It's Wednesday, April 30th, 2014, I'm Ariel Nunez.
And from our CBS Studios in New York City welcome to The 404.
[MUSIC]
Hey, what's up, everyone?
Welcome to our show.
It's The 404 Show.
I'm Jeff Bakalar.
I'm Justin Yu.
Welcome to our fine podcast.
Thanks for tuning in.
We've got plenty of things to discuss.
We're back into the old routine again.
We summed up Justin's vacation yesterday, which was eye-opening, inspiring.
[LAUGH]
I learned, I had a cultural sort of.
You don't have to lie.
No, it was, it was great because I learned about different cultures.
I spent 30 years of my life listening to other people's vacation stories, and I know how boring they can be.
No one wants to hear about vacation stories.
Unless you were on the trip.
I'm being genuine for the most part.
Yeah for the most part.
Yeah I like hearing about you travel stories too.
It's just cool comparing cultures and cities and things.
Yeah.
And engrish man we got and for me that was the best.
You like that?
I should have taken a photo series of that.
Cuz that's pretty much the entire trip.
You would have loved it.
I tried to get people to like create, some of them on our twitter.
People just don't give a ****.
Yeah, I was trying to find a t-shirt that I could bring back for you guys and myself.
Just as souvenirs.
California Boyfriend.
But man yeah.
I was telling people that last night, they thought it was.
It kinda makes sense though.
They thought it was so funny.
Yeah.
Do people not appreciate the humor like you and I do?
Is that is your audience like lame like that?
Stuff like that sorta makes sense.
Right.
And the effing summer thing?
Come on.
Yeah, that's so cool.
This wasn't like on a street store either this was like in a department store they were selling this stuff.
So if you're into that kinda [LAUGH] fashion, go to Asia.
I'll just, just go to Asia.
I'm always curious about like, what you and I, you and I have a very similar sense of humor for the most part.
I think so.
For the most part.
And, I'm always like, I always struggle, if like our audience has a similar sort of thing like that.
Hm.
I wonder, like if, like you and I felt like the scholar thing was pretty funny.
Yeah.
And I wonder like, if anyone else thought that was funny.
Like I talked to my friends.
[CROSSTALK]
Right.
Who thought it was funny.
There was, we got one e-mail that was a little bit critical of that interview which I thought was really good, I actually enjoyed the second interview you had with Scott on Monday much better than the
Yeah he was funny on Monday.
Yeah it was good.
So we've got plenty of news to get through today, there's a lot of stuff, I was holding on a bunch of e-mails that came in while you were gone, most of them have to deal with stuff that.
You and I discussed before you went away.
Mm-hm.
So let's jump right in.
This is kind of like an older story.
Yeah, yeah so we're sorta playing catch up.
I'm not sure what you guys covered.
So if we're double posting here let me know.
But these are just some of the stories I thought were cool this week.
Also, thanks to every ones concern on reddit and in emails about.
My trip.
When I was away I gotta bunch of Twitter messages.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And emails, about people concerned that I was on the ferry to [INAUDIBLE] Island.
Yeah, you weren't.
And I was clearly not.
Well I told everyone, too, that you weren't.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
You checked in on me too.
Yeah.
So I appreciate that.
I did.
Felt the love.
It's like.
I was surprised how quick you got back to me on that.
Yeah.
You know?
All things considered.
Yeah.
A little difference in [CROSSTALK]
Air B&B we were thing that had Wifi and what not but yes exactly 12 hours forward.
I was not on that boat, but we were definitely sort of planning on going there when we were making the initial itinerary for the trip.
We were like should we go to Jeju Island?
It's like sort of a lovers island, they call it in Korea.
It's a very popular honeymooning spot.
Hm.
It's kinda strange, I don't know why a bunch of teenagers going there but.
Anyway, that cast a big shadow over the trip.
Yeah, that was a bummer for sure.
Definitely.
I had no idea that it was making such big headlines over here.
It was a very big deal.
CNN had to actually stop talking about the plane.
[LAUGH] Very rare.
To cover that.
Right, right.
And now they've got the whole Donald Sterling thing that they're covering.
Oh my God, did you watch that press conference yesterday?
No, I mean.
I saw what you needed to see.
Yeah.
I mean.
Did you expect them to do a lifetime ban?
Sure.
I mean the guy's 80 years old.
Lifetime ban's not really It's not a big.
Slap a double on there for him.
He deserves it.
It's not a big thing for a senior citizen like that.
You know, I just you know men, why.
I don't understand.
Do you think that there should have been a freedom of speech sort of.
A call out there.
I thought that's what they were gonna do.
Is like look what he does in his private personal life has nothing to do with the business of the NBA.
He's allowed to say what he want's to say no matter how messed up.
I mean.
He is allowed to say what he wants.
But he has to face the repercussions that come from that.
Yeah
I mean, he said it in a private, in a private setting
Yeah
Either way, I'm not obviously not defending this bigot ****.
But, at the same time, it's sorta like.
How, how was this guy about to be, you know, honored by the N-C-double uh-
NAACP.
NAACP?
Yeah.
How like, where did, everyone is-
Twice.
Everyone's coming out.
[LAUGH]
And being like, this guy's been a racist as long as he's been alive.
Yeah.
And how is the N N N A.
Correct me.
NAACP.
NAACP.
Yeah.
I get them and the NCAA mixed up all the time.
How, how are they about to honor him?
I don't understand that.
I don't get it either.
Everyone you talk to is like, finally this racist is getting his day.
You know?
Yeah.
It's unbelievable.
It's strange to me.
[UNKNOWN]
You put me onto that story on Monday right after I went online to listen to that like, eight minute long TMZ.
Recording?
Yeah.
That he had with his wife, so painful, very traumatic.
Yeah it's I don't know, anyway [CROSSTALK] we totally went down a spiral tangent there.
First story we, we wanna get to is something that we talked about, we talked about this a while ago.
Yeah.
I forget the context.
I think it was just, this is the biggest urban legend in video games, ever.
And my bone to pick with this is that it is not an urban legend.
Uh-huh.
Okay, so what do we got?
Okay.
So, the back story, here, is that 31 years ago, Atari made a video game, based on the movie, ET.
And, since the movie was kind of a sleeper hit and, they sort of knew that it was gonna be popular.
But, you know, to, not to the degree that it was.
Right.
And so, after the movie came out, they pretty much rushed, as fast as they could, to develop this video game, for the Atari, console.
I think it was six weeks in development only for this video game, and it ended up going down in history as the worst game ever made.
Right.
For the platform.
And if you remember, I think that, that's the context why we brought it up.
Right.
Months ago was because it was so God awful.
Mh-hm.
The story here is that it was so bad they had this surplus,right?
Yeah.
No one bought it.
Of games.
And they decided to go where?
Nevada?
Yeah, New Mexico.
New Mexico.
Yeah.
Said to Alama, Alamogordo, New Mexico.
And just bury them.
Right.
Because there were so many unpurchased copies of this cartridge game.
Mm-hm.
It was basically a landfill in the ground.
Right.
Right.
So they were like, all right, let's dump all these things along with it, fine.
Right.
Then most, more recently what happened?
Yeah so, decades later people you know, rumors were starting to hit that yeah, in New Mexico there's this huge pile of games that exists underneath the surface of the dirt.
And it wasn't just it wasn't just the E.T. game that they were looking for.
Apparently, and according to Atari, this was confirmed
They had also buried a bunch of different Atari video games like Centipede and Missile Command but obviously truckloads, reportedly nine truckloads of this E T video game were buried underground.
And so 31 years later Xbox in conjunction with a documentary that was coming out about, that is coming out about this exact topic, the ET video game.
And that's when things started to smell fishy, in my opinion.
It's clearly all marketing for this documentary that's coming up.
I thought it was interesting that Microsoft is actually funding the dig.
Well it.
And the documentary.
So whatever it is, whatever the documentary is, do we know exactly what?
Yeah, the documentary is about the ET video game.
Okay.
And yeah.
Okay.
So, so here's the deal.
I've seen other documentaries about the rise of the video game industry.
Mm-hm.
And not one person in that film disputed the fact that this was actually done, like this actually happened.
Oh that no one was [UNKNOWN]
It's not an urban legend, this is fact.
[CROSSTALK]
People knew, and they created this kind of urban legend ya know, missile surround it.
Mm-hm.
And they went to where exact, like, not, no one ever questions for a second like, they knew exactly where to look.
Right.
And they just, they basically dug up garbage.
Yeah, they just hired a construction company with a CAT.
And they were like, oh, you have a, you have a plowy thing?
Okay cool.
And they went and found.
Now who cares is my thing.
I thought you would care.
I mean you play video games.
I couldn't give a.
Have you ever played the ET game before?
Yeah.
What's up?
Leaving the ground!
Yeah, yeah that's the thing, is that it was this amazing game that only one copy existed for.
Sure, sure.
But you could buy the games.
There are copies of the E.T. Atari game, you can buy on eBay.
It's also terrible, so if you got it you wouldn't play it for very long.
And don't get me wrong, I mean we're part of the problem.
Like we covered this.
Yeah it's a good story.
It is.
Yeah, I think it's a great, like I mean okay so this is in New Mexico, it's about aliens [CROSSTALK] it's like, very close to why people dig Area 51 right?
Also in New Mexico This like hidden bunker, underground buried for years, secret
But there's no secrets with this story.
I guess not, the secret is that there's a bunch of trash under the ground [LAUGH].
I mean look at this photo it's just so silly, ya know he's like I found it, [LAUGH]
Here's the game-
Here it is-
The funny thing is that in this article we talk about how the city is actually sort of pissed, the residents of Almagodo are upset because this wasn't just video games that were dumped underground.
It was a straight up landfill, so there's trash.
And when you dig up 30 year old trash, tends to smell like ****.
[LAUGH]
And so a lot of the local residents are super pissed that they're doing this.
Good, because this did not need to happen.
Yeah.
No one was arguing with Microsoft.
They're like, no no no no no.
Yeah.
We're gonna dig it up.
We're gonna go see what's really down there.
Yeah.
What else were they expecting to find?
I don't understand.
Yeah.
To me this is such a non-story, that I got so pissed when I heard that they were gonna do it.
And they're sending out press releases, they're,-
Yeah.
They're using these dramatic quotes like, something was found.
Yeah, right.
Go.
I don't even want to finish.
It's not archaeology.
It's just digging.
Yeah.
You just dug up garbage.
Once, once the documentary comes out, will you watch it?
I'll watch
They could of just recreated the scene for the movie.
They didn't have to actually do it.
I mean, I get it.
Yeah, I guess I'll watch it.
Yeah.
But it's just, to me it's just a non-story.
I know it's a little old.
I just had to cover this, just because.
It, it is pretty funny.
It's pretty stupid, right?
It's stuff like this that makes video gamers look like, they don't have lives.
It's just so unimportant.
Yeah.
Well I'm glad that you as a real video gamer don't-
Right?
Don't agree with this whole thing.
Okay.
But-
Good, I'm glad.
Yeah.
Here's something that's kind of cool though, speaking of sort of digging things up.
A set of floppy disks, speaking of old technology mediums, containing Andy Warhol's digital art is actually making history right now.
Now this is cool.
This is actually kinda sick.
So, the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Have you ever been there?
I have not.
Awesome, awesome place.
That's where he was born, I'm assuming, that's why it wasn't in New York.
I don't, I don't, maybe you're right, I wish I knew the answer to that.
Yeah.
I don't know the answer.
[CROSSTALK] Why Pittsburgh, right?
But I've been there, it's exceptional.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do they have all these original works, there.
They have a lot of original stuff.
[CROSSTALK]
[INAUDIBLE]
When I was there, there was also like a John Waters exibit.
Oh, cool.
[CROSSTALK] In, in, combined with with, with what they were showing off there.
Mm-hm.
But this story's amazing.
Yeah.
So they just announced this week that they've finally recovered a set of, previously thought to be lost, a set of floppy disk that contains the artist's digital work.
And so, what we're watching here on the video and you can look this up on youtube is a, is a video recorded in 1985 at a Press Conference.
A Press Conference where they're announcing the Commodore Amiga.
So you know the Commodore 64.
Sure of course.
The video game system, the the Commodore Omega is a personal desktop computer.
I mean just to interrupt real quick, Andy Warhol, would fit right in right now I think.
Yeah, like he's standing on St.
Mark's right now.
Right, yeah, [INAUDIBLE] for sure.
He's, he's at Bedford Avenue.
[LAUGH] Yeah, yeah.
So they were debuting this personal desktop computer and, the computer happened to have a graphics program built into it.
Something similar to Microsoft Paint.
Right?
Where you could come up with your own images and draw them yourself.
In the video, what we're watching here is Andy Warhol.
Using that application to take a portrait of Debbie Harry.
Blondie?
Right?
Who's also on stage with him.
Posing for this-
They don't show the part where a lot of his stuff looks like photoshop.
Yeah.
Right but he was obviously doing it without a powerful art, artist.
[INAUDIBLE].
I think, well, cuz like the video sorta cuts in with the image already created so I'm pretty sure they had native performance.
Right, but I'm saying like, I'm saying like the paint bucket feature really would have been useful in his artistic arsenal.
[LAUGH] Right, yeah.
Oh, cuz he's like.
You know?
Was using an individual line to color everything.
Right, you know?
And that's sor, like he, yes.
I'm not taking anything away from Andy Warhol.
No.
He was, he was analog Photoshop, right?
Right.
Like, that's what he was doing.
But it's amazing, cuz you, and, you know, we, there's examples of what his artistry using the Omega was doing.
Mm-hm.
But like, it's just.
[LAUGH]
I can't help but think that.
It looks like a children's drawing done at coco's.
Well, well yeah.
But I can't help but think that he was just like so pissed at this secretly like, under his breath.
Yeah, yeah.
Cuz he was doing it before.
Cuz it was just oversimplifying what he had worked.
Of course.
Over, oversimplifying his aesthetic which he had worked so hard to carve out.
Right.
And to individualize himself.
Yeah.
And then now anyone.
Well, I mean that's sort of what his philosophy was of pop art, right?
It's just making copies of copies.
Right.
I guess they sort of make, made our watch shorter.
But, here it is, that's the, famous Campbell soup can that he recreated, and this is the portrait of himself.
They're not, you know, by today's standards, obviously not up to par, because they were all saved on floppy disc.
Yeah, he was getting-
So they're not going to be very good.
Like a D plus in art class.
Yeah.
That'd be like in this day.
Definitely.
Yeah.
You'd be they'd be like, see me after class, Andy.
Yeah.
You're all over the place with this.
Not too great.
Nevertheless, super talented for his time, of course.
Of course, yeah.
so, I'm assuming they're gonna have that on display, the discs themselves, and hopefully the digital artworks on them.
At the at the Pittsburgh Museum.
It's pretty neat, though.
I dig, and these, and like you said, these were all thought to be completely lost.
Yeah.
Here's Andy Warhol using the Stamp tool for the first time [LAUGH].
Yeah, this is cool, Venus.
This is really cool, though, I, I would definitely like it's like Pointillism but digital.
Yeah, you know, it's got that eight bit feel to it.
Yeah.
It's amazing and you know, we found them and that's fantastic.
I thought you hated Pennsylvania.
What were you doing in Pittsburgh?
Woo,no, I never said that.
Oh, you hate Philadelphia.
Yeah, I hate Philadelphia.
Pittsburgh's a great city.
Yeah, what else is there to do there besides Andy Warhol?
There's other museums.
There's this part of this town called shady side which is really good.
It's just like a laid back kind of town.
Little industrial in some parts.
Yeah
There's good people there, as far as I can tell.
Good music-
Oh yeah-
I like a music from out of Pittsburgh-
I think there's some- Great record stores being checked out and.
Yeah man.
I mean, why do I like Pittsburgh?
It's always cloudy with a chance of like, rain.
So its just, it's up to you.
Yeah?
How far is that away from here?
Cuz you're talking like, a six hour drive.
Yeah?
Oh yeah.
That's doable.
Road trip?
Let's do this.
It's you know what it is?
It's good for shopping.
Oh.
[CROSSTALK] It's, it's six hours west from here and it's on a very boring road.
Well, when they demolish the studio, we'll need somewhere to go.
Yeah, so we'll just set up shop in Shadyside.
Our podcast on the road.
Well, we're, we'll broadcast from the Andy Warhol museum.
Yeah.
Well he, you know, he was interview magazine, right, that was his thing.
Right.
So they have a whole, sort of, you know, history with that.
He worked a lot with the Rolling Stones, which was really interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah, you know, it's kind of kind of sad that he's no longer with us.
Man, when I was in, what, it was in Korea I went to that record store I showed you guys yesterday.
Yep.
And they had on display that Rolling Stones album cover?
Sure.
Which album is it?
I don't, I don't know off the top of my head.
Exactly what I mean, something like that.
Anyway, so Andy Warhol did like a limited edition artwork pressing, for this one copy.
And they had it at the store.
And I asked how much it was, and the guy was like too much.
Eh, don't worry [LAUGH].
[LAUGH] He didn't even tell me how much it was.
I'm assuming like maybe 1,000 or more.
Yeah.
For sure.
Really cool stuff.
That's awesome.
But speaking of commuting to work, it sucks right?
You were talking [INAUDIBLE].
Yeah or just driving in general.
Okay, okay.
Speaking of driving.
No matter how you do it right.
It sucks when you're going to work.
Car a subway a bus nobody likes to do it.
But this morning I read a story that's super funny and.
And it's a story about one really bitter guys attack.
On his fellow commuters and hopefully.
Us telling it to you this morning will make you feel better about your commute if that's when you're listening to this.
The story's about a guy named Jason R Humphries and he's in Seffner, Florida.
Your favorite place.
I know how much you love Florida.
Florida I could do without.
That's for sure.
Florida or Philadelphia?
One week.
Where would I have, where would I go?
Oh man, talk about the lessor of two evils.
Yeah.
I guess I'll go to Philadelphia because it wouldn't be as hot.
Yeah, and of course.
And I have to deal with the, the, the mutants that live in that town.
And the mutants they are.
[CROSSTALK]
Yeah, I'll pick Philly over Florida.
It's closer.
Fair enough.
Geography thing.
Jason R Humphrey guy in Florida, he got slabbed with a $48,000 fine.
This week by the FCC.
And he was fined $48,000 for operating a cell phone jammer in his car, in his SUV.
[CROSSTALK] Oh, wow.
Every day on the way to work, during his commute for the past two years.
Wait, so he had a cell phone jammer, broadcasting a jam signal.
Yeah, I like, basically forming a force field around his car.
Why?
So that's the thing is, his defense against this fine which is gonna happen anyway regardless of how much he argues.
His defense is that it was for his own safety.
And in creating that bubble around his car he's sort of, thinking that it would make his drive safer.
Knowing that others around him weren't yapping on their cell phones.
They're not distracted.
So what's the, what's like, the blast radius of this thing?
I think, I'm not sure exactly what the radius is but certainly enough to cover a large enough section of the freeway.
To where T-mobile actually noticed there service going down.
Oh so significant.
On that big of a stretch.
Yeah.
t's like we can't figure it out.
The jam is moving.
Yeah that's how he basically got caught.
Is because metropcs his provider owned by T Mobile.
They found out that this, 12 mile stretch of highway was getting shut down for service every morning at the same time, and that coincided with his, with his trip to work.
I would've loved to been the guy to like, trace the steps and, like, figure out how it was done [CROSSTALK]
One dude in a blue Toyota Highlander.
So, to me.
One, he, it, it's a silly move because, you know, you're not making it safer for people.
Right.
You're just not.
You're blocking like, potentially emergency calls [UNKNOWN].
Yeah, that's the thing.
The thing that would, I would be more okay with is if he was maybe on a train.
Oh yeah.
He had it in a briefcase.
Oh, that'd be funny.
He just didn't want anyone around.
Like, that'd be way funnier, right?
Mm-hm.
And he just had it in his briefcase.
He didn't want people around him on the train using the phone.
Yeah.
If there was an emergency he's like, oh crap I gotta turn off my jammer.
Right.
Let that 911 call go out.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know.
To be there and see it.
I wish you could do that.
I think the jammer is big.
Like they said they found it in the trunk of his car like, underneath.
It's 4,000 pounds.
Yeah like, where the spare tire should be.
Right.
so, it was a pretty big jammer.
[LAUGH] Where the spare tire should be?
Yeah like, he was like hiding it underneath.
[LAUGH] Nice.
The floorboards.
But it's not illegal to talk on your phone in Florida.
So that's why he's getting slapped with this fine.
In the car?
Yeah, yeah, it's not illegal.
That's a California California.
Even if you don't have hands free.
You can hold that phone up to your ear and talk all day long.
Like I needed another reason to hate Florida.
Old people talking on cell phones and driving at the same time?
That's Darwinism.
How is that okay?
More senior citizens probably than other state in the country.
Yeah.
Just let them talk on the phone and drive at the same time.
Yeah.
Oosh.
That is scary.
That is very terrifying.
That is why you're the **** of America.
what?
That is why you're the flaccid **** of America.
[LAUGH] Jesus.
What?
It does look like that.
It does look like.
An unhappy ****.
[LAUGH] What is Texas then.
I'm just saying.
Texas I don't know.
Probably a ****.
To sharp to be a **** maybe.
Look people call Jersey the armpit of America.
Just simply because it's.
It looks like it's in the armpit area.
If Maine were the hand.
Yes.
Oh really I thought it was the smell.
It's not the shape of the state.
No dude.
The shape of the state.
No it's the shape of the east coast.
Right.
Oh, gotcha.
Or did I just invent that.
I guess so.
I pretty sure because it's in the right.
RL.
I've never heard that before.
You've never heard the armpit.
I've heard.
No, no.
I've never heard that.
Being called the armpit of America.
Right.
I just thought it was because New Jersey sucks, and it smells bad.
Right.
But I don't know.
Sewage run off I assume was the was the.
No.
Cuz of that.
That's different than like B.O.
[LAUGH] But it's not illegal talk on your phone in, in Florida.
You can't text message but phone calls are okay.
So the guy-
Draw the line somewhere.
Yeah, so don't do that, although it is pretty funny and I'm sure he was laughing all the way to work everyday, don't, don't do that cuz $48,000 is way too much money to pay for a prank.
Yeah I don't think if you're driving a Toyota, you're not gonna be affording that any time soon brother.
[LAUGH] okay, so the last story, or maybe second to the last story of the day, I wanted to talk about this, and there is really no other way to say it, and I'm embarrassed to say it but I should just come out with it because that's the headline of the story.
Selfies are dead.
And it's likely that selfies with homeless people probably killed it.
And.
I don't think selfies are dead.
They're not dead?
They should be dead.
People have been taking photos of themselves since the invention of photography.
Just wait till you hear about what's next in line for a photography trend.
Okay.
It's called Dronies.
And I'm embarrassed to say it.
I think this is cool.
And I'm getting shivers of embarrassment.
I think this is cool, man.
Basically they're photos taken of yourself using aerial photography done by drones.
Dronies.
Yeah, awesome.
You mean, awesome?
You gotta have a name for it.
Is that what you went.
Yeah, it's the name upsets me.
Call em whatever.
Dronies, alright.
Yeah, delfies or whatever you want.
Sure.
But anyway, it all started this month when, scroll down.
It's all started this month when New York Times reporter, Nick [UNKNOWN] actually took this selfie with the founders of [UNKNOWN] and Photo Jojo on top of what is one of the biggest hills in San Francisco in Burnell Hill.
Okay, so you can see one of the guys with like, the RC controller.
Yeah well this is a different one.
This was out, done out in the desert but um-
Yeah, the, my-
Go to this page.
The website's going a little wonky here.
Yeah go to the link that we'll post in the blog, cnet.com/the404.
It's really cool so, you know, this is all done in sf.
And it all got started by this one photo out of Burnell Hill.
And the video is really cool.
First of all its a video which makes it way better than a still selfie right.
It starts off with a real tight shot of the three of their faces.
And then using the remote control.
In his hand, it zooms out.
Basically show the entire city.
You know the they are like sort of classic movie.
I think that's cool.
It's really, really cool.
You get the perspective and it's a fish eye lens and so you get you know, a great view of the entire city.
Yeah.
Using this shot.
So this is sort of starting a trend now too, where as we're seeing more consumer based drone systems coming, like the Parrot AR, for example.
Hm.
People are doing aerial photography on a new level.
Yeah.
So, Photo Jojo, I hadn't heard of it before but the guy on the right pulling the, the, remote control.
Sure.
Is the CEO of Photo Jojo, which is a company, and has a website online where you can actually rent drones for your own aerial photography.
See I think that's really smart.
I mean, think about it.
It'd be rad to do at like at a wedding.
Well, yeah.
You know the rad, I feel they're relatively quiet.
Right?
They don't make a ton of noise.
Sure.
Just need one person to operate it with a steady hand.
You know, I'm telling you, we're already touched on it a little bit with Olympics and the drone photography they were doing for like the the big snow boarding jumps and stuff like that.
Yeah.
It's gonna start sneaking into sp-, professional sport.
Yeah, yeah and they're not big either.
You could travel with it really easily if you wanted to do it yourself on vacations.
Think about what they need to do to wire up a stadium to use cable cams.
Yeah.
Like what, the amount of, of, like labor that goes into that.
Wouldn't you just rather, I mean I guess like weather is a factor if it's super windy the drone might not, you know but I'm sure there's great stabilization technology built into those things.
Yeah.
Throw that, you know, drone up there.
It'll just hover for however long it needs to hover.
Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Bam.
Although, of course, the one day where it just like, runs out of gas or battery.
[CROSSTALK]
And falls on like Michael Vick's head.
Everyone's gonna like lose their minds.
Yeah.
But, whatever.
That wouldn't be the worst.
[LAUGH] Right, there could be worse things that happen?
And he'll probably be okay.
'Kay.
[LAUGH]
He's wearing a helmet!
Yeah, this is fine.
It's fine.
And these things are light.
It's like made of foam for the wings.
It's easy.
Is it?
No.
the, the shots are actually really impressive, too.
They're like HD quality shots.
Yeah!
They're always done like, in slow motion.
I really like them.
I'm telling you.
[UNKNOWN] Think about for golf.
Golf is, you know.
Say what you will about the actual sport.
But it is a gorgeous looking environment.
Yeah.
It's always like really well manicured and what not.
That would look awesome.
They always.
Definitely a thing.
Yeah.
Weddings.
I'm starting to think about that now.
Weddings.
Yeah, dude.
Like if you have a wedding on the beach.
Mm-hm.
Oh yeah.
Get that like cliff side shot.
How cool would it be if you could take a photo of your entire wedding over the water looking on it?
Yeah.
Have you ever tried to control one of those things though?
It's really hard.
It's true.
Well the ones we've in the office, they're really hard to confuse them, you basically control them by using your iPhone, so there's like a video display that comes up on your phone and you just put your fingers around the screen to make it.
You know, unilateral.
Right.
It's really sensitive.
I, I, think with one of those one of those remote controls, it be a little bit easier.
But if you ever try to control one of those little RC Helicopters.
Oh, forget it.
.
Yeah, yeah.
[CROSSTALK]
We used, I mean these are like the professional drones, if that's even a phrase.
Yes.
That are way more involved than just like your you know, your dinky $60.
You know, quadrocopters.
Whatever they're called.
Yeah.
Would you feel weird if you saw one of those doing like a security sweep across New York?
Say you're walking outside.
Back to the path train and you just see it fly overhead.
Yeah, but we're already trained to accept it.
Yeah.
We are.
And if you don't think it's already happening, you're crazy.
Oh yeah, in New York.
Yeah.
Helicopters and a lot of stuff.
And it's already happening.
So if, I, I think unfortunately, you know however you wanna position it, however you feel about it ethically emotionally.
It's no different then all the security cameras that are hidden around this damn city.
So many freaking cameras in New York, I mean and there are a lot in New York, but look at a city like London.
Yeah.
I'm not sure there's a square inch of London that isn't under CCTV.
Oh really?
So, you know, it's, it's something that we as a society are just used to.
Yeah.
We don't realize it, but we're already used to it.
So when this happens and you start to see things flying in the sky.
Yeah, people are gonna have fun.
They're gonna try and like, shoot them down.
Hm.
I think that'll be a thing for a little bit.
Maybe in the more like-
You can come over.
Like a-
Hacking.
Yeah.
You know drones.
I, man.
When I was in Beijing.
I noticed a ton of those you are under CCTV surveillance.
Yeah dude.
With a picture of the camera on them.
Yeah dude.
I feel like you don't.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm just desensitized to it so I ignore them when I walk around this city.
I feel like New York doesn't have that many signs.
Right.
That tell you they're around.
You just assume they are.
So there's a lot of them on the light posts.
That say New York NYPD security.
Oh.
Huh.
But I think New York has adopted a different strategy with them, where instead of telling you you're on camera, they more or less leave it like this underlying.
Yeah.
You know, security thing.
That feels more like nefarious to me.
Yeah, I mean, for sure.
They should really let you know.
But, but you know, You gotta look at it like, how the way it was rolled out.
Like in New York, it seems like it was more of a reactionary thing.
Yeah.
This is me just speculating, you know, pondering about it.
But I think maybe in other cultures and cities it was more of like, here's how we're gonna roll it out.
We're gonna be transparent about it.
Yeah.
And New York is more maybe, trying to look behind your back without you, you knowing.
Yeah.
You know what's funny?
In Beijing, I suspected that in a lot of the places where they had the sign telling you there was CCTV, there actually wasn't a camera.
Well sure.
And it's probably like a deterrent for if you see a sign that tells you you're on camera.
Right.
Then maybe you wouldn't do something.
It's like when I was growing up my dad somehow got a hold of this ADT Security sign.
Sure.
That like someone had like lifted from a lawn.
Yeah, and like you put it there.
And he just put it in our lawn.
Yeah, that's all you need.
So we didn't have a security system.
That's all you need.
So that basically acted as hopefully [UNKNOWN] [CROSSTALK]
It's like putting a club on your steering wheel.
Yeah, yeah-
If I want your car I'm gonna take your car, but if I see it's got a club, eh, I could get it but I don't wanna bother.
Yeah, yeah but you definitely notice it, it kinda pollutes the city visually maybe if you have signs everywhere that are like a high security zone.
Yeah, it feels like it's almost like a police state.
Yeah.
I'd much rather have that blissful ignorance-
Yeah, the truth in show thing.
About the, about the, you know, video film.
Right.
Than than actually be face-to-face with it.
All right.
Finally, I wanna talk about this real quick.
It's important to me personally, and I think we we should all, you know, take a second to, to talk about it.
You know, every social network for the most part is goes through like, a life cycle, right?
Yeah.
Like, you look at like, Myspace is the classic example.
It had its infancy, its heyday, and its death.
well, there is a fake eulogy in the most recent issue of the Atlantic or at least its been posted today, its a eulogy for Twitter.
It says, Twitter is dead, and perhaps its a little premature.
I don't know how you think about that.
But the author here.
A.J. [UNKNOWN] an, and ra, Robinson Meyer, have a pretty compelling argument.
Saying that Twitter has, more or less jumped the shark.
And they blame it, on, and audience obsessed.
Sort of self-promotional, lethargic, demographic that consists.
That, that exists on Twitter.
Twitter's interactivity, the amount of people who are tweeting, has gone down.
Their, they have more unique users.
But the frequency at which they tweet is going down.
Without a doubt.
And this whole piece.
And I recommend everyone read it because it's, it's certainly more, speculatory.
Mm-hm.
Than it is giving you cold hard facts about why it is.
But it's, it's saying it created this really strange culture.
That everyone instantly sort of adopted overnight.
And, is saying that, you know, the real world just can't go on like that.
So I mean, I know you're not very active on it.
Yeah.
I struggle with it all the time.
I, I, know, I'm convinced that it is somewhat important for what we do.
Mm-hm.
For news.
I still think there are a lot of pros.
And perhaps the pros still at this point in its life cycle outweigh the cons.
Yeah.
But I'm kinda, a bit of me is like a little ha happy about this just because-
You want it to go away?
I don't want it to go away but I want it to be less important.
Hm,
That's the thing is that people use Twitter for so many different purposes.
Sure.
Me for example, I'm very much like a passive user of Twitter, same thing on Reddit like, I will read news on Twitter, and engage with it every single day, but I'll you know rarely post myself.
And, I don't know, maybe that's my own self consciousness about looking back on my old Tweets which I've done before.
And sort of had some regrets.
But, i think after things like the Boston Bombings happened.
And there was that manhunt, and [CROSSTALK]
Sure, it's really simple.
Yeah, like different things like that, like Spike Lee, putting out the address.
There are a lot of bad PR stories for Twitter that make people wanna sort of shy away from it.
At the same time like, it's also been used to overthrow governments.
You know, like, it's been used in the Ghaza Strip.
And in Egypt like for great purposes.
You know, for me I don't take it very seriously because I follow a lot of comedians on Twitter.
Sure.
From a news perspective.
Which is what I think the Atlantic is taking here.
It is very annoying because you get a lot of.
I don't know how else to say it, but it seems like over-sharing almost.
In that people will post multiple tweets about the same news article, and that really irritates me.
It's like one of my biggest peeves is seeing the same content republished by the same account.
Right.
You know, like, yeah, you know, multiple people posting on a topic is fine.
It's annoying when you know, they'll have one headline and 15 different tweets to promote it.
Things like that there's just no rules on Twitter, right?
You can use it for whatever you want and, I think, like, you know, part of the problem is that you can now modify tweets too.
Yeah.
And you can make corrections to them and there's, there's no there's no commitment to a tweet anymore.
Sure.
Which is kinda the whole purpose of it.
The argument they make is that Twitter is, is the vessel that's leading us into the mobile internet age, the same way that AOL did for email.
Yeah.
In the beginning of, you know, the infancy of the internet and, and its popularity.
They claim Twitter is entering its twilight.
And me personally?
I think there is always gonna be a place for this sort of technology.
Mm-hm.
Whether or not it ends up being Twitter forever or some easier sort of service.
I mean, you know Twitter, it's desktop web presence is, is evolving to the point where it's kind of looking like Facebook again.
Mm-hm.
And that can't be good if we want to, you know.
Sort of emulate something that was successful.
So, I don't know.
I'm, I, I struggle with it man.
I, I'm mad at Twitter a lot because it's forced me to like, do, like be a person I don't necessarily wanna be.
Mm-hm.
And it's changed the way I look at things and, and changed the way I trust things and, and stuff like that.
And I don't know, I feel like, at times it's maybe like, a worse person.
[LAUGH]
Overall.
Really?
Yeah, it, it, you know, it, you-
Whatta you mean, a worse person?
I don't know, it's I think maybe in just like, what we do.
And like, what we do professionally.
there, there's this like built in sense of competition that you are forced to deal with.
Yeah when you, you know, we obviously want as many people as we can to listen to our show and engage with us and stuff like that but it sucks having a you know, you know have this like.
Competitive, you know, landscape words.
Like oh, if that Tweet wasn't good well your show's gonna go down in a, you know, 1,000 flames.
Yeah.
I think like for, for me what gets really tiring is having to filter through what is basically a commercial.
In like, you know, 140 characters.
Right.
Versus actual content that's worth reading on there.
Right.
That's with any social network or the internet.
You give any platform a long enough time, it will just turn into a commercial.
Yeah, yeah, which is slowly what I'm starting to see with Twitter.
Promoted tweets for example.
Sure.
It's starting to get a little bit more hidden.
I don't know but, I, I use Twitter all the time, everyday, and it's just.
I follow and un-follow people all the time.
It's what you make of it, right?
You can, you can sort of flush out whatever you wanna do.
Everything in moderation, right?
Moderate your Twitter experience.
Is the takeaway from this story.
And we'll see where that pans out.
I wanna get to a few emails before we say goodbye for the day.
Some stuff that was brought up, we talked about movies before you left.
Scott wants us to talk about Transcendence.
Have you seen this movie.
No.
It's when, it's when Johnny Depp becomes a computer.
Oh is that out.
I saw the trailer to it.
I think it's out.
He says you guys talk about tech and movies and stuff.
I was wondering.
About your thoughts on the movie Transcendent.
I've been looking forward to it for a long time.
I watched it.
I loved it.
And then I went online to see most of the reviews are trashing it.
I thought it was interesting from a tech point of view, as well as a good freaking movie.
Do you guys have any opinions?
Hm.
My first initial opinion of that film was, oh no, I'm not gonna see that movie.
Yeah, no.
I didn't, [CROSSTALK]
Johnny Depp as a computer, that's silly.
I think the idea is kind of, okay.
Like for me I'll see a movie if there's something that triggers my, intrigue.
Yeah.
Like where it's like, oh man that's a great idea.
Oh yeah.
This was not one of those movies.
Like when I first saw a trailer for Children of Men I was like, what?
I can't have babies anymore?
Sign me the F up.
I'm gonna watch the hell out of that.
But when I heard about Transcendent, even if Christopher Nolan is like, executive producer.
Yeah, right.
Which is like, means nothing anymore.
You know, I, I, I had some heavy skepticism about this.
18% on Rotten Tomatoes.
18!
Holy crap.
Yeah.
That is sour.
You, that, that, to me, 18% means that they made Johnny Depp like, Jonny five or something.
Yeah.
It's a.
That's how [UNKNOWN],
Johonny Depp's a hard actor to make.
Yeah.
Into a messed, like a bad movie.
But-
Unless you saw The Lone Ranger.
Or Charlie in The Chocolate Factory.
Man that, I was so mad at that movie.
Yeah, it's funny.
Like, I will get roped into a movie even knowing that it's bad and people telling me that it's bad.
Bad, but if the concept is good and interesting enough, then I will watch it, and spend two hours of my life.
Sure.
Like on the plane back I watched The Purge.
What the hell's wrong with you?
You know what this movie is?
It's a movie about a world where like one night you can do whatever you want.
[LAUGH] Yeah, kind of an interesting concept, I thought.
So yeah the, the movie is is basically about in the future to purge crime.
They have for one day, or I'm sorry, one night per year they legalize all crimes.
Murder-
So can murder, robbery any kind of crime is okay, sanctioned by the government for one night.
No medical or you know police services will be employed during that night.
One day, yeah, people just go crazy and take out all their stress.
And, what if they do it, when it's not purge night?
Then it's illegal.
Right.
Like, any other day.
Right.
But-
But, welfare should have waited.
Yeah, and so, you know, the, the idea is, oh, is this like a politically charged decision, by the government, to sort of weed out and kill the poor.
You know or, is it actually doing something to create crime.
So, so was it good?
And the no, it's terrible.
It's terrible but, Ethan Hawke is in it and he's like one of my favorite actors.
Is he really?
Yeah, I really like Ethan Hawke.
Is it, really?
Yeah, man.
Great Expectations, Gattaca, Reality Bites.
Gattaca's great.
Reality Bites is great.
Awesome movies.
That's it though.
Didn't he do those Insidious movies also?
Day [UNKNOWN].
Oh, I don't know about that.
Yeah.
I think that's him too.
Yeah, he's a great actor.
No?
I don't-
[LAUGH]
I don't know if a lot of people are saying that these days.
Training Day?
Yeah, I guess.
[CROSSTALK]
Anyway, so-
Training Day is like 15 years old.
This is not one of his better movies.
This is maybe the worst movie that he's ever made.
It's really bad.
He's becoming one of those guys that can't say no.
No, yeah.
It's, the thing is the movie is a little bit too much like, I forget.
Funny people?
Oh no, funny games.
Have you, do you remember that movie?
Funny games?
Yeah.
Funny games is a movie that came out in like, the early 2000's, about a rich family and like, a boat house that, got like broken into.
Yeah.
Like there house got broken into by like two fratty, white guys.
Dressed in all white.
That were like serial killers, you don't remember this?
No-
With long hair, anyways it's basically like the same movie and they're coming out with a second one.
So I'm hoping Purge two will be better than one.
Purge two?
Purger two is coming out and I'm gonna watch that too.
God, you're just like a sadist.
You just love torturing yourself.
Sometimes watching bad movies is fun.
No it's, it really is never.
I watched Anchorman two, one of the worst films I've ever seen.
That was not fun.
Yeah, you didn't get deep enough.
It, it got to the point where I was like, mad.
I was like, upset.
Yeah.
I was like man, it's Friday night.
I ruined my Friday night.
It's all Adam McKay and Will Ferell's fault.
Yeah.
And I was upset.
There's a law there, cuz it has to be a certain level of.
Terrible.
I think I'm on the same page as you, I think I know where you're going with this.
The cool!
Alright you're right, you're right.
Cool world was bad but often.
Okay, how bout this, have you seen the trailer for the movie, Lucy?
No.
So, it's Luc Besson.
Okay.
The guy who did the greatest film ever made.
Yeah.
Well, The Professional, is second in line to The Fifth Element.
Yeah.
And it's about Scarlett Johansson and she like, she can use.
Oh, I have seen that.
Stop time with her head or whatever it is.
Right.
She like increasingly becomes more intelligent.
Right.
Or whatever it is.
She can like, read minds.
And they do that whole stupid cliche of like, humans don't use all of their brain.
Yeah.
Which, in fact, we most certainly do.
We don't?
Yeah, we, we do, man.
How could oh, anyway.
Stuff like that really upsets me.
[LAUGH]
Either way, I'm excited.
At the concept.
In a weird way I'm excited for it.
Yeah.
So we'll have to see when that comes out.
I'll watch that.
All kidding aside, the, from now to the end of the year a lot of potentially awesome films coming out.
Which we'll chat about more.
We, when we, when we had our buddy, Outlaw, here we ch, we chatted about that.
So go back and listen if you wanna see a better preview.
Yeah.
Wes writes in SodaStream.
Right?
We were talking about SodaStream.
Were you here for that?
I think so, yeah.
We've talked about it before.
It says, nice.
I was complaining cuz I didn't wanna get a SodaStream cuz that was like trying drugs again or like, getting addicted to a drug.
What?
Because to me, I stopped drinking soda and I'm proud of that.
Mm-hm.
I don't wanna get a Soda Stream to get like, a taste of the action again.
Right.
You know, I'll like, I've already done a great job at stop drinking soda.
I don't wanna, you know, get a hit of the poison again.
But that's the whole idea is with Soda Stream, you can add as much or as little sugar as you want.
But, but right now I'm at zero sugar.
Okay.
So, even if I have like one gram of sugar [LAUGH], I'm gonna go crazy.
Yeah, okay.
He says, nice thing about it is that you can dial the syrup back.
You're not [LAUGH] locked into a 100% sugar.
Mm-hm.
I get that.
I don't know if I wanna do it.
It's on sale for $50.
He sent a link.
Wes, you're an enabler.
I don't need that.
Yeah, this has the Wal-Mart link too.
Yeah, come on.
You know who you're dealing with here?
There's a long email about net neutrality from Jay that we will get to.
That's, that's like a very big deal while you were gone.
Yeah, I didn't read much about that.
Net, net neutrality is like pretty much dead in the water.
It's really upsetting.
Well, we'll get to it, it says, the battle on net neutrality is largest issue I've felt as a young person.
I'm 33, and I want to fight to protect it.
Our country is supposed to be a we the people, not we the corporations with the most money.
And sure, it's been we the corporations for a long time now with PACs and lobbyists.
But our country is founded on capitalism with the idea that everyone has fair ground to compete upon, and competition and choice allows consumers to fair value for the products they purchase.
The government should have a social responsibility to keep the internet as free as possible.
Why would you put in place anti-competition legislature for that in itself is anti-American.
These companies like Google and Facebook were able to grow thanks to the way the internet works right now.
They don't mind securing an advantage now to stay on top.
Huh
Why would we allow our leaders to be bribed to pass legislation that stifles innovation, and stagnates the economic future of our country.
Well, Jay, that was, that was a very lucid and succinct thought.
And I, to be totally honest, Jay, I freaking agree with you 100%, it sucks.
Hm.
It sucks that this is gonna happen.
But it really just doesn't look very optimistic for, for what the future of the Internet's gonna be like.
It's gonna wind up being more money out of our wallets.
The you know, you, I, I, I, just I don't know.
I don't know what there is to do about it.
Yeah, what can we do to help?
I don't know.
Can I like throw a rock through someone's window and like make it all go away?
A rock?
I would gladly do that.
Yeah, okay.
You know, it's, unfortunately, the country's bought and sold a long time ago and, and people in power are gonna make these decisions.
You know, like look, That whole SOPA thing was kaboshed with the help of people on the Internet.
You know, you see about it on Reddit all the time and you wanna be a part of that.
And you want to help a cause, but I don't know.
Yeah.
It seems like this is something kind of out of our control, whether or not we want it.
I'm not, I don't wanna just like lay down and, and roll over and have it happen, but I don't know.
If it how else can I do but vote, or whatever it is.
Yeah.
So I don't know.
It's kind of a bummer.
Can I read an email.
Yeah, you can read an email.
We just got it in from Ben.
You know how yesterday I was talking about popular scams?
Whenever you're traveling, doesn't matter what the destination is.
Ben wrote in, and he was like, my wife and I were actually targeted by a scam while visiting Shanghai last year.
Two younger Chinese adults, maybe college age, asked us to take their picture.
Then they proceeded to separate us in order to have two different conversations.
One of them learning English and the other about what they knew of the US.
Sports, cities, et cetera.
Just random topics.
We caught onto the scam when they told us that the garden we were going to visit was too busy and that we should go with them to try some tea grown in the mountains.
Luckily, we decided to stick with our plans rather than getting caught drinking very expensive tea.
So Well then Chicago.
[CROSSTALK]
Sheepskins.
He avoided that, he avoided that scam well.
Sheepskins, I'm telling you.
Real quick yo, the one website that I believe, is gonna help, or is at least trying to fight the ruling on net neutrality's savetheinternet.com.
Oh, yeah.
I remember that one.
So, you know, you, you, you, it encourages people to call, people.
Mm-hm.
But I don't know man, it's super depressing.
Not so depressing is a bunch of emails we got in over your break that were saying this is really weird, because this wasn't anything we talked about.
I had at least six to maybe ten emails saying that Russ Frushtick and Steve Guttenberg were like, the same person.
What is that about?
Oh.
Isn't that weird?
Wait, for some reason, cuz.
It's like a wormhole.
Well, in this, in the rundown you wrote, multiple Steve dash Russ comparisons.
I thought people were making comparisons between Guttenberg and Russ from True Detective.
Oh, no, no.
And I was imagining those memes, which would be amazing.
Similar hair.
Yeah.
[LAUGH] I could really get into that.
Yeah, who knows Russ.
But Russ, yeah.
Russ Frushtick and Steve Guttenberg.
Now, do you think that's just a bunch of people on the internet who've never come into contact.
What about comparisons?
Just physically?
No, just like.
The way they talk and the way they act.
So, I'm like maybe they just don't.
Maybe they've never come into contact with like a Jewish person.
Yeah, is that what you think?
I'm not going to say anything.
I'm not.
You as a Jewish person is that what you think?
No, I have no idea.
That's like the joke about it.
You think they have a Jewish sense of humor.
They have Jewish demeanors and, and sort of, like, they come off a little you know?
Whatever that means.
You tell me.
Stereotypically like, it's not like, [LAUGH] I have no adjectives to describe it
Okay.
All I can, and neither do the people who write in, like the people who write in are not being prejudice.
They're just saying what's up with Steven Russ.
See.
You have similar sense of humor as we've all do.
Similar demeanor yeah.
I guess so.
I don't know.
I don't, I literally have no answer for that.
Maybe they're just audio listeners only and they think they sound the same.
Yeah, you think it's just as simple as that?
Yeah, I think so.
And maybe they're kind of act the same.
I don't know, it's hard for me to tell because I see them and they look way different, you know?
Yeah, they're clearly two different people.
Yeah, but maybe if you just listen.
They're both good story tellers, and have a lot of stories to tell.
Yeah, maybe that's what it is.
I don't know I always thought Steve was just the most unique person.
I've never met anybody like Steve before.
He is an amazing person.
So, that surprises me.
He's, he's such an under-appreciated character.
Yeah, yeah, like that, there needs to be a biography about him.
Absolutely.
Or a documentary.
Yeah.
We'll produce one about him.
alright, that's it for us guys.
Shoot us an email the404@cnet.com.
You can hit us up on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook and all that stuff.
We're gonna be back here tomorrow, so make sure you follow up and tune back in.
And we'll see you guys very soon.
Thank you so much for watching, I'm Jeff Bakalar.
And I'm Justin Yu.
I'm Ariel Nunez.
This has been The 404 Show, High Tech Lowbrow.
We will see you guys tomorrow, Thursday, have a good one.
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