89: Better Safe than Sony

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian and Jason. Discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Let's get started. Hey Brian, how's it going?

It's going well. I've got the tree up. I've got presents wrapped. It's the season for giving, isn't it? Oh, it is. Give away. Unless, of course, you happen to be Oprah. Well, she should be the biggest giver. Doesn't she always give away cars and houses? Yeah, she seems to give things away when it's good for ratings, but apparently she suffers from Lena Dunham slash Amanda Palmer disease.

She's got this big tour called The Life You Want, which apparently is charging $999 a ticket if you'd like to attend. And Oprah's minions are reaching out to local performers in all the areas and asking them to come out and perform, which is lovely, except they don't want to pay them.

Yeah, yeah. And to be clear, it's up to $999 for the tickets. There are a range of prices. But yes, the high-end front row Oprah will spit on you during the talk seats are $999. And yeah, it's an interesting story. I read through it.

And it's an open letter from this girl, Revolva, who does hula hoop dancing, basically. And I've actually seen, I don't know if it was her specifically or another group of them, but they've been at Coachella before performing, which they were paid for. Okay, yeah. I mean, well, this girl's up in San Francisco, and everybody, every chick in San Francisco has a fucking hula hoop.

But she's pretty good. I watched her video. She actually knows what she's doing, and she puts on a good show. So I think she should get paid to perform, and so does she. Yes, yes. And I, yeah, it just seems to be, I don't understand how this can keep happening, considering there's public outcry every single time it does.

And it does, strangely enough, this is almost always a female performer that is doing this. I have not heard stories of male performers doing this, asking people to come out and perform for free. Maybe this is some sort of a, hey, we're all gonna all lift each other up, right? While screwing each other.

Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't put too much into that. Dudes are just like, fuck you, I'm not gonna. It's chicks that write the open letters and complain about it. But I think the dudes are just like, yeah, fuck you, I'm not gonna come out and perform for nothing. We just say no. Then we go back and watch TV, yeah. Okay, that's done.

You know, and I am highly dubious that Oprah had any hand in this decision whatsoever. Oh, of course not. I mean, she's got layers upon layers upon layers of people below her that are handling this and running the tour. So, you know, it was just a, it's good business, as we'll talk about a lot.

It's just business. It's just business. You know, you're gonna be promoting yourself. A whole group of people that had never seen you before are gonna see you. So why should we pay you to come out and perform? Because we've got the power and we've got the money. Do you know how many movie websites were built on that same principle? We paid peanuts and everybody signed up for them, thinking they're gonna get their exposure.

And we ruined half of Hollywood by doing that. Seriously, we shut down so many design shops by just getting cheap websites done. Well, yeah. Because it's exposure. And the same thing through the music industry. And, you know, I personally have survived a couple waves of that happening.

And it's happening again this time around. It's, you know, if you're a high-profile music client, somebody, a design shop is basically going to take you on for free and give you a half-assed website to put their name on it. Indeed. And get the supposed promotion that actually never really happened. Ever.

It never comes out. It never really works. You can do something for free for someone high-profile. That does not mean you will never get a job from it. No. I've been victim of it myself. I've given my services away to a ton of people and, you know, just gotten crapped all over. Because the next time, they're like, oh, well, we're gonna hire somebody else to do it, to do the next version.

Yeah. Because, you know, we don't like a few things that you did. I'm like, well, why don't you just tell me about that? And I could have fixed it instead of going and giving somebody else the bag of money that you fucking owe me. But, no, that's how it works. Because, you know, if you don't set your prices at the outset of the interaction, they're gonna walk all over you.

Because they see you as cheap labor. Always. And you can't beat that dynamic. You cannot go back and work your way up the ladder. No. Trust me on this one, people. I know. So set your price at a fair rate out of the gate or don't do the job. Very true. So, anyway, screw Oprah.

Whatever. She's got her bag of money. And she's screwing young women that like to hula hoop. Oh, wait, wait, wait. By the way, who's on the cover of Oprah magazine this month? Oh, God. Is it Oprah? I don't know. Actually, you know what? We can actually play a better game with that one. Is it fat Oprah or thin Oprah? Ooh, that's mean.

But it's also true. I mean, she vacillates on the cover of that magazine way more than in real life. That's true. Who's running the filters this week? Exactly. Which Photoshop filter was used this week? Anyways, moving on. Moving on. But speaking, this is directly related to pop culture, of which Oprah is.

We've talked a lot about plugging, getting out, plugging out, just taking a fucking break and moving away from everything. There was a really good article in Salon that resonated with me this week. Link will be in the show notes. It's by a guy named Benjamin Hart. The Tyranny of Pop Culture Musts, How I Learned to Love Being Out of the Loop.

This one specifically, for me, has been about, I mean, the sub-headline is Serial. Never heard it. That's me. I have not listened to an episode of Serial. Everybody in the fucking world is listening to Serial. And because people know that I do a podcast, that is the number one question out of everyone's mouth.

Have you been listening to Serial? And I'm just, no. No, I have not. And this entire article is just about, you know, pop culture is everywhere. It's all over the place. I don't like it. I don't want to watch it. See, I read this article and I thought it was contrarian hipster dribble.

But, you know, that's just my point of view. Because people, you know, they vacillate. They go back and forth. Because I guarantee the things that he does actually, like, he'll talk about. But, you know, it's just because he just doesn't want to be part of the cool crowd, you know. Or just the, not the, he wants to be part of the cool crowd.

But he's in the, you know, ah, I'm too cool for that. I can't be bothered. Game of what? No, I don't watch TV. Forget you guys. There is a little bit of that, oh, I don't have a TV aspect to this. Yes. And he did lose me on not being into Star Wars. I mean, that's just wrong. Yeah, that's a weird one.

That is a weird one. I see it a lot, though. I mean, there's like a slice of the population that has never seen Star Wars, never wants to see Star Wars. And I just don't, I don't get it. I mean, the fact that it is so beloved by so many people, you'd think that they'd want to at least find out what's going on.

But that just comes back to, I'm just being a contrarian to be a contrarian. Yeah, well, I mean, I understand if you were raised a bit, if you're a bit younger than us, and your first introduction to Star Wars is the Jar Jar Binks abomination. I could get not wanting to go back and see anything. Yeah, but he doesn't know about Jar Jar Binks because he's never seen it, so that's not an argument.

I bet he's homeschooled. These homeschooled people are weird. That they are. Okay, moving on from the contrarian hipster. But, you know, honestly, actually, before we go, just a quick note on Serial. It is over. And it ended exactly like I said it was.

Did it really end? Because I did not see an online explosion of disappointment. In fact, I didn't see an online anything. So it must have been one of those. It was, yes, it was the meh of the tweets. I saw it, or I listened to it that morning.

I got up early, and I played it and listened to it, and then instantly opened Twitter and just watched the reaction from the same people who got up early. And it's mostly podcasters that I saw. And honestly, when you say everybody's listening to it, it's like five million people, which is not everybody.

Hey, you know, these days, that is pop culture phenomena levels. I mean, the albums don't sell that many copies anymore. They don't even stream that many copies anymore. That's five million is a big deal. But it's like half the demo of one episode of The Walking Dead.

Right. Well, Walking Dead took years to get to that level, though. Yeah, that's true. So speaking of taking years, is there going to be a Serial 2? Yes. They raised enough money through crowdfunding to get a second season. They don't know what the story is going to be or when it's going to come out, but there will be another season.

All right. And it's a different story. So I don't know if we're ever going to find out what happened to the guy in the first season. Well, that is the problem when you base your stuff on real life, because real life is messy and not wrapped up in nice little bows. Indeed. So if you were a celebrity on Instagram this week, you might have lost a couple gazillion followers.

Oh, my God. This is so funny. This is so funny. There's going to be some social media managers that are probably going to be getting yelled at a lot today. But it's nobody's fault. These were spam accounts that got deleted. I mean, granted, there were millions upon millions of them.

No, let's give some real stats. Rihanna lost 1.2 million followers. Kim Kardashian lost 1.3 million followers. And Oprah lost quite a lot as well. Okay. Do you know how many followers the Instagram account lost? How many? 14 million.

But, I mean, the funny story that came out is, like, you know, these rappers got butthurt and then quit. Like, dude, throw the fuck up. I know. It's just social media. Give me a break. And these are the people that were paying for follows anyway, more than likely. Yeah, but again, this comes down to kind of the way this all works, is there was some social media guy that was getting paid a decent amount of money by these celebrities to keep up their accounts and keep the things going.

And I'm sure they didn't mention that they were paying for followers on the side. So, like I said, somebody's getting fired today. Yep. Good. Honestly, good. I know. Good. Because those are the kind of... This is bullshit. Those are the kind of people that have basically devalued our work. Yeah, they shit on our industry.

So, fuck them. Screw them. To hell with them. Can't handle it Christmas, you brat bastards. You put a link in here to a Microsoft blog post that I had no idea about this. I was... And it was on TechCrunch, and they posted, like, the best, worst...

Corporate blog post of all time. And I read it this morning, and I was in tears. I was laughing so hard. This is one of the best things ever. I wasn't sure where to put it in our show notes, and I ended up just dropping it in the intro because it's just too funny. Everybody needs a little bit of cheer this time of year, so I highly recommend that everyone go to our show notes, pour yourself a nice little eggnog, heavy on the rum or the brandy, your choice, and read through this because it is hilarious.

I've never understood why corporations do this kind of, like, blog thing anyways, where they convince their employers or employees to go ahead and post to keep everybody up to date about what they're up to and show the world what a wonderful company this is. But they do it, and this post did not get vetted, apparently, and it is hilarious.

Highly worth reading. They took it down, but the entire thing is up on the TechCrunch article. It's very funny. Yeah, and super props to Alex Wilhelm, who wrote the TechCrunch article, because his commentary is almost as funny as the actual blog post. Yes, it is. Well worth reading.

Very funny stuff. Yeah, so that is our holiday cheer for the day, because the rest of this is not going to be very cheerful. Yeah, we're about to take a turn for the worse. Although I think it's going to be funnier than that, but we'll see. It depends on if you really enjoy the fact that Sony is a bunch of fucking idiots.

Our comment of the week comes from Heidi, who is a woman after my own heart. She writes, popcorn absolutely smells like feet. I've been saying it for years, and I'm glad to finally found someone who agrees with me.

Well, Heidi, so am I, because I do sincerely believe that popcorn smells like sweaty feet. Well, that's two of you out there. Now, Doritos. Doritos smell like dirty socks. I'll go in on that one. Okay, but they are delicious.

They are. They are delicious. Doritos popcorn. So if you would like to send us a comment or ask us a question, just head on over to grumpyoldgeeks.com and click the Ask a Geek button, or you can use the SpeakPipe widget in the sidebar to send us a vocal question.

Nobody's done that yet, so there should be a prize for the first person, I think, to actually send us an audio question, because otherwise I'm going to take the damn thing down. I was about to say, it might be time to remove that in 2015. Oh, and by the way, if you're out there and you want to make a comment, just agree with Jason, and 100% for sure it's going to get read.

Absolutely.

In the news. An article from the Washington Post leapt out at me. We're grumpy old geeks. We've been working in the web for over 20 years. We've seen it all. So I see an article titled, From Lycos to Ask Jeeves to Facebook, tracking the 20 most popular websites every year since 1996.

And I was like, holy crap, this is perfect for us. And then I tried to read it, and it was so boring. It is ridiculously boring. I was just like, as soon as you put it in, I'm like, do we really got to talk about this? But it was making the rounds, and it is just a bunch of corporate websites that kind of moved up and down over the years.

Yeah. It's not even a great visualization. I mean, they could have done such a better job with this. No, I mean, this is confusing as shit. It's a terrible visualization. I just think it's funny that from 96 to 2002, AOL was number one. Oh, and the fact that Yahoo was number one in 2013.

Yeah, that was pretty crazy. I mean, I figured it must be related to Flickr somehow, just in sheer traffic numbers. But who knows? Who knows? Who cares? Well, let's get to some good stuff, like Slate's article on the year of outrage. This was a good visualization.

Yes, they did an amazing job with this. This is absolutely fantastic. Yeah, basically, every day of the year, it's a giant calendar, and they've got just all of the outrage for everything this year. What people were pissed off about on every day of the year. And the great part is, like, they have an outrage meter at the bottom of this.

I tweeted to Jordan Cooper. I'm like, these guys are stealing your shtick, man. But yeah, there's an outrage meter at the bottom of this thing where you can vote in real time. And most of them are, people are just like, nah. Well, it either goes either, like, completely outrageous or completely overblown.

There's very few middle-of-the-road ones on this. Well, yeah. I mean, because it basically breaks down to, was it real news or was it a slow news day full of bullshit? Yeah. I mean, that's what it comes down to. So people are obviously outraged about Joe the Plumber writing an open letter to the families of the UCSB shooting victim saying, your dead kids don't trump my constitutional rights.

Yeah. Okay. Okay, Joe the Plumber, go die in a fire. But I love, I love the visuals on that. They did a really good job. Yeah. And it's, it's quite amusing content as well. So this is the perfect intersection of good design and good content. Yes. Look at that.

Something not on the internet much anymore. Ooh, doggy. Now here's something that wasn't on the internet, but kind of was, but it goes back to the outrage. The people who bought boxes of shit from Cards Against Humanity were actually surprised when they received boxes of shit.

First off, Cards Against Humanity is one of the most fun games to play in the world, as long as it isn't with your family or your parents. Secondly, I've railed many, many times on this podcast about truth and advertising. They told you what it was. You're an idiot. Yeah. And I, I, I've, sadly, I've never played Cards Against Humanity.

Oh my God. So fun. Yeah. I don't have any friends, so it's kind of hard. I can't play with myself. Oh, well. That came out wrong. That's the autoblow too. Let's, let us not forget. Let us not forget. No, Cards Against Humanity is a lot of fun.

It's, it's, uh, usually if I go back to Toronto for Christmas, which I'm unfortunately not doing this year, it's actually a bit of a tradition that I have with some of our friends there. We get together on Christmas day. We go to the Dog's Bullocks where they give, uh, they sell pints, pints of vodka tonics and, uh, we play Cards Against Humanity.

Oh, that sounds awesome. I, I, I went past that place and I've never been in, so I want to go back to Toronto just to go to that bar. It's a good bar. It's fun times. So the, just the follow-up on this, everybody was outraged. How could you, you know, earn $180,000 off boxes of bullshit?

And they just came back and said, Hey, look, these boxes cost us, they cost us $5 and 80 cents to produce. After mailing and everything, we, we netted $6,000 and we donated the proceeds to Hyper International. So, well, first off, I don't think that they should have had to do that.

It's a, we are in a capitalist society, buyer beware. Uh, they said what it was and secondly, you know, shit's not free. No, it's not. It apparently costs $5 and 80 cents. But I thought, yeah, these guys are a good crew.

I don't, like I said, I haven't played the game, but still, I, I give them props for just being awesome. Well, you might be getting a, you might be getting the card set, not the box of shit for Christmas from, from me then, because, uh, you got to play it. I'd love to. My brother's a huge fan too. He's got, uh, stacks and stacks of those things around.

Yeah. Now here's an interesting one. Facebook is going to start auto enhancing your photos because algorithms are better at filters than you are. True. Yeah. Uh, yeah, but the, but what if you want to find this, what if you want to post something that's a little bit dark and murky?

What if I don't want it auto enhanced? Yeah. It's just, I'm taking the, the, the choice out, which Facebook apparently is, that's their thing. They just want to take the choice out of everything. What you read now, what you see, you know, and they're trying to, uh, what does it stop?

Filter fatigue. Like, give me a fucking break. I mean, seriously, here's the deal. If you're just going to start doing everything for us, then just start writing shit and sending it to me. Just make shit up. I don't care. Nope. That's the goal, right? Probably.

It does seem to be a weird cross purpose considering they own Instagram and Instagram's claim to fame is their filters and letting you put that stuff on it. So yeah. And they, and Instagram just released five new filters. Woohoo. World rejoice. We've stopped world hunger. Uh, I don't know.

It's just fucking ridiculous. Yes, it is. Next up is a really good one. This one makes me happy. There's this company called magic leap that nobody has any idea what they do. Okay. Augmented reality. Yeah. It's a, it's an augmented, it's an AR company that has $542 million in funding.

And apparently you just have to be in the know to actually see a demo and know what it does, but they have hired Neil Stevenson. Okay. Which he is their, he is their chief futurist. Okay. Now, if you have to hire some, if you will here, if you're an augmented reality company and you need to hire somebody to come up with good ideas on how to use your product, you can not get better than Neil Stevenson.

The motherfucker wrote snow crash, which is the greatest book about, you know, uh, augmented reality, VR, uh, virtual worlds, the whole nine yards. This is the guy to have. That's true. So hopefully what the, if they ever release it, it's going to be amazing.

I am looking forward to, uh, getting my katanas on and, and riding around in the multiverse or whatever they called it. Well, you gotta, you gotta keep in mind though, that, that, that book was from Neil Stevenson quite a long time ago. If this is anything based on current Neil Stevenson, uh, all they're going to come up with is some sword play application and with any luck, they'll make an augmented reality version of Neil Stevenson that goes and writes good books again.

I like his book. I had the new, the last ones. Oh my God. No. Well, I liked Reem D. Okay. Okay. That one was fine, but the, you know, that was his latest book. Okay. That was his latest, but he had that huge series, that 10,000 page tones of, of who God knows what was going on.

There's the Baroque cycle. I read it. I read them all. I loved them. I mean, I, I know more about that shit than I ever wanted to. Um, but I mean, God, you still gotta, you gotta give him props for Cryptonomicon. Um, my favorite, my favorite, my favorite authors. Yeah. And, and the diamond age, which I still think is the best book he wrote.

I agree. Actually, I, as much as I love snow crash, diamond age is my favorite. Yeah. Hands down. Runcible. So, um, so here's, here's a fun one. This was, this came from Giga Ohm, um, external traffic to Spanish, Spanish news sites plummets after Google move.

Well, you know, Spanish news organization said, Hey, we don't want to be in Google news anymore. You guys are ripping us off. And then Google's like, okay, let's see how this works. And they took him out and their traffic went straight in the shitter. Shocking.

I mean, it's unfortunate. And I back companies that want to, you know, say, screw you to these big players, but, uh, that you've got to know what the consequences are going to be. Seriously. Don't bite the hand. Don't bite the hand. Don't bite. Don't bite. Don't bite the hand that keeps you barely starving in a corner.

Yeah, no doubt. It's like, okay, now you, I just say, oopsie. Yeah. Good times. Did you see this, uh, article on fortune that, uh, it was basically a Q and a with Evan Williams on medium. Yeah. On medium.

Yes. Yeah. And he's, he kind of really, really skirted the monetization side of things. As well, shocking. Yeah. We don't want those numbers coming out. No. And they're still pretty small. It's one of those things. It was like, we think everybody's talking about cereal.

We think everybody's posting on medium and no, it's just our, it's our little sphere, our little echo chamber. They've got like 9 million uniques a month to the site, which isn't very many at all for something that big while that small, but, um, he didn't talk really about any ways that they're going to give back to the people who are not already paid authors that they pay to put content on their site.

Yeah. Which is, which is my whole, my whole problem with them. If you're not going to pay back the people who are posting things onto your platform, then what's the point? Well, I mean, that's LinkedIn as well, which is trying to pivot to a place where people are, are blogging, but not getting paid for it.

So it makes no sense to me. No, I've never, never understood it. Even, even with blogger back in the day, you could put Google ads on it. Yeah. You know, once Google bought them, you could put Google ads on it. At least monetize your blog in some way, shape or form, but here, no, no go. You can get a couple of pennies for a thousands upon thousands of views.

Does anybody use Google AdSense anymore? You know, I told you I was doing that experiment with a site where I, I tried it out. I've made a 0.02 cents from Google ads. Wow. I used to make, I used to make thousands of dollars a month from them.

And now, no, they don't even pay anywhere near that much anymore. No. It's a complete waste. Well, because we all run ad blockers. Yeah, exactly. So we, we know the advertising model doesn't work. So good times. Bring on native advertising.

Yeah. So you found an article, uh, the Warner music CEO has, uh, written his own, and I don't know if, was it internal and it got out or was this out to everyone? I, I don't, I'm not entirely sure what this email was, but, uh, Steven Cooper has basically said in a corporate email that, uh, we love the streaming model because it's about all the only way we get paid for anymore, but nobody's paying for it.

So as long as everybody starts to pay for it, then that would be awesome. Yeah. And this wasn't a leaked email or anything. This was a transcript from the Warner brothers earnings call. Ah, there you go. Okay. So even though they're a private company or Warner music group earnings call, so even though they're a private company, they still do the earnings calls for the big investors.

So all, all the comments in here from that. And yeah, he's like, yeah, we, it's good for us. We just need more people to pay for it. We don't like the freebies. We don't like the ones where they listen for free and get ads because they don't make nearly as much. And they want these services to start converting more people to paid accounts, obviously, and then they get paid.

So they, they're, they're actually seeing it as a, as a decent price point for them, which is interesting. Well, granted, it still doesn't get back down to the artists, but for the label. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the, always the trickle down theory, right? So if, if the label starts to get enough, then they'll trickle it down to the artist.

Um, you know, it's, I would Spotify first came out. They basically used to say, you know, there's a magic number. If we get enough subscribers, this will all turn around and everything will really go. But the reality is most people just aren't going to the freemium model. Most people are quite happy to just stay free and take a few ads here and there.

Yeah. Honestly, Spotify should start giving away if they're going to do the free version, give them, give them a truncated catalog. I only, only give them half an album, you know, that, that is the, that's the impetus to get them to sign up, given the way the whole fucking show. That was a no brainer.

I've never understood why they didn't do that from, from launch. Some of these, one of these services has to do that. That's how you'll actually convert people. But the problem is you can't launch a service that does that when all the other services don't, because nobody's going to sign up with yours. Yeah. That's the problem. All of them have to get on the same page, which then you run into problems of collusion and it gets to be, it gets to be a problem.

But yeah, if everybody only gave away or, well, Hey, how about the labels say you can have the free service, but we're only going to, you know, license half the catalog for the, for the free version. The labels could get together and do that also collusion, but that's nothing new for the fucking music labels.

There's only three of them left. They can figure that out. Or to be, I mean, I would make, yeah, I would totally make it either a label and, or an artist. I personally think the choice should go to the artist. The artist should be able to say, all right, put up four of these 12 tracks as freebies. Yeah. That would, that would make sense. I want the other ones to only be available if I'm getting paid directly.

Yes. As somebody who actually pays for the, you know, his service, I have no problem with that. Yeah, exactly. Um, and I, I do believe if memory serves, I don't have it in front of me, but I think the Spotify number for the tipping point is 40 million and they're there. I think they're 12.5 now. Yeah.

So they've got a long road to hoe. Yeah. They've got a more than double, double and a half. And again, you're, you're, and they're hacking down their potential, uh, pay base anyways, by offering family plans and all that sort of stuff. So. Yeah. Yeah. But, um, on, on the call, I think what he was talking about mainly that he was really happy about is that YouTube has finally started a subscription service instead of posting everybody's entire albums and ship free.

So yeah, we'll see how well that works out, but yeah. And I mean, I know we've talked about this ad nauseum on the show, but we still don't have a trickle down to the artists, which, which really needs to be a change. But I think if, you know, if the economics work out and the labels can finally get their pound of flesh out of it, then the artists will probably start to see more.

So if the labels are pushing these guys to really push subscriptions, paid subscriptions, I think, I think that's a plus for the artists. No, I agree. I agree a hundred percent. Uh, you know, let's, we'll see what actually happens. Yeah. Now the next story really makes me sad that we still don't have the, the segment.

Are you shitting me? Facebook actually has, says it's dropped the term users and, uh, they have an empathy team and we're calling people people. I just, I, I, I, I think even are you shitting me is, is too weak for this.

This is like, are you fucking kidding? Yeah. Um, I've got no problem with the switch from users to people. I've been doing that internally, internally. I'm starting to, I'm so going into corporate speak already. Um, I've, I've been doing that for quite a while where I've stopped calling site visitors. I'm just like, you have 10,000 people coming a month, all that sort of stuff.

Um, using, you know, the term visitor or user just does seem a little bit weird, but the empathy team is, is something that makes me want to puke. I know. I know. I mean, back at JPEG magazine, we had a very empathetic, uh, co-founder and he was always like, no, they're all people.

We love them. There are, there are friends. Uh, yeah, he got fired. Uh, but I mean, this is okay. Users was a step up from what we used to call people, which were eyeballs. We used to say eyeballs. Now we've got, then we moved to users and now we're going to people in this fucking kumbaya hug.

I'm like, no, this is business. They're fucking eyeballs. Let's go back to eyeballs. Eyeballs. Yeah. I like eyeballs too. But then that you could say there's two for every person. Actually, that drives your numbers up and makes you look better. Exactly. I want to, I want to, I want to forget uniques. I want to go back to hits.

I want to have, I want to have a page with 6,000 gifts on it and their gifts, not gyps, uh, and say, Oh, look, we've had a 400 million hits today. Yet we've made no income from Google ads. Interesting. Yes. That's how we, but that's how we used to sell it.

We had, uh, on, on the Star Trek site, the first day we launched, we had 10 million hits and 10 million hits was probably about, uh, 200,000 people because everything was sliced up and diced up into little three by four gifts.

I remember the days. Yes. I miss those days. Me too. Uh, but let's talk about a company that could use an empathy team. This is here. Here we go again. Here comes the Uber segment. It'll be a quick one. Just a couple of new stories here. First off, a, a Uber driver in Boston is being charged with rape.

Yeah. Regulations. Just saying. Uh, secondly, uh, Sydney, the hostage crisis. Before, before we run off the, the rape side, um, do we have any numbers on taxi drivers that have been charged with rape this year? No. I would like to see those numbers.

Well, let me Google it. Let's play some songs. Hold on. Taxi drivers charged with rape. Oh, Uber comes up, Uber comes up, Uber comes up, Uber comes up, Uber comes up, Uber banned in Delhi after taxi driver accused of rape.

Another Uber driver, um, Uber, Uber, Uber, Delhi, Boston. Oh, well, one in Fort Lauderdale, regular cabbie. Okay. Point shulmeister. All right. So number two, Sydney hostage scene, Uber turned on surge pricing for people who are fleeing the Sydney hostage scene.

Now, first off, my initial thought, I actually went with Uber on this one. I was like, oh, it's probably just the algorithm. I saw a lot of people trying to get it, whatever. Um, and here's the quote from Gawker. And lest you think this was the fault of an insensitive algorithm that detected high demand, the company tweeted that it was aware of the attack and had raised prices for the fleeing people's own good.

Yeah. See, this is where logic fails. Uh, because the logic behind Uber surge pricing is to get more drivers into the area faster. That's the whole, that's, that's their, their twisted ass. Yes. Like Ayn Rand logic to get it.

Well, that's exactly what it is. It's Ayn Rand logic. And yes. Uh, and it also can be an insensitive piece of shit. What Uber should have done is say any available driver, get over there and we will pay all the fares.

If they wanted, if they wanted to instill goodwill into the people of Sydney, Australia, that's exactly what they should have done because they, they had that in their power. And Uber was later, later did offer free rides in the area and refunds to anyone who paid the surge fees, but it took being shamed publicly before they did so.

Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't count. Yeah. No, it, no, it fucking doesn't, which is why they need an empathy team because that doesn't fucking count assholes anyways. And the final article I'm not even going to talk about. I think it's just an interesting read. Uh, another journalist went ahead and tried to be an Uber driver and wrote about it.

So yeah, that was, that actually wasn't a very good article. No. So let's just leave it at the, they wanted the terrorists to kill people and charge people money to get away from them. Okay. I think we might have to change the title of the show to point Schuhlmeister begrudgingly. Finally, after all these.

Horrible Uber stories. I finally get a fucking point. It took a goddamn terrorist attack. There's absolutely no way we can not talk about Sony because I actually personally think this is a massive watershed event, um, that is going to have longstanding implications for years and years and years to come.

It started with a little hack and here we are with a stupid stoner movie being pulled and basically we have given in to the terrorists. Yeah, this, this is, this is a definitely a watershed moment because it is the first like serious hack on American soil, even though it's Japanese.

Well, hold on. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's hold on a second because I, where are all the servers physically located? That has not come out in the news yet. We do not necessarily know this is American soil. We don't know where these servers were. Yeah, they were at Sony.

They were physically on the location. Every single one of them, all the information was on location in the United States at Sony's offices. This came off the Sony a lot. Okay. All right. That we know. Okay. There's, there is not much else we know because nobody is saying a damn thing.

It's all unnamed government sources. It's all supposition and it's all hearsay. Right now. Yeah. The, let's start with the basics. Okay. Nobody knows who did this. Well, nobody.

Yeah. There's the North Korean shit that's being passed around is unsubstantiated. That's right. And then Sony, well, the U S government was coming out saying they think it was the North Koreans. And then Sony is coming out and saying, they think it was an inside job.

Here's the thing. The reason that the government is involved in this and saving face for Sony is the fact that they are a massive American company in, in like what that employs a bunch of Americans and has a substantial impact on the GDP. They're trying to save, they're trying to save Sony pictures.

That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to like displace blame for this hack and put it somewhere where it can be offset that it wasn't, it wasn't anybody's fault is what they're eventually going to try and come out as until they catch somebody. Right now. Is it an inside job?

Most likely because the time that it would take to map those systems being an outside hacker and figure out the network topology, that would take months and months of just digging through and rooting other systems. It's a Herculean effort to do this from the outside.

Right. Every, every security person agrees with, agrees with that. Right. And as far as the North Korean connection, nobody believes it in the security side. Even Kevin Mitnick doesn't even believe it. And you know, shit, if I'm going to believe somebody, I'm going to believe Kevin.

Well, first off, even just the North Koreans being able to do that hack, kind of not believable. Secondly, the threat to bomb movie theaters across the U.S. that show the movie, there's no way North Korea has the capabilities to do that. I'm sorry.

They don't. Yeah, that, well, that's, you know, the whole quote unquote 9-11 style terrorist threat. That has been thrown around in the news and it is utter, just, it's bullshit. But it worked and that's the sad part about all of this is that it, it worked.

We gave in to the terrorists. Salman Rushdie didn't give in to the terrorists. It's the fucking Dutch newspapers that printed the cartoons didn't give in to the fucking terrorists. We did. I want to, I want to, I want to say something about this too, because what people are forgetting are the fact that the theaters, the theater chains are the first people to pull the movie.

It wasn't Sony. Sony was not the first one to pull it. It was the theater chains. Yes, because they would have been liable. Yeah. Yes. And what, what Sony did by pulling the movie is save face for the theater chains. Everybody here is backing everybody else up. So there's no splash damage along the way.

But what they, what, by Sony doing this, it set a very fucking dangerous precedent. Yep. Very dangerous precedent. And that's the big problem here. And one thing that I've liked that's come out of this is the outrage about it. People are pissed. Yeah. People are extremely pissed that this was pulled because we're America.

We don't negotiate with terrorists, you know, we don't do that for a reason though. And the reason is because next time somebody else is, you know, it's, it, this, this sets a precedent. This sets a very stupid and dangerous precedent. Over a stupid, dumb movie.

I'm like, seriously, could we, could we at least do this over something like Schindler's List? You know, we're talking about two stoners. I know. It's a stoner flick that was actually getting horrible reviews. And now it's the most important movie of all time. Thanks a lot, world. Yeah. And there were so many people that were going to go see this movie just to go say, fuck you to whoever did it.

And they missed a giant market opportunity in pulling this movie. But also, and they, they should have kept it because they're going to need the money to fix all the damages that are going on because of this, because everybody's suing them now from ex-employees to everybody. You know, unbelievably, I just got to throw this in because this is so bizarre for me to say, or even think about, or wrap my head around.

The best idea in the world came from your, wait for it, Mitt Romney. You know, I didn't see what he said, but I saw a lot of people saying, I feel very sick to my stomach about this because I'm about to retweet Mitt Romney. So what did he say? Well, Mitt Romney basically said, okay, Sony, you fucked up.

But, well, I'm paraphrasing, obviously, Mitt Romney didn't say Sony fucked up. Put it up on video on demand, make it a $5 voluntary donation that goes to help fight Ebola. Let the entire world see it and put all the money to charity and say to hell with you guys. It's a genius idea.

It is, except it shouldn't go to Ebola. Well, pick a charity, who cares? Yeah, anything. Well, the charity at this point is going to be Sony because they're going to be the ones out panhandling on the street. Sony is in deep, deep, deep, deep trouble. So, like I said, there's so much going on with this right now, and it's just ridiculous.

The outrage from the public is what has surprised me the most, like you said. And I love it. I love it. I'm thrilled. It's one of the only good things that have come out of this. Friend of the show, Patrick Brown, actually wrote on a comment that I had made when this was first breaking.

Because I was wondering why, you know, we're looking at different governmental organizations. And as you and I have talked about, we know that corporate security is rarely the best. It tends to be full of holes. And I was like, well, why aren't people pointing their fingers at Sony's IT department? Apparently, they are internally, but the Sony's IT department hired their own lawyer and have brought proof that these issues were known and not fixed due to budgetary constraints.

Shocking. Well, what I mentioned on the last show is the head of security said, why am I going to spend $10 million to fight a hack that it's going to cost us $1 million? Right. And that is such short-sightedness, obviously. And he's the one that honestly should be set out the pasture right now.

Yeah. I think of him as the goat in Jurassic Park for the T-Rex. That's a good analogy. I like that a lot. Because, yeah, he fucked up. And by publicly saying that before, that's a bad thing. Yeah. I'm sorry. It's a bad thing.

Oh, that was so bad. The other thing that I actually think that I'm trying to see this with a positive outlook. And I do see another one besides the fact that Americans are actually pissed off about this happening. Arthur C. Clarke, who was a huge science fiction writer, particularly for us old people.

He used to, he did a story, or he wrote a lot of non-fiction. He used to do op-eds and things like that. And he used to talk about, this is way pre-internet, he used to talk about how satellites were amazing. Because what they're going to do is allow there to be long-distance calling for free.

Thus shrinking the world, thus bringing us all together, thus eroding national lines and making us all one people. I actually think that this is going to cause some of that to happen as well. Because we are looking at an international conglomerate being hacked by a rogue nation.

And then figuring out who's responsible. How do we protect ourselves? Is it the U.S. government's responsibility to, what about the Japanese government since it's a Japanese corporation? Where were these lines? Where did they come in from? The whole concept of a nation-state is starting to erode when we look at things at this level.

And I like that too. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the promise of the internet, is it brings us all together. Oh no. The upside, at least for Sony, is that the hackers have said they will not release any more data because it's scrapped the internet.

So they win. Okay. Yeah. See, and that's the thing. Yeah. Can you, how can you trust somebody that just ripped you a new asshole? Yeah, I mean, that's a bit like believing that the, you know, I don't know.

There are so many, I'm not coming up, horrible analogies just came to mind that I'm not actually going to say. But you can't believe, fuck me once, fuck me twice. That's, Jesus Christ. This is like, this is like dealing with a drunk, belligerent guy at a bar. He's like, like, I'm going to kick your ass.

And then like two seconds later, he's shaking your hand saying, I'm sorry, bro. And then two seconds later, he's like, I'm going to kick your ass again. You know, there's no trust here. Yeah. And, and we also don't know if this is true because this could be Sony saving their own face again, saying, see, we were right to pull it.

And we have no proof. Okay. It's, it's all hearsay. And the whole thing just makes my head hurt. Yep. But it is definitely a watershed moment. And Sony has handled it extraordinarily poorly. I agree. Even George Clooney thinks so.

That's going around today about how he tried to get a petition around all of Hollywood to not give in and Sony wouldn't sign it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, it is a buster. Yep. Big time. So let's, let's move on to fun stuff. Okay. The Pirate Bay has responded.

Oh, I thought they were still shut down. No, they were back up within hours. Okay, good. Just on a different domain. You know, we talked about that last week, but they, they said, we have, however, taken this opportunity to give ourselves a break. How long are we supposed to keep going? To what end?

We were a bit curious to see how the public would react. Well, the public just went and found a new tracker. So that's how that worked. Yeah. Yeah. I think it, I think this is the perfect opportunity for the Pirate Bay to bow out. I think so too. It's, uh, the Pirate Bay has been in this unique place where they're basically doing something horribly illegal, but, uh, still managed to kind of have a high road.

If they keep going any longer, the high road goes away. I'm sorry, but what they're doing in my mind is still not illegal. They're a search engine. Right. That's all they are. They are the Google of, yes, granted some illegal stuff. I can, I can find a torrent faster by going to Google than I can by going to, going to the Pirate Bay.

I agree. I, I get, I guarantee you hands down. If you, if you give me a title and you want it for free, I can find it faster by going to Google than I can to the Pirate Bay because Google is the search engine of the illegal search engines. You know, that's how that works.

And that was their, that was their argument in court that we're not doing anything illegal. We're a search engine. We are not hosting illegal files, period. Oh, and they, they got fucked on it. And by the way, entertainment industry, um, part of the big problem is it's easier for us and quicker for us to find it illegally than it is to find it legally to watch these days.

Yeah. Well, unless you wanted to go see Annie or Fury or the other Sony leaked movies. I'm just pissed at Sony because they remade Annie. I fucking hated the original. Why are you? Well, now you have two, now you have two versions to hate. Yes, I do. Um, I just saw this this morning.

It's a wall street journal article, uh, cyber attack on German iron plant causes widespread damage. And this is one of the first times a country has come out and said, look, we have, we have proof of physical damage from a cyber attack. Right. They, these things have happened before, but people aren't owning up to it because the scatter people are very, you know, secretive about these kinds of attacks because they don't want to spook anybody.

Yeah. And, but now it's like the cat's out of the bag. These guys need to seriously ramp up their security efforts. But what I want to know is why the flying fuck is a control system for an iron furnace, not air gap. That's what I want to know. That is a very good question. Apparently the guy wanted to download a movie while he was working the system.

He was watching Annie. Uh, there's a big Russian malware, uh, thing going around this week. That's infecting, uh, WordPress sites. Uh, keep, keep, keep your plugins updated. Well, this, here's the, here's the problem with this one.

This isn't a plugin issue. It's it, this, this comes back to the Tim thumb hack a long time ago. It's a, it was the Tim thumb hack was a library that people, uh, embedded in their themes. Right. And the, it was, there was a giant hole in it and people got hacked.

I mean, way more than this hack. That one was way bigger, but what, what it is, is it's a, this one is a gallery, a photo gallery plugin that lets you do carousels and shit like that. Right. That's embedded into themes and people weren't updating the themes. The company or not companies, probably four fucking zit face kids in the garage that made this, uh, the software, they patched their version, but everybody who had a theme that is using that version has not updated.

So, and you know, you know how hard it is to get people to update their WordPress sites and themes or get people to pay you to do it. Yeah. And the plugins, the plugin bits aren't even the hard part because plugins can be updated very easily. Themes on the other hand, where people do their most, that's like, okay, first rule of thumb, never hack the core.

You never hack the WordPress core, even though generally you have to, uh, but with themes, there's always a, uh, a functions.php file in there. Everybody hacks that because that's where you do your hacking. Most of the time when you do a theme update that gets overwrote, overwritten, whatever.

It gets nuked. Well, that's why people don't update their themes very often because they've hacked them to do what they want them to do. So a piece of software embedded in a theme is a fucking terrible idea. And that's where this hack comes into play and why it's going to be hard to eradicate.

Yeah. That's going to be a real problem. I mean, I just speaking from my own personal experience, I've taken over sites, uh, for other clients for, these are sites I never designed. So I don't know the theme. It would take me at least, you know, a week to go through the theme to figure out how it works, to be able to do an update.

So for some of these sites, I've been screaming at clients for a long time going, I need a budget to redo this, to upgrade things. It will break if I update it. I don't know how it will break because I didn't design this and you're not paying the person who did anymore and we can't get him to come back and fix this.

Yeah, no, no doubt. And WordPress themes are such a dark art because the entire WordPress system is so bass backwards. Yep. And, and, and like, uh, uh, Rudy Jashan, our first guest on grumpy old geeks. I, I, I still love his quote the best. He's like, what's up with WordPress?

They really just like brew shit at the wall and see if it's stuck. And, and, uh, good on Rudy for that one, because that, that sums up how WordPress works and just doing anything in a theme, which I know from years of experience, but especially this week, I spent 36 hours working on theme shit.

Right. And it's, it's a, it's a mess and having code like this embedded in a theme, instead of just having the user download a plugin package that they can use that will get auto updated if you use the right software is, you know, it's just irresponsible. Right. Gotcha.

Sorry. I went on a little long about that. I have some opinions. Tell me about your flying phone, Jason. Oh, this is a great article on motherboard. Uh, it's called the dawn of the flying smartphone. And I, I, I never even thought of this, but what they're, what they're basically saying is in the future, uh, personal drones that act like smartphones will likely become incredibly, incredibly popular, uh, if governments will allow them to, but here's the thing about drones.

You don't need a government to let you do it. If you, you just do it. Um, we have burner phones, right? Yep. Soon we will have burner drones. Ah, look at you. Did you get burner? Did you get burner drone.com already? No, I just made that one up on the fly. But it's a really cool idea.

It's like, okay, my, I send out my drone. It's got, it's got, you know, cell capability so it can make a phone call and upload their pictures on the fly. Instead of just being a wifi drone, I can send it out and I never need it back. As long as my fingerprints aren't on it, I scrubbed off the serial numbers.

That's a one use drone. And you know, what's like two, 300 bucks. If you're, if you're a stalker or like a assassin and you're following somebody that's your target, that's a minimal cost. So I, I, it's a really good article. I just, I recommend picking it up.

Very cool. And speaking of burner drones, uh, my buddies over at burner, the iPhone app and Android app that do, uh, it's basically burner phone software on your phone where you can get a, a disposable phone number to get taxed.

So, you know, you meet a chick at the bar, you think she's kind of sketchy, but you might want to hook up. You give her your burner number and delete it after a while. They had a great writeup in the verge this week. So I recommend checking that out and definitely download the app. They were our first sponsor on grumpy old geek. So there's a little bit of nepotism there, but, uh, Greg Cohen is, uh, the founder over there and he's an old buddy of mine and I love what he's doing.

And congrats to them. The title of the article is burner phone. There's an app for that and it's earning millions of dollars. So when, uh, when they were developing this, this was a pivot from their original idea. And I was working with them in the same coworking space over in silver Lake.

So I'm proud of, I'm proud of Greg. I'm glad he's getting his, his due. Very cool. All right, man. That's, uh, I think that's enough. That's enough. Unless, I mean, we could go on for Sony for hours and hours, but we're done. We're done. Media candy.

Brian. Jason. I sent you a video to watch this week. Did you watch it? I did not. I sent you the, the Christmas episode of, uh, Black Mirror. I understand that you sent me the Christmas episode of Black Mirror, but you've also been telling me I need to start watching Black Mirror and I have not had time to watch any episodes of Black Mirror yet.

So I figured I should actually watch the show before just watching one particular episode. See, here's the problem. Black Mirror's episodes are one-offs. It's like the Twilight Zone. You can jump in anywhere. That could have been communicated. I said it on a goddamn show. You think I listened to this stuff?

Apparently not. I had, uh, I had my roommate ask me, what is WhatsApp this week? I'm like, we only talked about it for six months on the damn show and you listened to every episode. Ah, nobody listens.

Nobody cares. Um, so yes, the Black, the Black Mirror Christmas special came out this week and it was amazing. All right. Well, I'll watch it tonight. I was going to say, here's the problem now is that, uh, I would put a spoiler alert up, but, uh, I can't because I'm not going to spoil it.

Uh, I watched, I watched this show right before I went to bed, which was a stupid idea. Do not watch this right before you go to bed. Okay. The thing about Black Mirror is it's a, it, it deals with near future tech and the dystopian ways that things can go wrong.

And this one is, I think one of the best of the bunch, the best episode of Black Mirror honestly is the first episode. It's the most disturbing from season one. It is the, it, it sets the tone for the entire series and all in all, it's solid all the way through.

There are a few kind of weird ones, but for the most part, it's, it just makes you think it's like, Oh shit. It like takes technology to its logical conclusion where things go wrong, not where things go right, where things go wrong. And this episode has Jon Hamm from Mad Men in it.

Um, and he's amazing. He plays a smarmy pickup artist of the future. All right. And it just, the way that they deal with technology and I'm, and all I'm going to say is you will never look at home automation the same way again after you see this episode, because it is a mind fuck the way that they do home automation in the future on Black Mirror is just amazingly good.

I mean, it's so solid. It, I just, I can't say any more. You just have to watch it. Uh, if you're in Britain, it's already aired in the United States. It's going to air on direct TV. I believe December 27th. Check your local listings. Um, otherwise I don't, I don't care if I'm promoting criminality, go hit the backwaters of the internet.

Find the fucking thing. This doesn't sound like the kind of thing I'm going to want to put on tonight as I'm wrapping presents. Oh yeah, for you, definitely. Okay. For me, man. For you. Fair enough. Actually, I, actually, I wouldn't say while you're, while you're wrapping presents because you need to watch it.

You need to pay attention to it. It's a, it's like a 90 minute episode. It's, it's like a small movie. Well, I guess a 90 minutes would be an actual movie, not a small movie. What constitutes a small movie? Anyways.

Anyways. Yeah. This was, this was the best thing I've seen in a long time. It, it, it made me smile. It made me cry. And it gave me nightmares. All right. I'm going to, I will watch it. I promise I'll watch it. We'll discuss it after Christmas. Okay.

Um, and slate put up the, uh, best 25 or the 25 best podcast episodes ever. Of course they did because we have to talk about cereal. Oh, we have to have listicles, but cereal didn't win. All right. Mark Maron won for the Louis CK one, which I actually listened to and I thought was a very good podcast episode.

Yes, it was. It was extremely good. Here's the interesting thing about the slate article though. I think that they're getting some, uh, some love from sound cloud because almost every single one of these episodes has a link to a sound cloud download. And I know a lot of these people don't post their stuff.

Sound cloud. That is a bit interesting, isn't it? So I think that this might be a self-selecting sample. Right. Um, I went through the entire list. A lot of shows are ones that you've talked about. Uh, there's a lot of completely unknown things that I don't think either you or I knew even knew existed. Uh, it was super nice to see that Ricky Gervais made it on there because his old podcast, which is the first podcast I ever listened to was incredibly funny.

And if nobody's gone back and listened to those, they are amazing. Well, apparently everybody's gone back and listening to those because he hasn't put out an episode in years and they're still taking up space on the iTunes top charts. So if you're listening to this Apple, get those old ass shows out of the top charts, please. They're taking up space for us newcomers.

Bastards. Bastards. Um, I, I was kind of annoyed that hardcore history got number five and, and serial got number four because, uh, they did pick ghosts of the Ostfront, which is an amazing hardcore history episode being a multi-part episodic that lasts 18 gazillion hours, but, uh, it's, it's amazing.

Uh, I, I would have picked Thor's angels, but that's just me. I love all the hardcore history ones. I couldn't pick this one. Here's the thing. I'm actually hoarding the new ones because he's got one more episode to come out and I just, I got to wait because I know it takes three to four months between episodes, even though they're like three or four hours long.

Yeah. I'm just waiting for this next one. Cause that's going to be a day. I'm just going to listen to him for a day. I'm going to, I'm literally going to get in bed, pull up the covers, get some tea, maybe a hot toddy and just listen to it straight through. Exciting times at the DeFillippo house.

That's pretty much every day, but yeah, this is, this is how we roll. Into bed with our podcast. Yep. The web's not dead.

In the web not dead, I found the best thing ever, particularly if you are one of those people that doesn't mind pop culture, unlike our previous mentioned article at the very beginning of the show, this is Magnum PI versus Han Solo, a sequence comparison done to the music of Magnum PI.

If you have even slightly fond memories of that show, or at least the soundtrack, this is awesome and very funny. The link is in the show notes. It's a lovely YouTube video. Good times. I really enjoyed it. The only difference was the, the Magnum theme and, and credits were an uncut thing and they did a super cut for Han Solo.

Yeah. But, but they did match pretty well. I really, I really enjoyed it. And I loved how Higgins in Obi-Wan. Yeah, that was genius. I love me some Higgins, but the Obi-Wan was, that was good stuff. And because it is that time of year, it is Christmas time.

And in my house, that means the wife puts love actually on basically on repeat the entire month. The Honest Trailer's version of Love Actually is hilarious. We have the link to that in the YouTube, or in the YouTube, we have the YouTube link to that in the show notes. And there is an article from Jezebel called I Rewatched Love Actually and I'm Here to Ruin It for All of You by Lindy West.

She is very angry at this movie, but it's very funny. I'm going to have to read that. Yes, I have seen this movie multiple times because it does seem to be something that the ladies put on around this time of year. Yes. And I mean, I enjoy the movie. I have to say, I don't mind it being on.

First off, there's boobs and lots of them. It's cute. It's clever. But if you actually do start to pay attention to the plots, it is fucking disturbing. And the Honest Trailer's and the recap on Jezebel will spell that out for you in painful detail. I was just going to say boobs, but yeah, the Honest Trailer did kind of ruin it for me because I don't mind this movie.

Yeah. But now I do. Now it's creepy. When you start to realize that every single relationship has fundamental creepy stalker-esque flaws to it, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really. Have your lady watch the Honest Trailer.

Yeah. Although that might be why she likes it. Could be. Could be. Don't discount the creepy. Closing shout outs. My closing shout outs is going to go to Matt Kemp, who has played for the LA Dodgers for basically forever and was always fun to watch and a great player.

He has been traded to the Padres and this is why I just, I fucking hate sports. I got into the Dodgers last year hardcore. I went to a bunch of games. I was way into the team and now they've traded away half the players that I really like and I can't stand that. Sorry to hear that.

Oh, well, whatever. It's funny. I was talking to my dad at lunch yesterday and there was apparently an ex-Cub that got traded away and came back for a one-day contract. He got a one-day contract with the Cubs so he could retire as a Cub.

See, that's got a bit of a beautiful symmetry to it. I mean, I just remember the days when we were young, since we are grumpy old geeks, players stuck around forever. There were lifers that played on teams, but now because of money and all that sort of stuff, it's just boom, boom, boom, gone, gone, gone. Well, they're like trading cards.

It's not up to them if they get traded. They get traded. They're very highly paid chattel. It'd be interesting if we did that in tech. You know, it's like the head programmer for Facebook comes in one day and he's like, eh, sorry, we traded you to Apple for $250 million in stock and a Ferrari.

You're out of here. You're out. You're over to Cupertino now. Suck it. They have to wear uniforms. It'd be great. Okay. So, uh, I want to do my closing shout out, uh, with a little self-promotion. Okay. We just, we just finished our last episode of the year for Does It Have Legs?

We did Big Trouble in Little China, which I've never seen. I was just at a holiday party that Kurt Russell was at. You are shitting me. Nope. You met Kurt Russell? I did. Oh, you bastard. That is cool. It was cool.

And, you know, like, uh, my buddy was just thinking about Escape from, uh, New York and I was like, big trouble in Little China. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Escape from New York's on our list for next year because I, I don't care for that movie. Uh, so in, in exchange for, for watching Escape from New York, I'm going to make Mike watch Die Hard, which he hates.

So we're, we're, it's a hate trade. Yeah. Uh, we're, this, uh, episode is going to come out later today. So by the time you hear this, it should be on available on the interwebs. Check it out. I still love doing that show. We have a good time. We hit no traffic.

So that's why I'm doing the shameless self. Good job. Go, go listen to his show. Music for Grumpy Old Geeks is provided by Among Us. Find them on iTunes and Spotify. We are hosted by Libsyn, use the coupon code GOG while signing up and receive up to two months free.

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You can also get our iPhone app at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iPhone. And as always, we appreciate your iTunes ratings and reviews. Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 89. Bob's your drunken Christmas uncle who only wants to talk politics and religion.

Okay, last one to kill a bad guy buys the beer. We're driving to Florida. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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