276: Perfectly Imperfect

This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by us, because we don't have any sponsors this week. So please, by all means, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Give us a buck a month and we'll love you forever. 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. Guten tag, Herr Brian. Yes, it is very early on Tuesday morning, the day after my pub trivia night. So a bit of follow up on the scooter situation here in Santa Monica, since it seems to be ground zero for everything that's happening all over the place.

Santa Monica scooter enforcement is apparently weekend only. Say what? They were out in force this weekend, giving out tickets and things like that. And as of Monday morning when I went out for my bike ride, nada. You know what you need? You need some cardboard cops. To just stick out there on the path. They're like pointing a speed gun at you.

You know what, though, that I don't think that would work because even the real cops are having a hard time stopping these people because they just blow past them and ignore them. Oh, it's pretty crazy. Like, I mean, it is a self-selecting sample. And obviously, some people do use the scooters for the intended purposes.

And I'm sure are very lovely people. But the vast majority of people in this area that are using them are just dicks. We should just go down and film some of that just because I want to see it. Okay. I'll get on that. And a lot of people don't believe us how bad it actually is, you know? Yeah, I know. So it's one of those things where I think we need to actually, like, hire a film crew and go down and actually document this.

I think there is some documentation coming up in our feedback loop because, you know, our lovely listeners send us everything I have to do with this. So we'll get to that. Awesome. In the news. In July, Jason, I rejoiced because New York City passed a law against Airbnb saying, you know, you guys, you got to give us the information on these people that are using your service because it's a source of income.

And, you know, we take money from that. That's how society works. Taxes, baby. Taxes. Yes, taxes. So some people, especially in New York City, where people had basically turned homes and apartments into de facto hotel rooms and weren't even living in them anymore. Airbnb slumlords, basically.

Yeah, basically Airbnb slumlords, which was driving up rent in the city. It was a decreasing available housing for people that actually wanted to live and work in the community, et cetera, et cetera. So it so it made sense and it was fair. And Airbnb got super butthurt about that, of course. So now they're filing suit against this law and they're saying, hey, you know what?

This is doing this is violating our users privacy and constitutional rights to which I say constitutional rights to not pay taxes on income because that seems to be the only thing that's getting violated here. And I wasn't aware that that was a constitutional right. Did not know that as well. Yes.

So for Airbnb, its ability to do business as usual in New York City, its largest U.S. market is at stake with this law because by the city's estimates, most of its listings, they're estimating two thirds of their listings are illegal listings. Motherfuckers. Yeah.

So we'll keep an eye on this one. It's pretty crazy. We've talked a lot in the past about the different approaches to homeland security and customs and border protection and what's happening when we cross the borders, especially with our phones. A woman, Rehani Lazuja, I believe is her name, is now suing border agents to make them return the data they seized from her phone.

They took her phone. They asked her to unlock it, give up the passcode. They kept the phone for more than 120 days. They seized it, took the SIM card, et cetera, et cetera. When she got the phone back, she took it to some experts who have basically told her, yep, they got into your phone and they copied your stuff.

So now she's suing, saying, first off, you didn't tell me why you wanted my phone. Secondly, you took my data. Third, I want it back. So good luck with that, because we know what happens. And of course, she happens to be a Muslim American. Of course she does.

Of course she does. So you and I are going to Canada in a couple of days here now, and I don't know what I'm going to do, because we had this whole discussion on security with Dave Bittner about you and your phone going across the border. What did you finally end up doing?

Absolutely nothing. That's what I thought, because fucking old, lazy people who don't do shit. Well, I'm old and lazy, and if they really want to have over 1,000 pictures of my son over the last two years, have at it, people. I really have nothing on my phone. I mean, I guess I could be worried about them getting passwords for my, you know, I have one password.

I suppose they could crack into that if they really wanted to, and they could get into my social media, or they could see how often I order a Domino's pizza, or maybe they could go respond to that jerk over at Discogs who's really pissed off that I sent him exact photos of the record, and he got it, and somehow thinks that it's not the record, even though I took fucking photos and sent it to him.

So maybe they can respond to him for me, because I don't want to. You know, I don't care. I've got nothing on me. I mean, I would be pissed, and I would certainly get in touch with the ACLU if something like this happened, because I don't think it's reasonable for them to take my phone or ask to see my phone.

But I'm not going out of my way to do anything about it. It's funny. I was thinking about this the other night, and, you know, because we both have iPhones, correct? Yes. I also have an Android phone. On my Android phone, I can slot in a micro SD card, right?

Right. So, say I have an enemy, somebody I just don't like, and I know he's going to be traveling overseas. What's to stop me from popping out his SIM, or not a SIM card, his micro SD card on his Android phone? Because I'm going to guarantee you, if I don't like this person, they definitely have an Android phone already.

They don't have an iPhone, because that's not how my nemesis rolls. My nemesis rolls Android. And putting a little bit of, you know, kid touching on the unsaid card and putting it back in his phone and just sending him across the border and waiting to see what happens. I suppose that could occur.

The one flaw I see in your mastermind evil plan is, how often are you around your nemesis and they just leave their phone sitting out for you to get at? Keep your enemies closer and make them pee a lot. Give them a lot of coffee, and then just, you know, you got to work the angles on that. When I've seen the Americans, it's doable.

Yeah, okay. I can't wait to see you in that 70s wig, sitting around, sipping coffee, stroking your dog with your nemesis. I can see it all now. And the stash. I'm going to have to rock the stash. Yes. Okay. Good plan, Jason.

You work on that. Remind me also not to let you anywhere near my phone before we get on the flight. I'll do it. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows? Okay. Well, we got some Elon Musk news. He initially was talking about taking Tesla private, and then he had funding, but then he didn't have funding.

And now he's no longer taking it private. So. Yeah. That's that. He says, given the feedback I've received, which is basically every single one of Tesla's existing shareholders, except for me, I was like, all right, sure. Buy it. Great. I'll take my money now. Yeah. Get me to 420 and I'm happy.

Yeah. If you really want to do this, you're crazy enough that I don't want to be invested anymore. So. But now he's not doing it. So my Tesla stock will sit and it is a been a wild ride with that recently. So we'll see what happens. But there is good news for Tesla. There is a semi truck that is currently traveling cross country completely alone.

Where is it? So I can not go there. Yeah, I know. I was like, don't you need permits for this sort of thing? One would assume he he's done it. But who knows? So the only necessary help is an extension cord to help plug the truck in when it needs to be recharged.

And it's basically going through only using existing Tesla supercharger stations. Now, wasn't there the video that we saw like maybe six months or a year ago of that robot snake that could plug itself in? Yes. He needs to get on that.

Yeah. He needs to go buy that company because if your fatal flaw is an extension cord, come on. Fatal flaws, you need a full service gas station in 2018. Oh, my God. Hey, at least we figured out what we're all going to do for a living now.

We're all just going to sit around charging stations, plugging things into robot cars. That's it. We're just going to plug shit in. Yep. Oh, my God. Oh, well, so we've talked about YouTube stars in the past, and I don't really care for them very much. And I know you don't because they're always clogging up your bike path in Santa Monica.

Logan Paul and KSI. Have you heard of either one of those? Logan Paul is the one that got in trouble a while ago because he showed like dead bodies in a forest or something like that. I think that was they're all just such horrible people. I just lose track of who's a Nazi, who's not a Nazi. Nazi or not.

That should be our new website. Oh, man. So this guy, Logan Paul, and another YouTuber, KSI, actually did a boxing match. Okay. And they live streamed it on YouTube. Okay. And they made over $8 million.

That's insane. I wish they would have killed each other because this just makes me so angry. Now, hold on a second here. How did they make $8.3 million exactly? Because I'm looking at this and it says 784,000 live streamers.

That doesn't seem to me mathematically to match up. All I need is 784,000 people to watch something and I'll get $8.3 million. Well, they also sold out Manchester Arena with 20,000 seats and tickets. All right. And obviously, I'm guessing there was a ton of sponsorship, which is probably where the majority of the money came from and blah, blah, blah.

All right. Yeah. Well, whatever. What's wrong with people? This should have been a moron of the week. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But yeah, I mean, I remember Celebrity Boxing on MTV. Yeah. And I'm just like, oh, this is kind of like that. Now, here's what I want. Celebrity The Purge.

I want to put them in a room until one of them is dead. That would be perfect. That is probably the only one I would watch. Yeah. Yeah. And given current regulations with the FCC, look for it next year, I'm guessing. Mm hmm. All right.

Well, Google's next move is apparently to help you lose weight and eat better because it's not like we're not aware enough already of what you need to do. Because sitting in front of a computer all day looking at Google is, you know. Yes. So Google is Google is entering the health market, much like Apple has done with their watches.

This will be on Android and it's going to be called Google Coach. And the only reason I really included the story in here beyond the obvious is that it's stupid. And if you really need this much help from a phone, I don't know what's wrong with you, but they do call it the AI health coaching space.

Fuck off. Yes. So when you when they notice, like, say, you're loading up a pizza, they'll say, maybe you shouldn't do that. Or if at 10 p.m. And you ask for a chicken Parmesan dinner recipe, it would offer you a healthy alternative instead.

So the A in the AI in this is for asshole. Yeah. Annoying. Bugging you when you want to get get some decent food. Well, listen, Google, I had six beers. I need a goddamn pizza. Shut up. You know what they have to they actually have to kind of tie this in with the beer goggles add on for Gmail.

You remember that? Oh, I do. Yes. That is actually saved me many times. You know, you have to solve a math problem before you can send an email late at late at night. And yes, I could not actually do division in the middle of the night. And I couldn't even I was so drunk, I couldn't get the calculator on my phone to load.

So I'm like, OK, time for bed. Let's move on. Yeah. Yeah. Mozilla is publishing their Firefox user data now. What's in it's what's called the Firefox public data report. Now, we've tried Firefox recently.

Did you know Firefox was tracking your usage and sending it back to the mothership? I did. I think you can turn it off, right? I guess you can, but I don't remember that being something on install when I popped it up because everything is opt out, not opt in these days.

Right. That's yes. Well, apparently, if you are a Firefox user, you can simply go to about a semi or no about colon telemetry and see what data is sent to Mozilla. That doesn't exactly tell you how to turn it off, but I'm assuming one can. I know we have some Firefox users that listen to this, so you might want to look into that.

Yeah. Yeah. If you give a shit, it's anonymized because we know that data cannot be unanonymized. Of course. Now, is it all your traffic or is it just add-ons, region, total usage, blah, blah, blah? I mean, do they know how often you're going to Pornhub with Firefox?

Well, they don't report that, but they may know that. I'm assuming they know. Yeah. They may know that. Right. And here's the thing. Firefox users are down to 250 million. So that's not really a lot of people. That's a fringe browser now.

Yeah. It really is compared. And they were up at 300 million in April. Right. So they've lost 50 million users since April. I was one of them for sure. But actually, no, I had started and left since April. This is like, you know, snap numbers at this point.

Yeah. It's pretty low. I'm actually surprised by that because I always think of Firefox as like the main browser out there. Nope. Not even close. But it's definitely not. Not even close. And I know a lot of people that work at Mozilla and I'm just like, how are you bitches getting paid?

I think, I mean, the main way that Firefox makes money is their deal with Google. So when you, as being, you know, the default search engine. Yeah. I think that's really where they bring their money in. But yeah, I mean, if I had a 250 million installed user base, they all used Google and Google paid me money.

I guess I could afford a staff. Okay. I get it. Okay. Glad we solved that. Yep. Media Candy. Finally, finally, finally, finally.

I should say that about another eight more times to get to all the seasons. The Big Bang Theory is finally done. And a great silence of no laughter filled the land. I know. Jim Parsons, the douche du jour over at the Big Bang Theory, has decided to go work somewhere else.

That's it. Remember. I guess, I guess all their money bags are full. They must be full. Yeah. They must be all full up now. You know, we talked last week about the guy from Facebook who is just saying, screw it. I'm moving to Hawaii. I'm going to go surf, take all this huge amounts of money I've made and just go live.

And well, Jim Parsons just, I guess, said, no, I just want to go work some more, but not for you guys. Leaving the entire cast, who makes like over a million dollars an episode, by the way, which is just fucking disgusting, left them in the lurch.

And they're like, oh, I guess that's it. We're moving on. Right. Moving on down. There you go. I actually, I enjoyed the show like the first couple seasons. It was all right. But then it just kept on going. It's the same episode. It is Groundhog Day.

I mean, I watched the first seven or six seasons when I had food poisoning and I was stuck in bed for two weeks. And at that point, I'm just like, let the food poisoning kill me. Yeah, that show went bad fast. The one thing that I always did enjoy about the show, and I haven't watched it in, I don't know, eight seasons or something like that now, is I always just, I was like, whoever is doing their set design, like should basically just live with me.

Because at that point, like every time I saw anything in the background, I was like, yeah, I have that. Yeah. Yep. I've got that. Oh, yeah, I've got that. So it was pretty funny. But that was, yeah, see you later. I'm not sad that it's ending. No, not at all. And something that's starting, though, that you're going to be happy about, Isaac Asimov's foundation is coming to the big screen or maybe the small screen because Apple is producing it.

I'm not happy about that. Apple does not exactly have a rich history of producing good product. Does it? Well, I mean, it's got some decent people behind it. Maybe, maybe. Yeah, I don't know. Foundation is one of those books. It's just like Dune.

It's too much. I don't know if it needs to be made, if it should be made, if it can be made. Well, I'm going to be disappointed. Ten episode series. That's it. Season one. You could just have book one in season one. You know, book one should be like five seasons.

I mean, to get it right. Oh, well, we'll see. We'll see what happens. I Apple gives me pause. I'm very worried. Apple give it. Apple take it away. Yes. And I want to follow up a little bit on Dark Matter as I'm working through season two. I'm still mostly enjoying the show.

But A, Will Wheaton. Will Wheaton is playing an evil character. Will fucking Wheaton? Will Wheaton plays an evil character. Not that he was bad, but just like Adam Savage showing up in The Expanse, it totally bumped me. Like, I couldn't take him seriously as a bad guy.

Yeah. He's not really built for being bad. Couldn't. And B, for fuck's sake, science fiction writers, the alternate evil universe that you somehow get dumped into because of some piece of technology. Knock it off. I'm so tired of this trope. It's so stupid. It's so useless.

Star Trek Discovery did it. Every Star Trek movie is doing it. They're doing it. They did it. It was horrible, except for the fact that the really hot chick looked even hotter as an evil person. Of course. Leather good. That part was good. I liked that. I went and saw Crazy Rich Asians with the wife for her birthday because this is one of her She's a crazy rich Asian.

Woohoo. Well, kind of. Not that crazy rich, though. Jesus. Wow. It was a great movie, man. I highly recommend going to see it. It was shot beautifully. It was a well-done rom-com. When's the last time there's been a well-done rom-com? It's been ages. It was great.

I really enjoyed it. The acting was phenomenal. The story was great. Good time. I highly recommend the movie for something completely different than we normally talk about here. Cool. Yeah. Two weeks at number one. So it's doing well. Yeah. It's not like Mamma Mia 2. So Preacher wrapped season three this week.

And oh my God, what an amazing season finale. I'm telling you, if you haven't started watching Preacher, Brian, you got to go watch it. It is so damn good. And it's past the Brian threshold. That's true. It is. It's three seasons in, and they're picked up for number four.

So come on. All right. All right. I'll get on it. You got to get on it. Empire. Also, I am just so digging Empire. I know for you, it's too much like work. But for me, it's just a ton of fun. And my roommate, you know, who used to work at Warner Brothers Records in the heyday, is loving it too.

Because she's been gone long enough, I guess. So it's like all past. It's like in the history. But I have my love for Empire owed to Martha and Snoop's potluck dinner party. Okay. Because I never thought that I would watch that show ever.

And my roommate watched it. And so we had a couple on the DVR. And she's like, just watch it. It's fun. You're going to like it. The first episode was with the two guys from Empire. And I'm like, and it was really funny. It was hilarious. And it actually is a good show. I kind of recommend it.

If you want something just popcorn, you know, just to have on in the background. Snoop's funny. Martha's hilarious. They're all drunk and fucked up the whole time. It's kind of fun. That's all I'm saying. All right. And I watched the movie Upgrade on the recommendation of Jordan Harbinger.

And, oh, Jordan, you owe me about an hour and 45 minutes. I was about to say, I saw the trailer for this. And I was like, this looks stupid. It is. I mean, the only thing that saves it is the last, like, three minutes.

And that gets me to C-plus status. I mean, that really, like, lifted it up to C-plus status. The acting is shit. The cinematography is actually pretty good. The fighting scenes are pretty good. But it's just so fucking dumb.

Well, but I'm looking at Rotten Tomatoes. The critics seem to like it. The audience likes it. 85% critics. 87% audience score. That's pretty high for a crap movie. I just don't know, man. I've read science fiction. I've seen a lot of movies. I've seen The Matrix.

I've seen a lot of different things. And for this, it was just a rehash of everything. I mean, there's nothing in this movie except for the last three minutes that you cannot just say what's going to happen. It's really that bad. I don't know.

Whoever's on Rotten Tomatoes can just go suck a big one because, no, this movie is just not good. All right. Well, I'm definitely not going to watch it. We have some updated news about what's going to happen with the show Roseanne. Why? They're going to kill her off. Why? Why is this here? I don't know because we talked about it when she tweeted originally and got, you know, it looked like the show was going to get canceled and all that sort of stuff.

So, yeah, they're basically just going to kill her off. And this is from an interview with John Goodman, who very tactfully dances around the subject that he actually doesn't seem to like her very much. Nobody likes her. That's her whole point. Yeah. And speaking of people that very few people like, Sasha Baron Cohen, Who is America?

I have not watched any of this. It came to an end on Sunday night, and apparently they did shoot a segment where he basically got to Sarah Palin and totally screwed her. And she went apeshit about it online and talked about it left, right and center. Obviously, there was some sort of legal thing that didn't enable him to show that segment because it wasn't in any of the series.

But boy, did she publicize the hell out of the show for him. Yeah. So they gave her a credit in the last episode. She gets a special shout-out as a special publicity consultant. Inadvertent. Yeah. I watched one episode of that show. It was terrible. I'm not a Sasha Baron Cohen fan.

I love his characters. I've got to say. I've always loved his characters. You would actually probably like the show then because it's just that. You know? Yeah. It's the same thing. It is literally the same thing, which is why I can't stand it. But for something completely different, friend of the show, Robert Fogarty, who does our VO work here, sent me a YouTube video last night.

That's Nirvana in 1988 playing at a closed Radio Shack in Aberdeen, Washington. Nice. Now, this is quite possibly the greatest performance video ever made because you will notice if you watch the video like halfway through, they stop and they take down the.

Remember when you walk into Radio Shack, they'd have those streetlights that you could buy? Yeah. Yeah. They move those around so that they were more like stage lighting. And then at about 10 minutes, 10 and a half minutes in, they actually bust out the fog machine, which is pretty awesome. And yeah, it was it's one of the most epic videos I think I've ever seen.

And this is way back when the drummer from the Melvins, I think, was drumming for them. Right. So it was it was a long time ago. But my God, it is one of the greatest videos of all time.

And then then we got to talking and apparently I went the show that I went to to see Nirvana at the Metro in Chicago a long time ago was apparently a very historic show because it's the show where Kurt started dating Courtney Love, who would then eventually kill him.

And it's also we'll go, go, go rent Kurt and Courtney. I'm sorry. Just go rent it. But it's also the show where Dave Grohl just destroyed his drum kit and threw it into the audience because his manager wouldn't buy him or his agent wouldn't buy him a new drum kit.

So he just said, fuck it. I'm going to beat it up and throw it in the audience. The important part about that is I spent five minutes fighting over a giant piece of that drum. And I almost had both my knees broken because I'm holding on to this. We're holding on to the base ring, you know, like the whole ring around the front.

And some guy falls right across my knees as I'm like leaning back and holding this thing. And I'm just like, oh, my God, I'm just going to lose my legs. I let go of it for a second. He landed on me. I fall down, grabbed it back up. Boom. And still ended up with half of the thing. But I should have kept that because I had no idea it was so goddamn famous.

Yeah, I actually talked about it on late night TV when that happened. So if you want to actually listen to the full audio, I've got a link in the show notes to the actual show. And it's pretty awesome. That was my first and last Nirvana show. Very cool.

I'm working my way through a bunch of books and I don't have really a lot for this week, but I grabbed The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. I've never read it and I'm trying to get through some classics.

I've got some Hemingway for next week, but I found this BBC production of The Divine Comedy and it's got John Hurt and David Warner in it. And David Warner, you know, for me is just, you know, the epitome of just great voice actors because what was it in Time Bandits?

He was, you know, basically the devil. Yeah. And John Hurt, you can't go wrong with John Hurt, but it was a full cast and it was amazingly well produced. It's less than three hours, but it costs, you know, a couple of bucks, like 10 bucks, but amazing production and a fantastic book.

Right. I wish I'd have read it a long time ago. I mean, it's good. There's, it's, it's kind of like, uh, what was it? Uh, what's the Rosebud movie? Uh, Citizen Kane. It's kind of like Citizen Kane. Yeah. Which is, that is really not the right way to talk about a classic like that, but it is a classic that I'm sad that I never read.

And I'm, I'm trying to get through some of these and it was really good. And this production, honestly, hands down, fantastic. Very cool. And this one was for you. I actually bought this book. Uh, it's called, you'll never nanny in this town again. The true adventures of a Hollywood nanny by Susan Hanson, Suzanne Hanson.

Sorry, not Susan. Um, cause I was going to send it to you when you were home alone with the, with the young and for a while. Uh, but, but, uh, Papa B was just like, no, I'm not nannying. I'm parenting. And I'm like, oh, okay. So I don't want to be a dick and send it to you.

So I'm reading it now. It's really funny. Good. It is. That's great. Actually, I might send it to you anyway, because it's really. Funny. And, uh, my roommate was just like, you have to read that book. I mean, it's about Michael Ovitz and his family, but also about the dumb shittery of Hollywood where we live.

Yes. And I knew it was going to be a winner in the first chapter when she's talking to her mom and they're trying to figure out how to say Sepulveda. Because everybody, Sepulveda, that's what everybody's done when they get here. They're like, Sepulveda. And, and the other one, she doesn't mention this one, but Cahuenga.

You, you know, across the mighty Cahuenga. Yeah. My wife had problems with both of those. Yeah. It's hilarious. And, and people who also say sin, because it's CYN and a lot of street signs when you're in Hollywood and it means Canyon and everybody's just like sin. What? Sin Heights?

Oh, no. Ah, yeah. It took me three years to get that one. So I, I think she nailed it on a lot of these. So when, when I'm done with this, I'll, I'll give a full review, but I'm going to get you a copy of this one. It's pretty. Yeah. I would actually kind of like to read it. In fact, it's funny because the nanny that we had for, for a little while was, um, we only had part time.

So she was working part time with somebody else who happened to be very high up at, uh, SpaceX. And, uh, she told some stories about, uh, I mean, you know, that's, that's almost Hollywood elite when you're that high up, uh, in the Silicon Valley kind of jobs. And, uh, I heard some interesting stories about the demands and, and crazy, and it's crazy that she had to deal with.

We were definitely easy. We were very easy for her. Okay. Well, here's what I learned from the fact that she's telling you about other clients. Sign an NDA. Every nanny needs a nanny NDA. Well, in conjunction with your, uh, your story about the YouTubers beating the crap out of each other and making, uh, just insane amounts of money.

I can't believe people do this. The hottest ticket on Twitch Monday morning wasn't Fortnite Star Ninja for once. It was an endless list of garbled letters, numbers, and punctuation, which more than 50,000 people sat and watched, hoping that the stream from a developer CD, Project Red, would eventually give them some more details about the game that they're releasing called Cyberpunk 2077.

They just sat and watched, hoping something would happen, and nothing really happened. And finally, finally, like 24 hours later, they got a little preview. Wow. Way to waste human endeavor.

Yeah, this is what our life is like now, apparently. You know, I actually edit every podcast that I, that comes across my desk to get every second of fat out of it because I don't want to waste anybody's time. I have what we call respect for the listener, and, and I want you guys.

Why bother? That's what I'm saying. Jeez, if these people, well, wait, they're not obviously our fans because there's 50,000 of them, and there isn't 50,000 people listening to this show. But my God, maybe we need to go after these people. This is now really depressing me because more people listen to nothing than us.

Okay, coming soon to Twitch. Shit, all right, I'm shutting this off. Talk to you later, Jason. See ya. Mic drop out. Fuck it. Yes, and as we all know, the comment section is basically the dumpster fire of, of the world. Fox News was forced to disable comments following a torrent of negative reactions to John McCain's death.

Yes, the people on his side, the Republicans. They trolled themselves? They trolled themselves and talked about how John McCain should die in hellfire, to which one person did say, well, he is dead already.

That was the Democrat. It just happened to be going through. Let me point something out. He's fucking dead, you dumb shits. Yeah. So, yeah, comment section, dumpster fire, morons as well. I did manage to find a hero of the week. I'm very proud of myself for this. It is a great story. We talk a lot about journalism and the death of it and how people can't even be bothered to spell check or grammar check their own articles anymore.

And headlines are always completely false and misleading on purpose. There is one person out there that believes in news and she is an intern at NBC. And right after the announcement of the verdict in the Manafort trial, because there was no cameras in there and there is a video of this woman in a blue dress looking very classy, hustling her ass out of the courtroom and running to go deliver the news to reporters outside.

I saw this, yeah, I saw this before you put it in here and I was like, maybe, maybe, but yeah, she's got some hustle on her. Hero. Feedback loop. We've got a bunch of new Patreon subscribers, Justin, Nicholas, Arjun, and Waylon.

And Waylon writes in, after hearing your review of the Anker wireless charging pad, I planned on picking up a couple foe the wife and I. Then I heard you were having problems charging the iPhone 8. Since we both have iPhone 10s, looking at the fact for Anker, it says, to make sure you're using a 5-volt brick.

Wondering if you've tried this and I am curious if it will work or not. What were you using, Brian? Because you're the one that had problems. I don't know anymore because I sent everything back. Don't! All of mine are using basically iPhone bricks.

So they're probably 5-volters, I'm guessing. Yeah, well, I would assume me as well. So it just didn't work for me. But, I mean, hey, order it on Amazon. You can send it back if it doesn't work. Yeah. It's pretty painless. The one that I've got right here is actually plugged into an Anker USB 3 hub with their super fast charging tech, which I think is over 5-volt.

But it is still Anker to Anker. So, you know, it's Anker all the way down. It's kind of like the human centipede of USB charging. Lovely, lovely analogy. Thanks for that. You're welcome. No problem. Okay. Over on Twitter, TJ wrote us, not heard of this one. People spending millions on cryptocurrency for virtual world.

It's over at BBC, the virtual land selling for millions. This reminds me of the rush to get into Second Life and people that actually tried to, you know, purchase characters and land and things like that. It's insane. Yeah. People are crazy. So much money was spent on Second Life. It's crazy.

Radio teacher writes in, you can see the bird users are not very safety minded in San Antonio. I saw three birds that were dual occupancy in five minutes walking from River Center Mall to the Riverwalk. There's a lot of rivers apparently in San Antonio. And I am looking at the photo now.

And yes, there are people on multiple birds there or multiple people on birds. Yeah. Riverwalk is beautiful. I used to have a girlfriend way back in the day that was from San Antonio. So I went there a number of times. Don't you call it San Antone? No, I don't.

Three birds in five minutes is nothing. That's thin on the ground. Come to Santa Monica. You'll see that. I know. Yeah. You'll see four people on a bird. It's crazy. Let's see. Paul writes us basically for you found this site.

It tells you how many fake followers you have or anyone else you want to look up Twitter audit dot com. So I ran that for both myself and for grumpy old geeks. I had thirty four fake followers and GOG had thirty two, although it's not incredibly clear how they determine who is a fake follower or not.

Oh, well, I have four hundred and twenty four. I win. You do win. But you did some testing yourself with those various agencies that get you followers. So that's not surprising, right? Yeah, most of them have they were dropped off. So I think this is just some like, you know, old stuff.

I've got eighteen hundred and twenty one real followers and four hundred and twenty four fake followers. But I still get a green thumbs up as an eighty one percent audit score. So nice. Well done. We also got a green thumbs up. So good for us. Wait a second.

That was updated three years ago. Hang on. Let's do this in real time, because that's what radio is all about. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Well, unfortunately, to do it again, I have to pay for it.

So. Oh, yeah. You only get one free. Yeah. Yeah. First one's always free. Fucking dealers. But, yep. Sorry. I'm going to stick with the four hundred and twenty four. That sounds that sounds like a good number to me. Sure. Dan writes in. I've used Overdrive.

They do audio books as well as e-books. The only downside is the only get it for two weeks. But it's a great service. And if you have a Chicago library card, you should still be able to use it. I sadly never got my Chicago library card. So. Boom. Yeah.

And Derek writes this and says, please, dog, don't call forty five, Mr. President. Sorry about that. I did. Damned if you do. You damned if you don't on this show, Jason. No shit. Maybe we should just play some static. And Morton writes in.

If one is into self-hosting, I highly recommend Charlie for the bookmarks. This is a bookmarking service and there's an Android app. It's PHP. No database required. And is this. It looks like it's basically open source kind of thing.

Yeah. Yeah. If you want to do that kind of thing. I'm actually. I found out that WordPress will run on a five dollar Linode instance. So. Oh, nice. I'm moving. I'm moving all my stuff over to a five dollar instance. Yeah. That's fantastic. I can't get rid of a damn server, but at least I don't have to pay 40 bucks a month for it.

Nice. Nerd Rewind writes this. You guys should place a bet on what the per person payout will be for the Google class action lawsuit. Prices right rules. Obviously. One dollar. I'm guessing two bucks. I'm at two. Two is. Two is what it usually is. That's why I'm going low on this one, because there's so many people.

I'm going to go. I'm going to go one dollar on that one. I think Jason might win this one. OK. Enter that into the record. Nerd Rewind and then come back to us when you get your when you get your payout. Right. Film Sleep Repeat writes us about the Apple hacker that we talked about the other week.

If he got in so easily, but then left huge breadcrumbs, was he perhaps trying to get a hat job at Apple? Smart. Could be double double thinking. Yeah, I think not. Me too. Me too. Hacky hack. Hacky hack.

Waylon writes in over GOG.show, looks like Uber has a new backer. I guess Uber is not stopping their self-driving cars anytime soon. Toyota invests $500 million in Uber and expands their self-driving car partnership. Well, $500 million in Uber is about a month and a half worth of general runway.

Yeah, it's not a lot, but that's, yeah, I guess they're going to go for it still. So, man, yeah, if you're going to partner with someone, Toyota makes sense. There's a lot of Toyotas out there. Yeah. And Sean sends us a dig video and asks, is this how they use the scooters out by you?

And this is a woman. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of people pile onto this scooter. And so, yeah, I've seen that more than a few times. Oh, yeah. It's not really a bird, but it's an actual scooter. Yeah. It's an actual scooter, but monkey 13 rates in. And that's our friend of the show. John Chevron. Eversync is a good cross browser plugin for Chrome, Firefox and Opera with a Chrome add-on.

This is what I switched over to after X marks flamed out. So check out Eversync if you're looking for a basically bookmark synchronizer. Right. And Stefan writes us or Steven, I suppose. What's this obsession with kerfuffle on your show? That's probably the second most abused buzzword on GOG.

Am I missing something here? I think you are missing something. What's what's our most abused buzzword? I'm curious. Yeah. Let us know. Kerfuffle. I think that's just one of Jason's go to's. I only said that like on one episode a couple of ago, and that was just like my word of the day.

I had I had kerfuffle in the on the brain, you know, and cattywumpus was another one that I had on the cattywumpus. Unless you dropped twice in one episode, I thought that was weird because you'd never used that word before. I was talking to my roommate. She comes from, you know, up in Wisconsin.

And we just we talked about something when something goes sideways or pear shaped, as they say, the Brits say in Wisconsin. You say it's gone cattywumpus. And we tried to figure out where the hell it came from without Googling it. That's really it's that's kind of the fun. That is the that is the hard one.

Yeah, you can try and come up with something without Google, you know, it's a day without Google. But anyway, yeah, it's OK. So I said kerfuffle or you said kerfuffle who kerfuffling cares the feed rights in. Hey, guys, hope all is well. I ran into this article and it brought out the inner grump in me.

Isn't this bill just fucking wonderful? Assemblyman Todd Gloria co-authored a bill that passed the California Senate that would allow adults to ride motorized scooters like dockless ones seen on the streets across the country without a helmet. Well, calling the herd. That's what we call that.

Yeah. Let's see. There's a they're currently riding a scooter without a helmet could cost riders a $200 fine, making the low fare not worth the trouble. Lawmakers in support of the recently passed bill believed it would entice more riders to put rules in place to keep them safe. Yes. Yes. And not just the riders.

How about everybody else? That's the real problem. We want to keep everybody else safe. Well, the helmet's not going to keep everybody else safe. No, that's true. But, you know, it makes them more conscious, more security conscious. That's the theory. Look, I've been in Chicago for a couple of years and there are no helmet laws in Illinois.

You can ride your motorcycle with no helmet, right? Right. There are helmet laws here in California and there's lane splitting in California. And I see more assholery in California than I do in Illinois. I mean, people, people who aren't wearing helmets actually tend to be a little bit safer.

So maybe this maybe it will work. Maybe. Yeah. Look, for me, the issue is never about the helmets. I could care less about that. You get make a law that they don't have to have helmets fine by me. Just keep all the laws about where they can and can't ride them and where they can and can't park them. That's all I seriously let it with no brain buckets required.

Just make sure that they have to park them on the goddamn street. Yep. And Phil Doe writes this. I wasn't a massive fan of the weird Burning Man hippies, but this is pretty bleak. And this is an article over at Medium. Why the rich love Burning Man. The story is for media members only.

Oh, wait, wait. So that's a thing. I couldn't read it. So kind of the rich people that love Burning Man who would pay for a subscription to Medium is probably the only people that read this. Isn't it ironic? Oh, well, it loaded for me. Oh, no. Am I paying? Am I paying for Medium? Oh, no.

Oh, no. You get a member preview. So I could have registered for a free account to read the article. But oh, yes. I actually have a Medium account, and I've actually published on Medium before, so. Oh, okay. Medium. Medium. You rang, writes in.

Hi, guys. Really like the new twice a week thing. Hope it's working out well for your schedule. Actually, yes, it is. From your comments on an episode a while back, I take it you had updated 1Password to the subscription model. Yes, yes. That's the only thing that you can do now. I'm still hanging on to the older legacy model.

I'm very happy with the version I have, and I really dislike subscription models. Get in line, you. We all do. Oh, yes. Especially when I've already purchased the legacy product. Bingo! Is there something really cool that I'm missing by not upgrading? Yes.

I think so. Yeah, there is. Yeah, you can use it on multiple devices. It's easy. And when I did the math, when I upgraded from my paid version to the subscription model, which still makes me angry, but I did the math on it, and if they update once a year, which they were doing consistently, with a $60 upgrade, it worked out to be basically like $1 or $2 more a year.

So I want to support them because I think they're doing the Lord's work over there at 1Password, even though I'm an atheist. But anyway, upgrade is great, and you get all the updates. I love it. I'm definitely on the bandwagon for 1Password. And it continues.

Me too. On another topic, while waiting on the new Laundry Files book to launch out of Charlie's head and into Audible, I listened to another Straw series, The Merchant Princes. Not bad. Jason mentioned he was going to go back and listen to some classics, and I would highly recommend The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov.

Truly a sci-fi classic. Stay grumpy. I'm trying, man. I still can't get into that first book. It's just it doesn't click with me. Well, luckily, Apple will be giving you a TV series that you can watch, and maybe you can just do that. Oh, yeah. Just like The Handmaid's Tale. Foundation.

Yeah, it's one of my favorite series of all time, so I'm totally with you there. Jake writes us, thought you guys should know San Francisco is hard at work to fix the man poo problem. Your tax dollar is hard at work. So San Francisco, we talked about this a little bit last week, has assigned six city workers to a new poop patrol to rid targeted sidewalks of human waste.

But it turns out the pay is far from crappy. Oh, you journalists. Poop patrollers earn $71,000 a year, which swells to a value of $184,000 with mandated benefits, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. So I'd say that's a pretty good shit job. I fucking quit. I'm going to go sign up for the poop patrol.

That's twice as much as I'm making right now. Fuck podcasting. I'm going to pick up man poo. That's it. So things we learned about our podcast this week, Jason. More people listen to nothing, and people get paid more picking up shit. Why are we doing this?

I don't know. I feel pretty shitty. Me too. Wow. 71 grand. Well, okay. Couple that with being in San Francisco. So you're basically don't that you can't live on that in San Francisco. But no, the benefits of $184,000.

Well, yeah, I can't afford insurance. So, okay, here's the deal. I could live across the bridge and take Barden or down South Bay. Okay. Yep. Make twice as much as I'm making now. Have insurance. And get outside all day long and see the great city.

Of San Francisco. I don't see a downside of that. And there's only six positions, though. I wonder if, like, what is the, what are they doing to pick who's on the poop patrol? Is there, is there like a, like a Thunderdome type of, you know, you know, just, did they just put everybody in and see how much poop they can pick up in 60 seconds?

I mean, I've got two dogs. I can pick up shit like nobody's business. This job should be mine. Maybe you should send them a, like a video of you picking up shit. Oh, and I can do it on my drone. Yeah, there you go. In San Francisco. They would appreciate drone footage, I'm sure.

Mm-hmm. I'm sure. Oh, what a shitty life you live. Calbee writes in, my main issue with prison labor is that it displaced jobs for free people. Company gets subsidized labor for pennies on the dollar, and we take care of their labor force's living conditions. In my opinion, prison labor should only be used to rebuild infrastructure, things that benefit the people paying the bills.

Yeah, I kind of get that, but to me, this is more the, we can't have all those illegals coming here to take our jobs argument when they're not really taking the jobs that white people want or whatever. I 100% agree with prison labor being used for infrastructure until I really thought about it, because they aren't exactly skilled laborers, are they?

And do you want someone, don't you want somebody who knows what they're doing to build that bridge that you're going to drive across every day? Well, that's not a criminal. That's why you have engineers. I mean, a lot of prisoners built the roads that we drive on already. I mean, you know, the chain gangs of the past. Go watch Cool Hand Luke, you know?

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess the real issue here is the fact that we've privatized a lot of these prisons, and they're for profit. That's the fucked up part. That's the part that I have a problem with. Marios writes us, I thought I should share with you an interesting article from CACM about two of your favorite topics, geek ethics and science fiction.

I have a PhD in computer science and over 10 years plus in academia. I barely ever had any discussions, no courses, of course, about ethics and the potential consequences of the tools we build. In fact, now that I think about it, I was formally exposed to ethics, privacy, etc., including harassment when I was working for AT&T, which tried to educate employees at great length about responsibility towards our clients, the environment, other companies, etc.

And most employees you talk to complain that those boring lessons were a waste of time. We need to focus a lot more on educating engineers about ethics, biases, and how to analyze and reason about the potential effects of the systems they design and build. For a good example of what can go wrong, I refer you to this article over at ProPublica. Computer science education in particular seems to be lacking tremendously in this respect.

So how can we expect the future geeks that will be running the world to do so in a responsible, ethical manner when they might be failing to do so just out of ignorance? I agree. We can't, obviously. And yeah, I 100% agree with that. Ethics should be part of the course loads for computer sciences and anything.

It really should be. And the fact that it isn't is stunning to me. No, this is, yeah. I mean, we fucked up. It's been 25 years since we started doing this stuff. It's about time that somebody kind of like, we need to, you know, take care of this thing. Because going forward, it's like, we're, you know, groping in the dark here.

We're like a teenager on prom night in the back of a limo trying to find the bra clasp, and we just can't figure it out. So I think that we need to educate the kids. Speak for yourself, Jason. I didn't go to prom. Sorry. I stayed home and masturbated like every other nerd that I know. But, you know, we have to figure this stuff out.

Definitely. Yeah. Ivor writes in. Is this the same Ivor that quit Patreon last week? I believe it is. I believe. So glad you're still listening. Glad you're still listening. And he says, hey, Jason, just wanted to thank you for mentioning the Jordan Harbinger episode on the incredibly brave North Korean escapee Charles Rue.

I listened to the episode and my jaw just hit the floor when I heard about everything this guy went through from an early age. Well worth a listen. Thoroughly recommended. Can't wait for the next episode. This has to be made into a movie. Well, I'm I can't wait for the next episode either, because as soon as I'm done recording this show, I am going to spend the next 24 hours editing it so you can hear it tomorrow.

Nice. Eric, the accountant, writes this. I'm not sure I agree with this article completely, but it was a nice display of candid opinion and thoughts about Facebook. This is over at LinkedIn. It's called Facebook. Be gently with a chainsaw. Interesting that he posted on LinkedIn the business version of a shitty social network.

I would have respected the author more if I saw this on Reddit or medium. Anyway, the discussion about brand slash not brand brand rankings and what is Facebook is interesting. Yeah, I read through it. It didn't seem too far off from everything that we've been saying all along.

But yeah, posting it on LinkedIn does seem a bit odd to me. Yes, you go where the audience is. Ethan writes in. Hey, GOG, I'm looking for a home network UTM, which is also called a unified threat management solution with some sort of machine learning. Do you have any suggestions for something that is quick and easy to maintain and very, very low cost?

Because when you're talking about threat management for your home. Security, you want to spend as little as possible. That's exactly what you want. You want to be the cheapest mofo on the block. Go back and listen to Jason talking about all of his Chinese security cameras. Throw snort on a pie, but I'm short on time to do the research required to configure snort as an edge firewall or UTM solution.

Well, Ethan. What was the old thing that we used to say, Jason, when we were contractors and things like that? You can have it cheap, you can have it fast, or you can have it good. Exactly. Pick two. Pick two. So you're going for cheap and fast, which is not going to go well.

Yes. When this is the security of your home, yeah. You might want to maybe throw some bones or spend some time on it, Ethan. Definitely. And so I don't think we have any recommendations for cheap and quick. No. And if, but if somebody out in the audience has some, you know, send them through, but send it our way.

And if you want to throw a snort on a pie, like you said, maybe make of the time. Rob writes, not sure if he's your sense of humor, but I found it to be pretty funny. Check out Dimitri Martin, the overthinker on Netflix. I watched Dimitri Martin when he first had a show on Comedy Central was not my sense of humor, but maybe he's changed.

I fucking hate Dimitri Martin. So, yep. Nope. Not really our, not really our cup of tea. Thanks, though. Byron writes in, hey, Jason, are you still planning to review your 4K monitor? I'm thinking about getting a new 4K monitor. I was wondering if 4K lives up to the hype, especially after watching this guy's video.

Thanks. P.S. Love the show. And the video will be linked in the show notes. I like it. It's okay. Color kind of sucks on it. That's pretty much what some other people had said about it. For me, it's just I don't see pixels anymore.

So for the price, it's fine. It gets the job done. But, yeah, I love my 5K iMac way more because it's freaking gorgeous. But the 5K monitor or the 4K monitor I have for the price gets the job done. Cool.

And Katie writes us, Uber's self-driving car division might not be dead yet. This morning, I saw a self-driving Uber on the streets of San Francisco. It appeared to be driven by a woman and linked to a New York Times article. And, yeah, as we discussed, Toyota's throwing some money into it, so it's not dead. How about for Halloween, we all dress our cars up as Uber self-driving cars?

And we get those outfits like that one guy had where he was the seat. Remember that? So he was just driving by himself. October's coming up. We could do that. Come on. Yes, it's true. Over on iTunes from Australia. It was KS Sobel, 79, Lords of Sobel, Pebbles and Stickers.

Hey, guys, I've been listening to your show for 28 months now, and I've thoroughly enjoyed every single episode. You're so grumpy and so geeky, so perfectly imperfect. We are perfectly imperfect. No regrets. I love this review for some reason. I don't know why. I don't know what Pebble and Stickers means.

I don't either, but we're perfectly imperfect. I like that. We also got a five-star rating from Blurred God. Change in the right direction. I've been listening to you guys for about nine months now. Always left wanting more. Glad you guys are moving to two episodes per week. The show is great, informative, and funny sometimes.

Sometimes. Now we're just sometimes. Trust me. It's almost as if it's funny at all. That's a bonus. So sometimes it's better than no times. All right. It's almost as if I have two more dads. Ha ha. Keep it up. Flame, flame, flame. Fire it up. On fire. Fire.

Flame. If you want your question or comment, read on the show. Head over to GOG.show slash support. The flames. I'm in my Dio mode. I am guessing. I'm in my Dio mode. Fireside conference and you're doing karaoke. You're going to be doing some Tenacious D.

Oh, Tenacious D. I like that. Because it's the pick of destiny. Yeah. I think maybe I'll have to. And yes, I will be videotaping Jason's videotaping. I will be recording Jason's karaoke at Fireside conference. And that will be a special for Patreon.

Yes. I'm going to loan him my drone for that. But head on 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 a snarky review. And somebody please tell us what pebbles and stickers means.

Fire. Closing shout outs. Rest in peace, Neil Simon, a Broadway master of comedy, passed away at 91 this week. Congratulations for the paid star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Weird Al. We have a link in the show notes to his speech.

It's quite funny. And I want to wish a happy birthday to my wife, Sylvana. And finally, rest in peace, John McCain, true patriot. I may not have agreed with him all the time, but, you know, he was a he was a real patriot. He really was. And he offered up a bit of a goodbye speech, which I just want to read a little bit from because I enjoyed this very much.

We are three hundred and twenty five million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country and we will get through these challenging times.

We will come through them stronger than before. We always do. We live in a land of ideals, not blood and soil. We are the custodians of these ideals at home and their champion abroad. We have done a great good in the world. The leadership has had its costs, but we have become impaired and comparably powerful and wealthy as we did.

We have a moral obligation to continue in our just cause. And we would bring more than shame on ourselves if we don't. We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. We wouldn't deserve to. And I would like to finish that off with the end of his at the end of his message was do not despair of our present difficulties, but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here.

Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history. Mic drop. Boom. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillip. And I'm Brian Schillmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. 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 276. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like.

Stay grumpy, and we'll see you in a few days.

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