Last night I had to call my credit card company due to a duplicate charge. While doing the authorization process the operator says - here at Megabank we can take an audio recording of your voice to help you get through the verification process. Do you agree to have your voice recorded?

I said yes, but instantly regretted it. Now my bank can find me anywhere on the internet.

Mr S. thought they might just be telling me that they were recording the call. But the way she said it. She didn't say - we are recording this call. She said - do I have your authorization to record your voice.

So..... banks are doing that I guess. I mean, I'm not sure... but phrasing is everything.

A ray of sunlight for privacy.

Mr S. gets home tonight and asks me if I been paying attention to the GPRD rules in Europe.

Me - Sorta. Then I tilt my head like a dog. Because clearly has has something extra to say.

Him - I had to go for some training for this.

Me - Oh. That is interesting.

Him - So, you know they have to get your permission to send you email and stuff right.

Me - Yeah. I'm not sure what America is doing about it, but I noticed that a lot of companies have already adopted the new rules. When I go to a trade show, if there is a product I'm interested in tracking - I hand them my badge to scan and I am forever put on their spam list.

It was sort of a blessing and a curse when it came through because there were a lot of people you were glad got ditched, but I must have gotten hundreds of emails.  I probably only responded to at best half of them. I was just flooded with emails asking me permission to keep sending me correspondence. I couldn't respond to them all.

Him - So you know this also comes with the right to be forgotten?

Me - Oooooooh. No. I didn't know that.

Him - Yeah. So now you can't store any personal information. You have to give people a unique user ID.

Me - Oh. That is super interesting. Then he adds. So - basically everything Google does is illegal over there.

I had to post it here because I don't think most Americans know this.  I hadn't been paying super close attention to what happens here because what difference does it make? They are going to do whatever the eff they want anyway.

Me - I believe 100 percent in the right to be forgotten, but I hope that people don't go too far with it. People go through some pretty emotional things in life they don't want on the news.

Then later on as time passes it doesn't seem real anymore. Sometimes that article in the newspaper is the only thing you have that it really existed. It's your history, and reality is still reality. But people have the right to choose.

Some days it feels like the ghost of 2008 has never really left. Just look at all the headlines saying worst since 2008.

Bubble bubble toil and trouble.

The Trump relief rally has pretty much evaporated everywhere. This is the homebuilders ETF right back at 2007 levels. Choose all data for full carnage.

It's the gift that keeps on giving those tiny bombs that President Money Bags planted. (Obama)

Sadly I think the Fed had no choice but to raise rates. Everyone seems to forget that Obama doubled the national debt. Flooding the market with money that people refused to spend because they didn't know what their liabilities were under him. And I must have said it a hundred times throughout the recession - some day people are going to un-bury that money in their back yards. Sentiment is EVERYTHING.

Trump provided the relief rally that made everyone feel comfortable enough to start unburying that money. But it just delayed the pain. No one knows what real and not real right now.

Shouldn't the DOW be at least 20% lower?

Everyone seems to be confused about why the market is falling today.

Meanwhile - transports are down at least 20%. As are banks, oil, tech, Nasdaq, China and Japan.

Hell there are a LOT of tech stocks now that are approaching down 50%. Just say'in. No one loves a market crash but they are badly needed to shake out the liars. And I'm talking about you Tesla. I guess the hyper loop was just a fantasy. Seems like just last year at CES that was the big thing. I'm just going to add that to the vast list of concept cars that never made it to production.

Elon proved today that we will never get rid of our cars.

If you are willing to put a 100 thousand dollar car in a tunnel under the earth instead of a pod that will take lots of people, it just proves that you will never pry these cars out of our dead cold hands.

We don't want to sit next to you even under the earth.

You shouldn't be able to get deposit insurance if you de-platform people for their political beliefs. If people are forced to bake cakes - they should be forced to take people's money.

Square makes a second attempt to break into banking.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

Here's why the 'retail apocalypse' won't happen.

"Still, the firm said stores hold an important role in retail, having surveyed 2,500 U.S. consumers over the age of 18. Forty percent of those people said they have a strong desire to feel or test products in stores before buying them. Many said they also want the "instant gratification" of being able to leave a store with a purchase in hand. "These are barriers that e-commerce is struggling to overcome," Sole said."

Emphasis mine. Yeah - we do have a strong desire to touch and test products. We also have a strong desire to leave the store in a timely fashion.  This is why Amazon is eating your lunch.

I have to say - I was bummed when OSH shut down because to get stuff like sandpaper I have to drive to the other side of town. Now I just order that stuff from Amazon. And I will hazard to say the reason OSH shut down was because it took so long to get out of there. Even though it was a tiny store. They chose the RadioShack way of checking people out.

This will kill all of them unless they get with the program. That killed Sears! Among other things. Those are the darkest stores ever.

Nothing makes me happier right now than seeing facebook back to March 2017 levels. They have a lot of crap torn up in Menlo Park.

I guess it's not trendy to talk about the mallpocolypse right now.

I had the misfortune of going to a mall today. And admittedly, I am not a mall rat so I'm not sure how long these signs have been back up. I think the last few times I'd been to the mall I was surprised they were gone. And just like that - back.

The mall was packed. Packed like I'd never seen it. So it was jarring to see the signs back up. But also - I'm not sure all of those people weren't just trapped in there like hostages. All of the lines were long. Super long. So you didn't want to line hop.

The line was in had five girls in front of me. They were all buying some wine openers. And they were buying the place out. Each girl had three boxes. But that is just the side story.

When I walked up there was a guy at the front and when the sales person got done with him - he just walked off. I thought he was helping that guy, but one of the girls said he'd called break time. Didn't even say anything. With a line 6 people deep! And he was a generation older than me. Not a millennial!

One of the girls went over to the perfume section to be checked out because it didn't have a line. And she was successful, but got chewed out by that sales person because apparently perfume makes commission and they aren't helping with anything else but perfume. Seriously. None of the other girls in her group got through.

By the time I got to the front of my new line (about 30 minutes) I was like - you don't have to fold any of this stuff, just throw it in the bag. I'm helping her dehanger stuff. But that didn't help. Her reply was - we have to fold stuff in this department because we sell high value items. And I was NOT in a fancy store. That store has been trying it's hardest to go bankrupt for a while. So in my head I was like - the eff you say.

But you just can't believe how these stores never catch up with the times. And they were never allowed to die. But it looks like we get a second bite at that apple.







Oh, and my Sears hadn't gone out yet. I thought it had already died a long time ago. So that didn't help the overall mall experience. Doesn't make you feel rosey. But hey - you can get half off any appliance you want right now. So there is that.

Sensor spotting.

This rig caught my eye. I am not sure what the boxes are. There are new lidar systems that are shaped like that,  But I am only speculating.

The company seems to test the surface quality of roads. So maybe the boxes are ground penetrating radar? It was clear I was already stalking him, so didn't follow.



I don't normally obstruct faces. But it's probably not fair that I zoomed in and put him on the internet.

Light Crawl.

The top house has to be one of the more creative I have seen.

I went to put up my own lights this morning and found out that I'd tossed everything out last year to start new, and completely forgot. So I guess I'm not doing lights this year.

Lets see how many light crawls I can get to.

I think he's laughing at us.

Last week I noticed that Tesla had picked up this building. Seemed strange because it's either an old restaurant or landscaping company type building. But I'm pretty convinced he picked it up because it has a giant parking lot. He's already started to park cars in there. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if I came back in a month the lot was filled and they had it so you couldn't see inside.



The lot is on the left side.





The building is under the arrow.











They already have drop security set up.

Nothing to see part 2.

They also have seemed to pick up a mini mixed used parking lot. There were Teslas on the right with plates. And I found it interesting that a masi was driving in from the other direction. They came in and parked but seemed to not want to be noticed.





Mr S. also found it very odd that this carrier was just carrying around one car considering all the cars, and just a couple of days ago all the carriers.

Nothing to see.

I came back out to the Tesla plant today because during the week these businesses are full. There are tons of cars and activity. On the weekend it weeds out all those extra cars and you can just see the good stuff.

The first thing is - they have security drops on the properties now. So I'm glad I came back in a different car and stayed off the properties that Tesla is on. They must have some AI going on too because I noticed that it blinked red or blue when there were people out there moving cars.

This is pretty much the backside of the lot I encountered security on the second video in this post.

Not quite large enough to take video, but not just a few cars either.  As a side note - they had moved all the car carriers off of Kato, but there were still many on the other back streets.

Death watch begins.

I feel a little sick right now. I figured he was moving those cars from campus to campus. He's not. This video is from today. I first blogged about this site 6 months ago.

Those cars have been there for six months now, and that is not even the worst or it.  I need some time to decompress. Then I will rack up the pictures.

Oh. That's a lotta percent.

• In Las Vegas, inventory in November jumped 54 percent from a year ago and sales were down 12 percent, according to the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors. Source.

Vegas should be interesting this year. You take a lot of taxis. And since my Uncle was a driver - I like to talk to them and see how things really are on the ground. 

Last year they were the most optimistic I'd seen them in forever.

Meanwhile in my local market I'm seeing houses being marked down like 5 times now. I'm trying not to think about it because its the Hollidays.

In the world of next Tuesday.

I hope they are going to have more of these at CES this year. Last year there were three. I'm really starting to believe this could be our future reality.

I guess I never posted the images to the blog. I posted them on twitter. So here, and here.

I fluently speak autocorrect now.

Seems appropriate.

The crazy thing about Tesla is that they could do absolutely nothing and still make money. They could just buy all the carbon credits from the plants that GM are shutting and make money. Right?

Isn't this the silent con we have going on?

Strange optics.

Parked in front of the Byton building. It just seems weird if you are trying to sell those cars to have this on a Tesla right out front.

It's going to be super painful.

Update -  Now that I've had a few hours to digest this whole thing,  I'm speculating that all these carriers are there to move his fleet when a new building comes up for rent. It is really strange that he is storing cars at all on tech campuses. But he must be getting a cut market rate, and when the landlord wants to raise the rent or the building gets leased - all of a sudden the word goes out to pack this crap up and move it.

Tipsters welcome. You know who you are. I am generically naming my video's for the moment.



That ~was~ securitay coming to shut me down. That's why the video abruptly stops.

He must have had that plate for a really long time. It's a pretty envious plate.

People still love getting their picture taken in front of Fascbook(tm).

I guess it's ghost lots again today.

To be honest, I'm pretty bored with the ghost lots. All of the ones I've written about are still there except one. And that's the Lexus ghost lot. I'm guessing they just found a better place to hide them.

I wasn't looking for car stuff today, but when I drove past this dead theater in Menlo Park/Redwood City and saw cars piled up in there - I had to stop. It's pretty much filled with Toyotas. A lot of 2018's and some 2019's.







Toyota was talking up about half of the theaters parking lot.





On the other side of these trucks was a chainlink fence, and that area was storing Chevy/Jeeps.







Which was weird because they already had a garage storage area. So - they were overfull.