552: Facehuggers

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

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. And welcome to the 10 new people who are listening from our shout out on Tech Meme Ride Home. You think we got 10? I don't know. I don't know if it's... One, perhaps? I think maybe one. I looked at the stats. There was no giant bump.

But I got a little story for you, Brian. Quickie. Okay. So, you know, I spend a lot of time doing nothing after the stroke just for recovery stuff. So I come up with ideas all the time. And I had an idea. I'm watching a lot of TikTok and Reels because there's nothing else to do and they're addictive as hell.

And I'm thinking, man, these people who wrote the music for these videos got to be making bank. You could have just texted me and said, are musicians making money on social media? Well, let me have my fantasy for a second here.

Okay. I'm thinking... Because there are only like four songs and they're, you know, they're not great. So I'm thinking, man, yeah, I can... I'm going to start a jingle factory. And we're just going to make jingles for TikTok and Reels. Never mind that you don't write music. Yep. Yep.

So I like start doing the research. I sign up for TuneCore and Music Gateway because there's an article I found on Music Gateway called, Does TikTok Pay You for Your Music? Do Artists Get Royalties from TikTok? I should have known from the get that Betteridge's ghost was hanging over my shoulders.

Yes. Because those are two questions in a headline. Yes. Count them. Two and two wrongs do not make a right. Two wrongs actually make the fact that TikTok pays once or twice a year to start with. So that was a non-starter.

Then I got deeper into the math. Why do people write music, Brian? Well, you used to be able, if you were very, very, very lucky, maybe pay a bill. If you were very, very, very, very, very, very, very lucky, you ended up like, I don't know, Green Day or Coldplay or somebody like that.

But most people write music the same reason that we podcast, because we can't not, even though it pays nothing. I mean, it's ridiculous. If you are getting like 500,000 views on a video, your payout would be about $20.

Right. So to actually make real money, they're saying that influencers with 10 million followers can make anywhere from $100,000 to $400,000 a year. Well, that's a fairly wide range. When I did the math on that, at $20 per every 500,000 views, you come out to basically 10 million view videos like two out of every three days, which obviously nobody does that.

Mr. Beast doesn't even do that. So I don't know where their claims come from. But yeah, making money on TikTok does not work. Not all ideas are good ideas. And sadly, my company, which was going to be called Hold My Beer, will never be again. Still a good name for a company. You know, just, you know, pivot.

Yeah, I thought it was a pretty good name for a company, too. Well, speaking about creating content and finding places to put it out there and not get paid or get any exposure or anything, Facebook has decided that there's no point in podcasts. Which we kind of knew nobody was listening to podcasts through Facebook anyways.

And we just got the lovely email. Facebook drops podcasts. Podcasts will no longer be available on Facebook starting on June 3rd, 2022. Your existing podcasts will remain available and new episodes will continue to publish until that date. Starting today, you'll not be able to link or publish any new podcasts.

Here's the kicker, because, you know, they always have to include some sort of thing at the end to make you feel good about the fact that you got dumped. Your voices and stories. Your voices and stories have inspired us, and we will remain committed to helping you reach and grow your audiences.

For example, we are seeing podcast-related content being developed into video, reels, and live, thus no longer being podcasts, to engage and grow audiences. Learn more about reels and other tools to support your goals. So please pivot to video. Our goals or their goals?

Their goals. To support their goals. That is the very important point there, Jason. Everybody knew this was, well, anybody with a brain. Saw this coming. And that's why anybody who asked me, like, hey, should I do that Facebook podcasting thing? I'm like, no. No. Just wait. Just wait. You know. We clicked on the button because it was there, and it was easy, and it involves zero effort.

And why not? You never know. Except we knew. Yeah. Yeah, this one we knew. And because it came down to clients asking, like, how much of their resources should they put towards this Facebook podcasting thing? And I'm like, you've put too many already by asking me. So that'll be $10. Thank you.

That'll be $10. Speaking about $10, everybody in the world sent me this article because I don't know why, because we've said this is what's happening and it's what's going to happen. But now it's really, really happening. NFT sales are flatlining. Yeah. They fell to a daily average of 19,000 this week, a 92% decline from a peak of about 22,000, I can't speak today, in September, 225,000.

You know, I've been, my kid is all about numbers right now, and he just gets a hold of the calculator app, and, like, he pounds in numbers, and they're fantastical numbers. Like, do you know what comes after a trillion, what the next number is? Are you asking me? Yes, I'm asking you. Me either.

But he punches all that crap in, and I have to read out all these numbers all the time. Well, you should be better at it by now. Come on. You'd think. You would think. So active wallets in the NFT market fell 88% to about 14,000 from a high of 119,000 in November.

I like this one a lot, this particular stat. Another NFT buyer purchased a Snoop Dogg curated NFT titled Doggy No. 4292 in early April for about $32,000 worth of Ether. The NFT, an image of a green-skinned astronaut standing on what looks like a Hollywood Walk of Fame star, sounds like beautiful art to me, is now up for auction with an asking price of $25.5 million.

The highest bid? About $210. So the interesting thing about that article is the example that they picked with the Snoop Doggy Dogs. The first thing is they apparently misspelled dog. It's supposed to be D-O-double-G. That's true. But those numbers are off for that NFT because, you know, they could just be wash trading.

That's why the price jumped and didn't get anything and moving stuff around. But apparently that one was just weird for some reason. So check out Molly's thread on that. But you should also check out over at The Information a great article called Crypto CSI, how Molly White became an absolute nightmare for Web3 evangelists.

By pointing out facts. By pointing out facts. I was going to say, I can save you some time, although I do love the information. They're becoming one of my favorite new websites. But here's the quote. Molly is very clearly sufficient in her positions and is very well read, which Web3 people hate because they hate reading facts.

Yes. Thank you for the information for that. Yes. I found another story this morning over on Motherboard, I believe. It's called The Tragic True Story Behind Wagami. How do you pronounce that, Brian? Would it be Wagami? Wagmi? Wagmi? I'm going to go with Wagami.

It sounds more foreign. They call it crypto's most positive catchphrase. So there's Wagami and Ungami. Ungami stands for not going to make it. And Wagami is we're all going to make it. When you see that, it's usually around a GM on a tweet. Right.

Because it's, you know, crypto speak from the crypto bros. Well, now they're a little upset because it turns out it doesn't come from crypto. It comes from a red pill, testosterone, swigging, toxic masculinity, dead guy who died in a sauna in Thailand.

I think if you looked at the Venn diagram of people into NFTs and crazy red pill, toxic male types, there'd be quite the overlap. There is quite the overlap. And this article actually does a really good job of bringing home where these kids come from.

Turns out a lot of them come from World of Warcraft. Go figure. There you go. In 4chan. Go figure. So. I just love that this one phrase, you can backtrace where all these idiots are coming from. Right. You can go to the source. You can go to the source.

And after having my Jeep for a couple months now, Brian, I can tell you, I know exactly why Jeeps die after five years. Why is that? Because they're a shit ton of fun and you just beat the crap out of them. That is definitely part of it. I beat the crap out of that thing just because it's fun to drive.

Right. And now I know. I'm just like, there's no way this thing's going to last more than five years. It's like a giant killer go-kart. In the news.

Hey, Brian, you remember Mike Lindell? I still see his commercials. You do? What? You watch Fox News? Well, Fox gets a lot of sports that I watch. Okay. Now that makes all coming, you know, it all makes sense in the end here. Yep. Well, he decided to jump back on Twitter after having a lifetime ban and well, it didn't last long.

Let's just say that the Twitter filters were working that day and he got the damn near the Insta boot. Well, I mean, if you've got a lifetime ban and your first tweet is, by the way, I'm back and this is me, you're probably going to get caught. Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. You don't just put a pillowcase over your head. Well, he might, you know, every Wednesday night at 10 o'clock for the meetings. Yes. Comes back spelling vaguely of smoke. Yeah. Anyway, I thought that was just funny that he's, why isn't he on truth? Why isn't he on truth? Why is he not posting his truths?

Yeah. By the way, I got in. Congratulations. Yeah. I got in. Immediately saw about three things and they were making, because you have to follow people to get to the next stage. Right. And I couldn't find anything that really didn't make my skin crawl. Right. But then I kept scrolling and then I found a couple of them that are science accounts.

Yeah, they're not. They're not. They're not. They're like the History Channel has history programming. Yeah, it's about as, yeah, it's about as scientific, as deadliest catch is historical. Right. Pass. Yeah. Yeah, I highly recommend passing. The fact that I got in was the fun part. Now, that's it. Right.

This next one, you know, here we go. Google fires another AI researcher who reportedly challenged their findings. Basically, Google hires AI researchers. AI researchers research, say things Google does not like, fires them. That's the story.

That's the story. Again. Again. Yeah, I Googled this story already. It seems to keep coming up, but with different timestamps. Yeah. Someday, maybe they'll figure out they're not all wrong. They keep coming back with the same results and you just fire them. And then you hire another one and they come back with the same results.

And then you fire them. Apparently, this guy was harassing, though, one of the original researchers on the document that he was trying to disprove. There's some documentation out there that he was apparently kind of being a dick to one of the other researchers. And that might be why he was fired.

Or he could have just been fired because the AI division at Google is a raging shit show. Maybe. Your pick. You can pick. Throw a dart at it. Barrett writes in. Barrett writes in, no thanks. After nearly two and a half years of wearing masks everywhere, the last thing most people want to do is wear a headset just to email or code.

I predict we'll see this added to the piles of Google Glass and Snapchat Glass. I would like to add, Barrett, that it's going to go on the piles of Oculuses as well that are sitting around here because, yes, Meta is launching a new headset. But the old headset that I had, well, the first one I gave away.

The second one I used for exactly the same time that I used the first one for. And now that is sitting in a closet. So, yeah, probably, Barrett, I think you're probably right. But we're going to get three new headsets from Meta in the coming weeks, Brian, or coming years, I should say.

They're more expensive. They're heavier. Just as pointless. And they still don't come with pants. This one has been described as Project Cambria as a laptop for the face or Chromebook for the face, according to the information. It straps on like a big, gigantic pair of goggles and it covers your almost your entire face.

And if you put one on 24 hours later, a little slimy Mark Zuckerberg explodes from your chest. Face huggers. Wikimedia Foundation will no longer accept crypto donations in a not very surprising move. Wikipedia editor Gorilla Warefare, a.k.a.

Molly White, wrote a proposal for the foundation to stop accepting them because she called them extremely risky investments. Some Molly White showed this week. It is. She also pointed out that they may not align with the foundation's commitment to environmental sustainability as annual crypto production uses more energy than entire countries.

So they're basically said, yeah, OK, that makes sense. Let's not do that anymore. All right. Yeah. It wasn't a unanimous vote, though. It was two thirds to one third, I believe. Yeah. You know, not exactly as close as an Amazon, you know, labor union vote, but it still wasn't a whole slam dunk.

No. And somebody else who did not get a slam dunk, the poor Russians. This one comes from friend of the show, Brian Blondell. Russians plunder five million dollar farm vehicles from Ukraine to find they've been remotely disabled. Now, this this is actually follow up from an old story we have about our good friends at John Deere.

Yes. The ones who made sure that they would be able to turn it off if you stop making your payments. Exactly. Your subscription tractor. They need to be able to turn off and locate wherever it is on the planet. And now the GPS location is good for crop planting. Well, you know, we'll give them that not just low jack in your tractor.

Yeah. But the subscription aspect. Yeah, that part kind of sucks. Well, it seems to work out because these Russians stole a bunch of, I mean, really expensive gear, five million dollars worth in total, drove it to Chechnya and found out they couldn't turn it on. So they're unleashing their hackers on the John Deere's to see if they can get them to turn on.

If nothing else, they can part them out, though, and still make a pretty penny. That's true. Those are not cheap machines. Now, Brian, we come to my favorite story of the week, Yuga Labs. Yes. People behind the Bored Apes Club. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

My favorite people in the world. Well, they had a sale for their new metaverse, right? Right. Well, they were giving away 55,000 NFTs, which are basically a land rush, right? 55,000.

Okay. Well, those 55,000 plots of land basically took down Ethereum and Solana. Now, 55,000 transactions is what we're looking at here, right? I'm thinking, wow, that doesn't seem to be like a lot when you compare it to every other financial transaction system in the world.

And the other thing that made it very interesting is that when these things got, you know, overloaded by this stupid-ass, you know, land grab, the gas fees went through the roof, like in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollar range because, you know, maximum demand.

Libertarianism unleashed. Isn't this great? When I go buy a bag of chips with my Visa card at the local bodega, I don't expect to be paying his rent for the next three months just on the transaction fee alone. So, I did a little research and I found out Visa, their CFO, basically said that their network can handle 65,000 transactions per second.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, per second. But, you know, fuck the man. Fuck the man. We got to build a new system. It's going to be bigger, smarter, stronger, faster, more private. Well, wait, it's none of those things. It's none of those things. Absolutely none of them. None of them. And so, what does Yuga Labs want to do?

They want to double down and just make their own blockchain because the other blockchains of the world just aren't good enough for them. Huh. That doesn't sound very decentralized if they have their own, does it? Oh, wait, now it's not decentralized anymore either, isn't it? It's centralized. Interesting. There's an old quote that I just love to pull out.

No matter where you go, there you are. So, you can go to whatever blockchain you want to go. You can make your own. You can roll your own. You can go to Ethereum. You can go to Solana someday. Maybe you can even go to Chia. Mm-hmm. You're still going to be douchebags. No matter where you go. Yeah. No matter where you go.

I thought this next one was—this one cheered me up as opposed to the depressing NFT news and crypto news this week. Right. A 29-year-old progressive running for Congress thinks her honesty and her OnlyFans could help her win. Okay. I love this.

This is Alexandra Hunt. She's 29. She's running for Congress in Philly. She's an ex-stripper. She's had an abortion. She's basically a normal human being. And some asshole said, hey, man, I can't wait to check out your OnlyFans when you lose the election.

And she's like, well, wait a second. Why don't I just start one now? So she did. So good on her. I'm assuming it's a very tame and campaign-focused OnlyFans, not used for the typical thing that OnlyFans is used for. Well, here's the thing.

I know you checked it out. Come on. I did. Yes. Well, I didn't pay for it, so I can't see the actual photos. But the most recent post is, how do you feel about unsolicited dick pics? I don't like them either. And there's an image, which I'm probably sure is probably a funny video.

And there's another one. Today marks 15 days on OnlyFans, and you'll have put me in the top 0.59% of creators with 3,600-plus subscribers. I am very grateful. I think this is great. She's a genius. Look at all the coverage she's getting. Fantastic. It's fantastic.

I seriously hope she wins. And she says, even to the haters, because y'all still put $4.99 in my pocket to troll me on here. And if anyone knows about grassroots fundraising, those small dollars add up. Nice. Well, Alexandra, love you, girl. Hope you win.

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Media candy. Brian, I finished Queen of the South. Okay. It was exactly what I said it was. Popcorn TV. There you go. Nice five-season self-contained story. It was based on a book, so that makes sense that it was that.

My friend was like, hey, I'm starting to watch Queen of the South. I'm like, why? Don't watch that. So I need to clarify my recommendation. It's not a bad show, but it's not a good show either. Right. So I'm just telling you, just, yeah. That was more of a social recommendation because it worked out for me and hanging around the house.

And it was something to watch that wasn't so insane. Yes. I think the understanding for your recommendations right now is you're watching an awful lot of TV because you're not really leaving the house much. And you're recovering and working through stuff. So the bar is low. Yeah, the bar was low for Queen of the South.

But the really stupid part is we're watching all these shows and we're watching all of these cartel shows. So Queen of the South is the first show. Then we go to Ozark and Better Call Saul. Two more cartel shows. Here's the crazy part. We finish Queen of the South. We start watching the new last part of the Ozark series.

And one of the characters from Queen of the South, one of the actresses, is in Ozark being a person in a cartel with the same damn name. So this is all getting so confusing. And one of the guys from Ozark looks like the guy that got killed in Better Call Saul.

So even that is all confusing. I just need a break. I seriously need a break from the cartel. So I wish these shows would end soon. That's it. Final season of Ozark. Final season of Better Call Saul. After these are done, I get a break from the cartel.

It'll be great. So I was searching for us for some reason on the podcast apps, trying to make sure that everything was where it's supposed to be. Because we're launching some new stuff soon. Just ran into a hiccup. But we'll be announcing that on the next show. But I came across another podcast called Grumpy Young Men, which obviously piqued my interest with the title.

And their tagline, I thought, was pretty good. We can't always agree on what's good, but we can always agree on what's bad. Usually. Join us as we critique and hate on books, movies, and video games every week. So I checked them out. They're like in the 300s in their episodes. Wow.

They're no spring chicken. I can't believe we haven't heard of them since then. Usually people, when somebody steps on our name, they let us know. But I listened to an episode. Kids aren't that bad. Kids aren't that bad. They don't do tech news, so I'll cut them some slack. Everything I saw was movies. Right.

And their movie reviews were actually pretty entertaining. There you go. So, you know, good on you, Grumpy Young Men. You have my stamp of approval. Another thing that has my stamp of approval is weird. The Al Yankovic story, the teaser trailer, came out this week. Did you watch it? I did. I don't have the Roku channel, so I'm not sure how I'm ever going to see the actual show.

But, I mean, you know, I love Weird Al. This is great. That's right. It's what you'd expect him to produce. Yeah, exactly. And everybody everywhere is saying, what's the Roku channel? Yeah. Obviously. I have a Roku TV. I have several Roku TVs and several Rokus. And I don't even have the Roku channel.

George Carlin's American Dream trailer came out as well. I am looking forward to this much more than the Weird Al Yankovic story, even though I'm really looking forward to the Al story as well. Yeah. George Carlin got so far ahead of his time. Yep. Gone way too soon. Predicted basically everything that's happening right now.

He really did. Yep. Mm-hmm. Grace and Frankie is back for their final run, the very end of the final season. So I'm watching that. It is very funny. I'm kind of sad that there will not be any more, but, you know, they are all like 95 years old now.

So fair enough. Yeah. That's the funny thing. I thought the last season was already done, but they just did one of those splits. Yeah. They did one of the splits because they had to stop shooting because of pandemic. You know, you don't want a bunch of old people in the same room together. Got it. Yeah. Got it. Netflix has canceled Space Force.

I did not realize Space Force was still going. I didn't know it was renewed. Yeah. Well, unsurprisingly, Netflix is cutting costs and nobody's watching the damn show. So they're cutting it. Yeah. Yeah. It was not funny. But yeah, I gave it a thumbs down.

So I guess that's why I didn't get to see another season. But whatever. It was just not good. Yeah. And speaking of not good, we have pinned our Star Trek hopes on Star Trek Strange New Worlds, which is premiering at the end of this month. And early reviews are coming in. Has promise, but the usual frustrations.

Apparently, we've just got to we've got to convince Paramount to get rid of Alex Kurtzman as a showrunner here. Yeah, it's time to go. Yeah. There are reasons that Star Trek Strange New Worlds exists beyond the need to keep Trek content pumping. So nobody thinks too hard about canceling Paramount Plus. That is so true. It's designed to quell some of the discontent in Star Trek's vast and vocal fan base about the direction the live action shows have traveled under the stewardship of producer Alex Kurtzman.

The review goes on to say, I particularly like this line and thought of you immediately. In short, it's designed to appeal to people who, when asked what their favorite live action Trek show is, unironically say the Orville. It's so funny. Friend of the show, Dr. David Teeter says that to me all the time.

He's like, I got to tell you, man, the best Star Trek on TV is the Orville. And he's right. He's so right. Yeah. We got one more month. One more month till the Orville returns. I cannot wait. I cannot wait. The rest of that piece was pretty good, though. That reviewer definitely knows Trek.

Yes. Definitely knows Trek. Which makes me even sadder because there's very little chance he's wrong and the show can maybe go somewhere someday that will be good, but it's not there yet. Remember Coupling from the BBC? Not the American version that lasted three episodes. No, the good British version, which was basically The Good Friends.

Yes. It was incredible. An incredible show. I think it only ran three seasons. Yeah, it was British. So I believe that show was done by Russell T. Davies. Was that? I don't remember. I'm almost positive that's him. He went on after Coupling to basically spearhead Doctor Who. Right.

And he basically did a Kurtzman, I believe. Well, Kurtzman is doing a Russell T. Davies, I should say, because you put Davies in charge of Doctor Who and it was okay for a while, then it got really bad, then it just stayed bad, I think, just personally, after watching when he took over, you know, I just, I don't think he did that fantastic job compared to what I know he could do with Coupling and I think we're in the same boat with Kurtzman and I think it might be time for a changing

of the guard, personally, for sure. Oh, and I found this one that I thought was really cool, NASA Audio and Ringtones, and it's just a collection of audio stuff that they have from NASA from different missions. Really cool stuff. Really cool stuff. I recommend checking them out and making your own ringtones because that's what I do.

I still have my Star Trek tones and I will keep them forever. Okay. Okay. Okay. And in totally sad news, Bill and Ted's Circle K is going to be closing. The actual original Circle K from the movie, which is in Tempe, Arizona, which I thought was interesting.

They shot most of Bill and Ted's in and around Tempe, which makes me kind of sad because, you know, I was always hoping that the water park was Raging Waters and it wasn't actually. It was Metro Center Mall and Golf Land Sun Splash Water Park.

So you have to go to Gulf Land to relive your Bill and Ted adventure. I know. It was never Raging Waters to begin with.

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And do you know what today is? A day I drink a lot of margaritas. Ah, no, not for me. It is International Password Day. Is it really? It is International Password Day. I found this out from an email from 1Password. Who invented probably International Password Day for just a day.

I guess so, yes. Because they have released 1Password 8 for Mac. And I have not updated yet. I was on the beta forever. And I dug it. You don't like it? Oh, I hate having to do the update because things change.

Oh, it is very different. It is very different. Some new features that are pretty nice, though. They're calling it Universal Passwords, where you can actually have the password dialogue anywhere, which comes in handy when you're trying to put passwords in apps. Okay.

No, I'm actually kind of happy that they finally rolled over. I've been on the beta track on one of my machines for a while. And like I said, you get used to it. It doesn't take that long. It still does the same thing. Yeah. Fills in your passwords. I'll switch over this weekend. Doing it during the week when I'm trying to do things quickly will just annoy me.

Oh, dear God, don't do that. No. Just wait as long as possible. You know how that works. I talked about the information before and how they're one of my new favorite publications. Their app for iOS, and I would say iPadOS is fine, but it's not.

There is only one app. It's an iOS app, so on an iPad where you would like to have a beautiful reading experience like every other news organization that I have's app for. No, theirs is just steaming pile of garbage. So I'm hoping that their exorbitant yearly price that I paid will go to an iOS designer and developer to fix it.

Yeah, what is this, 1990? I know. Jesus. You know, I haven't launched Instagram on my iPad because I never think to, but for the longest time, they never had an iPad app. Have they done that yet? They still don't. They still don't. How? They still don't. How is that? How?

They don't care. They're like, it works. It doesn't work. And I have to say, it kind of does. Well, I mean, it does. It's the same experience. It sucks a lot with the problem. It just sucks. You know, it's sitting on some like list, get to, get to list, to be done.

And then that list got lost and now they're just never going to do it. Well, it was at the top of Kevin Systrom's list and he quit because Zuckerberg's such a douche. Right. And when he quit, his to-do list got deleted. Okay. Oh, man, it's terrible. I did, speaking of fixing though, I actually fixed an Apple pencil this morning.

Six years I had that Apple pencil, never a problem. I was talking to my friend about how great the Apple pencil is and I've never had a single issue with it. And then I'm walking out of the, walking out of the loo and my iPad hits my leg and the Apple pencil goes in slow motion as I watch it.

And I go, as it lands point down on the linoleum floor and the tip cracks off and goes flying. I'm like, okay, I got some spare tips around here. And then I look at it and I'm like, oh, it cracked off inside. There is an, it cracked off flat.

So I'm like, oh God, I, you know, you can like normally just put something on and pressure it and then unscrew it. Nope. Thank God. YouTube comes to the rescue. I found a good fixer. You just need to have these very special pliers that I actually happened to have because a long time ago, I bought a couple of batteries from iFixit to fix those old 2014 MacBook Pros.

And I'm like, wait a minute. I know somewhere in the bowels of my garage that are those pliers. And I found them and I repaired my Apple pencil today. Congratulations. $130 problem avoided. That right to repair from Apple came in handy. It did.

It did. And I didn't even have to rent the tool from them, which was fantastic. I did buy two Apple pencils as replacements yesterday, which now I have to return. But I just didn't think there was going to be any way to fix it besides go into the genius bar. And I'm like, is it worth it?

Because you can't get in anymore. You just can't get in. This next one I bought because we run a tech podcast that makes fun of things. Yes. And this is right up there with one of the things we've always said that never should be invented. And it was.

It's called the Wristcam. Founded by an ex-Apple engineer in Silicon Valley and Startup Nation serial entrepreneur. What the? Oh, Startup Nation. I'm like, Startup Nation? Where's that at? Anyway, this Wristcam was made by some ex-Apple people. Right. That's all you need to know.

I got it. It's $299. Okay. Yeah. I wasn't paying too much attention when I bought it. I wouldn't have bought it for $299 if I was paying that much attention. I'm proud of you for keeping drunk purchasing alive, even being sober. I know. I don't. It's just one of those things.

I, you know, I blame the booze for years. And Brian, it ain't the booze. It ain't the booze. It's you. I just got to say. Yeah. That was just an excuse. No, I'm, I'm, you know, Jesus Christ. Very sober. And yeah, very broke.

No, the $299 for the Wristcam, thank God, is a write-off. But it's big. It's bulky. But here's, here was the test that I had. I wore it with a bunch of my friends when I went walking with them. Nobody noticed. Nobody said anything. And then I pointed it out at the end of the walk.

They're like, oh my God, that thing's huge. How can I, how did I, how come I didn't notice it? Wore it to the, nobody said a thing. So you can wear this thing very surreptitiously and capture video and photographs. You do have to cover up the blinding LEDs on it that let people know that you are recording.

Right. They are like Klieg lights that they have on movie studio sets. It is so bright. So, and they're on the selfie camera. Okay. Right. Now, when you're taking a selfie, do you really want a piercing bright white light shining right in your face just as you're about to, you know, take the picture?

No. You don't. But here's the upside of it. It actually works pretty well. The interface on the watch, slow, not the fastest because, you know, you got a watch processor in there and it's trying to push video to it. Yeah. The video out of the actual watch cam, not bad.

Photos, not bad. You can do 720p or 1080p at 30 frames per second. The high-res photos you can get are 3840 by 2160. It's got 8 gig of onboard memory, but as soon, you know, you're supposed to offload everything to the app on your phone.

So all the photos go into your photo library. Right. Do that every now and again. You can set it up to auto dump when you charge it. I do have to say the charging cable for this thing is maddeningly horrible. It just falls off. It's like you breathe on it, it falls off.

It is so hard to charge the thing. So hopefully for version 2, they'll fix that. It does what it says it's going to do. And it's fairly handy if you're out and you want to just take a quick picture. Great. If you don't have a phone with you. I was about to say, if only we had something in our pocket that already took pictures.

A lot of people don't though. When they go, they have the, you know, the 5G version of the watch. Right. I got, I don't know, maybe a third of my friends have that and they leave their phones at home when they go out. So it has a, it has a use case for that. But all in all, it's not a bad product.

The issue is, do you need a camera on your wrist? I think you can answer that question. No. Okay. They are having an actual contest called Shot on Apple Watch. You can win up to $5,000 and an Apple Watch, which I think is ironic that they're giving away Apple Watches and wrist cams that you have to have to enter the contest.

Yeah. Well, you know, the idea there is you give it to a friend and somebody else has this silly product that nobody needs. That's all they're doing. They're just offloading extra inventory that they can't get rid of. Check it out. The other thing about it, though, is it's not fast to boot up.

It's kind of slow, actually, to boot up because it does use Bluetooth to sync to the phone to do the video over. So if you're thinking that, oh, this is going to be a great addition to for getting, you know, quick pictures of the kids and things like that. No, it is not. It is actually very slow to start up.

So just take that. Take that. This sounds like it falls pretty solidly into the category that you describe as neat. It is neat and it is a no-buy for me. I would say it's a no-buy unless... Except you bought it. Unless you're me.

Unless you're me. So someone is going to get the... Oh, it does come in this beautiful Tiffany blue tin as well, which I'm like, you could have lost the tin and probably dropped 50 bucks off the price, which would have been good. So if you do get a blue Tiffany tin with a wristwatch cam in it for your birthday or the next holiday...

I know what I'm getting. That's why. Hell no. I'm not sending anything to Canada, dude. You can't send me maple cookies. You're not getting a watch cam. All right. For our friends who are audio people like me and work with iZotope products, we now have Neutron 3 Advanced on the M1 chip, which is good.

So, because I'm just bringing this up because everybody who does any interning, editing, or learning from me, they know that I use Neutron 3 Advanced on everything. I put that shit on everything, and now that it is M1 compatible, my export times have dropped significantly.

So if you're an iZotope user, check that out. Excellent. And I saw this in the news. Wardle brought tens of millions of users to the New York Times. So it appears... They're saying it appears to have paid off at least in the near term. They've revealed that it added tens of millions of new users in the first quarter of 2022, which led to their best quarter yet for subscriber additions to games.

And many, in quotes, of those incoming players have remained to try other games. So I would ask, basically here, I still play Wardle. When I go to the page, there are no advertisements. Nope. You can play it without subscribing to the service, as most people do.

So if you've got tens of millions of hits, and you have not monetized it in any way, shape, or form, how is that paying off? You know what? For the press bump alone, I think, they made their money back. Over time, they will definitely make their money back.

But you are right. I was playing Wardle this morning, and honestly, it drives me crazy. Second time I've ever lost. What the fuck? Homer? Seriously? Homer? Well, yeah. I didn't realize Homer, in the baseball sense, was actually a real word.

I thought it was just, you know, slang. And Homer, a proper noun, perhaps. But we aren't doing proper nouns in Wardle. So I was a little confused by that. Yeah. Don't! By the way, if you're an early listener, you might have gotten this before you played today's Wordle. Oh, shit.

Oops. Sorry. I forgot we released this early. I'm like, oh, nobody's ever going to know. Shit. So we ruined it for our Patreon subscribers. Sorry. Christina writes, in recent apps, you were talking about recipes, books, etc. Have you seen or tried the Mela app?

It's M-E-L-A. And it's at Mela.recipes. And she says, it's for iOS and Mac. You can manually enter, scan, or use the built-in browser to add recipes. You can print, share, and export recipes and create shopping lists and other features. Just thought I would mention it. It's made by the people who make Reader.

Right. The RSS Reader that I use. Which is kind of interesting because that's why it's got a built-in browser because you can put in RSS feeds of recipe sites and then just save them into the app if you see something cool come by, which is neat, I think. I'm not giving up Pestle anytime soon because that seems to be working out really well for me.

And I also got to say .recipes is a pretty cool niche domain, and you can get one today for $42.99 at hover.com slash G-O-G. Get on it. Nice. I have to say, I think I've hit peak recipe app in much the same way that I no longer want to switch away from Vivaldi unless I have a damn good, really, really good reason, such as Vivaldi Breaks.

I'm tired of switching recipe apps. I'm also on Pestle right now. And honestly, I even use that much less. I am just old school. I want it printed out, and I want it in a binder. Well, Dave is off this week again dealing with family issues.

So, Dave, we miss you and hope everything is okay, and we'll see you when you get back. Yep. But we also have some CyberWire news since Dave is not here. They have launched their CISA Cybersecurity Alerts, a first-of-its-kind public service audio feed for urgent threat advisories.

So, a link to that will be in the show notes. You can go sign up and get real-time advisories from the CyberWire. Very cool. Because that's what they do. Yep. Very cool. And, Brian. Yes. Obi-Wan Kenobi. The new trailer. Oh, I'm so excited.

I think that summed it up. I think Star Wars, you know, Star Trek is dropping the ball, and Star Wars is knocking it out of the park, hitting homers, as it were. I thought it was pretty fantastic. And I did just notice for the first time that the eye in Kenobi at the very end is a lightsaber.

Yes. How cute. Yes. How cute. I did get an email from them, since it was May the 4th, about going to Disney Plus and watching the official timeline, the official chronological timeline, as it were, that they have on their site. Yes. It's long. It's very long.

They've made a lot of stuff. They have made a lot of stuff. So, I was looking at that timeline thinking, oh, my God, what the hell is the runtime on that? Right. And I can't find it. And I'm not going to do the math. Well, it's a lot, particularly the animated series, because a lot of those ran quite a few seasons.

Yeah. And The Mandalorian and Boba Fett. You got, you know, a lot of time there. The movies themselves are going to set you back about 20 hours alone. Or one Lord of the Rings extended edition session. That's true. That is true. You definitely get more bang for your buck with the Star Wars.

You get more movies. I did find an article called How to Watch the Star Wars Movies in Order. Every different order, too. You've got Godfather orders. You've got Machete orders. You've got all sorts of different orders. I don't know. I'm a purist. I always think you should go chronological.

All right. Yeah. All right. Even though you have to sit through Jar Jar Binks first. I know. You really just... It's like Stephen King's Dark Tower series. You've got to suffer through the gunslinger to get to the good stuff. I think it's going to be a good year for Star Wars, and it's going to be another crappy year for Star Trek, which makes me very sad to say.

I think you're right. Andrew sent this note in. Not sure if you've seen this, but it summarizes terms of services for you. And this is a TOSDR.org. Terms of service didn't read. It's quite clever, actually. You kind of need to look at it.

I don't want to step on it by explaining it. The one that matters most is right at the top, and it's Facebook. Yep. They get a grade E, which I guess is the same as an F. Facebook would put their PR people on it and say it means exemplary. Yeah, that's true. That is true. Number five is deleted content is not really deleted.

All I got to say is, told you. Yep. And Ronnie writes in, saw this, and I'm sure it was something Jason brought up in a previous episode, and it was. It is a USB-C cable tester. Yes. This guy has created his own cable tester for USB-C cables, and he is Kickstarter-ing the device.

I bought it. It is going to be 21 euros. And 21 years until delivery. Exactly. So he has beat the goal, so it will be made, but it ends May 9th. So I'm putting this in here. I was going to save it for when Dave is back, but this Kickstarter is ending.

So go sign up if you want your USB-C cable tester. Maybe, if he ever ships it, caveat emptor, you know the deal. Yes. Speaking of late delivery, remember, oh, I don't know, three, four episodes ago now when I tried to order my new Around the House pants from a company, Kick-Em-On, or whatever it was called.

Kidor, Kidor, man. Still not here. You must be in the metaverse. I viewed my order, and apparently they're now in the Netherlands. So they've made it out of China. It's been a month. You can't cover your nether regions because they're in the Netherlands. Amazing. Closing shout-outs!

Over at Patreon, we've got Hal. Welcome, Hal. Hello, Hal. Over at PayPal, we have Matt, Simon, Jonathan, Judge, Nikolai, Matthew, David, Melissa, Nikola, Chalene, Thomas, a.k.a. Fruit Cup, and Ben, who sent us 50 bucks and some words of encouragement. Keep up the good work.

We shall, Ben. We shall try. Over at Stripe, we've got Anne, Matthew, John, Mario, and we have a new one that just came in this morning who is going to be, wait for it, wait for it, Linda. Thank you, everybody.

Oh, man. The tension. I could cut it with a knife. I know. I was trying to build. And I saw this over on Twitter, and then I just read through the whole thing, and it was one of those uplifting sort of things. This is by Kevin Kelly over at the Technium, and he put together a list of 103 bits of advice I'd wish I had known.

He's an elderly gentleman, a little bit up in the years, so he's passing on some life wisdom, and I just absolutely loved it. I thought it was a wonderful read, which we get so very few on the internet these days. Yep. Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired Magazine, and also the author of The Thousand True Fans, which he seriously needs to update.

Yeah, that needs an update. 100 million true fans. Yeah. I got some of my favorites in here, though. Okay. The best work ethic requires a good rest ethic, which I'm learning very much. Resting is great. Criticize in private, praise in public. We would not have a show if we followed that advice, so no.

Use a password manager. Safer, easier, better. Yes. GOG.show slash 1Password. And a great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others. Also, a good way—the show is therapy in that case, because all we do is we find everything irritating in others.

But I think reflecting on things that piss you off is actually a really good exercise. It is a good mirror to the self. Yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And my favorite is the last one, which ties right in nicely to absent doodads. Sort of. Aim to die broke.

Give to your beneficiaries before you die. It's more fun and useful. Spend it all. Your last check should go to the funeral home, and it should bounce. Aim fucking men, Kevin. I think if Kevin knew you, he would add a caveat to that one, which would be, buy useful stuff that you like, not stupid shit.

I'm going to share a little revelation that I had, Brian, when I was in the ICU, and I was pissed off at myself because I seriously thought I was going to die. And how much money I had in the bank. I was pissed off.

I'm like, I should have fucking got that goddamn thing that I was thinking about. Just the regrets. The regrets that hit you. Mine come from commerce. Not about relationships or love or any of that shit. I'm like, goddammit, I should have got that really nice Neumann.

We all take different things. We're all going to have, you and I are going to have very different, you know, end of life flashback experiences. I, oh, definitely, definitely, definitely. But I tell you what, people are going to be remembering me for a lot longer because they're going to be like finding shit in their garage for generations that I gave away.

That's true. And a shout out to Tech Meme Ride Home over there, Chris Messina and Ben, or Brian McCullough. I don't know why I call him Ben. Brian McCullough for the shout out. Keep it up over there. And Brian has a book actually called How the Internet Happened from Netscape to the iPhone.

And I think that's how I first heard of him. He was doing a History of the Internet podcast long, long ago. But keep it up, guys. They're taking the mantle from us since we stopped doing Up to Speed. Right. They took over. And Brian, two things. We should have bought Bitcoin early.

Yep. And we should have kept that show going. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Okay, those are done. So I don't have to worry about those on my deathbed. Now, what else didn't I buy last week? Okay, never mind. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister.

Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on and we'll love you forever. You can also help us out by sharing the show with your friends and enemies. It's easy and absolutely free. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 552. From there, you can find links to everything we talked about in this episode as well as links to our swag and Discord channel if you want to buy some stuff or chat with us and other show fans.

You can also head over to GOG.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash review and toss us a snarky review and preferably five stars. Stay grumpy and buy useless shit.

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