359: 19% Upside?

This episode is brought to you by Eero. Never think about Wi-Fi again. Get $100 off the Eero base unit and two beacons package and one year of Eero Plus. Visit Eero.com slash GOG and at checkout enter code GOG. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Back from the holiday break. Yes. Weren't expecting to have. Kind of snuck up on us, but then you had jury duty and that didn't help. No, that didn't help at all. But it's over. Jury duty is over. Excellent. God. For at least a year. At least a year. But now I know how to get out of it. So I've done I've done my civic duty. I've served on a jury. I got paid $97 for all six days. Yeah. More than

you get paid for podcasting. Pretty much. Maybe I can just become a professional juror. They gave me $23 for my mileage because they calculate it as the crow flies, which is just BS. I'm sorry. To be fair, you could have picked a courthouse closer to you. Van Nuys was still not that close, but I probably still would be there if that was the case because they get lots of cases there. But we'll talk about it more when

we get a chance to sit down with David Bittner because he will he has questions and your soccer is over. I see it is. It is. Congratulations to the U.S. women's national team. They won. It was very good. The U.S. men's team did not win. Okay. We're not allowed to talk about that anymore. That's right. Over. Over. And some and some sad news. Actually, I would classify it as infuriating.

Infuriating, angry, makes me want to go all Charles Bronson-y news. Very good friend of the show and one of my best friends, Dr. David Teeter, was assaulted coming out of his work in Oakland the other day by a dickhead on a lime scooter.

Yes. Well, look, dickheads will be dickheads. And so I'm not going to lump this in there with with scooter news. In fact, I consider it a plus because they will now be able to find this guy if they find if they do what they're supposed to. I don't know how good Oakland cops are. Right. Apparently, Dr. Teeter said that everybody that showed up at the the scene was very good. The paramedics were very good. The the cops were very good.

And apparently there were lots of witnesses that stayed and gave their information. And yes, he absconded on a lime scooter. So hopefully somebody at lime will be giving them the information on who this person was. Yes. And he will be tracked down and hopefully shot in the town square.

Or put on a jury that you serve on. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, get well soon, Dr. Teeter. I posted a link in Twitter if you wanted to go see how bad it is because it's not good. No, not pretty. Got some follow up. All right. Apple, thank God, is finally reportedly going to be moving away from those stupid butterfly switch keyboards and going back to the scissor switch ones that we all know and love.

Yay. So that that means that maybe you and I will be able to buy a new MacBook coming soon. Well, they still have to address the port issue. Well, the port issue, I don't think, is going away on any computer anymore. Everything's going to be USB-C. It is a it is, you know, welcome to dongle world.

Damn it. I hate dongles. I do, too. But man, if the keyboard works, all good. All good. And we always talk about Amazon and how you just have to buy everything from Amazon right now. And there's an article over at BuzzFeed where they actually list all of the different companies that Amazon owns.

And they have over 80 private label brands, a lot of which I knew of. Right. But a lot of I didn't. There's lots and lots of women's clothing lines that they own. Right. Well, that's a that's a big part of their business. Yes. Yes. Women do like clothes. Yes. Because they even made a does this does this dress make my ass look fat camera?

Yes, they did. Yeah. Which nobody bought, it seems. Anyway, it's an interesting read. So you can see all of the different things that when you're buying from Amazon, what you what you are doing and what you can't get away from. Yeah. You know, what's really interesting about this is the shift in kind of how these large megacorporations have worked since even when we were when we were younger.

Because Amazon goes out of their way to kind of hide the fact that they own these companies back when back in the day, if a if a big megacorporation bought another company out, they basically just rebranded them as the megacorp. Now, now it's now it's all done on the sly. Yeah, kind of, kind of.

And I've bought a couple of things from some of these like men's clothing brands that they have, and they kind of suck. Well, most let me tell you, men's clothing on Amazon, particularly if it's the private labels or the stuff that Amazon may or may not old own, all of that stuff is made in China, all of it.

And it's all done super cheap. It all falls apart quickly. And also, you have to order about two sizes larger than you think you do, because they make it for we people. The interesting thing that that's a trend that's completely reversed itself on his head, because for a while they were selling vanity sizes, which means you buy a large and you get a 2XL to make yourself feel better.

Right. It's switched, mostly because of the Chinese manufacturers. Yeah, could be. I don't know why, but and they do shrink quite a bit. I just get my Hanes beefy tees, which are probably also probably made in China. In the news. Big news over the weekend.

ICE has been mining driver's license photos for facial recognition purposes without warrants or court orders. Who saw that coming? Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I suppose on the plus side, it is gross.

It needs to stop immediately. There needs to be congressional oversight on this sort of thing. They need to stop this as soon as possible. On the plus side, though, we know how accurate facial recognition is. So. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, the problem is you're just they're going to come and get you.

Yeah. They're digging everybody. Yeah. They're going to drag you out of your house, call you Manuel and ship you off to, you know, Venezuela. Yeah. So that's where things really come. Especially when I get my summer tan. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of scary that the FBI's facial recognition database has more than 640 million images in it.

Well, still smaller than Google's. Smaller than Google's and probably matches just as accurately. Yes, exactly. Yeah. This is this is something that people are going to be keeping an eye on and hopefully Congress will step up and but they're going to be busy for a little while because I guess you got some Facebook news.

Congress has stepped up a little bit, not in the ways that we'd probably like it to with Facebook, but it's a start. U.S. lawmakers have asked Facebook to immediately cease implementation plans of its Libra cryptocurrency. Now, if you've been listening to this show since Bitcoin came out, what have we said?

No major country is going to allow this to happen, is going to allow a massive decentralized currency to take to become a standard. And well, our government is saying, hey, hold on a second. No, no, no, no, no. Governments are in charge of money.

We do not need this to shake up their entire universe. We do not need this to crash economies worldwide. What are you doing? Let's take a look at this before you leap out of the gate. And so it's on pause right now. Well, they've asked. Yes, they've asked.

How many times did it take them to ask Zuckerberg to show up before he finally did? Yeah. So I think the real thing that probably sent up the red flags is like, OK, you want to make a new currency system for a financial global market that's based where? Wait, wait, wait.

Did you say Switzerland? Switzerland? Oh, interesting. Hmm. Come over here. We're going to have regimes have basically used Switzerland for their banking needs. Yeah. Well, I mean, we beat the crap out of Switzerland recently to make sure that we can look at Swiss bank accounts.

That's why nobody has a Swiss bank account anymore. Yes. Everybody goes to the Grand Caymans or someplace else or Moscow. So they're going to be looking into it as they well should, because it does raise serious privacy, trading, national security and monetary policy concerns. And again, you've got over two billion users in theory.

So you have a bit of a head start if you decide to launch this. It will overtake Bitcoin immediately. There's no doubt about that. So we will see what happens. Yeah. They don't want it to take over the dollar. That's the one that they really care about. Yeah. Now we have some Uber and Lyft and labor union news here.

Tensions are surging as Uber and Lyft scramble to cut a deal to escape California's crackdown on the gig economy. As we've talked about here, the California Supreme Court basically passed a ruling saying that drivers get employee rights and they should. Yes. But the ride hailing companies are in talks with labor unions to create a loophole to block that.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, aren't labor unions supposed to be specifically there to make sure that these loopholes don't exist? They are. So I'd be a little bit concerned about the people running these unions at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so the court basically ruled that, you know, they should get all the same protections that employees get, like minimum wage and overtime pay.

And yeah, so they don't want to pay this, obviously. So they have been meeting with Service Employees International Union, the SEIU, to support an amendment which would exempt them from complying with the bill. So therefore making the union completely useless. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of defeats the entire purpose of it.

The SEIU. So as this is going on, if we went, let's file this under super bad optics of the week. The Uber co-founder, Garrett Camp, and his partner, Eliza Nguyen, have purchased a Beverly Hills mansion for a record-breaking $72.5 million, which is believed to be the largest ever sale of a home in Beverly Hills.

It is an extraordinary mega mansion sale that comes at a time when L.A., and I don't know if you've noticed this, Jason, we're facing a bit of a homeless crisis here. They're everywhere. Yeah. Everywhere. And there are major health concerns about everything that's going on outside of just human dignity.

L.A. is in trouble. Yeah. So this is not good. This is not good optics. And so this is all going on while all these fighting is going on for Uber drivers and everything else. So Camp is a Canadian entrepreneur who already has an estimated net worth of $4.2 billion.

So a lot of that money came from, well, not a lot of it, but he's got, well, a good chunk came from Uber. So this is a bad example, bad time, horrible thing happening. This is a perfect example of the 1% stealing from the rest of us, Nicole Moore, a ride-sharing driver in Los Angeles, said of Camp's $72.5 million purchase.

Drivers are living in their cars. They're fighting for fair wages. At least share that wealth with the people who have actually built your company. No argument there. Yeah. I mean, and, but this isn't the first one this guy has bought, you know, it's $72.5 million when you, your net worth is $4.2 billion is literally pocket change.

Yes. Well, so yeah, I agree. He's already got luxury properties in L.A., San Francisco and Manhattan. So this guy is like, you know, doing what everybody does when they get FU money from the tech sector. They go buy real estate, which is why. Yeah. Yeah. FU move is about it.

Yeah. And homelessness here in L.A. has gotten really bad. Like when I left Chicago the last time, there was like nothing out here in the valley. And now it is just insane. And it's really bad out here. And even it's bad everywhere. It doesn't matter where I drive now there.

We have a, there's a serious epidemic going on here right now. It's bad. Yep. So speaking of China, you might want to check those pants that show up from Amazon next time because there could be a surveillance app on them. No, not really on your pants, but Chinese border guards are installing surveillance apps on the phones of some travelers, according to an investigation by the Guardian, New York Times, and a German magazine, which I'm not going to try to pronounce because people pick on me because I get it wrong these days.

The app extracts emails. Let me try. I think it's so. Deutsche Zeitung. Zeitung. Zeitung. Zeitung. So Deutsche Zeitung. There you go. I'm saying with a Chinese accent. So Deutsche Zeitung. Yes. The app extracts emails, texts, and contacts, as well as info about the device.

Without notifying phone owners, border guards have installed the app when people attempt to cross from Kyrgyzstan to the Zhangjing region, an area where the Chinese government has long restricted the freedoms of the Muslim population. Oh, this is about the Uyghurs. Yes, it is. Travelers crossing the border have been asked to turn their phones and passwords over to officials.

And if you think that's scary, it's coming here, people. It is. We all know it. That whole area, there's actually a Vice News special about that where this one woman snuck in twice with hidden video cameras and documented it.

And it's crazy. They've hired over 100,000 new police officers in that region in the past year. And that's not like the entire force. That's new police officers. That's new. Yes. Yeah. This comes back to some of the surveillance stuff we talked about on security with Bittner a while back where those databases have been found out that are tracking the Uyghurs.

It is just not a good time to be Muslim in China, at least in that area. Yeah, that's for sure. Now, talk about chutzpah, the balls on these people, what they named the app. I'm not going to attempt the Chinese of it, but according to the Guardian, there's no literal English translation, but it has to do with bees collecting honey.

Okay. Yeah. So there you go. Good luck with that. Mm-hmm. But it's only, let me guess, only Android. Of course. Of course. The app has not appeared on iPhones, but you know, you listeners out there that swear by your Androids, you keep up with that.

Much more secure, huh? Stay out of China, people. In relatively decent good news, Tesla has delivered a record 95,000 cars this spring. They did not get off to a good start, and Elon Musk certainly did not help. But it's looking rosier towards the middle of the year.

They have set records for both production and deliveries in the second quarter, and compared to last quarter, they're way up, so they leave Tesla with a nicer problem than it has had in recent times. It has a growing production backlog. So, well done, Tesla. Oh, well, there you go. They have turned into the Prius of Teslas now, I guess, whatever, but they really need to start putting some noise on these things.

They're getting worse. Yes, I agree, but we'll get to that in the feedback. And this last story that I had, it just had me scratching my head and really makes me wonder if perhaps Elon Musk was right when he smoked some weed and said maybe we're all just living in a simulation. And AI has simulated the universe, and not even its creators know how it's so accurate.

Okay. So, for the first time, scientists have used artificial intelligence to create complex three-dimensional simulations of the universe. It's called the Deep Density Displacement Model, or D3M. And it's so fast and so accurate that the astrophysicists who designed it don't even know how it does what it does.

Great. Yes. What it does do is accurately simulate the way gravity shapes the universe over billions of years. Each simulation takes just 30 milliseconds compared to the minutes it took other simulations. And it learns from over 8,000 training simulations the team fed it, and it extrapolates from and outperforms them, able to adjust parameters in ways it had not been trained to do.

So, we may have just created a big bang ourselves. Somebody please unplug the Ethernet cable. Yes, please. Yeah. So, we've got a link in the show notes. This is from ScienceLert.com. It's an absolutely fascinating article, and it's, you know, get stoned first.

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Media candy. Brian, I went and got that podcast that you recommended, Running From Cops. Yeah, I finished it. What did you think? Wow, that was good. Yeah, that was good journalism. I enjoyed it. Yes, it was. Yeah, and it's from the same people that did that Richard Simmons one that got a lot of acclaim before.

Yeah, I had next to no interest in Richard Simmons and barely any interest in Cops, but I still managed to enjoy this one. Yeah, no, it was really fascinating. And how they do what they do. It is definitely worth a listen. I'm not going to give any spoilers, but we've got another article in the show notes you can check out.

Long-running reality show cops might be even more problematic than you thought. Yes. So, it's definitely worth a listen. And this one, we've been wondering where Spotify is going to be spending all that sweet, sweet cash they've been trying to put into podcasting. Well, it's going to Kevin Bacon.

Hang on a second. Are you telling me that Spotify is hiring celebrities that are already well-known and come with an inbuilt fan base rather than new talent? I do believe that's what I'm saying. Okay. Yes, Spotify has signed an exclusive agreement with Kevin Bacon.

I'm sure people were beating down the doors for the Kevin Bacon podcast. I know. I know. They're going to be working with Funny or Die on some of it, but it is a scripted podcast. Right. And it's called I'm Going to Be Kevin Bacon, and it will follow a washed-up actor who blames Kevin Bacon for his career failures, said actor, that embarks on a comprehensive quest to bring Bacon to justice.

Now, it's only going to be 12 episodes, but I think I might have to listen to that. That actually sounds pretty funny. I think that's a one-episode funny premise that will quickly tie her over 12 episodes. That's true. Yeah, that's true. They might want to cut that one back a bit, but yeah. Yeah. It's going to be one of those Spotify exclusives, I'm sure, for a while, and then it'll get released to the general public.

Yes. Yeah. And there's a lot of talk nowadays. Is it actually a podcast if you have to pay for it, or is it a paycast? It's a paycast. It's a paycast. Well, I guess we're a freecast. We're a freecast. Over the holiday, I'm guessing you didn't sit down and binge-watch Stranger Things Season 3.

Previous non-married, non-child me would have. Okay. Yes, I had fireworks and barbecues and family and all that sort of stuff, so I did not, unfortunately, get around to it. It is on the docket for this week to at least begin watching it. Okay. I'm finished, so when you're done, let me know.

I loved it. I thought this was possibly the best season yet. Does it look like it's ending? No. Probably not. Damn it. No, not actually, not at all. No. Oh, okay. It's going to easily go for another season. All right. All right. Well, the first thing was, I thought it was going to be 12 episodes or 13 episodes like the Marvel ones were, but it's only eight.

Oh, okay. That's quick. There's no lull in it like in some of the previous seasons. There's like a couple episodes in the previous seasons where you're like, okay, this episode didn't really move the ball forward very much. This one was pretty tight all the way through. All right. Trim the fat. Yeah, definitely did.

Or at least just wrote more story for the eight episodes that they did before. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really, really enjoyed it. And apparently so did a lot of other people because it has broken all of the Netflix four day viewing records. All right. Yeah. They said the service said Monday that the third installment of the nostalgic horror series has been watched by 40.7 million household accounts who God knows what that means because

everybody shares their password since its 4th of July launch and that 18.2 million already have binged the entire season. I am not surprised by that as my social media feeds were full of people talking about Stranger Things 3 and the fact that they were binging it. Yep. Yeah.

I didn't mean to binge it. I just did it to a night for four nights and it was done. Right. Well, I can I can handle a fourth season, but I think they got to wrap it up after that. Yeah, it's time to time to put a bow on it, as they say. And I did watch. I don't know how this came up, but I watched the new Shaft 2019 movie.

All right. Loved every second of it. The trailer looks great. I'm not going to lie. It is so good. I mean, I worked on the last Shaft movie and I didn't think it was very good at all. But this one, this one brought it completely brought it.

I really, really enjoyed it. So if you get a chance and you need something to watch, man, this new Shaft movie was really good, really funny, good story, good action. All in all, it was just fantastic. I have no complaints about this at all. Excellent. Well, you and I never made it to Taco Copia or whatever that pop up was that was going to be the taco bar theme thing in Santa Monica.

And we didn't make it to the Star Wars bar when they opened up that last year. And we didn't make it to the candy pop up Instagram thingy because, you know, we're adults. But here's one that I think we should go to, Jason. Los Angeles, November 2019. A place in time introduced to science fiction fans and Ridley Scott's incredible 1982 film Blade Runner is getting its own pop up bar.

OK, you're going to have to go without me. It's in downtown L.A. Nobody goes to downtown L.A. anymore. Downtown's awesome. You haven't been there in a long time. It is awesome, but it's getting there. That is not awesome. Yes. Well, there's a train now. Nexus 2019. If they had a flying cop car, then they could pick me up and take me there.

I'm in. It's called Nexus 2019. It's described as a completely immersive experience. The bar will feature a fully designed retro future interior theme craft cocktails, food, nightly entertainment, costumed actors and countless details for guests to explore and interact with, and we have a link in the show notes and some of the shots that they made look really cool.

So I want to make this one. The only thing I don't want to do is deal with the lines because it'll be popular and it's only open from November 1st to the 30th. The other thing is from their sketches, it looks way too small. Oh, I'm sure it is. It's going to be tiny.

It's going to be tiny and, you know, it's going to be packed. So I don't know. I would love to try it. They need to open one up here on the west side. You are so lazy. Yep. I certainly am. After driving back and forth to Santa Monica for even just five days, I am never going to get another job that does not let me work from home.

I'm like, I would, I would be the worst new employee because I cannot handle traffic anymore. So you could have just stopped with, I'd be the worst new employee. Well, yeah, that's true too. I needed a break from sci-fi and I'm not really a big Howard Stern fan.

I don't know where you fall on Howard Stern. I don't think we've ever had a discussion about it. I was never into the morning zoo stuff. I hated all that crap. I did recognize that he was extremely good at what he does, whatever it is he decides to do. I came around to Howard Stern a bit when he put out his first book, Private Parts.

I read it, thoroughly enjoyed it, thought it was very funny. The movie was okay. I didn't mind it so much. When he switched to satellite radio, there was a brief period of time after he got there when he kind of, he made his transition to adulthood, dare I say? And his interviews got extremely good and the show was actually compelling and interesting.

Since then, it's just become a circle jerk where basically if you don't listen all the time, you have no idea what they're talking about because they only talk about their own internal cast of people. But he put out a new book, Howard Stern Comes Again, and I downloaded it and read it. And it's excerpts from some of his interviews, some of what he considers to be the best interviews or just the craziest stuff that's happened.

And he really showed some self-knowledge there because he was put in some stuff where he's like, I really screwed this interview up or I wish I would have done this. I wish I would have done that. It was great. I actually thoroughly enjoyed it because I liked most of the people that he put in the book for the interviews. So I don't know.

I can recommend it. It was a good read. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I was never a big Howard Stern fan and I built the website for the movie Private Parts and they took, I'm sure you remember my first website, Spew. Yes, I do. A lot of the stuff that I built for Spew was in the Howard Stern site.

Like a boob concentration where you have to like flip over pictures of boobs and match them up. Uh, the slut machine, which was the, uh, the naked lady slot machine from a way back then. Yep. That was in the Howard Stern site. But the thing, the problem with Howard Stern was the show was in New York early in the morning and we had to get up every single morning and listen to his show because he never sent us feedback through the proper channels.

He gave us feedback on the data of the website on the air. So we had to listen to the show, take the feedback, run to the studio and get all of the stuff fixed. By the time all the execs came in, in the morning and we're like, he was complaining and we're like, we fixed it.

You know, we haven't slept, but we fixed it. So he was kind of a dick when we were building his website. But, uh, yeah, uh, I think I'll pass on this one. I think I've heard enough of Howard, but, uh, if you, if you see, the thing is, if it's a book of interviews, I wish I could just listen to the interviews.

He should make a podcast. Oh, wait, he's got a show. Oh, wait.

I have an entry for a bad optics part two this week. Okay. A series of president Trump re-election campaign ads on Facebook feature a range of American voters, including Tracy from Florida, Thomas from Washington, and AJ from Texas, supporting Trump and his agenda. There's one problem with this.

Uh, they, all three of them appear to be foreign stock models. Okay. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the series of ads featuring the young blonde woman on the beach, a bearded hipster in a coffee shop, and a Texas lifelong Democrat who now supports Trump are stock video footage produced in France, Brazil, and Turkey.

Love it. Gotta keep those immigrants out, right? Yeah. You can keep them employed as long as they stay in their home country. Exactly. And we got another one here. Crypto Ponzi scheme says it has no cash to pay out to upset investors. Bitcoin wallet, a lucrative South African investment scheme, used to attract hundreds of investors a day, many of whom clamored at the company's door to hand over cash to invest.

They promised a hundred percent return in just over two weeks by reinvesting customer deposits in cryptocurrencies, but they have no money left. It's all gone. And they shut down and everybody lost their money. That's how pyramids work. Yes. Go crypto.

I've got a couple interesting think pieces this week in bric-a-brac. One is from The Verge. It's something awful's founder thinks YouTube sucks at moderation. Well, he can get in line with that one. I also thought something awful sucked as well.

But he has a lot of history with running communities and content moderation. Yes. And, you know, he's talking about how YouTube should be doing things and things like that. The problem is he misses the mark with what YouTube actually is.

It's not a community. No, they'd like to pretend they are. Yes, they're not a community. They are a for-profit video hosting site, which means it's not really the same thing. And the points that he makes in the article are valid if you are running a community.

And I found the article actually really fascinating. It's well worth a read if you ever do want to start your own community and you want to, you know, give people the power to take care of your community because the best people to admin your community are people who are invested in it. Yes. Rule number one when I used to run fan clubs is I would find fans that were very smart and moderate and give them a separate account that was, you know, not tied to their personal accounts in the community and in the forum and made them moderators.

Yeah, that's how you do it. And you keep an eye on them. Yep. Yep. That's kind of it. Self-moderating and gets the job done because people really want to have a nice place on the internet where they can have fun. Yes. Well, and that requires moderation. It does. And YouTube is not going to be able to do this because they're not a community.

So what are you going to do? There's another story I found over on tortoisemedia.com. It's called the 8chan story, destroyer of worlds. And it's just, it's interesting because it's the story of Frederick Brennan, the founder of 8chan.

And it's kind of a really sad story because he's got a genetic disorder called osteogenesis imperfecta. So he's basically Mr. Glass. Okay. By the time he was 19, he had 120 broken bones, which can turn somebody into a very upset person at the world.

And that was kind of what happened to him. I'm not going to spoil too much of it, but it's really worth the time to take the read and kind of see what the story behind the site was and how awful, basically, anonymity on the internet is.

That's, it's kind of what it boils down to. Well, it really, it ties into your previous story because it is a community, but it's a community gone horribly wrong. Yes, exactly. Because there's no, you know, there are no names, which means anybody can be awful. And if you just want to be an asshole and a half, the people probably don't even believe the things that they say, but they do it for the lulls and they do it to just fire people up.

It's troll culture. That's all it is. And he even said in there, it's like, it was more fun to be destructive than creative. And when he was a teenager. And that's how you're supposed to grow out of that. It seems like he did for the most part. Right. But, uh, it doesn't mean that the damage isn't done, you know?

Yeah. So it's really one of the problems with anonymity online, unfortunately. Oh, that was the other thing that something awful did, uh, that I thought was pretty clever. They're like, if you're an asshole and we have to ban you a bunch of times, you don't get to be anonymous.

You have to pay us 10 bucks and then we'll let you post again because then we know who you are, which comes back to us always saying, let's pay, let's pay for these damn things. Pay for the things that we like. Yes. Yes. And have some accountability and people might not be such assholes.

And, uh, my last story, I just love this one. I found this one this morning. It's over at the next web and it says predictive policing. AI is a bigger scam than psychic detectives. What? It's a very, very funny read because, uh, AI can't predict crime, go figure.

And there are companies out there that basically say that, uh, yeah, we're going to try and do this. But, uh, even the chief executive of pred poll, one of the, the company says the software was never intended to be the solution to reducing and preventing crime.

Then what the hell are you charging money for? So I recommend, yeah, I recommend checking it out because they do have subscriptions. You can always get subscriptions to pred poll and, uh, have the AI basically tell you nothing. Feedback loop.

Over at Patreon, we have one new subscriber sniff, but thank you, Michael, for signing up. We appreciate it. Thank you. And Michaela writes in black mirror spoilers, even though these aren't really spoilers. I haven't finished season five yet either. First episode is kind of a slog though, for me, because just yikes.

Yeah. Yikes. But Brian, I can say that there are two episodes that aren't misery porn. I think you've already heard about San Junipero in season three, and there's also hang the DJ in season four. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not as good as San Junipero, but still a nice story. I totally agree. I like both of those episodes.

I like the Star Trek one. I thought that was good. That was really good too. Yeah. It's pretty fun. Yeah. I've dipped my toe into a few here and there, but I just can't do it right now. Well, that's the thing. San Junipero and Hang the DJ all both have happy endings, and they're clever, so well worth it.

All right. Well, we may not have had a lot of Patreon subscribers this week, but we did get quite a few over at PayPal, so thank you to David, Elizabeth, William, Breed, Christopher, Daniel, and Michael. Woo-hoo. Thank you very much. Thanks, guys. Over at Twitter, AJ writes this, I'll just put this here.

It's an article over at itnews.com.au, and it's, UK regulators put breaks on Amazon's Deliveroo deal. So it turns out the Brits are not happy about Deliveroo and Amazon sitting in a tree. Well, there you go.

All right. I'm not surprised by that. Derek sends over a link. What the fuck over? And if you look at this photo on his Twitter, it is a man in a business suit. Who has strapped his laptop and a coffee cup to a bird scooter. Yes.

And he's got his phone, his mouse. He's even got a stapler and two phones. Actually, he's got two phones and a mouse. Yeah. Interesting. Yes. Clever girl. Mustafa writes in, not sure if I've sent this before. I'm not mad at Amazon, but at Amazon countries, they should have acted first.

And this is an article about Amazon wins.amazon domain name aggravating South American region and undermining digital commons. This has been going through the courts for a while now. And I'm surprised they actually pulled it off and won. So I'm not terribly surprised.

I've worked briefly for a nonprofit that was dealing with the Amazon and the hoops and bitterness and anger between these countries. They cannot agree on anything over there because the Amazon runs through many countries and they cannot get their shit together.

So I'm not surprised that they weren't able to mount a to join together to mount a decent defense on this. It is sad. But I mean, as we've talked about many, many times on the show, what difference does a domain name make anymore? None. That's true. It doesn't. Go to Hover.com. They have over 400 domain name extensions to choose from.

Hover.com slash GOG. And Strickey writes in, after a long day at work, I arrived at home and my wife and daughter were waiting for me to have that talk. Did you know that Facebook and Instagram are listening to you through your phone? We were talking about stuff and now I'm seeing ads. No. They're wrong. No, they're very wrong.

Hopefully, Strickey, that we have given you enough ammo to fight that battle and win. Yes. JC writes in, Audi's e-tron makes a hum when driving. Maybe this one won't run you over, JPD. And I checked out the video. It's a YouTube video and it's called, here's why the Audi e-tron is the future of the Audi SUV.

And it does make a hum when you're driving forward. And when you're going backwards, it makes a different sort of hum. It's a good looking car, too. Might be my next one. Yeah. It doesn't look too bad. I like Audis. Yeah, me too. Can't afford one, but I like them. Third in Command writes us, 19% upside.

And this is a link to Sky.com. Met Police Facial Recognition Tech has 81% error rate, Independent Report says. 19% upside. Love it. Yes. And Amity Shah writes in, Amazon confirms it retains your Alexa voice recordings indefinitely.

Yes. Wait, what? No? Really? Who would have thought that? Us. I get you can still delete them, but you have to do the effort yourself. You have to put in the effort yourself every day. So there you go. Again, just don't do anything stupid with it.

You know what I did? I unplugged it. Are you done? No more ladies in the tube? The problem is, I'm like listening to my work stuff all day long, editing shows through the speakers. The thing comes on 20 times a day, and nobody says the trigger word. Right. Yeah.

Don writes in, thought you guys would be interested in this video. And it's a YouTube link. The History of Megadeth's website in 1994, parentheses, first band with a website. We are aware of this. Oh, yes, we are. Boy, do we. Robin Sloan Bechtel, the woman that did it, ended up over at Capitol, and I worked with her a number of times after that.

Yeah. Well, there you go. She was first. We'll give her that. She was my boss when I worked at Warner Brothers Records for one month. And then she fired me for not coming into the office enough. But ironically, she fired me from home because she didn't come into the office. We've had many a run in with her.

Let's just put it that way. Yeah. That was the day that I went to the Mojave to watch the first launch of the Ansari or yeah, the first launch of the Ansari XPRIZE with what was it? Spaceship One. And I did that because Shani over at Boing Boing did me a solid and made a post about Green Day's blank CDRs.

She's like, we don't put this crap on our website. I'm like, yeah, but I'll go shoot the thing for you because it was an NPR story. So I had to go spend the day in the Mojave, which honestly wasn't a bad gig. But I got fired because I did Robin a favor. So yeah, that's the way that goes.

Love the music industry. But I do miss Fez. He was the guy that wrote a lot of the tech behind Megadeth Arizona and got me literally excited about building websites. So yeah, there is history behind the history of Megadeth's website that connects all of us together in a weird way. So yeah, I was seriously would not be in the business if I didn't see that website and try to figure out how the postcards were made.

Oh yeah, the postcards. That was a big deal. Yep. That was a huge deal. So that was pretty cool. Frank writes in great episode again. Tip on the hard drive issue. Spinrite to restore and maintain hard drives and SSDs. I know about Spinrite because I used to listen to Security Now a lot over on the Twit Network.

The thing is, this thing won't, there's nothing. It does not do anything. So I just already, I already drilled a hole in it and got a Western Digital. So I'm good to go. There you go. It's actually cheaper than a copy of Spinrite too. Yeah. Over at GOG.show, Aiden writes in, got invited to buy Echo Auto today, says works best on cars without CarPlay.

Okay, well, I'm out. Yeah, I'm still in. I do not have CarPlay, but I have not gotten my invite yet. So I am waiting patiently. Oh, yeah, man. Your next car, you should get CarPlay. It's actually pretty sweet. I'm sure it will be in my next car. And Michaela writes in, put podcasts on the blockchain.

Sure, why not? And this is a link to Podminers. Everybody has sent us stuff about Podminers. And no, we're not going to use Podminers because it is a blockchain-based podcasting thing. Why? This is like buzzword salad. Yes, that's why I want to read this because this is just word salad.

Podminers, an Indian tech startup, is developing a global blockchain platform for digital radio and podcasting. As per the information, this blockchain platform is focused on promoting the freedom of speech for independent media publishers and audio content creators worldwide. This is the first time in history that someone is working on a solution to allow audio content creators to interact with a global audience in digital radio and podcasting space.

It can be called YouTube for podcasting and radio industry. As per the CEO, radio industry is struggling a lot because everything is going digital and no one has worked on a real solution for the radio industry. Whoever is there in the podcast market are just trying to steal profits without working across any real solution to the major problems.

On the other side, we are the only team building a global platform for this industry. Podminers ensures every possible contribution to make this industry flourish again. What the fuck did any of that mean? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Yeah, because podcasting actually is the solution to it, to the radio industry, because they're, you know, they're repurposing their content, they're selling ads against it, and they're making a lot more money.

And it's an open spec. Basically, you make an RSS feed with an MP3 file attached to an enclosure and you're done. That's it. That's all. We don't need blockchain for that. So, go die in a fire. Go die in a pod finder. Maybe they can have a pod fire or maybe they can have a mining collapse over there.

But, yeah, no, no, no. Barrett writes in, I can't believe this company is still around. MoviePass says it will go dark for several weeks to update its app. Okay. Yes, it's going dark while it sorts out some changes to its app. And they haven't said when the service will be back up.

My betting is on never. Yeah, I think this is giving them time to pack up what little money they have left and head to some South American country without extradition. Yes. And Cameron writes us, this is a lot to have to go through to opt out.

And this is a how to disable telemetry reporting and Visual Studio Code. And it actually doesn't look terribly difficult. It's one step. Yeah, it's not too hard. But then I did a little bit more research and I found an article at Newegg Business said, should you disable Windows 10 telemetry?

And unfortunately, this breaks Betteridge's Law of Headlines because the answer is yes. Because if you read this, the Windows 10 telemetry data includes basic system diagnostics information, logs of how frequently you use features and applications, system files, and likely more metrics that have yet to be disclosed.

Right. And digging a little deeper, it's like they track a lot of stuff, like how often you use the keyboard, all the names of your media files on your hard drive. It's a little invasive. It's a little invasive, but it's relatively easy to disable.

If you know what you're doing, that's always the caveat there. So I am actually going to be upgrading my mom's computer to Windows 10 in the near future. So I will disable that as part of my install. Yeah, I have two Windows 10 PCs, so I will definitely be going in and turning that off as soon as I can boot them back up and go through the update cycle, which usually takes three hours.

Yes. Mark writes in, I've heard you lament several times about how Amazon is paying no taxes. I hate to tell you this, but companies have never paid taxes. They don't pay taxes like you or I do. Taxes are just another expense to be paid, like payroll, vehicle purchase, or office supplies. All those costs must be offset by either lowering the net profits and thus dividend payouts to stockholders like you or Brian, or by raising prices on the customer.

I am not an Amazon shareholder, by the way, just Brian. If a $100 million federal corporate tax bill was dumped on Amazon, they would probably pay for it by raising the shipping and handling fees by a dollar a package. So no matter what, Amazon passes their tax burden to the stockholders and customers. We pay it.

They don't. Brian? Well, that's, yeah, that's, what? Huh? Jason and I have both run companies. We pay taxes. Yes. We try to pass on that to our customers by raising our prices.

That's how business works. But you still pay your taxes. We don't get, Jason and I never got breaks. That's what, that's the problem that we're having here is that the government is handing these major corporations huge tax breaks. We didn't get those tax breaks. We paid our taxes.

We paid our business taxes. I just paid business taxes. $3,000 for my business tax. Yes. Yes. So. Yes. Okay. All right. You're wrong. I paid, I paid, well, I, since you can't multiply by a zero, if Amazon, I paid, you know, 3,000, even if they'd paid one cent, I paid 3,000 times the tax that Amazon pay.

Exactly. That's the issue here. So how it gets passed on and where companies make the money to pay for their taxes is incidental at best. Uh, Carol writes us, I'm writing about the Boeing 737 max software outsourced to $12 and 80 cents an hour engineers news. When I see people saying online is that the flaw was in the design and not in the code.

I don't know enough to have an opinion if they should or shouldn't outsource it, but I just want to point out that the narrative shouldn't change to Indian coders crashed a plane. It was still up to Boeing to test and decide if the plane is safe to fly, and it looks like they want to blame someone else. Big fan. Thanks for your load of entertainment and knowledge during my daily commute and dog walks.

If you ever visit Grand Canaria, let me know. Oh, yeah, I agree. It's still Boeing's fault. Definitely. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That still doesn't mean that Indian coders still don't suck. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is not being racist. This comes from the fact that I've never gotten a single line of code from an Indian coder that was actually usable.

Nope. And never got a refund either. I'd like to point out. Cathartic writes in wonderful, informative podcast with two of the most awesome guys. Woohoo. And you guys are way better than ATP. Well, thank you very much. I've seen all Black Mirror seasons and it was great. Got into it as Charlie Brooker creates a parody review show called The Year in Review for BBC.

Stay grumpy, guys. We shall. And thank you for the email. Yes, thank you. Byron writes in, in episode 357, you pondered why Indianapolis was selected as the location for the Harry Potter Festival. I live there, so as a local, my opinion is India was selected because it is in a relatively central location.

India is known as the Crossroads of America. The city hosts Gen Con early August, which means the area is familiar to thousands of gamer geeks. The region has a fairly large Ingress following. Many of those players play other Niantic games and they've been in India in the past a few times, including an Ingress anomaly.

This is the Ingress version of a Super Bowl. So India has got that going for it to stay grumpy. OK, sounds like solid reasons. I don't even know what half of that stuff meant, though. Yeah, I also think they probably they probably got a pretty good deal if they've been doing cons there in the past because, you know, Midwest probably get a pretty good venue for pretty cheap.

So it probably makes makes financial sense to go there. And India is pretty much in the middle of everything. There you go. Yep. So thank you for the thank you for the insight. That helps. Arthur writes in. Well, Brian, the Internet gods have punished me for yelling at you about Canadian Internet. My ISP just sent me a letter explaining that my account has been upgraded to have a one terabyte data cap.

Yes, they really called it an upgrade as if I wouldn't notice it used to be uncapped. There you go. There you go. I have a question for Jason. I'm writing a field guide about mushrooms and want to know what kind of camera equipment I should be using to photograph the mushrooms. All shots will be within a few feet of the mushrooms.

I need to be able to zoom in around X10 to show the structure of the flesh. I also need to attach it to a microscope to photo the spores unless there is a lens that can photo things five to 20 microns. I think there's attachments for your phone if you have an iPhone.

That's what I was figuring. Yeah, I know I've seen ads for microscope attachments for your iPhone that you can use and lots of macro lenses that you can slap on. And, you know, the best camera is the one that you have with you. So if you're going to be out in the field, I'm sure you're going to be able to get just as, you know, just as good a photo if you went out and bought a couple thousand dollars worth of DSLR and super lenses.

So just check out some of the macro lenses and just search for iPhone microscope. And if you have an Android, search for iPhone. That was good. All right. Dugget Code writes in, I was just listening about the lack of Google Maps verification in episode 356.

You suggest them sending a physical postcard to verify the owner of the business. They used to do this five years ago when the small business I worked for moved. I had to wait a week for a postcard with a code to fly out from the U.S. to confirm our ownership of the address. I suspect Google of removing services again as usual. All right.

So that's multiple people that said that they used to do it. And one person said that they still do it. And I think we need to get some clarification on this. If they just changed venues and they only do it in certain areas now. But either way, it's hit or miss. It doesn't really seem to have any kind of coherent policy.

I wonder if there was some documentation somewhere about how this works. Oh, no, of course there isn't. Maybe we can Google it. And we got no iTunes reviews this week. Sad, sad Christmas. Yeah. 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. We are we're running at a deficit now. Pretty please. Sugar on top. That's snarky review. My closing shout out is to the U.S. Women's National Team.

Congratulations on your World Cup win. And if you want to, I agree with this headline 100 percent. Dang, it feels good to watch the U.S. Women's National Team get drunk and celebrate its World Cup win. The link over at Slate with Ashlyn Harris, which is the backup goalie. She did a lot of Snapchat stories from the locker room and you can watch the team get drunk and dance.

And it's quite pleasant. Well done, ladies. Very cool. Very cool. And another big shout out to our friend of the show, Dr. Teeter. Get well soon, man. Get well soon. Yeah. And hopefully there will be vengeance. There will be blood. And on a happier note, happy birthday to friend of the show, Robert Fogarty, who turns 50 on Thursday.

Bob's your uncle. Happy birthday, man. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Toss us a buck a month and we'll love you forever. If you'd like to give a one-time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar.

Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 359. And there you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy.

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