26: Sympathetic Belch Response

I got you. We are rolling, by the way, so maybe I'll keep that bit in.

Yeah, no, I think we have a new show title, Sympathetic Belchers. Sympathetic Belches. Let's go ahead and use that as the title because I'm starting to feel a bit weird about all our gray titles. Remember, it's Brown Hat SEO. Brown Hat SEO, yes. Okay. So back to real titles now.

And I definitely want to start out a huge, huge shout out to our boy David Teeter, who was in a hit-and-run accident in San Francisco last night. Yeah, didn't look good. No, and his girlfriend might have a broken leg. It's not good.

They were on Polk Street in San Francisco and hit-and-run just walking because they're, I mean, they're prolific walkers, so it's a real bummer. I'm going to send some flowers. Yeah. Bourbon is probably more appreciated. I hope you guys are okay. We'll keep in touch and follow up with you guys.

Absolutely. It's just, I mean, that's one of the things about San Francisco walking is there's just idiots out there. Hey, I live in Venice. Yeah. Yeah, you know it too. I know it too. So be careful when you're using your moves apps out there, people. Or stop texting and driving, which is... Or, you know, don't have a Prius.

Yeah, I wonder what kind of car they got hit by. I need to talk to them for sure. So our thoughts are with you. So get with you soon, god damn it. Definitely. So the Oyster thing we talked about last time, I got in. I got in. I got my invite as well.

I bought it. I did not. I'm using it. I am not. It's interesting because they say they have over 100,000 titles, but I could only find like 500. Their interface is not good for discovery at this point. Well, the first thing is they make you pick five books before you can even get in.

Yeah, I got that far in the sign-up process, and then I was like, I'm not really digging where they're going with this. And it was really hard because most of the books kind of sucked. Yeah, I saw a lot of things that I'd already read or things that I had absolutely no interest in reading whatsoever. Yeah. And there was actually a lot of what really surprised me is open copyright books, you know, old stuff. Very old.

Yeah, a little super easy stuff for them to go out and grab just to build up their database when launching. Project Gutenberg, basically, is what they did. Yeah, exactly. And if you don't know what Project Gutenberg is, look it up because there's tons and tons of free books that you should have read in junior high that you probably didn't.

The interface is – just the reading interface is bothering me a bunch because it's one of those ones where you have to – you scroll up, not sideways. Oh, God. You know, like now I'm used to EPUB and Mobi and all that stuff with Kindle and the iBooks reader.

Yeah. You swipe from right to left. As if it were a book. Yes, this is – this is – no. You've got to scroll up. And it's – since it is iPhone only at this point, I mean, it looks kind of okay on my iPad mini if you 2X it and the text still stays pretty nice.

But that scrolling up thing is just obnoxious. And it – but the nice thing is it does give you – in the sidebar, it gives you a percentage of where you're at in the book. And in the chapters, it tells you how many pages left you have until the end of the chapter. Well, that's kind of nice.

Yeah. We'll talk about the book that I'm reading in the other segment. But this book that it has – it's – I don't know. It's kind of like a bunch of blog posts that are compiled into a book. So they're very short. So there's about 200 chapters in this book.

So I get through the chapters pretty fast. So it's kind of nice to see if it's like long or short. I'm guessing it will be better for different books. But yeah. Yeah, I guess – I mean, I haven't – I didn't get that far in the sign-up process. And I ultimately decided not to do it, but more for philosophical reasons than anything else.

I mean, I do – I'm bothered by the fact that it's only an iPhone version, not an iPad version. I mean, obviously, you can do what you do, which is the two times and all that. But I just – I don't like that. But I also just – having kind of somewhat unwillingly participated in the decline and fall of the recording industry, I see this as a similar thing for the already-on-the-ropes publishing industry.

And I just can't – until I actually see how they're handling royalties and how people are being paid, which there's nothing online about, I can't – I won't sign up. I want to know how people are getting paid, how writers are getting paid, how publishing houses are getting paid. Unless that happens, I won't sign up.

Okay. Now, here's a question for you. You're a Netflix subscriber. No, I'm not, actually. I was for a long time, and then I quit. Okay. But did you quit on philosophical reasons, or did you quit just because there was nothing left to watch? A little bit of both. Okay. Yeah. You know, I have the same – I don't like the lack of transparency involved in all these subscription services.

Okay. Fair point. And I'm putting my money where my mouth is or not putting money where other people's mouths are until I know what's happening. Okay. Well, I don't know anybody who's on the – was it Random House?

Hooten Mifflin Harcourt. I remember them from my high school textbooks. Right. Hooten Mifflin. Hooten. Hooten. Harper Collins. Oh, Harper Collins is on there. I think I might know some authors on Harper Collins. I can shout out to them and say – Yeah, it'd be really interesting. I mean, I'm also – I think I might write an email to the Oyster guys and see if they'd want to come on and talk about it because I'd be – you know, this is a prime podcast for them.

But it would be interesting. I mean, I just – I want to know what's going on financially with this stuff, if they even know. I mean, obviously, right now at this point, it's like mostly Gutenberg stuff, so they don't have to pay anyone. Pretty early days. Yeah. But like I said, the interface annoys me.

Oh, this is the one thing that really pissed me off. It's supposed to be very social, so people know what you're reading. You can get your friends and all that crap, you know, all the built-in social bullshit that everybody's trying to bake in. But it's on by default. Everything I'm saying is public. That's messed up.

You should – it should be off by default. Absolutely. Jesus, it drives me nuts when I found that out. Yeah, and I was reading what you wrote about it, and it seems like it's quite a convoluted process to actually switch anything off. Yeah. It's – you have to go in, and it's on a book-by-book basis.

And I've already got the book in my library, so does it already – so if I get a bunch of books and I have them on the back burner, can people just go look and see what's in my bookshelf? And are the books there that I don't want people to know that I'm reading? I mean, granted, I'm not reading anything on there because there's nothing there to read yet. But, you know, like one day, who knows?

Maybe I'll read Fifty Shades of Grey, but I wouldn't tell anybody about it, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's kind of funny because we were bitching about how, like, the Kindle app didn't really have the social stuff kind of sorted out. And they're kind of working their way there, but these guys just went the exact opposite direction. Yeah, complete other end of the spectrum.

Way too much. Yeah. And it's bullshit. It really is bullshit. Yeah, I agree. I remember that going in. All you developers out there, privacy by default, share by choice. Thank you. Oh, speaking of sharing, man, this Facebook thing is still, it's driving me nutty.

When I make a post now, I can see, like, the reach. The reach is not as many friends or followers as I have. And I have to pay Facebook now to boost a post, which is extortion. That's been going on for over a year now, Jason.

Well, now that I'm looking at numbers and have things to promote, I actually pay attention to it, so I may be a little behind the curve here. But Jesus Christ, that is just flat-out extortion, period. Oh, well over about a year ago, they switched the algorithm on that.

I mean, I run a bunch of client Facebook business pages, and yeah, if you make a post now, you're lucky to get maybe 10% of the people that are actively following you, unless you pay. So it's, as I've mentioned to a bunch of my clients, you know, this whole concept of you don't need your own website anymore, you can use all these free services, bullshit.

Facebook pretty much made itself completely irrelevant to any brand, really, but specifically for me, bands. People just are not seeing your updates anymore. Yeah. I mean, on Twitter, everybody just ignores them. And here... Well, and Twitter just gets lost in the feed, too.

It just goes by so fast, depending on how many people you follow. But yeah, on Facebook, no. You can scroll through your entire timeline, and you'll not see a bunch of things that you liked. Yeah. I mean, it does come back to the news versus most recent debacle, where they're picking and choosing for you.

That goes back to, I think, episode one, Jesus, when I was talking about the algorithmically sorted stuff. But it's like, man, even if I go to most recent, I'm missing stuff, because Jesus, I missed the thing about Teeter. You had to tell me about it today, because it didn't show up in my damn timeline. Yeah, it's not just...

So, I just had a massive system crash. I think my desktop just bit it. It sounds like... I think it might be the power supply. Ooh, I think maybe Mark Zuckerberg was listening to us back on Facebook, and he sent in his minions. Zuckerberg! Yeah, probably.

I don't know. So, it's dead. I'm just going to let it sit for a while, because sometimes these things have a habit of, like, in two hours, if I plug it back in, it'll just boot up normally. Who knows? In the meantime, pro tip number one, never keep important documents on your actual drives in your computers anymore. I have everything saved on an external drive that's connected, so I can actually still access absolutely everything I would need for work or personal items.

Oh, good call. Do you back up the external drive? I do. I do. I back up the external drive regularly. Usually, I try to remember before I travel, or... It's actually one of those dual drive things, too. So, like, there's two drives in there, and they supposedly mirror each other, so you always have a backup.

Okay. So... Well, sorry to hear about your PC. It's okay. It might be that push to get me over to the Mac, but I doubt it. Well, we can only hope. We can only hope. So, apologies if the audio quality on this flip-flops a little bit, because I fortunately saved the first portion of the show, and his is melted, so we'll...

Yes. All apologies there. We'll figure it out. So, technology problems continue to plague the grumpy old geeks this week. No doubt. No doubt about that. Oh, there was one other thing I wanted to mention. Oh, I got my iPhone! Woo-hoo! You stood in line like an idiot? No, I didn't stand in line like an idiot.

I stood in line like a smart person. I got there... Shit, what did I get there? About half an hour before the store opened, so I got there at 7.30, which isn't very long. By the time I got into the store, it was 8.30.

Okay. Not bad, right? Walk out of there, 8.38, I think, so... Okay, not bad, but let's also mention, where were you? In Bopunk, Pennsylvania. Okay, just checking.

It might be a little bit of an important point there, because the news reports for the lines in LA, New York, etc. were kind of frightening. Yeah, no, this was... I think that... Here's the great part about this one. I got there, like I said, a half hour before, and they come through with the book of stickers and the little cards.

I actually posted a picture on Instagram of my card. They ask you what you want, and they flip through their book, and they see if they have any more, and they put the sticker on it, and they hand you the card, and then when you go in, you just hand them the card, and Bob's your uncle. Good deal. I got the single last 32 gig, because I wouldn't go anywhere more than a 32 gig.

I would have preferred a 64, but 64s were just gone, like, 10 seconds. So I got the last gray 32 gig AT&T phone, and everybody behind me, they're like, all we got is left is 16, and the line disappeared. And the funny part was, is, I mean, the door was open for three minutes, and they walked out and said, we've got no white, we've got no champagne, we've just got gray.

That's it. So their stock was ridiculously low, and not a single person that was there bought a 5C. Nobody cared about the color, they were just there for the S's, because you figured the 5C people could pre-order if they wanted to. But yeah, and it was funny, because when you looked at the box for the 5S, because they had them all on the counter behind the checkout, the 5C comes in the standard iPhone box, which

is, you know, big and thick and really hard to open, took me five minutes to get the damn thing open. 5Cs were wrapped like cheap iPods. I mean, they were like a little case, it just looked like a disposable, you know? Yeah. I thought that was kind of interesting, but man, I love this phone.

I love this phone. Well, I think we haven't talked about iOS 7 and the phones, so I'll get into that a little bit later in the podcast. Follow up. Man, Dan, the camera is nice on this thing. It is so nice. Follow up. I went to the racetrack later in the day and took some horse racing finish line slow motion photography, or slow motion movie stuff, and man, it's really cool.

Excellent. I'm still happy with my 5, so no need for me to update. I'm coming from a 4S, so this is like, this is space age for me, and I think I'm going to stay on the S schedule, because, you know, I don't have any of the problems with the first gen phone. Everything's sorted out by the second, and everybody that has the first gen, like the 4s or the 5s, are all like, damn, I can't upgrade.

I'm like, yeah, buddy. So I think I'm going to stay on that S cycle. That's probably smart, but I'm a little screwed for that, unless I wait super long for the 6S. Or pay a bunch of money. But not too into that. I was wondering, like, now they have those family plans, so I'm thinking maybe I'll just always have two phones going forward and then just, you know, rotate.

Yeah, you could do that. Yeah. Because you can still get the subsidized price for the second phone in the family. You know? I think that might work out. I do think that might work out. And contrary to popular belief and all the crap people were saying on the internets, I have unlimited data on my 5s.

I got grandfathered in with my unlimited data plan for 30 bucks a month. Verizon did not let us do that. So, good. Yep. And I mean, granted, if I get tethering, then I'm screwed. Then it jumps down to 2 gig. But forget that. I'm just going to keep it like this because the LTEs are damn fast.

I just do everything on the phone. But man, yeah, I was amazed that I still got my own thing. Hold on to that as long as you can. That's pretty amazing. Well, considering I got it with my iPhone 1, I've been keeping on with it for quite some time. Cool, man.

Well, I'm sorry about your computer. We'll see what happens with that later. I'm sure there'll be a follow-up next week. Well, hopefully there will be a follow-up from your shiny Mac that you have decided to always use from now. We'll see. So, this has been going around.

It's not really news, but it's kind of one of those little viral things. It's the Louis C.K. bit on Conan about cell phones. Yeah. I saw that. Yeah. Yeah. And this goes back to what we just talked about with Dr. Teeter and his girlfriend getting hit by a car.

Yes. So, I would bet that somebody was texting and driving. But, man, this video is a beautiful sentiment on how we've lost interpersonal communications and how it's screwing up people by not looking in the eyes and being empathetic.

And it's funny as hell, too, because I love Louis. It is pretty funny. Actually, I totally agree with all those points. But the one that really stood out for me is the idea that nobody is ever alone anymore and how important it can be to be alone. And I think my takeaway from it was you have to experience sadness to feel happiness.

You know? There's the yin and the yang. There's the push and the pull. Yeah. And it's true. Constantly getting those endorphins shot into you because you got that new text or people are responding to you or you got some likes on your Facebook status. You don't really have the time to get that emptiness. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm alone all the damn time.

So that part didn't – I got no problem with that. Well, no, no. I mean, I think his point being there's being alone and then there's even just the, you know, you're getting a text message or you're connected on social networks, which isn't real interpersonal communications, but it's still – it's not alone.

You're not, like, just completely, like, cut off and there's no input and it's just you sitting with your feelings and your sadness. Well, I've spent the last three and a half days sitting alone with my sadness because we had no internet or television. So you should be well-rounded and be able to enjoy true happiness right now, Jason.

I am so happy. I'm, like, glowing. I'm, like, the Buddha right now. Well, let me tell you who isn't experiencing happiness. BlackBerry. Nice segue. I thought that was pretty good. Yeah, BlackBerry is finally officially dead. They're cutting 40% of their workforce.

They've also – I just saw a news article right before we started to record that apparently for whatever reason they were planning on pushing out their BBM on iOS and that's been pushed back now and it's not going to happen. Not that anybody gave a shit anyways. They're done. They're dead. They're over. It kind of sucks because certainly they were a big deal for Canada.

The entire city of Waterloo was basically employed by them. So that's a lot of people in the unemployment lines. Oh, that sucks. Yeah, so it's a bit of a drag, but, I mean, BlackBerry really has nobody to blame but themselves. Yeah, I mean – I was a huge fan.

I was a huge fan of BlackBerry a long time ago before I got my iPhone and realized that this is what a phone should actually be, so. Yeah, I had one BlackBerry and I really liked it. Back in the days of the physical keyboard, it was decent. I wasn't, like, over the moon about it.

I, like, I dumped mine and got a Motorola Razr, which was way better, I thought, because it was more Star Trek-y. I would read this article right now, but I can't because I've reached the limit of 10 free articles a month on the New York Times. Wow. I have to pay them now to continue reading.

Well. I wonder if they understand how the DOM works and this really stupid thing that they've done is basically just a CSS trick that covers up the article that I could end around in about 10 seconds being in the inspector, so. Yeah.

Well, you know, a lot of people don't get that sort of stuff. That actually reminds me – God, this was probably about 10 years ago now. I got a ticket, a driving ticket. I don't even remember what it was for or whatever, but I had to – you know, you have to do the – go to the DMV and take the class, except at that point in time, they offered online classes.

And what they didn't realize is that, you know, they basically put a simple timer on every page so you would have to sit there for so long. I would just save off the page, go walk off, go do whatever, come back, save off the next page, go about my day, come back, save off the next page, and then you get the quiz at the end, and I just look through the source to get the answers.

Nice. Nicely done. Piece of cake. I'm sure they haven't updated that, so anybody that has to do the DMV class, do the online one. If you're reasonably tech savvy, it'll take you about, you know, five minutes spread out throughout the day. Yeah, and view source. Always view source. Always view source. Well, yeah, that's a bummer about BlackBerry, but it was coming.

Yeah, it was coming. I'm not really bummed out about BlackBerry per se. I'm just bummed out about yet another big tech company that employed a lot of people is going out as opposed to all these small startups that employ three or four people, make a couple million bucks, and then get out. Yeah, I mean, these are apples and oranges.

I mean, this is big business versus... One of my favorite people in the world is diving into crowdfunding, and it excites me and saddens me at the same time.

I had much the same reaction. This would be the movie Director's Cut by Penn Jillette and Adam Rifkin. He's looking for a million dollars to do his movie. And it's interesting because they put out a four-minute trailer talking about the project and doing a little bit of, you know, song and dance about the movie and what it's going to be.

And he says that, you know, he doesn't have that kind of money, which I find very interesting because they're looking for a million dollars. Yeah. And I can't imagine he doesn't have that kind of money considering he's been a staple on the Vegas Strip for how many years now?

Forever. Yeah. Forever. It's interesting. They're going for $999,972. Okay, that's, well, that's very Penn. Yes, I'm sure there's some significance to it, but they've only raised $270,000 so far, well, only, but they've raised $270,000, 42 days to go.

And they've got, it's one of those things where it just drives me nuts. They've got so many, what do you call them, add-ons, promotions, giveaways, goodies, incentives. That's the word. That's the word you're looking for. Yeah. I'm looking for incentives. Yeah, it's all the same kind of general stuff.

He'll record an answering machine message for you, private red card screenings, you know, VIP event Penn & Teller weekends, be a guest star on his podcast for $1,000. No, that'd be fun. I know. Some of them are kind of, some of them are actually kind of cool. The five, the, for the $535, you get the VIP Penn & Teller weekend, which actually is not bad when you think about it because they put you up in the rooms, you get tickets to the show, you get to hang out.

Yeah. That's actually not bad. If I had $535 to blow, I would actually do that one just to hang out with Penn and the $1,100 to be on his podcast, that'd be fun too. It would be fun. I don't know if he gets any traffic, but it'd be fun. Yeah, it'd be fun. I mean, I'm torn.

He did a big interview where he talked about how he tried to go through the studio system, but no studio will touch him and fund him to make a movie. I totally get that. I'd always said that, you know, I get people going to Kickstarter with their own crazy projects that nobody else would ever possibly fund.

The thing is, you know, I'm looking at his $3,500 incentive, which is the private hot tub party and tour of the Slammer. That Slammer, that house that he built, which is so over the top and crazy, that thing costs well over a couple million bucks. So you don't have a million to fund your own movie still?

I don't know. Well, you know, rich people don't pay for things themselves. That's why they're still rich. And that is my problem with the Kickstarter. It's rich people who don't want to put their own money where their mouth is about their own projects. So, again, still no profit sharing incentives, which is what you should be getting if you're funding something.

That's still a regulatory and legal issue. Yeah. You know, for the $11,000, you could be the executive producer of the director's cut. But from what I remember, executive producers get points. That they do. That they do. I'm just saying. Well, and here's the thing.

And also, you can be in the movie. So do you have to get a SAG card to do that? Do you have to be like, you know, get scale? You should. That type of thing? You should. Yeah. You have to be a member of the union if you're in the movie. So I don't get how that works either. But that only goes for speaking rules, right? Oh, I suppose so.

If you're a corpse, you're dead. So, yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Do grunts and groans if you're a zombie counter. I guess I'm probably not because then The Walking Dead would probably never have gotten made. Good point. Yeah. I don't know. I'm a huge fan of Penn.

I think he's a smart guy. I thought he got robbed on Celebrity Apprentice just because he came out against Donald Trump and Donald Trump's a prick. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I'm not – I don't know. Like I said, I'm on the fence because some of these incentives are just so – they'd be really fun to go hang out with Penn.

Yeah. I'm a big fan of Penn. I'm not really into the concept of the movie, so I wouldn't fund this anyways. I love Penn. I love Bullshit. It was one of my favorite TV shows. His podcast is fun. I like his books. He's a smart, smart, smart motherfucker. He's very smart.

But I'm not really into the fiction idea that he's pushing. I'm not into the movie, so I would never fund this. And I still have the ongoing issues that I have about all celebrities who have a lot of money doing this. But he's smart, and it's the smart way to do it.

Yeah. At its core, it is what it is. It's a celebrity panhandling. So sorry, Penn. No. No go. Speaking of one of our other semi-celebrities that we did both fund, Panhandling, Zane Lamprey has got his show up and running.

He's shot a few episodes already. I've watched some of the behind-the-scenes clips. It seems very funny. Yes, as have I. Yeah. And you got the note this morning, or yesterday, I take it, saying that, oh, yeah, we're still working on all those incentives.

Your T-shirt will be there sometime. Yeah, I did get that. I had a good chuckle. Well, it's what you expect. It's Kickstarter, again. It's leaping in before you have things in place. It's the fact that him and his small staff that he's put together to kind of shoehorn this and get this thing done, they've never dealt with merchandise before and delivery and doing the research and vetting the different merch companies

and knowing how to produce T-shirts and all the things that would be in place if this were a real project as opposed to a Kickstarter. Delivery issues, inventory issues, quality control issues. All of these things happen because all these people who are doing Kickstarter have no idea what they're doing except for the base thing that they were trying to do.

And as we discovered, not even always with that. People put up projects they don't even know how to do. So, you know, I like Zane. The show looks like it's going to be pretty funny. I'm bummed that I still don't have my T-shirt, but I never really expected it. I actually would be surprised if it ever shows up.

So I expect my T-shirt and I want my damn T-shirt and I demand my goddamn T-shirt. I agree. I agree. We paid for it. That was the incentive, right? Yeah. And to Zane's defense, I have bought merch from him before from the old three-sheets store.

I had my Pleplius hoodie for many, many years. I finally threw it away because it was just – it was getting embarrassing. But they had shipping issues because they were very particular about quality. So this at least – the fact that they've gone back and are dealing with quality issues makes me happy.

But it's still stupid. They should have known this shit from making T-shirts before. Come on, guys. Yeah, I agree. And I had the Pleplius shirt too and it was very high quality. The hat, not so much. That was a piece of crap. I had the hoodie. I had the hoodie. Nice. I loved my hoodie. So that's it.

I got no more craziness on Kickstarter this week. Yeah, nothing crazy fun. Just more – iPhone cases. Lots of iPhone cases. Lots of iPhone cases out there. That's true. Stop making iPhone cases on Kickstarter, people, please. Thank you. No, seriously?

Are you shitting me? My mom is looking to get a new TV, right? Okay. She was doing some pricing. And she goes to the Amazon and then she goes to the big box stores like Walmart and Costco.

Costco and whoever else is at Best Buy, whatever, just to get pricing. Yeah. Took her 25 minutes to get one price from one store. Everybody wants you to log in and put it in your cart. Yeah. And you have to get to the last stage of checkout before they tell you how much it is.

This is some of the most unfriendly and combative user experience stuff I've ever seen. I haven't – I've never experienced it because I don't buy TVs online. But now that I get – I get to be a fly on the wall while she was doing this process.

Yeah. And I was flabbergasted. I'm like, how – nobody's going to sell a TV online with this kind of, you know, just bullshit UX. Well, it's – there's a method for their madness or certainly a reason, especially for the more high-ticket items.

I mean, there's – these are big market – big markup items for them. They're making a lot of money off them. And we talked about this a little bit with Amazon and Oyster a couple of weeks back, I think. Amazon has the best bot in the world that just goes out and grabs prices so that they are always slightly undercutting the best price out there.

And that's why these sites are doing this sort of stuff. They're obfuscating the prices as much as possible so that bots can't go out there and so, you know, the competitor's site doesn't beat you by $1.50. You know, and that's the funny thing because that's exactly what I told her.

I'm like, it's a bot reduction methodology. But, you know, a good bot writer can just create a – create another bot. But, yeah, it's terrible for the consumer because what she ended up doing was just saying, no, I'm not going to shop at any site that's going to require her to – Register.

Create an account to just get a price. Yeah, to just get a price. It's ridiculous. I mean it's bot wars to begin with but certainly like I used to use – was it CNET.com back in the day that had their buyer's guide and then they would pull in the top like 20 prices from reputable online sellers and I would just buy from the one that had the cheapest price.

Yeah, it was CNET, CNET, so you're thinking of. And I would never go for exactly the cheapest price. I would go for a mix of cheapest price and highest rating, like find a middle sweet spot. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, you read the reviews on shipping and how long it takes them to get stuff to you and whether it shows up.

Yeah, that's minutia. But the fact that these people are – these companies are doing this right now is just shooting themselves in the face. I mean she would have bought a TV from Walmart.com if they would have given her a price, period. And now she's going to go down the street and go to Best Buy.

Yeah. She's not going to go to Walmart. This isn't just a big box store policy though. I mean all those sites that we've been talking about recently, those curated sites that we like, you know, where we got like the charger sticks from or, you know, fab.com and all those. They don't even let you browse the site unless you sign up for an account with them.

Yeah, and it's just stupid. I mean it's getting greedy. Basically they want your email address so they can upsell you and resell you and put you on the newsletter and sell your game. And they don't even realize that like the statistics on mailing lists are just – nobody reads your mailings ever.

That is absolutely untrue. Well, most of them go into junk folders. Well, with the big change from Gmail going to their tab system, there have been – there's been a huge decline in open rates. But email lists are a huge moneymaker for just about everybody who runs one.

Right. I'm surprised by that. I was surprised too and then I did some more research into it and it's still a major driver of commerce big time because it drives awareness. I mean I still – when I get emails and most of the time I'll just swipe them off and throw them away.

But a lot of times I'll just pick something up and I'm bored and I'm like, oh, let's see what they got to sell. Take a look at the site. I'll end up – yeah, I'll end up diving in and it usually won't be the thing that they sent me but I might see something new and buy something. Yeah. It's a marketing factor that is very well monetized by these people.

Well, it must work because every site is starting to go that way. So you got to sign up first and then you can actually see what they got or at least the prices. Yeah. I will not be doing that. I just want them to stop. This is not the way it's supposed to be. It's not.

No, it's not. It's supposed to have a website. You're supposed to browse it. It's not these little private clubs and all these little walled gardens of bullshit. Stop it. Good luck with that. I'd say maybe that's a new title, walled gardens of bullshit. Oh, that's a good title actually. I like that. I don't know if it will get past the iTunes sensors.

Damn it. iTunes and their stupid walled garden of bullshit. Oh, meta. Welcome to this week in shit we put on our computers. I just – what? I don't know. Tuesday it came out, installed iOS 7 on my phone and my two iPads.

I waited for the supposed final release and it is the final release but my first thought is, is this final? Not really. Yeah, I didn't think so. Work in progress. It's definitely a work in progress. Jobs is probably spinning in his grave right now because there's no way he would have let this out the way it is.

I don't know. I think – I mean I like it. I've been working with it for months. Trust me, if you go find another iPhone that has the old OS on it after about a week of using 7, you'll be like, ew. Trust me. Trust me. It's definitely – it's faster. I like a lot of the improvements they made in terms of – I love the upswipe for the control panel.

The control panel is fantastic. But it's so ugly. It's not. That's the thing. It's minimalist. It's gray and boring and then everything else is pastel and cutesy. Which parts are gray and boring?

Control panel. Swipe up. Yeah. You know what? It's adaptive to whatever your background is. Oh, is that what we're calling gray and boring now? Adaptive? Well, what's your background color? Black? No, I'm using one of those stupid animated ones because I just figured, let's see what that's like.

And it's all nice and pretty for about 10 seconds and then it's just stupid. Yeah. No, it's translucent so it takes on the characteristics of what's behind it. I don't know. To me, I don't like the look. I don't like the aesthetic. I'm not a fan.

I like the old one better. This feels like a toy to me now. But it runs a lot better. I will give you that. It is more powerful. It is faster. I just think that the UI people and the graphics designers need to be taken out and shot. Yeah, I thought that, like I said, for the first week and then after the week was up, I was just like, I'm in.

Well, it's like what we all do. Every time Facebook rolls out a change, we all bitch about it for a month and then we're just used to it. I just gave up on bitching about Facebook. Oh, wait. No, I already did that on this episode. Yeah, I was about to say that did happen. And that comes to my other frustration, which is, I mean, at least people are staying employed.

We have a lot of UI designers that are staying employed because as the updates are now rolling out for all the apps, everybody is just moving buttons for no reason. Well, no, they're switching to basic UI kit. You know, it's UI kit changes to make it iOS 7 compatible.

So everything looks the same. And I'm happy they're doing it because I don't like the old keyboards anymore. I like the new keyboards. I'm a huge fan. I don't know what everybody's pissed off about. I love the new updates. I've been waiting for the updates for months because I've had this OS for months and nobody could release the updates.

Now the updates are here and I'm like, woohoo. Yeah, okay. Maybe I just need to get used to it. I still just, I don't care much for the visuals on it. It is running better. Almost every app that I have is faster, quicker, stronger. Definitely.

There's a $6 million man of OS upgrades. So what do you want? Okay. So tell me about the, why, tell me about why I should be scared about installing 7.01. Oh my God. Yeah. I did the 7.01 update. I'm trying to find the app that I want to pimp here.

The 7.01 update came out like that night that I got my phone and I'm like, oh, that was quick. So I did the update and as soon as it came back up, it restarted, did the whole nine yards and it came back up and it's like, gives you the hello screen from a brand new phone.

Right. Which is, I've never had an OS update, like an over the air update that has basically reverted the phone to willkommen, you know, bienvenido or whatever. And asked you to input your, your, your iCloud username, your, basically your iTunes account again, pick a Wi-Fi network.

And by the third screen, I'm like, just, I'm like, oh my God, is it gone? And then it just went in as normal. Well, that's good to know. Actually, that would have freaked me out too. So I'll probably do the update later. Yeah. When you do the 7.01 update, I haven't, it hasn't come from my iPad yet.

So, which is interesting. So yeah. And my, my 4S is on its way to Gazelle right now. So I, I, I, Oh, you gazelled it. I gazelled it. I gazelled that in an old, uh, I had a really nice iPod touch that was one gen out of the, the loop for the iOS 7 update.

So if it, if it, if it can't run iOS 7, it's not worth anything to me anymore because that was a test device. I've still got, I've still got one of those sitting around. I should probably put that in. Although I checked, uh, when I was getting rid of a previous phone, I checked Gazelle and then I checked Amazon's buyback program. And as long as you actually take Amazon, uh, an Amazon basically gift certificate instead of cash, they give you a really good deal.

And since I buy so much stuff off Amazon, I just went with that. It was a lot, it was a lot better pricing than Gazelle was giving. Yeah. I got 187 for my 4S and I got 80 bucks for the, um, the iPod touch. Oh, cool. So that's, that's, you know, that's a hotel night and some gas money for my trip across the country.

So I'm, I'm down with it. It's easier than having to go to, I mean, I know friends that do Craigslist and they spend, you know, a couple of days on there and they'll make twice as much. I just don't have the time, my time, my time is limited right now because my location is fluid. That's just true.

So getting back to iOS seven and my disdain for the design and, and somebody actually did mention to me, I didn't expect I'd have a windows eight phone even anyways, which is kind of how some of it feels. Um, I, I think you mentioned this when you installed the previous, uh, or one of the early adopter updates.

Um, why, why, why, why, why, why do we switch the direction of swiping for delete? I think it's more natural. I mean, if you're a righty, it's more natural. Or if you haven't been doing it one way for seven years now. Well, here's the one thing that's, it's killing me.

The, um, I have the fingerprint updater thing now, the, you know, the fingerprint scanner. Yeah. Um, yeah, I still swipe and type in my code because it's, it's habit. It's, it's definitely habit. Yeah. The, the swipe left thing will, that takes two weeks.

And then you'll never think about it again. It'll be natural. And I mean, granted, I also don't use their, uh, built in on the Mac thing, the, the inverted mouse scrolling. Oh yeah. I flip it back to the old school way because that's the way scrolling should work. So I see where people will get a little hung up on, on these changes, but ever since, ever since then it's, it's just become natural.

You'll get used to it. Thankfully, our brains still adapt because we're not completely old yet, but it is just the minor, small annoyances that I've just, uh, been going crazy about. And I actually do have one other question since, since I've kind of felt like this was feeling almost windows eight anyways. And I was thinking about, uh, you know, other kind of mobile operating systems and tablets and whatnot, and, and kind of just how we use tablets.

Is there any other reason other than Apple wants us to buy three or four iPads for a household that there aren't separate user accounts for iPads? You know, this has been going on since day one with the iPad and everybody's complained about it.

Everybody wants it. It makes sense. That's just the nature of how a tablet is used. It's passed around people. I, I certainly in my household, it gets passed around and to not have that option, especially at this point when they spend obviously so much time on this, on this iOS upgrade is there's no other reason other than then please buy five of our iPads.

I think it comes down to Ram. I really do. Really? I think it comes down to having enough memory to run multiple instances with apps running in one account versus another account. You know, I'm sure they could do something with paging and, and, and, and be very, be very clever about it.

But like the first iPad came out, it had almost no Ram in a damn thing and they're getting better now. But I mean, I think it's the limitations of the device that, that dictate that. I mean, everybody wants a damn user account cause I want to hand my iPad to other people, but I want them to be able to just with one click, go into my, check my email, you know, or see, see my bookmarks or whatever.

Yeah, exactly. It's privacy, you know, basic human privacy. Oh, that doesn't exist anymore. We know that. No. So I do have one app that I wanted to talk about last week, which is, well, I've been doing this crazy test with all of the iPad writing apps because I'm trying to get back into writing and I've always thought the iPad was going to be the thing for me to write more.

And it just hasn't been because I haven't found any apps that I really love to write in. The ones that I have on here now, I've got this new one called editorial. I've got IA writer, which is an old one. Ohm writer, which is very Zen with the worst keyboard in the world.

Drafts, which is not so much writing, but just doing quick text snippets. By word, which is an old staple in terminology. Terminology turns out is my favorite. Okay. They've got the best adapted keyboard. That's the thing. All of these all of these players always have like updates to the keyboard to make it more useful, which is great because these are things that should be built into the actual Apple keyboard.

Like being able to move your cursor with just a tap, like end of word, character by character, that kind of thing. Instead of having to press, get that stupid magnifying glass. It's like the worst UX on that thing. So terminology has the best one because it's basically made for writers.

The same guys that do drafts, too. So it's two text editors, but different use cases. But for writing long form, I like terminology. It, you know, saved a Dropbox. All of them saved a Dropbox, have hooks. Editorial is a crazy one because it's got all these workflows.

You can basically write Python scripts in the app. It's got a Python. It's got a Python interpreter. That's nice. I don't write Python, so I couldn't really care less. And all of them, I don't know what this thing is with Markdown. Markdown is that meta language that John Gruber wrote way back in the day to make it easier to write like basic HTML stuff.

It's like meta markup. And then everybody, all of these text editors are just, they got a hard on for Markdown. I couldn't give a shit about Markdown. I know how to write HTML. I use it the way I need it to work. Yeah. And I just see Markdown as just being lazy.

Honestly, I do. HTML, CSS, that's the lingua franca. So that's what I use. Exactly. I would like for every text app out there to have a pretend Markdown doesn't exist button and take away all of the crap, all of the, you know, the glitz, the glamour of whatever whatever real estate that they've wasted on my screen for Markdown that I'm never going to use.

I just want a button to say, go the fuck away. Go away. Yes. So that said, I like terminology. It is definitely my favorite writing app. It's nice and clean. They've updated now. So I think they've updated. I'm pretty sure they've everybody else is updated.

Oh, yeah. That was the thing. Ohm writer doesn't let you split the keyboard. Okay. Okay. If you're going to make your own. Oh, it's not terminology. It's phraseology. Phraseology. I am an idiot. Phraseology is a, it's a sister app.

It's basically a really nice dictionary. That's all. I'm sorry. My bad. Yeah. These guys even have the Markdown side, but no, they haven't updated yet, but they will. Ohm writer has one of those custom keyboards that plays sounds.

It's like, I can't stand it with, with background noise, like, oh, you know, like, yeah, I would throw my end through the window if I use that. Yeah. It's like any on Valium, but they won't let you split. If I can't split a keyboard, I can't use it because my, my thumbs just don't reach it.

Why they do reach. But after about a thousand words, the insides of your thumbs just get raw from reaching across. So I look, I look at the longterm aspect of, of good writing apps. I've been sitting there and using it a long time. Yeah. Yeah. So these people need to think of that stuff.

So that's it. Phraseology, not terminology. My bad. Phraseology, not terminology. And Ohm, the perfect editor to match your candy iOS 7. Pretty colors. Little library.

Woo. So my book this week is the one that I got from Oyster. Okay. Called, called this will make you smarter, new scientific concepts to improve your thinking. It's a book, which is, like I said before, a bunch of, I think blog posts.

Right. From edge.org, which is, you know, a place where really smart people hang out and talk about being smart, I guess. And they had a theme and the theme was about how the scientific, how science and scientific thinking can make everybody else in the world smarter.

So it's just, it's little, uh, short diatribes on what scientific thinking should be, uh, for the common man, I guess. Right. I'm about 50, I'm about 15% into it and I'm smarter.

It, it, it delivers. I mean, it completely delivers. It, it's very well written. These little posts are very well written by, you know, you got Richard Dawkins. Um, I don't know if Brian Eno's a thinker. I haven't gotten to his yet, but most of these people are professors, authors, scientists.

I'm sure Brian Eno's is great. Everything he does is great. Suck that Brian Eno, go for it. Um, but yeah, I mean, from everything that I've gotten to so far, I have not found one bad essay in the whole thing. And some of them are contradictory, which is great because you get to see, you know, you get to think about it.

I really am enjoying this book so far. It's by John Brockman. It came out February, uh, 2012. And so far my $10 for oyster is totally worth it. Totally worth it just for that. Yeah. And that's the nice thing about them not having books that I, I don't know is I, there's a little serendipity going on there.

I am forced to pick a book that I would not normally read, um, which I kind of like, I think it's kind of, kind of fun. So yeah, I guess there's that going for it. Um, I'm definitely going to read this book. I didn't know this was out there. I didn't even know what edge.org was until, uh, I saw this. So very cool stuff.

Um, very interesting and I, I like things that force me to think. So that's good. Yeah. This is, this is definitely a, a, a, uh, double thumbs up. If I had three, it would be three, but I've only got two.

Since we all have our nice shiny iOS seven updates now, um, Jason, you brought something to, to light on Facebook, which I wasn't aware of. And I immediately, uh, went and changed some settings, uh, and there's a simple, uh, ZDNet put out an article for privacy settings.

You should enable an iOS seven immediately. And unsurprisingly, of course, I, I've been screaming about this about Facebook for a long time. Anytime there's a rollout, they bury the most important things that are destroying your privacy way down in the settings. So there are some settings that you need to change right away in iOS seven.

Uh, it's all about, uh, their new location services and the way they've rolling out all this stuff that will basically track you absolutely everywhere you go. Send the information to Apple, send the information to partners, send the information to everybody. Okay. And on the four points that you should, uh, the settings that you should disable or enable, um, three of them are actually legacy settings.

So the status bar icon for location services, which lets you know if you're being actively tracked, passively tracked or not tracked, that's old, uh, diagnostics and usage, which you should always turn off. That's been in for several revisions of iOS, turn that off.

Um, location based I ads, same thing, turn it off. The new, the new one is the frequent locations feature, which basically builds up a location profile for you for everywhere you go. So then they can, they can kick, you know, send you ads, send you better content.

It's what they're saying is that it's part of the maps initiative to get maps better. Uh, I call BS on that. I just think they want to be able to sell you more lattes whenever you're by a Starbucks. Uh, also I went into the, um, the, the app store on, on the phone and they actually have an option in there now that says find popular app applications using your area.

Oh yeah. That was weird. Yeah. I really don't care. Location has nothing to do. I don't care what the douchebags around me use. Yeah. I don't care. It's going to be all Snapchat. I don't know. I haven't, I've never pressed it. I don't really care what people around me are using.

Cause I'm probably the, I, I'm going to sound like a douche here, but I'm probably the smartest person in my area. So anybody should, can look at my apps and they'll know what to go look at. But yeah, I'm in the back. It's what do you want? You know? So it's just a, it's just a good little article that tells you how to shut off some stuff that you really don't want to have on.

So read it, do it right away. Be done with it. Don't give Apple even more information about you. Oh, that's the last one. Uh, limit ad tracking and reset your advertising identifier because they used, everybody used to use UUID, which was the actual device ID that cannot be changed.

And then they put in an advertising identifier in the phone. Um, you can reset that. So old, old tracking sites will not track you anymore and just turn on limit ad tracking. All this stuff, we'll link it in the show notes. So check it out. Go do it. Yep.

I agree. And, uh, I also found another kind of simple primer. Uh, life hacker kind of put out a, how to make your entire internet life more secure article. Uh, you know, we've been talking about this for ages. We know that you can't ever, ever be secure anyways, but these are good, simple things.

And I know, you know, even if you look at the article and then you go through and read the comments, it's a bunch of smart people like us going this, none of this matters or there's better ways to do this. This is a kind of a no brainer. If you're not going to do anything at all, cause you're so lazy or you don't get it, at least do these. They're pretty simple to implement.

Uh, you know, it comes encrypting your email, which a lot of people probably aren't going to do, but it's relatively easy. Check conversations, uh, secure backups, file syncing, hiding your web traffic, just password manager, which everybody should be using the simple stuff that, that anybody can do that'll at least have a little bit of security in your life.

And I'm telling you right now, we talked about this last time, never surf the web or check your email from an admin account. I got a, I got a text this morning from my friend's brother. Uh, he's like, I called Comcast this morning to fix my computer and they refunded my $129 because they couldn't do it.

And he got hit with that, uh, the FBI lockout scam. Have you said, you know that one? Yeah. Yeah. Basically it's, it's ransomware. Um, and he was surfing from his admin account, so he can't just go in as another user or go in as admin and just kill that user account.

His machine is just hosed, uh, there, there are ways to, to fix it depending on the variant of malware, but he's right, right now he's sitting there tearing his hair out trying to find a hacker up in Chico, California. Good luck. Good luck there. Uh, who can fix his computer.

I'm like, dude, hope you had a backup. Yep. Pretty much. So yeah, it's just some simple steps. Everybody should read it. Even if you don't know what you're doing, just give it a, give it a read, implement something, anything, at least make an effort. People do something. And if you really want to like get into the, the deep dive and the bare bones stuff, check out Bruce Schneier's cryptogram newsletter.

It is hands down the place to go for all of the really like nerdy, nerdy stuff. Um, that's, that's where I get it. I read it. I don't know if you read it, but I do not, but, uh, I will be reading it now.

Yeah. You haven't been the tinfoil tinfoil hat kind of guy like I am. No, no. You, you get way more into it than I do. I have a certain, uh, sense of just resignation about everything. So there's only so far I'm going to go. And I figure, you know, at the end of the day, if I get screwed, I get screwed and it's my own damn fault and I'll take responsibility for it.

So. Okay. Well, there you go. After just telling people to protect themselves, you just say, fuck it. Okay. Well, no, I, I do a lot of the basic ones, not as many as I should, and I'm trying to get better about that too. But, uh, the deep dive down stuff just starts to really creep me out and make, you know, and as we've talked about and kicked around all the time here, uh, how much does it really matter?

They're going to get into your stuff. If somebody wants to get into your computer, they're getting into your computer. I mean, there's, there's basic defense against hackers who are trying to steal your money. There's also defense against governments trying to, you know, do other things as it will.

Yeah. Those are two different, you know, attack profiles. So everybody should worry about the hackers trying to steal your money when it comes to the government stuff. If you're doing bad stuff that the government is probably going to come after you for, you're probably not listening to this podcast.

Probably not. But everybody that's listening to this show is a target for people who want to steal their money. Period. Yeah. We all are. And just, you know, the basic protection stuff, go for that. But like the nerdy stuff definitely makes you want to grab the tinfoil and put a hat on.

But it's, it's also fun and interesting to watch because this is, you know, this is spy shit just playing out in front of us. This is amazingly interesting stuff. The fact that we can, we can watch this happen and read about it and learn about it. I love it. It fascinates the hell out of me.

That's why I love reading stuff on security. It, because it's, it's, you know, it's an, it's like chess. It's like watching these people play chess, but with, you know, national security at stake. Yeah, pretty much. So it's, it's, you know, John Grisham couldn't write half this shit, although I don't like John Grisham novels because I don't think he's very good.

That's an aside. But yeah, the, check out Bruce Schneier stuff if you're even remotely interested in it because it's, it's really fun. And he makes it accessible. He writes well. He does get, he does do some nerdy stuff, but you know, he is, he's a very accessible writer for basically everybody, I think.

Yeah, I agree. Cool. You got one more? Oh, that one was mine. I thought that was yours. Well, if nobody wants it, if nobody wants it, we must've been hacked. We must've been hacked. Yeah. We'll skip that one. Okay. It wasn't that interesting anyway, people.

No, it really wasn't. Moving on. Candy, candy, candy, candy. So I finally got actually a little bit excited about an album, which has not happened to me in a very long time. Avicii, which I don't even know if that's how it's pronounced because I used to be really super into the EDM scene.

Electronic dance music is, I don't even think it's called EDM anymore. That's how long it's been since I've been soaking in it. But he's got a new album out. And what I really like about what's happening here is we're starting to see a lot of kind of crossover, EDM really going mainstream, taking in other elements, combining things around.

Daft Punk did it in a way I don't like because I'm not a big disco fan, and that Daft Punk album was disco. But this has got some cool crossovers with blues, acoustic guitar, the big song that's kind of breaking out right now is called, what the hell is it called?

I can't remember the title. It's not very good. I'll play it in the background. But it's got the guy who wrote Man of Constant Sorrow from the great movie Oh Brother Where Art Thou, singing some really good guitar mixed in with some electronica. It's a great track. It's pumping.

It's interesting. There's another track on it that's kind of like Adele meets electronica. Really good stuff. Good crossover. I'm loving seeing what's happening with this stuff and how it's kind of hitting the mainstream. And I just like the whole album. A lot of the stuff is still really EDM.

So people who like that, he didn't like go out and just do a full on crossover album. He's got some really great tracks. He's a really good EDM guy anyways. He's been around for a while. Really good stuff. Can't recommend it enough. Really loving listening to it. Cool. I'll check it out.

I love that Man of Constant Sorrow song. You will love the song that he does with him. It feels like that, except it's got a little dance groove that will make you tap your foot. Okay. I like tapping my toes. Good stuff. Check it out. We're grumpy old geeks, right?

That's that we're going with the old, even though we're not that old. But we are old enough that certainly we have to think about our parents at this point, about dying, basically. What's going to happen? Planning for funerals? Do our parents have wills? I actually sat down and did a will for myself a while back, because we're no longer the invincible young pups that we once were.

This is true. This is true. And the world has kind of moved on a bit since before, as moving on means. So I've even thought about this with my parents, because my parents now have online accounts. Some of their bills are paid online automatically.

Some of, you know, all that sort of stuff. What happens if they pass away and I don't have any of their information? This has been a topic for about 10 years when it came to light when a suicide, basically a suicide in, I forget where it was, but his parents could not get into his accounts to read his email to basically backtrace what made him kill himself.

And it got into this whole legal argument with Yahoo, and Yahoo would not release it. And ever since then, it's been kind of a side topic in the digital realm, but it has never really come that much to the forefront. Like I said, it pops its head up every now and again, but it is definitely an issue what happens with your stuff when you're gone.

And so I ran across a little article, and it's kind of just, you know, it's your standard kind of list of, here's some things that you should keep in mind. And it's pretty good, and everybody should keep this in mind. And I actually do need to sit down with my parents and kind of go over, you don't want to write down your passwords, obviously, because that's stupid.

But we need some sort of way where I'm aware of how to get into my parents' accounts, what accounts they even have, how to shut them down, how to access things that need to be handled, how to remove billing, all these sorts of things that we all do online now that, you know, basically one or two people may have access to the information or even know that it exists.

Yeah, and this was actually something that I came up with a long time ago. I can't remember if we talked about this on the show. It's called Death Vault. Yes. And, I mean, granted, not the happiest name, but I was flying a lot, and I'm terribly nervous about flying.

So in my head, I'm going to die every time I step foot on a plane. And I ran a couple hundred servers for many clients at that point, and I'm like, I'm the only one that has root. What if I burn up in a fiery ball? That's going to be a giant inconvenience for these guys.

I should come up with something to fix that. Look at you thinking of others. And I came up with Death Vault. You know, it's a dead man switch, basically, where you have a timed check-in, a heartbeat, as it were. And I pitched it.

I was out drunk one night, and I pitched it to my buddy Kevin Rose, and he was like, oh, that's stupid. Don't do it. And in my head, I'm like, oh, okay, I didn't. Forget it. And I still have the domain. I actually commissioned a logo, and I still want to do it. But somebody stole the idea from me that was literally sitting at the bar behind us and told me, listen to me pitch him.

They went out and built it, and they didn't make a gazillion dollars. So I'm like, okay, well, then this idea is not going to fly. So I'm done. They did all my testing for me. Right. But we need this. I actually think that this should be something that is built into any social system where if you don't check in for a certain amount of time, if there needs to be a third-party key, something that's very secure where it's not about like anybody can just come in and check my stuff.

It's like if I'm no longer available type of thing. It gets really gray. It gets into gray area. I talked to Corey Doctorow about this in email when I was first doing the Death Vault stuff, and we went back and forth with how can you make it secure that it can't be hacked but it also can't be subpoenaable.

Like if I have your credentials for something happens to you, like the porn buddy type of system. If you die, I go to your house, and I throw away your porn. Yes. That kind of aspect of it because you don't want it to be subpoenaable.

If a law enforcement agency knows that I have your key, then they can subpoena me directly to give them your key. Well, it almost needs to be a new legal precedent and part of an official legal document, a legal will, as it were. You just – you pick a person, and they get access to all this stuff, which can't be touched in any other event except for death.

Well, there's also – yeah, there's that. There's also possible multi-party keys. So it takes two people or three people to combine a key to gain access to the knowledge base type of thing or whatever to get your 1Password file, as it were.

Pretty much, yeah. That kind of thing. So they can subpoena one person, but it's like a blind system where nobody knows who the other people are that have the keys, and then they get combined at the end. There's all sorts of fun stuff that you can think about this type of thing. Well, there's definitely a real market for a solution like this that's relatively easy to use because we're going to see this more and more.

It's just starting to be headlines now, but we're definitely – we're having generations of people right now that are using digital technologies, even though they're 80, 90, and they aren't going to be around forever. And all this stuff is – just kind of gets lost. And obviously, for obvious reasons, third-party companies can't give out information except to the person.

Yeah. And once you're dead, you're dead. You can't sign off on it. Exactly. There's – yeah, there definitely needs to be like a chain of custody type of scenario where it's like, okay, I'm dead. This is my next in line. Basically, when you sign up for a social media service, this is my next of kin.

We need a digital next of kin. Digital – well, I don't – it's not digital. It's meat next of kin. Who's actually out here in the real world? Yeah. There's a couple of ways to go about this, I think, and it's something that needs to be thought of some more.

And now I'm kind of interested in maybe resurrecting. I think we resurrect. No pun intended. Resurrect the death. No, I always thought – when he first told me, I thought it was a really good idea. And now it's more than – now more than ever, Jason. Yeah.

And I stopped kind of with the – there's a lot of pieces to make that work with encryption, end-to-end encryption. And is it in-flight – like pre-flight encryption? So you – anything that you send me that goes in the vault is already encrypted, and then once I get it, I re-encrypt it?

Right. You know, I don't want to – as the person who has somebody's data, I don't want to be in a position where I can read it. Yeah. So that was always the point was I don't have any access to anybody's data, period. Gotcha. And there are backup services that do this now.

You know, you have end-to-end encryption with that stuff. Maybe we make dead box. Dead box. Oh, God. That sounds like a goth chick. I think I dated her. Yeah. And here's the – this is my favorite part that – I was talking to a security guy.

He's like, okay, so I know you have a death vault account, and I know that that's where my documents are. What's stopping me from capturing you, torturing you to give me your password? Right. I'm like, let me think about this for a second. And I'm like, okay, well, we have multiple passwords. We have the standard password to let you into your account.

And we have the help, help, call the police. The second tier called, call the police. My favorite Ren and Stimpy episode. And the third one is, oh, the site's downright – as soon as you type in the password, it puts up a fake page that says, oh, the site's under maintenance right now.

Please try again later. And at that point, we've just wiped all your data, got the IP address, geolocated you, sent it off to the police. They're on their way and blasted it to all of your friends saying, Joe's in trouble. Go get him. Call the Marines. I just want to build a system that has that functionality just because I think it's cool.

It's cool. It is very cool. Well, it's definitely something to think about, and I think everybody should take a quick look at that article too because we don't like to think about it. But you got to. Yeah, you do. Yeah, and we'll build a cool system and make a lot of money maybe. Well, I will.

Well, you will. I'll just watch and poke fun at you while you do it. Okay. Holy jokes, out! And we're wrapping up another show. I personally had kind of a bit of a downer week, but I did run into something on the web that I'm not sure if it cheered me up or just made me realize how insignificant my personal trials and tribulations actually are.

So, putting time in perspective. This guy on the site, he's got waitbutwhy.com, and he's got a lot of interesting posts on there, but this one is the one that kind of caught me. Humans are good at a lot of things, but putting time in perspective is not one of them.

Very true. And he went through and made a bunch of infographics that showcase time, and it just really kind of cheered me up. I don't know why. Because you just realize how crazy some of these stats are and how little we actually really do comprehend time.

There's just great stuff in here. I mean, he goes like – he starts with like, here's the last 24 hours, and you see exactly how much of it is sleep versus being awake and having your coffee the last week. And how little the last 24 hours is in a week, year, century, an American's 30-year-old life so far, a long human life.

And then it gets ridiculous and goes to like the age of the universe, and we have serious problems when the universe ends and all that kind of stuff. It's just really fun to look at. It's really interesting, and he did it in a very clever way, and he's quite funny. So check it out. Yeah, this is kind of a riff on the opening of Cosmos by Carl Sagan, how he has the big grid, and then he shows the entirety of human history.

And it's literally like a pixel in this 15-by-25-foot grid of time. It's definitely – if you are a nihilist – If you are a nihilist, this is a very good look for – you will play 20 minutes, and you will be very cheerful.

I love it. It just caught my fancy. Did you read the comments? Because there are people in there that are literally like, this – exactly. This is my only nightmare. This is why I can't sleep at night. This is why trying is futile. Why, in the end, nothing matters anyway.

The only consolation is being able to see at least a sliver of the universe, even though as soon as I die, that won't matter, and nobody and nothing will be changed by that fact. It's like, oh, my God. No, people take this a little way too seriously.

I loved it for the little things like I was looking at the – he did a chart about the European colonization of the Americas. And you think about that stuff, you kind of have a rough idea of timeframes, you know, 1776 and all that sort of stuff. But the most interesting – I'm just going to read his exact comment.

He put a little box there, and he said, The most interesting takeaway here is that a lot of time passed between the first British settlers arriving in Jamestown and the end of the American Revolution, 169 years to be exact. That means that the beginning of the British colonies seemed as ancient to the forefathers as 1844 seems to us today.

That's just crazy. You would never think of that. Okay, I didn't hear a word you just said because this is the guy that wrote the Why Generation Why Yuppies Are Unhappy post that has been making a shitstorm around the – and I completely forgot to put this in the notes today to talk about it because this is just – it's a preposterous post.

So now I'm bummed because this guy made such a great post, and then he made such a stupid post. Can't all be winners, Jesus. Oh, they can't. They can't all be winners. We had our Ladyboy episode. What are you going to do? Oh, man. Who loves the Ladyboys?

Oh, yeah. Okay. No, I saw the Why episode too. That just seems like – that annoyed me, but whatever. Okay. The putting time in perspective, very good. Yeah, putting time in perspective is good. Here's the upside. The Why Generation Why Yuppie Gypsies is what they call them.

And it's that weird – Generation Y is that weird gap type of generation. Because I think we're both Gen Xers, aren't we? Yeah. Is that what we – Yeah, that's what we fall under, yeah. We like Winona Ryder. Oh, God. I love Winona Ryder. See, that's how you define a Gen Xer.

So the upside of him writing this article is the rebuttal that I posted on Facebook the other day. The link to the rebuttal. I'm going to put this in the show notes. Even if you don't read the original article, the rebuttal is worth reading just because this guy is so funny and vitriolic.

I'm sorry I'm unprepared for this. This totally shook me. I did not know this was coming. Okay. Check the show notes. This is a reason, people, this week to check the show notes. Grumpy Old Geeks.com slash 26. All right. Oh, that's what it was.

Wunderlist. Wunderlist. Okay. Sorry. Man, I'm so spacey. I'm so tired. I can't even say it. So when iOS 7 came out and everybody updated their apps, OmniFocus updated their app and they want to charge you another 20 bucks.

God damn it. I flipped my shit. I completely flipped my shit and I'm like my buddy Bobby Boucher, old coworker, a long time ago turned me on to Wunderlist, which is a free task manager.

They have a pro version and they do have pricing so they can make money. But the free version is great. And it is on iOS. It is on the Mac store. You can even get it for that shitty little Google phone that some people have. And it does exactly what all of the other paid apps that I pimped last week do.

And it does it in a very pretty way. So I have dropped things. I have dropped OmniFocus because they're greedy. Greedy bastards. You take a hundred and some of my dollars, I want updates. I'm sorry. I'm not going to spend 20 bucks again.

For your iPhone app. No, not at that kind of pricing. That's ridiculous. I don't mind giving you 99 cents if I paid $3.99. But no. Yeah, I pay 140 bucks. I want updates for life. That's it. Unless it's Photoshop. This is a to-do list app.

This is a to-do list app. Okay. I just want to put things in perspective here. This is not Photoshop. This does not have, you know, I cannot create a Weekly World News Bat Boy cover in my OmniFocus. In Photoshop, I can put my dog's head on my girlfriend's body and make something.

This is a list of texts. This is a sorted list of texts. Wow. I'm really concerned about how you spend your Saturday nights right now. Yeah. Well, I told you I got to get out of here. So, okay. Well, that's it. I'm going to check that out.

And check out the show notes because we got some rebuttals in there and some really good articles this week. All right, man. Speaking of to-do, I've got to go see about fixing my computer now. So, that'll be fun. Oh, man. I'm so sorry.

That's all right. It happens to all of us. It's my turn now. And follow-up from the opening notes, I just got a text from Dr. Teeter and they're banged up. His head and shoulder were hit really hard. And Chen, his girlfriend, who we love, we love you, Chen, and get well soon.

She has a concussion and a hairline fracture in her knee. Oof. Sorry, guys. Yeah. So sorry. But here's the upside. I'm totally going to kick their ass on my Fitbit numbers for the next couple weeks. You are a bastard. Wow.

Okay. On that note, see you next week. We'll see if Jason's still around or still has a friend. Keep up with the Grumpy Old Geeks on the web at GrumpyOldGeeks.com, on Facebook at Facebook.com slash Grumpy Old Geeks.

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