316: Balldazzled

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Quick programming note, we're recording this entire episode through Apple's FaceTime eavesdropping bug. Talk about a tempest in a teapot with that one. Jesus. I know. We'll talk about that one later. Yeah, yeah. So I've got some follow-up on Facebook. Yes. I found an article on TechCrunch called The Facts About Facebook, and the writer over there did a little bit more of a deep dive.

Yeah, they did a little more of a deep dive on the Wall Street Journal op-ed from Zuckerberg than you did last time. And wow. Oh my Jiminy Jeepers. Yeah, I thought I had my rage pill on, but not in comparison to this person. Talk about some serious vitriol with facts to back it up.

Yeah. Well, I mean, she's not wrong about anything. No, nothing. Not a single thing. Absolutely nothing. It was definitely right on. And, you know, she covered points that you've made, points that I've made, points that Bittner has made about everything going on with Facebook. We've got a lot of fun stuff about Facebook this time, but I just find it ironic that the first link at the end of the article is a share this on Facebook link.

It's not ironic. It's emblematic of exactly how everybody feels about Facebook right now. We all realize it's horrible. We all hate it. And we can't stop it. Yeah. And I mean, I know it's in the template and they're not going to take it out, but they should think about it. They should think about if they're publishing vitriolic rage pieces like this one, they should maybe think about their position on sharing.

Right. But they got to get the clicks, man. Yeah. They got to get the clicks. But I'm sure they've been screwed over by Facebook because they're a media company. Every media company has been screwed over by Facebook. Who among us has not screwed us over? Yeah. So the one thing in the article that I really found interesting was there's a company called PersonalData.io.

And it's an interesting company. It's based in Switzerland. And it's a not-for-profit who basically does something that I'm pretty sure you predicted that a company like this would exist to traverse the waters of online privacy and help us get us through.

And, you know, just check everything and figure out who's got what and the best practices for how to do it. And so this company is, you know, it's been around since last year. But I think, you know, this is something that you've definitely talked about before. And I thought it was pretty cool that it now exists.

It's pretty interesting. I like the idea. I like the fact that they're basically covered under GDPR as well. So, you know, again, because it's always who watches the watchers, right? So it seems pretty straightforward and pretty much, yeah, this is, I knew that there was going to be somebody that came along to do this.

And we kind of need it because we can't expect, we need a third-party system looking at this stuff. We need the internet police, basically. We still need the internet police. We still need the internet police. But at least this is a step in the right direction, I think. So I'm going to look into this company a bit more.

I'm kind of, I'm pretty intrigued by it. Yeah, definitely check it out. And I found another article over on the New York Times, which I just thought was precious. It's called The Hidden Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite. They'll never admit it in public, but many of your bosses want machines to replace you as soon as possible.

So there's this guy who was going around and listening to people's talks and they're like, oh yes, we need equality and we need to figure out what the jobs are going to be and how this is going to go. And then like in the cocktail hours when nobody's supposed to be listening, they're like, we want to get rid of everyone. We want AI, we want robots, we want no people.

We just want robots and money. That's it. Robots and money. Robots and money. Again, never really thinking about the end game. You fire all the people, nobody has the money to buy your products. Yeah, I think I brought that point up in season two of Grumpy Old Geeks. Yeah, we have seasons?

Well, I'm just going by years now. Everybody calls them seasons, but I'm like in year two of Grumpy Old Geeks. You know, the people that take seasons, they take breaks. Like they take a couple months off. Maybe we should do the season thing. I know. I mean, well, we've upped it to four episodes off a year. So, you know.

Yes, but then we also doubled the amount of episodes we do. I know. How's that working out for us? Oh, God. What was that burnout generation article that we talked about? I need some fucking AI that could do my podcast for me. I know. I must be a fucking millennial because I'm feeling the burnout generation right now.

Yeah. Well, I found an interesting related article over on Recode that talks about how the robot revolution will actually be worse for men. So, finally, one thing's working out for the women. So, we know it's coming. The robots will take our jobs, but not all our jobs. And we don't know how many. Nor do we understand what jobs will be eliminated and which will be transitioned into somewhat say will be better, less tedious work.

And the rest of us say will mean the collapse of society, but that's okay. But there was a study and data from McKinsey and the 2016 U.S. Census that was analyzed by Brookings think tank. And basically says that young people, especially those in rural areas, will have a greater likelihood of having their jobs replaced by automation, which makes sense because you think of jobs like farming and whatnot.

Older, more educated white people living in big cities are more likely to maintain their positions, either because their jobs are irreplaceable or because they're needed new jobs alongside our robot overlords. Social inequalities are going to get worse along certain geographic and demographic lines, most likely, because it will eliminate many lower and middle skilled jobs considered stepping stones to more advanced careers, thus killing off that ladder to get to those better jobs.

And it is men who will be getting the short end of the stick. Jobs traditionally held by men have a higher average automation potential than those held by women, meaning that a greater share of those tasks can be automated with current technologies. So, there you go, guys. Here's the takeaway from this. Guys, get on that equality train for women right now so they get equal pay.

So, when you get shut down by your robot overlords, they can take care of you. Yes, let's make things equal. That's how it's worked out for me. My wife makes a ton of money. It's great. There you go. And you sit home and play the thing. I do stupid podcasts. Yeah. Now, over on Twitter, some people were sharing this thing from NowThis News.

And it's a video called, This historian wasn't afraid to confront the billionaires at Davos about their greed. And it was really funny. I liked it. The guy was spot on. But really, this woman from Oxfam, Winnie Bayanima. Bayanima?

Bayanima. Yeah. There we go. Winnie Bayanima. She's the star of the video. She's like, oh, yes, employment's down. Things are great. But the jobs suck. These are not jobs for real people. These are jobs for, you know, crap. You know, people are wearing diapers to work because they don't get breaks to go pee.

It's ridiculous. And so I think she was the real star of the video. We'll have that linked in the show notes. But yeah, there's a lot of people ribbing on Bono this time for Davos. He's just like, you know, his statements were a little out of line with the life that he lives. Yeah, well, you know, you got to give the guy credit for trying.

But maybe it's time he stopped a little bit. Yeah, maybe. Go write some music again. Or don't. Or just get on that yacht and just float away into the sunset and shut the hell up. Right. Now, there's another thing. Just to stay on this theme for a bit, because I think it's fantastic.

The Fleecing of Millennials is another piece on The New York Times. It's an opinion piece, and it talks about how, you know, the age inequality and job inequality and income inequality, the stuff that we've talked about ad nauseum. And I mean, even for us, you know, we're not doing that great anymore.

I mean, you married into money, so good for you. My dogs did not come with a pedigree, so I'm screwed. Right. But yeah, I am not making anywhere near what I used to make, even if I was working full time, which I could be, but I'm doing part time daddy daycare. Yeah.

I mean, I knew it at the time. I saw my budgets were dropping on all my projects. People weren't willing to pay what they used to pay for work. And yeah. Yeah. No, 1999 was the best year I ever had. And ever since then, it has been on a downward slope. I'm making half of what I made in 1999.

And I have 20 more years worth of experience. How's that work? Oh, well, what are you going to do? But what it got me to was this, I can't, this guy's name is so hard to pronounce. It's Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg.

He's a 37-year-old Democrat who's going to run for the presidency. And I'm like, okay, I'm in with this. And what he's talking about is intergenerational justice. And this is something I've actually been thinking about. And he coined this term, or he found this term and put it in the article.

But intergenerational justice is something that needs to be addressed, I think. Because we are grumpy old geeks, but we're not that old. I mean, we're mid-40s. But I am definitely on the other edge of giving a shit about a lot of things.

So I can only imagine when I'm 60, how few things I will give a shit about. And we've got a president that's 70, you know, or 73. And all these old businessmen there in their 70s, and they're just, they have zero fucks left in the tank to give.

And I was just thinking about this this morning. And I put on my thinking cap, and I'm like, maybe, maybe we need to pass some laws that say you can only have an office position between the age of, let's say, 30 and 55. That's the only time you can be a politician in the country.

Right. And that might actually be something that could bring about change, because those people are at least, you know, young enough to care about change, have grown up with the issues that have been saddled on them by the previous generations, and still have the wherewithal to give a shit.

Yeah, I mean, I can see something like that. But yeah, or, or we could just go with term limits. Nobody stays in there more than eight years. Eight years is a long ass time when you, when you see some of the people we got now. But I was just thinking about that. And I thought maybe, you know, maybe we don't need term limits.

We need age limits. You know, you're not allowed to drive past a certain age. So maybe you shouldn't be able to be in office past a certain age. Well, you're still capable. You're still capable. Maybe we just need to make better choices. We need to vote better. I'm not. I'm just looking at the historical record here.

I don't think it's working. So that's just my personal take on it. But I'm not, I'm not a historian. I just play one on the internet. So, and finally, in follow up, I found the new Twitter web client this week. They put me on it on that. And so I was playing around with the settings on this new Twitter client and I found data saver mode.

And I'm like, okay, what's this? Let me turn this on. And what it does is it stops all the images and videos from loading and just uses a low res preview. Unless, of course, it's a sponsored tweet. Of course, they're going to suck your bandwidth up if it's a sponsored tweet.

But what it's nice though, it's a, it's kind of a nice low noise filter. So you're not seeing all the images coming through. And if, if the copy matches something that you want to see, then you can click on it and it will load it for you. That's interesting. Yeah. I just think it's a nice way to shut down some of the noise on Twitter for crap that you don't care about.

Cause 90% of the stuff on Twitter, I don't care about. I'm, I'm trolling for gems, you know, I'm looking for truffles and there ain't no truffles on Twitter. No, I haven't found it to be much either. But the other upside is it loads a lot faster. It definitely loads a lot faster in the dark mode is nice.

And some of the changes they've made are nice, but it's still. The Twitter web client, which historically is a steaming pile of truffle. Yes, it is. In the news.

We got another Facebook bombshell this week. And this is, this is one of those ones that just really gets my goat. So Facebook is paying teens to install a VPN that spies on them. And they've been doing this for a couple of years. And the, the interesting thing is they were using some loopholes with Apple's enterprise certificates to have kids sideload on these VPNs.

So they could literally watch everything they're doing. Right. And they've just been tracking the data and they even use some of that data as part of their purchase of WhatsApp because they saw people were using WhatsApp way more than Facebook. And they're like, oh, maybe we should get these guys.

And this is a long article on TechCrunch, just outlining everything about what they've done. And so since 2016, they've been paying users ages 13 to 35 up to 20 bucks a month plus referral fees to sell their privacy by installing the iOS or Android Facebook research app.

And so Apple finally shut them down because they're like, no, an Apple spokesperson. And I love this because nobody at TechCrunch has spellcheck provided this satatement. We designed our enterprise developer program solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organization.

Facebook has been using their membership to distribute a data collecting app to consumers, which is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple. Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked, which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data.

Well, good, Apple, but this is kind of an Apple. Yeah, but, you know, day late and a dollar short. But hold on, though. Let me let me ask a quick question. You've read more of this than I have. Did Facebook tell these people what they would be doing? Did they basically explicitly state we're going to give you money?

We're going to track and see everything that you do. It's it's kind of ambiguous on how much that they said that they were going to be giving them. I am my personal opinion on this is buyer beware. I don't actually I it sucks.

It's not a good thing to do. But I remember in the earlier days of the Internet, dial up modems and whatnot. There used to be ISPs that would give you free Internet access, but they would watch everything that you did. Well, they did. It was a business model, a business model, by the way.

It's still a business model. But I mean, I remember it being a lot more prevalent. And I remember there were pay pay to browse programs in the early days of the Internet as well. This is kind of similar. It's it's creepy. It's not good. I would never personally sign up for it.

But a bunch of idiots obviously did. The only thing that they did wrong here was they broke the they they did wrong by Apple. They used Apple's technology inappropriately. So good on Apple for shutting them down and for calling them out on it. But if you're dumb enough to do this, I don't see a problem with it.

They can certainly I can ask you to send me 10 million dollars. You don't have to. The thing about it is it's it says it's Facebook research, not everything that you do research. So that is Facebook. Facebook wants to know everything that you do.

But on other apps, they're tracking other apps. They're tracking if your phone is on or not, if the screen is on or not. They're tracking everything. I'm sure it was in the EULA. Oh, I'm sure it was in the EULA. But who reads those? This all just comes back to this this program that they bought called Onavo that that they've been running for a while.

They got kicked out of the Apple store. And of course, by the way, all of this is still available freely on the Android stores. You can just you can just get this on Android. They don't give a crap about you. They don't give a crap. No, not their problem. Yes, no. But I still think it's it's a little bit sneaky.

Actually, no, it's a lot of it's a lot of it's a lot of it's a lot of I'm just arguing the point that, you know, there's no such thing as a free lunch, people. If it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true. Facebook's going to give me money every month. That's too good to be true. Yeah, it's a little ridiculous.

But anyway, all right. Another nail in Facebook's coffin. Yeah, they just got a really fucking big cough. This is a big enough coffin that it's fucking floating and it's a goddamn arc for them at this point. That's true. It's keeping them alive. Anyways, I can never say the name of this company.

Right. So chime in here, Jason. OK, U.S. charges Huawei with stealing trade secrets and violating sanctions. Yes, it's Huawei. Huawei. OK, so we just have some more news about this, that the U.S. has filed 10 trade secret related charges and 13 linked to sanction violations against the company.

So this is this is basically we don't know what the hell is happening here. And it's probably not going to go well for our relationship with China. But if they did steal secrets, fuck them. No, they did. And the problem is Huawei is building most of the 5G hardware that everybody needs right now.

Oh, great. Exactly. That's that's that's one. That's fun. Yeah, that's really where the rub comes in. So 5G might be delayed for a bit because because of Huawei's little tactics. But, yeah, they were they've been stealing stuff from T-Mobile for years, including a robot that will tap your phone.

I don't know if they've ever actually had a T-Mobile phone, but I wouldn't be stealing from that company. Well, I mean, if they're horrible, those phones don't work anywhere. I might I tell you what my T-Mobile sidekick, which was the first phone that they put out, which used to be the danger.

I love that phone. It worked everywhere for me until one day I smashed it on the ground because I got really mad at the other person on the other end of the line because I was maybe intoxicated. But I previous episodes discussion of Jason's relationship with HR departments.

Yeah, so when when when that was gone, I actually went out and just got another razor. But yeah, but it was a good phone. I didn't mind T-Mobile back then. I mean, they were piggybacking off of Verizon and Sprint. So I had service every I really never had bad service.

But nowadays, who knows with them? Who knows? And on this next one, serious hat tip to everyone who listens to the show, because I think I got 100 tweets and emails at least about this, which is technically more than. The people that listen to the show.

But anyway, new studies out that electric scooters are sending lots of riders to the emergency room with injuries. Yes. Figure that. Well, 94 percent of the 249 scooter related cases here in L.A. were discharged without being admitted. The injuries were significant. Some 40.2 percent were admitted for head injuries, 31.7 percent for fractures and 27.7 percent with sprains, cuts or bruises.

Now, the interesting the interesting thing about this is I've been watching the scooters behaving badly Instagram feed. It that is my that is my jam right now. I love this. They've got so many crashes and these people are just not qualified to write a scooter. Yeah, that's the thing.

If you follow the rules on a scooter and you put in a little practice on it, you're going to be fine. Don't go as fast as they go because the things go too damn fast and don't do stupid shit. But we can't help ourselves, can we? No, don't drink and it's a toy. Yeah. Wear a helmet. It's it's a little more than a toy.

That's the thing. It's you know, it's it's a little death machine. Those little tiny wheels are are what get people every time. And I've just seen so many face plants that I'm just like there's sphincter clenching. When you see some of these things, you're like, oh, and these people are just not ending in a good place.

So be careful on the scooters, people, or better yet, I was going to say take an Uber, but that's not even maybe walk, maybe just have a walk. And in other scooter news, we've got some scoot, scoot news here. A D.C. bill would give scooter e-bike riders more legal rights.

This is one of those things where I guess right now you don't have as many rights as you would like on a regular bike or as a pedestrian in some of these cities. So in Washington, D.C., they're trying to like at least have a level playing field.

If you're riding a scooter in a place where you're supposed to be riding and you get hit by a car or another bike, you know, if you're following the rules and you get in an accident, you have better recourse. It's pretty much that that's kind of a no brainer. Go for that. I'm down with that. Yeah, I think that's I think that's fine. These things are going to bother sort of here to stay.

I've got 10 different 10 different emails about them being kicked out of multiple cities this week. So it's pretty good. But in San Diego, these guys are my heroes. This is like the Sanford and son of scooters. Scooter Removal LLC impounds dockless scooters and bikes for free.

So if some jackass comes to your house and leaves a scooter on your lawn, you can call these guys. They'll come pick it up and then they're going to charge the companies to give them back. Nice. And then they charge them, you know, daily storage fees, which is good.

So if they don't come pick them up and then I'm sure at the end, they're just going to have a bunch of scooters that they'll be able to sell for however much they want. But and I knew that this was the way it was. These guys come from a towing company. You know, it's like, OK, that's it makes perfect sense.

It makes perfect sense. I mean, this is definitely a problem. I see it all the time here on Main Street. It's one of the things that I initially when when they first appeared here in Santa Monica, I was talking about the business owners were getting annoyed because people would just leave them in front of their doors when they would come to, you know, open up in the morning or whatever.

And it's it's an issue. And a friend that listens to the show who will not be named because of what I'm about to explain manages a coffee shop. And when she would come into work, she would see a whole bunch of scooters there and she would just pick them up and put them in the big dumpster. That was her solution.

This is a better one because this one actually finds the companies to some degree. So that's pretty nice. Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn't fill up the landfills with lithium batteries. Yeah. And if you watch the the episode of the Mythbusters Jr., putting those scooters into a garbage truck and actually catch the garbage truck on fire.

So we don't want a literal dumpster fire. It literally is a dumpster. That's what these things are. They're literally dumpster fires now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in continued Facebook news, they have announced that they intend to combine Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp at some point, which is obviously a no brainer for them because it keeps you in their ecosystem more.

And they own these properties. Anyways, there's a great article over on Slate talking about the various challenges involved here and how there are technological challenges. There are privacy expectations between the apps that are different that will, you know, obviously become a problem.

If you're used to WhatsApp, you're used to the idea of having a certain amount of privacy, which you will not get in Facebook. And how they were going to address that as they try to integrate them will be a real issue. There's a lot of issue with encryption and how you send data from one app to another.

And there's going to be a lot of struggles with that. And the TLDR on this is Facebook does not have a very good history of solving these problems. So buyer beware. Yeah, because they like to move fast and break things like everything. It's their goddamn motto. Yeah. No, it's interesting because, I mean, they're just trying to unify the back end, not really make, you know, one gigantic app.

No, not one unified app, but the ability to basically send data between the different apps. This is what they're hoping for smoothly and concisely, which in theory is a good thing, but not when it's Facebook doing it. Yeah, no, I mean, just the, yeah, the encryption keys alone going from app to app to app and all that.

It seems, it seems like a dumb problem to try and solve, but I don't know. That's what happens. People, people at Facebook are dumb. I'm sorry. Dumberberg. We'll just call them Dumberberg. Yeah. And speaking of dumb motherboard over, you know, Vice has done a deep dive again on what's happened with net neutrality.

And shocking, the title of the article, it's now clear none of the supposed benefits of killing net neutrality are real. So, yes, we've been hearing. That should have been on Reply All, like that's shit we already know. As we've been hearing from the FCC boss, Ajit Pai, also the biggest a-hole in the universe at the moment.

He was telling anybody to listen to killing. He might be the second biggest. Quite a few. Killing net neutrality would boost broadband industry investment, spark job creation, and drive broadband into underserved areas at an unprecedented rate. Well, the money's in, accounts have been done, the surveys have been done, the research has been done, and the exact opposite is happening.

Comcast, spending less. Verizon, spending less. Charter, spending less. Job employment, down. Lower investment numbers. And it's not expected to get any better. Yeah. Awesome. So, the exact opposite of what they said was going to happen is happening.

And what are the benefits then? None. None that anybody can see. Now, luckily, there is a chance here. Next month sees opening arguments in a lawsuit against the FCC over its net neutrality repeal, where the agency's false claims will take center stage. Very similar to what's happening over in the UK with Brexit right now.

There's a lot of people going, hey, this whole thing was a bunch of bullshit. You were lying to us, and maybe we need to take this back. So, we'll see what happens. Hopefully, we can repeal the repeal of the real or the repeal of the repeal. Yeah, the repeal of net neutrality does not spark joy, I gotta say.

No, it does not. Let's throw it out. Yes, and from everybody I know, Brexit does not spark joy either. It sparks, what the fuck? Media candy. I got a lot in media candy this week here, Brian.

You do? I've been watching The Punisher Season 2. I watched 4. Me too. Oh, I'm up to Episode 4. Where are you at? I've watched 3. Okay. I've stopped at Episode 4 because I'm really enjoying it, and I want to savor it. Because I know once this is done, it's going to be a very long time until I get any more Marvel superheroes from Netflix.

If. Yes, that's what I mean. If. A very long time. It might just be eternity. Yes. So, I'm just going to hang on to this one. I'm going to watch one a week until it's done. That's it. I've got it scheduled. It's in my calendar. It's in Fantastical to watch The Punisher once a week.

So, I am enjoying it. I'm really enjoying it. It's a little slower burn than before, but I like that. It's still with the ultra-violent, but it's good, and I'm definitely enjoying it as well. I'm trying to figure out what the name of that actress is that is in it.

She was on that horrible Amazon show that I watched the first season of, and then it went away, or I just stopped watching it, and I can't remember her name right now. There's this thing that we have. I don't know if you've heard of it. Yeah, I should have done that before the show started.

Yeah. It was the man in the high castle. She was the female lead, and she's the bartender in this thing, and she's actually quite good. I'm very impressed by her as an actress, so I'm really enjoying it as well. I'm three episodes in. It's got to be something I watch super late night because nobody else in my family likes the ultra-violent, and it is ultra-violent.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of violent, but I don't know. It's decent. The entire first episode is all blood all the time. Everybody's covered in blood. I have a different threshold for violence, I think. Okay.

I spent a lot of time watching, like, looking at 4chan, so I think I have a different threshold than you. All right, yes, your brain has been tweaked. That's right. I forgot about that. Oh, beyond belief. Yes. No. So I did watch the Good Place season finale. Did you get a chance to check that out? I did.

I did not realize it was the season finale until after, and I was like, oh, I can't wait until next week, so then I went, oh! Yeah. Yeah. No, I thought it was interesting. I thought it was a good season finale. Me too. They keep finding ways to twist it at the end of every season, and it has not lost its charms on me yet, so I'm looking forward to it returning.

Yeah, because I thought, I'm like, what the hell are they going to do this time, you know? And they pulled it out at the end. They really did pull it out. They really did. Yeah, I was like, oh, man, this is going to suck, but it was really good. I got to give it to them. So thanks to you and everybody who forced me to watch this goddamn show.

A good place is like an M. Night Shyamalan and Ding Dong that actually has a good twist at every end. Yeah. You keep pulling it out. Yeah. Speaking of, I still got to get out to see Glass. I've just been dealing with this remodel in my place, so haven't been able to get anywhere.

But that and the remodel, I can't afford a movie right now because of the remodel. I also watched the Ted Bundy tapes on Netflix this week. Uh-huh. Did you find him dreamy? There's that whole big thing now. That whole thing with Zac Efron being cast as Ted Bundy?

I don't know if this is actually a real thing anymore. Now I'm starting to think that Netflix just happens to have the best PR company in the world. They realized with Bird Box that they could get a lot of publicity going if something came out. So I think Netflix might be behind the whole outrage about Zac Efron being too good looking.

Yeah, I don't know. It might be. But I mean, the movie is a real thing, you know? So it's just an interesting happenstance. Because you know, all these guys all do the same thing. This was always a joke in Hollywood. It's like, that's why you get like five, you know, Westerns in a row, five sci-fi movies in a row.

Because they all go to the same restaurant and they all overhear each other. Everybody talks to each other. Hey, we should make a documentary about the Fyre Festival. Oh, we're going to make a documentary about them. Let's get on that. Let's get on that. So anyway, the Ted Bundy tapes is really good. It's only four episodes. I wasn't really that up to speed on the entire case because it was a little before my time and I never went back to watch it.

I live with a woman who knows everything because all she watches is true crime shit. So for her, it was like, I've seen 20 stories about this. But she said there was stuff in here that she didn't even know. And it was really good. And after watching this special, then I saw, you know, the clips from the Zac Efron movie that's coming out.

He looks exactly the same. That is fucking great casting. I don't know what anybody's complaining about. And they even had on one of the interviews, a woman who was choked by Ted Bundy five times and escaped. She's like, I think it's OK. That's what he looked like. He was dreamy. Right.

You know, so if a woman who was almost killed by Ted Bundy thinks that Zac Efron lives up to the role, then everybody needs to shut the hell up. Now, in vampire news, in vampire news, I have not been that much into the vampire thing since I don't know.

I was in my 20s. Maybe I kind of gave up game, gave up with the Anne Rice stuff. And I never, of course, watch the Twilight movies because vampires don't sparkle because that's a bunch of bullshit. Sparkle. So I was intrigued when the passage came out because I saw a tweet from Stephen King that said he really loved the books and he was looking forward to the show.

I'm like, OK, fuck it. I'll try it. And I DVR'd it. And I'm on. I watched episode three last night. I'm digging it. I'm digging it. I don't want to go get the books, though, now, because I think they're doing a really. The show is really good. It's not that fast of a burn, which is good.

I like that part. You know, it's it's kind of slow. And I like slow stuff because I'm getting older. I don't have that. You know, I don't have that snappiness anymore. And I'm just enjoying it. I think the casting is great. They got a low rent Chris Pratt playing one of the FBI guys.

It looks just like him, but is it's funny. I'm just looking at him like, yeah, that's the cheap Chris Pratt. That's what they got to be the FBI guy. But so far, I'm liking the vampires. I'm liking the story and I'm liking how it's progressing. So I'm going to I'm going to stick with it.

I'm definitely going to stick with it. And I put a link in the show notes to the first book in the series. If somebody wants to go actually read the books, but it's a trilogy of books by Justin Cronin. And so far, I'm liking it. I'm really liking it. It's kind of a nice thing. After watching the Orville, I would like actually some meat after my fluff.

You know, it's like I'll watch. I'll have I'll have dessert first. Actually, it's a sandwich. I'll watch Gotham, which is meaty. Then I'll watch the Orville, which is dessert. And then I'm like, I need a little savory aperitif before before bed. And then I'll watch the passage.

So it all kind of goes together. Next up. I'm kind of hungry now. Yeah, I know. Tell me about it. I always like some human blood. Next up is the dropout. I talked about this coming up and it has finally dropped. I'm listening to the podcast. I did not watch the TV version of it.

And this is about Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos. And the first two episodes have dropped. I've listened to the first one. I liked it a lot. I really liked it a lot. What I did not like is the blatant ripoff of everything serial about it.

The pacing, the music cues, the bumpers, everything is serial. I mean, it is down to a T. And it's a formula, man. Oh, it is such a formula. And it works. Well, it pissed me off.

But the one thing that really pisses me off at the end is because I'm listening to this in bed and I've got it like on my nightstand playing and they're like next week on the dropout. And I'm like, God, I have to reach over, find my phone in the dark, slap it, shut it off because I hate spoilers and I hate trailers.

I don't like trailers on anything and especially podcasts. God. But so far, it's really good. I if this is a this is a kind of a crazy story. I think you should definitely check it out on your bike ride. Yeah, I think it's really going to piss me off. Yeah, it is. But but we know that there's a happy ending because she's, you know, she's indicted for fraud and might face 20 years in jail.

So there might be a happy ending. Yay. Jail time is a happy ending in this story. At the library. So when I was going through my sparking joy period and I went through my books and decluttered sparking joy really does sound like a euphemism for masturbation.

It really does. Yeah. Well, I did that and I went through a bunch of my books and I got rid of a lot of older sci-fi and things that just did not spark joy, as it were, or just I didn't care for or just didn't feel feel the need to kind of like show off because that's what a book collection really is.

I found one book in the back of my collection that came out in 2005 and I bought it in 2005 and I read theoretically in 2005 called The Traveler. It was by John 12 Hawks. That sounds like a that sounds like a Native American name. John 12 Hawks.

That's I believe he is. So he's Native American that wrote a sci-fi book. Awesome. And it's I was intrigued as to why I still had it because I've done many a book call since 2005. And somehow this book has kept has stayed in there and hung out in my collection of sci-fi books.

And so I was like, all right, I don't really remember much about this. I read the little flap on the thing and kind of had vague memories of reading this book. And I was like, I'm just going to read it again and see what's going on. And I did. And I really liked it. It's really interesting because it's about, you know, shadow organizations and tech, how they're using technology and how we're all tracked in something that they call the big machine and trying to live off Facebook.

Exactly. That's the wait for it, Jason. So, yeah. And, you know, there are these people that are called travelers and they can actually leave their bodies and go to different dimensions. And when they come back, they tend to, like, become people like Jesus Christ who spark revolutions and all that sort of stuff.

And then there's an organization called Harlequins. And there are people that protect the travelers and, you know, the people that are behind the big machine are trying to kill all the travelers and kill all the Harlequins. And it's actually quite good. I really enjoyed reading it. The funny thing was, because it was written in 2005 before many things like the big machine, it's a little bit it's a little weird to see that he basically saw this in advance.

And so many of the things that he's describing didn't quite exist yet. It weren't happening yet, tracking with the cell phones, the governments and blah, blah, blah. And so it was kind of a fun read to realize the time that it was written in. And I thought it was really interesting for that. And the exciting thing is after I finished reading it, I discovered it's only part one of a trilogy.

So I have two more books by this guy to read. And I didn't check and see what years they came out. But I'm really interested to see how he ups the technology a little bit, because obviously things had moved on by the time he wrote the next one. So I am quite excited to find out that there's more of these books. I was quite excited to rediscover this book.

And now I remember why I kept it. I suppose it sparked joy. I have to say, we just had to pause for a second right there before I went into my next bit, because I had a ring at the doorbell, a ring at my ring doorbell, as a matter of fact. I cannot stand when delivery people ring the doorbell, leave the box and walk away.

Drives me nuts. Now, yeah, see, my equivalent, because I'm in a small complex, they bang on my door. Like, why? Don't hit my door. Just leave the box. Leave the fucking box, please. I got dogs. I'm doing a podcast. Get off my lawn.

Get off my lawn. Well, to get back to where we were, in the fourth realm, there are, like you said, three books. The first is The Traveler that came out in 2005. The second is The Dark River that came out in 2007, and the third is The Golden City, which came out in 2009. Hmm.

There you go. Yes. I have just added all three to my Audible account, so I will be listening to those soon. So, thank you. Again, I really did enjoy it, so I'm looking forward to the other two. I can't speak for those, but the first one was definitely fun.

Remember, read another book in between. Yes, I'm going to. Yes, definitely do that. And I think you're about to talk about the book that I'm going to read in between. Yes, the book that I recommend you read in between is Digital Minimalism, Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport. I love Cal Newport.

He's been on our show, the other show that I work for, several times. He's a friend of the show, and I love his books. He did a book called Deep Work, which I adore, which everybody should read if you haven't read it. But his new one is about digital minimalism and tactics and tricks on how to basically get more shit done and live a quieter, better life by not doing a lot of the things that, unfortunately, you and I have to do if we want to have a show.

This book comes out on February 5th, so you can preorder it now and it will get delivered to you when it arrives on your Kindle or if you want a dead tree version, whichever you prefer. But whatever you're doing, buy this book. The only thing that I request after you read this book is do not unsubscribe from this podcast, please, because that would be that would that would go on with the last episode and the law of unintended consequences.

I tell you how to declutter your life and then you unsubscribe from the show and then declutter us and Brian and I can't eat. So please, if you do anything, read the book, but keep listening to the show. And I listened to the audio version of it because Cal sent it over to me and it was great.

And in doing so, I found a new program, thanks to a hat tip to Jordan Harbinger on this one called Open Audible. Normally, I'd put this in the apps and do dad section, but since this is at the library and this is all about my audio library, I found this to be one of the most useful programs I've ever gotten.

It's an open source app. Unfortunately, it's written in Java, but it but it works. It works. There's a Mac version because there's been a ton of audible apps like on the the aftermarket where you can download and transcode your audible stuff. But this is the first one I found that is decent for the Mac.

And so I got it, opened it up, had to do some gymnastics to get it to sync my library because it didn't really it doesn't work that well to get your library synced. You have to like open up the browser and go page by page by page by page for it to see all the all the books that you have.

Turns out I have 798 books in Audible that I've read. And I think there was a there's a study sometime a long time ago that said, like, you know, most people can only read 500 books in their lifetime or whatever it is. I mean, I've read that much just on Audible. Yeah, I'm sorry.

I listen to them on Audible, but a lot of them several times. If you if you have an Audible account and you want to back everything up to MP3, this will do it automatically. It's it's fantastic. It'll download it. It will convert it to MP3. It'll give you all the ID3 tags that you can then import into iTunes or your your player of choice, because iTunes is nobody's player of choice.

Let's let's be honest about that. But player of last resort and player of last resort and you at least have backups if you ever in the future want to cancel your Amazon account. I know. I know a lot of people won't be thinking of ever doing that, but we're thinking to the future here.

And nobody was really thinking that they would be leaving Facebook or MySpace or LiveJournal or GeoCities. You know, some things, some things change in the future, but I just I just like having an MP3 backup of it because then I can transfer it over to different platforms that have better players.

And what I like to do now is with this app, I will get a new book on Audible. I'll download it using open Audible and get the MP3 and then I will load it into Overcast because the Audible app on iOS is such a steaming pile of shit that I can't stand it.

It crashes all the time and it just never saves my place. It's terrible. It is a terrible app. But Overcast, you can sideload it in if you're a premium subscriber, which I recommend you be because he makes a great app. But it has that silence removal tool. Right.

So you can actually if you're playing it at like one and a half X, it will you get even more speed because it gets out all the dramatic pauses that I could not give two shits about. Because people who read audio books on Audible talk slow and slow and it's annoying.

That's all I'm saying. So that's why I always listen to it at least one and a half X. But if you have one and a half X plus silence removal, you can get through a bunch more books. And since I have to read multiple books a week, open Audible plus Overcast. Great stuff. Go buy digital minimalism, though, because you're going to fucking love it.

Well, Jason, I know you love your dogs and I hope you don't do this trend, which I'll get to in a second. In 2019, people have decided to start glittering their dog's testicles. What?

The link is in the show notes so you can see pictures of glittered testicles. Are they ball dazzled? They're ball dazzled. Oh, show title. Yeah, except for the fact that not really that many people have done this. There's two pet salons that have made posts on social media with two images each, I believe.

And it's just gone viral because it's so ridiculous. So it's not really happening. Okay. Well, the problem is it has gone so viral that the dailyhaze.com that this was linked on is down. I haven't been able to get to it, so I can't see the glittery balls.

Interesting. Yeah. And my dogs don't have balls. So, unfortunately, I can't do this. There you go. And as I talked a couple shows back, The Big Lebowski, we were teased by Jeff Bridges with a short clip of him in character.

And the hope was, of course, that we would get a new movie. But the, you know, reality is it's just a Super Bowl commercial. And as Slate points out... Oh, wait, wait. You're legally not allowed to say Super Bowl commercial. You have to say The Big Game. Oh, The Big Game commercial.

Yeah, we might get fined. I'd have to edit that out. Slate put it in their title. So we better... Oh. Let's see. The Big Lebowski Super Bowl ad is a crime against humanity. I'm just reading the title here, people. Okay. Yeah, so it's even worse because it's not just the dude Lebowski in it.

It is Carrie Bradshaw in character from Sex and the City as well. And it's for Stella, which is typically my beer of choice. So I might have to switch my beer because this annoys me. So this is all it's going to be. See, Stella tastes like a skunk ass to me now. I can't drink that stuff. But, yeah, this commercial tastes like a skunk's ass, too.

I was watching it and I was just like, what? Yes, it's not that good. Oh, it's god-awful. And I would just... I want to go back to this thing. We've talked about this for five years now. Talking about your Super Bowl ad, releasing it on the internet beforehand. Everybody releases their commercials beforehand now.

Yeah. You don't have to watch the Super Bowl. You can just go to Adweek and they're going to have every commercial that you want to see so you don't have to watch The Big Game. I'm okay with that because The Big Game interferes with The Puppy Bowl, which is what I watch when The Super Bowl's on.

I'm sorry, The Big Game. Yes, The Big Game. And, of course, everybody else in the world also sent us this one. And Austin Teen was arrested for robbing a bank after using a jump scooter as his getaway vehicle. Yeah, we got this from everyone. Everyone, yes. This guy, Luca, 19 years old, basically robbed a bank with a note and they gave him some money and he jumped on his jump scooter and scooted away.

And, of course, it went right to his house. So, they triangulated where his cell phone was. They called Uber and said, hey, what scooter was here? And they're like, oh, that scooter. It's listed to this guy. They're like, oh, that's the guy whose cell phone was there. So, we're going to go arrest him. Yep.

Dumb shit. My name is Luca. I took a scooter to jail. It would have been awesome if they... Oh, I'm sure they had to impound the scoot scoot for evidence. Mmm. Mmm. And back to my friend Mark Zuckerberg. Yes. Bam Bam started growling when I said Mark Zuckerberg.

Bam Bam, you don't like Mark Zuckerberg? Mark Zuckerberg once killed a goat with a stun gun and served it as dinner to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Mmm. Yeah. And apparently it wasn't very good. Jack said it was cold.

And Jack just had a salad because Jack likes salad. This was part of Mark Zuckerberg's, you know, year of killing everything that he ate. Yes, I remember hearing about that. Yeah. Apparently he just didn't cook it. Well, apparently he didn't cook it enough. But the thing about it, I mean, I don't know who the biggest moron is here because, I mean...

It's a toss-up. It's a toss-up. And it's a toss-salad toss-up because Jack Dorsey just said he ate a salad, you know, because Jack likes salad. But there's a new interview on Rolling Stone with Jack Dorsey, which I cannot bring myself to read. I cannot put that in my head. I'm going to have a link in the show notes for anybody that wants to read it.

But, yeah, the fact that this is, like, you know, news that, oh, yeah, I had cold dead goat from Mark Zuckerberg. Well, I guess it's better than cold live goat from Mark Zuckerberg. True. Yeah, at least. But Mark Zuckerberg didn't even butcher it himself. All he did was kill it.

Now, that is just like, okay, here's what I'm going to do, people. I'm going to spend a year killing things. But you, you little friend over there, you have to clean it. Clean it and bring it back to me in the form of a steak. That's all. I just want to kill. I'm going to kill a dog.

I'm going to kill a cow. I'm going to kill a horse. I'm going to kill democracy. You know. That's it. I'm going to kill privacy. I'm going to kill everything. So, yeah, check those out if you're interested. And this is just a retro moron of the week. As many as 11,543 Microsoft employees got swept up in a Reply All email apocalypse.

Turns out Reply All isn't just a shitty podcast. It is still the worst feature of email. Oh, yes. And this just comes back from people who were all like all the employees of Microsoft who had GitHub accounts registered. Some moron sent a Reply All email thread.

And it goes back to 1997. Do you remember this? When all of Microsoft's internal email servers were down for days because there was a whole Reply All circle. Yep. I just. I remember that. Yeah. Because this was right when IE was coming out. And I was just like, oh, this is beautiful.

This is a beautiful thing. So, you know, what's old is new again. What's old is new again. And finally, because I don't know how to react to this one. I need your input on this one, Brian. I really do need your input on this one. There's a company called Oboe.

And what they do is they make product decision software to prevent product designers from making useless features. They've come out of stealth and they got an $8.2 million funding round. If we had $8.2 million and somebody wanted to show us their products, I would gladly tell them if it's shit.

You don't. I mean, I would take I tell you what, between the two of us, if we got $4.1 million and we split that between us, we would sit here in front of the microphone 24-7, seven days a week for a year and tell you everything that's wrong with your product. But Jason, we're doing all that now for free, basically.

That's why I have a conundrum with this. I don't know. Yeah, they really need to hire us. That's what I'm thinking. I know. Yeah. Hey, you know what? I think Oboe needs a podcast. I think we're going to go to Oboe. This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is sponsored by Oboe.

At the very least, they should be advertising with us, yes. I know. So, the thing here is, I think the guys at Oboe are the geniuses. I think the people who gave them $8.2 million are the fucking morons. Of course the guys at Oboe are geniuses. We haven't been able to get anybody to give us money for good advice.

I know. Man. Lucky bastards. Lucky bastards. Feedback loop. We have two new Patreon subscribers, Taylor and Mike. And just a little note to the people who like to knock their pledge down right at the end of the month.

We appreciate your patronage and we know that times are tough, but you got to do it at the end of the month, man. It sucks. I felt beat. I just looked at my email this morning. I'm like, really? Oh, man. That bummed me out. But anyway. And David writes in, hey, guys, my wife just sent me this.

Wondered what your thoughts were on it. And it's the how to turn off FaceTime and avoid Apple's eavesdropping bug. And yeah. You don't need to do anything. Apple's already disabled group chat. There will be an iOS update coming in the next few days, according to Apple, that will completely solve the problem.

Hey, you know, it's a bug. Shit happens. It's a tempest in a teapot, too. This is not. Yeah. The hoops you have to jump through to get that in. All you're going to hear is, oh, shit, it's that guy. Yeah. I mean, that's that's really what you're going to get. You're going to get the reaction to the person seeing the FaceTime call coming in. That's all it is.

Yeah. Because you're going to get that like half a second before they either answer it or hang up on you. That's it. So you can you can get sentiment analysis, I guess, from it. It's just like, you know, it's like, are they happy to hear your goal? They'll be able to tell if they like you or not. That's kind of it.

That's kind of it. We're not going to, you know, you know, this isn't NSA level hacking going on here. Yeah, it seems way blown out of proportion. Completely blown out. And Jared writes in, take a look. Seems like this company is going to do things right this time. I did a happy dance when I saw the news story on the TV, and this is VO Ride grows to more than 7000 users at Texas A&M.

And this is another e-bike company, kind of like UFO, but you can get charged 600 bucks if you use the bikes improperly. And they say they say you're allowed to ride outside of the geofence and you can lock the bike if you ride outside of the geofence, but you'll still continue to be charged.

So the theory is that you need to bring the bike back for the ride to end. So you can't just take it and run with it. Right. There you go. Yep. There you go. Makes sense. Consequences, people. You got to pay for consequences. And J4M35 writes us, if I recall, Apple Music or iTunes or both use AWS.

I used a little slitch and had to allow an AWS signed by Amazon to get to iTunes store and update Apple Music slash match. So, yes, Amazon is the Internet now, and it's good to have got stock in Amazon before AWS. Yes, it is. Yeah, there you go. And Bree writes in, regarding iPad note-taking apps, in a recent episode, Jason mentioned the new version of GoodNotes.

Thank you so much. I've started using it for note-taking, and it's pretty great. I'm currently pretty heavily invested in Notability, which I would recommend to others who enjoy experimenting with note-taking or drawing apps for iOS. I'm still comparing the two, but so far, GoodNotes has every feature I like in Notability, and then some with a single exception.

Notability allows you to continuously sync your notes as PDFs to whatever cloud gods you currently worship. You can sync RTF and other formats if you so desire. The best I can find in GoodNotes is syncing to iCloud, which is somewhat limiting. I'm happy to be told that I am wrong. Enjoy.

And she also writes in, there's a link to Reddit for GoodNotes versus Notability. Well, PDFs are the fucking devil. So, I'm going to say that that's not a good thing. I really don't care about that. I mean, if you have to export it to something, that's fine. I use notes for a different purpose.

I never need to export them. They're for me. I take notes for me, so I can go back and do it. I journal in GoodNotes because I can do handwriting notes. You know, my artist notes every morning, my morning ritual, and things like that, because handwriting things still is kind of good for the brain.

But, yeah, I couldn't give a flying fuck if anything comes out as a PDF. But, yeah, my use case is different than yours. There you go. Over at PayPal, we got a donation from Sean who wrote us and said, you called it, they fucked up, and sends us a link about the Apple FaceTime bug. Did we call that one?

Well, I'm guessing we did. I mean, we just say everybody's going to screw up, so. Yeah. It's pretty easy. And he writes in, keep up the good work, guys. I'm going to start up a EULA consulting firm, maybe. Also, my wife loves the show as well. Keep ranting like crazy. Please give her a shout-out on the next show, Miss Ellie L.

So, shout-out to Ellie there. Thank you, Sean. Thank you very much. And this next one comes from Joe over at Facebook, and it's a link to Denny Schweibert's post. It is just an image. And I got to say that this is the greatest thing ever. And she says, suddenly my childhood feels cheated.

And it's a rocking horse. But it is the NCC-1701. It is the Enterprise, the original Enterprise. Yeah. I might have to get this for my kid. I think you need to get this for your kid, Brian, because this is the shit. I was surprised that I could actually see this because I don't have a Facebook account.

But every time I go to Facebook, you know they're trying to get me to hit that login button and, you know, redo your account, guy. Come on in. The only time I'm going to log back in is when I can actually cancel my account. That's it.

All right. Over on Twitter, Old Man Sir Mix-A-Lot and WriteFilmSleepRepeat both sent us the Facebook stories about the app to spy on the internet and phone use, et cetera. And WriteFilmSleepRepeat also sent us a story about a mother and son that tried to warn Apple about the bug.

Yeah. The kid was 14 years old and he figured it out. So there you go. Let's see. Strickey also sent us the same thing about the Facebook paying teens to share all their web and phone activity. So everybody was quite into that one this week. And Third in Command writes in, this is still going on.

Keyless cars unlock rich pickings for thieves. This is an article over at The Times in the UK. Car thefts have risen by almost 50% in four years, bearing out a warning that hundreds of the best-selling keyless models are vulnerable to hackers. Home office figures showed that 111,999 vehicles were stolen in 2017 to 2018, more than 300 a day on average.

This was up from 75,308 in 2013 to 2014, a rise of 49%. So it's all about the keys. It's all about the keys. And key related. Scott wrote us and said, what could possibly go wrong with a link to a new company called MyKeyHero.com.

I think we covered these guys. Scan your key. I think we did too. I'm pretty sure we covered these guys in an old security segment because, man, yeah, you scan your key, put it on your phone, and then they can print one for you and ship it to you. Oh, not what I want.

I can't imagine that that would go wrong. And they've got all the security stuff. It's like, this is from the Hillman Group. And then security is by Unikey Technologies in Orlando, Florida. And I love this. This is one of my favorite bits at the end. I was just looking at the copyright on it. Copyright 2019 by the Hillman Group.

All rights reserved. Content management system by Sales and Marketing Technologies. Sales and Marketing Technologies. That is such a generic name that I do not believe that that's a real thing. And I'm going to try something here.

I'm going to type in mykeyhero.com slash wp-admin. Oh, nope, nope. It's a Java. It's a Java server. Oh, too bad. Too bad. But here's what I can also do. And these are tricks for you people out there who are listening.

If you want to know somebody who's on WordPress, you go to wp-admin after. And if you want to know if they're on Squarespace, you hit the escape key. Right. They're not on Squarespace either. So I think they're on Drupal. I think they're on Drupal. It looks like Drupal because I went to the sales and marketing technology site myself.

And it definitely looks like a Drupal site dead on. Okay. They will shatter the old paradigm with a custom website. Shattering paradigms. Ooh, I love it. Let's see what else they have to say here. Hold on a second. Let me. Oh, your scrolly thing is weird and doesn't work correctly.

And if I try to go over here to scroll past your hero graphics, then some weird side thing comes out. I do not like this site. Oh, anyways, moving on. Moving on. Quantum Leap rates in over on Twitter. Usually, I only tend to like Marvel productions where the main character doesn't take himself serious. That being said, I'm at the Punisher season two, episode five, and I do like it.

It's that dramatic undertone making it really shine. Yes, it is. I'm really enjoying it, too. Yep. Me too. Randy writes us, listening to episode one. Oh, no. Fascinating. So different. Love the conversational awkwardness about Tim Ferriss. Look, I don't even remember what we said five minutes ago, much less in episode one.

I know. Yeah, trust me. When I have to go back and edit this, I'm like, just, we said that? Oh, shit. And Moz6502 writes in, more people are coming around to what you've been saying for a long time. Thank God. It's a link for a LinkedIn story. It says, we need to rewrite the gig economy's dehumanizing unethical code.

So that'll be linked up in the show notes. Yep. I read that. I agree with everything said in the article. Maybe they listen to the show. Maybe they do. Over at GOG.show, Cynthia wrote us. Also, in parentheses, he's sissy. So I guess that's what she likes to go by. Hey, I wanted to call your attention to a recent ruling in Louisiana.

There's a case currently that involves the death of a fraternity member at LSU who refused to give up his cell phone passcode. Then the judge ruled he had to provide the passcode. She explicitly stated he is not protected by the Fourth or Fifth Amendment. She says, I absolutely adore you guys. Listen, you all makes me feel like I'm back with my old team.

Hugs. Who dat? Okay. Well, hopefully that'll get overturned. So she gave us a couple links. Yeah. Hopefully that'll get overturned. This is going to have to go to the Supreme Court and end the story. So. Yeah. Hopefully, Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be back by now. So if you haven't, check out the RBG or the Notorious RBG documentary on Netflix.

Oh, so good. It's fucking amazing. It's actually, I don't think it was on Netflix. I think I paid for it. But yeah, Notorious RBG. She is such a baller. Such a baller. And Quibble writes in. You said that news is dying because no revenue. Not true. TYT News went from 27,000 members to over 42,000 when they did their sub drive last December.

Four weeks, 15,000 new subs. These guys are red hot. It's the mainstream media's news that's suffering. Online news is doing just fine. Numbers don't lie, which is why their numbers are ignored, in my humble opinion. Please don't ignore their success, Jason. Okay? I don't know. First off, numbers lie, which he did write us back and say that was probably the dumbest thing I'd ever said because we all know numbers can lie.

Look, if online news is doing so well, why are journalists being fired left, right, and center? Why is even BuzzFeed, which is online news, slashing people? So they may be making some revenue, but it's certainly not being fundled back into actual jobs for reporters or reporting.

Okay, and I'm going to call out this TYT News thing right here. Okay, and their numbers are not big. Okay? So, here we go. TYT Network, the largest online talk, news, and entertainment network for the connected generation.

No, you're not. No, you're not. But they do have Lawrence Lessig's podcast on there, so that's interesting. But no, you're not the biggest. Sorry. You might be great. I've got to look into you. But yeah, that's a little bit of pumping the numbers there.

Pumping the numbers. Hey, but they're here in town, and the company is The Young Turks. Yeah, I'm vaguely aware of them, so they're doing all right work. Yeah, I'll check them out. I'll check them out. Patrick writes us a couple notes. I'm retracting my recommendation on Deadly Class. The pilot was very good, but the second episode completely missed the mark.

Had potential, but pilot looks like it might have been the high point. Well, that's good to hear because I'm lazy, and I had added it to my queue, and I never got around to watching it, so now I don't have to. So, I watched the pilot, and I did love the pilot. I went to go watch the second episode last night, and their sound mixing is so god-awful that I have to turn it up like super loud, but my roommate was sleeping, so I couldn't.

So, it's still on the DVR. I'm going to watch it. From what I gathered from all of the initial pontificating from the characters, they were trying to channel Fight Club for a lot of it, and it just didn't really work, but I couldn't hear half of it.

So, I'm going to have to watch it sometime when I can crank it because, man, the sound editing on that show sucks. The music is way too loud, and I just couldn't hear the dialogue, but I really did like the pilot a lot. I mean, I was into it. I told you. I'm like, add that to the DVR, man. This might be good, but we'll see.

The jury's still out. Okay. And he also writes, Annihilation was a shit movie, but the books, the Southern Reach trilogy slash Area X was solid. Third and final book doesn't have a tidy ending, though, so it requires being okay with some ambiguity. Well, that was my problem with the actual movie as well, so I don't think I'm going to be okay with that.

I want to know what the hell happened. Yeah, I like tidy endings. I really like tidy endings. I really do. I don't want to figure it out for myself. That's what I'm fucking paying you for. Seriously. That's why I bought the book. I want a fucking ending, you know? Andrew Mason writes in, great show.

Wanted to send you a few links your way. Deliveroo users are getting defrauded, and it could be fined millions for it. Scammers are using the delivery service to clear out bank accounts, and the company's response may be in breach of GDPR regulations. Oh, dear. Deliveroo.

Deliveroo. Deliveroo. Deliveroo. Sending this one mainly so I can hear Jason say, Deliveroo again, but also another example of the gig economy fucking its users over. Hopefully, they'll get their comeuppance. Yes. Hopefully, they'll get their comeuppance.

I had to say that in a British accent, because Deliveroo is a British company. So, there you go. He also sent in a link from the New York Times. He reported on Facebook. Now, he approaches it with caution. This is about Nick Confessori, an investigative reporter who has written about social media and data privacy, who has changed his tech habits after what he has learned, as is every other story that's out there right now, which is what Andrew's pointing out.

How long do you think New York Times and other publications can milk the Facebook isn't good for your privacy story for clicks? They can milk it until everybody gets off Facebook. Yep. That's pretty much it. This is all we're going to see. There's more and more stories. There's two billion people on Facebook. That's a pretty good audience to milk.

Come on. Yeah. Yeah, that's one point nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine billion more people than listen to the show. So, they've got a pretty good audience to go for. And there's nothing on iTunes again. What's up with you people? Come on. We need something. Give us some love. Give us some love.

Please do. 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. Closing shout outs.

Thanks to everybody who's been listening and sharing the show. Our numbers are starting to creep back up slightly. So, please, if you can, share the show with your friends, your enemies, your extended family if you have to, your in-laws. And if all that fails, just take their phone when they're not looking and just subscribe.

That's all I got to say. Somebody go tell Mark Zuckerberg to come listen to us. He really needs to. No. No. He's got a $10 million a year budget for self-protection. I think we might get a visit from Musad if that happens. So, let's stop that.

So, until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Support the show and keep us on the air. Go to patreon.com slash GOG. 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 316. And there you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy and stay warm. Polar Vortex.

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