192: Bob Is Your Dark Uncle

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I am Jason DeFilippo and I'm here with my bestest friends in the whole goddamn world. Well, that's some pressure. Come on, bring it. I'm Brian Schulmeister. How are you doing, Jason? Peachy Keen. Peachy Keen. Let's kick this mofo off.

Okay. Well, last week we talked a little bit about how our best friend, Ev Williams, Mr. Twitter, and then who went on to Medium. And before that, blogger. Yes. And before that, blogger was bitching and moaning about how the system that he decided to use for everything digital ads is broken.

Which we, I mean, all know and we've talked about for years and years. Fox basically agrees. The guy in charge of the ads that you see on all web content for Fox, ranging from Empire to Atlanta to the Super Bowl, basically has said that you should use an ad blocker because this stuff doesn't work.

Yeah. It's an interesting take. He's trying to figure out how to, you know. I just want to throw this out to the world, though, just for a second. Somebody please pay me a shit ton of money to give me a job that I can basically say is useless and doesn't work. Good point. Good point.

I mean, basically, he has no bar for performance, does he? No, he doesn't. That's a very good point, now that you put it that way. He's got what I would consider to be a dream job. I am going to get paid hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to do something that doesn't work.

And I've admitted that it doesn't work. And now my job is basically saying that what I do for a living doesn't work. Man, just go kill yourself. Kill yourself? Go to Hawaii. Well, maybe he's not one of those millennials that wants meaning in their life and in their job.

He must be a Gen Xer like us. I don't know. He looks pretty millennial to me. His name is Joe Marche. He's got the required beard and a black fitting tank. Okay. Can you tell if he's wearing the skinny jeans, too? It looks like he's wearing skinny dress pants.

Oh, that's new. He's straddling the line between our generation and the millennials. An executive millennial? Who'd have thunk it? Yeah, well, I think this is the textbook example of an executive millennial. He's an executive in a field that doesn't work, and he knows it.

Okay. Well, let's kick it to some news. In the news. So it's raining a little bit in Southern California, Jason. So I hear. It hardly ever does that.

But, you know, even when it rains in Southern California, there's a little bit of sunlight glinting through. It's kind of golden. One would almost say it's a bit like a golden shower. Could be. Could be. So, Brian, is there anything in the news lately? I don't know. Anything happened in the news at all, Jason?

I don't even know what to say about any of this. I was just gobsmacked. There's no better use of that word than what happened the other day, thanks to BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed has been straddling the line of actually being journalism and not journalism. I don't know where this falls.

Oh, this firmly falls in the camp of not journalism. Yeah. No, they have been doing so well. We've actually talked about them having a decent journalism department and quoting many stories on BuzzFeed News. And then they have to just go pee in the pool.

Still, it's enjoyable, isn't it? I mean, you know, I've ranted about how much I despise Twitter, but I have to say Twitter has been the most entertaining thing for the last 24 hours that I've ever seen in my entire life. You know, I'm sitting there watching the president's farewell speech and just, you know, a little tear fell up my eye.

I'm like, I'm going to miss this guy. He's eloquent. He knows how to be presidential. And then as soon as it's done, I flip over to the golden showers tag on Twitter and I almost fell off my couch. I was in tears. I was laughing so hard. It's very good. I think my personal favorite thing and it's going to be a hard thing for Trump to shake off throughout the next four years is the PETA stack.

That was the yeah, the picture of Obama in the vice press. So you can't call him PETA, but that's his name. Oh, yes. Well, the Sam B thing is is a pretty pretty I mean, I you know, I immediately wrote this is the day that comedians dream of.

Oh, yeah. It's a it's a it's a comedian's wet dream. Yes, it is. And the Samantha B bit on full frontal was pretty good. So we link that in the show notes for sure. Yeah. And yeah, there's not much technology involved in this. So unless he's using one of those strange things at CES that monitors your urine stream for your health.

I think we're safe. Yeah, indeed. But it's still the the the fact it was a perfect storm. It really was. It's like you have all these people emotional about Obama leaving. And then everybody just used his own weapon against him.

Twitter came out in in true Twitter form and just really made it. I really haven't checked my stock price, but I really hope it went up. I've got to say it did rain on his parade. Oh, man. OK, let's move on to some actual tech Trump news.

Peter Thiel, the supervillain of the Internet now. He's got a piece in The New York Times where he kind of explains himself. I particularly love the photo where it actually looks like he is a puppet of some sort. And there is something stuck right up his ass, keeping him sitting there.

Well, it might not be too far from the truth. We know he does like to take it up the ass. Thank you, Gawker, for that. And goodbye, Gawker, for that. Yes. Yes. OK, so this might be the last episode of Grumpy Old Geeks. And on that note, yeah, it's an interesting read.

And I don't like this guy. I don't like him. No, he's not. He's not. He's not a good man. No. I mean, granted, everybody was happy when Gawker died. But the methods that he employed to take them down, I think, were reprehensible. Well, get ready for about four more years of this.

We might have some good results, but the methodology of getting there, not so great. Yay. A glimpse of things to come. Exactly. Yeah. I was going to go for another rain joke, but I think I'm done. Thank you. Speaking of people that need someone to make it rain.

Yahoo is finally, supposedly, at the very end of their long-storied existence. The tip of hat to Barrett Reese, who sent this to us on Twitter, the slash dot dot org link about it. Marissa Meyer is going to be resigning shortly, and Yahoo will be changing its name to Altaba.

Altaba. Altaba. It's a play on the Alibaba, because that's the only reason that Yahoo has any financial stake in the world today, is because they own so much stock in a company that's doing well, unlike Yahoo. Now, here's something that you don't really hear that much.

Marissa Meyer isn't just going to pack her bags and go home. Because, as we know, you're not allowed to work from home at Yahoo, thanks to Marissa Meyer. Thank you very much for that. She's going to just go work for Verizon. Okay. Well, I guess I should be switching my cell phone company now, then, because she will rapidly run that into the ground.

Well, Verizon's pretty much on that track right now. If they're going to spend this much money on Yahoo after all the news lately. So, I'm guessing, hopefully, Verizon will be getting a discount based on the fact that Yahoo just can't quite seem to protect their database from anybody.

We'll see. Just all I'm asking, Altaba, is keep that Yahoo.com homepage up, because I really don't have the patience to train my father to use something else for the homepage on his browser. I cannot go change every person I know who's, like, default Yahoo page as much as I'd like to.

Trust me, I've been trying for 15 years, and you just can't get rid of that bar that they installed when they got Netscape 3 back in 97. It just won't go away. That's true, even though Bing is trying their damnedest to put their bar there instead. Oh, Bing. I didn't even know Bing was still a thing.

Well, Microsoft doesn't actually like to can anything. It just sticks around forever, and somebody gets a pension. Did you hear that submarines have Windows for submarines? And it's basically a version of XP that is unsupported nowadays. So they really do.

They really do not let anything go. I told you. They really don't. Well, Facebook is pissed off God. Okay. Bring it on. I don't know if you follow God on Twitter. I don't.

Well, actually, there are several God accounts because, you know, there is no one true God. So I follow a couple of God accounts. Well, this is the at the good Lord above account, which is also over on Facebook. So he made a post basically asking Americans to stop making your military so damn huge and give some people medicine.

Okay. I can get behind that. This is right online with what. Oh, by the way, God on Facebook is verified. That's awesome. This is a verified God. He's made many a snarky post. I've I've I've occasionally checked out the page. You know, I get as much updates as one ever does for anything that one follows on Facebook.

So funny, very humorous page. You know, you shouldn't you're not seeing the post unless you like the page. You're not liking the page unless you like the humor. But they felt that that post about making a point about military and medicine was over the line. Oh, all the other things that these posted and banned him.

Not only did they ban him from his own page. He's banned completely anywhere on Facebook. No commenting, no posting on a personal page, any friends pages, anything. God has been smote. So that's some arrogant shit to ban someone who is omniscient and omnipotent.

Yeah. They're omniscient, not omniscient. Well, that sounds like a dessert. Have some omniscient. It's delicious. Especially since we've just heard that apparently Zuckerberg has found God. He's he's disavowed his atheism. I guess not this God. Oh, that's that's breaking news to me.

I did not know that. Oh, that was making the rounds last week. I didn't include it on the podcast because who gives a flying God? That's true. All hail the FSM. Or who gives a flying spaghetti monster, I guess, would have been more appropriate. But I didn't get there in time. So yes, God banned on Facebook.

OK, maybe that maybe these two are intertwined because, you know, nothing happens. You know, every how do they the religious people say everything happens for a reason? So, yeah, OK, anyway, Facebook is also moved into journalism again and now they have the journalism project.

So it must be serious because they call it a project. Kind of like the Manhattan could be. Yes, probably probably about the same results. So they're going to be they're going to establish stronger ties between Facebook and the news industry. We will be collaborating with news organizations to develop products, learning from journalists about ways we can be a better partner and working with publishers and educators on how we can equip people with the knowledge they need to be informed readers in the digital age.

Shouldn't you have done this when you did your partnership with the advertising and what you worked on this, the posting where? Oh, yes, the the instant if I can't remember even what instant articles, instant articles on Facebook.

Yeah, well, that's before they admitted that they were a journalistic enterprise. They were just an advertising based enterprise at that point. Look, this would have been awesome if you would have come around to this way of thinking, I don't know, before the biggest selection in our lifetime. Maybe a year ago would have helped a couple steps that we've been screaming about for years that you could probably start to do integrate Snopes.

That'd be a good start. But hey, no, it's all it's already come out. And I don't think this has been on Snopes, but Snopes is just a tool for Hillary. Haven't haven't you heard? So, oh, Pizzagate. So, you know, you got to you got to take the good with the bad there. And do you remember when Facebook actually had the what was it?

The when they started posting things about the onion like, you know, this is this is irony or whatever the hell they call it. I can't even remember what the tag was because it didn't last very long. But they tried to do that with humorous news, but they just didn't do it with, quote unquote, fake news, which, you know, in the day, I always just thought it was illegal to say unpatent or patently untrue things about people on the Internet.

You know, you could get sued and go to jail for that. But apparently if you just say this is satire, then everything, everything's off. Gloves are off. You can do whatever you want. You could do that and you or you can take the Trumpian approach, which is you never say anything specifically.

You say that you've been hearing things. Oh, yes. People are saying I've got hearing and it's great hearing. You should you would be impressed by my hearing because it's great. I hear the best things, the finest things. Well, one of the things that I've heard is that Facebook has hired former TV anchor from CNN turned education reform advocate Campbell Brown to be the head of news partnerships.

This is not actually like a news position per se. It's quarterbacking Facebook with a bunch of news organizations, news being a very broad definition. I think the first thing that Facebook has to do is actually define what news is and what sites are providing news.

But good luck with that. So maybe that'll be partly her job. I somehow doubt it. OK, here's the deal. Don't get your news from Facebook, people. It's pretty straightforward. Go to Twitter for that. Oh, yeah. Actually, well, there's some degree of truth in that.

I do use Twitter more for news than anything on Facebook. If I see something on Facebook, I go check it out on Twitter and see what's going on. Speaking of Twitter, I particularly enjoyed this Gizmodo article. Becoming the first responder is a big deal on Twitter. First.

First. Yeah. And most people waste it by doing that. Mm hmm. So this is an article by a William Tritone who said that replying to a Trump tweet is a strange internet experience you should try. He managed to get first response on a Trump tweet once.

Not not positive, obviously, because he comes more from our side of the Trumpian perspective. And he said that basically you're in for a world of insanity. If this happens, you will. It's just instantly overwhelming and insane. Within seconds, craze Trump supporters and dissenters alike will weigh in on your tweet.

Hundreds of likes. And it doesn't. There's a taper off period. It lasts quite a long time. You will be getting responses weeks and weeks and weeks later still. So this is the long Trump tail. Exactly. OK. So so you don't shark fin when you when you reply to a Trump tweet.

You long tail. OK. You long tail. That's right. Interesting. So now I've been thinking about this a lot and there's a lot of people out there with Twitter accounts that don't like Trump. Right. Yeah. There's also a lot of people on Twitter that really like Trump.

Now, I have filters on my tweet bot that don't let me see anything that have the word Trump in it. And it is glorious. I will tell you right now. I replace Trump with poop emoji. I do that on my browser. But until we have to do show notes and then I turn it off because it doesn't really work that well when you're trying to paste into WordPress.

Yes. But I'm thinking if we all just start a flood Trump bot and just keep tweeting to Trump all day long with just random sentences, you just you fill the signal with noise. You know, we're going to do basically a denial of service, a DOS attack on him.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm thinking. I'm thinking if we can get enough people to just sign up for this bot and we just flood the shit out of Trump, we can probably just, you know, maybe make him move to Periscope. Oh, that'd be nice. I'd never see anything again. Exactly.

And, you know, he's so far behind the times now that he's apparently Giuliani might be a cyber security liaison with Trump. That's already in the show notes for the security. OK, great. So now that we know that, maybe he'll just move to Vine, which would be fantastic.

He's got he's got a couple of days left. Yeah. Yeah. Go for it, man. Get some. I mean, seven seconds is about all you can coherently put together anyways. Well, I think he's about five over that. But the best seconds. These are the best seconds that I can possibly have.

Everybody is talking about these seconds. Now, I know this is the funny part. We talked about this after the election and we're like, this is not going to be an anti-Trump show. Apparently, we have gone back on our promise. So, yeah. Sorry, guys. You know, whatever.

It is what it is. It is what it is. These are the facts. This is what I'm hearing. And since we have these facts, we're going to report on these facts. And those who don't like these facts can go fact off. There's no way we cannot talk about him. The fact of the matter is he is the president of the United States and he uses technology.

Twitter is something we talk about all the time as is basically only means of communication. So we have a week left till he's president. We have a week left. And I love I love all the pictures from the press conference yesterday that show the stack of papers on the table, which were all blank, all blank.

And all my friends in Hollywood were like, no prop master would ever let this go out there. You would at least have something on the paper, not just blank reams of paper. I mean, if you want an allegory for what I think the next four years are going to be, it's a table of blank paper. There you go.

And stakes. There were stakes on the table, too. OK, so let's get back to one of my other pet peeves, the unlimited data that we've all been enjoying for so long. Oh, yeah, yeah. The unlimited where literally unlimited does not literally mean unlimited. It's unlimited until you actually try to use a lot of it.

And then they go, oh, no, not unlimited anymore. So if you're one of the lucky few who managed to hold on to Verizon's unlimited data for years, I am not one of those person people because I'd actually still have like an iPhone 4 if I were because you can't upgrade. Yeah. Yeah. And AT&T was like that for years.

I was grandfathered in forever with AT&T, quote unquote, unlimited plan. And yeah, they finally were like, it's like, ah, you know what? The 3GS is as far as you can go. So if you're still managing to hold on to that and you can somehow manage to download more than 200 gigabytes of data per month on a circa, you know, 10 year ago phone.

On 3G, yeah, go for it. And on 3G, they're going to start booting you. Now, much like how you wanted to provide a denial of service against Trump, I want to go get about eight to I want to get about 800 old iPhone 4s. Sign them all up with Verizon and just set up like robots to download porn all day on them.

I was going to say, point them at Pornhub. I want to max them out every single month for as long as I can. Yeah. And that will actually do nothing. I'll show them, Jason. Yeah. You do that. I recommend the Golden Shower channel on Pornhub.

Oh, yeah. Speaking of bandwidth, Google is trying to come up with some new machine learning. So our images are smaller when we download high res ones. They're calling it, I think the pronunciation would be Razer, but it's R-A-S-I-R, Rapid and Accurate Super Image Resolution.

Because it's super. It's the best resolution. It's the rapidest resolution. It's the most accurate. People are saying it's super. It's super. Super duper. So you can get a large photo by only using a quarter of the pixel. So it just makes shit up and throws it in the image.

Yeah. It just figures out the amount of noise that you could actually put in as opposed to real data and trick the eye and still make it look pretty good, right? That seems to be the deal, which if you're looking on your phone, there you go. Who cares? Yeah.

But you know what? I think we need stuff like this because the one thing I've noticed with web design these days is nobody bothers to optimize their images anymore. Like every photo that I see on a website is like two megs. And I'm like, that should be 110K. Yeah. That's kind of it.

Yeah. The kids nowadays, they didn't grow up on modems like we did. You know, it's just like, sir, can I have some bits for my modem? You know? And nowadays it's just like, you go to any of these pages, it's a 10, 15 meg download for the homepage. And it's like, what are you people thinking?

I know. It's not like I have unlimited data on my phone. No. Yeah. And it's, it's just, everybody is, every designer and every programmer has forgotten just to optimize the damn image when, before you put it on the page, but whatever, nobody, who cares?

Nobody cares. Nobody pays for websites anyway. There used to be things like progressive enhancement and, you know, fail backwards, all this stuff, all of these things that, you know, Jeffrey Zeldman has taught us all and ingrained into us. Uh, they just, kids just throw them out the window anymore because there's no money in web development.

So they get the lowest common denominator. Yep. This is what you get when you pay 10 bucks for your website. Yeah. Anyways. Good for you. Anyway. So this is on Google plus right now and they're rolling it out to the rest of the Google properties in the future. I thought Google plus was supposed to go away like months ago.

I haven't been following up on that because really who cares? But I mean, I thought it got shelved. They keep, they keep changing their mind. They keep pivoting as it were. Um, so it's, it's a good test bed, I guess, for them. They've, you know, done a couple of billion images on it. So somebody's still using it.

Fair enough. Yeah. You just have to have an Android phone, I guess, but yeah, they're going to be rolling it out to the rest of it. And I, I assume this will eventually be coming to Chrome. And as a photographer, if they touch my damn image, I need an anti-razor tag. Alt equals fuck razor, you know? Right.

Well, Apple is going to spend some money. Apparently, uh, they are talking to TV and movie studios about making their own uh, movies and TV shows and getting into that game along with, uh, HBO, Netflix, spot, uh, Hulu, all those folks. Um, but the reason that they're doing it is not to compete with, with those areas.

They basically want to compete with Spotify because as we've talked about in the past, Spotify is starting to rule out its own, uh, original programming video base because music isn't enough and it doesn't pay. Uh, so they're going to do the same. Apple's going to throw some serious money at some, well, let's be honest.

Uh, Apple's going to go for big names. They're going to go for Joe Schmoes. So no, Joe Schmoes is going to get any cash to do anything. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to get movies by Jay-Z now. Great. And Dr. Dre. No, no, no, no. No, Jay-Z. They're all, they're all on title. They're all on title. But Dr. Dre, Dr.

Dre is part of Apple because he's got beats. So, you know, it's true. Yep. So there you go. They're going to basically roll out all this stuff and make it as a, if you're an Apple music subscriber, you're going to get some of this new content. We'll see what they announce. If anything, the problem with this stuff is, as we know, the stuff takes years.

Uh, they announced Westworld three years before we ever saw an episode. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll see what happens. It's, this is gonna, it's a long tail, I suppose. And Steve jobs just rolled over in his grave. Pretty much. He never wanted to be do content ever. No, he didn't even want to do video on the iPod, but.

Showed him on, showed him on that one. Yep. Uh, Amazon just got slapped with a $1 million fine. Ooh, what did they do wrong? In Canada, because. Oh, so that's like five bucks. It's about five American dollars. Yeah. Uh, the Canadian enforcement agency announced yesterday that Amazon Canada will pay $1 million fine for what could be construed as misleading pricing practices.

Uh, basically they're saying that the, the manufacturer suggested retail prices and things like that are being thrown up as marketing gimmicks to make people think that the Amazon price is an incredible, such a deal. Such a deal. I've got the best deals. These are the deals that you want because I make the best deals.

Well, apparently they aren't really good deals. They're basically bullshitting and, and faking larger, bigger prices so that, uh, their price looks better. So Canada said, Hey, you can't do that. Give us a million bucks. Yeah. We got to go buy some poutine. So yeah.

The thing about those Amazon prices, there's another lawsuit that I know that people are working on that the, uh, you know, the recommended by Amazon. So if you search for widget and it's like, it shows up in the top one is like Amazon recommends. And if you dig a little deeper, you can get the same thing for much cheaper.

So there, there's a lot of pricing shenanigans going on at Amazon right now that people are starting to get, get wind of. So maybe it'll start to bring them back in line. We'll see. We'll see, but the Amazon is going to add a hundred thousand new jobs in the U S because they're going to be opening up a ton of new warehouses in Texas, California, Florida, New Jersey, and other States.

And you know, you can't, you apparently can't have a drone, pick up a box and put it in a box yet. Yet. Yeah. And you know what? Here's the thing over Christmas, I ordered a metric shit ton of stuff from Amazon and almost all of it, there was probably 70% air in those boxes.

Those boxes are ridiculous. It's so stupid. It is so unbelievably stupid. So I don't know what's going on with their packaging over there, but if they just optimize the packaging, they could probably save a ton on fossil fuels, just materials and gas, you know, just everything.

It's, it's, it's silly. So on that one, bring on the machines, you know, cause apparently the people who work in these warehouses just want to take my USB stick that I bought and put it in a three by four foot box with about eight tons of those, uh, air pads around them.

I'm like, seriously. Yeah. And I know that this is, this is going to be trumped about as if it's a great new thing, a hundred thousand new jobs in the U S but the reality is these are warehouse jobs. These are not maybe 10, maybe 20,000 of these are going to be decently paying jobs.

Most of them are beyond low paying. Yeah, it is. It's minimum wage office or a warehouse work. I've done it. I've been, I've been a picker in a warehouse. It sucks. And, uh, you know, as we've covered on this show before, Amazon doesn't want to pay for things like air conditioning or heat or transportation for their employees.

So people sleep in the woods, like in Scotland and fun times. Yeah. Good times. Uh, so you, Amazon drones, all that sort of stuff. I finally found a drone story that didn't make me angry. Well, that's a first. I know. So this is a new research project that's being funded by DARPA, uh, the United States military's experimental technology arm.

You know, previous hits include the internet. Okay. Yeah. We know about that. Okay. Well, they've developed an autonomous drone made entirely out of cardboard. So we got something to do with all that. I was going to say, can we use all the Amazon cardboard? Yeah. It can fly twice the distance of any fixed range aircraft because it's disposable.

The drone only goes one way. This is going to be great for transporting vaccines, medical supplies, and, you know, getting to out of reach places, very low income, you know, third world nations think all that sort of stuff. Uh, you can pack a ton of stuff onto the drone. The more relief that you can supply, the better.

And the drone never has to come back. Plus they get some packaging paper. So there's an, there's an aftermarket here for all of the discarded drone engines that are coming. So hopefully, you know, we can get some, whoever's getting these supplies can get like a, uh, a solar panel and recharge the batteries and then sell the drones to the drug lords and be able to, uh, and, uh, deliver your smack via one way drone.

Yeah. Well, I was also thinking that this is absolutely fantastic to, uh, sort out that whole pesky situation about that potential wall that might be coming up. Ah, yes. Yes. Load up your paper airplane full of weed and fly that fucker right over. Or stick it in your button drive across the border like everybody else.

Yeah. And, uh, speaking of dark places, nice segue. No problem, man. Uh, we've talked a lot about the deep web and the dark web. Uh, they are apparently slightly different things. If you really want to break down of what all this stuff is and how you could actually go move about in it, if you really wanted to, uh, there's a nice little wrap up on salon.

It was originally from the conversation, uh, which is a site, the conversation.com, but they do that annoying thing where they don't link to the article. They link to the homepage and you cannot find the original article anywhere on the goddamn site. I swear to God, everybody puts originally seen on alter web or alternate and you cannot find it.

It does not exist. Yeah. I don't actually believe this was ever on the conversation. Yeah. So I think so much for attribution. Yeah. I want to do attribution. I can't. It's great. It originally appeared there. Then we took it, deleted it. And now we put it here.

Yeah. So now it's here. Anyways, it's a really good rundown of different weird bits of software and things like that, that people are using to basically try to, uh, to index the, the less visible parts of the web. Interesting stuff. Okay. I, I still, I stay off the dark and deep web because there's really nothing there.

I've seen the design that they've got going on there and I only like pretty software, so I'm just not even going to bother. That's true. That's very true. Uh, got a couple of security related items, but, uh, that I didn't throw into our actual security segment just because these are brief hits and we don't want Bittner to go too crazy on some of these things.

Um, the Bittner off the chain, exactly. The autofill systems and browsers like Google Chrome, Safari, and opera, as well as plugins like LastPass, curiously and, uh, fortuitously, one password is not mentioned as part of this, uh, can be easily tricked into giving away your information on web pages.

Uh, it's a phishing scheme. So there's a link in our show notes from life hacker that shows you the basics on how to stay safe. If you're using any of those things, I recommend you do so, or just, you know, use one password. The interesting thing about this is I did proof of concept of this years and years ago and I never even followed up on it.

So it's funny that it's coming up now. It is so easy to create a hidden form field and just have it auto populate and get as much information as you want. Cause you could just, you could put it as, as hidden data in a login form or a, uh, uh, newsletter signup, you know, put in your, put in your email address and then it will just automatically auto populate your, you know, if you have your credit card data stored in Chrome, it'll just auto pop and off your, off you go.

Yep. Bob's your uncle. Bob is your uncle. Bob is your dark uncle. And, uh, in late December, a hacker or hackers, as they take pains to point out, uh, basically, uh, did some ransomware attack on Los Angeles Valley college.

Um, they hit a bunch of their systems, including, uh, school computers, emails, and voicemail systems. Uh, the virus held the systems on lockdown until a ransom was handed over and the LA Valley college did pay that ransom 2,800 bucks in Bitcoin.

28,000 bucks, not 28,000. Sorry. My bad at a zero. You're not good at math. You're a programmer. That's okay. You like the design side. I know. I also have a hell of a tickle in my throat. Damn it. Obviously that must be that extra zero. They got lost.

It must be. It was there. I just coughed it out. And finally, I, I love this story more than anything. Um, give her, uh, the geek squad. I got a lot to say about the geek squad, but please bring this on. These wonderful, trustworthy people that you let into your home and give hand over your laptop to, uh, you lost me at trustworthy, but that's okay.

Well, that's what you're supposedly paying for. And that, you know, of course they're not going to take all those pictures of your wife and put them out on the dark web. They'd never do anything. They would never do that. Despite the hundreds of news stories about them doing just that, they, they would never do that. Well, last May, um, and this is a hard sell.

The defense in a child pornography trial. That's a tough sell, but, uh, you know, okay. Unfortunately, it's, it's not what you want, but, uh, they are alleging that the FBI is, uh, using members of electronics retailer, Best Buy's tech support team, the geek squad, to peer into the accused computer on the hunt for evidence of child pornography.

Uh, the, I, I wait, before we even go any further, I can tell you how this played out. Yeah. A member of the geek squad was cloning all of their clients, hard drives as he was in there to fix them. And he got busted for, for kitty porn. And then the FBI flipped him.

He, they flipped him and now he's an agent for the FBI. I guarantee you 1000%. I have no proof of this, but I guarantee that that is what happened. That is my guess as well, because I've known that they clone drives for a long time. I mean, that's, you bring in your drive to that place and, uh, the unsupervised 24 year olds are just 400 pound hacker in New Jersey is, is making copies of your drive to go over at their leisure on their off time.

Um, since then the defense lawyers have revealed that the FBI has cultivated at least eight of the company's IT folks over a four year period to serve as confidential informants who were all receiving some sort of government funded payment for turning over data that they are probably taking illegally.

Yep. 1000% probably true. And if it's just eight, that's only because we haven't gotten any proof that it's more. It's gotta be if the whole, if the whole entirety of the geek squad was owned by the FBI, I would not be surprised. Yes. And, uh, to be clear, the, uh, geek squad does not state that, uh, their people are, um, cloning all this data.

They do not state that they're quoting. No, they are, they want it. They want to be very clear. Their agents are unintentionally finding child pornography as they try to make the repairs the customer is paying for. They are not looking for it. They are not downloading your entire drive to take home and whack off to later. Their policies completely prohibit that.

Yeah. Yeah. Because when you're fixing a DLL, the first thing you're going to go is look for the kiddie porn folder in an images directory. Mm hmm. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You need to go to the photos directory on that drive when you are basically trying to figure out why the printer doesn't work. You know, we both fixed enough computers and we know that when you're fixing a computer, the one thing that you do not run across randomly is somebody's images period.

So I, I have actually, I, this is a true story. I took it a computer to get fixed once at, at the geek squad, just, it, it was a computer that didn't matter. It was, it was like, it was somebody else's. I don't even remember what the deal was anymore. It was a long time ago. Some asshole friend that said, fix, fix my PC. And you're like, I'm taking it to the geek squad.

Something like that. And I just dropped it off at the geek squad and I came back and I picked it up and you can see recent command was search for a star.jpg. You're kidding me. I'm not kidding you. My family, my family has used them to set up routers. And I, I, I strictly forbade them from letting them touch any computer.

I'm like, have them write down the credentials and then you type them in. You do not let anyone from the geek squad touch your computer. And that's what they did. So you never let those assholes touch your computer. They are, it's, it's a bunch of teenagers. You know, they couldn't get a job at Kinko's or Portillo's flipping burgers.

So they work at the geek squad because they know cyber. They know the cyber. Security. Security. We are here again with Dave Bittner from the cyber wire podcast.

How's it going, Dave? It's going pretty good. Jason. I had to get my security voice on. I was like, all right, got it. I was like, is this, is this podcast like a pirate day? You might pay for the whole podcast, but you're only going to need the edge. Right.

I am doing well. How are you gentlemen doing? Peachy keen. As best, as best as we can be doing in these trying times. I, we alternate between laughing and crying. Right. Right. Much like a first date. Yes.

Yeah. Right. Exactly. Wow. That explains, that explains a few things, Jason. I'm sure it does, Brian. The old joke sounds like my wedding night. You're right. Well, let's dive in here. I thought we'd start off with talking about influence operations.

So, obviously, we're, everyone's still, the hot topic is the, we have a new president. It's not the hot topic, Dave. This is the golden topic. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Yes. Yes. I was like, we're talking about influences.

So, we're going to talk about chicks that wear hot topic clothes on Instagram? That's right. Okay. Hot topic, yeah. That was the limited that closed down this week. Another, a iconic retail brand from, from like formative years closed down this week.

Could they not afford all the Bitcoin for the ransomware that they got hit with? It could, could, that might have had something to do with it. It's probably more that people didn't want to buy their clothes, but anyway. I find that hard to believe because hot topic is still in business. Yeah. It's funny.

I was wondering how far we were going to get into this segment without talking about Mr. Trump. And the question is, the answer is less than 60 seconds. So, look, we haven't been able to get into any of our segments without some joke dropping things that have nothing to do with it whatsoever at the library.

No books about it yet. Yet. We still open with golden showers. I will say, I will share my favorite joke with you because I cannot share it on my own show. The favorite thing I saw on Twitter was that Disney World has decided that they're not going to have Donald Trump in the Hall of Presidents.

He will, however, have a featured spot on Splash Mountain. Oh, that's good. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, where we do approve of potty humor. Yes. Yes, absolutely. So, getting back to influence operations, you know, there's been this whole talk about the election and it's pretty much agreed upon that votes were not altered, but it was an influence operation.

And a theme that we're seeing is that people are surprised by these influence operations, but a lot of they sound like Captain Louie from Casablanca. You know, they're shocked, shocked that people are trying to influence elections. But, you know, intelligence services, including our own, particularly our own, have been doing this sort of thing for a long time.

Can you say South America? Well, exactly. We, you know, we will often refer to it as public diplomacy. For example, if the president campaigns for Britain to stay, to remain, to stay in the European Union, or even, you know, campaigning in Israel against Netanyahu, that's, you know, that's an influence operation.

Yes, exactly. So, yes, you know, that the Russians got into the DNC servers, that was both aggressive and unwelcome. But, you know, on the other hand, we got a lot less bent out of shape when the Chinese did it to the OPM, and that was for espionage and not influence.

But, you know, there's sort of this spy versus spy kind of thing going on here, where we all do, in other words, it's not as if we are innocent in these sorts of operations. The doing is not the problem. The getting caught is the problem.

That's part of it. And, you know, at the same time, I don't think it's unrealistic for us to say we should not allow this, and we should do everything in our power to prevent this. But we are certainly not innocent of doing this ourself. So, to put ourselves on a moral high horse, I think, is a lot of observers are kind of finding that problematic.

Well, it could be construed as maybe hypocritical, so. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know what? Shut up. We're doing our job. Get on with it. That's right. Do unto others, not let them do unto you. We want to prevent it. Nothing wrong with that.

But there was an interesting story that came out in the past few days on Politico about Ukraine finds themselves in a little bit of a pickle in that they were doing information operations to sabotage the Trump campaign and actually boost Clinton.

They were doing it in a much less organized way than the Russians did because things are a little chaotic in Ukraine these days. So, it was more of a scattershot effort. But the fact that they were doing this seems to have been pretty widely revealed. So, now they find themselves having done this with the unexpected winner of our presidential election, who I think we can all agree isn't in the least bit vindictive about things.

No, not at all. Yeah. So, they find themselves sort of having to make nice with the incoming administration. And, of course, you know, obviously huge tensions between Russia and Ukraine. So, kind of an interesting story about, we have the link there to it, that, you know, what happens when you get caught doing information operations and they go wrong.

And the person who you did them against turns out to be, ends up being the most powerful person in the world and also has a bit of a vindictive mean streak in him. So, it would be interesting to see how that plays out. So, you know, this whole, all of this business is obviously, we're going to be keeping an eye on it.

These are interesting times that we are living in, you know, the release of all of these documents about President Trump. By the way, isn't that a Chinese curse? That's why I said it. That's why I said it. Yes, there's a great Terry Pratchett novel called Interesting Times that I would like to point out.

Everybody should go read. Yeah. So, you know, there's lots of accusations about what the Russians may or may not have on Mr. Trump. I do just want to say what my favorite aspect of this entire story is.

And beyond the obvious, you know, there's some really funny stuff there. But the best thing is the guy's name, the ex-spy, theoretically, the British ex-spy, Christopher Steele, Remington Steele's brother. Oh, come on. You know, I keep saying that this whole thing is bullshit and I don't care either way because it is comedy gold.

But, you know, I came I personally came from the opinion when it first all started to hit that this is all bullshit. The more time I'm spending on Twitter and seeing what learned people are starting to come out with, the more I'm starting to rather unbelievably and incredulously start to go, maybe it's not bullshit.

The funny thing is, I listen to I listen to the top talk radio show in Chicago here in the morning before K-Rock comes on WGN. And those guys are like, yeah, this doesn't have the ring of truth to it. But you know what? There's enough accusations in here that some of them have to be.

And the real story here is the the collusion with the Russian government. So, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is the real story. And interesting that, you know, the the FBI requested warrants to to to to tap communications of some of the people on Trump's campaign.

You know, that's not that was that's that they didn't do that willy nilly. Yeah. They know that they had a good and they had to convince a judge to let them do it. So, you know, we'll see how that plays out. It could very well be that they did their investigation and they didn't find anything. The real story here is they actually went to a judge and just didn't do it.

Well, another thing, something that struck me reading through the report was that everything in that report was plausible. Absolutely. And so literally all of it. Yeah.

And so, I mean, even the the crazy, you know, salacious stuff, you'd read it and you go, yeah, I could see that happening. I could, you know, like it doesn't seem out of character to me. That alone is the most terrifying aspect is that nobody really batted an eye. It was like, yeah, OK.

Yeah. But what a thing for the incoming president of the United States to have, you know, on his on his back as as he comes in. You know, that's sort of that's how we're. I just walked right into that one, didn't I?

It's always the funniest if it's unintentional. So awesome. Yeah. Can we can we go back to talking about Jason's video cameras? Sorry. Sorry. You got the splash damage from this one. Yeah, that's right. I was in the splash zone.

Like a concert. Yeah. Right. All of all. Everyone in the front row of his press conferences are going to be handed out raincoats from now on. Yeah. If he ever does another one. All right. So moving on to a subject that I know, Jason, I put this one in here for you.

Researchers in Japan have found that peace sign pics can give hackers your fingerprints. So I know you're going to say there's nothing new. No. Yeah. Yeah. You get a high enough high enough resolution camera if you're holding up your fingers. What do they do this with Angela Merkel the first time is the proof of concept way back in the day.

Right. Yeah. So this notion has been around for a while. But with the Japanese, this is researchers at Japan's National Institute of Informatics. What they're saying is that what they've discovered is that they can take images, high quality images just from social media, basically selfies.

And if you imagine the, you know, one of the iconic selfies is someone looking at the camera and holding up a peace sign. Right. How many of those do you see? They're saying if it's a high quality camera and if it's in daylight, so lots of light, which makes it, you know, a nice sharp image.

You have to have contrast. Yes. They can pull the fingerprint from an image like that. I would like to I would like to state for the record, this is why you should never give the peace sign, but always give the bird. It's the opposite side of your hand. So you don't actually see the see the fingerprints.

You got to be smart about that. You know, you know, biometric data isn't the isn't the as good a security factor as maybe a lot of people think it is. You know, just got to be careful. It's certainly better than nothing.

You know, using your fingerprint for your phone is more convenient than using a password for a lot of people. But as we've talked about here before, the problem with biometrics is you can't change them. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, come on. Well, if myth, if myth buffers, here's my dick thumb today.

If myth busters can actually break it, you know, in a few minutes with some rubber cement and in a, you know, a latex glove, then that's really probably not the best way to go about it. Yeah, absolutely. Also, peace sucks.

Give him the bird. It's your positive attitude that I admire. Welcome to grumpy old geeks. I know, right? It's right there in the name of the show. So, yes. So moving on. Have you heard of executive order one, two, three, three, three? Is that the one that kills all the Jedi?

No, it does not. Not quite as bad. No, I've heard of it now. Yes, this is a new executive order that will be sharing bulk raw surveillance data between all the organizations. I think there's 16 organizations that can now get all of the bulk data from the NSA, which is supposed to be just overseas collection.

But as we've talked about on the show a thousand times, everybody domestically who calls anybody overseas gets rolled up into that bulk collection. So right now, you know, this is this is and no court order. You can just get it.

You can get the feed. This is like getting the fire hose from Twitter, as they used to say. And the thing about this was it didn't really require congressional sign off. This is one of those Obama's like, you know, drop the pen, walk out of the room type of thing is like, here's your data.

Fuck off. You know, so it's an interesting one. And, you know, it just comes back to I, you know, I like Obama because he was a statesman. He was eloquent, but I disagree with probably about 70 percent of the shit he did when it comes to security and all of the espionage shit on the back end.

And this is another one of them that I don't agree with. Yeah, he has. It has been an interesting contrast, his take on civil liberties and. Oh, all the stuff that he ran on that he completely changed. I'm sorry. Gitmo still open. Go with that one. Right. Protection of journalists has been has been troubling.

I asked one of our analysts here about this in particular, and he described it. He said it's mildly troubling, but perhaps it doesn't amount to much. And he pointed out that, you know, the NSA shouldn't be collecting against American citizens. And actually, within NSA, they are like that's a really big deal within NSA.

And when they inadvertently collect information against domestic information, like there are all sorts of protocols that go into place automatically, and it's actually a pain in the butt for them when it does happen automatically or inadvertently, rather.

But I mean, but they still have it and they don't really get rid of it. If you look at anything that Snowden said, it's still there. You know, it's still on the drives. It may be. But, you know, so it could be a slippery slope type of thing, like what you're describing. But it may as well mean only sharing legitimate foreign intelligence with other agencies, which is which is fine.

You know, there's there's nothing wrong with that. The other issue that I would say the other issue, though, is just too much information. That's one of the problems that they had is that they're collecting everything and they don't know what to focus on. So if you have too much data that I don't I'm not buying that too much anymore because of the machine learning and the algorithms are getting better and better and better.

Wait, wait, wait, Brian, are you on the side of AI now? Are you saying that AI exists and that the government is using it against us? Not AI, but machine learning, certainly. So the too much information thing used to be a valid. I thought a valid criticism and something that you could hide behind.

I think that's becoming less and less true. Mandela effect. Okay, moving on. Just to wrap up, you know, the sort of background I got on it. Our analysts did say that The Verge is confused on one point that there is no such thing as raw intelligence.

By definition, intelligence is analyzed, not raw. So they probably meant raw data or raw information. It's a little bit, a little pedantic, but important, you know. That's what I that's what I assumed it was, is they're going to get access to all of like everything that they collect. Yeah, and again, he said it doesn't seem like a big deal and it might actually be helpful because this means that different people can be can see different things in the same information.

So, you know, again, he he said it was mildly troubling, but probably doesn't amount to much what it's worth. So someone who knows about these things, an opinion I trust. Oh, that's right. You guys hire professionals. I was like, yeah, I like I like how you and I, Jason, just kind of keep on chiming in, running over him.

And he's got the professional opinion on this. No, no, listen to us. Isn't this isn't this how them is? I mean, welcome to how the media works today. Right. You know, we've got opinions and our opinions are great because we've got the best opinions. But you, you know, no, no, no, you've got you've got fake cyber.

You don't do cyber. Well, that's fake news. Yeah. We only bring you on here because you like Star Wars and make fun of my microphones and my cameras. That's a nice. I'm a nice punching bag for you both. So. All right. Moving on.

Well, speaking of that and punching bags, Trump has picked Rudy Giuliani to meet with the companies about cybersecurity. I like how in all these stories now we never say the full cybersecurity word. We say people who are working on security for cyber. And what is it?

Cyber is an adjective. It's not a it's not a noun. Yeah, I don't know when this happened, but it's definitely become a thing. Now, I thought we would ask our resident expert because you are, I assume, well versed in many of these companies. I was not aware that Giuliani is running a security consulting firm.

He is. Yes. And not just a cybersecurity consulting firm. I think it's a more of a broad security consulting firm, but certainly deals with cyber stuff. And, you know, I think. Look, I think this is one of those situations with.

So a couple of things. Giuliani running a company that is a security consulting firm. You know, Giuliani could put his name on the top of just just about any company. In Orange Julius. Right. And still. You see, he still doesn't know anything.

He still doesn't know anything about orange juice. That would be delicious. But my point is that, you know, it is it is likely that a group of people that he knew who were already, you know, experts in this field came to him and said, hey, you know, why don't we put your name on the top of the masthead and profit?

Right. Yeah. And so but in that way, look, let's give Giuliani the benefit of the doubt. He knows a thing or two about leadership, whether or not, whether we like whether it's good or not, whether we like him or not. You know, the guy has experience, you know, running a meeting.

Right. So the notion that, you know, these these cybersecurity people are going to come in. I cannot claim to be a huge fan of Giuliani, but at the same time, this this story strikes me in some ways is actually being a good thing because it means that they're reaching out and acknowledging that there's work to be done here and that they don't perhaps know everything.

Right. I can't believe they haven't hired McAfee yet. Well, they can't get him out of the jungle. He's in Alabama. He's down south. He's in town. You can find him. If you're going to hire a whack job to do security, get get McAfee.

At least he's got some skills. Yeah. Go all in. OK, well, thank you for joining us this week, Dave. I don't know if we're better off than we were before we started, but I feel like I kind of need a shower. We oh boy, we had some laughs, right?

We did. We'd had some laughs. All right. I'm going to see. I'll see you guys next week. Hopefully. At the library. I've got a book.

I've got a big book and it's called The Big Picture. Is it the best book? It is not the best book, but it is the big book. The Big Picture on the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself by Sean Carroll. OK. And this comes from the review that I'm going to read comes from Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Weaving the threads of astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and philosophy into a seamless narrative tapestry. Sean Carroll enthralls us with what we figured out in the universe and humbles us with what we do not yet understand. Yet in the end, it's the meaning of it all that feeds your soul of curiosity.

I tried to put my best Neil deGrasse Tyson on that one because he's got such a smooth voice. That's a glowing review, Jason. Does the book meet the hype? Absolutely. It does. It's a pretty fascinating book. It's just really long. It's like 18 hours on Audible.

So I listen to a little of it every night and it gets me thinking. And I end up having these really weird dreams about life, the universe and everything. There are no there are no dolphins. And I have not hit the number 42. But all in all, I'm really, I'm really digging this book.

I have to go, but it's I recommend it so far. I mean, unfortunately, it's not a story. So there's no like payoff at the end. The professor is not going to get the hot intern. So you're safe there. But for for what it is, it's a really smart book about science, the universe and everything.

It's great. Nice. I haven't read a book in that that area for quite a while. So it'd be good to see what see what news out there. Yeah, yeah. You're definitely going to love this book. I highly recommend picking it up, especially after you went through the time to do the three body problem in Washington.

This is one of those long books that I think you can get your teeth into and really kind of enjoy. Great. Well, I'm working my way through some short stuff that I haven't gotten through yet, but this will be my next big, long project. And, you know, if you've made it this far into the show, you probably like science and stuff. So that's true.

Yes. All the new listeners have gone now. Yes. Anyways, speaking of that, I did find 10 Discworld quotes you'll desperately need for the next four years. Now, rather than pick on on the person we've been picking on the whole show so far, I'm going to pick on Jason, except for the fact that he did finally come around to my way of thinking on this.

But quote number one. Let me read this to you, Jason. Let me remind you or let me ask you if this reminds you of an argument that you and I had that was ongoing throughout, say, the first two years of this podcast. Okay. I know. I know. Let's go ahead. Go ahead. Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase, the innocent have nothing to fear, believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty.

But in the longer term, even more from those who say things like the innocent have nothing to fear. So, yes, if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear is what that whole thing that came. I think it was from Eric Schmidt at Google when he was talking about their the original argument was for their real name policy that eventually got shit canned.

Yeah, no, I see. I have to go back and listen to those shows because I can't I can't remember thinking oppositely from this. But but yet you did. And rather strongly for for almost two years of the show. Maybe this is the Mandela effect. I don't know. I'm going to have to go check this out. All right.

Well, we have some listeners that have recently come to us and have foolheartedly told us they went back and listen to every single episode. So feel free to chime in, guys, and come on, remind Jason that he strongly supported the viewpoint that you should not have to worry about. Let people look at everything.

You're not doing anything wrong. OK, because, yeah, I just can't. I don't know about that. I don't believe that because I think it was opposite. You are mandaling yourself. Well, you might be on the other end of that, but I don't know. Here's the thing.

This could this could go both ways, my friend. You could have come around to my way of thinking and thinking that it's your way of thinking. That could be. But now my brain is starting to hurt. Exactly. So moving on. So moving on. And speaking of Terry Pratchett, I am excited to hear about this, that the BBC has revealed plans for a new Terry Pratchett documentary.

So this should be good. It'll be coming out later this year on BBC, too, which means probably PBS here or actually probably Sweden because PBS probably won't pick it up here. And God knows they won't air it on BBC America because they seem content to air nothing but Star Trek episodes. Well, PBS is still running.

They're running Sherlock, so I wouldn't put it past them. Well, we'll see. We'll see. So there are. Yeah, it's going to be called Terry Pratchett back in black, told in Pratchett's own words with contributions from authors Neil Gaiman. I knew you'd be happy about that. Absolutely. Val McDermott and his long serving assistant Rob Wilkin.

So I am very much looking forward to this because I have loved almost all of Terry Pratchett's books, yet know next to nothing about his actual life. So this should be interesting. Yeah, I know a little bit about his life, but not enough to really be any kind of expert on it. So I'm definitely looking forward to this.

And by the way, if anybody is not into the Discworld stuff, but you see that there were three movies that they made from his novels. Do you remember? They were two parters. They were like about three hours long each. I loved them. They did a really good job with them, I thought.

So if you want to dive into that, head over to Sweden and pick up some of the Terry Pratchett stuff, but better yet, just go get all of the books. Yes, they get the books, get the books. They are awesome. And my I still had, you know, pyramids. I go back to pyramids because that's when this is when they first talk about the Assassin's Guild and the reverse hangover.

And I, when I'm reading about the reverse hangover, I thought it was the most genius thing ever. This guy wakes up feeling like shit and he's like, I didn't drink anything last night. So it's a time distortion. So he starts feeling better all day long until he gets to the point where he drinks the reverse hangover wine.

Awesome. Oh, can't. I miss Terry. At the library. CES 2017 just wrapped up. That's the Consumer Electronics Show.

We talked a little bit about it last week and mostly in the ways that we're not going to talk about it because everyone else is. But now that it's over, I thought I would look around and fair game. It's fair game. And I thought I would look around and see if there's any wrap ups that basically kind of gave me, you know, in a nutshell. Is there anything that we should be aware of doing the show or just me and you out of interest because we're, we're techie geek guys.

So, you know, Recode, always pretty good technology site. 50, 50, 50, 50. Well, this is on one side of that 50. Okay. So this is, this is the 51 side. This is by Bob O'Donnell. And I thought with the title, we're on the cusp of some of the biggest changes in technology in years.

Here's a big picture perspective on what I saw at CES 2017. I thought that would be giving me exactly what I was looking for. Okay. So you got a CES boner from this one. What did it say? Have you tried to read this article? No, I have not. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm waiting on bated breath for your recap.

I would like anyone out there to read this article and tell me if it says anything at all. Anything of substance. I, there are words on a page. There are lots of them. Some of them are big.

They've actually bolded a few and there might be some italics. Some are bold. And apparently there is an attempt to make some sort of point, but I don't know what it is. I got zero. This is like when you buy an orange and you want to make some orange juice and you have a juicer. And unfortunately that orange may have sat in your drawer for seven years.

And you pull that sucker out and you try to juice it and a fucking little pixie dust comes out. That's what this article was. Brian, but software is essential, but hardware still matters. And also what's old can be new again. And then the final bolded thing is the title.

Again, we are on the cusp of some of the biggest changes in technology that we've seen in some time, some time, yet there's not a single fucking mention of any technology that might be a big change that we haven't seen in some time. I just scanned this article and you are 100% correct.

And finally, trade shows still matter, even in tech. No. Well, if they did, you certainly didn't tell us anything at the trade show that fucking mattered, did you, Bob? But yes, virtual reality may one day provide us with the freedom to avoid the crowds, hassles and frustrations of trekking to an alternative location.

And seemingly everyone who goes likes to complain about attending CES, but there's nothing quite like being there. From serendipitous run-ins with industry contacts to seeing how others react to products and technologies you find interesting, products and technologies you do find interesting, there are lots of reasons why it's going to be difficult to completely virtualize a trade show for some time to come.

That is the last paragraph of that article. And it does say absolutely nothing. Now, normally I don't really, I mean, what's the, our show would be all day every day if all we did was talk about bad journalism online. But this one was just stunning.

But the sub, the subtitle is here's a quote unquote big picture perspective on what I saw at CES 2017. So this is a big picture. This isn't, this isn't the minutiae. This is not the details. He's just talking about big picture because he's a big thinker. And he doesn't mention a single thing that he saw at CES.

Not one. Yep. There you go. At the, at the bottom is, he's talking about how there's nothing quite like being at CES, but yet I got no impression whatsoever of what it's like to be at CES from this article. None. I'm surprised this is non-salon. This is, hey.

Anyways, I just, I, I, again, like I said, I was like, oh, this is the perfect article. This encapsulates exactly what I'd like to know. I want my review of CES. But no, there's not a damn thing in there. What I did find that actually encapsulates CES for me and told me everything I needed to know, the Internet of Shit Twitter account.

One of the best, best, there, there are two Twitter accounts I recommend everybody subscribe to, the Internet of Shit and Pinboard. The guy that runs Pinboard has one of the single best Twitter accounts I've ever seen. This is one snarky motherfucker. And if you ever get hit by a bus, I'm, I'm tapping this guy to take over for you.

Well, thanks, Jason. I'm glad that you've already thought about that. Well, he went to the CES and I got a very good idea of what CES was like and what was on display from his account. We have a link. Annual Festival of Stuff Not Made by Apple. That's great. We have a link in our show notes to the face or the, to the Twitter moments that he set up for his, his run at CES.

And I am assuming it is a him. I could be wrong, but that'd be bad on me. This tells you everything that you need to know about the state of technology and the moment. The first thing is high tech boxer briefs, protecting your health from wifi and cell phone radiation, which just shows a guy's junk while he's texting somebody.

So I'm guessing he's on grinder with that smart, smart water bottle, because I must know my hydration progress. Oh, well that we've actually covered that one on the show many times. Uh, the bat band sleek ear free headphones. How can they be ear free if they're, they are, they're not going over your ear.

This is like, uh, what the fuck? This is why we don't cover CES. This is just a, uh, huh? Yeah. When you get further and further down, the captions start to become, I don't care anymore. Biometric drone, whatever. Sure. It's great.

So every standing desk should be smarter. And he's like, should it? It's just great. Uh, give me some smart overalls, please. Oh, this is, this is genius. I cannot wait to dig into this. Yeah. It's, it's a good, good fun time there. So it, yeah, it's just, you can't beat it.

Uh, there is one thing that came out of CES that I found somewhat interesting. Um, I had talked a little bit ago about my son and how I felt that, you know, by the time he's getting to the point where he needs to use a computer, I think it's going to be all voice. It's good because we're, we're seeing what's happening with Alexa and Siri and things like that.

I think it's going to be all voice control by the time he gets there. So, uh, Adobe of all people has rolled out a virtual assistant for voice based photo edits. No demo. No, no. Yep. Yep. So there you go. So I watched the video.

It looked pretty cool. I mean, it's obviously very simple stuff, you know, basically everything that you would need to do to do anything online anymore. Cause nobody cares about content or how it looks. So there you go. I'd say in the, there's a YouTube clip. We'll put that in the show notes. A man uses a, a Alexa like virtual assistant to lend with basic photo edits.

So that's Blade Runner. It's Blade Runner. It's basically Blade Runner. Yeah. Yeah. Zoom quadrant seven enhance, enhance, zoom, enhance. Yes. Cause they did so good with flash. I just can't, I can't wait. Duck filter.

Duck filter. No, you're not, you really need to check out women every now and then. I, yeah, you lost me on duck filter. It's the duck lip thing that they all do. Oh yes, yes, yes. Okay. That was just so three years ago. I can't remember this show after we hit stop.

So. Okay. Well, finally, uh, well, not finally, I guess we still have some goodies to go. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh, I ran across this because I have recently switched from windows all my life to a Mac. Uh, this is add a windows styles start menu to your max doc. It is of interest to maybe some small people out there.

This is like shitting on the hood of your Bentley. Why would you bother? I totally did this. I did this myself before this article. Well, before I found this article, I figured out how to do this and I find it very convenient and familiar. Again, you have to remember 20 plus odd years of using PCs. So I like having the little folder that I can just click on and find everything right there.

Of course, now I figured out, you know, the quick search, lightning search, whatever the hell they call it, which is faster than anything else. Spotlight, it's called spotlight command space type like three letters and you get what you want. Sometimes most of the time. And it's, it's trainable by the way.

It's just like Quicksilver used to be for the Mac, but they've, they stole Quicksilver. Oh, so, oh, so it has artificial intelligence, Jason. It has machine learning. Brian is machine learning. Yes. And since you've bitched and moaned about, you can't find anything that will work with your Alexa to actually control your smart TV.

I want to tell you about, I talked about how you can't find anything that will work with how I tried out. I got the Logitech Harmony for Christmas and that was supposed to do all of that with ease and it did not. You can listen to my review of that last week. Yeah. So I want to tell you about the new device called the Blumpy. I mean, I'm sorry. It's called the Blumo and it's, it's a little Bluetooth thing that turns all of your Bluetooth enabled devices into universal remotes.

And it does work with the Amazon Echo to control your TV. And it works with 250,000 different brands and models of TVs. 250,000, Brian. The marketing terminology that they use and the numbers and all that sort of thing is the exact same as the Logitech Harmony.

And I went to the Amazon page for the Blumpy or the blue, whatever the hell they're calling it and I read through some of the comments and it seems to me it's very similar in terms of how the functionality will work. Now, it may be better. I will find out because what I did yesterday after I saw you put this in the show notes was I ordered one.

All right. It is on its way and I will see if this is any better than the Logitech Harmony. All right. What I did hear about is, well, the Amazon Firesticks apparently, obviously, because it's Amazon. They supposedly work almost flawlessly with Echo. But can it turn your TV on?

No, it cannot. That's the whole problem. Yes. And the only thing that let me know how this works, because I got that new TCL smart 4K TV that the remote control died on about three days after I got actually, I'm sorry, three minutes after I got it. That's it heated up and basically burned itself out.

And I'm surprised I didn't die in a fire from that. But maybe I did. And this is all a fever dream of my dying brain. Who knows? But you cannot out of your nightmare. You cannot get a replacement remote from TCL. I've been through support a thousand times.

You know why you can't get one from TCL? Why? Because nobody's ever fucking heard of this company. They're one of the biggest. Why you bought a TV from somebody that nobody's ever heard of? No, no, no. They are one of the biggest new names on the planet right now. If you go to Best Buy and you ask a Geek Squad member, the first thing they're going to try and sell you is a TCL TV.

I've heard the CEO on multiple podcasts now how they are making gazillions of dollars because they are the new player in the market and they are the only ones that are doing these giant Roku TVs. Okay. Well, if they're that great, how's it working out for you? It works out like shit. I have to reboot it five times a week because it freezes.

I have to reboot my TV to watch my Hulu. So, no, it's a giant steaming pile of shit. So, I don't recommend the TCL. And I've said that previously when I did the follow-up after I got it. I have to reboot my TV. And I told you, this is why I didn't want a goddamn smart TV.

But it was so cheap and it was 4K that I could not. I was, you know, called by the siren song of 4K for 500 bucks for a 60-inch TV. If people actually listened to our podcast, their stock would have soared for a few minutes and then crashed and burned. Shark fin.

Media candy. Now, Brian, last year we lost some great people and David Bowie was one of them. He kind of kicked it all off, didn't he? Well, you killed him. You killed him. Yeah, apparently I started the landslide of the great 2016 exodus.

It was about a year ago today, wasn't it, that he passed me yesterday? Pretty close. Pretty close. Pretty close. And I love the theory that he has gone to another plane and he's just grabbing all the cool people to come with him. So, I just released a new video for his song, No Plan.

Yes. Posthumously. Very much like L. Ron Hubbard is still releasing books to this day from the grave. Tupac keeps putting out albums. Yep. Oh, yeah. Must be, they must have pretty good bandwidth over there, wherever the fuck they're at.

Something in the groundwater. So, did you watch the video? Yes, I did. I liked it. I liked it a lot. I liked it a lot. I mean, I rarely watch music videos anymore, so I felt compelled to do so because he put it in the show notes, but I like the song. The video's fine. Yeah.

And speaking of music videos, this morning, for some reason, I was trying to listen to the safety dance on my Amazon Music subscription, and I could not find the version that I knew and loved as a kid. It kept giving me all these five, six-minute remixes, and then I finally just said, screw it.

And I went to YouTube, and I watched the video. Right. Now, I remember being a kid just waiting and waiting and waiting for that video to drop because I was a huge fan of the song. And when the video came out, I was like, what the fuck is this? I vaguely remember some people in hats, Morris dancing with some midgets.

There was a midget, and there was this crazy blonde woman who was just like shoving her face in the camera for no reason, acting like an asshole. But then I'm just like, okay, you know what? Let's, if we're going to go to the WTF videos, let's go to You Spin Me Around by Dead or Alive.

Right? Yeah. Because that is a, I love the song, and it's a crazy video that makes no sense. Yeah. So I posted it to, I posted both of those on my Facebook this morning, and Jennifer Tharp, friend of mine, posted that, you know what you missed last year is Pete Burns, the singer of Dead or Alive, died last year.

I don't think we missed it. I'm pretty sure I gave him a shout out at the end of one of the shows. Oh, I don't remember that. Okay. Well, then I missed that one. But yeah, he died in October. Yes. Yes, I hope you didn't Google what he looked like before he passed. See, this is what Jennifer said in my Facebook comments, and I didn't follow the rules, and I actually Googled what he looked like.

Pete Burns was a highly creative, troubled individual, and let's just say he took some of his creativity out on his face through plastic surgery. Yeah. Can we say train wreck? And I'm not joking when I say this. Do not do it. Do not. No, it's not.

It's not pretty. It is not good. It is not good. It is like, what's Goatsy? You know? And then you go Google Goatsy, or what is a prolapsed anus? Yeah. These are things that you don't want to do, because a prolapsed anus and Pete Burns kind of look the same, and with the Goatsy in between.

But yeah, you should definitely not do that. Do they have a double explicit that we can put our list of our episode under? I think that's just- Although, to be fair- That's called unsubscribe, yeah. To be fair, when mainstream media is discussing golden showers, we're doing all right. We are. When golden showers is the actual- Trending.

Well, when that's the culturally accepted thing, and grab them by the pussy, you could see them getting cringeworthy on CNN, but when they say golden showers, they kind of perk up. Yeah. Well, you know, it'll perk you up, all right. It'll perk you up.

So, moving along. Dropkick Murphys, who's one of my favorite bands, has a new album out called 11 Short Stories of Pain and Glory. I think by the end of this next four years, you will have a lot more than 11. Yes, I'd say so. Yes, it's a great album. I was listening to it all morning.

I'm digging it. And Twin Peaks, which is one of your lovely things. Oh, so excited. So excited about this. May 21st. May 21st. As soon as you posted this, I just want to let everybody know, if you need to catch up or need to refresh, go watch it again, because you haven't seen it in years.

Or if you've never seen it, it's all on Amazon Prime streaming right now. All two seasons. And then, yeah, you can go get your blumpy device and then use your iPhone to connect to Twin Peaks on your Amazon Echo through your TV. I put on the pilot last night after you put this in the show notes, son.

I enjoyed it. A damn fine cup of coffee, body dead, wrapped in plastic. God, what a great show. I remember watching this with friend of the show MXV at his house because he got me up to season one. And then when season two came out, I would go to his house and bring a blank videotape every week. And I'd videotape it and then take it home and watch it again with my dad.

And it was just so much fun. Back in the day when TV shows came out one at a time and you had to tape it. I remember this was on Friday nights and I would not go out clubbing. I would stay in with friends to watch it. So, yeah, it's a great show. You know, with all of these things, I am, you know, cautiously optimistic because what happened this year with the X-Files?

Well, let's discuss that because apparently we're getting new episodes in 2018. We did discuss it on the show when they put out their, what was it, six episode run last year? Something like that. Yeah, six episodes. Which, you know, ended on a massive cliffhanger that did not really answer anything.

No answers. And we had a new crew that looked surprisingly like the crew that we were probably losing. So, yes, I think that is what's going to happen. One of the reasons that we have not gotten any new episodes yet is David Duchovny is trying to negotiate.

He does not want to do a traditional 22 episode run. Fox wants a 22 episode run. So we're going to get something in between. My guess is we'll get maybe a 10 episode arc next in 2018. And assuming that does well, we will have the B team returned for the White Rabbit project at X-Files in 2019.

So we'll see what happens. I just, again, I am begging you people, if you're going to fucking make any more X-Files, wrap it up. Wrap it up. Where is it? I want to know what the hell has been going on with Fox Mulder the whole time. Just wrap it the fuck up.

We need to go kidnap Chris Carter, tie him down and waterboard his ass and just get it done. I mean, I guarantee you, there are legions of us that are right there with it. If you do another 10 episode arc or whatever and you don't wrap it up, we're all done. Never again will I watch anything from the X-Files.

Now, but if you do like David Duchovny, I will say, though, go watch Californication because I thought that was a fantastic series. So I like the first two seasons and my interest just kind of petered out on it. Well, it had it had the sophomore slump in the middle, but then it came back. It really did. It ended well.

And I thought it ended strong. So that was just me. Maybe I'll go back to it at some point. Maybe we'll see. I've got two documentaries of interest. I have not seen either. So, you know, grain of salt and all that. But both of these things are on my radar and things I'd like to watch.

The first is Viva Amiga. This is a documentary about the Commodore Amiga, which I had one. Did you, Jason? I used one at my photo school, and that was the first time I digitized a photograph using a VHS camera connected to the Amiga. Very fancy. And I still have my bubble prints that we printed out.

I still actually have the prints that we made on my first Amiga. Yeah. Awesome. Viva Amiga is a look at the history of the platform, the people who built it, and the users who loved it. The opening title is One Amazing Computer, One Chance to Save the Company, One Chance to Win the PC Wars. Well, we know how that worked out.

Yeah. Okay. It's, again, also available on Amazon. I believe it's free to Amazon Prime members. It's only an hour long, so it's quick and easy and painless. It's much like the rise and fall of Amiga that lasted about an hour. Fair enough.

They could have called this Waterloo. And the second trailer, actually, I've had this in the show, well, my show notes for a bit, but I finally decided to drop it in here. This is a documentary called 808s and Heart Eyes. This is about the Roland TR-808 drum machine, probably the most influential piece of electronic equipment in the last 40 years.

You can hear it on basically everything from Martin Gay's sexual healing, Phil Collins, Little John Usher. Wait, wait, wait. Phil Collins, the drummer, used a drum machine? Yes, they did. Oh, talk about killing my heroes. It was a massively popular sound. That's the thing.

It was in a lot of stuff. So even real drummers, you know, use it to augment to create a very specific sound. Yeah, great thing. So there's a documentary called 808s and Heart Eyes. So and that is available to stream for free for Apple Music subscribers. So talk about that.

As we discussed earlier, that call back that is for free. So premiered on iTunes this Friday. I don't know what the price is. I'm going to check it out, though. This is definitely of interest to me. This is big. If you are into electronic music at all. So there you go. OK, well, this has been making the rounds. It's called Urban Myths.

It's a new BBC series that just kind of makes fun of urban myths out there. But the problem that everybody has is Joe Fiennes is playing Michael Jackson. And I think that nobody actually watched the trailer that is pissing and moaning about this because it's supposed to be funny.

Yeah, it's the whole point of it. Comedy, right? I mean, I get OK. We're not doing the story of Michael Jackson here. We've got we've got Stockard Channing, you know, and he's not doing it in blackface, correct? I mean, this is just straight up. It's him with a wig, pretty much a wig and a hat.

So I think everybody should just calm the fuck down. Yeah, I think so, too. So we got the trailer in the show notes. Go check it out because it is this is a tempest in a teapot. So considering everything else that we've got going on. Yes, this is very this is not something to get upset about people.

Yes. Anyway, I did get into The Wall this week, which is a new it's a new game show with host Chris Hardwick. I only checked it out because Chris Hardwick is the host and it turns out it's a pretty decent game show. You know, I guess I don't know.

If you like game shows, I don't really care for game shows. I like At Midnight, who I just found out did 500 episodes in January. That's insane. I thought it just started like a year ago and they're at 500 episodes. That's pretty crazy. Yeah. So he's got his chops down for for hosting game shows and he's really good on the show.

If you're into game shows, check it out. If not, skip it. That's about it. I'll be skipping that. I'm a little bummed out by this news. I'm still happy. We're getting our Han Solo film, our young Han Solo film. I've been pretty OK with the casting of Han Solo. I think the casting of Lando is fantastic.

I love the fact that Lando's in it. You know, we've got what's her face from Game of Thrones is going to be in it. So Khaleesi is making her appearance somewhere. But they just signed Woody Harrelson on as young Han Solo's mentor. May the force be ever in your favor.

I was about to say, has he ever played a role like that before? Yeah, I think maybe, maybe so in that really horrible trilogy. Yeah, I'm sorry, quadrology, because they couldn't, they had to take a trilogy and turn it into a quadrology. Now, here's the real problem that I have with this.

If he's going to not, he can't replay the same character. So he's got to be completely different. There are no, there are no rules in Hollywood. He can play the exact same character. Well, I hope he does because the drunken surly jerk is exactly the kind of mentor that young Han Solo should have.

So he just plays the same damn character. I think it would be even better if they just took all the clips from the Hunger Games and just spliced them in. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, this is what, you know, this is the kind of technology Star Wars is doing these days, right? Why bother even having him there?

Just, you know, map up some new words onto his face from the Hunger Games. There you go. Done and done. Speaking of Star Wars, I did watch, I watched Bright Lights starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. How was it? Heartbreaking. That's what I thought. That's why I can't watch it. I'm not ready yet.

I'm not ready yet. The first hour is fun. They were both hilarious. I mean, just Debbie Reynolds, almost as funny as Carrie Fisher. Carrie Fisher, her comedic wit, just following her around her. The one liner she comes up with just immediately on the floor laughing, just dying laughing at how clever she was.

The last half hour, if you don't cry, something's wrong with you. Yeah, no, I know you. I'm sure you remember my ex-girlfriend, Missy. She went to a baby shower one day and then came home. She's like, it was at Carrie Fisher's house.

I get to meet Princess Leia. And I almost wanted to punch her in the face because I'm like, I wanted to meet Carrie Fisher. But for years, she talked about how awesome she was and how just smart, funny and nice. Yeah, the one thing that is hilarious about this is drunk, by the way.

She was completely drunk. Well, in the documentary, I don't know if she had cleaned up or not at that point or if they were rum and cokes. But she'd never she not in any scene that I can remember. Did she not have a Coca-Cola in her hand? Yeah, those are rum and cokes. Good on her.

Anyways, give it some space, but you must watch this. Yeah, I'll check it out. I just need I need a little more time. It's worth it. I've got enough on my my golden plate right now to keep me keep me occupied. Yeah. And when you think biggest band in the world, U2 comes to mind, correct?

No. Well, they are, whether you believe it or not. Well, it used to be REM, but now U2 is dead. I mean, I think now it's Coldplay. You know something about U2 is definitely dead at this point. Rolling Stones. They've just announced that they are doing one of those sellout tours where they go and play the entirety of their biggest album instead of just touring.

So they are they are touring the Joshua Tree in its entirety for 2017. One of my least favorite albums. So it's about when I checked out of my interest in U2. Go play War. That was pretty much, I think, their peak. Yep. And I've got some breaking news for people that are into the same sort of music that I am, specifically the shoegazing scene.

We've had the Lush reunion. We've had the Ride reunion. Slow Dive just released a brand new song, which I assume means we're going to be getting a tour and Color Me Excited. And the song's really good. Okay. I'll take you on your word for that. Hunting Unicorns.

Hunting Unicorns. Gotten a few emails from some people that are playing along at home. So if you're interested in doing so, I thought we'd run through the basics. Again, the idea being we have $10,000 virtual dollars. We bought five stocks each. Jason and I both picked tech stocks.

We picked two that were within the Dow. The other three, just whatever we wanted. Our friend of the show, Mike, picked five non-tech stocks to kind of be the control group. So if you want to join along, you can go to, I think we're using the site, howthestopmarketworks.com.

Or howthemarketworks.com, sorry. You can sign up for that. You can create your own contests and you can create your own rules. Give yourself a $10,000 budget. Give yourself a $10 per trade cost. And then pick five stocks and spread out your $10,000 over them and see how you do along with us.

So you can play along that way. As a refresher, Jason has Cisco, Intel, NVIDIA, Netflix, and Tesla. I have Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Electronic Arts, and PayPal. Friend of the show, Mike, with the control, has Citigroup, Caterpillar, Johnson & Johnson, Striker Corp, and Berkshire B. We're our second week into this, and I am winning.

You're winning now. I was winning for most of the week, which is a pain in the ass. I was up and you were down for most of the week. Well, welcome to the stock market. As we went to record this, I am up 2.23%. Jason is down 0.12%, and Mike is down 1.88%.

So much for that control, Mike. So week two, I'm kicking ass. I've made $222. You guys are all in the black. Well, no, we're all in the red. You're in the black. I'm in the black. And you're winning?

How the fuck does this work? You don't even know the difference between red and black. Jeez. Okay. So we also have our side bet on Twitter, where I wanted to get Twitter for my picks. And so I ended up buying 13 shares of Twitter, because I had to sell Apple, because I have no money, so I have to move things around.

And I ended up buying Twitter at $16.33, I believe. And right now, as of recording, they're at $17.38. So I've made $13. Woo-hoo! Oh, congratulations. I also, I bought 10 shares just because we have the side bet.

Because you're an asshole. I want the money to pay for it. And I'm an asshole. I've lost 0.49% so far. Okay, good. From when I purchased it, so. Yeah. See? There you go. That's what you get. This is stock karma. Wow. Somebody's really vindictive. Yes.

I don't want to play any games with you. We're never playing Chutes and Ladders. Moran of the Week! We've made no secret of the fact that we both feel that Julian Assange is a bit of an asshat. He has strayed from the path.

Yeah. Yeah. Original noble intentions, not quite so noble anymore. He's gone insane by living in the same building for three and a half years. I mean, he's putting ties on cats, for God's sake. Seriously. Abusing pussies. Oh, boy.

We've been talking about golden showers the whole show. Come on. Don't be squeamish on me now. Anyways, I do find the hilarious hypocrisy involved in their recent whinings. Not so much Assange himself, but WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has taken a bold stand against leaks.

I know. I cried when I saw this. I'm just like, oh, this. Yeah, this is true. This is not the onion. This is not the onion. WikiLeaks, a site famous for publishing illegally funneled classified information, has accused the Obama administration of illegally funneling classified information to NBC for a report on new intelligence on Russian hacking efforts that aired last Thursday night.

So, yeah, we can do it. Hey, guys, this is our thing. You don't get to do it. We, only us. Yeah. WikiLeaks. So. Not, not WikiLeaks. Not WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks. So, yeah, I seriously, when I saw that, I'm just like, are you, are you shitting me?

Yeah, the Twitter backlash on that has just been hilarious, too. I mean, people are just calling them out left, right, and center, and they're just so clueless about it. It's awesome. I know. So, I don't know if you've seen this video, but this week, Adidas ignores a student's commercial made for them, and now it's going so viral, they'll probably regret it.

The story is from BoredPanda.com, which is not really a bastion of journalism. I saw the commercial. It's very good. I don't think that they regret it at all, because it's gone viral. They haven't had to pay a dime for it. But they should have just at least thrown the guy a free pair of shoes or something.

Come on. Based, I agree 100%. I'm just arguing. And also, they should have hired him, because this is a damn good commercial. It's very good. I'm only arguing with the title of the article, because I do not think they regret it. No, I don't think they regret it. One iota. So, going back to CES, we didn't really talk about this.

I had it in my notes, and I pulled it for last show. Razer, who used to make the most amazing gaming mices, I think they still probably do. But they made this stupid laptop, which is a 17-inch laptop with three screens that folded out, kind of like a transformer.

Yes. And it got stolen from CES on the floor. And they're very upset about it. So, I don't know who the moron is here. The thief or Razer for, A, not putting a cable on it, thinking that, oh, nobody's going to steal our stuff.

Or the thief for basically stealing the Mona Lisa of laptops. How are you going to move that thing? Yeah, I know. Who's going to buy it? Good times. Yeah. What are you going to do? Speaking of morons, have you seen this video?

Or it's not a video. It's an infographic on how to break your thumb ligament. No. And I won't look at this. I cannot, will not, do not watch any of those, like, you know, from whatever, extreme fighting and all that stuff where they, where people's legs get broken during a, I, I, you can't wait.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I, I don't blame you. I, I remember, was it, uh, Joe Montana who got his leg broken? Oh God. Yeah. I can't watch that. I never saw it and I don't ever want to see it. I, I, I, I have been, you know, really good about not watching crap like that. So when I saw this article on the chive, um, and they're, they're, they're photos of people who theoretically have broken their thumb, right.

Broken their thumb ligament. Uh, well I can make a, might make my thumb do that without actually having to break anything. The, the, and it's on know your meme. And then Buzzfeed finally came out and said, uh, yeah, these people are stupid. You can't do it. It doesn't work. So the morons are the people who are sitting there trying to slam their hand on the table, trying to break their thumb ligament, because why would you try and break your thumb?

You idiot. You know, natural selection. I, yeah, this, this whole thing was just like, I, now I know why we have the commander in piss in the office. That's it. Brick a brick. NS, the Dutch rail operator has announced that its trains now run on 100% wind energy, according to the Guardian.

Did they put sails on the trains? Cause that would be awesome. That would be very time bandit, wouldn't it? It would be, that would be pretty awesome. Anyway, no, they don't. This is just straight up wind power that is powering this. Um, uh, they run a 5,500 trips per day, which is stunning.

Uh, over the course of an hour, a single windmill can power a train traveling 120 miles per hour. Uh, America, we got some work to do. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah. This is awesome. This is unbelievable. We, you know, there is no reason not to have a train from LA to Vegas powered by Palm Springs.

Seriously. Yeah. We got enough sun out there and I did pass when I was on Amtrak. I passed one of the most unbelievably huge solar farms that you've ever seen. Uh, it, it just went on for miles. So we can definitely afford to do this. Yep. That's pretty awesome. Um, and then I found a bit of my, uh, bit of my childhood, uh, that hasn't been ruined by either George Lucas or the big tree up in California crashing that you could drive through.

That was a bummer. Uh, yeah, I never, never got to see that in person. That sucks. Went through that with my parents, got a picture and a photo album of me at like seven and my sister at two with my parents. If you still got it, send it to me. I'll put it in the show notes. I will get it from my parents next week. Uh, okay. So using just two ingredients, I made the delicious pineapple Dole Whip.

This was sold at the Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki room at Disneyland where I used to hang out. I made it last night. It was delicious. Oh, I had those. Exactly. They're delicious. Those are great. Yeah. All a little coconut milk, a little frozen pineapple, blend the hell out of it. And it is delicious.

I had all my orange whip jokes lined up, but now I remember that and I'm like, oh no, those were good. Yes, I see. You were being all snarky in the notes and that's all gone now. No, no. And so when your teeth start to fall out from all the sugar, uh, researchers, researchers, yeah, I know.

I'm having, I'm having a tough time today. I just started lithium. So give me a second. Okay. Researchers have discovered that experimental Alzheimer's drugs cause teeth to regrow their tissues lost to cavities. I think that's awesome. As somebody who is old and has had genetically crappy teeth their whole life, this for me is a game changer.

Fuck the robotics. Fuck the drones. Fuck everything. Give me new teeth. Seriously. I need new teeth. You want to know how many cavities I've had my entire life, including my, my, my kid's teeth. I'm sure zero. Cause you're an asshole. One.

Yeah. Fuck off. 27, at least I, I, I, I'm missing two teeth. I've had probably six root canals, uh, four dry sockets from my wisdom teeth being pulled. Uh, there's no horror dental horror that you can, you know, describe that I have not gone through.

So yeah, no. Yeah. And I will not watch that Dustin Hoffman movie to save my life ever. Anyway, moving on. CVS just announced a super cheap generic alternative to the EpiPen. They're going to start selling a two pack of EpiPens for 110 bucks, which is, uh, quite a bit less than the $600, uh, basically a brand version of Milans EpiPens, which is, that's awesome.

That's fantastic. I can't, I couldn't believe this when I saw it. I'm like, you know what? I don't need an EpiPen because I'm not allergic to anything except cavities, but, uh, yeah, no, for people that need an EpiPen, this is great. Yeah. You can get your two pack and Shakur them out. You can right now at CVS.

Yeah. And, uh, again, not the onion. I, I still think we probably should have made this a segment. Uh, Oregon's goat yoga now has a 900 person waiting list. Yeah. What are they doing in Oregon that, that requires a goat to walk on you?

Is that the same state that had the guy that got, that had sex with a horse and got killed by it? I don't know about that, but I think that might be Washington. If you're walking around with those skinny jeans and that big mustache all the time and the top hat, you might need to stretch out. So you have a goat walk on top of you while you're doing your downward dog.

See, they should have just got dogs. Why would you not get dogs? Why do you have goats? Because if it was just dog yoga, I probably wouldn't have put it in the show notes. It's goat yoga. Come on. It is goat yoga. Feedback loop. I'd like to thank Ryan gun, who is our latest patron, uh, donator to the show.

He's helping us out. Pay the bills. Thank you so much, man. Much appreciated. And everybody else get on that patron bandwagon. We need it. And we love you. Yes, we do. We want your money. We need your money. Well, we, by definition also want it.

That's true. That's true. Okay. Moving on. Uh, Virginia man spends $1,000 to, to deliver 300,000 pennies to Lebanon DMV. No, this is from Rico over on Twitter. And he said, a kindred spirit. He must remember the time that I spent about 20 minutes bitching about how a bank would not legally have to take pennies anymore.

Yeah, that was like two years ago. So Rico, uh, going back to what we talked about earlier in the show, tell me if I'm right or Brian's right, because obviously you have the down low on the previous episodes. Yes. You do seem to recall that was about two years ago. That's the last time I went to Wells Fargo with change times.

Uh, and we got another one from Gilbert Davis. Uh, he responded to our posting of the Alexa gone wild video that we talked about last week. Uh, Alexa has never offered to find porn for me. Jeez. Well, ask nicely, Gilbert. Well, I think that's a talent that you have to, you know, enable.

Because Alexa has talent, uh, pole dancing might be one of them. So anyway, if you want your questions or comments read on the show, head over to GOG.show slash support and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air. Please do because we're a little light this week. What's going on people? Come on and go to iTunes and drop us a five star or a fantastic rating.

We'd appreciate it. I've been far too flabbergasted by everything that's happened this week to impossibly have any shout outs or honestly any comprehension of what the hell's going on in the world anymore.

So, uh, thanks for listening until next time. I'm Brian Schulmeister. Yes. The well has run dry and I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening. And we will talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks. GOG.show is our home base where you can listen to old shows, leave feedback, ask us questions, get links to our awesome sponsors and stuff we like.

If you'd like to become an official friend of the podcast, go to GOG.show slash support, where you'll find all of the ways you can support the show and keep us on the air. To learn more about all of the people who make this show possible, head over to GOG.show slash about show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at GOG.show slash 192 singing in the rain.

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