88: I Want My Four Dollars!

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. So Brian, did you ever have sex on acid?

Wow, that's a hard intro. Um, no. No, I have not. Well, I mean, maybe with an eight-legged creature in my brain, but not in reality. No. Okay, well, I have, and it is pretty much awesome. And it just reminded me, I was trying to get into the heads of the kids nowadays, so I was flipping through Vine for the first time. My new slogan is Adapt or Die, because I need to figure out what these stupid-ass kids are doing.

Oh, great. We'll talk about it a little bit further in the show. You're going to be a joy these coming episodes, aren't you? Well, no, I'm just flipping through Vine, you know, scrolling through with it on mute. Okay. And all I could think of was, man, I could use some acid right now, because it would be so trippy, because this is, they are the craziest 15 or however many second videos that I've ever seen.

And they're pointless. They're utterly pointless. Because I was watching the comedy section, and without sound, it's a whole other beast. And I watched it for like 45 minutes, just while we had some TV on it, I'm scrolling through going, what's going on with these kids? Like, I need acid to make sense of it all.

Yeah, I, you know, I signed up with Vine when it started, you know, I babbled in it for a little bit. Mostly, like with all these things, it's always like, can I figure out something I can do with my clients with this stuff? And I've just decided that, eh, no, this stuff is pretty much for, it's for the next generation, it's not for us.

It's, I have no interest in watching seven-second videos. I just don't. Some of the ones I saw were pretty funny, actually. They're getting clever. Oh, that's good. Good for them. Yay. It's bad for your branding. Yeah, it's not great for branding, but I don't think it's supposed to be.

You know, we'll talk about that a little bit with the YouTube stuff later as well. It is what it is, and it's a whole new form of entertainment. Good, good on them. Are you staying dry? High and dry? Well, I don't know if you've heard, Jason, but all of California is under 35,000 feet of water.

Awesome. I'm currently coming to you from a raft that I put together from hipsters. I put them beard down, just kind of lashed them together, and I'm floating along on them. So the sound quality goes bad, or it's because we probably have to stop at a juice place to fuel them up. I don't know.

It's raining. We actually have weather. Therefore, the news had to go fucking apeshit. And it's the biggest storm ever. We should be building an ark. And they always followed up with, but it will have no impact whatsoever on the drought situation. Well, that is not statistically possible.

There is no way we could have this much rain and it not have any impact whatsoever on our drought situation. I'm fine with reporting and saying we're still under seasonal levels. We're still in the red. We still don't have enough water. But don't say this has no impact. It's not possible for this much shit to be falling out of the sky and not have an impact.

Well, actually, it is. If the ground is porous enough because you haven't had rain in so long, it's all just going to get sucked up. We still have reservoirs that are being filled back up. Well, hopefully, unless they're too dry. One would think. Anyways. So, yes, it is raining unbelievably here. And I finally figured out, like, everybody always laughs at us Los Angelinos when it rains because we all get really upset and grumpy and we can't seem to get anything done.

It's because we are so unused to it. You guys, with your crappy weather, like you sitting there in Chicago, you just know if you're going to get a weather system, you're going to have to take things slower. You're not going to be able to get certain things done. You're probably just going to want to stick around the house. This is a personal affront to us that pay these exorbitant rents and taxes here because we're doing that because we can do whatever we want whenever we want to.

And this pisses us off. Well, I found a study this week that I'm going to have to dig up and put in the show notes that basically says that too much sunlight makes you dumb and less creative. So, that also kind of puts a few things into perspective. Oh, interesting. I said that as soon as I first got there.

The reason that people in California are so insane is because the weather is too nice. It's never crappy. And it's too much sun. It fries the brain. I said that from the first year that I moved out there. I'm like, this is not natural. It's not right, man. But they're happy, man. They're happy.

Oh, yeah. You guys are just a bowl full of jelly over there. Well, except for me. Okay. Let's move away from the weather because that's really just even boring me. All right. So, tell me about your big weekend doing nothing but using Web 2.0 services.

Oh, my God. It was a sharing economy weekend. We did everything. We Ubered in very many strange Uber cars. We Airbnb'd it. We got in fights with Illinois Nazis. That was fun. That wasn't app-enabled, I'm assuming.

At the what? You didn't get in an app-enabled fight with Nazis, right? No, no. There isn't like a fight club app yet. But we did use Yelp to find a dive bar on the south side of Chicago that we went to that was inhabited by some Illinois Nazis. Okay. That was an interesting one.

And we had one Uber that was the strangest one I've ever seen. The guy who picked us up was on a date. What? Yes. Okay. I would expect that from Lyft. Not so much Uber. Yeah. This guy picked us up in a big old Lincoln.

And we get in, and there's this chick in the front seat. And they just continued to chat the whole time that we were in the car. It was surreal. It was so much entertainment. I loved every second of it. Do you think that would be a plus? Like, the chick is thinking, look at this guy. He's a hard worker.

He's stopping to make a few bucks on his way to take me out to McDonald's or wherever the hell they were going for dinner. Well, that was a nice truck he was driving, so I'm guessing it wasn't McDonald's. Okay. Yeah, it was a very odd situation.

And we had another one where I watched the map, and the actual Uber map took us probably seven or eight miles out of the way deliberately until the taxi driver actually overrode it and said, okay, far enough, and took us back to where we wanted to go.

Right. And we did the A-B testing, so the ride back was 25%. It was 25% cheaper than the ride out. Okay, so can't trust him. Nope, can't trust him. And the Airbnb we stayed at had an extra tenant, not even the owner.

He rented out another room to somebody else strange that was there when we got back that night. Wow. We saw him in the morning. This old dude comes out in his workout gear going down to the gym in the apartment building, and we're like, hi, how's it going? And then, just out of the blue, someone from the building walks in and goes to the back room and comes back out.

It was bizarre. It was the strangest introduction to the sharing economy I think anybody could have. See, I am just not okay with any of that. I'm really not. It was, I mean, the fact that we had cocktails helped the entire thing.

I mean, yes, my younger self, or even a single version of this current self, would probably be okay with these sorts of things. But the idea of, like, using these services with my wife, no, no. No, she would not be pleased with any of this. She would not be happy to have someone walk in on us and, oh, well, you're staying here too.

Okay, interesting. Oh, yeah, if you were a single woman and some random stranger gets the other room that's not the owner of the building. Yeah. Ooh, that's a scary situation. That's not good. So, you know, it sounds like you had a lot of fun, especially with the company that you were keeping.

But your experiences with these services, I would not be pleased. We gave them all five stars just because of the entertainment value. See, this is the problem, Jason. This is why we can't have nice things. Well, we did find the most ultimate shot that we made while we were at the Airbnb because we were running out of booze.

And all we had left was a little Tito's vodka and some Trader Joe's gin. So we did a 50-50. Right. Half Tito's vodka, half Trader Joe's gin. It was the single most delicious shot I've ever had in my life. All right. It sounds repugnant. Yes, it does. But they mixed.

It was like two clear liquids, then made a cloudy liquid that was just delicious. I highly recommend every drinker out there, if you have a Trader Joe's, go pick the two of those up and make some science because, man, it was good. All right. Don't believe you. Let's move into some tech stuff.

Okay. We can talk a little bit tech. I mean, as I've discussed on this podcast, I have pivoted and I'm kind of working in a more corporate environment and going into an office and dealing with things like, what are those reports called in office space? TPS reports?

TPS reports. I've got TPS reports and I've got day-long conference calls and all that sort of stuff. It's been fine. I'm enjoying it. It's cool. But one of the things that came up is we were doing, we got into some serious social media research, finding out, you know, they paid buco bucks for some of these reports that are put together out there by these super high-end companies that do like real research and actually get real numbers in theory.

I'll talk a little bit about that later, about a lot of these social media companies and, you know, their actual usage numbers versus people that are just signed up and never sign in and how much, you know, engagement is actually taking place. I want to talk about whoever Twitter has as their PR company because this is the best PR company in the entire world.

I know you love Twitter. Twitter exists for a reason. It's very good for certain things. But going through a lot of these numbers, Twitter is way down on levels in terms of actual effectiveness and engagement, especially if you're going to start doing things like spending money on your brand to try to get some kind of engagement.

And even after, in a room full of very smart people, we saw all these numbers, the second half of the afternoon was spent talking about what we're going to do on Twitter and ignoring everything else. It doesn't matter what the actual numbers are. Everybody fucking loves Twitter.

They have the best PR company in the damn world. I was sitting there just like my jaw hit the desk. I was like, did you not see the numbers we all just saw? Why are we focusing on Twitter? I hope you actually banged your forehead on the desk. I should have.

But it wouldn't have mattered. Hashtag stupid. Now, yeah, for advertising spends, Facebook is going to win hands down because they've got all the targeting information. Twitter, there's very little targeting information that they glean from the users. Twitter definitely has its uses, but it is not top dog.

But it doesn't matter. As far as public consciousness goes, everybody just thinks Twitter. It's amazing. Yep. We actually did, I think, a $100 ad spend that I got for free when I signed up for Twitter for business when we first started this show. And out of, I think we got like a 3% click-through rate, which, you know, isn't too bad for the pricing.

I mean, and it was just, you know, English language, tweets only in Europe and North America. And, you know, it was decent. But, yeah, I mean, I don't think we got any listeners out of it. No, no, of course not. So, you know, it was funny because the day of that particular event for me, my pub trivia was that night.

And the very first question was a tech question, which they never do. I was shocked by that. What's the most downloaded smartphone app? Oh, geez. Don't think too hard about it. I'd say Facebook. Exactly. Yeah. The rest of my team, Twitter. See, the problem with Twitter is it started out as an API company where everybody built their own apps.

Yeah. So, you know, you've got a fragmentation of the marketplace when it comes to Twitter because there's so many different Twitter apps. I don't have Twitter installed on my phone. I've got Tweetbot. Right. So. Yeah. That makes sense. So there's that as well. But, I mean, there's also just, I mean, the sheer numbers, 1.2 billion Facebook users.

Yeah, I was going to say, they've got the user base. They've got the user base. And they've also got the overseas user base, which is much higher. And people overseas tend to be way more focused on their phones and probably never even logged into Facebook on a desktop. It's all phone. So. And the interesting thing that came out was, you know, the numbers that Instagram was bigger than Twitter now.

Yeah. Some of the stats are starting to leak out there that various people have paid buko bucks for in the past. But this article on Slate talks a little bit about, you know, the Instagram and Twitter number debate, which is going on out there. Yeah, because they based it on a single metric.

Yeah, exactly. And it was the active users per month. Or active, AMU, yeah, MAUs, monthly active users. That's it. Yeah. There's so many ways you can slice that. Active monthlies, I don't know, whatever. So, but there are a lot of different metrics as far as, there's engagement metrics.

There's time on app metrics. There's a ton of different things. But they just picked one and went with that. Yeah. I mean, for me, it's always been, you can kill yourself looking at these stats and trying to figure out what you want to do. The best case scenario is be on all of them for a month and see which one's working the best for you.

There you go. Yeah. And for us, for regular people who aren't like marketers or have a brand to promote, which one's the most fun? Yeah. I spend way more time on Twitter than Facebook because people on Facebook got to stick up their ass because they're scared to say anything because everybody can, you know, it's just, it's not as casual.

Well, it's your personal user group. Again, I'm the opposite. I spend more time on Facebook because I have a relatively carefully cultivated group of friends on there that I like, and everybody definitely speaks their mind. Well, that's good. Yeah. So, you know, there you go. Bunch of social media apps.

Who cares? Be on all of them. Check it out. See what you like. Done. You posted a link about the YouTube economy and how much does it cost to be a fan? This is an article from Daily Dot. Yeah. This is an interesting thing that I've been kind of trying to wrap my head around, which is there's this whole secondary, well, you just dived into it with Vine to a certain extent.

There's this whole secondary entertainment media complex that exists that basically anybody over 30 isn't even aware of. There are YouTube stars that make thousands upon thousands upon hundreds of millions of dollars, if you believe YouTube, which I don't.

But there are true real stars on YouTube that the tweens and teens are totally into, and there are a number of smart companies out there that are basically trying to move them from the virtual to the real and do tours with these people, which is kind of an interesting concept.

The best way that they're doing it in the way that this particular article talks about is basically like Lollapalooza for YouTubers, where you get 20,000 kids in some place, and you've trot up the top 15 or the top 20 YouTube sites, whoever those people are.

Most of them are, I don't know how you tour some girl that shows you how to put on makeup, because that's quite popular on YouTube, but apparently they're doing it. And it's big money. So after you posted this, I dove in, and I found one, I went to a couple of the different sites that they were talking about that you could buy tickets for, and one of them was called MagCon.

Right. And all I saw was just animated videos of screaming 12-year-old girls. It's like the Beatles are back. Yeah. And that's when I started to check out the stars that were going to the shows, and that's how I got to the Vine thing and just stayed there for 45 minutes.

Just with my, like, I was slack-jawed. I was literally slack-jawed. Yeah. Would somebody please put some acid in my mouth so I can make some sense of this? But I can see how this is a big thing. I mean, these people are putting time in. You've got singers on there. You've got comedians.

You've got just talk-show idiots like us. There's all sorts of stuff, but it's their generation. They're making the media, and they're consuming the media, and, you know, it is definitely a different world. I mean, I used to laugh at the thought of, like, I would be like my parents, where, you know, my parents liked the Beatles and Rolling Stones, and they were hip and cool.

But there came a point, like, when I would put on Skinny Puppy albums that they checked out, and that was that. It was like, we had reached the point where they no longer understood what I was listening to. But I do not understand this stuff. That's what happens, yeah. So I finally reached that age where, and good on them.

I mean, and now it's, now is the time where our generation steps in to try to figure out how to monetize it. And that's what's starting to happen. Well, yes, yes. You also don't have children, so you're not in that. You don't have it, like, around you all the time. Oh, that's very true. Because I know when I was, when I moved in with my dad at, like, 14, I was a huge Dead Kennedys fan.

And eventually, he became a Dead Kennedys fan, you know? Well, I got my mom into The Smiths and The Cure, but Skinny Puppy was a bit too far to go, I think. Yeah, I'd say so. I'd say so. So we posted another link in here about David Byrne, who says, do you really think people are going to keep putting time and effort into this if no one is making any money?

Is that your David Byrne? You know, he's from New York. He's not English. I don't, I know. I mean, I met him once. I saved a domain of his. He sent me a customized book that was very bizarre. Oh, he's a weird dude. Yeah, he's very strange. Nice guy.

I actually ran into him outside of a poke show in San Francisco. He was riding his bike around. He's a sweet guy, but I didn't actually read the article because it's music and I just want to hear your take on it. Well, I mean, it's a weird segue to go from when we were just talking about these YouTube kids.

But this is, I mean, I think this is true. I think we're seeing this for bands that have traditionally made X amount of money. They aren't anymore because the entire system has changed. For these kids on the YouTube thing, they don't even notice. It's all brand new. It's crazy. They're happy they're doing anything.

They don't really think about money. It's a whole new economy coming up. So I think we have something different there. But if you're talking your traditional musician who came up in the previous system and is now living in this system where they're putting the same amount of time, effort, thought, creativity, etc., etc., etc.

And they see their reward for that dropping by 90%, not too many people are going to be all that interested in doing it anymore. And we're seeing that a lot. We're seeing a lot of the old school musicians kind of just saying, no, I'm done.

I'll tour or I'll try to get into acting or I'll do whatever. And psychologically, it makes sense. Let's say just theoretically, Jason, just theoretically, you and I made $100 each per episode doing the show. Okay. And we kept doing it.

We made $100 per episode for a year and a half doing it. And then at some point after that, it just dropped. Like, all of a sudden, we were making $5 each per episode. Then it went down to $0.50 each per episode. Well, right. Yeah. You wouldn't want to do it or you'd figure out how to change.

Or you would go, like everybody I know that was in the record industry before, they sell real estate and used cars now. You know, you get out of the business, you move on. Yeah. There's a lot of that. And the real thing, and this is something, I mean, I have these conversations basically ad nauseum all the time with friends that are still in the industry, with friends that are musicians, with friends that are labels.

The real thing is that now the only way to make money is to have a hit single. There is no way to make money doing what I would consider to be the more interesting songs, the deep cuts, the B-sides, the track 9s, 10s, 11s on albums that nobody, they aren't ever hits.

They're never going to get radio play. They're never going to get a video on YouTube that's going to make any money. They're never going to get played on Spotify. There's no investment in making those kind of songs anymore. And that's the really sad thing. And I posted a big screen about it on Facebook, which got a lot of likes and whatever. It's a tragedy that that doesn't exist anymore because anybody that sits down to try to write music now has to write hits.

That's it. Right. Well, we live in the TLDR version. Yeah. Attention spans are dead. Give me a good song. I don't want to have to listen to 10 songs to find your good one. Give me the one good one. But think back to... I agree with you. I totally agree with you. I'm just telling you what we live in. I know. But think back to the songs, the albums that we used to love.

Is your favorite song the hit single? Is that what everybody else considered to be the good one? No, absolutely not. The good ones are way deeper in the album. Yeah. Most of my favorite songs are the ones that most people don't like. Yeah. So, same thing. Yeah. So, I agree with David Byrne, and I think it is, you know, we've seen the end of a lot of this, because it's just straight up psychologically, when you put the same amount of effort in and you get decreasing returns, your heart isn't in it anymore.

Nope. Not at all. Yep. So, you hear that? People donate to the grumpy old geeks. That's right. Please. Oh, man. So, did you see what's going on with Secret? Our nemesis? Kind of, yeah.

Okay. The one app that we straight up got in a big fight with on Twitter. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're idiots. But I can't believe somebody gave them 35 million bucks. That's how much funding they took. And, yeah, it's pretty much toast now. Nobody cares.

It is shark finned. They castrated how the users post. And then you can just watch the trend graphs where it just drops off. Engagement is at a super low. And, what did we say? We told you so. Well, we did tell them so.

How did they castrate what users can post? Did they actually have to make some changes so it could actually be secret? Yeah. No posting of real names. They scan all the posts that come in and make sure that they're kosher for their standards. They outsource out to one of those companies in India that depressed the hell out of us when we talked about them a few episodes back.

Exactly. Yeah. Well. I guess you can't post your junk or the name of Bob, who may be your uncle. So, what do you think? Well done. What do you think? Where do you think this $35 million went then? Oh, lots of staff. And lots of people now who are reading your secret posts.

But they're pivoting. They're pivoting. They say, watch out. We're pivoting. We're going to make a comeback. Oh, sure. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. You sent me a link yesterday that I couldn't get to. So, I don't know if it's fixed yet. But the, how long does it take Warren Buffett to earn your salary?

And for me, it's about .002 seconds. Oh, I had five minutes. So, that wasn't too bad. Yeah. You're loaded. I'm not loaded. But, you know, my pivoting turned out well for me. Let's just put it that way. If I would have done this two weeks ago, it would have been about the same. Actually, this is really funny on a couple levels.

Because this was originally posted way back June 23rd. And it's just this little app done by pennystocks.la, which does a rough calculation based on Warren Buffett's published income. And you put in your salary. And it shows you exactly how long it takes him to make your yearly salary, which is stunningly depressing.

But for whatever reason, it went completely viral, which is how I found it the day I posted it. And it was down because they couldn't handle the traffic. But it is back up. So, the interesting thing about this is people are posting how long it takes, which is a very simple calculation to find out how much money you made. To go back and figure out exactly what your salary is.

Yes. Which is why I didn't say how long it took. Well, I embellished a little bit. I went down, people. Come on. So, in the last thing I just wanted to post, Dan Gilmore, who I've known for years, made a great tweet that I put in just to amuse you in your Uber rage.

Uber lives by the adage that it's easier to apologize than ask permission, except that it doesn't apologize either. It's 100% true. So, true. I do want to mention one other thing, because it's Christmas time, and I noticed all the articles about this. I gave my sister my old iPod, the classic, like two years ago.

Just gave it to her. Well, I'd like to let her know that she will not be getting a Christmas present for me this year, because these things are going for like 900 bucks on eBay. We were looking for the, you know, the high-end classics, the big one that you can get, and it was about 500 bucks.

You could get them for 500 and 600 bucks on eBay about a week ago. Yeah, and that's the one I gave her. And there's a great article, which I actually 100% agree with, which will be in our show notes, which talks about why it's okay to miss the old iPod. And it was something I was bitching about even at the time. It was great.

You had your entire music collection in there. You didn't have to shuffle things on or off. You didn't have to rely on streaming services. It was better to, I listened to more music when I had it all there. There's a million reasons, and I'd miss that damn thing. So, Laura, bring it back. We've actually got two in the house.

We've got one that Mike uses all the time. He drives with it. He doesn't hook his phone up. He uses his iPod Classic. We take it out in the backyard. We play from it. We play everything with it. And fortunately, he's even got a backup for when that one dies. And those things last forever.

Oh, they were genius. The battery life was great. It held everything. I could still get my entire music collection on there if I had it. I know. Same here. Oh, well. We got suckered into tech. That's what happens, people. Now that you're loaded, go to eBay and pick one up.

So I noticed something this week on Facebook, which is that all of a sudden there were a lot less links out to YouTube and a lot of people putting up direct Facebook video, which I thought was odd. And thankfully we do this podcast.

And you can now tell me why, because you put a link in the show notes. Yes. Business Insider has an interestingly titled article called Facebook Video is Driving YouTube Off Facebook. So originally when I read this, I thought Facebook was actually having more videos posted to it than YouTube, which is not the case.

That's what I thought as well. Yes. If you redefine print just on Facebook itself, there are more Facebook videos than YouTube videos now, which I find interesting because I hate Facebook videos because they're really hard to share. I love it when people post YouTube videos because I just click the little YouTube thing, get the URL and send it off to my friends because a lot of people I know are not on Facebook.

And if I find something cool, I'd like to share it the old fashioned way. Right. Which isn't tell them to turn on their TV at 945 to watch the news anymore. It's this. So it's just an interesting stat. And they've got graphs in this article. And the funny part is the Instagram videos are basically flatlined at almost zero.

Yeah, I have no I've noticed that about the Instagram as well, which is, you know, right when they launched their their video thing, people were doing a lot of video, but it's basically dried up. It's almost all just photos again. So. Yep. So, yeah, there you go. Obviously, a good move for Facebook. They don't want to drive traffic to their big competitor, the Google.

But whatever. I agree with you. I hate Facebook video. It's a pain in the ass. Yes, it is. And on the flip side of that, Bloomberg has an interesting article that says I'll try and speak. Speak better today. Jesus, tongue tied. Robots, not humans, fake 23 percent of web video ad views that he finds.

Shocking. Not shocking. Actually, what's shocking is that it's that low. That was an ironic shocking. OK, yes. I know I know several outfits that were SEO outfits that whenever you posted a video and they guaranteed you at least a million views. They had sweatshops in Asia with botnets that would basically run those numbers up for you.

Yeah. I mean, back in the day, we used to make apps that would just click on things repeatedly. Yep. Yeah. It's called game in the system, people. It's been around since before there was an Internet. Yeah. So it's surprising that it's only 23 percent. Yeah. With ad blockers out there. I mean, come on. When's the last time that I actually watched?

When is the last time you watched a web video ad that wasn't for the show? Oh, it's yeah. I mean, true. I do not watch web video ads at all. Nobody does. So another report about another horrible thing from now.

Amazon is basically we talked a little bit about Amazon and their their performance records with their employees a long time ago. More more stories are coming out about it. Now there are claims that Amazon is even worse than Walmart, although I'm pretty sure that almost everybody listening to this podcast right now.

is done all their Christmas shopping on Amazon. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, me too. I am not a Walmart or I'm not a Walmart or either. But, you know, it's I don't understand why we're surprised that these companies that, you know, make these grandiose claims about, oh, we're Internet based and we're more efficient and we're nicer people.

It's still business. Amazon is a huge company. And of course, they're going to do the same crappy shit that other companies do. When you get that big, it's about ruthless efficiency. There's no other way to put it. I just I go to Walmart when I want to feel sexy because that's about it.

I just walk out of there feeling like Brad Pitt. I'm like, well, baby. Yeah, let me let me let me save you a little bit. Just go to people of Walmart dot com. You don't even go into the store. It is a wonderful site, but it's fun to, you know, smell the butt sweat. Get into it.

No, yeah, this does not surprise me one bit. They're a giant company and they have, you know, very strict guidelines on how many packages you have to put shit in an hour. That's about it. Yeah. And they pay as little as they possibly can. Yeah. Yeah. And it's unfortunate, but it is what it is.

I mean, that's the world we've created for ourselves. And speaking of which, I'll quickly do the Uber thing because everybody's pissed off about me going on and on about Uber. Just a quick two two articles in the show notes, both about the one thing that I always complained about Uber.

And it's the only problem I have with Uber, but they just won't let it go. It's the regulations. Uber is now threatening to leave San Antonio because San Antonio has basically said you need to meet these regulations that we apply to everybody else that does your service. And they're saying, well, we don't want to.

So we're going to leave. And California prosecutors are suing Uber over background checks, which is, again, another one of those pesky little regulations that everybody else has to do. But Uber said, yeah, not going to do it. Yeah. Those things that are put in place to protect public safety, you know, those things, those things, you know, that that is all I ask of Uber for all you people that think I have it out for Uber.

I just said level playing field. They have to do the same thing that everybody else has to do. Yep. Indeed. So there you go. So remember Andrew Keene? I do. Yes. We've talked about him a couple of times.

He's got a new book coming out called The Internet is Not the Answer. Well, if the question is, where do I find porn? Yeah, it is. I didn't see that one coming. OK, yeah. So he's got he's got a list up here on the next web called The Ten Reasons Why the Internet is Not the Answer.

OK. The funny thing is, I agree with everything he says and I disagree with everything he says. So this is one of those kind of you got to read it and find your own middle ground. It's funny because I read through the 10 points as well. And I'm right there with you. It's like first I went, yeah. And I went, no.

Yes. Rather than redistributing power and wealth, it has created supersized 21st century monopolies like Amazon and Google, which is true. Yeah. Instead of creating jobs, it has created 19 billion dollar Internet startups like WeChat that only employ 55 people. True. It's true.

Well, you just go back to the argument that we brought up a lot of times, which is Instagram versus Polaroid. Yeah, I mean. You know, it is what it is. I mean, the reality is we can't, you know, we've opened up Pandora's box of the Internet. We can't shut it, but we've got to figure out a better way to do things.

Right. But the way that he couches his argument is that everything is ruined and he doesn't take into account all of the smaller businesses that have come out of the Internet, like you and I. Right. You know, and everything else is like there's no there's no mention of that whatsoever that it's like.

He's cherry picking his argument here, but most of the things he says in here are just flat out true. Yeah. And some of them are. But the argument as a whole is a flawed argument. I see. Yeah, I'll read them. I'll read them. We're both going to have to read this one and talk to talk about it in greater detail, because I really want to see his points more fleshed out.

And hopefully it'll be a little bit less boring than Cory Doctorow's. Oh, my God. Although I don't know. I've seen him speak a couple of times at the Supernovas in San Francisco, and he's not really what you would call an engaging personality. Hey, he's an author.

That doesn't necessarily. Again, a big part of my argument with Cory Doctorow's book and his theory on that is that I believe that you can be really good at one thing. You could be a really good writer. Or that doesn't mean you're going to be an engaging speaker. And Doctorow's theory of the Internet and how we do it is we have to be all things.

Yes, you have to be a triple threat. Yeah. And that's not feasible for a lot of people. There are fantastic authors that if you put them up on a stage would have a panic attack. Does that mean they don't have a reason or a way to make a living anymore? No. Anyways.

Okay. Well, speaking of the ad block stuff from before, there's some French publishers that are basically suing the ad blocking software companies. Well, hey, if we decided that the only way that the main monetary model for the Internet is advertising, and then all of a sudden there's easy software that blocks all the advertising.

All right. Here's the thing. I'm not going to click on it anyway. I know. So I just run it for sanity's sake so I can read the articles that people post without flashing video ads that I'm not going to click on.

I run it 100% purely so I don't get fucking pop-ups. That's it. That is the only reason I run ad block software. I've already, my brain has trained itself to know which blocks to expect real content in and which blocks the ads will be in. I never even see them.

And even if they're there, I just purely do it because I don't want pop-ups. Well, see, that argument doesn't really hold water anymore because most of the modern browsers have gotten rid of the ability to spawn a pop-up without a user interaction. Right, I've just been too lazy to install the ad block software.

Okay. But, yeah, this is, I don't think their argument holds weight at all. And, yeah, this was in a website called The Monday Note, which I've never heard of. The article's called, The Rise of Ad Block Reveals a Serious Problem in the Advertising Ecosystem. Yes, the problem of the advertising ecosystem is that there is a fucking advertising ecosystem that can't figure out how to make money without using the same standardized banner ads that we just get blind to.

I sometimes just, at night I'll lay there and I'll close my eyes and I'll dream of a past where we actually had paywalls and they worked. Oh, so you want to go back to AOL? Well, we can't. I mean, again, we can't go back. But can you imagine if there just would have been a microeconomy, if it just would have been like, all right, New York Times gets, you know, two bucks out of my account every day or every month or every whatever.

And we didn't have to deal with all this ridiculous bullshit. Well, see, there's the flatter model, but you rage against the flatter model. No, I don't rage against the flatter model. I want the flatter model. I desperately want the flatter model, but we have a sortium of everybody out there not wanting it, particularly the credit card companies.

Yeah, okay. I want it. I want it, Jason. So we've talked a lot about the internification of social media and basically how our jobs have been completely devalued. There was a story that came out this week that is the exact opposite. Yeah, this one takes it a little over the top.

Yeah, this went the other direction. So Jason and I rail against the fact that interns basically get put in charge for corporations or campaigns to run their social media and then do really stupid shit. Like, yeah, how does that work out for the AMC and The Walking Dead? Exactly, AMC and The Walking Dead.

And, you know, you know that wasn't a well-paid, well, you know, somebody with experience in the industry that was doing that. That was some kid who just, all right, time to tweet. Here we go. During the Romney campaign, 22 people had to approve tweets before they went out. Now, that's a little bit too far.

That's excessive. That's really excessive. But hey, Romney's got tons of cash. I guess he had to spend it. That's not, I mean, that has got to be the worst game of telephone ever. Oh, can you imagine being on those email chains? I would have shot myself. I would have loved to have seen how it started and how it ended. That would just be a game in itself.

I would love to get just one of these. Hey, hackers, once you're done doing all the Sony stuff, go after Romney's stuff. I want to see one of these emails about one tweet. Oh, definitely. Please, pretty please. Final little bit of news that I saw this week. Shazam is trying to pivot. You know, actually, going back to the intro when I was talking about the most downloaded app, Shazam has got to be up there.

Because that's one of those original apps that, like, when we got our iPhones for the first time and there was a store and all these apps, everybody in the world got Shazam because they thought it was the coolest thing ever. Because it was. It was magic. Yeah. I mean, you hold your phone up and it tells you what is playing.

That is magic. I still have it on my phone. And by the time that I remember that I have it, the song that I was trying to figure out who did has already ended. Yeah. So it's completely useless to me now. But, yeah, they've realized that it's also completely useless to most people. So they are trying to pivot and take on iTunes and Pandora and become a music discovery service slash player.

Yeah. Sorry, guys. The ship has sailed. Yeah. Nobody cares. It's gone. It has left the building, much like Elvis. Gone. Shazam. Security. In one of the greatest security headlines of all time, Yik Yak shown no slack in intern hack attack.

I will give it to the writers for that one. Yeah. This is a post from Giga Ohm talking about how an intern at a security company basically owned Yik Yak and was able to, you know, reverse engineer who the users are, could find out who they are, where they are, that kind of thing.

So they sent it in early and they fixed it and put out an update for the app. But they're actually coming up in the scene now. They were kind of a nobody for a long time because their app is terrible, their logo is terrible, the colors are terrible, and the service is terrible. Yeah. I remember this is one of the ones I tried out probably two months ago or something like that when I was briefly interested in actually trying out new apps.

And I remember launching it and it was basically kids over at Santa Monica Community College trying to get laid. Yeah. That's pretty much what it is. And now they've all flocked to Tinder. But it's the one around here when I pull it up. It's just kids bitching about coming home from college for Thanksgiving was when I tried it last.

But I think we covered this like on episode eight or nine of the show way back when. Yeah. Because when we were talking about like location based apps, so like community watch apps kind of thing. And this was this came up in the there was nobody. There was literally nobody.

I was in the valley, you know, in the middle of the valley in Los Angeles. And there was like one post. So I figured I, you know, yeah, killed that one for a long time. But they seem to be coming back. Well, and again, going back to secret, which we just talked about, there is no such thing as anonymous posting.

It does not exist. You can try. Yeah, you can try as long as you want. But somebody is going to find a way around it. And if it's going to find a way. And if it's not an external threat, it'll be an internal threat. Much like the signs are pointing to it. Sony, that there's got to be an inside man on this one that we've got.

There's so many articles about Sony this week. We're just going to call the segment. Sony is screwed. And we'll just do some quickies on it. Yeah, the news coming out of there is just so terrible. And it's it's you know, this is pop culture. Big, big time news. So all you have to do is really load up Huffington Post and you can read all the articles that we would have talked about.

Anyways, I just my only comment about this is first off, it's fucking fantastic. And yeah, don't even think your corporate emails are going to be safe because they can get to them and they're all there. And these millions, millions of dollars executives said some shitty, horrible things.

And my only comment is, again, just in case any of our dear listeners think we've been exaggerating about what a festering pile of shit the entertainment industry is. Just read any of these articles. Oh, yeah. I mean, my favorite one is that Scott Rudin is finally being publicly outed for being a giant prick, which I've known for years because I've worked on movies that he was in charge of production on.

And he was such a raging asshole that now the entire world gets to see it. And he's going in spectacular fashion. Yeah. It's not looking good for anyone at all. Not good. So good times. No. And, you know, yeah, since this has a celebrity slant to it, it's it's being reported everywhere.

Yeah. And, you know, I'm we're both kind of just making fun of this because there there is a very big humorous portion of this. The sad portion is that so many of the lower level Sony executives and even, you know, celebrities are having their personal information gone getting out there because of this, which is unfortunate.

I'm all about like, you know, yes, hacking is illegal. If you find terrible things and they come out, I don't have much sympathy. I have sympathy for the people, the that the unfortunates that did nothing that are also having their lives ruined right now. Yeah, the splash damage. Exactly. So now the spin that I'm seeing now that's very interesting is one of the FBI directors said that this malware is so comprehensive and crafty and tricky that it could have gotten past 90 percent of the defenses that most companies have nowadays.

And the security professionals are just calling bullshit on it. They're like, hey, nobody's really released any of the details. Right. It looks like a face saving, you know, ploy from the FBI to help out Sony. And then when you when you factor into that, that they like Sony's team, their security team had 11 people on it, eight of which were managers and and the head of the department has come out publicly saying, oh, why am I going to spend 10 million on security for a million dollar hack?

Well, this is why this is exactly why, because it's not a million dollar hack. By the time you're done, this is going to be a billion dollar hack. And if this if this the studio can make it out of this in one piece and still working, I will be amazed. These guys are so screwed. Well, I'm going to be shocked as well, because people.

Yeah, this is not a million dollar hack. This is a billion dollar hack. Literally, you don't even talk about just the fact that every single computer used by every single employee has been basically has to be burned and they have to completely start from scratch. Think about things like the legal teams who have lost all their precedents, all the article, all the whatever ongoing lawsuits are going on.

Everything that they had was on a drive that they can't access anymore. They have to start from scratch. That's severe disadvantage in negotiations. They are fucked for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. I see the studio shutting down and getting sold off in a fire sale. Could very well be. Yeah. I mean, I feel bad, like I said, for the like you said, actually, for the people that work there that got caught up in this.

But this is this is this is a tough one. This is a big, tough one. I would say this is probably the biggest hack we've had so far. Oh, absolutely. No, this is this is hands down the biggest, especially domestic act that it's public or at least any hack that we know of. Yes. Yeah.

It's seen the light of day. Right. So now Facebook is toying around with the idea of using an A.I. to stop you from saying stupid shit on the Internet. I know many people that could profit from this. Yeah, I think it's actually a pretty smart move. I'm siding with Facebook on this.

This is a smart move because then you'll keep people from getting embarrassed from the stupid things they do and leaving the service and, you know, hiding in shame for the rest of their lives. They're like, oh, maybe you shouldn't say that about your boss, you know? Yeah, no, it's fine. You know, it does. It does a search for keywords.

It's it's time dependent. So it's like, you know, midnight, one o'clock in the morning. But I thought didn't Gmail do this two years ago? No, no. Five years ago. Five years ago. Five or six years ago because it saved my bacon many times. Where it presented you with the incredibly difficult math question after a certain time at night.

It was actually a very simple math question. It was like a couple of pieces of division, some subtraction and addition. And if you couldn't solve the problem, then you couldn't send the email. And yes, it did save my ass a couple of times. I have absolutely no problem with this whatsoever.

I think it's a good addition to the service, but it needs it should be and has to be optional. As long as you can switch it on and off. And and please, Facebook, for the love of God, start with the default being off. That's all I ask. Oh, hey, speaking of, I updated my iPhone yesterday and it didn't turn on Bluetooth.

But you get a kick out of that. It didn't for me either. So they're there. It's so how can it be? It's so random. It's it's on. It's off. It's on. It's on. It's off. OK, well, speaking of off the Pirate Bay rated again by the Swedish police.

Yeah, not surprised about this one. I was surprised to hear that they still had servers in Sweden, especially since we covered a piece where they stated that they were a global entity now with servers hidden on, you know, all the cloud based platforms. I can't believe they actually had a server that could be actually seized.

Yeah, I'm surprised, too. Hey, guys, remember, it's, you know, floating ocean over here. We can put servers on a on my rafts of hipsters. Go to sea land. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Brian land. You got like a cat five run up some hipster's ass. Yeah, pretty much.

Now, so the Pirate Bay is technically down. It'll be back. Whatever. It was back within hours. It's just got a different I think it's not CR now. Yeah. But Peter Sund, one of the founders, says, leave it down. It's turned into a festering advertising hole that nobody likes. And we don't we don't need more Viagra and porn.

So leave it down. Yeah. Start up something new. Although the funniest article I saw was CR is actually the Caribbean. Right. So technically now the pirates are the pirates of the Caribbean. So they'll be getting sued by Disney shortly. Good call.

Good call. Unless Disney gets hacked. That's true. So I ran across an article in PC World which had the title, Judge, Give NSA Unlimited Access to Digital Data. Oh, that sounds good. I read this article and my jaw was on the floor.

Let's let's just read a little bit from this article here. Oh, boy. Yes. I think privacy is actually overvalued, Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit said during a conference about privacy and cybercrime in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

Much of what passes for the name of privacy is really just trying to conceal the disreputable parts of your conduct, Posner added. Privacy is mainly about trying to improve your social and business opportunities by concealing the sorts of bad activities that would cause other people not to want to deal with you.

This is extraordinarily dangerous talk from a judge. I would, you know, if you want to talk about ethical hacking, here's your target. Yeah, hey, you'd probably go to jail for, you know, possibility to incite a riot. But no, it's, here's another one.

In the name of national security, U.S. lawmakers should give the NSA carte blanche, Posner added. Privacy interests should really have very little weight when you're talking about national security, he said. The world is in an extremely turbulent state. Very dangerous. No, sir, you are very dangerous.

And if we've learned anything from the CIA this week, you can't be trusted. No shit. What a bad week to be stating this. Yeah, that's not good. This is ridiculous. His name has popped up before. I think he's the, he's the go-to for stupid shit like this.

We ever have him in douche of the week? Probably. Now you posted some stuff about FBI breaking Tor. Well, it was a question. So I figured you'd have the answer. Did the FBI break Tor? No. Okay. As usual, the answer is no. If the headline is a question.

Now, a lot of this comes around Pando and their smear campaign against Tor. And we've got a couple of links in the show notes. And one of them is actually from Pando, but it's written by Quinn Norton, who has written some great stuff that we've talked about here before. And another one is this guy, Micah Flea, believes his name.

But it's an entire post about fact-checking all of the Pando smears. Plus, there's some links to the Tor project and all this other stuff. There's so much data out there that says Tor has not been broken. Tor is based on math, and it's public. So there are some ways to break it for older clients, to keep your software up to date.

But in the grand scheme of things, Tor still works. So if you see, I'm just saving the people some time. If you see any of these bullshit articles about Tor, skip them. Skip them. And if you're using Tor, keep it up to date.

That's it. Yeah, pretty much. You're good. Now, there was an interesting article on Naked Security this week about internet freedom weakens around the world, and it's a side effect of the Snowden revelations.

I call them revelations. I know. So biblical. What's happening is a lot of countries are forcing companies to keep their data domestically, which then opens that data up to local law enforcement, because since they've moved the data into their jurisdiction now, that's a weird side effect.

I've also been dealing with that to a certain extent, because I'm working with a couple of clients on, you know, they're international entities, and they're dealing with multiple record labels around the world. And the separation of data that some of these regulations are starting to require is almost impossible to comply with.

It's a serious pain in the ass. And you also think you've got Microsoft fighting right now, because the government wants them to release email records from a server that's in Ireland, and they're fighting it. Good for them. They're fighting it. They're saying no. Yeah. That's not the way this works. Yeah, I agree.

And I don't have any articles on that this week, but I followed it a bit. It's been a busy week. But I got a good one. I got my favorite one of the week. Yeah, okay. Iowa to launch smartphone driver's license. In the words of the great Kevin Mitnick. What could possibly go wrong?

So they want to give you the option of keeping a piece of plastic in your wallet or putting it on your smartphone, which you then, in a traffic stop, unlock and hand to the police officer. Yeah, that's not smart. And even like nowadays, the insurance companies, I think in like 20 some odd states, you can have an app on your phone from like Geico or your car insurance company and show that to the officer.

With all of the articles that we've ever talked about, with law enforcement trying to get into your phone and anything that as you unlock your phone and hand it to the police officer is just fucking ludicrous. I'm sorry.

But Jason, they say that the app should be highly secure and people will use a pin number for verification. Probably the same pin they use on their iPhone. Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Pin numbers work, as we've known, for years, forever. The Egyptians use pin numbers to get into the pyramids.

Yes, pin numbers. What could go wrong? No, this is very dumb. At least it's optional. But you know a bunch of people are going to do it. Of course, it's Iowa. I've been there. I know. Although, hell, half the farmers in Iowa that I've seen probably don't have smartphones. Oh, actually, no. I take that back.

Most of the farmers are pretty tech savvy. I take that back. They GPS their crops. No, no. They got that whole farmer dating website. Oh, yeah. I still can't believe they run ads for that here in California, but okay. I guess there are a lot of farms here. Never mind. They ran them in Pittsburgh when I was there, too.

And I'm like, I'm looking around. There's mountains everywhere. There's steel mills. There's not a farm to be seen for like 500 miles, and you're running this ad. Talk about bad targeting. Yeah, that's crazy. So I want to wrap up the security segment with some old school hacking, which I just thought was too great.

There was a disgruntled employee at Harrods in London who was fired from his job as the toy department's Father Christmas. He took revenge the other night in spectacular style by reprogramming the lights on the Harrods building to say, fuck off, Harrods. Bad Santa. Bad Santa.

Bad Santa. I just like in the article they said he had the better part of two bottles of whiskey. And he could still pull this hack off. I know. It's pretty insane, right? Good on you. Yeah, good on you, Father Christmas. I've been on a massive Anthony Bourdain kick recently.

I can't get enough of this dude. His parts unknown on CNN is absolutely fantastic. I love that show. And I went and found another one of his books. I read Medium Bra, A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook. And it was great. He does repeat a lot of his stories.

Yes, he does. Yes. Which I'm starting to notice as I finished this, obviously. And I've now picked up a third book by him. And I don't know how many times he's been telling the same stories, but apparently a lot. But I still enjoy his writing, and it's pretty damn funny. So I recommend it.

It's good. Yeah, you'd think for somebody who goes on so many trips, he'd have some more shit that happens to him that he could write about. No, no. He, you know, you get a good amount of new stuff in every single book, but he definitely has his go-to stories. It's kind of like your uncle when he gets a little drunk. Oh, Bob?

Yeah. So, I've been watching Parts Unknown since it started. I love it. This season, they kind of went off the rails with the editing a little bit. They had some really bizarre episodes in there with, like, video toaster transitions and stuff.

Yeah, they're going a little crazy with production on it. It's kind of like, we got a little bit of a budget. Let's do some stuff. And they hired on some kid who has his go-to bag of tricks. Yeah. An interesting side, though, when we were done with the Chicago trip, when my friends were done, we actually went back and found the No Reservations Chicago.

And super pro tip, before you go to a city, watch his show if he's done one on it, because we found 10 different restaurants that we could have gone to that looked awesome. No, that's a great tip, actually. It's not only Anthony Bourdain. As much as I hate, what's his face? Diners, Drive, and Dives guy?

Yeah, that guy, yeah. Whatever his name is. He's an annoying bastard. But look up, I think they have the database on the site. If you're going to a new city, look up some of the places that he's been to, because I've done that a couple times, and they've all been fantastic. Yeah, that's a really good resource if you're trying to find cool places to eat, for sure.

Software apps and gadgets. Brian, you know what makes me feel like a man? No, Jason. Besides your auto-blow, too? Cuddling. And I cannot cuddle with my auto-blow, too.

So, we have a new app called Cuddle Bids, where you can find people to go cuddle with for money. Yeah, you made me watch the video right before we started this segment. And what? It has to be a joke, right?

I haven't downloaded the app. I don't plan on downloading the app. I don't believe you. I do not believe you. I have not downloaded the app. I don't want to download the app. But, yeah. I mean, is this just a thinly-veiled, you know, prostitution ring?

It has to be. There's no... If this is actually real, if it's a real app, it's got to be. It's got to be just full of prostitutes, right? Now, I remember there was a movement in New York City two or three years ago where they started up cuddle clubs, where you would go as if it were a bar or something like that, and it was strictly monitored, and they had, you know, couches out and stuff like that, and you would meet up to cuddle with people.

I vaguely remember that. I remember thinking it was beyond stupid, and we haven't heard about it since then, and it certainly didn't expand beyond New York City. But this has to just be an app for prostitutes. It has to. I remember the cuddle clubs, and they were big news for a while.

Well, they were big news on slow news days, yes. No, I just... I was flabbergasted. I was floored. I just don't understand. The world has become just unfathomable to old people like me, I guess.

But to each his own. Yeah, well, let me... Okay, there is a movement going on here in Los Angeles. That is equally befuddling to me. I don't know if it's made the news there yet, but it's happening here, and it's on the same level of the cuddle clubs in New York City. There's this thing called daybreaking here.

What is that? You haven't heard of daybreaking. Okay. The kids, instead of doing the clubs the way that we used to do it, which is you'd be out until four in the morning on a combination of alcohol and drugs, and then hopefully have sex. They go out at four in the morning and go dance in clubs with no alcohol to start their day.

What? Yeah. Daybreaking. It's a thing. Google it. That is very, very bizarre. I don't know what's wrong with kids these days. Oh. So I did try and just install it right now while we were doing it just to try, and I don't know what's going on because it says my email address is already in use.

I knew it. You're a liar. I did not do it. I'm trying to browse. I'm browsing for cuddles. You had one of your two bottles of red night, and you've been signed up. There's probably some very, very lonely chick a couple blocks away from you who's pissed off that you didn't show up last night.

I am signed up. I will cuddle for $25 a half hour. God. There's nothing. There's nobody here. Okay. Well, it's only a matter of time before it gets taken over by prostitutes. Yeah. Maybe they should tie this in with yik yak. I just want to cuddle.

I want to cuddle anonymously. I want to anonymously cuddle my genitals. Everybody shows up in Guy Fawkes masks and just snuggles up. That would be awesome. I would go to that. Okay. That's all I got this week. It was just too good to pass up. Yeah. Thanks for that. You're welcome.

Media Candy. Every now and then I try to be a Jason. I do things like download crazy apps like yik yak and give them a shot for a week and get horribly depressed at the world or sometimes I'll find a new podcast and try to listen to that. I did that this week. It is called hashtag sorry, not sorry.

Not just sorry, not sorry by itself, but hashtag sorry, not sorry to let you know that they are connected and cool with the kids. It's by Jenna Kim Jones. Now, I have come to enjoy Jenna Kim Jones on the Alison Rosen is your new best friend podcast, which I listened to on Thursday as it's part of the Adam Carolla crew.

And she's joined in because I believe she's an old friend of Alison Rosen's. She's actually quite a funny comedian in her own right, Mormon. So she's got that angle as well. And then she started to do her own podcast with her husband, basically, because she has her own stuff to promote.

And this is a perfect example of a podcast done by people who have no reason or point in doing a podcast. And they're doing a podcast just to do a podcast. It's funny, I've actually gotten rid of every Carolla podcast except for the Adam and Dr. Drew show.

And I've got 164 in my list. And I've got no, no Adam Carolla whatsoever. Yeah, this was just it was very boring. I didn't I don't know why they're doing it. I don't understand the point of it. You know, there's almost if you're a comedian, it's basically required that you do a podcast at this point.

And most comedians step up to the plate and do something that's actually really funny and interesting. This not so much. Sorry, sorry, not so sorry, sorry, sorry. Yeah, but is it is it worse than Hitler? Oh, we're back to that, are we? So a friend of the show, Jordan Cooper, has a new show out this week called the Internet Outrage Machine, which is it's a game show.

Oh, they basically talk about things that the Internet has, you know, been enraged with this week and rank them on a scale and people win points and that kind of thing. But there is a game on there called worse than Hitler, which is fucking hilarious. Who got called worse than Hitler this week?

Oh, man, it's you just go listen to it. It's a ton of fun. Yeah, I highly recommend it. That sounds fun. That's you know, I like that idea. I'm going to definitely listen to this. What's cool about it is it's not a standard podcast. It is literally a game show and figuratively, but it's it's it's awesome.

It totally changes the way that the podcast is done. I mean, there are a couple of NPR game shows I listen to. Yeah, me too. I was asking. Yeah. Ask me. Anything's a good one. But this is a fun one. Add it. Definitely add this to the list. Will do. Oh, shizzy. And as it stands, I should be a contestant in a couple of weeks.

So very nice. Get to hear me figure out what's worse than Hitler. Little cross promo. I'll tell you what's worse than Hitler, but cuddle app. Well, yeah, because there's nobody to cuddle with. I feel like I'm on. What's it? What's the Christian one? Not Christian Mingle, but the big one with the thousand questions.

E-Harmony. E-Harmony. Yes. I went on E-Harmony in Los Angeles and they said there was nobody for me. I tell you, man, I'm telling you, I'm screwed. We were just you missed Tinder by that much, man. So a lot of a lot of podcasts.

I've been kind of having their head up their own ass for the past couple of weeks talking about talking about podcasting with the, you know, with all the news about cereal and all that crap out there. And it's gotten to the point where it's ridiculous and everybody just needs to stop. Johnny Carson did not go on the Tonight Show and talk about his microphone.

It, you know, he didn't. He went on the show and he did his show. So stick to your show. And on that vein, if you are interested in learning how to podcast, I recommend the podcast method on the five by five network done by Dan Benjamin. He's up to episode two now. And it's awesome.

I actually supported on Patreon because I like it so much. And this, this current episode, number two, they go deep into the weeds on compression and all the different settings on the compressors and stuff, which I had no idea how it worked. And I came out of it going, I still don't know how it works, but I'm going to, I'm going to go back and listen to it again with my app open in front of me so I can play with it and learn how it works because they give you settings and the whole nine yards.

I was about to say, you know, I, I did that a whole major in audio engineering and compression was basically a year long topic. So good on you for one podcast. Well, it's, it's like 45 minutes of, well, with an actor, he brings on an audio engineer and it's about it. It is specific to just voice.

Yeah. It's really cool though. It's cool stuff. Um, I'm not going to be going out and buying a compressor because I don't have an XLR mic and I can just do it in software. Yes. You can all do all that with software. Now you do not need an outbound compressor. Yeah. So let's talk about the newsroom. Okay. One to go.

I'm so sad. I know. And like we talked about, it is ramped up the season. It's, it's been utterly fantastic. I found out I was, uh, my friend's newsletter. I dream of TV, which we've talked about. Yes. I found out about the last episode on, on that newsletter and I was just, I was heartbroken.

I'm like, what, what's going on? And, and they, this last episode, spoiler alerts, if you don't want to know any newsroom spoilers or aren't caught up, skip ahead for two minutes. Um, okay. Silence down. Uh, yeah. So they killed off my favorite characters.

There was no, there, here's the problem with wrapping up a show. Yeah. Uh, he started to hit it out of the park cause he just didn't care anymore. And what I think they should have done is not do a traditional wrap up, but unfortunately he is. So yeah, they, they killed off a character cause they had basically written him into a core corner.

There was nothing they could do with him given the major plot lines that were coming up, except get rid of him. Plus it gives a big emotional goodbye and point for the last episode of the season. I could have written that in my fucking sleep. I wish he wouldn't have gone that traditional. Yeah. Everything about this last episode was just so cookie cutter.

It made me so mad. I mean, I was, I really wanted to throw my computer when I was done watching it. Except for the one plot line that apparently has pissed everyone off, which I thought was genius and incredibly well done. Yeah. The rape plot. Yes. Yeah. There's a New York times article in the show notes, uh, where they were Sorkin actually defends it and what he was trying to do with it.

And I thought he, I thought he explained it fairly well. Look, the reality is this show was written eight months ago, filmed five months ago. If it would have come out any other time, except without this all being in the news in the last two to three weeks, it wouldn't have gotten this much attention and it wouldn't have gotten this much scorn and hate.

The reality is it was pure bad timing for this episode to come out. I thought the way he handled it was great. I thought the points he was making was great. I thought the whole scene was fantastic. Yeah. It was a very good scene. And just when you think about the functions that they had when they were writing this season, everything in here could have been written yesterday.

It could just, it could have been ripped from the news like they do in, uh, those really bad cop shows from New York. Um, and I'm just, I'm sad to see it go, but I, and now I'm kind of happy because I just, it's written itself into such a hole.

Yeah. Well, I mean, obviously the whole, the whole, you know, the whole point of the last episode is they're going to be at the funeral for the guy who was the true defender of real news. And it's a, it's a very beat you over the head. News is dead. Yeah. And everybody gets fired. Yes, you know, exactly.

That was the, that was the super annoying part where like he comes out saying, you know, the last gift to the person who sold me the studio is that you can't fire these people. Only I can. And then he dies. Exactly. You. Yeah. So not, you know, not the best wrap up, but whatever. Hey, we may be really surprised.

You, you know, you're going to get an incredibly long soliloquy from Sloan and you're going to get one from, uh, Jeff Bridges character who I could never remember his name. Will McAvoy. Will McAvoy. And that speech will probably be brilliant and worth the price of admission alone. So I'm looking forward to that, but it all comes to an end on Sunday.

I wonder since, uh, Sons of Anarchy is gone, if they'll, they'll, uh, take the mantle and have a couple of musical montages. Oh, of course they will. Sons always had the big musical montages. Remember they ended season one with the, uh, montage to Coldplay. Oh, that's right. That's right.

So expect a couple, a couple of speeches, a couple of tears, and, uh, I'm just going to miss Sloan. Oh gosh, she's gorgeous. She's gotten so much better from when she was trying to play nerd on G4. I have to tell you though. I actually, I, again, this is one of those Hollywood things.

Um, I was at a Dodger game and I was in the super expensive, nice seats courtesy of universal music and she was there and she looked like an alien in person. She's so damn thin. She looks really the way she looks on TV is stunning. She does not look like that in person because you can't, because you have to be like 15 pounds thinner.

She's gorgeous on TV. I was like, Oh, you need to go get yourself some Dodger dogs lady. Bitch eat a sandwich. Oh God. Okay. So you, uh, you want to talk a little bit about the Stephen Colbert thing. I see since other, since they're ending to every show's ending, all the good shows are ending.

It's going to be really interesting. I've, to be honest, I've stopped watching Stephen Colbert and I've stopped watching the daily show. Um, I get the, you know, if there's a big hit and the clip is circling on, mine, I'll watch that. But I, I used to watch the full shows religiously. I don't anymore. I've moved on to a what's his face. Who's on break right now.

God, John Oliver, John Oliver, which is the best of the bunch. As far as I'm concerned. Uh, I have a soft spot in my heart for the cool bear. I thought it was genius when it came out really good show. Uh, so he's wrapping up and pulling out all the stops and doing what, you know, they do. And it's great. But, uh, president Obama filled in for him, which.

Yeah. It was very funny. It was, it was, it was extremely funny, but he had the, the decree instead of the word. I thought, and the way his delivery, they even made fun of his delivery during his delivery. I thought it, I thought they knocked it out of the park. It was very meta. It was very funny.

And I, I guess I'm just old. I'm not part of the YouTube generation, but I don't want my president doing these things. I was not thrilled even when I was young, when, when Clinton came out playing a sax on a late night show. That is not presidential. Oh, well. See, I got no problem with it.

None whatsoever. And also you have to remember that the timing on this for his PR the day before the torture report came out. Well, after that happened, then, then I got super cynical about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, this was, uh, wasn't so much a wag the dog, but it was a, uh, yeah.

See, he's a nice guy. He's the nice guy. He's funny. He can talk to the kids. Oh, uh, we didn't rip off the toenails over here. Don't look at those. That's bad news. Think about the good news. Look at, look at your shares. Go to Buzzfeed, you know, go to Buzzfeed. Of course. That's how we deal with PR in the 21st century.

Bad news. Everybody loves the moron of the week segment. And every now and then I forget about it, but this one was too good to not do. And I truly believe this guy's a moron. Unfortunately, this happened like early on. So now we have tons of follow-ups. The quick, funny moron of the week segment becomes more in depth.

Here we go. Ben Edelman, a Harvard Business School professor, got overcharged by $1 per item for the four items he ordered of Chinese food and then launched into a very massive attack on the poor restaurant, basically threatening to sue them into oblivion and take it to the highest courts in the land because he got screwed by $4.

I want my $4. I want my $4. Yeah. So he sent this insane email basically threatening him. The owner of the restaurant, Randwan? Randwan. Randwan basically wrote back an immediate response saying he apologized for the confusion in obviously broken English and using an iPhone.

So we all know what happens when we're responding on iPhones. He said our website prices have been out of date for quite some time. Later on during an interview, he explains we're obviously a family-run business. We don't exactly have the money to be able to update websites and keep them up to date frequently. Yeah, understandable. Small businesses not being able to pay web designers.

We know nothing about that. I've never heard anything to that extent. Regardless, okay, you're a restaurant. You should have the right prices. He then sent another very long email threatening him about, you know, well, that's fine. But you're charging me the wrong price. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, this goes back and forth like 10 times.

Well, here, the very next response, so that response number two from the owner of the restaurant is we'll refund you the money. Done. That's it right there. You're done. It's over. It's over. Unfortunately, it wasn't. And it kept going on and on and on. And luckily, all this stuff got leaked.

So it gave everybody a good laugh all week long. Yes, he finally apologized. But I think my favorite article about it is Diggs' take on it, where they basically wrap everything up in a story called Much Ado About $4. And they go back and forth talking about the press and how they kind of made this a mountain out of a molehill, because they honestly did by saying that this guy was a Harvard business school professor when he never mentioned it in any of his dealings with the restaurant.

Right. You know? And in the article. That's actually, this is a sign of good journalism. A journalist went out and found what he was. We should be happy about that. But some lawyers came back and said, yeah, this guy kind of read the law wrong. First, you have to have damages over $25, which he doesn't.

Yeah. And it has to be, you know, granted by a judge after a hearing, which it wasn't. So, yeah, the Diggs article is the best write-up of the whole thing, because they talk about all the other articles, but at the end, they quote the BuzzFeed article, which has a quiz saying, do you forgive Harvard Sichuan restaurant shamer Ben Edelman?

And basically, people said no. No. My favorite. No. Well, not really. You know, it was split between my favorite particular entry. Wait and see. His future behavior in Sichuan-related disputes will determine my forgiveness. So, we'll have to please somebody hack his accounts to find out if future Chinese food orders and see how they go.

Yes. And it wraps up. We're sorry, Ben Edelman. The BuzzFeed quiz has spoken. You are now known as the Harvard Sichuan shaming guy. We hope you like your new identity. Expect a call soon so that we may turn your return. God, people, get an editor. Yep. Yeah.

Okay. They lost me at their spelling error. Forget it. Gig sucks. I want my $4. What are they doing throwing away perfectly good Chinese food like that? Hey, you know what the upside is, though? The guy said the food was delicious. So, maybe this is just, this is fake internet outrage.

Maybe they're an ad for the restaurant. They're in cahoots. There you go. And maybe they're undercharging if it's that delicious. It is. I'm hungry. Are you kidding me? I found the single best website I've ever seen in my entire life.

This is hands down the greatest find on the internet ever. You win the internet of all time. This combines so many things I love. Tinfoil hats and 1992 web design. Everexisted.com. You need to look at this. The great part about this is the domain was registered in 2011.

Yeah. I didn't even look at the forum. There's a forum. A forum's broken. Okay. Take it to the forum. But they do have two different rundowns of why the Beatles that we were presented were not actually all the same people when you saw them in different times. Yes.

They compare height, different heights, ears. Yes. Actually, ears is coming soon, so you don't get the ears. But you do get eyebrows. They have a detailed explanation of the different eyebrows of the Beatles over time.

It's fascinating. I love the internet. This is the best site I've ever seen. It is absolutely fantastic. I lost a good hour going through this whole thing. I know. I don't know where they find the time.

God forbid they have two pictures where his eyebrows are different and one he's furrowing his brow. So, yes, they are shaped a little bit different. Or the height differences, which are caused by things like boots. And standing on uneven surfaces because they don't show the actual feet in some of them.

This is awesome. I suggest everybody on their next lunch break go out and just spend some time hanging out on this site because it is fantastic. Oh, the forum's back up. Sweet. Oh, great. There's the rest of my afternoon. Yep.

All right. Well, there's a couple hundred posts in here, too. Let's get moving. I got to dive into this. So we got one more. Are you kidding me? All right. The founder of Match.com, Gary Kremen, lost his girlfriend to a man she met on Match.com. How did that not become their ad campaign? Tell me about it. That right there is, that is the best advertising you can get.

Edis Harmony. Swipe, swipe, swipe. Okay, back to Paul. Did you see the eyebrow thing on page five? No, I got to go back. Closing shout outs. I want to give a massive shout out to the LA Galaxy and Landon Donovan.

Landon Donovan played his final game for MLS soccer and international men's, which he's already done. The LA Galaxy is the first MLS team to win five championships, which they did on Sunday. And no one, no one gave a shit except me.

I was, they had the, I don't know why they scheduled it on a Sunday. I tried to go out and watch it in a bar and I had to beg and plead to get it put on one TV because football was going on. I watched by myself. I got that looks, strange looks from people. I got comments from why the hell is the Galaxy game on as I was sitting there watching it.

But they won. So congratulations. You know, it's another hometown team winner. So since nobody cares, you're giving a shout out to yourself. I'm giving a shout out to myself and I'm sure there are some people, we know, we've seen our, our listener maps. There are people in England who also don't give a shit about MLS, but at least they know it's soccer.

Okay. I would like to give an anti-shout out to my good friends at WordPress for being a steeping pile of shitola. Oh, is this the breaking news segment? I have been, I have spent the past couple of days trying to merge one WordPress website that has about 400 posts in it into a subcategory of another website.

This should be simple. Export, import. Well, the export file is in XML, which, you know, 38, 38 megabytes. XML, that awesome standard that isn't really a standard. Yeah.

Yeah. Please. JSON, people. JSON. Um, and bringing it. No, it breaks on import every damn time, breaks on export every damn time. There's no consistency. And I feel like this is the universe just kicking me in the nuts because I was once offered a job by Matt Mullenweg to go work for automatic on the WordPress team and be in charge of the importers and exporters.

I shit you not. This is the universe saying you should have taken the job because whoever got the job after me does not know what the hell they're doing. All right. That's it. Okay. I just had to vent my frustration. It has been such a terrible few days dealing with this thing.

I spec'd out an afternoon to do it. That was it. It's going to be an afternoon. It's been at least three episodes since you crapped on WordPress. Yeah. Because I've been busy getting crapped on by WordPress. Oh. Go get some cuddles. Yeah, I could.

I need a cuddle. Damn it. There's no cuddles in my area. All right, man. I've got to go. I got to go. I got to go read some more about the Beatles. Okay, man. I'll talk to you next week. Talk to you next week. Music for Grumpy Old Geeks is provided by Among Us.

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As you can plainly see in this 1968 photo, where are his real Paul eyebrows? Behind his fake ears. Okay, last one to kill a bad guy buys the beer. We're driving to Florida!

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