463: R'amen!

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. If you're getting this very early on Saturday morning, you still have time to come meet us for our drink up at 2 p.m. P.S.T. Sorry, no, P.T. Damn it, that S throws me off. Yes, Pacific time.

Actually, more likely these days, P.T.S.T. P.T.S.T., yes, 2 p.m. P.T.S.T. Oh, my God. So we'll be doing it again. Come on by. Say hi. Yep. Yeah. And for our fellow fans in Australia who are a little upset that we're doing it early on Sunday morning, come on, man, you're made of Sterner stuff.

And by the way, you can have coffee and watch. You don't need to drink. It doesn't say that you need to drink. We do. That's right. That's what, you know, that's what we have to do to do this kind of thing. I don't even know what time we would have to do it to make it okay for Australians. So I'll tell you what.

We'll do it if you guys, if all of Australia sends us enough money to buy our beer for that show. Exactly. Well, I don't know. That's like, you know, 20 bucks. I think we should aim higher for that. They got to buy a round for everybody on the Zoom call. How's that? All right.

Got a little follow up here. Do you remember the genius lyrics lawsuit with Google? Indeed. Yeah, where they got busted by, you know, because the genius people were geniuses and stuck in some random characters. Yeah, hidden characters and stuff like that so they could prove that Google was actually stealing it from them.

Yeah, and it spelled out red-handed, which I thought was pretty funny. Well, their lawsuit against Google has been dismissed. Okay. You know why? Because they're not the actual copyright holders of the lyrics that Google was taking.

I did believe I mentioned that. Yep. Yes, the people that actually have a lawsuit against all of these people are the copyright holders, the publishers and whatnot, who own the actual copyrights to the lyrics. That's the reason why you do not see lyrics books, well, back in the day.

I guess you still see it. If you're a musician and you go to music shops, you'll still see lyric books and things like that. But they used to be quite popular when I was a kid. They would be in regular bookstores. So if you bought a guitar, you would go to the bookstore and they would have a whole section of tabs and lyric books and all that and whatnot. And those are all officially published by the people who actually own the copyrights, not the internet.

Yes. Well, at least for Genius, they do license the lyrics that they post. So there's at least that. They're above board. But the problem is they license them. And Google – They can't sue. Right. They don't own the copyright to something that they license, so they can't sue Google for doing it.

You know, valiant try. I give them that. It was a valiant try. And it was very clever what they did. But, yeah, the rights holders need to go after Google, which probably makes the rights holders very happy. Yeah, I think so. So we'll see what happens with that. In the news.

Well, in the battle for supremacy over your phones, Apple has booted Fortnite, but also so has Google. And this is going to turn into a big one. So, yeah. So the thing is, Fortnite and the game creator Epic, they're pissed off about how much money that the app stores take, mainly Google and Apple.

And so they tried to end around it. They totally tried to end around it, and they got busted for it. And so both main companies said, well, you know what? Screw you. It's our platform. Yeah. We got a lot of feedback from this that streamed in when this happened.

And a lot of our listeners appear to be pro-Fortnite on this, and they were yelling at Apple. And this was before I knew that Google had also taken them off. So at first it looked like, okay, so this is going to be a battle against Apple, and Apple's wanting to take their 30% fee every time that they use their Apple payment options. Fair enough.

Somebody, you know, it is high, I would say. I would say Apple could probably drop that percentage a little bit if they wanted to, and that would be fine. But I find it very interesting that Google stepped up and came down basically on Apple's side and said, hey, hold on a second.

Our platform, our rules. Yep. And so, of course, Epic has filed lawsuits against Apple and Google right now. And I just have, I want to put this line out here because it kind of pisses me off. It says, Epic also apparently just filed a legal complaint against Apple, blah, blah, blah, you know, saying that Fortnite is yet another example of Apple flexing its enormous power in order to impose unreasonable restraints

and unlawfully maintain its 100% monopoly over the iOS in-app payment processing market. Well, without Apple, there would be no iOS in-app payment processing market. There isn't a market. It's their platform.

They've built it. It's their platform. Yes. If you don't like it, go to Google. Oh, wait. You did, and you tried to screw them, too. So, you know, you want to play with the big boys and you want to get their audience, you've got to pay the piper. You've got to pay the ferryman, the tollman, whoever you've got to pay, but you've got to pay.

And, yes, I do think that the 30% fee is, you know, disgusting, but them's the rules, dude. They are the rules. Correct me if I'm wrong. You can go ahead and just play Fortnite on your computer and not pay any charges and just give them your money directly, correct?

Well, yeah, yeah. You can just go pay Epic directly through that. Solution. Yeah. Solution. We've been through this with so many companies. Oh, like Spotify and everybody else on the planet who just doesn't want to pay to get access to, you know, these massive markets.

Yeah. It's their market. They built it. Their rules. Table stakes. Yeah. Okay. Make the argument that the fee should come down. Agreed. I don't think that they can. I would find it very strange and unsettling if a lawsuit demanded that Apple had to actually include other people's processing and payment processing through their own system that they built.

Right. An option would be for Apple to just charge a fee based on, you know, putting your app in there and say, okay, here's the deal. You want to put your app in our store? Here's the filing fee. This will let you get in. I mean, you already pay a developer fee. That's fine. That's taken care of for giving them access to the SDK and the tools.

But, okay, here's a fee for putting it in the app store. If you want to charge for downloads, pay this fee. And since you want to be that kind of guy, we're going to charge you for bandwidth for all those millions of downloads of your multiple, you know, probably 100, 200 megabyte game, maybe even bigger.

So, you know, if you want to do that, then you're going to suck up all those costs and we're just going to make a profit from you on the downloads. There are ways around it. But, you know, 30% across the board for everybody, if you want to use their payment plan, boom, easy breezy for them. I get it. I totally get it. So, and Fortnite obviously had expected this because they made a video called 1980 Fortnite, hashtag free Fortnite, which is a play on the 1984 ad from Apple.

And it is pretty funny. Ironically, though, most of their target market were not around and do not remember that commercial at all. Exactly. The parents' credit card that they have to borrow to pay for Fortnite will remember it, though, but they'll probably never see it. Yes. So, yeah, they knew this was coming.

They definitely created a – they were prepared. They had their PR department. Their older PR department said, this is a great idea, kids. Yeah, exactly. And their lawyers are already, you know, lubed up and ready to go because, you know, they – you don't just file a legal complaint. Like, that fast.

You knew that, you know, something was going to happen eventually because you're poking the bear. Yep. Yep. And speaking of lawyers lubed up and ready to go, they're pretty much the only winners in this whole process so far, which has been going on forever. But we finally have a ruling, which, of course, is not the end ruling because there's going to keep on going and going and going.

And, again, the lawyers will be lubed up and happy. But a California judge has finally ruled that Uber and Lyft have to classify their drivers as employees, not as contractors. This came down on Monday. So this has been going on forever. The two companies have been sued by the California attorney general to enforce a new labor law passed earlier this year by the state that requires gig workers to receive the same benefits and treatments as employees.

You know, the caveat there being, of course, not gig workers that are only working like five hours a week. But if you're working full-time for the company, you need to become a full-time employee. And that's all the ruling basically said. And Uber and Lyft, of course, this goes against their entire business model, which is never have employees and never have to pay for shit.

And that's basically the companies have argued, rightfully so, that reclassifying drivers as employees could wreak havoc on their business, that not being the employee's fault, that being the fault of your shitty business model. Exactly. Exactly. So now Lyft and Uber are saying, oh, you know what?

We might just have to pull out of California because of this ruling. Okay. Okay. Bye. Yeah. See you later. Yeah. You know, it's not like a ton of people are taking these services right now anyways, or at least they're not supposed to. They're not supposed to be taking them or shouldn't be taking them.

And I know here comes the arguments about how are people supposed to get to work the old-fashioned way. Any other way you can. Walk, bike, whatever. Exactly. Yeah. It's just the way you used to do it. The old shoe leather express. I think like people are acting like there was no life before Uber and Lyft.

Like these are relatively new companies. They haven't been here that long. They can also ride a bird scooter to work. The bird scooters are back. They are back. They're everywhere again. I don't understand. There aren't little bags of Purell attached to them or anything.

I don't get it. But they're definitely back. They're everywhere again. Okay. And in more Lyft news, Lyft has beat Wall Street expectations for Q2, which is a very interesting headline, considering that they're still losing money.

And their revenue fell 61% from the same period last year. Now, a 61% decline in revenue actually beat expectations and they're still in business. This tells you how insane this business is and how much stupid money is behind it to give them a kind of runway that they can, you know, lose this type of money.

It's ridiculous. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I just, I don't know who these investors are, but, you know, one ring to rule them all is the theory. So you back a horse and hope one of these things wins and becomes the biggest company in the world in this area and actually starts to make money.

And then, I don't know, whatever, it's insane. I don't know. I don't know. It's, you know, it reeks a pyramid to me at this point because all the early investors have mostly, you know, hit pretty big liquidity events and took their money and ran. Yeah. You know, you know, all the angels I knew that got in very early have cashed out and moved to places like Texas to avoid taxes and things like that.

Yeah. Are living high on the hog. Everybody doing the right thing that furthers our community and our country as a whole. Yeah, you know, but, hey, they're going to get a nice comedy scene because Joe Rogan's moving there to do the same damn thing. Yeah. And speaking of all that sort of stuff, I found this article over at The Atlantic.

It's a nice long form one. It's pretty interesting. The title, provocative as it should be, Amazon is a private government. Congress needs to step up. So this gets into the recent House antitrust subcommittee meetings where all the big tech companies have been in and they've been basically doing this ongoing investigation to see what they should do.

Oh, about these gigantic tech companies. Should we break them up? Should we allow Facebook and Instagram to be one company or should we split them back up again? And finally, they got around to the elephant in the room, Amazon, because Amazon is gigantic. And they brought in Jeff Bezos. And I love this opening sentence.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos seemed rattled to discover that his appearance was not a public relations exercise, but an actual deposition. He devoted much of his five-minute opening statement to talking about his childhood. He appeared unprepared to field questions about his sprawling empire, which controls the backbone for much of the web through cloud computing and, of course, has its own parcel delivery operation that rivals UPS and the U.S.

Hey, Amazon can deliver our votes. That's right. Don't piss off the bees right now. We might need him. Yes. Remarkably, he's never before testified in front of Congress. He got a bunch of pointed questions from both sides of the aisles. He hesitated and stammered through many of his answers and said implausibly that he didn't know or couldn't recall the details behind several of Amazon's strategic decisions and core functions.

When he did venture a response, they were incriminating admissions about specific tactics his company used to snuff out competitors. Yep. He should have just held up his phone and said, hey, want to see my dick? So that was just the front part of the article. Then it basically just goes on to say that Congress basically has a duty to actually do some regulation because basically the reality is that's what they used to do.

And we're all so jaded and blown away by what's happening anymore that none of us expect anything to come out of this because we don't believe our government does shit and can't do anything. And basically, this is your chance to actually bring back some democracy and do something and show that machinery of government has function and can actually function.

So step up, Congress. Ain't going to happen. They're too busy working on shower heads now. Yes. And as the end of the article points out, Amazon's investors clearly aren't worried that any of this will happen. Exactly. So, yeah, unfortunately, nothing is going to happen.

But if there ever was a company that probably should be split up or have some regulations, it definitely is Amazon. Yeah. I mean, you look at the different departments that they've got. I mean, just clearly, AWS and Amazon should be two separate companies. But it will never happen because AWS, you know, brings in so much profit for Amazon.

It's, you know, it's crazy. But they're two completely different business models. One is cloud computing and the other is sending you underwear at three in the morning. So I don't know how they can justify that, that Amazon would just become a customer of AWS like everybody else in the planet.

Unless you go to Azure. Well, that would be funny. That would be so funny. Amazon and AWS are split up and Amazon moves to Microsoft Cloud. Hey, they offered us a better price. Exactly. Service works better. Yeah, that AWS would have to actually compete for Amazon's business.

That would be funny. Imagine the buckets come with passwords on them pre-installed. Interesting. You know, they also point out in here the problem. Amazon actually employs more lobbyists than the U.S. Senate has members. This is why this sort of stuff will never get passed. Yeah, exactly.

So in more big tech news, they're starting to roll out initiatives to counter voter misinformation. And at this point, Google is on board. Twitter's on board. Facebook, surprisingly, is on board, which should be an interesting one to check out.

Oh, God. Yeah, I want to get all my voter news from Snapchat. Yeah, great. That's what I'm looking forward to. Well, look, the reality is that is what's happening, right? Like, you know, we can scoff at it and laugh at it all we want, but the vast majority of people are getting their news these days from social media, not anywhere else.

No, I mean, look at the old days, man. MTV, rock the vote. That was a whole thing. And we all kind of laughed at that, too. It was like MTV is saving democracy. Well, you know, they did register a shit ton of people to vote. So that's how we got Bill Clinton. Yeah. Yeah.

Where were they when the Bushes came around? I think they'd already moved away from doing videos and it was all reality TV at that point. Oh, that's right. That's right. But yeah, at least they're doing something. I don't know if it's any good, but hey, we'll see how it goes. Yeah, we'll see. I found a really interesting article over on Slate, which was a little depressing because we were talking about perhaps this will be a whole new world.

This pandemic and this working from home thing is going to drastically change the way that companies approach things and the way that the future of the world and the workforce is going to go. And then I read society. Yes. And then I read this. All the intrusive and insulting ways bosses are smothering their remote workers.

So we may have come around to the fact that some people can work from home, but what we've discovered is most people in middle management don't know how to handle that. These are nightmare stories. It's a really interesting article about like, you know, having to do updates on work times three times a day and doing checklists online and basically getting micromanaged over Zoom and all installing employers, forcing people to install monitoring programs on their personal laptops.

Some managers are up front that they don't think working from home is real work. One company has even attempted to reclassify work from home days as vacation time. Oh, geez. Okay. You know what? This is pointing out the uselessness of middle management because they don't have a real job.

So they're trying to buck up their reason for being at the company by saying, hey, we're trying to keep these people in line, even though the people are probably still getting their work done. As long as their work's getting done, who gives a shit? Oh, wait. Yeah. The middle managers need something to do. And since they can't walk around the office and ask where their TPS reports are, then what the hell's the point of their being?

Exactly. Okay. These companies need to realize that, okay, you don't need all these big offices. B, you don't need so many layers of management in between. And C, maybe move to a four-day work week. We can talk about that later. We can definitely talk about that. Yeah. And you mentioned earlier about one of the main purposes of Amazon being getting your underwear shipped to you at three in the morning.

John McAfee may have listened to your advice. This story is a bit insane, but aren't all stories that involve John McAfee. But we would be remiss to not covering it. He was arrested in Norway, or at least he claims he has been arrested in Norway after refusing to wear anything other than a black lace thong as a face mask.

I know the picture on this, though, is just priceless. Yes, it really is. The picture of him wearing a thong is priceless. So this all came out in a series of tweets from him. The 74-year-old wrote, I am being detained in Norway. Trivial issue, but waiting for high-level bureaucrats to arrive.

Slow bullshit, as you know. My coronavirus mask is the problem. I insisting is the safest available, and I'm refusing to wear anything else for my health's sake. Authority? So, yes, he is just wearing a thong, and I believe he was flying, right? And an airline said you need to actually wear a real mask, not a thong over your face.

One would assume it is his wife's thong who was with him, and at some point took over the tweeting. I'll manage John's account until he escapes. Usual method. Bribes someone. Very quick. Might be out in a few hours. Retains the right lawyer. Will be a few days. Or becomes warden of the jail, in which case we will have to force him out.

So, yes. Oh, John. And here's where it gets crazy, because then, of course, we have to dip down into stupidity and pseudoscience. His thong mask, it doesn't recycle his exhaled carbon dioxide. Like over-the-ear masks. Breathing-impaired people are exempt from wearing masks because masks impair respiration.

Not true. Masks stop bacteria, not viruses, people. He was arrested for what he believes. I don't give a fuck what you believe. Exactly. Some people believe the earth is flat. Fuck them, too. I believe in the flying spaghetti monster. That does not give me the right to do whatever I want.

Raw men. Yes. Show title. And the last article I add in here is just for something to read if you're interested, because I found this fascinating. The return of Anonymous. And this kind of gets into the actual history of Anonymous, which I knew next to nothing about.

It's crazy to find out that it was just basically a disjointed group of kids fucking around. That's all it was. That's all it ever was. And that's what it's become again. Yeah, that's pretty much it. I didn't know you knew that. Yeah. No, I didn't really know the history of it at all.

So to find out that it was just a bunch of kids kind of messing around in the early days of 4chan that loosely organized and then basically got taken over by a group of actual activists that saw what they were doing and tried to do, you know, the big, the heyday of Anonymous when it was doing some pretty crazy stuff. And we were kind of all like, hey, this is kind of cool.

But then most of them went away and the teenagers grew up and aren't really doing it anymore. And there's a new group of teenagers that are usually, you know, K-pop stans. Yeah. And they're probably all going to go to jail, too, like most of the Anonymous original crew did. Now they work for the NSA and the CIA and, you know, have real jobs.

Yes. But do they cover the low orbit ion cannon in that article? Does not ring a bell, so they must not have. Okay. Loic. Yeah. They created the low orbit ion cannon so they could democratize DDoSs for a while and didn't really tell the kids how to use it.

So people were using it from their home and then were surprised when they got a knock at the door and said, hey, you're in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. You're going to jail. Awesome. Dope. Dope. Oh, Anonymous.

At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary all in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.

With brands like to see if you're getting ready for the season. With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com.

Security? Ha! We're joined again this week by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast. Dave is also the co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, as well as the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy as well as surveillance and privacy.

And Dave has a new podcast called Brunch with Bittner, where he talks about scones and omelets for your dining pleasure. Yes, yes. I was inspired. I was recently on the Smashing Security podcast, which originates in the UK. So I was so inspired by my hosts that I decided to go full out and scones for me, mommy.

Yeah, so we were going to – I know you were going to call it the Twilight Scone, but that was already taken. Oh, that's a good one. Do you guys remember – this is a deep, deep cut here. Maybe some of our listeners will remember. There was a promo they used to run on MTV back in the day, and it was this kid who said, No scones for me, mommy.

I'm watching Metal Sharp on MTV. I do remember that one. Yeah, vaguely familiar. Randomly, like this is the second MTV mention on this podcast, and we never, ever talk about MTV. Oh, there you go. Maybe some of our listeners will remember, but when I hear the word scones, for some reason, that pops back in my head.

I was more of a 120 minutes kind of guy than Metal Ships. Of course, okay. I do remember those. Me too, yeah. What was the name of the little girl dark-haired DJ or VJ? Martha Quinn. Martha Quinn. We were all talking about pizza on a previous episode, and I was trying to remember her name, so I didn't bring it up.

I did a training. I think it was at Domino's. I only worked there for an hour, but I watched the training video. Yeah. That clocks. Yeah. My friend Calby brought me in. He's like, let's make some pizza. And they're like, I got a job here. He worked there for like a week. And I came in, and we watched the training video.

And the training video was Martha Quinn. She did the whole Domino's training video. And we were done with it. And they're like, okay, guys, go back here and start doing this. And we both just took off our aprons and walked out the back door, and we're never seen again. Well, I mean, not to go off on a huge MTV tangent, but we're already there.

I mean, that totally makes sense as well, because the reigning thing about MTV, and if you talk to any of those guys that were on, or girls that were hosts on the shows or did anything there, they treated it as if you were lucky to have the gig. You didn't get paid, and you were supposed to use your MTV platform to go out and make money in other avenues.

Those guys made next to nothing, none of them being on MTV. Wow. It's funny. I worked with – do you remember Steve Isaacs? He was a VJ for a while, one of the later ones. Not really. Must have been – no, no. Passed my time. I went to go work at an ad agency called BLT, and he was one of the head designers there and got to know him pretty well.

He was a very cool guy. But, yeah, he was a VJ too, and he just – he makes his money off design now. It's pretty funny. We can't forget Mark Goodman, the very first podcaster ever. Oh. I thought it was – Oh, wait. No, no, no. It's not Mark Goodman. Which guy was it? Blonde hair.

He's on – jeez, I was just looking at his shirt. No, it's not Alan Goodman. Alan – I know. Alan – Oh, Alan – Original five MTV VJs. To the internet. I mean, you had Martha Quinn.

You had J.J. Jackson. Oh, this is going to drive me crazy. All right. I'm looking at – Well, if only with Adam Curry. Adam Curry. That's it. Adam Curry. Adam Curry and Dave Weiner are credited with the invention of podcasting. Yes.

Yes. I knew Dave back in the day. I never got to meet – I never got to meet Adam. It was funny. When I was working at a startup, metrically, we were at a co-working space, and in the parking lot were stickers on the parking spaces for Adam Curry's first podcast company that nobody ever took off for the parking spaces, even though it was gone for like 10 years.

Good times. Oh, Memory Lane. Speaking of Memory Lane, does anybody remember the Capital One hack? Wait, wait, wait. Yes. I'm still looking up MTV VJs. We are not done with our tangents. No. We are not leaving – well, but we're not leaving our audience without answering that question.

All right. If only the entire audience didn't have access to the internet. Well, you know, this is just – which question is outstanding? Who do we got after? Oh, the five original – we got Martha, we got JJ, we got Adam Curry. No. Well, yeah, he was one of the originals, wasn't he?

No, no. Really? No. You got Martha Quinn, Mark Goodman. Yeah. Alan Hunter. Yeah. Vaguely remember him. He was the news guy. Nina Blackwood. Oh, Nina, yeah. She did the metal show, too. She was the – she was the – she had the – the smoky voice.

Yeah, she was the one that smoked heavily. Yeah, exactly. She was the Joan Jett analog. Right, right. And JJ Jackson. Okay. There we go. That's the original five. I don't remember JJ Jackson. Yeah. Well, if you saw a picture of JJ Jackson, you'd recognize JJ Jackson. Oh, you would recognize JJ Jackson, yeah.

Okay. Who was the – who was the big news guy that came on shortly thereafter? Kurt Loder. Kurt Loder. Kurt Loder, yeah. Oh, yeah, JJ Jackson. Totally remember him, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, carry on. All right. Carry on. First cast of the real world. Oh, jeez.

Stop. The power of veto. The power of veto. Okay, Capital One. We talked about them back when their data breach happened. It's one of the biggest ones ever. Exposed the data of more than 100 million customers.

Well, they've been fined. And all I got was a stinking stupid credit report thing. That's my new T-shirt. They're fined. So think about – this is the easiest way to think about this. 100 million customers were affected. They got an $80 million fine.

So that's what, 80 cents per customer? Yep. Way to really, you know, knock it to them there, you know? Well, yes, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is the one that set the fine. And, yeah, wet noodle there.

No repercussions. Slap on the wrist. Yep. That's about it. Slap of the wet noodle on the wrist. Right, right. No one went to jail. And I'm sure they just snuck in an additional 80 cents of a late fee on almost every single account. And, therefore, it's paid for. Just like that.

Well, the lawyers probably made out well. So at least we can sleep well knowing that. Yeah. Yep. Well, we'll see what's going to happen with this one. But, you know, this is COVID times. Everybody's been dealing with some issues.

And it's not the time to hop in your car and go to a tiny little room with a couch to lay down and talk to somebody. So, unsurprisingly, mobile therapy startups have gone through the roof recently. And one of them is Talkspace. They're having some issues.

Some accusations are raising serious ethical questions about the tech company's respect for patients' rights and its understanding of the strict ethical rules that govern patient-client confidentiality. Apparently, they're mining data from clients' private therapy conversations. Say it ain't so, Brian.

Just say it ain't so. And these text conversations are considered medical records. So, you as a user are unable to delete transcripts. But, apparently, they are going through them and just kind of trying to mine them for whatever information they can. One therapist has claimed that when she referred to a client outside of the Talkspace app to a resource, a company representative contacted her and told her that she should advise clients to continue using Talkspace, even though she had not disclosed that conversation to anyone at the company.

You know who also does that? Dating apps. When somebody tries to contact you outside the app, somebody will jump in and say, hey, you have to use the platform. Because, mostly, when they take you out of the platform, they're trying to scam you on dating apps. But, also, they are listening and watching to everything you say.

Yes. Well, for dating apps, that may be one thing. For something that's supposedly a privileged client-therapist conversation that's completely different. The company is, of course, arguing that conversations may have been flagged due to algorithmic review, of course. A pair of former employees have claimed that Talkspace data scientists reviewed clients' transcripts so they could find common phrases and mine them to better target potential customers.

They are, of course, denying that they're data mining for marketing purposes. Similarly, a number of therapists have told The Times that Talkspace seemed to know when clients worked for enterprise partners like JetBlue, Google, and Kroger and would pay special attention to them, saying, you know, One therapist claimed that when she thought she was taking too long to respond to two clients from Google, the company reached out to her and expressed concern.

Do not lose these very expensive clients of ours. Big fish. Wow. Yeah. And, of course, online therapy apps are not covered by most healthcare plans, so these generally cost hundreds of dollars in out-of-pocket costs for a regular subscription. And, unsurprisingly, these therapists are poorly paid and their actual wages are being hidden.

Most of these therapists are basically gig workers, no different than your Uber or DoorDash or Lyft people. So they are not – even the therapists aren't being paid very well here in this equation. So this does not sound like a good company, but, you know, no repercussions, I'm sure. Well, but they are – I mean, this is all – this all does fall under HIPAA, right?

That's what I would think. They should, which is why they're going to kind of be in some problems now. Yeah, yeah. We're looking at the article here, and it looks like they talked to somebody from the EFF who said, If it is true that Talkspace used information from private therapy sessions for marketing purposes, that is a clear violation of trust with their customers.

So I would – I can't imagine how this wouldn't be under HIPAA rules, in which case they could be in a world of hurt. I don't know. They could be fine almost 80 cents per customer. Exactly. It's just – it's just awful.

I mean, talk about violating your trust. Yeah. Yeah. And Talkspace said that they were anonymizing the conversations, which obviously isn't true. Obviously, they are not. Yes. Yeah. Obviously are not. Wow. So, yeah. And then one came up.

Hang on. Before we go here, though, you know, we have an advertiser on the show, BetterHelp – or was it BetterHelp? Yes, BetterHelp. So I haven't heard anything about BetterHelp yet. So let's just keep that one clean until it comes through and save the emails to me because I'm sure somebody has heard of BetterHelp ad on the show so far.

I do like our new advertising program here, which is nothing bad has happened with this company yet. Exactly. Yes. Stay tuned. Right. But for now, all good.

The checks are still clearing. Yes, definitely. So I do like to go out and find confirmation bias for my stories every now and then. And, of course, this one came up, which is, of course, you know, delete is set visibility to zero. And Instagram has gotten in a bit of trouble for this this week.

Independent security researcher, I think that's not even pronounced anywhere near close, but that's what you're getting from me. Found that when he downloaded his data from Instagram using the feature they launched in 2018 to comply with new European data rules, his downloaded data contained photos and private messages with other users that he had previously deleted.

Now, it's not uncommon for companies to store this data for some time. Instagram says it takes about 90 days for deleted data to be fully removed from his systems. But he is looking at data that was over a year old and was still being stored on Instagram servers and could be easily downloaded.

So Instagram did not delete my data even when I deleted them from my end, he told TechCrunch. So the interesting thing would be to see, though, is if the person that he was who he was having that private conversation with downloaded their data and if they have it.

Yep. If they have it, then they are really cooked under GDPR. So that's the one thing to look at. And I also understand why they have to they have to have a data retention policy for law enforcement, depending on the region. I get that part. So they can set it to zero for a certain amount of time.

But, yeah, over a year old, pretty sure the statute of limitations for law enforcement data retention has run out by then. I could be wrong. If anybody knows that, then please feel free to email me. Just don't email me about Talkspace and BetterHelp. But I can see the use case for keeping the data setting visibility to zero.

And it's probably just a bug in the exporter that they that they missed. Well, that's what they're kind of saying it is. So he reported as a bug in October 2019 through Instagram's bug bounty program. And they say the bug was fixed earlier this month. But, you know, it is just kind of proving the point that we know kind of this is what's going on all the time.

I hope he got a bounty gun. Yeah, I hope he got paid. Yeah, not mentioned in the article. So interesting. Interesting. Good for him. Yeah, and grab me for the rest of us. So the way it usually works.

Now, I saw this one, and this comes from sextechguide.com. I just noticed the URL on this one. You just happen to be cruising by there, Jason? I assume this is part of your normal RSS feed. I'm pretty sure it is.

I'm pretty sure I have them in my RSS feed. Cruising by, as you do, and happen to notice a story. Why not? Hey, man, look, we have reviewed blowjob robots on this show before. Come on. Are you kidding?

We tried to give your one away as a prize. That would never fool you. We tried to give it away. I tried to sell it at a yard sale. But my roommate, a friend of the show, MXV, said, hell no, you're not putting that out on the table. I thought it would have been great. I would have videotaped it.

It would have been fantastic material for the show. But he put the kibosh on it. But because, you know, teledildonics is technology. So I like to be up to speed, as it were. But this one is actually about Tor, surprisingly enough. Well, apparently Tor has a really bad problem right now with rogue servers.

Are they getting fucked? They are getting, well, the users are getting fucked. Somebody's getting fucked, that's for sure. So what's happening is people are putting rogue servers on the network. And apparently earlier this year, you had a one in four chance of winding up on a fake server.

But now it's down to one in ten. Woo-hoo. Wow. And Tor doesn't have enough engineers to fix the problem because they had to lay about a third of their staff off due to C19. And they're saying, well, as soon as we get the funds, we'll bring back the engineers and we'll try and fix this problem.

But here's the rub. They're just going after Bitcoin users. They're trying to steal Bitcoin. Go figure. And, you know, they're trying to spoof Bitcoin sites. But there are a couple of ways, they say, to make sure that you're safe and just make sure you visit sites that are just HTTPS encrypted.

So that's the workaround right now. So make sure that little green thing is on because, you know, who knows? Who knows? But, yeah, trading Bitcoin over the dark web? Ah, caveat emptor is all I got to say on that one.

Who can you trust these days? Ah, yeah. Just your therapist. So we have a couple of questions. We have a couple of questions that came in from listeners for you, Dave, specifically. So I thought we'd just run through them really quick. I'm excited to answer them. Let's go.

I'm excited for some of your answers. I have to say. I definitely am. First up is Ralph, who says, hi, Grumps. I thought this story would be interesting to discuss with Dave. An excerpt. In an unusual sting operation, federal agents not only infiltrated the terrorist group's Bitcoin operation, but tricked its supporters into sending the digital currency to the U.S. government.

So this is a link from Fortune. Federal agents tricked Hamas into sending Bitcoin to Uncle Sam. So I read through this, and basically they just hacked the website and changed the link, right? I mean, it's not quite as insidious. Yeah, they took over the domain and ran it like they do for kiddie porn sites and things like that and use it as a honeypot to get people to either subscribe or track them down.

And this time they just changed the – I think they just changed the QR code to say, here, here, pay this wallet. Right, right. Yeah, so I like it. I like it too. I'm fine with that. I would like to know what the money went to. They say that at the end of the article, they say that it is going to victims of terrorism.

Okay. So they're taking all that money and they're going to donate it to victims of terrorist acts. Well, look at that. There you go. Our government doing something right. And look at me reading the whole article. I'm impressed by both counts.

Next up is Linda. Question for Dave. I was a music teacher in Columbia for years and taught at the Columbia School for Theatrical Arts. Any chance you took classes or performed with the school? Yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes. We have a connection. Yes, a thousand times yes.

So I have great affection for the Columbia School for Theatrical Arts and, of course, Toby Orenstein, the local legend who runs – ran the school. She's still around. She's going to live forever out of sheer force of will. And, yeah, so I took summer camp classes there.

I took many different classes. I actually performed in the Columbia School's production of Pippin, which took place, I want to say, around 1980 or so. And I played the young boy Theo in that production.

But I alternated the role with another young lad whose name was – let me try to remember. Edward Norton. Yeah. That's who it was. And I don't know what ever became of young Eddie. I hope he's doing well. But, yeah, absolutely.

Love the Columbia School. A really important part of my life. Chances are I don't know what Linda's last name is, but I'd be willing to bet we crossed paths for sure. Excellent. Very cool. Yeah. And our last one is from Roger. Hi, guys. I'm a longtime listener and really enjoy your views.

I don't always agree, but I still listen to your side of the argument, especially when discussing accessibility on the Internet or access to information in alternative forms such as Braille or audio books. By the way, you guys are quite wrong. People love to tell us when we're wrong. So here we go. And this is from one of your podcasts.

His question comes. So in Dave's Caveat Podcast, August 5th, there's a very interesting interview with Max Kirby on the evolution of the Internet. I would like to get your grumpy geek view of Max's position, subscription-based revenue versus ad-based revenue, or as he put it in, the original sin of the Internet.

So let's – he says – or maybe have Max and Dave both on the show with you two and duke it out. We're not going to do that, but we're here now, so let's hear it, Dave. I think our position is pretty clear on this. Jason and I have talked about this for years. Okay. Give me your position.

The Internet would be a much better place if we were subscription-based versus ad-based. I tend to agree with that. I would say that making everything free and ad-based is the original sin of the Internet. I'm on board with that.

I think you have to look at the history of the Internet, though. No, no, no. Let me chime in for that, though, because there is a caveat to this, even though it was on Caveat Podcast. Yeah. In the beginning of the Internet, we couldn't take credit cards on the Internet. It took several years for us to get the encryption set up and all of the back-end stuff.

And if you've ever had to do that back in the 90s, set up a merchant account, set up payment processing. It was difficult. And expensive. And extremely expensive. If that was the only way to make money on the Internet back then, the Internet wouldn't have happened.

So I think ad-based revenue was a stopgap that got out of control. It was the only way to make money back then. And that's just the way the technology kind of evolved over time. How are we all paying for AOL, though?

How are we all paying for AOL and CompuServe and all that kind of stuff? That wasn't really the Internet, though. That was a completely different walled garden system. And they were also a major corporation. If you talk about the Internet, you talk about mom-and-pop websites. That's what really built the Internet.

You and I and Brian and gazillions of other people making our own little personal websites. And we made a few bucks here and there off of advertising to keep the lights on. And that really worked. And even then, there was no PayPal. You couldn't take donations unless somebody literally wrote you a check and sent it to either your house or your P.O. box.

That was the only way to do it. I remember doing that to get membership on BBSs. Sending someone, dropping a check in the mail to get logged on to BBSs. Yeah. I mean, there were a number of options that were floated. I remember back at the time, you know, some sort of, I don't know.

I don't want to say cable TV type things. But, I mean, that sort of thing was floated. But also where, you know, if you had one, if you sent money to one place and then basically used that as credit against which you could go view things and make micropayments and all that sort of stuff.

But, yeah, none of it was easy. But I still think that the, this whole ad-based thing that we're stuck in is a result of that original sin. And perhaps it could have just been as simple as, simple, I catch myself saying stupid things.

But it could have been as simple as saying, no, we're not going to allow tracking. We're going to allow advertising, but we're not going to allow tracking. But, you know, as you guys know, in the beginning, targeted advertising was supposed to be a good thing. It was going to be great. We're not going to have to see ads for things we're not interested in.

You want this. This is going to be just, this is going to be so much better than any other kind of advertising. And we went for it. And the tracking was honestly just short-sightedness in the people who wrote the HTTP protocol. Because when you make a request and send a request, all the header information, no matter where it's coming from, that's where tracking pixels were invented, is you get all of the information from the user and the browser no matter where that thing is placed.

So that's how they could start tracking. And that's how we could, even with, you know, blog rolling, when I did JavaScript includes on the site, I got all of the information. And I'm watching this going, I can, this is too much power. I shouldn't have all of this information.

I can see anybody that's visiting all of the websites that have installed my JavaScript plugin. And I'm just like, this is not good stuff. But to go back to the original topic when we were talking about credit cards and stuff like that, and you were talking about cable subscription models and micropayments, do you guys remember a site called Adult Check back in the day?

Yep. I mean, no. I mean, I've heard of it. I think I read an article once. I read an article once. So back then, you could build an adult website because there were no, it was a Wild West, but you could sign up for a company called Adult Check.

And what they would do is they would verify that the people that are coming to your website are over 18. So you could kind of say that, okay, we're trying to be compliant here. But the real genius of that site is it let you make money on your content by not having the merchant account and the payment processing because one central company handled that and then gave you checks at the end of the month.

That was right when it was, like you were talking about, Brian, it was really expensive to set up a merchant account, set up credit card processing. I can't remember that god-awful site that we all had to use to set that stuff up. Like Authorize.net was just a nightmare. Authorize.net, yeah. Oh, that was just the worst.

And so they, you know, they had the money to put out to let people make money and they took it cut off the top. Then I think there were a couple other, you know, Adult Check type sites and they all went down because, and I'm pretty sure Adult Check went down for the same thing because everybody got mad with power and too much money and then let kiddie porn through and then the government came in and said, you're enabling kiddie porn because you're letting these people on your network and then the whole system collapsed.

Funny how they're, funny about how they didn't do the, we're just a platform argument back then. Because they probably, they tried, they tried, they tried their asses off. That's when we had a government that actually like fought against this sort of stuff and said, just let these companies do whatever they want. Exactly. I worked for a couple in Texas who ran one and I designed their site.

I built their site and just did the design in the, in the building of the website. All the technical stuff was on their end. And one day I find out my check's not coming. I write them and I get a note from their lawyer. They're like, uh, yeah, they're in jail for the rest of their lives. And I'm like, what?

They're like, yeah, they, they let kiddie porn through and they knew it. And I'm like, Jesus, I thought these were like good people. Nope. So they're, they're in jail forever. Well, they're probably let out now because C-19 is letting everybody out of jail, but, uh, and it was Texas.

So who knows, they might've gotten the death penalty. You never know. So I think, I think we can then kind of say that it's a bit of a gray area and a caveat in terms of it being an original sin because there wasn't too many options back then. But certainly by the time that we had a solidified internet and, uh, all these big social networks started to come in, they would all be better subscription-based versus ad-based.

Okay. But yeah, that was going to be my next question. Just as a thought experiment, how would the world be different if Facebook were $9.95 a month? Instead of being free. A lot of people that are on it right now wouldn't be on it. It wouldn't be flooded with bots that would have to pay the $9.95 to get their bots onto it.

Um, all that sort of stuff would be, it would just be a much better, more civil place. Yeah. We need to spin them off like AOL. Put them back to their walled garden for sure. But I mean, certainly it would, it would cut down greatly on, on all the stuff, all the problems we're having right now.

You're not going to, I mean, certainly you're going to have some people that would think the $9.95 would be worth the investment to get a bot on there, uh, to play whack-a-mole with. But it certainly wouldn't be overrun by the bots like it is now. Right. Also, you have to, you have to remember human nature with this stuff because once you go to the advertising model and give, start giving things away for free, it is nearly impossible to flip it back the other way.

Yep. That's the real problem. It's like, you know. Which is why we haven't seen any competitors that are subscription-based. I mean, they, they try, but nobody's going to go. Why would they go when they get it for free? Yeah. Right. So what are you going to do with that? You know, here's the deal.

The internet's fucked. We can't fix it. All right. Show's done. That's it. Yeah. Final episode. Before we go, before we go, I'm, I have to share with you something that made me laugh out loud today and it was the, uh, the welcome landing page for an app called Muzzle App and it's muzzleapp.com.

And I just ask you guys to go, you know, load this up, take a look because it's pretty funny. It's the funniest thing. It's the, I don't know. It's the funniest thing that I've seen. It's hilarious. Yeah. Fuck this client.

Seriously. So Muzzle App is, yeah. So just to fill in our listeners here who are wondering what we're all laughing at, Muzzle App is an app that basically, if you're on a Mac, it silences all your alerts while your screen is being shared.

Yes. Um, because, and then on the right hand side of, of the splash page is just a list of every possible imaginable embarrassing alert that you can, that you can fathom coming, just scrolling by on this screen.

And they are funny. Jason, there's one for you. Mom says, what's a milf? Your friends keep calling me. Your fleshlight has been shipped. I like the other one. Sorry. No refunds on dildos. Oh, there's the fleshlight one. Oh, there's so good.

This is great. Yeah. And useful. So, uh, yeah. So, uh, I don't know. Hat tip, uh, to the folks at Muzzle for making me laugh. Do check it out. It's, it's worth a look. Yeah. I mean, even though it's a useless app, because you can just scroll up and turn off notifications with do not disturb.

Well, but this does it automatically. Yeah, this does it automatically. So you don't have to, that, and that's the, that takes out what we call user error. Yeah, exactly. That's the ball game. Yeah. Cause if you've got people writing you like this, you're probably not the brightest pulled in the house anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. All right, gents, uh, that's what I have this week. I'll see you guys next time. See you next time. Apps and doodads. Brian, somebody at Adobe must listen to the show.

So if, if that person is you, thank you so much. I complained about, uh, the creative suite and having to log in and out and do all this crazy shit, go into the web, logging out, D you know, deauthorizing the computer so I can get another one on and all that. Well, now this is, this has to be a new feature because it wasn't there before.

Now, when I, when I sign onto a computer that was not authorized, it shows me the computers that are authorized and says, which one would you like to log out? Then you can pick the one you'd like to log out and it will automatically log you in to the computer that you're on. And voila, you can use the software as it should be exactly as it should be.

It is painless. It takes about 10 seconds to deauth and reauth, and it works like a dream. So thank fucking God somebody at Adobe fixed that. Yes. That's such a pain in the ass. Now, if we can only work on the subscription model thing.

Yeah, ain't gonna happen. I know. Once they get the power, they're never taking it back, man. Nope. Or giving it back. Anyway, so I got that new TV I told you about. Yes. It's beautiful. Awesome. Love it. But the problem is, uh, it's right next to my, uh, my bedroom is next to my roommate's bedroom.

So at night when I want to watch TV, um, it, it, I don't have a sound bar or anything that has the cool features where it will, you know, modulate the volume. So every now and again, the music will just go boom, boom, boom, boom. And then they'll start talking like this. And then I got it. I'm riding the volume and I hate riding the volume.

So I picked up a pair of Sony wireless headphones for TV watching WHRF400R with transmitter dock TMRRF400-6 foot 3.5 millimeter stereo plus knee Geo RCA plug Y adapter for TV.

Wow. Okay. Yeah, it's a good, good title. It's, it's not the best we've had, but it's a good one. And, uh, so now I can wirelessly listen to my TV shows. I haven't seen a 3.5 millimeter stereo adapter in so long. I know, I know, uh, and I, and I don't use it.

Yeah, I didn't think so. It was like a silly add on, but this was the only one that was in stock that I could get the next day. So, um, so yeah, they, they, they're like, you know, wireless and they charge, they've got, you know, rechargeable batteries and all that crap. Um, and you just plug it right into the TV, which is great.

And, uh, they work pretty well. They, I have noticed they do have some popping every now and again, which is not cool. I got to figure that out. See if you can change channels on it too. So I might need to like figure out the best channel for it to be on, but it's really nice to just be able to pick them up off the charging stand, throw them on and watch TV at my preferred volume, which is not low.

Let's just say not low. Okay. So yeah, there are 110 bucks on Amazon, but, uh, for the peace of mind of not waking up my roommate, it is well worth the cost. All right. And the next thing I've got, I've been playing around with pod chaser a little bit lately.

It's pod chaser.com and it's kind of, it's a discovery platform for podcasts. And I'm trying to find other shows to listen to because I used to listen to like all sorts of shows from every genre across the board all the time. And I kind of got out of the habit of it because as much as I love gaming, the overcast recommendation engine for it, for our, our own enjoyment, uh, it kind of sucks for finding new shows that aren't on, you know, the main lists.

So I've been using pod chaser to kind of like set some parameters and find new shows, which is it's worked out pretty well. And, uh, so I recommend checking it out. I've got a couple of links in the show ones to my profile, so you can see what I'm listening to and following, but there's also grumpy old geeks on pod chaser. So follow us there so we can get on those lists so everybody else can find our show.

I appreciate that, but, uh, it's, it's a pretty good, it's a, it's actually a pretty good discovery platform so far. So they're in there adding new stuff all the time. So I think the new one that they did was Twitter integration. So they'll look at your friends feeds and find out what they're listening to and give you recommendations based on that.

It's kind of like nuzzle for podcasts, you know, cause I don't know. Do you still use nuzzle? No. Oh, I use it every day because it gives me a list of everything that all my followers are talking about and people I follow on, uh, on Twitter. So I can see all the news. I don't have to scroll and find all the main topics.

So if something bubbles to the top where like five people will retweet a certain story, it'll just give me like a, an abbreviated list of all those stories. I find it painful enough to even just look at Twitter, much less new service like that. I was going to say, well, no, then you should probably just use that. Then you can see what everybody's talking about and get up to speed without actually having to open, open, uh, Twitter.

I don't care what people are talking about on Twitter. I do because half the news stories I get come from that nuzzle feed. Awesome. So we have Apple subscription services, obviously, because everybody's on this subscription train, but we're hearing about, we're going to get subscription bundles from Apple now.

Woo. It's currently being dubbed Apple one internally, which I'm sure is going to change because that's a dumb name. Uh, but it will offer multiple Apple services. It'll, it'll have to be Apple one plus. They have to, everything has to be plus any streaming service has to have a plus in it.

So, so you'll get, you'll get reduced monthly prices. The cheapest will reportedly combine Apple music and Apple TV plus followed by pricier options that will stack Apple arcade, then Apple news plus. And finally, iCloud storage on top. Uh, iCloud storage is the only one that I personally pay for, uh, because my Apple TV plus was free for a year and I don't see myself continuing it, but who knows?

And apparently they're going to launch a Peloton style virtual fitness service codenamed Seymour, which also one would imagine that name will change. I was going to say every Seymour I know is like a 70 year old New York Jew who just eats bagels all day.

Yeah, I know. I know. So yeah, the next version of its, uh, operating system, mobile operating system, iOS 14 will examine the apps you already use and suggest packages that make the most sense. Hopefully that's only if you ask it to, because I'm tired of services recommending things to me unasked.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, I'm, I'm in the same boat as you. I only pay for the iCloud storage just so I can, my, my photos will back up without taking a dump. Yeah. But I mean, I can see if, if I wasn't doing this podcast and I wasn't like scouring news sites all the time.

Anyways, I could actually see Apple news being somewhat useful, but there's no point in it right now for me because I'm always on news sites anyways. Yeah. And I hate the interface. Yeah. The interface sucks. I really do hate the interface because you get those Apple news links, which, you know, just suck.

Yeah. I just want the link to the actual article. It's like, it's a pain. I hate when people send me Apple news links. Yeah. Oh, it pisses me off because on most of my devices, I don't have the Apple news app installed. I've uninstalled it everywhere because I don't use it. And they're like, they send me an Apple news link. And I'm like, I got to install the goddamn app jerks pro tip.

Don't send me an Apple news link. Agreed. Now, I also saw another really interesting article over at the Atlantic this week called what is masterclass actually selling? Now you gave me a free year of masterclass and yes. And I know that they definitely advertise themselves as an educational service, but even just bouncing around in it, I could tell this is more entertainment than education.

I mean, it's nice. It's great. You have like super high, you know, A-level kind of people discussing their careers and what they do and giving tips and all that sort of stuff. But the idea that it's educational or any kind of like actual, you would learn something to go into that field is ridiculous.

It's more fun. Would you agree with that? Yeah. It's edutainment. Yeah. It's edutainment. I would totally go with that. So this article basically goes on to say that. It gets into it at the very end, of course, where it talks about masterclass seems ideally suited to frustrated 30-somethings for whom education has not necessarily resulted in upward mobility or even a job.

And it goes, as for whether it matters if a masterclass member finishes a course, the founder, Rogier, what's his first name? I always forget that. David. David Rogier said, most education sites look at completion rates, but I think that's the wrong metric.

The measure I look at, which tells you all you need to know right there. The measure I look at is what's the impact we have on your life. So it's about feelings. I know it's going to sound fluffy, but we legitimately ask people if we change their life, which nearly 20% of those polled said it did.

So the metric that you are considering is important because the other ones you would never hit any points on, you only hit 20% on. That's it. So the crazy thing about this, and let me backtrack a little bit in the notes that I put in here, is the amount of money that this place is making for basically being bullshit and the reality of how it got built.

So this guy, David Rogier, who founded it, just like Jeff Bezos, has this great creation story that's a wonderful origin story that's perfectly suited for Silicon Valley. Now, how did this guy get all this money? He grew up on the west side of Los Angeles, where I live.

It's not a cheap place to live. He's the son of two lawyers who became artists in retirement. He got his MBA at Stanford, and he asked one of his professors, the angel investor Michael Deering, who founded Harrison Metal, a seed stage venture capital fund in San Francisco, for a job. He got the job because, you know, this is all amazingly privileged and wonderful things that happen.

And then he went to his boss, Deering, and told him he planned to quit. When he asked what he had lined up, Rogier responded, I'm going to build something. And he asked, what? And I said, I don't know. He then wrote me a check for about half a million dollars.

Oh, my God. That's how things work in this world, people. Yeah, that's exactly it. And what he ended up building was, of course, Masterclass, which started with next to nothing, continued to get incredible amounts of investment. Because once you get one person in who seems to know what they're doing, of course, everybody else is going to fall head over fist to do it.

So that's how these things happen, people. Yeah. I mean, they make their money. I mean, well, they spend their money on these high talent names, you know. And, like, I did learn how to do the French drop from Penn and Teller's class, which is pretty fun. I didn't really learn how to be a performer from, oh, who's the guy that found Bieber?

What's that guy's name? Oh, Christ. Scooter Braun. No, no, no, the black dude, the singer, the performer. Whatever. He's got a class on performance, which is pretty good. I enjoyed it. See, here's the thing. I enjoy the classes. It's entertainment. It is entertainment.

I enjoyed the Steve Martin one. I really did. I enjoyed it. And you're no funnier after you watched it. Exactly. So, obviously, it didn't work. Well, I remember I gave that one a review. It's like Steve Martin's comedy just feels old now. It is. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, I, you know, for entertainment, for me, for the, you know, the whatever, the all you can eat for a year is.

I think it's 180 bucks. It's worth it for me because I can pop it on and pick just some kind of random classroom, somebody I would never get that much, you know, info from to begin with. And I enjoy it. I feel like I'm part of something. And that's fine. It's fine. If you consider it like another streaming service, like a better Quibi, then that's one way to look at it.

But again, the thing that I found super interesting about the article wasn't so much crapping on Masterclass as it was crapping on the entire Silicon Valley funding and how these things get made. And I just love this one paragraph. The question of who and what and how and why gets funded in Silicon Valley might not be asked often enough considering the impact of technology on our society, economy, politics, and daily lives.

But patterns are discernible. Mainly that ideas that rise to the top are those that seek to address deficiencies in an industry by creating a new category from within the old one, the way caterpillars consume themselves to become butterflies. Also, most of these ideas are had by young white guys. That's true.

Turning the housing market into an infinite unregulated hotel, for instance, or everybody's cars into an unregulated fleet of taxis or aggregating mastery across disciplines. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. I mean, this guy has an axe to grind with Masterclass, obviously.

But I looked at the numbers. It's $15 a month that I pay for Masterclass. And I get $15 a month worth of value out of it. And I think most people who subscribe to it do as well. So I refuse this shit on Masterclass. I think it's... But this story is as old as time.

This story is as old as Venture Capital. So it's like, okay, they should have had this on Reply All and called it shit we already know, like we already know, you know? So anyway, I still... I think that's some classes I want to go watch.

Like I said, as long as you, you know, as long as you treat it as entertainment, or as you said, edutainment, I'm totally fine with that. But the thing is, they don't position themselves that way. Exactly. Exactly. This link was getting passed around.

I think I first saw it from William Gibson and then a couple other of my friends posted it on Twitter yesterday. It's called Belly of the Beast, illicit photos from inside the Soviet ekranoplan. Mm-hmm. And these are photographs of one of the last remaining ekranoplans, which is a ground effect vehicle, which I love these things.

They basically, they use this high pressure area under a plane that, so it just basically flies across the water really close, but it just like, it's like flies like a bat out of hell. And of course, the Russians took it to a new level and made this monster that looks like the Spruce Goose, but it has six nuclear weapons launchers on top of it.

As you do. As you do, as you do. And it was meant to be a aircraft carrier killer. You know, this thing could come in super fast and then just take out aircraft carriers. But this Russian woman, Lana Sator, and her buddy actually found out that they were moving one to a museum and it was going to be coming by her place.

So she and her friend basically went and snuck on board and took some great pictures of the inside of it. I love this. This is one of the things this week that just made me smile because I've known about the ekranoplans for, you know, ever.

And to see the inside of it and see how it's built, I'm like, this is so Russian, it shits vodka. You know, it is so cool. Oh God, yeah. It looks like it's going to fall apart at any moment. You don't know what any of the controls are for. It's totally Russian. Oh, and looking at the cockpit, I'm like, they actually could fly that thing from there?

Because it's like, wow. It's like those Russians had balls, man. They had balls to fly that damn thing. You know what they need to do with these things? What? Put them up on Airbnb. Ah, Airbnb. I would definitely spend some money to sleep in an ekranoplan, although I don't think it would be very comfortable.

But speaking of that, of course, the last Blockbuster store is now on Airbnb. It's, I think it's cool. I think it's really cool. But the problem right now is you have to be a resident of Deschutes County in Bend, Oregon to actually get a chance to go stay in it.

So that's the downside of it. I actually have a friend that lives in Bend. I'm going to send this to her and tell her to do it. All right. Well, starting August 17th for just $4. Whoa. You can, $4. You can stay at it. And if you stay one night over, it's a $75 charge.

$75 charge. Exactly. And they say they're going to clean it to COVID-19 standards. And the candy, you can go raid the candy aisle, you know. And yeah, you have full access to it. Now, here's the thing about it, though. I'm like, I remember Blockbuster.

And I remember going to Blockbuster with my girlfriend back in high school. And we'd get like a manual in space. Then they go sneak down into the basement and try and bang on the couch without waking anybody up upstairs. And I figured that would be a great thing to relive at the last Blockbuster.

But if you look at the pictures of it, it's got big windows and maybe just a few scrims around the bed area where the TV is. I'm sure there's a break room, Jason. That's the best place to do it anyway. Yep. Do it in the back. Do it in the back. With an old microwave that still smells of ramen.

Oh, God. It probably does. But yeah, I think this is actually pretty fun. And they're not trying to, you know, gouge anybody on it. It's $4. No. Man, it's sad to see these going. I thought there was still one left in Alaska, but I guess not. No, this is the last one.

The last one. That'd be something that we could recreate. Like I said, it's one of those things where, you know, it would be fun to like start up a new video store. There was a video store down the street from me when I lived in Downers Grove in Chicago. Never went in it, though. Vidiots is still alive and well here in California, in Los Angeles.

So, always, always will be. I wonder how they deal with the degradation of the tapes, though. Those things have turned into jelly right now, so. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe they're all DVD at this point. I was going to say you open up. It's got the VHS box and then you open it up and it's a DVD. Yeah.

Or just a thumb drive nowadays. Closing shout outs. Shout out to digital imaging pioneer Russell Kirch, who has died at the age of 90. Without him, we would have no social media influencers because you couldn't digitize anything or take a digital photo.

Maybe I need to go back in time. Yeah. Fuck Hitler. Let's kill this guy. Yeah, no, he was a pretty bigwig back in the day and he, you know, he's the guy that gave us how to digitize images, so.

Yeah, I just heard a really, I was listening to my local NPR station, KCRW, and they did, they talked a little bit about him and how he basically came up with the idea because he wanted to find a way to digitize a picture of his kid or something like that. Really cool. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. So, he has like the first digitized image ever.

Yeah, if you actually go to the article linked in the show notes, you can see the picture of his kid, so it's pretty nice. Very cool. Yep. And speaking of Steve Martin from earlier, happy birthday to Steve, who turned 75 today, which is the 14th because we record this a day before it releases. Amazing that he's 75.

He looks not 75. He does not look 75. That's what money and banjos will get you, my friend. Apparently so. Money and banjos. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulman. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to gog.show slash donate.

And if you want to buy our swag, go to gog.show slash shop. Toss us a few bucks and we'll love you forever. And your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 463. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, and get links to stuff we like.

Stay safe and stay grumpy. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day.

Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love. From beauty and fashion to home, culinary, and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com.