Ep. 1426: Where it might blow up but it won't go pop

-Hey, everyone. It's Friday, February 14th, 2014. Happy freaking Valentine's Day, everyone. If you've got a loved one or if you're just plain home-alone doing nothing, hope you're enjoying your nonsense holiday. I'm Jeff Bakalar. Welcome to The 404. -I'm Justin Yu. -You are. -I'm Ariel Nuñez. -Thanks for tuning in, everyone. You're not alone if you think you're alone on this holiday because you're with us. -Yeah. -And that's good enough for a lot of people. Just be happy. -Yeah, you have personal pan pizza you've ordered for yourself. -Just be happy. Man, you heard about that McDonald's thing, right? -No. -Like some McDonald's are doing like reservations for tonight, you know. -Bleak. -That's pretty sad. It's pretty sad going to McDonald's number one. Number two, on Valentine's Day, like as a date. -Yeah. If I were single in New York, I'd be going to the nearest Five Guys Burgers and watching clueless dudes take their girlfriends there and just watching the girlfriends and like stare at them the entire time. -There's just no-- I refuse to believe there's that many people who truly-- like if you are together and put together enough that you've like found someone to spend time with you. -Yeah. -And maybe perhaps love you and you're-- do you got your stuff together enough to not go to Five Guys for Valentine's Day, right? -I know. I think you'd be surprised with some dummies. I-- man, so, I did, you know, I think both of us are guilty of this but we got our significant others some flowers, right, for Valentine's Day. -I did. Yeah, I got-- I did that. -Not because it's Valentine's Day but because I wanted her to feel special everyday but today especially, right? -Well, I mean, yeah but you know, I did it on Valentine's Day because there's coupons. -That as well, on 1-800-FLOWERS. -Right, there's coupons on Valentine's Day. I'm not gonna do like flowers on a regular, you know-- -So, you had them deliver it from the florist that 1-800-FLOWERS hired, right? -Yeah, right. -So, I picked up some flowers that I had ordered this morning and brought them to her work before I came in, which is why I was late. Sorry guys. -Okay. Wait, say that again? -Which is-- this is why I was late it's because I hand delivered these flowers. Not because I'm a gentleman-- -Who's-- like no-- -but because they charged a pretty hefty delivery fee on 1-800-- -How much? -It's like $10 to $15. -You don't think that's worth it? To have you be starting the show on time, you know. -I think it's probably worth it. -Yeah. -But with no live listeners for the weekend. -Okay, no, fair enough. -It's 10 PM right now, we're recording this. -It's-- no it's-- it's interesting what you did to save 10 bucks, right? -So, I delivered them and as I'm carrying them on the street, you would not believe how many scuffs I got from people. -From what gender? -Women. -They were scuffing-- -Men weren't scuffing at me. Men weren't-- -A scuff is like-- -Yeah. -Like blowing you up. -Yeah, like-- -Women were doing that? -Yeah, a lot of women were doing this to me. It was really weird and I couldn't tell like-- -It's weird. -what their reaction was. They're like, they would look at it and just be like-- and give like a little bit of an eye roll. -No, they didn't. -Yeah, I swear and I wasn't wearing headphones or anything. -It doesn't make any sense. -Like it wasn't them coughing because it's the winter or something. -Were they not flowers? Were they like maybe there was something weird about the flowers and they were like, she's gonna hate that. -Oh, black roses. -Did you get her-- no, seriously, what-- like was there something weird about them? -No. They're great. I mean, they weren't long-stemmed roses because I think those are played out. I mean, I think flowers on Valentine's Day are already played out. -What kind of flowers were they? -There's just like a nice mixed bouquet. -A bouquet? -Yeah. -What do you think, dude? What do you think, Ariel? -I don't know, it's bizarre. -Why he's getting that reaction? -I still don't-- -No, idea. -No. -I don't know, it's Valentine's Day, you're walking down the street with a bouquet of flowers and people are like, what a loser. -I think there's a lonely hearts club that was scuffing. -Yeah, probably. -Or maybe they were just like, Jesus, even this muck has a girlfriend. -They're like, I can't even get anything, nothing. We should go out and hand roses to people in the subways. -That's called charity work and I'm not-- -You were smart though. You've actually predicted the blizzard yesterday. -Yeah. I did. -And you got Stacie flowers early. That's genius. -Well, yeah, no, you know, well, the thing-- it was-- had nothing to do with the weather. It was just because today is Friday and when you send flowers to someone at their office on Friday, they're left with a difficult situation because it's like, all right, well I'm just gonna leave these here on Friday so they can die over the weekend. -Right. -And I come on Monday. -It's a three-day weekend too. -Right. It's a three-day weekend. You come in Tuesday and they're just like, you know, dried up thorns, sitting-- -What? Flowers have longer shelf life than three days. -I really don't think they do, man. I just-- I get it, I get flowers, I get like they're super-- they smell good, they're very attractive. -Yeah. -They're-- we are naturally drawn to them. They give off a very pleasing scent but I just don't understand we just like kill them, -Yeah. -and like keep them on like life support in a box, in like water for a little bit. -Yeah, it's like a Christmas tree. -It's so weird to me. -I think-- -When you deconstruct the routine and tradition, it's silly. -Yeah. And put a lot of thought into that. -Yeah, yeah, yeah. -I think, you know, if I were to live with my girlfriend, you know, eventually, which we're planning on doing, I think next year, I'm gonna start giving plants as Valentine's Day gift. -That's cool. -Because those things can sustain and you remember them everytime you see them -Right. -in the coming months or years. However long they last. Like orchids for example, if you buy an orchid for somebody, it will bloom every single year as long as you keep it healthy. -Really? -Yeah. It will bloom new flowers. -I learned something new. -Which is a cost-saving thing for you as well. -Absolutely. No, that's cool. All right. -What about you, Ariel? What you do to keep the wifey happy? -I haven't done anything yet. She's out of town. -Nice. Nice. -So-- -What? -Free pass. -Yeah, she's out of town for work, so, I'm chilling with the dog. -For work. Oh, man. -Yeah, she's probably with her Valentine. -That's a free pass, man. -What's she doing out of town? -No harm, no foul. -She probably has a secret Valentine I don't know about. -Where did you say she was? -She's in Arizona right now. -Arizona. -Uh-hmm. -Arizona. -Yeah, I know. -Coats in the air. -I saw her walking on the way here. She scuffed at me. It's weird. -Oh, really? -Yeah. -I'm so-- I wish I was there to see like people spitting at your feet over this. Like, what was it? -I have no idea. I mean, I wasn't gonna ask. I actually gave one of them the flowers. -I'm trying to really like rack my brain what could they have been upset about. -I don't know. Maybe they're like, my husband never does that for me. Maybe there's something more negative than that. -Yeah. I always tend [unk] towards the more negative. -Uh-hmm. -So, I don't know. -Well, for everyone that's celebrating Valentine's Day, either with somebody or alone, did you see that Spotify actually put out three curated playlists today? One of the top songs played traditionally on February 14th. Another that's for the best love songs of all time. -Yeah. -And then the third one is just super empowering songs for the single club. -Okay. -Which is like men or women. But for some reason a lot of the songs in this list are sound like they're mostly geared toward women. -Okay. -You wanna play a few of them? What are your favorite love songs? Let's start off with that and then we'll talk about our favorite depressing songs. -My favorite love song. -Yeah. -I don't really have a favorite love song but I enjoy like '80s love songs. -Yeah. -Like give me some like Air Supply. -Yeah. Careless Whisper? -Or, yeah, or like Meatloaf. -Yeah. -I would everything for love. -You know what's funny is that, so Peony, she came here from Korea when she was seven, right? -Yeah. -And so she hasn't really-- and she's young too. She's 25, so she hasn't had a really good grasp of '90s pop culture based on those two things. -Correct. We know that, yeah. -And we're walking down the street one day and there's this song playing out of a car, like blasted out of stereo and it was Careless Whisper. -Uh-hmm. -And we heard the chorus part that goes-- you know, like that part with the saxophone and everything. And she's like what is this song? -What's this new song? -Yeah, she's like, whoa, what is this song? -I was like, wait why? -She's like, I've never heard it before but it's really good. -Don't you know how lucky you are? -Yeah. Is that lucky? -Yes. -Because for the next week after I told her what that song was, she would not stop playing it. -Right. -And she still sings it like at least once a week. -Here's why it's luck. -Which is endearing and like very adorable but it's also one of the more annoying songs of our generation, like you can't sing that song. It's almost a joke now to sing that song. -Right. -There was like the sexy sax, YouTube video that came out of him just going into random malls. Like an actor with a saxophone and going to random malls and play a saxophone. -It's that and it's also-- -It's like become a meme. -It's almost like a Rick Astley thing. -Yeah, yeah. -Everywhere. -It's a joke song at this point. -It still-- it doesn't change the fact that it's a great song. I need everyone to like understand we, in fact, do like that song. -Of course. -Or at least I do. -But it's almost like the Macarena. -I don't know. I'm like [unk] to call the Maca-freaking-rena. -Uh-huh. -Really? You associated with that? -Sort of. -No way. No freaking way. I think it's cool and I'm trying to like put a positive spin on your girlfriend-- you and your girlfriend's relationship. -Thank you. -Because I think she's a great woman. -She is. -And it's cool because you get to like relive things for the firs time. -That's true. -And seeing it-- seeing the genuine organic reaction from someone, I mean, that's magic. -Of course. Yeah. Because then you really answer the question like there's this song, hold up. Apparently, after what, 30 years the song has been out-- -I don't know. -It does. -Yeah. -It happened again recently and she was like, what song is this? And I was like another song. I think it was in a mall or something playing over the speaker. -I know, it's I Had the Time of My Life. -That would have been a good one. -There's some Dirty Dancing. -It was a lot more popular. -Sweet-- -Because sometimes, I think she should know. Like it's not like she grew up, I don't know, in North Korea that she's in South Korea. -She grew up in the good one. -She grew up in the good one. -Yeah. -And this song was Thriller by Michael Jackson. -Oh, wow. -That's weird. -Yeah, I was like, oh, this song is-- you should know this one. -You should because Michael Jackson transcends borders, countries, he is-- -Yeah, yeah. Well, she knows like the hit songs. You could argue with that. That is one of the hit songs. -Thrillers most surely. -But she knows like Bad and Billy Jean and stuff. I guess-- -She doesn't know Thriller? -Thriller maybe like second. I don't know. -Thriller is the glue of the world, man. -I know. I know. I know. I love-- -Thriller is the reason there's not as much wars there could be. -Really? -Yeah. -Because they're too busy like do the zombie dance. -Because too busy like zombies doing choreographed dance. -Right, right. -Am I correct or what, Ariel? -I mean, I think that's like the Halloween theme song. So, she's been here for Halloween, right? -Yeah, she's been here for-- -She has still have heard. Maybe it just doesn't stick. Maybe it just doesn't stick. -There's no way that beat line, that-- there's no way she's-- and it's like, "It's close to midnight." -Yeah, yeah. -There's no way that was just like foreign Greek to her. -Yeah. -When she first heard that in America. -Yeah. That is a great song. -Man, I love it. -What about you, Ariel? What love songs do you play on Valentine's Day? This one's gonna be a memorable moments for you but-- -Oh, man. I don't know. -He's not upset he's alone tonight. -Yeah, not at all. Not at all. -Be like walking around-- -She's be back late tonight, so, I got time to buy, you know, on-sale Valentine stuff. -I'm imagining a risky business, Ariel. -Yup, which is like-- -[unk] floor with only sunglasses and [unk]. -And underpants and socks. That's it. -Yeah, yeah. -Tiny whities and socks. That's it. -I've been doing that all week, man. -Kicking the dog all over the house. -Yeah. -It's her dog, right? -That's my Valentine right, there is the dog. -Yeah. You know what you should do, you should like put a little heart costume on the dog. -Yeah. -And then somehow train it to do something romantic. -That's a good idea. -All right. -When she gets in tonight. -Yeah, that'd be good. Maybe I'll do that. That's a good idea. -Yeah. -I went to [unk] yesterday and do some shopping for Valentine's Day dinner, -Uh-hmm. -And they were selling tube of rose petals. I thought that was kind of cool. -Tube. A tube? -Yeah, talk about corny. Like a tube of rose petals so you could like sprinkle-- -Sprinkle them. -You can sprinkle them on a bed or-- -Were they real rose? Were they real? -Have a route leading up to the house or something. -Yeah. Were they real petals? -Yeah, yeah. They're real petals, which is kind of sad because a rose is a beautiful thing. They plucked all the petals out, it's kind of mean. -That is funny though. -Yeah, I know. -Like a tennis ball can of petals. -Yeah, exactly. Hershey Kisses everywhere. Now that I've kissed the ground you've walked on. -I'm sorry I introed the show on such a negative note with Valentine's Day but it really is silly, right? We're all in agreement here, right? -Yeah. I think it's definitely a played out holiday for sure. -Yeah. -Okay. -What about sad songs then? Let's really indulge our single friends. -Elton John, I guess that's why they call it The Blues. -Oh, that's a good one. -I mean, come on. Laughing like children. Living like love. -Yeah, that's a great-- are you playing these in the background? -Rolling like thunder. -Yeah. Under the covers. -And I guess that's why they call it The Blues. -Wait, rolling like thunder underneath the covers. -Maybe it's like they used to bang and now they're not. -Oh. -Or he's tossing and turning and can't sleep. -Oh, right, right. -Laughing like children, living like lovers. -Lovers. That one's good. What are some other depressing songs? Ain't No Sunshine? -Ain't No Sunshine, yeah. -Have you heard that Bette Midler song I Can't Make You Love Me? That song is so-- -'Cause I can't make you love-- -Yeah. That is so sad. -Poor Bette. -Yeah. -She had it good all those years and now she can't make anyone love her. -Yeah, poor girl. Or Landslide by Fleetwood Mac is pretty sad too. -How's [unk] go? Come on, sing it. I've been singing the whole show. -I couldn't sing it. -Back me up, man. -My [unk] bad. What else? Every Smith song ever-- -Every Morrissey and Smith song. -There's like that Aerosmith song. -Oh, I thought it was happy. The one in Armageddon? -Yeah. Isn't that a sad song? -Well, I could stay awake-- that one? -Just to hear you-- -That's a love song. -Yeah. That's like super romantic. -Oh, really? -Yeah. -Oh, is it? -But it's a very fine line. -It sounds depressing. -Right because it's gonna make you cry either way. -Right, right. Every Sarah McLachlan's song is both happy and sad. -Exactly. It's tears of happiness or sadness or joy. -Yeah. -You know, fine-- very fine line we walk with these songs. -Yeah. -You know who we should really ask next time she's here? Shanon Cook. -Oh, right. -She's-- I'm sure she'll do a little retrofitted Valentine's Day Spotify playlist for us. -Yeah. I like that. -Yeah. All right. We got a lot to talk about today. Let's just jump right into it. Also, e-mail us at the end of the show. -Uh-hmm. -We are getting close to having our body Josh King on the program. Serious talk for a second if you've got a serious addiction, someone who and your family with an addiction, a friend or if you're just curious about an addiction. Even if you're clean and you just wanna know like, man, what's it like being addicted to XYZ? -Uh-hmm. -Send us an e-mail, the404@cnet.com with Addiction in the headline-- in the subject rather. And we're gonna get your questions and tweets to Mr. Josh King, who is like freaking out. He's so excited to come on the show. He's a fan. -Oh, really? -Yeah. We have-- we have a doctor who's a fan. -Oh, that's right. He told Jill. Well, we have two doctors, I would hope that-- -A bunch of doctors that are fans actually. -Yeah. -But yes, you're right. -We still have physician that listen to our show. I forget. -Yeah, he wrote me up a card. -Right, yeah. -Not a prescription, a card. -Yeah, a card, an empty card. -A card that took care of my insomnia. Anyway, we got a lot of cool stuff coming down the pike including all kinds of really awesome guests. -Yeah. -So-- -So, let's get into the stories of the day though. -Let's do it. -We're gonna talk about De La Soul. -Okay. -And we're gonna talk about BS titles and technology. -Okay. -BS tech jobs and then we're gonna talk about a really, really silly Kickstarter project. Aren't three quarters of Kickstarter projects silly? This one's really bad. -I was gonna say I bet, I wondered what the percentage is. I'm willing to bet 92 percent of Kickstarter projects don't get funded. -Yeah. -Or not even seen by anybody. -Sure. -You know how they have that Spotify list of songs that have never been heard before? It's like a third of the songs on Spotify have never been heard by human being. -Yeah. It's crazy. -This is like that. But you know, speaking of songs, let's get to the first story. If you're not into any of the Spotify songs that they put up for Valentine's Day, well, for the next 25 hours starting today, De La Soul is gonna be putting out their entire back catalog for download for free. -Right. -So this is really cool. That's sort of promoting the upcoming 25th anniversary of their first album, 3 Feet High and Rising. -Wow. -And this is really cool. Apparently, and I don't really know this, De La Soul's sort of hard to find online. They're on Spotify, some of their songs are on Spotify. None of their songs are on iTunes right now because of unreleased samples. I'm sorry, uncleared samples. -So, that's just the legality. -Right, yeah. So, after all these years, how long that jazz will be making music? Thirty something years? -Somewhere like that. -It's just like the mid to late '80s, right? -Yeah, yeah. So, all this time they haven't been able to clear the samples because a lot of it just came from like funk and jazz records -Right. -that, you know, a lot of these people aren't alive anymore, no one even knows how to get a hold of the rights' holders. So, yeah it's kind of tricky but you know, they're sort of convecting that by offering it all for free for the next 24 hours. So, I think that's pretty cool. -Rock and roll. -Yeah. -I'm excited. -Yeah. -What do you do? You just like-- like you're just gonna download it all? -Yeah. You could download-- I don't even know how many albums they have. Do you know, Ariel? -I think it's like six albums. I just went to the site because I saw that too. -Yeah. -And you could check which albums you want and then you have to subscribe to their e-mail list and then they'll send you a link to download which ones you want. -Oh. -They're from Long Island. Did you know that? -Yeah. -Yeah, it's awesome. -Yeah, they got together in 1987 like I-- we expected, and how many records did they do? Wow, they've got like a crazy amount. -Yeah. -They've got like almost 20. -Yeah. -Twenty records. -I think there's only six up for download, for download. -Okay. Let's see, one, two, three. Yeah, at least ten studio records as far as I can tell. -Uh-hmm. -Awesome. -Yeah, I wanna know the history of this. I don't-- I have no idea but I'd like to know why De La Soul is one of the only hip hop groups from that era that has unreleased or uncleared material. Like A Tribe Called Quest's and all of their songs there. -Yeah, I don't know. -Their super sample have a-- -Probably whoever-- I mean, you know, probably their specific label, the deal they had, you never know there could be so many, you know, little minutes in the contract that changed things. -Yeah. -Who knows? -Yeah. -So, moving on, let's talk about this article. Take this with a big grain of salt, right? Like this is gonna be in just, we're joking about all this stuff, but did you guys see that MSNBC interview with a guy named David Shing, -Who-- -who is the tech evangelist for AOL. -It's-- can we pull this photo up? -Let's play some of this video. -Okay. -This is what we're talking about here. -Of our lives. He's the man to talk to, it's an honor to have the brilliant David Shing at the table. -Oh, thank you for having me. -You talked about what are the things you see for the future. A more useful -Yeah. -connectivity from smarter wearable computers and not just Google Glass but computers in your clothes that will boost, that will power out what you've done. -All right. So, what we're talking about here is David Shing. He's the tech evangelist, which basically means his title, it's sort of loose. He just makes predictions about the future of technology for AOL. -Oh, he's clearly from the future. -Right. -Or from the past because his hairstyle doesn't look like-- it looks like something we've seen before. -I don't wanna make fun of someone because of the way they-- -No-- -look but he chose all those things. -Yeah. I mean, the thing is like he's obviously a very well spoken guy. -Sure. -And he sort of list what he thinks is gonna be. -It's not the first time we've heard of him. Yeah. -Yeah, the big tech angles of 2014. -Right. -He talks about wearables and getting your wearables to talk to you and things like that and defriending people, which is gonna be a more curated thing in 2014. I agree with everything he says. -Sure. -But [unk] usually when he looks like this and he has such a freaking weird title. -His title is very strange, arguably as strange as his, what, glasses. -Yeah. Hair. Face. -What's his title again? -He's a tech evangelist. -Tech evangelist. -Yeah. -So this is a story that's really pointing out some of the sillier sort of, you know, titles and what happens when like the web becomes such a, you know, unopposable force. -Yeah. -And you just sort of get these ridiculous people with ridiculous jobs, who make like-- -Yeah, a.k.a. tech-- digital prophet. I'm sorry. Digital prophet. -Right. He's a digital prophet. So, a prophet it implies that he actually knows the future, -Right. -which is-- but not the future of everyday life. Just the digital future. -Right. -Because it's a digital prophet. -It's kind of working though because if they wanted someone who would grab your attention and force you to listen to what he's saying, I just did. I mean, I would never have watched that MSNBC little skit if it weren't for the way that he looked and how ridiculous his hair is. -David Shing can send tweets just using his brain. -Yeah with glasses. -And receive them as well. -And cook. So anyway, based on that interview, Sam Biddle over at Valleywag, he's kind of known for his like snarky articles and stuff and he sort of points out other people. He cause other people out at tech companies that sort of have strange job titles. -Right. -He calls them bullshit job titles, I don't work at these places, so I can't say for sure. Let us know what you think and he talks about fashion evangelist. I think somebody's jobs are really cool that Sam's maybe a little bit jealous that he isn't able to like to secure it in eBay front page for his job. I would love to do that myself. And that's my favorite one. There's list of hackers and residences at LinkedIn for example and-- -I think he's more upset about the sort of-- the nomenclature of it. You know, he-- -Right, yeah. Like what it says on their business card. -Right. It's like, oh, I'm a hacker in residence and I wear sunglasses in every meeting I go to and stuff like that. -Right, right. Although, when I tell people that all we do is talk about technology and bullshit around for an hour everyday for a living, -Yeah, but that's not-- -that's a pretty sweet job too. -Right but it's still like a show and people can relate to that in some capacity. Like if you're a "Chief Happiness Officer" -Yeah. -like delivering happiness, I mean, come on. -Right, right. I'm sure they do-- -Right? You're the CHO. -Right. -The Chief Happiness Officer. -The best is like people like just test out products, you know, that's like something we sort of do, but at least there's metrics with that. Like researcher at Snapchat, what does Nathan Jurgenson do as a researcher at Snapchat? -I don't know and it's in quotes too. -He just-- he looks kind of creepy. He looks like he just develops relationships with teenagers. -For six seconds at a time. -Kind of cool. -I like some of these other ones. Damon Horowitz is an in-house philosopher at Google. -Yeah. I'm sure he's super smart. -I mean, when you give someone your card, do they not just laugh right in your face or how does that work? This is not bad. Over at Microsoft, William Bunce is an Innovation Sherpa. -Yeah. -What the F is a Sherpa? -Kind of arrogant. -Is that a sort of cloth you wear? -I think that's somebody who guides you into places you've never been before, which sort of makes sense but super arrogant. -Get out of here. All right, and then Kelly Schweitzer from TIME, she's the director of Digital Innovation and you can tell because we have a nice zoomed in shot on her eyes. -Yeah. -Those eyes are responsible for digital innovation. -Uh-hmm. -Her whole face just couldn't be displayed there because that's just not innovative. -Yeah. -It's a little condescending. You know what? This is awesometacious. -Yeah, kind of. It's presumptuous. -Yes. -Like you know the future and what's gonna happen. -You know the future. -It's sort of like all social media managers too, which is to put a lot of people collide in the comment section of this article. -Be careful what you say, man. -I'm not saying that it's a BS job because I know people. I have friends that are making really good money by being social media managers, because it can-- it's the new marketing basically. But anyone can do it. -I don't like when I need a social media manager and I have more followers than them. They should have like a billion followers. -Yeah. -Like Nathan have like-- he's got a bunch if I use-- like, you know, -Yeah. -I want someone to be like I'm so good at this, I do it full time and I've got the numbers to show it. -Right. -Yeah, yeah. -Right? -Are you with me? You know. -A social god. Yeah. -Like look, if you're just starting out, that's one thing but if you are like the director or the VP of so-- but there's VPs of social now, right? -Yeah, yeah. -Like if that's your gig, come on, right? -You know, what I wanna have is you're on Instagram, right? -I am, yeah. -Ariel, you're on Instagram? -Me too. -Yes, Ariel is a baller on Instagram. -Yeah, you get more likes from any of us. -He's good because he keeps using an SLR to take photos and fakes it on his iPhone. -No, never, never. -Never. -Never. -He stands by that. -I swear. -People will take that lie with him to the grave. -Man, I get mad when people do that. I don't do that. -You don't do that? -No, he doesn't do. -I do not do that. -There's no way, there's no way he'd be this passionate about it. -No. -You can't take a picture and then if it's not fit into the ratio, -Yeah. -you can use software to fix it. So, I don't know, that's why maybe you see a lot of people with like borders on the top. -Yeah. -No, but Ariel's-- -That's so cheating. -Ariel's photos are the most artistic and well-framed and well-composed than anyone I follow on. -Well, I thank you. Well, thank you. -That's for sure. -But you guys ever go to the popular page on Instagram? -No. -You ever check that out? -Yeah, I do sometimes. -It's like the second button on the button toolbar and if you click that button, you'll see basically a grid of people's profiles that aren't famous. It's not like Justin Bieber or like, you know, Alec Baldwin or anything. It's just random teenagers that are getting like 109,000 likes. Have you seen this? -Uh-hmm. -I wanna know who these people are. -Oh, yeah. I always see random people, yeah. -Because it could be just like random, like Thai girls. -Yeah. -Or like a 15-year-old kid in Wyoming. And they'll have like a million followers. -Yeah, yeah. -It's crazy but it's like, should I know who this person is or like am I just like a philistine? Like-- -I always assume they're like some international superstar that I just don't know of. -Yeah, probably. -Maybe some child superstar. -Yeah. I think kids are able to rack up that many followers because they're not doing shit all day. -Yeah, and just that all day. -Yeah, they don't have to worry about bills or anything because they just rack up followers like its currency. -Uh-hmm. -It is. -But-- yeah, it technically is currency, right? Get paid for your follower. -I think so. -So, anyway, that is the biggest bullshit job titles and texts. -Do we have anything like that at CNET? I mean, aside from the social media manager thing, which actually does gives us a lot of hits. That's not bullshit. -Which is not-- you wanna say it is not bullshit. No, I don't think we do. I don't think we have one of these like, you know, fantasy sort of titles. -Yeah. -You know, like leading wizard. -No. -Or like yeah, like head sorcerer of URL clickage. -Yeah, they are anything. -We don't have anything like that. Yeah, we don't have anything like that. So, we're one of the good ones. -Yeah. That's good. I'm glad we work here then. -Yeah, absolutely. -All right. Last story of the day is a really crazy Kickstarter. It's basically a joke Kickstarter and it's something that makes me feel like we should start our own because incredibly, it's very easy to get people to donate their hard earned dollar to you for no reason. So, what started as a joke has earned one kid named Noboru Bitoy, a design student over $144 and that's as of this report. So, he's actually, I'm sorry, at $743 now. It's jumped up a lot in the past few days since we wrote about it on CNET. So, basically, it started as him just needing money for lunch and he wanted to go to Chipotle to get a burrito which costs about $7 and so, I'm sorry, $8 for a burrito. And that was what his initial goal was when he put up this Kickstarter. And when he wrote this, he said, look, if I make the $8, I'm gonna go and get a burrito. I'll report back on how delicious it is and if I get more than $8 then I'll buy as many burritos as I can and then graph the deliciousness of it as it changes overtime. So, you want to know how well does a Chipotle burrito hold up for leftovers. So, he ended up getting like $100 after the first week, which he used to buy like about like ten burritos and saved all those and eight one like everyday without heating it up to, you know, graph how well it holds up. -Right. -You know, like does an 8-day Chipotle burrito taste. -Just put it in the fridge at least. -I think, I hope he is. I hope is. Otherwise, he just probably-- -It's a different kind of grab he's gonna need. -Yeah. So, anyway, you could see here, this is not a joke. People have donated so much that it's gotten up to 743 bucks, which is crazy. -Why do you think this happens? This happens a lot. -I don't know. -I mean, so, okay, this kid is obviously in design school. He's not a poor guy. You know, there's probably people asking for dollars everyday on the street, -Of course. -and no one wants to donate to those homeless guys but they'll give this design student a dollar because it's something that kind of gave them a laugh. -Because it's a joke and its' funny. -Yeah. -But why are we doing this? -There's nothing wrong with that, I wanna say either. -No, it's fine. -Humans spend their money the way they want to. -Hundred percent. -You know, I'm not gonna be that guy that's like, this should be going to charity or whatever. I mean-- -Right. Yeah, it doesn't matter. -It should in like the big scheme of thing. -Of course, of course. -But all of our money should be going to charity and so I can't fault him for that. -Right. So, I don't have a problem with him doing it. I just-- I don't understand why like this happens. I don't understand why we do this. -Yeah. -Like when the guy is like, I'm trying to go, you know, to Mexico on, you know, with just a backpack getting there. -Right. -And like people just send them that-- -Oh, that crowd funded vacations, yeah. -Like, why do we do this? Why do you think? -I mean, this guy is definitely charismatic. He's in New York. People also really like Chipotle. So, maybe that has something to do with it. -Or maybe it's just like the Chipotle people jacking it up, you know. -Yeah, could be. You know, I wanna say that-- -Because like at the end of the day, like hold a thought, -Yeah. -at the end of the day, like if you see-- if you-- if they have a good social guy at Chipotle, -Uh-huh. Uh-huh. -they see this happening and you know, run-- -Hire him immediately. -run with it and just go, okay, like this is something happening we need to, you know, the same thing with the Oreo guys and you know-- -Are you speculating that Chipotle donated some of their own money to this campaign to make the story a little more compelling? -Hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely. -I could see that. That's a-- -Why wouldn't they not. -That's a great-- -I would be shot if they had nothing to do with some of the funding. -Right, right, right, right. That's an interesting point. -Even if it's like five bucks, you know, you know what I mean? -Yeah. -Of course, why wouldn't you want this to happen? -I wanna say that it's jumped up a lot in the past few days. -Yeah, like covering it, the outlets are covering it. -Yeah. -You know. -Something that I think it might also has to do with this like the whole gastronomic voyeurism story that we've talked about, you know, like South Koreans. We talked about that story, right? Like a couple of weeks ago. South Koreans are paying webcam host to eat on the air in front of them. -Right. -And he does that a lot in this video, like the actual chewing and sort of like a big part of the video. But then also he's a design student, so the video is well-produced. -Sure. -Maybe this is a conspiracy theory. Maybe the whole thing was set up by Chipotle and they just hired this random kid. -Sure. -To pretend like he shared something new. -Why not? Why not? -That's genius. -It's good. I mean, there's a lot of good campaigning and marketing going on. Like you-- there's-- it used to just be like, oh, it's just Facebook and there's [unk] searching on Facebook and it's just that. -Yeah, yeah. -Well now, if there's so much stuff, we've lost track of it and we can't, you know, we can't manage to wrap our heads around every possible scenario. -Yeah. -So, you just gotta, you know, swallow it with a grain of a, you know, salt. -It seems like it's so easy for things to like catch fire with this. -Yeah, for sure. -It does seems super easy but then don't forget, the hundreds of thousands of things that just don't take off. Right? -Yeah. I wondered if this was started by Chipotle if they have like other campaigns above Kickstarter they just do as well. -Yeah, you never know. You never know. Although it does seem to sound like this Nathan filler guy everytime he like wants to do when it goes crazy. So, I don't know. Some people are really good at engineering a campaign. -Uh-hmm. -Let's get into some e-mails and then we'll say goodbye. First one comes from Schnides. This is in regard to the phone scams that we talked about where you would get a missed call on your phone, call the number back and then inadvertently get charged -Right. -money for calling an expensive number here. He says, "Hey, I get ghost calls from the area code 240 regularly but I ignore calls from spammers. This reminds me of a trend of door-to-door energy sales people. Energy deregulation is legit because it creates competition for power utility monopolies. However, some people they hire to go door-to-door are shady. I saw a news report about how energy just changed its-- a place just changed its name because an elderly couple sued them when they have their energy provider changed without their permission and it was changed to a higher rate." -What? -"They used to come in his neighborhood about 30 deep knocking on doors in pairs." -Right. -"I used to troll them but that could be scary. They would claim to be from the energy company." -Yeah. -"And they pressure you to see your last bill and authorize your account and before you know it, you're paying a different company, more money for energy." -Yeah, I've gone that. -Yeah. -Yeah, I've gone that before and pretty much anybody that knocks on your door and anyone that walks through and going door-to-door to sell something is full of it, right? -It's true. I mean, like-- -Unless it's like a kid selling candy for school. -And I still always wonder about those guys. -Treat them the same way. -I'm always like, really? You have a baseball team? -Yeah. -Or I could just like rip off-- -Well, I did that. You didn't do that when you were a kid? -I guess I did when I was really young. I don't know. -But this energy thing has happened to me in New York City before and it's super shady because yeah, Schnides is right, if they work for the energy company, they should already have a copy of my bill. -Exactly. -And you know, what I always do to get rid of them is just immediately ask for a work order. -Right. -And once you ask for that, they like, we don't have it, so they're selling something. -Yeah. All right. Good advice. I can do that. -Be careful. -Life hacker, Justin Yu, here you go. Jimmy from Brooklyn on the topic of Pickup Tipping. -Yeah. -Jimmy, Jimmy from Brooklyn. He says, "You guys should think about pickup tipping." I just did. I don't wanna do it. "When you go to a bar and order a beer you tip the bartender." But that-- okay, hold that thought. "When you get coffee, you throw a change in the tip jar." I don't do that. "When you order $200 worth of food, someone puts that in to-go containers and prepares the package. If you're the type of person that tips at a sit-down restaurant," Who doesn't do that? "Even if the service is awful, I've never left someone zero tip. I just can't do it. Then what's the rationale for not tipping for pickup? You've already made a decision internally that tipping is not strictly related to the quality of service. I think leaving a few dollars isn't necessary but totally reasonable. I'm not calling you cheap. I'm just friend were shocked when I've done it." -Yeah. -"But it's something that makes sense to me." I mean, look, you're not wrong. You can't be wrong to write about this situation. For me, you know, I just-- I think when you make the comparison to a beer, a beer to me is like, you know, he's taking care of-- he or she is taking care of your drink, they've giving it to you, plus you're giving them a dollar or whatever it is for a tip for a drink, you know. -Uh-hmm. -If you want me to give a dollar every pickup delivery thing, it's like all right, I'll do that. -Yeah. -I don't know. What do you think? -I think if you tend to go to a place a bunch and you know, he brings up the example of ordering $200 with a food for pickup. If that's the case, definitely tip. -No. -Because that's a bigger hassle for whoever did have to put that into a container. -I still don't think you should. I still don't think you should. -But, you know, like a lot of times the tip is a downpayment for customer service in the future too, right? I mean, if you go somewhere a lot and you tip poorly, -Yeah. -maybe not gonna get your food as quickly in there next time or they may not even prepare it as well knowing that you're a shitty tipper. -I don't know about that. -But you never know, that's what I'm saying. Like it's sort of this relationship you develop with the restaurant not you go to a lot. -I get that. -You don't wanna jack them on a tip. -Of course. But pickup tips, man. -I think the hard part is, you know, for pickup tipping, you don't see the courtesy being performed for you. And for waitering and waitresses, you know, you actually see them carrying the food, it's a struggle for them, you talk to them in person, for pickup you don't have the interaction. -You have a relationship. -But it doesn't necessarily mean that work isn't being done. It's not like a robot putting food into trays. -Of course not but like the-- it just, it doesn't meet the minimum threshold for tippage. -Yeah. I don't think that it's like a social-- it's not like a social pickup tip. -You are not waiting on. -But if you want to, more power to you. Like Jimmy, I respect the hell out of him for pickup tipping. -Go for it. You're one of the good ones I guess. -Yeah. -Good job, Jimmy. This is an e-mail from Jason, talking about the new credit cards that are coming next year. He says, "In episode 1422, you have the story about the new credit card system we're gonna be adopting next year." -Uh-hmm. -"Well, I believe we do need to change from the current system into something that's more secure. I also think we need to consider something else. If you have visual-- if you are visually impaired or totally blind as I am, I know no way to make a credit card transaction by myself out of store unless the credit card terminal has a physical keyboard. Less and less of them seem to have them. In fact, no stores I know of where I live have them. Every credit card terminal is a touch screen. I think it's something that needs to be done above that." And then he goes on to say, "I don't know if mobile payments would be the answer or Apple should build credit card terminals because they'd have voice over, which would kinda be funny." But no, that's a very good point. What about people who are blind and you know, need some sort of like guaranteed interaction? I feel like what happens if the cashier must just help. -Yeah. I mean, I remember in the photo for the story that we talked about with those new cards. The picture was actually a woman holding one of those scanners. -Right. -And the scanner had physical buttons on. -Sure, sure. -That one wasn't a touchscreen and I almost wanna say that the buttons had that bump in the center five. -Right. I don't know-- -Sort of-- -Is the bump enough? -I don't know if the bump is enough. -Jason, is the bump enough? -Yeah, do you want like six bumps? -I wanna know. Yeah. -I don't know. But anyway, I'm pretty sure a lot of those things have to be operated by somebody. -Right. -So, I'm sure that person would more than willing and be more than willing to help you. -To help out. Yeah. Well, thanks for the e-mail, Jason and thanks to everyone else who wrote into the show. That is just about gonna do it for us today. If you're celebrating Valentine's Day today, hope you have a lovely evening and we will be back on Tuesday, because Monday our offices are closed. -Thank you, presidents. -Thank you, dead presidents. And that's it, the404@cnet.com is the e-mail address. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and participate in the ongoing conversation that never ends on Reddit. -Uh-hmm. -That is gonna do it for us. We're back here on Tuesday. Have a great little weekend. I'm Jeff Bakalar. -I'm Justin Yu. -I'm Ariel Nuñez. -This has been The 404 Show. High tech, lowbrow. We'll see you guys soon.