41: The Undisruption Revolution is Coming

This saddens me.

No, we're not. You are back wherever you are and it's probably cold. And the heat has just cranked up here. We're having a crazy week here in L.A. Fires and madness and insane heat, which has been wonderful, except for the fire of it. Yeah, I walked outside for about five minutes today and I could not feel anything above the neck.

It really sucks. And we're probably going to get snowed in today. Yay. Well, it was fun having you out here and we had a good time having a few drinks after the show. A couple people came by. It was a good time. Yes, 80% female. 80% female.

We'll definitely have to sort out more functions whenever we do get a chance to be in the same place together. Obviously, I think the next time might have to be Chicago. I might have to book myself a flight out there. Yeah, because I've been schlepping my ass to your house for how many months now? True. So, yeah, definitely. Hop a flight. We'll go downtown and set up and have a good old time.

Excellent. So, we've got some follow-up from last week. Yes, we do. I think I want to start with the app follow-up. Okay, let's do that. Because we talked about a bunch of apps last week and we also talked about shark finning, which is not swimming across the pool with your hand on top of your head going doo-doo-doo-doo.

So, Jelly. Jelly was the first one, which was the big one from BizStone, the crowdfunding or crowdsourcing your ignorance, I guess. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, I got so over that app within basically. I shark finned on that so fast.

Within a day, I was just like, why the fuck do I have this installed? Yep, same here. No more than a day. It was just people going – people didn't know what to do with it. No. It's almost like Twitter at the beginning. Here's my cheese sandwich, you know? Yeah, there was – most of the questions that popped up were basically just jokes or kind of ridiculous.

And the ones that were serious, those are the things that, you know, as we discussed last week when I was just even thinking about the app, I was like, well, why am I going to go through all the effort to do this and tell you and I'm not getting paid or anything? Or, gee, 10 seconds on Google would have gotten you the answer for that.

Exactly. Every time you send a reply, it should be one of those let-me-google-that-for-you.com replies. Yeah, there was quite a lot of those coming up. So, yeah, I kept the app on through this recording today, and basically as soon as it's done, I'm going to delete. Yeah, I already deleted it. I'm done with it.

I should go back and kill my account somehow. That is exactly what I was going to ask about next because I'll do my last time that I'm ever going to talk about Moves, which was the app that I loved for a long time for tracking my bike rides and steps. I'm getting rid of it. I'm finally done with it.

I spent about two hours attempting to figure out a way to get my data out of the program. Then I finally just gave up and said, who cares? So I'm going to lose 150 days of steps and biking information. I'm not really tracking that or saving that information anyway, so I gave up on it.

But it was a hell of a process to even attempt to try to do it. There aren't any good plug-ins available to let you get to it easily. They should just have something on their site that lets you dump raw data. They do not. And the question I was going to ask you, because I still haven't deleted it yet, is am I being irresponsible if I just delete it, or should I actually write them an email saying, please remove all of my data from your system?

You should write them and have them remove it. Okay. That's exactly what I was going to ask because I know you go in and out of your apps all the time, and I just had a feeling in the back of my head that I'm being completely stupid and irresponsible if I just delete the app. Yeah. So I should do the same with Jelly, right, I guess?

Yeah. Anytime I kill an app now, if there was any type of account integration, like if it was a Twitter integration or a Facebook integration, first thing I'll do is go – well, first I'll look on the app or the site because a lot of them now have, you know, delete my account and I can go through that. And then I go to Facebook or Twitter and kill the API access.

So it was just gone. But, yeah, I didn't do that with Jelly. I was just so pissed off at it. I just deleted it. So now I have to reinstall it, go back in, kill everything, and delete it. Yeah. So that is a step that everybody should start taking now when you add apps and delete them. I went through that process with some other app that didn't have a delete thing.

I wrote them an email saying, please remove all my data. Three weeks later, they got back to me and said they did it. And, you know, just get rid of your stuff. Don't leave your breadcrumbs everywhere. Yeah. Path was the last one I got in a big fight with. They didn't want to delete my account and my data. I'm like, delete my shit now. They finally, finally acquiesced and got rid of my stuff.

So Argus, you don't like Argus? No, I actually love Argus as an app. It's way better than Moves. I love it for tracking. I love, like, the fact that I can put in things like, you know, amount of coffee I'm drinking, water consumption throughout the day, tea, all different kinds of activities are in there.

Obviously, if I had a Fitbit or any of the other things that they plug into, the app works great with all of those. It's beautiful. I've really enjoyed using it the past week. The problem is it is an insane battery drain. I cannot be out for more. If I go out, like I did on Sunday, for three hours, I was only out for three hours that the app was running, and my phone was dead ten steps away from my walk home.

You need a 5S. Yeah. Just tell me that's exactly what it is because battery drain for me was not an issue. Right. Yeah, I'm just on a 5. Obviously, the 5S has better battery performance anyways, and I'm sure that the chip helps. It's the chip. It's all about the chip.

So Argus on a 5 is a little brutal. Luckily, I've got, you know, chargers, and I'm usually not away from anything for more than three hours. But if I am, I have to turn the app off. But it is a great app. I love it. It's pretty. I'd delete it just because I didn't use it. I don't need it.

Yeah, well, you're a FitBitter, so. Yeah, and I really don't care how much water I drink during the day. I know I drink enough water, and I don't care about any of the other metrics on there. It's like I wake up in the morning. I get on my Fitbit ARIA scale. It syncs that, and it tells me if I've been a good boy or a bad boy. And then I just walk, and it tells me if I've been a good boy or a bad boy.

That's all I need. I do want to do a shout-out to Bootify2, Electric Bootaloo. Yeah, we had a fun little Twitter chat with those guys. Yeah, I didn't know they were from Glasgow. That's awesome. Yeah, me either, actually. You wouldn't – and what is it with Scottish meditation, people?

My Andrew Johnson. He's Scottish, too. I don't know. I mean, the voices in Bootify2 are very distinctly kind of English and even somewhat London-y, but apparently they are a bunch of Scottish guys. Very funny. And I know they aren't going to send us that beer, but I would love it if they did.

I thought it was whiskey that they said they were going to send us. Oh, no. That's like one of the most insanely rare beers there is. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's like $70 a bottle or something. Jesus. So I'm assuming that won't be coming our way. But it was great talking to those guys. Very funny.

One of the first times I enjoyed being on Twitter for a couple seconds. It was fun. But I wanted to say regarding Bootify2, I used it. I've been using it every single day. Yeah. And it's fantastic. I couldn't sleep the first night like after we talked about – like after I'd gotten back to Chicago, I just couldn't sleep.

I was wired and not feeling well. Right. Sorry. I winded from running up the stairs. And I need to use my Fitbit app a little more I guess. The L.A. flatland killed my stair climbing ability. But anyway, in the morning when I'm getting out of bed, I'll listen to it too just to kind of ease into the day.

Right. Then in the middle of the day when I'm stressed, I'll pop on a little five-minuter. So I've been loving this thing. It's totally relaxed me. Yeah. It's a great little app. And I liked version one. But version two has a ton more meditation, so it doesn't get quite as repetitive. I love it.

I'll just take a five to ten-minute walk in the middle of the day, usually after I get a really annoying email from a client. It chills me out, come back relaxed, feeling good. It's a great little app. It's perfect. It does exactly what you want it to do. Yeah, and I bought one, and I never used it.

Right. I mean, I used it like once or twice. I just didn't like the design. But this new design is fun. Give them a good thumbs up on that. Cool. Yeah. So apps. Interesting. Yeah. I'll cover it when we get to the other section. I've got a couple I'm trying out this week that will probably be in the follow-up next week that we've already deleted.

Excellent. That seems to be the way. Yeah, I have one more bit that is somewhat follow-up. It's actually a really interesting story first. So let's talk about the story, and then I'll tell you why it's follow-up. I found this on Salon.com. It's People's Private Lives are Private, or sorry, that's not the title, how Facebook snooping backfires on employers.

So apparently there is starting to be a backfire about all this happening, about how basically any employer will look you up online, will check out your Facebook, check out your social networks, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. People are starting to get pissed off about this, understandably so, because I do think that there is a separation between someone's private life and their ability to do a job.

Absolutely. If your job is not public-facing or in public relations, then it should not be an issue, period. I mean, obviously, what leaps to mind, because you just said public relations, was that idiot from the New York PR firm that did that whole about to board a flight to South Africa. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if your job is being out there and being online and doing PR, then it matters.

Then you're a public face online. But if your job is Joe Schmo working in some office, and you have pictures on your personal Facebook page of you getting bombed on the weekend, big deal. That doesn't matter. Well, and also the whole – one of the points in the article that I thought was really interesting was prospective employers are not allowed to ask you certain questions or allowed to discriminate on certain factors.

Yeah. And by going and checking out your Facebook profile or your Twitter profile or like wheedling in through a friend to say, hey, can I check this guy out? I know your friends, whatever. Yeah. They're breaking those rules and effectively breaking the law. Yeah, that's also very true. Yeah, more lawsuits are going to be coming out of this.

And I knew what happened to me when I was – remember a long time ago we talked about that job where I had to do the live coding exercise? Right. And that was just a terrible, terrible time. But those guys had also asked me for my Facebook, my Twitter, my LinkedIn, all my different social indicators.

And like for Facebook, I'm like, well, the owner of the company already – we were friends on there. But I wasn't going to give out access to anybody else. I just drew the line. I'm like, my Facebook is private. Screw you. You can check me out. We've been friends for years on there. The rest of the stuff, it just made me feel creepy.

It made me feel creepy about them. I'm like, why do you guys need to know this if you want me to type for a living? Yeah, I think that is insanely creepy. I think the only social network that any employee has any – or any employer has any right to look at is LinkedIn because that's the point of that social network.

The rest of the rest of them aren't, you know, I mean, Twitter is public, whatever. So they're going to find what they're going to find. But they shouldn't be able to ask you for any of that stuff or require it. Or obviously, you know, they'll discount you if you don't give it to them. Yeah. Yeah. People need to cut that shit out.

Yeah, I agree. I agree completely. LinkedIn is all you get access to because that's the whole point of it. But the main reason that this is in follow-up is the article, which is on Salon, is actually originally from Scientific American. And we had had a huge conversation and rant about appropriation on the internet and how difficult it is and to see where things are from.

For the proper attribution argument. Yeah, the proper attribution argument. And they actually – I mean, Salon does a good enough job. We'll get into something a little bit later where they don't because they have the logo. They say this article was originally published by Scientific American, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But what they didn't do, and this is really annoying to me, is all the links just go to Scientific American's homepage. They don't go to the actual article as it appeared on Scientific American, which is when we're trying to do attribution and we're putting together our notes that will go on grumpyoldgeeks.com, I wasn't able to easily get the link that I wanted to put up there.

I didn't want to put up the Salon one. I wanted the original one. Absolutely. That's what I've been trying to train you to do. So good for you for trying, but you still couldn't find it. No, I mean, I can search for it, but we're doing this quick. We're doing this on the fly. We're not getting paid.

So it's just like, all right, fine. I can't give it to Scientific American. Now I have to send the traffic to Salon. And here's another one, another Salon article where I was trying to follow your point to see how bad they were. Yeah. They linked to a post about we're living through the most peaceful era in human history except for religious wars basically are on the rise.

Well, that was an article that was from Alternet. And they do link to the exact article in Alternet. But when you click on the link, the Alternet page has a sign up for our shit box, which is – I want to find people that do that and just take them out of the internet and do bad things to them.

But the only way that you can read that article is if you know how to hit escape. You know that escape is the way. There's no close button. There's nothing. You have to either put in your goods or hit escape. It's ridiculous. So for that one, Salon was okay I think with it just because I read it there.

Yeah. They actually linked directly to the article. It's Alternet that was annoying. Yeah. Well, they are very annoying all the damn time. But – oh. So yeah, that's pretty much what I got for follow-up this week. I saw you finally got the good microphone.

We're podcasting like professionals now. That's good. We are podcasting like professionals, you know. We're basically just now stuck to the whims of our mutual ISPs and Skype to make sure that we keep a clean connection. But we're both using the wonderful Rode Podcaster mics with the boom set up.

So we can – Yes, the PSA1 booms, I believe. Yes. So we can type away and I can drink my poor tea without hearing the bangs and bleeps and all that sort of stuff going on while we're doing it. And the nicest part about it is we don't have to futz around with like levels and anything anymore.

We just – we're both on the same mic. We plug it in at the same category and we're good to go. And you're getting another call. Comment of the week. Our comment of the week comes from Jake Stefanich.

He's got a website at sparkbmxtraining.com. He says, hey, guys, just found a bout about Lula. It's always hard to read once you're used to bullshitting, isn't it? I know. It really is. Hey, guys, just found out about the podcast from my friend Calby Mundy who, by the way, is the co-host of the Does It Have Legs podcast, also on the Grumpy Old Geeks Podcasting Network.

Right. I'm a BMX coach, trainer, personal trainer, and aspiring internet mogul. OK. Well, there's problem number one. He's got – well, yeah. He's got like eight job titles there and nobody should ever be an aspiring internet mogul. Yeah, that's the one I was pointing out specifically.

Yeah, don't ever say that to anybody ever again. Entrepreneur. I'm about to start my own podcast focusing on BMX racing content with some training tips mixed in. I actually just bought bmxpodcast.com today. By the way, great domain.

Yeah, you nailed it with that. That was a very good move on your part. Great domain. You guys seem to have your shit together. Seem. Just wondering if you have any tips, ideas for a brand new podcaster. I hope to hear back from you. I subscribe to Grumpy Old Geeks Podcast and can't wait to listen to more episodes while I work.

Sweet. Excellent, Jake. Thanks for the email. My first comment is that coming to us to get tips is a bit like going down – walking down your street and stopping to talk to the lovely 10-year-old neighbor girl that sells lemonade about business when you should be talking to Donald Trump.

But, you know, thanks for the vote of confidence. Well, here's the deal. Yes, we don't make any money on this because we don't really try that hard. He's got a business already. Yeah. So he's doing an awareness podcast, which I think is a great thing.

And especially with BMX coming – is it going to be a sport in the upcoming Olympics? Yeah. You know, now is the perfect time. And he's already training pros and all that. Check out his website, which does need a facelift, by the way. Big time. I think starting a podcast right now is great, especially because he's got a niche.

Yeah. He's got people that he already knows in the industry. So it's perfect. So I don't want to, you know, get on about starting a podcast now. The things that we've learned are – Well, yeah, let's go with this because we're coming up almost a year of doing this now.

So we have learned a couple of things. First off, I agree with everything that Jason just said. You're niching yourself perfectly. You're already in the industry. You're going to have no problem. I mean, obviously, it's a niche, so don't expect to have, you know, mass appeal. But you're already in there.

You're networking with people. Just start telling everybody you know about your podcast once it's up. Obviously, you're probably involved with all the online forums that are involved with BMX, et cetera, et cetera. So you've got to, you know, get active in those. Always mention your podcast. Draw from people in those things.

Have them be guests on your podcast. And that's how word will spread about it. You should have no problem getting an avid group of followers that are way into BMX. So that part, no problem. The part that you'll probably have to work on is I'd imagine you've never done one before or, you know, haven't, you know, gone around doing talks about BMX, being in the public, speaking about it, bullshitting, bullshitting, bullshitting.

And you're probably not an audio engineer or anything like that. So that's the learning curve that you're going to have to come up on. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. The actual technicals of doing the podcast are, you know, what kind of got us in the beginning. We didn't know – well, yeah, speaking on camera – or on mic, again, see?

Yeah. We're professionals. Speaking on mic took us months to even get our first episode out. Yeah. So schedule yourself a lot of time to do a bunch of test episodes. You know, Jason and I – this was born in sitting around at a bar getting drunk and talking about tech.

And we went, wow, we're actually pretty interesting. Now, there's a huge leap from sitting in a bar bullshitting about tech to sitting in front of two microphones and making an hour to an hour and a half podcast about tech. Yeah. We were pretty interesting. We got more interesting as the beers commenced, as the night went on.

And we finally figured out, oh, shit, we got to do this sober. Yeah. And we weren't nearly as interesting. They got very unintelligible and there was a lot of super inside information and very bad things said that we could – we were like, we cannot put this out there. No. So there's that.

So give yourself a few tests, test shows. Well, yeah. Let me talk a bit about that because we did four episodes. When we first started, we're like, I will nail this the first time. No problem. And when I said coming into it, I'm like, everybody I know, they've got this four-episode mark where they throw away the first four and the first episode you hear is their fifth one.

Right. And I thought it was bullshit. But you know what? That was our first episode was number five. That's exactly what happened. Yeah. It really is like – and do a full show. Edit it. Write it. Record it. Edit it. Get it done. Put it on your phone. Listen to it.

Yep. And you'll see where you screw up. It's really not that hard. And give it to a friend. We had some really good people that gave us a lot of good tips in the beginning. So there's a lot of practice involved. From the audio side, it's a lot easier now like if you're just using GarageBand.

There's a couple quick, easy tools. I use Sound Studio to do my editing for Does It Have Legs because I'm the editor on that. Brian is the editor on this one. He's got crazy high-end tools that he uses. Get a copy of Levelator, which is a free app that will save you tons of time at the end and give you like a more rounded, professional-sounding podcast.

You just drag your file onto it, then convert it to MP3 and off to the races. Get a good podcasting host. There are two that I know of. There's Blueberry and Libsyn. We use Libsyn because we want good stats.

We didn't do that from the beginning. So our first 15 episodes, we've got no stats on. And that's really key because as your podcast grows, you're going to want to bring people in to be sponsors. And without those stats, without like professional stats that are audited by somebody else, you're not going to get the money from the sponsors because you're not going to have the right – that's set up from the get-go.

And it's just easier to have somebody else deal with that stuff. Agreed. I don't think if there's anything else. We just switched to the Rode Podcaster mics. I mean that's a one-stop shop. You can't beat it. We'll have the link in the show notes. It's a little bit pricey, but you get the mic and the boom and everything, and you're basically completely sorted for audio quality.

Yeah. I'll tell you what. It's cheaper than what I did, which is keep buying cheap mics and buy a little more expensive, a little more expensive. If I'd have just from the get-go went out and bought two Rode Podcasters with the booms and the shock mounts, I would have probably saved $500.

Yeah. This is where we ended up. We went through a bunch of mics first. These work perfectly. Get yourself a nice, comfortable pair of headphones. I recommend the Sennheiser HD 280 Pros. They're great because you're going to spend a lot of time wearing them. Absolutely. Yeah, and just kind of get into a groove and figure out how – the other main thing that took us a while to get there too was to kind of find a structure.

So you might want to sit – and that will come out of the first four episodes that you do that you think are going to be great but won't be and you'll never put out. You'll kind of fall into a bit of a structure. Figure out if you want to have segments, all that sort of stuff, and figure out right away if you plan on having a lot of guests because that throws another interesting thing into the loop both technically and in terms of conversation.

Yeah, and time, time involved because when we have guests on, we spend a lot more time doing research and making sure things are just right. Well, sometimes I guess. I guess the Joey Rabier episode we didn't really spend that much time on. No, we spend a lot of time drinking for that one.

Yeah, yeah. But just factor in like a podcast is a time commitment. It's a serious time commitment. I think like I was saying before, does it have legs? I edit that thing. I do all the recording, editing, website, social, that whole thing.

I'm looking at 12 hours a week to do that show. Right, yeah. So if you're doing it by yourself, expect to spend some time on it at the beginning or find some cheap interns that you can hire to do the editing for you, the posting stuff. I mean it's not hard stuff, but you're definitely – there's a learning curve.

It took us almost a year here to get where we're at and we ain't even that far. Nope, that's very true. So it's just – you're going to go through a period of trial and error where you're going to figure out what works, what doesn't. You'll find a groove about editing and putting things together and getting it out there.

And the main thing is you've got to put in the time to make it compelling and interesting. And that's another – Oh, that's what we haven't done. Yeah, that's where we consistently fail. But you've got to factor in that time as well. So it's not just recording the podcast, editing it, getting it out there, not doing beds.

If you want to do that sort of stuff for different intros and outros for segments. But we also put in time – we find stories. We find interesting stories. We put them out there. We talk about them a little bit before we go on and talk about things. Your content is obviously king.

So the two main things you want to focus on is your content and make sure it sounds good because no one will listen to a podcast that sounds like shit. And we've had many of them and somehow people have struggled through them. We've lost a lot of people based on our audio quality. Yeah, yeah. I mean now we're dialed in and we got it.

So we're passing that knowledge on to you. But there's always going to be things you can't control like the episode where I was doing it from London and had shit internet. There's just only so much you can do. All right. Well, good luck and let us know when your podcast is up so we can go to listen and pimp it on the show.

So there's an article I found this week called the NASA Studies on Napping in Priceonomics.com. It's an old study that was done by NASA on long-haul jet pilots and their reaction time and how it works to nap and does it help kind of.

I mean it's basically a study on napping and it's been quoted over and over again. It was brought up this week because there's a guy who is doing a Kickstarter campaign who's going around making the circuits doing the napping stories. I just thought it was a fantastic article because it kind of broke down the old NASA study.

Sorry. I was taking a little nap and – I was going to say, where are you? I woke up to a nightmare of there being some sort of Kickstarter about napping. I know. It's a Kickstarter about napping. So take the article with a grain of salt. Yeah. This is a promoted article to a certain extent. But I'm not personally a napper.

I definitely know people that need them. I think everybody is different but okay. Well, I am a napper. I love napping. Now that I don't have to go to an office, like 2, 3 in the afternoon, I hit my Paziz Energizer app on my phone, lay down for 20 minutes, turn off, like close the blinds.

Oh my god. Wake up. Feel like a new man. Right. I think napping is good for everybody. So the study says. You just have too much Poo-er. You can't fall asleep. I probably do crank myself up with a little too much caffeine throughout the day. By the way, I was really fucking pissed off that I got to your place and you were out of tea.

I got to say that. I really wanted to try that tea and now you're drinking it again and I'm gone. I know. It was two days after you left that the box of Poo-er tea showed up. So sorry about that. Actually, davidtea.com. I'll give them a little plug. They've got some of the best selection I've seen.

They ship it right to your door. Very nice stuff. Throw it in the show notes because I want to get some. Will do. Oh, so the Napwell is the world's first napping mask, which I call bullshit on because you have sleep masks forever. They sell them at every airport kiosk.

Yeah. He met his goal though. So unfortunately, it will be thrust upon the world six months behind schedule as always. As per Kickstarter. So yeah. Okay. Well, napping, napping, napping. The other thing that hit the news, Nest was bought out by Google.

I think, did we talk about that at all last week? It happened after. It happened after. So Google purchased Nest, which led to a bunch of jokes and some not entirely unwarranted concerns about Google now being able to access how long you're in your house, what particular room you happen to be sitting in at any particular time.

A whole lot of metrics they could grab if they wanted to. I don't think Nest is sitting there like Sauron with his eye telling you which room you're in. No, but… Which was a pretty funny graphic going around. It was a great graphic. And there were a lot of jokes about it. So I've been a fan of Nest since day one.

I really like the idea of the company kind of taking over these things that we never think about in our house and updating them to the 21st century. So I read an article about the smoke detector specifically because that one had freaked me out a little bit because it is ridiculously expensive compared to the price of a regular smoke detector.

They're coming in at $120 each and you figure most homes need at least three to four as opposed to you can buy a pack of four standard smoke detectors for like $30 or $40 at Home Depot. So it's a significant increase in price to take yourself up to Nest level, far higher than their original product, which is the home AC units, which are only a little bit more pricey than your standard units.

So anyways, it's basically a nice little review of it. It says it's absolutely great if you want to spend the money. Well, yeah. I mean everything is great. A Ferrari is great if I want to spend the money. Exactly. So I mean maybe the hope I guess is with Google behind them.

They'll be able to drop prices. They'll take over leadership in this market, which as far as I know, they're really the only people out there. I don't know too many other companies that are starting to do high-end home equipment. Here's what I want with the Nest stuff. I think it's beautiful. I love the thermostat.

I think it's fantastic. Oh, yeah. It's amazing. Take the goddamn Wi-Fi chip out of it. I'd buy one in a heartbeat. I do not want anything in a home Wi-Fi connected to the rest of the world, especially a smoke detector because you know what? Hack the smoke detector, turn it off, set the house on fire, burn everybody in their sleep.

Okay? Done. Go write the novel. There's your story. Now, I was concerned just about Google getting access to that stuff. You've got people hacking in. I kind of agree with you. I do like – I love the app aspect of it, being able to control everything from the app, and I don't know how you do that without Wi-Fi.

You don't. Everything goes through the network. What if you're not home? What if I want to turn on my AC when I'm still finishing up a meeting? That's why it goes through the network. You have to probably pop into Nest servers that are tied into your Wi-Fi router at home, probably VPN through hopefully or some kind of secure connection hopefully, and then it talks to your thermostat and boom, you're done.

But we've lived without this technology for like the entirety of humanity, so we've done okay with figuring out how to turn the goddamn AC on. I'm just saying. We've also lived without cars for the majority of humanity, but progress, man.

I love this stuff. If I'm in the position of being able to design a home in the future or if I don't own my place in LA, the problem is I rent here. If I'd like my place in Toronto, I would totally put this stuff in. I love it. This is the funny part. I'm the homeless guy bitching about home automation and the security involved.

This is like – I went to a conference in Washington, D.C. where Cory Doctorow, who is a Canadian, is railing on the head of the FCC about the rights of Americans. I'm the Cory Doctorow of home automation I guess.

I want to save you from yourselves. That's all. That's all. Hey, the stories about people breaking into people's homes when they post that we're going on vacation on Facebook. You know, I was doing that two years before it ever hit the news. That's true.

So I'm just saying. Now it's on the news every time. So yeah, I mean there will always be cases of that happening I assume. But I do – I like Nest. I like where they're going. I don't have a lot of faith in Google taking it the direction that you want it to go, which is more private and more secure. But you never know. Maybe they'll get somebody over there that goes, hey, we have the ability to do this and we've got the money and the backing behind us now, so let's make something even cooler.

Yeah, and I would like to point out that my father sold security systems for a living for like 15 years. So I come from a background of security paranoia. Exactly. You certainly do. Speaking of Facebook, they're apparently doing something again that I don't care about.

But you linked to the topic, so bring it up. Well, you know, it's – What are they doing? Trending Topics is now rolling out on Facebook because they are attempting to kind of – I guess the theory is they're trying to present themselves as a place for breaking news and current events and all that sort of stuff as well, trying to get a little bit of that Twitter mind share.

That's so stupid. These people just need to leave each other alone and focus on what they're good at. I believe that was a rant of mine from about, oh, 10 episodes ago. They're all becoming the exact same thing. They are, yeah. Twitter is adding things that make it more like Facebook. Facebook is adding things that make it more like Twitter.

Snapchat is going to be a laughing stock in history when we look back at it because they're dumb. Oh, yeah. They're going to be the greatest – they are the new pets.com. Oh, yeah, totally. And it's funny because everybody always mentions Snapchat. Like all these articles – all these tech articles about Facebook and Twitter when they add these things and the battle going on between them always end with some stupid comment from lazy journalists like, well, five years from now when we're all on Snapchat, I guess we'll look back at this and laugh.

I'm like, no, no, no. There will not be a Snapchat in five years and we'll be laughing at that one. Well, there may be but Justin Timberlake will own it and it will be part of my space. Yeah. And he'll probably buy it for 45 bucks. Exactly. So there's that. So look forward to that.

I guess they're rolling it out this week. I suppose this will come out on Monday. By then you'll probably see it on your upper right-hand side. It said it was going to be in by Thursday and I haven't seen it yet. Yeah, I haven't seen it yet either, which is weird because historically I've always gotten the Facebook stuff pretty quick when it rolls out and I'm not seeing it yet.

So maybe they're having a bit of a hitch. Who knows? Or like half of my sidebar on Facebook is gone because I have an ad blocker on. So maybe it fits the dimensions of an ad and it's already there. But we just can't see it. It could be. And eventually, obviously, that's another one of Facebook's plays there as the trending topics will be sponsored.

As per usual. But Twitter's already R2. So again, same, same. So, okay. This is a story I hadn't heard yet. Hershey and 3D Systems join forces to create printable confections. Yeah, this has popped up on Engadget and it's one of those rare times where the grumpy old geeks get all giddy and go, isn't technology awesome?

Yeah, this is like the NASA pizza printer that they're working on. Exactly. It's very similar. So this was announced, obviously, at CES where everybody announces all kinds of bullshit that will never show up. Hopefully, this one will. Hershey and 3D Systems have joined forces basically to create a thing that will allow you to print confections.

So everybody can be your own Willy Wonka. Great. Except I don't eat sugar. Well, that sucks for you. It does. A yet-to-be-released machine will fall under the Chefjet line and also support printing 3D objects with sugar. So it's going to be pretty awesome.

It ain't going to be cheap. You're not going to have this at your home anytime soon. But it will be really cool to see what people do with it. And I'm sure it will end up being like a reality show on Bravo or something. Give it four years. Give it four years, you'll be in the home. Look at the MakerBot. So many people have those already.

If you can print with plastic, you can print with sugar. Probably at a higher resolution too. One would imagine. So it's going to be pretty cool. This is when I get excited about science and tech. So here's an article that I just found this morning that I didn't even read, but it had a great cover picture.

It kind of reminded me of going to Club Perversion back in the 90s. It's very similar to some of the girls that we used to dance with there, yes. Yeah, yeah. You didn't need a bra. You just needed electrical tape on your nipples. That's all you have to do. And I don't know what booth this is from, but here's the headline.

Scientific evidence that booth babes don't sell products. I'm going to file this one under. I don't care. I really don't. My point being that I don't think anybody ever thought they did. The whole point was it was a bunch of dudes stuck in a conference hiring hot chicks to stand around.

Yeah, you've got an expense account. Use it. That's what they used it for. So, okay. I know there's this whole trying to integrate the sexes and technology shit going on, and I'm probably going to be labeled a pariah and nailed to a cross for it. But I don't care. I like booth babes.

I went to CES – or not CES. What was it? What's the damn video game conference in LA after they banned them? I don't know. I don't play video games. You're asking the wrong person. Sorry. E3.

I went to E3 after they banned them, and it was just boring. It was a bunch of – it was a sausage fest. Well, I have no problem with booth babes. I mean this is old school advertising. It's all a bit ridiculous. I'm sure that there's some company that's going to come out with booth beefcake, and so they'll be hunky.

I mean that's Abercrombie & Fitch, isn't it? Every time I go into that store, there's a bunch of dudes standing around without their shirt on. Nobody has an outcry about that. Speaking of which, I didn't get this in the show notes, but this was a story that hit the lines yesterday, which is just absolutely ridiculous. Did you hear what American Apparel is doing now to get some publicity?

Dude, I could probably talk – I could have a 20-minute stand-up routine on what American Apparel is going to be doing now to get – go ahead. Tell me what it is. They have added pubic hair to their mannequins and not subtle. I mean we're talking full-on 1970s never-seen-erazor pubic hair. Okay.

I didn't see that one coming. So they put tighty-whities on the mannequins, on the female mannequins, and basically hair is exploding out the sides. And it was just – it hit the news everywhere. It's such a stupid publicity stunt. It's ridiculous. And of course they had to come out with some sort of statement about we're concerned about female gender body issues and we're asking people to question what it – no bullshit.

You wanted to get in the news. Fuck you. Do you have the press release in front of you? No, I don't. Sorry. Oh, because I bet Ryan Holiday's name is on it. He's the guy that does all the stuff for American Apparel. He wrote Trust Me, I'm Lying. He's a master manipulator. He worked with Tucker Max.

I mean this is the guy who is the genius of doing stupid shit to get press. And this just reeks of one of his ideas. Yep. So that's going on. So let's talk about something serious. After we've gone from models or pubic hair.

So basically we have lost net neutrality. The court struck it down. It is gone. For good. Well, I don't – there's still appeals in progress, but yeah, it pretty much seems like the battle is lost. It does seem that way. And this is something that I was talking about.

We were talking about just the last podcast basically. This opens up – the internet as we know it is now gone. ISPs control everything. They will control what you see and what you can get. They will control how fast you get it.

And companies are going to start paying to be able to deliver you content. It's all over. This is game over. It's pretty bad. I mean if you go back and listen to the last episode, what we were talking about, I think I need to kickstarter that router that has the different internet connections and check-checks your Netflix usage versus your whatever and routes packets accordingly because it's going to get bad.

Yeah, it's going to get real bad. And I'm actually heartened to see how many people seem to be kind of paying attention or at least reading the idiot's guide to it on like Huffington Post or things like that. I saw quite a few people who I know aren't really technically motivated or pay attention to anything posting the link on their Facebook.

So hopefully people are paying attention. People will do something about this, although they're – What the hell are they going to do? What the hell are any of us going to do? This is completely out of our hands. This is big business. This is government. And they are pretty much fucking the entire internet. Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yay. It's not good. Like the NSA already hasn't fucked our technology business in the US at this point. Now we just got to go stick our dick up our own ass at this point. I mean that's it. It's just – we're fucking ourselves. Yeah. I mean this is something that we literally could probably talk about for a two-hour podcast, but why?

Why? There are other podcasts out there with people that are smarter than we are and generally do a better job of it. We just piss and moan about it. We just piss and moan about it. I mean frankly, it's out of the hands of regular people or technologists now. Anyways, it's in the realms of corporate lawyers.

This is where everything is now. Lawyers and lobbyists. Exactly. So – Probably, yeah. Here's where we're going to see the war. We're going to see Google versus – Google, Netflix, content creators versus the people who own just the wires in the damn ground.

That's what they own. They shouldn't be able to say what can go – it's making my fucking head explode. Sorry. Yeah. I mean that's what it is going to be. It's going to be content creators and tech companies versus ISPs. Oh, you know what we're going to go back to?

I know. I figured it out. We're going back to CDs through the mail. We're going back to Netflix, DVDs on demand. Yeah, pretty much. I mean that's going to be the way around it is – I'm going to fill out a postcard to Google. I'm going to say, Google, can you tell me about mesothelioma, please?

I'll mail the postcard and then I will get a DVD back a week later. It will revitalize the post office. It will be undisrupted. I know. This might cause us to unfuck and undisrupt, which might be nice. Yes, and it's also getting us away from the cloud stuff that I've been screaming about for years.

The only difference between this and my worry about the cloud is now it's going to be metered and sponsored. I'm glad I didn't sign up for any online backups. I just went and bought a new hard drive. Yeah, I would definitely never do that, especially not at this point. I mean your uplinks are going to be throttled, especially for that kind of stuff.

They're not going to work. They already are. You only get 250 gig a month on general Comcast plans or Time Warner plans or any of the big box boys. And it goes back to I used to have a T1 in my bedroom, and I kind of want to go back to that and just have my own straight to the provider.

Yeah, but I mean you get into the problem. I mean I was thinking about this net neutrality stuff as soon as the ruling came out as well. And I was like, well, boy, that certainly opens up a market for some crazy like maybe kickstarted ISP that's going to be all – all your data is – nothing is metered.

It's all free, but they don't own the lines. They're going to have to leave. Oh, I got it. You know what? I got it. Unless they – I know who's going to do it. I know who's going to do it. Richard Branson, virgin internet. Yeah, well, unless he comes in and actually builds out all the physical lines, he's going to have to rent them from other people.

He's going to have to rent them from AT&T and Verizon who have put all that infrastructure in already. Yeah, but once he rents them, then it's – I mean then he controls what goes over the pipe. They can't throttle something that you have time on. Right. I'm hoping. But there's still like thousands and thousands of miles of dark fiber out there that was put down in the late 90s that has never been lit up.

Yeah. It's just ripe for somebody to come in and buy up. That's true. So hopefully somebody will. I mean I'm surprised Google isn't making a play themselves to get around everything. Just own the lines themselves. They can't. There's no way. Right. Antitrust would knock their dick in the dirt as they say.

Big time. There's no way Google could do that. And just to illustrate how dire the situation is, I'd like to point out the fact that I actually just appeal to our overlords Google to save us. Yeah, that's pretty bad. It's pretty bad when you're looking to Google to save your ass.

Yeah. All right. That's depressing. Let's kill the news.

Kickstarter. Get the balls. So this week on Kickstarter in the balls, we don't actually have anything on Kickstarter, but we have a new Kickstarter-ish startup. Yeah. Called Travolta. As in John?

Kind of, I guess. He likes to travel. He's a pilot. He owns his own planes. Nope. This is crowdfunded travels. Uh-huh. I don't know what the name has to do with that, but yes. This is you go put up your dream trip and you get people to give you money so you can go on vacation.

Do I even need to rant about this anymore? Please. I think you should. This one's pretty funny. Come on. This is fucking infuriating. It's insulting. Why the... What the... Who the... What? Ow. I don't even have words. This is... Fucking go away.

Fuck you. Come on, Brian. Use your words. Fuck... Fuck everybody that signed up on this and put one up. Fuck all of you. Pay for your own fucking vacation. Assholes. So, friend of the show, Jonas Luster, has one up that we will link to in the show notes.

Let's see if he's got any takers yet. Nope. Been up for... Shocking. Nobody wants to pay for your vacation. Yeah. That's kind of... That's the problem with this one. It's like, you want people to pay so you can go have a good time.

Look, you know what this company would work for? Or they should make a deal with, like, a wedding.com and this, you know, part of a gift registry. You set up your honeymoon. People, instead of buying you a fucking set of plates in China, can donate as part, you know, part of your Hawaii trip. For that, fine.

That's a good idea. You should actually do that one. I know. Well, that's... You should kickstarter that. Maybe we should kickstarter one. Yeah. So, we can call it gaytravolta.com. Cater to the... Sorry, I had to put that in. Couldn't help. Yeah, this is...

This just annoys me to no end. And it should... You know, I've actually been thinking more and more about this. And Lefse's letter talked a little bit about it. And I actually feel that finally crowdsourcing is starting to shark fin. I think we're starting to see a backlash to it.

I don't... Obviously, this stuff is up. And this is just ridiculous to everybody. Everybody can see how ridiculous this is. So, I think it's starting to go away. I mean, I think people are fed up with it. People are starting to have bad experiences, as we've talked about ad nauseum. Products being six months late, a year late, never really showing up.

You know, bad incentives. Our Chug t-shirts were horrible. The Chug show still hasn't shown up. People not being able to make the products that they said they were going to make. People skipping out on important issues and important legislations that exist. And rules and reasons why Soma Water isn't what it says it is.

And all the other problems that we see with all the crowdsource stuff. You know, Lefse's even talked about Amanda Palmer and how, oh, it's going to change the music industry. Well, Amanda Palmer's doing a new album. And shockingly, she's not using Kickstarter this time. Nobody is. I mean, nobody...

I think it's shark finned. I think people have started to see through it. I think it's going to go back to what it's really good for, which is, you know, your Etsy small hobby project stuff that a small group of people fund. And that's all it should ever be for. And it certainly shouldn't be for your fucking vacation.

The only thing I think about this site is like, wow, if you actually find people dumb enough to give you money to go on vacation, good on you. Yeah. Go for it, man. By all means. Yeah, I mean, why not put one up and see? I will say I have had one good Kickstarter experience, and those are my werewolf cards.

Right. They came out perfect. They were late. The guy's dog died. It's okay. But that's exactly the type of project that I think it should be for. And I think it'll eventually, that's all crowdsourcing and crowdfunding will be. A small, you know, independent, little artsy hobby type project.

Oh, speaking of, I got to put this in the show notes. There's a guy that's making a set of Edgar Allan Poe playing cards on Kickstarter that look awesome. Again, exactly what crowdsourcing and crowdfunding should be for. Yep. Independent artists trying to make a product that they can't fund on their own.

Yes. Not plan an extraordinary trip and get it funded by inspired people, amazed friends, and generous sponsors. I'm so inspired by looking at other people's vacations, I'm going to give them money instead of taking my own. Yeah, really? What the fuck? I mean, apparently these people never saw the study that, like, looking at other people's travel photos just makes you depressed and hateful.

It bums you out. It bums you out and makes you not like your friends anymore. So if these people are going to pay me to go on vacation, I think they're probably going to have a hitman waiting for me in the hotel room just so they can get their satisfaction. Yeah, this is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen and, yeah, I'm really, you know, I'm hoping this shark fin on crowdsourcing, crowdfunding is…

I don't think you can – I think this is not part of the quote-unquote shark fin model because that's a rapid adoption, immediate drop-off. This has been growing forever. This is a standard bell curve distribution of users. I just hope we're at the tail end… Yeah, me too.

…of the whole thing. Let's get it back to Etsy-type arts and crafts and super cool, like, one person just doing something amazingly artistic that, you know, he would never get funded any other way. He or she would never get funded any other way. Let's get it back to that. Let's not make it major Hollywood movies.

Let's not make it… Million-dollar video games. Million-dollar video games. Let's not make it things that you can fund through normal avenues that we already have an existing business for. And let's certainly not make it for people's vacations. Now, Brian, we didn't have cars in the past. Are you saying you're poo-pooing on the progress of the human species?

I don't see Kickstarter. I don't see crowdfunding as progress. I just don't. And like you said, we're all discovering. It's rare. And it's few and far between that we find one of these projects that actually delivers as said. Absolutely. Enough of that.

Okay. Good luck, Jonas. I hope you enjoy your trip. Sorry, man. Seriously? Are you shitting me? Last night, I was sitting around after a quick little dinner with some friends and maybe a beer or two.

And I had a total are you shitting me moment when a story popped up on my Facebook feed. So LAist, which I believe you are very familiar with, Jason. They were my fierce competitors when I ran blogging.la. Yes, go ahead. I won't say any more. Well, they're doing rather well for themselves.

And they're definitely – they have a good presence here in LA. A lot of people check them out all the time. They're definitely all over Facebook and social networks. They have made some attempt at – or definitely a leap at trying to be actual real journalism instead of just a blogging platform.

Bullshit. They failed absolutely miserably last night with this particular story. A couple months ago, there was this woman named Cecilia Abadie, I believe, in Temecula, who caused an uproar last year for getting ticketed for Google Glassing while driving.

I remember when that happened. So she was pulled over and got a ticket because, obviously, she's wearing Google Glasses, which, you know, if you can't use your cell phone, you shouldn't be able to use those. She also was cited for speeding. So let's put that in context. She was also speeding.

So she was already – she didn't get pulled over just for wearing the glasses, but she got an additional fine for that. Woman bravely fights. Historic Google Glassing while driving ticket, comma, wins was the headline of the story itself. Bravely? Bravely. And they also titled it on their FB link, LAS titled the story, Great News for Google Glass Fans.

Now, this drives me insane. First off, this is useless page view journalism at its absolute worst. This is exactly the stuff that we rail about all the time on Huffington Post. It's a complete fucking non-story if you actually read it, which nobody on Facebook actually did because all the comments that were starting to go in under the thing just showed that nobody reads a goddamn thing.

First off, how is it great news for Google Glass fans? Because the lawsuit basically said – the judge stated that she won technically because the Google Glasses were off. If they had been on, it would have been a different story.

So how is it a win for Google Glass fans? Because all it's really proven is that you can actually wear them as long as you're not using them. And how can the cop tell if they're on or off from 50 feet away as he's gunning you with his radar? Exactly. Or how can you even tell that she didn't just switch it off really quickly once she got pulled over?

Exactly. Can't you just do a voice command, glass off? Yeah. So the ruling basically just states that, sure, you can have this useless piece of technology on you as long as you're not using it and it's not turned on. That's not a win for Google Glass fans. Secondly, I'm reasonably sure any cop, firefighter, regular person who has ever – army guys, anyone who's ever done anything brave would not find that fighting a moving violation is brave.

Yeah, no shit. She is not brave. She was lawyered up and she went in there and whatever. There's nothing brave about that. And I'm annoyed at the judge as well for not making any kind of statement with this case. He had the opportunity to basically just say, no, you cannot wear Google Glasses at all when you're driving, which is – we all know that's what's going to end up happening.

Instead, we're going to have to waste more taxpayer money. There's going to be more cases that happen until we actually get to that point when he had the chance to basically just state, you cannot wear these when operating a motor vehicle. End of story. Done. And he didn't do that, which is annoying. Which is what he should have done. Exactly. It's what he should have done. I don't care if they're on or off.

They're on your face. They're in – they're in a vision obstruction. No, get them off. Get the damn things off. Get the damn things off. We're all agreed on that. It's just a fucking horrible story with horrible headlines and horrible writing and fuck you for wasting my time. Well, you brought up L.A.s in the first place.

I was going to say that from the get-go, but hey. Well, the segment's called Are You Shitting Me? Welcome to This Week in Shit We Put on Our Computers. So this week I saw Warren Ellis, who is a comic writer and just general author and novelist on Twitter, mentioned an app called Kennedy that he was checking out.

So I got a budget for apps that I waste every week. And so I went and checked this out. This is kind of a different type of journaling. It's literally just a one-click, save some data.

Right. Off you go. You can save a note to it. You can put a photo with it. But it also gets like the news headline from what was going on at that moment. Gets your location. Here's the nice part about this one, going back to your shitty experience with moves. You tie this to your Dropbox account.

Saves all your data to a JSON file. Oh, that's very nice. I love that. So you can do whatever you want to with it. I love companies that do that. Yep. So I don't know how useful it is. I've only had it for a couple of days and it's been cold and I haven't left this chair in a while. So once I start to leave again and move around, I don't know what kind of uses I'll have for it.

But it's just kind of cool to be able to just go dink, remember this spot, make a note, move on. I think it will be cool if I'm out shopping or at a store or in a town I've never been. I can say, boom, cool Indian food here and then I'll have the GPS for it and I can go back later.

Like when I was in Asia, that would have been perfect. Just bouncing around Singapore and Bangkok and Hong Kong, I could have just marked the places instead of having to just rely on backtracing stuff later. Just that one-click save. It's kind of what it is.

It's a one-click save. Yeah. It's an interesting concept. I mean the idea of the context of the day is kind of cool but kind of weird. Like I'm just looking at one of the screenshots and like it grabs a headline about Iran warning ahead of nuclear talks. I mean that – I get it kind of provides a context for the day and the time and everything.

But what does that have to do with like the picture of the guy in the coffee shop that captured this on a wet Monday afternoon in New York? Oh, and Iran's warning of a nuclear attack. Oh, my god. Oh, my god. Well, I think like five years down the line, that would be some cool information.

What was going on in the world when you took this shot? I like that. I like that. I mean I wish there was a setting to turn it off because I really don't care. Right. But still, I mean it's just – it's extra data. It doesn't really hurt anything. I mean it's – like I said, it's a really interesting concept and I talked a couple weeks back about how I was rereading the kind of near fiction books, the First Immortal and The Truth Machine.

And he wrote in a very – like this would be a perfect tool for him as he was writing those books, as he was like going around and grabbing headlines and things like that. So I could see this like definitely like if you're a writer, if you're thinking about putting together some sort of like current events book and you're putting it together over time, all of these things would be really, really useful to you.

I can't see myself personally using it, but I can see the application and it's definitely interesting. I'll give it that. Yeah, that's what I thought. So I'm giving it a shot. I'll keep it around and see what's what. And I do – I have it on my home screen, so it's there and it's in my mind space as it were.

So when I go out and do something interesting, I'll probably just tap it and try it. Because all it is – like I said, all it's doing is pumping a JSON file to my Dropbox. Yeah, which is actually much more useful than say social networking and things like that because you can use Foursquare or Facebook.

Or Facebook and tag yourself at a restaurant that you really liked, but you're never going to go back and find it. This is something specific that you'd be able to troll through the data yourself really easily. So I like it for that. Yeah, that's all I want. And this is kind of – it's like a personal API kind of thing almost.

So my next one is Launch Center Pro. Yes. This one costs $5. It's a – oh, you know what I should do? I should tell you exactly how much the other one costs too, shouldn't I? I believe it was $199. Is it $199? Yes, $199 for Kennedy. Sorry about that.

Yeah. This one, Launch Center Pro is $5. And what it does is it's almost like an Apple script for your iOS device. Okay. So you can – it's got like automations. So I can set up a one-click text Brian button.

You know? And it does a bunch of other stuff. It integrates with other apps on your phone. So you can do kind of like piping and things like that if you're into the Unix jargon. Just neat stuff. So I haven't gotten super into it yet because there's a lot of apps that I don't really use on here that are built in.

But I'm starting to – at least just with the contact stuff, I've got like one-click text to everybody now, which that alone saves me a bunch of time. There's a bunch of neat stuff in there. I don't know if it's worth trying out for $5.

I will tell you next week what I think of it because I'll actually set everything up this week. Right. Or if you've actually used it and have any cool like formulas that your automations that you can send my way, send them to jasonickrumpyoldgeeks.com. I'd love to really get deep into this thing.

But I would because it's like, you know, if I can save five clicks, that would be great. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I personally don't – you are much more of a power user with your phone and your iOS devices than me. But I can totally see how this would actually be useful for quite a few things even for me.

So I might have to check it out. Check it out, bro. Check it out. So for shit we put on our computers, I actually don't have any apps or anything.

But I did stumble across a great site called bluelounge.com, which basically sells gear, cable management gear, iOS power nap boxes, little doohickeys basically to put all your stuff into and to manage the cables and make things look pretty.

They're very pretty devices. I am very impressed. I'm going to be ordering quite a bunch of things from this site, I have a feeling. Yeah. This Sanctuary 4, like, cable management charger system looks awesome. Yeah. I mean, you plug everything in. It keeps it nice and clean on your desk.

It looks great. And, you know, everything's just charging, sitting right there. And I'm looking at the Cidoica, I don't know exactly how to pronounce that, which is just a little dock that sits right next to your keyboard. I mean, if I had that, I'd be using it right now while we're doing the podcast.

Ooh, that is kind of sexy. It's not that bad. It's up to, it's like $29.95 to $49.95. Yeah, nothing on here is incredibly expensive. It all is very well thought out. It all looks really nice. If you've got, if you've ever thought about cleaning up your workspace and just kind of everything else and having it look pretty sexy, this is a site to go to.

Oh, I'm totally getting the Cidoica thing. Yeah, I'm totally getting it as well. So it's super nice. And it works with your case on. Yeah. So you can put your phone into the dock with the case on. Yeah. That's key. Exactly. And there's also the Nest iPod iPad stand, which is, again, exactly.

If it were sitting here right next to me right now, I would totally be using it while we're doing this podcast instead of holding up my iPad mini every couple seconds to check our Google Drive. Ooh, that's cute. It's just a little bucket. Actually, it's just a little bucket that has a little pull-out stand, so you can stand it multiple directions.

It's $14.95, and it comes in a variety of colors, and you can stick your keys in there. This stuff is well thought out. It's really cool. This is really cool. I'm glad you found this site. Yeah. I'm definitely going to be ordering quite a few of these things. Oh. It's worth checking out, people. Well, it's not shit we put on our computers.

It's shit we put our computers on. Exactly. I'll just cut up Bob's intro and redo it. Okay. A friend of mine, Matt Quinn, who lives in Toronto, kind of does basically what we do.

He's a super tech guy, has his own design company, wrote an article on Medium a couple weeks ago that I read through and I thought was really interesting. It's why I dropped e-books and embraced a perfect technology in its original and most meaningful form, meaning he went back to actual printed hardcover.

Dead trees. Dead tree books. It's a good read. It makes you think about it. I don't entirely agree with him, but I thought it was really interesting, so I wanted to throw it in the show notes and have people take a look at it. It's a different way of thinking – well, it's a way of kind of rediscovering and rethinking about all the e-books and all the e-reading that we've been doing.

Okay. So I read the article. I just got a few things to say about it. Sure. His premise is valid. He was having problems, technical problems with his e-books, which started him down the path of going back to real books. I've never had an e-book problem, period. Neither have I.

I've never had anything fail to sync. I've never had anything that was illegible or a font size wrong. If it is, it's usually pep cack. The problem exists between keyboard and chair, as they say. And the funny thing is in his – on his Medium, which we should have him on to say, why the fuck are you publishing on Medium?

He's got a lot of books that are upside down like Lord of the Rings by Tolkien, the far right. So I don't know. Maybe he's not there. But no, I'm just joking. I like the article. I thought it was a well-thought-out article. And there are times when I will take a hardcover book and – or not a hardcover, just a physical book and go read it.

Yeah. You know? It's nice. It's a nice change of pace. It is a nice change of pace. Yeah. For the most part, though, after breaking my back for 20 years schlepping thousands of pounds of books around the country, guess what? My Air, better than Dead Tree. That's all I got to say.

I'm with you 100%. I liked his article. I liked his thinking. I don't agree. But it's worth a read and he thought about it. It is. It's a nice counterpoint. I didn't know he was your buddy, so I didn't know there was nepotism going on with this one. But it was still – I read it. It was a good article.

I think for a lot of people, some people may get something out of it and go buy a book. Who knows? Yeah, who knows? So I did read a book this week, which I want to talk about really briefly as well. I did not read it in a physical form. It was an e-book read, which was quite comfortable for me.

The Examined Life, How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Gross. Not my typical nonfiction that I would read. This is a psychoanalyst who is a bit on in years and has written a couple books. And it's a really – I enjoyed this read a lot.

If you are interested in the human condition and delving into how vastly different people can be and how they can just have completely different approaches and mindsets and the various life events and things that happen to us that make us into the people that we are, you will enjoy this.

It is not scientific at all. He does not delve into the nitty-gritty of psychoanalysis or any kind of theories. He just simply – each chapter kind of recounts an experience that he had with the patient. Usually through one particular story.

And he uses it to illustrate different issues that we all deal with. It was a great read. Really enjoyed it. Okay. I would ask if I could borrow it from you. But you got it – but it's an Amazon book I'm guessing you got for Kindle? Yes.

Yeah. Lending is not enabled on this book. Yes. It's one of the things. It's like once I got my Prime account and then I could do the borrowing and lending. I've been so psyched. I've been lending books out hand over fist, but this one doesn't have it enabled, so I can't borrow it. Yeah. Sorry about that. It's a good read if you're – it's simple.

It's one or two chapters at night before I went to sleep. You can run through them really quick. Some of them are really insightful and amazing, and some of them will speak to you and your personal issues, or some of them will speak to – won't speak to you at all, but it's still intriguing. And I really enjoyed the way he approached it and wrote it.

Okay. Cool. I've got a couple this week. I have McMafia, A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glennie. This book is a couple of years old, but it talks about the rise of the criminal underground after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Right. It's very detailed, and honestly, I couldn't read it. I got a third of the way through because I had it on Audible, and I was trying to listen to it, trying to get into it. Maybe if I had the paper copy, but the paper copy sells for like $50 because this is like – It's a tome.

It's a major book. It's like a 14-hour listen if you have that. But it didn't really – the narrative didn't really grab me as far as – I mean it's a true story. That's the problem. It's like you couldn't embellish, and it's a fascinating true story, but I just didn't have any context for it, and I just don't really care about gangsters in Russia right now.

Yeah, yeah. I thought I would. I mean I thought that was like kind of my wheelhouse. I thought I'd be into it, but I just could not get into it. I mean if you're into that kind of thing, go for it. It's a classic. I mean people talk about it all the time. I just – it wasn't for me this time. Maybe I'll go back to it in the future, or since I got it on Audible, I'll trade it in for another book.

All right. There you go. My other – I got a couple real quick Audible ones. The BBC did a re-recording or an audio play of Neverwhere, I think on BBC4, and they finally released it on Audible. Right. It's really good. It's – if you've never seen the television series Neverwhere, it's amazing.

It's better than that is, but if you've seen the television series, don't waste your time. Honestly, don't waste your time because it is almost verbatim somebody reading the teleplay from the show. That was a real bummer for me.

It was only like four and a half, five hours, so it's abridged. It's not the full book. There's a better version of Neverwhere on Audible that you can get that's read by a cast. I just want to jump in really quickly because I know there's a lot of Neil Gaiman love coming from the other microphone and has come out on this podcast a lot.

I personally am not a huge Neil Gaiman fan, but Neverwhere was a fantastic book. So if you haven't read it yet and you're on the fence about Gaiman like I am, that's a good one. Yeah. This and Good Omens are my two favorite books that he's written. Yeah. Agreed. We had Tim Ferriss on. He talked about the Graveyard book, which honestly was the Jungle book with murderers and ghosts.

I liked it. I wasn't a huge fan of it. I thought it was kind of meh. His new one, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, meh. I don't think he's had a real hit since Neverwhere personally. Stardust was okay. The movie Stardust was great, but I'm going to stop talking about Neil Gaiman now. Now I'm going to talk about Charlie Strauss.

Okay. He's a science fiction writer. I think he's in Scotland or England. Hanging out with the butterfly guys? I think he's on the other side. But he's got this series called The Laundry Files, which I just picked up on Audible because they recommended it, and I had a bunch of extra credits.

And it's really good middle-of-the-road sci-fi. It's hard to explain. It kind of integrates computer science with Lovecraftian space monsters and ancients.

It's really weird, but it's fun. I dig them. I mean, it's a solid four across the board. And I just read the last two, The Apocalypse Codex and The Fuller Memorandum. They were good. They were really good. So I think that's four books that are out now for the Laundry Files series.

He's working on another one. And you should follow him on Twitter. He's really funny on Twitter. I find some good stuff from him. So that's pretty much it for me for the week. I'm still working through Zorba the Greek, actually reading it, not listening to it. So it takes a little longer that way because I'm slow.

And I'm actually looking for another kind of sci-fi book right now. So if anybody out there has got a good suggestion, drop it to us. Cool. Yeah. And I'm actually going to return the Morrissey autobiography to Audible. I can't listen to it. I wouldn't listen to it either.

I would read it. Yeah. I might have to. Well, Hoppa. Oh. Oh, yes. You didn't buy it. I didn't actually buy this one, so I could send it to you, assuming all you have to do is buy a Morrissey or Smith's album. I have bought them all.

If it was on Kindle, then you could loan it to me, but I'll just go – I'll buy it and pick it up. I believe it is out now in the U.S. It is. Yeah. So that's how I got it on Audible. It came out on the same day, I think December 3rd. December 3rd or 7th, it came out on all formats in the U.S., so it is out.

But I can't listen to it. Man, the language is just so fucking flowery. It's like – I mean, it's worse than Charles Dickens. I've talked about a couple of books on At the Library, the You Are Not So Smart book and the You Are Now Less Dumb book by David McCraney.

He's got a podcast. I didn't know this. I follow Mark Fraunfelder on Twitter and he said that he was listening to the new episode and I'm like, what? So yesterday or last night, I picked him up and started from the beginning. Fantastic podcast.

It's basically a scientific look at self-delusion and the things that we do to fool ourselves into getting through the day. Very nice. I mean, and very similar to the book I talked about as well. That's what – I didn't want to bring it up because you got to check out this podcast because there are some that just go straight at that.

Right. It is – it's humbling. It's constantly amazing the things and the tricks that our brain will do to us to get us through a day. Yeah, the fact that we're blind two to three hours a day because whenever your eyes do a saccade, you can't see.

Right. You know? Just little things like that are just like, wow, that's kind of creepy. There's just a lot of it. I'm only four episodes in but I was like binge listening last night and this morning. It is amazing. Definitely check it out.

I will. And I want to throw a shout out to our boy Kenny in London. I talked last week that there was never going to be a Dirk Gently series. Apparently, there was one two years ago and I missed it. So it's free on Amazon. If you have Amazon Prime, you can watch it for free.

I've got it queued up and all I can say is I really hope it doesn't suck. But the fact that I've never heard about it until now – The fact that you haven't heard about it and I haven't heard about it. Yes, yes. Because I was a huge fan of the book as well and not hearing about it means it's probably not any good. I watched the first ten minutes.

It seemed okay. The guy that plays Dirk is probably not my first choice but let's see if he grows on me. Okay. And lastly, Zane Lamprey is back with The Zane Lamprey Show. On the same thread that he has had multiple iterations of different shows, he just never changes his RSS feed like his underwear.

I was about to say, isn't this like the fifth or sixth different podcast he's had out now? The funny thing is we both love Zane Lamprey but all we're doing on our podcast is crapping on him because everything he's doing is so stupid right now. Well, and it pissed me off with the cheap shirts after saying for months that quality is the number one concern.

Right. Whatever. It doesn't matter. He talks about Chug a little bit on the first episode. It is now the reboot episode that's up now. All right. We'll link to the show notes. His buddy Dane Dunn was on the show before. He's off doing his actual career writing television.

So he left and if you do want to go back like a couple episodes back, there's a great episode with Zoe Bell, the stunt woman. Okay. She lives in Venice. You might be able to run into her. Oh, okay. I'll check it out. Kick your ass. It's actually really good.

I mean, you've seen Death Proof, right? The Quentin Tarantino movie? Yes. Yeah. She was the star of that. She's an amazing stunt woman and really funny. I mean, she's really funny. That was the best part about it. She was totally jived with them. Well worth a listen. Cool. Very cool. Yeah.

I mean, I do like Zane. I think he's a really funny guy and I lost interest in his podcast for a while because they kept changing and I wasn't a big fan of the co-host that he had last time and I'll give it a listen again. What the hell? Yeah. I mean, it was surprising because he has the Guinness Book of World Records for longest podcast.

They podcasted for like 25 hours straight. Right. And then the next episode was, we're not doing it anymore. I'm like, okay. And they brought in the new guy and I didn't really like the new guy. But the new guy was pretty funny on the Zoe Bell episode. Cool. But now he's gone. So you can go back to, and it's the old cast is back and it's like, they never left.

Closing shout outs. I want to give a big shout out to Wyoming. You finally made it onto our list. Yes. We now have all 50 states. So whoever you are that listened in Wyoming, drop us a line. We want to say hi. Yes, definitely. Finally.

Although they probably listened once and will never listen again. So the next person to listen to Wyoming. Yes. Send us your cords. So our buddy David Teeter was going to be on this week to talk about security stuff, but he has the flu.

So we skipped security this week and we will be back next week with an expanded security segment with his expert analysis because we want to talk about the Snowden stuff. Because when he first came on was right when the Snowden docks came out and we had an interesting conversation about it.

But now that so much more has come out, I'd like to just have him on to get a new fresh take from somebody that was inside the machinery. Cool. And I think maybe he got sick because he was in San Francisco and had a $3 slice of toast. We were going to do a bit on this artisanal toast craze.

My air quotes and eye rolling going on there. I'll put the link in the show notes. You can go look at it if you want. It's on PSMag.com. But you know what? I don't know. You don't even need to give them. I found this in my dig email one morning.

And literally the headline was Blame San Francisco. Yeah, well, it would not be out of place if this were a Venice Beach story instead of San Francisco. Yeah, whatever. Artisanal fucking toast. Give me a break. Exactly. So I got to take a – I got to breathe in for this one.

I almost have to hyperventilate. Last night or two nights ago, I made a post on Facebook that was just kind of when I reached the breaking point with WordPress. I was done. I'm never touching it again unless I have to.

Which you do. Well, no. I mean it's optional in many cases. And I'm looking at new platforms. But here's the crux of what happened. I get a call. I'm ready to go to bed. Had a couple cocktails. I'm sleepy. Getting ready to listen to my Budaphy. And then I get a call saying, we've been hacked.

I'm like, what? And I go to the site and there's that Google malware warning flashing red saying, don't go, don't go, don't go. And I'm like, what the hell? And go through and check it out. And sure enough, some douchebag broke into our WordPress site and is injecting malware.

Right? Yep. Had it happen to me many times. Happens to every – if you run WordPress long enough, it's going to happen to you. Here's the difference. This was on a fully patched, upgraded system with no old plug-ins, no old source, nothing.

I had run it through the security scanners. Everything was locked down and they still got in. Oh, boy. Yeah. That's a fun way to end your day, to figure out how those little bastards got in. So I'm just like, I'm done.

I'm done. They've got children running the show over there. And it's not even the WordPress guys so much, in a sense it is. But it's the plug-in vendors that are just – they're the hole. They are the fucking hole because they don't know how to write code.

I mean, yeah, they can figure out how to type hello world and get a little bit of shit in. But for the most part, these people are not computer scientists. They're not security experts. They're just – they're getting by with the basics to get done what needs to get done. This is the downside of open source.

Not even so much open source. This is what happens when something gets too big. Right. Hang on one second. I had to take a sip of water for that one. In the natural world, we have what's called biodiversity. The more biodiverse an ecosystem, the healthier it is.

When you start to get systems that – let's look at West Virginian inbreeding. No offense to our West Virginian listeners. It breaks down the biodiversity and then it's open to attack. Right now, WordPress runs 20 percent of the internet.

That is not a lot of biodiversity there. So it's – I mean I can scream for an hour on this. But all I'm saying is find something new. There are new platforms out there every day and simplify.

You don't need flying out sidebars, all this crazy shit. It's just driving me insane. I'm going to put a post up on my blog about this, which is now going to be hosted not on WordPress. I'm going to try Ghost. Everybody is talking about Ghost. It's a Node.js back end, whatever the little hipster fixie kids are playing with nowadays.

But I'm probably going to end up for my blog just going back to fucking text files that are spit out of a database on a back end that I wrote. Right. It's really not that hard to write a blog engine. No. Obviously. To be honest, it's really not that hard to code a site. It costs a little bit of money.

And I've been doing artist sites for 15 years now. Any site that I've built myself has never been hacked. Every single artist website that I've been forced to develop on WordPress has been hacked. End of story. Exactly.

And here's the problem that people don't understand when they say, I want to use WordPress. They're like, WordPress is free. It's not free. It is not fucking free. You're going to spend more money with WordPress experts, plugins, paid plugins, maintenance, security updates, backups, restorations, fixes after a hack, all this bullshit.

Just get a custom little website with a little admin panel that you can just write your shit in. Boom. You're done. That's it. Yeah. And the other thing that drives me insane, too, is a lot of these people actually think that they're going to do their updates themselves. And half the time, they don't. So I've been forced to use a platform that I told them is insecure and is crap anyways for a reason that they'll never end up doing.

I end up going into WordPress and typing in the updates because they just don't do it. Exactly. This whole thing makes no sense. I mean I'm seriously just – I'm going to start putting out code for the stuff that I do and I'm putting it out in pieces so people can piecemeal their own systems together because what you don't want is homogeny.

You want diversity. And we've just gotten away from that because people are just fucking lazy and stupid. So that's what – I mean I had a much – my rant was basically Matt Mullenweg and I first got to San Francisco on the same rainy night way back in 90 or 2000-something.

I can't remember. We were going to our friend's party. I feel like I met Hitler that night and if I had just shot Hitler, World War II would have never started. We would not be in this boat right now if I had just put Mullenweg back on a train, sent his ass back to Texas and said, get the fuck out of my town. But I didn't because all the girls said he's cuter than you and you need to play nice or we're not going to talk to you.

Well, you know what? They still don't talk to me anymore so fuck him. I should have put his ass on the train. Wow, somebody needs some honey. Oh, dude. So you saw my tweet about the honey too I guess. I did, yes. Yes.

So in an effort to get to sleep better two nights ago, I was – I had the hiccups but I needed to have my honey before I went to bed so I could sleep better. Well, hiccuping and swallowing honey took about half a teaspoon down my lungs and I coughed for nine hours trying to get the shit out and had just these horrible red eyes, tears running down my face.

Didn't sleep. It was terrible. It was very ironic I think. Very ironic. Well, I've personally found that the honey has actually had no effect on me. I still do it just because I do it but I haven't really noticed much of anything. But to get back to the point, yes, WordPress is not good.

It's good for what it is. The problem is the fact that everybody uses it. The problem is it's become this thing that people who don't really understand websites just assume that WordPress is the way to go. I wouldn't say that you would have had to kick him back to Texas or go back in time and have shot him and it would save the world from anything because if not WordPress, then Drupal.

I think Drupal is bad enough that everybody knows better. WordPress at least had a good design. Yeah, no, I couldn't have fixed the world. And by the way, there are tricks with the honey that you have to not have carbs for four hours before you go to bed if you don't have – so you drink stuff.

So that kind of negates the honey thing. Anyway, yeah, I'm going to be putting together a solid plan for all my clients that are running on WordPress to get the fuck off of WordPress because they're paying me more money to fix it when it gets broken than they are if they would have just paid me to custom code something.

Honestly. No, I agree completely. The thing is that most people would just run with that because that's a business model. I will keep fixing your WordPress that will keep getting hacked and will keep breaking. There are a lot of people out there that make a lot of money on that model. Yeah, that is a business model, and you and I are not those people.

I'm the one, and you as well, that I sit there screaming just saying, please, God, no WordPress at the very beginning of a project. And I try to explain why, and they just don't listen. So you will save money in the long run if you do not do WordPress. Tons of money unless you are an independent person who can sit there by themselves and don't really care if you get hacked.

But the clients I'm working with are – these are $100 million companies that I'm doing WordPress sites for, and the CEO is the one that's pissed off at me. That's not something that I – that's not a position I want to be in as a vendor, that I am at fault for something that I could have avoided if I had just explained to them in the beginning.

But they're like, you broke our site. And I'm like, no, no, you wanted WordPress. Let me explain this to you in very small words. No, I mean if you're a $100 million company, you have no business having a WordPress site anyways. Build something from scratch. Build something from scratch or the other site they have is Expression Engine, which is just as bad.

But not as bad because it doesn't get hacked as much because nobody uses it because it's a giant piece of shit too. I feel better. I feel a lot better. Well, I'm glad you feel better. So next week. Next week we'll have Dr. Teeter on and he can tell me how big of an idiot I am.

Excellent. Until then, please, if you are a listener, go to iTunes and give us a rating and a star, please, pretty please, preferably more than one. And tell a friend. That's pretty much our only outlet for keeping this thing going. So if you'd like to hear me scream about WordPress and you'd like to hear Brian scream about crowdfunding, then give us a hand and give us a star.

Seriously. We appreciate it. We really do. Thank you very much. And drop us an email at podcast at grumpyoldgeeks.com or hit us up on tugyards.com. And cool. Hope to talk to you next week. Talk to you next week. Keep up with the Grumpy Old Geeks on the web at grumpyoldgeeks.com, on Facebook at facebook.com slash grumpyoldgeeks, or email them at podcast at grumpyoldgeeks.com.

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