71: Too Soon?

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian and Jason. Discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Let's get started. Hey Brian, I think this might be a short show this week. Nothing really interesting happened on the internet.

No, not a damn thing. Nothing happened in the world either. No, it's been just a bit nice and quiet. Alright, well, fuck it. Nice talking to you, man. Yep, see you next week. Oh man, so yes, crazy week. Crazy week indeed. Yeah, it was a week. I found myself angry every single night for something or other that was going on in the world.

I was all fired up to have a really super angry, massive, I'm going to yell and scream about things show today. And then I woke up this morning and I had a runny nose and a sore throat and I'm tired. So the mind is angry, but the body is falling apart.

Sorry about that, man. That's alright. Well, I was quite angry too, especially over the Ferguson stuff. But it kind of turned around yesterday, so all my anger kind of dissipated. Well, it turned around except for the fact that it still happened.

Yes, yes. But, you know, for the whole story, you know, yes, we still have – the kid's still dead. Yes. We still have militarized police out the wazoo. Yes. But there was like a little kumbaya moment last night when like normal people showed up and prevailed over these guys who wanted to be SWAT, you know, their whole life and couldn't get in the real military.

So I like to play weekend warrior. Yeah, it's a little frightening where our police are at in this country right now. I think that that was one of the most frightening things that I've kind of watched in real time, at least, you know, knowing this is in our own country. And I remember I was actually up and I was watching that Ken Burns baseball documentary, which I talked about the other week and love so much.

And I'm on the sixth inning now and he broke up the various episodes and innings. And it's all about Jackie Robinson and, you know, it was great. And, you know, he talked about all the hurdles he had to overcome. But then, you know, it came around to that turnaround moment where the white players were now supporting Jackie and taking on fans and going, you know, this is just the way it is now.

And while I'm watching that, I have my iPad open and I'm just watching all this, the bad, bad Ferguson stuff start to stream by on Twitter. And I realized, you know, this is how many years on now from Jackie Robinson and we're still dealing with this. And I got so angry.

I was just really, really mad and I was thinking about the whole, you know, militarization of the police. And that's when I, you know, for the first time in my life, Jason, you are a gun owner. I am not and staunchly so. And I sat there and go and I was thinking to myself, I was like, this is the first time in my life I ever thought I'd actually want to have a gun.

But then I realized that me having a small little pistol when the police roll up in their Abrams secondhand tank with their Kevlar outfits and their jackboots, my gun isn't going to do crap anyways. So, yeah, I mean, it's I thought of that, too.

I mean, yes, we have the Second Amendment to own guns because of, you know, the possibility of the government taking over and, you know, civilian uprising being a thing that it used to be, which it's not anymore. But I don't really want to go down that road.

So, yeah, all the stuff that was happening was, you know, it was kind of hard to wrap your head around watching this happen in real time here in the U.S. And there were there was a there were a couple moments where I almost just grabbed my camera, got in the car and went down there because it's not that far from here. Right. Just to cover it because I used to I used to love covering protests.

And one of the things that I have noticed, if I go back and look at all my protest photos, you can see the gradual militarization of the Chicago, the Chicago police, especially because that's what I used to used to do this stuff. From the stuff in the 90s where I was covering the first Iraq war.

Yeah. Cops look like cops. Right. They came in their normal uniforms and basically were in the crowd. And only when things got kind of out of hand, they call it in the horses because we got a lot of horse horseback riding cops here in Chicago. And those things were terrifying.

You get you're in the middle of a crowd with a horse in front of you. You're looking at a horse's ass. Basically, you know, those things can kick and kill you. That was scary. But, you know, 10 years on, 15 years on, I did covered another Iraq war protest and a different president, same problems.

And I swear to God, the horses were in riot gear. Right. I've got a great picture of all these Chicago cop horses lined up and they've all got like goggles on or like face plates. Yeah. Like, are you kidding me? And all of the cops were in, you know, black fatigues and look like they were.

It was a ridiculous sight. Yeah. Especially especially some of the cops. I should put up some of the pictures just so you can see them with the show notes this week because some of these guys look like they were poured into their their outfits with their guts hanging out. It was pretty fun. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's insane.

It really is. And I hope this does spark some sort of debate about this. And maybe we can say, you know, the military can take back some of their surplus stuff because, you know, police don't need it. This is ridiculous. Now, spend it on salaries. Don't spend it on crap. But the I mean, the social media reaction is what really got us talking about this because it was insane.

I mean, Facebook was basically silent. I mean, it didn't even trend over there. There was nothing. Twitter, on the other hand, my feed was like full of, you know, 10 times as many tweets and photos. And it was just off the hook. Yeah. It's the first time that I was actually relatively impressed with Twitter and found myself on it basically just to see what was going on.

Because, yeah, there was nothing on Facebook was just full of people dumping ice over themselves to do something or other that doesn't do anything while Ferguson was all over all over Twitter. Mm hmm. And there are a lot of people talking about the well, the first night, it almost didn't trend at all on Twitter.

And everybody was wondering, like, hey, what's going on here? And the second night, it was just it was everywhere. You couldn't get away from it. So because I was watching I was basically watching the feeds like from the moment the kid got shot and it hit the news. So just watching the ramp up was it was fascinating because it did take a while.

It didn't take till really the second night for people to to to really get, you know, mainstream coverage. Right. And the you know, there are a bunch of articles out now on on the trending side of things and people defending Facebook saying, oh, well, the algorithm isn't, you know, what, whatever.

It's it was kind of a mess. And just the the the Twitter side was fantastic. The news coverage, everybody down there. I followed a bunch of people that were, you know, down on the scene. And it was really interesting to watch. Yeah. I mean, you did post an article that talked about even Twitter.

I guess it wasn't trending for some people. And because God knows why. Right. I mean, well, I mean, if you're if you're trending, you can set the location for your, you know, your trend line. So if you're in Argentina, you're not going to get, you know, shit out of Missouri. So, you know, that's kind of the way that works.

But if you're in the U.S., it definitely started trending pretty quick the second night. Yeah. Yeah. By the second night. So overall, I guess this is a win for social media because this is one of those things that probably wouldn't have really taken off if there wasn't a Twitter there. Right. Yeah.

I mean, this was this was our Arab Spring, as it were. But watching, you know, what it really helped was when the journalists got arrested. Yeah. You know, that like all that stuff was brought to light super fast because these guys were like, oh, I'm getting arrested now. It's like, oh, OK, we're arresting journalists.

Great. And in the the video coming out of the guys gassing the Al Jazeera team and taking their cameras, that was crazy. See that in real time. Yeah, that was pretty insane. So it was it was a spectacle to behold. We'll see what happens, if anything better comes out of it.

And hopefully they'll they've at least released the guy's name now. So we know who the who the shooter was. But the story's coming out now. I'm watching Twitter's kind of blowing up again this morning because everybody's calling bullshit on the police story. So we'll see how this plays out. It'll be interesting. And hopefully there'll be some some actual ramifications for what happened, because last time I checked, this is not the America I signed up for.

Oh, a lot of us. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to talk. Can we talk about the Robin Williams thing? I suppose we should, because that was the other massive trending thing. And this is a not that the Internet hasn't blown up over someone's death before. But I thought this one was particularly big and different.

Usually when a celebrity dies, I turn off Twitter or Facebook for two days and just let it go. Right. You know, because it's just the same thing over and over again. And then you see somebody posting something that has nothing to do with it. Like they're completely oblivious to what happened. And everybody jumps on them like, why don't you feel our pain?

And, you know, I call it the buffer effect because people have all these tweets buffered to come out later. And then they get, you know, get shit on for it. Yeah, I was actually just kind of sitting here at my computer when the news hit. And I got to – I wasn't – I was actually waiting for clients to get back to me.

So I was doing a fuck all, basically, just sitting in front of my computer. So I really watched for like almost two hours just how things spread and how they went across after – as soon as the announcement was made. And I made a bullet point list of my instant reactions at the time.

So I'll just read through some of those because I thought it raised some interesting questions. Yeah, like you just mentioned, the buffer effect. You seem like a total asshole when your entire feed is filled with rest in peace messages and then all of a sudden your post saying, dear friends, do you have a connection for this random thing I need help with?

Update pops up. That's just – there's the buffer effect and then there's also just being completely and utterly oblivious. Do you not see anything else that's going on when you make your post asking for help? Then there's the kind of how long do you have to wait after such an event before you can make a somewhat snarky post about it or post something totally unrelated again?

There are a lot of questions about that because people would start to go, OK, can we talk about other things now or is that uncool? When commenting on another celebrity's post regarding a dead celebrity, it is somewhat creepy to discuss how that celebrity's death would be very moving as well. Oh, that is creepy.

I saw – It's very creepy. Eric Idle was good friends with Robin Williams and he posted a number of quick kind of very heartfelt messages about Robin Williams that I was reading through some of the comments and somebody was like, it would be like losing you. I was just like, oh my god.

That is fucking weird. Yeah, that is weird. But people are stupid out there. Also, Facebook and other related networks should probably put in some sort of controls in their advertising algorithms so when you post about a dead celebrity, you don't get ads for that celebrity's product because that seems pretty fucking tacky.

Yeah. That's kind of strange. I went and saw Guardians of the Galaxy again on Tuesday and there's a trailer for Night at the Museum 17 or whatever number they're on and Robin Williams is in it. I'm like, maybe you should have pulled that.

It's a little bizarre. Yeah, yeah. It's in this day and age where these things can be kind of automated. Not to do that is a strange thing. Also, I don't understand the impulse that people have to post a link to the same news story that everybody else is posting with no commentary or feeling or whatsoever.

Just a link. Why? Obviously, our feeds are full of this already. If you've got nothing to add to it, do you just need to feel like you belong or something or I don't get that. Yeah, that happens a lot. That happens a lot and that's why you have to leave for a couple of days because you get the people dragging ass coming in two days later and they're like, oh, I just saw the news.

I'm like, yeah, we know. We know he's dead. Stop it. Shut up. Yeah. Go back to work. Speaking of Buffer, I talked to a buddy of mine who uses Buffer a lot to post stuff for his company and I'm like, you might want to hit pause just for – give it 12 hours before you start pimping your podcast or whatever the hell it is you're pimping.

There's apparently no pause button on Buffer. The program is called Buffer and there's no pause. Nope, no pause. You can't say stop my campaigns for 24 hours or whatever. It just – they go out. They might want to add that feature. That would probably be very useful especially – I mean as we're seeing just the way that these things play out, it would make sense because there's – you look like an asshole if you're just an individual and you kind of break this thing that happens with your personal request.

And if you're – yeah, if you're a company and you're pimping your product, you look even worse. Yep. And like I said, this isn't the first time obviously that somebody has died on Twitter. So I just remember Steve Jobs. That was a real big one too. Yeah.

When he passed, it was like crazy blow up and you just had to go away for a while. So yeah, this is not a new thing but it's not – and it's not going away. When somebody famous that people love dies, they talk about it. Yes, they do.

And there was an article. I think it was – who was that? Tuesday posted an interesting article. It's a debate. Are we superficial for morning celebrity deaths? It came out yesterday. But I started to go through it. I'll put it in the show notes. You can check it out if you want.

Yeah. Let's get back to some fun stuff. You got any? Because I don't. Well, we throw around the word disruption a lot. Yes. Well, because it's shoved down our face but yeah. Scott Birkin, who's an author and a writer – well, I guess you got to be a writer to be an author.

He's got a great post called Why Jargon Feeds on Lazy Minds and he actually quotes a George Orwell piece called Politics in the English Language. But it's pretty good and the rule of thumb is never use a fancy word when a simpler one will do.

And he's got a list of words that should be banned, breakthrough, transformative, next-gen, game-changing, revolutionary and of course in the middle of the list, disruptive. Disruptive, yes. I'm with him on that one. I'm totally with him on that. I mean you and I – this goes way back in our history, back when we were still young cowboy coders and working at the same company together.

Do you remember the collective moan that we would have every time Wired came out with their new issue and their buzzwords? Because we knew there was nothing – we would be hearing these stupid words for the next month from all our salespeople and all the marketers. And yeah, I mean this is just – it's human nature.

I mean we're never going to get rid of it. This is what – if you don't understand something, you will use crazy words that people tell you have something to do with it. Push is a disruptive technology that will kill the web. Remember that one? Oh, yeah. Oldie but a goodie. Never happened. Actually, technically it kind of did eventually.

Yeah, but it's still more of a – it's more of a pole society. Comment of the Week. Continuing run of five-star ratings on iTunes. So thank you all very much. We have another one with a comment.

Keep them coming, people. Please. They really do help. This one is from WillD76. Great gleaning of all the interesting stuff on the internet. They have great takes on internet trends. Just enough rant without going overboard. Well, you may not like this episode because I think this is going to be a lot of ranting.

But thank you very much. Well, fortunately, you're down with the sickness and it is. Put the brakes on – put the kibosh on your ranting. That's true. The fire in my belly has transformed to snot in my nose. Oh, lovely. Thank you for that picture.

Anytime. And thank you, Wildy676. Wildy? Wildy. I don't know. Wildy. We'll go with Wildy. Thank you again.

In the news. Breaking news. TMZ, the last bastion of real journalism out there. Oh, God. Believe it or not. I know. What are we coming to? It's surprising how good their journalism actually is.

But this one kind of has me scratching my head. They have released Apple iPhone 6 pictures, which I really, really, really hope are not. Pictures of the new iPhone 6 because it's ugly. It is not impressive at all. Well, I opened up this link just a few minutes ago, and this almost feels like it's some buffered post from the iPhone 2.

It looks clunky. It looks like an older device. It's not sexy at all. No, that's why I'm very, you know, I don't believe it. I cannot believe that they would put this thing out because it's just – it's got these weird white lines on the back.

It looks – in the front looks like a crappy Android device. I mean, it's ugly. Plus, who would put it on such an ugly tea towel? Seriously. Come on. No, this reeks. I'm not buying it. And it's got a raised – you know, there's a lot of things that point to some of the stuff that I've heard is coming out, but I just hope it's not.

It's ugly. I hope it's not, too, and I'm really not digging it. Not digging it at all. It's bigger, which is fine. I kind of like the bigger stuff, but I don't know. I hope it's fake. Well, we shall find out very soon, right?

I mean, what's the release date on this supposed to be? Well, September 9th is the big unveiling, so we don't know when it's coming out after that, but that's when they've got – they've booked the room for September 9th. They've booked the room. Excellent. Well, so let's go from TMZ to my other favorite journalistic site.

BuzzFeed is apparently worth $850 million. Oh, God. Yeah. So the site that gives us all the listicles that we ever so much love has gotten another $50 million funding round, which basically values it out at around $850 million.

For one of the first times in my life – or in my life – in my life as being a grumpy old geek, I actually don't have a problem with this valuation because I know how popular BuzzFeed is because you cannot get away from it. The amount of money actually makes sense. I just find it depressing because it's BuzzFeed.

And there's a particular quote in the article that we have linked in our show notes. And the near-billion-dollar valuation makes each of its 550 employees worth about three times that of a staffer of the New York Times. This is our journalism, folks. I don't get it.

I don't go to BuzzFeed. The big Facebook purge, fortunately, got rid of almost every BuzzFeed article that came through. Nobody is posting that stuff anymore. Right. And I unfollowed people generally who do post that stuff. So I don't see – I barely see anything from them anymore, which is fine by me.

Right. Totally fine by me. Well, we'll see what happens to it. I mean, it's still – I still see quite a bit. You might have blocked BuzzFeed articles or something, but I still see quite a few. And I have wasted an hour clicking through BuzzFeed and finding some things that were actually genuinely funny.

But let's go on to article number two that I found about BuzzFeed. This is another article. They have been quietly deleting thousands upon thousands of their own listicles and posts because they finally realized that if they're going to be almost a billion-dollar company, they can't be plagiarizing and stealing content from the rest of the world.

Yeah, because they used to have like spiders and algorithms that would go out and pull other stuff and make their crap out of it. They're a little automated crap factory, so they're killing all the old stuff. Well, and even the authors would just grab photos from the web, not give any credit for the photos and just put them in their articles.

They were basically the leader of just if we find it on the internet, it must be free. Yeah. Yeah. I've been waiting for people to sue the hell out of them for that. So hopefully those are the posts that they've gotten rid of because, yeah, their mass market theft of imagery is just mind-boggling.

Yeah. Yeah. I keep checking to see if they steal one of mine because I hope they do. Please, steal one of my photos. I will sue you into the ground. Yeah. So we'll see what happens with BuzzFeed because, you know, between them having to remove a lot of their content because it's all stolen and the fact that you seem to think that they're just kind of disappearing, maybe they're not going to be worth that much money anymore, which would be lovely.

So Comcast is back in the news. Yes. Another call has surfaced and I have a feeling this is going to be continued. I mean, anybody that's even vaguely kind of a journalist anymore, if they've got to call Comcast or Time Warner Cable now, you've got to know that they're calling with Skype and recording the call just hoping that it's going to be horrible now.

You don't have to wait too long for one of those. No, you don't. That's pretty much all of them. So this is a good one. I listened to it and I actually felt my blood pressure rising. Yeah, I didn't listen to it. So I'm glad you did. What did it say? It's just your standard, you know, it's your standard doublespeak.

It's your, why can't we do that? And then, you know, well, we can't do that. And then they refunded money, but then they didn't refund money. Then it's not a valid charge, but it is a valid charge. But first, hey, you said A and now you're saying B. What happened to A? It's just the standard. It's just so frustrating.

You know, it's we're going to charge you for this. We're not going to charge you for this. Well, then why'd you charge me for it? Oh, you charged me twice for it now. Well, we'll take off one of the charges, but you charged me twice. So I still have the one chart, you know, that whole thing that we all deal with now every single day because, you know, all these computers and everything are going to make customer service so much better, quicker, faster, and easier.

Pebcac. It's always pebcac. So Matt Honan, who was – we covered him a long time ago. He was the journalist that got hacked. Yeah. Remember him from Wired? And he's got a new post that's been making the rounds that was – it's called, I liked everything I saw on Facebook for two days.

Here's what it did to me. Now, it's an interesting piece to see, you know, what kind of happens when that happens. You know, you like everything, so it basically turned his feed into companies.

Companies just pimping stuff. That's what it kind of turned into, which makes sense. You know, the algorithm sees that you like clicking on stuff from companies, so they're going to give you more company stuff. Yeah, yeah. I was not surprised by that at all. Again, depressed, but not surprised. But that is a lot of Facebook.

And, you know, if you choose to do the opposite of what I do, which is I usually try to block anything that's corporate, and you decide to like it, of course your feed is going to be full of that, and you won't see any of your friend's personal stuff anymore. And I think it's interesting that he kept getting complaints from his friends because all they see in their sidebar is Matt like this, Matt like this, Matt like this.

It's like, oh yeah, be able to turn that off. I was a little disappointed by the article just because when I saw the title, I was thinking it was going to be something completely different, which is my own fault. He talked specifically just about what happened to his feed. I thought this might be more of a, and this is what happened to me and how it like affected my life and here's my emotions about it.

I think that would be an interesting thing. Well, that's what it says in the title. So it's kind of a, it says, here's what it did to me. And it's more about, here's what it did to my feed, which who cares? Exactly. Yeah. But it was making the round, so I thought I'd bring it up.

Well, there it is. So don't like everything on Facebook. I like nothing on Facebook, especially Facebook. So now going back to the Ferguson thing and the cops run rampant, for years, it's always been a problem for photographers who like to take pictures of cops doing their job or not doing their job as it were.

And it is completely legal to do so. But if, I mean, cops will tell you, don't take my picture. It's illegal. And sometimes they'll take the camera. They'll take your phone. They'll take your memory card. And, you know, I got to say kudos to the New York Police Department because they sent out a memo to all of their officers saying, this is legal.

Stop it, which every, I mean, this should be in every police department, but, you know, it is what it is. But, you know, at least, you know, if the NYPD is doing it, then hopefully other cities will get on board because I've got like a, was it a bill of photographers rights that I carry in my camera bag?

And basically, if anybody tells me to stop taking pictures and I hand them that. So I got to dig that up. I'll put links in the show notes to that because basically you just print off a few of them and keep them in your camera bag. And anytime anybody hassles you, you give them that and say, look, no, this is legal. I am in public property.

You are in public property and I'm doing my thing. Now, in San Francisco, there was an interesting thing because when you're on the sidewalks in San Francisco, like downtown, those sidewalks are actually private property owned by the building and given leeway to the city.

So technically, there are times when you can get kicked out of a place, even if you're in front of a public building, you know, taking pictures, security will come out and boot you. And it's kind of a gray area as far as the law goes there. But even then, it's not the police's prerogative.

It's the owner of the building. Right. Yeah. It's the building security. So rather shockingly that the NYPD would do this. So kudos to them because they're the ones that seem to get the most hot water all the time. So congratulations, NYPD. Round of applause. I do remember there was a study that just came out relatively recently because this just makes a lot of sense to me.

There was some police department somewhere. I'm going to have to Google this and try to find the – I'm just winging it. There was a police department somewhere here in the U.S. that basically put the equivalent of GoPro cameras on all their police officers. And shockingly, abuse shot down.

Yep. Like just immediately because they knew everything was being taped. Everybody was on better behavior, which is a bit frightening and Orwellian. But for the police that are, as we talked about, driving around in Abrams tanks these days, I think it's a good idea. No, every – I mean a lot of the cars have dash cams.

Yeah. A lot of – and a lot of cops basically have body cameras on them now. And that's great. I'm all for it. I'm all for it as well. Accountability across the board. If I can take pictures of them, they can take pictures of me. A-OK. I got no problem with that. Now, the – I won't go into the surveillance camera angle, but it's a little bit different.

But yeah, I'm all for it. Yeah, I agree. So let's go a little bit more lighthearted for the last news article that we found for the week because I love this. I love this article so much. Apparently, Lyft and Uber are in a battle for supremacy right now, obviously.

And Lyft has just accused Uber of ordering and canceling over 5,000 Lyft rides just to fuck with them. That is so awesome. Out of the two, I suppose I'm on team Uber unless they're actually doing this.

But I'm against all of them for obvious reasons that I've talked about 1,000 times on this very program. See, I still love my Uber, but I think this is funny. I'm sorry. It's just funny. And Uber is opening up an API soon, so they're going to get it back at them.

So we'll see how this plays out, but I don't know. I thought it was funny. Yeah, I saw that news about the API too, and I think that's actually kind of a no-brainer. It's going to do them very well. I mean, you'll basically be able to build in a get-a-Lyft-from-Uber button into your apps and other things.

So very cool. Yep. See how well it works. Go, Uber. Security. Wired's next article is going to have a big cover story on Snowden. And fortunately for us, they've put the entire thing online.

Yay. It's very long. It's extremely long. I've gotten about two pages in so far. I think you're a bit further than me. This is going to be a big deal because this – they even talked about it on the Today Show. Of course, they didn't actually get into the article or anything interesting. They just talked about the fact that he's draped in an American flag.

Yeah, yeah. The interview is done by James Bamford who I've actually talked about on the show before because he's written a couple of books on the NSA, which I've read and reviewed. And the books are really good and he's interesting. And the piece so far is interesting. There's a cool video about the photo shoot too that I really quite enjoyed.

And man, the good photos, very good photos. The big problem with the article is it's one of those crazy parallax scrolling jobbies with all sorts of effects and all that crap. I'm like, God, just give me the text. It is a little – as a geek and as a web designer, I kind of like how they did this and it would be great for some corporate bullshit that's raw-ing a very small amount of content.

But considering the large amount of actual content here, yes, it would have been nice if it was just an article. I wonder if there's a print version button we can get. Anyway, check it out. It's interesting as far as I've gotten because it's very long. There's only so many hours in the week.

Well, it doesn't – there's nothing new in here. It's just a really good kind of write-up of him and what he's trying to do and his background and all that sort of stuff. But, you know, it's more go Snowden for me. I'm really coming around to this guy. Yeah.

It's got a lot of his background, which I actually find interesting, very interesting. So check it out. Now, getting back to some more security stuff, this is a little bit older, but I just wanted to kind of cover it so we can kind of kick this one in the nuts.

Yes, there was a flaw called bad USB. Bad. Bad USB. And basically there was a Wired article that says why the security of USB is fundamentally broken, critical flaw, all this other stuff.

And it comes out of some researchers who say I can basically rewrite the driver flash ROM on a USB stick to have a hidden payload of bad stuff that your antivirus or any scanning is completely never going to see.

Well, in the Wired article, fortunately for you, I went and read the comments, which, you know, I should get hazard pay. Yeah. So there's a guy in there, his handle is clandestine moniker. Okay.

And what he's talking about, he worked on USB stuff and sticks and memory and all that stuff. And he's like, most of the time you can't rewrite that because it's not flashable ROM. They hardwire that stuff in at the factory because, I mean, the margins are super thin on memory sticks.

So they try and, you know, cut every penny off of the cost of making them. And to do that, they basically, you know, hardwire the software onto the chip. You can't go back in and rewrite it. And that's from almost all USB sticks. Yeah. So, yes, it's, you know, it does exist on some sticks.

There's a small amount of sticks out there that this could actually be done to. But, again, this is another one of those things where, like, if somebody – why would you stick something onto your computer from somebody you didn't trust? They'd actually have to get physical hold of this.

They'd have to do something to it, then give it to you. I don't take people's fast drives that I don't know and just jam them into my computer. Well, I mean the other thing that they talked about is that once one is compromised, you can stick it in and then it will basically own your system with the software. So the next time a stick comes in, it can be owned as well without anybody knowing it.

So, you know, it can get passed along the chain. Yeah. But for the most part, it's only – yeah, it's only for things that are – you know, have writable flash memory for the USB OS. And, I mean, this guy's comments were really smart and he basically says, yes, for a very small subset of devices, it can possibly be done.

But let's not, you know, let's not burn everything to the ground right now. No throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yeah. So this is one of those ones that was basically overblown by the press. And it's still, you know, it's in the research stage. It's not out in the wild. These kids came up with, you know, the research and have proven that they can do it.

But I don't know. I'm not worried about this one. So you shouldn't be either. I agree. And finally, we have another article that maybe – you'll have to tell me, Jason – maybe about the same thing. The Internet's Vulnerable Backbone – How Cybercriminals Hijack the Web's Architecture to Mine Bitcoins.

This is an article that is talking about BGP, which, Jason, why don't you take it away and explain what that is. Oh, God. Never mind. It's Border Gateway Protocol. It's basically the way that various networks actually exchange information with each other because it's not one – there isn't one big pipe that's running around the place that has been gifted by God.

It's a bunch of companies that actually own these things and they have to talk to each other in order for us all to play well with each other and pass around BuzzFeed links. Yeah, I mean it's a protocol for exchanging and routing info and this hack basically took over a lot of Bitcoin mining in very small chunks that added up over time.

It was a very clever hack. It's very office space. It's a quarter of a penny here, a quarter of a penny there that builds up. I think – wasn't it Superman 2 that really kind of did that? Yeah, I think they did that as well. But they definitely did it in office space. That was the plot on which all the good jokes hung.

Exactly, but they also referenced Superman 2 as the source. All right. Richard Pryor, the hacker from Superman 2. But anyway, yeah, but they still don't know how this guy did it because he had to have access to – this came out of a Canadian ISP and they're still trying to figure that out.

But it was basically getting into the router and moving – Moving some bits around, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he must have had some kind of high-level access that typically people don't get to which is – we call that insider crime and that's hard to stop.

Yeah, now the big thing is, is this BGP hacking like something that is very bad and it's an old vulnerability that people have known about. And there are hackers out there that have claimed that they can take down the internet very easily because of these flaws in BGP.

They haven't. The internet is still here. If they do take it down, well, then I'll go outside and play with the dog. I'm not going to really worry about this one. The sky is not falling yet again. Wow. Look at us for security. We got a bunch of things that don't really matter.

Nothing to be scared about this week, folks. Well, you know, why let it ruin your day when you don't have to? There's nothing you can do about it. That is true. Be more scared about your local police. So we came up with the title for this segment, Knowing is Half the Battle.

Yo, Joe. Instead of stealing from Harry Potter, we're stealing from G.I. Joe. I love those cartoons when I was a kid. I love the fake PSAs that came out a couple of years ago. Those were awesome. Yeah, those were really good. We should actually find those. Try to get those in the show notes, too. All right.

Go forward, Jason. Yeah, I'll leave that one up to you. Okay. So the whole point of this segment is to give you some tools to combat online marketing. Like when you are being marketed to and you don't know it. So this is episode one, really.

The other one was kind of the intro episode. I want to talk about what is a landing page today. Okay. You see them all the time. So I'm just going to tell you. I'm going to give you some skinny hair. Okay? You ready? I'm ready, Jason. I actually built some landing pages, so I might talk about how they're not always bad.

But they are trying to sell you something. Yeah. Landing pages are pages on a website. Duh. They're basically designed to get you to part with personal information, just like your name and address. And they use different incentives to get you to fill out a form, like a downloadable PDF PDF or maybe newsletter content, coupons, discounts.

You know, it's just another ad, but it's interactive. Cue the air quotes there. Yeah. It's not only that. It's – I've seen this on Facebook with some of the kind of more nefarious like BuzzFeed-y type sites where if you want to see that video that you're never going to fucking believe, you've got to put in your email address first.

Yep. And why do they want my personal info? You know, I'm already on their website. It doesn't make any sense. Why do they want it? Well, you know, in the past decade, it's been harder and harder to sell somebody on a product on the first visit to a site. And since it's getting even harder to get them back for another visit, people want to get their hooks into you as quickly as possible and be able to email you in the future.

It extends the time they have to sell you on their, you know, whatever it is that they're selling, their widget, we'll call it. And if you pony up your email address, you're entered then into like this insanely complicated dance of email marketing. They use fun terms like orbit and funnel.

I would actually say, I mean, this is a number of sites that we've even talked about that we like in our segments have used these things. A lot of the kind of higher end furniture or widgets or stuff like that, you can't even look at their catalog unless you give them your email address.

Yeah. And I'm stuck getting emails from all the crap that you've passed along. I finally, I've backed out of all those. You can actually get out of their marketing lists. It takes some effort, but you can. Well, fortunately, we have unsubscribe laws now. Yes. Which really help. So in orbit, now this is a fun one.

Okay. In orbit is the path of emails that you're entered into when like certain criteria are met. Like how many pages you viewed on the site or where you entered the site from. Did you come in from a search engine or did you come in like from a partner link? And have you been browsing the site for a while or is this your first page?

They track all of that stuff and that kind of determines which orbit you're placed in because they know if you've been on the site for a while, you're more interested in the kind of stuff that they have to sell so they know that you're more familiar with their product. But if you're like a first time visitor, then they will craft the messages to be more educational, to teach you more about their product, you know?

Smart. Yeah. And those emails are crafted specifically for your use case, which gives them the best chance of you spreading your wallet. Now the funnel, the funnel is generally, it's a general sales term. Like, you know, it's kind of a graph from the participant numbers from the lead acquisition stage to sale to repeat sale.

And it's called a funnel because at every stage people drop out and there are fewer and fewer people leading up to the sale. Right. And it kind of looks like a funnel. Gotcha. And it kind of makes you feel like you're being herded like cattle down the path. And these landing pages have been engineered over many years using a lot of different techniques to get you to do something without you even realizing it.

That's the tricky part. And that's, you know, why I wanted to do this segment. Now they design these landing pages to be, you know, very visually pleasing, but offer very little in the way of interaction besides reading their pitch and putting in your email. Yeah. Or blocking you from seeing anything else unless you give them information.

Yeah. They take away like the site nav. They give you very little choice but to scroll to the bottom of the page and give up the goods. And they'll use like contrast to pull your eyes to the CTA or call to action as they say in the lingo. Directional cues like arrows and different design elements to segregate different content to draw your eye where they want you to go.

And one of the really fun ones is they will put pictures of people in the ads looking at something which is what they want you to look at. You know, there's small and subtle cues that kind of manipulate your brain into taking action. And they've all been, like I said, they've all been tested to hell to create this like witch's brew of psychological trickery to get you to give them your email address.

I'm going to put a, I'm going to put a video in the show notes on, it's called diectic gazing. And it's from, what's it called, brain tools, brain quiz. Right. It's a great show on National Geographic. Okay. But what it says is we are hardwired to when we see somebody looking at something, we look at it too.

Yeah, we follow the eyes. Yeah. So now if you know, if you get to one of these pages and you know you're being manipulated, the magic kind of disappears. Yeah. And you can make better decisions on if you want to give them your info or not. You know, if it's a product you're genuinely interested in and you go into it with your eyes wide open, then everybody wins, you know.

But I'm telling you this stuff for when you get to a page and you're not that interested and you still find yourself wanting to put your email address in, now you know why. You know, these guys are manipulating you. Or maybe you've had a few beers and your brain isn't firing on all frequencies.

That's true. And, you know, there are studies that show that the longer the page, the more you are, you're basically worn down by the end and you're like, oh, Jesus, I'm going to put my email address in just to get out of here. I mean, seriously, though, ask yourself, do you really need that PDF on 10 tips to earn money online today?

You know? These are the sites that the infinite scroller was basically made for. There's a lot of that on these. Any time that you find yourself scrolling down and down and down and down and it keeps going and there's pretty pictures, you're in trouble. Yeah. I mean, at its core, most of this stuff is, you know, it's a giant pyramid scheme.

People selling information usually aren't even the original creators. They're like standing on the shoulders of giant douchebags of the past who have sold them information on how to sell you information. Yeah. And it just goes round and round and round. And there's this whole new crew of internet marketers out there who are just, you know, masters at trying to get you into their system to sell you something later.

And like I mentioned on the intro to the show a couple episodes ago, you know, they'll give away 99% of everything already for free and then have you pay a huge amount of money just to get that extra 1%. Which really isn't very useful most of the time. Nope.

You can basically find everything on Google anyway because that's where they got it from. So just, you know, next time you're at a page where somebody is asking for your email address, just, you know, think about these principles and say, look, I just, you know, take a step back and say, do I really want to get into this dance with these people?

That's it. That's it? All right. I mean, that makes total sense. Just to be fair to landing pages in general, this is a certain type of site that does this. Landing pages are actually very useful for the rest of us in various different ways, being mostly the fact that absolutely nobody reads on the internet anymore.

I work for a lot of artists and they occasionally have new products. And, you know, 10 years ago, everybody would know that a new product is coming out for someone and now people don't. So landing pages in my world are always the first, like, hey, idiot, there's something new.

You came here. You like this artist. Look. So we're not necessarily nefarious. And when I build landing pages for my clients, I never require taking any personal information or anything like that. We assume you're a fan because you're coming to our site anyways. We're just trying to make sure that you absolutely know 100% for sure that this great new product is out.

So, yeah, I mean, they do have their place. Yeah, they have their place. They're useful for getting eyeballs on new information because nobody really researches or dives in anymore. So, yeah, I would say if you see a landing page where they're requiring information to be given to see anything else, which I never do, be wary.

And make sure that you actually really are interested in this and want the information because it is hard to get out of mailing lists even with the laws these days. Yeah, because a lot of times these guys don't go by the rules. Exactly. And they could be selling your email address to other people. So, you know, be careful.

It could be. I think it's almost a guarantee for these kind of people because that's a whole other revenue stream for them. They're definitely selling the list. Absolutely. I finally made my way through Oryx and Crake, which is a book I read ages upon ages ago by Margaret Atwood.

Vaguely semi-apocalyptic fiction. It was fucking fantastic. Really, really, really good. I can't recommend it enough. I can't wait to get on with it now that I know there are two follow-ups and I've already gotten the second one, which brings me to a little bit of disappointment.

But I'm only 25% of the way into the follow-up, which is called The Year of the Flood. She left Oryx and Crake on just basically the biggest cliffhanger ever. And book number two, completely new characters, completely new setting.

Not even sure where in the timeline of the first book this is happening, but I'm assuming she's going to get there. Because by all accounts online, this is a fantastic trilogy of books. Really, really highly recommend it. It's good. It's good stuff. It's very plausible.

And she's an amazing writer that doesn't just do science fiction. So she really brings those skills to the genre. Cool. I'll check it out. I'm going through your recommendation from previous episodes, The Long Mars, which is the third in that series.

And so far, it's pretty damn good. I kind of agreed with you that the second one was a little meh on that series. But the third one really picked it up for me, and I really enjoyed that as well. So some really great books out there right now. No, definitely. And hopefully I'll have a few more next week.

They're in the queue, but this was a rough week. So I didn't have my epic reading week like I did last time. Me either. So I'm still slogging through the baseball doc. So reading has been a bit of a luxury. But yeah, I couldn't stop reading Oryx and Crake.

And I can't believe I completely forgot about that book like 10 years ago when it came out. And I'm really happy to have rediscovered it. Good stuff. I will have to see if it's on Audible. I got a little disappointed when we were talking about apps in a previous episode how most of the stuff we've reviewed – are you playing with an app right now?

Save it for your segment. Let me get to mine here. Okay. I was just saying I was a little disheartened by the fact that 99 percent of the stuff that we reviewed we don't even have on our phones anymore. This is true.

So I was looking for more stuff that would be kind of evergreen, which is kind of silly. Wow. You're stretching for this joke. Go for it. No, I lost it there. This week I'm checking out Sit or Squat, the restroom finder by Procter & Gamble.

Yeah, it's basically a place that lets you know where there's a nice place to take a dump. Wow. That's so awesome. Yeah, okay. Enough with you and your thing there. Okay. You can get to it. And the Sit or Squat is do you actually want to sit down or do you got to hover, as it were.

And so far it's pretty good. I checked it out. There's stuff. This is – I assume people can submit and they do ratings and whatnot and people are using this app? Yes. Okay. Absolutely. All right. So in the suburbs, it's not as big a deal.

But if you're in the city and walking around and you got to go, it could be a lifesaver. Right. I do want to point out one slight possible potential flaw with this app in the fact that ratings say from a month ago – well, let's face it.

A toilet can be destroyed within the space of five minutes. Yes. So how up-to-date is this information? You know, it's a general guideline. Let's just put it that way. Okay. All right. Fair enough. Now, they've got a sister website that you can use, but you have to go – first you go through age verification, which I'm like, okay.

To poop? I think we all come out of the womb ready to go. So I don't know why you need age verification or at least I didn't at the beginning. And then I say, oh, well, because you have to use Facebook to connect with it. Oh, right. Yes. I'm like, okay. No, I got to go now.

And the Facebook verification page is all screwed up. They've got – the terms of service say one thing. The buttons say another. Yeah. It is terrible. So get the app. It's free. Get the app. I think it's funny that it comes from a company that makes TP. You know? It's target market.

Indeed. They're thinking about their product. We're hoping that some will be there. Anyways. Rather improbably, I bought an app. Hey, man. What's up? Yeah. It's the Bald Brian app, as you well all know, that I listened to Adam Carolla.

And he's got – he's the drop man on the show and he's very good at it. He has an app out, $199 and worth every single penny because I can't stop playing with it. It's got a ton of the drops that he uses on the show. I'm going to try it out this – my Sunday fun day and see if I can get through the whole day without talking at all and just using drops.

He has not updated it. I don't see that he probably will, which is unfortunate because he's got a ton more drops. So if he keeps this going, I'm going to be really happy with it. And yeah, it's only funny or interesting if you listen to Carolla. But if you do, this is – it's a goldmine.

So you are going to spend an entire day just trying to use a $1.99 app for all of your inter-human communication. Do you not like your friends? See, I got a laugh already too. Yeah, I'm just going to see how it goes.

I'm sure it won't last more than an hour, but it will be fun. I expect you to come back next week with a black eye. Okay. Hey, I bought an app, man. Yeah, good for you. Welcome to 1996. It's nice to be here. In continuing with themes of vast improbability such as me buying an app, I have a podcast that I listen to that I'm going to review now.

This is normally Jason's domain, but I was a little bit bored, again, talking about Carolla and Bald Brian. They are on a bit of a vacation this week, so there are not as many podcasts, and they're not as long as they used to be. And I've been chained to my desk doing a lot of crappy work, so I needed things to listen to.

Bald Brian from The Carolla Show does his own podcast called The Film Vault. He does it with this guy, Anderson, that is also vaguely connected to that whole area. Interestingly enough, they left the Carolla Podcast Network, and the first film vault that I chose to listen to, they actually referenced the fact that they left because Carolla is a despot that takes all the money.

So, interesting. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Now, wait, wait. Before you continue here, last week, didn't you say that you were going to stop listening to podcasts for a while and just listen to music? Yeah, then I discovered that I'm so far behind in music, and I had so many new things that I really wanted to listen to and actually listen to listen to that I couldn't do it while I was working.

So, I went back to podcasts for work, and I've been doing music for what I'm not working, bike rides, et cetera, et cetera. So, anyways, I just gave this podcast a shot. I'm not going to be a continuing listener to it because I made some discoveries about myself while trying to slog my way through one of these episodes.

One, I'm just really not a big film guy. Therefore, I'm not a really big film podcast guy. Does it have legs on the Grumpy Old Geeks Network? Except it, of course. I always listen to that. Number two, being a film buff does not necessarily make you a qualified reviewer.

Bald Brian, I really like him as the drop guy on Carolla, but his opinions about film mean next to nothing, and they show when you listen to the podcast. And number three, the things I find annoying about Bald Brian on the Carolla podcast are only amplified when he has his own, and there are no drops, damn it.

See, that makes no sense. Why would you not have any drops? Probably because they're owned by the Carolla Network, and he is doing it off the Carolla Network. Good point. But even on Does It Have Legs? We have drops in there from the films that we're reviewing. Yeah, they don't really do that either. They just get together and they talk about movies, and, you know, I love some film criticism.

If they actually have something interesting to say, do I want to listen to two guys sitting around at a bar talking about movies? No. So, there you go. Okay. Not a big fan. Well, on the film side, check out Does It Have Legs if you are interested in film, because we just put out a new episode yesterday for Grease.

It is the word. Have you heard? I love that movie. I like Grease 2. Get the fuck off my podcast. I'm sure that doesn't have any legs, but it came out at the right time for me, and I remember being a big fan of it. You are definitely not a film guy.

No, that was number one up above. Moron of the week. One of the other things that happened pretty much immediately after the news of Robin Williams' passing hit the Internet, Jason and I actually hopped online and started to chat with each other a little bit about what we wanted to do in terms of talking about it on the podcast, because obviously Robin Williams is pretty huge for everybody in our generation.

And we made a little bet. We decided to bet and try to predict which right-wing nutjob was going to make some horrible article or faux pas talking about depression first. Let's see.

Jason went $20 saying it would be Ann Coulter. I bet put my $20 on Palin because she's trying to promote her hideous pay site, which we're not going to talk about on this show unless I find a really good clip of her. We ended up being both wrong. The moron of the week goes to Fox News host Shepard Smith, who decided to go on air and call Robin Williams such a coward within about five minutes of the news coming up.

Good job. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for making me lose my $20. Well, it's a push. Neither of us won, so I guess we both get to keep our own $20. But he's since apologized, so let's give him fair credit for that.

But it was a boneheaded move. We're not even going to get into depression and suicide and all of that sort of stuff. But it was, if nothing else, highly insensitive and very stupid to do right away. Yep. But good job on apologizing. Somebody who has not apologized never will, so we're going to have a special runner-up prize.

That goes to Rush Limbaugh, who decided to come out with a crazy theory that Robin Williams killed himself because leftists are never happy. This leftist is pretty happy most of the time. How about you? No. Okay. Well, we got to split. I just ate Rush Limbaugh, so.

I'll say yes, just because I'm happy as can be. Yeah. And then we have a special runner, runner, runner, runner, runner, runner, runner, runner, runner-up prize for Robert Scoble, who we've laughed at before on this podcast. He's a celebrity only in his own mind. There's a BuzzFeed link, rather conveniently, in our show notes.

This is a master class in how to win a Twitter fight. He got in a Twitter fight with some people, and basically, this is worth a quick skim over because it's funny, and people are stupid. It definitely made me chuckle. It's worth a read. Yeah. It's funny, and Scoble, just go away.

It's never going to happen, unfortunately. I know. I can just – it's like at the end of it, I can just see him taking off his Google Glass and dropping it, like dropping the mic and walking off stage. Totally. That will make more sense when you read it. Trust me. Yeah. Go take a look at it.

It's quite funny. And it just – as much as I said I liked Twitter earlier because of the whole Ferguson thing, this BuzzFeed article basically illustrates in a nutshell exactly why I don't like Twitter at all most of the time. Well, just don't follow Scoble.

That's true. Oh, and I also had another actual Morons of the Week. I totally forgot about this one, and this is one of the things that actually super massively pissed me off. Morons of the Week to all the fucking Twitter trolls that are out there that actually drove Robin Williams' daughter off of social media because I don't even know why.

Why are you going to go attack his daughter after something like this happens? You people are scum. Yeah, there's a special place in hell for people like that. Speaking of Twitter, I found a Twitter account that has just made me laugh my ass off every day.

This is Infosec Taylor Swift. So it's like, hello, new people. I'm Taylor Swift, and I have moved to working in computer security. I cry a lot more now. And you have great tweets like, what kind of asshole makes a folder with a space in the name?

Which for me, that's pretty damn good. If you're old school, that's very funny. And whoever's doing this, they make tons of infographics with pictures of Taylor Swift and just some great, great bits. Mouths are how we communicate, so kissing is kind of like rubbing two Ethernet ports together.

Yeah, I started following this after you put it up, and I've had a good chuckle every day as well. Good stuff. Yeah. Yeah, seriously. It puts a smile on my face. So join in. Closing shoutouts. There's no other way to end this than to give a massive shoutout to Robin Williams, Nanu Nanu.

This week, I went back and watched Good Morning Vietnam, and then I watched The Fisher King the next night. Some of the funniest, best movies ever made. Absolutely amazing. I highly recommend if you haven't seen them in ages, or if you've never seen them, go watch them immediately.

Good Morning Vietnam is hilarious and poignant, and The Fisher King is disturbing, and I can't even believe it ever got made, but it's so, so good. Yeah, I haven't seen either one of those in a long, long time. I've got to say, though, my favorite Robin Williams movie was What Dreams May Come, which is very kind of relevant with what happened to him and the story and the movie, and I won't get into that, but I loved that movie.

It was a classic old one that wasn't in his normal vein. It's a very serious movie, but I dig that one. And I do want to do a last shoutout to Does It Have Legs? Because we've been finally back on track. We've got new episodes up. We've got new episodes in the can, so check it out if you like guys talking about movies, which Brian doesn't.

And I've got a new solo show coming out next week called Good Morning Internet, and the first episode talks about why I did not steal the name from Good Morning Vietnam. Okay. Awesome, man. I'm glad you're going to finally do that. I will be listening. Once iTunes – it's sent off to iTunes, and once they give me the go-ahead, we'll put the link in the show notes and look for new episodes on that starting next week, probably three times a week.

Wow, look at you. Yeah. I might be guesting on that every now and then. Probably not Does It Have Legs, unless you guys do some movie that I really need to talk about. Yeah, probably not. You're welcome on Good Morning Internet any day of the week that I'm actually doing it. You're actually going to do it.

Excellent. All right, man. See you next week. See you next week. Hopefully we will both not be sick anymore at that point as well, so apologies for the low energy levels. I need some drugs. Go for it.

Music for the Grumpy Old Geeks is by Among Us. Check them out on iTunes. And other places as well. We are hosted by Libsyn. Use the coupon code GOG while signing up and receive up to two months free. Keep up with us at GrumpyOldGeeks.com. On Facebook at Facebook.com slash GrumpyOldGeeks.

On Twitter, we're at Twitter.com slash GOG Podcasts. Or simply email us at Podcasts at GrumpyOldGeeks.com. Show notes for this episode can be found at GrumpyOldGeeks.com slash 71. Shazbot! Okay, last one to kill a bad guy buys the beer.

We're driving to Florida! We're driving to Florida! 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.

This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Brews Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel. Three straight days with pool deck bare knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and non-stop action.

The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at BKFSEA.com.