326: Whiskey in the Morning

This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is sponsored by Privacy.com. It's like a burner phone for credit cards. To sign up for free and get a $5 credit, go to Privacy.com slash GOG. That's $5 free to spend anywhere by just signing up. Privacy.com slash GOG. 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. Let's get ready to grumble. Oh, you've been waiting to use that one, haven't you? Kind of. Okay. We have a bit of follow-up about the Star Wars land that is appearing in both the Disney lands in Florida and California.

No news about the Tokyo one or Euro, so I guess everybody will be flying here. There's a whole bunch more previews. They've let journalists in and go take a look around and stuff. And so I saw this. There's a couple out there. I won't do any spoilers because this is kind of fun to figure out and look at yourself.

There's a little quote here. The new hope and promise is to do the one thing that 10 and counting feature film shows, books, games, and more have never been able to deliver. A fully physical and immersive experience with a look, feel, sounds, smells, and even tastes of Star Wars. Okay. Smells worries me a bit because the only smell I think that was ever referenced is, or there's two, trash compactor and the inside of a tauntaun.

Exactly. Hmm. Yeah. Interesting choices. It's a detailed and architecturally accurate 14-acre playground with character interactions, unique food, and shopping you won't find outside the parks, and of course, rides. And speaking of the rides, there is a tour of the Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run ride at Disney Parks over on EW.com.

And again, link in the show notes, it looks pretty badass. Okay. I have to check that one out. I am very excited about this. The hell with my son. I'm going for me. Exactly. In the News.

Another day, another change to net neutrality. All right. What do we got this time? Or something. We don't know yet. But now that the Democrats have taken over the House, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has revealed that they will introduce a bill to restore Obama-era net neutrality rules on March 6th.

There's not much details about what legislation is going to include yet, but it is named the Save the Internet Act. Okay. Clever. So we shall see. While Senate voted for a net neutrality bill in 2018, there's no guarantee it will do the same for its equivalent of the Save the Internet Act.

That bill only passed by a narrow margin. Unless it receives enough votes to override presidential veto, there's a real chance President Trump would just reject it anyway. So this may be more of a symbolic gesture than a realistic attempt at restoring net neutrality. But at least it's something. It's something.

It's something. Somebody's trying, at least. Well, Lyft is also trying. They're trying to go public. And now that their revenues have been opened up, people can actually see what's going on. And I found this article over at Bloomberg, and it just tickles me pink, because did you watch the video that comes along with this article?

No, I did not watch the video. Well, they've got an old dude at the beginning. Right. And they're talking about how, you know, Lyft has lost $991 million in 2018. Sounds like a winning company to me. Oh, wait, that's the way things work now. Yeah, he's like.

Well, it's obviously a super successful company by some definitions. But a company that's losing $900 million on $2 billion in revenue doesn't impress me. I think that's not shocking. We sort of knew that kind of thing was happening. But in my historic, old-fashioned view of business, that's not a company that's ready to go public.

Yeah, that's about it. That's kind of what we've been saying on this show. I guess this just makes us old now. We are like, what's that guy that always closed out 60 Minutes? Oh, Rooney? Yeah, we got to grow out our eyebrows and just go crazy here, because we are officially old. I've been screaming this since day one.

I don't understand investing in these companies that are just losing money. I don't understand their valuations. Now, I know it's a winner-take-all environment. And the more money they're throwing at this, the better the chance that they will win and take over the entire market. And that's when you're going to make your money.

But you've got to be kidding me. You've got to be. None of this is in my portfolio. I'll tell you that. Yeah, that's for damn sure. Yeah. Oh, God. Uber's lost in excess of $10 billion since they started. $10 billion. You used to get fired for that, or maybe even put in jail.

For recklessly running your company into the ground. Well, if you will recall, Travis Kallick does not work at Uber anymore. It took long enough. Yeah. Yeah. Fun times. Now, I ran across an interesting article over on The Atlantic. Workism is making Americans miserable. Again, nothing new to us.

We've been talking about this for quite some time. The economist John Maynard Keynes, in his 1930 essay, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, meaning our grandparents. Yeah. So this didn't quite work out very well for us. He saw the equivalent of a five-day weekend for the first time since his creation.

Man will be faced with this real permanent problem, how to occupy the leisure. Yeah, he got that one wrong. Well, according to the article, they weren't exactly entirely wrong. By some counts, Americans work much less than they used to. The average work year has shrunk by more than 200 hours. But those figures don't tell the whole story.

Rich, college-educated people, especially men, work more than they did many decades ago. They are reared from their teenage years to make their passion their career. And if they don't have a calling, told not to yield until they find one. As we've always talked about on the show, that is a stupid idea. Yes, it is.

Do not pursue your passion. No, that's the worst thing you can do. Because then you don't have any passions anymore because you've got to go do them for money. And we've also learned from science that once you get paid to do something, it is no longer a passion. It becomes a job. Yes.

And this article just kind of goes on to detail more and more of the things. It even postulates that because atheism is on the rise and people's belief in churches and institutions of that sense are going down, people are replacing that with work ethic. And that's what they're getting their sense of self and happiness from, except for the fact that it's not making us happy.

So, yeah. So, the economists of the early 20th century did not foresee that work might evolve from a means of material production to a means of identity production. You hear all that, Instagrammers? Yeah. They failed to anticipate that for the poor and middle class, work would remain a necessity.

But if the college educated elite, it would morph into a kind of religion promising identity, transcendence, and community. Call it workism. Yeah. Boy, this made me sad. It's true, though. It kind of is, you know. People just, I mean, we just need to get the Flying Spaghetti Monster Church back up and running.

Whatever happened to that guy? I'm down for that. Raw men. And one of the things at the end of this article, this is a long article, very long, but very, very deep, very good. Blue collar jobs produce tangible products like coal, steel rods, and houses. The output of white collar work, algorithms, consulting projects, programmatic advertising campaigns, is more shapeless and often quite invisible.

It's not glib to say that the whiter the collar, the more invisible the product. And podcasting is about as invisible as you can get. I think we should call ourselves black collar workers, though, because none of us wear white. All we do is wear black t-shirts. Black t-shirts and hoodies is pretty much all I got.

Yeah. But that was, I mean, that whole thing with, you know, having nothing tangible to show at the end of the day was one of the reasons I got out of it. I've never had anything tangible. Yeah. Yeah. Never. My entire career was building things that existed on the internet for an album cycle.

Yeah. Maybe two. And that was it. And then they were gone, you know. Yeah. Or I put things on CDs that nobody, you know, that are in landfills now. So even now, I mean, we can say that we're creating something tangible in that there is a podcast that is out there, which is, but it's still just digital.

And if we ever stopped doing it and took it down, it would be gone. Yep. It would disappear. I got, I got so tired of the marketing cycle with movies because we would work it for a year, a year, and then you'd have it up for three weeks and then home video would take it over. And tear it down and build something God awful.

It's like, oh man, just, it kind of sucks. But, uh, yeah, that's, but that's what we signed up for. That's what we wanted to do. So, man, it's just not going to end anyway. Moving on. I had to read this headline several times to make sure that I was awake and I wasn't on the onion.

Google finds it's underpaying many men as it addresses wage equality or wage equity. And do they think that they were underpaying what they were, they were trying to, they were trying to figure out if the, you know, what the wage gap is between men and women at Google.

And they said, oh, well, it looks like you're not getting paid enough, average white guy. So here's more money. Wow. I know. I mean, I was, I was like, I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that this is a thing. And I'm like, and they even say, which I love in here, it's just a surprising trend that we didn't expect.

No shit. Really? Wow. That is surprising. Well, good on you, Google. Even it up. That's, that's fine. Ah, the other shoe. There's another shoe that goes along with this. Wait, is there an unintended consequence? Okay, let's go. Well, what they're, what the women are saying is that when they come in the door with the same qualifications as the men, they get put in a different, like, pay bracket.

So like somebody that's come straight out of college will, a woman will come in and she'll get put at level three, but a guy that comes in will get put at level four. So over time, you know, the men are obviously always going to make more money and it's harder for the women to move up the rank. So there are lawsuits right now against Google over this exact practice.

Ah, so there's the rub. There's the rub. Okay. Yeah. So they're just, they're, they're profiling women and putting them at a lower base rate when they come in the door. Okay. So, but this is just, I mean, I'm scratching my head. I'm like, if that can't say what it, what I think it says, but it does, but it does.

Yeah. It's over at the New York times. If you want to go read it and just go, huh? But yeah. And we talked about China and their, you know, their social credit score. Yes. Yeah. Well, it turns out it really is a thing. It really is a thing. They have banned people from buying plane or train tickets 23 million times last day, last year because of their social credit scores.

Wow. That's a lot. That's a lot. And don't think it's not going to happen here. It's just not going to be government run. It's going to be the big data that everybody is collecting from Facebook. Yeah. I don't know how much that, uh, United is going to try and, you know, not sell you a ticket because of your Facebook ranking.

But, uh, the interesting thing about it is they want to get everybody in the country in this system by 2020. Yep. And, you know, it's to discourage people from behaving badly. I understand that part, but that's what society is for, honestly. Well, it used to be.

It used to be, Jason, because nowadays when you're on your flight and somebody's dog is shitting up and down the aisle, some other dude is taking off a shirt and doing yoga in his chair. Somebody takes off their fucking shoes and puts his feet up on your armrest from behind you and they stink. You get in trouble for complaining.

Mm hmm. Yep. There is that we don't shame people anymore. People just do whatever the hell they want. Maybe we need the system. That's true. This might actually be a boon to society. The Chinese might actually have it right. Maybe. We shall see. Uh, speaking of having it right, Tesla has finally gotten it right.

They're finally building the car they've always promised and nobody's happy. Nope. Because Elon Musk and Tesla have been the internet journalists punching bag for the last couple of years. So on Thursday, they finally delivered on the ultimate promise, a $35,000 electric car.

Unfortunately, they also managed to report some other stuff, layoffs, store closures, and financial red flags. That has dropped the stock about 8%. So yeah, the Model 3 will come, good time to buy. The Model 3 will come with less range and less fancy interiors than previous versions because it's cheaper.

It's also only available in black. Fair enough. Also cheaper. You got your car. So they finally did it. It's like the Model T. You can have any color you want as long as it's black. As long as it's black. Exactly. You can order one right now on Tesla.com and you'll get it within two to four weeks. So this article goes off to say the disappointment surrounding this news would have been hard to imagine until recently.

If you had told Tesla supporters a decade ago or a half decade ago even or even three years ago that the company would indeed eventually deliver the all-electric four-door family sedan with 220 miles of range, sports car acceleration, and a charging network that spans much to the country, they would have been amazed and thrilled.

Instead, he smokes weed on some stupid podcast and makes some dumb tweets, and now everybody's freaking out. That's basically what it comes down to. That's true. They're doing everything that they promised to do. It's all coming. And I'm going to continue to buy this stock.

That's basically all I'm saying. As the article states, Musk and his company have stayed remarkably true to the long-term master plan he laid out back in 2006. And the fact that other companies beat Tesla to its goal of building an electric car for the masses is a testament to the power of his vision. Those companies had no plans until Tesla showed them that they could be done.

And again, for me, the main thing is the charging network that he's built. Everybody's going to be using that thing. Yeah. Well, poor Elon. Poor Elon. But you know, SpaceX also had a pretty good week this week with the Dragon capsule making its way up to the ISS.

I think that was the most exciting news for me this week, watching that thing go up. Yeah, it was very cool. Yeah. And I do like that they named the dummy Ripley. That was pretty good. So I want to do a little bit of a throwback here to a Kickstarter in the Balls segment that we would have done had this had we still had that segment right now.

Nearly one year after robotics startup Ebo? Ebo? Ebo? Ebo was sold off for its parts. The company's social robot of the same name is informing users that it will be shutting down. In a message accompanied by a dance, a happy dance, the robot informed users that its servers are going offline, which will severely hamper most of its functionality.

It will continue to respond when users try to activate it by saying, hey, Ebo, but it won't understand other voice commands because it has no home to phone to anymore. So that's it. Maybe the bot also warned that its mobile app will also shut down soon and advises users to download any pictures they took at risk of losing them otherwise.

Now, here we go. Ebo was a crowdfunding success when its creators launched an Indiegogo campaign in 2014, raising $3.6 million from backers. Now, I would like to define what a success is here. Seriously. As far as I can tell, success means just raising the $3.6 million from backers.

It took nearly three years for the company to finally get the bot into the hands of its supporters. So that's 2017. It is 2019 and it's shutting down. You had this thing for two years. How the fuck is that a success? Tell me. How is that a success? It's not. I don't know, man. Well, you know why?

Because, well, they did sell off the company, so they did get some money back. So the founders actually got something out of it. But again, we got to define what a success is for a Kickstarter campaign, because to me, it's not just raising the money. It's actually getting a product out to consumers that they get to use for more than two years. Yeah, they keep saying success, but I don't think it means what they think it means.

Exactly. Exactly. Now, Google has disclosed a high severity Mac security flaw ahead of the patch. This is something we don't hear much from the Apple universe, but it has occurred. Google's Project Zero security disclosure program is once again proving to be a double-edged sword.

The company has detailed a high severity Mac OS kernel flaw that lets people modify a user-mounted file system image without the virtual management subsystem being any the wiser, theoretically letting an attacker go unnoticed by users. Interesting. So Apple's working on a patch, but the disclosure ahead of the fix could leave Mac users vulnerable until it's ready.

This is because of how Project Zero works. Google notified Apple of the bug in November 2018, but its automatic 90-day disclosure policy means that it will publicize security vulnerabilities whether or not the fix is in place. So there we have it. We will be getting a fix soon. Apparently, it's rather esoteric, and you're not going to have anything happen.

You should be fine. Okay. I'm not worried about it at all. Me either. And finally, leading into Media Candy, I ran across a really interesting article over at the NME, which is the New Music Express over in the UK, about the mainstream media's refusal to acknowledge YouTube culture and how that's creating a generational chasm.

And it kind of is. We poo-poo YouTube stars all the time, too, but the kids love them. And I'm not going to get too into the details here because you can choose if you're interested in this or not, because we're going to do the same thing and completely sideline YouTubers. To hell with them. But it is a really interesting article about how these things have grown so much.

And, you know, mass media does not pay attention to it because we don't know how to deal with YouTube stars. We know how to deal with music stars and movie stars and TV stars, but we're just not covering YouTube stars. Of course, there is again, there's there's there's another side to this, which is basically it's kind of like covering the Teletubbies.

Once these people grow up, they don't care about these YouTube stars anymore and they kind of move into our mainstream media. So it is a bit like, do we really need to pay too much attention to these people on YouTube that put on makeup? Who knows?

I don't know. You know what? If you can make a living at it. Good. Good on you. Good on you. And I may have a completely different opinion about this in another year or two when my kid starts to get into this sort of stuff. But right now it's like it just seems like child's play. And at some point we have to put away childish things. Well, the millions of dollars some of these people make are not very childish, but no, that's not that's very true.

I would I would like some PewDiePie money. Oh, wait, he doesn't have any more because he's a racist asshole and nobody gives him any dimes. But there are. Remember the unboxing channel with the kids open up Disney crap that they buy? I got to tell you, by mistake or, you know, just through somehow my kid saw one or two of these.

The fascination is real. Like he sat down and just wanted to watch it so badly over like anything else, over anything with a story, over Peppa the pig, over Blaze and the Monster Machines and all the stuff that he actually enjoys that we let him watch as treats. By mistake, one of these things came on.

He was so sucked into it. And just like I had to delete it out of the history because any time it would show up on the YouTube history, he wants to see that one. I want to see that one. I want to see that one. I want to see that one. It's insane. So weird. I've never understood the unboxing phenomenon. Me either.

But man, I see it. I see it in my life. It's insane. I got to keep all those. I wish there was a way to block that whole genre. YouTube needs a genre block. So I can say no red hot chili peppers and no unboxing videos.

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Privacy.com slash GOG. It's a no-brainer, so get on it now. Well, it was a very nice morning when I popped into the old Twitters and saw that the Game of Thrones trailer is finally out.

The real one. The final one. I was on my bike ride when I saw that it had been out. I got texted by my wife and a few other people. I have not watched it yet because I got back just in time for us to record here, so lay it on me, Jason. Here's what we're going to do, Brian. We're going to pause the recording, and you can go watch the Game of Thrones trailer, and we will have a live reaction from you.

All right.

Okay, we're back. What'd you think? Oh, hell yeah. I'm in. That's so good. Oh, I love the show. I can't believe it's the last season, but that is a great trailer. I'm very, I can't, it's just a month away. I'm very excited. I know. And looking at the trailer, I finally figured out why it took him so damn long to get it to us.

The rendering time on all the CG on this has to be insane. Yeah, yeah. I've been reading up on some of the battles that they're doing, and oh, it's just, it's just going to be so good. I cannot wait. I mean, I normally don't like to watch trailers for things that are coming, for the most part, if I can avoid it, but I just had to on this one, because it's good.

Game of Thrones has always been good about not doing any spoilers in their trailers, either. They make you feel like you're seeing a lot, but you're seeing nothing. Yeah, that's true. You see nothing, Jon Snow. That's pretty much it. I'm very excited about this, and I'm very excited about it, because also, it's going to be an event, the likes of which we may not see again.

They're not dropping everything all at once. This is going to be a weekly thing. Oh, yes, that's right. Yeah, right? And I love that about shows. I just really love it. So, I love the fact that it's not just going to be all dumped, and then, you know, everybody's going to be talking about it all over the place. It's week by week, and it's going to be quite the event.

So, yay us. I hope they're buying more servers over at HBO Go, or whichever HBO app that you can get, because I'll be getting the app. Right. But, man, yeah, because this thing is going to be just slammed, I bet. Yeah. It's going to be great. I'm expecting that quite a few theaters are going to do, like, showings for the last episode and things of that nature, too, which is very exciting stuff.

Oh, that might be interesting. Yeah, I think it would be kind of fun, actually. So, see it on a big screen with everybody for the very last episode, that'd be a lot of fun. Yeah, I remember going to see, was it the last Lord of the Rings movie? Oh, my God. 14 hours. Yeah. 14 hours in a theater.

The two extended versions of the first two films, and then the very first screening of the last film. It was pretty epic, actually. It was pretty epic, except we were in the front row, and my neck hurt so bad. Oh, but I got to tell you, if you're ever at the Cinerama Dome, or the Arclight in Hollywood.

It was at the Arclight, yeah. It was the Cinerama Dome then, I think. Yeah. It was the Arclight now. Yeah. Their bar has the single best Bloody Marys in Hollywood, because we would run in between the movies to go get Bloody Marys, because you needed it to kill the pain in your back.

Oh. But yeah, that was epic. I could stand doing that again. That was fun. And Star Trek Discovery has been set up for a third season. They've been renewed. It's been a hit for CBS All Access, so it's not a huge surprise there. The show will continue until 2020 with a new co-showrunner, Michelle Paradise.

Hell of a name. Who joined during the second season, and she'll do it along with Alec Kurtzman, who is also overseeing the expansion of the Star Trek franchise at CBS All Access. We know the Jean-Luc Picard show is coming. It's supposed to be scheduled to air later this year. I'm guessing early next year, because that's the or in there.

Yeah. Since they've just announced a couple cast people, I don't think we're getting it still this year. That's too much to hope for. As well as Lower Decks, an animated comedy. And of course, they've also announced the spinoff for Michelle Yao. So that's coming as well. So there you go. And apparently, she will be in both seasons three and four, even though four has not been announced yet at Star Trek Discovery.

Yeah. You know they're going to keep doing it. Of course. It's doing really good. I mean, it's doing really good. Yeah. I actually have not been keeping up on it. So I see you're about to do some follow up. I'm behind. So no spoilers, please. No spoilers. I'm one behind right now. But no, my follow up on Discovery is that it's actually just really fun and really good.

Great. Really enjoying it. And the Orville. Holy shit. They stepped up their game. Wow. They have to now that there's a real good Star Trek out there. That's it. Because I was it's funny. I was texting with a friend of the show, Dr. Teeter, and I'm like, the Orville isn't really doing it for me right now.

It's like with Discovery killing it. I'm like, I don't need fake Star Trek when I have real Star Trek. And they totally flipped it on its head. We now have the Orville version of basically the Borg. And it's it's pretty cool.

They did a really knockout job. And so we'll see if they're they're turning it into more of a darker show instead of just a silly comedy. And quick shout out to friend of the show, Dr. David Teeter, who upped his pledge on Patreon for no reason whatsoever. You're our buddy. You don't have to pay us, but we certainly appreciate it.

We do appreciate it. And everybody else who subscribed on Patreon, which we'll get to in a little bit. And some of the people that are our subscribers hit me up on Twitter and told me about the Umbrella Academy. And since I've been sick and kind of unable to get out of bed, I watched four episodes of it so far.

Wow. Holy good shit. That's a great show. All right. I never read the comic book, so I don't know anything about it. So I come I'm coming into it fresh and it's got a pretty stellar cast. I mean, Ellen Page is in it. I haven't seen her in a while. I've seen ads for this everywhere, but I live like one of the main streets that I drive up and down every day basically leads to Netflix and YouTube's offices.

So all I see every day up and down the street are ads for Netflix and YouTube shows. That's funny. Yeah, but man, I highly recommend it so far. It is it's really, really interesting. And I like I like the way the story is going. And everybody I know that's finished it has said very good things about it.

So after I catch up with Discovery, I'll get to it. Yeah. Yeah. Watch it at night. Don't watch it with the kids around. Yeah, I figured. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. We got some new news about something coming to YouTube. New Order has shared a trailer of a new documentary series called Transmissions.

We talked a while back about I think it was the BBC that did a series of how albums were made that were really good. And this is going to be kind of the same thing. The series will tell the story of the Manchester band's 1981 debut, which was released in the year following Ian Curtis's suicide and the Joy Division splitting up.

So on the teaser clip, New Order basis said to be one band with such a distinct identity is pretty bloody lucky. But then to get a complete and separate identity was amazing. So I'm looking forward to this. It'll be weekly episodes, which will launch via New Order's YouTube channel starting next Thursday, March 7th.

Well, it'll be actually March 7th. It'll be the day the show drops. So yeah, the day the show drops. So I'm going to be checking that out. And I'm sure, you know, because it's on YouTube and it will get enough views that they will continue this hopefully with some other bands as well. Yeah, that'd be good. Then we can become YouTube generation watchers, too.

Yeah, I did get to see New Order recently, not like a year or so ago. Man, they were good. Yeah, they're great. Oh, good. It's unfortunate that the bassist Peter Hook doesn't play with them anymore because they don't get along. But it is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. It's just bass. Who cares about bass? Yeah.

Now we got some podcasting news guaranteed to get Jason on on his soapbox. So it looks like Lena Dunham, Trevor Noah, Russell Brand, Hannibal Buress and Patti LuPoon. Oh, I don't even know who that is now have more than just normal celebrity stuff to talk about. They've all signed on to work with Luminary, a new subscription based podcast service launching this spring, which aims to be the Netflix of podcasts.

Oh, they'll charge users eight dollars per month, so it will be behind a paywall and they've raised nearly one hundred million dollars. Yeah, it's going. So they will launch with more than 40 ad free shows. OK, so. Luminary's bold foray into premium content promises to be a major shakeup, Jason.

This is your cue. I'm going to go put down my headphones. I'll be back in 10 minutes. Come back in a minute when it's time to talk about Spotify. OK, they just wasted one hundred million dollars. Whoever invested in them. That's that's my take on it, because nobody understands how hard it is to get people to listen to a fucking free podcast, let alone charge somebody eight bucks a month.

So these guys are going to go through this and then they're going to find out, oh, wait, yeah, this is hard. Podcasting is hard. I don't care if it's I mean, it's just a celebrity game now. And these people are. Well, that's what podcast one is offering off of. And they're free. All they've got is celebrities now, too.

So that's right. We're on there, too. Hey, so we're celebrities. Yeah, no, it's it's a hard business. And all these people are dumping all this money into it. And I think they're going to be in for they're going to be in for a surprise, especially because Spotify is going to eat luminaries lunch, I believe, in the long term.

Right. So, yeah, Spotify, there's a article over on The Verge and had to Sam Harrelson over on Twitter for sending this one along. But Spotify is doubling down. They're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get these different platforms to build the shows in house.

So instead of spending a lot of money on talent, which Luminary is doing right, they're buying you know, they bought Gimlet Media, my favorite people that make a reply all and they're you know, they've got a production studio in house now.

Right. So they've also got a platform to let people make their own podcast. They can then go on Spotify because they don't know which one's going to work best. Exactly. This is like this is like major label, old school record label stuff. Sign up, everybody. See, see who makes some money. Drop everybody else. That's going to be it.

And I just the problem I'm having with all this is it's just flooding the damn market and people only have so many hours in a week to listen to this stuff. And I don't care how good it is. I've got a list of, you know, 30 shows in my podcast player that I just don't have time to get to even at 2x.

Yeah, we're seeing fragmentation again. You're never going to have the bars need to be lowered for advertising, not raise, because there's just too many out there. There's too many things. There's not enough time for everybody to see everything. So a hit show is us with a relatively small listening base.

I'm sorry. We are a hit because we actually get a lot more than a lot of other people do. If you look at the numbers, we're in the top 90th percentile, which is amazing for you got to get in the top 99th percentile before you can like actually make a living doing this. That's the harder part.

That's the rub. Yeah. And these shows are they're coming out with one season shows like I've been listening to the Ron Burgundy podcast. Why? Have you listened to that one? No, because you got me to watch Anchorman. So, well, yeah, that was great. You know what wasn't good?

Anchorman 2. You know what I'm not thinking is good? The podcast. It's actually pretty funny. All right. That's good. The first one was me. The second one was good. And the third one with RuPaul was actually really funny. OK, so I liked it. I liked it. But, you know, even the ads that they're running on there, they're awareness campaigns.

They're not actual tracked campaigns. He's selling Charmin ads on his podcast. Since there's no tracking, the money for awareness campaigns is so much lower than tracked campaigns because people can't tell how well your ad is done.

So, you know, if you get awareness campaigns, it's usually just, you know, people throwing like half the CPM or a third of the CPM at what normally would be, you know, an actually tracked campaign. And that's why, you know, I'm not a big fan of automated ad platforms because that's all that's going to be in there is awareness campaigns.

And they're not going to be read by the host and things like that. I mean, there's so much of this stuff that just smells like it's going to fail miserably to me. And it's just going to turn into crappy radio. That's all it is. And I think it's going to turn more people off than on. And, you know, normally I'm like, OK, anything to get more people listening to podcasts, I'm fine with.

Even even I can live with NPR because they at least do get people to get podcast apps. But now they've got their own app. So you got to get the NPR app. And it's like, oh, it's destroying the ecosystem, which was just beautiful, fun, free place. Kind of like blogging used to be. I can see so many parallels with this.

Or the Internet in general. History repeats itself. All of this has happened before, Jason. And this has also happened to the music industry. This is streaming. This is basically what's happened with when they could stream music. This is going to be the same thing with podcasts.

So what do you say we start looking for jobs? Because this is not going to get easier. This is just going to get harder. Well, Spotify is going to need a lot of podcast producers. Yeah, but I like working from home. I really do. So, yeah, that's kind of it's I'm just not happy about any of this stuff at all.

I know. And speaking of the music industry, the RIAA report came in and streaming music pulled in seven point four billion dollars last year. Not bad. Not bad at all. Mostly, you know, who got the money, though? Because we know it's not the musicians. You know, like four musicians got all the money.

There's a lot of insanely creative financing going on with this, which the music industry is, you know, music industry organizations, music musicians organizations are working very hard to try to untangle. But major labels don't want it untangled because, you know, they own percentages of all the streaming companies.

And how that money gets shuffled in and out of the labels is a pretty suspect, as it always has been. So it's not generally making it to the musicians. It's making it to the biggest musicians in the world because they've got the clout to force it to happen. But the trickle down theory works just as well as trickle down theory works in real life.

It doesn't. And that's what has me worried about Spotify making all these moves into podcasting. It's like, how much is their cut going to be? It's a lot more than it is right now, because right now we give zero to Spotify and we keep all our monies. But you could talk about these economics all day, but I'm sure people are already like hitting the 30 second skip button.

Let's keep this to our Slack channel and, you know, we'll bitch about it all week, as we have been. Yeah. Or Twitter. Find us on Twitter. I'm at JPDeaf on Twitter. At the library. I read Winter World, the Long Winter Book One by A.G. Riddle.

I've read all of A.G. Riddle's stuff so far. Pretty good author. This is definitely my least favorite of his books. It's not necessarily that it was bad. It's just kind of popcorn sci-fi, if you know what I mean. Not a lot of meat to it. Yeah. Quick and easy read. Enjoyable. Not terribly memorable.

And it falls into a category that I think has kind of taken over sci-fi. It was fine in the beginning, but there's just so many of these books out there now. I feel like it's all I've been reading. I don't have a name for it, but I will basically summarize what all these books are like. And this was definitely it to a T.

Something horrible happens to Earth. It came from outer space. It could be a natural phenomena. It could be aliens. It could be malevolent. They could just not even realize we're here. Earth is dying. We have to put together a ragtag crew from all over the world to save us.

Most of them are very, very skilled people, but happenstance and circumstance put some wild cards in there. One of them is male. One of them is female. They will fall in love. They get put up into space. Bad things happen because they weren't quite prepared for this, and they don't know what they're facing.

They solve these problems. They figure out what's going on. A couple people die. Some because crazy shit happens. Some sacrifice themselves heroically for the good of the mission. The love interests make it home. They know what's going on, and they've either solved the problem, or at least they know how to solve it.

They come home to a world that has changed forever. There's a lot of work to be done repairing things, but now we have hope. You have just completely summarized the entire plot for the movie Armageddon. That's exactly the plot for Armageddon. It's all of these sci-fi books that are perfectly written and made, and I believe wrote, hoping to get bought up as a screenplay.

Yep. Because there are so many of these books right now, and it's so lazy for sci-fi, and I hate the fact that this is so generic in genre now. Generic. Generic. Generic. Generic in genre. I mean, even Seven Eves, the first half of the book, was basically that.

Yep. To some degree. I mean, that's why I like the second half of the book so much, because it was so original in comparison to this kind of straightforward trope that we keep getting in sci-fi books. Now, all of that is not to say that this wasn't a bad book. It was great. It was fine. I was into it.

It's just, you can see. You can see it coming. I just told you the whole plot, and you can see it all coming, because that's what all these books are like now. So, you know, with that caveat, go read it. Oh, man. You know what's funny?

Let me pull this up here real quick, because I forgot the title of it. I just watched it. Dead Moon by Peter Clines. Same thing, right? Kind of. But it happens on the moon instead of Earth. Well, you know, it's outer space, right? They got moon zombies. Yeah, there you go. I still gave it a five star, but it kind of is the same.

We are reading the same book over and over and over again. Yes, we are. So I need to take a break from this genre. If anybody has some out there sci-fi suggestions, please send them on to us. I want good, hard sci-fi. There hasn't been anything really good since The Martian. I miss that, too. Moron of the Week!

I just have to start putting these in Moron of the Week, because, you know, eggs are good, eggs are bad. Yep. Coffee's good, coffee's bad. Well, this one, alcohol, coffee, and being overweight might actually help you live longer, study says. I'm living forever! That's right. According to researchers at UC Irvine's Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders, UCI mind, clever, the secret to living an ultra-long and prosperous life, a.k.a.

making it past your 90th birthday, is actually quite surprising. Being overweight in your 70s, so you've got some time for you. Jason, you've got to slim down until you're 70s, apparently. I peaked early. And drinking both alcohol and coffee in moderate amounts. Now, here's the problem.

Starting in 2003, researchers began a project called the 90-plus Studies, where they studied 1,600 old people over the age of 90 to determine what it is that makes them live so long. So they started with people that were already beat the curve and lived until 90, for some unknown reason.

Because little is known about people who achieved this milestone, the remarkable increase in the number of oldest old presents a public health priority to promote the quality as well as the quantity of life. In layman's terms, more and more people are living to their 90th birthday and beyond, and no one knows where this increase in longevity is coming from.

So to figure it out, they had the participants perform all these tests every six months, and they also... I would do it more than every six months. They're 90. Jesus Christ. Yeah, seriously, man. Clock's ticking here. Yeah. And also gathered information on their diet, daily activities, medical history, and medications.

Analysis found that those who drink moderate amounts of coffee and alcohol lived longer than those who didn't, and those who were overweight in their 70s lived longer than normal or underweight people. So there you go. Plus, America's oldest veteran, 112-year-old Richard Overton, says he drinks a strong cup of coffee with cream, sugar, and a shot of whiskey every morning.

Well... So that should tell you something. That works for me. Yep. A little Irish coffee in the morning. Except for the fact that there are a gazillion studies that say the exact opposite. Yes, yes. And the one thing that they left out of here, which really chaps my dazzle, is social connections.

Because there's a lot of evidence that social connections is what keeps you living longer. Because... But not Facebook ones. Not Facebook. But real life, you know, hanging out with somebody, having friends, you know, going out to the lunches, hanging out with your besties, making scrapbooks, doing things like that.

Because I guess that's what you do when you're in between 70 and 90. There's so much evidence that that is one of the key metrics for a longer, happier life. All right. Which is why I'm going to die in about three hours, because I stay at home and have two friends. I was about to say, how's that going for you, Jason?

Might want to take up scrapbooking. Yeah, but the dogs offset that, because animals help you live longer, too. So, who knows? I'm going to stick with a shot of whiskey every morning. I'm down with that. Feedback loop. We've got some new Patreon subscribers, Eric and Erspo.

And Glenn also writes in, listening to you guys lets me feel like I'm not so alone with what others call my cynical worldview. Vindication! I donate to a couple of podcasts, and seeing how little you get on Patreon is a crime for how great you both are. Well, thank you very much. And we agree.

So, upping that number by a few bucks is literally the least I could do, and we appreciate it. I've given you a few shout-outs to friends. Hopefully, they tune in and help out. Appreciate your hard work. Your show notes are brilliant. You make my week far more enjoyable. Stay grumpy. Thank you. And Waylon writes us in on Patreon as well.

I know that WordPress is not the best solution, but for now, it makes the most sense for my needs. My site was recently hacked and deleted. It's WordPress. Now that I have moved to Notehost based on Jason's review of them, I want to make sure I've done everything I can to protect myself. Do you have any recommendations on how to secure a WordPress install?

I currently use the WPMU set of tools. Yes. There are two tools, other tools that I recommend. Securi, S-U-C-U-R-I. I use some of their tools. They have some really expensive paid versions now, but... Free one seems to work pretty well.

Yeah, it works for me. And you can use Jetpack as well. And you should use Jetpack and pay for the backup service. Yes. Because that way, if your site is hacked and deleted, you can just restore from backup. Exactly what I do as well. Over at PayPal, we got some monies from Brett, Ian, and Herbert.

Thank you so much. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Over on Twitter, SuperListener Chad writes in, Hey, guys, quick question. Are you using the PodCoin podcast service at all? No. Trying to figure out if it's just a big scam or not. If it has the word coin in it, it's probably a scam.

There's your answer. And it says it supposedly pays listeners and podcasters. Not sure how. No ads that I have noticed. No business model either. Skip it. Yeah. Skip it. We're not down with that. Warrior writes, start insecurity. And he has a bunch of links here.

On.com and hackthebox.eu. Hack, read, write-ups, apply, document, train until you're able to pass OSCP, offensive security.com. Read blogs, books, join meetups. The rest will come naturally. Source myself. I'm assuming this is an answer to how to get started in security business.

Yes, and also to follow up with that a little bit, I've got a couple emails out to friends in the cybersecurity business to try and do some small segments, like five-minute segments, where they come on and just give us some background on how they got into it and what they recommend for getting into cybersecurity.

That'd be great. Yep. Yes. He also writes in, love Seven Eves as well. Listen to it on Audible. Did you guys have a chance to read slash listen to the Three Body Problems series out of China yet? Highly recommended. We did. We covered it. I don't know, what, year, two years, two years ago or so? Yeah, it was like two, three years ago.

Yeah, and I think what our feeling, what both of our feelings was, was diminishing returns. The first book was great and they got progressively more boring. Oh, until the last one was just, oh God, no, no. Did not care for that last book. But I liked the first book. I thought it was interesting. Yeah, the first book was great. And Derek writes in with a link, Chan Zuckerberg researchers test implantable brain device on primate.

Oh, what could go wrong there? What could possibly go wrong? Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Link could be in the show notes for that one. Yeah. But yeah, Facebook, Facebook's, you know, one of their owners putting implantable brain devices in.

Yeah. That, how is it? It's awesome. Yeah. Sign me up. Oh, God. And Kablam writes us, well, this isn't remotely terrifying at all. Tesla Model X burned on frozen link Champlain. What's happened and what's coming next? And they don't know why it's burned.

Yeah. So what happened? We don't know. Over at GOG.show, Matt writes in, thank you for wading through the internet for us all. Have either of you ever read Pandora Star by Peter F. Hamilton? I have not. I have not. I know I've read something by Peter F. Hamilton.

I was just quickly scanning through all of his books on Amazon and nothing's ringing a bell, but I know I read something by him. So I'll take a look at the blurb on that one. Maybe it's some hard sci-fi that we're hoping for. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And Mark Burnett writes us, what the fuck, with a link, something in those vaccines.

Lawmaker says, mandatory measles shots are communist. Now I've already gotten enough feedback because apparently some people that listen to us believe in flat earth and how vaccines are killing us. So I won't go too crazy here other than there is a lawmaker who believes that vaccinations are communists because we're required to do them.

We're also required to eat, breathe, poop. So that must be communist as well. And this person has a long history of making outrageous statements. And there you go. So and the kicker on all of this, if you want to read this in the show notes, which is very funny. And I think the only thing that I really need to read is that this lawmaker says that no scientific evidence will ever convince her otherwise.

That's all you need to fucking know about these people. There you go. Yeah. Way to elect the geniuses in the thing. No amount of evidence whatsoever is going to change my mind. I know what I know. And I know that I'm right. OK, moving on then.

No point in discussing this. And Jason B writes in AI is the new Soylent Green. Took me a second to get that joke because it's people. That's right. Because it's people. Mark writes us recently after weeks of trying. I finally dislodged the baby shark song from my head. Even humming the theme song from Andy Griffith didn't work.

I just had to let it run its course. So thanks, Brian, for jamming it right back in there during episode 322. He also says, for your AI pleasure, I started auditing a Coursera course on AI that seems useful for dispelling the misconceptions surrounding it. Perhaps it will be of interest to you. And he sends us a link.

It looks to be much easier than the Stanford machine learning course by the same instructor that I've bailed on three times so far. My math is weak. Yes, that's because machine learning is a real thing and AI is just a woo-woo in the clouds as far as I'm concerned. And Mark also says, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do.

So there you go. Now it's stuck back in everybody's heads again. Except for mine, which I love. I'm going to Rickroll you with baby shark. I swear to God. Alan writes in, I agree that I need to start using a password manager. Can you tell me why you recommend 1Password over Dashlane?

Thanks so much, Alan, because I've never used Dashlane because 1Password does everything it needs to do. That's true. We haven't tried them all out there. So if you're happy with it, with what you've got, you're happy with it. But we are both very happy with 1Password. Yeah, it has never let me down. Even though they're not advertising with us again.

Yeah. Jerks. They don't need to. That's true. They really don't. That's the problem. We pimp them all the time. Well, maybe we should get Dashlane to advertise with us. If Dashlane would like to advertise with us, we will switch and use your product. For a while. Yes. Yes. Michaela writes us, regarding episode 324, the Horrible Lives of Moderators segment, I definitely understand and empathize with what you guys said, both about seeing things as smaller humans that can't be taken back.

And Brian, especially so with you talking about not being sure how to protect your son from those things. I'm at a similar but not exact conundrum. My little brother is 11 years younger than me, and he's now 13, about to be 14. I just recently built him a computer for gaming. When I made it, I knew there was a good chance he'd use it sometimes to look up GOG forbidden topic porn.

Yes, he will. Because that's what we do. I thought there might be a time when I had a really awkward talk with him about how if our parents found out, he'd be in a lot of trouble. We're Southern, and they were raised very Baptist. But that getting to know yourself is normal and natural.

Also awkwardly trying to explain how not all porn is created equal and how to try to suss out if maybe a video he clicks on isn't ethical. Okay. Okay. If it has the word stepmom or sister in it. Weirdly, that stuff is so popular. What? You people are freaking creepy.

Yeah, you're scared of people out there. Yeah. Then I remember the horrors that are on the internet these days, and I considered installing a net nanny program of sorts and configuring it to lock out the worst of the worst. As I said, I understand if he looks up naughty videos, everyone does some self-exploration. It's only natural at his age. However, I'm not so sure of a few things.

One, how to make it block the violence that you can find via a deeper web search, i.e. terrorist videos and such. Two, how to make it not go all ham on any and all porn. Three, how to make it where he can't just uninstall it since, as it's his computer, he has an administrator account on it.

Well, that's the problem, right? There's a couple options here for you. There's some, but they're kind of creepy, and then you're getting into this weird space where you're monitoring your own family, and do you really want to do that? I don't know. I don't know where I'm at with that either with my kids, so I don't know what I'm going to do.

Well, if you get something like the Eero, Eero.com slash GOG, use coupon code GOG at checkout, they have their, they're basically, they're filtering software, which is really nice. The Eero plus package, because he can't turn that off because it happens at the router level.

And so if you're using the app, he can't get to it. And that's really one way to get around it. I mean, he could maybe go out and get a VPN and find his way around. He's going to be 14. He can probably figure that out pretty, pretty easily. But yeah, you want something that happens at the router level, not on his machine.

Now, the problem with that is you're going to have to whitelist your computer if you want to look at some porn, but it's not hard. Well, that's why he says, like, you know, I don't want it to not go on hand on any and all porn because some porn's got to get through. You got to have some outlets in there because apparently, you know, exploring themselves as well.

So, but yeah, Michaela, I think if you go that route, it's going to be a better solution because then you'll have more control over it. Yep. But I'm really happy with the Eero plus stuff and how you can filter with that. Yep. And I assume I'll be using that very shortly. Oh, yes, you will.

Austin says, I can't wait to hear what you have to say about Facebook's clone of Patreon that takes six times as much. And to link to The Verge, it says Facebook's Patreon competitor is a bad deal for creators. Well, it's Facebook. No crap, Sherlock. Yeah. Yeah. So, Walled Garden, no.

Facebook, no. Taking the high percentages that they're going to take, no. Facebook basically stating that they have a lifetime license to use your work and the right to take up to a whopping 30% of subscription fees, no. No. No. Especially the whole, that whole thing about they have the lifetime license to use your work even if you take your stuff out of their system, no.

Yep. Yeah. And also, making our listeners actually have a Facebook account and put their credit card in and give it to Facebook? No. No. Absolutely not. Look, we have a hard enough time with Patreon. A lot of you people don't like Patreon out there, and that's way different.

So, you know, PayPal's good still. Yeah. PayPal's fine. Patreon's fine with us. But we're never, ever going to use this Facebook thing. Ever. No. No. And I like beer rights in, damn you. Damn you. My wife was in the truck while listening to you guys as you belittled Lifehacker, and now she likes the website.

Well, so do I. It's okay. The law of unintended consequences. If I had any money to send you guys, I would take it back. Anyways, I still enjoy your show. Deliveroo! All right. Sorry, I like beer. It just, it happens. It happens. Yep.

And Joe writes us, he sends us a link. Fifth Circuit holds no Fourth Amendment violation when detective viewed child porn discovered by private company. So he says, new ruling on Fourth Amendment rights by the Fifth Circuit Court. Guess this shows that scanning files uploaded to cloud services work. Also worries me that law enforcement and government agencies might take this new ruling a step further.

When's that ever happened? And start asking for providers to start hash values of everything uploaded and giving them access to such information. That is, if they already don't. Well, I'm kind of okay with it with child porn. Here's the thing about that. Yeah. And also, law enforcement doesn't have access to that stuff at first.

What happens is, like, because this was on Microsoft SkyDrive. So they have a program that takes hashes of everything that you upload. They run it against a database of known child pornography. And if they get a hit, then they can throw a tip to law enforcement who can then come and look at the look at the images and find out and then, you know, take appropriate legal action.

It's not like the cops are sitting there looking at every image that goes up. This is a proactive service on on the part of Microsoft. We would never subject cops to happen to look at all that sort of stuff. We save that for the Philippines. Yeah. But I think this is a fine ruling.

I know there's nothing really here because what they what the guy was trying to say was that that it was an illegal search and seizure under the Fifth or under the Fourth Amendment. Right. Saying that, you know, now you have fruit from the poisoned tree. So anything else that happened because they went and got his computer and found more porn, obviously, because it's on his computer.

But yeah, no, this guy just I mean, this is he's a horrible person that just got hit with the stupid tax. So enjoy your time in prison. Julian writes in since the previously recommended VPN service has been bought up. Is there another one with the GOG seal of approval?

Well, they weren't bought up. It was just they had a questionable higher, but from what we can tell and digging into it, nothing's really changed. And it's still my VPN of choice. So private Internet access is works still for me. Yep. So if you want to go to GOG dot show slash VPN and sign up now.

Yep, that's right. And no sec writes us. There's a study that services like Netflix is killing privacy. While I can kind of agree to that, I also disagree because of stuff you have also said. Too many of these services are shooting themselves in the foot because everyone wants to be the platform while none of them is all of them have something good.

But who will pay 20 different subscriptions to see those few shows and movies that are actually interesting? And it's a link to the the New Zealand Herald. Netflix is killing privacy in study now. Yeah, exactly. That's the whole thing. Like if it's easy to get to and it's all in one place and you're not subscribing to seven thousand different services, there's no point in doing private and piracy.

Right. But the problem is it's all fracturing again. Right now we have Netflix and Hulu. Next year we're going to have Disney's. We've got CBS is all access already and they're all charging too much for what they are. And you can't pay all of them. Right. So that's the problem. That's when piracy is going to start to come back.

Yeah. I mean, that's really it. And yeah, I mean, I don't pirate stuff that much anymore. Only when I just really need it now and I can't buy it and I can't buy it, then I'll go get it. But make it cheap and easy to get to and we're all going to get it. But you require us to subscribe to 17000 different services to get the stuff we want to see.

Then you're going to start to see piracy creeping back up. Yeah. And, you know, when it comes to the things like CBS all access, the main reason it wasn't worth it because there was no shows that you're paying for one show. Yeah. And one one actually decent show. And then the Big Bang Theory. So that was kind of a rip off.

But yeah, they're adding shows as they go. So I'm enjoying the Twilight Zone every night now. So it's good. Yeah. And we got some reviews over at iTunes. Lucy V writes in great for old geeks. I love these two. They find all the interesting tech stories and discuss them with the wisdom of been there, done that tech veterans.

This is great for me as I can't be arsed to do the reading, but appreciate being kept up to date. They also have good taste, well aligned with mine in music, TV and books. Being a similarly aged vintage geek. Oh, I like that. We should be vintage geeks. Okay. I get all their jokes and it's a bit like hanging out with the smart and cynical coders for my old jobs.

They have a genuine rapport and chuckle at each other with glee. One of the two. Jason's always a bit more wild card, but that's fun too when he gets on his soapbox and rants. Is it fun though? Fun for me. Fuck you. It's great for me. Thanks, Jason and Brian.

You guys do a great job. Oh, and the production values are super too. Well, thank you very much. We put a lot of work into this. Yes. Thank you. The explosionist also gives us a five-star review. Love the grumpy cynicism. I'm an old tech guy myself and remember the boom and bust of the 90s. Love to hear other learned voices commenting on the way things are going badly.

Keep it up. We shall. Yes, we shall. Well, maybe. We'll see. Maybe. See previous comments about everybody screwing up the podcast market. If you want your question or comment read 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 in the overcast player, please hit that little star next to the episode. We are almost getting ready to overtake ATP in the most recommended list. Let's do it, people. Come on. We've been mobilized. We've got to get this done. We really got to get this done.

I looked this morning and we were. I'm going to. We're going to get an update. Oh, my God. We're right behind that. One, two, three, four. We are the fifth highest recommended show in all of the overcast player right now, right under the accidental tech podcast. And beat them, people. Come on.

Mobilize. Press those stars. Give us some stars. Make it happen. Closing shout outs. I think we need to. Well, once we've rebranded as Vintage Geeks, we also need to rename this segment from closing shout outs to In Memoriam, apparently. Really?

That's a nice music playing. We've got some surprising passings this week. The Prodigy's Keith Flint died age 49, unfortunately, suicide. He sang lead vocals on both the band's number one singles, Breathe and Firestarter. He was found dead in his home on Monday morning.

And unfortunately, the band was about to launch a huge U.S. tour in May, and I was actually going to get my butt out to it. And I'm not going to be able to now, sadly. Yeah. I wanted to go, too. I've never seen them in person. And it's just so sad. Oh, they're so good. They were so good live. Unbelievably good.

You could have just said that they sucked live. And so I wouldn't have to even worry. Think about it. They were really bad. Just edit out my. They were really, really good. Okay. And we talked about Luke Perry just last week, who had a stroke. Unfortunately, he did not recover from it.

And he also passed away on Monday morning. Sad to hear. So yeah, he was only 52. I know. Well, between Keith Flint at 49 and Luke Perry at 52, I turned 48 this year. This is not good news. This might be the last year of our show.

Could be. Could be. Because God knows I can't afford health care. So patreon.com slash GOG. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Philmeister. 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 326. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. This is GPR.

Now, here's the deal. If I die this week, we know the curse is real. The curse is real. Then you have to basically do an in-memoriam just for me, just to say the curse is real and shut the show down because it's way too dangerous in anybody's hands.

Yes, we cannot be trusted. I cannot be trusted to continue.

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With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com.