Category Archives: Misc

Misc

Steve Gibson Resorts to Reusing Testimonials for Long-Broken SpinRite on Security Now

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Egads! They got me!

Steve Gibson’s SpinRite program has been broken for the entirety of this decade. It doesn’t run on modern machines which use AHCI to access the hard drive and instead requires legacy ATA. It doesn’t work under UEFI and instead requires a legacy BIOS.

For these reasons, it literally does not run on modern computers. People who still swear by the snake oil program must keep old computers around for the specific purpose of running the Dumbo feather program.

Steve Gibson needs Security Now as his vehicle to keep a stream of new customers coming to buy his now-useless program. With the pittance that Leo pays Steve, he says in his own words this is literally the only reason he continues doing Security Now.

“Leo pays me so little that I pay Elaine more than half of what I receive from TWiT. And if it were not for my ability to keep SpinRite alive through the podcast, this would never have been a viable use of my time.”

— Steve Gibson, July 7, 2017

As you saw in the video at the top of the post, Steve has resorted to reusing testimonials, presumably because no new ones can come in, because the program physically cannot run on modern machines.

What’s shocking is that he pretended to have never heard of the blog post, the “KSOD”, or any of the rest of it. Steve dishonestly presents each reading of the testimonial as if it was a new testimonial that just came in.

The Total Drama Scholarly Research Team set out to find other examples, and they were found easily. This is not an exhaustive list, but here are some examples of testimonial re-use.

  • Security Now 622 and 481
  • Security Now 600 and 333
  • Security Now 456 and 312
  • Security Now 599 and 334
  • The research team was too frustrated to continue after finding this many examples.
Steve Gibson could not be reached for comment.

In the interest of allowing Steve Gibson to explain himself, we requested comment from him on this article. He did not reply. We then requested comment again in his SQRL newsgroup. He did not reply.

Thanks to BillEverlasting in our chat room for giving us the initial tip for this story. Submit your own tips to help us find stories we may have missed!

We fully expect many of these links to disappear, but we have archived everything in case. Let us know in the comments if he starts deleting anything.

Misc

Leo Laporte Learns He is a Nobody

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Leo Laporte, Diabetic

Leo looooves Wolfram Alpha. He told us so on the latest episode of iOS Today. While Megan Morrone poked at the iPad screen like a monkey, Leo droned on and on about how great Wolfram Alpha is.

We agree with him on that point. You can’t argue with the data. When Leo mentions searching names, Megan’s early-primate fingers type out “leo laporte” into Wolfram Alpha. What appears is magnificent.

Leo Laporte’s declining relevance, expressed in Wikipedia page hits over time.

Notice the dick pic bump in May 2015. That’s the last time people searched for him trying to figure out who “Leo Laporte” was when the story was picked up by Gawker, Perez Hilton, and TomoNews.

When we hear Leo realizing he’s a nobody, like Tonya proved at the Crunchies with her interviewing skills, he sounds really disappointed. Megan tries to console him with a statement of “People don’t use Wikipedia anymore.”

Really, Megan? Wolfram Alpha — which Leo Laporte loooooves — says Wikipedia is the 5th most popular site on the internet.

Thank you to the dark tipper who sent this in. We would have missed it. Submit your own tips to help us out.

Misc

Inside the Mind of Perverted Tech Pundit Leo Laporte

34 Comments

Leo Laporte is no stranger to perverted thoughts. From the time he sexually harassed Sarah Lane, to the time he made a disgusting handjob joke about Megan Morrone’s daughter, there is one more thing even more certain than death and taxes, and that’s you can always count on Leo Laporte to say the most perverted things live on the air.

TWiT’s public relations consultant (O’Doctah) could not be reached for comment.

Case in point on This Week In Google, everyone’s favorite IoT princess Stacey Higginbotham was introducing a new camera appliance and made the unfortunate mistake of rubbing it up and down.

Instead of being a professional and letting this go Leo Laporte immediately went FULL PERVERT and told Stacey to “stop rubbing it”.

Not only was this embarrassing and completely avoidable, but it affirmed what we’ve been saying all this time… that Leo Laporte has possibly the most perverted mind in the universe.

Through the power of modern technology (thank you Starbucks) we’ve been able to see exactly what Leo Laporte was thinking the entire time. Viewer Discretion is Advised.

Man of God, Misc

Man of God: Father Robert Ballecer Lies While at Religious Retreat

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Update: The liar priest, who is supposedly without technology on a vow of silence, is now muting accounts on his personal YouTube (Proof) within 2 minutes (push notifications). Absolutely incredible.
Father Robert Ballecer
Fr. Robert Ballecer

This is the Total Drama series Man of God, in which we chronicle the exploits of one Father Robert Ballecer, aka Grimace in a Priest Costume, aka The Digital Jesuit, aka <PadreSJ>, aka FMCP. Please use our dvr and send in tips with examples of his very Christlike behavior.

Something very strange is happening over on Father Robert Ballecer’s Twitter profile. The fat fake priest — aka FMCP aka PadreSJ — is pretending to have written an artificial intelligence bot that is running his Twitter.

He is supposedly away at a no-technology Jesuit retreat. Mercifully, this is the reason he is not appearing on TWiT right now.

We found it odd that he has timely mentions of things that just happened, such as the new Doctor being announced and National Ice Cream Day — a holiday we are certain he celebrates daily.

We did some digging using the actual Twitter API. All of his Tweets are being posted from TweetDeck. Here’s the source attribute from almost all of his “bot” tweets:

"source":"<a href="https://about.twitter.com/products/tweetdeck" rel="nofollow">TweetDeck</a>"

He can’t control that string, because it’s set by Twitter’s server side based on the API keys being used. He’s 100% using the TweetDeck program to post his tweets.

TweetDeck can’t create Twitter polls. No consumer of the Twitter API can, including FMCP’s fictional “bot” lie. The fake priest logged onto the Twitter web site to post these polls:

"source":"<a href="http://twitter.com" rel="nofollow">Twitter Web Client</a>"
"source":"<a href="http://twitter.com" rel="nofollow">Twitter Web Client</a>"

Some questions:

  1. Did FMCP sneak a smartphone into the no-technology religious retreat under one of his many fat folds?
  2. Is Bryan Burnett running FMCP’s Twitter and pretending to be a robot, not far from the truth? Edit: This hypothesis is improbable, now that we’ve seen he is policing his own YouTube/Google account via push notifications.
  3. Does FMCP think anyone believes he knows how to program anything, let alone an artificial intelligence that can respond to current events? We’ve seen Coding 101.

Don’t forget to read the rest of the Man of God series detailing Father Robert Ballecer’s misdeeds in real life and on Twitter.

Misc

Watch Leo Laporte Struggle Using Linux

36 Comments
Time capsule of the last time Leo learned something new about technology.

Leo Laporte, Theeeeeeeeeeeeeee Tech Guy, had some technical difficulties with his System76 laptop during Triangulation.

After the show, he sought help from the shutins who frequent his chatroom and discuss Game of Thrones instead of the current guest.

Leo Laporte literally doesn’t even know what distribution he’s using, as you can see in the clip above. He desperately tries to follow Keith512’s instructions before giving up and saying he’ll just use a Mac from now on.

<@Keith512> what nvidia driver is it
<@Keith512> 375,381 or 384
<@Keith512> inxi -F will tell you
<@Keith512> maybe upgrade 375.66 to 381.22
<@Keith512> let me just check

Listen as Leo does various voice impersonations to try to deflect from the obvious awkwardness. It’s a long clip, but it’s painfully delicious.

Maybe he should follow his own advice for fellow grandpas and long-haul truckers:

JUST BUY A CHROMEBOOK.

Misc

Nathan Olivarez-Giles Fired from TWiT

46 Comments

Update: It appears Nate has landed on his feet. It’s a bit of a downgrade from the WSJ, but still an upgrade from unemployment/TWiT.

Maybe he could pass some of that luck on to Tony and Kara, whose LinkedIns remain stale.

The firings will continue until morale improves.

Dearly departed @NateOG.

No new bona fide shows will ever be created on TWiT. Leo lied when he said Mike Elgan would be creating a news division and traveling to Shenzen, China to cover tech developments there.

It should come as no surprise, then, that when the portly Laporte promised Nathan Olivarez-Giles (@NateOG) the opportunity to create new shows, including a car show (This Week in Leo’s Leased Tesla) and a Lets Play-style gaming show, that was merely bait to get Nate to stay a bit longer than he knew he should.

After getting Nathan to fill in on a few shows while failed CEO Lisa Laporte and Leo Laporte took their entire extended family to the Galapagos, he was summarily terminated upon their return. Was it because of him cursing out the live audience? We don’t know.

Nathan Olivarez-Giles, seen here in need of soap for his potty mouth

Leo didn’t hesitate to use the pre-taped Nathan segments on The New Screen Savers, without acknowledging the termination. They even trotted out the dead corpse of Nate’s employment with top billing in the newsletter. Leo Laporte has no conscience.

Can you believe they had the balls to force Nate to pre-record months of Know How segments — that they are currently airing — before terminating him upon Leo’s return from the Galapagos? Is it even legal under California law to make someone front-load their work for months that would be paid out later and then fire them?

Here’s to you, Nathan. We apologize you didn’t make it into the latest In Memoriam 2. You’ll be in #3 for sure.

We barely knew you; you only lasted 3.5 months.

Bonus Video

Misc

Leo Laporte Is Still An Incorrigible Racist

38 Comments
For better quality watch the video fullscreen.

Katie Benner is a smart and savvy technology reporter for the New York Times who hates Naturebox.

Katie Benner (File Photo)

Benner was phoning in to This Week In Tech to discuss her NYT’s article on how women entrepreneurs who seek financing from angel investors are often on the receiving end of inappropriate verbal advances and touching.

We at TotalDrama fully condemn these scumbags and hope they die a long and painful cancerous death.

The person responsible for finding a correct image of Benner was Karsten Bondy, the lovable but incompetent bow-tie wearing producer and technical director of such hit shows as Triangulation. However TotalDrama places 100% full legal responsibility (FLR™) for this screw up on the racist (example 1 & example 2) patriarch Leo Laporte who should have been the safety net here.

Not only has Benner been a regular guest on Tech News Tonight (which we hear Laporte watches religiously), but she’s also appeared two other times on This Week In Tech (appearance 1 & appearance 2). How does Leo Laporte not know what Katie Benner looks like at this point? Do all Asian people look the same to Leo Laporte? The rest of this trainwreck can only be experienced by watching the video above.

Update: Thanks to the #drama chatroom member who uncovered another photo of “Katie Benner” switched out at the last moment.

Editor’s Note: This one is a joke made by a chat room member, spoofing Leo’s racist error. The video and everything above is real.

Misc

And Now, a Word From Zero Sponsors

73 Comments
Update: Friday’s “no ads” discussion from This Week in Enterprise Tech has been added to the video.
Rare picture depicting Lisa Laporte harvesting Galapagos money in the wild

We previously reported on Leo Laporte shitting on sponsor Ring.com just before leaving for his Galapagos vacation. Why can’t we find any discussion of this vacation on TWiT on any show??

Shortly thereafter, during his vacation, Ring.com disappeared from the sponsor list. But — if Leo is to be believed — his lies and ridicule of the FMCP-approved surveillance device company prompted the owner to reach out to tell Leo how much he loved him and wanted to buy more ads. Silver-tongued Uncle Leo isn’t to be believed — of course — but how he talked himself back into Ring.com’s graces, we’ll never know.

Leo said he got in trouble with his wife, Lisa Laporte, supposedly the CEO of the failing company, which already has a lot of trouble selling ads. Leo claimed Ring bought “a whole bunch more ads” just to show him how much Ring loves TWiT.

Hilton A. Goring could not be reached for comment.

But here’s the weird thing. Many shows regularly have zero ads, as you heard in the video above. FLOSS Weekly went without, on the same day. Windows Weekly went without, on the same day.

Home Theater Geeks has gone without ads this entire year. Circumstances are so dire that Scott Wilkinson made on-air remarks about how there are never any ads to read on his teleprompter.

Total Drama dug deeper. Expert analysis revealed the following shows had zero ads recently — by no means an exhaustive list, just spot checks. Something is rotten in the TWiT ad sales department.

I guess that Richard Branson money doesn’t go as far when you constantly shit on your advertisers.

TWiT is going to have to fire a lot more people than just Tony Wang and Kara Kohl to make up for this shortfall.

Other Recent Shows With No Ads

Windows Weekly June 28
Home Theater Geeks The entire year of 2017
FLOSS Weekly June 28
This Week in Enterprise Tech June 30
Tech News Today May 22
  May 23
  May 24
  May 25
  May 26
Know How January 19
  January 26
  January 30
  February 6
  February 23
  March 6
  March 20
  March 23
  March 30
  April 6
  April 10
  April 20
  April 24
  April 27
  May 8
  May 22
  May 25
  June 5
  June 12
  June 29
Misc

Scott Wilkinson Gets Masterfully Trolled

67 Comments
Update: By popular demand — one guy using a bunch of different names in the comments — here’s the video of Leo handling a call from Longmont Potion Castle the following weekend.
For better quality watch the video fullscreen.

Scott Wilkinson is a professional home theater expert who we affectionately refer to as the maniacal cackling Santa Claus. He’s probably never been targeted by an Internet troll. But cue “Carmelo” from Needles, California, calling in to The Tech Guy.

Facial composite of “Carmelo” drawn by police sketch artist after listening to audio

What started off as an innocent home theater question quickly turned into a trolling master class. There’s no doubt that “Carmelo” meticulously planned and executed this troll to perfection. This was not a mindless Howard Stern fan yelling “ba ba booey” and then hanging up. This was someone who spent a lot of time writing what he was going to say, choosing every word and sound effect with precision.

Editor’s Note: We found out “Carmelo” is Longmont Potion Castle, a famous prank caller.

At TotalDrama we don’t condone trolling good and honest people like Scott. However we were amazed and in complete awe at the amount of preparation and courage this must have taken. Congrats on the good job “Carmelo” and enjoy your video tribute.

Misc

In Memoriam 2: Remembering Those We’ve Lost at TWiT

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For better quality watch the video fullscreen.

This is a follow up to HelloWorld’s inspirational video about the great men and women who worked hard and gave their best every day but were still fired in the end.

“Who da’ f*ck is Johnny Jet?”

The latest firings came only days before Leo Laporte and Lisa Laporte ditched TWiT to go on yet another luxurious vacation.

I’m not saying the timing is suspicious but three employees are fired and a week later they are jet-setting to somewhere new. TotalDrama reached out to Robin Leach for comment and his only words were “Shieeeeet these gangstas are legeeiittttt”.

But even though countless employees are now wondering how they are going to make rent this month, every cloud does have a silver lining. For Leo and Lisa, this is that the vacation fund is safe once again. Our sympathies go out to Tony, Kara, Frédérique and the countless other employees who have lost their jobs because of this financially careless waste of money.

Dearly departed Curtis Franklin, who didn’t even make it into the video

Late Update: After the video’s creation, we became aware that Curtis Franklin aka “the swamp monster” has recently gone missing from twit.tv/people.

We aren’t sure if he’s been fired or has simply returned to the Florida swampland to reunite with his own.

Full list of those fired (including the first In Memoriam) and escapees:

Justin Robert Young Iyaz Akhtar
Lamarr Wilson Amber MacArthur
Shannon Morse (Snubs) Gina Trapani
Chad Johnson (OMGChad) Brian Brushwood
Tom Merritt Dane Golden
Evan Brown Sarah Lane
Joe Panettieri Jason C. Cleanthes (EffenDunn)
Myriam Joire Tonya Hall
Frédérique Louis Tony Wang
Kara Kohl Mike Elgan
Jeff Stewart Curtis Franklin(?)