322: VINDICATION!

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Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. We got some follow-up, Brian, and I would like to call this follow-up our new segment called Vindication. Vindication. Mofos. This is an article over at TechCrunch. It says, Even years later, Twitter doesn't delete your direct messages.

Wait, hold on a second. You're saying when we delete something on social media, it doesn't get deleted? Oh, I wonder where I've heard that before. I wonder where I've heard that before. And what I love is, I swear to God, this writer over at TechCrunch must listen to our show because it says, When does delete really mean delete?

Not always or even at all if you're Twitter. Yes, we've been saying it for so goddamn long. It's become our own mantra. I think we're going to have to send Dave Bittner a beer and we're all going to have to crack one on Friday's security segment because we have been screaming this from the rooftops for years.

I know. I mean, I don't know if he can drink a beer with that furry mask on, but we'll send him a big straw. We'll send him a very big straw. But yeah, Twitter's retaining all the direct messages for years. And you can actually get them through the API.

How convenient. How convenient. So basically, when you delete something on Twitter, you can't access it anymore, but any hacker can. Yep. Anybody with an API key can go back and get them. Way to go, Twitter. Oh, and I'm sure it's not that easy, but still, it's messed up.

It's messed up that they don't delete them. And this is just Twitter. We've only just learned this about Twitter. We are 99.9999% sure this is true for Facebook. This is true for everyone. Everyone. Yes. And also, here's the other thing. Remember when Twitter gave the firehose feed to the, what do you call that?

Oh, the Library of Congress. That's right. So even if you delete a tweet, it is still in the archives at the Library of Congress. Nothing is ever going away for Twitter. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of frightening, actually. Yeah.

And this next bit of follow-up is because I talked about Surviving R. Kelly, the docuseries on Lifetime, which is, it's an interesting thing. Well, shocker, a new videotape has surfaced of R. Kelly having sex with a 14-year-old.

What? And here's the catcher, you know, here's the big one, still within the Statue of Limitations. Still within the Statue of Limitations. Correct. So R. Kelly has a grand jury that is being convened just for him.

So he might be trapped in something other than a closet for a lot longer than he might like. Well, couldn't happen to a worse guy. Yeah, seriously. And I found this next one fascinating. Open Markets wants the FTC to block the Spotify deal.

This is the Spotify deal we talked about. Yeah, with Gimlet and Anchor. Right. And I've never heard of Open Markets before. And it's the Open Market Institute. And that is OpenMarketInstitute.org if you want to check it out. The link will be in the show notes to those guys. This is a bunch of people who are against monopolies.

Well, where the fuck have they been? Seriously. And now, just for Spotify and podcasts, we got some bigger fish to fry here, Open Markets folk. Yes, the Open Markets Institute uses journalism to promote greater awareness of the political and economic dangers of a monopolization, identifies the changes in policy and law that cleared the way for such consolidation, and fosters discussion with policymakers and citizens as

to how to update America's traditional political economic principles for our 21st century digital society. Well, they do have a big post at the top that says Open Markets applauds New York citizens for stopping Amazon raid on city coffers. Well, I've never heard of these guys until this other one came out because, of course, I care about the Spotify deal because I think it's a load of bullshit.

But this is interesting. I'm going to have to go into this. But they do have a whole segment on their website called Monopoly Basics, which is really interesting. And I definitely encourage everybody. Do not pass go. Yeah, seriously. Get out of jail free is what most of the monopolies have nowadays.

That's what you get. But yeah, it's it's a whole bunch of articles on monopolies and how they work and why you should stop them, hospitals and workers and all this stuff. So definitely go check that out. That will that will be linked in the show notes. And but here's the deal.

Yes, they want to stop the Spotify deal because they see this as basically ruining the podcast industry, because podcasting is awesome right now because it is an open platform. You publish an RSS feed in an MP3 and that's a podcast. That's it. But as all of these companies come in and they want to spend huge amounts of money and put everything behind a paywall.

Well, then things get tricky. So they're saying do not ruin podcasting because it is almost the last bastion of free speech that we have left to us. So the Spotify deal definitely is going to ruin things for a lot of people, especially with the anchor side.

I don't really you know, I told you I don't care about the Gimlet thing. That's just the thing for me is what it is. It's no big deal. In fact, in some ways, it's actually kind of a good thing. You and I can argue about that. Yeah, we can. Yeah, I need whiskey for that one.

The anchor one is is is a different story. That's just setting up a whole system and it's not it's not going to be good for anyone. But having, you know, having said all of this, if anybody wants to give us a boatload of money and put us behind a paywall, we're listening. We're listening. Yeah. Hey, hey, hey, Daniel Ek.

You want to throw us a check? We'll take it. We'll take it. You know, I my morals and the courage of my conviction only go so far because once once the money, once the food's not on the table, my morals and convictions can go out the window. In the news.

This person does not exist dot com greatest domain ever. It is. It's pretty cool. Actually, uses AI to generate endless fake faces. This is an article over on The Verge. First off, it doesn't use AI. OK, use machine learning.

There we go. But anyways, well, you know, again, this is the argument that we always have. What is AI? And I guess we have to give up the ghost and just say that, you know, what we talk about as AI is as general, general artificial intelligence or however it said. No, no, no. General artificial intelligence is the one thing that's never going to exist.

We know that. Right. So which is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're just going to we're just going to stick. We're just going to go with the people now because it's just I'm tired. I'm tired. Yeah. I'm tired of this argument. I've given up. So this is a site created by Philip Wang, a software engineer at Uber, and it uses research released last year by chip designer NVIDIA to create an endless stream of fake portraits.

It uses a it's trained on a huge data set of real images. And apparently, you know, Philip Wang is better at this than Google or Facebook because nobody's made any racist claims about this yet. So he used a good, huge data set of real images using people, huge and then uses a type of neural network known as generative adversarial network or GAN to fabricate basically new people.

Yeah. So these are facial images created from scratch. You can just sit and reload and reload and reload. And none of these people exist. And they all look like 100 percent completely real people that you would see walking down the street. It is unbelievable. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool.

I like this. The problem I have with this now, though, here's where the real problem comes in. Now I can take these images of people that don't actually exist and create fake social profiles about them and then use them for social engineering attacks.

Great. Thanks, guys. There's a lot of problems with this. So the article gets into that and it says, wow, how cool. There are obviously lots of creative applications for this technology. Programs like this could create endless virtual worlds as well as help designers and illustrators. They're already leading to new types of artworks.

Then there are the downsides. Yep. Yeah. So it gets into deep fakes, nonconsensual pornography, the ability to manipulate and generate realistic imagery at a scale that's going to have a huge effect on how modern societies think about evidence and trust, which is sure enough going to go into our vindication section soon enough as well.

Exactly. Because this is something else we've been screaming about. How do we know or trust anything in the near future when this technology gets good enough? And this is a pretty stunning example to how the technology is almost good enough now.

Here's the thing. I mean, maybe 2019 will be the year of vindication for us. But the other thing about this would be awesome is that he's totally bullshitting everybody. And these are just a bunch of pictures he found on Google. It just has a big folder of them and just shows up a random photo every time.

How awesome would that be? The other thing I was thinking about is if this is the year of vindication for us, it might be good for our egos, but it's really fucking bad for the world. That's true. That's true. We are not very good. We don't want all the stuff that we keep screaming about to come true.

That's, in fact, why we're screaming about it. Oh, good point. Good point. Oh, man. I've been reloading this thing the whole time, and it is just amazing. It's pretty fucking scary. Yeah. I mean, you can definitely see some flaws in it, but especially when people have glasses.

But, I mean, the skin tone matching alone is just phenomenal. And the aging and things of that. It's just, wow. Lots of people with really fucked up teeth. There's a lot of fucked up teeth out there. But, yeah, just, I mean, it's crazy how good this is.

But you can tell that there's definitely some stuff going on, especially around the hair and the ears. Look around the hair and the ears is where you really can kind of see where it kind of falls apart. It's failing a little bit. But, yeah. That's how you make the model better.

Yeah. Wow. That's crazy. Okay. I got to turn that off. Next. Yeah. Turn that off. Next. So, in the continuing race between trying to crawl back some of our online privacy and having it taken away, Chrome is basically, there's been a loophole in incognito mode that has allowed websites to recognize when people are browsing the web privately.

Sites like the Boston Globe and MIT Technology Review, which you'd think MIT Technology Review would be kind of on the side of privacy. But they've been using the loophole to block anyone browsing in incognito mode to keep people from avoiding paywalls and to maximize data capture. So, Google plans to close this loophole.

But the problem is, there's going to be, it's just a continued rat race, right? Like, it's a race down to the bottom. So, Chrome will fix this loophole. They'll find another exploit. There'll be a different way around it, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. I mean, I've definitely used incognito mode to reset my, you know, articles you've read count on different sites.

I haven't done it on the MIT, like that site, because I pay for that site. So, I'm a subscriber. So, I get that one. So, I haven't seen that. I don't go to the Boston Globe because I don't go to Boston. So, I go to Boston. I wish it worked on the Wall Street Journal so I could actually read something over there, those ridiculous bastards in there.

Oh, God. If they cut their subscription price in half, I would pay for the Wall Street Journal because they're doing great stuff over there. But it's just so damn expensive. And, yeah. Anyway, yeah, this is cool. This is cool. Yeah, it's the file system API. And they're just going to start making a new file system in RAM and then nuke it when you're done with your session.

So, I like this. I like that Google's, like, you know, trying to figure this stuff out. But in the grand scheme of things, yes, you can profile so many metrics in a browser right now that it's crazy, especially if you use the canvas. Like, you know, you do a small 1x1 pixel canvas. You can get all the fonts in the system.

You can do all sorts of profiling, which is what all the ad companies do. So, we'll see if they can do that. Next up, this one got my blood a little boiling. A little bit. A little bit. This comes from The Verge. Google is reportedly hiding behind shell companies to scoop up tax breaks and land.

I can't possibly imagine that they would do that. Yeah. No, they've been doing it. And this article talks about a new place that they got down in Texas to build a new data center. And it was Sharka LLC.

Baby Sharka, do-do-do-do-do, baby Sharka, do-do-do-do, baby Sharka, do-do-do-do-do, baby Sharka. I have no idea what that was all about. All the parents out there will get that one. Exactly. I figured. I figured that was some kid shit going on there. But they opened a new data center in Midlothian, Texas, where I've been, actually, surprisingly enough.

Midichlorians? Not midichlorians, Midlothian. Oh, that's a bummer. There are fucking midichlorians, Jesus. Ruined Star Wars. Oh, thank you, Lucas. Thank you, Lucas, for that. So they got $10 million in tax breaks down there. And nobody knew that it was Google behind the company that was actually getting the land and all that stuff.

And then as soon as the deal closed, the address for Shaka LLC switched over to Google's home address. Oh, man. You know, I can see one side of this argument where Google rolls in and says, hey, we want to build something here and we want to get some land and we want to, you know, do our thing and how they can be like seen as, OK, here comes Mr. Moneybags.

We're going to fleece them for everything they're worth. Right. So if they were, you know, if that was the case, that's I understand why they would want to hide behind fake LLCs and try and do it that way. But it's not just that this $10 million in tax breaks really kind of shines a different kind of light on it.

It's like if you came in and paid fair market value and didn't want any tax breaks just because you were Google, OK, that's interesting. But also having the people behind the deal with the city sign NDAs to say that they are not allowed to tell anybody that this is Google.

Well, then you just lose all credibility whatsoever right there. So what are you going to do? Obviously nothing. No, it do nothing. But I mean, it's the community's pissed off because they didn't get to have like any meetings about this vote on it because they just didn't know who was coming to town.

It's like, oh, what the hell is going on here? I mean, like they might they might have voted for it and said, hey, great. Google's coming to town. We're going to get some new jobs. We're going to give them some tax breaks so we can have some, you know, new jobs for the community because Midlothian, Texas ain't really all that is all I'm going to say.

But yeah, this this sneaky shit has got to end. It's getting ridiculous. The rich getting richer. Everybody's getting pissed off about it. And we need to just kind of shine a light on this shit. I agree. And speaking of shining a light, another week, another call to regulate Facebook, this time coming from the UK's Digital Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which has been investigating and sport, which has been investigating Facebook's role in spreading disinformation.

The committee issued a new report this weekend saying Facebook intentionally and knowingly violated both data privacy and anti-competition laws in the UK. Basically, they caught it from all those internal emails that they nabbed last fall. Yeah. Yeah. So the report calls for more regulations and described the company as digital gangsters for how it handles its users data.

I love that. Yeah. So basically, they're saying Facebook is kind of a monopoly and they're engaged in anti-competitive practices. So they're suggesting that Facebook be regulated as a new category of tech company that is not necessarily either a platform or a publisher, which is interesting to us because we know everybody hides behind the we're just a platform excuse all the time.

Yeah. And by the way, the whole thing about we're just a platform, as soon as you start deleting somebody's information, then you become a publisher. Yeah, you're an editor. As soon as you edit or delete or anything, you are now publishers. You are now making editorial decisions.

This comes down to the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA that we have here in the US. They don't have it over there, so they can do whatever the hell they want in the EU. And they're just saying, guys, well, oh, wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry. The UK is not going to be in the EU for much longer. Oh, you Brexit idiots.

Oh, man. But yeah, it's interesting that they're going to go after him. And I think that I think a lot of people are going to go after him. This could be bad for Facebook. Here's what they would like to have happen. And if it does happen, not only is it going to be bad for Facebook, it'll be bad for YouTube. It'll be bad for Twitter.

It'll be bad for anything that identifies themselves as a platform or takes any user generated content by Reddit. The company would like Facebook to assume legal liability for content identified as harmful after it has been posted by users. Oh, they're going to fight tooth and nail to make sure that never happens.

Yeah, well, that would basically end these businesses, to be honest. You know, so so I don't see that happening. But it is suggested that a code of ethics, oh, ethics, be created to identify what is considered harmful content. Facebook and other platforms would then be regulated to ensure that they don't spread that content.

This one seems a bit more likely to me. We come up with this idea that we can use across the platform. Sorry, publishers. And, you know, here's our code. And if anything here gets posted, we will take it down. We will make sure it doesn't get spread. I'm fine with that. I don't think we need to make these things liable.

That will basically get rid of them as entities. They couldn't exist anymore. But we need to make we need to hold them to the fire a bit more than we are now. So, I mean, this just sounds like the death knell of walled gardens. It really does, because if if these things are going to get regulated so heavily like this, they're just not they can't exist.

They can't exist. We're going to go back to the web where everybody has their own website or, you know, just say goodbye to it, because there's just no way that these giant platforms with so many users can police this much content. It's just it's it's impossible. It's absolutely impossible.

So we'll see how these things are going to shake out in the future. But, yeah, I mean, this is the downside of the walled garden and everybody being on the same goddamn website at the same time, because Facebook is just a fucking website, you know? So what are you going to do? It's also a crappy app.

Well, God, that was terrible. Now, moving on to more Facebook news, the Federal Trade Commission has a new complaint that accuses Facebook of revealing sensitive health data in groups. Oh, shocker. A complaint filed with the FTC is accusing Facebook of failing to protect sensitive health data in its groups.

The complaint filed with the agency last month and released publicly today argues that the company improperly disclosed information on members of closed groups. The issue first came into public eye in July when members of a group for women with a gene mutation called BRCA discovered sensitive information like names and email addresses of members could be downloaded in bulk, either manually or through a Chrome extension.

Oopsie-daisy. Well, of course they can. Of course they can. It's a public forum. Well, it's a closed group. It's a closed group on a public website. How much do you want to bet that insurance agencies are hiring hackers, have been hired hackers, have people going out and collecting all this information?

They'd be stupid not to, right? If this information is out there, if you can get sensitive public health information and tie it to names and addresses, you would be stupid as an insurance company not to be collecting it. Insurance agencies in the next five years are going to become the new Facebook that we are going to have to regulate the shit out of what insurance companies can gather online from your social media profiles and things like that.

So this whole thing. In the meantime, if you've got a disease, don't join a group for it. Yeah. Just sit in a closet by yourself and just die alone. Because God knows the medical industry isn't going to help you right now either. Yeah. Oh, geez. We're getting cheery again.

And Instagram's fundraiser stickers could lure credit card numbers is the title of this horribly named article over at TechCrunch. What a terrible title for that. So what they're going to try and do now is inside of Instagram in the app, you can create a sticker that says donate, but people need to have their credit card associated with it.

Now, I don't know about you, but there is one company on the planet where I'm never putting my credit card information and that would be Facebook. So you always have to remember Instagram is Facebook. So that's one of those things where I just I can't see smart people will not do this.

But ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine percent of the people on Instagram probably are not smart and will do it anyway. So what are you going to do? Yeah. Oh, God. Donate to Zuck. What are you going to do? All right. And for our last story in the news, we will say rest in peace and bid a fond farewell to Oppie the Mars rover.

Oh, bye bye, Oppie. Opportunity began her life on Mars on January 24th, 2004. Wow. Now, it's 15 years old. Holy shit. It's finally died. The golf cart size rover has died following a battle with dust that prevented her from charging her batteries.

So this is pretty amazing because they were only expecting opportunity to last for 90 days. Right. Yeah. 15 years. We kept a robot going on a on a fucking different planet for 15 years. Way to go, NASA.

Way to go, NASA. And you know what? For all of that amazing stuff that you did, we're pulling your funding. Yeah, seriously. Go call Elon, see if he'll give you a check. But that's that's crazy that that thing lasted 15 years. And it's also crazy that that was 15 years ago.

I know. It doesn't really. It seems like five, you know.

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Media candy. Well, it is that time of year here in Los Angeles when screeners get passed around and change hands, and I came in contact with quite a few of them, and I watched a few movies this weekend that are up for Oscar consideration. First up, I finally saw Bohemian Rhapsody.

Oh, what'd you think? I thought it was a good movie. Yeah, it was. I didn't think it was a great movie. Nope. Not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a good movie. There is only one thing that I think it should be nominated for, and that is the casting director, because whoever cast this movie nailed it.

Nailed it. They look so much like the members of Queen. It's ridiculous. Yeah. And with, I mean, Remy Malik just, I mean, he was spot on. Well, a little bit too buff. Actually, he bumped me a little bit. Not the buff thing. The teeth were a little bit too much.

Yeah. Yeah. They went slightly too much, and it was really hard to concentrate sometimes, because you could tell it was almost like, it was pushing his cheeks out they made them so big. I thought those were his real teeth. I mean, they used to scale it back just a bit. I thought those were real. I thought those were his real teeth.

Yeah. Because he does kind of have fucked up teeth, but anyway, but I mean, seriously, if you go back and do that side-by-side comparison to the Wembley show, oh my God, he just nailed it. He nailed it. Yeah. It was really great, and I really enjoyed the movie, and if you're, you know, I wasn't a huge Queen fan, but obviously, massive hits, great songs, and it was just, it was a fun movie to watch.

Obviously, you know, approved by the band. Everybody looked good. No, yeah, it was made by the band, so yeah. Yeah. Take that with a grain of salt, but either way, I've always been a huge Queen fan. Like, my second album that I ever bought was a Queen album, you know, as a kid, so I've always been a huge fan, so I really enjoyed the movie.

It was definitely popcorn. It was not really the real story, because the real story is really not as fun as Bohemian Rhapsody was, because especially his time in Germany, it was not even, they showed like two house parties. It's like, it was not like that at all.

It was bad. So anyway, I'm glad you liked it. Yeah, it was good. And the other movie that we watched was On the Basis of Sex, which is the true story of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and how she got her start. It is the year of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, apparently.

And just for the record, as I'm getting older, if anybody decides to both make a documentary and then an entire Oscar-nominated movie about my beginnings, I'm thinking I'm probably dying soon. Yeah, seriously. Hey, but she's coming back to work.

She's coming back to work. So that's good. I saw her on TMZ this morning saying she's coming back to work. So come on, Ruth. Well, this is a very, very, very good movie. I really enjoyed it. I didn't think it would be that interesting or that great or that compelling, but it was. Again, casting phenomenal in this.

Every character was great. It was really engaging, even after watching, you know, the notorious RGB RPG. RBG. Yeah. Yeah. I always get them backwards. I'm like RGB CMYK. I'm thinking about my old RGB monitors.

Notorious CMYK. The notorious SVGA. Yeah. Oh, man. Little old tech jokes for you people out there. But yeah, this is phenomenal. Highly recommend. I would never have thought this was about Herb from the title of the movie. Right. I didn't either. I was like, oh, I guess my wife's putting on a cheeky movie tonight.

Oh, right. You got to press that anonymous button to let her know you want to get some. My love style, love sense, whatever that was. Yeah. It's the butt signal, as I called it. No, it is not a particularly sexy movie, but it is very good. Cool. I highly recommend it. And we have some good Cure news coming out this year.

There's 30 years since Disintegration came out. Wow. Terribly. It's my favorite album of all time, for sure. And they are announcing a special 30th anniversary Disintegration concerts where they will be playing the album and B-sides from the album in full. Only four have been announced right now, all at the Sydney Opera House in Australia, May 24th, 25th, 27th and 28th.

But they state that this is the world premiere of these 30th anniversary performances. So there will be a tour. Okay. Well, here's the deal. If they come to L.A., get me a ticket, because I know you're going to be able to get tickets. So get me one, too.

All I got to say, because I will be going to at least one, if not more than one of these shows, for sure. Yeah, because you got me to go see The Cure at Riot Fest, and it turned out to be the best live show I've ever seen in my life. And I would just kill myself if I didn't be able to go see them again if they're playing here.

I would really want to see them again, because it was so good. But the problem with Riot Fest is you only get 90 minutes for the headliners. And it's like, I just want them to play for, like, hours and hours. And they do. They're notorious for playing three-plus-hour concerts. I'm sure this will be much the same.

And they will. They'll play here. The Cure is just one of those bands that, once they spin up the machine, they go out and tour. They tour for a long time. And it sounds like the machine is getting spun up. All right. Thankfully. Yeah. Put the crank in the front and get that Model T going. We need some more Cure.

Now, we saw it coming. We knew it was happening. More vindication. Jessica Jones and Punisher have been canceled by Netflix. Yeah, that sucks. It drives me crazy. But there is a silver lining in the Jessica Jones cancellation.

They had to know it was coming. Because if you follow Kristen Ritter on Instagram, she says, when she shows a picture of the last table read that they were doing for season three, that they, like, completed the story. So, I think that they knew it was coming.

And they actually wrote it to be like a wrap, which I'm hoping. At least we'll get one show wrap, then. Yeah. Punisher. I'm like, bring me some more. I could do ten more seasons of Punisher. I love that show. That guy's a badass. I love me some ultraviolence. But, man. And I want more Daredevil.

But I got to say, with Daredevil, they did the same thing. I'm fine with the way Daredevil ended. I don't need any more. You know? Yeah, it was okay. Yeah. I really had a feel. That was a feel-good ending that I didn't see coming. And I don't know if there's going to be a feel-good episode where we're ending with Jessica Jones because of the way that the last season went.

That last season was just dark. Way too dark for me. But, yeah. It's over. All the Marvel shows have been canceled. Fucking petty-ass school bully shit going on over there. What are you going to do? Brian, look, they all did well enough on Netflix that I can't imagine them not getting rebooted.

Unfortunately, that means new casts and all that sort of stuff. But they've got to get a reboot because you've got to fill your content, man. I just want them to continue as is because I love these casts. These casts are so perfect. Unfortunately, the Jessica Jones showrunner has already got a new job. You know? She's already moved on.

So because apparently Disney didn't pick up the ball fast enough. Stupid Disney. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Now, Brian, do you have a Blu-ray player in your house? I do. That's how I've been watching my Oscar screeners.

Okay, gotcha. I have got a couple old Sony ones, and I sold one at a garage sale last, like, two months ago for, like, $5. My Xbox has a Blu-ray player, but I don't know a lot of people that have Blu-ray players anymore. And it's going to be harder to get them now because Samsung has decided to stop selling Blu-ray players in the U.S.

Okay. It's kind of crazy. If you look at the numbers, they're just dropping precipitously because streaming. That's really it. Well, look, the only reason I still even have a DVD player, or I guess I should just call it a Blu-ray player or whatever, in my house was because we had a DVD of Love Actually.

And every year at Christmas, my wife absolutely has to watch that movie, like, 15 times. If it wasn't for that, the Blu-ray probably wouldn't have made my last move when I bought this place and moved in. It would have been dumped out with everything else because I haven't bought a DVD in years.

Even most of the Oscar screeners now are done via apps and streaming. It was kind of random that I was just handed a box of DVDs for Oscar screeners this year. So I don't need it, really. Yeah. And, you know, don't all the gaming systems play DVDs now?

So you don't need a standalone DVD player, right? Yeah. My Xbox One plays Blu-rays, so I don't really need one. There you go. I did buy a bunch of my favorite movies on Blu-ray, though. I've got a little library of all my favorite movies on Blu-ray just to have them in case I want to watch them sometimes.

And then I can just play them on my Xbox. But most of them, though, I've got RIP that sit on my Synology, which is my media center. You know? I was like, you can just RIP Love Actually or get it from Sweden and not have to have the player sitting around. Probably pulling Phantom Power.

Or actually, no, sorry, it's not Phantom Power. It's Vampire Power all year long. You know? Get rid of the damn thing and just put it on your laptop and just stream it with a stick like everybody else does. Exactly. Yeah. It's just, you know, Blu-rays and physical discs are going the way of the Dodo, just like CDs.

I don't know anybody that has a CD player in their house anymore. It's crazy. I don't. I don't at all. If somebody gave me a CD, I'd have to go out to my car. And it's even surprising my car still has a CD player in it. My new one doesn't. I just got rid of my escape and my Explorer does not have a CD player.

Period. There's nothing. The discs are dead. Yes, they are. Oh, man. Shit. I just realized I left a couple discs in the damn player in the car that I turned in. Oh, man. I left some Jesus Jones in there and I left the, this is going to sound kind of funny, but remember our friend Jeff Koga?

Yeah. Yeah. He made me a CD of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode. That was in my car and I don't have it anymore. Damn it. Well, you don't have a CD player in your car anyway. I couldn't play it if I wanted to. I couldn't play it if I wanted to.

Oh, man. Oh, that's funny. I just totally spaced on that. I'm like, I left all those CDs in there because it was like a six changer and it was full. Oh, well, I do want to talk about my new favorite podcast called the Darknet Diaries. A show fan sent this in a couple months ago and I subscribed and I listened to a couple of them and I just listened to the latest one this morning.

And man, is that a good show? It's a really good show. They're only, they've only got like 32 episodes. There's one guy that does it and he talks about all these stories from the dark, dark web, the dark net and things like that. And this is like about the latest one is about a Russian Carter who is stealing credit card information from all these local restaurants and causing all sorts of havoc.

And I'm not going to spoil it what the ending is, but you should definitely check it out. The thing that pisses me off is he makes twice more than twice as much as we do on Patreon. He's only got 32 episodes. God damn it. So get on it, people. Patreon dot com slash GOG. Help a brother out or two.

Yeah. Jason needs to get a portable CD player for his new car. At the library. I'm reading a new book by Peter Clines, who we love. We love Peter Clines.

It's called Dead Moon. Now, I'm about halfway through it. I just wanted to do a shout out this week to it. So if anybody wants to get it, it's audible only. It is only available there. This is one of their productions where they have it's the same guy that did 14.

And I think the other book was called Fold, if I'm not mistaken. And I loved those books. This is it's actually a series. It's called the Threshold series, which I didn't know. 14 was amazing. I've raved about that book. I've listened to it a couple of times. The Fold was another book that I really, really, really liked.

And I didn't know what was going on with it. But now we've got another one called Dead Moon. This stuff is basically like sci-fi Cthulhu porn because it's about the ancients. It's all about the ancients, which is really cool. It's really cool. And Dead Moon so far. All I got to say is moon zombies.

You got moon zombies. It's awesome. It is really awesome. So I'm really, really enjoying it. It just came out on February 14th. It's I mean, it's a longer book. It's 11 hours and 23 minutes. So not short. It's not the not the longest of his series because 14 was the longest.

But and I really, really, really loved 14. And I really love the fold, too. These are all like great Peter Klein stories. So if you're a fan of Peter Klein's, definitely, definitely get into it. Paradox Bound was another good one. But his whole X-Hero series as well.

I love that series. That was. Oh, that was so good. That whole thing. And then he wrapped it really nicely, I thought. But so far, everything that he's written that I've read, I've loved. So excellent. Yeah. Highly recommended. You're not going to ever get it because you won't listen to an audio book.

Although I think you should try these on your bike ride, you know, I suppose. It's just I have so much so little time and so much content, Jason. So little time. That's OK. I'll send you my password. All right. I'll check it out. I am rereading a book right now. I have a friend at my soon to not be local anymore that I've always exchanged book recommendations with.

And she's always not been interested in sci fi. But she finally said, well, give me one of your best sci fi books, ones that you love the most. Make it recent because old sci fi is really difficult for people that aren't into sci fi to get into. So, you know, Dune Foundation and all that was out.

Oh, come on. Stranger in a strange land that has legs. It totally holds up. It does have legs. But I wanted to go with something more modern. And I went with Seven Eves by Neil Stevenson because we both love that book. Well, you love that book. I love the first half of that book.

Yes, I loved all of it. So I am. I decided I got intrigued enough to reread it, basically. And I am about halfway through. I am at that point where you probably checked out. And I've got to say, not with any spoiler alerts, but that one character, man, even even knowing what was going to happen, she gets under my skin so hard and I hate her so much.

And I'm so angry reading it right now. I know exactly who you're talking about. You know what I'm talking about, man. Politics ruins everything. So I'm about halfway through and I assume by next week I'll have reread the whole thing and see if I find a way to convince you that the whole second half of the book is also very.

Okay, maybe I'll maybe I'll just go listen to the second half again. But I did really, really enjoy the first half. It started perfectly. It really started perfectly. And no, that's that's the funny thing, because after I gave away a copy of it and I went back home and I pulled up my my Kindle app and I saw it sitting there and I was like, let me just read the first couple pages.

Oh, you just get hooked immediately. Next thing I knew, I was like, oh, shit, I'm just rereading the whole book. I'm like, yep. Oh, Lifehacker, you hate yourself, don't you? You just hate yourself because you just keep reading Lifehacker.

I need to unfollow Lifehacker on Facebook. But then again, how else would I get a gem like this? Oh, my God, I'm I'm scrolling through this right now. And if you could see me, my jaw is probably on the floor. This is I don't know where we're at in society to actually have this, but I guess this is where we're at now.

So it's an adult's guide to hygiene for those who weren't taught growing up. OK, I guess we're looking at you, millennials. If you haven't figured out how to shave, shower, shit, brush your teeth. If you haven't figured out the basic essentials you need, like deodorant, mouthwash.

This article's for you. Wow. Wow. Yeah, this is this is in crazy. This is insane. This is insane. How to shower properly. How to shave effectively. OK. Oh, well, the shaving thing is that's a time old, you know, argument.

But how to shower. You. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. OK. I'm just saying I'm just saying you've got to stop this, Brian. This is an unhealthy addiction for you. This is seriously an unhealthy addiction to Lifehacker because this site is garbage.

It is garbage. I know. I can't stop. Can't stop. OK. I think I'm the moron of the week. You might be just might be, although I have a contender with you, which which makes me so sad. Jesse Smollett from Empire.

Yeah. What the fuck is going on with that dude? I never watched the show. I don't know the dude. I don't care either way. I love the guy. He's my favorite character on the show. But this and I even tweeted about this when this whole thing came out where he was attacked by MAGA racists and, you know, got covered in bleach and had a rope shoved around his neck.

MAGA MAGA. Because when you said MAGA, I was like, my mind went manga. I was like, imagine the tentacle porn people coming after. It's kind of the same, same disgusting people. That's fine. But it turns out that, well, today is Tuesday when we're recording this and a grand jury is being put together so he can testify because it turns out that he probably staged the whole

attack on himself because he wasn't getting enough recognition about some racist letter that he got in the mail. Uh, no, I'm just like, you are one of the stars of the one of the greatest shows on TV right now.

And there's one person that's getting written off the show at the end of this next the end of this season. And nobody knows who it's it, who it is. And he was kind of worried that it might be him, which is stupid. He's the he's like the favorite character of everybody on the show. And it's ridiculous.

But this whole thing, it's just like it's coming out. These guys who they the cops grabbed these two brothers, like these two Nigerian brothers who ended up one of them was on Empire. One of them was like personal trainer. And they came out and said, no, we we actually practiced the attack days before.

Um, yeah, no, it's really, really bad. I mean, this guy is just he's got to be not smart because why would you throw away such an amazing career? He's an amazing musician can sing like an angel and is on one of the best shows on TV.

And he did this stupid ass thing. Well, allegedly did this stupid ass thing. I'm hoping I'm hoping that there's a Hail Mary out there somewhere that's going to come through. But signs point to no. So for me right now, Jesse Smollett is the moron of the week because we talk about this every day in the house, like over coffee in the morning.

Me and my roommate were just like because we read all the articles in the morning on TMZ or the New York Post or wherever everybody's posting about it. And it's just like we're shaking our head, shaking our head. Why would you throw away such a beautiful, brilliant career over something so stupid? So sorry, sorry, Jamal Lyon, but you are my moron of the week.

Feedback loop. Over on Patreon, we have some new subscribers. We got Sarah. We got Bob the Bear, Runner 609, Peter, Lonnie and Richard. And Ben also writes in. Hey, GOG, with the upcoming release of Captain Marvel in March, this will either bring back fond memories or trigger PTSD.

Also, if you could pimp my podcast over at the nerd herder podcast dot com, I'd appreciate it. Thanks, boys. Ben. Yeah. PTSD mostly. But I feel like I'm going to have to watch these last two because they're the last two, right? Yeah. Yeah. But I'll wait and probably see them on a plane because I just don't care that much.

Would that be a plane from Sweden? Yes. So I'm my prediction right now, Quantum Realm, half the characters are going to come back except for the actors that don't want to come back. Death of Iron Man. There you go. Yeah. Iron Man's dead because we know we have a new Iron Man. And Captain America. And Captain America.

But there you go. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Yeah. What are you going to do? A bunch of really sad people are going to be all upset. Yeah. So there you go. A bunch of rich people that are actors are going to get more money and these characters never existed anyway. So OK. There you go.

Yes. OK. Moving on. Over at PayPal, Linda also sent in a donation. So thank you very much, Linda. Thank you so much. We got two new ratings over on Facebook. So thank you. Or I guess they call them recommendations now because, you know, change things. Glenn says, listening to these guys is like having a renegade angel and devil on your shoulder who, after being fed years of horse shit, discuss world issues as kindred realists without towing the line or kowtowing to PR flim flim flam.

I like that. Thank you. Yeah. And Tim says, always enjoy listening to them discuss the state of technology and the Internet. Thank you. Both of you. Over on Twitter, third in command writes in fraudsters steal 74. 4,000 pounds from ex-nuclear scientist's pension. What a bunch of dicks.

What a bunch. And he says, if you ever needed motivation to work in cybersecurity, read how these scumbags stole from this 84-year-old cancer site. Yeah. People are just turds. Terrible. Yes. Also from third in command, he said, I sold my Renault Zoe EV a year ago. The dealer and manufacturer did nothing to clear down the connected account or app.

I deleted it all, I thought, but still get the emails as someone has connected it to charge every day. Oh, how annoying is that? That's annoying. And Mitch sent us a couple of different tweets getting into this thing. But basically, he sent a few links at the end.

It's a thing. With BMW, you can disconnect from the head unit with other brands, not so much. And there's a couple of different articles that will be in our show notes about it. But yeah, basically, some of the apps for like Land Rovers and some of the other ones, there's nothing you can do about it.

With BMW, it's a RTFM thing. You have to read the fucking manual. And apparently dealers don't bother. So they don't tell you. But you can go through kind of an arcane, crazy thing through the app to disconnect the app from your car if you're going to sell it. So interesting.

At least BMW thought about it. They're just not really letting people know. So and also a little follow up on my Ford. You cannot actually authenticate the app for all of the different features until you plug the phone into the USB console. So I can put the VIN in and it will give me the basics.

But I can't actually do anything with the car, like find out where it's at, see all the data or remote start until I plug it into the actual car. Now, yeah, that's good. That's a bit of security. It's physical. It's de-authenticated it. Yeah, yeah. I don't know about the de-authentication, but the authentication is all physical based.

You can't do it over Bluetooth. You have to literally plug the phone into the car. Gotcha. And Barrett writes in over on GOG podcast on Twitter. It was only a matter of time. Woman accused of dragging dog behind electric scooter now faces charges. Good. Die in a fire, you bitch.

That's all I got to say. I watched the video and she's like holding up the dog and like you can see the dog's paws are bloody and she's just smiling. And I'm just like, I hate you. I hate everything about you. And she is now going up on charges for animal cruelty, which she should.

And she should go to fucking jail. That's all I'm going to say about that. Right. Scott writes in Facebook is worried about creepy. Laughy face, laughy face, laughy face, laughy face. And it's a link. Facebook reportedly demonstrated informal interest in buying the company that made HQ trivia, but backed off after reports of creepy behavior from its late code founder.

Well, or how about the fact that it's just a fucking trivia game? It's just another fucking trivia game. See all of our previous episodes every time a new trivia game came out. Seriously. And Stuart writes in AI text generator not released or it has escaped.

And this article is the perfect way to cover its tracks, which is very funny. He sent us a Guardian article about new AI fake text generator may be too dangerous to release, say creators. And the funny thing is about this. This is this is really funny. Now.

We know Elon Musk is like, oh, God, I hate AI. AI is terrible. AI is going to kill us all. But he spends a ton of money funding the open AI research project. Right. Yep. Well, those guys are the ones that came up with this creepy ass program that they won't release.

And it is kind of a creepy program because what it does is it's like, you know, you take a bunch of text and then it does predictive text algorithms to figure out what it's going to say next. And it's kind of good at what it's going to do. So we'll see how this plays out. But, you know, the law of unintended consequences comes back to Elon Musk as well.

Just because you're a billionaire doesn't mean you're not a dumbass. Right. Agreed. All right. We got a bunch over at GOG.show. First from Peter. That mystery metric that determines a business success. It's called profit. Yeah. I think we did say that, right? Mm hmm. Yep.

And then he also writes VIN number vehicle identification number number. Really, guys? Do you also get your cash from ATM machines? Yes. Because we're old. What do you call them? The money box? Yes, I get my cash from an ATM machine.

What do you think I'm going to do? Walk in and talk to a person? What the hell? How do you get your cash? Steal it from people who come out of the ATM little kiosk? You know, I don't understand that. I don't understand that, Peter. Sorry. Randy writes in with an article on Wired about Internet connected sex toys and security.

And it says, don't get your Valentine an Internet connected sex toy. I think we've been saying that for a very long time. There are some things that don't need to connect to the Internet. Yeah. You don't get yourself an Internet connected sex toy and don't get your lover one either. Unless you want to find out when she's rubbing one out when you're not home or to find out other things that you might probably not want to know.

Hey, Zeus writes in, guys, where do I obtain a link to your podcast that works with Plex Media Server? I don't have Plex Media Server, so I don't know. I mean, the RSS feed is the RSS feed linked on the website, so you can just grab the RSS feed at GOG.show. And if Plex Media Server cannot do an RSS feed, then I don't know.

That's about that. And Rob writes in with an article over at Ars Technica that talks about a phishing scam that looks really, really good for signing into Facebook. And he says, this phishing scam might even trick me. I will never use Facebook to sign into anything, though.

Probably worth putting in the security section of your show. Well, no, it's going into the feedback loop. But yeah, definitely check this out, because this is a kind of a scary one. It looks really, really good. Yep. And Patrick sends us a link to a video, the Von Braun Rotating Space Station. Super boring presentation, but space stations are cool.

I agree with that entirely. It's so boring. I don't suggest watching the video, but I just skipped ahead and looked at the pretty pictures. I skipped around it. I spent like five minutes with it. And it is a very boring presentation, but it is cool. It's like a modular space station. That they might actually be able to make.

It's pretty cool. And Christopher Bridge writes in, add code slows down browsing speed. And this is a link to the BBC. And we're going to file this one under No Shit Sherlock. Because anytime you load external code that's doing something like JavaScript, it's going to slow things down.

Duh. Yep. And Naveed sends us silence. Silence.com. Hey, Grumps. Not sure if you've covered this in a previous episode, but wanted to hear your thoughts on it. It's an antivirus with, wait for it, AI. I've been seeing tons of ads on this on the internet and finally caved in to take a peek.

Silence provides a solution that identifies threats and analyzes them before they appear in the wild. On average, 25 months in advance per SE Labs. We've stopped tens of millions of potential attacks with a system that is continually learning and continually getting better. Can't wait to hear what you have to say about this. So silence is actually a sponsor of the cyber wire that Dave Bittner is on for our cybersecurity segment.

And they actually use it in-house. And from what I can tell from what Dave has told me, it actually works really well because it does machine learning, not AI, to identify threats that are coming to your network and can stop them before they actually become a problem.

So from everything I've heard, silence so far is right at that cutting edge of using machine learning to stop attacks on your network. So, you know, check it out if it's, if you can, or if you need it, I don't need it because nobody's attacking me, of course.

But from what I've heard, it is actually a very viable product that actually does work. And car comp writes in, I was the guy who said your show was at least better than FM. The reason I left such a short review is because the podcast app on iOS is a frigging mess. It took me five minutes to figure out how to leave a review.

Do I swipe up, tap this, tap that? Oh crap, where the hell did that just go? Is it minimized now? Damn it, now it's playing NPR. What the hell? That's pretty much my experience too. On the bright side, I at least was lucky enough to find you guys by accident in that streaming mess of confoundry. Just to give myself a little credit, I am a software engineer.

C, uh, PHP. C sharp. Yeah, C sharp. Begurgingly JavaScript, even though we all know it's just pretending to be a real language and there's nothing else. Oh God, JavaScript. Yeah. I'm sorry. Now, isn't it called ECMAScript now? Isn't that the, the, the, the nom de bloom? I'm so out of this.

Yeah. With this crap. Yeah. Cause I, I remember when director took over and said they were using ECMAScript, which was basically a subset of Java script and, uh, JavaScript. Fuck you, Brandon. Ike. Dick. Pamela writes in.

Hi guys. I just discovered you a few months ago and I love your podcast. A quick note regarding quitting Facebook, Brian. This is all for you, Brian. Despite what cashmere Hill has written. I will say that quitting Facebook is one of the best things I've ever done for myself. I've been FB clean for over four and a half years.

Do you get a token? Like it, it, a, a for that. You get badges. Of course. Yeah. I did the 30 day trial in July of 2014. It had become a huge time sucker. And I was constantly waiting for notification that someone had responded to something I posted only to frantically open up the app and discover that I had merely received a thumbs up.

One day it just hit me a huge. What the fuck? My exit strategy consisted of merely deciding and accepting that the people who love me will always be in my life and will stay in touch. So on my 53rd birthday in July of 2014, I deleted my account.

And what happened after that was even better. Once I quit, there was more texting with those people I mentioned above, but definitely a lot more telephone and face-to-face time. It freed up so much time that I discovered that I had artistic ability and now I draw and paint. My relationships are true and intimate.

All the other people fell by the wayside. I stopped getting twisted up in a ball by every little bit of news. This fall, I cut the cord on cable and have an antenna. Horrors! And I don't even have Wi-Fi at home. Well, that's that's just ridiculous. You just can't do that.

I deleted the Twitter app and probably log on three times a year. I can't take the hate. I'm still on IG, but well, talk about that. But I'll quit that too soon as it's integrated into the Facebook platform. I have to say I love podcasts and listening to them reminds me of my grandpa listening to the radio.

What was old is new again. Maybe all that's a bit extreme for you, Brian, but all I can say is go for it. Quit Facebook. I think you'll be surprised at how much your life changes for the better. Well, thank you, Pamela. Thanks, Pamela. If we did all that, we wouldn't be able to do a show anymore and then you wouldn't have a podcast to listen to.

This is true. This is true. And one of us, unfortunately, does have to remain on Facebook to promote ourselves and see all the things that we see. So, like I said, I've really scaled back usage and I'm reaching out to people in different ways these days. And but I can't see myself quitting it, at least as long as we're doing this stupid podcast.

So, yeah, I stuck with it for a while. Good. That's that's your side of it. I'm going to let you stay on Facebook because I am not going back. And Kevin writes us. Hello, I listen to and enjoy your podcast. Recent discussions on a journalist trying to drop Google, Twitter, Facebook, et cetera, from her life for privacy purposes had me wondering, how much does Google know about the company I work for?

Do they know what my company is designing, forecasting, concerned about, et cetera? Does it help Google target acquisitions? Yes. Maybe the backlash won't work from individuals crying foul and dropping these services, but from companies who want to keep their privacy. They know everything. I doubt it. They know everything. That's fine. Just get over it.

Cameron writes in. Hey, guys, I wanted to see if you had seen Lost in Space and Mars on Netflix. I know you've all mentioned that you like sci fi in the past, so I figured I would ask you about them. Lost in Space is based upon a show from the 60s and Mars is like a sci fi documentary crossover about going to Mars.

Maybe you mentioned them previously before I started listening to you. Yes, you definitely missed the boat on that. We both love Lost in Space. They're fantastic. I have seen every episode of Lost in Space from the 60s because I'm fucking old and I have not, but I like the new one.

You haven't seen all the old Lost in Spaces? No, never. I wasn't around in the 60s. No, but they played them in the 70s. They were on repeat every day. Nope. Oh, my God. Man, you got to go back and watch those. I'm rewatching the Twilight Zone right now.

Oh, they're so good. They're so fucking good. The original Lost in Spaces were great. Oh, they were so great. Mars, I haven't seen yet because I just don't care about Mars. Dan writes us. Hey, I know how much you like the scooters. I wasn't sure if you read this website. It sends us a link to Hackaday Security Engineering inside the scooter startups.

I think it's time to hurt them where it hurts. Take the batteries. Leave the carcass. Yeah, there's no security. That's a good idea, though, because all these dumb asses are still throwing them in the water. Stop it. Don't do that. It hurts the environment. Stop it. Stop throwing the goddamn scooters in the water. It's not good for anybody.

Johannes writes in. Hey, Grumps. Software recommendation delivery. Johannes from Boston here again. If you're looking to ditch 500 PX, take a look at Cocon.me, which is a very polished publishing software. That's not a polished publishing software. You don't say a before software.

Sorry. That drives me crazy geared for photographers. It does photo galleries, but also written content has various plugins and can even do Lightroom sync. If that's your jam, they allow self-hosting and managed hosting. I've never used them for anything serious, but they seem to be a solid choice for photo portfolio stuff.

This is actually the software, not a software, the software that I talked about last time that node host can install automatically. So they have they have Cocon images that you can install. So just the problem is I went and looked at the open source site and it just hadn't been updated in a very long time.

So I don't trust software that has been abandoned by the developers. Yeah, that's never good. All right. Over on iTunes, we got some five star ratings. The first from Zara's mom, who I hear has got it going on funny and spot on. This is a really good podcast. These guys say what everyone else is thinking. They do it with humor.

Love to laugh with and at these guys. Also full of good information. Recommend everyone check it out. Nice. The next one is a five star from Sarah and Yvonne clinical truth with a audio smile. And this comes from the UK. Love it. Love this show. It covers a wide range of news and entertainment from tech and sci-fi spheres.

Their experience in these areas shine through in their observations and almost eerily accurate predictions when it comes to all things tech release. Thanks for creating vindication, distributing vindication. Oh, God. We got it. We got it. We have to do it like a Braveheart like vindication.

Oh, thank you, guys. Thank you. 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. And if you're listening to this on the Overcast platform, please, pretty please click the star next to the episodes so we can get up in the rankings.

We're doing really good. You guys are killing it, but we could still we want to beat ATP. We want to beat the accidental tech podcast because it's just a point of pride that we can beat the guy who wrote the software at his own game. So pretty please with sugar on top. Go click all the stars on Overcast.

We would really love you for it. Closing shout outs. Pitchers and catchers have reported spring chaining starts this week, and I'm super excited that baseball is back. My long sports drought is going to go Dodgers. God, again, we got to do this shit again.

Yes. Fuck. God. Well, I got a shout out. I was listening to Penn Sunday School this morning, and he was talking about an old friend of mine, Andy Preboy, which was very strange to hear. And apparently Andy has a new song and a new video that was directed by his girlfriend, Meryl Marco, who, if you.

Our David Letterman fan know that they were a couple back in the old David Letterman days. And Andy actually lives in Dave Letterman's first house that I went. I actually went over to at one time when we hung out in his studio, which was really, really strange, really strange.

But his new song is called I Had a New Wave Act, and it'll be on YouTube, and I'll link that in the show notes. And it's just really fun to see that Andy's still kicking and going, because his original musical, White Trash Wins Lotto, was the best thing ever in the history of the world.

I'll have a clip from that linked in the show notes as well. It's like there's only one clip that you can find on the internet about White Trash Wins Lotto, and it's mine. So it's really good. He did a bit on Conan O'Brien, and wow, I just, I love those guys.

I met so many great people when he was doing that, because Andy walked into my office one morning when Missy and I worked together at Rocktropolis. You know about those old days, Brian. It was actually before we met. That was before we met, right before we met. And Andy walks in, and we got a big whiteboard, and he's like, I'm working out a song, and I want to write this down.

And he starts to write down how the song is going to work, and he writes down the meat, and then the beat, the tune, and the hook. And then he starts writing little bits under it, and then he starts singing the song, the meat, the beat, the tune, and the hook, repeating the hook like it says in the book. And it just goes on and on.

And Missy and I, like, our fucking jaw was on the floor. And that was, like, when he started to write the musical that became White Trash Winslotto. And they played at the Roxy for seven days straight, and I went to every single showing. I even brought my friend Fabrice Morvan from Milli Vanilli to go see it, and he was just, like, in love with it.

It was so much fun. Did you ever get to see White Trash Winslotto? I did. It was very good. It was good, wasn't it? Oh, man, I miss that. I miss the old days. Andy hates me now, so I can't really talk to him anymore. But, you know, I've done stupid things in my past.

But human resources nightmare. Yeah, I am a human resources nightmare. But you know what? Andy is a talented guy who I still love, even though he doesn't love me back. But go check out I Had a New Wave Act on YouTube. And also, I just got to throw a shout out to my show on Jordan Harbinger today, Cesar Milan.

We finally got it out today. I worked on it all day, all weekend, and it's out. And Cesar Milan is one of the sweetest, nicest, most humble guys you're ever going to meet. And I love our show. It came out. So I have to throw a shout out to that.

Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schilmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. It costs 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.

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