143: Flux Decapitator

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks for January 15th, 2016. We're just going to roll into this show today. I am Jason DeFillippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Oh my God. Having a bit of a day? I've been up since 3 a.m., no hot water, puppy won't poop, got three shows to do today, including this one, and I'm tearing my hair out. What's left of it? Because I'm going bald because I'm an old man. Yay, Friday.

Okay. I was in a good mood. I guess I'm not anymore. Hey, don't let me bring you down. Don't let me bring you down, man. I don't need you to do it. I've got Facebook, or as I've been calling it this week, Deadbook. Yeah, no doubt. I'm sorry, Killer of Celebrities. You know, sorry about that, Bowie.

Yeah, if I find out that you killed Alan Rickman, I'm coming after you. No, no. I inadvertently made a comment after Lemmy's death last week that, wow, you think that was crazy? What will happen when David Bowie passes away? And then he promptly proceeded to do so. Yep. Thanks, David. The power of the pod.

Yeah, no, it's been insane this week, you know, or even standing in the last week. First, we had Lemmy, then we had David Bowie, then we had Alan Rickman. And then it's kind of continued for me. Can we please, because, you know, Lemmy was 69, Alan Rickman was 69, Donald Trump is 69.

Can we kind of, like, keep the trend going? Let's see if we can continue our personal trend of knocking people off if we say it so. No, my, my, then it just continued. I almost miss seeing cats and, and things like that on Facebook. Renee Angeli, who is the husband manager of Celine Dion, particularly in my circles, that was getting a ton of posts.

Brian Bedford, who was the voice of Disney's Robin Hood, tons of posts about that. And this morning, Dan Haggart from Grizzly Adams, also getting tons of posts. Wait, wait, wait, all three of them died? Yes. Oh my God. Yes. All three of them died this week, in the last few days.

You know, some of this is, like, self-selecting. Now that there's just been a bunch of celebrity deaths, we're posting about people that probably we wouldn't have posted about otherwise. Well, I mean, Grizzly Adams is a big deal. The other two, I don't know. So I don't give a shit about them. Brian Bedford, big deal to me. Disney's Robin Hood, one of my favorite Disney movies.

Well, you know what? Alan Rickman in Robin Hood. I'll cut your heart out with a spoon. One of my favorite lines. Also a great role. Salon has an article called The Rule of Three is Over. We've entered the devastating age of nonstop collective mourning, and I don't think they're wrong on this one.

It's an interesting read, and it's talking about particularly in the near future since now the concept of celebrity is actually being so diluted to the millennials. You know, anybody that is on a YouTube channel is considered a celebrity, basically predicting that, you know, in another 50 years, it's just going to be constant.

Oh, this person died, this person died, this person died, this person died. Yeah, well, you know what? I mean, I had to deal with this with my, you know, aged grandmother, and every week it'd be who died this week. That's all it was. You know, as you get older, people die. That's what happens, you know? And considering Facebook's main demographic is basically us and people in their, you know, late 30s, 40s now, most of the people and stars that we grew up with, they're getting older.

They're kicking the bucket. They are kicking the bucket. Surprisingly, though, still around? Abe Vigoda. I know. Is it, what's the website? Is Abe Vigoda dead? I think, I think that's. There is a .com that is keeping tabs. Yeah. Oh, man.

Yeah. That was, that was always the thing. It's like, nope, still alive. Yes, it is. Is AbeVigodaDead.com. And you just go there and it says, no. No. Yeah. That was my, my brief fling of an idea for, for the app generation was I wanted to create an app called Dead or Not.

Yeah. With the database and all of that sort of thing. But then I realized, uh, I'm just too lazy and it's, and it's stupid, which means, of course, the fact that it was stupid, I would probably own an entire island at this point. Exactly. Exactly. Like, hey, man, look, uh, do I have pigflu.com basically bought me half a car, you know?

That is very true. Uh, speaking of things that are dead, we talked about San Francisco and, uh, Yellow Cab Company in San Francisco, which is filed for bankruptcy. Uh, the end of the taxi era article on slate.com by Will Orimus. Or I, I got really got to figure out how to pronounce his name because he's actually a really great tech writer and I enjoy lots of his stories.

Um, talks about how basically cabs are, are doomed, even if they pivot to create their own apps and such. Uh, it's a bit sad, but, uh, it is what it is. It is what it is. You know, at this point, get used to it. Yeah. That's really it.

I was actually at, uh, at a bar with a buddy a couple of nights ago and we were talking about some work stuff and we were sitting, it was a hip place. That's all the places that are opening up in the Venice and Santa Monica area are totally hipster places.

Uh, so some millennials were sitting next to us and I was overhearing, uh, the girl talking and she was saying, you know, I, I realized that with Airbnb and Uber kind of taking over the world, we're screwing ourselves in the long run, but, uh, whatever, you know, it's cool.

Uh, speaking of which, uh, the California public utilities commission, uh, basically find Uber $7.6 million for failing to beat data reporting requirements in 2014. Yeah. I mean, we covered this story a long time ago and, uh, it's, it finally came to fruition.

They got, they got dinged for it, but there are $64 billion company. Okay. Yes. So, uh, that's like, yeah, yeah. That's less than the, the tip that the CEO leaves at a Denny's probably, you know? Well, as pointed out in the article, uh, although the fine is relatively small for a company valued at $62.5 billion, it underscores the regulatory and competitive conflict.

Uber's business model repeatedly faces across the globe. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Well, you can always be on call. Okay. Hey, this is the best transition I could do. Yeah, that was, that was weak. This is something we talk about all the time.

This is a, an article on Scientific American. Um, we've always proposed and, and been big proponents of taking a rest and taking a break. Uh, it's basically this article states that just knowing that work might reach you makes it harder to relax and recover. Hello, smartphones.

Yeah, no, we've, we've totally, we've, we've crossed that bridge a long time ago. We know about it. There's nothing new here. Yeah. Except, uh, you know, it's just, uh, people really need to start paying attention to all the science that is out there about this stuff. If it, this is fucking with us and not in good ways.

Um, yeah, but who cares? Right. Well, no, I, I just watched the, I just watched the Alex Gibney documentary on CNN on Steve jobs. And they, they actually talked about this quite a bit, how, you know, this, this technology that was supposed to be, you know, the great equalizer has turned into, you know, turning us into these just like, like solo automatons.

We just sit there and stare at our phones all the time. Right. And, and it's kind of being expected by most companies. Uh, and you, you, you know, you're going to lose your job if you don't do it. And I, you know, I've got to give credit where credit is due. And I don't know how prevalent this is across say all the jobs over at Google, but I was having lunch with a mutual friend of ours actually.

Um, the other day who is working over at Google. And he said that they pretty much have a strict policy that four o'clock on Friday, if you send an email that's work related, you will be scorned and laughed at Monday morning. No way. And that, that you got to respect that. That's how you keep people vibrant and alive and interested and creative.

And this is Google and this is Google doing it. And Dave said, yeah, our buddy, Dave, uh, who's over at Google. He basically said that, you know, if you get an email over the weekend and you look at it and it's not some sort of shared just joke or meme or something like that. If it is anything related to actual work, you will be in trouble on Monday.

Wow. Got to respect that. That is, it's kind of interesting. And I, well, actually what I'm most surprised about is that our friend Dave is at Google. Me too. I was like, I was looking at his Android phone and I was like, it must've killed you to give up your iPhone. What was his, what was his response?

Uh, he just kind of shrugged. He's a company man now. Oh man. How the mighty have fallen. Yes. Uh, in addition to things that we always harp on about another article in salon, the myth of the middle class. And I found this to be really depressing. Uh, another study has proved that, uh, most Americans don't even have a thousand dollars in savings.

Uh, the middle class class is dead. Gone. You know what? I've fought with you back and forth on this the whole time we've been doing this show. Yep. I am finally acquiescing. It's gone. I'm going to completely acquiesce because at this point right now, I have about $300 in my bank account.

Now, see, I was about to say you and I are barely clawing on to stay within the middle class, but apparently you've slipped a bit. Um, no, I, it's, it's, I'm done. I, I, I am paycheck to paycheck. I am like barely hanging on and it's just fucking depressing. You know, and you know, and when things like shit that happens today, when the water heater blows up, it's like in the old days, it's like, okay, I'll just dig in and grab a few bucks and either fix it or get a new water heater.

But now it's like, it's a, it's a major burden. And it's like, you just, you just get like beat down and depressed and things just like everything is a slog. You know, I feel like I'm a teenager working at Kinko's, like just trying to barely make it by and I'm 44 years old.

This is not the way things are supposed to be. And it's not like you aren't working. You're busy and you're doing 80 hours a week. And you're working in a highly skilled field that requires a lot of experience. Yes. You know, I feel this, I'm not quite at the point where you are, but I mean, certainly like the idea of like, if I had to go get another car, that would be a problem.

I can't, I cannot, and I am, and my brakes are going and I can't afford to fix them right now. And it's like, you know, it's just, you just get beat down and beat down and beat down. And, you know, there, you have your uptimes, you have your downtimes, you know, you have to wait for the wheel as they say, because sometimes you're at the top, sometimes you're at the bottom.

But, you know, it's just like, sometimes the bar eats you. Yeah, exactly. And it's just getting harder and harder and harder. Well, I am happy that you finally realized that I'm correct. I'm sad that it took personal experience to get you there. Yeah, me too. Honestly, you know, I tried, I really tried to be, you know, upbeat about the whole thing.

But now it's just like, man, it's just getting harder and harder and harder just to get by. That's, that's the argument that I find very frustrating, particularly having watched the Republican debates last night, where it's, it's all painted as you can, if you have the initiative and you spend the time working, you can pull yourself up and that's going to happen.

And no, that's not what, that's not what's actually happening. There's, there's real science behind this. There's real stories behind this. There's real surveys behind this. This comes from Forbes. Yeah. Forbes is not in the business of, of, of selling their magazine to poor people. They want rich people.

They want people that are doing well. And they're basically saying that most of this country is totally fucked. Yeah, because you need disposable income in the, the majority of the country for people to make more money. You need that. You need the money flowing. And when people just run out of money and it's all like just concentrated in this 0.1% of the population, then there's nobody.

You can't do anything. It's like, yeah, I would like to go buy that right now. I would like to go buy a new water heater right now, but I can't. Guess what I'm going to have to do today? I'm going to have to take a cold ass shower because I can't afford to go buy a new water heater. That's the honest fucking truth. But according to Tim Ferriss, cold showers help you lose weight. So that might be a plus.

Well, I've, I, I have, look at me, I'm Mr. Brightside. I have Dorian Gray's puppy because for every pound that she gains, I lose a pound. I have, I have gone sub two 20 for the first time since I was 30. Congratulations, my friend. I'm sorry that your, uh, your bank account has gone a sub in your twenties.

Yes. Apparently my bank account has been taking cold showers for quite some time without me knowing about it. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a problem. And I know that you were getting sick of me throwing the articles in there all the time, but now that I'm right, I think we can just agree. Yeah, I, I totally agree.

And I, like I said, I acquiesced to your, your, your, your point on this one. So yeah, well, I'm sad about it too. I don't want it to be true. I, I agree that this is, if this is something that if it does not turn around will make us a third world country. It will. It's, it's going to be a problem. And speaking on that point, I just put in an article, uh, Walmart has, is pulling the plugs on 269 stores, which is going to leave 16,000 people around the world unemployed.

Right. Um, yeah, that, that's obviously not good, but, uh, most of the labor stories that I've heard from Walmart is they don't pay a living wage anyways. Yeah. This actually might release some of the tax burden on most of the people, you know, because the largest beneficiary of welfare in our country, our Walmart employees.

Exactly. So this might actually be a boon to the rest of the working class who actually are, you know, doing their part and don't have to pay for the welfare and the food stamps for people who work at Walmart because they're a bunch of douche nozzles. Douche nozzles. That's the second time today that word has crossed my, my ear.

Interesting. Wow. Strange. Okay. Okay. And on the drone news, I put in an article about the, it's called the robotic Falcon. Uh, and, and this comes back to something that I had talked about. I'm like, before this thing came on the market, I said, you need nets or you need silly string.

And somebody went out and made an octocopter or maybe it's a hexacopter that is fast enough to take down the DJ DJI drones and, uh, just shoot them with a net with a tether, a tethered net. So you can take them back for analysis, you know, which is kind of cool.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's a, that's a, we put a, we talked about a couple of weeks ago. I think it was the police drone in Tokyo that was doing that as well. So yeah. Yeah. But, but when we were blue skying this, like maybe two years ago, this is the idea that I came up with and this guy filed a patent for it. So I think he owes me some money when it comes down to enforcing his patent.

I'm going to throw in a, an episode of grumpy old geeks is prior art. Okay. Yeah. Well, maybe we can become patent trolls now. That'll be fun. Hey, Hey man, you got to make money wherever you can. I'm telling you do. And in big news before we close out the intro here, a grumpy old geeks has joined blog talk radio.

Woo hoo. Yeehaw. Yeah. I don't know what that's going to mean. We don't know what that means yet, but, uh, we went through lengthy negotiations to ensure that we actually don't have to change our show. So we'll be pretty much the same, but, uh, hopefully a couple of ducats will come in and fill up Jason's, uh, bank account.

Hopefully. Um, so here's the deal though. Here's the one thing that I did want to mention. If next week or in the middle of the week, uh, you don't see any new episodes, go back and resubscribe because what may have happened is that your feed pod catcher, whatever the hell they call these things nowadays did not get the automatic update because we will be doing a redirect and an automatic update to our feed.

Yes. Which will point to the new location and hopefully everything will work smoothly, but there's always the chance that it won't because, uh, it's technology and Brian and I did not build this backend. So if we didn't build it, I don't trust it.

Yeah, exactly. So things may be a little wonky for the next week or two, but we're going to be working closely with them to ensure that things get settled down and our show is nice and comfy and accessible. Yes. And so big thanks to Jay over at blog talk radio. Uh, it was at the pod Vader is his Twitter handle.

Yeah. He's the one who reached out to us and brought us into the fold. So thank you very much. In the news. Let's briefly talk about some of the people that, uh, are still either, uh, comfortably middle-class or, or at least doing rather well.

Um, but they just happen to be women. Okay. So women working in Silicon Valley, uh, there was a study called elephant in the Valley, which focuses on women with at least 10 years of experience in Silicon Valley. So these are women that are doing pretty well for themselves. Uh, unfortunately, uh, guess what's happening?

What's happening? Not good things. Uh, let's run through a couple of the statistics that they found. Eighty-four percent of these women had been told that they were too aggressive. Okay. Sixty-six percent felt excluded from social and networking opportunities because of their gender. Eighty-eight percent had clients and colleagues address questions to male peers that should have been addressed to them.

I've seen that happen. I've been addressed when it should have been somebody else. Uh, seventy-five percent were asked about family life, marital status, and children in interviews because, as Mark Zuckerberg has proven, oh, wait, he's taking time off because he had a kid. Oh, interesting. Uh, sixty percent report unwanted sexual advances, two-thirds of which came from a superior.

That's a big no-no. Uh, another sixty percent who did report harassment said they were dissatisfied with the results. Uh, so it basically still sucks to be a woman. Yeah, this is, this is not news. Uh, this is unfortunately the way it is. Yeah, and we do call them Silicon Valley tech douchebags for a reason.

Yes, we do. Absolutely. Um, no, I've seen it happen. I've been there, you know, on the, on both sides of it and, well, not on the side that is being the douchebag. I have been on the side where I've seen, uh, female engineers get completely passed over for things that they, that they ran and they're like, they would just ask somebody else when, when they're standing right next to them.

It's just like, are you an idiot? Oh, yes, you are. Yeah. Yeah. It happens. It sucks. It's kind of bullshit. Let's get over that people. We're supposed to be the better generation yet. All these younger, these kids are all younger than us and they're reverting back to being idiots. You know what?

They watched too many episodes of, uh, was it all in the family? I think like on, on TV land when they were latchkey kids. Maybe, maybe that's it. Who knows? Uh, new study has also come out about, uh, the worst place to charge your, your smartphone. It's in your car.

Uh, basically drawing the electricity from a USB port in a car truck cuts 0.03 miles from each gallon of gasoline in a tank, which is quite large actually. Yeah, no, this isn't interesting. Yeah. I looked at the math on this and I was like, Hmm, that is very interesting. Especially when you're doing the drives that I used to do, which I will not be doing anymore, which are cross country.

So you're doing 3000 miles and like how much gas did I waste just charging my damn phone? But the problem is you can't plug in your phone to your car system to listen to your audio books. If it's not charging, it's like, Oh, I got to catch 22 here. Oh, can't you, you could probably, uh, maybe there's some sort of Bluetooth system where you, I don't know.

Yeah. My car's old. I have a Gen one, uh, Microsoft sync system in my car with no, like, you know, none of that fancy panels or, you know, map devices or anything. It is to you. It's, it's, it's actually, it's a USB port and a mini plug.

That's it. Gotcha. Yeah. I can actually stream. So I'm going to start doing that. I mean, it's been, you know, it's, it's not even a thought. It's just what I do when I get in my car is I, I plug in my phone and start charging it. I'm definitely going to start modifying that behavior, uh, unless I'm running out of juice, in which case I will suck it up and have to use it. Yeah.

No, I always assumed that the alternator was giving an, giving us enough power that there was just excess power and it was pulling from it. But apparently that's not the case because they have these cars so finely tuned now that they're not actually putting out more energy than they're supposed to. Right. And that's where, that's where the problem comes in.

So, or, you know, at least as VW does, they so finely tune their software to record that's occurring. Whoopsies. True dat, true dat. Yeah. And in ironic headline of the, of the week, well, not quite headline, but ironic story, uh, the European court of human rights.

Okay. Has ruled that companies have the right to snoop on their workers online private messages. Yeah. We've had that here for, well, ever they're paying for the connection. If you're doing private messaging on the company dime, but this is Europe, which is always kept a stronger privacy argument going on.

So as particularly for WhatsApp, uh, stop doing that at work. No, definitely. I mean, you shouldn't be doing that shit at work anyway. Yeah. You know, it does. That's, that's true. That's true. So Bitcoin, Bitcoin is in the news. Really? Oh, big time. Uh, I did not follow these stories, uh, but I did see that you've posted quite a bit.

So tell me, uh, am I, am I happy or sad that I didn't buy any Bitcoin? Uh, you should be happy. You didn't buy any Bitcoin. Mike Hearn, one of the major developers of Bitcoin is pronouncing it dead. He's done with it. He is stepping away. He left Google to go work on Bitcoin.

And, uh, he's like, yeah, it's just not going to work. It's not going to work. So get your money out. Uh, if you've got any in, you know, this is, this is kind of like, uh, what is it? Uh, uh, what's that online gambling thing with, uh, FanDuel and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah. If you have money in Bitcoin, you probably want to get it now.

And unless it's, you know, already devalued enough, but yeah, it's, uh, it's not good for the Bitcoin community because he's, he's come out saying, I'm not working on it anymore. The experiment is over and we're done. Wow. Well, that's going to be really bad for, wasn't it China?

I think that it's, it's rumored that the Chinese government basically like set up this massive Bitcoin farming computer center in the middle of nowhere to try to just make money hand over fist. I guess that's not going to work out. You know what I was laughing at? I was, I was laughing at the Winklevoss twins because they just started their whole giant thing, you know, with, they put all their money into Bitcoin.

Remember that? Yeah, I do. These guys just cannot win. I'm sorry. They're not exactly hurting. Uh, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, what is hurting PC sales? Apparently, uh, in 2015 PC desktop, I believe they're talking about mostly, uh, as sales have tanked, like just horribly, really bad.

Nobody's buying them. This is not surprising. We are mostly a consumer culture. Now tablets are fantastic for that. Uh, even if you are a content generator, much like, uh, Jason and I used to be, uh, a laptop. We still are. Sorry. That's what we're doing right now. Oh yeah.

We are making, uh, making content right now. I believe we're probably both using laptops. And I cannot believe that, you know, anybody could be a content creator with just a tablet. You can't. Or a phone. You can't. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there, there are apps for that, but they're just, they're terrible.

They suck. I mean, this makes sense to me because, you know, to, to even, um, consume content up until two, three years ago, you had to have a PC, you had to have a desktop, you had to have something. And now you don't. Now you just need a tablet or your phone and you can basically watch and consume anything or even just through your damn TV.

So there's no need for anybody that isn't actually making anything to have a computer anymore. No. Yeah. I mean, because you look at the 80, 20 rule, you know, 80% of the population are consumers, 20% are creators. And that number, as we know, is a fallacy.

We know that, you know, the 80, 20 rule does not apply to that. No. We did this. We did the experiment with JPEG magazine. We, we tracked it and it turned out that like 8% were the creators. And 92% were the consumers. And the funny part was our entire company was named 80, 20 media because we believed the fallacy.

And then we ran the numbers. We're like, ah, crap. But Apple is actually the only company that managed to sell more PCs this year. Yeah. Well, uh, again, also just kind of running the basic numbers and thoughts, uh, most creators and creative types prefer Apple than a PC.

So, uh, if you, if you actually do need to have a real computer to create something, you're probably blowing a lot of money on a nice, uh, nice Apple. Yeah. I mean, but we also have to think about business, you know, businesses have desktops. That's kind of what they do. But the thing is like these, these processors have become so powerful now that you don't need the updates.

The, the actual life lifespan of these PCs has far outreached anything. I mean, how many people do you know that still run XP? Come on. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that's why we're seeing windows basically trying to discontinue their previous versions. There's no point in upgrading. Yeah.

Uh, unless you're a gamer, you're, you're perfectly okay. Running a desktop from five years ago, if not even Excel, Excel will run on XP just fine. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So the only change that you see there is, uh, and I've started to see it just a little bit is, is people are getting rid of desktops or, and they're just going to tablets if they can get away with that for their work, which a lot of people can.

So yeah, that's shocking. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, there was an article on recode called the post-mobile era. Um, this was just a really interesting read. Um, it's, it's some guy kind of blue sky and what's going to happen, uh, what's happened, what's going to happen, uh, particularly with, uh, basically agreeing that nobody's going to be buying PCs anymore.

It's all going to be smartphones and how it's a mature market now, and we're not going to see any crazy innovations in phones so much anymore, blah, blah, blah. Well, the next, the next innovation is going to be in glasses. Yeah. We'll see about that. Let's get the glass holes back. What they never think about is the people that have never had to wear glasses.

I'm not going to wear a pair of glasses because I've never worn glasses. Brian, I have seen you in sunglasses more times than I care to imagine. Yeah. But I don't want to wear those like inside that make me douchey. Hey, I got to wear glasses. I've been wearing glasses since I was four. Get over it. Okay, fine.

Okay. So this is the big news this week. A former tech exec is now offering $199 flights to Europe from LAX and SFO. This guy is Skuli Mogensen. Yep. Made a ton of money running Oz Communications, and now he's got Wow Air.

Yeah. And the interesting thing about this is it's like, yes, it's $199 there, but about $400 back. Well, it's also $199 there. Oh, you want to bring a bag as a carry-on? That's another $50. Oh, you want to check a bag? That's another $100.

Yeah. Oh, would you like some air? That'll be $45. Yes. If you would like to breathe on the flight. So it's one of those disingenuous. It's not really $199 unless you are flying buck naked in your own little bump suit that's providing your own fucking oxygen.

Yeah, this is death by a thousand cuts as far as this goes. Exactly. So, yeah, people were freaking out about this, and I looked at it, and I read it, and I started going through the pricing sheet, and I was like, huh. And then there was one that was LA to Iceland, and a friend of mine quickly did the math on it and just went to – I can't remember the name of the other airline.

It's another airline, but it's just regular. And he's like, the $499 flight is going to be cheaper. Really? Than if you actually wanted to take anything with you. More than your tablet or your phone that can just fit in your pocket or clothes or toothbrush.

Because it was also the round trip. It was the round trip price that worked out way cheaper. So that's how they get you. So if you want to just go to Iceland and stay there forever with no belongings whatsoever, this is a great deal. Yeah. No, I looked at this, and I was thinking about this for my Italy trip, which I'm probably going to have to cancel.

Because I need a water heater, which is just depressing. So I'm in a mood today. But anyway, I looked at this, and they don't even start until after I'm supposed to be there, but I don't even know if I can go anymore. Sorry. Yeah, it happens. Speaking of out of money, SoundCloud, they just raised another $35 million in debt funding.

Who gave the money? I can't even remember, but this actually happened a while ago. This happened like last year, and it's finally getting reported. But they've got options for like another $70 million that they can get. But here's the problem with SoundCloud. They've got no monetization strategy except for these deals they're doing that are going to try and go against Pandora, Spotify, and Apple Music.

They're going to try and do the streaming thing, and it's not going to work. Yeah, no, it's not. I just don't see it working. People liked SoundCloud until they started pulling things that were copywritten. And then nobody wanted to use SoundCloud anymore. Yeah, and by the way, if you're a podcaster, here's a pro tip.

If you're a podcaster and you think you can use SoundCloud as your hosting environment, stop it. Don't. Don't. Don't be silly. Do not use SoundCloud as a podcasting host, period. If you'd like to learn more about that, sign up to my class, which I'll be teaching soon because I need to get some money.

You're going to teach podcasting. I am. Yes. All right. I'll attend. Okay. And I have another deal or another, not a deal, another link in here about the universal deal. So that'll be in the show notes. Yeah, I read through that as well. It is what it is. Yeah, this is a reach. They're screwed. They have 175 million users and they can't monetize them.

Yeah. They're not going to be around for too much longer. No. I'm actually surprised because we thought that they were dead already. Yeah. Yeah. I still have an account on there somewhere. Whatever. Anyways. Moving on. Moving on. Moving on. We've talked about Flux a lot in the past.

Yes, Flux is the app, the free, I would like to mention, app that will take your laptop and turn the color temperature of your monitor down when sunset happens. So you're not getting blue light. So you're not staying up till five in the morning trying to be online all the time to make money to try and stay in the middle class.

Yeah, that or, you know, how I use it, which is I'll be laying in bed at night. So the problem with it has always been I have it on my desktop, I have it on my laptop, but what I use at night is predominantly my iPad or my iPhone. And unless you jailbreak them, you could never get Flux on it.

Well, in a shocking statement, Apple is going to release their own version of it. I thought they'd buy Flux. I really did. There's nothing to buy. It's free. It's open source. Okay. So, yeah, they've done what Apple always does. They find something that they like and they take it and they make it their own.

Yes. So we'll now have that with the next iOS update, apparently. So, yeah, I mean, and the Flux guy, he gave it away. So I'm not I'm not really like sad about his thing. It's not like it was like 10 bucks and they just like completely pulled the rug out from under him like Apple has done for many, many, many, many decades for, you know, even back in the day, the shareware developers got the rug pulled out from them all the time.

Like, oh, yeah, you made great shareware. Apple is going to take that idea, build it into the OS and your SOL. So at least this one, I think, is going to this is something that I think is going to benefit humanity. Me, too, because I'm quite happy to be having this having this on my iPad when I'm reading in bed at night.

Absolutely. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Apple. Security. A while ago, we talked about air gapping computers and how these crazy ass hackers had figured out a way to use subsonic sounds to actually hack computers that were not connected to the Internet.

Yeah, well, advertisers have jumped on that bandwagon now and you can go to a website and there will be some some sound player in the background playing a subsonic sound that will try and trigger another device to actually pick up your like UDID that they will then cookie and say that, oh, hey, he's on multiple devices.

And then tie those two devices together. Interestingly enough, one of the first projects that I did kind of as an independent web guy was I built a website and I can't even remember the name of the company anymore. But they were basically a startup and they were marketing a box that you I don't even think we had USB.

Then you connected it to your computer in some way, shape or form. And then they were going to start a they were going to do a TV network. And what they were going to do was do inaudible sounds embedded in the actual broadcast that they were making that that would trigger a live experience on your computer.

I kind of remember that. Yeah, I'm sure they went the way of the Dodo because this is years ago and I never heard of them again. But this whole concept has been around for quite a long time. OK, well, the hackers took it over to get get your air gapped computers and now they're doing it back for advertising. And it's a, you know, it's an interesting article.

Bruce Schneier is the one that wrote it for Motherboard. Motherboard has been kicking ass lately, I got to say. It's been a damn good site for news stories with real journalism. Hmm. What about that? I wonder how they're making money. I wonder if are there inaudible sounds that we can't hear? Perhaps.

The next story is interesting because I had no idea that the NSA. Well, why are we surprised that the NSA is getting so involved in anything? There is a beta program for a game called Paragon. I am not a gamer. I don't know any of this stuff. It's some sort of multiplayer action game from Epic. And a guy by the name of Muhammad Khan tried to sign up to get into the beta and was given a really interesting denial.

The message came up that your account creation has been blocked as a result of a match against the specially designed designated nationals list maintained in the United States of America's Office of Foreign Assets Control. Yeah. If you have any questions, please contact us at customer service at accounts at epicgames.com.

How fucked up is that? It's actually not. Here's why. Because what they figured out was a lot of ISIS and Al Qaeda were using in-game communication to actually do their back channel talks to plan attacks. So that's why the NSA has kind of stepped in and gotten involved with the gaming companies.

This is the first time that we've actually seen proof that it's happened, though. Right. That's the interesting part about it. And it's fucked up. I'm not going to say it's not fucked up. But I understand the rationale behind it. Right. Yeah. I just don't think that Muhammad Khan, that's got to be a pretty, that's your John Smith.

That is. It's John Smith, Jane Doe, whatever, you know. Okay. Seems a little stupid. Yeah. Well, you know what else is stupid? Blackberries. Right. The fact that people still have them is, it's, you know, it's, it's kind of huge in Canada.

And if you really need a kind of somewhat secure phone, in theory. In theory, because the police can crack the Blackberry PGP encrypted email. Great. Without the help of Blackberry. So that's, that's the news. Because Blackberry, like in Pakistan, has acquiesced and said, okay, we'll give you a backdoor.

Right. But these other countries are like, oh, nah, we don't need it. We can do it. Don't worry about it. Right. And supposedly, you know, our whole government uses Blackberries because this can't be cracked. Oh, well, yeah. Well, maybe that's why they use Blackberries, because they can crack it and they can keep an eye on their people.

Maybe. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Good times. That's all I'm saying. If you're one of those people that likes to stay at Airbnbs, you might want to take a look at the link we have in our show notes. There are a lot of really tiny, small, hidden cameras out and about. And apparently a lot of people set these up in their Airbnbs.

I suppose some for, you know, good reasons. Like, we've heard the stories about the people that rent Airbnbs to throw wild orgy parties and leave places trashed. I suppose you'd want to have a record of that. Some people probably not so, you know, for other reasons, like, oh, hey, a whole bunch of 22-year-old girls are renting out my place for spring break.

Mm-hmm. So that sort of thing is happening. There is a script that you can run when you connect to the Wi-Fi network, if they're not smart enough to have, like, three different ones, that will find, basically, if there are any hidden cameras on the network. And then you can shut them off. However, having said that, before you make the decision to use this script, it may be illegal to run.

Of course it is. Because of the changes made by the FCC last year. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. And in the prank of the year so far, millions of server logs were injected with a poem inviting them to jump in the river. This comes from the 32nd Chaos Communication Congress in, well, it actually was in Hamburg.

They do this every year. It's the biggest hacker convention in the world. It's been going on for 32 years. And somebody actually figured out a way to do this injection into the HTTP logs for Apache or probably, what's the other one? The one that people use now, the kids, the ones that the kid use.

I don't know. I like Apache. Yeah, whatever the new one is. I'm so happy that I'm out of the fucking game that I don't even remember what it's called. But anyway, yes, it was a very funny little poem. The link will be in the show notes. I highly recommend you look at it because it's funny.

Okay, I will. GM, General Motors, one of the big original automakers, has basically decided to embrace white hat hackers, and they've opened up a public vulnerability disclosure program. So if you find anything wrong with their tech and there are problems, you can report this and they will thank you very much for it.

Oh, that's nice of them. I appreciate that. I do feel a little bad for Tesla because Tesla's been doing it for a long time, but I didn't get the story because, you know, they're not considered one of the major automakers. Yes, that's true. Yeah. Yet. Yet. Give them time, people. There's a really good article on Recode, another site that's actually been doing some good journalism, understanding the truth of do not track and ad blockers and the consequences of having them installed, which I think we've all started to notice.

This does a really deep dive into it, so we won't get into it here. If you're interested in this, go read it. But I don't know if you've noticed, Jason, but some sites are basically saying, you want to come in? Turn off your ad blocker. Oh, no, it's major now. Yeah, you cannot get into a lot of sites because they will check to see if the ads are playing, and if they're not, you can't get in.

Yeah, smart. I think the first site that I ever saw that on was Revision 3, like maybe like seven years ago. Wow. It was a long time ago. They were the first one to really kind of go after it because they were bought by a discovery network, a discovery channel, you know, the TV people.

When they got bought by them, I noticed that happening, and they're like, hey, guys, you know, sorry, you got to turn on your ads. We, this is how we make a living. Can't really blame them for it. Well, the TV people understand that, and they have their own battles to be fought right now with DVRs. So we'll see what happens with that because, you know, the TV people are going, hey, what about our ads, people?

Yep. And in the Internet of Things news, someone could have stolen your Wi-Fi password from this Internet of Things doorbell. Yes, one of the biggest products that you can get is this crazy little doorbell called Ring. It which has a camera in it and will send video to your phone.

And if somebody just popped it off the wall and grabbed the chips out of it and could actually just plug it in and reverse engineer your Wi-Fi password in plain text, you're done. That's it. They can just sit outside and download kitty porn until the cows come home. Yeah.

That's, uh, this is why I do not have a Internet of Things household. Uh, I'll wait for Zuckerberg to figure it out. Yep. Welcome to the Internet of Things. Yes. No, thank you. No, thank you, ma'am. I mean, I don't know how many times we have to talk about this, but, uh, anyway. Uh, a lot. We're going to keep saying it until somebody figures it out.

And another one, uh, teen who hacked CIA email is back to prank the USA spy chief. James Clapper's, uh, personal stuff has been, uh, basically hacked. Awesome. Yeah. I'm sorry. You're the head of the CIA. Maybe you want to have some OPSEC in your own home.

Well, yeah, that would, that would make sense. Okay. Moving on. A proposed bill in New York would force Apple to allow backdoor access to user data or be fined. And it's a, it's, it's a massive fine. It's like $2,500 per device. Wow. Yeah.

States should not be allowed to actually do this. States should not have the right to, to put these global companies on notice for, you know, just, this is, this is just a play to, for, from these people who are just like, we want Apple to open up their encryption and this is how they're trying to do it.

This is how they're trying to backdoor it. And it's bullshit. No, states shouldn't have this kind of access. If this is going to come from anybody, it has to be at a federal level and a story. Exactly. It's got to be federal. If it's federal, then fine. But if it's statewide, that's ridiculous. And the users in that state should stand up for their rights because this entire thing is just ridiculous.

But Tim Cook is coming out saying, Hey, Obama, get on board. This is, this is ridiculous. You know, they really need to get on board with securing our rights to, to privacy, but they don't want to do it because otherwise they can't, they can't read our email, you know?

Yeah. Well, we've already hit lame duck area. Uh, well, why bother? Well, if he's going to take away guns, you know, at least like take away the guns. And in, you know, enhance the encryption. I agree with that. I'm at a hundred percent on board with that. I want both of those things to happen. And yeah, we'll see how that goes.

Now in, in the great, greatest thing I've seen all week, this comes from Sean Bonner's, uh, newsletter, which we highly recommend you sign up for. People are using fog cannons for home security. This is amazing. It's, it's awesome. Uh, it's fun to watch.

It's very cool. So people, when somebody breaks into your house, basically a giant fog cannon will completely obscure their view. So they can't see anything. And then they just have to leave. Yeah. You know, the best thing about this, what you're not going to accidentally kill your spouse or children with a fog cannon. This is true. This is true.

So no, this is one of the most genius things I've ever seen. And it's like, if they can't see what to steal, what are they going to steal? It's fantastic. Love it. I'm going to get one of these installed.

Comment of the week. Last week in my uncaffeinated state, I, uh, I went to, uh, grumpy old geeks.com and grabbed some comments and threw them in right before we started the podcast. And I inadvertently did not see if they checked off on the little checkbox. Um, so sorry about that.

And there's a little checkbox that says if we, uh, are allowed to read, read your comment on the air. Yes. And I read one that did not have the checkbox. And, uh, I apologize for that. My bad. Luckily these monkeys can learn and, uh, I make mistakes once. Okay, good. Moving on.

Moving right along. Uh, so we have a new Patreon subscriber, Roz Thomas. Thank you very much for your support. We appreciate it very much. Thank you, Roz. And, uh, we got a comment on Facebook from a friend of the show, Chen, uh, been meaning to say the latest episode was fantastic. Great energy guys.

Look forward to the next one. P.S. I'm posting this on your FB page because I can. Well, and I did find apparently found it. So I found it, which was pretty amazing. Uh, over on Twitter from, uh, Moss 6502. Uh, I love your podcast.

Super annoying that iTunes reviews are still a way to show support because fuck that app. Indeed. My friend, succinct and true. Yeah. Sam Harrelson writes, the curse of the GOG podcast is real. Brian on Bowie's death from last Friday. And he posted a link to the time code, which is actually inaccurate now because we did have to remove the comment that Brian actually fucked up with.

So. Yep. Yep. Yep. So you might have to, you might have to retweet that. I would just like to state for the record that I did not wish Bowie dead. I did not predict his death or anything. I just said that the, the outpouring online for Lemmy was going to be far overshadowed when somebody such as a David Bowie were to pass away.

Okay. Damn it. There you go. And, uh, or say a Justin Bieber. Come on. Come on. I'm telling you, man, if you're going to stick with the bees, go Bieber and Bono. If you, if you need to take some people down, please, I will, I am, I will get behind you 100% as your co-host.

I did not know I had this power. You're like, you're like the death note of podcasting. Desu noto. Anyways, you can find us on Twitter at GOG podcast or at Patreon at patreon.com slash GOG. We have a website at grumpy old geeks.com where you can listen to the shows, leave feedback or better yet, ask us questions that we can read on the air.

If you hit the little check boxy thing, if you have any friends, please tell them about the show. And please, if you like the show, drop us an iTunes review. They really do help us out, sadly, and it'll only take a minute or two. Just go to grumpy old geeks.com slash iTunes. It'll take you right there. We were talking about journalism and, you know, we've talked about that a lot on the show, the death of journalism, how there is no more long form journalism, how tension spans

have basically killed that, that we even consider, you know, more than five or six pages of scrolling to be long form these days. Ted Koppel is an old school journalist and seriously long form is an entire book. I finished Lights Out, A Cyber Attack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath.

It was fantastic. It was terrifying. It basically describes in great deal what would happen if basically somebody hacked into our power grid and shut us down and how terrifyingly simple that actually is and how incredibly complex the solution would be.

I will have to say that even my attention span, even though I love to read and I love long form journalism, is probably going down a bit because I found this to be a lot and it was difficult to get through, but worth it all. He wrote a damn great book and it's kind of terrifying.

I'm not going to run out and become one of these people that starts the preppers, as they're called. Or your co-host. Or you, yes. But basically, if you read this book, Jason, you'll realize that all your prepping will do you nothing because you're still in a metropolis.

Good luck. No, I know that. Trust me. We of that ilk know that. Yeah, the people that got it together that will survive will be the Mormons, which was a fascinating chapter in this book. I can't recommend it enough. It's actually a really great read. Okay, well, I will add it to my list.

Awesome. And also on my list, and this comes to the books I haven't read yet, coming up next week, Written in Fire by Marcus Saki is out now. This is the final installment of the Brilliant series. We've talked about the first two books, and this is just out, hot off the presses.

Go get it, read it. I'm going to talk about it next week, and I can't wait. Having just finished the Ted Koppel book, I will be getting it now, and we're going to actually try to both talk about a book once. Okay, that'll be, well, hey, we'll see. Yeah, we'll see what happens. Also, I want to talk about Deep Work, Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport.

Cal's first book, or actually, I think it's maybe his fifth book. This guy, he's a really good writer, really smart guy. His first book was called So Good They Can't Ignore You, Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love. And this book is about why you should not follow your passion. And that's something that, you know, I've reviewed this book on the show before, and I stand by this book.

And I finally, this morning, actually, last night, we talked to Cal on my day job for an hour, and Cal is just wicked smart, wicked smart guy. And I cannot wait to dive into his next book, Deep Work. And that will be my second review for next week. Excellent.

All right. I'm just saying, if you want to, if you want to, like, get ahead of the game, pick up these books, and we'll be talking about them next week. And then if you have questions or comments, send them to our previously stated comment section. Software, apps, and gadgets.

If you have an iPhone, there is a simple code that will give you access to iPhone secret settings, showing extra information on signal strength and call settings. I'm not sure why you would want any of this, but if you're old school like us, and you like seeing a bunch of other information and trying to be able to tweak things, you'll be intrigued enough to pull it up once.

You can enable the tool by dialing star 3001, hashtag 12345, hashtag star. And it's called pound. It's not hashtagged, for fuck's sake. I'm trying to speak to the kids. They don't know what pound is. Kids these days.

Oh, yeah. Speaking of weird ass shit, Foursquare just finished another round of funding. They raised $45 million, and they're still valued at $250 million. I don't even know anybody that still has the app on their phone unless they just forgot to delete it.

Yep, same here. But here's what I think is the greatest news. Dennis Crowley steps away as CEO. Hopefully, he'll go get a haircut. Well, he's a douchebag. I cannot stand Dennis Crowley, which I have mentioned. Many times on the show, because he is an asshole. Right. Okay. And speaking of apps that old people probably shouldn't be using, the Wall Street Journal and a woman by the name Joanna Stern did basically a Snapchat 101.

And she's making an appeal to say, don't leave Snapchat to the millennials. Learn to love the world's most confusing social network with this guide. This is kind of prompted by even the White House getting on board and starting up their own Snapchat channel where they do updates.

My argument, well, I have a couple thoughts here. First off, yeah, it makes no sense. There's nothing even close to actual menus. For us old people that grew up with understanding operating systems and having menus, this is confusing. But this is not surprising for younger generations who have grown up not bothering with that sort of stuff.

So, of course, there's not, you know, they like exploring things. And that's what Snapchat is. There's no direct way to A and B. You just kind of figure it out. My argument would be, I don't think, I think we leave this to the millennials. Snapchat is silly and you can do cute little things with it.

And once you grow up, you won't be interested in it anymore. So leave it for the kids. Yep, absolutely. Yeah, I actually spent the week playing around with Snapchat because this article made me feel like I should. And my takeaway from it is, no, not for me. I'm too old.

I'm not interested in drawing funny things on pictures and, you know, using the same city tags. And I just don't care.

Media candy. We talked about The Expanse before. A new show on the Syfy Network, or Siffy, as it were. Yes. I've been watching it. I rather enjoy it. Okay. I have to say, I'm actually getting into it.

I really kind of dig it. So I think I'm on episode six or something now. So give it a shot. Okay. This is for you. This is for you, Brian, because I figured I'll actually look at this one. It's not a superhero thing. So I'm into it.

So making a murderer, which I've talked about before. Yeah. Nancy Grace, who I honestly cannot stand. She was there for the Stephen Avery trial and has had a special out and is doing a bunch of different things with this.

She is on board with saying that he done it. He done it. Okay. And then they got his ex-fiancee on and she said he done it. So the big debate right now is about how Netflix allowed this to be aired and are they culpable for it?

But it's a documentary. I mean. No, they're not culpable for it. It's a fucking TV show. It is a TV show, but it's, it's, it's, I'm, I just want this guy to just go away. How much longer until I don't hear about this? I know that's, that's pretty much it. I, that's my, the full extent of my engagement with the show, but listening to Nancy Grace talk about it and going through the evidence from the trial, when she actually talked to him, she, she paints a very valid picture that he done it.

Okay. We had our Oscar nominations and the not surprising thing would be that Star Wars got a bunch of nods in the standard areas that science fiction movies always get nods, film editing, visual effects, all that sort of thing. Right.

Not story. Not story. Uh, the cool thing about this though, is that, uh, two sci-fi movies basically got the nod for best picture, uh, Mad Max, Fury Road and the Martian, the well-known comedy. Yes, the comedy. Great Golden Globes. Uh, so that's great.

If you're a fan of sci-fi, unfortunately, I mean, I, I did love the Martian. Um, do I think it's Oscar best picture worthy? Probably not, but it was absolutely not even mad Max, Fury Road, not even effing close, not even close. So, but I mean, it's good to see sci-fi actually not being relegated.

Not being relegated to the back ends of Oscars where they only hire the hot chick and it's not part of the main ceremony. Well, they did hire the hot chick for Mad Max. I mean, Charlize Theron, come on. I meant for the pre Oscar ceremonies or whatever it's called. The one that's the day before that sci-fi movies always win awards at and they hire hot actresses at the moment.

Oh, yes, yes. Feel better. Yeah. The technical awards. Yes. That one. Uh, and today I believe, or maybe yesterday, yesterday, yesterday, there was a new trailer that dropped, uh, for a, not necessarily sequel. We don't know yet to Cloverfield 10 Cloverfield lane.

I loved the trailer. Okay. I did not love the original Cloverfield. I thought it was okay, but I love this trailer. Okay. I'm excited. Yeah. I'm not very excited. My only thing is why would you make it? I don't know.

I don't know. You know, they made it because they can. Yeah. And it's, you know, they're attached to JJ Abrams because it was produced by Bad Robot, but he has nothing to do with it. No. Didn't write it. Didn't direct it. That's fine. He's doing enough. Keep your attention on Star Wars and don't fuck it up.

Okay. David Bowie has broken Adele's music video record on Vivo. Good. Yay. That's nice. You know, it takes dying, but there you go. Yeah. That's how it goes. And I just want to say it's time for X-Files.

Watch the people are, the people are coming out of the woodwork now. I saw. I know. Did you see, I changed my profile picture on Facebook to the iconic, I want to believe poster. I couldn't give a flying fuck if what you change your profile picture too. So no, I did not notice. I'm excited. Okay.

You do want to believe, but I would say that don't get your hopes up because the reviews are coming in and they are mediocre at best. Oh, fuck. Yep.

The web's not dead. Oh, no, it's not. In the silly kind of reason that the internet exists thing, as soon as the David Bowie news was announced, a couple hundred different sites put up this fake headline just for clickbait-y purposes, but I still had to laugh.

Music fans in mourning as Justin Bieber tragically confirmed alive and well. Yeah. I mean, I figured the onion would be the king of that one. Yeah. I also saw one for Ted Nugent with, you know, replace Justin Bieber with Ted Nugent. It's all very funny. So an interesting question popped up on Quora.

What would $1,000 of Apple stock bought at the release of Forrest Gump film be worth today? He went through the whole thing, which involves splits, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it's actually less than I thought it would be. 1,000 shares would have returned $136,000. Okay.

I was expecting quite a bit more. Because you always hear that story. What if you would have bought stock back in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's an article that actually outlined, I mean, this was like 10 to 12 years ago, that had all of the different things. If you, instead of buying an Apple computer, how much would you be worth if you'd have spent that money on Apple stock?

You know, that's an old article, but yeah, about the same. Yeah, about the same. Now, my, the web's not dead. The Twitter spat between Emo Kylo Ren and Very Lonely Luke is what the internet was made for. And I have to say. This is fantastic.

Yeah, I followed Emo Kylo Ren as soon as I heard about the account. And then the Very Lonely Luke one I actually missed. But this is, when they got into it with each other, that was fantastic. No, it was really good. Yeah, good stuff.

Closing shout outs. And somewhat breaking news. I saw this as we were going through some of the stories. Flux is not all that cool with Apple doing this. They have responded to Apple. They're a little bit annoyed because Flux basically did try to release their own app and Apple banned it.

Apple said that the app was in violation of its developer program agreement. And so they're not quite so cool with the company going ahead and then releasing their own version. Well, interesting. Right. We will see if anything comes out of this. I'm guessing not. Okay. Well, my closing shout out is to Mr. Alan Rickman.

And I'm putting a video in the show called Epic Tea Time with Alan Rickman, which is one of the greatest videos ever made. It's like seven and a half minutes of slow motion of Alan Rickman having tea. Yes. That's pretty much it. It's very funny. And you were bagging on my buddy Tim Ferriss before.

He came by this week and we had lunch and he got to meet Bam Bam, my little puppy. When was I bagging on him? Earlier in the show about the cold showers. But anyway, yes, Tim has a new crowdfunding campaign that is about getting enough money together for Johns Hopkins to do a study of treatment on major depression using psilocybin, psilocybin, basically mushrooms.

If you can take mushrooms and not be depressed with microdosing and things like that. I find that if I take beer, I'm not depressed. Actually, I find that's completely I have to have beer because I'm depressed. They're $41,000 out of an $80,000 campaign.

Check it out. It's very interesting. I will be donating to this because I think it is a very worthwhile test to be done. And any of the money that goes over the $80,000 will go into the other studies that are basically on the table because there's a ton of them. Okay.

That's cool. It's very cool. Yeah. Yeah. And just for the record, I think that just mentioning the fact that he said cold showers would help you lose weight is not bagging on him. Okay. Especially since there is a small chance we will be doing some sort of meetup soon that which he will be at. So, yes.

And I have to go take a cold shower now because I don't have the money to buy a new water heater. Yeah. Well, that's a come on, BTR. Grumpy Old Geeks on the BTR Podcast Network. Ka-ching! Thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFilippo and you can check me out at jpd.me.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. And you can follow me at Slender Fungus. Grumpy Old Geeks is a fan-supported show. Check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash GOG. We really appreciate your support. If you don't want to or can't donate but still want to support the show, please go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a few words and five stars or tell a friend about the show.

Intro music for the show is provided by the band Among Us. You can find them on iTunes, Spotify, and Apple Music. Or you can donate through the Grumpy Old Geeks Patreon page at patreon.com slash GOG to get 10 exclusive tracks. Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Stachansky. You can follow Andy at twitter.com slash houseofandy.

And he's also on SoundCloud at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash Andy. Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 143. This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean.

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