389: Big Mac is Watching!
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Summary
In this episode, the hosts discuss technology news, media, and listener feedback. Topics include customer tracking, political advertising, delivery traffic, streaming entertainment, privacy, and workplace technology.
- The hosts discuss California fires, evacuation preparations, and a podcast hosting change that may make old episodes appear new.
- They examine Siri recording controls, blockchain, and McDonald’s use of customer data and license plate readers.
- They cover Facebook employees’ objections to political ad policies, Elon Musk’s defamation case, and the effects of same-day delivery on New York City.
- They discuss Alphabet’s interest in Fitbit, Spotify’s podcast strategy, machine learning in banking, and employee stock options.
- The media discussion includes The Mandalorian, horror films, wireless earbuds, and Netflix’s playback-speed experiment.
- Later topics include facial recognition for age verification in Australia, sportsmanship, scooter rules, algorithmic bias, and Uber rides.
- Listener messages address a ransomware attack affecting TrialWorks, HireVue interviews, privacy, backups, and Lyft’s job access program.
Key moments
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California fires and podcast housekeeping
The hosts discuss fire preparations and warn that a hosting change may make older episodes appear new.
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Data, advertising, and delivery
The discussion covers blockchain, McDonald’s customer tracking, Facebook’s political ads, and delivery traffic.
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Entertainment and wireless earbuds
The hosts discuss The Mandalorian, horror films, earbuds, and Netflix’s playback-speed experiment.
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Age verification and sportsmanship
Topics include facial recognition for age verification, sports stories, scooters, algorithmic bias, and listener feedback.
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Uber rides and listener mail
The hosts compare recent Uber rides and begin reading listener messages.
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TrialWorks ransomware attack
A listener’s message leads to discussion of disrupted legal case management software and data recovery.
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Hiring, privacy, and access
Listener messages cover HireVue, browser privacy, drones, backups, and Lyft’s job access program.
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Reviews and closing
The hosts read reviews, acknowledge birthdays, and share ways to contact and support the show.
Full transcript
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This episode 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. Aw, poor baby, gotta cough. We had some fires. Yeah, still do. And probably more to come. Yes, but for the first time this year, they actually impacted me.
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I packed up the family and went down to Orange County yesterday because the air quality here was so bad and schools were shut down and my wife's office was closed because of it. It was crazy. Yeah, I was really glad that it was you, not me this time. I was just getting over fire lung and I'm like, oh, not again.
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Yeah, it seems all right today, so we'll see what's going to happen. Knock on wood. Yeah, knock on wood. It says we've got winter, spring, summer, fire. These are the new seasons in California. No, I hate to break it to you, Brian. It's fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, bad.
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Yes, but there's no climate change. No. No, none whatsoever. No. So hopefully in the next couple of days, we'll still be here. I am packed up and ready to go. I also, yeah, that's what yesterday did to me was I realized I need to get everything kind of together. And I did, like drives and the fireproof safe because, you know, fire is fire and it's not always fireproof.
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So many things are just kind of like I now have the mental map of everything to grab and throw in the car to get out of here. Here's what you do, though. You have to run through it, physically run through it. Well, I did yesterday. Okay, okay. I didn't know if you packed everything up yesterday. Yeah, we thought better safe than sorry and thought it was a good, you know, life lesson.
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Not any chance of the fire actually getting to us, but might as well be prepared and know what to do. So we went through the mental list of all the things that we want to grab and save if that happens, and I loaded them all up in the car. So, yeah. Yeah, for you, fire is probably not going to be what gets you.
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It's going to be the earthquake and the tsunami are what's going to get you. Like I told my wife yesterday when she was freaking out about it, I was like, if that fire actually makes it to us, it will be the biggest disaster that's ever happened ever because multimillionaires' houses have to burn down.
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All of Third Street Promenade has to burn down. The Santa Monica Pier will burn down. Like, it's not getting to us anytime soon. And also, you know, ocean right there. So we're okay. Yeah, yeah. I'm not, don't have such luck. No, you don't. No, I'm right by Topanga Canyon, which can go up at any second.
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So anyway, enough of that. Yes. I do want to have a little bit of housekeeping here. A feed change announcement. We're going to be switching hosting providers soon for this podcast, which means. Oh, God, not again. It means a lot of emails. Every show is going to look like it's new.
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There's nothing we can do about it. Mark all as red. It's pretty simple, people. No, the problem is they have unique identifiers. It's not as simple as that. That's why I'm making an announcement. What you need to do is make sure that you limit the number of episodes that can be downloaded at a given time.
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If you have it set to unlimited, it will download 400 almost episodes to your phone or your thing before it shuts off. On the plus side, that'll help our stats. On the downside, we pay for bandwidth now. Oh, no. Yeah, that's why I care.
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That's the only reason I care. Please, pretty please, with sugar on top, just to make everybody's lives happier, just set it to, like, three. Three is all you need. If you're not caught up by three episodes, then, man, you're slacking. You're slacking already. But, yeah, that's coming in the next, like, two to three weeks.
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So I'm going to be making announcements because I know that people are a couple episodes behind. So it's on its way. Got a little follow-up here. Finally, iOS and iPadOS 13.2 is out. Yay. Yay, we get new emojis.
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Yay. The little otter emoji. It's so cute. I did not see that. But I do know you can do interracial handshakes now. Ooh, how fancy. Fancy. I finally got my Memoji set up this morning. Does it look like an old Italian grandma, like you always say?
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No, it does not. It looks like me. The funny part is, it's like every time I went to go make it before, when you go to hairstyles, the first hairstyles are all women. And I'm like, dude, where do you set the male and female? And I didn't really even figure out that, oh, it's everything is in there.
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Yeah. And you can change the shape of the face and all that stuff. I'm like, oh. So I spent, you know, I spent the entirety of iOS 13 and 13.1 all the way up to 13.2 not having my Memoji. So I missed out. But the thing that is relevant for us, and the reason I mentioned this, is because now you can tell Apple to stay away from my Siri recordings.
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That's a plus. Yes. So you can opt out or opt in to sharing your Siri. And I opted in. I opted out. Because I would like Siri to get better. I don't use Siri. Oh, well, there you have it then. Tomato, tomato.
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Yes. And I found this great article over at Wired called, What's Blockchain Actually Good For Anyway? For now, not much. Blockchain. Ooh. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. So this is a great article on the blockchain.
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And it kind of drives home where we were about a year ago with blockchain fatigue. And, you know, how do you want to get funding this week? Put sprinkle some blockchain on it. That's right. This week it's AI. So in about, you know, nine months, we'll have this same exact article backing up everything that we said now about AI.
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So, you know, we're your podcast from the future. We are your podcast from the future. And speaking of AI. In the year 2000. Little Conan O'Brien flashback there. Okay. We talked about McDonald's and their new AI initiatives.
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And we were trying to figure out what the hell they were doing. You know, it's like, okay, are they trying to voice recognition on the ordering is what we talked about. But we missed something very, very important. Yes. License plate readers. They should be required by law to say that they're doing that.
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It's a private company. It's a private company. So, I mean, you're on their property. They can do whatever they want. I know. But you're in public. Doesn't it just feel wrong? Well, here's. I'm not loving it. You're not loving it. That's right. And I'm thinking now, it's like, okay, McDonald's has presents on just about every street in America.
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Yeah. And so, on that big Mickey D's sign out front, they can put license plate readers so they can see you driving down the street. They can see how often you pass them by instead of pulling in. Well, even better. Here's what I'm thinking. They can buy some of those electronic billboards in between the McDonald'ss.
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So, as you drive by, they can totally minority report you saying, hey, Filet-O-Fish, Big Fries, and, you know, a root beer floats on sale at the next McDonald's because they know that that's the order that you usually get and, you know, and pull you back in.
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But, yeah. I believe the plural is actually McDonald-i. McDonald-i? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And I just, my mind was blown up. Like, why did we not think of this when we were talking about it? Did not realize. Well, I don't, first off, I don't lump license plate readers in with AI because that's a very different thing.
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True. That's data collection. But, yeah, the fact that they're actually doing that terrifies me. That's just wrong. It just feels so wrong. Yeah. It feels minority report. Like, we're there now. Oh, yeah. I see. Once you're there, you're kind of screwed.
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Yeah. I like this. Like other companies, the goal is to mirror the ability of Amazon to deeply know its customers and adjust interactions with them accordingly. You just grow to expect that in other parts of your life, why should it be different when you're ordering at McDonald's? This comes from the chief information officer.
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We don't think food should be any different than what you buy on Amazon. Well, it all tastes like cardboard. That's true. That's true. So, I mean, here's the thing. It's been in front of us the whole time. They've been hiding in plain sight. It's not Big Brother. It's Big Mac. Big Mac is watching.
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In the news.
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Once again, apparently the only bulwark we have against big tech is the employees. We've seen Amazon employees rise up. We've seen Google employees rise up and change policy within their own companies. Now it's Facebook. Now it's Facebook. Finally.
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Thank you, Facebook staff. Facebook staff is rising up and demanding that Zuckerberg limit lies in political ads. They are not cool with this new policy of, hey, if you pay for it, you can lie. So, that's good. Not too many people, at least some.
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There are like a couple thousand employees at Facebook that have signed an open letter to Zuckerberg saying, not cool. We don't like this. We got to do some fact checking. They've even supplied some suggestions about what to do about it.
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So, good for them. Thank you, Facebook employees. Yeah. Was it 0.001%? But, hey, it's a start. It's a start. Yes. So, the letter says free speech and paid speech are not the same thing. Our current policies on fact checking people in political office or those running for office are a threat to what FB stands for.
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First off, I'd like to know what exactly does FB stand for? Money. It does stand for money. But, you know, it's open communication is what they really want. So, well done, employees. I'm happy about this because, honestly, this is – we are in such a dystopian future already.
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This is insane. Like, the whole stance that, like, if you pay us, you can do whatever you want. But, you know, if you don't pay us, then you have terms of service is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. And I'm glad that employees are fucking realizing this. I know.
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We've been wondering where they've been hiding. After all the Google walkouts and the Microsoft, you know, petitions and all this stuff, we're like, what's going on over at Facebook? Well, apparently, finally, this is what – this is the straw that's broken the camel's back. Yes, finally, they've looked beyond their paycheck.
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You know why? Because since Google had to fire all those people that were protesting, there are openings at Google now. So, Facebook people think, I can protest now because I've got another place to go. It's just, you know, the Silicon Valley, you know, people swap going on up there. Yeah, pretty much. Now, we've talked about Elon for a while and the pedo guy is back in the news.
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Well, he's going to court. Okay. He is going to court. He tried to get the suit dismissed because Vernon Unsworth, who is the guy that he called a pedo guy, is deciding to sue. Yes. Okay. And a judge here in Los Angeles said, no, we're not going to dismiss it.
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You are going to actually have to go to court. Well, he did write an email saying, I fucking hope he sues me. Yep. Now he is. Right, and you shall receive. I swear, I mean, this just cracks me up. Having run social media for artists for how many years, you should not have access to your own Twitter account.
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I just love how he's got little billionaire syndrome. He does. It's just insane. Like, take away his damn Twitter account and just let him run his companies and do the good things that he does. Now, over at the New York Times, there's a really interesting article about, you know, we've talked a bit recently about how Amazon is basically screwing itself and lost quite a lot of value because they're cutting themselves under the foot to do same-day delivery for like 99-cent store items.
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And there's more to this problem. The New York Times looks specifically at New York City to deliver Amazon orders and countless others from businesses that sell over the internet. The very fabric of major urban areas around the world is being transformed in New York City, where more than 1.5 million packages are delivered daily, shows the impact that this push for convenience is having on gridlock, roadway safety, and pollution.
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Well, there's another thing that they're not doing is delivering the goddamn packages. I ordered something for delivery in New York yesterday and same-day delivery, and I got a notice this morning that it is finally shipped. Thanks, Amazon. Well, I don't think that's a bad thing. I think we can all relax a little bit about this same-day delivery stuff unless you really need it.
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I would actually like an option. You know what Amazon should do? And I would support this 100%. Okay, you're offering same-day delivery if I want it, or next-day delivery. What if there was a little option click that I could put there and say, you know what? I don't need this right away.
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Get this to me within a week and plant a tree for me. Well, they do have that option, and you get credits on different things. I don't want credits. I don't... Okay. Plant a tree. Do something good for the environment. You know, then they got to deliver the trees. Come on. That's not...
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That's not how this works. I suppose that's true. So anyways, this story went on to say that delivery trucks operated by both UPS and FedEx double park on streets and block buses and bike lanes. I see that here as well. They racked up more than 4,000...
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471,000 parking violations. It's very early morning for me. Brian can't speak. Very early morning. Parking violations, which is insane. It's a 34% increase from 2013. You know, blocking up all the different ways into New York City, all the bridges, that's become the most congested interchange in the country, finally taking over from the 405 and the 101 here in LA.
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Thank God. That doesn't mean the 405 and the 101 still doesn't suck, Brian. No, no, it doesn't. So when you combine all this next, you know, same-day delivery and all these crazy vans and trucks and all that stuff everywhere with Uber and all that sort of stuff, I mean, traffic has basically come to a complete shutdown in Manhattan, which is insane.
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And you know what? Same thing that we've been complaining about, or at least I've been complaining about with Bird and the scooters and all of this. All of this stuff has happened without... City planners have been left in the dust. Same thing like with our laws, with technology and all that sort of stuff.
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City planners have to catch up to this sort of stuff. There has to be some regulations. They have to figure out how to make this work. You need to work with your local governments if you're a business. And for some reason, that's gone by the wayside and businesses just say, to hell with it. We're just going to do what we're going to do.
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Well, they pay their taxes. They pay their parking fees. And they own legal trucks. They can do that. Well, they're going to have more taxes and more fees, apparently, because that is the main way that cities are going to start to figure out how to deal with this sort of stuff. Much like London, where you have to pay a tax if you're going to drive your car in.
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They're going to start doing this with delivery trucks. You're going to have to pay an extra tax to be able to come in to the cities. Well, Brian, you know there is a solution for this. What's that? Drone delivery. Come on, no traffic. And we'll all be deaf within two years. Not if you buy those new Amazon Echo earbuds that have noise cancellation on them.
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We're all going to have to wear those. There's the solution. Telling you, man. It's a technological world. You've got to get used to it. I think that they need to replace the trucks with giant vacuum tubes, just like the old days. Oh, the old banks. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Everybody gets a little tube in their house.
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You know, everybody loves that satisfying when something's delivered. Yeah, that would be so cool. That would that's like, you know, the 50s sci-fi. Everybody would have vacuum tube delivery. Vacuum room. That's what we need. That'd be amazing.
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So I'm down with that. I am definitely down with that. And also, by the way, Amazon does have the one thing where you can select your delivery day. Well, they will group all your packages into one day. Yes, but not into one box. Well, you know, hey, man, baby steps. Hey, environment steps.
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You can get 17 different boxes delivered to you on Monday if you so choose. Yeah. And speaking of feeling like it's 1950, this this blew my mind. Google searched to stop indexing Flash content in late 2019. What? What?
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Who knew that they were still trying to index? Well, there are still sites out there that use Flash. Why? Amazingly enough. Does anybody actually go there? Are these just abandoned? No. It's just abandoned. Who the hell uses Flash?
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Oh, God. This is just it's just crazy. But yeah, they're going to be they're going to be finally shutting that down. Day late and a dollar short. But I wish they would have I wish they never would have made that deal with Adobe way back in 2008 to be able to index Swift's because I hate Flash.
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I've always hated Flash. I really enjoyed developing it. I have to say I really did enjoy developing it. It was fun. I know. I was. Yeah. You like the pretty pictures on the front. I was the back end guy. Give me a database any day.
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Well, speaking of abandoned technology, except for you, Jason, we've been wondering what the hell Fitbit is going to do for a living, as it were, because, you know, basically people stopped using Fitbit because you've got your Apple Watches and thousands of other options. And we knew they were starting to try to transfer more to a B2B model where they were going to do health care and all that sort of stuff.
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But they're hemorrhaging cash left, right and center. You know, switching and pivoting is expensive, as it were. It is. So they are looking for some cash. And apparently right now they're quite serious about maybe selling themselves. And Alphabet is interested.
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You know, I'm fine with that. That's totally fine with me. It's funny. I'm not the only one that has a Fitbit. My roommate got one. She finally jumped on the, you know, the one household, the whole train with Fitbit. She is. She loves the thing. She absolutely loves it. It gives her notifications.
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She gets up and walks around the house so she can get her steps in by the hour. She's having a blast with it. I go in, like in the morning, I can peek over her shoulder. She's got her Fitbit dashboard up. You know, I think Fitbit still has legs. I really do. So I hope that this will regenerate them.
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Well, it would actually be a really good fit because Google does not have a good marketplace right now for wearables. And this would make a lot of sense for both companies, actually. And they can call it the alpha bit. Ooh, look at you. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not even a dad. And I got a dad joke in there.
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Yeah, you did. I'm impressed. And I threw this story in here mostly because I want to, you know, you are Mr. Podcast. So let's hear what you think about this. And Gadget reports that Spotify's podcast strategy is starting to pay off. They're basically saw exponential growth in podcasts and they're going to up their buy-in.
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We're here, Spotify, for exclusive podcasts. Yeah. Yeah. Still waiting. Still waiting for that call, Spotify. Still waiting. I looked at our numbers on Spotify. They ain't all that. They are growing. But, you know. They are growing. I looked at it as well. Millimeters. Not by a lot.
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We're probably the only podcast in the world that is almost exclusively listened to on Overcast. Yeah, seriously. I know. Our Overcast stats are phenomenal. Yep. You hear that? Marco throws a few bones. We made you some money, damn it. We could be exclusive to you.
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Pay us. Yeah. Pretty sure Marco's not going to be shelling out the big bucks anytime soon. But it's interesting. It's good for podcasting, which I'm fine with. But, yeah, the fact that they, you know, they download you once and they're not a pass-through pisses me off.
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Yeah. That really bugs me. And, yeah, I don't know. Half of me is on the side of, yay, more podcasting. The other half of me is like, you fuckers are cheating. Because they get paid for premium content, which is supposed to go back to, you know, the musicians.
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I don't see a podcaster fund anywhere. Well, yeah, that's insanely wrong. They should be paying podcasters in the same rates, you know, pennies on the download as they do for musicians. And that's just wrong that they aren't doing that. That's the thing. We have the option of opting out of Spotify.
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We don't have to be on Spotify. But that's where... Well, also, to be fair, I mean, they are paying for the exclusivity, right? Like, it's not like musicians get a big paycheck up front. They just get paid for the stream. So I guess you take your money where you want it. Yeah. You got to go to Tidal if you want to get those exclusive checks.
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In HD. They're still a thing, aren't they, Tidal? Yeah, they are. I don't... They should pivot the podcast. Get the Wheezy and Yeezy podcast. Oh, can't wait. And I found a really good article about banks going all in on artificial intelligence.
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They are putting a lot of money into, of course, immediately, as soon as you get past the headline, machine learning strategies, not artificial intelligence. But this is a really good article saying we should be really worried about this because this is where our money is.
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And banks are incentivized to go a whole hog on machine learning because of all the ways financial products vary from most of the other things we buy. Consumers rarely pay for bank products like checking accounts or credit cards with one lump sum up front. The way we buy anything else. So when you open up a new financial product, the bank is typically in the hole from paying marketing or setup costs because I've always been swayed by billboards or ads to go open up a new bank account.
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And they have to dig their way out by nudging consumers towards whatever behaviors trigger the most fees or interest income for them. So once they figure out how to do that, much like McDonald's, we could get really screwed financially. Or if it's Wells Fargo, they could just create a bunch of bots that pretend to be you and give you service fees for it.
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Yes, that's true. Yeah. We'll see how this plays out. But yeah, banks, banks, not my friend. That's the funny thing is my sister is looking to buy a house right now and she's in upstate California. And I was sitting around with my wife and we were kind of discussing all that.
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And she's like, banks are never your friend. Nope. You know, as you're shopping for mortgages and all that sort of stuff, it's like they're not your friends. And you need to keep that in mind. Exactly. They're there to take your money. They're not there to help you. Yeah. I found that out several times the very hard way.
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Okay. This last one I found from Business Insider and this just struck a chord with me. Employees at companies like Vice and BuzzFeed are worried their equity is worthless as digital media's fortunes fade. This story basically is lifted from, you know, the boom, from the dot-com boom.
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Yep. We've gone through this already. Yep. They get their stock options. They think they're going to be gougabudgillionaires. And turns out after everybody else is paid and your, you know, your common stock comes up, well, there's nothing left in the coffers and the company's worthless anyway.
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Right. And then there's a whole, you know, just giant marketplace of people who are screwed. Yep. This happened in software and happened to me on several occasions. Yep. I still have, I have my Technorati stock in a frame and there's a little sticker on the bottom that says, in case of emergency, break glass.
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And I was going to, I was going to put it in the bathroom for toilet paper. Right. In case you ran out of teepee because that's all it's worth. And, you know, that's several thousand dollars that I had to pay out of pocket. For my options. Yeah. Yeah. And it just goes to zero. So I actually funded the company and got bupkis in return as well.
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There were a couple of times throughout my career when I was running my own company where I was considering packing it in and taking a job. And I went through the whole process of even interviewing and all that sort of stuff. And I always said, you know, stuff your options. I would like a bigger salary. And they always said no.
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And I always said no to the job. I was like, this stuff is not going to be worth anything. I want my money now. Yeah. A friend of mine at Technorati also basically took a, you know, less than half of what I was making, but got a giant bucket of options and shares and walked away with nothing as well.
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And it's like, man, that hurts. It really, really hurts. And it's funny because I read another article at Wired that I'm going to put in the show notes. I got to dig it back up where somebody was bitching. It's like, my company was just sold for $100 million. I had 1% equity in the company. I got paid zero.
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Nothing. Yep. Yep. It's the difference between preferred shares and common shares and what the overhang is on preferred shares and things like that. They find every way to screw you. Yeah. If you don't know those numbers, you know, you could have 10% and still get nothing.
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And on $100 million, you know, the common thinking is, oh, I should be getting $1 million if I have 1% of $100 million. You know, the lawyers get, you know, a nice chunk of that, the fees and all the closing out costs and all that stuff. So even there, you're looking at $75 million, and then after that, all the people with preferred stock get paid at premiums first.
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So, yeah, at the end of the day, if you have common stock in anything, it's very rare that you're going to get a payout, especially in a digital media company, which is, you know, running in borderline red all the time. Unless you're in the C-suite, take the money up front, people. Always.
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Media Candy. I saw this one last night, Brian, and I thought this would make your day. There's a new Mandalorian trailer, now with more Werner Herzog. Basically, all Werner Herzog in this trailer, but it looks phenomenal. This looks like gritty, dark Star Wars, which is the Star Wars I love.
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I watched the trailer this morning when I got up. I'm very excited about this. All right, November 12th, and it's going to have 10 episodes. Looking forward to it, and apparently the scuttlebutt is the first episode drops something major about the Star Wars universe, so much so that it's under wraps, and it's going to be a big gasp moment.
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Dun-dun-dun! I know, I'm excited. Okay, you've got to get up early and watch it, because the spoilers will be a-flowing, because people don't know how to use the fucking internet. Yeah. So I watched, since it's Halloween, I watched the movie Us. Oh, yeah, how was that?
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I wanted some horror in my life that wasn't the mainstream news. So I watched it, and, you know, I liked it. I liked it. It has, of course, a twist ending. I liked Get Out. That was good. Get Out was good.
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I think I actually like this better than Get Out. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. It still has that horror-slash-humor thing going on for part of it, but then it gets more horror-y as it goes. But I actually, it took me a while, because the twist ending kind of leaves you thinking a bit and going, hmm, and I don't know how I feel about this.
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And then after I sat with it for a day, I was like, that was actually really good. So if you're looking for a good horror movie that's not too crazy violent and bloody, there's, there's, you know, a lot of violence in it, but it's not like over the top. You know, we're not talking, we're not talking super gore here, but I enjoyed it.
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I think, I think you'll dig it. Just so when the kids and the wife go to bed, grab some wine, turn off all the lights, maybe wear, maybe wear your headphones. Yeah, I've actually got it. It's funny because I was just talking about this last night with my wife, because she said, hey, there's a new like Stephen King movie that's out, Dr. Sleep, which is kind of the follow-up to, oh my God, what's it called?
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The Shining. The Shining. Which I love the book and the movie looks really good. And she's like, well, do you want to go see it? And I looked at her, I was like, you hate horror movies. I haven't seen a horror movie in 12 years because of you. And she's like, yeah, I don't want to go see it.
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I'm like, so I'm going to wait until it streams. I haven't even seen the two It movies yet. And, you know, I love that stuff. I love horror movies and I love Stephen King. So I got to get on my game. And I told my wife, you got to go to bed earlier because, you know, I need a good two hours.
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Well, I'm telling you, just get headphones, man. Get some wireless headphones and sit on the couch and crank it up because I ran into this problem with us. My roommate came out because I was watching it, you know, she'd been in bed for a while and, you know, screaming and stabbing and gurgling and all that stuff woke her up.
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She's like, what the fuck are you watching? I'm trying to sleep. So you have to, you kind of have to have your headphone games on when you have kids and wives in the house. Because even if your kid just hears it in the background, you could be scarring him for life. You never know. Yeah, you never know. All right. And speaking of headphones, Apple is continuing their game of playing catch up instead of innovating.
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The $249 AirPod Pros have been released and they will have noise cancellation in them and hands-free Siri. Yay. The battery life is the same. The battery life is the same, which means five hours for the first year and then nothing.
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Nothing. Yep. And they have dropped the replacement and repair costs on these puppies, too. So it's going to be going up quite a bit. Of course. So, of course, because there's more technology, man. You would think that by now they would figure out how to engineer these things so they could pop the battery out and pop a new one back in.
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But I guess it's just really not. I'm kind of not impressed with Apple with these things. I got to say, they were a game changer when they first came out because they were first to market, but they have not really improved them very much and everybody else's versions are getting better. Here's what I'm thinking. Now, correct me if you think I'm wrong here.
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Okay. These have been in development for quite some time, right? Right. Guess who was behind probably the design on these? Johnny Ive. Yep. Guess who's gone now? Johnny Ive. So let's put a fucking replaceable battery in them now. And let's put some ports back on the fucking computers.
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Yes, please. As I look over at my Frankensteinian bolt on my fucking Air pad. Yeah. Yeah. Mac Air. Mac Air. Whatever the hell they're called. Also, try to give them different names and not just slap a pearl on it when you want to charge more. Yeah.
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Be a little more inventive. We'll see. But yeah, I really miss ports on my Air so much. So the Amazon Echo Buds are coming tomorrow. They're released tomorrow. Oh, okay. All right. I think I hopefully will be getting mine tomorrow.
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I'm supposed to get them same day because I pre-ordered. I haven't got a shipping notice on it yet, so I'm guessing maybe not. I'm guessing you're not getting them. But the reviews are starting to come out. Okay. And I found the first review over at TechCrunch. All right. Well, I got a couple things to say to TechCrunch.
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First, proof your goddamn article. My God, this thing is full of typos. Not even spelling grammar mistakes. This is terrible. Let's start with number one. If you try to copy and paste the title, can we stay on the damn page? Oh, Jesus.
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Yeah. That is so annoying. But that alone. But second, don't do hardware reviews. You suck at them. You absolutely suck at them. They're like, meh. Okay. I like beats. Great.
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Okay. Thanks. Didn't really help me out on anything that I wanted to know about these before they arrived tomorrow. So, you know, if there was a good review that gone into great detail that I might say, oh, maybe I'll cancel these and just get some AirPod 2s. Nope. Nah, there was really nothing in here.
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And I looked at some of the other ones but didn't have time before the show. But I'm just like, you know what? I'm going to give them a shot. Why not? All right. I don't know what the return policy is on used earpods or earbuds. They take everything back. I'm sure they'll just dip them in some rubbing alcohol and ship them off to the next person.
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True. That's why I want to get them on release day. Unless I get the review copies back that somebody else had. I'm actually very much looking forward to your review on these because I am kind of sick of my AirPods. And I'm all in on the Alexa, as I've said, for my house stuff.
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So, I'm very intrigued by these. If the battery stuff lasts... It's about the same as the AirPods. It's supposed to be five hours. Well, no. I don't mind the five-hour thing. I mean, a year from now. Oh, yeah. A year from now. So, I guess I'm going to have to wait a year to get the Echo Buds because I'm going to want to know how that's going to work.
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Yeah. I'll let you know, Sue. You might want to get them sooner than later because, yeah. $249 for the AirPod Pros. I'm not getting AirPod Pros. I'm just not. No way. Because there's no plus for that for me at all. And, again, I just know they're going to be useless within a year or two.
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Yeah. What I'm really looking forward to is not having the ear sickles. I think that's really what I'm looking forward to. It's like, okay, something different, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And these come with different ways to keep them in your ear because I really haven't had a problem with AirPods falling out, but they just look silly.
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They do. They look silly. But so do all these big things. Like, you know, the Microsoft ones look ridiculous, even though they sound amazing. Yeah, I'm not going to get those. I thought about that. I'm like, I'll wait for the Microsoft ones, but no. I just, I'm not PC infrastructure at all anymore right now.
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Otherwise, I would get them because the battery life on them sounds amazing. All the reviews are stunning on them. Like most Microsoft products that aren't PCs, the reviews are amazing. Just nobody gets them. Yeah. Therein lies the rub. But they're still a trillion-dollar company, so they're doing okay.
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Now, this one's a head-scratcher. Netflix is experimenting to let you watch movies at 1.5x. Why is this a head-scratcher? You listen to everything at hyperspeed. Here's the thing. These are movies. Yeah. I will not watch a movie sped up.
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Ever. You know what? I think I might. Oh, Jesus. You and I might be very, because I'm an audio guy, right? Like, I love music. I like, I can't listen to audio sped up. But I'm not really that much of a movie guy. And I would totally watch, like, it at 1.5x speed so I can plow through it without, you know, going to bed at 2 in the morning.
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Oh, man. But you're still going to have the audio problem, because they're going to be talking like chipmunks. I know. Yeah. No. Jed Apatow, I'm with him on this. He's like, we give you guys nice things. Leave them as they were intended to be seen. Exactly how I feel about audio. We give you nice things.
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Listen to our podcast at normal speed. No, don't. You can listen to 3X if you want, as long as you listen to it, and go to hover.com slash GOG when you're done. Moron of the week. My moron of the week is Australia. We're going to talk about Australia for a second, because yesterday, Australia's Department of Home Affairs proposed to start scanning porn viewers' faces and match them up with government photos to verify their age.
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Wow. They're going to have, like, a database of O-faces. I know. I know. What the fuck are they thinking down there? That's insane. I mean, it just writes itself.
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I don't even have to say anything after that. We thought the UK was crazy. We thought the UK was crazy for having to go buy, like, a porn card at your local 7-Eleven, but these guys want to scan your face? They want to scan your face while you're going to a porn site. Wow. Are you kidding me? And, like, okay, what's it going to take to just wear a mask?
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I don't know. Look, I get it. Porn is all over the internet, and it's not the best thing in the world, as we're seeing from an entire generation of people that don't really understand sexuality. But, I mean, come on, people. Yeah. Here's the deal. Block Pornhub. Then you're done. That's 99.999% of everywhere anybody goes.
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You know? Anything that that company has, just block it. Be done with it. Right. Until they put it on the dark web, and then you have to go tour. Yeah. So, anyway, it's a little ridiculous and a little stupid. But it hasn't gone through Parliament yet, I guess.
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So, I don't know what they're thinking. But, also, I think that what they need to do is go get these new wank-proof t-shirts. Because scientists at Northwestern University, with the MIT and IBM Watson AI Lab, propose what they are calling adversarial t-shirts.
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And they have a printed image on them that evades person detectors, even when it's deformed by a person wearing it and changing position. Okay. It's like a big grid that has things on it. Oh, I thought this might be useful for Monica Lewinsky back in the day, but I guess not. No.
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Not quite the same wank-proof. No, not quite. Not quite. And they say that they are achieving success rates 79% and 63% from digital and physical. So, we'll see. We'll see. 79% in the digital, which means that they're doing facial recognition on pre-scanned data.
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And 63% if you're just wearing it and you get caught by a camera. And this is going up against the very popular YOLO V2 facial recognition stuff. All right. Yeah. Let's, you know, hope that these things will go. Or just wear a face mask and I don't know.
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We're going back to magazines. Everything old is new again. That's it. That's true. That's true. That's it. So, I have a couple of heroes of the week. Two of them come from sports. I love this story in particular. Soccer players halt a game and huddle around an opponent as she fixes her hijab.
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That's kind of cool. A soccer match in Jordan took an unexpected detour. One of the player's headscarves came undone. So, she was wearing her hijab to play. And when it came off during the game, she struggled to put it back on. And several women from the opposing team rushed to her side, effectively halting the game and shrouded her from the crowd with her bodies until she was able to fix it.
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That is sportsmanship. That is great sportsmanship. Very heartwarming. And something more heartwarming for, I think, you and I happened at the World Series. A double fisting World Series fan used his chest to block the home run ball rather than put down his beers.
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Good man. This was amazing. If you watch the video, he's holding his beers. He just sticks out his chest. The ball hits his chest and drops. And then he puts his beers down and gets the ball. Amazing. Very well done. Very well done. And finally, from non-sports heroes, I love this.
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I have not seen any of these myself, but the link is in the show notes. A comedian is covering California in fake posters, and they are absolutely brilliant. A Bolivian stand-up comedian named Jason Sanzes is putting around fake posters all over California. And I highly encourage you to check out our show notes and click on this link because these are awesome.
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Google, now hiring. No need to apply. We already have all your information. No parking yesterday. Signed, Time Cop. These are so good. Missing. Self-esteem. If found, please call. Ah, what's the point? Forget I said anything. Oh, my God.
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Oh, my God. Missing Jar Jar Binks. Let's fucking keep it that way. Lost cell phone. If found, please call. Oh, fuck. Oh, man. Oh, man. These are fantastic. So good.
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Mars. Still more water than California. Oh, these things go on forever. I love this guy. I love this guy, too. Feedback loop. Sadly, no Patreon subscribers this week. Dear Patreon, we have a problem.
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Nobody likes Patreon anymore. People are bailing on it. At least they're thankfully moving over to PayPal. Yes. Over at PayPal, we have Ryan, David, Andrew, Scott, Michael, and Simon. Thanks, everybody. We appreciate it. We do. And over at Twitter, Derek wrote in all the motivation you need.
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Wisdom of Chopra. Wisdomofchopra.com is down for me at the moment, but you can get samples at their Twitter account. Yes. Wisdom at Wisdom of Chopra. And this is from a Deepak Chopra generator. Yes. Very funny.
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When I first saw it, I'm like, that guy's a hack. I'm not going to link to that. Oh, never mind. I get it. Yes. It's a joke. Yes. And Matthew sent us an article, Fishing for Scooters in the Shadow of the Eiffel Tower. And it turns out Paris has the same problem, where they have a lot of scooters and a big body of water running through the middle of town.
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So everybody's throwing their scooters in the Seine. Don't do that, guys. Don't do that. Matt B. also sent us a link, Vive la France, and this is about they're recognizing the problem and they're introducing new rules to restore tranquility. So well done, France.
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Yeah. There's a lot of rules that they're putting in, speed, age, docklessness, all that sort of stuff. They're sick of this. So they're trying to figure it out. Yeah. Or you just ban them. Yeah. That's what I do. Yeah. And Matt B. also writes in, today, an AI is people and training model based on biased data will produce biased results.
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Medical algorithm favored white people for healthcare programs. Actually, that wasn't from Matt B. It was from somebody who was doing the Halloween thing on Twitter. So the name is actually insert Halloween world wordplay here. Oh, my bad. My bad. Yes.
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But the story basically came out. Yeah. It was shocking. Shocking. All big data is screwing up. Yeah. And algorithms are screwing up. Yeah. The black box favors the white box. That's right. And Loki writes us, and he's not very happy with us right now.
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Good for you guys and your principles. Tip the nasty cab drivers over social pressure and stiff the Uber drivers who transports you safely and professionally in his nice car. Pretty soon, all the Ubers will be the cab drivers when all the good ones quit due to the pay, to which I say pretty soon, the state of the Ubers I've been in recently are on par, if not worse than cabs.
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Also, we didn't decide not to tip Uber drivers. Uber rolled that out as part of their service. That was the deal. That was the company. You don't tip. Yep. That's what it said on the tin. That's what it said on the tin. And yeah, some of the Ubers I've taken, most of the Ubers I've taken recently are disgusting.
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Beyond disgusting. And they are not professional drivers. They have this because they don't have anything else they can do for a living. That's been my experience with Ubers recently. Yeah. I mean, when I was in Chicago, I was going to the airport. Guy picked me up in his minivan. He had to move the child seat and all of the McDonald's bags that were like empty on the floor so I could get in the van.
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It was disgusting. This is what our Web 2.0, Economy 2.0 is brought to us. Look, we predicted this. When Uber first rolled out while we were doing the show, I was like, these things are going to be worse than cabs soon. And now they are.
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Well, when Uber came out, it was used. It was limos. That's what it was. They were nice cars. My first, my first Uber ride was in a Mercedes 500 SL. That was a nice car. My last one was in a Civic. Yeah, mine was in an Astro minivan.
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So there you go. How the mighty have fallen. Yes. And E writes in, Cash App now has fractional stock share trading. I think you were looking into this at some point. And this is Square's Cash App. Officially adds free stock trading starting at $1. Yeah, but I'm quite happy with my M1 Finance, which I found earlier, and I have no reason to switch.
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And if you want to get in on it, link is in the show notes. Yep. Get your kick back right there, Brian. That's right. 10 bucks for me and something for you, I think. I don't know. I think it's 10 and 10. Unless they're running a special, then it's just 25 and 25. But, yep. And Spakanak writes us, Yo Grump's good news.
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There will be a new Bobiverse book. In fact, there are already two more in the works. How exciting. And link to his blog where he's talking about it. Yep. That's pretty good. David writes in, So I just listened to Brian extolling how great Windows 10 is. All I can say is, you poor sick bastard.
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Windows interfaces have only gotten worse since the peak of Win 2000. Who hurt you so bad that you think Windows 10 looks good? To be fair, I only spent a couple hours with it, but it did seem all right to me. And anything's better than Windows 7 was. Oh, or Windows Bob.
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And over at GOG.show, Edward writes us, Love your show, and I hope to be able to have enough money to toss your way soon. I'm a lawyer, not the type with tons of money. So sorry. Hey, you can afford a buck a month, right? And listen to your show on my commute into work. I started hearing about this issue through the grapevine and figured it was right up your alley.
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I haven't finished your latest podcast. So apologies if you've already covered it. Stay grumpy. And he sends us a link from Bleeping Computer. Trial Works ransomware attack disrupts court cases and deadlines. So Trial Works apparently is one of the top rated providers of legal case management software for law firms and attorneys.
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And it became the victim of ransomware attack earlier this month. So it made it impossible for lawyers to access legal documents hosted on Trial Works platform, to which I wonder, why are these things in the cloud? If you buy the software, why does it not save on your local computers or your local network?
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Hmm. Interesting. I'm not sure if I want my legal documents on the cloud. True that? True that. Yes. So initially, they notified their customers of a hosting outage at their data center, which seems a bit of tomfoolery to me because they probably knew what was going on and it wasn't a hosting outage.
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And the message continued saying that the issue is being dealt with and updates on the situation will follow. The article says it's important to note that Trial Works did not communicate the ransomware incident publicly, but informed customers via email the situation and how they dealt with it. To which I also say, sending out an email to all of your customers is kind of dealing with it publicly, is it not?
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I guess. I think so. So on October 15th, two days after the ransomware hit, they announced that the systems had been disinfected and team members were actively decrypting and restoring data, suggesting that the company paid the ransom, which is not good. Well, it's good for at least the people who got their docs back.
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It's good for people that got their data back, but you're not supposed to pay the people. No, you're not. And you're supposed to have backups. Yes. The thing about this also is it's just, yeah, yeah. It's a SaaS world. We just live in it. Yep. Nathan writes in, I just wanted to drop my two cents on HireVue.
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In my former position as a hiring manager for a retail company, I used HireVue on a daily basis as applicants were forwarded to me. Every applicant that completed the application for employment was then sent to complete the HireVue interview prior to being interviewed by myself or someone else in the hiring chain.
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They were not filtered by AI, and they were used by us to review and prescribe the person before making contact. In essence, we were the AI screener. Not sure when AI started being utilized or if that is something companies employing the service can choose to decline or use. See, AI is people.
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AI is people. You've been saying it. You've been saying it the whole damn time. AI is people. Yep. And Dan writes in, in response to, DOE, I've tried to see if my traffic was discoverable a couple of times with this turned on, and it seems to bypass the gatekeepers. So turn on DOE if you need to get around parental controls real quick.
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The question is, how do you keep the kitties from turning it on? Well, I'm sure we'll figure something out with that. And Steve writes in, you guys were wondering why the EFF was getting Congress involved with it. DOE! Simple. Comcast started it. Comcast is lobbying against encryption that could prevent it from learning your browser history.
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Why does my ISP want my browser history? I ask myself that question all the time, which is why you need a VPN. GOG.show slash VPN. Yeah, turn on DOE and get your VPN.
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Yes. Right. And name writes in, Al Jazeera, both English and Arabic, is streamed live on YouTube 24-7. I did not know that, and now I'm happy. I was watching it this morning. It's so much better. So much better. Nosec writes in, yet another security company tested the hypothesis of phones listening and came to the conclusion that it isn't so.
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And it's a link to an article called, Is Your Phone Always Listening to You? No! And Betteridge would say, no. That's right. Yes. And Tiorin writes in, you just shattered my worldview. In episode 388, you mentioned it is illegal to shoot down a drone flying over your grounds in the U.S.
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In April, a German court ruled that it was legal for a man to shoot down a drone with video equipment attached that was flying above his garden. He used an air rifle that is legal to buy without special permission. The owner of the drone had sued to get reimbursed for the destroyed drone. The court argued that it was legal to shoot down the drone to prevent the crime, violation of his and his family members' personality rights committed by the drone controller and police wouldn't arrive in time.
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It's a controversial court ruling as there are legal flyovers for mapping purposes, for example, that you can't differentiate standing on the ground, but the ruling stands. For now, in Germany, it is legal to shoot down a drone with a camera attached that is flying over your property, at least as long as the drone operator doesn't have permission.
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In short, something related to shooting stuff is legal in Germany, but not in the U.S. I need a drink. Nice. Very nice. David writes in, just this week, you scared me away from my Seagate drive and onto a Western Digital, which I should receive Monday and onto which I'll time machine all my data.
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Get two. Always have two. Wise choice. Two. Yep. One is none. Two is one. And Michaela sends us a link. Lyft launches job access program in 35 plus cities with national partners, including Goodwill, United Way, and the USO. I don't know if this counts, since I know they're a taxi company, not a tech company.
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Well, everybody's a tech company now, aren't they? But then again, they're only an app, and that's part tech, so here you go. So this job access program will focus on three key interventions in the employment pipeline that are critical to individual success and where transportation can play a major role.
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They will give rides to and from job training programs, rides to and from job interviews, and rides to and from the first three weeks of employment until individuals receive their first paycheck and begin to pay for their own transportation. Are you supposed to tip? She says, this feels very good as far as it seems from that post.
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I haven't looked into the deeper stuff. I'm still kind of concerned how they're going to stay in business, though. Like you guys have mentioned frequently, all the rideshare companies are like notoriously hemorrhaging money. Maybe this is a good faith sort of action, hoping people will support them more since they're doing a good thing. That's pretty much exactly what it is.
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But I like it. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We'll take it. We'll take anything we can get from these guys. David writes in, thought I'd share a small trick that I've been using for a while now. And this is the plus trick. So if you have like a Gmail account, you can do your username plus any unique identifier after it.
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And it will basically just create an email address with that. This has been around for over a decade. And I thought everybody knew it, but I guess it's something some people don't know. But yeah, your mail provider has to have it enabled. And there are places that do not use them, will not let you use things with a plus in the username.
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So yeah, your mileage may vary on that. But yeah, that's something that anybody can use, especially if you have a Gmail address. We know it works there. So just add a plus and whatever unique identifier after your name. All right. And Bob writes in, long time listener from Down Under.
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A lot of Australians listen to us, apparently. I'm in Canberra, not Melbourne, written for some strange reason as Melbourne. Straya, for some strange reason, written as Australia. Dropping you a line to express the enjoyment I get from your episodes as I perform my mind-numbing second job, which is shelf filling in a supermarket on Friday and Saturday night.
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Yay, what a life I have. I was listening to episode 831 tonight and heard a listener say- I believe that would be 381. Oh, sorry. We had 831 then. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. We made it. Geez. Yeah, that should be 381. And heard a listener saying how they had listened to all of your episodes in two months.
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That's a hell of a feat. Also crazy. I can relate as I found you guys two years ago, binged every episode you had made previously in a few weeks, and haven't missed an episode since. I have even told all my tech friends about you, and hopefully they have become as addicted as I am. I also heard an episode, and he put 831 again here.
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Something about ringtones and Jason seeing how hard they are to make. I thought I would give you guys a heads up on a site I have been personally using to make ringtones for years, in case you hadn't already seen it. And there's the link in the show notes. Yeah, I don't think the problem is actually making the ringtones. It's figuring out how to get them onto your devices these days, because that's complicated.
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Yeah, it's actually – it's not that complicated. I figured it out. You just have to manually manage your music on the phone, and then you can drag things over. But if you have it to auto-sync, it can be a pain in the butt. It's also much harder now that the new – they've split everything from iTunes.
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I haven't really tried it on that. I spent like an hour on the phone with a friend of the show, MXV, last night trying to work out some of his new music library issues and some things you just can't do now if you've upgraded to the new Catalina system. Wait, he has a music library? Isn't he just a vinyl guy? What's he doing with digital music?
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He's got a very big digital music collection. This is the guy that wouldn't change from an iPod Classic until the new phone came out with enough storage for his music. Look, you know what? He was right about that. I wish I still had an iPod Classic with 60 gigs.
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That was great. Anyways, Bob – or Bob – yeah, it is Bob. Tangents. I also want to thank you guys for finally convincing me to use a password manager. I can't say it has been easy, but I do see the advantages of doing so. You'll get used to it, Bob.
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Don't worry about it. I haven't convinced the rest of my family yet, but I'm working on it. Hope this helps. Keep on grumping. And he says, P.S., I'm not going to ask Jason to say, Amanda writes in, Jason, you are not alone in the universe. The last five Star Wars movies largely stank on ice, and the final installment has but one thing going for it.
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The word final. The ninja trooper screaming traitor was kind of cool, but not cool enough to carry a zombie franchise. Good grumpings to the both of you. Amanda, will you marry me? We shall agree to disagree. Derek writes in, this title grabbed my attention.
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V-R-A-R startup valuations reach $45 billion. And here's the kicker and the important part. Parentheses on paper. End parentheses. Barrett writes in, how does Jason not have this for Bam Bam and Dino? And this is linked to a video for Meet Pet Cube Bites 2, the smartest pet camera with treat dispenser and Alexa built in.
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Well, I don't have it because I think we actually covered this one on the show when Pet Cube Bites first came out or one of these treat machines. I think version one. This is version two. So, you know. Yeah. Because now it's got Alexa. It's got Alexa. That's right. The reason I don't have this is as soon as Bam Bam figures out that there's food inside, no more Pet Cube.
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It's gone. It will become the world's most expensive chew toy with Alexa built in. That's why. There you go. And over at iTunes, we have a five-star rating from Felicio Sands. I think he meant to do Felicio, but spelled it incorrectly. Maybe that name was already taken.
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Who says, keep it up. Love the show. Thanks so much for a solid tech cast. And Stree's Technoid writes in, my meager payment and indignant review, so smile. Updated. Would have rated the show a six-star, but less one-star as I had to leave a snarky remark and comment.
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Consider a five of six, next gen, and a meatspace score of 4.755. Guess I will just have to go to the website. What's the address again? Knowing you're both sci-fi buffs and fanboys, I guess I'm older than both of you as I predate your cultural linkage by way of Lost in Space.
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Ginger was hot. I watched Lost in Space all the damn time. Sorry I couldn't feel the collective kitty or Jason's dogs as I'm snowed in this year and NASA won't fly me out. AI snarky on. Old codgers have remained true to their charter. Stay grumpy. AI snarky off. There you go.
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We have another five-star rating from Espresso Stain. Espresso Stain. Good show, but stop it. I really enjoy the show with two grumpy old geeks when they talk about technology, which is 90% of the show. However, please, for God's sake, stop talking about politics and other stuff you have opinions about that have nothing to do with what most people want to hear from you.
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Based on what you think is going on anywhere in a very complex and fluid world, you have very little clue about other than the fake news from mainstream media you read, see, and hear. Especially stop getting upset of what politics you see on social media. You should know better. Well, thank you for the five-star rating.
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Try to tell me how politics and tech don't intertwine these days. Geeks Corner UK from the UK writes in five stars. Grumpy, snarky, funny, and the best podcast out there. I've been listening to these grumpy old geeks for almost 13 months now. I'm also listening to some of their older episodes when I run out of podcasts to listen to.
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I'm glad to say their newer episodes sound so much better than their old stuff. So good job, guys. I'm listening to their latest episode on my HomePod, and they sound great. I, A... I think a lot of these reviews are now coming through the app on the phone because the spelling on them is just getting atrocious.
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But thank you all for doing it. I, A, comma, A, proud Patreon member. And these guys deserve all the support we can give. Well, I agree with you there. All right. And we have a three-star review from Nebraska Nick. Gross advertising. The advertising was disgusting, but this podcast is usually interesting and has sound options.
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Okay. Well, here's a tip for the... This must be the ball fucking shaver. Of course, man. Manscaped. Use coupon code GOG. Look, we need money. What do you want us to do? Seriously. And Nebraska Nick, shave the boys.
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Come on. That's what you got to do. Shave the boys, toss us a coin, and put that up to five stars just because he didn't like an ad. Shut up. Yeah, seriously. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to GOG.show slash contact 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.
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Shout out! A belated birthday to friend of the show, Trent Hamilton, who turned 42 yesterday. Thank you so much for the 75 pictures of grass that you put on your Instagram feed yesterday. I hope you enjoyed golfing at Pebble Beach, and thank you for the grass.
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And happy birthday to the internet. We're recording this on October 29th, and the internet turns 50 today. Old man. So, yes, happy birthday, internet. And Tim Berners-Lee has a few things to say about it. We're going to put a link in the show notes for you to go check that out. And his new contract for the web, which is coming next month.
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And until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schellmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Toss us a 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.
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Your support keeps us going, and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 389. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.
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