366: Spider People

This episode is brought to you by Eero. Never think about Wi-Fi again. Get $100 off the Eero base unit and two beacons package in one year of Eero Plus. Visit Eero.com and at checkout enter code GOG. Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. I want to wish a laurel and hearty birthday to my co-host Jason DeFilippo who had his birthday yesterday, two days ago by the time this podcast comes out. And I'd like to tell him after I listen to thanks again to Chris Lockhead who co-hosted for me and let me have a bit of a vacation.

I brought home maple cookies, but my son ate them all. I figured. But I have something else for your birthday, so don't worry. Okay. God damn it. Never getting my maple cookies. No, you're not, because you can get them at Trader Joe's. So chill out. They're not as good.

They're terrible compared to that, man. Not like the real thing. I still have some leftover from Fireside that I've kept in the freezer, so I still got a stash. You're pathetic. I am, but they're so good. So this is my third show today.

Fun times. I'm sorry. It's nice to be back. My kid is a, you may hear him in the background. We're jet lagged and trying to move on to returning schedules and all of that sort of stuff. But I had a very nice time in Canada land. It was great. Maybe some news about that in the next couple of months, but we'll talk.

Okay. Okay. Well, it's good to have you back. It's good to have you back. It's nice to be back in my normal setup. You sound wonderful. I hear your dulcet tones. Or what did that woman tell you? The golden throat? Oh, yeah. Dulcet tones. Not the golden throat. If you go back and listen to it, you're the one that made that up.

She didn't say that at all. Oh, I totally made that up? Yeah, that was you. That's good. So we got a little follow-up here. Tesla has fixed its dangerous dog mode bug. Right. So, yes. Rahul Sood has tweeted out that, yes, it has been fixed.

So, good on Tesla for fixing that pretty quick. Bad on Tesla for fucking it up in the first place. Agreed. But to be fair, if you didn't fuck with your fucking phone settings while you're inside the store, it would have worked just fine. Actually, no. It was when he was still in the car. He was setting the fan speed in the car.

Okay. So that overrode dog mode. Okay. Fair enough. That needs to be fixed. And they fixed it. So, good on them. That's the way customer support is supposed to work. Yeah, yeah. Tweeted the billionaire owner and had him go fix your shit. That's the way the world works now, Jason. It is.

It's kind of scary. Kind of scary. Yes. And related to your discussion about the ladies in the tube and all the news that has been coming out about basically people getting bitch slapped about, oh, hey, people listen to the things that we say? Well, yes, because, you know, AI doesn't exist.

It's people. So that's what's happening. But in response to that, Amazon has finally joined Google and Apple as well. Very quick response when all of a sudden the world freaks out. Interesting how that happens. Public shaming still works. Public shaming works. It's the only way to get anything done anymore.

So now Amazon is also allowing you to opt out of human review of its voice assistant recordings. This was announced on Friday. And we have a link in our show notes that'll run you through the way to basically opt out of Google, Apple, or Amazon recording processes. And I suggest you do so.

Well, Apple's pretty easy because they suspended it on their end. Yeah, Apple is kind of done and done. Basically, the instructions tell you to turn off Siri completely, which is fair enough. And I have to say, after I read this, I went into my because the only lady in the tube I have is the Amazon.

I never use Siri and I don't have a Google one. They made it so you can basically batch delete all your previous stuff without scrolling through and doing everything one by one, which we talked about previously. That was the only way to do it. You can now batch delete your entire history.

Okay, but you can't just say, stop. Don't save. No, no, no. You can turn it off as well. That's one of the new things they rolled out. So it's complete. You can opt out of it completely and delete every single recording that was already saved. Oh, well, good for them. Finally. Of course, caveat here.

What does delete mean? True. True that. You can not see it anymore. How's that? Yeah. Visibility sets a hearability set to zero. Yeah, hearability. Speaking of Apple, though, I had to make a pilgrimage today.

The mall. I went to the mall. Let me guess. You spent some money. Unfortunately, I had to. Yes. Gog. Or patreon.com slash gog. Sorry. Surprisingly enough, though, all the nickels and dimes I've saved up through our Patreon subscribers and our donations actually paid for my trip to the Apple store today.

So thank you, everybody. Really? Yeah. Well, all our Patreon subscribers, you guys literally bought me, bought baby a new pair of shoes. So thank you. There you go. Yeah. I've been saving this up in my PayPal account for quite some time for a rainy day. And oh, boy, it's raining.

Is it raining then, Jason? No, it's not. It's raining battery acid. It's what it's raining because the battery on my 2014 MacBook Pro finally, finally decided to go tits up. And instead of having it fixed, which I'm like, eh, it's big, it's old, it's heavy, but it does have ports.

I will say that. I'm going to miss the ports. Yeah, it had ports. I could actually plug things into it. If you get it fixed, you can actually just use it as a hub. Connect it to your new computer. That's it. It'll be a hub. The world's most expensive USB hub. God.

So I went out and I got the new MacBook Air. I got the 13-inch MacBook Air. All right. 13 inches. Yeah, it's a little small. It's a little weak. But I tell you what, it's light as hell. So most of the time I'm using my laptop is when I'm sitting in bed at night doing emails or in the morning picking out shows.

Isn't that what you're almost as expensive as a laptop iPad is supposed to be for? It does a lot of that, but there are some things that I need the keyboard for. It's just like a convenience thing. And plus, there are apps that I need. Didn't you buy the really expensive keyboard case that comes for the iPad? I didn't buy the expensive one.

I bought a cheaper one. But I use it for that, too. But there are some things where I just want a computer because I need to do things that only a computer can do. There's some browser stuff that you can't do on the iPad yet. Once iOS 13 comes out, maybe I'll be good with it. But you can only do in bed. Yeah, I got you. Fuck off.

I use them both interchangeably. They're nice. So it's, but it is, it's nice. Well, I love it when you feel like you're losing steam because I'm totally destroying your point. That's my favorite part of the podcast every time we do it. Look, I have the iPad Pro. I love the iPad Pro, but it just doesn't work with everything.

So I have to have it. All right. You try using Quip. You try using Quip on an iPad. I don't. I refuse to. I just don't do shoe notes anymore. At that point in the night, I'm like, I'm done. Yeah, it just does not work. It does not work. But I'll have a full review of it next episode when we do apps and doodads and the $20 dongle I had so I can plug USB shit back into it.

Excellent. And I just have one last quick note before we go into the main show itself. I noticed that we're at episode 366 right now, which means if you stop at the previous episode, you've got one per day for the entire year. Oh, yeah. That's what an accomplishment.

Well, I was just thinking of the people who actually went back and listened to them all recently. Well, they're crazy. They are fucking crazy. In the news. You sure you don't want to stay in Canada, Brian?

It's been one hell of a week down here in the States. It is. It is funny how many people texted and tweeted and wrote me of maybe I should not come back because in the two weeks that I was in Canada, there were three. Well, there were actually more than three. There were three mass murders, mass shootings that made the news in the US.

There were about five more that didn't quite that weren't gory enough, apparently, to make the news. Didn't quite hit the body count. The entire time I was in Canada, there were two mass murders. One was a family thing not involving a gun.

The other one didn't involve a gun. And the entire country was aghast and three people died. And there's a massive countrywide manhunt on for the people that did it. So slight, slight difference. Slight difference. In between response. Yes. You know, God damn.

I can't believe we're still here talking about this. But here we are again. Here we are again. We'll be here again. We'll be here again. But the technology side of this one is really simple. We'll just do the tech side of this because it is pretty cut and clear. And there are solutions to this. Take it away, Jason. So Cloudflare has decided to shut down 8chan.

We'll cut them off from their service. They can still go out and find service. But yeah, good on Cloudflare for taking a stand. Yeah. So they shut down the Daily Stormer before and, you know, basically kicked Alex Jones off the Internet and did all sorts of stuff. So I, you know, it's interesting that these guys have, you know, said this is the last time we're going to do this.

Oh, hold my beer. We're doing it again because people keep doing stupid shit. Well, it's refreshing because these are people that are literally a platform that are saying we're not a platform. We need to make a choice. Yep. Absolutely.

You know, the platforms that are making millions of dollars, the YouTubes, the Facebooks, the Twitters are not making these hard choices. I can't I can't give Cloudflare enough props for this. And Matthew Prince in specific, who is the one that basically came out and said that we need to do this.

And you're right. You do. And so does Facebook. And so does Twitter. And so does YouTube. And so do all the other platforms out there. You know, there's free speech and there's fucking insanity. Yeah. And this is insanity. So it's interesting that Frederick Brennan, the guy who started 8chan, who we actually talked about a couple of weeks ago, there was an interesting write up on him.

He's just like, turn the fucking thing off. Yeah, he agrees. He's like, shut it down. Just shut it down. Like, this is not what this was ever supposed to be for. I believe the exact quote is do the world a favor and shut it off. Agreed. Yep. So and it's going to be whack-a-mole. It's going to be whack-a-mole, though.

You know, they're going to pop up again. Because, well, if they they have to find a safe harbor and and all of a sudden people are starting to turn around and going, we're not going to host you. Yeah, we may be a platform, but we're not going to host you because we're not going to host this crazy shit.

Right. That's the whack-a-mole part. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, there's always going to be somebody that has a web server somewhere. But the thing is the critical mass, right? So if you shut down HN, which had critical mass, now they have to go find this. They're going to be all over discord and there's going to be all over these these other fringe sites.

But will they be able to conglomerate into the amount of people again? And that's what I'm hoping will stop because you have to kill that critical mass aspect, right? Mm hmm. Yeah. Make it harder. Make it harder. So as long as people are cognizant of what's happening and can see these things start to sprout up and like I said, whack-a-mole, knock them down.

Don't give them don't give them the air to breathe. Yeah. And if you're not sure why this is important, we will have a show, a link at the show notes called HN is the normal part of mass shootings now over at Slate that kind of gives you your basics about what's been going on with HN and these insane shootings and these, you know, Nazis and these white supremacists because it has been a haven for them and they run through the last 15 to 20 that have happened, not just in the US, other places as well.

And yeah, it needs to be shut down and it's getting shut down and that's a good thing. All right. Enough of that. Moving on. All right. Moving on. Speaking of whack-a-mole, Google's new Chrome makes it easier to bypass newspaper paywalls. As those of us in the know have known for quite some time, if you just turn on Google Chrome's incognito mode, all of a sudden those views that you had at New York Times and Vulture and other sites of such place went away and you got to just look at articles.

Well, they figured that out because it's whack-a-mole and they put in, you know, they put in a little bit of code that said you can't look at this site in incognito mode anymore. And now Chrome is Chrome 76, which was released on Tuesday, has closed that loophole, allowing you to see it again. So that'll work for about a month or two until it goes away again.

Right. Yeah. You know, this is one of those ones where I'm on the fence with, you know, I do think that people should pay for news. I pay for news. I pay for a lot of news. I agree. We both do. You and I both do. And we have, we even have joined a mutual accounts that are paid for by our Patreon subscribers.

Yeah. I mean, our Washington Post, the New York Times, Stratechery. Well, actually I haven't gotten paid for any of those. I pay for those myself. Hey man, I need some, I need some cash back. Take a cut, bitch. Send me the logins and take a cut. All right. Will do. Anyway, but I am not averse to paying for news.

I do every now and again have to use that workaround to just get a story that we're going to talk about and link to. Yep. But for the most part, you know, I don't mind paying for news and I don't know if Google should be in the business of doing this, honestly.

No, they're kind of knowingly screwing. People screwing content creators. They, they really are. You know, it's a great thing for us as we say these things. But as you know, we have a, we have a friend of the show that always writes us confused about Sweden.

Well, this is one of those issues, right? This is one of those exact issues where for the most part, we, we, when we find a news source that we like, we pay for it. But sometimes when we're on the fence about things, I mean, I guess the fact, the fact of the matter is if we're reading five or 10 articles a month and we're hitting that paywall, maybe we should pay up.

We should, right? Yeah. Yep. No, it's the one offs that always get me. And Google shouldn't give us that advantage to go ahead and get away with it for free. I think Google's point though, is that it's about privacy because you can be like fingerprinted in incognito mode, which is what they were doing to get past this.

The first thing I read a long time ago, they may have gotten through this fingerprinted though. Or was it just, I, my understanding of when I read this and maybe I'm wrong, you, you may have read this more than I did and may more, no more of the tech than me. I just thought they basically just shut down. Oh, we can tell if they're in incognito mode off.

You don't get to see. That could, yeah, that could be it. Because I don't think they were being fingerprinted, which, which doesn't give Google much of a fucking stand. That's true. Cause yeah, the original way that they were doing it was they were, um, uh, what you could do is like, there was a style sheet trigger that was being, being sent that then like when the page loaded, they could read the DOM and find that incognito style sheet switch and say, Oh, okay.

If that style sheet is there, that switch in a style sheet is there, then they're in incognito mode. And that's what I thought the original one was. So if they, if all they did was, you know, change that flag in their CSS or in the browsers, you know, DOM implementation, then that could be it.

Yeah. See, my understanding of it was basically just like they could tell you're in an incognito mode and they shut you off. That's it. Okay. So, yeah, see, that's not really protecting privacy because if you're in an incognito mode, you're in incognito mode. So I'm going to have to read up on this a little more just so I know the tech a little bit better because I haven't, I haven't looked into incognito mode in a long time, but in the old days, that's what it used to be.

Yeah. I kind of don't want to go look into it because I'll probably get PTSD triggers from looking at source code. Well, and, and just to be on the negative side of all this, because we just kind of basically said you should pay for stuff. If your cognito mode's not doing it for you, just turn on your VPN.

Moving on to other things that are probably not a good idea and might be screwing our privacy. Here we go. An AI bar system. Make sure patrons are served in the right order. Sounds good, right? Oh, no, that sounds terrible.

Doesn't it, though? Yes. That sounds terrible. According to the article, there are two kinds of people in this world. Those that queue patiently at the bar for their drinks because they recognize their place in the great order of things. And those that elbow their way to the front and jump to the queue because they're massive jerks. Ah, but there's a, there's a third person in there that they're not talking about.

Those of us that know the bartenders. Exactly. Those of us who are regulars and know the people who are going to serve the drinks that we can go, yo, refill. That's the, that's the, that's, that's our type of bar patron. That is our type because we're alcoholics. But British data science company DataSpark Q has developed a bit of technology that uses facial recognition technology to put customers in an intelligently virtual queue, letting

bar staff know who was really next and who's just being rude. Oh, screw that. So they're testing this out in London and the bartender said the regulars were a bit skeptical at first, but as soon as they saw it in action, they were sold. It enables us to maximize our pouring potential and cuts out the need for sharp elbows when it's busy.

The system works by displaying a live video of everyone queuing on a screen above the bar. A number appears above each customer's head, which represents their place in the queue and gives them an estimated wait time until they get served. Bar staff will know exactly who's next, helping bars and pubs to maximize their ordering efficiency and to keep the drinks flowing.

It also comes with an automatic age verification. So if somebody looks underage, they'll be prompted to get their ID out before they reach the head of the queue. User data is, and here's the rub, deleted locally. And from the cloud at the end of every night. Is it?

Is it? Is it? Is it? Because the next sentence in the article says the technology also provides data insights to bar managers on drinking patterns and peak times to help them optimize their staffing requirements, which tells me that that data is not deleted.

Yeah. Well, I mean, there's two types of data there. There is the facial recognition data. Yes. And then there's also just, you know. Oh, I'm sorry. The anonymized data. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you're just counting people in times and drinks, well, you can de-anonymize from somebody's drink order.

But obviously, the next step for this AI would be recognize the local and know what they want to drink already. So you have the drink waiting for them. And the VIP club that you can spend, you know, $20 a month to get ahead of the queue.

Exactly. And then we're back to where we started with. Yes. We were right where we were without all this stupid technology. Yes. Or we just go into the fucking bar and get a drink. That's true, too. That's true, too. Well, I found this one over at BGR.

E-scooters aren't as green as you think. Shocking. You're going to turn blue and pass out one of these days. I know. I might die. Yeah. I don't think you have the lung capacity you once had as a young man.

I've been doing swing lessons with the kid. I'm pretty good. All right. There you go. Well, a team of researchers from NC State took an in-depth look at the overall environmental impact of the e-scooter trend, examining the emissions output associated with building, shipping, and charging the scooter, as well as travel habits of individuals who use them often.

And how about the piece of shit fucking pickup trucks I see picking up 75 scooters every day in fucking Santa Monica, belching fucking smoke and gas from their horrible exhaust systems that haven't been checked in a while. Let me read from the article. The most damning aspect of e-scooter proliferation seems to be the fact that the companies rely on other vehicles, gas-burning trucks and vans, to collect the scooters and redistribute them to locations where they are picked up by users.

Guess I should have read the article. We found that the environmental impact from the electricity used to charge the e-scooters is fairly small, about 5% of its overall impact. The real impact comes largely from two areas, using other vehicles to collect and redistribute the scooters, and emissions related to producing the materials and components that go into each scooter, and also scraping them up from the bottom of Venice Canal.

Well, there's that. Obviously, we can't do anything about the emissions related to producing the materials and components that build each scooter. But you know what would fix the entire other area? Docks. Oh, there you go. Do some docks. The one thing that I've been saying since day one, since this fucking scourge has landed on us in every city in the goddamn world, don't do dockless.

Dock the fuckers. Fixes everything. Yep. Well, I think the dock genie is out of the bag now, so... Unfortunately, it is. Not in Toronto, though. Yes, it is. I have to say that about Toronto. The great thing about Toronto, and the one that my wife, when we came back the other day, just yesterday, and we were driving around a little bit, she's like, oh, yeah, scooters.

We didn't see any of those, did we? Yeah, the only thing that they have in Toronto, docked bikes. And it's wonderful. Oh, yeah. They don't even do dockless bikes? Nope. All docked. Wow, what a beautiful world. Civilized. Civilized. Civilized. They are Canadian, after all.

Come on, man. Also, no guns. Yeah, well, here's an interesting one for you in the Santa Monica area. Our friends at Snap. Oh, joy. Snap, snap, snap. They're looking to raise a billion dollars in private debt offering. Got to keep the company afloat somehow, since nobody gives a crap.

Yeah, when was the last time you heard Snap in the news or Snapchat in the news? Nope. Except for when they're coming hat in hand to get more money. That's about it, really. And, yeah, I haven't seen a lot of people running around. There used to be a lot of people running around with their badges. We don't need those stinking badges in the area from Snap, and nobody, nobody anymore.

Because most of the people got fired. All the engineers are gone. Mm-hmm. Oh, you don't see people wearing those Snap glasses anymore? I've never seen anybody wearing those Snap glasses. Not once ever in the wild. And I live where Snapchat is based. You'd think I'd see somebody.

I've seen one person in the wild wearing Snapchat glasses, and it was that asshole AJ from The Art of Charm that fired me. So that tells you right there. What a shit stain. Anyway, so this is apparently a common thing that public companies do.

Like, Netflix does it all the time when they need more money to go make some more crappy comedy specials. But it's just, it's interesting, because the debt offering will be used to cover the cost of general operating expenditures involved in running the business, but also potentially to acquire complementary businesses, products, services, or technologies.

Why don't you just use the money that you're making? Oh, wait, you don't make enough. Oh, you don't make any money. If anybody's looking for any Henry Miller chairs, there's going to be a lot going on sale on Craigslist Venice in a very, very short time. I think you mean Herman Miller chairs, but, you know, Snap might be using Henry Miller's.

Henry Miller was the erotica author, right? Yeah. Yeah. With the, yeah, that was good. You wouldn't want Henry Miller's chairs. They probably need some disinfecting. I don't know. Uma Thurman was sitting in it. That's true. That's true. Just saying. All right.

And in other news, I saw this on Vox, 22%, and I'm sorry about this, millennials. I know we have quite a few millennial listeners these days. 22% of millennials say they have no friends. Oh, okay. So members of the millennial generation right now are 23 to 38.

38. Millennials are about to turn 40. You guys are fucked. You have no idea what's about to hit you. So these ought to be the prime years of careers taking off and starting families before joints really begin to ache. Yet, as a recent poll and some corresponding research indicate there's something missing for many in this generation.

Companionship. A recent poll from YouGov, a polling firm, and market research agency found that 30% of millennials say they feel lonely. This is the highest percentage of all the generations surveyed. Furthermore, 22% of millennials in the poll said they had zero friends.

Zero. Wow. 22% of people don't have any friends. They should all get together. If only there was some internet thing that enabled them to meet other people on 8chan. Oh, wait.

That could be the problem. 27% said they had no close friends. 30% they have no best friends. And 25% they said they had no acquaintances. What the fuck, man? Seriously. Look, Jason, like, of all my friends, you'd be the closest to all this.

And I know you have friends. I got a ton of friends. Yes, you have a ton of friends. I just don't go anywhere. You just refuse to leave the house, but you stay in touch with people. So I was kind of wondering, like, is it the internet? But then I thought about you. That was my thought. Like, first off, I was like, obviously, this is internet usage.

Obviously, this is people staying at home and just being on Facebook and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then I was like, well, Jason never leaves the house, but he manages to maintain both close friendships and acquaintanceships. Yeah. So what's going on with the millennials, Jason? I have no idea. I'm just a little frightening.

I'm stunned that when we started this show, you know, the upper age range of millennials was, like, around 30. Yeah. And now they're going to be pushing 40. Oh, man. We got to go to Gen Z next. Apparently, we do.

We need a new target. But I'm worried about you, millennials. Have friends, people. Friend us on Twitter. We'll be friends with you. Come on. Nobody should have no friends. This is terrifying. I know. I feel bad for making fun of them all these years. Maybe we're part of the problem. Maybe we're part of the problem.

All right. We'll never make fun of you again. Don't pick up a gun and find us on Twitter. That's all I'm asking. Pretty please. And I didn't have time to read this story because this is breaking right before we decided to record. But I thought this was interesting. And I'm sure we'll talk about this with Bittner.

Microsoft caught Russian state hackers using IoT devices to breach networks. Yeah, I've been hearing about this one earlier this week. And yeah, they're basically using, you know, IoT things like printers and smart light bulbs. And basically, like everything that we always said, had really shitty security.

It was connected to the network to use that as an access point. And then wheedle their way into the network. Told you it was coming. Remember, the S in IoT stands for security. There's that. And the Mueller report. Jeez. What was he saying was happening?

Hmm. Yeah. Interesting. There you go. Yeah. This episode is sponsored by Eero. Eero is a home Wi-Fi system like nothing you've seen. Look, the single router model just doesn't work for our increasingly high bandwidth world. Simple physics.

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Media Candy. I had high hopes to work my way through Star Trek Discovery. on my trip to Canada. But that did not happen at all. There was next to no media, but I'll make up for that in at the library shortly.

But I do have two quick drunk on a plane movie reviews. Captain Marvel. Okay. How was it? I don't remember a goddamn thing about it, except there was a lot of 90s music. Okay. Did you see it? No, I gave up.

I'm done with them. I'm done with superheroes. Yeah. Yeah. So I watched that. There wasn't a lot of choices. It seemed okay. Just, you know, whatever. It's the same movie with just different people. Yeah. This one had a blonde with a red.

Yeah. I mean, a blonde Superman outfit, basically. I'm sure I'm pissing off everybody that's super into the Marvel universe, but whatever. And I'm about to piss you off a lot more because on the way back home, I watched Avengers Endgame. And? I'm sure that was incredibly meaningful to people that give a shit about these characters that mean nothing.

Yeah. Like, I could tell that there were moments that this was supposed to mean something to me, but it didn't because I don't care because they're fucking superheroes and they should have stayed in a comic book. But for all you people that cried, good on you.

Get a fucking life. See, that's the problem, maybe. Maybe it's not the internet with the millennials. It's everybody stays home and watches these comic book movies and superhero movies and don't get out and meet their friends. They spent so much time on certain characters, and I'm sure it was super meaningful in some way if you gave a shit about any of this stuff.

But as a layperson who's probably seen half of the Marvel universe, extended universe, whatever the fuck. Cinematic. Oh, MCU. Sorry, people. MCU, yes. The MCU. Law and Order MCU. Dun-dun. Dun-dun.

It was better than the last one. What was that last one that I saw? It was Avengers something. Infinity Wars. Yeah, this one was better than that one because at least a couple people died. It was great to see Robert Downey Jr. die because I hate that fuck. Spoiler alert! Whatever.

Who cares? It was supposed to be meaningful. It wasn't. Who cares? Okay, so that was my review of that. I see, I think the problem with all these MCU stories and movies, there's just too damn many of them. There's too many. I mean, even by the end of Lord of the Rings trilogy, I'm like, would you just fucking die, Frodo?

I just wanted to die. Come on. No shit. And when they came out with The Hobbit, I was like, no, no, we don't need The Hobbit. We were good. We were fine. Yeah. So, yeah, that's my problem. And like, oh, MCU stage four is coming. Woo. Who gives a shit? Stick a needle in.

And speaking of who gives a shit, sadly, Star Trek Picard will have its own prequel comic and novel. Not even Picard is going to get me to read a goddamn prequel comic. Yeah, that's really pushing it for me. The novel, I will definitely read the novel.

The novel I will read, yes. So, yeah, the streaming shows have had literary tie-ins before, but not quite like this. So, we're going to get two things. We're going to get a three-part IDW comic book series, Star Trek Picard Countdown, which will kick off in November 2019, and center on a mission that will change the life of the legendary Starfleet captain.

Sadly, this is probably the thing I'd like to read the most, but I'm not going to read a goddamn comic. See, I don't have a problem with comics. I'm just like, I don't want too much information out of the gate. I kind of like the show to reveal it as it goes. Yes. I'm kind of, I mean, that's really what I want. Yeah, me too.

We're getting the novel, The Last Best Hope, which will follow in February 2020. It will be published by Simon & Schuster and introduce some of the new characters you'll see in Picard. You may want to read up then, especially if you aren't a diehard fan. I'm with you, Jason. I'm not going to read either. I'm going to see the show on its own merits.

Yeah, I kind of want to do that because I don't want to have, like, preconceived notions coming into it. I want to go in with fresh eyes and a fresh brain and say, hey, wow me, you know? Yep, that's what I'm looking for as well. Yeah, because this just seems lazy. Lazy and, like, just opportunistic. Actually, it just seems like a cash-in.

Yeah, pretty much. Well, I watched the last season of Orange is the New Black. Should I? Hell no. Okay, perfect. My God. I haven't watched in, like, four years, so. We seriously hate watched this, trying to get through it, and, I mean, there's nothing happy in this entire thing.

It's just, like, it was pure sadness porn, and, you know, we're just, like, and they're introducing new characters and storylines. We're like, why? Why do you introduce a new character in a final season? For no reason. Just a, it was filler. It was just filler. So, I mean, no, talk about something you can skip.

Ooh, this one you can totally skip. I feel good. I feel good jumping out when I did about four years ago. Yeah, that's, actually, jumping out the first season is probably the best thing, because that was a great season. The first season was phenomenal. Everything else after that was just crap.

And also, here's the thing. This thing ran for seven seasons, and you find out, somewhere at the beginning of this one, that Piper was only in jail for 18 months. Like, what? Oh, God. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Fine. I found this one over at Digg.

Why the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy show should embrace change. And I was just... Why is there a new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy show? Bingo. Okay. I didn't know about it until I saw this. And I'm like, oh, no.

You've got to be kidding me. Yeah. And I'm like, you know what? I liked the movie. I was fine with the movie. I had no problem with it. It was okay. It was not fantastic, but it was okay. It was okay enough. Yeah.

Now, the problem here is some of the people that are going to be working on this show. Oh, yeah. It's just not going to be... I don't... There's no... Get the Amazon team that was behind Good Omens to do this, and I'm on board. Otherwise, forget it.

Well, that's the thing. That would be Neil Gaiman, who has a history of working with Douglas Adams. Wrote the first book with Douglas Adams about Douglas Adams. Get that. Get Neil Gaiman on it. But... Then I'm on board. Yep. Yeah. But this... No, no, no, no, no. Do some research into the guys who are behind it, and you'll see, I think one of them comes from, like, one of the Lost spinoffs or Lost himself.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Yeah. I'm like, okay, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So, yeah. Okay. So, New Hitchhiker's Guide, not going to watch. And I did get into some Katie Sackhoff news, because I listened to her on ID10T, Chris Hardwick's new podcast.

I always want to say Nerdist, but it's not. It's ID10T. It's not the Nerdist anymore. Yeah. But Katie Sackhoff was on, and she's funny as hell. I'm a huge fan of her personally. She hasn't been in anything good since BSG, but she's amazing. You weren't a Longmire fan? No, I did not like Longmire.

I obviously don't like Afterlife. I did watch one episode, and I was like, nope, done. But I'm a huge fan of her. I got through four. As a person. We shared a personal trainer for a while, so I got to learn a lot about her, and I even met her once. She's wonderful. Yeah.

Great person. She's got a new YouTube series out now. I'm totally going to watch this, because I like her. Mm-hmm. Highly recommend you go check out the ID10T podcast on your bike ride. It was really good. It was really good. Very funny. She's fucking hilarious. Yeah, she's really funny.

Yeah, well worth the listen on that one. It's a short one. It's like an hour or so. Excellent. And we've had a lot of Cure news recently, and I ran across this. The Cure's Robert Smith lists his 30 favorite songs from the 80s, and there's a Spotify playlist buried in this somehow at Far Out magazine.

And most of these songs I totally agree with. I'm not really into the Yoko Ono pick, but whatever. It is what it is. But most of these are fantastic. So it's a great playlist. Go listen to it. I agree with it almost 100%. Yeah, you can't agree with Yoko Ono, no.

Yes. And I was, as I said, I was in Toronto recently, and my friends bought me tickets to go see a band that they love. And Jason, this band has your name all over it. So that's why I'm putting it in the show notes. I normally wouldn't talk about this. I enjoyed the show a lot.

It's not really my cup of tea, but Jason, you would love this band. They're called Idols. Link in the show notes. You will love this band, Jason. Go listen to them when we're done with this podcast. You'll be a huge fan immediately. Well, spoiler alert. I already listened to them while I was working on the show notes for the show earlier tonight, and I fucking love this band.

I figured you would. They're fantastic. And if a friend of the show Fogarty's listening, go check them out, too. I think it's up his alley, too. Yeah, this is definitely up your guy's alley, right up there. And they were phenomenal, I've got to say. So catch them when you can. All right. Which will be never, because I don't leave the house.

At the library. So what I did do a lot in Canada was read, and it was wonderful. I finished reading Children of Rune by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which is the follow-up to, let's see, what was the first?

Spiderland. Children of Time. Spiderland, yes. Which I thought was a great book, but horribly depressing. This was an even better follow-up. This series has the possibility of becoming up there in my sci-fi pantheon of all time.

Really? We'll see. I'm looking forward to the third one. I cannot wait. I don't think it's out yet. I haven't looked into it yet, but I'm assuming not, because this one came out in 2019. So I guess we're going to have to wait a while. But this was amazing. Really good.

Really, really good. Made the first book worthwhile. I loved it. Okay. Is there still more spider people and stuff? There's beyond spider people. There are, I cannot spoiler alert it, but there's, you know, there's bacteria people now. It's good.

Oh, I'm going to pass. No, it's good, man. It's good. I liked it. I liked it a lot. It's really worth it. And I can't wait to read the third series or third book in the series and see where it goes with it. It's really good, Jason. I can't recommend it enough. I really think you should give it a go.

I just couldn't get through the spider people. I know. I know. But they're still there. But yeah, you just have to deal. You just have to deal. Okay. Maybe. Maybe one of these days. All right. And then I read some basic popcorn sci-fi stuff. Nomad, the New Earth book series by Matthew Mather.

And then also Sanctuary, which is book two. Breaking the rules. Yeah, I broke the rules. But it's one of those ones where they don't, there's nothing changes. They pick up where it left off. There shouldn't actually, it shouldn't be two books. It should just be one.

Well, it shouldn't be three slash four books, apparently. I've started on the third one already. It's, you know, popcorn sci-fi. It's fine. Something comes in, destroys the Earth, and people try to figure it out from there. And there's conspiracies and stuff like that. It's okay.

So basically, is it screenplay format? Yeah. Yeah. They're definitely shooting for a movie. You know, they blow up the Vatican, spoiler alert, and shit like that. So obviously, screenplay shooting for it. But it's okay. It's fine. I'm not angry about it yet.

And, you know, flip to the script, the main character is a strong female lead. So well done. I like that. It's not the scientist. Did she fall in love with an old professor yet? Not yet. She hasn't fallen. She fell in love with an Italian fucking billionaire. So, you know, some things never change.

But at least a strong female lead. So good on you for that. So I've enjoyed the first two. I'm reading the third right now. And I will take a break before the fourth because I think it's just getting ridiculous. Okay. Okay. I listened to a podcast called Blackout. This came out a while ago.

And it's like an eight, nine part series that was produced by Rami Malek, of all people. Okay. I like him. What do you got a problem with him? I know you don't like Mr. Robot, but I didn't know you had a problem with him. Mr. Robot sucks. Yeah, but he didn't write it.

Well, yeah, but that's kind of the point. Is he good at writing anything? This is okay. It's interesting. It ended pretty abruptly, which was strange. But yeah, it's basically about a blackout and nobody knows why and how people are doing in the post-blackout days.

And he plays a DJ, which is pretty fun. Oh, dear Lord. I liked it. I liked it. It's not like, you know, I'm not going to drop everything and say run out and listen to it. But if anybody's curious about it, I did listen to it. And when the next season comes out, I'll continue listening to it.

But, you know, I'm going to batch it. So when they're all out at once, because they're only like 20 minutes long and they were sponsored by Sonos. So the sound is really, really good. And it's a full cast recording. Dear Sonos, if you'd like to sponsor our podcast, we sound pretty good already.

There you go. Come on. We need some new Sonos gear. I especially do. My Play 1s keep, I have to manually restore them from factory settings like once a month now. So not happy with you, Sonos. But your podcast was okay.

Jason, you and I order a lot of stuff off Amazon. An inordinate amount of stuff, yes. Yeah. Occasionally, we return things, right? Yeah, we do. We wait for our money to get back. Mm-hmm. Nice. Do you know we could have made $370,000 by simply filling up our boxes with dirt and returning them?

That would have been nice. That would have been nice. I could have handled that. Yeah. Well, one guy did it in Spain. Unfortunately, he was arrested. So therein lies the problem with your story here. Well, maybe you just make the first $100,000 and then you stop.

Yeah, yeah. But how far are you going to get on $100,000? Come on. Nowadays? Yeah. Well, he would order things and then he would fill up the boxes for items like iPhones with the exact weight of the product and dirt and then return them to Amazon. And then he would get his refund. Yeah.

And then they would turn around and sell the original item as well. So double dipping. But he really seemed to think he wasn't going to get caught. How? I don't know. How can you think you're not going to get caught? Yes. And again, the Moron of the Week, I'm not sure so much if it's the guy itself or the publisher of the story, which is the Ladd Bible again, who said the man who has been released on bail was able to get pretty rich from the scam.

No, because all the money was taken away. That's how this works. Yeah. You have to get it back. It's not like Amazon's not going good on you. Arrest that man. It doesn't the coin. It doesn't stay in the bank account until you come out of jail. Exactly.

It's not how it works. Come on, Ladibble. You can do better than that. Yeah. And then another Moron of the Week, Josh Hawley, who is a Missouri Republican senator. And he's done some good things. He's one of the, for the most part, he's one of the good guys in our Congress because we've always talked about, you know, these people don't understand technology.

This guy mostly does. And he's introduced more than a few bills that are fair that I've been kind of behind this new one that he's done today, though, or not today, this week. Not so much. He unveiled the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act, or SMART Act.

Yeah, I'm scratching my head over this one. This is really, really dumb. Yeah. Well, he wants to curb what he calls social media addiction. Now, there's no denying this is happening. And this legislation won't kill off social media companies, of course, but it would force them to change the core ways their products function.

Among other things, it would ban infinite scroll and autoplay on their apps and websites. I'm 100% behind that, by the way. I'm down. Yeah. Anything that bans autoplay, I'm definitely down with it. All in on that, 100%. But here's the core of the bill, and this is just silly.

It would automatically limit a user's time on a platform to 30 days a month unless they opt out. You mean 30 minutes a day, not 30 days a month? Oh, sorry. 30 minutes. Because that is how many days are in a month. Well, that's what everybody's doing already. That's it. Yeah. All right. No change there.

30 minutes a day, but they could change or remove the time limit, but they would have to go into settings to do that. That's stupid. That's absolutely stupid. That's absolutely stupid, and it's also, you know, it's not freedom, right? No.

Well, it's like the liquor store saying, we're going to limit you to a six-pack a day until you go home, drink that six-pack, and come back and get another one. Yes. And then if you opt in, you're going to have another six-pack. Exactly. Yeah. That's stupid. So why bother? That's just ridiculous. But thanks for trying.

Thanks for trying. I do have a hero of the week. I have Amazon, shockingly, as a hero of the week, because they're going to start finding resellers who ship products in oversized packaging. Finally. Because just today, I got a tiny little box in a gigantic box with a ton of fucking packaging stuck in there.

Mm-hmm. Yep. So let's stop doing that. So Amazon is introducing the Frustration-Free Packaging Program, aimed to give customers minimal protective and functional packaging to keep items safe without adding unnecessary waste packaging.

If Amazon sellers don't stick to the packaging guidelines, they could face a penalty, according to the Wall Street Journal. Packages which don't meet the new standards will be subject to a $1.99 surcharge the seller must pay. You may not think that's a lot, but for these sellers, that's a lot.

That's way over the margins for a lot of the things that you get. That's going to stop this very, very quickly. And they're also offering a carrot as well as a stick. Amazon will give $1 credit to sellers for each item that does meet the guidelines, at least temporarily. So that's amazing. Well done, Amazon.

Here's the deal, though. Most of the things that I get from Amazon that are in the massive boxes with lots of padding and things are packed by Amazon, not from the sellers. The sellers just give them products for most of it, and then they put the product in an Amazon box at the Amazon warehouse.

So you actually make a very, very, very good point. And I hope they hold themselves to the same standards. We are going to give ourselves $1 for every time we pack something right. Buy more Amazon stock. They're about to make a shit ton of money.

Exactly. Feedback loop. Over on Patreon, we've got a couple new subscribers, James, Patrick, and Daniel. And over at PayPal, we've got some new donations from Elizabeth, David, and William. Thanks, guys. And gals.

Thank you so much. Yes, appreciate it. Over at Twitter, Brian writes in, I got this from my bike, converts my regular bike into an e-bike. I use it to get to the train in the morning so I don't come into the office sweaty. Then I bike from the train in the evening to give me some exercise. And this is the Hilltopper Electric Bike Company. Got no problems with this whatsoever.

Love it. You're doing your part for the environment. Fantastic. Yeah, those are pretty cool. I still want to give me a rad power bike, but they're just a little too expensive. So, but anyway, Thomas writes in, you should stop using WhatsApp right now. And this is over at Slash Gear. And what this is coming down to, there's a whole big kerfuffle now because Facebook might be putting in back doors to the end-to-end encryption to use artificial intelligence to send your messages to humans who will read your messages and find out if you're going to go shoot up a mall.

Yeah, nothing new. We've been talking about that for a while. It is what it is. Moss 6502 writes in, scooters are coming to Puerto Rico because cities designed without sidewalks, unreliable electricity, and spotty cell phones are fucking perfect for this thing. Yes, and this is the scootel.

Do tell about the scootel, please. The no-tell scootel. Yep. And Matthew writes in, IBM fired up to 100,000 older employees to make room for millennials, lawsuit alleges. To be fair, millennials are now 40. That's true. So next year, they're going to be fired to make room for Gen Z.

That's right. And AJ writes in, Facebook doesn't need to listen to you. Everybody else does it for them. And this is a link to threat posts. Trivial bug turns home security cameras into listening posts. Well, fuck. Looks like I know what I'm doing tonight because the cameras that are mentioned in this article You might have.

Yeah. There are two of them right over my shoulders pointing at my garage right now. I use the Amcrest cameras, which are basically, uh, they're white labeled cameras from another distributor. So I have to go get some firmware updates to- I would assume there's going to be firmware updates pretty quickly.

Yeah. They say, they say in the article that there are patches out for them. So I have to go. Patch your shit, people. Yeah. Great. And over at GOG.show, Sherman wrote in, Hey, Grumps, read an interesting article last week that blows your good pal Elon Musk's dreams of living on Mars all to hell.

It's a long read, but a very intriguing one. And it's from Gizmodo. Humans will never colonize Mars. Never say never. I read this entire article and I agree with most of the posts. We're not going to be there anytime soon. The technology is not there, but, uh, 100% we will be on Mars because we're fucking this planet up.

We got nowhere to go. All right. James writes in, it was great having, uh, Christopher Lockhand on the other day. Same format, but longer dialogue, which is a refreshing change. Huh. Okay. He should definitely be your relieving anchor or guest three times a year.

It breaks up the show a little bit. I really liked the way Jason kind of guided him and then explored things for a lot longer period of time. Great to have Brian back though. Well, thank you. No, I actually, um, I, I've never listened to our podcast recently. I listened to the show. It was very good. And, and Chris was great.

And I enjoyed the show very much. Chris, if you'd like me to be on your podcast, please do. Um, cause I know Jason is looking for a break. If you want me to be on your podcast and we can get to know each other and then you and I can co-host grumpy old grease. And Jason wants a break. That'll work just fine for me. Works for me.

I need a damn, need a damn day off. So have Chris, uh, get me on his show and we'll do it. All right. Chris balls in your court. Mark writes in regarding dominoes, not being accessible. One thing you haven't mentioned with this story is that accessibility is good for search optimization. Search engines can't see shit.

The things that make a website work for someone with a screen reader and other accessibility features have the secondary and not trivial benefit of being good for SEO. And since I'm listening while I'm writing that, well, I'm listening while I'm writing that Raul sued guy from Voodoo PC can eat shit.

Back in the day, my boss bought an Envy laptop. It was carbon fiber, bright orange with the tribal butterfly thing painted on it, matching wireless mouse. When it was assembled, the wires for the cooling fan in the bottom were pinched between the carbon case and the hard drive. After a couple of months, the insulation in the wires wore through and the carbon fire conducts electricity.

The fan shorted out and it smoked the fan and a couple of components. I had to fight with Raul for almost a month to get their repair covered because they tried to say it wasn't a manufacturing defect and wasn't covered under warranty. They only ended up covering half of the $800 repair bill. And then it came out like a month or maybe two later that they were bought by HP as if the $800 was coming out of his douchey pocket.

All right. I got two thoughts really quickly. I never got a Voodoo PC from Raul, but I did try to order an Alienware once and I spent a top dollar on that and that was a nightmare process and I ended up canceling it. So fuck high end PCs.

Yeah. Alienware is a ripoff. Alienware is for total ripoffs. I mean, I, I fucking like put like five grand into a PC back when five grand was fucking real money. Yeah. Yeah. And I never ended up getting the damn thing. So that was, that was a nightmare.

And the whole Domino's thing, when I was listening to you guys talk about that, I was like, hold on a second. Shouldn't blind. I know for a fact that you can order a pizza by voice through the Alexa. I'm sure you can do it through Siri. Isn't the whole point of the ladies in the tube and, and this voice technology a hundred percent for blind people.

Don't they have it covered through that? Probably. And they're also, there's this other device that we've had around for a very long time. It's called the telephone. There's that as well. Yeah. And I do believe that you can, the screen reader will. You can order a pizza through that? Yes.

Yes. So there's that. I think the biggest issue that Chris had was that it's a really stupid PR move for him and they could have actually just done this. And yes, he was a hundred percent right about that from the PR perspective, but from the tech perspective, it's absolutely ridiculous.

The lawsuit. It's absolutely ridiculous because there are a million ways for blind people to order a pizza from Domino's. Not a million. There's at least, there's at least more than, more than zero. If you can't, there's a lot more than zero. All right.

So Neil writes in Jason, what's the deal with not talking about the jury stuff? I was looking forward to that. You're the only one thought it was over and you can talk about it all now. Also try to hang on. Hang on. No, I gotta, I gotta answer that. Uh, Bittner wanted to talk about it and we had all this time where we kept missing each other cause he was gone or I was gone.

So we never went into it. But, um, if anybody still cares, we can talk about it. Maybe next episode when Bittner's on at the end of the show, after the regular show, it'll be an add on. Maybe we do it as a Patreon thing. Yeah, that may be because it's not really tech and it was just, oh God.

Yeah. I will be angry by the end of the show. Also, I've already heard it so I can't sit through it again. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Dave and Dave and I will just go off into a corner and record that and then we'll put it out as an extra maybe. But I'm guessing even Dave probably doesn't give a shit anymore. He said, also try to have Dashlane for my password managers.

I got it for free from work. That thing is awesome. I fully switched from 1Password to Dashlane and solidly recommend it to anyone. I believe it is still subscription model. I'm out. And I'm not sure as my link said, it was lifetime license that talked about it like once a day and done by.

Anywho, keep up the great work though. I may disagree with some of your politics. I love the show and agree with most of what you say. Don't get discouraged by those other jack wagons out there. Well, we're not. We're fine. And Cameron wrote in, hey guys, just wanted to share this. And it's an interesting article over at the Charlotte Observer called, here's how many people have gotten hurt in scooter crashes around Charlotte and Raleigh.

So if you're interested in the scooter, scooter news and scooter stats, go check it out. Yep. Pierre writes in, hi, my favorite grumps, avid listeners to your podcast. For two years now, you have traveled with me during my shifts for delivery and picking this lime scooters and picking this lime, picking up lime scooters.

Probably picking up lime scooters. Yeah. My journey in the evil world is over. I can go back to being a physicist. I have self-published my thesis a few years ago. Oh boy. And I want to broadcast it via podcast. It's written in audio. It talks about artificial life and tries to explain my theory of equivalences.

It's in French. It has a duration of around 11 hours and is composed of 48 files. In short, I need a bit of help to broadcast it as a podcast. I would be delighted to translate it into English, starting with two numbers. You could peak between one and 48. Stay grumpy a bit and enjoy life.

Family, friends, and this lovely planet, Pierre. Okay. Oh my God. That's a long. I don't speak French, so we're kind of screwed on that. I'll throw you an email offline and give you some tips on how to get that started. But yeah, it's a long one.

All right. Barrett writes in. YouTube, there you go. Where all the crazy theories go. Barrett writes in. So the parent company of TikTok, formerly Musical.ly, has decided that it needs to make its own smartphones to the focus is on meeting the needs of Smartison's existing customer base.

Smartison's. Which is what people who make annoying videos, I'm going to guess that we'll never see this phone. Yeah, you're never going to see this phone. Yeah. You're never going to see it. TikTok is doing very well for themselves, though, with the Generation Z, I guess we're calling them.

Probably. They're doing quite well, but they don't need to. They're making a big mistake. This is like Snapchat going into Snapglasses. This is stupid. Yeah. You don't need hardware. Yeah. Piggyback on the existing infrastructure out there. Exactly. Like God intended.

And over at iTunes, Oregon Lender, I can't pronounce this, writes in Slippery Slope, it starts with a curious press of a button. Before you know it, you've grabbed the tail of the dragon. Shout out to Morgan for dealing me my first episode. A witty, informative, snarky, sobering look at the world of tech and what went wrong.

I picked up a few episodes back in March. As a glutton for punishment, I went back to episode numero uno and began to binge the whole thing. And you get a fucking stick or whatever. A magnet. A magnet. My commute allows me to polish off an episode of every day or two.

I cheered at episode 100, was jubilant at episode 200, and can't wait to reach episode 300. From babies born, congrats, to watching Bam Bam, Brian, drink on Jason's Chinese webcams. I'm hooked, currently up to December of 2017, miles to go before I sleep.

I really enjoyed this comment because I forgot how much shit we've been through since we started this thing. It's ridiculous. Oh my god, man. Like life, huge life changes for both of us. Yeah, many, many times. Yeah. And this is like our diary. It's crazy how much stuff we've done since then. Yeah, I gotta delete all this shit when my kid gets his own phone.

Block your own IP address. Yeah. And we got another five-star rating from Bruno AK9, who says, reliably, awesome. This podcast is probably the only one I listen to regularly. I hate when they get political. So do we. But then they seem to realize that we all don't agree with each other and avoid the topic as often as possible.

This is the most professionally sounding podcast out there. Cheers to Jason. And they are funny, interesting, and snarky. Woohoo! That's us. That's us. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to GOG.show slash support and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air.

And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review. Closing shout outs! Rest in peace to Toni Morrison, who is a novelist, a towering novelist of the black experience who died at 88, according to the New York Times.

She was our 1993 Nobel laureate in literature. And, you know, we talk a lot. We have an at the library section. We talk a lot about sci-fi books, but I've read all of her books. They're fantastic. It's just books I would never discuss on the show. So if you're looking for something new and you want to expand your mind a little bit, go read some Toni Morrison.

Great books. Unbelievably good. We have experienced a major loss. And a big shout out to all of my Torontonian friends. I had such a good time, as per usual, and I can't wait to see you all again. Yeah. Had lots of good drinks.

Good times. And a big shout out to everybody who sent me birthday wishes. Thank you very, very much. And a big shout out to my roommate who took me to the polo lounge on Sunday, where we got to see Kylie Jenner and her boyfriend, Tony Scott. Was it Tony Scott, the rapper? I don't fucking know.

So we had billionaires on one side, and then on the other side was Ozzy and the family. Oh, cool. So Ozzy and the whole family was there. Ozzy's not doing too well, man. He's not in good shape. Well, there's a reason the show isn't still on the air. Yeah, man. He had like a nurse with him and walking really slow, and it's not good.

It's not good for the old Ozster. But it was cool to see, you know, Sharon and the whole family there. It was neat. I love the polo lounge. Drugs are bad, kids. Yeah, seriously. Well, until next time, I'm still Jason DeFillippo. And I'm still Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks.

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