361: Thumbsy Uppies

This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by ButcherBox. For $20 off your first box and six burgers for free in every box all summer long until October 15th, go to butcherbox.com slash GOG or enter promo 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, a sick Brian Schulmeister yet again. Yes, it never ends. Last week of school. Can't get another cold for a little while. Well, that's good. That's good. But then you're going to get on a plane and go to Canada and infect all of them. So that's true.

Beware, Toronto. I'm coming. Coming in hot. So I got a little bit of follow up here. I found a great article on Wired by Guillaume Chazlott. Sounds like a totally fake name, but it's one of the programmers that worked on the YouTube algorithm for the recommendations.

Ah, so he's the son of a bitch. Yep, pretty much. With a name like Guillaume Chazlott, I'm guessing he's in hiding and he just made that up for the article. But it's a pretty interesting article that talks about the, you know, the problems with the recommendation engine and filter bubbles and things like that.

So if you don't know why we bitch about it as much as we do, it's a it's a good primer on getting up to speed on it and what people can do to kind of either protect yourself, which is, you know, not follow all the recommendations all the damn time or, you know, stay off of YouTube.

But it also talks about how the companies need to actually take a little bit more responsibility for creating this stuff, because now they if it's a really interesting way to profile people, too, it's like, hmm, how do we find pedophiles? Well, let's look at the pedophile AI and go from there.

Yes. Well, it is interesting because, you know, we we we ask these companies to regulate themselves, but we know they won't. So what do we do for that? Government regulation. Yeah. How do you how do you regulate content recommendations, though? Yeah, I don't know that. That is a that's that's a that's a weird one.

Not without just not without destroying their business model. Yeah. I mean, it's all in it's all in service of keeping people on their service longer. And yes, they have figured out a way to do that. It just isn't very savory some of the times. Well, speaking of government regulation, we have a little bit of follow up here.

Sure. The U.S. government has decided to actually find Facebook the expected five billion dollars for their privacy violations. And Wall Street thinks that's great. And Facebook's stock is rising. Of course, because Facebook already squirreled that five billion away. They're like, you know, let me look in my pockets here.

I think I might have a nickel lying around. Oh, here it is. Go away. Yes. The obvious reason for this is that Facebook has already told investors that they would be expected to pay a fine of up to five billion dollars. And they'd already set aside three billion. And, you know, they're doing twenty three million. I mean, let's see what 19 billion is what they're expected to make.

They've they book profits at twenty two point one billion last year. So drop in the old bucket there. So a slap on the wrist. We've reached a point where a five billion dollar fine is a slap on the wrist. Yeah, I know that just shows you that really kind of says the size of how big these things have become.

That's insane. That is insane. It's absolutely insane. Well, and speaking of insanity, I got I got this one from Steve, who is at Geek Corner underscore UK over on Twitter. And it's a very sad one. Television presenter Emily Hartridge has died from an accident while riding an e-scooter.

Yes. We'd be remiss not to point out that we also got this from Third in Command, right film, sleep, repeat, Gabe, Barrett and about 50 other people. OK, the first one I saw came from Steve. So, yeah, yeah. So maybe people will start to, you know, get their heads out of their asses now that somebody pretty and famous has died on one of these things.

Yeah. Sad news. The crazy thing about this, obviously, I did not know who she is because I'm not living in the UK and I don't follow social media stars. But she's 35 years old and she's a social media star. She was one of the originals. So the social media stars are getting older.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I've seen her around. I've seen her around. She, you know, works in some of the circles that I have a Venn diagram crossover with. So that it's just sad that, you know, people are dying on these damn things. And yeah. What are you going to do? Well, we said that's going to happen.

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. In the news. Just love this headline, Jason. Never commit a crime when your phone is connected to a Wi-Fi network. OK.

How about just never commit a crime? Well, there's that. I like this. The beginning paragraph to like many bad ideas. This one started with Bud Light. That's the truth. Hold my beer. Yeah. As for high school seniors sat around shooting the breeze before graduation, they decided to vandalize their school as a senior prank.

Well, that's that's been going on as old as time. So no big deal there, except for the fact that there was a lot of Bud Light involved. And this is where it gets a little bit iffy for me. You know, you can set out to a spray paint class of 2018 on your school, but I don't know how it slides into swastikas, racial slurs and other hateful symbols.

Well, there is the Bud Light crossover there. I've had a lot of Bud Light in my day. Didn't turn you into a Nazi? Did not turn me into a Nazi. Just saying, just turned you into an asshole. Not made me an asshole, not a racist asshole. Yeah, you go. Yes.

Well, they decided to take the precautions of covering their faces before they broke in, but they did not turn off their automatically connect to school Wi-Fi with their unique logins. So the digital fingerprints already pointed out who they are and they were arrested. Good. Culling the herd. That's right.

If you don't know how your technology works, don't be surprised when it bites you in the ass. Exactly. So that's that's the kind of the whole point of this article is. It's how little we all know about what our phones are actually doing and what they're connecting to it all the time and and what they're doing automatically without any of our knowledge. So, you know, if you're going to be a jerk, leave your phone at home.

Yeah. Leave the phone at home. Seriously. Come on, people. I mean, obviously, they didn't listen to our show. Obviously, obviously, obviously. And this is a really interesting one. And this is an exclusive to CNN. When was the last time you saw a CNN exclusive? I'm just used to TMZ exclusives.

Seriously. Where's BuzzFeed? I'm a lawyer. So documents obtained exclusively by CNN reveal that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange received in-person deliveries, potentially have hacked materials related to the 2016 U.S.

election during a series of suspicious meetings at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Just had him post made it over. Yeah. So, yeah, apparently, you know, Robert Mueller had an inkling that this was going on.

And this is it's just crazy. It is crazy. He basically had a war room. He had a war room. And part of the war room was in the women's lavatory. But, you know, the fact that he's staying in the Ecuadorian embassy and the Ecuadorian government actually hired companies to spy on him, which is where these documents come from.

It's like, OK, yeah, well, we can't get rid of him. So let's at least watch what he's doing. And an Ecuadorian intelligence official did tell CNN that the surveillance surveillance reports are authentic. So this shit happened. Yep, it did. Yeah. So, you know, now we have a little bit more proof for the extradition, which was it's eventually going to happen.

You know, he's still serving a one year prison sentence for jump and bail. But once that's done, if he survives that, then he's still got the sexual assault charges hanging around over. He's not a good guy. No, he's not. He really is a douchebag. Yes.

You, sir, are a douchebag. Well, speaking of douchebags, the FBI is planning more social media surveillance. Uh, guess what? They're going to outsource it. All right. They have issued a call for contracts for a new social media monitoring tool. There is a request for proposal.

Maybe we should look at it, Jason, since we're not making enough money from this podcast. I'm sure we can build one of these. Looking for an early alerting tool that would help it to monitor terrorist groups, domestic threats, criminal activity, and the like. The tool would provide FBI with access to the full social media profiles of persons of interest, which could include information like user IDs, emails, IP addresses, and telephone numbers.

They will also be tracking people based on locations, enable persistent keyword monitoring, and provide access to personal social media history. Yeah. I've got an idea for the company name we can start. We'll just call it LA Analytica. That'll be us. Oh, there you go.

Yeah. So obviously a tool of this nature is likely to raise a few red flags, despite the FBI's call for ensuring all privacy and civil liberties compliance requirements are met because they have such a good track record of that. Yeah. And here's the thing. If they're just using public data, there's nothing that anybody can do to stop this.

It's when they're going backdooring to the actual social networks to get more data, which that's what I'm assuming will be part of the deal. Yeah. Cause it's a, they're not just going to go, Oh, you set your Facebook profile to private. Guess we won't look at it. Yeah. It's going to have to have something like that. Or, you know, half of the tool is making fake IDs and infriending people in these networks to get more data, you know, a little, little, uh, human goes a long way.

That's right. And I love this. And it says, and the CIA already invests heavily in its own social network monitoring tools. Yeah. They built Facebook. That's their social media monitoring tool. Basically. You know, I love that, that old onion article. I got to dig that up and put it in the show notes where the, where Zuckerberg gets his CIA award for building the best surveillance tool ever.

That's right. Oh, and speaking of tools, Peter Thiel's back in the news. Oh God. I really don't. This guy, you know, everybody talks about Elon Musk being the supervillain. No, it's Peter. No, it's Peter. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. So now he's saying that, uh, Google is treasonous and should be investigated by the CIA since they, since Google has decided not to work with the U S government, but still works with the Chinese.

He says that, you know, it's treasonous, treasonous. I says, ah, and, uh, there's no proof of any of this, but there's not just got on a rant. He just got on a rant and just started spewing shit. You know what? He's been hanging out with Trump too long.

He just makes shit up and says whatever he wants, just making shit up and seeing if it'll stick. That's kind of it. That's kind of it. And, uh, yeah, this guy has way more money than common sense, you know? And now we can't, thanks to him, we can't even see the Hulk Hogan sex tape.

Damn. I was really looking forward to that. I had, I left my Saturday night open. Yeah. Yeah. Trust me. You're not missing much. Cause I did see it when it was out and, uh, yeah, not really a whole lot to write home about there. Anyway. Yeah. Peter Thiel is, uh, he's lost his marbles.

Definitely. Well, if you are going to be streaming that Hulk Hogan sex tape, you should be aware of the environmental footprint you'll be causing God, this is over at Gizmodo every year. Our collective video streaming results in carbon emissions equivalent to the entire country of Spain. A new report has found all the data centers used to run the sites that give us our videos from YouTube to porn hub require massive amounts of energy and researchers are estimating that YouTube alone amidst some 11 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2016, a separate group

of analysts from the shift project, a pair of space think tank dedicated to a low carbon future is concluded in a report that all online videos from around the world emit over 300 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. That's 1% of the total annual global emissions. So I'm good with that. Yeah.

I'm fine with that too. I'm fine with that. I'm sure it's for Jessica Jones. I'm good. It's a much less than our old, uh, gas guzzling cars going back and forth. The blockbuster. Exactly. You're driving to the mall. It's like, okay, you're going to sit home and watch TV and maybe rub one out, uh, over the internet.

Yeah. So it's a trade-off. Shut up. You fucking hippies. So AT&T is getting sued. This came out early this morning. The EFF who we were wondering what they, what they've been up to lately. What they've been up to been quiet. Yeah. They have sued AT&T for selling customer location data to third parties.

Okay, good. Yeah. It's about time. I can't wait for my $1. Me too. It's going to be awesome. Except you're a Verizon customer, so you don't get shit. Oh, damn. Yeah. This is a, they're going for class action status in California. So that's me.

Customers living in California since 2011. Ah, crap. I might only get 30 cents because I kept moving a lot, but I have had a San Francisco number the whole time. So I've been in California in spirit, in spirit. I've been here and I'm here now. So give me my, give me my, my sense, please.

So hopefully this will, uh, have a good outcome, but you know, if, if Facebook, it's a $5 billion fine and nobody bats an eye AT&T, same thing, you know, exactly. It's, it's going to be a slap on the wrist. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by butcher box.

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Media candy. I finally finished Jessica Jones, thus destroying the environment by streaming it all. All right. Good for you, steel killer. What'd you think? I loved it. I thought it was good. I thought it was a fine wrap up. I'm sad that there's not going to be more, obviously, because I really enjoyed the characters and the actors that portrayed everything.

It was great. I really I left with a smile on my face. Yeah, I thought the ending was really good. I thought they wrapped it up nicely. I didn't think they wrapped it up as nicely as Daredevil. Yeah, I can see that it wasn't as good as Daredevil, but it was definitely it. I thought it was good. I thought the sisters' Descendant of Madness was a bit Game of Thrones-y in that it went a little bit faster than it probably should have.

But they had to wrap the show up. So I could assume that been like a two season arc. But what are you going to do? Yeah. Yeah. It's like clock's ticking. Let's make the bitch crazy. Pretty much. Let's let's tease her hair out a little bit. So she looks crazy. OK, how do you make some how do you make a beautiful woman look evil?

Bad hair day. Bad hair day. That's really how they did it. But no, I was satisfied in the ending scene. I'm not going to spoil it. But I thought I thought the whole like last maybe three minutes was very satisfying. And I thought they did a really good job. Exactly. I agree. And I've also started watching Stranger Things 3.

I'm two episodes in. It is. Yeah, it's all right. It's a total 80s nostalgia porn. Loving it, loving that part of it so far. I'm not sure. Two episodes in. I don't know where the hell this is going yet. So, oh, OK, yeah, yeah, no, I still think it's one of the I think it's the best of the three because just because of the pacing, I think it moves along a lot faster.

But I thoroughly enjoyed it. So I look forward to your wrap up. Excellent. I should try to watch that at least over the break. So we shall see what happens. Also, the Cure's Anniversary Live in Hyde Park film is out and it is a hell of a concert. What a playlist, man.

Have you seen the film yet? I have. Oh, how did you do that? Sweden. There you go. OK. Hey, the Cure has gotten more than enough money for me over the years. Don't you worry. This is true. God, just our tickets for the upcoming show were enough.

Exactly. Warrant to free. It should have come with the movie for free. Jesus. Oh, man. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, it's good. It's really good. It's really good. Although I might just save it because we're going to go see him in a month. So this is true that it's coming up. Yeah. Yeah. That's going to be really fun.

And I finally finished the Grand Tour season three. I know I'm a little slow on the on the mark on that one. Not going to lie. I kind of forgot about it. Did you finish it? No. Oh, my God. OK. I've totally forgot about it until you put it in the show notes. I'm like, oh, yeah, I should finish that up. OK, well, you can just skip to the end.

The last two episodes are the only thing you need to see. OK. The they did one of their epic road trips for the I think it's episode 13. Oh, good. Good. And those are the best. It is the best that they've ever done. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Great. Looking forward to it, then.

Yeah. It's hands down the best one they've ever done. And the teary farewell in the final episode also was was very heartwarming. It's very heartwarming. But they're they're filming season four right now. So the interesting thing is everybody's getting their own shows.

Cash cow. Why not? Yeah. James Mays got a show called Our Man in Japan. OK. That's going to be interesting. And Jeremy Clarkson has a new show about farming. OK, that that'll probably be pretty funny. Yeah, I don't know how this is all going to play out.

But, hey, you know, every now and again, you've got to do something different. I mean, they've been doing the car thing for almost 20 years. So, yeah, take a break. Let's take a break. Yeah. I, you know, I'm as they were like doing the rap, I got a little teary eyed myself. I'm like, yeah, it is going to be kind of sad that they're not doing a lot of the things they used to do.

But those epic journeys are really amazing. That's the only good part of the show anymore. It's fine. It's fine. We have all the old top gears if we want the old stuff. That's true. That's true. So farewell, Conversation Street. See you later. And I found this over at Deadline.

It's called Streaming Overlord. Nielsen reports finds average viewer takes seven minutes to pick what to watch and just one third bother to check the menu. Now, this seven minutes is fast, I think, especially when you're dealing with roommates who can't seem to figure out how menus work in general.

I applaud you for not saying women. No, no, no. This happens to every roommate. And it's just I had to leave the room on Sunday when my roommate was trying to find a show to watch because I was getting motion sick watching the menu. No, no.

Yep. Yep. No. That's what. No. Yeah. No, I'm not in the mood for that. It's just like now I know how women have felt for the entirety of human history up until now when men have been the controller of the remote. I feel for your pain now.

I understand. To be fair, we only had four channels. Well, that's true. That's true. But we still would switch between all four incessantly. Now, I understand you are not in a romantic relationship with this woman, but you are still in a relationship.

And let me tell you again, the key to a happy relationship, Jason, two bathrooms, two TVs. Well, you know, we watch TV together in the afternoons and that's kind of the thing. That's the fun part. You know, when we hang out, we hang out together and watch TV. And we have stuff to talk about. That's why I like having a roommate.

You know, it's like I could have just lived alone if I wanted to sit there and watch TV by myself like I did for two years in Chicago. That part sucks. Well, just send her in to pick a show a half an hour before you're ready. Oh, I need a week. I need a week. I told her I'm like, you need to start picking some shows. But it turns out that, you know, it's it's endemic.

You know, a million shows, nothing to watch. That's the old adage. That is that is why I feel almost every time I launch up Netflix, unless there's something specifically I want to go see. Forget it. There's nothing in there. Yeah. And God, I tried to get her to use Hulu. Even I can't figure out the Hulu interface.

She was just like, what is this shit? It is pretty bad. It is pretty bad. I've got my mash saved. That's all I need Hulu for. Yeah, true. I read Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, a sort of biography by Eric Eidel this week.

Nice. I needed something different. You know, we were talking like, ah, sci-fi. Now for something completely different. Exactly. Which he even talks about the story of that line in the book. And it's a fantastic book. I loved it. I love Eric Eidel. And yeah.

And hearing his whole story was really good. The only complaint I really had was that it was just too damn short. I really. He's not dead yet. Yeah. Yeah, but he went through his whole history already. I'm not dead yet. And, you know, there's a really touching Robin Williams story at the end of the book that was just heartbreaking.

And what I found really interesting was Python used standard working hours and wrote everything totally sober. They're like, this is work. We're going to work from nine to five. We're not going to get messed up. And we're going to write funny stuff. And then we're going to go do what we want to do.

And in Eric Eidel's case, banging every chick in Britain, it seems. But I'm like, he got around. Yeah, it's a good gig if you can get it. Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Say no more. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Yep. Yeah, no, I'm not surprised by that at all. One of my favorite stories from the music industry.

You know who Nick Cave is, right? Of course I do. Yeah, birthday party, all that sort of stuff. He had writer's block at one point in his career. And what he decided to do is for a year, he rented an office, had a secretary, went in every day, nine to five, three-piece suit, briefcase, and just sat at a desk and wrote songs.

And how did that work out for him? Really, really well. Yeah, see? This lifestyle we've created for ourselves 24-7, our creativity is dying. Exactly. So I really can't say enough good things about this book. It's really fun. I am looking forward to reading it.

Yeah, you would definitely. I think you're going to enjoy it quite a bit. It made me want to go pick up all the other Pythons biographies, too. Oh, yeah, definitely. And there were a couple Audible originals that I got this month. The first one was The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon by Todd Zwilich.

And it's the story of John C. Hubolt. And it's a really fascinating story that I'd never heard before. And, like, when they were trying to figure out how to put people on the moon, he came up with, well, he championed. He's built a sound studio in Burbank.

Yeah, that's right. He got some rocks. Yep. Called Adam Savage and Jamie Heinemann. No, his idea that he was a big proponent of was the lunar orbit rendezvous, which is what we ended up going with.

And the fight that he had to actually get this thing through and, you know, make it a reality is really fascinating. And, you know, it was it's a really interesting story because everybody didn't want to go that route. They wanted to put a big rocket on the moon.

And it turns out that his idea was better. That's right. And even Werner Von Braun gave him an OK sign and said, you did good when it landed. Werner Von Braun. Yeah. One of the God. Do not like that guy. Go look at his Wikipedia entry.

It's pretty funny. You look at his accolades. It's like member of the SS, member of the U.S. military. It's like, oh, Operation Paperclip. What did you do? Well, got us to the moon, I guess so. Got us to the moon, I suppose. Yeah, the last one I read or listened to, sorry, don't offend anyone.

The Adventures of Tom Stranger, Interdimensional Insurance Agent by Larry Correa. I don't know how to pronounce that. It was a two and a half hour story read by what's his name from Firefly?

Adam Baldwin. OK. And there are some very funny Firefly jokes in here. This was hilarious. It was really, really funny. Just one of those really quirky little sci-fi short stories. Douglas Adams-y. It was. It was very much like that.

But, I mean, it was really funny. He's got a follow-up to it, but it's like another two-hour audio book, but it's like 11 bucks. I'm like, I don't know, five bucks an hour on that. I don't know if it was that funny. But it was really good. If you're an Audible subscriber, I highly recommend both of those because they're July's Audible original picks and you can get them for free.

Excellent. And I finished reading The Solar War, which is the Long Winter Trilogy Book 2 by A.G. Riddle. It just came out. I have to be honest with you. I barely remembered anything from the first one, but it came back relatively quickly. This is just straight up pulpy sci-fi. It's fine.

Nothing memorable here. It's fine. But it's a good crapper read. It's good sci-fi. Oh, damning with faint praise. It's fine. It is. I mean, it's, you know, we expect a lot from books these days and sometimes they're just fine. It's a good story. Okay.

Good to know. We spend an awful lot of time pointing out the downsides, shall we say, of the gig economy, the replacement of a boss with an app for an on-demand service and how it has not really turned out well for a lot of people going to it.

From Uber and Lyft, decimating the ranks of taxi drivers, TaskRabbit workers have awoken and recognized their exploitation by faceless capitalists. The problem is not only low wages and high percentages these companies take as a cut, but also the lack of benefits. But for a certain part of our world, these seem to have turned out pretty well.

Well, cam girls, some may argue there's some exploitation going on there, but okay. In addition, psychics, mediums, tarot card readers, and spiritual guides. Are you kidding me? There is an ever-growing world of psychic apps that are taking up space in the Apple's app store. Digital automation has had a positive impact for them.

What is automation? That's a new word. Sorry about that. The app Kasamba is more like hotlines where psychics charge by the minute they charge a service fee. Oh, Ms. Cleo is back! They're back and they're apt. Ms. Cleo. Oh, God. Yes, it's awesome.

So there's various modes of communication. You can have a text session with customers for 17 cents per minute on top of the additional fee of 55% of the total price is levied. Oh, yes. This could explain why some psychics on the app charge $26 a minute. Jiminy, Japan, Jesus Christ, a host of fat.

Why are we doing podcasts? I don't know. It's funny. I was at a friend of the show, Bob Fogarty's house this past weekend for his 50th birthday. Happy birthday again, Bob. We had a lot of fun. It was a great time.

And I did notice he had a deck of the Alistair Crowley Thoth tarot cards on his on his bookshelf, which I don't even know if I may have given him those because I learned to read tarot when I was working at an art gallery running the front desk.

And I had a lot of time on my hand, so I would read all the girls in the gallery and I got really good at it. I mean, I got really good at it. And I think maybe this is my second, my second calling. I think I'm going to I think I'm going to go read tarot for people on the Internet.

Do it. Apparently, it's a booming, booming field and people are paying a lot of money. So the morons are the people that are paying them, because if you didn't pay them for this crap, they wouldn't exist. Yeah. Oh, man. I'm telling you, learning to do tarot is really fun, actually, because it's all about it's kind of social engineering because, you know, you kind of know what the card is supposed to mean.

That's all it is. Well, yeah, but you have to, like, read the people and, you know, just pay attention to what their mood is for different things. And you can hook into them so fast and then they're amazed when, you know, you say this card is this. And it's like, oh, how did you know that?

I'm like, I didn't. But thanks for telling me. So let's go down that route. You know, tarot reading is fun. I think everybody should try it at some point. And especially if you can make twenty six dollars a minute. Jesus. Yep, that's pretty crazy.

So the other morons of the week, you people on Facebook, on your Facebook event page for Storming Area 51. Yeah, the military has basically said, you shouldn't do this. We will not let you in. But remember, we are part of the military.

Yes, we have guns and planes and things that go boom. Now, more than 400,000 people have joined a Facebook event page calling for Storming Area 51 with many more indicating interest, as we know from setting up our own Facebook events. Just because people say they're going to come doesn't mean they are.

So I expect about 15 people to show up on September 20th to do this. I grabbed this from Deadline and I didn't go back and check the actual source because I'm going to read the event description from Deadline. We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry.

The event description reads, if we Neuratu run. Now, is the typo on the actual event? I should have checked into that. I should have checked that out. I don't have Facebook. I can't look. Well, I don't want it. I don't want it in my history. We can move faster than their bullets. Let's see them aliens. Oh, God.

Oh, God. And I just I found this one on another one on Science Alert. It said, P.S. Hello, U.S. government. This is a joke. And I do not actually intend to go ahead with this plan. Wrote user Jackson Barnes following his rather descriptive proposed game plan.

I just thought it would be funny and get me some Thumbsie Uppies on the Internet. Thumbsie Uppies. I'm not responsible if people decide to actually storm Area 51. Oh, boy. This is a wonderful world we've created for ourselves.

I know. When you try and get half a million people because you want some Thumbsie Uppies. I do like the update to the Just for the Lols. Now it's the Thumbsies Upsies. Feedback loop. Over on Patreon, we have new subscriber Jamie.

And he writes in. Good morning, Grumps. I just signed up for the $10 a month tier for a year using my newfangled privacy.com card. Excellent, sir. I saw that this tier allows me to give a shout out, but not sure where I'm supposed to do that. Well, this is a good spot. I'm assuming here. Yes. You assumed correctly.

I work in tech at one of those infamous golden handcuff media conglomerates. And even at 36, I'm grumpy AF on a daily basis with the insanity of the mantra, doing more with less. I hate that one. That being said, your podcast makes my day that much more bearable.

I wanted to see if you could wish Sir Fox, a fellow grumpy old geek, a happy 45th birthday. Happy birthday, Sir Fox. Happy birthday. He will be hiking somewhere along the Colorado Trail right now, but I know he plans to catch up on all the GOG podcasts once he gets back to civilization.

Excellent. He is the one who turned me on to GOG and turns me on in general. If you get my drift. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, we, we. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Thank you both for such an intelligent, interesting, and funny podcast. Deliveroo! Thank you so much, Jamie.

And we got a message from Neil over on Patreon. I was wondering if Jason could give an update on the eight sleep pod bed, highly considering one for myself. Oh, my God. It is a game changer. Yes, it is. I cannot recommend it more highly. If you have the means, please pick one up.

They are incredible. And if you go over to the Jordan Harbinger Show website, you can get a coupon even for a coupon for 150 bucks off. The thing is amazing. It is unbelievably amazing. I just I've slept so good the past couple of weeks.

And now, fortunately, I have some new Brooklinen sheets that are coming. Podcasting is sponsoring all of my sleep. We don't get paid, but we get meat. Yeah, we get meat here at Grumpy Old Geeks and or the other shows. I get beds and in underwear and now sheets.

And yeah, it's good stuff. But man, yeah, no, even I, I have to say that I did get it for free. But, you know, I would pay for this thing in a heartbeat. It is completely changed how I sleep. If it's like it's cools down at night before I get in and then it like, you know, it can fluctuate temperatures at night as you go and warm you up as you wake up in the morning.

It just it is so unbelievably awesome. And don't have to keep the AC on in the house at night because the bed keeps you cool. So you actually will end up saving money over time instead of cooling your whole house down just to keep your, you know, butt cold in bed. So there's my there's my free eight sleep pod bed.

And I will just mention that, of course, your bed now has a terms of service, a privacy and a subscription. Yeah. And it's gamified. I get a sleep score every morning. All right. Over at PayPal, we have new donations from Derek Jack, who says thanks for the great show.

And Thomas, who said discovered this from Jason on the Jordan Harbinger show. Another fantastic podcast and wanted to support you guys. Thanks for all the humor and entertainment. Stay grumpy from a grouchy young geek. Well, thank you, Thomas. Thank you. Over at Twitter, Gwydian writes in tinfoil hat equals on.

I've had a similar experience, similar to your ego story. I'm pretty sure my car company is selling my location data and redirecting cars to my area as I'm seeing cars just like the one I recently bought everywhere. Tinfoil hat equals off. Oh, what was that called? I forgot the cognitive bias for that one.

Yes, there's a specific cognitive bias for that. Definitely. Yeah, there is. Dave is going to be doing some in-depth research, so we will hear more on Saturday's show about what's going on with his diet app and the fact that the foods that he's been entering have been showing up as ads in his feeds.

So we'll see. Yes, and I've got a follow-up to that as well because I had some interesting things happen here at the house recently. So I've got a little bit more follow-up on that as well as far as retargeting of ads goes. So it'll be a fun one. Excellent. Nathan writes in, about an hour into episode 360, Jason refers to his Kindle skin as classy orange.

I feel a mixed show title opportunity. I actually wrote that down as we were going along as a possible show title, so I agree with you there. Nice. And Ma6502 writes in, Puerto Rico government is collapsing thanks to a Telegram chat. I'll try to find a good English overview to send.

Main takeaway is no app is secure if one of the users wants to fuck everyone else. Nice. This is true. Yes, you can just take screenshots and release them. Jared writes in, I really like your show. Discovered you from the podcast Engineering Show. I'd like to hear you talk more about Libra versus Bitcoin.

You said, paraphrasing, that Libra would definitely overtake Bitcoin, but you didn't really say why. Can you expand? Anyway, good stuff. Share user base. Two billion users. Ease of use. It's going to be baked right into Facebook if they're allowed to do it. It's going to be super simple. Tons of people. Yeah.

Going to win. Ease of use is going to be the key to that, or if they're even allowed to do it, which it looks like that might not happen. Yes. And Martim writes in, if you don't know the AI bot on Twitter that describes random images, you should. Some real gems making it very clear the machines would likely fail their attempt at world domination.

Check out at PicDeskBot. That's P-I-C-D-E-S-C-B-O-T. I did check it out, and it is pretty funny, because it does kind of suck. It does. And Cluen sent in a link from the Next Web. Study. Influencers can't even influence anymore. Shocker.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just kind of a rundown of how many people have what type of influence and how many people actually see what they're doing. And it turns out the fewer followers you have, the higher the engagement is. Interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. So, beware the algorithms. Yes. And over at GOG.show, Mike writes in, soon we won't be able to buy textbooks anymore. Pearson is going digital to try and stamp out the secondhand book market, and probably the precursor to another subscription model. This is education publisher Pearson to phase out print textbooks.

Yeah. So, these are basically for students right now. It's all the e-textbooks, and they want to just go that way, because they figure they're at a digital tipping point, where over half of their annual revenues come from digital sales. I remember being in college, and I liked the secondhand books. They were great, because they usually had good notes in them.

Exactly. Yeah. That's going to suck to lose those. Oh, I tell you what doesn't suck. If you're a kid with a parent who bought a lot of textbooks, who spent a bunch of money on them and couldn't get rid of them because they had a little issue with the sunk cost fallacy, and you had to move them every three months because you moved every three months, and you were the one that had to carry them everywhere, digital is the way to go, in my humble opinion.

There you go. And Kirk writes, and good luck deleting someone's private info from a trained neural network. It's likely to bork the whole thing. And this is an article over at the Register called Researchers Show Limited Success in Getting Rid of Data. Did you read this one? I did, yeah. So it's kind of interesting about how AI neural net systems have weird memories.

They cling on to the data they've been trained on, making it difficult to delete bits of it. And basically, if you want to get rid of data because of things like GDPR, if you want to be removed from any subset of data that was fed into one of these neural nets, you can't. It's stuck in there.

Yeah, they have to totally, like, you know, dump you and retrain the whole thing. Yep. So interesting. There you go. That's going to be really interesting because if GDPR is getting serious, as we talked about last episode, the internet cops are here, that's going to be a problem for people doing machine learning research. Yes.

I mean, that's a market opportunity for somebody who's writing training software is to be able to remove specific surgical parts of the training set. But I don't think you can. I honestly don't think you can either. That doesn't seem to be the case. So interesting stuff. Chris writes in, hey, Grumps, regular listener and Patreon subscriber here.

Love your show. Here's an interesting article regarding the legality of e-scooters in a country that you may have never heard about. I come from Malta, which is I know where Malta is. Everybody knows where Malta is. We know where Malta is. Come on. It raises some interesting points regarding legality and insurance and reg requirements for these fucking retarded millennial transport devices.

Why don't people just use a regular bicycle or get an e-bike if they're too lazy to put some effort into getting to work? Stay grumpy. I agree. So, yeah, Malta has some some laws on the books, just like everywhere else. Anytime these things get dumped somewhere, everybody's like, huh, how do we fit these in with the laws that we have?

Oh, we don't. But they dumped them here anyways. Yeah. Remember, England had rules that they couldn't get on the road and then they relax those rules and then voila, someone's dead. Yep. That's how it works. Lex writes in, guys, I've listened to your privacy dot com ads and I wish I could try it, but I'm located in Mexico and can't sign up since it's only for U.S. cards.

Do you or any of the guys and gals listening to your show have any alternatives for this service I could use? I want security in my purchases. Thank you for any help you may or may not provide. I don't have anything off the top of my head, but dear GOG army. Yes.

Please help. Yes. If you know anything that Lex can use in Mexico, please send it our way and I'll drop a note to the guys over at privacy dot com and see if I can get an ETA on when they'll be available in Mexico. There you go. And Aaron Ronan sent us a link. Alexa now giving UK users NHS medical advice.

Unfortunately, it's behind the New York Times paywall and I couldn't read it. And I ran out of time to Google an alternative source, but I'm very interested in reading this article, so I will get around to it. OK, well, I gave you a New York Times login, so there's no excuse for you. Oh, damn it.

I should have checked my passwords. Yeah, I got you. I gave you one of my digital subscriptions. Well, since you've got that signed in, why didn't you read the article? Lazy bastard. Because I'm a lazy bastard. That's why. All right. We'll get to that one next time. Yeah. David writes in, hey, years ago, I did a similar thought experiment on how many different images can be created for a 640 by 480 pixel image with three RGB color channels.

Turns out you can make 10 to the power of 2, 2, 1, 9, 4, 3, 4 different images before you start repeating yourself. That's a lot. OK, so maybe I was off there. That'd be 2,219,434. Yeah. 10 to the power of. I'm putting the commas by myself. OK.

Because I'm a lazy bastard. He says, I'm not an expert in AI, but I don't think even if you have one color channel that you can create this metric fuck ton of images in one day. I also did a small visualization where I compared my number with different odds. And he sends a link that we'll have in the show notes.

He says, cheers from Austria. I love Austria. It's such a beautiful country. I know. I've been trying to plan a trip over there. Oh, God. Austria is one. It's a gem of Europe. You'll love it so much. But OK, I'll check out the visualization. And yeah, yeah, that is, as you stated, a fuck ton of images.

And Cameron writes in, apparently you don't need machine learning to make deep fakes. This is an article over at PC Gamer. A Pakistani politician mistakes a GTA 5 stunt video for real life and congratulates the pilot. Why wasn't that moron of the week?

I don't know. What's going on over in Pakistan? You got this and then, or was it Pakistan or India that had the filters with the bunny ears during one of their cabinet meetings? For some reason, I can't remember where that was from. I can't remember either. That was great.

Yeah, good stuff. Jack writes in, hey guys, great show and I'm throwing a few bucks your way. Well, thank you, Jack. One fun little aspect of privacy.com that I haven't heard mentioned is that you can use any name and billing address you want with any card, and privacy will return it to the merchant as valid, assuming the merchant's anti-fraud doesn't kick in.

So keep the city, state, zip a real location, even if it's in a place that shouldn't exist like Florida. I forgot about that. We should put that in the reads because that is kind of a nice thing. You don't actually have to give them actual data, and I don't give them actual data. So yeah, and he says it's an extra layer of, well, privacy.

And let's not forget pranks where you can send someone a pizza from Dirk Diggler, and even the billing info will match up. Thanks again for the great content. And Brian, as the father of a preschooler myself, the struggle is real. To keep up with the media. Yes, it is. Matt writes in, thought this might bring a smile to your face.

And this is a link, WTVR.com. 300 plus abandoned scooters up for auction in Richmond. Left for dead by their California-based owner. Hundreds of electric scooters that were impounded by the city last year are now up for grabs. They're all from Bird, and they just dumped them there, and now they're just sitting in a dump.

It's literally an auction for Bird shit. Yep, exactly. Nick says, hi, guys. Maybe I can shine some light regarding the Google My Business verification. A call back from episode 359. I started a business in late 2018, and as of early 2019, Google, in fact, does require a physical address to be listed for search results.

This included receiving a letter in the mail with a four to six digit verification code. Being that my business is a DBA, just me, Google allows business owners to hide the address if residential and set a radius where your business services. So this is interesting. So how is there so much fraud if they're requiring this for everyone?

Yeah, I don't understand. This is what doesn't make sense. It makes no sense. I'm going to have to go back and see that article and write the author. Yeah. Do some actual research here. Yeah, yeah. Because it's still, you know, we're getting a lot of, you know, inbound feedback that you do have to get the postcard.

But, you know, these people are putting businesses out there that don't exist. So how are they doing it? So that's that's the trick. There you go. John writes in. Hey, guys, I had no idea about Windows telemetry and the data collection they're doing. Definitely freaked me out. I looked at the link you provided in the notes, but you need to install VS Code first.

I searched around and found an easier way for Windows Home users via this blog post. And we'll have the link in our show notes. I use the reg edit and disable the two service tweaks. Hopefully that does the trick. Well, hopefully it does. All right. All right. That'll be easier for you, Jason. Yeah, much easier. And you too, for your mom. That's right.

No Name writes in Jason brought up an article from The Atlantic, the coddling of the American mind on a show a while ago and went off on a rant against millennials. Well, that's every week that far for the course. Something about it didn't sit right with me. Now I know what. Listen to the last 15 minutes of this, which is a behind the bastards podcast.

And it's called the fake crusade for free speech. The just the Koch brothers are funding articles and left leaning articles to fight back against younger people's more progressive views. Be skeptical and stay grumpy. Well, the coddling of the American mind is a book that I also read from Jonathan height and Greg Lukin off.

And it kind of puts everything into perspective. It's not just the Koch brothers who were, they might fund the articles to get the word about the book out there, but the, the book breaks it down in very, you know, detailed ways on how this is bad, very, very bad for free speech.

And just, you know, common sense, just common sense. When, when people claim that words are violence, you run into problems. Agreed. Steve writes in a quick correction about your story on episode three 59 about the Chinese installing surveillance software on tourists phones.

iPhones were not completely immune. As you stated. I guess Android simply had an app installed, but if you read the guardian article link in the show notes, you'll see this paragraph. The iPhones are plugged into a reader that scans them. Well, Android phones have the app installed to do the same job. All the installations confirmed by the guardian and its owners were on Android phones, but travelers report that iPhones are also taken by officers.

They still did something pretty shady to the iPhones. Also, the question is what stay grumpy. Well, my best guess is that they attempted to copy whatever they could on the iPhone, depending on users' privacy settings, or maybe they have the Israeli device that cracks all iPhones, but they didn't install anything and they could just get a grab of what you've got on your phone at the time, as opposed to Android, where they could keep getting updated information constantly.

Yeah, that's the difference. That's the big difference. So it's, you know, just a snapshot versus continual surveillance. Exactly. And I'm sure that they have that Israeli device. I'm sure they do. Yeah, every copy. You're issued a gun and an iPhone scanner when you come to work the first day.

And Charles writes in, hey, gents, I know you've mentioned an interest in the Echo Auto. I stumbled upon this Alexa-certified dongle for the car. At least this one's not vaporware. This is the Rova Viva by Anker. Alexa-enabled two-port USB car charger in-car navigation compatible with Android and iOS smart devices.

Yeah, I looked at it. It looks pretty snazzy. I already have an Anker 2 USB port charger in my car, so it seems like an easy upgrade for me to make. But I'm going to wait and see what the official Amazon device is like, since it seems to be seeping out there from what we've heard. Also, my kid has now figured out how to ask Alexa for things like music, and I'm not sure I want to relinquish control of my car's stereo.

There's only so many times I can listen to Yellow Submarine without losing my mind. Yeah, and this is actually more expensive than the Amazon Auto. It's $49.99, where the... I thought the Amazon Auto was like $30. Yeah, well, one you can get, the other one you can't. The other one you can't, yeah. So $49.99 for something that exists, or $30 for something that you can't get yet.

Yeah, and Francois writes us, my view as a grumpy old Android user, I really enjoy your podcast, but I can't help but notice a certain disdain from your part when it comes to Android devices and their users that goes beyond the fact that you just prefer to use iOS devices generally. I have a feeling we've triggered him a little bit, Jason.

Probably, probably. I think he needs a safe Android space. Continue. Since you are iPhone users, I would like to share my views as an Android phone user on why I prefer this platform in the hope it might broaden your horizon on that point as tech enthusiasts, as we all live in our bubbles. I'm going to stop you right there, Taylor Swift.

Jason's got Android phones. My parents have Android tablets that I set up for them and always sort out for them. We aren't in a bubble. We honestly just like iOS more for all the reasons we say all the time on the show. By all means, use Android. We just don't. The main problem here, which you brought up on page 352 of your long message to us, and that we agree with, is that there are really only two options in the marketplace.

100% agree with you there. Yeah, and I love the hardware on other phones. It's the Android platform that's the problem and all the shitware that they load on top of it because I, you know, I've got a Samsung, was it a Galaxy S7 Edge? Beautiful phone. I would love to use that phone, but there's so much Samsung shitware on there that it's like every time I come, it's like signing with your Samsung idea.

I'm like, no, I'm not making a damn Samsung idea and you can't decouple it. And it just reminds me about the old e-machines that we used to buy. I think I bought 30 e-machines back in the day and e-machines were great little cheap computers that were just all, it was preloaded with a ton of crappy software that you were supposed to use.

But I, of course, got them, wiped them and installed FreeBSD and put them in a server rack somewhere. But I think his, I mean, his arguments, which are, you know, very extensive here, we're not going to read the whole thing because we don't have that much time in the show and it would cross about seven episodes, but his arguments are well thought out, just too long.

But I use iOS because I want a phone to work and be a phone. It's kind of a utility device for me. I just don't have enough days left in my life to worry that every app I install might be malware that got through the provably inferior submission process that Google has. So, I mean, that's just the, and I think it's ugly and doesn't work well.

I hate the way, I hate the way the iOS or not the iOS, the OS looks. I really do. I can't stand using my parents' tablets. And like I said, life is too short to use ugly software. So, I mean, that's really where it comes from. I understand that you could actually put a lot of time into it to create an interface that you like.

You can personalize everything. That's great. I don't have that kind of time anymore. No. And he makes a point that, you know, iPhones are much more expensive than Android. That's true up until a point. So, some of these new Android phones are pretty goddamn expensive too. So, the thing is, I will pay for convenience and security.

It's easy enough because I just want my phone to work. I want to pick it up and use it and put it away at the end of the day and not have to worry about everything else. So, and like I said, the shitware that they install from each different provider is just obnoxious. There you go. Over at iTunes, we have a five-star rating from JLong129 who says, great relevant tech talk with more.

Does tech interest you? Do you like other stuff too? Then check out these grumps. All right. Thank you, JLong129. Thank you. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to GOG.show slash support and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review.

And if you're using the Overcast player on iOS, keep clicking them stars. Closing shout outs. Shout out to the Bank of England, which has chosen Alan Turing, computer pioneer and code cracker during World War II to be featured on the new 50 pound note.

Turing contributed significantly to the fields of mathematics, but his achievements were not fully recognized during his lifetime as he was gay, which was illegal at the time. Well done, Bank of England. When I get over there, I'm going to get me a 50 pound note. Well, I'm going to give you some money and you're going to get me one, too. And I will frame it and put it on my wall because the Alan Turing story is infuriating to anybody who lives in this day and age.

And it's funny because I was I put this in three different locations trying to figure out where it fit best. And then I finally got it set up to where I wanted it to be. And I scroll down to closing shout outs and you already had it in here. I'm like, God damn it. So anyway, yeah, if you don't know anything about Alan Turing, then go do some research, read some books, because we would not be talking to you today if it was not for him.

And you can't you couldn't do worse than going to see the imitation game the film made about him. It was actually very good. So it was good. It was good. There's a lot more to his story, though. Oh, yeah, definitely. But that's a good overview. Yeah, definitely. And I found this one this morning in this was from loopinsight.com.

Amazing Easter egg and iOS speed test app. And I thought, I'm like, OK, well, I got the speed test app. Let me go check out the Easter egg. And it comes from Okla is the name of the company that makes the speed test app. And I got to say, all hail Okla.

This was this put such a smile on my face. This is an Easter egg done right. It's so deep and well done. And I just I adore it. I cannot believe it. So that's all I'm going to say. If you have an iOS device, I don't even know if this works on Android, but not even going to go down that road.

But go go try it because it is it'll it'll make you laugh. It'll definitely make you laugh. It definitely will. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo and I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Support the show and keep us on the air. Go to patreon.com slash GOG. Toss us a buck a month and we'll love you forever.

If you'd like to give a one time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 361. 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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