Artwork for 279: Live from Fireside 2018

279: Live from Fireside 2018

38 min

Dynamic advertising can change episode lengths. Timestamps are approximate.

Summary

Jason DeFillippo and Brian Schulmeister record a live episode of Grumpy Old Geeks at the 2018 Fireside Conference in Canada. They discuss their early web careers, AI marketing claims, startup pitches, technology companies under public scrutiny, and security stories. The episode closes with podcasting advice, audience giveaways, and thanks to the conference staff.

  • The hosts recount their early website, startup, and podcasting work.
  • They discuss Jaron Lanier’s criticism of AI terminology and an announced feature for Will.i.am’s headphones that they say never appeared.
  • They critique startup pitches and promotional language.
  • They discuss Elon Musk, Bird scooters, and the proposed Stop BEZOS Act.
  • They consider research on attention.
  • After an attempted cryptocurrency giveaway, they discuss alleged bank malware, Tor server exposure, and unsecured 3D printers.
  • They close with podcasting advice, giveaways, and thanks to the conference staff.

Key moments

  1. Live introduction and career histories

    The hosts introduce the live show and recount their early work on websites, startups, and podcasts.

  2. AI claims and startup pitches

    They discuss AI terminology, promotional claims, and startup presentations.

  3. Tech companies and public scrutiny

    The conversation turns to Elon Musk, Bird scooters, Amazon, and research on attention.

  4. Cryptocurrency, security, and closing topics

    After an attempted cryptocurrency giveaway, the hosts discuss security stories, gadgets, podcasting, and the conference.

Full transcript

96 lines · machine transcribed
  1. This episode is sponsored in part by Betterment. Get up to one year managed free by visiting betterment.com slash gog. This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you in part by ButcherBox. For $20 off your first box and two pounds of free ground beef in every box for the life of your subscription, go to butcherbox.com slash gog and enter code gog. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what

  2. went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. We are coming to you live from a deluxe cabin in the woods. We're moving on up. We've just finished our show. So yeah, it's going to be a bit of a different episode this week. We just recorded a live podcast at the 2018 Fireside Conference.

  3. It's a little bit shorter, 30 minutes, because, you know, we had a crowd of people and tolerances for long shows are not really there. We were keeping them from their booze. Let's be honest. Yes, let's be honest. There was one thing between dinner and booze opening up and it was us. So it was morally imperative that we finish up quick. Yes. So without further ado, I hope you guys enjoy the show and we're on our way back to Los Angeles. Coming to you from in front of a live studio audience

  4. from the Fireside Conference in the ass end of nowhere, Canada, where milk goes in bags and vodka comes in cans. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks so much to Stephen and Daniel and Tom for listening to our show. And I can only guess getting extremely drunk one night and deciding this would be a good idea to have us here.

  5. Now, this is a trigger warning for the sensitive types out there. We do use adult language in this show. We call BS on the company's technologies and bad ideas in just plain screw ups. If you're easily offended, can't take a joke about your AI blockchain enabled crypto coin providing quantum computing service in the cloud via serverless architecture startup, get the fuck out and go do yoga. And you've had a lot of happy talk today. That ends now. And I'm sure there are some folks

  6. out there thinking about starting a podcast. See this buddy right here? Stick around to the end of the show. And if you can stomach it, that is, we're giving away this blue Yeti to one of you lucky audience members. This is this is the actual blue Yeti that we started the show with. This is the one it's not the reason our first show sucked, though. No, no, that was all that was totally bad. Very bad. So a little bit about us between the two of us. We built over 1000 websites, really, and global social media

  7. campaigns and done just about everything there is to do on the inter tubes. We've been in the trenches since the beginning of the web. We've seen it all. And here's kind of a little bit about me. Does anybody remember gopher? And I'm not talking about the thing that ran through your cabin last night. I'm talking about the original gopher, which was anybody, the web, anybody? Yeah. So I built that for the University of Southern California when I was a student there as part of a work study program, while I was getting a dual degree in music and psychology. So naturally, I would do

  8. technology. That makes total sense. Then I built their first website. Then I went to a company called Hollywood Online, where I built movie packages for AOL. Before there was a web. And then I went on from there doing websites. I transitioned to music. I started my own company 20 years ago, developing stuff for music companies as well. I built a downloadable MP3 company and I shopped it to every single major label and got turned down. And three months later, iTunes

  9. launched. So how well did that work out for the labels? Not so much. So then I just went on to work for bands like Green Day, Atlantis, the Goo Goo Dolls, Depeche Mode, Leanne Rhymes, Rihanna, et cetera, et cetera, and that annoying fucking band that woke you up this morning, Coldplay. And I did all that until streaming killed the music industry. So here I am podcasting.

  10. I started making websites with my girlfriend back in 1994. My first website was called Spew. It was nominated for the best sex site at the first Webby Awards. And it has been expunged from the internet by the Webbys, just like Hulk Hogan sex tape. You cannot find it anymore. The only two things you can't find on the internet.

  11. Yeah. I programmed Epson's first website. Yes, that Epson. And through some weird twists and turns, I got the job as the head website programmer for Paramount Motion Pictures. For a few years, I made movie websites, about 50 or so of them, and one for a little flick called Titanic. The worst fucking movie ever made.

  12. Well, what are you going to do? It's a paying job. Good website, though. Yeah, it's a good website. I started my first company called Blog Rolling. And that one, I grew and sold it to a little Canadian company called Two Cows, some people may have heard of. On a $1,000 budget from my friend Joey Ito, I made over $100,000 on that company. So that is a 100x return. Check.

  13. Only time he's ever done that. Yeah, no doubt. I co-founded a citizen journalism blog network called Metro Blogging, long before Huffington Post ruined it for everybody. Of course, Ariana. A bunch of other startups in San Francisco, like Technorati, JPEG Magazine. And I retired from programming five years ago to become a full-time podcaster, producer, and editor, since no one hires basically programmers over 40 in Silicon Valley anymore. And thanks to Jordan Harbinger down there, who got me into

  14. this business. Appreciate it, brother. And yeah. So without further ado, here we go. One of our biggest pet peeves. And I'm happy that only two pitches use it, AI. Yeah, we talk about AI on this show a lot in our hatred for it. And we're going to hand this one off to Jaron Lanier. He just wrote a new book called 10 Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. And he is a, you know, he's a pioneer in the virtual reality space. He's a computer

  15. scientist way smarter than we ever will be or anyone in this room, I'm guessing, hopefully, because it's going to fall flat if it doesn't. So he writes in his new book, we forget that AI is a story we computer scientists made up to help us get funding once upon a time, back when we depended on grants from government agencies. It was a pragmatic theater. But now AI has become fiction that has overtaken its authors. AI is a fantasy, nothing but a story

  16. we tell about our code. It's also a cover up for sloppy engineering. All kinds of different programs might or might not be called AI at any given time. So when a program is called AI, the inevitable result is that the criteria for success becomes vague. AI is a role playing game for engineers, not in itself an actual technical achievement. Many of the algorithms that are called AI are interesting and actually do things, of course, but they would be better understood and might even work better without the AI

  17. storytelling. So we talk about AI because every journalist on the planet right now uses it as a buzzword. And every startup. And every startup. So we're going to play a new game that we came up with called AI Buzzword Bingo. Over on VentureBeat, I found an ad for a webinar to get businesses ready for the coming, basically surge in AI that's going to either ruin your business or make you fabulously

  18. wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. Or Skynet. Or Skynet. They have five topics that we'd like to share. So if you can, count the buzzwords as we go. The first up for the webinar is strategy. AI driven transformation begins with ground up problem solving, but must be supported by a foundation of governments and aligned with business objectives in enterprise data strategy. While approaches and metrics vary by organizational maturity, customer experience is always true north.

  19. North. North. R2-D2. Head north. That's where the customers are. People. Preparing people for AI is as important as preparing data. And it's essential for businesses to prioritize human factors over technological capabilities. Instill the AI mindset across myriad stakeholder groups. Foster lockstep coordination between technical and product.

  20. And address AI's limitation and cultural stigma head on. We must prepare the people to become batteries. Get the meatbags ready. Into the matrix you go. Data. Data preparedness is not a linear destination. AI data readiness requires organizations to address their broader data strategy and orchestrate data pipelines and resources for ongoing enterprise learning and evolution. We must create a pipeline between the data we mine and the people who will buy it from us. And it will be more of a circle than linear like that movie had Human Centipede. How you guys doing on the buzzword count so far?

  21. You got them all? Good? Good? Okay. We got two more to go. Infrastructure. Decision making around the technical architecture and integrations required to deploy AI must align with core product strategy, balance reliability with flexibility, and account for rapidly evolving AI software, human hardware, and firmware. And humans, I guess. I've read that 15 times and I still don't know what the fuck that means. If anybody understands that, let me know. Last one is ethics. We've talked about ethics quite a bit

  22. because nobody has any. The mass automation of big data and AI call for a new business competency, a formalized approach to organizational resources, bias assessment, transparency, and ethical preparedness. Ethics. We'll never get funding if we use ethics. We need all the datas. So that's basically how all that works. And speaking of AI, raise your hands if you like the black-eyed peas.

  23. Oh, good. You all have good taste in music. Not you, sir. No, get out. Just kidding. So Will.i.am is apparently a tech entrepreneur. I don't know if you knew that. Maybe you guys did. He started up a company called IM. And I've got a pair of IM Plus buttons right here. These are a USB head...

  24. Somebody laughed. These are USB headphones that retail for $149.95. Now, I unfortunately don't have the most expensive part of the package. It's not the actual product. It's the 45-page booklet of artsy photos that Will.i.am commissioned for the product, which involved a lot of shots of Will.i.am wearing his product. And multiracial but not multi-age or multi-weight or multi-attractiveness people.

  25. They're all basically just hot 20-somethings wearing the fucking headphones. So I don't have that, unfortunately. But that's not my point. The point is that when these were announced, they were going to come with something called ANNEDA. A-N-N-E-D-A. Has anybody heard of that? Of course you fucking haven't. Because it never fucking appeared. It's a year later. Try to Google it. You can't find it. It's been removed from their website. So yet another bullshit AI thing that was announced to try to get money that never fucking came out. So if anybody would like

  26. these headphones, come up and get them. So since so many people here are doing startups, here are a few other things that you should probably not do that we've seen around the conference today. Okay, so we've gotten some swag today. We've gone around. We've gotten little bits. Our bags are full. A couple places we've gone to today we got swag from. Nobody told us what they do. If you're giving away swag, please, for the love of Pete, tell people what you do.

  27. It would help. It would help. Secondly, if you're trying to get funding, you should probably have actually started your company already. Not just have an idea and a dream. Ideas are like assholes. Everybody's got one. Some people have two, maybe three. In blockchain. Okay. Blockchain. We've heard blockchain bandied about a bit. And for us, blockchain is an Excel spreadsheet with track changes turned on that everybody has access to.

  28. Not everything needs to be on the blockchain. Honestly, your pet food does not have to be on the blockchain. And we have heard things that are pretty close to that at some point. So, now that said, rules are made to be broken. And here's how the adults do it. Let's talk about Elon Musk. Oh, no. What did he do now? Well, uh... Hold on. Seriously? Do I need to go check my

  29. portfolio? Yes. Yes, you do. I knew shit was going to go south when she started dating Grimes. Fuck. No. Okay, what happened? Uh, Elon likes, uh, likes to go on podcasts nowadays. Let's have, let's have one of the most powerful people in the world do the podcast tour. Great. He went on Joe Rogan, smoked a dube. And within a, just a little bit of time, the two main people or two of the main people, one of the head of human resources and the head of accounting quit. And, uh, the stock dropped

  30. a little bit, just a little teensy bit, a little teensy, teensy bit. Uh, Dave Morton, who joined the company a month ago, a month ago. And this is what he said. The level of public attention placed on the company, as well as the pace, as the pace within the company have exceeded my expectations.

  31. What did you think was going to happen when you joined Tesla? Do you think you're going to join like a nice little safe company? It's Elon Musk. He's like part superhero and part supervillain and part like just Asperger's Tasmanian devil nowadays. So, uh, yeah, it's been a, it's been an interesting day for, or actually it wasn't an interesting day because we were on a bus with no cell phones and your stock dropped 8%. Yeah. I might've been an early investor. Yeah. A little

  32. bit. Yeah. Kids not going to school anymore. I guess still got Apple. As long as Tim Cook doesn't start hanging out with Elon, I think we're good. Yeah. Well, we got one more. Not done yet. Okay. Remember the cave diving pedophile episode? Yeah. Yep. Yep. Back in the news. Oh fuck.

  33. You know, when you send an email to a news organization and you say off the record, that's not a magic word. It doesn't mean it's off the record. It's a, you have to agree that it's off the record, right? Any, any journalists here? That's a, that's the thing to agree to.

  34. Well, Buzzfeed didn't agree. So they, they posted his email and, uh, just here's a few bits of it. I love this. I suggest that you call people, you know, in Thailand, find out what's actually going on and stop defending child rapists. You fucking asshole. He's an old single white guy from England who's been traveling or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years, mostly Pattaya beach until moving to Chang Ray for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time.

  35. Not incendiary, not incendiary at all. So talk about not letting sleeping dogs lie. Uh, and as for the alleged threat of a lawsuit, which magically appeared when I raised the issue, nothing was sent or raised beforehand. I fucking hope he sues me. So, uh, yeah. And, uh, nobody at Buzzfeed can actually verify those claims and he didn't give any, like any evidence at all. This, and this came before the Rogan doobie. You know, if he was stoned when he did it, I'd give him a pass, but, uh,

  36. what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Yeah. It's a short hop from superhero to supervillain. And, uh, yes. One of our other favorite topics is the bird scooters. I don't, you don't have them in Toronto yet. I don't know where you're from. Maybe you're not from my city where we're inundated with them, where I trip over them every two seconds and they're a horrible scourge upon everybody, but they're cute and they're so fun as everybody says. Uh, so they ran with a business plan that Uber did, which is just show up, dump your shit all over the place and we'll

  37. clean up the mess later. And hopefully we'll make a bunch of money first. And, uh, all the cities turned around and went, Hey, hold on a second. That's kind of bullshit. So we've started to kick them out of a bunch of cities and you'd think they would have learned their lesson, but no, new news is coming out now that they're basically just taking this to universities and they're dumping them on universities left, right, and center all over the U S and, uh, the universities are basically saying what? So it's a pivot, man. It's a pivot. Yes. It didn't work in cities. So now

  38. we're going to try the kids. Oh, kind of like the cave divers in Thailand, I guess. Yes. Uh, see, you always go there. Oh, come on. What do you want? You know, you know me, you know me. Uh, Bernie Sanders is a Senator down in the U S where we're from. And, um, I believe he'd be considered conservative in Canada. That's my understanding. I don't know if you guys know this, but we have a

  39. little bit of a problem with these mega corporations hiring people for like subsistence wages and then having them live off the government and they get food stamps. They get, you know, any kind of basically government wages that they can get just so they can work at Walmart and Amazon. Well, Bernie said, no, Mo, we don't like this anymore. So he has introduced the stopped Bezos act. It was

  40. right on the tail of Amazon hitting $1 trillion in valuation. And it is, it is stop bad employers by zeroing out subsidies act. You can't have an acronym where the first word you actually say, and then everything else is just, this is the Spezos act. That's bullshit. No, well, take it up with Bernie, man. I'll get right on that. Yeah. Yeah. And

  41. so I, what do you guys think for it? Against it? All right. I hear Canadians like living wages. Oh yeah. Yeah. We don't do that down there. Yeah. We don't do that. Not at all. Since we're here at fireside talking to the brilliant minds who'd be the bright hope of want to be the bright hope of the future or sell the Google and Amazon as quickly as possible and get a big payout.

  42. Come on. We know the truth. Yeah. You want that 100 X and that fuck you money. We know. Oh, come on. Yeah. Everybody wants to take their companies to the bright hole fucking horizon these days, right? As soon as you get an offer for a hundred mil, you're out. No. Well, Google researchers say that the tech industry has contributed to an attention crisis.

  43. We're going to file this under no shit, Sherlock. It's like saying, oh, fire burns. Yeah. Yeah. We kind of figured that out. So this new paper calls on the technology industry to re-examine the way it ties engagement to success, noting that capturing people's attention is not necessarily the best way to measure whether they're satisfied with a product. Hmm. What do you think?

  44. No shit. Okay. Well, went on that one. Went on that one. This episode is sponsored in part by Betterment. If you're a long time listener to the show, you know, I can't get enough of that hot stock talk. I mean, Elon Musk alone has provided hours of enjoyment recently. And I like to invest in the stock market. I'm always looking for a smarter, better way to do it. You're not the average investor. So why settle for the same old average investing? Now there's a smarter way to manage your money. Betterment. Betterment is an online

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  51. Everybody here is in some tract I hear. And I hear there's a crypto tract. So we might have some crypto fans in the audience. All right. Well, hey, we got a lot of swag, right? And there's an entire thing going on. So I've got this $25 of free crypto from CoinSmart. And it says basically you have to be from Canada. I'm not from Canada. So I can't use this. But even if I could, I'll illustrate exactly how much I believe in cryptocurrency. If anybody has $3, they can have this $25.

  52. Three actual Canadian? I don't even need American. Canadian. One dollar. I will take Canadian dollars. No? Nope. All right. That's all we got on crypto. And you just proved our point. Thank you. So we're going to talk about security now. We usually have our friend Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire on the show to talk about crypto with us. He's an expert in the field, whereas we are rank amateurs.

  53. Not crypto, security. You're stuck on crypto. He's with us to talk about security. Okay. Okay. Well, he talks about crypto and security. You'll edit it and, you know, the people at home won't ever hear this. When you guys hear this later. Oh, wait, you never will. Oh, God. We're going to be so good. So good. So good. Well, Dave is awesome and we miss him today. So we wanted to do a little shout out to him. A long time ago when we started the show, I said that the smart programmers are going to be the ones that are in Apple and Google right now. They're going to be writing

  54. the code that it has just a little tiny flaw, a little bit that nobody's ever going to catch and they're going to leave. And that is going to be the zero day that they sell to every government that you know and make a million dollars. Jason's always been the evil one on the program. He comes up with these schemes.

  55. I think I had. I'm giving everybody a monetization strategy. That's all I'm doing. Come on. You know, it sucks being a coder. You got to, you got to have an exit plan. That's true. If we'd have thought of this stuff when we were in our twenties, we would not be here right now. That's for sure. So this is an interesting story. There are white hat hackers out there that are going rogue. There's two guys. They haven't figured out who they are yet. They're going by the, well, the, the security community has labeled them

  56. silence because apparently they're silent, but it's two guys. There is a developer and a, what's the other guy. He's basically like a social engineer. One guy is writing the code. One guy is going to a bank and getting the code in the bank. Well, they're bank robbers. Two guys in the white hat community are now bank robbers. They're in the way they figured this out was these guys are using

  57. malware code that only the like white hat guys have. It's like, you know, code that is in the system that are like samples that people have come up with. And they're using that to build their own custom malware. And then that malware is going in and they're pulling money out of the banks. They made $700,000 so far. Two guys. We have not made $700,000 too, so far. No, no, no. So it's, it's not bad for a two man crew, but it proves my point that the white hats will eventually turn bad given enough

  58. motivation. Maybe we have a bet on this. You haven't proven it yet. Okay. Well, they got $700,000. I proved it. They're not. Okay. I want proof. So, uh, Tor, anybody here use Tor? Nobody?

  59. Nobody on the dark web. Nobody on the dark web here. Oh, that's right. These are the, these are the good guys. That's right. This is the, the, the conference of light and love. And well, on the dark web, you're supposed to be private and your servers are supposed to be hidden, right? Now to set up a server on the dark web takes really specific customizations.

  60. And this researchers has figured out using bad SSL certificates that there are ways that you can actually expose public IPs of Tor servers. Turns out you're only on the dark web if you click on dark. Oh, you got to get dark mode. You got to hit the dark mode. Dark mode button. And it's a, it's a pretty interesting hack because what we're finding out is being a criminal for the most part is hard. You have to, you can't just like, you know, say I want, I want to be the next guy on the Silk Road. Well, unless you want to be Ross Albrecht in jail for the rest of your life, but that's the

  61. way it goes. And I don't know. We're finding that all of the smart criminals are either underground or in jail. So I guess maybe not so smart, not so smart, not so smart. And, uh, anybody here have a 3d printer? Cause I know everybody loves raising their hand at this conference. Come on, anybody, nobody. They only raise their hands in sunlight. It's like a reverse vampire thing.

  62. Reverse vampire. Okay. Well, there's a tool. If you have a 3d printer that you can actually put on called Octo print. And what it does is it lets you remote control your 3d printer because when you're home and your 3d printers at the office and you got to print that widget for that 9am meeting, you got to be able to log in and do it. Well, people generally forget to change the default passwords and credentials for their shit. That's what happens. And it's stupid. We know, but everybody does it.

  63. At some point. Now, some researchers have found out they went to Shodan. Anybody know what Shodan is? Anybody? Anybody? Nope. Nope. Well, Shodan is a search engine. Okay. We got one. Shodan is a search engine for internet connected devices that you can go search and find stuff that people have left unsecured. Basically, if you have a webcam at home and you haven't put a password on it, somebody can Google it and find it. Well, Shodan it and find it. So you and your cat and your spouse

  64. and other insundries, which Brian has told me I'm not allowed to say certain things tonight. So I won't go down that road. It's a nice, it's a nice people. Or in Canada. I gotta be nice. I know. Shit. So there are over 3,000 or almost 3,800 3D printers out there that you can go to right now on Shodan.

  65. Search for and print your own stuff. You know, make it in, send it commands that can actually burn out the 3D printer. Print a gun, because apparently you can do that now. Well, you know, if you gotta be in the office and kill your boss, you gotta have a gun ready for you. That's true.

  66. I'm saying. So, uh, cautionary tale. Just make sure you change your passwords. That's all we gotta do. And moving on. We usually break this show into different segments, and we're not doing it this time because we don't have our sound effects here. So we have like, you know, Boo! Absin' doodads is the next one. And we don't really have that right now, so we're kind of just shucking and jibing. Chrome 69 has been released.

  67. 69, dude. And the only reason I did that is because I'm a 12-year-old, and I love Bill and Ted. Tried not to put that in the show. I know. There we are. And since we're in Canada, I have something of interest to all of everybody that is here right now because of the mosquito thing. There's this company called Thermacell, and they have something called the Radius Zone System now. So they've released a new mosquito repelling system, and it utilizes an all-natural method of defense. It's rechargeable.

  68. It forms a protective dome around your family that keeps bugs at bay. It's got a rechargeable USB lithium-ion battery. It lasts for six hours in a single charge. It emits a scent-free repellent made from something or other, and it's pretty cool as shit. So you Canadians that have to go home and deal with this stuff, this thing sounds awesome. I wanted one today. I was outside working on the notes for this show, and I got the shit eaten out of me, so I could have used one today. That's true. It would have been nice. And we have a section called Brick-a-Brack,

  69. which is just random shit that we found, and because we were coming here, I found some Canadian stuff. So I bet you didn't know there was a country between the U.S. and Canada at one point. From the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which settled hospitalities between the brand new U.S. and Great Britain, it left the U.S.-Canadian boundary line a little open to interpretation, especially along a certain corner in what is now New Hampshire. The treaty said the border would follow the north and west head of the Connecticut River, but there were several tributaries.

  70. So all of a sudden, they disagreed about which body of water counted, and as a result, there was a 280-square-mile patch of land between both that was subject to taxation by both countries. The residents said to hell with that, declared themselves independent, and called themselves the Republican of the Indian Stream. Not only did they do that, they managed to raise a militia, they had a constitution, they elected their own government, and they printed their own stamps and currency. It only lasted a few years, and then all of a sudden, it became part of the U.S. again. Sad but true.

  71. But you're dropping the ball here. Today, the area is known as Pittsburgh, New Hampshire. Okay. I'm from Pittsburgh. You're not from Pittsburgh, New Hampshire. I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I like this guy. I like that for a little bit. Anyways, I'm a big fan of the Cocteau Twins. I don't know if anybody else here is. You're probably all too young, but she just did her first live performance in 20 years last night in London. So there's some video footage out online. Go find it. Links are in our show notes

  72. like they always are. I like to throw in the old school music stuff because, you know, it is good. How many of you guys flew? You know what? I'm going to stop asking you guys because you guys don't care anymore. We flew here. I put this story in the show right before we came on because I was kind of freaked out by this. There's a new study that shows where you get that kind of flying cough because I always get it. It's like a couple of days later, I'm like, ah, this sucks.

  73. I'm totally fine. Ah, well, you're healthy. Wouldn't know to look at it, but it's the tubs. When you go to the airport and you put your crap in the tubs, this is mainly probably a U.S. thing because we have to put everything in the tubs. We have to get seven of them. What they did was they swabbed a bunch of the tubs, and it turns out there is rhinovirus and adenovirus on like half of the tubs. So when you're going home from Fireside, if you're flying home, like we

  74. are, wash your hands as soon as you come out of security, and you have a much higher chance of not getting sick. So pro tip. Pro grumpy tip. And we like to drink alcohol quite a bit. Over on Digg, which is now basically we steal other people's content and call it our own and put it up on the website.

  75. Thanks, Ariana, for starting that trend. It's an infographic on how the favorite alcohol in European countries has changed over time. This goes from basically 1990 to present. And we always think Russians like vodka. And overthrowing American governments.

  76. That too. That kind of throws in every now and again. We've always figured they had too much vodka. And that's why they did it. But now we know they like beer. The Russians like beer now. And maybe that's why they're taking us over, because they want all our beer. They can have American beer. Please come take it all. We'll take the vodka. And it's interesting because Spain, Iceland, Poland, and Romania all changed over to beer from spirits.

  77. The only big interesting change I thought would be beyond that was Sweden went from beer to wine, because they're snooty. Have you ever had a good Swedish beer? Uh, nope. Exactly. Ah, good point. Good point. So, we're going to give this mic away here in a second. And we're going to do it with a question.

  78. And the first person to shout out the answer is going to win the mic. Now, a lot of people like to want to start podcasts. It's the trend. It is the big trend in the world right now, I guess. Besides trying to save the planet, which all you guys are trying to do.

  79. Now, in the first year of podcasting, a lot of people throw around numbers about how much money you're going to make when you start a podcast. Now, the first person to shout out the actual number will win that mic. Go. Who's over there? You got it?

  80. Zero first? All right. Zero. It's all yours. Right here. Come pick it up. You are not going to make any money podcasting when you start. You are going to lose money when you podcast. You can take it. Take it. By all means. And by the way, it comes with a free Imsi shirt because, you know, we like failed things. Here you go. Here you go. Here's your free Imsi shirt. Enjoy that.

  81. If nobody has heard of Imsi, that's why it doesn't exist anymore. We have a very good track record of telling companies that they suck and they're going to fail. Then they get really mad on us on social media and then we give away their shirts after they failed. So. Yeah. Imsi got really, really mad at me. Imsi got really mad at me.

  82. Brian. Elo hasn't gotten that mad at us yet. We've, we have made fun of Elo for, well, since day one. I tag them every week. Okay. Just for fun. Because I think it's hilarious. And once a week I get actual emails. It's like, hey, somebody liked your Elo post. And I'm like, what? And it's of course a porn bot. The porn bots have gotten to Elo, so that means nothing. But Elo has pivoted. They're now a t-shirt company.

  83. Yes. A good lesson for all of you people doing startups. Be prepared to pivot. If you fail as a social network, you can make a fucking t-shirt. Never forget that. Never forget that. So yeah, it's, it's an interesting trend. We also have another one. This one. Oh, hang on. Almost broke my neck. Now another tip for podcasters. Microphones generally, you know, promoted by other

  84. new podcasters are terrible. This is a road to podcaster. This is a $350 microphone. Piece of crap. Piece of shit. It worked for us for about a month. And then we opened it, like it died. So I'm like, ah, I'm a tinkerer. I'll open it up. All of the leads from the microphone had just popped apart.

  85. They were just got, like all the solders had popped on them. And I Googled it and everybody's like, yeah, that kind of happens. They're not that good. So I'm going to update my reference for Canada. You can go to a Canadian tire and buy the parts to build this for 10 bucks. Yeah. So 300 bucks. Anybody who wants it can come get it. Signed by us. All of the, basically, I don't know if we even have any fans here, but you guys had nothing else to do. We understand.

  86. This is a freebie. This is, does all of our bumpers on the show. We did a bunch of shows with this. This is one of our first ones. Nobody cares. But you can use it as a bear repellent. So if a bear's coming at you, you can beat it to death with it. It is heavy. Yeah. It is very heavy. That's how they know. That's how you know that it's high quality.

  87. We listened to Adam Carolla's podcast, like how to podcast and the guy, the mic guy, what's his name? Mike? Mike Dawson. Mike Dawson. That's it. I got so drunk listening to that. I was like, are you fucking kidding me? So his, his tip was, it's like, okay, when you get to a certain point on the quality of a mic, go for the heaviest one. So there's a, there's a podcasting tip for you from, from the great Adam Carolla team. Go for, go for heavy over, over quality. So does anybody have

  88. any questions for us before we keep going here? By keeping going, you mean we wrap up because I want to get drunk? Oh, because you want to get drunk. Yeah. Okay. So that's, that's about it here. Huge thanks to Steven and Daniel from Fireside for dragging us out in the middle of nowhere to have a ton of fun and turn off your phones here at Fireside. And, uh, oh yeah. And, uh, Daniel, thank you for hitting me in, almost hitting me in the face with my box of fucking maple cookies, which this guy, after five years of coming here, he comes to Toronto twice a year. And I

  89. say one thing, bring me back a box of maple cookies. Never once. For three of those years, you live in Chicago. Was I supposed to do throw it out of the fucking airplane? Yeah, pretty much. Okay. No. Uh, huge thanks to the Fireside volunteers and the Camp Walton staff. You guys have been amazing. And if you don't hear from us by Thursday, send them out on these. And, uh, again, to all you Canadians here, if you like the style of show that we did, but like it a little bit more genteel and maybe not have some much cussing,

  90. there's a great show based out of Toronto, uh, geeks and beats podcast. That's really good. They talk about a lot of the same stuff that we do. They're just, you know, nice. Like you guys are family friendly. It's a family friendly show. Yeah. And since we'd like to leave on a low note and none of you guys have had access to your phones or any, uh, wifi or anything like that, just an FYI, Burt Reynolds passed away. So everybody go have a drink for the bandits night and that's it until next time. I'm Brian Schoelmeister and I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for coming guys. We appreciate it.

  91. Nobody wants these shitty headphones. Nobody wants a shitty microphone. I carried this thing all the way to Canada. Well, thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks. I hope you guys enjoyed the live show. We had a good time doing it. Uh, had a great time this weekend. Thanks a lot to Steven and Daniel and Tom here. Uh, it was great hanging out with Jordan and Jen and seeing their shows is great running into Daria and seeing her show. She's coming back with a new episodes of the foodists. So be sure to check

  92. out her podcast and thanks to the amazing staff here at fireside and camp Walden. They've been awesome. And, uh, we certainly appreciated the buckets of beer that showed up every single night by our fire pit. Yes. Except there were no hot dogs last night. Damn it. Why were there no hot dogs in our s'mores basket? Yes. We never did get hot dogs. That's the only downside. So yeah, we had a great time and thank you to all the people that came up and talked to us and said hi and said that they listened to the show or at least enjoyed the first show that they ever saw and are now, now listening

  93. hopefully. So hopefully. So yeah, it was a blast. Uh, hopefully they'll have us back again next year. So thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks to support the show and keep us on the air. Go to patreon.com slash GOG tosses a buck a month and we'll love you forever. If you'd like to give a one time a recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar.

  94. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 279. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback and ask questions and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy and we'll see you next time. I think that's a fucking moose. at QVC shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start

  95. with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love from beauty and fashion to home culinary and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com.

  96. Thank you.

Now playing: 279: Live from Fireside 2018