358: Inverted Schulmeister

This episode is sponsored by Privacy.com. It's like a burner phone for credit cards. To sign up for free and get a $5 credit, go to Privacy.com slash GOG. That's $5 free to spend anywhere by just signing up. Privacy.com slash GOG. Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason 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. And we are doing a late show again. On an early day. On an early day. It is Monday evening. I have my glasses. Syrah. I have my, uh, uh, my, what is it? Lagunitas Maximus.

Ooh, there you go. Yes. 8.2%. Nice. This is gonna be a fun show then. Uh, yeah, we're doing this, uh, cause Jason's got jury duty and then we're rolling into the holidays, 4th of July and all that. That sort of stuff. So there's not going to be a second show this week. Um, because we're all over the place.

Yeah. I'm still going to be coming back from jury duty and you're going to be on holiday and Bittner's on holiday. So we will reconvene next week. Amen, brother. See what I did there? Reconvene. I got it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're living in a world right now. Everything's gonna be legal with you. Oh my God. I can't wait for this to be over so I can talk about it. This is so interesting, but it's, it is, it's one half exciting. The other half. So mine, deadly boring that we're all trying to stay awake.

Yeah. And even today we had a half day and we were walking out. I talked to the guy next to me and I'm just like, man, today really didn't feel like a half day. And he's like, tell me about it. It felt like a whole day. And tomorrow and the next day we've got two full days, but hopefully on Wednesday we go to deliberation.

And then fingers crossed, it'll be over unless we have a nine angry men or eight angry men scenario. Well, you certainly got one angry man on this. I'm not the angry man on this. I'm very level headed. I'm extremely level headed and I want to make the right decision and not give people money that don't deserve it. So there you go. That's how it goes.

So I found this on TMZ this morning. Okay. This is a weird one. Steve Wozniak was caught at the airport and they got some video of Steve picking up his luggage. And he basically is like, uh, yeah, get rid of Facebook. It's evil. They're listening to us. No, Steve, they're not listening to you. No, they're not Steve. No, no, they're not. So anyway, it was just, but it's funny you have fallen. It did, but at least he's still telling people to get off Facebook. So now the techie lead are going to start eating their own. I like it.

But that does feel like a bit of a generational divide to me. The, the old tech yelling at the new, get off my lawn, get off my internet, you damn kids. But it's Steve Wozniak. He does have some cachet in the business, you know? Oh yeah. You know, he was on a, he was on a, a God, why am I blanking on the name of that horrible show? Big Bang Theory. So, you know, he's got cachet.

Well, he was on Big Bang Theory, but don't forget, he also dated Kathy Griffin. So he does lose some geek points. That's rough. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just wondering how many people on TMZ even know who the hell he is. No one. Probably zero. Well, at least me and my roommate know.

So anyway, and I found this over at the verge, America needs to see Amazon's tax returns. And we talked about this last show or the show before last sometime soon. They all blend together after a while that Amazon paid zero in corporate income taxes.

And it seems to have hit the zeitgeist now. Of course, everybody running for president is banging down the door saying, we need to see their tax returns. But Bezos' emails, where's our tax money? I 100% agree we should find out what's going on with Amazon's tax returns.

I would put that as second in priority to Donald Trump's tax returns. Actually, I don't even care about the Donalds anymore. I want to see Amazon's because they make more money. They actually are profitable. Yes, but the other one's in charge of everything. Yeah, well, you can't get over that. Technically.

But it would be nice to see why Amazon thinks they can get away with this. But that's the thing. No, I would love to see this. Definitely. 100%. We need to figure out what exactly is going on. Why the company that is making all the monies in the world is not paying any taxes here. Well, the problem is you need corporate reform and you need to change the laws because right now it's all good and well for them to keep their tax returns private.

Because it can be seen as trade secrets, you know, where are they spending their money and all that you get. You can get the some of the numbers from their SEC reports, but you don't get the tax returns. You know, we'll see if this changes shareholder value.

I know that, you know, I happen to be an Amazon shareholder and I'm very pleased with the amount of money that it's making me. But. Yeah, I got to start thinking about ethical investing. I really do, because it's starting to actually cause me angina.

Angina? Yeah, it's not that country that Trump calls. China. Angina. No, no, he grabs him by the angina. Oh, yeah, he grabs him by the angina. All right. Five minutes in, we pissed off all our fucking Republican listeners. Yeah, yeah.

Well, we have been drinking, so that's how that works. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. Nope, nope, nope. In the news. So speaking of angina.

China. China is doing what they do. They're starting to silence people. They're starting to silence podcasts and music apps and doing a complete online crackdown and is widening greatly. Audio apps have been doing very well in China. In 2018, online listeners in the country grew 22.1% to surpass 400 million at a rate far exceeding that of mobile video and e-reading populations, according to market researcher iMedia.

But now, the crackdown has come. On Friday, a total of 26 audio-focused apps were ordered to terminate, suspend services, or have talks with regulators as they were investigated and deemed to have spread historical nihilism and pornography, according to a notice post by the Cyberspace Administration of China, or the CAC.

I want to know how pornography gets through the podcast world, but I'm sure that there are a few. But is it really... Hey, hey, hey, stop it. You're going to trigger my mesothelioma. No, no, mesophonia. Mesophonia. That's it. My mesothelioma.

Mesophonia. Anyway, yeah. I mean, some of these podcasting apps in China are massive. I know we've done work at some of my other companies with Himalaya, and they've got all the monies in the world and, like, you know, just all the listeners because it's Chinese specific. There's a lot of people there.

Yeah, and they tend to like podcasts, believe it or not. And here's the thing about China. They pay for podcasts. I think we need to take a lesson from them. I think we need that Chinese teaching app so we can start doing this in Mandarin. Yeah, except we can't get it through the Great Firewall anymore.

Nope, not anymore. This really sucks for a lot of companies that were making huge strides in the podcast space over there. It's really not a good thing because a lot of that money was coming back to us in the States because they were sponsoring a bunch of shows, you know, to build out their catalog.

So this is going to hit at least some people that I know that were getting paid to build new shows for their market. Well, it's going to hit a lot of people. I mean, Apple is a restricted Chinese users from accessing podcasts that aren't hosted by local partners, effectively preventing those with a Chinese Apple account from consuming content unchecked by the Chinese sensors.

And it's not just podcasts, it's music as well. Music apps are under fire. Searches for NetEase Cloud Music, a music streaming service operated by the internet titan NetEase on a few local Android stores, returned the alert that the app is unavailable for download due to ongoing maintenance.

So they're cracking down. They're saying enough of this. We're going to control everything that you see and hear. You know, it would be worth it to us if we could get just a hosting account in China to mirror the show there. But I've seen our numbers and not many Chinese actually listen to the show, sadly.

Yeah, sadly. Yeah, I think it's it might be in the triple digits, but the low triple digits, which really kind of for as many Chinese that are out there, I guess, well, the show's not in Mandarin or that's all right. Remember, I travel overseas. I don't want to be on a watch list. When's the last time you've gone to China?

Well, I don't want to be fingered by the U.S. I'm not worried about China. OK, there you go. So I saw a really interesting article over at Slate. It is your duty to learn how to spot deepfake videos.

And this is written by Jane C. Who, who has written a lot on this kind of new emerging technology, the deepfakes and everything like that. And the TLD are on this because I bullet pointed a lot of things, but I don't want to talk about them all. It's like we've started to figure out as a society.

Photoshop fakes. We can kind of tell and and we're obsessed about them on the Internet. There are Reddit threads all over the place about every single time that some Photoshop fake comes out and everybody goes. You can see the lighting is wrong here and you can see that they the skin texture and the tone and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And her argument is we need to start doing this with videos because there are subtle tells. There's a little thing that ding, ding, dings, at least at this point, at this emerging point in this technology that dings in us. And we can kind of tell and we know something is wrong with a video when we see it, especially if we really look at it.

And her argument is we need to start all watching these deepfakes and start to get that same feeling that we get with the Photoshop fakes. And I kind of agree with her because she says, basically, the government's not going to help. The law is not going to help. It's all going to be too late.

It's all going to be past the point of no return if they even do anything. So we just have to do the same sort of thing that we've done with Photoshop fakes, start to recognize it and call people out on it when we see it. I'm sorry, but I don't want homework. I really don't want any more homework.

We're old. Maybe this is not so much for us, but certainly the kids these days need to start paying attention to this stuff and not just believe in everything as soon as they see it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because up until this point, video has been video. You know, generally you can tell and you know that something is amiss.

Yeah, it's getting it's getting crazier and crazier, and especially if my next story is anything to do with it. I love this. We've gone too far. Mike Tyson deep faked is every character in the opening of Family Matters.

I have to say I really enjoyed this video. They did a really good job. And I'm going to tell you, there are a couple in there that even if I was watching, I couldn't spot. Yeah, there were some really good ones in there. So I think the argument for, you know, us having to learn how to spot deep fakes, I think the technology is going to surpass what we can actually tell in the not too distant future.

Well, in the not too distant future, surely, and especially if you just play it. I think one of the nuances of the article that I that I was talking about was that you have to like start pausing frames, which again, it's homework, right? Yeah. Like we can't just watch a video anymore. Now we have to like pause frames and like, you know, use your arrow keys and you see the pixels move and you know something's fucked up with it.

It's a lot of work, but it's something we're all going to have to do because we can't we certainly can't expect our platforms to come in and save us, can we? Well, yeah, it looks like we need like, you know, fake a pedia or like deep, deep snopes for people who some place where people can actually that domain right now.

Yeah. Before this show is done, deep snopes is us. But anyway, yeah, it's it's I think it's going to be it's an arms race at this point. And here's the deal. Just get away from the computer a little more. I know that's not what anybody wants to hear, but hey, it's coming.

It's coming. Yeah, there's going to be there's going to be like an Armageddon point where things flip over to the point where you just don't know what you can believe anymore. It's coming faster than we anticipated because deep fakes haven't even been around that long. No, I've just gotten so good. So quick.

And every time somebody figures out, like, you know, one way that these things can be that you can spot something like remember the eye blinks, everybody's like, oh, we can spot deep fakes because they don't blink their eyes. Well, that took about 26 hours for them to fix, you know? Yeah.

And then once they get the cadence matching done and they get the edge detection done, it's going to be. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, maybe there should be jail time for people who are writing the software. Well, that would come down to regulation. Yeah, that ain't going to happen. Yeah, we don't like to talk about that.

And speaking of challenges, another streaming service is challenging broadcasters with free TV feeds. We've had a few of these before and they have been sued out of existence. But somebody else is about here. And a streaming service that offers free broadcast TV to cord cutters is winning support from some big media players five years after a similar venture got completely quashed.

So low cast is a new service that allows people without a pay TV subscription to view local broadcasters, sports and news. This is backed by a nonprofit called the Sports Fan Coalition and is launched in several large markets, including New York and L.A. And last week received a five hundred thousand dollar contribution from AT&T.

So they're going to just kind of do this. Viewers have always been able to watch over the air broadcasts for free with antenna. But federal copyright law requires that companies get a TV station's consent to carry their feeds over cable, satellite or the Internet. However, low cast found a loophole.

If you're a nonprofit, that law doesn't apply. So they're basically saying we have nonprofits backing us and we're only asking for donations. Interesting. That's that is a very interesting business model. It's quite the workaround, isn't it?

Yeah. What could go wrong with that? What they might discover is if you try to rely on donations to make a living, you won't. Yeah. Slash G.O.G. Seriously. Seriously. They're going to be eating a lot of ramen over there at low cast. But yeah, that five hundred thousand dollar contribution from AT&T will probably get them in like what, a month of bandwidth.

Probably. Yeah. So we'll see what happens with that. I thought this was really interesting. E-books purchased from Microsoft will be deleted this month because you don't really own anything anymore, as we've been screaming about. This is over at Gizmodo. Anybody that bought e-books through Microsoft stores and for a rude shock in the coming days.

Of course, that's probably like 10 people, to be fair. Honestly. Yeah. If it was a profitable, like, you know, part of their business, they wouldn't be shutting it down right now. You will get a refund, but all your books will be deleted at the end of this month. So they're going to stop selling anything and they're going to shut down the DRM servers, which is why you wouldn't be able to access your content anymore.

So anything that you bought is gone. Users will be automatically refunded to whatever account they have on file. So that's kind of nice. But if you made any annotations or notes in your e-books, those are going to go away as well. But if you did it and they have a record of it, they'll give you an extra 25 bucks per one, which is very generous, I suppose.

Wait, 25 bucks per book? Oh, to anyone. No, $25 to anyone who made annotations in their books. So you only get $25. If it was $25 a book, I'd be like, everybody who has a book from the Microsoft store, get annotating immediately.

Yes, that's true. But it is kind of crazy and it just highlights how much our landscape has changed. We really don't own things anymore. We just kind of rent them. Yeah, that's interesting that you can't export your annotations because I know in the Kindle app for the Mac, you know, if I go through and I highlight things while I'm in my actual Kindle reader on the iPad, I can load that up and I can pull my annotations and you can actually like copy and paste them out and you get a list of your annotations and things like that.

So that's actually kind of at least a decent feature. Although, wait, wait a minute. I might have misspoke there. I don't know if it does transfer from iPad to the Mac platform. I think I had to actually do the annotations on my Mac to get them to export because I used to do that for show notes for the Jordan Harbinger show when we were doing research for books.

I'd read a book and I would annotate different things that I wanted to use in the show that I would export that and put them in the show notes. But I'm pretty sure that it didn't it didn't sink across. Anyway, that's a that's a side note. But it would be nice if Microsoft gave you the option of at least pulling your annotations in some kind of text file.

Yeah, that would be nice. But, you know, that would involve them actually investing in the software, which wasn't going very well for them anyways. True. True that. Yeah. And this story is a concession to a listener of the show that was pissed off that we didn't keep a close eye on the Huawei story.

And President Trump has decided to let Huawei buy technology equipment again from the US. And we have no idea what that actually fucking means, which is why we wait months before we start talking about these stories, because we don't know what this means yet.

He's suspending tariffs on additional Chinese goods right now, and China has agreed to buy large amounts of US agricultural products. But Democrat and Republican lawmakers and and most security experts still see Huawei as a national security threat to the US.

So who the F knows? Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. So I have some interesting news here in the fresh talent market. Oh, yes. And I love this. This comes from the Sydney Morning Herald and their their domain is smh.com.au.

So shaking my head at this one at this one. I thought it was a joke at first. And then I saw Sydney Morning Herald. They have a very long piece on the Sydney Morning Herald about how Boeing outsourced a lot of the software for the 737 Max.

Boops a daisy. And they went with a couple of companies in India because they cut a deal with India to buy a bunch of jets. And then they said, OK, we're going to put a couple like almost two billion dollars into investments into India to help, you know, say thank you.

A little, you know, pro quo. A little you scratch my back. I scratch yours. Well, it turns out that some of the people that were working on this, you know, they got paid a whopping nine dollars an hour. Yeah, if you can get it, I guess. And they were working on some of the software that caused one of the crashes.

So whoopsie. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you and I have talked about Indian programmers before and outsourcing of those companies. I did. Oh, my God. And the code was horrible. It kind of worked. You couldn't debug it. You couldn't figure anything out with it.

And I'm I can't believe they found anybody better. I'm sure they got the same sort of code. Yeah. I mean, I'm with you. I'm with you on that one. I never had a single programming job that came back from Indian developers that we did not immediately flush down the toilet and try and get our money back because it was just garbage.

It's garbage. And it's completely you can't you can't make heads or tails of any of it. So I'm sure that Boeing is doing the same sort of thing right now. Well, they're they're now paying through the nose to get people to fix this crap. Yeah. And the funny thing is, I mean, I can make heads or tails of the stuff I got from India, but it was just bad coding.

You know, they didn't do any any part of the spec that was based in security. They didn't check any of their variables. They didn't check user input fields. They didn't, you know, scope any of the variables to make sure it's like, OK, well, this is supposed to be, you know, a four four digit int.

Nope. Didn't check any of that. And we put all that stuff in the spec. And when it came back, it was just like, take the form variable straight from the form and throw it to the method. And it's just like, are you fucking kidding me? You know, it's like you write data scrubbers for that stuff. And they did none of it.

Of course, none of it. So that's what you get for cheap. You get what you pay for. Yeah, you do. Which is, you know, a couple billions of dollars in your jets not flying right now and people canceling orders. So I would say people died. Yeah, that.

Oh, that's right. That's right. There's some people died. 46 to be precise. So you definitely want to. You know what? You got to spend money to make money. So don't skimp on the things that keep the fucking plane in the air, I think, is the lesson that Boeing is going to be taking away from this.

So we can update our list of things we should spend money on to good sheets, good toilet paper, a good TV, square footage, and things that keep you alive. This episode is sponsored by Privacy.com.

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Media Candy. Brian, last night, I finally had a little bit of time to myself, and I'm like, ah, let's watch some TV. Okay. And I was bouncing around Netflix, and the only thing that I could find that would possibly even be remotely interesting, I watched episode two of Black Mirror, the new season.

Since there are only three, I'm treating these as, like, individual movies. I have a confession to make about Black Mirror. I think I know what it is, but go ahead. Don't think I like it that much. I think you're probably right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it was a thing when it first started.

It was like the Twilight Zone for nerds. But now it's just, it's, you know, an hour and a half. It's misery porn. It's pretty much all it is. Yeah, I'm not into it. I don't care. So I watched episode two. Right. And, yeah, I did not leave that episode feeling better than when I started.

So I don't know if I'm going to watch episode three. I might have to just because I'm a completionist. But yeah, you are. You force you. See, you always make fun of me for, like, sticking through things that are kind of crap for a while or, you know, Game of Thrones and all that. But you're worse than I am.

If you start something, you cannot stop, even though it's fucking horrible. Yeah. Like I said, completionist, that's part of the problem. So this episode did have Topher Grace in it, playing the kind of like a hybrid of Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg character.

Right. He was on a he was on a retreat, a, you know, a silence retreat kind of. He was out in the desert by himself. But yeah, there was really nothing great about this. The other main character in this played Moriarty and Sherlock.

So it was nice seeing him again. Oh, I like. Yeah, I like that guy. Yeah. Yeah. I miss Sherlock. That's all this. This episode did was make me miss Sherlock a lot. So it was it was not a feel good episode. And I kind of want to scrub it from my mind. So maybe maybe episode three, when I'm in a really good mood and I don't want to be in a really good mood anymore.

I'll watch episode three. OK, I think you can skip it. Yeah. My dirty little secret is I've actually never seen half of the episodes of Black Mirror. I actually I was into it at the beginning. Like I watched a couple and I basically just kind of scoured the Internet for the top rated Black Mirror episodes.

And I watched those and I didn't watch the rest of them because I don't need this kind of darkness in my life right now. That's true. That's true. You are raising a young and so you need I'm raising a young and in dark times. So it ain't that dark. It's pretty dark. Well, speaking of dark times, Bill and Ted are back.

I am so excited about this. They are filming now for release for August 21st, 2020, but they have added a bunch of new people to the cast, which I thought was a little late in the game since they're already filming. But they've got the princesses will be back. OK.

I'm excited about that. Sadly, they can't bring back George Carlin. That's no, they cannot. Well, Rufus ain't coming back. They could deep fake Rufus. OK, but there's still time traveling. So I'm looking forward to it. Keanu Reeves is having such a renaissance right now.

I don't know if you saw it because I should actually I'll try to find this and put it in the show notes. But somebody did a whole series of of amazing illustrations. Reimagining Keanu Reeves as the prince or the main lead in every single Disney movie.

Phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. Oh, that's hilarious. So good. And we now have a showrunner for Picard. OK. I'm looking forward to this. Michael Chabon or Chabon or Chabon. Thank God it wasn't Ronald D. Moore. He's busy. He's busy fucking up shows for Apple right now.

So no one will see. Yeah, you're safe that he's not coming back to CBS and coming back to the Star Trek universe. So thank God. Very excited about this because Alex Kurtzman is just kind of swamped right now. So it's good.

It's good. And, you know, because they've got the Section 31 spinoff coming. And they have another showrunner for that who is a woman, which will be cool. And he's still running. He's just running so many things. They're going to have so many Star Trek shows over at CBS.

Star Trek and Star Wars are just going to explode because with Disney now having their own streaming channel, it's going to be Star Wars show, Star Wars show, Star Wars show. And CBS is going to be countering with Star Trek show, Star Trek show, Star Trek show. Here's the thing, you know, I'm Star Trek all the way.

So I'm excited about the Star Trek shows. The Star Wars shows, I really it does not tickle my tickle my ball sack, as they say. I'm going to say, you know, I like both. But Star Trek is is more cerebral. And as long as they keep all the shows heady and intelligent, I'm Star Trek all the way.

Right. So, I mean, I'm really excited for Discovery because I think that twist they did at the end of Discovery was fucking fantastic. Don't spoil it for me yet because I still haven't gotten to the end of it. Jesus Christ. Are you going to ever watch TV again? I can't even fucking like I get an hour a night, man. I have a kid. So I finished I finished the 700 page book.

We'll get to that later. No more of the books. You're not allowed to you're not allowed to expand your mind until we slap it down with mindless television for a while. I'm going to finish Jessica Jones. Then I'll go finish Star Trek. Oh, man. OK, well, there's a new TV series coming to USA Network.

I don't have time for this. Yeah, it's based on the ID software's origin story, which should be interesting. But it is going to be so over dramatized that I don't even think it's going to be that interesting. Because, you know, you've got John Carmack, who is the Uber nerd.

You've got John Romero. I mean, these guys built, you know, some of the greatest games of all time. You know, I'm a Quake player. Yeah, I play Quake with you. Yeah. So, you know, the problem with this is I see this kind of like Halt and Catch Fire, which I could stand for about seven minutes.

I'm just like, I never got into it either. Oh, God. That first seven minutes was just so over dramatized and like so like, oh, God, this is so important stuff we're doing. I'm like, you're a fucking nerd typing into your computer late at night. You smell like pizza and Mountain Dew.

I don't care. I really don't care. And nobody looked like you. No, there's a beautiful woman in the show. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Go back and look at the historical record. If you want some historical nihilism, go back and look at the real people behind Halt and Catch Fire.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. I got another problem with this one. James Franco. Sorry, I'm out on this, dude. No. OK, yeah, I don't I don't care either way about James Franco. Right. Not really like literally not on my radar, but I'll probably watch a little bit of it because a great player.

You know, what are you going to do? You watch it for me. I will. I will. I will definitely watch the new Sandman TV series coming to Netflix for you, even though this has me a little bit worried because Neil Gaiman has been he's been, you know, really having a renaissance now.

This is like him cashing in. I'm a little surprised this is on Netflix because Amazon made the deal for Good Omens. I'm a little surprised that they didn't lock them up for both. Yeah. You know, it what's even more interesting is that DC's channel isn't going to be funding it.

Right. That's really the interesting one because they're just like, we need some money, you know, so let's probably their entire, you know, pay to play network is going to be funded by this Sandman series with all the money. money from Netflix. Right. So I'm, you know, I don't know about this because.

Neil Gaiman is not going to be the showrunner, so that's the downside. Wonder Woman screenwriter Alan Heinberg is going to write the series and be the showrunner, so it's going to run a little too long and the last 40 minutes will be horrible.

Morpheus now knows Kung Fu because they're going to transpose the Morpheus from the showrunner. From the Matrix into Dream and there we go. Whoa. So I'm on the fence about this one. I will watch it, obviously, if it ever gets made. It is not. Of course, you're not going to watch it yet.

What's fucking Sandman? Of course, I'm going to watch it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we just talked about Vertigo going away last week. Sandman was part of my entire building my existence as a human being. So and, you know, if there's going to be 75 hours of Sandman, which there obviously won't be.

But man, I would be into it if they do a good job. But it's live action. So I don't know. I don't know how that's going to work out. We'll see. But we'll see. So I actually listened to two new podcasts this week as a rare thing for me. Yeah. I took your recommendation.

I listened to Pessimist Archive podcast episode 18, Kids These Days. Loved it. What did you think? It was good, wasn't it? Because yes, every generation has always hated the generation that comes after them. And the reasons for doing so are very poignant and interesting and funny.

And I enjoyed the podcast a lot. The only problem is I can't stand Jason Pfeiffer, the host. I can't stand his voice. Yeah. You know, that's somebody that builds himself on his website as a speaker, writer, podcast host. He has the most horrible voice.

Yeah, he's got that voice. So 1.5x generally tends to fix those things. I don't think that it could because his voice is already so high. It must be like listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks read a podcast. It kind of is, but you get used to it. You really get used to it. Yeah. I will go back and listen to some of the other episodes because there's some interesting topics in there.

And it was well done. It was very NPR. Yeah. I mean, he's got a grant from the Koch Foundation to do this. So he has money. And it takes him a long time to do it because of all the voice talent that he brings in to do the recreations and stuff. Except for some of them came from Fiverr. Yeah, literally.

I don't know if you listed the credits at the end, but some of the people came from Fiverr. Literally Fiverr. So he's pocketing the rest of the money. So on a future pessimist's archive will be about corruption and taking grant money and hiring talent from Fiverr.

Yes, amazing. And I also started listening to a new podcast. I was at my local the other night. More on that later. And I talked to a friend of the show, Sean, who told me that I need to listen to headlong season three, running from cops.

And this is a I don't know what the other two seasons were about because I haven't looked into it at all. I just listened to the first episode of this amazing after this entire show is about cops, the TV show and how it's actually how it's actually destroyed and changed policing in our country.

What? It's amazing. The first episode was stunning. It was so good. And this is like a, you know, 60 minutes kind of thing. This is deep investigative reporting. I think there's 10 episodes in the entire season. Six. Six. Great.

Even better. Six with one bonus. All right. Fantastic. Even better. This is amazing. They get into how it's changed policing in our country and how fame kind of fucks everybody up. It's awesome. Really? I never would have thought of that. Dude, you have to listen to this.

Living here in Hollywood. I've never even watched an episode of Cops and I was fucking riveted. You've never watched an episode of Cops? How is that possible? No. Oh my God. Because as soon as I hear bad boys, I change the channel. I've seen hundreds of hours of Cops.

I'm not surprised by this. Well, I come from the Midwest. There was nothing on. When you're waiting for Star Trek Next Gen Season 1 to come on and it's on the same network as Cops and they're running a Cops marathon and you're waiting for reruns. What are you going to do? You know what I always have next to my remote?

A book. Brian, I am going to tell you right now, the TV that I used to watch Cops on had a dial. Okay? So. Oh, well, that's the other fascinating thing. It's been on for 30 years. Exactly. Cops has been on almost my entire life.

I don't know about almost your entire life. Almost my entire cognizant life. Adult. Your adult life. Let's go with adult life. Because it came on when you were, you're what, 46? I was 16 when it first came on. Right. Yeah, I was 18. So. You know why I wasn't watching when I was 16? You're trying to get laid.

Or getting laid. Successfully. Okay. Good for you. I finished the 7,000 page. All right. It was only like 600 and something.

650 pages. Yes. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. And I loved it. I really did. I'm looking forward to reading the next one because it's going to continue. It is dark and it is depressing, but it ends on a note of hope. Well done.

Okay. So. I really love this book. It's the shit sandwich. It's more of an open-faced shit sandwich because at the end, you know, there's no shit on the top. Okay. Well, an open-faced sandwich would have bread at the bottom and shit on it. It does not. It does not work that way. I was making the shit the bread, Jason.

Well, on an open-faced sandwich, the bread is at the bottom and you start with the bread because it's the first thing that hits your tongue. So. So if the shit's the bread, then that is a good analogy. Okay, okay. If the shit's the bread, then the bread is the shit. See? That's where I was going with. The inverted schulmeister is what we'll call that.

I wish we could make that a show title, but I would never be able to find artwork for that. Oh, come on. Just put a poop emoji with a loaf of bread on top. We can make it happen. We can make a deep fake of it. I got to say, Jason, I think it's worth the time. It's a good read. I really liked it.

This is an exciting new author for me. I went and looked at his website and unfortunately, most of the stuff that he writes is like fantasy bullshit. But when he sticks to, I will read all of this man's sci-fi. I liked it. I liked it a lot. I hate those guys that do that.

It's like half the books that come out are fantasy, half are sci-fi. I think, what is it? Brandon Sanderson does that shit? Got to pay the fucking bills, man. Fantasy sells. That's true. Fantasy sells way better than sci-fi does. Ah, that sucks. But okay. Okay. If you say it's good. It was good, man.

It was really good. Okay, I'll add it to the audible cue because I'm already going through one of your recommendations right now. The Dark River, book two of the Fourth Realm Trilogy by John 12 Hawks. All right. What'd you think? I finished book two. I broke the rule.

I started book three. It ended on such a cliffhanger. I'm just like, yo! I actually think the rule doesn't apply to the series. I think it's best read just straight through. It's one continuous story. I mean, it literally picks up immediately where the other one left off.

There's no time jumps. There's no nothing. It's one continuous story. Yeah. So I'm like, you know, 30% into book three right now. Yep. And I'm still digging it quite a bit. Yeah. It's a good book. And, you know. It's a good series. It is a good series.

And the fact that, you know, book three came out in 2009, 10 years ago. And he was a visionary. I got to say, he was a pretty good visionary about the shit that we're going through right now. Yep. I told you that's what made me pick up that book again.

All of a sudden, I discovered it was just in my collection. And I moved it around from place to place. And I'm like, why do I still have this book? And I reread the first one. I was like, holy shit. Yeah. This guy was predicting exactly where we're at now. Yeah. Yeah. All the way through.

I mean, I give him props, except for the, you know, the wacky, you know. Well, there's a bit of woo-woo mysticism going on. Yeah. Yeah. There's a bunch of that. And, you know, just some unnecessary love story that gets in the way. But for the most part. You know my rule of sci-fi.

At least the guy's not a professor. Come on. Exactly. He's not a professor. He's not a professor. So, at least that part is palatable. But all in all, I am thoroughly digging this series. It's a fun series. Yeah. Once I'm done with this, I'll pick up Children of Time and see if I can have an inverted Schulmeister myself.

Moron of the Week! I love Arby's Horsey Sauce. It's the best thing in the world. It's good. It's a little bit underpowered for my palate. But it is still good if you put enough on. It's good stuff. And I love this move that they're making.

I'm not sure if this is more. Well, I'll tell you why it ends up being Moron of the Week. Because they were potential for Hero of the Week. Everybody's heard about the Impossible Burger. Yes. Burger King has added an Impossible Burger. All the fast food chains are getting out there really fast to get Impossible Burgers.

And Arby's said, Arby's ad campaign is, we have the meat. So, what are they going to do? Are they going to add an Impossible Burger? Hell no! What did they do? They made something called the Merit. Okay. It's a meat carrot. Okay. So, it's just a meat-shaped carrot.

It's a carrot made out of turkey. And it looks exactly like a carrot. Okay. And it's amazing. And they said, well, to hell with that. We have the world's first meat vegetable. Or megetable. Megetable. Megetable.

Oh, man. I love that. Now, why they are Morons of the Week is this is just a publicity stunt. It's never actually going to be in the store. Because if they had one, I would drive to the goddamn place and get myself a Merit. I would, too. Oh, man. Because here's the conspiracy theory is that Arby's isn't actually made out of meat.

You know? That's true. Who knows? Everybody says that, you know, that worked at Arby's, that the roast beef comes in a bag that you actually have to. It's a liquid. And then you have to solidify to actually turn into the roast beef. I don't want to know that. I don't want to know that. I don't have one anywhere near me, but I loved Arby's when I was young.

Here's the deal. I know it. And I still eat there. That's how good it is. I'm sorry. You can go and get, like, you know, three roast beef sandwiches for 75 cents and a gallon of horsey sauce. Who cares what it's made out of? No. I honestly just need the horsey sauce. I don't even need the fucking sandwich.

Yeah. Well, you know, just go do a drive-by. I'm going to post-makes myself some horsey sauce. That's all you got to do. Seriously. Go steal some horsey sauce from Arby's. It'll be $7, please. Oh, my moron of the week is NASA. Because back in the day, apparently, they accidentally sold the original moon landing tapes to an intern.

Oops. Yeah. Yeah. They sold 1,000 reels of videotape, like old school videotape way back in the day. And they sold it for $217.77 at a government auction. And now the guy was actually going to sell off all the tapes to TV stations because he thought he got a good deal on usable videotape that could be re-recorded.

But his dad was the smart one and said, you might want to hang on to the ones that say Apollo 11 EVA. And, yes, they are the original recordings of the moon landing and Armstrong's first steps on the moon. And they're going up for auction at Sotheby's.

And they're expected to fetch around $700,000. I think we should buy them. GOG.show slash Patreon. Slash Patreon, please. We only need 175,000 people to come and give us, like, you know, a couple bucks.

But the thing about it is I think this guy's a dick. Honestly, I think this guy's a total dick. Because if I paid $217.77 and ended up with the original moon landing tapes, the first thing I would do would be to walk into NASA and say, guys, you made a mistake.

I got something here. These need to be in the archive. You need to put these, you know, in the Indiana Jones, you know, big room with all the crates and keep them safe forever. But no, this guy wants to make a buck. 100% what I would have done, what you would have done.

Definitely. Yep. Yeah. And he said he contacted NASA, but they couldn't reach an agreement. And I'm like, here's the agreement that should have been reached. Give them back, you asshole. Seriously. All right. Fair enough. Anyway, I have a hero of the week, Jason.

Oh, good. Thank God. I need a palate cleanser. Yep. Sometimes an act of defiance is necessary just to shake up authorities because their actions shows them that it's unacceptable to mistreat their clients. That's probably what this guy had in mind when he created a scene at the Melbourne airport. A passenger was about to board his Qantas flight to Perth when he was informed at the gate that he wouldn't be allowed to take his can of beer with him.

What? He argued. Yes. This is Australia. He argued with the staff. I thought they handed them out to you. When he got on the plane. But they insisted. They insisted the rule is part of their policy. So he decided to check his beer. The beer can went through the usual check-in process along with the rest of the passenger's baggage, and it came out through the thing at the baggage claim, and he grabbed his beer.

Fucking hero. Fucking hero. How much you want to bet, though, that every, like, not garbage thrower, but baggage thrower shook that thing up massively as it went through? Oh, I think you have to wait like five years before you open that thing up. Yeah, seriously. There's two options here.

Either they shook it up to just, you know, mess with the guy, or they all stood and saluted it as it went down the aisle and said, good on you, Mike. I would have saluted personally. Yep. Feedback loop.

Over at Patreon, we have two new Patreon subscribers, Nicholas and Brian. And Brian writes, finally decided to toss a few coins your way. Thanks for the great show. One comment about Google Maps. I went through the process of putting my business on the map, pun intended, a few months ago, and Google did send me a postcard with a verification code at the business address I listed.

I had to put in the code before they would list my business, so they did implement some kind of verification process. Interesting. That is interesting, because that belies the whole Google map thing that we were just talking about. So, I don't know. Yeah, I wonder what else is going on there. Maybe it's a local thing.

Who knows? Yeah, could be. Could be. Depends on me. Could be depending on your market. Yep, maybe. And we got some messages over on Patreon. Ivan writes in, hey, Grumps, you might have seen this article somewhere else and is a bit clickbaity headline, but content worth mentioning on a show. This horrifying app undresses a photo of any woman with a single click.

Yep. And a programmer created an application that uses neural networks to remove clothing from the images of women, making them look realistically nude. It's called Deep Nude, and it has since been removed from all app stores, but it takes a photo of a clothed person, creates a new naked image of that same person that swaps clothes for naked breasts and a vulva, and only works on images of women.

When Motherboard tried using an image of a man, it replaced his pants with a vulva. While Deep Nude works with varying levels of success on images of fully clothed women, it appears to work best on images where the person is already showing a lot of skin. We tested the app on dozens of photos and got the most convincing results on high-res translucent images from Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues.

Tough day at the office, their advice. Tough day at the office for Motherboard. Yeah. I think they got a little too into this. You know, we all knew this was coming. Of course it's coming. And it's what we've been talking about a lot. How do we verify anything now these days?

How do we know if anything is real? Well, fortunately, the guy pulled the app and, you know, because he was just like, I figured this was going to be like a little thing that, you know, I'd get a few bucks here and there with, and when it blew up, he's just like, oh shit. I let the genie get out of the bottle. I just took a look, like I searched Deep Nude on Reddit.

Oh my God. Oh Jesus, it's everywhere. There are a lot of really sad guys out there that desperately want to see everybody naked. Yes. Yes. Because they're spending all day on Reddit. Go out and meet some women. It's not that hard. Go to a bar. Go to Disney.

Who the hell knows? Go anywhere. Roy writes in, thanks heaps, Jason. I am now getting nothing done thanks to you mentioning the Harry Potter game. Damn, I am so addicted. Well, better you than me because it's, I'm done. I already gave up. And he says, P.S.

The first death in New Zealand on a Lyme scooter, though possibly a medical incident rather than a fall. Still, ACC paid out $739,184 from October 28th to March 6th in accident compensation. Well, sad to hear that somebody died on a Lyme scooter, but a little scooter follow-up, Brian.

Since I've been spending so much time in Santa Monica at the courthouse, when I go outside and look around, there is a surprising number of people riding bird scooters with helmets. Wow. I have not seen that. Yeah. Those must be like the federal employees in the local area going to lunch.

No, this was in the morning. They're leaving. They're just driving by the courthouse, going past and on their way down to like Third Street Promenade. And I would have to say about 40% of the riders that I've seen are wearing helmets. So that's an uptick. Yeah, that is definitely an uptick. And Pranthe writes this as well.

Thanks for the recommendation on the Dead Drink First book. Very moving and touching audio. Great show in general, but this was an extra gem. Awesome. Glad you liked it. I thought it was very moving too. The room got a little dusty there at the end. And over at PayPal, Jeremy, Raymond, Simon, and Sven threw us a few bones.

So thank you very much, guys. Really appreciate it. I mean, really appreciate it. We do. And over at GOG.show, Peter writes in visibility equals zero. I tried writing this with the equal sign and number zero, but your word fence wouldn't let me submit it if I did that. Yeah. Good. It's doing its job.

It's doing its job. I deleted my Uber account a year or more ago during the uproar and after I couldn't take it anymore. I convinced that they are an evil company. I went through all the steps to delete my account, not just the app. And today I got this in the mail. Subject. Peter, should we delete your Uber account?

Body. Don't let your Uber account be deleted. Hi, Peter. It looks like your Uber account has been inactive for a long time because your privacy and data protection are important to us. The account associated with blah at example.com will be deleted unless you take action. To keep your Uber account open, just log into the app or tap the link below.

Other ways to keep your Uber account open. If you'd like to continue using the Uber app but no longer have it on your phone, you can download it now. Links for Android and iPhone. If your inactivity is due to a forgotten password, you can reset your password now. Link. No, I wanted you to delete my fucking account.

Of course, there's no option for that anywhere in the email. And I'll let you read the last line. Deliver effing rue. Here's one thing, though, that this might be. This might be a phishing email. Could be. Could be. Yeah. Yeah, it could be somebody trying to get your Uber password.

So there is a possibility of that. I wouldn't be surprised if this is actually from Uber. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. But I get emails from Instagram all day long that are phishing attempts on my account. But none of them are as well-worded as this one. Actually, they are pretty well-worded.

They look extremely official. Okay. So, yeah. And, I mean, I've got two-factor auth, so I don't get that. No, that's true. Yeah, okay. Yeah, because if somebody tries to log into my account, I get the ping for two-factor. And I don't get a ping when these emails come through.

And they really look like they're from Instagram. So, I just got to say, make sure two-factor is enabled everywhere you possibly can. Seriously. Cameron writes in, And after hearing Brian talk about inappropriate ads on YouTube and the confirmation bias algorithm made me want to provide another perspective.

I started using the internet a lot between the ages of 10 and 13. This is where my usage ramped way up. As an impressionable young person, I would often end up going down the rabbit holes and end up in conspiracy theory land. I heavily contribute this time in my life to the anxiety and depression I deal with today.

I think they need to find another algorithm to use. This led to a question I had for you guys. Do you think regulation of these media companies or splitting up these companies is the better solution? Regulation. 100%. Splitting up the companies wouldn't change anything about the algorithms.

The only thing that would change the algorithms is regulation. Regulation, regulation, regulation, regulation. Regulation, regulation, regulation, regulation. I know a lot of you out there hate it when I say this. That's all. That's the only way this will change. Only way.

Or stop using them. Yeah, that's never going to happen. That's just not going to happen, Jason. I know, but hey, man, it worked for me. So I'm just telling you what works for me. Well, there's only so long you can keep doing a tech podcast if you're not on the internet, Jason. Well, I can still navigate.

I can still navigate. I know how this thing works. Dave writes in, fellow grumps, about a month ago, I asked if it was okay to use saltyoldgeek.com. After setting things up with a basic blog, I thought I'd share my latest blog post and ask for your feedback. So guys who are listening and gals who are listening, go check it out.

It says, when in doubt, blame it on the neutrinos. And it's over at saltygeek.com. Link will be in the show notes. And I did read the article and you know what? He's got a good, good, funny point. I like it. I liked it too. Scott wrote in, I've heard you guys shit on vitamins and supplements before.

Now I'm questioning my fish oil and multivitamin. Get it right of both of them. What vitamins and or supplements do you recommend and which ones are snake oil? Thanks. Keep on geeking on, friends. All right, so I'll tell you exactly what I use. I take a B6, a B12, acetyl L-carnitine, CLA, megafood multi for men 40 plus, megafood turmeric strength for whole body, L-tyrosine, and NADH plus CoQ10.

Those are what I take. Fish oil, screw it. Just go eat some fish. And, you know, Jason is a paragon of health. Actually, these things keep me sane and keep me going. When I don't take them, I go down the rabbit hole and you don't hear from me for a week. There you go. I also take CoQ10.

CoQ10, yeah. Yeah, I take that as well. I take a few other things as well, but it's all very boring and I'll put it in the show notes. I just didn't go through it. Yeah, I mean, this is my stack that I take. L-carnitine is really good for a couple of things, which has the new research that's come out around it is it really helps with depression, which was a side effect that I didn't know about.

And that's one of the ones I think when I stopped taking it that I get really, you know, off my kilter. Oh, maybe I should take that. Give it a shot. I got rid of the fish oil because that is bullshit. Yeah, that turned out to be, unfortunately, bullshit. I just eat a lot of fish, so it doesn't really matter to me.

But, yeah, the acetyl L-carnitine, it's good for weight loss and it is also good for mood. So, yeah, a whole bunch of new stuff out there. And if you're into weight loss, too, CLA is really good, too. I can put some links in the show notes for all the stuff that I take. Please do. I'd like to see some of that.

Yeah, yeah. And at our age, Brian, take a B6 and a B12. You don't need a mega B. They're tiny. They're tiny. They take one sip of water. It's good for you. And you don't get it from anything else. Yeah. So, I mean, you know who got me on B6 and B12?

Daria Rose. I was having some issues. Well, I trust her. I trust her completely. Yeah, I was having some issues. And she's just like, just throw in a B6 and a B12 and cut down on your drink in a bit. And that's going to change you completely. Cut down on my drinking? Well, cut down on my drinking. Your drinking and my drinking.

Oh, yeah. They're different things. Yeah. Yeah. We're talking orders of magnitude difference. It's a geometric scale. Yeah. It really is. We need a calculator to figure that out. Harold Kumar writes in, hey, guys, long time listener of the show, but contacting you for the first time.

Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio? And we have a link over at the message board at stackoverflow.com. Take a look at this thread, and it kind of looks like people have reason to put the tinfoil hat on. P.S. Harold Kumar is obviously a fake name, but it'd be fun if you said it on the show. Well, we said on the show, was it fun?

It was for me, because now I want to fucking White Castle. I really want White Castle. I read through this as well. It mostly seems to be an ad that is asking for way more information that's needed, which is what everybody does these days.

It's why you need an ad blocker and a story. It's about browser fingerprinting. It's all it's about, because if there's any information that they can get from your browser that they can build a profile of you and send that back to the mothership, that's what it's for.

So they're just trying to start it up to figure out what your audio and microphone configuration, your codec settings are, like what codecs are available. They put that all into an array, hash that, and then boom, there's your browser. So they can just tag that to any ad that they see going down the line. Yep. And Bob's your uncle.

So, yeah. Nosec writes in, if this ever sees the light of day, any guesses how long it'll take before it's cracked open? Oh, really? Hold my beer. And this is a link to the world's first patented unhackable computer ever. And it's a Kickstarter.

Of course it is. The guy says, I came up with a new hardware design of personal computer, where the computer processing is done in one hardware compartment and the internet processing in another, both completely separate from each other. Nothing in the internet processing area is allowed to go to computer processing area.

If a virus gets into the internet processing area, it cannot affect the computer processing area in any way whatsoever. The computer is always working. In worst case, the user turns off the computer and the virus is gone. It's the two hardware compartments that make the computer unhackable.

Capital U on unhackable. Bullshit. There are so many things wrong with this. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. And I've got to say, for the, let's see, they had a, he has a targeted goal of $870,000. He's got $374.

Yep. From 35 backers. And that's about all it's worth. None of that makes any sense whatsoever. But did you look at, did you look at his profile photo? No, I did. I did. Yeah. Yeah. That's some hair. That's some hair that guy's got there. Linda writes in.

Hey, Jason and Brian, I'm visiting Santa Monica in a few weeks for a voice workshop and looking for fun places to experience. There was an Irish bar that was mentioned in an older podcast about a favorite Irish bar of Brian's. Was it Finn McCool's? I'm an all-girl Celtic. I'm in an all-girl Celtic inspired.

Celtic. Celtic. I'm in an all-girl Celtic inspired band. So I'm big inclined towards live music and Irish bars. Besides trying not to get run over by scooters. Do you have any suggestions of places to go? Linda, regular listener and PayPal supporter. Well, thank you, Linda.

Unfortunately, you've missed the boat on Finn McCool's. It has sadly changed hands. It is now called Jameson's. Oh, I didn't know it had a new name. I thought it was still Finn's. No, it is Jameson's now. And there's not a lot of Celtic music going on in there anymore.

There's a lot of, it's a frat boy kind of place, sadly. Oh, it's gone. Damn. But all the old crew still works there. They're wonderful people. So if you don't go on a Friday or Saturday night, it's still actually kind of nice. Um, a lot of TVs.

So there's lots of sports going on, but, uh, I would say drop in anyways and say hi. And, uh, if you see D or Jared or some of the other wonderful people that work the bar there, they're great people. And it's still a fun place to drop in on, uh, Santa Monica.

I also, um, highly recommend Baja Cantina, uh, Mexican joint. Uh, one of my favorite places to eat in the area, uh, Jinya ramen that Jason and I met up a couple of times. Fantastic food. Delicious. Uh, Jason spent a few, spent a few days in Santa Monica recently as well.

So maybe he has something to recommend, but, uh, there's a couple of recommendations for you. Oh, stopping at Rick's on main street. Nice little dive bar. Stay away from Shay J. If you want food, uh, you can go there for drinks. That's fine. It's if you've seen the show Goliath on Amazon, it'll be a nice little retro memory thing.

Uh, I think it's raccoon and ramen over by the courthouse. I've been going there. That was cheated on Jinya. I, it's too far. I can't make it there and back with the, the time they gave us on a bird. I could, but then I would be a douche bag. So I just walked out in the street, have a couple of beers and have some of their delicious ramen, which I have to say is really good.

So it's not as good, but it is still pretty good. But, um, yeah, for the most part, I can't remember anything around there, but welcome to Santa Monica. Yeah. If you need anything else, just email me or tweet me. Neil writes in another example of disruptors, ignoring regulations and getting away with it.

In this case, Uber eats and food safety. I suppose we shouldn't complain after all they're just a platform. Yeah. And this is the link over at the BBC, uh, shocking fake takeaway sold on Uber eights. Um, they basically just set up, uh, they basically just applied themselves to Uber eats and they were able to process orders with no identity checks, bank details, food hygiene ratings, nothing.

They just made up a restaurant. They made up a restaurant and said, we're in business and Uber accepted them. I love it. I love it. Un-fucking-believable. Oh no, Brian, it is so fucking believable. Oh, that's that. Yeah, that's, that is the real problem now, right? It really is.

It is just so fucking believable. Yeah. And, uh, Wesley writes in, thanks to you guys, promoting privacy.com. I signed up via your link and I love it. They didn't support my credit union initially, but I sent them an email and they responded immediately that they would look into it took a couple of months, but now my obscure credit union is part of the service and I use privacy all the time.

I worked 2,200 miles away from home. My God gone anywhere from two to six weeks at a time. My debit card seems to get compromised a couple of times per year. Right after I leave for work, my credit union promptly deactivates the card, but then everything that builds to my debit card, like Netflix, Pandora, et cetera, gets declined.

And I spent an hour or so switching all those accounts to the credit card and then back to the new debit card. When I get home, not anymore. Privacy has solved all that for me. Plus I set limits. So when net, I feel like we're reading an ad. Yeah, but we're not actually, this is, this is actually from a user of the show or can we save this for the next time that I have to do a privacy ad?

Well, which we have to do this episode. So privacy has solved that for me. Plus I set limits. So when Netflix, Pandora, et cetera, and inevitably hacked and my info is in the wild, would be crooks wouldn't have unfettered access to my monies. Thanks guys. Privacy is even better than your recommendation of PIA, which I also use.

Thanks to you guys. Well, thank you, Wesley, for supporting the show. We really do only advertise for stuff that we actually kind of like. Yeah. And actually use. So everything that's been on this show, we, we use in some way, shape or form. And I use privacy every single day when I buy something.

So I, I really stand by these guys. Uh, so thanks, Wesley. And, uh, hopefully your card isn't getting jacked all the time anymore. Arp writes in, if you decide you like Firefox again, there's an add-on called a Firefox multi-account containers.

It allows you to quickly create and automate access to separate Firefox profiles. I use it to separate my tracking cookies, Facebook, Google apps, sketchy sites, Amazon, all get their own profile in my profile automatically switches when I go to their sites. That's really cool.

Arp, thanks for that tip because, uh, I was supposed to have my write-up of Firefox done by now, but unfortunately my civic duty has called and I have not gotten to it yet, but it is going to be delayed, right? Well, it's not that much delayed because hopefully over the, over the break, I'll be able to get to it because I really do want to switch to Firefox because I don't want Chrome on my machine anymore.

Right. It is so fast. So if I can make it work, then that's great, but that's really cool that you can create multi-account containers that switch based on your websites that you visit. That is really cool. Yeah. And Barrett writes in, thought you might enjoy this. Years ago, my brother-in-law was dating a girl who left him and ran off with the then single skateboarder, Tony Hawk.

When I heard about the cameo site on your show, I contacted my sister who then proceeded to have Tony send my brother-in-law a video birthday wish, $200 well spent. That's pretty awesome. That's pretty funny. Actually, I was listening to the, um, I was listening to the childish, uh, podcast.

Which is, uh, Greg Fitzsimmons and Alison Rosen. And they talk about raising kids. So obviously this is of interest to me. So I'm, I've been listening to it a lot. And in the latest episode, they both set up cameo accounts. And it's funny because I think $80 and $50 is what they're charging.

And they both had like one person do it. So, you know, I'm actually surprised they had one. Ah, yeah, me too. Actually. Yeah. Honestly, I'm surprised they had one. Cameron writes in. I wanted to respond to a listener who wrote in last time regarding getting into tech.

Plural site is a pretty good place to look to get into tech and try different things out. They have courses or even paths within different techie careers from C-sharp programming to ethical hacking. And there are courses for the newbies all of the way to more advanced topics. Both companies I've worked at have given us subscriptions, but it's only 30 bucks a month for a personal subscription.

So check that out. Plural site. I've never heard of that one. That's cool. Me either. I'll take a look at it. And over at iTunes, we have a new five-star rating from no more names to choose from. It's worth a try. They're not old or very geeky. They're grumpy and enjoyable. Hey, man, I'll take what I can get.

Grumpy and enjoyable works for me. Me too. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to GOG.show slash support and send us your feedback, your questions that we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review. And if you're listening to us on the Overcast player, click those damn stars because ATP pulled ahead of us again.

Damn it. We can't have that. We cannot have that. The stars don't abide. Or what was it? I can't even. The center does not hold. Closing shout outs. Shout out to a friend of the show, Johnny Goo, and his wife, Melina.

Her sister just recently passed away from cancer. And this is the third person I've known in the last four years who, third woman I've known in the last four years that has passed away from breast cancer. So ladies that are listening to this show, go get your boobies checked.

Go get the mammograms. Take care of it. It's important. I hear Jason is licensed. So if you want to come out to Woodland Hills, he'll be happy to check them for you if you don't want to go do the professional route. But please go do it. Go do it.

It's very important. Love you guys. So sorry for everything you're going through. And on a happier note, happy Canada Day. We're recording on Canada Day. And happy Fourth of July to everybody, because we will be off because of the holiday. Yes, I will be barbecuing and checking all my email that has been gathering up while I've been on jury duty.

So should be fun. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. 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 a one-time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar.

Show notes for this episode are GOG.show slash 358. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy. This is Christine Ko from the Edit Your Life podcast.

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