Backslashes are trash (Friends)
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
1hr 30min Nov 11, 2023
Mat Ryer returns with his guitar, an unpopular opinion & his favorite internet virus.
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Featuring:
- Mat Ryer – GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, X
- Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
- Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
- S100 Pbzzbaf Ebnq, Fhvg 7-701, Qevccvat Fcevatf, GK 78620
- ILOVEYOU - Wikipedia
- Samy (computer worm) - Wikipedia
- MySpace Worm Explanation
- The Net (1995) - IMDb
- Renfield (2023) - IMDb
- The Rock (1996) - IMDb
- Adaptation. (2002) - IMDb
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Jerod Santo
We are here with our good friend, Mat Ryer. Mat...
Mat Ryer
Hello.
Jerod Santo
...you're back.
Mat Ryer
Yes. My front is here as well... Thrilled to be here. I do feel like we are friends, even though we've never really met in real life. Do you feel like that really, that you're friends with me, or...?
Adam Stacoviak
He said "good friends", and I was just thinking I'd probably categorize it differently...
Mat Ryer
Interesting.
Jerod Santo
Please. Do tell.
Adam Stacoviak
I would say "great friend", honestly. I like you a lot. Yeah, Mat, I would buy you a sandwich and a coffee.
Mat Ryer
Oh, that's nice. I thought you were gonna go the other way. Acquaintance, or one of those...
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, it's called injected drama.
Mat Ryer
Is it?
Adam Stacoviak
I went to school for that.
Mat Ryer
Did you?
Jerod Santo
You've injected drama?
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, you just learn how to inject drama. It's all class, injected drama. You put the drama into the conversation. Injected drama.
Jerod Santo
Got it. Love it.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Mat Ryer
Nice.
Adam Stacoviak
Now I'm just bringing up -- what was the show again? \[unintelligible 00:01:29.29\] I've faked that. That's not even true. That's all not even true right there, what I've just said.
Jerod Santo
The injected drama part?
Adam Stacoviak
I made it all up. Everything.
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\]
Mat Ryer
Wow...!
Jerod Santo
Look at me believe. I'm so confused.
Mat Ryer
If you're making stuff up and it's that good, what's the difference between just being real?
Adam Stacoviak
Okay, here's what's not made up... And I'll be very honest with you.
Jerod Santo
I don't believe you.
Adam Stacoviak
That's a conundrum, right? \[laughs\] This is too funny.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, you got us.
Adam Stacoviak
I like Mat a lot. He is a great friend.
Jerod Santo
Can we believe it?
Adam Stacoviak
I made up the term "injected drama", and I did not go to school for it. But I might as well have, because I've been podcasting since the beginning basically, so...
Jerod Santo
That's true.
Adam Stacoviak
...I've learned through the school of hard knocks of podcasting.
Mat Ryer
Since you were born you've been podcasting.
Adam Stacoviak
That's right, yeah.
Jerod Santo
You came out ready.
Adam Stacoviak
Came out swinging.
Jerod Santo
You got a lot better...
Adam Stacoviak
Mic in hand, pop filter properly placed, so I'm not poppin' my p's... And \[unintelligible 00:02:24.08\]
Mat Ryer
Wow...
Jerod Santo
That first one was a real screamer.
Adam Stacoviak
Fun start.
Jerod Santo
Well, I'll save the fake definitions for the game show version... This is not a game show, this is real life, and I don't actually know if Adam likes Mat still, but we're just gonna roll with it.
Adam Stacoviak
\[laughs\]
Jerod Santo
I like you, Mat...
Mat Ryer
Thanks.
Jerod Santo
...honestly...
Mat Ryer
Yeah, I like you too, but...
Jerod Santo
Even though we've never met, you know? Adam and I didn't meet for years.
Mat Ryer
Really? By choice.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, by choice, I would say...
Jerod Santo
Well, just by distance. I mean sort of... Kind of like we have met you by choice, same kind of thing...
Mat Ryer
You don't really need to actually meet in real life these days. That is the kind of amazing thing. I remember when the internet was first a thing, and people started dating on the internet, and everyone was freaked out by it. They like "That's so dangerous. What are you doing?!" And now you're a psychopath if you go up to someone in a bar. We've gone all the way around now. So it's like making real friends...
Jerod Santo
Yeah. People are like "Why is this person approaching me?"
Adam Stacoviak
"Why don't you DM me first? Why are you talking to me to my face? Come on now... What's happening here? DM first, or it didn't happen."
Jerod Santo
This kind of marks maybe the end of guts. Not the Nickelodeon television show...
\[sample 00:03:36.24\]
...but the actual metaphor for your gumption. You know, like, you don't have to have any guts anymore to introduce yourself to someone, or approach somebody, because now you're just sliding into their DMs. It's the easiest thing in the world. Right? Isn't that kind of too bad?
Mat Ryer
I think that's why women have a horrible time on the internet?
Jerod Santo
Well, true. They used to have a horrible time at the bars, now they have it on the internet, you know?
Mat Ryer
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Well, somehow the connection has to be made, and nowadays you don't have as an aggressor - maybe that's not the right word, but as a person who's going after the other person...
Adam Stacoviak
The aggressor... \[laughs\] Takin' the lead, man...!
Jerod Santo
It's still not good.
Adam Stacoviak
It's called taking the lead.
Jerod Santo
As the person who's approaching, I just feel like it's gotten so easy that it's now small things; you do it to a bunch of people and hope somebody answers...
Adam Stacoviak
\[unintelligible 00:04:35.27\] too deep, Jerod...
Jerod Santo
Alright, fair enough...
Adam Stacoviak
I like it though...
Jerod Santo
Oh, you do?
Adam Stacoviak
...but I would say, to back that up, I haven't hit on anybody in... A long time. So I have no idea how it works.
Mat Ryer
Why don't we act it out now? We'll just do some role-play, and I'll be...
Adam Stacoviak
Let's do it. Yeah, let's go.
Jerod Santo
Alright, go ahead.
Adam Stacoviak
Can I be the aggressor, Jerod? Should I be the aggressor?
Jerod Santo
I think you are. I think you are.
Adam Stacoviak
I'm only doing this for podcasting's sake, so if you're listening to this, this is for you.
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\] Bring out the disclaimers.
Adam Stacoviak
Very specifically you. You listening to this right now. This is for you.
Mat Ryer
I'm just minding my own business...
Adam Stacoviak
I've been checking out your tweets and your code, man... It's stellar. It's really good stuff.
Mat Ryer
Oh, yeah?
Adam Stacoviak
I was wondering if we could sit down over coffee and maybe just talk about it... And some other stuff. Can we do that?
Mat Ryer
No, thank you.
Adam Stacoviak
Do you have time?
Mat Ryer
Nope. \[laughter\] Oh, no, it's not gone well.
Jerod Santo
Oh, man... You just got so rejected.
Adam Stacoviak
Are you sure? Because I've really got a good review for you. I'm good at code reviewing.
Jerod Santo
Hey, no means no, Adam. I'm stepping in. No means no. Okay?
Mat Ryer
This is Jerod, my friend.
Adam Stacoviak
So you only get one chance? There's no comeback? You just take the no and you walk away? Is that how it works today?
Jerod Santo
I don't know, it's been a long time for me.
Mat Ryer
I don't know, it is tough...
Jerod Santo
It's tough... \[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak
I didn't believe your no though, so I was like "Maybe I can go one more -- express the invite one more time. I really think you should reconsider."
Jerod Santo
So your opening line was "I've got a good code review for you"?
Adam Stacoviak
\[00:06:07.06\] Well, he said software developer. What am I gonna do? You know what I mean? You've gotta use context.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. Fair enough. It didn't work.
Adam Stacoviak
Hey Mat, you're on the internet, I'm on the internet... We should meet.
Jerod Santo
Failed spectacularly.
Mat Ryer
It'd be a bit creepy, I think, if people knew who you are before...
Jerod Santo
Yeah, you knew an awful lot about him.
Mat Ryer
That's weird.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, I did. I actually stalked you out a little bit. Your reputation precedes you, and therefore I can use it against you in the court of Adam.
Jerod Santo
Well, speaking of reputations... We have a reputation of playing a game called Unpopular Opinions.
Jingle
\[00:06:39.23\]
Jerod Santo
We played it the last time you were on, Mat. I think that was back in June, or July... I don't recall. It's been a while back. One of our very first episodes of Changelog & Friends. It's one of our worst ones yet, but... Nonetheless, here we are.
Mat Ryer
The only way is up then. This one can only get better.
Jerod Santo
This one's gonna have to get better from here... Yeah. \[laughs\] And we shared some unpops... So I thought we'd review them and maybe refresh. Maybe extend even, if you're one of us, our unpopular opinions.
Mat Ryer
Didn't know you could do that.
Jerod Santo
So who wants to go first here? We're gonna review last time's see how you've fared, and then we will refresh and extend.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, I can't remember what mine was last time. Can you?
Jerod Santo
Well, you barely spat it out last time, I remember that... Because it was the "Wired keyboards are better than wireless keyboards", but you were trying to do a meme...
Adam Stacoviak
That was awesome.
Jerod Santo
...a tweet meme, and you couldn't spit it out...
Mat Ryer
Where are you going with the keyboard? You just have it in the same place, except now it can run out of battery. Just plug it in. That’s my unpopular opinion. Wired keyboards are tired. And what’s wired, is wired. Sorry, a wireless keyboard is tired…
Jerod Santo
Now, this is going to be unpopular. Spit it out, Mat.
Mat Ryer
Tired, colon. Mechanical, no. Tired, colon, wireless keyboards, wired, colon, wired. Easy.
Jerod Santo
And so that was probably why it was not well received. Still popular though, actually...
Mat Ryer
It's hard to do memes in real life. The one I can do is "Charlie bit my finger." I'm good at that. I nailed that one.
Jerod Santo
Well, let's hear it.
Mat Ryer
Well, you just bite someone's finger until they go "Aaargghhhh!"
\[00:08:43.24\]
*Ouch, Charlie...! OUUCCHHHH!! Charlie...! That really hurts!*
Ouch, Charlie...!
Jerod Santo
Very good. \[laughter\]
Mat Ryer
That really hurt, and it's still hurting...!
Adam Stacoviak
This is why I call you a great friend.
Jerod Santo
The only one I can do is I can usually work a rickroll into many conversations... Which I actually did before before we hit record, I already rickrolled you guys. So that was fun. You probably didn't even notice it, that's how smooth it is.
Mat Ryer
Is that when you told us you weren't ever gonna give us up?
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Mat Ryer
You didn't mean that, did you?
Jerod Santo
I said I'll never let you down.
Mat Ryer
Oh.
Jerod Santo
And then you guys moved on, and didn't extend it. I had a single tear.
Mat Ryer
A single tear rickrolled down your cheek...
Jerod Santo
"Mickey, I think he likes it." That's a pre-internet meme. Do you guys know "Mickey, I think he likes it"?
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, yes.
\[00:09:38.00\]
*Look at this stuff. Top Cereal. It's supposed to be good for you. Do you wanna try it?*
*I'm not gonna try it, you try it.*
*I'm not gonna try it...*
*Let's get Mickey.*
*Yeah! He won't eat it. He hates everything.*
*He likes it! Hey, Mickey!*
*\[When you bring Life home, don't tell the kids it's one of those nutritional cereals you've been trying to get them to eat. You're the only one who has to know.\]*
My brother's name's Michael. Your brother's name is Michael too, right Jerod?
Jerod Santo
Yes, I do have a brother named Michael.
Adam Stacoviak
So we have brothers named Michael... That's odd, I'd never connected that... But that must have landed really well in your family.
Jerod Santo
Well, we called him Mickey when he was a youth, too. So that was a very popular meme. Do you know that one, Mat? It was a television commercial where they gave their little brother some sort of food. Was it cereal, was it candy? I don't know. And the line was "Mickey, I think he likes it!" And that was it. But it was huge. Everybody was saying that for years. Kind of like "Where is the beef?" Remember the "Where's the beef" one?
Mat Ryer
Not really.
Jerod Santo
No?
\[00:10:36.13\]
*It certainly is a big bun.*
*It’s a very big bun.*
*Big, fluffy bun.*
*It’s a very big, fluffy… Bun.*
*Where’s the beef?*
*Some hamburger places give you a lot less beef on a lot of bun.*
*Where’s the beef?*
*At Wendy’s, we serve a hamburger we modestly call the Single. And Wendy's Single has more beef than the Whopper or a Big Mac. At Wendy’s you get more beef and less bun.*
*Hey, where’s the beef? I don't think there's anybody back there.*
*You want something better. You are Wendy’s kind of people.*
U.S.-only? That's an old granny, just like "Where's the beef?!" These were like pre-internet memes. That one was pretty good.
Mat Ryer
What does she mean? Was it a dating app?
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\] She was given some sort of a meal, and she wanted beef. It was kind of like -- maybe it was soy-based, I don't know...
Mat Ryer
Oh, \[unintelligible 00:11:25.04\]
Jerod Santo
Yeah, she's like "Where's the beef?!" She really wanted a hamburger, and they wouldn't give it to her. So that was the -- that was the commercial. That was also very popular back in the day. Alright, Mat...
Adam Stacoviak
Let's just take a pause real quick... This show is sponsored, by the way... And this is the power of advertising, because decades later you can still be talking about it. I would encourage anybody listening to this that has something to share, work with us on "Where's the beef"-inspired advertisements to software developers, because --
Jerod Santo
Oh, you're sliding it in there?
Adam Stacoviak
That was a Wendy's commercial. Yeah, yeah, man... You've gotta take every opportunity. And it was about the size of the burger.
Jerod Santo
Right. They wanted more meat.
Adam Stacoviak
It was instrumental in their success as a business.
Mat Ryer
I see. Do Wendy's do big burgers?
Jerod Santo
Where was the "Mickey, I think he likes it"? Where was that from?
Adam Stacoviak
That was from Life Cereal.
Jerod Santo
Oh, it was cereal. So yeah, I remembered it.
Adam Stacoviak
Mm-hm... It was life cereal, which actually failed as a result of that advertising, so that's actually not a good thing... I'm kidding, I have no idea. But it became a spin-off; it became a game, too. Life, the Game. The cereal and the game were one and the same.
Jerod Santo
That's a spin-off of the cereal?
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, man.
Jerod Santo
I thought the game pre-dated the cereal.
Adam Stacoviak
They're cousins.
Jerod Santo
I'm learning something new every day.
Adam Stacoviak
Some would say kissing cousins, honestly...
Jerod Santo
Mat's over there like "What American pop culture are you guys talking about over there?"
Mat Ryer
Yeah, but it's good, because it's like watching a film... I mean, not a good film, but... Do you know what I mean? When I listen to Americans... Because don't forget, the only other time is in movies.
Jerod Santo
Oh. So to you we're kind of like movie stars.
Mat Ryer
Yeah. Basically, yeah. It's like hanging out with the really cool kind of dudes.
Jerod Santo
I always wanted to be one. Cool. Eh, sort of... I'd rather be an athlete, but that also wasn't in the cards. When I was growing up I wanted to be Michael Jordan or Ken Griffey Jr. Literally. Those two \[unintelligible 00:13:18.04\] But that's who I wanted to be. I didn't want to be Tom Cruise, or other movie stars. I wanted to be Michael Jordan, for sure.
Adam Stacoviak
Wow.
Mat Ryer
Nice.
Adam Stacoviak
That's cool, man.
Jerod Santo
Is it? I mean, it's not abnormal. I think a lot of kids wanted to be Michael Jordan when grow -- I could still wanna be Michael Jordan. Talk about advertising, that guy is a walking brand.
Adam Stacoviak
Gotta have a dream, man...
Mat Ryer
What about you, Adam? When you were tiny, apart from you were obviously doing your podcasts... What else were you --
Jerod Santo
He was already living his dream.
Adam Stacoviak
Let me tell you exactly what it is.
Mat Ryer
Yes, please.
Adam Stacoviak
Early in my youth I dreamed of being a corporate lawyer.
Jerod Santo
He's lying again. \[laughter\]
Mat Ryer
\[00:14:04.01\] You can't say that. There's no way that is true.
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\] I'm onto him this time.
Adam Stacoviak
I'm not kidding, I promise you.
Jerod Santo
This is true?
Adam Stacoviak
This is true. And the reason why was -- well, they make a lot of money.
Jerod Santo
But lots of different people make money.
Adam Stacoviak
And I was like "I can have a room full of gold bars as a corporate lawyer, and I'm set." This is like age 4.
Jerod Santo
How did you know that as a kid? Did you watch Wall Street, or something?
Adam Stacoviak
I was told that. The information came to me. It was disseminated to me from other sources.
Jerod Santo
Oh, okay...
Adam Stacoviak
Family, friends, co-workers, loved ones... Dogs talked to me... Everybody would tell me that. \[unintelligible 00:14:41.07\] "You can argue well. You should be a corporate lawyer." "Okay."
Mat Ryer
Oh, here we go.
Adam Stacoviak
"Do they make money?" "Yes, they do." "Is it lots?" "Yes, they do." "Okay, I'm in." That was it.
Mat Ryer
I see.
Adam Stacoviak
That was a Mitch Hedberg impression, Jerod.
Jerod Santo
Oh.
Adam Stacoviak
What do you think about corporate lawyers? "I'm for it!"
Mat Ryer
So you were an annoying little kid, and then they were like "Oh, you should be a lawyer, because everyone hates them."
Adam Stacoviak
That's not nice to say. What would make you think that, that I was an annoying kid?
Mat Ryer
Because they've told you you should be a corporate lawyer. That's not the sign of a child that's easy to get on with.
Adam Stacoviak
What?!
Jerod Santo
Right.
Adam Stacoviak
Have you met corporate lawyers?
Jerod Santo
They already heard how well he could lie. We've seen it here today. His lying is spectacular. So they were like "You annoying, great liar, and you want money. So - corporate lawyer. \[unintelligible 00:15:32.07\]
Adam Stacoviak
I would not say lying, Jerod...
Jerod Santo
Okay.
Adam Stacoviak
Would you say lying? I would lean more towards deception for entertainment. Entertaining deception. I would label it as that.
Mat Ryer
Creative truth.
Jerod Santo
Do you wanna split hairs? How about you, Mat? What did you wanna be when you were a little kid?
Mat Ryer
I did always want to be -- I always was interested in computers.
Jerod Santo
Seriously?
Mat Ryer
Yeah, yeah, from when I was tiny. I remember my dad saying "This will be a job one day." We didn't know that it probably was then. I'm not that old.
Jerod Santo
That was smart.
Mat Ryer
I was like "Oh, I could do that." I don't know if he was that smart, because he also said that we'd have shoes that we could hover around with...
Jerod Santo
Well, he just watched Back to the Future too, and he was just telling you what he saw.
Mat Ryer
Yeah. He watched Back to the Future 2, too. He watched them both.
Jerod Santo
In a tutu?
Mat Ryer
Back to the Future 2 as well, I mean...
Jerod Santo
So you wanted to be a computer guy, generally speaking, and you are one.
Mat Ryer
I sort of am a computer bad boy. So in a way, dreams do come true.
Jerod Santo
That's what I was just gonna get to - you're living your dream.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, but I also had another dream when my brother's body was just a cylinder of gelatinous material. It was a nightmare that stayed with me. You know how sometimes that happens...
Jerod Santo
Are you living that one?
Mat Ryer
No, that one thankfully has not come true.
Jerod Santo
That's a relief.
Mat Ryer
Yeah. But..
Jerod Santo
Then you also -- didn't you wanna be Johnny Depp too, though?
Mat Ryer
No, I didn't want to be Johnny Depp. Maybe I wanted to be Superman. I liked Superman when I was a kid.
Adam Stacoviak
Really?
Mat Ryer
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
He's the best superhero.
Adam Stacoviak
I wanna add one to my list. Can I add one to my list?
Jerod Santo
Well, do you wanna get a good one in there?
Adam Stacoviak
Well, it's another truth, of course...
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\] Alright, quickly...
Adam Stacoviak
A ninja. I wanted to be a ninja.
Mat Ryer
Oh, that's pretty cool.
Adam Stacoviak
I was really into ninjas. This is the age of life Kung Fu happening, Bruce Lee was popular...
Jerod Santo
Quiet Murder?
Adam Stacoviak
Sure... \[laughs\]
Mat Ryer
Parents were like "You're stealthy. You're good at arguing. You're great at killing. Do you know what? You should be a ninja."
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Mat Ryer
"Will I get loads of gold bars?" "Probably not. It's more of a job of honor." "Not interested then. I'll be a corporate lawyer."
Adam Stacoviak
That's a great synopsis of my reasoning. Great. It was awesome.
Mat Ryer
Yeah. I should have done the accents, really.
Jerod Santo
Maybe that was kind of like reverse psychology, if someone says "You should be a ninja", because they want you to be quiet.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, actually that's it. That's it. We've cracked it.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, like, you know, I used to play the quiet game with my kids in the car... You know, who can be quiet the longest. It took them a long time to realize what was really going on in that car. So maybe this was the ninja thing; it was all about silence.
Adam Stacoviak
Sure.
Mat Ryer
Were you also amazing at hide and seek, Adam? Like, you would just be hiding for hours?
Adam Stacoviak
Honestly? Yeah. I was really good at it. Really good.
Mat Ryer
\[00:18:15.05\] For whatever reason, they could just never find you, even if you were in a really obvious place.
Adam Stacoviak
Days later I'm like "Man, they haven't found me. This is good stuff. But I'm hungry."
Mat Ryer
"This is a good hiding place."
Adam Stacoviak
"And I need new clothes."
Jerod Santo
That reminds me of the -- have you ever heard of the Michael Jordan of hide and seek?
Mat Ryer
Is that who you wanted to be?
Jerod Santo
Osama Bin Laden.
Mat Ryer
Oh, really?
Jerod Santo
Osama Bin Laden. The best hide and seek player in history.
Mat Ryer
Good point.
Jerod Santo
Unpopular Opinions. Mat said that wired keyboards are better than wireless keyboards. Pretty much a popular opinion, Mat. I apologize for your lack of abilities. Everybody agreed with you. 72% of people on X - that's the website formerly known as Twitter...
Mat Ryer
Eggs.
Adam Stacoviak
Eggs, yeah.
Jerod Santo
You're a 10-eggs developer... 64 votes, 72% popular. On Mastodon 73% popular, so pretty much identical. 40 votes.
Adam Stacoviak
That's a good one.
Jerod Santo
Not bad, man. People pretty much think that wired keyboards are better than wireless keyboards.
Mat Ryer
Why do they keep making wireless keyboards then?
Jerod Santo
Well, I use one that attaches to my computer. It's all one piece... I'm not sure what you consider that.
Mat Ryer
What do you mean?
Jerod Santo
Like, it's a laptop. The keyboard is right there as part of the computer.
Mat Ryer
Oh, I see.
Jerod Santo
Is that wired?
Mat Ryer
That's more than wired. That's very wired.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, it's super-wired. So I'm with you, I guess. It's good. I don't like things that run out of batteries when there's no need for them to run out of batteries, right? It's like, why does this thing take batteries when it doesn't need to? So I think people were with you on that one.
Do you wanna refresh now, or should we move on \[unintelligible 00:23:40.08\]
Mat Ryer
Yeah. I think more generally you should simplify -- always choose the simplest versions of things. I have a very LoFi toaster; everything is mechanical on it. There's nothing -- it's got a timer on it, and I can turn on the heat... It's very LoFi mechanical. And it's brilliant, it's kind of indestructible, apart from - yeah, it has broken. But apart from that...
Jerod Santo
So you almost had us there, but then it broke, so it's pretty much just as bad as anything else.
Mat Ryer
Well, that does put a bit of a dampener on the point, but if you have these complicated, futuristic -- I've seen a toaster that you have a live feed on your phone, so you can watch it toasting, and when you see it's ready, you press the button on your phone and it pops up. We don't need that...
Jerod Santo
In general, the internet of things where all the things are small things in your house, usually they plug into the wall... I just think writ-large it's just a bad idea. Mechanical, sturdy, steel and metal-based products, that just do one thing well, for the win.
And the new, shiny thingamabobs are usually the parts that break. So we have a pretty new Suburban, and it has a bunch of features that are like bleeding edge, back when it was new a couple years ago - it's new-ish... And it's like, all that new crap is the stuff that breaks. Thankfully, they didn't change the way the engine works, but... I hear they're working on that as well. So do you want to share another unpopular opinion, or should we move on to Adam and we'll all share ours together?
Mat Ryer
I've got one.
Jerod Santo
Okay. Let's hear it.
Mat Ryer
So at conferences, or really when there's any audience, when the person gets up and says "Okay, are you ready?" and everyone goes "Yeah!!" and then they go "That's not good enough", I want everyone to collectively reply with "Hang on a minute... We haven't come here to have our excitement judged", something like that.
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\]
Mat Ryer
You know what I mean? It's Monday morning, it's tech conference... A lot of people have got to be there for work, you know what I mean? What are we doing? Leave them alone. Let them do the half-assed "Yeah, we're ready..." That's fine. That's my unpopular opinion.
Adam Stacoviak
Come on, you could do better than that... Right...? \[laughter\]
Mat Ryer
See? You don't do it in real life, do you?
Adam Stacoviak
\[00:26:02.15\] I'm with you, man. That's -- imagine the person doing it. Like, you just fall into a caricature, essentially. You're on the stage, you're a hyper person, and you're there to hype folks up... And obviously, the first round, even if it was hype, is not hype enough. "Come on, you could do better than that! One more. Come on, everybody!"
Jerod Santo
Here's a question. I tend to agree; you're getting popular. But is there a context in which that is legit? Like, it's tech conference, Monday morning... You've painted that particular picture. But is there ever a time where you can reject their level of enthusiasm appropriately?
Mat Ryer
Well, I'd take it as a failing on me if I've not got them excited. It's my job as the hype person. And I do host conferences sometimes... So it's literally like the first --
Jerod Santo
But isn't that part of the hype? It's like, "That's not good enough! Get louder!" Isn't that part of your hyping?
Mat Ryer
No, it's not part of mine. If anything, I'll say "Fine. That was that was absolutely fine." They know they could have done better. We all know, but I just don't make them do it.
Adam Stacoviak
There's an easy way to fix this, honestly... Unfortunately, it requires a little bit more tech. You could analog it, but I think it would require maybe a decibel meter that's visible to everybody... That basically just like shames you visually, with colors, something like that... Like, orange and yellow bad, maybe even red, if you're just not loud enough... But if you're loud enough, it's kind of green, lime green, and really green, and then like super-green; it's clear. So like a decibel meter on the wall, visible to everybody.
Mat Ryer
You could have a camera on the audience, and then show as a heatmap in the audience. Make the people glow those colors.
Adam Stacoviak
Where it's hot.
Mat Ryer
Yeah. You'd be like "Okay, down here, in quadrant B..."
Adam Stacoviak
"These folks here hot."
Jerod Santo
So just visually shame them.
Mat Ryer
It's sort of the opposite of what I was going for Adam, really, where I'm saying "Leave people alone..."
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, okay.
Jerod Santo
So you think whatever level of enthusiasm your audience has is completely and always appropriate.
Mat Ryer
Yes. And if I'm not happy with it, then my shirts coming off, or something; not that, but...
Adam Stacoviak
Come on, Mat...
Mat Ryer
It's my job to get them going.
Adam Stacoviak
This is not nerds at night. We haven't invented that yet.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. Shirts on, please. Okay, well, I kind of agree with you. I think there's times where you could use that as part of your hype, but I don't think at tech conferences it's appropriate. I would leave the shirt on... I think if you're at like a hockey game, or a tennis match, and you're trying to get the crowd into it, to help the game progress and your team win, I think telling them it's not good enough is appropriate. Like, they've gotta get louder. And in fact, they do have those decimal meters in some stadiums, so... I think there's times when it makes sense, but... In the context that you provided, I agree with you.
Adam Stacoviak
Well, let's just nerd out on this real quick, because when you say that shirts off...
Jerod Santo
Are you gonna nerd out on the shirts off?
Adam Stacoviak
No, no, no. This show we haven't told the audience about that, that \[unintelligible 00:28:58.19\] The subtitle for the podcast could be Shirts Off. Nerds at Night. Shirts Off.
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\] This is getting worse and worse.
Adam Stacoviak
That's my unpopular opinion.
Jerod Santo
No, your unpopular opinion was the "Apple Magic keyboard is the best keyboard ever created." I don't need to congratulate you on being truly unpopular... Because Adam, most of your unpops are like -- one was like you should have habits. It's like "Yeah, we all agree." \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak
Habit stacking.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, habit stacking. It's like, that's not unpopular. It's just your opinion. This one was really unpopular.
Adam Stacoviak
I still believe this is firmly the best keyboard ever made. This one right here.
Jerod Santo
Nobody agrees with you.
Adam Stacoviak
That button right there - biometric, boom, gotcha. It's in there.
Jerod Santo
And the reason is because it has the touch ID on it. But my keyboard also has the touch ID on it, and it's not that one. So that rules out that particular argument.
Adam Stacoviak
Right.
Jerod Santo
\[00:29:57.09\] Everybody disagreed with you; specifically, 61% other people disagreed on X, and 81% on Mastodon, which shows were the true people of tasty live. That's 57 votes. So highly unpopular on Mastodon, pretty unpopular on the \[unintelligible 00:30:13.13\] formerly known as Twitter.
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, my gosh...
Mat Ryer
I have a keyboard, which is a Q10 Keychron, which I love... And it's got a knob on it. It's got a spinning knob for volume, and things. But you can, of course, customize these. So I changed it so that when I rotate it clockwise, it prints "Ha!" So every time I -- you know, it clicks around, so I can do "Hahahahaha", loads, just really quickly. And if I twist it the other way, it deletes two characters, so it deletes a ha. And so I'm able to just -- if I want to reply to someone, just depending on -- I can just choose the knob to set it to the right level of funny. Click Send.
Jerod Santo
Can it go to 11 has?
Mat Ryer
It can.
Jerod Santo
That's cool.
Adam Stacoviak
Could you do like option keys, where you hold the option key and twist it, and it's not ha; Now it's a particular emoji, or a modifier?
Mat Ryer
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, I like that.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, definitely. It could be lols...
Adam Stacoviak
Well, in that case, I think this keyboard sucks. This is the worst keyboard ever now.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, it's better than yours, Adam. Yours can't do that.
Adam Stacoviak
I'm holding up my biometric, amazing Apple keyboard. You never said what the keyboard was. It's the Apple -- what do they call these? This is like the full one, with the keypad and everything... And it's wireless.
Jerod Santo
Ah, the Apple Magic keyboard.
Adam Stacoviak
And now it's using an obsolete input to power it, which is terrible. It's lightning, not USBC...
Jerod Santo
So you disagree with yourself as well.
Adam Stacoviak
Well, there's parts about it I don't like... But I still think it's the best ever. I'm using it. I have a choice. I can go and purchase a whole different keyboard. I continue to use it.
Jerod Santo
You should try Mat's. That one sounds pretty cool. You could get a bunch of laughs.
Adam Stacoviak
No, thank you. Knobs, and stuff? Nah...
Jerod Santo
I like a knob.
Adam Stacoviak
No, thank you. Type something, Mat, real quick. Let's hear this thing.
Mat Ryer
Oh, yeah. Check this out. This sounds beautiful.
Jerod Santo
Is it clicky?
Mat Ryer
It's clicky. \[00:32:03.14\]
Jerod Santo
That's nice. Turn the knob.
Mat Ryer
You can't really hear that.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. That is cool. That should be clickier.
Adam Stacoviak
Compare that to this beautiful sound. Listen to this beautiful sound. Listen. \[00:32:19.25\] That's amazing right there.
Jerod Santo
Mat's is better.
Adam Stacoviak
You put that on the internet, that's fire right there. It creates gold. That's like a Mr. Beast killer right there. He's down. That video - hm... Nah.
Mat Ryer
That's an entire podcast. It's basically like an ASMR thing of like relaxation sounds, but it's just keyboards typing; different keyboards, different clicks, click levels... Different competencies of typing.
Jerod Santo
You call it "Nerds at night." "Keyboards out." \[laughter\]
Mat Ryer
This is good.
Jerod Santo
Alright, so here's your new unpopular opinion, but you're going to extend it; you're doubling down.
Adam Stacoviak
I'm going to double down by saying this is the best keyboard ever. And any Macintosh computer that cannot leverage Touch ID is just garbage. And they're out there.
Mat Ryer
What should people do if they've got one of those computers then? Just --
Adam Stacoviak
Doesn't support Touch ID? Trash.
Mat Ryer
Give it to a niece...
Adam Stacoviak
And I've got an address you should send it to.
Mat Ryer
Have you?
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Mat Ryer
What's the address?
Adam Stacoviak
I won't tell it on the podcast. It's a secret in a way. But we're gonna put it in the show notes. So check that address out. If you've got one of these... They're generally Intel CPU computers. I think pretty much since the apple silicone, they've supported Touch ID on the Mac, which is just beautiful... And if you have one of these that doesn't support this touch ID on the Mac, you should just throw it in trash. And I've got a recycling center that you can send it to. And they do a great job, and I'll give you the address in the show notes.
Mat Ryer
Okay. Secret, but it's in the show notes of a widely distributed podcast.
Adam Stacoviak
Right. I can change it there. When we bake the shows, they're baked. We never take those cookies back.
Jerod Santo
Can you base-64 encode it?
Mat Ryer
\[00:34:06.10\] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jerod Santo
Or ROT13. Can you ROT13 it?
Mat Ryer
To make it secret.
Adam Stacoviak
I will.
Jerod Santo
You should.
Mat Ryer
Oh, yeah...
Jerod Santo
So you have to both listen, and go to the show notes, and get to decode it. So it's ROT13, listener.
Adam Stacoviak
I guess I could tell you on the show. I mean, it's no problem with me, really.
Jerod Santo
No, don't tell them. This is good. This is good.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, I think all the show notes actually should be that.
Adam Stacoviak
Can somebody do that for me real quick? I'll type you the address, and you just give me the cryptic key, and I'll just speak it...
Mat Ryer
\[laughs\]
Jerod Santo
Me?
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. Either of you. I don't know how to do it.
Jerod Santo
Ask ChatGPT. It'll do it.
Mat Ryer
You can just do it in the browser.
Adam Stacoviak
Just a second...
Jerod Santo
Surely you could, but you could also just ask ChatGPT. It's one of Adam's favorite things to do.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, but ChatGPT hallucinates, and it's likely to get that right.
Jerod Santo
It might ROT14 it, or 15 it.
Mat Ryer
I don't think it'll do anything to it.
Jerod Santo
You don't think so? I'm pretty sure it will.
Mat Ryer
That'd be really interesting, actually.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, let's find out. Give it a string and say "Please ROT13 encode this."
Adam Stacoviak
I actually didn't say please. I just said "Do this." \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo
Okay. Well, if you want to be rude about it...
Adam Stacoviak
Here's the address to send it to... I don't know what to do with this once you've received this. I'm not even --
Jerod Santo
Well, they decode it, of course.
Adam Stacoviak
Decode it then. That's what you've got to do. Decode the encoded address. This is it. Send to 100PBZZBAF EBMQ, FHVG 7-7-1, QEVCCVAT FATF, GK78620.
Jerod Santo
That's good radio right there. That is good radio.
Adam Stacoviak
Congratulations, you have now rid yourself of the tyranny of the world, which is any Apple computer that doesn't support Apple Touch ID. They will recycle it for you. They're certified in this, and... Do it.
Jerod Santo
Alright. Let's do my turn. I said automagical is a great word, and we should say it more. Of course, this was in direct response to my previous actual opinion, which is that automagical is a terrible word, and we should never use it. My original was popular.
Mat Ryer
Yes.
Jerod Santo
My rebuttal was also popular. So I'm not sure what to make of this, but... More popular, actually. So back in the day, when I said automagical is a dumb word, I had 57% agreement on X, and 50/50 on Mastodon. So they were kind of with me, kinda not. "Automagical is a great word, and we should say more" - 83% popular on X, but hey, only six votes. Not only do they agree, but they just don't even care. It was like "Six of us are gonna actually take the poll." Which is way down. Maybe that's a result of the website itself... 65% popular on Mastodon, with 34 votes. So a little more action there. But gosh, they both agree with me that it's an awesome word and they don't really care about it, either. So I feel like a total dweeb.
Mat Ryer
When you say it's a bad word, you're pulling in the crowd that don't like it, I think. It's a kind of selection bias, isn't it? Whereas when you say "I love automagical", which - it's rare that you're going to agree with that. But if you do, it's going to feel very special when someone else says it, because you're going to feel validated, and like you've found your people.
Jerod Santo
You're going to affirm it.
Mat Ryer
Yeah. So I think it's quite sweet. I mean, there's only six of them. But you know...
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak
Do you think that this makes you think of a song, Mat, by any chance? Like some sort of automagical thing... Did you already do a song on this? I feel like you did.
Mat Ryer
\[00:37:57.21\] Did we?
Jerod Santo
Yeah, it was the end of our last show. It was the Beatles "Let it be automagically."
Adam Stacoviak
Can you do a remix?
Jerod Santo
Did you bring your guitar? We haven't even asked.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, I've got it right here.
Jerod Santo
Okay. So the last song wasn't very popular. It was actually a better unpopular opinion than mine. Could you do a version of the automagically song that's good?
Mat Ryer
Well, I don't know if I could do one that's good... \[laughter\] I don't remember what the song was at all, so it'll be completely different. Is that okay?
Jerod Santo
Okay, that's probably the best.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. Start fresh.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, it's probably a good strategy. So you can use automagical, you can use automagically, which rhymes with more things, in case you're hoping for some rhymes...
Adam Stacoviak
The last time was Mat Depends, right?
Jerod Santo
Mat Depends was the last episode. Yeah, he sang an automagically song...
Adam Stacoviak
Okay, I thought so.
Jerod Santo
I thought it was beautiful.
Adam Stacoviak
It was a wonderful title for a podcast too, honestly. I think we outdid ourselves with that one.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, Mat Depends. Coming soon, by Changelog. Alright, here we have, Mat Ryer... What's the song called, Mat?
Mat Ryer
You tell me...
Jerod Santo
Automagically, by Mat Ryer. The remix.
\[00:39:09.29\]
Mat Ryer
It's automagic... It's automagically my favorite thing... But nobody likes me, nobody takes me seriously... Nobody likes me, nobody takes me seriously...
And then one day I saw on the internet some guy who agrees with me...
I thought "This has never happened before, some guy just agreeing with me...
And now I'm one of Jerod's six friends...
One of Jerod's six friends...!
Adam Stacoviak
\[unintelligible 00:40:18.01\]
Jerod Santo
Wooh...!
Mat Ryer
It went on a journey all of its own.
Adam Stacoviak
It did.
Jerod Santo
That was a journey.
Mat Ryer
Yeah. And also, my airpods were noise-cancelling half of it, so I couldn't hear \[unintelligible 00:40:30.06\]
Jerod Santo
Oh, no...! You were flying blind.
Mat Ryer
Yeah. It was good though. They were the best bits.
Adam Stacoviak
I will say, in Mat Depends there is a chapter called "Automagical by Mat Ryer." So if you're listening to this...
Jerod Santo
...and you liked what you've just heard...
Adam Stacoviak
Well, either way. If you dislike it, you should listen to it, because you might like that one.
Jerod Santo
We should get a poll going on which Automagical song is better.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, let's do that.
Mat Ryer
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Alright, let me share my unpopular opinion now, since you guys have done so...
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, wait, sorry, so you're gonna extend yours now, right?
Jerod Santo
No, I have a new one. But go ahead, Mat.
Mat Ryer
Well, I just wanted to just -- I said this last time, but Adam, your habit stacking thing genuinely changed my life.
Jerod Santo
Wow.
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, my gosh. Are you being serious?
Mat Ryer
Yeah, yeah. Habit stacking is like you've got a task to do, like you're gonna go make coffee, so pile another task on top of that, because you're waiting around anyway... And then that becomes a habit, a sort of super-habit. Now, be careful, dear listener... You may go too far, like I did. Then you end up with a habit stack overflow.
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, gosh...
Mat Ryer
And if that happens - yeah, then all the plates drop and crash to the ground. But it's brilliant.
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, good. I'm glad I can help. One unpopular popular opinion at a time. That's my life.
Jerod Santo
Right. Well, you're changing lives over here...
Mat Ryer
It's changed mine...
Jerod Santo
I also habit-stack. You know, I do post on our Instagram reels, and I've made a habit - every time that I'm posting to our reels, that I also drop the kids off at the pool.
Mat Ryer
\[00:42:04.27\] Oh, really?
Jerod Santo
Shall I share my unpopular opinion now?
Adam Stacoviak
You ruined that beautiful moment. Man... Alright. This is a fault, not an extension.
Jerod Santo
This is a freshens. This is the freshens. In fact, this might prompt a brand new song even. A brand new single from Mat Ryer. So listen closely, Mat. I despise backslashes. Okay? They disgust me. This is one of the primary reasons why I don't like Windows. It uses backslashes in its path names. Forward slashes are cool, I'm down with underscores, hyphens are okay... The pipe character is fine... I'm even okay with the tilde, and backticks. All good. But backslashes - get those dreadful characters out of my face before I slap someone.
Adam Stacoviak
Woof! Gosh, man.
Jerod Santo
And I'm looking at you, php namespaces...
Adam Stacoviak
Okay, Jerod. I'm with you. It's popular.
Jerod Santo
Backslashes. Mat, what's your take? For or against?
Mat Ryer
Um, I kind of agree. I heard someone the other day read out a domain name, and they said it's http colon backslash backslash www dot etc. And I said "Alright, I'll go to your website now then." And it's just an error. Actually, it somehow figured it out and it worked, which was annoying...
Jerod Santo
Oh, that's cool.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, browsers are smart.
Mat Ryer
...because they couldn't prove the point. Yeah, but... But yeah, I kind of agree. I don't love them.
Jerod Santo
When I see them in a path, name like c colon backslash system32 or whatever, I just want to throw up.
Adam Stacoviak
Or slap somebody, like you had said.
Jerod Santo
Or slap somebody. Yeah.
Mat Ryer
What about line feeds though?
Jerod Santo
What about line feeds, like backslash n? I mean, I live with it. I'm also left-handed in a right-handers world. I also live with that. There's things in life you just have to overcome. And every time I see a backslash, I have to overcome the unction I have to throw up in my mouth.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. Well, let me be the first to say I'm sorry that you're in this position in life. One, as a left hander. Thank you for admitting that. And then two as somebody who just despises backslashes.
Mat Ryer
I thought as a left-hander you'd love a backslash. You're not smudging it for once.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. Back and to the left. I mean, forward slashes are better, just for the simplicity of up and to the right is a good thing. It's a positive thing. Back and to the left is just like -- you don't want to go there, right?
Jerod Santo
That's right. Nobody wants to backslide, or backslash.
Adam Stacoviak
No. No.
Jerod Santo
It's just the wrong direction.
Mat Ryer
Backslide.
Adam Stacoviak
Do you want a forward slash though, or do you want to just slash? Because I feel like -- we live in a slash world. If you say slash, you mean forward slash, and it's just like, that's how it is.
Jerod Santo
I just say slash and I let everyone figure it out. Now, I know Gerhard, he says forward slash forward slash a lot. Because I've heard him say it, and he's thorough. That's thorough, but unnecessary, because no one's gonna assume backslash. And if they are, I just don't really want to talk to them.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, it's like tabs versus spaces. Let me share a story with you, because early in my days of producing this podcast I used to say forward slash... Until the Jerods of the world said "Listen, just say slash, okay?."
Jerod Santo
"The Jerods of the world..." \[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak
Just say slash.
Jerod Santo
Did someone actually write in and say that?
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, they did.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. Was it actually a Jerod? Was it me?
Adam Stacoviak
It was in a tweet... It was somewhere in the ether, I don't know where necessarily... But I would say forward slash because I would do the ad reads, you know? I'd be like "Go to--" I would even say http. Like "Go there..."
Jerod Santo
Colon slash slash?
Adam Stacoviak
Colon, forward slash -- no, I wouldn't go that far. But I'd say like "Changelog com slash podcast." Or sorry, I'd say "Changelog dot com slash -- forward..." I can't even say forward slash. I'm like messing up just trying to even redo it. "Changelog dot com forward slash podcasts." And that didn't sit with anybody. It's slash, man. Get it right, it's slash. And if it's backslash, I'm gonna slap your face, like Jerod.
Jerod Santo
It's kind of like when people would say www a lot...
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, that's gone, too.
Jerod Santo
And it's like, come on, guys. We only have so much time. You're on television. You don't have to spell out the https colon, forward slash forward slash www dot... Mat, were you going to say we changed your life again, was that what you were about to say?
Mat Ryer
\[00:46:10.03\] Yeah, because you've changed my life again, Adam, because I -- I think if I was describing a URL, all of it, I would say forward slash each time. So...
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. It's assumed, it's implied...
Mat Ryer
Okay, good.
Adam Stacoviak
I mean, you do have the option of using backslashes, but the browser will correct you. However, you're just wrong.
Mat Ryer
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
So don't do that. Just slashes. Simplify your life. I say "Remove the extras. Simplify your life to the essentials." That's what I say.
Jerod Santo
Keep it mechanical. Mat, do you have -- have you thought of any good lyrics, any rhythms and rhymes for the backslash? This song could be called "Backslashes are the worst." It could be like "Backslash, you disgust me."
Mat Ryer
Yup.
Jerod Santo
"I want to slap someone..."
Adam Stacoviak
I would just call it backslash.
Mat Ryer
Okay.
Adam Stacoviak
Keep it simple.
Jerod Santo
By Mat Ryer.
\[00:47:00.07\]
Mat Ryer
I don't mind ash, I don't even mind Bash... I like caching and cache, and I'll clash with a dash in a flash, man... I'm not gonna say gosh... I don't even mind hash... I'm out on the lash, man. I've got a rash. Oh my gosh, man, I'm gonna smash your face in if you backslash me. That's trash!
A backslash is a trash...
A backslash is a trash... Yeah, backslashes are trash...
And don't see forward slash...
Just say slash... Just say slash.
Just say slash... No need to say the forward bit...
Just say slash...
Jerod Santo
Wow. That might be your best song ever.
Mat Ryer
Oh, I loved it.
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\] I thought it was great.
Mat Ryer
Good.
Adam Stacoviak
It's a treat, man. To see you be able to like take pretty much anything and make it good... Obviously, you're having fun with it. But it's still just -- it's still good.
Jerod Santo
It sounds nice.
Adam Stacoviak
You're just like on the -- on the tip, making it up as you go. And you're pretty good at it. Where did you acquire that skill? Is it developed? Is it ingrained? Is it built-in? Were you born with it?
Jerod Santo
Did you come out of the womb with that?
Mat Ryer
I think it's an ADHD type thing, where it's like, normally that's a negative in life... But if you need to quickly -- if you need to quickly improvise a song about backslashes, then it can come in handy, just in that narrow case. I don't know, but it's very fun. I mean, you have to be prepared to fail. That's actually the thing. These don't get cut out, I know that now... Like, whatever happens --
Jerod Santo
Like that first song you sang.
Mat Ryer
Yeah. \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak
Jesse Eisler actually said this recently, he was saying that the best favor you can do for yourself is to not take yourself so seriously that you can't be embarrassed, or -- man, I wish I can remember his exact words. But basically, don't worry about being embarrassed. Forget about that. Just let it go. Do what you've got to do in life, because nobody cares anyways... People are more paying attention to themselves than even you anyways, so just go and do your thing, and don't be embarrassed. Don't be afraid to embarrass yourself.
Mat Ryer
\[00:50:01.02\] I think it's good advice. On the other side of it, be forgiving of people. If they take a risk and it doesn't work, just forgive it and move on.
Jerod Santo
Don't keep bringing it back up again.
Mat Ryer
Yeah. That's the worst thing you can do. Or just say "That was a terrible joke." Sometimes people do that, which is fine. It happened to me on a conference once. I was hosting, and I introduced somebody, I was going to; they were on stage, and then something went wrong with the tech, so I had to \[unintelligible 00:50:28.21\] for a bit and fill some time... And I said a joke, and it got a little of a titter of a laugh, but it was more like an embarrassing sort of nonsense thing to say than a laugh out loud kind of joke. And then the guy, he just said "That was terrible. That was absolutely terrible." And then got an enormous laugh because of the power dynamic; and I'm the host, and stuff... Which I'm completely fine with. But it was annoying, because I was then sort of contractually obliged to give him a nice introduction still.
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\] Well, I'm glad you overcame that terrible moment.
Adam Stacoviak
That's right.
Mat Ryer
Well, that's it. I embarrass myself a lot. Like, I really do. Because I like to kind of be funny and be silly at my own expense. And sometimes it just doesn't land... And it's sort of -- if you're too concerned about those moments, sometimes when I'm trying to sleep at 4am, they come back to me and I'm like "Ughh... Yeah, I forgot I did that thing."
Jerod Santo
Ouch. No wonder you can't sleep at night.
Mat Ryer
Exactly. But you've got to forgive yourself, and forgive each other. Then we can have some more fun.
Jerod Santo
Mat, you thought it'd be fun to talk about viri.
Mat Ryer
Oh, yay.
Jerod Santo
Is that the plural of virus?
Mat Ryer
It's gotta be. \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo
We haven't had enough of viruses yet in this these here United States of the Earth... But these are not the scary kind of viri, that are going to put many people in the hospital and whatnot... These are internet worms, viri, etc.
Adam Stacoviak
It's viruses.
Jerod Santo
Is it viruses? Dang it.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, you must have known that, Jerod, saying it, hearing it back...
Jerod Santo
Gosh. That's a big fail by me. I hope nobody rubs my face in and makes me wake up at 4am...
Adam Stacoviak
That's another game show we could do, called Plausible or Not.
Jerod Santo
How would that game work?
Adam Stacoviak
It's plausible that viri is the plural of virus... But it's not.
Jerod Santo
Okay, good game. Good game. That game is plausible \[unintelligible 00:56:26.26\] So Mat, you brought your favorite virus here with you.
Mat Ryer
Yeah. We've all got a favorite, so I thought I'd talk about mine.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
He asked us what our favorites were, and we went and put some thought into it, and thought we would share it. So do you want to go first, since you're the guest? Or... I don't know. Do you want to rest? You've been working hard.
Mat Ryer
No, no, I would love to go first.
Jerod Santo
Okay.
Mat Ryer
I don't know if you remember this one... Let me set the scene. It's the fifth of May, the year 2000. If you lived before the year 2000, the year 2000 was the future.
Jerod Santo
Right.
Mat Ryer
So we were very excited about all the possibilities of everything in this time. To be honest, a little bit disappointed. We're not getting the hover shoes that we were promised, or the you take a pill and you don't have a receding hairline... Do you know what I mean? We're not getting all everything that we were promised.
Jerod Santo
Well, let me add to this context. So 1999 was a heck of a year. And it ends with New Year's Eve, and of course, Prince famously wrote "Party like it's 1999." So when that ended, when it flipped to 2000, we thought -- first of all, the y2k bug, but hopefully that's not the one you're talking about. Because that one's lame. But we had that whole situation, and then 2000 came, Prince wasn't relevant anymore, y2k was over... It was a brand new day. And very exciting. But also a little disappointing, because nothing really changed on January 1st 2000; everything felt the same. You were like "Oh, I was hoping for --" I don't know, an alien landing, or what did we expect?
Mat Ryer
\[00:58:02.21\] Probably that. Aliens.
Jerod Santo
We expected a lot.
Mat Ryer
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
All the power outages... We thought there's gonna be power outages, literally, right? Like, that was what the news was saying. It was like "We may have the power grids go down..."
Adam Stacoviak
Lawn mowers just randomly turning on...
Jerod Santo
Yeah, exactly. So anyways. But now it's May 5th 2000, so we're a few months past this.
Mat Ryer
And out of the Philippines comes a worm, which was called ILoveYou, or it was called lovebug. Sometimes it was called love letter. And it was basically - you'd get an email that had an attachment that said "I love you." And windows would hide the extension of files if they were known extensions, for sort of aesthetic reasons. So this was a .vbs, a Visual Basic Script, or VB Script file. But it looked like just a letter attachment; it just looked like a little file. So of course everyone double clicks it, and on Windows 95 at the time double-clicking that would execute it. You could run scripts like that on your computer by just double-clicking them. So of course, you're just running untrusted code, you don't know what this thing is, you don't know you're gonna run a program, you think you're going to open an email from the love of your life... But instead, what it does was it deleted a few files, it changed some images, apparently hid all the mp3s... It didn't delete them, it just hid them.
But then it also -- using VB script, the libraries, it would access the Windows address book, and then it would send itself as an attachment to all of your contacts, with the same thing, or a similar thing. ILoveYou. There were a few variations. Sometimes -- one said Virus Alert. Quite clever. Another one said "Important. Read carefully." Another one of the subjects was Forward Joke, and one that I think wouldn't work on me, just in all caps, FRIEND MESSAGE. That one wouldn't work on me. But the lovebug was -- that was it. And then it just spread -- 10 million machines, I think, as far as we know, and probably more. Amazing.
Jerod Santo
That is amazing. Do you know how they got rid of it, or how it was mitigated, or what happened in the aftermath of the lovebug?
Mat Ryer
First of all, in the Philippines it wasn't illegal to do this the first time it happened. So the person who did it didn't actually get prosecuted. And then it was like a couple of months later they introduced new laws to stop this from happening again. But it was essentially Windows then had to patch it and say "Oh, we're not gonna just run VB Script files like this. We can't--" But it's just like a kind of a time of innocence, where --
Jerod Santo
A naivety, almost.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, it was a more innocent time.
Adam Stacoviak
It says the damages were estimated to be in the billions of dollars. And what it would do is it would send itself to all the contacts in the victim's Microsoft Outlook address book, which obviously spread it, and then it would randomly overwrite files with copies of itself, which obviously resulted in data loss. So I mean, that's kind of a random thing based upon what it's saying here.
Mat Ryer
So you'd run it multiple times.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. But billions of dollars. This is 2000 days. I mean, if you -- would that be trillions now? Close to trillions? Or maybe at least 1 trillion.
Jerod Santo
Great question.
Adam Stacoviak
Because 1000 billion is 1 trillion, just to let everybody know. That's a lot. So how did they patch it?
Jerod Santo
Oh, they patched it by patching Windows, right? Like, they just said you can't execute arbitrary scripts in your email.
Mat Ryer
And that's why we can't do it now.
Jerod Santo
This is why you can't have nice things.
Adam Stacoviak
You patch it like download it to disk and then run it, or something like that?
Mat Ryer
It's actually not that hard. Yeah. Or just send someone a command and say "Put this in your terminal."
Jerod Santo
That is hard for people.
Mat Ryer
That's how we install programs.
Jerod Santo
See, I wouldn't fall for that one, because I'd open up my Windows prompt and I'd see that c:\\ and I'd just close it. Or just not run in that terminal.
Adam Stacoviak
Or you'd punch the screen. \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo
That's the one.
Adam Stacoviak
Ah, man...
Jerod Santo
Alright, well, my favorite computer worm is Sammy. Do you guys know Sammy?
Mat Ryer
\[01:02:07.11\] No.
Jerod Santo
Sammy was famous back in '05. Sammy is the MySpace worm, if maybe you just know of that, the MySpace one. This one's cool--
Adam Stacoviak
Should have been called Tom. Tommy.
Jerod Santo
No, Sammy was the person who wrote it, so that's why it's called Sammy. Samy Kamkar, he wrote this MySpace worm back in '05. This one's cool for a couple of reasons. It became the fastest-spreading internet worm in history at the time. Also, it's pretty much benign. I mean, it doesn't cause any real problems. It did take MySpace down, but that's just one website on the internet. But contextually --
Mat Ryer
That's a plus.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. The most popular website at the time was MySpace. I mean, this was --
Mat Ryer
Yeah, but the fact that people could put those horrible backgrounds on... Like, all the MySpace pages were horrific, because they gave them too much control. So taking MySpace down is actually a gift.
Adam Stacoviak
That was the original Code Pen.
Jerod Santo
Ouch. You're dissing on Code Pen like that, huh?
Adam Stacoviak
Nah, the ability to hack on the internet, in the public. Show it off.
Mat Ryer
I know. It's cool, but...
Jerod Santo
It was cool. You could totally customize your page, trick it out.
Adam Stacoviak
What year was this, Jerod?
Jerod Santo
This was 2005. And in fact, the ability to customize your page is how Sammy Kamkar wrote the worm. So this is a classic cross-site scripting hack, where he put in his profile page, some JavaScript code... You're not supposed to put JavaScript code in your profile page. MySpace did make it hard to do that, and he has a great technical explanation of the hack, which I'll include in the show notes; we're not going to go step by step. But it's fun to read, because it shows how he subverted all of their techniques in order to scrub and sanitize the output by basically just doing things they weren't expecting.
So the big mistake was you couldn't run JavaScript inside of your little custom area of code on your page, but you could run JavaScript inside CSS. And so the whole thing starts with a div style equals, and so now it's inside the context of CSS. It's the style attribute on a div. And then inside there, he sets background URL to JavaScript. And that worked. Sort of. He had to do some tricky stuff, like --
Mat Ryer
So it's trying to access the URL, but it's actually a script.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, exactly. And they would actually scrub the word JavaScript. So he would do Java, and then a new line, script, and that would get past their checkers, but it wouldn't get past the browser. The browser would still execute it. So like that's step one. And he goes through about 11 steps that he had to do in order to accomplish this. What happens is, once Sammy got going, when you view his profile, it will display the string, but most of all, "Sammy is my hero", which is one of the reasons it's called the Sammy worm. And when that got displayed, it would then send Sammy a friend request. So he's basically making -- he made himself the most popular person on MySpace overnight, to the tune of like millions of friends, from hundreds to millions. So much so that it took down MySpace servers, because they couldn't handle -- maybe like a database issue? I don't know. They weren't ready for that level of traffic.
So yeah, when you'd view the profile page, it would do that, and then replicate itself into their own profile page, and spread from there. Relatively harmless though, like I said. I mean, obviously against the law, I guess... Well, it was against the law, because he was raided by the US Secret Service and the ETF -- no, the Electronic Crimes Task Force, the ECTF, because of the worm. He entered a plea agreement to a felony charge... So he became a felon because of this. And he got sentenced to three years probation, with only one computer, and no access to the internet, which was funny. 90 days community service, and $15,000 in restitution, as directly reported by Kamkar himself, on some video that he made for Vice. So he got a slap on the wrist, but...
Adam Stacoviak
\[01:06:14.08\] Bummer, man... Could you imagine that - one computer, no internet? Ugh. How long? Three years?
Jerod Santo
Yes, three years.
Adam Stacoviak
Well, those are not friends he expected to make, right? The US Secret Service, and the ECTF... Who wants them as friends?
Jerod Santo
Yeah, they sent him a friend request to his house.
Mat Ryer
One of the secret service -- isn't that like the people who look after the president? Why are they getting involved in this?
Adam Stacoviak
The president was on MySpace.
Mat Ryer
Oh. He was friends with the president.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. So the president was being protected by the US Secret Service by the Sammy worm on MySpace. The president was like "No, I choose my friends."
Jerod Santo
He made a friend that he didn't want to make...
Mat Ryer
Wow.
Jerod Santo
So that's Sammy. I'll link the -- I think the technical explanation is fun to read through. I had a good time going step by step through it this morning, so I'll link that one up.
Adam Stacoviak
How many servers do you think MySpace had in 2005? Do you think they had like a cluster? Do you think they had sharded databases to maintain their uptime? What do you think the infrastructure was like back then? 2005. This is like Twitter shut down days, when Twitter couldn't even stay up.
Mat Ryer
Yeah. It's got to have just been LowFi manual network stuff, panic-driven... Probably had spikes in traffic, which meant they had to panic their way to get some kind of scale. And probably just adding machines...
Jerod Santo
Yeah, I remember it. Was it Digg? What year was Digg? Probably the same timeframe. Digg got big. That's digg.com, which was really the dawn of web 2.0. I remember the very first time I could actually upvote on Digg and it wouldn't refresh the entire browser page. I didn't know what was going on. I was like "Wait a second, I clicked a link, but I didn't go to a new page, and yet the thing updated." And that's how I learned about Ajax.
This had to be back in '05 timeframe... But I remember reading about Digg's scaling problems, because they had big scaling problems... And they were LAMP stack, I think. And that was the first time I heard about sharding. So they had a big technical deep-dive on how they sharded Digg back in that timeframe. So my guess is that at least sharding was around, and MySpace was probably doing that as well... But it was all manual and very difficult. It wasn't things like -- what's that?
Adam Stacoviak
That word sharding really just gets me, man, everytime I hear the word shard.
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak
I know what it means, but... The word sharding just gets me.
Jerod Santo
You have to emphasize the D.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, it's great in American accent.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, you can do the sharting.
Mat Ryer
I say that shaading.
Jerod Santo
Oh, you do?
Adam Stacoviak
Shaaading.
Jerod Santo
Shaaading. You're saying it like it disgusts you. Like I say backslash. Shaaading. \[laughter\] I like yours.
Mat Ryer
Oh, it makes me sound so bloody posh. Nah, I'll probably just finish the bloody podcast talking like this.
Adam Stacoviak
You could try...
Jerod Santo
I would appreciate that.
Mat Ryer
I could try.
Adam Stacoviak
That would be fun.
Mat Ryer
But if I say sharting...
Adam Stacoviak
It's a different thing, man.
Mat Ryer
Exactly. Yeah. But it's funny. But in your accent, there is no difference to my ear.
Jerod Santo
It is hard to tell. I try to enunciate the D, but I fail.
Adam Stacoviak
I think you did fine, Jerod. I was just saying like the word sharding is just not -- yeah, I guess sharding and sharting is pretty dang close, you're right.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, it is.
Adam Stacoviak
Wow. Yeah. Well, I guess that's why I don't like the word, because it's like -- I mean, do you know what you're talking about? Wait, wait, wait, hang on a second... Are you a software developer? Okay, cool. I know what you're talking about.
Jerod Santo
Right, right, right.
Adam Stacoviak
But if you're not, then we've got a different problem and I'm not gonna be near you, okay? I'm walking away.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, I think the two things are kind of like equally unenjoyable. I haven't heard anybody who likes either process. So maybe there's some poetic alignment there...
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. Nobody wants to \[unintelligible 01:09:51.14\] their databases. It's not fun. Manually...
Mat Ryer
You mentioned Ajax in 2005... Before that, I invented Ajax by using iFrames.
Jerod Santo
\[01:10:03.11\] How so?
Mat Ryer
So I would put an iFrame on the page, I would style it to be one pixel, and white, and with no border. So you just don't see it.
Jerod Santo
Okay.
Mat Ryer
Same color as the background. In those days, with JavaScript - it was just an object on the page. So I would essentially make HTTP posts, but the target being the iFrame. And that was a way to communicate with the backend. And then the response from the backend was JavaScript - this is probably quite dangerous... It was JavaScript that executed in the iFrame, which reached out to the parent and call functions to update the page. And then the JavaScript in the page would then go and update just those little pieces.
Jerod Santo
Nice.
Mat Ryer
So it was essentially like -- because there wasn't that XML HTTP request object thing then... But that's the way that we got around it. And then we learned, like, you'd do tricks -- because it was slow, the internet was a bit slow back. You'd do tricks like you would immediately update the UI kind of proactively, assuming that it's going to be successful, and then you'd go and do the little backend piece. And only if it failed, would you then update and say "Oh, this didn't work." But that's it. That was it. Ajax.
That's one of the things about being around in the web in the early days - you didn't have all these problems solved. And I also didn't do a computer science degree, so I didn't even learn basic computer stuff. And that means I get to invent loads of things that everyone just already either knows about, or now we've solved properly.
Jerod Santo
That's cool.
Adam Stacoviak
That's right.
Mat Ryer
It was great fun. So satisfying.
Adam Stacoviak
I would just call it iJax instead, though. iJjax.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, that's a good name. Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Did you name it and publish it? Did you publish the technique, and name it, and get it out there?
Mat Ryer
No. I didn't know you could do stuff like that.
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\]
Mat Ryer
I'd love to have done that.
Jerod Santo
Because then you could have been -- you could have your own Wikipedia page at this point as like the inventor of iJax. But now it's not even a thing anymore.
Adam Stacoviak
You can still be on Wikipedia. I can put you there right now.
Mat Ryer
Okay.
Jerod Santo
Appreciate that.
Mat Ryer
Yeah. Don't say anything mean...
Adam Stacoviak
iJax, invented by Mat Ryer.
Jerod Santo
I would say, Mat Ryer is a co-host of the Go Time podcast, and the singer/songwriter behind the world-famous "Backslashes are trash" single, off of Changelog Beats.
Mat Ryer
That went viral...
Jerod Santo
Adam, were you going to share a computer worm with us?
Adam Stacoviak
I'm not allowed, I guess... I've just got to keep vamping here, while Mat --
Jerod Santo
Mat keeps interjecting his stories every time we get to Adam.
Adam Stacoviak
That's right.
Mat Ryer
Sorry.
Adam Stacoviak
Anything else, Mat? Anything else?
Mat Ryer
Well, I hope the song becomes a viri in its own right, and goes viral.
Jerod Santo
Alright, Adam, this is the coup de gras. This is the end of the show. You're going to end the show with this.
Mat Ryer
It's gonna be a good one. We've built it up a lot.
Adam Stacoviak
Here it comes. Listen. 1995. This was a day when basically dial-up internet was the way. It was the earliest of early days, when pretty much anything you said about computers was true, because no one knew about computers, right? You could make it up. This was a fun day, right? There was this virus by a shadowy group called the Praetorians. And these folks were trying to orchestrate a series of cyberattacks, with the premise of gaining control over critical systems, especially those in the US government. They were trying to get the government's stuff, and they wanted to leverage this virus, and they were gaining backdoor access to mainframes, in major institutions, in banking, and manipulating data, controlling systems, and just doing all they can do to advance their own covert interests.
And right in the middle of all this, right in the central standpoint of all this is Angela Bennett. She's a typical early day computer programmer, somehow ensnared into this web of conspiracy. She comes across this mysterious disk in her office, and it's malicious software... And she recognizes this threat poses some issues to their plan. She finds out it's the Praetorians, and she takes these drastic measures, of course, to fight back. And to her demise, they attempt in many ways to erase her identity, begin to frame her for crimes and murders she never did... And it's just a big issue. This is 1995, Praetorian virus... This is a big deal.
Mat Ryer
\[01:14:35.08\] I mean, being in trouble for murders you did commit is bad. But if you didn't commit the murders at all, that's got to be worse, hasn't it, I would say?
Adam Stacoviak
Angela's -- she hasn't been the same since. She's really still fighting to regain trust of the public.
Jerod Santo
How did it all end?
Adam Stacoviak
She fought back. And I can't tell you the rest.
Mat Ryer
Was this a movie?
\[01:14:55.29\]
*Computer analyst Angela Bennett was just doing her job... When she stumbled onto something she never should have seen.*
*"I plugged it in and I'm staring at the personal medical files of the Undersecretary of Defense Michael Bergstein."*
*"Someone hacked into the system."*
*"How long would it take to track her?"*
*"It depends on how long she stays online."*
*"Why would anybody want to do anything?"*
*Something that reaches farther than she could ever imagine.*
*"They hack into computers and they cause this chaos. Wall Street --"*
*"The market panics as officials suspended trading."*
*"The Department of Water and Power in Atlanta. LAX."*
*"We've lost radar contact."*
Jerod Santo
This is six stars on IMDb, I think.
Adam Stacoviak
I can't confirm nor deny. I just -- this is one of my favorite viruses.
Mat Ryer
Oh, hang on a minute... This is just completely fictional.
Adam Stacoviak
No, this is real.
Mat Ryer
Is this film based on a real thing, or have you watched a film and believed it to be a documentary again?
Jerod Santo
Well, Adam, I think we have to give you the Miss Congeniality award.
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, nice. Thank you.
Jerod Santo
Also a Sandra Bullock movie... \[laughs\] Tell us about the time that that one bus was driving really fast, and they couldn't stop it or it would explode...
Mat Ryer
Yeah, that is annoying.
Jerod Santo
I think Keanu Reeves was there.
Adam Stacoviak
I can't confirm nor deny that either.
Mat Ryer
That's annoying. That's annoying because you miss your stop; not only at risk of being blown to smithereens, but you're also late for yoga, or wherever it is you're going.
Jerod Santo
Well, you get there early...
Mat Ryer
Yeah. \[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak
In the end though, what this really did, this virus, what it did is it really highlighted the vulnerabilities of the digital age, and the expansive reach of cyber criminals and what they can do, and the fragility really of our online identities. And so ever since then, she's been an advocate with the EFF to regain her composure, and to fight back against these Praetorians. And I for one applaud her. She's valiant in her efforts, and she's won. And the internet is better since then, because of this. They thwarted all these backdoor accesses; they were all shut down. And that's a good thing.
Jerod Santo
We should get her on the show.
Mat Ryer
Angela?
Jerod Santo
Don't you think? I'd love to hear that story.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, Angela Bennett. In all honesty, when I thought about viruses, I was just thinking -- the one I know most of, that's near and dear to my heart... Because I'm a movie fan, right? I had to go there. I'm like -- I wasn't gonna go to... What was it, Hackers? Was that the movie, called Hackers, with Angelina Jolie? Wasn't that called Hackers?
Jerod Santo
Yes, sir.
Adam Stacoviak
I mean, that one wasn't visual enough. And I thought about Lawnmower Man, which was not a virus. It was more like VR gone wrong.
Jerod Santo
Didn't he go viral, though? Like, he infiltrated the whole --
Adam Stacoviak
He did. He became a virus, but how could you describe that? Whereas the net was literally a virus. And I thought I could walk you all through the plotline...
Jerod Santo
Are there other movies about viri?
Adam Stacoviak
I think viri has now become a real word, at this point... We need to put it into the dictionary. I don't know...
Mat Ryer
Well, see, I thought that movie could easily be based on something real, like a real story.
Adam Stacoviak
\[01:18:00.12\] Which one? Lawnmower Man?
Mat Ryer
The Net. The Net. Yeah, Lawnmower Man could be based, but it would be different; it would just be someone who cuts grass.
Jerod Santo
It'd be different. \[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak
You know, think about that though, honestly... Back in that day, 1995, how many viruses had been in the world to make somebody, a scriptwriter, director, studio, sign on it and say "Let's do this"? Because the internet was so young... They educated pretty much the general public on what computers really weren't, really. I mean, you knew there was dial-up internet, you obviously had the floppy disk that was famous in the movie, and the accessibility of a computer show to a computer on the internet... I mean, that was probably a thing, I guess. But they leveraged all these emerging pop culture phenomena at the time to their advantage, to say "Okay, Praetorians against the world... One lone soldier against the world... Identity erased, murders that didn't take place, that she's being blamed for..." Great plotline for that time. 1995.
Mat Ryer
Yeah. Very ahead of its time. But if you think about it, fear usually predates -- like, fear's one of the first things that we get just as a society when anything new is there. So probably the fear of... I remember, I genuinely remember somebody, when I was young, saying that if a computer had a virus, you had to be careful, because you could catch it. Like, that's what they just thought that was. They just didn't know.
Adam Stacoviak
And I can't tell if you're being serious or not, honestly. Are you being serious?
Mat Ryer
Yeah, genuinely.
Adam Stacoviak
You're being serious.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Can you use a sign? Like, you put two fingers up when you're being really serious...
Mat Ryer
No, because the new Apple computer puts balloons if I do two fingers, for some reason.
Jerod Santo
Oh, gosh... The balloons. I hate this feature.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, why is that if you're holding up two? Doing that is swearing in the UK. So it usually means like --
Jerod Santo
Is it? It means peace over here.
Adam Stacoviak
Because you've got that third finger kind of half up. Is that what the swear is? And this is not a swear, and this is a swear?
Mat Ryer
No. It's that. It's just two fingers. It's the same as the one finger.
Adam Stacoviak
What's wrong with your third finger there, your middle finger, your ring finger? What's wrong with that? Yeah, put it down.
Mat Ryer
That's a good point. I don't know. Yeah, you're right. It doesn't get down so easily.
Jerod Santo
I don't understand these special effects. Why does a thumbs up do bubbles, and two fingers does balloons? It makes no sense.
Adam Stacoviak
The folks on audio are like "What's wrong with this podcast? What happened here?" Because they see none of this.
Jerod Santo
This podcast went off the rails in minute one, so...
Adam Stacoviak
I suggested to Mat, because I couldn't believe him, to put up a sign of sorts, and he puts up two fingers, because I said just two fingers, and then balloons appeared on the video.
Jerod Santo
Bubbles if you're telling the truth, and balloons if you're lying.
Adam Stacoviak
Do it, Mat. Go. Okay, so you can catch a virus from a computer, for real. Okay...
Mat Ryer
A teacher thought that, yeah. I also know somebody who told me a story -- because when Google Maps was out, and they had the satellite view, they said "Oh, we went outside, and we were waving, and we could see ourselves on the thing." And it's like, it's just satellite imagery, it's not a live satellite feed.
Jerod Santo
And you fell for that one too?
Mat Ryer
No...
Adam Stacoviak
Just a second... You're saying that's not a live feed of my house that I'm looking at whenever I look down on my house from the Maps?
Mat Ryer
When Jerod messages you and you see in his background, you're like "Wait, that's in my house", then I think then yes, that is real.
Adam Stacoviak
"I'm on the inside."
Jerod Santo
The call is coming from the inside of the house.
Adam Stacoviak
That's right.
Mat Ryer
That's spooky. That did actually send a shiver down my spine when you said that. Because don't forget, it's like a movie talking to you too, for me.
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, my gosh...
Jerod Santo
I got shivers last night. Do you want me to tell you a quick story before we call this a show?
Mat Ryer
Yeah. What shivered you?
Jerod Santo
This was like fear shivers. Like classic shivers. So I'm driving home from basketball practice, and my wife tells me -- so our 15-year-old daughter was at home with the younger girls, babysitting, so to speak, watching the house. And my wife tells me this story, she says, "Well, while we were gone", they saw a black car drive up the driveway, and then an older woman walking across the front walkway to the door, made eye contact, and rang the doorbell. Now, our strict rule is you just don't answer the door when we're not at home. You just don't do it.
Mat Ryer
\[01:22:15.11\] Yeah.
Jerod Santo
But that eye contact made my daughter think "It's super-rude and weird if I don't answer the door. She knows I'm here." So she answered the door. Yes... And the woman needed directions. She was desperately needing direction \[unintelligible 01:22:30.16\] And so my daughter said "Hold on, let me go get my phone so I can help you." And she goes into the house to get the phone, she turns around, and the lady's inside our house. Like, she let herself in, and standing in the entryway. And when my wife told me that part, I got shivers, because I'm like "That's the start of a murder scenario."
Mat Ryer
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
It turns out it was cold out, and she needed directions, and so she stepped inside... And my daughter gave her directions, and she's like "I hope I make it", and she left, and everything was just fine. But when I heard that part of the story, I got the goosebumps, because I was like "Once someone's inside your house, with your daughters there, and you're not there... Ugh!"
Mat Ryer
Yeah. If they're a vampire as well, if they're in the house...
Jerod Santo
That's even worse. Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Well, the vampire couldn't come in. There was no invite. She just walked away and said "Stay here. I'm gonna get my phone."
Jerod Santo
Don't answer the door.
Mat Ryer
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Well, you know about vampire lore, right? They cannot come in unless invited.
Mat Ryer
But remember, in the story, the old woman is in the house. That's what I'm saying. So whatever -- something's happened, and maybe they're just like "Yeah, sure, come in. It won't belong. I'm just gonna get my phone."
Adam Stacoviak
Okay. So since we talked about movies by way of my virus in the show, have you seen Renfield, either of you?
Jerod Santo
No.
Mat Ryer
No.
Adam Stacoviak
Sadness. Okay, sadness.
Jerod Santo
The movie is sad?
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. Nick Cage is coming back. And he's not good in every movie he's in, but he's amazing in this one. Nicolas Cage, phenomenal...
Jerod Santo
What's this movie about?
Adam Stacoviak
It's a magnificent retake on the Dracula story. It's a whole new spin on it. It's gory and hilarious, and if you at all like good cinema, put this on your list. And report back in Slack. I want to hear what you think.
Jerod Santo
Is it a comedy?
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. It's a dark comedy.
Jerod Santo
Okay. Gotcha.
Mat Ryer
I mean, Nicolas Cage is -- I agree... Did you see that -- something about a talent, an unbearable talent. It's a Nicholas Cage film where he plays himself, and he's just like a bit of a narcissist kind of guy, and gets into a scrape... But it's such a great movie. I think he's brilliant. He in a way plays a caricature sometimes of his own '80s kind of action, or '90s action type.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. Multifaceted. He could be funny, and serious...
Mat Ryer
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Like I said, not every film he does is amazing, by any means, but his performances are always really attempting to be well done. I haven't seen everything he's done to be like "He's not a good actor", but he's done some films you're like "Meh..." Like, Face Off at the time was a really good movie... But then you look back on it, it's like "It was kind of like a... Not a really great movie." Like, there's some bad acting in that one.
Jerod Santo
The Rock was good. The Rock holds up, I think.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, The Rock.
Adam Stacoviak
The Rock was amazing, yeah.
Jerod Santo
That was the same timeframe.
Mat Ryer
That movie is why I moved to San Francisco for a bit.
Jerod Santo
Honestly? Because you wanted to be close to Alcatraz?
Mat Ryer
Yeah. I wanted to go to Alcatraz.
Jerod Santo
You could have just visited.
Adam Stacoviak
Or National Treasure... One, only, really. I mean, every other follow-up to that was not good.
Jerod Santo
I haven't seen National Treasure, actually.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, that sort of treasure hunt... I love all that.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. I do, too. But Renfield - put it on your list if you're a vampire/Dracula fan. Like, it's just really well done. It's a whole new spin on it... I can't recommend it enough.
Mat Ryer
Okay. And it was "The unbearable weight of massive talent" was the Nicolas Cage movie I was talking about. It's also worth a watch.
Jerod Santo
Ah. Well, since all good things come in threes, I will now give a Nicolas Cage movie that you should watch. Adaptation. 2002's Adaptation, in which he plays twin brothers.
Adam Stacoviak
Really?
Jerod Santo
And it's a movie about writing, and it's very interesting. Yeah, it's a very interesting movie. It's a Charlie Kaufman movie, if you know that writer... Directed by Spike Jones. Adaptation. Nicolas Cage is very good in it.
Mat Ryer
And it's got Meryl Streep in as well, isn't it?
Jerod Santo
I think so, yes. Same guy who wrote Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Being John Malkovich... Like, this guy makes interesting movies.
Mat Ryer
Oh, I love that.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. So Adaptation, that's a good one. Add that to your list.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, agree. Concur.
Adam Stacoviak
I'm going to. I've watched this, but I've gotta rewatch it, because it's been so long that I'm thinking "Have I watched it?"
Jerod Santo
He's great in it.
Mat Ryer
Yeah, both of him.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Well, thank you, Jerod.
Jerod Santo
Alright. Well, we started with unpopular opinions, and we ended with popular Nicolas Cage movies. Should we say goodbye? Should we continue to talk? What should we do here? Should we sing ourselves out?
Adam Stacoviak
Oh gosh, no... No more.
Jerod Santo
Let's not. We've put Mat through enough.
Adam Stacoviak
It's over. It's over...! \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo
Alright, thanks for hanging out, y'all. Talk to you on the next one. Bye, friends.
Adam Stacoviak
Bye, friends!
Mat Ryer
Bye, friends!
