This was originally posted on gozgeek.com.

The 80s are back!

We are living in strange times, especially when The Empire Strikes Back and Ghostbusters top the box office charts almost over 35 years after their initial release. I wish it didn’t take a pandemic for some of these great movies to get some theater screen time.

In other 80s movie news comes the story behind The Pointer Sisters Neutron Dance in Beverly Hills Cop. The song was originally released in 1983, but didn’t become popular until it was attached to Beverly Hills Cop. I didn’t have MTV, so I’ve never seen the video. The video is genius on how it integrates the movie. When you watch the movie again (there is no if you watch it again), be sure to check out the IMDB Trivia page. I love the story behind “the five pounds of red meat in the bowels” bit.

To boldy go

I’m torn on the new animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks

On one hand, I’ll watch anything Star Trek, even if it’s with an inner rage (I’m looking at you, Star Trek Into Darkness). But, on the other hand, I don’t know if Star Trek will work as an animated show. Yes, I know about Star Trek, The Animated Series but that doesn’t mean I’ve watched it.

Lower Decks will be Star Trek canon, taking place in the Star Trek Prime Timeline (let’s pretend the Kelvin Timeline doesn’t exist). The show is set in 2380, which places it right after Star Trek: Nemesis and 5 years before the destruction of the Utopia Planitia Shipyards. I was hoping that it would take place in the same year as Star Trek: Picard since I’m sick and tired of everything being a prequel. I want to see time move forward!

Amazon at 25

Amazon, the online store powerhouse, turned 25 this past week. I can’t find my early orders, the website only goes back to 2006 for me, but I know one of my first purchases was the Star Trek The Next Generation: Technical Manual. Since then, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on the site, which is just plain scary. But, living in the middle of nowhere means that you have to mail order just about anything.

Thank goodness we no longer have to wait 6-8 weeks for delivery. We must have had the patience of Job back in the 70s and 80s.

An investment for the future?

When a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. sells for over $100K, it’s a good thing for a seller, but a bad thing for the hobby. Every person who is currently holding on to sealed copies of games will now think that their games are worth a lot more than they are.

If it ain’t broke

Russia’s Retro Lenin Museum Still Runs on Decades-Old Apple II Computers

Giggidy

Did you know that it is Chuck Yeager’s voice that airline pilots try to imitate for in flight announcements?

I need TP!

One of the smartest shows of the 90s was Beavis and Butthead, and
they are coming back! I can’t wait to see what Mike Judge has in store for them. Not only was Beavis and Butthead awesome, but then along came King of the Hill, the show that is how I imagine it is like to live in Texas.

To catch a CSGO cheater

I don’t know what is more genius, the writing of the fake cheater software or the naming of the punishments. The karma burns for these CSGO cheaters.

RIP Online Streaming

I signed up with YouTube TV right after the first price hike to $40. It was, and still is, pretty awesome. Unfortunately, with the price going up to $65 it means I’m going to cancel. Someone needs to tell the content producers that they just can’t keep raising rates for distributors. Along the same line, just because you can start a streaming service doesn’t mean you should. With all of the fractured streaming services that are available, it was only a matter of time before a service such as JustWatch would be released.

Now, you can search for the show you want to watch, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and find out exactly where you can watch it. Apparently, it is currently on Hulu.

I don’t know whether it’s the terrible HD remaster, I hope not. I fired up the first episode and it is not in HD, so someone is lying.

Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?

Here’s an article on procrastination, I think I’ll read it later.

No, just no

I’ve got to admit, the first computer I lusted over was the ZX-81 kit computer. For the first time, a computer was almost in my price range at $99. Luckily, I never pulled the trigger because that computer would have been an exercise in frustration. A computer that was more famous in the US was the VIC-20. and it’s getting it’s own re-release. The VIC-20 is one up on the crappiness scale from the ZX-81, but hey, if that’s your jam, who am I to argue?

Paging Bobby Tables

SQL injection is a method of changing a database with a database query that’s ran outside of the context of the app. Here is a great story about some help desk software that had an SQL injection problem.

Where students are held in place by magnets

Magnets are magical, but they probably shouldn’t be stuck up your nose when inventing a coronavirus device.

Pull my finger

MSCHF and MrBeast set up elaborate pranks on the internet, and this past week the unleashed Finger on the App. The game was simple, once you start the app, you have to put your figure on the screen and not remove it. Periodically the app would ask you to move your finger.

The game went on for more than 70 hours before MrBeast ended the game and gave the final four each $20,000.

The shopping can’t wait!

If you are an elected official, you probably shouldn’t use government owned equipment for personal reasons. What’s even more important is to not go shopping during an important board meeting.

I thought the future was so bright I would need to wear shades

Here’s a movie from 1947 showing what the future would look like. Although the movie is in French, and it is showing portable televisions, it still looks eerily like today with smartphones.

Security today is a lot different than security was even 10 years ago. We carry more and more of our personal data in our smartphones. This is why Apple and Google have been strengthening the security of their systems. In iOS 14 Apple is adding an alert to let you know when an Application accesses the clipboard and it’s already caught TikTok and 53 other iOS apps snooping on you. The clipboard stores any information that you copy, such as text and pictures. What is unknown is what these apps are doing with the information from the user’s clipboard. This gets worse if you have a Mac with continuity turned on, which means your iPhone and Mac share the clipboard. Anything you copy to the clipboard on the Mac is automatically placed in the iPhone clipboard.

One of the best security practices you can do is to turn on two-factor authentication on your accounts. Almost everyone uses one factor authentication, something you know in the form of your username and password. Your second factor would be something you have, such as your smartphone. Before a service allows you to authenticate, you not only have to have your username & password, but you also have to have your smartphone. If you don’t turn it on before your an account is compromised then the crooks may do it for you. Once the crook turns it on, it becomes very difficult to get control of your account again. So, turn it on, do it now! And be sure to save the backup codes in a safe place, such as printing them out and putting them in a safe.

Grandpa Pokemon Grandpa has leveled up to 64 phones on his bike so he can play multiple copies of Pokemon Go. Impressive not only on riding with that many phones, but to also know what’s going on with all of those phones!

Excel is my DAW

Why spend time and money learning Protools or GarageBand, when you can use Excel instead?

I love retro tech as much as anybody, and I would love to have a portable way to listen to my copy of Pac-man fever album on 8-track. There is a beautiful genius on Reddit has made his own 8-track Walkman.

If the cost to produce a product goes up, and you want to keep the same profit margin you can either raise the cost of the product or remove items from the product. The rumor is that for the iPhone 12 Apple will choose the latter option and won’t include a charger in the box or earbuds. I find this hard to believe, especially if the charging cable is USB-C. A lot of people have extra USB-A chargers lying around, but few have extra USB-C chargers. The earbuds are less of an issue, unless they are upgrading from a phone that had a headphone jack. But, hey, let’s get people to buy AirPods!

What killed Blockbuster

We never had a local Blockbuster. Even at college we were more likely to go to a small local rental place rather than a Blockbuster. All I heard was that their prices were high.

Oh, and they had the chance to buy Netflix for $50 million.

I had a discussion with my mother once about wanting to play Freecell but she didn’t have access to a computer. “You know, you can play Freecell with a deck of cards…” She was not amused. What is amusing is how popular Microsoft Solitaire is as it turns 30 years old. Solitaire has 35 million monthly players which is 3 times the number of people playing World of Warcraft. In other Microsoft news, GW BASIC is now open source. BASIC started Microsoft, so this is a bit of interesting history.

Has Zoom video conferencing gotten bland? What about some new locations for your virtual meetings? Meet the company that is holding meetings in Red Dead Redemption 2. There are a few downsides, but it sounds awesome.

Turn on your 60s era mainframe with Alexa

Some people may be afraid of Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially after Nvidia’s AI generated a Pac-man clone after watching 50,000 hours of Pac-Man, but I don’t see too much to get worked up about. Just like that annoying kid in school who copied your answers for the test, Nvidia’s AI created nothing new, it just copied.

I’m one of the first people to hop on the Zack Snyder sucks bandwagon after the travesty of Batman Vs. Superman. Seriously, the movie was so boring that I heard a guy snoring during the big battle scene at the end. But, after watching the extended version of BvS, parts of the movie now made sense. This elevated the movie almost to the level of mediocrity.

Because of personal issues, Joss Whedon came in to finish the Justice League movie, adding some much-needed humor. Since then, fans have been clamoring for the ‘Snyder Cut’ of Justice League, and it is now happening on HBO Max. I hardly remember watching Justice League the first time, so my second viewing will seem like the first time all over again.

One of the first things I did when we signed up for Disney+ was to check out The Simpsons. I was hoping Disney wouldn’t fail like FX, but I was too hopeful and it crushed my dreams. The Simpsons on Disney+ were the cropped versions, which means several site gags were lost. Fortunately, Disney has seen the light, and will be releasing The Simpsons in their original aspect ratio on May 28th. Now if we can get the video distributors to stop cropping popular TV shows that were released pre-HD. Friends and Seinfeld look terrible with the framing of the shots being off.

DEVO’s “Mongoloid” about the arcade game Asteroids

Back in the 80s, everyone talked about how cool it would be to be able to have video calls and work from home, and how did that work out for us? Apple added Facetime in 2010, and I can count the number of Facetime calls I’ve ever done on two hands. Now the coronavirus has been driving us to the online world we were promised.

Need something beside Netflix to watch online? How about checking out
the free shows being offered by HBO. Maybe you prefer YouTube over HBO? Here’s a way to watch YouTube videos in 3D with others, including text and video chat.

No, 5G is not the cause of the coronavirus, but some people are believing the conspiracy and shooting at cell towers. I’ve heard the telecommunication workers are also getting death threats.

Here’s a little blooper with the special effects of Star Trek Voyager when they left a cursor on the screen.

In the 90s, point and click adventures were a big deal. Here is the concept of a Seinfeld point and click adventure. I’m hoping George will be a non-playing character because, really, who would want to be him in the game.

Along with point and click adventures, BBS games (called door games) were big. They made such an impact on the developers at Slack that those developers used BBS dor games names in the documentation for the API.

Don’t you hate organizing your MIDI files?

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I’m all for the if it ain’t broke then don’t touch it mentality, but with technology 10 years is an eternity. Yet governments are having problems because they are still using COBOL, a language from 60 years ago. Now I wish I would have paid better attention to my COBOL classes in college. Along the same line, because Boeing didn’t want to upgrade the computers in the 737 Max, the same hardware is now holding up a fix.

We’re all stuck at home, so how about checking out
Wizards of the Coast’s page of free D&D materials and resources. I also stumbled across this list of games to play online.

Did you ever wonder what the sheet music for various video games would looke like? Wonder no more!

Halt and Catch Fire was not the most popular show on AMC, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. Here’s a retrospective on what made it great. The secret to enjoying the show is to not nitpick how the technology is depicted. It took me a few showings until I got over the problems with the technology and to sit back and enjoy the story. If you haven’t seen it, then go watch it!

I sometimes wonder what I would put on my gravestone. He died out of spite sounds pretty good, and that is why I totally understand building a Nintendo Switch out of spite because of scalpers.

Finally, if you want a new game to play during quarantine, how about a version of Space Invaders where the invaders are replaced with the letters that spell virus? Requires an Atari 2600 and an SD cart if you want to play it on real hardware, which any self-respective geek would have in their basement or lair.

How will society change in the future? Some of the dominoes have started to fall. The value of conferences has been debated far and wide, but this year the question is moot since every conference is canceled, and a lot are soldiering on virtual. O’Reilly Media is going all in on virtual conferences and canceling their physical conferences. I wonder how many conferences will be virtual in the future?

There are tons of reasons why being physically at a conference is beneficial, but I always wonder what virtual conferences would be like if employers gave employees time off to attend one. Let the employees stay home and attend a virtual conference. They can share what they learn when the conference is over.

I’ve heard of elections being decided with a coin flip, but FIFA pros settle match with Rock, Paper, Scissors after a server error.

Here are 2 hours of Seinfeld bloopers

The bloopers were apparently created for the cast and crew, and this particular copy made its way to a flea market.

Radiooooo lets you pick a decade and country, and will then stream the popular songs from your selection.

A 4k, 60 fps Trip Through New York City in 1911

After watching this video, I realized how lucky the people of 2120 will be. There will be millions of hours of HD footage of the early 21st century available, letting them essentially time travel to 2020.

Mastermind turns 50! We played the crap out of this game growing up.

SXSW, a major conference in Austin Texas shows off all sorts of pop culture, movies, and more. One big feature of the conference is the showing of up and coming filmakers. It was canceled this year, but Mailchimp stepped in to release the SXSW 2020 Shorts online for free.

How good is the Space Shuttle Insulation?