327: The King is Dead, Long Live the King

This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by you, dear listener. If you'd like to donate to the show and keep us on the air, please head to patreon.com slash GOG or click the PayPal button in the sidebar over at GOG.show. 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. It's our sixth anniversary, sorta. Sorta. Sorta. It's six years since we started attempting to record, right? But we didn't actually get a real episode out the door for like another month or so. Three weeks. Three weeks.

Okay, three weeks. A couple weeks we'll have an actual anniversary, but I wanted to drive home the point to new podcasters that when you start, always throw away your first couple of shows because they're garbage. And then even your first show is going to be garbage. Your first hundred shows are going to be garbage. And then you might get, okay.

Some might say the first 327 shows are garbage. That's true. I know a lot of people that say that, but just stick with it. But yeah, six years since we started this in your loft in Venice. Congratulations to us, I suppose. I think I've been to Chicago and back to LA like four times since then.

I think so as well. I think we actually should count those things. Those are what we should celebrate, your leave dates and arrival back dates. Yeah, really. Okay, Jason's back in LA. Jason hates LA. He's going back to Chicago. Oh, wait, Jason's back in LA. Yeah, we're about due. How are you feeling? It's only been a year. It's only been a year.

That's true. We also happen to be recording on Friday, March 8th, which is International Women's Day. So I thought we could take a minute to mansplain that to everyone. Be my guest. I'm kidding. I want to give a shout out, though, to Ada Lovelace, widely known as the very first computer programmer and female.

So good on her. Yes. Yes. I bet she'd be working for Google these days and miserable and getting paid less than a man. How about a little follow up? And we have a bit of follow up about I can't stop talking about this Disney Star Wars Galaxy Edge. There was a bit of a surprise this week, as CEO Bob Iger explained to a crowd of investors.

It's opening up earlier than expected. It will be open here in Los Angeles, technically Anaheim, on May 31st, and will be opening in Orlando, August 29th. Unfortunately, there are two big rides, one of which will not be ready, but the important one will be the Millennium Falcon ride.

So there's that. And of course, there's another wrinkle as well, because they're expecting it to be exceedingly popular. You will have to make a separate no-cost reservation to be able to go into Disney World, the Star Wars land in Disneyland. So I will be eagerly anticipating the sign-up for that.

I'm sure you'll be sitting there pressing refresh over and over and over. Just like happens with Ticketmaster or Live Nation, I'll get screwed. Yep. That's the way it works. We also got some more good news. The Good Omens first trailer has dropped. The six-season series will be dropping on Amazon Prime. Six-season, I wish.

Six-episode series will be dropping on Amazon Prime May 31st. The trailer looks fantastic. It does. And I also watched the Hannah trailer this morning, which drops on March 29th on Amazon Prime. Now, I have a problem here with the trailers that Amazon Prime is putting out.

You know how we talked last week about how Game of Thrones is really good about showing you a bunch of stuff, but none of it really matters? It's just the tip of the iceberg? Yep. Well, they need to go over to Amazon and kind of tell them how it's done, because you get the entire story in both of these trailers.

You kind of do, which is fine for me, because I've read Good Omens about 7,000 times, so I'm okay with it. But yeah, they do kind of tease a little. They're not really teasers. They're more like encapsulations. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, just watch this. Yeah, it's the Cliff Notes, basically, is all it is.

And it looks great. It really looks great. You know my love for David Tennant, so I cannot wait. And the Hannah trailer looked good, too. I mean, the movie was great, but since I saw the movie, I know it's going to happen in the series. So it's just like watching a really slow version of the movie play out. So we'll see how that goes.

A little Grand Tour follow-up. It's funny that you mentioned that. I was actually going to wait for next week's Media Candy, because I had completely dropped off my radar that there was Grand Tour, and I just recently restarted watching it. What episode are you on? I'm up to episode four now, because I'd watched episodes one and two and then completely forgot about its existence for however long it's been.

Me too. Just a couple days ago, I was like, oh, yeah. I didn't realize that it was still on until this morning when I was watching the Hannah trailer. I'm like, oh, wait, I still got Grand Tour. I've watched one episode and was so underwhelmed that it just did not get on my radar to go back and even think about it.

Well, now that I've watched four episodes, I have to say, I think they've definitely made the right decision in that next season. It's just going to be all trips. The trip episode, there's one, I think it's episode three, is just a trip, and there's a couple more in this season. They are phenomenal. And then as soon as I went back to episode four and it was them in the stupid tent doing things, I was bored out of my mind again.

Yeah, the trips are really what's in their wheelhouse. It's really just watching for the trips. Those episodes are fantastic. So next season should be wonderful. No more Conversation Street. Oh, God, such a joke. And as more people seem to be coming around to our way of thinking, eventually, I think if you go back and listen to all six years of us, we were calling it right a lot of the time, and it just took the world a long time to catch up.

Facebook is playing a bit of catch up with YouTube as well. They are finally cracking down on anti-vaccine hoaxes all over their site. They will stop showing pages and groups that spread anti-vaccination content in search results and will stop recommending them for users to join. No word if they're deleting Jenny McCarthy's page.

That's true. That's true. The interesting thing about this is, you know, it's like once one of the dominoes falls, then everybody comes in line. Like, look at the Alex Jones thing. All it took was one person or one company. One company to stand up and say, no more. Yep. And then everybody else was like, oh, okay.

Because everybody else looks and goes, oh, oh, well, they didn't go out of business or lose a lot of money getting rid of those idiots. Oh, I guess we could do that too now. Yeah. You look like a douchebag if you don't get rid of the douchebags. I think that's the takeaway from this. And I found a great article over on Medium, which is actually from Fast Company.

It's called Why Podcast Fans Will Always Reject a Netflix for Podcasts. And this goes into our discussion last week about Luminary and Spotify and all these people trying to put, you know, shows behind the paywall. And it's great. And she's got a couple of quotes here that I just love.

As more and more platforms look to wall off content for paying subscribers, listeners are getting left out in the cold. And now podcasting is starting to look like everything else, where only pre-sold talent who've had success elsewhere gets opportunities. I have no problem with treating podcasting as a serious business. But as the industry grows, investors and entrepreneurs best not lose sight of why people love podcasting in the first place.

The relationship formed between creators and their audiences, not audiences and their favorite media investors. Boom. Love that. Yeah. Well, I want to believe. Well, a couple more things. The other thing that she said, which is I totally agree with.

It's like, but what can I say? I don't want celebrities who have many other ways to reach an audience to become the extent of what people think podcasting is. If I wanted to hear from big name radio types and celebrities with popular TV shows, well, I think there are other outlets for that. Like what they're supposed to be doing, their radio shows and their TV shows and their movies and things like that.

Again, I want to believe, but I don't have much faith in people. I just look at TV and I look at, you know, well-written shows with extensive casts and deep thoughts and meanings doing nothing and the Kardashians just taking over and making bank.

So I don't want podcasting to go this direction, but I will not be surprised if it does. Well, there is a little bit of pushback here because there is a tweet from Luminary, and I just like to say that Luminary has stepped on their dick with one single tweet. And it is a little graphic of a little rabbit holding up a sign that said, podcasts don't need ads.

Well, go read that thread. Actually, we do. Actually, we really do. Because, I mean, what are they going to have, 80 shows? Well, there are hundreds of thousands of podcasts and hundreds of thousands of podcasters, and these guys poked the bear. They really poked the bear on this.

Just go read the thread. It'll take you a long time because a lot of people are pissed off, and it's a really fun read. Well, of course, they did what all companies do now when they've been caught doing something stupid, and they're just happy that they opened up a conversation.

Oh, yeah. I want to know if the person that made that tweet got fired. Oh, wait, of course not. Nobody gets fired anymore. Nobody gets fired. As expected at the time and thought at the time, New York City actually dodged gigantic Jeff Bezos bullet, and this has nothing to do with his penis pictures.

So, after saying thanks but no, or thanks next, is that what the kids say these days because the Ariana Grande, Amazon has moved into Arlington County instead of New York. As a report is coming out from the actual situation, in exchange for giving Amazon about $23 million in incentives, activists wanted Arlington County to require the retail giant to pay union-level construction wages, donate to affordable housing funds, basically give to the community that they're coming into instead of just promising to have jobs.

But when the proposed incentive agreement was released on Tuesday, it basically said all Amazon has to do is fill a certain number of office spaces in its Crystal City headquarters. That's it. Receive the payout in the next 15 years. That is literally it. That's it. It is nothing but a payout to get them to come there.

That's it. That's all it really is. And the one thing I really liked about that story was some of the tweets that were in there. It's like, what does Amazon have to do to get $23 million from Arlington? Just show up. Oh, and also pay $0 in federal taxes for the billions that they make.

That's how it works nowadays. I love the video that came along with this story that was really well done. Yeah, it was. And Amazon is pulling the plug on their pop-up stores. Have you ever seen one of these? I have not. Well, I mean, there's a kiosk in my Whole Foods that has Echoes and Shows in it that you can go up and that's about it.

Is that what they're considering a pop-up shop? It's exactly it. Yeah. Okay. Well, they've got 87 of them and they're getting rid of all of them. Okay. Because they're going to focus on, of course, the bookstores. Yeah, because I go to Whole Foods to get carrots, not a Kindle.

Not an Echo. Well, you know, if they had Echoes around the store where you could say, hey, Alexa, where's the carrots? Then that would actually be something that would be worthwhile. That's what they need. Alexa for Enterprise. Yeah. So then they can just fire all the employees. Mm-hmm. Yep. And they're also going to be working more on their four-star stores.

I heard that there's one of them around here somewhere. I have to go research this and go find this out because I would be interested to go see it. There's a bookstore right down the road from you. Okay. So it's like right on the other side of the four or five from you, which sucks, but that might as well be in Cincinnati.

Yeah. It's like in the Westwood mall, which I think is great that it's in a mall because Amazon has killed all the malls. Yeah. What you going to do? What you going to do? All right. Back to my favorite topic of all time. Apparently scooters. Yes, there is more going on with scooters again. Down in San Diego, these scooters have led to a federal lawsuit claiming the new devices cause discrimination against people with disabilities.

Basically, my complaint when me with my kid in a stroller, unable to get down to the street, I was just being a little bit self-centered because I was worried about me. Think about people with wheelchairs and that's why they're getting sued. People with wheelchairs or that are using crutches or anything like that. Prosthetic legs.

Prosthetic legs. When these idiots dump their scooters right in the middle of a sidewalk or they dump them like on the depression when you're trying to get off a curb, which you have to use if you're using a wheelchair or something like that. You're not going to go try to get air. They've just been dumped everywhere. So they're suing.

Good. Yeah. And one of the guys in the article was who's part of the complaints is like, you know, he was born with one leg and no arms. And so he's got all prosthetic limbs. And he's like, when these people are coming at me on the sidewalk, I can't get out of the way. So it's supremely dangerous for me. Yeah.

Yeah. That's exactly it. Because you're not supposed to be riding them on sidewalks, but that's what people do. As the thing states, it says they've turned sidewalks into a vehicle highway. That does seem to be the case. Yeah. So I hope they, I hope they win. I really hope they win. Me too. Now we never, we make a point of not really talking about porn on, on this podcast because not anymore because you yelled at me too much.

Well, we were getting a little cray cray with it, but this is interesting, not necessarily the porn angle, but just if you think net neutrality isn't a concern. And if you think that the free and open internet can't go away, let me tell you, it's going away in Britain.

It is a hundred percent. There are new rules now that require age verification for porn sites because we have to save the children's and God knows no children are smart enough to figure out ways to get around these things, but it's required. You will now have to, if you are in the UK and you want to watch any porn, you will have to go get a sign up for a system called age ID.

You'll have to register yourself using details from a valid form of ID, such as a driver's license, credit card, or passport. So when you first visit a site protected by age ID, a landing page will appear for the prompt and you have to put in your information. It is a one-time verification with a simple sign on for future access.

These rules, which are part of the digital economy act of 2017 are aimed at making adult content less accessible to anyone under the age of 18. Now, if this is a little bit too weird for you, you don't want to give, say your credit card or driver's license or passport as a form of verification. Then tied to all these sites you visit, which will be stored and tracked somewhere.

Well, it's going to be stored and tracked on the age ID servers. Yeah. So they will know everything that you look at and where you go to. You will be able to get a hold of a verification card known as a ports card from a selection of high street shops that costs around, I don't know, probably the equivalent of 10 bucks. So you can pay 10 bucks to look at porn or just have them track you and know who you are.

The interesting thing about this that really irks me is, I mean, age ID is not a government run agency. It is a private company. Do we have any experience with private companies collecting a lot of data and then not really keeping good hold on it? Yeah, we do. We do. Okay. So I wonder how hard this company lobbied to get this legislation passed for starters, for starters.

And I want to, I want to harken back to the old days of the internet back in the early days when there was a site called adult check. Remember that? I do remember that. Yes. So adult check basically was the same exact thing as age ID. So you would sign up for adult check, you'd get your login, and then you could access different sites.

Well, adult check got taken down by the magazine Perfect 10. I don't know if you remember that magazine. I sure as hell do. And what the claim from Perfect 10 was, is that adult check was facilitating copyright theft.

Right. Because they were responsible for the content that was behind their age verification wall. Now, because they were, they got sued and, you know, Perfect 10 won and Perfect 10 went up against Google, Amazon, Visa, and MasterCard. Of course they didn't win against them, but they could win against a little guy like adult check.

And adult check was not a little guy. Their revenue in 2001 was 320 million. Right. My ex-girlfriend worked at adult check and she said it was just ridiculous. They were printing money, just absolutely printing money. And what, you know, it just got shut down because of that.

And now is age ID going to be held to those same rules? Don't know. It's interesting. I mean, I don't know. Cause it's, it's, it is again in the UK. Right. Interesting thing with Brexit is they're probably not going to be under GDIP. GDPR.

Or GDPR. I don't know where I got GDIP from. So many acronyms, so little time. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see what happens with that. But I just think it's, it's a really uncomfortable step to be taken to, to realize that this, this experiment, this very young, I mean, I know we're 20 years in, but 20 years is nothing.

Very young experiment of the internet is already starting to change in ways that we did not expect it would. Some of us kind of expected that it was going to go this way. It's just, it, it happened a little faster and a little more left of center than we thought. That's for sure. That's for sure. So, and I do want to point out that the adult check thing that happened was here in the U S so it was under, you know, our copyright laws.

And cause it was, it was because of the DMCA and the safe Harbor laws. Yeah. I don't know if like age check or what is it? Age ID. GDIP is giving any money back to the UK government because maybe that's part of it in that because they're going to need all the money they can get once Brexit goes through.

If it goes through. This is true. If it goes through. Now I'm starting to wonder if recode is listening to us because after we have a big rant or something, generally within two to three weeks, they have an article that is basically positing the same questions that we did. So I saw why companies like Lyft and Uber are going public without having profits.

So some of the bullet points here, Lyft filed paperwork to become a public company last week with a valuation of $15 billion, but the ride sharing company is still deeply unprofitable. The company had a net loss of nearly 1 billion last year. To put it another way, Lyft lost $1.47 for every ride it gave in 2018.

Now, Uber's valuation is expected to be anywhere from $76 billion to $120 billion. So why aren't public markets more concerned about these negative balance sheets behemoths? And it's just because we've gotten used to them. IPOs by money losing companies are more common than ever.

In 2018, 81% of U.S. companies were unprofitable in the year leading up to their public offerings, according to data from Jay Ritter, an IPO specialist and finance professor at the University of Florida. Now, here's where it gets fun. Here you go. Here's where it gets really fun. I wonder if this has ever happened before in the history of our financial markets.

Yes, once. In 2000, the year the dot-com bubble burst, plunging the U.S. economy into the biggest recession it's had in our lifetimes. Yep. Yay. That's kind of it. So start stocking up that ramen, people. Start stocking it up, people. Yeah.

No, it's really ridiculous how similar these things are. And, you know, everybody's saying we're two to three years out from a recession anyway. So start planning accordingly and maybe save your money from these overvalued, you know, losers. Yep. Because they're going to be the first against the wall if a recession comes.

You know, people care about things like Walmart and McDonald's in a recession. They don't care about lifts. Time to diversify your portfolio, folks, if you're all tech. Yeah, definitely. Now, my favorite, or one of my favorite, there's so many articles this week that I love. This one's from ZDNet.

Close to half of startups jump on the AI bandwagon without the tech. I think ZDNet listens to our show as well. So you're saying they just put AI in their press releases and then just have people? After examining 13 EU countries with local startups claiming to be active in AI, including the UK, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, in close to 40% of the cases, there was little evidence of AI adding any value.

MMC Ventures says that since 2015, startups claiming to develop AI have constantly raised more capital through investment rounds than software firms, a premise that brings to mind the use of the word blockchain by a number of companies to make their shares jump in 2018, despite having no interest in distributed ledger technologies.

I swear to God, we could go back and find the episode where we said the same damn thing. It's a game. It is a game with tech investing right now. That's all it is. And it's all built on nothing. I swear my like I can't stress enough to everybody out there.

Be careful what you're investing in, if you're even investing at all. Like I'm sticking with the big tech companies that I know and I trust and I would never. All these companies are just printing money from bullshit press releases. It's insane. Yes, it is.

I mean, look how Gimlet just got $230 million. I think I figured that one out, by the way. Remember who was the first investor in startup from the first, like, you know, startup was Gimlet's first show and they got their first investment from someone named, oh, I don't know, Chris Saka.

Now, I also hear through the grapevine that ABC was developing a show based on the show called Startup and Chris Saka was going to be playing himself. Now, what would a billionaire do to make himself look good on TV? Well, he could say that the company he invested in for a couple hundred thousand dollars just had a $320 million exit.

And I bet I bet Chris Saka, billionaire investor who has since retired in the wake of some sexual scandals, has the phone number of a few people over at Spotify to kind of push that deal through to make himself look good on TV. Billionaire games, these are the things people do.

I understand it. And it may sound like ridiculous to people like me and you who, you know, barely have a pot to piss in half the time. But this is the shit that these guys do. And this is all this stuff is. It's all it is. It's a game. Yeah. And I just couldn't leave this one alone.

Airbnb, which has been one of my favorite companies to complain about for a long time now, is figuring out their own exit strategy from the problems that they're getting themselves into by basically becoming a hotel company. Well, kind of a hotel company. Kind of. Yeah, they bought hotel tonight.

They're investing in hotel spaces. They bought hotel tonight. I just see this in almost exactly the same route as Amazon, which was destroy the competition, then open up a bookstore. Yeah, kill a market and then kill a market and rebuild it and then rebuild it with the same system that was there before.

Yeah. So how's this disruption really working for us? It isn't. It's destroying the old companies, replacing them with the new ones. Long. The king is dead. Long live the king. Exactly. Security.

We're back this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast. The Cyber Wire is a free, community-driven, cybersecurity news service based in Maryland. Dave is also a co-host of the new Hacking Humans podcast, along with Joe Kerrigan, where they take on social engineering. Hello, hello. Hi, Dave. Hello.

Good to be back. Got a little bit of quick follow-up here on the Ring law enforcement story that we covered back in 321, or as we like to say, 321 Contact. I used to love that show. Oh, so good. So good. Oh, man. The Bloodhound Gang.

Yeah. All about the Bloodhound Gang. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, at SpeedQuest2 over on Twitter sent this in, and this is a link to the support page over at Ring about email requests for video recordings from law enforcement. We're going to put this in the show notes, so if you want to go check it out. But there are very few options you have here.

You can share your videos, which we'll just share it straight away. You can review the videos before you send them to them, or you can do nothing. And you can also unsubscribe from future requests, should you choose. So, very straightforward stuff, and Ring at least has a decent page up to walk you through all of the options if you do get one of those emails.

Excellent. Good to know. Yeah, I still wonder, is there an op? With the take no action, it says your identity and information will stay anonymous, but do you still show up as a pin on the map? I wonder. I'm guessing. I mean, how can your location stay anonymous if they're trying to track criminals in your area?

Yeah. Yeah, that was always the head scratcher. It makes no sense at all, how your location is anonymous. Right. Even if you don't even appear as a pin, you would still just kind of, they know where you are. The state makes no sense. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Yeah. Now, my next quick story here comes from NBCSanDiago.com. And it is leaked documents show the U.S. government tracking journalists and immigration advocates through a secret database. And this is talking about how basically us and the Mexicans are tracking the people who are covering that big caravan that was coming up to the border.

Yeah, it's the scary caravan. Yes. We're all going to die. It's a scaravan. It's a scaravan. Right. I like it. Yeah. So somebody at Homeland actually gave these guys a copy of some of the database and SharePoint application data and screenshots that they were using.

And, you know, this is kind of unexpected. I mean, it's expected. Unethical? I don't even know if it's unethical. What they've done with the data is unethical. Well, they've been detaining photojournalists for hours and sending them back to the U.S. when they get to Mexico and things like that.

They're harassing them and stuff like that. And they just want to know, you know, what have you seen? What are you covering? You know, you know, show me your papers. Show me your pictures. Documents, please. Yes. Show me your papers. But we kind of, you know, I'm not surprised that this is being done in any way, shape or form.

Are you not surprised? I'm not surprised. I'm disappointed. We are definitely, I mean, it's difficult not to see attacks on media at all fronts. And media seems to be all we have left in terms of finding out what's not fake news anymore.

Well, I just wanted to point out the fact that China is not the only one with a database. I think the word I would use is chilling. Yeah, it's not what you want to see happen in what is supposedly the United States of America. Yeah. It was interesting to me in reading this article that one of the photographers was talking about her trips back and forth and getting detained.

And it seemed as though some of the border agents were sort of let her in on it when they were saying, hey, your name is flagged for us to do this and this and this. We're not really 100% sure why, you know, we're going to do what we're asked.

But it didn't seem like they were necessarily adversarial. They were doing what they were required to do. Speaking of chilling, they were just following orders. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they seem sympathetic to, I mean, they were said to her, you know, here's the deal.

Every time you come through here, this is going to happen to you. So plan your time accordingly. That's quite generous of them, I suppose. Yeah. It's not what you want. And there's just, there's so many things to be outraged at at the moment. This is just somewhere in the list, isn't it?

Yeah. And we have this, this odd situation with our rights when it comes to border crossings. And you can understand there are legitimate reasons for having them, but the flip side is you get stuff like this if you're slowing down journalists.

It's an abuse of power. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just like it's, it's done in, it's done in conjunction with the Mexican government. So it's like, we're going to build a database and Mexico's going to pay for it and Mexico's going to put it out on an unencrypted server. Yeah.

Right. If only. Oh boy. All right. And then we've got the big Facebook news pivot as it were after, you know, years of not giving a shit about our privacy of the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg made it clear on Wednesday that privacy is Facebook's future.

A possible future. It's part of their future. A privacy focused vision for social networking. Now, I don't think we need to go point, point, point in here because everybody in the world, there has been more digital ink spilled on this than ever before.

So what I will say is I don't think this should come as a surprise. I think we have, Facebook has hit the wall of growth and we are in a position now where the only thing that matters for public companies is growth.

We can debate whether that's right or wrong. Obviously, it's wrong. So there's no debate. But that's the way it is. And Facebook cannot grow anymore. And so they have to do something different. And he the only thing left for Facebook would be to get into China. And that is not going to happen.

That was the only portal for growth left for Facebook. So they took a long, hard look at China and what is going on in China. WeChat. It has taken over the entire country. It is what everybody does everything through. And it is more than just a social network.

It is in private communications between yourself and who you want to communicate with. And the Chinese government. And the shopping is done through it. Payments are done through it. Everything's done through it. And Zuckerberg went, huh, guess we need to do that here. And that's what I think this is all about.

It's strange. I mean, I saw this come across. I read Zuckerberg's note, which I think is around 3,000 words. And when I finished reading it, I just stopped and thought to myself, what the hell was that? I mean, it seemed completely tone deaf.

Yep. It seemed like word salad. And he didn't really say anything. Everything is couched in the terms of saying, over the next few years, we're going to look into this. I think this was finely combed by PR and legal.

It was written by PR and legal. Yeah, to the point of destroying, I mean, just pulling out any real thing in there other than a general, hey, you know that whole thing about how we wanted to combine all the backends on stuff? We really want to do that, but we're going to do it for your privacy. Yep. It's a way to skirt around regulation because they're going to run into real issues with the EU if they try and merge all of these backends.

That's already come out that the EU is already looking at that going, we talked to you about this already. We find you a couple times, and now you're rolling back on another thing you said you weren't going to do? Mm-hmm. Hmm. Okay. Yeah. I mean, the only thing I pulled from this, and guys, tell me if I'm off base here, is that they're going to be focusing on some sort of chat thing that's end-to-end encrypted.

But it says nothing about continuing to track you. It says nothing about all of the things that we complain about pretty much every week here about Facebook. It doesn't address any of those things when it comes to privacy. Well, again, what strikes me that they're doing is literally WeChat, except Facebook is the Chinese government.

Right. Well, the thing about it also is it's like, you know, yeah, we're going to lose a couple vectors for advertising targeting, but we have more than enough already, and we don't really even need the subject or the contents of your message to know how to target you.

We have everything on you already. Yes, we no longer care if you're posting it publicly because we've got you. Yeah, we don't need to see what you're saying. We just need to know you're saying it, and if you're saying it, we know how to target you. So it doesn't really matter to us. Well, and we know where you're saying it, and presumably they still know who you're saying it to.

Right. Right. Yeah. And we know where they are. It's all metadata. They can do everything through metadata, just like the NSA. They've got everything that they needed publicly, so now there's an outcry for we don't like this anymore, we want privacy. So, okay, you can have privacy, but you need to do everything through us.

That's what they want to build now. Now, the thing about this, you know, there is a lot of talk about, you know, is this going to be an add-on to the current Facebook model, or is this going to take over the Facebook model? And, you know, you can talk to your blue in the face, because a lot of people have. I think some people have passed out from talking about it.

Everybody at Recode is on oxygen right now. Yeah. I mean, Walt Mossberg was already on oxygen. Let's be fair about that. But, yeah, zing! The thing about this whole, what drives me nuts about this is, when was the last time Facebook actually made anything that they promised on?

We still don't have a delete history button. Can Facebook actually do anything anymore? Are they too big to pivot or have enough engineers who haven't, like, you know, stormed out after they've vested? Are they ever going to actually get to anything here? Because, honestly, when was the last time they published?

I love the fact that, in addition to, I mean, unintended consequences of posting this giant screed was the fact that it was brought back to everybody's attention that Mark Zuckerberg built himself a delete for all of his Facebook messages, but never gave it to everybody else to have that.

Yeah, he built it in, like, a weekend. Yeah. And so he was able to delete his entire messenger history, but none of us can. Yeah. Well, let me ask you this. What if someone else, let's say, what if Apple were to, I mean, Apple already has iMessage, which is end-to-end encrypted.

It has a payment functionality in it with iPays built into it now. What if this was a play that someone like Apple made? Would you be comfortable with that? Yes. As long as Tim Cook is still running things. I think I probably would, too. Tim Apple, you mean.

I use. We'll talk about that. Tim Apple. We'll talk about that. But I use both of those things all the time. Primarily, all of my personal correspondence with people I try to do through text messaging and not through Messenger or anything like that. Right. I use Apple Pay anywhere that they've got it.

Yeah. It's convenient, and I trust them. Apple has been remarkably consistent about security and privacy. Facebook has not. I know that Apple considers themselves a hardware company, but it'd sure be nice if somebody that we trusted leapt in to do this sort of stuff. Yeah.

I can't think of a company that I trust less than Facebook to do this sort of thing. You just could have left out to do this sort of thing. I can't think of a company I trust less. Yes, you're right. At all. To do anything. That's the thing. And I just don't see them being able to keep the momentum and move people to some other sort of system with these claims of how great it's going to be.

Because I think once you get rid of the timeline and the public aspect of Facebook, there is no more Facebook and no need to be there. Because these things exist in other sources that we trust more. Yeah, you still have your account. Well, yeah, because I still like the timeline.

And I like seeing Dave's updates. I see Dave's updates. I would not know about so many of these things if it were not for Facebook and the social timeline. I like the social timeline still. You stand by the fact that the company that you trust the least out of anybody you still use. I would never give them my credit card.

I would never give them any personal information other than what they already have. I use all the clear features that I possibly can use whenever they are available. And I don't post, you know, super personal things. It's how I get a lot of my news. It's how I share Star Wars Galaxy's Edge is opening on this date.

And it's fine for all of that. I would never use them for private communications that I expected to remain private. I hate using Messenger and I hate when people write me on Messenger. Yeah. I look at it as, as we've talked about here before, I look at it as smoking.

I compare it to smoking is that I'm a Facebook user in the same way that someone was a smoker. It's really hard to quit. You know you got to. You know you want to. You know you will eventually. Yeah. But not today. Right. And where is the non-creepy version of Facebook?

How has there not been, I mean, I guess maybe Google Plus was attempting to do that. Obviously, we know what Google does with information. But it seems to me like somebody could get in front of a bunch of VCs and say, I want to do what Facebook does in a non-creepy way. We're going to sell ads, but it's not going to be tracked the way that Facebook does.

Give me some money. And somebody would say, yes. You'd think. And if we could port our information over, or even if we couldn't. I always feel like. There's so much desire. I think people, and that's where we are. People hate being on Facebook, but there is no alternative. And there are lots of things that we enjoy about Facebook that we would hate to lose.

I think Apple has remained gung shy since they put out Ping. Ping was a good attempt. It was their attempt at doing it, but they tied it to music, which was the biggest mistake that they made. If they just would have put it out there as a social product, I think we'd all be on it right now. What do you think about this, though?

What if all the VCs do not want to fund that because they're scared of Facebook? Or because they're heavily vested in Facebook. Yes, that was my second point. If they want to create a company that may one day be bought by Facebook, but they're also investing in this other company that is supposed to be a Facebook killer, then that model has gone away.

So Facebook could just be strong-arming VCs saying, you're not allowed to invest in a company that would be coming after us one day. This gets us right back to something that we've been screaming about on the show for quite a long time now, and the FTC is supposedly going to take a look at, which is the fact that we have virtual monopolies.

You can't go up against Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon. You can't. You cannot compete with them. And for multitudes of reasons. They have the most guns. They're probably controlling the VCs. They've got locks on all these things, and they're not letting go.

And somebody's going to have to let them loosen up a little bit if we're ever going to get a viable competitor in there. Which means we're probably never going to get a viable competitor in there until Facebook dies with the heat death of the universe. I'm going to start using WeChat. I'd rather the Chinese government know what I'm talking about than suck.

There you go. Oh, man. So I found another interesting article, which comes back to something we've also talked about in the past, which is, is anything ever deleted? And now Facebook has decided, and the name of this article is a little puff piece here, but, and hat tip to a friend of the show, Chris Lockhead, for this one.

Facebook is dying, and here's the proof. No, it's not. It's over on Medium. The only takeaway here is that Facebook has decided to double their grace period from 14 days to a month. Keeps people on the books longer.

It does keep people on the books longer. That's exactly what I was thinking. It's like, oh, that just shows we have more users for longer, and we're not having a problem. This is the equivalent of the Mormons rolling dead people into their books. Increases their numbers. Or the FCC's polling, you know, same thing.

Well, also, if the, you know, the tobacco companies find out that you're trying to quit smoking, and they start mailing you cartons of cigarettes. Yeah. Yeah. It's the way it goes. No, so it's not surprising at all that they're doing this. It's definitely, again, it's a numbers game with the investors.

Of course it is. And they also know that they're going to beat you down. We have to always remember that Facebook employs almost as many psychologists as they do programmers. They know that this is going to work. Yeah. They know this is going to work for a lot of people. Like, you can white knuckle it through 30 days.

You can increase it to 60, and you keep getting those notifications about how your friend Billy Joe Bob just did that, and you've got to go look. And boom, you're right back in. I'm sure it's like a small percentage increase, but it's a percentage increase on people that will stay. Right. That's why they do it. And soon it'll be 60 days, then 90 days.

And after a year, we'll say it's okay. Yeah. And another little bit of not being able to delete anything on the internet. I talked about my 500px account a while ago when I tried to delete it, and I had to send in an email. I just, as we're recording this, I just got a follow-up from 500px.

Now, I would like to say that I put my first request to delete my account in on February 14th. Today is March 8th. Hi there. We have received your ticket for your request for account deletion. However, we are currently experiencing a higher-than-usual volume of support requests, which may cause a delay in the response time.

Additionally, due to the sensitive nature of this matter, we are thoroughly reviewing each request individually. We recognize that this is inconvenient and apologize for the delay. Thank you for your patience. Please monitor your inbox for further updates. Thank you, Suzanne. So by 500px standards, Facebook is positively quick at deleting your account.

Well, we're still under the month. You know, we're at three weeks now. We're at three weeks. They're on high volume, Jason. High volume. I guarantee you this won't get done in the next week. Yeah. We'll follow up next week. I wonder if any of this runs afoul of GDPR, including the Facebook thing.

I mean, the GDPR has notification time limits, but I wonder if they have the right-to-be-forgotten rules. But I wonder if... I have to check and see if there's a time constraint on the right-to-be-forgotten. It probably says something like reasonable or something like that, but yeah, I'll have to look into that.

I swear, we're getting to the point now where I would almost consider moving to Europe for a year to just delete all my accounts and make sure everything gets deleted and then I can move on back. 500px is based in Europe, so yeah, well, they would know. Maybe if I just send them, you know, a threat for a GDPR, you know, ting, ding, then I can get something done or publicly shame them on Twitter.

I don't know. Maybe, no, you know what? I have publicly shamed them on Twitter and it got me nothing. That used to be the only way to get customer support, and now even that's gone. Now even that doesn't work much anymore, yeah. Oh, man. All right. Well, let's talk a little bit about Alphabet's house of cards companies.

Google's parent company, Alphabet, announced something called Chronicle about a year ago, which would be a cybersecurity division, and they have launched their first commercial product, which is a global telemetry platform called Backstory. It's a bit like Google Photos, but for business network security. Okay.

So you dump everything in Google Photos. They structure it, recognize faces, they give you themes, they store it in the cloud and allow you to understand it. Backstory works in a similar way, storing huge volumes, petabytes of data on a company's tech infrastructure from employees' devices to domain name servers, and then this can be easily brought up in a series of poorly designed UI graphs.

Does it say that in the article? No, I was just a little commentary there. Brian just put a little color on that one. Okay. As a longtime user of Google Analytics, I have a feeling I can speak with some authority about their shitty UI. Yeah.

So, yeah, what do you think about this, Dave? Have you guys talked about this much? It seems to be a pretty all-encompassing attempt to take over all your company's cybersecurity needs. Yeah. I spoke to a couple people who were out at RSA this year. I did not go. We had some – some of our folks were out there, but I stayed back this year.

And this generated a lot of excitement and buzz as much just that we have something from Google in this domain. And so when the 800-pound gorilla comes in and says, hey, I'm joining your party, everybody looks around and takes notice.

So I think there was interest and excitement based on that. I guess the bottom line is, how much of your information do you trust with a company that's a spinoff from Google? Yeah. Well, they do try to address that a little bit, and they stress that they are distinctly not Google.

Right. They definitely are. But they have separate legal and privacy agreements, which I'm hoping somebody is going over with a fine-toothed comb at the moment. And they do argue that they have a goldmine of historical information on security threats, as they've seen just about everything, which does seem to be a plus for them.

But, yeah, it does, again, come down to your comfort level with Google's already got everything. Am I going to give them my entire business? Well, and this isn't aimed at, like you say, this isn't aimed at consumers. This is an enterprise-level kind of thing. So anybody who's going to engage with this is going to do their due diligence.

And Google knows that, or Chronicle knows, I suppose, that nobody's going to engage with them without the right assurances from them that this is going to work as advertised and they're going to protect the data. I mean, I will say, on the one hand, Google's been pretty good about not being breached.

I was going to say, you know what? When it comes to trust from companies, I trust Google a hell of a lot more than Facebook. I mean, I trust Google. Google's just under Apple. And actually, Google has historically been extremely good for companies, just not so much for us personal consumers.

Yeah. I don't know. They've been pretty good for me. I've got no real complaints with Google for what they've done in the past. I mean, I know what they do is, you know, fairly creepy, but I just, I don't really have that many problems with Google at all. One thing I would... Except for their design. Yeah, their design's horrible.

The only thing that would make me feel much better about Google is, I love the fact that they put in the ability to delete your histories from their servers completely. But I do want to know if that delete is really delete, because we know it's not for a lot of companies.

So if Google comes out and says, when you delete that history, it is gone, then I almost am totally okay with Google again, weirdly. You know why I believe them? Because if they got busted for that, that would be a really big problem. I mean, I know they've done, had a few issues, but that was just like turning on, you know, your search history by default back in the day.

Yeah. But I have gone through, I've turned on search, like, you know, allow search history for like a little while with my Android phone just to get some stuff done. Gone in, turned it off, and then tried to download my search histories, like came back empty, turned it back on. Because normally you would think that, oh, well, if he turns it back on, then all the history will still be there again.

Nope. Did a few searches and then got it back. Well, that's because visibility's just set to zero there, Jason. I know, but at least if they're doing it, they're doing it well. But I have a tendency to believe Google when they say they delete stuff. Because if they got caught, man, it would just kill them. Well, I certainly believe in more than Facebook. That's for sure. Yeah. Well, on the enterprise level, the companies who'd be engaging with this, because this is a product that's, I don't know what it costs, but I'm sure it starts in the six figures, I would imagine.

A company that's going to engage with Google on this is going to say, when you delete stuff, prove it. And Google's going to have to show proof. Show their work. Yeah. Show, yeah, we don't. And so I'm optimistic about this.

It certainly has gotten a lot of attention. I think it's interesting. If it does what it says it does, pretty cool tool. Yep. Yeah, definitely. I've never played with Google Photos, but everybody I know that uses it says it's pretty much amazing. Oh, I love it. I love it. You do? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I've just started, that's where I, that's become the bucket for all of the family photos. I created an account that's called, basically, I can't remember exactly what it's called, but it's like Bittner Family Photos or something like that. Oh, and what was the password? Hmm? It's just checking your offset there, Dave.

Like everything, one, two, three, four, five. So. Change my luggage! But it's a place to put not just my photos, but the whole family's photos, because I'm betting on the fact that Google's not going anywhere anytime soon.

But the searchability. All of your complaints, Jason, about all the various different things you've been using to put your photos into. Right. The searchability is just amazing. Being able to say, show me pictures of my dog in the snow, and up comes all the pictures of my dog in the snow. You know, like.

Sold! You got me, right there. That's all I need, pictures of my dog in the snow. I said to say dog, yeah. I know where your soft spot is, Jason. Yeah, you pitched that sale perfectly. Right. You hit my little bicycle spot. My legs are already going back and forth really fast. There you go. All right.

Well, finally, I've got a story that isn't have anything to do with security, but I do want to try to start ending these segments on a high note, as it were. President Trump praised his good friend in a recent meeting as a Tim Apple. Yeah.

We appreciate it very much, Tim Apple, said Trump. He had previously noted in the meeting that Mr. Apple had become a friend of his. Now, all praise to Tim Cook again. I'm liking Tim Cook more and more every single day. He is in on the joke, and he changed his Twitter name to Tim Apple single.

Yeah. Yeah. There's also been an image making the rounds of the whole executive team from Apple, and it has Tim Apple and, you know. Elon, Tesla. Well, it has basically everybody else from Apple, but with what they do in the company.

So, there's, you know, I don't know. Johnny Ive would be, you know, Johnny Design and, you know, things like that. It's pretty funny. Sounds like a pretty cool mob, you know, name thing going on there. Hey, Tim Apple, what do you want, Johnny Design? Right. Strangely appropriate.

Yeah. And on that note. Yeah. Good times. Good times. There was another, actually, I think it was not completely unrelated to that. I think it, gosh, who was it? I think it was General Nakasone at RSA this year.

A reporter asked him, how do you feel about the President of the United States using an unsecured phone? And he paused and he said, next question, please. That about says it all, doesn't it? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. All right, gents. All right. If the world should still be here next week, we will be back. Right. And if not, I'll see you on Facebook. Apps and doodads. Jason, do you remember the company iHome? Yes, I do. There you can find them in every hotel.

Exactly. I was going to get to the hotel bit. They were kind of the first company that recognized, okay, we don't really have CDs and people aren't really listening to the radio that much anymore. And they have these devices, these little pocket devices that have all their music. So let's make an alarm clock that you can plug that into. It'll charge it and you can then listen to music from your iPhone when you wake up.

Smart. Very smart. And all the hip, cool hotels, you know, around the world bought them up because they thought they would be great. What they didn't think about doing was ever following up with that and staying with the changes and getting the adapters so your lightning ports could start to work because all of that stuff they forgot to do.

So none of the upkeep ever occurred with the hotels. But I've had one for a long time and I finally just kind of got over it because it's too big and I don't need it. Well, you can't, you get the 40 pin connector so you don't have your old iPod laying around that you can plug into it. Well, I had the adapter, but it ended up putting my iPhone like seven feet into the air.

Yeah. When you were charging with it. Stacking adapters. Yeah, stacking adapters. So I was looking around for something new. As we talked about, you know, I would have loved to have gotten the Alexa thing that they have for a night or for an alarm clock, but it has a camera in it. So no.

Yeah. And I decided, well, I've got all these devices that I need to charge. And even my iHome thing only had two USB ports on it. So I did a little Googling around and I found the, or Amazon-ing around, I suppose. And I found the OlerBR charging docking, charging dock suitable for Apple Watch Series 4 slash 3 slash 2 slash 1.

AirPod slash iPhone XS slash iPhone XS Max slash iPhone XR slash X slash 8 slash 8 plus slash 7 slash 7 plus slash 6S slash 6X plus slash iPad Black. There you go. It's a lot of words for a small, tiny stand that is built to kind of hold a phone, a watch, and AirPods.

Yeah, AirPods, yeah. And it works wonderfully. And I got, you know, I got a four USB charging thing that sits under the bed. So I've got an extra cable that's there for my iPad, which I end up just like putting on the side of my bed anyways when I'm done reading. Works perfectly. The watch is a suitable enough night light for me slash clock to see what time it is.

And I like that it goes off and stays completely dark. And I just have to tap it if I want to see what time it is. And it charges everything wonderfully at night. It's perfect. It's all I need. There you go. I don't like all the cables. I was, you know, the charging pad from Apple is supposed to alleviate all of this.

But yeah, charging pads have not been working for me, as we know from previous experience. Right. But it's not Apple's. So once Apple's gets here, but Apple's is like a year and a half late. Now, I don't want to get all that crap because I do have a charging pad and I don't really need it. But I've been using this one for a very long time.

It is the Spigen S330 designed for Apple Watch stand with aluminum body for Apple Watch Series 4 slash Series 3 slash Series 2 slash Series 1 left off slash 44 millimeter slash 42 millimeter slash 40 millimeter slash 38 millimeter dash patent pending. Now, this was just a nice, elegant little stand for your Apple Watch.

And I love it. It's clean. The design is nice. It sits well. It's like well balanced. It's only 12 bucks. Gets the job done. Yeah. And I like yours, but I just don't need it. Well, it's perfect for me. If you don't need all that connectivity, then yeah, don't get it.

But for me, it has replaced my alarm clock and it's perfect. Cool. Good for you. I don't know. Maybe I'll get it. Maybe. Maybe I'll get some less. I don't know. Because I mean, the problem is my iPhone is in the bed at night with me because it plays podcasts and audio books because I need some noise to fall asleep to.

And I think if it's on the stand, I'd have to crank it up too loud. But like my roommate might hear it. So that's the only issue. But it would be nice to have all three charging at once. It's very nice. Yeah. All right. So I had a little spillage on my desk yesterday and yeah, knocked over a beer.

Not good. Not good at all. Because I usually have everything in bottles with caps on them. I never have anything on my desk. And for some reason, there was a beer on my desk. Oh, it was because I was thirsty. That's right. And I went to move something and it got knocked over and I just, you know, it was a mess.

It was a total mess. So I'm like, okay, let me Amazon around and find me a cup holder for my desk. I'm like, how tacky and white trash that is, but I'm going to do it anyway. Wait, isn't that what the CD thing? Oh, yeah. Nobody has CDs anymore. I know that's what it used to be for on my PC.

So I got the Kimimoto ATV cup holder for Can-Am, Spider drink holder, RZR water bottle holder, Universal for Harley, Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, Rollator, Walker, wheelchair, push chair, transport chair, bar. Okay. But it also works on a desk because they have a picture of it on a desk.

And it was, you know, 13 bucks and I can stick it on the side of my desk so like my stuff won't fall off anymore. It says it holds a maximum water bottle of 20 ounces, but I'm sure it'll hold a beer bottle as well. But in doing that, I was, I was reminded that I needed a new water bottle, like a smaller one.

And I got the Takea 500, the Takea 50,041 Originals vacuum insulated stainless steel water bottle, 24 ounce black, 24 ounce. They really want to drive home that it's 24 ounces. It's 24 ounces, people. I have the 32 ounce Takea water bottle and it is awesome, but it is massive.

Did I bring that one with me to Canada? Did you see that one? I think you did, yes. It was a giant monster that I don't think I ever used because all we drank up there was beer. But you know, what are you going to do? It's 23 bucks, but these are my favorite water bottles. They are just, they're really comfy. They got a big hook on them or a big like loop to hold them.

They're really great. If you, if you need a new water bottle, check them out. They're really cool. Very stylish, I think. Now in honor of Keith Flint from the Prodigy's passing last week, a lot of my music friends on the Book of the Face were sharing this link.

It's pretty amazing. This guy, Jim Pavloff, basically has reverse engineered the track Smack My Bitch Up in Ableton Live. And he shows all the samples, how it was put together. It is just stunning. It's unbelievable. My jaw was on the floor when I watched this.

It was like, it was like nine minutes of just insanity. Yeah. Wow. I mean, and he nailed it. He just nailed it. It sounds exactly like the original track. He's done a whole series of these. I've watched quite a few of them, but this one I thought was definitely the best. Yeah. The only problem with Ableton is just that interface.

Oh, it is horrible, but everybody uses it now. It's crazy. I could never get into it. I just never liked Ableton. I don't know why. I went straight from Sony's Acid to Logic. So that's my, my path. Oh, you never did Pro Tools? Oh, I did a lot of Pro Tools too, but Pro Tools was never great for manipulating samples.

And most of the music that I did was sample based. Gotcha. Also, Pro Tools, ugly and expensive. And you have to use that damn key. Eat that key. I think, didn't think, I think they've gotten rid of that. Nope. Nope. I bought it a year ago and you still had to have the damn key.

There you go. Well, in other news, obviously we're podcasting still, which means we're not making any money. And I'm still a part-time stay-at-home dad at the moment. So I was kind of bemoaning that fact recently to a friend of mine about how I felt like I kind of don't have too much going on in my professional career at the moment.

And it's fine. I'm really enjoying doing the parenting thing, but I do miss kind of being out in the world. And then, as if by magic, because Facebook is not listening to us, this link came across in my Facebook feed about how much money a stay-at-home parent should be making.

It's pretty intense. It's a new survey done by salary.com. And they say the average stay-at-home parent should be earning an annual salary of $162,000 a year in 2018. They did the math on it. They determined the average work week for stay-at-home mom or dad is 96 hours. And then they asked thousands of parents how much time per week they spend on different tasks, from cleaning the house to helping their kids with homework.

They then calculated the total sum using the site's Salary Wizard tool. And based on responses from real parents, they aggregated the salaries at 34 different jobs that stay-at-home parents take on, including janitor, schoolteacher, event planner, staff nurse, dietician, laundry manager, and even CEO.

So they really gave it a real go. How can you put the CEO in there? That's a stretch to, I think, bump the number. I don't, I mean, if we're talking tech CEO, then it should be, what, half a million, 25 million per year? 25 million, yeah. Yeah. So the 2018 figure marks an increase of about $5,000 from the previous year.

And it's been going up steadily year by year. Shocking because everything is more expensive now. And we're getting paid less and less. And the interesting thing they found, too, which made me feel a little less not alone. It's not the only thing on the rise, the money. They found that 11 million parents who chose to stay home with their kids, 7% of those were fathers.

Up from 4% in 1989. So there's a few more of us out there. Yep. You're a growing army. Yes. And then, just because I thought we didn't have enough stories, but we always do, and I just love this one. For the first time, scientists find jellyfish-like animal with a transient anus.

Okay. I'm tempted to use transient anus for a show title, but I don't think we will. No, we will not. Veto. Executive veto on transient anus. But this is actually interesting. Compared to other parts of anatomy, the anus is underappreciated. But without a way to expel waste from the body, all the work that takes place at other stages of digestion wouldn't be good for much.

Scientists now have a better understanding of how our anus has evolved after identifying the first transient anus in jellyfish, according to new scientists. So, the warty comb jelly does not have a visible anus most of the time. You discovered it only forms one when it needs to take a dump.

It's like an ass TARDIS. It just shows up when the doctor needs to come out. Yes. As waste builds up, the creature's gut expands until it touches the outer layer known as the epidermis. At this point, they fuse together and form an orifice where there wasn't one before. Waste is then disposed, and once they're done with their business and put down their newspaper, the hole closes up again, and the gut and the epidermis go back to being two separate layers.

Awesome. Oh, that's kind of gross. Yeah, right? That is so gross. Okay. Well, transient anus, it is. Okay. And because I didn't want to wait for the next moron of the week, because it's going to be a while, and I think this story is going to be everywhere.

It's not. It already is, man. Oh, it made it. Nah, damn. When I first got it, it was only in the Toronto Sun and one other place, and I had to wait for confirmation on it. But billionaire diamond trader Ehud Araylanis is dead.

He's a 65-year-old billionaire, and he died in a Paris hospital because he was getting a penis enlargement. Now, he's a moron of the week because if you're a billionaire, who cares? I mean, you have a billion dollars.

You can have anything you want. Why would a bigger schlong make any difference in the world? I guess the sports car and the yacht and the private plane did not do it. Yeah. He felt it needed to be bigger. Oh, well, sometimes karma just takes over. I was going to say, sometimes karma bites you in the ass, but he got bit somewhere else, didn't he?

Karma bit him in his transient anus. Closing shout outs! I hope in post-production, Jason is putting in the sad In Memoriam music here, because here we go again. Breaking news as of this morning, Airwolf star Jan Michael Vincent has been found dead at 74 after suffering a cardiac arrest.

Aw, man. I love the Airwolf. Yeah, all of our childhood is going away. And as the entire world knows by now, unfortunately, Alex Trebek has announced he has stage 4 pancreatic cancer. That's not good. This is what my uncle actually has, which I've been talking to you off the air about, Jason.

He's managed to go a year, but he's in, this is final days at this point, because there is no cure and it is very deadly. So, sad news for Alex Trebek. You know, Jeopardy! has always been one of my mainstays, part of my life. You know, my wife and I, one of the last things that we did before we had our kids, we went to a couple tapings, which was a lot of fun.

We announced our son's, our son's announcement thing was a Jeopardy! screenshot that we tweaked around and played with, you know, made questions up and all that sort of stuff. And actually, crazily enough, as we were giving birth, Jeopardy! happened to be on in the delivery room.

So, the first thing my son ever saw was Alex Trebek. I don't think he'll remember that, but I sure do. And, yeah, very, very sad news. Why was the TV on in the delivery room to the, you know... Because you don't really know when it's actually going to come, and you're pretty bored sitting there waiting, so, you know, Jeopardy! was on.

Okay, okay. And, you know, all of a sudden, it's go time, and nobody went for the remote, so it was okay. Okay, that's what I was wondering. I'm like, you're sitting there, I see the head, uh, what is giving birth? Yeah. And more sad news, but not as sad news.

This is for LA folks. So, actually, I think this show's been syndicated all over, but, uh, K-Rock's Kevin and Bean are finally breaking up after 30 years. I remember when they first got it, when they first started, when they were a brand new show. That was prime K-Rock listening years for me.

Yeah, January 1990 is when they started. I started listening to them in 95 when I first moved here, so I'll have, like, you know, by the time they quit, I'll have 25 years of them under my belt. Nice. Yeah, well, I mean, I haven't listened to K-Rock in 20 plus years or so, but it is sad to hear.

They were definitely a mainstay here. That's the, you know, the one thing that my Alexa was really good for when I was in Chicago was I would get up in the morning and I would listen to K-Rock. I would listen to Kevin and Bean. So, I've listened to them, you know, not every day, but off and on for 25 years. So, it's time, 30 years.

I mean. It's a long time. Hell, after six, I'm about ready to dump your ass, but, uh, you know, it goes that way sometimes. Yeah, maybe I'll move to England too. Yeah. Maybe I'll move to Toronto and you move to England. So, let's end on a high note this week. Okay. HIV has been reported cured in a second patient.

Now, this is 12 years after the first patient. Yes. Which is a long time, but it's good news, and I believe you have some more good news, Brian. Well, apparently, there is now a third patient that has been reportedly cured of HIV. There was a 12-year gap, as you mentioned, between the first and second, but only two days between the second and third.

Now, nobody is saying outright that this is a cure. They're describing it as long-term remission, but looking pretty good. It is also a very specific, like, you have to find somebody that has the same kind of bone marrow that doesn't have these specific genetic markers. But, hey, now that everybody's done their 23andMe spitting a tube thing, we can find those people pretty easy, right?

Yeah, no doubt. Yeah. Oh, man. So, good news there. Until next time, I'm Brian Shulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Toss us a buck a month and we'll love you forever. If you'd like to give a one-time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar.

Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 327. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy. I'm Jan Michael Vincent. I keep watching Airwolf on USA because in January, something very special will happen.

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