95: We're Driving to Germany!

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Good morning, Brian. How are you?

We are good. After a few Skype foibles, we're back on the air and ready to rock and roll. Yes, we are. The point of failure remains Skype. Hopefully somebody will come along and make something better than this someday. I know. I was hoping FaceTime HD Audio was going to be our savior, but that's just as bad.

Yes, it is. Go Apple. Oh, well, what are you going to do? Obviously, these things are not made by Germans. We'll get to the Germans in a minute. So I put something in our show notes that I proposed to you to kind of like unburden you a little bit and myself, actually.

I was about to say, it's not just me. No, yes, it's me too. But I know you and I know you're a little bit verklempt nowadays. So I've been kept a little busy. Yeah, it's definitely been busier than I have been in the last few years, for sure. Sitting around, sipping your tea all day, working on your lazy musician websites.

So when we usually wrap the show on Fridays, almost immediately, we open up the new doc and start adding stuff to it. And unfortunately, by the time the next show rolls around, half that stuff is stale and dead. So I'm thinking, ah, how about we just like, let's take a vacation.

After we do the show, let's take a vacation and relax a bit and then pick back up on Tuesday. Wait, you mean like actually have a weekend? Have a weekend. I know. Isn't that silly? Do the thing that we keep talking about on this podcast about actually having downtime because it's super important. Yeah, let's try the do as we say, not as we do kind of thing for once.

That sounds good to me, man. I'm totally up for that. Excellent. Because, yeah, I think the show will be a little bit better because then we can relax. Because having this on our shoulders all the time kind of was starting to get to me a bit. I'm like, oh, my God. Every time I see an article, I'm like, I got to put it in the show notes.

I got to put it in the show notes. And then, like I said, by the time it rolls around, it's stale and been talked about to death. So we end up dumping it. I agree completely. I mean, there's only so many more times I can spend my Saturday night on my couch when I'm supposed to be watching something relaxing or interesting. And instead, I'm looking up Uber stories.

Like watching The Notebook with your lady? Oh, God. That thing's always on. It really is. Yeah, I still haven't seen it. Since I am single, I have dodged The Notebook Bullet. It's actually not too bad of a movie. And that girl is pretty cute. That is not all.

You have been subsumed by this movie because that's not what you've ever said ever. You're like, what the fucking notebook's on? I can't believe it. I hate this movie. Look, you've got to find the pleasures where you can. And I don't mind staring at the petite young actress. Okay.

Yes, make the lemonade out of the cute little lemons. That's right. She has lovely little lemons. Okay. Maybe I'll have to check this out. Next week in Media Candy. The Notebook. The Notebook. Does it have legs? No.

Okay. No, it does not. Oh, man. Yeah. So I did three podcasts yesterday and this one today. I am. You are Mr. Podcast now. I do what I can. And all with that with a full day of work. Yeah. It's just like, ugh. I started at six in the morning.

I think we wrapped at midnight last night. You know, I mean, that's one of the things that I'm always saying. All this technology and all this stuff that we do to kind of move forward that's supposed to be saving us time. And we're all working a hell of a lot harder than we ever used to and longer. Well, the fun thing about podcasting is I don't count that as work.

I actually count that as relaxation. Like, this is the highlight of my week right here. You got to get out more, man. Well, I got like 18 feet of snow outside. That's why I'm like, put me on any podcast. I'm not going anywhere. Okay. There is that. So speaking of working too much, I found something that I thought would be very close to your heart.

And since it is talking about working and productivity, I figured we should put it in the follow-up. And it's an article called Why Germans Work Few Hours But Produce More, A Study in Culture. Yes, I love this article. You definitely nailed this for me.

And you're right. And I immediately reposted this on my Facebook as well, because it is true. And it's a great article. It's really interesting. It's, you know, I'm German-American. I was born here. I'm not from Germany.

I wasn't born in Germany. But I was certainly raised in a German culture. My parents were that way. And this is how I would like to work. This is how I wish offices were. This is why I quit corporate culture 20 years ago and basically have worked for myself, because I can create this environment around me.

And basically, my transition into working a semi-corporate job in the last two months or so has been slowly driving me mad, because all of these things that the Germans do not do in this article is occurring in my office. When I go into the office roughly, I don't know, two days a week maybe.

And as soon as I get there, I am itching to leave because I cannot do any work there, because it's all just talky, talky, talky. Look at this. Look at this link. Oh, did you see what? Did you hear about? Blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm just like, I can't work here. I'm dying to go home just so I can get my work done.

It sounds like you work at BuzzFeed. Everybody's passing around links talking about kittens or whatever. I think that's every office now. I really do. I mean, I talk to people that do corporate, you know, do the corporate thing all the time, and that's what their days are like. It's, you know, it's all of a sudden they look around, it's 5 p.m., and they haven't done anything yet.

Yeah, I think the real thing that I really liked about this article, it was basically saying Germans don't fuck around at work. They go in, they do their job. There is no Facebook. There is no Twitter, and they sit down.

They're serious about their work. They get to the point, like, let's get this done so we can go home. I think that's really the thing. It's like if you make work too comfortable and don't take, you know, a serious focus and pride in what you're doing, then you do. You get scattered and never get anything done.

Honestly, Facebook is just screwing up everything no matter what, but I think nowadays it's gotten so ingrained in the culture. If somebody sees you on Facebook, they're thinking, oh, you're taking a break, you know, or whatever. It doesn't really register with people that, no, you're actually fucking off and costing the company money right now, so get back to work.

No, you know, that drives me kind of insane sometimes because my job is to be online, so I am on Facebook. That's part of my job. But I can always tell when my friends are having a slow day at work because I'm getting deluged with messages and they're sending me links and, you know, talking about what we're going to do later after work.

And I'm just, like, slowly pulling out my hair going, leave me alone so I can get my work done so then I can see you later. I mean, that's all I want. I want to power through the day, get it done as quickly as possible, and then have a separate life outside of that. And that's my favorite part of this article.

Germans have a life outside work. Germans work hard and then they play hard. The work day is focused on doing work. And then the off hours are truly off hours. And the German government is currently considering a ban on work-related emails after 6 p.m. Because work day is done. I don't want to get a work email after.

We're done. God, wouldn't that be amazing? Oh, my God. Wouldn't that just be amazing? I mean, the problem for us is we work on the internet, which is a 24-7 medium. Yes, it is. But, again, if you go through the statistics of even social media posts and things like that, the value for them if they're done after hours is less than they are during hours.

And, really, who gives a shit if some ban tweets at 9? Why do I have to tweet at 9 p.m. on a Sunday? Why? Who cares? Well, yeah, that's a different thing from what I was thinking of is that we both used to run our own servers. I still run my own server, but I don't have any clients on it.

But I have my day job servers that I am responsible for, which means that if something goes wrong, they have to be able to reach me. I just can't turn my phone off at 6. Yeah, I mean, obviously. I mean, there's emergency use, and that's an emergency case. Server goes down. All right, fine. But do we have to post a press release at 11 p.m.?

No, we do not. Well, that's the thing. Once they know that you are reachable, they will reach out for anything. It's like, oh, well, I know I can get to them. So, yeah, can you just change the font size on this article for a little bit? It'll only take you a minute, and you know it's going to take an hour because you've got to boot up, you've got to get in, you've got to get your whole shabelle going.

And then by the time you're done, they're like, oh, that doesn't look right. Can we try this? Can we try that? You know, that's how it goes. Yeah, I know. And I've been fighting the battle against that for a very long time. And you just really have to put your foot down with clients and just say, well, you know, I can't.

I just, I'm not working now. I'm off. I will get to this, whatever. But this has been a battle that I fought basically since I entered the workforce. I mean, I remember the job that you and I met at, at that particular place, you would quit already. You were gone. And it got considerably more corporate after you left because when we started, it was kind of a ragtag little organization that was just doing fun stuff.

But I remember being passed up for promotions because it was felt that I wasn't working hard. And I looked at the amount of projects that I had versus, say, the amount of projects that the person that got the promotion had. I was doing five times the work.

But the thing is, I was coming in at 9 a.m., headphones on, slamming through it all. And I was done by two or three. And then I was like, oh, I'm just going to go home. But that does not fly in the American corporate system. That makes you look bad. Yeah, and I mean, honestly, when we started at BoxStop, it was a scrappy little startup.

But then you were there after they got bought out by IXL, which was a big corporation. So you definitely kind of got, you know, dragged into that kicking and screaming. Well, and that, you know, that definitely is, that experience is one of the reasons that I just said to hell with it and to hell with corporate culture and went off to start my own thing, thinking it would be a lot easier.

Silly me. Yeah, work is work is work, no matter where you're at. Yes, it is. So I want to do a little follow up on my T-shirt cannon drone snatcher idea. I just I ran across this, a thing called the rapery.

I think it's it's R-A-P-E-R-E. I don't know how you pronounce that. I don't know who was on the committee that decided to name this, but I wouldn't go for anything that's close to rape. Yeah, it's the rapery. Why don't you just call it the E-raper or the I-raper? Yeah. Anyway, yeah.

It's a drone that will actually go out and disable other drones. It's not it's not on the market yet, but it's interesting. They basically take a regular or their drone overclock it. So it's only got like two minutes of flight time, but it's super fast. It goes after him, hovers over it and then drops a piece of string on the on the props.

They call it they call it a tangle cord. But yeah, basically, they drop string on it. They should use silly string. So, you know, there's no evidence when it's done. Yeah, this is a it's funny. I mean, my favorite part of this is the the whole FAQ section down at the bottom. Is it legal?

That depends on how you plan to use it and where you live. Yeah, they obviously don't have anybody legal on this team because this page would be full with words that basically say no. You know, how will you stop people abusing this? We don't know yet. Yeah, we have great.

We have no idea, but it is what it is. You can buy one. Maybe we'll figure it out. Maybe. I don't know. We'll see. There's no way this could possibly be legal, but awesome. Yeah, honestly, you are you are going after somebody's personal property and very likely destroying it in the process.

Yeah. Good times. See, with mine, you can do the T-shirt cannon with the net in a parachute. So it will gently bring it back to Earth where it can be recovered. This one just turns off the motors and it just falls from the sky. And you know that's not going to end well. I honestly don't know why you haven't kickstarted this yet, Jason.

Because I. You could be rolling in the dough right now and you'd actually never have to even make it. Just like most people on Kickstarter. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I'm just going to come up with a card game. OK. So you've got some follow up on the Pono.

I do have a little follow up on the Pono. Honestly, I never thought we would be talking about Neil Young's Toblerone looking high quality music playing device ever again after we basically ripped it a new a-hole almost a year ago now. But apparently the rest of the world has discovered it because it's been talked about a lot in the media recently about how it's stupid.

On the Toblerone note, in the review that David Pogue does, it does not look like a Toblerone anymore. It looks like a really poorly designed Microsoft iPod knockoff. Yeah, it does. It's a rectangle now. Yes. Well, at least they figured out that they should probably just be able to stick it in your pocket.

But the story basically all over is that this is a dumb device and nobody's going to use it. And I just want to say, you know, grumpy old geeks called this about a year ago. Yeah, the instant it came out, we called it. Yeah. And I love you. Go watch the video on the David Pogue did where he has people come in and do A-B testing on it.

And most of the people pick the iPhone as sounding better. Well, again, we did the A-B testing with Tidal, the high quality streaming service. And, you know, unless it was very specific types of music that use very specific frequencies that are super high and super low, forget it. You can't tell the difference.

And we're all deaf from 20 years of earbuds and headphones. Yes, that's true. Actually, that reminds me. There was an interesting story that I did not get in the show notes because I was technically taking my downtime when I saw it cross the deck. But somebody did, and I should, we'll find this and try to get this in the notes.

Someone did testing of the actual sound levels from the very first iPhone all the way to the 6. And they've basically been increasing with every release. So our phones are even getting louder to counteract the fact that we're getting deafer. Oh, that's nuts. Remember when they started to build in the, like, the max levels?

On the iPods? Because you'd put in a track and it would blow your eardrums out because you were at max volume. And they built in a limiter. And I haven't seen that since, you know, probably, what, seven or eight years. Because it was in the iPods. They still have an option for that. They don't call it a limiter anymore.

They sound matching or something like that. So it tries to keep all the different tracks in. It's a compressor, basically. Okay, because, yeah, there's two of them. There's one that tries to keep all of the songs at the same level. But that doesn't limit the volume. Right. There's no volume limiter. But, you know, I'll dick around with my phone.

I was wrong about the Shazam thing. So I could be wrong about this, too. You could be. Yeah. I also did want to follow up, too, because I was blown away by the fact that, I mean, this is the other big thing that you just can't get away from in the news. And I posted a couple of days ago. I mean, it's bad enough we don't have jetpacks and flying cars yet.

But I can't believe that we're still debating vaccination. But did you watch the Penn and Teller, the one minute and 30 second clip that basically destroys the entire anti-vaccination argument? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And as soon as I saw the first two seconds, I realized I had seen it before because I have seen all of the episodes of bullshit many times.

I just forgot about that particular one. And it does sum it up in beautiful, just the only way that Penn and Teller can do it. It's just like there is no way to argue with that. It's the numbers. But they do it visually. Well, apparently there is, Jason, because that was done over five years ago, and here we are still arguing about it.

Oh, man. Well, some people are just terminally fucking stupid. Well, and if they was only putting themselves at risk and at danger, I'd be fine with that. The problem is there's this thing called the greater good and society at large, you fuckheads. Yeah. Once you hit the, was it the 5% unvaccinated or anything over 5% that aren't vaccinated, then you really run the risk of an epidemic.

Because there are some people that can't be vaccinated because they have, you know, conditions or cancer or they're too young. They haven't, they haven't reached the age of vaccination yet. And you bring around this shit and it's like when you don't have to, it's, you know what, I'm pretty sure our audience is on our side.

So I don't think we have to get into the nitty gritty about that. I agree, but, you know, just, I just, I always just think about the fact that measles was basically eradicated and hey, it's back now. Awesome. Thanks guys. Yeah. Thanks you Prius driving, fucking whole food shopping assholes.

Yeah. Jenny McCarthy, go die in a fire. Yes. So I've got a Mac tip this week. Okay. I ran into this issue. I was, I was talking to my buddy, Jordan, who was running into some memory issues on his MacBook Pro and he was running less stuff than I am.

And I'm like, well, mine, mine cooks. So I just, I started to do some, some deep digging. And then I, in my Mac, I noticed that there was a process called SecD that was, it was gobbling up about like 5.6 gig of RAM. And that's quite a bit.

Well, it's ridiculous. It's huge. And it was doing that on my air, which only has 4 gig of RAM, which means it was, it was, you know, digging into swap and doing all this shit to the, for no reason. And I looked it up. SecD is one of the demons that runs for the iCloud key chain access sharing.

iCloud is just a clusterfuck. Yeah. Basically this, this demon has a memory leak. So all I did was I went in, I turned off key chain sharing in my iCloud settings, rebooted, and it's never come back.

So it has to do with the, the key chain sharing when, and that process should not be, you know, in the, anywhere near the gigabyte range. It should be in the, you know, the megabyte range. And I haven't had a problem since. And, you know, my air is running a little snappier now, which is nice.

And yeah, if I need to, to sync my key chains, then I'll just turn it on, then turn it back off, but don't leave it running all the time. And you'll notice that your RAM is much happier. I will have to take a look at that. So that is my Mac tip of the week.

I think that's been my first Mac tip ever. Yeah. You know, it's surprising how little you actually talk about this, considering how deeply you get into it on a daily basis. Well, because every time I say Apple, you rip me a new one. You're like, fan boy, fan boy. I'm like, well, I use a damn thing. I should be able to, you know, drop some knowledge every now and again.

Hey, if you can't handle the truth, Jason, it's fine.

Comment of the week. Our first comment of the week comes from Quibble on iTunes, who gave us a five-star rating and a review. Thank you very much, Quibble. It is titled Bucket Full of Win. Well made and interesting. Jason and Brian describe the latest tech news and rate all the things geek currently making a buzz.

I don't know if that's a real sentence, but we'll put it together somehow. Finally, a tech podcast for adults. Woot. And I appreciate the use of the word woot. Me too. Thank you. Thank you very much, Quibble. Thanks, Quibble. That's awesome. We also got a comment on Twitter from Rico, at the underscore Wampster, which is kind of a fun name.

That's a good name. At GOG Podcast, your uber high earner has been found. With a link to Forbes. Love the show, gents. The link is very funny. It's awesome. I really enjoyed it. And it's not. Yeah, sure. This guy is making over a quarter of a million dollars a year, but he's doing it by turning his Uber car into a showroom for his jewelry.

I know. It's awesome. That is the way to hack the system, my friend. That is definitely hacking the system, but it does kind of bring up a lot of the other things that we always talk about, which is, okay, he's driving a car. He's also selling jewelry. He's also driving for Lyft. I mean, this dude is always working.

But guess what? Now he's hired drivers to go out and be his showroom. So now he's got six cars with six different drivers, and he's paying it back to the, you know, the underemployed Filipino community. Good for him. And now he's only driving – he says he tries to stay in the trenches and drive at least eight hours a week.

So he's put his time in, and now he's kind of backed off and has become, you know, the landlord. You get to drive my cars and give me your money. Yeah, it's a good job, man. This guy's pretty smart. So hack the system. Yeah, yeah.

Hey, man, if that's how you got to do it, that's how you got to do it. What I found interesting in the article was Uber is completely okay with this. Yeah, I think that that is a result of how bad their PR has been for the last, oh, two years running. I don't think that they would have been okay with this, say, eight, six months ago.

But they've got to play cool now. But since you do have the driver ratings, you know, that if people are still, you know, pimping their stuff and still maintaining, like, you know, a 4.8, 4.9, 5.0 rating, then where's the harm? Where's the foul?

I don't see it. I 100% guarantee you that the legal department over at Uber was really trying to figure out a way to get a cut of this guy's profits because it's done on their time. It's done on their time, but it's not done on their property. If he was driving an Uber car, I can see them staking a claim for it.

But if he's just putting his stuff in his car and people want to buy it, there is no legal standing for that, that they can in any way, shape, or form. And especially as long as he gives them that bottle of water when they get in the car, Bob's your uncle. In the news.

In a rather stunning turn of events, the FCC did something good again. What? Yeah, all this talk about net neutrality, and the FCC actually came out in front of it and for it and are helping protect us a little bit by making it, what do they call it, the Title II Resolution, Title II of the Communications Act, which is basically reclassified broadband as a utility and is basically telling carriers that they cannot throttle websites or apps or data services as long as they're legal.

So net neutrality for the win, FCC for the win. Thank you. Yeah, it's about goddamn time these guys grew a pair. I'm really happy with this. And at this point, it still has to go through Congress, Senate, all that crap, who they can dig their claws into it.

And you know the utilities are going to fight. They're not utilities. They're not utilities yet, but they will be with any help. The cable providers and the net providers. So yeah, it's a great day for the internet. Everybody, you know, it was jubilations and everything.

It was confetti from all my nerds. Everybody was happy about it. And the fact that they rolled in mobile as well into this was a shocker. Yeah, that's a big win. That's a lot of foresight. And that's very, very, very important. So thank you, FCC. One of the only times you're going to hear us say that.

Yeah. Well, I'm hoping this is a new era for the FCC, that they're actually, you know, taking a stand because they've always been at, you know, they've been the lapdog of the cable companies for so long. Now we just expect them not to do anything correctly. And I think, honestly, I think John Oliver has a huge amount to do with this because they cited the, you know, 3 million comments they got, which was, you know, mostly from his outreach on his show.

Yeah. Which, by the way, starts up again on Sunday. I'm very excited about that. I have missed his show. It is must-see TV for me. It is. And also, Better Call Saul starts this Sunday. Yeah, we'll see about that one. I'm hoping it's good. And The Walking Dead is back.

Okay. All right. We're not in the media segment yet. I know, but I'm excited. I'm excited. Well, at least you can, you know, use your downtime properly that we're taking from the show. Yes. Yes. This is a bit of follow-up because we talked about the rise of the robot journalists coming.

And The Verge reported this week that the AP has actually implemented it about six months ago. Oh. Yeah, they're doing about 3,000 stories a quarter. And they say that number is going to grow. Right. Well, that's interesting. And nobody's really noticed, I guess.

I don't think so. I mean, here's what they're doing. They're doing it with things like- Well, the reality is the state of news is so damn bad, nobody's going to notice anyways. My only question is, you know, is the robot journalist going to lie about being in a helicopter like Brian Williams did? I don't know about that one, but you can tell me about that in a sec. What they're doing is they're taking data-driven articles like earnings reports.

That's the one they keep citing is earnings reports that get an article. We don't need people to write those because it's the same crap. It's formulaic. Let's punch in the numbers, run it through a thesaurus algorithm so we have different words. And poof, there's your article. You know, why waste human power on that?

Which, you know, I agree with. Like, let's spend the money on journalists doing real journalism instead of sitting there writing crap articles that nobody cares about anyway. Ah, but there's the problem, Jason. That's not a problem. That is an opportunity. Because then the that's that's a great theory.

But the reality is the organizations do not spend that saved money on real journalism. They just fire someone. Now, here's an interesting thing. Speaking of journalism, BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed News. What the hell is going on over there?

Again, we this is the world that we have created for ourselves. The most credible journalistic sources in the country are TMZ and BuzzFeed. Yeah, we're going to get to a BuzzFeed story in a second. But, yeah, I was just like my mind, mind blown, mind blown that I'm reading BuzzFeed, quote unquote, news and getting news out of it.

Well, written news. What the cats and dogs sleeping together? I don't know. Well, again, I mean, you you obviously didn't. This this came out yesterday and you probably aren't aware of it. But because I just mentioned Brian Williams and you seem to not understand.

I was doing podcasts all day yesterday. I didn't have a chance to see the news. Brian Williams is the anchor. He is Mr. News. He is he is, you know, our stalwart of news. This the 630 evening news. Brian Williams, the host. He is, you know, beyond reproach.

He's he's the every man. He's the every man's Anderson Cooper. Yeah. And, you know, he just he blatantly lied about a story in Iraq and you can't trust anyone now. So, OK, BuzzFeed, fine. I don't care where I get news from as long as it's it's well researched and well written and well, you know, well done.

Great. Awesome. And don't lie to me. That's all I ask for. OK, I'll have to read up on the Brian Williams thing. I always liked him. So now I'm sad. Yeah, I'm sad, too, because I was a fan as well. I mean, I don't watch his show regularly, but he always you know, he has that he's that look.

He's got America's most trusted anchor. Like I said, he's the straight Anderson Cooper. Yeah. So I posted an article about in this. I knew this was going to kind of bite me in the ass because it opened up the door for you to put in all your Uber articles. So here it is.

The sharing economy is a lie. Uber, Ayn Rand and the truth about tech libertarians. Now, this comes from Salon. And the fact that I found it before you, I was stunned because you're you're like you sit there and refresh Salon all day long. But so, yes, this is an article that I'm just going to let you go.

Go free reign. Everybody should read this article. It is the best. Well, most well-written version of this that I've seen. It basically encapsulates in a nutshell exactly how I feel about the sharing economy and what's really happening.

It pulls no punches. It is straight up the truth. And I'm not even going to try to describe it. This article rests my case. So thank you, Richard Eskow. OK. Yes. Just go from what the what the actual title says and read on.

Yeah. You know, everybody liked Ayn Rand. Everybody read that in college and it was like, great. But there's also the reality of how the world works. And this is just it's not good. And the only the sharing economy is not helping people. It is overworking them.

It is overtaxing them. It is driving them crazy. They are working longer and harder for less money. And the people that are making money out of this are the people that own these companies. And that's it. There is no trickle down. There is no Reaganomics. There is no nothing. We are all getting screwed. Read this article if you disagree and you're wrong.

I also think we need to come up with new terms for these because the sharing economy when when, you know, applied to things like Uber doesn't fit because it's not that's not a sharing ecosystem. That's a sharecropping ecosystem. Yeah, I agree. Uber owns the land and you get to drive on it.

You know, when you talk more about the sharing economy, I think more of things like Kickstarter, where you are sharing to build something that isn't owned by a conglomerate. I mean, there's a lot of this stuff that we've just started to, you know, narrow down our vocabulary to a point where it's not making sense when we use these throwaway terms.

Well, it's funny you should mention that because the article that I found immediately after you put that one in, basically, he talks about that. This is an article by Robert Reich, who is the former secretary of labor. The sharing economy is hurtling us backwards, and it's a good short look into this as well.

But he argues that the euphemism is the share economy. A more accurate term would be the share the scraps economy. So he agrees with you there. And this is also a great, nice, well-written article that basically says we are going to hell in a handbasket and basically bye-bye middle class.

And we're going to have the extremely rich and the extremely poor that are working 24 hours a day to barely get by at best. Then comes revolution and demolition man and Taco Bell, the rise of Taco Bell. It was an interesting article, though, because he talks about Amazon's Mechanical Turk system, which I had never even heard of and terrifies me.

You've never heard of Mechanical Turk? No. Oh, my God. Where have you been? Well, I've been trying to actually get paid market value for my work instead of doing it for next to nothing. Well, you do listen to Planet Money, right? Yes. I think there was just a recent episode on Planet Money where they interview Turkers who are sitting at home making extra money doing the, you know, the tasks for a few cents.

But this has been around for almost a decade. It's somehow completely passed me by, but it scares me. I mean, this is – I've been running around – you know, I've got my pet issues. I run around and talk about how the bandwidth costs are going to kill us when they get rid of unlimited bandwidth and how we've all moved to streaming and how this is just going to – we're going to get so screwed and blah, blah, blah.

The other one is we are hurtling towards the, you know, the fabled Star Trek economy. This is what all the, you know, all the San Francisco tech heads – it's their dream. It's the – we're not going to have to work. We're going to have – everything's going to be automated. Everything's going to be done with an app. Blah, blah, blah.

The problem is we haven't done the same thing on the supply side, which is, you know, my mortgage company, they still want money. When I go to the grocery store, they want me to pay for that stuff. I'm looking farther down the supply chain because an app is not going to go and grow your ass a potato.

No, exactly. You've got to go in the field and plant that shit. You know, we don't have the food generators that they have in Star Trek and things like that. We are getting rid of the jobs, we are getting rid of the money, and everybody's going to be screwed. Fun times, fun times. Good times. But, you know, you can always be a mechanical Turk while you're driving your Uber, selling your jewelry.

Then you go home and you're sharing your house with an Airbnb, and this is how we're all supposed to get by? This sounds like a fucking nightmare to me. Yeah, it is, you know, about 10 steps backwards from where we should be headed. Exactly. We're all supposed to be making more money and working less. That was the techno dream.

Somehow, it's become the exact opposite. Fuck it. We're moving to Germany. Okay. Okay, so continue on your Uberness, your holy Uberness. I don't have any stories of how Uber is completely and utterly horrible this week.

I mean, the thing that came out this week was basically Google and Uber whipped out their penises to see which one was bigger and gotten a bit of a spat. Google announced that it's launching an Uber arrival, sort of. Stop, stop right there. Stop right there. Google did not announce anything.

A quote-unquote insider said that they were working on a ride-sharing app, which was actually just a way for people who work at Google to get a ride. It's their ride-sharing app for carpooling inside of Google. So, basically, somebody got a hold of this and ran with it, and it was completely wrong.

Completely wrong. And then it just kind of escalated from there because, as we know about the next story, continue. The next story being Uber wants to replace its drivers with robots. Yes, so they did a deal with Carnegie Mellon.

And here's the great thing about this deal. Everybody thought that, oh, my God, Carnegie Mellon, you know, hub of robotics in America, some of the smartest people. And it's in Pittsburgh, which is surprising. They did this deal with them. Now, here's the deal with the deal, okay?

They basically invested, quote-unquote, several hundred thousand dollars into a robotics research lab that will help develop a fleet of autonomous taxis. Several hundred thousand dollars is less than yogurt, okay? How much can they do with several hundred thousand dollars?

I agree with that completely, but you have to admit that that is the endgame that Uber is suiting for. And, I mean, Google as well, obviously. Look, I'm thrilled with the idea of robotic cars. I love the self-driving car because every time I go anywhere now, I'm almost T-boned by a Prius, whether I'm walking or driving, because anybody that buys a Prius no longer knows how to drive.

So, great. Let's get to some robot cars. Sure, this is just in its infancy, and they're just taking a first step forward, and they're not putting a ton of money into it. But the endgame for Uber, what better way to combat the mistreating driver issues that they have than just get rid of them completely? This is where it is heading, and it will get there.

And, again, it goes into the entire economics articles that we just talked about, which is we are phasing out the jobs everywhere. And getting back to the point, one of the biggest investors in Uber is Google. Yeah. So, as soon as Google gets their cars done, Uber is going to be getting Google cars.

Yeah. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. No. Yeah. You know what? Uber will eventually be part of Google. Google will just buy them outright at some point. Or Uber will buy Google. Or the other way it happens. Depends on how it goes because ad revenue is trending downward recently. So, it'll be an interesting thing.

And in 20 years, because that's how long it's going to take for these cars to actually get on the road and be reliable. I don't know if it's going to take that long, but definitely 10. I'll give you 10. Yeah, 10 at least. That was my original estimate, but everything keeps getting pushed. Because they, you know, Google cars still have a lot of problems, especially in city traffic.

Highway, they're spot on golden. Yeah. But when you get into things like intersections and people with dogs, cars, kids running into the road, they still get confused and they don't know what to do. And they will kill somebody, you know? I think we should just make a fleet that goes out and hunts and destroys Priuses.

Ooh, I am. I am. So, and on that Kickstarter that, you get all my monies. All of my monies. Excellent. Now, to stick with the transportation theme and the news theme and the BuzzFeed theme, I ran across this article on BuzzFeed News called Transportation Department Releases Tech-Focused 30-Year Report.

It's all crumbling bridges, flight delays, and gridlock traffic unless we get deeper ports, driverless cars, automated airplanes. Oh, and Uber, Uber everywhere. Yeah. This was written by Matt Honan, who used to be at Wired, who was famous for getting hacked and, you know, having all his pictures and stuff stolen.

And I was like, wait, wait, wait. You work at BuzzFeed? People are leaving Wired to work for BuzzFeed. He is now the BuzzFeed San Francisco News Bureau Chief. And I was just like, jaw, drop, floor, thud. I was like, well, the hell.

Let's be honest. Wired's been on a downhill trajectory for a long time. They still have some good people over there. And they still come up with some really great, well-researched articles. But in general, Wired has been kind of, meh. Well, I think the problem is they're part of Condé Nast now. And if you look at what Condé Nast is doing to things like Reddit in there, you know, please don't leave your toys at home type of thing.

Why would anybody want to work for Wired anymore? You know, Wired may now be tired again. And it'll come back. Who knows? It probably will. But this is a good article. I like this article. It's really interesting. Again, it's – the very start of the article is basically discussing another one of my pet peeves, which is our – the basically non-existent, totally crumbling and falling apart infrastructure in this country.

We need a new deal again. The first president that comes in and says we're going to just blow a ton of our budget and hire a bunch of people to rebuild our bridges and our roads and our – all those systems gets my vote instantly. OK.

Isn't that exactly what Obama did when he came into office and spent a shit ton of money, hired a bunch of people, and we fixed a lot of roads, we fixed a lot of bridges. But we seem to have slowed down a bit. It should have – it needed to keep going. We didn't do enough. We need more and more and more. Every time you read a newspaper or report locally, it's – local bridges in severe state of disrepair.

Streets in L.A. are ridiculously horrible. There's potholes everywhere. It's unbelievable how bad our infrastructure is. So, yeah, Obama started it, and it was a great program, and it did really well, and it hired a ton of people, and it got the economy going, and it really rebuilt areas. But we need a hell of a lot more.

Yeah, we need to keep it going. And I can just tell you from when I took my train trip across the country last year, it – I mean, it looked like I was going through the depression because everything was falling apart. And I'm just amazed that you have potholes in L.A. and you don't even have snow. Here we've got potholes, and they fix them immediately because, you know, you have to because you'll kill somebody in the snow with it.

But, yeah, L.A. has no excuse for potholes at all. They got potheads. You can have all the potheads you want. Yeah. It's got a great excuse for potholes. It's – we got idiots in charge. There you go. Yeah. Okay. Now, let's keep on with the – let's keep on with the transportation theme for a little bit.

The NTSB came out this week and say selfies caused the fatal Colorado plane crash a little while ago. So, yeah, these guys – well, they weren't rated to fly when they were flying or the guy, the pilot. I can't even pronounce his name.

But he was 29 and his passenger, they were killed when they flew their Cessna into a wheat field at midnight, which they weren't – he wasn't rated to fly at night. Yeah, so the – I would say that that is a very misleading title. The selfie did not cause the crash.

The fact that he was not skilled and not rated caused the crash. And any pilot that knows what they're doing wouldn't be doing that. Yeah, well, taking a selfie while not being rated to fly at night I think probably caused it because they have the pictures and they had a GoPro in the plane.

So they kind of – you know, they're saying it was kind of the selfies. But it's – seriously, people. Seriously. If you're flying your plane when you're not supposed to be flying, 10 and 2, 10 and 2, hands on the wheel at 10 and 2, eyes forward.

Just like in driving school and I'm sure just like in flying school. Pay attention, people. Pay attention. Now, in the final bit of aviation tech news, a pilot uses the full-plane parachute in a crash in the wild. This is the coolest video I've seen in a long time.

I've always followed these full-plane parachute stories for a long time. But I've never seen video of one actually deployed in the wild. And it is so cool. Yeah, it's very fucking cool. I mean, I don't think you could use that on like a 747 or anything, but it's cool.

No, yeah, yeah, you can't use it on a jet. But these little personal planes, if the guys taking the selfie would have had one, they might still be around. That is very true. So I definitely recommend checking out this video because it's from plane failure, parachute deploy, to landing, to rescue.

Like I think it was a Coast Guard helicopter that was filming the whole thing, and it's awesome. It is one of the best videos. Screw your cat videos for the day. Go watch this one. Now, getting back to depressing internet news, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are basically bribing the people that run Adblock Plus to let their ads through.

Yeah, I saw this, and I got so angry. This is whatever. This is what's wrong with the world. Hey, man, you got the money. You can do it. I'm surprised nobody has just bought them yet and shut them down. Yeah, I'm surprised by that too.

So I'm not happy. I'm going to have to research and see if there's something else out there now because I don't want to use them anymore because that defeats the entire purpose. And it's just wrong. It's wrong. Not cool. Not cool. Not cool at all. Yeah. I'm just disappointed.

As a company, you know, it's like their mission is to keep crappy ads away from people. Unless you pay us to let them go through. Or if they pay us. Yeah, it's just money. Stupid money. Now, here's the in the Tempest in a teapot of the week.

Yeah, I was about to say this is the biggest non-story ever. Yes. U.S. Army sends out a tweet about his badass armor, but one word sets off a firestorm. Now, was there really a firestorm? I don't know. I saw the article and I thought I just I got to put it in here because it is so stupid.

It is stupid. It's, you know, we're talking armor. Chink in the armor is a saying. It has been a saying for a gazillion years. 600 years. Get over it, people. Yeah. So the tweet was chinks in special ops, digital and physical armor post challenges, experts say.

And with a cool picture of this guy and like, you know, some super soldier suit with his with his Oakley's on, I guess. But still, everybody, they thought it was racist and kind of just, you know, any any opportunity to troll nowadays, people will take advantage of it.

I am I am sad that the army took down the tweet and apologize. They kind of they kind of didn't apologize. They kind of stood their ground. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of a common term. We've been using it for a very long time. Has nothing to do with Asian Americans or Asians. Yes. It's a word.

It has a meaning. It is not just a, you know, a racially insensitive slang. It is a word, a chink. It is a word. Well, well, we know it's a word. It's about context. This is all about context, using the word in the proper context, which is what they did.

They're like chinks in our armor. Like, you know, means that there are flaws. It's just Internet culture. That's all it is. It's ridiculous. Let's talk about Katy Perry culture. Did you watch the Super Bowl? I did watch the Super Bowl. I had no idea about this left shark phenomenon.

Again, that's it's an Internet culture thing. I mean, it's amusing that that is what kind of took over the entire story. And, you know, it became a hashtag immediately. And there were memes everywhere. And it was very funny. I prefer the wardrobe malfunction. Now, if Katy Perry had a wardrobe malfunction, I'm all in.

You know, there was bets on that. You could have actually bet that her breasts might have slipped out. Unfortunately, it did not. Damn it. That would have made the Super Bowl worth watching. But now people have gone and done a 3D printable version of the, quote unquote, left shark. And Katy Perry's lawyers are demanding that it be taken down.

I'm reasonably sure that Katy Perry did not come up with the design and concept for the shark. Who cares? This is a ridiculous lawsuit. It's completely ridiculous. And the fact that it's just instructions is that it's like it's not even a printed thing.

On the first site, yes, you could order the prints that were taken down. But it's on Thingiverse now, and that's just where you download them for your 3D printer. You're not actually buying anything. They're just instructions. And we're waiting to see if the other shoe drops. Well, I mean, you and I have talked about this before.

This is going to be a big issue moving forward because everybody's going to be able to do, you know, basically just print whatever they want. And it's just a set of instructions. It's not the physical thing. So who has the rights and how does that all work? And it's going to be a big old mess. Now, how long till we can print Katy Perry's boobs?

What?

Security? Ha! Now, just to clarify, on the end of the last segment, there was a little ding at the end. We're not moving to a soundboard. We're not being like wacky shock jock radio DJs in the morning with our sounds. I have a Skype machine set up for when we talk to Brian and I forgot to turn on do not disturb.

So I got a text, a very well-timed text from my friend Trent Hamilton, who is also the developer of the Grumpy Old Geek's iPhone app. So thank you, Trent, for that perfectly timed sound effect. It was very nice. I thought you had went out and bought some more stuff.

Yeah. I went out and bought a bell. Yeah. That's it. So starting off this week, this is actually new news that came in this morning. A UK tribunal says intelligence sharing with the US was unlawful. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled that Britain's GCHQ had acted unlawfully in accessing data on millions of people in Britain that had been collected by the US National Security Agency because the arrangements were secret.

Okay. It's going to change nothing, but okay. Well, yeah, because you know what they did about a year ago? They went back and they changed the laws and made it not secret after the Snowden stuff started to come out. Yeah. So it is no longer secret, but the chances of anybody getting prosecuted over this are, what is it, null, zed?

Zero. Yeah. Whatever British is, Britishisms are for not a goddamn bit. Nil. One to nil. Yes. So that came out today and it was interesting because this is the first time that this tribunal has come out and said, no, no, we were actually guilty.

Yeah. You know? That's really interesting. I'm, you know, again, nothing's going to change, but I like this. It's good. It sets the stage for future prosecution for people who go off the rails because, you know, even the Brits aren't happy with what their people were doing.

Yeah. And they have a better track record than we do of going after people for doing bad things for the most part. For the most part. I agree. I mean, it's no Germany, but we'll go with it. But what is. Yeah. The Germans would have had this this law passed, you know, before 6 p.m.

And then shut off their phones. Well, they've had this law passed, which is why they tried to kick the NSA out of their listening post after the Angela Merkel phone phone tapping came into play. But that's a story for a show we did probably a year ago. Yeah, probably. You know, we really got to think about moving. I got to say, everything that we hear about Germany is just, it's the way to go.

Ausgezeichnet. Yeah. Except for the Lodgewoods. Anyways, the hack of the week is one of the ones, I think, for the very first time that affects both of us, Jason. Yeah, exactly. This is, well, the first one hit you. The big Home Depot hack hit you pretty hard because, you know, your handyman, Bob, with your ass crack hanging out under your sink.

But this one, this hit Anthem. Yes, which is my health insurer as well. I have not gotten any notifications from them yet. I got a notification from an employer who uses Anthem, but I don't get health care through. So it was just a happenstance that I got a note from them.

I have got nothing from Anthem at this point. I've been with them for three years. Not a peep. No email correspondence. Nothing about this breach. And it's a big breach. It's a big one. Over 80 million of its customers and employees, which is, it's likely to be considered the largest data breach disclosed.

That's an important clarification. Yeah, disclosed. By a health care company. Oh, well. So good times. So we'll see. I'll let you know if I hear anything. But, you know, this is just going to keep happening. Oh, yeah. Every week. Every week. You know, there's just, once we've moved everything into the cloud or into other people's online systems, that's it.

Well, I mean, it's just, I mean, it's their systems. They didn't move it into the cloud. They just had piss poor security, I'm sure. Yeah. Well, that's, you know, we don't get to, we don't know what anybody is using for their security, for their databases. We have no control over our data, and we have no idea what all these companies are, how they're storing it, what they're doing with it.

Oh, boy. Oh, yes. I might have to drop in the bite from hackers right there. We've got no names, man. We've got no names. You know, but at the end of the day, as ridiculous as, you know, we worry about this sort of stuff, there are still companies that decide to use your social security number as your ID number and put it in mail, you know, right up there so everybody can see it, including the mailman.

So we've got more issues than this stuff going on. Yeah, social security numbers are dead is any kind of secret anything, because everybody can find your social security number in a matter of minutes. Yep. So, speaking of being found, found very quickly, Ross Ulbricht, the supposed leader of, well, actually, the founder of the Silk Road, was actually convicted this week on federal charges,

accusing him of being the mastermind and the dread pirate Roberts. All right. The jury of 12 reached its guilty verdicts on all seven counts after less than four hours. What was he charged with? Everything.

Wow. Three drug counts, distributing or aiding and abetting the distribution of narcotics, distributing narcotics or aiding and abetting distribution over the Internet, and conspiracy to violate narcotics laws. He was also convicted on a fourth count of conspiracy to run a continuing criminal enterprise, which involves supervising at least five other people in an organization.

In addition, he was convicted on conspiracy charges for computer hacking, distributing false identification and money laundering. Wow. He's fucked. He is fucked. You know, it's an interesting precedent to set.

I'm a little torn on it. Obviously, I mean, this was constructed for a very specific and not legal purpose. But it's still just a distribution system, and it's just some code. Well, go back and read. I'm putting a link in the show notes to the Ars Technica series on the entire Silk Road trial, and there's some good stuff in Wired.

He was saying that he was framed. He was set up. Somebody put the documents on his computer, and that's kind of what happened. Yeah. And they're still also saying that the guy that ran, was it Mount Docs, is the real guy that was, you know, everything was handed to, and he's the one that stole all the money from that.

And there's a whole lot of stuff going on. I don't think this is the entire story. No. But he still created the damn thing, and he is on the hook for a lot of it, and there's the whole murder issue, you know, contracting murder that you need to read.

There are transcripts of all this stuff. The shady side was that the judge did not let a lot of the defense witnesses testify, and a lot of stuff that should have been in the defense's testimony go into the court record. Right. That's a major thing.

So they're going to appeal, but right now he faces life in prison. Yeah. Yeah. Oops. I guess that dark web ain't so dark. No. I mean, I think we saw that coming. I mean, as soon as the governments of the world, particularly our government, decided to take a look into what was going on, this was going to crumble pretty fast because, remember, the government has some serious stuff at their disposal.

Yes, yes. And so does California, because Kevin Bollert, however the hell you pronounce his name, he was found guilty for operating the Reborn, Reborn Penge, Reborn Penge, that's what I'm going to call it from now on, Revenge Porn website.

We talked about him on a couple episodes, and yeah, faces up to 20 years in prison for that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is – it's not nice. It's shady stuff. And I think what we can learn from the two stories that we just did is people that go and build shady things tend to be shady people.

The things that these guys are getting busted for aren't necessarily related to exactly what it is they did specifically. It's because they're all around assholes that do a lot of bad things. Yeah, and the fact that, okay, it's not the Wild West anymore. You can't go on, build something like this, and then just disappear into the ether.

Nowadays, if you put it on the internet, everybody knows who you are. You're screwed. You cannot do this kind of thing. The old days, yes, you could. You could do this. You could get away with it, take your money, go to Belize, and live a happy life. Now you're screwed. Yeah, and you can no longer get away with the argument that I just built a system.

It's not my fault how other people use it. That doesn't fly anymore. Well, that failed when Napster went down. Napster was just – they were a middleman for theft, and they got their ass handed to them. Everything bad started to happen when Napster was convicted, and that's what it's going to be.

Then it went to the Pirate Bay and torrent sites. Torrent sites don't actually host anything illegal. They host pointers to pirated stuff. But they are treated like criminals. Yeah. So here's the deal. Don't do stupid shit. That's it. Honestly, you want your drugs, go buy them on the street corner from Julio or whoever the fuck's down there.

And if you want to do revenge porn, make some Xeroxes and send them to your friends. I don't know, but just stay off the internet because you're not smart enough to get away with it. No, you're not. Speaking of people who aren't very smart, Adobe. Let's go with Adobe. Good segue.

Flash player faces its third zero-day flaw in a month. Three zero days. And 16 other flaws are being patched right now. It is a bad month for Flash. You know, who would have thought that Jobs would have been right about this? Because at the time when Jobs basically announced there will be no Flash on Apple products, I freaked out because I was heavily into Flash development at the time.

And I was like, well, this is a great system for doing all this stuff, and now we can't use it anymore. But he was right. See, you were on the other side of the coin because I've always said that Flash was a steaming pile, and I hated it, and it was unusable and should have been banished from the internet long ago. But you made your money off of it, so you were on the other side of the coin.

Well, I was happy to stop using it. I never really enjoyed it either. The problem was clients. Clients wanted it. I still have clients that asked me for it, and I'm just like, no, we are not doing that. Flash is dead. Flash is dead. I'm surprised that there's still Flash out there, personally. It is so entrenched, you know, and it's on so many computers.

Even if websites aren't doing it, that plug-in is on so many computers. Yeah. And people don't update. I mean, old versions of Flash are just everywhere. They're sitting there like time bombs waiting to go off, and it doesn't take much to trigger it. So, I mean, the best thing you can do if you want to protect yourself on the internet is turn off Flash, uninstall it, get it out of your life.

You do not need it anymore. I mean, I can guarantee you can go a month without ever having to use Flash. Unless you want to watch Strong Bad. No, fixed. He's back to HTML5. Everybody's in HTML5 now. Excellent. Yeah, even YouTube.

YouTube last month, actually last week, I meant to put it in the show notes last week, their default player is now HTML5. You have to ask for Flash. That's fantastic. Yeah. Talk about a move forward. Steve Jobs would be proud.

I found an article on Boing Boing about Kindle Unlimited, and I'm a big reader, and I love my Kindle app, so I was intrigued, and I went to go read it. You know I'm not a huge fan of the all-you-can-eat bucket system for payments.

We've seen how well that's working out for the music industry. It's not, just in case. Spoiler alert there. And they're trying to do it with books now. So I read this article. It's very pro-Kindle Unlimited. Basically, the premise of the article is if you like self-published fiction or read more than a few books a month and don't mind giving books up when you're done, Amazon's borrowing service is a great deal.

Well, most good sci-fi that's coming out these days is self-published. It doesn't go through the big houses anymore. I definitely read more than a few bucks a month, but my main question is still, what's best for the author? I seriously doubt that the all-you-can-eat model is working any better for authors than it is for musicians.

Well, here's the deal with this. We don't know yet how it's going to break out. I think this is going to be fantastic for Amazon because I've had Kindle Unlimited for three weeks now. I haven't read a single book. So I think at the end of the month, if it flips over and I pay for it because I just forget to cancel, which is more than likely what's going to happen, and it's going to happen to a lot of people.

Just like Columbia? Yes, exactly. This is the new Columbia. I'm going to have like 17 versions of REM's document sitting in a drawer somewhere because for some reason I bought – I got a bunch of those from Columbia House one year, the same cassette. But either way, it's going to fall into disuse from people who are still going to keep paying for it and not realize it.

And that's the old porn model too. It's like, okay, it's on the credit card. You forget about it. Whatever. I don't think that it's going to be really that bad for the authors for this one because just the nature of the books that they've got in the unlimited system. Yeah.

But it's got to play out. And the authors can pull their books out. They don't have to be in there. Right. Well, yeah, everybody says that, but we know how these systems work. And Amazon's had this themselves a couple of times where they've kind of strong-armed people. And you don't have to do it, but you also will not get any kind of promotion whatsoever and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, we haven't had the Zoe Keating moment with Kindle Unlimited. That's true. Where some author has said, Amazon says, I have to put my book in here or I won't get promotion for the paid book. Yeah. So we'll see where that comes. And, you know, a lot of best-selling authors are not in Kindle Unlimited. You know, new books aren't in there.

It's just – it's – what this is is it's trying to monetize the long tail, I think. Yeah, I think so too. Which is, you know, there are books out there that once they – just like most other things, like most album releases, if you don't catch – you make all your sales in the first month. After that, you make next to nothing.

So this is an attempt to kind of, you know, throw all these things in there. You'll discover things that may have passed you by the first time around, and hopefully you'll make a little bit of money. Again, I want to know exactly what they are paying authors for this stuff. If I check out a book through Kindle Unlimited, what is that author getting?

And I want to see the paperwork on that. I mean, I love reading too much to let that industry get destroyed as badly as the music industry did. So for now, I am not using any of these all-you-can-eat models. I am purchasing books that I like. I'll tell you how you can figure that out. Publish a book.

Write one. All right, let's put out a Grumpy Old Geeks five-pager and see what happens. We can do that. Actually, we can do that. And we can self-publish a book, put it on Amazon, and then sign up for the Unlimited system. And then we will actually get the documents that say how much is there.

So, you know, that's one of those things where we can do that. We can actually find that out. It's not a black box because there are lots of people. We are immediately filling up that free time that we just carved out for ourselves. I think it'll take an hour. I think it would literally take an hour to figure this out. So if I get some free time this weekend, I'll jump on it.

All right. We'll have the Grumpy Old Geek Compendium of Shit You Shouldn't Do. Nice. So I did read a book this week. It's called Brilliance. It's part of the Brilliance Saga by Marcus Sake. I don't know how you pronounce his last name.

He's a – this is an author I'd not heard of. I found it by like – I Googled top sci-fi books of 2014. And the follow-up to the Brilliance Saga was listed. So obviously you have to go back and read the first one first. So I did. Not bad.

You know, it's soft sci-fi. It's not hard sci-fi. And it does fall into the, wow, the brilliant and handsome guy that works for the government who also has all these amazing abilities, runs across a strangely attractive younger female who also has crazy abilities.

And they're on opposite sides, but they're thrust together. And, of course, they fall in love. So you have to have all that in soft sci-fi, unfortunately. And this goes the same way. The conceit and the sci-fi of the book is that starting in 1983, one out of every 100 children that's born has this strange ability.

Whatever it may be, they're all over the map. They're in tears as to how powerful they are, et cetera, and how it basically derails society. That part is super, super interesting, well-written. Not bad. I'd recommend it. Oh, cool. Can I get it on Kindle Unlimited?

I don't know. Okay, I'll have to do a look. Yes, you can, actually. I'm looking at the page right now. Awesome. It is available under Kindle Unlimited. Then I will snag it since I've already paid for a buck. So hopefully he gets $9.99 for my Kindle Unlimited subscription for my download of the book.

Well, we'll see. Maybe we'll tweet him and ask him. So I got a book this week. I got Neil Gaiman's new book, Trigger Warning, Short Fictions and Disturbances. I got the audio version because Neil reads it. And Neil is one of the best readers of his own works out there. One of the only authors that I can say should be allowed to read his own work because when authors read their work, it is crap.

It is always crap. You'd think that they would have the nuance and everything, but they're not trained voice, you know, artists. Neil trained himself to become a great voice artist. And he also has a fucking sexy voice for a man. You know, he's got that British deep dude.

You know, you listen to him talk and it's just like, wow. Like, I mean, I totally gate out for Neil Gaiman right there. I admit it because it's awesome. I know you're a Gaiman fanboy, but you just even might have crossed the line. I'm just saying. I love I love when he reads books.

I do. I just I can't help it. He does such a good job. So I'm I'm taking my time with this one. It's I think it's a take it slow with him, Jason. Take it slow. It's like, take it down. Put on some Barry White. Neil Gaiman. The story so far there, they're they range from like six minutes to an hour.

It's I think because I got since I said I got the audio book, it's about 12 hours, 11, 12 hours, I believe off the top of my head. So there's a lot of stories in there. And there is a new American God story in there, which I'm guessing is going to be at the end. And I can't wait to get to that one. But like I said, I'm taking it slow.

The stories are B plus ish. Some are some are a some are C. So I'm giving it B plus so far. You know, they're fun. So far, it's a good read. I'll get to the whole thing. When I get through the whole thing, I'll give it a final rating. But yeah, I'm really digging it so far.

I'm glad you put something new out. OK. Well. You're going to take this one. Sorry, I'm still a little just disturbed at your love for Neil Gaiman. Speaking of putting something new out, the Harper Lee sequel to Kill a Mockingbird is coming in July.

You have not been able to avoid this news anywhere because it's everywhere. I suppose it's good for the book industry. I was personally didn't care much for To Kill a Mockingbird. I understand its importance. I understand the, you know, the point of it and the timing and all of that.

But I was never a big fan. Here's the most surprising thing about this story. Who thought Harper Lee was still alive? Nobody. That's a damn good point. I didn't know either. Yeah, that was the biggest shocker. I'm like, OK, they found it in an attic. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait. Harper Lee's still alive.

But she's completely a recluse and doesn't talk to anybody. It's interesting. She's got an interesting story. But you'll never hear it because she won't talk to anybody. Yeah. She sits in her house and does her thing. And yeah, nothing. I mean, I always hope that somebody, she would write about her own life because I think that would be interesting.

I love, you know, it's the same thing with Salinger. It's like these people that just put out this amazing work that is loved by everyone and then just go fuck off and live out in the middle of nowhere and talk to no one. I'm really intrigued by people that do that. The book itself, again, like I said, not a huge fan of To Kill a Mockingbird to begin with.

The interesting thing about this is actually this is the first book that she wrote. It was just lost. She submitted this to her publisher at the time. And the publisher said, you know, why don't you go back and flesh out the earlier story? And that became To Kill a Mockingbird.

OK, so this is going to be worse than To Kill a Mockingbird. And I, too, am not a huge fan of To Kill a Mockingbird. I know it's, you know, it's classic that you're supposed to read in grade school, but I never really I didn't like it that much. I didn't like the movie that much. It's just not my cup of tea. Yeah, it's not my cup of tea. And the reality is basically this book that's coming out was the rejected first book.

I mean, honestly, that's the reality, right? It is rejected by the publishers. So she went and wrote a different one. Oh, great. So there's a good selling point for you. I'm surprised their PR team isn't going with that. Hopefully they get somebody to at least punch it up a bit.

But we'll see. We'll see.

Media Candy. So the BBC released a BBC for release an hour long documentary on the band. Have you seen this yet? I have not. It is on my to-do list to watch on the page.

Unfortunately, the video is not found on YouTube. It is either removed or marked as private. You can watch it through the BBC player. But in the in the beginning, it was all region. Everybody could watch it. And now it's England only. So if you're if you're that into it, I recommend anybody who wants to watch this video.

Go to grumpy old geeks dot com. Click on the private Internet access ad on the right side in the sidebar. Sign up for the service. And then you can pretend you're from England and watch the Kraftwerk video. And I will be doing that. I am a huge Kraftwerk fan. First off, they are German.

And they invented electronica music. And they wrote songs about calculators. And in their personal life, they wear suits and like to ride bikes. Do they touch my monkey? Touch him. Love him. I mean, that's you know, that is where Mike Myers got the Dieter concept from. It's it's, you know, German Kraftwerky type people.

Great band. Absolutely great band. And I can't wait to watch this documentary. Cool. Yeah, I'm going to try and watch it by next week. So hopefully we can review it next week. Sounds like a plan. All right. So NASA posted a huge library of space sounds that you are free to use, which I think will show up in a lot of electronic songs going forward.

That's why I put it after the Kraftwerk piece. Yeah, I listened through some of these. It's really cool. Super interesting. I love that NASA did this. I think it's great. But as much as I love it, I'm using my not free to use ill begotten Star Trek library for most of my effects and sounds.

I wonder where you got that from. I wonder where I got that from. So in Russian news, Spotify said yet to go to going into Russia. Smart move on their part. Why bother? It's such a mess over there. Yeah. No rock for rubles right now, I guess.

No, I mean, I'm trying to get payments and dealing with no way, man. I'm not surprised at all that Spotify is staying away. And most, yeah, I think most people are trying to stay away. Google's moving engineering out. People are fleeing out of Russia. It is.

Things are not good there. Yeah. Putin fucked up. He did. He dropped to Putin. So I've been checking out some of the Amazon pilots this week. I, uh, the first one I watched was cocked because it has Jason Lee in it. And it's, uh, and, uh, the guy that played Sam in, uh, what's the vampire one?

True blood. Oh, true blood. Okay. Yeah. They play brothers in it. I liked it a lot. I give it like a four and a half star. I hope they bring it back. It's, it's well worth the hour watch. The second one though, is the man in the high castle. This is a Ridley Scott produced show. And it's from, um, uh, what's the guy's name that did a blade runner?

The short story. Philip K. Dick. Yeah. This is based on a Philip K. Dick book. And it's about if Nazis had in Japan had won the war. Oh, okay. I mean, I love that kind of stuff. I love the revisionist history fiction. Watch this then. If they don't make this, I am going to be so pissed because it ends on a perfect cliffhanger and just the show is so good.

That's right. Cause Amazon is doing the, basically we, you know, we'll produce the shows that get the most views, right? Most views and best ratings. So if you watch these, go and rate them. That is such a smart way to do it. You know, it makes sense. I haven't watched any of the Amazon shows yet, uh, but I guess I'll be watching man in the high castle for sure.

What's the production quality like on this stuff? Are they actually, is this like, it could be on HBO or a network? Uh, man in the high castle. Definitely cocked, um, is, you know, kind of a mid range production, but they don't do any, they don't go back and fix them. These are just pilots. They just spit them out. You know, it's not really high production quality because they don't want to spend a lot of money on it.

They want to move on and keep going and figure out what's going to do. It's more about, I think, story and characters. So definitely check them out quick because I think the, the, if it hasn't closed already, sadly, uh, it's closing soon, the, the voting. And I went in rating.

There's one called downward dog. Skip that one. It's about a, it's about a, basically a dumb ass pothead who has to start a yoga studio. Uh, skip that one. That just sounds like I walk outside here in Venice. Trust me. It is. You will have like PTSD.

If you watch that, I did. It's a really bad Californication ripoff. It is terrible. And you know, he has sex with like 17 girls in the, in the, in the pilot. And all you see is man ass. I'm like, this is, this is cable. This is the internet. Where's my boobies.

Give me some Katy Perry boobies. Something. And I just don't understand this entire universe that's created, uh, on TV shows where, where guys that are complete and utter bums are always getting laid. Oh, well, that's kind of, that actually kind of mirrors reality in, in Venice beach, but actually that's very true.

So I have my one final thing on, on, uh, our media this week. Um, this is my segment called fuck the verge. Yes. I know I put a few verge articles in here, but this one, it's an article called Batman and Robin is terrible and here's why you should watch it immediately. Forget the article, forget everything.

They, this is part of a segment that they run called quote unquote, does it hold up now? They've only been running this for a few months. Now tell me somebody who has something very similar to this. I think, uh, Kiwami Opom probably is a, a listener of does it has legs.

I think he might be a fan of does it have legs because does it hold up is, you know, kind of like a poor rent version of our title. So they went, they went, uh, kind of, uh, highbrow with their, with their tagline though. Have they gotten better like a fine wine or are we drinking cork?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Verge suck my dick. Ooh, fancy. Fancy. Ooh, fancy. I'm not a fan of drones, but this millennium Falcon is the drone I've been looking for.

It's in the show notes. Some guy created, made his drone look like the millennium Falcon and then posted a how-to kit. This, if anything, is the thing that will get me to go out and buy a damn drone. It's so awesome. I saw it last night. It is really cool. I was just like, you know, when it, when they first show it, I'm like, yeah, I'm not that into it.

But once it starts flying around, I'm like, yeah. Want now. It's awesome. I mean, I got to, I want to go build the Slave I. Boba Fett, Boba Fett, where? Yeah, I can just see the market now.

If, if the Lucasfilm guys aren't on this and building these drones, they should be on it. They're missing a gigantic market opportunity. Well, keep in mind, it's Disney now and there's no way they are not going to be making these things. Oh yes. So I found something.

I am a huge fan of the fifth element. I don't understand that, but okay. Well, you and, you and my co-host on Does It Have Legs. I don't know what's wrong with you people, but somebody built an ID holder in the shape of a multi-pass. The fifth element was fucking love.

Dumbest thing ever. Okay. You know, yes, it does have, it does have the stupid love matrix, love will conquer all ending, but the rest of the movie is amazing. Forget the last, forget the last 30 seconds of it. I can't do that with Battlestar Galactica either. Sorry. Okay.

You've ruined it at the end. I just take what I can get out of it because this world is terrible, but multi-pass, you can get a multi-pass ID holder from, from Etsy, from Reaction Designs. It is 60 bucks and it is on, it's made to order.

So it's on back order because they got a lot of press about it because it is so cool. Multi-pass. Okay. Are you kidding me? Love it. So we've discussed belfies before.

I found the dumbest thing in the world on Engadget this, this week, the belty. What the hell is the belty? Does it punch you in the mouth? It's a motorized belt that keeps you comfortable, but tries to keep you active by tightening up every now and then, depending on, on who the hell knows what. This is the dumbest wearable I've ever seen in my life.

It, it, yeah. I saw a little bit of the video of it and it's a giant motorized belt buckle that just makes you feel fat. Yeah. So, you know, it, it puts the pressure on you so you'll get up and walk around a little bit and this is just, I can't believe this is in production.

Well, what are you going to do? It is the fucking internet. That should be the tagline for our podcast. What are you going to do? It's the fucking internet. Closing shout outs. My closing shout out is to all of my friends and connections that have reached out to me to ask if I will be doing what I typically do when there are big award shows, particularly the Grammys, which is sit on my couch, get drunk and post nasty comments on Facebook.

I guess I'll do it again since people seem to like it. You do that every day though. That's your downtime. You just, you sit on the couch, get drunk and post nasty comments. Why do you need an award show for it? So much more, many more targets. Contacts. Yes. Okay. So you have context for your rage.

Exactly. Okay. Well, I look forward to it because they are generally fun, but I'm not going to watch the Grammys. So just, you know, throw it. I'd watch it. So you don't have to. Excellent. Excellent. My closing shout out is the Rad Roller.

This is a little thing that I got in Tim Ferriss's quarterly box yesterday. And it looks like a set of truck nuts that gained their freedom. And when on the road, it's just two little balls that are connected to each other, two rubber balls that are connected and you use it as a massage kind of device.

I use this on my feet yesterday just to try it out. Now, you've been to Disney a lot. Yeah. So I grew up down there. So yeah. Remember those little seats where you could sit down, put in a quarter and get a foot massage? Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. This is like that, but in your own home.

It is awesome. I like just a couple rolls on the thing and I felt like I could stand for another 10 hours. It was amazing. I mean, when I had a slip disc and I had to go, a friend of mine is a physical therapist. So I was, I was seeing her for a while and she was just like, you know, the best thing that you can possibly have around for any kind of pain, have a couple of tennis balls.

And this is basically the higher tech version of the tennis ball. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to take these with me whenever I travel. Cause the other thing I did with them was, um, I worked out my forearms because after typing all day, you don't realize it, but your forearms do kind of get tense.

I rolled them out and then like right before I went to bed and oh my God, I slept like a baby last night. So did you roll around on your balls while you were listening to Neil Gaiman's deep, sexy voice? Now don't push it there. I'm just saying. I did not play with my blue balls because they are blue while I was listening to Neil Gaiman.

No. Um, but just as a cool little, uh, massage device, this thing is great. I, I, I generally don't go in for that kind of thing. The thing I do like are those long foam rollers. I've got one of those. That's probably why I won't be ordering the, uh, the balls, but, uh, this looks great. It looks like it would really do the job.

Nice thing about these though. You can toss them in your luggage when you travel. So if you're on the road. Very cool. Yeah. You can take, these are your road balls. Uh, my last shout out is to the morning dump with Jordan Cooper at, uh, dump.am.

He, I'm trying to decide if it's you or Jordan Cooper that is trying to do more podcasts than each other. Are you guys in some sort of, you know, uh, competition? Could be, could be. Okay. Um, but yeah, his, he, he, he shuttered his blender head podcast and then just does a quick 30 minute roundup of the news every morning, but he does it live.

And it was the first show that I ever actually, you know, tuned into live. And it was kind of fun because there's a chat room and a bunch of people in the chat room and you get to chat and make fun of Jordan and come up with show titles. It, it, it's interesting. It's fun. I dug it. It'll never be for you because he does it at 9 a.m.

Eastern. So, oh yeah, that won't be happening then. Yeah. Even eight, eight in the morning. My time is a little tough. I missed it this morning. So, but it's a, it's a fun little show and he used our coupon code because he started a new show. So, uh, we're going to get some cash back from Libsyn, baby. All right.

Thanks, Jordan. Appreciate it. So I guess I will see you next week, sir. Go, go. Next week. I, I, I, I hope you have a very fine downtime until Tuesday. I will not do anything grumpy old geeks related until Tuesday, which is probably good because, uh, I did notice that we had a few links from the wall street journal, both of which went behind the paywall by the time we've done the show.

So yes, we will wait a little bit longer and I will have a relaxing weekend, uh, shooting on the Grammys. I will be playing with my blue balls, listening to Neil Gaiman. Such an unsexy image. Ain't it though? Ain't it though? Grumpy old geeks is a fan supported show.

If you'd like to help keep the lights on, you can donate at grumpy old geeks.com. $10 or more, we'll get you a copy of our official soundtrack provided by the band among us. If you want to be a cheapskate, but like the tunes, you can find among us on iTunes and Spotify on social media.

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Use the coupon code GOG while signing up and receive up to two months free. Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks.com slash 95. Gaiman's blue balls. Boxer uncle. Tonight we drink.

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