The 404 Show 1,583: Uber controversy, wearing Oculus Rift for 28 days, no more Jobs movie

[MUSIC] What's going on, ladies and gentlemen? Welcome to The 404 Show on this Thursday, November I guess it's the 19th. Who can keep tra, it's the 20th. 20th? You guessed it's the 19th, but it's still the 20th. Yeah, all day today. Who can possibly keep track of things like this during the anarchy that, that, that is our new studio installation. But thank you for tuning in to the show today. My name is Jeff Bakalar. Iyaz Akhtar, where are you? Somewhere else in Manhattan? I am located on the Upper West Side today, not on the East Side. Westside. [LAUGH] Thanks for clearing that up. And Mr. Steven Beecham, all the way in San Francisco. What's up guys? Thanks so much for doing this again with us, man. Yeah, it's awesome, dude. Happy to do it. You know, we got so much great feedback when we were doing this a couple weeks ago. Thanks for filling in again, and, and making this happen. I have some updates on the studio. We've been working three days straight, trying to get this studio into place and it sounds like, fingers crossed, we'll be back in there tomorrow. And we'll be able to do a brand new show out of the new, new studio. So that's excellent. It's cra, it's cra, there's so much crazy stuff happening in this office right now. I can't even begin to explain it, but thanks for bearing with us during this little bit of a, of a downtime and, yeah, we'll, we'll, we're going to be keeping the, the twitters updated and let you guys know just what the hell's going on. I like your background actually. In your office, sir? Yeah. The background that you have there. Yeah. This is a nice, this is from one of the new sort of floating offices in the, in the new set up,. A little urban, New York City backdrop I thought would be appropriate. So check that out. Hell yeah. [LAUGH] You've been dying for that backdrop for like what, 30 years now. You finally got it. Congratulations Jeff. This is as good as it gets. This is how you know you've made it. When you can look at an upper. When there's another building across the street, from your sad, sad conference room. But yeah, it's great. The new office is actually kind of amazing and maybe we'll do a video to show everyone, all the ins and outs. But let's just get into the show. Let's get into a few stories. A lot of controversy in the world of Uber. This is this kind of like a serious note that we'll start things off on. So, Iyaz, you, it sounded like you didn't know a lot of what was going on. So, so I want to help explain to you just what the hell is happening to As far as I know, as far as I know there was like this one reporter that, I guess like one of the New York regional managers or something. They were trying to get information about this reporter. And they didn't ask for permission, and there's some kind of God mode or God view and that's as much as I know. [CROSSTALK] I wish they called it God mode, that's way cooler. [LAUGH] Yeah, so it's such a strange story. So I guess the best way to describe it is. A couple, I want to say like a month ago this, this writer Sarah Lacy came out with a, a story about the sort of weird, misogynistic culture that she found to be the case within Uber. And a little there Emil Michael who's an executive at Uber. Was at this very high profile dinner. And he jokingly but, nevertheless he did say this, he talked about, you know, possibly investigating journalists who were criticizing Uber. And he talked about like spending upwards of a million dollars to dig up dirt on these people. Sort of like, well if the door swings both ways, sort of thing, like eye-for-an-eye, sort of thing, is the way it came off. That made all the news, obviously because it was a very strange thing. He claims he thought he was off the record. I'm sorry dude, you're at this like gigantic, celebrity-attended dinner, that's being covered by the media. What you say is gonna come out. Nevertheless, you fast-forward a little bit, and then news comes out that. A buzzfeed writer was meeting a new york general manager. And the guy she was meeting, was like, she shows up at the meeting and the Uber guy is like hey I was tracking you. I knew when you were going to get here. [LAUGH] It's like, what, and apparently what come, what came out of all this is that within Uber, and they say at a, an executive level is this sort of back door, all seeing eye called God View. Number one, what the hell are you calling it [LAUGH] God View for? Like, that is, you do not do, there is nothing but nefarious associations that can be attached to something called God View, right? Unless we're talking about a video game, which is, which we're not, this is real freaking life. And you know, that really resonated negatively throughout the entire, you know, internet. Your, their, have this ability to find out where you are, where you're going, where you are before the car comes to get you. And I know this is a little you know sort of contradictory dealing with a company that's in, the entire business model is based off of GPS location. But at the same time, i, it's just very strange. And a lot of these things are just hitting at the same time. And it's really kinda banging them up on a PR level, for sure. Yeah, they seem seriously screwed. I saw an article today about like, Uber's got a real problem. Cuz they're not like Facebook, there's no buy in. There's nothing keeping you or I from saying, I'm not using Uber anymore. I'm just gonna move to Lyft. And then like I think time.com had this great article, there's like seven real dead serious things that Uber has done. Including like sabotaging Lift by booking rides when- Yeah. And then cancelling them. Oh yeah. Then also poaching Lift's drivers. So like, this is, this extra thing, especially with Gabi, which is. Just headline gold. I mean. Yeah. You couldn't ask. If you were a writer, you're like, God View, that's perfect. You guys will get nailed to the wall for this one. It's just [CROSSTALK] Whoa. [CROSSTALK] Is that another religion pun? [LAUGH] No, it wasn't. Oh, okay. I was thinking. Okay. No, I said wall. The wall, not cross. [CROSSTALK] No, no crosses here. Sure. My bad. I said, cross to bear. That was a religious. I was a theology major, so, anyway. You poor guy. I was not,. So, the, the other thing is like, you take all of these things into consideration, right? You're like, oh man. You know, Uber's like, they're muscling, you know, innocent journalists, they're talking a big game. It's like they're in the mob. Right, it's like they are a bunch of like, Sopranos that are just sort of you know, throwing their weight around a little bit. I don't know, I, and at the same time, I'm conflicted obviously, cuz Uber [LAUGH] is a fantastic service. [LAUGH] Wait! Listen, man, Uber is the best thing, ever. This is, this is, You're talking. Hold on, hold on. Go ahead. You're talking to a dude whose father has been in the New York City taxi cab industry for upwards of 30 years. Okay? Sounds like you got Dad issues first of all. No, it has nothing to do with like Jeff having Dad issues. It has everything to do with the fact that. Like, my, my father's livelihood is based off somewhat, excuse me off the success of the cab industry, which is being annihilated by Uber. Well there's there's competition out there man. Yet I still use it all the time cuz it's way better than taking a New York City cab. Well have, have either of you guys ever used Lyft? Have you tried that one yet? Once and we lived. How was it? I mean, was it, it's basically the same thing as Uber right? It, the app seems a little clunkier. The driver did not know where we were, which was way fun. I always love it when the driver calls you and they're like where are you? It's like that's the whole freakin' point. Yeah. If I had to tell you where I was, I would have just called you. But yeah, that, but I've had that happen with Uber as well, the one lift experience that I had, the driver was very confused, and asked me how to get there. I'm like, I don't freakin' drive. I don't know, just, just go. Well. Stop asking me. That's too funny. Sounds like a lazy, Lift Driver. [LAUGH] Lazy, well like Lift definitely has that hippy mentality to it, right? Like I associate hippies with, like I'm sorry the whole pink mustache thing? Yeah I, I'm not digging the pink mustache. Come on. The pink mustache should mean that it's confidence. I know it's [UNKNOWN]. It's optional. Well look, you look at it like this, right? You get into a car with a pink mustache, and no matter what, you're like, all right, I'm not getting murdered in here. [LAUGH] [LAUGH] You know? Like, I think no matter what happens, as long as this car's got a pink mustache on the front of it, I'm gonna be relatively safe. That's very- Right? You can identify that car. Like, did you remember that car where you got hit in the head with a hammer? Actually that was Uber. That happened in, in Uber. Right. But like, you're like, oh, by the way. It had a pink mustache on it. Yeah. Kinda whittles it down right away. Like, hm. Exactly. Let's check it out. Let's. [CROSSTALK] Uber, Sidecar, they all got that blacked-out Toyota Camry, right. They all just have the same exact car. So it sort of falls into the ether. But it's a really strange story. But I, I don't know, it's like, like I said like, I love Uber so much. I love the service. And obviously like the problems they're facing are way up the food chain. You know like. The dude who drives you around, it's not him or her. You know, you don't really have to like concentrate on them being part of the problem, but Uber definitively at a corporate level, at an executive level, needs a culture shift. They need to change the way they at least. Say they operate. Like lie to me Uber. Tell me you're not, you know, trying to spend a million dollars to dig up dirt on a, on a, on a journalist cuz, cuz he or she wrote negatively about you. That's, I don't know. Do you got anything to add to that? I think leadership comes from up top. And I've, I've so how do I articulately say this? I've been in places where if the leadership is shoddy, it just, it can affect everywhere. So if they don't get their act together, I think Uber is just, they're not gonna survive. I mean, flat out there's enough competition, and to come up with other ones, other competi, other. Car services, very simple at this point. Uber has so much to freaking lose if they don't start firing people from the top. I mean, how, don't you think Yellow Cab is like working on an app right now. You know, I mean there, there's gonna be competition in that whole space pretty soon I'm sure. You, you're talking about New York City cabs. Yeah, I'm talking about Yellow Cabs taxi cabs. Like if they just build. Uh-hm. An app that would you know that would. Cut into a lot of Uber, Uber's business I'm sure. You are 100% correct, Mr. Beecham. [CROSSTALK] The problem, it's true Beecham knows what's up. The problem though, and like, I mean dude, it took ten years for credit cards to be accepted in cabs, okay? That's right, and they still **** at you, if you try to use a credit card. That's my biggest complaint about taxis. That. That mentality is changing just because they're not getting, they're not getting pounded on the, on the rates as much as they used to. But the problem is that because it's tied into the city of new york, you know, taxi business, the very old school, you know it's like this...I hate to keep using like this mafia analogy and I'm not saying these guys are wise guys. You'd probably be right on. So this is the most appropriate usage of this analogy, though. Yeah. This is the, it's probably correct. It's true, though. Like, there is this sort of ment, it's this glacial pace of progress. The second they do that, someone's gonna lose their job. Like, the guy who runs dispatch, or whatever it is. Like, there's unions. There's all this really ugly red tape that has to be traversed. In order for this to be injected into the work flow of New York City cabs. I think there's something like 13,000 cabs in New York City. To have them like, you know, undertaking this digitalization of the way we get cabs in New York would be a massive project. You were 100% right though, Beecham. It absolutely should be the case. Like, they should have this. And Uber would, would feel it. Uber would ha, basically have to make a flat rate in New York, to compete, right? Cuz you're, there's gonna be. Yeah. But they have fluctuating rates right now too, right? Right. Based on, based on priority of how busy it is during the day or something? Exactly. You know, ba. Which is totally not cool. I don't think that's cool. Well. [NOISE] I'm, I dunno. I think that's actually. Like if you're in like a rainstorm they raise the prices or something. You know what I mean? Surge pricing. Surge pricing yeah. They do, surge pricing is wack. Right? I do understand like, you know all of a sudden it's raining and umbrellas cost 10 times what they cost when it's not raining. That sort of thing. But, I think in terms of the way they go at it it's like this supply and demand sort of thing. And I get it. Like they can't just magically make more Uber cars available on the road. I'm kinda torn on the whole surge pricing thing. But I definitely appreciate both sides of that argument. But I think you're right though. New York City has to figure out a way to get yellow cabs on it. And once that happens we're gonna be in good shape. I think there's actually a bunch of app already for that. I looked it up just now, when we were talking. And there's a- Yeah, but there's nothing [CROSSTALK]. Yeah. It's not exactly the same, your right. The other about like, if you can get a, if you can hail a yellow cab, like I want the cars that are nice inside. And Uber cars, I think, of like 90% I've been in. They're really nicely taken care of. Yeah. 90% of the yellow cabs I've been in have some kind of weird aroma. That's been cleaned up by newspaper. [LAUGH] Right. They don't want a smell. Not even, it's just been placed on top of whatever smell. [LAUGH] Exactly. This is the problem. Yeah. It's a lot of people die in New York City cabs I feel like. Oh, yeah. Or. No. I'm kidding. They just go to the bathroom in them. It sucks. I don't know what to tell you. That's a big part of it, too. It's the whole experience. My experience, I think Uber drivers seem to be way nicer than New York City cab drivers. I would was in an Uber car and they had small waters, he had small bottles. Yeah. Of water. And I was. Totally. Like oh, my God. This is like. It's fantastic. Yeah. It's like going to the bathroom at like a high end hotel. With like [CROSSTALK] You're like I have this precious resource. Would you like some water? Yeah. Just a small bottle of water. That's all you need. That goes a long way. And even that Spotify stuff they're starting to do. You heard about that right? I don't know a lot about that but, that would if I was a driver I would be annoyed by that. Cuz now I have someone else you know controlling what I'm gonna hear. Is that how it works? Yeah. Basically like if you can hail an Uber ride that is, that plays nice with Blue Tooth audio and you could sync up your Spotify playlist and. And it will be playing when you, it pulls up to you, too. So they hear music that's already playing. So you could be like. You can have some kind of music that's basically all about killing car drivers. That would be the playlist to have. I'm gonna get in there with like death metal happening [CROSSTALK] Yeah. [CROSSTALK] [INAUDIBLE] Possibly like half an hour. Like Napalm Death. [LAUGH] Right? It's all [CROSSTALK] Cannibal Corpse. [CROSSTALK] [LAUGH] We're gonna have a four hour drive. [LAUGH] All right, that's enough with the Uber stuff. Uber, dead. I just felt like we, that's, it's a pretty major deal that's going on with them, I'm glad we I'm glad we chatted about that. All right, what else do you have for us Iyaz? You know, so last time, we've been talking about the Steve Jobs movie. We talked about Christian Bale being in the movie, then dropping out. Then there was Seth Rogan being in the movie and then maybe not in the movie. There's news today out of The Hollywood Reporter saying the Steve Jobs movie is not happening. At Sony. Sony was the company that was putting this together. You know Sony. They have, they bring in movies like Spiderman and other Spiderman movies. But they were, they were gonna have the Steve Jobs movie. It was supposed to happen. Everybody seems to be backing out, but the studio is still shopping around. The the rights to it. Universal, you know, Universal the makers of Wolfman coming up pretty soon. They, they're. They might even cross-over, man. [LAUGH] Interesting. You, you think Universal should add Steve Job to it's monsters? Like you got Wolfman, Dracula. Third guy who I'm forgetting, and that's Steve Jobs. [LAUGH] That's so offensive to the Jobs estate. I really, no, that's, that's so crazy that they would drop, that they're looking to, to get rid of the rights, I don't understand that. The money. That's the third one. Sorry. [LAUGH] Oh. So then I can sleep tonight. I, I don't, right? Like why are you shopping around the rights? I feel like, even though the Ashton Kutcher one bombed. I still think there's a lot of value. Yeah. In that property. Why are you shopping it around? Well Aaron Sorkin is still attached. And there was, you got, he's, he's written the script. That's the thing that's being shopped around. I mean, it's, it's, I guess Sony, maybe they didn't want the amount of headache going into this. Because, it, well, I wouldn't think the whole competition thing bet, between Apple and Sony. I don't think that's even playing into it over the years. But. To have this kind of thing with the amount of scrutiny that's going on there, and about the amount of money they'd have to throw at the high budget actors, I don't know if they can afford this, considering how Sony's very, very kind of on the edge when it comes to money. Don't you think? Yeah. Yeah, I, I. You know, it's, it's interesting. I think, make, you know, I wonder if [UNKNOWN] deal has anything to do with it. Like I don't, I've, I've heard and this isn't like, you know, a, a fact, but you always hear things like, oh, he's difficult, right? I wonder if like they kind of were at they butted heads on something. I don't know. This also the latest rumor to, to who's going to play Steve Jobs is Michael Fassbinder, Magnito. For Max Man, it's going to be- No, Dark it, I'm okay with that. No? How's his American accent? Anybody heard Michael Platt's American accent? Let me look him up. [LAUGH] Can't be worse freaking Charlie Hunnams. Oh my God. [LAUGH] Okay, you're right. You've been watching Sons of Anarchy, haven't you? Yeah, it's, two nights ago is actually like one of the best episodes, I think, the series has ever had. But man, that dude, he shoulda just been British. LIke they just shoulda had him be British. Kind of like when alls- . There's Fassbender. Yeah dude. He's. I think he'd be a perfect Jobs. He's an intense. And I think he could pull it off too. But I, I don't know if it's gonna, it it's gonna work out, and if. If Universal is gonna go with it. It just seems nuts. But back to Sons of Anarchy. You, remember how like, you could have a British guy in there. Right? You could have just said they grew up in England and they just came back. That would have been the end of it. Well, well, there's a lot of Irish dudes, right? Mm hm. [LAUGH] So it's like, why, why not? Do you watch that show Beechum? No, no, I haven't watched that one yet. It's, it's weird, but yeah, his, the main character is the guy who's in Pacific Rim. You know that dude? I haven't seen that movie either. But you know the actor? Have you seen Undeclared? Undeclared. Tell me you've seen that show. That's the first time I saw Michael Fassbinder was in that picture right there. [LAUGH] Oh really. So, so- I don't really know him, but that, that makes it good, because I like seeing a movie, like if the Steve Jobs movie is someone I don't really know. Right. Makes it more believable for me, you know. I, I totally agree. If it was Christian Bale I just would have been like, wonder how they can make. I, I could, I could see Christian Bale in that though. He's, he's a great actor. Yeah? Yeah. I could. I could. He is a great actor but the whole time I'd be like oh I wonder how they got that weird mole off his face for Steve Jobs. [LAUGH] Like that's the whole time I would have been like oh was it prosthetic, CG? What did they do? What did they do? And he has an accent too right? He does. He does yeah. Sonny backed off of that cuz of Bale's mole. It was too unworkable. Clearly that was it. It's a controversial mole. I mean, come on, it's got a mind of its own. alright, this is a crazy story about, Wal-Mart getting jacked on a few, clever shoppers who found a loophole with PlayStation 4. Yeah, so there's a bunch of stuff that's been going on online where people can proud of going to Walmart and getting the Playstation 4 for like $90. Playstation 4 does not cost 90 bucks anywhere unless I guess you like you, you bought the parts and made it yourself and you're Sony right? I'm just having a Sonycentric episode but. What was going on was these people were taking and creating fake price listing on www.amazon.com. Showing that the PlayStation is being offered for 90 something dollars. Then, they would print out the listing, before Amazon took it down. And go to Walmart, where they said they would price match anything online. So they would bring it in, they would show it to people. They'd go, oh it's taken down, but that doesn't seem to be an issue. So, a bunch of people proudly were showing off their [UNKNOWN] PlayStation 4s. What this has lead Walmart to do is, they're not allowing price-matching like this anymore. Cuz they're like, we got screwed, and you all are a bunch of liars. Well they, they modified. They modified their price matching policy. They, they were photoshopping, were they photoshopping Amazon prices? Is that what they were doing? There was a couple of different ways. Yes. One of the ways, one of the ways of just setting up your own fake listing and having like a company that looked like Amazon, I think some people actually wrote like, Amazon without one of the a's. So it just like moves on. [LAUGH] So like people, oh it looks real. And it's not real or like they would try to present it as real at the time. So yeah, they've modified this thing. Yeah, but. They restricted it to 30 competing retailers. So they have to be real, can't make them up. And you can have like, you can still do price matching. But, this is why we can't have nice things, people. A-holes. [LAUGH] Well, no. I think these people are actually kind of, I mean, it's slimy for sure. But. I, it's, they didn't break the law, right? I mean, Amazon [CROSSTALK] Amazon has a marketplace, right, Mm-hm. Is that, and that's where these came from, they came from the Amazon marketplace, so- These are fake listings. Right, there are fake listings within the Amazon Marketplace. So yes, they are fraudulent in many facets. Are they, is it illegal? It's a gray area. I think it's, I think it's really called fraud, dude. That's. Fraud, like you're defrauding somebody.>>You're the lawyer. You're the lawyer. Are you gonna, are you gonna tell>>Yeah. I don't have, I don't have my, my degree in fraud or defrauding.>>And I didn't really take a look at that kinda stuff. But I'm pretty sure that's [UNKNOWN]. So,we were talking about DUIs the other day.>>Yeah, but like>>And you're like, that's not a crime, is it? Like, it's a crime! He's a criminal.>> [LAUGH] [LAUGH] That makes him a criminal. [LAUGH] Yeah, but okay. All right. So, so, so back up for a, a step- Yes. Because this is essentially what could have been the case too, okay? I's, I, I'm a bad dude, right, and I stole a box of PS4's. I got four PS4s that came in a truck, fell off a truck in Chinatown, right? I put them up on Amazon. For $100 a pop. I have the product. I'm a, I'm a seller on Amazon. Now I am now you, Inez, are across the country and you know that Wal-Mart has a price match. You don't know that the one's I'm selling on Amazon are hot. You go and ya, and ya, and ya buy, you price match a PS4 to Wal Mart, and you get it for $100. The, the, the customer there, the one that tries to price match, they're not in the, in the wrong. This sounds like a law school final questions. Like yeah, you're right. [LAUGH] Because what happens is the person who- And show your work. [LAUGH] Like a long essay, it's just like, well that person who, who didn't have any like, any actual evil thoughts, I'm not using any the proper languages at all. But they're not intentionally trying to defraud somebody. Right. The first guy, Jeff, the man who defrauded Walmart, that guy is in a world of trouble. But the guy who just printed out cuz he thought it was real. It's kind of like if you bought stolen goods, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're evil. If you have an idea that it's like, oh, well this Playstation fell off a truck. Here you go, for five bucks. You might have an idea something's up. Right. Okay. You are correct, and I'm glad we deconstructed that. Now that I said it out loud, it makes sense. [LAUGH] I wanna talk about this real quick. A little complementary story about Amazon Marketplace selling. I've been going through a little bit of personal controversy with Amazon. And I have not been public about it until this very moment because I thought I could solve it. We couldn't solve it. So I have an Amazon Marketplace seller account that I would sell you know, anything around the house that like I just didn't want anymore, or gifts that I would get. Just, you know, I'd use it maybe five times a year. My brother got a gift from one of his he, he tutors people and, and he got a gift, right, and I tried to sell his, this product that he had. It was a mouse from Logitech. Didn't have the receipt whatever it was. Tried to sell it on Amazon for him. And two days later I got a message from Amazon. My seller account is suspended forever. No questions asked. Turns out, there's a lot of fraudulent activity in selling specifically Logitech. Products. Now I did not do anything wrong, I followed the instructions that I've always done when I'm selling something on Amazon, and they basically said, hey, the product you're trying to sell is fraudulent, no questions asked, you're done, forever. What's going on with that? That's messed up. That's always messed up. That sounds, that sounds terrible. So like Logitech, I guess. I mean, what do you think of? Is, is it just their peripherals? People are selling keyboards, and Logitech remotes? [CROSSTALK] Like what items are? So, so I dug a little deeper. It turns out. Dave had a history of fraudulent products being sold. And that's fine that doesn't make me the bad guy. I have no, I have 100% feedback. I've never had one issue. Not even been a return, never been a problem. Turns out they only, and this is an unwritten law, they have this thing that if you are selling Logitech products, you have to be an authorized reseller. And if you're not, they instantly flag that transaction as potentially fraudulent and suspended my account forever. Forever, I can never sell anything again on Amazon. Couldn't you just get a new account under new name and everything? But then I, then I'm, it sounds like you know, after our previous conversation I'm the bad guy if I do that. But you lost, you'll lose all of your feedback, right? You'd lose everything positive about that old account. Yeah, but like. You have to like, do so much work to avoid having Logitech stuff. I mean I learned my lesson the hard way. I just can't sell Logitech stuff. Even though on the product page, on Amazon, it says in the, in this nice, shiny button on the right side, sell yours here. [LAUGH] So did you ever talk, did you get to talk to someone at, at Amazon? Like, an actual person? So, I did. Oh my God. I did five. Half hour to hour long calls. And none of them were ever, ever resolved. It was always. They just see you as the enemy or something. Yeah, they're just like, you're a scumbag. They didn't say this, but they're like. [LAUGH] They're like, you're just a scumbag trying to get away, pulling a fast one on us. And it was, and I was always super super civil. Very polite, never once raised my voice. At the fifth call, I was like, listen, what you're doing is really screwed up. But yeah, there's like no way around it. And I guess I could create another account maybe under, you know, like Stacy's name or whoever it is. But I don't know. It's so insane what happened. And I even tried to get, I had a friend that used to work there. He said it's a dead end. I don't know. That's crazy. It's crazy. So I, I didn't even know Amazon. It's kind of like a Craigslist kind of thing, huh? I, I've never used that before, really. I mean you, you well, you've never like bought something through like the new and used link on an Amazon product page? I, I don't, I don't think I have. But, I don't, I didn't know that you could sell. Anything, like I thought like, you could sell music or you know, products like that, but I didn't know you could just sell like, you know, like something like you would on Craigslist. Yeah, if any, if Amazon has a product page for the product you want to sell, odds are you can sell it. Hm. And, and you can have like, an individual seller account, which is what I did, a very. Infrequent transactions, I, like I said maybe five a year. You know. Yeah. It's, it's insanity. Totally. Anyone can sell anything as long as you're not Jeff Fackler. Well you know what I learned? You know what I learned real quick? There's still Ebay ladies and gentlemen. Ebay works really well. You're like "Oh they didn't take that down?" Yeah. It's still around. Even after the dot com boom. Pretty much sell anything on Ebay besides human organs. [LAUGH] And even that's questionable.>>Yeah, exactly. Yeah and that's still a grey area.>> [LAUGH] All right. We might have room for one more story here. What do we got?>>Let's talk about this crazy artist.>>This guy he plans to wear an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset for 28 days straight. The idea he's just want to do an experiment. It's a really odd thing, his name is Mark Fareed, he's gonna have some handlers helping him. [CROSSTALK] bed and bathroom he's gonna wear constantly. He's gonna shower with it he's gonna go to the toilet with the thing on. He's gonna eat with the thing on. That's going to be a smelly VR headset. Yeah it is. That was enough for me to go what. Why, why would you do this? I don't understand the point of this. Like, how bad does your life have to be to be like look, for the month, I'm not going to be here. Just pop this on. I mean I, I kind of get what he's trying to say. Like I get the art that he's trying to make. And he's trying to say like this is the dystopian future we're all heading towards [LAUGH] Right? People have to feed you? Look at this! Yeah! [LAUGH] Look at him, it's like a **** baby! [LAUGH] Oh man, that's pathetic. But like, so what is he looking at, though? It's going to be some footage that is not supposed to be out of the ordinary. There's going to be a person that Fareed has never met. Who is gonna capture audio and video, and the sound's gonna be played back on the guy's headset. So he's calling this, this man, the other person, The Other. So whatever that other person sees, Farid is gonna see. So if some, if the guy's going to a, like this, these examples. If you go on a bike ride, a funeral, a bad movie, or even a bathroom trip. Farid's gonna see it. So he's actually entering like, the John Malkovich portal. Right? Kinda. Yeah. Except no control. Right. Right. So. Oh, that's super weird, man. But I, you know, as crazy as it sounds. And people are gonna be like, how is Jeff defending this ****? No, it's. He's trying to like say that we will eventually be so uninterested in living our own lives and wanna be sort of like you know, transported vicariously into someone else's life. Like I think that's what he's saying. Right? Here's a, here's a request for the other. So the person who's life is gonna live like days later cuz you're gonna get, he's gonna get this footage and it's gonna be played back in his in his, VR headset later. He's got specifications for the other. The other has to be a, a male, he's gotta be heterosexual and in a relationship, he says straight male parts because for Reed is a straight male and he doesn't want to quote complicate things. Oh, he's a pervert. [LAUGH] For Mayor Liship's part, it's a read that the narrative of what's happening, Mayor Liship is more likely to say out loud that he's going out to buy milk than one who lives alone, for example. So, he's gonna have some idea of what he's about to watch, I'm assuming. But, man, this is, this is intriguing. There's gonna, there's a Kickstarter for this as well, for the documentary of somebody recording what's happening to this guy. Mm. Cuz this, [CROSSTALK] I am not helping pay for this guy to do this, okay? Documentary, fine, but I'm not paying. For Farid, that's great, Fa, Farid. [LAUGH] Like, see, Oh. The thing with this, like if, if they guy, if the other, what I can't tell right now is if the drinks milk, does he have to do it too? Or like what? Dude, think, okay, **** that. Like, yes, you bring up a very interesting question, but, like, dude, for a month. He's essentially going to give himself brain damage. Totally. Right? Also, I think he's gonna damage his eyes, too. Yes. I mean, that's gonna hurt your eyes big time. Yes. He's gonna, he's gonna **** up his, and like, he might do irreparable damage to like, his coordination. And he might have to learn how to do things again. A month? That's a long. That's a long time. [LAUGH]. That is a long time. Yeah. A long-ass time. Yeah. You're right. As it, like, just think about when you've been on a roller coaster. Well, one of those V-R roller coasters. When you come out, you're a little bit wobbly. Yeah. That was like three minutes. Oh, my. Dude, he's gonna puke. He's gonna puke. [CROSSTALK] How much do you want to bet he's not gonna make it in 2010? He, he'll go insane. He's gonna drop out. Yeah, he'll go insane. Yeah. Probably after like, two weeks probably, I give him. 28 days is way too ambitious, man. Oh, my God. [LAUGH] I'm thinking of the scratch. Do you go up and under? Can you, does he, is he allowed to do that? I don't know the, all the rules. Least of his problems, bro. [LAUGH] Yeah. Well, he had a rash all of a sudden up here because you've been sweating and it's been pressed against your face for so long. Now how do you shower with this thing? [CROSSTALK] Waterpoof. I, I don't even care about those details. [CROSSTALK] I want to be the, I want to be the first dude to interview this guy the second the mask comes off after the 20th day. [CROSSTALK] [CROSSTALK] Where, where is the dude? Great question. Let's find out. I'm gonna look that up. Probably U.K. Is it U.K.? In, in London. Yeah. U.K. based, yeah, there you go. Somewhere. He's gonna- let's see, his living space will be on display in London, you're right. Yes! He's gonna be like an animal in a zoo the whole time too. Dude we should Skype with him on a 404. Have him on the show. Well no, we've gotta stand for this other first. That's what we gotta do, the other's got to show up until like days later he knows he's on the podcast. How is the other gonna broadcast what he's doing to Mark? Like how, is he just reporting stuff and then they're just gonna jack it into Mark's face. Yeah. So the other's experience will be filmed days in advance then converted for use with the Occulus Rift. So that's what's going to happen. I'm sure, There you go. I'm sure those, those Occulus dudes are like, yeah, this is exactly what we had in mind, thanks cuz. The others are going to be wearing, a camera on his glasses, so basically, it's like, somebody's like, interfacing with a Google Glass. With a VR. Yeah, I'm sure Facebook is super psyched. Haha.>> They're like awesome, This is exactly what we bought Occulus for. You are exactly right. Some **** in London exploit the whole thing. Oh man. I find this crazy **** fascinating. It's called Seeking I. Good luck to you. The letter I. Alright, good luck to you. And hopefully the damage you do is not permanent, is all I have to say,. Alright, I think that's that's it. I think we got a show today, dudes. We've done [CROSSTALK]. You can call us, 866-404-CNET. Odds are we won't be able to listen to that on the air tomorrow, but hey, still do it. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and then join the subreddit reddit.com/r/the404. Steven Beacham, ladies and gentlemen- Yeah. Thank you so much, buddy. Thank you, man, it was fun. I love let's try and do this as much as we can. I know it's gonna change when we get our studio, but it's always a pleasure, buddy. Right on, man. Ias, thank you,sir. You're welcome. All right. Thanks for, I'm sure. What were you doing like we just disturbed you so you can pop on the show here? You know like. Oh, I was doing. I, I was just dealing with not having a real computer instead a Chromebook and I was freaking out like how am I going to do Skype in a Chromebook? Like oh, yeah. No, you can't. So I had to like hook up, I had to use an old machine I had laying around. So, it didn't die. All right, well I'm glad you figured that out. Excellent. All right, that's gonna do it for us guys. Get in touch with the show. Send us an e-mail the404@cnet.com and hopefully, fingers crossed, we're back here tomorrow. If something changes, we'll let you know on Twitter. Until next time I'm Jeff Backalar I'm Isa Doctor. And that man over there in that set is Seth Glison