Podcast - This Is Only a Test

Episode 450 – A Dark Divide – 5/24/18

Will Smith joins us this week as we avoid talking about Solo spoilers, but learn about a big difference of opinion in the room concerning Star Wars. We also discuss Uber’s latest autonomous car news, a brazen Samsung commercial, and what’s up with HBO’s Watchmen adaptation. Also, a recap of some cool stuff we saw at Maker Faire!

Comments (11)

11 thoughts on “Episode 450 – A Dark Divide – 5/24/18

  1. Regarding my budget of forgiveness for the last
    Jedi, they stole me of at least $75,000 USD from start to end. It is hard to
    accept that someone can say that this was the best Star Wars ever. Brrrr!

    I tried, I really tried to like this movie. But
    I could not turn my brain off to let go of the back history of the old movies
    to follow this new one.

  2. I think I’m done with any TIOT where Jeremy just wants to start hating on people who don’t HATE TLJ with him. I remember him saying that it was fine if we didn’t agree with him for the dislike for the movie but he keeps bringing it up and it’s very tiring. He is starting to be the very definition of a SCIFI snowflake at this point. Get over it mate.

  3. Hey Norman, I work as a Privacy Officer (which all companies gathering personal data are required to have now also) for an tech company serving education / government & companies and I can tell you that at least in the Netherlands this regulation is basically as big a mess as one could think it would be. Our own Department of Justice does not yet confirm to the GDRP regulations (along with I think 5 other departments) and it has been a huge burden on a lot of people here. I’ve been hearing statistics that in the Netherlands about 25% of businesses state they comply as of the deadline.

    Big companies are now being targeted mostly for audits or inspections because the authority in the Netherlands which is tasked with all things regarding privacy is overwhelmed with questions and also understaffed since lots of top personal has been bought out by companies to come fix their own issues. Smaller companies are not yet being audited unless there is reason for that, i.e. a data breach.

    I have personally not yet tried to remove myself from any digital online platform yet but there are big caveats on that front as well. If someone requests to be removed you do not have to alter your backups as long as that backup does not stay around forever. Lots of issues that most likely will need to be settled by courts in one form or another because currently they are too vague. There are still so many discussions on what classifies under personal data. For instance, my avatar could be used to determine my race, gender and age and could be used to reverse image search for other sites. So that would fall under the highest classification of personal data that companies never really need to store.

    But more interestingly in the Netherlands there is a big discussion that freelancers need to register with the Department of Taxes, which gives that a VAT number that is literally their social security number with B01 slapped on the end. Which you are then mandated by law to put on your website, your invoices etc. Lots of work still needs to be done!

  4. I am so solidly in the Jeremy camp here.

    What Disney is doing to Star Wars makes me ill. I want to talk about all of the issues I have with Solo (forget about TLJ) but I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who still finds joy in that hollowed out husk of a franchise.

  5. I would love to be convinced that TLJ is a good movie but I’m afraid that it soured me so much on Star Wars in general that I don’t know if the movies will ever give me the same feeling that they did when I was a kid.

    The shockingly abrupt change in style and direction in TLJ and the complete disregard for characterization, lore, and in universe physics broke the illusion of the Star Wars universe as a cohesive thing. I don’t see the magic anymore. All I notice in the the movies now are the characters and plot devices introduced specifically to spawn never-ending sequels, prequels, and side stories.

  6. I completely agree with you on TLJ stuff and it’s disheartening that you always seem to be ganged-up on when it comes to discussing. I also share no love for this movie for many reasons, and not just because it’s a bad representation of Star Wars. As a movie, it’s very poor. There is bad writing, mediocre direction, choppy pacing, and more. All that it’s got going for it are all the pretty shots, which at times feel like they created merely to be distractions from the quality of the movie.

    I was alright with Force Awakens even though it had some lazy writing because I thought TLJ would pick up where it left off and take the story somewhere new. Instead we get left off 3 days later with no interesting plot advancements except that now there are fewer Rebels (or are they Resistance? We’ll never know!) and some Sith lord that we didn’t even learn the backstory of (convenient that he died before they could actually explain anything) is dead. But no characters really changed, they just played footsies for 2 and a half hours…

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