408: Crossing the Creepy Line

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. No, not fucking again. Well, let me tell you a little story. It was a long weekend and I believe on Sunday, a Sunday evening, a friend of the show and mutual friend Dr. David Teeter wrote me and said Chen had gotten him a brand new Apple Watch 5.

Yay. And he wondered if he could, you know, connect with me on the activity app to get a little motivation. And normally I'm really good with that sort of stuff. So I was like, sure, of course. And about 25 minutes later, my son sneezed into my eyeballs. And then I woke up and I woke up the next morning with the cold from hell.

You know, since I've had my Apple Watch, I don't think there's been a day that I haven't closed the stand and exercise circles because, you know, I at least get a bit of a walk in or something like that. I didn't close either. So sorry for the lack of motivation, Dr. David Teeter.

I will get back to it hopefully later today, but not from the way I'm sounding. I should add you back in because I got the phone call as well. I also am on that, but I didn't know you could do challenges now with the Apple Watch and the health thing. So I laid down a challenge.

We'll see if it's accepted. But if you like, I can add you back. But it's because it gets me motivated, too. I like having competition. Well, feel free to add me back. I don't mind. Okay. Well, I'll have Apple competition on the Apple Watch and I've already got work week hustle competition on the Fitbit.

So I don't know. I'm out of gadgets to attach to me. I don't think I have. I'm sure we can find you more. Yes. The new activity suppository coming soon from Buttbit. I challenge you to put this up your butt. Speaking of things coming out of people's butts, though.

Yes. I saw this one and I just shook my head. Oh, God. This is over at Business Insider. Buzzy mattress maker Casper is pitching itself as a tech company, just like WeWork did. Here's why business experts are dubious. Here's the thing. You don't have to be a business expert to be dubious about a mattress company that says I'm a tech company.

Let me tell you why they're dubious. Just because you have an app and a website and you advertise on every podcast known to man, except for this one, I might add, that you are not a tech company. That does not make you a tech company. You are using modern delivery and ordering mechanisms, but you are not a tech company.

You are doing what everyone does. Yep. And they probably even outsource their logistics, I bet. But they do have a smart lamp. They have a smart lamp. That's it. What does it do? I don't know. It's apparently smart. Oh, okay. I can't believe they didn't put AI and blockchain in the filing papers as well.

So let me guess. Totally rake it in. Okay. Yeah. They're filing. I was wondering why we're hearing this news right now and why they're pitching themselves as a tech company. And that is, of course, because they're filing. Got it. Got it. Yep. That's exactly why. And this to the list of stocks I shall not be purchasing. Yeah. Or the bad.

I wouldn't buy a Casper to save my life. Because I have an eight sleep. However, if they'd wish to advertise, I will happily take a sample. Yeah. That's all you. I'm covered. Actually, I really would rather have the money. That's true, too. We need the money more than a new mattress. And a new mattress would be something you just have to schlep to Canada.

In the news.

Well, Jason, we've talked a lot about ageism in tech and how it's difficult, how it would be difficult for us to get a job in tech anymore because all these millennials are out there and, you know, they'll do it for less money. And they have way more interest in it and, like, we'll work way harder than we would anymore.

They care. Yeah. Our biggest issue now is not just that we're old. It's that we don't give a shit. Well, Jason, they're coming after our shtick now. What? Yeah. There's a new book coming out by a woman named Anna Wiener. She graduated from college in 2009. Oh, my God.

And she decided to get out of a dead-end job in the publishing industry to work in tech because, as she says, she wanted to feel like she was going somewhere. Instead, she found herself sucked into a culture that left her increasingly disconnected from her sense of self and working for young startup managers who seem not to have much more emotional intelligence than an AI program chatbot.

So, of course, she's writing a book about the experience, which, you know, is kind of what we do. We talk about it. So, yes. Get off our lawn. They're coming for our jobs, Jason. I actually am interested in reading this. I love this. You see people who are 24 or 25 running a company.

They've never really had any professional experience. You've never had any professional experience. Things can get really bad really quickly. Well, yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. Welcome to the tech industry, honey. That's the way it is. Well, she's figured out her exit strategy.

She's going to write a tell-all book about it, which I think we'll probably both end up reading. You can read it. I've had enough of that shit. All right. But, no, and she better have another backup plan. She needs a plan C because I'm telling you right now she's not going to get rich. Nobody sells books. Nobody sells books.

But I'm sure she'll have a podcast. She'll have a podcast. She'll go on a speaking tour, and she'll become an expert on not being an expert. That's what it'll be. I like how you gave her the benefit of the doubt. You know, here's the thing. We started this show making fun of people telling other people how to make money online.

Yep. She's writing a book about how you can't make money online. She has completely flipped the table. Yeah. Great. Now, I found this one over at Engadget. It's by a friend of the show. Not really a friend of the show. I don't even think she knows the show exists. Violet Blue. I knew her back in the day.

Your online activity is now effectively a social credit score. And did you get a chance to read this one or peruse it? I perused it a bit. And it's funny because it's kind of this has hit the zeitgeist a little bit. People are worried about the credit score thing. I've had a couple people come up and talk to me about it because they know I do the podcast.

And these are people not really into tech going, what's going on with all this stuff? Are they tracking us? Are they giving us scores? And I'm like, well, not in any organized way yet, but yes. Absolutely, they are, especially Airbnb, which is really crazy.

They've got a whole system in the back. Of course, it's run by AI. Of course. So it takes all of your different public profiles, mashes them all together, and gives you a score. It lets you know if you're worthy. If you're worthy of giving Airbnb your money.

Well, I'm a little torn on this. There's no law against it, and it makes sense, and it's smart for a company such as Airbnb, also not really a tech company, to do this sort of thing because of the various issues that they've run into.

You know, people renting places and trashing them, people renting places and hosting orgies, all that sort of stuff. And on the other side, you know, people that are renting places and they're slumlords and they're, you know, misrepresenting themselves online or they've stuck cameras everywhere or whatever.

So I'm not surprised they're doing it. I think that there should be laws against it. I was going to say, Mr. Fucking Regulation here. Well, I'm asking for regulation. That's exactly what I'm asking for. I'm asking for there to be regulation about this sort of thing. Again, not illegal at the moment, not cool, and a good reminder that maybe you shouldn't have your profiles public.

Oh, yeah, you're all trying to be influencers. I forgot. Don't be a fucking influencer. Make your social media private. No problems. Okay. Okay. So. Well, am I wrong, Jason? Well, you're not wrong on some pieces, but you're definitely wrong on others.

Airbnb is only tech. They're a tech company. Sorry. That's all they have is tech. They have all the booking shit. They've got all the payment stuff. They are tech. There is no physical product that they make. So got you on that one. Well, do you know, I think we need to define what a tech company is just the way that we attempt to define what AI is here again.

Again, I think that just having a platform for ticketing things, you know, that does not, in my mind, make you a tech company. A tech company is somebody that engages in creating technology of some sort, not just having a booking system online.

Well, that is tech, though. I mean, all right. Well, then by that definition, Uber is a tech company, too. I believe Uber is a tech company. I don't know how you can see it not as a tech company. I think of IBM as a tech company. Where's my flying colors? Okay, can we do tech? How about we do tech 2.0?

These are tech 2.0 companies, then. Okay. But Airbnb does have tech because they have AI that, like I said, crawls everything. But here's the thing. It scrapes everything it can find on you, including social media for traits such as conscientiousness and openness against the usual credit and identity checks and what it describes as secure third-party databases.

They added traits such as neuroticism and involvement in crimes and narcissism or Machiavellianism or psychopathy are perceived as untrustworthy. Okay. Everybody's social media profile comes off as narcissistic. It's in the nature of what it is.

It's right there on the tin. Yeah. I would like to know how they determine these things. I would like to see the secret sauce behind these computations. But, of course, they'll say, no, you can't see that. It's either a trade secret or it's an AI black box, and we don't even know how they come up with it.

Exactly. Well, here's the real big problem. It's for sex workers. And, you know, they're not doing, in some states, nothing illegal. But they're also getting just completely shut out of the Airbnb system because Airbnb is like. Well, no. To be fair.

No, it's not. Don't even go there because it's also – they're doing people who work in pornography, which is a completely legal business. And they're saying you can't have an Airbnb because you work in this field, which is legal. How about then there's a checkbox saying I would allow this in my place because – well, first off, I would never – I'm too skeezy about this sort of stuff.

I would never let a stranger stay in my place to begin with at all. Okay. That's not what we're discussing here, though. What are we discussing, then? We're discussing if the platform should ban people for having a legitimate legal job. Well, that is what I'm discussing if you'd listen to me. Get to the point. Hurry it up. I'm just saying that I – okay, add a checkbox to that sort of thing.

I would like to know the difference between I'm renting to a tourist who's just coming here to go to the beach versus I'm renting to a sex worker that's going to have Johns come into my place. Well, nobody's going to say they're going to have Johns come into their place, and people who have – you know, people who are sex workers like to travel, too.

It doesn't mean they're going to be banging in your bed. Yes, it fucking does. It's their job. God, Brian. So, you know what? Never mind. I can't even – I can't even – you're not understanding me. But the point – okay, so you don't want people – you don't want sex workers in your house.

What's the next checkbox? You don't want Chinese people? You don't want black people? That's where that kind of thing goes. Oh, look who's doing the slippery slope argument now. Well, this is – I mean, it's ridiculous that they're profiling people based on – I agree it is ridiculous. I do. I do agree.

I'm just pointing out other issues with this sort of thing, which is like many, many people would have an issue with a sex worker renting their place. They just would, and it's understandable. Not only do you have – well, again, I don't really get it because I would never, ever put my place up on Airbnb.

I just wouldn't. So maybe I'm just coming from a completely different place. It's where I don't like strangers or people much for that matter. That's my position, dude. You can't take my position on this one. Sorry. All right. Well, let's move on to some more creepy shit. This one is just everywhere.

It's the secretive company that might end privacy as we know it over on the New York Times by our friend Kashmir Hill. Yes. Which is interesting. She's left the Facebookosphere and actually is writing about somebody else now. Yeah. And this is about a company called Clearview AI run by Hontong Fat.

I don't know how do you pronounce that guy's name. That's pretty close, actually. Hontong Fat? I think he almost got that. That sounds fake. Hontong Fat. What's a – he's Australian. I don't know. It must be some Australian thing. Anyway, this is a company that apparently has three billion photographs that they scraped from the web and are running facial recognition against it.

Yeah. And they're selling it to police. Yeah. And is anybody surprised by this? Nope. Not in the least. But everybody's got it up their butt now saying, oh, my God, this is terrible. What's going to happen here? I'm like, this is – you can go get this service from Amazon, Google, or Microsoft right now.

I don't see why the big kerfuffle is happening about it. I really don't. Well, because it's not cool. I mean, it's, again, not illegal. But not cool. And I think people are starting to finally figure that out.

That, like, oh, my God, what is going on here? And it's starting to hit the mainstream that, wow, what's happening is absolutely insane. How come nobody's doing anything about it? Which is kind of what you and I have been screaming about for six years. How come nobody's doing anything about it? Yeah. And honestly, what they've built is not very hard to build.

No. We could have built it. It's not. It's just a scraper. And they just got a crap ton of data. And they've got some really good facial recognition software running on it. Well, not that good. It's got a 75% hit rate. So that's pretty good for facial recognition, as we've discussed. Yeah. We haven't tested it yet.

But it's interesting because Ben Thompson over at Stratechery has a pretty good article about it. And he thinks that they're just using the built-in stuff from, you know, Microsoft or Amazon and just running their stuff through it, which would make sense. What they might be doing is running multiple ones and cross-checking against each other, which would be pretty smart.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because we're writing their own. They said they wrote their own. But who knows? Everybody lies. Who knows if they even have three billion photographs in there? Come on. Can't trust anybody these days. But what I love about this is, like, they were – she was talking to a bunch of different law enforcement agencies and having them run her picture and seeing, you know, what they got back.

And then the company flagged it and said – and called the police station and said, are you talking to the media? A little creepy right there. A little creepy. Yeah. Yeah. So the other thing about this is one of the other co-founders was Richard Schwartz. He was an aide to Rudy Giuliani.

And that is what it is. But here's the bad part. Backed financially by Peter Thiel. Yep. So this is like kind of a – I'm surprised they just didn't take this in-house at Palantir because I'm sure Palantir has very similar technology. Probably. Maybe theirs is better.

Maybe he's hedging his bets. Who knows? You know, it's something we talk about all the time. There's only – there's not really much difference between the Chinese dystopian state and the American dystopian state except for the fact that in China it's the government that runs it and here it's private companies.

Yeah. That's it. You can get it here as a service. Yes. You get it here as a service. Dystopia is a service, yes. And speaking of dystopia, one of the other investors, David Scalzo, he's dismissed concerns about Clearview making the internet searchable by face, saying it's a valuable crime-solving tool. He goes on to say, I've come to the conclusion that because information constantly increases, there's never going to be privacy.

Laws have to determine what's legal, but you can't ban technology. Sure, that might lead to a dystopian future or something, but you can't ban it. Actually, you can. Well, if you can write it. Where's Hulk Hogan's porn video? Things can disappear.

Yeah, that's – I mean, that's not so much technology, but, I mean, everybody's got a compiler. Anybody can write whatever they want. You know? That's the way it's going to be. And I love in the Stratechery article, he quotes Eric Schmidt and the old – his old 2010 line, there is what I call the creepy line.

The Google policy on a lot of things is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it. Well, that line just keeps moving is the problem. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and they also go on to talk about how this is – it's a scraper. So they went out and scraped publicly available things that you can get on the internet.

And Facebook's like, no, against our policies. The problem is there is no real legal recourse for that because everything is just based on – if it's on the public internet, you can go grab it. Because there was a lawsuit with LinkedIn versus Haikyuu, and the courts came down on the side of Haikyuu for being able to scrape their stuff.

And that's the way it's going to be. Like, literally, you and I, with $10,000, could go probably rebuild that three billion-person database in no time. Sure. Spin up an AWS, leave it open to the public so everybody can see it just like everybody else does.

See, that's what it is. It's just – everybody just puts their photos in one place, and it's all searchable by everybody. Let's open the playing field to everyone. Why not? That is some Black Mirror shit right there. Yeah. Hey, man, facial recognition for everyone.

You get it. You know, everybody just has their 15 minutes of searching every day that you can search for whoever you want, find out where they're at. That's the way it goes. Well, we'll be there unless there's some regulation. Well, here's the problem. In China, where there is – one of their facial recognition databases with information on thousands of children was, of course, stored without protection.

And, yeah, that was hacked, too. So that's – you don't even have to go scrape Facebook. You just get one of these dumps from somebody that's already done it, you know? Yep. I'm sure if we looked hard enough, somewhere there is a Clearview AI, you know, instance somewhere that we could just walk into.

Bet me dollars to donuts. Somebody get on Shodan and find that for us. You're probably right, which is equally terrifying. It's the whole thing to begin with. Lovely. Okay. All right. You remember the whole brouhaha that came out about Amazon Ring and the hacks, which weren't really hacks because people just used old passwords?

Correct. And found passwords out of databases? Well, there's a lawsuit saying, no, that's not true. Really? That did not happen. Yes, two plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit are accusing the company of negligence and invasion of privacy, say that instead their passwords were unique and the company didn't implement basic security measures to protect users.

So we shall see. This is Tanya Amador and her boyfriend Todd Craig said they use unique 14 to 16 character passwords for the Ring security cameras, which did not stop a hacker from breaking into their camera fee in December, blaring sirens and threatening them pay this 50 Bitcoin ransom or you will get terminated yourself, the hacker said.

So they're saying, nope, these were not reused passwords. These were relatively secure passwords or at least as secure as your system at the time allowed since then they have offered, of course, two-factor authentication. And they said, yeah, we didn't do what you said we're doing.

And what you said was the problem is not necessarily the only problem that you're having. Well, here's another variant on that that is probably if this is a unique password that was used only on this site, dollars to donuts here, that their computer was hacked and somebody got into their system and found the password while they were browsing their system.

That's definitely a possibility. That's the other alternative. Yeah. It's just because you made it unique and locked it away in one password, that doesn't mean somebody can sit there, get into your machine, put a rat on it, and just watch your browsing history and see what your login is for anything. And there's so many other possibilities for this that it wasn't Ring.

But there's also the possibility that it wasn't Ring. That's the good thing about this lawsuit is we're going to find out, right? Exactly. Exactly. They need to send some forensic people over to Tanya and Todd's house and get that computer just to find out exactly what's going on. Yes, I would definitely like to see about that. But there is one other aspect of the story that I actually liked because we've talked in the past about this bullshit about class action waivers and arbitration being put into terms of service so that you could never sue a tech company because their lawyers were smart enough to say, oh, nope, you can only do arbitration.

Well, some of the lawyers over at Amazon screwed up because there are terms and conditions that say that, but you don't have to click on them and agree. They're non-binding and unlawful, so there could be no arbitration in this case. All right. So that was a whole lot of bad news.

Let's talk about something potentially kind of cool. I found this article over at The Atlantic saying, you can probably hibernate. Yeah, this has long been the sci-fi trope that allows us to get to places. We just put ourselves in deep sleep and travel for 100,000 years and get to a new planet.

Very nice. Except for when it screws up like an alien and you wake up. You're the only one left on the ship. Yeah. So there's a small group of scientists that are taking this extremely seriously and are looking into it. They're studying the basic mechanisms. So there's all kinds of applications, including altering metabolic rates, helping people lose weight, trauma victims when critical injuries are repaired.

I think you actually brought up a story that was kind of along those lines a little while back about how they were kind of semi-freezing trauma victims when there was no other option. Yeah. Yeah. It was basically for battlefield medicine. So if somebody got hit really bad, you basically swap their blood out with like antifreeze, but like something to keep them going and cool them down heavily before they can get back to the base and get fixed up.

Yeah. That was like two years ago, I think. That's a pretty cool story. But it was fascinating. Yeah. Well, they're definitely still looking into it. Kelly Drew, a professor at the, well, this makes sense, University of Alaska's Institute of Arctic Biology, saying that it's very possible that humans can hibernate. The essence of hibernation is body temperature regulation.

Dropping the body core's temperature induces a low metabolic state of torpor in which animals require almost no food. Unfortunately, us human systems have a pretty stubbornly fixed set point of 98.6 degrees. So it's very difficult for us to drop that without, you know, basically killing us or giving us hypothermia.

Yeah, something going wrong. So, you know, basically the set point was long thought to be immutable, but it may not be so. NASA is looking into this as well. Beginning in 2014, the agency funded research on long-term hibernation as a way to facilitate space travel, of course. And what they really need is a drug that can drop a person's core temperature safely.

So we can basically get down to that point that we don't need to eat and we just sleep and it's all good. And they're basically saying that we are looking for this drug actively right now. And the Arctic squirrel biologist, Drew, has a drug that she believes could do exactly that. It's working in rats, which is pretty crazy.

So they're in talks with the FDA to start human testing. I will pass on the testing. Oh, I'm not going to be involved in the testing either. But pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, when I lived in Chicago, I would definitely have liked to hibernate through winter. That would have been fantastic.

But yeah, day to day, I sleep enough. I'm good. But if only we had Casper mattresses, you know, because they're a tech company. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary, all in one place.

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Media Candy. I watched quite a bit this last week. I watched a new stand-up special from Joe Coy. I think I've talked about his previous stand-up specials as well. This one's called Coming in Hot. This dude is funny. And he's really funny. And he releases specials often.

And they're all new content every single time, which is amazing. This guy is just pumping out the jokes. So, highly recommended. Very good. All righty. Next up. Grace and Frankie has started. Season six. Watched the first three episodes with my wife. As good as ever. Phenomenal writing.

Phenomenal acting. Very, very funny. Love the show. Can't recommend it enough. I watched Mel Brooks Unwrapped. What is that? Well, Mel Brooks is pretty old at this point. And this is a bit of a documentary, weird, kind of put-together thing about him.

It's kind of interesting because it's looking back at his whole career and different interviews, all with one particular guy, Alan Yentob, former creative director at the BBC. So, since 1981, he's had, like, all these small canon conversations with him, mock interviews, etc., etc. And they kind of edited together all this archival footage with a new interview.

So, he's 93 now, Mel Brooks. And he looks it in the new stuff, unfortunately. You know, I want to preface this with Mel Brooks is, of course, a comic genius. He is a huge part of my childhood. I can't tell you how many times I watched Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, I mean, all the movies.

Like, I have memorized these movies because that's what we did when we were kids. You know, it was Monty Python and Mel Brooks. That's what we lived off of. It was sad to watch this, man. Don't do it. Okay. Don't do it. It will not remind you of the great Mel Brooks. Just go watch his old movies.

He's almost always in his own movies. In fact, he's almost basically always in his movies. Yeah. No one that he's not in. Yeah. You don't need to see these interviews. You don't need to see the old stuff. You don't need to see him now. It's not funny, really. So, I would skip this one.

Okay. Go watch a movie. Go watch one of his old movies. Yeah, because I was going to put this in a queue, but I'm glad that I didn't now. Thank you. Yeah. Skip it, man. And then I stumbled across something new that I hadn't known was going on, maybe because it's probably at the BBC and it's not airing here. But hey, use your trusty VPN, gog.so slash VPN and you can get in the BBC player.

Stuart Copeland, the ex-drummer from The Police, has got a new series called Adventures in Music where he goes and sits with famous musicians. They talk stories. They play a little song together. There's a performance. There's short little shows. They're fantastic. He's sitting down with Sting on an upcoming one, which I can't wait to see because they famously hate each other.

So, it should be awesome. I didn't know they hated each other. That's too bad. Oh, the whole band can't stand each other. Yeah. I figured that's why we haven't had a police reunion yet. Well, we did have a police reunion, but it was like almost 15 years ago now and there'll never be another one. Yeah. Okay. Chalk that one up there with the Smiths reunion.

Just never going to happen. Oh, yeah. Never, never going to happen. Anyways, so that's looking pretty cool. So, I'm going to keep my eye out for that and start playing those episodes. It looks great. We got some news from Amazon about the cast for the upcoming Lord of the Rings TV series, unlike most of the other things we've been hearing about, like HBO's Game of Thrones follow-up series, which has been canceled.

A lot of the Star Wars stuff that we were hearing about, many of which have been canceled. This is still actually coming. It's very quiet over there, but they have given a cast list. I don't recognize a single person on this list, even though I've seen some of these shows, but we'll have the link in the show notes and you can run through it and see if you recognize anybody.

So, this is our cast. Yeah. This is the cast we get. Oh, did you hear they canceled Watchmen as well? They didn't cancel it. Didn't they just say, that's it? We're not going to do it anymore. Well, that's canceled. Well, okay. We're not going to do it anymore. It's kind of the same thing.

But the writers and director did it. Like, it's self-canceling. It's not like the network said, oh, you guys were crap. We're not bringing you back. They said, nope, we're done. Well, the main guy said he didn't. Yeah. The main guy said he didn't want to do it anymore, but HBO had the option to keep going and bring in a new showrunner. And they said, nah, skip it. Well, there you go.

And I've got some potentially very good news for us, Jason. Yeah. Daredevil season four is apparently coming. I saw this in here and I'm like, wait, wait, wait, what? And not only is season four coming, they're signing the old cast.

I see that as well. Everyone. How? How did this happen? Well, they have the rights to it now. So they can do that if everybody agrees. And apparently everybody is agreeing and they're coming back. Please, please, please more Jessica Jones. Yeah.

Please. Yeah. I got to say that Daredevil out of the bunch is my favorite. Daredevil probably as a show is my favorite. It's just, you know, Kristen Ritter as Jessica Jones. You know, what are you going to do? I need that back in my life. I don't give a crap if you bring back Punisher.

I definitely don't want you to bring back. What's the Kung Fu one? Iron Fist. Iron Fist. Nope. No, thank you. Yeah. Luke Cage. I'm whatever on Luke Cage. I love Punisher, though. They can bring back Jessica Jones, Daredevil and Punisher and just make those until we're dead. I'm very excited, though.

This is extremely good news because I thought this would never, ever happen. It seems to be happening. Yeah. And they're bringing Bullseye back. Yep. Interesting. So that'll be fun. Yeah. Fingers crossed. Knock on wood. Fingers crossed. I don't want to get too excited, but that would be amazing.

Yes, it would. Yeah. Coming in 2026. Ugh. So I found a new podcast, Stephen Fry's Seven Deadly Sins. I could listen to him read the dictionary. So I think I'm all in on this. Oh, you have to be.

As soon as you get through the first episode, you're going to be like, holy shit. I'm sad that there are only seven sins. There's only going to be seven episodes. Right. But it is extremely well done. And I'm not going to spoil anything about it. Just go listen to it. Everybody. It's only... I think episode two, they're up to now.

So we've got several to go. But yeah. Yeah. Stephen Fry can just sit there and read. He does an American accent in one of them that is just uncannily weird. Because it sounds like an American, but not Stephen Fry doing an American accent. It's like, who is... It sounds like they literally brought somebody in to do it.

It was disconcerting, but cool. That's cool. Check that out. Yeah. I wanted to do a review of, what is it? Avenue 5, the new sci-fi show on HBO. I watched it last night so we could talk about it. I couldn't. Everything fell apart around here. So we'll catch it next week.

You need to take these things out of the notes earlier. Well, I had planned to do it last night. Then I was going to do it this morning. And then we had a gas leak and had the gas company come. So I... All right. Blame... Force majeure. Force majeure. I have thoughts. I have many thoughts. We will wait until next week.

We can do it. We can do it. We can do it on Friday. We'll sneak it in. At the library. I read Exhalation. Something I'm having issues with at the moment.

My cold is killing me. Exhalation Stories by Ted Chiang. This is also the author of Stories of Your Life and Others, of which one of the short stories was the basis for the Arrival movie, which I still think is probably the smartest sci-fi movie we've had in the last decade, if not longer.

I really enjoyed his first book of short stories. I've really enjoyed the second book of short stories. There are at least five in here that have probably been optioned already to make movies out of them. So great read. Really enjoyable. I can't believe this guy hasn't written a full-length story yet. It's all short stories.

Maybe that's just his menu, but he does a damn good job of it. Yeah. If he does a damn good job, that's his jam. Let him do his jam. Yep. So I talked about The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet before on the Wayfarers book series by Becky Chambers. And I loved the first book.

I went to the second book. Second book was difficult. Oh, boy. It was difficult because it was two different characters, and they jumped back and forth between two storylines, like, incessantly. So it was kind of hard to keep track of what was going on with what. All right. I would have liked to have had those two storylines, like, not run in parallel.

Yeah. Well, no. The whole point is that they kind of go together on these parallel tracks. And it makes a lot of sense on paper, but it was just really hard to follow. Great payoff at the end, but it was a long road to that payoff. Right. Trust me. So, fortunately, next book is not that way.

It's Record of a Space-Born Few. This is the final book, book three. Well, the final that's been written so far. But it's really good. I'm really enjoying this one because it's not like the second one. It's more like the first one. So it's more like a regular novel so far.

Gotcha. Thoroughly enjoying it. Thoroughly enjoying it. And I also finished The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal. Not really sci-fi or tech, but stress is something that you get from tech a lot and podcasting. So it's a really smart book on just how a lot of what we were taught about stress is absolutely wrong and good ways to mitigate stress and actually kind of wrangle it into what you need it to be.

So if you're stressed a lot, go read this book. Okay. And this morning on my Audible account, yay, Agency by William Gibson finally showed up. Only a year and a half late. So I've got it. I'm going to pick it up for now.

I'll hopefully finish The Record of a Space Born Few and get into this for next week. Okay. Because I really want to do that. You know me. I love William Gibson, but I'm hit or miss on his books. So I think I'm going to let you read this one first and then you tell me. Okay. Sounds like a plan. It's already paid for, so I'll let you know.

Fingers crossed, though. Yeah. They are definitely hit or miss. I just bring back Big End. Bring back Big End and Case Pollard. Go do another series with that. I'd be happy. All right. We do have a new book by Peter Kline's coming, though. Terminus. Okay. Refresh my memory.

What did Peter Kline's write that I liked? He wrote – well, the books that these are in the series are 14 and The Fold. Yes, which I did not read. Yeah, they're fantastic. But the ones that you're thinking of are the X series, the X-Heroes books.

Ah, yes. Yes. Yeah. He wrote the X-Heroes. He wrote another great book called Paradox Bound, which I thoroughly enjoyed. But yeah, so basically the X-Heroes books that we both loved, Paradox Bound, which I loved. But yeah, 14 and The Fold, another couple set of books that I just – they were fantastic.

He also wrote Dead Moon. Okay. Which I think you like, too. Yes, I did like that one. The Moon Zombies. Yep. But this is also in that series, I think. Yeah, yeah. This is the – I don't know what series they're calling this one, but I don't think you're going to be able to get it because it's coming out on Audible first.

That's okay. I've got lots of books to read right now. Yeah, and you still have to watch Star Trek Discovery. I'm getting closer and closer to purchasing CBS All Access to make it easier. Well, today's Tuesday. You're going to be purchasing it in less than 48 hours, my gut tells me. Yes.

Yep, because – yeah, Picard. And finally, the last thing I've got here – this is for my World of Warcraft friends. There's a book called How World of Warcraft Was Born from Chaos, and it's a really cool-looking little book about one of the guys who worked on World of Warcraft.

I would definitely want to pick this up at some point because it looks pretty cool, I've got to say. The thing about it is I love his URL. He has whenitsready.com, which is famously their mantra at Blizzard, like, when's this going to be out?

When it's ready. Very clever. Yep. Good stuff. A hat tip to Barry on Twitter and to a friend of the show, Mike, for sending this story in, and I think we got it from about 7,000 other people as well.

A deaf man is suing Pornhub claiming lack of closed captions is discrimination. Yes, and Barry says, this is a follow-up for the story of the blind guy who wanted the Domino's Pizza site to be accessible for the blind. Now we have this guy, and his name is Yaroslav Suris. He's deaf and says he was denied equal access to such titles as Sexy Cop Gets Witnessed to Talk, Hot Step Ant Babysits Disobedient Nephew, and other videos on MindGeek sites Pornhub, RedTube, and YouPorn, according to a filing with the Eastern District of New York.

Without closed captioning, deaf and hard-of-hearing people cannot enjoy video content on the defendants' websites while the general public can, the court document reads. Yeah. So somebody's new job is going to be typing, oh, oh, yeah, that's great, uh-huh, right there, yeah, great, yeah.

Okay, okay, we get it. In a statement to TMZ on Friday afternoon, Pornhub Vice President Corey Price said, we understand that Yaroslav Suris is suing Pornhub for claiming we've denied the deaf and hearing impaired access to our videos while we do not generally comment on active lawsuits. And here's the kicker. We'd like to present the opportunity to point out that we do have a closed captions category.

There you have it. So they actually have it, yes. All right. Excellent. A little more follow-up. I got this one from Bike Commuter PH on Twitter. He was the first one to send it in out of the gazillions after. We talked about the dentist on the hoverboard.

Yes, yes, we did, right when the lawsuit first hit. Yes, yes. Well, he has now been convicted, found guilty on all 46 counts. Good. Yep. Yeah, yeah. And this guy basically just, he's an idiot. He's an idiot. Everything is in, all of his text messages to his friend.

There's video. Yeah. But he's also charged with fraud and all sorts of other things. But he'll be sentenced on April 30th. I just love the fact that his attorney came out and said that, where was this?

Yeah, he, well, the attorney apologized to the woman on his client's behalf. And she said that he could have made better choices with his life. And that's true. They didn't claim deepfake? Come on. Nope. At least put up something. No. And I got to say, this is not in the show, but since it is under more another week.

I have a new pet peeve, Brian. Okay. And it is people on Instagram who like to post pictures of the records they're listening to, because every person I know with a fucking turntable has to show us what they're listening to. Like, it's a thing.

I only know one person that has a turntable. I know several. A friend of the show. I know someone who's just figured out how there is an Instagram and has decided to post his playlist. You know who we're talking about. You. I do. I do. So, but it's not just him.

It's not just him. There are at least five people in my Instagram feed that I am thinking of saying no more to, because it's like, oh, it's a rainy day. We're going to listen to records. And here's every single thing I listen to. It'd be like us posting our Spotify playlist to Instagram, where it has absolutely no bearing.

It's like, okay, great. You have an album. If you'd like to follow a good Instagram vinyl person, there is somebody out there. That is actually really cool that I do follow. It's called Vinyl and Beers. And it's just an Instagram post, I think, once a day of like a really cool old vinyl album and a very cool like craft beer.

I like that one. Okay. I just, I don't get the album art posting to Instagram thing. I just don't get it. Unless it's something that is so rare. A lot of people don't get, you know, 7,000 dog pictures posted Instagram either, though, to be fair. Yeah, but that's a rare and unique moment with my beautiful and unique snowflakes.

We've got some new Patreon subscribers. Well, we've got a new Patreon subscriber. Thanks to Carts. Thank you, Carts. We appreciate that.

Over at PayPal, we have DGA Studio, Ryan, Andrew, Tom, Nicholas, Joseph, and Thomas, who says, Hey, Grumps, long-time listener, got a new job today, wanted to pay it forward to my favorite podcast. Here's some beer slash Jason's White Claw money. Thank you very much, Thomas. Yeah.

And Nalen is also a PayPal donator, and she says, or he says, I don't know, is Nalen male or female? I don't know. Don't know. I have been having issues with my MacBook Pro mid-2012 for about five months. The fans are constantly loud, and the computer feels like it's struggling. I do some light dev work on it and mostly just browse the net with it.

Then I listen to episode 404, where you guys talk about Brave. It's like a light bulb turning on in my head. I started using Brave about six months ago, so it fits with the timeline where the Mac started going crazy. Uninstalled Brave, and now it's quiet and zipping along again. Thank you, guys.

I just felt compelled to donate to the show again. Well, glad we could solve that mystery for you. And yeah, Brave is not ready for primetime at all. Unless you like your CPU pegging constantly. Yep. Not mining coin for somebody else. And Gertrude Donated writes in, Hi, Jason.

As a farm girl transplanted from Colorado to Santa Monica, then back to the farm, I must tell you a secret I've learned to keep unwanted critters from eating your veggies. Household ammonia. Soak rags or place bowls filled with ammonia and place around the areas you don't want the buggers to go near. Make sure it's out of reach of the pups. We had a family of skunks in the barn that needed to be gone, and it worked like a charm.

The rag soaked a couple times in the winter to keep the mice from eating the wires in our tractor mower and away from my fabric lawn furniture. I'm sure it will work to keep the Santa Monica, well, you don't live in Santa Monica, but the Valley Rats. How's that? Yeah, they got the Valley Rats out here. Away from your tomatoes. I am the daughter, daughter-in-law, wife, and mother of geeks, but do not claim to be a geek, nor am I grumpy, but I still love, love, love the show.

The family has been listening to the show since the beginning. We raised, warped our girls on it. Oh, God. Thank you for listening to our drunk shows and our extreme profanity. Thank you for making me look and sound cool when I quote your show. Much love. So, send some beer money for you via PayPal, drink something from Boulder or Longmont, and support the local economy.

Okay. Did they make White Claw there? Oh, man. Well, thank you very much. I will remember that. Ammonia. Interesting. And over at Twitter, Mostavo writes in, Blockahoma. Oklahoma lawmaker proposes state-charted crypto depository.

What could possibly go wrong? Great. And a third in command said, thought you'd love the space camouflage comments here. The first Space Force utility uniform name tapes have touched down in the Pentagon. So, these are the uniforms which are camouflage for the ground.

I know. Now, I was making fun of this as well, and I was speaking to a friend of the show, Mike, while we were watching some football games and having a couple beers. And he said, well, to be fair, it's not like we have a Space Force that will be in outer space. They will mostly be on the ground. Yep. So, there you go.

Touché. Yes. Mr. Dom writes in, hey, guys, have you tried Microsoft's Edge browser? You know, the one that isn't made in ROC or has Google's evil in it. I downloaded it, I believe, because it's out for Mac, but I haven't really tried it yet.

You? I use it once to download Firefox on the new computer I was setting up for my mom. Okay. Why Firefox? Well, my mom is comfortable with Firefox. Oh, perfect. That's all you need to say. Enough said? Okay. Enough said. There you go. Raf writes in over on GOG.show, hey, Jason and Brian, I'm sure you're familiar with Kevin Kelly's post, 1,000 true fans.

It's referenced to death by people like Tim Ferriss and basically claims that 1,000 devoted fans is all you need to support yourself from whatever you're producing. I think Kevin states that they are true fans because they are willing to buy anything you put out. In any case, I would imagine you've surpassed that number and curious about your thoughts about this theory.

Thanks for putting out one of my favorite shows. And he sent us a link to the article. I'm very, very familiar with Kevin Kelly's one true fan since I've done well over 100 episodes of the Tim Ferriss show back when we worked together. There's a couple problems with the numbers here.

One, we are not even close to 1,000 true fans. We don't have 1,000 of you giving us donations yet. Nope. Nope. Step it up. Yeah. We're about 70% shy of that number. We've got about 300 and some of you that are kicking in out of the 11,000 that listen.

And since there's two of us, me and Brian, we need 2,000 true fans. And actually, I think we talked about this, I think three or four years ago, and there was a rebuttal to this, but that was, you know, especially with streaming and all that stuff as the music industry was changing.

There was a definite rebuttal to this written from the music industry perspective that said, No, it's more like 10,000 true fans to make a living. So, you know, tenfold increases. So, a tad bit shy of what they were thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, this is an old article.

I mean, streaming wasn't really even a big thing there, and the whole music industry hadn't been eviscerated. Yes. And you only make pennies, and then you have to go tour and all that shit. And it's like, yeah, the math is off. Kevin needs to go back and redo that, I think. Yes. And Dan writes in, I'm an avid listener in Santa Monica.

I invite you to read my article on the perils of scooters and the city's responsibility in this week's Santa Monica mirror. And I have linked to the show notes there, and he says, thank you, and please accept my congratulations and support, as always. And I did read through it, and yeah, it's everything we've been saying, so toss us a buck or two. I think the time to reevaluate scooter rules has passed, because it should have been before they were ever put on the damn street.

Well, you know, that would involve companies doing things that are nice. Yeah. Michelle writes in a couple comments on episode 407. Number one, I'm surprised Disney was not higher up on the evil companies list, not only for the reasons listed in the article, but also for the way they've historically treated their young stars, like Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato, et cetera.

There are lots of accounts of how the young stars are treated with excessively long hours, pressure to be thin, et cetera, which probably contributed to issues they developed during their late teens, early 20s. That's showbiz, baby. It's welcome to show business. Exactly. I'm like, it doesn't stop in your teens.

No, it doesn't. It doesn't. Yeah. That's show business. You got to be skinny. You got to look good. You got to be in shape and you got to work long, hard hours. That's what it takes to make it. Also, we got my three and a half year old son in Osmo for Xmas and love it. We love it.

We got the kit with the 10 grams and he's actually quite good at figuring out the puzzles without too much adult intervention. What's a 10 gram, Brian? I don't know. I don't, I don't have that kit, but I will definitely look into it and get it because my kid is loving it as well. And yeah, he just sits and plays it by himself and figures it out.

It's phenomenal. Awesome. And he's three and a half years old too, isn't he? Yes, he is. Yeah. Check out the 10 grams. I shall. Diane writes in, hey, Grumps, love your show. Speaking of AI, you may have already come across this tidbit, but I think the Quarks and Quarks podcast best explains the role of AI and this Xenobot crap thingy, whatchamacallit, thought you might appreciate the quick listen.

So we have a link to that in the show notes. I have not gotten the chance to listen to it yet, but I shall. I shall as well. I like the name, Quarks and Quarks. Roderick writes in, story suggestion. Love you guys, but I die a little every time I hear you endorse the course owned Chromium browser. I think he means Chinese owned probably because he's talking about Opera here.

Stay grumpy. Opera reportedly has multiple predatory loan apps in the Play Store with interest rates of up to 876%. What? Yeah. So my only question is who the fuck would get a loan from a browser company?

Exactly. And yeah, so apparently Opera is not making any money and their market share is falling. So they have decided to go into predatory short term lending in Africa and Asia. Okay. That's not, that's not good. No, it's not.

Especially since they're a publicly traded company. Well, the market will sort it out, right? I will say that I have been experimenting a lot with Vivaldi and I almost see absolutely zero reason to stick with Opera anymore.

Okay. I found nothing. I, it's been weeks, Brian, you know, how, how gun shy I am now. I do. I do. And this is why I wait for you. And I wait for a final recommendation. And when you're ready to give that final recommendation, I will get, give Opera the boot as well. Okay. As soon as I've used, as soon as I've used Vivaldi for at least three weeks and have no problems, then I'll recommend it because I got kicked in the ass by Brave.

Yep. So, yeah. So got kicked in the ass by Brave. Totally screwed up one of our podcast recordings. More, many more than one. There were at least four of them that would normally take two hours to do that took about 10. So they owe me a lot of money.

They're bastards. Mike writes in, hi, I love the show. Many podcasts seem to come and go in my feed, but you guys continue to stick around and I keep listening. I live in Montreal. My daily job is mechanical engineering and aerospace. However, I've taken quite an interest in web development. Oh God, why? You have a real job. And I've been learning Node Express and MongoDB over the last year.

I'm about at the point where I'd want to deploy to a host and was wondering if you have any suggestions on the best service to use as a first timer. I've been looking at Heroku and Red Hat OpenShift, but I'm looking for some advice before diving in and learning more. Thanks and keep up the great show. Well, Jason. Node Host is where I'm going for everything right now.

That's where I'm at too. Yeah. I love those guys. They are unbelievably affordable, great customer service, and it's fantastic. Still waiting on our gopher site though. Yeah, we're still waiting on that gopher site. I think we have a special page set up and if memory serves, it's a, you know what, memory is not going to serve because- We'll put the link in the show notes.

How's that? Put a link in the show notes and we'll probably just set up gog.show slash node and you can go there and we'll redirect to that. Perfect. Yeah. I should make a note of that because I'll forget because I'm old. Barrett writes in, I just watched I Love You Now Die on Hulu.

And very near the beginning, the police that went on to question Michelle Carter made her unlock her phone. They said they had a warrant to search it, but is she legally required to unlock it for them? Could she have refused? At the time of her questioning, she didn't have a lawyer present either. Sure, she's a garbage human, but I really believe her fourth and fifth amendment rights have been violated.

I do not know the story of Michelle Carter, and I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on the internet. But if anybody's listening that is a lawyer, somebody call Ben Yellen. Get Ben Yellen on the horn. Yeah, I'm sure we'll find out in short order. So anyways, I don't know who she is either.

He also writes in, hey, Jason and Brian, here's a quick video. There's a quick video on the delivery robots. Man, the Dayquil is kicking in. We have here in Pittsburgh, the guy who produced it, the video, not the robots, has been creating a series on the neighborhoods in the city. It's a pretty decent look at the pros and cons of the new world of tech interacting with humans.

Hope you enjoy it and stay grumpy. I watch a little bit of this. Very interesting. Yeah, yeah, I skimmed through it. I'm going to go back and watch. It was like seven and a half minutes. And who has seven and a half minutes in one go anymore? Come on. Sid writes in, hey, guys, love the show. Keep up the good work.

Just a FYI for Brian. Clean My Mac 10 does have a one-time purchase option. Just go to their purchase page or scroll down to find it. They are trying to push their subscriptions by hiding the purchase option farther down the page. Bastards. So you can go by. But I guess you already have a subscription now, don't you?

I do, so I guess I'm just stuck. And you say the math works out, so I'll choose to believe you today. Okay, today. Thank you. Today. Yeah. Yes, the math does work out unless you have 17 computers like I do. Yes. I'd just like to have it. Sissy writes in, hey, Grumps, I am embarking on a family cookbook.

It's already out of control thanks to my unk? I guess it might be uncle. Maybe. I don't know. UNC. Now, a recipe book includes family trees, stories, comics, and oh yeah, recipes. I was hoping you provide your grumpy wisdom as to what software would be best in putting together a cookbook, which no longer sounds like a cookbook.

This would include PDFs, pictures, plain text, et cetera. Thanks, guys. You put in my suggestion as well. InDesign. Yeah. Adobe InDesign. I don't know about the... I guess you can just make a digital brochure with it or a website, you know. Honestly, for something like this, build a web site.

I would use... Yeah. Use like a... Squarespace, Wikipedia engine, or something like that, or just use Squarespace, yeah. Yeah, Squarespace, Wix, any of those crappy ones, but WordPress would be overkill for this if this is just like kind of brochureware. Yeah. But yeah, if it's just pictures and plain text and you want to actually print a cookbook, well then, yeah, InDesign is going to be good for that.

And I think InDesign is just good for layout in general. I haven't used it in years. I just used it a little while ago. It's pretty great. I still like that software a lot. It's the only reason I'm still playing the stupid subscription. I've got the subscription, but I have the photographer subscription. So I get Photoshop, Lightroom, and a bunch of other junk that they throw in there, but not InDesign.

Right. Neil writes in, when AI isn't people and people have to fix the mess it made, TLDR, they can't. And this is a Facebook glitch-canceled $14,000 brushfire fundraiser for NSW community of Ewinger.

Yep. Yep. So, and he says, their response was that they can't solve it and there was no way to stop the refunds happening. Just leave it all to Mr. Al. Go Rhythm. He can do it. Stay grumpy. Very funny. Marie writes in, check out the DJ Mordor episode of the Half Hour Happy Hour Ladies' Night.

Just at the very beginning, when they talk about one person's experience at CES, they did a live interaction with actors using the guest's scraped data as a way to interact with them. Freaked out Mod the Podcaster, a real-life example of how all our data will be and is being used. Yep. That's good times.

Yep. I got to check that one out for sure. And Demaster sent us a link. Verizon created a privacy-focused search engine you can use today. And he says, Verizon plus privacy. Need I see more? Need I say more? I'm so messed up right now. Yeah. Verizon's not exactly somebody I would trust with things like privacy.

But, you know, the press release sounds good. It's called OneSearch. Let's you search the internet the way you might use Google. Nothing is tracked. It's available for free if you want to give it a try. You know what? Verizon doesn't need to track you through your browser because they're tracking you through everything else already. Yeah.

Here's the thing. What they're also not saying is Verizon doesn't track you. The NSA tracks you because they have a lovely long-term relationship with them. Yes. Verizon is hoping that companies with an interest in security will partner with them to implement OneSearch in their own products. They're saying there's no cookie tracking, no retargeting, no personal profiling, no sharing of personal data with advertisers, no storing of user search history, even though Verizon serves all that.

Anyways, unbiased, unfiltered search results, encrypted search terms. There's also a toggle for advanced privacy mode. You'd think all of that was already advanced privacy mode. But were these search links? What's more advanced than everything that they just said? No cookie tracking, no retargeting, no personal profiling, no sharing data. What's more advanced?

The search result links will expire within an hour. So that's important for people who share a device with someone else or should you share a search results link, thus solving our never-ending Christmas search problems. In theory. In theory. So, yeah, I don't buy it.

I just don't believe Verizon would do this. But anyways, I'll take a look at it. Why not? Who knows? Sure. You're on Verizon, right? I am. They know everything about me already. Yeah. Done. Done-ski. Zachary writes in, Howdy, Grumps. Wanted to congratulate Brian on the new job and big move.

Hope everything goes swimmingly. Also wanted to mention my cell service provider, Visible, and a positive in the customer service experience. This came to mind because of your recent discussion of ring cameras and their use of God mode. When working with Visible customer service, they require authorization via email before they can dig into an account details.

This allows them to verify my identity and provide them with my approval before they move forward. Just like you guys mentioned, this seems like a super simple way to provide reasonable privacy measures. Yeah, that sounds pretty good. That sounds pretty interesting. If it's true. If it's true. They could just send you an email and they already know everything.

On a related note to that, I am actually looking at finally getting off Verizon since we just both talked about Verizon and cell phone providers, especially once I move. Because I'd like to keep my 310 U.S. number, but I don't want to pay a ton of money for something that I'm just going to hold on to when I travel back here and there.

So I would love to hear if anybody has really good experiences with low-cost providers out there where the service is actually pretty good. You can actually hear things. It's been a long time since I looked into that world. I remember it used to be really crap. But there are so many people that are just licensing the trunks and lines and data pipes from people like Verizon and offering the service at a super cheap rate.

Anybody has any suggestions? Love to hear them. Ting. T-I-N-G.com. Check them out. I have my secondary line through them, and I spend $7 a month. That is reasonable. It's a backup number. I keep their SIM card in my Android phone. I don't know. Are you going to get a Canadian phone number, too, or are you just going to always use that number?

I'm going to end up getting, I'm sure, a work phone, which will be a Canadian number. Gotcha. Okay, yeah, but check them out. I think you can transfer your number over. It's run by the same people who run Hover.com, so it's a two cows company. Ah, okay. I will look into that. Thank you, Jason. And they're also Canadian. That's what I'm saying.

So I can go knock on the door. Yeah, you can. Well, I can actually send you to the CEO of Two Cows' house. So I know where Elliot lives. I'll send you there. He probably just terrified him. Yeah, probably.

I don't think he listens to the show. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to GOG.show slash contact 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. We didn't get any this week. Hurry up.

Please. I've got enough whining. And if you're listening to this in the overcast player, please click that little star. We're still moving up, but we've kind of flatlined it. I think Tim Ferriss is beating us again. Damn it. Down with you, Ferriss. And thank you so much for putting up with my nasally, nosally drawl and my slightly addled head for this episode.

I'm hoping to be better by the next one. Fantastic. Please do. Go mainline some Theraflu. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Shelmeister. Hey, hang on. Brian, Brian, I'll give you a break on this one. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks.

To support the show and keep us on the air, go to GOG.show slash donate. Toss us a few bucks and we'll love you forever. Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 408. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show and get links to stuff we like.

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