79: A Smorgasbord of Stupid

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. We don't talk about sports a lot because this is a podcast about technology. Of course, we talk about a lot of things that have nothing to do with technology. But to hell with it. I wanted to talk about the NFL really quickly at the start here.

We talked about them briefly because of the thing that they tried to do with the Super Bowl where they were basically asking artists to play for them and to pay to play the Super Bowl, that is. And then obviously the NFL has been in news a lot recently because they can't seem to control the various players from beating up on their wives and girlfriends.

And I had mentioned in the past that the NFL is basically a nonprofit as far as the government is concerned and pays no taxes whatsoever. Finally, someone is trying to do something about this. The National Football League generates about $9.5 billion in revenue each year. It is, by Forbes' estimate, the most valuable sports league in the world.

And basically they've been a tax-exempt organization forever, which needs to stop because this is absolutely ridiculous. They chase you and me down like there's no tomorrow. But apparently the government will not tax this crazy sports institution. They're finally trying to change that. New Jersey's Cory Booker is introducing legislation that will prohibit tax-free status for all major sports leagues.

Thank you. You go, Cory. Yes, I'm very excited about this. It's kind of bullcrap. That's a lot of money we're talking about. It's a ridiculously huge amount of money. Yeah, and they're all about profit. There's not much going on here. They basically keep on players that beat their wives as long as humanly possible because they're making them money.

Stop it. Let's pay your damn taxes, people. So, Brian, you sound a little bit better this week. Are you feeling any better? I am feeling a little bit better, but it's definitely been like a lingering head cold sort of thing going on. I think you can still hear it in my voice a little bit. But, yeah, feeling better. Feeling better.

That's good. That's good. I fell down and went boom on the skateboard ramp this week. So, yeah, the trials and tribulations of a 43-year-old on a skateboard. Yeah, I attempted to skateboard again about four years ago, and that did not go well.

And I basically just kind of decided my skateboarding days are long gone. Yeah, I was getting good and then, you know, just kind of didn't pay attention and slipped and almost broke my damn arm. So, I think mine might be behind me, too. You've already got a bum leg. Let's not try to fuck up other things. I know. It's always the right side. Why is it always the right side?

It's my mouse hand. Mouse hand. Funny. Yeah, so I ran across something that actually really struck a chord with me. There's an article on Noisy, Music by Vice. It's Vice's kind of music area.

It's called The Internet Made Me Hate All My Favorite Artists. And I read through it, and I realized that I would probably feel the same way that I do now, even if I didn't work in the music industry. This ties directly in with last week's talk about being a Luddite. And this guy writes a really funny, pretty long article about how he despises music now because of social media.

And why? How so? Well, there's no mystery anymore. You see your artists being douchebags, and the entire process of promotion is so blatantly obvious these days that you always feel like you're being sold to, even by people who you really like. Well, I mean, in the past, rock stars used to be aloof.

You wouldn't get, you know, you'd never had access to them, and now you have access to everything that they do. Yeah. And, you know, this comes back to don't meet your heroes. Oh, yeah. It's totally about that. I mean, definitely, I've been that way about music since getting into this lovely industry about 15 years ago. For the most part, everybody that I've met, I've walked away thinking less of them, which is not what you want with music.

They're heroes, man. So, yeah, this whole article is basically just about a lot of what we had talked about last week, about how social media and this new world has really kind of destroyed the artist as a hero or someone to look up to and really makes it difficult to get into personas.

So now you need to tell all of your clients to get the hell off social media. You have proof now. You have written proof that it's not good for them. No, I totally agree, and I wish people would do that. I think that there needs to be a bit more mystery with music, but nobody's really biting on that one.

And besides, if I told people to do that, I wouldn't have a job anymore. This is true. I did want to follow up a little bit on our whole discussion last week about being a Luddite and kind of disengaging a bit from social media. I've been doing it, and I've been happier.

I really have been. And I've totally slowed down on posting. You know, I wish I didn't have to sit on social media, you know, most of the work day, but I do because it's part of my job. But what I've been doing, and hopefully this will not get me, cause any repercussions here.

I've been using the unfollow on Facebook. It's been fantastic. Oh, yeah. I've collected, you know, tons of friends over the years. Some of them, you know, personal, some of them work, and some of them are, and for various political reasons, you can't really unfriend people. But the unfollow has been fantastic.

Basically, once a day, I will remove a brand from my feed completely, and I will unfollow a friend, quote unquote, that, that, whose updates just either annoy me or they're useless, or I don't even know why I'm friends with this person. Yeah, the unfollow has been a godsend.

Sure. Yeah, I didn't ever use it because I was always initially worried that I'd be missing out on some key piece of information or something. But you quickly realize that it's all just noise, and I'm so much happier. And Facebook is actually becoming useful to me again. I enjoy looking at my feed.

Wow. I know. See, you know, you can Facebook responsibly. Yes, you can. It's about using the tools well and not getting sucked into what they're trying to sell us, which is follow everything. Yeah, I've, you know, I've been pulling back.

I did that 30-day of no-sharing experiment where I was way happier and much more relaxed. You know a super easy way to do that? Just sign up for Ello. This is true. This is true. It has fallen off. It really has. Just even from last week when I was experiencing that, but I think you were still seeing a pretty hectic feed.

But I think it's pretty much bottomed out for almost everybody, and so is discussion about it. Well, discussion definitely has. It hasn't so much bottomed out. The stuff that I'm finding there from the few people that I do follow is generally longer form and well-written and pretty engaging, but there's not a lot of it.

So when you go back, you know, I think I go back like once every two days now, and then there's a decent amount of stuff. But I stopped really posting there because I didn't have anything to add to the conversation. And if you comment on something, good luck trying to find it again because there's no way to find, you know, older posts except for scrolling through and trying to find them or remembering where it came from.

So it's – yeah, it is not feature complete by any stretch. So – but Clay Shirky has been posting a bunch of good stuff there, and he had a really good Twitter rant that I'll put in the show notes about these smaller – like these smaller social networks. Like Elo, there's another one out now called Meatspace, which I haven't tried yet, and the Tilde Club, which is very funny, which we'll talk about a little bit later.

Okay. But yeah, I'll put the rant in the show notes. He has like a 17-parter. It was a pretty epic Twitter rant. Those kind of rants that made me stop following Kevin Smith on Twitter. Oh, Jesus. He was terrible. I know. 17, 18, 19 tweets in a row, and it's just like, oh, my God.

Yeah, talk about somebody who doesn't know how to use the medium or any – he just doesn't know how to use the internet, period. No, he really doesn't. But hey, his podcast is doing much better than ours. Well, I don't know about that. He's not doing too well.

Oh, really? Yeah. His shows are kind of tanking. Okay. So I did find one cool thing this week, and it was – we talk about drones here and there, and there's these French guys who basically get together in the woods and have drone races. All the track in the back is in French, but it's fun as hell to watch, but I really think that they need to start putting weapons on these things.

We need weaponized drone racing. I'm a little surprised that somebody hasn't dropped this video into After Effects and gone ahead and added some super special effects and lasers shooting around, but it's the first time I've seen – the first video of a drone I've actually really enjoyed. Yeah, they just need to put little – get some Star Wars action figures and put them on top, some Star Wars stormtroopers, and glue them to the top.

That would be – you'd have your perfect Endor racing then. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Comment of the week. Comment of the week comes from Dennis Fong. He writes, Seriously, no-nonsense show.

These guys say it like it is and don't pull any punches while still making it accessible for non-geeks to learn more about tech. Thank you, Dennis. Well, thank you very much, Dennis, and please do rate us on iTunes. He gave us a lovely five-star. We love that. iTunes ratings mean a lot to us. Not to go too inside baseball here, Jason, but Jason and I learned a bit about podcasting this week, and, you know, we've basically realized that the only reason we're ever going to do this is for your love and adoration.

So keep it up. Indeed. Please. Thank you. Thank you.

In the news. Have you been keeping up on your John Oliver? I'm not going to get too into it, but I'm just wondering if you've been watching it. No, I thought they were off the air for the summer. Oh, okay. Well, maybe they are, and I was just behind.

But I've watched the last two just recently, and he started, he did a segment, he does that segment where they do, like, the little clips of all the newscasters beating something into the ground. Yeah. And I love the bit that was about, like, every time we talk about tech, somebody has to say the Jetsons.

So it was, like, just like the Jetsons. Where's my, where's the Jetsons? The Jetsons. The Jetsons. So the Jetsons had a flying car, and apparently, according to news reports, the flying car really could be coming to a road and sky near you. There's a company called Aeromobile, and they've made, basically, prototypes that the thing, damn, it flies, folds up, can go into a normal parking spot, can drive.

I can't wait. Every three years, there's another flying car. Yeah. And they've got video of them all going, and they just never, pardon the pun, they never get off the ground. They never get off the ground. Plus, when I think about reliable and safe technology, I don't think companies in Slovakia, which is where these guys are based, I'm just, I'm not hopping in.

I'm going to get into this thing anytime soon, I'm sure about that. It does look very space-age, but the big problem I have with it is, I mean, you're supposed to drive it on the road, right? Yes. There's no rear bumper, so if anybody just gets up a little too close to you, they can ding your propeller. That's very true, and it looks a bit Batmobile-y.

It is definitely cool-looking. I'll give them that, but there's no way in hell I'm getting in this thing. No. No. Some of the other ones I've seen actually look much cooler, but this one, this one's, you know, it's neat. We'll see. Actually, no, we won't. It's never going anywhere.

Look, we can't even figure out how to let drones fly around in airspace. What are we going to do when everybody gets a flying car? Not going to happen. Oh, man. Drones versus flying cars. There's a future I don't want to live in. No. No, not at all. So we missed this last week because I think we were recording when it happened, but Facebook actually came out and apologized over their real name policy to the LGBT, ABCDEFG community.

Yes. So Chris Cox issued an apology, of course, via Facebook. Do you think Chris Cox is his real name or is he using a fake one? I'm pretty sure because it's with an X. Unless that's his stage name. Because now if it was COXXX, then I'd be with it.

But it's just COX. Okay, gotcha. I really don't see how they're going to enable this. I understand both sides of the argument. I actually really understand Facebook's side of the argument, which is we're trying to create a system in which you are real and we can prove that. But I also get Lee, you know, I'm a stage performer.

This is my name. I don't know. Yeah, or I was beaten by my husband and I don't want to give my real name, but I still need to stay in touch with family. How do you get around that? Yeah, that's true as well. But the way, I mean, as far as the performers and the LGBT thing, I didn't see that as an issue as they have something kind of built in.

You have your normal account under your real name and then you make your page. True. I mean, everybody I know has a page now. That's another frustrating thing with Facebook that I've been blocking out recently. It's like everybody has started to have a page for whatever it is that they do, which is even nothing. So whatever.

There was a way around that already, but, you know, good on Facebook and good with the community. And I'd like to see some sort of system that works. Yeah, I mean, it is what it is. It's going to be a kind of a mess. But the way that they describe what the problem was and how they're getting around it, I give them credit for at least giving it a shot.

Yeah, I agree. And they say, you know, there's several hundred thousand fake name reports every week, which is a lot of data to go through. Yeah, it's a ton. They're so big now that opening up any sort of thing like this. And there's so many people that complain about things.

And it's a massive undertaking for Facebook. It's costing them a lot of money. Well, they make a lot of money, so tough. That is true. And speaking of making a lot of money, I see that you want to argue with me about Uber again. I don't want to argue with you about Uber.

Yeah, you posted the links. I didn't post the Uber improves life, economists agree. That's you. Oh, my bad. Yeah, so damn, I guess I did. There's no way I would post that because I don't believe that.

No, yeah. So they did a poll on a bunch of economists and most of them say that it is – they strongly agree that it's good for economics and 40 percent agree and none of them are uncertain, disagree or strongly disagree. Well, I don't know how good these economists actually are.

But they say that since there's competition, it's good for the markets. That's their basic claim. Yeah, and I understand that. Competition is always good. And a friend of the show and Uber apologist, Fergal, who gets in arguments with me about Uber basically on a daily basis, he sent me the same article last week to which I responded with my article, Don't Believe the Hype, the Sharing Economy, Massive Failing Economy, which I've actually put – talked about on this show I think two weeks ago, but it's back in the show notes and it's a good read.

It's written by an economist, Evgeny Moroves or something like that. I can't pronounce his name, but – Evgeny. It's a really very well-written article about basically these are all flailing stabs at trying to make money for a failing middle class and it's not actually helping us.

Yeah, go back and check out the other show if you want our full take on it. Exactly. We beat that article. I am tired of arguing about Uber. So what about San Francisco? They've apparently created – are working on creating a legal framework where you can legally have an Airbnb house or room that you rent out.

I'm a big fan of this. My entire issue with the sharing economy and Uber and Airbnb and all of these things is that these companies are growing massively without regulations and they're able to get around things like taxes and the trickle down that we have built into our society for companies and for services and San Francisco has basically said, all right, we're putting something in place.

We'll let you keep running here. Fine. But you got to have – you got to play the game just like everybody else does. Yeah, you got to pay your taxes. You have to register so we know who's doing it. Exactly. And you can only have 90-day rentals or like up to 90 days within the year.

Which is fine. Yeah, it's totally fair. And this is all I want. I want regulations. I want these companies to have to deal with the same regulations that everybody else does. Yeah. If this actually passes, this could be a template for other cities to take and make some money.

Yeah. And what Airbnb should do, by the way, if you want to be a really cool, forward-thinking company, if this does pass, go ahead and make this your rule in every city. Don't wait for other cities to come along and regulate you. Just say, here, this is what we've come up with.

This makes sense. Let's implement this everywhere. Well, I think they would probably have a problem with the 90-day limit. If they don't have to abide by the 90-day limit, then they won't because that caps their income. So they're going to want to say, oh, I can have an Airbnb 365 days a year if I have a room that is available for rent.

And if it doesn't break any city ordinances, they're not going to step in and there's no way Airbnb would say, no, no, we're just going to let you only do it for a month and a half or three months. Nah. Right. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I can see that, but I think it would be nice and forward thinking of them if they just implemented it automatically.

But I get it. Yeah. At the end of the day, it's still about money. And speaking of it still being about money, Amazon is in a bit of trouble. What'd they do this time? Well, there's a lawsuit going on right now, and it's a huge labor case. Basically, apparently, Amazon, well, apparently, I don't think either of us are going to be surprised about this.

Amazon treats its employees like shit. Okay. So, I mean, so does Walmart. So does everywhere. Yeah, yeah. But Amazon's the big gorilla these days. So somebody is suing them. Let's see. What's the exact name of the place?

It's Integrity Staffing Solutions Incorporated versus Busk. And somehow Amazon is standing in there and it's totally involved. And there's a very long article talking about it, which I have not read all the way through because it got extremely boring. So I'm kind of more waiting for this to shake out. Okay.

Yeah, this is a really long article. They need to put a TLDR version up top. Yeah, I know. I know. They really do. Get on that, someone. So in talking about our Internet of Things things. Yes. There's a new company out called Seed.

Uh-huh. Seed Labs. And they've come up with a little chip and they want to put it in everything. But the interesting thing is it uses Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi. I like that. I don't know if it really matters much. I don't think it really matters much either. But, you know.

Yeah, if you get close enough to anything that broadcasts and receives, you can figure a way around it. But at least with Bluetooth, you have to be on location instead of Wi-Fi, which can then come in through the router from the outside and turn the lights on.

In theory, it's a bit more secure because you'd actually have to be nearby to be able to hack in as opposed to just anywhere. Yeah. So I like that. But we'll see how it goes. I mean, it's a new thing. But they're saying it's an idiot-proof Internet of Things. Well, there is nothing idiot-proof in the world.

Yeah, there you go. My issue with this whole thing was the title, which is Seed is Creating a Truly Idiot-Proof Internet of Things. Seed, I'm going to send my dad over to test some stuff out. Yeah, seriously. I'm just saying. Yes. It might be idiot-proof, but it isn't parent-proof.

Yeah, I just don't see that. It's cool. I mean, I love this technology. I want to see what people do with it. So get on it. Let's see what happens. I can't wait for my refrigerator to text me. I can. So we talked about Product Hunt before and made much fun of it.

Yes. And now they're rich. Of course they are. $6.1 million seed round. For what? It's a fucking list of other people that have gotten money. Yep. I don't understand why they took the money, why they need the money.

If it was going so well, why did you take the money? What are they going to do that's going to make it that much better that they need millions of dollars for? It's $6.1 million for an RSS feed. With voting. Oh. Oh. You can like things.

Yes. And now they have celebrity hunts. So Nas is in there doing his celebrity hunting. Oh, God. Yeah. What's wrong with the world? It's a fucking circle jerk. That's all it is. And I posted a link to Medium called Making Product Hunt where the founder talks about their trials and tribulations where there were absolutely none.

These kids just got lucky and went straight up. Yeah. It's the same argument that I have with art a lot of the time, which is, you know, I'll go to some crazy-ass art show and somebody will have dribbled blue paint on a canvas and then took a dump on it or something. And I'll go, that's not art.

I could do that. Anybody could do that. And anybody could have done this. And we could have put this together in an afternoon. It took them five days. We could have done it in an afternoon. Yeah. But we didn't. But we didn't. And we don't have the $6.1 million in our bank accounts.

Yeah. I think that's the story of the grumpy old geeks. It truly is. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Didn't, because we thought it was stupid. Yeah. And something else that's stupid, apparently a JetBlue passenger was bitching and moaning on Twitter and they booted her. I got a problem with that.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I do not think you should be able to do that. Not at all. Their airline, they can do what they want, but it's wrong. It's absolutely wrong. It is wrong. And I'm really surprised that the airline industry has not come up with policies about this yet because we keep hearing about it.

There's a lot of this going on. Didn't this even actually do a throwback to Kevin Smith? Didn't? Exactly. This goes back to Kevin Smith, doesn't it? He was the one that kind of started this whole trend by tweeting Southwest while he was on a flight. And he ended up getting pulled off the flight, didn't he? And he was banned because he was too fat.

They wanted him to pay for two seats, I believe. Yeah. And I've seen him. He needs two seats. He is a big dude. But yeah, I mean, I should have every right to sit on a plane and if I'm having a delay, tweet about it and bitch. Yeah. Well, just you can do it.

Don't do it on JetBlue, apparently. Apparently not. So Google Plus we've talked about and mocked regularly for the Deadpool that it seems to be. And they're saying that they're in it for the long haul. They've got a new head, David Bisbris.

Bisbris. Bisbro? Bisbro. Yo, bro. Yo, bro. He's saying that they're going full steam ahead. They've got a new office. And if you look at the picture of them on the Recode article, they've apparently got a ball pit.

Yes, yes. I'm sure they're spending a lot of time doing awesome things over there. I mean, this is like the dream job. I almost want to apply because they'll just pay us a ton of money and we'll just sit there and go, huh?

Hmm. I don't know. Let's go sit in the balls. We built something so good. How come there's nobody here? I know. Let's build a Tumbleweed app. Jesus Christ. Oh, yeah. I don't know. I don't know how it's going to go, what they can do to make it better.

I was hoping that their design was going to get better when they picked up Kevin Rose's old company, Oink, because they had some pretty good designers in there. Nope. So far, it's still about the same. I mean, there's nothing inherently wrong with Google+.

It's nice. I think the design is pretty nice. I love the circles and, ooh, you can drag and drop friends in and out of things and you can create your own list a lot easier than Facebook, but there's no one there. That's the problem. No one's there. And you're not going to get people there.

Hello, just prove that. And I've got like four friends there that will comment on stuff that I post there, but that's it. I have 10,000 plus followers, almost 11,000 now, and the same four people comment on my stuff and everybody else just kind of blows past it.

They probably do exactly what we do. We go and we post something, we leave. We don't look around. I used to check it out all the time because the photography stuff was great and the way that they present photography is beautiful. But nobody goes. That's the problem. I haven't even logged in.

No, I can't say I haven't logged in because they force you to have a Google plus account to be able to do things like a YouTube account and all that sort of stuff. But I have not posted or looked at my profile in probably three years. I go there every week just because I pimp our shit, but we'll see if, I don't know what they're going to pull out of their ass to make this work, but I wish them luck.

I do. Well, apparently since the grumpy old geeks are on Google plus, if any of you out there actually use it, send us a message over there. We'll see. A little experiment. Tumbleweeds. Security. Ha! Now it's time for the segment on grumpy old geeks where Jason basically has a cow and I sit back and get really depressed.

Take it away, Jason. I'll see what I can do this time. So there is a zero-day exploit in Bugzilla. Okay. It's very, it's very meta because what people post to Bugzilla usually are zero-day bugs. Yes, that they find.

So, yeah, this is a, this is kind of a, not a good one. Um, and one of the things that I really pulled out of the, this was an article on Krebs on security. I saw it a couple other places, but there's a guy there, uh, Shahar Tal, who's a vulnerable, vulnerability research team leader for a company called checkpoint.

Yes. Now, I like this guy. I like this guy a lot because he, he kind of parrots some of the things that we've said many times about open source software. Let me, uh, let me state from the record here. Okay. The perception that many eyes have looked at an open source code or an open source code and it's secure because so many people have looked at it, I think is false.

Duh, no shit. Because no one really audits code unless they're committed to it or they're paid for it. Yeah. This is why we can see such foolish bugs in very popular code. This bug was there for 10 years. Wow. So somebody is very upset that this was finally brought to light.

I am sure. Totally. Uh, that's insane. Um, I, Mr. Shahar Tal, I tip of the hat to you. That is so fucking spot on. It's ridiculous. And let's not even talk about open source code. Uh, personal example, Jason, I was, I was actually, uh, a bit slammed all week this week.

And I had a client that was like, we need this done and we need this done immediately. And I tossed it over to you basically just to say, Hey, do you have any free time? Can you knock this out for me? Uh, you were busy as well. So I kind of just, uh, picked it up at late at night. I worked on this little project a little bit. I had a bit of a stumbling block.

I tossed you some code really quick just to have you look it over because my eyes were dead. Um, and you said, well, you helped me find the problem, but you also said, my God, the programming on this is horrible. And the security is complete and utter shit to which I responded. Yes, I'm aware of that.

However, I'm not getting paid enough to fix it. And I have taken, I've gone to the client and said, I need to completely redo a lot of this stuff, but I need money to do it. There's, I'm not getting paid. This is why there's shit code everywhere. Well, to be honest, uh, your code could be fixed in about three minutes.

Well, but that's not the point. And I would have to go through the entire site and redo it because it's all existing framework of code that was written years ago when that was okay. Oh, it was never okay. We didn't know any better. We didn't know any better back then.

Yes. Yes. Cast your ints. That's all I got to say. Um, I did fix that little bit of code. Oh, good. Good. That one's free client. So, but, uh, he's right. He's right. I mean, that's, that's the reality of the situation, especially for open source.

It's nobody is going over this code with a fine tooth comb and, uh, they won't unless you're getting paid to do it. I beg to differ. There are people that are going over it with a fine tooth comb. Those are basically the bad guys. The ones putting in the zero day exploits. Exactly. Uh-huh. Yep. So on to happier news, Twitter is suing the U S government.

Okay. I like this. Uh, they're suing over the ability to disclose the surveillance orders that they get. All right. I like that too. Yeah. In January, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Facebook, they all came to an agreement with the government saying, okay, we're there.

The government says, we'll let you disclose these, but you can't say the exact numbers. You have to give a range, which can be like from one to a thousand or one to 1 million. Yeah. We got between one and 1 million requests this year. Okay. There you go. There you go. See, we've done our due diligence. Here it is. And Twitter says that's balderdash and, and are actually suing saying, look, it's within our, you know, our constitutional rights for freedom of speech to be able to do this.

And so you go girl. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I like this. I'm on your side for once, Twitter. The only problem with this is you're suing the U S government, which is going to cost me money because I have to pay for the government's defense. Wait, hold on. I have an idea. How about the government rescinds the NFL's tax exempt status to help pay for this lawsuit?

We who not going to happen. Connecting it all together. There you go. So the whole Silk Road thing is going on right now. The, the court case and all the discovery and the, uh, the defense for the guy who's up for the Silk Road, they brought in some, you know, security guys and they looked at what the FBI said that they did to get access to the Silk Road servers and, and, you know, called bullshit on it.

And the, the FBI and the prosecutors have basically come back and said, okay, well, maybe that's not what happened. But even if we didn't do it this way, it was still perfectly within our legal rights to hack the server. So it doesn't matter. Huh?

Yeah. Because the server was technically in Iceland and it was a, it was a leased server. So the guy didn't actually own it and he was using, using it for nefarious purposes, which broke the terms of service with the people that he was leasing it from. So they're just saying, yeah, foreign soil used for criminal purposes.

We can get in there if we want to. Okay. Well, kind of, it makes sense. I suppose they are okay with that. We'll kind of see how this shakes out, but I, I, you know, that's a, it's a hard argument to, to go against. Yeah. Yeah. It really is.

Uh, you know, those terms of service are going to get you every time, but it's interesting that they lied about it the first time. Yeah. And now they're kind of backing up saying, eh, maybe not, but we can do it anyway. It doesn't matter. Okay. Our first reason wasn't really valid, but here we found 20 more. So to follow up with this, the Atlantic put out an interesting article this week, which ties right into this.

It says a year after the death of the Silk Road, dark net markets are booming. I love the shot that they used on this article of a guy like snorting heroin at his desk, at his desk with the laptop and what could probably be Google glasses sitting there. Ridiculous.

Yeah. But you know, you cut the head off the Hydra, then another two pop up. So, well, you know, surprising, uh, I still have not, uh, not delved into the dark net, but, uh, you know, Hey, we've already had the first artist promote their album release on dark net. What are you going to do? Yeah.

Well, you know, I, I guess you have a local hookup for your heroin and your guns. So why, why bother shopping elsewhere? I don't think you need a hookup for the guns. They're pretty easy to find in this country. Well, if you want to, you know, untraceable. Yeah. Untraceable, no, uh, serial number kind of not coming back to you gun.

Right. It was a little, little tougher. You got to kind of go, go across the tracks to get those, but yeah, you still don't have to go very far. Yeah. Now the Dubai police are going to do something very interesting. Now they're going to be wearing Google glass with a facial recognition software, looking for bad guys.

Okay. They also have a Lamborghini. So they're, they're, they're forward thinking and loaded. It's a, it's just a bizarre story. I don't know how the hell it's going to work as the Google glass camera. Isn't that good to begin with. So you get fuzzy pictures of people and then you have, you know, and you're connected matches.

So what database particularly, and, uh, how fast is it going? How secure is the Google glass network? Are there zero day exploits on the software that's involved there? Because everything I hear about anything related to Android is not good. Um, yeah, I don't trust this at all, but then again, it's Dubai police and I'm not going there anytime soon.

No, definitely not going to Dubai. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, Hey, what do you, I mean, I thought it was, I thought it was hilarious. Driving around in your Lamborghini wearing Google glasses. They, you know, the, the Dubai police have become the ultimate douchebags.

Yes, they are the glass holes of the future. Now you do go to the UK quite a bit. So I would say, I would say if you do go to the UK, don't post any revenge porn because it can land you into jail for up to 14 years. Well, I don't, I don't know what 14 years is in, in, uh, pounds, but I think it's a lot.

Let's see if the convert 1.24, I don't know. Uh, I have no revenge porn available to me to post, but, uh, okay, good to know. Um, I, I support this. I'm down with this. I think it's, uh, I think it's a bad thing. I think 14 years might be a little bit ridiculous, but it's a little excessive.

It's a little excessive. Now, 14 years for the guy that runs the site that collects all the revenge porn and is making a ton of money off of it. Okay. I'm down with 14 years for that dude. But for the, uh, you know, jacked up horny and probably drunk 14 year old kid that posts up the shot of his girlfriend that she, you know, sent to him that 14 years is ridiculous.

Just my thought on that. And speaking of that, uh, let's, we got to talk about it. Uh, Jennifer Lawrence just, uh, did a big article for a vanity fair cover interview, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, she calls the photo hacking that she had a sex crime, um, crime.

Yes. Sex crime. No. Explain. Well, the crime was the fact that somebody hacked into her cloud storage, which can hold anything it's there's, there's no sex involved. It's, it's hardly, uh, the guy, the hacker's fault that she is a bit of a narcissist.

Let's be honest. I don't know where she finds the time to take that many naked photos of herself, but, uh, Hey, there you go. So she had a shit ton of nude photos there. Guy just hacked in the crime was hacking into a secure account and has nothing to do with sex.

And I don't really know if her take on it, I've seen people saying that even everybody that has looked at photos is committing a sex crime. No, there was one crime here. It was the hacker. That's it. Okay. There you go. That's my thought on it. That is Brian's take on sex crime.

That does not mean I feel bad for all these women. I do. I certainly do. I think it's a horrible thing that has happened to them and there was a crime, but, uh, I don't believe that it's a sex crime. I know how, I know what, where she's coming from with feeling violated, being violated. Oh, totally. I totally understand that.

I think, I think what it actually does is it cheapens actual sex crimes, you know? Wow. Well, cheapen because, well, not, not, I know, I know how it sounded, but you know, rape is a violent crime.

This is not a violent crime. This is not a violent crime at all. And again, I mean, you know, calling it a sex crime just because you took a lot of pictures of your boobs instead of pictures of butterflies. And that's what people hacked in and stole. It's not a sex crime. Okay. Moving on. Cause we're going to get a lot of trouble.

I, we, we just don't want to cheapen sex crimes. Exactly. Jesus. So, uh, there's a, there's a, there's a cool post that Stu over at know before put up this morning. It's worth a read. I'm going to put it in the show notes cause just go check it out. It's a history of Russian cyber crime in five minutes.

And it basically, it's all Putin's fault. That's a TLDR version. Yeah, actually that's a good summary. I did it. It was a nice read. It takes you five minutes. Read it. It's really interesting. Um, yeah, it basically is all Putin's fault. Okay.

I got to stop now. So Putin is, I can't, I can't even make the joke. We're done. At the library. I'm reading a very, very, very, very long book now called Shantaram, a novel by Gregory David Roberts.

Okay. It's like 944 pages. That's nothing. It's long. Well, it's, it's on audible. So it is, I think 42 hours of book. Okay. That's, that's a lot of, of listening. Yeah. I'm only about 10 hours into it.

Really good. Okay. It is really, really good. It's about a guy who escapes from a maximum security prison in Australia and then flees to Bombay and his trials and tribulations in Bombay. So far, that's all, that's as far as I got. He's in Bombay hanging out with criminals.

It's very, it's a very good read though. I'm really, really liking it. They're a tech element to this or none whatsoever. I'm just reading a novel. I wanted something that wasn't sci-fi or techie and was long. And this came up. It had like four and a half stars. I'm like, yeah, I'll give it a shot. And it's, it's been pretty, pretty damn interesting.

It's a, it's a nice change too, to not read, you know, sci-fi stuff. Yeah. I mean, but my last couple of novels have been crime novels and that kind of thing. So kind of, kind of goes with that trend. Gotcha. Yeah. I've been trying to work myself off sci-fi for, I think I need a little bit of a breather as well.

Um, the last one that I, the last sci-fi book that I just finished, I finally finished The Handmaid's Tale by, uh, uh, by Margaret Atwood who wrote the Oryx and Crake series, which we both just finished reading and was awesome. Uh, Handmaid's Tale is kind of her bigger novel. It's, it's often on, you know, the top, you know, a hundred dystopian sci-fi books of all time lists and all that.

You've told us about it for three weeks in a row. How did you like it? How did you like the damn book? Uh, I liked Oryx and Crake a lot better. It was really good, big ideas. The, it took half the book to even really kind of get going and get into it. The ending was wretchedly horrible and you don't really know what actually happened, but then she followed it up with a postscript that was written way in the future and people looking back on the time.

That part was awesome. I loved the very end of it. Big ideas, not the best book. Okay. So skip it. Yeah, I'd say skip it. Read Oryx and Crake. That's a lot better. Cool. And I also read Kitchen Confidential because I needed something that was nonfiction and non-sci-fi. And I had seen the Anthony Bourdain show on CNN that just premiered and was like, I'm really into this guy.

He's really interesting. And I loved every second of this book. Yeah. I loved it, loved it, loved it. Can't recommend it enough. It's a world I know absolutely nothing about, which is, you know, professional cooking. And he is one of the most interesting people that I'm aware of in the world right now.

Really weird, interesting, funny dude. Yeah. He's written a couple of follow-ups to the book that weren't as good. Right. But Kitchen Confidential started the whole thing off and started his career. And I love Anthony Bourdain. I've seen all of his shows, all of his series, and I just, I love him.

I got no problem with the guy. He's cool as shit. Yeah, I agree. Really, really enjoyed the book. Can't recommend it enough if you haven't read it. I know it's old, but it was good. Software Apps and Gadgets We've spent a lot of time on this show talking about social media and the different sites that are out there and the problems with posting and how people are trying to kind of avoid that and this never-ending, you know, this stuff exists forever.

So some people are going through and, like, deleting all their posts manually after three weeks to try to stay away from it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I stumbled across an article on Salon that talks about big data. It's called Smart People Prefer Curly Fries and Other Insights Gleaned from Analyzing Your Social Media Accounts.

It's a good read, but most interesting to me are some of the sites that are out there which they talk about that basically go through your social media and try to make predictions based on what you do there. So I thought we'd do a little experiment here, Jason. Okay, let's do it.

Let's bring them up and let's see who we are.

We're going to start off with youarewhatyoulike.com. This is the snazziest. It's the prettiest by far. So your openness, what do you have? What's your – Let's start with this analyzes basically your Facebook. This one's Facebook only.

Yes, this is Facebook. And then it attempts to get you a bunch of different metrics about you. So the first one is your openness. So it's conservative and traditional versus liberal and artistic. Agreed, yes. And I am 59% liberal and artistic, 41% conservative and traditional, which I would say is pretty spot on because I'm incredibly socially liberal, but I am increasingly financially and regulatorily conservative.

Well, it pegs me at 56% conservative and 44% liberal and artistic, which is completely wrong. I don't know. You're more conservative than I am, I'd say. So I think that's pretty spot on. On what topics? Most. No. All right.

All right. It also does tend to match you up. It brings in three examples of your friends that are either most liberal or most conservative. And just judging at those pictures, I will not mention any names. I agree 100%. Yeah, they got that. They got that pretty much right. Yeah. So the second one is conscientiousness.

I am 53% spontaneous and flexible, 47% well-organized. I am 54% well-organized and 46% spontaneous and flexible. For me, this is 100% false. I am just well-organized. End of story. Even my spontaneity is penciled in.

Yeah. I honestly don't know. Yeah. I can't tell you. I'm not that spontaneous. So this is actually pretty spot on. Yeah. Okay. So the next one is extroversion. I am 58% shy and reserved and 42% outgoing and active.

One of the problems I'm starting to see in this is there's not a lot of swing. So either we're both kind of middle-of-the-road people or it's just not a very good algorithm. Yeah. For shy and reserved, I'm at 54% and outgoing, I'm at 46%, which should be shy and reserved should be in the 80 percentile range, I think.

Yeah. I guess, well, you get an automatic amount of points just for being on social media because how shy and reserved could you be? Listenless, I am 56% assertive and competitive as opposed to 44% warm, trusting, and cooperative. I'm 52 and 48 on those.

All right. Yeah. Well, I definitely think that I ramp up my social media postings to be kind of angry and absurd. Okay, so this next one, this last one, which is your neuroticism, this is the kicker right here. Are you calm and relaxed or emotional and stressed?

I am 57% calm and relaxed, 43% emotional and stressed. I am exactly the same. Really? Exactly the same. Oh, and that is completely wrong for both of us because we are incredibly emotional and stressed. 70% emotional and stressed, yeah. All right. So, and then it also gives you personality twins and personality opposites from your friends, which is rather interesting.

And one of the kind of crazy, and this is what people don't think about, you go to this site and you go, I'm just going to analyze myself. No, it is analyzed every single one of your friends as well when you log in. So here's the really disturbing part. My personality twins are five of the craziest chicks I know.

I don't, I, and I barely talk to these people. I don't, this is scary. You know, the weird thing is my personality twins are people I all, I really respect and like, but never, ever talk to. Yeah. My opposites are some of my closest friends. Yeah, mine too. Interesting.

Very strange. All right, let's move on to the second one. We are going to apply magic sauce. This is ugly. It's JSON. It gives you the results back in JSON. How hard would it have been to do some fucking pie charts? Well, yeah. So apparently I am 0.052879 gay.

Oh, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Let me see. I had that come up for me. Relationship none less. This is, this makes no sense. I'm 0.08% gay. I, I, basically it's the higher the number, the better chance that you are. It kind of nailed that I'm married. Um, but then it put me at 0% chance of being in a relationship, which is weird.

Um, it thinks I'm female. It thinks I'm a Christian. Uh, no, I got zero on all the religions. Um, I'm supposed to be a lawyer apparently, or a nurse. I'm 0.53 for intelligence. Yeah. Well, I don't know what the hell this thing is.

Oh, I'm, yeah. I'm, I'm Christian and Catholic. Right. So. I also may be a lesbian. Well, I'm not too into this one. This one's got some weird stuff going on and it would certainly help. I mean, come on guys. It takes 10 seconds to take some JSON and put it into a nice lookable format.

So in my age is apparently 26.59. Oh, I got older than I am. I must, I'm a curmudgeon. Oh, I'm a Mormon too. I got, I got high on Jewish. All right. So you can take, you can take a look at that one as well, but that one takes a bit more time and effort and it seems to be a little bit more off.

The third one that we found is called analyze words. And this one goes through basically all your tweets. So this is a Twitter based one. It doesn't go through that many of them. It only picked the 777 most recent words for me. I got 739. Which isn't very many words. That's not that many tweets.

No, no, it's not. So, uh, this breaks down your tweets into emotional style, social style, and thinking style, uh, emotional style. I am 78% upbeat. I'm 74, but I'm also 77% worried.

I'm only 40 on the worried. Hmm. I think I, my tweeting is basically usually just grumpy old geek stuff. So that probably makes sense. Uh, I'm 54% angry and 42% depressed. I am 67% angry and 52% depressed.

Okay. So social style, we have plugged in. I'm average at 50%, 54, uh, personable high, 62%, uh, 49, arrogant and distant 61%. Damn it. I only got 54 on that one.

I figured I would, I would be off the charts. I thought it would be for you too. Maybe they're not bringing in the fights that you get in with people. I must not do like, uh, replies. Yeah. See, this is the problem with this. It doesn't have enough data. No, I agree. Uh, spacey slash Valley girl, which I thought was a weird thing.

That is bizarre. But if you roll over, it gives you the little description of what it is. And it's, this one's funny. Excitable. If you rank high in Valley girl, you love recounting your newest story with lots of LOLs. Uh, I'm 60% at that. I'm only 50. Okay. I'll stick with 50.

All right. Thinking style. Analytic. I am 41. I am 66. Ooh, you're the smart one. That's right. Sensory. 49. Uh, 40. In the moment. 35. I'm 58. And isn't Twitter all about being in the moment?

Everybody should be a hundred. Yeah. Oh, if you're posting links and shit, probably not. Yeah, I guess not. So, uh, just some interesting stuff. I, this, uh, the big data polls, I don't think are really quite there yet. As we saw from so many things, just being kind of hovering around the middle ground.

But, uh, this is scary stuff when they dial us in. Yeah. But all that I can come out of this with is feeling that I've just wasted 10 minutes of my life because none of it has any actionable data for me. It's just, okay. It's kind of like a, a really bad version of a digital mirror.

Ah, but the point of the whole article is that it's not supposed to have any value for you. It's supposed to have value for other people towards you. Oh, the advertisers. Exactly. Or potential employers or whatever. Okay.

Interesting. And, uh, I must not be that smart because I hate curly fries. Yeah, me too. I'll take waffle or straight any day. Yeah. Now I'm hungry. God, I want some steak fries. Okay. So I found a new website this week called a point lit. It, it lets other people schedule your time based on your Google calendar.

Hey, you can tie this into all your, uh, your, your, uh, your Uber profile and then your Airbnb. And there you go. This is how we're all going to make money in the future. According to some leading economists that were not mentioned earlier. Okay. That was a tangent. So anyway, I was, uh, checking out a new podcast that I'll talk about in the next segment.

And he had openings to be a guest. And I found it through that because it's like, oh, here are the slots where you can come be a guest on the show. And I filled out the little form and then it zoomed off. And then a couple of days later, I got a thing back says, Hey, you're, you're confirmed to be on our show. I'm like, cool. That worked out pretty well.

All right. So I liked it. I like it. It. And the next one is a cycloramic. Do you remember that app? I talked about it a couple of times. It's the one where you set your phone down and it uses the vibrating motor to spin it in a circle. Yeah. I do remember that. Yep.

I thought it was going to be dead because with the iPhone six, if you don't have a square case, it's just going to fall over. Well, the iPhone or IO, the latest iOS has panoramic built in and walks you through doing them as well. Yeah. But you have to handhold it and all that stuff. This, you set it on a table and it just does it, you know, perfectly.

So, cause it's on a flat plane. So you don't have that little arrow going up and down kind of thing. I just, I always just thought the app was neat. So these guys have come up with the most clever workaround I've seen. This is pretty good. Yeah. You take the little charging block, that little USB charging block, stick it on the table and then stick your phone between the prongs and that, that's your, your flat base now.

I just thought that was clever as hell. That's a, there's some smart people over there that came up with a, basically a Hail Mary ditch pass to save their, save their app and they did it. So good job. Yeah, seriously. Good job. I figured they were going to have to sell little things that you had to carry with you. Most of the time, well, you still have to carry it with you, but a lot of times you have that in your bag.

Somebody's, somebody's got one. They are missing out on a market opportunity to create a device and sell it. I've seen those kickstarted and most of them have failed. Shocking. It is. Now I have two WordPress links. I am so in love with your first one because that is the most useful thing to me because part of my part of my, let me, let me tell people what it is.

Sorry, leaping ahead. Yes. It's called what WordPress theme is that? And it is, uh, unsurprisingly at what WP theme is that.com. I have bookmarked this. Yes. Throw, throw a domain at it and we'll tell you what theme they're using. This is beyond useful for me, especially for the smaller clients that, that kind of force us into using WordPress, which we've discussed ad nauseum.

But, uh, you know, part of my creative process working with a client and coming up with design is go find a couple sites that you like, tell me what you like about them, et cetera, et cetera. And this is invaluable now because now I can go find the theme that they actually really seem to like and, and without having to fuck around.

Yeah. Then you can just take it, customize it for your client and you're done. Bob's your uncle. This is fantastically useful. We got to fit that in, in every show somewhere. Don't we? Bob's your uncle. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The next one is from a WPMU dev.org, which they generally put out crap.

Uh, I'm a member there cause they have some tools that I use for clients, but this, uh, article, it's a, it's not even a listicle because they forgot to put the number in it's a powerful must have tools for every WordPress developer. Yeah. They really missed an opportunity with the titling and numbering here, which is, which is weird because most of their articles are listicles.

So I don't know, I don't know who like phoned in that day, but, uh, they missed a, missed a calling there. Um, there's a lot of tools in here, most of which I've never heard of me. So I'm going to go through this whole list and check them all out and see if there's anything that I can actually use.

But, uh, some of the stuff looks really handy. Yeah. There seems to be a couple of things in there that actually might be of use, but I'll let you do the legwork on that one. Of course. Now though, um, what was the one here? Let me pull it up here is there's one that basically gives you a command line version into where, yeah, of course, WP dash CLI command line interface for WordPress.

So you can automate a bunch of stuff and just do it straight from the command line. No, that's great, which is great for me. I'm always in a shell somewhere. So yeah, if you're, if you're stuck dealing with the abyss that is WordPress, go check out this list and hopefully you can pull something out of it that will make your life a little easier.

You're always in a shell. We didn't get that from you are what you like.

Media candy. I've got a couple of new podcasts this week. Okay. Which is probably the last thing I need when I'm trying to get through a 42 hour book and work. Yeah. Um, so the first one I got is called new tech city. This has been around a while and it's done by a professional radio people, but I noticed it because it jumped to the top of the tech news, uh, ratings and iTunes.

I'm like, who are the hell are these guys? Cause I don't have that many ratings and they're like unstoppable. You can't get rid of them now. Right. So yeah, new tech city is kind of, it's kind of like our show talking about, you know, the effects of technology on people, but they don't use tech jargon like we do sometimes.

Right. It's a really interesting show. I actually listened to about 30 episodes of it so far cause they're fairly short. And if you 2X them, then you can, you know, squeak through them. The first one I found, I sent to you that you need to check out and it talks about backing tracks in live bands in live shows.

Right. Yeah. It's a, it's a fun little story. No, I'm definitely going to listen to it. That's a, I just didn't get the chance to get around to it and I don't want to listen to it at a two speed cause that drives me insane. But, uh, this, it looks like a really good podcast. It's on my list of things that, uh, I'll start listening to a little bit. No, it's very good.

It's actually very good. And it's really good for people who are not like super tech savvy. Right. Right. Yeah. But it was well-produced, very well-produced. Maybe I'll have my dad listen to it. There you go. So my next one is called show me your mic. This is total insider baseball for podcasters.

Now do you listen to this just to get upset? No, I actually found out about this because Jordan Cooper was on one of the latest episodes and he turned me on to it and he said he pimped us on there, which he did. So thank you, Jordan. Appreciate it. No, shut up. And I ended up listening to a bunch of the episodes.

It's, it's only like half about gear and then just half about shooting the shit about podcasting. It's a very interesting show. Is this the one that you're going to be getting on? Uh, yes. This is the one. So I'll be on this on November. I think I'm recording it November 18th.

Okay. So I don't know how long he, uh, sits on them for, but it should be, uh, up soon after that, I'm guessing. So we'll put a link in when, when I'm done. Excellent. That'll be fun. Uh, so last Friday while we were recording our grumpy old geeks episode, um, two tweets went out to identical tweets from David Lynch and Mark Frost.

And the tweet said, dear Twitter friends, that gum you like is going to come back in style. Hashtag damn good coffee. If you know what that means, you are already quivering with excitement and anticipation. If you do not, it is Twin Peaks, the TV series that ran back in 90 and 91 that actually kept me from going out on Friday nights until it was over because we didn't have things like DVRs and a series of other technological miracles.

Um, I'm so beyond excited about that. Uh, basically over that weekend, people started to freak out. And then on Monday morning, they gave us a gift, which is a special Twin Peaks announcement on YouTube, a short video announcing that the show is going to be returning as a Showtime limited series.

Yeah. Like nine episodes in 2016. I cannot fucking wait. You're going to have to wait a little bit, but they did just re-release it on Blu-ray. So you can go get that and re-watch it all. Yes. If you've never watched the show, it is by far probably the best TV show that has ever been made.

Uh, so amazing. So wonderful. Really groundbreaking. We wouldn't have half the shows that are out there. Uh, now if it weren't for Twin Peaks and I'm very excited to see it come back. So apparently it's going to be, I can't wait to start hearing the casting announcements because it sounds like a lot of the same cast will be returning.

It's 25 years later. I'd also like to, uh, talk about a quick book called Reflections, an oral history of Twin Peak by Brad Dukes. So if you are a Twin Peaks fan, go check out this book. It just came out a couple, I think about a month or two ago. Oh really? And I got it, I got it for my roommate who is a huge Twin Peaks fan and he bought the Blu-rays and we're, we're sitting on them trying to figure out when we can just, you know, binge watch them.

And I saw this book and I bought it for him and he said it was really good. So check that out. I'll put the link in the show notes. Have you thought about expanding your, uh, does it have legs to TV series? That might be interesting to see how well Twin Peaks is, whether the 25 years. No, we don't have time to do a two hour movie once a week.

So we moved it to every other week in trying to do an actual TV series. Oh Jesus. Yeah. The one I would really like to do though, they just came out with the full set is Hill Street Blues. I never watched that. I love that show. That show was so good when I was a kid.

I don't know if it has legs and I'm not about to spend 180 bucks to find out, but it's out there for you diehard fans. All right. So speaking of old things, uh, one of my, what I'm basically calling my second favorite album of all time is now 20 years old, uh, underworld dub no bass with my head, man has just been re-released in what they call the deluxe.

No, I call the deluxe remastered super fantastico edition, but they're actually technically calling the super deluxe 20th anniversary remaster. Um, this is like your, I like your name better. Super fantastico. Yeah, I agree. Uh, this is a groundbreaking album. It kind of really got me into EDM and electronic dance music.

Um, but it's also like, it's one of those albums that you can just have on, uh, you can either engage with it completely and pay attention or it just kind of washes over you in the background. One of my favorite albums of all time. I cannot recommend it highly enough. And I'm usually not one to go out and spend a ton of money on mastered for iTunes remixes and redone things.

But, uh, this is like the equivalent of four CDs worth of outtakes, uh, tracks that haven't been released. Um, you know, original versions. It's unbelievable and really, really good. So I cannot recommend that enough. Excellent.

Uh, and speaking of older musicians that I was really into, uh, David J is actually putting out a book about his, uh, he was in Bauhaus and Love and Rockets. He's a bit of an odd guy. I always kind of really liked them. Um, Love and Rockets being one of the first bands that I've ever actually worked for.

Um, you know, he's kind of creepy and weird, like likes magic and Wicca and all this sort of stuff. And so he has written a book called, uh, what the hell is it called? Sorry. That's bad on my part. Um, who killed Mr. Moonlight, Bauhaus, Black Magic, and Benediction, which I'm really looking forward to reading.

And, uh, I've already kind of, uh, I want to buy it. I can't buy it yet because it's obviously, you know, it's one of those things that the ebook is not available on Amazon. You can do a pre-order, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I really liked David J, but now he has annoyed me and I would like to thank, I would like to give a tip of the hat to Fred of the show, Andy Stochansky for getting me pissed off about this one.

Uh, he is on Kickstarter and he is kickstartering or crowdfunding his promotional tour for the book. Oh my God. Will these people ever learn? Pick up a dictionary and find out what promotional book tour is.

You don't get it funded. You're doing it to sell your book. This is so douchey. It is pretty fucking douchey. Now in his defense, he isn't just going to go around and sit at Barnes and Noble and sign the book. He is trying to do it as almost a tour.

So technically he is, I guess, kickstartering a tour, uh, where he's going to play some live music. He's going to do Q and A's. Um, but still, come on, man. You can still do that at a Barnes and Noble. Sorry. You can do that without us paying for it. Uh, cause I went to a Liam Clancy signing and he brought out his guitar and this was at Barnes and Noble in New York and he played some songs and then we signed his book and he signed our books and we bought them and he made money.

Yeah. The entire point. And by the way, at books at, at these promotional tours for books now, they do require that you actually buy the book if you want to get it signed. And so you are going out there to have us buy your book and that is how you will make your money. Do not make us fund your promo tour for it. Okay. Sorry, David J.

I really like you, but damn, whoever came up with this idea. Slap them. And he's only looking for 12 grand. He's got to have 12 grand. Come on. You'd figure he's been in these bands and you know, they've both done their, their second round of touring just to make money. Bauhaus did it and Love and Rockets has done as well.

So come on anyways, let moving on to something that I thought was much more interesting. The BBC is going to be launching a BBC music, which will be a, well, we're not all really all that sure what it's going to be yet, but it's very exciting that they're actually trying to get involved in the, in the new music age and to promote the launch of it.

They did a cover of God only knows with about 10 gazillion musicians in it and a very high budget. Okay. For the video. I haven't seen it yet. So I have to check it out after the show. It's a, well, God only knows is an amazing song to begin with and it's very interesting. They have a lot of really interesting people in there.

Uh, it's stuck out for me as there's Lord sings one line and her voice is just so amazingly different compared to everybody else. Um, I highly recommend giving it a listen. Cool. Uh, who originally did God only knows? That would be the beach boys. Brian Wilson.

Okie doke. Thank you very much. No problem. Moron of the week. We found a lot of morons this week and Jason, you even got in on the game. Hell yeah. It's a fun one, isn't it? It is. All right. Moron number one. This should come as no surprise.

Rush Limbaugh. We always knew he was a moron, but this one is pretty spectacular. Uh, he basically floated a theory that Obama wants Americans to get Ebola as payback for slavery. Okie dokie. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Can we, can we change this to retard of the week? Uh, that one, we don't even need to talk about that one cause that is just a, that is what it is.

Um, moving on, uh, class action lawsuit was brought up against Red Bull. And if you've had a Red Bull in the last 12 years, you're able to claim a piece of the settlement because somebody sued them because they did not in fact get wings. Well, I think what they did was they proved that the inefficacy of the bulges and, uh, the other stuff that's in it.

And yeah, it, it's, it's a Coke. It's got some caffeine in it. It's a Coke. I mean, there's a long list of various things that we all know doesn't really do much for us. And Red Bull says it's an energy drink. It does certainly jazz you up right when you have one because of all the shit that's in there, but you know, whatever.

So they got sued yet. We can't seem to manage to sue a telecom or a cable provider, even though all of their commercials are all straight up lies. And, and good luck getting your piece of the pie for this because every time I tried to get there, the website was dead. Oh, because this one went totally viral. I will be signing up to get my, my bit of the settlement, but here's the other thing that really upsets me about this.

Um, you don't actually get money. What you end up doing is you get a, a like $15 credit to buy more Red Bull. Now, hold on. This has happened to me twice now because I've always stated that like I, I, when I find out about class action lawsuits against things that I use, I always sign up for them.

This is trickle down. This is like, I'm getting my pound of flesh and I've got, you know, I've gotten 50 bucks here from Verizon, all that sort of stuff. Um, there was one for a restaurant chain that, that I've ate at that they came out, like, you know, uh, they had some sort of issue with their pricing or whatever.

There was a class action lawsuit. I signed up for it because I had ate there and you know, six months later I get my settlement. The settlement is a $20 gift certificate to the restaurant. That should not be legal. If you are getting sued for something, you need to pay your customers and the people that signed up for the class action lawsuit in cash, not with stuff that puts more money back in your coffers.

Fuck you, Red Bull. I want $15, not $15 a Red Bull. There should, there needs to be a class action lawsuit against class action lawsuit settlements. Okay, let's get meta there. All right. Anyways, moving on. My moron of the week is Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft.

I bet this guy walked off stage and his handler ran over to him and said, you fucking idiot. I can't believe you said that. I mean, as I was reading the statement, which I will get to in a second, I could like literally hear a forehead slap somewhere. More than a few, I think.

Yeah. Okay. So in response to a question over how women should broach the always uncomfortable task of requesting a raise, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, it's not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along.

Like that ever happens. Furthermore, he suggested that not requesting a pay raise would actually top up a woman's karma bank, which would by magic, presumably enhance her trustworthiness within the organization and so lead to an enhanced level of responsibility.

Not only should he feel like an idiot right now, he should actually be removed as CEO. If you can say things that are this stupid, and this was at a women's conference. Oh, remove dick. Firmly step on it.

Repeat. I am relatively sure he is not long for his job. Oh, I don't know. Look at Balmer. He lasted forever and he was a giant twat. Are you kidding me?

Low project production values. Ebola Watch 2014. Okay. Everybody's all... You have my attention. Everybody's all worried about Ebola. The news is pushing it. They tell us we're all about to die any second and it's coming to the US. Well, watch out, Maine, because apparently you're the closest US state to Africa.

And why is this relevant? It's just an interesting fact and then I just realized that Africa is where Ebola comes from. So you Maineese people, you better watch out. You're closest. They're coming for you. Okay. Well, if you want to read something good that's not about Maine, check out an interview in De Spiegel with the guy who discovered it, Peter Pyatt.

Oh yes, it's a very good article. It's a very good article. So if you want real information on Ebola and a really good read, we'll put that link in the show notes. And don't go to Maine unless you're having lobster. But completely ignoring the whole Ebola factor and the reason that this is in this section, click on the link in the show notes, which provides a really cool map that shows you basically ways to plot distances between different areas and shows you what is closest to what.

And I found the fact that actually Maine, by actual distance, is the closest point in the US to Africa to be incredibly interesting. And it lets you kind of mess around and try all different sort of things and suggest different things. It's a fun little plotty thing that somebody built out. It is a very cool little tool.

I'd like to give a shout out to Landon Donovan. If you follow soccer at all, particularly US soccer, you know who he is. He is basically the longtime US soccer great, our first major star, as it were. He will be playing his final game for the US national team, I believe, this weekend.

And he will be coach, or not coach, he'll be captain. So it'll be, I'm going to be watching that. Be sad to see him go. He's also currently playing for the LA Galaxy and has announced that this will be his last season for club play as well. So, and the Galaxy is doing quite well. So it'd be great if he went out on a high and have the Galaxy win the title.

So thank you, Landon Donovan. It's been a pleasure watching you. Why is he leaving? Is he just getting too old? Yeah, he's getting too old. And he's actually got a lucrative deal that's going on with ESPN. So he's going to be doing commentating and all that sort of stuff. So we haven't seen the last of him, just the last of him as a player. And actually, I was at the game last Saturday and got to see him play.

So good times. I love watching him play. Going to be sad not to do that anymore. I want to say rest in peace to Jan Hooks. Jan Hooks was one of the major cast members on Saturday Night Live in kind of the sweet spot of my particular watching of Saturday Night Live.

You know, kind of late 80s, early 90s, when you had like Tim Hartman, Phil Hartman, Tim Meadows, sorry, Tim Meadows, Phil Hartman, Kevin Nealon, Jan Hooks, all those sorts of people. I guess she, I hadn't heard her name in years or even thought about her in years.

Apparently, they haven't released The Cause of Death or anything, but apparently she's had a really bad sickness for quite a long time. We have a very good clip in the show notes there. It's a very funny woman. And speaking of sick people, I'm sad to announce that Morrissey has revealed he has cancer and has been hospitalized several times in the last 18 months, causing him to cancel his U.S.

tour. He certainly had a lot of issues. He has canceled quite a lot of things. We've heard of him going in and out of the hospital, but he hasn't really spoken about it. And in typical Morrissey fashion, he begins the statement with, if I die, then I die. Oh, Morrissey. You're so, you're so happy.

I had a lot of emotion about that when I found out about it, but I'll wait and see because Morrissey is a bit melodramatic. So hopefully, just wishing him the best and hopefully he will recover. Well, he did a show last night and it seemed to go over very well. They said he seemed very energetic. Good, good, good, good.

I'm not quite ready for Morrissey to leave my world yet. So entering the world, I finally put up a Jason.com podcast. Oh, and I listened to the two of them. Yes. The two that I've done, I will do another one this afternoon. That would be a little better than the last one, which was off the cuff.

But I dropped some tips and stuff. And juggled your balls. I did juggle with my balls. My racket balls, not my ball balls. Well, congratulations, Jason. I know that you've been talking about this for ages and it's a long time coming and you finally got it done. Good job, man. I just have to keep going with it.

That's the thing. It's like we talk about it so much and it just got to be such a joke and it was always over my head. So I'm like, ah, screw it. I'm just going to do it. All right. Well, everybody subscribe and listen. Okie dokie. And I think that's it for us. Yeah, that is it for us. So congratulations, Jason. I know you have another podcast to get to now.

I got two more to get to. I can't talk to you all day. Jesus Christ. All right. Well, get to it, man. And I will talk to you next week. Talk to you next week.

Music for this show is by Among Us, The Benny Hill Show and Angelo Baltamente. You can find all of that on iTunes. 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 GOGpodcast, or simply email us at podcast at GrumpyOldGeeks.com. You can also get our iPhone app at GrumpyOldGeeks.com slash iPhone. Show notes for this episode can be found at GrumpyOldGeeks.com slash 79. Here, Ebola, Ebola, Ebola, Ebola.

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