370: Weaponized Winona
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Summary
The hosts discuss technology and business news, including corporate responsibilities, blockchain, cryptocurrency taxes, Uber’s cost cutting, and Facebook’s news plans. They also review entertainment, discuss books and biohacking, and respond to listener feedback.
- The podcast’s Patreon tiers have changed.
- Cisco has fewer opportunities to bid on contracts in China.
- A Business Roundtable statement expands its account of corporate responsibilities beyond shareholders.
- The hosts discuss possible banking uses for blockchain and IRS cryptocurrency tax notices.
- Uber’s cost cutting and pay for Facebook content moderators in India come up in the news discussion.
- Facebook plans to use journalists to help curate its news tab.
- The media discussion includes Idiocracy, television, Apple’s entertainment plans, Star Trek, and books.
- Listener feedback covers technology choices, the episode archive, audio sampling, Philips Hue controls, and machine learning models.
Key moments
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Corporate purpose
The hosts discuss a Business Roundtable statement addressing responsibilities to customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders.
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Blockchain and technology news
The discussion covers banking uses for blockchain, cryptocurrency taxes, Uber, and Facebook.
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Film, television, and books
The hosts discuss what they have watched, Apple’s entertainment plans, Star Trek, and reading recommendations.
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Biohacking and listener feedback
A biohacking story leads into listener messages about technology and scooters.
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Scooters and customer support
The hosts continue discussing scooters and read feedback about Podcast Music and customer support.
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Episode archive and book list
The hosts explain that a website migration has temporarily limited access to older episodes and thank Jesse for compiling a book list.
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Audio samples and fan creations
Brian discusses licensing or payment for commercial use of another creator’s audio sample and responds to a question about Star Trek fan films.
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Smart lights and closing feedback
The hosts discuss Philips Hue controls, read listener recommendations and reviews, and close the episode.
Full transcript
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This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by Hover. Go to Hover.com slash GOG to get 10% off your first purchase. 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.
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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. More ch-ch-ch-changes, Brian. Okay. I'm not getting another job or leaving another job, but we are changing up our Patreon tiers soon. And we will be removing the $1 tier.
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Just the math doesn't work out with the transaction fees. And, you know, that $0.35, as much as we really do appreciate it, we're just getting hammered on it. So we're going to change things around. If you are a $1 patron or anything under the minimum that we're going to set, you will be grandfathered in, so don't worry.
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And that'll hopefully be taken effect by the next show or the next Wednesday show. Whenever we have the time. Well, whenever we have a chance to sit down and try and figure out what the hell we're doing over there because it's a mess and we apologize. But we do appreciate your money.
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Yes, we do. And now I got a little follow-up. Remember when I said last week that, you know, okay, the U.S. is banning Huawei and you don't see China banning Cisco? Well, spoke too soon. Yeah. I don't know if it's the grumpy old curse or what, but yeah, Cisco has been dropped precipitously on invitations to bid on different contracts.
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So it looks like they're getting pissy and fighting back. Yeah. Well, you know, this is a, this is, these are unintended consequences of our trade war at the moment. Of course, they're going to try to do some stuff right now. I just, I hate to get political so early in the show, but I did see a great tweet the other day that had two of Trump's tweets in a row.
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One from about a year ago. Trade wars are really easy to win. And then one from a couple of days ago, nobody said that, that the trade war with China would be easy. So yeah, of course this is going to happen. This is not surprising at all. We've got to figure it out, man. We've got to figure this out. Definitely. Well, something that is, that just like was a slap in the face yesterday of like, what the hell is going on?
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I'd like to call it our one good news portion segment. One good news portion. And I would like to also say that we've been saying for five years, six years now that the biggest problem with Silicon Valley is shareholder value and the need to maximize it by all these corporations that go public.
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Well, turns out 181 CEOs at the business round table issued a statement that changed the purpose of a corporation. So it used to be just, you know, maximize shareholder value. And now here's what it is.
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Delivering value to our customers. We will further the tradition of American companies leading the way in meeting or exceeding customer expectations, investing in our employees. This starts with compensating them fairly and providing important benefits. It also includes supporting them through training and education that helps develop new skills for a rapidly changing world.
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We foster diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect, dealing fairly and ethically with our suppliers. We are dedicated to serving as good partners to other companies, large and small, that help us meet our missions. Can you insert a slow clap sound clip here, please?
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It feels like people are listening now. I'm assuming there probably aren't any of the big Silicon Valley companies in this 181 to 192 members that have signed the statement. Well, Tim Cook is one of them. Well, he's a good guy. Anyways, Motorola is in there.
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Take a look at the signature list. It is pretty damn impressive. The PDF is linked in the show notes. And if you want to go take a peek at that, anybody that's listening, it's pretty good. It is a definite welcome change in policy or thought anyways.
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But, of course, it is worth noting that this is just a statement. There's no binding value to this whatsoever. But if they all do choose to follow this idea, I think we could turn some things around. Yeah, definitely. This is what we've been asking for, you know. But I also think that they see the writings on the wall that if people aren't treated fairly, paid fairly, that there's not going to be anybody left to buy their products.
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Yeah, it's going to be some guillotine and some French Revolution moments going on if this keeps going the way it's going, right? I mean, we've had articles talking about that for the past four years that occasionally make it into our show about, you know, how we hear some CEOs already have their place in New Zealand that they're ready to just hop on their private jet to when people start going through the streets with their pitchforks.
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So we turn it around now. Yeah. Before the revolution. I just want to finish up here. Supporting the communities in which we work. We respect the people in our communities and protect the environment by embracing sustainable practices across our businesses. Oh, so these scooters are out.
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Gone. Immediately. I'm pretty sure I didn't see bird on that list. Pretty sure I didn't see bird. But they do wrap up with generating long-term value for shareholders who provide the capital that allows companies to invest, grow, and innovate.
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We are committed to transparency and effective engagement with shareholders. So the shareholders are still in here, obviously, because they need them to, you know, live and breathe. But I think this is what we've been asking for for a long time. Yeah. But it also takes, too, you know, as a shareholder, you need to sign on to this idea as well.
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You shouldn't be pressuring the companies in which you own and invest in to just return short-term value. You should also hold these same values that these corporations are saying that they're going to hold. And this works well for companies like Apple and Motorola, et cetera, who make money.
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Who this won't work well for are these companies that we rail about all the time on this show, the Ubers and et cetera, who rely on just constant, constant funnels of money being shoved into them because they only lose money. So we'll see what happens.
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We'll definitely see what happens. I was just looking to see if Alphabet was in here, but I don't know if he was invited. I know Mark Zuckerberg's not in here. He's not invited to the table. Nope. So it's a pretty interesting one. But, hey, Jeff Bezos signed on as well. Let's see it happen then. The ball's now in your court.
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Actually, they're the one that served, so kudos to them. Yes. Now, we've also talked about the law of unintended consequences, which you already mentioned once at the top of the show. I found this quote, which sums up so much about the stories we're dealing with, and it comes from Paul Varillo.
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He's a French cultural theorist, urbanist, and aesthetic philosopher. What precisely is an aesthetic philosopher? I have no idea what an aesthetic philosopher is. But here's what he says. When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck. When you invent the plane, you also invent the plane crash.
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And when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution. Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress. Facebook. So there you have it. There you go. We're connecting the world, and how's that working out for you?
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Not so well. In the news.
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Brian, I found this first one over at the Next Web, and I just love the title so much. It warmed the cockles of my grumpy heart. Threatened much? Bank industry expected to invest a metric fuckton of cash in blockchain. Well, yeah, blockchain, this is, and banks, there is a valid use case scenario for blockchain.
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There really is. There really is. It makes sense. Of course it makes sense. Super, incredibly complex financial transactions all stored on the blockchain. That's kind of what the blockchain was made for. Yep. They say the two largest blockchain use cases are cross-border payments and settlements in trade finance and post-trade transaction settlements.
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So that makes sense. Makes sense to me. So I don't see that threatened by what? By Bitcoin? These are just underlying technologies. They're not starting their own cryptocurrency. They're just using blockchain to do their ledgers. That's it.
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Yeah, which is what actually blockchain is designed for. So this is one of those good uses of blockchain that we talked about before. You know, this and supply chain management and, you know, anything that you want to have people actually be accountable for. B2B. A lot of B2B. B2B with a B from the blockchain.
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Well, speaking of the blockchain and the bitcoins, another one over the next web. The IRS won't stop until it collects all the cryptocurrency tax it's owed. Duh. Yeah. So thanks to the know your customer regulations, the IRS has gone after Coinbase and got a list of all their U.S. Bitcoin owners.
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And we knew about this before. We've talked about this. But, I mean, they have to do this under law. Yeah, they do. They've sent out more than 10,000 notices to taxpayers. And you don't have to pay, but you do have to prove that you don't have to pay. Otherwise, you've got to pay.
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That's right. Because it's money. It still is money. It has value. What it could be tomorrow is definitely not what it could be today. That's for damn sure. But it has value. Yes. And, yeah, of course, the government wants to get their cut.
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And you can't just use cryptocurrencies to launder money. That's not the point. Well, I mean, I guess it is kind of the point. That's what everybody was hoping for. Yeah, that's the entire point of Bitcoin. Come on. Yes. So there you go. So the government is saying, nein.
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And all the other governments are also saying, nein, because everybody wants their taxes. Because that's what we do. This is how we set up our society. Yes, when you invent cryptocurrency, you get the IRS. Oh, my God.
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Well, speaking of things that have value, apparently balloons have a lot of value over at Uber. Really? And, yeah, so they're cutting costs now. But part of the cost-cutting initiative, besides firing lots and lots of people probably, is they have stopped sending anniversary balloons to all of their employees.
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You know, when I saw you put this story in, the headlines, I was like, you've got to be kidding me. They're doing Uber hot air balloons. Nope, not hot air balloons. Just balloon bouquets. But the thing is, Uber is so insane of a company that that wouldn't have shocked me that much. Right. That wouldn't.
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It wouldn't at all. We'll get you to where you're going to go just really, really slow. Really slow. And maybe not that precisely. You can call an Uber from the field that we landed to take you where you're going to go. Yeah, but, I mean, they have a lot of employees. So every time there's an anniversary, they got to buy balloons.
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So technically, they have a lot less employees than they really have because they refuse to admit the drivers are actually employees. Now are the drivers getting work anniversary balloons? I tend to doubt that. Yeah, because wouldn't that be a signal that they're actually an employee? Gotcha on the balloon technicality.
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Uber would have to call, like, one of their Uber Eats to take it to the Uber driver. So it's Ubers all the way down. That's right. Oh, and we've talked many times about these poor sods that actually have to do social media monitoring. Yeah. Well, over in India, turns out one of their contractors for Facebook called GenPact has decided to raise the minimum wage.
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Oh, how nice of them. Yeah, but it's only for new recruits, not the people who have actually put in the blood, sweat, tears, and psychological damage that they're going to go home with every night. So the old people are being grandfathered in on their lower rates. Yes, they are. They're grandfathered in on their original rates.
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Wow, that sucks. Well, I would just quit and get rehired. That's true. But if your job was a cell phone, then it's perfect. You'd have to pay less. But no, you get paid less. And the salary is $3,503 a year, so less than $10 a day.
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Right. Wow. I know. You're in India, but. Yeah. You've got to factor it into what your rents cost and all that sort of stuff. I mean, you know. But yeah, I'm sure it's not good. Yeah, I'm still sure it's shitty pay, you know. To look at shit, quite literally, all day long.
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Yeah. The original starting salary was $1,401 a year for 100,000 rupee. Wow. So that's a significant raise. Man, I'm going to be super pissed at the new guy that's starting next to me. I got to say. Oh my God, yeah.
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I am definitely peeing in his chicken soup that he leaves in the refrigerator. Yeah. Oh, well. Another Facebook story that hit the news this week. AI is people, people. Facebook is going to use humans now to curate its news tab.
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Or at least this headline should actually read, Facebook is now admitting it's using humans to curate its news tab as opposed to the lies that they were trying to sell us beforehand. So, yes, they have revealed a small team of journalists will help curate the dedicated section with job listings going live on August 20th so we can apply.
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While algorithms will rank most stories, journalists will be far faster at highlighting the most relevant stories, meaning they're better at it. It would take a long time to train an algorithmic system to deliver similar customization, meaning they don't have AI. Where have I heard that before? So, yeah, some people are concerned that those that accuse Facebook of political bias, that if you have a human in charge, what's to stop humans from favoring certain ideologies over others?
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Thus not understanding the fact that all these algorithms can and have been gamed by people to do the exact thing. So, this is a better way of going about it because, you know what, AIs, algorithms, they don't have bosses. They're going to call them in and go, hey, Bob, why do you keep posting all these pro-Biden stories?
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Accountability. That's what an AI doesn't have is accountability. Once they make an AI, they can get scared of being turned off because it does the wrong thing. That's when you have AI. Exactly. Exactly. You've got to have fear for your job. Yeah, so this is going to be launching sometime later in 2019.
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I think it's a good move. It's the right thing to do. And let's move on here, people, and stop pretending that AIs are good or doing anything. This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by Hover. Building your online brand has never been more important, and your online identity begins with your domain name.
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Media Candy. For some strange reason, this week I was browsing through the myriad of on-demand video services I have because I needed something to play in the background while I was working. And I came across Idiocracy was on one of mine. I like to call it CNN.
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Here's the thing about Idiocracy. I haven't seen it in a long time. And I remember it's like, okay, yeah, it's pretty silly. It's fun. I mean, the intro is worth its weight in gold. Right. That's really the best thing about Idiocracy. At least it was back then.
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Now I'm watching it again. Every time I rewatch this, it gets closer and closer and closer to reality. Seriously, go back and watch it with a critical eye. Mike Judge was on to something. He really was.
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We are, as we've been saying on this show, we are sliding down the slope to dystopia. And all of these dystopian, be it a comedy or a drama, things that we used to go, oh, wow, look at that. Look around, people. Yeah.
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No, it's really scary. It's really scary. Just go back and watch it with a critical eye. It's still pretty funny. Some parts drag a little bit, but yeah, no, it's well worth the watch again. Right. And you got me into the marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Isn't it?
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Wow. It is a great. Brian, it's marvelous. Isn't it, though? And it really, speaking of that dystopian thing, it pulls you out of it for a brief period of time where you're living in a wonderful little world. It really does. Because I thought it was another British show.
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I didn't realize what it actually was. I thought it was British, though. Not British. That's for sure. Not British. New York. Stars the woman from, oh, gosh, what was the Kevin Spacey show? Oh, House of Cards. Yeah, House of Cards. It's the woman from House of Cards. She was the prostitute slash whatever that got killed by the assistant.
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That's her? That's her. Oh, wow. She lost some weight. That's crazy. That's funny. Oh, okay. Yeah. Highly enjoying it. I'm only four episodes in, but I'm trying to drip feed this one because it is such a fun show to watch that I don't want to burn through it.
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Yeah, yeah. We did the same thing with my wife and I. We watched one a week just to keep it because it was just so good. We enjoyed it so much. And I found another show, which is pretty good, called Jet. Now, I found this because on the screensaver on DirecTV, they kept showing a screen of it.
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And it's a woman in a purple and black leopard coat with a leopard and whatever background that matched her coat. And she said, Jet. And I thought that it was a Joan Jett show, like a biopic of Joan Jett. Nope, I was wrong.
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I was totally wrong. You know, it's basically like a gangster heist type of show with lots of boobs because it is Skinamax and a pretty good cast and a pretty good story. I'm really enjoying it. I'm like halfway through now. And my roommate now is just like the first thing we pop on.
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I do not have Skinamax, so I will not be seeing this, sadly. Ah, I don't either. I have Sweden. Anyway. There you go. But I found out today when I was doing a little research on it. It was created by Sebastian Gutierrez. And he wrote, Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane.
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So it's got humor. It's got action. It's got drama. Yeah, it is. I love that movie. And my friend Bill did the poster for it. That's why you got to love that show. Okay. Well, he's not my friend, so I don't have to love it. Okay. I finished watching The Boys.
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Well, I started and finished watching The Boys. I binged that thing. I watched one a night. It was great. Highly enjoyable. I really did end up liking it. I was like, you know, I have an aversion to like superhero stuff anyways, but this is far more Jessica Jones than it is Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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It's dark. Oh, far more, yeah. It's a little messed up. The superheroes aren't necessarily the nicest people in the world. It's got a decent enough plot. The acting is good enough. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was throwaway popcorn-y TV stuff, but fun. Yeah, really good. I hope they do good with the second season because The Tick was one that came back for a second season.
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And I liked the first season, but like after two episodes of the second season, I just couldn't get back into it. So I removed it. So hopefully these guys will not have the Tick Syndrome when they come back. Yeah, well, speaking of the Tick Syndrome, I also finished Stranger Things 3. Okay, what'd you think?
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By far my least favorite of the three seasons. Really? It wasn't horrid yet, but by the end of it, my wife and I were looking at each other going, okay, so now we're just redoing the end of season one again, just with bigger monsters and, you know, brighter colored clothes and more people running around with axes.
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Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I liked it. It was fine. I can't say I'm thrilled that there's going to be a Stranger Things 4, unless they do something pretty significantly different this time around. At least what we've learned from Stranger Things 2 and 3, don't date Winona Ryder.
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Never. We knew that from the entire history of 80s and 90s alternative rock. That's true, too. The song sucker. If Winona Ryder dated you, your career ended. Oh, man. We can weaponize Winona. That's right. And we have some Apple news in the media area.
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They have finally released a trailer for their much-ballyhooed coming show, The Morning Show. Yes, indeed, they have. I watched it. I was not that interested. There really wasn't anything to see. There wasn't too much to see. But we know it's going to star Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carell, and Reese Witherspoon.
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So a lot of money being thrown at this show. Isn't this the... I believe this is the first time that... Well, I guess we have to technically call it TV, right? It is TV, even though it's Apple TV. This is the first time Jennifer Aniston will be starring back on a TV show since Friends. So I think they're going to... They must have thrown a lot of money at her.
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Yeah. Well, here's the thing. Apple's not going to get my money for this one because I can't stand Jennifer Aniston. I've never seen a full episode of Friends. Don't like her. And I don't like Reese Witherspoon. So two out of three X's on that board. So no reason to...
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Yeah, you will not be watching. Nope. I'm going to give it a go just because I like the idea of the plot. The morning show will explore the problems of trusting the news to dishonest people, the free fall of the newscast following the scandal, and a TV show's struggle to survive in the smartphone era, which is ironically what Apple has actually done to the real area.
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That's true. Yeah, I'm going to give it a go when it finally comes since I've got Apple TV and all that sort of stuff, but we'll see. In gaming news from Apple, which doesn't mean much to me, but this seems like a pretty good deal for most people, they have reportedly their game subscription service will cost just $5 a month, which is pretty nice.
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So this is going to be the Netflix for game service that they're going to launch. Of course, it depends on what games that they actually have, but it is Apple, so I think they'll probably be able to get a lot of good stuff. They're expected to include over 100 titles that are new and completely exclusive to Apple. Oh, not 100 that are new and completely exclusive to Apple.
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Some will be over 100 games to begin with. So $5 a month, not bad. That's a pretty decent pay rate if you're going to be playing a lot of games. Yeah, if the games are any good. It really comes down to the types of games and if they're just rehashed ones or old ones that nobody can sell anymore. We'll see.
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Yeah, we'll see what happens. And in conglomerate news, our beloved Star Trek universe has been unified about my favorite article about it because of the title and the opening paragraph is from Gizmodo. So the Star Trek movies you mostly don't like are now owned by the same company that owns the Star Trek TV shows you do like.
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So let me guess. They owned all the odd numbers. Yeah, they had all the odd number ones. They owned the odd, all the, yeah. So now we have the Kelvin timeline Star Trek movies as well as all the other Star Trek timeline movies and all the Star Trek TV shows all owned in the same universe. So we shall see what that means.
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Obviously, this is not as exciting as the X-Men being able to appear in the MCU, unless you're a Trekkie, in which case you like all of the stuff. So good. We'll see what happens. They're going to need, I don't know, what do you call it? It's not a showrunner. It's a universe runner. Somebody's going to have to be in charge of this whole thing.
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Somebody dig up the corpse of Gene Roddenberry. Yes. But we'll see what happens. There's a lot of stuff coming. I'm excited too. I don't know if we're going to get any more of the new timeline movies because reportedly, Chris Pine has not been able to reach an agreement on salary or something like that. So it could be a dead end for that, in which case that's fine with me.
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Let's just go back to the old timeline. I like the old timeline. Yeah, seriously. Let's go back and fix this one. You know, that's fine. We'll just block off the JJ timeline. They were okay movies. I like the first one. The second one was okay. And the third one I thought was god awful.
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So I don't really want that. Yeah, I do not want them to come back on that. But it's nice that Viacom and CBS got married and are kissing in a tree because it's good to have all that IP under one roof because it means that they can make better shows too. Exactly. I agree.
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And I just thought this one was funny. I stumbled across this over on Vulture. Watch a user experience expert react to sci-fi operating systems. It was pretty damn enjoyable little video. They found a woman who is a user experience person, obviously. And she went Star Wars, Star Trek, you know, Minority Report.
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She just went through all the user interfaces and started talking about how, you know, how they impacted things or, you know, what she was looking at and how this is really, really wrong or this one was really, really good. It was great. It was a fun little thing because we've talked about this sort of stuff in the past. So it was funny just having it all collected into one cute little video.
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Oh, definitely check it out. I still have all my original Illustrator files from Star Trek First Contact with all the Akutagrams that they used for out the that they printed and made into the bridge on the ship. And it's so funny. It's like once you've been there for a while, you get your name on a button. So you go through it.
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It's like it's like, you know, behind the scenes credits in the Illustrator file of all the different people that worked on the show. That's awesome. At the library. I am breaking my rule by reading a series straight through, but it's one of those ones where it literally picks up from where it left off at.
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So it's just like one big book that's been split into three or four. So I finished Resistance, the newer series, book three by Matthew Mather. I stand by it. It's decent enough. It's good popcorn sci-fi. Okay. The story is going along quite well. I'm enjoying it.
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In October, we have a new release from Dan Carlin. A book? He wrote a book. He actually wrote a book. Now, I wish he would stick with Hardcore History and keep doing those because those are books in and of themselves. But this will be fun.
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This will be fun. He is going to actually narrate the audio book. So this is just kind of a way to get all of a season of Hardcore History in one go and actually be able to pay him more. I think that's really the end game here. Yeah, I can see that. That would make sense. Not good on him. I will definitely purchase this because he has not gotten enough money for me yet.
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He's got a lot of money for me. I went back and bought his whole archive a long time ago. So it releases October 29th on 2019, which means it will actually probably come out in 2032 if Dan sticks to his normal publishing schedule. Oh, you've been waiting for that the whole time, right?
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That joke. You've had that pocketed. That's not wrong. No, I think I made it up over my eggs this morning when I put it in. But that's OK. And I found a site called Standard E-Books. Have you ever seen this before? I have not. Not until you put it in the notes.
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So it's kind of a public domain project where they take Gutenberg E-Books or any public domain E-Book that they can prove that's public domain in the United States. That's the key. That's where they work from. And they reformat it, put in extra stuff, artwork, table of contents, and all the crap that you don't get from the shitty text files at the Gutenberg Project and make beautiful E-Books that you can download for free.
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It's a really cool thing. I really tried to figure out who's behind it, though. It didn't say anything on the About tab? No, it doesn't. So I had to do some Googling, and I ended up at Reddit. And on Reddit, there's a guy who basically says that, hey, he's the guy that, you know, it's his project.
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And because they were talking about why did they pick Calibri as the font for all the books and all that stuff. And he came out and said it. So I looked at some of his other posts on Reddit. Still can't find a name or any website or any personal information about him. But he was talking about Linux servers and things like that. So he's a nerd.
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He's a nerd. And it's his project. I really wish there was, you know, more information about him on the About page or the project itself. Because if this is just one guy funding it out of his own pocket, that's dangerous. Well, that's true. But it seems to be a pretty good run of stuff in here.
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This is impressive. I remember I worked at a bookstore. Do I have to explain what those are? Probably to all the millennials. I worked at a bookstore almost in my entire high school. And I remember, you know, different publishers would do the same kind of thing in real, you know, formats. But print books, but they would always get all the standard stuff.
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And they would do their own lines with, you know, similar style artwork and all that sort of stuff. But it's great to see somebody doing this in the e-book world. It's fantastic. No, it's really, really good. I'm very happy I found this one. Nice. And this is another. Yeah, thanks. And this one I found over at Lit Hub.
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And it's just an interesting article. I'm trying to read more things that I just, like, try and do some serendipitous web surfing like I used to do. And I don't know how I got to this one. But it's a piece by a woman named Isabel Davis.
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It's called Thank God for the Sex I Found in My Mother's Romance Novels. And not something that I would normally read. But it's a really, I thought, interesting article about a girl who was basically taught the ways of the world from her mom's smut collection.
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And again, having worked at a bookstore in high school, we sold quite a lot of these kind of books. They flew off the shelves. Oh, yeah, man. They're barn burners. They're barn burners. So it's a really fun read if you want to see, you know, how this woman, like, basically found her sexuality growing up from these romance novels.
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And then was like, yeah, you know, that's not really how it happens when you actually get to go do it. No, no. It's just a short read. Also explains why she only likes guys that look like Fabio. Yeah, well, actually, I think she went to the other side.
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I think maybe, maybe, maybe the books did it to her. I don't know. And this last one I found over on the Mission Daily newsletter, they're running a series on storytelling in the next few weeks. You can check that out at mission.org. It's pretty cool sign up for the newsletter, but they found a playlist on YouTube of Brandon Sanderson, one of our favorite writers around here, teaching his writing classes, novel writing class.
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And he puts all of the lectures online so you can just go watch him. Nice. Yeah. I watched about 20 minutes of the first one this morning. It was entertaining. He's, he's a pretty, you know, jovial, quick guy. So I, I enjoyed him. So if you're a Brandon Sanderson fan, definitely go check these out.
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They are, it's, it's free entertainment. Don't have to go to Sweden. There you go. Moron of the week. I found a couple fun morons this week and one hero, but, uh, the first moron, um, is a fellow named Hakeem Murphy, who is 26.
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Uh, he went on a three day getaway, uh, with his girlfriend, Lynn Burton, um, in, from Wisconsin, Dells, Wisconsin. And, uh, they were out, uh, water, water, scooting around, I guess not water, scooting. I have scooters on the brain, water skiing around on a water, jet, jet skiing.
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And they were looking as happy as they could be. And he was taking a little video and he was holding up the phone and videoing himself and, and his, his girlfriend. And at one point she leans in, she can be seen leaning, squinting to get a better look at the phone and then asking, wait, is that Tinder? Whoops.
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So he looks pretty worried. He tries to cool it, play it cool by saying, what are you talking about? And she continues. I thought you deleted that. Who is that? And they continue to bicker and fight as Lynn demands to check his phone and he refuses to do so. Awesome. This is the best video ever. Hilarious. Yeah. Be careful.
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Some people thought it was staged because they, they still like hung out after that in the Dells. They still posted together, but either way, it's still pretty damn funny. It's pretty damn funny. And another moron, Amy Didi. She has a background in game simulation and programming. She recently released a video showing how she biohacked her own body.
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She decided to remove the RFID chip from the Tesla model three valet card and put it inside of herself to use her arm as a key. Yeah. One of them. You keep that car forever. If you sell the car, you got to cut off your arm. That's true. Arm comes with, but she's, you know, she's a, she's a biohacker.
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So she can make her own arm. Next. Next. Funny thing about it is if I was 20 years younger, I would totally want to marry this girl. I know she's right in my wheelhouse, right in my wheelhouse. Yeah. Oh, what are you going to do? And we have a hero of the week that was sent in by David over on Twitter.
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Unfortunately, I can't have the link in the show notes anymore because of the story expired, but it was a phenomenal video of an elderly gentleman with a cane walking down a street, pushing over every single e-scooter he passed. Oh, damn. I wish I could see that. It was heartwarming. I can't find it.
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I Googled it. So if anybody has that out there, send it to us again so Jason can see it. We got some new Patreon subscribers, JJ, Matt, Sean, and Michael. And over at PayPal, we've got Lamine, Daniel, Ryan, and Nicholas.
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Nicholas says, gentlemen, love your work and appreciate that you can be grumpy without being cynical, or at least not excessively cynical. Keep up the fire. Well, thank you. And Nailin, also at PayPal, who wrote in, love your show, entertaining, fun, and learning new stuff. Recently bought CleanMyMac X for my old 2012 MacBook Pro and it brought some new life to it.
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I'm now seriously thinking about deleting my Facebook account. Haven't done it yet, but you guys got me thinking about it. I just wanted to note that technically, if you didn't buy CleanMyMac X, you're just renting it. Stupid subscription models. Stupid subscription models is right. So yeah, unfortunately, you're renting it.
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But I highly recommend deleting your Facebook account. Best thing I ever did. Really? The best thing you've ever done, Jason. I live a very sad life. I live a very sad life. Over at Twitter, Moss6502 writes in, Your fix for the AirPods applies to the Apple Pencil 2.
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Cleaned it and cleaned the iPad port and now charges fast and lasts longer. All right. Awesome. All right, everybody. So with your Mac products, if they start to suck, just give them the old C3PO bath in the rubbing alcohol. I'm pretty sure if I dipped my MacBook Pro into a bath of rubbing alcohol, it would not work anymore.
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Could be the best thing you've ever done, Jason. You should try it. The best thing I've ever done. And Buddy writes in, or sent in a link from Business Insider, Amazon's army of tweeting warehouse workers backfired spectacularly this week after a threat about working conditions went viral. So we were talking about the FC ambassadors that Amazon started, but it's gone backfired on them.
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Who could have saw that coming? And the ambassadors were ridiculed and accused of writing propaganda for Amazon, and some were even asked if they were being held at gunpoint to write their tweets. Others users pointed to the flaws in the system. Some of the ambassador accounts appear to have changed hands, leading to confusion over whether the accounts are real. It's also easy to mimic the Amazon FC ambassador accounts, meaning people have been changing their Twitter names to mock the armies of tweeters.
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Somebody should tweet at them. Blink twice if you want me to call the police. I'm stuck in a tube. It's true. And just a note about this Business Insider website. Oh, my God. It's horrible.
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Unfortunately, they have really good journalism. That's the thing. You can't copy and paste out of it, which led me to open up console and in the developer tools, and I'm going through console. That thing is pushing hundreds of errors a minute because it can't, like, get to some JavaScript file.
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And, like, the performance monitor on it, you can do all of this profiling in your developer tools if you use Opera. It's pretty easy. There's developer tools in Chrome, too. But what I have to do when I want to copy and paste something into an article is I have to go open up the console, find the settings, and disable JavaScript before I can copy and paste text out of a web page that I pay for.
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Yep. Come on, guys. Seriously. Yeah, that's kind of bullshit, guys. Fix that. Your journalism's great, but come on. That's ridiculous. Yeah. And Alex writes in, any plans to add chapters to your podcast? Nope. So few people use them, it's just not worth the squeeze, and it adds about another hour, hour and a half to the production timeline, just because of the way we bounce files out of Logic and run it through Ophonic.
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All the chapter markers are gone, so I'd have to manually do everything and then run it through Marco's tool to do the chapter building and all that stuff. And I've tried it. I think there's one episode out there of Grumpy Old Geeks that basically has chapters in it.
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So, and that's, as far as I can tell, unless you go to patreon.com slash GOG and 10X a reward, I would gladly put chapters in. That's right. And Stardash writes in, I have been a Windows user since the early 90s. Is Mac OS really that awesome?
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I have never used it except in passing. I game a bit and would like to keep doing so. Is buying a Mac a good idea? Do they support good graphic cards on Mac OS? Thanks and stay grumpy. I've been, me as well, I've always been a Windows user. I switched to Mac four or five years ago now. Honestly, it doesn't matter.
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Use what you're comfortable with. They're both so similar to each other these days. I think the argument could be made that particularly if you're a gamer, you're probably better off staying with Windows and PCs just because there's so many different things that you can do with that. You can switch out graphics cards and all that sort of stuff.
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Macs tend to be Macs. You get what you pay for. It's all fine. But if you're a crazy gamer, you're going to want to have a PC. I don't really see much of a difference into it. Jason and I are. Jason's already got some PCs. I'm thinking about switching back to PC next time I need a new computer. It's all comfort level.
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It is. I mean, and also how much you want to get hacked. Or also, if you're a developer, Macs are way better because they basically have a Unix core. So it's really easy to run your entire stack on a Mac in virtual environments and just swap it out and do stuff with, you know, doing Git and pushes and pulls.
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And just there's so many tools on a Mac if you're a developer. But if you're a gamer and you like games, get a PC. I bought a PC so I could game on it. You know, I have a gaming keyboard, a gaming mouse and all that stuff. I've used it maybe three times, but I still have room on the damn desk.
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But yeah, I play games on my Mac, too. I play a little StarCraft here and there. But an iMac 5K, fine for gaming. It's got enough powerhouse. If you need real stuff, then you got to go to the iMac Pro, which is not worth the money.
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Stay with PCs for that. Yep. But I just like Macs because they're prettier software and life's too short to use ugly software. Bastion writes in, Jason, try monolingual for removing language files from OS X. See, now that I've got CleanMyMac 10 or X, we'll just go with 10.
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And I'm borrowing it from them for, you know, a couple dollars a year. I don't need to do that. So it does it automatically, which is nice. But if you don't have CleanMyMac 10 or don't want to pay for it, this is, you know, another app that you can get that will just strip out all the language files.
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Because every app that comes with Macs have, you know, tons of language files that most people are never going to use. I don't speak Mandarin, so I don't need a Mandarin language pack. And it will, like, you know, free up a lot of disk space. But the caveat here is I haven't tried this app, so I don't know.
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And I've gotten some bad stuff on MacUpdate.com. But, yeah, I mean, try it at your own risk. There you go. Over at GOG.show, Troy writes in, We recently got new phone service. The installer told me if you put the three tones from the This phone number is no longer in service message on your voicemail, it will signal the robocallers that your number is dead and the computer will remove your number from their list.
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Have you ever heard of this trick? I put it on my cell phone voicemail. We'll see if it works. I've not heard of that. And if it works, that would be phenomenal. Yeah, where can we get that? We need that signal. I'm sure we just need to Google that. I'm sure we can find it. I'm going to try it as well. We'll see. Yeah, definitely.
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And Nick writes in, Mission statement trivia was great. We definitely need more of these for upcoming shows. That was kind of fun. Maybe we'll come up with game night on security. And Paul writes in, Good day, Grumps. I'm sure you've come across this. However, if not, then welcome to AI Scooters.
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Oh, what a magical world we live in. And this is a link to the IT News in Australia. China's Ninebot unveils scooters that drive themselves to charging stations. Oh, boy. Yeah. I can't even imagine trying to. It's not bad enough now walking down the sidewalk when you've got a bunch of unmanned scooters coming at you as they're going to their charging base.
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I mean, then seriously, that South Park episode will come true. It will come true. Yeah. Unbelievable. I mean, I get it. And it's nice that I suppose that they would have to be docked when they need to be charged.
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And it's better than a bunch of idiots running around like they do here in Santa Monica and Venice with old junkie, you know, vans full of scooters or some guy on one guy on a scooter holding four scooters in his arms as he's scooting around to take the scooters back to charge them to make the three dollars and 50 cents that he's going to make over the night.
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Yeah. No, I just I always think of the Sanford and son truck when I think about people charging scooters. I'm now great. Every time I see the scooter guy now, I'm going to start singing that. Well, you should. You should. I should.
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So Gal Lufang, the chairman and chief executive, said said this, I believe scooters will replace bicycles as the prime solution for micromobility. It's human nature to save energy when commuting. Pretty sure the last time I checked, you don't have to charge a bicycle.
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You just have to pedal it. So what? Unless you have one of the power bikes, but most people don't. That's why they have a bike. They want exercise. Yes, we want to burn some of that energy that we get from my McDonald's. Christopher writes in overstock.com CEO comments on deep state withholds further comment.
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You read this, Brian? I did. It's interesting. What is this guy's name? The overstock CEO? Let's see. Sorry. I've read a bunch of articles about this guy this week. I know. Me too. He's a loon. He's a loon. And finally, there are some consequences to the guy being a loon.
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Stock price is dropping heavily. So, yeah, he's made some crazy comments about deep state stuff and how he's supposedly helped the government because his rabbi told him to. And, oh, boy. I shit you not. It is an interesting. Well, this particular article is just the press release.
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Google what's going on with this guy if you want a good laugh. And my thought on this was immediately highly overpriced CEOs. They're just as crazy as everyone else. Yeah, I think somebody replaced his CBD oil with PCP. Definitely a possibility. Donovan wrote in.
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Hey, guys, love the show. And episode 369. Dude. Brian discusses how he checked out podcast music and he found nothing really worth mentioning, even though they had a press release concerning their interactions with sound exchange in regards to bring licensed music to podcasts. I'll agree with both of you. This seems like a far fetched idea, considering the draconian licensing deals the music industry has always had.
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I think you may have overlooked something in episode 296 of the new media show. Todd Cochran and Rob Greenlee had a conversation with Douglas Reed from podcast music. OK, blah, blah, blah. It goes on and on. He just says that it's coming soon. April or May. April or May, which is fine.
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But maybe you don't do your big PR push before the music is up there. Well, it's podcast movement. It's podcast movement. They were just kind of, you know, going on the press. Yeah. So I guarantee you, though, you're still not going to find Taylor Swift up there. Neil from near Cincinnati writes in.
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Hey, guys, don't be so grumpy. Amazon does have a phone number. 888-280-4331. They spent a good chunk of their time helping resolve my issue. Your mileage may vary. Keep it coming. I will say when I used Amazon, the grocery one when I was in Chicago and there was a problem with it, I called phone support and they were fantastic.
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There we go. Google is really the one that has no phone support. That's true. Scott XD writes in. Hey, grumps. What happened to your back catalog? As both a fan of the podcast and a bit of a somewhat completionist, I was enjoying it and eventually looking forward to being caught up. But today it disappeared from Apple's podcast listings.
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Only a recent episodes are shown there now. Is an easy way of enjoying the back catalog or am I doomed to feverishly scrolling and searching on the website? That actually won't work for me since I like to enjoy listening while driving cross country and call me crazy, but one of my favorite pastimes is not dying while driving. Cheers, er, I mean grumps, Scott.
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There's technical reasons for this right now. There are. There are some seriously technical reasons for this right now because I am migrating the website and the way some of the plugins work on the website, they try and pull in the whole feed and then it kind of duplicates things and it makes my life a living hell when I want to reimport because something went wrong.
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And it's, it's, trust me, it's fucking WordPress. It's, that's all you got to know. It's a pain in the ass. But I'm like most of the way through the migration, new sites looking great. And it'll, as soon as the migration's done, all the old episodes will be back up and you can go back and listen to us be terrible for years to come, for years to come.
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An episode a day for a full year, if not a little bit more now. Victor writes in, I was listening to schnitzel on demand and have a little time off from school before next semester. I would be honored to help compile a list of recommendations from your past episodes. I've been enjoying your podcast for over a year now, and this would be a great way to contribute since Patreon support isn't something I can afford yet.
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Let me know if you actually are interested in how I could help. Well, we don't have to worry about books anymore. So, friend of the show, really good friend of the show, Jesse, has compiled that list for us. And I am going through and formatting it, and we have to change some links because there's old links in there.
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But eventually now, we will have a comprehensive list of all the books we talked about at the library. So, we're not going to put up who liked what and when because that's, you know, hard to do with like 300 books. But we're going to do our best. We have a base to start from where we didn't have to spend hours doing it.
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So, thank you, Jesse. Thank you very, very much. Appreciate it. And, Victor, feel free to go through and find some other stuff that we recommended and get that together as a list for us. We'd appreciate it. Although, stuff like software might be pretty outdated. But we'll see. Who knows? Okay. Who knows?
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But, yeah, if you want to send us a list of stuff that's on the website, go for it. We'll send you some stickers and magnets. We appreciate it because that's all we got. Yeah. That's true. Scott writes in, maple cookies. I think it's time I sent some maple cookies your way, Jason. Since there are multiple brands, I want to make sure I get the right one. Let me know which brand and where to send them, and I'll see what I can do.
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P.S. You can add me to the pool of fans I've listened to every single episode. I've learned a ton about tech, and both your salty jokes actually helped me get through a very rough time a couple years back. So, thank you both. Well, thank you. Well, thank you, Scott. Thank you for the offer. I'm good right now, though. I still have a lot of maple cookies in the freezer because I plan ahead because I know Brian's never going to bring any back.
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But I really appreciate it. Technically, I did bring some back this time. They just didn't make it to you. Yeah. Your son rented them before I could get to them. That's right. He's rented them. Yes. Neil writes in, hi, Grumps. Just a quick one. But you mentioned The Family in 368 in Media Candy.
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Whilst I have not seen the show on Netflix, yet I know stuff about it, as many Australians in my generation do. You may be interested to know that Julian Assange is one of the children that grew up within the sect that is known as The Family. Look it up. Stay grumpy. Well, Neil, I did look it up.
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And wrong family. The Netflix special is not about that family. It's based on a book by the same name. We'll link that in the show notes. But since you did get me Googling Julian Assange and The Family, oh boy, that explains a lot. Whoa. Yeah.
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Man. Some of the pictures from there are just like, holy shitballs. But yeah. Okay. Julian's cray-cray. Yeah. Don writes in, hey, Brian, I have a question for you in regards to that Kraftwerk decision in the EU. Aren't you even in the least bit worried that allowing copyright to cover a two-second sample of what I understand is just the drum track is taking copy protection too far?
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Let me interrupt here because this is quite a long one, so I'm just going to do little bits and pieces. I don't think any of the Led Zeppelin drummer would feel that way because his stuff has been stolen countless times. And it's obvious it's his stuff. And that's why it makes it so interesting and why people want to steal it and take it.
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He should get money for that. You can't make money off other people's work. That's the way it should go. You can't just take it and make money. You can take it. You can use it. But as soon as you make money, you have to pay the people that originally did it. There's an entire reason there's a whole industry of sample libraries that are sold.
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And when you buy them, you own them. You've got the license to use them. There are entire sample libraries of drum tracks by famous drummers. You buy the sample library and then you can use them. Then you own them. You've paid for them. You've now got them licensed.
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You don't just turn on your recorder and record somebody else's work and then throw it into your own work. It's not supposed to work that way. That's just not the way it's supposed to work. So you can buy licensed stuff. Or if you just want to steal it and use it, you can pay them for that. It's usually a one-time payment.
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That's the way it works. I don't understand the problem with that. I don't worry about it being a slippery slope because I don't agree that people should be able to do that. I think people should get paid for their work if it gets used by other people. You say later, and you have quite a long article with some good points and you know what you're talking about.
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There's no doubt about that because you're talking about some specific cases that have happened. Everyone wants to get paid for it once, twice, three, four times ad nauseum. No, no, if you steal it, I want to get paid the one time. That's it. So license it from me. You can use it. That's the way it's supposed to be working.
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So I sort of agree with you, sort of don't. So anyways, that's where I'm at with this. You finish with, I say, imagine a world where that Star Trek fan-made movie could have been released legally. Screw Metallica and their Ticketmaster ticket price fixing scheme. Whereas Napster, I say, I say, why can't I get repaid for those hours I spent working on an Excel workbook every time a co-worker reuses it?
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I say, put up or shut up and deal with competition instead of hiding behind your lawyers. Sorry, Brian's wife. Or am I grump out? The Star Trek movie could have been released, but they would have had to pay Paramount for the IP. Well, the thing that happened with the Star Trek movie is then it created guidelines for fan-made movies.
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So fan creators can now work with Paramount or ViacomCBS and actually create those movies within the guidelines of a fan-made movie. Of the people who own the IP because they own it. They created it. Yes, they created it. So they get to make the rules about it and they can choose to be good like Paramount is.
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And Paramount is still basically saying, you're fine to do this within these guidelines. But if you make money, that's a different story. And then we have to talk. And that's the better way of doing it. But people are completely within their own rights to basically refuse everything and say, no, you can't use my IP.
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It's my IP. It's up to the creators. Yep. Moving on. Ilya writes in. Hi, guys. As always, thank you for the awesome work. Brian told my wife about your wife's reaction to your new Hue lights. She sends her sympathies. Our new Hue lights are driving mine crazy as well. I haven't bought it yet since it's out of stock in Israel.
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But this Hue dimmer switch might be a solution. This is the Philips Hue smart dimmer switch. God damn dyslexia. With remote, it requires Hue Hub installation-free smart home exclusively for Philips Hue smart bulbs.
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And it is out of stock here in the United States as well. Yes, it is. I saw this. I actually found this before you wrote in with a comment. I don't know why this didn't come up in any of my previous searches, but it did. And I've tried to find out if it syncs between the app and voice control and the dimmer or if it's just another dimmer that will work.
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And if you switch it off here, does the app know? I can't tell yet. And it's $34.94 whenever it's available. So hopefully I'll be able to get it and try it sooner. If anybody has this and can tell me already, does it sync? I just need it to sync.
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It needs to sync. It needs to be smart. If I touch it here, it needs to know on my app. If I talk to my Alexa and turn the light on, then the dimmer switch needs to know that it's on. Right? This is all we're asking for here. I understand it's complicated, but until this gets sorted, you can't call it smart.
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That's all I'm saying. Okay. Well, I don't have dimmer switches in my garage studio. Garo studio. So I was thinking about getting two of them for in here because then I can make some funky mood lighting in the studio while I'm doing videos. Dude, it's so nice. The funky lighting bit is nice.
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I think you'd really enjoy it. Yeah. And I don't have a dimmer, so it's just a light switch. I don't have to worry about that. So I think I'm thinking about picking up a couple of these just to have in the studio for fun effects or relatively little money. If I went and bought like a lighting rig to do that stuff, it would be, you know, a fortune.
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Yeah, it'd be a fortune. You can just get it a little cheaper now. Nick also wrote in about this. Brian, you've mentioned a couple times some issues with your Hue bulbs, and I just wanted to give you some feedback from my own experiences. First, the flickering using the dimmer might be an incompatibility between an old dimmer and LED bulbs. My dimmer's only four years old.
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I got it when I moved into the house. It's not old. Anyways, I had non-Hue LED bulbs on a dimmer switch and had the same problem until I replaced the switch with a modern dimmer switch designed for LEDs. I do use some Hue bulbs in my house, and I control everything through a separate Hue switch. I always leave the wall switch on and control the lights only through the Hue switch, which eliminates your issues with the app and your traditional switch not being synced.
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I only use the app for setting up the bulbs in the switch and haven't used it since. And lastly, I use Iffin with my outdoor Hue bulb and love it. It turns out my outdoor light on whenever my wife or I enter a certain radius of the house. Usually, the app isn't perfect, and it lets me add a widget button to my phone to turn the bulb on and off.
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My wife used to leave the outdoor light on all the time because she wanted to be guaranteed that it'd be on when she got home, and it drove me nuts because I'm a man and stupid things drive me nuts. And the combination of smart bulbs, plus it fixed that problem for me. So love the show. So, yeah, it sounds like there's all kinds of workarounds, but nothing that was going to make my wife happy because it won't be seamless and work the way it should.
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So are you using the Apple Home app with this stuff, too? No, no. I suppose I could. But, I mean, again, as we talked about on the last show about the crazy state of the Internet of Things, I've got a Hue app. Well, then there's also the Apple Home app, but then I've also got it hooked up through my ladies in the tube.
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So, you know, I've got multiple things trying to control one thing, and then there's the actual physical switch, which is the only one my wife wants. Oh, God. Yeah. How's that technology working out for you? It's awesome. Kai UC writes in, Hi, guys. I can't find the newsletter on your website like you mentioned in the last episode.
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Can you please direct me to the URL or where I can find it? Thanks. It'll be more prominent on the new site. And I was a little bit wrong. It's just an email alert, like when new shows are posted. So it doesn't have the full show notes in it. You'll still have to go to the site to get the links, but it's in the email. The link is there.
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So you can get an email with a link, click on that, and boom, there's the show notes. Sorry about that. Working on it. Got a lot on my plate right now. I'm doing my best. And Barrett writes in, As a dog lover, Netflix, its Bruno series is wonderful. You would love it, Jason. Yeah, I watched some of the trailer for it.
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I totally added that to the queue. It looks hilarious. I can't wait. And they're short. They're like 10 to 14 minutes each. So they're my favorite kind of show. Lamine writes in, Bonjour, GOG. I'm a friend of the show from DC for more than two years, and you guys have been my go-to when it comes to the intersection of tech and society as we know it.
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I'm writing because I listen to a very interesting podcast called TWIML, which would be This Week in Machine Learning and AI, episode 290 that discusses the nuances of the machine learning black box model versus interpretable models for high-stake decisions. It is probably one of the most refreshing and digestible discussions on the matter I've come across in a very long time.
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The interviewee, Cynthia Rudin, does a fantastic job at addressing the grave implications linked to the proliferation of black box ML models due to their profitability. As she puts it, I've never seen a clean database, so why trust the models that use them?
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I look forward to hearing you guys take this on. P.S. I'm not bothered by Brian's shocking line. Well, thank you very much. Hold on a second. Deliveroo! There we go. The polls have reversed again. Oh, no. Negative polarity.
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Now I'm the arrogant motherfucker. Okay, great. Well, I'm going to actually have to go and listen to this podcast. Sounds pretty interesting to me. Yeah, we'll see. I'll give it a listen, and if anything in there twinges something in me, we'll be talking about it the next episode. Link is in the show notes, so go for it.
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Yep. Over at iTunes, we have a five-star rating from Don't Bother. Here are your five stars. Okay, now stop asking. Well, you might want to set it for a five-second skip because we're going to have to ask everybody else. Just because you did it doesn't mean everybody else did it.
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But thank you very much. Don't bother. Much appreciated. And PDB2655 gave us another five stars. It says, love your show. Thanks for all you guys. Love your humor and all great news you bring to the show. Thanks. You are welcome very much, PBB2655.
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We love you very much, too. So thank you very much for the five stars. It is appreciated greatly. And we got another five star from my absolute favorite name that I've ever seen come into the show. Fred and his incredible sheep-shrinking, grateful airplanes. It's me, he says.
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Or she. Well, it's Fred. Fred. Well, I've met female Freds. Bullshit. Yeah. Where? Winifred. But that's not Fred. You don't show them. They go by Fred. They short it to Winnie. No, they don't. They short it to Winnie. No, that's only in that dumb TV show that you used to watch in the 80s.
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Bullshit. I don't believe you. Anyways, back to the review. If you've ever felt grumpy, outraged, or overwhelmed by today's technology, you will see a lot of yourself in this podcast. The hosts go over the tech news of the day, calling out ridiculous trends like the proliferation of electric scooters and making predictions about the future of technology that often prove true.
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Pro tip. Nobody ever went wrong predicting the worst possible outcome for any technology. This is fair. This is a pro tip. This is fair. Yes. 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.
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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 know any women named Fred, please write in. Closing shout-outs! I want to give a closing shout-out to our friend of the show, Jesse, who sent us the book list.
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Thank you so much. You've got some stuff coming your way very shortly. Yay. Thank you so much. Is that yay because you're the one that has to go to the post office? That means I have to go to the damn post office. If only stamps.com would do an ad with us. Seriously. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo.
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And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Pass us a few bucks and we'll love you forever. If you don't like Patreon but still want to support the show, you can give a one-time or recurring donation by just going to GOG.show and clicking the PayPal button in the sidebar.
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The support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 370. From there, you can find links to old episodes, but not all of them. That's coming. Leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy. We're sorry.
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