344: Dorf on Glue

This episode is brought to you by Hover, the best place to buy domains. Go to hover.com slash GOG to get 10% off your first purchase. And this episode is also brought to you by Chartable.com. Chartable helps podcasters understand, grow, and monetize their audiences.

Sign up for Chartable Podcast Analytics for free right now at chartable.com slash GOG. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo, discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Today we're going to talk a little bit at the beginning about the new format changes and the timing of the shows. Brian, you and I had some delicious ramen the other day. We did. And we talked about, you know, we need to kind of change things up again because, you know, life isn't difficult enough already.

That's kind of my takeaway from that. Yeah. Let's make things more complicated. We're both tired. We're both stressed out. But let's go ahead and make it more complicated. Well, it's most of the work here falls on my shoulders. So what we're going to be doing is we usually record these shows a day or two ahead of time.

Hmm. And then they come out, you know, a couple days later. But we talk about, you know, news. And for a news show, that's not a really good place to be. I don't know. Seems to work for 60 minutes. Well, I've gotten a lot. Well, they also have real reporters and they're actually creating the news.

We basically skim other people's work and parrot it back to the Internet. Right. So people can read everything that we've done already. So what we're trying to do now and what we're going to do is we're going to record and release same day. That kind of throws a monkey wrench into everything that we've done so far because we have this schedule of record on this day, release on that day.

So we're in an adjustment period right now. And what's going to happen is this show that we're recording today on Wednesday will come out Wednesday night. Theoretically. Now, now, what do you mean by that, Brian?

I'm just saying we have a long and storied history of not necessarily doing absolutely everything that we said we're going to do. Well, that's the human race. Elon Musk ain't to the moon yet or to Mars yet. So we're going to try.

We know within 10 years, we will release a podcast on time, says JFK. So this is going to come out on Wednesday and then the Friday episode with Bittner and our security stuff will come out as it should on Friday. Next week will then be the big shift where we come out on Tuesdays and Fridays.

There may be some things that you will notice that we're going to have to shift around as far as which segments come out on which shows. Because we might not have enough material on Tuesday to come out for Friday. You know, it's going to be one of those adjustment periods. So we apologize in advance for our construction.

If I could if I could send an audio version of the little construction guy, you know, the old animated gif that we always put on our websites back in the day. Well, other people put on their websites. We were never that gauche. No, but so that's our that's my little intro.

So there we go. OK, there we go. I'm in typical Grumpy Old Geeks fashion. You have, of course, picked the day where I am as soon as I turn off this microphone busy until 7 p.m. tonight. But that should give you still enough time to do the write up and get you some artwork. All right. So we've got a little follow up here.

I am still Marie Kondo-ing. I'm not really cleaning up anymore, per se, but I've kept with the folding and that's been a very wonderful thing. But unsurprisingly, what we kind of thought would happen is happening. Everybody is taking all their crap to thrift shops, which, you know, normally we'd think would be a good thing.

But it unfortunately really is just crap. Shops are reporting long lines to donate. Outdated clothing are being brought in by the suitcase full. And the problem is that most of our donated clothing does not reach any sort of higher purpose. It just ends up literally in the trash. Clothing is one of the fastest growing categories in landfills in the United States.

Almost 24 billion pounds of clothes and shoes are thrown out each year, more than double what we tossed two decades ago. This is obviously because clothing is cheaper these days and fashion moves quickly, I suppose. And there's every reason to believe that the show is adding to the problem. Clothes people end up donating aren't necessarily things that are saleable.

Donation centers can't replace zippers, loose buttons or iron things. And some of these stores are now paying to take clothes to the dump. And other charities are so inundated with crappy donations, they have to turn people away or have to pull in workers to do overtime to sort through a backlog of out-of-date and low-quality items that they probably won't sell anyways.

Okay, so here's the takeaway. Just throw it in the garbage. Pretty much, yeah. If you live here in Santa Monica or Venice, somebody's going to come around and take it all out anyways. Save yourself the gas to drive down to the place. Yeah, I mean, and clothes are biodegradable. It doesn't matter if it goes in a landfill. It's going to biodegrade.

It's not like we're throwing out, you know, tons of styrofoam. I don't know. My rubber cat suit's never going to biodegrade. Well, you should definitely keep that. You know, I'm sure you have a high school reunion coming up at some point that you can wear it to. True, true.

Or The Cure Show. We'll talk about that later. In more follow-up, Uber. Guess what happened? Their IPO failed miserably? Pretty much, yes. And people are starting to worry that this may signal the end of the Silicon Valley boom and the, what do they call them, the unicorn stocks.

Because, shockingly, it didn't do well because there's no profit in the company. I wonder who's been talking about that for a little while. Don't know. Don't know. I think I heard it on some sort of podcast. Yeah, some fat old podcaster. Have been bitching about it for a couple of years. But who listens to those guys?

Who listens to those guys? Well, maybe people are now. Because, yes, the stock did not do well. Vastly underperformed, even though it was priced down to underperformed to begin with. It did not meet any sort of expectations. And it is continuing to go down. Yeah, the second day trading was abysmal.

Yes. I even posted on Twitter. I'm like, oh, I'm not mad at all my friends who just became multi, multi, multi millionaires. Well, I guess I can remove a multi from that. Yeah, you can take one zero off. But they're still doing quite well. Yeah, yeah. Trust me. They're not hurting that much.

And I found a great article because we talk about, you know, is anything ever deleted? Well, it turns out when tech companies are deleting all of these videos from, you know, Syria and ISIS and all this stuff, it's hindering access to people who are war criminal investigators.

So there's an actual problem happening where these guys can't go back and find the video so they can backtrace the people who are committing the atrocities. Now, we know shit's never deleted. No. Now, these tech companies need to actually have an avenue where these people can say, hey, can I can I get this video?

Can I get that video? Because we're going to investigate these people. And at some point in the future, we want to hold them accountable, much like we want to hold you accountable, Mr. Social Network, for being an asshole. But we want to hold the people accountable who kill people.

So, yeah, this is a problem that's actually happening. And, you know, the law of unintended consequences is in full swing. Yeah, well, I mean, we know it's not actually being deleted. It's just no longer visible to the general population. So, yeah, there should be some sort of avenue for law enforcement or whatever to go and get access to the stuff.

Or, you know, I think one thing actually really has been actually really deleted. So we know it can happen because we know Mark Zuckerberg deleted all of his old private messages. The Hulk Hogan sex tape has also been deleted, which somehow is just not on the Internet. Amazingly. I know.

You know what happens when you have a billionaire behind you? Not that I've been looking for it, mind you. Well, I looked for it after the book came out and I could not find it at all. Right. It's gone. You can not. I mean, I must have to go to the dark web to find it. Previously, we talked about facial recognition at airports and how some some people are having to, like, you know, go through and get their face scanned before they get on a plane.

Well, it turns out you can opt out of it if you're American, because, you know, we have privileges. And the way that you have to do this, this comes from TechCrunch. You basically just have to go in and say, yeah, can we not do that over and over again?

That's it. It's really stupid. You just have to go and say, we just I don't want to be face scanned. Can we just here's my ID? Here's my boarding pass. Let's go. Let's go. All right. Well, whatever. For me, it's it doesn't even matter because I've got the Nexus Global Traveler card, which means they've got my photos and they've got my fingerprints.

You know, they've got that biometric data already. So what do I care? They've already got me. That's true. I'm in the system. Yes, yes. You are part of the machine. Deus ex machina. So, you know, look, facial right. I don't like the way they're rolling it out, which is, you know, it's not like everything else.

It's it's, you know, at this airport, you have to take off your shoes at this airport. You don't. It's not consistent everywhere. It's not well documented. Nobody's it's not been explained to us. I don't really technically have a problem with facial recognition for flying and things of that nature. It is what it is.

It's going to go that way. Anyways, you've got to you got to have your documents. You can't be an unregistered person and just get on a plane, which I'm OK with these days. Show me your papers. Yeah, it is what it is. So but I would just like some consistency and some transparency about it.

That's all. Well, we know half of the bullshit that goes on at the airports is theater. It's security theater. You know, we don't have to take our fucking shoes off anymore. Nobody's going to try and blow up a plane with a shoe. So, I mean, even the guy that tried failed.

So what's the deal? You know, everywhere else in the world, if you want to blow up a plane, you need to bring on a scooter, not a shoe. Seriously. Come on, bring your bird. In the news. I almost feel like we need to just stop the show because I'm going to do something that we haven't done since day one on the show, which is put good news about Facebook in our show.

Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Yes. As of Monday afternoon, Facebook announced a bit of positive news. Everyone who does contract work at Facebook in the U.S. will now earn a wage that's more reflective of their local costs of living. And those that do have the hard and sometimes psychologically damaging work of content moderation will also get pay increases in real terms.

Here, we've broken you. Here's a few shekels. Here's a couple bucks. This means a run-of-the-mill non-employee contract worker at Facebook will make a minimum of $15 per hour in all U.S. metropolitan areas with rates as high as $20 in San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C. And more importantly, the operations team members, these are the people screening graphic content, will earn between $18 and $22 per hour across the country.

Now, the catch here being, of course, that's only for the U.S. people, the U.S. employees. The vast majority of the people screening graphic content are being outsourced overseas and are not getting any benefits. And do they get actual, you know, I mean, okay, so you go from $15 to $18 to $22 an hour.

That money is going to be spent on therapy. So are they giving people more therapy? They are. They are going to provide more psychological support if they are affected by the aftermath of the horrible things that they're looking at. But again, only for the U.S. Yay, us. See, that's why. That's why we're the U.S.

Us. It's us. Yay, us. Now, we also have a little bit of potentially good news coming from Google. Now, Google is making a change to the way that they do things finally on their, well, because we have Apple phones, we don't really care. But for those of you with Android phones, there's going to be a significant change that's going to occur very soon.

And it's basically based on their voice recognition systems, because until now, now they say Google has needed about 100 gigabytes of storage on its servers, plus a constant network connection to make voice recognition work at a good enough level for users' everyday use. They have made advances in this technology, which will bring that 100 gigabytes down to 500 megabytes.

Thus, they'll be able to move voice recognition directly onto the mobile device, meaning you don't have to be connected, and they're not getting everything into their cloud. It'll all be done on your own device, and it will never leave your device. Yay. Okay, so that 100 gigabytes, is that stuff that we've actually sent them that gets billed to our data plan?

Because if that's the case, I see a class action lawsuit for that. Most likely is, right? Yeah, I mean, it's like, okay. But you've opted in to use the voice recognition system, and I'm sure somewhere in that terms of service that you just clicked accept on and said that you'll be charged for this. Yeah, yeah, I forgot about that.

Yeah, there's that. But, I mean, I think it's a move in the right direction. Of course, there isn't any specific language being sent out by Google saying that they will no longer send that information to their cloud, but they could, theoretically, you can shut it down now and just have a self-contained little thing on your own phone, which is the way it should all be going.

It shouldn't be going to the cloud. What is the point in making all these devices so much faster and stronger and better processors if all we're doing is using it to send things up to the cloud? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Build it faster, better, stronger. That's right. Sorry. So, we'll see what happens there.

My $6 million reference. We've talked in the past about Amazon's cashless stores that they were going to try to do, the Amazon Go, where you would just walk in and it would tell who you were and you would just pick out what you wanted and walk out of the store and your Amazon account would get dinged for whatever you wanted in there.

Well, Amazon's cashless cashierless stores now has cash and cashiers because not everybody works because cash works because cash works and not everybody has an Amazon account and basically it wasn't doing very well.

So, now they're basically turning themselves into a regular store sort of now. 7-Eleven, they just turned into 7-fucking-Eleven. They're turning into 7-Eleven, but it's not quite as straightforward because, you know, they couldn't just roll out what has worked for hundreds of years in terms of having a cash register and a person that takes cash.

If you want to pay with cash in an Amazon Go, you have to find an entry associate, let them know, the associate will then scan you into the store, you'll then be able to shop and then you will go to a checkout cart to pay with cash and get a receipt before leaving with a purchased item. So, it's not, you have to let them know when you walk in, yes, I will be paying with cash, sir.

Oh my God, this is what they fucking call progress? This is progress? This is progress, Jason. Oh my God. Okay, excuse me, sir. Excuse me, sir. I'm a poor little peasant and I have to pay with these little bits of paper and metal. Would you please let me into your utopia so I might buy a sun-kissed for my little child who needs a juice box before he goes to school?

Fuck you. Fuck you. Jesus. Yeah. Oh man. Well, a new app came out this week that lets you go to Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon. And now you can pay with Bitcoin and Ethereum and any of your cryptocurrencies.

Well, that's one way to get rid of the $20 I still have in crypto. There you go. Yep. Yep. Flexa will let you pay at Whole Foods using Bitcoin. So, what they are is they're a middleman. They're just basically... Does anybody need or want this? No.

No. If people made things that we needed or wanted, we would not have a show. That's true. Well, let's talk about some other stuff that we don't really need or want. Mainly the fear-based social media sites like Nextdoor, Citizen, and now Amazon's Neighbors.

God, Nextdoor is... It's a cesspool. They're all cesspools. And this article is really good over at Vox that kind of gets into the psychology of it. I installed Nextdoor for a while, and I eventually just deleted it because it was useless.

Like, it was just bad. Like, people are crazy, and I don't want to know that my neighbors are that crazy. Yeah, that's what Nextdoor is for. It's to figure out which of your neighbors are batshit fucking crazy. And it turns out all of them are. Well, as we've talked about with the other forms of social media, you know, they're feedback loops, right?

Like, you know, the likes and your Instagram and your photo and your self-worth and seeing other people's perfectly documented best life. Well, these apps are feedback loops for fear and crime. Yeah, negative feedback loops for fear and crime. Oh, my God, there was a brown person in my neighborhood, and I'd never seen him before.

Exactly. And that's what this article really gets into. Yeah. Violent crime in the U.S. is at its lowest rate in decades, but you would not know that if you happen to be on any of these increasingly popular social media apps that are forming around crime. Basically, Nextdoor, Citizen and Amazon's Ring's neighbors. There's deep research that if we read or hear about a crime story, we're much more likely to identify a black person than a white person as the perpetrator, regardless of who actually commits the crime.

And examples abound of racism on these apps, usually in the form of who is identified as criminal. A recent Motherboard article found the majority of people posted as suspicious on neighbors in a gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood where people of color. Nextdoor has been plagued by this sort of stereotyping. I can attest to that. And Citizen is full of comments speculating on the race of people in 911 alerts because people are trashed.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, we talk about how like AI is going to be biased towards, you know, people of color because it is. Well, and it turns out it's because everybody's fucking racist. That's really what it comes down to. I'm like, and I have I have had to so many times yell at people on Nextdoor is like, oh, this person, this person, brown person with a hoodie was walking by my house and I've never seen him before.

And I'm like, that's Joe. He works up the street at the sandwich shop. Stop being an asshole. You know, it's ridiculous. It is absolutely ridiculous. Right. Well, well, let's go back to Facebook now. OK.

So even Chris Hughes, one of the social media giants, co-founders and Mark Zuckerberg's college roommate, has published an op ed saying Facebook needs to be broken up. He laid out a scathing case for the government to crack down on Facebook and scale back Zuckerberg's power. He argued that regulators should unwind the company's acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram, create space for more competition and enact new privacy legislation that restricts what data Facebook can collect in the United States.

He says he doesn't believe that Zuckerberg has nefarious intentions. The power he's amassed at the helm of Facebook is unprecedented and un-American. They're not afraid of a few more rules, he writes. It's afraid of an antitrust case and the kind of accountability that real government oversight would bring. No shit. Yeah, but it's not going to happen, so it doesn't really matter.

No, of course not. Yeah. It doesn't. It should, but it won't. Yeah. I think even Zuckerberg came back out and said, well, it doesn't really matter. We're still going to be doing the shit that we're going to do. Chris who? Yeah. You haven't been around here in 10 years. Whatever. Seriously. You sold your options, bitch. Get the fuck out of my face.

And yeah, so, and we're going to go back to automation and Amazon for a second because there's news everywhere this week that, oh my God, Amazon is going to buy machines that put things in boxes. Okay.

That's the big thing. It's like, okay, we're going to, you know, people can't put things in boxes faster than a robot. Hmm. Surprise there. Okay. Okay. And it, I mean, it's, it's a ridiculous thing that, that this is news because we know that Amazon is the automation king of the world.

They've got robots everywhere. And if they can find a robot that's going to put things in boxes where people don't have to, I'm 100% okay with that because I don't know if you've ever worked in a warehouse being a picker and a boxer. It sucks.

It is one of the worst jobs that you could ever have. It is soul leeching and soul sucking. And yes, if you need to make money for your kids for dinner, you will do it. But you will do it. But I mean, we've heard the stories about people wearing diapers because they couldn't take bathroom breaks.

Exactly. It is a horrible system. And if they can automate that, fine. Now, the best part about all this news coming out is the Verge's take on this. And they talk about this slow drip of automation. And it's like, oh. I could use a coffee right about now.

I know. I could use, use me a nice cold brew. And what it is, though, is like, oh, well, Amazon isn't going to be firing these people. They can just wait for them to quit because their jobs suck so much. Well, you know, that might be a blessing in disguise. And then we can figure out something else that we can do with our time.

And what can you do with your time, Brian? You can start a package delivery business because Amazon is now going to subsidize you up to $10,000 to cover the overhead for your new delivery business. So you can now deliver the boxes that are being packaged by the robots that you didn't have to put shit in anymore.

At least until the drones come and take that away from you, too. Yep. Look, this is all I mean, we're in a weird time. We are absolutely in a weird time. So Amazon is trying to, you know, pay their employees to say, hey, guys, we don't we don't want you to be employees anymore.

We're going to give you a couple bucks. Go off, start a delivery company that we can hire you for. But you deal with all the bullshit. We don't have to deal with the bullshit anymore. You drive the trucks that you have to lease from us, by the way.

And then deliver our packages for us. Man, Amazon's going full Uber. Well, I think this is worse than Uber. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop here. Everybody's talking about the upsides where people can start their own business. They can be their own man or woman and have, you know, I've got my fleet of drivers.

And let me make a couple points here. Yes, please do. Please do. First off, when you become your own employee, you're responsible for your own health care. How's that going, Jason? It's expensive, right? I did that myself for quite a long time. So they're losing any benefits.

They're also now responsible for their own retirement. Exactly. They're not getting anything from Amazon. They are now responsible for everything themselves. And let's face it. I ran my own business for 20 years. Running your own business is hard. It is. It sucks. Not everybody has it in them to do it.

There are so many things involved with being your own boss. Even if it was just a solo thing, just you're by yourself doing this, it's difficult. And not everybody has it in them. Not everybody should be an entrepreneur. They should be an employee of the company that is doing this.

There's an old slogan. The world needs ditch diggers. And sometimes people are, that's what their temperament is attuned for. It's not for, I'm going to go start a business and pay my taxes and pay my health insurance and take care of my employees and keep morale up and do all this shit that Amazon now wants to outsource.

I look at this as one of the most disgusting business plays in a long time. Most people. I'm not impressed. Everybody I talk to says I'm an idiot. They're like, Amazon is doing good here. They're giving people an opportunity to start their own business. I'm like, do you understand that Amazon doesn't do anything that does not benefit Amazon in some way?

So can you just like take those fucking rose colored glasses off for two seconds and realize that these people are going to get fucked at some point? They're going to get upside down in this, these leases to Amazon and they're going to have to pay it off and they're going to come out worse than when they started putting shit in a box on a production line when they worked at Amazon for 10 bucks an hour.

There's, there's really no difference between, again, I'm going to go back to the Uber analogy. This is an entire, Uber has an entire business model that is predicated on the fact that they have to fire every single one of their independent employees or not employees, independent contractors who are entrepreneurs in their own right by Amazon standards.

The only way this company will succeed is to get rid of them all through automation. That's it. Yeah. So they are not creating entrepreneurs. They're not giving you the ability to start your own business. They're outsourcing. So they don't have to pay for you until they can get rid of you.

That's it. Exactly. And this whole thing is so fucking short sighted. And I swear to God, we've six fucking years. I've been saying this. These people are so short sighted that they're not going to have anybody that's going to be buying their shit in 20 years because nobody has any money.

Jeff Bezos is going to have to fucking start. He's going to have to start universal basic income because he's taken everything from everybody. And we don't have a way to pay for the shit that we want to get from Amazon that they have completely automated. It's ridiculous. He's just going to have to do a lot of solo drunk Amazon shopping.

Yeah. He's going to be the only one that's going to be able to afford to buy it. Exactly. That's it. Everything goes before. Yeah. He's going to have to buy the entire country because that's where all the shit's going to go to his house, which is the entire. It's it is. Look, I know I want it. It is.

And I want to make one last point before we wrap this up, because we talk. We've been talking about this a lot. We talk about this all. It's one of the main themes of our show. And I do want to point out the fact that I don't think it's the company's fault. They are doing what they should be doing in a capitalistic society. What Uber is trying to do, not their fault.

That's their job. That's what they should be trying to do. What Amazon is doing, not their fault. It's their job. It's what they should be trying to do. But you know what should be there? Government regulation stopping them from doing well or a new definition of capitalism, because capitalism is going to go down the shitter in a couple of years with these people are going to be the first against the wall.

Oh, wait, they can't be the first against the wall when the revolution comes because they have such high paid security that they have their own private armies and you can't get to them. So, yeah, it's it's it's a ridiculous feedback loop on this. This episode is brought to you in part by Hover.

You need your own domain name. If not for your business, then for your family. You're just way cooler if you can drop an email address with a custom domain name. Hover.com slash GOG is the single best place to buy your domain name. If you've ever had to buy a domain from any other registrar, you know how difficult it can be.

Terrible interfaces and a constant barrage of ridiculous upsells make it almost impossible to even just find the domain you're looking for. Hover has an incredibly clean and intuitive user interface without all the insane upsells. And they also have free who is privacy on supported domains that you usually have to pay for at other sites just to keep your private details private, not with Hover.

And the more domains you own, the less you pay for renewals. The savings start at just 10 domains and they go up from there. And every month they have awesome sales on great domains. Right now you can get dot club dot design dot online dot site dot space dot store dot website all for just $4.99 or if you want to spend a little bit more, you can get dot tech and dot photo for just $7.99.

These prices do change often and the domains change as well. So make sure you check their on sale page when shopping for your domain. Hover has over 400 domain name extensions to choose from, including all the classics, but also all these new fun extensions. The days of having to spend a fortune on dot com domains is totally over.

All my main domains are now new extensions. Using a new TLD also lets you get something more aligned with who you are as a company, individual or family. So get started today. Go to hover dot com slash GOG and get 10% off your first purchase. That's hover dot com slash GOG to get your awesome domain today and get 10% off your first purchase.

This episode is also brought to you by Chartable. Chartable helps podcasters understand, grow and monetize their audiences. Chartable's podcasting tools are used by over 10,000 podcasters. From the smallest indies to top networks driving millions of downloads. Do you have a podcast?

Sign up for Chartable Podcast Analytics to track chart rankings and reviews from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher across over 150 countries and join hundreds of podcasters using Chartable's new smart links to figure out which marketing channels drive listener growth.

Chartable smart links are trackable URLs that automatically route listeners to your podcast in their favorite apps counting both clicks and downloads. We've been using these guys here at GOG for months now and it's amazing the information that you can get from Chartable.

It really is. They send us a daily brief on what our rankings are in all of the different podcast charting sites and also any new reviews that we get, which is really handy. So when you hear basically all of our feedback section, we have reviews that come in.

That comes from Chartable. So sign up for Chartable Podcast Analytics for free right now at chartable.com slash GOG. That's C-H-A-R-T-A-B-L-E dot com slash GOG to sign up for free. If you have a podcast, there is absolutely no reason not to use these guys.

They're fantastic.

Media Candy. All right. So we've got to talk some Game of Thrones, but what I think we should do here, Jason, for the listeners that get mad at us because they somehow are not keeping up with the show. If you cared, you'd be watching it. Let's move it to the end of Media Candy.

Let's talk about the other stuff first. Okay, we'll do that then. It'll be the same thing. I know. It doesn't matter. Yeah, it doesn't matter. The Wandering Earth. I started to watch that after we talked about it previously. Three times I've tried to get into this movie.

It sucks. That's all I'm going to say. Okay. And I'm thinking, okay, this is like, you know, one of the biggest grossing movies in China's history or the biggest grossing movie in China's history. And in the world. And then I'm thinking, you know what? So is Avatar.

That movie sucked, too. So quality and the amount of money they take in doesn't really, doesn't coalesce sometimes. I can't. They are not. They're not comparable. I can't get into this movie. I've tried. I've tried. I've tried.

It is just it's pretty in some places, but it reminds me of those old just disaster movies like the day after. But, you know, I can't even remember the guys who did Independence Day then went on to do like all those disaster movies with, you know, the world.

Yeah, they were all horrible. Yes. So some of them were volcanoes. Some of them were snow. Some of them were asteroids. Yeah. Yeah. We had a lot of those movies for a while. Yeah. This one, they put 10,000 engines on the Earth and are actually driving the Earth to another planet. But they can't figure out how to get past Jupiter because apparently somebody didn't figure out that Jupiter has gravity.

Oh, my God. So it's OK. That's bad. It's really terrible. I mean, that just the science behind it. Even I'm like, oh, God, this is bad. Anyway, the wandering Earth is a skip in my book. One star. All right. The Orville has been renewed for season three by Fox.

So I'm happy about that. I mean, granted, I did shit on the season finale because it was pointless and stupid, but I still enjoy watching it. So I'm glad they're coming back for another season because they need to at least finish it. All right.

And a show that I really enjoyed called Fleabag, which is a kind of British dark comedy. I love the first season. I'm happy to announce that season two is dropping on May 17th on Amazon. So I will be watching season one. On Amazon as well. So I can go watch it. It is. So I would recommend going and watching it.

It's very funny. OK, I've never heard of this show. I don't think you've talked about it on the show before. So I have to go check that out. Yeah, pretty much. OK, well, go check it out. Fleabag. It's it's amazing. It's written. It's basically written and directed and starring one woman. And it's kind of her comedy. And it's very dark, but very fun. I like dark.

I like dark. I'm literally sitting in the dark right now recording this. So I like dark. Amazon has sucked up all the rights to the new Jean-Luc Picard. Star Trek series. So what that means is the global rights. Yeah. So it's going to air on CBS All Access for the US and Canada.

And then the next day it'll be on Amazon Prime around the world. So which is I think is a good thing for people who, you know, are around the world so they don't have to go. Do you also know who it's a good thing for? For people with VPNs that don't necessarily want to subscribe to CBS All Access.

That's true, too. I will now be able to access Jean-Luc Picard's series via my VPN on Amazon one day later without having to pay the whatever for CBS. Yeah, yeah. I actually have to do in my things to go cancel CBS All Access because Discovery's off the air now.

Discovery's done. So, yeah, no reason to be paying that. Yeah. And the Twilight Zone series. I watched the first one. I liked it, but I have not given any shits to go back and watch another episode. So I will be canceling my CBS All Access pass until Discovery and Jean-Luc Picard come back. And the Cure finally announced their big festival here in Los Angeles.

This is a bit of local news, but too bad they're my favorite band. I'm pretty excited about this. They're going to do something called the Pasadena Daydream Festival, where they'll be playing with the Pixies, Deftones, Mogwai, Throwing Muses and a couple other bands. Tickets go on sale this Friday. I will be there. I would. I don't know, because I like two out of the ten, you know.

Look, let me explain to you why you buy these tickets anyways. We're old. We don't go to day-long festivals anyways. We'll miss all the traffic. We're going to show up late. We're only going to show up for the Pixies and the Cure. What's really funny about what you just said is that is exactly what I told friend of the show Fogarty on Slack the other day when I sent him this link.

I'm like, you know, I just got to find out when the Pixies go on so I can show up. Don't have to get stuck in traffic, get there, watch the Pixies, watch the Cure, and then bug out. Go home. I'm not going to stand outside all day and get sweaty and have to buy overpriced hot dogs and things like that.

I want to see the Pixies. I want to see the Cure. That's it. Me too. So that is my plan. Yep, and my plan is if I can't get VIP, then I just don't go because I want VIP. You can get VIP, but they're pretty pricey.

Yeah, it's $300. So that's $150 a ticket for each band that I'm going to see. But I still have never seen the Pixies, and I have seen the Cure, but it was a truncated set. And those are the two bands that I will pay that much money for. I will sell a kidney to go watch the Cure and the Pixies play live from a VIP vantage point.

Whatever that VIP might be. I looked at the map. It looks like it's decent. So. Okay, good. All right. I'll be buying that as well then. And I have a podcast recommendation. I have LeVar Burton Reads. Okay. So I had an interesting day yesterday.

I went and spent my morning with LeVar Burton. And before doing that, I went and checked out his podcast where he reads short stories. And these are short stories that he picks personally that he loves. And there's two things about this. The short stories he picks are fucking amazing.

He's got a great eye for, you know, great sci-fi short stories and fantasy short stories and things like that. The first one I read was or listened to was a Neil Gaiman story that he read, which was just awesome. And then I got to meet him and hang out with him while he was interviewed for the Jordan Harbinger show.

Right. What an amazingly smart and just awesome dude he is. I mean, I just can't even explain it that he was he was so much cooler than I thought he was going to be. I mean, I met a lot of celebrities and I'm always, you know, trepidatious when I go and I'm like, oh, God, are they going to be an asshole?

Please don't let him be an asshole because I don't want them to be an asshole. He was one of the nicest people I've ever met. Just period. And super sweet, super funny and just incredibly smart. And he gave me a hug on the way out because I was going to go and my next meeting was with a friend of his and he's like, send him my love and all this stuff.

And but I got a hug from LeVar Burton before before we left. And it was just like, man, that was cool. But the thing about LeVar Burton Reads is his voice. When he reads these stories, you want to get a blankie, cuddle up with a with a cup of cocoa and just sit there and listen to it because he is so good.

I mean, he is so good. Right. And they're free. That's a podcast. So I highly recommend LeVar Burton Reads. It is one of my favorite new my favorite new jams, as the kids say. Right. OK. All right.

Let's do whatever we're going to do about Game of Thrones. Oh, God, we got to do Game of Thrones. I forgot about that. I feel like everybody else did. Do we really need to? Maybe we should just go ahead. Go ahead. Let's do it. Let's get out of the way. OK, spoiler alerts coming for the next four minutes, if that.

I think we can do this in two, if that. Yeah, I actually don't have too much to say about it. Everything is unfolding as I thought it would. Disappointment is inevitable. It has to be. There's no way that it can't not be disappointing because you've gone from this incredible universe where everything was possible to we have to end the show.

So we have to wrap up. Decisions are going to be made. And that's the way it's going to be. You have to make a decision now because we're at the end. Yes. Yes. And it does seem to be going in exactly the way that we kind of all thought it would. You know, Daenerys is crazy. Somebody is going to have to kill her.

It's probably going to be Arya. Jon doesn't want the throne. Who's going to get thrown? Probably going to be Sansa. Well, or Bran. So. Or Bran. So that's kind of seems to be now they've got one chance and basically a two hour movie coming up this Sunday to, you know, throw all of our expectations out and do something crazy.

But I'm betting they won't because you've got to do some fan servicing here and you've got to end the story. And this is the way it's all been leading. So that's what we're going to. Yeah. And yeah. Yeah. Arya is going to kill Danny. You know, the white horse at the end. Death rides a pale horse. You know, she saw everybody getting killed.

She's going to go kill the bitch. That's the way it's going to end. Yep. So, yep. And she's got to kill somebody with green eyes still. Danny's got green eyes. There you go. So what are you going to do? I, you know, and everybody, there's a great recap over on Wired. It's Game of Thrones recap how to ruin every beloved character.

And it is definitely one of the best write ups I've read. I've read a bunch of them for this week. And yeah, my theory literally is just, OK, Arya is going to. All I care about is Arya kills Danny. That's it. And then maybe Jon kills Arya again. And maybe.

And then somebody kills Jon and then Bran gets the throne. Who knows? But who knows? And by the way, who cares? It's TV. It's fun. It's TV and it's going fine. And you know what? At least they have a plan. It may be it may be expected. It may be disappointing because it's what we thought it was going to be.

But they have a fucking plan. Unlike goddamn Ronald D. Moore. It's better than Battlestar Galactica. And I would like to point out, though, that apparently that dragon has lightsaber breath because it could just throw a little bit of fire and cut buildings in half. I was just like, that's a little crazy.

Well, OK. Once again, we. We've had me at suspended disbelief a long time ago. Well, I'd hope so, because we had the dead coming back. Oh, God. It's just a mess. But it's a fun mess. It is. But it's fun. It's still fun. It's fun.

And I'm glad. And I'm glad that they made the decision to make Danny crazy and burn the city because that was just a beautiful scene. It was, you know, you knew it was coming. She had to. It was. Yeah. I mean, it was. Yeah. And when that switch came, it was awesome. It was very well shot. It was. It was. Here's the deal.

It made no sense, but it was a ton of fun. And the single best sequence of the entire episode was Cersei just kind of sneaking past the mountain. And oh, that was fantastic. They had their battle and she just kind of. It's the best. It's the best fucking meme out there right now.

Yeah. And also, it's so many people were pointing back to the fact that, you know, OK, we expected this battle between between the hound and the mountain and all this stuff, but we didn't expect it to be the fucking scene from Highlander with the Kurgan. Because that's exactly what it was.

They totally stole the Kurgan scene. It was great. I loved it. Good stuff. At the library. I read a new book this week by our friend Adam Savage, who, you know, Mythbuster fame.

So has apparently everybody on Twitter, because that's just my Twitter feed has been covered with people or him retweeting people that have read it. Oh, I don't follow him on Twitter. But tell me what they say before I give you my review, because I'm very curious what the what the zeitgeist is on this book.

Well, given that Adam Savage is retweeting them, they're all very positive. Of course they are. So I read this book or I listened to this book. I got the audible version, which Adam reads. Now, a lot of the stories here are Adam stories, which I knew most of because I'm a fan of Adam Savage.

Yeah. And it's interspersed throughout the entire book with. I don't even know how to how to explain this. There are entire chapters on things like glue. And the minutiae of glue and cardboard.

Yes. And I swear to God, I was driving on Mulholland and I'm listening to this chapter on glue. And there was a point where I was driving and I'm just like, I really want to drive off this fucking cliff right now and end it all. It was so mind numbingly boring.

I did find one chapter where he talks about how he how he manages his tools, which was was which was interesting and how he manages his workshops, because for me, that at least I can equate to my studio and my podcasting and all the microphones and cables and all that stuff that kind of got there.

But the chapter on glue, I'm sorry, is one of the worst things I've ever had to endure in my life. Look, you're not a maker, so that that's that's part of it. But people are weird, as we've discussed.

I want I want to do a call back to a friend of the show, ex-gugudals drummer Mike Malinan, who once when I was out on the road with them, just sat in his bunk reading a book, a giant book about salt. That book was actually really good. I've read that book.

I have read that book. That was a good book. I mean, I have to give it if you've read. If you've read an entire book on salt, I don't think you can complain too much about one chapter on glue. That's all I'm saying. Well, at least at least the book on salt was interesting in the history of salt and how it goes with how how we're a civilization.

But my fucking God, the chapter on glue, the chapter on cardboard, too, was like that. That comes in second for the most boring chapter of a book I've ever read in my life. His stories are good, though. I got the impression that because I am also an Adam Savage fan and I've listened to his podcast for quite a while, stopped a long time ago because it just got to Comic-Con for me and, you know, Mythbusters and all that.

I got the impression I don't need to read this book. You know, no, you don't. You absolutely don't. If you've listened to his podcast, you've heard all the stories that he tells in the in the book. And you go. And the reason I stopped listening to the podcast is because somebody who puts so much time and effort into his craft for making things puts so little time and effort into the craft of actually making a podcast.

And it is so terrible with such a horrible audio quality. Mike all the time like this. Oh, I don't know. I don't know what they're going to do. Oh, oh, I forgot. There's a microphone here. Oh, yeah. Or or doing it on crappy microphones when they're like, oh, we're traveling.

We can't do this. Brian, you and I are in completely different places. We can make a podcast that sounds like we're in the same room. Why can't we only done like four episodes in the same room, to be honest? Well, we've done about 100 episodes because I know because I had to drive to fucking Santa Monica in Venice over and over again.

But they can do it, but they just choose not to. And when they do that, I just turn it off. I haven't listened for three years now because it was just so bad. All right. Well, good to know. I don't need to read it. I still stand by the fact that the Carrie Bryan book was fantastic, though, if you feel the need to read a book from a myth buster.

Yeah. Carrie, I'm still going to pass on that one. I mean, Carrie Byron is she got her she got her start like Kim Kardashian with her ass in the air. But she at least is, you know, she's an interesting person. And and Adam stuff. If you have listened to the show, you will have heard all the stories because I'm like, OK, I know how this one ends.

I know how this one ends. But if you are new to Adam Savage and it's it's it's an interesting story. It really is. So if you're not an Adam Savage fan, you haven't watched Mythbusters. It is an interesting book because his story is actually interesting. But just because we've heard it doesn't mean it's not good.

But please, for the love of God and all that is unholy, skip the chapter on glue and cardboard and you will be a much you'll be much better off unless glues your jam. Maybe glues your jam. But I think that I am jaded because I know all of his stuff.

I'm just I'm not going to not recommend his book because I still think it is a good book. And just check it out if you're not an Adam Savage guy, because you will learn some stuff and his story is is actually pretty interesting. So there's there's my my M. Night Shyamalan Ding Dong twist ending.

OK, and I also bought the Daily Stoic 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. I'm a big fan of the Stoics and I've been going through this book in the in the mornings and they do a really good job of taking the little nuggets from Stoicism, putting a little spin on them and giving you just nuggets to think about all day.

It's it's I'm I like it. I like it a lot and I like it that it is digestible in literally one day increments. I can do two or three in a day, but I will read each day two or three times. And in my Kindle app, I'll make notes on it and bookmark the ones that I think are really, you know, prescient.

I'm enjoying this book more than almost any book that I've gotten in probably the past year because it's it gives you things to do and think about. So I really enjoy this. I like the thought that they put into the quotes that they pick and it's broken into different parts of philosophy and just how to live based on the Stoic philosophies.

I I'm enjoying it thoroughly, so I can't recommend this one enough. Excellent. And as per your recommendation, I picked up Delta V by Daniel Suarez last week. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm with you in that this book is actually good. I'm enjoying it so far. Yeah, you know, I'm back on the Suarez train as it were.

That's what I'm saying. Like, if you wouldn't have told me that Daniel Suarez wrote this book, I wouldn't have been like, oh, this is this is a great book. I really enjoy it. It's really good so far. So I'm looking forward to finishing it up. Yeah. So welcome back, Daniel. Welcome back to the family. Feedback loop.

We've got some new Patreon subscribers. Woohoo. Welcome back to the fold. Matt, Leslie and Barrett. Oh, we love you guys. Thank you so much. Thank you. And Michaela sent us a note on Twitter. iOS location bug. And I'm reading this right now. And I'm going to read this real quick because I have things to say.

A bug impacting your privacy. We're reaching out to tell you about a recent issue that we have resolved where we inadvertently collected some iOS location data. We then shared this inadvertently collected location data in a form that had been fuzzed so that it was no more precise than five than a five kilometer area with one of our partners as part of an advertising process known as real time bidding.

We've confirmed with our partner that the location data has not been retained, that it only existed in their system for a short time, and was then deleted as part of their normal process. We did not share things like your Twitter handle or other unique account IDs, and we've taken steps to ensure that it can't happen again.

You're receiving this notice because you're receiving this notice because you were one of the people affected by this bug. We're sorry this happened. And while there's nothing for you to do, you place your trust in us, and we think that it's important to respect that by acknowledging when we make a mistake.

If you have any questions, you may contact Twitter's Office of Data Protection through this form. Got it? Got it. Got it. There's nothing for you to do because there's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can do. Yeah, the horses have left the barn.

Sorry. Yeah, I think that's pretty funny. That is funny. Thank you for sending that over at PayPal. We got donations from Daniel, Linda, and Jeff, who writes, My fiancé and I are traveling to Canada in July. It's our first time going out of the country, and we aren't sure what to do about money.

Do we exchange cash for Canadian money? We also have a Capital One credit card that deals with the conversion and charges no fees. Allegedly, we even called them. A friend of mine mentioned that spending another country's currency is a cultural experience. Any advice would be helpful. Seeing as how I do this three to four times a year, I do have some advice for you.

Yep. Use your credit. Yeah, use your credit card for everything. Assuming you have no fees, you'll get the best exchange rate, but be prepared for a lot of strange looks. U.S. credit cards are so behind in technology, you will have to sign all the receipts, which they don't do in Canada at all anymore, so they'll be very confused.

Just say, I have an American card, and they'll understand then. If you really want some walking around money, you can just use your ATM card when you get there and take out some Canadian cash. The fees aren't that bad. Prepare yourself for a lot of change, though, because $1 and $2 are coins there, not paper money.

So you're going to have some heavy pockets. Right. And when you leave the country, if you want to take the cash with you without having to incur any fees, go to Starbucks and buy a gift card with all your extra money, and then you can use that card when you come home. That's right. Matthias writes in, great podcast.

Listened to the show for nearly two years now on my commute and really enjoy it, so stay grumpy. Matthias from Germany. Well, thank you, Matthias. Thank you. And Ben writes in, thank you for such an awesome podcast. I hope you guys aren't going to stop making shows. Only say that because of your recent Twitter posts, so I felt I should finally pay for all the content you guys have produced for me and everyone else.

Keep up the great work. Sounds like we need to threaten to quit the show more often, Jason. People open up their wallets. No doubt, man. Oh, man. Over on Twitter, Barrett writes in with a link from Twitter. He's like, who called it the gig economy instead of surfing USA?

And that's S-E-R-F-I-N-G, which is very good. I like that. I like that play on words. Yeah. Yes. And Donnie wrote us, check out the podcast to live and die in L.A. Investigators use Google mobile data to track suspect steps. Scary. Yeah, this is from Neil Strauss, actually, who is a friend of my other show.

And I was going through that show. I've listened to all the episodes and the Google data that they do have is actually pretty crazy and might actually break the case, which is kind of scary. I'm waiting for the last episode to come out.

But man, yeah, they they followed every step that he took and it doesn't quite match up with what the police were going from. So it's interesting to say the least. Not the best podcast, but it's still interesting. That's all I'm saying. Trippin Full writes in.

Where does freedom of speech and unreasonable search fall in this one? And this is a school surveillance zone. Yeah, it's a link for Brennan Center dot org. School districts are spending more money on social media monitoring technology, but there is little evidence it is keeping students safer.

Yeah, this is concerning to me. So, yeah, all these schools are there are a number of companies that have come up in the past couple of years that sell software that can allegedly identify signs of violence or other concerning behavior by trawling students, social media posts and other online activity. And as we know, these things are not always very accurate.

And yeah, they're basically saying there's no proof whatsoever that these surveillance tools work, but there are plenty of risks in any context. Social media is ripe for misinterpretation and misuse. And the possibility of misinterpretation is particularly high for middle school and high school students who are more likely to use slang and quotes from pop culture and who may be especially motivated to evade adults prying eyes.

So, yeah, stop it. Knock it off. It doesn't do anything. Yeah. Quit wasting the money. You know, my 6502 writes in. I went to a burger food truck and the guy told me it would be 45 minutes because they are swamped with Uber Eats orders. I'm happy for them, but I wonder how long before this crashes.

Well, yeah, I don't know. They're making money. So how's it going to go with that? Brian, any thoughts? Are you supposed to just stand in front of stand in front of the truck and use the Uber Eats app? You'll get your food faster. That actually is pretty good.

What you do is before you leave the house, you call Uber Eats and you have them deliver it to the truck. So when you show up, the Uber Eats guy takes it from the window and hands it to you. Yep. That seems to be the best way to go about it. He also sent in, was talking to a Taco Bell guy.

They process the online orders like drive-thrus. So for them, it's not super disruptive. Might be a way for other businesses to solve this. Have a separate order taking and processing flow. Small place still fuck. Well, here's the thing. What if you're in the drive-thru? Then you're still stuck in the queue. My main concern here is actually for your health, Moss 6502.

Go get a salad. What are you doing with all this fast food? I know. I mean, he's a runner. He's like always posting pictures of him at all these marathons. And I'm like, what the hell are you doing, dude? All right. Over at GOG.show, John writes in, hi, GOGs. My company requires that we do a quote-unquote preventative care visit or a yearly physical with our primary care physician.

At the appointment, I provide my doctor a form from a third party called Preventative Cloud. Oh, fun. He fills it out and sends it back to them. The company has been doing this for years as a way to compete with insurance providers, so I'm told. My doctor hates the idea of sharing my health data with a third party.

And if I don't, I get dinged, which comes out to about $40 a paycheck. I know you've mentioned this in previous episodes, but what the hell is this? Can these prevention care or insurance haggling companies be trusted? Is there any info or data anywhere that shows whether or not this is in the employee's best interest?

Have you heard of any data breaches? Many thanks. Keep up the great work. Well, Brian, go for it because I know you're going to have something to say. No, they can't be trusted. No, it's definitely not in an employee's best interest. It's in the employer's best interest.

Have you heard of any data breaches? Not specifically, but I'm sure they are and they're happening. And of course they are. I think this personally should be illegal. I don't think your employer should be able to demand these things and ding you. You know, it just it sounds horrible. Find another job. Yeah, well, or yeah, just take the $40, you know, ding.

Yeah, $40 per paycheck can be quite a lot. And that's a lot of money just to not want your information going to a third party. Yeah. You know, I would talk to I would talk to human resources and say and ask them why they're doing this. I would I again, it feels like it should be illegal.

I'm sure it isn't, but it is what it is. Yeah. I mean, you can get a bunch of employees together and go against the company. Try to do a union. Try and do a union and say, yeah, just get, you know, bargaining, collective bargaining power and say, look, we're not going to you're dinging us 40 bucks a paycheck.

We're going to file a class action lawsuit against you because that's a lot of money that we're going to be losing because you want to send our data to a third party that we have no idea who the fuck they are. And if my doctor says that that's a bad idea, well, then it's probably a bad idea. Yep. And J.R. writes us.

Hello, once again, geeks. I have a question for both the Grumpy Kings and the Raccoon King. I like that. I'm looking at trying to get into cybersecurity. What would you all suggest as far as getting started? We get asked this an awful lot and we've done some suggestions before in the past. I wish I could remember exactly where. So, yeah.

Last episode, actually, that we think last episode, a couple of them. Yeah. I reached out to a bunch of cybersecurity people because I wanted to do a special report on where to get started in cybersecurity. But turns out, they're busy and nobody wanted to do it.

They're like, I'd love to, but I'm too busy doing cybersecurity. So, I'm trying to get more people on to talk about this stuff. It is a great thing. We'll talk to the Raccoon King and see if he can put together a resource or if he knows somebody that's put together a resource on how to get started because it is definitely

one of the facets of employment right now that has like 100% saturation where you can get a job because they are so in need of that skill set. You know what we should do?

And this is a little bit in the future. But when we do Fireside again this year, if the same guy is there, the cybersecurity guy, we should just rope him into being on our show and talk a little bit about how to get into it. Yeah, well, actually, yeah, yeah. Dan Tentler. I'm going to I'm reaching out to him, too, and see if he can come on and give a talk about that, because it is it is so much in demand right now and everybody wants to do it, but nobody knows where to get started properly.

So I'll reach out to Dan again and see if we can get him on. Enrico writes in, this is why we are doomed. Uber is worth twice as much as Ford because that's the insane world we live in. Oh, yeah, I took a lot of bullet points from this article because I thought it was hilarious.

I'm just going to we're going to skip it. Go read it. It is very funny. The story that he tells at the beginning about people just being stupid is hilarious. This is a great, funny little article. And yes, we are all doomed. OK, yeah. But Cameron came back with I'd love to hear your thoughts on this article.

He found a business insider article saying Uber isn't screwed. There are tons of ways it can become a profitable monster. OK, but basically, it says what we thought, which is if they actually get self-driving cars and they can get rid of all the drivers, they'll be a good company.

Or there's the platform concept. We could do new services like the aforementioned Uber Eats and things of that nature. And then there's location data that Uber collects. So, yes, there are different ways for Uber to make money, none of which involve its actual business plan and business that it's in right now.

So, which, by the way, is what you're investing in if you buy their stock. So, yeah, that's it. You're investing in shit that doesn't exist. OK, great. Yes. Made a bucket writes in. I'm in need of an image managing app, one that can handle my roughly twenty five thousand images and maybe videos.

I've just lost my trust in Google images after some random images went missing, which seems to be a common problem. Well, that's interesting. Jason, I've heard you mention on the show an app that you use, but can't remember it or find it on the website. Thanks. Check out Luminar three. That's the one that I'm moving everything over to right now.

It is a replacement for Lightroom, which I've used for years, but I don't want to pay the exorbitant Apple creative cloud fees for one app. And they're going to be phasing out buying it, you know, single version, which I've bought since version one. I'm up to version six.

I paid for every version coming out and I've loved it. But twenty five thousand images is nothing. So check out Luminar three with the videos. It's great. I'm loving it right now. I'm transferring everything over. Excellent. Elaine writes in. Hey, guys, our CRISPR overlords have decided that our hearts need to be modified.

Kind of scary to see this stuff happening. It will be interesting to see how this trial goes. There's a link from the Guardian. One off injection injection may drastically reduce heart attack risk. The therapy will inject scores of tiny fatty spheres called nanolipids into the bloodstream, which will home in on our liver cells. When they arrive, they will slip inside the cells and release a molecular gene editing kit known as CRISPR-Cas9.

This finds and then disables genes. And the aim is to turn off about 30 percent to 40 percent of these genes that mimic the natural mutation that protects against heart attacks. So cool. I'm not going to sign up for that, but be my guest. Be my guest.

And I can't wait until this gets weaponized. Whee! Yeah. All right. Peter writes in. Hey, geeks. Thought you might appreciate this IPO, the likes of which are usually reserved for companies like Lyft and Snap. Beyond Meat's scorching hot IPO has shades of the dot-com bubble.

Oh, yes. Well, it's Beyond Meat has a history of losing money. It has yet to turn a profit. Hmm. This is sounding familiar since it's founding in 2009. That's exactly why it's a tech IPO. Losing $29.9 million in 2018, $30.4 million in 2017, and $25.1 million in 2016 as it invested in innovation and growth.

This is basically... It's nice to see the tech go into fake meat space. Here's the funny thing about it, though. If this was tech, those would not be millions. Those would be billions. That's the problem. They're not losing enough money. That's it. That's really it. That's really it.

And I do like how he signs off with, insert the obligatory Deliveroo here. So there you go. You got your Deliveroo in with your fake meat. And Matt sends in a link. Some sad news from Australia. Lyme has a fatality. Man dies in hospital after crashing off Lyme scooter in Brisbane.

The 50-year-old man suffered critical head and facial injuries after crashing his e-scooter at South Bank. It is understood that the man had a heart attack after the accident. I'm wondering if that's really what killed him then. He was found just after midnight. Lyme's public affair manager said data from the scooter had been analyzed and they can rule out any malfunction of the scooter itself and the man who died was wearing a helmet at the time of his accident, which to me points out that even if you're using it properly, these things are dangerous and you're going to die.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sorry to do this to you, Matt, but I see your fatality and I raise you a homicide. A woman was beaten to death with an electric scooter in Long Beach. Some guy. Yeah. Some guy picked up a bird and beat a 63-year-old woman to death the other day.

So, yeah. Okay. So, we have literally weaponized scooters now because we just put these big heavy things on the street with a handle that you can bash somebody to death with. Yay, scooters. Awesome. Yay. Charles writes in, hello, gents. Stumbled across this article.

Now you can get your very own bird. Yay. I can have my own death device in my house. Does it come with a helmet or common sense? No. I'm going to tell you right now. No, it doesn't. No and no. Yeah. Bird's selling their scooters directly to consumers now.

12,000 or 12,000. 1,200 bucks. And it comes in three colors. How exciting. Yeah. And aren't these scooters generally 500 bucks when they get them from China? So, you can probably get one just without a bird sticker for half the price.

Less than half the price. Oh, God. And Swell writes in, hi, guys. I'm going to recommend a sci-fi book for you. It's No Thinking Thing, Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill. A thoughtful and entertaining take on post-human apocalyptic theme. The author, I believe, is a producer-writer in L.A.

Also will be sending you some love. Appreciate it. Thank you. We'll check it out. And David writes in, here you go, fellas. Facial recognition wrongly identifies public as potential criminals 96% of the time, figures reveal. Yes, we know. That's why we keep talking about it. Yes, and yet we keep doing it.

Yes, they've been doing trials in London that have cost more than 222,000 pounds and are subject to legal challenges now in a separate probe. They've carried out eight trials between 2016 and 2018 that resulted in a 96% rate of false positives. My God, what are we doing, people?

Well, nothing. We're just doing nothing. You know what? You know what's funny about that is that just a randomization engine would at least be better. Would do better than... That's the old joke about, like, taking tests in high school.

If you just pick things at random, you're going to get 50%. I know. No, let's pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to be worse than a coin toss. You can literally just send out cops to grab people off the street at random and have done better than this system did.

Exactly. That's what I mean. It's like, Jesus Christ. Awesome. And Cameron sent in, figured I would share this with you guys. Looks like this is actually bipartisan. Two lawmakers urged the FTC to consider harsher penalties against Facebook. Yeah, we talked about this when it first came out, and I hope it happens.

It's Senator Richard Blumenthal, who is a Democrat, and Senator Josh Hawley, who is a Republican. They've sort of noticed through the FTC that they need to do more than just find them what Facebook already knows is coming and have set aside. Yeah. Yeah.

We'll see. No. And over on iTunes, Elliot Close writes in, from the UK, a lovely grumpy tech show. I love these guys. Their grumpiness can take a little while to get used to, but after that, they grow on you with each passing episode. And it feels less like a podcast and more like a chat with some slightly drunk friends.

Never slightly. If we're drinking, we're drinking. Also, they deserve- Yeah, we're all in. Yeah, we don't take half measures here. Also, they deserve respect for not getting rage fatigue when it comes to companies like Facebook. They still give them crap every damn week when they inevitably mess up.

This is the only podcast I hit play on the moment I see it gets released. 100% worth your time. Well, thank you very much, Elliot. Thank you. And we got another five-star rating from, well, they came in Japanese characters, but Jason translated this for us. Barley Liquor O is the name.

Nice. And the title is iTunes. Only tech show I've listened to for the past five years. A technology show about actual technology, as opposed to other tech shows that only talk about the new phones and tablets. A mix of current events with tech, books, security, random ramblings, all good stuff. Well, thanks so much, Barley Liquor O.

Barley Liquor O. Thank you very much. If you want your question or comment right on the show, go ahead and over to gog.show slash support and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air. And if you're inclined, please head over to gog.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review.

You know, there are times when I open up the show notes and I scroll around and I see what we have in here to figure out what we're going to talk about.

And then I am the one that's stunned when I see that you put in the death of the week in closing shout outs. I was very sad to see this because I was a huge Tim Conway fan. Dorf, Dorf on everything was one of the greatest bits ever.

Dorf on golf, I think, is where it started. And my God, Tim Conway was funny. I'm going to miss that guy. He was a funny guy. Yep. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schilmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Toss us a buck a month and we'll love you forever.

If you'd like to give a one-time or recurring donation, go to gog.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 344. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy. And before we introduce the whole that we are going to be playing here today, I would like to introduce another assistant of mine, Boom Boom LaRue.

Now, the hole itself. As you can see, the hole we will be playing today is a par four hole with a dog leg to the left. Can you get a shot of that dog leg? Not this dog's leg.

This the dog leg. All right, let's get out to the course. Not you, Boom Boom. Here you stay. All right, go.

At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then, explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

From beauty and fashion to home, culinary, and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com.