22: Bare Knuckle Geekery

We are back for number 22? 22. 22. Oh my goodness, it's our first solo in a while.

First solo, new setup, at least on my end. I actually switched over to the real mic and headphones rather than using the stupid headset. Yes, good man, good man. Getting all super pro over here. Yeah, that heavy petting breathing thing was not becoming of you. No, it was starting to annoy me when I was listening to myself, so here we go. Yeah, so it's been, like I said, it's been a while since we actually had a nice sit down together. You know, there's always,

you know, three's a crowd type of thing, but you know, it's fun for us, I think, to have guests on every now and again, but you know, we started with just the two of us, and it's a little weird when somebody shows up on the show, I guess. At least for me, because we do a lot of, you know, a lot of prep for the guests, and it always feels just a little bit more stressful, at least for me, you know. Yeah, you and I aren't, oh, somebody forgot, somebody

forgot vibrate. No, that's the, that's the phone in the, in the flowers that I talked about last time, and I can't unplug it or it will beep. Should we just pause for a second and cut it? Or we can wait? Yeah, fuck it. Oh, ring on, people. Nobody's here. I got the house to myself. I love it that came out just after I said I got all professional over here. Yeah, exactly. Still, I mean, I moved all of those flowers. It's $10,000 worth of flowers. They're

all gone and in storage, except I still can't find the damn phone. That's hilarious. No, but I'll just say it's like, it's, it definitely makes it a little more stressful to do the show with the guests. Well, you and I aren't exactly practiced at interviewing people, and it's also been a bit of a weird thing because either, you know, one of the guests are always either like a friend of yours or a friend of mine, and it's also doubly weird to even just be trying to interview somebody that's a friend, so. Yeah, and you want to make them sound

good and, you know, do all that stuff, and like you said, we're not professional interviewers, but it's still, I mean, it's, they're fun conversations for us. Oh, definitely. For sure. And, but it's just, you don't want to, you don't want to fuck it up. But talking to you, we can fuck it up all I want. That's true. We can do whatever the fuck we want.

We can let the phone ring, do whatever. So I want to, I got a little follow-up from one of our old shows when I was pissing and moaning about my interview process that I had to go through that was such a clusterfuck. Yeah, that sounded like a total nightmare. It gave me the heebie-jeebies. I hope I never have to do it. Yeah, yeah. And here's the deal, don't. Just, just don't. This guy, Ike Ellis, did a post on Medium this week called, I think

it's called, I will not do your tech interview. Straightforward. Right. And he kind of comes on my side of like, you know, get to know the people, take them out for a drink, whatever, get to know them as people, and then give them a task. Either like a short, just a basic tech task kind of thing, or just some kind of contract job where you get to know their skill level. Right. And then make a judgment from there. But don't sit around a whiteboard and

give them like fucking logic problems. I had a, when we were selling, uh, metrically, I had to sit around and do that for an hour. And it was, it was one of the most nerve wracking things because they were giving me problems that were like C specific. Right. C and C plus or C plus plus specific and then Java specific. And I'm like, I don't have that vocabulary.

So even if we're going to have this conversation, it's like, it makes no sense. Yeah. And they just stuck with it and stuck with it. So we were there for an hour just talking in circles and it was a nightmare. And plus the other stuff where I had to have somebody sit there and watch my screen is ridiculous. So I was at a point, um, you know, before the economy took its, its big dive, I, we were actually getting ready to start bringing on some people. We were thinking about bringing some people on full time. Um, you know, over the course of the 15

years that we've been doing this, we've, we've consistently hired subcontractors when there's either something out of my personal skillset or we're a little bit too heavy. We got too much going on, uh, or we have a small project here or there that really isn't worth our time. And, you know, but we could find somebody and, you know, basically just pass it on and move things along. And that's, I've never done a tech interview ever. And Wendy's never done like a design interview. What we've always done is just say, you know, let us see a little bit of the work

that you've done in the past. And, you know, we'll have a meeting where we just kind of get to know you, but I'm not going to test you on anything and I'll start you off with something small. And as long as you can do that, cool, we're good. Yeah. I mean, that's the way it should be. I mean, this is a skills-based business, you know, it's like somebody can, even if I read all the books and I knew all the lingo, you know, I can talk about class inheritance and closures and all this other stuff, like till the cows come home, but it doesn't really matter until the metal hits the

road, you know, if that's even a thing, metal hitting the road, um, rubber hits the road, I believe. Yes. But, uh, maybe you're, you know, kind of going like Terminator style, who knows? Yeah. And it's funny cause, uh, I, I found this link cause my buddy Edo is his real name's Adrian.

He, uh, I met him at, uh, Technorati, but he, he says on, on his little Facebook thing, he says like, I'm very bad at tech interviews. I only got where I got by actually having done technical stuff. Joey, Joey Ito hired me because I made the blogging client Ecto, which was awesome back in the day.

I gotta say, uh, from there I got into the, into the Technorati team, even though I had zero PHP experience, it worked out pretty well and it just snowballed from there. You don't know what a potential recruit can do unless you let him or her actually do a little project. And that is perfectly, perfectly on point. A hundred percent true. And I would rather hire somebody that I knew was smart and could figure things out than actually had a massive skillset in one particular area.

You know, if you're, if you know how to code in one language, uh, transferring to another vaguely similar language is not that hard. Um, if you know what you're doing and you're a smart person, that's way more valuable than, than a massive skillset in any particular arena, as far as I'm concerned. And assuming the economy turns around and, and we get things going again and Wendy and I do end up hiring people. That is the exact approach we're going to take. Yeah, absolutely. And I have to say from experience working with Edo after he came on to Technorati, he had never,

like he said, I didn't even know he had zero PHP experience until I saw his Facebook post because he was a master at it because he came from another language where he, he had already mastered. So he knew the concepts, he knew how to make it work. And he was, he was amazing at his job and I loved working with him. So I'm glad he didn't get a PHP interview, you know? Yeah. So, uh, yeah, I think this is coming out. I think, uh, you know, anybody that's, that's listening to this, that is in a position to hire, this is, this is a good article to read and this is something you

should really consider. Stop your stupid tech interviews. I mean, unless you were hiring somebody that is only doing massive coding craziness in one particular area, what's the point in doing that? That's just stupid. But still give them a task, you know, give them something to do. Don't interview them. Yeah. Don't talk, don't talk and bring out a whiteboard. Just take it, take them for a beer or a dinner. You know, it doesn't even have to have alcohol involved. Just take them out, get to know them, make sure you want to work

with them first. And if you want to work with them, then go to the next step and give them something to do where you're not sitting over their shoulder. Agreed. A hundred percent. Cool. Cool. So, um, one thing that I like that, um, you and I are doing this week, and I think we've kind of fallen into that trap that a lot of, uh, tech podcasts do, which is, you know, we scan the news. We find a couple of things that are really interesting. We talk about them. We make a few

jokes. We make a few observations and then that's it. We don't ever come back to it. There's no followup. I would personally like to make the followup section bigger for our podcast every week. I want to come back and start talking about these things. Um, so like last week we talked a bit about the Soylent stuff and we, you and I both kind of looked into it a little bit. And I think that we should definitely start following up on things more, especially after like, I want to talk about the moves app again in this segment because I've actually

used it for two weeks now and I've got some observations. So excellent. Okay. Yeah, no, I'm down. Cool. Let's start Soylent first. Okay, cool. Yeah. I mean, we, we talked about it a little bit with Scott last week and you know, it's one of those things where I, when I looked into it at first, I couldn't find any, you know, there were, there was no food scientists on the board. And then I read, uh, this interview, uh, not an, not actually an interview. I read an article that Tim Ferriss posted on his blog by a guy who actually stopped eating for two

weeks and just use Soylent. Yeah. But in, in that article, he talks about when he, when this, um, the experiment, he met the founder and the founders apparently a very smart guy and very much like us where he would just finds a problem and just researches the hell out of it. And you know, he's, he's definitely like a bootstrapper autodidact kind of guy where he just will learn something to learn it and figure out a problem. Right. That,

that I respect. Totally. The, the, the problem with it is it's not like figuring out how to, you know, do like a miter cut to put a door jam up. This is food science. This is like serious shit. Food science is, is, uh, uh, it doesn't even really exist. We don't really know how our bodies work and you know, we have a good idea, but we don't know everything idea. We don't know

everything and there are no solutions for everyone. I mean, that's, that's a big thing I've come up with again in my own life. Um, you know, there's a lot more food advertising than there is science. And in my opinion, I mean, health should be, it's a big issue for, for us as grumpy old geeks.

We, you know, we're highly stressed from our jobs, particularly because you and I are both basically independent contractors. Um, it's a sedentary lifestyle unless you force yourself not to be. And of course, you know, Coke, beer, pizza, bad nutrition. And, you know, it used to just be us geeks that, that did that, but now that's kind of everybody's life. Um, so it's, it's becoming more and more important. The whole health thing. So definitely, definitely. So I was

really glad to see that somebody had actually done some, I mean, these are very rudimentary, like baseline tests this guy did. Yeah. It was, it was very non-scientific. Um, it was partially scientific. He did, he reached out to Tim Ferriss first and said, what do I need to do to get some good numbers? And he kind of followed it. And there were some, there were some decent observations, but it wasn't definitely a rigorous scientific test, but the observations were fun to watch.

It was pretty scientific. I mean, you're not talking like, you know, you're not going to, to a super doctor that's like carving you open and checking stuff, but that he did those in-body 320 tests and the blood levels. I mean, that stuff, I went to a nutritionist for six months to try to figure out exactly what the hell's going on with my body because I've had this issue as well. Um, you know, just, just my body doesn't respond the way that, that a lot of other peoples do, you know, most diet and exercise programs that work for most people, they don't

work for me. So I went to a nutritionist. I had all those tests done. They're pretty involved in pretty serious science. I mean, they're studying hormone levels, blood levels, insulin levels, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I actually really liked the fact that he did all that stuff. Yeah, no, I liked it. I liked that he did it and it got just a little too heady for me at the end.

I just, you know, a lot of that stuff just goes right over my head because I don't, I just don't have the attention to detail when it comes to blood love, you know, all the, the blood work stuff because I don't really have a good grasp of it. So, and I don't have the, the dedication to dive into it and learn it.

Yeah, it's, it's pretty involved. Yeah. A lot of it was more about like his, his observations on what he was feeling and how it, how it went the entire course of the two weeks. And, and what we'll get to when we're, when I, when I talk, when I'm done talking about this is Tim's take on it, which I'm really happy about, but I used to fast a lot. There was a, there was a time when I was about 20 years old,

I weighed 240 pounds, couldn't get a date. And I literally stopped eating for a month or two months, two months. Sorry. Right. Um, I took vitamin supplements, drank two gallons of water a day and wrote a skateboard for 10 hours a day. And I went from 240 pounds to 170 pounds in two months.

Right. Everything that he was describing at the beginning of the process with Soylent about how he was, he had like a three day slump. He had no energy. And then after the third day, everything picked up for him. He had better mental acuity. He had, you know, didn't look at food the same way. All of the things that he had happened with him with Soylent, you could get by just not eating. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty. I mean, basically your, your system is flushing out the excess sugars and

I hate to use the, you know, blanket phrase toxins that everybody goes to when they can't figure out anything, but basically that's what you're doing. Yeah. And you're resetting body to zero and your body also goes into hunter mode. Yeah. You know, where it, it's storing energy for the hunt later. So you are more mentally, you know, focused because you're looking to go find food and it, that, that part I

found interesting in the fact that he, you know, he, he did lose weight on it, which was also very interesting. It didn't, it didn't keep him at a, a balanced state, which is what I would expect from a food source that like, okay, this is my nutrition for two weeks. If that's what it is, it should maintain me. It shouldn't, I shouldn't be losing weight on it. That means to me, it doesn't have enough nutritional weight to it to keep me at where I need to be.

It's possible. I mean, I thought that was really interesting too, because they did a comparison between soylent versus like a slow food diet, which Tim Ferriss espouses, I think, you know, based on Chipotle and stuff like that. And there were more calories in the soylent diet than there was in the slow food diet and he still lost weight on soylent. So something's going on there.

Yeah. And technically it's a slow carb diet, not the slow food, slow carbs. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Just, just, just, just for, you know, clarification. That's true. You don't, you don't want to pick up any retarded vegetables and I've used a slow carb diet and I loved it. It's just, I love it too. It's, it's hard. It's just hard to maintain unless I literally go to, to eat Chipotle every single day. So the way I did it, I did it for a month or so and I lost about 20 pounds on it was, um, you see, you literally

eat the same meal pretty much all week. Yeah. Chicken, chicken breasts and beans and fish and eggs. Yep. That's it. Works. It works great. Yeah. I gotta, I gotta get on that again, actually. Yeah. I've, I've been here in pasta country, pasta and pierogies and it's been terrible. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm even, you know, the one thing I really liked about, uh, well, I'll let you talk about the Tim Ferriss's, Tim Ferriss's thoughts on it. But, um, the point that I liked that Soylent mentioned, um, and this is kind of, just kind of a throwaway.

It has nothing really to do with the science, but one of the, uh, one of the responses that they had is if food is too hard, you're doing it wrong. And their response to that is given the obesity epidemic in America and the number of malnourished people in the world, including America, it's not a stretch to say food is indeed hard for a whole lot of people because we aren't doing it right. So it must be pretty difficult. Okay. I just liked that point.

It really struck a nerve with me. So, yeah. So I just, uh, to Tim's points, I want to say that everything that we, we had kind of talked about with, um, the FDA approval stuff, they're using all the ingredients are FDA approved, but that does not mean the combination together is FDA approved. So, you know, as Tim says, get a good lawyer. Um, yeah. And, uh, what were

you gonna say? No, they just, they do make a lot of claims and they're using a lot of terms that I would, I think any lawyer worth their salt would say, um, you might want to back away from that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And talking about how like the human body is like an understood and closed system that, you know, it's like, no, no, no. He brings out the point about sailors and vitamin C and, uh, you know, Oh wait, we didn't know about that.

Well, as I think that you and I both know, because you and I have both struggled with weight over our lives. It isn't calories in calories out. It's not a closed system like that. There are processes we don't understand. And there are things that work for certain people that don't work for other people. And you have to kind of play around with and find things that work for you.

And there, there is no end all be all solution. And they're trying to, they're kind of positing themselves as that. So absolutely. Absolutely. And, and basically all the other points that we made, uh, Tim pretty much agreed with, which, which I was really happy with. Um, like, you know, they say someone that makes one more alert and it's not been demonstrated demonstrated that they can do it. Um, it just, all of the, all of their claims are basically just a bit way too grandiose.

Right. Yeah. So agreed. So good follow up there. I I'm still tempted to actually try it. Um, but as it's been pointed out, you know, this isn't the first supplement GSN has had one for a long time that claims to be, you know, all you need. Um, I've done shakes before I've done all that stuff.

So, uh, again, it comes down to finding out what works for you. And I'm actually doing a test right now on my own body because I don't, you know, I don't buy this whole gluten-free thing that, that goes on all around the world right now. I can't, there's just no way that many are allergic to glutens, but I do have a feeling that my body kind of reacts to glutens poorly.

So I'm on a two week gluten-free diet right now. And I'm drinking omission ale, a handcrafted pale ale that is gluten-free. Excellent. Excellent. So we'll give it a shot and I'm going to see what it does. I mean, you have to approach this stuff scientifically, give things a shot, give it at least two weeks and take notes and record down everything that you're doing. Record everything. Absolutely. And speaking of recording, I do want to do a little follow-up with the moves app that I talked about because I've now been using it for two weeks.

Okay. How's it going? It's, I, I'm really, really enjoying it so far. Uh, I've got a couple points. Um, I haven't found any battery drain or at least it's definitely not that bad. Um, I did a little experiment where I let it run all day. Well, I mean, it's just running all day anyways. Um, and compared to the Facebook app, which I also uninstalled just to see what was going on and ran them both separately, you know, individually Facebook drains way more than moves does. Oh yeah. Facebook app is

terrible. Yeah. So running moves by itself without Facebook on my phone, I was basically out all day with a full charge and was totally fine for about 10 hours. Awesome. Okay. So that was great. Yeah. I didn't mind that at all. Um, I did find out that you can back up and transfer your data via iTunes and they have their own API and you can write a basic simple PHP widget to pull out your own data. So you can get to your data right now. Uh, that's cool. Yeah. They're probably going to build that

out more in the future for a lot of obvious reasons because there's still not the social connectivity, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but it's not closed. You can get your data, which is nice. Okay. Well, you know what? I think this week then I'll give it a shot and I'll run it next to my Fitbit and see what kind of, uh, correlations I can make on accuracy of either one. I know my, I know my Fitbit is really accurate, at least for me, where I carry it, my gate and how it works.

It's extremely accurate. Yeah. That's, that's something I think I have some issues with. So I'd be really interested in even more followup from you on that because I've found tracking to be a bit all over the map. Um, you know, on, in their fact, I'd love to see specific speeds that they divide things up by because on one of my bike rides, it seemed to think I stopped biking and was only running for five minutes. I'm assuming because I was behind a big fat family that were taking over

the whole entire bike path. Um, also I took the exact same ride. I mean, literally the exact same ride four days this week. And I found a variance of five miles either way for all four days. That's a big variance. Yeah. So, you know, they say in their fact that it uploads and they, you know, they, they process things and then they update it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that's a pretty big variance. And it's a little too big for comfort. Yeah, that's way too big. I mean, like I,

my, my variance with the, uh, with the Fitbit is like maybe five steps for every thousand. Right. Yeah. So I, cause I've done counts and, and double checked it and cross checked it and it's always been fairly accurate for me. So, and I also are, uh, my friend Jonas Luster got one of the newer trackers that the guy used in the Soylent, uh, uh, the Soylent article, which I can't remember

the name of it. It's, I think it's a basis. I think basis is that a friend of mine just got that as well. It's, it's a watch that's supposed to be super, super accurate. Right. And it also tracks your sleeping patterns and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And your heart rate and skin temperature, basically skin temperature, heart rate. So you can see variances in resting heart rate, that kind of thing. So I'm, I'm curious cause he said his, he did a, like a 5,000 step test and there was only like a five step variance in 5,000 steps. And his Fitbit tests were in the hundreds.

He's actually, I should, I should post his link cause he, he has a chart cause he's tried them all and, uh, he, he's found huge variances in all of them. Yeah. And we talked a bit on Facebook and you know, it comes down to almost the person where you're placing it, your gate, your bone structure, like how your hips are moving almost to where it's tracking the steps. So that's the, that's the other things like everybody's different. So you kind of need to figure out a placement for it or any of

these trackers that is conducive to how your body moves. Yeah. I agree. But in the base, the thing with the basis that drives me nuts, it's another wrist based, uh, pedometer and this based pedometers just for me just don't work. I mean, the Nike fuel band was the worst of the bunch. I mean, I, I got, I basically walked to seven 11 and back by putting my shoes and my pants on in the morning. It was, it was so bad. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's going to be really interesting. I had also another

thought about the app because, uh, you know, one of my pet peeves these days is that unlimited bandwidth is gone and we're eventually all going to get bit on the ass by this. So I was, I wanted to look into like how much traffic is, is this app using and conveniently and much credit to these guys for putting it up there. It's right in their FAQ. Um, just reading from it, this depends on how much you move and how often you use the app. No duh. On average, a typical moves user uploads

about 700 KB and downloads about 300 KB per day. This equals about 30 megabytes per month. The impact on your phone bill depends on your data plan, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. For example, with a two gigabyte monthly data plan and no wifi use, 30 megabytes would be about 1.5% of your data plan. So it's not insignificant amount of data that this app is, is taken up. So if you, if you're using a lot of stuff that's always updating, you got to keep that in mind because you might find your phone bill creeping up. Yeah. But if you have the Facebook app open, then it's just dropping the

bucket. No shit. Yeah. Um, but the more important thing and, and there's the phone again, the phone again, I'm going to, okay, on our break where I'm going to go find this thing and I'm going to take it out back and I'm going to office space this motherfucker too. Sweet. You're going to play some rap music while you do it. It'd be awesome. Absolutely. Okay. Gangsta's paradise. Yeah. And, and I think this is probably where we're going to go with the entire rest of this podcast. So I think this is a good, uh, good way to go with it. I'm a little freaked out about the privacy considerations because

the app, I mean, as great as it is in tracking everything, um, Oh, I also did find you can connect it to four square to every spot that you stop at. You can actually tag as, as a place in four square and it'll remember it. It keeps a, it keeps a, it keeps a map of everywhere that you are at the times that you're there the entire time. Now, obviously this is a no duh. You're thinking, well, you have this app to track all your movements, you're walking, you're biking, you're

et cetera, all your exercise. This is all going into the cloud and their privacy, they have a privacy policy, but it's one of those kind of vague, easy, well, blah, blah, blah, blah. Who knows what they're going to do with it? What I'm concerned about is that literally everybody using this app has a map of where they are at all times, the entire time you have your phone on you all day, every single day. It's not inconceivable that somebody could hack into this. They would be able to look at say two to three weeks of aggregated data from me, easily figure out where I live

and establish patterns of my movements in times that I'm generally gone and out of my house. I would, uh, this just kind of freaks me out a lot. Well, that, I mean, that's, you can do that with Facebook or any of them, you know, that's, that, that's a, that's a standard concern when you're dealing with geolocation. That's always been a standard concern. That's like, you know, the old services that could tell who to rob, you know, it's like, we're going on vacation.

Exactly. Blah, blah, blah. I'm at the gym. I'm at the gym every day. I'm at the gym. I got a friend to post. I'm at the gym every day. I'm like, great. I know where you live. I'm going to go rob your sorry ass, except you ain't got nothing. Yeah. Um, but, but this is an entire different level though. I mean, this is everything all day. Hang on, hang on, hang on. What I want to ask is they don't have a turn off geolocation preference in their preference pane? Oh no, they do. They do.

Oh, well they have tracking on tracking off. If you, if you turn it off, it stops recording your data. So you can't separate your steps and your movement from them storing your location. No, that you cannot do. Well, I will not be trying it next week. So we will not be having this conversation because if I can't, if I can't turn off geolocation tracking on an app, I won't use it.

Right. Exactly. Okay. This, the app entirely relies on it. So yeah. Okay. Well that's out the window then. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. I'll, I'll probably keep using it for a little bit until I get more information from you about a better and more private alternative. So I, I got a, I got an email this week from a human, a human dot IO. I think humanio, humanio. Um, and, uh, this was one of those really crazy ones. I signed up for something a while ago and it's one of those things where they,

they tell you to move 30 minutes a day and I got a, I got a beta version of the app to get the beta version of the app. They literally emailed me a link to go get an IPA from an unknown source to install on my phone. Yeah, no, I did it just for shits and giggles because my phone is clean.

There's really nothing on my phone that anybody, if they want to steal my address book, there's easier ways to steal my address book. Yeah. Um, so I tried it completely useless, did not work at all. And they're like, Oh, if you, and I ran it for an hour while I was moving, I did literally like four miles in about an hour while I was moving. And it came back and said, Oh, uh, by the way, if you want us to track your movement, you should turn on wifi because my wifi was off. Yeah. Um, I'm like,

okay, well, okay, I'll, I'll go with it. I'll try it. See what happened. And then I, an hour later I checked and it's like zero minutes of movement per day. And it had an entire list of things that I'd done. Right. But none of them were walking and that's all that I'd done. So, uh, hopefully they'll get better at it, but it's the same type of thing. These, these quantified self apps are starting to proliferate at just a ridiculous rate. And hopefully somebody is going to get it right. There's,

there's definitely a market opportunity right now to, for somebody to do it in a very good way. Right. It's not going to track exactly where you are all the time because they don't need to know that. They don't need to know that for tracking what you're doing. That can be, that can, when, when you send them the data, they crunch it, they give you your steps, they give you your bike ride, they give you your car ride, all that bullshit. Then they dump it. There's no reason for them to keep a map of it. Yeah. If that data is stored anywhere, it should be on my phone and not on your

servers. And I actually can't find out the truth about that. They, they don't mention that anywhere in their FAQ or anything. So I don't know, maybe they do remove it, but I seriously doubt it. So it's probably pretty easy to find a contact over there. So let's drop an email and find out. Yeah, actually that's a good call. Cool. Yeah. It's worth, it's worth following up on because I like the, I like how the app looks. I like what it does. And if we can, if we can get some clarification, I mean, that's kind of what we should be doing. You know, you want to, you want to go heavy into the followup. Let's actually go into the followup and follow up.

Fuck yeah. Let's do it. Let's, let's get one of these guys on our podcast. All right. I'm going to go find this phone and destroy it. You do that. I need a break and I need another gluten-free beer. Excellent. In the news. So best news ever. Best?

Best news. Free boobies? Damn it. No, that would have been better. Actually, wait, that's happening in Venice. We're coming up on the topless day in Venice, but you know, as per usual with those sorts of things, it's never boobs you really want to see. Yeah. I ran across that in San Francisco.

Yeah. Anyways. No, it's not. It's, it's about our other favorite thing, beer. Beer? And some crazy scientists in Australia, Australia, Australia, Australia, we love you, have come up with a hangover-free beer. How? How, how do they do that?

Basically, they're infusing it with electrolytes, so you do not get dehydrated, which is fantastic. That's really, really smart and better living through science once again. However, to make a point, I don't think I've ever really had a hangover from beer. Have you? You haven't tried hard enough, my brother.

I've gotten a hangover from beer, but that's only because I've drank so much that shots seemed like a good idea. Oh, now that you put it that way. Actually, no, no, no. I have had, well, I guess it's, I don't know if this counts as beer, stout. Guinness, I have had some fucking severe Guinness hangovers.

Okay, yeah. Super, super heavy dark beers. Yeah, I've had hangovers from that, but I'm assuming this isn't a super dark or heavy beer, I'm assuming. But then why wouldn't, they should be able to take this process and do it with any beer, one would imagine. Yeah, they said they did it with regular and light beers, so. There you go. So this is very exciting, and we do love science. So we'll see what the taste, we'll see what the taste and the calories are on this, and if it really changes the flavor.

If this happens, we'll have to get our, my good friend Fergal in here, who is a beer connoisseur slash expert and do a taste off. Yeah, and they said, well, always, they always recommend drinking water. It says the electrolytes did not affect the taste. So, you know, did not affect, I'm sorry, did not affect the taste in any way. So, you know, but then again, these are Australians, and they've probably had too much to drink by the time they started the test. So who the hell knows?

Yes, very true. So that is fantastic news. I'm very excited about it. Another quick story that I want to get out there, as I just mentioned, I live in Venice. Venice is one of the few walking communities in Los Angeles, for those of you that have never been to our fair city, or come down to this particular area. You know, as we just mentioned with the Moves app and whatnot, I like to get out and about during the day. I want to walk around, I want to, you know, be on my bike. And but we do have a lot of traffic here, because there's a lot

of people that live here. There's a lot of tourists, etc, etc. 99.99% of the time that there's some fucking idiot that almost hits me, takes me out on the bike, runs a red light, blows through a stop sign, almost takes out about 100 people. It's a fucking Prius driver. And it's finally been confirmed. There is a study done by or well, it's on Oregon Live. So it was done up in Oregon. So it's

not just a Venice Beach phenomena that finds out and discovers conclusively that Prius and BMW drivers are the biggest jerks on the road. Okay, here's the deal. The research was done by the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley. I have been there. There is not a car on the road that's not a fucking Prius. So at least they're, you know, they're going after their own. Yeah,

I give them that. And I agree with you there. I mean, I've got a bunch of friends that drive Priuses, Priai, as they say in the article, and I've driven a Prius. They're stupid cars. Why would you buy one of those pieces of shit?

They are ridiculous. But yeah, I mean, I've been posting on my personal Facebook for months now, fucking Prius drivers. I've been noting every single time I've almost been killed by one. Anecdotal evidence from all my friends as well. Prius drivers, worst drivers on the goddamn road. If you got a Prius, screw you. Learn how to drive.

Yeah. And it also bleeds over into BMWs too. Yeah, well, I think that's just a rich asshole sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I've been with rich assholes, but I know people who drive BMWs because they're performance machines.

My big issue, I always thought the worst drivers in the world were pickup truck drivers. Because in Texas, when you get behind the wheel of a pickup truck, you just rule the road. Nobody can stop you. I'm in a pickup truck. Get out my way, motherfucker. Right. And I've just noticed people who are normal plane drivers, once they get behind the wheel of the pickup truck, their demeanor changes, their mentality changes. It's just get out my way, you piece of shit. Yeah. And that's a BMW thing, I think.

That's probably the BMW thing. I think the Prius thing is one of those holier than thou, I'm saving the earth. Therefore, I can do whatever the fuck I want thing. The worst nexus in the world for bad driving is a Whole Foods parking lot full of Priuses. You will die. You will. You will. I've always said there's nothing more dangerous on the road than a Southern California parking lot.

So true. Actually, I was on my bike ride yesterday and some lady, and it was in a Prius, was pulling into the beach parking lot. And there's a clear, like, as soon as you get through and you've paid for your parking, you make this left-hand turn and there's a stop sign right there. And there are just, like, people walking. And I'm on my bike because the bike path stops for that brief little period. So you have to go through the parking lot. And there's three other bikers in front of me, too. She just blows straight through the stop sign, almost takes out two guys. I have to slam on my

brakes. And then she looks up at us like we're the assholes. Oh, you should have kicked in her fucking window and said, ha, who's the asshole now, bitch? Exactly. Anyways, so that's the no shit files for me this week. Send your hate emails to Brian, not me. If you got a Prius, fuck you. So in other news, in what I thought was an Onion article, Yahoo tops Google in U.S. traffic.

What? Yeah. And even see that, they're like, wait, what? So apparently, hot little Marissa Meyer, who's in Vogue, looking all sexy, having all the feministas come after her because she looks sexy.

Yeah, there were a lot of articles about that. That was funny. Which is just stupid. I mean, she looks great. Let her do what she wants. Sexy might be overstating. She looks great. I'm not exactly about to hop on a plane and go find her. But if you were in Northern California, she'd be the hottest thing around.

But, you know, to even out the sexism, the bank account makes her a lot hotter. But the fact that she's a powerful woman. She runs Yahoo, okay? She can do whatever the fuck she wants. So, I mean, she could come out in a muumuu and she'd probably look hot because she is bringing up Yahoo traffic, which I swear to God is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

Okay, I scanned through the article and is it just me or is the entire reason Tumblr? Tumblr. Tumblr, Tumblr, Tumblr, Porn, Porn, Porn. Everybody using it as a free service, even bands that are too cheap to do their own websites anymore. Tons and tons and tons and tons of traffic going through Tumblr right now.

As soon as Tumblr was added, Yahoo went through the roof. It was only portions of Tumblr. Okay. So, they're not taking all of Tumblr traffic, portions. But here's the deal. She was the one that bought Tumblr. It was her decision to buy Tumblr. So, guess what? She wins.

She wins the internet today. She did win the internet today. Yeah. Screw you, Zuckerberg. Just a quick side note because this came out this morning, which just cracked my ass up. Steve Ballmer decides to step down from Microsoft and the stock goes through the roof. Well, that's not surprising.

I've actually met Steve Ballmer. Super nice guy. Really? Yeah. A long time ago when I was working on some projects for Microsoft, he was doing a tour. I got to shake his hand, talk to him for a couple seconds. Super nice guy. Oh, man. That was a long time ago. That was in the 90s. That's right. It was.

But I'm glad he's going. I think he's lost the vision for Microsoft. I think they need a fresh start. Yeah. I think they need to break up the damn company. And I'm super happy my stock went up. I've been holding on to that for ages. It's always been a good moneymaker for me. Oh, Mr. Moneybags over there.

Okay. Jeez. Next thing you know, I'm going to be driving a Prius. Oh, yeah, it's wrong. Yeah. So speaking of Mr. Moneybags, let's talk about Mark Zuckerberg. Okay. So his new, well, I don't think this is new, but it's a new wrapper for an initiative to get five billion people that aren't on the internet on the internet with cheap access.

Okay. It's called internet.org. All right. And it's basically Facebook and a bunch of cell phone companies going together to figure out how to give cheap access to people who can't afford internet access through crappy cell phones. Wasn't Google doing something like that with a super cheap, like, $100 laptop a couple years ago?

That wasn't them. That was MIT. Oh, that was MIT. Okay. Sorry about that. No, I actually bought one of those. Did you really? I gave it away. Yeah. It was one, well, PC. Yeah. One laptop per child. That was through Nicholas Negroponte at MIT Media Lab. Okay. All right. I had one for a long time, and I couldn't figure out how to make it work.

I'm apparently not a disenfranchised child, because I couldn't figure out the interface. And at my going away party in San Francisco, and I gave away probably $10,000 worth of gear because it wouldn't fit in the U-Haul. I forget who got it.

I think, oh, Leah Culver may have taken it. Some San Francisco luminary tech chick took my one laptop per child, and I hope it's going well for her. Yeah. No, this is more about cell phones, because he's on board with Ericsson and all these different...

Let me pull it up real quick. He's on board with... Wait, what? Oh, this is the wrong thing. But yeah, no. Can I take a guess here? Ericsson, Facebook, Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung, Opera, believe it or not. Right. Oh, that's a little surprising. That's a little surprising. Yeah, and Facebook. But basically... Can I go out on a limb and take a guess here before you continue?

Much like I'm always able to guess who's going to be on the cover of O Magazine every month... It's always fucking Oprah, by the way. They're going to be running the Facebook app? The Facebook... Like the Android Facebook Overtake app on these phones? What?

There's a new thing called Facebook Zero. Okay, so it is a Facebook thing. That they're building. All right. They're building other ways for all these people who are disenfranchised to get on the internet to also get on Facebook. But I think it's more to get on Facebook instead of get on the internet. So they can upload the pictures of the not-lunch that they had?

Pretty much, yes. Here's what I didn't eat for lunch. Oh, fuck. I'm going to hell for that one. Sorry. Send all your hate mail to brian at grumpyoldgeeks.com. That was not me. That was him. So, yes.

Send your pictures of sand to brian at grumpyoldgeeks.com. This is like altruism wrapped in just bullshittery. I mean, this is his play to get everybody on Facebook and get everybody.

Yes, it is. There's no doubt about that. But even though I just made the horribly tasteless jokes and I do all the time, I'm on board with this. I like it. I don't care. So what? At least it's better than nothing. Get them online. I'm fine with it. Go ahead and, you know, like we talked about when an Amazon guy took over the Washington Post, at least they're doing something with the ridiculous amounts of money that is doing a better good.

Sure, it's going to affect his bottom line. Sure, he's pushing more people to his own products, but he's doing something. I'm fine with it. Who else is stepping up to do it besides the MIT people? And that was pretty good. Yeah. And I'm not sure that this is good or not, but I haven't seen the phones.

I don't know what they're doing. Yeah, it's this goes into a deeper conversation. We're getting ready to dive into this is just the tip of the iceberg for I, I think wrapping this in an altruistic rapper is just disgusting personally.

It's like, OK, here's what we want to do. We want everybody on Facebook. So what we're going to do is we're going to give everybody cheap cell phones and give everybody Internet access. That is a moral position I can get behind. Yeah, this this we're doing this to save the world and make people people more happy is bullshit.

Yeah, I think it's complete bullshit. And I cannot get behind anything that comes out of this little shit bird's mouth. I cannot do it. I know I can't. You have some personal hate and I get that. And I'm kind of there with you. I'm still I'm still happy.

He's at least doing something. I prefer he did the Bill Gates route and just tore a ton of money, poured money into some something not related to tech. You know, fix fix their water situation instead of putting cell phones in their hands that are running your app. OK, go back and read his text messages from when he was at Harvard.

Just go back and reread them just to give you a primer on where this kid's coming from. Well, that's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. Just don't forget his past. You have seriously. Don't forget his past. No, I get that. But you've got to give some people some ability for the for the chance of change and growing up.

There's got to be a million ways that that everything that's happened to him since then has affected him and probably in good ways. You can't judge people by what they did in a completely different situation. Well, you can, but you shouldn't because people do change. People change, Jason. Maybe he's a super nice guy now.

No, he's been killing goats in his backyard for a year. So I don't think so. Well, what? You didn't you know about his personal one year quest to kill everything he ate, right? Oh, no. No, I think I did see a headline over that.

Yeah. I mean, that was about two years ago, but he was he was he's slaughtering goats in his backyard. That's fine. I don't have a problem with that. He's eating. As long as he's eating them. Yeah, I know that was it. That was a that was a completely wrong tangent that I went off on. But still, I guess, though, gamey, very gamey way too gamey.

It was a great, great image. I saw this week. It's like all of our cows are 100 percent vegan. So you don't have to be 100 percent grass fed. OK. All right. Yeah. OK. Moving on. Moving on. So so I saw an article and, you know, relating to Facebook and well, all the social networks, really, and kind of the thrust of what we're eventually going to get to this podcast, even though we still haven't yet.

There is an article posted on Slate called, hey, want to buy my info? It was a somewhat tongue in cheek article that this guy wrote based on he basically took some basic metrics of kind of our bigger social networks, user based market valuation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And he calculated out the current market rate of his personal information, i.e., all the stuff we give away for free every single day in exchange for using these free services that are basically making money off of our own information. So he started the article by saying, I don't do any of this stuff.

So you're not currently getting my information. If you want it, here's what it's going to cost you. My work history. He valued that out as about worth six thousand two hundred dollars based on LinkedIn's user network and their valuation. A list of things I like, not a comprehensive list, but, you know, a good idea of a couple movies that I like to watch, a few of my favorite bands, some books I read, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Eleven thousand dollars based on Facebook. And he also offered to provide information on friends I like that you can't get information from since I can see their information. Eleven thousand dollars each for them because, you know, I'm not going to sell them out cheaper than I sold myself. Yeah.

And this just goes on and on and on. I mean, it's like I think the one that really gets me is the where he talks about his DNA data. Yeah. He's starting that off at a million dollars. A million dollars because the actor slash director slash actually everything that he's in is horrible.

So never go see any of it. Vincent Gallo offered his for that price. Yeah. So he figured that's a good starting bid. The one I found most interesting was one of the higher prices was the fifty thousand dollars for Foursquare where I go, which I was talking about with the moves app, too, which I'm a little. Yeah, that seems a little low.

No, it's yeah, it does seem low. But I do think that strangely enough, Foursquare, the social network that couldn't that nobody really talks about anymore. That is actually some of the most valuable data that can be collected by anybody. Yeah. You know, that's why Facebook added their own check in thing instead of using Foursquares.

Yeah. With their little fuck you Foursquare icon, which I thought was genius. Yeah, that was good. That's good times. Anyways, it was a fascinating, really funny article and it did. I've been on that kick all week this week for whatever reason. Obviously, the book that we're both reading where I'm just like, why all the stuff that we do is worth money to these companies.

Lots and lots and lots of money. I want to get paid for it. Yeah, this is basically dovetails into what we're there's a we've got a little bit coming up here, so we should probably cut cut this and just move on because this is we let's just dive into this shit because we got we got a lot.

Let's kick the tires and light the fires, as they say, in Top Gun, which I don't think you've ever seen. Maverick and Crap. What's the other guy's name? Goose. Okay. Iceman. Iceman.

Come on. I think I saw it once. Kenny Loggins. Come on. Oh, I love Kenny. Danger Zone, man. It's the library. So we're finally getting back to this goddamn book. Who Owns the Future by Jaron Lanier that we that we've talked about.

We've teased. We've been reading like religiously. You know, I thought I was just going to burn through it in in a couple days because that's what I do with books. I really like and I love this book, but I just couldn't. I had to take it in bite side chunks and just think about it and then move on to the next chapter.

It's taken me forever. I actually still haven't completely finished it. There's a few chapters I need to go back and read still. Yeah, I got through most of it actually reading it and then I just had to give up because I didn't have the time to sit down and read because I'm a very slow, methodical reader. I like to absorb and think and go back and do all that stuff.

So I said, fuck it and went to Audible and got the book. And I've listened to the end the last couple chapters twice and it is it is a very good book. It's very dense. It's very. There's a lot of ideas in here. There are a lot of ideas, but they're around one central idea, which is basically people should be paid for the shit that they create digitally.

Exactly. That is the core concept. Facebook updates, every single one of your tweets, every single check in. You should be getting a ducat or two. Anything that describes you as a person that you put digitally on the internet, you should get paid for because they're making money off of that data.

That's the core crux of it. As we just discussed in that slate kind of tongue in cheek article. It's not so tongue in cheek. That shit is real. And that's what I'm so happy about that this is finally coming to the forefront because this is something I talked about years ago, but everybody thought I was a crackpot and you're like, oh, well, it's free, so shut up.

I've always said it's free, so shut up with the black aspect of it in the background of the mind. Okay. Now, tell me a service that you would pay $500 a year for. I would pay $500 a year for Facebook if I knew they weren't fucking with my information. It's worth it to me. Okay.

What about Twitter? No, I never used Twitter. Fuck that shit. Okay. Well, that was one of the early ones where we're like, just let us pay you so you can keep the damn service up, and they're like, no, no, no, we got this. We got this. We're good because now we know that they're going to make more than your $5, $10, $15, $20 a month on you.

Yeah. You know? Because they're rolling it out. They're getting there. But the whole point of it is it's this concept that Jaren calls – he came up with his own vocabulary in the book because there were things that nobody really – he couldn't really describe without describing his own – you're coming up with his own vocabulary, and he calls it the Siren Server, which is where – Which is a fantastic name because if you go back through mythology, they're calling you to shipwreck.

Exactly. That's what I loved about it. I thought it was a great – I thought that was a great bit of terminology that he came up with. And it's – everything is going to the Siren. You're getting called to the Siren. Yes. And that's where all your data is going, and that's pretty much what all these services are.

Yeah. Facebook, LinkedIn – LinkedIn is one of the – more devious than I thought even. We'll go into that. But, yeah. Yeah. The fact that – All of these free services – It's crazy because – All of these free services that we're using right now are Siren servers.

Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter. MySpace may be dead, but it's still hanging in there somehow. All of them. Google. Everything that you're using for free that has become part of your basically daily life and everybody else's, they're all Siren servers.

If you're not paying for the product, you are the product. We've said that before. Yes. We've said it a hundred times. And now it's just coming – it's finally hitting – you know what? It's just – it might just be us because there are like six people in the world that are saying this, and we just like those six people.

So, to us, it might seem like a mass movement. Well, no. Here's my thought on it. And Lanier didn't discuss it, but here's my opinion on it is the fact that this is all front and center in public consciousness now, not because of Facebook, but because of the NSA and our government and all the tracking that we're – all of a sudden, everybody's like, oh my God, the government is spying on us.

Well, so are these companies. They're doing it even more. In fact, the government is getting their data from them. Right, because that's the loophole. Yes. The government can't get it, but they can go buy it without any judicial oversight. You know? And this is one of those things that always – back when I did blog rolling, I know I hate to come back to this again, but what I had was I had a widget on everybody's blog that gave me all of their visitors' information.

Yeah. I had everything. I was not under any terms of service to the people that visited their blog to not do anything with their information. I was very responsible about it because I knew the power I had, but I was one of the first people that ever did a JavaScript include.

Right. And I saw back then the power. Oh my God, so powerful. And I've – this, you know, for 10, 15 years now, I've always been like, these widgets are – you guys don't know what you're giving up. You really don't see how this works. And then, you know, finally people were talking about ad networks and all this, how much data they could get.

Then they could marry it with their other services. This shit's been around forever, since the 90s. I mean, like, late 90s is when we really started to crack this nut and figure out everything that – if something loads on a page, all of your IP address, your browser, your screen, everything comes to the person that put that thing, the pixel, like that tracking pixel, the JavaScript, whatever.

That all goes to another service, not the page that you loaded. Exactly. So, it's this whole crazy mess that's been created for the past 15 years that is going to be really hard to untangle. Probably impossible.

It's almost impossible. What I really liked about Jaron's book is he goes into ways to fix it that are quite – They're possible. They're completely fucking impossible.

Yeah, they really are, but, I mean, at least he's not talking about tearing the entire internet down, per se. No. I think what – I think the thing that really struck me was when Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web, he instituted a way of linking that was one way.

This was the most fascinating part of the entire book for me, and I had hoped that you had some thoughts or maybe even were aware of this history. I was not aware of this at all until I read this book, and I fucking shit my pants. Yeah. Originally, when you were talking about SGML, like standard – Yeah.

The way that links in the networked infrastructure used to work was it was a symbiosis of links. If somebody linked to you, you had to implicitly allow them to create that link. Yes. That way, you had a connection, a bi-directional connection.

Well, I love that – When Tim Berners-Lee came out, it was a one-directional connection. Yeah. So, anybody could link to anybody else without permission. Without permission and without any validation, without any rights, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Which means that you completely give up that – what do you even call it?

It's not even tracking. It's kind of oversight on who can link to you and who's taking your information. Well, ownership. You're giving up ownership. It's ownership. So, yeah. And that's kind of the crux of his arguments later in the book, how people can get paid for the stuff that they create, is you need to bring back that bi-directional permission system that says, okay, AOL can link to me and look at my article.

But I know that they did. Every time somebody comes from that node, I get paid. Yeah. You know? It's completely 100% trackable. There's no way to break it. We see it's coming. I can see that AOL linked – I got 10,000 links yesterday from AOL.com, and they owe me 0.001 cents for every single one of those links.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Done. Everybody gets paid. The money shifts around. The most fascinating thing to me was – I mean, obviously, this whole Ted Nelson thing about the alternative internet that could have been, that didn't happen, was the idea that copying is a kludge that was never meant to be built into networked servers.

The idea of copying a file should never have happened, because the entire concept of it being networked is that only one copy should ever exist. Right, yeah. I love that. Yeah, well, you know, this is – That would have saved the music industry. The music industry never would have died if that would have happened, ever.

I know, but this is where – like, I'm looking back now at the give and take with Tim Berners-Lee and how he created – the web wouldn't have existed if he had gone with the bidirectional system. Yeah. It would be a completely different thing.

This would never have been – this would have been a pigeonhole in history, and nobody – it'd be like just nothing. But the way that anybody can link to anybody else, anybody can see – if you put it up there, anybody can see it and go to it and link to it and go for it. That's what created what we have today.

And for better or for worse, what we have today is what we have today. You know, I can go and view source and learn and do all that stuff, but it also means I can go view source on your music that you post and steal it and give it to somebody else. Yes. You know, you give up freedom without that bidirectional, like, police state almost.

Yeah. No, you do. It's a fascinating thing, and it really – there's no way to go back to it, the idea of the bidirectional thing. We can try to implement it. We'd have to to really get to the point where we would get paid micropayments for all the things that we do unless a siren server becomes all altruistic.

And what if Facebook implemented their own financial system within Facebook where every time that you liked somebody's status, that meant you gave up a couple cents for it, to like it. Well, that's Flatter. That's what Flatter is, and that's why I love Flatter. Yeah, Flatter is a genius idea. You put in – and that's Peter – I can't remember his last name – from the Pirate Bay.

You basically – I put in – every month I put in 10 euros. Yep. Me personally, I do this every month. I put in 10 euros, and anybody whose stuff I like, I click on the Flatter button. At the end of the month, it takes my Flatters, my pool of money, it distributes it evenly across those content creators, and they get paid.

I've made money off of it for the content that I've created, and people have made money off of that – it's a very easy way to spread financial gains for good work. Yes. And that's why I loved it.

The instant I saw his demo video, I'm like, I'm in. I want this. I wish I'd have had this when the internet began. Yeah, exactly. And like I said before, I stopped using it when I stopped creating for like five years. And now I'm back into it, and it's kind of stagnated.

Nobody's really diving into it, and I really want to – Because everything's for free. I know, but I still want to lead the push because I think there are good people out there. I think everybody wants to pay for stuff if they get value out of it. That's why piracy is there because – I mean, look at Game of Thrones.

That's that great – I don't know if it was an XKCD cartoon, but there were these great cartoons. It's like, oh, I want to buy it. I can't buy it. I can't go to Amazon. I can't go to HBO. It's off the air right now. I don't know how to get it. I guess I'll steal it. Exactly. Well, that's just – give people a way to pay for things.

People will pay for things. Yes. Make it cheap. Make it easy, and people will do it. And it has to be – there has to be punishment for sources that do piracy when you're in that situation. Right. But this is actually off the topic a bit of us creating digital goods just by living our lives.

You know, that's really what this book kind of goes into. Yeah. This book is about – I mean, the fact that basically, you know, the only real value that we're starting to have because we've done mechanical solutions. We've done, you know, robotics, all the, like, day-to-day handwork and our real value as humans is starting to go away.

And the only value that we have left is our thoughts, our opinions, our creations. And we've completely destroyed the way to be paid for any of those things, and we're all giving it up for free. We're basically the slutty girl in high school. Yeah. I mean, the way he kind of describes it is what we're doing is destroying the middle class.

Yep. And without a vibrant middle class, society basically implodes, which I don't know. I mean, there were kings and there were serfs for a long time, but we've got so many people now, and we've got so much information.

Well, the quality of life for 99% of people in the king and serfdom situations was not good, at least with the middle class. It's a fairly evenly distributed bell graph of quality of life over the entire society. Yeah, I just think the way he describes it, like I said, it's a really dense book, and it's really hard to get through.

But if you go back and really kind of absorb the material, he explains everything in a really genuine way that you can understand about why we're fucked. Yeah. And he's super passionate about it and super intelligent.

There wasn't any particular point that he ever made in there that I thought, oh, you're so full of shit. It's really well thought. There was one. There was one for me. Where basically you put your price on your own data. I don't know if you got to this part in the book. This was near the end. So I'm traveling around town, and you can track me.

I've got my geolocation data. And if you want to buy my data, you have to have a price on all your data. You cannot be private. You have to put a price on your data. So I'm going to say, I'm going to the 7-Eleven. I'm going to put a $250,000 price tag on my geolocation data from where I'm at at my home.

I'm going to 7-Eleven. I'm going to rob the 7-Eleven. So law enforcement has to pay that $250,000 to get my geolocation data to prosecute me. And that was just kind of really, really silly.

Yeah, I mean, he did a lot of thought experiments at the end about possible ways to make this happen. It's a very complicated thing. I mean, you and I could talk about this probably for 17-hour podcasts about how we could implement such a thing. Yeah, I think it's unimplementable.

But I think the way that we can... I think he has a point, though. I think if we don't implement it in some way, shape, or form, we are fucked. Well, no. There's a very simple way to fix what's wrong right now to get back to zero, or at least get back to a starting point where companies will pay attention.

Right. Excuse me. That is simply to stop using the services that take your data and profit from it. Yeah, but people aren't going to do that. I wouldn't. Hey, after all... I like what you're doing. No, no, no, no, no, no.

After all the NSA shit that's coming out right now, there is some serious awareness in the populace about what these people are doing. It's very easy to just say no. It's very easy to say no. You can opt out. You can opt out.

And, you know, what was that? Was it Brewster's Millions with Richard Pryor where he ran for the... Do you remember the movie I'm talking about? I do remember the movie, yes. And he ran for office and he used all his money to run for office. And he said on the ballot, just say, none of the above.

Exactly, yeah. You know? Vote for none of the above. And then things change. And then you have an actual debate. Well, I think one of the... The fact that I just... Hey, I want some props for just busting out Brewster's Millions on that. I actually can't believe you brought up Brewster's Millions. And I instantly thought of him on the train riding around.

This is good stuff. Great movie. I don't see it happening that way. I just don't. I don't think it's going to be a grassroots movement. What I think is going to happen is one of these siren servers is going to become altruistic. And not out of pure altruism. Because one of the points that he makes is that the siren servers say, let's just use Google as an example.

Google makes all its money from people buying advertising. But everything is free. So, if everything continues to be free and people stop making money, eventually there's going to be nothing left to advertise for. So, therefore, they are running themselves eventually. The end game for Google is they no longer have a business plan because nobody is going to be buying advertising anymore.

Because they've freed everything up. But how is that different from Facebook? Well, it's not. Facebook is advertising as well. Like I said, I just used Google as an example. All the siren servers' end game is eventually self-destructive to themselves. Because eventually, whatever income that they are making is going to go away.

Because nobody will be able to afford it or want to buy it. Or there's no value in advertising anymore. So, my only hope is that eventually somebody is going to realize this and go, Hey, this is not self-sustainable for us as a company. Let's actually try to even up the marketplace a little bit and implement one of these programs in our service.

And people will flock to that service because they will start making money themselves. And they have a bit of ownership and a bit of stake. They're getting paid money to provide their information. And everybody else will have to follow suit or they will die. Okay. Well, I think that is a valid way forward.

And I want to bring up real quick. You posted on our Facebook page the trailer for a movie called Terms and Conditions. Yes, which looks stunningly amazing. I watched it this morning before the show just to get up to speed on it. And it is fucking incredible.

Yeah. I got to say it's incredible. The only really weird part is Orson Scott cards in it. And he lost all my credibility. He said some good things in it. He did say some good things in it, but I kind of went through the math and I Googled it really quickly. And they cut that trailer well before he went off his total fucking rocker.

And I bet they regret the fact that he's in that right now. Well, I don't know recently when he went off his rocker, but I know he's went off his rocker 20 years ago. Oh, yeah. He's always been a bit of a fucking nut. But because the movie is coming out, he's been getting national press and he said some really shitty things.

Okay. Well, this actually ran on British TV. Yeah. That's where I got it from. Yeah. If I could pay for it right now, I'd watch it. It was on a channel called Prism. And here's the really fucking creepy bit. I'm watching this movie and it's on this channel called Prism.

Yeah. And they're running like what's coming up on the network later that day. And they ran a little teaser for Farscape. And I'm like, well, shit, Farscape, grumpy old geeks. You know, our good friend Gigi Edgley was Chiana on Farscape. And I'm like, they're running Farscape?

That's awesome. When I went back to my Facebook page after watching that to go post an update about when we're going to do our show today, there was a thing about Prism TV. The fact that it's Prism TV, kind of with NSA, Prism, you get what I'm saying?

I got what you're going to do. Kind of creeped me out a bit. And it said, check out our Facebook or Farscape, check out our page on Prism TV. I'm like, oh, okay, so the NSA has their own channel. That's great. Sweet. No, it's a fantastic movie.

I highly recommend everybody watch it. And it will creep you out. I'm going to watch it this week. And I have a feeling next week there's going to be no avoiding talking about that and some more of this book as well. Yeah. But let's take a break for now.

Okay. And we're definitely going to get back to this stuff. Getting worked up. Yeah, me too. All right. Bye. Holy goat out! So we've talked about a lot of things that make me grumpy and depressed and angry this podcast. And this will start with something good.

And then I'm going to get grumpy and depressed and angry again. But I'm going to end on a high note, literally. So the other day, I was asked and very proud to serve as a witness for two of my friends. I'm not going to name names because it's a bit of a secret and there'll be a party later.

So just not that I think anybody is listening to this that would spoil it. So let's just call them Brian and Jason, a wonderful gay couple. So I was asked to be a witness at the wedding the other day.

And I was very proud to be asked. It was amazing. So it was really cool to go do it. They've been together for 20 years already. You know, so, you know, it's not like, ooh, we're going to get married. They've been together for 20 years. They just wanted to have the same legal rights and, as I joked, the same miseries as the rest of us married people can.

All of us straight people. So, you know, nobody went in and thought it was going to be all that touching. You know, it's a five-minute thing in a run-down city hall courtroom. But it was actually quite beautiful. It was extremely touching. Thank you very much for having me be there. I'm still, I'm all verklempt right now.

It was a good thing. I'm a little choked up. So cheers to California for finally figuring out that letting two people who love each other, even if they're both AC or both DC, is not going to destroy the fabric of society. You know, the world did not fucking end yesterday. The building did not come crumbling down.

I did not go and fuck a goat. I mean, we're okay. This is cool. We're fine with this. And humanity is fine with this. I know this has nothing to do with geekery or, you know, digital stuff right now. But I don't care. You know what else isn't going to destroy the fabric of society?

Everything else we talk about. Marijuana. All of the illegal things that we are not making money on. I live in California. It's the seventh largest economy in the world. And we are not able to sustain ourselves here. We offer tax breaks to large companies. And we go out of our way to destroy small businesses.

It's almost impossible for me to run my business here. We're taxing ourselves into submission. Yet we have no money to fix the potholes on my fucking street. And what have we done? We've spent a ton of money and not allowed gay people to get married. You know how many fees we get from that? You know how much they had to pay? Just bullshit legal fees for the wedding license fee.

This fee. That fee. Rent the room. Blah, blah, blah. And that's all going into our coffers here in the state. So how much does a straight marriage cost? Going beyond that, if you go do the big party. Venues, caterings, planners, et cetera. Then how much more fabulous are gay marriages and more expensive?

Look at all this money that we have kept out of our economy that's going to come flying in now. You know what study I want to see that we're never going to see? We're never going to see an economic impact study of what legalizing gay marriage did to California this year. I would pay that myself to see that study.

So let's talk about marijuana now. The other thing that we just can't seem to fucking legalize. Study after study proves it's safer in every way than alcohol. I don't smoke pot. I'm not doing this for my benefit. It doesn't do shit for me. I tried it in college. I had fucking inhaled.

I go to sleep. I order a pizza. I'm asleep before the pizza shows up. Domino's blacklists me. It does nothing for me. But it's got serious medical benefits. It's safer than booze. And we live in a state where we're out of fucking money. But if we legalize and tax marijuana because everybody else in this fucking state smokes it, we could actually maybe fix some of my potholes.

End of rant. Jiminy jeepers. Step off ye soapboxy. Sorry. It's been on my mind. Well, you know, if you can't rant, then what the fuck are we doing this podcast for?

Exactly. And speaking of doing this podcast. Well, no, I'm glad you said a few things there. I really don't, you know, I'm happy that Californians can get married no matter what. I think marriage is ridiculous. But if everybody wants to do it, fucking more power to them.

Go for it. Anybody should be able to do it. I'm a miserable old sod who lives in his mother's basement and lives out of his car. So I'm not somebody to talk. And I don't smoke pot. Either way. I mean, these are simple ways to fix some of our economic problems that are going on.

These are what we call in the biz victimless crimes. Exactly. So anyway, yeah, the podcast. So we have come back to the reality there. I kind of zoned out while you were ranting. Yeah, sorry. No. So the podcast, we have been talking about this for a while.

We started this just, you know, as two buds who like to sit around, drink beer and shoot the shit. And it was a cool way for us to hang out every week in the same room and do some stuff. But now we're distributed and, you know, for now. For now.

And we've been trying different things. We changed the format. We got these awesome little VOs by Mr. Robert Fogarty. And we had guests. We had a ton of fucking amazing guests. Yes, we have. That most podcasts would kill for.

And we're still not kind of getting where we want to be. So this is one of those things where it's like, what do we do? You know, what are we doing wrong? What are we doing right? How do we do this? What makes it fun? What do you think? You know, let's talk about this.

I mean, this is the transparent era. So even if we talk about it on email, somebody is going to know about it. So let's just talk about it on the fucking air. That's true. I mean, you and I had kicked around a bunch of emails this week and we were talking about it. And, you know, my thought is just that, you know, we're lost in the sea.

There's so many podcasts and not a lot of people still, not everybody listens to podcasts. It's too much investment of time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I certainly know that from my friends. It's just like, they'll listen to one or two every now and then. But they're just like, I just don't listen to podcasts. There are obviously a lot of people that do.

I mean, there are entire. That's why I call bullshit on your argument. I know you call bullshit. I call 100% bullshit on that argument. That's fine. I'm just saying, I know I have a hard time getting my friends to listen to it, but that's fine. I don't necessarily want my friends listening to it. I just think there are so many right now.

There's no filter, really. There's no way. People just have to find us by stumbling upon us. I mean, the best thing that can possibly happen is if you are one of those people, and we know we have a lot of you out there that are listening all the time, please tell a friend. We really need you guys to let other people know.

I personally still just think it's a matter of there's so much choice out there. There's so many. How do people find you? And, you know, Corolla goes off word of mouth. He swears by it. But is he making money? And even if he's not making money, I mean, do we want to make money doing this?

Because that's what it comes down to. I personally don't give a shit if we make money, Jason. But I do think that we need to be able to cover our costs. We're both out of pocket right now on this. We don't need a lot of money. We need what? What would be our break-even point? Maybe like $100 a month.

That's all we need to keep this thing running. It would be nice to get more, but that would keep us running. No, no, no. You know, $100 a month would definitely cover costs and maybe eventually cover costs of equipment. Yeah. I mean, it would be nice to be paid for our time as well in the future. But I'm just saying. Yeah, but for me, that's not, I mean, that's, you know, that's CapEx.

You know, it's like I spent a grand on the equipment that we're recording on right now. Between your microphone, my microphone, all the other stuff, and all the other crap that we put out money for. I'm a grand in the hole. I don't care about that. Yeah, me either. I don't care about the software.

I used to do editing things. I don't care about any of that stuff. I enjoy doing it, but here's the thing. Are we podcasters or are we web developers who do this for fun? Do you want to be a podcaster or do you want to be? I'm fine doing this for fun.

You brought up that point. That was something that you mentioned. You have a belief that we could actually change our format to be more like other things that are successful and proven. And perhaps that's why we're not getting the listeners that we could be getting. I am more personally interested in us rambling and freewheeling and doing, like I said earlier when we were doing our follow-ups, most podcasts that are successful don't do that kind of stuff.

I want to do that kind of stuff. I want to be able to do this closing shout-out rant that had absolutely nothing to do with technology. See, I'm fine with that. I'm totally fine with that. For me personally, I enjoy talking. I enjoy doing the podcast stuff.

And for me, it's great. I mean, just sitting here chatting every week and putting it online and seeing that a couple hundred people every week listen to it. For me, that's fucking awesome. And if it builds organically that way, that's great.

But we do, you know, and my thought is we really need to ask the people that do enjoy this for a little bit of help just to recommend it to people that they think would like it. Because we're not advertising. People aren't going to find out about us any other way. And I don't want to become a regimented structure. You know, I don't want to be one of those people that just goes, here's the format that works.

Let's do that format. Let's be top 40 radio. No, we're fucking Indie 103.1. We're fucking freewheeling. And if we fucking burn out and go into the dust, fine by me. Hey, quarter after the hour, it's 3.45 p.m. The traffic is looking light, though. Asscracking back sack in the morning.

Yeah. All of that sort of stuff. I don't want to do that. And I don't think you do either. So, fuck it. Let's not be podcasters. Let's be two guys that are fucking grumpy old geeks that hop on Skype once a week and fucking bullshit. No, and here's one of the things I wanted to put out to you and maybe to the listeners.

One of the things I always wanted to do was kind of a daily news wrap-up. Right. Can we get a hot news girl? No, no, no, no, no. Just an audio news wrap-up. Oh, I wanted a hot news girl. Well, shit, I do, too. Trust me. I'm not Dan Benjamin or anything.

I can't swing that. Basically, at the end of the day, I want to do a news wrap-up so people in the morning can come in and pick up the tech news that they missed the other day on their ride into work or whatever in the morning. Okay. You know? Is that something you'd be up to to put under the grumpy old geek's umbrella?

Wow, you're putting me on the spot. I am. I'm totally putting you on the spot. Do you want to hop on and do 10 minutes every morning or something like that? No, you don't have to come on. Oh, okay. I'm just saying, if I can, every night before I go to bed, because I'm on the East Coast, do my daily wrap-up of news that we can't cover.

Because we get so much news every week, we can't cover it all. No, we're always deleting links as we're recording and just saying, don't have time for that. Don't have time for that. We cover 10% of the stuff that we want to cover every week. No, I'm down for that. I mean, I'll hop on when I can, but what I can do is, like, you know, I'll help find the links and throw them out there and give you a couple throwaway comments.

And if you record when you can and when I can get on with you, I'll do it, too. Yeah. That brings up another point, which is my little news bombshell. I'm 99.95% sure that I'm moving to London for two months. You are fucking kidding me.

No, so I'm going to be in the UK, be over in the old smoke for two months, probably starting mid-October, coming back, you know, mid-December or something like that. I'm not entirely sure of all the dates yet. So that's going to fuck with our timing as well.

You blew my East Coast thing out the water. I thought I was on the East Coast. I'm going Easter. So, yeah, I'll be recording from London starting probably in a couple of weeks. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, it'll be fun.

I'm looking forward to it. Oh, that is so awesome. I hope to – you know what? We talked about a live podcast from Finns. Yeah. Fuck that. I'm coming to London. We're going to do one from London. All right. We'll do it at the White Stag. It's one of my favorites. Yeah, the White Horses in New York.

That's where Dylan and Liam Clancy, who I sued right up until his death. Bring the happy. That's what you said. Ended it on a feel-good story. No, so that's the thing. It's like we've been kind of waffling on what we want to do with this.

And it's like we look at the numbers. We look at the people we have. And do we really want to do a podcast that's just for us? Or do we want to do a podcast to be podcasters? I don't want to be a podcaster. I think that's pretty much the consensus for you.

So for me, I want to be a podcaster, and I want to have fun doing it. So I think we're going to split the difference. And every week, I'm going to cover the news. And then every weekend when we do it, we're going to go deep on the stuff that we really like to talk about.

And that gives us both kind of the outlet. I think that's great. I mean, I think you and I will just throw up all our stories, and you'll do your little thing by yourself. And not little thing by yourself. I'm sorry. I do that every morning. And sometimes afternoons and evenings.

Depends on how much vitamin E. Anyways. Oh! Yeah. And I think that'll be a great filter. You'll be able to discover the stories that you really kind of resonate and bring the big ones. And we go in depth on that with our podcast.

Well, and you just changed the dynamic with you being in London. So now we can actually collaborate. Exactly. Yeah. It'll be good. I actually think that's going to be... I lived in London quite a long time ago for almost two years. And it's such a different environment.

It's going to bring a complete new perspective about what's going on, at least in my mind. So I'm quite looking forward to it and bringing all that kind of experience to this pod, as it were. No. Don't call it a pod. It's like... Fucking douchebag.

Yeah. It's like saying SF. And you want me to get on Skype with you even more than these couple hours every week? Fucking seeing all the abuse I get? Fight back, you little pussy. Come on. Oh.

Okay. Well, I'm glad you're going to London. Yeah. You're even farther away. Actually, I... Oh, yeah. I guess it's a six-hour time difference for where you are from London as opposed to the three hours here, but I'm ahead of you, so...

Well, it also makes my decision to come back to L.A. a little bit easier because I'm not going to be there. Well, I'm only gone for two months. I will be moving back to L.A. So it's a two-month trip. Much like mine. Yes. So... Okay, cool. I think we have pretty much destroyed everything that we've built and we'll figure it out from here on out.

We're good. We're going to go back to the way we were starting to do it and move away from some of the patterns that we were getting into, but you're going to start doing that by yourself and I'll guest in when I can. I think it's a pretty good plan. And, you know, we'd love to hear what everybody else thinks. I mean, the people that are listening.

No, definitely. Tell us. Yeah, definitely. Because, like I said, I just love to go through the news every day and talk about it and get everybody up to speed on what's going on and, you know, the weekly deep dives, I love doing this stuff. And as far as guests go, I think we're going to be changing it up probably a little bit so we don't have, like, guests the whole show maybe and just do guests for the segments that we're talking about.

We'll do targeted segments. Yeah, let's try and get the guy from Moves on. Yeah. Yeah, we should get the guy from Moves on. I'd love to get the flatter guy on and, you know... I think he's in jail or in hiding. Yeah, shit. I'd call my old business partner, but he's not talking to me anymore. But I'll see what I can do.

Yeah. And I'm going to bring in a couple more musicians, especially some that have some, you know, either sci-fi or super tech insights. Got a couple people in the bank that want to come on. It's just a matter of trying to schedule with a musician, which is a fucking nightmare. So... Yeah. And I got some guys that are in deep tech that I'm definitely going to try and bring on.

I'm going to throw it out. I'm going to try and bring in my buddy, Joey Ito, head of the MIT Media Lab, to talk about some of this stuff that we talked about today. Oh, I'd love to talk to him. Yeah. I really want to get him on to talk about who owns the future. Yeah. And really kind of get deep into what he sees that the kids are doing nowadays.

So I'm going to throw out a line to him and see if we can get him on. Yeah. And I got a big internet radio thing that I want to do with one of my buddies, another security thing with another one of my buddies. So we got a bunch of people. We got stuff. So we're not giving up. We're going to keep on going. Well, I didn't think that we were going to give up, but you did do a nice tease that we might on Facebook.

Dude, man, I work in media. You got to fucking tease that shit. Tickle, tickle, tickle. Oh, jeez. I'll talk to you next week, brother. All right. Talk to you next week. Keep up with the Grumpy Old Geeks on the web at GrumpyOldGeeks.com, on Facebook at Facebook.com slash Grumpy Old Geeks, or email them at podcast at GrumpyOldGeeks.com.

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