DEVIN: That was too awkward.
ERIC: Yeah.
DEVIN: What’s up internet.
ERIC: Hi.
DEVIN: You know what we’re going to talk about today. We got California exiting the union.
ERIC: Trump.
DEVIN: We got immigration websites shutting down in Canada.
ERIC: Trump.
DEVIN: Facebook?
ERIC: Facebook.
DEVIN: Facebook. It’s a tough week on SnapMunk’s Weekly Tech Feed, but I’m Devin Greene…
ERIC: …I’m Eric Hargrove…
DEVIN: …and here we go.
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DEVIN: Alright, first up hashtag Calexit trending on Twitter. That means that a lot of people want California to secede from the union. This isn’t the first time this has happened, believe it or not. In 2004, after Bush won for the second time after two wars and big deficits..
ERIC: Small stuff.
DEVIN: … stem cell research. Yeah, little things. Um, people were- wanted to create something called Pacifica, which would be a country made up of California, Oregon and Washington. That’s also trending. The question is, California being the sixth largest economy in the world, if it were- if it were it’s own country, should California secede? I say yes.
ERIC: I say no and, I mean look, we have entertainment, agriculture, uh defense and uh and tech all in this one spot and to do that immediately after election is-is the uh, how would you rip that away from the rest of the United States?
DEVIN: I don’t, I uh think it would be more a process of that precipitating a number of other rips, so one country seceding would become maybe six countries and anybody who studies American history knows that there are six distinct demographics that formed based on the different paths of when the states were founded. Um, the south has one, the north-east, California, it’s different countries almost as it is, um and it seems like that’s the direction we’re going. The European Union’s splitting up, Africa’s splitting up, South America’s splitting up. Maybe modern economies just need to split up. That allows people to vote with their feet, you know, if you don’t like what your region is doing, you move to another one and they have an incentive to change.
ERIC: Well, yes, and there’s also the conversation about really like inclusion and working together and figuring all of this out. Let’s remember, it’s still early days, right? He just got elected, it’s a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction, I know that we’re not happy about it, but he hasn’t done anything and I think that it would take a much larger issue. Like we fought a war around slavery. It would take a much larger issue like, let’s say having uh, hold of surveillance nationally and having that misused, then hey, I’m for it, let’s secede, let’s get out of there.
DEVIN: Maybe, I don’t know, I’m not in the mood to wait, like a lot of Americans. I mean Americans basically showed that they just want to throw a brick through the window by electing a completely incompetent person. Let’s throw a brick through the window by choosing our own destinies, or at least threatening to and see what that gets you, um but, I hear where you’re coming from. For people who aren’t in the mood to secede and start another civil war, there’s a second option, uh Canada. Remember that place? Like us, but less insane? Um a number of people have threatened to move there and now Trump won and so time to put your money where your mouth is.
ERIC: Well, and their, and their immigration website crashed right?
DEVIN: Ok, so people are putting their money where their mouth is.
ERIC: Or at least they’re looking more into it-
DEVIN: -they’re fantasizing-
ERIC: -right-
DEVIN: -checking in-
ERIC: -before they weren’t doing it so much, you didn’t hear about it crashing before he won and, you know, people were talking about it, but they’re now kind of serious about it.
DEVIN: And that’s not them trying to shut it down the flow either, I mean, Justin Trudeau has gone on record saying, “Come on, come on!” They created some laws to incentivize tech companies to come, make it a little easier to get visas, a little incentive here and there, um so silicon valley may not just be silicon valley for long. Already Dublin has burgeoning tech industry, India in Bangladore has one. It could be Toronto next.
ERIC: It could be, it could be. I think that there’s an actually a fantastic climate for startups to be able to take advantage of all the initiatives in Canada. They’re very friendly around clean energy for one, that’s been kind of shown to be not-
DEVIN: -which Trump denies-
ERIC: -so exactly-
DEVIN: -I mean, not denies clean energy-
ERIC: -well no, climate change-
DEVIN: -climate change-
ERIC: -right, so I, you know it could be a very viable option.
DEVIN: We’ll see. I mean he’s supposed to be friendly on business. We don’t really know what he’s going to do, you know. I mean, republicans and democrats have this in common, they say one thing, they do the polar opposite.
ERIC: Flip.
DEVIN: So, infrastructure, business. That would seem to create space for Hyperloop and the mission to Mars, but you could also use the religious right to say, you know, that’s-that’s foolishness.
ERIC: Yeah.
DEVIN: We don’t go to space! We stay right here and we fix good American jobs! We don’t know.
ERIC: But, on a lighter note.
DEVIN: Could it get lighter?
ERIC: It can get lighter. Facebook-
DEVIN: -anything lighter-
ERIC: Facebook is always lighter.
DEVIN: Beasts of no nation, have you seen it? On a slightly lighter note.
ERIC: But, Facebook is now actually delving into the dark web to purchase passwords from hackers to make Facebook safer for the user.
DEVIN: That is light.
ERIC: Yeah, well, it’s not Trump.
DEVIN: The dark web is light. Um, this is a fascinating story to me because they’re going beyond just machine learning to kind of protect people from bots taking over their Facebook accounts. Have you ever had a bot take over your Facebook account? You know, it comes in there, pretends to be you, it says, “Hey, click on this link!” and your friends are like, “Ok!” and then they’ve got the bot. I mean that’s one danger, but also identity theft, stealing people’s payment information. Remember, people are buying and selling on Facebook now though the marketplace, so that’s another concern. I think they do need to up their game a little bit. You know, this reminds me of Patreus’ surge strategy, where instead of fighting the Taliban, you’re paying them not to do Taliban stuff, um I might be getting that wrong, it might have been Al Queda, sorry this is a tech show. Um, but point is that, they’re paying the bad guys to give us the information rather than giving it to the evil doers.
ERIC: Right, exactly and they’re taking that information and making sure that you as the user are not using passwords that are super-weak that are already out there on the dark web making it easier for someone to just come in and just completely wreck your life online. So.
DEVIN: Oh big brother, where art thou. Let’s move on to honorable mentions.
ERIC: Right.
DEVIN: Shall we?
ERIC: Twitter’s COO bounced. Left. Gone.
DEVIN: This is just a week after they fired 8% of their staff, so things are shaking up over there right?
ERIC: Yeah.
DEVIN: And a brain implant helped a monkey walk. Just like, yeah, just like this, ‘cause you know how monkeys do. It could already do that, um anyway, exciting news for humans that can’t walk. That came out insensitive.
ERIC: Well.
DEVIN: Just pointing out they can’t walk sometimes, maybe not for long. Uh, MacBook outsells all the competition despite having no ports. Too many dongles.
ERIC: Lot’s of dongles.
DEVIN: Just dongles on dongles on dongles on dongles. And uh, just honorable mention America.
ERIC: ‘Mherica.
DEVIN: No, you don’t get an honorable mention this week, I’m taking it back.
ERIC: You get your honorable mention card pulled!
DEVIN: Twitter got it for firing their CEO or leaving voluntarily-
ERIC: -COO-
DEVIN: Whatever.
ERIC: Let’s get the **** out of here.
DEVIN: It’s late. People are racing bikes outside. America’s just ****ed.
ERIC: So, on that note. Why don’t you like, subscribe and comment below and Devin and I will get back to you.
DEVIN: Yeah, with tears streaming through our eyeballs onto our screens ruining our MacBook Pros which have no ports!
ERIC: Just lots of dongles.
DEVIN: We’re starting a vigil um, for America and this flame represents our endurance and nothing will ever put it out. It’s beautiful. So beautiful. Oh jesus chris- Hey, not my sticker!!!
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