294: We Broke the World

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, I hate you. Okay, what's new? Last week, you gave me the trick of using yoga on my Apple Watch to basically game the activity stats. Now, technically, I suppose I did give you the trick, but my point was that this is the problem with gamifying stuff.

And now you have exemplified that for me. Yeah, now that I know it's there, it holds no special place for me. I'm aware of this because Jason, as someone who I've never known to do any yoga, did a lot of yoga workouts last week. Because I wanted my October badge for doubling my move goal.

So guess what? I got my October badge. You know what, though, Jason? The only person you really cheated is you. Ah, bullshit. I got my badge. Which means nothing. Absolutely nothing. Yes, and you did not get the workouts. Now, I guarantee you, if there weren't badges and if there weren't little closing circles in the endorphin rush that you get from closing your circle, you wouldn't have cheated and done the yoga thing.

You just would have gone about your day and went, oh, you know, I need to do a little bit more tomorrow. Yeah, I think I'm just going to turn it off. I know they say what gets measured gets managed, but since I've, like, seriously slowed down on the drink and I'm down like six pounds, so I don't even need to care about that stuff.

It's great. Okay. Let's see. Basically, the only reason I have an Apple Watch, so I'm keeping it going. Oh, I keep it for many other reasons, but the health stuff, it just doesn't really matter now, now that I know you can see. It's like, as soon as I found out my friends could get, you know, words with friends cheats, it's like, okay, the game means nothing to me now.

Right. You know, there has to be standards and practices. If they don't see me doing a downward-facing dog on my phone, then I should not get credit for it. I'd rather the phone not have that ability. Yeah, and the funny thing about it is, when I started to take the dogs for a walk and I was actually getting exercise, they said, well, it looks like you finished your yoga workout.

Would you like to stop? I'm like, okay. Busted, but yeah, it's just silliness. And I talked a couple weeks ago about Linode and the problem I had with their billing because I got shafted for, like, almost $100 for this web-attached storage when I was only trying to set up this little micro instance to host a little one-page site.

And I got dinged for 120 bucks. And I'm like, oh, and they weren't going to pay it back. And then the next, and I canceled the instance, and I got another bill for, like, another $90 for this web-attached shit that I never turned on. So I finally got fed up. I'm not going to take it anymore.

God damn it. Get to Twitter. No, I just got on the horn to support. And I'm like, guys, I'm not paying for this. I want a refund. And they're like, how do you have this? You must have set it up. I'm like, no, I set up a micro instance for a one-page website.

It was going to have $150K of graphics on it. And you think I need a terabyte of storage for that? And they're like, okay. And then they went back and refunded me all my money. But they didn't actually refund it. They gave it to me as credit. Useless. Useless, because now I'm stuck on Linode for another couple months while I burned through the credit.

So we're not moving to WordPress yet. Okay. Because that's the only reason it's there. The only reason it's there is for our website. But I got to say, they did the right thing. So my bashing on Linode before, they did the right thing this time. So I'm very happy about that.

Sort of. They sort of did the right thing. They should have refunded you your money in real money. Let's be honest here. That's true. They didn't really do the right thing. They kind of did. I mean, that's what I'm saying. This is like a half-assed. It's a half-assed thing, but at least I got something back. They're like, well, you gave it to us, but we're going to keep it.

They're really keeping it. Yeah. Okay. Now you're making me mad. Now I'm thinking I got shafted. Shit. You did. You did. Damn it. I'm sorry. You really did. That's bullshit. You know what you were doing. You know you didn't turn that on. They fucked it up, and now they're not giving you any money.

Yeah. You are getting shafted, Jason. Shit. Okay. Back to the support queue. Back to the Twitter bots. Yeah. Damn it. I was stuck at the DMV getting my license this week, or last week. I mentioned it on the show last week, and I forgot to mention on the last show, they have DMV TV.

Oh, boy. Which you can buy ads on. And then they run just public service announcements, like don't drink and drive, don't text and drive. Or you can get a job driving for Postmates with your new license. And I'm like, are you shitting me? Yeah.

Oh, God. Why is there a TV playing in the DMV at all? Everybody has their own phones to entertain themselves. They're just blasting stuff at us. It's pollution of airspace. I hate the TVs in the airport. I hate the TVs at the DMV. Can't there be anywhere that we go where we don't have to have a screen screaming at us?

Well, there are a lot of people there that did not have smartphones. It's a lower income area where the DMV is, and there were a lot of people there, a lot of immigrants who did not have their own phone. And they just sat there and watched the TV. All right. That's going to come up in a second when we talk about the digital divide and how it is actually expanding.

There were three stories back to back in the New York Times this weekend. The digital gap between rich and poor kids is not what we expected. And then a dark consensus about screens and kids begins to emerge in Silicon Valley. And Silicon Valley nannies are phone police for kids. Okay.

All of these could have been in one single article because they were written by the same person. And they all look exactly the same. They use the same template. Yeah. They just have different clip art. They could have easily put this into one article. But it comes back to what we were talking about with you raising your kid and how you're going to, you know, deal with screens as the young one is growing up.

And so I put these in here so you could read them. But it's really funny that the rich people are saying, no, no screens at all. No phones. We're going to go make them and sell them to the poor people. But you can't have them because now we know how dangerous they are. Yeah. It's not just, I mean, specific. Yes. Rich people, but specifically people that have worked on these technologies.

That's what they're talking about. They did a lot of interviews with people who are, you know, working on social media networks or working with digital media. And all of them who are doing quite well basically said, we built this. We know how bad it is. There's no way I'm letting my kid have it. Yeah, exactly.

Which, yeah, it's like somebody, you know, that makes Marlboros is like, no, you're never going to smoke. You're never going to smoke, kid. Sure. It built this house and put you in that private school, but you ain't using it. Yeah. You're never going to work a day in your life, but don't have a cigarette.

Yeah. So don't have a phone. No, and that's, you know, we're still very much limiting any screen time. YouTube on TV when we're at home together is kind of a wind down is a bit of a different story, but that's something, you know, it's educational and we're all engaged together with it. But I would never, ever just hand my kid a tablet.

That's just never going to happen. Speaking of tablets, though, that new iPad Pro looks sexy as hell. I'm definitely getting one some year. Right. There's 1,500 bucks out the fucking window. I put it all in my cart just so I could be confirmed. It was like $1,464 for the 12 inch with a pencil and the keyboard.

Oh, man. So, Brian, you want to buy my iPad? Maybe. Let's talk about that off air. Okay. Nice. Nice. And we did talk about the red hydrogen one phone that was coming out and the reviews are finally coming in. It's a piece of shit. Shocking.

I know. It's basically like those old little 3D lenticular things that you would get in bubble gum. That's kind of what it seems the technology is. That's why you can't film it because it's just the way it works. And everybody in this review on The Verge, it was a great review on The Verge, and everybody's like, ah, I can't look at this.

I'm getting a headache. Yeah. I mean, I knew this wasn't going to work out. And there's a problem because we've had science fiction and high-end visual effects for so long now that if you can't make something like this that looks as good as 1978's 3D chessboard from Star Wars, we're not going to care.

And this doesn't look as good as 1978's 3D chessboard from Star Wars. Yeah. You can't call it a hologram if it's not a hologram or holographic. Well, if there's one thing we've learned from doing this show for five years, Jason, you can call anything anything you want. That's true. That's true. Oh, man.

So I still like the look of the phone. I think it looks kind of cool. But they did say that it's kind of uncomfortable to hold with all the ridges and grabby bits on it. Right. And I love the data port on the back where eventually you'll be able to plug in a red lens or some shit like that.

But there's nothing there for it now. So that could actually not even be hooked up. You could have just put some metal bits on the back and said, in the future, there will be. In the future. Yeah. And it's like, OK, sorry, but these new accessories that we come out with in 2022, oh, they're not backwards compatible with the Hydrogen 1 V1.

You have to get the Hydrogen 1 V4 where they actually plug it in. So there's a way around it. They could just be marketing. And as per usual, as we talk about all the time on this show, they're selling something that they don't even have yet. They're selling the future, not what they actually have now. Exactly. That doesn't exist.

Yeah. They're selling us a feature that does not exist. Great. So. Yeah. And the best part is it doesn't even have a red sensor in it. It's just got an off the shelf camera sensor. It's like, why did you even bother making this? I know you put out a press release, but that doesn't mean you have to follow through.

You can scrap the project. You could be vaporware. That's OK. Yeah. We've got a long history. Just say, oh, we didn't hit our Kickstarter goal. Exactly. But we're keeping your money. Just like Linode. Yeah. Fuck. Now I'm pissed off, man. I got screwed.

Tom DeLong is not reuniting with Blink-182, as we previously thought was going to happen. Thanks to Chris Lockhead from the Legends and Losers podcast for pointing this out. Yeah. No, it's just bullshit. Well, you never know yet. I know how the music industry works. Let me check his bank account first.

And then we'll see. I'm just wondering if he planned on it. And then the other bandmates said, no, actually, we're doing good without you, bro. Go check your UFOs. I think the problem was, you know, he came to him with a stage and set design and it was all UFOs. And they're like, no, we're not going to do that. Yeah.

That's like a Spinal Tap UFO-inspired Stonehenge. Exactly. In the news.

Brian, it's been a shit show of a week for America. Two years running, I think, at this moment. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this week has been spectacularly crap. This week has been spectacularly bad, yes. Between the mail bombs and then the synagogue in Pittsburgh.

But I want to talk about racism on the blockchain. Woo-hoo! Racism as a service. Raz. Gab, the website where the shooter in Pittsburgh, allegedly, the alleged gunman, not the alleged social network, it's the alleged gunman.

Yeah, LO is the alleged social network. That's true. Yeah, no, the t-shirt company. Gab was shut down by everybody on the planet. Everybody came and said, nope, you're done. You're done. PayPal, Giant, GoDaddy, even GoDaddy, which I think of as, like, you know.

We'll take anyone. Yeah, I'm like, have you seen their commercials? They're about as alt-right as you can get. Yeah. Yeah, they all shut them down. Good. I mean, look, the reality is there isn't, as we talked about a few, five, six episodes ago, there are no internet cops.

So it comes down to these companies just saying, you know what, you can't use our platform. You can't use our service. You can't use our whatever. And this is the only way to really police the internet, as it were. Yep. So Gab has already been planning for the future. I think that they knew that their time was limited after all the Info Wars shut down.

So what did they do? They had an ICO. Yes, that's right. They had an ICO because they want to put Gab on the blockchain. Okay. I was reading this article just going, this is actually probably going to be a thing. reading all the different services out there, like Ethereum-based DNS, Ethereum-based web hosting.

And these guys have raised $5.6 million in capital. A lot of the racists in the world. There are. Well, there's like 1,800 and some people have signed up for the ICO at this point. And, of course, they used a website that was ICO as a service.

You hear that, blockchain developers? Mm-hmm. It's already- Blockchain development's done. Yep. Unless you're working for the WordPress of ICOs and blockchain, go to cybersecurity, honestly. Yep. I didn't even realize this was the 10th anniversary of Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Crazy, eh? Crazy. 10 years of Bitcoin. Oh, great. I wish we could go back in time. I don't want to go back in time and kill Hitler. I want to go back in time and kill Satoshi Nakamoto. That's it. Okay. Wow. Although, he gave us so much material for our show, I guess I can't do that.

No. Plus, you know, lack of time machine until they put one on the blockchain. I know. I have a hot tub, but it is not a time machine. I guess I've got to spill a 40 in it at the right spot. I think you'd need to get your hot tub on the blockchain, and then we'll see what happens. My hot tub is not going on the blockchain. You do not want that.

Not at all. But some other fallout this week from the bomber in Florida. Yep. Did you see the Michael Moore footage of him that he filmed? Yes. It was pretty funny. I was like, oh my God, this guy's such a loon. Everybody in that video was a loon.

I'm sorry. Oh, yeah. I'm going to get political for a second because they're all fucking insane. That's it. Everybody in that video was insane. Anyway, Twitter was basically told a while ago that this guy was tweeting and threatening people.

Right. And they only came out and removed this guy's threatening tweets after he was caught. And this is another story from The Virgin. I just love the ending. This is a familiar story from Twitter, apologizing for reacting after the fact, after it becomes clear that someone violated the site's terms.

They are reactive, not proactive. And this is just coming back and back and back again. Yeah. This is Twitter's mode of operation. This is what they do. People report abusive behavior. Twitter says they don't see any abusive behavior. Something happens in the real world and then they pull everybody off.

Yeah. Honestly, it's ridiculous. And this is going to be a theme for this show because I do believe we have broken the world. OK, and there's a great article in The Atlantic called Twitter should kill the retweet. And I completely agree with this article. Did you get a chance to read this one?

I did. But again, remember, I'm not really a Twitter power user. Right. But the fact is, you know, there was a big kerfuffle this week because Jack said, oh, we might remove the like button or the heart button, whatever the hell they're calling it this week. You know, now it's a heart used to be a like, whatever, and that really doesn't do anything.

The real culprit in most of the echo chamber filter bubble crap is the retweet button because it makes it so easy for people to just with one click share bullshit around the web. Now, I've only got I'm only following like three hundred and twenty five people, something around there.

And for ninety nine point nine percent of them, I click on their username. I go to the tools and I say mute retweets or turn retweets off. I don't want to see them. And so for me, Twitter is an actually nice, quiet community where people post what they post. And my friends, I get to see what they say.

I love that part. There are a couple of people that I keep retweets on because they actually do a good job of retweeting good news stories that I use for the show. The majority of people are just retweeting bullshit. So I just turn it off. But having that off by default would be so nice. Go back to the old days of having to type RT and then the username and then copy and paste, you know, make it harder for people to share crap, crappyoka, as it were.

And I think that would be a great way that they could actually stop the proliferation of these filter bubbles. It may be not completely stop, but it would at least slow them down. Because a lot of the people on Twitter just I mean, they just don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

And we can get into stupid people on the Internet, which is the giant problem here. It's not so much the platforms enabling stupid people. It's letting stupid people talk to each other. That's the real issue. I'd like to remind all of our listeners right now that it's very easy to retweet our bullshit and that would be very helpful to us or make your own tweet and just tell a friend.

So you mentioned just a little bit ago that it's been 10 years since we've had the white paper that led to Bitcoin. It's also been a year since Twitter announced their horrible change of going from 140 characters to 280 that everybody thought would break Twitter. So the folks over at Slate and some other people did a lot of the metrics on this stuff and they found that basically it hasn't broken anything.

As we know, Twitter is actually doing relatively well financially for the first time in years. And people rarely use all 280 characters. The vast majority of tweets are still 140 characters or fewer. So this data was meant to serve as a sort of victory lap for Twitter saying, see, it didn't change anything and we're doing so much better right now.

However, as everybody points out, this is a time when Twitter needs to be looking at other issues such as the right wing, anti-Semitism and all the other stuff that's going on that we, you know, is breaking the world. Right, right. And yeah, the 280 thing just didn't faze me.

I was fine with it. I had, I just don't really care. I'm like, okay. I enjoyed the fact that we just didn't get all these stupid chains. One dash, two dash, three dash. At least people were able to get longer thoughts in now. Right. And now you can, they also do have that thing where you can do a Twitter storm that is built in.

Yeah. You know, unfortunately I've had to actually, this is just, it makes me cry. I've actually had to move to the actual Twitter app on my phone because of their changes to the API. I gave up my beloved tweet bot and I missed tweet bot.

It was so much nicer than the Twitter app, but there's just some things you can't do now. There's a lot you can't do now. Yeah. Because I use tweet bot on my desktop and I'm, you know, I'm just going to the, to the opening up in a browser window now to, to do things I need to do. Yeah. I just use the, I use the website now.

Thanks Twitter. Thanks Jack. I really don't like Jack Dorsey. I really don't. I, you can put that on my tombstone. I, I will. Jason, he hated Jack Dorsey. Um, and I did find a really cool Chrome extension called remove vanity metrics and it takes away some of the numbers.

Like, you know, the amount of likes retweets and, uh, just other, other little bits of data that come along in Twitter. So you're not looking at something and you're saying, Oh, 13,000 retweets. Maybe I should retweet it too. It just gives you a cleaner interface and it's a very lightweight.

So that link will be in the show notes at gog.show slash two nine four. Now we've also talked a lot about homelessness in San Francisco in the Silicon Valley. Yep. Well, there's a new patrol. Yeah. The poo patrol on the birds. The turd scooters are literally turd scooters up there.

There's a new, new thing on the ballot called prop C, which would raise corporate taxes by 0.5% on companies making more than $50 million in revenue. And it will be earmarked for housing and helping the homeless. Sounds great. What's the problem? The problem is it's the type of tax that is going to be levied on and it is gross receipts tax.

Okay. There are some companies that bring in a lot of money that they don't get to keep like square and stripe. Hello again, Jack Dorsey. So these people, you know, they're, they're credit card processing companies. So their money comes in and it goes back out, but it's, you know, it's not, they're not looking at net.

They're looking at gross, which is a problem because for them, it looks like it's going to be a shit ton of money and, you know, stripe and square will get a charged an inordinate amount of tax based on their income, which they just have to give back out anyway.

It's not technically income. Right. So they're, these guys are going after it saying, you know, look, we're going to spend too much on this. Not instead of just talking to the legislators and saying, can we put this on net receipts? Maybe, uh, no, or finding a way to have exemptions.

Nope. They're just going to fight the whole thing, which sucks. Seems a simple fix. It does seem like a simple fix. Just change the type of tax that you would be, you know, or the type of income that you would be taxing. Yeah. That should solve the problem. Uh, we'll see if it actually happens, but it won't.

I mean, it's a, it's a great bill because it would, uh, there's, there's about 7,500 homeless people in San Francisco right now, which is a fucking lot of homeless people for a place that's only seven miles by seven miles. You know, it is. That's why there's so much man poo and it would house up to 5,000 of those people and prevent another 30,000 people from getting evicted.

I think this is a great use of these companies money, you know, I agree. So I, they, they need to work with these people and make it happen because homelessness up there is just embarrassing for our country at this point. Not just even San Francisco and Silicon Valley. It's for the country everywhere.

Yeah. The most wealthy city in the country has, you know, one of the worst homeless epidemics. Fix it guys. It's not that fucking hard. Yeah. Well, apparently it is because, uh, as we've again talked about, there are no, uh, there are no internet cops and there are no, no ethics police running around and looking at companies.

So it looks like companies employees have to take it in their own hands. And there is an eternal rebellion at Google's mountain view headquarters this week, uh, following the report claiming the tech, uh, that they paid out $90 million to one of its executives after he faced sexual assault allegations. According to Buzzfeed news, more than 200 Google engineers are organizing a company, a company wide woman's walk walk out on Thursday.

So good for them. Yeah. Good for you, honestly. And, um, some breaking news this morning. We're recording this on Halloween. So it's spooky, spooky, grumpy old geeks. Uh, rich Duvall has resigned. This is the guy that, uh, took one of the people that he was interviewing out to burning man and tried to have sex with her saying that he had an open relationship with his wife, even though he'd already made up his mind not to give her the job, but didn't tell her.

Oh God. Nice. Oh, I just, that slipped my mind. Oh, would you blow me anyway? Oh no, wait, wait, wait. Uh, yeah, no, this is bad. So, and this is the woman that took her mom with her to burning man. And then there's this guy trying to sleep with her. Uh, gross, gross, gross guy.

And he was one of the heads of, uh, the X division used to be Google X. Now it's alphabet X or just X or just X. Yeah. He's out. No package. He didn't get a package for his package. No, that's a bummer. I'd be pissed off. Cause you know, Andy Rubin got 90 million.

Yeah, seriously. Oh man. But as we talked about Andy Rubin's thing, that really kind of is something that we kind of can't pass judgment on because they were in an open relationship or at least in a relationship, even though he was cheating on his wife, but they were seeing each other after hours.

And so, yeah, that, that, that blow job is that, that is an iffy blow job by, by far. You, you're the one that, that said it. So that's true. I did. Yeah. And there's another article over at Buzzfeed news, which still shaking my head. Uh, this is by Ryan Broderick and it's called, this is how we radicalize the world.

And he's, uh, I mean, he's a young guy, he's a journalist and he's been around the world following a lot of the, you know, the elections and the, you know, and all the crap that has been happening with social media because he's been in the places where it's been affected. Most of this article is him just rattling off every place he's been.

So you can skip a lot of it. He's like, Oh, I was here. I was here. I was here. Okay. You can skip that bit. But the great part of this article is like, yeah, we all saw this coming. We knew it was going to happen. Now it's happening. And now we're upset about it. And what are you going to do?

What are you going to do? But it's an, it's an interesting read. It really is because I'm trying to get as many of these articles together as possible because since nobody listens to our show, at least we can, you know, get people to read these articles and send them to friends. Retweet them. If you would, please. So lay people can, you know, get the lay of the land.

And we've got another, another segment coming up in media candy. That is fantastic that everybody listening to the show needs to share. Right. So moving on to some more Facebook news, Facebook, they have a vision for the future, Brian. Yes. Yeah. Your favorite, your favorite, less news feed, more stories.

All right. I mean, that's fine. Given, given the article that you were just talking about and given what we know and how it's, it's affected everything. This might be a good thing because stories are, you can't share them so easily. They're there. They disappear. Maybe this will solve our problems.

I doubt it. My interest in using Facebook will decrease and I will blissfully move off from social media. There you go. Yeah. Moving stories is, moving to stories is actually pretty difficult because they don't know how to monetize them. Because yes, like you mentioned, they're ephemeral and there's not a lot of keywords sometimes because it's video or photos.

Yep. And they're going to have to figure that out. Yes, they are. They're going to have to figure out how to make the money off of it. It's easy to get the people to use it. It's hard to figure out how to monetize it. Yeah. Yeah. Which is fine. I don't care. I'm on Facebook. So, but I am inching my way to getting off Instagram.

I am so close. I am so close. I just, it's ironic that you will just end up with Twitter and you hate Jack Dorsey the most. I know. I know. Come on back app.net. I miss app.net. At least they, you know, had a fucking non-algorithmically generated timeline.

Right. It's the algorithms that are the problem. That's the algorithms broke the world. They really did. And speaking of breaking things, Wisconsin is totally broken. Now we've, we covered this Foxconn deal that Wisconsin made a long time ago when it first happened.

And it was a $3 billion deal. And now it has gone up to a $4.1 billion deal with his, which it's just subsidies. They're giving money away to Foxconn to bring their company there. Now, honestly, if I was a resident of Wisconsin, I would get the governor in the entire state legislature that let this whole thing go through, take him out back behind the woodshed and shoot them in the face.

Because this is going to be one of those deals that is going to have generational impact because Foxconn has said, well, we were going to build this factory here, but the other guys who we needed to build the factory for said, nah, we're not going to Wisconsin. So now they're like making a different type of factory that is going to have far fewer employees, more robots, definitely more robots.

Definitely more robots. And, you know, it feels a lot like, you know, Lando Calrissian at the end of Empire, you know, Darth Vader is Foxconn and they're like, pray I don't alter the deal further. Exactly. Because Foxconn has a history of screwing people on these deals are backing out of them.

And, you know, they're building this factory. There are photos in this article on The Verge where, I mean, the factory is underway. What's going to be inside of it? Who knows? And some good news. Amazon Smile has raised $100 million for charity. Which is great.

That's good. I'm glad Amazon is doing something. Well, they're kind of doing something. Basically what they're doing is... They're enabling the rest of us to do something. Yeah, yeah. It's one of those deals where instead of having an affiliate deal, you can sign up for a charity of your choice.

So I signed up for the Tony Hawk Foundation because I love what they do. They build skate parks in low-income areas. And I love that. I'm a huge fan of what they do over at the Tony Hawk Foundation. So, you know, like maybe 20% of my purchases go through Amazon Smile. And I love it.

But the problem I have with this is when I went to the page that said Amazon Smile has raised $100 billion for charity, I wanted to copy and paste some text from that page to put it in the show notes so I could talk about all the great things that they've done. Every single word on that page is part of a graphic. Even the terms and conditions.

Amazing. Okay, yeah. This is what happened back in the day when they couldn't get a programmer to, you know, go code up the page and they just had some junior intern designer put some shit together. This is... You could crap this out in CSS in two seconds. I know.

This is so easy. Okay. It took longer to make these graphics. It's not even responsive. No. It's not responsive at all. Oh, my God. And they're using image maps. They're using image maps. Holy shit. Oh, my God.

You'd think something as big as $100 million to charity would warrant at least more than 10 minutes from some intern in clip art. It's really just it. It's like, oh, my God. And I love the little girl getting the water from the side of the dilapidated building smiling.

Like, where the hell did you get that clip art? Anyway, yeah. It's like, come on, guys. If this is such a big deal, spend more than, like, two hours on it. It's bad. Yeah, crazy. So IBM is making one of the third largest tech acquisitions ever. And believe it or not, they're spending $34 billion to buy Red Hat.

I don't know if I care about this or care for this. I'm sorry. I do care about it. I don't know if I care for it. Yeah, well, it's basically cloud computing. So they want to get involved in that area because they've been not doing well themselves. And so they're going to buy Red Hat. And it's amazing to me.

Not in my wildest dreams that I think IBM would ever own Red Hat. But now it does. Yeah. And because IBM is, I mean, this is like their last gasp. You know, they've been losing market share for years. And their bottom line has just gone down the shitter. So they think that this is going to save the company.

It just might. Who knows? Because, yeah, I mean, they're buying it at a massive premium. They're way overpaying for this and hoping it's going to pay off because Red Hat is profitable. You know? Yeah. And, you know, in one fell swoop, now IBM basically runs almost every web server.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. I personally, I use CentOS, but CentOS is a variant of Red Hat, you know? Yeah. So I don't know how this is going to play out. What can blue do for you? More than brown. I want my flying cars.

Where are my flying cars? Waymo is back in the news. No, no. Self-driving cars. Oh, please. We have a story every week about this, and then they never happen. Well, this time it's actually happening. They have gotten approval from the state of California to have cars with no people in them on the roads.

They've already been running these in Arizona. Right. So they finally moved to California, and it is a very small test group. And it's only Google employees, I'm sorry, Alphabet employees. I still keep getting that confused. Alphabet employees are the only people that are going to be using it for now.

And it's in a very small space, and they can only go up to 65 miles an hour, but there literally is no one else in the car. So to get this permit, this is what I love. They had to demonstrate it had insurance or a bond equal to $5 million. That is two-tenths of a second of Google's income right there.

So we're good there. Come up with plans that would help law enforcement and first responders interact with the driverless cars in the case of an emergency. So I guess there's a pullover button. Okay, good. A stop button. Train remote operators or workers that are hired to help the vehicles out of trouble from afar.

So people who play video games can now get a job at Alphabet or Waymo driving self-driving cars, which I said was going to be a great job opportunity for somebody. I said it, and it's coming true. Prove it could monitor the status of test vehicles and the passengers inside from afar, which means anytime you're getting in this car, you're on candid camera.

So much for taxi confessionals or getting a blowjob in the back of a Waymo. Maybe you'll get the ride for free. Maybe somebody at Waymo will be like, hey, dude, let's give this guy some credit. Okay. This is probably a good thing, given previous stories. Alphabet seems to have issues with its employees getting blowjobs.

That's true. That's true. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Because the only people getting blowjobs would be Alphabet employees. Dope. Show that it complied with federal rules about car design or that it had received official exemption from the federal government. Okay. Exemption. Yay. And here's the favorite one.

Certify its vehicles could operate without a driver. This one is the problem. Isn't the whole point of doing this test to get to that point? Like, we don't know yet. That's why they're doing the tests. Well, they have done other tests in Arizona, like I said.

All right. But it's a self-administered evaluation. Yes. Ergo, we say the cars are okay, so they're okay. Now, state officials can jump in and say, well, we think you're wrong. They can pull the license at any time. But, yeah, these things are coming, dude.

They're coming, and they're coming quick. I don't know if they're going to be any good. They're not coming that quick. They're not. They're not. Again, this is another one of these stories. They'll do some tests. Something will go horribly wrong, and they're not coming anytime soon. Yeah. No. And that's the other thing.

These are in a predetermined area that they have mapped the ever-living shit out of. Yep. These are not general cars that you can unleash into the world. These are cars that are specifically crafted to work in a very specific area. And it's not like Tesla's new thing, where it's like, okay, we can put you on the freeway.

When you get on the on-ramp, you press the button, and then it'll get you to the off-ramp. That's the new Tesla self-driving mode that came out last week as well. But this is something completely different. This is just no driver in the car. And I still stand by.

It's going to be a long time before these are everywhere. Agreed.

Media Candy. Over on PBS, they have a show called Frontline, for those of you who are not familiar with the PBS, the public broadcasting system here in the United States. Frontline is a great investigative journalism show, and they took on Facebook.

They call it the Facebook Dilemma, a two-night special event. I have seen part one. It is amazing. I love it. And I can't wait to watch part two. But what I love is at 30 minutes and 45 seconds, we learn exactly what deleted means at Facebook because a researcher asked for all of his data, and he got it.

He got 1,200 pages of it, and a lot of it actually said marked as deleted, and it was still in their system. They did not delete it. They flagged it as deleted so nobody would see it, but they were still storing it, and they were still using it for profiling. So there's our answer.

I figured. Yep, that is exactly what I thought deleted meant, and I think it's exactly what deleted means with all of these services. Pretty much. Yep. Visibility equals zero is the flag always, you know. Never throw anything away. Why would you do that? Why would you do that?

That's valuable data that I can use to sell you on later. I can monetize you to increase shareholder value. That's how it works. So Daredevil Season 3, have you finished it yet? I have not. I'm about halfway through. I'm enjoying it. I finished it, and all I'm going to say is, best season yet.

I loved it. I loved it all the way through, except for that one episode, episode five, that I thought was kind of a stinker. The rest of it has been amazing. And I thought about your complaint about Too Much Kung Fu.

It's a fucking superhero show where his superpower is Kung Fu. How can you be mad about Too Much Kung Fu in a superhero show about Kung Fu superheroes? Even you have to admit, in the first season, there were episodes that were like 75% Kung Fu. Okay, the boss battles did go on a little long in that.

Thank you very much. But it's still about Kung Fu. It's like that whole, like, last half hour of Wonder Woman. Oh, my God. That went on forever. Oh, God. That was terrible. There's always... This season is much better. The Kung Fu has been dialed down a bit. But that first season was a little insane.

Yeah, it was. I give you that. But, man, the hallway scene in the first season was pretty damn good, I gotta say. And so I found this over at BGR.com. It said, two other Marvel shows on Netflix might be in danger based on this warning sign. Turns out, no. It's a bullshit headline.

And what the article goes on to say, though, is they were looking at retweet metrics and tweet metrics and people talking about shit on social media. And what they're, you know, putting out there is they think that Netflix was looking at social engagement based on the show and the drop off from season one to season two.

And they used those metrics to cancel Luke Cage and Iron Fist. Right. Which I can see as a possible one possible metric. But also, remember, we don't have the viewership numbers because Netflix guards those like the family jewels, which I guarantee you is what the decision was based on.

I care about likes and retweets when they know exactly how many people are watching it. Yeah. I mean, honestly, that's the whole point. I'm just like, guys. Yeah, that's I mean, I know you're trying to infer viewership based on some other signal that you can get because you don't have all the signals that they have.

But viewership, I'm guessing, is what people are looking at. And Luke Cage season two, I watched three episodes and did not give any more shits. Iron Fist. I watched one episode and I liked it and was planning on going back. But then decided I'm going to save me 11 hours.

I don't need to go back to that. I got other things to do. That's a day of my life. Do I want to give a day of my life to Iron Fist? No, I don't. I would rather give it to the good place. I want to just double back for a second because you said that this headline was bullshit and wrong.

This has been my pet peeve and kind of like just my fascination with the Internet and how copywriters and headline writers have evolved over the years. This is not a misleading or wrong headline because they're very careful to say might be in danger.

Yeah. They can get away with that. Yeah. Yeah. It's a load of shit, but it ain't wrong. Yeah. But when they look at the numbers for Jessica Jones and Daredevil, they're really not that much. Yes, they've gone down a little bit, but not that much. Yeah. Well, they hook you with the might.

Yeah. And then they tell you that, no, they're not really. This article's headline might be bullshit. There you go. So we have some news now, finally, of this upcoming Game of Thrones prequel that will be on HBO once the big Game of Thrones is wrapped up itself.

All we know right now is it's going to take place in the golden age of heroes as it descends into its darkest hour. We'll get some of the history here. And they've finally cast someone, Naomi Watts, whom I love. I do like Naomi Watts. I don't know if I need any more Game of Thrones in my life, but because we're not even going to get to the finale till 2020, right?

Or 2022. Who knows? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We get seven more episodes. I think they come next year. Yeah, but it's next year. But even though they've wrapped filming, which is crazy. And I love how they filmed like, you know, a bunch of different endings. So nobody actually knows what it's going to be. Yeah.

Now, I just found this one funny. And again, this is a headline thing. This is over at Slate. Avatar franchise releases new Papyrus free logo. Now, remember, everybody made fun of the Papyrus logo. There was even a great Saturday Night Live skit about it and all that sort of stuff. So nothing. We haven't heard really anything about what's going on with the second and third episodes, movies, whatever the hell they're going to be.

Well, we did. We have heard some things. They're late. They're extraordinarily late. Getting to my point. But they did on social media. They released a new logo and it didn't use the Papyrus font anymore. So that's all we've had. Now, my question here, how is something a franchise when there's only one movie?

Yeah. Planned franchise is what they should say. This is they're taking a page from the tech people here and they're already promising something that doesn't exist. It's not a franchise yet. We don't even know if there will be a second movie at this. Yeah. I mean, if James Cameron has a grabber and falls over from the stress of all the ponytail sex, you know, who knows if these things are ever going to get made?

Yes. So no franchise. Yeah. In good news, classic episodes of Jeopardy are now available on Netflix. They are 45 episodes of the quiz show curated. So handpicked collection, which should be interesting. It features highlights from various tournaments of champions, college championships, and more. Hulu has already had 60 episodes of Jeopardy, including the same ones that are newly available on Netflix.

So that's some interesting deal that was made there. We'll take your we'll take 45 of those 60 handpicked ones. Please. Thank you. Sloppy seconds. I think they call that exactly and somewhat maybe good news. I think you're going to be very excited about this, and I am tentatively cautiously optimistic.

The watch has been picked up by BBC America based on Terry Pratchett's Misfit Cops from the Discworld series. OK, I'm reading some of the notes you have here. The watch is a punk rock thriller inspired by the legendary City Watch subset of Discworld novels.

Um, yep. Um, don't know about that one. Yeah, I don't know. Modern and inclusive. No, that's modern. No, we don't want modern. No, you missed. Not supposed to be modern at all. Oh, God, BBC.

So we shall see. This is this is early, early, early, early times. There's no casting announcements. There's there's not much. There's the showrunner. That's about it. We don't know anything about it. Um, fingers crossed. They don't screw it. OK, well, you lost me on the title. Original scripted series scripted, which means somebody else is going to be writing in Terry Pratchett's voice.

There was another original scripted series they did on Dirk Gently. And it took me like seven episodes to actually be OK with it. And then they ruined it with the entire second season. And then it got canceled because it turned out to be terrible. Oh, man. I just don't leave Discworld.

Leave Discworld alone. Please. That's right. And a little bit of quick music news as we cop out this section. Dead Can Dance's new album Dionysus will be out November 2nd. I'm very excited about that. And of course, the upcoming tour, because they are one of the best bands in the world to see live.

And speaking of seeing really great bands live, Massive Attack has announced the new Mezzanine tour, anniversary tour, and the Cocteau Twins' Liz Frazier will be hitting the road with them, which will be amazing. That album is one of my favorite albums of all time. And her song on there, Teardrop, is, you may remember it as the House theme song.

Absolutely stunning. So this is going to be amazing. And, you know, keep your eyes peeled for Banksy artwork at every single city they stop at. Yeah, seriously. Can't wait for that. I'll steal me some Banksy and go see a show. I finished Rogue Protocol, The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells.

This is the third in the series this week. It was a pretty quick read. I have a lot of thoughts about this one, Jason. Hit me with it, because I got halfway through and forgot about it and have not gone back. Absolutely loved the first book. The concept was incredibly fresh, incredibly interesting.

The second book was okay. The third book is even less okay. This is diminishing returns. Okay. I mean, it's fine. The problem for me is that the main character isn't evolving at all. The main character, all of, spoiler alert, the main character is a murder bot.

It's human with a bunch of, you know. It's a cyborg. Cyborg. But, and have control, they have controls on them to keep their human feelings and emotions and all that sort of stuff from coming out, because they have human brains. She or he, I don't even know.

It's technically an it, because they have no genitalia. And they're made to look androgynous. Breaks some of that in the first book, and struggles with being kind of human and dealing with ethics and all of that sort of nature. The problem with books two and three is there's no evolution of the character whatsoever.

Yeah. There's no character development. It's just, now we take this character and put them in the exact same situations with different characters. It's here where I'm protecting these people, and I have to get out of trouble. Both the second books did that. No character development at all, so totally losing me, because there's just no interest.

Yeah. There's nothing to grab your attention. The character's not evolving. You're not rooting for the character. The character doesn't even have a goddamn name. I mean, there's been no move forward at all. It's just, okay, now we have Murderbot, and I'll stick Murderbot here, and Murderbot has to save these people.

That's the second and third books are just exactly the same. Yeah. That sucks. A bit of a bummer. I don't think I'm going to read a fourth unless I find out that there's some major character development or the addition of a second character or a sidekick or something like that. There's got to be something to keep my interest in this series.

Yeah, which is kind of sad. It feels like a wasted opportunity, because the first book was so good. I love the first book and can't recommend that enough. I'm not so sure about where she's taking this. Yeah. Yeah. It's too bad. Too bad. Sorry, Martha. Get on it. We've given you the recipe. Go fix it.

We need Robin. We need Murderbot and Robin. That's right. That's right. So I started The Labyrinth Index, The Laundry Files Book Nine by Charlie Strauss. I'm a little saddened by this book so far. It's not a Bob book. Yeah, I started it too.

And I was like, oh, man, are we ever going to get Bob again? Yeah, I mean, the last one, we got a great Bob story, and this is not a great Bob story at all. It's an evolution from the last one, because there was a very big climactic end with the last one, where people are coming through from other dimensions and things like that and taking over the world.

And so far, I'm digging it. I'm digging it. It's not bad. It's not bad at all. I was just really hoping for another Bob book. Yeah, me too. I'm way too early into it to give any opinion on it so far, other than I do like the fact that it's picked up exactly basically where it left off, because that was a hell of a cliffhanger.

Yeah, yeah. So I mainly put this in here to let people know that if you're a Laundry Files reader and you didn't know the book was out, go grab it, and we'll talk about it when we finish it, probably next week. I'll be done with it by next week for sure. I think I will be as well. Unless I have to read The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene.

Now, Robert Greene's famous for writing The 48 Laws of Power and a bunch of other books, and even a book with 50 cent. And he's famous in the psychology self-help realm. And I love his books. I've read his books countless times. And this new book is like his swan song, his huge piece on human nature and how we basically make decisions and treat other people and how we can kind of hack the system type of stuff.

Unfortunately, Robert had a stroke when he was finishing the book. And I feel really bad for the guy. He's only 59. Wow. So he's recovering from a stroke right now. Like his whole left side of his body was paralyzed really bad. But they say he's going to recover. So if you're a Robert Greene fan, just know that he'll be back.

And I'm going to his house on Saturday to go do an interview with him for another show. So I get to meet him. So I'm like trying to pound through this book. And so far, it's fantastic. I'll have a full review of it. But it's like almost 650 pages. It's not a short book at all.

It's like reading Dune again. It really is. It really is. So, so far, it's amazing. It is definitely his best book so far. So if you're a fan of Robert Greene, definitely pick up The Laws of Human Nature. It came out last week. And if you want to get it on Audible, it's only 28 hours long.

Oh, my God. Even at 2X, that's a day and a half of doing nothing but listening to the book. But take your time. Take your time. There's a lot of stuff in here. And you're going to want to absorb it because it is definitely good stuff. We're on of the week. I was just complaining about the TVs at the DMV and the TVs at airports and the fact that you can't just get away from screen space all the time anywhere in the world these days.

Well, San Francisco and your fucking startups are just fucking with me at this point. There's a new one called Grab It. And this is a startup that is turning the city's car windows into a distributed outdoor advertising platforms. People can sign up as a driver in the city to host the company's screens in their cars, playing an endless stream of ads targeted at passerbys.

How does that work? You put a camera in your or you put a screen in your window as in the back window as you're driving and it's just running ads. So when you pull up next to somebody, they look over, they see the ad. People walking down the street look over, they see the ad. Now they're saying this is great because we can totally geotarget things to certain areas and we can do responsive ads based on everything that's going on around us.

And woohoo, you can earn up to three to four hundred dollars a month in ad revenue if you're driving up to 40 hours a week. So basically, it's a side hustle on your side hustle. If you happen to be an Uber or Lyft guy, it's side hustle all the way down. But how can you see out your back window when this thing's running? They were saying that actually that might be part of the problem and that's why people who are like have families or just regular cars would probably not do this.

But if you were doing your your side hustle on Uber and Lyft and you're driving all the time anyways, why not? Because you can't see out your back window. There's a window there for a reason. You need to be able to look at the back window and see if the popos behind you, if the fire department needs to come by anything.

There's a window behind you for a reason. How do you back up if you're running an ad behind you? I don't know. This can't be. Well, I guess you use your backup camera. This cannot be legal. I'm sorry. It probably isn't. But hey, move fast and break cars and people and world run over children.

That's it. Break the world and move fast. People make your three hundred dollars a month side hustle. Yeah, that three hundred bucks isn't enough for the insurance when you run over a toddler. God, how stupid. I got to look this one up and see what the if they've gotten any kind of, you know, permission from the state for this.

Because if not, I'm coming back to this one. Damn it. I found this over at the hustle. The dystopian business of bottled air. Air. Yeah, this is big in China. Yeah. That's where most of it's being sold. Yeah, because the air over there is so bad.

People in Canada. You buy a can of air. Yeah, a can of air. And these are Canadians doing this because apparently the air in Canada is so much better. So they're going out with these basically air compressors, stealing the air from Canada, putting it in a can and selling it overseas.

Yeah, there's nothing, you know, environmentally irresponsible about that whatsoever. Now, I want to throw a shout out and a challenge to all of our listeners. I have vague but strong memories of this being a plot in some sci-fi dystopian, not a plot, but a part of a sci-fi dystopian novel where there was groups of people packaging air and selling it to other areas in the world after something really bad had happened.

If anybody, if that rings a bell or if you know what it is, please let me know because it's driving me crazy. And I tried the Google bot and the DuckDuckGo bot and the Bing bots to try to figure this out and I cannot find anything. But I know this exists and I know it's a pretty big novel. Somebody help me.

Feedback loop. We got no new Patreon subscribers this week. What the hell's wrong with you people? That made me sad. We've had them every single week. I know. I'm feeling like there's no love. There's no love. I know. But over at PayPal, Judge sent us a recurring donation. Thank you.

Over at Twitter, we got a lot of feedback this week. Nosec and Moss6502 both sent us this story. Nosec says, so now we have AI blowjob machiny thingy. Never underestimate horny geeks. This is the blowjob paper. Scientists process 109 hours of oral sex to develop an AI that sucks dick.

Why was I not allowed in on that study? Yeah, well, you'll be the benefactor. So you'll get the autoblow version 2.0. Oh, actually, the autoblow 2 was the one that I tried out. So this will be the autoblow 3. Oh, there you go. So thank God we had an AI on it.

Yeah, seriously. If you want to know about the autoblow, just check the previous episodes. It's back there somewhere. Or not. Yeah, you might want to skip that one. That's just me. Moss6502 also sent me the second favorite article that we had this week.

And I loved reading these in unison. The Vatican has launched Pokemon Go-like game where you collect Catholic saints. Oh, God. Yes. Literally. Literally. Oh, God. You collect famous religious figures to join your evangelization team. You'll build up a Sunday school of saints and other biblical characters by going out and about.

You'll find them hanging around your neighborhood because where else would they be? Don't try to attack them, though. Your biblical bros will be added to your team if you simply answer some of their questions. I like the fact that in this article, they called it Pokemon Go. Oh, man. Well, you know, it's just as historically accurate as Pokemon Go, so I guess there's that.

There's that. Yeah. And Babylonie writes in with a picture on the Twitters. It says, this device can actually read your mind. It's an MIT prototype that can sense words you're about to say. Well, if you're going to say them, why do you need a machine?

Or maybe it gives you a shock if you're going to say something really insensitive. I think the idea is that you're going to be able to speak to an AI that's attached to your head without actually vocalizing out loud in the future. But it doesn't work yet. Oh, not even close. Wait, technology that they're pimping that doesn't work yet?

Yes. Wow. I expected more from MIT. This is just straight out of Silicon Valley. What the hell, guys? Yeah. And Babylonie also sent in, love the show, but the transition music is loud, and I don't know how to auto-equalize that with Cast Republic. Can we joint venture this? It ain't loud.

It ain't loud. I mean, it is normalized to negative 18 luffs with an adaptive leveler using ofonic leveler. So everything is exactly the same as it comes across. Now, having worked in the music industry for a long time, I have been on both sides of this.

I have said that I've heard something that nobody else has heard, and I've been on the other end of things where somebody is yelling at me that they hear something that nobody else can hear. So some aspect of audio is indeed, of course, obviously open to interpretation, but the meters don't lie, and we process this stuff.

So the transition music is the same level as everything else. Yeah, it honestly is. It's like everything is run through the same algorithm. Oh, no, it's the algorithms, the algorithms problem. We're ruining the world, Jason, with our transition music. Now, everything is normalized to go through at negative 18 luffs, which is actually quieter than all the specs ask for.

Everybody asks for negative 16, and I think that's too loud, so I make it negative 18, because that's how I roll. Now, write, film, sleep, repeat sent us, he sent us some lyrics that you're supposed to sing to the conga, which I can't, for the life of me, I can't even pull that song up.

So do you, Brian, can you sing us a tune? I was hoping you knew that one, because I got the other one. I don't know the conga, so just put this into the conga. AI, AI, blockchain, AI, AI, blockchain. LimeUberBird, LimeUberBird. Now, he also sent us to Legos Awesome, which I do know. Everything is AI.

Everything is cool when you're our blockchain. Everything is AI when you're revenging on GOG. Okay. I love that song, Tegan and Sarah. Oh, my God. You have a kid, don't you? Yeah, but not even, I watched that movie for myself.

It was good. It was a good movie, actually. Now I know the song you're talking about. Yeah, okay. Andreas writes in, here's something to spend your Patreon riches on, and it's how I cheated the Apple podcast charts for $5. Well, if you would like to hear my rants on people, you know, basically doing the Apple podcast charts and gaming them, just follow me on Twitter, JPDeaf.

I rant about it every now and again. Here's the problem. Apple podcast charts don't mean shit. They are fundamentally broken, and we don't care. So that's the thing. We want your ratings and reviews for social proof, but the actual numbers in there are bullshit, and I can probably talk to you for half an hour on that.

And I'm not going to waste your time. Yes, I'm not going to waste your time. Over at GOG.show, Myra wrote in, hey, guys, adding to your weekly annoyment about electric scooters, I just read that Germany comes out with a regulation for participation of miniature electric vehicles in traffic. German version, because I know you like to practice your German.

I think you need more practice. Yeah, it's been a while. It sounded more like the Swedish chef. Here are two links I found in English. Greetings from the land of regulations, Myra.

Electric scooters awarded official traffic permit in Germany, and there's a second link in the show notes as well. I just like this because here's the bit. The spokesperson said the corresponding directive on the participation of small electric vehicles in traffic would be released by late 2018 or early 2019 at the latest. Electric scooters will then formally be allowed to travel along cycle paths and motor roads as long as they fulfilled regulatory standards detailed in the 40-page long directive.

There you go. See, that's the thing. First, it's Germany. So Germans will follow the damn rules. And secondly, there's 40 fucking pages of them. We have maybe half an index card and nobody pays attention. Yeah, wear a helmet and stay off the sidewalks is pretty much all we've got. And people can't even do that.

People can't even do that. So I have no doubt that this will work far better in Germany than it does here. And Dan writes in, wonder if we can trust the government to keep our data safe. Once the data is compiled by Stats Canada, it will be made anonymous in order to remove personal identifiers. And this comes from an article in globalnews.ca.

Stats Canada, which is a company, is requesting banking information of 500,000 Canadians without their knowledge. I think that's all of Canada. Isn't that all the Canadians? 500,000? It's pretty damn close to it. Yeah. So I understand why they're doing it.

They basically said that, you know, we want to kind of paint a picture of what's going on financially in Canada. And people don't respond to surveys anymore. So nobody's telling us willingly what's going on. So why don't we just grab this data and we'll anonymize it, of course.

That being the main problem, we know that you can't anonymize data like that. You can always de-anonymize it. So a little bit weird. Yeah. Jeff writes us, hello, geeks. I have a moral question. So we all know that everything costs money. We do.

Facebook is free. Everything seems to be free these days. Yeah. Anyways, I really want new Star Trek content, especially Picard. I haven't checked out Discovery yet because I was opposed to signing up for the CBS service because I don't care about anything else on said service. The idea did cross my mind to buy a month of the service, binge watch the season, then cancel and wait for the next season or show.

My question is, do they release the entire season that you know of or space out the episodes? I really do think it's important to pay something, but I'm really only interested in Star Trek. Thanks. We have covered this and we are on dicey ethical ground with this because we both went to Sweden to see the show. If you feel the need to pay, you have to wait until it ends.

They did something pretty tricky with Discovery in that they split the season in two, so you couldn't just binge all of it. You have to wait until the season is done. If you want to pay right now for a trial service, you can see the entire first season of Discovery, but at some point they're going to get you, and at least there'll be two shows in the future.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, for now, you can just go get a seven-day free trial and just remember to cancel it. If you do it, but if you want to pay, just pay for a month and then watch it at your leisure, your leisure, and then cancel it. Yeah, exactly. And that's probably what I'm going to be doing when Picard gets involved, and certainly for the second season of Discovery, which will be out well before we get a Picard show, I think I'll just wait until it's all aired, and then I will do pay for one month and binge.

Actually, I'm just going to go to Sweden. Of course you are. Holly writes in, this was on 2600, the Hacker Quarterly, and it is a video about, if I can find the tab again, ancestry tracing websites turning over DNA to law enforcement.

I'm going to tell you right now, there's a problem with this. Do you see who published this video? No, I did not. RT America. Oh, oh yes. Yeah, that's a problem. I'm not going to watch this video because RT is basically a Russian propaganda news organization.

So, yeah, it might be correct, but it will pass. Yeah, basically what the gist is of the piece is what we've said before is that people are posting their ancestry information online and law enforcement is using it to catch people like the Golden State Killer.

Right. So, yeah, that's about it. And Jason wrote us, hey guys, you may have already seen this, but scooters are back in the news. Did they ever leave? Lawyer suing e-scooter company calls user agreements draconian. And this is, we touched on this, I think, in the last episode when it was first announced. But I did like one little point in here that they're making in this lawsuit, which is, who is responsible for making sure that riders obey not only existing traffic laws, but company policies as well?

And if anyone gets hurt by the scooter, who pays? I would like to know the answer to these questions as well. Yeah, because I want to know who to sue next time I come down and hang out with you in Venice, in Santa Monica and somebody runs me over. I would like to know who to sue. For me, it seems like the dumb shit that ran me over would be the first person that I could sue.

But usually they don't have the money, so you would go after the company. But, I mean, if somebody hits you with a car that you rented, that person is liable. Well, theoretically, they have insurance. See, that's the difference. We don't have insurance for these people riding these scooters.

Ah, good point. Good point. We need scooter insurance. Exactly. Scooter insurance. There's a horrible stripper name. Bubby writes in, hi, grumpies. I make my wife listen to the show at slow speed and we have the best of laughs, so thanks for keeping the marriage together.

You're well done. Anyway, you never talk about Linux. Is it dead? Nowadays, I run all my machines on Linux with Ubuntu. I am not a geek and I do all right. What's your stand on Linux? Ciao. P.S. Check out my awesome 90s website. We'll have a link to that in the show notes.

See, previous article about IBM buying Red Hat. Linux isn't dead, but both Jason and I still only use it for servers, not for our personal machines. Yeah, I never use it for desktop stuff. I mean, yeah, I'm not going to use it for desktop. I mean, the Mac OS is based on BSD, which is, you know, a Unix derivative.

But Linux is, yeah, I never run a server that is anything but Linux. I don't use Ubuntu because I think it's too basically graphics heavy and there's so many libraries you have to turn off if you're running a headless machine. So that's why I prefer CentOS, which seems to be a little bit more hardened to the world.

I don't use Red Hat for anything. But like I said, CentOS is a derivative of Red Hat Enterprise. And yes, so to answer your question, yes, we still use Linux. Right. Rico writes, Jason, I desperately need your help. I've been on Quest for about a year to find a working solution to a communication issue I have.

I have a speech disability with my vocal cords that does not allow me to speak very well. I can carry on quite a conversation, but I sound like a cross between a whisper and that teacher from Charlie Brown. What I've been on a quest for is a way to use a TTS package on a phone call. I don't think that either Jason or I know anything about this, unfortunately.

Yeah. TTS is text-to-speech. No, I know what it is, but I don't think we know any of it. No, I was saying that for the audience, not for you. You know, the people that are listening to this show, help me. Who? Yeah. I have not come across anything about this, but you know what?

I'm going to dig into it for next week. I'm going to make a note in things here to research this because I think this is something we might actually, might be able to find a solution. There might be a solution out there for this. So yeah, we'll do a little digging into it. I'm not reading all of your things because it gets very technical, but I will finish off the end of your comment because I love it.

Help me. Oh, bye, Filippo. You are my only hope. Thank you, Rico. I will do some research into this because I know some people who have issues with this and they may have some suggestions for you. Jason writes in. Not me.

I'm not writing to myself. Good morning, guy. Okay. Which one? You may remember me from such emails as, really, Jason? You got physically sick from the election? Oh, fuck, this guy? Well, with all the political crap from all sides going on today, many people are shouting about the socialist system in Sweden and how superior they are to us.

Here's a great documentary that gives a history and inside look into what it's really like. I was impressed with what they have done and it's not what you may think. Give it a watch if you like. I would be interested to hear what you think because I am open-minded to everyone's argument and I think you are too. By the way, the jokers in charge on both sides of the aisle would never go for this.

Thanks again for the show. I remember what he said. I do, too. It was very funny. I actually watched this video and I enjoyed it immensely. And yeah, it could never happen here, sadly, for a number of reasons. I mean, it's the same reason that Canada's policies won't work here. We have too many damn people in comparison.

But I highly recommend watching this. It's quite good. It's very similar in vain to Michael Moore's one about he went around the world and found the things that work. Why don't we do this here? So there's some good things. There's some bad things. But overall, it was a very interesting little short documentary. Cool. Well, it's short.

It's a 56-minute long documentary. But I guess that is short. It's not an hour and a half. It's not two hours. You're not going to watch that on Snap. No. Troy writes in, you need a buy in your podcast opening. I'm enjoying hearing you guys twice a week opposed to once a week. I suppose we do need to.

Oh, that's right. We do have to fix that. He says, I hate to be that guy. But here it goes. Your opening says, Grumpy Old Geeks is a weekly talk show. You are now bi-weekly and better. Thanks, guys, for all you do. And just so you know, I don't hate Trump, but I like some of the things he is doing, and I still enjoy listening to you guys. It's got to be our mutual disdain for Facebook, concerns for privacy, and dislike of the Google monopoly that keeps us together.

Again, thanks for all you do. Troy, I hate to be that guy, too. But you typed our name as Grumpy Old Geeks, not Grumpy Old Geeks. Yeah. If you want to be a pet ant, then go all in. Go all in. But you're actually completely right on the opening. We'll have to get that.

It's too bad. We just had Bob up here. Bob was in my studio. I could have done it in two seconds. Oh, man. Nosec writes in, just listen to your episode 291. And in your closing shout outs, you referred to breast cancer. This has been a really embarrassing topic in Finland lately. This one aviation company fired an employee because he was wearing a pink ribbon in his uniform and refused to take it off.

The company is trying to play it off with uniformity of the uniforms, et cetera. And so, yeah, that's bullshit. Yeah, it is. I mean, I read through the article, and of course it's bullshit. It's super bad optics, and they never should have done that as a company. But in the company's defense, he had five to six written warnings, a couple different interviews with his supervisor saying, please take this off, blah, blah, blah.

And he chose not to, so they're in their right to fire him. Yeah, so they used this as the final lever, you know, to get him out the door. Yeah. I mean, if he was a stellar employee, things might be different. If he was a douche. Yeah. Yeah.

And Greetar writes us, seems like even Amazon employees might not be as mercenary as we thought. Amazon employees protesting sale of facial recognition software, much like the Google thing that we were talking about earlier. It seems folks over at Amazon, more than 450 employees signed a letter addressed to CEO Jeff Bezos and other Amazon executives demanding that the company Palantir be banned from Amazon web services and that Amazon implement employee oversight for ethical decisions.

I don't want employee oversight, I want outside oversight. I'll take anything at this point, especially if all these employees seem to have some morals. Google's employees have morals, Amazon's employees have morals, it's the company themselves that don't. So, let's see what happens. I wonder if any of these people listen to our show.

They don't. Of course they don't. But yeah, fuck Palantir. I hate that company so much. Peter Thiel is the devil. Over at iTunes, Fleen01 writes in, new GOG fan. I listen to all the shows now and they make me feel smart and arrogant about my knowledge of the happenings in the tech world.

I gave you $1 a month because you are at least worth one-fifth of a beer every month. Thank you. Maybe a whole beer someday. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. And Stay Grump writes us, grumpy for all. Love the show. I am only 22, so not quite an old geek, but still grumpy as hell at the current state of tech.

This podcast beautifully sums up the most important weekly news and never spends too much time on a single story. Highly suggested for anyone who wants to stay current on tech news. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much. If you want your question or comment read on the air, 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. Even though we know the charts are bullshit, we still read them and it makes us feel good. We like to feel good. We appreciate it. It's basically just giving us endorphin rushes, nothing else. Yeah. But even better, go to patreon.com slash GOG and throw us a few bones.

Closing shout outs. God damn Dodgers. Well played Red Sox. I look forward to next season and losing the World Series yet again. All right. Thank you, Dodgers. That was quick. It wasn't a sweep.

We won one. You won one. Oh, well, of course, that game went 18 innings. Yeah, I'm glad I didn't. I'm glad I didn't give any shits this year because I would not have wanted to watch that. Anyway, it's painful until next season when the Dodgers lose. I'm Jason DeFillippo and I'm Brian Schulmeister.

Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Support the show and keep us on the air. Go to patreon.com slash GOG. Pass 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 294.

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 next week.

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