335: Putting the F-U in FUN

This episode is brought to you by Hover. Go to hover.com slash GOG to get 10% off your first purchase. 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 grumpy. Let's get grumpy. Now, I think the Facebook algorithm AI interface for my newsfeed is definitely starting to work. Okay. What have they done now? Well, they may be listening to our show in order to tag me in certain articles because nary a week goes by where I don't get a new article about a study that immediately decries a previous study, which turns out that the other study was wrong and the study may be right, but neither study knows what's going on. Eggs are good. Eggs are bad.

What do I got this week? This week, you are now, well, once again, you're back in California and everybody here in California knows that, uh, we've been cracking down and banning plastic bags in an effort to reduce pollution and save our oceans. Um, you know, so they charge you for bags if you want them now at stores, uh, five cents or 10 cents or whatever. And, uh, you know, a whole new business opportunity of course opened up and everybody is selling their own, uh, you know, canvas or cotton totes that you should be using and reusing instead of using the store's plastic bags. Well, what could

possibly go wrong? Is that really the best approach? Uh, a study has found that while plastic bags are almost certainly the worst of all options in terms of ocean pollution, the issue gets a little murkier when you take other environmental issues into consideration. As it turns out, canvas tote bags might be less eco-friendly than plastic bags because they're often made of cotton, which requires more energy and water to produce. According to one study from 2011, a cotton bag's carbon footprint

is 598.6 pounds of CO2 compared to 3.48 pounds for a standard plastic bag made from high density polyethylene. So researchers have concluded it might actually be better to reuse those plastic bags you've got from the supermarket and then recycle them when they're no longer viable instead of using those lovely canvas totes that you got from NPR. All right. Well, there you have it.

And because... You can't win for losing, Jason. No, you can't. You can't. And just because you put that in, I found another one today too. Okay. Vitamin and mineral supplements won't help you live longer and could cause harm, says a study. This is a new study from Tufts University. And they're saying the use of dietary supplements do not actually cause a lower risk of death. The study analyzed data from a larger health and nutrition survey conducted from 1999 to 2010. More than 30,000 participants, ages 20 and

older, answered questions about their dietary supplement use. Well, it turns out that taking a pill ain't gonna do it. You need actual nutrition from... Oh, what's that called again? Oh, food. Food. Yes, food. Actual food. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was a... It's a billion dollar industry and they certainly hook you into it, right? I mean, currently what we're thinking is putting butter in coffee.

Okay. Oh, God. Don't even get me fucking started. Vitamin, minerals, and supplements. I mean, it's pretty basic and we do kind of understand it. There's only one or two vitamins that you actually need to take if you... And you only need to take them if you happen to be low on certain things, which your doctor will tell you if you run a test. Other than that, it's a... I've always subscribed to and I can't remember who first coined the phrase, but basically supplements are basically just coloring

your piss. That's all they're really doing. The actual quote, I believe, was you're making very expensive pee. Right. That's what it was. The funny thing is I take a ton of supplements and while they might not actually lower my risk of death, what they do do is increase my quality of life because there are certain supplements that I take that when I don't take them, I severely notice the repercussions.

As do our listeners. Yeah. So, exactly. So, once I stop taking my supplements, I know that I am just in for a world of hurt and I can't not do it anymore. It is part of my daily morning ritual. When I take them, I feel better, I am better, and my brain works better. So, while I may still die at the same time, I'm still going to take my supplements. I don't care. It could be placebo effect. I don't care if it's placebo effect because it fucking works. So, that's...

Hey, man, whatever works for you. Exactly. I remember being at Fireside Conference and you hauling out this gigantic bag and shoveling pills down the way I hadn't seen since 1980s in the music industry. Exactly. Except these were none of the fun pills. None of them. There were no lewds in that bag, unfortunately. Yeah, I know. I looked. Oh, I know. I know. You were like, what's he got over there? Can I get some? Got anything fun? Yeah, I wish. I wish. No, L-carnitine is not fun, but it does

help reduce depression. So, I will keep taking it. There you go. That's... That's... That is This Week in Survey Bullshit. In the News... Surprise, surprise. Big telecom companies are suppressing fast internet.

Shocker! Yes. Susan Crawford has written a book. She is the author of Fiber, The Coming Tech Revolution, and Why America Might Miss It. She has spent years studying the business of those underground fiber optic cables that make the fast internets possible. And as it turns out, guess what's going on? Throttling?

Bullshit. A little bit of throttling going on? Hopelessly compromised by the oligopolistic telecom industry. Say that at nine in the morning. I dare you. Which, due to the lack of competition and, guess what? Deregulation is hesitant to invest in their aging infrastructure. So, we're seeing... And the interesting thing that came out of this article for me was, obviously, you know, we're grumpy old geeks, but we ain't that old, is the parallel with electricity when it first came in in America, which I thought was really

interesting. When electricity was young, it was viewed as a luxury, and it was initially only for municipal buildings and streetcars, and only very gradually moved to rich people's houses. And there's a story in this book about the richest house in San Francisco finally getting electric lights. They're only... It was only because of FDR did electricity go into rural regions.

So, in the middle of that story, a lot of locals, thousands of them, and cooperatives across the country took matters into their own hands, decided they were fed up with the cartel, and decided to build their own electricity networks. So, it was only by forcing and shaming big companies that we all got electricity because they were dragging their heels on it.

And that's exactly what's happening right now. We're at that point in the story with the internet. There are over 800 communities and cooperatives across the country that have, or are in the process of, building their own fiber networks. They understand that we need this, and that's what's going to get us the fast intranets, and the big companies are refusing to do it. So, hopefully, they will get shamed and put it in elsewhere as well. We'll see. But, as per usual, it comes down to monopolies and deregulation.

Yep. And there was an actual podcast that we covered on the show a while ago on Recode with Susan Crawford that was really good, that talked about this book. And I forgot to put this on my reading list. I think I might need to put this back on there and just plow through it because it was a great interview. I should dig that up and put it in the show notes because she was really smart. I mean, really smart. And that whole thing about how communities are building their own fiber networks was fascinating. Utterly fascinating.

And speaking of big monopolistic companies and internet access, Google and other tech giants are quietly buying up the most important part of the internet. Are they doing it so quietly? It's not that quiet. I feel like we all know. Yeah, it's not really that quiet. This is the first of misleading titles in this week's episode because there are a bunch. Google is now, like, basically making their own undersea cables.

Okay. There's a new one that's coming out that's going from California to Chile called the Curie cable. I believe it's probably named after Madam Curie. But what they've got are, like, all these companies are going in on cables, like, it's collectives. Like, you got Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, and Google that are just laying their own cable.

Could Google put in a line from California to Chile that just brought in Chilean red wines? Because I love good carbon air. Oh, yeah. It's so good. So good. Yeah, let's pour that down the tube. I love this. The internet is commonly described as a cloud. In reality, it's a series of wet, fragile tubes.

And Google is about to own an alarming number of them. Well, here's the thing. I'm okay with this. I am actually, too, because who's what government entity is going to do this? What private company? It's got to be a private company just because that's the way the world is, right? Most of the undersea cables are owned by private companies and collectives who do this and telecom giants. So the more people that have the more cables, that's fine.

If you remember from the dot-com boom, we have most of our internet infrastructure because there was just a shit ton of money being poured in before the bubble burst. And they laid all of this cable and all of this groundwork. So we have, I mean, granted, our high-speed internet is laughable compared to the rest of the world.

But it's better than Africa. But still, all of that money that got poured in just basically made the infrastructure. So I'm fine with these guys just spending all of that money they have to help make things faster. What's wrong with that? I got no problem with that at all.

I've got no problem with it as long as they're not the only ones. And they aren't. So Microsoft is investing in this as well. All the big tech giants are. So I don't want a monopoly, for sure. But I don't mind a healthy competition. This is the idea that we're supposed to have with this healthy competition between companies.

Let's get a few of these companies out there building these things. Well, here's the other shoe. There's always the other shoe. A lot of these cables are just for data center to data center communications for their services. These are private networks. So it sounds like we need to go get some wetsuits and start a consortium to lay down our own pipes to chili.

That's right. Lay that pipe. Lay that pipe. You remember that movie Bachelor Party with Tom Hanks way back in the day? Yeah. They always said, hey, go lay that pipe, you know, like go get laid. I saw that movie when I was a kid and I never understood what lay that pipe meant until I was like 10 years later.

And I'm like, oh, now I get it. So I get it. Yeah. The millennials listening to this will not understand the joy of movies such as a such as that movie, because it was basically the only way to see a pair of boobs when you were a teenager. Bachelor Party, Porky's, all of those all of those teens.

Let's go try and get laid movies back in the day that you'd have to sneak into as a kid, which I did often because I always knew the back door into the theater. That's the way it went. Laying pipe in the back door, Jason. That's right. Hey, you went there, not me. Anyway, the EU is starting to set ethical guidelines on AI.

OK, because Google isn't. Yep, yep. So, yeah, their ethical standards have been put on pause. Someone has pressed the pause button. Now, the EU is saying companies working with artificial intelligence need to install accountability mechanisms to prevent its being misused.

AI projects should be transparent, have human oversight and secure and reliable algorithms, and they must be subject to privacy and data protection rules. OK. The problem here is a lot of these, quote unquote, AI algorithms, and we'll talk about AI for a little bit here.

The really good ones that are coming out, people have no idea. Nobody understands. Yeah, nobody understands how they work. They have no idea. Data in, data out. What happens in the middle, no one can really tell because that's the whole point of it. It's like it's supposed to be like, you know, taking all of this data, running it through its processors, being racist, being misogynistic, and then out the other end pops an answer.

So there are a lot of people in the ethical AI space that are saying that, yeah, we need transparency in what the algorithms are doing. So you need to start building in kind of just like an audit trail. Show your work. Yeah, yeah, that's really it, you know, like a paper tape on a calculator.

That's what it needs to be and say, OK, this data comes in. These are all the steps that it's taking. This is what the data set that it's running against is. Why is it coming up with answer A versus answer B? And that's one of the things that people are trying to figure out how to do because, you know, nobody's, they're just like throwing algorithms at the wall and seeing what sticks.

OK, that kind of looks right. I'll take that answer. Sure. Why not? That's the answer I was looking for. Let's build in some confirmation bias into these programmers. Oh, that's all shit. They already did. Never mind. So it's an interesting thing that they're trying to do, but it's not there yet.

And of course, everybody agrees. You know, all of the big players in quote unquote A.I. agree that we need this kind of thing, even though nobody knows how to do it yet. Or is willing to enact it. Yeah, that's the other thing. They just say they just say that they need it. I'm keeping on keeping on the A.I. thing.

And I want our listeners to note that I have officially thrown my hands up in the air. I give up. It is just A.I. Even though it's not. There's a podcast over on Recode with Kara Swisher with the co-founders of the A.I. Now Institute, Meredith Whitaker and Kate Crawford, who want to change the conversation away from being scared of artificial intelligence, such as how or the Terminator, and talk about the actual artificial intelligence that we have now.

And the dangers of that. Rather than killer robots, they say, you should be concerned about what happens to your resume when it hits a program like the one Amazon tried to build. They took two years to design essentially an A.I. automatic resume scanner. And they found that it was so biased against any female applicant that even if you had the word woman on your resume, it went to the bottom of the pile.

Wait. Yes, I love it. Oh, the bell. The bell is back. I found it. All right. Bottom of a box. So this is what they're calling dirty data. Even though people think of algorithms as being fair and free of human bias, biased humans are the ones who create the data sets and the code that decides how the data should be evaluated.

That doesn't mean A.I. is useless, but she and Crawford said we need to be interrogating how it is being made and deployed in the real world. So kind of everybody is agreeing that we need to look at this stuff. We need to figure out how it's working and why before we throw all of our trust and all of our data and all of our lives into these algorithmic machines that are doing God knows what.

That's right. That's right. And there's a great over on Ars Technic called The Basics of Modern A.I. How does it work and will it destroy society this year? And I love it. Put a timeline on it. This thing starts out with the greatest joke I've heard. There's an old joke in computer science that goes like this.

What's the difference between A.I. and automation? Well, automation is what we can do with computers, and A.I. is what we wish we could do. As soon as we figure out how to do something, it stops being A.I. and starts being automation. This is not a joke. This is true. This is true.

Yes, that's the thing. It's very funny. And they talk about the differences between strong A.I. and weak A.I. and the fact that strong A.I. doesn't exist because strong A.I. is what you and I consider A.I. A.I. is strong A.I. Yes. Somehow the word has been watered down. Oh, yes, completely.

So it's a really good primer. It's a long read, but it's worth going through if you want to know what's going on with this. And continuing on with A.I. news, yes, and the trend of tech journalists to write the most stupid headlines you'd ever read, Facebook's A.I. helps block or remove one million accounts each day.

Okay. So this is an article about how Facebook is trying to not get screwed over in these Indian elections over in India. Facebook is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to block or remove one million accounts a day that violate its rules against misinformation, hate speech and voter suppression ahead of its elections in India.

That's at the top of the article, right? That's that makes it sound as if they have a goal of one million accounts that they're trying to hit every day. It's an interesting way to phrase it. Okay. So when you get to the bottom of the article last week, Facebook said it pulled down more than six hundred and eighty accounts in India and Pakistan for inauthentic behavior, which means the people behind the accounts misled users about their identities and intentions.

I know, you know, some people tend to round up, but six hundred and eighty to one million is one hell of a rounding error, CNET. Come on. That is impressive. That is. It's like if Facebook was killing one million accounts a day in three years, there would be nobody left.

There would be nobody left. No, six hundred and eighty to a million. Six hundred and eighty to a million is one hell of a jump. Sounds about right for Facebook's math in general over the past few years from everything that they've been saying. So I kind of get it. But OK. Yeah, that's that's awesome.

That's that's amazing. Isn't that fantastic? I love I love CNET. I love CNET in their fucking autoplay videos. Thank you very much, CNET. But here's another another story from CNET that I found because I was just scrolling through and it says Facebook still tracks you after you deactivate your account.

Deactivation does nothing for your privacy. Wait for it. Shocking. Yeah, shocking. Oh, my God. Yeah. And here's from CEO of DuckDuckGo, Gabriel Weinberg. He says most people would expect less or no data collection during a deactivated period.

Deactivated means cease to operate and you wouldn't expect all the wheels to be turning. Well, unless you're dealing with Facebook. There's just there's a lot to this article, but the long and the short of it is if you deactivate your account, Facebook still pretends that you're going ahead full force.

All the data that they collect from the rest of the Web is still being attached to your deactivated account for your for your benefit, of course, because they assume you're going to come back. And when you come back, surely you would you would like your account to be kept up to date with your current interest so they can serve you ads. Of course.

Of course. And we know we all know that this happens even if you don't have a Facebook account, you're being profiled and tracked anyway. They're like the Mormons. They got everybody on their books. They really do. No offense to any of the Mormons. Book of Mormon was such a good show. I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it.

So after reading this article, I finally got off my ass and went in and deleted my account. It's I've I've had it deactivated for how long has it been now, Brian? Like months. A long time. Months. Months. Yeah. Yeah. So I finally went back in and deleted it. Took me a while to find it because it's not very easy to find.

But I did. I hit the delete button and it said, OK, 30 days in 30 days, your account will be deleted. Now, I thought we covered a story recently that said they cranked that up to 90 days, didn't we? I thought we did as well. Yeah. They must have rolled that back because on their page, it says 30 days.

So here's the test in 31 days. I'm going to go try and log back in and see if my data is still there. Should we put a friendly wager on this? I'm going to say it is. I. Well, no, I'm not because you want that one. I want that one, too. Yeah. All right.

Never mind. We'll buy it. We'll buy ourselves a beer if your state is still there. Yeah. So I. And then weep into it. So I deleted my account on April 9th, 2019. So in 30 days, I will or 31 days, I will go back in. I might actually leave it to 32 because time zones, you never know.

So in 32 days, I'll try. Be safe. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to like, you know, prematurely reactivate my account. No. One last thing for me from Facebook here. Facebook is going to start using AI to determine if you're dead or not.

No, how here's the thing. Tuesday, yesterday, they announced that they are going to be making changes and aimed at easing users grief because you've had it happen. I've had it happen. It's a terrible thing when you go into Facebook, you have your hey, last time this year or your whatever kind of crazy, stupid flash animations they make for you.

And it's pictures of your dead friend like, hey, you know, congratulate him on his like five year work anniversary or shit like that. Right. Which is just, you know, it's got awful. It happened to me with several friends who have died. And it just every time it happens, I just want to punch Zuckerberg in the fucking throat.

I'm like, stop it. You got to be able to not do this. Well, it turns out it's a bigger problem than I would have imagined because there isn't a really easy way for them to figure out if you're dead or not. Yeah. I was about to say there's no real easy way. You'd have to rely on reports from other people.

And how do you vet that? And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it's not easy. And, you know, a lot of people don't, you know, passwords, you know, or when you're in the midst of grief over someone who would even think, oh, I should probably go and figure out how to shut down, you know, my cousin's social media accounts.

Well, they have they have mechanisms in place to do this. You can memorialize an account which will, you know, automatically turn it into a different mode where people can come back, still see the things that you posted while you were alive. Why? Why anybody would do that? I have no idea. But I get it.

I mean, some people just, you know, can't let go. And some people there's an emotional aspect to that, Jason. I've struggled. I've been struggling with it myself. I've been trying to figure out what to do about this. I mean, as people that have listened to the show for a while, I've lost a couple of friends just recently and a few friends over the past couple of years.

And I always struggled with what to do about that. I used to I used to be of the mind that, you know, I'll just keep them as friends. But I've actually started and, you know, this sounds horrible and it sounds mean, but I've started to remove people that have passed from my friend list because why keep them there?

Yeah, I do. I do that, too, now because, yeah, my friend Matt, who died at Technorati, very suddenly was just a punch in the gut. And then, of course, I kept getting notifications from Facebook on it. So I just had to delete them as a friend. I'm like, well, yeah, I mean, there's a nice period of time right after someone's past where people are posting and tagging and yeah, it's all very lovely.

But after a certain period, it's just you don't need that digital ache. Yeah, you need to move on. You know, that's what grieving is for. That's what the stages of grief are for. And you move on. Yeah. You go on with your life. They're gone. There's nothing you can do about it. I don't need to go back to Facebook to remind me about what they said when they were alive, because I know I was there and so they're trying to figure out what the markers are to, you know, prove somebody's dead and you can actually put in in Facebook now like a secondary contact.

So if you do pass, yeah, that person. How many people have actually done that? I mean, I think a lot of people have. I know. I know several people that have done that. Yeah. Yeah. When that first came out and it was first being published, I know a lot of people that went and did that because they had specific things that they wanted done. And mainly it was delete my fucking account when I'm dead.

Yeah. I really don't want people to see this bullshit that I was writing, you know, when I'm drunk on a Saturday night. It's not that funny. And they just want it gone. So they're really trying to do it. Now, Miss Sheryl Sandberg did not specify how the new artificial intelligence technology would do this better than the company's previous efforts.

Facebook would not provide further details other than to say in an emailed statement, we look at a variety of signals that may indicate the person is deceased. And that's about it. So she comes out and says, we have AI and we're going to fix it. And then they're not going to tell us anything about how it's done.

Yeah. Okay. We have a basically set up Google alerts for every single person on Facebook. If you get an obituary notice that they go, they go set the flag. That's about it. That's insane. Yeah. Well, we talked about Lyft going public and about how even stock traders and analysts were not betting long on the company and planned on dumping the stock as soon as they got past the initial Lyft, as it were, which is, of course, exactly what happened.

Now, Lyft is actually looking at threatening litigation against Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter for their main rival Uber, because they were helping investors bet on a drop in Lyft stock prices. Oh, my goodness. I do declare. Which I do declare.

Morgan Stanley is denying the claims, telling CNBC that any suggestion that Morgan Stanley is engaged in an effort to apply short pressure to Lyft is false. Oh, no, sir. No, sir. We would never do such a thing where we could make some money. No, we would never try and make money from you. But I suppose my question about this, and I don't know, so maybe some of our listeners do, is even if they were doing it, is that even illegal?

You can short stocks. It might be. Might be. Well, it's certainly unethical. Well, there's a lot of unethical things with stock trading. Here's the thing, though. The problem is they're the lead underwriter for Uber, for Uber, for the, yeah, for the exact competition.

Yeah. OK, that might be a bit iffy. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. And Lyft is currently trading at $64.12 as of this recording on Wednesday morning. OK. Well, I guess it worked. I guess it worked. A stock that's doing pretty well is Netflix.

And as we all know, everybody is sharing passwords on Netflix, and Netflix doesn't seem to care too much. And this is just an article that kind of discusses it to a little extent. It's just the numbers that I thought were really interesting. Netflix is saying they have 139 million paid subscribers around the world.

And a new survey from analyst Moffat Nathanson, sounds like the grumpy guys from the Muppets, found that 14% of US Netflix users admit that they're watching the service using an account paid for by someone who they don't live with. That's quite high, actually. Interesting. So, yeah, they're not going out of their way to stop this right now, because on the plus side, he figures Netflix non-payers currently represent some 8 million users who could eventually be persuaded to pay.

OK. Which never really happens, I suppose. Well, here's an interesting stat. I actually pay for a family plan with four devices because a friend of the show, MXV, is in Chicago, and there's some bizarre reason that he can't get his own account like a normal person, but he pays me the extra four bucks a month to put him on my account.

Actually, he hasn't paid me in a long time. Mike, if you're listening to this, you owe me some money, dude. But it's cheaper to add one person to my account than it is for them to go get it. Yeah, exactly. We do a lot of family sharing as well. I don't pay for Netflix. My sister-in-law does, but my sister-in-law uses my Amazon Prime account.

So, you know, we kind of move it all around. You scratch your back, I'll scratch yours. Exactly. You know, so. Yeah, but if you do want to have somebody on legally, it is much easier to just pay for that extra device. I think it's two devices for the basic price, and then for two more, it's like four bucks.

So it's worth it to just like throw somebody on your account and just pay a little bit extra. And then you're, you know, then you don't have people coming in. This is the main reason I do it, because Mike watches a lot of really terrible movies. I screw up your algorithm. Exactly. That's exactly it.

I don't want my recommendations being sullied by somebody else who's coming in and just like, I think I told you this. I used to go to friends' houses when they had Netflix going, and I would just go like and add all these blaxploitation movies to their list so that when they would come in, that's all they would get recommended.

That's funny. It was fun. It was very fun. But yeah, I see this happening, and I don't see the, you know, it's free advertising for Netflix, and at some point somebody is going to want their own account when they can pay for it. So, you know, I don't see this as a big deal, and I'm glad that Netflix isn't cracking down too much on it.

Yep. Now, Tesla is in the news because they have a new Sentry mode in their cars, which is kind of cool. They have a 360 dash cam, which I didn't know, and when you basically lock your car, it turns on, and when you turn on Sentry mode, it will, like, you know, it's kind of like a ring for your car.

Right. So, there's a person in San Francisco, Jed Franklin. He got an alert on his phone informing him that Sentry mode had been activated, and when he got to his car, he found the window was broken, but, unfortunately, the car was still there. So, he checked the footage, found the guy who did it, found his license plate of the car of the guy who pulled up, apparently, to the car with his license plate in view, and sent it to the cops, and the guy was arrested.

Right. Pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I like that. I do. Okay. I wish that came with my car. It does not. No, it does not. In the future, all cars will have Sentry mode. And, or, you know, like those cars in South Africa that you can go up to, they have flamethrowers underneath and electrified doors.

That's the Sentry mode I want. Seriously. If you're going to break into my car, I want to turn you into a crispy critter. We've talked a lot about apps and how the app economy is kind of waning. Well, we've been talking about it since day one on the show. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, there are some new studies out now that say that basically trying to break into the app market is a futile effort. We've reached peak app. Yeah. Yeah. Back in 2014, the average top 30 app had been available in the app store for 625 days.

Now it's been in there for 1853 days, making it more than five years old, which means that like all the top players have been consolidated and that it's, you know, kind of really hard to break into it because we've figured everything out. That's the whole point. We've figured everything out and even most of any time there's an iOS update or an Android update, they're putting things into their own system that you used to use for third-party apps.

So that need has gone away and really, you know, what else are you going to do? We have the apps and doodads section in our own show and we very rarely cover apps anymore. In fact, I've been deleting apps on a regular basis, one per day, and I've been cleaning up my phone. So I think the app economy is pretty dead.

Yeah. I mean, most of the apps that I cover in that are, it's actually mostly doodads, but the apps that I've been covering are desktop apps because they actually do, you know, a purpose. Like Luminar 3 is my latest app that I got for photo, you know, stuff. But the only caveat to this is games.

Well, of course. Yeah. Those change because they're disposable. You pick up a game, you play it for a little while. Clash of Clans, you know. Remember when Angry Birds thought they were going to be a long-term thing? Oh my God. Yeah. When they went public. They went public. We both were just like, are you kidding me?

It was just a way to cash out. And that company is just dead man walking. When was the last time you heard anything from Angry Birds? Nope. I think Rio 2 was the last thing I heard. I was like, okay, we can't make apps anymore. Let's make some movies. Yeah. Although, I got to say the Angry Birds movie was pretty good.

They did a good job with it. It was fun. I did not see it. Well, when your kid's old enough, you might want to watch it. It was pretty good. Now, Facebook has agreed to clear terms and conditions under pressure from EU lawmakers. Okay.

What they need to do, they've got until June to do this, and what they're going to do is they're going to put in the terms and conditions how they make their money. They're going to say, we're a free service. And since we're a free service, we're going to take your data and we're going to send you ads.

Right. That's the big change. Okay. We kind of all knew that. But here's the interesting thing. When the article first came out, they're like, we don't know if it's going to be global or just in Europe. Turns out, Facebook is making this change globally. So, they're going to tell everybody what they do, even though we all know it already.

They're going to tell us in their terms and conditions, which nobody has read ever. Okay. Have you ever read the Facebook terms and conditions? No. I just assumed it meant, screw you guys. Screw you guys. I'm taking your data. That's right. Airbnb has launched a competition to spend a night at the Louvre.

Okay. Now, to compete for the chance to stay at the Louvre, you have to write an 800-character statement on why you are deserving of this special occasion. A whopping 800 characters. Not 800 words. 800 characters.

That's like four tweets. You can put in so... It's actually less than four tweets if you go for the full length now. Oh, that's right. That's true. Yeah. Now that they've doubled their tweet number. How can you really put into words in less than three tweets why you are deserving to be the winner of this competition?

I don't get it. My favorite movie is Night at the Museum. Ah, there you go. That's all you need. There you go. I win. My friend David Berkus, he's the one who tweeted this when I found it. And he's like, just to be clear, the last guy that spent the night in the Louvre stole the Mona Lisa. I thought it was pretty funny.

Now, here's what we get to the bottom of this. Airbnb claimed the competition allowed the company to promote ethical tourism. Say what? How is this ethical tourism? I don't know.

How is it? What is ethical tourism? What does ethics have to do with spending the night somewhere? Exactly. Yeah. I don't get it. Okay. No fucking clue. No clue whatsoever. But if you've got 800 characters to spare, you have until April 30th to sign up. Link will be in the show notes.

I'd rather have a really nice hotel room to go back to after spending the day in the Louvre. Especially when you see where you have to sleep. They made a mini, because the whole thing is about the pyramid. This is the 30th anniversary of the pyramid, right? So they've made a mini pyramid inside of the pyramid that you get to sleep in where everybody can see you.

It's like a really shitty David Blaine trick. Right. That's all it is. This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by our good friends at Hover. Look, you need your own domain name. If not for your business, then for your family.

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Media Candy. I was very excited to hear that one of my favorite shoegazing bands, Ride, have recorded a brand new album again. They split up after 1996 Tarantula when they called it quits during the album's production.

They came back in 2017 with a new album, Weather Diaries, and a tour, which blew the roof off every place I saw them in. I saw them at least three times. They were phenomenal. So I'm very excited to hear that they've just finished recording their sixth studio album and will be touring again. So if you've never listened to Ride, give them a chance because they're pretty awesome.

I did like that new album. It was pretty good. Yeah, it was very good. They're great songwriters. I'm really happy to hear that they're able to keep it together. So many of these other shoegazing bands like Lush managed to get it together for a tour and an EP, but then fizzled out again. So they're keeping going. I want Lush back.

Damn it. Me too. I miss that band. Well, go listen to Parushka, her new, Mickey's new band. It's not bad. It's no Lush, but it's not bad. Okay. And speaking of the alternative music tip, I saw this over on Wired. Let's all obsess over this intricate map of alt music history.

And it's kind of set up as like a, you know, kind of an electronics diagram. It's a schematic. It's pretty cool. It's a schematic. It's really cool. Younger me, single me, no wife me would have blown this up and had this framed on the wall. It's pretty, pretty cool. I was wondering, can we get a print of this?

Because this is actually really cool. It's very cool. Yeah. I definitely like, I would have had this on my wall in college, no doubt about it. So very, very cool. You can actually get this. It's a $43 poster. Oh, there you go. There's a link at wearedorothy.com. Yes. That is not something that will fly in a married man's house.

Oh, fortunately I'm not. So maybe this will hang in the studio. I might have to get one of these. 35 pounds, 35 pounds. Now, Brian, I have been a fan of the movie Unbreakable from M. Night Shyamalan and Ding Dong since it came out on November 14th, 2000.

Yes. And everybody's been waiting and waiting and waiting. It's like, when are we going to get another one? When are we going to get this? And then, of course, we finally got Glass, which is the third movie in the trilogy because there was the other one that was okay. I don't even remember what that one was called, Splinter or whatever.

Split. It was called Split. And I thought it was decent. And then at the end of Split, you get the big shocker that, you know, okay, this is part of the series. Well, I finally sat down and watched Glass. I bought it. I watched it. I waited 19 fucking years for that piece of shit.

Oh, my God. Talk about something I wish never existed in this world. Does it actively go back and destroy Unbreakable for you? It completely destroys Unbreakable for me. Now, everything is ruined. I hate you, Shyamalan and Ding Dong.

I hate you and your eye hole. I don't think you should ever be allowed back in Hollywood. Your Hollywood card is revoked. I've never understood why he continues to get money to make movies. Well, now I definitely don't. It just feels like it's failing upwards since day one, man.

Oh, man. Signs. We should have known from Signs. Signs is great. I like Signs. Signs. The entirety of the alien invasion could have been thwarted by everybody turning on their fucking sprinklers. That's it. That would have completely done it. Okay, the twist was stupid, but I actually enjoyed the movie except for the twist.

But for me, I just, all I need is, what was the first one? The I See Dead People. The Sixth Sense. Okay, bingo. Sixth Sense, fine. Good. Done. Go away now. Peaked early. That's it. Peaked early. He seriously peaked early. Yeah. And he had his cameo in this one, too, of course, and made me want to punch him in the face.

Oh, my God. What a waste of two hours and 20 bucks. I am so mad at Shyamalanma Ding Dong. I just, I'm seething. I'm seething. This movie was so bad. Okay. Well, never going to see it anyways.

Don't care. Yeah. God. I am really glad I wasn't at the theater when I saw it because I would have been in jail because I would have thrown my big gulp at the screen. The plus side, though, you would have spent less money if you saw it in the theater. I would have. I would have literally spent less money. He got more money than he deserved for me on this one.

God damn it. Anyway. Okay. Breathe. Breathe. I did see something nice this week. I saw The Kindness Diaries on Netflix. Oh, I've heard about this. Yeah. This is season two I watched. I didn't watch season one, but this is Leo or Leon Ligothugus. I can't pronounce his last name.

He basically drove from Alaska to Argentina in a 71 VW Beetle, basically existing only on the kindness of others. Okay. So gas, food, and lodging were all provided by somebody else.

He could not spend any money, and he could not take money from people. There are a couple spots in here that were a little iffy. He was in Mexico, and it turns out that driving through Mexico is a really bad idea if you don't want to get kidnapped or die.

So he took a, basically to get to Costa Rica, he took, they flew. Southwest flew him there. They donated the plane to fly the cast and the crew and the car from San Diego to Costa Rica. Now, there's another part in here where he's in, he's going like into Columbia, and there's this 400 mile stretch of road where they say that you have a 40% chance of being kidnapped and killed.

He drove that. Now, okay, like don't really care much about your crew, do you? So that was a little bit weird. But all in all, it was a nice, it was a really sweet show. And they're short. They're 20 minutes, which is why over the past, well, I finished it not last night, but the night before last.

I watched the entire thing because it's like they're popcorn. You watch one and you're like, oh, the next one's only 20 minutes. I'll watch that. I'll watch that. And then I go to bed at midnight and the dogs get me up at four. So I had like eight hours of sleep. Right. But it was worth watching. The fact that I watched the entire second season in two nights, you should say that, you know, it's fairly decent.

I highly recommend it. It's that's cool. It's a feel good thing. It's not really super deep because they're only the episodes are only 20 minutes long. But it's a fun. It's a fun watch. You know, watch a couple of them. See what you think. That's all I'm saying. Okay, will do. I finished reading Zucked, Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee.

Okay, I am really curious about this one because I started it and I want to hear what you say. You don't need to finish it. Okay. There's nothing we didn't know or haven't talked about constantly on this show. Ad nauseum. Ad nauseum. I mean, I suppose it's nice to have an insider actively confirming it.

You were probably stuck in the beginning, which I felt was like, look at me. Look how cool I am. He spent a lot of time at the beginning kind of blowing himself up. Well, he was also lading himself, basically. Also, that's funny that you mentioned that. I'm like, would you get Mark Zuckerberg's dick out of your mouth?

Because I listened to two hours of the audio book and all he did was say how great Zuckerberg was. I'm like, can you just blow him already and get this done with? Because that's why I turned it off. Yeah. The book is, once you get past that, it's first Zuckerberg is great. And then the whole rest of it is I'm so disappointed in Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.

That's it. Okay. Yeah. I'm returning it. I mean, if you don't know anything about how bad Facebook is, if you think Facebook is a great company, and you wouldn't be listening to this show. But if you know anybody that thinks that and goes, oh, what's wrong with Facebook, then this is a good read.

It will bring you up to speed on everything that's wrong with Facebook. But that's about it. So it was kind of a bit of a waste of time for anybody that keeps up to date on these things. Yeah, you can listen to his podcast with Sam Harris and get everything that you need to know, I think. You know, save yourself some money and just go listen to that podcast.

I just felt like, you know, we had to read it given what we do for a living. I tried. I fucking tried. You don't need to. You don't need to. I finished it. There's nothing amazing or shocking in there. Okay, well, good. I can return it because Audible has a great return policy.

If you don't like a book, you can return it and get another one. Yeah. And I read another book. I mentioned a few weeks back that I had reached out to some friends that I really, you know, know and like their tastes and things and asked them what their favorite books were because I wanted a break from sci-fi and the sort of things that we normally read here.

And the first book that I read was a friend of mine's recommendation, The Fool's Progress, an honest novel by Edward Abbey. This guy has passed away. This was written, I believe, in the early 90s. It is a, wow, it's dark.

It is dark. It was published in 1998. Oh, there you go. Okay, late 90s. Yeah, it is a really good read. It's definitely out of my wheelhouse of things that I've been reading recently. It's a tale of a particularly dark guy who's led a particularly interesting life and gets a, well, I'm not going to spoil it, but I did write my friend.

I wrote her and I said, I had no idea you were so dark. How is this your favorite book? My God, it was depressing. And we had a little bit of a discussion about it. And I think the point that came out of it was this may not be the best time in our history to read a book like this because the world is a little bit dark right now.

And when she read this and discovered this book, it was a much happier world. I think it's easier to read dark novels in happier times. Okay. So, yeah, it was a bit of a, I had a bit of a hard time with it and I got a little depressed reading it, but it is very well written.

I will give it that. Okay. And it turns out it was, he died in 1989 and he published this before he died. So it came out in 1988. The 1998 was the paperback version. Sorry about that. I got you. Okay. All right. There you go. Yeah. And this is loosely based on his own life. So. Yes. Which made me even sadder when I knew that.

Sadness porn. Getting ready for Game of Thrones. Go read the Fool's Progress. Yeah. Seriously. Oh, I can't wait for this weekend. It's going to be so much fun. Moron of the week. My moron of the week is all of the sports ball fans in Lubbock, Texas.

Now, this is a love-hate moron of the week. When Texas Tech won its final four matchup, they, you know, they went crazy. They went out and they did the things that most, you know, sports ball fans do. They set things on fire.

Well, fortunately for most people, they set all the scooters on fire. Okay. Well, kind of hard to fault them for that. I know. I'm like, well, it's better than setting some poor schmuck's car on fire, which is what usually happens, or breaking down some, you know, small business owners' windows and pilfering that.

I'm like, okay. You know, if you have to make a decision to be a dumb shit, at least setting the scooters on fire is okay. Now, everybody's going to have a class action lawsuit against the scooters because they're going to have cancer because of all the flames and the noxious fumes from the lithium-ion batteries that they set on fire themselves.

But, hey, this is the world we made for ourselves. Yeah. Well, I have a hero of the week. I'm quite proud of this guy. He's my new hero. Fed up with hearing from wannabe Instagram influencers asking for free stuff in exchange for publicity, the owner of a beach club in the Philippines decided to take a stand.

In a caustic Facebook post calling for help, Gianluca Casaschia? Close enough. Close enough. Manager and co-owner of the White Banana Beach Club on the island of Siargio went bananas at a whole section of the blogosphere. We are receiving many messages regarding collaborations with influencers.

Instagram influencers, he wrote. We would kindly like to announce that White Banana is not interested to collaborate with self-proclaimed influencers. And we would like to suggest to try another way to eat, drink, or sleep for free, or try to actually work. I love you. I love you. Get a job, you fuckers.

Yeah. So a few people then argued that Instagram influencers allow places like the White Banana Beach Club to get noticed, saying they provide a service, a form of free publicity that works for both bloggers and hospitality, business, restaurants, hotels, and clubs. It's not free. But he said this is not the case for his business. We are already famous and we are providing an excellent service.

We were the White Banana already before this social media storm and that's why everyone wants to come for free. I didn't want to give any lessons, but somebody had to address the elephant in the room. He told CNN, I can't believe we became world famous for saying the most obvious thing in the world, pay your bills. Yeah. I love it.

I love how the Instagram people say that this is a form of free publicity. I'm like, oh, well, somebody's paying for that food. Somebody's paying. Yep. That room could have been taken by someone who actually has a job, not a fucking Instagram influencer. Yeah. This reminds me, over at Netflix, I saw a new documentary, another Instagram documentary called Social Animals.

Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Another Instagram influencer documentary about people who just are not worth spending your time worrying about. Honestly, just don't do it. That was the other one that I watched. It had all the little vignettes of Instagram.

Uh, no, I stopped making movies about people on Instagram. It's fucking useless. Stop wasting our time. Feedback loop. We've got some new Patreon subscribers. Andrew, Barzenator, Roy, Benjamin, Heather, Francesco, Jeff, Philip, David, and Amanda.

And Amanda writes in, thank you for the grumpy. Doubling your shows per week has me up to two bottles of wine for my podcast listening. Even my liver is grumpy now. Well, I'm glad we could help. Yes. Imagine how we feel doing the show. Yes. Yes. Uh, Vinny also wrote us over on Patreon. Hey, grumps.

Just a short while after hearing your podcast episode about bold Airbnb landlords who have hidden cams in their properties comes this piece of news from the green aisle. The Airbnb HQ in Dublin has a lot to answer for, or maybe they've done enough because it's just a platform. And this is a link over at the Irish times family felt sense of danger after finding hidden live cam in Cork Airbnb.

Um, yeah, that's pretty crazy. Cause this one was like a, one of those fake smoke alarms. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's a, you know, okay. I love it because the father like was trying to get on the wifi network and he saw the camera and then he could live stream the camera straight to his phone with like no encryption, no anything.

It's not smart enough to block that. But I, what I really love is they took a family selfie together. Yeah, that is great. That was awesome. Well played. And over on PayPal, we have new donations from Daniel and Steven. Oh yes, Steven. Thank you for the very generous generous donation and thank you to everybody.

That's a lot of Patreons and a lot of people giving us some cash this month. We really appreciate that. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Yes. Over on Twitter. Kate, the great writes us. Hey guys, the iPhone eight series was the first to support wireless charging. Brian's iPhone seven doesn't work because the capability isn't there.

As for Jason's roommates, eight plus no clue, man. Well, mystery solved. Yeah, I guess so. I gotta get a new phone. Yes, you do. Bastion writes in. Hi guys. Just finished the latest episode. Great stuff as always. About the Chinese woman caught at Mar-a-Lago. Maybe she was just the distraction.

Ooh, interesting point. Also, there are good Mexican restaurants in Toronto. Just not as many as Southern California. Brian, would you dare to retort? No, there are not. I have eight at all of them. They are acceptable. It is more what I would call Tex-Mex.

They have, you can get some decent Tex-Mex in Toronto. You cannot get decent Mexican. Sorry. Yes, we need to redefine the standard for good. Yes. Because if all you've had, if all you've had is Canadian, Mexican, then, you know, your picker might be off. Yes.

Third in Command writes us. When your weekend needs a reboot and the whole of London can. See it. Oh yeah, see it. That cut off. The BT Tower displays dreaded Windows error message. Oh, it's very funny. Yeah. Oops. And Jeff writes in, I laughed at the comment that you two are Apple fanboys. I used to think that.

Now I think you're just security fanboys. I even use Android. I'm no longer mad. Well, I'm glad you're no longer mad. Me too. Stuart sends us a link and he says, although they seem to use machine learning and AI interchangeably as if two different people wrote the bits, they use the phrase AI to optimize for searches or both.

Machine learning makes pesto more delicious. And this is that technology review, which is a little disappointing that they do switch back and forth between machine learning and AI because it's the technology review. Well, you never know. You never know. And Ma6502 writes in, how much is a bottle of Lagunitas up there?

I know they have a lot of different brews, but I forgot which one you had and am lazy to re-listen. Of course you're lazy. Damn it. Down there in Puerto Rico. I was having Lagunitas Maximus, which is like a 12% beer or something like that.

It is monster. So a six pack up here costs $10.99. Yep. Sounds about right. TrippinFool writes in, well, sounds like the Grumpy Old Geeks found a new name for a future topic or show. And I'm the one that's drinking. What the hell? That's right. Martim writes in, I'm surprised I haven't heard you guys mention the love of death and robots on Netflix.

It says it's a nice little dark sci-fi animation series. Give it a go if you haven't already. I've been recommended this several times. And the only reason I haven't watched this yet is because there's a lot of them. They're very short vignettes, and I honestly forgot about it.

I forgot to add it to the queue. But some of the reviews I've read says it's like 50% good. Yeah. I've read as well that it's basically got a pretty low hit rate on it. And I'm personally, I was waiting for Jason because I figured Jason would watch this and I'm not that into adult animation stuff.

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of boobs in it. So I think I'm down for that because I like boobs. But it's all CG boobs and animation boobs, which I prefer real boobs, but I will get around to it. It is it's in the queue now. I put it in there. But since I finished the the kindness diaries, I have some time to to watch that when I go to bed.

Right. And Charlie writes us, according to our referencing episode three, three, three, your points about K. Cole James prove why conservatives are never portrayed without bias. You want her on Google board only to appease not to be heard. You're exhibiting the hate you claim she extols. Why not also say I have a friend who is conservative?

That's not what we said. We said, let's put her on the board. And if she has good points, then she has good points. But if she's just going to spew the nonsense, then we can ignore the nonsense. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Ignore the nonsense. But we did say, yeah, give her a voice. Let it let's see what she has to say. And we've gotten some other some other feedback about this.

And what it really kind of turns out to is, nah, don't ever on the board. And it turns out Google said, OK, we're just going to shut down the board. No board. No board. So, yeah. So we all lose, really. Yeah. I mean, everything is so bipolar nowadays. It's not not even bipolar.

It's just, you know, you're either on team A or team B. Nobody can talk like we used to do. And what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Well, we're going to talk to NZ Roy from New Zealand. He's like, whoa, you guys have to be very careful when lumping Australia and New Zealand together. We in New Zealand have a long running battle with Australia, generally friendly bullshit, who think themselves better than us.

This ranges from the infamous underarm bowling incident of 1981 to Australia claiming various famous New Zealanders as their own. Well, here's the thing. Yes, we did talk about the gun law in Australia, New Zealand. And I had that in the back of my head when I was reading it.

I'm like, I'm going to get some shit for this because we are lumping them together. I have very many friends from New Zealand and they're like, don't fucking call us Australia ever. And that's why I'm saying this is not a generally friendly rivalry. So I do understand that. And I do apologize because I did know better.

But I was trying to get through the spot. No offense, man. I love New Zealand. I would love to go someday. But I can't buy my super secret safe home anymore since you guys kicked out all the foreign real estate investment. Not like I could buy a house anyway. And he also writes in, Jason, thanks for the word on Farscape dropping on Amazon Prime.

Surely the best sci-fi series ever created. Yes, sir. Star Trek. Nope. I remember watching this in my younger years and was absolutely mesmerized by the storylines. Non-CGI aliens that actually look like aliens and the best puppetry that ever came out of the Henson Studios. Not to mention Aaron Sun, a.k.a.

Claudia Black in great outfits. But that's not all. All of the actors, except for John, were either New Zealanders or Australians, which gave the acting industry here a huge boost, especially for Lonnie Tupu, a Kiwi who went on to many things. I am reminiscing and enjoying. Stay grumpy. Well, NZ Roy, I actually, I'm really good friends with Gigi Edgley, who played Chiana on the show.

And I miss that show so damn much. You have no idea. So I'm glad that you are dipping your toe back into Farscape. And I recommend everybody go back and watch Farscape. It was amazing. All right. And Christophe sent us a link from The Guardian. The Boeing scandal is an indictment of Trump's corporate America.

And you guessed it. It gets into regulations. Very good article. Very good article. Very good article. Pen Filius writes in, Jason, on episode 333, you mentioned you keep checking your Evernote because you're concerned of getting your account reset to premium. I wonder why you haven't used your privacy.com account for that.

Couldn't you change your payment method to a privacy.com single-use card with a $1 limit or something? Well, Pen Filius, that's exactly what I did finally. I'm like, oh, I can just do that. Yeah, that's right. I forgot about that. So that's what I did. But when they reset it last time, I had not been using privacy.com yet.

So everybody, go to privacy.com slash GOG and don't get dinged for shit that you don't want. That's right. Greg writes in, hi, guys. Dave, too. I've written in the past. You mentioned that you both use RSS feeds to some degree for news articles and content. What reader are you using these days? I'm a Mac and iOS user.

Many years ago, I used a Mac desktop RSS client, which I doubt is still in production. Google Reader was convenient in its day until they shut it down years ago. I'd appreciate your suggestion. I'd like to get back into subscribing to RSS feeds. Thanks, guys. Love the show. Jason has a plan. Yes. Better than Battlestar Galactica's plan, I would like to add.

Our plan is we have no plan. Yeah, no, I actually do have a plan. On the desktop, I use Reader, R-E-E-D-E-R. You can get that, I believe, from the App Store for the Mac. And on iOS, I used Reader for iOS up until I got that new swanky 12-inch iPad and Reader completely broke.

So now I'm using the Feedly app, which, because all my RSS feeds are stored in Feedly and you can use Reader on the desktop to just tie into your Feedly account, which is the best way to go. Definitely get a Feedly account. They're awesome. And the Feedly app on iOS is amazing.

I use that exclusively now on my 12-inch iPad Pro. And it also works really well in the browser. So you can kind of skip Reader if you don't want to spend any money and just use Feedly directly. I love it. I mean, those guys are killing it over there. And Twilight Sparkle writes in, hi, to answer your question, yes, I am a brony.

Plans are set and I'll be in LA and we're going to cut this right now because we don't want to, it's a bad OPSEC to tell everybody where Twilight Sparkle will be. Hopefully we'll be in touch. And yes, do you want anything from Norway? Healthcare? Healthcare. Yes. Socialized medicine would be fucking great.

Socialized medicine would be lovely. We would love that. Can you bring us heaping helping of that, please? And we got some five-star ratings over on iTunes. The first from Frivaraz, who says, the only tech podcast I need. I've been listening to Jason and Brian weekly for over a year.

By now, they are the only tech podcast I listen to and practically the only podcast I have time for these days. These guys have a finger on the pulse of today's digital zeitgeist. I really enjoy the bi-weekly format because the news and updates are always fresh. I get my cybersecurity fix on Mondays with guest Dave Bittner, and then my latest update on media on Thursdays.

I'm roughly the same age as Jason and Brian and have a very similar life story, having started building websites in the mid-90s. I'd like to think I'm not as grumpy, but I find myself agreeing with almost everything they say and catch myself laughing out loud during my morning commute. Stay grumpy. All right. Well, thank you very much. And Abdicators from Denmark writes in, simply fantastic podcast, critical tech news coverage, and great ranting thereof, spiced with humorous anecdotes.

Love it. All right. And we got from I am Marthoons in Canada, another five-star rating, scolding from Canada. Hello, Grumps. I love your show, and I've been binging it at about 60 hours a week and just hit the 200s. The one and only complaint I have is Canada has unlimited data plans.

I can only personally speak for British Columbia and Alberta. However, they have unlimited broadband plans since the late 90s to present. It is an insignificant nitpick, but Brian says there is no unlimited in Canada, so often it started to get to me. Anyways, hope you guys are well and sorry that I can't afford to donate because you absolutely deserve it. All right.

I will rephrase these things in the future and say only in Ottawa, because all I know is Toronto. There is no unlimited data plans in Toronto. Yeah. Everybody I know in Canada generally comes from Toronto, and all they do is say, fuck Rogers. That's about it. Now, my favorite.

This is my favorite iTunes review of all time. See, pin CK1001 from the US writes in as a five-star. They put the FU in fun. An enjoyable listen. They put the FU in fun is now our tagline. That's it. I do enjoy that.

It's too bad. We just did our new batch of bumper stickers. I know. Oh, that's right. We didn't tell anybody yet, but yeah, the new stickers are going to be arriving here tomorrow, so we'll be able to send out new stuff. We got bumper stickers this time, plus our regular square stickers, so we've got a new batch that we'll be sending out to Patreon subscribers soon.

So if you're a Patreon subscriber, get your addresses in, and same with PayPal, PayPal subscribers and donators as well. So get us your address, and we'll get these things out in the mail coming soon, sometime, maybe, whenever. Yep, sometime, whenever. 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 keep hitting those stars on the overcast, player. ATP, the Accidental Tech Podcast, has taken the top spot again, which means someone out there is getting lazy. You know who you are.

Press that damn star button. Every episode, we need those stars. We do not. We want to own Marco on his own app. It is just too much fun not to. So please, please keep hitting those stars in overcast. And we know, here's the crazy stat. Most people don't know this about podcasting.

Most podcasts, the iTunes or the Apple Podcast app in iOS is like the big behemoth. They usually have 65% to 70% playbacks or subscribe rates. For us, overcast is like 80% of our listeners.

Yeah, it's really weird. It's nobody. I showed these stats to people and they're like, that's really strange. And, you know, the Apple Podcast app is way low compared to overcast. So we know that you people are listening on overcast. So hit that star.

Hit that damn star for every episode just because it's fun. Closing shout outs. I don't know if I've mentioned in the past that I have a connection to Eric Idle. I'm friends with his niece. Oh, really? So, yeah, he's a super nice guy.

I've met him a few times. It's nice to have a connection to someone that cool. But he hit the news this week because a suspicious powder was sent to his house. Oh. And it sparked an anthrax scare. It was a certified letter posted from Thailand and it was opened up by a member of staff at his home.

And, yeah, so fire and hazardous materials responders were dispatched. We're not entirely sure what's happened yet. But leave Eric Idle alone. He's a goddamn international treasure, people. Seriously? What you got against Eric Idle? Yeah. Why Eric Idle of all people in the world?

Leave him alone. Leave Eric alone. Leave Eric alone. And I just put an image in the show notes from my Connectix Quick Cam, which is me giving Eric Idle a demo of Python Line, which was what we were pitching on back in the day. And he was my first celebrity that I met.

Behind him, you can see Nick from Lords of the New Church. He's a drummer and an evil person and I hate him. But, anyway, Eric Idle was the first famous person I ever met and demoed for. And it was so cool. And he was so nice. He was so nice.

Man, I'm wearing a Sandman shirt and have blonde hair. That's so weird. That is weird. Very weird. My shout-out comes to the iPad! Woo-hoo! Oh, man. April 3rd was the first day that normal people back in the day could get their hands on the iPad. And I remember exactly where I was.

I was waiting in the rain at Oak Brook Mall in suburban Chicago to get my iPad 1. Nice. And I got it. And the funny thing is, my roommate's mom still has it. I sold it to them long, long ago because they wanted to be able to check their stock prices and for olds, like real, like legit olds, it was super easy for them.

So they still have my iPad 1. It sits on the kitchen counter and she still uses it to check her stock prices over her coffee in the morning. It still works, believe it or not. And my final shout-out goes up to my friend Dana and the staff of the Dog Psychology Center. Dog Psychology Center is Cesar Millan's place up in Santa Clarita.

Me and the pups went out there on Saturday and had, during my digital Shabbat day, went for a ride. First in the morning, I mowed the lawn with my new lawnmower. It was glorious. And then me and the pups hopped in the car and we went up to the DPC and walked around the place, got some training in, got to see Rio, the macaw that they have, and all the other dogs.

And it was just great to be outside. I got so much sunburn that it was ridiculous because I'm about as white as you can be. But it was a ton of fun. And just thanks to everybody up there. Every time I go up there, they're just, they're so nice.

Such great people. And unfortunately, Cesar had just flown in from Mexico the night before, so he wasn't around. But hopefully next time the pups will get to meet Cesar because it's just too cool. Too cool. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. 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 us 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 335. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like.

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