90: Back in the Saddle Again

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 you doing?

I feel like crap. How are you? I'm feeling better. I was sick all holiday break. I managed to miss it all until last night. Now I have a really bad cold. Good times. So I'm recovering from a cold. You're getting a cold. Have either of us been healthy like for a single show for the past six months?

I've been healthy. I think you've been sick quite a bit. You had the summer cold for a while. Anyway. Oh, that's true. Yeah. Well, here we are. Happy New Year. Yeah, I got the meat tube flu of death. Honestly, I was in West Virginia with my mom for 10 days and eight of those were spent on the couch watching Acorn TV in Old British.

British dramas. Awesome. I think I probably got mine from going to Vegas. So I had a bit of a, you know me, I don't like to relax. So my relaxing break in between first, you know, my family being here and then the in-laws showing up a couple days ago was to run to Vegas for a few days. Not so smart.

No, no. So you got the Vegas flu. Yeah. No matter what you do, you get that going to Vegas. Very true.

Oh, man. So yeah, I was on the couch, but I did end up doing the internet outrage machine podcast, which was, you think we have technical difficulties, man. We spent an hour and a half just trying to get all the gear to work because, because Kyle, the main guy who does all the recording and stuff went on vacation. And when he came back, the, the goblins of the internet had apparently dismantled everything.

It does seem to happen. We, we have often have same sorts of issues in that I shut down my laptop for the week in between shows. And every time I bring it back up, nothing is the same way it was when I shut it down. Yeah. Now, even today when I'm, I'm doing the recording today and nothing worked out of the gate. So I had to go back and start from scratch. It was like, Oh, geez. But yeah, we're going to be doing a truncated show today because I'm traveling tomorrow to come to LA.

You're sick and you have in-laws. So this is going to be a quickie. It's, it's like the holidays are supposed to be over now, but we're still like running around like chickens with our head cut off. No, it's really bad. I mean, you know, as we've talked about a little bit, I'm pivoting and starting kind of a new job, which technically isn't supposed to start until Monday, but I'm getting a ton of emails.

I have my mother-in-law and father-in-law living in my office for a few more days. Uh, sister-in-law is on the couch in my living room. Uh, the other sister-in-law gracefully, thankfully decided not to come join us because otherwise I might be losing my mind at this point. That's why they invented hotels.

Uh, have you, have you met Chinese culture? They don't do that. No, not at all. No. I tell you what, the, the, uh, the infrastructure in, in the town of West, Wheeling, West Virginia left a lot to be desired. The internet actually worked the entire time I was there. I had a really good connection when I was there. I was surprised.

That's impressive. So I could do the, the internet outrage machine show with no problems on my end, except the first day I get there. Some idiot broke a water main. So everybody's water in town was brown. So, so start off the day with going to buy a bunch of bottled water. December 30th, somebody drunk in a pickup truck, hit a telephone pole and knocked out the power to 1800 homes. Wow. That's good times. Well, at least it wasn't

New Year's Eve. So that was good. So I spent, uh, an hour and a half streaming the first Star Trek movie because my mom had never seen it onto my laptop on, on a dinner tray that we huddled around in the living room through my iPad with a connection, like a 4g connection to Verizon. And it's like, it was from the future because everybody else was dark. Nobody even had, there were people that didn't have candles. I'm like, if your infrastructure sucks this bad, why don't you at least have like

flashlights and candles at the ready? I have all that. And my, I have good infrastructure in Santa Monica. Why? Yeah. Why would you not? That seems silly. Yeah. So I felt like I was like a magician from the like being able to watch a movie from Amazon with nothing, no power, no internet connection, just out of the ether came Star Trek. It was fun. I like it when the power goes out. You get to do

some fun stuff. Nice. So you put in a note about Nicki Minaj's executive producer as some follow-up. This was an interesting post, I have to say. You know, it just, uh, it's, uh, this popped up over the holidays and, and I thought it was fantastic. I mean, it really shows you a lot of what's going on in the music industry right now. Uh, it's just a collection of this guy's tweets. Uh, I personally have not heard of him. J1, he goes by J1 Inc at, uh, on Twitter. And, uh, he was one of the executive

producers of the Nicki Minaj album. Uh, not happy about the album, not happy about the final version that, uh, that was being released by the record label, not happy with the record labels promotion, not happy with the album in general. And basically just goes off and says, this is a complete mess. Uh, she's, her career is basically destroyed for the next few years and you're never going to hear from her again. I don't think we're going to hear from this guy again either. Well, we're definitely not going to hear from this guy again because you don't do this in the music industry as bad as it is at this point. Well, you don't do this in any industry. Come

on. You don't like air the dirty laundry and the call out the star for being like somebody who doesn't know how to market, you know, it's just the whole thing was it. This is a rant of epic proportions. And I think he will be, uh, he'll be feeling that for quite some time. Yeah. Yeah. He's not going to be getting jobs anytime soon, but, uh, again, it's, it's, uh, you know, it's a funny peek behind the curtain and, um, you know, I've had very similar discussions with very similar, uh, things being said, but we do it privately.

Yeah. Seriously. And I love how we just called it the shit print. Yes. I mean, this guy, this guy rails on everything about this album and it's, this is just not what you do. I mean, this is like a social media step on your dick moment. If I've ever seen one, I mean, this is like the poster child.

This is, this is almost worse than the girl who tweeted that she was going to Africa and she wouldn't get AIDS because she was white, you know, maybe not, not as public, but. Yeah. It's a, it was just a, it's an interesting read. If you think that the music industry is, is all lovely and great and going well, take a quick look at this. It's, it's quite funny. Um, you know, he should never, ever have done this, but then again, I also say we need more transparency.

So, you know, it's, it's also kind of nice to see a guy go, Hey, here's the problem. Here's everything that went wrong with this album. So speaking of everything that went wrong, I know it's probably been talked about to death. I just want to do a quick little follow-up on the interview and the Sony hack. Yeah. Because I had to deal with, I had to explain to so many people over my break that it wasn't the North Koreans. There's no proof that it was the North Koreans.

Nobody believes it's the North Koreans, especially everybody in the security industry. And finally, people are starting to hear because the Norse report came out saying, yeah, doesn't look like it was the North Koreans. It almost doesn't seem to matter anymore. Isn't that the funny thing about the internet these days and kind of pop culture? Cause I had the same thing going on.

I mean, even yesterday, I was still telling someone North Korea didn't hack Sony. Yeah. And the FBI is standing behind their original, you know, prognosis, which is silly. Like, okay, admit you made a mistake. And it probably wasn't even a mistake. It was probably deliberate trying to save face for Sony to make it all, make it all better. Yeah. But yeah, it was a mess. So did you actually watch the movie? No, because I wasn't going to anyways. Yeah, no shit. To be honest,

I was never going to watch this movie anyways. I found, you know, Seth Rogen, some of his stuff is kind of okay. Everything I had read about this movie made me go, that's a clever concept, but I'm probably not going to see it. I'm not a stoner. I don't like stoner humor anymore. If I want stoner humor, I'll go back and watch fast times at Ridgemont high, a classic. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Pineapple express. I didn't really get into, uh, what was it? This is the end was, was clever and cute in some, some aspects. I liked that cause it wasn't so much a stoner movie, but it was cute that they took the

out of themselves in that one. But this one, I had zero interest whatsoever in seeing this. And I, I kind of feel bad for my friends who actually went out and got it just because they wanted to promote freedom, you know? Yeah. Well, you know me in that kind of arena as well. As soon as somebody tells me I need to do something, I'm never fucking doing it. Exactly. So I'm not going to watch a crappy movie because it's yay America to hell with that. So no, I didn't see it. Did you? Hell no.

I just said I didn't know. I'm not going to nothing. No desire whatsoever. I didn't even, it wasn't even interesting enough of a premise for me to go steal it. Right. Okay. And that says, cause I would just want my hour and a half back, you know, I'd want a refund on my life, which they will never give me. Now, did they actually do an about face and release it in theaters? I don't even remember. I know it went out on a, you could watch it at home on pay-per-view and that sort of stuff. But, uh, I, I didn't really, I stopped following it basically cause I got sick

of hearing about it. Yeah. I think a couple independent theaters ran it, but the mainstream theaters did not run it. They, they pulled it. And apparently a couple of theaters tried to run a team America and Paramount pulled the plug on that and said, no, no, no, no, no. Don't bring us into this. Yeah. I heard about that as well. It's like, yeah, come on. Somebody stand up. That's that would have been funny. I would have gone to see that. I love that movie. I still haven't seen it.

You've never seen team America. I've never seen team America. I don't like puppets. Puppets creep me out, dude, dude. Okay. You've got, you have to, it is genius. And yeah, the puppets are creepy, but intentionally so. So definitely make sure you see it, watch it on the plane, do something. Okay. I will, I will, uh, I will procure it. Let's just, let's just say that I will procure it, procure it for my trip tomorrow.

Why don't we start to just say, I'm going to watch it in Swedish subtitles. There we go. Seems to be a good way to go. So part of my year end listicle for, for our 2014 followup, which we were actually quite right. Nobody listens to podcasts at that time of year. Our numbers were like a third of what people normally listen to. So good on us for not doing a full episode.

How about good on us for, let's actually take a hiatus next year, Jason. Okay. Okay. Well, we shall break with tradition because it, God, this, this episode was, you know, a Herculean effort to get done today. So next year, yes, we will take a break. I talked about, you know, how language needs to change and people need to stop saying totes, cray, redic, adorbs, all that crap. I found an article saying 14 Bay area slang words. We all need

to start using by Matt powers. And I want to go find Matt powers and stab him in the throat. Number one, hella. Okay. Hello is not a Bay area slang thing that comes out of, I mean, that's ancient. We were using that in college. Yeah. That's ancient. Yeah. That's, that's old. That's old. Tryna. What the, never heard of that one. Yeah. I, and I don't want to,

I don't want to, cause I'm not going to tryna. Uh, some of these are just seriously silly. Ye as in a variation of yes. Are you trying to drink tonight? Ye. Who? No, nobody actually. Really? Nah. No. Okay. Some of these just keep going and it's like, okay, let's just run through them here. Cuddy. I mean, if it's Cuddy Sark, you can at least get drunk on that. A fascio swoop.

I am a fan of on mamas. Number nine. I do enjoy that one. It's short for, I put that on my mama, which is a way of emphasizing that whatever you're saying is the truth. This, this podcast was a hella hard to get together on mamas. Yada, Demian. Some of these are just making up letters and putting them together. Yeah. I don't get a lot of this. Oh, just, okay. This is exactly what I was trying to say in our year end wrap up. And if you haven't heard it, go back and grab it. Cause I

thought it was kind of funny. Um, and cheers to friend of the show, Tara, who called our year end wrap up totes adorbs. Yes. Yes. High fives on mamas on mamas. Jesus Christ. I just want, I just wanted to point that out to say that there are people out there who are going in the completely opposite direction that we're going and it's wrong. Uh, I agree a hundred percent. And I'm so sick of these listicles because again, like you said to, uh, these are not Bay area slang. These are not specific to the Bay area. Maybe some of them are, but a lot

of these have been around forever. So, you know, if you're going to do a listicle, at least make it a proper true listicle and come up with something new, not just recycled crap. And it, you know, if this actually is Bay area slang, we just need to nuke the entire place. These are supposed to be smart. These are supposed to be smart, educated people who are changing the face of the world through the internet. And if you can't finish the entire word, go fuck yourself. Well, they are changing the face of the world. The problem is we just

don't like it. That's true. That's true. In my travels, I also found this report from a company called K hole. This is a lovely name. I know right out of the gate. I mean, I've, I've heard about the K hole, which is people who like, you know, get too messed up on ketamine and kind of spiral out of control and have like basically a bad trip. But naming your marketing company after a bad trip, I think maybe they shouldn't be in that business. There's a,

they put out these reports and there's one called youth mode, which talks about, you know, how old people are, they're not trying to be young, but they're just in youth mode. I, you just have to read this report. It'll be linked in the show notes. It, my brain hurt when I was done with this. Did you, did you read it? I tried. I got about three pages and I was like, I can't do this. I'm having, I'm having a good time on my vacation to hell with this. I was having a good time too. And I just was

sitting on the couch. I was in like my Alka-Seltzer cold medicine haze. And I ran across this and I'm like, okay, let's see what the marketing geniuses of the future have to say about what's going on. And this has reiterated everything that I've ever thought about these people, not knowing what the hell they're doing. They're just making shit up and throwing it against the wall to see what sticks.

Yeah, pretty much. If you, if you are like us old and silly and want to see what the kids of today think about us old people in our midlife crises and how they are branding us, they're not having a midlife crisis. They're just in youth mode. Go check out this report. And I do have to, I mentioned the internet outrage machine before, but I do have to do a quick shout out to the episode I was on little baby Jesus

lizard. That's a great title. It is. It is. It was a fun show. I mean, granted it, we were recording for three hours to get an hour out of it just because of the technical difficulties, but it was a blast to do. And a huge shout out to Kyle Roderick, the, one of the co-hosts of transmission who I, we talked about on episode 89, super pro. And the fact that he pulled an episode out of it and it sounds as good as it did. That guy's a mad genius. I mean, this guy, this guy can edit like nobody's business.

So check it out. It was fun. Comment of the week. Our first comment of the week is not actually a comment, but it's a shout out for Brian Bettel who gave us a lovely donation through tugboat. Um, Brian works for the federal reserve, so we won't go into too much detail about his job, but he does say, please listeners be fiscally responsible. Um, uh, Brian actually is the, uh, grumpy old geeks listener who bought the first

GitHub project that we mentioned last time. Yeah. So that's awesome. And, uh, he just finished the, the first kit with his seven year old and they're looking forward to the next one. So they wanted to, he just wanted to give a shout out to GitHub and say, check them out. They're having a blast using it. So that's awesome. So everybody go check it out. Link will be in the show notes and, uh, rock on with it. Yeah. And he also did request the, uh, among us tracks that we're giving out to people who, who want them that, uh, donate to grumpy old geek. So I'll get

those out to you shortly, man. Sorry. Just been a little buried with sickness and in-laws, but it will get out to you. I promise. Uh, and then we didn't get a comment through grumpy old geeks.com on our site. Uh, this one is mostly directed to Jason. So I'll just, I'll read it out to you. Here you go, Jason. Jason, I watched the first episode of black mirrors due to your recommendation disturbing. It was actually hard to sit through and not very satisfying of an ending. I'm actually trying to decide whether or not to watch a second episode. It was so unfulfilling. There's a specific

amount of a hot crazy girl has to be to deal with the hotter, the crazier she can be. I do not think the amount of disturbing this episode had matched its interestingness. Yes. I am comparing a hot crazy girl to disturbing only mildly interesting show. Yeah. Want to comment in at this point? Cause there's, there's more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's, let's, let's take a quick break here and comment on this black mirror, black mirror, uh, not black mirrors. Uh, black mirror is probably not for everybody,

but it is, it is disturbing. That's why I love it. It's a, it's all future tech. It's, it's supposed to be twilight zoney. So, you know, if you watch the twilight zone, expecting friends, that's what's going to happen. It's, it's supposed to be disturbing because the, I mean, the first episode has a politician being blackmailed into supposedly having sex with a pig. So yes, that right there, that's a tip off that it's going to be a little disturbing.

Um, I'm still kind of thrown by the hot, crazy girl comments, but Hey, you know, I'll whatever about the hot, crazy girl. They are all crazy, but you know, let's move on. Okay. Continue, Brian. Okay. Um, uh, just my own personal observation thus far is, uh, there seems to be some disconnect between, you know, popular culture and just general weirdness. And we like weirdness, not popular culture. I'd rather watch black mirror than friends any day personally. All right, moving on.

I have a few books you have recommended coming in this week from Amazon. Well, thank you very much for ordering. I hope you click through our links. Um, I hope they fare better than this recommendation. I tried disc world, bought the first five books and I'm still chewing through book one. Well, that's probably not a good sign. Oh, well, uh, yeah, well, yeah. Disc world, uh, they get really good, probably around book seven or eight. I think pyramids was around six or seven, which was my first,

first disc world book that I read. And I still go back and read it because it's really cool. But I, I, the first books, you know, he's getting his legs under, it's like watching a pilot for a show. They're always not going to be as good at the beginning, but there are like 30 books. So as long as you're starting, just keep on going.

I did the same thing. I jumped in halfway through at some point because, you know, you just find one and you read it and you go, Oh my God, this is great. Go back. And yeah, the first ones weren't great. It's yeah. I felt the same exact way about Battlestar Galactica, the, the revenue remake, cause I had tried to get people to watch it and getting through that first two hour pilot is rough, but the show gets so much better.

I love the first two hour pilot. You are the only person I know that actually likes it. Everybody else just goes, Oh my God, this is so boring. Oh, when she killed the, well, Oh, I mean in the beginning when everybody dies in the space station and then she kills the baby and you know, all that stuff. I thought it was fun.

Tangent. Moving on. Okay. Uh, he also ordered Damon by Daniel Suarez, uh, which is great. I hope you do enjoy that one. Yes. And it is demon, not Damon. Damon. Sorry. Demon. Demon. I'm sick, man. I'm NyQuil high.

All right. And then he addresses me on a side note. Will you please ask Brian to quit making hipster references during the show? He actually sounds like a hipster with his B sides have better songs and no one makes real music any more references. It sounds hypocritical to hear him put down the masses with one breath and then make fun of the social elite with the other.

Would you care? Would you care to, uh, reply? Everybody's welcome to their own opinion. I think the fact that I'm being called a hipster, I think almost everybody I know would laugh at because I'm about as unhipster as you can get. I do think that B sides are generally better than singles and I always will.

And I don't think that's a particularly hipster reference. And if you're totally fine with, let me just look really quickly at the billboard charts here. Um, if you're fine with your Taylor Swift and, and Megan Trainor, all about the base and Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift again, and Nick Jonas and Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez playlist, more power to you.

Well, our anonymous commenter finishes with, please continue to put out great podcasts. It makes my driving more fun. Well, comments like this make our show more fun. So please, everybody keep writing and feel free to call us on our shit. It's fun. Yeah, we don't mind at all. I've been talking a long time about open offices and the noise factor, the distraction factor,

and why I hate open offices so damn much. It also comes down to some of the links that we've posted in past episodes about how hearing one side of a conversation just makes you angry. And the open office is designed for you to hear 10 of those open-ended conversations at the same time.

Well, the Washington Post has just come out with an article saying, Google got it wrong. The open office trend is destroying the workplace. Yes. That's all. I mean, I, I didn't even have to read the article. I scanned it, but yes, they, they bring up every issue that I had. It is terrible for productivity. It is, it's, it's a mess. You get nothing done in an open office.

Um, yeah, I, I agree a hundred percent. I open offices are, are the devil. I'd give anything to just to have an office space. Again, part of the reason I left the, the corporate workforce is I couldn't handle that crap anymore. Um, I don't blame Google. Google was way late to the game on that. We had open offices way back in, you know, the first tech companies we were ever working at. They're nightmares and they're, they're even horrible. Now there's an office that I, that I go into every now and then, and it's kind of an open plan. And I'm just like, I'm watching people that I know are getting paid a lot of, a lot of money and all they're doing

all day is looking at gossip sites and you can just see them doing it because it's an open office. Yeah. I mean, as much as I, you know, you make fun of the cubicle farms, that's still mildly better because you have some semblance of, of privacy, but still you can hear everything that's going on. I mean, the old days when everybody had an office with a door, they could close was the best. And nowadays you just, people just don't want to put the capital outlay out for doors and walls and things like that.

Yeah. I mean, the very end of the article, it mentions that companies could simply join another trend, allowing employees to work from home, which has a proof has a, that model has been proven to boost productivity. And I agree a hundred percent. I get way more done when I work from home than if I pop into an open source office, not open source, open plan.

Yeah. I mean, eight hours in an open planned office will give me about an hour of productivity a day, which is after lunch when everybody's tired and shuts the hell up. The rest of the day you're chatting with people, things are moving around. It's just, it doesn't work. So, and working from home, you get maybe four hours of productivity and nobody's ever going to get eight full hours of productivity. And we're just not wired to do that.

And no, we aren't, we aren't at all. So let people work from home, damn it. Yeah. My next article is from the wall street journal. It says new Facebook rules will sting entrepreneurs. See grumpy old geeks episode one through now. Now the problem I have with this article is I can't read it. It's behind a paywall. When I first, when I first put it in the show notes, the whole article was there and I was going to go back to it later because I scanned it and I'm like, yeah, this sounds like it's in our wheelhouse. I'll check

it out. And when we just went back this morning to go check it for the show, nope, back behind the paywall. So paywall rules will sting everybody. So wall street journal, nah, dump the paywall and don't make any money on advertising and don't do good journalism anymore, but just stop teasing us with things we can't read after day one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is an old argument that we have a lot of times, which is we get upset about the state of journalism, but if

nobody's getting paid and we know the advertising model doesn't work, what is the other model? The other model is a paywall and you get, you pay for good journalism and round and round and round up. We go. Yeah. The, the paywall version where they give you an article for a day and then tease it and then everybody shares it and then you come back later and then it's like, oh no, you have to pay us to read this. Yeah. Is it's smarmy in my book. Uh, but I know what they're trying to do. I understand it. It's a desperation move, but you got, you got to get the eyeballs one way or another.

You got to get somebody to pay attention to maybe possibly pay. Yeah. The, the thing is though, I just feel like I've been kind of, you know, bait and switched. So I, that, that's what the problem I have with this model is it, it feels it. I don't know if it is dirty. I can understand the, the, the thinking and the methodology that comes up while these guys are putting these practices in place because they're desperate. They're trying to get people to pay for it and they're like, oh, we'll tease it. And then they have to pay for it if they come

back later. But the, the actual reaction of people that come back later is at like, you know, the antithesis of what they're looking for. So yeah, it just pisses people off. Absolutely. There you go. So on Ars Technica, who does not have a paywall, they do have a donation model where you can turn off ads, which might be working a little better for them. The suit, the suit over Facebook's practice of scanning users' messages

to go forward. So there's a, there's a suit out there that alleges that Facebook's messaging service is designed to allow users to communicate privately with other users. And the scanning therefore violates the federal wiretap act as well as California's invasion of privacy act.

Do you have anything to say on this, Brian? I think there are a gazillion things you could be suing Facebook over and this is not one of them. Well, actually it is because Facebook was dumb enough not to put it in their TOS. Yeah. Yeah. They fucked up with that. So I guess some lawyers found something to go at for it for, but this is ridiculous. Do you know how many times your normal emails are scanned over how many servers, this, this is, that's Gmail's business model is your emails are scanned so they can put targeted ads in there. Duh. It's free.

Well, Gmail's lawyers obviously aren't using all the jargon that the Facebook people are. And you know, something about your mama in the TOS doesn't work. So yeah, you know, okay. They didn't put it in their TOS. So definitely they're bad. So you go for it, knock yourself out. But the idea that you're, you have private messaging service for free that isn't scanned for ads is ridiculous.

So this next one is kind of fun. Rental car stereos in fringe copyright music rights group says, this is from torrent freak. Now. Okay. That's funny. It is funny. Now this is a, uh, this is, I'm just gonna start laughing on this one in, uh, over in the old land of Sweden, there, there is a, a, uh, basically a version of Hertz, you know, the big rental car company over there and stim,

which is a unintelligible bunch of words. Yes. Which is kind of like ASCAP or BMI for Sweden. It's a, you know, it's a collection society for songwriters, copyright or copyright holders, composers, and publishers. They get, they get the fees. What they're saying is by renting a car and the, and the company is called fleet manager in Sweden by renting a car, you are, you are basically

making a public performance of our music when they turn on the radio in the car that you rented them. I mean, I, I'm not personally aware of, of copyright law in Sweden, but an argument could be made that that could be very well possible. I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's like walking into a bar, I mean, or something like that here where, where if you're playing music, you have to pay the collection societies. You just, you buy a blanket license to be able to play music in public locations,

a rental car that might be pushing it. But again, it's, it sounds like a crafty lawyer found a loophole. Did you pay a license when you bought your car for the radio that's in it? No, you don't because the radio stations do, but, but you know, if you, if you get satellite radio, you're paying your subscription fees, a good portion of which goes to pay, pay the, uh, the collection agencies.

So if you give me a ride to the store and you turn the radio on, does that then put you in violation of copyright? Because you are doing a public performance for me in your car. That's what they're, that's what this suit is about. I know, of course not, but it's as equally ridiculous as the Facebook messaging suit. It's somebody found a loophole or something that wasn't in the terms of service. I mean, if this were actually true, it just, it'd be awesome because it'd be another thing against Uber. And then I can laugh about that. Well, Uber is doing the Spotify deal

now. So when I get in the car, I turn on my music that I paid for already through Spotify. Right. You should get a kickback then you're not using their services. Okay. So this is, this is like, you know, in just silly shit, the internet has to say today because this one is, is silly. Yeah, pretty much. It's ridiculous.

And it's on torrent freak. So, but I mean, it does, I mean, it shows you the, the weird state of copyright, that law that we're in internationally, even at this point, it's nobody really knows what to do. And everybody's just kind of going, well, who owns what, where, who passed to pay for what, where does it count? What does it matter? We need a complete overhaul of the laws and the way all this is going, because it's so damn confusing to everyone that you could have ridiculous lawsuits like this.

Well, and the funny part is, I mean, they're just, they're, everybody's broke. Everybody's looking for every last scrap of cash they can get off the table. And this one is just like, who thought of this? I want to, I want to meet the guy who thought of it, buy him a drink and say, what is your rationale behind this? Honestly?

Yeah. You know, cause, cause obviously the people, oh, it could be because of the CDs, but no, I bought the CD. I put it in the car. Is it the radio? No, the radio stations pay the licensing. Where does that chain break that the rental car company is then liable for the shit that comes out of the radio in their car? Where, where's that, where's that break where they can claim that somebody is stealing music? Because at this point, somebody is paying for it. The radio station's paying for it, that you, you paid for it by getting a CD or, you

know, plugging in your iPod, whatever that has music, you theoretically paid for it. There's no break in the chain is what I'm saying is. So there needs to be a break in the chain where somebody is getting music for free. And it doesn't seem like that is the case in this. No, it doesn't seem to be so. I don't disagree. I just think it's funny.

Okay. Okay. Well, speaking of breaks in the chain, do you want to take this next one? Oh, sure. Why not? This is from the Hollywood Reporter. A YouTube star claims the collective withheld money from Annoying Orange show. Annoying Orange is apparently a big, or at least a decently big YouTube show. And they're, you know, Hollywood management agencies have cottoned on to the fact that there are these shows out there and these YouTube stars that are actually doing quite well

for themselves much better than say the interview in some cases. And, you know, they've started to sign them and things like that. What they've discovered, like, as we've talked about again, see grumpy old geeks episode one through now, it's not that easy to get money out of people off the internet. So they're having a hard time collecting revenues and basically just decided to stop paying their clients. Yeah. So, so this is a case where middlemen have been interjected into the process where

they shouldn't have been before. Like the whole, the whole promise of this was the fact that we would live without middlemen taking, taking the cuts. So like I put a show on YouTube, YouTube gives me the money, but now these guys have middlemen and the middlemen are hiking off to the Bahamas with the money. And now they're trying to sue before the company becomes insolvent and says, we'd kind of like some money out of this since we have 4 million, you know, subscribers to our channel, which is more than, you know, probably the interview got downloaded. So yes, they want

their money back. And I think this is going to be, this is, this is just standard business when you put middlemen in the process that want their pound of flesh and, you know, sometimes they want five pounds and you got to stay on them. And if you don't trust your middlemen, what the hell are you going to do? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is, you know, this is, again, it's, it's a weird thing because here you go, you've got this new business model, like you said, where there's no middlemen, you go and do it yourself. And, and as we've all seen, I mean, there's not a lot of money floating around because

people don't pay for things and you're, you're relying on advertising revenue, but then you sign with basically an old school management company that wants a ton of money and they'll, they're not getting it and they're pissed off and they're going to screw you and screw everyone else. So don't do it. I mean, I get you, you, you and I both know, like you sign with somebody like that because they promise that they're going to blow you up even bigger. You've got 4 million subscribers. Well, you signed with one of these companies, you're getting merch deals, you're on, you know, broadcast

TV, you're getting international distribution. That's, that's the promise, but it's not really happening, is it? No. And you know, this is just endemic to internet middlemen. I can just, I can tell you from history when I ran Metblogs, we signed with a company called Federated Media. They ran the ads for us. They came out of Boing, Boing and Dig, like those two big deals.

And they hired, they, you know, got on a bunch of lower trafficked clients like us. We were one of the smaller clients and they were, they're middle clients in there. Some like, you know, 43 folders that were middle tier and all that. But what they figured out was as the middlemen, they were going to make the most money catering to their top tier clients. And then the rest of us got the shaft.

This is, this is the way it works when you deal with agencies and people who are managing people of different calibers. I have this with my business manager. You know, he's got big clients. He gives them the time and I just got to scrape for my, my minutes here and there. That's what happens. This is how it works. So it's not surprising, but when you sign up with somebody that's supposed to be like an agency for you, just know that if you're not one of the top clients, you're going to get

treated like a redheaded stepchild, period. That's the way it works. Agreed. So up your game and get to the top or do it yourself. Exactly. A redheaded, annoying, orange stepchild in this case. Show actually sounds kind of nice. I might look at it. Yeah, I'm going to check it out.

Security? Ha! The Lizard Kids. A long trail of fail is an awesome post on Krebs on Security about the Lizard Squad, the group that took credit for the Sony, uh, Sony and Microsoft hacks on Christmas day. Right. Now these kids who, you know, said that we're part of the Lizard Squad who, you

know, DDoS'd these main networks, went and did media interviews. I'm sorry. I hope you enjoy your time in prison, you stupid fuck. They have, both of these kids have been arrested. One has been let go. The other one is still incarcerated. Couldn't happen to better people. I'm sorry. I mean, we talked about,

we talked about this hack on, on the outrage machine ad nauseum, but the fact that these kids went out and did press, okay, shows how disconnected they are from the real world. They have spent so much time in front of their computer. They think that they are heroes for exposing flaws in the networks. They didn't expose any flaws. They just exposed the outer edge of how much traffic the network can handle because this wasn't a hack. This was a distributed denial of service, which means it was just

a flood. My point was that they should have just claimed responsibility and waited because both of these networks were going to go down like a $5 whore, no matter what. But they, they, you know, stuck their dick in the socket and now they're going to go to jail. Just stupid kids. Seriously. And they're like, oh, but maybe they should hire us to, you know, help with, uh, help with their, uh, you know, their security and all this stuff. I'm like, that's what resumes are for. Taking down,

taking down the network is not the way to do it. No. Sending them a white paper saying, this is how I could do it is a different story. And then you maybe even get a bug bounty, but by actually taking down the network, you go from white hat to ass raped, salad tossed criminal.

That's what's going to happen to you. And you're never going to get another job except for probably working for the NSA. Probably. Yes. They'll take you on. Um, yeah, this is dumb. And you certainly, you don't bite the hand that feeds you. I mean, your, your fellow people out there want to be on the Xbox live and PSN networks. What's wrong with you? And, and, and the funny part is with Kim.com taking credit for, you know, saying, I will give you 3000, you know, vouchers for our privacy

service at $99 a pop, which is a $300,000 bribe to make these kids stop. Yeah. Was interesting. And you know, Kim.com is right now he's, he's in the middle of just the standard bullshit that he's always in the middle of, but it was, it was silly. Cause he just wanted to go play games cause he's a gamer and I don't know. The whole thing is just, it, it reeks of just dumb assery across the board on so many levels. And I feel bad for these kids cause they're obviously smart,

but so dumb. Well, that's kind of standard, isn't it? And can we also now just finally agree that Kim.com is the Donald Trump of the internet? Yeah, he's getting there. He's really getting there. That's I mean, he's a bad haircut away really. Well, he already has that too. So, okay. So this one was fun. So, uh, the chaos computer club is going on or was going on at the end of the year, which it always does. And there's always fun stuff that comes out of it. I haven't had the time to dive into all the talks yet, but I plan on it because some of the stuff that comes out of there

is just so cool. It'll make your head burn. Um, this one was good. It's a politician's fingerprint reproduced using photos of her hands. This is not surprising. Mike, my current camera is like the, the resolution on that camera is so mind bogglingly huge. And you know, I'm like looking at the pictures. I'm like, you know what, if I got close enough with a decent zoom, I could take a

picture of your fingerprint. Absolutely. And then I can reproduce it. Yep. And that's what he's claiming. So that's amazing. I mean, again, yeah, this is as soon as I heard, you know, everybody wants to switch to the biometrics and we're going to do fingerprint stuff. And I'm like, that's just bad.

That's not, and yeah, again, camera resolutions now HD cameras, you know, it's, it's only a matter of time before the resolution is good enough that you could be watching an episode of, well, not friends because they didn't record in HD, but whatever current black mirror and, uh, just grab the stars shot and recreate the fingerprint. Now you just have to actually physically get to their phone and you're good to go. Yeah. Well, once 4k comes out, 4k will be a little closer. I don't think you can do it with HD. The resolution's not there, but still. Yeah. It's getting there

though. It's getting there. So yeah, that was a silly one. It's a fun one. And so everybody's going to start wearing gloves on TV now. Awesome. I mean, look at, uh, Mythbusters. They already proved that you can beat a fingerprint scanner with just, you know, a dirty glass like they do in the movies. It works. The NSA drops a Christmas Eve surprise. They released a report on internal abuses on Christmas Eve. And it's exactly what we thought. Yep. And, uh, they were very smart to do it when they did it because I didn't even read it and I'm interested in this

stuff. So on, if you ever watched the West Wing, they called it taking out the trash. Yep. They hide it in the garbage, much like when, uh, the Millennium Falcon, uh, released from the back of the Imperial cruiser, but Boba Fett was smart enough to follow him. Yep. You got to be a Boba Fett these days. Good references. I like this. Thank you. Um, so this, this one is a fun one. Tinder is being used to ID suspected thieves. Really? Some guy had his computer

stolen and then he put the picture of, from his security camera up on Tinder and saying, Hey, $5,000 reward. If you identify the, uh, if you identify me in this picture and seems like, uh, that works. Got a lot of swipes. Got a lot of swipes. I, I, I, I give this person like pretty good credit. I mean, yes, it is a San Francisco startup called build zoom.

Of course. Yeah. So no, uh, no points there for, for naming, but still, uh, the person stole $30,000 worth of computers and gadgets, uh, from this guy's company. And he's just like, screw it. I'm putting her on Tinder and, and it worked. Hey, you never, I mean that, why not? Lots of people are on it. That's, that's pretty damn, it's ingenious. Well done.

And I like that Tinder actually said there, they were like on board with it saying they're people are using it for creative, you know, creative purposes. They didn't say, Oh, this isn't what it was supposed to be used for. You know, if you, if you don't get a handy in your, in your parked car, then, uh, we're not doing our job, but you know, Hey, forget the Sony hack. This could be the biggest cyber attack of 2015, which is a very long article on the debrief, which is a, it's a security security bog, but just talking about how we're

kind of screwed into the next year. There was the big story about the German power plant that was compromised. And this is, this is a very long article that we'll put in the show notes that you can go and read. And it's, this is a, this is a tinfoil hattery, but, but I mean, you and I have talked about this at great length. We know how poorly defended our infrastructure is and how out of date all the technology is and how easily anybody could, could

hack into this stuff. So it's, it's, we've been very lucky that nothing has happened yet, but, uh, Oh, things have happened. They just haven't been reported. The, the, the Germany hack was the first one that was really reported by the state. And, you know, it's, but it's going to escalate from there. I think the more transparency we get into these physical attacks, the better, because then we can, we can determine, we, yeah, we can determine where the compromised systems are and plug the

holes. Like the little boy with this thumb in the dike, stick your thumb in a dike or unless you're in San Francisco, then you could go to jail for assault. Anyway, these metaphors are just all over the place. I do what I can, man. We get, we only get, we got four minutes left. Let's cut through this.

Okay. So WordPress makes a fix to end all manual updates. So since they've taken on root protect and, and bought them, now they're rolling it into jet pack, which means that now WordPress is consolidating management of all your WordPress sites into the wordpress.com infrastructure. And you can go to wordpress.com and manage all your sites. It doesn't work that well yet. I'm going to tell you right now, I've, I have, I probably have 20 websites that are linked

up with jet pack and all this stuff. There's, there's absolutely no way to get rid of the old ones. You have to manually email them and say, can you take this one out, this one out, this one out? It's a mess. There's no, there's no unlink button yet, but anyway, it's a step in the right direction. If it's going to work. Yeah. I don't, don't know. I don't have a lot of faith. Here's my problem with it. Now, wordpress.com has a, they have a link, an API based link

from their system to my system. So guess what? That makes wordpress.com target number one. Exactly. That makes them target number one. You hack wordpress.com and you've hacked every WordPress site in the universe. I've got accounts on, on 20 different WordPress installs. Everyone has a unique username and password. Now I've linked them all to wordpress.com. So I've got one username

and password, even though it is a decent one. The username is pretty damn easy to guess because when you sign up for wordpress.com, you want your vanity name because that, that determines what your blog is going to be named. So it's pretty easy to guess what my wordpress.com username is going to be. So now I have to do what I have to do is I have to go to wordpress.com. I have to get a

completely random, stupid username and D link all the other sites and then link everything up. So it's non obvious what my username would be that has all my sites linked to it. It's you can protect against it, but it's a pain in the ass. And most people aren't going to do it, which means we have another spoff in the system. Thank you, WordPress. I appreciate it. Would you just let the plugin do what it was supposed to do and stop trying to control everything? Agreed.

Media candy. Media candy this week is going to be very brief, but good omens is available on the BBC in the radio play format. You only have a very short window to go get it. Links to the episodes will be in our show notes at grumpy old geeks.com slash 90, but go get it quick. I'm sure there will release it later on audible where you have to pay for it, but now they're free and I cannot wait to dive in.

I cannot speak to the radio program at all, but good omens is by far one of my favorite books ever written. So I am definitely going to be listening to this. Absolutely. Closing shout outs. Closing shout out just thanks to family, friends, et cetera, blah, blah, blah. It was a wonderful year and a closing shout out to whatever virus I have that's making me feel like crap right now. Brian Bola.

Yes. And a thank you to the wonderful people of West Virginia. I mean, I make fun of West Virginia because it's West Virginia, but everybody I met there was super sweet. I had a great time. The casino there definitely needs some work. We got there for New Year's Eve and we looked around and said, we'd rather go home and drink $4 champagne by ourselves than hang out here. But I'm going to LA

tomorrow. Actually, I'm leaving in about 12 hours. So I'm going to LA. If you're in LA and want to hang and grab a drink, I'll be in Hollywood all week, just drop me a note. And that's about it. Maybe we'll try to get together at Finn McCool's. So we'll let people know if that happens. If that happens.

Yes. We'll see. All right, man, go get, go take care of yourself. And, uh, I will. And thanks everyone for listening. And, uh, we'll be back with our full show next week. All right. Take it easy guys. Music for Grumpy Old Geeks is by Among Us. Check them out on iTunes or Spotify. We are hosted by Libsyn. Use the coupon code GOG while signing up and receive up to two months free. If you'd like to help support the show and keep the lights on, you can donate on our website at grumpyoldgeeks.com.

You can also leave us voicemail comments or questions by using the SpeakPipe widget in the sidebar. On social media, you can find us at facebook.com slash grumpyoldgeeks or twitter.com slash GOG podcast. 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 90. And Bob is most definitely your uncle.

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