364: I Want My 2 Dollars

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

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. How you feeling, Brian? You back from the dead? I am back from the dead, but dealing with technical issues, as one does when traveling. So I'm sitting in my in-law's basement and as good to go as I'm going to be.

Hopefully I will sound okay and things will not break again much. Yeah, this can't be worse than last week on the technology we were using. That's true. Actually, knock on wood, because it can always get worse. It can always get worse, Jason. That is the Grumpy Old Geeks law.

Yeah, it really is. Fuck Murphy. We got a grumpy law. Yep. So we got a bit of follow-up. The Equifax class action lawsuit has ran its course, and I particularly enjoyed this article over on Slate. You have a moral obligation to claim your $125 from Equifax.

Okay. So even if $125 isn't the sum of money that matters to you, even if you don't feel like you were directly affected by the breach, even if the prospect of filling out a relatively brief online form fills you with more dread than the theft of all your personal data, it is part of your civic duty to drive up the costs for these corporations so they have an incentive to invest more heavily in security.

And I kind of agree with this, because this is a big part of the punitive punishment to them, is this class action lawsuit. And if we don't claim that money, they keep it, which I'm not sure that they should. I mean, if I were running things, I would probably put this, I would do this like lottery style.

They have to pay up all the money, and if people don't claim it, it goes to schools or something like that. We've talked about this. Yeah, it should go to credit money, like people that need credit cleaned up or things like that. Yeah, we talked about this with the EFF and how a lot of that money that doesn't get claimed goes actually back into the pool of people who are defending the same type of case.

Yes. So go claim your money, people. Well, over on The Verge, I found another article called, Why You Probably Won't Actually Get $125 from the Equifax Settlement. Yes, because if everybody claims it, the pool, the amount of money is not that big. So, yeah, I mean, it is what it is.

But again, it doesn't come away from the moral obligation that we have to make sure all of this money is taken. So go take it, even if it means you only get your $2. Well, here's the thing. There's room for 248,000 people to get the $125, and from there it keeps going down.

So if every single one of the 147 million affected people actually sign up, which we know they won't, but that would come out to 21 cents. Which is pretty much spot on for what we always say these class action lawsuits are going to give you. Yes. We're going to get 20 cents. You know what?

It costs them more to mail you the check than the check is worth, but to hell with them. Make them pay. Kill those trees and put those stamps on. That's right. And way, way long ago, we talked about the Swiss Post and their drone delivery service. How's that going? It's been suspended after a second crash.

Oops. So, and this time the parachute didn't quite open properly and it plummeted to the earth. Right. So they've gone back and forth with the manufacturer and they seem to be like working on fixes because apparently there was only like one attachment point for the parachute.

So single point of failure, not good. Never a good idea. No, they did add metal reinforced ropes previously. So the blades won't chop them off because that would have been really funny. Parachute deploys the drone just cuts its own parachute, which is pretty funny. But as I was thinking about this, I had, I had an idea.

I was like, okay, how about this? We put like reinforced mylar balloons in, in the, in the frame of the aircraft. And when a catastrophic failure is detected, like a can of compressed helium just expands the balloon and turns it into a dirigible bubble. Or we just use blimps to begin with.

Yeah, it takes too long. Oh, please. Have you ever seen those remote controlled blimps at parties? Come on. We had one of those. They were great. I love those things. In the news. Oh, Uber, Uber, you little rapscallion, you Uber has laid off about 400 people.

So, yeah, they're, they're cutting, cutting 400 people from the marketing departments are all around the world. Okay. And I was reading about this this morning over on Stratechery. And it's, it's interesting because he lays out how Uber kind of built up their marketing, like guerrilla and SWAT team style when they would go into a new place.

And then when they would go in, like have this like on the ground team, they do a bunch of stuff. And then they would leave like marketing departments to keep the juice going after the city launched. Right. And there's still a lot of these people around the globe, but you don't need those, that many people after you've actually spun the city up. Because then everything could be handled by like a central marketing firm because you've already got mind share in the city.

So, it makes sense, actually, that these people should go. I mean, the only marketing I see for Uber anymore is trying to desperately get more drivers. It's not even people trying to get passengers anymore. Well, I've seen the drivers. They need more drivers, but they also have those, you know, like we care.

Uber cares. Right. Sure. We promise you won't get raped today. Rapes down 10 percent. Yep. Yeah. Well, in other shocking news, Facebook misled journalists about how bad the Cambridge Analytica scandal was. Oh, no.

Really? Shocking. Apparently, Facebook repeatedly lied to journalists about the severity of the scandal as part of an alleged cover-up of a privacy breach that gave up to 87 million users' personal data to the Trump-link political firm. Company officials allegedly pointed reporters to false statements published by Cambridge Analytica itself.

Nice. They feigned a lack of awareness about how the firm improperly harvested tens of millions of users' data, and they publicly said that an internal inquiry into the data breach had found no wrongdoing whatsoever. When it, of course, had found wrongdoing. When it had found the wrongdoing. Of course.

Yes. And we're surprised by this. We're surprised by this. Facebook just cannot seem to get its head out of its own ass, but it does not seem to matter. Stock's up. Stock's up. Of course the fucking stock's up. Yes. Oh, man. Well, we do have a lot of things going on globally right now, and, you know, with the trade wars in China and stuff going on with Iran and Syria and all those goodies out there.

Well, you know, we're not allowed to export a lot of data to some of those countries, and we're not allowed to do business with a lot of those countries. And that thing is starting to really come home to roost because GitHub is now blocking access to Iran, Syria, and the Crimea.

You cannot have our crappy code. No, you cannot. It's like, come on. You know, here's what they need to do. They need to open up GitHub India and just let all those other countries do it. It's like, you know, just a form of cyber warfare.

Here you go. Have the worst code that you can possibly have. I mean, it's just interesting to see this happen because in the past, what these companies would do is just open up a data center in a third-party country that would be allowed to go ahead and have those kind of contacts. But I guess they're coming around to doing things the right way and just saying, we're an American company.

This is the law. We can't do this. So we're going to shut these things down. Yeah. Well, you know, on this one, they really don't have much of a choice because guess who owns GitHub? Microsoft. Right. So Microsoft, they, you know, they play by the rules for the most part. For the most part.

Yeah. They're pretty good. They're the clean cut guys. They're not the Zuckerbergs. But well, you know, they kind of do now, now that Steve Ballmer's gone. And I think in the Ballmer era, things might have been a little bit more fuzzy. Yeah. As you can see with the way he runs the Los Angeles Clippers, if you're a basketball fan.

Yeah. Things get a bit fuzzy with Ballmer involved. Yeah, they do. Yeah. Well, our good friends, Bird. I just, again, this stuff just blows my mind. If you're a company that is actually profitable, good luck to you. If you lose money, people will just throw money at you.

It's amazing. Bird, the Santa Monica-based company behind Bird Scooters, reported significant financial losses during the first quarter of the year. Despite this decline in revenue, over $100 million, the company, valued at about $3.2 billion, continues to seek out venture capital investments aggressively by talking about their new device's durability.

Yes, the new scooters are heavier and stronger, which will make worse crashes and more accidents and more problems. Give us more money because of that. Exactly. They're seeking a quarter of a billion dollars.

Yes. Yeah. That's just classic. It's like, okay, yeah, let's just make our scooters heavier so they do cause more damage and go faster so people can die on them easier. And what I also love is they're also looking to raise funds by selling a $1,300 device for personal use, allowing companies to rent out their devices for a cut of the revenue.

So what they're doing is basically franchising the scooter business. Yes. Maybe we should buy a few and put Grumpy Old Geeks logos on it. They're going to end up in the Venice Canal in about 20 seconds. No. Exactly. And in interesting news, Universal Music Group's H1 revenue comes from 60% streaming.

Yes, it does. And you probably knew this long before I did. I let you put this in the news because I did not want to seem impropriety in any way, shape, or form. Yeah, I know. And I found it on my own. You didn't even slide it to me under the table. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Nudge, nudge. Yep. No, this is not surprising at all. I mean, most of the other revenue is, you know, there's a lot of placements and ads and things of that nature. But, yeah, there's no more sales anymore. Of course, it's all from streaming. Yeah. And it's interesting.

I didn't know that Vivendi was trying to sell off Universal Music Group. They've been trying to sell it for quite some time. So we'll see what happens with that. Well, that seems silly now that it's profitable, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I guess. But I don't know. They want to get it. Well, they want to sell as much as 50% of its stakes.

So they're going to hold on to some of it because now it's profitable. They just don't want to keep all of it anymore, apparently. Right. Oh, yeah. Let's get rid of things once they start making money. That's the way to do it. We are in a topsy-turvy world, Jason. You know, we lose $100 million as a scooter company, but we're going to go ahead and get a billion dollars, half a billion dollars in investments.

Why not? Nothing makes sense anymore. Speaking of nothing makes sense, the T-Mobile and Sprint deal is going through, which is good for you if you like paying more for your wireless plan. Well, this is an interesting one because this, too, I read about on Stratechery this morning. Highly recommend getting that newsletter.

It's really good. A lot of this stuff is about bandwidth consolidation because a lot of companies like Sprint have a lot of spectrum that they can't actually build upon because they don't have any money because everybody hates Sprint. And Dish Network is in on this one, too, because part of this deal is that Dish Network has to be given right of way on T-Mobile's system for, I think, seven years and use a lot of that spectrum.

So there's a lot of spectrum swapping going on here. But the whole thing is, like, we're going to have an extra 5G network and also, I mean, we're going to lose, like, a 4G network. So it's kind of there's some consolidation, but for future growth for these telecom companies, it's going to be kind of necessary just because, like, you know, people who are hoarding the bandwidth and not letting it go because they can't just do anything about it because they don't have the money to put up the towers.

Because that's the big problem with 5G towers is you need so goddamn many of them because it's all short distance. Yeah, because it's such a high frequency and, like, low frequency spectrum is where you get the distance and all that good stuff. So it's just an interesting play. And it's, you know, yeah, you might go up, you might go down.

But there's a lot of interesting things also is that part of this deal is they're going to require eSIMs. So you'll be able to, at least for the T-Mobile and Sprint side, you'll be, like, have to change characters. Characters? Carriers. Yes.

But, yeah, I mean, we really need that eSIM to be just ubiquitous everywhere. Oh, I agree with that. But the problem with this is we're going from four big wireless carriers to only three. Except there's another caveat in this agreement, which is that another big wireless carrier will need to be created more or less from scratch to bring the number of competitors back to four because we're trying to avoid monopolies.

Right. But isn't that the Dish Network deal? That was the caveat that it was the Dish Network. Are they going to make their own wireless? Yeah. That's the whole point. Yeah. There you go. Interesting. Well, you know more than I do. Yeah. It's to keep the balance of power. So Dish Network is going to be rolling out a new carrier because they're taking over a lot of sprints like prepaid business.

So there's a lot going on, but shucking and jiving with these guys behind the scenes just so, you know, people can have just so these 5G networks can actually come to fruition because, you know, people are locking up a lot of that spectrum that's needed. So the big winner in all of this will be an advertising company because all I ever see on TV anymore is ads for networks.

That's it. I know. So somebody's going to get a big new deal for a new carrier. How exciting for all of us. And over on YouTube, YouTubers are unionizing and they've given YouTube 24 days to respond. They're teaming up behind Europe's largest trade union called IG Metall, the German metal workers union, because what makes more sense than a bunch of millennial content creators and German metal workers getting together?

Metal! Yeah. So a YouTube union was formed last year, but basically nothing really happened with it. So now it's got a real, real union behind it. So that's great. So we'll see what happens. It's headed by Jorge Sprav, a German content creator who makes videos of weird slingshots and has over 2 million subscribers.

And he's gotten involved in the activism because he's trying to understand how YouTube is cracking down on things because it doesn't make any sense. And 99% of the demands of this union is let's have some transparency about what's going on. What are the real rules? When are you choosing to enforce them?

Are you going to enforce them across the board or just haphazardly is the way you seem to be doing it now? Explain how we take down channels or videos. Explain how you demonetize people. Give us a real set of rules here that we can all follow, which seems fair to me. It doesn't seem fair to me at all because these are people that are making money off the platform of their own volition.

They're not employees. Remember, these are not employees. These are people who willingly signed up to use the platform. Yes, with a set of rules that they are not following consistently. Well, I get that, but even stop using the platform. Well, and then do what with their lives?

Get a job. Yeah, that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon. But I mean, I agree with them. I mean, I think if you get to this level of this level of power as YouTube does or Facebook does or Twitter does, let's have some RTFM and give us an FM.

Yeah, we really need the FM. We really need a goddamn FM here, people. And I think that's fair to ask of all these platforms, especially if they're going to keep making all the monies. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see how this plays out. I mean, it is in Europe, so we'll see. It has a better chance of actually happening there than it does here.

Here, you get laughed out of the room. Oh, yeah, you just get laughed out of the room. But one thing you'll be able to watch from these newly monetized YouTube people, you'll be able to watch in your Tesla. Ooh. Yes, Elon Musk has revealed that Tesla's cars will soon offer Netflix and YouTube streaming. Great. What could possibly go wrong?

So long as the car is stopped. Oh, okay. So I guess at every red light, you can start streaming your Netflix video again, Stranger Things. Then you'll drive again. Then you'll come to the next red light and they'll click back on. And then everybody will be honking at you because you'll be like, wait, wait, wait. This is a key part in the movie.

I didn't know. Yes, exactly. He claims it will have an immersive cinematic feel since you're sitting in posh seats with surround sound. Just what I want from people who are supposed to be paying attention on the road. Yeah. Yes. You should eventually have the option to watch on the move when once regulators approve self-driving abilities in the year 2092.

Yeah. Along with your fucking flying cars. Exactly. Oh, man. And this last one I found over at the Next Web. And I just, of course, of course on this one. Anonymized data does little to protect user privacy, as we've known. No shit, Sherlock.

Right. But thank God that everybody who gathers all our data promises that it's anonymized. Right. And we've talked on the show about this new idea of sampling, which takes data sets, breaks them up, and, you know, doesn't let you have too much access and re-changes the keys and things like that.

But a bunch of researchers came out and said, pardon me, I do believe your logic is flawed on this one. And so they've been able to actually develop a statistical model that could correctly identify 99.98% of Americans using 15 characteristics of anonymized data sets, including age, gender, and marital status.

And they go on to say, 15 characteristics seems like an unrealistic number. But when you think about that Facebook, Google, and Amazon alone have hundreds or thousands of data points on us, it makes it pretty easy to do. Yeah. So the information they buy from our own account, the information they buy from our credit cards, the information they get from our Ralph's Rewards cards, the information they get from everything, our friends, the information that, yes, it's beyond easy for them to easily identify us, regardless of this bullshit anonymization that everybody throws around.

Yeah. And there's another article I need to throw in the notes about how the Chinese social credit score has been completely misreported and overblown. And the interesting thing about that is I'm like, well, they should take a lesson from us because we actually do have that going on.

We just never publicized it. We can't see it, but we know it's there. And it is exactly what these companies are already doing on the government side. It's what I've been saying all the whole time. Every time we talk about the China stuff and the government surveillance, I'm like, we have it here. It's just done by individual companies, not the government.

And we have it better because I guess capitalism and free markets work because ours work better. Exactly. This episode is brought to you by our good friends at Hover. You need your own domain name, if not for your business, then for your family.

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That's hover.com slash GOG. And we thank Hover for supporting our show because we love them. Ups and doodads! Brian, have you ever heard of the Luke arm? I have not. It's been around for about 15 years now.

It is a project to create a cybernetic hand, which is why it's named Luke after Luke Skywalker, that people could use to basically replace their hands. Now, I know Lucasfilm would have let this slide, but now that all intellectual properties of Star Wars are owned by Disney, I know for a fact that there was a meeting with some lawyers saying, we may have to go after these people.

And somebody in that room went, for the love of God, don't go after them. Yeah, probably. Probably. But the interesting thing about this now is they've been really making headway with this for years and years and years. But now they've actually got a version of it that clips into the nerve endings on the amputee's arm and gives them the ability to feel with the hand.

How cool is that? That is so cool. The first guy that they were trying it on was able to, you know, pick up a grape without squishing it, but feel the grape, peel a banana, and, like, touch his wife's hand and actually get feedback from it. It's pretty cool stuff. Very cool.

I love that. That's amazing. Have you seen a pic? Go look at the picture of it, because it looks pretty damn neat, I got to say. Wow. It looks like it was designed by Johnny Iovie. That's why Johnny left. He's going to make hands.

It is very, like, Apple. What were those apples called that came in the different colors? They were all this, like, look-through, see-through plastic with, like, blue or aquamarine. Yeah, it looks like an iMac hand. Yeah. Although if Johnny Ive took it over, it would just be one piece of platinum with no perks on it.

That's right. No fingers. You don't get fingers. It would be a cube. You would get the cube back. Yeah, that would be it. And I saw this one, and I just love this. Sony is making a silent, wearable air conditioner that will launch next year.

And it goes behind your neck in a pouch in the back of your shirt and is a little air conditioner or heater that you run from an app on your phone. Now, it's funny because they crowdfunded it. That is what I have a problem with. I think this is cool as hell.

I think it's great. Why is Sony, who has more money than God, crowdfunding something? You know, here's the thing about it. It's actually not a bad idea when you think about it because it lets you know if a product is interesting enough for people to put their money behind before it goes into manufacturing, which is what people do on Kickstarter all the time.

So why wouldn't a big company just say, hey, everybody else is doing it. Let's try it. Let's throw out some of our crazy ideas and see if some of these stick. This one's stuck. So it's coming out in 2020. I just want a version for my pants. No, Jesus.

Come on, man. Get the man sweats back there. Just put a little fan in your crack. Perfect. I'll compile it or Jason. You'll be fine. Oh, no, no, no. So and on my last bit of I got a doodad this week. I got the OC White Pro Boom Ultima mic boom arm.

Now, for years, I've used the Rode PSA ones. I've got like five or six of them around here. But after a while, when you use it day in, day out, they start to squeak and the springs kind of die and you have to keep tightening them up. And, you know, and everybody's got them now. So it's not very cool to have, but they get the job done for almost everybody.

Right. But since I move my mic boom, you know, probably 30, 40 times a day. I wanted something that's going to last like way more heavy duty. And this thing is low profile, heavy as can be. This thing is going to last for a long time.

And it costs about like this. It looks good, dude. It's so nice. It's got cable management built in. And if I want to spend another hundred bucks, it's got a little nub that goes at like where the mic attaches that has an on air, off air light. So you know. So you always know when your mic's hot, which is a really good thing when you, you know, have a temper like mine.

You always want to know when your mic's hot. Yes. Patreon.com slash GOG. Jason needs that. Yeah. So the most nerve wracking thing about this is this is a flush mount boom arm. So I actually had to drill a hole in my desk, which was definitely the most nerve wracking part of the entire process because I measured I, you know, measured 30 times drill once because I definitely yeah, yeah, because it's a big one inch hole that I don't want in my beautiful standing desk here.

But I got to tell you, I'll send you a picture of it later on. But the thing's not cheap. It's it's about 350 bucks. But right as many as many road PSAs as I've gone through, that's like three of them. I'm sure I've gone through more than that, probably four or five over over my career because I use this thing like constantly.

But if you're looking for a really sexy mic boom, it is really nice and low profile, super quiet, and you can bang on this thing and it doesn't travel up the mic. It is so nice. I'd highly I highly recommend you check it out. I will. Amazon has canceled its podcast based prime video series lore after two seasons.

This wasn't a very shocking thing since the second season premiered in October 2018 with months of silence about any future to it. But if you were a fan, it's a it's gone. And this cancellation could make some TV producers nervous because networks like HBO, FX and Showtime have all banked on podcast inspired TV shows in the wake of that deal.

While there's a clear difference between lore and a talk show like Desus and Miro, which I've never heard of or say us, which probably translate. Well, this indicates that a loyal podcast fan base does not necessarily translate to success on TV. Shocking. Yep. Yep. Yeah. And also the show was terrible.

Well, there's that as well. Factors into it mildly. I love the podcast, but it got a little old after a while. But yeah, no, I can see that happening for sure. Yeah. And a good news about good TV shows on Amazon. Amazon has renewed the expanse for a fifth season before the fourth season has even started to air.

I was going to say, what happened to the fourth season? Well, that was like a friend of mine sent me the link that had been that had been, you know, renewed for a fifth season. I was like, where's the fourth? And then I finally saw buried in the article. It will premiere December 13th. Yeah. I'm really looking forward to that.

Me too. I cannot wait. That was such a good show. That's it. That's actually good. December 13th. That gives us time to actually go back and watch him from the beginning. I do need to catch up a little bit on it and skip everything. I mean, watch everything except for the Adam Savage floating in space bit. Yeah. Because that totally took me out of the show.

Well, I'm pissed off at you about that because I never would have noticed it because I didn't see it when it happened. But when they did the recap for season three and they showed him, I was just like, oh, man, what has been seen cannot be unseen. That is right.

And this headline for this next one, because I guess we're doing media candy here since we don't have it in the notes. Another life is a clumsy muddle of superior science fiction stories. This is the new Netflix series starring Katie Sackhoff.

Yes. I've heard some things about it. Okay. Well, I'm going to tell you a few other things about it. Okay. This would have been a fantastic sci-fi show if I have never seen any sci-fi previous to it. It's like it's like the Idiot's Guide to Sci-Fi as a show.

Yeah. They've taken every single standard trope for alien first contact, you know, crew in space with rogue peoples and, you know, running out of gas, no oxygen, all this crap that has been in every honestly superior science fiction story since the beginning of time.

It's all over the place. The writing is terrible. The acting is kind of not good. Katie doesn't even look that good in this. She looks a little odd. I don't know if she's had some work done, but man, she looks a little weird compared to the old, compared to the old Starbucks days. But honestly, that was 10 years ago.

So that can be expected. But I made it through an episode and a half before I took it out of the queue. I'm not going to waste my time on this one. I mean, if you want to give it a shot, go for it. But I think you're going to, your time is going to be better served going back and rewatching The Expanse. Good to know.

All right. I will let that one go then. Yes. And here's a fun one. Japan approves groundbreaking experiment bringing human-animal hybrids to term. Well, maybe Japan needs to watch Another Life to get some of these basic sci-fi tropes that don't go well to understand that they should not be doing this.

Well, honestly, I'm kind of okay with this one, because the entire point of this is to be able to grow human organs in animals. What could possibly go wrong? Yeah, but what could possibly go right? Honestly, I'm fine with it. I'm fine with them trying this, you know?

And the interesting thing is, because, you know, they are splicing human and animal DNA together, they do have things in place. If they detect more than 30% of the rodents' brains are human, they will suspend the experiment. Oh, boy.

I was just like, wow. I didn't even think about that. Okay. Well, we're just looking for a pancreas right now, but if we can't get super rats. Meet our new rodent Operlords. Yeah, the secret of NIMH come to life. All right. Well, at least it's actual biologists and researchers doing this, not some dipshit that just got a CRISPR.

Yeah, you know those guys are already on that. I know. That's the scary thing. Yeah, Siberia, China. These guys are already, you know, they've got talking moose over there, reindeer. Yeah. Yeah. And then I just love this particular story that I found, because we always think of it as just the Prius people that are the total a-holes.

A lot of people say BMW owners, but I beg to differ. Thank you very much. But we have an entitled Tesla jackass. This story is amazing. This guy in, let's see, where is this? Florida, of course. Of course, it's Florida. This guy woke up and was being asked by a lawn care guy to please move his car, and he was confused because his car was in his driveway.

It wasn't on the lawn. So he soon found out that some guy with a Tesla Model 3, a white one, parked on his lawn and plugged himself into his own electrical outlet, his house electrical outlet outside, and was just charging his car overnight through this guy's house.

Parked on his lawn. And he just left. He just left. They just left. Yeah. Now, this guy showed remarkable patience. He didn't immediately yank the plug from the house or call a tow truck, which I would have done. He waited a few hours, finally called the police, who determined the car wasn't stolen, found the owner's name, and around noon, the owners, a man and a woman, returned in the car and had been there since last night, leaving 12 hours of charging time.

And they said they were just visiting a friend when they realized they were out of power, didn't offer any compensation or apology, got in their car and left. Yeah. What really annoys me about this article is they didn't name check the husband and wife who left the Tesla out there, because I think this is a prime, prime opportunity for public shaming.

I agree. But man, yeah, the guy who owned the house was, this guy is a saint. He should be, I mean, is his last name Gandhi? Because my God, I would, that car would have been so trashed by the time they got back. Yeah, exactly. Unbelievable. Feedback loop.

We got a new Patreon subscriber, Zbeezes. Thank you very much. Gesundheit. And Ivan writes a message in. He says, I finally did it. I've listened through all the episodes of the GOG podcast. It took me nearly a year, if you're interested, and I have to say that your early episodes aren't that crappy as you're telling.

Not that good as recent ones, but still very enjoyable for me, at least. Now, when my inner completionist is finally satisfied, I guess I'll start reading more books, which has been piling up on my Kindle. Always looking forward to the new episodes. Keep up the great work. Ivan, you are the man.

You are the man. Send us your address. We had a small batch made up of Grumpy Old Geeks magnets, and I think we need to give them away to anybody that has completed listening to all of our episodes. Yes, that is stellar work, my friend. Stellar work.

Well done. Over at PayPal, we got donations from Stephen, Judge, Simon, and Marshall, who said, keep up the great work. We shall. We'll try. We'll try. Over at GOG.show, Mark writes in, guys, in episode 362, you said something that makes zero sense to me. Well, probably 361 to 02.

Yeah. I hear you regularly complain about the government needs to make laws and regulate this. This being the topic of the moment. Then seconds after that, you both admitted that our elected officials are idiots when it comes to technology. So I have to ask, why would you want 535 idiots?

I agree with you there, to make laws about things they know nothing about, laws that can have severe financial and or confinement, like prison penalties. You're asking the cows to organize the hen house. Okay, but that's not the way our government is supposed to work. See, the thing is, they put together committees, and they had learned people come and tell them things, and then they make an educated decision.

We can't expect all of our representatives to know everything about everything. That's why they put together committees, and they have people come and talk to them about it. So they need to start doing that more. Well, yeah, they need to do it more, because they don't have a great track record. I'll give you that, Mark, because, you know... I agree. Yeah. Yeah.

Patriot Act, you know, there you go right there. Just the Patriot Act alone will tell you how bad it can be. Yes. So they just need to be educated. They have to have more committees. They have to have more people coming in to talk to them about these things and lay the groundwork. And then they just make a decision based on the information that they are given.

That's the way it's supposed to work. Yes. And in a case in point, deep fakes, like we talked about last week, you know, yes, they're trying to regulate deep fakes and legislate it, even though right now that's a dumb thing to do, because we do have laws on the books that can take care of that. Yes. And people are going in and telling them that.

So, yes, hopefully something will come of that. Open debate. Yes. And David writes in on digital wills. As someone working on family history, I'd really suggest having your family photos in a repository that can be easily passed on when you die. I'm archiving scans of all of our family negatives and slides. I use Dropbox camera upload to get all images from our iClouds, and we also store all DSLR images similarly.

And I have a full and eventually organized archive in our Dropbox shared folder. We also have similar archives for family historical data. We use LastPass, which has a mechanism by which you can bequeath access to your account to a next of kin, particularly if you have online businesses or cryptocurrency holdings, regardless of whether or not you believe in them.

Maybe you wore something to someone later. Make sure these are bequeathed. Agreed. I agreed. And I do have one point to say here. Two is one and one is none. Don't keep everything in Dropbox alone. Make sure you have local backups that are shared between family members.

You know, the canonical version can be in Dropbox and then just sync out to other people's drives and just make sure other people have copies of them. Don't rely on a single cloud service. One copy is no copies. Exactly. Yes. One is none. Cameron writes in just just saw this today. Crazy how a company can just steal your money like this.

And it's a video on about how Fiverr still owes this guy thousands of dollars and won't respond. Well, look at the history of PayPal. They can take all your money anytime they want and never tell you a thing or or like Amazon who canceled my affiliate account and kept all the money that they owed me. So, yeah, they can do whatever they like.

Assholes. It's a wonderful world we've made. Neil writes in. Hey, Grumps. I hope you are both feeling better now since powered scooters are a thing now and the silly things go too fast. I thought I would share Colin Furzee's take on the powered scooter turbojet powered. No helmet. LOL. You have probably seen this before as it was from 2018, but he always puts himself in insane danger.

That is his thing. This is a YouTube video turbo powered turbojet powered scooter. It's alive. And yeah, it's pretty crazy. And he's got another one about a jet powered bicycle, which I have seen. I hadn't seen the scooter one. And I don't know if I would actually call this a scooter because it does have a regular bicycle wheel on the front.

Yeah, it doesn't have a scooter wheel on the back, but it does have a regular bike wheel on the front. But I got to say the things that he makes are really fun, really fun. Evan writes in app controlled tribbles from my buddy's son's daughter in law. I'm sure Dino and Bammers would love them. And this is a crowdfunding campaign for Star Trek app enabled interactive tribbles.

And they look kind of cool, but BAM would eat that apart. No, she would just bite it in half in about two seconds. She is a Rottweiler after all, but she would love it. Then I'd have to take her to the hospital and get it, get a triplectomy. Right. And Jose writes in.

Hey, guys, wanted to know. Jason said he now uses Spark for email. Doesn't he have any concerns of yet another company looking at his email? I generally use the Gmail app on iOS, but I hate the web interface on PC, so I'm curious about it, too. Outlook for iOS has improved a lot, but still doesn't handle Gmail labels. So I've been looking for an alternative.

OK, here's the deal. Spark doesn't actually read your email. It's just an email client. It's just a client. It's not a pass through. They don't download your mail and send it back on or anything like that. It's just a client. And I got to say, after the time that I've been using Spark on all of my devices, my Macs and my tablets and my phone, oh, my God, is it the single best email client I've ever used in my life?

I mean, I'm sorry, you, Dora. I loved you back in the day. Oh, man. I miss you, Dora. I miss you, Dora, so much. But Spark is so unbelievably good. You couple Spark with TextExpander, and man, you have a powerhouse of an email client.

I got to switch. I'm still just using MacMail. All right. I got to get on the Spark train. I know. You're savage. I don't do that much email anymore, man. Neither do I, but the little I do is fantastic now. I just get in, get it done. I have been at Inbox Zero for the past four days without even trying.

It's fantastic. Yeah. Over on iTunes, Subbanana26 writes in, informative and entertaining. This is a five-star review. I'm neither old nor grumpy. In fact, I'm young and rather optimistic. That'll change. That'll change. Keep listening. Go back to episode one. However, this podcast provides an informative and realistic take on the goings-on in the tech world.

At least as far as I can tell, I am by no means what you would call a tech expert. Well, neither are we, so join the club. Although Jason and Brian love to make fun of my generation, I appreciate their insights and humor as I learn more about this world that baffles me. Well, thank you very much, Subbanana26. 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. I got to meet up with a friend of the show, Miller, here in Toronto.

He was on tour with Brian Ferry and just happened to be in town the same time I am. And thank you, Facebook, and your algorithm, because the only reason I think I saw his update, because I never see his updates on Facebook anymore, is because he probably geolocated both of us to the same city. So that worked out rather well. We had a lovely discussion.

It was a grumpy old musician's talk. Boy, we got sad about the state of the music industry, but it is what it is, and it was really great to see you, Miller. So keep on going out. Go see Brian Ferry when he comes into your town. This may be his last tour. And say hi to Miller if you see him. Cool, cool.

Have you gone to Tim Hortons and tried the Fogies? Okay, so I've looked into this a little bit. They are rolling out the fake eggs. It is not everywhere yet. The place I went to just had the fake meat. They do not have the fake eggs yet. So I think next time I'm in town, if they haven't decided that this was a really stupid idea and they taste horrible and they're already gone, but if not, they'll be here then and I'll try it.

Well, well, hopefully you will get a chance to try it. I'm looking forward to that. Or maybe sometime they'll have him here in the States. Anyway, I've got a I've got a shout out to my friend Dan Nitro Clark and his new podcast Calm the Beast finally got episode one out today. So look for that in your podcast player of choice.

It is called Calm the Beast, and there will be a link in the show notes to check it out. And Brian, you get the you get the rest of the week off. I know. I'm very excited. I get to finish up my little vacation here without having to actually look at tech news for the next couple of days. Yeah, yeah.

You're back. You're back in the office on Tuesday, though, buddy. Don't don't forget. Oh, I know. I know. So friend of the show, Chris Lockhead is going to be taking over Brian's spot on the Saturday episode. So we thank Chris for stepping up for that. And we should have a lively discussion because he's he's got his own takes.

He is more of a tech optimist than Brian and I are. So we should have some lively discussions, I think. Excellent. That should be fun. I can't wait to listen to it and not do any work on it. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. 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 364. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy and stay healthy.

It feels much better.

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