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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. Brian, I made the switch. I've done it. Okay. I've signed up with the Brave Browser. You're a brave man. I am a brave man. Well, it turns out not really. It was really seamless.

It was really seamless. It only took a few minutes and I just installed the 1Password extension and I installed the privacy.com extension. And it turns out I don't really need any other extension. That's good. Yeah, I'm only running on two extensions. It basically works. We're actually using Squadcast right now to record this show in Brave.

So I have one browser, which is fantastic because before I had to run Opera and run Chrome when we did the show. Which is exactly what I'm doing right now. Exactly. And the fun part about it is it just it seems to work and I don't need to run a separate ad blocker.

It's got tracking protection. It's, you know, it's a privacy browser. Wow. All right. Well, one important question. What side does the close tab on? It's on the right. Oh, God. Sorry. I'm so used to the left now. Yeah. All right. I know. That's the only thing. That's the only thing so far that I've run into any issues.

The other obvious issue is you have to log in with all of your passwords again because it doesn't have anything saved in the browser. I never save my passwords in browsers anyways. They're all in one password. Oh, I still do just for convenience. It does have sync between browsers.

It's a little weird. Okay. Yeah. You set up kind of this little sync blockchain between multiple machines and it kind of runs this little thing in the background that keeps everybody in sync. Okay. It's interesting.

So we'll be on the blockchain. You only have one computer now, so it doesn't really matter. No, but I like to sync with my phone and iPad. Well, I mean, do you have Opera on your phone and iPad? Well, no, because that's never worked quite right. Okay, so here's the deal. It's my beautiful dream, Jason. It's your dream. Okay, yeah.

Well, your dream is never going to happen. So you're basically no harm, no foul on that when you still have to do that by yourself. Okay. But I mean, that's what 1Password's for. That's what's great about it. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So all in all, I'm digging it. I am digging it.

I haven't had any problems at all. And now I can feel better about not having a browser that's made in China. That's a good point. So I will, you know, this is early days for you. I'm going to give this a couple more days and then I'll expect a report again back from you. And if all is good, then I shall switch before the next show.

Yeah. Let's say I did it on Friday afternoon. So I've had, you know, about four days with it. And got it. It is my main on all my, all my computers now. So I've taken everything else out of the bars. The other big issue is the icon in the, the dock is like a lion's head.

Okay. It's really hard to remember that that's the new browser icon. That's the other thing. That's muscle memory. It'll come. Yeah. Cause every other browser icon is round. You've got, you know, opera's round. Chrome is round. Safari's round. This one is the shape of a lion head.

I feel like I'm, I'm clicking Simba every time I try and go, you know, go to the web, but all in all, yeah, so far so good. The circle of browsing, the circle of browsing. Now I did find this this morning. Researchers debunk theory that single whale caused the 2017 Bitcoin bull run.

This was from the story that I had the other day about Bitfinex and how people came out and said, Hey, you know, this really is a thing where somebody was actually trying to, you know, influence the markets. Well, some new research has come out from long hash, which, you know, it's, it's the worst long earth sequel that was in the, in the series.

And it's, they're just saying, Hey, if you just take off two of the months, the two most significant months, December, 2017 and January, 2018, if you drop those from the, the sample, then everything else fails to be statistically significant.

That just points to me that there was tomfoolery going around December, 2017 and January, 2018. And then they stopped. That's, that's what it says to me. Well, I mean, they were saying that the evidence was that out of 24 months in the sample. Okay. And there are other issues why people might be dumping at the end of January, 2018 and December, 2017, because like rents do, and they put all their money in the Bitcoin market.

Also possible. Also possible. So, uh, sorry about that one. All right. And, uh, a little personal observation that I made this week, uh, as I've had to, uh, try to do a couple things on the interwebs. It's been a nice run, but, uh, I think we have to call it time of death, November, 2019 search is dead.

How so? Try searching for anything on Amazon. Try searching for anything via Google. Try searching for anything. People game the system so badly. Now we're talking like page eight of results before I can actually find anything relevant. People put, uh, put competing products in their keywords and, and game the system that way.

And it's, it's search I found to be considerably less useful than it was, say, even two years ago. I think it's just gotten ridiculous. The, the algorithms need to catch up. Well, I, the algorithm so much, I mean, everything right now is just paid placement. Yeah.

Everything is sponsored. So, so I've, I'm, you know, I'm, I used to be King Google. I, I had my, my algorithmic, uh, search routines down. I could find anything lickety split first result where I'm literally page six or page seven before I find what I want these days.

It's, it's so bad. What kind of stuff are you looking for? That's so well, this, this, this time, this week I was looking for, uh, on Amazon, I was trying to find a multi, uh, iOS charging cable. One, you know, one USB plug in two to three, uh, lightning cables, because I like to charge, I have multiple, I like to charge my son's iPad and my iPad overnight.

And I don't want multiple cords over there. Every single search result. Uh, I, and also needs to be at least five to six feet. Every single result came back. There were four feet cables, or it was one lightning cable and an Android cable, you know, multi, multi device charger.

Who needs a multi device charger? Isn't everybody in the same ecosystem? Basically. I don't need one lightning cable and one Android cable. I need two lightning cables. Actually one lightning, one Android would work well for me because I do have a, an Apple phone and an Android phone. Well, if I ever find the cable I need, you can have the one that I currently have, which is too short and only has one lightning cable.

Okay. So you never found, you never found the cable. I have not found it yet. And the other thing that I was looking for is, uh, I, I finally got a sound bar and I'm trying to install it, uh, with the, you know, I've got the, the mount that'll go on the TV mount. So it hangs underneath and cannot find specific instructions for my device, even though I know they exist because it says so in the manual, it says, go search online for it.

Oh, that's fun. What kind of sound bars you get? Uh, I just got a Samsung cause I have a Samsung TV already. It goes well with it and it, uh, I'll do a full review once I actually finally have it set up. So look for that. Once you get it to work. Yeah. Once I get it to work. But you know, the first part isn't even getting it to work. It's just hanging the damn thing. Uh, how many cameras and microphones does it come with?

Zero. So you think. No, it actually does come with microphone. It's a, it's Alexa enabled, which is kind of nice. Oh God. In the news. Well, we've known for quite some time that there is an actual dollar amount attributed to all of us for Facebook in terms of what they make from us.

Um, right now it seems to be $132 and 80 cents per year. That's what we're worth to Facebook. However, there's some trickiness involved with this. Yeah. I'm curious how this number was arrived upon. Well, here's how they got there. In 2013, a software company, 643 launched an iPhone app called bikinis, which basically let you search your Facebook feed to find all your friends wearing swimsuits.

Oh, that's not creepy at all. Well, one could argue that what Facebook does in general is far creepier than this, which just does a photo search. Big deal. Right? Mm-hmm. So I, I, again, I don't really understand that the uproar about it. Yes. It's a little bit creepy, but who cares?

But anyways, Facebook cut them off two years later because, you know, it took two years because it does. Shortly after that, though, of course, 643 sued Facebook, alleging anti-competitive behavior. I'm not entirely sure how that works, but, you know, the legal system is what it is.

And on November 6th, NBC News published thousands of pages of leaked documents from that lawsuit. These files, newly released, indicate that between 2013 and 2015, moves that Facebook's touted as protecting consumer privacy, like stopping them from accessing names, photos, and likes of their users' Facebook friends, were really more about safeguarding the economic value of consumers' data.

Our data is valuable to Facebook above and beyond what the company has previously disclosed. So, in the U.S. and Canada, it works out to about $132.80 for the past four quarters, seven times more than the $18.70 average revenue per U.S. and Canadian user in 2013.

So it's gone up a bit. Yeah, because that's the number that I remember. Yes. Well, it's gone up. Yeah, quite a bit. That's what we've learned. Facebook is earning triple the revenue from its U.S. users as from its users in Europe, where average revenue per user is a mere $41.91. Part of that is because Americans spend more, because, you know, yay capitalism.

And part of that, of course, is probably about GDPR and things of that nature. So they can't get as much data and sell as much data as they can here, which is interesting. But we'll see what happens with that. But the real thing that came out of this, actually, is not that it's not as straightforward as you get this free product.

In exchange, you'll have to look at a few advertisements, and this is how we make money off of you. What they actually do is they basically strong-arm people that want to use their system. They're selling and bartering data in a more controversial way, one that Facebook has repeatedly denied engaging in, both before and after portions of this document were leaked back in early November.

They definitely show that Facebook's Director of Development and Platforms and Programs, Constantin... Oh, boy. Good luck with this one. Constantinos Papamidladdas. Close enough. Not even close, but whatever. Has instructed third-party apps that they would need to spend a certain amount of money, at least $250,000 a year, to maintain access to data.

So, basically, if you spend a lot of money on Facebook's advertising platform, you get full access to everybody's data. And that's another way they're making money. They are selling data left, right, and center. Yeah. This is surprising how? It's not, really. But it's not...

I mean, I guess the point is Facebook has denied this is happening, and now it's come out, obviously, going, well, yeah, you're actually doing it. Okay. So, yeah, the downside is, the old days, I was always excited. I'm like, can I just give you $20, and then you just don't track or show me ads? Well, now, yeah, I'm not going to obviously pay $132.80.

Well, you know, it's just a little bit over $10 a month. I would pay that for Facebook for being private. Yeah. It's sad I actually do have to get a new Facebook account, because I have to use it for business, and I'm not happy about it in one way, shape, or form. Yeah.

One of us. One of us. Oh, no. And I can't use a fake name, because a lot of the people that I have to deal with on there need to know who I am, which sucks. Oh, you just have an account, and you don't ever post. Big deal. That's pretty much what it's going to come down to, yeah. But you'll get sucked in. It's good. Well, they're still going to track everything anyway.

They're still tracking you. It doesn't... As we've talked about many times on the show, it doesn't matter if you have a Facebook account or not. Yeah. That really is what it comes down to. And it's funny. I did try and reactivate my old account to see if it worked. It's gone. It's not gone, Jesse. I know it's not, but what I'm going to try and do is sign up with the old email address that I had the old account with, because I had a very specific and customized email address just for my Facebook account.

So I'm going to see if, when I sign up with that, if anything pre-populates from the old days. You'll probably get an email saying, hey, we've noticed you've come back. Would you like to reactivate your entire account? That would be funny. That would be very, very funny. Well, speaking of Facebook's continued lies, this one kind of upset me a little bit because I don't know why.

I'm having a week where things are getting to me, which we'll get to later. But anyways, this is a Facebook has come over under a lot of scrutiny recently because they've got their bullshit political ads policy, which is basically, if you're paying us, you can lie. And, you know, even Facebook employees have come out and said, this is, this is abhorrent and ridiculous.

We can't do this. We've got to figure out another way. Well, on Monday, one of Facebook's top marketers again defended this policy and said the company has no plans to change it, insisting that it's up to voters to decide what messages resonate and are true, even if they're false. This is Carolyn Everson.

She's vice president of global marketing solutions at Facebook. And she said in an interview, it's not a role that Facebook should be playing in interfering with democracy. Okay, fine. You're going to take that stance. Gotcha. When pressed on Facebook's refusal to fact check political ads, Everson tried to defend the company's stance by referencing the rules that govern how broadcasters must handle political advertisements.

In the U.S., the federal, the FCC has extensive guidelines for television and radio broadcasters around political advertising, and it bars broadcasters from censoring ads or from taking down ones that make false claims. Those guidelines do not apply to online platforms, including Facebook, but the company has consistently tried to hide behind them.

So they're trying to have it two ways. We're just a platform, except in this case, because we don't want to have to do this. She says, we have no ability legally to tell a political candidate they are not allowed to run their ad, and that is flat out not true. Not true at all.

So, and continuing along in this discussion, an audience member asked Everson why Facebook had decided to allow right-wing website Breitbart to be listed in its news tab, which is basically an indication that Breitbart offers trusted news despite being a known source of propaganda. The whole point of Facebook's news tab was, here's vetted news, and they're basically letting in a place that does unvetted news stories all the time.

She said, we're treating them as a news source. I wouldn't use the term trusted news. So, okay. The whole point of the news tab was, this is trusted news, and now you're saying it's not trusted news. You're getting back on Facebook.

I'm considering leaving it. It's the way this usually goes. Tap, you know, it's like a... They flat out lie, and they change the ground that you're standing under. It's insane. Well, the way I look at it is, it just kind of is what it is.

They're going to keep changing it. It's their platform, quote unquote, their words, not mine. Yes. And they can do whatever they want to with it. That is true. It really kind of is the long and the short of it. So, I'm just going to use it as little as possible. All right. As little as possible. Good luck with that.

I will. There's a great newsletter by Stacey Higginbotham. She is an IoT expert. And her latest newsletter is, the chickens are coming home to roost in the smart home. By basically saying, the smart home is dead. Get over it. All right.

How so? Basically saying that it's been five years since Alexa came out. And it's basically as good as it was when it first came out. There has been almost no major improvements whatsoever. And people's expectations have been let down.

And nothing is really happening anymore in the smart home. It's all about the same thing. It's like, okay, I can turn my music on and I can make my lights go up and down. Yeah. That's really the end of it there. That's about what I do with them. So it's like, okay, how is all of this, you know, smart home crap working out?

It's not. It's really kind of turned into just voice control for your radio and your lights. That's it. Well, I mean, there's so many problems with it. Like, I'm an avid user, right? I think we can say that. I've got Alexas in most rooms.

I've purchased things recently that, you know, I always try to make sure that they have Alexa compatibility when I get them. It's nice to turn on my Roomba with Alexa, but it's not life-changing. And sometimes it doesn't work. The big problem with all this stuff is sometimes they just don't work and you don't know why and there's no way to fix it.

You know, I've got some Dyson air purifier fans. They're also Alexa-enabled. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't. You know, sometimes you just lose access to them and you don't know why and then it just comes back, which is really frustrating. The lights are nice, again, but not crucial.

But so many of the problems are – the problems are many, many, many problems. I think one of the first ones is – one of the things that I don't think has gotten any better is the language recognition. It's still horrific. Like Alexa never understands what I'm saying if I ask anything particularly complicated.

You know, if I ask if a particular restaurant – you know, what time does a particular restaurant open? It never gets that right ever, which is, you know, one of the big uses that I would use this for. So language recognition is still a massive problem. I think one of the other big problems is something that you and I talked about when these things first came out.

You have to remember commands. Right. And who – you know, I'm sure there are a million things that I can do with a few things that I have plugged into my smart home right now. But I couldn't tell you what those commands are and I'm not going to go to a website and look them up.

And I don't know them offhand. So that's a huge interface problem. We just don't know what we can and we can't do. And we're not willing to learn. And we're not willing to learn. Another problem is finding skills. There is no decent store to go look through.

The Amazon Alexa store is a mess. It's horrid. You know, I have no way to find new skills. I have no way of knowing what skills would be relevant to me. The browsing of the skill store is horrific. So I am not adding new skills because it's a nightmare scenario to do so.

And the final thing that I can think of that's a real problem is, again, if you're trying to do a smart home, we're used to dumb homes. And our homes are wired is dumb. I complained. I remember my complaint about the light switch thing. My wife wants to use the light switch.

We're ingrained to use light switches. We've used light switches all of our lives. If the light switch can't sync with the software aspect of it, then it's useless to me. It pisses my wife off. It pisses me off. You know, unless you're a millionaire and you own your own home.

First off, if you're renting, you're never going to get involved with this stuff because why would you spend money on the infrastructure of your home? But you'd have to be a multimillionaire and basically gut and rewire your house to have this stuff work correctly. It doesn't play well with our existing infrastructures in our homes. And the annoying thing is even if you do wire your own home in, like, you know, a couple of years, things are going to be out of date and deprecated and you have to do it again.

And none of this stuff plays well with others. None of this stuff plays well with others. You almost have to be the exact same infrastructure. Now, having said all of that, my Fire TV Cube via Alexa Control is pretty awesome. But then again, once again, I can turn my TV on and off.

I can put volume up and down using my voice. But could I load up something on Disney Plus? No. I can only load up things that are on Amazon's infrastructure using my voice. You can't play Disney Plus on your Fire Cube? I think maybe if I install the Disney Plus app in the Fire Cube, then maybe it'll work.

Oh, yeah. But like I said, it also, like, they don't have my cable TV lineup here. So I can't tell it to go turn on CNN because it doesn't know what CNN is. It's a mess. Yeah, it's all a mess. So it's not surprising that it's not getting adopted the way that people hoped that it would.

Yeah. See, after I had Alexis everywhere in my old house in Chicago, now that I moved out here and I have the roommate who won't let me put anything in the house, I'm finding that it is actually just easier without it. I can still do everything that I could do before. There's nothing that they let me do that I could not do before with my hand.

Yeah, I mean, basically what these smart speakers have done is they've replaced stereo systems. Yeah, kind of, I guess. But even then, it's like I have Sonos in my house and I press the button to make it play. So I don't know.

I'm fine with all this. And, you know, everybody's like, oh, no, it's not. You see how many Amazons or Alexis are being sold? Well, tell that to Google. So nobody's buying Google smart speakers. Look, I didn't even go get my free one. That's true.

That's why there's so many free ones out here. Yeah, man. They have just, like, tanked and nobody is buying the things. They've got around 12% of the market now. Amazon is about 70% of the market.

Now, Google owns Nest, right? Yes. So I find it somewhat surprising because there are so many Nest units out there that you wouldn't just go all in on the Google. You know, anybody that's got a Nest, I would probably think would get Google Home stuff. But I guess not. I've got a Nest, and I see no reason to be able to talk to that thing by voice.

Well, to be fair, you live in California. The weather never changes. Well, it changes all the time. I use my Nest constantly. Here's one that I found out last night with the Nest. I just wanted to have the heat turned on at 4 o'clock in the morning. Right. Turns out you can't do that. What you have to do is train the smart schedule to do it for you.

So instead of tomorrow morning, I want the heat to come on at 4 in the morning, I have to spend a week turning it on at 4 in the morning before it knows that, oh, maybe he likes it on at 4 in the morning. There is no way to set a basic schedule. There is no way to set a basic schedule, which is so damn annoying.

I – so here's my schedule for my smart thermostat, which, you know, my $10 dumb thermostat used to do. I have to set an alarm for 4 o'clock in the morning, wake up, and press the button to make the heat come on. My $10 old ran on a 9-volt battery thermostat.

I could set – turn the heat on at 4 in the morning and turn it off at 8 in the morning. This one, no bueno. Let me take your rant and step up on it a bit because this was actually another thing that was annoying me this week that I was thinking about. Our smart devices with their algorithms that are supposed to be learning our schedules, my Apple Watch, right?

I use the fitness tracking and all that, and it sends me – it'll ping me with little, like, hey, good job. You're way above your normal step count for the day or your normal whatever for the day or your normal calorie burn for the day. Or, you know, if it's a day that I'm running a bit late, it'll tell me, hey, you're way behind today.

I have a very regimented schedule, Jason, as you know. Yes. I do the same thing most days. There is one day per week today that I don't go do my bike ride first thing in the morning. How has my watch not learned that every Tuesday I don't start my workouts until later?

It's fucking every Tuesday, and every Tuesday it tells me you're way behind on your count today. No, I'm not. That's so funny. For something that is supposed to be able to find patterns in all of this data, you would think that the Tuesday pattern would be something that it would pick up on.

What we're learning is that these smart devices are fucking stupid. Yeah, yeah, because mine used to I would get in my car on Sundays and like, you know, every couple Sundays I would drive to my dad's for dinner. And so I would get in my car and my phone would immediately pop up and say 26 minutes to my dad's address without me doing anything.

Yeah, because it just knew that if I'm getting in the car and the car senses this at this time on a Sunday, that's probably where I'm going. Right. Which when it first happened, we talked about it on the show. Creep the fuck out of me. It's a little creepy. What? Whenever I get in my car to go pick up my son from school, it gives me the number of minutes to his school, which freaks me out.

Yeah. Yeah. Even when I go to the gym now and I've only, you know, I haven't been going to the gym for more than a couple of weeks now. And I get in the car to come home and it's like four minutes to get home. I'm like, I didn't need to know that, but thanks. But I'm actually going to Trader Joe's, which if you did know anything, you would know that every day after I'm done at the gym, I go to Trader Joe's.

I don't go home. So maybe fix that too. Yep. They're just not that smart. They say they are and they tout all these benefits and they just don't work, right? They're just not working. We're early adopters, Brian. We're early adopters for 10-year-old technology. Because all of these links in the show notes that you put in are about, it's been five years.

Why aren't they any better? Pretty much. Pretty much. I'm living without them and I'm fairly happier than when I had them. So I do miss the one in the kitchen. That's the only one I miss. Oh God, that one's great. It really is.

But here's what I have. I have an Apple Watch that does almost exactly the same thing. So what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Oh, wait, not buy them anymore like everybody else. Yeah, seems to be what's going on. All right, let's move on to this good story here. I love this story and it kind of ties in a little bit with some of the stuff that we've been talking about recently on the show.

We've been talking about like who owns the rights to AI-generated art. This isn't quite the same thing, but it is a rights issue and it's just, it's pretty cool. It seemed like the perfect digital heist, the Nefertiti bus created in 1345 BC is the most famous work in the collection of Berlin's Nuez Museum.

The museum has long prohibited visitors from taking any kinds of photographs of its biggest attraction to get people to go there. Nevertheless, in 2016, two trench coat wearing artists managed to, now this is where it gets a little unbelievable, rightfully so, managed to smuggle an entire 3D scanning rig into the room with a bust and produce a perfect digital replica, which they then shared with the world.

At least that was their story. Shortly after the reveal, a number of experts began to raise questions. They've examined the digital file and they've concluded that the quality of the scan was simply too high to have been produced by a camera under a trench coat operation. So they've concluded in other words, this is an inside, inside heist.

Okay. Yeah. And one of the first experts to begin the question, to begin to question the story of the scan was the artist Cosmo Wenman. Once he realized that the scan must have come from the museum itself, he set about getting his own copy and making it public via basically the German equivalent of a Freedom of Information Act request.

Because the museum is state-owned. It took three years and it was a long legal odyssey and the museum has never clarified its relation to the scans. But earlier this week, he got the files and he released them for anyone to download. It's a 3D digital version. It's a perfect replica of the original 3,000-year-old bust with one exception.

The museum has etched a copyright license into the bottom of the bust itself, claiming the authority to restrict how people must use the file. The museum is trying to pretend that it owns a copyright in a scan of a 3,000-year-old sculpture created 3,000 miles away. Oh, that's beautiful.

Uh-huh. I was originally going to put this in Moron of the Week, but I figured it just goes in news kind of well. They decided to use the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike License. So if the museum actually owned a copyright here, this would give you the permission to use the file under three conditions. That you give the museum attribution, you do not use it for commercial purposes, and you allow other people to make use of your version.

However, these rules only matter if the institution imposing them actually has an enforceable copyright. If the file license is not protected by copyright, nothing happens if you violate the license. If there is not a copyright protecting the scan, you don't need permission from a rights holder to use it, because that rights holder does not exist.

As the author states, it would be like me standing in front of the Washington Monument and charging tourists a license fee to take a picture. That's kind of it. But, I mean, there is a little bit of a gray area, because they're the ones that made the scan. They actually created it. It is their scan, yes. Yeah, it is their scan. So, you know, if you're using their scan, they kind of do have copyright to the scan, not obviously Nefertiti's bust.

But I guess the gray area there would also be, you know, well, they don't allow anyone else to take a scan of it or even take a photo. So, and they don't own it. It's a museum for the public good. Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder what the thought process is behind not letting people take photographs of it.

Well, I mean, it's the same as, you know, don't take a photo of basically anything. We want you to actually come here. Come see it, yeah. Yeah, pay your entry fee. Exactly. It's all about capitalism, damn Germans. That's very funny, though. Nice one. Good story. Well, here's another good story.

And this goes back to the Apple Watch and, you know, smart devices. Actually, for once, doing smart things. And this is actually a feature of the Apple Watch. It's the noise bug, you know, the noise notification if it gets too loud. Yes, yes, yeah. Well, this guy has a 21-year-old son on the autism spectrum.

And he's a very social guy. But the problem he has is he doesn't really know how to modulate his indoor voice. So he's always extraordinarily loud. That is a phrase that is in heavy usage in our household right now. Indoor voice. Indoor voice. Well, maybe you need to buy him an Apple Watch because that's what happened here.

He bought him an Apple Watch and showed him that when his voice goes to a certain level, the watch turns yellow and he's being too loud. So the son learned to use his indoor voice because his Apple Watch told him to. That's great. That's pretty cool, right? I like that.

Here's the good part. No AI involved. You don't need a fucking cloud for it. Nothing's going to go down. If it's loud, it tells you. End of story. So that's fantastic. Single-use apps. Aren't they the best? See? Hi. I'm looking smarter and smarter nowadays, aren't I, Brian?

A little bit. A little bit.

Media candy. Brian, the old Disney Plus has been in the news quite a bit. Yes, it has. Well, now thousands of hacked Disney Plus accounts are already for sale on hacking forums. Woo! Shocking. Yeah. So, yep, lists are out there already.

Nothing surprising. When you go ahead and come out in public and say, we don't care if you share your accounts. Well, okay. What do you think is going to happen? All right, then. Let's put these on the market. I'm surprised that people aren't selling them privately.

Maybe they are. Yeah, maybe they are. But, I mean, you also have to think about, it's like, okay, this is a new service that everybody's going to be reusing their email address and their passwords that they did on other services. So, let's just run the list. That's true. Let's just run that list against Disney Plus and see how many we hit.

Yep. Yeah. Prices vary from $3 per account to as much as $11 an account. Which is more than an actual legitimate Disney Plus account cost, which is pretty funny. Well, per month. The assumption here is, like, most people are getting, like, the full year. So, you're paying $11 for a full year, which is considerably less.

For some reason, I have an inkling that people aren't buying these to watch Disney Plus. They're buying it to do what? Just suck whatever other data they can get out of it, you know? Yeah, that's true. Because I'm sure there's just more than your email address and your password inside of your Disney Plus account.

You still have to have your billing address. So, if you log in, you can see home address and things like that. That is true. You get some more datas. All right. Indeed. I have to check and see if my account got hacked. Is there a list somewhere? Is this on Have I Been Pwned? I don't know if this is on Have I Been Pwned yet, but as long as you used a unique password for Disney Plus, which I assume you did because you used one password for everything.

That's true. You probably have a new unique password for it. Yes. They can only get into my Disney Plus account. And as I've mentioned, there is not much under the account information area since I still can't figure out what kind of account I have or if I have ESPN Plus or not or how to get any of that working. I was going to say, here's the best case scenario for you.

Some hacker steals your account, really wants to watch ESPN Plus, and goes through support and sets it up for you. Oh, God. I'd be so happy. I'd be totally fine sharing my account with that hacker. Dude, you can watch as much as you want. Just make this fucking ESPN Plus thing work.

Just get ESPN Plus to work for me. There's another big game coming this weekend. Damn it. Yeah. And speaking of Disney Plus, did you see The Mandalorian Episode 2? Of course I did. What did you think? Should we wait for Bittner? I'm sure we'll talk about it anyways. Yeah, I can say it's pretty awesome.

Yeah, it's good. It's really good. Baby Yoda's a little chi-chi, but whatever. It's good. I love him. I love him. I love him, too. Everybody does. He's the biggest meme on the internet right now. Yeah, I thought it was a very well-done episode. I'm really looking forward. There's only eight episodes for this whole season.

Oh, no. Yeah, I didn't know if you were aware of that. So this is going to be a quick burn. But very good. Yeah. Yeah, as far as space westerns go, it's pretty damn up there. I'm enjoying it. I love westerns, and I love space westerns. So this is right up there. Did you like that? What was that movie? Space Cowboys?

Never saw that one. That's the one with the old guys, right? Oh, that's not the one I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of the one with James Bond and Olivia Wilde. That was the aliens came to the western. No, I don't think I saw that one. Don't. It was horrible. I'm like, there's probably a reason I didn't see it.

Yeah, it was really, really bad. The Crown Season 3 has dropped. I've seen two episodes already. Loving it. Well, good for you, because now there's Crown, the official podcast. Do not need that. It's official. It's made by Netflix. Who cares?

Okay, I was just throwing it in for you. I enjoy watching the show. I do not need to listen to a podcast about it. I learned that from listening to the podcast from Battlestar Galactica, which made me want to kill Ronald D. Moore even more. Great. Oh, man. Netflix is making Beverly Hills Cop 4, another thing that nobody wanted, asked for, or cared about.

Looking forward to the podcast about it, though. Of course. You can listen to the podcast about it. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. They better be using that Axel Foley. I was going to say, that was not the same. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

Which one was mine then? That's the Axel F theme. Hmm. I don't know what you're singing. Well, somebody out there will know and tell me. Okay. Oh, man. And I have been watching Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner with David Chang. Mm-hmm. I liked the first one with Seth Rogen. Thought that was fun.

Loved the Kate McKinnon episode, because I have such a crush on her. Mm-hmm. And there's one with Lena Weythe that was okay. Mm-hmm. But you can skip the Chrissy Teigen one altogether. You know what I did? I watched none of them. The Chrissy Teigen episode before you put this in there.

And I went, this show sucks. So, yeah. How can you take Chrissy Teigen and make her boring? Well, David Chang seemed to figure that out. Right. So, I guess it's worth it for some of the other episodes then, because I finished watching the Chrissy Teigen one, and I was like, I'm never watching the show again.

I turned it off halfway through that one. I'm like, I'm going to go watch the Kate McKinnon one. That was excellent. Seth Rogen was pretty funny. And the Lena Weythe one is cool because it's in L.A. Right. So, I liked it. I liked it because, you know, every time I look at Netflix nowadays, I'm like, I don't want to get sucked into another story that's going to disappoint me.

Food. Food shows generally, I can just – you know what? I'm not going to throw something at the TV at the end of a food show, except maybe the Chrissy Teigen episode if I was forced to watch the whole thing. But, yeah, it's good. I enjoyed it. Speaking of getting sucked down the hole to watch horrible things, I ended up watching Nikki Glaser's stand-up special, Banging.

I'm not a millennial, nor am I a woman. So, there was not many chuckles for me here. This is pretty definite target audience work here. I'm sure it's funny to women and millennials, but not me. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Did you really? I don't know who you're talking about. I loved it, yeah. I didn't.

I don't think she's that funny. My roommate got a lot more out of it than I did because she's a woman, but I thought it was solid all the way through. Okay. Was not into it personally. Yeah. That's the thing about comedy. It is subjective. Mm-hmm. So, this one, I wanted to yell at my computer.

Wow, we've had cranky weeks, haven't we? Oh. This comes from Vice. Mm-hmm. Science supports your habit of falling asleep to stupid podcasts. Okay. And it starts off talking about Drew Ackerman's Sleep With Me podcast, which has been around for quite some time. And there are other, you know, bedtime podcasts, stories for grownups, meditation, ASMR shows, which, honestly, I have misophonia.

So, even just saying the letters ASMR makes my back tense up really heavily. Now, a couple paragraphs in. I would like to state this. I'm going to read this verbatim. Okay. Actually, you know what I'm going to do first?

I'm going to read the headline again. What's your habit of falling asleep to stupid podcasts? Cut down a few paragraphs. There's not any published science on how podcasts like Ackerman's work, per se. But study shows that there are positive correlations between listening to white, pink, or brown noise.

Also, not a podcast. Ah, but the author of this article says that, isn't the human voice much like white noise? No! No! No, it's not! No, it's fucking not! You should have put this in more honor of the week, because I have a very similar story coming up.

Oh, God. I just... Why did you cut and paste so much of this story in here when all you really wanted was the first two paragraphs? Just to remind me of how stupid this fucking article is. Well, thanks a lot, because you made me fucking read it. You're welcome, Brian.

What a waste of time. At the library. Ooh, and there. Some exciting news. We've got incoming Christopher Moore, and it looks like a return to his normal lunacy. Not like the last book that I couldn't get through.

It's called Shakespeare for Squirrels, and it's coming May 2020. Oh, yes. Good. Please, knock on wood. Be good. Please be good. Yeah, noir. I tried so many times to get through that. And I just couldn't. Never even got close. Yep. I did get through The End is Always Near, apocalyptic moments from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses by Dan Carlin.

All right. Finished it. Loved it. Absolutely loved it. Okay, good. Just go get it. Seriously. I'm so far behind on his podcast, I can't even imagine starting a book of his now. That's so funny, because it's like he puts out three episodes every two years, so how can you get behind?

Because they're like 19 hours long. They're three hours. It's not that bad. I'm behind. I get shit to do, man. Ride your bike. Ride your bike and try and get your Roomba to work, because you can't reach over and press the button. So annoying.

It's a tough life, ain't it, Brian? It is, man. It is. It's a tough life. And I found a new book by Dennis E. Taylor of Bobaverse fame. Oh, yes. But we're getting Bobaverse books, right? That's what we've heard. Yes, we are. Yeah, this is called Outland. All right. And I think this is one of the Audible-only ones.

And fortunately, it's read by the guy that read all the Bobaverse books, so that's good. Right. Now, when I first got it, I was reading the reviews, and the reviews that they highlighted were not very flattering to the book. Right. I'm like, uh-oh. But I got it, and I started to listen to it.

And I listened to it as I was falling asleep, because science told me I could. And I did fall asleep. I blame that on the magnesium, not the science behind the book. So I'm still going to go back to it. But I went back, and I was pulling some of the reviews for the show. And here's one.

Love the story. Hated the Fowl's language. Great story. Good character development. But lots of swearing. Could have enjoyed more if the author could write without assuming so many people cuss and want to hear it. Are you sure you didn't copy and paste this from our reviews? It's probably one of ours, yeah.

All, of course, no capitalization in any of this. Right. And he hated the Fowl's language. I hate the Fowl's language as well. Yes, birds. Birds, man. They cannot. You never want to get into an argument with a bird. Anyway, I'm going to check it out. And it was another one that was pretty funny.

They're like, too short for the money. And I'm like, it's 10 hours long, dude. What the hell do you want? Dude, everybody complains so much about everything now. It's insane. Which we'll get to in our feedback loop. Yeah, yeah. And honestly, I mean, maybe we can put in copyright infringement lawsuits.

Complaining and grumping, that's our shtick, people. Get over it. We're on of the week. We're on of the week. So the other week when we were discussing The Mandalorian with Dave Bittner, I believe you brought up the point that the episodes are so damn short. Right. And why are they so short?

And because Facebook listens to us, this showed up in my feed. You know, it's a link from Screen Rant called Why The Mandalorian's Episodes Are So Short. The Mandalorian premiere clocked in at 32 minutes, while its follow-up was a little bit shorter at 27 minutes.

In a world where scripted series usually run for 40 to 50 minutes without ads, the public will obviously find these outings too short, much like you did, Jason. Assuming this pattern continues, the total runtime of the show's first season will be around 4 to 4.5 hours. That's just an hour and a half longer than a three-hour full feature film.

Thank you for the math lessons there, Screen Rant. Thanks for math. Yes. And then, I'm not even going to bother reading these things, they go into a couple paragraphs of nothing but conjecture. Yeah. There is no answer to the question why The Mandalorian's Episodes Are So Short.

Once again, the click economy sucks. There are millions of articles about The Mandalorian out there, and none of them say shit. There is no answer in this article. There is nothing but wild speculation from people who obviously never even worked in the industry. This is ridiculous.

This is the dumbest article ever. Stop it, internet! Brian, I know why The Mandalorian's Episodes are so short. Why? Science! Hmm, they're good to go to sleep too. We got some new PayPal subscribers.

Art, Linda, Nicholas, Allison, Andrew, Ryan, and Justin. And Justin says, thanks for the great podcast, Jason and Brian. Well, you're welcome, Justin. And thank you, all of you, for donating through PayPal. And there's a new big old PayPal link on the website that makes it a little easier to see, since everybody seems to be poo-pooing the Patreon.

I know, it's a little sad, but I get it. You know, we don't care where the money comes from. I couldn't care less. Over at Twitter, Adam Starbuck writes us, just heard the part about smart TVs and privacy, and I was wondering if you guys use Piehole. I've currently got a dumb TV from a few years ago, and I'm going to be sad if it dies.

And he's got the link to Piehole. We've talked about it on the show before. Somebody recommended it to us before, but now I'm a little bit lazy. Yeah, and a friend of the show, Monkey13, heard us talk about Piehole, and he actually went out and got one and set it up, and he runs it on his home network, and he says it does what it says on the tin.

So it's network-level ad blocking right there before it gets to you. Nice. Cool. Very cool. And Gustavo sent us a link. How Chilean protesters took down a drone with standard laser pointers. Well, they took down this drone with a lot of green laser pointers, which green lasers are not standard.

They're very high power. Very high power. Are they really? Some of them. Because the one I bought in Thailand like 12 years ago when I was there was a green laser, and it was like $2. Okay. Well, I guess maybe I'm thinking of a different color, but I thought the green ones were the really high-power ones.

I could be wrong. I forget colors. But, yeah, a bunch of people just pointed their laser pointers at it and made it land, and there's a lot of speculation on what it did because they're saying that it could have, you know, interfered with the battery or melted some of the wires from the heat from the lasers. Nobody really knows, but all they know is they pointed their laser pointers at it, and it landed.

Woo-hoo! It's the new playing with your cat with the laser pointer game. Very interesting, the question on who owns AI art. I've seen art and music based on 23andMe results and Strava patterns, not AI per se. It's pattern recognition. But has me wondering about that stuff.

Reminds me of Conway's Game of Life we used to program back in school. Not familiar with that. It's been a long time, but, yeah, it's an old thing. Old things. Thomas writes, in the Jabra 65T slash 75T earpods are worth a look.

Been using the 65T Active for almost a year daily. Battery life still great. Simple controls. Love them. Also, double-click to close tab. Maybe time to take another look at Vivaldi browser. I did look at Vivaldi browser, and I can't do more than one, so I'm sticking with Brave.

And I do have a feature request into the team at Brave to get my double-click on the X to close tab. So we'll see if it goes through. That would be nice. Over at GOG.show, Matthias writes in, But why? Why? Why? Windows 10? Come on! I was in the same place as you, and I took another turn.

And then to go to Windows 10, I installed Ubuntu 19.10. And, oh, man. Why? Why? Why? Come on! Why? I agree with Jason on this one. You know, when I was younger, I did love the Linux, and I loved the Unix, and I thought it was the best thing ever.

But now I just like my stuff to work. Easy. I want to check my email. I want to be able to watch YouTube. I'd like to listen to some music, you know. I don't want it to be an Og Vorbis just to be able to play it on a Linux machine. Yeah, well, he's really enjoying it, according to his comments.

And go well on you. Enjoy. Mateus from Sweden. Thanks for writing in. Thanks, man. Enjoy it. Jacob writes in, was wondering what you guys think of the Wish app. It's supposedly stuff from the same factory that makes the brand name stuff in China, but they produce it with no labels or slightly different and sell it super cheap direct.

I have had a few times where I found the item cheaper on Amazon, but otherwise, I feel like there are some good deals. Also, if you sign up, check it out, and you can use my referral code, CBBDRSYG. Well, you're welcome, Jacob. So hopefully, if somebody signs up, they can use your code. I've never heard of the Wish app. Have you, Brian? I have not.

I looked into it. It seems all right. But the price is, the differential in price and, you know, Amazon's free shipping because I'm a Prime member, kind of, it's a wash. So I'll just stick with Amazon. Yeah, if you're going to get, if you're going to get, you know, knockoff products, it's best to get them domestically from Amazon.

Yes. Buy American for your knockoff shit. Exactly. Elaine writes in, hi, guys. A couple of podcast episodes I thought that might be of interest to you. First is Freakonomics episode 396 on tipping. They go into detail about the design and stats of tipping on Uber.

And here's their exclusive summary. 60% never tip. Oh, yeah, we went through the tipping before. But, yeah, it's the same stuff about tipping on Uber. But I love Freakonomics, so. Me too. I'll check it out. The other episode is The Dictator's Playbook from Your Undivided Attention podcast. It talks about how Facebook is corrupting democracy.

Yeah, I know. We all know. But it looks at it from a different angle. How Facebook's Free Basics app is bad for freedom and net neutrality. No surprises there. And it also points out that the Philippines is the Internet's guinea pig. So, basically, this could go into the shit we already know category.

It sounds like you agreed with everything they said, and we've talked about all that. Two good podcasts, though. I like both of those podcasts, though. I've never heard your undivided attention. Oh, dude. Is it another NPR-y one? Yeah, it's NPR-y, but they do deep dives, and it's well-researched. You know, the stuff we don't do. They come to the same conclusions as us, but.

Yeah, we just get there faster with fewer words is how we do it. Exactly. And Steven writes in, love the show. Hope this helps. I heard you guys saying you never know what show you want to watch is streaming on what platform. Have you tried justwatch.com? You just type in, say, Star Wars, and it shows every provider you can stream it on.

Also, any chance you guys can send me links where you guys are still able to find torrents nowadays. There was an app that came out a long time ago that I reviewed on the show that did the same thing, but the app was horrific because it pulled in key art at, like, two gigabytes per size, so it took forever to load and killed your bandwidth.

But justwatch.com actually looks pretty good. Now, I just have to remember to go to justwatch.com. Yeah. And it says, if you just type in Star Wars, it shows where that's playing. I want to see things like Star Wars. Like, ah, I'm in the mood to watch something like Star Wars. Right. Like, I want recommendations.

No, then they have to get AI. Yeah. They should do that because then they could get funding. That's true. They could get a lot of funding. Then they could shut down the company and move to Belize. Yes. And we got five stars over at iTunes from the real Rob O in the UK. Indulge your tech paranoia here.

Luckily for these guys, the source material never runs out. Fast-paced. Litter or no padding. Litter. That's supposed to be little. Little or no padding. Serious, hilarious, great host chemistry, educational, illuminating, and thought-provoking. All right. I like that. Thank you so much. We're thought-provoking. That's right.

And we also have another five-star rating from Fozzy Fancy Bear. Great name. So grumpy, so good. These two are the Statler and Waldorf of technology. I anxiously await each episode to hear what I should be upset about next. I can't get enough. Thank you. And I particularly love the name and the Statler and Waldorf reference because I am in Muppet Babies world right now.

My kid loves nothing but Muppet Babies and we watch it all the time. Isn't there like a new Muppet talk show thing on Apple Plus whatever that they have now? I think they're doing something with the Muppets. I can't quite remember what. But I tried to introduce my son to the full-of-age Muppets and he's not into it.

He's purely Muppet Babies right now. What about Fraggle Rock? Oh, old school. I'll have to see. I've got to go to justwatch.com and figure out where I can scream that at. There you go. And here we go, Jason. So you and I both got a little upset last night when something came through the interwebs to us, but I will let you read it.

This comes from Jedi Victor, one star. Great podcast, except for the long ads. I just unsubscribed from this podcast. I enjoyed listening to these guys grump on current tech subjects. However, lately they screwed up the show by putting effing long ads smack in the middle of the show.

Not horrible if you're sitting down somewhere listening to it. You can always click forward through the manscaping shaver nonsense, but it is not so easy to do if you're driving and start being assaulted by these insults to your brain. So bye bye, grumps. Your ad strategy is super uncool. Fuck you.

Sorry. I just had to get that out. Now we can have a decent conversation about it, Brian. Now, let me break this down a little bit. Let's break it down. He loves the podcast. Loves the podcast. Thinks it was the best thing ever, but decided to give us a one star rating, even though he loves the podcast. Why does he give us a one star rating?

Well, the ads are okay if he's sitting down somewhere, because he can hit forward, because it's way too difficult to hit forward when you're driving. Way too difficult. And this is where he draws the line. Draws the line. Yes. So even though we've been running ads for, oh, I don't know, four years now, he's finally decided that it bothers him, or at least he's noticing it.

Maybe he was, maybe he used to be an alcoholic. Who knows? Didn't notice the ads before, even though they've been here forever. Yep. Maybe he likes having a stinky big bush, and it took offense at the manscaped ads. I knew you could cross the line somewhere. That's awesome. Well, he calls out manscaping.

I did hear your reads were pretty spectacular on those. I've gotten nothing but great feedback from all the people that have written me. Also, your ad strategy is super uncool. Oh, you mean the same ad strategy that every podcast uses?

All of them. Yeah. Sorry about that. I mean, we only work 20 hours a week each to make this show free for you. And every now and again, we put in an ad. And you take offense at that.

I'm sorry that we did not work harder for you to have free content that you actually enjoyed. You ungrateful piece of... So, I feel better now. Okay. I think it's out of my system. It's one of those things where, you know, I love doing this show, Jason.

I really do. And the feedback is kind of what keeps it going. Because God knows we're not making enough money. We're paying the bills and keeping the show going. But that's about it, really. And then something like this comes through. And I went to bed going, why the fuck am I doing this show? Yeah. I was just... I mean, I just had flashbacks of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

I'm like, I can see why somebody would want to drive around and punch people in the face for saying stupid shit on the internet. Except we can't afford gas money. Because according to Jedi Victory, we'd have to take out the very few ads we get just to make him happy.

Because if he just happens to be listening to us while he's driving... Oh, I'm so sorry. ...that we're not perfect in every locale that you listen to the show in. Right. There you go. Well, if you want to write in and tell us how great our show is, but that you're not going to listen anymore because you hate our ad strategy because we're trying to make a buck so we can actually eat, 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 give us a one-star rating for no fucking reason whatsoever. Closing shout-outs! My closing shout-out is to everyone that has donated to the show and not made us stink about our ads and given us a one-star review.

I thank you all so much, and I love you to death. So keep it up. And if anybody knows this guy, Jedi Victor, please just give him a sack tap with the back of your hand when he's not looking, just to let him know that we... Just say it's from GOG. It'll make me happy.

And don't forget Manscaped. Oh, God. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Or, you know, just bitch about the ads. Toss us a few bucks and we'll love you forever.

If you don't like Patreon but still want to bitch about the ads, you can give a one-time or recurring donation by just going to GOG.show, clicking that PayPal button, giving us a buck, and bitch about the ads. Your support really keeps us going, as do the ads, and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 394, where you'll find a graphic for an ad.

From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like, maybe sometimes sponsored as in an ad. Stay grumpy. Tell us how you really feel.

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