331: Flat Bubbles

This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is sponsored by Privacy.com. It's like a burner phone for credit cards. To sign up for free and get a $5 credit, go to Privacy.com slash GOG. That's $5 free to spend anywhere by just signing up. Privacy.com slash GOG. Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. This morning has been kind of a mix between I Love Lucy and a series of unfortunate things or whatever that show was called. A series of unfortunate events, I believe. Events. That's it. Yes, they have been. It has been eventful.

Lemony Snicket. Yeah, I watched the first episode of that. I couldn't get into it. Yeah, me either. I like the books, but not so much the show. Yeah, Jim Carrey kind of turns me off now with all the stuff that he's done. And we worked on his website when I was at a former company, and he was just a loon. Looney Tunes.

So, of course, the gardeners come at 7 a.m., which means the dogs can't go out to poop. And Dino can't hold it, so he poops on the floor, which is a very rare event. So pick up the poop, put it in the toilet. Toilet overflows. All the rugs are gone. Got to do the, you know, basically my bathroom smells like a West Virginia rest stop right now.

And so I throw everything in the washing machine. Forget to hit start. Run back in. Clean everything. Do all. Just get everything going. Then, you know, I have to get dinner ready for tonight, so I get my instant pot black beans going. Those turn out like crap, so I have to redo those. But while I'm redoing those, I forget that I burned the rice because I was in cleaning the bathroom.

And the dogs still haven't gone for a walk, and Bam is like just, you know, walking around going, oh, you need to go outside. And then, of course, I have auto updates on on my Mac, and then the update hangs my iMac for like an hour. And it's just been a fun morning. Everything that can go wrong has. Murphy has. Murphy has graced me with his presence today.

Are you coming around to the millennial viewpoint that adulting is hard? Well, I've always known that. But today was just one of those days where if it can go wrong, it shall. So hopefully this thing will record because you never know anymore. That is true. You never know.

So I got a little digital Shabbat follow-up from last week. This is funny because I don't think I've ever needed any reason whatsoever to contact you on a Saturday the entire time we've known each other. And this Saturday, I did. Yep. And you texted me. I did. But I did not expect a response. I knew it was going to happen, but I figured I'd just throw it out into the ether so you would get it whenever you got it.

Yeah, and I did. And you know what? Because I had my phone on me. And I deleted the email app, and I deleted Slack from my phone completely. So I cannot actually use email or Slack on my phone. Right. Fantastic. Oh, my God. It's really hard, though, to get that muscle memory down.

Like, whenever I go someplace, I always have my phone in my pocket, but then I put it on the table just in case. If I'm watching TV, I put it on my little side tray just in case. There's nothing I can do with it now. But I still do that. I'm trying to break that muscle memory. This has still been my issue, just with the I have not done your digital Shabbat or even anywhere near what most other people are doing who are doing these sort of detoxes.

But I've slowed my role a lot. And I still, yeah, it's the muscle memory. It's I'm always grabbing my phone and looking at it, expecting to see some some updates or some little red badges saying I've got a notification. And it's it's it's really hard to train yourself off of it.

It's like quitting smoking. Yeah, it's almost the same thing because you're just used to that muscle memory. And the nice thing about it, though, is it was just glorious. It was really good because I told everybody up front what I was doing. Yeah, you, Jordan, Jen, all the folks at the Jordan Harbinger show, my roommate, everything, everything was fine.

And I ended up texting a bunch of people that I haven't talked to in a while because I'm like, well, normally I would just tweet this. But since I'm tweeting it and I only care about one person that's going to see it, well, shit, I'll just text them. Right. And then I got into longer conversations and ended up having phone calls with friends I haven't talked to in a while.

How strange is that? I know. Go figure. And because I've cut back on a lot of stuff, too, I've sent emails out to some people that I've been meaning to get together with and I'm scheduling out drinks and meetings and lunches and all that sort of stuff in meat space. So it's a weird thing. Yeah, it's it's really fun.

And yesterday, Jordan and Jen from the Jordan Harbinger show were here at my house. We recorded a show and then we went to lunch. We actually went out and had a nice lunch. We went to my favorite Mexican restaurant in the valley, Sol Eluna. If you've ever if you're ever in town and you want good Mexican, Sol Eluna is my favorite.

I've been there with everybody who comes through and I am as we finished the meal. Jordan said, Jesus, I need some probiotics because their carnitas burrito with the green sauce is the best thing in the world. But it is a lot of food.

So now I'm hungry. Oh, God. Yeah, it was so good. So, yeah, the digital Shabbat was a success and I'm going to keep going with it and I'm going to keep email and slack off my phone. Right. It's on it's on my iPad. So if I need it, I can just grab an iPad. But when I'm out and about. Text me.

Call me. Be like we used to be, you know, right. Page or just wait till I get there. Because I'm probably on my way. Right. Anyway, got a little Gimlet Union follow up. How's that going? Not so well. Shocking. So well.

Yeah, the the powers that be came back to the Gimlet Union cabal that are trying to unionize saying, yeah, well, no, you need to cut 30 people from your union. How many people are working over there?

Over 90, I believe. I thought it was like 92 people. Wow. That's a lot. Or. OK, dude, I've been saying it since the. Jesus Christ. We need a staff. Reply All has like six people, seven people on staff.

I'm like, why? You're regurgitating fucking Wikipedia stories. How hard can it be? OK. You know, I'm I'm saddened by this news that they're they're putting the hammer down on the union. It would be nice to start these new companies with a new way of doing things.

But I guess we're not going to be doing that. Well, no, no, no, I mean, listen to you're not listen to listen to the thread on Twitter. Go look at the thread on Twitter and you'll see a lot of people are unsubscribing. So they're getting a lot of bad press. And it's funny because Alex Bloomberg is being very silent on the whole thing.

It's interesting. But Fast Company and surprisingly, the onion came out in in support for them. So it's like, OK, sell your company for two hundred and thirty million dollars. And when your people actually want a fair shake, you say, screw you.

Well, that's that's that's that's how we do things. Yeah, I mean, and the funny part about this is it's a podcasting company. Yeah, we're on the razor's edge right now about making money and how this thing's going to shake out because everybody and their dog has a podcast.

Yep. So I'm wondering if Spotify is just saying, wait them out. Just I think that's it, because Spotify looked like they were going to lean in pretty heavy into the podcasting arena. And they've made some forays, but I think they're basically just going to sit here and go, let's let these people let these people bash it out and we'll pick up the pieces.

We'll we'll hire on the good people. We'll let go of the bad people, take on the good shows, let go of the bad shows. And we'll we'll still be here. Yeah, maybe H.R. knows 30 people that need to go. That's why they're saying you need to cut 30 people. Here's a list. Here's the list. Yeah, here's the list of people we don't want.

But yeah, there's more Gimlet news or I mean, actually not Gimlet news, Spotify news coming up in a bit. About podcasting. But yeah, this is fun to watch because it's interesting. And there is a Twitter account for like the Gimlet union that I started following just so I can I can play along at home.

All right. In the news. The White House has a new website for the artificial intelligence for the American people initiative.

I'd be OK with just some intelligence for the American people initiative. Well, true that. True that. Did you get a chance to look at this site? I looked through it. Yeah. This is basically just regurgitating kind of that press release we got a while ago. Right. Kind of. Kind of. There's a lot more in there, though.

You can dig pretty deep into it. It's fleshed out a bit. They've definitely hired some writers. Yeah, they have. Yeah. And they've got some interesting bits in here about how like, you know, AI for the American worker. Yes. And I'm like, OK, well, is there going to be an American worker?

That is the question, isn't it? Well, it kind of is and kind of isn't because we know how AI is and that a lot of this is smoke and mirrors and a lot of bullshit. Yeah. So now it's very interesting. The worry is, you know, that this will be a geometric thing, not a linear thing, in which case, you know, we'll go from AI as people to what happened to all the people.

Yeah. You know, you don't want this on a logarithmic scale. That's exactly. Yeah. So that that's the that's the fear. But I mean, it's good that it's being thought about. I did not expect that from this administration, but this is a it appears they've got people thinking about this. Yeah. And I love the key agency.

So you got DARPA, you know. Of course, the NSF National Science Foundation, you have IARPA, which is a new one. This is the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. OK, that's a strange name.

But, you know, same thing with DARPA. Then you've got NIST, of course. You know, you got to got to have those guys, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. That's that's a good one to have. That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. And at the very end, you have United States Department of Agriculture. I thought that was a curveball.

Lots and lots and lots of people still employed in this country doing agriculture and all of that could go away quickly. So I think it's good that they have their hat in the ring. And the interesting thing is here's like the way they start off their segment of it. Building on a long history of artificial intelligence activities that span a realm of disciplines and program areas, NIFA seeks to catalyze efforts to harness the power of AI and applications throughout agriculture and the food supply chain.

Well, shouldn't they be investing in blockchain instead of AI? It'll be an AI assisted blockchain. Oh, there you go. There you go. So it's it. I mean, it's a long read and it's an interesting read. Since we know that AI really isn't a thing, it's kind of like, hmm.

It's much ado about nothing. It's a lot of money being spent on nothing. But again, I'd rather we be thinking about it than just being surprised by it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can we start AI powered podcast and get in on some of this pool? That'd be awesome. That would be the first AI blockchain powered podcast.

The first true crime AI blockchain powered on Gimlet with a union podcast. Oh, powered by Watson. Yeah. Now, this next story is more kind of nothing, but we did get a number of people wanting us to chime in on it.

Psychedelic warlord Beto O'Rourke belonged to a legendary hacking crew. Yes, he was part of the cult of the dead cow. I believe I was as well at some point. I'm pretty sure I was too. This is this is not surprising, given that we're having people that are approximately our age starting to appear in politics.

You know, the relationship mostly involved pirated games, or as we called them back in the day, we get in the wares and he was on some message boards. And if you weren't cool, you called him Juarez. Juarez. Yeah, idiots call them Juarez, but we all knew it was getting the wares. And that's what we all did.

So, yeah, it's interesting because we're getting to a point where basically our politicians will have been involved in what we were doing, which was illegal. But we didn't know it at the time and we were just kids. So that's about it. He wasn't having the idea that we're calling this a hacking crew. What hacking crews were in the 80s is significantly different from how we describe them now.

Well, I beg to differ a little bit, because remember, these are the guys that put out back orifice. You remember that? A way to break into office and figure out if you can, you know, it's, you know, it's a bit like saying, though, it's a bit like saying, well, I was an American during the Vietnam War.

That doesn't mean I was bombing people. He was involved in this organization, but there were many people in this organization and he wasn't involved in that part of it is basically what it comes down to. He was just a kid on the message boards. Yeah, yeah. He wasn't really like, yeah, if he was one of the authors of back orifice, you know, because right now you look at we've got things like set the social engineering toolkit, which can be used for good or ill.

You know, yes, mostly for ill nowadays, I believe. But yeah, I mean, being part of the group doesn't really mean much. But no, the fact that he was part of cult of the dead cow actually gives him, you know, I give him some points points in my book.

Yeah, I mean, his handle psychedelic warlord, I'm a little bit lame, but there you go. Yeah, that's pretty, pretty, pretty weird. But that's that's loser with a zero and the Z at the end. Yeah, that's not good. He was not leet. He was no, he was not leet. Well, back over to the Spotify podcast world.

Spotify is going to acquire Paracast in their next round of acquisitions. Paracast is a studio here in Los Angeles, and they have 18 series, including serial killers, unsolved murders and female criminals with some 20 new shows expected to launch later this year.

Christ, how much crime is out there? Have we not gotten to peak true crime? Is there this much of an audience for it? Is there this much of a thirst for it? I can't believe that this genre is so I don't have anything. I don't have a problem with it. I get why some people find it interesting. But for Christ's sake, there's other podcasts out there.

People here's the thing. We're not women. All right. Every night after, like, you know, my roommate goes to bed, she's 60 and she goes in her room and watches her TV and all it's all true crime. That's all it is. All it is. My mom, when we used to talk, she would watch true crime.

Right. It's a big thing. It's a big thing. But here's the thing. It brings women into podcasting, which is fine by me, because as we found out, a lot of women listen to the show. So good. At least, you know, brings new people in. But this is just one of those things where I went to the Paracast website this morning and listened to their flagship show, Survivor, which is like the biggest one on the page.

It's awful. It is just awful. So I think we really need to start a school for podcast hosting because, man, wow. Yeah. This is so formulaic now that it is just bordering on comedy.

It's really reminiscent to me of what happened when the first kind of home recording music studios came into existence, when it became feasible to record music without having to shell out for a studio or real equipment or anything. Or go to college and get talent or things like that.

Or any of that. Exactly. When the tools became so low cost and so easy to use that anybody could start doing music at home, what you got was a lot of incredibly talented people doing stuff that would never have gotten through the main, you know, mainstream media system, which is great.

But you've got far more, far more. Absolutely horrible, horrific stuff dumped on you from everywhere. So that's that's what we're seeing. The bar for podcasting, not good podcasting. The bar for putting out a podcast is very, very low.

So I'm going to one up you on that one. This isn't even about the home studio. I want you to go back to the days when we could buy laser printers for our home. No zines, man. Zines and newsletters for the family with 18 different fonts and the worst design ever.

Everybody thought that since I can print it, it must be good, you know, and I'm sure you we can go back to other this my space. This goes way back way. Well, the laser printer thing was long before my space. No, I know. I'm just I'm just thinking of other examples, you know, when all of a sudden like these platforms showed up where people could do a modicum of design and thought that they were just killing it.

So geo cities. Yeah. Dear God, geo cities. Yeah. Just because you can do it doesn't mean it's good. And I fear that there's going to be a lot more of these acquisitions and what just makes me crazy. It's like, why would you buy this studio? Hey, everybody, we're pretty good over here.

Feel free to acquire us. Well, I think we need to start a podcast collective because that's right. There's no other way to get bought. Most people aren't buying individual shows. Lion solo again. Yeah. But hey, you know, like some head honchos over at Spotify. So maybe next time you're hanging out, slip him a business card, say we might be willing to talk.

It's all I'm saying. They listen to the show. So, OK, yeah. All right. There's a long form article over on the Atlantic. Your health data are a gold mine for advertisers. I'm going to put this firmly in. We've been calling this for a while. Hospitals across the nation.

My sphincter just clenched with the title on this. Hospitals across the nation are piloting voice enabled smart speakers and patients room. What could possibly go wrong? I the ice sphincter just sent the data to my watch, which just sent it to my insurance provider, which just said he's under stress right now.

Raises premiums. Oh, no. Yeah, that's the here comes the problem. So, yeah, we've already talked about how Apple watches and health watches and health devices and wearables and all that are starting to become premiums for your insurance. This is taking it even a step further.

Now, in theory, this is a great idea. I love the idea of having smart speakers in a patient's room helps them make more comfortable, help staff stay organized. In some cases, keep people out of hospitals and emergency rooms altogether through this tiered system where you could ask for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The problem is what they should really be doing is they should be developing their own or at least go to someone like an Amazon or a Google and say, we need a proprietary system that is locked

and controlled and, you know, is HIPAA compliant because none of these things are. And the idea of using these things and having sensitive health information being sent to Amazon or Google or God knows where and how that because we don't know really where this stuff is going or what they're going to do with it, none of that stuff.

So it's it's a it's kind of a terrifying thought that this is going to be happening and moving forward without which is using stuff off the rack is not supposed to be happening in these kind of situations. And that's what's going to happen. Yeah, this it's it's not good, especially if they start putting those little clocks with the cameras in your room.

That would not be good. No, that wouldn't be good either. Yeah, let's live stream my colonoscopy. Great. Love that. Love. Yeah. So there's some great thoughts here. But as, of course, this article gets into privacy is a big part of the conversation that needs to be happened here as we explore a voice enabled health care and legal concerns and sound medical advice like these things shouldn't be giving hardcore medical advice.

They should just be used for communication within the again, it all comes down to you should have a proprietary closed design system, not use something just off the rack that does everything. But, you know, nobody listens to us. Of course not. And I love that the Kinsa thing like Kinsa smart thermometer was taking your temperature, uploading it to the server, along with your gender and location information.

Yep. OK, why do you need my location? I guess if you're trying to if you're trying to stop a pandemic, fine. But if you're trying to sell me an ad for Theraflu, go fuck yourself. Well, they're doing both. That's the that's the thing. They wanted to create a real time map like Google was doing for, you know, to to for flu outbreaks and things like that.

But at the same time, they were turning around, dipping their fingers into more of the coffers and selling information to Clorox, which then beefed up its marketing of disinfecting wipes and similar products in the zip codes, which were reported spikes and stuff going on. Yeah. You know, that's that's not that's not something we're agreeing to.

I guess actually, you know, you are. You are. You don't read it. Nobody reads the Eula and nobody cares enough to talk about it or scream about it or get mad about it. So I guess this is this. How quickly we've hit the throw the hands up in the air on this episode and say, well, we're screwed. Yeah.

I mean, it's funny. I've got a nest in my house now and I'm kind of creeped out by it because every time I walk by it, it comes to life and tells me what it's doing. I'm like, OK, that's weird. It's really weird. And it doesn't work that great.

I set up a whole schedule on in the app. I'm like, OK, here's the deal. At five o'clock in the morning, I want you to set the set the temperature to 68 degrees to start heating up the house, get the chill out of the air. So when we get up at five thirty to make coffee or breakfast or whatever, the house is a little bit warmer.

And then at eight thirty, turn it back down to sixty two because we don't want to waste any energy during the day. Right. Well, I've done that four times now because for some reason it just decides to delete my entire schedule randomly. Yay, nest.

I do not have an S, so I cannot chime in on this, but it does sound it's funny how buggy all these things are. That's it looks cool. I mean, it looks super cool. And the fact that you walk by and it's like if it's like orange, it means the heaters on. I'm like, OK, well, the perfect place to place the thermostat is under the heater and the intake vent so I can hear the heater.

I know it's on. You don't have to wake up every damn time and tell me that it's doing its thing. And I don't know. It's just kind of it's kind of weird that this thing's in the house. And I'm sure it's like, you know, in the future, they'll say, oh, your nest microphone will be able to, you know, you'll be able to talk to your Google home through your nest or you'll be able to wave at your Google camera that's buried inside the nest.

They didn't tell anybody about it. I know. I know. Put on the tinfoil hat. But the fact that these things have already come out saying that there are there are microphones and things that Google didn't tell us about before means that it's happened. So I just it's hard to trust these damn things without buying two of them and taking one apart and figuring out what the fuck is inside of it.

And I don't want to have to, like, run Wireshark on my entire network just to figure out what smart device is sending information back to the mothership. And since you can't even see what the information is because it's, well, theoretically encrypted, what are you going to do?

I don't know. I just I almost found myself buying a set of Hue light bulbs this morning, and then I just stopped myself and I'm just like, dude, stop. Do not do not. They were on sale from the Amazon. They were they were on sale. Yeah, we'll talk about we'll talk about some Amazon stuff in a bit, but yeah, buying on Amazon.

But I was just like, oh, they're so cheap now. I can get some and try them out. And I'm just like, you know, that if you buy a set of Hue light bulbs, every light bulb in your house, the next time you have a bottle of wine is going to be a Hue light bulb and your your house is going to look like, you know, a 1980s disco.

It's going to be Studio 54 up in here. I stopped. I stopped myself on that one. And we can't have a show without some more e-scooter news. So we've got some here. Los Angeles is fighting for e-scooter data. City officials want to use location data from Uber owned jumps dockless scooters to inform public transport policies.

Makes sense, doesn't it? Um, why? Well, if they know where the scooters are going, what people are doing, they can figure out better ways and more efficient ways to do bus routing and timing and things of that nature. You know where the people are going, what time they're doing things. You would want to know that as a city official, would you not?

You want, I mean, we keep track of cars and how we keep, we know, you know, when busy times are, then they use that to do, to do things with like stop traffic lights and things like that, or where to put stop signs or where you have to replace the stop sign with a light because there's too much traffic and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is a one-on-one city one-on-one man.

Yeah, but this is the last mile problem with the scooter. So I don't know if using like mass transit is going to actually get anything useful out of it. I mean, it's, it's definitely an interesting thought problem for sure. Uh, as long as you know, the data is, well, the city is saying specifically what they want to do is they want to get insight into scooters usage as a growing means of transit.

Let the city see if scooters end up in the LA river. Well, we've been talking about help ensure scooters are available to lower income residents, things that cities definitely do. And they're saying the data will not be shared with police without a warrant, would not contain personal identifiers, and would not subject to public records requests.

So they're purely going to use it for the purposes that they're intending to. So just data analysis is all they're asking. Yes, data analysis. Now, Uber is saying this could lead to unprecedented levels of surveillance, which the city would weld over companies and citizens. I think, I think that's a bullshit argument.

Well, here's the thing. Uber's keeping that data. So all the, Uber's got that data. They're the ones doing the surveillance right now. Well, all I'm saying is if the city is asking for it and they're for using it for, they have damn good reasons and they're going to put some controls on it, share it. End of story. I'd rather the, the argument that, that, that we always have in security.

And I think Bittner and I certainly agree. And I think you're with this too, is nine times out of 10, I would much rather have the, have the government to have this information than have it being held privately. Cause we don't know what these people are doing with it. Well, and also, you know why Uber doesn't want to give it up because if the city they're in competition, they see the city's infrastructure as competition.

So they're not going to give the competition their data. Exactly. That's really all it is. And if you know, okay, if we can adjust a bus route by like two blocks to get people closer to home, instead of them getting off the bus and taking a scooter, because you can correlate the time of a bus drops people off in the time that a scooter is picked up and the, you know, the stop and start points, you can do that.

And then you can adjust those bus routes to make them more efficient. I totally understand that. This is a complete and utter easy way to collect the data on the last mile problem, because the only way to do it before was what? To take submissions, send us a postcard and tell us what the issue is. Now they're getting real data about it and that enables them to adjust things and fix them.

I, you know, I, I think I am with the city on this one now. Now that, now that we've talked about it, I think I am with the city. All right. Uh, we'll see if they get it, but they probably won't. Well, here's the thing that they can do. Ban the scooters. That's the easiest, easiest way to go, which I'm still on board with.

I wonder how, how this is working out with the scooters in low income areas. Can I go down to Crenshaw and hop on a bird and go get a bean pie? Can I, you know, go down to Compton and, and go, go just scoot around. And I told you, like when I was going around downtown LA, didn't see a single scooter, not one.

That's the perfect place for them. Not a single one. If they, I mean, there are bike lanes in downtown. LA. Look, there's a reason they started rolling these things out in, in high income areas. Uh, you know, they knew they wouldn't get stolen. They wouldn't get trashed much. Well, that didn't work out.

That didn't end up working out too well for them, but that was the idea. So I mean, I, I, next time I'm driving through around an area, I'll definitely check it out. But, uh, yeah, my, my one foray into what would be considered a low income area recently when I was just kind of walking around the area for a while, I didn't see a single scooter in downtown.

Yeah. They've kind of disappeared from out here. Uh, I think there were like two or three bird scooters that, uh, Jordan saw when we were driving to the restaurant yesterday. But beyond that, all the lime scooters are gone. I haven't seen a single one for weeks now. And yeah, I think they, I think they've pulled out of the Valley because the Valley is like, you don't want to be on a scooter in the Valley.

You really don't. It's in the Valley. Most, most places aren't last mile. That's last 10 miles. Exactly. That's the whole thing. It's like too vast, right? So yeah, it's way too big. And everybody's just used to driving out here because you, you have to. And there's parking. Yeah. There is.

And the infrastructure exists. Yeah. So it's a, it's an interesting story to keep an eye on. And I'm, I'm, I'm fairly interested in this one to see if they get the data because yeah, if they can do that and the data scientists can look at it and say, Hey, we can like actually make the bus routes more efficient.

That would be fantastic because I've taken the bus in LA for a long time. You know, for years I was taking the bus because I just, I was tired of sitting in traffic. And like, if I can sit in a bus for the same amount of time that I'm going to sit in traffic, I can read, I can pull my laptop out.

I can get something done or I can just chillax and not worry about getting hit. By some random asshole that's late for a meeting. So I'm, I'm, I'm all for this because I am a fan of public transportation. Always have been. Now I found an article in the South China morning post, not a, not a publication.

I generally frequent. Really? It's in my bookmarks. Okay. Well, I, I have to find their RSS feed and add them in. It's called the article is called no sleep, no sex, no life. Tech workers in China's Silicon Valley face burnout before they reach 30. This isn't very interesting article because China has, you know, they, they're very efficient.

They, they make lots of stuff for everybody in the world. And now they're trying to make startups like everybody else in the world. And they're doing it like super duper gung ho. They're, they're, they're very Chinese about it.

Yeah. And I love this. The average tenure in Silicon Valley is 3.65 years. Whereas in Chinese tech firms, the figure is less than 2.6 years. So they're burning out way faster. And it turns out they've got what's called a nine, nine, six schedule.

They work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week with every other Sunday off. Wow. That, I mean, I've done that. I did that when I was at Technorati. I worked 40 straight days. And I, I mean, I think I've mentioned this on the show before.

By the end of that 40 days, I was having three panic attacks a day. The tips of my fingers were bloody with blisters. So I was typing with band-aids on all 10 of my fingers to get the launch done. Right. Yeah. I mean, when you read off the title of this article, I was like, well, okay, I went through this.

I know you went through this. We know tons of people that did this as well. And so it's not a, it's not a new thing and it's not just a Chinese thing. It's not just a Chinese thing, but they just seem to be taking it to level 12. Yeah, definitely. And some of the stuff in here was just crazy. A 25 year old from DJI had died from cardiac arrest from stress.

There's just all sorts of like crazy things in here. And it's a, it's a really interesting read to see what it's like. And after being in the Silicon Valley blender for so long, I mean, I think I lasted five years in the, in the whole thing before I was just like, screw you guys.

I'm getting in. This is a global thing now where people are trying to win the lottery. And the really sad fact is almost no one does just like the real lottery, like the real lottery. Yeah. What you're going to come out of this with is a broken body, a broken soul and no money.

Then you can start a podcast. Then you can be a podcast. So, I mean, I feel really bad for these guys because it's, I mean, I'm sure they're making, you know, better money than a lot of other people who are putting together iPhones and things like that. But it's still, it's like, it's going to break you.

You're going to pay for that in the long run. You're, you're getting short-term gains for long-term consequences. And that's the way Silicon Valley works. That's totally the way it works. So I wish, I wish there was a way to change that. Oh, maybe unions. No, no. Turns out that doesn't work either.

What are you going to do now? I found this one over at the hustle, which I just loved. It was the 2019 drunk shopping census. I mean, it's, it's a small sample size, 2000 alcohol consuming American adults. And, uh, they found out that drunk shopping is an estimated $45 billion a year industry.

Okay. That's, that's a weird extrapolation. But anyway, 79% of alcohol consumers have made at least one drunk purchase. I believe that is way higher. I'm sure it's 100% of alcohol consumers. Period. Look, of course it is. The reality is that now shopping online shopping is what you do.

And you, you do that at night. You do that when you're sitting on your couch and you're drinking a couple of glasses of wine and watching a crappy TV show. This is not at all surprising. I mean, there's an entire industry based on late night infomercials that it still exists. You know, it, this is just, this is just the one click version of that.

Yeah, totally. And, and when you think drunk shopping, you're thinking, you know, completely hammered sitting over your laptop. That's not what the way I see it anymore. It is. It's a couple of glasses. It's slightly tipsy on the couch with your phone. My wife does this almost every night. Yeah. Your inhibitions are down. You're just like, eh, I'll try it.

I can always, I needed a new pair of shoes. You can always say to yourself, I can always return it later. And nobody ever does. Yeah. Never, ever. I've gotten so many things where I'm like, oh shit, then I gotta go to the post office. Eh, it's only 10 bucks.

Fuck it. You know, throw it in a drawer. That's it. Right. So, and they say the, uh, the average annual spend per drunk shopper is $444. Bunk. It's way higher than that. Way higher. $444 is an average purchase as a drunk shopper.

And I've never bought clothing. I do. I have bought in shoes though. I have bought in shoes. I don't know. I don't think button is a word. I think it's, I think it's a town in England somewhere. That's about, but either way I have bought, uh, I actually just bought last week when I was a little tipsy on the couch, I needed to get a new pair of Nikes.

And then I'm just like, like hanging around Zappos and I bought a pair of fur lined black leather vans. Like I used to wear back in the day. And I, I got them home. I looked at it. I'm like, these things are ball. I showed them to my roommate and she's like, those are cool.

I'm like on sale. I saved some money. And knowing, knowing internally, my soul is dying a little because I would have saved a lot more money if I wouldn't have bought them in the first place. But I came out ahead that Zappos. No, you did not. That Zappos sale page is, is evil.

I got to tell you. Well, moving on to people who buy things that they shouldn't buy. McDonald's is acquiring dynamic yield to create a more customized drive through. Well, here's the thing. I have questions. I have a lot of questions.

So yes, another AI company. I was going to say Microsoft, but it's not Microsoft. It's the other M company. McDonald's has paid more than $300 million for this company. The largest acquisition in 20 years. Right. Dynamic yield works with brands across e-commerce, travel, finance, and media to create what's been described as an Amazon style personalized online experience.

So I'm wondering here now if they're going to put license plate readers on all the drive throughs at McDonald's so they can brand you when you come up and they can change the menu just for you. That's the only way that I can see something like this working. Yes. Because I don't really understand any of this technology to create a drive through menu that can be tailored to things like the weather, current restaurant traffic, and trending menu items.

What? It's McDonald's. There's like eight things on the fucking menu. Do you want a burger or do you want some fucking nuggets? I mean, that's it. I don't understand this at all. Well, I mean, yeah, it's just taking local data. It's cold. Push the nuggets. Yeah.

Put a big hot chocolate sign up there. I don't know. I don't know how this is going to move the needle for $300 million worth. I don't know. It's insane. Okay. It's a little bit ridiculous. I wish I would have invented that. Actually, I don't. I wish I would have just invested in it.

I'm too fucking tired to invent anything. I just want to invest in the people who have the wherewithal and the energy to do that because I don't anymore. Yes. Well, let's end on a high note here because this is pretty awesome. A German observatory has been transformed into a giant R2-D2.

Yes. Professor Herbert Zitt, who is widely known for his fascinating lectures on Star Wars, Star Trek, and other science fiction, saw the perfect opportunity to put a distinctive mark on the university where he works. So along with his father-in-law and several helpful students, he transformed the perfectly shaped Zweibrucken Observatory of the National Science Association into a giant replica of R2-D2.

Link is in the show notes. It looks awesome. And Disney lawyers have been deployed to take it down or get their fair cut. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. And I put a lovely image in the show notes that you're going to have to go check out. It is at GOG.show slash 331.

I totally want that shirt. I've tried to find it. I can't find it. I want this. And where did I find this shirt image? On Bruce Sterling's Ello account. I told you, he's still posting good stuff. Not worth it to keep my data going there. This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is sponsored by Privacy.com.

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Media Candy. In breaking news today, Jesse Smollett has been exonerated in his little case in Chicago. Exonerated might be a bit strong. Well, all charges were dropped.

All charges were dropped, yes. And the interesting thing about this is, of course, the Chicago PD is very upset about it. But the thing that gets me about this, and this has bugged me since day one, since the first Chicago police press conference.

Do you remember that? Did you watch it? No, because I don't care about the story. I didn't think you gave any. I figured there were no shits given on your side. No shits are given. The Chicago PD basically said he was guilty in the court of public opinion and in front of the media without really taking him to trial.

They're just like, he did it. He did it. So, we're going to indict him. Well, not really their job. Their job is to, you know, give the information from their investigations to the state's attorneys and the attorneys general and all that stuff and let them deal with it.

Well, it turns out that a lot of the things that they said actually weren't even proven. They said, oh, he wrote these letters and the FBI came back and said, we never said that he did. They completely jumped the gun on it. The checks that he gave to those two guys turns out actually were for training that was proven.

So, there's a whole bunch of stuff going on here. But the entire point was it's that even if he was going to be convicted, all he was going to get was community service and he does community service in Chicago already. So, they're like, what's going on here? So, yes, Kim Fox, the state's attorney said, oh, after reviewing all of the facts and circumstances of the case, including Mr. Smollett's volunteer service in the community and agreement to forfeit his bond to the city of Chicago, we believe this outcome is a just disposition and appropriate

resolution to this case. That's it. Done. Over. I'm allowed to like Jesse again. That's good. Okay. Good for you. But I was I was actually I had a joke already lined up for this show. I'm like, I think Jesse may have done it because he read the scripts for this season of Empire and they're just God awful and he wanted to get kicked off the show anyway.

Because, man, it's not not a good show this year or at least this second half. Whoa, it's bad. Well, let's talk about some good shows that went away. Unfortunately, as we all know, Daredevil, Luke Cage and Iron Fist are all done. We are still well, Punisher is now done as well.

And Jessica Jones has one more season coming. So as of right now, Marvel is auctioning off props from Daredevil, Luke Cage and Iron Fist. So you can own his aluminum baton or his suit or all these other cool items. Nothing up there from the Punisher yet or obviously Jessica Jones because Jessica Jones is still shooting.

But if anybody sees when they add Jessica Jones stuff, if you want to get me a nice gift, I'd like one of the bottles of whiskey from Jessica Jones. There you go. Well, you want to get her DNA so you can clone her, you perv? Oh, yeah, sure. Why not? I've got to I'll get myself a crisper. I don't think that that's how that works.

Well, whatever. We'll get there. I'm sure I can get funding for it if I put it on the AI blockchain. Oh, of course you can. Speaking of speaking of Jessica Jones, though, I wanted to talk about a podcast called David Tennant does a podcast with and his latest episode is with Kristen Ritter. Oh, and I've I've loved this show since it came out.

He is just I mean, you know, my love for David Tennant. Yes, and he's just his podcast is fantastic because they talk about some of the behind the scenes stuff as for being actors. And also, you know, the trouble that they go through for being famous. He apparently still has to go to therapy over being doctor who and all the other stuff.

But it's a it's a really sweet podcast because he's just a sweet dude. That's really the problem. I really I just love this guy so much and check it out. It's a really good interview show because he's talking to people that he really, really likes. And some of the the past guests that I've really enjoyed, of course, Ian McKellen is amazing.

John Hamm was a big surprise. Really liked him. Jennifer Garner was also another surprise that I totally enjoyed. And even Whoopi Goldberg. I'm like, Whoopi's still around. But yeah, she's still around. And it's it's it's a really nice interview show that doesn't it's not confrontational.

It's not antagonistic. It's just a couple of people who really like each other talking about a business that I know nothing about. And I thoroughly enjoy. Right. So it's a feel good podcast is all I'm saying. And something that I thought was interesting.

YouTube is getting out of the big budget original series thing. That is interesting to me because, well, I know that there is absolutely nothing, nothing on YouTube's TV stuff that I'm interested in. I figured that it might have been a kind of a bigger hit with the millennials and the kids because it was all kind of geared towards them.

Yeah, no, it's it's flopped. The only big hit that they've had is Cobra Kai. And I couldn't even make it through season one because I found it a little bit too uncomfortable. It was a little too close to home for me with the, you know, the guy who's basically a failed ninja turned into an alcoholic and just kind of hated the world.

I'm like, yeah, I can look in the mirror and watch that. I don't really need to see a show. Yeah, you've got the you've got your, you know, your hero who's the rich dude who has everything he wants. I'm like, OK, I know a lot of people that got that that I didn't. So I'm going to go drive my crappy car and go have a bottle of vodka.

Fuck you. I can I can just watch that at home. I don't need to pay for that. So it's a yeah, it's just an interesting turn. So they know where to they know when to walk away. I guess. That's good. OK, fair enough. Yeah, because we don't need another fucking paid service.

And I guess YouTube Red is being rebranded as a paid music service. Yes, I heard that as well. That's kind of weird. But I guess they are the biggest music service. They're the biggest music service in the world. Doesn't really, you know, surprise anybody. No.

Anyway, I watched The Dirt on Netflix this week. Yes. Based on the Neil Strauss book of the same name for the life and times of Motley Crue. Right. My roommate and I watched this on Sunday because she wanted to watch some other true crime crap.

And I'm just like, I need something happy. Please. Oh, happy fun. Oh, it is. This is if you took like equal parts Bohemian Rhapsody and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, blended them together, put in some metal, you would get The Dirt.

Right. I absolutely loved this movie. I'm still thinking about it. Did you read the book? No, I have not. OK, I've read the book and the book is insane and it's awesome. And I've talked to a few people that have watched this and it's very toned down compared to the book.

So it probably is kind of feel good, kind of goofy. What they really did was disgusting. It was hilarious, but it was disgusting. Yeah, I think they do go into it, but I'm sure they had they had Netflix to tone it down. But the first scene in the book is in the middle of a party and Tommy Lee goes down on a girl and she squirts all over the people in the party after she comes.

Right. So it's not that toned down, but for the rest of it, it is it is fairly toned down. But yeah, they do say that, you know, that they were just a bunch of monsters. Oh, yeah. This kind of behavior never could exist anymore.

You cannot be like this anymore. No, absolutely not. The fact that they got away with it for as long as they did was like insane. Yeah. But yeah, no, it is over now. Simpler times. Simpler times. Yeah. And behind the curve is the next one I watched.

Mm hmm. Oh, my God. No, I don't know why you do this to yourself. Well, I had to. I just had to see it just because. And yes, this is the Flat Earther documentary on Netflix. Yes. There are a couple of things wrong in here. One is it's about it's about Flat Earthers, which is completely wrong.

Yes. The main guy who also has a podcast and is doing a podcast with a relatively beautiful woman who has crazy eyes, complete crazy eyes. Well, they both use blue microphones, which I cannot condone. I think that's worse than actually being a Flat Earther.

And the guy holds a blue snowball up against his chest while he's podcasting. Right. You would get kicked out of my podcast school in about six seconds, A, for using a blue snowball, A, for using anything from blue and B, for being or C, for being a Flat Earther.

But anyway, this guy is just the heartbreak that he's in for because he wants this chick so bad and he's not even in the same planet, let alone league. But yeah, it's a really strange, strange documentary.

There's got to be some kind of mental illness behind why these people believe this. I don't know what it is, but it was nice to see Tim Urban in here, though, because I like Tim Urban's work. He's really good. He does. Was it Wait, Wait, Why? I honestly think that there's not a I mean, it is a mental illness.

I think it's at the attention. Here is something crazy that if I talk about it and do things about it, people are going to pay attention to me. That's it. I really think that's it. I have nothing else to offer the world. I want the attention. Here we go. Yeah, it's really kind of sad.

It is really pathetic. The saddest thing is, I mean, all of this stuff has always existed, but it was always so fringe. And now we turn the spotlight on these people and we give them what they are hoping for. So they're not going to stop. We gave them a platform. And Tim Urban's site is WaitButWhy.com. He's got some great stuff up there.

If you don't subscribe to his post, you definitely should. All this stuff used to be kept in the pages of the stupid tabloids that you would see at the grocery store. And that was it. Weekly World News. Now it's on Netflix. Now it's getting its own podcast. Now people are covering it because we have to have a news cycle. And we're destroying the goddamn world.

Well, the thing is, it's like, okay, now other people out there know that these people exist and they can find their tribe. Yes. And it just exacerbates the problem of bullshit. Self-selecting examples. Everybody's talking to people who believe the same thing. Yeah.

I mean, they're all in their flat bubbles. Crazy is a flat circle. Oh, man. So, yeah, it was worth watching. It really was worth watching. But a little nuts for me. Now, this other one is kind of strange.

BBC has blocked its podcasts on Google Assistants and the devices. All right. There's a big dust-up about this because of how the BBC is structured and how people have to pay into it. Yes. You have to pay for your licenses.

Yeah. My friend Jason Sanderson was here a couple months ago and talking to me and my roommate about how the licenses work and how bullshitty it is. It's just like, if you have a TV, you're going to pay. And they have narcs walking around the streets, looking in people's houses, making sure that they don't have a TV.

If they say they don't have a TV, because everybody's got a TV, you've got to pay that 400 pounds a year, however much it is. And the fact that BBC is just pulling all this content, which is also really stupid for the podcasting content, because this whole walled gardening of all of these different new things, you've got so many of them that we've talked about on the show.

It's like, I am fine, actually, with everybody taking their content and going home and playing in their own sandbox, because you know what it's going to do? It's going to leave the open podcasting market here for us. If NPR would put all of their content behind a paywall, that would be the happiest day of my life.

If Gimlet would take all of their content and put it behind a paywall, happiest day of my life, which may be coming anyway with the Spotify deal. But the open podcast ecosystem is what made all of this stuff possible.

And all they're doing is trying to break it, which makes no sense to me. None whatsoever. It's like, you know, it's like putting a radio in your car with a coin slot saying, OK, well, if you'd like to hear five more minutes, put in a quarter, put in a quarter, put in a quarter.

It's stupid. Isn't that Sirius XM? That is Sirius XM, which is why I don't listen to Sirius. Well, actually, I forgot I can now because I get six months for free with my new car. With your new car, yes. But there's nothing on Sirius I want to listen to because I don't drive anywhere. I'm not going to go sit in my car and listen to Howard Stern or even Tony Hawk's show.

It's like, oh, Tony Hawk is on at this time. But you can pay extra and get access to the app and listen in your house. Yeah, I just I don't like, you know, I like time shifted radio now, like what we do. That's it. I like what we do. And I don't have time to live on somebody else's schedule anymore, because if the Internet has given us one thing, it's letting us actually live our lives on our own schedule and be entertained on our schedule as well.

So that's all I got to say about that. All right. And speaking of podcast, we have a page up on the website at GOG.show for podcasts that we like. It is in the header. You can go click on it. And it's also will be in the show notes at GOG.show slash three, three, one.

We finally updated it after a very long time. I've got it. I've got an update now in my in my things app to remind me at the first of every month, go check my feeds and put in the list of the things I'm listening to. And, you know, some of my all time favorites will stay.

But I because I circle through so many podcasts and I want to put up stuff that people can go check out to see what we're listening to. And you updated yours as well, which is cool. So, yeah, go check that out because that's the stuff that, you know, feeds our brains. Yes. And we had some big media news from Apple this week with not a lot of details, just kind of what's coming.

I suppose there's a number of different things. Apple's new Apple News Plus, which will be a new magazine subscription app because the first one didn't work. So we're doing it again. You know, it says this has all happened before. This will all happen again. $9.99 per month, a bundle of 300 magazines as well as some additional digital new subscriptions.

So I'm going to take a look at that. But most of the magazines that I enjoyed reading have gone out of business. So we'll see if this would really be worth it. It's a little bit too little too late. They're launching their own digital first credit card for your iPhone, the Apple card. So they're going to try to get you away from using competing credit cards for Apple Pay and just use theirs now.

I'm looking forward to that one. That's the one thing I'm looking forward to. I am too, because one thing that there's like next to no fees, there's a pretty good cash back reward program kind of thing going on there. So I'm going to be checking this out as well because it's kind of interesting and they're definitely going to be picking a fight with a bunch of people to help them build that thing from scratch.

So we'll see. Yeah. And my credit's so terrible. I don't think I'm going to get one, but I can try. I can try. I think they just need to look at your purchase history with Apple and they might just give you one anyways. That's true. They should actually have like Jim McMahon show up at my house. You should get like a platinum Apple card.

Yes. Seriously. As much as I spent on their stuff. Yeah. They're also launching Apple Arcade, which will be a Netflix for games on all of Apple's hardware. Interesting. Not. Did you look at the games? But I'm not a gamer. So. Okay. Well, I went to the page and looked at the games and they all look the same. It's like there's nothing really nothing.

None of those games really enticed me. But the interesting thing is that they're all cross platform. Like you can play on your Mac. You can play on your iPad and you can play on your phone. Right. Most of the games that I want to play will not run on my phone. So. Right. I'm like, I cannot play Starcraft on my phone. There's just the way it works. So it'll be interesting to see what kind of games.

It just seemed like very popcorn games. Yeah. They're also launching Apple TV Plus, which is a real attempt to get into having their own kind of network sort of thing beyond just that stupid beyond the valley of the apps or whatever that crappy show was that we watched one episode of.

And yeah, we're like, what is so they're they're doing something real. Of course, there's no details. There's no price whatsoever. We just know that Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, they got the star power, obviously. So a whole bunch of stuff is coming to that. So I don't want to watch another thing. We will have to purchase another subscription service if you want to be able to watch things that are in the zeitgeist, as it were.

Now, they also are launching something, which is their attempt to fix that system. Apple TV channels, which will be an all our cart way to watch your favorite networks. So they're trying to basically dip their toes into the cord cutting markets. Now, I have a feeling our prediction will be coming true here in that it will end up costing as much, if not more than the cord to get all the things that you'd like to see.

There's no pricing announced yet. Shocking. Yeah. Yeah. The nice thing about these a la carte services is you can subscribe and unsubscribe. That's true. You know, so it's a lot easier to do than with cable or anything like that. So you can you can pick up your HBO for the for the run of Game of Thrones and then unsubscribe from it and you can pick up your sports things when when your team is playing and then unsubscribe from it.

So there's that. It'll make it easier. But it's also more to keep track of. So, yeah, we just pile more and more onto our digital plates when we're supposed to be minimalizing. Yeah. Well, just get a copy of things are fantastical and just put in a notice saying when the last episode airs just to remind you to cancel stars or cancel CBS, whatever.

And yeah. And by the way, Discovery is killing it. It's fun. Yeah. Have you seen the latest episode? No, I'm still a couple episodes behind. Oh, my God. Yeah. You should catch up pretty soon before you get any spoilers.

At the library. I have not gotten a chance to finish some of the books I'm working on, because as I mentioned, I'm juggling like three at the same time. But I did run across an interview with Tom Robbins, who's one of my favorite authors of all time. And he's up there in years.

He's 85. So we don't know if we're ever going to get another book or not. And it was an interview with another pretty good writer who kind of writes in the Tom Robbins vein. And I've read a few of his books, Tony Vigarito. So I think this may be as close as you'll ever get to another book by Tom Robbins, because he can't even do an interview without being Tom Robbins.

So it's a great read. He's all over the place. But he did write one thing that I found particularly we haven't really heard his opinion about what's happened with our interconnected world and social media. The last of his real books was done well before we had this crazy world that we live in now.

So it's interesting to have him voice his thoughts about it. So I just wanted to read this one paragraph from the interview. When television first became ubiquitous, many worried that it would destroy imagination. Today, there's similar concern about the Internet, and that's a legitimate issue. If only because social media is to the human ego what a pile of red meat is to a hungry wolf.

Evidence of exploding narcissism is everywhere, from the pathologically corrupt occupant of the White House to intrusive audiences at concerts and radio quiz shows. Online with such easy access to a wide audience, everybody and his sister with a keyboard seems to want that piece of the spotlight, regardless if they have any talent or have paid any dues.

It may be a case of democracy swallowing its own tail. Kind of a point we made a little bit earlier. Yeah. Oh, the oldie Orbus is coming back. Mm hmm. Nice. Well, I've got a little tiny book called Art Matters, because your imagination can change the world. This is a little hardcover book I got by Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell, or Riddle, however you want to say it.

What it is, is it's a bunch of quotes from Neil Gaiman that are illustrated, talking about how to make art. And I love these kind of books. They're popcorn. It's cute. It's cheap. And it's going to be sitting on my bookshelf probably forever, because there are just some great quotes in there. When I need some inspiration on getting my ass in gear to go make something, I just flip to a page and read it, and it generally kicks me into gear.

It's a fun little book. And the illustrations are cute. Very cute. I highly recommend anybody that is a creative, which I hate that term, but anybody who makes shit, go buy this book, because every now and again, you need a little kick in the pants. And it's cheap. It's a couple bucks.

You know, it's like maybe 12 bucks or something. But it's really good. Really good. Right. I found this article over at Science Alert, and it made me very sad. It says, the title is, An Engineer Says He's Figured Out Why Time Moves Faster As We Grow Up.

And this is, it's about perception. Yes. It's about perception and imagery. And as we get older, it takes us longer to perceive things as opposed to when we were young, which means time goes faster. And I don't like that.

I don't like that at all. As you can see by my comment in the show notes, I just said, fuck. Yeah. And so basically, my son is seeing the world at like a high definition 4D incredibly fast frame rate.

And I'm kind of looking at everything through a chunky over the modem circa 1998 real player video. We're back to 64480 and he's a 4K. Right. Okay. That's awesome. Yeah. Because it does go faster as you get older, which sucks. I guess maybe we should.

Maybe cocaine is not good for the young, but it might be good for the old. Maybe we need. I like this idea. I am supporting this. I think we should just go back to cocaine. And this next one I found over at vinepair.com site I've never heard of. It's called your local Irish pub from Dublin to Dubai proves you can prefab authenticity.

I'm calling it manufactured nostalgia personally. Okay. But it's about these companies who go in and build pubs to look like they were authentic. Yes. And you've seen this. Obviously. I know you've seen this. Yes. And they made fun of it completely in The World's End, which is one of my favorite movies.

It's the third movie in the Cornetto trilogy. Well, that's the thing. I mean, I know I've seen this with Irish pubs. And obviously, I mean, you'd walk into an Irish pub almost anywhere in the world. They look exactly the same. That's kind of done on purpose. A lot of it is fake. The real tragedy is actually in England. When I first started going to England, man, pubs were diverse and very English.

I mean, they had a look and feel for sure. But they had their own special character, their unique characteristics. And I think there's like two or three companies that now own 98% of all the pubs in London. And they all look exactly the same. Yeah. You know, there's two things that you can think about with that.

Either A, every pub you go into feels like home and you just feel comfortable because, you know, you're going into the place where you feel comfortable or you can say, well, this sucks in the wheel. Yeah. This is just, you know, like I said, manufactured nostalgia and you can get pissy about it.

You can get pissy about it or you can get pissed, I think. And not pissed by mad is not what that's not the that's not the pissed I'm talking about. I don't honestly have that much of a problem with it. I think it's interesting from a, you know, a capitalism point of view.

I do kind of really like old school, old town pubs that you go to. But I think even that they have like adjusted their look and feel to be like these modern pubs. That's the thing, right? It's because that's what makes the money now.

And it's akin to Amazon knocking out the small mom and pop shops. You know, I don't have a problem with this concept. What I have a problem with is it drives everybody else out of business or forces them to conform. It doesn't, yeah, I was going to say it doesn't force them out of business. It forces them to conform because at the end of the day, when you walk into a pub, what you're really doing is you're looking at a place and you can, you can kind of visualize the menu like, okay, if I go in this place, I can go get me a Guinness and I can get me

a good English breakfast. Right. That's kind of like how my brain works when I look at a pub. I'm like, this is why I'm going into this place because I can see from the outside what the menu is going to be on the inside just from how they design the place. So at the end of the day, I'm still getting the same beer I would get at any other place.

I'm going to talk to my friends. It's still going to be the same music on the jukebox. That's fine. So if you're going for the experience and you don't really care about the decor, it's just kind of like, you know, yeah, it's like, okay, I can tell that chick's a goth. I want to go hang out and talk with her. You know, I guess I think I'm just sensitive to it because this is what's happening to what has been my local for 20 years right now.

You know, it's a, it's a, they've pulled out a lot of the stuff to make it look a bit more modern, like, like other kind of pubs that are around, um, you know, they're, they're making the waitresses wear the skirts now they didn't have to before. It's, it's pretty, it's sad to see, but it is what it is.

I mean, I'm still going to like the place and I'm happy they're putting some money into it. It's already cleaner. I definitely like the way they've laid things out. Um, but it is, you know, the flies are gone. So thank God, I mean, it needed some work. There's no doubt about it, but it didn't need to be exactly like every single other Irish pub that I've been in.

Yeah. And, and of course, at the end of the article, they say, can these artificial pubs be everything we want them to be? Yes, of course they can. That's the point. So yes, it's, you know, it's just the Disneyification of everything, but, uh, I, it, it, it's an interesting concept and they talk about the different companies.

There's literally a company called the Irish pub company. Yeah, of course. So that's what it says. Yeah, it is what it says on the 10. And I found this great video. This came from, uh, the dig newsletter. Uh, it's called fancy shoelacing. Most of us have been lacing and tying our shoes all wrong.

Well, no, that's a bad headline. We just have not been doing it creatively because we have shit to do and we just want to get our shoes on and let the dog out so they don't poop on the floor. So the toilet doesn't explode. So you don't have to do the laundry before a show and then burn your rice and then screw up your beans.

That's all I'm saying. The funny thing about this is I have tied my shoe. Well, my doc Martins, I've always tied this way, but only my docs, all my other shoes. I do not tie this way. Okay. Well, I mean, which way there's like 40 different ways to tie your shoes. The first one, the very first one in the video. Okay. Um, yeah.

Do you even have a pair of doc Martins anymore? I do. They're in my closet, uh, collecting dust. Ah, I got a, I got a shiny new pair of classic eight holes that I've worn twice. Nice. Yeah. Because if you remember new doc Martins, they give you blisters that take about a month to heal. So it takes about two years just to break them in, but I will, I will take a look and see if I can, uh, we'll lace them up.

So when we do our first, uh, meetup at the new Finn McCool's, which is probably not called Finn McCool's anymore. I'm guessing. I believe they're going to be changing the name. Yeah. Well, we can both wear our docs with, with, it'll probably be called the Irish pub. Oh God. Uh, but anyway, it's a really calm video to watch.

I recommend turning off the sound because the soundtrack is terrible. I recommend putting on some Brian Eno and watching these girls lace their shoes. It was really good. And we've had a couple of good visualizations on these recently. And this one is called the relative market capitalization of major tech companies since 1995 visualized.

I loved watching this. It's like watching a horse race at the carnival, you know, like those little mechanical horses where they're like cranking and they're going forward and back and stuff like that. This just kind of reminded me of that for some strange reason. And, uh, it's just a, it's a fun visualization. I highly recommend checking it out.

And finally there at the 2019 makers conference, Jamila Jamil, is that how you say your name? I'm not sure. Okay. Uh, the, the, the unbelievably hot woman from the good place. Yes. She reads a poem that she wrote called tell him.

And I was just like standing up applauding when she was done with this. Uh, it's about how to raise your boys. And turn them into people who are worthy of being in the world. And did, did you like this?

I did. I did very much. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm down with her. I'm down with the Jamila. Down with the Jamila. So go check that out. It's a, it's a fun watch. It's a very short, like maybe four minutes at the most, but, uh, yeah, sorry. Sorry. So many of bric-a-bracs you have to actually go do homework on this week, but, uh, you know, this is an interactive show.

That's right. GOG.show slash 331. Get on it. Feedback loop. Over on Patreon, we've got some new subscribers. Yoo-hoo. Chris, Flash, Brittany, Michelle, Charles, Michaela, Val, and James.

I just wanted to give a shout out to the ladies. You guys are, are, uh, listening to the show and donating. Like, I've noticed a severe uptick, like you're even with the men now. I, I would not have guessed that. Awesome. Yeah. Don't we have actually more women donating than men now? I think we do actually. Yeah. Come on guys. Get on it.

Yeah. Dudes. Open that wallet. And, uh, Benjamin and, uh, Charles sent us the same link asking, Jason, what did you buy? Ford Explorer owners say their SUVs are making them sick. Well, I have personally a, uh, 2019 Ford Explorer. These are not the ones that are listed in, uh, no, actually it does say it's 2019.

Yes. Yes. The first one, the first ones that I saw were not 2019. It was a 2017. Uh, well that, uh, it's not making me sick yet. So I don't know. We shall see. We shall see if I, yeah, if next week I'm not here, then you might know why, but so far I've had no problems with it.

It's actually a fantastic SUV and I love it to death. Maybe literally to my own death. Maybe, maybe literally. And Michelle writes in, enjoy the show. Even though you pick on Prius drivers, um, she then illustrates her own point. I'll add that I've gotten pulled over twice for speeding. Yeah.

Probably while talking on your phone, but Hey, we'll take your money through a stop sign. Brian needs it for his medical bills after you run them over. That's right. And over at PayPal, we got, uh, some donations from Mark to Joseph's, Chris and Jeremy. Yes. Who is doing a new monthly payment.

So thank you so much over on Twitter, over on Twitter. We got a whole bunch. Moss 6502 says happy anniversary regarding retirement. I have several, several Gen X friends who jokingly say their retirement plan is suicide. They'll work until their health allows it and then kill themselves. I think this joke will turn real.

Unfortunately. Yep. That's sadly a thing because that's kind of my game plan. If I, if, if I get sick and I can't get my insurance and, uh, yeah, that's it. Patreon.com slash GOG. Let's keep Jason alive and out of that. Explorer third in command rights in all that time on the internet, being a pain in the arse influencer didn't stop long enough to research how well eating raw pork goes.

And this is a link to veganism is human cruelty. Protester eats raw pig's head outside vegan festival. Now look, I'm, I'm, I'm down on trolling the vegans, but, uh, yeah, this is just stupid. Uh, YouTuber S V three R I G E who has 65,000 subscribers was surrounded by pro vegan activists waving meet his murder placards outside the veg fest in Brighton as he ate the raw pork.

I am feeling he will be taking a break from his doing his videos. Remember all those times we talked about people who are in the life hacking space, who are injecting themselves with really stupid shit. This guy, this guy is going into the hall of fame with them as well. And Koi zero writes in nobody sounded more like a grumpy old geek than Jason.

When Bam Bam made a cameo on the most recent episode, were I riding helmetless on a scooter? I would have likely gone right over a cliff. Well, yeah, well, don't ride helmetless on a scooter and Bam Bam says hi. Quantum leap writes us. Does anyone in the States ask themselves? Why do other Western countries not have a Robocall mess?

It seems they don't want to fix this. You certainly don't need to blame the internet. We have it too over here and Robocalls are non-existent. What we have are gullible people. Well, and I also, I believe I made the point that there's still money in it and that's why it's not getting fixed. Yep. That's the way it goes.

And, and, and also gullible people. Yeah. Jay writes in watch the umbrella Academy on your recommendation. Thanks. Did I imagine it or was their music budget particularly well spent and or large? Maybe I just knew most of the songs for once. Uh, that was one of the things that hooked me right out of the gate was the, the soundtrack was awesome.

It was completely awesome. All right. Uh, over at GOG. Grant writes us, please change your website. So it uses HTTPS. Love your comments on security and privacy, but your website forces itself to be HTTP only. That doesn't match with your privacy and security ranting.

Love your podcast and your grumpiness. Stay grumpy. Grant down in New Zealand. PS thank you America for those Lyman bird scooters that have shown up on our streets. It really makes walking down the footpath fun when we have to dodge the crazy idiot riders. Okay. Welcome. Let me reply to this real quick. Uh, we are HTTP only right now because we're still stuck on my Linode server and it takes time to go get a cert and install it and get to HTTPS.

And we're already doing redirects from grumpy old geeks.com to GOG.show. So it makes it quite difficult. And the fact that I just don't get paid enough to go spend an entire day figuring all that stuff out and we need to make the whole site move over to wordpress.com also takes two or three days.

It'll get there. So patrion.com slash GOG. And, uh, once we get enough in, we'll, uh, we'll move it over. But here's the thing. It's read only doesn't matter. It honestly doesn't matter. We're not too worried. We're not taking anybody's information. Yeah. Your credit card, your credit card is not coming directly to us.

We do not have to be compliant on that front. So it's just a blog. David writes in, Hey Grumps, I'm a grumpy, fairly young geek, and you're my favorite part of my drive. Unfortunately, I don't always have time to listen to the whole show. Do you guys have an RSS feed that I can easily read up on your amazing show notes?

Thanks and stay grumpy. Yes. Go to GOG.show. And, uh, I think it's GOG.show slash feed. I believe it is. Ben also writes in to help answer a listener's question about VPNs in China a few episodes back. There are several popular VPNs that work in China with varying degrees of stability.

Astral is one of the big ones and has been fairly stable for many people for the price. It also offers a large number of servers around the world, several protocols to choose from and unlimited server switches bonus. that it's not based in a 14 eyes and friends country, no affiliation or connection with them, just a satisfied customer. So there's one Cameron writes in, not sure if you've seen this before, but I heard Jordan Harbinger mentioned thinking about the Seinfeld theme when thinking about embarrassing things when you did in the past.

And that made me think of this video and it's every Star Wars death, but the Seinfeld theme plays during each death. Okay. I thought you'd get a kick out of this as well. So I figured I'd share it. Sacrilege. I figured you'd have something to say about that. Yeah. Michael writes in as a fan and as a physician, I want you two fellows to take more time off.

Regular vacation times are imperative for physical and mental well-being. Go to once a week broadcasting if you need to, or take a month off. We love you and we will wait for you. Please take care of yourselves. Doctors orders now. All right, well, that doesn't really work. Sorry.

The money needs to keep coming in. Yes. The Bitcoin must flow. Patrick writes in, maybe we can petition MySpace to lead all social media platform migrations moving forward. If intentional delete means nothing, maybe the unintentional loss of data is the feature we're looking for.

Yes. It's not a bug. It's a feature. Yeah. Quibble writes in one show a week. I'd be fine with one show a month as long as it was 12 hours long. Just saying that would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it? Yeah. I mean, that's why this one's almost 12 hours at this point. Yeah. Elaine writes in.

Hi, guys. In the wake of the tragedy in New Zealand, it was good to see that Facebook is making an effort to remove video of the event. As always, is there more they can do? TLDR. Yes. For example, are they automatically blocking people who have uploaded such videos? It also raises questions about live streaming.

Should there be more controls on people's ability to live stream? Or even whether people should be able to live stream them at all? Thanks for the great podcast. Yeah. And he included this link from The Guardian, which talks about everything that went on the first day after the attack. Facebook says it blocked 1.2 million attempts to upload the video.

Thanks to its system, automatically recognizing the footage and a further 300,000 clips removed by moderators after going live, which begs the question, who the fuck are these 1.2 million people? What is wrong with you? Yeah. People are the problem. Elaine makes a very good point. Were these people blocked from Facebook?

Or did they just get a 24-hour ban? They get a slap on the wrist because they should have been kicked off the platform. Yeah, they should be. But then the numbers would go down and then the stock would go down. So we can't do that. Now, what I thought was really funny about this, and this could have made more out of the week, several British news organizations, such as Mail Online, The Sun, and The Mirror, which faced outcry on Facebook after uploading edited versions of the gunman's footage to their websites on Friday morning.

The Mail Online also uploaded a full copy of the gunman's 74-page manifesto, which was later removed. But despite this, the Sun and the Daily Mail's print editions used their Saturday front pages to attack the social networks for hosting the video, even though they put it up themselves. Wow.

Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. Good times. Brian writes this. Hey, fellow geeks, wanted to say that I'm a big fan of your show. I have what you might consider to be an odd book to recommend. It's called Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. It is a long book, but the storyline will leave you hanging on every word.

I hope you will check it out and let us know what you think of it. Also, if you wouldn't mind plugging my new podcast, are you a Patreon donor? All right. One for free. Conf T with your SE. I would greatly appreciate it. Stay grumpy. Yeah, you get that one for free. I have read Pillars of the Earth and the part two in the trilogy, World of the World Without End.

Now, if Game of Thrones is sadness porn, these are basically a snuff film. It is. These are not happy books. These are terrible, terrible books for your psyche. I still have nightmares about some of the stuff that was in these books, and I spent a decent amount of time because the audio books for the Pillars of the Earth, 40 hours and 55 minutes.

The World Without End was 45 hours and 32 minutes. They are extremely engaging, extremely well-written, and very interesting. And I think they did a series for Pillars of the Earth, and Ian McShane was in it, actually, which I couldn't even get through because I knew what was going to happen.

I can't recommend these books, honestly. I mean, like I said, they're well-written, but there is so much just evilness in these books that I just, I can't. I can't. They literally give me nightmares. I still remember scenes from them.

And I just, I can't. I can't. Right. Jay writes in, to the listener who mentioned Overcast, asking them to connect to Twitter, I think there's something weird with the Overcast interface. I get this every once in a while when I try to star a show. Keep on mashing that GOG star. Stay grumpy. Deliveroo!

Got a free Deliveroo out of that one. You should only have to link a Twitter account if you want to use the guide. But you can sign up for a free account and attach an email and password and then just search for your shows. But yeah, if you don't have your Twitter account linked, it won't give you the guide.

But you can still, you should still be able to star a show if you've downloaded the show. Right. Twilight Sparkle writes us, hi, from your latest episode, you had a question about storing lots of data in the cloud. One of my backup solutions is a Norwegian service called Jada Cloud. It's $8 per month or $80 per year for real unlimited storage.

I have some 12 terabytes there. All the servers are located in Norway with one of the world's strongest privacy laws. Here it works pretty fast, but not sure what speeds you're going to get from the U.S. They have a free 5 gigabyte option so you can try it out. They have clients for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS, as well as headless clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Also works with external and network drives. Only problem I have with them is that their clients are not the best. But for $8 a month, I can live with that for one of my backups. Also, I'm going to San Francisco in a month and might be going down to L.A. Plans aren't quite set in stone yet. I know this isn't quite furry, but if I were to go down to L.A., do you want to meet my $1,000 custom ordered handmade My Little Pony plushie?

XOXO Twilight Sparkle Art. Now, the problem from the U.S. is that we have these fucking data caps for one terabyte a month for most of our internet plans. So you're going to be charged stupid money for going over that. And I got to ask, dude, are you? I don't even know if it's a dude.

Twilight Sparkle could be a girl. Could be a boy. Could be a man. Could be a woman. Are you a brony? Could be genderless. That's the way things go. Oh, that's right. I forgot about the other options, but I actually would like to see your $1,000 My Little Pony plushie.

That would actually be pretty fun. Why don't you guys go get Mexican together at Jason's favorite place? No, we're going to meet over at what was formerly called Finn McCool's. We'll have a meet up there. Because I would actually like to see what a $1,000 custom ordered handmade My Little Pony plushie looks like. That sounds actually pretty cool.

Peter writes in, no National Scooter Crashes database? I thought that was called Instagram. Yep. And Charles writes us, dear GOGs, thrilled to hear that you have so many ways to get paid that you do not need a monthly check deposited into your account. This is based on your response last year to a request for an account number to set up automatic monthly deposits and bypass the internet fees.

Good podcast, interesting topics, and funny. Jason is a freaking genius. Used to wonder what Brian was there for. Me too. Until he missed a show. He is a brilliant straight man without whom it falls flat. Keep up the good work and stay grumpy. Still want to contribute, but not willing to pay PayPal or Patreon for the privilege.

Five stars. To be fair, we're the ones that pay PayPal and Patreon. Yeah, that comes out of our cut. Comes out of our cut. So, you know what? Look, it's a lot of freaking effort to set up a bank account and do all this stuff for one dude. Sorry. Like, we've got plenty of ways to pay us.

And at some point when we get our business stuff together, we will have a checking account and we will write you personally and say, here, solved. Yeah. But then we still have to pay ACH fees or transfer fees. Yeah, there's bank fees. It's fees all the way down. You're going to pay for something. It's not like a checking account is free.

We're still going to end up paying for your for your deposits. Yeah, that's there's just no way around it. So Andrew writes in herd slash social immunity enforced in Italy bans unvaccinated children from school. Well, it was a law that was passed because Italy's plummeting vaccination rates went below 80 percent to the World Health Organization's 95 percent target is what they want to get it up to on Monday, which is the last day for parents to provide documentation proving their children have been properly vaccinated.

The Italian health authorities released figures claiming a national immunization rate at or very close to 95 percent for children born in 2015. So it worked. Look at that. 95 percent is the threshold, at which point the herd immunity kicks in when enough of the population is vaccinated for the spread of the disease to become unlikely.

So good. Yeah, there we go. Austin writes in regarding Facebook ads. Since they know so much about me, I joined back when you needed a dot edu email address. How come the ads they put in front of me aren't relevant? For some reason, most of the ads I see are car wax and trendy suits.

I could understand if they are trying to sell me something about my dingy car and shabby clothes, but I won't be buying either of their suggestions. It seems the same with Google and Amazon, which both are showing me things I already bought. I hate that so much. And don't. Meanwhile, DuckDuckGo ads are just what I'm searching for.

I'm convinced, like you, that collecting all this data isn't necessary to have their ads business. So true. Now, here's the one thing that I would I would point out, Austin. If you're getting a bunch of really weird random ads for stuff that you generally don't search for or browse to, somebody else might have access to your account and is browsing as you.

That is definitely a possibility. Yeah. So change your passwords immediately and enable two factor off. Seriously. Tom writes us. Thank you so much for a great podcast, gentlemen. You recently asked for some good sci fi book recommendations. I have to affinity by John Barnes and alternative universe multiverse story.

The Light of Other Days by Stephen Baxter. I have read that. So I've got that one done already. That was a very good book. I was going to say, was it any good? Yeah, it was very good. As an honorable mention, this is not quite a sci fi series, but it has some techie angles to it. The Kid and Llewellyn series novels by John Sanford, John Camp.

Books are The Fool's Run, The Empress File, The Devil's Code and The Hanged Man Song. There are more crime thriller novels, but Kid is a hacker. He uses an acoustic coupler modem to give you an idea of the time period. War games. Again, thank you so much for the show. I've been listening since episode 200 and picked up several services from your recommendations.

Well, thank you for supporting our supporters. We appreciate that very much. Quibble writes in. Congrats. Sorta. LOL. No, really. Six years plus or minus three weeks is a long time. Like 30 haircuts or four pairs of sneakers or an unknown amount of libations times six.

Here's to the next 30 haircuts as I take a sip of my neat whiskey. Well, I haven't had a haircut in a year, so that blows that stat. And enjoy your whiskey. I think I make up for it. I get a haircut every two months. Okay. There you go. Over at iTunes, we've got some five-star ratings.

Thank you so much. The first is from Twinkz, which says, me likey a lot. I'm not a techie, but I learned a lot of poop emoji from the boys. All right. All right. All right. And Mr. Peanut three, five, three, four, three, four writes in gloriously grumpy fellows. I'm glad they don't compromise the way I have.

Willing to use the appropriate language to describe the idiocy and uncaring malice in today's internet and related politics and business practices. I always laugh out loud several times a show. After the second show, I went around telling people about the podcast and how wonderful it was. See, people follow Mr. Peanut's recommendation there.

But I also warned them it might be not safe for work or sensitive family members. I also enjoy their backgrounds and doing IT for music and other businesses. A million thanks for doing all the work against the odds. Keep on keeping on as we older geeks used to say. Well, we shall. Thank you.

Randy Big Dog gave us a five-star. Listen to this. GOG is the only podcast I subscribe to and listen to regularly. I'm older than them, grumpier than them, but not as geeky. They resonate with me. I trust them. I grump with them. I'm cursing mad at the same things they are. Excellent. Well, thank you, Randy Big Dog.

And Waffle Balls writes in. Meets expectations. Performs duties as assigned. And as for much more than that, Ricochet Rich also gave us a five-star rating. Love the show. Love listening to you guys while at work. I think you have a lot of knowledge to pass down to the younger geeks like me, 30 slash M.

That's like, feels like I'm in an AOL chat room right now. ASL? ASL. I hope your show keeps growing. I also hope that there's some spacing that appeared in the middle of nowhere while I was reading this. Okay, here we go. I also hope those who make important changes to tech will be listening.

Well, we know they're not. Also wondering if either of you listen to the Rogan podcast with Jack Dorsey of Twitter on banning slash censorship. I could understand if Rogan isn't your cup of tea, but would love to hear your thoughts. Stay grumpy. I don't listen to Rogan. Well, I do. I listened to about half an hour of it, and Rogan was just throwing him softballs and didn't really engage.

There was apparently another version after where Rogan was a little bit harder. We talked about it on the show previously. Another listener wrote in about that. I haven't listened to that second show yet. It's on my list to go back and listen to because I was really disappointed with Joe on his Jack Dorsey episode.

I thought it was just, it was a pussy move. Not what I expected from Joe. So Tinder user 666 writes in, interesting nerd, smiley face. I like this show. It's unique. Quite a few things up my alley. Another smiley face. Two smiley faces. I'm in.

Well, thank you so much for all the reviews and all the feedback. We caught up with most of the stuff that you guys send us over the last two weeks, and we'll be back. We aren't taking the breaks. We're not eating the doctor's advice. So if you want your question, me too. If you want your question or comment right on the show, head over to gog.show slash support and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air.

And if you're so inclined, please head over to gog.show slash iTunes and toss us a five star and snarky review. Closing shout outs. I am thrilled that baseball is back with all that spare time I have. At least I'll be able to sit on the couch with my laptop and get the show notes together while watching the games.

There you go. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash gog. 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.

Someday you may be able to send us a check if you're that old. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 331. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy.

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