74: Dear Hackers, Go Fap Yourself...

This is as good a time as any to say I don't really care much for Beyonce. She isn't my queen bee and I've never heard a full song by her and God willing I never will. 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 Jason. Hey Brian. How are you this week? I'm doing good. WordPress 4 came out. That involved a lot of time of updating. Most of mine updated automatically. I don't set mine to update automatically. I like to go in and check and make sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Me too. Usually. I forgot that it was going to do full dot upgrades on me. So fortunately I haven't had anything blow up. None of my plugins have died. All my sites are still running as they should be. Thank God. And Brute Protect did the whole thing for me. I didn't have to touch them.

Nice. Very nice. Yeah. I've got to say this is one of the first times I've had a full like big big WordPress update where absolutely nothing broke. All my themes are still working etc etc. And I do want to do a follow up and a shout out to you Jason for Brute Protect and Word Fence. After you talked about those the other week I've installed them on all my sites. And if you do not install these you are a complete and utter idiot.

Yeah. We were idiots for a long time without having them in. Word Fence does a good job. So does Brute Protect and Securi does a good job. Limit login attempts is deprecated. Now you can dump that. It doesn't work on some things. Especially if you've got a front facing proxy on your enterprise network because it does a bunch of pings to the website before you get there and basically locks you out before you can log in.

Which is not good. Fun times. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. It's nice to just check Brute Protect and see how many thousands of attacks it's knocked out of the park for us. It's completely unbelievable. I've actually launched a new site which I am not talking about yet. It's kind of a personal project and I'm kind of getting it up and running before I talk to anyone about it.

So nobody actually even knows this exists. It's a completely new domain name and I'm running WordPress for it and I installed Brute Protect. So if you think that you don't need this I have a completely brand new site that nobody's ever heard of that isn't even in Google yet and it's already blocked 142 different attacks.

That's how spiders work. Yep. You know they'll just they'll hit those things especially if it's you know IP based and they can just scan the IP blocks and there's all sorts of ways they can find it. Yeah. You know scan new registrations whatever. There's tons there's tons of ways they can find it but it's all automated.

I mean it's not like somebody's out there just sitting there trying to attack you although sometimes that is the case. Yeah sometimes. As we'll talk about later today. The just the automated tools out there you know if as soon as you put on a thing on the internet like the old statistics about XP boxes you know a fresh clean install of XP will get owned within 16 seconds of plugging into the internet without if you don't have it protected.

Right. Protect yourself. Protect yourself. So Jason you are sitting in Chicago. Yes I am. Chicago the home of Wax Tracks Records which has been the home of some of my favorite bands of all time in the industrial scene but also the home of the Smashing Pumpkins. Yes. Jimmy Chamberlain.

Remember him? See I wasn't a big Smashing Pumpkins fan back in the day. I like their stuff but I never really got that into the band. Oh see I was a huge fan but he made the news because he is now a tech CEO. Oh boy. Yes. He is a tech entrepreneur and now the CEO of a company called Live One which is based out of Chicago where you are and is working on a project called Crowdsurfing.

Huh. Yeah. This is frustrating to me on many levels. Well I have worked for ex-drummer musician CEOs before which you have seen me rant about which I will leave out of here because you kind of get nervous when I talk about this dude.

So I will skip that part and just say yeah they are usually not the most tech savvy but you know he is our age so he might be a little better at it. I don't know much about the company because I don't know much about the company because if you go to their website, either one, there is nothing there. Yeah. You can sign up for some newsletters or they will let you know when something is happening but it's all – I think it's probably like an enterprise-based solution for basically sharing concerts or live events.

Yeah. And then they do all the promotion. So you have to be a big corp that comes to them and say, hey, I've got an event like Red Bull. I'm doing a thing where people do something stupid and I want you to cover it and then I'll have people come and watch it. Yeah, it's an interesting concept. Not really. I actually worked briefly – well, I was going to work briefly with a company that did something very similar a few years back actually based out of Vegas.

I think they were called Deep Rock Drive or something like that. They had enough startup money to actually build a venue. They built their own venue and were going to have bands come in and they kitted up with all the cameras and high-speed connectivity. And the entire concept behind that company and behind this apparent company as well is the idea that – well, there's a big long press release where Chamberlain talks about how there's no money in music anymore and we need to bring revenue streams back to musicians.

The concept in my opinion is flawed to begin with because I just don't see people sitting around on their computers watching a live show and chatting about it with each other. Well, I've got experience with this. I did something very similar to this for Kia not too long ago.

We had a party in New York, which was a release party for the YouTube Awards. We did a live streaming event. We built a stage. We had musicians come in and artists come in, rappers, DJs, singers. We did a whole live event around it and I ran kind of the board coordinating everybody.

So I got to see how everything worked, which sounds like it's exactly like what these guys want to do, but it was free because you can do it free on YouTube. And we had a ton of people. I mean a very – I can't say specific numbers, but a lot of people, like a scary amount of people.

I think it's probable and I think it is a valid model for certain things and special events, something like that, something like a live or something like the Oscars, etc. But a standard run-of-the-mill concert, I don't think so. But what do I know? I'm not a tech CEO that used to be a drummer in a rock and roll band and was kicked out twice for various substance abuse issues.

Well, hey, look, Pot Kettle Black. Don't be talking to anybody about substance abuse issues, okay? Hey, the ones that we abuse are legal. This is true. Actually, no, just on that note really quickly. I mean I do – I think it is smart to bring in somebody from the music industry and here's why.

I mean I've seen other startups try to do this. I've seen a lot of startups try to actually deal with the music industry and they never actually have a musician. The thing that people don't understand about the music industry and entertainment as a whole, which you totally get, you're going to be on board with this one 100%. It's an old boys' network. You don't just break in.

You have to have somebody that is in the industry to basically broker and get you in. You cannot just knock on doors because nobody will answer. So bringing in somebody from the music industry is the only way for a company like this to actually get anybody in the music industry. What I question is the person himself.

Now, I know nothing about Jimmy Chamberlain personally, but I do know that Billy Corgan, who was the head of Smashing Pumpkins, is basically known to be the biggest pain in the ass in the entire music business to work with and people basically do not want to work with him except for the fact that there's money involved. Now you've got the guy that was in the band that the biggest pain in the ass in the music industry thought was too big of a pain in the ass and kicked him out of his band three times.

Okay, well, as far as – and I just need to say this now because I work for Billy's wrestling league. So everybody I know that works with him says he is amazing, cool, easy to get along with and easy to work with and nobody has any complaints about him.

Well, it's a different industry at different time. It's a different type of thing, but from anecdotal experience from everybody I know, a bunch of cool people who don't take shit from anybody, like who will kill you because they're wrestlers, love this guy. So I'm not going to go down that road because I don't know and I don't want to get into it.

Like I said, and I also don't know Jimmy Chamberlain. So it's all anecdotal evidence. This guy might be – he might have cleaned up his act. He's super cool and he's got a big Rolodex. That's why they want him. Exactly. That was kind of my point. So there is an interesting article that you found where it's a big, long interview with him and they talk about kind of the thought behind the company.

It's interesting to me, like you said, first off, that they don't have anything up on their sites really and secondly, there is no discussion of where the actual revenue stream will be coming from. So who knows? We'll see what happens. I'm pretty sure it's coming from the companies that hire them. Yeah, I'd imagine. If you look at the names that have hired them, those are big names. So that's why I said before I think they're going after the enterprise and they're not doing – you can't get your indie band on there to do a live event.

It's only big names, big sponsors, big pocketbooks. Yep, and there's a few other companies out there that are already doing that. So we'll see. But it made the news. It did. It did. Also making the news again is Uber. Uber is starting to seem just more and more evil every day, isn't it?

It really, really is. I mean we've got a couple articles that we'll put in the show notes. There's a great article on Salon by Andrew Leonard called Why Uber Must Be Stopped. Yes, I love that read. It was awesome. Yeah, and the byline is the touted startup is proving to be the embodiment of unrestrained hypercapitalism.

What happens when it wins? And he goes down a lot of thought experiments that we've talked about where it's like what happens when everything is deregulated and one company just rules them all and then we're all back to serfdom under the Uber aegis. Yeah, I mean I just want to go on record as saying that I've been hating Uber since day one and we've talked a lot about that.

So this is good to hear what we've been talking about actually starting to make it onto the mainstream media and other people coming on board. In other Uber news, an entire country of Germany has banned Uber from operating. Why? Because they don't have any of the necessary transportation permits or regulations.

Yeah, there you go. There you go. And we all know Germany is very big on regulations. Very big on regulations. You do not fuck with Germany. No, you do not. And I got to say, I still got my five-star Uber rating.

Thank you very much. I'm a very nice passenger. And they've always shown up for me. I've never gotten lost with them. All the drivers have been fantastic. So the drivers who work for Uber, which are all contractors, I have never had a problem with. They've always been awesome. I always get my free bottle of water.

Now, the news that came out yesterday in New York is that they're trying to take all of the Uber black drivers and knock them down to the UberX people. So they want the guys with the Mercedes 500 SL limos to get paid the same as the guy with the Prius who's doing on his lunch break.

And there's a backlash going on about that. As there should be. And there also should be a backlash about the fact that they're all just contractors and they're not getting any kind of benefits whatsoever. So this is going to be interesting how it plays out. If Uber is going to have a come-to-Jesus moment and clean up or – I mean the thing is right now they don't have to because they've got a ton of money in the bank.

Yeah, yeah. No, they've got tons of money and they don't actually have to. So, yeah, this is going to be kind of a watershed moment for these kind of companies that try to skirt regulation. Are you going to come on board and are you going to be nice human beings or are you just going to say to hell with it and do the money grab? Yeah, we'll see how it plays out.

I have to take Uber, but I will be doing so for the very first time as I am going up to San Francisco this weekend and I figured why not try it out there. Yeah, it's too bad. I'm going to be up there in two weekends. Yeah, I saw that. I signed up for an Amazon local deal a couple of months ago when I was trying to get a limo to the airport to go to Los Angeles when I broke my leg, which I didn't end up doing because I would have died, the doctor said.

Fortunately, I didn't use it. And unfortunately, I gave that voucher to my roommate who got completely screwed by the limo company. So, my track record with Amazon local is now negative 100%. And I'm getting ads from them all the time now for things that I really don't want to discount on.

The first one, LASIK Eye Centers, $1,900 for both eyes. No, thanks. I don't want to be blind. I'll pay full price on that. And another one is the Tandem Skydiving Experience, $149. Nope. I don't want to be flat.

No, that's pretty funny. Yeah, I'm just staying away from Amazon local. I got, to their credit, as soon as I called them and complained and said, look, this guy lied. He didn't show up. And then he charged it saying that they took the ride when the guy wasn't even there.

And they're like, oh, oh, okay. We'll look into this. We'll investigate it. Here's all your money back. We're very sorry. Within like three minutes. That's awesome. I had a very similar experience with Groupon quite a while back, actually, except they were not very quick about it.

They had some sort of Groupon for a car detailing service. And I was getting ready to sell my Jeep and get another car. So I figured, let's get it detailed before I go sell it. And I bought the Groupon. And then when I called the place, it was like they couldn't take me for six months. Because they sold too many Groupons.

Because they sold too many Groupons. And I was like, well, this is completely useless to me. And I tried to get a refund. And that took a very long time. But it eventually came through. I also had something a little bit weird happen to me this last week. I kept getting a phone call from a number I didn't recognize. And then I finally just said, to hell with it.

I got to answer because they keep calling. Local Google placement. They claimed to be Google. It was a robo voice on pickup. So they claimed to be Google. And if this is the owner of the company or the marketing manager for the company, please press 1.

We have important news for you about your business. So I just hung up because I figured this is bullshit. But they kept calling. So at this point, I'm like, I have to go through this phone tree just to get them to stop calling. So I hit the 1. And then I hit 1 again. And then they asked all these other questions.

And 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. And I finally get to a person. And the entire time, every single bit of the robo script implies that they are actually Google calling me. Not a third-party company. That they are Google. And they are calling because of my business placement.

And they want to make sure that they have the correct information, et cetera, et cetera. So finally, I get to a person. And she asks me if I'm the head of the company. And I'm, yes, I am. Who are you? And she won't answer because she's on a script as well. So I asked them what type of company I was listed as, Internet Services.

And then she replied, well, I guess you would handle your own listings then. Yeah. Yeah, I would. OK. We'll remove you from our call list. OK. So you never found out what the company was, who they were? No. Did you try and do like a reverse phone lookup to see if you could get a number on it, if their number matched any known callers?

I was going to because I was annoyed. And then I just figured to hell with it. If they call again, I will. OK. Because that would be something that you can report to Google. Yeah, that's true. Because they do try to pass them off as. Oh, wait. You can't. You can't get in touch with anybody at Google because it's not run by humans. Well, that's also the way I knew this wasn't a Google company because I was like, Google is actually calling me?

No way. I can't get a hold of anybody over there. Never going to happen. Yeah. The only time I've ever had any luck with getting through to humans at Google is through people I knew that work there. Well, same thing with Twitter or any of these other companies. You cannot get a hold of them ever. Yeah, we got – for Metblogs, we got kicked out of Google News for a long time.

We couldn't get anybody to review our account. So I called up my buddy, Kevin Marks. I'm like, hey, can you ask somebody about this? He's like, OK, let me run down the hall. He went down the hall and we were back in like by the end of the day. It's like – it's definitely the old boys' Google network over there. Oh, totally.

I mean I'd have better luck living here in Venice walking down to their building and knocking on the door than trying to get a hold of them any other way. Yeah, and God forbid your AdSense account ever gets shut down. Just kiss that money goodbye. Ah, Google. Comment of the week.

News five-star rating on iTunes this week from Hammered Head. I'm an old school – oh, wait. I'm an old high school buddy of Brian. I always knew he was smart but failed to see the brilliance. Jason is great, woo, and is regularly voicing my own concerns and opinions of the world.

A great podcast on not only tech but the world in general. Thanks, Brett. I'm brilliant. You're just great, dude. I don't give this guy much credence. I'm assuming this is Brett Bowman. He's the only Brett I knew back in high school.

So, hey, man. Thanks. No worries. I buried the brilliance in hairspray and makeup back then plus a good amount of booze. I like your name, Hammered Head. That's funny. Glad you're listening. Glad you like it. Hope all is well. Yeah. There you go. Brilliant. Thank you, Mr. Hammered Head, even though I am not very brilliant.

In the News Sad news from yesterday. Miss Joan Rivers died at the age of 81.

That is sad. I really like Joan. I thought she had some spunk. I never thought she would actually die. I watched her show with her daughter for a while because I lived with a woman and it was unfortunately required watching. On some nights. Right. But it wasn't bad. Joan was a firecracker, man.

She took shit from nobody. No. I mean, she, you know, people forget that she was actually legitimately extremely funny way back in the day. I mean, she still was. She definitely went down a shtick of just kind of being, you know, rude and mean to celebrities and all that sort of stuff, which is well-deserved and I'm happy with.

But she was a really funny straight-up comedian way back in the day, which is great. I love Joan Rivers. She's great. I'm not crazy about the legacy, the Chelsea Handlers and the Kathy Griffins of the world who are basically just aping the later stages of Joan. But, yeah, good to be missed. Yeah.

Some of the stuff from her show when she would go out and do stand-up was still just wickedly funny. Yeah. She was so good. Yeah. Sharp as a tack. And one of the things that she did, which I thought was great, was she wrote down all her jokes and she kept them all on three-by-five cards. She had an archive of every joke she ever told.

That is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess we got to get to it. Bring it on. There's been one big story this week. What else are we going to talk about? The Fappageddon. The Fappening, I thought, was the name. It is, but I really was hoping to catch Wolf Blitzer this week, say, The Fappening on CNN, but I couldn't watch CNN for long enough to really find it because I can't stand watching CNN.

Yeah. Well, if you happen to know any males between the ages of, say, I don't know, 14 to about 29, never has there been more masturbation than in this last week, I would say. No. It's been ridiculous. In case you don't know, in case you've been living under a rock, all of our fears about the iCloud and all of us bitching and kvetching about how stupid the cloud is, well, all those fears came true for a number of celeb utards this week.

Basically, a bunch of actresses' leaked nude photos have been all over the web, and they all came from their iPhones, where they stored them stupidly in the iCloud. Not all. Not all iPhones. Almost all of them. Almost all of them were from iPhones. Yes. Yes.

So before we get too into the tech on it, a friend of mine, a friend of the show, Tim Elliott, actually posted something on his Facebook, which gave me pause because the fappening kind of basically broke the same day that there was the second beheading of a journalist in Syria, I believe.

I'm not sure of the exact location where they did it. I guess they don't exactly publicize the location of the beheading either. No, they don't know where the location is. If they knew, they would be over there finding them. Exactly. So they happened about the same day, and Tim wrote on his Facebook, and I kind of agreed with this a lot.

We now live in a society where more people will express outrage over some actresses' leaked nude photos than over a non-celebrity being beheaded. Thoughts, Jason? Okay. Now, I originally had an issue with this statement because I was extremely outraged when the first journalist was beheaded.

And then I watched some CNN and some other news stations, and you're completely right. And to that, I actually have to say that the news completely overshadowed the second journalist being beheaded or press person being beheaded because I just found out about it from you.

I did not know that the second guy got beheaded. That sucks. It got buried completely in the news because of Jennifer Lawrence's vagina. Interesting. Yeah. This is the society we now live in, and I have massive problems with it. So on with the show, and let's talk about the celebrities and not the beheading.

Might as well go with the flow. Yeah, you got to go with the flow. And this is a tech story. The other thing is geopolitics that we know nothing about, and we do know tech. So let's talk about the tech. Okay. Bring it on because we're going to butt heads on this one. I think we are too. So regardless of whatever celebs have already had their photos leaked, I'd imagine there are a lot of awkward phone calls going on right now to boyfriends, husbands, ex-lovers, managers, PR agents, movie studios, TV studios, and others.

Because all these kids – and I do say kids because we are grumpy old geeks, and I didn't know – I don't know who half of these girls are because they're all very, very young. And they're all taking naked photos of themselves on their iPhones, not all iPhones.

Let's just say iPhones for the sake of this segment, Jason, instead of arguing. No, let's say phones for the sake of this segment. All right. On their phones. Because you're going to say some things here that I'm going to smack you for in a second. Yes, there are a lot of people that do that. Here's the thing though. Almost everybody has got it.

Got these photos out there. Anybody with a cell phone is probably taking a picture of their junket or their girlfriend's or their boyfriend's junket at some point. That's just the reality of having a camera on you all the time. And being hormonal. Exactly. And having a banging body, let's be honest.

Yeah. It's like, hey, nothing to be ashamed of out there. So let them have their fun. The issue at hand here is this was a theft of, you know, you can either, I mean, yes, it's personal data. It's intellectual property at some level. And it's, you know, it's a violation.

It's a very personal violation of these people. It very much is. And we all can feel, I felt certainly very high and mighty about it because when the leak came and I read the list of people, I was like, I don't even know who any of these people are. Until I saw Hope Solo and then I went, Hope Solo, Hope Solo naked, where?

And of course I had to go look. It's a violation. I'm very sorry, Hope Solo. I love, you know, I'm a big fan. Nice ass. I have no idea who Hope Solo is. A goalie for U.S. women's soccer. Oh, okay. Anyway, let's get back to the attack.

You can go fap later. Okay. So this was an old school attack and this was a targeted attack. These people were targeted because they are celebrities. Yes. Flat out. You know, if we even go back to just the cloud setting and talk about, you know, cloud security, all of these attacks were basically, you know, from what they can tell, brute force attacks or social engineering attacks.

There is nothing here that really said that there was an actual, you know, hole in the cloud stuff. The big issue now that they're trying to cover up and say, oh, well, we'll notify you when you set a password change, download a backup to another device because that's where most of this stuff probably came from.

Yeah. Just people getting a whole dump of their entire phones. Yeah. Right. You know, I, okay, I finally get access to your account. I can log into your account. I can take a blank phone and say backup from iCloud. Here's my info. And then it'll pull the entire backup down and boom, it's all there. Yeah.

And that's what they're, you know, positing is what happened. And then there's also the further theory that this is all happening in the dark web and there's been this trading thing going on where if you get, you know, one celebrity, then you hook up with somebody somewhere on the dark web and you trade and just this massive collection of basically hundreds of celebrities and their private photos, all of which will eventually see the light of day.

And maybe these guys are getting hunted right now like you would not believe. They have to be the most terrified people on the planet, deservedly so. Well, no. Again, let's go back to the original argument. I'd rather we be spending our money and time hunting the folks that are beheading people. Well, I think it's a different group that are doing that.

So this is the upside of having two separate agencies, one for domestic and one for overseas. So the CIA and the NSA, those guys are out there trying to get ISIS and ISIL and those guys. The FBI is all domestic and those are the guys that are on these guys.

Well, I'd be surprised if – I mean I'm sure that there's quite a few people that are here in the U.S., but I'm sure there are plenty of people overseas that are involved with this whole scandal. It could be at some point. I'm sure there will be multidisciplinary or multi-agency cooperation as far as they can do that.

So now let's get to the iPhone side of it just because most celebrities have iPhones. So that's what was targeted. But most people in the world don't. They've got Android phones. Yeah, but nobody is interested in – frankly, nobody is interested in my nude photo.

They are interested in celebrities' nude photos and 99 percent of celebrities have iPhones. So if you have one point of attack, you're going to go after the iCloud. But it wasn't – I mean it was a multi-pronged approach to the attack. You just made a supposition before in our show notes that I wanted to bring up that you're saying that Apple is now superior to Microsoft because everybody writes viruses for PCs and the tables have turned, and they haven't turned.

Nobody is writing a virus for the iOS to attack celebrities. They're just going after them specifically. Jason, you're taking an overall supposition and going after the specifics on it. My entire point was just – it made me laugh because I remember back to the old Apple versus Mac or Apple versus PC battles, which are no longer really a thing.

But the big argument back then from all the Apple snobs was, oh, Apple is so much better than PCs because, you know, you can't get a virus on your Apple because everybody writes them for PCs. Well, that's still true. I know it's still true, Jason. You are taking the point and making it specific.

My entire point is just, well, now if you had a Windows 7 phone, you'd probably be safe if you took pictures of your junk. That is the only point. Well, no, because they will attack the cloud storage that goes with the Windows phone as well. Oh, Jason. Listen, listen. Just point A.

Most – almost all celebrities have iPhones, correct? Not for any – not for much longer. Well, not for much longer, but for right now, all celebrities have iPhones. All celebrity new photos are in the iCloud. If you were the one celebrity that took pictures of your junk and had a Windows 7 phone, you'd be safe right now.

That's the point. That was it. It was a minor point that you just want to niggle away at, which is stupid. That's the entire point. And that point is correct and valid. This was a tech conversation. You weren't talking about tech. So I wanted to make sure that you had a proper point made.

Okay, there are no viruses involved. I know there are no viruses involved. All I'm saying is just that the Apple was the point of attack for what you wanted to get out of this situation. Right, and my point is it – And anybody with a Windows phone could snicker and go, ha, ha, ha. Windows is superior because nobody attacked us.

Nobody wants your piece of shit. Okay, let's move on to the rest of the story here. Let's talk about the Redditors who felt guilty, who had fap guilt. Yes, well, most of this – well, most of this obviously broke on 4chan, but then Reddit kind of became the area where – because it's a bit more acceptable for people to go to.

I don't think most journalists are logging into 4chan to look through there. So they went to Reddit and – Because they don't know what 4chan is. You saw the CNN piece. They were like, is 4chan a person? I mean that was the stupidest thing all week. I know. There were actual articles saying the FBI was going after 4chan as if 4chan is a person, like the hacker 4chan.

And props to Jon Stewart for showing like some of those clips on The Daily Show saying, why are you on my TV? You have made me dumber by watching this segment. Yeah. So – but Reddit has kind of come out in recent years as this internet community and full of decent people while 4chan is a bit on the shadier side, let's be honest.

So a lot of this stuff broke on Reddit and I think the Redditors actually coined the term the fappening, which is still hilarious to me. I love it. Yeah. So that's where a lot of the photos were basically breaking and going into public consumption as it were. And they – yeah, somebody over there started to feel a little bit guilty because it is an invasion of privacy.

I don't think it's a sex crime and I don't think it's a bunch of other things that people were starting to say about it. But it is an invasion of privacy. So they decided to do something about it and donate money to prostate cancer because they felt bad. And they got shut down. And the organization said we are not going to take your money, which I also think is stupid.

I don't know. I'm kind of on the side of the Prostate Cancer Foundation on this one because they – it's – the whole premise is just ridiculous. And if they took the money, they would open themselves up to so many different vectors of attack just from – just the opinions of people saying you're taking money and are profiting based on these photos being leaked.

So for them, I think it's a smart PR move not to take the money. I agree with you on the PR element but I just think a charity is a charity and I don't care who is offering you the money. Take it. It wasn't that much money. It wasn't worth the hassle. I think they came out on the right side of this argument.

Well, 17-year-olds that sit on Reddit masturbating all day don't exactly have tons of funds. Yeah. And to your point that people on Reddit are better than people on 4chan, that's a very, very thin line. If you go check out the subreddit, the fappening on Reddit, it's just as bad.

I'm sure it is. Honestly, they're still posting the same crap which they shouldn't be posting and Reddit is playing whack-a-mole with them. And now 4chan has actually decided to take the stance of we will honor the DMCA now and put people on taking the stuff down. But I think that's a PR move too because 4chan is a cycling cesspool of images.

You know, it's like 10 pages per channel and once it hits that last page, it's gone and it's in the ether. They delete it, never to be seen again. You know, it's very ephemeral. Reddit, I don't think, has that same problem. I think they just keep that stuff forever. I think they do as well.

So, yeah, it makes a bit more sense for them. You know, this is one of those things too where we could talk for hours about all the different aspects of this. You can't stop this. I mean, I get it's a good thing and it's a good PR move. And certainly if you want your site to continue, you're going to stop these images from being posted, much like Twitter did with the beheading images for the first one.

I had not that many on it the second time around. Twitter has also been removing any of these celebrities' photos that pop up on Twitter. But information wants to get out and it will one way or another. Yeah, probably on the dark web now. But we'll see how this thing plays out.

And as far as just, you know, protecting yourself, it's a case of simple passwords, simple question and answers. You can get around that stuff if you just use a modicum of common sense. Well, and if you're taking pictures of your junk, don't put it in the cloud. You want to keep it on your phone?

Keep it on your phone. Don't let anybody take your phone. Don't let anybody plug your – don't charge your phone at somebody else's house that's connected to their computer. And definitely don't put your junk in the cloud. Well, here's the thing. A lot of people don't – they assume that like they're just – when they do the backups, it's for apps and stuff.

They don't realize that their photos go with those backups. So, you know, it's set up for them. I'm sure somebody at their office hands them the phone and say, here, it's good to go. Yeah. And they never think about it again. Exactly. So I think, you know, that's a completely different discussion. So let's just get off this damn thing.

Yeah, let's get off the thing. One thing that I maybe hope that comes out of this is people might start to pay attention to how their technology actually works instead of just wandering around with it and just going, it's a magic device. No, this will not happen because look at what happened.

OK. The way that Dig became, you know, Dig was for the same thing, the leaked Britney Spears photos from her phone from how long ago? Yeah, I know. You know, this has all happened before. It will all happen again. It's the same shit. The person that's probably the most upset about this is Paris Hilton.

She's somewhere feverishly taking pictures of her vagina and hoping somebody hacks her phone again so she can be relevant. She was nowhere to be seen in that dump. Yeah. Oh, man. OK, I want to talk about Twitter a second because this is, you know, you mentioned Twitter. So let's just get this out, get it over with.

Twitter is about to go away is the wonderful thing that you guys all love and it's become Facebook-style filtered feed because they have to make money. There, done. Yeah, and the backlash has begun and people say they want to pay for it, which they won't. I updated Twitter with that last night. I'm like, you guys are all yelling and bitching and pretending that you would pay to have Twitter keep itself the way it is.

And you will not. And you will not. Nobody will pay. Nope. Studies have shown. Experiments have been done. You say one thing and then as soon as they say, give us your money. You do not. You do not. Yeah. And end of story. So they spent the engineering time to build it and all this other crap and you won't do it.

I mean like a small subset, like three or four percent might do it. But the people that Twitter cares about that are going to make money off of them are the people that are going to see their ads and see their sponsored content. So it's not going to work. They will not do it. We tried to get them for years to give us a way to pay them so they could keep their servers up and they didn't.

And it's a whole new team there now that just – they are beholden to the shareholders. So get over it. Twitter is going away as you knew it. End of story. Yep. Yep. Twitter is gone and, yes, nobody is going to pay. If there was ever a site or a service that actually had – I mean Twitter is full of super tech people.

So if they thought there was money in making a Twitter that you paid for, there would be one already. But there isn't. There was one. There was one. It was called app.net. Yes. And nobody paid for it and it went away. And right now it's running on fumes. They've got enough money coming in to just keep the servers going, but they've got no staff.

So who knows? Maybe app.net will get a resuscitation out of this. But I doubt it because it was already there and people could pay for it and get what they wanted. It won't because app.net was there the first time everybody freaked out about Facebook and privacy and wanting to have some sort of pay version where they didn't have to deal with all this stuff.

And nobody went to app.net. That's what I'm saying. So suck it. Who? Everyone. Security. Security. Ha. So the hack of the week that doesn't involve nubile naked celebrities but rather sexy spanners and backhoes.

Home Depot is investigating a possible data breach, which then Jason found a lot more information about. It's big. It's very big. And I'm going to have to go change my credit card because I bought a house. And I've been to Home Depot a lot recently. Yeah. It looks like all of the U.S.

Home Depot stores have been hit. And it looks like it's from a Ukrainian organization, the same people that were responsible for the P.F. Chang break in and a couple other ones. And it's almost a retaliation for what's going on, the sanctions against Russia for the Ukraine. Right.

Man, that is a hot bit of hackers there. Amazing. And they're good. That's the scary thing. These guys are good. So, yeah, if you have shopped at Home Depot any time since last year, I think they're saying. Yeah. It's a long hack on these guys.

You definitely should look into it. And the way they're figuring out that it was Home Depot is there's a dump of all of the zip codes that are attached to all the cards. And there's like a 99 point something percent overlap with Home Depot locations. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it makes sense.

It's why wouldn't you hit the Home Depot? Everybody ends up there at some point, especially people that have, you know, high level, you know, credit cards because they're homeowners and things like that. Yeah. Monitor. If you've been to Home Depot, find out which card you use. Keep an eye on it. I'm just going to go ahead and automatically switch out my card because I don't want to deal with it.

But you don't have to be quite as crazy as me, but keep an eye. Yeah. And Home Depot has put up a page which is a feeble-ass response with like two paragraphs. We'll link that in the show notes. It's a message to our customers about news reports of a possible payment data breach.

We will not admit to anything. I think they're going to have to pretty soon, though. Yeah, they're definitely going to have to. So who was the company that did it right? I can't remember. We talked about that. UPS. Thank you, UPS. Yeah, they listed every store, every date range that were affected by the breach, and they did it right.

I mean, granted, UPS could still be doing their research on it and their due diligence with the FBI or the Secret Service and figuring out exactly what happened. But still, it's a pretty weak response. Yeah, that is just bad. So on the other side of kind of weak responses, Apple is adding – I mentioned this before.

Apple is adding some new iCloud security measures. They're saying you should move to two-factor auth, but the two-factor auth only affects very few things. Yeah, and I actually saw a report, which I don't have the link for right now, but I will find it and get it in the show notes, about a woman that put up – basically hacked herself, and she had two-factor authorization in.

She used some $200 piece of software and hacked herself in 20 minutes. Oh, you've got to find that. We've got to put that in the show notes. Yeah, I'll just track it down. It was on Twitter somewhere. Okay, yeah. What they're doing now is – these are after-the-fact notifications. So like I said before, if somebody – if your password's changed or your phone backup is downloaded to a new device, all this other stuff.

So if somebody does get your iCloud or your Apple ID login and they can pull it down, it notifies you. But these are after-the-fact issues. Yeah, you've already been hacked at that point. Yeah, they need to have some kind of two-factor auth on downloading your iCloud backup.

So, I mean, this stuff's rolling out in a couple weeks. Hopefully, they'll be really trying to lock the stuff down. Yep, hopefully. And Grindr, an app that I probably will never ever – well, not probably, will never ever use, the gay dating app for hooking up.

It has privacy issues as well. Shocking. Nobody's surprised. Somebody figured out that you can triangulate where a physical person is by just logging out, logging back in, and seeing the distance from them by moving around in a circle, like standard triangulation. Yeah, well, since you're trying to hook up anyways, maybe that's actually a good thing.

Yeah, really. It'll save you some time. It'll save you some time. You know where he is. Oh, hey, your photo's fake. Screw you, buddy. Yep. And finally this week, I'm a huge fan of the band Rasputina, which is basically Melora Krieger and whoever she gets to play with her.

She does like crazy cello music. I got a crazy email from her from her mailing list this week talking about how she's basically been in hiding and has been hacked and stalked for the past year. And nobody believed her and it's a terrible, terrible story.

And they like got broken to her house, broken to her car, all this crazy stuff. And I feel really bad for her because she's out in like rural Pennsylvania. Yeah. And so it's a it's a terrifying story. I'm going to put the whole email in the show notes just so everybody can read it.

But this is kind of what happens when you're a celebrity nowadays, not even with the nudie pictures. This is just some crazy ass fan. Yeah, this is a crazy ass fan going after. It's you know, we're in a really scary world where if somebody wants to basically ruin your life, they can. If somebody is somebody is motivated enough to to basically just destroy your entire life, they will do so.

And we talked about it. I mean, we've talked about this for 10 years sitting around the bar having drinks, you know, how easy it would be to, you know, just throw some child born on somebody's computer and have them framed kind of stuff. But now it's like you're dealing with all of their finances, their money, their family. And you can do some terrible things to people.

And this person, hopefully they find them and take them down because it's really not nice. I mean, not nice is is the tip of the iceberg on this. This guy needs to be taken out back and kicked in the nuts a couple thousand times. And Jason, you posted a link in the show notes that I didn't read because I felt like if I read it, I'd put on a put on a tinfoil hat and seal myself off from everyone.

But I'm really interested. So go ahead and tell me about it and scare the shit out of me. OK, now this actually we got a hat tip from this from one of our friends on Twitter whose name escapes me at the moment because I forgot to put it in the show notes like a dumbass. But I'd already found this story. And this is a story about how an Android security phone that people have.

It's a really expensive but very cool phone called the CryptoPhone 500. It's a great name there. I know, I know. And I checked out their site and I want one. But you can only buy them in bulk for companies. And the only thing that they sell is a Windows phone version for $1,500. Well, if you took a photo of your junk, it wouldn't have leaked.

Yeah, no doubt. This is a very cool phone. But what it can do is it can tell when you're basically being tricked into using fake cell towers. Wow. And these guys have found just driving around about 17 at least cell phone towers that are not real. They are – what they do is they – you connect – when you're close to it, you connect to that and that connects to another cell tower to do a pass-through.

And most of them knock you down back to 2G and then it can just basically read everything, get all your calls, record the calls, text messages, actually have access to the phone. It's kind of like a Stingray device like we talked about that the police use. But these are really mystery – like mystery towers.

They're saying that a lot of them are right around military bases, US military bases. But there are other ones that are not. I had a situation a while ago where somebody that I knew was calling the police because somebody was stalking the neighbor and she saw them outside.

And as soon as she made the phone call, they drove away. And her phone was doing weird things and she was texting people saying like, he's here, he's here. Don't come home. Call the police. My favorite Ren and Stimpy. And the guy left and then the cops finally did come and it was an L.A. County sheriff and he completely said that he's probably got a cell tower spoofer.

Because you could buy – this was like two years ago. They were like $1,100. You could get them from a couple of places I knew in England, the same place you could get cell phone jammers. Completely illegal. It's a felony just to have one. But criminals have them now. It's known by the police that these things are out there and they are being used by criminals to monitor cell phone traffic around sites where they want to do crime.

Let's go do some crimes. And seeing this that there are just random ones out there all over the place is kind of weird but they're there. That's a little freaky. Like it does kind of come down to – and this is where the tinfoil hat stuff starts to go. Are these criminals? Are these government putting these things up?

What the hell is going on? Of course, the government doesn't really need to, right? Because they can just go directly to any of our cell providers and get whatever they want. Not in real time. That's true. Not in real time. They need to track you in real time. I can see this around military bases because people use cell phones to A, coordinate attacks, set off bombs, and do other things with them.

So being able to in real time monitor all the communications that are happening around your location as a defense mechanism makes total sense. I just want to read this a little bit for those of us that aren't as up with this as Jason is.

This device costs approximately $100,000, which is quite a lot of money but not if you're planning on stealing a lot of money. It's called the VME Dominator, which is described as a real – well, I'll skip the technobabble. Let me just go to the point that scares the crap out of me.

It cannot be detected. It allows interception of voice and text. It allows voice manipulation, up and down channel blocking, text intercept and modification, calling and sending text on behalf of the user and directional finding of a user during random monitoring of calls. They just basically own you.

Yeah. They are pretending to be a cell tower and you can get all of the information that you would if you were a cell tower. Unbelievable. And the $100,000 ones I think are the top of the line ones. Yeah. But when I did my research on them, the ones that I saw, the cheapy ones were around $1,100.

But the standard ones for small area use for like if you need like a couple block radius were in the $4,000 to $5,000 range, which is completely doable for any street criminal. Yeah. Exactly. So is anybody looking into these things?

Nobody's saying. Yeah. Nobody's saying. Awesome. All I know is I want one of these crypto phones. I think Christmas is coming. I think I might have to be – doing this damn show is going to make me buy one of these stupid phones. Oh, good.

At the library. Okay. So hat tip for the cell tower story goes to Matt Quinn, friend of the show. You can find him on Twitter at IamMattQ. Thanks, Matt. That was awesome. I have not finished Matt Adam book three, which is book three of the trilogy.

I'm about halfway through. So I wasn't actually going to say anything at the library this week. But as I was reading last night in bed, I came across a quote so frigging relevant to everything that's just been going on this week in the news and with the fappening that I felt the need to drop this in here and just read it really quick.

So here we go. Okay, there we go. Here's the quote, and this is just awesome. The least said the better online, even if you thought your space was secure. The net had always been just that, a net full of holes, all the better to trap you with.

And it still was despite the fixes they claimed to be adding constantly with the impenetrable algorithms and the passwords and the thumb scans. But what else did they expect? With code surfs like him in charge of the security keys, of course the thing was going to leak. The pay was too low, so the temptation to pilfer, snoop, snitch, and sell for high rewards was great.

But the penalties were getting more extreme, which was a counterbalance of sorts. Online thieves were increasingly professional, like the outfits he'd worked with in Rio. Few were hacking for the pure lulls of it anymore or even to register protests. That is a fantastic quote, and I wonder if they can join the show sometime because that kind of goes back to everything we've said since episode one.

This is our entire show in one quote, including the low pay. No doubt, and especially with the getting more extreme and with the penalties but also the temptation. Remember, I think it might have been episode two or three where I said that if there were really smart coders out there, they'd be working for Apple right now, building in O'Days that never got found until they left, and they would go sell for a million bucks.

Exactly. So this sounds very similar. So again, can't recommend the entire trilogy enough, and go read it. I just finished the third of the long trilogy, the long Earth and now the long Mars. Nice. You finished it a couple weeks ago, and I finally got around to it.

I thought the ending was too abrupt, kind of like the last one was, but the story was totally engaging, and I thoroughly approved of it, and I can't wait for the next one. I agree. The endings for the last two of the series have been really abrupt, but as I said at the time, I just can't wait for the next one, and I think that this has the possibilities of being one of those grand sci-fi sagas like Dune.

They can really do a lot with this. They really can, and they were really smart. The plot lines in this were very smart, which I didn't see coming, which is why I liked it. So two thumbs up. Software apps and gadgets. Now this week is a little follow-up on something I mentioned before that I love called iStat Menus for the Mac, which gives you introspection into all of the inner workings of your Macintosh.

Well, I mentioned before that they upgraded to iStat Menus 5, and for me it was a free upgrade. Turns out, no, it was not. They upgraded me, and they upgraded me to a 14-day trial. So this morning when I boot up where all the menus should be in my menu bar, they're just little dollar signs.

I'm like, what? That's sudden. Yeah, so I click on them, and sure enough, I had to upgrade $10 because I bought the other two previous versions. Now, I'm not against upgrade fees. It was a major upgrade, a major rewrite, but don't lie to me.

Don't be sneaky about it. Tell me up front, and don't upgrade me saying that, oh, we're just going to upgrade you. It's like, give me the option right there to pay for an upgrade or not, you know, do it and stick with the old version. There's a screen capture program I use called ScreenFlow Pro, and they do that.

They tell you, it's like, hey, big warning, upgrading to this new version is a paid upgrade. So if you don't want to do it, don't do it. These guys did not. And so I say, fuck you, Bajango, which is the company that makes this and your damn high stat menus, and I paid for it.

There. That was a hollow fuck you. It was. No, but that is completely the wrong way to go about it, people. Do not do that when you are going to have a paid upgrade at all. You should notify people, not just do it, and then force them to do so. That is not cool. Give them the option and don't be a sneaky bastard.

Damn right. I've got a couple of podcasts this week that I really enjoyed. The Art of Manliness podcast number 79, On Killing and On Combat with Lieutenant Colonel.

Like, let's call. What's a let's call? Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman. Great episode. I love this guy. He's, you know, a veteran, wrote an amazing book called On Killing, where he describes how most soldiers won't actually kill. They shoot high and all the psychology behind it.

He's got a new book, On Combat, which is in my queue. So this was a callback to our talk of World War II from last week. Very nice. Highly recommended. Now, my other – one of my other favorite podcasts, the You Are Not So Smart podcast, they did an in-between episode this week where he didn't eat any cookies, which sucks because I like the cookie monster theme in there.

It's called Why Do You Sabotage Yourself When Trying to Break Bad Habits? And I mean I love this show. It's usually just fascinating. But this actually has some solid info that you can use for habit change that can honestly be life-altering if you put it into practice and pay attention to what he's talking about.

He's talking about extinction events when you're at the very end and ready to change a habit but your body and your mind rebels and it basically has a tantrum. It says, no! I have this downloaded, queued up, and I'm definitely going to listen to it because as I mentioned the other week, I am giving up the smokes and I'm on the vape.

And this is definitely happening to me because I was – I was out the other day with a couple of buddies. They smoke. We were having a few beers and I was like, eh, I'm out having a couple of beers. What's the harm in having one cigarette? It goes exactly through that process. Yes. So I need to listen to this.

Check it out. And I will. I ran across Freakonomics Radio, which made me very happy. They're quick little bits, about 30 minutes each, going through the standard topics that they talked about in their book. So if you've read the book, it's a bit of a rehash.

But I read the book so long ago, I barely remember any of it. So I really like these little segments. They're very – they're well NPR produced. They sound very NPR radio. They probably run on it. But you can just scroll through it on the iTunes listing and find a topic that you're interested in. Get a quick 30-minute download.

It's nice stuff. Yeah, they're very good. They're very good. And then they are almost all recycled. But if you have forgotten about the topic, it's a nice rehash. And some of them are new. And some of them are from the new book, which I actually did not care for the new book. Yeah, I agree. But the other books are pretty good. Yeah. So it's a good little thing.

It's nice. Aphex Twin put out a new track. The new track is called Minipop 67 120.2 Source Field Mix. It's really good. It is really good. It is old school electronica. It's like the last 15 years of EDM didn't happen and we don't have Miley Cyrus bleeding on top of everything and everything sounds like a gay disco.

This is great old school electronica. It's really, really good. And I love the fact that the artwork is basically his YouTube stats for the last two years. Yeah, that's interesting. So I got the link from you and I listened to the track and I immediately went to Spotify and put on all his ambient stuff for the rest of the rest of the day while I was hacking.

Yeah. It was great. I've completely forgotten about his ambient stuff and I've been listening to it incessantly and the new track is great. I cannot wait for this album. No, I can't wait either. It was really good. Yeah, it's really good. So there was another leak of footage. It wasn't a leak. It was actually released.

Star Wars rough cut footage was put out the other day on the net and it was hard to watch because it's rough cut footage. But here's something we never knew. Han Solo had a girlfriend. Booyah, boy, getting some. Yeah, he was sitting in the booth with a chick.

He kisses her. She leaves and that's when Luke and Obi-Wan come on over. So I've got some – I'm angry at Lucas here. We've got to stop this Han Solo neutering. He is a badass. First you take out his chick and then you make him shoot second? We need a Han Solo supercut.

No, that was the wrong thing to do, Lucas. Again. Again. Again. So I just want to do a quick shout out to the In Bed with Joan podcast talking about Joan Rivers. She did a great little video podcast. There's an audio version of it too where she just had people come over and sit for some time in her bedroom.

This was her getting into the podcasting thing and she did it pretty much up until the end of August. So it was pretty good. I recommend checking it out. They're fun watches. Yeah. A bunch of – I follow quite a few comedians on Twitter just because it's nice and it balances out the bad evil news that I get off Twitter.

A lot of them have been posting links to their shows where they sat in with her. So I'm looking forward to seeing quite a few of them. And a little more follow-up on the Wil Wheaton project that we talked about a couple months ago before he went on the air. He is now off the air for good. Yeah. Well, I can't say I didn't see it coming, but that's sad.

I like Wil Wheaton. I wish he had something on the air. But sci-fi is just a mess. They're a total mess. You know, they had such an opportunity coming off of Battlestar Galactica to just be a great network and then all they produce are stupid, idiotic, pseudo-horror movies now.

You know why though? That's what people watch. That is true. They ran the numbers on it and they're like, we're going to make these terrible movies because that's what people watch. So that's – What a world. What a world. You can't beat their logic on it. They're a TV network. They want people to watch and if that's what people want – if the people want the Sharknado, they get the Sharknado.

Yeah. Much like Twitter, they want to make money. And I do recommend reading Will's post about the cancellation. It was actually a really good read. Yeah. I agree. Links to that will be in the show notes. And we got a little breaking news while we're recording. This story is interesting to me on many levels and I just want to mention it really quickly because I'm sure we'll be talking about it next week.

Canada may unbundle cable TV subscriptions. The proposal is worrying U.S. content kings as it should because bundling is what screws us but pays for a lot of these crappy channels. We pay for ESPN even though we never watch it. Well, I've started to watch but yes, point taken.

So we'll see what happens with that. That is – that would be a major change in the media realm. So we'll see. We'll follow up on that next week. Moron of the Week. I was torn on Idiot of the Week or Moron of the Week. Sorry, the segment. We changed it to Moron because that's nicer, I guess.

I don't know. I guess. I got two. So CeeLo Green had his show canceled. I didn't even know he had his own show called The Good Life. It was canceled because he went on a Twitter rampage, as so many celebs are off to do these days, about rape, which is really stupid.

He has deleted all of them but they're all, of course, floating around on the internet. It's particularly moronic because CeeLo has had more than a few rape accusations against him that have quietly kind of gone away. By the way, his current net worth is approximately $22 million. Boy, man, he can pay for it.

Jesus. Yeah. So yeah, he is Moron of the Week number one. Moron of the Week number two is GQ magazine. Now, GQ is not something I read a lot but they've always had quite decent journalism and were a relatively respectful magazine or respected, not like People or Us Weekly or anything like that.

It was GQ. Their Women of the Year issue is coming out and guess who the Women of the Year is? Oh, I don't know. Let's go Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton. Nope. Nope. It's also not Sheryl Sandberg or Angela Merkel or…

Lady Gaga? Marissa Meyer. Hey, if you're going to go entertainment, Lady Gaga. At least she does something, right? Or it could have been Meg Whitman. There have been a lot of pretty amazing women doing pretty amazing things this year. But no, it's Kim Kardashian. Oh, Jesus. You've got to be shitting me. Nope. Oh, that's what we were going to call this segment.

Yeah, you've got to be shitting me. Yeah. So good job, GQ. Woman of the Year, Kim Kardashian, who is, of course, naked in the photos for the spread. Spread, spread, literally. God damn it. And then we wonder why we can't have nice things. GQ, what have you become?

The web's not dead. Now, this is an article that you sent me last week that we didn't cover because you didn't read. So this week I read it and it's called The King of Trolls, How One Fiendish Comedian Created a Twisted Twitter Art Form from Salon.

It is about basically a comedian or a writer, whatever, all of the above, actor, producer, writer, waiter. The standard L.A. thing, yes. Yeah, triple threat, actor, model, dancer. Rob Schrab, or Schrabe, I don't know how you pronounce it, but he's got a new art form called Schrabbing where he just makes the best Twitter comments on whatever you tweet.

So, like, for example, here's another clip from my Letterman interview with a link, and then he will reply, hey, do you have a link for that? Right. Which is kind of… This is painful to me because I happen to run a number of various, you know, notables, web presences, and this happens constantly.

That's why it's so beautiful because you don't know if he's, you know, if he's trolling you or if he's serious. But now that you know the trick, he's trolling you. This is what you do when people, you know, grammar not see you. You know, you come back and then you put your apostrophes and commas in the wrong place and maybe a semicolon if you're feeling really snarky.

So, his whole shtick is basically just trolling people with really stupid answers that I love. I love this guy. I do, too. I've actually started to follow him. I got to keep up with this. Oh, absolutely. I got to follow this guy, too.

So, thank you for the link, Brian. It was amazing. It made my day. No problem. And now that I read it, I'm actually getting that itchy feeling because I just, you know, I know that these are all the normal responses that I get on everything that I post for various people. Yes, but now, are they? But are they? Well, they definitely are because they're usually misspelled.

He doesn't misspell. He actually does it quite well. Well, he's a writer on Community, so… Yeah, true.

Are you kidding me? The next time you're feeling really self-important, or even more importantly, you're very dejected because you think the world has it out for you, a lot of people will tell you to look to the skies and go Carl Sagan on you and just say, we're just one spot upon billions upon billions and billions of stars.

But I'm going to go the other direction. There are more living organisms in a teaspoonful of soil than there are people alive on Earth, so shut up. Closing shout-outs. I want to give a shout-out to Joan Rivers. Any insulting joke she'd make about her own passing would be way funnier than yours, so don't try.

I also want to give a shout-out to at Venice311 on Twitter. Even if you don't live here, you should really – you can enjoy some wonderful tweets. Whoever is doing that in this area, just hilarious. Here's one of them. Crazy drugged-up lady with roller skates and no pants. That's it.

Yeah, I actually used to check out his when I lived out there. They are very funny. They are very funny, not only just – Venice is a pretty weird area anyway, so you've got good fodder for your updates, but it's well-written and very, very, very funny. And so I wanted to say that thank you very much to Stitcher for giving us a shout-tweet last time.

That was very nice. That was very nice and very surprising, so thank you. And I have an anti-shout-out this week. Okay. Fuck PHP, man. Oh, no. Oh, God. I keep saying it. It's all I know, and I think I'm going to have to upgrade soon because I'm in the middle of this giant project, and all I've done for the past seven days – or actually a couple months now – is just write PHP.

And, man, is it a mess. It is such a mess. You're just burnt out on it. You're never going to go to Ruby. I tell you what, though. I did some tutorials on Ruby, and it is sweet. It is so much nicer. Yeah, well, it's a newer language. It's built for the now on the web.

And it's written by one guy. That helps. Yes. You have benevolent dictatorship there. I do have to say, though, Bootstrap – I did a lynda.com episode – not episode – a tutorial on Bootstrap this week. And I've changed my mind on Bootstrap.

I was tired of every site looking like Bootstrap, but I did a customization course on Lynda. And you can basically have Bootstrap look like anything with just a little bit – a very little bit of CSS. Yeah. And the grid system with them is so easy to understand.

I really dig it. Everything I'm doing right now is based on either Bootstrap or some similar variants that are out there. The grid system is amazing. And you can – yeah. Yeah, most people just use some crappy templates so everything looks exactly the same. But you can tweak the hell out of it. Yeah, and it's not hard. No.

Well, not for us. It still costs you money, people. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You people out there pay us. We'll take the – we'll do the hard work. There you go. Please. Please. For the love of God, please. Okay. Well, back to work for me. I'll see you next week, man. Me too. Talk to you soon.

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Hey, where can I find you guys online? Okay, last one to kill a bad guy buys the beer. We're driving to Florida.

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