80: Mmmmm, Cloud Bacon!

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. Good morning, Jason. How are you?

I'm good, Brian. How are you? Oh, well, you know, I've been still struggling a little bit with the cold. I've just had this kind of never-ending nasal drip, and I've been coughing out in public, and every time I cough, people look at me like I've got the Ebola's. You need to get one of those fancy masks that they have in Japan with like a tiger face on it.

You know, I actually saw a few people wearing masks this week, which lets you know how the hysteria with this Ebola is going, because first off, the mask ain't going to do shit, and secondly, give me a break. Yeah, seriously. Nobody's got the ebolas except for the stupid people that are – well, we'll talk about that later. Yeah, so Yosemite. Let's talk about Yosemite and things Apple real quick.

I saw that Yosemite came out yesterday, and I looked over at my laptop, and I went, nope, we're recording a show tomorrow. I'm not going to do that. Yeah, I did the same thing, and I'm like, I've been through this enough times. I can make it work. So I got my USB drive out, did my carbon copy cloner backup, so I had a fresh image of my drive in case anything went sideways.

And I've also got a time machine backup, but you can't boot from one of those, so don't expect those to save your bacon. Did the install. Took like an hour to download it. Boom. Reboot. Kernel panic loop. I've had that before. I know from experience and in many martinis from the hangover of being stuck in that for three hours.

Command option PR, the old four-finger salute to zap the PRAM, gets you out of the kernel panic loop, and then it usually installs just fine. Well, not this time. Went through the whole process, and then it's getting to the end. It's got the new little, like, booting screen with a little thin bar now, so it looks like your phone gets to the very end, and then, boom, big white not sign saying, no, there's nothing here.

I'm like, oh, Jesus. Go through it. Zap the PRAM again. Go through the whole process again. No. Boot from carbon copy cloner. Get to it. Won't even mount my hard drive that's in my laptop. You have not had a lot of luck with Apple recently.

So, after, you know, hours of dicking around with this, because here's a tip, kids. If your Mac has USB 3, don't use a USB 2 drive for your cloner backup, because it's going to take an hour to boot. Found that out a couple times. So, I ended up having to nuke the, just wipe the hard drive in my laptop and do a clean install, which I haven't done in, like, six years.

So, I think that might have been the problem. Could be. Years of, years of cruft and hacking and doing all sorts of crappy things to my computer. It runs so fast now, it's ridiculous. Oh, that's great. You know, I actually had the same issue with my PC the other day, strangely enough. I haven't, I still work on that, basically, at home, because I've got all these massive monitors, and I'm just used to the workflow.

And I've been gradually moving over to the Mac, but still haven't done it completely, just because I'm lazy, really. And I ended up getting a little bit of a virus on my PC yesterday, and it spent basically half the day tracking down that squirrely little bastard and eradicating it. But in the process, doing all the things that one used to do with PCs, going through, cleaning the registry, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

It's like I have a new damn computer today. This thing is so fast. Because I have not literally done, this is really bad for us as grumpy old geeks. I had not done any maintenance on my PC for probably two years. Yeah, housekeeping after a while just gets to become tedious. It really does.

And, you know, everything was running fine. It was no big deal. But since I was in it yesterday anyways and going through and trying to track down this stupid little ad fucking bug thing, I did it all. And it's amazing how much faster my computer is running. Yeah, I've been piece by piece moving my life back over to this machine off of the various pieces and parts I have around the world.

Here's what I got to say, though. As much as we rag on the quote-unquote cloud, it completely saved my bacon. I would have spent probably 10 more hours than I had to getting everything back where it needed to be if it wasn't for the fact that all my bookmarks and passwords are in Google.

The rest of my passwords are in 1Password. All my notes are in Evernote. I got crap in Dropbox. Not very much anymore because they're in bed with the NSA. All of our show notes are in Hackpad, again, owned by Dropbox. But, you know, like almost everything that was of key importance to getting back to actually doing work.

You don't actually have physically on your own drive anymore. Yeah. Well, I have it physically on my drive, but it's also kept out somewhere else. Like all the source code for the projects I'm working on, they're in GitHub. Yeah. Everything is somewhere else now. And as much as we joke about it and laugh about it, it completely saved my bacon.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's got its pluses. You know, just don't put your junk out there. And don't expect it to be safe. You know, I think if you go into it with those two ideas in mind, it's all fine. Yeah. The only thing that I was terrified about were my SSH keys because those are the keys to the castle for everything.

And I ported them from my old backup and I got back into everything I needed to be in like five minutes. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, again, same thing with my PC when I was dealing with everything yesterday. I basically had to nuke and reinstall Chrome, but everything was stored anyways. So as soon as I got the new install back up, it was just, boom, everything was right there again.

Yeah. I mean, this Yosemite interface is really just gaudy as hell. It really is. The icons are, I don't know what's going on with the Mac icon, the little smiley face OS X icon. Right. He looks, he looks shifty as hell.

Like literally, it looks like he's got his hands down his pants and he's at a kindergarten, like staring through the fence. That's lovely. It's, it's not a nice thing. Well, I may be finding out tomorrow, but who knows? I'm not in a rush to upgrade my Mac, especially after your horror story. Yeah. Just tell you what, carbon copy cloner is the best thing.

Just have a, and I have that usually, but I did a fresh, you know, update on it to make sure everything up to that point was on there. And they just released version four, which is pretty nice. I dropped the 20 bucks to get the upgrade and it's really nice. And they've got scheduling and all that stuff, but that's, that should be in software.

But anyway, yeah, do the backup. And for you, it'll probably work. You're not an idiot like me and hack so much crap on his machine. No, no, I'm not. It'll probably work just fine because I really haven't done much to this Mac at all. It's, it's pretty much straight up Apple approved. Okay.

Now let's, let's talk about anti-technology for a while. Since we just, the, the wonders of the cloud. Yes. After our couple episodes where we, we've been discussing the joy of being a Luddite. And then we just belied all of that because all we've been doing is checking out all week.

So there were a few articles that hit the news this week, all about this sort of stuff. And, and I am, I am basically addicted to reading about, addicted to reading about not using technology, using technology to read about it. Is, is what I'm doing basically. Uh, so there was a good article on, on Salon.

We must stop praying to our iPhones, dissent and critical thinking in the internet era. Uh, so this guy, Andrew Ewel, who I believe is a teacher, um, talked about how banding devices in classes actually made the class more enjoyable again. And then people started to, you know, interact with each other and we're critical, doing more critical thinking instead of just looking things up.

Um, interesting enough article. Oh, it's very interesting. He, he teaches literature. Right. So that's something that you really kind of need to be able to put more than 140 characters worth of thought into dissecting. This is true. So I thought it, I thought it was actually a very good article.

I thought it was a good article as well. And then the, a very complimentary article. We apparently have the first case of Google glass addiction. Yeah. This has been making the rounds, but it's technically kind of work addiction. This guy gets into his job and it, the glass helps him do his job better.

So, you know, technically he's a workaholic. Yeah. Yeah. And he's getting the dopamine hits from doing a better job and being better than everybody. He just happens to be using Google glass to do it. Yeah. This article actually really resonated with me and it doesn't have to be about Google glass, but that's why it's popular right now. I agree completely.

This is about, he was using a bit of technology that made him so much better at his job. That was perfectly suited to his job that he became addicted to using it. And he was kicking ass. Um, who hasn't been there? Well, yeah, that's, that's you and I, that's exactly what we do. And he, it was, the article talks about how he started to, you know, basically he was seeing his dreams through glasses interface.

I was like, shit, I've dreamt about fucking coding all night before. Well, hell Tetris, go back to your first game boy who has not played Tetris in their sleep. Exactly, exactly. So this is nothing new, but, uh, it is interesting and it's kind of the two articles dovetail in, in this weird way, talking again about how these technologies are really fantastic and they make you better at doing things, but they also fuck with your brain.

Yeah, and this gets to me, what gets to what I wanted to talk about a bit was the proper amount of technology use. Right. I've switched, you know, I got my Razer phone, which I haven't been able to get a damn SIM card for because it's, it's surprisingly hard to get an old school SIM card for a Motorola Razer from 2001.

And I've also picked up, this came this week, I got an iPod, an iPod Nano. Nice. I got the little space gray one, I got a refurb, which is cool because it was like 99 bucks, but it also came with a set of earbuds and a lightning cable, which if you have to go by those aftermarket, it's like 55 bucks.

Yeah, yeah, those are expensive. So the iPod is pretty cheap. So I don't carry my phone with me anymore all day. Right. I have, I have my little iPod and I listen to my music and I sync my podcasts with a cable, old school style. And what I've noticed is I don't, I don't find myself reaching for the phone as much anymore because I keep it away from me.

And when I go for a walk, I'm not getting bothered by texts. And I can't, since I can't be bothered by texts, I relax more. I don't feel the need to check my email every half a block. Right. Or, you know, see what's going on. It's like, I, just by pulling away and going a little retro with the technology, I've been able to, when I sit down to work, focus a lot more and get a lot more done.

Right. In, in a lot less time. It's, it's a, just a weird side effect of just making that one little change and not having everything in my pocket all the time has really calmed me down and made me focus more. It's been a great week for that. Honestly, it's like I, when I go to bed at night, I feel like I've accomplished stuff instead of bouncing around between 400 things all day.

I don't disagree. I don't disagree with that at all. And I, but I think that you and I are in, in kind of a very lucky position in that we're kind of capable of doing that. I've been doing something similar, which is I basically just finally told my clients, you know, 6 p.m., that's it, unless there's an emergency or you plan ahead. That's it.

And I've stopped checking my email. I've, I've kind of left my phone, you know, in a different room. I'll go look every now and then just to make sure that, you know, there's nothing crazy going on. But it's, it's been great. And I've been sleeping better and I don't feel like I'm on call 24-7 anymore, which is how I always used to feel.

But again, my, my argument being that I think you and I are both very lucky in that we're able to get away with that. I don't think the job market right now necessarily, or our culture even supports that. I think a lot of people feel the need and their companies force upon them the, the, you need to be available 24-7.

And they don't have the luxury that you and I do to just kind of tell our clients to go shove it. Yeah, I think as time progresses, companies are going to realize that they need to pull back on the technologies and the, you know, the constant always on being able to get in touch with your people. Because we're, we're kind of canaries in the coal mine because we've been doing it a lot longer and a lot more consistently than most people have.

I mean, I've got, I've had a computer for 30 years. Yeah. And I mean, well, and I, I, I've been running a company for 15. That was basically the, the whole guiding principle was we're available whenever you need to because of this whole internet thing. So yeah, we've been doing it this a long time and we see how bad it is for us.

And it isn't just us. I mean, we've, we've talked about quite a few articles and studies that have come out about this and we've seen, you know, the, the other countries are being much more progressive about this. And basically telling employees or employers, you cannot insist that your employees are available 24 seven and putting really good governmental restrictions on that sort of stuff.

Yeah. Which is, which is fantastic. And I think that we've been talking about it so long and we've been dealing with it so long because like I said, we are kind of ahead of everybody by several years just because of the amount of use that we've had. Yes. We are all more fucked up than you people. Yeah. Well, it's like they try and do cancer studies on people that smoke two cigarettes a day and we're smoking a carton a day.

So we're going to get, we're going to get the, we're going to get the diseases first. And I don't, I don't think that we, we, we haven't. I mean, you and I have spent basically a year talking about how much this screws us up and finding ways to feel better about ourselves. I know. And I think it's, it's honestly getting to the point now where we're making progress and we can actually give people some usable advice on it.

It's fun. That's true. I mean, the past two to three months have at least work-wise have been the least stressful for me because I finally just plugged out a little bit and just said, hey, you know what? I will work my ass off for you, but I'm doing it eight hours a day. That's it. And this kind of dovetails nice to a new study that came out, a couple of new studies.

Now, this is a Forbes article that says multitasking damages your brain and career, new studies, quote unquote, suggest. Now, caveat here, this is written by a guy named Travis Bradbury who's written a book called Emotional Intelligence 2.0, not to be confused with Emotional Intelligence, the original book.

What was that guy's name? Daniel Goleman wrote the first book. So this guy basically self-published a book with another doctor. He doesn't use his doctor moniker in this Forbes article, but he's got something to sell. So the article is skewed towards the shit that he's trying to sell you. But the studies are real and the results are fairly straightforward where using technology kills your IQ and turns you into basically an eight-year-old kid, which I love.

And you look at anybody. Look at anybody on the street. They turn into little golems walking around Facebook. Nobody can actually walk anymore. The amount of time that I spend basically just looking at other people and moving out of their way because they're too busy to see anything that's around them is ridiculous.

Yeah, once you go down that rabbit hole. And it's funny. My dad and I had a really fun conversation over some wine last weekend. It's like if you give smart technology to stupid people, it doesn't make them smarter. It actually makes them dumber. By the way, that's every retail environment known to man these days.

That's fast food. That's bookstores. Bookstores, like there are any of those left. But you know what I mean. What's that? We went away from just having a cash register to these super smart machines in every target and every store known to man. But everything takes five times longer than it used to because these are stupid people running technology and it's even slower.

It is true. It is true. Now, you found something that's going to just take our jobs away this week. Well, this appeared as a Facebook advertisement in my feed. It's a new site called thegrid.io. So apparently we're not going to have to worry about this at all anymore because we're about to get completely fired.

This company claims that they have AI websites that design themselves. All you have to do is provide them with some content and Bob's your uncle. See, we had to get that in again. It's not as good when you point it out. I know. I think, yeah, it's one of those things where you give it some pictures, movies or Facebook credentials or social credentials and it goes out, scours everything, comes back and builds your little website for you.

Yeah, it'll basically make you a little flip board. I checked it out and you can't even try it out because it's not done yet and you can pay now. They want you to pay before you've even demoed the product. That's ballsy. I got to give them props for that. Well, you know, it's what do they want, $96 a year.

You can preorder and there you go. You get your whole entire pretty website except for the fact that you as a person knows nothing about design. You don't know how to take decent photos. You don't know how to actually get your content. Maybe you probably don't even know how to do compelling content. So good luck with that. Yeah, definitely.

Also, I found it really funny because they talk about how this is, you know, this is, you know, even designers don't want to mess around with the small details. Why would you? And I was like messing around with the small details is the best part about design. I love tweaking fonts. I love just getting the shading and coloring just right.

That's the biggest part of design and that's what makes something look good. Yeah, and that's what designers live for. Exactly. So the minutiae. To hell with that. Now, I saw another article this morning called Are We All Cyborgs Now? This was originally published at brookings.edu.

It's a long, medium read and I started it and I want to get back to it. But the stuff that I read was fairly fascinating and I will put it in the show notes. But it's talking about the Supreme Court decision about cell phones and warrants and how you must have a warrant now to see the contents of the cell phone.

And the implications of this ruling on basically we're becoming cyborgs because we are machine enhanced humans. And now like the machinery is getting rights too. It's an interesting concept. As it should and I totally – I mean if you're a sci-fi geek like many of us are, this makes total sense to you.

We're starting to offload some of our brain capacity and storage onto the little device that sits in our pocket. So why shouldn't it be protected as much as we are? Yeah, but it comes back to smart technology doesn't make you smarter sometimes. But that's a side – that's a tangent. No, that's true. I mean you could have the cure for cancer in your cell phone or you could have your boobie shots.

Now you put up a cool Neil deGrasse Tyson video. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. It was a nice long talk where he did my second favorite thing to do on this podcast, which is rip startup culture in San Francisco, a new a-hole. He did that and he only did that in the Q&A at the very end.

It's a hard-to-watch video just because the quality is so bad. Yeah, the quality is horrid. But you can just listen to it. It's kind of nice. Yeah, that's true. But he's got slides. Yeah. So Neil Tyson has been taking a lot of heat from multiple areas but I don't even care about that.

What he does is I find him entertaining. I find him somewhat mentally stimulating and I just like him. I think he's a cool guy. Yeah, he might not be the best scientist in the world but who cares? That's not his job.

His job is basically to bring science and technology to the masses and say, look, this isn't that scary. Yes, it's true, you idiots. That's his entire job. So of course he's getting a lot of knocks right now. That's not surprising. Yeah, entertainment and education. That's what I look to him for.

Exactly, yeah. And I think he's great. He's fantastic at it. He's got such a nice personality. He's got a very easygoing voice. He's very good on the mic. He's great. Although I have to say I didn't really enjoy that produced by the Family Guy documentary that they did.

I thought it was a little bit too dumbed down. Cosmos? Yeah. Well, here's the thing with Cosmos. I couldn't really get into the first episode. And after that, I really started to get into it. I'm working my way through it on Netflix. I'm really enjoying it. Okay, I gave up after the first one. So maybe I'll get back into it. Yeah, yeah. Keep going.

Keep going. I think you'll find it actually really enjoyable. And speaking of the entertainment and education part, there's a video that I put in the show notes of Neil Tyson with Stephen Colbert. He does like an hour-long interview with him. It's a great interview. But the thing that I found – the thing that I got out the most out of this is watching Stephen Colbert do an interview is a master class on how to listen.

Watch this guy listen and watch him like how thoughtful he is and pays attention to everything and just thinks about stuff and comes back with great questions and great answers. It's really fun. I'm not sure what they put in the water over there at The Daily Show because that's where Colbert originally came from as well.

But Jon Stewart is the same way. They are masters at it. They just – they really listen and they're not just reading off a script. They hear what you say and come up with a great question based on that instead of just moving on to the next point that they had. Yeah, and Jon Oliver came out of that plan too.

It is a serious like crucible of talent that – Yeah, that's a serious room over there. So watch out for all those people. OK. Well, that's enough about anti-tech and tech. Let's move on. Moving on. Comment of the week.

Our comment of the week comes from GrumpyOldGeeks.com from Greg. His question. It's kind of long. Here we go. OK. My only other note to you guys was rough and mean. That's actually true. He was kind of a dick. But we still like you. But I will point out that I have been and remain a loyal listener who has also bought podcasts several times based upon your endorsement.

I can give you a list. I have a question. I think I remember the show mentioning a particular brand or product in the exercise monitoring category. I think it was a dedicated device, potentially a Fitbit, that you both personally use. Can you clue me in on the product name and why it is superior? I would appreciate it. And your shows have been up to your usual standards.

That bad, huh? I give it a five-star rating on iTunes a year ago. So does it help to do so more than once? Thanks, Greg. No, it doesn't help to do it more than once. Your account is tied to that. So once you've given us a five-star rating, that's there for good. Feel free to leave comments, though. Or even better, tell a friend.

And he also bought products, not podcasts, just to clarify that. My bad. So we have talked about multiple fitness products. I have stuck with the Fitbit for years now. We've tried other ones. The Misfit. The Misfit Shine was one that I tried, hated.

Nike Fuel Band tried, hated. And you've got a couple other ones. You tried apps. I've never actually used a device because, in my view, I'm already carrying my phone with me because I'm also listening to music and all of that. So I don't want a second thing on me.

I've used a number of apps. I have basically settled on Argus, which I am still using. It's one of the better ones out there. They're really, for me specifically, because I do a lot of biking and then walking, and then I also do workouts. There's no really good one app out there. For instance, the Argus, I basically have to tell it that I've started to ride a bike instead of it just kind of figuring that out by itself.

And interestingly enough, I'm still just using an iPhone 5. I don't even have a 5S. So I don't have any of the cool chips in there that do anything in terms of actual monitoring. I can guarantee you right now that if I had an iPhone 6, I would only be using an app because that does steps. That does everything now. Yeah, and I'm sticking with my Fitbit.

I've got the Fitbit Ultra or Fitbit 1. Whatever the newest clip-on one was that they don't make anymore, I think they killed it. It does stairs and distance, and that's all I care about. The app that they have is a proprietary app. It syncs with Bluetooth to the phone.

The downside of this is, which might be the death knell for Fitbit, is they're not going to write any tie-ins with HealthKit for the iPhone side, and Apple is pulling their products from the store. Yeah, that's going to be a problem. You can still get them at Best Buy, but their product line recently has not been that great.

I still have the ARIA scale, which also doesn't tie into anything. And to get serious with their statistics, you have to pay them $50 a year for the premium package, which is annoying because it's my data, and I want to be able to pull it without giving you more money over the cost of the device.

So I stopped paying them for that. Yeah, I'm not too fond of their business model with all that stuff they're doing, which is one of the reasons I didn't use them. And just more amusingly, the other reason I don't have a Fitbit is I believe, Jason, you gave me an old one of yours. Yeah, and you lost it. Yeah, and I took it out with me to the bar, and that was the last I ever saw of it.

So the lesson here is don't give Brian anything nice. That's right. But yeah, I'm still going with the Fitbit. I still recommend it because it does what it's supposed to do, and that's it. And it's always on me instead of my phone, which is now increasingly less on me.

Yeah, you're going that way with it. And I just, for me again, I want to carry one thing, and I want the thing to play my music. And if I get a phone call, I get a phone call, and that's good. And I also want it to track my movements. So I'm sticking with the app route, and Jason is sticking with the Fitbit. There we go.

There was another big Apple event this week, and well, let's be frank, I probably wouldn't have watched it anyways, but I'm in the middle of refinancing two mortgages at once, so I did not see it. I do know there is a new iPad Air 2 and an iPad Mini 3. And I'm assuming, Jason, you were sitting there, wrapped at attention.

I wasn't wrapped at attention. I was watching it on my Apple TV to see if it worked this time, if we had something to make fun of. There was no Chinese lady telling us what was going on this time or anything like that. It actually went off without a hitch, because I don't think anybody really cared that much, and probably only a few geeks tuned in.

You can't say it didn't go off without a hitch, because it did actually leak on their website the day before the announcement. So some guy pushed a big red button, Mark, do not push until Thursday. Yeah, they can push that stuff, but they can't push Yosemite until late afternoon.

I thought they did a pretty funny bit in the actual speech about how they need to beef up their security. And they brought in Stephen Colbert to do a surprisingly unfunny bit about him being like the new security czar guy. Ah, okay. Just as a tangent, I noticed in the news this morning that we have a new Ebola czar.

When did czar become a good thing? It really didn't work out well for Russia, so why are we going with that as a term? That's a running joke since the security czars came around, since 9-11. Well, I thought I came up with it this morning, but I didn't have much coffee. Yeah, it's been around for quite some time.

People making fun of czars and slaughtering them has been around for quite some time. Okay, well, let's scratch that. I'll edit that out. Except I won't, because I'm lazy, because I'm the editing czar. Editing czar, that's Brian. That's going to be on your business card. Right. So should I be looking at purchasing one of the new iPads?

Because I still just have an original iPad 2 and the original iPad mini. It's probably worth upgrading. I love my iPad Air, and there's not a big enough difference for making me to upgrade. I paid almost a grand for this thing. So to sell it on Gazelle, I'll get like $250, and to get a new one, it's going to cost me about the same.

Because I've got a LG or LTE version with Verizon, 64 gig iPad Air. I love it. It's great. It weighs nothing. And the new one's only like, you know, a little bit thinner and a little bit lighter. I'm really not that weak that I need to focus on the sheer ounces of it.

Well, given both of our workout regimes, maybe we need like a 50-pound iPad Air, not a lighter one. Oh, that would be good. Yeah, what a heavy one. Actually, somebody should invent some sort of weight system to put on it, so when we carry it around, we're actually burning some calories. Well, there is the sex attachment. You can burn calories with that.

Yeah, that's kind of your area. No, no, no. They can make a kettlebell version, so you can only see it when you're on the upswing. And you can tap it with one hand and then do the swing. Anyway, no, I don't think for you, yeah, probably a new one wouldn't be bad if you use it very much. If you don't use it that much, then don't bother.

Yeah, I really don't use it that much. I think I'm fine with the mini, the iPad 2, the original one, probably could use an upgrade. Yeah, definitely. That thing's kind of janky. And the new one is like 40% faster than the iPad Air, but the iPad Air is smoking fast already. I don't run into any problems with it.

I'm not going, ooh, I just wish this was a little bit faster. Nah. No. I wish it was a lot cheaper, but not a little bit faster. Yeah, that's the only thing that's kind of keeping me away from upgrading is these things are crazy expensive. Yeah, if you go full bore with LTE and the whole nine yards plus your monthly fee for the bandwidth on it, they get to be pretty pricey.

Unless you're, I mean, if you're using it a lot, it's, I don't know if it's worth it, but this one saved our bacon. I actually edited an episode when I was stuck on the Amtrak train on my iPad and published it through the Verizon LTE connection. So sometimes it can come in handy.

If you're, if you really need to publish something very quickly that doesn't make you any money, this is the thing to go spend your money on. Yeah, that's the thing to go spend the non-existent money on. Fantastic. Oh, boy. I saw Twitter is now doing audio integration with their Twitter cards.

Yes, they are. You gave me a little note because one of my clients is very much involved in this and you asked me if I had known about it. And the thing is, no, I didn't actually know about this one. There are many moving parts on Team Coldplay. I was involved with a couple things with audio with Twitter that I probably can't talk about at all, but they never came to fruition.

I think that my attitude towards it probably got me left out of this one because I was just like, this is the dumbest thing ever, please. I think that that's your general attitude and probably gets you left out of a few things here and there for sure. Probably, but I mean, seriously, the Twitter audio card, I don't really know if this is going to do much.

Well, the interesting thing about it is it's an integration with SoundCloud right now and hopefully there will be other providers like Libsyn, our provider, so we can have our little audio cards. But if you're using the Twitter app and you find an audio card, you can actually bounce that to your system's audio.

So if you come across somebody's interview or something, you can just play it within Twitter and it will bounce to your system audio and then you can still keep going with Twitter and listen to it uninterrupted. If you end up using the Twitter app, I don't know if it will work with third-party apps, but I'm sure at some point it might. The only people I can see this being useful for are the people that basically just live on Twitter.

And again, as we talked about a little bit earlier, why are you splitting your attention? If you want to listen to something, sit and listen to it. Well, it's a good way to – I mean, for podcasters, it's an easy way to get new audience for people that don't know how to find a podcast or install a podcast app or use the installed podcast app that came with their phone.

It's just another avenue to get people to listen to your shit. Yeah, and I get it for that. So there you go. I don't think it's going to change the world, but there it is. So this week we've had – we've actually got a couple of things with hacks. I don't know why we put this in the news, but it kind of ties in with some other stuff.

And it's this snapping, which happened like at the end of last week. But Snapchat, a third-party app that used Snapchat's login credentials, which you never want to use a third-party app that asks you for credentials to log into something.

No, you do not. I just want to state again for the record that I believe we were doing this when Snapchat came out or certainly at least when they became a big deal. And the first thing that I said was this is not going to stay secure. Nope, and it didn't. So there's a dump.

I think it was like 13 gig. Wow. It was going around on – they were distributing it through Mega was the last one I saw. It was a 13.6 gig dump that was distributed through Mega, which had about 220,000 photos in it. There weren't account names or numbers and no personal identifying information, but lots and lots of pictures.

And I did not go download this one because there is a lot of underage people in there, and that thing is a time bomb. You do not want that. You don't want to be anywhere near that. I don't care how sick or perverted you are. You keep that thing off your damn device. No, I agree completely. This has no interest to me whatsoever except for the fact that I can go, ha-ha, told you so, stupid fools.

It's good that it's not connected to usernames. That would be very, very, very bad for people because luckily most of the time when people take pictures of their junk, they don't include their face. I feel bad for the people that did. Yeah, it's – never mind. Go see Grumpy Old Geeks episodes 1 through 79 if you want to hear more about – let's talk about why it's a dumb idea to trust Snapchat.

Yeah. Did they take a hit? Are they still worth the same amount of money? That's my big question. I'm guessing they're still doing okay because if you look at the top apps in the iTunes store, they're still in the top 10. Yeah, it doesn't seem to matter these days. Nobody cares. Speaking of nobody caring, I have been just rattling the saber about my hatred for Uber for a long time and I've been getting a lot of shit from it from basically everyone who thinks that Uber is the best thing ever.

You know who doesn't think Uber is the best thing ever? The Better Business Bureau. And Lyft as well. Yeah. All of them are basically getting an F rating from the Better Business Bureau. Oh, and every taxi company in the world too. Well, I never said taxis were good.

I just said Uber is bad. A lot of the complaints are based on my biggest pet peeve which is surge pricing and not really understanding what you're actually paying for your ride. Yeah, and they have fixed that in the app like I mentioned before. It still feels very rapey when you're done. You do have a little blood running down the back of your legs when you get out of the car.

And that's what I look for in a company. I like to feel a little rapey. Well, it's better than walking. So yeah, take this as it will. I mean the amount of complaints versus the amount of rides is kind of a low percentage. It is a low percentage but I do take notice when the Better Business Bureau actually gives a rating like an F that is somewhat important or at least it used to be.

But then again, like I said 30 seconds ago, nobody cares anymore. Yeah, and the Better Business Bureau has kind of been on the hook for doing some pay-to-play stuff like Yelp has. It's all these – everybody is out for themselves. Forget about it. All right. I think we're done with this entire podcast then. Oh, no.

Anyway, HBO finally going to do some a la carte over the internet by your own subscription action. This makes complete and utter sense for them and hopefully it will bring down the cable model as we know it because that sucks balls. I don't think it's going to bring down the entire cable model but it's going to definitely give them a hit.

It will be interesting to see how that plays out. But Netflix took a hit in their stock big time, which I thought was surprising because they don't – yeah, it's HBO. They've got a small subset of content. Netflix has a lot of content. So it's six and one half dozen of the other and all the HBO stuff you can already get like the back catalog you can get on Amazon Prime.

Yeah, yeah. So I don't see why it was such a big deal and I don't know if I'm going to pay for it because I've got enough friends with HBO Go and iPads where they just come over to my house, throw it to my Apple TV and we watch Game of Thrones. Yeah, it's fantastic for that. I like this. I will probably do this. I will probably cancel my package with my cable provider because I'm still – I had just moved into this place, what, six months ago?

So I'm on the one year of decent pricing and then they turn around and butt rape you. So when I'm about to get butt raped, I'm just going to go ahead and get HBO and call it a day. Sounds good. Yeah, so I'm not surprised about the Netflix newsies because I think it's a confluence of things. They did announce that they're actually going to raise their prices.

Excuse me. Sorry. It's the Ebola's again. So they announced they were going to raise their price a little bit and I know you just mentioned that they have a lot of content and it's true that they do have a lot of content. It's just I'd be damned if I could figure out anything I actually want to watch. Yeah, it's a lot of B content.

I'll give them that. I would go C or D. It's a lot of C or D content. If you've got a kid, it's probably great. There's tons of cartoons. If you're super into documentaries, it's fantastic for that and I am so I do enjoy that part of Netflix. But any new movie, no. Any new show, no.

Yeah, in the old days, it was much better content because they could get DVDs when they came out. When they moved to the main streaming stuff, they've definitely had a harder time getting content licensing deals because everybody's got a streaming service and it's even harder nowadays for them to get content. Yeah, exactly. So I'm not surprised that Netflix took a hit.

I don't see them doing well. This is not in any means an investment show, but I would say if you had Netflix stock, I'd be ditching that. Invest in our friends in Sweden. They're always going to be going up. They are always doing quite well and thank you very much again.

I am so caught up with Downton Abbey. Yeah, me too. Security. And here comes the part where Jason talks really fast. Go. I'll do my best here. I know people just love security so much.

I just want to get so much in. Anyway, this morning, I was listening to the Sophos Chit Chat podcast, which is really good. I recommend it every week. It's short. It gives you kind of the overviews and highlights. But they were talking this morning about are we getting breach fatigue because every week we've got a new hack, a big hack.

You know, when we were doing this segment, I was kind of joking when I was like, breach of the week. But basically, we've got four or five every week now. Yeah, and the news has stopped covering most of them because it's like now it's like, oh, two million? That's nothing. And the thing about the breach fatigue is it's good that we have it because now companies are required by law to expose these breaches where in the past they could just shove them under the carpet.

Right. And we wouldn't know about them. So now if, you know, your favorite store just happens to come down the news cycle, even if it's just a little blurb, you can get notified about it. Exactly. Yeah. I like that part. So let's get to the breaches of the week. All right. Breaches of the week. Dairy Queen confirms a breach at 395 stores.

I have not been to a Dairy Queen since like it's probably been 20 years. When I was in Pennsylvania, man, we'd go every weekend because it was hot and miserable. And the best thing was a nice cold cone at Dairy Queen. All right. But we paid cash. Anyway, because it's a fucking ice cream cone.

Why are you using your credit card at a Dairy Queen for ice cream? That's a very good point. Anyway, so they've put out a list of the stores. Kmart was also breached, but they did not put out a breach of the stores. And they said, yeah, we've been breached, I guess, kind of, sort of, more coming from them. And my response was, they're still Kmarts?

And the parent company is Sears. And I'm like, Sears is still around too? I didn't know that either were still around. I haven't seen one in years. Well, the hack that wasn't this week was Dropbox. Credentials were supposedly leaked. And, you know, the sky is falling, sky is falling.

Turns out it wasn't. It was other hacks where people were just using stolen credentials and trying them against Dropbox. Yeah, yeah, I went to the blog that actually lists that, which is also in our show notes. It's kind of amusing because there are a lot of people that are posting about how, but wait, but wait, I did get hacked. And then people follow up with, you're an idiot.

They used your passwords that were stolen from somewhere else. Don't use the same passwords. Yeah, don't use the same passwords. Get one password or last pass. Turn on two-factor authentication if you have the patience for it, which most people don't. Yeah. Myself included. Myself included as well. I mean, I know I should be using it, but then again, I also go to the, so what if somebody gets into my Facebook?

Well, I also don't keep anything important in Dropbox anymore, which we've covered on past shows. Yeah. Yeah, if they want to come listen to our raw show files, then, you know. By all means. And was it podcasting host Blueberry was hacked.

I used them for a while for stats for us, and I know some other people that use them. They had a big hack. They didn't really say a whole lot about it. And I left a comment on the thing saying, okay, can you give us a little bit more information on how our passwords were stored? Were they hashed, salted, the whole nine yards?

Right. And my comment is still sitting in moderation. They refuse to answer me. So, fuck you, Blueberry. Maybe they're working very hard to fix the issue. And TechCrunch posted an article about Ed Snowden this week who basically says, stay off the internet. Yeah, that's the takeaway from the article.

That's it. Stay off the internet. I scanned through it, and it was like, don't be on Dropbox, don't be on Facebook, don't be on Google, don't send text messages that aren't encrypted, don't ever turn on your computer, sit in a corner and hide. Wrap yourself in tinfoil and suck your thumb until you die. The takeaway from this entire article for me is, at the very end, he was asked a very lighthearted question, saying that he was now free to enjoy some vodka in Russia.

And he replied, I don't actually drink alcohol. Little known fact, I've never been drunk. Mr. Snowden, what the fuck? How can we trust anything you've ever said now? Yeah, I no longer trust you. Okay, speaking of trust, WebEx, the very popular conference software.

Don't use it if you don't encrypt your chats, because people can just go search the directory and find unencrypted chats. I think Oracle runs it, they've been notified, but there are lots of government agencies that use them for internal meetings that anybody can just pop into and listen. Oh, that's fantastic.

Yeah, neat. I wish I'd have known about this before the article came out. I could go, you know, listen to some DOE chats. You know, how's the morning roundup going at the nuclear plant and wherever? All you'd end up hearing is a bunch of fucking doublespeak. Well, Bob, I really think we need to be outside of the box on this one.

We need all hands on deck. Can you please get the pubs? That's all you'd hear. Hopefully they keep the nuclear material in the box. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. We don't want that one outside of the box. Good point. Okay, and the big interesting news this week was this little box called Anabox.

It's a Kickstarter project. They've gotten a huge amount of money and then basically imploded because people did their due diligence on this thing that people were saying. It was a little tiny router that you could plug in and it would automatically tore all of your communications, right?

Yeah, it's a $20 box in China that you can just buy, put a little software on it and resell and that's all they did. That's what's come out of it and there's a huge backlash against them. So, you know, it goes back to everything we've said about Kickstarter.

You know, do your own due diligence on it and whatever they're saying, you're probably, A, not going to get on time. Yeah. Your perks are going to be crap and the product is, if it ever arrives, it's probably going to be crap too. So, we'll see what this one's going to be because people are pulling their money out hand over fist. As they should be. I think that as soon as I saw that one, I was like, bull crap.

Yeah, the Reddit, there's a huge Reddit thread on it that is just fascinating to read because it's, I mean, I just was in tears laughing because it's like, nope, here's where they screwed this up. Nope, this is where they lied. This is where they lied. Oh, and they got a guy on from the company and, yeah, he's full of shit too and couldn't answer a single question.

It's just very, very fun. Yeah, good times. Let's talk a little bit about some actual meat space security. Oh, meat. Yeah, meat space. So, we talked a lot about the ebolas and there's been a couple problems, basically people getting on planes and flying all around the country and starting a 12-monkey Our World.

Everybody remembers 12 Monkeys, right? I love that movie. I love that movie too, except it's kind of freaking me out right now because it's actually happening. There's an interesting article on Slate that reviews the would you lie to airport screeners because basically our entire security for this sort of stuff is have you been exposed?

No. Then get on the plane. So, all you have to do is say no and you're on. This is the entire level of security that we have for this stuff right now. Now, I have some friends on Facebook that have not probably read this particular article but are feeling the same concern and they've gone a little bit overboard.

I am not going to call for, as some people are, why the fuck are we letting anybody from Africa on a plane come here? That's not what we're looking at here. But I do think we need some sort of level when we're having biological breakouts like this. We do need something a bit beyond, have you been exposed?

No? Okay. By all means. Enjoy your cocktail. Well, what would you propose? I don't know. We need to – I mean, I don't know. I'm not a doctor. I mean, I'm sure there's some sort of easily done test that could tell maybe. Who the fuck knows? I don't know.

But I think it's ridiculous that we would rely on somebody basically telling the truth, especially when these people probably know they've been infected or are certainly exposed. And there's a great deal of fear and they want to get to a fucking country with doctors. I've got a new market.

We're going to set up stands outside the airports in Africa and we're going to sell level one hazmat moon man suits. And so you can get on the plane. Forget those little kitschy masks that were going around when bird flu was going around or pig flu or whichever flu. We're just going to sell full-on moon man suits.

So you get to walk through the airport like the Michelin man and get on your plane and you won't be able to have a cocktail because you won't be able to open the lid. That's true, yes. No, it's just a good article that kind of runs through the psychology of it and basically states that the fact that we're actually thinking of relying on people's moral compasses in these sort of situations is ludicrous.

And I agree with that. It is ludicrous. Well, because these people are – they're concerned about their survival. They're going to say anything they want. Yeah, and they're concerned about their survival and not so concerned about the random people that they may possibly be infecting because they do not know them. It's a social contract. It makes sense. It's basic. It's psych 101, people.

Welcome to the human race. Yes, welcome to the human race. So let's talk about something a bit more amusing but also not because this is insane. The Euro Cup is on. So, you know, those of you that were really happy that I haven't talked about soccer in a while are tough shit. It's all back and it's happening and there's a bunch of, you know, qualifying matches taking place right now.

I was watching Germany versus Ireland at the same time Serbia versus Albania was playing. The Germany versus Ireland game was rather boring. Apparently, I was watching the wrong game because there were amazing scenes at this particular game. Serbia versus Albania all started because a drone carrying the Albanian flag flew over the football pitch at the stadium, which then sparked riots, fights, unbelievable insanity.

It was great. Best use of drones yet. The best use of drones yet. Now, this really does point out a problem. You know, this kind of stuff is going to happen increasingly and these people take their football very seriously and frankly, they're looking for a fight as well. So, good times.

They're just going to have to put snipers with net guns on top of all the football stadiums to take any of them down. Yeah, I mean, I'm surprised there isn't a box yet that exists that you push a button and the drone just falls out of the sky. Well, you don't want to EMP the whole stadium. That would not be good. Actually. Oh, and I thought of a side business for our Moon Man suit Endeavor.

Right down the street, we can have the upsells for the Depends undergarments so you can take a leak while you're on the plane too because you couldn't do that anyway. I mean, you don't want to get to where you're going in a suit full of pee. I'm just going to leave it there. I was looking for something new to read and kind of put it out on the book of the face and got a suggestion from a very good friend of mine.

So, thank you very much for that, Laurie. I basically almost did a trifecta. It's a trilogy and I almost read all three before this podcast. I only completely made it through two of them. The third one I was desperately trying to finish last night but I fell asleep. These are books by an author named Ian Trigelis.

Trigelis? I'm not sure how it's pronounced exactly. It's called the Milkweed Triptych. The first one is called Bitter Seeds, the second The Coldest War. Those are the two I have finished. They are fucking awesome. They're alternative history books which I normally don't really ever read and particularly there seems to be a fascination with World War II for alternative history.

Wonder why. This also is a World War II alternative history except in this one, the Nazis have actual supermen built through science and the British have demons. Nazis and demons. Oh, my. I love these books. They're so fucking fun. They're great. I love them.

I can't recommend them enough. I don't want to give anything away and even talking about it at all kind of spoils the surprise. It's a bit like The Matrix. As soon as you know what it's about, it's not as interesting anymore. If you go in cold, it's awesome. Okay. This sounds like almost young adult-ish.

I thought it might be. It's not. Okay. It's definitely not. There's a lot of science. There's a lot of sci-fi. It's well thought out. They don't bother too much with romance, which is fantastic because we don't get that old trope of the professor, the kind of older professor and the hot young thing.

That doesn't happen. So good stuff. I really enjoyed both of these and I can't wait to finish off the series. That's awesome. Yeah. I did finish Shantaram, the 42-hour audio book. Mm-hmm. That was a slog, but it was fantastic.

I loved every minute of it. It was one of the best novels I've ever read. It was right up there for me with Les Mis as far as epic novels go. So I can't recommend it enough. Excellent. I will have to give that one a long, long, long, long read or listen.

Well, you read like a madman, so you can probably get through it in an afternoon. It's only 900 pages. You almost did that this week with your other ones. That's true. That's true. Those were not exactly short books either and I just plowed through them like an English demon. So this was a good week at the library. At the library?

Woo!

Media Candy. Media Candy. Coming out next week is a movie called Citizen Four. It's the documentary that Laura Poitras is putting out about the initial interactions with Ed Snowden in the original video. Right. It's a documentary.

It looks really good. I've seen the trailer. The trailer kind of gave me chills even though now I know he doesn't drink. But yeah, there's a lot of reviews out for it. Everybody says it's stellar. So I'm really looking forward to this. I think it comes out on the 24th. Okay. And it's going to be in theaters.

So I believe it's going to be in theaters. I'm going to go try and see it if it's playing anywhere around here because I'm really interested in this. After all of the following and talking that we've done about it, I really want to see this. I'm glad you're still into it.

You know how you talked about breach fatigue earlier. I think I'm a bit on Snowden fatigue. You're Snowden-ed in? I'm Snowden-ed in. Oh my god, that's horrible. There's a couple other links that we're going to put in the show notes that are related to this. But yeah, I'm really looking forward to this film. All right.

Well, go for it, man. Let me know how it is. If it's really good, I'll watch it. But yeah, like I said, it's like I can't even read another article about Snowden at this point, and especially now that I know he doesn't drink. Teetotaler. So now let's talk about addiction counselor and physician.

Something more up your alley. Something more up my alley. Dr. Drew. Dr. Drew has been running his own podcast on the kind of Corolla network for quite a while. I tuned out of it because I got really bored by it without Corolla there chasing him and kind of bringing him down to earth. It was getting a little two-up his own kind of doctory ass, and I didn't really care too much about the people that he was having on.

He has apparently stated a change in focus on his podcast recently. He's now chasing after bleeding-edge information from science. I guess he started this back in like September or August or something like that. And the people he's getting in are really interesting, and the podcasts are getting really fascinating again.

So those of you that might have tuned out on it or never listened, I would highly recommend going back and giving it a shot. One in particular that I listened to is with a guy named Dr. Andrew Hill, and he is all about like crazy neuroscience and the brain. And it was a fascinating podcast, really interesting because it's not just theoretical.

It's like real world. This guy was talking about this is everything that we know about the brain right now. This is what we know actually works on it. These treatments are actually doing this. Here's how to tweak your brain, everything that we love. Yeah, I started to listen to it, but I couldn't get into it just because of the timing. But I'm going to go back and check it out.

And I'm one of those guys who tuned out probably around episode 20. I was glad to see he had his own podcast, and I love Dr. Drew for the most part, but he can be a little not entertaining if he doesn't have anybody that is trained to be entertaining to keep him on the rails.

Yeah, exactly. I mean he's kind of the boring guy, and unless he's got somebody that's really funny, a Corolla or whoever in there, it can get really tedious. But he's replacing the entertainment aspect with this is fucking cool shit. So give it a listen. Particularly, I think the Dr. Andrew Hill one is right up the alley of our listeners and you and I because it's all about tweaking your neurochemistry.

Nice. And speaking of entertaining, I was trying to get caught up because you told me there were some new Last Week Tonight videos out, and I'm like, the show's off the air now. But they've produced a bunch of stuff to keep you interested in the show while they're off, which is a very smart thing to do. And so I went to their page, and I just looked at their download numbers.

Everything that they've put out is in the millions. Yeah. It's insane. Well, I mean every single one of their clips basically goes viral as much as we hate to use that term, but it's true. And I think more people watch this on YouTube than actually watch it on HBO. I think that's – he's kind of figured that out.

Yeah, it's amazing. And just going back to the crucible of the Daily Show, he puts out a solid show every week, and it's starting again this Sunday. They're back. Yep. Yeah, it's going to be great. Can't wait. Been loving everything. They've got a great fucking writing team over there, and they're spot on with their timing on everything.

It just goes to show, if you put in the effort, there you go. Yeah, and speaking of somebody who put in a little too much effort, Bono finally apologized on camera during a Facebook interview of all places. Sort of. Sort of, yeah. He's like, yeah, we kind of got a little carried away.

We're a little megalomaniacal, and sorry about that. I think that's the best we're going to get, so we can put a nail in Bono's coffin over this whole thing now. I think he did that to himself already. I think U2's career is basically done. I mean, you can't say that. They're huge, and they'll always do great touring, but I think this is pretty much it for new music from them as far as anybody giving a shit.

But there you go. Speaking of nobody giving a shit about music, an article came out this morning in Forbes, and this is very close to my heart. Not one artist's album has gone platinum in 2014. Not one. Not a single one?

Not a single one. Wow. The only album that has gone platinum is the Frozen soundtrack. That's it. That's nuts. So we're nine and a half months into 2014, and the music industry numbers are lower than they have ever been.

The music industry is basically over. Now, I don't know how they – I don't think that they factor in streaming or anything like that, so obviously sales are down because more and more people have moved to streaming. And we've talked about the streaming model and how it doesn't work either many, many times, but the reality is that's where it's all at at the moment, and sales are basically done.

It's over. Yeah, the problem with quantifying a platinum album when you're dealing with streaming is everybody streams it by the track. Exactly. It's not about albums. So it's a hard – yeah, it's a hard thing to quantify. So, I mean, I've seen all the platinum albums on your wall. You're not going to have any more. That's sad. No, no, I'm not.

But, I mean, then again, they'll just do what they did, I think it was about 10 years ago, where they basically lowered the goalposts. So pretty much if you sell 10 albums, you're going to have a platinum album these days. 10 is copper, 15 is silver, 5 is mud.

But then, yeah, 25 albums, you're platinum. Yeah, pretty much. So on a related note, I saw an article from Enemy.com on Iggy Pop basically saying if he had to depend on what he gets from album sales, he'd be tending bar between sets. Iggy Pop is always entertaining and an interesting guy, but I'm not entirely sure I would ever consider business advice from him.

He makes some good points. He did a lecture, the John Peel lecture over in England. I can't believe John Peel's been dead for 10 years now because they mentioned that in the article. It's pretty crazy. He's always been innovative and he blasted you too. He praised Tom York for the BitTorrent thing and we all know that that was just kind of dumb anyways.

He's all about try anything. Go for it. But he's fucking Iggy Pop. Okay. Yeah, he's Iggy Pop. Iggy Pop has a net worth of $15 million, so I would take some advice from him. Yes, he has a net worth of $15 million for many reasons.

He licensed the crap out of his songs. Lust for Life is on every commercial known to man. He's made many extreme commercial moves. He sang along with the B-52s when the B-52s were bigger than God. He's done a lot of very commercial things. That's why I would take a business advice from Iggy Pop.

He's smart. He knows what he's doing. Yeah, yeah. Okay. When I was reading this article, and I noticed this on a couple of articles this week, websites are bringing back the damn scrollers. I know. They're everywhere right now. I've even been asked. They're at the top, the bottom.

We did this 10 years ago and it failed miserably. Why can't people learn from the past? God damn it. I can't read an article if something is moving on the screen, especially in your peripheral vision. It drives me nuts. But they don't want you to read. They want you to click. Click, click, click.

Click. Load another article. Load another article. You won't believe what will happen when you click here. Yeah, but if you're clicking through articles, you're not clicking on ads. You're not spending time to even get taken in by the ads. Oh, wait. You can't because we have ad blocker on. But anyway, they've fixed that now by saying, oh, related articles, which are just ads.

That's the new fix. So anyway, just stop it with the damn scrollers. The Web's not dead. I stumbled across another really funny Trent Reznor article.

I love Trent Reznor. Don't get me wrong. Nine Inch Nails, one of the best bands ever. I'm not a huge fan of his scores or any of his music for, I'd say, the last 10 years. But in particular, his scores. Well, I can't say I'm not a huge fan. I like the one he's written.

I don't think he's only written one. Well, he's credited on three of them. Yeah, but I thought all three of them were fantastic. I listened to him while I worked all week and I loved them. I think they all sound exactly the same. They do. That's why I love them. Well, that's my point. He's only written one. Oh, gotcha.

Yeah, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Gone Girl. I loved all three of those. And I used them as background for all my work I did this week. I can totally understand that. But I find them incredibly uninteresting. And I think that, like I said, they're all derivative of each other. And not only are they derivative of each other, the derivative of his music. I feel that the soundtracks are basically just lumped together sound effects.

Like he loaded up a sampler and he fucking fell on it. And that's the soundtrack. I think it's great ambiance. It's nice and moody. It's been raining and cloudy and dark here. And it's perfect for that kind of weather. Well, like I said, I really like everything he does. I just think that there's a lack of innovation going on.

And I think it's a bit boring. And the link I stumbled across is basically a testament to that. It's on Vulture.com. The link is in our show notes. It's basically a game. Is this a clip from a Trent Reznor score or is it a household appliance? I scored 16 out of 22 on this one.

I'm such a Reznor-phile. I actually got 22 out of 22. I actually think that they also did a bad job with it because the clips that they picked, all of the Reznor clips had a little bit of musicality to it. And if they would have just found the drones and the fucking chunks that he actually throws in all the time, that would have been a real challenge.

Yeah, that's true. The ones that were – it almost faked me out because I'm like, oh, that's so blatant that it has to be a Trent Reznor one. But no, it actually was a refrigerator. Yeah, it was a fun little thing. And you know I love you, Trent. Or certainly I've given you enough of my money over time.

Anyways. I also found something that I put in the show notes just for you, Jason, because I thought you'd really appreciate this. This is a Macintosh classic case cover for the iPhone. It's cute. I love it. If my business manager hadn't screwed me over and I had $300 to get me to the end of the month, I'd probably buy it.

Yeah, it's pretty clever. So if you've still got an iPhone 5 and 5S, I don't think you can stretch this out over the gigantic iPhone 6s. By the way, did you notice that Apple's commercials have moved to its puge and that's awesome? Yeah, I have. I've seen those. They're terrible. Yeah, a little crazy-ass shift.

And I finally ran across something else that I actually loved on the internets. Full disclosure, I have worked for Sinead O'Connor. I find her to be an amazing, beautiful, batshit crazy, but a true feckin' artist, as the Irish would say.

She is insane, but I've always been a big fan. And her web presence has basically been dead for years, since a long time ago, since even, you know, I've worked with her ages and ages ago. And she had somebody else for a while, and she did some stuff, but then she basically just went away.

But she's totally started up again online, and there is a blog, and it is glorious, because she does not give a fuck what people think. I scanned this, and the picture of the dude with the giant foreskin kind of put me off of the articles, so I just kind of skipped past it.

But if you say so, go for it and read it. The one that I particularly link to in our show notes is completely about the music industry, and she is basically not wrong, but not going to make people happy. So you go, Sinead. We need people like you.

I'll go back and give it a shot. Give it a read. It's fucking funny. I was howling. Closing shout-outs. I want to give a shout-out to my Slender Fungus business partner, Wendy Marvel, and a shout-out to all of our London listeners. For all of you out there in merry old, Wendy is actually over there right now.

Her and her partner for Flipbookit are part of the Connectica Art Fair at the Old Truman Brewery. It's on all this weekend, so if you're listening to this tonight or tomorrow, get your ass down there and go say hi and check out the art there. It sounds like a pretty cool event.

I said, yeah, that's cool. Wendy's shows are always good. Yeah, Wendy's shows are always a blast, and she's, you know, just wander around and look for the crazy chick with the red hair and say hi. Say you're a grumpy old Geeks listener. I also want to print a little site that I did just for shits and giggles. It's called bronzecaf.com.

I originally just kind of did it because it had been a while since I had built a site from scratch that I wanted to mess around with some various different WordPress plugins. I also wanted to mess around with basically social media, do real tracking, see what actually happens, see how things spread.

And, of course, I also wanted to play around with Google AdSense, which just is kind of almost useless. But if you're interested in the idiocy of celebrities and people like Bono and if you're interested in – because it's funny because, Jason, you brought up the net worth of Iggy Pop.

I wanted to explore celebrities, the dumb things they say, and how much money they're actually worth and why we worship them. Okay. So if you want to laugh, check out bronzecaf.com. What is the history and what does the bronze calf mean? Well, it was golden calf, but, of course, that's taken, and then I figured, well, celebrities should be cheapened, so I took it to bronze.

The golden calf is a story from the Old Testament in which basically people started to worship the golden calf, and God said, no, no, no, no, no, none of that, and destroyed them. Okay. Cool. Yeah. So one thing I did want to throw a shout out for, I was talking to you.

I can't remember if we did it on the show or offline, but I found a new WordPress theme called Divi. Yes, we were doing that offline, and I've taken a look at it as well. It's pretty cool. So this week, I did a site for a job for the Art of Charm Boot Camps, and I did it in Divi, and it's an awesome theme.

It costs $89 for a developer license, and go check out this site. It's at bootcamp.theartofcharm.com. I did this entire thing in six hours. Nice. So if you need to slap something together that looks really cool, check out this Divi theme. I'll throw that in the show notes, too.

It is the – I generally, obviously, don't talk about WordPress things that I like very much that aren't security-related, but this thing is saved – it saved me so much time. It's all drag-and-drop theme building and content building. You've got all sorts of transitions, and I barely scratched the surface with it.

Yeah. So if you want to see what it can do, check out the site. I've got it up right now. It looks really nice, man. Good job. Thank you very much. I wish I would have found this one when I did my stupid bronzecalf.com. I just used some crappy little thing, but yeah, good times. I mean, that's part of why I did it again, too. It was just like, all right, here's an interesting little crappy template.

Let's see how quickly I can slap this together and make it look decent. Yeah. Well, you can always go back and redo it. That's the beauty of the internet. Nothing stays forever. That's true. Although your Ebola seems to be staying forever. It is hanging on. And if you want to find out if you have Ebola, go to doihavebola.com and check out for yourself.

You might have to do a geofilter on that, and if they're coming from Texas, go, maybe. Yeah, I know. I really should do that, especially in Texas. Yeah, you do. Are you a healthcare employee that decides after exposure to take long flights? You may have Ebola.

Okay, man. I think that's all I got. So I will talk to you next week. Go take some vitamin C or something. I've been drowning myself in it. I'll keep at it. You know what? I could actually use some sleep. I'll try to do that this weekend. Sounds like a plan, man. I'll talk to you next week. All right. Bye-bye.

Music for Grumpy Old Geeks is provided by Among Us. Check them out on iTunes and other places that music is available. We are hosted by Libsyn. Use the coupon code GOG while signing up and receive up to two months free. Keep up with us at grumpyoldgeeks.com, on Facebook at facebook.com slash grumpyoldgeeks, on Twitter we're at twitter.com slash GOG podcast, 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 80. Hashtag Ebola Nazi. Okay, last one to kill a bad guy buys the beer. We're driving to Florida.

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