339: Let Them Eat Cake

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. I am supremely grumpy today. I'm supremely tired. You know they've done studies on empathy and being in a hurry. Yes. And you are about 5% as empathetic as you normally would be if you got some shit to do.

Makes sense. Welcome to this show. Okay. Well, I'm just tired and I don't know if it's old or if it's traveling with a toddler or it's a combination of both. But, I mean, I used to hop on a plane, be it a red eye. I don't even sleep on planes.

I'd land. I'd be up and ready to go. Now it takes like two days to recover from travel. I think it's the kid. Yeah, I think so. It's the added stress of the kid. It is a lot. It's a lot, man. Yeah. And you also can't have as many cocktails on the flight as you used to. Many being zero nowadays, sadly.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So, we got some follow-up. All right. Found a great article over at the Washington Post called Capitalism in Crisis. U.S. Billionaires Worry About the Survival of the System That Made Them Rich. Ah, are they having a let them eat cake moment? They are.

They are. It's a very long read, but a very good read. Because, yeah, a lot of kids that are coming up through school are like, what's happening? What's happening here? And it turns out billionaires are basically, well, they literally are at their let them eat cake moment.

Yep. And they're going to be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. And they're trying to figure out how to fix it. Maybe. If we can get to that wall that's in New Zealand in the private areas where they all bought all their properties, where they're going to go and take all the monies. And if we can get past their private armies that they own.

Yeah. I mean, it's pretty crazy, right? And this youngest generation, whatever we're calling them now, are, you know, we were pissed when we were kids. And it wasn't anywhere near as gamed and rigged and bullshit as it is now. It's insane. Like, there's no winning. You can't win. We've stripped the artifice of the system.

And, you know, it's been rape and pillage for 20 years now. It's so crazy compared to what it was like when we were coming out of college. And these kids are going, hey, hold on a second. Yeah. I mean, it's supposed to be Generation Z, I thought. But I think it's, at first I was going to say Generation Fucked.

But I think it's turning into Generation Fuck You. I think it is, too. There's been a lot of studies coming out of this next generation. And they don't think the way that any of us do. They are a different species. And good on them. I think we need some shakeup right now.

Oh, we definitely do. Because they're coming into this system that, you know, the haves and the have-nots. And, you know, as you've been saying, middle class is disappearing. And most of these kids are going to be on the other side of it. They're going to be on the, you know, the have side of it. But they're also saying, this just isn't right.

You know, they look at everything. They're not cool with it. Yeah. Even the ones that are on the right side of things are not cool with it. And they don't think it's the way it should go. You know, this is the Sneetches with stars and Sneetches with no stars upon thars. And maybe there's a better way to do things. And I hope they find it. And I hope, you know, I hope I'm around when they get into power.

And hopefully they don't get corrupted and old and tired like we did. Shout out to the Dr. Seuss reference, by the way. So it's a very interesting read. And there's a there's an interesting book in here that I just bought.

And I was just bitching to you off the air that I that I had paid for this. And the way that they they drag you in is I had a dollar fifty credit for Amazon Kindle. And I bought the book and then they gave me another three dollars and twenty five cents to get my next book.

I'm like, great. Thank you. And it's it's an interesting thing that's happening. And I'm just I'm watching this like on the sidelines. But a couple of things happened this week. And one is I was doing fine.

Everything was good. And then the entire world crashed around me. And everybody that wanted something from me came with hat in hand saying, you need to give us all your monies now. And I've bitched about this before on the show. It's like as soon as you get ahead, somebody comes to fucking smack you in the head and take you back down.

And you got to build yourself back up. And I'm just getting tired. I'm tired of it. And it's just it's it's it's it's this fucking loop and everybody's going through this. You know, it's just like, oh, you thought you were going to be able to get that house eventually in five years.

Well, no, we're going to change the rules again. We're going to move. We're going to move that target. Yeah, move the goalpost every time. And I was listening to a show that I edited for the Jordan Harbinger show yesterday for Humble the Poet.

And he was talking about this exclusive club that he was going to in L.A. with, you know, one of his whitey friends. And his whitey friend was going to get a membership. And the guy at the club said, I'm sorry, but the time for white people over 35 has ended.

And he looked at Humble the Poet and said, now, if you want a membership, come on in. And there is a huge societal backlash that I think is against us old whiteys. Yeah. Even those of us that didn't quite make it. Exactly. We were, you know, we're the cannon fodder.

It's like, sorry, you know, help, help. I'm being repressed. I'm like, no, I'm the guy in the ditch. God damn it. And it's all because of the tech stuff that, you know, we help build. And, you know, it's exactly as a bitch. Getting back to the article.

I mean, that's exactly what this guy is talking about. Anand Yuradharadas, I believe is how you pronounce it. Author of Winner Take All. The funny thing is, I can't open the article again because I have to subscribe to the Washington Post, which I'm going to do. I've given up.

I'm going to subscribe to the Washington Post because subscription models just aren't for on-demand video. You got to pay. They nickel and dime you everywhere now. So even though we're giving them press and linking to their articles, we still have to pay for it. But I guess that's fair. That's fair. That's fair. But yeah, it's really interesting.

I mean, he talks about the things that we've been screaming about all along, slamming Mark Zuckerberg for, you know, and Facebook. And then he talks about the Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz, who's running for president, basically on a campaign of let's protect super rich people, mainly old whiteys.

And, you know, he got mad at this and he's bucking at the notion that you and I do as well, that Silicon Valley's innovations would disrupt old hierarchies and spread capitalism's rewards. We have not seen that happen. We've seen consolidation.

We've seen more money in less people's hands. We've seen less companies. He's saying now that there are five companies that control all of America instead of the hundred that did before. The consolidation of power and money, it's got to be it's as far as I'm concerned, it's already hit a tipping point.

Like something's got it. Something's going to break. Something's going to break. Yeah. I mean, we've been hinting at it since episode one in what we've been talking about. And finally, you know, over six years on, it's finally coming around. Well, you've seen that we've seen the consolidation just fast forward.

It's almost geometric at this point. When we started the show, it wasn't even this bad. Now it's it really is. It's five, six companies that control everything, right? Because if you start up a company that's going to compete with them, they give you fuck you money and say, we're going to buy you out. You go ahead and go buy your island or get your place in New Zealand and go.

And by the way, that is that is the business plan for all these tech startups now, too. It's not it's don't make a profit. It's it's run in the red until somebody buys you and acquisition, you know, it's acquisition is the business model. And that's not how it's supposed to be. Yeah, I mean, this entire article is about Representative Ro Khanna, who is he's an Indian immigrant who or his family were immigrants.

He's not. But it's interesting because it talks about he's first gen and it's how he has to deal with these billionaires because that's his like Silicon Valley is his, you know, his jive. So he's got to deal with these people and he's trying to get them to like, wait, get woke as it were, you know, to the fact that everybody is fucked and it's just not getting any better.

So I know that we've harped on this a lot. That's why this is in follow up. And then we come to the next story, which is Disney CEO Bob Iger's compensation is insane. It says Abigail Disney. And I've never heard of Abigail Disney. She is the granddaughter of Disney co-founder Roy Disney.

And she's saying that that level of pay is insane. His bonuses and compensation now hit sixty five point six million dollars in twenty eighteen. That's nuts. That is. Well, I mean, we've we've done a lot of infographics and I just didn't have time to find one.

But there's great infographics out there right now. If you just Google the rise and disparity between CEO pay and standard pay at any of the same companies, it's it's it's they used to be almost not in line. Obviously, CEOs obviously made a lot more money than.

Yeah, there was a hockey employee. Yeah. But then all of a sudden it just like shot up to ten, twenty, one hundred X times. And again, it's insane. And shareholder value, though. Exactly. And I love this. She says when he got his bonus last year, I did the math and I figured out that he could have given personally out of pocket a 15 percent raise to everyone who worked at Disneyland and still walked away with ten million dollars.

So there's a point at which there's there's just too much going around the top of the system into this class of people who I'm sorry, this is radical, have too much money. There is such a thing. I am with Abigail Disney on this. There there is a point where it's like, why?

Why do you need this much? You don't. You can live comfortably for the rest of your life on one year salary of ten million dollars comfortably, not extravagantly. And I think it it all comes back to power. It all comes back to power.

And the more money you have, the more power you have. And the more you can theoretically get things done for good. But as we've seen and as we're going to talk about further on in this episode, this just is not the fucking case. This is not the utopia we thought it was going to be.

It is actually completely flipped on its head because of human nature. Well, and I know we've harped on about unions and things of that nature. And that's this is why I'm so pro union these days, because I mean, something's I understand the problems with unions. And we have historically there are there are some negatives to it.

But we've got to fight the system somehow. And the only way to do it is to unionize, is to get together. And then we've also talked about some of the people that are trying to fight the power within organizations. We've had, you know, Amazon, you know, employees writing open letters.

And we've had all that sort of stuff happening in the big Google walkout. Remember the big Google walkout last November? We were like, oh, yeah, all right, let's do this. Cool. Some people within the system are going to say, hey, hold on a second. We don't like the way you're dealing with the sexual assault and harassment issues and what's going on with all the executives.

Now they basically get away with murder. Well, guess what happened? Oh, let me guess what happened to the organizers of this of these of that walkout on Monday. Two of these women, Meredith Whitaker and Claire Stapleton, shared examples of retaliation they've faced from the company since on a Google internal mailing list.

Wired's been reporting on this and everybody else is reading on this. Come on, you didn't see this coming. Of course it was coming. It's again, it's people protecting their power. It's consolidation of the industry. Stapleton is a 12-year veteran at Google. Two months after the walkout, she got word that she would be demoted and lose half of the people who report to her.

She escalated that to human resources and to her VP, which made things significantly worse. Her manager started ignoring her. Her work was given to other people and she was told to go on medical leave even though she's not sick. She hired a lawyer and eventually Google decided to walk back its decision to demote her, although she says her work environment remains hostile and she regularly contemplates quitting.

This is what happens when you fight the power. Before you go into the next bit, I want to tell everybody, and I've been saying this for years now, HR is not your friend. HR- No, their job is to protect the company. Exactly. I mean, it's human resources.

If that is not the most cold fucking business title, you are a resource to the company. You are, I mean, inhuman resources is what they should call it. But they are there to save money for the company and make sure that you don't sue them. They are not your friend. You don't go to that.

It's not the school counselor who's trying to, you know, and even school counselors are assholes. They're the ones that's like, yeah, you're never going to get into that college. Maybe just go take industrial arts and learn how to fix engines. Yeah. So all in all, just when you escalate to HR, the only reason you do that is to have a paper trail.

So your lawyer has something when you go back and sue the shit out of them. So always document everything, always document everything. So continue, Brian. Let's talk about the second woman, Meredith Whitaker. She led Google's open research group, and she is the co-founder of the AI Now Institute at New York University.

She received a notice that in order to stay at Google, she'd have to abandon her work on AI ethics in the AI Now Institute, according to the email, which I guess makes some sense because why would Google want anybody that's working on ethics? Well, also Google canceled their AI ethics board. So, well, because they hired a douche bag that's on Google for that.

But all in all, I am not surprised about this, but I'm glad they're speaking up about it and not staying silent because you knew this was coming. I'm surprised they weren't fired outright, but they, you know, Google's, they were trying to be covert about it and of course, screwed the pooch, which, you know, because it's a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing with people.

I just spent a week in Canada and Canada would be basically considered socialist by the current administration and a lot of people on the far right and far left, I believe, because it gets crazy on the edges, as it always does. But, you know, it was a bit of a shock to the system to be reading all these things while I was there and talking to people, my friends, my family.

I just have things. Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of problems there. There's a lot of problems. Yeah, there are. It's called life. But but they've got a better sense of taking care of people and fairness than than we seem to have abandoned that here. And I really can't believe like in the last week or so.

I mean, God damn it. I'm turning into a Bernie, bro. No, no, no, no, I really am. I'm starting to. I'm all on board with the AOC and the Bernie right now. So something's got to change, man. And even if it takes a super old white guy, that's the super old white millionaire is coming in to fix everybody.

Bernie millionaire. He's barely a millionaire. I think out of everyone with their hat in the ring right now, he's got the least amount of money. Probably I'm voting for. Who's got the least money? Well, there's some people with little money and no sense of what the hell is going on.

But I'm going to wait for this one and figure that one out. I'm not going to throw my hat in the ring yet. But yeah, the thing about Canadians is, yes, there are problems in Canada. But after being in Canada for a while and going to, you know, the fireside conference and hanging out with a bunch of Canadians and knowing my Canadian friends, Canadians are supremely happier than we are here.

So they're doing something right. Oh, and by the way, at the fireside conference, you were hanging out with the Canadians that have that entrepreneurial, you know, Silicon Valley mindset. The Canadian Silicon Valley mindset is vastly, vastly different than the current Silicon Valley mindset.

True. True that. Even though they're trying to make money, they're trying to take over industries, they're trying to slash and destroy. But they're doing it very nicely and they treat their employees well. They give a fair wage while they take over the world. Because I know people are going to scream at me and point out examples of horrific Canadian CEOs and companies.

But in general. Yeah. In the news. The Sri Lankan government has blocked access to social media and imposes curfews among the deadly blasts that happened there.

And this is an interesting take on this because there are different studies that say cutting off social media after the fact is actually harmful to journalistic integrity and people trying to figure out what happened on the ground. But also it curtails false information and the bullshittery that started the attacks in the first place.

So you have six of one, six on one hand, half a dozen on the other. Is this the eggs are good, eggs are bad again? Kind of. It kind of is because you can understand the reasoning behind it. I mean, we know that there are kill switches for communication and mass communication.

And don't fool ourselves thinking that the U.S. government doesn't have the same thing that Russia does. Oh, we do. There are definitely kill switches for all this. We control the Internet. I mean, we have all the buttons. We control DNS. So, yeah, well, I think that has been I think that's been more like internationalized recently in the past, like 10 years.

But we still have a lot of big buttons, but we're never going to turn it off. No. Well, never because we also get the money. We get the money because Zuckerberg is going to run hat in hand to the White House and say, hey, for every second we're down, we're losing one hundred million dollars that you don't get taxes on because we put them all in offshore tax havens.

But anyway, we're still making money. So don't turn off the Internet. But getting back to the main point, I I'm torn. I'm not sure how to feel about this because I understand, especially I mean, we've had study after study showing that, you know, Facebook, always Facebook. It's always Facebook is, you know, people the misinformation spreads immediately and the worst of human nature seems to come out.

And when something like this happens, you've got conspiracy theories and people pinning it on on people they don't like and all the divisiveness that happens. But it's also an invaluable tool for journalists to get the real word out there and for people to get the real word out there and the you know, and what do you do?

And I guess we're trying to figure that out and governments are trying to figure it out. So here's the deal. They shut it all down. They shut down social media, but not the entire Internet, which means email still worked. So the claim that people couldn't communicate is patently false. You know, it could. Journalists did not have Facebook back in the day and they still figured out how to get the story.

So there are ways around this. Just you don't get the easy answer by going to Facebook and trying to sort through all the assholes. You know, there are still the communication channels are still open. You just have to do the legwork to get to where you need to be. Yep. You know, that's my only point about this.

It's like, oh, no, the world is ending because Facebook is gone. Fuck you. Sorry. Yeah, well, we've raised a generation of people that that is the way they communicate. Yeah. Lazy researchers. Anyway, moving on to the next one. Silicon Valley came to Kansas schools and that started a rebellion.

This is over at The New York Times, and I love this. But we're going to start with a comment from Andrew. Andrew writes in over at GOG.show on the topic. Brian, you want to read this one for us? Sure. He says, what's the saying? If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer. You're the product. Correct. As a parent and someone who has worked in tech for a few decades now, I'm a huge believer that technology is a game changer in the classroom.

This article about summit learning really bugged me, though. I'm totally behind the idea of personalized learning, but I read the platform that summit provides was developed by Facebook engineers. It is funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician. I definitely got suspicious. Facebook had a hand in developing an online learning solution.

Then I read, summit is free to schools, and the evil genius of the whole thing became clear. What better way to start collecting data on new users and get around that pesky requirement that users be over age 13 before they can create a Facebook profile? To be fair, I have no idea exactly how summit learning uses the data they collect on their students.

Let me just interject here. None of us have any idea how they use any of their data that they collect anywhere. Yeah. The TOS and privacy policies aren't completely clear. It does raise the issue in my mind about if and how data collected by any of these providers will ultimately contribute to the massive amount of data being amassed on every one of us.

Maybe I'm wrong about the goodness of tech and education. Maybe we should go back to massive textbooks, ditto sheets, overhead projectors, and the occasional movie shown on the TV that the teacher had to wheel into the class. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you very much, Andrew. Now, stepping back on my soapbox for a minute.

And feel free to interject anywhere here, Brian, because... Okay. Or go get a beer and come back in a minute. Bitterly for that. I'm not going into the tinfoil hat side on the Facebook thing. I'm not going to go with... I don't think data collection and that is tinfoil hat at all.

We know that's the reality. That's true. But that's not what bothers me about this. The problem I see is with it trying to shoehorn kids into this learning model is that most people aren't autodidacts because it is a customized learning model for the person where they have to learn on their own.

The people that are making these solutions, for the most part, are autodidacts. People learn differently and going whole hog on digital and self-directed learning is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Only works for certain people. Exactly. Kids need someone to shove things down their throat over and over again to make them stick.

And they're losing the human connection. You know, we've talked about this time and time again. The more you stare at a screen, the less human interaction you have, the less social skills you generate, and the less happier you're going to be. So... We only have to look to Japan.

We look at Japanese society because they went whole hog on this 15 years ago. And we're just hearing all these horrid stories about people that are so socially inept. They lock themselves up in rooms and they eventually kill themselves. Exactly. Yeah. The suicide rate around this is crazy in Japan.

And so I think programs like this would create a generation of zombies with even less social skills than the people who invented them. Think about that for a second. You know, the people who are inventing these solutions are, you know, the people who don't want to interact with people who want to sit in their room, play video games, and write code.

And I don't like how schools work right now and would probably... Me personally, I would have thrived in that system, but I'm an outlier and I'm an autodidact and most autodidacts are. And that's why 80% of these kids and families are rejecting this system. You know, it's crazy.

The kids hate it, which shows you that there is a disconnect between the people making technology and the people who are consuming technology. I would never have enjoyed this. I was very lucky. I had wonderful teachers. I had some of them were crap, of course, but I mean, I still remember super fondly more than a handful of my high school teachers and they got me engaged and interested.

I mean, otherwise, I just would have been reading books. I probably would have learned just as much that way, but it wouldn't have stuck and it wouldn't have sparked the fire in me that made me a lifelong learner. End of story. Exactly. I am with you a thousand percent. And I had the same few teachers, the handful of teachers that I still remember and I still send Christmas cards to.

And, you know, the big problem I had in school was the problem of why, you know, when you're a kid and you're learning about the world, the biggest roadblock for me, at least, was giving more than half a shit about a topic was what I'm going to do with this when I grow up. You know, I history and Russian studies, which I'm now interested in as an adult looking back on it.

I mean, they were just shoved down my throat as a kid. And all I wanted to do was go take photographs and learn about art and history. And my favorite teacher who still gets my Christmas card is my photography teacher, because he taught me about the things that I was interested in. And he taught me about the history of them and how to take better photographs, what composition is and the stories that he told me about the people he met along his journey by being a photographer.

I wasn't allowed to do that, you know, with the other classes. It's so I wanted to learn the stuff that I was interested in. And it don't even get me on follow your passion and all that shit. But when you're learning as a kid, you're trying to figure out this this, you know, what is the world that you have been shat into and what are you supposed to be when you grow up?

You know, and the whole thing is I wasn't allowed to graduate with with my class because I got a 69 in my Russian studies class because I didn't give a shit about it. And I needed a 70 to graduate. They wouldn't let me walk down the aisle.

So I have this whole stigma in my, you know, in my adulthood where I've never graduated from anything. And I think that had a negative effect on me over the years because I never saw what, okay, what is this moving graduation? You know, I'm going off script here for a second, but graduation is a point in your life where you are moving from one stage of your life to the next.

And, you know, if you take that away from someone because of some stupid system that doesn't really matter, you are taking that entire experience away from them. And how does someone recover from that? Personally, I haven't. I'm still a fucking 19 year old in high school or 17 year old in high school, maybe 18.

I can't remember. I flunked math because my math teacher sucked, but it, this whole like structured learning thing has, you know, the whole point of it is that I'm trying to get to here is I like tailored learning for kids, but doing it in the, the sphere of autodidacts who write code and thrusting it upon someone is just not the way to do it.

You know, like I said, I'm custom, I'm all for customized education based on the child. And I know it's a huge hurdle in our current educational system without some smattering of technology, but huge investments need to be made in teachers and shoving a laptop in a kid's hand and saying, Hey bro, go learn some shit and come back when it's done is just short sighted and irresponsible and making a generation that is not going to be socially acceptable because everybody else is going to be like doing the same thing.

And it's just going to, it's a self-perpetuating cycle. And just like bias in AI, it's being baked in and that's going to seep into the educational system and lets people push back, which it looks like they are. Viva la revolution. Seriously. Well, everybody's still with us.

How are we doing? 30 minutes of pure rant. Dude, I told you I was, I'm in a mood today. I'm in a fucking mood. All right, let's move on. We don't want a two hour show. No, because I got any more to rant about. The funny thing I got shit to do. And the next one is, can antitrust law reign in Facebook's digital mining profit machine?

Well, as we know from Betteridge's Law of Headlines. Well, apparently not. And this comes from a paper from Dina Srinivasan at the Berkeley Business Law Journal. And it's called The Antitrust Case Against Facebook. And it talks about how Reagan era antitrust rollbacks like basically fucked us all.

And it sets out a pretty good precedent that we're screwed on antitrust, which we've been saying for a while. We know that the monopolies and monopolies and monopolies. Yep. Yep. Yep. And it's funny because I put this, I put the original article that I found from Boing Boing in here and I put it in twice in two different places.

And I'm like going through, I'm like, wait a minute, this is the same article because fucking AB testing for it. Boing Boing. The first title was The Antitrust Case Against Facebook, A Turning Point in the Debate Over Big Technology and Monopoly. And the next one is The FTC is considering taking direct aim at Mark Zuckerberg as it investigates fake Facebook privacy lapses.

Well, yeah. OK, thanks. Thanks, Boing Boing, for doing the same shit we bitch about everybody else doing, which is why I generally don't read Boing Boing anymore. But there you go. There you go. Well, you know, I follow them on Facebook, so they pop up in my feed. Of course they do.

Here's a quickie. At Easter, I gave my roommate's mom my New York Times, and she was talking about an article she read, how Ring keeps all of our data and they're listening to us all the time. And then, of course, my roommate looks at her Instagram feed and there's an ad for Ring and then she shows it to her and she's like, look, they're listening to us all the time.

And then she winks at me to make me not say anything. But her mom was just going off on, ah, these technology kids, goddammit. Like, oh, you're part of the problem, not the solution. But speaking of part of the solution and not the problem, or vice versa, talking to a therapist through Alexa could make mental health care more accessible.

And also will give all the Amazon employees more to laugh at you about in their private chat rooms. Exactly. Yeah, this is, again, this is one of those cases where, yeah, it sounds like a great idea at the time, but who's holding the keys?

And where is that data going? The law of unintended consequences. Do we have any assurances that this is private? Is this HIPAA? Is it anything? No, it's not. So. Yeah, do you really want to be telling your deepest, darkest secrets to the lady in the tube, not knowing who in the Philippines is listening and posting it to the company chat room going, yeah, OK, here's a furry channel.

We've got all these different channels for people who have all their weird ginks. There are plenty of therapists that are available over the phone. Use your damn phone. Don't use the lady in the tube. Don't send this there. You know, I'm fine with my lady in the tube for the uses that I use it for.

I don't care that they know, you know, they're tracking what I'm listening to on Spotify. That's fine. But I don't talk about anything personal or private with it. And I wouldn't because I don't trust Amazon and they haven't come out and told us if these things have any privacy whatsoever to them.

And we kind of know that they don't. So don't do this. Yeah. Stay away from it. I recommend personally better help. I'm actually a customer of better help. And here's a side promo. If you go to better help dot com slash Jordan, you get 10% off your first month. I found them because they sponsored the other show I work on.

And I've been talking to my therapist who's basically a 65 year old Indian gentleman who lives in Tennessee in the backwoods who's been helping me with my anxiety issues. And I talked to him on the phone. I can do video chat if I want to, which is secure and private. I can text with him and I can email with him.

None of that goes to Amazon. And there you go. That's the way to do it. And he's helped me immensely. So if you need therapy and you don't want to drive across town and sit in a waiting room, which is my personal kryptonite, I don't want to sit in the waiting room with other fucked up people like me and figuring out what's going on with them.

Try better help. It's a good solution. That's not. Can we start scheduling or can we start scheduling our recordings right after you've talked to that guy? No, absolutely not. Oh, man. And Sony has launched a taxi hailing app to rival Uber in Tokyo for fuck's sake.

Okay. For fuck's sake. But Sony is actually doing it right because in Japan, you're actually not allowed to have Uber. You actually have to deal with licensed taxis. So as one should, as one should. So they've got 10,000 licensed taxis in their initial trial and we'll see how that goes.

So good for them, at least by playing by the rules. Well, yeah, that's nice. I'm glad that they're doing that. I guess. I guess. I mean, if it's a better app than what the taxi companies have, why not? Why not? Yeah. The taxi companies were just never able to get that together here.

There was that app for a while and it just never worked. Oh, yeah. Taxi magic was the one that I used. It was terrible. But again, remember, Uber's entire product is nothing but an app. That's true. That's true. At least Sony. A $1 billion app. No, no.

Multi-billion dollar app. $111 billion app. Yep. After they go public, it's going to be. Oh, it's $118 billion is what the valuation is predicted after they go public. Insane. Joy. And this one is just funny. JCPenney drops Apple Pay support from retail stores and app.

And Apple said, who? Who? Who? I don't even know where there is a JCPenney anymore. I know that. As far as I'm concerned, they've all closed. The one here at the Topanga Mall. I think I just walked through it to get to the mall. But yeah, that's the way it goes. Retail is dead.

Get your husky jeans. Wranglers. Real jeans. DJI R&D head dreams of drones fighting fires by the thousands in an aerial aqueduct. I can get behind this one. Especially when you're talking about high rises or something like, you know, we had with Notre Dame, you know, get those things in there.

And they actually did use DJI drones at Notre Dame to figure out where the fires were because there was a lot of confusion about where the fire started because there were some computer glitches that said, oh, the fire's over here, but it was actually over there. I like this one. I like that they're figuring out different uses of drones instead of spying on your neighbors.

Yeah, that's a nice thing, isn't it? It is. It is. Technology for the win. And speaking of drones, I found this article. Drone pilots deserve privacy, too. Now, this is about, you know, we don't know, just like you were saying, who a lot of these anytime you find a drone is overhead, you don't know who it belongs to.

Is it police? Is it just a neighbor trying to, you know, snap pictures of you? What's going on here? And we've talked about the various, you know, things that are being developed to try to basically put a license plate on a drone. Shocking. Yep. What a crazy idea. We should have that.

Unfortunately, what's happening because, you know, deregulation and the government doesn't want to do anything anymore. It is kind of a government slash private system that is currently being developed. Okay. Problematic because we don't need that to be private.

It shouldn't be going to private companies to collect more data. This should be the DMV. Yeah. The FAA DMV. It should be a government program. That's what it should be. It shouldn't be private. This is the whole fucking point of having a goddamn government to do stuff like this.

I'm with you, brother. I'm with you. I registered my drone at the FAA and on both sides of my drone in big bright letters is my NCC 1701 version of what my drone is. Yep. And that's how it should be. And it should be a government program.

And knock it off, people.

Media candy. I've got another round of not drunk on an airplane movie reviews. Oh, poor Brian. I did have a beer. It was nice. So I watched the Oscar award winning Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse as my first film on the plane.

How was that? It was actually fantastic. It is by far the best superhero movie I've seen in a long time. Really? Yeah, it was funny. It was interesting. It had some, you know, great, great lessons for the kids. It was touching.

It was amusing. It had nods to being old and getting older and grumpy. And it was very well done. Much better than any of the Avengers movies. No doubt about that. That's not tough. No.

I'm a fan of the Tobey Maguire first two Spider-Man movies. So I've kind of steered away from these. But I think I'll check it out. I've been on the fence. So now that you've said it's good, because I don't care if they won an Oscar. We know how that works. But since you said it's good, I'll give it a shot.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Next up, I intended to stick with the animated stuff because Kid was not sleeping. And didn't want boobs on the screen and things of that nature. I tried to watch Ralph Breaks the Internet. Okay. Not good. I was so bored.

I stopped paying attention. There was a few good jokes in there. There's a couple, you know, clever techie things and whatnot. I just didn't care. And Sarah Silverman puts on this weird little girly voice that I found jarring and annoying. And I was out. Did you like Wreck-It Ralph?

I thought Wreck-It Ralph was okay. It was fine. As a video game guy, I loved Wreck-It Ralph. But as an internet guy, I've just said no to this one. Yeah, I think that's probably a wise choice. And then on the flight back, Kid actually took a nap. So I watched Bad Times at the El Royale.

Oh, yeah. What I like to call Tarantino Light. It was Tarantino Light. Was it not? It felt like a Tarantino movie. It looked like a Tarantino movie. It sounded like a Tarantino movie. Heavily based on the music, obviously, which was great. But I found myself not giving a crap about what happened.

Yeah, I didn't care. I loved this movie. I felt that there was no payoff. I felt that it just meandered. And like I said, looked great, sounded great, didn't give a crap. At the end, I just went, eh, okay. I really enjoyed that movie. That's too bad. It's kind of like...

It was very much like the Hateful Eight, like a one-room type of thing, you know, like one location, shoot. Hateful Eight, I thought, was much better, obviously. Yes, definitely. But Bad Times at the El Royale, I thought it was just one of those things where I got and was like, oh, let's see what this is about.

And I was pleasantly surprised. So I think I might have had a, you know, just a jaded version of your review because I was not even jaded. Just I was like, it was a Saturday and I'm like, I need something to watch. And I popped it in and watched it with the roommate. And we're like, this was actually really good because we expected shit.

And it turned out to be decent, I thought. Look, it was okay. I give it a B plus is what I give this movie. It got me from over Chicago to somewhere over like Salt Lake City. And it did the job for that. All right. Okay. Well, I've got some Gotham news because the Gotham finale will be, I think this will be airing the evening that this show comes out.

Unfortunately, Catwoman will be played by a different actress, which is sad. It is actually really sad because. Is it a different Darren? No, it's well, Carmen B. Condova is the name of the girl who's been playing Catwoman for the entire run of the show.

And then the series finale takes place 10 years later from the last episode. And she's stepping out saying that she needs a more mature woman to play her part, which I think is bullshit because she looks way older than she actually is. Oh, I'm sure she'll be pleased to hear that.

Well, no, she looks. Yeah, probably. I see your point. I see your point. Anyway, I really thought that she was fantastic as Catwoman in the entire series. And I'm going to miss this show. I really am going to miss the show. But I think they're ending on a decent note.

So I'm going to miss Gotham. All right. To say Star Trek Discovery. Are you caught up? You said you're not because I was on. And here's why. For all the people that keep writing in about there being unlimited bandwidth in Canada. My in-laws do not have unlimited bandwidth, and I did not want to destroy all their bandwidth for the month by downloading all the Star Trek discoveries I would have had to watch to catch up.

So it is this week's project. Damn. Okay. Well, okay. For next week. Next week. Because they did something that we have to talk about. We have to talk about because it's fantastic. They did a great job. I got to say that this is, as far as a season finale for a Star Trek show goes, this is up there in the upper echelon.

All right. And they did some things that I predicted from the first episode, which makes me very happy because I get to say, I fucking told you so. All right. Now we're going to talk about podcasts for one second here. Luminary has launched.

And that is the $100 million podcast startup with 40 exclusive shows from very well-known names. And they're being blocked by the New York Times and Gimlet Media and Spotify and all their shows and things like that. And I'm fine with them blocking.

Where's our money? Well, yeah, this is true. We're working on that, by the way. Anyway, we'll talk about that off the air. But I like to I like to think of podcasts as the new punk rock because we don't have which we don't have the popular culture blowback that we had in the Reagan era with punk rock music and, you know, the Margaret Thatcher era.

We don't have the Sex Pistols. We don't have the Dead Kennedys. We have fucking podcasts. But because people have evolved, gotten older and gotten more savvy. And, you know, punk rock is not the way it used to be. So I think podcasts are the new punk rock. And when these big companies come in and try and spend all this money, they're the new major labels that everybody loves to hate.

And I just like to say this has all happened before. This has all happened again. Again. All right. Well, if it were the new punk rock, I'm going to have to start wearing my docs and my leather jacket when we record. I polished up my docs yesterday, so I'm ready to go. I just put a grumpy old geek sticker on it because we are the new Dead Kennedys, motherfuckers.

And speaking of punk rock of a sort, at least the punk rock that led me to becoming a goth and all of that sort of thing. Have you heard of Andrew Yang? Yes, I have. I actually have this in the show, but you beat me to it. He is one of the guys that has thrown his hat in the ring for a presidential run.

He is very tech savvy, which we like. And he hopes to become the first ex-goth president. Okay. I love this. He says he distinctly remembers coming to school in eighth grade and a friend, Dan Miller, was full goth, wearing all black, he told feminist blog Jezebel in a recent interview. So, yeah, this guy is the cure.

You know, all 120 minutes. He grew up watching Alternative Nation during MTV in the late 80s and early 90s. He is our peoples. He's basically us. And he's going to run for president. Yeah. So his policies are centered over growing concerns on automation. Sounds familiar. And he's running on a platform of universal basic income, something we talk about quite a bit here.

And he's been doing the podcast circuit. You can hear more about his platform on the Joe Rogan podcast. And I'd hope he'd come on ours, considering we have a lot in common, Andrew Yang. Yep, we do. He is definitely welcome on this show anytime. Yes. I'm going to have to look more into this guy.

He sounds pretty interesting. Over at Patreon, we've got some new subscribers. Vision, X-T1, Nicholas, Artem, and Evan. And Benjamin writes in, PS5 and the new Xbox could utilize stronger NPC AI through machine learning.

Just felt like triggering Brian on a Friday. Enjoy. Yeah, I'm just going to read this one quote directly from the article, and it's all you need to know. Another piece of the future of AI is obviously going to be machine learning coming in. OK, so there you go.

And Amanda wrote in, just saw the next show title, which we lifted from her last comment. You two have me up to three bottles of wine this week. My liver probably hates you, but everything else feels better than a Zuckerberg driving a Prius in search of a clue. Thanks, Grumps. And that's because Amanda is the one that gave us our last show title. Allison writes in, former Apple employee here.

The internal tool is basically a toothbrush that, to my recollection, has bristles that are static dissipative. They take it super seriously because iPhone internals are extremely sensitive to ESD. So I probably shouldn't have used that little piece of metal to get all that fluff out of my phone?

Yeah, that's basically what this is all about. Oopsies. Yeah, because you used, I prefer to toothpick personally to get the fluff out, but you used something different. She says you can likely use a natural fiber toothbrush just fine. If you Google ESD safe toothbrush, though you can find them online for the same cost as a regular toothbrush, which is probably the best option.

Just never use a nail. I've been present for an iPhone battery fire due to something, someone doing that once and the fumes seriously mess you up for a long time. I'm sticking with toothpick. Toothpick works fine. It's a piece of wood. And regarding in regarding eggs and health, it's pretty interesting.

The studies and mechanisms behind the increased cancer risk and mortality associated with egg consumption are explained here. She sends us a link to nutritionfacts.org and with a video that's under five minutes and transcripts and study citations beneath it. Yep. I looked through that and I'm tasking our listeners.

Somebody send us another study that says eggs are good because we all know they're out there. I eat two eggs a day. I'm just going to do it because you know what? At this point, I would rather die young than have to deal with another fucking egg study. All right. And Will writes this.

Hey, guys, a little something Brian at least might dig. You mentioned a few episodes back, IIRC, that your wife sometimes doesn't recognize certain slang and vernacular. That's probably there's probably a better article on this stuff somewhere. And I don't know about. But having worked in New York City's Chinatown for years, my tutoring co-workers and I encountered some fascinatingly similar scenarios.

For example, the way we text LOL for laugh out loud. Some Chinese American students of ours had phonetic equivalents like texting 555 because in Mandarin, five is pronounced like woo. So 555 would literally sound like woo, which some folks think sound like crying. Therefore, 555 is their opposite of our LOL, so to speak.

You get the idea. I'm not affiliated with any news outlet. All I can offer is a wiki that'll give you the gist of it if you're curious. And there's a link in the show notes. And it was quite funny. Cool stuff. I thought we all code in different languages and so forth. I'll leave the subtleties to better writers than me, but up my pledge for as long as I can.

Damned gig economy and really wish you guys all the best. Here's to many more years. Well, thank you. And I would like to point out Allison's thing about the eggs was about breast cancer, not just cancer in general. Right. So you're going to have boobie cancer. Yeah. I got boobies, so I should probably pay attention to that.

Over at PayPal, Joe, Mark, and we have a new recurring donation from David. Thank you, guys. Thank you so much. Over at Twitter, Jess writes us, I thought you'd appreciate this. And he sends a link. 16 arrested in Chicago theft. We'll have 100 car to go Mercedes. Yes. These are Mercedes opened up by an app.

Nice. That's all you need. An app to get into a Mercedes. And somebody figured out, possibly with fraudulent stolen credit card data, how to get into a bunch of Mercedes and drive off with them. Oh, my goodness. Oh, I have some thoughts about that, but I'm just going to leave that right there.

And Derek writes in, brew on the blockchain next, how artificial intelligence is used to make beer over at Forbes. Now, I was prepared to be extremely angry about this. Really? Yep, I was. But as I read the article, they're basically just using AI.

OK, let's be honest, machine learning to help them push towards the more science-based aspect of brewing and figure out different ways. They're getting a bunch of data points from people by answering a series of 10 questions using links on sites and whatever. And they're basically trying to improve the quality of the taste of their beer.

But still, they don't just do what algorithms tell them to do. They look at it and they think about it and the humans make the decisions. Yeah, we've actually covered this on the show before and we shit all over it. Yep. But now I've read more about it.

OK, OK. A radio teacher writes, I moved to Overcast when the iOS 11 update broke podcast auto download. I would rather pay for a great app than suffer with Apple podcasts. Yes, because it's terrible. And she writes, GOG podcast gets my star. So everybody go get Overcast and star those episodes.

Please. Pretty please. We're moving up the ladder. We need you. We need you hard. A judge writes us. Hey, guys, after hearing the recommendation for a battery pack is a great way to back up my security system. Do any of you guys or listeners recommend a good solar panel system for a home with a flat roof annex and a larger battery for cheap?

Long time listener. Judge. I've got nothing. So listeners, feel free to chime in. No solar panels here. I'd love to have them, but it doesn't work in my current situation. Yeah, I rent. Nothing for me here. We would definitely love to have them. But yeah. So yeah, definitely.

Listeners, let us know. And Ma6502 writes in, do you have special settings on the iPad screen and Kindle app to read before sleeping, like reducing blue light, etc.? Brian, you read on your Kindle all the time. Do you have special settings? I just put it in black and white mode. Yeah, me too.

With the auto, like night mode, whatever. Yeah, it's all built in now. We used to use Flux on our laptops, but it's all built in now. Yep. I do the same thing and just turn the brightness way down. Yeah. And over at GOG.show, Vincent writes us, I've been listening to you guys for a while now and enjoy you very much.

I don't always agree with you, but that's okay. We don't agree with us either. Sometimes we change our mind, too. A few things. One, Luminar versus LR, Lightroom Classic CC. The subscription model is very fast, and as much as I hate subscriptions, it is reasonably priced. One LR catalog on an NVMe drive.

I did not do my vocal warm-ups today for all these acronyms. Will speed LR up significantly. That said, I definitely need to check out Luminar. I've heard some others speak well of it. By the way, competition is good. Yes, it is. Yes. Number two, I've been ranting about Comcast owning the wire and content for a while now.

Finally, someone else gets it. Yes, we do. Number three, privacy, Facebook, etc. Yep, I've been ranting about this as well. As you've said, vindication. A grumpier and older geek, VinX software engineer, current IT guru and photographer. P.S. Don't make fun of my AOL account. Old friends can still find me.

Okay. We'll let everybody else make fun of your AOL. Yeah, sure thing. Sure thing. Yeah, definitely Luminar. Check it out. Good stuff. Barrett writes in, just heard your bit about MASH on Hulu. I've been binge watching it for the past month, up to season seven now. And luckily, it's been decades since I've watched it.

So I don't remember how each episode ends. Some of the earlier seasons with Frank and Blake seem a bit dated, but the newer ones make up for it, although it's really easy to spot numerous goofs that were never edited out. Hulu also has the old episodes of The Addams Family, which are still 100% classic.

Yeah, I'm actually looking forward to re-watching MASH again. I think a couple of years back, and I think I talked about it on the show, I went through this jag where I watched the final episode of a bunch of old shows. Like I watched the final episode of Frasier, and I watched the final episode of all the Star Treks and- Alf. Alf.

And I did watch the final of MASH, so get some hankies at the ready for that one. It's a tearjerker. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It wasn't a chicken, people. It wasn't a chicken. It was not a chicken. John writes in, I know you always mention this fact. I'm pretty sure you've been sent this link a few times already. But if not, enjoy the shit show.

And this is a link over at Vice. The amount of poop on San Francisco's streets has hit an all-time high. Oh, yeah. Man poo. Welcome to Man poo. So it's up considerably. There are already 6,676 shit sightings on the books for 2019.

There were 28,084 reports of turds in 2018, five times from what it was back in 2011. And as Vice points out, and I think it is important because, you know, we laugh at this and think it's kind of funny because we don't live there. But the real problem is, you know, this is not going to be solved by an app or city workers going around with pooper scoopers and all that sort of stuff.

The homelessness epidemic and the income inequality is the problem. And as they point out, the streets will continue to run brown until the city's unhoused population get access to public bathrooms. Meanwhile, while the city drowns in shit, it's also drowning in millionaires. And the number of ultra rich tech bros moving in is only going up.

Awesome. Yeah, everything we've said. There's nothing new under the sun. Rick writes in. Here's one for you. Tech new stars have it all except the path to high profits. Yep. Yep. Yep. Here's everything that we talk about as well. So, you know, it's it's an interesting article.

It's what we've been screaming about. It's there's no business models for all these companies that are raising gazillions of dollars and are going public and making gazillions of dollars. And they just they don't have business models. They talk about it. This is the economist basically saying what we've been saying. Thank you, economist.

Yep. Thank you very much. Yep. And Dan writes us. Hopefully this doesn't make you pay to see it. But it was an interesting article I thought you guys might like to read. And this is over at the Washington Post. And unfortunately, I only got to read the very beginning of it because I already hit my limit there. But this is getting back to the Notre Dame fire.

In addition to using the drones, as mentioned, to help locate it, they sent in a robot named Colossus that had a crap ton of water in it and was able to go where firefighters couldn't to help cool things down and stop the fire. So awesome. I'm down with that 100 percent.

And Brian writes in the data tracking is nothing new. I worked for a Midwest company 10 years ago that required you to do the fitness assessment and they tied your rate to how you scored. I hated it, but I was paid so little that I couldn't afford not to do it. And that's how they get you. That's how they get you.

Yep. We got some ratings and reviews over at iTunes. The first up is a five star from just some random guy in Malta. Nice. Nice. He says, great podcast. I'm hooked. Well done, guys. It's evident that you put proper work into researching and getting relevant information for every single show.

Well, thank you. Thank you very much. And grumpy old goth girl up in Canada writes in. I love you guys. Grumpy old goth girl who used to work in tech. I can relate to your opinions. Another five star. Thank you very much. Thank you. I suppose you'd vote for Andrew Yang if you were American. Yep. Yep. And we got a review from Jason.

Another five star. Angry about the right stuff. These guys are frustrated. You think? Did you listen to this episode? About the weak links in the chain, the people. Sad that they never learn, but I know I learn from them every time they post a new episode. The two times a week is great and I need my fix and more is better.

Thank you for the insight and experience and educated recommendations I'm posting on here, but listen on Overcast and don't have enough stars and enough podcasting apps to support you more. Thank you, Jason. And for kicks, JPD. Deliveroo! Apparently that's my tagline.

It is your thing. And RTHGRGNS over in Canada writes, Ritha Riggins from Canada writes, best tech podcast available. Five stars. I've been binging it for around 60 hours a week and can't stop. I am so sorry.

I'm so sorry. You must be in a wonderful mood. It's a great podcast full of snark facts and snowflake bashing. If you like comedy and tech, this is the podcast for you. If you don't listen to it anyway, your digital life will thank you. True. If you want your question or comment right on the show, head over to GOG.show slash support and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air.

And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash iTunes and toss us a five star and snarky review and mash those stars on Overcast. Closing shout outs. I want to give a shout out to Air Canada. They finally rolled out a little kid's coloring book and crayons for the flight.

That was very nice of them. And the stewardesses or whatever you're supposed to call them these days, stewards. I don't know. Flight attendants, I believe. Flight attendants. Isn't the current term. We're we're wonderful with my kids. So thank you so much. I miss the days when I used to fly TWA and they would give you the little pilot's wings and then take you up to the cockpit to meet the captain when you were flying.

Yeah, that doesn't happen anymore. No, it doesn't. I still have my little TWA badges somewhere in a box that I'll probably never find again. Anyway, until next time, I'm Jason DeFillipo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Support the show and keep us on the air.

Go to patreon.com slash GOG. Toss us a buck a month and we'll love you forever. If you'd like to give a one time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar. Help us hang on to that lower middle class. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 339. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions and get links to stuff we like.

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