284: Dark Mode Nipple Patch

This episode is sponsored in part by Privacy. It's like a burner phone for credit cards. To sign up for free and get a $5 credit, just go to privacy.com slash GOG. That's $5 free to spend anywhere by just signing up. Privacy.com slash GOG. 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 Morgen. Hello. It is very early today. Yes, we are recording at top of the morning. Top of the morning to you. My laptop in the other room is updating to Mojave. So I will have an update on that next week. From what I've heard, it's actually not bad. I updated yesterday. How do you like it? I like it. I'm running in dark mode, which, you know, when I was younger. The only reason I wanted it.

When I was younger, I would have done it for the look and because I would have felt cool. Now that I'm older, I'm doing it for eye strain. It's quite nice. Seriously. Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's it was a relatively painless update. Nothing went wrong. Everything seems to be working pretty well. You know, they drop a few more apps. I don't need Apple news. I don't care. So I've already like pulled that off my drop bar and things like that nature. But it's quick. Dark mode is pretty nice.

I wish I'm hoping I can do some tweaks to it because I don't care for some of the color scheme that they're using. I probably won't be able to because, you know, the days of being able to really customize our systems are long gone. But overall, I like it. Yeah, we were long past the days of res edit and things like that. I miss res edit so much. Me too.

That was so much fun back then. We wasted so many days and weeks customizing our Macs back then. But it was so much fun. But yeah, I'm really looking forward to the dark mode because it's I've got almost all of my apps have a dark mode. Yeah. Already. So now it'll be nice to have it like unified in the system. So we'll follow up with that soon. And I got my aura ring.

OK, finally, I did my first sleep with it last night and it's awesome. It's so awesome because now I don't have to wear my watch when I go to bed. And the data is way better than on the Apple Watch, even with the sleep tracker app. It's so much better. So I'm looking forward to being like able to have some time with it until the next show and do a full deep dive on it.

Interesting. I mean, if Apple is all in on health, does that mean we're going to be getting an Apple ring at some point? Because it's probably a better way to track. Nah, I doubt it. I doubt it. The eye ring, but better than an O ring, I guess. But yeah, it it feels comfortable. It's really light and it's very stylish.

Most men fear putting the ring on the finger, but Jason leaps forward. Yeah, well, I put it on my right hand, so I'm not married yet. Although you wear your wedding ring on your right hand. I do. I do. My dad did as well. And it's just kind of a thing that my family apparently does. Bunch of cheaters for when you go out at the bar. Yeah, I'm not married.

Yeah, that's my modus operandi. That's right. With all that time I have not changing diapers, I'm out there chasing tail. Of course you are. All right. So we got a bit of Amazon follow up. Recode apparently listened to us and agrees with us.

They did a nice long article about how as Amazon is trying to push Alexa into every corner of our lives, there is nary a thought of privacy or security in these systems, which is very important. Now, they make a good point. People just don't seem to care. Which we've also mentioned a lot. Yeah.

But we should care because these things are pretty easy to hack. They're pretty... We're putting more and more control of our lives and our houses on these things. And there is zero, zero security. They do point out that Amazon is not dumb. If people cared, they'd be addressing it.

People don't seem to care. And they're kind of saying what we kind of know. We live in a world now where we can't expect these companies to take care of it for us. We have to push them to do it. So they're basically saying if you are an Amazon customer and you're in the ecosystem, you need to push Amazon to get security on these things, which is...

Okay, who am I going to call? Jeff Bezos directly? Like, there's no fucking customer service anywhere. So what am I supposed to do here? Well, the thing is, I mean, we've only had a few issues with these things in the wild with Amazon. So I think the public trust with Amazon is pretty high.

I mean, we have the one incident where the guy's, you know, basically private conversation with his wife was texted to somebody else. That was a big no-no. But for the most part, you haven't heard anything like this. And they push back against the cops who wanted them to, like, you know, give them all the data from when that guy killed another guy.

And they're like, well, he had an echo there. So why don't... I'm thinking more along the lines of voice control, locking down to, you know, your voice so a stranger can't control your system, that sort of thing. That thing. And again, it's like medicine. We should be preventative. We shouldn't be waiting for situations to happen, then address them.

How about we get ahead of the game here and put the security in first before somebody breaks into your house using voice control? Move fast and break things. Isn't that how Silicon Valley works now? That's right. No, I really want to try and, you know, red team some of this stuff one time.

And just, I'll set up a bunch in my house, and then you can come over and try and break in my house. Okay. Just from the outside. Sure. Without breaking a window. You have to use the echo to do it. Wait, I can't pick up an echo and throw it into the window? Oh, you could do that. Old school, baby. Yeah, exactly.

My dad used to sell security systems. I'm like, so how much does a security system cost to make your house, you know, completely secure? He's like, son, there's no such thing as completely secure. You can just break down a wall if you have to. So there is no real security in the world.

We sell hopes and dreams is what we sell here. Now, over on Digital Trends, they had a write-up on how beneficial is ECG in the new Apple Watch? We asked an expert. So it turns out that, you know, when you normally get an ECG, they're going to put 12 wires on you.

So they'd get 12 points of data. Now, if they send you home with a device to track you over time, it's going to have one point of data. The Apple Watch has one point of data. But it's better than nothing is basically what he's saying. Right. It's like, you know, it works.

It gives you that one point. It's a single lead ECG, but it will give them something useful to track over time. So home care, preventative care, but not weapons grade. No, no, unless, you know, you start getting the eye nipples and all the other stickers on you.

The eye ring, the eye nipple, the eye chest pad. Yes, I'm looking forward to all of these things, but they'll be tastefully designed. Oh, I'm sure they will. Come in dark mode. Johnny, I will dark mode your nipples. That's what we've got. Show title. And Chairgate continues.

This chair is just toast. What did I tell you, Jason? You said, go to Craigslist. And friend of the show, Trent, friend of the show, Trent also said, listen to Brian, go to go to Craigslist. He's like, I got my air on 10 years ago for 300 bucks and it still works great.

And so in about 45 minutes, a gentleman will be showing up from a furniture store in North Hollywood with my new Aaron chair. I didn't go with the mirror. I went with the Aaron because I've always wanted an Aaron. So I got a fully loaded air on size C because I got a big fat ass for delivered $405.

There you go. Like new. So I looked at it. It was like 1400 new if you just bought it from the Herman Miller store. Yeah. Why would you do that? There are so many of these things literally rolling around in the area because every tech company that went out of business sold them all.

Yeah. So I went to Craigslist and I went to my local Craigslist and I typed in Herman Miller and popped up the first ad. 150 Herman Miller Aeron chairs, 385 apiece. Yep. So Chairgate is going out the window here. I'm going to sell this one at a garage sale next week and get some money back to pay for it.

And I'm selling all my cameras at the garage sale. So to pay for all the rings and the rings have been fantastic, by the way. I love these things. They're great. And it's just so much easier to use. I'd recommend only trying to sell your chair to a thinner person because otherwise as soon as somebody sits down on that, they're just going to go.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's a hard to replicate thing. You have to hit it. You have to sit on it just right for it to hit that button and then it like bounces. So I'm hoping that I can at least get like 50 bucks for it since I paid 200. That would be nice. Right.

And I had a shower thought the other day and you're going to shake your head and go, oh, Jason. But, you know, we always talk about crypto coin and things like that. I'm like, what about crypto so we can put sex workers on the blockchain? Oh, see, when you put this in the show notes, I thought you just forgot the link because I naturally assumed it was actually real.

I thought you might. That's kind of why. But I'm like, oh, let's let's start crypto. Okay. I did end up watching a little bit of John Oliver this week on YouTube. I haven't watched him in a while, but he had a Facebook bit that was hilarious.

Did you get he's stomping on our territory back off? John Oliver, please. Seriously. Do you do politics? We do tech. Yeah. Come on. Or at least hire us as writers. I mean, you're in town. No, it was a very good segment. It was very funny and not wrong. No, Facebook. We are a toilet. Yes.

I loved it. And a little bit of follow up on the podcasting news. I said that, you know, because BuzzFeed shut down and then Audible was shutting down. Vox, on the other hand, has doubled down. All right. They've got some new shows coming out. And I figured you'd like this one. It's called Recode's Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.

I'm a fan of Kara Swisher. And I'm a fan of Recode. Yeah. So I'd be interested in listening to that. I mean, she's been doing a podcast anyways for quite some time now. It's just I've been too lazy to actually get around to it, but I just, well, they put the transcript up. So I just got to kind of go through the transcript. Yeah. But the other cool one is they're doing one called Vox Media's Function with Anil Dash.

And Anil's an old friend. So I'm really looking forward to that. He's a very smart guy. And, you know, one of the guys from the old, old days of blogging back from the, he was working at Movable Type when I met him. Right. And they were on like Movable Type 1.4, I think, something like that. But yeah, Anil's a really good guy and a very smart guy.

So I'm looking forward to that one. And it turns out Serial is back. Okay. I didn't even know or care. Nobody does. I love this. And over on Vulture, there's an article called Serial, still a juggernaut. The first episode, a bar fight walks into the Justice Center, saw around 1.46 million unique first day downloads, according to PodTrack.

And the second one got 1.43 million unique first day downloads. Big numbers. But let us remember that I was subscribed to Serial. So I got these as downloads. That doesn't mean I've listened to them. Exactly. That's kind of where that comes in. And I know shows that get a lot more than that. So look at Tim Ferriss.

That's like an average show for Tim Ferriss. And so it's not really the juggernaut that they're saying it is. But then again, this article was written by Nicholas Qua, who writes a podcasting newsletter, which just kind of I hate it.

I hate his newsletter because all it does is it just talks to the power curve. Like, you know, it's only people that are at NPR or the big people doesn't go into depth for anything like that. So with any of the smaller shows or the smaller networks or things like that.

So, you know, he's trying to be like, you know, the NBC of podcasting. And I'd rather have the vice of podcasting. So, yeah. And I recommend the pod news email newsletter. That one's really good. That's from this guy down in Australia. It's much, much better.

I'll put a link to that one in the show notes. That's the one that I really get my good news from. But but it's interesting that Serial is back. And as far as I can tell, nobody gave a shit. Yeah. You know, I was I loved I loved the first season. It was fantastic. Second one totally lost me.

Then they did the third one that wasn't really a Serial thing, but produced by Serial, but still kind of promoted as if it were Serial. And that was S-Town. Yeah, that one. Yeah. So I'm out. Oh, the one that they got. Yeah. S-Town, the one that the S is for getting sued. So, yeah. Got to get those releases, guys.

In the news. So last week, you brought up Cody Wilson, the guy who did the 3D printed guns and was brought up on sexual assault charges and had absconded off to Taiwan.

Yes. Well, it turns out he should go to a country maybe without extradition because they hunted him down and sent him back. So he was immediately arrested and is now out on a hundred and fifty thousand dollar bond. OK, so we'll keep an eye on that. And this one, because there was another article I saw in Ars Technica that said basically without him, his company can't survive.

I think his company is him, really. Yeah, kind of. Probably. It's like, what do you actually do? You put up plans on the Internet for people to make a gun. Yeah. So, you know, great business model there. We've talked a lot about the Internet of Things and how ridiculous the security level is on these things.

Some stuff ships without even having an ability to change a password. Some stuff ships without a password. California is once again leading the way. California is considering legislation that will institute strict password settings for the network of smart physical devices that collect and share data that they acquire from users and their surroundings.

SB three twenty seven reasonable security feature or features must be included on all devices beginning January 1st, 2020. This bill also mandates the manufacturers must provide default passwords that are unique to each device, which unheard of. I think that's an amazing idea.

Or prompt the user to generate a new password before using the product. Perfect. Great. I love this. Yay. Go, California. Yeah. Amcrest was they have a default password. It is admin, but they do make you change the password when you do set up the camera.

So that's good. Ring does the same. You have to set up a new account and a new password. So good on. It's basically going to force the low lying fruit to do what the better companies are already doing. The low lying fruit. Yes. Which would be most of the really cheap shit that comes out of China. Yeah.

There is a great article over at Ars Technica called low pay, poor prospects and psychological toll. The perils of micro task work. Did you get a chance to read this one? I did. This is a great article and it talks about the United Nations International Labor Organization study that just came out that basically said this is bullshit.

Like Amazon, Amazon's Mechanical Turk and all these other places. Screwing people left, right and center. Yeah, there's you know, it's way below the, you know, minimum wage level and people are becoming psychologically traumatized because they have to look at your dick pics all day.

Yeah. The interesting thing about this article was I actually I almost never do this because I tend to think of myself as intelligent. But I clicked on the comments link because I wanted to see it. Oh, no, no, no. The interesting thing about this is there are a lot of people commenting in here saying we use these to train our machine learning algorithms.

So you are basically putting yourself out of a job because once our algorithms get good enough, we're going to fire you. Well, well, yeah, I mean, what they're expecting is that their machine learning algorithms will eventually work. Yes. We're not so sure that they will.

Exactly. So you might just be, you know, this is this is the redistribution of wealth from venture capitalists that I always talk about and I always love. It's like, OK, here's one hundred million dollars for your company. Go out and crack this nut. And then they spread the money around and it gets back into the ecosystem and then the company goes under.

Perfect. Yeah. Redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. I love it. Except for the fact that people are paid not so long wages, not even close. Yeah, it's it's unconscionable how little they're actually getting paid for their work. And speaking of that, we've been talking about this for a long time.

Another company that is basically the business plan is as soon as we get self-driving cars, we're firing all your asses. Yeah. Uber drivers and Lyft drivers and other gig economy workers are earning half what they did five years ago. Oh, surprise, surprise. Yeah. So on average, drivers who transport people, Uber, Lyft or things, Eats or Postmates through an app made 53 percent less in 2017 than they did in 2013, according to a new study by J.P.

Morgan Chase Institute that looks at online gig economy payments into Chase checking accounts. Now, as we've discussed on the show a couple of times, it's very, very difficult for anybody to track the gig economy. A lot of it is under the table. Yeah, not really being reported and things of that nature. But they are saying it's definitely down, which is not surprising because there's a lot more people out there doing it.

The prices have had to drop in order for people to continue to use these sorts of things. According to J.P. Morgan, drivers on average are potentially working fewer hours. Demand hasn't increased to meet the increased number of drivers, meaning we've written we've reached a critical mass of stupid cheap transportation out there.

Right. Prices have fallen. Platforms are paying drivers lower rates because you have to make the money that they used to make because, you know, they're a company. So all in all, this is going exactly the direction that I kind of thought it would not looking good for people doing this as a job. Yeah, because everybody's like, oh, I can drive for Lyft and make lots of money.

But everybody did that. And so now there's too many drivers and too few rides. The thing that depressing, the depressing takeaway from this is J.P. Morgan is basically saying that people are only using this now to supplement regular nine to five jobs because they have to because their regular traditional employment is no longer enough to make ends meet.

Yeah, that's what it comes down to. Now, the thing here that is kind of buried in the lead, J.P. Morgan Chase Institute that looks at online gig economy payments into Chase checking accounts. Now, did these people give them permission to look at their checking account data or not?

Probably not. I'm sure it's in the fine print somewhere. Anonymized air quotes. Yeah. And so, you know, OK, they're making public studies based on what should be private information. But that that creeped me out a bit that these guys are going through and using your checking account data to actually put out studies on, you know, that you didn't authorize them to do.

Yeah. So that that I thought was a little creepy. Anyway, moving on. Sirius is going to buy Pandora. OK, which I thought was kind of crazy. Yeah, I mean, well, here's the crazier part. They're buying it for three point five billion dollars.

Pandora lost about two hundred million dollars in the first half of the year, which comes back to how the fuck do these people value these companies? I don't understand it at all. Pandora doesn't make sense to me as a business model. Sirius XM.

I actually just canceled Sirius XM. Finally, finally, I don't know why I'm paying three hundred and some odd dollars a year for this. I have issues with what they're doing in terms of the musicians rights stuff that's going through. They're they're paying lobbyists left, right and center to try to block that crap because it costs them money.

But the main reason is just every time I get in the car, I hear the same damn five songs. I don't need to pay three hundred bucks a year for that. I've got a phone. Exactly. Or just to put it on a put it on a like two gig memory stick and listen to the same five songs. And you want to talk about a business models that don't make sense.

Of course, they don't let you cancel online. You have to call. And as soon as you call, they offer to drop the price in half. Yeah, it's amazing. I called to re up on my because I've got a Ford Escape with the Sirius XM radio in it. And they wanted like it was like ninety eight dollars a year.

I'm like, what kind of deal can you give me? Because I'm not going to pay you ninety eight dollars a year for something that I'm going to listen to as I go back and forth to the CVS, you know, and they're like, we were not going to give you a deal. I'm like, OK, then cancel. And they're like, OK, so I had a different different take on it.

But I was I mean, because it was a deal that came with the car because I got the first six months for free and was kind of enjoying it. I was listening to Howard Stern and I like that. And Tony Hawk was on there. It was cool. But now I'm just like, I'm not going to spend that much money for this that I'm almost never going to listen to.

So I don't know how they're still in business. I don't understand how either of them are still really in business. The idea behind this merger, this acquisition is that Sirius XM is primarily used as a premium in car service, while Pandora is used mostly for streaming music to homes and on mobile devices. I don't know.

I can listen to Sirius XM when I had my subscription off my Echo or other devices. There's apps. All they really have to do is, you know, split the feed, plug one into the satellite and one into the Wi-Fi over there. And you've got Sirius XM online. I don't quite get it.

Yeah. You know, so I think it's mostly Pandora has a huge listening base that are happy to listen to it when it's free. Um, I don't think Sirius XM has thought through the fact that you're not going to be able to convert a lot at probably any of these people into paying customers, but we'll see.

I was a paid Pandora customer for a year and it turned out that I didn't, I didn't mind the ads. So now I'm back on the free plan because that's what's hooked up to my Sonos in the house. So I've got like a radio station that I set up that's always on in the house and I hear the same like 50 songs, you know, all the time, just on a loop.

It's just, it's nice background noise, but I'm never going to pay for it. And I can hook up so many other things. Like I hooked up radio.com's new app to the Sonos. So I wake up in the morning, I can listen to K-Rock in the house. And so I'm not, why would I pay for Sirius? You know?

I don't know. Yeah. Cause I'm not that big of a Howard Stern fan. I really don't care that much. I mean, I guess that's the only thing that has to be keeping them on the air. And he's talking about going away in a couple of years. So we'll see what happens. Yeah. And there's an interesting article over on slate called how serious XM's purchase of Pandora could change the balance of power in the music industry.

And it talks about how all of these companies are doing curated feeds now to people. And it's all a black box, which just, you know, is ripe for payola. It's, I mean, it's, that's what it is. And the other thing is like when serious merged with XM, like years ago, uh, the federal regulators said, you know, you have to have this much content of this type for at least three years.

And then as soon as that went away, they killed eight out of its 10 Latin music stations right off the bat. They're like, okay, we don't have to do it anymore. So we're not going to do it. It just shows the consolidation is a bad thing. Yep. So yeah, shocking.

Yeah. Put a company in charge. Okay. Uh, and as we, as we have heard on the internets, oh no, big news at Instagram. If you really care about this CEO, Kevin Systrom and CTO, Mike Krieger are leaving the company.

Okay. Now this is really funny because I, I found it on tech crunch this morning, but, uh, uh, the Stratechery email newsletter that, uh, comes out every day that I, that I pay for because I like to pay for the content that, that is good. Um, it was a great article this morning about how, no, Kevin hasn't been the CEO of Instagram since they sold it.

That's been Mark Zuckerberg because he's your boss. Yes. So it's kind of interesting that, uh, everybody keeps saying, oh, the CEO of Instagram is leaving. No, no, actually not. The CEO of Instagram is still right there and his name is Mark Zuckerberg.

But exactly. You know, Kevin was very upset and so was this other guy who I've never heard of, uh, Mike Krieger. The Facebook has basically said, okay, you know, uh, honeymoon's over. We're going to, we're going to do more integration with Facebook now.

That's supposedly smart people. These people are very fucking stupid. What do they think was going to happen? No, no, no, they think they were going to get autonomy. Did they think Instagram was going to continue to just be this thing that Facebook paid gazillions of dollars for and we're just going to leave it alone.

Are you fucking stupid? Yeah. Okay. That's kind of it. I, I, you know, I put it up to a Silicon Valley naivete. Take your bags of money and go live in Hawaii. That's what I go buy Hawaii as much money as they got because yeah, it's like they got a billion dollars, but a part of that was $700 million in Facebook stock back then, years ago, which is worth over $4 billion.

Now you're a billionaire with a buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, B bugger off. I don't know why you're complaining. This is the, that's the dream. That's what everybody here is trying to do. Yeah. It's exactly what just happened to you. So shut up and go take the bags of money. Go build your mountain lair in New Zealand and never speak to us again.

Yes. Unfortunately, of course they won't. And we're going to get some dumb app from them. That's not going to do anything. So yeah, no, I mean, once you, we, in the old days, we always wanted fuck you money. And now I just want these people to have fuck off money. So go fuck off and leave me alone. That's what it is. You have the fuck off money.

Go away. Oh man. And this one, next one came over back, uh, back to, uh, some more Facebook stuff over on courts.com when Facebook goes down, people go read the news. Okay. Oh, figure. Uh, yeah.

Facebook experienced a 45 minute outage on August 3rd. And there is a study that, uh, basically showed that, oh, all the news websites got more traffic. Surprise, surprise, surprise. Yeah. Yeah. When you, when you don't want to feed from the teat of the Zuck, then you actually have to go out and get news.

Everything is pointing to the fact that Facebook is just terrible for the world. Honestly. And I haven't missed it. I have not missed it. I've been off for a couple of weeks now and I have not missed it. I'm off Twitter now for the next like five or six weeks. Cause I'm, I've got to go heads down on a new thing that I'm writing and it'll be out.

We'll announce that when it comes out. But it's like, I just don't have the time to have these things like taking that little bit of attention away. Cause we know what cost switching is, you know, if you go look at Twitter, then before you can get back into your, your main flow, it's, you know, like half an hour to 45 minutes just to get back in the headspace.

So I took it off my phone. I blocked it from my computer. It's, it's gone for a while and it's been, it's been deliciously silent. I love it. Okay. Also over at Quartz, I can't wait to talk about this one. One small change to New York's intersections is saving pedestrians lives.

Now this is a, this is an article that just talks about how they'd made some, some easy changes to an intersection to put in some speed bumps in the right place. And I love, I love what this article is about. And I think Brian, you kind of hit on the same point that I was going to have about this, this article on Quartz.

Would you like to take over? I wasn't sure if you wanted to actually talk about the content of the article, which I didn't find particularly interesting or the wankery douchebaggery design. This is the most horrible bullshit I've seen in a long time.

I think somebody who just figured out CSS and, and a JavaScript went to town and somehow this got approved. Get to the goddamn point. I am scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Oh, aren't we clever? Exactly.

Yes, it is. It is a masturbatory design for the web for the, for sure. And what it comes down to is I, I, I like the city design aspect of this article because anything that can, you know, make it easier to be a pedestrian and walking around, which I thought you might get a kick out of too, because you're almost killed every day by a fucking Prius, um, to slow people down when they're making dangerous turns.

I think it's a great article about that, but it could have been basically four paragraphs and a couple of JPEGs. You know, totally, yeah, instead of all this wankery, but I mean, the thing that upsets me about the content of the article itself is, God, we have just had to dumb down everything because people don't pay attention and they're just stupid.

20 years ago, we didn't need to stick gigantic barriers to stop people from running people over. Oh, because we didn't have people on cell phones 20 years ago. People, people weren't sitting there on Facebook trying to, trying to gram their tweets as they're making a left turn in their fucking Prius, you know, that you, that nobody can hear, you know, we also, yeah, we also had V8s back then.

So we could hear, hear them coming when we used to like burn gasoline and hit the gas. But yeah, no, it's, it's, it's one of those changes that is unwelcome, but needs addressing. And I think, I think this speed bump trick addresses the problem.

And I thought I liked it. That's all, that's all that was about. And over at the New York times, this was, this was an interesting, what I found a friend of mine sent me for hackers. Anonymity was once critical and that's changing. This is an article by Steven Hiltner.

And it talks about the, the landscape of the security researchers and how everybody always used to have a handle. Everybody was anonymous, but now these people are getting hired by fortune, you know, 100 companies and you cannot, you cannot have a check made out to your idiot handle that you had on CompuServe 20 years ago, you know?

So, but I thought it was, I thought it was a nice middle ground for, you know, talking about how some of these people are coming out of the shadows and actually talking about who they are. And there was one quote in there, hiding behind a fake name doesn't mean you're doing something malicious and it doesn't mean you're a bad person. It means you're trying to protect your privacy, which, which is, you know, a valid concern.

But when you are making a living as a security researcher, I think, you know, you have to have a public persona. You can't go to an interview and say, oh yeah, I was, I was dank memes 92. That was me. Dank. Okay. You know, it doesn't work that way.

No, it doesn't. But it's, you know, it's, it's just an interesting thought experiment to talk about how these guys, like if I'm going to come up with a solution to a hack that I found or out somebody that is, you know, very dangerous character over in Russia and I don't like polonium soup, maybe I do want to release it under a pseudonym, you know, just for personal protection because some of these people are putting things out.

I mean, just look at all the shit Brian Krebs gets for his, his articles, you know? So I, I see, I see both sides of this and it's, it's interesting. It's, it's an interesting tightrope to walk for some of these people. Yeah. And back to the N, NYT, the old New York times.

I actually had to call them this week because online you can't actually cancel your subscription to the physical paper. You have to talk to a human. Right. And I've been, I've been using the, uh, their service to get the digital version, which you enjoy from my account. Yes, I do.

But I also get the physical paper and it's time to kill the physical paper. I don't need it. It, it basically goes in recycling. So it's just a waste of waste of trees. So, so the New York times has sued the FCC. Okay. And they're suing because they want the data from, remember a while ago when they, we had the net neutrality, open comments.

Oh yes. Yes. And all the dead people were sending in comments about it. We don't want it. We don't want. Yeah. Um, so the New York times wants to find out if there was Russian interference in that process because the, the repeal of net neutrality is bullshit and they're fighting for it.

And the FCC keeps coming back and saying, no, you cannot have our server logs because it's going to then basically give out personal information for people that, that signed up for the comments. Now there's two problems here. One that's public data because it's run by a basically government agency.

Well, no, not a public company, a government agency, but a government company. Yeah. Yeah. Sunshine laws. And the fact that they, they actually came back to the FCC several times and said, no, we're going to pare it down. So we can't do it. We just want to know, just give us the IP addresses and the headers. Can you just give us the IP addresses and the headers?

And that way we can match, match them up, see if there were some bots in action and where those IP addresses came from and they still said no. And so the New York times said, well, F you, we're going to sue you. And hopefully they'll, hopefully they'll win. Yeah. Yeah. Fingers crossed. Uh, and I, Southern California is great for many reasons.

And one of my favorites is that there are no mosquitoes here. Very few. I, yeah, not many, not, not in my neck of the woods. It's too damn hot. They just burst into little balls of flame, but I come from, you know, the Midwest and the East coast where mosquitoes are a problem. I don't come from sub Saharan Africa where they're a real problem and there's malaria everywhere, Asia where there's malaria.

But I found this story in wired and it says, here's the plan to end malaria with CRISPR edited mosquitoes. And as soon as I heard that, my, my spidey sense perked up, I'm like, oh, do tell, do tell. I mean, if this, if this works, this is going to be one of the greatest breakthroughs in science history, but what could possibly go wrong?

I, for one, would like to first extend the greeting to our eight foot malaria mosquito overlords. Exactly. Jesus Christ. I've seen starship troopers. I know what those bugs are going to look like and I'm terrified. Yeah. So I do like in the story, more tests have to be done first.

No shit. No shit. How about a lot? How about let's, you know, figure out what happens with the whole ecosystem too. If we, we just, oh, this is terrifying stuff. That's what I mean. That's what I mean. It's like, okay, let's just release all these mosquitoes into the wild.

No, at least they're doing all the tests in the laboratory right now for now. Okay. But you know, you know, it's coming and they have a, they have a custom built facility outside of Rome. I don't know why Rome is the hotbed of mosquito testing, but yeah, this is, this is terrifying.

Yeah. Here's one line in order to spread their genetic time bomb through a wild population. They have to be competitive with wild males. Okay. Right there. Genetic time bomb. Right. Yes. That, that's scary. I mean, I know you're scientists, you know, I know you mean well, but, but, and this is funded in part, in the most part by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

So Bill Gates could actually be bringing about the end of the world. Great. This episode is sponsored by privacy. Privacy is the first payments product that keeps your personal information, well, private while being even more convenient than using a regular credit card online.

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Media Candy. Patrick Stewart shares first photo from new Star Trek Picard show. Make it so. Make it so. Sort of. It's just a bunch of them sitting around and announcing the writers on the show and all that sort of stuff. So there's no spoilers.

There's no nothing. But it's something. It is something. It's a something, nothing. Yeah, it's something that is actually happening. That's what's. Yes, I'm very excited about that. Another thing that it seems is actually happening is Tenacious D is going to make a sequel to The Pick of Destiny.

I was one of three people that liked that movie. I was about to say, woo, I guess. Look, I'm a fan of the D. I love the album, the first album. You know, and, you know, 18 year old me would probably love the fact that there's another movie.

Didn't care for the movie when it came out. Nobody did. I'm the only one that liked it because I never watched Tenacious D. Like they'd never watched the show. I never listened to their albums. And this was like my first foray into the D. And I was just I was smitten with it.

And and also in the old guitar hero, there was a song, The Metal, that was cut from the movie, but was still on the soundtrack. And I played that incessantly on expert trying to beat it. And I beat it like twice. It was really hard. Kyle can fucking play guitar.

It's really tough. Yes, he can. On the opposite side of that, I found a new app called Sleeping Dragon Calming Tone Sound Generator. OK, this would normally be in apps and gadgets, but I wanted to throw it in here now because it's one of those things where if you have trouble sleeping and you need some kind of like ambient music to go to bed to, this is a great one.

And I really dig it. And there's an app for the iPhone. They said that there was an app for Mac OS, but I think they pulled it. It doesn't exist anymore. You can't find it. But it's pretty cool. I dig it. OK, or you can listen to Dead Can Dance. I love them, too. They have a new song called The Mountain, and they have an upcoming album called Dionysus, which will be out on November 2nd, and then they will be touring.

So all very exciting stuff coming from them. They are one of my favorite bands out there. Oh, mine, too. I'm very excited. Yeah, I've never seen them live. I would love to go. Oh, one of the best things you can ever do in your life. It's amazing. Yeah, well, I take your concert recommendations very seriously because you, for years, said, you've got to go see The Cure.

You've got to go see The Cure. And I finally went and I saw The Cure, and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen in my life. So maybe we can go together. Perhaps. Perhaps. We shall see what the dates are. And I put this one in the show because you're a Dan Rather fan, and I found out he has a podcast.

Ah. He doesn't do it very often. He does one a month. But, you know, I like Dan Rather a lot. He's definitely putting himself out there as this really wise and journalistic voice. I get kind of everything I need from him from what he posts on Facebook. Now, a friend of the show, Mike, is a huge fan of the interview series he does.

Like, this guy is ramping up, not slowing down. Yeah. He's doing a podcast. He's doing a TV, you know, interview series. He's posting on social media, left, right, and center. He started up a whole new, like, news network. Go, Dan. Yeah, seriously, man. I wish I had that much energy now that he has, and he's old.

Yes. Older. We're still pretty old. But, yeah. And, you know, I don't know what it is with people named Dan that can't put out more episodes because Dan Carlin, you know, he comes on the scene, drops a bomb, and then runs away, and then you don't hear from him for five months, and then he puts out another one.

And, oh, that's another show that, like, you know, probably five million downloads the first day that just puts cereal to shame. But the other night, he dropped one of his hardcore history addendums, Nightmares of the Indianapolis. Did you get a chance to listen to this one yet? No, I did not even know it was out yet.

Oh, yeah, it's fantastic because the story of the Indianapolis sinking is one of the most terrifying stories of World War II. And it was like, you know, because they were carrying parts for, I think, you know, the nuclear program.

So nobody knew that they were out there. Nobody came to look for them. They got found on accident. But after the ship sank, because they got hit by a couple torpedoes, and the ship sank, and there were a bunch of people in the water, unfortunately, it was shark-infested water. Yes, I know the story.

Yeah, yeah. It is terrifying. And Dan recounts it in the only way that Dan Carlin can, to make it even scarier than it normally would be. Yes. Oh, man. Great episode. I'm so glad he put this one out. I'm actually going to go back and listen to it again just because, you know, I'm not going to hear anything from him for another six months, so I might as well get my Dan in now that he doesn't do his other show, his political show.

You can't do common sense because, as he says, there is no common sense. Yeah, exactly. But speaking of common sense, Sam Harris has a ton of it, and he has a new episode called The Edge of Humanity, a conversation with Yuval Noah Harari, the guy that wrote Sapiens.

And I love this episode so much, and it just reminds me of why we need to take more time for ourselves to think. You know, Yuval, he meditates two hours a day so he can get focused, which is insane because I'm like, that's a long time. I can't meditate for more than 10 minutes, but when I do, it really helps.

But he also talks about universal basic income and how it needs to be thought out more because it's not universal. It's not basic, and it's, you know, it's a problem. So people who throw the term around like we do may want to think about it a little bit more. But he's got a new book coming out, which we'll talk about in a second.

But, yeah, it's a great, great interview. I highly recommend everybody go check it out. Right. As you know, I've been working my way through Dark Matter, the show that lasted three seasons and then did not get picked up after that. I should have Googled it.

I should have asked you if you asked me, I'd be like, I've never heard of Dark Matter. So my rule of these shows is I always want them to last at least three seasons before I watch something because I don't want to get totally invested in something that's just going to get dumped.

I have an addendum to that rule now. I have to watch three seasons and know that there was a final episode or wrap up of some sort. I was the other night I was watching season three and you know how Netflix will just kind of roll into the next episode.

And I'd had a little bit of wine and my wife and kid were asleep. So it was daddy downtime. Yep. Yep. I was enjoying and I really enjoyed the show. So it rolled into the next episode and I watched that and I was like, all right, it's time to go to bed. Man, that's a hell of a cliffhanger. I can't wait to watch the next episode and that was it.

And I came up the next night and discovered that that was the final episode that was ever aired. And fuck. So disappointing. It was such a good show and it was heading towards in such a good direction and it ended on such an amazing cliffhanger and there's nothing.

Well, make sure it should be. Make sure you thumbs up your rule. Make sure you thumbs up it. Maybe Netflix will pick it up because they've got. They're all on other shows already. It's been too long. It's done. There should be a rule that these show writers have to like at least put out a synopsis of what would have happened.

They would have done with the characters. But of course, that would require that they knew what was going to happen with the characters. And as we know from all these shows, these people fucking make it up until the very end. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Now, you got deadwooded on that one. You totally got deadwooded. I'm sorry.

Sucked. I was so depressed when I came out the next night and I was like loading it up and I was like, are you fucking kidding me? That was the last episode? Well, I'm really glad that I held off to watch that one because now I don't have to. It's very good. It's very good. But you have to know that there will be no resolution if you want to go in and watch it.

I enjoyed it a lot. And speaking of resolutions, the first episode of the final season of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown aired this weekend. It was very good. And there seems to be some backtracking. We thought there was going to be three to four fully complete episodes.

But the interviews I saw after this aired said that this is the last one that has like the full narration. Oh, really? Bourdain. Oh, we'll see what happens. OK, it's on the DVR. I'll check it out when I'm in the mood to get sad. It's very good. And they did some good editing at the end. And after you, it might get a little misty.

That's what I'm saying. When I'm in the mood to be sad, then I'll watch it. Yeah. But I watched Skyscraper with The Rock. Dwayne The Rock Johnson. The last movie I saw from him was Rampage, which was I am.

If I ever see him, I'm going to have to punch him in the nuts for Rampage because it was so bad. And Skyscraper is his attempt at doing Die Hard. I think it's kind of like Die Hard. And it was tolerable. We'll just say it's tolerable.

Not great, but tolerable. OK. That's all. That's as far as I can go. That's as far as I can go with it. So if you're stuck on a plane and drunk, watch it. But otherwise, probably skip it. And then I watched The First Purge.

I haven't seen any of The Purge stuff since The First Movie came out. I watched The First Movie. I love the concept. Are you telling me that The First Purge isn't The First Purge? No, it's not. The Purge was already happening by The First Movie. So this is a prequel to everything. And I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I really enjoyed it. Because the way it works with The Purge is the first movie had a budget of like $3 million. And then the next one maybe had four. They're cheaply made movies. They're just cheap horror movies. So they put more money into this one. But it was a good story, good actors, good action, all along the way.

I mean, I really enjoyed The First Purge. And the only reason that I went back and watched this was because there's a Purge TV series out now. Believe it or not. So I downloaded the first three episodes of that before because I missed it on my DVR.

Because I kept seeing the commercials for it, and I thought there were commercials for The First Purge, the movie. Because I knew that was coming out. But no, they're for a TV series. So I'm going to check that out. But if you're into that kind of thing. I know nothing about The Purge. So I'm just looking at their IMDb page for the movie, The First Purge.

America's third political party, the new founding fathers of America, comes to power and conducts an experiment. No laws for 12 hours on Staten Island. No one has to stay on the island, but $5,000 is given to anyone who does. Well, now I'm intrigued. I didn't know it was an experiment in universal basic. Yeah, there you go. This is what happens when you get UBI.

No, because the first one was the entire country. The first movie was like in the United States to, you know, let some steam off. Everybody has 24 hours, one day a year, or 12 hours, whatever it is, to basically kill and murder or do whatever you want.

That's pretty much what it is. And we used to think about this long, long ago before the movies ever came out. And we called it, let's have a Darwin day. Let's just have Darwin day in survival of the fittest happens because there's some people you just want to take out.

And this kind of goes along with that theme. And I mean, I like the movie. I like the first Burge movie. So the other movies I can't talk about except for the first movie that came out. And that was mediocre at best. Right. OK, well, I'm not a big stage or play person, but I might be dragging my ass to a theater at some point in the near future.

All About Eve is being adapted for the stage. It's a 1950s classic and best picture Oscar winner. But PJ Harvey is going to do the score and it stars Gillian Anderson. PJ Harvey and Gillian Anderson involved in the same project. Be still my 1990s heart. Oh, my God.

I got to dust off the passport. Let's head over to London. Yes. Let's set up some grumpy old geeks action over there. Who wants to who wants to fly us over to do a live show and get us some theater tickets?

Some might think that the first real sign of autumn's arrival is colder weather, falling leaves or maybe even seasonal lattes. But the wisest among us know that the true harbinger of fall is the annual viral Halloween costume. This is over on Slate. It's hard to truly top 2017's Anne Frank's children's costume or the Tranny Granny sold by Walmart in 2016.

But 2018 might have done it. The sexy handmaid costume. First spotted on Twitter, Yandy's brave red maiden costume is a sexy take on the iconic red robes that enslaved surrogates are forced to wear in Hula's dystopian drama, The Handmaid's Tale. Yandy's ex but make it a slutty version of a symbol of women's state sanctioned depression included a hooded red cloak, a red mini dress and a white bonnet hat.

That, according to the website Coffee, allows the wearer to be bold and speak your mind. Somebody never watched the show. Outrage was swift and mocking. And within 24 hours of the costume making the rounds on Twitter, Yandy pulled it from their site with a statement that includes the mesmerizing lines.

Over the last few hours, it has become obvious that our Yandy's brave red maiden costume is being seen as a symbol of women's oppression rather than an expression of women's empowerment. Go figure. Amazing. Oh, my God. How could anybody, anybody think that that was a good idea?

Look, this is a world now where we just throw this shit out there and see what sticks. Yeah. You never know. Break, move fast and break things, Jason. That's right. Yeah. Oh, God. Well, Linus Torvalds is in the news. He has apologized for years of being a jerk and takes time off to learn empathy.

Excuse me? Awesome. God. I mean, this guy is just, he's a famous dick. I mean, he's terrible to the people that help him make his product that has probably made him millions and millions of dollars. You know, the open source software package, Linux, which everybody uses.

I use it. You use it. Everybody uses it. Everybody's got some Linux in them. And now he's just like, well, maybe they were right. And I should just go like, I think I need a timeout. So, well, you know, good for him for recognizing it a little, a little late after he's made a lot of money.

That's it. He's like, um, actually, I got to go just spend my money. Uh, so I'll see you guys in a little bit, but I'll be nicer when I come back. Oh, my God. What a dumb shit. And I found this one just randomly. I can't even remember where I found it.

But thieves caught hours after stealing GPS tracking devices from a tech company. Did we make sure they're off? Apparently not. Apparently not. Now, these are devices that usually go into cargo containers to track shipments.

But, you know, they thought that they looked cool, so they would steal them. And then the company's like, well, let's turn them on. Go find them. It took them like four hours to find them. And they had about $18,000 worth of the devices. And the CEO is saying, well, our shit works. We found them.

That's amazing. So the unfortunate part for these thieves is they put these trackers. Well, they had some in their cars and they were just driving around, but they put the bulk of them in their warehouse with all of their other stolen shit. So the cops like found them and found all the other stolen stuff.

And apparently one of the things that was in there was like some really rare World War II photographs that this collector had. And they were stolen by these guys. And so they returned the photos. So he was very happy about that. But talk about dumb shittery.

Let's steal GPS tracking devices. How are they ever going to find us? Feedback loop. We got some new Patreon subscribers. Lust Dante, Adam, Gadiel, Andy, Bob, and Benjamin.

Thank you so much, guys. Thank you. And Peter wrote us. Jason, on the topic of Chairgate 2018. Unfortunately, it would seem that I am walking in your footprints maybe two weeks behind with my own painfully cheap knockoff of what I can only imagine is what it looks like when a Formula One bucket seat fucks a Republic of Gamers fire sale on Amazon.

That's what they look like. The squeaking sounds like I hadn't seen my girlfriend since I left for NAMM. And after the Pistons started hinting at potentially crapping out on me, I see a similar future awaiting. I tried to know what I was getting into first as best I could as far as the warranty is concerned. And since I can just about guarantee that your chair, my chair, and every other gaming chair duplicated of the same company, it seems the manufacturer warranty with these things are pretty standard and they're bullshittery.

And it gets into specific details here. So very funny note. Sorry that you had a very crappy time with the chair. I give you the same advice I gave Jason. Go check Craigslist. Yeah, what I love is he did the math on what it would take to return this thing. And it's like about $3,465 to send it back to Shenzhen.

If you have the original box, which nobody does, it was a giant box. So thanks, Peter, for the note. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. If you all just want to listen to me. Anthony writes in, hey, I never used my pimp something out reward and I have something now, but it's not needed at all.

And I don't mind either way is you're both awesome. And the highlight for two of my days a week now. Anyways, down to the dirt. I run a web hosting company. Yeah, one of those things. Oh, my God. Still. And for years, we've offered free services for teachers teaching students code, but we just expanded it today to actually include any student.

And the student can register from a huge list of over 9,000 schools and growing. So with this, all students with a school email can get access to a free level of our sites. As many sites as they want, if not for company use, as well as our other services and stuff being 50% off for the life of the account.

All right. Here's the link for more info. Go to nodehost.ca slash teachers. Nodehost.ca slash teachers. Woo-hoo. Thanks, man. Thank you very much. Over on Twitter, Nathan wrote in, no human stacks books this way.

Ghostbusters. Unfortunately, he was beat by Super Listener Chad, who got in faster. So Super Listener Chad, DM us your address and we'll send you some stickers. He also said, great new episode, but have to say that Bittner stole the show with his Casey Kasem bits. And now for our long distance dedication. And that's what we've got this week.

So remember, till next time, keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars. I totally agree. Bittner stole the show. Yes. Nerd Review writes in, if you guys like delicious burgers, you have to go to Plan Check. They make my favorite burger in L.A., the Blueprint Burger.

Have you been to Plan Check? I have not, but I will have to go check it out. Yeah. Anthony wrote us. I just raised my pledge to $23 on Patreon. So you are now at $1,000 exactly. We've actually gone over that now since then. Now it's time for our live Friday shows. You know, we wrote those things before we realized where we'd be at.

So we'll figure out something. But live shows are kind of boring for most people. So we'll figure it out. Basically, you hear the same show, but I fuck up a lot. Yeah, exactly. So we'll figure out something. Yeah, yeah. We're going to redo those Patreon pledges soon and figure out something that people might actually like. But it'll probably end up being like one night, Brian and I get drunk and let everybody come and hang out with us.

Probably, yeah. On Twitch. In fact, we were supposed to rewrite those things while we were at Fireside, but we got drunk. We got drunk and forgot to do it. Therein lies the rub. Yeah. Mr. Beardy Cuff writes in with a YouTube link. Product management director avoiding the question given.

How does Instagram make money off all these businesses? Made me think of recent talks about Snapchat and how they make any money ever. Hashtag GOG. Yeah, well, you can watch it. It's artistry and bullshittery in motion. It's quite nice. It happened in May, wrote us. Love listening to your show.

Found this and thought of you guys. Former Facebook employee Selena Scola seeks a class action suit on behalf of moderators, saying the company has failed to adequately adequately prepare them for the job. Well done. Good. Sue. Oh, sweet. Yeah. So she says the job gave her PTSD and Sue is suing the company.

It's a class action for the 7,500 or so other people collectively screened around 10 million posts a week. They're all based. I can't even believe this. They're based in San Mateo, San Francisco, Menlo Park. How can they possibly afford rent around there just doing moderation?

Yeah, I don't know. That's amazing. It is. And that goes back to one of the things from the article at the beginning on microwork saying that these people are getting $3 an hour in PTSD. Yeah. So here's your check for $34 and have some PTSD on the side.

Yes. All right. Triss writes in regarding scooters on military bases in Strava and people. As I note, wherever I'm working on user guides, people are stupid. Yes, they are. Said this today, in fact, when taking out a section on wiping devices at the end of a guide on setting a device up.

I figured someone would do it. And Rocky sent in something that I'm sure is for you. How the three seashells work. Reddit edition. Oh, no, dude. I don't even I don't have to read this because the director came out and said, no, there's not going to be anything about that.

No. No. So somebody made up a joke on the three seashells. But no, no. The director said that was a MacGuffin. You do not get to ever know what the three seashells do. So anybody that's making this up is not involved with the movie. Damn it. It's not official. It's not sanctioned.

It's not canon. It's not canon. I was going to say these three seashells are not canon. And Giovanni writes in for selling electronics. Lately, I've been using Swappa. Swappa. What a fucking dumb name. All the names are gone, man. I know.

It's really simple. And all the posts seem to be verified by actual human people. An amazing concept. Oh, well. It seemed to be. Oh, what we've learned is all machine learning is people. So it's people all the way down. Everything I've posted has always sold within a day or two.

So at least he's actually selling something on it. So I'll give it a shot. That's interesting because I've got tons. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. A lot of people do. Write Film Sleep Repeat wrote in. I didn't break, but the car should have done it for me. For fuck's sake. I do like the title of this article over at the register. Breaking Bad. Mitsubishi recalls 68,000 SUVs over buggy software.

So there's something in the software that is not doing the automatic braking. I don't even think I've ever had a car that has automatic braking. I just pay attention. Well, no. You know what it usually is? It's when you're in the cruise control. Right. So if somebody stops, it'll automatically slow you down.

And that's a feature of a lot of cars nowadays. I don't have fancy cars like that. But, yeah. Someday I will have the technology. Right. So Kyle writes in, follow up from the ramen shop signs and autonomous cars. All of the things that still baffle self-driving cars, starting with seagulls.

This is an article over at Quartz.com. Yes. As we've been saying, and they agree with us, we're still a long way from self-driving, despite marketing to the contrary. And then it goes into a list of altered stop signs, which is Jason's favorite. You've always talked about that. Snowflakes. And not just those of us that think Trump is a traitor.

Seagulls. Foam. Exiting vehicles. It's my pet peeve. It's got to be all in or nothing. You can't have a combination of things out there screwing around with the systems. Hills. Bridges. Hills. And yes, fucking shadows. Shadows confuse self-driving cars.

Great. 14 and a half more years. Yes. Goydian writes in, I'm sure you've seen the article. Listening to the radio this morning, I heard that Wisconsin is trying to pass legislation to allow these. Mixing winter weather, beer, and electric scooters should be fun. This is a link over at Gizmodo. Emergency rooms say people are getting really hurt on electric scooters.

There's 161% increase in scooter injuries from eight over a four-month time span in 2017 to 21 in that same time period this year in one particular hospital in Salt Lake City. So, yeah, of course, people are getting hurt on these things. It's crazy. They're getting more than hurt because Scott writes in, fatalities.

It's getting real now. Lime Scooters has its second fatality in a month. And guess what it's from? Head trauma from not wearing a fucking helmet. Go figure. And as much as I like to tout what California in general is doing, and Santa Monica in particular, for things, I am not thrilled with California Governor Jerry Brown, who just signed into law a bill eliminating the requirement for e-scooter riders to wear helmets.

Okay. Why? Well, guess who pushed for it? Bird. Oh, my God. Jerry. What are you doing? You're doing a lot of good things here. Don't screw this one up. I mean, you actually changed my opinion of you from all of the dead Kennedy songs I listened to when I was a kid.

I thought I'd be moving here, and then, you know, Governor Jerry Brown is here. Oh, no, it's going to be terrible, and you've been great, but this is fucking dumb. Yes, it is. Seth writes in about, he sends us a link for a company called The Touch, which makes HB rings.

This ring lets you feel your partner's heartbeat anywhere in the world in real time, and he asks, what happens if you die while they're checking your pulse? Which is sad. Yes, but I thought you might like this, Jason. Created by a company called The Touch, HB rings allow you to feel your partner's heartbeat in real time, regardless of where they are in the world, a comfort that would certainly put my mind at ease.

There are multiple benefits that come from daily physical contact. I'm not sure if having a ring on your finger when you're not around somebody that you love and it just, like, pulsates is really doing much. But I thought you could get one or two for your dogs and wear those rings. Kiss my ass. Dick.

Fernando writes in, hey guys, although Shopify does compete with Amazon, I think the point its CEO makes is still valid. Shopify doesn't compete with its own clients, while Amazon does. Yeah, we agree with that. We agree with what the CEO was saying. I think the only point that Jason and I were both making is you always have to keep in mind the person making the point.

He does have a vested interest. Over on GOG.show, Martin writes in, guys, you talked about 23andMe in the past and law enforcement using that data. Do you think hardware vendors are passing on fingerprints or facial images too? You guys are great. Yeah, that's a good point. I haven't read the EULAs on any of that sort of stuff, but I'm sure that they own that data and are collecting it and probably would feel free selling it at some point.

That's an interesting take, yeah. Never even thought about that. Me either. And Peter writes in again, and with more stuff, but he says, In closing, I would love it if you could talk a little bit about e-commerce solutions, as you touched upon when bringing up Shopify. My boss wants me to work with Magento to set up a store, which, if I recall, the main difference being that Magento is self-hosted, as opposed to Shopify doing the hosting themselves.

Do you guys have any experience with Magento? Please do share. Thank you, as always. I do. I have set up several Magento stores. And if there is any way humanly possible that you can get around it, don't do it. I mean, just don't set up a Magento store. The problem there is you have to deal with credit card processing yourself, unless you deal with somebody like Stripe.

But for everything about it, Magento is just terrible to work with. It is a terrible CMS for shopping. Set up a Shopify store. Seriously. And honestly, there is no plus to doing the hosting yourself. Let Shopify do the hosting. Unless you're getting paid a lot of money to maintain the server, especially in an e-commerce situation, that can be a lot of work.

Let them do it. Yeah. When you have to get your server credit card certified, it takes forever. You know, if you're doing it like the hosting yourself with that, because what was that certification called when you host credit cards? I can't even remember anymore. It's been so long. Yeah, I've wiped it from my memory because it's such a horrible process.

I've done it like maybe a dozen times and every time it's miserable. So setting up a Magento shop, dude, no, it's 2018. You should not be doing that yourself. Yes. Move on. John writes us. This is a great article about the complete lack of security from this bike sharing company and how the author was able to dump a database of every user.

Shouldn't this sort of laziness be criminal? This is cracking drop bike, data breach, and free bike rides. It is an in-depth exactly how he broke into their system. And, yeah, this kind of laziness should be illegal, but, you know, it isn't. And as we always discuss in our security segment with Dr., Dr., with David Bittner, there is basically zero consequence for being a fuck-up anymore.

Well, GDPR is supposed to be taking care of this, but I guess if you're not selling bike rides in Europe, you're shit out of luck. So Zachary writes in, just heard about this site and thought you guys would get a kick out of it. Let's blockchain all things. Yes, it's a social network on the blockchain called Peepeth.

Yes, and every time I look at it, I see Peepeth. Horrible name. I see Peepeth. I'm just going to start doing that with the dogs. Doggies, would you like to go out and go Peepeth? Yes. So this appears to be some sort of Twitter knockoff, except it's on the blockchain.

Because blockchain. Because why? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Oh, my God. Over on iTunes, we have a five-star rating from Strez Technoid. My meager payment would have rated the show at four stars as I had to leave a snarky remark or comment. Consider a V score of four and a meatspace score of five.

Guess I will just have to go to the website. What is the address again? Of course. Of course. And now this next one comes from TM Sendry. One star. How dare you? How dare you talk about James Franco in a rude way? Unsub!

So first I thought, I'm like, okay, well, James Franco obviously used to listen to the show, but doesn't anymore. But then I went and I looked at, because one of the things you can do in iTunes is you can actually see all of the previous reviews. This is a very cranky person. I did that too. They're very cranky. Yes.

Yeah. No. Maybe try some meditation. Just chill. And you know what? Don't kill the messenger. And did you also write the New York Times and every other news outlet that have said some things about James Franco that you consider rude? We didn't do it. He did it. And I did say that he was decent in the one where he cut his arm off.

You know, at least I gave him something. But Jesus Christ. One star just because we don't like James Franco. God. Tough crowd. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to gog.show slash support and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to gog.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review, unless you're James Franco.

Closing shout-outs. My closing shout-out this week goes to Paul Simon. He has played his farewell concert. He is not going to play anymore, which I didn't know until I heard about the show. So I am a huge fan.

I actually did not know that. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Paul Simon. And Graceland is still on my playlist for when I go to work in the morning because I think it's one of the greatest albums ever made. So it's really sad that he's calling it quits finally. Yeah, it is sad that he's calling it quits.

And it's also sad that he just couldn't get his shit together with Garfunkel to do one song with him on his last show. Garfunkel actually, like, booked a show the same night. So you knew he wasn't coming there. Edie Burkell came out because they're married. Yeah, yeah. But so that's kind of an easy one.

But yeah, the fact that Garfunkel couldn't come and, you know, for his final show, that shows that that's some petty shit. Come on. Yeah. Oh, well, it happens. And I want to give a shout out to our Patreon subscribers, patreon.com slash GOG. Thank you so much. We just crossed the one K per month line.

We really appreciate it, particularly since we're putting more and more of our precious little time into the show. And we're trying to figure out more and more of our downtime, as Jason always talks about. We originally wrote our goals back before, you know, reality. So we're going to reconvene and figure out what we could do. But to be fair, you are getting two shows a week now, bitches.

So really, that works out to what? 125 bucks a show minus our costs. So Jason and I are basically clearing about a six pack per show to sneeze at, mind you better than most podcasts do. Definitely better than most. So we do appreciate it very much. But keep it coming.

Come on. Keep it coming. Yes. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Toss us a buck a month and we'll love you forever. If you'd like to give a one time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click on the PayPal button in the sidebar.

Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 284. 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. We'll see you in a few days.

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We'll see you in a few days. We'll see you in a few days. We'll see you in a few days. We'll see you in a few days. We'll see you in a few days. We'll see you in a few days. We'll see you in a few days. We'll see you in a few days. We'll see you in a few days. We'll see you in a few days. We'll see you in a few days. We'll see you in a few days.

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