350: Cangaroooooo!

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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. Guess what I woke up to this morning, Brian? A dog in your face. Ah, well, besides that. Okay. Nice little F you from Amazon. They decided to cancel my affiliate account with no explanation and no reason. So now I got to go spend God knows how long on the phone trying to figure out why.

Are you still making a decent amount of money from your affiliate account? I make about $30 a pay period. Hmm. We seem to make nothing with ours. I don't know why. Yeah, nobody's clicking on anything anymore, but it's still annoying because I've got tons of links out there and for them it's just free money.

So I want to know why. I mean, there's a chance that somebody's dicking around with me because I do have enemies and I'm just curious. I just have to go through the process now. So I'll let you know what the process is on the next episode to try and get your affiliate account reinstated when Amazon just decides to turn the sprinklers on.

It's lovely that they do that. It's such a these tech companies. They just it's so blatantly obvious. They don't care. Like at first it was great. Amazon enjoyed this. It drove traffic towards Amazon and everybody got to share a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little bit of the wealth.

And it worked for Amazon and it worked for everybody. But now they don't care anymore and they'll just shut down accounts. And there's basically I'm sure you're going to find out the process is excruciatingly stupid. Yeah. With most tech companies, I found any kind of process where you need to get support or help involves tons of broken links because they don't really seem to care too much about maintaining those parts of their sites.

And I'm sure you're going to get a very unsatisfactory answer and they may just switch it back on for you and not. Yeah, well, well, here's the thing. I have to do it on the phone. Right. Since the account's been canceled, they gave me a phone number that I have to call. Ah, that'll be fine. Which they give you after you fill out the email us form.

It's like, oh, well, you're just call us. It's like, oh, that'd be nice to say at the beginning. Right. No. So in a little Facebook account deletion follow up news. Right. I finally decided to try and log back into my Facebook account. And lo and behold, it has been deleted.

Oh, well, it's actually visibility has been set to zero. Yeah. Yeah. Let's be honest. It has not been deleted. And here's another fun tidbit. I was playing around with Instagram and they're like, would you like to upgrade to a business account? Yes. They ask me all the time.

I'm like, sure. Why not? And since my account on Instagram is not linked to a Facebook account, guess what they decided to do? Open up a Facebook account for you. I don't know if they opened up a Facebook account for me, but they sure made a page for me.

So I don't know what's going on with that. So there's no escaping it. If you're going to use a Facebook property, just expect to get pulled back into their orbit somehow, even though I never agreed to have them do anything on Facebook by creating the Instagram business account.

Well, they are related properties, but more on that on in the news. All right. And I've got a little bit of follow up as well. Remember that Chinese scientist that decided to do some genetic tweaks on babies to make them immune to HIV? He Jianku. Yes, that one.

Yeah. Who would have thunk it? But perhaps this isn't going so well. Are there unintended consequences of fucking baby genus? There were unintended consequences, Jason. Who would have thunk it? So people with two copies of a mutation that protects against the HIV virus known as CCR5-Delta-32 are more likely to die before age 76 than individuals without the mutation, according to new research published today in Nature Medicine.

So saves you from HIV, kills you sooner. Yeah. So six of one, half dozen of the other. As the article over at Gizmodo states, the new study is yet another reminder that human gene editing will be exceptionally tricky work. For each genetic action, there will be a vast number of genetic reactions, a.k.a. unintended consequences.

So the key will be to identify these unwanted side effects prior to making modifications, not just doing it, and finding ways to mitigate negative outcomes. This will be difficult and time-consuming, but not impossible. Human gene editing is in our future, with future being the key word. I love this.

So baby's born. Once he's old enough to kind of comprehend the universe, the parents sit him down and say, welcome to the world. I've got good news and I've got bad news. Good news, you're here. Bad news, not for long. And don't mind that third arm.

In the news. Well, we finally got some potentially interesting and potentially good news about maybe breaking up these monoliths of social media that we now have in these tech companies.

The FTC will lead any antitrust investigation into Facebook under an arrangement that gives the Justice Department chief oversight over Alphabet, a.k.a. Google, as the government gears up for scrutiny of all the major tech companies over competition concerns, i.e. the fact that there is none and they just buy anybody.

So the Justice Department and FTC are basically splitting these up. They're taking two of the big four each. The Justice Department will have authority over Google and Apple, while the FTC will have oversight over Facebook and Amazon. There's no plans yet on what they're actually going to do.

This is stage one. Because I'm sitting here thinking about it going, well, what do you how how do you. OK, I can understand how you break up Facebook. It's what we just talked about in the intro. Instagram has to go off and become its own company. WhatsApp goes back to being its own company. Every we split all these things up and Facebook is just Facebook.

Again, how that actually works in the real world, God knows. But what do you do with Apple or Google? I don't understand. Well, I mean, look at look at what they've been charged with before with deceptive practices and monolithic practices and things like that and how they deal with their ad sales.

And with Apple, it's a case of the app store. And there are there are a lot of different things. Yeah, I guess Apple's media will have to be split off from the from the tech side of the company. But who knows how this is all going to work? It's one of those things where I wish I had known about it the day before it happened so I could have sold my Apple shares.

That's for damn sure. Well, nothing's happened yet. So the shares are all still doing quite well. Well, not from when I bought them. But yeah, this whole thing put the poor in portfolio for me. So we'll see how this kind of plays out. The only thing that I'm sad about is I don't have any cash on hand to go buy because right now is a good time to buy.

It is. And we've got some some Web 2.0 or work 2.0 or whatever economy 2.0 news that we're calling this. I don't know what it is anymore. But, you know, it's the bullshit exploitation that's going on with everybody out there. In specifics, this time it's Postmates. So they they've they've pulled the rug out from under their workers.

Shocking. And the workers are going to try to fight back. But I'm sure that won't work very well. So there was an article over at again at the Gizmodo that talks to somebody who used to work for Postmates. He says he's been delivering with Postmates for a year and a half in the greater Seattle area and working gig economy jobs more broadly for close to half a decade.

Poor soul. But he used to make a reasonable living and he no longer does. Just this year, they have cut the pay rates twice. They have incentives to keep people motivated. They make it sound so possible. He said, recounting how his attempts to live off gig work alone resulted in briefly becoming homeless. So, yes, Postmates changed its pay structure again for the worse.

And drivers have engaged in a relatively disorganized strike, partly because the changes hurt their bank accounts and partly because of how quietly the company tried to sneak the new rates through. In addition to that, they've started getting rid of basically the blitz, which is the Postmates word for surge pricing, which we've seen in Uber and Lyft and all that sort of stuff.

Basically, it's the only way that people make a living is through surge pricing because the other pricing is artificially kept low to make sure that they win and drive out other competition. Correct. Works great, right? Oh, yeah. Yes. Now the workers working with a group called an organizational group called Working Washington have come up with a plan that could turn the quirks of app based employment against itself called a blitz up.

The idea for the blitz up is workers will come together and agree that they are going to reject all jobs that are not in blitz mode for a day of action. And then try to drive them up to blitz mode and get more money. Isn't this the same thing that the Uber drivers were doing by the airport? Exactly the same thing.

So everybody is getting in on this. If you're working in the gig economy to try to get some basic money, which is only going to work short term. Here's the thing. Stop working for these companies. I know not everybody has a choice. I know. Yeah. This is not working very well for anybody.

No, it's not. But I mean, what Postmates really needs to do is just all these people pay their workers or wait, maybe even call them workers instead of contractors. Hire them do like companies have done all throughout history, except for the surf period, which is basically what we're back to.

Yeah, that's not going to work. Just the economics don't work. There's not enough people to do it. So the interesting thing about this is, yes, they're trying to do the same thing that those Uber drivers were doing. Very clever, but not going to work. It's a short term. I mean, I guess they're doing it as a protest, which I can understand that.

Yeah, it's not a fix at all. It's just a protest. Yeah, the Uber drivers were doing it systematically to just keep the prices up. They weren't protesting. They were just trying to make some money. There's the difference there. But yeah, this whole gig economy thing is not working out the way that everybody thought it was going to.

And there's got to be a change to it or it's just going to fall apart. There really is. There's just no way because people are understanding that you can't make a living if they keep dropping prices on people. And it's the way it works. You know, if I walked into work tomorrow and my salary was cut by 25 percent and nobody told me I would be pissed, then I would quit.

I would go find another job. But I know a lot of people can't, as you said. So we'll see how this plays out with Postmates. I don't see it playing out well. I've never used Postmates, so I don't know much about the whole system. I'm guessing it's just the same thing where you go to the app, find something you want, and somebody delivers it for you.

Exactly. It's yes. That's what all these companies do. And that's why they all have to try to undercut each other, because there can be only one. Yeah. Oh, well. Yeah. So speaking of things that have not worked out the way that we had all hoped, the Hyperloop. Oh, yes. Oh, what's wrong now?

Hyperloop. Well, it's not his Hyperloop. He basically wrote a paper saying, here's a cool way to do something. Yeah, on a napkin. Everybody can have it for free. Go off and do something with it. And the people that have gone off to do something with it have been messing about for quite some time now, trying to get it off the ground.

There's a couple of different companies that are out there trying to do it, one called HTT. But what has happened is basically the Hyperloop, which would have been this really cool, incredibly fast tube system to move people around all over the country and all over the world, has basically started to become a train.

Okay. Why? Why is this? Can they not get the vacuum tubes to work? The series of tubes that was far? No, it was supposed to be magnets, and they have not been able to get that to work so far. They've been pushing things with air. The bobsled size carriage imagined by Elon Musk was becoming looking more and more like a train car with a needle nose, basically, or, you know, the high speed trains in Japan because of you need to have more people in them to make them financially feasible as opposed to the smaller little tubes that was going to go on with Musk.

And Hyperloop One's project is definitely starting to sound more like basically a high speed train. So all of this high sci-fi hopes dashed. It's basically just becoming high speed trains on the plus side, they're going to cost 60 to 70% less than the cost of a traditional high speed rail, but not the 10% or less that Elon Musk was once projecting for people.

Does that mean Elon Musk's idea was wrong, or has it been the implementation or the financial realities that have come along since the 2013 white paper? Who knows? All I know is we're not getting the cool Hyperloop that we were going to get. Well, not yet. Technology is not there yet, which is, you know, that's what Elon does. He comes up with an idea that requires technology that is not available yet and then works towards making it.

So, I mean, there wasn't the which he has done with with Tesla and battery chargers and the boring company. He's got a new super boring machine, which is fine. You know, I'm look, if we didn't get everything we want, fine. If we get something out of it, I want more trains. I want high speed rail.

We need high speed rail in this country. I'm totally down with that. Especially if it's underground, so I don't have to wait at railroad crossings all day long when I'm in a place with trains, like in the Midwest, which was terrible. Yes. So, I'm fine. Hey, look, baby steps. There's nothing wrong with baby steps.

No, I agree. And in sad news, I suppose, this didn't hit me quite as hard as when Instant Messenger finally shut down the other year. But BBM, BlackBerry Messenger Service, has shut down this week due to lack of users. And my reaction is, it was still a thing?

No, it wasn't really. That's why it's gone. But I do remember it fondly. I did have a BlackBerry for quite some time. And I remember giving people my pin so we could do texting and all that sort of stuff back in the day before it was everywhere. So, a little, you know, just a sad bit of history going away. Yeah, I'm not going to shed a tear.

I never owned a BlackBerry. It's one of the things I never actually owned. I had everything else, but never a BlackBerry. I got to say, I love my BlackBerry. Up until I finally got an iPhone. Yeah, you know what got me? I think I skipped the BlackBerry because I had a sidekick.

Right, you did the sidekick, yeah. Yeah, that was my jam. I loved that sidekick so much. That thing was fantastic. I miss physical keyboards on phones. What can I say? I still love them. Yeah, me too. That was why people kept on with BlackBerrys for years. You would always see, you know, lawyers basically loved BlackBerrys because they could actually type, you know.

And it was faster and quicker. So there you go. But they're all gone now. Now, moving on, as we all do. Let's move on. We don't ever do this. We're doing more than we ever do. But Apple had their conference. And there's Apple news. Yeah, I feel gross doing Apple stuff, but we have to talk about it.

We have to. We are a tech show. Just a little bit. So there's a couple of things. A couple of things of interest. The iPad is going to be getting its own operating system now. Finally. As opposed to sharing the same one that it does with phones, which is a good thing because the iPad is a much more powerful piece of equipment. So that'll be good.

Most impressively, they will be supporting external storage. Finally, we'll be able to plug thumb drives into the thing. That's not my favorite part, though. What's your favorite part? Mouse support. Oh, yeah. That is a plus, too, right? Dude, mouse support on an iPad is a game changer.

That turns it into a laptop. That's what I want. That's basically what I was. The iOS 13 or whatever they're going to call iPad OS is what they're calling it is basically turning these things into full on computers, as they should be because they cost as much as full on computers. No shit, man. Thirteen hundred bucks for my iPad Pro.

I could have got an air for that. Yeah, exactly. So thank God that they're finally giving them the power and flexibility that you. I can totally see a lot of people moving away from ever having a laptop again now. Oh, yeah. I know a lot of people that have moved away from having a laptop. They live the iPad lifestyle. Yeah.

I can't do it, but, you know, good for people who can. Well, this is sad news because we just paid a bunch of money for Duet. I feel like such an idiot. Of course, this was going to happen. I just dropped 15 bucks. Well, at least we supported. We supported the people. Yeah. Yeah.

So good on us. But guess what? It's gone. You know, here's the thing, though. We've been waiting for so damn long for Apple to create. This is called Sidecar. And what it does is it turns your your iPad into a secondary device, but you can also use it to draw on the screen for your your main computer.

So if you have like Photoshop open. Oh, yeah. So and this is also wireless, which was my one complaint with Duet. It will work wireless. Yeah. So the thing is, yeah, it's going to take down the third party apps like Duet and the other ones. And it's like a shot across the bow to Wacom tablets, too, because this is going to completely replace the functionality of a Wacom tablet.

I mean, probably probably not completely because I'm sure Wacoms are much more powerful and some of the high end ones are pretty damn cool. But if you've got an iPad and you've got a Mac already, this is like the dream team. Finally. Yep. Yep. And, you know, it's one of those things where we just we've been waiting so long.

Everybody just kind of gave up hope. That's why Duet exists and all these other ones exist, because it's like, come on, Apple, let's do it. I mean, hell, the guy that made Duet used to work for Apple and got sick of them not doing it. So he went off. He quit and made did it himself. He should have just stayed a little longer. He would have stayed at the company a little bit longer.

Yeah. I'm surprised Apple just didn't buy Duet. But yeah, me too. Maybe they were pissed that he left. Maybe. Yeah. And this is an interesting one, which I really like. Apple will soon require apps with any third party logins to offer sign in with Apple.

Now, sign in with Apple doesn't exist yet. And this is another one of those things where it's like, why has this not been a thing? Yeah. Yeah, it's good. I think the really interesting thing that they're doing with it is that they're going to make temporary email addresses so you can even keep your personal email address private from a lot of these services.

How fantastic is that? Yeah, finally. God. That's amazing. Watch out, 1Password. Yeah, you're next, buddy. You are next. But this is pretty cool. I mean, it'll save time signing up for new services and it keeps your information much more private and the problem here is, though, it's another, you know, thing in the Apple ecosystem in the App Store that is tied directly back to Apple owning the whole ecosystem, which might not fare so well with the Department of Justice with the new things that are coming down the line.

No, and it was interesting because I read an article that was basically talking about how this is also separating it's it's it's bad for poor people. It's separating the rich from the poor because Apple devices are incredibly expensive and you can only take advantage of these services if you have an Apple device.

If you are poor and you cannot afford Apple devices, you don't get all this security and privacy, which, you know, I don't. That's kind of how things work. Sadly, you get what you pay for. Yeah, I don't see this as a rich versus poor thing, at least on this one bit. But yeah, I mean, you can lock down an Android device.

So being poor doesn't mean you can't RTFM and figure out how to lock down your device. So I think that's a bad argument personally. But what are you going to do with that? So let's talk about the let's talk about this new app thing that they're doing, which it's a head scratcher. But go ahead.

Oh, it's you really think it's a head scratcher. We've been screaming for years that iTunes is the biggest bloated piece of crap and needs to die and they're finally killing it. Good. I'm thrilled about this. I wish they would have done it 10 years ago before my initial before they destroyed my music library for the first 15,000 times.

So it's they're they're killing iTunes. It's finally going to die. And they're going to basically switch your desktop software to the same way it's been on iOS for a while. There will be separate apps for music, podcasts and TV. So all your videos go in TV. All your music goes in music and all your podcasts will go in podcasts.

Three apps, not one, not one app to break them all. Yeah, I just wish they would have fixed iTunes instead of. I don't think iTunes was fixable. I really don't. Maybe this and this is the process that they're going to fix it. There will be iterations of these separate apps and they will get better, hopefully, and not get all bloated again because they've separated them.

So I think this is how they're going to fix it. This is iTunes just split into three, which I'm totally fine with. Thank God. And I'm seeing a bunch of stupid articles going, what's going to happen to our playlist? Your playlists are just going to move into the apps. Duh. Yeah. Everything's going to be fine in theory. Apple's usually pretty good about this.

But which app do I use to sideload content onto my phone now? If I need to update an app, which where does that go? Maybe the Duet guys will get into that business. They'll build that app. Yeah, seriously. Because, you know, there are apps on my iPad and my phone that I can sideload data into.

I guess I'm just going to have to use iCloud Drive, yay, to do that, which I don't want to do. I want to, if I have a movie on my desktop that I want to run in VNC or VLC. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. VLC. I get them confused sometimes. Then I just drag and drop it in iTunes right now.

But if I have to upload it to iCloud Drive, I mean, that's bandwidth. That's time. Yeah, that's going to be a process. If I got to upload a two gig drive and then pull it back down, that's a pain in the ass. So I'm curious about how they're going to handle that or if they're going to handle it or make any changes whatsoever. Yeah. And my other main concern with this is they've shown a lack of interest in basically giving a crap about local libraries anymore, your local content.

And I'm curious to see what the music app and how it's going to treat my local library. Because, you know, they want to push everybody towards the Apple streaming service, not keeping your stuff local. So you better support it. You better support it well, Apple. Yeah, seriously, because I still have a very large, large local iTunes library that I would like to use every now and again.

And I generally don't right now because iTunes is such a cluster F. Maybe this will fix that. I literally like have to go with like if I'm looking at the streaming services and I can't find the damn song that I want because they didn't put it on an album like, oh, say, Killing an Arab by The Cure because everybody's so snowflakey nowadays.

I got to go find the file in my backups and open it up and play it alone. And it's like, oh, God, what a pain in the ass. We'll see if these this music app is worth the time of day. I just have a feeling it's going to be shit. I'm well, I'm holding out hope. How's that worked for you in the past with that?

Not very well. Exactly. I found this one over at nine to five Mac talking about the new Mac Pro, which I think is a sexy beast. I think I like it. I think it's a kind of cool system. It's kind of like throwback look, too. It looks like the old towers that we used to get.

Yeah, it is. I mean, and everybody's making fun of the cheese grater. Look, I'm like, well, did you see the old Mac Pro? Not the trash can, but the one before that. Yeah, it's a cheese grater, too. This one, it looks like the little gray aliens, if you look at it just right on the little front.

But if you max this thing out, looking at current prices right now, it can land you almost about 60 grand. Wow. Yeah, that's one hell of a computer. I don't know if I'd be putting wheels on it like they have so somebody can roll it out the door.

I would be like putting cinder blocks on it and tethering it to the ground so nobody could steal it. Yeah, that's a bit pricey. That is a bit pricey, but it is, you know, pro. So you get what you pay for. I mean, I'm sure and I'm sure there are going to be a lot of companies that load this thing up, video editing companies and things like that.

Yeah. A little overkill for podcasting, but it'd still be nice to have. Patreon.com slash GOG. We're never going to get that much money. No, no. And if we did, I wouldn't spend it on a damn computer. Let me just tell you that right now. It's called a vacation.

That's where that would be going. Now, here's an interesting one from the New York Times. We've talked about the algorithms in the past and how they are basically screwing everything up because they just kind of run unbridled and there are unintended consequences. When these programmers just put these things out and say, well, do it now and fix it later.

Well, oh, my God, this one is so bad. The automated recommendation system in YouTube. It tries to push you towards more compelling videos as you go based on the rabbit hole. Based on what you've been watching. Based on what you've been watching. And they ramp up the extreme as you go to keep you watching.

It's a feature, not a bug. And I've got to say, for certain circumstances, it works very well. When I've had, say, a few tipsy evenings going down the rabbit hole on, like, you know, the old 80s punk and goth and electronica that I used to listen to. It pushes me.

It pushes me deep towards weird ass content that I'd never seen before. So, yeah, sometimes that's a good thing. Yeah. I mean, every now and again, I'll come across a gem. And I'm like, if I start watching, like, you know, some old punk rock videos, it'll eventually get me to a video from a show in the 80s that I was at.

Right. I'm like, wow, I didn't know this thing existed still. And then I'd save it and move along the day. Well, if you're looking at videos of young children, well, that really changes the game. That changes the game just a little bit.

So the title of the article is On YouTube's Digital Playground, an Open Gate for Pedophiles. And some people were noticing that pictures of their family vacations with their, you know, scantily clad children just frolicking and playing that weren't really meant for public consumption were getting hundreds of thousands of views.

And they're like, what's going on now? OK, quick note here, though, if it's not meant for public consumption, don't put it on YouTube. That's kind of I'm with you on that. It's like you're kind of a dumb shit for doing that to begin with.

But I know, I know. Now, this doesn't get YouTube off the hook on this at all, by the way. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's still it's just. Yeah, it was like, OK, let's put pictures of our kids online and not make them private. Sure. OK, now, of course, Jennifer O'Connor, YouTube's product director for Trust and Safety, said the company was committed to eradicating the exploitation of children on its platform and had worked nonstop since February on improving enforcement.

Protecting kids is at the top of the list, she said. They say that this is a feature, not a bug. Right. And so they're not willing to give up the views on the videos for protecting children.

And it's not like they can't do this. They are remarkably good at music copyright takedowns. And there's no there is machine learning that can identify the age range of people in videos. They can very easily, very easily put a filter in to stop this very easily.

How the fuck do you think that they're making the playlist that these people are going down to begin with? They can exactly identify them. Yes. Yeah, their their argument holds no water whatsoever. They just want that. They want the videos. Protecting kids is not at the top of their list.

They want the views. Views are at the top of their list. If protecting kids were at the top of their list, they could stop this right now. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it all comes back to shareholder value, our favorite term. And these people, you know, they have metrics that they have to hit for their jobs.

And they're not like, OK, who do I care about? Some kid in podunk, Idaho, who's like playing in the backyard and some dude jerking it off in New Jersey. Or do I care about paying my rent next month because I have to meet my metrics? Therein lies the rub.

No pun intended. And it's just a horrible situation that they have the power to fix and they can do it and they're just not doing it. It's a horrible situation they created. Yeah. End of story. And they can fix it. End of story. Shame on you, YouTube. Shame on you, YouTube.

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Media candy. Ryan, I got some good news for you. Do you? Ron Moore has dropped the teaser for his new show on Apple, whatever they're calling it. Do they have a plan? Well, I guess they do.

Did you get to watch the trailer yet? I did watch the trailer. I can't. I can't. I'm not going to do it. I can't watch it. It looks like it might be decent, but, you know, I just can't. It's got a good cast, but it's, yeah, it's an alternate history of the moon landing and what happens after.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know it's pretty much a dead issue once you see Ron Moore's involved. No, I will never watch anything he does ever again. I really won't. I can't. I just can't.

He's such a hack piece of shit. Oh, my God. Well, tell me how you really feel. That's how I feel. Yeah. I don't know if I'm going to care that much about it because it's going to be on the surface that I'm not going to get anyway. Well, that's the thing. I'm not. I'm, you know, this is obviously supposed to get you to pay for Apple services.

Ron Moore is not going to do that for me. Well, you don't want to go back and watch Gwyneth Paltrow and Gary Vaynerchuk on reruns of Planet of the Apps. Yes. Let's see. Gwyneth Paltrow and Ron Moore, two of my favorite people. Yes, I'm going to pay for that. Mm hmm. Uh huh. Yeah. So I saw the Deadwood movie.

I'm sure you're very happy. The instant it came out. Mm hmm. Now, it's funny. When I was done watching the Deadwood movie, I, of course, ran to Twitter to see what everybody thought. Mm hmm. And if you compare and contrast the final episode of Game of Thrones with the Deadwood movie, which is the finale to the series, you could not have two different reactions.

There was I went through thousands and thousands of tweets. There was not one person who did not think this was the greatest thing ever made. Good. That's I am included in it. It was fantastic. It was the perfect finale. They hit every note perfectly.

So if you've never watched Deadwood, which I know you haven't, Brian, I have not. I tell you now the whole the whole package is there. You've got the three seasons and then you've got the two hour movie to wrap things up. And it was just a joy. It was just a joy. Yeah.

Cocksucker. So good. So good. And we do finally have a date for Jessica Jones. The last season there. June 14th. Be sad. Sad. Yes, it will be sad. I'm looking forward to it, though. Good Omens. Yes.

On Amazon. Yes. I watched two episodes. Oh, you're one ahead of me. Yeah, I couldn't help myself. I watched two. It is great. I'm really enjoying it. I'm, you know, a few caveats. The special effects are beyond shit, which you wouldn't expect from an Amazon budget.

But they're horrible. And David Tennant. A little too much cribbing off the Johnny Depp, Jack Sparrow playbook with Crawley. But overall, I'm loving it. It is fantastic. It's highly enjoyable.

I like his over the topness with it. I think he's playing it just right. No, I like the over the topness, too. But it's hard. He stumbles around a little bit and has a little bit too much of the physical mannerisms of the drunken Jack Sparrow. But pretty good. I don't know. That's that's kind of David Tennant's job, too.

So go watch. Watch him in Fright Night. He's it's kind of the same thing. That's kind of his his thing. But if you can, I would appreciate it if you would put a link to Good Omens in our show notes, because that was the link that I was going to get this morning when I found out that Amazon had turned off my goddamn associates account.

All right. I don't have a link in the show notes. Over on Netflix, I watched a movie called Always Be My Maybe. The stars Ali Wong and Randall Park. Randall Park being the lead over on Fresh Off the Boat, the series. So it's basically an Asian made rom-com.

And it's very good. It's very cute. Very funny. It does what it says on the tin. It's a romantic comedy. I do question why it seems to be a trope now that all romantic comedies, one of the leads has to be a chef. I think it's because everybody wants to have good food on set, so they have to hire people in to make really decent meals.

I don't know what's going on with that, but it was very funny, very clever. And I'm not going to spoil it, even though you'll probably never see this, but maybe some people out there will. Keanu Reeves plays a part in this. Hilarious. I heard it was really good in it. It's hilarious.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, not really into the chick flicks, obviously, but I don't know. Rom-coms aren't necessarily chick flicks. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. Did you think Chef was a chick flick? I never watched that. No, it was really good, man.

You're missing out on the whole genre of movies that are actually quite clever. They are chick flicks. Chick flicks are like, you know, I'm struggling to even think of one because I don't watch them either. And almost anything in Julia Roberts' early career. Those are chick flicks. Okay. I don't know. It's just not.

I got so much stuff to do that going to watch a rom-com even. I got you. Isn't really up my scene, as it were. Well, there's something off both of our plates. We won't have to watch the Silicon Valley season six, which will wrap it up. Okay, good. Because we're all done with that. We've been done with that show for a while.

There is a hats off to the writer over at Vulture who came up with this paragraph talking about it, though, because I thought this was hilarious. As you'll learn from talking to anyone in the Bay Area or just staring deeply into the eyes of Elizabeth Holmes, you can't stick around in the tech industry forever. There's just a certain unsettling darkness there. I love that.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think I bowed out at the end of season two and a half. I just couldn't. I mean, for me, it was PTSD. I lived that shit, and it was too close to home. I was able to stick with it, and it just stopped being funny. That was the real problem. It just stopped being funny.

Here's the thing. I mean, there was like one funny scene, I thought, in the first two seasons, and that was the final dick scene in season one, where they did all of the math on the masturbation and the jerking off and all that. Right. That was funny.

That was about it, though. Otherwise, I thought it was just uncomfortable. I found a lot of it in the first two seasons funny, but yeah, it stopped being good. Now, one of the things I've always complained about, one of the things I've always complained about, is that one of my favorite genres of music, which is like shoegazing and Brit pop, it's basically everything that came out of the UK while we were mired in grunge here in the US, is just completely ignored everywhere.

Like, the 80s channels and the new wave channels and all that stuff on Sirius XM, you know, a thousand channels, every kind of music. Is there any Brit pop or shoegaze? No. Is there a channel for it? No. Do they ever play those songs in the 80s or 90s channels that are playing alternative music?

No. So this whole genre of music that I love is completely ignored, but I found a bit of a solution for that. There is a radio program over in the UK called the Brit Pop Revival Show. They do things like interviews with the stars. They play a bunch of, you know, deep cuts and things that Sirius XM never does.

And it's actually really, really good. And it's all available online via Mixcloud. So link is in the show notes. If you're into this kind of music, give the show a listen. You might find yourself playing it a lot, as I have been doing. And you even find out about new albums by some of these bands. One of my favorites was Sleeper.

And I had no idea that they released a new album this year until I started listening to the show. So I've been listening to Sleeper's The Modern Age, brand new album by them. Sound exactly the same. And God, she still looks gorgeous. Okay, cool. So there's that. I have a question about Mixcloud for you. Yes.

What's the business model of Mixcloud? They don't have one. Okay, because I know that they're paying royalties on the songs that people are doing. They have like ASCAP BMI licenses. I was looking into this because my friend Dave Shaw puts out these great retro playlists from New York with Love.

He puts out three a month, and they're a couple hours long. Yeah. There's no ads in them. No ads. And they're just there. And this is definitely all copyrighted music. And I'm like, how the hell did they do it? So I was digging into it and trying to figure out, what's their business model? Yeah, I don't really get it either because this is also, it's a radio show.

So they're just taking their radio show and putting it up online for people to listen to. And I don't get it either. There is no business model, but for now, I'm enjoying it. Yeah, I'll keep enjoying my Mixcloud playlist because they play through my Sonos. So I'm fine with that.

It's just great music around the house, but I'm just like, I guess we enjoy it while we can until they run out of funds and the runway runs out. Exactly. And the Cure's entire performance of Disintegration from the fourth and final night at the Sydney Opera House is online and available everywhere.

They did a live stream, but obviously you can now watch it. So we have the YouTube link in the show notes. It is a phenomenal concert. Is it professionally produced or is it just iPhone footage? No, no, no. Professionally produced. Oh, wow. That's nice of them. I appreciate that. And hat tip to friend of the show, Amber, who posted this link, and I'm going to have to watch this.

I'm very excited about it. The creative life of Jim Henson explored in a six-part documentary series. I've had this on the list. I didn't put it in the notes a couple of weeks ago when I had it because I wanted to watch it first to see if it was any good. Right. Well, now we can all watch it together and find out.

So I'm very excited about this. It looks like it's well done. So we shall see. Okay, cool. I will check it out. We've talked a little bit recently about how we can get a little bit down, especially talking about the state of tech and what's going on with these companies.

And we've talked a bit about, you know, my mom's very Zen-like approach that she's said to me, which is, you know, you cannot change a lot of these things. So, you know, be aware of it and move on and change what you can and keep on going. And that's been resonating a lot with me recently. And as I was thinking about that a couple of days ago, I looked over on my, I was sitting on my couch and I looked over at the coffee table and I've had a book sitting there since Christmas, a book that my mom gave to me for Christmas and I never got around to reading it.

And she gave it to me for a reason. That's for sure. It's called Factfulness, 10 Reasons We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling and his son and daughter-in-law, I believe. And he's been going around. Unfortunately, he's passed away recently.

Yeah, he's going around. He's not going around anymore. He's been doing TED Talks and all that sort of stuff about this. And he kind of made the end of his life. His mission of the end of his life was to get out there and say, we are viewing the world wrong. Things are nowhere near as bad as they are. And the book gets into that and it's pretty good and it made me feel a little bit better for a while.

And certainly there are so many misconceptions we have about the world. The things are, in general, getting better everywhere consistently. You know, we have a lot of problems, obviously, and we are losing ground every now and then because he certainly got into things like kids, lifespan, vaccinations, disease.

Of course, there's some pushback right now because they're stupid people. But in general, things are better. And it was a really nice book to read and put me in a good mood. And as soon as I put it down and finished it, unfortunately, I saw this article. New reports suggest high likelihood of human civilization coming to an end in 2050.

Over advice. So. Okay. Yeah. It put me in a better mood for a while. So if you're feeling down, Jason, you think the world's shit, I highly recommend this as a read. It's helpful. Ish. 2015. Well, the world will have come to an end for me by 2015 because I'll be dead by then.

So I don't really care that much. 2015. Oh, 2050. Sorry. Yeah. 2015. We're already dead. Yeah. This is all a dream. This is all a dream. Or a nightmare. So guess what came out today? I got my notification. Yes. New Neil.

It's getting really good reviews. So we'll go. I've been so hit or miss with him recently because his bigger, crazy series. I have not enjoyed that one about the dodo was horrible. Oh, that was terrible. But, you know, there's still seven names. There's Reem Neem. There's, you know, he's a great.

We'll see. This one seems to be pretty straightforward. Good sci-fi. So. All right. All right. I actually picked up the, uh, the traveler, uh, book, the part two, and I haven't gotten past chapter two yet.

So I will try and get, get that finished. I just haven't had time. It's nothing, nothing about the book, but, uh, yeah, I'm going through that, but I think that's going to have to go on the back burner for a week. Yeah. I'm getting back into the game of Thrones stuff, but I think I'm going to go ahead and dive into Neil Stevenson first.

So. Yeah, definitely. This is, this is a must do, must do. So next time fall or dodge in hell, we'll be on at the library. Feedback loop. Over at Patreon. We've got a bunch of new subscribers. Woo. Woo.

Peter, Brian, Howard, Jade, Andrew, Harrison, Finian, and Nikolai. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Mm hmm. And we got a message from Michaela. No one would give us $5 to say hello. Looks at my subscription tier. Hey, say hello, Michaela. There you go. Hello, Michaela.

Deliveroo. A little extra there. A little extra there. Extra bang for your buck. And Tim Davis sent us in a question that we have been trying to get to for so long and we feel really bad. But he's also got an app over on the Google Play Store for your Android phone.

It's called Silent Mode Timer. Now, this is a pretty genius app. It's here's from the description. Never miss important notifications because you forgot to re-enable your sound again. When silencing your phone, Silent Mode Timer will automatically prompt you to select a duration, if you like, after which your sound will be re-enabled, which is pretty cool.

So if you go to see a movie, you set it for like two hours, two and a half hours, and it will automatically switch your sound back on. So when you leave the movie, your phone will work again. That's genius. That should be a built-in feature on every phone. If you tell him that, he'll lose his money then. That's true. I think it's a free app, though.

Oh, okay. Still, very cool. And Tim, we'll get to your question. I looked into it, and I have some ideas. I have some ideas. All right. All right. We will get there. And over at PayPal, we got donations from Raymond, Simon, David, Super Digital Limited, Joseph, and Joseph writes in, Jason, quit your slacking.

What happened to your audio in episode 346 from 48.34 to about 49? It seems every time I catch a mess up, I find it necessary to donate a few pennies and bitch. Hmm. Well, here's the deal. That was that Rodecaster Pro fucking up again, and that's why we don't use that piece of shit anymore.

That's why we're back to our lovely PreSonus Studio 192s. Yeah, the Rodecaster Pro has issues. Yes. Very much, very, very many issues. Very many issues. That thing is gone. And David wrote in, hey, you two sexy senoritas just sent you $100 on PayPal.

Get some margaritas on me. The extra $40 is for the toilet paper if you try the food at the Taco Bell restaurant. Trust me, you will need it. Well, thank you. Now we can go to our event over there in Santa Monica. Yes. Yeah, that'll be fun. Cholula for everyone.

And David also writes, random question. What desk treadmill do you use? Been looking, but still on the fence. Keep up the great work on GOG and the Jordan Harbinger Show. Well, the desk that I use is an Uplift desk, and the treadmill that I have going with it is a Lifespan treadmill.

You can get both of those at UpliftDesk.com. And it's pretty nice. I gotta say, I love both of them to death. Excellent. And Matt also gave us a donation and wrote in with a rather long, long, long comment.

But I do think it's really important, and this is something we talk about a lot on the show, so I think it's important that we read it. He says, gentlemen, I could use a little help. I am a teach-aware psychologist in South Lake Tahoe, and in our town, there is a new patient database initiative that scares the crap out of me, but I believe to stay in business, I will need to use to some degree.

The general goal is to create an online platform so the general public can get connected with mental health, physical health, and community resources. In concept, it seems like a great idea, but here's the rub. This new database contains critical private health information that needs to be safeguarded, and the company the initiative is using is not an industry standard.

Unite US. Who would want their mental health diagnosis treatment regime, and other information about what services in town a person is using to become available on the unsecured web? I take my patient's privacy very seriously and have stopped using cloud-based electronic health record systems because I don't believe the platforms have the same data security mindset that I do.

I now keep paper records only that are locked in a file cabinet, since I know there's no way that black monstrosity will end up on an unsecured AWS with no passwords. So here's my dilemma. Since I'm essentially being forced to use this cloud platform, how can I vet the company to identify that the patient data are actually secure?

I've looked at the company's executive team, which includes folks with finance backgrounds. Jaron Laniers, who owns the future, leaves me suspicious of this. And I don't see any senior staff with clinical backgrounds. These two pieces leave me feeling uneasy. I have a phone call set up with the head of their customer success team, and I'm pretty sure I'll be speaking with the head of their engineering department at some point as well.

What questions should I be asking, i.e. what does delete mean to your company? Nice. So that was a mouthful, but important, because we're all going to be dealing with this now, if not now, very soon.

This is the way the whole health industry is moving. So yeah, this is a tough one, right? I'd ask about their specific security protocols. What delete actually means is a very good question. What access levels do you as a patient's doctor have? What information can be removed and who can remove it?

Are there auditing rights to customers, customers being either the patient or you as the health care provider? Are they being audited by any third party security firms? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But realistically, you're going to be basing everything on trust. You know, if in a perfect world, if this were up to me, I'd hire my own security expert in house to act as an intermediary and main contact and rely on their instincts and expertise.

But I realize that's probably not realistic in this day and age for companies to do that. Unfortunately, we also be a little cost. It'd be a little cost prohibitive to just have a security guy just to work with a third party company. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Talk about their data retention policies, what their backup retentions are.

Do they keep backups around for a very long time? They could be just left lying around anywhere and, you know, just grill them on everything you always hear us talk about on the show as far as, you know, the gotchas on how people's data get leaked and just, you know, what their policies are and just see if they you can get a feel from their answers.

If they know what they're talking about, you know, if they waffle a lot and go, oh, we, well, we haven't really thought about that. Well then guess what? You're in for a shit show. Yeah. And kudos to you, Matt, for thinking about this stuff before you actually jumped down the rabbit hole with these guys.

Most people don't do that. So that's a big feather in your hat. You're doing some serious due diligence. I'd be happy to use you as a healthcare provider. Yeah, seriously. And over on Twitter, Mostavo writes in, the current tech industry biz model is discount rate management. If one estimates a long enough company duration and a generous discount rate, any cash flow justify any preposterous valuation.

Basically, if you fuck with the numbers long enough, you can make any company look profitable in the future. Yes. Third in command writes in, you predicted this one so many times. Amazon destroys High Street only to take over High Street. Amazon defends UK role as clicks and mortar pop-ups launch.

Clicks and mortar. Oh God, somebody shoot me. And John writes in, kangaroo. A Swedish startup is bringing pogo sticks to San Francisco as an e-scooter alternative. And Seth Podchain Lasanz also sent us the same link saying, so this apparently isn't an Onion article.

Forget scooters. Soon you'll be able to pogo around town. I'm investing in unicycles myself. My only thought about this is it's bad enough when you were just rolling over Manpoo with wheels. Now you're going to. I'm predicting some severe outbreaks of disgusting diseases in San Francisco soon as pogo's smashed this crap everywhere.

They should have called their company splash damage. Oh man, get that insurance taking care of people. And I love that, at least in the pictures, they do have people wearing helmets, but. Oh my God. Yeah, broken ankles galore.

Broken ankles for everyone. And Patrick writes in over at GOG.show, Brian, there's an iOS app called Wolf, a world of ice and fire. It's quite good as a companion reference, as there seem to be 30 characters for each character in the show. And the maps in there are great to have on hand.

Excellent. I will have to check that out. I have a feeling I'm going to be needing it because I'm only I'm barely into the first book and I'm already like, who's this person? Who's that? Good luck. And he also writes in, I recently read Brian McKellen's Power Mate, Powder Mage, it was Power Mage, Power Mage, Powder Mage Trilogy.

And I'm currently reading his Gods and Powder follow up trilogy. Both have been fun. Quick reads. Napoleonic era inspired warfare. Light touch on the sorcery. Heavy touch on soldiers snorting gunpowder. That sounds fun. Not too deep. Good character. I also listen to some of the books on Audible and the narrator does a kick ass job as if your two read lists aren't long enough.

True that. That's true. And Mickey writes in, gotta pull a grumpy on you. You keep saying dark side of the moon. There is no dark side of the moon. The far side of the moon receives the same amount of light as the near side. Hey, you young whippersnappers, get off my moon. Fair enough, but from Wikipedia, the phrase dark side of the moon does not refer to dark as in the absence of light, but rather dark as in unknown.

Until humans were able to send spacecraft around the moon, this area had never been seen, hence the term. Also, it's my bad because I misread the quote. The quote was, Duffy thinks Starlink fleet will make this radio frequency interference inescapable and suggests we should build a radio telescope on the far side of the moon, shielded from the radio noise here on the planet.

Now, honestly, I think it did say dark side of the moon the first time I read it, and they probably got the same email from about 600 people, and they went back and changed it because I swear to God it said dark side of the moon in the article because I would never, why would I change that? It makes no sense.

Anyway, so yes, thank you, Mickey. Sid writes in, don't know if you saw this one, but a truck full of scooters caught fire in downtown Austin on Friday night. Witnesses had to be ushered indoors due to toxic air. And apparently it was a Chevy Silverado flatbed that was loaded with 23 scooters, which were plugged into two electrical generators.

Gotta have your side hustle. Yeah, you do. Jim writes in, hey, geek dudes, call me Sparky. Okay. Sparky writes in, hey, geek dudes, I have no country for no men pause during the anti-robocalling segment because I have a question slash mystery slash maybe nothing.

TLDR, I don't get robocalls. I knew robocalls were a thing, but not the scourge the show notes say it is. The most annoying call I get is the blood bank every week until I go donate and then nothing for the three month recovery time. I have AT&T, had the same cell number for 12 years. I think I received two voice calls during March, both from family members.

What do you think? Weird? Not weird? Maybe I have a unicorn phone number. Interested in your thoughts on it. Be excellent to each other. Love Sparky. Yes, you have a unicorn phone. Yeah, that's it. You are the luckiest person alive, Sparky, so don't go changing. Don't go changing that number. If you do ever decide to change your phone number, write us.

I will take your number. Seriously. Because I know I've had my number for about the exact same time, and I get about six to seven robocalls a day. Yep. Most of which are in Chinese. That's a big one right now. Chris writes in two things.

First, you asked about a system that might be able to verify age without giving away personal data. This does exist. It's called Sovereign. I think Solid, created by Tim Berners-Lee, may also be able to do it, but Sovereign's designed to take advantage of zero-knowledge cryptographic proofs to keep underlying data private.

And I've heard of this. It's a whole blockchain thing that's coming around, but it's not really in place yet. So it's one of those things to keep an eye on. It is blockchain-based. Woo-hoo! And Chris keeps going. I'm not a blockchain evangelist, quite a skeptic, in fact.

But under the hyperbole and hype, there are some interesting applications. The lack of uptake isn't just due to apps being useless. There are other factors of which usability is significant. Even MetaMask, which is supposed to make dApps like CryptoKitties easier to use, is a huge pain in the ass.

Yes, nothing's there yet with the whole blockchain thing. Remind everybody as well that the people that check age at bars are bouncers. So usability needs to be very, very simple. Yeah. Old enough, not old enough.

That's really it. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, even better. In. Out. Sweat card. In. Okay. You can go in. Out. I'm sorry. You can't come in. Barrett writes in saying, next, we'll see porn stars wearing ski masks. I'm sure that's an entire genre already.

Oh, I'm sure it's out there already. I'm sure it is. So he sends us a link from Vice. DIY facial recognition for porn is a dystopian disaster. I was actually, I'd seen this as well. I was going to save it for security. But hey, we're here. Let's do it. So somebody posted under the Chinese social network Weibo claims to have used facial recognition to cross-reference women's photos on social media with faces pulled from videos on adult platforms like Pornhub.

This someone is an asshole. To be clear, the user has posted no proof that he's actually been able to do this and it hasn't published any code, databases, or anything else besides an empty GitLab page to verify this is real. When Motherboard contacted the asshole over Weibo chat, he said they will release database schema and technical details next week and did not comment further.

His reason for making this program, he wrote, is to have the right to know on both sides of the marriage. After public outcry, he later claimed his intention was to allow women, with or without their fiancés, to check to see if they are on porn sites and to send a copyright takedown request. So he's doing it for you, ladies.

Oh, nice pivot there. Nice pivot there, asshole. In 2017, Pornhub proudly announced new facial recognition features that it claimed would make it easier for users to find their favorite stars and, in turn, theoretically easier for abusers or harassers to find their targets. So, yeah, this is fucked up.

There's no doubt about it. This is unintended consequences from technology and the idea that, you know, you did something crazy in your 20s and now somebody's got this little easy-to-use machine learning program that will find your social media profiles to go with it. Awesome stuff.

I remember the good old days when you'd have to go down to the porn shop and search through all the videos to find a picture of your neighbor's daughter. Now it's all automated. That's no fun. It's no fun. They've got to put some work into it. Yeah, seriously, man. Come on. Joe writes, in local story, I don't think you guys would see but might be interested in.

Seaside Heights photographer fights Facebook for her video rights. This is a story about Jean El Coccaro, who put some of her video up online. And this third-party video licensing platform called Viral Hog basically put her copyright into the hands of other people.

And Facebook said, yeah, it's ours now, whoever's it was. And she had to go fight and get it all taken down and all that. And they said, oh, the people over at Viral Hog said that her video had been flagged by automated fingerprinting tools provided by Facebook that are designed to detect and claim infringing use of our content.

The system is imperfect and sometimes generates false positives. This is rare. No, it's not. It is not rare at all. This is the rule, not the exception. Yes. So they apologized and changed the fingerprint for her video of the moon.

There you go. Rick writes in, great t-shirt for Jason. And it's a shirt over on Etsy. That is a meh, meh, meh. It just says meh. I think I'm going to get that for a friend of the show, Joey Rabier. He's the meh guy. Yeah. This just reminded me, is Think Geek still a big thing?

You and I used to always buy those dork shirts that they sold. Yeah. Yeah. No, Think Geek's still around. I think I saw, I've got a bunch of them in a box somewhere. Yeah, me too. Somewhere. My favorite one is on the front. It said, Schrodinger's cat is dead. And on the back, it said, Schrodinger's cat is not dead. Very funny.

That was one of the best conversation starters I ever had. And this wasn't Think Geek, though. This was Gamers for Geeks or something like that. Right. Yeah. But I miss Think Geek in the old days before it became overdone. Howard writes in, so you young whippersnappers, I'm sending you some money via Patreon.

How the hell do you live? The number of supporters is pitiful. The lurkers should be ashamed. Amen, brother. Speak it. Because I like to listen to you young folks grouse. I remember when the only net we had was to catch fish and when an advanced programming language was Fortran on punch cards.

You should also tell Bittner, apologize for knocking Balmer, hon. It can't help that it's the armpit of the state. Look at a map. Stay grumpy. Howard on the I-83 North, almost to Pennsylvania. Thanks, Howard. Quibble writes in, have you guys seen this? And this is the link over at Time.

Apple is selling your iTunes listening data despite its privacy claims a lawsuit alleges. All right, so the Apple is being sued by customers who claim the company is unlawfully disclosing and selling information about people's iTunes purchases as well as their personal data, contrary to the company's promise in advertising.

What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone. FYI, advertising, not a promise. Yeah. Just so everybody knows that, keep it in mind. The EULA, that's the promise. Yeah. So three iTunes customers from Rhode Island and Michigan sued Friday in federal court in San Francisco seeking to represent hundreds of basically a class action lawsuit.

Yeah. They're saying, you know, obviously this isn't just unlawful, but can also be dangerous because it allows for targeting vulnerable members of society. According to the complaint, for example, any person or entity could rent a list with the names and addresses of all unmarried college educated women over the age of seven. With a household income of over $80,000 who purchased country music from Apple via its iTunes store mobile application.

Such a list is available for sale at approximately $136 per thousand customers listed. So if Apple is doing this, that's not good. I wonder where they're getting these lists from. Me too. Interesting. That is interesting. Not a lot of information in this actual article, so we shall see.

Over from iTunes, Twings writes in with a one star. So I went to privacy that you all hawk. Why TF do they need my login info for my bank and not my credit card? I am not giving them that info. Now I have now idea how to get my personal info deleted from their system.

My B date in my name. I've emailed them. Next stop, my attorney general. This is very disappointing. Brian, would you care to take this one? Sounds like this is a review of privacy, not us to begin with. We have talked a great deal about privacy.

We've answered these concerns on a show before. You don't have to use our advertisers. We just, you know, it helps us if you do. We use privacy. Jason and I both. It's pretty good. You know, one time I got a really bad case of food poisoning from KFC.

20 some odd years ago. I've never ate a KFC again. But you know what? You know, you know the other thing I don't do, Jason? What? I don't give bad reviews to shows that have KFC as an advertiser. Why not, Brian? Why not? Because it's not their fucking fault.

This is true. It's also not our fault that Twinks didn't actually read what privacy does or listen to the actual bit where we had the CEO of privacy answer these questions. So, yeah, thanks for the one start, Twinks. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Twinks. Awesome. Yep. Sorry you had a bad experience, but come on.

Yeah. So, RCPro512 writes in, great show, guys. The only thing better than Grumpy Old Geeks is the sequel coming in 2020, Grumpy Old Geeks. Don't miss this original podcast. Well, thank you for the five stars. You actually read that correctly because I was wondering what the hell he said because he actually wrote in, the only thing better than Grumpy Old Geeks is the squeal coming in 2020, Grumpy Old Geeks, which I didn't understand at all.

Are we supposed to squeal out? I'm dyslexic, so he rewrote it perfectly for me. There you go. That was meant for you to read. And unfortunately, we did get a two-star rating from Jimmy2LongSmith53, who says, eh, not that grumpy and not funny.

Really tried to force myself to listen and enjoy, but had to unsubscribe. Good tech info just didn't connect with the guys. Fair enough. Thank you for giving us a go. We're not going to connect with everybody. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to GOG.show slash support and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review and not a fucking review of the advertisers.

Closing shout-outs. My closing shout-out goes to Kevin Snyder. He writes in, I still listen and I miss Dino and Bam Bam. Kevin was my neighbor up in Downers Grove and we had some good times and the pups used to play together. So, yeah, I miss Barkley too.

I was going to say, how can you miss Dino and Bam Bam? Because I hear them every time we record and they're all over Jason's Instagram. Well, he used to get to play with them. Oh, I see. Okay. In person. Yes. In person. Yes. Yes. He had many tummy rubs with Bam Bam. IRL. Yes.

Yes. He has, you know, that meat space place. Meat space place. So, and I would like to point out that he is the only friend of mine that used to listen to the show that wrote it and said he still listens. So, my case has been made. My case has been made. And I got a shout out to Chris Lockhead. He had an awesome podcast over at the Follow Your Different podcast.

That's his show with Max Temkin, one of the founders of Cards Against Humanity. I love Max and I mean, it was a fantastic episode. So, if you're a Cards Against Humanity fan or just a Smart Conversation fan, go check out that episode and definitely subscribe to Chris's podcast.

He's one of my favorite people. Yeah, check it out. And a shout out to him in general because he gave us a great shout out on Twitter. So, thank you. Yep. Good guy. Good guy there, Chris. 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 350. From there, we can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like.

Stay grumpy.

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