338: Farting in the Wind

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Hello in Canada land. You still there? I am still here. I leave tomorrow. Today has been a cluster F. Yeah. So we got the three kids and we're trying to do some Easter related stuff.

Three kids? When did you spawn again? I have one and we have two cousins here. Ah, okay. That's kind of why we come here and we get them all together and it becomes very loud and very, very loud. And there's all kinds of stuff going on at my parents-in-law's house. And I was getting ready to record because we were supposed to record yesterday.

That one's on you, not me. Yep. Today's on me though. So yeah, and we were getting ready to do stuff and my father-in-law had retreated to the basement, a.k.a. my studio when I'm in Toronto, to escape the children. But luckily my sister-in-law sent me over to her house and brother-in-law tossed a few beers into the room with me.

So here I am. See, this is what podcasters have to go through, people, to bring you this fine entertainment. That's right. Yes. I was almost killed by my dog yesterday or Thursday and it's just bam, bam in her big watermelon head. It was basically like she hit me in the temple with her head when we were playing.

And it's like getting hit with a bowling ball. Right. And I've been talking to doctors and stuff to make sure it's not serious, but I'm still here, still recovering. But my God. Well, I'm happy to hear that we've moved on a bit since, say, five or six years ago when you wouldn't talk to doctors.

Oh, yeah. Well, I learned my lesson. That was the thing. We had to do an intervention, if I remember correctly, on this podcast. It was pretty close. Yeah. Yeah. And when the doctor at the ER told me that if I'd have gotten on that plane to come to L.A. back then, I would have died. It kind of was a little bit of a wake up call, as it were.

And I'll never walk right again because I waited so long. So, yes, I did learn my lesson. Good. And concussions are nothing to mess about with. So I'm glad you're talking to doctors. Yes. I don't have a concussion. It's just I have one hell of a headache. That's for sure. But I've had a concussion before, and it's bad.

But not this time. Not this time. Good. Yeah. That's what happens when you have a dog the size of a bear. Yes. And you screw around. Yes. Okay. We got a little follow-up here. We do. We've been talking a lot about ethics in tech recently or the lack thereof. And there's an interesting article by somebody who is an expert in the field, who is an AI ethicist, as it were.

Is that really a real thing? I don't think so. Can we not say that we're AI ethicists at this point, after all the stories we've read? Okay. Machine learning ethicist. Okay. That's it. Well, anyways, he claims to be doing this for a living, and I'm sure he is, because, you know, somebody's going to give him some money.

But it's a really good article about something that we've kind of known the whole time that we've been talking about this, which is ethics in and of itself isn't going to do anything anyways. The beginning of the article has this great paragraph. By its very nature, ethics is idealistic. The purpose of ethical reflection is to understand how we ought to live, which principles should drive us, and which rules should constrain us.

However, it is more or less indifferent to the vagaries of market forces and political winds. In other words, ethics is just farting in the wind. Unless people want to do anything about it. So this entire article is kind of about how law and policy and ethics have to be combined and used to basically influence things and make sure that we don't end up with Skynet.

So it's a good article. I liked it. Okay. Good. I still don't think we're going to end up with Skynet, but what are you going to do there? The technology just isn't anywhere close. It's not anywhere close. No, it is not. But it's good that people are, again, it's good that people are thinking about it. And look, I mean, just take it as a parallel to how social media has formed, because God knows they didn't have ethicists on board for that, right?

True. So let's look at that as an object lesson to, as these technologies move forward, perhaps we involve them. Yeah, and I think a lot of this comes down to the expert that these companies employ, too. I don't know if I told this story on the show, but I used to work for an adult website company back in the day.

I think we've mentioned that a few times. But we hired a psychologist to come in and try and teach us how we can get people more addicted to porn. And social media model. This guy actually had the wherewithal to say, no, my job is to fix people.

I'm not going to come in here and have you break them. And he basically got up and walked out of the meeting. I'm like, and I was sitting in the back. I just wanted to jump up and down and clap and give him a pat on the back. I was about to say, do you have that guy's card? No, I wish I did. But talk about somebody who at least, you know, has the courage of his conviction to say, screw you guys.

This is ridiculous. If more people in that business had that type of conviction, maybe we wouldn't be in the pickle that we're in right now. Maybe. Maybe. And I threw this one in here. It's not tech, but it just I was gobsmacked.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Columbine shooting. Really? 20 years. It does not feel like that was 20 years ago. It's been 20 years since anybody considered Marilyn Manson scary. True that, true that. But man, yeah. And so much has changed for the good.

Well, maybe not. Not really. I wanted to get the dark news out of the way first. Oh, wait. Our whole show's dark news. Never mind. Plenty more. Plenty more to come, everyone. In the news. Now, we've been talking about the new copyright laws that the EU is passing, and I'm not going to get too into it again because we don't really have any new information than the last time we talked about it.

But I did see an article on Recode, which had the title, Europe is passing strict new copyright laws that could hurt companies like Facebook and Google. Now, before you shed a tear for Facebook and Google, the byline is Facebook and Google could soon be forced to pay more creators for the content that appears on their sites.

And I thought I'd fix that byline for them. Okay. So I'm going to rewrite it here. Here's what the byline should have been. Facebook and Google, which originally screwed creators left, right, and center and paid them nothing, have been told to knock it off. Okay. I wish Pinterest was listed in that. Me too. Yeah.

But we'll get to them soon. Soon enough, we'll get to Pinterest. Now, I found another really interesting article, which I never really thought about. You know, I consider, Jason, you and I are considerably more worldly than the average American would be. But I did not think about this. India actually leads the world in internet shutdowns.

Say what? India leads the world in internet shutdowns. Now, we normally think this would be China or Russia, correct? Yeah. Yeah, because Russia has been cracking down. It's got the social credit system. They've got all that stuff going on. They certainly have been very effective at blocking sites from the West that they don't want in there.

Well, I think you said, but China is the one with the social credit system, not Russia. Yeah. Or has Russia launched one too? Russia has not launched one yet. Okay. No, China. And then Russia has been, has their plan to unplug the country from the internet if they want to. And they've got their new fake news law that basically limits online speech for all of its citizens.

But the surprising thing that we found out, according to the Software Freedom Law Center, which has a tracking system, there have been more than 300 reported shutdowns in India over the past six years, which is more than China, Russia, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, the Congo, etc.

So it's interesting because we think that this sort of thing only happens in authoritarianist countries like the United States. But no, it happens in democratic countries like India, too. Oh, you can't get, can't get away from it. Nope. That's the way it goes. And I guess I could have put this in follow-up.

This is a nothing story, but I thought it was funny. End the tyranny of Ariel. Okay. What's wrong with Ariel? Basically, every single site in the world looks the same and everybody uses Ariel and a handful of really boring fonts. And this, the author of this article is, is charging for the return of MySpace-like democratization of design.

I can get behind that. I kind of can, too. I actually really enjoyed the article. Now, this guy is very much more about custom fonts and things of that nature. He even says that, you know, the main thing is the font. Remember back in the early days of the internet when you could recognize which friend was typing to you by which font that they chose?

Yeah. That sort of thing, which we all can. But, you know, we've talked about how boring the internet looks these days. And, of course, we don't want to go back to MySpace and twinkly stars everywhere. But a little bit of customization would be nice. You and I have talked about that about all software recently. Like, where's our customization options?

That used to be the best part of software. I think this all comes back to 1999. And I don't know if you remember when Basecamp launched. Vaguely, yes. Yeah. Basecamp is, it used to be called 37 Signals. And they build, you know, software.

Yep. Well, back then, they took on this approach where, that everybody just kind of copied. And I called it back then the blandification of the internet. Because everybody kept doing that. And if you look at most of these templates now, they're all based on some of the original stuff that 37 Signals did back in the day.

And, you know, when we started, it was like, you know, we were having fun. Everything was like, I mean, we tried to turn everything into a CD-ROM. That's right. We wanted to make it as interactive and cool looking as possible. Exactly. We wanted everything to be cool looking. Not this, like, sterile, you know, lots of white negative space and crap like that.

And sans-serif fonts. I still have 25,000 fonts on my hard drive. You know? Oh, man. And remember when you could first start to embed fonts in your web pages and it actually kind of worked? Yeah. That was exciting days. But then all of a sudden, nope. Everybody, no, it never caught on.

Everybody went to the Google Font Library, which has, you know, some decent fonts in there. But it's like, ew, really? Google is known for their design skills, as we all know. You might be right about it starting in 99, but the nail in the coffin was definitely mobile. As soon as we had to design for mobile as well as desktop and nobody wanted to pay budgets for two different sites, that was it.

Design was dead. Yeah. The phone has killed everything fun. It really has. It really has. Yeah. We need to go. We need to go back to the old days. Except for the kids with their sexting. Apparently, they enjoy that. Well, not Generation Z, but more on that next week. I got a study we're talking about next week.

So UK's porn block is going to start on July 15th. I've already sent an international telegram to get my porn card. OK, there you have it. No, I'm kidding. Yeah. The UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sport. OK, culture. I guess I guess sport could be, you know.

I would define it more as sport than anything else. Yes. I suppose that's when you engage in it. But I mean, they call it sports when you just watch baseball, too. That's true. That's true. Well, there are bats and balls in both. So there you go. Cricket. Yes. The government's controversial new porn block plans go into effect July 15th, which means you've got to go get your porn card.

Yep. Yay. Porn cards. But if you don't want to do that, go to GOG.show slash VPN and get signed up with private internet access. And then you don't have to go down to the store and, you know, get your porn card because that's all that it's used for. Every time that anybody walks in, they're like, can I have my porn card, please?

That's what it's going to be. I wonder if this will bring back magazines. Ooh, maybe maybe this. Yeah, this is the same time to invest. I'm going to go buy some dead trees right now. And speaking of streaming video images, as it were, I had some interesting facts about Netflix that I learned this week.

And now I knew, obviously, Netflix is the big monkey in the room, right? They're by far the biggest streaming media company out there. Oh, hell yeah. Until Disney Plus launches anyways. True. But we've got some actual numbers. And I didn't realize this. 148 million paying users around the globe, up 26% from last year, this quarter, in line with analyst expectations, and hence the rule of the world and how everything sucks.

When you add free trials to active subscriptions, streaming company now has 155 million users globally, which is actually a surprising number of free trials versus active, because if you got 148 million, only a couple million free trials. So how big is that really? Well, it's just still a fraction of the size of the number of global digital pay TV prescriptions, subscriptions, not prescriptions, although it is like a drug.

Yeah, I was going to say, some people- Some people definitely need to be prescribed their idiot box, yes. Yes. There are more than a billion paying digital TV subscribers nationwide, according to market research. This counts people who cough up for cable, satellite, internet, protocol, television, or IPTV.

It doesn't count the illegal boxes, of course. A billion paying digital TV subscribers nationwide. What nation are they talking about? Because there's only 350 million people here in the US. Well, Recode, you got some copy problems there. I think so. Worldwide, I assuming, is what they meant there.

Yeah. Yeah. So at more than 500 million subscriptions in 2019, all online subscription video services, such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video combined, represent about half as many people in the world that pay for digital pay TV. So not quite there yet. You'd think streaming was everything now at this point, but not yet.

Not yet. I mean, half my family doesn't even do it, so it doesn't surprise me at all. And a lot of people just aren't on that bandwagon. You know, we're at the bleeding edge, dude. That's right, man. It's been a long time since somebody called me up. Literally, bleeding, because we have to pay for everything. I know.

Hey, but we don't have to pay for Hulu now, and we get our mash for free. That's true. Yeah. Speaking of not paying for things, let's talk about Pinterest for a second. Yes, our favorite global copyright thieving motherfuckers.

Pinterest is up more than 25% in its first day of trading. Is this basically the market telling us that piracy is profitable? Apparently. Apparently. Interesting. Interesting. They closed now $24.40 is what they're doing. I still wouldn't invest in them.

No, no. And Chris Lockhead, friend of the show, over on Twitter, wrote, The Pinterest founding story reminds us of the power of entrepreneurship. This is what's possible when a few people with a big dream get busy. So, of course, I had to reply to that.

My dream is to avoid all copyright laws whatsoever. I have a dream. One day, everyone will be able to steal everything and put it up for free. Yes, and I said, when a few people commit copyright theft on a truly industrial scale, I think you mean, I'd punch every single founder of Pinterest in the fucking throat, given the chance.

This is me being diplomatic again. Oh, yeah, obviously. The punching in the throat is very diplomatic. I'm sure that forwarded your argument quite well. Well, Chris writes back, that's one point of view. And I said, if they posted the entirety of your books over and over again, I think you'd agree. Well, he hasn't replied yet.

So, Chris, I'm waiting. I'm waiting anxiously for your reply because. And by the way, Chris, it's not one point of view. It's the factual point of view. Yeah. It is what the company does. Yes, at some point, we're going to have Chris on the show because I think we would have a all of us would have a very lively discussion.

I love Chris so much. So definitely check out his podcast. And he's over at Lockhead on Twitter. We'll have that link to the show notes. But there is. Yeah. No. Yeah. What a big with a big dream and get busy stealing everything from everyone. And making it your business model. Yeah.

They're a message board. Why is a message board public on the national stock? Why doesn't the Pirate Bay go public? Exactly. Oh, that's right. Because we're just using images. Right. Yeah. Same business model.

Exactly the same business model. We steal shit and give it to you and you don't have to pay for it. So fuck Pinterest in their fucking eye hole. All right. So let's let's end with a chuckle. The Mueller report came out this week and we're obviously not going to get into that because that is not in our purview.

Well, it will be in our purview because that's my next at the library. Oh, good. Because I really do want to talk about it, but I'm not ready to talk about it. It's 440 pages. It's going to take me. It's going to take me till next week to finish reading it. Well, you got a PDF of it. Yes. Guess who didn't? Congress.

Congress did not get a PDF. They did not get anything of it. In fact, they got CD-ROMs of it and they had to find PCs that actually have disk drives on them because very few do anymore. They could have just gone to the, you know, the New York Times and downloaded it there, which I bet a lot of them did.

But still, this is pretty funny. I just love this. They passed out CD-ROMs. And luckily, the House Judiciary staff was prepared in the case of the fact that they found one computer with a working CD-ROM drive. Oh, God. So good.

I can't even. I can't even. Look, we've been saying all along the law and our government is so far behind on technology, but I didn't really realize it involved hardware, too. Yeah, I was surprised it didn't come on like, you know, a five and a half inch or five and a quarter inch floppy.

Can you imagine they all had to go down to like the nuclear silos where they still have those? We got to go read the report down in the silo. You got some guy in Mueller's office with a like a hole punch, like trying to do the double density disks to make them make them bigger. It doesn't fit. It doesn't fit.

Punch the hole. Punch the hole. Punch the hole. We're not back this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast. Dave was having an off day as I was on Friday.

So when we punted the show, Dave was just like, oh, that's good. Me, too. Me, too. Me, too. So we can say screw Maryland. Fuck Maryland. And it's I hold to like Pinterest. Maryland is the Pinterest of the United States. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

Save your tweets and emails. Save your tweets and emails. I'm sure it's lovely. You can go have all the Guinness blonde. You can drink in Maryland. We will be rejoined by Dave Bittner next week and all and make all of our apologies to Maryland. Exactly. And check out the Cyber Wire podcast and the Hacking Humans podcast that he hosts with Joe Kerrigan because we do like those shows.

Anyway, let's move on. We got a couple of quick stories just to burn through it here. Unsurprisingly, and actually, maybe this is a good thing that Dave Bittner didn't join us this week because I saw on the Twitter fear sphere thingy that somebody had asked him and copied us on it. If he was sick of talking about Facebook every single week on the segment.

He said, yes, I am. Well, he's not here now, so he doesn't have to. He doesn't get a voice in it. Shocking. Facebook fucked up again. Now, this isn't a new F-up. This is the last month F-up when they announced that they had stored hundreds of millions of user passwords unencrypted on its servers.

At the time, it said that there were tens of thousands of Instagram passwords also stored that way. What they actually meant, apparently, was not tens of thousands, but millions. Millions of Instagram passwords along with millions of Facebook passwords.

Oopsies. That's what happens. That's what happens. So, you know, they pointed out, again, that there was no evidence of abuse or misuse of these passwords. One can argue that storing them that way is abuse and misuse of those passwords, but, you know, it is what it is.

Yeah, are we really, are we even surprised anymore? Do we even care anymore? No. In fact, I'm just going to start listing my Facebook password at the beginning of every podcast, because I might as well. Yeah. I'll change it every week, but right now it's 17432, exclamation, bang, bang, bang, 974312ABC.

ABC. ABC. Easy. One, two, three. Boop, boop. Oh, I'm not allowed to sing Michael Jackson anymore. Shit. No, no. Oh, man. Over at the New York Times, Dave actually posted this story for us to talk about, and it's, we built a legal facial recognition machine for $60.

It's a fascinating read. These guys basically went out, found some live webcams that were open to the public, downloaded a bunch of video, and then ran it through Amazon's recognition. And, you know, found one guy who was picked up because they only use publicly accessible images to train, and they found, like, everybody that works around that spot in New York and then trained the AI with it.

And they got this one dentist, which was pretty cool. And he agreed to come in and be part of the article, and it was a really fun read. It kind of makes me want to do this now. I want to try it. I've got enough security cameras around here. My God, I can do this all day long.

You know, I don't have the Chinese ones anymore, but I do have, I got the Amcrest ones. I got the Logitech ones. I got the Ring ones. You come anywhere near my house, you're on camera. You're definitely going to have some bias on your camera. It's only going to be white people and dogs. That's actually kind of it.

Yeah. In my neighborhood, absolutely. So this just sounds like it might be fun to play with just to try it and see if you can do it because, you know, it's easy to find everybody on Facebook in the neighborhood because people post stuff publicly. So why not? Why not give it a go? Oh, time, and I'm not getting paid for it.

Screw that. Never mind. There's that. Yeah. Oh, by the way, the cool thing about the beginning of this story is, again, New York Times doing the cool interactive stuff at the beginning of the articles. It's cool to see them, like, actually going the extra mile.

I don't know if they used Ariel or not, but they probably did. Probably. These are fun. These are fun articles. The next one is tracking phones. Google is a dragnet for the police, and it's a long article that goes into the fact that Google has given a lot of cops access to your location data.

And, oh, shocker, sometimes the police arrest the wrong person. Who would have thunk? Who would have thunk it? Who would have thunk it? I mean, I often get the wrong result in my Google search, so why shouldn't? True. Why shouldn't the Google search turn up the wrong criminal?

You know what we need? We need facial recognition and location tracking from DuckDuckGo and give that to the police. Except it's kind of against DuckDuckGo's policies. True. That's why we like DuckDuckGo. Except the search results. Except for the search results. The internet giveth and taketh away.

Oh, ain't that the truth. I'm going to wrap up my stint in Canada with a pro-Canada report here, or at least an article, filling the cybersecurity void. Now, we all remember the Equifax breach, which in, you know...

How many people went to jail for that? Oh, wait, none. Zero? Zero. Zero. Yeah. Zero people went to jail. How many companies have suffered because of this? Uh, thousands. Zero? I mean... Well, our companies have. Yeah. Uh, 146 million people were affected.

We all got our free, what, week of, uh, some bullshit service that tracks our credit for us. That they actually made money on, by the way. That they made money on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so basically nothing happened here. But, uh, in Canada, the Government Accountability Office released two reports.

One on the response to the Equifax breach, and another on its need for better oversight of consumer reporting agencies. Uh, Equifax is, uh, basically going to get off scot-free in the U.S. But in Canada, they recommended that, uh, Equifax Canada identify Canadians' personal information that should no longer be retained by Equifax, according to its retention schedule, and delete it, and provide a third-party security assessment and audit to the Canadian government every two years for the next six years.

Okay. So they're doing something about it here. Yeah. Now, of course, that only applies to Equifax Canada and personal information held by the company about Canadians. All 12 people in Canada can now sleep better at night. Yes. All righty. We can watch our hockey. No worries.

Ups and doodads. Well, I've had some spare time up here in Canada, mainly because I've had in-laws to dump my son off at for a while. And, uh, as part of my digital cleanup, I finally have moved all my domains over to Hover. Now, they've been our sponsors for quite some time, and I've been very lazy.

Uh, but yeah, it's so clean, it's quick, it's easy. I only had one hiccup moving everything over, and it ended up not being Hover's fault. It was, of course, Doddster's fault, who I was still with. Oh, Doddster. I can't believe you're still with them. Another Canadian company, by the way, but man, they went to shit not long after it started. Yeah, they used to be the shit.

Now they are shit. Yeah, that's it. They went the upsell route and just turned into a steaming dumpster fire, but, uh... Yeah, Hover, clean, clear, crisp interface, really quick. Everything moved over fantastically. Didn't have no worries at all with all my domains, so everything, uh, is set and kept over there now.

Um, very clean, awesome, easy to use. Hover.com slash GOG. Can't recommend them enough. Not only are they advertising, I'm a customer. How many domains do you have over there now? I've got about 25. That's about all I'm holding on to. I let go of a lot. Yeah, I think I, I think I still got like a 60, I think.

Yeah. But the nice thing about Hover is the more domains you have, the cheaper renewals are. Mm-hmm. Which is really nice, because I hit, like, once you hit that 50 threshold, it's like they knock off like 20% on your renewals on some domains. Yeah, that's not going to get me to buy a bunch of stupid domains, though. I get drunk a lot, so I always buy dumb domains.

It's like your crack. It is, it is. It's just, it's one of those habits that's really hard to break. It really is, especially with all the new TLDs. They're just fun to get, so. Right. And I want to talk about private internet access for a second, since we don't have a sponsor for this episode. We want to let you guys know that private internet access is the VPN that we recommend.

And Brian, you're actually using them in Canada right now, because we had to start the show over twice, because you forgot to turn it off. I did forget to turn it off. I have had my VPN on here, so I could watch all my TV shows. I use it to be able to stream Grumpy Old Geeks. I wish we were as popular. Game of Thrones over my, you know, US HBO account.

And yeah, it's been very helpful while I've been here. While I've been here, I've also, you know, got it set up on the in-laws and the sister in-laws house and everything like that. It's just, it's, it's the best out there. And as we've always talked about, they're the only ones that have not turned over their data when requested.

Right. They have been proven in court to be a no log VPN by the FBI, no less. So that's why we recommend private internet access. Go to gog.show slash VPN and get your VPN on today. Got some cool science news this week.

NASA finally found evidence of the universe's earliest molecule, at least until we discover one that was earlier. Okay. Well, that's how it works. Things always work. Yeah. That's kind of how that goes. Yeah. Scientists have long expected that around 100,000 years after the big bang, helium and hydrogen combined to form the first molecule, helium hydride, which helped the universe cool and led to the formation of stars.

But despite decades of searching, scientists could not locate it in space until now. NASA used something called the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, to detect the molecule. They found it in NGC 7027, which I believe is one of the enterprises in an alternative universe.

I thought so too. I'm like, oh, okay. A planetary nebula located 3,000 light years away. It proves that it can exist in space, this helium hydride molecule, and confirms theories about the chemistry of the early universe and its evolution. This was all published in Nature this week. I didn't even know- That's one hell of a telescope that can see a molecule from 3,000 light years away.

Well, that's the thing. The crazy thing is I had not even heard of SOFIA, and this is cool. It's the world's largest airborne observatory. It's in a modified Boeing 747SP jetliner, and returns after every flight, which allows NASA to add new tools and updates and new technology as it's available, as opposed to when we send something up into space, and that's that.

Yeah. I mean, we do have people like Mike Massimino that can go brute force and fix the Hubble when we need it. But, you know, this makes it a little bit easier. But it's really cool. It is really cool. I like this. Science. Science. And now this one is a bit of a head scratcher. This one, I'm just going to say, this one ruined my day, because as I was reading this article, I was having my breakfast, which included bacon.

So take it away, because I don't know if I can eat bacon anymore. Well, it isn't just you this is messing with. We're talking about religious people. We're talking about scholars. We're talking about ethicists. This is a bit of a people aren't quite sure what to make of this yet. But scientists have restored some function in the brains of dead pigs.

Hours after the animals were killed in the slaughterhouse, a Yale University research team was able to basically restore brain activity. Now, they're careful to say that none of the brains regained the kind of organized electrical activity associated with consciousness or awareness yet. But the experiment did describe again, this is also in nature, a surprising amount of cellular function could be preserved or restored.

So this is obviously got some staggering implications because it kind of moves the goalposts as to what dead might actually be. Yeah, I don't like this. I don't like this at all. Unless they can plug me into like a USB port after I kick the bucket.

But well, you know, that's that's where this will probably end. So, let's see, Nita Farhani, who studies the ethics of emerging technologies at Duke Law School, said, this is mind blowing. My initial reaction was shocked. It's a groundbreaking discovery, but also really fundamentally changes a lot of what the existing beliefs are in neuroscience about the irreversible loss of brain function once there is a deprivation of oxygen to the brain.

Interesting. Yeah. So this explains Leia being out there and floating back. Way to bring that one home. Talk about a 17 episode later callback. It's what we do, man. Wow.

I'm just saying. I have to take a moment. Okay, well, this one is for my L.A. people. My favorite restaurant in the world is turning 100 this year. Musso and Frank's Grill. Have you? You've obviously been to Musso and Frank's millions of times.

It is my favorite hangover spot because I used to live a couple blocks away for many years and we're a friend of the show. Robert Fogarty and I would stumble down there like we had dead pig brains on Saturday mornings and go get our Eggs Benedict on. I have to recommend multiple things.

Eggs Benedict is fantastic. It's the best Eggs Benedict in Los Angeles. Also, their tomato soup is far none the best you can get anywhere. And they have a 10-page martini menu because you do need a little bit of the hair of the dog to pitch you. But they're expanding.

They're actually adding three new rooms for private parties and things like that. So it's kind of cool. Very cool. It's kind of cool. I love Musso and Frank's. If you're ever in town and just want to get some of that old Hollywood feel and probably see a couple celebrities at the same time, you'd do yourself well to go to Musso and Frank's.

And also, all of the waitstaff were our original. They're all at least 100 and some odd years old. Yes. They kind of are. Yeah, since the Formosa closed, you can't really get a better old-school Hollywood spot. Maybe Bordner's or something like that. But Musso and Frank's, definitely.

I'm banned for life from Bordner's. I can't go in there. Of course you are. Yeah, unfortunately. Thanks to the same friend of the show, Robert Fogarty, for getting me banned from Bordner's for life as well. And I have to throw a shout-out to this one because I was listening to it this morning because I've been catching up on my podcast because of my head injury and I couldn't move.

I was listening to the new No Such Thing as a Fish. I think it's episode 33. No, this is 336. Oh, this is 338. It's in the 300s. This is their new episode. Right. And there was just one quote in there that I had to put in as a possible show title. And it was, By my ancestors' testicles!

Which, at that point, immediately reminded me of my Grabthar's hammer. Yes. You shall be avenged from Galaxy Quest. So, today, I am going to have to go back and watch Galaxy Quest because it is one of the greatest movies ever. And Alan Rickman is one of the greatest actors of all time who is sorely missed.

And if you've never seen Epic Tea Time with Alan Rickman, I highly recommend that as well. It's very good. Yes, everything Alan Rickman touched turned to gold. Closing shout-outs! Well, we've got to get out of here. It's a short show this week. Jason's got a head injury.

I've got to get packed, take care of my kid, and get home. But I want to give a big shout-out to all my Torontonian friends. Another great trip in the book here. And some exciting future prospects. I may be living here sooner than I thought. Oh, really? Oh, wow. I'll talk about that off-air with you. Okay, well, we should have our live show sooner than later, then.

Definitely. And a big shout-out to another Torontonian, Stephen Pulver, our friend from Fireside, on the arrival of his new baby. Ah, congratulations. You are going to be frazzled at the next Fireside. I can't wait to see you. Well, we were actually talking off-air where you guys should actually do a daddy podcast.

And a big thank you to all the Twitter followers who I shouted out and reached out to yesterday. I've been looking for women podcasters, and I got a good bajillion recommendations from people on Twitter. Oh, hello there. This is Ms. Stoutfire.

The one that almost everybody, almost everybody recommended was Mueller She Wrote, which I think is, A, one of the cleverest names for a podcast. That's a good one. I've ever heard. And the artwork is pretty good, too. So I have to go check that out, but I've got, like, maybe 30 shows that I have to go listen to now.

But Mueller, She Wrote, is definitely leading the pack by a mile. So got to check that one out. I have to say, I've been here for a week and have had no free time to listen to anything. So I have not listened to a podcast in an entire week.

Somewhat refreshing. I don't recommend it to our listeners. Yeah, don't recommend that to our listeners. What are you thinking? My God. Well, hey, I'm still here recording it. You guys have to listen to it. That's the way it works. That's the way it works. Yes. Until next time, I'm Brian Shulmester. And I'm Jason DeFillippo.

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. And if you'd like to give a one-time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar. And soon we'll be sending out new stickers for our people who gives us the monies.

So definitely get on that. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 338. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. And keep clicking that star button in Overcast. We're getting there. We're getting there. Love it. So everybody, stay grumpy.

By Grabthor's hammer, by the sons of Worvan, you shall be avenged.

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