374: Gone Fishin’

This episode is sponsored by Privacy.com. It's like a burner phone for credit cards. To sign up for free and get a $5 credit, go to Privacy.com slash GOG. That's $5 free to spend anywhere by just signing up. Privacy.com slash GOG. Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Did you labor over your labor day, Jason? Of course I did. There's no way that I cannot labor, unlabor. There's no unlabor for me. No conscious unlaboring? Yes, there was no conscious unlaboring. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, I had to make up for being broken for a couple days and some other stuff. But I'm back 100%. Excellent. Because I have a hot tub.

In a hot tub when you're broken really helps. That's true. It's a wonderful thing to have when your muscles are sore. Yeah, I wish I would have remembered it the first day when it happened. It took me two days. I'm like, hey, wait a minute. I've got a hot tub somewhere around here. I should go get in that.

Right. You're a weird man, Jason. I am. I know. What are you going to do? So I've got a bit of follow-up. As we discussed the other week, the $30 million each, roughly, that Uber and Lyft, which are companies that don't make any money, but they were able to find $30 million each to fight the battle against the, what do they call that, AB5 here in California, which would basically push these companies into recognizing that their drivers are actually employees.

They seem to, they've gotten another setback. They lost another battle here in California. On Friday, state senators on the Appropriations Committee voted for AB5. So now we'll move on to the Senate floor for a final vote. So $60 million got them bupkis so far. Oh, good.

Good. See, you know how many balloons they could have bought for that? A lot of balloons. So if AB5 does pass the full Senate, it will essentially disrupt a business model championed and cherished by Silicon Valley itself. Uber, Lyft, and other app-based gig economy companies rely on hundreds of thousands of independent contractors to give rides, deliver food, etc.

And AB5 will reclassify them as employees, which will change everything. They will get labor protections. They will get benefits. They will get unemployment insurance. They will get health care subsidies, paid parental leave, overtime pay, workers' compensation paid, rest breaks, and a guaranteed $12 minimum hourly wage.

And perhaps most importantly, they will be able to unionize. Basically, they get to be people. They get to be people, but they also might just get to be fired. That is also true. Yeah, because Lyft and Uber might just take their toys and go home just to prove a point.

So this could backfire on the state of California, but, you know, go buy a car. Thank God we have all those scooters laying around. Exactly. Oh, man. Well, also, some follow-up on the Apple hack thing that we talked about last week, the websites that were using all the zero days and all that stuff.

And I had mentioned it on a site that I had found that they said it was Middle Eastern. Well, not quite. Turns out it was China. And China was going after the Uyghurs again. So this is what that was for. So, yeah.

Yeah. Blame China. Well, that seems to be the thing to do right now. You know, if Star Wars were shot today, everybody on the Empire on the Death Star would be Chinese, not British. And I found this one over at Science Alert. And this talks about something that we've talked about many times. It says, before you blame screen time for teen mental health issues, read this.

Okay. And it talks about some new studies that are saying that there really isn't a correlation between depression and screen time for kids. Right. Which is interesting. It's very interesting. I have a three-year-old, as listeners to the show most likely know.

So I spend an inordinate amount of time reading every article that pops up about these things because we are desperately trying to figure out. I mean, obviously, you can't go wrong with limiting screen time. But this is the world that we live in now. And screen time is a reality, especially if, you know, we're out to dinner and you'd like to enjoy your dinner sitting next to us.

Exactly. So, yeah, but this feels very much, every article I read is contradictory. Every single one. This is eggs are good, eggs are bad. I was going to say, this is the new eggs. Yes, this is the new eggs. Screen time is the new eggs. So, yeah, I read through this study as well.

The correlation is definitely not necessarily there. But, again, this study just focuses on depression. Right. There are so many other aspects involved here. But I understand you have a theory. I has a theory. That's right. And what my theory is that these kids have grown up with screens.

They've known nothing but screens their whole lives. So I think they have, you know, figured out how to use them properly. It's the new normal. It is the new normal. I think the parents are the issue here because I think the parents are getting depressed and that is getting passed down to the kids because parents like, you know, people of our age and, you know, in the in the same range who grew up in a land that didn't have screens until we were like, you know,

in our teens and 20s, we see everything now as is different than they do. You know, we look at Instagram and we're comparing our blooper reel, which is our day to day lives with everybody else's highlight reel. And it makes you depressed. Right. So this is this is really just us as parents going, hey, you damn hippies.

I think so. I think it's trickle down, you know, economics when it comes to depression in screen time. That's a theory that I have. It could be completely bunk. But, you know, just throwing it out there. I think the parents need to learn how to cope and then that will trickle down to the kids. Yeah. Yes.

I think there's a middle as with all things in the world. What I think we're going to end up finding is that eggs are both good and bad. Screen time is both good and bad. All things, nothing comes without a price. There's no free lunch. All things in moderation. Right. Like, I don't necessarily see screen time as a bad thing as long as it's balanced with get outside, get some vitamin D and run your ass off for a while to burn off some calories and some energy.

Yeah. The poison is in the dose. Exactly. You know, there you go. Look, we solved everything. OK, fuck it. I'm going home. Oh, wait, I am home. I never leave. Shit. Yeah. Well, somebody just has to pay us for, you know, solving everything. In the news.

Anthony Lewandowski is back in the news. If you remember from from the Waymo Google lawsuit not too long ago, Anthony Lewandowski is the engineer who used to work at Google for self-driving cars and left and created a middle company called Auto, which was a self-driving trucking company that was then subsumed by Uber.

Right. And the lawsuit. The original lawsuit was that that Uber was stealing trade secrets from Waymo for the self-driving cars that got handled pretty, pretty handily. They were only in court for four days, but we had to listen to it for months. Anyway, they didn't really do much with Anthony back then.

He kind of was on the sidelines, and I think it's because they wanted him to be free and clear of it so they could just go after him criminally, which is what they've done. And he did. He did. He did. And attempted theft of trade secrets. Oopsie. Oopsie. Well, as far as we can tell, he did kind of do that.

Yeah. No. And if convicted, maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 on each of the 33 counts. All right. All right. Well, he took a gamble. He seems to be losing. Yeah. And he pled not guilty, and he posted a $2 million secured bond and has to wear an ankle monitor until at least September 4th, which is tomorrow, and he's going to go to court.

So on the plus side, it's a self-driving ankle monitor. It's a self-driving ankle monitor. Oh, my God. So we'll see how this one plays out, but I think this guy's screwed. Yeah, I think he is, too. I think his gamble did not pay off. All the monies are going to go bye-byes, and he's going to spend a little time behind bars.

Yeah, I think Uber basically did the deal with Google just so they could get free and clear of it and then threw him under the bus because he got fired pretty much right after the first lawsuit started to happen. They're like, get out. Get out of here. Dude, you're toxic. You did what? Yeah.

So I'm hoping you're enjoying your Apple card. Some articles have now come out saying that while Apple recently has a very tarnished reputation regarding privacy, given the hacking that has been going on that China was apparently behind.

But, you know, people buy into the Apple privacy thing and assume that their Apple card might be very private. The article that I found over at Engadget gets into some kind of weird stuff about adult and sex sites and the backlash against them and how, you know, this may be found out and that could be a bad thing.

But if you're a listener to the show and you enjoy your adult entertainment, you would never use your Apple card to pay for that because, you know, privacy.com slash GOG. Exactly. Come on. Come on. But if you honestly, who pays for porn anymore? You don't have to.

There's that as well. But the other aspect of this that gets interesting is the fact that, of course, Apple did not build up this entire infrastructure themselves. They have basically white labeled their credit card through Goldman Sachs and Goldman Sachs will continue to use your data. They say they will never share or sell data to third parties for marketing or advertising.

And so they aren't using it. They aren't mining it and they aren't sharing it with their other people. But they will terminate you for transactions considered illegal goods or services or on illegal gambling sites. Well, that's pretty much every credit card under the sun. Yes. Yes, it is. So basically, you have a credit card and it's exactly like every other credit card, except this one just has an Apple logo on it.

Yes. And keeping with it being exactly like every other credit card, an author, Jeffrey A. Fowler over at The Washington Post, did an article called The Spy in Your Wallet. Credit cards have a privacy problem. No shit. And he bought two bananas, one purchased with a popular Chase Amazon Prime Rewards Visa and the other with Apple's card.

And then he then tried everything he could to follow the data to see what happened with privacy around these transactions. And there was zero difference between the cards. So the Apple card is no more private than any other credit card. Yeah. Okay. I'm not surprised by that. One iota.

One iota. No. It's just it's interesting because you can't even use it on a lot of sites because there are no credit card numbers on it. You don't get a credit card number, but I use it for food and gas. So that's about it. And booze. Food, gas, and booze. There you go. The essentials.

That's kind of it. Yeah, it is just the essentials. Oh, and it did automatically switch over all of my Apple purchases to the card as well. So anytime I do like buy a app or a game, it goes on that card automatically and then you get cash back. So. Okay.

I prefer my miles. I don't want it. I'm not going anywhere. I need don't need no stinking miles. Yes. And in the delicious irony section of news. Oh, yes. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's Twitter account was compromised. Don't you mean hacked?

Well, whatever. I know. I just it's funny that, you know, they use the word compromised. Yes. In here instead of hacked. Yes. Well, they also used hacked because, you know, AI machine learning, because the first paragraph is the personal account of Twitter. Chief executive Jack Dorsey was hacked Friday and filled with erratic and racist tweets in a high profile security misstep at the social media company.

Or back when I was working with bands, just meant that the lead singer got really drunk in the back of a bus last night. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of it. Yeah. It was hacked. It was hacked. It was a hack. It was a hack. Yeah. So he's dehydrated. He did not OD. He's just dehydrated.

He just needs a couple of days off. We'll reschedule the dates. But remember, not OD'd, just dehydrated. Dehydrated. Yes. So they are throwing the mobile provider under the bus, saying the phone number associated with the account was compromised due to a security oversight by the mobile provider.

They said in the statement, this allowed an unauthorized person to compose and send tweets via text message from the phone number. That issue is now resolved. And this does raise the question of how secure Twitter's protections are for the accounts of world leaders, such as, say, oh, I don't know, President Trump. Yeah.

I'm sure this is one of the SIM hacks, you know, where you social engineer a new SIM card and then take it over. That probably has to be it. It does beg the question, though. If hackers got access to Donald Trump's account and post racist shit, would we notice?

If a tree falls in the woods. Oh, my God. And while you and I do not understand how Pinterest is an actual company that is worth money because all it does is basically infringe on copyrights for a living and makes billions.

They are doing something that's kind of good there. They are working towards curbing misinformation on vaccines. As we've known, a tide of this is this is mainstreaming this insanity, this non-science by calling it vaccine hesitancy. That's not what it is. Do not mainstream it like that.

The vaccine hesitancy reluctance to get inoculated because of unfounded fears and misinformation is rising in the U.S. and throughout the world. As we know, the WHO has identified vaccine hesitancy as one of the dumb shittery. Can we just call it dumb shittery for God's sake? I know as one of the 10 most urgent public health challenges of the year.

And social media is, of course, incredibly responsible for this, as it is for all fake news. Right. So we know that's going on social media and Jenny McCarthy. That's how we have to blame. That's true. Last year, Pinterest disabled search for terms such as vaccines and cancer cure.

And while you are on Pinterest, searching for a cure for cancer is beyond me. But people do this sort of stuff. Goop was down for a few minutes. I guess so. Jesus. What's wrong with people? But they're taking a bigger step right now. They are providing information from only leading public health institutions, including the WHO, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the WHO established vaccine safety net.

So they will not show comments, recommendations or ads. They are going to be taking down crazy stuff. And you can basically if you're posting anything with the tags that relate to vaccines or things like that, you can only post stuff that's from vetted organizations. Now, I want to know why the WHO, the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, all these people.

Why do they have Pinterest accounts? What? Don't they have anything better to do? Yeah, I know. Especially with the budgets that are out there for this stuff right now. Pinterest should be the first thing to go. Oh, man. But the principle here, as the article says, is worthy. With free speech comes responsibility, which is something that we could use on the Internet.

Free speech is not free, people. You got to do stuff. And Amazon. I read this article over at BuzzFeed News because I'm still shaking my head. BuzzFeed is an actual news organization now. It's a thing. Back in my day, it was just cat photos and listicles. But nowadays, they have an article called Amazon's next day delivery system has brought chaos and carnage to America's streets.

But the world's biggest retailer has a system to escape the blame. Yes, it's called contractors. That's what this entire article is about. It's like, OK, Amazon hires contractors who are then responsible for having employees and training them and making sure that their vehicles are safe.

Shockingly, the companies that they outsource to are basically horrible, horrible companies just riddled with, you know, theft and gambling addiction and cocaine usage and peeing in the van a lot, too, which is interesting.

I don't want to if you ever get a wet package from Amazon, you might want to put some rubber gloves on before you open that one or just get a return label and send it back. But it's a long read, but it's really good. They go through a lot of different things with a lot of different companies talking. They start off with one poor woman who was killed right before Christmas in 2016 by one of the one of the drivers for one of these companies who apparently that company had taken out some safety devices in the vans that could have prevented the accident because they thought it was cheaper.

It's cheaper and they didn't really need them anymore. It's like, oh, look, everybody's driving. Yeah, every everything's going fine. Nobody's getting an accident. We don't need those safety devices anymore. See, everything's right. Oh, shit. Maybe those safety devices were stopping the accidents. Exactly.

Hmm. Yeah. Anyway, so it's a good read if you want to check it out. But yeah, it's Amazon just outsources everything that they can and denies responsibility. There's like, hey, we didn't hit them. Not our not our problem. So and even I wonder how it works with that new system where they'll even like, you know, help you buy your own van.

Are you then beholden to Amazon? I doubt it. I'm sure it's in the TOS somewhere that you hit somebody. It's your problem. Not on you. Yeah. Oh, man. MoviePass is back in the news. How is this still a thing? Well, when I tell you these numbers, you're just going to laugh.

MoviePass laid off roughly a third of its staff, including its entire team, focused on relationships with movie theaters. You've got to think that would be a big thing. And apparently there were only two people that were doing that. So seven.

So that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. That explains a lot, actually. Yes, it does. Yeah. So they laid off seven people, which is a third of its staff. They're down to 12 employees. Now, here's the thing. Here's the kicker. At the company's height in 2017, the staff numbered around 40.

Not enough. 40 people caused all this havoc. The problem is because there were only 40 people. Yes, exactly. There's no way they could have done what they did for the 40 people. No way. And they didn't. So makes sense. Yeah. Actually, this all tracks. So on this next one, I thought was pretty interesting.

The shift towards open source conversational AI. This is over at VentureBeat. So what is this? Contractors talking to each other? Yeah, that's all it is. It's the programmers on IRC. That's the conversational AI. What's up, Joe?

Blush Hagan. Nothing. How's it going? How's your AI? No. Can I borrow a cuppa? Sure. Mine ain't working today. So a lot of big companies are actually open sourcing their systems, their AI systems in an attempt to make them all better, which is interesting.

Uber actually released an open source AI library called Plato, or the Plato Research Dialogue System. Pertus. Yes. Pertus. Cisco open sourced its mind meld conversational AI platform. And then we're promptly sued by Star Trek.

Seriously. So there's a lot of different companies that are doing this. And it's interesting. And I think it really kind of came out of Google when they open sourced TensorFlow back in 2015. So it's like, okay, we're going to use our system, but we could really use some help building this because we don't know what the hell we're doing.

Our decision trees and contractors in the Philippines aren't really cutting the job right now. So let's open source this and see if we can get some help. And so we'll see. We'll see how this plays out. But I just thought it was an interesting turn that these companies were doing that.

I figured this would all be super heavy duty proprietary because they want to win the AI wars. But I guess it turns out these conversational AI systems actually aren't that important. No. If it was really that important, they wouldn't be releasing the source. They would be keeping the IP as much as they could.

Yep. And since we don't have Brick or Brack, I just had to throw this one in here. This comes from the Next Web, which I don't get why this is an article in the Next Web. But it says, you're still you when you're drunk, science says. Okay. Yeah. They did a bunch of tests on people who were sober and people who were drunk.

And it turns out your moral compass is pretty much intact when you're drunk. You kind of lose some empathy. You still know you're doing something wrong. Yeah. Yeah. So but you do lose that little empathy curve. But at the at the end of the day, if you if you if you weren't going to kill somebody when you were sober, you're not going to kill somebody when you're drunk.

So if you if you get drunk and kill somebody, you might want to watch out for that guy when he's sober because he still might kill you. I'm a very happy drunk. So science says I'm a happy guy. I like this. This episode is sponsored by Privacy dot com.

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Media Candy. On Saturday night, I went out to the Rose Bowl for the Pasadena Daydream show and saw The Cure play. And as the Slicing Up Eyeballs article says, The Cure turns Pasadena Daydream into the best day of the summer with a scorching set. I'm very sorry you missed it, Jason.

It was stunning. Yeah, me too. Me too. But fortunately, from this article, somebody posted the whole show. You can see the whole show from your hot tub while you recuperate, Jason. Exactly. How were the VIP tickets? Did you get good seats? There are no seats.

It was outdoors on the golf course area. Yeah, no, it was great. It was perfectly positioned. You don't want to be too close anyway. So you can see everything with easy access to decent bathrooms and beer. It was awesome. But I have to say, I didn't go until later because, you know, kid and babysitter.

So there's no way I was going to spend all day out there. But people that did, if you watch the show on the YouTubes while you're in the hot tub, you will be cooler than most of the people were at the show. It was 95 degrees for most of the day out there. And no shade? They did the best they could. There were some trees and they put up a bunch of tents everywhere.

So they did what they could, but it was packed. I mean, there was more than 25,000 people there. It was pretty intense. And it was a great show. I had a wonderful time. So I'm sorry you missed it. How were the Pixies? I didn't. I made it for the very end of the Pixies set because, again, kid and babysitter. So we only wanted to pay so much.

But they were good. They sounded great. So I got to hear two or three songs by them. Saw some of the throwing muses and then saw all of the Cure set until the very end because we decided we wanted to get home before 2 a.m. Okay. So it was a very good time. And I've got to tell you, your ticket did some good because I don't know anybody that's like in their 20s anymore.

So the idea of a last minute ticket, I offered it to people, but people were busy because once you're over 20, you have plans and lives. But I did find a lone pimply little teenage boy wearing his very old Cure shirt. And I made his hopefully his entire year by gifting him your VIP pass.

Excellent. Excellent. That's all I could hope for. I'm like, if nobody wants to buy it, find somebody outside who can't get in and give it to them. And you did just that. I did just that. So it went very well. I'm sure he was very happy. That guy had to shit himself. He's like, you could have given me a VIP pass. Nice.

Yeah, I'm old. Enjoy. Enjoy. That's the stuff of legend. Yeah. Pass it forward. So I found a very long form article over at the New York Times about Neil Young. Now we've made fun of Neil Young for quite some time because he had his Pono device that he was trying to sell and his high quality audio streaming service that he was trying to push, none of which went very well.

But this article is great. It's called Neil Young's Lonely Quest to Save Music. And if you read through the entire article, it's awesome. And he says low quality streaming is hurting our songs and our brains. They posit, is he right? And they do get into some of the science. And yeah, high quality stuff is much better.

And it just is. It sounds better. But the reason I put this article in our show notes is because this guy should be on our podcast. Really? He doesn't just hate bad music. Neil Young is crank. I'm going to read some quotes here. Neil Young is crankier than a hermit being stung by bees. He hates Spotify. He hates Facebook.

He hates Apple. He hates Steve Jobs. He hates what digital technology is doing to music. Am I? I'm only one person standing there going, hey, this is fucked up. He shouts, ranting away. So let's see. There's another one down here is like he's like he hates everyone in Silicon Valley that produces, of course, and what it produces, the culture of digital everything, which is basically a load of toxic, mind destroying crap.

It's anti-human. I'm not putting down Mark Zuckerberg. He continues his voice taking a turn. He knows where he fucked up. Just just the look on his face, he says, wagging his finger towards a television screen where the Facebook chief executive is giving sworn testimony before a panel of lawmakers. You know, he came to me in a dream the other night, and I felt really sorry for him.

He said he was just sitting there sweating and kind of didn't know how to talk because he fucked up so badly. Oh, you know, I'm not a fan of Neil Young's music at all, but I'm a fan of Neil Young. That's my man. This is a very long article, so you got to go read it.

You're going to have a good chuckle about it. All right. And I also saw a review for something I'm not going to watch because I think it would depress me too much, but it seems in our wheelhouse, so I'm including it here for anybody that wants to be depressed. Jawline reviewed a chilling look at the making of a teen influencer.

This is a film by Lisa Mandelup, the director, and it's on Hulu, and it's about the teen influencer gauntlet. And one, she found a subject in particular, Austin Tester, who was kind of off the thing. And boy, man, I don't know what we're doing with these kids.

I read this review, and I've opened up Hulu, and then I thought better of it. I looked at it, and I'm staring at it, and I'm like, you know, every single documentary I've seen about Instagram and YouTubers and all of this just makes me feel really bad for these people.

And I'm like, you guys are really just, you're creating nothing and think this is going to be a lifestyle, and this is how you're going to make a living for the rest of your life. And it's just delusional. There's all these older people around them that are just bad, bad people trying to make a buck, and they do not care about these kids.

Exactly. So I'm just like, I couldn't bring myself to hit play. I'm just like, you know what I need? I need to finish season one of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. That's going to put me in a better mood. So I'm going to go watch that. Sadly, though, I will not be watching season three of The OA since it was canceled by Netflix.

And apparently a lot of people, well, actually, not a lot of people, because if it was a lot of people, then the show wouldn't have gotten canceled. My three-season rule stands. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they've got to, the fans have a petition of nearly 80,000 people trying to get Netflix to bring it back.

They've done, they bought a billboard, they've had rallies, and they are really trying to get Netflix to change their mind. And I don't know if it's going to work. I don't think 80,000 people is enough to cover the budget. No, it's not. And I watched season one of The OA.

I thought it was weird, and I really enjoyed it. And I went back to start watching the second season, and I'm just like, you know, I just couldn't get myself to even press play. I was like, it was, I mean, it was a good show, but it was a slog on season one.

And I'm just like, I don't know if I have that in me anymore. So, you know, well, I feel for these people because, you know, I've had shows that I love taken out from underneath me. I mean, hell, I used to run savefarscape.com, and I sent boxes of crackers to sci-fi channel executives saying, savefarscape.

I've been on the other side of this. I know what it's like, and it sucks. So we'll see. Well, you know what I like about what I would like to see Netflix and the Amazons and the Hulu's of the world do, which they talk about a bit in this article. It says a fandom of Sense8 was able to persuade Netflix to make a two-hour finale for the drama.

So when there are enough people running these things and pushing for continuing the show, at least kick in a finale. Wrap it up. Yeah, exactly. Give them an hour. Give them two hours to finish up the story. There's enough people that care about this.

Just don't drop them and leave them hanging. And don't take 10 years like they did with Deadwood. I mean, granted, Deadwood came on the heels of the Game of Thrones finale, and then they put out the Deadwood movie to kind of wrap up Deadwood. And that was the complete that like HBO took their time and they did it right, which is why there was not a single bad thing said on Twitter about the Deadwood movie.

And then you compare and contrast that to Game of Thrones. It's like, OK, maybe we should have given Game of Thrones a two-hour wrap up for the last season instead of giving them a whole season and do that with. Yeah, I think it should be written into these damn contracts. It's like if you want to cancel our show and we have an arc, you're going to pay for the fucking finale and wrap it up.

So because if Netflix keeps doing this, people are going to get gun shy like you are. And it's going to be a problem. I wonder because you're saying that Deadwood, nobody said anything bad about it. I wonder if that's partially because there was 10 years in between. I wonder, you know, because the edges soften about things. You forget plot lines that may be dropped.

I mean, I'm sure people like you who are crazy go back and watch the entire show before the thing. But I do wonder if like if Game of Thrones would have stopped and we would have waited like eight years and then gotten the last episode. Would we have been quite as crazy? What was the delay between season seven and season eight?

Wasn't it like three, four years? Three years, I think. Three years. Yeah, it was ridiculous. They had plenty of time to not make such a shitty show. Maybe that's why it came out so shitty is because they had too much time. Yeah. Anyway, I feel for these people.

Hopefully they can at least get a finale out of Netflix. Do the right thing, Netflix. And then I found the trailer for Pretending I'm Superman, the Tony Hawk video game story trailer. It's crazy. Tony Hawk Pro Skater was released 20 years ago on August 31st.

20 years. I remember getting that game the day it came out and like staying up for three days to beat it. It was and I played every subsequent Tony Hawk game, you know, for while they kept making them. The ones at the end did kind of suck.

But the first couple Tony Hawk Pro Skater games, man, I was just I was so in. I learned geography from those games like there's the San Francisco level in there. And when I the first time I'm walking around San Francisco by myself, I knew how to get around the waterfront because I'd skated it so many times.

It was great. But I can't wait to see this this movie that they're making because Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was just a huge part of so many people. And, you know, I know that people can if you had that game and you handed it to me right now, I could still do my warehouse run with, you know, just unbelievable accuracy every time.

But yeah, I do miss that game. Anyway, so the trailer for that's out. And speaking of trailers, I saw the Terminator Dark Fate trailer. Right. Why just why did you watch that trailer? I did. I feel about the Terminator series the same way I feel about Aliens.

First movie. Good. Second movie. Good. I'm done. Yep. That's pretty much it. They should have cut it at two. Really? Everything after that was crap. Over the Labor Day weekend, I labored to finish the New Earth series.

I read book four, Destiny. These are all by Matthew Mather. And I have to say. He surprised me at the end. It's been a while since I've been genuinely caught off guard and surprised by the ending of what I would consider to be popcorn sci-fi.

So it was worth it for that. Now, having said that. Okay. It's a four book series that should be a two book series. There is a lot in this, especially in this, particularly this last book, a lot of lead up to get to a pretty good ending, pretty good beginning of the book as well, of the series as well.

I like the first book a lot. Didn't need a lot of this book, but didn't need a lot. If you took book one, as is, and take book two, three, and four and make them one book that's much shorter, this would be a great series.

Okay. But as is, it's a lot of extra stuff that you don't need. And I actually found myself yawning quite a bit during this book until it got to the apex. And then all of a sudden I was like, oh, didn't see that coming. And I do love when that happens. Yeah. It's rare and random. I think the last time I had that happen to me was one of the Brandon Sanderson series.

It was really good. That was a, they did some good stuff with that, but yeah, I haven't been surprised by a book in a long time, which is maybe why I haven't really gotten into reading as much as I used to do. I've been kind of slacking for a couple of months now. Yeah. I tried. You and I have both kind of scaled back our reading a little bit.

So I finished the series. Yeah. It is. Yeah. There's shit to do. Yeah. Actually, there's a lot of shit to do. It's kind of crazy. But I got, I got so many books that are queued up, but I can't really just get to them yet. So, cause they're all like 12 and 14 hours.

Cause that's how it is. I mean, even at two X, it's still, you know, a day's worth of listening to get through a book and I just don't have it anymore. Wish I did. Ah, I miss, miss having free time. The Australian civil aviation safety authority is currently investigating a video that appears to show, wait for it, a man using a drone to lift himself off the floor in a chair before casting out a line and going fishing.

He's even got a bottle of beer in the cup holder next to him. Oh, this guy's my hero. He is a bit of a hero. So this footage was uploaded to the Facebook page of a Brisbane based drone seller called UAV me earlier this month. And it shows him sitting in a metal chair being carried several meters above the water and fishing.

And he even appears to have caught a fish. He reels one in on his line before being carried back to shore by the drone. Naturally, the authorities have been quick to say that this is, of course, a really silly idea. It is, but it's great. It's great. But if you try it, you will probably die.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. And at the bottom is like, it'll take some time for us to gather the information and analyze to determine what appropriate course of action is next. And amazingly, there's not a book. There's not a rule on the books about not fishing on a drone. Exactly. And he keeps going saying for the person on the chair, the risk could be computer errors where the aircraft flies away or there could be motor failures where the aircraft ends up in an uncontrollable state.

Best case scenario is the battery sets die and it plunked straight into the water. But that is, you know, if that drone had a bug and just took off, you'd be kind of screwed. Well, I don't know. I mean, he wasn't like he wasn't. I don't think he was like belted into the seat.

You just fall into the water. Yeah. But if that drone like just jumps you up like 100 feet real quick, you can't jump. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. But hero. This guy's a hero. Fuck moron of the week. This guy's my hero. All right. We've got some new Patreon subscribers, Joseph, Sorong, Ben.

And over at PayPal, we have Simon, Michael, Stephen C and Jason and Stephen T. Thank you very much for your various generations, various, very generous donations. Yes. Yes. It's a bitch. Life is a bitch. But thank you guys very much.

Those are very generous donations. Thank you. There are also various generations. Jesus Christ. Got a little follow up to last week. Someone was asking us about those services that you could get to go through and remove yourself from public databases.

Mm hmm. And I found Delete Me. Yes. And that's over at join delete me dot com. Link will be in the show notes. But it's a service where they will basically go through and scrub things for you. And I found a bunch of them and they were all ridiculously priced. Like, you know, they'll create fake websites for you to get your name bumped out of search results for things.

This is just them going through and basically scrubbing you. And it's pretty affordable. It's one hundred and twenty nine bucks a year for one person per year. Two people. It's two twenty nine a year. And then it goes up from there. But it it looks decent. I haven't tried it yet.

So caveat emptor, but it's been reviewed by some pretty big ones. I think I first found this over at CNET and they said it was decent, but that's CNET. And your mileage may vary. Yes, it's a, you know, another subscription model, which drives me crazy.

But if they do what they say on the tin, I think it would actually be worth it. Well, this is like human powered, so I can understand why it's a subscription. It's not. It's not automatic. Yep. Yeah. All right. And over at Twitter about everybody in the world sent us articles about the hurricane that's about to hit Florida and how Florida is gathering electric scooters before Dorian sends them airborne, because, yes, that could be a problem.

Yeah, yeah. Light enough to be blown around and slammed into things. And with the batteries exploding, they could just be bombs. That's really that would be bad. That would be bad. So it's nice that they're leaving the city to do it, that the companies themselves aren't really helping too much. And yeah, yeah, we'll see what they do.

They just don't want their property to be destroyed. I'm sure. And Cookie and Nathan Sage both sent us a little bit of money. And this is a it's a tweet from a fairly unsavory character. But but Kiwi bots, rolling robots that deliver burritos and smoothies, have become a fixture on UC Berkeley's campus thanks to their creepy, cute faces and low delivery prices.

But while the robots appear to be anonymous, the San Francisco Chronicle reports they're actually operated by remote workers in Colombia who make two dollars an hour. AI is people. Yes. And the best part about this is the second image, which shows a Fred from Scooby Doo and the mystery machine capturing a bad guy.

And over the bad guy's face, who's wearing a mask, it says AI and he pulls off the mask and says, exploited developing world workers. Yeah, that is the best thing ever. OK, and AJ sends us another one. Hashtag AI is people local convenience store called AI by market.

The only remotely cutting edge tech is the ability to pay with WeChat money, assuming the AI is the person behind the till. Exactly. And Derek writes in, so Lyft scraped some money from my account over six hundred dollars in two days. No recourse, only to contact Chase to take the hit.

Lyft doesn't care if you've been hacked. Lyft doesn't care about anything, about anything. It's OK. We know that. Yes. And Adam writes in, you guys would be less political. I listen to you guys again. Well, OK. If there was less politics and tech, we'd be less political.

Yes, I also think English is a second language. I think so, too. Yes. Jim writes, here's one for your favorite AI subject. The government is going to use Alexa, Google and Fitbit and Apple data and AI to flag potentially violent people. This is an article on Gizmodo and it's called the plan to use Fitbit data to stop mass shootings is one of the scariest proposals yet.

I don't know if I would call it scary. I would call it stupid. Yes. They want to create an agency called Harpa, a health care counterpart to the Pentagon's research and development armed DARPA. They will reportedly collect volunteer data from a suite of smart devices, including Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echoes and Google Homes in order to identify neuro neurobehavioral signs of someone heading towards a violent explosive act, which, of course, is stupid.

But unfortunately, it seems to be getting traction in government where they don't understand anything. I do like this, particularly this last quote, the proposed data collection goes beyond absurdity when they mentioned the desire to collect Fitbit data. I'm unaware of any study linking walking too much and committing mass murder. Yeah.

As for the other technologies, what are these people expecting? Alexa, tell me the best way to kill a lot of people really quickly. Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too. I'm like, OK, how the hell are you going to glean anything from Fitbit data? Period. Yes. I guess the new watches do have, you know, geo tracking on them so that you can get actual GPS data and things like that.

But, you know, is it opt in? I don't know. Yes. And here's the thing. Yeah. If Harper fails, they also have plans for Groucha, Chica, Gama and Zeppa. So we can we can hit all the Marx Brothers if we have to just to get this through Congress.

God, I need the sound effect for a drum shot. And right film, sleep, repeat, writes in, hey, guys, what's your view of Ecosia? I understand it's a Bing algorithm based, but it plants trees. So this is a search engine that if you use it, we'll plant trees for you.

I don't need a search engine that plants trees. I need a search engine that actually returns results. And Bing is not that. Thank you. You're welcome. Story late, but I got you. Now, we've covered Ecosia on the show before, and it's it's a fairly silly concept.

But it is what it is. Yes. Over at GOG.show, Steve writes in. Hey, guys, I'm the guy that hangs out in forums and posts nothing but love this podcast. I had to say something. You're on the top of my podcast playlist. I just bumped my recurring PayPal payment to eight dollars a month.

I we appreciate it. I would do more. But right now, the least is a one dollar an episode. I'm also a grumpy old geek. I'm 47. Work in tech. And in most cases, you guys are spot on. There are some occasional differences, but I beat NASCAR says it best. Differences are healthy.

There lies the scope for inquiry. And in inquiry lies the scope for learning. Differences turn unhealthy only when we make them the cause for hatred. Our biggest difference is music, Brian. In the 90s, where you went with alternative, I went with thrash. So it'd be awesome if I could get a shout out to fucking Slayer.

There you go. All right. Shout out to fucking Slayer. Hey, friend of the show. Mike is a huge fan of that sort of stuff. It's all good. Everybody can listen to whatever they want. I like the $8 a month. I think that's a great pledge for everybody. A buck an episode. Come on. That's way less than coffee these days. Seriously. Especially if it's one of those spiced lattes that we're coming back into season on.

The pumpkin spice latte. Don't be so basic, Jason. Oh, sorry. Sorry. You have noticed that it is Halloween already. I know. It's September 3rd. Even though it's 95 degrees outside, it's Halloween. Everywhere you go. I'm like, come on, guys. Really? No.

Oh, God. Tom writes in, greeting geeks from Connecticut, the state of confusion. In episode 373, Jason was talking about his camera setup. If you've already taken your home security to the next level, check out a great piece of software called Blue Iris and a great forum called IP Cam Talk. I quickly went from one camera with Blue Iris running on a spare PC to wiring up six cameras on the exterior of the house, a PoE switch, and a big old NAS.

Typical of any geek hobby, it wasn't cheap, but I've had lots of fun managing it and getting fellow geeks set up on their own setup. So, yeah, it gets into some of the technical details here. So, yeah, cool. Yeah, I wish I could have wired cameras. It's just not my house.

If it was my house, then we would totally have wired cameras. We'd have turrets on the roof with lasers. Yeah, if I had my own house, oh, the fun I would have. But thanks for the software recommendation. I'll check out Blue Iris because that will work with my other cameras.

Perfect. And John Jones writes in, episode 373, I do not see the camera recommendation over the ring camera in the notes section. Is it a Logitech? What model with a pan and rotate with zoom? So, I screwed up last week and I forgot to put them in. So, the one with the pan and tilt is the Amcrest Pro HD 1080p.

It's an older model. You can get these for about $58 right now, but it changes every time I log in. So, the link will be for that in the show notes. The other camera, which is the really nicer set, is the Logitech Circle 2. That has the really good video quality. The Amcrest has really good video quality, too, but it's not as good as the Circle 2.

So, it's two different systems. I've got three different systems in the house. I've got Logitech, Circle 2, and regular circles. Then I've got the Amcrest cameras, and I've got the shitty ring cameras. So, links for the Logitech Circle 2 and Amcrest cameras will be in the show notes. But I recommend if you go to Amazon and look for the Amcrest ones, it will say that there is a newer model available.

So, it's higher res and looks a little different, but it does the same thing. Sleep Too Little writes us, it's been about five months since I deleted my Facebook, and I wanted to see if I could get back in. It seems I could, but I have to confirm my identity via code being sent to the phone I no longer have, or I can upload my photo ID.

What the fuck? Let me think here. My options are passport, driver's license, marriage certificate, or national ID card. They will keep the ID for more than 30 days, but no more than a year. Sucky Zucky can Sucky My Zucky before I give them that. Why the fuck isn't my account deleted? I will sacrifice my happiness in the name of your grumpiness.

Long live GOG. Your account's not deleted because they jacked the time up for deletion. Yep, the time for deletion is up now. Yeah, I think it's six months, so you've missed it by that much. Yeah, and actually, I don't actually blame them for having to have some sort of actual ID once you, because you set your phone, and if you don't have the phone anymore, then that's a problem.

I mean, you know, they've got to do something to verify it's you. Yeah, actually, they do. And I guess they could have done it with email address. I said, yeah, they could do it with email, but yeah, they don't. Yeah, no, they don't. Here's the deal. You're better off without Facebook.

Yeah, so Sucky Sucky can, yeah, I like Sucky Sucky can suck my Sucky. All right. Alexandra writes in. I don't know if it's Alexandra or Alexandre. I'm not sure. Alexandra. Yes, we'll go with that.

Hey, guys, so I heard you about not having a designer and whatnot. This may not be much, but check out this little design I made for y'all. Feel free to use it for anything you want, including merchandise, free of charge, of course. I really hope you like it, and he sent us a couple links to, the one I really love is he's got a cup logo there, and he made my avatar much bigger than yours.

Thanks. Thanks, dude. We know who you like on the show, and he did an affinity design. Nice. Thank you. We will endeavor to get around to something about this at some point, hopefully. Yep. Yep. Amanda writes in. Jason, thank you for posting the upload you use for Mac.

This pointed me to some very useful stuff, and I appreciate the input. Cool grumpings. You're welcome. Oh, you're very welcome, Amanda. D Roar writes in. Short version. I hate Apple Face ID. Don't rush to upgrade your iPhone. So many situations that fingerprint is preferred and Face ID won't work.

My iPhone XS is the first iPhone upgrade I regret doing, and I had them all. So he's got it, and he's just saying that it's easier sometimes to just leave it on the counter and put your finger on it, which I agree, because otherwise you have to pick it up and look at it.

I know first world problems and all, but I don't know. Well, thank you, D Roar. Yeah, I want one. So just going to go with that. All right. Thank you. Jason's not fond of listening to anyone, in case you hadn't noticed on this show. I like to make my own mistakes, thank you very much.

And make them you do. Yes, in spades. Tree writes in, or try, not sure which way, not affiliated with anything related to Worm. If you're interested in a great sci-fi book, then this might be your style. It's from the perspective of a true AI, and it's Crystal Society by Max Harms.

There's no way that that's the author's real name. No, it's a great name, though. It is a great name, and we'll have the link in the show notes. It's a completely free book that you can read online. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any e-book download version of it, so I'm not going to be sitting on my browser and reading. Yeah, yeah.

He should have something out there. Yep. PDF, at least. Yeah, seriously. Just give us a PDF. Morgan writes in, hello, Grumps. First off, I want to thank you for introducing me to Opera and Privacy.com. I've been using Safari and Chrome my whole life and had never experienced the wonders of an ad blocker.

My life has been changed. I forgot to use the GOG promo code when signing up for Privacy.com. So sorry. Well, you missed out on five bucks. Thanks a lot, Morgan. God, the only thing that keeps us going. He said, while talking to a network admin about the wonders of Opera that I had recently discovered, he told me about another web browser called Brave.

I was wondering if you guys had ever heard of it and if you knew if it's any better than Opera. I'm still migrating from Safari, so I'd rather not migrate again just to see if it has better benefits. Thanks, you guys, for the great show and the help. P.S. Deliveroo. We have tried Brave. We talked about it on the show a while back. It's almost there.

Not quite, but almost. Yeah. Doesn't do a lot of the audio stuff, but. By the way, Morgan, you can actually test out a browser without having to migrate all the way. That's what we did with Firefox recently. We just loaded it up and see how it ran on some of our favorite sites. We didn't move everything over.

Yeah, I just imported the bookmarks because all my passwords are in 1Password, so that just migrated over. Spoiler alert, Firefox ain't there yet either. But yeah, I mean, these things are coming along. I give Brave maybe another year and it'll be, I think it'll be up to snuff.

All right. Eric, the accountant, writes us. Hey, Grumps & Co., I just wanted to send a thank you. I am reactivating an old domain and wanted to snatch up the .org and .net equivalent, so I gave Hover a try. The pricing is great, the UI is great, and the free privacy options will save me countless calls and junk mail solicitations over the next few weeks.

I'll be moving my hoard of domains over to Hover over the next couple months. I hope you used our promo code. Yes. Thank you, Eric, the accountant. Andrew writes in. My little homie immediately reminded me there's some brilliant stuff on YouTube combining My Little Pony cartoons and Wu-Tang songs.

My little Wu-Tang and shame on the N-word has to be the best thought you might enjoy. I was hoping you were going to get that one to read to see what you were going to do. I thought I had a time, so you were going to get it, but nope. Yeah, you killed one of the stories, so there you go. My fault.

Harold Kumar writes in. Hey, Grumpies, what do you think about this news? And this is a link to the Economic Times or in the India Times, government notices an issue in TikTok's shared chat notices. It's from my home country, India, whose techies Jason does not like a bit, but that might be because of his implicit bias from some of his interactions with the work he has seen from developers here.

That's exactly it. They made shit code and ruined my life. So, yes. It's interesting to see that all these media companies claim they are just a platform and so does TikTok. Yeah, well, why wouldn't they? As long as they can get away with just being a platform, that's what they're going to do. So this shouldn't be too surprising, sadly.

He also says that you should go for an iPhone XR. He came from the Android world and he was a huge Samsung Note fan. But after all the fire issues and new Note being so expensive, I switched to Apple XR. It has a long battery life, same as the Note phablet. Which has a much bigger battery.

It feels sturdy with all aluminum body as any premium phone should. I don't use Face ID as I travel in China and I don't want anyone to just unlock my phone by just putting it against my face. But I tried it and it works well with and without beard. Nothing you need to worry about there, Jason. It's even a sweeter deal if you buy it in Asia as you get a dual SIM phone.

So you can just have one phone for work and personal SIM cards. There you go. Yeah, if I don't shave for three months, I just look like an old Italian woman. Don't have to worry about a beard. Anyway, it's interesting because the government in India has taken issue with TikTok. And so they're actually saying, no, the stuff that you're trying to pull here means that you're not a platform.

So what's it going to be, guys? What's it going to be? 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, which we got absolutely zero of this week.

Come on, guys. Get on that. Closing shout outs. I've got a little bit of a plug, a little plug for my shout out this week. It's called The Club. My plug is for The Club. And it's a little podcaster hangout that I made using Mighty Networks.

And it's just like a little cool group hangout for people who are into podcasting and want to learn or want to teach. And you can come and just hang out if you're a podcaster. It's a pretty blank slate right now as we're ramping up. I'm just turning it on tonight. I'm looking and I'm seeing, why should you join me? And it says coming soon.

So I have no reason to join yet. No, I haven't published the landing page yet. That's why it's not up yet. I still have to finish publishing the landing page, but we've got a couple of people in there already. We're trying to seed it with some things and topic starters and all that stuff.

But if you're a podcaster, it's free. Absolutely free. No tracking. No ads. I pay for it out of my own pocket because it comes from podcast school's budget. And it's just I want a place where we can all hang out. That's not behind somebody's paywall that is trying to sell you some snake oil.

So it's just come on by. Have some fun with us. And they're there. And that game where you're all hanging out in. Oh, we still have that. Yes. The Clash Royale clan. We still have that. And the clan name is GOG.show. And if you ask me that on Twitter after hearing this, I will. I will.

I will just have an aneurysm. I won't do anything bad. I will just have an aneurysm. It's mainly the reason I brought it up again. I can't wait for all the tweets. Yes. Clash Royale clan is GOG.show. Until next time, I'm Jason Filippo. And I'm Brian Schilmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks.

To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Puzzles 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 recurring donation by just going to GOG.show and click that PayPal button. Recommended donation is $8 a month.

Yes, that's a good amount. It seems right to me. Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 374. There you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy.

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