250: Useful But Creepy

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Episode 200. 200. Can you believe it? Five years. No, we were going to do 10 and then maybe 100. And if we didn't make any money after that, we'd call it a day. And here we are, 250 and still not making any money.

We're making more than most podcasters, though, which is kind of scary. That is terrifying, actually. And we'll talk about more of that and these newfangled jobs that everybody is taking on and not making any money doing. I googled 250 anniversary to see if we might get a snappy show title.

I would say no. Here we go. This is the Sester Centennial or the Semi-Quincentennial or the Bison-Quin-Quagonary or the Quarter-Millennial. Now, I got to say here, yet another thing that you millennials have ruined is the word itself. Millennial. It used to sound cool.

Now, when I read Quarter-Millennial, I was like, oh, it's tainted. It is tainted. Oh, well. What are you going to do, though? Yeah. So here we are, 250. And the shows just keep getting longer. Well, we'll see this week. Yeah. Even last week, I was just editing it. I'm just like, oh, my God, why didn't we shut up?

Why don't we shut up? Why can't the tech world get it together and stop giving us so many damn stories? I know. Speaking of, last week, we joked about the Skydio flying laptop, you know, hunter-killer drone with a camera. Yeah. And for the first time, I got to walk the dogs together and, you know, training them. And I was all excited because this was a breakthrough to get Bambino in one little group there going out.

And I'm like, man, I wish I could get a picture of this. But I had dogs in both hands. I'm like, man, I could use a Skydio right now. Sadly, you know, with the budget that we have on the show, there is no Skydio in my future. No, that's not coming anytime soon. Yeah. So I got everybody in the car and went over to my friend's house, old school, and had him take a picture with a camera. Not even a phone, a real camera.

A real camera. Yeah. So thanks to a friend of the show, MXV, for coming out and doing that for me. I appreciate it. That's very nice. Now, you also casually just kind of threw away a little mention in last week's show about being banned from Pakistan. We had a few questions about that. Some people would like to know what you did to get banned from Pakistan.

Well, in a former life, I used to run a blogging network with a friend of the show, Sean Bonner. And we had a couple blogs in Pakistan. It was, you know, it was a crowdsourced news back in the day before Huffington Post, I might add. And we had some stories about what was basically the Adobe of Pakistan.

And they were not very flattering stories. And we refused to take them down. And we got several threatening lawsuits. And it's I think we basically did end up getting sued in Pakistan. So as soon as we land, we'll be arrested and taken to court.

So we're never going to Pakistan. Not like I was really planning on going to Pakistan anytime soon. But, yeah, I just now that's my excuse. I just can't go to Pakistan. Fair enough. That's what blogging will get you, people banned from Pakistan or Warner Brothers. Yeah, that was just me.

And speaking of Sean Bonner, I slap on the wrist to Sean Bonner for his newsletter because he put a link in one of his recent episodes. So I did a little I'm like, of course, I have to read that. I live in my standing desk.

I walk on my standing desk treadmill. You know, it's how I get my get my steps in, as they say. Well, in the article, it says researchers at Curtin University in Australia observed 20 participants working at standing desks for two hours. That's a slightly small sample group there.

Yeah, slightly small sample groups, slightly small time slice there. So, guys, call me when you've done a real study, please. And I'm sorry, but, yeah, none of that jives. I've been having what I got my first standing desk in 1995.

And if it does slow down mental ability, at least then I can blame it on that. Not all the booze, but fair enough. Probably probably probably the booze. Anyway, Entrepreneur Magazine has an infographic that I thought was very interesting, a snapshot of online image theft.

And this is this is relevant to our interest because we've talked about it several times on the show. Shouldn't it really just be a link to Pinterest? But they say that Pinterest is only 41 percent of the social media sites for image theft. Bloggers, 21 percent. YouTube, 19, Tumblr, 15, Facebook, 2 percent, and Twitter, only 1 percent.

Instagram following with another 1 percent. I find that Instagram one completely unbelievable because all these social media marketers and thought leaders and yoga gurus and people who are selling me ads, all are stealing people's photography and putting, you know, cute sayings over them and posting them every day.

And so I think Instagram is much higher than that. I agree. It's an interesting infographic. I think they put some work into it. The one problem I had with the article was it said, thanks to social media and blogs, image theft is a major issue. Sorry, dumbass. It's the Internet, not social media and blogs.

The Internet causes this. It's not just that. Yeah, that's that's what I have to say about that. But check out the infographic if you're into the scene where people steal your images, because happens to me all the damn time. Well, nobody thinks about it. You Google, you do a Google image search and you grab whatever fits relevant to your needs.

And that's that. And Google, I think Google has some culpability here. I think they need to do a better job of highlighting whether these are copywritten images or not. But the thing is, every image is copywritten. Well, some people just put things out there. Yeah, that's true. I mean, if you do use a Creative Commons zero license, then yeah.

Yeah. But it's the minority, the vast minority of people. And this happened to me the other days on Instagram. I got a note that, oh, somebody, you know, tagged me in a post. So I go and look at the post and it is like the, you know, the welcome committee for DuPage County, which is where I live in the lovely state of Illinois.

And they had taken a picture I shot of my house, the front of my house while it was snowing in the winter. It was a nice picture, I thought. They thought so, too. So they ganked it and gave me a credit on it, but they didn't ask me to. So I left them a nice little note saying, I'm in a good mood today, so I'm not going to sue you.

But what you've done is against the law. And I would like to point that out. So next time, ask. And the next morning, it was gone. They didn't write me, didn't say anything. They just took it down. Right. I looked at their page, and they're still stealing other people's stuff. Yeah. But hopefully they're asking permission this time.

And they tagged it with all of these drone photography tags. So I was getting all these follows on Instagram from people who were drone photographers. I'm like, it was snowing. I was picking up dog poop, and I took a picture with my phone. There's no drone involved. No drones. I certainly didn't have my Skydio out there with me.

No. And I've got a little follow-up again about Bird, the Bird scooters here. And I just want to talk about why I keep coming back to it. I know it's like a hyper-local issue, because they're only here in Santa Monica. They're not even in the rest of LA yet.

It is just Santa Monica. But my point is, the guy that started it came from Uber. And we saw Uber and Airbnb and a lot of these other companies build and grow really quick and become these billion-dollar companies, because city and state governments were not prepared for this stuff to come in.

And they weren't quick enough to respond to them. And by the time they did, it was basically too late. I mean, Uber is a verb. You know it's too late when something becomes a verb. But Bird is now... This is the version 2.0 of these things coming out and rolling out. And it's the first one that we're seeing play out in real time.

And we're seeing it here in Santa Monica in real time. And the government is not having any of it. They've been on this since day one. And they're fast about it. And they shouldn't be okay with it, because they're just doing whatever they want. They're not playing by any rules. They're doing exactly what Airbnb and Uber and these other people did.

And they're pushing legal and financial responsibility for their service that they are making money doing and pushing that onto people and the city. And that's messed up. That's not okay. So that's why I keep coming back to this story. And the other week, I think, or a week or two ago, there was...

Lefzitz wrote something about something, and I can't even remember. But it was spot on with how I felt about it. I think it was the movie, the doping movie. Yes, Icarus. Yeah, Icarus. And that felt weird, too, because I don't like agreeing with Lefzitz. And I generally don't. And I'd like to say all is right in the world again, because he just wrote this incredibly stupid article about the bird scooters.

And he's all rah, rah, rah about saying you should just do it. This is the world we live in now. You should just do what you want. It doesn't matter if it's illegal. You'll pay for the consequences later. You'll deal with it later. But if you don't just go do it, you're not going to be able to succeed. And screw you. That makes my blood boil. I hate people taking that position.

That's not the way the world is supposed to work. Damn it. Yeah. When did breaking the rules become this, you know, watered down term for being a criminal? Yeah. You know, what the city of Santa Monica should do is walk into bird headquarters and arrest the CEO. That's what they should do, because otherwise, you know, just to slap on the wrist.

No, go arrest these guys for operating an illegal operation in their city. That's what needs to be done. The idea that Lefsys is promoting in this article is the ends justify the means and the winners to the winners goes the spoils, which certainly, I guess, if you took a really pessimistic view of the world is kind of true.

But that's not we signed up for society. We're making a deal and to just go ahead and say, well, doesn't seem to be working. Look what happens. Here's a billion dollars, Travis, for starting your company up called Uber. It's OK now. No, it's not OK. It's not.

And kudos to the city of Santa Monica for continuing to fight this battle. They just had a meeting earlier this week where they've approved an emergency ordinance establishing temporary regulations for shared mobility systems. Smart also not just pointing it at bird. This is saying to anybody else that wants to kind of do this crap.

No, here are some rules. You've got to follow them. They're going to start docking the company for for any time anybody dumps a bird off in the middle of a sidewalk happens every single day, dumping it off in the middle of or right in the front of a business's door happens every day. In fact, I would say that's basically what always happens.

Very few people put them responsibly in an area out of the way of traffic. You know, they're just going to they're going after him. And I appreciate that. And I know it makes me an old fuddy duddy and I'm not cool like left sits. But screw that. Play by the rules. Come on, people. Society. It's all falling apart.

Well, we'll see if anybody ever gets arrested, because I really think, you know, fines aren't going to cut it. These people are overfunded. Yeah. Well, they've already been fined and they just paid the fine and it was a joke and nothing has changed except for the fact that you can now write bird and they will send you a free helmet. And since that's happened, I have yet to see a single person wearing a helmet.

I see people, two or three people hopping on one together. Most people that are writing it are going to bars and back. Most people are breaking the law and going out in the middle of the street. Everybody. Nothing has changed. Nothing. They paid the fine. Nothing's changed. Well, you should order one of those free helmets and give it to somebody on the street and have somebody videotape it on YouTube.

Yeah, you could be the helmet man. You know what they're going to do? They're going to start only leasing these bird scooters while everybody's gone home from the Santa Monica City Council, just like Airbnb D lists and relists. So you'll only be able to bird at night. All right, they're home. Let's roll them out.

Yep. Now, again, I mean, I applaud the original concept. It's the last mile problem. And when and when bird first rolled out, they were all inland. They were all for commuters who are going to to the trains and different things and, you know, large parking garages. That was great.

But since then, they've all moved down here to the beach and the bars where people really want to use them. And that's where the problem started. Yeah, I know Santa Monica very well. I used to live there, too. And putting scooters in the hands of drunk people is not really a good idea.

I mean, the people in Santa Monica are pretty much assholes already. So then they're just assholes on wheels. It's not like the street is blocked off to traffic. It's heavy, heavy car traffic. And nobody knows how to drive anymore either. Yeah. So it's just a mess. It's not safe for anyone.

In the news. The Washington Post has come out with a new article saying that apparently no one or almost no one is making a living on YouTube nowadays. Well, and shocking, surprising.

Yeah. You know, we hear about these YouTube stars all the time, but there's like 12 of them now. There's 12 of them now. And we're losing one or two every week because they go out and do something stupid and horrific. Yeah. Yeah. Farewell, PewDiePie and farewell, whoever the last asshole that got.

Logan something or I can't even remember his name. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's gone. Pretty soon. Info Wars will be gone. Can't wait for that one. Yeah. Pretty pleased with sugar on top. It's kind of ridiculous. The numbers are so compartmentalized at the top of the channels.

The top channels are taking 90% of all of the views, which I find kind of crazy because when I go to YouTube, I'm never at the top channels. I'm always in the middle. Well, I don't know what these people are watching, but it's crazy. It's the same reason that networks are still doing well.

People are lazy and it's the filter aspect. It's why YouTube and SoundCloud and the democratization of music didn't really work. You need filters. You need somebody saying, okay, well, we listened to 75 bands of which five of them are good.

So we will push those five bands, not all 75. And everybody's putting stuff up on YouTube. I complain all the time about how Venice Beach and Santa Monica are our grand central station for people just filming themselves doing stupid stuff all the time that they then put up on YouTube. Everybody's doing it.

So there's no filters and except for what YouTube rolls out. And again, it's a critical mass thing, right? Like once somebody's got 500,000 people looking at it, more people are going to look at it. It's getting pushed up in the algorithm. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it's the same.

It was the original issue that caused a lot of people to become superstars on Twitter because when you first signed up, there were only a handful of people that got listed for you to follow. And all of those people immediately became superstars. So it was a big thing. Now, here's an interesting snippet from here.

You need at least 1 million views a month to earn about between $12,000 and $16,000 a year. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot of views for not a lot of money. Yes, it is. There are TV shows with less views that earn a hell of a lot more than that.

Yes, they do. But yeah, they're just saying it's becoming harder and harder and harder to make a living on YouTube. So okay, get a real job. Yeah, get a real job. Like go drive for Uber and Lyft. Yay! Because the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, not exactly a small, unrespected school, has done a report finding that basically the median hourly wage is just $3.37 per hour, which

is considerably less than if you went to go work at 7-Eleven for minimum wage. Yeah, so they did an analysis of vehicle cost data and survey of more than 1,100 drivers for the ride-hailing companies, a little bit more of a sample size. And basically, by the time that you have finished paying all your fees and all your upkeep on your car and your gas and everything that's involved, because you have to do all that stuff, Uber's not paying for that.

You're making basically nothing. Now, obviously, this is a scale. There are people that are making lots of money driving for these services, and that means also there are people that are making, probably losing money driving for these services if your median is $3.37. Yep.

And as they say, the business model is not currently sustainable. The companies are losing money. The businesses are being subsidized by venture capital money, and the drivers are essentially subsidizing it themselves by working for very low wages. Awesome. This really kind of makes sense now, why Uber is running all of these ads to get new drivers, and Lyft is running ads now.

I saw Lyft commercials this week to be a driver for Lyft, because people are driving for them for a month or so, and then figuring out they're losing money, and they're just beating up their car for nothing. Yeah, and they are literally subsidizing the company itself. If you are driving for Uber, you are subsidizing Uber.

Not you, Uber. Yep. So, since nobody's an adult anymore, and we live in a world of children, the CEO of Uber tweeted to the guys about this study, and they called MIT mathematically incompetent theories.

Yes, MIT is well known for bunk science. Yeah, seriously. You moron. Well, to MIT's credit, they did exactly what they should do as adults. They said, okay, well, we'll revisit the study based on the discrepancies that you're saying.

But, you know what we'd like? How about you give us some transparent information? That'll help. I guess. I guess what the Uber's probably not going to do. They're not giving up any data. I will happily bet all the six packs of beer in the world that they won't give up the data. Now, because everything is going automated as well, this is an interesting one that I found on SF Curbed, which I don't know how this got in my feed, but it's actually a pretty good site.

Mission District cabbie attacks self-driving car. These companies that are testing the automated cars in California have to report every single incident, no matter how minor it is, to the California Transportation Authority or whoever that body is.

But, so, apparently a guy got out of his car, went up and smacked the window of the robot car. And the funny thing is, the robot car wasn't even driving itself. The guy from GE was driving it. So, oops. But, and the only reason that it was reported, because he left a small scratch on the window.

Oopsies. People are, people are upset. Yeah. Well, I found an article at The Atlantic that basically, if, if everybody that listens to this podcast goes and reads it, we don't need to do the podcast anymore. This, this article is our entire podcast. It, it is fantastic.

It's Airbnb and the unintended consequences of disruption. Now, we've talked recently a lot about the different cities, Santa Monica being one of them, Berlin, that are starting to crack down on Airbnb, which, you know, comes in, lets people, in theory, lets people rent their places when they're not going to be around, so they can make a little extra money.

And that's a good thing, except, you know, nobody is getting, nobody's paying any taxes into this stuff. It's destroying real estate markets because people who can afford to are buying places and just putting them up on Airbnb in cities and, and just destroying the community, et cetera, et cetera. So, this gets into it really, really well.

So, it talks about how Airbnb lowered prices for tourists, supplemented income of renters, and made travel to major cities more fun. But, upon inspection, it shares some things in common with more controversial companies, with less grave implications, perhaps. Facebook and Twitter designed for attention, but incidentally encouraged mendacious outrage and trolling.

eBay and Amazon designed for open marketplaces, but incidentally encouraged the frenzied resale of bulk-ordered toys around Christmas. Airbnb was supposed to challenge hotels by letting tourists pay renters, but its platform is unwittingly producing a subsidy of tourists paid for by non-participating urban dwellers who bear the cost of higher rental prices.

Like just about every story these days about revolutionary tech platforms, Airbnb is a story both of democratized access to commerce and the unattended consequences of those efforts, even when they succeed on their own terms. So, original concept, great. Actual implementation, not working out so well, but hey, they're making lots of money.

Disruption! Yes, disruption. Speaking of disruption, we've been talking about Snapchat's redesign recently and how, you know, people don't seem to like it very much, and some people do, and Kendall Jenner can apparently tweet about it and destroy their profitability for a week or two.

Some publishers are, this is apparently, the design is baffling publishers, because people who are trying to make a living on these platforms are publishing on the platform. Snapchat, of course, encourages that because it's content. And some publishers are seeing spikes, others are seeing declines, nobody knows what's going on.

Nobody, none of the publishers can figure out Snapchat's new algorithm. They don't understand why they're seeing hits or why they're seeing declines. Nobody understands anything. How is anybody supposed to understand anything if the underlying business principle is a mystery?

How is this a billion-dollar company when even the people making them money and supposedly making money themselves on them as a platform have no fucking clue how it works? How is this? I don't understand. You know, this all happened when we left the business.

We should just go back and fix it. Yeah. That ain't gonna happen. There ain't enough billions in the world to get me back in that bracket. I also, I just don't understand why people aren't, like, up in arms about this. This is supposedly how we're, what our economy is moving towards, and nobody, nobody understands that there is no manual.

There is, nobody gets it. And we talked about companies that are going out of business on Facebook because of the same stuff that's happened. Now it's happening over on Snapchat. These companies just do whatever they want. They report to no one, they tell no one, and everybody just keeps throwing money at them.

No, it makes no sense. And we know a couple episodes ago we talked about how the web is dying. And it is theorized that at this time of the year, next year, that some major companies will just completely remove their web presence, which I don't believe one bit. And I think what's going to happen is everybody's going to have to go back to the web.

Yeah. Everybody's going to have to have their own sites. These companies are pushing them there. Yeah. Yeah. Because this doesn't work. It's a failed business model time and time again. These walled gardens, building your company inside of somebody else's walled garden doesn't work because eventually their business practices, or lack thereof, is going to run you out of business because they can't sustain it because they don't know how.

There's not one successful company that is going to last. You can still point to Facebook as much as you like, but we already covered that people are leaving Facebook because they're tired of being sold to and surveilled all the damn time. People are getting sick of it.

Yep. We need to go back to everybody having their own damn website and monetizing it the way that they can. Speaking of, I was trying to get a Wall Street Journal article this week, and you can't. You have to pay for it. No, you can't anymore. Yep. The price on the Wall Street Journal digital edition is ridiculous.

It's $36 a month. Yeah, it's pretty high. Yeah, that's going to come down to like $15 an article if we used it for the show because I think we get two Wall Street Journal articles out of them maybe a month. All it's done for us is to make sure that we're never going to use them. Wired's price, was it $25 a year?

That's doable. Yeah. I mean, the Wall Street Journal price already is ridiculously high. If you tried to get a paper subscription, it's over $100. It's the paper of note. It is, but they can kiss my ass. They're not sending me dead trees. I'm not paying that much money. But everybody's going to have to figure this out because it's not going to work.

And speaking of it not working, Snap is actually laying off around 100 engineers, probably the people they shouldn't be laying off. I was about to say, they have to figure it out. So what better policy than to get rid of the people that build the stuff? You know, if you want to fire some people at Snap, fire the UX designers and the C-suite who are coming up with, you know, the Snap glasses that nobody wants anymore.

Yes. They've got, you know, they're in boxes in the thousands in a warehouse because nobody's wearing them. Because nobody cares. Well, I expect to see some sad engineers getting drunk on Main Street this weekend. They're not going to be getting any birds because they can't afford them because their stock options are now out the window because they're not going to vest.

Oh, sad Christmas. Sad Christmas. Now, speaking of more stupid people, this one's in the New York Times. It is, Silicon Valley is over, says Silicon Valley. Now, there's a bunch of these articles that I'm seeing pop up. I'll talk about another one in a second. And this is about a bus of venture capitalist pig dogs who left the man-poo-encrusted, overcrowded, overpriced hellhole of San Francisco to see how the flyover peons live.

And it turns out the middle of the country is actually nice. Go figure. And they're like, oh, maybe we'll leave San Francisco and go somewhere else and start up over there. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, the rest of the country is okay. There are other cities out there where you can do stupid startups.

Go figure. Yeah. On that note, somebody in my Facebook feed posted this this morning, and then I immediately muted them for 30 days because they are now in the doghouse with me. It's an Inc. article. And over at Inc., you can write your own articles. Yes. It's one of those things where you can, it's very easy to become a contributor.

Same at Forbes and all these companies because let's, you know, not pay staff writers anymore. And this is called, people are leaving Silicon Valley and Orlando might be the next hot spot. Okay. Spoiler alert. No, they're not going to fucking Orlando. The article is in complete utter waste of electricity and human effort.

And the author should be thrown in internet jail for wasting people's time because there are no facts about people moving to Orlando. He cites like two companies that started in Orlando and there's no factual evidence that people are going to Orlando. I guess that's why he says might be the next hot spot.

You know what? Downers Grove might be the next hot spot. No, it's not. It's not going to be. So why are you wasting my time? And there's a bunch of these articles that I found this week that everybody's leaving Silicon Valley. No, no, they're not yet. Well, this is a perfect segue for the next story that I found because that you saw this article on Twitter, correct?

No, Facebook. Oh, damn it. Well, if it would have been on Twitter, it would have been better. It's okay because people on Twitter like passing on lies better than they like retweeting the truth. This is over at The Verge. So it is yet another study showing that we are just basically a big dumpster fire these days.

truthful news is 70% more likely to be retweeted on Twitter than true news, according to new research, and bots are not to blame. Apparently, human nature is just shit. Damn. Can't blame the Russians on this one. Let's see. They did it. Researchers analyzed the spread of all stories verified as either true or false by six fact checking organizations from 20 from 2006 to 2017.

So this is a lot of data that they sifted through. The analysis shows that false political news spreads more quickly than any other kind, like news about natural disasters or terrorism. And predictably, it spiked during events like the U.S. presidential elections. The researchers deliberately use the term false news because fake news is too politicized already, they write, though the Twitter accounts that spread untruthful stories were likely to have fewer followers and tweet less than those sharing real news.

False news still spreads quickly because it is seen as novel. That segues nicely into my next article by Farad Manjou. You like Farad, don't you? I'm a big fan of his. I've always enjoyed his articles, and I enjoyed what he was on Twitter. Yes, well, he has done an experiment.

For two months, he only got his news from print newspapers. Turns out, it works. He says, I have spent most days since getting the news mainly from print, though my self-imposed asceticism allowed for podcasts, email newsletters, and long-form nonfiction books.

He was trying to slow down the news, but he still wanted to be informed. So he was looking for good formats that prized depth and accuracy over speed. Right. And he says, it's been life-changing. Turning off the buzzing, breaking news machine I carry in my pocket was like unshackling myself from a monster who had me on speed dial, always ready to break into my day with half-baked bulletins.

And he says he's less addicted to the news and less anxious. And the best part, he says, most of all, I realized my personal role as a consumer of news in our broken digital news environment. So. Yep. If only we weren't doing this podcast. Seriously. I would so be doing that.

Well, I've called my RSS feeds down to just tech news, but the real world still kind of creeps in every now and again, unfortunately. Well, it's all intertwined, right? We keep trying. Like, we keep getting in trouble and people like yell at us because we get political every now and then, but tech is in everything now.

You can't, there's no separation. When everybody is carrying around their phone in their pocket and everything is done through that and we're lacking legislations and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It is all connected. Tech is everywhere. It's everything. I really liked it more when we were a subculture.

Oh, me too. I miss subcultures in general, but I'll get to that later. Speaking of subcultures though, Google has added Disney parts to their street view. Okay. And it's pretty cool. I was, I was playing around with it today and I was walking through Epcot. It's because I'm right now I'm scanning a bunch of my old slides when I was like 16 or no, I was 18 years old.

My dad and I went on a cross country trip from kind of cross country, went from Chicago to Washington DC to Disney. And when we were in Disney, I took a bunch of photos. I took slide photos because I had a camera that took slide film and now they're all out of order. So I can go back through and kind of walk through the park and place them where they were and figure out, you know, the perfect order, which is really cool.

I can do that. This is another one of those things that I am just so glad I grew up before it existed because I hung out at Disneyland as a teenager and boy, there would be, I'd be terrified that street view would be catching me making out with some tourist check in a corner. Well, they do.

They do blur all the faces. Okay. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm sure you were wearing your goth uniform back then. Of course I was. And speaking of goth uniforms in Disney, Bats Day turns 20 this year. And for people who don't know, Brian, would you like to tell them what Bats Day is?

I've never attended a Bats Day because I thought that was for amateurs, but it is the day that is organized for all people who are still into the subculture of goth, industrial, all that sort of stuff. They get together and basically take over Disneyland and kudos to Disneyland for never shutting this down.

I know that there were a few years that they had talked about not allowing them to do this anymore and turning people away, but they have let them continue to do it. So good on you, Disneyland, and good on you, you crazy old goss. Yeah. Yeah. And what they, Disney realized is, oh, the older these people get, the more disposable income they have.

Yes. And they're wearing black all day. So they're going to have to buy more, you know, sodas to keep cool. Well, they also, I mean, they buy a crap ton of merchandise. You're never going to sell as many of the evil step witch from all the different shows than you will on this day. And, you know, the Cheshire Cat is a big seller and you're, yeah, they're selling a lot of merch to these guys and gals.

Yeah. The Haunted House gift shop, they probably like triple stock it that day because everybody's buying all their swag. But man, I was looking at the pictures from past Bats days. Goths in general do not age well. That's all I'm saying. So it's, you know, as much as I kind of cast my mind back and enjoyed that time, I'm so glad I don't do it anymore because there's, the aging goth look is not a kind one.

Yeah. There's a reason these people hung out in very poorly lit clubs for a very long time. When they go out in the sun, it's not a pretty sight. I did see my ex-girlfriend on one of the pages, though. That was kind of interesting. She still looks pretty good. All right. But most of them, most of them have exploded, as it were.

The BFGs. Yep. Yep. And this one was interesting, too. Google has finally sold Zagats. Oh, okay. I didn't know that they owned Zagats. Yeah. I used to have those all the time. I'd get them and check out all the restaurants in them. That was kind of our, you know, that was our Yelp back in the day.

It was the OG Yelp. That's for sure. Yeah. So they got rid of them after all this time. So hopefully the company that picked them up will, you know, keep it going. But sadly, I think that there's just no real need for it anymore. The world has Yelp, sadly, as that may be.

That is true. You know what? This is an aside. It's not in our show notes. So feel free to do the tangent drop. Random tangent. You know what I was thinking about randomly today as I took a bike ride before the show? Oh, it must suck if you were the manufacturer of the little hand mirrors. You don't see them anymore.

When I was a kid, especially like a goth, every woman I know had at least one, owned at least four or five hand mirrors. They had like one in their bathroom, one in their car, one for their purse. Nobody has them anymore because everybody just uses their phones. They're completely out of business.

Yeah. Sorry. Aside. There we go. Anyways, I don't know why I thought about that. Another disrupted industry. Damn you, Steve Jobs. Okay, reel it back in. And speaking of disruptions, Netflix. Oh, Netflix. Back when it started. Send you DVDs in the mail.

The postman would always steal. Yes. And now they are worth more than GE or Ford. And they're creeping up on Disney. How crazy is that? And I'm so glad I bought them two years ago. Oh, damn. I wish I would have bought them. Yeah. But I totally see it, man.

They're investing everything into new content and it's paying off. Yeah, it really is. Everybody was complaining for a long time that they couldn't get the catalog because, you know, you'd go there and it's like, you know, C-level monster movies. That was like the only thing you could watch on a Friday.

Yeah. So to get around that, wisely, they said, well, screw the studios. We're just going to make our own. And it has turned out fantastic. And really, that is one of the few instances I can think of that the pivot has totally worked for them. Because I remember that too. I remember canceling Netflix at one point because I was like, they don't have anything.

And now they've solved that by just going, all right, we will become a studio. And I remember canceling them when I found out the algorithm was giving preference to new users. Right. And so when you wanted a DVD of the new movie that came out, you couldn't get it because you were on a waiting list because the people that had just signed up were getting the DVDs.

And so I would cancel and then re-sign up with a different credit card and then I would get the movies faster. I did that so many times. And the one trick back then, and this is the funny one, I would make my home into a quote unquote apartment building. Right. So to get around the address issue, I would just change my quote unquote apartment number every time I signed up.

A, B, C, D, E. Yeah. Nice. A, A, B, B. See, look, this is the thing. It's like, eventually we do figure out your bullshit companies and we figure out ways around it. Yep. Now let's get into some Bitcoin and crypto news.

Seriously? Again? With this? Old Dirty Bastard's official new cryptocurrency is called Dirty Coin. Oh God. Yes. The estate of the late Wu-Tang Clan rapper, Old Dirty Bastard, has launched a new cryptocurrency called Dirty Coin. And with the currency, fans can access his exclusive merchandise, ODB's music catalog, tours, and shows.

Um, he dead. I don't know if he's touring anytime soon. But yes, um, and the digital coin will also be used to fund projects for the late musician's son, rapper, Young Dirty. Okay. Is that his given name?

I guess so. Okay. Now, here's the funny, here's the funny part. Dirty Coin is the second Wu-Tang cryptocurrency. Of course it is. Yes. Ghostface Killah launched the Cream Coin last year. Nice. Okay.

How's that doing? I don't know. I haven't, I haven't checked Coinbase recently since I've, since I've unloaded all my crypto. Right. And, which is a good thing because this week the SEC has started to get serious about crypto. And that has caused the price of the coin to plummet.

Yes. So, that's been fun. That's been really fun to watch. Unfortunately, you still have yours, don't you? I, like I said, I put 20 bucks in on, on Bitcoin, 20 bucks in on Litecoin, and 20 bucks in on Ethereum, and I'm just letting it ride.

Basically, every day I'm down 10 bucks or up 10 bucks. That's, that's a spark. So, as, as everybody's just talking about these crazy drops and huge rises, I don't see it. I, I, it seems to be averaging out for the most part for me, and I'm certainly not making any money. Okay.

Yeah. I put it in 300 bucks, so. Well, you're, you're cray cray. Well, I got it all out and I made like, you know, 10 bucks or something after the fees, but I got out at right just in time. Yeah. And now's the time to buy if you're, if you're into that kind of thing. And Mashable had an article, a Bitcoin drops below $10,000 per coin following the SEC warnings and rumors on the Binance hack, which is an exchange that was, I don't, I didn't even follow up on it because I just didn't care.

But the thing that got me was, this is Mashable, of course. Yeah. So, you know, nobody, nobody spell checks. And, uh, the timing of the latest dip has some faithful hodlers concerned. And I'm like, it took me a second. I'm like, hodler?

What the hell's a hodler? Oh, holder. Gotcha. You have to go out of your way to misspell things in this day and age. There are spell checks. It's, it's underlined in red at the page I'm looking at right now. I know. What the?

And I want to know why, why, when you own a cryptocurrency, you're a holder instead of an owner. Why, why, why do you need that distinction? I'm holding this coin. I'm holding this coin. You own that coin. You do. But, but the coin doesn't exactly, it doesn't even exist.

So the, so the idea of holding it is even more misplaced because there's nothing to hold at all, ever. You hold some stocks because you actually theoretically could write them and ask them to send you certificates that exist in the real world.

There is nothing for Bitcoin. Okay. Anyways. And if you wash your USB dongle, then there goes your Bitcoin. Sorry, guys. And Coinbase is in the news too. They're, they've got a class action lawsuit against them for insider trading. What?

Somebody involved in cryptocurrency is shady? Everybody that does crypto is insider trading. I, I am on take that back, sir. Yeah. So the Bitcoin cash split a long time ago, they're like, no, we're not going to do it.

And then they, you know, change their tune and came out and did it. So it's, there's a long article on futurism. If you care about that kind of thing. I just thought it was funny that they're finally getting slapped down by the traders, at least. And somebody, somebody's filing a lawsuit. The SEC is not doing it. So they are.

Well, luckily, since you and I both use Coinbase, we'll be able to join in on this and get our point zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, two bitcoins out of it. That's true. That's true. Except I never bought any Bitcoin cash. I think I might be excluded.

Same with you. Oh, damn it. Just never any good news on this front, is it? Apps and doodads. Brian, I found an app for my phone that I have had for a couple of weeks now, and I wanted to try it out before I talked about it on the show.

And then I forgot about it. Okay. Keep using it. And I'm finally going to mention it on the show. It's called Launcher for iOS. Yes. Right. It lets you put apps on the main screen, like where your notification center is, so you can customize special widgets that go there. So you can, like, you know, I have a bunch of phone numbers on there, so it's like, call my friend, you know, Joe Blow Schmo.

And so you can just, like, go over and do it without having to go into contacts, scroll, find them. It's really cool. And you can use, like, your most used apps on there, because my home screen now has, like, six icons on it, or eight icons. I've only got two rows of icons, because I try and minimize the home screen.

And it works out great. So this lets me have a bunch of stuff that's really easy to get to. And it's currently about five bucks to unlock the most important stuff. Right. Which is pretty, it's not bad. Five bucks. I love this thing. I usually don't do pricing about apps on the show, because every time I do, tomorrow, it's going to be different.

There might be on sale, or it might go up. I don't know. But it's never the same. So, you know, hopefully for everybody listening, it'll still be five bucks, but it'll probably be 24 or two. They use those AI algorithms to do pricing these days. So, right, right. Yes. The AI is going to hear this show, and they know that, you know, thousands of people are going to be looking for launchers, so they're going to jack the price up.

By AI, it's some guy named Alfred Ignatius that actually has to go in and change the price manually in the old, outdated, crappy piece of shit software that they have for doing prices. I don't think there's anybody named Alfred in the Philippines, but you never know. You never know.

Jurassic World has a new game out. It is a Pokemon Go clone. Yes. Okay. Kind of missed the boat there. Pokemon Go shark finned a long time ago. Oh, but yeah. I kept hearing. Weren't we supposed to get a Harry Potter version of this? That was going to be a big deal.

And you'd think a Star Wars one is kind of a no brainer. This is basically the Angry Birds business model. Let's just keep rolling out new skins. But here's the thing. I couldn't find the company that made this one on the NextWeb article, and I just didn't have time to go dig into it.

I don't think it's the same company. Oh, okay. I think somebody just cloned it. Right. Because it's not, you know, it's not crazy tech to do that. No, it's not. It's, you know, basically Apple's rolled out apps that let you basically build it, so. Yeah, ARKit's out now, so it's, you know, there's an SDK for that.

Right. So, I haven't played it, nor shall I. That's going to go in the bin with Snap and Snapchat. Right. Now, this one kind of creeps me out. Google's productivity suite now shows who viewed your files. So, if you make a Google Doc, you can see who and when read the doc.

Right. I don't like that. I don't mind it. I know some people will. Yeah, it's okay. I mean, if you're doing shared work, it's good to know. Then you can call the person on it and say, hey, I know you've looked at it. Why haven't you responded? Well, for me, it'd be like, yeah, I'll look at that later and then never look at it.

And they'll be like, you never looked at it. I looked. Right. And then you can't fake it anymore. I can't fake my laziness. It's a brave new world, Jason. That's why I'm pissed off at it. I know. I don't like all this accountability bullshit. I might be able to fake it like I used to. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I saw that.

And they're like, oh, okay. Okay. Yep. Yep. Check that out last night. All good. I mean, to your point, it is weird the amount of stalking that one is able to do online these days. You can see and find out when people see just about everything. And it is a little creepy.

I'll give you that. But in this use case scenario, when I am doing a shared document, working on a project with someone, I would find this useful. Yeah, I'm sure it would be. But creepy. Whatever.

Yeah, it's useful, but creepy. Yeah. Here's the show title for you. Now, I had a bit of a disturbance in the force in my life here this week. I want to give a quick shout out to my in-laws. My grandfather-in-law, that's not something you hear very often, passed last night, which is sad.

So my wife took a red eye to New York, where they were living, to see the rest of her family and be there for the very end. And so she came back. But I was tracking her flight because, you know, I wanted to... First off, I was alone with a kid for 24 hours straight, which is exhausting.

And, you know, I just wanted to see... Poor baby. Hey, man, Mr. Mom is rough. You know, you got two dogs and you bitch about it all the time. Okay. As long as you acknowledge that it's tough on both sides. So I had the airline website up with the flight status page because I'm checking to see, you know, if she's delayed, what's going on, all that sort of stuff.

And I just want to say about all airline websites, every single one of you do this. Your flight status pages should not time out ever. Ever. Because guess what? We load it up, we leave it in a tab, and we come back to it and we refresh it to see what's going on, especially since no flight leaves on time anymore.

They all time out. I have to put in the flight again and again and again and again. This is what we call shitty UI. It's horrible. So fix it, people. Yeah, nobody's going to fix it. Have you checked out Flight View?

You know, I always, the thing is, I remember it after. Like, I don't have to, I don't ever do this enough to always keep that front of mind. I should probably like add it as a tab on my quick launch bar or something for next time. Because yeah, I did remember that. Oh yeah, there are sites that do this better than the airlines.

Yes, there are sites that do it, there are apps that do it. You can see exactly where the plane is, where the plane, where it's coming from, and all that stuff, and they don't time out. Yeah. So, yes, they're, and they're, they're, every, I never keep them on my phone, but right before I fly somewhere, I always re-download them all.

The ones that are still here, some of them have shuttered. I think Flight Track was one of my favorite ones, and it's gone. Yeah. I'm really pissed off about that because I paid 25 bucks for the pro version. Yeah. Then they went out of business. Of course. Bastards. Speaking of crappy UIs and things not working properly, alert, SF is a service that I had about 10 years ago when I lived in San Francisco, and it would just send you notifications on street closures, bridge closures, things like that.

You know, unfortunately they didn't have manpool alerts, but I, so I signed up for this thing 10 years ago, right? Yes. So I get these emails all the time from them. And I finally, you know, I put it in spam and so I never check it, but today I had to check my spam folder because there are a bunch of my emails were going to spam for some reason.

And I saw all of them and like all of the, all of the stuff in my spam folder, I started to just hit unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe. So I tried it with alert SF. Now I realized I remembered why I have all of these damn emails. It's impossible to unsubscribe because to reset your password, you need to supply your username, your registration email.

Okay. You can figure that one out fairly easy. Then the security question and the security answer. Right. 10 years ago, I have no idea what I put in as my security question. And this was before one password. So I have no way to, to unsubscribe from these.

So what this is going to do is me and probably thousands of other people market a spam on Google. So people who actually want to get these alerts, it gets shuttled to spam. So this is why good UI is key because what all they're doing is screwing up their service.

And here's the other thing. They used Everbridge to outsource this. The city of San Francisco, the tech mecca of the world, outsource this to a really crappy company. Oh, come on. Untalented people.

And I was going to, I was going to use the R word, but I'm going to go with untalented. Good. Thank you. That's my new, if I call you untalented, you know what I mean. I preach that. Okay. Totes. And I got one last shout out here in the absent doodads. If you want to become a podcaster, friend of the show, Chris Piccioni is doing a little seminar at Adorama on March 22nd from five to 7 PM.

Link will be in the show notes to go pick up a ticket. It's free, but you still need a ticket to get in. So Chris is from the Grime Life podcast, which I thoroughly miss him and Seth have not been in the room for quite some time. They did a one like a couple of months ago together, but I miss, I miss my weekly Grime Life with those two guys.

I text with them all the time, but it'd be nice to get them back on the air. So Chris is going to teach you how to start a podcast, even though he's not doing one himself right now. Actually, I take that back. He's doing under the noise still with Zeus, which is one of my other favorite podcasts about movie news, but go check it out.

Cool.

Media candy. I watched Abacus, small enough to jail. What are the other films up for best documentary in last week's Oscar? It did not win, but it should have. Well, no, I liked them both. I liked Icarus and Abacus about the same.

Abacus is an American documentary film centering on the Abacus Federal Savings Bank, a family-owned community bank in Manhattan's Chinatown in New York City, which was deemed small enough to jail rather than too big to fail and became, and this blows my mind, the only financial institution to actually face criminal charges following the subprime mortgage crisis.

And I ended up enjoying this film so much, and I was so outraged and angry and upset for various reasons, which you need to go see it yourself. I'm not going to spoil it. That immediately after finishing it, I loaded up Too Big to Fail, the, uh, the, this was not a documentary. This was a fantastic movie that was done about the financial crisis itself, uh, how they tried to fix it and all the really crappy stuff that all these super big banks did.

And it was, uh, I was, I was just frothing at the mouth that night. I was so angry, but it's worth it. Go watch both of these movies. If you've never seen Too Big to Fail, you have to. And Abacus was absolutely fantastic. I really enjoyed it. I liked Abacus. I didn't think it was that great compared to Icarus, right?

But I mean, it was good. It was a good documentary and it was infuriating to watch. And Too Big to Fail is a classic. You have to watch that if you haven't seen it. I agree. Now we got a couple of podcasts here. The Osbournes are back with the Osbournes podcast. Why would you do this to yourself? I like the Osbournes.

I love Ozzy. What I don't love is a podcast. He can't speak. That's, that's half the fun is trying to figure out what the hell Ozzy's saying on a podcast. Okay. The problem I have with this is Jack, the son, is the audio engineer on this.

Oh, joy. He's terrible at it. He's terrible at it. Half the show sounds like they're in a room with a Yeti. It's echoey. It's, it sounds God awful. And then there are cut-ins where it sounds like they're in a studio. Now, I don't know if they just got close to the mic for that line or what, but it is almost impossible to listen to if you're like a listener of podcasts and have any kind of ear for quality.

Oh my God, it's terrible. I wish they would fix it. They can hire me. I will send them, I'll send them the schematics on how to do a beautifully sounding podcast. But no, they did not. But I'll probably keep listening to it because it's one of those things I can put on in the background and not really care.

Right. If it's on, um, my other show that I want to talk about, uh, friends, Kyle and Kenny over at the good stuff morning show. Now that I have a little bit more time on my hands due to unfortunate employment circumstances, they do their show on Twitch in the mornings.

So you can watch them record it and be in the chat room and all that, which is pretty cool. I enjoy that part because it's usually early in the morning, morning show, get it. And so I can hang out with them in the chat room and it was great. The problem I have with the good stuff morning show is I always forget the word good stuff when I'm trying to find it.

So I always search for morning show and Kyle and Kenny change the name of your show, please. You had such great branding with transmission. I'm just, I'm saying it right now on the air. The show is fantastic. Everybody should go subscribe to the good stuff morning show because it's like our show, but a little lighter and more family friendly, but still, you know, subscribe to ours first, obviously, obviously, but check them out.

And, and I think that you and I should, uh, look at this Twitch thing for some, uh, Patreon perks in the future because it's kind of fun to be able to see each other. And, uh, well, we wouldn't even actually look at each other because we always find that creepy, but so other people can look at us when we do. Yeah. I think that was one of our goals when we hit a certain amount.

So it's good to know that there's a built in solution out there already. Yeah, it's, it's pretty cool. And I was talking to Kyle about this. He runs the show and he's running it on a PC. So fortunately now I have a PC and, uh, can go with that. Uh, and I'm still loving the PC, man. Gotta say, I tell you, it's scary.

It's not bad. We have, we have swapped worlds. I know. Another thing I watched this week was Darren Brown's The Push. Have you seen this yet? You should watch it. Okay. This guy's pretty crazy. This guy's using, uh, persuasion to basically have somebody commit murder.

Okay. It's, it's incredible. And this actually ran on the BBC in 2016, but now that it's on Netflix, it's pretty crazy. We can talk about it later, but I don't want to spoil anything. There's a lot of stuff that's come up about this. The show, the show is basically real, but the, you'll see what I'm talking about when you watch it, but it's only an hour and six minutes long, I think.

But by the end of it, you will be grabbing your seat, screaming at the, at the screen. Okay. I guarantee you check it out. Awesome. I watched, uh, Chris Rock's new, uh, standup special tambourine. I see. I saw it too. It was good. You know, it's good. It's good to see Chris Rock go from the young, angry comic to kind of a middle aged, you know, let's talk about life now sort of thing.

And it was very good. It was very confessional, which I wasn't expecting from him. And he made a lot of good points. And I wouldn't say I was belly laughing the whole time, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yeah. There were, there were, there were some definitely chuckle-rific moments, but it wasn't, it wasn't like his old special where you were just in tears the whole time.

Yeah. No, it's a more mature seasoned show. Now, does it look like Chris has had some work done? No, but he doesn't seem to age. His face to me looked a little weird. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It looked like he had some work done to me. No, well, I don't know. I don't think so. Maybe, maybe he did because of that whole experience he had with Rihanna and just being ignored because he was old.

Maybe, maybe he got some work done. He's like, I'm going to get that Rihanna one way or another. No, it was very good. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And in more Netflix news, there's a lot of Netflix news this week, Black Mirror is renewed for another season. Shocking. Shocking.

On that one. We knew that was coming. Have you watched? Yeah, I still haven't watched this last season. No, I'm just not. I think I'm going to have to wait until we have somebody else in the office before I go back to Black Mirror. Well, here's the nice thing about this season of Netflix. There are more uplifting endings than any other season. Like, actually, than all the other seasons put together.

Right. So there's some uplifting endings. I liked it. Okay, good. Now, here's the new one. Obama is in talks to provide shows for Netflix. So Obama is going to be the next Oprah. Okay. Go figure. All right. I think it's a good platform for him. I think it's a good. Because he wants to do shows.

I think it's a fantastic platform for him. And I love, I mean, he's so young. He's got to do something. And why not? This is fantastic. I like this. Yeah, he wants to do a story, like inspirational stories. There are not enough stories being told by Nigerians. God.

It's good to see Netflix embracing this diversity. A Hawaiian Nigerian. A Hawaiian Nigerian. A Hawaiian Nigerian. Sorry, I just couldn't resist. I know. Okay. Anyways. I can't wait.

Hopefully he'll do it. Yeah, I hope so too. The Cure is releasing a new compilation called Torn Down and a reissue of Mixed Up for this year's Record Store Day. Torn Down is the long-promised from Robert Smith follow-up to the Mixed Up album remixes. And the track listing on this is phenomenal.

It is not the hits. It is deep cuts and some of my favorite songs by them. I do not know. I have searched far and wide to see if this is going to end up on streaming media or any kind of, any format other than vinyl. I'm sure it will. It would be stupid for them not to because I'm frothing at the mouth to hear all this stuff.

So we'll see what happens. I definitely can't wait. I'll be going over to MXVs to listen to it on his turntable in massive stereo. Tell him to rip it. I will. Well, I actually gave him a laptop to rip for me. So perfect. There we go. I'm first in line. I noticed there was another link you had here in the show notes about them, about the Cure on 120 minutes.

Yeah. And it seems to have disappeared. I pulled it because it was just a short little clip of him talking and it was kind of funny, but not that big of a deal. I can put it back in since you've now mentioned it. I would appreciate it because I watched it and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Okay. All right. I will get that back in. I've never seen. I'd never seen some of that. There were fun interviews to watch.

Now, speaking of the Cure, Killing an Arab is one of their songs that I like the most, which you cannot find on any streaming service. Yes. It was the opening track on Standing on a Beach, which I still think is the greatest Cure compilation out there. And it's the one that got me into the band and I listened to on repeat over and over again for many years.

You can't find that on streaming services either. Yeah. What gives? People are stupid. Okay. That's really what it comes down to. It's one of the first songs he ever wrote. It's very old. It's a great song. It's a fantastic live experience when they play it. It's written about Albert Camus.

It's a song that details what happened in one of his books and it involves a murder and it happens to be an Arab person that's murdered, but we cannot have anything that says killing an Arab out there apparently. So I, you know, record labels have made the decision to, to pull the song off, off streaming services and for, we're just dumb.

We are just dumb as a society. The nerf culture strikes again. Fortunately for me, I have a Synology with a lot of ripped media. So I just have to go over to my Synology and put it on. And that gets me to the next thing, which really chaps my dazzle.

I signed up for Amazon music, right? It's 79 bucks a year and it works fantastic with my lady in a tube devices. I can get just about everything that I ever want just by speaking the magic words, the incantation and thus it will appear in my ear holes. Yes. They had a feature where you could upload your own music.

Ha ha ha ha. I thought this was perfect for you because they captured it 200,000 songs. Yes. And I'm like, ah, I finally figured out a service that Brian can use to upload all of his goodies and get them streaming later down the line. Nope. Nope. They pulled it. Yeah, it's gone. Canceled.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, they don't have nice things. Well, all these companies are not, they're vested in you not owning anything and them having it and sending it to you when you want it. That is their business model. So the idea that you would own your own stuff and even store it with them is not working for them.

They don't want you to do that. They want to control it. Why? Because there's no, there's no monthly fee to that. I mean, there's a iTunes match. There's a fee for, but still 125,000 songs. And I bet they're going to phase that out at some point. I'm sure they are too. Yeah.

Um, I, have you tried Apple music again? I've been hearing good things about it. No, no, because it's just, I don't trust them. I don't trust iTunes. I don't trust Apple music. I don't trust them to destroy my precariously curated library. Anything. Yeah. So no, I, I just won't.

So I, I'm a Spotify guy. Uh, and I just do use my workarounds for my ladies, ladies in the tubes. So. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm just, I might end up killing Spotify and sticking with Apple music. It's been a good experience. It really has. The only thing that I miss that I really like about Spotify is seeing what my friends are listening to.

Yeah. I have that part. I really enjoy that. You used to be able to do that on Facebook too. That's gone. I know. That's gone. Yeah. This will probably go away soon too, because we can't have nice things. Uh, one thing I did find this week that was kind of nice is a comic called One Giant Hand by Ben.

Have you checked? Did you check any of these out? Uh, I'm not really a comic guy. I scanned over it. Yeah. It was funny. It was good. It was black humor. Yeah. It's kind of fun. Black humor. I liked it. They're good. I recommend checking them out. Links will be in the show notes. Cool. And speaking again of we can't have nice things, uh, the enemy has announced the new musical Express, the, the, the rock and roll pioneer magazine out of England that has been going for, I believe, 66 years.

Yeah. They're finally getting rid of their print edition. It will exist no longer. It will just be some online website that does what, whatever, every other website does, which is just grab a bunch of links from somewhere and post it. And that's that. So it's very sad.

I mean, to be honest, it's sucked for years, but what's to be expected? The music industry is dead. Subcultures are dead. Uh, why would a print mag survive anymore anyway, regardless of the topic? But it is sad to see yet another touchstone of my youth bite the dust. Well, I have good news for you.

If you're into that kind of thing, guess what's still survived? What? Maximum rock and roll is still around. Yeah. They don't really cover the kind of stuff I listened to though. Well, maybe you should get into something new. Eh, I'm old. What the hell with that? I know. I know.

I know. Uh, but new things are out. Jessica Jones. I watched it. Yes. I, I, I was only going to watch one episode last night, but I ended up watching two because I enjoyed it so much. You know, I watched two episodes as well. Thoroughly enjoyed them myself.

Yes. And I stopped myself when, when the third one was coming on because then I knew I would be up all night. Yeah. I was, I was kind of almost betting that you would, you would have, uh, just binged the whole damn thing already, but, uh, good to hear that you only did two as well. Yep. I only did two. And the thing about it, like my finger was over.

So I had an X files in the can, so I went and watched X files and then went to, went to sleep. But, and I know you hate, hate for me to say it, but I'm really loving the season of the X file. The first two were terrible, but this whole season has been fun. There's only two episodes left. So I'm sure that's when they'll go back to the other storyline that I really don't care about.

I just like these one-offs way better, way more fun. That's fine. I just need you to tell me if they wrap it up at the end and then I'll, if so, I'll go back and watch it. So we'll see. Okay. Uh, speaking of Jessica Jones though, I've got to say the show dropped on international woman's day. How did they not use that for marketing?

They did. It was everywhere. Oh, I missed out on all of it then. I didn't see anything that, that related to like, you know, it being a female centric show. I've seen a few billboards, but that's about it. Oh, there are tons of billboards. Uh, do you follow Kristen Ritter on Instagram? No. Because she was taking pics of all of them. Oh, cool. I'll have to follow her.

All right. Well, nevermind then. I'm glad. Oh man, yeah. You got to follow her. She's great. Well, I mean, she is. She was live streaming from the premiere and with all her, all the friends and everything. I love following her because she's just a happy person and she's always doing something. She, you know, that girl's got some get up and go. Yeah, she does. Anyway, uh, speaking of more Netflix, Luke Cage season two is coming out June 22nd.

I thought they were going to be sprinkling these things out for the next 10 years, but they're going hard and heavy because they took a couple of years off between these things. And they did that, you know, the defenders movie, which was a series. It was okay. You know, unfortunately, because it had the iron fist in it.

So it's way too much iron fist, the iron fist. Um, and it looks like daredevil is going to drop before the end of the year. So Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and daredevil. Fantastic. I skip iron fist and please give me more punisher because that was amazing. I really want to like Luke Cage, uh, but I just petered out on that one, man.

I just couldn't get into the story. I love him as an actor. I loved all the cast. I just, I didn't care for the story. So we'll see season two. Yeah. I'm hoping that they fix what was wrong with season one because season one for me was lukewarm, if anything. And, but I really liked him in the defenders and I like his character and Jessica Jones.

It just, I thought, I felt that they brought the C team for season one of Luke Cage just from the story. The production value was lower than the other shows too. I agree with you on that. So I'm hoping that season two will be better because, you know, now it's like all of these shows have such a following now that they really have to bring the, the big teams in to do them.

So my fingers are crossed because yeah, I was, I gave Luke Cage season one, like a C plus at best anyway. And, uh, Jon Favreau is going to be executive producing and writing a new live action star Wars series for the new Disney version of Netflix.

So we've got at least three different new series coming with different directors attached to them. Okay. All right. Well, yeah. Yeah. Anybody can make some star Wars shit nowadays to show up at Disney and they'll give you a, give you a ticket to make your own series apparently.

But I mean, at least Jon Favreau did Iron Man one, which was still, it's still a classic is a fantastic movie, but he also did Iron Man two and three. Yes. There are some downsides there. I swear to God, if anybody would have told me that Jon Favreau back when, uh, when I saw, what was it? Swingers?

If somebody would have told me that that dude from swingers is going to be making star Wars movies one day, I'd have been like, get the hell out of here. I know. Oh man. And, uh, Vegas baby. Speaking of things we probably don't need or want, David Chase is reviving the Sopranos sort of, not really because it's a prequel film set in the 1960s, New Jersey at a time when the African Americans and the Italians of Newark were at each other's throats and it's, it's okay.

Well, I'll, I'm sure I'll go see it. Yeah. It's a movie. So, you know, at least the most it can suck is for two hours. That's right. But I've actually been on the fence about going back and rewatching the Sopranos because it was so good. Right. You know, I've been looking for something to rewatch and I was like, ah, I don't want to do deep space nine again.

I'm looking for something that's not sci-fi to kind of cleanse the palate, but maybe I'll go back and watch the Sopranos. That was a damn good show. That was a damn good show. Security? Ha! Welcome back to Security, huh?

For our 250th episode with Mr. Papa B, Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire. Congratulations, gentlemen. 250. That's nuts. That's a lot. Five years. Yes, it is. Wow. I don't, how many, do we have any idea how many I've done?

It's been about two years, right? About two years that I've been with you guys. Something like that. Yes, I believe so. I didn't have time to count today, but yeah, wow. Five years. There's a search function on GOG.show, which apparently nobody can find, but I bet if we go there and use it, we'll figure it out. Yeah. Yeah.

We don't get paid enough for that, so. No. Yeah, you've been here for a while. Let's just say that. Yeah, it's been great. Yep. Yep. Good enough that if you ever came to my town, I'd let you sleep in my guest room. Aw, that's very sweet of you. Yeah. You just have to kick out Bam Bam and Dino.

That's right. Or snuggle with them. It's your choice. Yeah, that's all right. Yes. All right, let's get into some news, guys. All right. Well, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe recently gave a keynote at the Entertainment Finance Forum in Hollywood, and he repeatedly boasted that the app that the app has been collecting data about its users' locations before and after they enter a movie theater.

We get an enormous amount of information, he continued. We watch how you drive from home to the movies. What? We watch where you go afterwards. Oh, shit. And in an update, he did an interview with Wired, and he backpedaled rapidly, saying he was just joking about the notion of the company tracking its users' locations.

I was just being in a funny mood and said it sarcastically. Line seconds. We are not tracking people. Unfortunately, in a move taken from, say, our current administration, the official statement from the company, however, completely contradicts what he just said.

Which time? MoviePass released it. Yes, which time? Today, MoviePass released a new app update, including the removal of some unused app location capabilities. While part of our vision includes using location-based marketing to enhance the movie-going experience for our members, we aren't using some of that functionality today.

Our members will always have the option to choose the location-based services that are right for them today and in the future. Lion sack of shit. Now, Jason, you are a member. Well, yes, I am. You are a MoviePass guy? Well, no, I was a MoviePass guy until my credit card expired, and then I let it lapse because I never used it once.

I paid for three months and never used it. We covered this on a previous episode, but I knew they used my location because you have to have location enabled so they can see that you're at the theater. The theater. Once you're at the theater, you can go in and use the credit card. The credit card is only enabled when the location matches the theater.

I knew that, but this, you know, watching how you drive from home to the movies and where you go afterwards, oh, fuck you, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lau, dying of fire. I'm glad that I got rid of your crap. And I just want to give a hat tip to Dougal and literally everybody else that sent us this story.

This is probably the most popular story to ever be sent to us. And in the story that will not die, but it hit the Wall Street Journal, so we might as well mention it again. The Wall Street Journal says Facebook really is spying on you.

Just not through your phones, Mike. And this story includes a kind of cute, kind of creepy, odd little video. I don't know if you guys took the time to watch the video. Well, that's all I could see because I don't pay for the Wall Street Journal, which we covered earlier in the episode because it's just ridiculously overpriced.

So I did watch the video, but I did not read the article. And apparently there is a hack to get to Wall Street Journal articles. And it's... There might be because I read it. Yeah. I read it the first time I saw it, but this time it is coming up that it wants me to pay for it.

The Apple News app will let you read the article, but it won't let you copy it out, which is a pain, so I couldn't put any notes in here. But yeah, the long and the short of it is, yeah, data. It's just data. It's not the mic. It's exactly what we've said repeatedly every time we talk about this.

Now, the one little data point that I had never really thought about and was new to me, and I feel sort of naive for this, is that the loyalty cards that you use in your store, they sell that data. Oh, Dave, you are so naive.

I know. Well, I just never really thought about it. I get, you know, in my mind, I think... They only collected that for your benefit. Only to give you discounts. I thought they did it for... It's sort of internal use for sending me coupons and things like that. I hadn't really thought it all the way through that they sell that data, and that that...

I guess I hadn't connected the dots that that is another piece of this, that that data connects into it as well. Yes, connecting directly to your phone number, which connects directly to your Facebook account, which... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why when you sign up for a loyalty card, you never give them your real phone number or your real address, and you can swap those cards all the time for free.

Say, oh, no, I don't have a card. Give me a new one. Then you just put in fake information. You can do that all the time. Well, here's a nice little life hack for you. If you ever are asked to put in a phone number, 8-6-7-5-3-0-9, always in there. It is always in there. That's true.

Yeah, but what about the area code? Is it just for all area codes? Yeah, just put it, you know, your local area code, and just 8-6-7-5-3-0-9, I will bet you dollars to donuts that that will be in there. I'm going to try that when I go to the store next week. Okay. All right. I wonder if anybody has ever won that bet and tried to claim their donuts for dollars.

Oh, man. If they haven't, we should do it now before this show airs on Monday. It's like that old Stephen Wright joke about how did the fool and his money be put together in the first place. I like that one. Yeah, that's really good. I know somebody who might laugh at that.

Alexa. This is my favorite story of the week. It is kind of mine, too. So, Alexas have just started creepily laughing at people for no reason whatsoever. I love everything about this. This hit every mainstream media outlet.

It was on every time I turned on the news, this was on. And I did see videos of it. I mean, people have captured it happening. Mine updated before I could try it because I tried it last night and it just wouldn't work. But the new one works.

Yes. They have changed the phrase. Apparently, Alexa would mistakenly hear Alexa laugh. And they have changed that to Alexa, can you laugh? And deleted the shorter utterance of Alexa laugh. I have not heard it at all. Is the laughter actually quite creepy? Yes, it is very creepy. Okay.

Yeah, I wish I could. I might try and find it for the show. But yes, it is. It's extremely creepy. A friend of mine asked Alexa today, said, Alexa, why are you laughing? And evidently, she responded and said, oh, just you wait. Well, that's great. I do think we can all laugh about it.

And we can all say that, you know, the story is being done over and all over the place. But it is interesting to me because the whole idea, especially for the three of us and obviously many of our listeners, having grown up with technology and always been in personal control of said technology, i.e.

We have a PC at home. We choose what software we put on it. We choose when we do updates. We are, for the most part, extremely in control of the technologies that we've always had until this moment in time in our houses. Now we are bringing in technology that we have zero control over.

Realistically, they could push up any updates they want. They're all controlled centrally by somebody else, not by you. And things like this are going to start happening a lot. And it's weird. And it is creepy, right? So I saw a thing on Twitter. I can't I forget who posted this and I wish I had it.

They said smart. In other words, the Internet of smart surveillance marketed as regular technology. I loved that. And I think that's really kind of what it is. So the thing that strikes me about this is how with artificial intelligence, machine learning, however you want to describe it, that you don't always know what you're going to get out of it.

You don't always know what the answers are going to be that the machines come up with. And that was the part that I loved about this. It actually turned out to be something that Alexa had come up with on her own. That, I think, is very interesting. In the same way that you remember Microsoft's Tay, who began spewing profanities at people because she was imitating.

Yes. She learned from Twitter. So if this had become something like that, what made me smile about this was the possibility that it was something that wasn't actually intentional, that was not under Amazon's control, that somehow Alexa had gone a little rogue on us.

And so that was the part that I found delightful about it. As unlikely as that is, that was the part that was delightful about it. Yeah. What I want to know is if they can actually program those trigger words remotely, you know, because we have a few, we have a handful of trigger words for all of these devices.

And it seems like they're fairly hard coded into the chips to figure out, you know, what you're going to say. And I think that's why they haven't updated them so often. And but if they're not, if they are programmable by the vendors, imagine if a rogue employee just wanted to, like, create his own trigger word and slid it out in an update.

And so anytime anybody in the house would say something like Trump. And if he was a non-Trump fan, your Alexa would just go, fuck that guy. Right. Every time somebody in the house would say that, that would be a funny use of the technology. And I'd pay extra for that.

That's true. That is that is probably true. I'm just thinking about, you know, yes, it's all software based. So what in the future, what can a rogue employee do that would, you know, as the greatest pranks of all time?

Think about April Fool's in the future. That that actually puts a smile on my face. I totally agree with you, Jason. But but to Dave's point, I think the more interesting thing is fake is what these things will start to do in and of themselves. And how nonsensical they will probably actually end up being, which is just going to be weird.

But you couple that with the fact that they can run your home. That's yes. There's the black mirror. It gets weird. That's the black mirror side of it. When these things have access to your thermostat, your garage door, your locks, your lights, everything in your house.

Open the pod bay door. He's hoping that we get to the point where he can set his house up so that every time he enters a room, it plays a fanfare. I just hire a band for that. It's much more satisfying. They just follow you around. A mariachi band. They just follow you around.

So in other creepy news, the Geek Squad has finally been outed for talking to the FBI and giving up some of their customers. We knew this was happening in a deep down, yes, it has to be happening level. But fortunately for us, the EFF knows how to submit a FOIA request and has basically found out that, yep, yep, the FBI has been paying off Geek Squad employees for a very long time.

Now, who are we more mad at? Are we mad at the Geek Squad for taking the payments and rolling over? Or are we mad at the government for going to them in the first place saying, hey, here's some cash. Come on, hand it over. I am way more mad at the Geek Squad than I am the FBI.

The FBI is just using the tools that they have available to them. The Geek Squad just, you know, didn't have to be that tool, even though they are tools. Because if you've ever had them come and update your Wi-Fi router for 250 bucks, then you would be mad at them, too. But, yeah, I just these guys are these guys are shady.

They're creepy. They're scary. And I never trusted them. I have a couple of thoughts on this. So, first of all, I think if you're a Geek Squad person and you're fixing someone's computer and you stumble upon something like child pornography or whatever and anything.

Let's just use child porn because that's everyone can imagine that. And I think you're obligated to then report that. And I don't have a problem with that. If in the course of your fixing the computer or whatever, you find something, you think someone's in danger, you call the police, I have no problem with that.

You call the FBI. No problem whatsoever. I'm with you on that 100%. Where I start to have trouble is it when the FBI starts putting out a bounty for this sort of thing. So, rather than happening upon things, now the Geek Squad folks are incentivized that every computer they look at, they're going to go poking around looking for things.

And I think there's a – without a warrant, right? Without a warrant. Yeah. If I bring in my computer for you to replace a faulty, say, power supply, why are you going through my photos folder? Yeah. Right. That's a real problem. Yeah. And without a warrant, again.

It's basically creating, you know, vigilantes who are getting paid for what they bring in, bounty hunters, basically. On the other hand, in the crooks are stupid category, if you take your broken computer to the Geek Squad with your whatever bad stuff is on there in some unencrypted folder where anyone can go look at it, well, you kind of got what's coming to you and you were going to get caught sooner or later anyway.

Yeah. I guess. I mean, I'm being a little snarky about that. It doesn't change how I have trouble with the FBI having a bounty on this because I think that does circumvent judicial oversight for what should be a Fourth Amendment protected search. Right.

Even though you sign – I think in my mind, what it seems like to me is the FBI is taking advantage of the fact that you sign away permission from Geek Squad to look in your computer. They're taking advantage of that to put out a bounty. And while it's good they're catching bad guys, this is – I don't know.

It's a little creepy to me. It's not a little creepy. It's a lot creepy. Okay. Fair enough. We talked about DNA stuff on the show before, specifically human and canine. Now the Dutch police are testing the DNA of 21,500 men to solve a 20-year-old murder.

What do you guys think about this? Because they're basically trying to find a relative of the killer. Yep. And they're just carpet bombing these guys with cheek swabs and saying, come here and maybe we'll find out if you're related to a guy who killed a kid back in 1998. Well, research shows and studies show routinely that this stuff – this tech isn't there yet.

That there's so many false positives. I would – if I were one of these 21,500 men, I'd be getting out of Dodge. Well, it is voluntary, isn't it? Yeah. I think – yeah. Now, what struck me about this, my first thought was that this, to me, is the kind of thing that they can do in Europe and specifically Germany that you'd have a hard time doing here because their privacy rules are so much stricter than ours.

So, I think people would be more comfortable knowing that if they provide a DNA sample, it doesn't belong to the people who collected it the way it does here in the States, right? Like, their privacy is going to be protected. So, the downside for me of trying to help a law enforcement case by providing DNA is much less than it would be here because they just think about, in terms of privacy, the government's on our side and looking out for us.

I don't look at it as a privacy problem, though. I look at it as a misattribution problem because what if my cousin is the guy that killed the person but the DNA comes back and says it's me? Right. Right. Well, back to my first point is that we know this technology isn't quite there yet.

It's just not there. And there's a reason that so many DNA cases get struck down here in the States. You get somebody smart up on the stand that can start to refute things and show false positives and false negatives. And the rates of attribution and all that, it all just starts to fall apart because it's, as we know from the commercial level version, apparently the doggy DNA is far more advanced than the human DNA.

It is. I have a very tall beagle, as it turns out. Yeah, it's interesting. And every day, the funny thing is, every day that goes by, the people at Wisdom Panel are more right every single day. So, you know, we joke about it, but turns out that they know what they're doing, it seems.

And yet 23andMe still say you aren't Italian. I know. I know. What are you going to do? Maybe they're right, too, Jason. Hey, come try my pasta and you tell me I'm not Italian, by the way. Come on. What do you guys think about the cyber? Are you fans of the cyber? Do you like the cyber? I like you, Dave, but I'm really not into it right now.

Brian's on the line and it could get kind of creepy. Yeah. So, I was at a conference last year. I was at the Women in Cybersecurity Conference. I was in Tucson. Lovely conference. Lots of really cool stuff. And one of the keynote speakers started off her keynote address by basically asking everyone what they thought of the word cyber.

She said, how many of you hate the word cyber? And there was this swell from the audience of people going, ugh. Did they all chant in unison, ASL, ASL? Well, I think – but it's interesting to me that a lot of people don't like the word cyber.

It's like moist. People don't like – I think they just – They are kind of tied hand in hand if you think about it. They just don't like the word. And I think there's something to that. This article that we included here was about how it's so overused that it's become sort of meaningless.

I don't know that I necessarily agree with that. I think cyber means computer slash internet when used as a prefix for something. Now, the thing I did not know that I included in here, I have no recollection of the word cyber being synonymous with cyber sex.

Do you guys recall that? See, this is – yeah, this is where we diverge because every joke that I said for the last five minutes is all about that because I grew up on AOL. And when you wanted to get down with somebody, you said, hey, want a cyber? And then the first thing they write back is ASL for age, sex, and location.

Or if you're in a more saucy room, age, sex, and length. See, that's interesting. I was thinking American Sign Language. So, all right. We have a generation gap. Well, but I – honestly, I have no recollection of the loan word cyber being synonymous with cyber sex.

So, I guess maybe I wasn't on AOL enough for that to become a thing. I did not really spend a lot of time in chat rooms. Maybe it's that. But I spent a lot of time on Usenet. And I'm just – it's possible that I just forgot about it and it's been supplanted by all the other cyber things. It was definitely much more of a real-time thing.

It wouldn't have been Usenet. Yeah. And texting and chat rooms and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah. I mean, I had that association as well, more so probably for sex than anything else, really, until we started making jokes about old people talking about the cyber.

Yeah, that's kind of it. Yeah. It's like there's that gap between people who knew what cyber was and got a chuckle when all the oldies out there started talking about. Yep, the cyber. You know, talking about computers. Yeah, the cyber. It's like, no, no, that's not really what it's about at all.

Do you recall how it first came into your knowledge when your first recollection of the word cyber? William Gibson, Neuromancer. Yep. Neuromancer, yep. Cyberspace, that was it. Yeah, and I think Information Society had an album and a song that – cyber something or other.

Definitely, I heard that. I definitely remember cyberpunk. Yep. Yep. Yep, Mondo 2000. It was heavily thrown about there. On my – on Spew, my first website, we had a section called cyberpunk, and that was in 1994. Okay. And, of course, cyborg, which I think goes way back.

Way back, yeah. I mean, the word goes back from the 1940s, evidently, with cybernetics. Didn't they not call Luke Skywalker, when his hand was replaced, didn't they call it cybernetic, even at that point in time? So we're talking 78? Well, cybernetics comes literally from the 40s, so that would make sense.

Well, I'm just thinking of, like, one of the first times that I would have heard it would have probably been Star Wars, right? I'm pretty sure they don't say the word cybernetic in Star Wars, but I could be wrong, but that's one of those things for the internet to tell us, because they love to tell us when we're wrong. Yes, they do. Yeah, I'm having a vague recollection of that as well.

Maybe some reference to Darth Vader, even, where he was – I mean, they say he was more machine than man, but I can't recall – I know in Terminator they used it, for sure, cybernetic. That was considerably later. Right, right, right, right, right, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So, I don't know, it's interesting to me that some people seem to have this visceral response to the word – Terminator was 84, by the way, so, yeah.

Oh, yeah. It was before the internet, so we didn't get cyber and cyberspace and all that stuff until then, but – But after Luke Skywalker got his hand cut off. It was after Luke Skywalker got his hand cut off, but – so that's the whole thing. It's like, you know, there's this weird timeline, but I think, yeah, I think cyber in the lexicon for what we're talking about is – I think it really started with William Gibson in computers and cyberspace.

I think he revitalized the term and brought it back in. But I think now, yes, it's definitely a term that we should lose as soon as humanly possible. Well, it's interesting to me how words become fashionable and then not so. You know, when we were back in the – well, back in the 90s, everything was pixel, right?

Pixels, this, pixels, you know, and then that fell out of favor thanks to Pixar and – That website is really 23 skidoo. Yeah. Well, here's another one. Another one that drives me crazy. When I'm watching these damn phone ads on TV, you get unlimited gigs.

I'm like, bandwidth. It's unlimited bandwidth. It's not a gig. One of the articles I was reading on this mentioned that it's odd that we never had cyber phones. Like the transition from cellular phones to smartphones, they became smartphones, not cyber phones.

That was something that escaped the cyber prefix, which I find interesting. I think IP took that over because IP phones were big with Cisco, so they used IP for internet protocol instead of cyber. So I think it was marketing at that point. Yeah. Because Cisco was probably not going to say, we've got a cyber phone because it sounds so like 50s, you know?

So I think that they use internet protocol because the phones talked over IP. So they use that, and that really kind of moved into that realm. Right. But then we got smartphones, which is, I think, the term for it these days. Anything with any blank slab with a touchscreen, we call a smartphone, which is interesting.

Mm-hmm. Anyway. All right, gentlemen, that's what I have this week. All right. All right. A walk down the cyber memory lane from the Cyber Wire. Have a great cyber weekend. All right. You too. Go get some cyber on, people. ASL.

We're on of the week. This is one of my favorite stories of the week. The New York Times had to print a correction this week because one of their writers left on the Millennials to Snake People extension in Chrome while they were copying and pasting stuff from one article to another.

Nice. And here's the correction. Because of an editing error involving a satirical text-swapping web browser extension, an earlier version of this article misquoted a passage from an article by The Times reporter Jim Kinkersley. The sentence referred to America's narrowing trade deficit during the Great Recession, not during the time of shedding in cold rocks.

And it also goes on to say, in parentheses, pro tip, disable your Millennials to Snake People extension when copying and pasting. The fact that they put in pro tip made this the greatest, the single greatest correction of all time. That was pretty good. And I've got a moron of the week this week as well.

Hope Hicks, the longtime Donald Trump aide who finally decided to leave the administration after a domestic abuse scandal involving now former fellow aide and rumored boyfriend Rob Porter, says she can't log into two of her email accounts anymore because she was, air quote, hacked, end air quote.

According to NBC News, people present during her closed door testimony before a meeting with the House Intelligence Committee's Russia panel last week says that she told members of Congress two of her accounts are inaccessible now, following a break-in by an unidentified third party. She was conveniently light on any details about the supposed hack, which involved either her personal email or her campaign one.

But her emails, Jason? But her emails! But her emails! And it's certainly possible that she was hacked, but if she was, it beggars belief, according to Gizmodo, to take at face value her explanation that she was just floating around in total technical ignorance of what happened, instead of at least partially debriefed by the security, intelligence, or law enforcement personnel who should be looking into such matters.

Considering that pretty much everyone in the administration has been using personal email for work purposes, but her emails, Jason? There's no telling what could have been revealed in such a breach, you know, if there actually was one, which probably there wasn't.

Nor should anyone believe that Hicks' emails, which could potentially shed more light on just what was going on inside the Trump campaign with respect to Russian interference, have simply dissolved into the ether, and that everyone should then just move on, because that's not how things work. Well, fortunately, as we've discussed on this show many times, nothing is ever deleted.

Nothing is ever deleted. Yes. But her emails. Ah, yes. And I also have Uber founder Travis Kalanick in as Moron of the Week this year. Now that he's been pushed out of Uber, he is starting his own investment fund. Yay.

Okay. He's making personal investments in both for-profit and not-for-profit companies and is creating this new fund to manage those ventures. He wrote the fund, which he is calling 1-0-1-0-0. We'll focus on large-scale job creation. Now that he's left a company that is focusing on large-scale job de-creation.

Yes, job destruction was job number one at Uber. Thanks for that, buddy. Yep. All right. Way to go, dude. And another Moron of the Week, some poor developer over at Oculus Rift. Now, in this day and age, everything is encrypted, or so it should be, and you need a secure certificate to verify the parties who are doing the encryption.

Therefore, you have to pay for said certificates. Well, those certificates expire. And if you don't buy one for 100 years, which, why wouldn't you if you have all the money that God, you have to update it every year.

Well, someone forgot to. And every Oculus Rift on the planet stopped working. Ah, single points of failure. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. So they have issued a patch to bring them back to life, and there are instructions in the show notes, or links to the instructions in the show notes, I should say.

We're not going to put instructions in there. Okay, guys. Talk about a junior error. Yeah. Oh, my God. Here's the best part. You know nobody got fired over this. Of course not. Of course not. Of course not. I thought you were going to do the cert. No, I thought you were going to do the cert. Oh, poop.

Poops. Oh, nobody did the cert. Oh, well. And if you were, basically everybody who has an Oculus now has $15 credit in the Oculus store. Aw. So, because you know, you know, somebody, there was nobody out there doing a demo in front of a paid audience that got hit by this.

Sure. Never. So that $15 is going to go a long way to make them whole. Sure. Now, my final moron of the week, this is just a screen grab because I'm not going to link to it. I put the screen grab in here for Brian. I refuse to link to this. The number one podcast in all of iTunes, as of this recording, is the Goop Podcast.

It seems the theme of the show is we're stupid and this is why we can't have nice things. Five years on and you just figured that out? The fucking Goop Podcast. Oh, God. Is it even her or is it she sources it out, right?

It's not like Gwyneth isn't sitting down and actually doing a podcast. You actually expect me to listen to it to find out? No, of course not. I have very few IQ points left. I want to keep the ones I have. Hitting play will drop me another 20 points and that might put me in the untalented pool.

But I really do want to deep dive into why steaming your vagina is actually healthy. What to put up your butt this week on the Goop Podcast. Feedback loop. We have some more Patreon subscribers this week. Thank you so much for helping us out.

Joseph A., David L., and Eduardo S. have all donated to us at Patreon. And we have some direct donations from PayPal as well. So thank you for that. Taylor G. sent us some dough and says thanks for the laughs piece from Los Angeles. And Michael M.

It's been a year since I last donated. I've listened to every episode since then. Keep up the good work. Thanks so much. Thank you, everybody. We really, really, really appreciate it. And we have a five-star over on Facebook from James. A nice little break from the professional wrestling podcasts I listen to as I broaden my horizons with new shows.

I've been listening for the last few weeks and have found myself both entertained and informed. Excellent. Welcome to the family, James. Yes, thank you so much. And we had a couple people writing us on Twitter, but I totally screwed the pooch on that one, so I forgot to get anything. So thank you all for engaging with us. Thank you, everybody, on Twitter.

Yeah. Donate on Patreon, and then maybe Brian will be able to copy and paste next week. Well, you know, two episodes of Jessica Jones, a bottle of wine, and reloading, and having to retype in my flight information into the flight status checker all night last night. It's a long night. Oh, and taking care of your child.

Oh, yeah. Well, he was already asleep at that point, so we're all good. Okay. Over at GOG.show, a couple people have written in to us. Mark says, Jason and Brian, you guys are my go-to 10 podcast for my long, dreary commute home on Mondays. Thank you for putting out such a high-quality production. As an aging technologist myself, I enjoy agreeing with you as much as disagreeing, but mostly agreeing.

Yours is the only podcast that gets me talking to myself in the car. I came across the below URL today. I thought you might enjoy griping about it. I read about a paragraph when my laptop fans spun up, thinking it might be crypto mining. I fired up Chrome DevTools and reloaded the page because I've never seen that in action.

This is something over at Salon, why Americans are such easy targets for trolls and bots. He says, within 30 seconds, the page had downloaded 10 megabytes of who the fuck knows. I got disgusted and closed the tab with extreme prejudice. Kids these days. I remember when we had to cap pages at 25K.

Hear, hear. Of course, that was also when the entire internet was on Alta Vista. I missed the days when content was king. Anyways, keep fighting the good fight. Mark. And he has a couple PSs here. 10 apologies for the bad pun. Go to three. And I dropped AOC as soon as I heard what happened. I was a longtime listener, like back when Audible was the only sponsor and they sponsored everybody.

So there you go. Thanks, Mark. Yep. And he also says, love the new show. It's another one of my staples. I got to throw that in there. So the pun was, the pun about this was, when he says, you guys are my go-to 10 podcast, go-to and paren 10, which is an old programming joke. Yes. So yes. Yes.

I'll take your 10 apologies and drop you the three. I have a feeling that the 10 megabytes was video ads. Yeah, probably. I have a fairly certain idea. I've got to say, the salon redesign is so horrible. It's just really, really bad. And they're dumping so much crap on there. It's making the site almost unusable.

So it's not surprising that there's just huge downloads, too. Yeah. Another thing, another pro tip from my side, what I do is when I'm browsing some of these sites, I do it because I do a lot of research for the show on my iPad. And when I have to go to these sites, I immediately hit reader view when it's available.

Yes, when it's available. So much better. Yeah. Because I used to use Chrome and I tried Opera on my iPad. Opera's not really there yet. And Chrome, no, because it breaks some of my extensions. So I've been using Safari. Safari's been great on my iPad. And that reader view just immediately, boom, no ads, clean view, good to go.

I love it. So, yeah, so much for the third-party browser game on the iPad. But anyway, Tristan writes in, talking about voice control fails reminded me of this oldie. And it's a YouTube video about the Scottish guy who couldn't talk to his Alexa, which was, or no, Siri, right?

Oh, actually, this isn't that video. I thought it was. This is a BBC Scotland voice recognition elevator. It's, I've seen this one for two. This is quite funny. Yeah. Okay. I saw Scottish and I thought it was the serial one from back in the day. Oh, well. Yes. Thankfully, the Scottish accent seems to have been bred out of the populace.

Otherwise, we'd be in even more trouble. I love the Scottish accent. I always feel like I'm going to get in a fight when I talk to a Scot. Me too. P.S. Dollhouse. Yes. Thank you. I knew I recognized her from somewhere. Told you. Yep. I guess I could have Googled that or even asked Alexa, but my laziness knows no bounds. Mine too.

It just came to me when I was watching it. And honestly, it was hard to because she was naked most of the time. But then it finally clicked. I figure if I listen long enough, eventually all questions will be answered. Yeah. I think you might have a long way to go, but we'll get there. Maybe by episode 500.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Mateus wrote in. We were talking about NASA and blue sky research and all that sort of stuff. He said, just to add that the ozone layer research was built on data gathered by the British Antarctic Survey over a 30-year period of data in a very costly slash cold area of the world without any direct idea of what the data will be good for.

Blue sky data, if you like. Oh, and then publishing it to the world for free. So, yes, we do like science. It's good. Well, thank you, British Antarctic Survey. Yes. We love you. Yes, we do. And Roy writes in, $20 porn unblocking fee could hit internet users if state bill becomes law.

And it's a link to Ars Technica. And he says, dystopian future is approaching. And this is, Rhode Island is trying to get a law passed where you have to send them a written letter asking them to unlock questionable content for your internet connection. Yes. Uh, yeah.

I have a fairly good idea this will not pass. I hope not. This shall not pass. Yeah. All right. Over at iTunes, we have some five-star ratings. And we have a very curious one to open with by someone named Iggy Strongpaw, who originally, when I first grabbed the review, said, Jason, your voice doesn't match your face.

What the hell does that mean? Well, it's now been updated. And instead of saying that, it says, question, what are your thoughts on the podcast Masters of Scale? Now, I have no thoughts because I don't know what this podcast is, but I do appreciate you giving us a five-star rating. I do. I do. Q&A is not really what iTunes is good for, but since you gave us five stars, I will answer your question.

Masters of Scale is a podcast by Reid Hoffman, talking with, you know, luminaries in the space. Reid Hoffman was the lawyer who brokered the PayPal eBay deal. I met him back in the day. Very nice guy. Not a podcaster, though. Not a broadcaster.

And I listened to his interview on Tim Ferriss, which I think I edited, but his voice was so terrible. Lots of mouth noise. Got to get rid of that guy. But Masters of Scale, I found overproduced and utterly boring. Okay. So that's my thoughts on Masters of Scale.

Too much production, too little content. Next up, we have HawkFan08 writes in, a love story about a guy and his dogs. This is my favorite review we've ever gotten. This podcast is nearly impossible to listen to.

We get it, Jason. You have dogs and you love them very much. Now go from a non-baseball fan to a White Sox fan? I'm sure you're right about your neighbors throwing rocks at your house. Seriously, though, this podcast is fantastic. My productivity at work has skyrocketed since I discovered this podcast.

I used to spend way too much time browsing all corners of the internet. These guys do that for me and filter it down to interesting and helpful stuff. Instead of wasting countless hours at the job surfing the web, I listen to this podcast and then check out the links in the show notes for more in-depth info on what they talk about. All right. Another two weeks in a row.

People liking the show notes. I thank you so much. And he says, I thank you both for the show, but my employer thanks you more. P.S. Go Cubs. P.S. More Bam Bam and Dino pics on Instagram, please. God, don't encourage him. All right. Thank you so much. Our next five-star review is from Tujumaster.

But are they Dvorak grumpy? No, they are Dvorak grumpy, as in John C. Dvorak. Give them a few years and maybe. In the meantime, you'll have to put up with what I would call mildly grumpy middle-aged geeks. Actually, the podcast is quite enjoyable and has become part of my weekly rotation. Jason Bryan adds some useful and sometimes colorful context to the happenings in the tech industry, while Dave Bittner provides commentary on security, amongst other contributions, like Last Jedi hating.

If you are looking for some entertaining musings, this is a must-listen. It's one of the best. Just don't expect Statler and Waldorf to show up. I'm cool with that. I don't want to be that grumpy. Yeah, I'm so. Mildly grumpy. Well, I'll go with that. I'll go with that. And I have met John C. Dvorak in person and had drinks with him a couple times.

And the grumpy is kind of an act, I think. I think that's his shtick. But he is too grumpy on the air and I can't listen to his show. But he's a nice guy in person, and I think he bought a couple rounds one time at Locker Gnome Conference way back in the 90s.

Locker Gnome 2. I actually got some good pictures of him on stage, too. I should dig those up. All right. CS Lovebug writes, grumpy? Check. Geeky? Check. This is an awesome podcast. It fills my morning commute with sarcasm and cutting-edge technology. What more could you ask for? I've been listening for almost a year and love it so much, I'm supporting them on Patreon.

Be one of the cool kids and listen to this snarky, hilarious duo. All right. Thank you, CS Lovebug. Thank you. And 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 slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review.

Just don't expect it to be read on the show if you posted it on Twitter. And Brian had some wine. So, and also, please, tell your friends. We really appreciate it. Closing shout-outs! We have some sad news again this week.

MASH actor David Ogden Steers has passed away at age 75. He was Major Charles Emerson Winchester III, my favorite character on that show. So, sad to hear that. I've been watching MASH quite a bit at night because it's one of the things that my DVR on and my Comcast piece of shit TV service actually records in its entirety.

So, this is sad news for me because I was just watching him the other night. Yeah, yeah. Too bad. It's a great show and he was great on it. So, also sad passing news but yet also somewhat hilarious and appropriate. The founder of Tower Records has died at age 92 while drinking whiskey and watching the Oscars.

Tower Records founder Russ Solomon died with a drink in his hand and a smart aleck remark on his lips. The swashbuckling visionary entrepreneur who built a global retailing empire and the most famous company in Sacramento history, this was written by the Sacramento Bee obviously, died of an apparent heart attack at 92.

Ironically, he was giving his opinion of what someone was wearing that he thought was ugly then asked his wife, Patty, to refill his whiskey. When she returned, he had died. Oh. Aw. Well, I would like to say that the Oscars killed him and not the whiskey. Yes, I think so. And if you have not seen the documentary about Tower Records called All Things Must Pass, I highly recommend you do so.

We'll have the link in the show notes. It is fantastic. I've been meaning to watch that and I forgot what it was called. I'm definitely going to watch that. Oh, definitely watch it, man. It's really good. So, until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG.

Toss us a buck a month and we'll love you forever. If you'd like to give a one-time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 250. That's 250. We made 250 of these damn things. Amazing. And from there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like.

Stay mildly grumpy, and we'll see you next time. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary, all in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.

With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com.