42: The Answer to the Ultimate Question

I've had a pretty crazy week as well, including getting a cold and cold.

And just one of those things where as soon as things start to pile up, it just snowballs from there. It's been an avalanche. Yeah. I haven't been able to work for a week. Oh, really? I slipped and fell on the ice on Friday and probably have a broken leg, but I've been kind of hobbling around on it, keeping it elevated and trying to let the swelling go down.

Right. And it's like it's bad. And when that happens, it's almost like having just a terrible cold because your body is trying to heal. And I have not been able to sleep. I haven't been able to focus. I can barely like tie my shoes at this point. I saw the photos. They look pretty nasty, man. You need to get yourself to a doctor.

Yeah, okay. Nah. Tough through it. Yeah. A little shot of whiskey and some tape and I'm good to go. Oh, yeah. That's definitely the way to fix something like that. Well done. I mean, yeah. It looks bad, but I can move the foot. I can stand on it. I can walk up and down stairs.

So, you know. All right. For our younger listeners, we're going to classify that one under bad advice. Okay. Fine. I haven't been to the doctor in 27 years, so why start now? Okay. Also, under bad advice there. Again, kids. So, we tried to kill some of these old apps that we were talking about last week.

Jelly being the main one. Yeah. Yeah. How did that go with you? Well, I wrote them an email. Well, first off, I, of course, went through the app as painstakingly as I could to try to find any kind of, I don't want to use this anymore. Please remove all my data button.

Nothing in the app. Nothing on their website. Contact email. I sent an email. I've had no response. Yes, I did the same thing, and I have yet to get a response either. They do have a way to disconnect your account, but all your data still stays there, so all your answers and crap are still there.

Yeah, and as we discussed last week, that's really just not good enough. What you want to do when you get rid of these apps is make sure that they nuke all your data, that you don't stay on a mailing list for them forever, that they don't have all this information tied directly to you sitting on a server somewhere. Yep.

So, yeah, no luck whatsoever with Jelly. I saw that you even tweeted them. A little surprised that they didn't get back to you because God knows there's nothing going on on that app to keep them busy. I had a little bit better luck with moves. First, it looked like same old, same old. I went through most of the app trying to find something to request deletion. I didn't see anything.

Again, same thing with their website. There's nothing on the website. They did have a contact email address. I wrote them. It took them a couple days, but they did get back to me. Buried deep, deep within the app submenus, there is a request to remove all data button that, when you press, generates an email to a specific address.

Yeah. And then another two days after that, I got a confirmation saying that my data had been removed. Now, obviously, at this point, you have to kind of take their word for it, one would assume, but I was finally able to go ahead and delete that app.

So one app gone. Jelly folks, come on, man. Get back to one of us. We're talking about you a lot on our podcast here. And we're not saying nice things, so it's only going to get worse. So yeah, I was going to try out those two apps this week and report back the Launch Pro app and the Kennedy app, which was the one-click journaling app.

Since I haven't really moved at all this week, I really haven't touched either one. So hopefully next week and when I'm back in the saddle. All right. And unbury myself from the mountains of work that I have piling up. Gotcha. And I did catch up on my Downton Abbey, though. I've never seen it, so I binge-watched it.

It's good, right? Yeah. I'm like halfway through season three. It's just keeping me going. Yeah. It's not going to change your life or anything, but it's definitely fun. It's something to watch. The acting in it is, of course, impeccable, and Maggie Smith is a golden goddess. And she makes the whole damn show.

She really does. Yeah. Okay. So I saw a bit of interesting news that might potentially explain why Wyoming finally showed up on our listener map. And why is that? Why Wyoming? Well, for some reason, all of China's internet traffic was redirected to a mysterious house in Wyoming.

What? I know. This is pretty crazy. Now, this house is kind of known for a lot of weird things happening. This is not the first time this house in Wyoming has popped up in the news. Back in 2011, Reuters revealed more than 2,000 corporations are registered with this house as their address.

Now, the house is basically a covered floor-to-ceiling with mailboxes, and they're just a bunch of corporate P.O. boxes. Obviously, this is being done for tax purposes or whatever, so you can set yourself up as a company based in Wyoming and get out of state taxes or even, apparently, a lot of international companies are using it.

The entities included a company sheltering real estate assets controlled by a jailed former prime minister of the Ukraine. Now, for whatever reason, apparently, they are also setting themselves up for internet traffic, and for some reason, nobody really knows what's really happened here.

But basically, almost all of China's internet traffic was being rooted through this house at one point. So I'm thinking one of our listeners on that China map just happened to be downloading right when it went through Wyoming, and we still don't have a Wyoming listener. Yeah, we do. We've got our one Wyoming listener.

No, I know. Yeah, yeah. We just think the app, whatever. Right, right. I don't think anybody's in Wyoming, actually. It's all up front. Yeah, that's where it is. 75% of China's domain name servers redirected web traffic through one mysterious house in Wyoming. I want to see a picture of the damn house.

I know, I know. I'm totally intrigued. I think we need to set up a P.O. box there. Yep, in Cheyenne, Cheyenne, Wyoming. So speaking of stupid corporations doing weird-ass things, and I'd like to cast your mind back to my holiday rant about doing corporate entities or brands or celebrities doing or feeling the need to do ridiculous holiday-themed tweets.

Oh, yes. That was a good one. Or any kind of social networking or whatever. A great article popped up on Salon that's in the show notes. The best of the worst, corporate America's most cringe-inducing Martin Luther King Day tweets. Yeah, yeah.

They should just really – they should have taken the day off. Yeah, yeah. It was a holiday. You know, you got ZQuil tweeting, today is the day for dreaming. That's kind of clever. Let's say – I mean, sure, they're all kind of a little bit clever. I mean, it's straightforward advertising for most of them.

I love Pornhub's one. Happy Martin Luther King Day in honor of his death. Make sure to only use the ebony category today. And then they come back and it's like, oh, oh, no, no, wait. We're not in it, Rachel. Yeah. So it's a good, quick little scroll about just how corporate America basically just wastes your time and does ridiculous shit.

Yeah. Don't even bother. I don't know – I mean, who follows these people? Why would you even – I've never understood that. Whenever I see on my Facebook feed that like some friend liked Coca-Cola, I'm like, what? Why? Why would you ever do that? It makes no sense.

And especially like ZQuil too. Yeah. Why would – no, it's a drug. Who cares? There's no reason in the world that you should have a Twitter account for some night-night drops. Yeah. It makes no sense. Well, everybody has to have everything now.

That's just the way it goes. But it is relatively ridiculous and just – some of these tweets are just awesome. So they're really good and I'm looking forward to future installments. I think we need to make this a segment. Every holiday I'm going to collect some corporate bullshit tweets. All right. You have fun doing that.

No, I won't. I'll actually just go insane. And also another follow-up on the Google Glass lawsuit that I ranted about the other week. There's been another – well, not a lawsuit yet, but I guarantee you there will be one. A Google Glass wearer was removed from an AMC theater under suspicion of recording.

Okay. So he was wearing his Google Glasses in the movie theater and some – amazingly enough, I guess somebody that worked at the movie theater actually knew what a Google Glass was. And obviously, yeah, you could record a movie. I mean it's no different than having like a camcorder or frankly an iPhone and you can just sit there and record the damn thing.

So he got pulled out of a theater and I'm sure he's going to sue and that will be another dumb case. That's so bizarre. Yeah, I mean I don't even – I don't care. Whatever. This is going to be going on forever. Yeah, it's good. I have a feeling this is going to be popping up in our follow-up segment quite a bit because there's just going to be tons and tons of stupid lawsuits and dumb things happening with these glasses as they start to proliferate more and more.

Speaking of that, did – I think it was – oh, where's my link for this? It's a site that – there's a piece of software actually that lets you have sex while wearing Google Glass so you can like basically see what the other person is seeing. Very strange.

That is a bit odd. Yes. Oh, yeah. I'll dig it up and put it in the show notes but it's – there's some crazy people out there like I really don't want that view. Right. That's when you – I mean you literally go fuck yourself then. Yeah.

A little creepy. A little creepy. Yeah. And I also found another interesting little article that is something that we've talked about quite a bit in the past which is the gamification of life and how everything – we're turning basically everything into a game. And you know, you can't – you don't go shopping now without getting your double-double reward points and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah for everything.

Farhad Manjou, I'm hoping I'm pronouncing his name correctly, who's somebody I've been reading for a long time and is actually starting to become a bit of a kind of a rock star as far as tech journalism goes. He started over at Salon or Slate. I can't remember which. He's over at the Wall Street Journal now. He wrote a really great article about the gamification of the office and will software that awards compliant employees boost morale or deflate it.

You know how I feel about that. It's a really well-thought-out article. It makes you think a little bit, and I just find this whole movement disgusting personally. But not surprised again. We're raising an entire generation of people that want to hear little coins drop and get your power plus points for everything that you do, which will now include filing those TPS reports.

Yeah. There was a company called Better Works that I actually interviewed at for a while. It was run down in L.A. There was the same thing. It was like Office Perks, kind of crazy shit for doing certain things. They shut down a while ago. They ran through $10.5 million before shutting down.

Oopsies. Here's a game. Just give me the money, and I'll be happy. Yeah. I mean, I do. The one thing that I think is I would see out of this and say, wow, there's a real market opportunity, would be for you to come up as a company with a system that you could then sell to McDonald's or large corporations.

You know, come up with the whole system, come up with the app, and then turn around, and basically your company is just gamifying other people's businesses. Well, that's what Better Works was. Oh, okay. I thought they were one that just did it themselves internally. No, no, no. That was their whole business model was to have that kind of – you know, you just plug your company into it.

Yeah. Well, perhaps they were just a little too soon because apparently this is going to be quite the thing. Yeah. Too bad. Too bad. I really don't want a badge for doing what I should be doing anyway. No. You know, what about – I'm good with self-respect and paycheck.

That's enough for me. Yeah. Seriously. All right. Who's this asshole? We have our old friend Dr. Teeter from – what is it? Episode two or three from ages ago back on the show to have a little circle back and talk about some security stuff.

Welcome, Mr. Teeter. Dr. Teeter. Sorry. Right. Welcome, Jason. Welcome, Brian. Good to hear you again. Sorry we don't have any of the fiery Doritos on hand. Well, maybe you do. No, but I have a nice Lagunitas ale. Okay. Oh, wow. Excellent.

Yes. Starting early. I think I have a PBR somewhere in the basement. This one's 9.4 percent, so – Oh, so we should probably get this going quick. Yes. So when – last time you were on, it was pretty much right when the Ed Snowden stuff started to happen, and we kind of had the conversation like good guy or bad guy, you know?

Yeah. Hero or villain? And since so much more has come out since then, I thought it would be fun to kind of just get your take on it now. If your mind has changed, if you think he's still a bad person or not. Huh.

Well, you know, it's still – still looking at it from the point of view of he lied and violated his NDA with the government. You know, he still did that.

Yeah. And committed crimes and all that. But, you know, when we first talked about it, the extent of what the government had done was not really apparent. I still was pretty much shot because all the national security work I used to do was clearly focused externally.

It was just focused on our peer adversaries. And it just – it was just completely incomprehensible to me that the NSA would be doing these kinds of activities pointed internally. Well, I guess now we – Joke's on us.

I guess now we know better. So is your feeling that maybe there was a whole just separate department that you were unaware of that was obviously just focused internally? Obviously. Yeah. No, obviously. I mean, it was – it became apparent in some of the documents that he released that that was what was happening, that a lot of this was directed by the White House.

And if there's a group of documents codenamed Stellar Wind, if you look for those – and including those, I think it was an Inspector General report detailing the start of these activities. They worked very, very, very hard to keep these activities not just classified, but like nobody knows about it.

Right. And, you know, usually when someone's doing that, they're trying to basically keep Congress from finding out. Right. And I don't know. It's something where after looking at what the NSA did and not talking about the spying on the German or French president.

I mean, who cares about that? They should be doing that. Yeah, I thought that was their job. That is the job, yeah. That's their job, yeah. Don't get caught doing it. But, no, it's something where I think that he did the right thing.

And I think that the world owes him a debt of gratitude on this. I don't think he should be pardoned per se. But, no, I think that – I'll just say as a taxpayer, as an American, I'm outraged by these activities.

Yeah, I fall pretty much in the same camp as you. At first, I've definitely kind of felt that he was almost basically a traitor. But I've kind of come around to how do you not disclose this if you know about it because it is wrong.

It's just wrong. It's wrong. And even the president has come out and said, not in so many words, but, you know, okay, we need to take a look at this. This might be getting out of hand. Oh, well, I don't – I mean I don't trust in anything that any of these people say. I mean this is something where they'll say what they need to say for whatever agenda they have.

You know, the part that still concerns me is you read bits and pieces about how Snowden might have – they don't know the extent of what he grabbed, the number of documents. And I've seen numbers of tens of thousands, 100,000 documents, and it's something where you disclose some of this stuff about specific programs that you feel are illegal or violating the Constitution.

That's one thing. But he grabbed a lot more. Yeah. Glenn Greenwald was actually on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, I believe, last week, and he had mentioned that they were still going through things.

They hadn't even seen everything yet and that they were actually being fairly responsible about it and kind of making joint decisions about, well, this is something that we should never publish. This is something we should. So they seem to be going about it in kind of a remarkably ethical fashion.

Yeah, but that's not their job. I mean it's something where – they're not hired by, I don't know, we the people to be third-party reviewers of NSA stuff. Sure. Yes. It's a tricky thing. I mean there's information that I'm sure he grabbed that could compromise programs which are very important.

Or, you know, result in people being killed. I really don't know. But it's something where, you know, it – when you have access to everything, it is tempting to grab everything. Right. I mean – Why not?

No comment. Not more than that. Yeah, and it's really interesting how they keep changing the numbers. Like they still don't, I think, have any idea how many he actually took because first it was like 50,000 documents. Then it got up to 1.6 million in some places that they're saying, which is, you know, it's a lot of documents but nobody even knows and they keep citing it as fact.

So on that part, I'm just – I'm still kind of – the jury is out on that. Yeah. I mean it's something where – you know, I've had high-level network access on some people's systems. And, yeah, you – I viewed it as part of my job to go poke around and see what was there because it helped me do my job better.

And there can be a lot of stuff out there. There can be a lot of stuff on these systems which isn't supposed to be there that people just are very sloppy about putting documents, scanning things into PDF which shouldn't even exist on paper. I don't know.

It's something where – I think in the end, ignoring whatever happens with these surveillance programs, he's going to be judged by a lot of people by the damage that gets done by having all these other documents out there and what might happen with that.

I mean it's – I don't think he's a traitor. I don't think that he – some congressman claimed that he was working with Russian security. And I'm like, no, I don't believe that at all and I think it was probably very – I don't believe that.

And I think it was probably just pretty stupid of anyone to say that to the press. Yeah, I think that too because his trip to Russia was like third on the list of places he wanted to go. It wasn't like he went to Russia right away. It's like, oh, they'll take me so I guess I'll go there.

He couldn't make it to Colombia. He couldn't go anywhere. Ecuador or – that was just kind of the first people to let him in. And on top of that, it's something where from a basic espionage point of view, if Snowden really was working for the Russians, he'd still be at his job.

Yeah. Or he'd be dead. No, no. Rule number one of intelligence is never compromise sources or methods. And so it's like if they actually had someone who could pass them the good stuff, you keep that going as long as you can.

You don't let that information be released. A lot of times you don't even make it used because many times the agencies would prefer to protect the source than to allow the information to be disseminated and exploited. So I don't know.

I mean part of me, I just – at a certain level, I just kind of like don't care about this right now because it's like Snowden isn't – we shouldn't be talking about Snowden. I mean he's – whatever he's done, he's done.

It's past tense. What's really important is future, that people don't forget about this and that they hold people accountable. I mean – and I'm kind of old-fashioned in that, you know, my definition of being accountable is you go to jail.

And so if people did illegal things, if people lied under oath – To Congress? To – you know what? Congress, whomever, if they lied under oath, punish them. Strip them of their clearances.

Strip them of their job. Try them. And, you know, that's justice. And that will hopefully – well, those kind of activities is what prevents people from doing things in the future. Right.

So I don't know. I got something else to talk about though that could be fun. Okay. Let me close the door because the dog's barking. So, yeah. Remember we've always – we talk about security and Facebook and stuff like that and how social media can be exploited.

And Jason, remember some of the fun little activities we did about basically exploiting people's activities and networks by reverse analyzing social media? Oh, yeah. I had some fun with that. You tell. I did.

So, like, I can't say too much because actually this is an open investigation with the FBI and some other agencies. But over Christmas, I was sitting around drinking a beer and I read an article about an area I work in.

I'm an environmental engineer now. And it was about some people who had basically – they were running a recycling operation and they basically abandoned it and committed some environmental crimes and nobody could find them.

Right. And if, you know, for someone like me, if it says nobody can find these people, I'm like, oh, that sounds like fun. How hard could it be? And so it – you know, the first thing one would really do is like, you know, okay, what's the name of the company?

You get the name of the company. Then you go to the state where the company was incorporated, in this case California. You go to the California website and you search for the company and you get basically who are the officers that was an LLC and got the names.

And then just start – of course, you know, the first thing you do is Google it. No. Nothing really good there. And so I kind of start digging in and digging in and I go to the EPA, a record for this company, and there is an email address associated with this company.

And it was a personal email based in another country. And it was someone's name. And the name just looked off. And so one thing I will say is that these people are Chinese and my girlfriend is Chinese. And I've learned – I've done some work with her about tracing people down.

And it's Chinese – tracking Chinese can be kind of difficult because there's many variants to spelling. Wong could be W-O-N-G. It could be W-A-N-G.

It could be H-U-A-N-G is anglicized spellings. It could be the Chinese characters. It could be whatever. But I saw this email. And the email last name looked off. It was – some of the letters were transposed. And so the first thing I did was I just shot an email to that address based – using one of my dummy accounts and it bounced right back.

And I started transposing some of the letters to the correct name. So they basically used a fake email address on their EPA permit. I then guessed what I thought the correct name was and sent an email off to that.

And it actually was – it bounced back. But I tried the name and nothing came up. And so I just started working my way through that company and a very small operation but – in all Chinese. But I finally got what I would consider to be a unique name, like a pretty rare name. And I Googled it and got this guy's Facebook account.

And his Facebook account had friends protected. But it said who he was engaged to. And so I clicked on this person. And basically within a matter of a couple hours had basically created a social graph of all the people involved in this company, including the people like who could not be found.

And by using graph search, you know, it was amazing. It was just like, you know, find friends of – it would be like if I said Facebook. So now I'm like, you know, Scotty with the microphone. Facebook. Find friends of David Teeter and Jason DeFilippo who live in, you know, Los Angeles.

Rather than by doing it by hand, bang, you just go through and found it. So essentially I was able to reconstruct all these people, these people's activities, where they were, what they were doing, where they are now. And sent off a nice little email to the government and got a call back.

So – This is what you do for fun. Yeah, this is what I do for fun. I mean I'd like to get paid doing that. But it's something where – I just did that for fun and it's something where it just kind of pisses me off because I don't like people who do that kind of stuff. And as a taxpayer in California, we also – Brian, you and I actually paid for some of this.

Right. But I'm sorry. This long-winded thing of just basically people, if you're going to do bad things – Don't be on Facebook. Don't be on Facebook. If you're going to be on Facebook and you're going to have multiple accounts, don't friend yourself.

Seriously. And it's just something where if you're going to be on Facebook and you're doing bad things, don't make comments on public posts. Don't – you know, basically all this stuff can be exploited in ways where even I was shocked. I mean I was really shocked.

I could basically – I could figure out not just where these people are and what they're doing but how to basically exploit them. Right. Yeah. So you probably ended up having photos of every single one of them. You probably could figure out their address. People tend to think that if they make their Facebook profile private, that means they can't be found on Facebook.

But all you have to do is have a friend who isn't, be tagged, comment on a public post. You – Facebook, if you're on Facebook, you're not private. End of story. Just assume that everybody can get the information of everything that you put out there. Right.

And it's like you – so Jason tries to keep his Facebook locked down. But his friends are private – I'm sorry. His friends are public. And a lot of these people, their friends were private. They were hiding their friends list. But by going through and saying like posts commented on by, you know, Mao Zedong or photos commented on by, you know.

Yeah. And like even you, you hide your friends list. But all I got to do is type in photos liked by Brian. Yeah. And all of a sudden, you know, there's like – it's like God, go see shit. It's disgusting. But then one can basically reverse engineer your friends list and then start exploiting that network.

So, you know, it's something where – I don't think there's a lot of people out there who really – this isn't going to matter for most people.

But it's something where if you think it matters for you, if your privacy matters for you, dear God, don't use these networks. And then it's like there was another thing. There's a certain sport that these people were involved in and I was able to – I found – I knew where they practiced that sport, badminton.

Right. And I just went to Twitter and I basically searched for hashtag, you know, Pasadena badminton, whatever. And bang, up it comes. I find out who posted that and then I could reconstruct their Twitter networks. I could reconstruct – and then it just became wide open.

So it's like, you know, being able to exploit multiple networks across all these different people regardless of what silly usernames they chose to use. So who knows? It's something where – got a callback from the feds on this meeting with the agents soon.

But to me, that was pretty fun. That sounds pretty fun. It was very fun. You go, girl. It's you. Private investigator. Jesus. Well, and the nice thing is I didn't even have to use any of these like professional databases or tools that skip tracers or PIs would use.

I mean, to me, it was just more of an interesting exercise to use these networks that people use for – hell, I don't even know why we use Facebook. But we use it. Yeah. Please. If you figure it out, let me know on that one. I have no idea.

Well, you know, it gives and it takes away. I mean it is an interesting situation. And some days I wake up and I'm just confused as to why we all do Facebook and why I posted what I posted the previous night. But other days it's fun.

You were drinking, Brian. Well, that's usually number one, yes. But I mean also it's how – it's enabled me to talk to you. You're living up in San Francisco. We really only met the one time in my kitchen to record a podcast.

Yeah. But because of Facebook, we have become friends. Yeah, yeah. So – I mean but it's one of those things where it's like, dear God, I mean what percentage of my Facebook friends are actually interesting? Or what percentage of my Facebook friends are actually really even friends?

I mean especially when we first all got on it and people just started kind of requesting willy-nilly. This could be somebody I've only met once and I will never meet again. But because they requested me as a friend and I said yes and they're just still lingering in my list. Right.

Well, that's something – my initial Facebook network was based upon my Flickr network. Now Flickr is pretty much kind of dead or dead for me at least. But there are still remnants of that network on my Facebook one. But it's like even if there's someone I haven't met, if they're actually really entertaining or posting cool stuff, I mean I'm glad I've got them.

I mean that's to me so much more interesting than someone I kind of know who just posts either bullshit articles or poems or quotes about how they feel today and feel so sad. It's just like Jesus Christ, just fucking shut up. The ones that get me are the people that post the sad-eyed dog, animal cruelty ones.

Instant unfollow. Oh, well. Cool. Oh, I did want to ask you about the ant catalog from the Tailored Access Operations Group. Yeah, so I mean my professional opinion on that is that it's not that good.

And this is something where it just is kind of a holdover from having access to all this stuff where it's like every classified document is going to be marked by – it's kind of security level.

– and what might be called compartments or other access controls. And it's something where generally the more restricted the document is, kind of the sexier it is. It's more – kind of being more interesting such that that class of documents that I mentioned before that was released by Snowden,

marked Stellar Wind, that was the security compartment within what's called the SCI – shit, sensitive compartment and information, I think – spook stuff, which was probably super, super tight. Very – you know, not many people involved in it.

So, you know, you see something like that, you're like, holy shit, that's – that might be pretty cool. When you see stuff marked like on that – on the ant document, it was marked like, you know, released to our friends and other stuff.

It's like, no, if we're going to share it with the Brits, the Germans, whomever, it ain't that good. So, to me, I mean, the really super tight stuff is always going to be marked differently. It's going to be marked with, like, code names.

It's going to be a special access program or intelligence special access program where it's like, you know, this stuff is so cool that only, you know, 20 people know about it. So. All right. So, I wasn't that impressed. I mean, I'm – it's something where I'm sure that document exists for a reason.

I'm sure some of that stuff might work, but it was always my experience that the really good stuff is marked really good. It'd be like if, you know, if you were – fuck, I don't know. If you were Googling for – I can't find a good analogy.

But say, like, you know, if you were trying to find a report to plagiarize, say, back in high school and you had a list of reports and, you know, you had a bunch of ones that were like A-plus or C-plus, you know, you can – that document that you're talking about was a C-plus.

Well, there then. I thought it was pretty cool tech though. Oh, I mean, all this stuff is interesting. And once again, it just kind of goes to show, you know, one, the only way to keep a secret is you don't tell someone.

And there's a reason why, you know, back in the day and probably still today, you know, cells, small cells of people isolated from each other were the best way to have a network and keep it going and not get discovered where you could burn any one individual node and not kill the whole network.

And finally, you know, why the fuck don't we have encrypted cell phones these days? Yeah. Yeah. Well, one's supposedly coming. Black phone. I guess it's supposed to launch in the next two months. Just don't tell me it's a fucking Kickstarter.

That was actually – I think I put that in my comments. It's not – it's not Kickstarter. Thank God. Oh, God. I will say one of the cool phones things that are coming out, FLIR, you know, the guys that do the heat cameras, they've actually got an add-on for your phone called the FLIR One.

This looks pretty cool. But I don't know. It has nothing to do with encryption, but I'm just saying it's pretty damn cool. No, but there should be a way to – there should be a way to have some kind of VPN or whatever through your phone.

That, you know, basically doing VoIP and like where they don't need to know where you are, what you're doing. But they want to know, so they keep it out as long as possible. Okay.

Yeah. I don't know. I mean – the Kickstarter I would support would be if someone said, hey, we want to buy a million phones and put – or, you know, 10 million phones, flip phones and put them around the world and just send random texts that basically have the same keywords that NSA is looking for and blanket their systems.

Basically, you know, overload them. I'd put a buck into that. But, I mean, they're already overloaded. They don't look at almost, you know, any of the stuff. Yeah. They're just storing it for later so they can come back and get you on the backside. Yeah.

I mean, I'm still – well, no. I mean, still, it's just the – am I paranoid about the NSA? No. I mean, the people I worked with there I thought were super professional. And if anything, you know, that's not what I worry about.

It's the bit that once you have information, once it's been collected, it can be exploited for other reasons, blackmail. It can be used for – shit, what was the term they used? Parallel investigation?

Mm-hmm. Remember that? Yeah. Oh, that's bullshit. I mean, anyone involved with that, they should go to jail. Now, you know, this is the kind of thing where it's just like basically I love my country.

Hell, I love all countries. But do I trust governments? Fuck no. Are you crazy? Who should? I mean, there's a reason why we have different – oh, help me here. I've forgotten my old – The different branches of government?

Yeah, the different branches. Right. The checks and balances. The checks – thank you, Brian. That's it. You're welcome. I was thinking, trying to remember the schoolhouse rock thing. But there's a reason why there's checks and balances. The government – a good government doesn't even trust itself.

Yeah, and it shouldn't, and it's not supposed to, and it was never meant to. And people are flawed. And to believe that just because they achieve some sort of position that they will magically be constrained by some ethics that we don't really have anyways is foolhardy. So, okay.

All right. One last thing just to make my girlfriend happy. Jason, say something nice about my girlfriend so she can hear it on the podcast. Hi, Chen. You're awesome with your little legs and beating me on the Fitbit. All right. Anything else, guys? No, that's about it.

If you want to hang out for a second, we're going to be joined by another guest shortly, and we're going to talk a bit about San Francisco and the funness up there. I'd like to get your take on it if you have a second. Yeah, I'd be happy to talk on that one. I mean I'll probably like piss off people and like get blogged about or something, but to God, man.

Well, that's what we do here. All right. Okay. Welcome, honored guest. Jordan, I wanted to talk to you today because you're moving to San Francisco. David lives in San Francisco, and I get the hell out of San Francisco.

Yeah, you do. Why in God's green earth are you going to move to the place that everybody is like – thinks is going to be the hotbed for the next like socioeconomic, political, like melting, fiery brimstone type of thing?

Well, mostly, I mean I live in L.A., so is that really going to be worse? I mean my rent is higher, but other than that, my girlfriend got a job in Palo Alto. So it was San Francisco or Palo Alto. So, I mean I'm not 75 yet, nor do I go to Stanford, so I don't think Palo Alto is a good option.

Yeah, it's a no-brainer. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So before we go any further, I just want to say welcome, Jordan Harbinger from the Art of Charm. Thank you. For swinging by today. David was already on and talking about some security stuff.

So what I originally wanted to have you on for is – because talking about the moving thing, you're moving there. I'm a homeless guy basically. I live – You look like one. Jason, go with nomad. It sounds sexier. Yeah. Well, yeah. I was a techno nomad and I have been for like what, five years?

I don't think I've had my own place and with this fucked up leg situation I've had, like not being able to go anywhere, you think a whole hell of a lot and you think, man, I'm 42 now. Is it time to start settling down and like, I don't know, building a life?

And between all three of you guys, I figured I can get some good advice here. But Jordan, you're like the world traveling guy. So I needed somebody on my side that likes to go and travel and do some shit. Sure. I mean, first of all, go to the doctor. That's my first bit of advice.

Thank you for that. Let me just chime in really quickly that just because I have settled down, I'm married and I have a home does not mean I don't travel. There's plenty of traveling to be had even if you settle down. Okay, okay.

But like look, Jordan travels to North Korea for Christ's sakes. He's a little more adventurous. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think it's more dangerous of going to like East L.A. and Detroit and parts of Brooklyn than it is going to North Korea.

It's just that the danger of getting kidnapped slash assassinated by the government is less theoretically in East L.A. Actually, it's probably still higher because if you count the police as the government, you're probably still a little bit higher chance of assassination by the government.

But you won't get kidnapped most likely. They'll just kill you. North Korea is actually really, really safe. There's no crime. All the criminals are in jail or dead, which is basically the same thing over there. Cool, cool. So what do you guys think?

I mean give me some advice. Should I finally say fuck it and get a house and settle down, get a dog and the white picket fence and all that noise? Or do you think it's like just – because here's the problem I'm having. I'm 42 and it's kind of sad to not have a place to actually call your house that's not your car.

Do you see yourself painting walls, setting up furniture, doing Ikea, sitting on a porch, swinging, having lemonade with your dog? Jason, even if you had a house, you still need to get laid. Yeah, I was about to say I'd find a girl first because then the settling down kind of happens naturally.

These guys are your friends you said? I'm telling you. Jesus. Seriously though, I mean in all honesty, it depends largely on what you want to do and are you – let me put it this way. Let me ask you this. Are you thinking you need to get a house because you think other people look at you funny when you tell them how old you are and that you don't have a place that you live?

Or is it – like what damage is it? What damage is it causing? What sort of – what is making you think that you want that or what is making you want that? Just the fact that I'm sitting here right now in a friend's house with a damn near broken leg and just thinking about – man, I kind of wish I had my own place that I could sit around in my underwear all day and just be normal.

But it's one of those weird things that happens, at least with me. I don't – it kind of – how to put this? I'm not the master of my own domain as it were. Like I live at the whim of other people. So if they got really pissed off at me for no reason.

It could be something completely different or I do something. But I could just say get out. Right. Not have a place that's – it's a very kind of stressful lifestyle sometimes. Sure. I think more likely someone's girlfriend is going to go, when is this guy leaving?

I don't think anybody is really going to kick you out. But you never know. The other question then becomes – obviously, I don't think you should buy a property because if you're nomadic or, as you put it, homeless, I don't think that buying a property is – in fact, no matter what, having an apartment, renting a place, buying a property, none of that is going to make a home for you.

A home is where you have – there's a lot of things associated with a home. For me, I don't have a home aside from where my girlfriend is and she's up in San Francisco right now. So the fact that I'm down here in L.A. in an empty condo, as nice as this condo is, it's not really my home.

So there's a lot associated with that. So if you don't know where you're going to live, where you're going to stay, definitely don't buy a property. I would say rent something so that you can walk around in your underwear all day. But I mean honestly, the stage you're at in your life, regardless of your age, you'd be fine in like Koreatown in L.A.

There's a lot to do. There's a lot of Asian girls, which I know maybe you're into. I mean maybe. And there's a lot of really good food and you can walk around in your underwear and you could probably walk outside in your underwear in Koreatown and nothing would happen to you. So you can still explore a few of those things.

I think if it's just a privacy concern, you could live in the Valley. You could live in L.A. You could live in Burbank. You could live anywhere and you'll be fine. You just want to make sure that you have a place where you can throw something on the floor and it's there three weeks later when you come back home. That's fine. I would highly agree with that point.

I think you should rent your own place. And that wouldn't necessarily stop you from living nomadically because you can do month-to-month leases and things like that. And if you get bored with Chicago, pick up, rent a place in L.A. for six months. After that six months is up, pick up, go back to Chicago, go to New York, go wherever you want and rent a place.

It's funny that you bring it up that you started thinking about this because you ended up breaking your leg. I mean I was thinking about a friend of mine here who just woke up at like four in the morning with kidney stones and her family wasn't around. So for her, that was the home thing.

She had to rely on friends to get to a hospital and it felt really off-putting to her to realize that she's renting a place here. She's got friends. She's got all of that stuff, but she still wasn't – it didn't feel like home when something bad happened. Yeah, I totally get that. Totally get that.

I think Jordan's advice is right on, but it's something we're still. It's like, you know, I – shit, I think I'm the only one here who has kids. Yeah. Right? Yes. Yep. I'm the only one here who's been divorced twice, right? So far.

Yeah. Okay. But it's – so like here I am. I'm older. I think I'm the oldest one on the call. I'm 47. Jesus. I'm just kidding. No. I'm a very young-looking and very young acting 47, but I'm actually enjoying my – He's very viral.

Virile. Virile. Virile. Virile. No, but here – you know, at my age, I'm actually getting to – I think I'm having my 20s or 30s I never got to have. You know, this is – for me, this is – I've owned – shit, I don't know, more than five, less than 10 homes, something like that.

But, you know, it's – I have no desire to be a nomad right now, but if given a choice between – you have a choice between you're going to be a nomad or you're going to be paying a $1.78 million mortgage in San Francisco, it's like, fuck, I'll choose a nomad.

Yeah, I know someone very similar as well who's in his early 50s, and, you know, he kind of did the settle down early, had kids young, got divorced. Kids are now growing up, and, you know, he's just bouncing around, renting, doing what he wants, kind of living that life now.

So it really depends on what you want, Jason. What do you want to be doing right now? What kind of life do you want to be living right now? Shit, that's what I don't know, man. I mean, I've been doing this tech thing forever. That's the great part about what we do. Like, the technology side of things, we can work from everywhere, you know? And I kind of exploited that for the past, what, 20 years?

And now it just seems like it might be time to do something new. I just wish everybody I knew lived in the same damn city. So can we all just, like, move to the same spot? Sure, San Francisco, no problem. Oh, tuna. I can't stand San Fran, so I'll be staying in L.A., but it's a 45-minute flight. Yeah.

There you go. And stop calling it San Fran, Jesus. Yeah, is that how many of you say that? No, 42 episodes, and you're still calling it that. Well, I've never lived there, and I don't like it. He's not calling it Frisco, but who cares?

Yeah, yeah. I think that's, like, a thing you're not supposed to do, right, to call it Frisco? That's, like, one of those people don't use that who live there. No, definitely not. Yeah, yeah. But you can go get a $3 artisanal piece of toast up there now.

We talked about $4. Oh, my God. It's $4. $4 now? It's $4. It's caught on, man. They've got to raise the prices. Strike while the toaster is hot. Yes, exactly. Oh, my God. I know that's – I'm really not looking forward to, like, the insane cost of living.

Here's the plus side, though, for me. I love the urban environment. I like being safe. I have a girl that I have to pay attention to. Like, I can't have that person living in Koreatown. I could live in West L.A. I was fine here. She got a job up there. I don't want to be long distance.

The other thing is she's got – her family lives in Cupertino. So we basically have a retreat to get out of the city. We have a place where we can keep a car. She can go to Costco and buy a bunch of stuff, drive it back. And so I don't have to go to, like, the bodega where a bagel is $8 un-posted.

Jordan, we actually do have a Costco in San Francisco. You do? Oh, great. So I'm all set. I was trying to explain – David, you'll appreciate this. I was trying to explain to Jordan the problems with the man-poo situation up there. So, Jordan, does your girlfriend already live here?

She does. Yeah, she grew up there. What neighborhood? Soma. Okay. Well, deep Soma, stabby corner Soma. By the Caltrain. Did you say stabby corner? Yeah. I don't want to.

She lives by the Caltrain station. So whatever part. Okay. Okay. That's – okay. That's not too bad at all. But there's – yeah, you go a couple blocks and you're in Manpu Central. But I don't think you'll get stabbed there.

You just – don't wear any open-toed shoes. Gross. I mean, I don't wear – I'm a dude, so I don't wear open-toed shoes. But, yeah, I'll pass that – I will pass that on. Well, after you live there for a while, you might flip over to Soma. Flip over to some Birkenstocks and get your inner hippie on.

That's the one part I'm not really super looking forward to is that all – like that whole hipster thing. I'm over it. But I know there's a lot of tech people there and I'm interested in that as well. I think that will be really neat. So I'm actually pretty excited about that. Yeah.

But on the day-to-day thing, Jordan, it's like it's – hipsters don't even see them. I mean – or if anything, it's just like a mild – kind of like roll my eyes. But it's something where depending on where you live and walk, it's something where you actually need to develop a sixth sense about where you place your foot so you don't step in the shit on the sidewalk.

I'm not kidding here. And as Jason said, it's not dog shit. Nope. So gross. Well, it's not just that it's gross.

That's really – I've been in San Francisco now coming up on for years and I'm still shocked at what a filthy, dirty city this is and how the city doesn't do a good job of keeping itself clean and even people that live here don't.

I mean when I would travel in Asia, people are always like – in front of their place, they're always like – Sweeping. Sweeping. Exactly. Exactly. Keeping it clean because it shows that they – I don't know what it shows. Maybe they'll get shot if they don't sweep.

I'm starting to see a new public policy change right for San Francisco. It's funny. I have that conversation often about L.A. as well because it's a sense of pride that doesn't seem to exist here because so many people are transient or didn't grow up here or only out here for three years to be a waitress because they're never going to make it as an actress.

There's a sense of pride with these kind of communities that you don't get when they're in L.A. or San Fran and people just never – they never adopt it as their home. They're just passing through. Yeah, that totally makes sense.

People in L.A., a lot of people – anywhere you go where anyone works, pretty much anywhere east of the 405, those people are like, I'm too good to be doing whatever I'm doing right now, which includes helping you get chicken or buy groceries or get coffee or whatever it is.

They're always working on their little project. I'm all about dreams and stuff, but at some point it's like, quit dreaming and get me my freaking latte, dude. I got work to do. It's my old go-to line. Why don't you act like you're a fucking waiter? No. Yeah. You're such a good actor.

Why don't you act like a barista and put some cinnamon on shit? But yeah. I mean I hear you. Jason's obviously not cut out for San Fran or doesn't want to be in San Fran is what I mean. I mean obviously cut out is different than want. I would say don't – why settle down?

I mean I feel like you feel like you have a privacy concern, but you don't necessarily want to settle down. There's nothing wrong with being nomadic. I just wonder why you live in the United States. That's what I wonder. Your dollar would go a lot further and you'd get laid a lot more as your friend had put it.

Well, you'd get a lot more girls if you lived in like, I don't know, China or something. Yeah. No, I thought about it. Taipei, Hong Kong. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I don't want – don't go to Thailand because that's just gross. But like not the country of Thailand, but the whole like sex tourism thing is gross.

Yeah. But like you can live like a normal person in Taiwan. You can live like a normal person in a big city in China. You can live like a normal person in Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh City. I mean there's a lot of cool expat stuff going on there and you're basically loaded.

So if I were in your situation, honestly, I've thought about this. Like if I didn't have a girlfriend, there's almost nothing – the art of charm obviously requires a lot of time and attention. But like if I were 42 and I were nomadic and single, I would not live in the United States because you're young enough to like go and just do awesome stuff all the time.

The Philippines are just calling your name is what I'm trying to tell you. That's a pretty damn good point. I don't even know why I didn't think of that. It is a lot cheaper. I mean you don't necessarily – I would bum around Europe personally, but I mean that's where the dollar is even forced.

If you think San Francisco is dirty though, I wouldn't go to the Philippines, Jason. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, dude. You don't like man poo? Try people who build houses on piles of it. I mean the Philippines – here's the thing with the Philippines though. You could live in an area that's like expat friendly, which doesn't mean Manila where you're going to get – like talk about stabby corner.

That's like every block. You can't even tell them apart. But you could live in a seaside town or Cebu City, which is where like all those tech areas are and those startups. And I mean you're talking about beachfront property with good internet where people are speaking English. And if you don't go to the tourist trap Irish pub on the corner, everything you eat and do is a dollar.

I mean you'd be banking like crazy. You could live there. I did the math when I was there for a couple weeks last year. I mean you could live there really well on $2,000 a month, really well. And I mean that's like you're living in a really nice place in a beachfront town going out to eat pretty much every day for $2,000 a month.

That ain't bad at all. No. So if you're making twice that – and I mean of course it depends who your employer is. But if you're $10.99 and it's up to you to pay taxes, I would strongly encourage you to follow all U.S. laws regarding taxation. However, that's pretty – Have we met before?

Yeah. I mean there might be some flexibility on like what you can do in terms of write-offs and things like that. No. I mean if you're going to be a nomad, you should embrace it and be a true nomad and be a global nomad. I definitely agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. Why would you be a nomad on the northeast in winter?

That's just stupid. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a nomad. I got to wear a winter coat every day and I slipped on the ice. I mean I'm not laughing at your injury but like there's no ice in the Philippines except in your cocktails and even that is purified water. Boom. Every place is different.

Jordan, I'm stalking you right now. Are you? The water is not purified by Soma of course. Yeah. No, no. But Jordan, you just went to Taiwan. I did. I went to Taiwan. Yeah. How did you find that? I won't even ask you. Yeah. I went to Taiwan in October with my girlfriend and that was okay.

I mean it was a fun trip because I was with my girlfriend and her family but like I don't recommend living there. Where did you go? Taipei and surrounding areas. What did you think about the scooters? I mean there's a lot of scooters. There's still not as many as like Vietnam.

Right. But there's a lot of scooters. Yeah. It's cool. I mean I can't really see Jason on a scooter. Jason would have to be on one of those scooters that is like for old people where it has three wheels. Hey, hey, hey. I'm just saying because you would have to carry your groceries on. That's the only reason.

Okay. Well, that's actually pretty good advice. See, this is why I bring my friends on to tell me what the fuck to do because I have no clue anymore. Yeah, man. Jason, if I could just give you one bit of advice, it's don't go back to Pennsylvania. Yeah. Oh, no worries. Never going back to Pennsylvania for a damn thing.

No, I'm just in Chicago because it's, you know, family and stuff. Yeah. And I think it's what Jordan said. I mean it's been my experience for my whole life. Your friends, your friends stand by you. Your friends, your friends are usually happy to have you around.

Significant others are friends. Watch it. Be careful. Those are the ones that cause the trouble. Oh, ain't that the truth? Yes. That's the truth. That is absolutely the truth. Those are the ones who are like, yeah, I'd love to go down on you, but you're friends in the next room if you get my drift, you know?

And you're like, hey, Jason, can you walk on that thing? It's looking a little bit more purple than yesterday, but that might be a good thing, right? Anyway, you got to go. Yeah. Well, I mean that's just a fact of life basically. I mean if you're going to hang out with – if you're going to be nomadic, hang out at other nomadic-type people's houses, you're not going to be able to crash at somebody who's shacked up with their significant other for a very long period of time.

It just doesn't work. Oh, yeah. Definitely not. Well, you could probably do that here because Chen likes you so much. But only if you keep giving her shout-outs on the podcast. Yes. Sweet. All right, guys. Well, I know some of you have other places to go, so I just want to say thanks for swinging by.

And David, where can people find more about you on the internet? Hopefully not on the most wanted site. Well, if you are interested in my professional consulting services, it's davidteeterconsulting.com.

Other than that, fuck off. All right. And Jordan, where can people find out more about you? People can find me at theartofcharmpodcast.com. So the Art of Charm podcast got 250 hours of me telling you how to live your life, whether you want to or not, and give all the good advice.

And really, it's about business. It's about getting girls. It's about all kinds of stuff that guys who are personal growth-oriented would love to see. And otherwise, I'm on Facebook. And if you want to follow me on Twitter, you can waste someone else's time. And I've got to say, you have a shiny new logo for your podcast.

It's very sexy. I do. I do. My girlfriend made it. It's neat. I like it. Very sexy. So as soon as you get to San Francisco, give me a holler, and I'll come up, and all three of us can go have some drinks and not step in man poo. Awesome. Yeah, sounds good. We can ride around in your little scooter, your three-wheel scooter.

Oh, Dave will just pick us up on the BMW, and I'll sit on the handlebars, and you can sit on his lap. Yeah, that sounds good. We can go out and stab people. Stabby corner. Here we come. It's real. Google it. Oh, no. That sucks. All right.

All right, guys. Have a good weekend. I'll talk to you later. Thank you. Bye.

This week saw the launch of yet another streaming service, sort of. I say sort of because Beats from Beats by Dre, Beats Music, launched this week and then promptly decided to shut its doors again.

So, you know, I got the boilerplate email this morning and just started laughing. You know, due to the popularity of our launch, we are currently, you know, going to stagger things. So if you haven't already signed up, please wait. Oh, okay. So they're having some issues already, which is, I guess, a good issue to have is if they're actually being truthful about the fact that they're just too damn busy and too many people are trying to sign up.

I did get in, and I had been on the waiting list and reserved names for myself and for artists previously. So as soon as it basically launched, I was in there. I've used it a bit. Okay. Here's the thing.

I'm on Engadget right now looking at some of these things. Every word that says Beats links to another article down the rabbit hole. I can't find a link to the actual damn thing. That's funny. Okay. I'm sorry. Never mind. Continue. No, it's okay. I've been playing around with it.

It is not very significantly different from any other streaming service. I personally am on Spotify. I was on Rdio for a while. They're all about the same. Beats has got a funkier interface, as one would expect, because of their branded headphones and all that sort of stuff. And they're definitely pushing more towards the – they bought Mog, as you had mentioned a little bit earlier.

They also have special algorithms, and they're really touting themselves as being some sort of personalized music discovery in the future. That even comes from the sign-up, because instead of just putting in your name and all that, it asks you what kind of genres you like, genres you don't like, pick a few artists that you like, pick a few artists that you can't stand.

So, if you're the type of person that kind of likes Pandora, basically, or something like that, where you get suggestions, maybe this will be really good for you. I personally don't listen to music that way. I know what I want to listen to. I'm in the music industry.

I've recommended stuff all the time. I have a list about 75 albums deep that I still haven't gotten around to listening to that I need to. So, the last thing in the world I want is more suggestions. But that's just me. Yeah, seriously. So, that seems to be where they're headed with it.

It's very pretty, but it's just another streaming service. You can't get in now anyways, but maybe by the time you hear this, they'll have opened it back up again. It's worth taking a look if you have not made the jump into a streaming service yet. Cue rant about unlimited bandwidth going away and having to pay for everything because they're just going to hook you on another thing that's going to end up costing you more money in the long run.

But it's decent. So, Beats is here. Deal with it. Or ignore it. Or ignore it. Yeah. I'm an RDO guy. I stick with that. I was actually pulled up RDO this morning, and I'm thinking, why am I still paying $10 a month for this when I almost never use it? But did I forget?

Now, iTunes Radio is pretty damn good. iTunes Radio is actually really – I've listened to that more often than anything else, just as background music, and it's right there. They did a great job on it, and they're getting next to no press. And they're probably not going to anytime soon because of Beats now.

So they're not even kind of thrown in with any of these other things, which I find quite odd. I do. I agree with you completely. I like iTunes Radio a lot. But if you've not ever tried any kind of streaming service anymore, you might as well go for it and give Beats a shot. But Spotify is still my go-to.

I don't know why. It's probably got the worst interface out of all of them. Oh, God. Yeah. It's so fucking – it's so ugly. Yeah. Guy, that's the one thing I can't stand about it. I mean, yeah, I did have a little bit more music than RDO, but I can live without that. Yeah. I need something pretty if I'm going to look at it.

Yeah, and the one thing that really kind of – the tricky thing which got me on and made me go ahead and give Beats a shot anyways is that Trent Reznor is actually involved. And, of course, he did that thing where he's got an exclusive four-track EP of remixes that's only on Beats. So I was like, all right, I've got to go listen to that.

So I listened to them. Good job, Trent. Listen to the four songs and immediately delete the app. Yeah, and I haven't actually tried out this feature, but I had just read about it, again, going along with the idea of doing personalization and stuff like that.

It's got some sort of like Mad Lib kind of thing of finding music for you where you put in where you're at and what you're doing and a couple other like Mad Lib-y type things, and then it just comes up with music for you, which I'll actually have to give that a shot just to see what comes up.

Okay. That's way too much work for me. Yeah, yeah. It's gamification of music. There you go. Get a badge and a cup of coffee or whatever. I don't know. Okay. Well, best of luck to Dre. Yes. In Trent.

Kickstarter. Get the balls. I don't really have a Kickstarter per se. Well, I guess it was partially on Kickstarter, but I just thought this was hilarious. The Jamaican bobsled team basically crowdfunded its way to the Olympics. That's pretty awesome.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with this one at all. This is fine by me. Yeah. I just think it's hilarious. So instead of turning to John Candy for help, cool runnings joke, ha, ha, ha, the team basically turned to the internet. They hit up CrowdTilt, Indiegogo, startup cryptocurrency, Dogecoin.

See, I don't know of anybody that knows how to pronounce it. Dogecoin? Dogecoin? Dogecoin? I don't know what it is. Nobody knows. They managed to drum up $200,000 in just a few days, enough to get them over there and to compete. That's pretty awesome. Yeah. All right. Good on you. I like that. That one's good.

We have a happy Kickstarter story. You do have a happy Kickstarter. I screwed up and there was one that I wanted to get, those Edgar Allan Poe playing cards. Yes. And I happened to just break my leg and forgot because I had other things on my mind. So I didn't get my damn playing cards.

And I actually totally forgot as well that I did have something and I'll probably just save it for Kickstarter next week. But if you want to Google it really quick, Zach Braff sold his Kickstarter movie. Oh, my God. Yeah, this has been going for a reason. So he made $2.75 million in addition to the $2 million he got from Kickstarter.

He won't be refunding anyone, but you'll still get your T-shirt. Yeah. Why would he refund it? He can't. Yeah. You know? So, I mean, I called that way back when we first talked about it. I said he's going to get money from a studio anyways, and then what happens?

And now we're there and nothing's happening. So Kickstarter-ing your movie is a complete and utter load of shit, and you should feel like an idiot if you funded him. Oh, wow. Bam! Okay. That's it for Kickstarter. All right.

The web's not dead. Making the rounds on my social media this week for sure was The Internet Solves a 20-Year-Old Mystery, this fantastic little story about a woman that was seeking help with a decades-old family mystery where I believe her grandmother passed away in 1996 of a fast-spreading cancer.

It was non-communicative for the last two weeks, but she left behind at least 20 index cards with scribbled letters all over them. And if there's a photo of it, and it's just nonsense. It's just letters. There's not a single word in there, and I guess 20 of these cards were left behind.

She posted it up on the Internet and said, anybody have any ideas? Within 15 minutes, the cards were practically completely deciphered. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. That is pretty awesome. The power of the crowd.

Yes. Hey, we finally found a use for jelly. Oh, yeah. She could have totally used jelly for this. Yeah, so they're just a bunch of prayers, it turned out, but it's pretty interesting. But still pretty damn cool. I mean, people figured it out really quick, and it's one of those, again, snowballing effects where somebody figures out a couple things, and then the next person in line is like, oh, yeah, and then boop, boop, boop, boop.

Next thing you know, all 20 cards deciphered within 15 minutes. That's pretty awesome. Now, in the web side of things, there's a video called – oh, it's just – here, I'll just name it. Oculus Rift lets you see what it would be like to swap genders.

This is NSFW because it's got some half-naked people looking – like basically mimicking each other, but you're looking at their perspective, you know what I'm saying? See what I'm saying? I got you, yeah. It's kind of weird is all I've got to say.

It's kind of weird. I'm going to put it in the show notes. Check it out if you're into that kind of thing. But this also goes back with the sex in Google Glass, which is at glassandsex.com. That will be in the show notes. And it's just all these – I don't know what these people are thinking, man. There's going to be trouble here.

I'm telling you. There's going to be a lot of trouble. You cannot – I mean I'm just thinking practically here. I mean if you're a dude and you look down and you see boobs all the time, you're never going to do anything else ever. Never leave the house. All you're going to do is look down at your own chest. Never going to leave the house. So, yeah, I don't know where we're going with this tech, but I don't know.

Now, our last bit is Mr. Tarantino had a little problem with one of his scripts this week. Yes, he did. His new movie that he was ready to film, somebody leaked it. And now he just won't do it.

He's having a tantrum. He's basically having a tantrum. He's acting like a little kid. I mean, yes, this would be extremely annoying and very frustrating and you should be angry because he apparently only gave it to like six people, six people, the high-level actors that he was hoping would be interested.

And somehow, you know, one of the – maybe their PR person, maybe their assistant, whatever, leaked it. And he just had a big hissy fit and said, well, I'm not going to make the movie now. Yeah. Grow up, man. It's the internet. Welcome to leaks. They happen. You think it's not going to happen once you start shooting?

Come on. Give me a break. We're already seeing pictures from the new Star Wars set. They've started? I thought they weren't even starting yet. They've started building, man. Oh, wow. Okay, yeah. Yeah, Quentin Tantrum Tino. That's about it. I don't know.

Maybe it sucked and he's just using this as an excuse to get out of making it. That's definitely possible as well. A quick closing shout-out to an old band because I am a grumpy old geek that put out a new album and it's really good, which I love when that happens.

Crystal Method put out their self-titled The Crystal Method this week. And if you love that old-school electronica, man, this one's a good one. So give it a listen. Oh, that's good, good. I miss those guys. They haven't been around in ages. Yeah, they haven't put out anything for a while. They did some soundtrack work.

All of that was really good. I mean, they're super talented guys. They've not put out a bad album yet, but this one is just great. It was perfect timing. I loved hearing it. I was dancing around the house. It was awesome. Yeah, I love that. I've actually got one track of theirs that you can't get anymore. It's really hard to get. They did it in conjunction with Nike when Nike had the new thing that you could put in your shoe.

Oh, yeah. I've got that track as well. It's awesome. Yeah, it's like 32 minutes or something, but it's like a perfect workout. Yeah. And I love that song. And you can't find it anymore. It's down. Yeah. It's not on any of the streaming service. You can't buy it on iTunes. Yeah, that's true. You can't actually.

So you know where you can find it. Your friend's in Sweden. So I do want to throw out a thank you to Dr. David Teter for coming on and talking security and good old Jordan Harbinger for coming on and telling me that I look like a homeless bum who needs to get laid.

Appreciate that. So enjoy your man poo. And there will be links to those guys in the show notes, which will be at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 42 because this is the 42nd episode where, you know, 42 is the answer to life. The universe and everything.

There you go. So thanks to those guys and yourself for giving me some advice on how to be a tech nomad still with my crazy broken leg, which we'll go to the doctor. Please take the advice from the beginning of the show and go to the damn doctor.

We'll see. We'll see. You know, worst case, I get a peg leg. Yeah. The chicks love that stuff. Oh, yeah. All right, man. Great weekend. And, yeah, till next time. Till next time, man. 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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