376: Beardy Robots

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 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. Read any good news articles lately, Brian? Not really. Yeah, you know. I'll go first because you probably have more to say about this.

My opinion about the Joey Ito MIT Media Lab stuff has not changed at all. I've read all the articles that we've been kicking around with between you and I and some of our other friends. You know, they got caught and they kind of knew what they were doing.

It doesn't. I understand the concept that everybody does it, but that doesn't make it okay with me. I still believe he shouldn't have had to retire until they stepped on their own. He made a huge apology and then it became a big story again because, you know.

Negroponte. Negroponte screwed up and brought it up into the eye again. And after that kind of scrutiny, then yes, you do have to resign. You just do. Yeah. That's how it goes. So that's where I'm at. Yeah. I hear where you're at. And with the new articles that came out, you were correct.

They did know exactly what they were doing. They knew exactly what they were doing. Yeah. And, you know. And actually, now that I just thought about it a little bit more, I think it I think he had to resign and not just because of Negroponte, because he didn't just take money from Epstein for MIT.

He also took it for his own personal company. Yeah. That's kind of a damning bit right there. So there you go. Done. Yeah. That's it. You know. Sorry. Yeah. And, you know, I appreciate all the sentiment about it. And I still stand by him because he's a good guy who made a bad, bad decision.

Who hasn't? You know? And I don't think that that should ruin his life and career. He'll go on. He's got the monies to go on and do something else. And this will be forgotten about. And hopefully he will be more careful about who he takes money from in the future. Yeah. Yeah. I just hate this culture now where if you make a mistake, there's just no conversation to be had, no path to redemption, except for waiting for the next news cycle to knock you out of the limelight.

But I don't know. I don't. I understand what you're saying, but I don't feel that that applies in this circumstance because he took the money for his own company. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. Well, I wish him well. And hopefully he'll bounce back and, you know, learn from his mistake. There you go. All right.

And in continued follow up, I was not aware of this because I don't do a lot of app store searches. But we were talking about how just the other week about how Apple basically mines the very popular apps to bake them into their own products and thus putting them out of business. But apparently over the summer, they Apple actually tweaked their algorithms so that their own stuff didn't show up first so that, you know, third party apps could actually get a chance.

Now, given what we know about what Apple does, this actually seems more devious than helpful because this is saying, all right, let's tweak the algorithm a bit so our apps don't show up first. So we see what other people look for. So then we can see how to improve our apps because they're using these different ones, which we can now research.

Well, I don't know if it's that devious. I don't know if that much thought was put into it. I think they just got busted. Yeah. And we're trying to get ahead of the game because, you know, all the antitrust stuff that's been going around all summer long, they're trying to get ahead of it. Yes. You know, see, we're very cool. Yeah.

See, yeah, exactly. Now we are. It's like, you know, we're going to do what we can until we get caught and then we'll we'll fix it. Yep. And I made a big point about how I thought it was our civic duty to take the Equifax money, the $125 from the Equifax settlement that you're supposed to get.

But even though we found out that it was going to be much less because everybody was signing up for it. Well, they're making it a bit harder now. Yeah, they are. Of course they are. Of course they are, which I think, how is that even legal? Because if you've signed up once and did all the terms and conditions, how can they come back to you and ask for verification?

They're basically asking you. You now have to prove that you had a credit monitoring service during that period of time. And then if so, you can get your $125. If not, you will default to just getting free credit monitoring. Now, there are ways around this because you can go sign up for something like Credit Karma or Credit Sesame, which is free, but then you're giving another company access to all your information just to get $125.

Yeah, the juice ain't worth the squeeze, buddy. The juice ain't worth the squeeze. And I particularly enjoyed Moss 6502's comment on Twitter. He's just said, those Equifax assholes just really don't want to pay. Of course not. Of course not. Yeah. In the news.

I just love this headline and then kind of got into it a bit more. Facebook broke democracy. Now it's coming for your marriage. The opening paragraph is great. Facebook, no matter how hard the company tries, cannot escape its current dilemma. It's a brand that wants to be seen as cheerful, lighthearted, and fun. The internet's go-to place to share the joys of life with friends and family, but it's increasingly being seen more as a nest of social media termites gnawing away the very foundations of our society, eroding our right to privacy, and profiting off reactionary propaganda that

undermines democracy and encourages hate crimes and genocide. Well, tell me what you really think. They should take that and make that their new mission statement. It really should be. So this article gets into, this is the contrast between all the bad news that Facebook has had recently and the fact that last Thursday they released Facebook Dating, a cheerfully marketed competitor to apps like Tinder or Bumble.

So, you know, if you want to date with a company that is not good at keeping your information private, buy a hat at it, by all means. And as the article states, it didn't receive the best reception. Most media coverage focused on Facebook's long history of privacy violations, which is not what you want if you're the PR guy trying to roll this out and promote it.

And what they've also noticed is that Facebook, in just doing what they do by trying to provide another service so that you can date and they promise to keep it private, they basically created a system that is tailor-made for cheating on your spouse. The feature that I really like is the one where you can, you know, say you're interested in one of your friends, but it never tells you until your other friend says the same thing back.

Yes. The secret crushes feature, which is absolutely perfect if you want to test the waters with any of your friends to see if you want to ba-donk-a-donk in the afternoon and have a little afternoon tonight. Yeah. See, I think the thing that everybody should do is just click on everybody. I think they limit you to eight. Oh, man, that sucks.

Eight people. Like, it's old school MySpace top eight. Oh, man. Like, I want to be on top of these eight. Yeah. Oh, nice one. Nice one. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I wonder if you can, like, try eight of them, then remove them. Yeah, I'm not into her anymore.

Not into her anymore. And then do another eight and then just cycle through all your friends to really find out who's digging you. It just seems creepy to me that somewhere out there that you would have this, you know, this person, I tried the dating app when it first came out. Then I liked, like, you know, three girls that I thought were really cute and really liked and then forgot about it, got married, and down the line, they come along and, you know, pick you back up.

Then your wife finds the, or the notification pops up on your phone that Susie from down the street is into you too. It's like, oh. Well, you know, turn off those notifications. Probably a good idea. The article gets into the idea that maybe they're doing this on purpose because that is the one thing, one untapped market, as it were, that Tinder and Bumble aren't really good for, the adultery.

Maybe they're forgetting about Ashley Madison. Yeah. Which has had its own privacy issues. Yeah. Still there, though. Still there. And it gets into it about, that said, this is just a microcosm of the bigger picture of why Facebook simply is not the pro-social app that it markets itself as being. Time and again, the evidence suggests that Facebook, in fact, feeds off the darker impulses of humanity, as it does.

Love it. There you go. Good luck with that. And another great article over at the Atlantic, which, by the way, Tangent, recently launched their subscription model. So I don't get all my free articles anymore and I'm going to have to pay up. Pony up. They have good journalism. I will pony up for it.

So this is great. Please regulate us, is the title of the article written by Brad Smith, president of Microsoft. What? Exactly. This is why I keep my Microsoft stock and I keep buying it. I like Microsoft 99% of the time, even though I technically don't use any of their products anymore.

I was going to say, you don't like them enough to actually use what they make, but. I like them as a company. They're up there with Tim Cook, just a little bit under in terms of privacy and the way that the world seems to be going. So there's a very, very long article that gets into all the reasons why he feels that we absolutely 100% have to start regulating the tech industry because the tech industry does not do it themselves.

If you're one of the people out there that is sick of me saying regulation, regulation, regulation, I challenge you to go read this article by somebody way up in the tech industry who feels the exact same way and lays out why regulation is needed now. Okay.

Get off your box. It's okay. Okay. Well, then I have to move the mic down a little bit. And I found another one over at the Atlantic, which is when I realized I have to pay for them. AI is coming for your favorite menial tasks. Now, this is an interesting article by Fred Benson, who is the former vice president at Kickstarter, who gets into their own use of admittedly, and this is what drives me crazy, AI, machine learning, and et cetera, et cetera, are used interchangeably throughout this article as if they're all the same thing.

Sorry, I'm back up on the soapbox. But anyways, his point being that basically once we start using and deploying machine learning and maybe AI in the very far future into our companies and our day-to-day tasks, they're going to take over kind of the more fun ones, the ones that let us take a break, the menial stuff that we need to kind of set our mind and give it a break and circle back around to the bigger problems.

And it's only going to leave us with the bigger stuff to do, which isn't fun. Work is going to suck. You can take a walk. Come on. You could take a walk. Yeah, it's OK. But it's, you know, that gets into the fact that people need both experiences of mastery and pleasure for a healthy mood.

And if they take away all the easy tasks that give you that quick little bite of like, done, did it, out of the way, and only leave the shit that fucking drives you nuts, everything at work is going to be super challenging and you're going to hate work. Here's what you do. This is a life hack.

You got your to-do manager, right? I use things. So what you do is when the AI is starting a task, you put it in things. And when the AI is done, you get to check the box. So you get the dopamine. Check the box. That's true. It's all just about checking the box. It's all about checking the box and seeing that number go down. So that's my work around.

You solve the problem. I no longer worry about very old robots with beards. This episode is sponsored by Privacy.com. Privacy is the first payments product that keeps your personal information private while being even more convenient than using a regular credit card online.

Privacy lets you generate a brand new Visa card number for every purchase you make online with one click with our browser extension or via the mobile app. We all buy more and more stuff online and privacy gives you a temp credit card number for every site you buy from. Never forget to cancel subscriptions or trials ever again.

This has saved me a lot of money. I tell you right now. And that's worth the price of admission, right? But the price of admission is actually free because they make their money the same way debit cards do with the interchange fees paid by merchants. You know how skeptical we are. Free services here on GOG.

And these guys actually have a business model to back it up. Who'd have thunk it? That gives them the grumpy old geek seal of approval. We actually reviewed this product when they first launched. And we're not just pimping the product because they paid us. We're both actual customers and we love what they're doing. If you use a password manager, and why don't you? If you listen to the show, you have to use privacy.

You don't use the same password everywhere, so why use the same credit card number? Sign up takes less than two minutes. And like we said, it is completely free. So far, they've saved their customers over $115 million in unwanted and unauthorized charges. And most of that was probably mine. Most of it was.

You can freeze cards and set spending limits. Cards locked to merchants, making them useless to thieves and hackers, thus solving all the problems we talk about in security every week. Protect yourself from online fraud with virtual card numbers. Delete cards anytime and kiss forgotten subscriptions. Goodbye. To sign up for free and get a $5 credit, just go to privacy.com slash GOG.

That's $5 free to spend anywhere by just signing up. Privacy.com slash GOG. Get on it today. You will thank us. Privacy.com slash GOG.

Media Candy. Found this one over at the Hollywood Reporter. I thought this was a rather strange article, but ties into the fact that we live in a very strange world right now. Author Walter Mosley has quit Star Trek Discovery after using the N-word in the writer's room.

Right. Yes. It's an odd. Did you read this one? It's worth pointing out that he is black. It is worth pointing out that he is black. It's also worth pointing out that he didn't just drop it capriciously. He was asked about a story of something that occurred in his own life, and he was simply relaying the exact things that occurred to him in a writer's room.

Yep. Writer's room are famously sacrosanct and anything goes. Should be a safe space. Yes. It should be. Yes. It should be a safe space. But apparently they're going for the other kind of safe space. So I find this sad, actually, because it's there was this is this is not you know, he didn't use it as as a negative.

He didn't use he was relaying a story of something that occurred to him. Yes. If you can no longer do that. Anywhere, much less a writer's room. What the hell's going on now? Well, I recommend people go out and read The Coddling of the American Mind. How good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure.

Right. Having said all that, though, I've never really liked what Walter Mosley's writing, so I'm not going to complain too much about him not writing. OK, well, there's that then. But but he should never, ever, ever have been fired. And whoever contacted HR about that.

Yeah. Yeah, because because he had to go do the HR gauntlet and all that. And who wants to be in a room with people like that? Nobody wants to be in a room with. Well, HR to begin with, because HR people are the devil. I stand by that. And yeah, he's just like, yeah, no, this is you know what?

It's not a safe space for him. So let's go. That's all right. Good on him for stepping down. Go right for Picard. Wait, no, if you don't like your writing, don't put him on the show that we're looking forward to the most. Never mind. Never mind that. He can go right for the animated series that's coming out there.

Yeah, I don't care about that. Yeah. And I did finish Marvelous Mrs. Maisel season two. Yes. What'd you think? What a fantastic show. Isn't it? It's just pleasant. It's delightful. It is delightful. It's delightful.

You really just want to have like a nice little cocktail and just sit and watch it and you smile. Yeah. And she is such a good actress. She really is. Who knew from from her in House of Cards? Yeah. House of Cards. Who knew that she would be this great that she could totally carry a show?

I want to go back and watch her in House of Cards just because I remember her character very vividly, but I don't remember her being that good. I was actually kind of, you know, happy when they killed her off. But yeah. Anyway, I did also watch The Spy with Sacha Baron Cohen. OK.

It's a six part miniseries about the life of the Israeli spy Eli Cohen. Cohen. It was decent. I thought it was decent. Sacha Baron Cohen was actually a really good dramatic actor, I thought. That's that's the reviews I've said. It's been that he was actually amazing. So here's the here's the problem.

And he looks in every scene exactly like Freddie Mercury. So that. Well, he should have been Freddie Mercury. Yeah, I mean, it's like every time he's like, you know, he's wearing a wife beater and he has the mustache and the hair and everything.

I'm just like, OK, Freddie. OK, for even my roommate was like every time that he would come to the scene, she's like, OK, Freddie, we get it. Right. But yeah, he really should have. He really should have been because he actually looks a lot more like Freddie Mercury than Raman Malek. He would have been if the band wouldn't have nixed the script that he was attached to.

Well, yeah, there you have it. I watched a stand up special over on Netflix. Whitney Cummings. Can I touch it? I don't know anything about Whitney Cummings. I've never seen any of her stand up before. I know that she's a very talented comedy writer who's written for lots of shows. I know she's very well talented.

Talented is she she she created two broke girls. OK, I don't know if you've ever seen that show. No, not good. Not a good show. And I know she's very active on social media and she's always on Howard Stern and all this other kind of stuff. So I figured, OK, I'll watch a stand up special.

It wasn't bad. No, I liked it a lot. I thought it was good. I thought, you know, it ended up being randomly kind of right up our alley because she gets into the sex robots. And most of the show is about technology and how we're going to be dealing with it. So that was pretty interesting. Yeah. Now, I've seen her a lot on the roasts, the Comedy Central roasts back in the day.

She was really good on those. And and, you know, about the kerfuffle with her nipple that happened after the the filming of this special, don't you? No. OK, well, when she was taking pictures at one point, she got she had a nip slip and then somebody like screen capped it and then was trying to blackmail her and or I'm going to post it.

And she's like, well, screw you. Here's my nipple and posted it again. Excellent. Well done for her. It's just a nipple for people. Seriously, we all got and we all got them men to this is actually one of my favorite books. Why do men have nipples? It was. It was a really good book.

Never was in fiction. It's like it just went through a million on random facts. So I'll have to pull that up and put it in the show notes. And I also ended up watching both seasons of Fleabag a second time around. Well, technically, I was sitting. Have you finished Discovery yet? No.

God damn it. But I didn't watch Fleabag by choice. My wife finally wanted to watch it all. And I have to say, watching it all a second time again, not even that late after I watched it the first time. Man, that's a great show. OK, I found myself ignoring my book and just watching it again because it's so good.

OK, well, I don't get to my cue. It's in my cue. No, you won't. If only I had a NAS. I have to open up my laptop. I have to toss it over to the TV. It's such a pain in the butt. Oh, my God. Or you could just pay for CBS All Access. When Picard comes, I will. There you go.

And I'm a huge fan of Grant Britton, the skate photographer. He had a huge impact on my life growing up and got me into photography. I have I still have a letter he sent me and he put one of my photos in Transworld Skateboarding for my first roll of film. I still have that, too. But he's got a very short documentary about him over on Vimeo that somebody made.

It's like 14 minutes long. But it's really cool. It's really cool. I really like this guy. He's I mean, he's every famous skate photo that you've probably ever seen was his. He's just he's the godfather of skate photography. You know, some people say Glenn Friedman would be one of them. But I think Grant Britton is way better than Glenn Friedman.

So check it out if you're into that sort of thing. And I put a link to his Instagram in the show notes as well, which you can always check out. Mm hmm. And this one is because I just love these stats for you. Vinyl is set to outsell CDs for the first time since 1986.

Mm hmm. I you know what? There's there. They're also outselling cassettes and eight tracks, too. Yeah, because nobody has a cassette player. Nobody has an eight track player and no computer and no car come with CD players anymore. So shocking. Yeah, well, I mean, you still have to go buy a new record player.

They don't come with anything, but people like the retro, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. People are into it. It's cool. That's fine. I don't have a problem with that. Wait, wait, what? I don't have a problem with people being into vinyl. I think it's silly, but I don't have a problem with it. OK, I had to do a double take there.

Brian says he doesn't have a problem with it. Wow, that's new. No, no, no, no, no. I've never had a problem with that. I have a problem with the the vinyl fucking fanatics that are crazy that are saying it's coming back and it's going to become mainstream. It's never going to be mainstream. Never. Never. Yeah.

When one dead medium is outselling another dead medium, does anybody? Exactly. It's a race to the bottom here, people. Oh, my God. And this one I thought was really funny because since everybody has to have a podcast now, the band Korn is starting up their podcast. I didn't even know they were still around.

They have a new album coming out in September. So expect the podcast to drop around the same time. So it is a scripted show. Yes, it's a scripted show. And we'll see what it's like. I don't know what the band is contributing to it since two other people have written it.

If I had to guess, I'm sensing that we're getting a concept album and this will be exploring the world. Could be. Could be. So we'll see how that goes. But keep an eye out for it. It'll be dropping sometime in September. I think it's called The Nothing. Okay.

And I've got some more old band news hot off the presses. Just as we were getting set to record, I saw this. Bauhaus is going to reunite with Peter Murphy, Daniel Ash, Kevin Haskins, and David Jay for a Hollywood gig November 3rd. This, I believe, is the third time the band is reunited. And I will take as many as we can get.

And I will see you there. You won't see me there. I'm not going to Hollywood ever again, if I can help it. Moran of the week. A new priest named Mindar is holding forth at Kodaji, a 400-year-old Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan.

Like other clergy members, this priest can deliver sermons and move around to interface with worshipers. But Mindar comes with some unusual traits. A body made of aluminum and silicone, for starters, because he is a robot. Or she, I guess. Designed to look like canon, the Buddhist deity of mercy, the $1,000,000 machine, is an attempt to reignite people's passions for their faith in a country where religious affiliation is on the decline.

Good luck with that. Let's put a soulless piece of metal in a temple so you can experience more spirituality. So you can take care of your soul. Oh my god. And it gets better, because for now, at least they're not claiming that Mindar is AI-powered.

It is not. All it does is recite the same pre-programmed sermon about the Heart Sutra over and over. But the roboters, for a million dollars, they created a tape deck. They really did? A million dollars, they made a tape deck. With a body.

That's it. It doesn't even have shuffle. It's got one track. It just loops. I guess it's more like an eight track. Yeah. Anyways, but the robot's creators say they plan to give it a machine learning capability that'll enable it to tailor feedback to worshippers' specific spiritual and ethical problems. This robot will never die.

I don't know. Have you seen Terminator? It might grow a beard, though. It might grow a beard. It will just keep updating itself and evolving, says Tensho Goto, the temple's chief steward. With AI, we hope it will grow in wisdom to help people overcome even the most difficult troubles. And then, self-actualize and destroy everyone!

I just love it how, at the end, it's changing Buddhism. For the better? I don't think so. I don't think so. Oh, that's genius. I want to know who made this thing for a million dollars, because those guys are good. Those guys are good.

They can sell anything. Oh my god, I just pulled up the photo of this thing. This is creepier than I even could ever have imagined. Isn't it? It's so fucking weird. Wow, this thing is so bizarre. They couldn't even, for a million dollars, the only skin is the head, shoulders, and hands.

They couldn't even afford skin for a million dollars. What's going on here? It's amazing. Feedback loop. Over on Patreon, we've got a couple new subscribers, Ansley and Chris, and we got a message from Michaela. Hey, I can't DM you on Twitter, and I can't remember the email address of Jason.

That'd be Jason at GrumpyOldGeeks.com. And so here I am. Mainly, this is for Jason. I also audiobook and just found this thing called LibPro.fm. I think it would be Libro. Libro. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there you go. No sleep.

I make up letters as I go today. Libro.fm. So what it is, it's an audiobook store, and some of the money goes to indie bookstores of your choice for, I guess, just existing. Yes. That's how it works. Keep them alive. Yeah.

That's a noble cause. It is. It is. But I'm not going to change, because all my stuff is in one library already. Yeah, that's the problem, right? Yeah. I've got almost 800 books in Audible, so I'm not going to change. And I buy credits by the year, so I get a big chunk. So I've got like 30 credits in there right now.

So this is cool. If you're getting into the audiobook stuff, check this out. And if not, then don't. If you're Brian, don't. There you go. And over at PayPal, we have a bunch of new donations. David, Elizabeth, Michael, Mark, Edmund, who writes, covering two whole years of charging your cell phone around 20, well, there's some math.

If it's more expensive, I'll send you additional 25 cents. Love the show. Pedro, who writes, hey, guys, love the show. Hopefully you can keep it going. And who knows, many years from now, you'll still be recording from your retirement homes, and not because you need the money, but because you love doing this. Oh, God, that sounds depressing. Never mind. Grump on. Agreed.

Will, Jody, and Janice, who said, if I had a lawn, I would want you to get off of it. Hey. So thank you all. Actually, I just want a quick comment really quickly. A lot of you new people, both on Patreon and PayPal, are doing the eight bucks a month thing or a buck a show. So, well, that's not a buck a show.

Hold on a second. Do some math. Do some math. For a four week month. You know, hey, hey, hey, look, man. It's better than what we were doing. So it's better than what we were doing. So we really appreciate that. It's awesome that you guys are doing that. We really do appreciate it. And, you know, it's way less than a cup of coffee a day.

Nowadays, for sure. Over at GOG.show, Mark writes in. Hey, Chief Grumps. Longtime listener and supporter via Patreon. I really enjoy the show, and it's great that you're doing two episodes a week now. I heard your recent comments about Patreon and the need to update the minimum amount for subscriptions. I like your suggestion that $8 a month makes sense for an ongoing donation, i.e.

a bucket episode, which, buck or take, give or take. I guess I didn't need to make that huge comment because this was the very next thing that wrote in. I haven't had much sleep either, Jason. Exactly. So as I'm not really a fan of Patreon, I've canceled my donation through them and have set up a new recurring donation for $8 via PayPal.

Well, thank you very much, Mark. And he says, keep up the good work and stay grumpy. P.S. Thanks, Brian, for the recommendation of Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's one of the best books I've read recently, and I'm looking forward to reading the follow-up, Children of Ruin. P.P.S. Deliveroo! For $8 a month, you get as many Deliveroo's as you want, buddy.

And Don writes in. In response to the mental health information being sold, I wonder if a person could invoke HIPAA here in the States. I'm looking at the HIPAA page at hhs.gov, and it says, health information protection is one of its purposes, but it is limited to healthcare providers. So the hypothetical, you go to a random site which has X number of trackers.

Shortly thereafter, you go to your pharmacy website to refill your high blood pressure medication. The trackers all note somehow that you refilled your high blood pressure medication. Would this be a possible violation? Not a lawyer? Not a lawyer. Don't play one. Don't like it. Not happy about it.

Wouldn't like it, but guessing it's happening. Yeah, and I don't think it would really go down to a pharmacy level. And yeah, I don't see the violation here. So, hmm. But not a lawyer. Yeah, also, yes, not a lawyer.

Raphael writes in. Here's how I get to stop my four-year-old daughter seeing YouTube recommendations. For example, a guy being cut in half by a train after watching Thomas the Tank Engine videos. And I'm sure that probably happened. One, buy a YouTube subscription. Not required, but less morally gray. Two, download two-tube videos with YouTube DL command line app and save to a NAS.

Three, view on VLC. Requires a NAS command line usage and a bit of work. May work for you or listeners on the geekier side. Well, thank you, Raphael. Thank you. Not really going to work for me because the iPad is the preferred medium of choice for YouTube viewing, particularly when out at a restaurant.

Oh, yes. Hard to drag that NAS around with you. Well, you can load them. You can load them locally to the iPad. That's true. That's true. Well, that's all for my next move when I will geek up and get all these sorts of things. Neil writes in. Hey, Jason. Heard you saying about the extension for Firefox and Chrome only to bold the first letter of the text and just wanted to let you know that for Opera, there is an extension that allows you to use Chrome extensions in there.

We know. I have it and it seems to work perfectly. Yes, it does. If you just search their extension store for Chrome extensions or just do a quick Google search, it will come up. Also, is it just me or has Brian suddenly got a whole lot grumpier? I love the new fiery Brian. Stay grumpy. I don't know if I'm grumpier, but I'm a hell of a lot more sleep deprived.

My three-year-old has just been amping it up recently, so it's been a rough couple months. So I think I'm just coming to the show rather early in the morning with a bit of fire in the gut. There you go. There you go. And the thing about this is this was for that, oh, what was it called?

It's the extension that does- Cyborg reading, binary or something like that. I can't remember. Robot reading, something like that. It was something like that. But the issue with it is- It was bionic reading, right? Bionic, bionic reading. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, bionic reading at bionic-reading.com.

So their extension is in beta, and I used it in Opera, and I couldn't get any site to make it work. So I haven't tried it in Chrome because I'm not going to use Chrome, so I'll wait for them to get their ish together on Opera. What do you mean you're not going to use Chrome?

We use Chrome for Zencaster every time we record. Yeah, and my fan spins up, and it just sucks all the juice out of my machine. I know. I know. Every time. Yep. And Derek writes in, well, three out of four isn't bad. While I've listened to most things you've said, I did go back and listen to every episode of GOG, even though you have repeatedly said not to.

It has been enjoyable. I know, I'm crazy. To listen and follow the growth of GOG. You guys have come a long way. I've been a Patreon supporter since the first week of listening to the show, but to show I've listened to what you complain about every episode, I have gotten a VPN, and I'm now using Privacy.com and 1Password.

Thanks for the great content. Keep it up. And by the way, I always love the show art. Well, there you go, Brian. Shout out for the show art. And somebody finally enjoys your show art. Thank you so much. And if you enjoy the show art, make sure you follow us on Instagram, because I also try to pick out things throughout the week. Beta Bucket writes in, wow, stupid electric scooters claim another victim.

This one with so much potential. And this is a Detroit Tigers prospect, sadly, that died while riding an electric scooter. I actually was riding an electric skateboard, so it was a bit different. A bit different. This is a scooter thing, yeah. Yeah. So, let's stay away from what used to be manpowered to be electric.

Let's get some exercise. Seriously. Skateboarding is fun. You don't need a motor on a skateboard. Yeah. It's really hard to do a kickflip with a 30-pound skateboard, I tell you that. Joe writes in, hello, in episode 375, you talked about the Fuel Rewards Program. I worked for Ralph's Grocery Stores for many years, and I left three years ago, so this policy might have changed.

When customers had problems with their points, we would refer them to Ralph's Customer Help Desk at 1-800-576-4377. The Help Desk will work with the customer to get their points restored. Without getting into all the stories, I heard, customers have unintentionally typed in one wrong digit and tried to use an old phone number, and this has resulted in stealing other people's points.

So, okay. That's basically what you have to do is just go and call customer support and say, where'd my points go? That's kind of it. That'll work. Chris writes in, I keep hearing ads for Eero on your show, and I'm so confused. Oh, here we go. The gents call out Amazon constantly for their surveillance practices, acknowledging that we all still buy things from them, but you shill for Eero every week without noting that Amazon now owns that.

Well, we started pimping Eero before Amazon bought them, and it's a router, so I don't think they're sitting there listening to your traffic. The problem that we have with Amazon and the surveillance is with Ring and the Echoes, especially with Ring, because they're dealing with the police departments right out of the gate.

But I don't have a problem with my router. I don't have any Echoes in the house. I still have these damn rings, though. I've got tons of Alexas around, and I just don't do stupid stuff with them. But I'm not giving up my Eero no matter what. And yeah, you know, look, all these companies are buying out everyone.

If we only sought out like third party, non-affiliated stuff, we wouldn't have any connection and we wouldn't be doing the show. That's true. That's true. We got look, we got a pimp somewhere, you know, it's not like it's Jeffrey Epstein that made the Eero. But I see your point.

I do see your point. Jody writes in. Hey, guys, took a cue from listener Steve on episode 374 and set up an $8 recurring donation through PayPal. Thank you. A couple more will jump on the bandwagon. Steve will officially be a trendsetter. Love your show. It's the only podcast I listen to religiously. Being an amateur podcaster myself, I checked in at Jason's Club, which is the club.

Yes, that's right. And can't say enough good things about it. Thanks, Jason, for the editing tips. You've already helped me improve my game. Stay grumpy. Jody. Excellent. I'm glad everything's going well over there. I signed up. I haven't been back yet. Sorry. I know. I didn't. You don't have to. That's OK. Holly writes in.

The article title alone was hilarious to me. Who the fuck is Tool? Fans freak out over unknown band dethroning Taylor Swift. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, this is, you know, if you've been around long enough, you'll remember who the fuck is Arcade Fire when they won a Grammy. So it's good times. Arcade Fire. I don't know who Arcade Fire is.

I've heard of them here and there. They did win a Grammy, you know. Oh, OK. Like that makes a difference. Hell, I barely know who Taylor Swift is. Old, old. And Tia writes in, Ready Player One is coming true. And this is an article over at The Guardian called Sardine Tins for the Poor, Barcelona's Shipping Container Homes.

Yes, that's right. They're turning shipping containers into homes. Actually, the interior looks quite lovely. Yeah. You know, and speaking of Amazon, I'm pretty sure Amazon was selling these for a while, too. I think they were. Yeah. Pamela writes in, Hey, guys, regarding the new Terminator movie and you both only liking the first and second movies, you're in luck.

I read that the premise behind Dark Fate is that it's the third installment after the first two and all the Terminator movies in between didn't happen. Hope that makes you feel better about it. I, for one, cannot wait to see it. I, for one, cannot wait for the explanation of how a goddamn Terminator robot looks like he's 85 years old. That's true. Well, you know, sun damage.

Last I checked, they don't age. Well, look, man, you leave your rubber toys out in the sun, you know, they kind of fade and wilt. And I just want to know how he grew a beard. Advances in the technology. That's right. Because being hairy is going to help a robot.

Helps him blend in, man. It's camouflage. Does he have a man bun? Oh, God. That would not be good. That would not be good. Thea writes in, Hey, just want to let Jason know that his Apple card does have a card number.

It's in the wallet app. Click into the Apple card. Click the three dots in the upper right-hand corner and then click on card information. And it's still, and it still have all the card info. Okay. Anyway. Yes. Okay. That's where it's at. Thank you very much. And also thank you to everybody else who wrote in to tell me how to get to my card number because I'm an idiot.

And I did not RT the FNM. So, appreciate it. There is no FNM. That's true. You got to just, it's like Snap made the app. Yes. You have to click around until you figure out where you're going. Joe Notkerrigan writes in, love the show, guys. I'm curious if I'm the only listener that yells the section intros out loud, even in public, when I hear the jingles.

Media candy in the news. And my favorite moron of the week. Yes. You are the only one. Yes. Yes. I have not been out in public and heard anybody screaming those out. Yeah. Well. Oh, God. David writes in, I wanted to ding you for your pronunciation of Goldman Sachs in episode 372.

It should be pronounced correctly as Goldman Sachs. Very clever. All right. Pedro writes in, hey, grumps. Love the show and been listening for a while. Like you, I'm old, cynical, and grumpy and achy. Well, maybe not you, Brian. Well, damn. My kid's heavy now. I'm getting achier.

Came across this page while researching some conference room mics on my phone, and it was completely blocked by three ads running simultaneously. The internet has turned to shit. I used to work at an ad tech company and left because it didn't seem moral to keep supporting this kind of crap. Well, it did pay the bills, and that's how the internet works, but still shitty to bombard people with unsuitable pages full of ads.

Grump on Pedro. That's why we use ad blockers. Yeah. Seriously. He sent it from the phone, though. I think the screen cap was from the phone, which is really hard to get to ad blocker to work on the phone. That is true. Carol writes in, oops! Recent research from Kaspersky Labs shows that many illicitly acquired textbooks are rife with malware.

During the last academic year, it identified 356,000 occasions where one of its users downloaded an infected bit of academic writing. Surprisingly, more than two-thirds of these incidents involved the download of essays. Well, you know what? Cheater.

Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater. Cheater, cheater. That's right. Barrett writes in, I just saw the trailer for Jawline on Hulu. I've never wanted to punch my monitor more. I feel sorry for these influencers who still have no idea that this is not a career. It's sad that their parents and friends support and encourage this narcissistic behavior. Yes, isn't it?

It sure is. Simon writes in, hey folks, you talked about verifying businesses on Google in the past. I found this and thought you might be interested. Perhaps you already saw it and I missed it. So I loaded up the link into the official Verify Your Business page on Google and it does involve a postcard, but still tons of people are getting in there without doing this.

So I don't quite know what's going on. It is what it is. Thanks, Simon. It is what it is. And over on iTunes, Scars525 writes in with a five star. Finally, a real show, Grumpy Old Geeks. Grumpy or not, very entertaining shows? Stay grumpy, my friends.

We shall. Oh, thank you. And MadMike1984 writes in with another five star rating as well. Excellent. I am neither old nor a geek, but I am grumpy. An excellent show to listen to if you want to keep up with the tech and media news. Makes for a great listen during my walk to school or when I'm smoking my pipe to relax. I'll hop on the Patreon when I get a real job.

Put down that pipe and get to work. Seriously? Yeah, you get the pipe. You don't get to be Hugh Hefner. Where's your side hustle? He's an Instagram influencer. He doesn't have time. Yeah. He's working for the lucrative pipe industry.

Thank you, Jason and Brian, for quality content in a sea of trash. Thank you so much. 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 to please head over to GOG.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review.

And man, we've been getting a lot of email lately. We really appreciate it. It's really fun to hear from you guys and to interact and chat. My shout-out goes to the L.A. Dodgers, who are two games away from clinching the division title.

So it could happen this week. Very excited. Oh, I'm sure you are. I am. I am. I forgot that baseball was even happening this year. It's been delightful. It happens every year, Jason. I think my Twitter mute filters are actually working this time around. It's fantastic. And a big thank you to everybody who wrote in this week for feedback loop.

We had more than we've ever had. So we really appreciate that. We had so much that we thought we were going to go long. And we've gone short. We've gone short. So you get a short share this time. A lot of people wrote us the same stories, but with their own comments, and we just didn't want to double up on things 7,000 times.

That is also true. But keep it coming, people. We love it. Yes. So we'll be back on Friday with Dave Bittner. Actually, Saturday. We are here on Friday, but you get to hear us on Saturday. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schallmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks.

To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. It costs us eight bucks a month, and we'll love you forever. It's a good amount. It's almost like a buck a show. If you don't like Patreon but still want to support the show, you can give us a one-time or recurring donation for, say, I don't know, eight dollars by just going to GOG.show and click that PayPal button.

Your support really keeps us going, and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are GOG.show slash 376. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay beardy grumpy.

At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then, explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

From beauty and fashion, to home, culinary, and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com. you