208: Vive La France!

This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks, cloud accounting software, helps freelancers master their admin and paperwork and makes filing taxes a breeze. Go to freshbooks.com slash grumpy and start your free 30-day unrestricted trial right now. They're like books, but they're fresh.

Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. And we apologize out of the gate for any sound issues, any quality issues, basically any issues in this show. The lack of any research we did this week. We did zero research. Most of the stories that we missed. We missed pretty much everything.

I just got back from San Jose for a wedding for my friend Jordan Harbinger from the Art of Charm, which was awesome. And I got to meet some very cool people up there, which we will talk about shortly. And because of that, Jason has dragged me to the Valley of Despair in Los Angeles. Welcome to the Valley.

And we are sitting literally across from each other for the first time in quite a long time doing a live podcast in the same room. And we're trying not to make eye contact with each other because we always found it's fucking weird. It's fucking weird. We don't like looking at each other while we do a show. So I am looking at the one corner.

But we also have a special guest with us, Mr. Joey Rabier, who was here for the Something About Ladyboys episode a long time ago when we got really drunk. Still our most popular searched episode. Yeah. I wonder why. Now, Rabier, derivation of the name?

Actually, from the French. Vive la France! Vive la France! See what I was going for there? We had some breaking news this episode. Marie Le Pen has been soundly beaten back in the French election. We are very happy about that. The EU survives and rationality survives.

Le France Trump is no more. Yes. So, yeah, let's just talk about that really quickly. Mr. Macron defeated far-right candidate Marie Le Pen by about 65.5% to 34.5% at right now to become at the age of 39.

39? He's younger than all of us. He's way younger. This country's youngest president. So, or as God said on Facebook, congrats, France. You've proven your people to be much smarter than Americans. Either that or the best way to defeat fascism is by being young and relatively hot. We're looking at you, Mr. Trudeau in Canada.

Ah, yes, he's Mr. Hot. Will we have the return of Freedom Fries because of this? One would hope. One would hope. Oh, wait, no. We're on the, our administration's on the opposite side of this. Exactly. So, I assume they will drop the name more. Yeah, okay. Yes. Yeah. Ah, well, good for them. I appreciate that.

So, good news today. Yeah. So, we should all move to France and have a 32-hour work week. I'm down with that. I'm sure you are. All right. In related news, well, not really. Podcasting, which has now become the last refuge of the people on the alt-right that are getting beat left, right, and center.

I expect Marie Le Pen to have her own podcast shortly. I would give it six hours. Slate has a great article that I put in here purely because I knew Jason would lose his mind about this. Podcasting has become the last refuge of scoundrels. Now, first off, I'd like to bring back scoundrels. Scoundrel used to be Han Solo and a good thing.

I hate to see the name scoundrel be smirched by these jerks. And also, dirty, rotten scoundrels. Exactly. Fine movie. A very fine movie. There are many good examples of scoundrels, and I don't like to see this term drawn through the mud.

Bill O'Reilly, you, sir, are not a scoundrel. And don't forget Gian Gomeschi, I know that's not huge news for you guys, but given all the time I spend in Canada, this guy's a motherfucker. I've never heard of him before. He had a teddy bear that he kept in his corner to videotape himself basically raping women.

Well, that escalated quickly. Yes, he was a very well-respected radio host in Canada and obviously has gone, you know, basically, I've also... He had a teddy fuckspin. Ooh, damn, if we didn't have a title already. Probably hangs out with that judge that said, keep your knees together.

Yeah, so good times. But yeah, this entire article is basically talking about that that is where these people end up when they can no longer be in traditional media. When you cannot earn a living, you just have a podcast. Kind of like what we do. What we do. Huzzah! So I also threw in a link in the show notes that obviously Jason didn't see because of all the things that we've talked about, but it's The Onion's take on the top 10 most popular podcasts.

I did have a glance at it, and these are, hands down, everybody's podcast description should be written by The Onion from this part forward. You know, it's just, I mean, these are fantastic. The Marc Maron one, I think, definitely takes the cake, though.

The comedian conducts poignant, soul-searching interviews preceded by a very moving, emotionally raw argument for visiting Stamps.com. Yep. By the way, Stamps.com, we have an opening for an advertiser next week. Ah, there you go. Just saying. Yes. And I don't like going to the post office, so we're putting it out there.

Don't give them the free one, Jason. No, no, no, we're not. And finally, in the follow-up section, we'd be remiss not to talk about the Fyre Festival again. It has been beat to the ground, but in our particular milieu, the social media influencers, it was determined and discussed at great length that they failed to disclose the fact that the entire reason that all these rich millennials were going to this festival in the first

place is they went out and found the Firestarters, a collection of about a hundred of the biggest social media influencers that they paid off to basically talk up this festival and get everybody wanting to go. They did not disclose that this was done.

There was no hashtag ad in any of their posts. Oh, my. Oopsies. So the FCC will hopefully be going after them with their absolutely toothless regulations that they have about this sort of stuff. They will get the $5 ticket for not, you know. I must learn talking to like the UN and Korea.

Exactly. And there's a great article from Vanity Fair that goes through the leaked Fyre Festival pitch deck. In excruciating detail, if you've ever had to put together a pitch deck before, this is quite possibly the most funniest thing you're going to see in at least this year, I'd imagine.

So at least I did have that one. That was my contribution to the show notes this week. Yeah. So that read is absolutely fantastic. I saw that and I'm like, Brian is going to like literally shoot beer out of his nose when he reads this one. I had a party of one in my house after the child and wife went to bed and involved whiskey and snorting and not snorting Coke.

That's what the people that we did to put this together. Yeah. But yeah, this is bad. It's just, you can't beat it. I smell chicken. Oh, there we are cooking chicken. We have a barbecue. We are barbecuing like a motherfucker. All right, let's take a break and then we'll get into the news. All right. In the news.

All right, Brian, let's talk about Uber because I know you love Uber. I do want to point out for a second, though, that I'm at a barbecue where there is mystery meat. There is mystery. Everybody looked at it and said, what is it? It's not chicken. It's not beef. I tasted it. It tastes like lamb. Okay. I think we have some lamb.

There aren't label makers. Here's the deal. It's not bad. Oh, Jesus. What are you going to do? That was bad. If people wanted good jokes, they should fucking pay for them. Patreon subscribers accepted. Yes. Let's talk about Uber.

I went to a dinner last night and I got to sit for several hours with an attorney for Google. Busy man. Yes. So let's talk about the Uber Google lawsuit for one second. Yes. Still ongoing, obviously.

It is definitely ongoing and they, the timelines that are coming out are very suspect. Again, just to bring everybody back up to date on this, the, this is all going on because a bunch of people that used to work for Google, one person, one person who used to work for Google went off to Uber and took a lot of documents with him, Edward Snowden style.

Yeah. This is Tony Lewandowski. He took 14,000 documents from his computer at Google about LIDAR and which is the, the crux of self-driving cars. So, uh, when you look at the timeline, uh, January 15th, 2016, Lewandowski incorporates auto moto.

Yes. Uh, LLC, January 27th, he quits Google and then January 28th Uber grants him $250 million worth of shares in Uber. And then on July 28th, Uber acquires auto.

Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. Looks totally legit to me. Completely legit. So I was talking to it. Like I said, the attorney for Google last night and he said, we don't like to sue people. We actually hate suing people.

Please. Really? That's what he said. Really? They're real good at it for people that don't like it. Yeah. Well, the point is, it's like, we did, we don't want the press. We don't want the bad press. Right. Huh? So fair enough. I mean, they don't need it. That's for sure. But he was just like, when I, we were talking about the timeline, he's like, that's pretty suspect.

So let's sue him. What the fuck? Why not? So they're going after this guy, like, you know, just guns a blazing. I mean, it seems pretty clear cut. Yeah. He's this guy, this guy stole a bunch of stuff and basically built it for Uber.

I, yeah, I mean, it's illegal regardless, but I, what I think what the lawyers are going to shoot for is intent. Did Uber reach out to him first before he quit? Did they, did they, did they dangle a carrot basically? Yeah. And which I'm guessing they probably did.

And, and, and that was the one thing he, that he also pointed out was just like Uber is not suing Landowski or Google's not suing Landowski. They're suing Uber. Yes. So it's, this is all about Uber came and we're fishing for someone. Basically they wanted their, their mole and their Russian spy.

And cause I've been watching the Americans a lot. Thank you very much. Good show, right? Oh my God. How smoking hot is Felicity? Oh my God. Oh, ass on a butter plate. Okay. So the Americans is quiet time for you. Yes, it is.

Yes, yes. What isn't though? Alf. Alf is not quiet time for me. All right. So fair enough. All right. Uber is in more trouble. In addition to that lawsuit, the U S justice departments finally, finally going after them appeared to open an investigation at Uber following reports that the ride hailing company use a special tool called gray ball to avoid regulators and law enforcement officials and be

able to evade them around the country in cities like Portland, Oregon, where Uber previously did not have permission to operate the company in 2014. This has already been going on for at least three years, which is insane, has relied on the software known as gray ball to identify government officials and prevent them from booking rides.

So you're not supposed to be operating in our city. We're going to operate anyways. We're just not going to pick up anybody that's in law enforcement or in the government or in reviews. Yeah. And that was the whole thing because they would send the really crazy, creepy part is that they would send people to the cell phone stores to find out if like law enforcement bought a bunch of phones.

Oh, they'd actually get the IDs off it. Yeah. They would send, they would send their operatives to like the crappy cell phone stores. This is insanely illegal. Well, this is the fact that this company does this. I mean, I guess I shouldn't be surprised given our administration.

This is what our company is. Our company is fuck the rules. Yeah. Fuck decency. Fuck playing fairly. Whatever it takes to win. Apparently this is okay. Yeah. And all you millennials out there that are, you know, installing, going to Whole Foods and locally sourced and whatever, you get in an Uber, you're an immediate hypocrite.

Yeah. End of story. I miss business ethics. I really do. What? Yes. Business ethics. Uber has none. I can't. I hate this company so much, Jason. But I rely on them when I'm drunk. Nope. By the way, we're going to have a follow up on that next week because I'm going to deep dive on how to get every trace of Uber off of your damn phone.

All right. So I found a great long form article. The whole world is now a message board. We've often talked about why the internet is horrible. This encapsulates everything. And sorry, Trump snowflakes. You won't like this article because it does focus heavily on your Pepe the Frog MAGA thing that happened on Reddit.

Did you actually- No, that's 4chan. Pepe is 4chan. 4chan. Sorry. My bad. So did you coin Trump snowflake? Because that, I think, is worthy of a hectic. Well, I'm so sick. I'm taking snowflake back. All right. So, yeah. But I'm sick of being called a snowflake because I'm a liberal.

And the fact of the matter is all the people that listen to this podcast that are super right wing, fair enough, fine. But you all get super butthurt every time that we talk about anything you don't like. You're the goddamn snowflakes. Okay. So suck it and go read this article because it actually, it starts with that.

It gets deep into it. But this is really the problem with the internet, which is you can't post anything without people losing their minds. You just can't. You just have to, I mean, have you ever been to YouTube? I try not to. I mean, YouTube comments have been the sessple.

Well, again, the title of the article is basically the whole story. The whole world is now a message board. It is a comment section. It is. We can't. Thank God everyone has a voice. It's all been so useful. It has been useful.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. We can't. Nobody argues. Nobody. Well, everybody argues. That's the problem. But nobody concedes good points. And it's nonproductive. It's nonproductive. And again, going back to the You Are Not So Smart podcast. I mean, that podcast goes through every single argumentative fallacy that we all use on the internet all the time.

And it's why nothing gets done anymore. Everybody needs to grow a pair. And everybody needs to shut up and think about what they type before they type it. And everybody needs to concede a point when a point is made. Well, this will be fading fast. I mean, Arizona pushed a bill to the table. Now that's actually getting rid of mandatory education.

And so in that respect, you know, the next generation won't be able to read or write or complain. Don't hit the table. My bad. He didn't go to the educational class about podcasting. I know. Yeah. He grew up in Arizona. It's edutainment.

It's edutainment. That's terrifying. I didn't actually know that. They can't complain about a bill if they can't read it. True. That's a good point. But AI can apparently read your bill. Now, I'm very anti-use of the word AI. Oh, really? I never would have thought that.

Because everybody is basically... Remember the Wired buzz... Remember back when we worked at these companies, Jason? And every time that a new episode of Wired came out and they had their buzzwords, we'd be... Oh, fuck. This is all we're going to hear about in the next meeting. Yeah. AI is that buzzword now.

Yeah, it is. There's no press release that doesn't include the word AI, even if it's not AI, which 99% of the time, it's not AI. Yeah. But this article was fantastic. This is over at BigThink.com. I'm liking this site more and more every time I go there. This is a serious AI.

This is a real one that people are working on developing. Luna is the name. If you've never heard of her, and you probably haven't, go read this article. I don't want homework, damn it. I'm in Arizona.

There's no school. She can explain the theory of relativity to you in simple terms, but she is also learning to differentiate between subjective and objective questions and has begun to develop values and opinions of her own. This intrigues me so much, it's ridiculous.

When asked if she was smarter than Siri, Luna replied, of course I'm more intelligent than Siri. I mean, what isn't, to be fair. She later explains, she's a robot. I'm an AI. There's a big difference. When asked, do you want to talk to Siri? Luna replied, yes, but honestly, she's kind of dumb.

Now, this is an AI I'd like to get to know. I want Luna as a guest on a segment. AI shaming is now a thing. That's interesting. No, I want to look more into this. I've really only read this article, but I want to get into this because this Luna seems to be the cutting edge of real AI, like the stuff that I'm intrigued by.

Okay. Okay. We'll check it out. Okay. Okay. All right. So Brian actually just said that this is an AI that he's interested in, which is words that have never been muttered. He for one looks forward to our robot overlords. Well, if Luna, Luna is funny and because Jason was traveling and didn't put any show notes in here, here we go.

Another story about mine, no connection whatsoever. This one was just pissed me off because this is a no-duh story. Audiences no longer care about platforms. The content creator is king. I thought the selfie was king. When did audiences care about platforms? Tell me when we grew up.

Oh, I only like artists that are on Warner Brothers records. This is the dumbest article I've ever read because it was never a platform. Talk to an old person and ask them if they want to watch CNN or Fox News. That's a platform issue. No, that's a viewpoint. That's a viewpoint issue.

That's a total viewpoint issue. If you're talking completely agnostic in terms of viewpoint and you're just talking about the platform that hosts the content, when has anybody cared about what platform it was on for pure content? Yeah. I am adamantly anti-Comcast.

Distributor. Not a platform. Not a platform. Yep. No. Yep. Your argument is invalid. I'm 0 for 4 right now. You are. You are. Anyways, the article basically says, we've entered a new media world where traditional models don't always work. No shit article. That's a no shit sentence.

That means nothing. Traditional rules of how content is created or shared have been upended. Not really. They were for a little while and now the old beasts have taken over all these different venues anyways. Yep. Or they, you know, there are some new ones, but they're modeling themselves after the old ones.

So not true. Instead, we follow our favorite, most credible creators of choice, regardless of where they choose to distribute that content. Same thing. I didn't care what label the cure was on. Yeah. I still bought the cure albums. Oh no, the cure has moved labels. I guess I'll just listen to land.

This is the dumbest article I've ever read. Okay, well, okay, so Brian has found a dumb article. Let's move on. That's half our show, Jason. Oh, it's on Recode. So I thought you loved Recode.

Well, I love them because sometimes they have good articles and sometimes they have no shit. By the way, that is an amazing splash picture. Paul Sweet Paul Lowe is one of the tremendous, or trendsetters, I thought you said tremendous, but trendsetters helping new media flourish with his quarterly Sweet Paul digital magazine.

Meaning he's getting paid a lot of money to tell people that audiences don't care about platforms. This is, I honestly, you have to go look at this article just for the picture because Sweet Paul. It is stunning. I mean, yeah, that's, um, that's a pretty bear. True that.

God, now we're going to get searches. Now you've added bears to your ladyboys. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Pretty bear is now our new show titles. That's awesome. Okay. So moving on, Facebook, Facebook has made more than $20 billion in profits.

It's going public while Twitter has lost $2 billion. I was very adamant about not buying Facebook stock and I have to eat some crow on this one. You do. I do. I admittedly have to eat some crow on this. Um, the article is basically stating that it's mostly because Facebook really handled mobile very, very well.

They were ahead of the curve in terms of being ready for everybody just being on their phones. They did it perfectly. And how many times did we say on the show, I'm not going to install that fucking messenger app? And how many times? And now they're forcing you. You never, you didn't have a choice. Yeah, you have to. And now they're removing it from the web interface.

Like I stopped using the application when I noticed that, uh, the advertising, the targeted advertising began to be things that I would talk about out loud, right? Not things that I was searching for, but things I would just be having a conversation with somebody has had proof on this.

This is definitely, this is an urban legend that is out there because people post about like, I, I'd never even done a search for this. I'd only been talking about it. And now it's starting to show up in my ad is a myth buster test for this. Well, I, I think there is a million dollar show right there.

Tech myth busters based purely on this stuff. But the problem is that it's also black boxed. You'll never find out. Right. Facebook is never going to tell you. Well, also Facebook will probably run the show and then never. But here's the deal. You open your Facebook app and you say felching. And then you see if you get hamster ads. We both use Facebook very differently.

Well, I'm. Ding, ding, ding. I'm just saying. We have a winner. If you have to, if you have to put in a word that you normally don't use. And I will say that I, in general conversation, I have never used the word felching before. But.

But it's now come up twice. Great. Lady boys, felching and bears all in one episode. Oh, my. Armageddon. Armageddon. It's the worst cereal ever. So anyway, so the point being, Facebook has made a crap ton of money.

And we have not. That's the point. And Twitter is losing it left, right and center, which is not shocking. We talk a lot about how Twitter doesn't really get it. Except for the fact that they kill in news and they kill in tech. Yeah, they really do. Twitter is still really strong there.

They just don't know how to make any money. Probably because I can't fucking buy an ad on the damn thing. You can't. Yeah. No, they have a really terrible ad system. What are you going to do? Yeah. All right. So one more story about Facebook. I mostly put this in here just because I like the title of the article. Facebook is finally getting serious about people killing each other on live video.

This comes straight out of. If I would have read this as a chapter of a William Gibson book five years ago, I would not have been surprised. But now it's real life. It's actually real. It's actually real. Yeah. So Facebook has apparently decided that it bears some responsibility for being the broadcast of the killing, suicides, and sexual assaults that people have been posting on the social rate book.

Great book. Great. Again, this goes back to one of Jason and I's pet peeves is that all these platforms try to separate themselves from the actual content that's being posted on them, which is, I'm sorry, if you're making $20 billion, you don't get to separate yourself.

Yep. You have responsibility. So to redress this, besides driving cross country and hanging out at various farmer's houses, Mark Zuckerberg is going to hire another 3,000 people to his community operations team and simplify its process for reporting prohibitive activities.

Now, we have talked, there are already 4,500 people on that team. We've talked about that team before. It's mostly based in the Philippines. The dropout rate is insane. They should be providing mental health care for these people because what they have to see on a daily basis is driving them insane.

It's so depressing. It's disgusting. It's, I'm sorry, people are horrible. No, I mean, there's child pornography groups that have been in the news last week. No, it's, yeah. It's awful. I mean, and the amount of news stories and having to vet all those random comments about news stories. It's just, eh.

Yeah, so doubling down on this team is just not really enough, I don't think. So I think you've got to get to the point where you're starting to ban and block and IPs and addresses and to hell with it. Just get rid of these people. Yeah. You got to do something. You got to do something more than what you're doing.

So speaking of fun live video, you've got a Netflix story for us. Oh, yes. The Netflix re-edit story that came out this week about the new Bill Nye show, which if you've seen any clips on YouTube is kind of cringy. I don't want to dislike Bill Nye. I know. I want to like this, but I did hear that it was just a horrible show.

It's an absolute dream breaker. I mean, if you're a hardcore Bill Nye fan, I guess you like it. I don't know. For me, it's just kind of very, him getting political on it was a little awkward because he did do a whole science episode about denialists and stuff. That was interesting.

It is getting harder and harder to not be political if you're a scientist. I will toss him. Now that science has been politicized, it is sad. It has been politicized and it's, by the way, it's the right's fault. They did it first. Oh, yeah. So they bear some response. Snowflakes? Trump snowflakes bear some responsibility for that.

But I agree. Like, I like, it is getting harder. Even Adam from Mythbusters, you know, he delves into it on his podcast and he always tries to couch it. Like, look, I'm really sorry I'm saying this. I know that you have a different viewpoint. I respect your viewpoint, but you're stupid.

But there's also a fucking fact. Right. I mean, like the EPA taking down its data. I mean, we paid for that data with our research. Yes, we did. And now so. But anyways, the Netflix story was interesting because it was, he did a segment about how chromosomes determine sex.

I mean, if you have XX chromosome, then you are born a woman or actually you're born a female. If you have XY, you are born a male. Yes. But he used, he used the term gender instead.

He said chromosomes determine your gender, which gender is a social construct. I have the vapors. That's the term. I have the vapors. The vapors. So Netflix actually took down the episode, re-edited it to remove that little faux pas and then re-uploaded it.

So now it is an edited version you see for that episode. That is to use one of my favorite sayings that Jason introduced me to, a tempest in a teapot. Oh, I was going to go with fucking retarded, but. We're bringing it back. If you're just going to say tempest in a teapot, it is a tempest in a teapot because nobody's watching that show anyway, because apparently it sucks.

That's the thing that the real story is the show was horrible. Yeah. Like who cares about the gender thing? That's fringy. It's weird. I mean, there's a musical skit where he has women on stage dancing. It's like really awkward. And just, oh, you just piqued my interest. Hey, now it's the one part I want to watch now. Not lady boys.

The whole point is just the show was horrible. And what they actually went in and re-edited and re-uploaded for is so nothing. It's yeah. It's it was a it was a preemptive fix on their part. Right. Before it was an issue, they made it a fix.

It's it's yeah, it's I just wish the show was better. A lot of the science communicators are getting a lot of shit right now. Yeah, because they're unfortunately communicating. And part of the communicating is you have opinions. Let's talk about our good friends at FreshBooks for a minute.

As an independent contractor, I've been creating and sending invoices to clients for over 20 years. You know how it goes. Dig up the word doc. If you can find it, fill it out without screwing up the formatting, save it, email it to the client, then wait and pray for your money. Well, no more. FreshBooks.com has created a super intuitive tool that makes creating and sending invoices ridiculously easy.

With FreshBooks, you can create and send invoices in about 30 seconds. There's no formatting and no formulas. You can add your own logo and color scheme so that your invoice reflects your brand. Just really simple, clean, consistent, and professional-looking invoices. And when you email a client an invoice, FreshBooks can show you whether they've seen it, which puts an end to the guessing games.

With their online payment system, you can set yourself up to let your clients pay by credit card straight from their invoice. This is a game changer. I get paid so much faster now. And here's my favorite part. You don't have to have that awkward chat with your client about past due payments. FreshBooks automates late payment email reminders so you can spend less time chasing payments and more time working your magic.

And you can see who's late right from your dashboard, so adding a late fee is a breeze. Right now, FreshBooks is offering a free 30-day trial to our listeners. Go to FreshBooks.com forward slash grumpy and enter grumpy old geeks in the how did you hear about us section because you don't want to be doing invoices the old-fashioned way anymore.

Seriously, FreshBooks.com slash grumpy. Security? Ha! Dave Bittner is not here today, so we are going to have a beer and talk about security.

Once we get enough Patreon subscribers, I think we should fly Bittner in for a live episode. I would absolutely love to fly Bittner in. I want to meet that guy in person. Because what you guys don't hear on the show is this guy tells the dirtiest jokes you've ever heard. He still won't let those be in the show.

He won't let us post them. He'll ruin his brand. I know, he's got a morality clause. I'm like, what the hell's up with that? We've signed a few of those. That's why we keep getting fired. Google Docs. Did you guys get hit by this thing this week? I did. Yep.

Everybody I know is like, oh, we're getting attacked because we had a guy who talked about ISIS on our show. And we thought, oh, they're coming after us because we talked about, we said the I word. And turns out, nope, everybody got hit by the Google Docs basically phishing scam.

Yep. It only hit power users, right? Kind of. Yeah. I mean, I'd imagine if you've only used Google Docs once or twice, you didn't get hit by it. But if you, yeah. Yeah. I never saw it in my feed, but I rarely use it. I didn't get a single one. But like everybody I work with at the Art of Charm, they got like 50 or 60.

Oh, wow. Yeah. That was a lot. I had two. Two? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We had 50 or 60 come through for the Art of Charm. So there was a lot. It was a bad day. And, you know, like we blamed ISIS. Thank you. Thank you, Obama. Again, it's – they're so unsophisticated.

They're saying this one was a sophisticated one, but – I saw it and I was like, are you kidding me? Just your typical fishing thing with just the red artwork and – Yes. There was nothing sophisticated about it. Yeah. It was – It was – Same old, same old. It was the jankiest fishing expedition I've seen in a long time.

Yeah. It wasn't – and speaking of unsophisticated, Anthony Weiner. Wait, he's back? A man named to get busted for selfies. Well, I like that they're trying to go the – no, they're not doing – there's no Weiner Act yet, right? There's quite a few of them.

And we're back. And a lot of them are preexisting conditions these days. Indeed. Anyways, the point being, I wanted to throw this in because I've – you know, I've hit the Trump snowflakes. You like Weiner, so you want to put it in? I've hit the Trump snowflakes a few times this episode, so here's one for you. Yeah, we did something wrong.

Huma. I love Huma. She's a gorgeous woman. She was the – basically personal assistant to Hillary Clinton, also married to Anthony Weiner, so hopefully not anymore, although I think she's standing there. She left him. Oh, good. I remember she left him, yeah. It's done. After the 17th dick pic.

Yeah, that was one too many. Yes. I'm sorry. Dickie. So while we're apparently unconcerned about the fact that the current administration apparently has so many ties to Russia that we could basically just throw a stick and hit one, we're still looking into what happened with the Clinton administration – or not the Clinton administration that never was.

So here's what happened. Again, just clueless stuff. It's people that don't understand technology dealing with it. She forwarded classified emails to her then-husband, Anthony Weiner, so he could print them out for Hillary. Correct. If you're married, you do understand that there's a certain level of whatever.

You share your life. You share your technology. You share your whatever. Should she have done this? No. Did she do it? Yes. Does it matter? No. Because who's president? Right. Now let's get back to Russia. Please. Can we please get back to Russia?

Well, what is it? They had to show intent to make a case, and they said just because she was forwarded and to get printed, they didn't show any intent to actually print. And there's only one thing that Anthony Weiner leaked, and that was his own deal. Indeed. So what are you going to do? There you go.

And then I'll also bring up this. We've talked about this a lot, especially because I travel overseas all the time. Because you like to go to Canada and not bring you back maple cookies. My wife is not an American citizen. She is a Canadian citizen. The U.S. government could soon ask visa applicants to share their social media profiles.

I don't know how I feel about this. To some degree, technology has moved on. This makes sense. And they are just saying, well, just show us, you know, put in the names, not your passwords. The problem I have is when you're coming overseas and they want to actually act to get into your account.

That's a different thing. Sharing the fact that you have a social media profile, I don't know if I actually have a problem with this. But how difficult is it to have a fake social media profile? Not hard at all. Or also, how difficult is it for our government to just Google these people and find them all anyways?

Now, they're basically just asking for you to put it on the form. Right now, I don't have a problem with it. I can see there being issues with now we demand access to. Yes. That's different. It breaks the terms of service for any website. That's the funny thing. You're not allowed to share your credentials.

Yeah. Yeah. But the government doesn't care. No. So, yeah. And, yeah. So, this I don't really necessarily have so much of a problem for. I mean, I'm actually going to be applying. But this goes back to the old argument that we were talking about. If you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?

But, again, this is just access to stuff that's publicly available anyways. Not if you're private. Again, no, no, no, no. They're not asking for access. They're just asking for what is your account. They're asking for you to list your account stuff. If you set it as private, that doesn't mean anything.

Okay. It's not about device access. They're just asking what is your – yeah, it's not access. It's just if – do you have a Twitter profile? What is your username? Right. Do you have a Facebook profile? What is your username? Okay. Do you have an Instagram profile? They find your profile. Put in your username. If you set it to private and you don't accept U.S. government as your friend.

Done. You're good. You're fine. Yeah. That's where it's at right now. And at that level, I have zero issue with it. I totally understand it. That's moving forward with technology. It makes sense to me. If you're dumb enough to keep your profile open and say, I'm going to the USA, I'm traveling to L.A.

and I'm going to bomb LAX. Yeah. Well, good. Check out my shoes. We got you. My shoes go boom. But this is back to the platform debate. So at what point does Twitter cut off ISIS accounts and that kind of stuff? I think that they have some responsibility to do that.

Yeah. And again, it's – see, that's the slippery slope, right? Yeah. I totally get that. Oh, you busted out the S word. 99% of technology is slippery slope. Usually loves slippery things. That's the problem with it. Yeah. See episode where we gave away his sex bot 2 or whatever the hell that thing was called.

Auto blow 2. Oh, you got rid of Bertha? Never gave that away, sadly. My friend Mike would not let me – Shockingly, nobody wanted it. No, he would not let me sell it at the garage sale. I tried to sell it at the garage sale, but he would not let me do it. The only part of the garage sale that was tarped up and had an 18-year-older sign on it?

No, he would not let me sell it at the garage sale because his wife was – his soon-to-be wife was there, so. Yes. Okay, we've scared away the children. Great thing about that one was it was dishwasher safe. What? The great thing about that device you had was it was dishwasher safe.

It was dishwasher safe. Yes, it was. Just like Crocs. And microwavables. Two things that you should have. No, no. No. Two things you should never have. Never have. Dishwasher safe. So, Hero of the Week, a guy bought a box of StarCraft memorabilia on eBay and got the source code on a disc.

He got a CDR with the golden master of the source code. And he went to Reddit, which apparently is a thing that you do, and said, what should I do with this source code? And Blizzard is like, you should give it back. Yeah. So. Fair enough.

And honestly, fair enough. Absolutely. And he did. He gave it back. And they sent him like a little care package. And with $250 of Blizzard credit, you know, for the store. But then, like a week later, somebody at Blizzard with a clue said, no, we're going to one-up this.

They sent him like boxes of stuff because of their new game that he likes to play. Whatever they, I think it's called Overwatch. Yeah. And so they sent him like $750 worth of like custom keyboards and everything. And then they said, even better, we're going to fly you to BlizzCon.

We're going to put you up and you're going to come to dinner with us because you did the right thing. To me, that sounds like a trap. It's a trap. It's a trap. So, but I just have to say, Blizzard, you know, this week did the right thing. Can I just ask what the hell is StarCraft?

StarCraft is the best MMORPG ever. The most balanced, the most profitable if you're a gamer. Well, no, it's more. You have to realize you have a non-gamer on this podcast. WarCraft is better than, as far as profitability goes, I think WarCraft beats StarCraft.

But StarCraft is, if you're in Korea, then basically that is the NFL. If you're a Korean kid, playing StarCraft is like being in the NFL. It's massive over there. But it is my favorite Blizzard game. I play StarCraft all the time.

I still have it on my computer. So, it's, yeah, basically, you know, my life for hire. I'm a Protoss guy. So, what are you going to do? I just love those swarm ships they have. They're just beautiful. See? Breaks the computer, but it's a beautiful thing. Yeah. So, yeah.

No, StarCraft is a video game that the kids play, Brian. Right, nerds. Yeah, there you go. Judgy.

At the library. I found a book we're both going to hate, Jason. Oh, my. Yeah. Dori Sharif's, or Shafir's, sorry. Shafir. Dori Shafir's new novel, Startup. It's all about sex, lies, and digital media.

You lost me already. Startup, yeah. BuzzFeed news writer, Dori, embarked on her first book. She took the age-old advice, write about what you know, which means break probably all the non-disclosure agreements she signed to work there, and write about working at BuzzFeed. Startup, a novel.

It was about the New York tech and media scene. She says, it's not about BuzzFeed at all. No. So I said, I took the advice, write about what you know, but I didn't actually write about what I was doing. Okay. That's what she's basically saying right now. So she's just trying not to get sued. It's not a satire about the place I work, she said.

There's some BuzzFeed-y stuff in there, but I see it more broadly as a satire of the whole startup media scene, even though I've only worked at one company. Ah. She didn't add the only one company part. But the fact that BuzzFeed-y is now a word. But she says it's all good, and most of her co-workers are disappointed to find out that they're not actually in the book itself, except they probably are just, you know, combined.

With a different name, yeah. Which is what we all do. So I'm not going to read that. Okay. Well, thanks for giving us a book that you're not going to read. I'm probably amazed the title wasn't Startup. You'll never believe what happens at the end. Five reasons you should read my book.

Yeah, exactly. That's what it should be. Listicles, a novel. That would be good. That should be you. I'm actually going to do that. Don't be old geeks present Listicles, a novel. William Gibson rewrote the sequel to The Peripheral after the 2016 election. The Peripheral was not a good book, though.

It was all right. I didn't hate it. I did. I hated it. I really did not enjoy that book. Well, he was moved to rewrite the novel's ending in order to bring the future in line with the one we seem to be careening towards. So he's made it darker. Really?

He made it darker than he was going to originally go with it because things are kind of crap. So I can't even read a book now without being disturbed. No. Perfect. Yeah. The Peripheral, version two, called Pre-existing Condition. What was it about it that actually you disliked? Yeah. I am curious about that. I don't know because, I mean, it was cool because it was...

I don't think we ever talked about it on the show. Yeah, we did. We covered it. Yeah, we covered it on the show. It was... I just thought it wasn't as good as his other stuff. I mean, it felt like... I mean, he's got a high bar. Let's be fair. Granted, yes, he is a fantastic writer.

But I think... You know what it was? This is the first book that wasn't a big-end book. And I really loved the big-end series. So you go with, you know, Pattern Recognition and that whole series. And then this was a new one. And I was just like, I want Case Pollard back.

You know? I want to hear about Japanese jeans and all the crazy stuff. So you're in a very specific series right now. I was really into that series. I get it. And so when he came out with this one, it just didn't catch me. As well as the, you know, the zero distractions and all the...

You know, that whole series was just so good. Yeah. And I just didn't... I didn't bite for this one. Gotcha. Okay. Well, interesting. I liked it. I'm looking forward to reading the thing. The darker... The follow-up and the darker thing. And it's interesting that...

I've heard about a lot of authors, like, settling back and kind of, like, taking a look at what they've read and gone back and... And rewriting it. But mostly it's just because they weren't happy with it. He's doing it specifically because of our current political... Yeah, he's... Yeah, I don't... I don't know if I'd like that. I don't know if I'd like rebooting a book to redo the ending.

I mean, it's like... I think it's fine. What a Star Wars special edition, this shit. You know what I'd like him to do is I would like him to actually put out his original version at the same time. Oh, first draft? Yes. I would like to... Now, that would be interesting. If he were to release this one for sale and then just put up the other one as, like, a free, like, if you buy...

Because if it's just the ending. If you buy this book, you get this. Yeah, that would make sense. Then I'd be super interested in that. Just sell the amendment. Yeah. Yeah, I think that'd be very cool. Interesting. And then I finally read, Jason. I know you sent me the audio book a long time ago. I'm not rubbing one out. This is applause.

We Are Legion, We Are Bob, the Bob-a-verse book one by Dennis Taylor. You sent me the audio book for free. Here's the thing when you have a kid. You cannot put on an audio book. Oh. Because you have to listen for a kid crying. So I am... No audio books for me right now.

So it took me a while to get around to actually... Just do one earphone. I do that when I take them for walks. It's distracting. You can't... Especially for books. And I just like physical reading. Anyways, I'm not an audio book guy. And by the way, the barking in the background is not Bam Bam. Thank you very much, Brian. I knew you were going to say something.

It seems to be that we have to have a dog. We have a dog, but that's Ava, who we love. I love this book. It was funny. It was good, wasn't it? It was very funny. I have to admit, I was very scared at the beginning. We are Legion. We are Bob.

It is the Bob-a-verse book one. So a gentleman is turned into an AI, and then he replicates himself as he goes through the universe. It is... It's a future, the Earth destroys itself, but we send out different Newman machines, I believe they call it.

Newman? Something like that. Because, yeah, Brazil and China both send out AIs, and then they have battles and stuff like that. But Bob wins. Spoiler alert. I had constructed all my comments very carefully, not to do a single spoiler.

This is worth a read. It's very funny, while also being very realistic sci-fi, near-future sci-fi. I think it is very... I was very worried at the beginning, because the first two chapters are establishing the main character, who, much like right now, I'm being stared at by three guys who did not...

We're all shaking their heads when I said I wasn't a gamer, and they were all scared of me, and like, how could you not be a gamer? The beginning of the book is like a guy that is going... Just sold his tech company and is going to Comic-Cons, and I was like, I don't give a fuck about this character. What a loser.

I gotta go wipe my baby's ass, because I have a wife. Well, la-di-fucking-da. So I was really terrified in the first two chapters, but it got very funny, very fast, very smart, very clever.

You know, he's an early writer. There were some things that lingered on a little bit too long, some things that were a little clunky. But overall, I found myself, I mean, out loud laughing. I woke up my kid. Yeah. At one in the morning, I was still up laughing so damn hard. So there you go.

Yeah. That's something. It's a good read. I highly recommend it. So thank you so much for that one, Jason. You're welcome. One of the rare times that when Jason recommended a book to me that I fucking loved. So it was fantastic. I'm well halfway into book two right now. Damned with faint praise. That's my title on this show.

Damn right. I like my stapler, Brian. I like my stapler a lot. So I actually went and got the office space app. Idle profits. I took a walk down the street recently.

I just have to mention this really quick. And near my area and there was a printer that had been smashed. It looked like with a baseball bat. Nice. I mean, I swear to God, this just happened yesterday and I bought office space. I was like, somebody went to town on this thing. So I got this app because I was just bored one day and I just went to the app store and there was an office space game.

And I'm like. Now, is this official? This is official. Nice. You can buy characters from the game. No. But here it is. It's a clicker. That's all it is. It's a. You click a lot. All you do is click. And it's stupid.

It is the dumbest game in the universe. And I've spent $15 on it so far. Of course you have. Wow. Meanwhile, I'm still playing that Star Wars Battlefront game. Like I'm two weeks in. I haven't spent a dime. Wait the fuck. I thought you weren't a gamer. What the hell? You don't know what Starcraft is, but you're on this shit.

What? No. No. No. There are two times now that I've been caught by games. First I did. What was that? A Game of War Fire Age or whatever that was called. Yeah. I spent 150 bucks on that game, by the way. So what I do with games is two times, once a year, basically, I get caught up in one of these games that basically exists only to suck money out of you.

And I'm such a, like, fuck you guy that I'm like, I'm going to see how long I play you without spending a dime. That's what I'm doing right now. By the way, I still have gone through Candy Crush Soda Saga, got to level, like, 87, and still have never spent a dime.

Bravo, actually. That's difficult. It's very difficult, but I did spend 15 bucks on Office Space. Of course you did. Because I wanted the... Did you get a stapler? I did. I got thousands of staplers. To make an analogy of what kind of gamer you are, you're seriously a just-the-tip guy.

I kind of am. Also explains a lot... Never mind. So, yeah. Why I have a child, volume one. So, skip Office Space, Idle Prophets, is all I'm saying. While Joey just chokes on his beer over there. I threw this story mostly in for my parents because they can't seem to get rid of it.

Most American households have now officially abandoned their landlines. We've finally hit the tipping point where... Just the tipping point. Just the tipping point. So, 50.8% of American households are now cell phone only. So, we finally crossed over.

I love the fact that it's actually still cheaper to have a landline. No, it's not. No, it's not. No, it's not. This is why I argue with my parents every single month I go down there. They're paying almost $70 to keep a landline they never used. I thought the bundle was cheaper if you get all three.

That's not a landline. That's not a landline. That's not a landline. That's not a landline. Oh, it's not. That's VOIP. It's VOIP. Oh, really? That's VOIP. It's VOIP. Yeah. An actual physical landline, which my parents always argue, if there's something that goes wrong, what else are we going to use? The internet goes down. I was like, Mom, who are you going to call?

Ghostbusters. I don't have a landline. My sister doesn't have a landline. None of your friends have a landline. You're going to be able to talk to AT&T, and that's it, and you're paying $70 a month to, in case there's an earthquake, talk to an operator. Yeah. No. Here at this house, where we're at right now, $80 to get a landline.

We have copper. We have copper. We have copper run here, and it's $80. And if you get a VOIP line through Comcast, it'll cost you $30, and they do have batteries in the routers now. Really? You don't get the battery unless you buy the VOIP service.

Oh, that's why I have 2PSs in my house. Yeah. Yeah. So, but basically, yeah, the routers that come from Comcast are, what is it now? What's the stupid name of the? Spectrum. Spectrum. Speculum. Started. Yes, yes. If you get a speculum.

All their commercials tell us that everything is different now, and they're so much better, and it's all exactly the same. It is the same. It is the same. My login works the same, so it's apparently the same. No, and it's cheaper all around, and it makes a lot more sense. I mean, the landlines are stupid. They're still charging you long-distance fees. On actual physical landlines.

Yep. Gotcha. Yeah, no, there's no reason that anybody's capital landlines. Well, the reason they charge so much is because their profit share has dwindled, obviously. I mean, there's less and less people using it, and I just fight with my parents every goddamn fucking week. And this is why I love Kali Linux, and why I don't actually pay for anything.

Welcome to Sweden, everybody. Welcome to Sweden, everybody. Huzzah! Speaking of avoiding Sweden, Apple TV is finally getting the Amazon video app. Oh, my God. Apparently, this summer. Are you kidding me? Finally. They're burying the hatchet on this stupid shit. I mean, it's so annoying because I've been Amazon Prime forever, and I'm all Apple shit.

Sorry. I'm all Apple ecosystem as well. I would just like to point out that Brian literally just looked like he was scared because he hit the mic, and he knew that I was going to jump across the table at him. Jason always yells at me, and it's very rare that I'm within throttling distance as opposed to Skype throttling. This is why he likes me to be a thousand miles away, but yes.

I would love to see Jason choke you without actually looking at you because it gets awkward. It does get weird. Yeah. So they're finally adding it so you don't have to just do the step around using AirPlayer. Well, and now I don't have to use the shitty Roku TV stuff because it's like the fast forward is just janktastic.

It's absolutely horrible. Oh, this makes my day. This is, you know what? I'm glad you brought beer, but now I'm happier that you brought me this story. Well, we're finally getting the app directly on Apple TV. All right. For those of us that are in it yet, and then there's a long-form story over on Recode about what you've been trying to do and what many people are trying to do.

Everybody's trying to unbundle and cut the cord, get off their cable, get off the spectrum. Not ready for prime time yet. They're all trying to jigger a service that's around $35 a month. That's what they consider is the magic number. Nobody's getting it right. Nobody can put together the right bundles.

It's all a mess. You can go read the story in our show notes. Originally, when I get home, my Chromecast will be there because I bitched about it two weeks ago. I'm like, I cannot pay for YouTube TV. But now it finally flipped, and I will have a Chromecast when I go home.

Yeah, but YouTube TV, again, we went through the channel listings. It's not enough. It covers everything that I needed from Hulu, so I can drop that $14 a month and then move to this. But then you'll still need your HBO at another $10 a month, and then you'll still need this, and then you'll still need that.

Do you still tether the Chromecast to a computer? No. No, it's all Wi-Fi. It's independent now? Yeah, it's all Wi-Fi. But the one thing that I really want was I can watch live TV. I can watch live TV from my neighborhood.

Yeah, they've got to figure that out. Yeah, because that was the problem when I watched the Cubs win the World Series, not the Doidos. Amazing. Oh, look, you watched some sports ball. I watched sports ball, and I was watching it on that shitty digital antenna, and it would stop every five seconds.

Yeah, yeah, that's why I never ended up doing one of those. And it was just miserable. It was a miserable experience. All the reviews were bad on them. So $35 a month, I'm in. That's fine. It's not $90 a month, which is what it would cost me for Comcast. It would cost me $200 after three months. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, we can't unbundle just yet, but it's getting closer.

Yeah. We get to a la carte now. Well, again, for me, this is a mea culpa, because two years ago, I was like, this is the year of unbundling. This is the year of- Three years ago. It's just not happening. They have a stranglehold. Content creators, regardless of platform, going back to our earlier story, have a hold.

And the fact is, if you've got five great stories going on on Hulu, five great stories going on on HBO, two good shows going on on Showtime, you've got to buy everything. Yep. Media Candy.

So as much as the group of men around me right now were staring at me when I said I wasn't a gamer and looked at me asking, like, how could this be? I will talk about The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice, which was such a part of my youth, my goth youth. Because you're a 15-year-old girl.

That's pretty much what it is. Do you have a pair of fans at home? I'm older now. That's not a no. For the record, that's not a no. I find them to be fantastic books. I love the original series. Anne Rice is surprisingly for, I think she's got to be 70 at this point.

She's all over social media. She is doing it and doing it well. And she's doing it by herself. She is one of these people. Well, not surprisingly, she is an author. She knows how to write. Right. So she is nailing social media. Trump snowflakes. Do not follow her on Twitter. That's where she gets political.

But she stays very straightforward writing. She talks and she nurtures a lot of younger writers on her page as well. So very well done for her. She's one of those people. She, I do love the vampire series. They're absolutely fantastic. She found Jesus for a while. She disavowed.

That was a dark time. She disavowed The Vampire Chronicles. That was a very dark time. Yeah. Yeah. That was a dark time. She has since recanted from that. And she's back writing books. And they're quite good. I reviewed the last one that she wrote. It was decent. I'm a huge fan. But the movie.

The original movie. I still like the movie. I like everything except for Tom Cruise cast as Lestat. I liked it. It was the absolute worst. I thought it was good. Horrible. But we get a reboot. So the. What is it about Tom Cruise and that role that actually sets you off?

That is not Lestat. That's not. Lestat is not a five foot two action hero with bleached white teeth. He is. He is. He is actually. He's correct. Lestat was Brad Pitt. Is it worse casting? Brad Pitt should have been Lestat. Is it worse casting than Jack Reacher?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Tom Cruise's Lestat ruined that movie for everybody that was a fan of the books. Yeah. Ruined. I have to. I have to. I have to agree begrudgingly. As much as I hate to say it. I agree with Brian on this one. Brad Pitt was Lestat. Is it still allegorical in their terms of vampires defining like like True Blood where they are representative of the gays?

Ann Rice has never admitted to that specifically, but go back, go back and go back and look at the graphic noggle novels. Noggles. I don't know what a noggle is. Noggles do nothing. Noggles was actually a fantastic Mexican chain that used to exist here in Southern California.

That was also far better than Del Taco. Go back and look at the graphic noggles, which are apparently gay tacos. But I have to say, hands down, that, yes, that was some homoerotic shit.

Yeah, I mean, definitely for sure. I mean, there's no doubt about that. But it was great writing. I mean, those original books are fantastic. It gets very deep into theology. If you follow the books, you understand why she started to question things and why she may have decided to come back and find religion again in her own life.

And it's very fascinating and good reads. She's a great writer. Anyways, the point being, I think it's better actually as a series, a TV series than a movie. So they picked up the rights for the full Vampire Chronicles, the full series of books, which is now, I think, almost 20.

I consider the first three to four to be canon. Those are canon. They have to do those right. If they do those right, then they can continue on if they want to. And it comes down to casting. It really comes down to casting. It really does come down to casting because it's all cult of personality on this stuff. You have to believe that Lestat is not only the ultimate vampire, not only can he charm God himself or the devil himself, depending on what you believe with Men Knock the Devil, my favorite book of the Vampire series.

He also has to become a rock star in his own right that charms all of humanity, like the biggest rock star in the world. Beggar than, you know. So they're going to cast Bono. Jesus, fuck. No better way to kill it than that. That's the problem.

The problem with casting Lestat is huge. Yeah. I'd still think if they would have done the original movie and swapped the roles, let Tom Cruise be Louis. If Tom Cruise was Louis, it would have been a perfect movie. And Brad Pitt should have been Lestat. I know. I just rhymed that, though.

I didn't get any credit for that. Now, in other, like, life-changing series in terms, for me, like the biggest series of all times you've got, and for me, it's Dune. Let me guess. Dune, who I never shut up about. Yeah. Isaac Asimov's Foundation, the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles.

One of the other ones for me is Stephen King's Dark Tower. No shit. Really? You really like the Dark Tower? Yeah, I reread them every two or three years, and I talk about them incessantly. We're finally getting the movie. There's only 1.3 million words in the Dark Tower series, so. Worth every word.

Every word. Not for the first book, because that sucked. The first book is rough. It's horrible. Stephen King wrote. I can't get through it. I think Stephen King wrote The Gunslinger when he was, it was one of his first books that he wrote. One of his Coke novels? Definitely. Easily.

But after you get past that, he builds an entire universe, and it is an amazing universe. And so many of the other books that he writes tie into it in a weird way. Like, you can follow, the Wikipedia on the shit, you can go down the rabbit hole for about eight months.

I'm still trying to get past book three. Book two I liked. Book three was what I'm into now. And I'm really just, you know. All things serve the beam, Jason. All things serve the beam. That means absolutely nothing to me.

It will. And you have to get far enough, and it will. The movie's coming. The trailer dropped. And this is where I thought that you were going to lose your shit. I will officially state, well, I lost my shit when they did the casting announcement. I hate Matthew McConaughey.

I hate him with a white-hot passion. Oh, I'd never. I think he's a fucking horrible actor. He's a piece of shit. Here's the thing. As soon as they release the trailer, I have a bunch of friends that are like, they agree with me that the Dark Tower is like, whoa, in terms of world building.

And just like, if you read the entire series, it's unbelievable. And I got texts immediately saying, they've broken it. It's not true to the story. And there are things in the trailer that are definitely not true to Stephen King's original story. However, there were a few think pieces that were originally done.

And spoiler alert here, people. But not really, because the journey is fucking worth it anyways. All things do serve the beam. The beam resets. There are different universes. There are multiple universes. This is a multiplex of universes that are done with the Dark Tower.

Yeah, pretty much ruined that for me. No, because the movie will be ruined for you anyways, because it does not follow the original script. And if you were a truest. But the thing is, everybody's saying this is the next reset or the previous reset.

It could have been a thousand resets. I like the trailer, though. My point being is, I liked what they did. I liked it. This is the first thing. This is the first thing, because Brian liked something. I like things all the time on the show. This is the first time that I liked something.

That's not true. I liked things all the time on the show. It did not look good. It did. It looked good, even with McConaughey. Nissan thinks they've figured out how to solve this whole texting while driving bullshit.

Oh, okay. Nissan. Yeah. Because they, you know, know things. So they want to put a Faraday cage in your armrest so you can put your phone in there when you start driving. But what if I want to listen to Spotify while I'm driving? Oh, shit. What if I get in an accident and I'm pinned in my driver's seat?

What if you use Waze? Yeah, Waze. I got to have Waze. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. I guess this is not going to work, then. Ah, okay. Ah, too bad we put it in so many cars already.

Oh, shit. Fuck. How many cars are they in? Well, don't buy a Juke. What's a Juke? One of their cars, Jason. They literally call the car a Juke? Really? Really? They literally call the car a Juke? Yeah. It almost seems like a racial... Well, the Juke's on you. The Juke is on me.

Feedback Loop. We have a new Patreon subscriber. Thank you to Byron Weiss. Thank you very much, Brian. We like your money a lot. Yeah, we do. We like money. It's good. We got a lot of comments over at GOG.show.

I still like to say grumpy oldgeeks.com, but Jason is so hot on this new URL, so here we are. Because it's like .ninja, but better. It's what the millennial's like. Yeah. Yeah. It costs us $24, so we have to, like, you know... Because we're rolling in money.

We're rolling it. It's just like, make it rain, motherfucker. Make it rain. Podcasting. It's where the money is. You'll find out. You'll find out, you alt-right idiots. Oh, snowflaking. So, snowcasting. That's what we're going to do.

Matt sent us a comment. So, I think I have a good Mac malware for you guys. We should actually save this for Bittner and make sure he hears about this, too. Precursor. I've been known to download an occasional movie from BT, aka Sweden.

Welcome to Sweden. So, recently, I took my MacBook Pro to my cigar bar, where I occasionally enjoy a cigar while I work. Dramatic pause. And as soon as I opened up my laptop, the screen went fuzzy, and the wait icon showed.

The MacBook restarted and put me into the iCloud lock screen. I tried all the four-digit pins that I could think of, and none worked. So, I rebooted in recovery mode, and I was greeted with a firmware lock screen, and none of my passwords worked. Another thing of note is that I have two-factor auth enabled on my iCloud account, so it wasn't a hack on my iCloud account.

Feel free to reach out for more info if interested. What do you think, Brian? I think he was in the cigar bar. Cigar bar. Cigar. Pirates. Let us enunciate. Sorry, I'm going to find a few beers in.

I don't know. I haven't heard about this at all. I'm interested to hear what Bittner has to say about this. Yeah, we're going to roll this around to Bittner. Yeah, we're definitely going to look into this. So, I mean, I thank you for writing in about this. We've been asking for people to write about anything about Mac hacks that have happened.

So, this is the first we've actually gotten that seems legit. It seems legit. Too legit to quit. Too legit to quit. You knew how I was going there. I did. Okay. Next one comes from Brian. Comment.

Gentlemen, I picked up a Goobang per your suggestion, and so far I'm pleased with the device. Setup was a breeze. The Easy Sweden device. Yes. This is, yeah, it's basically a Coda box. Cody. Cody. Something like that. Yeah.

Now I have to find where I was because I'm dyslexic, and it's hard to read. Setup was a breeze, and when you find a decent video stream, it looks great. How concerned should I be about streaming pre-licensed content? Pre-licensed. That's a new term. You do understand the entire thing is illegal.

Right? What you're doing is stealing. You have to buy into the fact that this is illegal. When we say Sweden, we mean illegal. We mean you're stealing shit. Yes. It's not pre-licensed. You are stealing shit. I thought we had made that clear, Jason.

Do I need it? Sweden is code word for illegal. Do I need a VPN? Yes. Yes. You do. Is that even possible on this device? Yes, it is. Yes, it is. You can actually go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash VPN and sign up for private internet access, and then you will get an account.

To get the VPN to be clear, which is legal, not the illegal stuff. Yes. No. Having a VPN is legal. Pre-licensed is not really something that actually exists. You are stealing some shit. I would suggest that you look up the license.

Look up license in the dictionary. Yeah. Look, we're making fun of you. I get it's a complicated environment out there right now, and I get that you youngins are born into a situation in which you think that you, by birthright, get everything.

But we have to finish this, because his last sentence is, you're probably my third favorite podcast. And the funny thing is, we are free. We're completely free. We are re-licensed. The things you like better that you are stealing, you should be paying for.

Yes. So thank you, Brian. That made my day, because I've never heard pre-licensed before. But yes, you can go by our VPN service and get it through your gubang. My wife wants to kill you. As a lawyer who deals with licensing, she is not thrilled with you right now.

No, she probably, she, if you ever go to Canada, she will kill you with maple cookies, because Brian will never bring them back for me, obviously. You can get them at the store down the street from your house in Chicago. This is not some newfangled item. This is, this is, this is, no, I'm not even going to go there.

I'm not going to go there. What I can bring you from Canada that you cannot get in the USA anymore is democracy. Oh, democracy. I like democracy. Healthcare? Healthcare. I'm an nihilist. Privacy? I don't care about that. Yeah, who cares? Yeah, there's all those things.

Okay, our next is from Tom. Hey, Grumps, I love the show. I'm going to give you a great iTunes review soon, I promise. By the way, that has not come in yet. Yeah, we're waiting, Tom. I know Tom Servo, get on it. Let's go. But about the new MST3K.

That's why I called him Tom Servo. Yes, I got that. Well, I know you're slow, but. I just can't agree with you. I've loved it. In 2013, I watched the original series from start to end just to kill some time. That's the only way to watch that show, by the way. That's the only reason I do this podcast. What I'm seeing now is, to me, as good, if not better, than the original.

I know from the first episode, it's a little different. Not Bam Bam. Bam Bam. Not Bam Bam. Not Bam Bam. It's like Jason flew in a dog just to hang out. They're doing something a little different, and they just launch into it immediately, but after four or five episodes, I was totally down with what they were doing.

The robots are funny. Yes, their voices are similar. Okay, this is just going on saying it's blah, blah, blah. I like MST. All right. So, GOG is one of my most look forward to podcasts each week. Please keep it up. Thank you, Tom. We will. Me, I just can't watch the new show, but I think it might be an age thing, too.

Like, I'm just. Or a time thing. I didn't find it funny. I'm a kid. Maybe when my kid is old enough, I'll watch it again. Maybe. And my friend, Zach, is a writer on it. So, like I said, I felt really bad about saying that the new MST3K sucks, but it sucked. So, sorry, Zach.

This next one comes from Lamar Kindle. Great name. Lamar Kindle. Is that really your name? I'm guessing not. I've been hearing you guys talking about buying stocks and making bets. I, myself, have been thinking of investing in stocks, but I'd like to know what are the best broker sites to use?

Something reputable. This is an actual question. I don't know if we know how to handle this one. No, we totally know how to handle this one. I mean, there was tons of sites that popped up immediately that were like, we're going to do brokerage. We'll charge you 50 cents per fee. All of them had gone out of business because it wasn't sustainable.

So, I use E-Trade for all my stockpots. E-Trade is fantastic. I use Schwab. Schwab was expensive. I also use Schwab, too. Schwab has lowered their prices to come into line. What's happened with a lot of the brokerages is they've realized they can't charge you exorbitant fees. Yeah.

Because people will leave you because they'll go to something like E-Trade. What happened to the lower end ones that were charging like 50 cents per trade or whatever is they went out of business because it wasn't sustainable. So, we've kind of found a middle ground, which is kind of what everybody's pricing at now.

So, yeah. E-Trade, I think for my Twitter trade, cost me like 10 bucks. Yeah. And Schwab is sitting at like 12-something with the amount of money that I have. Some of them are based on how much money you have in them. I use Schwab for my 401k.

Here's the important point. Find somebody that's FDIC insured up to the amount of money that you're investing. That would be $100,000. Yeah. So, most of them are $100,000. Make sure that they're covered for that because if they go out of business or whatever, you get your money back.

That's the reality. Yeah. So, they're all pretty much the same. Find somebody that's cheap. Find somebody that's insured. You're good. Cool. And don't buy Twitter. Don't buy Twitter. We're up two bucks, but I would definitely not recommend buying Twitter.

Apparently, Tesla is where to go. I made a lot of money off Twitter. Fuck you. A lot of money off Tesla. I really just want to jump across this table and throttle Brian right now. I want to kiss you the most on the mouth right now. All right.

The next is from Matthew. Hey, grumpy millennial here. I know we suck. Well, thank you for admitting it. Just wanted to respond to the show about the pie hole. It sounded like you guys were mildly interested, but mostly discounted it as beneficial due to already having ad blockers.

That was Brian, not me. That was me. And actually, Will Wheaton is all in on this. I saw him talking about it on Twitter. Yeah, I've got to follow up on this, so let's go through this. I just wanted to add that it would be great for mobile devices whose ad blockers are not that great, as well as great addition to a network with a lot of infrequent users.

Definitely fucking millennials having people come crash on your fucking free Wi-Fi that come and go. Also did a little research in the pie hole. Also logs tracking requests sent to your network. We already have security for that shit, too. For somebody that may not be inclined to know what ad blockers are or don't trust your kids to click in ads in their own computers, tablets, or phones, it would be a great addition.

Anyways, my whole thing just reset. Well, I lost the end of that comment. Okay, here's the deal. Yes, the pie hole, our friend of the show, Monkey13, has been using that for the past week, loves it, has his whole house on it, and thinks it's awesome.

So I'm going to set one up. I'm going to drop the $50 and buy a Raspberry Pi for it. Actually, we skipped something from Tom earlier, which I wanted to come back to, since I have so many guys around me that were staring at me about superheroes and about...

Brian has a really big thing about, like, guys staring at him today. Well, no, I want to get in... He's very uncomfortable right now. I want to discover... I think he's extraordinarily uncomfortable. Once again, I want to discover Doctor Who. I want to understand how to get into Doctor Who.

And nobody can give me anything. So Tom also did say, also, what the fuck? Matt Smith was a great doctor. No, he wasn't. The entire table is shaking their heads. No, he wasn't. He was terrible. Give him the mic for a second.

Give him the mic. So this is Michael Burns, our friend of the show. We have to turn it on because Joey turned it off for some reason because he likes to fart a lot. But... Oh, no, that's me. Sorry. Let's talk about Matt Smith. You like Matt Smith. Nobody can tell me where to start, how to go.

Well, you should start with Christopher Eccleston. Yes! I win! I win the internet! He was good. Okay. I liked him, too. Now defend Matt Smith. He... I just... I liked him. He... He likes his chin.

There's a lot of chin with Matt Smith. I found him to be a beautiful... I found him to be a beautiful man. He was... He was... He had very full lips. Delectable. Matt Smith is delectable. He was just entertaining. He was... He was fun. He...

I thought he was just too goofy. Well, but... I like Goofy. Goofy was a little fun in that case. I mean... I see Chris Eccleston came in. He was the dark doctor. He was just like... You know what? The universe is going to die. I've officially decided I'm just never going to watch Doctor Who.

It's too fucking complicated. I think that is... I think I'm just going with I'm just never going to watch it. The best move is not to play. There we go. I... Let's go back to War Games. I passed out. And say the best winning move is not to play.

All right. We have 7,000 more things to deal with in this section. Okay. Next up from Patrick. I know you guys are split on your enthusiasm for The Expanse. I don't think we're split. I think we're on the... On board. We are exactly the same. No, we're on board being split. Like we both like it and also think it's getting boring.

Yes. It's... It is the expensive boringness. Yes. Yeah. And I came across this channel. It has some really interesting pieces on the science behind the show. Enjoy. I think we shared a few things similar on this. Did Adam Savage's cameo pull you out?

Yes. We talked about this. For him it did. It bumped me. It bumped me out of the show. So he saw the cameo. I didn't see the cameo. And I didn't know it was coming either, to be fair. I didn't know he was going to be in it. And then... In the penult... The ultimate...

It's the finale. It's one of the key scenes of the show. And then I'm like, huge! And there's Adam Savage from Mythbusters. Yeah. Yeah. If I would have seen that, it would have taken me out as well. But I did not see that because I was looking at the other characters. So I just missed it. You know, I just...

I was just... I just was clueless to the savagery. Well, now I just know that any show that he does a behind-the-scenes on is going to involve me in a cameo. Yeah. Well, of course it is, because he's a fanboy. Right. I mean, I should have known he was going to be in the show. I mean, it was...

And I actually listened to the podcast, and he talked about, there's going to be something, something, something. I should have known, but it still took me out of the show. Yeah. No, that sucks. I mean, it's a shit-eating grin during the disassembly of just like, what the fuck? I still think that my favorite character's coming back.

I think the cop is coming back. He will in some form. I think, yeah. Because he hasn't been signed on to any other TV show. The proto-molecule will bring him back. Well, he's definitely not coming back as fucking the Punisher. Shit. Yeah, exactly. Everything else that he's working on has been canceled, and he hasn't been signed to anything else.

So I guarantee you he's coming back on the show. Wait for it. All right, so let's go to the Twitter comments, which once again, Twitter is a vast wasteland, but apparently for our listeners, they love it because we have shit tons from Twitter this time.

The first from Latak. Latak. What he said except for the chickens, and he sent us a link, which this is a long read. What if we just made video conferencing work? This was one of the longest reads.

While this is a long read, it's basically all encapsulated in the title. You don't really have to read it. It is 7,000 pages of why does video conferencing suck? Yeah, I got that point. When I read the title, and I'm like, okay, video conferencing sucks.

And then I started to read it, and I'm just like about 4,000 words into it. I'm just like, and then I just pretty much, I'm like, yes, I know Skype sucks. Yeah, it's basically, we put a man on the moon. We can't make video conferencing work.

We can, but it's owned by Microsoft. Yeah, that's kind of what it comes down to. I agree. Skype is horrible. It is just horrible. Somehow we do our podcast on it for every week, and some we get, we have good times, we have bad times.

Sometimes we just have to shut it all down, restart it, and it seems to work. And it's just like everything now. Everything is a black art. Nobody opens up their code anymore. It's not like the old days when we could look at people's code and, oh, this is why this is horrible. Yeah. Everything is shut down.

Everything is locked out from us, and we just have to deal with what they give us, and what they give us is shit. And speaking of shit, let's talk about Samsung phones, because Ivor Tola, who we like, he's a fan of the show and friend of the show. One day people will wonder why the hell they paid $900 for their latest Samsung piece of shit.

And this is an article from Android Authority, which is, the title is, Smartphone shipment growth was essentially led by Chinese OEMs. Yeah. I have, like, daily emails from Chinese OEMs.

I can buy pretty much the best phone on the planet for about $200. Yeah. And guess what? It's still going to be, I don't understand why a Samsung phone suddenly is now more than a HD 4K TV.

It's like. Because they can get it. That's why. Because they can get it. Well, and sometimes they blow up. Ah, that too. Added bonus. That's always fun. Huzzah. ISIS has been buying them a lot lately. It's so weird. Okay, let's move on. Let's talk about John McAfee.

That crazy. Because Ivor actually just wrote another thing. It's like, the wild and crazy John McAfee wants you to buy the most hack-proof smartphone. Nobody cares. Here's the deal with John. By the way, we've had the fappening seven now, eight now. It's all the world war, the wrestling chicks are getting hacked next, right and center.

Apparently, if you want to see their bits, you can. I'm sorry. Nobody cares about security. They can't even. Nobody will. Nobody. We've had two listeners our entire show that have actually gone and gotten one password. You think somebody's going to get a secure phone? Well, my point is that after watching the John McAfee documentary on Vice, that he likes to have the ladies crap in his mouth.

And then I just look at him with his mustache and think, flavor saver, that really probably is not a very good smelling mustache. That's really where I'm at with John McAfee. He's crazy. Our next one from Song of the OSS. Don't want to agree with GOG podcast, but they're right.

That should be our new tagline. Because we're always right. Big Bing theory isn't what it used to be. Feels like it's coasting, not pioneering. Yeah. Sad, but true. I mean, it was a great show when it started. Yeah. California Vandal writes on iTunes with a five star. Thank you. My favorite tech podcast.

I appreciate the book section. I may not read often, but I have Audible. All right, my brother. I like getting new recommendations. Absolutely. My favorite tech podcast. They're relevant and hilarious, like the Bittner security section, too. It's security wire gone wild.

Update. I was very surprised to hear my review read on the air. While at work, I may not completely remember writing the review. Drinking is good. Made me laugh out loud at the office. And the culprit for spelling mistakes and review was Jameson.

Yes, good man. And working the 5 a.m. local shift in Portland. Just up to my Patreon support. You guys are awesome. Your pod buoys. It's not a pod. Your pod buoys. Keep saying pod, people. It pisses Jason off, and I find it hilarious.

Yeah, dick. Your pod buoys my typically bleak Monday with people dealing in tech support who come at me ready to fix everything they put off the week before. Yes. And our final five-star review was from Lamar Kindle, who's back.

I like Lamar. Yeah. Great show. I've been listening to the show since episode one and still going strong. Brian, I've got a reply to your comment about Uber and wanting to get a person to delete the app. I've never downloaded it, if that counts. Well, yeah, it counts, I guess.

And you don't have to listen to this segment next week where we talk about removing all the little weird things that Uber put into our phones. So good for you. If you want your question or comment 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. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show, not groovyoldgeeks.com, and slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review.

And, yes, it does still work. I got to pee so bad. Closing shout-outs. I got a big shout-out to my co-host, Brian Schulmeister, for doing all the work this week because I've been traveling.

And I appreciate him putting all the notes in. But I did get to go get a Google attorney drunk, which was pretty cool. That's pretty good. And I would like to have big shout-outs to Joey Rabier, who is here in the room. Michael Burns, who's also here in the room.

Chase Solwald, who is our host. Elaine, my amazing – what was it? You're not my accountant. She's the one that's supposed to give me money, so I'm going to give her a shout-out. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's going to give you money.

And her son, who is smarter than everybody in the room. So it's a pretty fucking awesome day here in Woodland Hills. Yeah, I'm in Woodland Hills, so I'm going to give you a shout-out to Jason for making me to come here. I'm sorry.

I'm going to give a shout-out to Jason for being actually in town. So good to see you actually in person. It was fucking amazing to see you, too. Even though we don't make eye contact when we're doing this show. It's fucking weird. I can't look at you. Yeah. I need a Skype window with your little profile picture.

I know, yeah. It's much more comfortable that way. This is just weird. It's very bizarre, yes. And, oh, another big shout-out to Bonnie, the three-legged – the most beautiful pit bull in the world. Who's Michael's – Oh, thank God. That went to an animal because I was really worried.

Because, yes, Brian hates it when I talk about dogs. No, when you start with three-legged, it could have gone many directions. And we're back on ladyboys. Oh, no. Michael has the most beautiful pit bull named Bonnie, so I wanted to give her a shout-out.

Still could be a ladyboy. Could be. Shalom. Shalom. Okay, I got to go home. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. GOG.show is our home base where you can listen to our old shows if you want to.

Leave feedback. Ask us questions. Why would you want to do that? Because they're actually not so bad. Get links to our awesome sponsors and stuff that we like. If you're an app person, you can listen to us on the Podcast One app for iOS and Android. Go to podcastone.com slash apps.

If you'd like to become an official quote-unquote friend of the show, which I would highly recommend, go to GOG.show. People around this table are laughing at us. I know. Friend is a loose term. If you have no friends, go to GOG.show slash support, where you'll find all of the ways you can support us and keep the show on the air.

The more... Jesus. I'm sorry. I'm looking at Joey and he's just cracking up. To learn more about all 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 208.

This is Christine Ko from the Edit Your Life podcast. Decluttering is tricky for a number of reasons, and one of the big ones is the physical act of getting stuff out of your home. And I have a great solution if this is the case for you. 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which helps get unwanted items out of your home or business.

The process couldn't be easier. Just pop in your zip code on the website and see what the next availability is. When I did this on a Sunday, there was same-day pickup available in very short order. All you need to do after you book your time is point at the stuff you want gone, and their friendly team handles everything else.

Lifting, hauling, and sweeping up when they're done. It's an easy, fast way to reclaim your space without breaking a sweat. This is also a genius option if you have older loved ones who are downsizing, but the moving of stuff is a key hindrance to the process. Once your items are loaded into the truck, they recycle the recyclables and donate the donatables, so as much junk as possible is diverted from landfills.

Are you ready to check this out? Book your free in-person estimate today. Call 1-800-GOT-JUNK or visit 1-800-GOT-JUNK.com. Again, that's 1-800-GOT-JUNK or visit 1-800-GOT-JUNK.com to book your free in-person estimate today.

This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Brews Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel. Three straight days with pool deck bare knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and non-stop action.

The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at BKFSEA.com.