312: Red Hot Chili Tomatoes

This episode is sponsored in part by Privacy. It's like a burner phone for credit cards. To sign up for free and get a $5 credit, go to privacy.com slash GOG. That's $5 free to spend anywhere by just signing up. Privacy.com slash GOG. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason 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, we're getting old, right? Yes, we are. Now, as a dev for so long, I was always averse to actually changing the default font size on my browser because when you're building websites, you need it to be saved for the default, right?

Donned on me yesterday, I'm not a web dev anymore. I can make the font on my browser bigger so I don't have to be squinting so damn much. Yeah. It's really nice. Isn't it, though? I haven't actually done that yet. I have a perverse psychological block towards increasing the font size on either my phone or my computer. I'm holding on with dear life.

Yeah. I gave up the ghost and now I can see again. I've actually got an eye appointment on Friday because I just am blind as a bat. These damn progressive lenses. If anybody out there is thinking of getting progressive lenses, you know, the one I, well, are progressive the ones that get dark when you go inside? I don't know.

You're talking to somebody that had better than normal vision most of his life up until now, so I know nothing about glasses. I'm in for a lot of learning real soon, I'm sure. Yeah, I've got the ones that are like, you know, bifocals and trifocals. So if you tilt your head, everything like is, you know, you're supposed to be able to read on them. Well, since I got these, everything looks like it's through a tilt shift lens.

So, or like a tilt shift filter. So nothing is ever in focus properly. And I've had them for two years and they are, they're terrible. I'm going back to old school and if I got to get reading glasses, that's fine. Cause now I just don't care. I've given up, but man, these glasses suck.

I'm married. I have a kid. I might as well get the damn reading glasses. Cause I, I certainly need them. Just go down to the grocery store and get some, you know, uh, just little reader glasses. Those won't look good. I need something that at least looks good. Why are you going to, are you going to be wearing your reading glasses out like around town while you're riding your bird scooter?

Yeah. And you know, I've got to update my snap stories and my Insta stories, man. So you need prescription snap glasses. That's what you do. Right. Yes. Well, it's conveniently they're down the street. I'll drop in on them. Oh wait, nobody's there. They're all at the warehouse trying to burn the evidence. Yeah.

We have a little bit of followup. Uh, just last week with a lovely Dave Bittner, we were talking about, uh, why the Chinese government would be hacking sites like Marriott.com and things of such nature. And it's basically just a giant data slurp, uh, grabbing everything they possibly can because maybe something will be useful later.

Looks like they're not the only people in the game right now. Wired has an interesting report about a worldwide hacking spree. That's using DNS trickery to nab data. And apparently it's, uh, Iranian hackers that are doing it this time around. So a lot of people out there just slipping up all the data that they possibly can.

Now, I wonder if we, the United States are doing that as well. We've been doing that for decades, decades. It's world war two. I think, I think we probably still have intercepts from like, you know, the Germans that we're waiting to decrypt. Well, again, the difference now though, is, uh, those were, those were definitely military communiques that we were slurping up, but, uh, now everybody's fair game.

It is, uh, let's get everything that we possibly can and store it and hope that someday we can crack it if it happens to be encrypted. And if not just get it, get it, get it, it's the get it world, Jason. Now this next article I found isn't specifically about tech, but it is about the fact that, oh, we have studies.

Then somebody comes along and reverses the studies and somebody comes along and re-reverses the studies. This one is called is sunscreen, the new margarine over at outside online.com. And I, I don't wear sunscreen. I have not worn sunscreen for 20, 30 years, so I'm probably going to get skin cancer, but they say that I'm, you know, eight times less likely to die from it in the study.

But it's an interesting article with actual science from real scientists. And I think that, you know, we may have been sold a bill of goods. Well, people who bought sunscreen are probably sold a bill of goods, but, uh, what did you think about this one? Because I see you have a follow-up in here. Well, I was about to say, hold that thought about real science with real scientists.

And, uh, let me get into this just on a personal level. I have had stage three melanoma. I have had a golf ball size chunk removed from my leg. Um, I caught it quickly. And if I had not, I would not be sitting here now talking to you. So I urge everybody to make an appointment with their dermatologist.

Now you did not grow up in sunny Southern California. So what I learned from getting my stage three melanoma is these things are 20 to 30 years old. Um, basically the, these cancers grow for that long of a period of time. They have, it's the exposure that you had 20 to 30 years ago.

As a kid, we did not wear tons of sunscreen as a kid. You know, you would refuse to wear it anyways. I am an avid sunscreen wearer. Now I wear it when I put, you know, I go out on my bike rides and my shorts and my t-shirt when it's not fucking raining like it is in Southern California right now. I, but I slather myself up because I have had skin cancer and, uh, I was doing it before that.

I, there's a, and it helps now the study that you are talking about, there has been, uh, some backlash about it, obviously. Uh, and there was a really interesting article over on slate by somebody who is a, was a product reviewer.

Not a scientist though, not a scientist and basic, not a scientist, but she spoke to many, many scientists and let's see, let me find the exact part here where they were basically saying that the person who did that study admits that there was some shady science that it was based on.

So to begin with Jacobson, who did the study says it was based on some things that the, here, let's see, here we go. Jacobson takes pains throughout his piece to acknowledge that his thesis is supported by a new small line of research that is regarded with skepticism within the dermatology community, which is all the more reason not to take the piece as advice on how to live your daily life, or at least not yet.

So this is an early study that has not been proven, not been, not been, there's no clinical backdrops on it. There are no confirming studies. There's no nothing. For example, he strongly evokes the health of our ancestors who lived outdoors in tropical regions and ran around half naked without noting the improvements in lifespan since, despite that being an incredibly relevant factor to cancer incidents.

Now, here's the problem with your, your slate article. She's talking about Rowan Jacobson, who's the author of the article, not the scientists behind it. He is talking to the different scientists. He talked to the researchers from Edinburgh, Richard Weller, and he talked to, was it Peller Lindquist?

The, the other doctor, this guy is just, he's a, he's an author. So she was saying that this guy is doing the research, which means she didn't even get the article that it came from and was completely misattributing the research to different people. That's, that's where I really kind of draw the line at that.

We will do our own cohort based study. You can continue to not wear your sunscreen here in Southern California. I will continue to do so and we shall see who dies from skin cancer. Okay. I'm fine with that because I spent my entire youth outside on a skateboard and I am. A-okay so far.

Right. And the other thing, interesting thing I found about this article is the main point of, of the first study was that, oh, we're doing ourselves harm because we're not getting vitamin D. And from the personal research part of this, the, the woman that wrote this article who was doing product reviewing gigs said that I don't care how well you put on sunscreen.

It's not that effective. You're still getting your vitamin D. You're not covering yourself up as well as you think you are. I also would like to hear that from a scientist, not an author for Slate. That's, that's it. And the, the big problem where this came out is that vitamin D supplements have turned out to be bunk as is, as are most supplements.

Same with fish oil and all that crap. Oh yeah. They're totally bunk. The only way you can get your vitamin D is through the sun. Yeah. Exposure to the sun. That's it. End of story. So that's, but the whole point of this is that all these things keep coming up. And so I'm going to go eat a dozen eggs and not die of cholesterol poisoning.

And I guess my point to you being is that we will inevitably see the scientific study that says that no, sunscreen is effective and you should use it. And then five years later, we're going to get another one that says don't. Here's the deal. We're going to die anyway. Yes, we're all going to die. I don't give a shit. So I found, I found this while I was researching some more scooter news.

I was, I was on my scoot, scoot news this week and I found the super ride self-balancing electric unicycle S1000 one wheel electric scooter with single fat tire and a hundred watt motor. I found this over at, uh, oh, I found it on a couple of things, but I dug it up on Amazon and there's a video of it in action on Amazon.

And this is the dumbest looking thing I've ever seen. This definitely looks dumber than a scooter. Did you get a, what did you watch the video? It does. Yes. And there's only one person in the entire universe I can imagine that would be into this. And that's Adam Carolla, who is perversely proud of his unicycle riding skills.

Editor's note, Brian meant Adam Savage, not Adam Carolla. Yeah. Cause he's got a one wheel, but I don't know. I don't think he has this one wheel and, uh, it's $1,400. $1,400. Also with the only person that can afford it.

Now, Brian, I was watching the news yesterday because it's raining here in lovely Southern California. And I wanted to see if there were any mudslides in the neighborhood, but on every news channel, every single news channel that I came across, it was all about a fucking egg. Getting likes on Instagram.

Fucking egg. Well. It was in the news on every channel. Yes. Not, not the mudslides. An egg. An egg. Can you, what, what the hell's going on here? It got more like, it's the most liked photo on Instagram now. It beat Kylie Jenner's record. Who the fuck cares? I support anything beating anything from the Kardashians.

Okay. Unfortunately, all it does is really put them back in the news. And I'm sure somebody, idiots out there are working just as hard to get Kylie Jenner's record back up there as they are trying to get her to become the first self-made billionaire. That was all in air quotes, of course. Oh yeah. So, such, so, so self-made.

Yeah. So self-made. Well, continuing on with the viral world. I love this because we've been talking about it for a while. YouTube is all full of clips of virtual assistants misunderstanding children's requests. My son is definitely taken to running up to my Alexa and going, Alexa, light on, light off. But he still can't quite get it right.

So it is very amusing. And if you haven't seen it, one is particularly going crazy viral right now. A small girl in a coat standing on the floor facing an Amazon Alexa on her counter says, Alexa, play baby chair, meaning baby shark. It fails, but she keeps trying with increasing urgency. Baby shirt, blah, blah, boop, blah, blah, blah.

And it's quite funny. It got so popular that, of course, she was invited on the Today Show to repeat it. And this article is about the unique pleasures of watching Alexa deny children what they want. And I have to admit that there's something there. And as the author points out, the author says, I have to admit that there's something disturbing about the Alexa fail genre.

Within a few years, these children and these charming snippets will have learned how to interact seamlessly with their digital assistants in their home. They'll remember to firmly state Alexa at the beginning of each command. They'll intuitively string together search terms and slightly over enunciate each word in the stilted style the devices require. And it'll be weird because they'll be fully trained to live with a surveillance device that by then may be present in every room in the house.

We did say that these devices are training us. So this is proof. This is proof. This is proof. They are definitely training us. Oh, man. So speaking of Amazon, though, I got a box this week. And for the first time, I thought, man, somebody over at Amazon's pretty damn smart.

There was advertising on the box. Oh, I've been getting those for a while. Yeah. Did you this Chevy Silverado box? No, it was something else. I can't remember what it was. But I remember looking at it and going, yeah, it was just a matter of time, wasn't it? Well, I mean, it's usually just Amazon stuff that they're pimping on the box. This is the first time it's a third party, I believe.

I think this is the first time they've done it. And it was it was interesting. I'm like, it's about time. You know, they've got all this real estate that everybody sees that sits out in front of people's houses. And people use it to reship their stuff because nobody needs to buy a cardboard box anymore.

And so they did seven million or seven point one million boxes of these, which is that's a decent ad buy, I think. So Chevrolet has gone to the mattresses on this new Silverado campaign because I got my Bon Appetit magazine yesterday and the whole front was a sticker, which had a Chevy Silverado on it.

I don't know what the crossover is for people who read Bon Appetit magazine in a pickup truck, but I guess they're just banking on that somebody somewhere might buy a truck. In the news. Oh, this was a big one this week.

Bird sent a cease and desist letter to Cory Doctorow over a copyright infringement for the DMCA Section 1201. Yes. And quite a few people sent us this on social media as well. So thank you. Yeah. If you know anything about Cory Doctorow, you know, he is a man that you do not mess with when it comes to copyright.

No. Period. Period. So he got it. He got it and called up his buddies at the EFF, who is basically Boing Boing's counsel, you know. Mm hmm. And they're like, OK, yeah, yeah, that's dumb. We're just going to we're going to reply to that.

And they published everything on Boing Boing, the entire takedown notice, because it was about linking to an article on a on a message board, which we all know is dumb. And we've been through this time and time again. And apparently the number of these takedown notices has been increasing, not decreasing.

So there's a lot of really stupid lawyers that are coming into the into the scene nowadays. And of course, Bird has apologized. They have apologized. And they said, yeah, of course, it was human error in the quest for curbing illegal activities related to our vehicles.

Our legal team is overstretched and sent a takedown request related to the issue to a member of the media. Bird celebrates freedom in many ways. Freedom from traffic, congestion, as well as freedom of speech. Oh, boy. Fuck you. Fuck you, bird. I finally saw my first bird scooter in the neighborhood.

The birds have landed now. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah. Of course, it was in the like in the middle of the neighborhood and like not anywhere, just in the sidewalk for no reason. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I guess they're just they're everywhere. I want to go back and watch that South Park episode again, because that was just genius.

And it's so true. It's so true. Yeah. Now, we've talked an awful lot about how nothing lasts forever. First, there was a Friendster and then came along MySpace and now there's Facebook. And certainly Facebook is enjoying a much longer shelf life than most of the others did, thanks to many factors, including just having peak saturation and all of that.

But we've often wondered, well, what's going to be next? There's going to have to be something. I think we may know what it is, or certainly at least a model for it, because in China, nobody gives a crap about Facebook. Everybody is on something called WeChat. And there's this great New York Times article with a Chinese journalist talking about the basically they do this recurring series where they ask people what apps they're using.

And she just basically goes on and on about basically it's not an exaggeration to say I live and work on WeChat, a messaging app that's the equivalent of WhatsApp plus Facebook plus PayPal plus Uber plus Grubbub plus many other things. It's basically an all-in-one app in China that everybody is on, and if you're not on it, you're out of the conversation and you're out of social life.

So Facebook, you better watch your ass. There's already something beating you in the biggest country in the world, and it's only a matter of time before somebody is able to unlock something like that here. Well, Facebook's trying. I mean, with all of the different properties they're buying and trying to integrate everything into it, you know, they're trying to do payments and all that.

The problem is their integration. Their integration is horrible, and they're not entirely 100% convinced that they want to integrate because you can see the separation that Facebook always tries to keep between themselves and Instagram. It's weird. Like, obviously, people want integration. You have 800 million internet users in China, all of them, and over a billion WeChat accounts, which means that users are making multiple accounts for different personas, which is even crazier.

Well, there's a little difference that happens in China. You notice that there's no Facebook in China. The government stifles competition because they want to be able to watch everything, and the best way to do that is to have everything under one umbrella, which is WeChat.

Yes, and she addresses that. She says, by now, some readers must be screaming, how about the censorship and government surveillance on WeChat? Sadly, it's just the way of life in China. I'm not trying to make light of the issue. I've been very critical of how the tech companies work with the government to censor and monitor the Chinese public. But the reality is that ordinary Chinese often feel powerless and fatalistic when it comes to censorship and surveillance.

How are Americans starting to feel about censorship and surveillance, Jason? Pretty much exactly the same way. Exactly. And that rolls nicely into a TechCrunch article I found called, Are Dystopian Cyberpunk Here and Now? And it's an article by this guy, John Evans, and it talks about Xinjiang.

I think that's how you'd pronounce it. It's a province or a city up in northwest China that is under full-time surveillance all the time. Video cameras everywhere. You just can't get away from them up there. And this is, you know, the interesting thing.

It's, you know, part of the ethnic cleansing that was going on there as well because they're trying to find these people who are, you know, dissidents and of different religions and things like that that they want to get rid of. And it's a really nasty bit of news. So if you want to go dig into that one, go for it.

I'm not going to cover it on the show here. But it's like, this is kind of like, this really is a William Gibson novel that's playing out over there. It really is. And it's coming everywhere. So it's one of those things where you just kind of, are we going to stand up and fight against it or are we just going to let it happen?

Yeah. Or are we just going to feel powerless and fatalistic as most people do? Yeah. And continuing with our China segment, apparently, there's a really great, there's a short YouTube clip which we link to in our news. This is from 60 Minutes, which did an interview with Kai-Fu Lee, a pioneer in artificial intelligence and venture capital based in China.

You can watch the short clip and that basically tells you all you need to know. We also, I also included in the show notes the full transcript of the discussion. But this gets back to our AI stuff, what's going to happen with AI and jobs. And he is saying that AI will displace 40% of the world's job within as soon as 15 years.

He's got a more long form book coming out that I'm definitely going to read about the coming destruction of jobs in a book called AI Superpowers, China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order. So he's basically saying they ask him what sort of jobs are going to be lost to AI and he's saying chauffeurs, truck drivers, anyone who does driving for a living, their jobs will be disrupted more and they're going to be gone.

Jobs that seem a little bit more complex like chef, waiter and a lot of things will become automated because we'll have automated stores, automated restaurants. And within 15 years, that's going to displace about 40% of the jobs in the world. And then they ask him, well, what does that do to the fabric of society? And here's kind of what you've always said.

In some sense, there is the human wisdom that always overcomes these technology revolutions. The invention of the steam engine, the sewing machine, electricity have all displaced jobs and we've gotten over it. The challenge of AI is that this is bigger. This is 40%. It's huge. And it's coming a lot faster than previous revolutions.

So he's basically he says that it's still and then he gets into the thing that we always talk about, which is AI is not really that smart. It's not general AGI. It's not artificial general intelligence. It's just AI. So there's still creativity. There's still intelligence. There's still humanity that is at play here.

And he doesn't believe that we will ever get AGI because he thinks that there's something specific about the human soul. So there's a bit of hope, maybe. OK, I mentioned this on the show before, but apparently you were tuned out when when I said it. There's a very long form interview with Kai-Fu Lee over at the Jordan Harbinger show.

We sat with him for about 45 minutes and got a lot more in depth than the 60 minutes piece. So I'll put a link in the show notes for that episode. It's definitely worth listening to because he goes deeper. I didn't not hear that. And he does go deeper. But this is for people who don't want to go deeper and want the quick update, Jason.

Well, I gave the quick update before, Brian. And anyway, definitely check out the book. It's it's not bad at all. If you want to get deep into this stuff, it is out now. You can get it at Amazon or Audible. And we will also link that in the show notes. Kai-Fu Lee is a very smart guy. Yep. Very smart guy. I mean, he used to be the head of Google China back when Google was in China.

And well, they will be again. I don't care what everybody else says. Yeah, they're coming back. They're coming back. But yeah, definitely check his stuff out. Yep. And in frightening but tasty news, CRISPR is starting to get out there. The humble tomato is about to get a makeover. Plant physiologists in Brazil and Ireland, kind of a weird combination of places, but they're doing it together, are researching how to use the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to create the world's first spicy tomato.

Apparently, tomatoes are particularly a good choice to use for messing around with stuff for whatever technical reasons, and they want to basically give them some heat and turn them into larger, more robust peppers so we won't soon have red hot chili tomatoes.

Okay. The best new band in the world. Worst new band in the world. I mean, I'm down for a spicy tomato. I like tomatoes, so I'm telling you. Yeah, me too. But you know, what could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? And going back to some AI stuff here, Google is looking at AI transcription to search, analyze, and instantly translate podcasts.

Do you mean we're going to stop getting all those emails asking us if we want to hire people to transcribe our podcasts? Exactly. This is a real world business that is probably going to get hammered from this. And you know, the problem is you do have machine transcriptions and translations right now, and they're not good enough.

They're close, but not good enough. You still need a human to go through the entire thing. It gets you, you know, it gets you about 75% of the way there. We did one a couple of years back, didn't we, Jason? I just remember it being hilarious. It was like meat sauce, taco technology, AI, taco meat.

That was kind of it. Yeah. And there are a couple of them out there that I've had to use with clients. And they're, I mean, if you're using them not for transcription, but just for, you know, placing points in a show where you can say, oh, like at this point, cut something and do something else with it or things like that, it's like a nice baseline to just get some words on a page that you can kind of go through.

But yeah, it's, it's, it's more work than it's worth. And hopefully they'll figure this stuff out because it would be nice because I've got a couple of friends who are deaf who would love to listen to our show or read our show. And we just can't afford to do transcriptions for every episode.

It's just, it's cost prohibitive, you know? So hopefully this will, this will be a new thing because Google is ramping up their, their podcast play. They've, they've added a bunch of new features in the new beta of the Google podcast player, including subscriptions. Finally, you'd think that would be, you know, I don't know, a launch feature, but they're adding a bunch of stuff.

We'll add that in on version 2.0. Come on. Who needs that? Who wants to subscribe to a podcast? So keep an eye out for this. It's coming. This episode is exclusively sponsored by privacy.com.

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Brian, I watched Bird Box on your recommendation. I already know what you think of it. Yeah. Yeah. Because I had to tweet about it. What a dumb fucking movie. I thought it was just fine. It was OK. It was far too long, but it was fine. It was well done.

It was nice. The length did not bother me. The pacing did not bother me. The ending bothered me. All right. Because there wasn't one. No, there wasn't. No, no. It was somebody posted when I when I posted my tweet. They're like, it's the happening all over again.

Oh, God. Yeah. That's actually kind of true in a weird way. Yeah. Yeah. So to cleanse my palate, I had to watch an actual good movie again. And I noticed The Dark Knight was on Netflix. So I sat back, poured myself a glass of wine and watched that soup to nuts again. And man, that is a picture perfect movie from start to finish.

It is a good one, isn't it? Oh, man. Go back and watch it again if you haven't seen it in a while. Heath Ledger is just so goddamn good in it. Such a waste. Yeah. And speaking of Netflix and the fact that everybody has to sue over everything, who did not see this company? The Choose Your Own Adventure publisher is suing Netflix over Bandersnatch.

Yeah. ChooseCo LLC, the company known for publishing the Choose Your Own Adventure book series popular in the 80s and 90s, is claiming Netflix infringed upon its trademarks, according to Variety. Netflix did attempt to attain a license trademark in the past, meaning that their lawyers kind of went, hmm, we may be treading on some weird ground here if we try to do this technology and never reached a deal with the publisher.

So, you know, in typical fashion, we can't do it legally. We're going to do it anyways. And now they'll get sued and probably give them a couple hundred thousand dollars and call it a day. Probably a couple million dollars, I'm guessing. Probably a couple million, yeah. Yeah. But if they wouldn't give them a license, they had to, you know, they had to bird it.

They had to lime it. They had to scooter it and just, or just Uber it. They won't let us do it. We're going to do it anyway. Yep. Damn it. They should have just bought the company. Probably cheaper. Who the hell's buying Choose Your Own Adventure books anymore? Also, back over on Netflix, I watched a show called Insta Famous.

These are like eight minute snippets of influencers on Netflix. I mean, on Instagram. Yes. You sent me a note saying, if I watch it, remove any sharp objects from the room. So, I decided, eh, I just won't watch it. You should watch one or two of them.

They're infuriating. Infuriating. I'm like, what is the point? What is the point of this? I don't know. And how did it get on Netflix? I mean, you and I could have done something better with two weeks and a couple cameras. It is terrible.

Content, content, content. It is content. They need the content. And speaking of content, do you remember that show, Follow This, Brian, from BuzzFeed over on Netflix? Vaguely. Yeah. They're on season three now, which I can't believe because season one was like two weeks ago. They've got an episode called Scooter Wars.

And you should check it out because it's all in your neighborhood. And they send out a reporter and he wears his helmet and he scoots around, but he's scooting around on the boardwalk, which is, I think, pretty much where you shouldn't be writing them. Nope. And it's an interesting take on it.

He's kind of a wishy-washy reporter. He doesn't really take a side, which I guess, you know, as a reporter, you're not really supposed to do. You're not supposed to. That's the way journalism used to work. Used to work. Yeah. And he tried to get an interview with Vander Zander and got in touch with some of their their legal people.

And you just talk to a lot of people locally in the neighborhood. And there's one surfer dude in there who's a charger that is just a moron. He's just a moron, which I've been to. I've been to your part of town. There are a lot of those guys out there. It's it's it's like short.

It's 20 minutes. It's worth a watch if you want to get some more detail on what's going on with the scooter wars. But I think after watching this, Brian, I think we need to start up a dockless cinder block company so we can leave them in front of the Lyman Bird corporate offices every day.

I think that's a great idea. I think so, too. I did see a movie this week. Bad times at the El Royale. Oh, I'm curious what you think, because this was almost up on my airplane adventures. I was going to watch it, but I didn't get around to it. It is fantastic.

It is so good. It it's all it's Tarantino esque, but not is, you know, I don't know. It's it doesn't have the same Tarantino this that his movies do, but it's it's similar in nature to some of his movies. But I'm not going to spoil anything, but I highly recommend this if you want a good like, you know, rainy day movie because it's raining here a lot.

Now, watch it at night. Don't watch it during the day. Have a cocktail and just kick back and watch it. It is. I loved every minute of it. It was so good. Great. Can't wait. Yep. And Gotham is back. Anybody who watches Gotham season season five, I think this is.

And it's the final season. So if you've been been on the fence about watching this season, check it out. They're going going balls to the wall on it. I'm really enjoying it. I've loved this series since it came out. And yeah, I love it. So good. Excellent. I started listening to a new podcast because everybody has a podcast now.

I'm listening to clear and vivid with Alan Alda. Now, I've always been a huge Alan Alda fan. I love him. I love mash. I love his autobiography. I love his worldview. I like everything about the guy. And on the plus side, this entire podcast is about communication.

And that's that's his focus right now. And he makes no money from it. All the money that he makes from it goes directly to I can't remember the name of the institute, but it goes directly to some sort of collegiate thing. I don't remember what it is, but so that's great. And it's phenomenal.

I've only listened to one so far. He had Jaron Lanier on and he really kind of breaks down. He breaks down hard subjects, forces the interviewers to kind of really explain things in layman's terms. So Alan Alda himself can get it in such a very charming way. And I just like hearing his voice.

His voice is very soothing to me. So I highly recommend this podcast. He has a lot of really great experts on a lot of different weird topics. I'm really getting into it after the first one. I'm not a Rachel Ray fan, but I'm really enjoying the episode with Rachel Ray that I haven't even finished yet because Alan Alda really just brings something out of these people that I enjoy.

So good podcast. I've listened to about 15 episodes of that and then turned it off for a while because I just got busy. I went back and I started to listen to the Jared episode last night, but I fell asleep. I went back and listened to the Christian Picciolini episode because I was actually supposed to interview him in about three hours, but he canceled.

Sure. Right. And he's a great guy, though. Definitely listen to that one. And no, it's a good show. It's definitely a good show. I enjoyed it. Yeah. And I've talked about how Underworld is currently releasing a whole bunch of new songs and remixes and all that sort of stuff, but not doing it in the traditional album format, which is a bit millennial, I suppose.

Don't mind it. But I like having albums, albums. And conveniently for me, they've kind of put together they put together Spotify playlists of all these different outtakes and remixes and such. So for us old people who like to have collections put together for you, we have a link in the show notes, which has a link to four separate Underworld playlists, most of which contain completely new Underworld music.

It's all quite good. Well, all right then. Yeah. And we've learned a bit more about Picard. The Picard series coming on CBS. Show creator Alex Kurtzman has revealed that the streaming show will tie into events mentioned in J.J. Abrams' 2009 Star Trek movie, which is kind of a bummer.

I was kind of hoping that they would avoid the whole reboot thing. So in the first Abrams flick, Spock mentions that he failed to save the Romulan homeworld Romulus from a supernova that followed several years after Star Trek Nemesis. That event in the subsequent end of the Romulan Empire radically alters Picard's life. So we shall see what happens.

But it sounds like it's going to be on the original timeline. It's not going to be on the new timeline. It's like it's going to be on the timeline that Spock left. Yeah, that is the hope. Yeah, that is definitely the hope. And this makes me happy since we're losing all of the other great shows on Netflix like Daredevil and everything else.

Yes. Well, and some not so great shows like Iron Fist and Luke Cage. I came around Iron Fist a bit at the end, sadly. Yeah, I know. That's why I don't want to watch it. Because it's like, oh, I want to get into it. And then we know it's not coming back. The Punisher is back for season two on Friday.

All right. I'm really looking forward to that. Any word if this is the final season? On Saturday, it'll probably get canceled. Yeah, I'm guessing. But the Punisher season one was one of the better shows that they've ever put out. It was so good. Very violent.

Very just gritty. I loved it. Right. And Stranger Things season three is coming back July 14th, which was a surprise. It was a shocker. I didn't think. Is it July 4th? I believe. Oh, sorry, July 4th. Yes, 4th of July. Yeah. Yeah. I thought we were going to have to wait until October again or something like that.

Me too. But I'm surprised that they're putting it out that early as well. Mm-hmm. And also on Friday the 18th, the Grand Tour is back. Yeah. We'll see. I'm going to watch it. I still, you know, I'm still intrigued. I'm still intrigued. I'm looking forward to the follow-up season after this one when it's all just the big touring things.

Yeah. We shall see. Yeah. Yeah. But definitely going to, I'm going to, I'm going to dip my toes in. Why not? Okay. Also starting on the 18th, Frankie and Grace is coming back with, which I can't believe is season five. I guess I really burned through the first couple of seasons quickly. It is a very funny show. I cannot state that enough.

It's well worth it. On the 17th, the day before, Star Trek Discovery will start airing. So fire up your subscriptions or your connections to Sweden, as the case may be. This is going to be a busy weekend. Very busy weekend. I'm going to need lots of coffee and lots of wine.

And of course, Game of Thrones is back on April 14th with a new trailer, which I was, the new trailer was pretty good. I got to say. The new trailer's really good. Yeah. Got a little goose bumpy there. I got to admit. Yep. Yep. It's going to be pretty cool. Can't wait. I needed a break from hard sci-fi and tech and everything all together.

And I found something really definitely far away from that. This is Approval Junkie, My Heartfelt and Occasionally Inappropriate Quest to Please Just About Everyone. And ultimately, myself by Faith Saley. If you don't know who Faith Saley is, she's a regular on the NPR show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.

She's very funny. She has a long history in Hollywood. She's even guested on, I believe, Star Trek Deep Space Nine as a semi-recurring character for a while. And she hosts some show on CBS, or she's on CBS Sunday morning thing that I never watched, so I don't know her from that.

Very funny. A highly enjoyable book. Just it's when comedians write good, good, you know, autobiography type things, you can't go wrong. So very much enjoyed it. It was a quick read. And it was a nice break from sci-fi dystopias. Moron of the Week!

CES always brings us wonderful things for Moron of the Week, but I think this one takes the cake, or the shitter, as the case may be. The 146-year-old plumbing company Kohler has already stolen the show with what will be 2019's hottest gadget, an intelligent toilet with a fully immersive experience, built-in surround sound speakers, ambient mood lighting, and Amazon Alexa voice controls for your toilet.

Now, does this come with, like, a built-in bidet, like those Japanese toilet seats? No, no, they couldn't bother with that, even though it costs $7,000. What's the point? Unless you can say... As the Verge points out, truly, we live in an age of wonders.

Yeah, unless you can say, Alexa, wipe my ass, then what's the point? Yeah. Alexa, blow water up my butt. Kohler's NuMe 2.0 intelligent toilet is one of those strange products that draws so heavily on buzzwords and tech trends that it's indistinguishable from parody. Does it come with blockchain?

Shit on the blockchain. Shit on the blockchain. And, of course, because people are stupid, Netflix's Bird Box Inspires Teen leads to predictable results. Yes, people are actually trying to do the Bird Box Challenge, where they drive a car with their blindfold on.

And, well, guess what? They crash. Go figure. It doesn't work. Yeah. Oh, and surprise, when you eat some Tide, you get sick. People are so sick. Yes, and thanks to all of our listeners that sent us this story as well. We knew it was going to happen, didn't we? We knew it.

Feedback loop. Over on Patreon, we've got some new Patreon subscribers. Michael J., Jonathan, Daniel, Michael L., and Mitch. And we've got some comments from Derek to start with. So, what the fuck is with the TED-style talks popping up everywhere? I work in the event industry, and we have requests for TED-style talks regularly.

I believe these used to be called keynote speakers, and there was one, possibly a couple per event. Now, it seems everyone is an expert, and to stroke the ego, they label it TED-style to make it seem educational. Hashtag TED-stroked my ego. On a lighter note, Corner Gas on Prime is great.

Well, you know, if you say you're something on LinkedIn, you are, right? Right. So, it works now. And you can throw together a 10-minute talk about it. Good for you. Yeah. TEDx is not TED, by the way, people. You're fooling yourself if you think it is. No, it's not. TEDx is not TED. Yeah. It's a completely different thing.

John also writes us over on Patreon. So, I'd just like to throw my opinion in about millennials. I'm on the older range of that group, and I think there's a distinction between us ages 30-plus and those still in our 20s. I'm definitely closer to a younger exer for most things than a hipster toast eating Instagram influencer type. Hashtag shrug.

Yeah. So, you know, it takes all types. All right. There's a spectrum. And most of them- Just like autism. And most of them are on the spectrum, for sure. Jared writes in, so, I'm doing the same thing as you, Jason. I bought a drone as well. I bought the Unique Mantis Q instead of the Mavic Pro.

I actually got the Mavic 2 Zoom. That's the one I got. I'm registering it tonight, and we'll be working on my pilot license next like you are. Any suggestions on how to get into making money with the drone now? I've seen online selling photos and such you take as a good way to start. Okay.

But I'd like to get into surveying and such. Got any suggestions? As far as the surveying goes, I've been talking with a friend of the show, David Teeter, about this, and I think it was the old 3D Robotics site with Chris Anderson's company. They do a lot of the surveying stuff, and David actually went over to their offices to get the skinny on it, and it's kind of not ready for prime time yet.

What I would suggest is get to know some local real estate people because they always need houses shot, and you can make a decent chunk of money. That's how I'm going to pay mine off because I know a bunch of real estate people that always need drone footage of the houses. You still have to get your license to be able to make money, though.

So until you get your license, you are going to be making money illegally if you do it. So once you get your license, you can do it, or you can do it under the table and risk getting caught and getting fined. And he also sends over a recommendation for Harbor Freight for Apache cases for the drones and his firearms.

But I'll check those out. I actually have a case for mine, so I don't need one. But if anybody's interested in cool cases like Pelican cases, but for different things, Harbor Freight. All right. Gianni also writes us in. Hi. The other day I heard you guys were reviewing some books, and some of them fell into the fantasy genre.

If I may suggest a book series, please read The Way of Kings, The Stormlight Archive, written by Brandon Sanderson. He is by far my favorite author since I discovered his work last year. The series is the only one that has gotten me goosebumps on audiobook format. Haven't read that, but we did cover his Reckoners series, which we all read.

Has there ever been any new ones in that? No, that was done. He put a... Yeah, he quit it. Yeah, he basically wrapped that one up. But it was a great thing. I don't read fantasy books, though. I only read sci-fi books or regular books. Fantasy's not my jam. You do read some fantasy books, but they're called Discworld, and they have to be humorous.

Right. I mean, that was a long time ago. I look at those as comedy books. I used to read fantasy books, but it's just... I used to read... What was that guy? Piers Anthony? I used to read him all the time, too, but I kind of... Those weren't a comedy as well, so... Yeah, I never read any of his stuff. But Brandon Sanderson's a great author, so I'm sure it's a well-written series.

But yeah, just not my jam. But yeah, definitely, if you like Brandon Sanderson, check out the Reckoner series. It was top-notch. Mm-hmm. And over on PayPal, we got new donations from Linda and Jose. And Jose says, thank you, guys. Well, you're welcome, Jose. Thank you. You're welcome. Over on Facebook, Paul sent us to a link to Dog Does Bird Box Challenge.

I watched the video. It was cute. But it was cute. Definitely not a bloodhound, that dog. No. Definitely not a bloodhound. And Benjamin also wrote us and says, grumpy old geeks, you guys should check out the latest episode of Freakonomics Radio. It touches on how you pay for universal basic income and someone who's looking forward about AI.

Freakonomics Radio kind of dropped off my listening. I'll go find that episode, because I'm always interested to hear what people are saying about that. Yeah, I got burnout on them. It just kind of got too formulaic, and I gave up on it. So let me know how it is. I might go back and listen to it if you give it a thumbs up. Okay. And over on Twitter, super listener Chad sent us a meme.

This is the Dos Equis guy. Facebook and the FBI say thank you for helping them update their facial recognition database with your current and 10-year-ago pictures. Jason is obviously not aware of this because he's not on Facebook, but that is the newest thing going through, where people are posting a picture from 10 years ago side-by-side with a current picture to see how much you've changed, and thus educating the government and making their facial recognition software work better.

Well, I know about the meme, Brian, because everybody's doing it on Instagram. Oh, okay. Yeah, I went back, and I don't have any pictures of me 10 years ago, so I can't do it. I'm not a selfie-taken narcissist. I try and stay away from the camera. So, sadly... Sure, I have pictures from you from 10 years ago.

I hope not. I hope not. Oh, man. And here's an article from Scott that says, PERL is not an acronym. And this is interesting. Some will say, after glancing at MANPERL, that PERL is an acronym for either Practical Extraction and Report Language or Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.

And there's a whole article here on how it is. Clever. Yeah, but on the O'Reilly books that I bought, it called it Practical Extraction and Report Language, so I'm sticking with that. Yes, right. And MAS6502 wrote us, Air Fryers were a big hit in Puerto Rico last Christmas, so much so, apparently, they are responsible for a couple of major blackouts.

We've had a small one for years, mostly for delicious fried, plantains, and bread food. And he also writes in, iPhones and MacBooks are both Apple, but there's value in separate market data sets. Facebook, the product, Instagram, the product, are distinct products of Facebook, the company. There's value in separate data sets. I don't argue with that, but journalists do not write about iPhones and MacBooks as if they're separate companies or any of these.

They write about Apple. And people write about, and tech journalists do tend to write about Instagram and Facebook as if they're completely separate entities. That's my only point. Good point. James writes in, while you guys talk about potty training, my mother used a coffee can. Yes, an actual metal coffee can to train me.

She said, the noise helped me with aim. Good luck, Brian. Not sure if I'm going to go that direction, but thank you. Old man, sir, Max, a hollow up wrote us and said, face look, face unlock can easily be defeated with a photo on many popular phones. Study finds.

Well, shocking there. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And he also wrote and said, I have a galaxy S eight. Facebook cannot be deleted unless you root it, which I've read is pretty easy to accidentally brick while doing. I have a completely not updated and removed its network permissions. You can disable it and sent a follow on tweet showing four or five different settings that you actually have to set.

Yep. And Mrs. Shinyside writes in, by the way, I know I haven't commented in a while, but I had a Christmas pickle on my tree growing up. Whoever found it first got some cash. The secret was to lay under the tree and look up through the branches because the pickle would be hanging down as it was an ornament. So there. Yep.

Somebody we know actually had a Christmas pickle. Probably not German because none of us Germans ever did. TJ and Strickey both sent us in the bird box thing. And Strickey also sent us in a link. Poland arrests. Huey and orange employees and spying case.

It's actually pronounced Huawei, but Huawei. Huawei. I just like saying Huey. Huey. Huey. Now for GOG.show, Peter writes in, remember, though art mortal, history of the world part one. And he also comes back with Pearl Accord and Galeri also stands for pretty eclectic rubbish lister.

Nope. Mike writes in regarding the Ikea shades. I can't wait for all the hilariously bad install videos with only five sizes. The chances of them fitting in any given window seems low, which means they will be outside the window box overlapping wall or will have gaps within. What's the point of blackout shades if there is an inch gap on either side?

Fair point. I went through Costco to purchase Bali shades back in September. The cost through Costco was at least 25% less than same through the big box home improvement sites. They are battery operated. Z wave with remote and tech tech tech tech tech. Regarding shields up is absolutely awesome to come home from dropping kids at school and say, hey, Siri, start work and all my blinds go up, allowing natural light in.

The office light turns on and the home pod starts playing grumpy old geeks. Great show. Listen to you guys. First thing Monday mornings at 5 a.m. going out for exercise. Thanks, man. That's pretty cool. And I like beer writes in Netflix and AI and crying emoji laughing, crying emoji.

I should say what I always wanted. Apparently, we shouldn't share our Netflix logins. Bad human. And it's an article over at Yahoo. Do you share your Netflix password? New AI can sniff out unauthorized sharing. Now, here's the problem with this.

Tell me if I'm wrong here, Brian. But like in the old days, we would just store the login IPs in a table and then we would put those IPs in an array with timestamps and then kind of match to see against the discrepancies. And it didn't really take AI. It took like about, you know, 10 minutes of thought and a little array manipulation and we were done.

You could tell if somebody was logging in from your account. I in no way, shape or form see why this would require anything that approaches anything that anybody even considers to be AI these days at all. It's just it's just IP. It's just it takes a little I. You don't need the A. It just takes some I.

Yeah. What I find interesting about it is that they're not using it to basically unless it's egregious, they're not going to be deleting or canceling accounts, but they are going to use it to to give you a nice message to upgrade to a more expensive multi-user subscription. So it seems to me the only thing that you're really going to find out about this is if your ex is still using your login.

Yeah. And the thing is, you can only have one person per account logged in for the cheap one. So if somebody's logged in, you can't actually have multiple people logging in at the same time. So, yeah, it'll boot you. Over to iTunes. The Shogun of Harlem writes in, better than a poke in the eye.

You could do worse things than subscribing. Brian and Jason are easily crankier than a senior citizen who just missed double coupon day at the supermarket, and you might just learn something from them. Well, thank you, Shogun of Harlem. Yes, thank you so much. If you want your question or comment right 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 if you're listening on Overcast, hit that little star thingy. Closing shout outs! Rest in peace, Carol Channing. Very sad to hear that she passed away, but hey, 97.

Pretty impressive. Good run. Mm-hmm. Good run. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. It costs 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 312. And there you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy. Hello, Dolly.

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