414: Brew-Ha-Ha
View episode on the publisher’s site
The publisher’s audio length has changed since transcription. Ads may differ, so timestamps may be offset.
Summary
In episode 414, the hosts discuss cybersecurity, social media, location privacy, workplace software, and streaming services. They also review entertainment and respond to listener stories and questions about technology, health, and privacy.
- The hosts discuss charges against four Chinese military officers over the Equifax breach and broader concerns about cyberwarfare.
- Brian Schulmeister considers leaving Facebook after seeing more political memes from relatives.
- The conversation covers machine learning in coronavirus research, Russian spacecraft trailing a U.S. spy satellite, Twitter bots, and ICE’s purchase of cellphone location data.
- The hosts discuss Slack’s expansion at IBM and Netflix’s autoplay setting.
- Entertainment discussion includes television, films, the Oscars, books, and the ending of The Lyon’s Den.
- Listener feedback raises questions about browser features, dynamic ads, home security, and a used Tesla Model S whose advertised features were reportedly disabled remotely.
- Later feedback covers experiences before measles and mumps vaccines, privacy software, electric vans, cloud storage, credit reporting, 5G, and a Microsoft Teams outage.
Key moments
-
Equifax breach and Facebook concerns
The hosts discuss the Equifax breach and Brian Schulmeister’s growing frustration with political memes on Facebook.
-
Research, satellites, and location data
The conversation covers coronavirus research, Russian spacecraft, Twitter bots, ICE’s purchase of cellphone location data, and Slack.
-
Streaming and entertainment
The hosts discuss Netflix autoplay, television, the Oscars, and books.
-
Listener questions and stories
Listener messages prompt discussion of donations, advertising, browser features, home cameras, and a used Tesla.
-
Tesla features on a used car
The hosts discuss a report that Tesla disabled Autopilot on a used Model S after its sale.
-
A listener recalls life before vaccines
Jim describes illness and disability among people he knew before measles and mumps vaccines were available.
-
The Lyon’s Den ending
The hosts recount Rob Lowe’s account of the canceled show’s final episode.
-
Privacy, storage, and other feedback
Listener messages lead to discussion of privacy software, electric vans, cloud storage, credit reporting, 5G, and Microsoft Teams.
Full transcript
-
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. Guten Morgen, Brian. It's windy. It is windy. So hopefully we can get through this episode without my power going out again. Yes, because as we've talked about, we're living in a third world nation power grid system. Yeah, we are. But fortunately, I have two giant battery backups because I'm a professional podcaster.
-
I do not. Well, well, yeah, there you go. Quick note of housekeeping here. There will not be a show on Saturday as usual because Brian and I will be at Podcast Movement Evolutions. Yes, we will be trying to make our podcast better by not doing a podcast.
-
Exactly. That's how you do it. That's how the pros do it, man. That is how the pros do it. We will be meeting and greeting and hopefully nobody has coronavirus. Yeah, definitely. And if you listen to the show and you're there, come check us out. It will be pretty hard to miss. It'll be me, Brian and Nitro from American Gladiators. So we will make quite the motley crew.
-
A little follow up here on the Equifax breach. Yes. Apparently, we have charged four Chinese military officers with the crime. Yeah. Yep. Don't think anybody's ever going to jail on that one.
-
No, I don't think anybody's going to jail. Can we just freely admit we're in full on cyber war at this point with both China and Russia? I don't even know if they even have to admit it because it just kind of is. Yeah, it just is. Yeah. But here's the other fun part. If you want to put a thought experiment on it, maybe it's not the Chinese, but they can just charge whoever they want just to get the press because we know we're never going to get whoever these guys are.
-
Hey, man, these guys could even be deep fakes. They could have just made these guys up. Who knows? Well, I mean, if we're going to go down that rabbit hole, all is lost, Jason. Brian, I think all is lost. Yes. I didn't expect us to get so dark so early in this podcast.
-
Well, we got to make up for not having a show on Saturday since Dave Bittner won't be here because he's usually the bringer of the doom. So we have to bring our own doom. Well, let me follow up on that a little bit. Actually, I bet you didn't think it was going to go this direction, but it is because we have in our show notes what to do about Facebook because I made a post the other day.
-
But I will continue with the all is lost and the cyber warfare in terms of my thoughts on Facebook recently. I made a big, long post the other day about I don't really know what to do about Facebook anymore. And I listed all the reasons why I've talked about it many times on this podcast.
-
Dave, speaking of Dave, has left Facebook for the past few months. I think it's been two to three months now and has no intention of returning until after the election and maybe not even then. You have left and returned to Facebook as many times as you've left and returned to Los Angeles throughout the recording of this podcast.
-
A little different this time, but yeah, go ahead. Continue. And I've been pretty stalwart on I get value out of Facebook. I recognize all the problems. I've I've worked very hard to curate my Facebook presence. I use Facebook purity as a plug in to try to keep my timeline, you know, in order of time, which is what a timeline is supposed to be and and to keep somewhat of a value proposition from it.
-
But something has happened over the last two weeks that is kind of maybe flipping my script on this and maybe making me think that it's time to go. And I don't I didn't I don't know how to explain it. So let's let's do a bit of a thought experiment here, Jason.
-
As you know, I have a very curated Facebook feed. I know most of the people and, you know, at least have met them once that I'm friends with. I I have blocked and hidden posts from people that I just have no interest in really seeing anymore, but still want to maintain the connection and friendship and the ability to look at their timeline.
-
Should I choose the stalker mode? Yes. Yeah, stalker mode. I've you know, I use Facebook purity, et cetera, et cetera. So I have a very curated feed and it's a good thing for me and I've enjoyed it. However, over the last few weeks, a couple of things have happened that have changed my opinion about this.
-
And I'm wondering what exactly is going on now. We all have older family members and their political opinions may not be the same as ours. We'll just leave it at that. And before anybody starts hitting fast forward or is getting ready to write an angry tweet or an email, this is not political.
-
This is this is not political at all. This could be either side of the aisle. I understand that there is a crazy alt left as well as there is a crazy alt right. So shove it up your ass hats right now, people, and put on your big boy pants and just listen. I'm going to talk about the alt right because that is my personal experience.
-
It does not matter. It could be either. This is not political. So I have some older relatives who occasionally post them. I'd call them alt right memes. You know, factless, baseless, crazy stuff that is meant to incite the masses. It's the sort of thing that we hear about from Russian bots, et cetera, et cetera.
-
I don't ever see those because why would I? I don't interact with these people. There's no reason for them to show up on my algorithm. I'm perfectly happy to have them be my friends. I know they'd like to see photos of Lucas and my son and all that sort of stuff. I love these family members.
-
I just disagree with them. So I don't interact with them on the book of the face. They don't show up in my algorithm ever because there's no interactions. Now, we don't really understand how Facebook's algorithm works, of course. But over the past couple of weeks, I've started to see alt right memes being posted by these family members repeatedly in my timeline.
-
How? If they're muted, how are you seeing them? Well, they're not muted, Jason. They're not muted. I haven't muted these people. I just never, ever see any of their updates because they just don't show up in my algorithm. I don't interact with them at all, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. I can imagine seeing the occasional one show up, but repeatedly, a lot.
-
So now what I'm wondering, because I can't really figure out any other way that this would be happening, do you think by any chance Facebook has opened up a new advertising revenue for themselves that would, say, take money from alt right or alt left pack groups, target and go through your friend's timeline feed, find posts that match criteria, and boost them into people's timelines that they're friends with?
-
I can see that being a possibility, but have you tried to boost someone else's post? Can you even do that? I don't know. Let's, we should try that because that would, you know, right there is the crux of the argument. So we should actually go try and boost someone else's post.
-
I don't know if you can do that. That seems like it would be weird. Whether or not we can do it and whether or not Facebook can do it are also two different things. That's true. You know, people with money have different tools than we do. Yes. Remember, delete all messages? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That the Zuck has? That we don't?
-
I heard that somewhere before. Yeah. So I am wondering if this is taking place because for the life of me, and I have really been trying to figure this out. I don't understand why I'm seeing such a surge of these posts in my timeline from a handful of people. And they are very specific alt right memes.
-
And it's only that. Huh. I'm not seeing their other updates about, you know, I went to go see banjo music the other night or anything like that. I'm only seeing the memes. How interesting is that? Mm-hmm. I'm very curious. Now, are these reposted memes?
-
Are they posting them originally themselves? Because if they're reposted, that could actually amplify the signal and bring it up into your feed. Yeah, I thought of that. It's a mixture. Interesting. Okay. I don't know. So what are you going to do, Brian? Well, I still don't know. I don't know where I'm at with this.
-
And I still, as my very long post on Facebook said, which maybe I'll just copy and paste and put into our show notes if anybody wants to read my thoughts on Facebook, I still do find value. I just find it's decreasing. I don't know if I've hit the tipping point yet. So we shall see. You seemed very close the other day, or last night when we were chatting about it.
-
I know. But then you know what happened? 48 comments and be interacting with a bunch of people that I haven't talked to in a long time and really enjoying it. That's how they suck you back in. Yeah. Well, as my last comment said, Facebook, I just can't quit you. Yeah.
-
Well, you know what it's like? It's like when you call the cable company once a year to renegotiate, which everybody should do, by the way. And you say, yeah, I'm thinking I might go to Dish or I might go to DirecTV. And they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what can we give you to keep you around?
-
And you should do that every year because then you usually get at least six months to a year of free HBO or Showtime or something like that. This could be one of those things where they never see your posts ever, except for when there are trigger words in your posts like, I'm thinking of quitting Facebook.
-
You know, I think you're right. And also, I think it's because it got a lot of likes and a lot of comments. So obviously, it was getting boosted in my other friends' feed. So it is as much as I've curated my own personal feed, I don't have any control over other people's. And I'm sure many of my friends never see most of my posts.
-
But this one got a lot of traction. So it probably got boosted by the algorithm. Yeah. Speaking of the algorithms, I've been looking at my insights on Instagram because I have like a business class account now, I guess. And every post because they're trying to get me to boost my Instagram post, which I will never, ever do because who really cares about looking at dogs?
-
But I noticed yesterday, so I posted a video. We had a breakthrough moment yesterday. Gigi and Dino are now playing together. And all the dogs are living happily ever after. We have our own pack in the house. But I made a post with the dogs. And I noticed I got very little interaction. So I went and I looked at my insights.
-
And I have over 1,000 followers on Instagram. And my reach was 86. I'm like, wow, okay. And I'd even put a hashtag Doberman in there. And that usually gets, you know, gets a bunch of people of Doberman fanatics coming through.
-
And I was just, I don't know. I've been puppy banned. They've totally turned down the algorithm on my puppies. Did you notice a change after you switched to your business account? Because I've always thought in the back of my mind that you're better off keeping the account a personal account because as soon as they switch you, you switch over to business.
-
The dollar signs appear over Facebook's head. And then they throttle your views to make you pay more. Yep. Yes. I have actually seen that. Yep. I have seen that. Definitely. My, my like counts in my comments from my friends, it went way down after I switched over to the business side.
-
Yeah. Yep. Because they throttle you. I won't admit that they do it, but we know it. We know it. Those fucking bastards. I'm switching back to wanting to quit. Okay, good. Good, man. Join us. Join us. Because you got to quit Instagram too. Oh, you know what? Sure.
-
If you quit Facebook, I will quit Instagram. Well, actually, I'll pause Instagram because I've got a three-letter username, which I need to sell because I'm not giving that shit up. That's going to be worth as much as domain names are. I'm trying. Dude, I, man, if I get 10 bucks out of it, I'm up.
-
10 bucks. Just a quick news story. Speaking of the coronavirus, I saw this, and of course, this just blew my mind and made me angry.
-
Scientists are identifying potential treatments for the coronavirus via artificial intelligence. Okay. So what they did is they basically had a data set, and they went through it using machine learning. But, you know, that's artificial intelligence. Yeah.
-
Yeah. Now, the thing about this is it's like, okay, it's like the lottery. Just throw a bunch of balls in there and roll it around and see which one pops out and give it a shot. Yep. That's about it. Yeah. The quotes in here are just ridiculous.
-
It's just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're trying to figure it out. We don't know if it's going to work. And remember, this is just a starting point for scientists. And the thing that pisses me off about this is if they're wrong, they're wasting scientists' time. Yes. Because they're just coming up with these things and then throwing it out to the scientist community to go, okay, go make and try this drug.
-
Yeah, yeah. Our computer said maybe this one might work. And, you know, it's like, what if it doesn't? Well, then you just wasted a bunch of people's time. So that part annoys me. It's like, let the fucking scientists do their job and keep your stupid AI out of it. Because, yeah, just stop.
-
At least, you know, on something that is this important. Yeah. I mean, I don't mind everybody throwing it at the wall to see what sticks. But how about we don't have an incredibly long article about it unless it turns up something useful? That's true, too.
-
That's true, too. This is kind of like, you know, talking about the next Mac that might come out. Yeah. But, hey, we need the clicks, right? It's all clickbait. Now, Brian, this next one, I saw this last night and my mind was, I had a hard time sleeping because of this, because this is actually, this is actually a thing.
-
This is the title of the article over at Science Alert. Two Russian spacecraft are trailing a U.S. spy satellite. Space Force is unimpressed. Now, now, let's break that down here right now. OK, the fact that we have two Russian, two Russian satellites following one of our satellites, which is a spy satellite, trying to get intel on the satellite.
-
That's pretty fucking neat. I think. I mean. Also bad. It's bad, but it's neat. It's like, OK, we've this is this is like a new area that I think is pretty interesting to follow. Now, Space Force is unimpressed that that line right there.
-
I'm like, OK, maybe should it be Space Force is concerned? Yes. Worries. Unimpressed is a word that's just like meh. You know, I just put the shruggy icon up there. Now, the other part of this is the fact that fucking Space Force exists now.
-
I knew they had uniforms that Space Force is a thing. We have a commander and everything. We have a fucking Space Force commander. I'm sorry. Now, tell me if I'm wrong here. When I envision what's going on at Space Force headquarters, I see marionettes and the Thunderbirds.
-
That's how I envision Space Force in my mind. It's not like, you know, I just I see marionettes and the Space Force commander walks up. Oh, Russians. They're trying to get your satellite. Man. See, what I what I think is always a Star Wars.
-
I'm imagining already Star Wars up there. And I'm a little bit concerned because I'm not entirely, you know, all the big baddies in Star Wars were British, of course. Right. Of course. It's kind of famously I'm looking through this article and they're talking to General John Raymond, the Space Force chief of space operations, who I would hope is an American citizen.
-
But considering every spelling of the word behavior is the British one. Now I'm concerned that we have Grand Admiral Top Moff in charge of our Space Force because he seems to be British. Well, you know, I wouldn't be surprised. Or just the author of the article, of course. Yeah, probably just the author of the article.
-
But still, you know, you never know in this in this day and age, because, yeah, I don't know. We can't get Internet police, but we've got fucking Space Force for real. Yeah, we do. What a world. What a world. And speaking of Space Forces, Jack Dorsey can't figure out how to fucking fix Twitter.
-
So who does he ask? Elon Musk. Hey, at least he's asking now. Finally. Yeah, finally. He's just like, you know, the first step is admitting you have a problem. I've got an idea, Jack. Listen to all your users who repeatedly send you suggestions about how to fix it. Yeah. Well, I got to say, Elon's suggestion is pretty much spot on.
-
Fuck the bots. Yep. Identify what's a bot, what's not, bot or not. And that's going to really kind of fix 90% of your problems. 99 problems, but a bot ain't one of them. Unfortunately, it'll massively decrease your user base, thus decreasing. Your value, thus decreasing shareholder value, but it would solve the problems.
-
Yeah, it kind of would. Fix a lot of them. Yeah. And a hat tiff, hat, tip of the hat, but whatever I'm trying to say here, tip of the hat to Jeff and a few others who all sent us this article. It's another one of those. We kind of figured this was going to happen, but we really hoped it didn't.
-
Law enforcement is now buying that cell phone location data that is freely available on the open market from marketers. They've been doing that for years, though. I don't, this, the only reason this is new is because it's ice. Yeah. And it's ice. It's confirmed and it's ice. So yes, all that data that's being sold left, right, and center from our cell phones and from our cell phone providers that basically pinpoint us.
-
And as we all know, is not anonymized at all because it's pretty simple to pinpoint where somebody is going on a regular basis, unless you're one of those people that just never goes to work or doesn't have a home. So we can't figure out where you're showing up at every day. Yeah.
-
Yeah. It's being sold to ice. Yay. Yeah. Not, this is like a, yeah, and we knew this, we knew this was happening. Just nothing, the doom and gloom rolling, Jason. Okay. Well, there's an upbeat bit of news for Slack. I did not know that Slack was doing so well because they've been in the news for, you know, the whole issue with Microsoft, which we're going to talk about in a little bit, which is pretty funny.
-
But this one is Slack just came out with news that IBM, who is their biggest customer, is actually rolling the chat app out to 350,000 of its employees, all of them, basically. So I didn't, A, 350,000 employees at IBM.
-
Wow. That's impressive. Hey, they still do stuff. Yeah. Apparently they do. I don't know if they're going to be doing that much stuff anymore because everybody's going to be on Slack dicking around. But, so Slack's not dead yet. So, yeah. Well, we'll see.
-
I mean, it's, I've used Microsoft Teams a couple times now. I prefer Slack. I think Slack is best product in the market, but, and what's Facebook's? Facebook's is called Facebook Works or something like that. I've looked at that. It's as crap as an interface as you'd expect from Facebook.
-
So I don't think that's ever going to gain any traction. But, yeah, Microsoft and Slack are going to have to battle this one out. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, Slack being best in class and best in market doesn't really matter because, you know, that just doesn't matter. It's all about, it's all about adoption from big tech.
-
And this is, this is at least good because, you know, yeah, I like the guys over at Slack. So I, I'm rooting for them. I'm always rooting for them. 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.
-
Media candy. Had tipped asleep to Little who sent this one in and I hadn't seen this. Netflix's horrible autoplay previews can be turned off. Love it. Love it. I did not realize that this was such a big deal to so many people.
-
It is trending everywhere. They never really bothered me that much. But then again, I don't spend a lot of time on Netflix. And I don't spend any time browsing it. I know when I launch Netflix, I'm going to watch something very specific. Oh, see, yeah. That's not the way it works around here. Or probably most households.
-
Because when my roommate takes the controller, it is an hour of just moving. I like, I go walk the dog. I make something to eat. I'm like, call me when you find something. Because it's seizure-inducing. Watching somebody who doesn't really know how the interface works try and find something out of the morass of all of the Netflix titles.
-
It's maddening. That is, I mean, I'm sorry, but that's like the seventh level of hell for me. It's watching somebody else with a remote control. And I'm sure you're not alone with me on this. I'm not alone on this one. No, you're not, because my kid has figured out how remotes work, so that is a nightmare. Yeah, I love the first line in this.
-
Autoplay trailers are now optional. That's it. That's the news. The short but horrible tyranny of autoplay previews are at an end. Well, that'd be nice if they actually ended the article right there. Well, but here's the thing. At least they give us how to do it.
-
Click manage profiles. Choose your profile. Untick autoplay previews while browsing on all devices. Now live, damn it, live. I like it. Scroll free, friends. Yeah, it drives me fucking crazy. Especially when you're just like, you know, just popping through.
-
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I'm like, I don't want to see it. Anyway, I finished The Expanse. All right. Loved it. Yep. Absolutely loved it. It was phenomenal. Yeah, it was really, really, really good. And I mean, we lost a couple of my favorite characters, but that's not going to keep me from coming back for the next season, which I'm looking forward to.
-
And I'm sad that I got to wait so damn long. Yeah, it's going to be a while. Yeah, definitely. But I thought they killed it on this one. Really did. It was really good. Really, really good. It was so good. It made me start to go back and read the books again. Oh, good. Good. Now, I talked about my Ray Donovan obsession on this show and how I binged basically seven seasons to get caught up to watch season eight to a day for months on end.
-
Got to the end of season eight. Fucking Showtime cancels it. Fuck. But they're going to get an end. It's not like they just. No, no, no, no, no. It's done. They gave that shitbag show Homeland a finale. But no, they can't give Ray Donovan one of the best shows they've ever made a finale.
-
Screw you, Showtime. So fucking livid, man. So livid. I even went with Brian's three season rule. I went to the seven season rule, eight season rule, and then you just get shafted. God damn.
-
I am so angry. Are you watching Homeland? I got the first one. I haven't watched it yet, but I'm going to. Okay. I am curious about the finale. I don't know why. Yeah, but you know what I'm going to do? I'm not going to watch it on my Showtime app that I pay for. I'm going to actually go steal it so they don't get the numbers of fuck you, Showtime.
-
All right. I finished Grace and Frankie or Frankie and Grace. I can never remember which way around it goes. One of the shows that I scrolled to immediately on Netflix when I launched Netflix, so I don't see all those auto-playing trailers all the time. It was great. They're going to do one more season. Super happy about that.
-
I think one more season would be perfect. I don't think it should go on too much longer. So really enjoyable show. All right. All right. This next one just makes me kind of annoyed. Viacom's CBS plan would unify all of Star Trek and more in one new streaming service.
-
So since CBS and Viacom are back together again, so all the Star Trek properties are coming together again, but they're thinking about creating another fucking streaming service. Look, if you do that, you better roll in CBS. If you're already a CBS all-access customer, it better be rolled in.
-
Yeah. That's all I'm saying. I don't care if you want to rebrand it or name it something else or have two different things. And by the way, if you have two different streaming services, then it's not all unified into one streaming service, is it? No shit. No shit. And here's the thing. I don't care about the Star Trek back catalog.
-
It's reruns. I don't care about reruns. I've seen all the movies. I don't give a shit. I want the new stuff. I don't know. I'd like it because the other night after I finished Picard, I was like, I'm not done with Star Trek. I haven't seen Star Trek Generations in years. I wouldn't mind seeing that right now. Well, that was probably a mistake, wasn't it?
-
Well, I didn't actually do it because it's not on that streaming service. But I would have, had it been. Isn't it on Netflix? Can't you just go to Netflix and watch it? Well, I'm too lazy to switch. So what I did was I watched the very last two-part episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, which was amazing. I should go back and see that. I don't think I've seen that since it aired.
-
Dude, highly enjoyable. Oh, good. I have watched DS9 three times all the way through since that aired. But I don't think I went back to Next Gen. Yeah. And if you like one of the only pluses, I would say, of Apple TV. It's not that great, let me tell you.
-
But their screensaver is the best. It really hands down is. It's super HD drone footage of cities and beautiful landscapes and all the sort of that. I love, love the Apple TV screensaver. And you can now get it for your Mac or your MacBook, which is pretty awesome.
-
Link in the show notes. But you have to get another app to do that, don't you? Well, it's an app called Arial. And then you just install it and you can set it up as your default screensaver. Oh, interesting. They should just build that in. You think they would. Yeah, because I agree. The Apple TV screensavers for years have been great.
-
And I actually, there's a classic one that we have going in the house here, which is the old one with the animals. Oh, yeah. I remember that one. The first gen one. Yeah. With just the animals. We just leave that on as background. And it's great. I love it. That little lion hanging from the tree. Still love that guy. I should look it up, but I won't because I'm lazy and we won't put it in the show notes.
-
But if you're interested, you should probably Google it. I remember there was a repository for a while. It may have gotten taken down by Apple, but somebody had basically grabbed all these super high definition videos for every single one of the screensavers and had them up as an archive. I remember that. Yeah. I think we actually talked about that on the show.
-
I think we might have. Yeah. So I'm not going to go find it. So Google it if you're interested. We just sent our audience to go find a thing that may or may not exist. Yes. That's what we do here. We're too lazy to do it. Now, my favorite part of the Oscars was this post-Oscar win interview with Tiki Watiti.
-
And they asked him about what the Writers Guild should do about this upcoming strike. And he just basically made a very funny rant about how much Apple keyboards suck and how the Writers Guild should get on that and fix it. Very funny. Did you watch the Oscars? Oh, hang on.
-
Before we go there, I got to say, now that I have so many different generations of Macs and different keyboards, I went back because I type on the wireless extended keyboard all day on my iMac 5K, but I've got the new Air typing on that keyboard.
-
And I haven't really touched my old MacBook Pro 2014, 2015 models in a while. And I went back the other night and started working on them. And I have to say, I think I've been indoctrinated into the new keyboards. I'm pretty used to them now.
-
I like them. Yeah. Yeah. I went back to it. I'm like, it's kind of mushy. It doesn't really have the, it doesn't have the, the play that I remembered. So I don't know. I think they may have gotten me. Damn it. They do that, don't they? Yeah, they do. So did you actually watch the Oscars?
-
I know you're a film guy. I watched most of the Oscars until I was watching the In Memoriam segment with that terrible cover by Billie Eilish. I hate that song so much. The cover might've been great, but I hate the song. But while I was doing that, a giant chunk of my roof fell off and hit the side of my house.
-
So I was, I'm like, I'm watching all the dead people. I'm like, oh shit, they're coming back to life. My whole house shook. I'm like, damn. So I missed, I missed the end because I had to go do home repair. Yeah. I was kind of up and down. My wife is really into it and I was just puttering around the house and doing other things, but catching some of it.
-
I don't know if you caught the opening, the opening song with Janelle Monáe. Holy shit. That was amazing. Yeah. Well, she's amazing. I mean, she's a stunning singer and she's really good, but I couldn't, I was trying to wrap, I was trying to figure out what the background dancers were all dressed up as. And I found out it was basically black, black directed and black written movies that didn't get nominated for anything.
-
So it was kind of an FU. So they had a bunch of characters from that. So I saw the Joker, but the Joker was in there. The Joker was in there, but they threw, well, here's the thing. Dolomite was in there. That's, I even called that out to my roommate. I'm like, hey, they got Dolomite up there. Yeah. See, I was wondering if they were just going to do the, do characters from all of the Oscar nominated films for best picture, because if they would have done that, we almost would have gone full Mel Brooks.
-
We would have had a sing and dance and Hitler on stage. Oh yeah, totally. Totally. So they didn't go there. But if you want to watch one of the classic Mel Brooks sequences, springtime for Hitler is linked in our show notes. Have you seen Jojo Rabbit yet? No, I really want to. Yeah, I've got it.
-
I got a screener, but I haven't had time to watch it. I'm looking forward to it now. Yeah, I've got the screener app and I just haven't installed it yet. I've got, I've got Jojo Rabbit and Parasite up for this weekend. Everybody's been raving about Parasite before it even hit the Oscars and I've had it and I just haven't been able to get to it. But now I'm like, okay, well, it must be that damn good.
-
Yep. Apparently it is.
-
I got a really good recommendation from a friend for a book that isn't really technically sci-fi. It's near future, somewhat dystopian, I suppose, called An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King. And it kind of explores a possible future in China, basically involving the consequences of there being a lot more men than women in the very near future, involving basically bidding
-
for wives, having two to three husbands per woman, etc. And what that happens and what happens to men and society of men and particularly the men that can't and don't ever get married because there's too many. It was really interesting. A very, very thoughtful read.
-
I highly enjoyed it. Are there sex robots in there? No sex robots. Again, it didn't get very sci-fi that way. There's no technology that really exists that's beyond what we have right now. It's just kind of a little bit in the future, possible dystopian sort of thing. Well, we do have sex robots right now, so, you know.
-
Sort of. Sort of, yeah. Have you looked at them? That's true. That's true. I read The Stars in Our Pockets, Getting Lost and Sometimes Found in the Digital Age by Howard Axelrod. Mm-hmm. Have you ever heard of Howard Axelrod before? I have not.
-
I know an Axelrod, but I think he's a political pundit type guy. Okay. David Axelrod. I think of Axelrod. I think of Axelrod. I think of Axe from Billions. But, no, this is a really interesting read because this guy had lost an eye when he was young. Mm-hmm.
-
Did he find it? No, he did not find it. Well, the title's getting lost and sometimes found. I thought it might tie in together. He might have found his eye. No, he actually went off and went full Walden for a while and lived in the woods and eventually came back to society. And it's interesting because it basically talks about what we're losing with this switching between digital and the real world and, you know, how people can't read maps anymore and
-
how it, like, that part of the brain actually is kind of important to us and can trigger other things. But it's a really interesting read and well done. It's not too long, but I kind of recommend it for, especially for the audience for our show here because it's, you know, it follows that fine line between are we, do we have too much digital and what is it actually doing to us long term?
-
Right. And yeah, I'm concerned about that too. Yeah. Yeah. You should definitely read it because it's cool because, you know, he talks about when he was off the grid and then came back and he's just like, I came back to a world where everyone is staring at their hands and I don't know what to do about it. So it's so true.
-
It's so true. It's gotten so bad. Like I just, I walk down the street and I can just, I have to move out of other people's way because they don't even bother to look up anymore. No, no. Most people used to be able to do that. You know, your peripheral vision would pick up and see that. But I think people's peripheral vision are getting, they're atrophying because people just keep going, you know?
-
They really do. It's insane. Yeah. No, it's a mess. That's why when I go for walks, I don't take my phone. It drives me fucking crazy when people are out there walking their dogs and just staring at their phone. I'm like, you have animals with you that can possibly injure people and you're fucking around on Snapchat.
-
Come on. Pay attention. People come back to the real world. Feedback loop. We've got a couple of new Patreon subscribers, Lewis and Philip. Thank you very much. And over at PayPal, we have Mark, Chris, Jody, William, Breed, Daniel, Andrew, Michael, Ralph, Adam, and Jeannie.
-
And Jeannie says, I love this show. It's a joy every time a new episode appears in my feed. I want you two plus guests to know how much you are appreciated. Well, thank you, Jeannie. And thank you, everybody else who sent us some money. And it's pretty interesting how the script has flipped on Patreon versus PayPal.
-
Yeah. Yeah. I'm kind of bummed out about it personally because Patreon did have a nice system for seeing everybody that's coming in and calculating it. And PayPal is just kind of willy-nilly and they don't offer you a lot of decent tools to go through your stuff. Yeah. And it's also kind of annoying because I want to start offering ad-free versions to the people who support us.
-
And the only way we can do that easily is on Patreon. And I don't know how to do that with PayPal subscribers. So it's a messy digital world, Jason. It's a messy digital world. It's messy. Somebody should just come and clean it up. Maybe somebody at the podcast conference will have some sort of AI solution that they'll tell us about.
-
Could be. Could be. All right. Over at Twitter, waiting for Aminal Crossing, wrote in, I don't know if this would interest you, but my parents have been using their ring doorbell camera to spy on what potential buyers of their homes say as soon as they leave the house whenever it's been shown. Genius! That is genius.
-
It's evil, but it's genius. It's fucking great. My roommate's a real estate broker. I'm totally going to tell her about that hack. And Dan writes, and Brian brought... Brack? I know. Spell check is causing more problems than it solves these days.
-
I'm telling you, with Aminal Crossing and Brian brought Brack. Shocking. Loved it. Great pod today, guys. Thank you. Thomas writes in, as a Vivaldi browser convert to managing my bookmarks, I found giving each site a description works much like tagging or categorization.
-
Now, when searching for a site, type the description into the address bar and the results are shown below so easy. And he has a screenshot of it. As soon as I find time to actually go through my bookmarks, I will implement this. Yeah. Ain't nobody got time for that. I know. I ain't got time for that. Maybe I'll just sit around the...
-
I'll walk around the podcast conference with my... Staring at my hand, organizing my bookmarks. That's it. Steven says, tried Vivaldi, but wasn't able to click to call like on Opera. Am I just a short bus passenger? Is there a way?
-
On Opera, I could click to call and it would do so via FaceTime on my Mac via my iPhone. I've never tried that before. So I don't know. Anybody listening, if you have any experience with this, let us know. I'd imagine there's a plug-in. There's a plug-in for everything.
-
But that was built into Opera because I know that it had that. But yeah, I don't know. I've never done that because I don't want to FaceTime people. God, why would I want to call anybody? There you go. And Brett writes in, YouTuber uses neural networks.
-
Thank you for not saying AI to upscale 1896 short film to 4K 60 FPS. It's an interesting little article. Is the movie any good? It's fascinating. I mean, it's really interesting to watch how it has been upscaled and up-res.
-
There's a little bit of tomfoolery going on behind the scenes because this particular film has been up-res and fixed so many times that the final one was from another up-res version. So it wasn't from the original film. Now, if it was from the original film, that would be interesting.
-
But this comes from many steps in between. But I tell you what, I don't care. The final product is beautiful. Yeah. I mean, I'd love to see a bunch of 80s films totally up-res like this. That'd be great. Well, I want 1880s films.
-
The cool thing about it is, like, when you're watching everybody, everybody on that train platform, because, I mean, it's from 1896. Everybody on that platform looks like they can kill you. They all are just vicious-looking people. And the guys with the mustaches and the bowlers, everybody there looks like they have a shiv and will cut you just for looking at them.
-
Yeah, because we've been trained to think that, because we always use period pieces like that to have this, the funky, like, mob dynamic and all that. I don't know, man. Go look at them. They're shifty as fuck. I'm telling you. And Justin says, is dynamic ad insertion now a thing for you guys?
-
I got one on my latest episode, and it was jarred from your grumpy voices to a happy-go-lucky female voice trying to sell me stuff that I have no interest in. Serious sticker shock. Well, yes, it is, and I'm going to add in some transitions so you know when it's coming.
-
But, yeah, we do have dynamic ads in, and our friends in Australia will be happy about that, because now they can get ads that they can actually purchase instead of listening to us talk about shaving your balls, which you can't buy. Apparently, we don't care about Australians' balls down there, or anything else that we sell.
-
Let's make sure we throw that in, Auread. Exactly. So, yeah, we have moved over to that, because we've got to make some money. Sorry, guys. It's the way it is. We need money. Yeah, and that's why I'm saying that soon we'll have an ad-free version up on Patreon for the subscribers there, and I'm trying to figure out a way to do it with everybody that donates on PayPal.
-
Yeah, we've been trying to figure that out for a year. It's not going to happen, Jason. Probably not. Probably not. Just the tech behind it's tough, because we don't know when they subscribe and unsubscribe. I mean, shit, you can't even tell on PayPal if somebody has a recurring donation. Well, I've been trying to figure that out for months, and I can't do it.
-
It's a pain in the butt. Yeah. But, hey, we want your money from anywhere it comes. Yeah, yeah. So, yes, we do have dynamic ads coming in, and it's just a thing. It's just a thing. So, I'm going to put in a transition, so you'll hear a little jingle or a whoosh or something.
-
And then you can skip. Ka-ching! Over at GOG.show, James writes in, you guys absolutely cracked me up with a Phillips Hue joke. If the hub's connected to the internet, well, it is. Okay, yeah, that's my whole song that I made up last week. Thank you so much. Actually made me laugh out loud and look like an idiot at work, so thanks for that.
-
Keep up the great work. Absolutely love the show. Thank you. Thank you very much. And Evan writes in, watch out for that white claw. It can mess with your mind. And it's a New York Post article called, Craft Beer Hater Pulls Gun on People Outside Brooklyn's Other Half Brewing Company, and it's pretty funny. I mean, I gotta say.
-
Absolute props for the line. What a brouhaha. Yeah. And yeah, this guy did throw a white claw at them because he just hates IPAs, apparently. So, it was a good read. I like them both, people. Let's all get along. Yes. Barrett writes in, love the new talk with Seth.
-
Now about that end to EF lens development by Canon. They'll probably have the widest selection of glass in just about every necessary focal length. I'd much rather see them build up a quality glass for their new RF series. Hopefully, they'll put on a decent mirrorless body this year, as rumored. I felt exactly like the actors in Star Trek reading things that they don't understand.
-
There you go. Well, I sent this to Seth, and Seth just said, yes, it's coming. So, there you go. And Holly writes in, see if she was using privacy, this wouldn't have happened. And it's a link called, Angry Mom Demands Xbox Refund After Hackers Bought 36,000 FIFA Gaming Points, which turns out to be...
-
Three times 780 pounds. It's 240 pounds. Yeah, 240 pounds is what she lost. And she went on an 11-month odyssey to get her money back. Yeah, it's pretty bad customer service for Microsoft there. Yeah, it was really bad.
-
But she finally got her money back eventually after she publicly shamed them in the press. As one always has to do. And Elias, Elias, I guess just Elias, I don't know why I was trying to zhuzh it up. You probably saw it already. But in case you didn't, enjoy the dystopia.
-
This is a link over at The Verge. This girl's only app uses AI to screen a user's gender. What could go wrong? Yes, apparently trans people are very up in arms about this one. Yeah. Shockingly enough, AI, facial recognition, all that sort of stuff doesn't work very well.
-
Doesn't work. Doesn't work. Mark writes in, hi, guys. You guys have been talking about Ring from time to time, but I don't remember hearing you mention a good home security system that you would trust and that is affordable. Anything to recommend? As of right now, buy a Rottweiler.
-
That's it. That's my home security system that I can trust. I wouldn't say she's affordable, though. Not by any stretch. My Logitech cameras are my favorites that I have. No word on hacking or anything like that or giving your videos to the popo, all that.
-
If you want to go homeschool, the Amcrest cameras aren't so bad. You just got to keep that firmware up to date. And there's a lot of self-management. Yeah. Fuck Ring. Just fuck Ring. Yep. They're done. They're dead to me. I'm never going to get one of them. Brian writes in, is it possible to listen to over 400 episodes in under a year?
-
Eat your heart out, Betteridge. Silence. This can't be. Every day for nearly a year, I've listened to you grumps on my commute. Halfway home, anxiously awaiting Mr. Fogarty's intro to the next episode. I see the most damning evidence. You're all caught up. Oh. I left a five-star review on iTunes July 2019, but for me, it was still December of 2017.
-
I burned through the last two years in about six months. So now we enter 2020, all caught up and waiting for my next episode to drop. Boy, you're going to be bummed out. There's only one episode this week. One thing I'll miss, listening to old episodes gave me omnipotence over impending events. Listen to you grumps break a story or take a position on a topic, and I already knew the outcome, making assumptions at the stupidity of WeWork or the debauchery of Uber, all the while thinking, if only they knew how right they are.
-
Grump on. And he says, by the way, original Highlander is, remember, there can be only one. By the way, I'm a dumbass for thinking I could spell out my screen name by enclosing it in brackets. Somebody knows how to filter special characters. Original Highlander is original Highlander. All right.
-
Well, thank you, Original Highlander. Thank you for listening to all of them. A.K.A. Brian. You're crazy. Yes. Send us your address. We've got a present for you. Yes. And Darren writes, an interesting story that feeds into the subscription world we are moving into, and it's resulting problems that you talk about on the show quite often.
-
And it's an article over at The Verge. Tesla remotely disables autopilot on used Model S after it was sold. Wow. Yeah, this story was pretty crazy. So, yeah. This guy bought a Model S used.
-
I guess it was a company, a third-party dealer. The dealer advertised it as having all these features. When it was sold, Tesla said, you didn't pay for those features, and shut them off over the air. That's fucked up.
-
Yeah, it is. That is really fucked up. That's just bad PR. What you've got to do at this point is you get mad at the dealer. You say, you can't do that, but you don't get mad at the customer. Seriously. Seriously. And here's the thing. If the original customer paid for it, then it should be in the car for the life of the car.
-
Yes. It should transfer with the life of the car, not owner to owner. This is some weird stuff we're getting into where we have digital products, not physical products in cars. Yeah. And, I mean, it's not like it's a subscription, I'm guessing. It's like you pay like six grand or eight grand for whatever to get the extras and the add-ons.
-
That should be a feature of the car if you want to pass it on. Seriously. Tesla really stepped on their dick on this one. Yep. Couldn't tell from the stock price, though. Man, that's made me a lot of money the past couple weeks. Fuck you. Peter writes in, LinkedIn is reading my mind.
-
Hey, geeks. I thought you'd appreciate this. Do you know how people are always talking about how their phones are listening to them because they were talking about X and then suddenly an ad for X appears on their computer? Well, LinkedIn just one-upped them. Last night, I was thinking about a friend of mine whom I haven't talked to or even spoken of for a few years. Just thinking of, mind you.
-
Didn't mention her name or type or email or surf to her website or anything like that. This morning, I opened up LinkedIn because I had a message from a recruiter. What was the first thing at the top of my feed? A post from my friend I've been thinking about. They're reading our minds. Stay grumpy. Your line doesn't. Deliveroo!
-
Yeah, that happens. It happens. Zachary writes, thought you guys would get a kick out of the Mac Pro D brand skin prices. I really hope that this is a mistake. But who knows? With Apple, I took a screenshot. In case they fix it on the website. Before you get to see it, both are linked below. Keep up the great work.
-
And so we just have the link in the show notes to the actual page where you can get the Mac Pro plus Pro Display XDR skin and wraps. Well, Brian, we have an update. We have an update. We did. But now I have to undo the update. We had an update.
-
Then now the update is back to nothing. Because I looked at the price from his screenshot, which is $52,748.95. And I looked yesterday and maybe they're using some trickery like all these sites do because maybe it was my first visit to the site.
-
It offered me a discounted price. Now that I just clicked on the link again, same price. $52,748.95. Oh, that's bullshit because I saw the discounted price too. I bet it was first click. No, it wasn't actually. Oh, yeah.
-
You've looked at it before. That's right. Yeah, because I was actually talking with him. I'm like, because he's like, okay, why is there $52,748 skin? I'm like, well, they're actually factoring the price of the actual computer because to actually skin one of these Mac Pros at home would drive you insane.
-
Look, I could barely get the little plastic window on my iPhones. Oh, I can never get those things to line up. And there's always a bubble. There's always a goddamn bubble. So I just gave up on them. I'm like, you know what? I'm going bareback. I'm going bareback, damn it. Thank you for that appealing image.
-
Of course. You're welcome. Mark writes in, for your curiosity about people who can't recognize which search results are ads, I can do you a thousand better. As an ATM technician, I encountered people so stupid, I seriously wondered how they have enough intelligence to inhale.
-
It's a great line. The best story is we had pulled an old drive-up machine out and put in a new model. Mind you, the old machine is on a flatbed truck ready to get hauled off. A gentleman drives up, stops, gets out of his car, climbs up onto the flatbed, and tries to insert his card.
-
Dude needed cash, man. Damn. I have over a dozen stories of people so unknowledgeable about a simple-to-use device that is as idiot-resistant as possible that I have to assume someone else dresses them and ties their shoelaces for them. Thank you, Mark.
-
Thank you very much. Not enough intelligence to inhale is a great line. And we got a message from Jim. I was on the fence about reading this one, but I think it's important that people hear this not just from us, from our actual listeners that have firsthand experience in these sorts of things.
-
So Jim writes in, Here's some anecdotal evidence that vaccines work. I'm in my mid-60s. I only knew one of my grandparents. The other three died of diseases or their complications, which are all preventable today because we are vaccinated against them. The measles vaccine was introduced when I was about 11, and a childhood friend who contracted measles before the vaccine lost his eyesight permanently as a result.
-
The mumps vaccine was released when I was maybe 15. Kids I grew up with had severe and permanent hearing loss from mumps. A friend's sister was infertile as an adult and as a side effect of mumps as well. The prevalence of autism today is likely due to parents having kids later, better diagnosis of kids with autism, and possibly as a side effect of Lyme's disease, which wasn't really identified until the mid-1970s.
-
For perspective, I'm not terribly old, but remember segregated lunch counters and swimming pools. I grew up about eight miles from the U.S. Capitol building. It's good to remember our past, so we aren't forced to relive it. Thanks for your show. Thank you, Jim. Thank you for your comment, Jim. That is very important.
-
Steve writes in, Speaking of series endings, I never watched this show, but the story of the last episode ending is hilarious. I read this. You should be glad that your Roy Donovan show didn't end this way. Ray Donovan, not Roy. Ray Donovan, whatever. So, yeah, Rob Lowe quit as Sam Seaborn on the West Wing, which was a great character, but he wanted more out of it, and that didn't happen.
-
So he went on to star in a show called The Lion's Den. Despite the extensive ad campaign by NBC and the star-studded cast, the show lasted six episodes before they were informed that they were going to be canceled. So, unfortunately, they were contractually obligated to deliver 13 episodes total so the show could be sold on DVD as well as into syndication.
-
As this article points out, they were not contractually obligated, however, to make sure that the rest of those 13 episodes would be good or make any sense whatsoever. So, Rob Lowe did a bit of an interview explaining what exactly happened. And as the article points out, once they threw their last remaining fucks out of the nearest window.
-
So, I kind of want to see those last episodes now. I am desperate to see these now. So, I want to watch the whole 13-episode arc. So, he's doing an interview, and he says, yes, the show is canceled. It's not on the air. It's over. But they say to me, you're still going to make 13 more episodes, but nobody's ever going to see them.
-
Maybe we'll release the DVD in, like, Bratislava. So, with that as the backdrop, the writers and I decide, you know what? The hell with it. We're going to burn the bridges. We're going for it. So, we decide to write my character as a sociopathic maniac who was revealed to be a mass murderer. And Kyle Chandler, right before Friday Night Lights, is the mentor in the office who is always my rival.
-
He comes in one night while I'm eating in the executive dining room and confronts me with evidence that I might be a mass murderer. I walk up, stab him to death with my steak knife, sit back down, eat my steak, wipe my mouth, go to the balcony, and throw myself off. That's the end of the series. I want to see these so fucking bad.
-
See, Jason, sometimes it may be a good thing not to have a final episode. Oh, that sounds beautiful, though. That would have been the best show ever. Oh, my God. I remember when The Lion's Den came out, too. I think I watched the first episode. I think I did, too, just because I was such a fan of him as Sam Seaburn.
-
You know what? But I hate watching it because I was so mad that he left. I was just like, you idiot. Well, he came back eventually to run for Senate. Yeah, but it wasn't the same. It wasn't the same. Yeah. Alex writes in, Hi, Jason, heard your issue with iPhone face recognition with a bed face.
-
I had the same issue, and then I learned that it's not related to how I look when I'm in bed. Rather, it had to do with using face ID with the phone too close to my face when I'm in bed. I don't have my glasses or contacts on, and I have to get my face really close to the phone to see. So if you have bad eyes, try unlocking your face farther away.
-
Hope that helps. Alex, thank you so much. It is exactly the problem that I had because I'm blind as a bat, and I can't see the damn thing. So it's always like my nose is almost touching it when I try to open it up.
-
Yep. Held it away from my face. I got one eye open. I can barely see. I'm trying not to lose my night vision, and it still works. So thank you, Alex. You have saved the day. All right. I'm glad that works for you now. Oh, so, dude, it's a game changer.
-
It's fantastic. Thank you so much. All right. Grumpy Viking writes in, Hi, Grumps. Thank you for sharing the news about Avast. Although I've paid for Avast, I'm uninstalling it right away. Somebody's got to stand for the last shred of privacy we have on the interwebs. Maybe I should go back to Linux? Thank you for a good show. Keep on grumping.
-
Don't go back to Linux. No, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. Mr. Taco Man writes, I would love to know your guys' thoughts on this. Also, do you think this will give Rivian a huge bump? This is a behind-the-scenes look at Amazon's upcoming Rivian electric van. Well, I think the fact that the Amazon has pre-ordered 100,000 of them is, yeah, that's going to give them a big bump.
-
I'd think so. I'd think so. Yeah. He also said, Also, I was just listening to the latest episode, and you mentioned the unofficial official Grumpy Old Geeks Reddit. Why don't you take a page from PewDiePie's book and use content from there?
-
Like, read the top five upvoted posts on there instead of using your website to submit comments. The unofficial Reddit is basically just reposting our episodes when they're released, so we're not actually getting any content from it, sadly. Yeah, on our official Reddit, we tried posting links and get people to vote them and submit links.
-
And yeah, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze because not many people actually submitted stuff. And if they submitted them, we already had them. You know, so it turned out to actually waste more time than it saved. As do most things on the internet. Yeah, because I've got, you know, I read 4,000 articles.
-
I'm sorry, not articles. I read 4,000 headlines a week and maybe 200 articles to get the stuff that I put in for the show, which is about six fucking articles. So, you know, if that is more efficient than using Reddit, that should tell you how inefficient Reddit is.
-
Yes, exactly. And Chris writes in, if you're impressed by JLo at 50, you should check out Susanna Hoffs at 60. She must be hiding a portrait in the attic. I have always had a huge crush on Susanna Hoffs. And yes, she still looks stunning at 60. It's unbelievable.
-
Scott writes in, Jason, I meant to send you this last week, but I use G Suite and you get unlimited storage with five plus accounts, which are $15 a month each. And this is all about how Google Photos and you can do like, you know, the basically unlimited storage. Problem is, I don't need five accounts.
-
Because if I do that, then I'm paying more. And the only accounts on my account that I use are for family. And they're a bunch of fucking freeloaders. So I'm not going to pay for them to get unlimited email and storage. So they can go fuck themselves. They want to give me 15 bucks a month, go for it.
-
But they don't even know how their email magically works. I handle all that. And since I'm grandfathered in on G Suite, I am not going to give them the money because I can't un-grandfather when people decide that they don't want to give me that $15 a month and then I'm on the hook for it. So no, I'm just going to pay my 20 bucks a month and get my two terabytes of storage.
-
So thank you, Scott. I appreciate it. But yeah, it does not work in my particular case. But yes, if you do get G Suite with five or more accounts, the unlimited storage is great. I have a couple of clients that use that and we've uploaded terabytes of shit up there. It is basically where everything lives.
-
So it is a nice way to get unlimited storage out of Google. Right. And Donovan writes in, in episode 412, a listener wrote in about landlines, credit ratings, et cetera, in the UK. In the US, Experian does have a feature that allows you to add your utility bills, phone bills, et cetera, to help increase your credit score.
-
It's called Experian Boost. So I took a look at the link that he sent us. And according to the site, Experian Boost, trademark, has everyone talking. Well, obviously not, since none of us knew this. Actually, I did. Remember when I said that there's a service that actually does that? This is the one I was thinking of.
-
Yes, but you didn't have a brand name. I've actually done ad, I've done ad reads for Experian Boost before, but then that was before the Experian kerfuffle happened and nobody would take their ads anymore. So yes, I have, I have actually done ad reads on other shows for Experian Boost. And that was the product I was thinking of.
-
Yeah, well, it's great that they offer that. So you have to opt in. So if anybody is having some trouble with their credit and needs to build it up, go for it. It exists. Who knew? Yeah. And you've just given Experian all more, all that much more data about you that they can leak later. Yes. Matthias writes in Huawei, Faroe Islands, 5G network.
-
Their minister of communication were to be interviewed by TV. Microphone was rigged and on. And just when the camera were to start rolling, his secretary wanted to talk to the minister. He left with his secretary and forgot that the mic was on. Oh, what a sweet deal for the TV. It was a message from the Chinese ambassador.
-
I believe this is Matthias from Sweden. So English, probably not his first language, but we worked through it. So yeah, this is a link over at the New York Times. It's pretty funny. So basically, Hot Mike and one of the senior aides in the government there was caught on tape saying China's ambassador had threatened to block a trade deal and more fish sales if Huawei was not used for the 5G network.
-
And of course, the US is saying, don't use them, don't use them, don't use them. But they're offering a sweet ordeal. So that sucks. Yeah. I mean, this is how business gets done in the world. This is how the world works, people. Yeah. And John writes in, really, Microsoft, and this is a link from The Verge, about Microsoft teams going down because Microsoft forgot to renew their certificate.
-
Yeah. That's what I was talking about before. It was only down three hours. Three hours. 9 a.m. Eastern to noon. The most important hours in the workday to use these communication tools. Yeah. Because of a damn cert.
-
Okay. Here, guys. Here's a tip. Buy a 10-year cert. That's it. Well, maybe they did. That was 10 years on the dot. Well, Microsoft Teams has not been around for 10 years. Maybe they're repurposing a cert from something else, Jason. Okay. Okay. Over at iTunes, we got nothing.
-
We got nothing. Not a one. You know what? And speaking of Slack, I just set up... ...a cool app that will let us know on our Slack channel whenever we get a new iTunes rating. We don't know if it works. We don't know if it works because nobody sent us any damn iTunes ratings. So, guys, please give us a rating or review on iTunes.
-
Somebody, please. I want to see if this damn thing actually works. Me, too, because I'm tired of going to the site trying to find them. 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 just so we can see if this Slack thing works.
-
Thank you. And stars are destination. Please keep giving us those stars in Overcast. We are closing in on Rogan. We're on his heels. Apparently, if we get the same amount and beat him, we get some of his money. Ah, that's, well, wouldn't that be nice?
-
Wouldn't that be great if you top the charts, you actually get the ad revenue from the guy who's below you? That'd be awesome. That'd be so great. Closing shout outs. Shout out to new listener Mike Mosser, who is possibly the most hacked person I have ever met and is a new convert to 1Password.
-
We're actually going to be doing a security standalone show in the next couple of weeks where we just kind of go through everything we've always talked about on the show. With him as our use case? Yeah. Honestly, I think I'm going to try and get Mike's permission because holy shit, what a story he's got.
-
So, man. Come on, guys. 1Password, two-factor auth, and never tell them your actual mother's maiden name, please. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. And just a reminder, this episode comes out Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
-
We will be at the podcast, whatever it's called, here in Los Angeles. If you're there, find us. Find us. Come on. We'll have stickers and magnets and stickers. Two sets of squares. Well, we got two sizes. Oh, that's true. We do have two sizes. Yeah, we got squares and we got bumper stickers.
-
So, woo, come on out. And we got magnets. Woo-hoo! Wee! 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 414.
-
And there you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy.
-
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. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.
-
With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com.