303: Sigh

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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. I'm going to tell you about a shitty morning, Brian. And I mean that literally. Oh, geez. Here we go again. Here's the difference between you having kids and me having dogs. Is your kids not going to sneak out of the bed at night, walk around your room, and leave puddles of poo for you to step in at 5 in the morning when you're freezing and butt naked trying to turn the light on?

True. That's true. Yeah, that's the way the day started today. Okay. Yeah. This is after they tried to break into our car again yesterday. So it's going to be, if the past is a signal for the future, this is going to be another fun week. Oh, joy.

Oh, joy. Well, it sounds like you need a really good sigh, Jason. Now, this is tech news, but it obviously relates directly to our show because we do a lot of time sighing on the show. So a recent study, good news for hopeless romantics and the perpetually dismayed, of which we are.

All that sighing is good for you. In fact, you'd die without it. Scientists have now pinpointed the region in the brain that transforms normal breathing into a life-giving sigh. They published their findings this week in the journal Nature. Basically, sighing is a way to keep your lungs inflated. A sigh is a deep breath, but not a voluntary deep breath, study co-author Jack Feldman said.

In a press release, it starts out as a normal breath, but before you exhale, you take a second breath on top of it. Whether you realize it or not, you do this about 12 times an hour and even more when you're stressed or anxious. And it's a good thing that you do if you didn't sigh every five minutes or so. Basically, your lungs will collapse and you'll have complete lung failure.

What? That's why patients in early iron lungs had so many problems because they never sighed. The machines had not been programmed to give patients regular deep, lung-filled breaths. So long story short, listening to us is good for you. Saving the world one sigh at a time.

That's right. And I've related an ongoing complaint about the internet that made me sigh this week. Mental floss I usually really like, but, you know, they're clickbait. As everybody on the internet is, we only survive if we get people looking or listening or clicking on stuff.

So we can make that money's, uh, I ran across an article looking for something for the show and, uh, 12 compelling fan theories about the office. How the fuck are there 12 compelling fan theories about the office? There aren't any. It's a sitcom. It was pretty goddamn self-explanatory.

Not like we're dealing with, like, you know, something like Dune or 2001 here. No, this is the office. There are not 12 compelling fan theories. There's not one compelling fan theory. Okay. Anyways, it made me sigh. Now, is this the American office or the British office?

This is the American office because, God forbid, we actually do the good one. Oh, they both were pretty miserable. But, you know, me and sitcoms. Yes, I know. And this one's just for you, Brian. As measles surges, decades of progress are in jeopardy.

That's right. Last year was a really bad year for measles. The number is up. It is still below what we were at in 2000, but because there were 853,479 cases reported in 2000.

In 2017, it was 173,300, but that is 31% higher than it was in 2016, which means it's going the other way. And this is the world. And this is the world. This is not just us. This is the entire world.

So, but scientists are worried about this because we're going in the wrong direction. People need to get vaccinated for measles. It is not going to give you autism. Just get it done. I wonder if the guy that yelled at us because of our position about vaccinations is still listening to the show.

I doubt it. He died of measles about two years ago. Probably. He's dead. Oh, get vaccinated, people. Come on. Get it done. Get it done. Now, in a related, more sighing stories, Opera, our browser of choice, which we'll talk about again later on in the show.

I don't know if you've noticed, Jason, but the ad blocker, which used to be amazing, is no longer the shit. Most sites have now gotten wise, getting pop-ups all the time, saying, you know, you have to turn off your ad browser if you want to. You have your ad blocker if you want to read any of these stories here.

And for some reason, as opposed to every other app ever on my Mac, if you click on the top bar when minimized, Opera does not become the active app. I actually have to click within the window. I hate that. This probably only happens to me because I Googled it and nobody else was complaining. But for some reason, that is the way my Opera works, and it's driving me batty.

Okay. When you say minimize, minimize to the dock? No. Sorry. Not minimize, but just not focused on. Like, open window, I'm doing something else in some other window. I want to click back over to Opera. I click in the top bar, does not recognize it. Weird.

Yeah. That's weird because that works fine for me. Maybe you should reinstall. Yeah, I might do a complete uninstall and reinstall. Yeah. Yeah, definitely do that. But the ad blocker, definitely, that's happening. So the thing about that, yeah, yeah, people are getting smarter with their programming to tell if you have one on.

The one way around that, which I highly recommend, and I highly recommend everybody listening to this show do, is go to Eero, E-E-R-O dot com slash G-O-G, and get your Eero on. Because what they have with their Eero Plus product is basically router level blocking.

So most of the ads go away. You can turn off your ad blocker because the ads just don't even load from the networks. Perfect. Yeah, it's a way to get around it. There was that other one that we tried that you have to basically get a Raspberry Pi and put on your network, and then it would block the ads up.

Yeah, yeah, it's way more work than we're ever going to do. But a friend of the show, John Chevron, got one right after we talked about it, and he said it works really well. I'll ask him to see what that was called. Maybe we can put that in the show notes. But, yeah, these people are, you know, it's a war.

It's an ad war. Always. Your ads suck. We don't want to see them because we don't. And I was listening to a podcast yesterday that's not out yet. Well, by the time this comes out, it'll be out. I was editing an episode of the Kevin Rose podcast yesterday, and Jim Quick is on, who I love.

He's been on the Jordan Harbinger show a couple times, and he's just a superstar. But he coined a term that I've never heard before called digital dementia. That's kind of the state where we end up where we just can't remember shit because we rely so much on technology. And we've been talking about this for a couple weeks now, and I just really liked that term.

That's a good term. I like it. It totally explains a lot of the stuff that, yeah, is going on with all of us these days. In the news. Now, I know we've talked about these stats before, but sometimes I just like to review them because every time I see them, I'm freshly shocked and blown away by exactly how big Amazon is.

There are more than 100 million paid subscribers to Amazon Prime. What? The majority of U.S. households, over 51 percent, have Prime accounts. That's incredible. Right? That's insane. Now, we've been talking a lot about Amazon recently, and people are starting to wise up to the company's serious threat as a monopoly and its willingness to seek domination at the expense of the health of its blue-collar workers, blah, blah, blah.

And there's a small but vocal backlash that's occurring to Amazon, people canceling their accounts and encouraging other people to do the same. Now, the interesting thing about this is I read there's this great article over at Slate that's talking about why it's so hard to quit Amazon, and it's because we're overworked, we're underpaid, and we don't have time to go shopping, and Amazon gives deals.

Right. End of story. It's cheaper. So it's very, very hard for most Americans to quit now. They can't quit shopping on Amazon because they don't have the time. Shopping has become what once was just a regular part of our daily life has become a luxury. It's only the rich motherfuckers that have time to go out and shop somewhere.

You're working hard. You got kids. You got all that stuff. It is too damn convenient. And in this article, it also talks about how small businesses rely on Prime to make ends meet, too. They don't have the time. A small business doesn't have the time to go to Staples to get a couple things.

Just order it on Amazon. It'll show up tomorrow, and it's cheaper. So Amazon is literally just screwing us left, right, and center, but we can't quit it. I can't quit you, Amazon. Well, because they're not screwing us. They're actually giving us good deals. They're out Walmarting Walmart is the problem.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. So the question now is, what do we do about this? Because we know it's like we're hooked on drugs. We know this isn't working well for us. We know this is bad, bad, bad for us, but we just can't stop it. So, you know, and this article kind of gets into that and says, well, what are you supposed to do?

Well, even if you can't quit it, at least use your voice out there to say, you know, hey, Amazon, how about being better to your employees? Or, hey, Amazon, let's not screw everybody out there. I don't know if that's actually going to do anything. No, it's probably not going to do anything because there's a revolt brewing now from all of these smaller brands.

And this was over at Recode because Amazon is changing a lot of policies and delisting certain products and things like that because they want to be able to control pricing. And it's like, excuse me, my product. I know what, you know, I know what my cost of goods is. I know what my cost of customer acquisition is.

I know what my cost of market is. I know what my overhead is. You don't. So piss off. I mean, yeah, you might want something for cheaper, but you can't do that. This is my business. I make the stuff. So if they keep doing this, there's going to be a problem because brands are going to go out of business or they're going to be bought by Amazon and they will become Amazon basic brands.

I think is kind of where it's probably going because Amazon is just going to put every brand in the world out of business and just turn it into an Amazon basic and just rule the world. Pretty much. If it's going to go that way, it's going to go. I don't know. I don't know if I have the damn strength to go up against Amazon because no, I don't.

I don't. I actually really literally don't. Like, I would love to go out and shop in stores for all the Christmas stuff, but Amazon wraps them for me. That's the thing. I know. What am I supposed to do? It's cheaper. I don't have to go to the mall, the mall, which will be out of the sizes that I need or the specific thing that I want.

It's all there. It comes right to my house and it comes wrapped. Like, how am I supposed to say no to this? Damn you. You're like, okay, Amazon. Yeah, that's delivered by drone. I know. You don't even have to go in the corner anymore and see like shaky, the drug dealer.

They just get delivered to your house. It's in a box that's way too big for the item that was shipped for some reason. You know, yeah, one order that comes in 19 different boxes. Yeah. Oh, it's very strange. It's a very strange time to be alive. You know.

It is. It's like, I'm just glad I don't work at Amazon, but I do enjoy the fruits of the labor that these people who are in horrible conditions have to endure. And I feel terrible about that. But what are you going to do?

What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Go to Walmart? Same problem there. They're just stuck in a, you know, they're stuck in a store, not in a warehouse. Right. That's pretty much it. But I think we should just automatize everything and then we can all just sit at home and wait, wait for that, you know, universal basic income, which is never going to come.

Oh, and I said this two years ago. I'm like, Amazon is basically going to bankrupt all of its customers. So nobody's going to be able to buy anything. That's right. Putting too many people out of business. And this is this is a problem, though, with these brands that they're kind of, you know, forcing forcing their price guarantees on.

And they're just saying, you know, this new policy is intended to help reduce customer confusion. It's a price tag. There's no confusion about a price tag. How confusing is it? Yeah. This is what it costs. Okay. Yeah. No, that's kind of silly. And you know what? This is the best part.

It's healthy to decide, Jason. It's healthy. It's good for you. Now that you've said it, I have to do it more often. Okay. On. Yeah. Amazon announced today the best of Prime 2018, highlighting how Prime members around the world enjoyed their benefits throughout the last year.

And it is a rundown of everything that this is a press release from Amazon at about Amazon dot com. And you can see all the goodies up there about how things kind of, you know, worked out. But Prime members worldwide ordered two billion products with one day delivery or faster.

Two billion. Billion. That's a lot of stuff. Yeah. That's a lot of stuff. That's a lot of gasoline. That's a lot of guys running around in those trucks that, you know, you can't even tell anymore if they're Amazon or just somebody coming to steal your stuff. Yeah.

So I was reading this article as well. And I mean, the stats are just mind numbing. But regarding their streaming service, because they're, you know, obviously pushing that as well. And a lot of people are watching Amazon shows because they're actually getting decent as opposed to the first couple of years that they started to do shows.

And they were all just horrible. But I was reading that I'm sure this is an outlier comments. But they were talking about The Marvelous Miss Maisel. One customer gave it five out of five stars, stating, I've probably watched season one five times, three by myself and two more times introducing it to my friends.

Miss Maisel is how all of us hope to be in similar situations. Who are these people? What do you what do you do for how I like the show? I watched it once. I got you watched it three times by yourself and twice more.

You dragged a friend over to sit on a couch with you and watch it again. Who what what do you do for a living? Probably works at Amazon. Jesus Christ. Yeah. OK, moving on.

Well, no, the two. The thing that got me was the two most binged prime original series worldwide to date include Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan starring John Krasinski from The Office. Callback. Yeah, which I got to say is a great series. He nailed it. He was really good at it.

He's turned into Mr. Like Action Hunk. And the other one is Homecoming starring Julia Roberts. That looks terrible. It's got terrible reviews. How is this the second most binged program when when not not to be sexist or anything, but I will let you know because I think it is perfectly targeted towards women.

My wife is so on board with this. She can't wait to watch it. So I will let you know if it's any good or not. I live with a woman and she watched the trailer and said, this looks stupid. We're not watching that. Let's go watch Jack Ryan. Actually, no. She said, let's go watch the Patriot or Patriot, not the Patriot.

That's the Mel Gibson movie, which I do actually still enjoy. Turns out that's a really good movie before he became Mel Gibson. It's kind of like going back and watching the Cosby show before you found out that he was the world's most prolific serial rapist. But, you know, we've hit way too much media when there's a difference between shows that we have to preface.

No, there's no the in front of it because we will be talking about bodyguard in media candy, which is not the bodyguard. Yeah, that's Kevin Costner. That is we have run out of names, people. I'll always hate you.

That's that's our theme. It's not the other way around. Now, let's let's dance back to automation, as we were talking about, and like, you know, basically just drones taking over the world and all of us not working. We've been talking a lot about how fast food and restaurants are moving towards having less employees.

We've talked about, you know, there's there's the automated cooking. But more important than that, what we're going to be getting rid of first, of course, is the people that take your orders and the cashiers and whatnot. And McDonald's over in the UK have moved on significantly more than here.

They've got a bunch of touchscreen menus now, so you can just go up and place your order yourself and you don't talk to anybody and you just pay with your card or your phone or whatever. And, you know, it's weird because it's it's like a lower income sort of thing in the UK. Like it's fast food chains that are doing it here, at least in Santa Monica.

They're like sushi places that I've tried to get rid of waiters. You know, it's higher end stuff where you go and you just have your tablet at the table and you place your orders or the Toronto airport, like Toronto airport, which you and I both used. Yeah. I'm not going to use them anymore because what we kind of figured was happening.

Now studies are coming out, I'm saying. So, yeah, if you've ever used a self-order touchscreen at McDonald's in the UK, basically, scientists have discovered that they're covered in shit. Maybe my dog went to the UK on vacation.

Oh, no, human feces. Sorry, not dog. Yes, human feces. Well, probably a combo. Microbiologists from London Metropolitan University and Metro.co.uk recently investigated the cleanliness of the fast food chain's touchscreen menus, taking swabs from a total of eight restaurants in the UK. And they found that every single one of them showed traces of human feces and tested positive to coliform bacteria, including feces or sewage contamination.

We were all surprised how much gut and fecal bacteria there was on the touchscreen machines. Senior lecturer in microbiology, Dr. Paul Metzahuali, told Metro these cause the kind of infections that people pick up in hospitals. Oh, my goodness. Okay, time to put some wet nappies next to those iPads.

I hope they got the, you know, the hardened versions that are waterproof. Well, yes, McDonald's UK did release a statement saying that they have, you know, it's part of their procedures that they get cleaned on a regular basis throughout the day, but it doesn't really matter. Oh, man. Yeah, they need to be wiped down in between use, apparently.

Yeah, so if this stuff starts to spread here and it's all going to start becoming touchscreens, I will be buying stock in micro, in wet wipes, and I will be carrying my own with me and always washing them down first. So, yes, this is the world that we're heading towards, people.

Imagine how bad this is going to be when it hits San Francisco, the man poo capital of the world. You just have to, like, get a squeegee out wherever you go to get all the man poo off. Yeah. Oh, technology for the win. Yes. And speaking of technology, let's move on to ransomware.

We've talked a lot about that in our security segments throughout the show and since it started happening. So, an interesting article over at Slate talking about what the Treasury Department has started to do now with a brand new case. The Department of Justice released an unsealed indictment charging two Iranians with distributing the SamSam ransomware that has been around since 2015 and has targeted more than 200 victims, including the city of Atlanta, the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center.

We're in LA and the University of Calgary. We talked about all these things when they happen. They cost more than $30 million collectively. So, what the Treasury has done this time around is basically said, well, how's this going to work if you can't access your cryptocurrency account?

Because that's basically how everybody gets the money from these things. It's all crypto because it's not real money because that can be traced and tracked and locked down. So, what they did is they actually released these people's accounts and basically made them public.

So, they're not anonymized anymore. And they're saying, you know, we can't stop this, but maybe if we make it public and people know what's going on and they kind of get shut down to a certain extent. And it's really an interesting process and it kind of undermines what cryptocurrency is all about as well.

So, that's interesting. Here's the thing, though. It's not hard to make a Bitcoin wallet, right? No. So, you make a new Bitcoin wallet. You transfer everything from that account to another account or run it through a Tumblr and get it to another account and just create a new wallet. Well, again, it's always an unending war, right?

It's always an unending war like everything else is. No. It'd be interesting to have, like, you know, a blacklist of, you know, just a blockchain blacklist for different wallets that have been owned. Blacklists on the blockchain. Seriously, blacklists on the blockchain to know the wallets that have been doing nefarious stuff.

Yep. You know, there are blacklists for websites that you can't go to because they have malware and spyware on them. So, why can't you just do the same thing for these wallet IDs? Granted, it is going to be plain whack-a-mole, like, you know, nobody's business because people will figure this out.

I mean, the whole thing with Tumblrs even is, like, you know, everybody throws their money in and then it comes out into different wallets, you know, completely differently to try and, you know, make it untraceable where the money went. Right. But the thing about this is it's a good step. At least somebody's thinking about it at the Treasury Department.

Exactly. I dig that. They're at least putting their thinking caps on. Yep. Yeah. And I'm sure that the IRS is probably paying very good attention to this, too. As they should be. No, no. So, Tesla is in the news this week. Not in a good way.

Again, we've talked a lot about Tesla recently. And Elon Musk has definitely been a punching bag. But the Times story that's come out this week is about employees and contractors being harassed for being gay, women getting catcalled on the factory floors, workers who sustained debilitating injuries that were left off the books, low-ranking employees who have been resorted to sleeping in their cars between long shifts to make ends meet.

So, a lot of things are going wrong over a Tesla right now. However, and as the article does point out, this is not exactly just a Tesla problem. This is an everyone problem. Yeah. This is happening everywhere. So, once again, it's like, it's almost like Elon Musk is being singled out again. But, fair enough, this has happened.

Now, the Times report basically reported that Elon Musk sent a letter to factory workers last year telling them not to be a, air quote, huge jerk to people in marginalized groups. Yet, went on to write that if someone is a jerk to you, but sincerely apologizes, it is important to be thick-skinned and accept that apology.

Now, that seems fair enough to me. Wait, wait. Part of your job is to be thick-skinned? Well, shrug it off. Move on. It only hurts until the pain goes away. Put some Robitussin on it. What the fuck is that all about? I don't know. It doesn't matter because they're getting sued anyway.

So, there's multiple lawsuits from people who have worked at this factory. And, you know, it is what it is. We've all worked in companies. This happens. This is called human nature. And, it does suck. People are jerks. Sue. Yeah, they are. They are. You know what I'm starting to think? Here's the thing that I've been thinking.

I'm still trying to figure out what the hell's wrong with the Matrix right now. You know? I don't know. Yeah. Something. No. I think I may have just figured it out. I think all the adults have left. We're just a bunch of man-children running the fucking world right now. You know? There are no true adults anymore.

It's over. Yeah. It's all just kids. It's all babies. Everybody's running around. They're screaming and bitching and moaning. But, the problem is the fundamental nature has never changed of humans. Humans are jerks. They just are. Like, 99% of people are jerks. And, you know, our parents' generation kind of knew that and just got on with it.

Yeah, that's true. Maybe they just did have thicker skins. So, I mean, and it just gets worse. You know, from our parents down to us and then, you know, down the line, I think that the skin is getting thinner as we go. Because, you know, just look at, what was that Jonathan Haidt book about the coddling of America that I reviewed a couple weeks ago?

It's just getting worse. You know, when you can actually claim that language is violence, then we've got a problem there. But, this Tesla thing is interesting. Remember when Elon Musk used to be a good guy? And now it's just like.

He's like, he's being really, by media, he's being portrayed as if he's some sort of evil super genius. That's the thing. I think we may have been part of that problem somehow. Yeah, I think we might have been. I think we've kind of been part of that problem. It's just like. The thing is, he's not helping himself any with all of these crazy Twitter rants and going and smoking a dube.

Again, he's not a real adult. Like, my dad would never have done this. He just would have been like, all right, I'm going to keep my head down and I'm going to build up my company. That's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to shut up. I'm going to do what I'm here to do. I'm going to keep my opinions to myself.

That's what adults do. They don't go to Twitter and just bitch and moan. That's true because they didn't come up with blogging where we started. We started with blogging, which was, you know, dipping our toe in the water of telling everybody everything about you all the damn time. And then it has morphed over time to Twitter where we only have a sentence to say, you're a dick.

Why'd you say that? Or, you know, podcasts where twice a week for an hour we tell everybody exactly what we think about everything. Look, this is the Shakespeare of social media. We have a lot more time. We have a lot more time to tell you how much you suck. Oh, and it came to me that Mrs.

Maisel reviewer on Amazon. I know exactly what that person does for a living. Watches Mrs. Maisel. They do a Mrs. Maisel podcast. They're a podcaster. Of course. Of course. Yeah, that's the only thing I can think of that would do that. We've been joking about, you know, Bitcoin and crypto for so long now.

It feels like it's been here since I was born. But we also said a long time ago when you and I first started like investing in Bitcoin, we're like, oh, we're not actually investing all that much money. So don't come and beat us up and take our crypto. You know, well, it turns out thugs down in South Africa are doing just that.

So they're luring people who they know have a bunch of Bitcoin to come speak at conferences and then drugging them, torturing them and having them hand over the keys to their Bitcoin wallets. Wow. Did we not see that coming? Wow. Yeah.

Wow. OK, so next conference that we're invited to, I'm going to have to look into a little bit more. Yeah, I'm telling you, the only conference I'm ever going back to is Fireside. We've vetted those guys. They're not trying to kill us, but there's still maybe bears in those woods. But anyway, yeah, this is crazy.

This guy was, you know, he was asked to come talk about Bitcoin at a conference and they kidnapped him, tortured him, stripped him naked, you know, and then got his keys, took all his money in his wallet, which was like 200 bucks.

But he got they got $60,000 worth of Bitcoin and then like drove him 30 kilometers outside of where they had him, took his laptops, his iPhones and left them on the street, which sucks. So that's really the upside. He's in intensive care, though, recovery. But he got he got fucked up really badly.

Ain't nothing good that comes from Bitcoin. Nothing. I'm telling you, man. This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you in part by Hover. Now, I'm going to take off the copy hat here for a second because I've got this list of things that I'm supposed to go through and tell you all about.

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Media Candy. I watched the new Coen Brothers movie, which came out on Netflix rather than in theaters because this is the world that we live in now. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Well, that was weird. It's a Coen Brothers movie.

What do you expect? No, I expect weird, but this was weird. Okay. So it's basically six short stories, three of which I actually really enjoyed and three of which were horrible. So I don't know if I can recommend it or not. I mean, it was good. Ish. Sort of.

Kind of. Okay. That's where I'm at with it. I've got it in my queue. So when I watch it, I will let you know what I think as well. It might be exactly the same review, but who knows? I posted basically on Facebook right after I watched it.

I was like, I watched the Ballad of Buster Scruggs. What the fuck was that? And reviews, comments from friends were split. Some people really enjoyed it and some people were like, I hated it. But it's definitely interesting. But the Coen Brothers always are. So if you like the Coen Brothers, watch it.

If you don't like the Coen Brothers or have never seen any of their movies, this is not the one to start with. Start with Raising Arizona. The best Coen Brothers movies. I loved, oh God, what's the one with George Clooney? Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? That one's my favorite. You know, I still listen to the soundtrack for that.

I have that soundtrack in my playlist. I should watch that again. We're in a tight spot here, boys. Yeah. I should definitely watch that again. I did enjoy that movie. But Raising Arizona was Nicolas Cage at his best. Besides Vampire's Kiss. Oh, yeah, no, Raising Arizona was Nicolas Cage at peak Nicolas Cage.

Have you seen Vampire's Kiss? No, I haven't, actually. Oh, you need to watch Vampire's Kiss. You want to see a strange fucking movie? That's a strange movie. That's the one where he eats a cockroach, a live cockroach. And they made him do it twice. Nice. And then, of course, they use the first. Right.

Now, getting back to there are too many damn shows and we've run out of names. I watched Bodyguard on Netflix. Not the Bodyguard, just Bodyguard. Yep. So, yeah. And it was very, very good. It's like a better Homeland that ends after six good episodes without ruining everything. Okay.

Speaking of which, is Homeland still going on? Yes. The next season is coming out in 2019, season eight. Oh. And I checked it out because I watched season seven and it was the worst season of them all. I tapped out at five. Dude, you tapped out right on time. Right on time.

Actually, you should have tapped out after season two. Yeah, actually, that's a good point. That is really when you should have tapped out. The Bodyguard is basically tapping out after season one. Okay. Which is a really good time to tap out, too. Yeah. I figured something like that was happening. But I'm just like, you know what?

I cannot stand, you know, what's her name that stars in Homeland? Claire Danes. Claire Danes. I cannot stand Claire Danes. She looks like the incredible Mr. Limpet to me, and she's just a mess. Did I ever tell you my Claire Danes story? No. You have a Claire Danes story?

I do have a Claire Danes story. You know that pained face that she gets in Homeland? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's the only face she has in Homeland. It's the only face that she has in Homeland. So I saw her on the bike path here in Santa Monica. She was running. And the only reason I recognized her is she had pained face because she was running.

And I was like, that's Claire Danes. That's her Homeland face. She has one face. That's it. She has one face. Yeah. And she had it on because she was like well into a run. She was very sweaty and in pain. And so she had pained face. And I was like, oh, it's Claire Danes. That's funny.

Yeah. No, I'm looking forward to finishing Bodyguard. I'm only halfway through episode three, but I love it. The funny part about Bodyguard is we started to watch it, me and my roommate. And we, you know, like not even five minutes into it, she's like, I can't watch this.

I cannot understand what he's saying. It is a thick accent. Yeah. So we're like, I'm like, okay, I thought about it over the night. I'm like, I went and watched the first episode. And then I'm like, you know what? That's why we have subtitles. Oh, dude, I have. I've had subtitles on on our TV since my son was born because we have to like, you know, off at night, we try to keep the volume down.

And one of us, either my wife or I can't hear what's going on. I've had subtitles on for two years straight now. It's awesome. That's funny. Yeah. My dad has had subtitles on since I moved in with, you know, like long ago when I moved in with him, they've always had subtitles on. And I'm like, why do you have the subtitles on?

It's just distracting. And now that I'm old and I can't hear and I can't understand, because instead of like us looking at each other going, what did they just say? Yeah. Which is what happens all the time. Now we can just read the subtitles. This is one of those, those, you know, pro tips for when you hit, you know, when you start to get into the forties and you start to lose your hearing, the subtitles will save your relationship.

It's amazing because you don't get in fights over. No, I think they said that. No, they said that. No, they said that. It's great. And so we're into bodyguard now and she's loving it. We had and we did the same thing with what was the Narcos Mexico. We've had them on for a while now because we couldn't understand it when they spoke English in Narcos Mexico.

Sometimes it's because the accent was so thick. We're like, I just put on subtitles. So now subtitles on Netflix are on all the time. This won't save your relationship though, because I'll tell you exactly what happens. You start, my wife is relying on the subtitles so much that when she wanders off into the kitchen to get a snack, she doesn't listen.

So she comes back and now I have to rewind it again. Well, that's why you pause. We're epic pausers. We will, we will watch for two minutes, pause, do something, come back, pause. Nobody can watch TV with us. We have a very specific set of skills. Here's how relationships work, Jason.

I say, do you want me to pause it as she's going into the kitchen? She says, no. Then she comes back and that makes me rewind it. Exactly. Welcome to life. That's why, that's why, that's why we have a, we, you know, if the ass is off the couch, you pause it, period. Both people have to have both asses on the couch watching the show.

That is, that is the secret to a great relationship. She and I have been great friends for 20 years and we've, she drove me crazy at the beginning, but now it's like, okay, we have a, we have a system. Even if you just want to get up and get a, like a chip or something, it's pause. Whoever has control of the remote that time, that is an instant pause.

Anytime your head is away from the TV, instant pause. It will, it will, it will trust me because I'm the one that always has to explain the complex plots. So I'm like, okay, well, you're at least going to be here when it's going on because you're going to come back and go, what happened? And then it just like you, and then you have to go back and do it all again.

So instant pause, trust me, it will help. And they're like, I said, keep it going. And they're like, nope, just say no, just, I'll wait. Just say no. Speaking of just say no, there's a Ron Burgundy podcast coming to iHeartRadio.

Now, I'm not a big Will Ferrell fan, never have been. What about you? The Anchorman is one of the funniest movies ever made. Anchorman 2, not so much. Yeah, but everybody says Anchorman was a great movie. And I've never seen it because I'm just not a Will Ferrell fan.

So Ron Burgundy is coming back as a podcast for a 12 episode run. They're not saying if Will Ferrell is actually going to be playing Ron Burgundy yet, which is that would be a problem if he doesn't, I'm guessing he will, because every celebrity on the goddamn planet wants to be a podcaster now.

And iHeartRadio is throwing or iHeartMedia, the parent company of iHeartRadio, is throwing buckets and buckets of cash at everybody to make original content podcasts. Where's our bucket? Except us. Except us. Damn it.

You know, it's like a stunt casting. Like, I can see one episode being funny. I can't see a 12 episode run, and I certainly can't see any more than that. If they're five minutes long, maybe, you know, that's the thing. So we'll see how this comes out.

But I just wanted to throw this in here because. Dude, and you need to go see Anchorman. You really do. Watch it for the next Media Candy segment, just so you can give us your thoughts on it. How drunk do I have to be? How drunk do I have to be before I watch it? Because I guarantee if I watch it so I'm going to hate it.

You want me to watch it sober? Yes. Oh, God. This is painful. I have homework. I have sober homework. God damn it. Yes. Well, I did some sober homework as well. After you were raving about the final table, I decided I guess I need to watch this. I love cooking shows.

I tried it, and I couldn't get into it. And I think I figured out what the deal is. I don't like cooking competitions. Oh, okay. It doesn't matter if the chefs are great or not. The only one I can ever watch is I watched MasterChef Junior for like the first couple seasons until I found out. Because that's the best. Yeah, and it's amazing.

Until I found out, you know, I clocked to the formula of the show and I couldn't watch it anymore because I was like, oh yeah, okay, now we're going to cut to this kid and this kid's going to do this and blah, blah, blah. And then I was done. So I like cooking shows that are instructional, like the Food Network in the morning or travel adventure stuff like Anthony Bourdain.

I could care less about competitions or foods that I'll never end up making because they're way too highbrow and all that sort of stuff. So having said that, I only watched the first episode, so maybe it does get better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it does get better as it rolls into it because it's different countries for every show, so it's different types of cuisine.

But I really, you know, so here's the thing I hate about most cooking shows, especially Top Chef. There's a lot of behind the scenes between all of the chefs and like, you know, you hear their stories and all this crap. I'm like, cook, cook, just cook. That's all I want. That's why I love MasterChef because it's like, okay, cook.

Gordon Ramsay's going to yell at you, cook some more. Somebody else is going to yell at you, cook some more. Then they'll get some praise and then we're done. Okay, great. I don't want to see how they go back to the house and how they spend their time. And what I loved about the final table is there was none of that, zero interaction between everybody.

Yeah, I did enjoy that. Yeah. And the nice thing about it is since they're all top tier chefs, when people get kicked off, they're like, hey, at least I got to meet some of my heroes and cook for some great, amazing people. It doesn't have that, you know, that stigma hanging over.

It's like, oh, if I lose, I don't get the $100,000. There's literally no prize at the end of this. There's no prize. They get nothing except to sit at a table and be one of the major chefs in the world, which is cool. It's cool. And I got to get introduced to a bunch of new top tier chefs.

And it's interesting. The one guy that I didn't expect to like is the guy that started Alinea in Chicago. I've always wanted to go there. I was invited to go there one time, but it was $500 for dinner. And I'm like, I don't have $500 for dinner.

So I couldn't go. But the guy who runs it just is this weird little dude. And I thought I was going to hate him when he first came on. And I'm just and I ended up falling in love with him. I thought he was one of the greatest. And there's just so many great chefs on there. I give it a couple more episodes, honestly, just if you still hate it, then turn it off.

But, you know, I did turn it off techniques. Yeah, I didn't turn it off after the first episode. And I switched immediately over to salt, fat, acid, heat, which I talked about in the previous episode. And I finally finished them all. It's only four episodes, one focusing on each salt, fat, acid and heat. It's wonderful.

I actually I just loved it. And it's the kind of show that I like. She travels around, she meets people, she cooks and explains things and their meals that, you know, you and I could make. And it's just wonderful. OK, I'll check that out because I just I finished the final table.

So I need another cooking show. I'm trying to get my my roommate into the Phil shows because I need to see them. I need to see the last season of that. Those are the best. Now, things I'm not so sure about. The Grand Tour is returning for its third season, January 18th. I know that you said it ended well.

I kind of never even finished the second season because I got a little bit bored by it. But they're coming back for season three. They're going to a lot of interesting places. They're going to Detroit, Columbia, Nevada, Sweden, Scotland, Mongolia and China. So I'll give it another go. I hope it I hope it feels less scripted this time around.

Yeah, we'll see how it goes. You know, I'm going to watch it. I really enjoyed the trailer. I'm glad they're coming back. Yeah. And yeah, it's it's one of those shows where it's like, you know, sometimes the final episode will ruin the whole season for you. Yeah. But well, the entire you always want to end on a high note.

Yeah. What was that one where they just like just completely screwed the pooch? Was that season two where they season two? Yes, that's the one. Yeah, that's that's kind of why I tapped out. I'm just like, oh, yeah, but it was the trailer looks good. Here's the deal. Well, they take feedback for every episode because so when we talk about it, they fix it.

Notice there was no like celebrity crap on the stupid celeb stuff. Yeah. They still had conversation street. Conversation street needs to go. I actually started to enjoy the interstitials on those because they got fairly clever. I don't know. I'm into it.

I'm going to watch it for sure. Yeah. So I mentioned on the previous episode that iTunes mysteriously ate my meticulously created and crafted Christmas playlist that I've had for years. Postpunk.com has come to the rescue with Christmas songs for goths. OK, we have a link in the show notes.

It's not a bad list, but damn you, Postpunk, make a Spotify playlist, not do a bunch of YouTube embeds. That's almost useless for me. Yeah, but, you know, how do you not and how do you not have the cures? Hey, you B side on there? Because it's hey, you it's Christmas. I mean, that's the it's the song.

You can't have a Christmas playlist that doesn't have that. OK, I've never heard the song, so please put that in the show notes because I have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah, well, what I think I'm going to do is I'm going to have to rebuild my Christmas playlist and maybe I'll do it on Spotify. And if I ever get that done, probably by next year, I will put the link in the show notes.

OK, actually, we'll put it we'll put it in for the Patreon subscribers so they can get it. Yeah, there you go. But yeah, I will work on that. But put a link into this this, you know, random cure song because I'm sure it's out there somewhere because I've never heard it. And OK, we'll do. Hey, you, you, the one that looks like Christmas.

I mean, it's the ultimate Christmas song for the cure. And it's poppy and happy and nice. And, you know, pour yourself some eggnog and do your tree listening to it. It's great. OK, speaking of that, Christmas ornaments. Hang on. Before you go before you go on, before you go on, make sure that your Christmas playlist does not have that damn fairy tale of New York from the Pogues.

Classic. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're forbidden from putting that in any Christmas playlist ever. I'll make a separate one just for you. That doesn't thank you. Thank you very much. And speaking of alternative music and your Christmas tree, dangerous minds dot net has Christmas ornaments featuring Morrissey, David Bowie, Adam Ant, the cure, Susie and the Banshees, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I see this comes out every year and I've never bought them and I finally think I need to. They're quite clever. And there's Elfman on the Shelfman for you because I know you're a huge Oingo Boingo fan. Oh, I am so getting these. OK, yes, I want Elfman on the Shelfman.

I want the Adam Ant. That's important. Mary Smithsmith is pretty cute. Yeah, it's cute. You know, he's on Rudolph. I like that. The Morrissey one is hard to beat, even if you're not a huge Morrissey fan. Oh, yeah.

It's just great. Those are great. OK, you have to go check these out because this is a visual joke. So go to GOG dot show slash 303. And I like how they did Susie Lou Who, which they probably can get sued for. Probably, but it's clever and cute. And finally, just because we're in media candy and I bought my tickets last night, I'm officially going to see Massive Attack play all of Mezien with Liz Frazier from the Cocteau Twins in March.

I'm very excited about that. Do we have a review of our friend Andy Stochanski's show? It was amazing. He did a great job. It was really great to see him back on stage again. Awesome. I'm sad that I could not go. So hopefully he'll be doing more shows. I will let you know in advance. Yes, yes.

Advance is good. Advance notice is a good thing for, you know, us old people that have plans. Moron of the week. DJ Khaled, who is a moron anyways, because I don't understand what it is he does.

You hate this guy. You really hate this guy. All he does is point up in the air and say his own name. That's all he does. He's not a DJ. He should be a podcaster. Basically. Anyways, he and Floyd Mayweather have been fined for illegally promoting scam cryptocurrency. The SEC announced on Thursday that it is fining boxer and music producers for failing to disclose that they were paid to promote a cryptocurrency.

Both celebrities have been paid to advertise the startup Centratech and ICO, a process through which cryptocurrency tokens are distributed to investors. Khaled had informed his millions of followers. Oh, God. Oh, God. That the token would be a game changer.

He has agreed to give up the $50,000 he was paid by Centratech and also pay $100,000 penalty and $2,725 in interest. He is further banned from promoting any securities for two years, although he was not forced to admit any wrongdoing. Well, we'll take the money.

We'll take the money. Thank you. Mayweather has tweeted to his more than 7 million followers. Centra's ICO starts in a few hours. Get yours before they sell out. I got mine. He also promoted two other ICOs on Instagram and Twitter without disclosing that he had been paid to do so. So he is handing over the $300,000 he earned from promoting the offers and paying a $300,000 fine and $14,775 in interest.

He's also banned from advertising any securities for three years, and he also does not have to admit to any wrongdoing. The founders of Centratech were indicted for security fraud and wire fraud in May. They falsely claimed to be partnering with Visa and MasterCard in order to boost their ICO, from which they raised $32 million.

I would like to point out that we called this bullshit when it first happened. When this thing first happened, we called this as pure and utter, unadulterated bullshit. And so, right again. Sorry. If you have a scorecard at home, still right.

Sorry. Now, this next one made me, like, literally, like, cry. I was laughing so hard because I was holding it in my coffee so I didn't spit it on my computer. The California Highway Patrol on Friday pulled over a Tesla Model S that was traveling down the road, but whose driver appeared to be asleep at the wheel.

It was going southbound on Highway 101 in Palo Alto. All right. Silicon Valley. So, this man was drunk. He was totally drunk and he fell asleep. Now, the only way the cops could get the car to pull over was to pull in front of it and start to slow down.

So, the, you know, the cruise control and the self-driving mode would slow the car down and get it off to the road, off to the side of the road. Now, here's the great part about this. I think this is a win for Tesla. The driver's a moron. He's the moron of the week.

Absolutely. He's one of the morons. But I think that Tesla's stock price should have just jumped up after this because, you know, there was no accident. The guy survived. It was just a hassle for the police. And, you know, the autopilot did the job. So, I mean, granted, it was supposed to disengage because his hands weren't on the wheel and he was asleep.

So, that might be a little bit of a problem. Right. Yes. But it took them seven miles to pull him over, which is longer than the 30 seconds your hand, unless he was going really fast, longer than the 30 seconds that your hands are supposed to be off the wheel before it starts to warn you and disengage.

So, all in all, I think this is a story with a happy ending with a dumb shit who should have his Tesla taken away and he should get a VW Beetle from the 60s that he has to drive in manual mode forever. Right. Now, as we all know, I'm a big soccer fan and the Balloon d'Or is a very prestigious soccer award that's handed out.

And the first ever woman soccer player of the year was finally awarded, which is amazing. Norwegian striker Ada Heddeberg, 23. Now, we come to the bad part. I was going to say, that sounds great. Why is this in Moron of the Week? Because we come to our second DJ, who is a moron in this particular week, Martin Solvig, who is a DJ and producer, very big in France, hosted the awards.

And he actually has, he's much better than DJ Khaled. Like, he's actually got a couple decent songs, but he's an asshole because after the very first woman got her trophy, he asked her in French if she could twerk. What? Yeah. Yeah. Visibly irritated, she declined.

With an abrupt no, she turned around and left. So way to ruin the fucking moment, dude. Wow. What a dick. What a dick. Well, he's French and a DJ, so he's got two strikes against him right there. This is true. Yeah. I don't, you know, there's not, nothing good comes from DJs or Bitcoin.

That's what, that's your takeaway from this episode of Grumpy Old Geeks. And let's end on a high note because I just think this one's funny. There's no real moron here. It's just good. A passerby called 911 about a man dangling from a roof. It was a Clark Griswold dummy that somebody put up with their Christmas decorations.

And apparently it was lifelike enough to fool this guy who thought he was going to be saving somebody. But it's hilarious. Go check it out in the show notes. The picture is quite funny. Yeah. You'd think he might've been like talking to him to make him.

So, hey man, how you doing up there? Well, I'm a dummy. Yeah. I love it. I love it. By the way, are you going to watch those movies again ever? Do you watch the vacation movies? I don't. The only one I watch is the Christmas one.

Every year at Christmas when it comes on, I'll watch it. I haven't seen the other ones in years. I remember watching the remake of Vacation. That was absolutely horrible. Oh, God. No, I'm sorry. You wasted some time on that one. And I just remember European Vacation just being hilarious to like a teenage me. But I wonder how well it stood up.

Yeah. I kind of remember those as just being good. But maybe. Oh, no. I was going to say maybe we'll do it on Does It Have Legs? But we're not going to do that. I've had Smokey and the Bandit in the can for two, three months now. And I just can't get to edit it. It's just so hard to edit when I'm not getting paid to.

Right. Feedback loop. We've got some new Patreon subscribers. Ryan and Greetar. Would that be Gretter or Greetar? What do you think? I'm going to go with Greetar just because it sounds like guitar. Yeah. Well, I think it sounds more like Conan the Barbarian.

I think it's a very cool name. And Greetar writes in, hey, I guess they are more than just annoying. Electric scooters are now disrupting wrists, elbows, and heads. It's an article from CNET, which means I can't open it because CNET. Basically, it's just injured scooter riders or flooding U.S. emergency rooms.

Accident rates could be as high as 1,000 per month. Well done, guys. Wow. That's a lot. Well, judging from how often I see people spill just on Main Street here in Santa Monica, it sounds about right to me. Nice. Steven has also joined us on Patreon.

Thank you so much. And writes in, been listening for a while now. Finally got off my lazy ass to contribute. Keep being grumpy. Also, in regards to fake news, I always think of the bullshit asymmetry principle. The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. That is so true. That is so incredibly true.

Yeah. All right. Caitlin, also a sponsor, writes in, the cancer is spreading. New Times, Broward, Palm Beach. Some Fort Lauderdale residents are already upset with rental scooters in their neighborhood. Oh, just wait. Just wait. I went through and every single complaint is everything that we've mentioned on this show.

Of course it is. Yes. We are the canaries in the coal mine, Brian. That's the way it works. Someday we'll just be dead. Well, that was uplifting. Gadiel also writes us, hey, guys, love the forum. I'm at now. Need a little help. I'm looking for a replacement for my old laptop.

It's acting up. I'm concerned going with a desktop because of my budget. I want to get the best performance, give or take a thousand. I've searched online, but I can't seem to find anything I can trust. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. It's mainly for making Word and PDF documents. Some browsing. Also would like it to be my media center. Thanks. That's a bit like saying, I'm going to use this just for next to nothing, but then also for everything.

Yeah, that's the thing. Because for a media center, you need a lot of power. For making Word and PDF documents, not so much. Well, actually, for a media center, you don't need that much power. It's just sharing files over the network. Okay, I suppose. I guess I was assuming you'd be watching them on your laptop as well.

No, it's basically you stream. Like, you can use Plex or something like that. Right. And for me, I mean, I've used low-end Mac minis as my media centers. Yep. And I also... Back in my PC days, I always went with Dell. They have lower-priced models. They're pretty solid.

So... I was actually going to recommend Dell's because they apparently had a lot of sales because Dell laptops were some of the, like, highest sellers on Black Friday. So maybe you can catch some of those sales before they're gone or for Christmas. But yeah, Dell's are, you know, pretty solid.

I've got that Gamer's Republic PC that I spent, you know, under $1,000 on. And that thing's been fantastic. And honestly, I wouldn't get a desktop. Just get a laptop. Don't... There'll be sales. You'll be able to get a laptop cheap. That gives you the portability.

I haven't had a desktop in years now. Yeah. Yeah, and you can Chromecast from the laptop, you know, to it. So you spend, like, $30 or $40 on a good Chromecast to go to your TV, and then you just use your laptop as your media center. You just need a big hard drive. That's the only thing with the media center. Yep.

And just go SSD. Do not get a spinning disk anymore. They're just so not worth it. I am trying to get rid of all my spinning disks. And it's just... Because it's just so damn slow now. And it sucks. But yeah, Dell. I think Dell. Check out Dell. I think brands are...

Yeah. Even though they're not advertising. We both like them. We got a bunch of people over at PayPal. So thank you to Martin, David, Judge, and Ivor, and Cliff, who wrote in, You guys remind me of my friend who can always find something wrong. With anything. Yes, we can. Yes, thank you. Make America grumpy again.

Yes. And Joseph as well, who says, First off, I'd like to congratulate you on twice-a-week format. I didn't think I'd like it, and now I prefer it. I'd wanted to give you $10, but I'll add my additional two cents when you guys can explain to me what happened to Brian's mic and audio in episode 289, Tanqueray Beavers, starting at 30 minutes and 45 seconds when Bittner comes in until the end of the podcast.

When it comes to crisp and clear audio, your podcast is tops. This often echo-ish sound threw me for a loop. Looking at you, Jason, insert Blue Yeti advertisement here. That switches to you both. Cheers. What did happen? I don't remember what happened. Yeah, your mic switched over to your computer mic.

Right now, Brian is on a Electra Voice RE27 ND in a PreSonus Studio 192. Yeah, so he's basically got my backup rig, so he's on almost the same rig that I am.

But there was a fuck-up where I was listening to him on one set, but it was recording on another mic. So sorry about that. That one, I think that one was late because it took me so long and I fixed it as best I could. Sorry about that.

But, you know, sometimes shit happens like that and we can't fix it in post because that was, you know, that was security, so there's three of us. You know, we can't get Bittner back on and redo the segment because the magic is gone. That's right. We can't recreate the magic. But anyway, sorry about that.

And yeah, that's why Brian now is running on a professional rig instead of what he had before. Yes, the makeshift that I was working on. Over at Facebook, Norma writes us, gave us a rating. It's not like, basically just a recommendation now. They got rid of the star rating for some reason, but whatever.

Oh, it's like Netflix now. Yes. Yeah, there's no stars you just recommend or you don't. So she says, Love the podcast, not for people who get offended easily. It's a fun, snarky, entertaining podcast that keeps you up to date and tech and the shit going on around us. And then a couple emojis. So thank you, Norma. Thank you very much, Norma.

And Ma6502 writes in on Twitter, I have a Sprint phone, so I get Hulu. I've watched Clue, Monster Squad, Wayne's World, and other classics. It's okay for free. Exactly. Damning with faint praise. Kind of like this podcast.

It's okay for free. And he also writes, I'm sure Veronica left the show on her own. She builds great shows, then moves on. It's what she does. It's part of her charm. That is actually 100% false because Veronica's my friend and I asked her about it. So, nope, that is not what happened.

AJ writes in, iTunes podcast charts really are rigged and sends us a link to the Darknet Diaries podcast, episode 27, Chart Breakers, where the host gets into exactly how bad they are. Of course they are. We've talked about that on the show. I know that they're rigged.

They've been rigged for years, though. The only thing that's happened now is a bunch of carpetbaggers have moved into the podcasting space trying to make money on all of our hard work without giving us a cut properly. And they're like, oh, why can't we get in the charts? Oh, because these other people are in the charts and you get hit up on Fiverr every day for people that can do it.

It is extremely simple to game the iTunes podcast charts. They say they're working on it, but here's the deal about the iTunes podcast charts. It doesn't matter. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Nobody goes there to look for new shows anymore. It's, I mean, sometimes they do.

But the thing is, it's a badge of honor to be in the top 200. But nowadays it's like, oh, you can get that for 20 bucks. I can, you can send me an email and I'll tell you how to do it for 20 bucks. If that. It's really silly. Paul, the social influencer, writes in, the concept of useful idiots makes me appreciate a lot more dum-dums in my life.

Okay. And here's somebody you pissed off. Kevin writes in, I was with you until you called our border enforcement cock stains. Tough job. Hard rocks. Why do parents have their children next to a violent protest? Because it makes headlines to have your child tear gas. With respect, gentlemen. Well, with respect, Kevin, they have their children next to them at a violent protest because they're fleeing a fucking government.

Here's the deal. Here's, here's the problem I have with this. A, it's still, this whole thing with, you know, our, our guys shooting tear gas into another country. And yes, there were, there were some, you know, some violence. There were rocks thrown at the, at the border agents.

Right. Go behind the wall. That's why we have a fucking wall. You can, you can walk back a couple feet and not get hit by a rock. You don't have to, you know, use chemical weapons on the people who are just trying to find a new home. And the people who are throwing the rocks generally probably aren't the ones with the kids is what I'm thinking because that's not what it is.

It's a bunch of dudes because as we know, dudes are stupid and they throw rocks. Have you ever seen a woman throw a rock? Probably not going to hit you. Sorry, women. It's true. Throw like a girl is a term of art for reason. You know, stereotypes do sometimes exist because they're true.

But, and I heard a French DJ went up to the woman that threw the rock and then asked her to twerk. That's true too. Look, let me stop. Let me stop Jason before he pisses off anybody else anymore and just say to you, Kevin, that one can condemn the act and not the institution. I have no problem with border enforcement.

I have a problem with this particular act. Yes, that's all it is. But, you know, the guys who did fire the tear gas, I still stand by what I said. I don't think it was necessary. I honestly don't. And it's just, we've got so many things that embarrass us in the world right now.

That is tear gassing a bunch of people who are like, you know, looking for asylum because their life sucks. Come on. It's not what our country is supposed to be. I would rather have more people down there with clipboards and trying to get these people placed in the U.S.

than people with tear gas guns and real guns turning them away because we are a nation of immigrants, like I've said, because my family comes from that and so does half of everybody or more than half of everybody I know. So I would just, you know, it's not about respect.

It's about just making the wrong choice. And, you know, we have a, we're a big tent here. We take all comers and all opinions. So, Kevin, I understand your opinion, but, you know, other people have different ones. Right, film, sleep, repeat wrote us in. Thanks for calling out U.S. Customs, disgusting behavior, tear gassing innocence.

So, you know, it is what it is. We're all going to have our opinion on it. Let's just stay civil. Yeah, and Mr. Dom writes in, you know, I like nearly all of your podcasts except for the times you sling crap at Firefox. Well, if it's a target, we're going to hit it. It's a horrible browser.

It really is. It used to be our favorite, as you all know. So, Cass writes in, is the book where people have to pay for oxygen? You've been thinking of Luna by Ian McDonald. No, you've been trying, you've stopped trying to work it out, but now it's bugging me. Well, now it's bugging me again and no, that isn't it. So, let's keep at it.

Damn it. I thought this was over. No. Shane writes in, apologies if you've covered this before or have no use for a Windows music player anymore. Haven't listened in a while. Not, well, why not? You need to listen more. Damn it, Shane. Not sure if you guys have tried Music Bee, but in my humble opinion, it's pretty great.

and it's linked to getmusicbee.com. And unfortunately, it's Windows only and we're all Mac. Right. Yeah. So, I don't even have a PC in the house anymore, which is weird for me. I don't have desk space, so I can't even turn mine on.

I can't even set it up because I'm out of desk space. But I do have my PC and I love my PC. Windows 10 is great, but I just don't listen to music on it because my main audio machine is a, you know, 27-inch 5K iMac. My main audio machine is an Amazon.

Yeah, yours is an Echo. These days. Like a $30 Echo. Did you ever sign up for Amazon Music? No, because I've got, I'm on Spotify and, you know, my wife works for Universal Music, so we have free subscriptions on all the other services, so there's no...

Oh, look at you, Mr. Fancy Pants. Y'all. No, it's pretty much just Spotify, so... Okay. Yep. Why isn't Amazon Music part of the Prime subscription? That's ridiculous that it isn't. I was wondering the same damn thing. You can get some music from your Prime subscription, but just not all of it.

Yeah, not all of it. So, and yeah, I have to cancel mine now. I should actually, I was making a note in things. There's an app recommendation for you, things, the to-do manager, to cancel my Amazon Music subscription because the only time I ever used it was on my Alexa slash Echo or whatever the fuck they call it, and since I can't turn it on in the house anymore, I'm just burning money with that subscription.

But I liked Amazon Music. It did the job. Everything's everywhere, so who cares? Yeah. We got a bunch of stuff over at GOG.show. First up is longtime friend of the show, Lawrence, who's written in, sigh, ho, hum, again. Of course, Quora does a bit of verbal self-flagellation, but if they think they can work very hard to make sure this does not happen again, why the hell didn't they work harder to make sure it didn't happen in the first place?

Just saying. And it's a very long email from Quora because they got hacked. Yep, I got this same email three times last night for the three Quora accounts that I have from three different email addresses. And yeah, it was a pretty pathetic email. Sorry. Yeah. Ivan writes in, hello from snowy Ukraine.

Love your show. I've been listening to it for a few months. Best podcast I've heard so far. Well, all right there, Ivan. I know you guys like stuff on a blockchain, so I'm presenting you our SQL, a MySQL replication on a blockchain here, and here's a link to the project.

This actually might be decent. Yeah. This actually might be a really good use of it. Yeah. I do like the fact that you called it RSQL and then went MySQL instead of going RSQL or MySQL. I like how you switched it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the whole thing about it is it's MySQL plus a blockchain and you can create MySQL clusters using blockchain replication.

I have done so many MySQL clusters over the years, over data centers and all that stuff, you know, replication, all that crap. Anything in the world to make MySQL easier to replicate is a boon to humanity.

So this, I'm never going to do it again. I'm out of that game. Oh, me either. I'm done. I'm so out of that game. I'm never doing it again. But this looks pretty cool. So check it out. It's at O-U-R-S-Q-L dot org. This is cool. Yeah, good use of blockchain, actually.

Yeah. Martin writes in, love the show, getting old and grumpy myself, so I feel very connected. Been trying out Opera and loving it. It's now my go-to browser. Even tried Vivaldi, but no. Twice already in the first day it started lagging the entire system and gobbling up memory. Probably a shitty web page, but the fucking browser should be able to handle that.

Stay grumpy, Martin. Oh, thanks, Martin. Now I don't have to do that. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Yeah, that was your job. You were going to do that, Jason, but I guess it's taken care of, of course. Like I said, I've had a shitty day, so. Literally. Nathan writes in, what password manager should I get?

This is an easy one. 1Password. Go to 1Password.com. Even though they only ran one ad with us once, we're still pimping them because we both use it and love it. Love it, love it. Brian's still on the basic one where he keeps all his data local and shares it over, what is it, Dropbox.

I am on the paid plan for the cloud version, and I love it. I find it much easier to use. I'm just lazy. Take that with a grain of salt. Yeah, yeah. And it's actually, they've made it harder to get the standalone version now, but I love the cloud version.

It is so easy to get set up on new devices, so it's on all my devices, and it takes like a minute to set up. Right. Love it. Catherine writes in, I am a network engineer and amateur photographer. I was wondering if you have any knowledge or options about Shutterfly and FreePrints. I don't use them, but some of my clients are all about them.

Have you ever heard about them using the photos for ads or selling them to ads? I would love to have an article to shove down their know-it-all throats. By the way, I love your show and listen to it as soon as it's available and tell everyone old, geeky, and nerdy to listen. Thank you. As far as Shutterfly goes, I have not used them for ages, and when it comes to selling photos for ads or selling them to ads, that's a tough one because there's so many people that are doing basically stock photography now.

You know, it's a really difficult business to get into, and that's why I just don't even waste my time with it anymore. But yeah, I'm not sure. You're going to have to do your own research on that one, Catherine. I'm sorry. I just don't have time to do it, but there are options out there, and I even think Flickr was doing that for a while where you could, you know, post your stuff for sale.

Yeah. Although now that Flickr's been bought by SmugMug, I'm not exactly sure if they're the best course of action because they just did release some new policies where they're going to be deleting old photos and stuff like that if you're not a pro user. But yeah, there's a ton of options out there for stock photography sales.

Yeah, I just don't really have an answer for that one right now, so sorry. That's all I got, sorry. It had been a long time. Yeah. Naveed writes in, Hey Grumps, ran into this article which talks about how a PlayStation mic captured an apparent rape. But what caught my attention was the very last paragraph that made me bring up a question.

Does Amazon actually store voice recordings from very long time periods on Alexa devices? The report follows news in early November that a New Hampshire judge ordered Amazon to turn over a full two days worth of Echo device recordings. The audio in question is tied to a span of time in January 2017 when an alleged double murder occurred and Amazon had previously stated it would not overturn such audio to authorities without valid and binding legal demand.

We talked about this one about two weeks ago, I think. Yeah. And the answer is yes. Yes, they do record these things and they store them. You can go through and delete things one by one via the app, but of course, there's no delete all. So you would have to go in and just individually delete everything.

And on the show, we've discovered that delete generally doesn't mean delete. It means set visibility to zero. So we don't know if Amazon really deletes things or they just keep everything anyways, even if you decide to delete it yourself. It just doesn't seem to matter. But we don't know for sure.

Either way, I guess we'll find out because this stuff is going to happen more and more. Amazon's going to have to turn over this stuff. The thing about this though is you have to remember that it's only storing things after the device is triggered by the trigger word. So it's not recording everything that you say all the time.

Yes. It's only recording trigger word and then whatever. And that's stored and that's stored forever. I mean, they just keep all this stuff. Yeah, because they use it to train their machine learning and AI. But it is out there. So, you know, if you say, if you turn it on and then just scream at it and yell at it and, you know, throw profanity at it, that's still in your account.

It's still going to be there. But the one thing I think you need to remember now is if you are being murdered, you can yell at your echo and say the name of your accuser. Exactly. Tell us who did it. Yes. Which I think is a really great plot point. That's a good plot point for a short story I should write, I think.

Definitely. Get on that. One that I never will because I've put out 17 story ideas for dystopian tech we cover on this show. Never written a single word. But anyway, yeah, just be aware of that. And Brian, to talk about deletion a little bit, I had to deal with Google G Suite support this week.

We're just talking about, you know, how things are stored and how they're deleted and things like that. And in business accounts, you have a 25-day grace period when something is deleted from the trash in your Gmail account. you cannot get rid of that 25-day hold, period.

If you want it deleted, you cannot do it. It's really interesting. Yeah. No, you have to cancel your account. That is the only way to do it. You can cancel your account and they will wipe all of your data from all of their servers. Do they, though? Because they're not going to pay it anymore. Yeah, I think they do.

Or do you just not be able to access it anymore? I'm almost certain because I went through so many scenarios with this guy Rolando on Google Tech Support. Their Google Tech Support for G Suite when you do a chat with them is incredibly good.

Incredibly good. You can also call them, too, which is also incredibly good. I was surprised. When you pay Google money, they actually answer the phone. This was a new revelation for us. I'm like, oh my God, they actually pick up the phone. They give you a phone number to call. If you're running AdSense, forget about it.

You're never going to get in touch with anybody. But when you run a G Suite account, they actually have a very robust support team, even on a Saturday, which is surprising. And they speak proper English. You're not going to Bob in Mumbai. Hello, my name is Steve.

Exactly. But yeah, that really also talks about when delete is not delete. And in G Suite, it's really hard to delete. It's a really hard thing to delete. Some of the other ways you can make them delete things is not give them any more money. They will delete things.

That's really it. If you go from a business account down to a standard account and you have stuff in your G Drive that goes over the limit, I'm like, will you just bill me for the overage? And they said, no, we're just going to delete it up to that limit. We don't know which files will get deleted. I'm like, okay, well, that's good to know.

Rishi. Rishi. All right. We got a five-star rating over at iTunes from Song of the Oss from the UK. Show Me the Grumpy, a consistently well-researched and interesting show. If something tech has annoyed you, it's likely to have annoyed them. Avoid mentioning AI and all will be well. And our 301st review from Grumpy Old Critic.

Disrespect law enforcement officers equals unsubscribe. A one-star rating. As an open-minded centrist, I was okay with their all-too-common left-leaning commentary, but I draw the line. I draw the line here. When U.S. border control agents are called cockstains for defending themselves while on duty, shameful unsubscribed.

I'm guessing this might be Kevin. I don't know. It's Grumpy Old Critic via Apple Podcasts. The interesting thing was this was, you know, before the last episode came out where I was shitting on the local police. It's on local police, yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. I know you don't want me to talk about them, so I won't, but I'm just going to say it got a lot worse since even that.

No, these guys are not good. Anyway, sorry. Yep, sorry. Everybody gets their own opinion. If you want your question or comment right on the show, head over to gog.show slash support and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to gog.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review.

Closing shout out! Shout out! My shout out of the week goes to Ken Berry who died this week. He was 85. Most people who listen to this show probably don't know who Ken Berry was. If you ever watch the old show, F Troop, he was one of the main characters on F Troop.

F Troop was one of my childhood staples on Saturday mornings and I loved that show. But he was also in Mama's Family, which also is a strange show that was a spinoff of the Carol Burnett show. Yes. But Ken Berry was a... I loved him in F Troop.

He was one of my favorite characters. So go in peace, Ken Berry. And my shout out this week is to George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States who passed away at 94. Quite a run. Definitely the last Republican President that I have a lot of respect for.

He closed out the Cold War. Good for him. Yep. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Shulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Toss us a buck a month and we'll love you forever. If you'd like to give a one-time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar.

Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 303. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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