356: CRISPR Bacon

This episode is brought to you by our good friends at Hover. Go to Hover.com slash GOG and get 10% off your first purchase. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo, discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. A quick note for new listeners. The show is published twice a week, but each show is different. Both shows cover the latest interesting tech news. Our Wednesday show covers the latest in TV, movies, and podcasts. Book reviews are morons of the week.

Listener questions and feedback. The Saturday show dives into cybersecurity with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire. Apps, gadgets, and the latest weird stuff we find on the internet. So please make sure you check out both shows before kicking us to the curb. Little follow up this week, Brian. Cameo. Not the old rapper from way back in the day.

This is the service that lets people send little messages to friends and people like that. Yeah, we talked about them a couple weeks ago that they were valued at $300 million. Yes. Because they were trying to raise funds. Well, they have raised $50 million more.

So that brings them to $65 million that they've raised so far. Okay. At a $300 million valuation. So, it has come to pass. It has come to pass. Yeah. Well, I'm not surprised. We are in a pseudo-celebrity world.

And this gives you access to pseudo-celebrities. Yeah. And some real celebrities. Like, if you want Snoop Dogg to send a message, he's $3,000. Mm-hmm. And he's an investor. Of course. So, that's interesting. Yes, of course. They have a roster of 15,000 celebrities currently.

Now, here's the kicker. Yes. They believe they could expand to 5 million. Are there really 5 million celebrities in the world? There are these days. I guess so. We just don't know who any of them are. Everybody has their small little groups of people, right? And, you know, all these Instagram famous people.

And who the hell knows? YouTube stars that I don't know who they are. There's probably at least 5 million people that could probably charge a buck or two to make an announcement of some sort to someone. But, I mean, you also have to take into account local celebrities. And China and India and every other country in the world that has their own celebrities.

Yes. But that's a tall order to get that many people on the same platform. Especially when you're kicking back 25% of your video to these guys. Just because somebody is on their platform doesn't necessarily mean they'd be making any money. It's just signing people up. That's true. That's true. I mean, you and I could sign up.

We could, I think. Actually, I think we should just for shits and giggles. In the news. Well, we have an ongoing conversation about how our government just is not keeping up with big tech.

But at least attempts are now being made. Particularly Senator Josh Howley, a Republican, who's been putting up a number of different ideas and trying to put some bills out there. Unfortunately, Rico doesn't think the first attempt is any use at all. And I read through it a little bit. And I tend to agree.

This is new legislation that he has proposed, which is supposed to rid Facebook, Google, and Twitter of supposed political bias. Well, this is a bit of the whole you're not a platform argument that you and I have all the time.

So I would say this is a good thing. And don't give them back the protections. Okay. And second, the main problem that this author over at Recode has with this is the fact that, as we know, there isn't any particular bias one way or the other.

The bias pushes towards the extremes. The way the algorithms are set up is you will see what you react to, be that something that agrees with you or something that disagrees with you. And the more you interact with them, the more extreme things get. So the problem is the extremes on both the right and the left.

There is no particular favor to the right or to the left. It just pushes and pushes and pushes. It's a feedback loop. That's the real issue. Yes, it's a feedback loop. And this does not address that at all. It's getting the problem wrong. Well, what we need is an anti-algorithm bill. Yes. Yes, we do. Let's go back to the old days where it was based on time.

And we'll just go from there. And then, you know, if you want to find a new video, make a new search. Yes. But you know that's never going to happen. It's not. No. Another bill that Josh Hawley, however it's pronounced, is introducing. And this one is an across-the-aisle thing, also with Mark Warner, a Democrat.

They are pitching a bill that will require that companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon to disclose how much your data is worth to them, which is a very interesting idea. I would like to know that. So I'm down with this one. U.S. Digital Media Owners, which is a company that sells advertising space or time online to advertisers, such as all of the above and various, basically any site out there that's getting traffic, have released some numbers.

They're expected to receive $106 billion in ad spending this year in the U.S., according to ad measurement company Zenith. So if you divide that by the number of adults in the U.S., which is about 250 million people, you get $420 a year or about $35 per month. So in theory, then you would have to pay $35 a month to replace the revenue Internet companies get from advertising.

In other words, an ad-free version of the Internet as we know it would cost $35 a month per person if everyone was paying up. Seems reasonable to me. It seems reasonable, but it'll never work. Of course it doesn't work because ads can scale and blah, blah, blah, blah. The article gets into a thousand reasons about why it wouldn't work.

Yeah, it's not. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, it's like, OK, everybody advertises. It's not just it's not just these these big companies that are doing it. Little guys advertise, too. So how are you going to pay them? You got to slice up the pie. So, yeah. And, you know, we still need advertising because people still need to hawk their wares. It's not going to go away.

And it's just the yeah, it's just the personal data that they're selling is the part that really matters. So that's true. So we'll see how that goes. And Facebook has failed to kill a class action lawsuit over one of their data breaches. Yay. You get five cents. You get five cents and you get five cents.

Yeah. When you scale that out to 30 million people who who are affected by this breach, yeah, even if they paid 30 million dollars, the lawyers take 29 of those. That leaves one million left. So about three cents a person. U.S. District Judge William also disagreed with Facebook saying that they should be that they should be dismissed.

And he said that the evidence gathering phase of the case should proceed with alacrity and the lack of reasonable care and the handling of personal information.

Further, some of the information here was private and plaintiff plausibly placed trust in Facebook to employ appropriate data security from a policy standpoint to hold the Facebook has no duty of care here would create perverse incentives for businesses who profit off the use of consumers personal data to turn a blind eye and ignore known security risks.

So there you have it. Well, as Facebook's own lawyers have presented it, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy or security when you signed up for Facebook. Yeah. Well, you know, the private data going out, that's a different thing. So, yeah, it really is. If you mark something as private, it should not be open to the world.

Well, yeah. And, you know, not be able to be hacked. But anyway, I love this judge also previously warmed to Facebook's legal team. He would authorize a bone crushing discovery process on behalf of affected users. Yes. I love that. I love that. What I don't love is Amazon right now.

I still have not been able to figure out why they canceled my my account, my, you know, affiliate account. Right after being there for 10 years or since like the week that they launched the program, I cannot get a straight answer out of them. And now, even better, Amazon has doubled their profits and still pays zero dollars in federal income tax.

Amazing how that happens. Amazing. Yeah. Thanks, Trump. There you go. I mean, this is actually this is criminal. This is criminal. Absolutely criminal. Yeah. You know, you and I probably both have deliveries coming from Amazon today.

Hmm. I've scaled back. I think I might have to go to Walmart now. There's no better. No better. There's just nowhere to shop that's not evil anymore. Well, no, there isn't. And I've got some more news on that front. AT&T, which promised 7000 new jobs to get tax breaks, has actually cut 23000 jobs instead.

All those 23000 jobs were the people that actually made my Wi-Fi. And my wireless phone work, apparently, because I swear, when I moved here, I had five bars and now I have three. So apparently the people that hold the bars up and sit in there and hand the packets off to each other in a fire line are part of the people that got shit canned.

Yeah, well, they they pushed for the corporate tax cut by promising to invest an additional one billion dollars in 2018, with the CEO saying that every billion dollars AT&T invests is 7000 hardhat jobs. These are not entry level jobs. These are 7000 jobs of people putting fiber and ground hardhat jobs that make 70000 to $80,000 per year.

Sure. Yes, those jobs never showed up. They fired a bunch more people. Oh, and they got three billion dollars extra in cash from that tax cut. And they decided to cut capital spending and kept laying people off instead. So a union analysis of AT&T's publicly available financial statements shows the telecom companies eliminated 23,328 jobs since the Tax Cut and Jobs Act passed in late 2017, including nearly 6000 in the first quarter of 2019.

The annual report also shows the company boosted executive pay. Of course, they did. Of course, they did. After refunds, it paid no cash income taxes in 2018 and slashed capital investments by one point four billion winning. Yep. And here's the thing. Here's the reason why they can do it.

There's no consequences. There's no consequences whatsoever. The fact that it had this this tax cut passed Congress and Congress can't actually do anything about it now is just ludicrous. Ludicrous. Oh, man, these guys need to write in, like, you know, refund clauses.

If you don't do what you say you're going to do, the United States people want a goddamn refund. We would like our check back, please. Thank you. Yeah. And this is I swear to God, big tech needs needs to change their slogan because obviously don't be evil is gone.

And the new slogan should be, you know, first we break them, then we pretend to fix them. Right. So Google's new media literacy program is now teaching kids how to spot disinformation and fake news, which this is, you know, Google's thing that they rolled out for kids a while ago.

We talked about it when it first came out and thought maybe this would be a good thing. And now they're moving into disinformation and fake news. And then next year it's going to be deep fakes, I'm sure. And this will keep going. But, you know, the best way to find disinformation and fake news is to use Google.

This is true. That's how you do it. So this is true. Let's break the world and then pretend to fix it. Or the Amazon model. Let's put everybody out of business and then just go back into business where they were. We can do that, too. I particularly enjoy the name of this particular program.

It's Be Internet Awesome. Ooh. That makes me feel. Whatever happened to Melania's Be Better program? I don't know. I'd like to propose a few new programs. Okay. We will start them. Be grumpy. Be suspicious. And be critical. That's our slogans.

Yeah. Yes. Be skeptical of everything. Yes. That's how it goes. And Google is responding to an old Wall Street Journal report that concluded that there are millions of fake business listings on maps. And it's not really that old report. It was a week ago, but in Internet time, you know, you've got to blow the dust off of it.

Yep. And I read the original Wall Street Journal report, and it's like, okay, people are gaming maps and putting businesses where they shouldn't be. And this is as old as time. And Google has basically responded saying, this is as old as time. It is.

It literally is. I mean, people used to game the yellow pages by getting phone numbers in different area codes. So you'd think that they were local to you, but they weren't. That's what always has been going on forever. Shocking. Just dive a little deeper, people. Yeah. Be skeptical. Do your own due diligence, please.

So yeah, the Googles are just saying, yeah, we've got teams that are out there doing this and they're playing whack-a-mole and it's not going to get any better. The only way to really do that is to put in place mechanisms for businesses to have to be terrified some way physically and, you know, they're just not willing to do that.

That would cost money. Yeah. They're not willing to do that. The internet is basically just whack-a-mole now. That's it. And what everybody's hoping is somehow there's going to be an AI that whacks those moles better than we can anymore. And otherwise it's just going to be broken. Yeah. Come on.

It's always been that way. From the first day that the first ads were shown on the internet, it has been whack-a-mole. So like I said, people are the problem. People are always going to be the problem. When there's money involved, people are the problem. So, I mean, good luck to Google, but just do your own due diligence always.

Okay, now Firefox is available with enhanced tracking protection by default, plus updates to Facebook Container, Firefox Monitor, and Lockwise. So I dug into this because we've got some questions this week about in our feedback stuff about Firefox, and somebody who was confused thinking that we used Firefox when we use Opera.

But I had some stuff for security for the next show about these two back-to-back vulnerabilities in Firefox that have been exploited in the wild that they have patched. And I'm like, okay, well, you know, they're patching those. There's all this new stuff from Firefox. So I'm like, oh, let's give it a shot.

So I went and downloaded the new Firefox. God damn, that thing's fast. Really? You know why it's so fast? Why? Because it's not loading a thousand different trackers on every page load. Oh, well, yeah, that's what we're getting with Opera right now, too. It's not as good as Opera.

I'm telling you right now, this thing is fast. And I went through the whole rigmarole of, you know, transferring everything over from Opera to Firefox just to test it. I wasn't going to give up Opera. I wanted to see how long it took to get Firefox up and running if I needed to change it to a default browser. Right.

It was under 20 minutes. That's not bad. Everything worked. And they've got this new Firefox lock wise, which is going straight after one password. It's free. It's cross platform. You can use it on your phone. You can use it on your desktop and you can use it in your browser. And it works pretty damn well, which is kind of scary.

Firefox monitor takes over the watchtower function of one password. So you can put in your email address and it will let you know if your email address shows up in a data breach. Which is pretty interesting. They've got a lot of new stuff coming out that I'm really impressed with. And the fact that it's fast, you know, because that was always the problem with Firefox.

It's like, oh, we're back. We've got all this new stuff, you know, but Firefox has quantum. And yeah, the problem with Firefox is it is just really starting to feel like bloatware. But if they've sorted out a way to make it fast with all this stuff in it, because every browser is going this way that all the browsers are basically becoming their own operating systems.

Yeah. So it's interesting. And they're all doing their own take on privacy protection and things like that. Safari's got new stuff coming out with the next version of the OS. And I but I got to say, man, I was I was thoroughly impressed. I did a whole bunch of notes for the show from my pinboard stuff, put a bunch of stuff in pinboard, went through all of my like moving my bookmarks over, got that going.

And you'll like this, Brian. This is where opera falls down. It syncs your shit to the mobile version of the browser. Oh, God damn it. Now I'm gonna have to switch browsers again. Well, give me a week. Give me a week to test it out. Yeah, I'll let you sit with it. Yeah, I've I've literally spent like less than an hour doing this.

So give it till next week. I'll come back with a with a verdict on it. But I've actually it's in my dock now next to opera and Chrome. I only use Chrome to do this show, but to record the show. I never open Chrome except for when we record the show in Zencastr. Same here.

It's the only window ever opens Zencastr. Here's the funny thing, though. If we switch to Firefox and we only need one browser, we don't even have to have Chrome around anymore because Zencastr works in Firefox. OK, you know, in a week, I will let you know in a week. This episode is brought to you by our good friends at Hover.

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Oh, Spotify. Oh, Spotify. Oh, Spotify. Spotify and music publishers have obviously been fighting back and forth for months because there is a planned royalty rate increase that would require streaming services to pay more to artists, so you can bet that Spotify is looking at those numbers a bit closely now, especially when the new rules apply to it.

So we have heard that there are more money going into the buckets over at the museum publishers and at the record labels, which, as we've always said, is a good thing because they aren't paying a lot of money. However, Spotify is now claiming that it overpaid songwriters and publishers last year and would like their money back.

Oh, the irony. Oh, the irony. Yeah. So this all comes down from the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board decision that mandates higher payouts for streaming content. The increase, which would affect services, all the streaming services, Spotify, Apple, Pandora, et cetera, would raise royalties by 43.8% over the next five years.

Spotify, which reportedly pays out 0.0062.0084 cents per stream, split between rights holders, songwriters, publishers, et cetera, has fought against the new royalty rates, obviously, claiming that they would harm both music licensees and copyright owners. Complicating the matter is the complexity.

That's always complex, right? Related to how discounted student and family subscriptions are treated under the new revenue plan. Obviously, you can package things and bundle things, and that screws everything up. So Music Business Worldwide is reporting that the agreement requires family plans to be counted as 1.5 subscribers per month, even though there can be up to five people on a family plan, and students to be counted as 0.5 subscribers per month.

So I guess if you're a student, you're half a person. Well, the funny thing about... I'm sorry. The funny thing about students is they should be, like, counted as five subscribers because they generally steal anything everywhere. Everything anyway. So it's... Or they're listening to the bulk of music, because I guarantee you, when I was a student, that's all I was doing.

I was listening to music constantly. That's really, like, what you need to kind of take into account there. Yes. So, but based on Spotify's calculations with the number of these different plans, the company says it overpaid songwriters and publishers, and they would like their money back, please. But they're being very nice about it.

Rather than collect the 2018 overpayment immediately, we have offered to extend the recoupment period throughout the end of 2019 in order to minimize the impact of the adjustment on publishing companies. Oh, nice of them. Jessica Jones, have you finished? I have not. I'm three episodes in, and then I kind of stalled out because of Women's World Cup.

Oh, man. Okay. Well, you're going to have to finish soon. Okay. We're going to have to talk about it. We're going to have to talk about it. Trust me. As soon as you get back into it, you're not going to stop. I did it in, I think, four days. So that's 13 episodes. Stayed up way too late, but was worth it.

Was worth it. And on your recommendation, I tried out The Chef Show. I wouldn't say it was my recommendation. I just mentioned it as news that it existed. I have not seen any of it. Oh, okay. Well, I mean, it was a real act of will to get past episode one because their first guest was Gwyneth Paltrow, and they cooked in the goop kitchen.

God, I would have just skipped that one completely. Oh, well, I wanted to see what the show was about, you know, because he's running around with Roy Choi and doing different things. And I am of the mind now that every cooking show needs to be 30 minutes. Oh, yeah. These guys cook through so much stuff in 30 minutes.

It's not very detailed. But now that I've gotten past, I've gotten the goop off me, as it were. It's okay. I'm just not a huge Jon Favreau fan. I just don't like the guy. That's I was. It's funny you mentioned that because I saw you put this in and I haven't seen an episode yet.

And that was going to be my I'm not sure I want to watch this. I think Jon Favreau is an extremely talented writer and director, but I don't like him like when he's on screen. I'm not a fan. Yeah, exactly. That's the problem. Here's the saving grace of this show.

Roy Choi. Yeah, I love him. He's amazing. He saves the show because all Jon Favreau does is drop names and talk about being on set. And they've even got, you know, the new Spider-Man and they've got Robert Downey Jr. in an episode. And the cooking bits when they have people that you've never heard of are pretty cool.

You know, they cook some really interesting stuff and it's worth watching because it is only 30 minutes. That's its saving grace is that it's 30 minutes. I actually got through four episodes and I would have watched another one, but it was time to go to bed because I knew we had the show this morning.

But it's good background. I mean, I mean, it's not even background. You can watch it. But yeah, getting that stink off the first episode was really tough. Well, I think I'll just skip that one and start with episode two. Well, it's only part of it. It's only the first half of the first episode. So just turn it on.

And when Gwyneth goops herself away into the ether, but actually you should watch it just so you can get a taste of the goop because they do make a kind of interesting pepper stew. They call it the pepper pot. Of course. Of course they do. Yeah, but it's worth it.

It's so far. It's worth a watch. It's just I would like this show a hell of a lot more if it didn't have Jon Favreau in it. Right. New podcast that I absolutely adore is called Pessimists Archive. Okay. A history of why we resist new things.

Yes. Yes. I was listening last night to the kids these days episode and spoiler alert on that one. It is literally as old as the written word. Right. Everybody hates the previous generation and thinks that they're going to ruin the world.

Yes. That's that's what happens. Yes. The interesting thing is, well, I mean, it's we can't even tell if this is the cause of it, but the written word is really where it starts, because it's like then people started to reflect on the past more. You can compare that. Yeah. Yeah.

You could compare what came before you as of what's now and what's in front of you. So it's like it almost rewired the human brain when when actual writing and historical documentation came around, which is an interesting side effect of of writing and what it means.

But, you know, there are a ton of really good episodes in here. There's only 19 so far because it takes him forever to put him out because he's got like voice talent come in and things like that to do recreations. But it's it's well worth the listen. They're pretty short and really, really interesting.

So I was going to say the pessimist. It's no, it's just called pessimists archive. So there will be a link in the show notes at GOG dot show slash three five six. Check that out. At the library.

So I needed a palate cleanser 17 after that latest Neil Stevenson book. Actually, let me mention that since you mentioned that, let me just dive in on that really quick. I went ahead and just read the absolute last chapter. Of the Neil Stevenson, but skipping the 350 pages and it ended exactly where I thought they were going to go with it.

So, yeah. Yeah. If the journey would have been fun, it could have been a good book, but the journey was horrible. So I and I knew where they were going and I confirmed where they went and that was that. So there you go. I read one with not even quite a half of the book and got the point and didn't care much for it.

Yeah. You you did it the better way. I gotta say, because, man. Yeah. As I said before, the juice was not worth the squeeze on this one because those middle pages with the quote unquote journey. Yes. Terrible. Yeah. Absolutely terrible.

All right. Moving on. So Audible has these Audible originals that you can get every month with your subscription. So you get two free books every month. And the first one I got was not free. You're paying a subscription. Well, no, but I get my it's on top of the books that I pay for.

Right. So you do get them for free based on their extras. You know, that's the whole point. That's audible extras. So I got the dead drink first by Dale Maharaj. OK. And it's the story of. Bringing home a lost soldier from Okinawa.

Right. And took this guy 20 years of his life because it was a picture of a picture his dad used to keep in his workroom with him and his buddy. And after his dad died, he went on a quest to find out who this guy was. And everything had culminated in him actually finding the body through forensic evidence and all these different agencies.

And they got him back and he's buried in Arlington now. Right. It's a it's an amazing story. It's only like three hours long and three and a half hours long. It was really well done. I highly recommend it. If you have an Audible account, that's a good one to pick up because it's just a really good story. It's really heartwarming.

And yeah, it's a little graphic at points, but they've got interviews with actual interviews with people who were there from the unit. You know, all the old veterans and stuff. It's pretty crazy. But they go into some of the science behind shell shock and these pressure waves that these guys experience being close to these bombs going off.

It's not that they were actually, you know, it wasn't like that they were terrified and had PTSD. It rewired their brain completely. Once they got hit with those shock waves, something physically happened to their brain and they were not right again. Right. And they go into the science of it.

And it is fascinating. I'd never heard this stuff before. So even for that, it's really, really worth it. So I highly recommend it. It's called The Dead Drink First. And then I picked up Alien 3, an audible original drama by William Gibson. Yes, I was actually surprised this was released.

I thought there might have been some legal stuff about it, but it's not. Apparently they sorted it out. And now I know why this was never made into a movie. So that bad, huh? It's not bad, but it's not great. Well, neither was Alien 3, the movie.

So which one's worse? You know, here's the thing. Alien 3 made up for it with the visuals because that was David Fincher's first movie. Yeah. And he really knocked it out of the park with the visuals. The story for Alien 3 all across the board was crap. Right.

You know, from the one that William Gibson wrote, which actually I think while being more boring is actually better than the movie. But what was cool about it is they got, you know, some of the voice talent from the movies to come back. Lance Henriksen and the guy that played Hicks was back.

So that was kind of cool. But yeah, Ripley is barely in it at all. You know, and there's some really interesting, you know, takes on the xenomorph that William Gibson came up with this. I mean, it's two hours long, so you're not going to really waste too much of your time.

And it's interesting. It's a decent listen. I gave it three stars. Excellent. Okay. It wasn't bad. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't a one star. It wasn't a five star. But you can really tell Lance Henriksen's really old now. So yeah, his voice really kind of kind of betrayed that. DC Comics has killed its Vertigo imprint.

And this kind of saddens me. But then again, I haven't read a Vertigo imprint for 20 some odd years. As my wife and I always say, when a place we like closes, if you don't, it's our fault for not to for not going there. Exactly.

Exactly. Exactly. I mean, once I was done with Sandman and Hellblazer, I've gotten like, okay, I'm grown up now. I need to go get a job and pay my bills. So no more comic books for a long time. But yeah, it's been around for 26 years and they're just redoing everything. But I was just, you know, pour one out for Vertigo.

I really back in the day, Vertigo really was a game changer with Sandman and Hellblazer. And I think Swamp Thing was on there. But it was really cool stuff. Really cool stuff. It will be missed. Excellent. And I needed a palate cleanser as well after reading the Neil Stevenson Dodge book.

So I went back through our archives. I did a little bit of a search on our site. I wanted to find a book that either you had read and I hadn't yet, or maybe one of our listeners had recommended to try to find something new. And I stumbled across Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. And I bought it. And I did the stupid thing by not looking to see how long it was, because I was really hoping for just a short, quick read.

Yeah. To cleanse the palate. And I am about halfway through, having put in an awful lot of time. I'm enjoying it so far. And I see that you put a little comment in here. So I just looked at it and it was you had read it and reviewed it quite a while back. And this is not this is not my this is not my review.

This is the first review that I found. OK, so I've not read it, but I went and looked it up and I did see that it is 650 pages. It's long. Yeah. So I love the comment says original, but very depressing. Yeah, it was very well written, original and earned its awards.

But it's also one of the most depressing books I've read in years. So be sure you're in the mood for a downer about how human beings suck and how everything we touch is destined to end in senseless violence. So I thought I'd throw that in. It's 100 percent on brand for us, Jason.

It is well written. The characters are super interesting. It's managing to fairly, you know, basic sci fi and somewhat silly premises. But it's so well done that you buy into it and I'm enjoying it.

And yes, it is relentlessly humans suck. OK, but I really I'm halfway and I'm enjoying it so far, so I'll have it wrapped up for next week's show and be able to tell you if I haven't killed myself from depression, how how good it ended up being.

All right. All right. Well, I won't be checking it out till I hear the review. But yeah, way to pick them, Brian. Way to pick them. Yeah, I thought I was getting something short and light and quick. I read this one over at futurism dot com and it, of course, had a, you know, clickbaity headline.

It says science leaders, we can't stop Russians plans for CRISPR babies. And I'm like, oh, here we go. Oh, not CRISPR bacon, not CRISPR bacon. Oh, there was if the Russians were making CRISPR bacon bacon eat you. So this is going back to the guy in China who did the CRISPR babies that we've talked about before and the obviously what could possibly go wrong aspect where the gene that he flipped.

Yes, they're not going to get AIDS, but they're going to live 10 years less than everybody else. Way to go, China. Well, it turns out one of the Russians, one of his Russian biologists saw that and didn't go. That guy's an idiot. He said, hold my beer. Hold my hold my vodka. Let me go try that.

And the problem is nobody can stop him. There are no, there are no, you know, government agencies that can stop him, though. All the Russians can stop him, but they're like me, misky. I don't know. So, yeah, it's worrying that people can be out there doing this stuff right now.

And yeah, Russia is going to have to be the one to stop him. But as we know from watching how many, how many 80s movies about Russia, all they care about are super soldiers. Yeah, they want to make their Dragos. Exactly, exactly. So wait for it.

It's coming. It's coming. And this one I just thought was too funny. I mean, you and I, Brian, have worked. Well, you worked in one ad agency, but worked with a lot of other ones. I have worked in maybe seven or eight actual ad agencies who worked in the movie and film industry.

And this one is a head slapper for me because I know how meticulous and how detailed it is to get a movie poster out the door and how many meetings you have to have for the slightest thing. Well, Samuel L. Jackson, God, God love him.

God love him. He was out and he saw posters for the new Spider-Man movie, Far From Home. And his Instagram comment was, what the actual fuck is going on here? Head's going to roll. Left eye, motherfucker. Because what they did was they flopped him.

Right. There's two posters side by side. One, his eye patch is on the right. One, his eye patch is on the left. So the funny thing about this is there were probably 20 hours worth of meetings about the the shadows and highlights on the actual patch itself.

But nobody could actually tell the forest for the trees to figure out that it was on the wrong goddamn eye. Whoops. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, nobody's going to get fired. Oh, actually, no. This is the movie industry. You get fired for anything in that business. So, yeah, some somebody's head is actually going to roll in this one.

I'm sure. That's true. It's just it's just mind boggling how that one got through. That's insane. And we have a hero of the week or heroes of the week this week. Jason, this is over in Germany. Residents of Austritz, Germany, bought up hundreds of crates of beer to keep it out of the hands of neo-Nazis descending on the town for a music festival.

Awesome. A Dresden court imposed a ban on the sale and possession of alcohol at the Shield and Sword Festival, which is a bunch of neo-Nazis prompting police in the state of Saxony to confiscate more than 1,000 gallons of beer Friday and Saturday. So, suspecting the festival attendees would try to buy alcohol at the local supermarkets instead, town residents reportedly bought more than 200 crates.

Awesome. The plan was devised a week in advance. We wanted to dry the Nazis out. We thought if an alcohol ban is coming, we'll empty the shelves at the supermarket. Congratulations. Well done. And enjoy the beer. Well done. I'm sure they are. Feedback loop.

We've got some new Patreon subscribers. Finally. Woohoo. Ben, Derek, Terry, fantastic wolf. And John. And John writes in, worthy of a shout out, no to Cyberdump, which is a YouTube series on weekly tech research. And I went and checked out some of these videos.

He does a really good job. Yeah, I watched a couple as well. Well done. Yeah, really well done. Link will be in the show notes for that. Highly recommend you check it out. And I subscribed via RSS to his website in my RSS reader. So I'm looking forward to more stuff from you, John. It's well done stuff.

Kiki Grump I am also writes in, hey, Grumps, I'm a new supporter and happy to do it. Saw this posted on LinkedIn. Yes, people use it. And despite some good content for most, I think I personally had a no duh feeling throughout while reading it. I hit the techno reference understanding several years ago and use my mobile phone. Technoference.

Technoference, sorry. Technoference understanding several years ago and use my mobile phone as a tool to get a job done. And the link is in the show notes. It's over at LinkedIn. We're now realizing what screen use by parents is doing to kids and it's troubling. And guess who it's by? I saw this and was a this is a head scratcher.

Ariana Huffington, who always comes late to the game. So no, no wonder you had the no duh feeling while reading it. Ariana Huffington writing on LinkedIn. Yeah. And especially since we covered this exact topic from another article about three weeks ago that was almost verbatim what she said.

Well, Ariana Huffington has literally become her site. All she does is repackage other people's articles and post them and not pay them for it and not pay them for it. Yes. So, yeah. Ariana Huffington on LinkedIn. These are a few of my least favorite things. Way to go, darling.

Way to go, darling. And Vinny writes in not really news, but this Irish satirical staple Waterford Whisper News had a little jab at Zuckerberg. A delightful start to my day and it calls Facebook launches own currency, military hospitals and schools. And it is a funny read. If you are if you're not following the Waterford Whispers News dot com site, you should.

It is as good as the onion. So it's always very clever over there. And Jason, I think I upset one of our Patreons. Oh, Brian, we got a note. I like the show, but I sent in feedback regarding the U.S. women's soccer team that was referenced previously and got what seemed to be a pretty rude response.

I didn't read the full article, just a good portion of it, which was my fault. But the tone and dismissive response really put me off. I was just trying to give an honest rebuttal without coming across as one of those rude commentators getting all worked up because they disagree. I'm a relatively young person and always try to broaden my vision by asking questions about opposing views.

I try to understand both viewpoints and adjust my opinions accordingly. This is continually getting harder because of the dehumanizing and belittling of people with opposing viewpoints. If my comment was perceived as rude, please let me know so I can change the way I write these in. Maybe it had to do with the alcohol, but it's hard for me to continually give after that response.

OK, yeah. So Cameron has pulled his Patreon subscription and which is fine. Yeah. Amen. Do what you got to do. But here's the funny part about this. Well, you write into a show where people say what they think and you don't want them to say what they think. Well, that's on you.

And yes, it may have had something to do with the alcohol, but I believe Brian actually quoted the article that you sent in as the evidence that it was wrong. So you should have read the whole article. So you didn't do your due diligence. So that's not on us, bro.

And I'm sorry that you feel that we were rude in the response. But, you know, read the damn article before you send us a comment about it that doesn't have the whole context. Yes, I do apologize if you felt I was rude. One of the thing I was trying to do at that point is I was actually trying to move on because this show is not about sports and I know Jason and I don't know how we got stuck on this.

So it's a hot topic. Apparently, people on both sides feel the way that they do. I'm not doing any more commentary about the pay situation with U.S. women's soccer. So I was probably just trying to move on pretty quickly. Okay. And speaking of pay over at PayPal, Mark, Joe, Craig and Mark again send us some cash on PayPal.

Thank you very much. And we have a new recurring subscription from Ryan. So thank you all for bridging that pay disparity between podcasters and actual working adults. We need to unionize, Jason. Over at Twitter, Moss 6502 writes in, just wanted to say the show has been super excellent the last couple of weeks.

It's always good. But lately, you guys are on fire. Thanks. Oh, God. We're on fuego. Great. Write film sleep repeat writes in the machines are turning as you predicted. And this is a link to Twitter about a gentleman who had his first bird ride. And then one minute into the ride, the scooter had a mechanical malfunction.

The wheels locked up and he went ass over tea kettle and it's a picture of his bloody hands. So, yeah, I got to tell you, though, Brian, now that I'm playing that Harry Potter game, I got to walk around the neighborhood a little more. I almost got plowed down by a guy on the sidewalk, no helmet, riding a bird flat out.

And, you know, it's one of those things where I just want to start carrying a paintball gun with me so I can shoot these people with paintball guns, at least since I can't shoot them with real bullets. I stabbed you with my bullets. But, man, I mean, it was scary how fast this guy was going. It's like if he'd hit me, it would have been a mess.

It would have been a mess. I've got some bad news for you, Jason, because Santa Monica's Venice area seems to be the on the bleeding edge, literally, of these kind of transport situations. The birds aren't even the biggest problem here anymore. I haven't talked about these because I have a bit of bird fatigue. But now there are sit-down scooters that people are renting and they go faster and they're bigger and they're heavier.

I've seen those. Yeah, I've seen those. Yes, I've got everywhere here now. And it is even more dangerous and more annoying than the birds were. Great, great. Birds 2.0. Look forward to that, everyone. Karthik writes in, thanks for mentioning the Cody issue here on this side of the pond.

We, British, do have a license for TV, which, thanks to the BBC, is not given to other broadcasters and also cover any live TV, British or otherwise, if it's streamed through a UK ISP, whether you use a VPN or not. Unfair. And he also writes in, that porn check is a plan with failure to launch, as most people are worried on privacy bomb and no-no Brit accent.

I recommend something like IT Crowd UK or comedy like Ear of the Rabbit. Okay. Okay, thank you. Discord writes in, I was just about to tweet that in your mea culpa about citing LeVar Burton as data, I thought you mispronounced Brent Spiner's last name. I double-checked myself and it turns out you had the correct pronunciation.

I've been wrong my whole life. Hey, we got something right. Yeah, we got something right. Yes, Brent Spiner. We did a meeting with Brent Spiner, the first company that you and I worked at together. That's right. That's how I knew how to say his name because I had to go there and say, yeah.

Nice gentleman. Wacky-doo, but nice gentleman. Yeah. He's very funny on Twitter. You should follow him, actually. Oh, I'll check him out. Yeah. Third in Command writes in, hey, Jason, Instagram copyright courtesy of at PopBitch. You should subscribe. And this is a link to the Instagram copyright. Oh, it's an interesting little bit about people who are going after people who are, you know, stealing shit on Instagram.

Yeah. And trying to get their money back. And I love this. Mariah Carey's people are dutifully working their way through a backlog of social media users who used all I want for Christmas in their Christmas memes and are still issuing takedown orders in the middle of June. All right.

Good luck with that. Good luck with that one. Over at GOG.show, Brooke writes in, as someone who has slapped himself in the face with many a rock trying to use a centrifugal slingshot as a kid, what can go wrong here? And this is a link to stealth startup Spin Launch raises 40 million dollars for radical new launch strategy, which is basically slingshotting shit into space.

Yes, I do enjoy this. Spin Launch has the potential to be a highly disruptive for launching small and medium sized payloads. I don't want anything that's launching small or medium sized payloads to be disruptive. Yeah. I would like it to just work. Yeah, but Brian, it's uniquely positioned against traditional rocket based methods for space launch.

OK. Yes. And because they are a stealth launch, we don't really know how it's going to work. But the basics seem to involve accelerating the launch vehicle to hypersonic speeds using ground based electricity. All right. Hyperloop. And then they just put a ramp at the end. I guess so. It's kind of like a Hot Wheels.

Oh, my goodness. Seems to be the deal. Peter writes in FIFA was summed up best by John Oliver and now FIFA, an international crime ring which occasionally organizes soccer matches. This is true. Cameron writes in, I found this book while searching articles on I hate my job, but like my work. And it's a book called and it's a book called Developer Hegemony.

I can practice this one. God damn it. Developer Hegemony. Huawei. Huawei. Huawei. The Future of Labor by Eric Dietrich. I look at this. It looks really interesting. It might be one of my next reads.

But Cameron, I do hope you were doing this search on your work computer with a VPN on because otherwise you might be finding yourself getting a pink slip before you're ready to quit. Yes, but I can still say ubiquitous, damn it. I can't do that one either. I always screw that one up. I don't know why. It's insane. Hegemony.

Hegemony. Ian writes in, I'm curious if you've heard of neighbor.com as I do not recall it being mentioned on the show. I think it originated out of Utah, as do all good things. A state where everyone is just trying to make a quick buck by offering to rent empty space in your home to store your neighbor's belongings.

In the vein of what could possibly go wrong, I'd figure I'd ask you what you thought of the concept. Seems like the prelude to a serial killer story or creepy nefarious headline, at least. Here's to more platforms and subscriptions. Stay grumpy. Oh, this is awesome. Yes. Neighbor.com is where you actually use your neighbor's space to store your shit instead of going to like a private security or storage company.

You know, like normal people would do. They're disrupting the storage industry, Jason. They are. They are. And like I was looking through it. It's like, hey, I've got half of my plastic storage shed in my backyard. If you want to put some stuff in it, I'm like, OK, yeah, I'm going to put all my belongings in your storage shed.

This reminds me of a concept called neighbor goods that my friend Mickey Krimmel did way back in the day when she was trying to crowdsource things in the neighborhood where I'm like, OK, I've got like a saw and you can come rent my saw for like three bucks or I can just loan it to you if you want to.

So it was a whole big thing. Yeah. Failed miserably. Failed miserably. But it comes back to one of the things that we talked about earlier with Google Maps and businesses. She required you to actually verify where you live. So what would happen is you'd go and put in your address and she would go to the post office with a with a postcard and mail it to you with a code on it.

And then you would get the postcard. You would type the code in and voila, you were verified. Seems like a pretty easy concept that Google might be able to replicate for businesses that have, you know, location based stuff. I'm just saying it seems like, you know, it seems like this is a not insurmountable problem.

Exactly. Exactly. Her concept might have been wrong, but the she should have patented the whole postcard with a unique code thing because then she'd at least be rich now. But getting back to neighbor dot com. Yeah, I've met my neighbors. No, they're a bunch of panty sniffers. I'm not putting my shit in their house.

I'm not taking their shit into mine. That's for sure. That's for damn sure. Yeah. Hey, man, you just want to hold this baggie for me for a little bit. Promise. There's nothing bad. And there's nothing in it. Ryan writes in. Hey, Jason, Brian, and hopefully Dave will. Sorry, Dave will not be here this week.

Started by exploring programming, but I think I missed that wave. Now, like others in the hive mind, I'm exploring cybersecurity, especially once I learned more about data breaches and other fuckery afoot. After some research, I discovered that becoming a network engineer is a good place to start. After a little more research, I found doubts over the role of the network engineer in the near future with regards to automation.

Feels like the next door is already closing as I just got to this room. Without experience. Should I even bother with cybersecurity or programming? Maybe just go back to school for computer science and see where things are when I've got more experience. I know you're not career counselors. I apologize. But with your experience and foresight, maybe you have an idea of where we are going based on where we're at.

Thanks for what you guys do. I genuinely wish I would have started listening years ago. At least I'm here for the vindication. Robot mechanic. That's what you're going to want to be. That's where it's going. Oh, um, yeah, there's, I mean, there's tons of stuff in programming.

Network engineer, probably, well, a, one of the most boring jobs in the world. Snooze fest. Oh my God. At least with cybersecurity, you're like hunting the bad guys. There's at least, you know, there's a lot of creativity in cybersecurity. And like, like we've mentioned many times, it's got a hundred percent employment rate right now.

So if you want to get a job, you can get certified on your own online in a couple months and at least get a, like a low level job and then learn on the job because they're trying to put asses in seats right now. But look, we don't really know anything about your specific situation. You did mention the, maybe going back to school.

If you have that ability, if you're able to do that, uh, if you don't have to be out there making a living and paying the rent and all that sort of stuff right now, you cannot go wrong with going back to school for computer science and then seeing what kind of strikes your, uh, strikes your fancy while you're there that you could focus on. Uh, I would highly recommend doing that if you can.

See, I, you and I disagree completely on that. I think everything else is happening in the real world and you can get trained up in the real world without incurring student debt and actually get paid to do it. And you can take the computer science on your own time that you, if you want to get deeper into a topic. I just figured it was more of a better way for him to kind of see the whole field and see what is more of interest to him.

I think you're better off doing something and pursuing something that you, you actually enjoy as opposed to something that has the highest employment rate. I don't know. I mean, how that, how's that, uh, music degree working out for you? Cause you were interested in that at one point, weren't you? Well, the music industry went away.

Yeah. Well, anyway, I, I, cyber security is not going away, but also programming in general is not going away nowadays. I mean, first thing you should definitely start to do is if you just want to dip your toes in Python, learn Python. It is, it, it is literally the language that everybody uses for everything nowadays.

It's the language of AI. Yes. The language franca. So, and, and automation and robot programming and everything else. I mean, Python is pretty much the general tool that everybody uses. So never saw that one coming, but me either. Oh, well.

Over at iTunes, we have a five-star rating from, let's see, sleep too little. It says, hopeless. In my world, I started to cheer up about the future that my wife told me about these guys. I find myself listening to them more than anything other podcasts I subscribe to because they are me.

I'm back to my gloom and doom self wishing for one hellacious EMP to thin the herd. Sucky zucky is a good start. Stay grumpy. Sucky zucky. I need some kind of hopelessness to look forward to. Always happy to help. Yes. Looking forward to the hopeless future. Love it. 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.

Make them short. If you want to get them read, we don't want another Neil Stevenson novel. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash iTunes and toss us a five star and snarky review. And if you're listening to this in the overcast player, please click those stars. The New York Times is pulled ahead of us again, but we're still ahead of the accidental tech podcast.

But, you know, we're number three. We're number three. We're number three. We're number three. And I don't want to talk about the pay disparity, but I have been thoroughly enjoying the Women's World Cup so far. A lot of the games have been great and we're up to the quarterfinals and knockout stages now.

So they've all been really good. Well done. It's been a great as much as I hate FIFA. It's been a great, great run so far. So looking forward to it. Is this shit going to be over soon so you can get back to Jessica Jones? It's over on the 7th of July is the final, but they're all slowing down now.

It's not like three games a day anymore. OK, OK. I'll get to Jessica Jones. And my closing shout out is to the late, great Anthony Bourdain. We miss him a fucking lot. The only cooking show that should be an hour. Yeah, seriously. Seriously. That's, you know, that's that's kind of the sad state of affairs.

Yes. Anthony leaves us. We get fucking Jon Favreau. The world is not fair. The world is not fair. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geese. 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 356. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions and get links to stuff we like. Be grumpy.

Generally speaking, when you walk through the lobby of a nice hotel with a big reeking bag of fast food, people look at you like, you know, you're low class or, you know, why are you bringing that in here? We do have a restaurant. No, nothing but love and admiration. Even from the staff, they're like, good going, sir.

Nicely done, sir. Excellent. I would like to be eating that right now. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home and culinary all in one place.

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