300: Tonight, We Dine in Hell!

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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. 300! Woo-hoo! Yes. You know I never saw that movie. What? I know. I should probably get on that. You should. It's a good movie. I mean, it's, you know, schlocky, cheesy, but it's a popcorn movie. It delivers what it promises, right?

It really does. It's, you know, tits and swords is kind of it. Excellent. Yeah. And lots of slaughter. Tits, swords, and slaughter. That's what they should have called it. And yet, you don't like Game of Thrones. Ah, they kill all my favorite characters. Well, I guess they do in 300, too. Never mind. Spoiler alert.

So, great. So, no episode on Monday. Just a little reminder. Yep. We're all taking the Thanksgiving holiday off, including Mr. Dave Bittner. So, we will not have an episode on Monday, but we'll be back following later that week. Yes, we will. And if you're a first-time listener, we break this show up into two episodes a week. Each episode is different.

So, it's not the same show on Monday as it is on Thursday. So, highly recommend you check out a couple episodes to get the full, full scope of our grumpitude. Yes. Because we have new listeners coming in, and I wanted to make that clear for everybody. All right. Well, speaking of delivering as promised, or actually not, here's some follow-up on the big old Amazon HQ2 scam, as it's now being known.

CommonDreams.org has a nice write-up about this. New York taxpayers have learned that they're going to be forced to finance a helipad for Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, of course. Nice. Is it made of gold? Oh, no, that's Trump's. Never mind. That's Trump's, yeah. So, in addition to that, all the details that are coming out now just make it sound worse and worse and worse.

Politico reported on Thursday, the site where Amazon will build offices for its new headquarters in Long Island City was previously reserved for nearly 1,500 public housing units for needy families. That's gone? Yeah, those people are being moved to an Amazon warehouse somewhere in upstate New York.

And that is not all. In addition to killing plans for the public housing development, Amazon's Long Island City headquarters will also reportedly displace over 1,000 New York City public school workers to carve out space for them. Nice. Oh, man. So, that's happening as well. Now, while Amazon claimed that it will receive $2.1 billion in total taxpayer incentives from the two cities, Long Island City and Crystal City combined, a new analysis by Good Jobs First found that the action, the actual cost to taxpayers will likely be $4.6 billion and likely even higher.

Whoa. So, yes. So, Amazon had released a statement saying that basically it was going to be $48,000 per employee that they would be getting a tax break from. But the new analysis says it's actually more like $112,000, which is considerably probably more than they'll be paying any of those employees.

Yeah, seriously. Nice job, Amazon. So, well done, Amazon. And we thought Facebook was the only douchey company this week. Damn. Over on Vox, there's a pretty good write-up on the human costs of Black Friday.

They get an Amazon warehouse manager to kind of go behind the scenes and tell what it's like for everybody there. And, spoiler alert, it sucks. It really, really sucks. People, like, get jazzed at the beginning. They're like, we're bringing Christmas to everybody. And then after they're like, you know, like fourth or fifth week straight of 12-hour days and, you know, six days a week, pretty much everybody just wants to fall over dead.

Right. That's how that works. We've got a bit of follow-up on the kilogram. We did a story a while back when we talked about how the actual kilogram, the gold standard, as it were, wasn't a kilogram anymore because, you know, just little bits of ions are flying off of it and whatnot.

And the idea was eventually, well, we should probably change this because the kilogram can't just keep falling in weight because then it's not a kilogram anymore. Right. And representatives from more than 60 countries voted during the 26th meeting of the General Conference on Weights and Measures in Versailles, France. What a party group that must be.

I'm telling you, man, that's a barn burner right there. Man, that hotel bar. Whew. If drinks could talk. Yeah. Well, hey, at least cocaine comes in kilograms. That's right. So they have finally redefined it. It will not be based on a physical object anymore. It will be based on a fundamental factor in physics known as Planck's constant, which is a small number, which starts with 33 zeros after its decimal point, describing the behavior of elementary packets of light known as photons and everything from the flicker of a candle flame to the twinkle of stars overhead.

It is a fundamental constant woven into the fabric of the universe, and it will now be the very definition of the kilogram. So we've gone to pure science and not just a physical object anymore, which is kind of cool. That is pretty cool. I like science. But you know who doesn't like science? North Carolina.

This one's right for you, Brian. Anti-vaccine community behind North Carolina chickenpox outbreak from the BBC. Who could have saw this coming? Yeah. Yep. There's a school. Oh, wait. Scientists. Yep. Everybody with a brain. There's a school in North Carolina that has the largest religious exceptions for immunization in the state.

And now that school has the biggest chickenpox outbreak state officials are aware of since the vaccine became available. Out of the 152 students, 110 have not received the vaccine. And yeah, so there's a pretty big outbreak.

Thirty-six students right now have it. And yeah, calling the herd. Amazing. Just stunning. Stunning. Science for the win. Or not. And I love this. This is from the school. We found that our parents are highly motivated to choose exactly what they want for their children.

We as a school do not discriminate based on a child's medical history or medical condition. This is a school I would never go to or send my son to or even want to live anywhere near. Yeah, that's about it. And how'd you like my North Carolina accent? I haven't lived there for like 20 years, but I think I still got it somewhere. I'm sure Trent's a friend of the show, Trent, will write with a scathing rebuke.

He's screaming at the speakers in his Porsche right now going, You guys! Damn you guys! In the news! We have talked about data breaches an awful lot on the show.

In fact, we basically have an entire segment that's just about them for the most part. And we also talk about how companies never seem to actually have to pay for their ills and their stupid behavior. And what we've found out and what we've talked about in the past is that it just doesn't make financial sense for them to do so.

And that is exactly what the 218 Cost of a Data Breach Study from the Ponemon Institute and IBM states. So the average cost per data breach globally at $3.86 million, including IT expenses, insurance, notification, and lost customers and business. In the U.S., the average is $7.91 million.

That might sound like a lot, but it's not. Because of the 477 companies studied, had between 1,000 and 100,000 employees. With annual revenues from $100 million to more than $25 billion to these companies, the cost of a breach is a rounding error. The company spends more money buying coffee for its office workers than they do for when they screw up on a data breach.

Oh, who'd have thunk it? Yeah. So until we get some regulations and some laws on the books and some hefty penalties, I don't expect anything's going to ever change. Well, we do have some laws, but we just don't have those hefty penalties. Yeah, that's true. We need the hefty penalties, damn it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Now, something interesting is coming out of facial recognition software. We talk about that a lot in the security segment as well, usually not in a good way. But this is super interesting to me. There's this guy who launched a Civil War photo sleuth, a web platform dedicated to closing the gap a little bit further between Civil War photos and recognizing who they are.

Now, this is interesting. This guy, Ron Coddington, is one of the people involved here. And he said he once calculated that there were 40 million photographs of Union soldiers taken during the Civil War. Even if only 10% of those survived, there are still 4 million images out there today. And basically, nobody has been—very few people are actually identified in these photos.

So he wanted to start up this thing to help do it. So you can upload a photograph, and then there are all these different kind of tags, and then there's some AI that goes through and tries to help out. But the interesting thing about this is they found out that because of the photos, the quality of the photos, the black and white are sepia tones, and facial hair, that actually human sleuths are much better than digital and software figuring these things out because the beards and mustaches can block the features the program is trying to map.

So while they're trying to do this using AI and facial recognition, they're finding out that humans are still better at it. Oh, we need beard removal software. Damn right. That's what we need. Yeah. And speaking of photos, Instagram. Instagram is finally cracking down on services that sell likes and followers.

Now, I know you did an experiment, I believe, with Twitter buying likes and followers. Did you ever do that with Instagram? No, I did not. Because it was such a failure on Twitter that I'm like, I'm not spending any more money on that. Yeah. So Instagram has built machine learning tools to help detect accounts growing artificially.

The move is not retroactive, so if you did it in the past, no punishment for you. You get to keep all those likes and followers. Good for you. You spent the money. You might as well keep them. Might as well keep them. That's right. And Instagram also in the news again because they accidentally exposed some users' passwords in plain text.

Nope. Oops. They rolled out a new feature to download your data because they had to comply with GDPR and also because they're trying to do a little, you know, backspin on the Cambridge Analytica stuff because, you know, they're owned by Facebook and they're trying to be the good guys.

Even though all the good guys have left the company now and Instagram is just part of the mothership. But, yeah, part of this download your data package basically had a pretty nasty bug in it that let them save copies of your password in plain text.

But I was not notified of this. I used two-factor auth, so I don't think that I was affected. Did you get a notification from this? I did not. Okay. I also used two-factor auth. Ah, that's probably why. There you go. Now, Facebook has obviously been in the news a lot.

And over on Recode, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway have a podcast called Pivot, of course, and they discussed it. And I just like this one particular quote that came from it, so we'll just read this and then we'll get on to more nasty Facebook news. Winston Churchill said at the outset of World War II, never have so many owed so few to so much, Galloway said on the new podcast.

And it got me thinking, can you think of any individuals have made so much money doing so much damage? I mean, they make tobacco executives look like Mr. Rogers. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. There was an internal Facebook memo because the VP of comms, what's his name, Elliot Schrag, is leaving.

And he blamed himself for hiring the PR firm definers. I'm sure, basically, Zuckerberg walked into an office and said, here's a pen, here's a sword. You're going to write this out, and then you're going to fall on this sword, and then you're going to get the hell out.

Yes, and then you can fall all the way to the bank because I'm sure he's taking quite a bit of money with him. Yes, that golden parachute, I'm sure, followed him around wherever he goes now. Yeah. Anyways, moving on, Alexa can now make Skype calls, which is kind of cool. You'll be able to make Skype calls on all your Alexa devices.

The entire line will be able to do it now. In addition to using your Skype contacts via Alexa, users will be able to call mobile numbers and landlines using Skype out. And they're giving you 100 free minutes of calls for the first two months when you link your Skype account with Alexa, which is kind of nice. Yeah, except Skype sucks.

It is a terrible thing. Terrible, terrible thing. And I don't think I'll be syncing my Skype contacts with Alexa for the same reason I'm not going to do my contacts with Alexa, and especially my Skype contacts, because I have a lot of pretty heavy hitters in my Skype contacts for all the interviews we do.

And that would not be good for me to be calling some of these people in the middle of the night. It's like, oh, my Alexa just butt-dialed Russell Brand. Okay, great. That's what we need. Yes. Yeah, I'll be passing on that one. This next one is pretty cool, though.

Last month, somebody got a picture of a guy wearing an Apple Macs backpack with LiDAR in it and cameras on it. It's a cool-looking backpack. And since then, Apple has come out saying, oh, yeah, we're going to be mapping people walking so we can give better walking directions.

And they're starting out here in California. And the counties of Alameda, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, and Santa Clara are going to start having people walking around. But only a nobody walks in L.A. Yeah, except me. Except me. But the thing about this is they're rebuilding all of their data from the ground up.

Okay. They're not – because remember, they used, like, open maps in the beginning. Yeah. And at least they have cars out there, and they're trying to backfill that. So I think they're just trying to get rid of all of the old data they have, and they're just going to start, you know, rebuilding it from scratch, which is a good thing, because Apple Maps in the past has been known to suck balls, I think is the technical term for it.

To put it mildly. Yeah. Yeah. They can't even come close to Google. And this comes back to – this next story comes back to something that I talked about this last week or the week before about how these self-driving car manufacturers aren't sharing data on, you know, on their findings because it's a business and there's competition.

And the world would be a better place if everybody just pooled their knowledge and came up with, you know, a great solution for self-driving cars. Like, everybody puts money in the pool, and they have this open software initiative to do that. I thought that would be fantastic. Never going to happen. Never in this universe.

Well, there is – this is great. Over in the UK, there's a data group called the Open Data Institute, and they said that data monopolies are stifling innovation in the UK. Tech companies like Google and Apple and Uber should be forced to share mapping data with rivals and firms in the public sector.

That's what they said. Do you think it's ever going to happen? Probably not. But it's good that people are out there thinking about this stuff because, you know, they're maps. It would be great if everybody could just share their map data. Then we wouldn't have – think about how fewer cars there would be on the road and how fewer jobs there would be, I guess.

So maybe scratch that. But those mapping cars are going to be self-driving anyway soon. That is true. Yeah, I think Tesla should be the ones that really give it up because they've got more cars on the road than anybody. That is true. Come on, Elon. Do something nice for once. He's too busy pouring holes under LA.

Yeah, yeah. He's also – he also caused a little stir with his pot smoking on Joe Rogan. I didn't get to put this one in the show notes, but NASA has launched basically kind of an ethics probe into SpaceX and Boeing as well.

Right. So it's basically a safety review, and they're going to be doing, like, hundreds and thousands of interviews of all the people there so they can get an entire view of the corporate culture and how they, you know, basically do safety.

Let's do safety right. Okay. Because they have a strict no-drug policy, and that's kind of a problem when the CEO is out there smoking pot and NASA says, we don't like the pot. I mean, that basically prompted this, and it's kind of interesting how this is going to play out.

I'm sure that it's going to be fine because, you know, these people are, you know, rocket scientists, for Christ's sake. Yes. Granted, they are in California, and they might like to smoke on the weed probably in the evenings, but – It's legal. It is legal. That's the problem, but that doesn't mean NASA cares.

They couldn't give a shit if it's legal. What they want is a rocket ship that's not going to kill anybody. Yeah, which is understandable. Yeah, yeah. So, back to the news. Mm-hmm. Snap is going to – I can't make this shit up.

Snap is going to release new spectacles with two cameras for even more money than the original snaps. You know, that's what they need to do to really fix the company. I get it. And they got dinged for $40 million in unsold inventory the last time they tried this because they ordered 800,000 units, and nobody wanted them.

Yep, and nobody's going to want these either. No, this is a play to move into AR since they'll have, you know, two lenses and they can do more stuff. Right. It's been kind of a rough week for the stock market. My portfolio is not happy right now, but I'm just going to turn it off and let it sit and come back to it later.

That's right. The one portfolio that I'm glad I don't have anymore is Bitcoin because it is now at a new 2018 low, dropping 25% in a week. And we thought it was bad last week. Oh, no. Everybody's, everybody's selling off. You know, I deal with the socials for our podcast here, Jason, so I know you don't see these things a lot, but we used to get a lot, a lot of comments and likes and things like that of that nature from BitBros.

Not so much likes, but people saying we were wrong. Yeah. They've all kind of gone away. You think? The BitBros aren't bugging us much anymore because it turns out we kind of nailed it. Yep, kind of nailed it. And yeah, the problem is they can't afford their ISP bill now because they lost all their money.

A Bitcoin. Yes. Yeah. Everybody, go check out Craigslist real soon for all those miners. You can get some pretty good GPUs for cheap, I'm guessing, soon. That's right. This episode is sponsored by Privacy.com.

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Yeah, especially for Aquaman. Talk about, out of all the movies they made, Aquaman is the one that I least care about. And, you know, because it's DC and they screw everything up, this will probably be the best one. Could be. Could be. Yeah. Because God knows the rest of them weren't that great.

Well, Wonder Woman was great until that last 30 minutes. Yeah, exactly. So I can't wait for the three-hour Aquaman underwater fight scene with the sharks and the fishies. That's right. The KLF are still around. They're one of my favorite bands of the old days. These guys are pretty crazy, Bill Drummond and Jim Caudi.

So they've reunited the band, but now they're calling themselves the Justified Ancients of Moo Moo. And they have plans for a new event. Now, I don't know if you remember, they once burned a million pounds on an island as an art project. Nope. Don't remember that. Yep. They did that because they made a lot of money back in the day. And now they're doing something called the People's Pyramid, which is literally a pyramid out of dead people, or at least their ashes baked into bricks.

They're going to use 34,592 bricks, each of which will contain 23 grams of ash of a dead person. And they're going to call it the Toxteth Day of the Dead. Okay. Because why not? Why not? Apparently, they still have some of their money.

They do. They still have a lot of money, and they just like to do crazy things. So, they have a website for it. You can check that out. Link in the show notes. And they're going to call the process Moo Mooification. Oh, God. Look, man. I like it when people with crazy money do stupid, crazy things. Why not? It's like the Elon Musk of the music world.

Yeah. Spread that wealth around. Better than burning it, I guess. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, this is an interesting little project. Anyways, I watched a documentary on Gary Neumann this week called Android in La La Land. And the discussion here says, Filmed with candor, warmth, and humor, Android in La La Land explores life for Gary and his Neumannoid family as they set up home in California.

And he recorded the album Splinter, which came out a couple of years ago, which is great. So, I think this has been around for a while, but I finally got around to seeing it. It's quite funny, actually. I had no idea that Gary Neumann was quite so funny. Sometimes unintentionally, but generally very good. If you're a Neumann fan at all, I think this is worth watching.

It's definitely interesting. I'll check it out. But the problem with the link that you sent is I need a library card, and I don't have a library card yet. So, I don't have to go for it. Oh, right. That's the link I put on is on Canopy. But I think it's available other places as well. I'll have to dig into that a little bit. All right. And Taylor Swift actually just did something extremely good for all music artists, or at least ones on UMG.

Anyways, she left her longtime label, Big Machine Records, and signed with Universal Music Group's Republic Records. My wife works for Universal, so this is good news for us. One of her major contract stipulations is that if UMG sells its Spotify shares, the label will have to pass on some of that money to all the artists it represents, and it won't count against their advances.

That's a pretty cool thing that she did for everybody else on the label. So, good on her. Define some. Well, that's where it gets interesting. And I don't think we have exact numbers there, so I'm sure that the lawyers are getting into it. Oh, yeah.

My wife. So, we'll see. Oh, yeah. And the other interesting thing about this deal is the main reason she's leaving her old label is because she doesn't own her masters. Yep. And part of this deal with UMG is going forward, she's going to own all of her masters. They had to basically give her an island full of cash.

Pretty much, yes. I cannot believe that deal. It's insane. It's an insane deal for Taylor. I mean, a massive, like, windfall. Like, you cannot get anything better. But then again, she's one of the few artists that sell these days. True. At least in the kind of numbers that make anybody any money.

So, it's a smart deal all around. Definitely. Yep. And we talked a little bit about the new Star Trek shows that are coming. CBS All Access is just bringing Star Trek after Star Trek after Star Trek. And I think I mentioned in passing the animated comedy Lower Decks when we were talking about the new show that's going to star, what's the name of that actress again?

Michelle Yao? Yep. Michelle. Yeah. So, I just wanted to follow up on that and talk a little bit about it. Star Trek Lower Decks is going to be a half-hour animated comedy developed by Mike McMahon, who is a writer for the Rick and Morty show and the upcoming Star Trek short called The Escape Artist, which I didn't even know existed either.

So, we're getting an awful lot of Star Trek. I'm not so sure about this show. They've ordered two seasons. It'll focus on the support crew of the Starfleet's less important ships. Let's see. It says, I wanted to do a show about people who put the yellow cartridge in the food replicator so a banana can come out the other end.

His cat's name is Riker. His son's name is Sagan. The man is committed. He's brilliant, funny, and knows every inch of every Trek episode, and that's his secret sauce, he writes, with a pure, joyful heart of a true fan. We'll see. I'll give it a go. A Star Trek comedy?

All right. Why not? Yeah, why not? Why not? Give it a shot. It has a chance. It has a chance. I finished watching Patriot Season 2. Okay. That was... I loved Patriot. Patriot was a great show. If you listen to any episode of a podcast about a year and a half ago, Merlin Man would not shut the fuck up about it.

This is the greatest thing ever. I'm like, it was good. I wouldn't go that far. But I have to say, Patriot Season 2, better than the first. It was quite enjoyable. Very strange, but quite enjoyable with a great payoff at the end. It's worth watching it just for the last, like, half of the last episode.

It was awesome. Really enjoyed it. I'm also really enjoying Narcos Mexico. Amazing. It's got... Yeah, it's kind of the... It's got the same vibe as all the other Narcos. And if you dug those, you'll dig this one, too. It's, you know, it's a different story. It's about pot smuggling in Mexico around the same time as, like, right before cocaine started to come in.

And it's a really good show so far. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Excellent. We covered Pod Save America on this episode, or on the show before. And we're going to cover it on this episode, too. I was a premonition there. This came out...

I just saw this this morning. Tim Miller, one of the guys on the show, he was the token Republican on Pod Save America. Well, turns out he was the guy behind the George Soros crap that came out of Facebook.

Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah. So, he's on vacation right now, until they can figure out what went wrong, and if he'll be back or not. I kind of doubt it. I'm pretty sure he's off the pod. Yeah, I think he's gone now.

Yeah, that's kind of a... Yeah, that's a stick your dick in the blender moment right there.

I read a couple books this week. We're going to start off with Live, Work, Work, Work, Die, A Journey into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley by Corey Pine. The book started out okay. I'm like, okay, this is cool.

These guys move into Silicon Valley. He's going to try and become a billionaire, come up with an idea. He lived in some Airbnbs, hung out with coders, did pitches on Sand Hill Road and all that crap, and then in the middle of it, it just started going weird.

He started talking about Singularity University and doing deep dives on them, doing deep dives on the racist side of Silicon Valley and all these other side roads, and it was like four books in one.

So, I was kind of hoping the first part of the book was going to go to term, or term sheet even, and it didn't. It was kind of just a weird book. I can't say that I would recommend it. A lot of his stuff that he was writing in there is spot on with us.

I mean, I can see why it was recommended because a lot of the things he talks about are things we talk about every week about how this fucked up Silicon Valley is, but he just didn't bring it home. So, it was, I give it a C. I give it a C. Yeah. I mean, it had, it really had potential, and I like the guy, but it was just, it had too many tangents that turned into full-blown stories that just kind of, it was really weird.

But his Singularity University story was good. As a standalone story, that was, I think, the best of the book because he really took the piss out of Ray Kurzweil. I mean, really did. Next up, I read Red War, a Mitch Rapp novel, book 17 by Vince Flynn and Kyle Mills.

Now, here's the issue I have with this book now. I've covered, I've covered, I've read all of these books. I've only covered a couple recently because I still like them. Vince Flynn is dead. Vince Flynn died years ago. How's he still writing?

That's the thing. Yeah, I was at the grocery store today, and I saw another novel, another Mitch Rapp novel, Vince Flynn, and I love these novels, but the whole thing is, Kyle Mills is the guy that writes him now, and he gets his name in like 10-point type at the bottom. Right.

So since they've been taken over by Kyle Mills, they've been okay. So if you're a Mitch Rapp fan, you're probably going to read it anyway, but if you're not, you can stop at, you know, after Vince Flynn died. I recommend all the books up until that point, but when Vince Flynn goes, you can stop. But he's trying to carry the torch and make some money, which I, you know, he's doing a decent job, but eh, not really.

I'm done, I think, with the Mitch Rapp novel. So no more reviews for Mitch Rapp on Grumpy Old Geeks. And everybody cheered. Well, I finally finished The Labyrinth Index, which is Laundry Files Book Nine by Charles Strauss. It was good. I had a really hard time getting into it at first because, as we mentioned when you read it, different characters.

It's not a Bob story, sadly. And to my mind, it's gotten too big. The stakes are too high. I liked it when they were smaller stories because there was more room for him to put the humor in. And I felt that this was almost all plot and all story and moving it forward.

And the little, little bits of humor and irony and laugh out loud stuff is kind of missing from it now because he's got so much story that he has to get across. Step it back a little bit for the next one. Make it a smaller story. Yeah, I think going back to the roots might be good or finish it.

Or just finish it. Bring it home. Because he's taken it to a point where he can't do small stories anymore because I'm not going to do spoilers here, but it's all pretty serious. He's taking it as far as it can go. We are at the point that they were all worried about the earlier books. We're there.

So he's got to either finish it or move on to something else at this point. Yeah, because I'm getting, I'm kind of done if he doesn't, on the next one, he's got one more for me unless he really knocks it out of the park. Yep, I agree. So I still enjoyed it. It's still good. It's just I miss, I miss the humor that was such a big part of it.

I miss Bob. I miss Bob. Yeah. Something I also miss in my life is Firefly. I love that show so damn much. Let me guess. You never watched it. I did watch it. I enjoyed it. Oh, okay. Okay. I finally went back and saw it at some point, I think a couple years back.

Okay. Did you see the movie Serenity as well? I did. All right. Yeah. And Serenity made me cry. But the thing about it is that it's never coming back. They can't get everybody back together. And some of the characters or actors who played the characters are actually dead now. So there's a bummer. Although I think the characters that are dead were killed off in Serenity.

But here's what I'm, here's what I'm liking about this. There's a new book series coming out. And the first book is Big Damn Hero. And it's based on the Firefly universe. And it is being overseen by Joss Whedon. So right there, I'm happy. But it's the crew.

It's the same crew. So I'll be able to see him in my head and laugh along. Which is good because then Wash is back, you know, since I miss him the most. You know, it's going to be, I think this will hopefully be a good series. So keep an eye out for it. They're coming pretty soon. The link will be in the show notes for the story at gog.show slash 300.

Woohoo. Woohoo. Moron of the week. My moron of the week is somebody I've always said was a moron. Just this week, he got to be more moronic. Bill Maher. Bill Maher stepped on his dick this week, big time, with a blog post called Adulting.

And he just rails into comic book culture and Stan Lee in particular and says that, oh, God. He says, Stan's loyal fans pretended comic books were actually sophisticated literature and said Trump could only get elected in a country that thinks comic books are important.

Well, well, well, that kind of that was you poke the bear on that one. Love that. Yes. And everybody told him he was an idiot for this one. And Stan Lee's company, POW Entertainment, responded to Mars blog about the late great Marvel honcho, saying Bill's opinion that Stan merely inspired people to watch a movie is, in our opinion, frankly, disgusting.

They added, countless people can attest to how Stan inspired them to read, taught them that the world is not made up of absolutes, that heroes can have flaws, and even villains can show humanity within their souls. We will rely on another of Stan's lessons to remind you that you have a powerful platform.

So please remember, with great power, there must also come great responsibility. Great reply, I thought. Yeah, exactly. Well done. Very well done. Look, everybody's allowed to have their opinion. Bill Maher is obviously, he's never cared for comic book culture or superheroes or anything like that.

He's made that very clear. Making a statement like that so soon after Stan Lee's death was dumb, but well done to Stan's team, because that is exactly how you should respond. Yep. Like a boss. Like a boss. Now, next moron of the week, Japan Airlines.

I saw this article, and I did a double take when I first saw it, because it comes from the BBC, and the headline is, Japan Airlines tightens alcohol rules for pilot. And I'm like, okay. Shouldn't they be pretty tight? They should. Yeah. They should not be loose enough where you should be able to tighten them anymore.

Yes. It's not like a belt. No. Yeah. So Japan Airlines is going to introduce a new breathalyzer system at airports abroad after one of its pilots was arrested at Heathrow Airport. Court for being drunk. Oh, God. Not just drunk. Nine times over the legal alcohol limit.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. And the guy faked it with the breathalyzer. He, like, stood back and, like, blew from a distance, and he got through. But, yeah, this comes after a series of Japan airline flights were delayed due to intoxicated pilots, because Japanese law does not set limits for alcohol consumption by pilots.

Instead, it's up to airlines to determine alcohol limits for pilots on duty. Okay. Well, Japan, I see a market opportunity for a new law, because right now I will never be stepping foot on Japan Airlines. Me either, actually. That's insane.

All right. Well, let's get some legislation going there. Yeah. It's this problem. Okay. Okay. Now, I really, you can't make this shit up. It's. We say that every week, man. It's great. You can't make this up.

Ivanka Trump. After an entire campaign of but-her-emails, Ivanka Trump has been using her private email to conduct official White House business. And you didn't see it. Despite the entire existence of the year 2016, she's using personal email to do White House business.

Yes, but-her-emails, I can't fucking believe we live in this world right now. Yeah, and especially since Trump is still, like, rattling the saber about wanting to go after Clinton for her email. Yep. Well, go look at your daughter. She sent hundreds of emails from her personal account to White House aides and cabinet officials over the course of the year.

The Washington Post reports that less than 100 of those emails contain discussion of government policies and official White House business, which I believe is about the same ratio that they had with Clinton. But her emails is still- And that is the thing that kills me, is it's- They're still going after Clinton, and, oh my God, I just don't know what world we're living in anymore.

Yeah. It's email people. Yeah, it's not hard. Use the company Outlook. That's all you gotta do. Yes. That's all you gotta do. Okay. This one came across my desk this morning. I wasn't gonna put it in, but it irks me so much that I really have to put it in here.

Amazon sent me an email this morning about Amazon Day. Did you get this? Yes. I did. I was very upset about this as well. They say, simply pick a day that works for you, and we'll deliver your Amazon orders each week on the same day. Free for eligible Prime members.

Nice try, fucksticks. I pay for Prime so I can get my stuff faster, not because I want to batch my deliveries. They're just trying to make it sound like this is such a fantastic idea, but all they're doing is trying to cut down on more shipping costs. We see through this, Jeff. We see through this one.

Yeah, this is a load of crap, because that's why I'm already a Prime member. It's for my free and quick shipping, not so that I can now wait until Thursday or whatever day I pick. What a load of crap. Yeah. I mean, this should be free for everyone, because why do you have to?

Because it's good for you as a company. Yeah, yeah. This is, you know, just adding a price. Since you're a Prime member, we're just going to make this, you know, free for you. Give me a fucking break, guys. Nice try. We got some new Patreon subscribers, Kevin, Paul, and David.

And David writes in, interesting new concept with your genetic data. This is a startup that's offering to sequence your genome free of charge, then let you profit from it. Right. Nebula Genomics, created by the prominent Harvard geneticist George Church and his lab colleagues, seeks to upend the usual way genomic information is owned.

They're doing, I guess, a much deeper scan, if you want. They're doing a full genome. Yeah, full genome. Yeah, they're doing the whole thing. And it's a little unsure exactly how you'd make money, but you would technically own your own data. They wouldn't own it. And I guess you're licensing them to it.

I'm not entirely sure how this is exactly going to work, but I would trust this over 23 and me. It seems like they're going to be basically genetic brokers. So somebody can come to them and say, hey, we need this group of people, you know, this cohort for this study. And do you have these people?

And then they'll send off an email to the people who they have in that cohort. They can say, yes, opt me in and tell me how or first tell me how much I'm getting paid, then opt me in. And then you can make some money off of it that way. It's an interesting way to do it. I don't know if I would, but, you know, because what do I get out of it besides a few bucks, you know?

Yeah, nothing really. And Quantum Leap writes in, didn't have time to read The End of Trust yet, but it will probably be a good read. The subtitle states, something went wrong. Sound familiar? And this is a new set of short stories from the EFF called The End of Trust.

You can download it for free in a PDF form or you can buy the hardcover if you are so inclined. Yes, that's very cool. We also got some donations over at PayPal. Alberto writes us, hi, Brian and Jason. Merry November 21st. GOG is super. I hope you'll continue to be grumpy and geeky even when you win your first podcast Grammy.

Take my money now. We will. We did. Thank you. Yes, and Steve is sending a recurring payment, so thank you so much for that. Preech. Preech. I can't believe I just said preesh. Again. Again. Over on Twitter, WriteFilmSleepRepeat writes in, a new low.

Who thought it was possible for Bitcoin? Scumbags cram Make-A-Wish website with coin mining software. Yep. I think at this point the wish has to be, God, I wish this was worth money. Again. That's true. Oh, man. And Wesley writes us, seen this yet?

1.1.1.1. Faster internet by Cloudflare. Free, private by design, and paid for by websites using 1.1.1.1. Not a catchy name. A default app along the likes of 1Password and privacy that no one should be without, and I'm gathering you check this out, Jason. Yeah. It's basically a DNS server, and by Cloudflare, who knows what they're doing, and it is fast as hell.

I set it up this morning on my Mac here. So I used to use OpenDNS, but this thing is super fast. I mean, it was like, wow. And it's, you know, privacy. I trust Cloudflare. I use them all the time. Right. I use them everywhere. So this is cool. This is very cool.

Thanks for the heads up, Wesley. Yes. Thank you. TJ writes in, Moron of the Week candidate. Justice Minister Rory Stewart has apologized after making up a Brexit stat on live radio and the BBC. Yeah. Yeah. And then he says, how the hell are we meant to trust these politicians when they are inventing stats out of thin air?

Now, what was funny about this is I was going to put a note in here that said, you know, 80% of statistics are made up on the fly. And then I went and I read the quote that he said. It's like 80% of the population is with us on Brexit. I'm like, see? See? 80%. 80%. Yeah.

Mike writes in, I may have solved the crapple watch thing. Get a fitness tracker. I got an unbranded one for $35 a few days ago that does anything I do with an Apple leash. I also traded in my iPhone for a Sam Sucker S9 instead of driving 70 miles to get the something broke issue fixed. All right. Just not doing fitness tracking right now.

I'm taking a break. Taking a break. I'm still doing it with my watch because I'm okay with it. Yeah. I mean, if I was going to do one, I'd just go get another Fitbit. Because that seemed to work the best out of everything. Manu writes in, please do some background research before recommending anything from Yohan Hari or Sam Harris.

But you need to be a little more explicit on your comment here because both people have a lot of haters. So, I'm assuming you're one of them. But please be specific. Okay. There you go. Tired Mixer writes us, I'm a millennial and I love that you rag on millennials. We whack generally. But don't forget, please don't forget about our wonky ass baby boomer parents, the helicopter and bulldozer parents.

That's how you raise us. I mean, yeah. Okay. Fair enough. All righty. Over at GOG.show, Mike writes in, Boeing and Spark Cognition Joint Venture. SkyGrid. SkyGrid will build AI and blockchain powered airspace management software platform. Let's see.

Got the buzzwords, both AI and blockchain. Real close in the dystopian name department too. SkyGrid is real close to Skynet. Thanks for the heads up on that. Link will be in the show notes for that. Benjamin writes us, damn, you guys are grumpy. Episode 290 answering my question about VPN and you shred me because it's all over the site.

I get that now, but up to the point, I'd only listened via my phone podcast app and had never visited the site. So, what meat delivery service do you guys recommend? None at the moment, I don't think. Nobody's paying us right now, but come on. You got to admit it was funny, Ben. It was funny.

Yeah. And Booby writes in, hi, Brian. Wish all is well. What is your thoughts about mobiles and children? My 10-year-old is bugging me and I told her to forget it, at least till she's in high school and will actually be spending time after school with her friends, hence the need to keep in touch. Anyway, I told her that when she'll have a phone, I will be able to see everything she does and know where she'll be all the time, like God.

She was not impressed. Cheerio from Italy. Well, sounds like you solved your problem there. Yep. My kid's only two, so this isn't something I'm even thinking about yet. And given the way things change by the time he's going to be wanting or interested in a phone, who knows what things are going to be like then.

But offhand, I mean, you got to go with your own gut feeling. But don't forget the peer pressure element to all of this. If your kid is the only kid that doesn't have a phone, that's going to be kind of weird. There's all kinds of monitoring that you can do. There's all kinds of different things that you can do to ensure that nothing crazy is going on.

But it sounds like you're handling it pretty well right now. So, well done. Pac writes, I think that's Paul with a typo. OBSStudio, hi. I'm sure your fellow podcasters are using the software. Noah, who does the Ask Noah show, and Chris from Jupiter Broadcasting, I'm sure that they would help.

Well, we ended up booting doing the live video at the moment because we ran out of time. But we will get to it eventually. Yeah, yep. I did check out OBS Studio, but I haven't had a chance to fire it up yet because I've been dealing with getting the rest of the studio wired up and waiting on cables to get the video to the computer.

My Blackmagic box took a dump, so I can't even pull that in yet. And I'm not going to do a webcam for my iMac because that's just gross. But thanks for the heads up. Yep, going to check it out. Christopher writes in, AI in Microsoft Word? And there's a new article from Microsoft that says, collaborate with others and keep track of to-dos with the new AI features in Word.

He goes on to say, apparently adding and highlighting... The paperclip is self-aware! The paperclip is self-aware! Oh, Clippy's back, and he's here to kill you. He said, apparently adding and highlighting a to-do tag is now considered AI. Oh, God. Yep, yep, yep.

Jim writes in, hey, GOG, I know you guys speak highly of the Opera browsers. Do you not have any concerns? The company is owned by the Chinese. They're actually not owned by the Chinese. They're owned by a Chinese company. Opera Software co-founder and former CEOs have publicly expressed privacy concerns and have since gone on to create another browser, Vivaldi.

Yeah, you know, we knew that. We are concerned about it. We tried Vivaldi. I didn't like it at first. Maybe it's better now. I don't know. Yeah, they came out with a 2.0 version recently that I'm going to check out. Because the one thing that Vivaldi didn't have when we tried it, because it was, you know, maybe six or eight months ago, they didn't have any way to sync everything across devices.

Yeah, that's big for me. Yeah, that's a showstopper right there. But in September, they launched Vivaldi Sync. So now it's worth trying again, because if it does everything that Opera does, then I'm fine. As long as I can install my extensions and go from there, that's fine.

The built-in ad blocker is really nice, too, on Opera. So hopefully they've got that figured out as well. But yeah, I'm willing to give it another try. The privacy thing, you know, I went to Firefox because of that and tried that out, and that was just an unmitigated clusterfuck and lasted a week.

Man, they don't know how to make software at Firefox. Or Mozilla. Not anymore. Mozilla, sorry. Nope. Yeah. So Mike writes in, I'm a couple weeks behind, but concerning your can of air sci-fi request for help. See attached link, a pail of air. I believe it was famous. I remember hearing a replay of the radio show, and this is an old story from the 50s.

Did you check it out? I did. Not what I was thinking of, but I've given up on that. So thank you for everybody that's written in. I don't think I'll ever figure out what the hell my brain was trying to think of there. Okay. David writes in with a link from CNET. Google inbox is going away.

I, for one, am quite sad about this. It's been neglected for a while with long-term issues not being fixed. That said, I've found it to be the best tool for my email for a long time. It was okay. It was okay. Yeah. There are too many things that were missing in it that I thought. I mean, there were some new things that I liked, but if you're on a Mac, check out AirMail 3.

It's great. And you don't even have to fire up a browser for it. I love it. John writes in, hi, still loving the show, guys. You put me on the Hacking Humans podcast, which is first rate. I work for a car rental company, and we're looking at expanding to scooters. Oh, sorry for you. Your reports from the U.S. are great info for us to try and get it right in Europe.

P.S. I can't see your link in the How to Organize Your Fridge in the site notes from the Coordinated Behavior episode. Can you help? Yes, I can help. Go to GOG.show slash 297, and it's under Brick-A-Brack. Or you can search for Organize, but I think there's an issue here, a spelling issue, because you spell Organize with an S.

And over here, we spell it with a Z. So if you search for Organize with a Z, it'll be the top result, and just search, go down to Brick-A-Brack. In one case, our search worked. It actually worked. And you also manhandled a U into behavior, as you Europeans want to do.

Yes. So Mike writes, and Vice says we should be paranoid, shaking my damn head. And yeah, it's the recirculated story about Facebook listening to us on our phones from the one idiot writer over at Vice that did a test of one and got nowhere with it.

This is the problem with social media, is these stories never go away because of ad clicks. They just keep coming around, keep coming around, keep coming around. Coming back, coming back, coming back. Yep. Kevin writes in, hi guys, love the show. Thought you might be interested in what happens to people using electric scooters here in the UK.

You can even get points on your future license. And it's an article about how a 15-year-old was caught speeding, and they put points on his license. So as soon as he gets his license, he's already going to get dinged. Nice. That's well done. That's smart. That makes a lot of sense.

So good on you, UK. Yeah, and over here, you're supposed to be 18 to ride one. Yeah, that's true. Not that anybody is. Don't get me started again. Ivor writes in, hey guys, I thought you and your listeners might be interested in this podcast, the Darknet Diaries. Their latest episode is on how the IRS is getting hijacked, and it's probably one of the most frightening podcasts I've heard in a long time, and I don't even live in the USA.

I thought this might be something you and Papa Dave might want to talk about sometime, as I'm sure you will have a lot of people who could be affected by this scam. Cheers. I'll have to give that a listen. I'm trying to stay away from my sadness security porn, but here we go. Yeah, I'll definitely check it out. He also sent in a link. I think Brian came up with a very good point a while ago that driverless cars would rapidly become the shit pits of society once they were on the road.

Well, now we're really going to have to watch where we sit if this article turns out to be right. And I think this is actually one of the links I used way back in the day, but who knows? So, yeah, it's basically, according to a study conducted on the impact of autonomous vehicles on urban tourism, autonomous vehicles with no driver inside would be the perfect alternatives to shady motels where sex workers like to operate.

Would you like a prostitute with your car? Yeah. Uber prostitution. Yes, I would like a happy ending at the end of my route. Thank you very much. Yes, I will not be getting into that car. Kevin Wrightson was listening to the latest one mentioning RT, and here's a wonderful video series you too may be interested in, Operation Infection with a K.

So, we'll check this one out. It's about Russia meddling, disinformation, fake news, elections, all that good stuff. Anyway, keep up the great work. We shall try. Thanks for the link. Yep, and David sent in a couple things here. First, is it just me, or is the airmail turned into a steaming clusterfuck of shit? I know you guys use it.

Speak of the devil. I've used it for a while with my Gmail account. Yeah, so apparently he's having lots of problems with it. I don't use it, so. Okay. He says, I want to like airmail, but it seems to have gone to crap, or is it just me? Are there any better alternatives to keep me from going back to the web, inbox.google.com? The thing about airmail and going to shit, I know exactly what the problem is.

It's Mojave. Their upgrade to airmail to use it in dark mode in Mojave broke a lot of the buttons on it. So when you try and like, you know, archive something or delete something, you have to like click around to find the spots where it actually works now, and it sucks.

That part sucks. So fortunately, I do most of my email on High Sierra. So I skipped that problem. But yeah, on my laptop where I have Mojave running, except for the laptop died, it was a major pain in the ass.

So hopefully they're going to fix that. I've been bitching at them on Twitter. I highly recommend you do the same. That'll be good. Yeah. And David also writes in, boys, we're on a roll. AI toilets will scan your poop to diagnose your ailments. This has been like driverless cars. This has been coming for years, and I'm sure it ain't there yet.

I'm not even going to open this link, though, because it's CNET. And they're autoplaying videos. Goddamn autoplaying videos. But yeah, this has been around for a while and keeps making the rounds. We'll see if it ever comes to a poopition. Yes. And iTunes, we got a five-star rating from Strez Technoid.

Says, my meager payment would have rated the show at six stars. As I had to leave a snarky remark and comment, consider a five score of six and a meat space score of five. I guess I will just have to go to the website. What is the address again? 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. And as always, please tell your friends. Closing shout outs! This show will be coming out on Thanksgiving, so happy American Thanksgiving, everyone.

And thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you sometime next week after we take our little break. Yep, and I do want to mention that for this show, I had a massive amount of links that just didn't quite make it in the show. So in the show notes for this show at GOG.show slash 300, I'm adding a new bonus link section, which I may keep up going forward because I always have extras that are never going to get in the show.

And it's always some cool stuff, but you know, we have to pick the best of the best to go in the show. Or the worst. Or the worst, yeah, depending on what sections we've got this show. So check that out, and I hope everybody's having a great American Tea Day. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo.

And I'm Brian Shellmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Toss us a buck a month and we'll love you forever. If you'd like to give a one-time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 300.

From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy. Spartans! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty. For tonight, we dine in hell!

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