419: I’ll Drink to That

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. So Brian, how was your trip to the great land of Arizona? Did you get many bugs on your windshield? It was good. More than I thought, actually, but not enough that I had to pull over or anything. It's just when I had to go get gas, I found myself actually using a little squeegee to take care of some bugs.

So yeah, it's been a long time since I've done a trip like that and nowhere near as many bugs as I remember even road tripping in college, but some. So I guess that's good. I guess. I guess. I guess. I don't know. Still a few left. Yeah, still a few left. It was a fun trip. If you're a baseball fan, I highly recommend at least once getting out to go to a spring training game. It's pretty cool. I'm sure it was awesome like 10, 15, maybe even 20 years ago.

It's built up now, man. It's a big deal. Like the stadiums are big. And I got to say, a little shaming to Dodger Stadium, the food and beer options far better. Yeah. So that was that. Road tripping with the kids is pretty crazy. We hadn't done that yet. And one thing that I had totally forgotten about is you go to bed when the kid goes to bed when you're sharing a hotel room.

Oh, in addition to Arizona not recognizing daylight savings time. So they were an hour behind the whole time I was there. But we were going to bed at like nine o'clock and waking up at five in the morning and all that. So it was a normal day for me. I guess it's pretty normal for you. Yeah. So it was a lot of fun. I do recommend that if you're a baseball fan. It was a blast. I'm happy to be back. I even took work with me. I hadn't taken work on a work trip before or not in a long time anyways.

But I knew that when you travel with a kid, there's lots of downtime in the hotel room. So I had a little work with me as well. So it was a fun time and very happy to be back. Awesome sauce. Well, I got a little follow up here from the Clash Royale clan at GOG.show. Quit asking. It's pretty fun. The chatter in the chat has been pretty good lately. I think some of us have a few cocktails at night.

Oh, definitely a little off color. OBK, or as I like to call him, Old Butt King, because I have dyslexia and that's how I read his name. It's actually Old Butt Kicking. But he's been helping me keep the crew alive over there.

So I got a happy birthday shout out to Neil for his 40th birthday, which is the day the show comes out. So happy 40th, Neil. And I got some shout outs to Slander, RJG18, MassishockerRaf, BetaBucket, Jake, Badger, JayTheDestroyer, RogueMadFox, and HarryBeanBag, just because.

Lovely. I'd have gotten some more, but the chat stops you from scrolling back too far. So, but it's a fun time over there. We usually have like one or two slots open if anybody wants to come join us. I think we upped our minimum trophies to get in, so you can't come in as a noob.

But if you play Clash Royale. Oh, yeah. Well, you're not coming back anyway. No, I'm not. Especially since I found out a level is something called teabagging Brian. Yes, that was so good. Thanks, guys.

That was pretty funny. That was pretty funny. And I do have to say, fuck shingles. I thought still, I thought that this thing was gone. Daddy gone. And it just came back with a vengeance. And it's it's not even a vengeance. It doesn't even hurt as much as it used to hurt. But it's like constant all the time. It's like getting a tattoo over a giant swath of your body 24 hours a day. So I haven't slept in a long time. So that wouldn't bother me too much. I've done that.

Yeah, constantly for three weeks. No, you stop feeling it after a while. No, you don't. Well, this you don't. This does not stop no matter what. And I know why this happened. It's because I do the work week hustle on Fitbit with my friend from Chicago, Jeff Bochner and some other randos he knows. And of course, on Sunday, I released the, you know, the shit talk. I'm like, you guys better be prepared. Shingles gone. I'm ready to go. Shoes laced up. And then probably an hour

later, the universe said, hang on a second, two weeks ago, two weeks ago, or so you were telling me that the one thing that makes the shingles feel better is walking. Yeah, problem is I got too much work. And that part also when I tried it again, like, I guess in that phase, it really helped. After that? No, it actually does not. Sadly. Okay, well, kind of can make it worse. So, yeah. So if you're over 50, or

right around 50, or right around 50, and had the chicken pox when you were a kid, go get the shot. Go get the vaccine. Because you don't want this. Ain't nobody got time for this. That's right. In the news. So, Brian, lawmakers are proposing making e-commerce companies liable for counterfeits. This one came from the New York Times.

Okay. Because I guess they don't really have anything else better to do over there. Well, I mean, you know, it's a good idea in theory. I'd like to see who the internet police are that's going to enforce this. True.

True. You know, I mean, I get it. The problem with these open storefronts with the Amazons that let anybody get on there and do anything is that anybody gets on there and does anything. Right. You know, it's not like a traditional retailer that has deals with distributors and direct deals with manufacturers and, you know, what you're getting most of the time when you walk into a Walmart or a Target or something like that.

With Amazon, you have to, well, as we've been saying a lot recently on this show, you have to pay attention when you're on the internet. Yeah. And, you know, here's the other thing. It's not even that. It's like they could use actual, you know, product photos of a legit product and then just send you a knockoff.

And if you don't have the eye to pick it, you know, then you might just get it. You got to look into who's the one, who the sellers are. You just, you got to do your due diligence on the internet these days. And, you know, I am Mr. Legislation. I am Mr. Let's get these things legislated. I don't know if this is something that in the olden days, you know, the invisible hand would have taken care of this.

Enough people would have gotten crappy goods or had problems that the store would go out of business. But when the store is so damn big, what are you going to do? Right. So they're going to call this the Shop Safe Act, which would create trademark liability for companies selling counterfeit goods that pose risks to consumer health and safety.

Like drugs and medical products. So that is a very good thing because there are a lot of drugs and things like that out there that are counterfeit. Yes. And I always found it. I mean, Amazon is the buy anything store, but isn't it? I just wouldn't get any medical products or any medications off Amazon. I just wouldn't.

But I mean, well, I mean, it's not just Amazon. It's any store online. No, I know. But we're talking Amazon because that's the big one, right? Yeah. The nice thing about this, though, is it does actually or will hopefully, fingers crossed, create at least some kind of accountability options because I don't think there really are many right now.

So we'll see how we'll see how it goes. It seems to have pretty good bipartisan support. Accountability would be nice. I recommend checking out a show on the Jordan Harbinger Show 308 with Chris Buckner. And it's about who does counterfeiting really hurt.

And it's a fascinating look that most of the counterfeit goods that you buy basically go to straight up organized crime. And lovely. Yeah, it's a it's a major thing. It's a major problem. I highly recommend listening to that episode. It's really fascinating.

That will be in the show notes. Excellent. Well, speaking of Amazon and their competition, news is coming out. Recode has learned over the past 18 months, the world's largest brick and mortar retailer, that would be Walmart, has explored creating its own paid membership program that would include perks that Amazon cannot replicate in part to avoid direct comparison to Prime.

So they're coming after Amazon Prime now. Walmart has basically, until now, just kind of been like, we're free. There's there's no paid service. But now they want to roll out a paid service because, well, Amazon Prime is so damn popular. Amazon now accounts for nearly 40 percent of all online retail sales in the U.S., according to eMarker and eMarketer.

Sorry. And Prime is a huge reason why. Obviously, we get the same day shipping, next day shipping, all that sort of stuff. Walmart is in a distant second place with only a little more than five percent of the U.S. e-commerce market. That is stunning to me that Amazon has 40 percent and the next biggest player only has five.

Crazy. Pricing. It's all about pricing and free next day. So as soon as next month, Walmart plans to start publicly testing a membership program called, wait for it, Walmart Plus. Give me a break. Come on, people. Remember back in the day when it was all about adding I in front of everything?

Yeah. This is the new I. Put a plus at the end of your name. So they're going to basically relaunch and rebrand Walmart's existing delivery unlimited service, which charges customers ninety eight dollars a year for unlimited same day delivery of fresh groceries from one of the sixteen hundred plus Walmart stores in the U.S.

So this is somewhere where they could actively compete with Amazon. The Amazon grocery stuff hasn't really taken off the way that they had hoped that it would, even with the acquisition of Whole Foods. So this could actually get them going somewhere. They're also talking about launching a feature that would allow customers to use text messaging to place orders, which seems a bit lame to me.

Yeah, so we will see there. They're definitely going to go for it. They're going to try to try to compete. And one of the things that Walmart is good for is not having counterfeit goods, which is a good thing, because this will also include discounts on prescription drugs at Walmart pharmacies, fuel at Walmart gas stations, as well as a scan and go service that would allow shoppers to check out in Walmart stores without waiting in line.

All of which would be kind of cool, except there's no Walmart near me. Oh, I got a Walmart right up the street. My roommate goes all the time. I like to go there when I like to feel sexy because I'm always the thinnest person in the joint. But I got to tell you, one thing that Amazon really surprised me with this week was I ordered a video converter and I got the wrong one.

And so I went to return it. And, you know, usually they'll give you a printout and you slap it on the box and take it to a UPS drop off store. Right. Yep. Well, there's a new one now that is a brand new option. You basically, they send you an email with a QR code in it. You don't have to box anything up.

You just take the product to Walmart, hand somebody the box of whatever you got and let them scan it. And then they take care of shipping it back to the mothership. Wait, you order something from Amazon and then you take it to Walmart. I mean, sorry, sorry. Whole Foods.

Whole Foods. Oh, okay, okay. Okay, yeah. I was really confused about that because I'm like, hey, I just did a story. About how they're in competition now. Yeah. I'm telling you, man. No sleep. That'll get you. But yes, Whole Foods, which I have one like a block from my house. It's actually closer to the UPS store.

Yeah. But I think it's genius because it gets you into Whole Foods. It gets you into the Whole Foods. Yeah. Well, I've also got that Amazon bookstore near me. So I've been doing that for a while. I can just take my returns and drop them off there for free. But it's nice to know because Whole Foods is closer to me than the Amazon bookstore is. So that's cool. I like that.

Yeah. I just hate parking at Whole Foods. It's never a good thing, at least in Southern California. No, it is not. Now, we've talked about e-scooters since the beginning because Santa Monica here was ground zero of Bird just dumping their crap everywhere. And there's a really interesting article called The Frenzied Era of E-Scooters is Over, which, you know, now we've had enough time.

Cities have had enough time with this. We've had enough different regulations put into place. We've had enough pilot projects. It's all settling down into business as usual. So what's happening? Well, there's going to be a great culling because there's been too many e-scooter companies and only certain people.

They're basically, cities are going to start to do like what they used to do with taxis. You have to have, you have to have a, what do they call them? Medallion. You have to have a medallion, basically. So cities are going to say, okay, you three companies are allowed to operate here. You get X amount of scooters each, and that's that.

You get some scooters. You get some scooters. You get some scooters. Yeah. So the culling of operators could give the e-scooter market a better shot at financial viability. But it also means casualties in the industry. So a lot of brands will be going out by the wayside. The funny thing about this article is they say something along the lines of, you may not have your favorite brand of e-scooter.

Do people actually have a favorite brand of e-scooter? I don't know. I don't ride them. So that's a question for people out there who ride scooters. Well, you're in Santa Monica, Brian. So why don't you just walk down the street and say, hey, do you have a favorite brand of e-scooter? That would take effort, and I'd have to talk to people.

Yeah. I think your favorite e-scooter is the one that's closest to you. I think so as well, because it's not exactly difficult to get the app, and most people have all these apps already anyway. So I find that hard to believe. And the one thing that this article does not discuss at all, and it's my real problem with the scooters.

It's not so much a bunch of companies running around and throwing their scooters everywhere. It's the lack of infrastructure in every single city. That is the big problem, and they don't discuss that at all in this article. And I certainly know that Santa Monica has done some work. They've put in e-scooter parkings at the end of major streets like Main Street and stuff like that, but nobody is using it.

People still just dump their crap wherever they want. Yeah. Yeah. Damn vacationers. So I'm curious. Has it lightened up any over there? Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. It's so much better now. Because obviously they were losing too much money, so they've really scaled back operations.

You don't see anywhere near as many scooters around anymore. Interesting. Interesting. And I wonder if the shine has worn off. It was such a novelty when they came out, and everybody liked it. Or everybody that was riding it all the time got so injured they can't ride them anymore and decided to walk like civilized human beings.

I mean, I think there's something to the idea that the shine has gone off. Now everybody has tried them. They wanted to try them. And now people are just using them for intended purposes, you know, drunkenly wheeling down Main Street and dying. Yeah. There you go. That's speaking of culling the herd.

Yes. Yeah. So let's move on to more transportation and technology. Uber and Lyft. A new study has come out as of Tuesday by the nonprofit research group Union of Concerned Scientists that basically says Uber and Lyft are increasing emissions, not lowering them.

Knew that was coming. Come on. Of course. Of course it is. So rather than simply replacing other cars, Ubers and Lyfts are increasing the total number of car trips in our collective carbon footprint, causing an estimated 69% more emissions than the trips they have displaced. Now, they say the reason for this is twofold.

They've analyzed public data from seven U.S. cities. The report found that ride-sharing vehicles traveling many miles in between passengers, known as deadheading, this tendency, also seen with taxis, makes a non-pooled ride-hailing trip 47% more polluting than a private car ride.

On top of that, a survey of California passengers found that ride-shares are the preference for trips they'd otherwise have taken by mass transit on bike or on foot or, I suppose, the e-scooters. As a result, this report concludes ride-sharing is increasing vehicle travel, climate pollution, and congestion in cities and suburbs alike.

So one of the much-vaunted pluses of ride-sharing, not really working out. Oh, there you go. Did you see the Billy Never Idols campaign that came out from New York City? No, I did not. Oh, my God. It's so good.

They've got a big problem with, you know, delivery cars and other vehicles just sitting around idling all the time, which is increasing, you know, air pollution. And obviously, because they're idling, so they actually got Billy Idol to say, Billy Never Idols. And they, I saw the press release, not the press release, yeah, it was the press conference.

And he was there and screaming, Billy Never Idols. It was pretty good. There's a link in the show notes to it. They've got a commercial up there and you can check that out. So hopefully Billy Idol will save the city. Well, another aspect of the ride-sharing promotional materials, as it were, is coming under scrutiny and kind of falling apart as well.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving says that ride-sharing saves lives endangered by alcohol-impaired drivers on the road. Uber has joined this group for years in what it calls a partnership that protects and thank your local heroes. Uber's description of the project reads, the next time you ride after a couple of drinks, show your appreciation with a late-night hero compliment or even a personal thank you note.

And Lyft gets in on this narrative as well. What, that may or may not be happening, curbing drunk driving. But what we do seem to be having is unintended consequences, Jason. Really? Yes. What could those possibly be, Brian?

Well, this article was written by a, he's a current Lyft driver and he's a former congressional reporter focused on healthcare. And this is his own particular, he, he litters this entire article with his own, own experiences, basically driving around incredibly drunk people all the time.

And researchers have begun to quantify this as well. Late last year, a team from Georgia State, the University of Louisville and the U.S. Department of Justice released a study that considered how ride-sharing availability might affect alcohol consumption. And surprise, surprise, Jason, people are drinking a shit ton more.

Because they can. Because they can. So the study reported that Uber X, one Uber ride option in many places, is associated with a 3.1% increase in the average number of drinks consumed per day, a 2.8% increase in number of drinking days per month, a 4.9% increase in the maximum number of drinks consumed on one occasion, and a 9% increase in the prevalence of heavy drinking.

Yeah. There we have it. So when we focus on areas with relatively weaker public transportation options, we estimate Uber X is associated with a 17.5% to 21.8% increase in instances of binge drinking. In other words, even if ride-sharing does reduce drunk driving, it might help ramp up drinking itself, and along with it, other dangerous consequences for public health.

Whoopsies. Yeah. There you have it. Knew that one was coming, too. Yeah. I mean, I've seen it. And I've talked to, I have a bunch of friends that are- I've done it. I've done it as well. And, you know, I have quite a few friends that work in the industry that are bartenders, and I actually did ask, I saw a friend the other night, and I asked about this, and she said, oh my God, people get so much more drunk now than they did 10 years ago.

Well, also, just remember it's an election year, and what the past four years have been. So we might have a statistical anomaly going on there. People might be getting more drunk because just the world as it is right now. Well, I certainly have been. Exactly.

That's what I mean. There's- they didn't take that into account, so. Yes. And, again, I found another one filed under, we've been saying this since day one, but it's always nice to have proof of concept. It's 2020. Where are our self-driving cars?

This is over at Vox. There's no real reason to read this article because it's everything that we've been saying since day one, but I'll just do the little bit here. In 2020, you'll be a permanent backseat driver, The Guardian predicted in 2015. 10 million self-driving cars will be on the road by 2020, blared a Business Insider headline from 2016.

What'd we say? 20 years away. Still 20 years away. Going to continue to be 20 years away. Those declarations were accompanied by announcements from General Motors, Google's Waymo, Toyota, and Honda that they'd be making self-driving cars by 2020. Elon Musk forecast that Tesla would do it by 2018, and when that failed, by 2020.

In the age of AI advances, self-driving cars turned out to be harder than people expected. Really? Shocking. Shocking.

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Media Candy. No spoiler alerts here, but have you caught up with Picard? Oh yes, I have. Oh yes, it's good. Oh, it's very, very good. It is rapidly becoming my absolute favorite Star Trek show of all time, which is hard to say when you're only six episodes in, when you've got, you know, 479 episodes of The Next Generation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But boy, it's dark and it's good. Yeah, it's really picking up. I'm just sad that it's going to be over soon. That's really it. And we're going to have to wait a little while. Yeah, yeah. Well, we got Discovery coming behind it, which is, you know, different universe by any stretch and every stretch, but man, that last episode was just, I got chills.

It was so good. Yeah, it was a really good one. And we've got, we've got Riker making his guest appearance pretty soon. Pretty excited about that. Yeah, next episode. I'm just so glad that they got him back directing these Star Treks. He worked on Discovery now too. So man. Yeah, he's got a whole new career.

He's just directing Star Trek stuff now and he's really good at it. He's really good at it. I mean, he's just been a great director since he started, but this is like his sweet spot, man. That guy knows Star Trek inside and out. Yes, he does. He should. Number one. He should. Yeah, exactly.

And Altered Carbon has dropped on Netflix. I had the chance to watch the first episode. I don't know if you did, Jason. I did. I saw the first episode. Yeah, I liked it. I did too. I surprisingly liked it a lot. So, yeah, and, you know, I forgot about Poe, the, you know, the basically AI guy that runs the hotel.

And I forgot. He's like my favorite character in the show. So I'm glad he's back. He's totally my favorite character. He's totally my favorite character. He's awesome. So, yeah, I really enjoyed it. So looking forward to digging into that a little bit more this week and hopefully have it done by the next media candy. All righty. And because I did a road trip with a three-year-old, six hours long, there was no way that we were not going to have the iPads swung out there.

And I listened to all the Toy Stories and then eventually watched them in the hotel room as well. I had seen Toy Story 1 and 2 when they had came out. By the time 3 and 4 came out, I had not watched them, but I finally got to see both of them. 4 did not need to happen.

It was fine. But there was no need for it. 3, end of 3, especially now that I'm a parent. They got a little misty in the room. That was a tough ending, man, for number 3. Man, that was brutal. That was brutal. I've now been beaten into submission because I've seen it like 17 times that I don't get teary anymore.

But it took like 17 viewings to not get teary. Yeah, I've only seen that one, I think I've seen it once because I just remember, I'm like, man, that was really rough. I don't know if I need to go back and watch that again. Yeah, it's, you know, it tears at the heartstrings, that's for sure. But anyways, yeah, so I've seen all four now and a great series.

Just really, really good. Yeah. And speaking of old series as well, I've been watching Long Way Round with Ewan McGregor and Charlie Borman again. It's where they rode their motorcycles from London to New York. Have you not renewed this on the show before?

I think I did a long time ago. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So I'm watching that one now. I'm almost done. And then there's Long Way Down where they go from John O'Groats down to Cape Town, which is another really long one. That one was annoying because Ewan's wife came along for part of it. And the show got much better after she went home.

And I just picked those up randomly and then we were chatting about it on the Clash Royale thing and somebody mentioned, hey, aren't they doing something new? So I went and looked it up and sure enough, they just finished doing Long Way Up. They finished recording on December 14th last year and they did a three-month journey on electric Harley-Davidson live wire motorcycles from Patagonia, Argentina to California.

All right. And it's tentatively titled Long Way Up. And I don't know if it's a long way up. It's kind of the only way up. So it's interesting to do that on electric motorcycles going through, you know, South America and Central America.

Right. Could it be interesting? Got to be interesting. So I'm actually looking forward to that one. So there you have it. And I got to watch another comedy special that just came out on Amazon. Russell Peters deported. Are you a Russell Peters fan? I am aware of him. I think I've seen one.

I enjoyed it. He's like one of the biggest comedians in the entire world, though, if I'm correct. Yeah. Yeah. Internationally, he's just gigantic. Yeah, definitely. This was in a stadium in, I think it was in Mumbai. And it was fantastic. He does some of the best crowd work out there.

And he's just funny as hell because, you know, he was born in India but basically raised in Canada and is married to a Mexican woman. And so he's very international, but he's just funny as can be. Like, you know, when we watch comedy specials, we usually, like, do them in chunks.

We'll do, like, half one night and half the other night because we watch them at the end of the night. And because I just, like, we're really big fans now of ending the night on some kind of positive note. Right. Because you just have to. So it's great when we find new comedy specials.

And the Pete Davidson one on Netflix, everybody was thinking that it was going to be just god-awful and terrible. Pretty damn good, I got to say. Does he spend most of the time just talking about himself? Well, yeah, a good bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A good bit. But not really so much jokes, just him. Oh, there were pretty good jokes in there. The Ariana Grande stuff was hilarious when he ragged on her. It was good. It was good. Okay. And I don't know, Brian, are you a Glenn Danzig fan? I'm a fan of Glenn Danzig as a person.

I'm not really a big Danzig fan. Okay. Well, he's putting out a new album called Danzig Sings Elvis, which is, you know, makes absolutely total sense. But he's going to be doing two shows, one in L.A. and one in San Francisco.

I would say that I would love to go to these, but I'm not leaving the house. Jesus Christ. If you're a Danzig fan, you might want to go for it. You're so sad, Jason. Go to the show. Go to the, sit at the bar and order a Corona and freak people out. You'll enjoy it. Okay.

Yeah. Ain't going to happen. Well, and something else that isn't going to happen, and you sent it to me, but this is Media Candy, so we should mention this. This is really cool. Netflix has been a big supporter of stand-up comedy, obviously. A lot of our stand-up that we watch is always on Netflix, and they've announced the Netflix is a joke festival, which will be a week-long comedy festival, coming to Los Angeles this spring with over 100 shows of many of the biggest names in comedy, and it'll kick off on April 27th.

I haven't looked into what ticketing looks like for this, like if you can buy a VIP all-access pass or if you can buy it to individual shows, but if you're in LA and you like comedy, I mean, everybody is doing this thing. Yeah, no, I mean, literally, everybody is on this show.

It's insane. Yeah, what a great idea for promoting themselves and their comedy. Like, this was such a no-brainer, and whoever thought of this over at Netflix, I hope they got a raise. Yeah, definitely. I just, you've got to find out when the tickets go on sale, so. Or, yeah, maybe it is just one-by-one.

That would be interesting. Yeah. Tickets, yeah, one-by-one. So, yeah, Netflix is a joke at the Palladium, hosted by Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. That's the one I saw. I thought you would be into that. Yeah, there's a lot of these that I would go to, so I've got to look at the schedule and see what's up, and I will get out of the house for you.

Next sale starts today at 10 a.m. PST, so they're not on sale yet, but they go on sale today. Well, we'd better hurry up. Yeah, okay. Netflix pre-sale, one day away, yeah. So, doesn't have a price here, though, yet, so can't really tell. Yep, I think it might be a little expensive.

I'm betting they're going to be expensive, yeah. I wonder if you get a discount if you prove that you've got a Netflix subscription. Can we get Netflix Plus? Oh, here it comes. At the library.

I finally finished The Expanse Book 2, Caliban's War, by James S. A. Corey. I really enjoyed it. I like reading these books after seeing the series, because it just fills out so much stuff. So far, it still stays pretty true to the series.

Well, the series stays true to the books, as far as I can tell, for the most part. I was hesitant with this one, because, again, I have a kid, and I hated watching that whole sequence with the guy looking for May, because that drove me crazy. Oh, yeah.

It gets into more detail in the book than I really wanted it to, but once I got past that, really good. I'm enjoying this series a lot. I look forward to moving on to book three and killing another month trying to read it. How many books are there in this series? I think that's up to eight or something like that. Oh, my God.

This is going to take you forever. Yeah, it's a lifelong quest. Well, I guess you have to wait until the shows come out so you get a year in between once you get caught up. That's exactly how I'm going to do it, because I've really enjoyed it so far. So I'm not going to read a book until the actual series comes on the air, until somebody that's already read the books tells me they're gone completely off script, and you can just go ahead and read them, which you know will happen.

Yeah. So I am reading a new book that hopefully we'll have next time. It's Facebook, The Inside Story by Stephen Levy. Lied, cheat, and steal. Yeah, yeah. It's an interesting one so far. I'm only like a little bit into it, but yeah, there's a lot in this book.

I've seen a lot of other articles talking about it, which we'll probably put in the next show, because some interesting things going on over there in Camp Zuckerberg. Very interesting. Lovely. Moron of the Week. Our Moron of the Week was sent to us by Mustavo on Twitter.

Corona coin. Yep. A cryptocurrency that goes up in value the worse the COVID-19 epidemic gets. Yes, a group of developers have created a cryptocurrency that tracks the spread of the coronavirus and goes up in value as the number of infections goes up and the more fatalities are registered.

Well, there's a line in here, Brian, that basically says it all. Corona coin, a new token built on the Ethereum blockchain, was created by a team of programmers and activists on, wait for it, 4chan. Yep. Yes. So there's an original supply of Corona coin, which is based on the total human population at the time of the token's inception, which is 7,604,953,650.

But every 48 hours, the token is burned to reduce supply according to the official number of coronavirus infections and fatalities, meaning the more people that die, the more valuable your remaining tokens become. Okay. Is this a nice thing to do?

It's from 4chan. Well, watch how they try to backtrack things a little bit. We developed the world's first blockchain that tracks the spread of the virus based on its token supply. The token supply started at 7.6 billion, is burned every two days to keep up with the official WHO statistics.

Sonny Kemp, an admin for Corona coin's Telegram group, told Decrypt, the benefit of documenting the spread of the virus on the Ethereum blockchain is that it is uncensorable. People behind the Great Firewall can view the real death statistics by checking our token contract on ethereascan.io.

Yeah. So they're doing this as a public service, Jason. Yeah. Bite me. Bite me. That's bad. That's really bad. Yes, it's bad. It's a perfect story for more on of the week. But I also have a hero of the week. This could be you, Jason, if you ever left your house.

Yeah. See, I'll tell you why. A Florida man was able to rescue his kids from a shark swimming near them in the ocean, all thanks to drone footage. Dan Watson told Fox 35 Orlando that while at New Smyrna Beach with his wife and children, he decided to snap some bird's eye photos on his drone.

The results were chilling and life-saving. Kids were playing in the beach and I just decided, hey, now's a good time to get a picture of them overhead, he told the station. And as soon as I got it in the air, I started seeing a shadow moving through the water right towards them. He yelled at his wife, his wife yelled at the kids, kids got out of the water, shark swam past.

There you go. See? There you go. Drones can be good. Drones can be good. We've got almost the same drone. He's got a Mavic 2 Pro and I've got a Mavic 2 Zoom. So I just take my drone, put it in the backyard, let it take off and I sit in the backyard and I just look around the neighborhood. That means I don't have to go anywhere.

I go vicariously by drone nowadays. I don't think I have enough battery to get over to the Danzig show though. I know what I'm going to get you for Christmas. I'm going to get you one of those little robots with the iPad pasted in the front so you can go to the Danzig show. There you go. That's what I'm looking for, man. That's what I'm looking for. Actually, I'm going to do it cheap. I'm just going to steal one of the bird scooters dumped outside of my place and I'm going to duct tape an iPad to it.

Don't even get an iPad. Yeah, get one of those like fire tablet threes. Oh yeah, fire tablet. Perfect. This is going to cost me next to nothing. And then you can just control it and send it around, Jason. All right. I'm in. Feedback loop. Over on Patreon.

We're just picking up steam over there. We've got Jamal, Brett, Robert, old butt kicking. Not old butt king. Old butt kicking. I'm paying because I've been listening for too long for free. And JPD, you demand for making yourself accessible via Clash to us mere mortals. Yeah. Okay. Jason's pretty accessible.

Pretty fucking accessible. Yeah. And over at PayPal, we got Scott and Michael, John, Simon, Christopher, Judge, Ben, Stephen and Doug. Thank you all for your support. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Over at Twitter, Wiggle.net tweeted us back after we mentioned them and said, don't worry.

Searching for cars in basic search is super interesting. Thanks to concave hole maps. Thanks for the shout out. Let us know how we can help. P.S. The project is so old that the original tagline was wiggle.net. Just a little bit. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool.

And Trippin fool writes in Rubio wants us agencies to review sale of AT&T's planned sale of its majority stake in central European media group enterprises to the Czech owned conglomerate PPF group and are working with Huawei. Yep. So the PPF said in the statement, it appeared Rubio was relying on false information from a Czech politician and disputed his characterization of CME's market.

The company said it only inherited Huawei's technology as part of the acquisition of the Norwegian telecom operator Telenor last year. I suppose my argument would be if you inherited it or bought it, you still have it. You got it. You got it. And he also sent a link over from BuzzFeed News.

Clearview AI documents have revealed they're working with more than 2,200 law enforcement agencies, companies around the world, including the Justice Department, ICE, Macy's, Walmart and the NBA. Yeah, because the NBA really needs facial recognition. Well, you know, they say they do to say, you know, we had the brouhaha with Taylor Swift who was using it at her shows to, you know, get known people of interest.

Yeah, Stalker, Stalkergate was that one. And David Findlay writes in, not a baseball fan, but if a person in the audience used binoculars then told the guy next to them to wave a banner, then the guy in the dugout banged the trash can. Is that okay? Is it just the level of tech or the intent?

Brian, you're the baseball guy. You know, there's a lot of discussion about this right now, but in theory, it's only supposed to be the people that are actually playing the game that should be involved in the play of the game. So I suppose if you sent one of your first basemen who wasn't up to bat way around to pick up a hot dog and get out to center field really quick, that might count.

But if it's a non-participant participating in the game, that would be illegal. So there you go. Well, illegal to the rules of baseball. Yeah, illegal to the rules of baseball. Yes. You're not going to the who's cow for it. You're going to baseball jail. Or not, because it seems like nobody ever does.

He says there's no consequences. Fucking astros. Anyways, Stuart writes in, if you're enjoying Dracula so far, skip episode three to keep it that way. I have not gotten to episode three yet, but that does not bode well. That does not at all. I've heard it's very divisive. Divisive.

Divisive? The episode three. So I will check that out hopefully this week. Yeah. And Clu and Vaz writes in, listening to old episodes of GOG, came across your do I have pigflu.com idea. Do it for coronavirus? Nope. Can't get the domain and not really worth the effort anymore.

So, and this one, this one actually is much worse than the pig flu one. So I'm going to. The numbers are not good. No, they're not. The numbers are bad. The numbers are very, very bad. Yes. JC writes in, finally, iOS is smart enough to remind me to turn off my alarm when the next business day is a holiday.

I've been waiting for this since the first phone became my alarm. All right. Well, that's a good thing, I guess. Yeah. It's a nice feature. We'll take it. Richard says, thank you for the no brainer in retrospect. Remember that payment apps, Venmo, et cetera, aren't FDIC insured.

Had some hefty ticket evil master transactions in there. Thanks, dudes. Keep on fighting the good fight. Excellent. And Steven writes in, Brave deemed the most private browser in terms of phoning home. And this is over at ZDNet. New academic research published last month looked at the phone home features of 60th Day's most popular browsers and found that the Brave browser sent the smallest amount of data about its users back to the browser maker's servers.

This research conducted by Douglas Leith, a professor at Trinity College, looked at Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Brave, Microsoft Edge, and the Yandex browser, but not our browser of choice, Vivaldi. And I would argue, I don't care how often the browser phones home if it's unusable.

Therein lies the big problem. Thank you so much for listening to that. Been listening to your show for the past three or so years and still haven't found a better show out there. Keep up the good work as we shall. A little side note. I was curious about this Brave browser you've been talking about with all the talk about it being a miner and all.

And that's just my gut reaction. It might not be a miner when this kind of, I guess, goes counter to my point. I took a look online to try and see what I could find. Well, I'm no expert. I feel like the high CPU usage is more a bug and not some crypto mining virus. It seems to be a rare bug that they can't find any solution to, dating back to 2016.

The entire browser's on GitHub, so I don't know. Could you even hide a miner if it's in all open source? I guess someone's got to be grumpy at it. So why not you? Stay grumpy, y'all. So if it's just a bug, that's a pretty bad bug that you've had four years to fix. And if it's based mainly on, you know, Chromium, then, you know, that doesn't happen in any other browser.

The other browsers seem to have fixed it. Exactly. So why haven't you? So what's going on, Brave? What's going on? And over at GOG.show, Jason writes in, they definitely didn't forget about the toilet paper. On episode 418, Jason mentioned that people forgot to get the toilet paper, and as a listener from Japan, they most definitely did not.

The stores have been out of toilet paper for days. People are stockpiling numerous rolls every day. They've run out in Costco minutes after they unload. Even Amazon is sold out. I'm just glad my wife is organized and prepared, because the rest of the folks here went crazy for the teepee. Thank you guys for all you do. And Deliveroo!

Get some toilet paper, Deliverooed. So the funny thing about this is I found out about the Japanese rush on toilet paper from Sean Bonner's newsletter. I found out about it from his wife, Tara's Instagram feed. And so I hit Sean up on Instagram.

I'm like, hey, aren't you guys in Japan supposed to have those fancy toilet seats for everybody? And he said, yes, they do. But most of them don't have dryers on them. The cheap versions don't. So you still need the teepee to dry it up. So I'm like, okay, here's an idea.

This is, you know, you're a maker guy. Why don't you go ahead and make one of these in corner of the market? Like, you know, a little clip-on fan that'll dry your bum when you stand up. You know, just like one of those little USB fans. So I think that would save everybody a lot of time and teepee. That's right. And Steve also wrote in about the same issue.

Jason, it looks like your listeners in Seattle finally took your advice regarding preparing for a fallout with toilet paper. Sounds lovely. And this is long lines at Costco as shoppers empty shelves of water and toilet paper amid the coronavirus panic. And he also had a link to Sean Bonder's newsletter in there.

So there you have it. Sam writes in, hey, geeks, thanks for all you do. It's truly appreciated. You've quickly become one of my favorite must-listen-to podcasts. This coming from a non-geek but a growing grump. Question. Do you have any suggestions for us Canadians who wish to use a product like Privacy.com?

Currently, Privacy.com only supports people in the U.S. Thanks. But no, I don't. No, we were actually asked this before about international versions of Privacy.com and we kind of threw it out to the listeners because we were not aware of any. And I don't recall. I think somebody said something, but it wasn't quite the same as Privacy.com.

So if anybody knows, let us know so we can pass on the information. Yeah. I sent it over to Bo at Privacy.com and he said that's one of those things that they want to do, they just can't yet. So, you know, it just takes time. But since they're not advertising for us this year, you know, figure that out.

Yeah. You'll figure it out. All right. Dan writes in, hey, Grumps, been loving your show for about a year. My boss turned me on to it and we discuss your episodes in the office. Send us a paycheck. Just wanted to turn you on to this fine app, Clicker for Netflix, the best standalone Netflix player for Mac. It started as an Electron app, but the developer put in the work and turned it into a first-class Mac app.

The dev is also super responsive to bug reports. Check it out. At five bucks, it's a great value. Keep grumping and PS, give us the regulations. You get regulations, I get Deliveroo. I never watch Netflix on my Mac. It's purely an iPad or TV deal. So I don't really need this, but you might, Jason.

No, I watch everything. I got a 12-inch iPad Pro, so I just watch stuff in bed on that when I want to. And everything else is on the Roku. But yeah, if you need a player for, I think it's, yeah, I was looking at it. It looks okay, you know?

So if you need a player that's not Netflix, which I'm not actually sure why you would need that because the Netflix player on your, in the browser works pretty well. I'm confused why. Maybe you're using the Brave browser and it keeps crapping out on you. Could be. Could be.

Neil writes in, okay, so I know you guys started dynamic ads and I wasn't getting any for a while, which I was fine with. I like your readings of the ads. They always gave me a chuckle, but I just had my first dynamic ones and I just have to say, what the fuck? I got two ads in NPR voices for HEPA air filters and Manscaped, and they nearly made me stop the podcast because I was so thrown by them.

Please guys, don't give up the gleam you provide to the world with your readings. It just feels so dirty listening to those ads when they aren't read by you. Otherwise, keep up the good grump. Well, if we could get ad deals with those people and do direct sales, we would love to. But unfortunately, since we're just a two-person shop doing the sales for all of those people, and it's tough.

It's tough. So we get scraps from network buys, and those help keep the lights on because lately our bandwidth bill alone has jumped up over tenfold from what it used to be. So those ads help pay for keeping the lights on, basically.

We need the monies. That's the end of the day. We need the monies. So, and always remember, there's just that little 30-second skip. You can always do that. Yep. And soon, soon, they'll be on Patreon for no ads whatsoever. And you're good to go there. And Greg writes in, hi, grumps.

Love the shows. Don't know if this has already come to your attention yet because I'm one show down in my listening, but the BBC has an interesting article on their website. And this is Criminals on CCTV, Scammers Caught Red-Handed. He writes in, the video part will be geoblocked, but luckily we've got, we've got geog.com slash, or geog.show slash VPN.

Yeah, I forgot the URL. So that's never an issue for us, but it's well worth watching if you have the technology to be in the right place. Before you keep going there, that video, I didn't even have to turn on the VPN. I could actually watch the video. There's another video coming out, I think, well, actually would have come out yesterday, so it'll be available.

That one is iPlayer only, so you would definitely need a VPN to watch that, but it's the whole documentary on what you're about to talk about. Yep. And he writes in, seems a Brit hacker was a very naughty boy and broke into the CCTV and voice over IP systems of an Indian company that was earning millions from defrauding people with Windows support scams.

By the way, my mom got hit up with that just recently. Oh, really? Yeah, those are all over the place again. They're really busting out again. She fall for it? No, of course not. She called me immediately. I've trained her up. Okay, good. Just making sure, man. Making sure. And extracted vast quantities of image and cell and call data evidencing the scam.

Said firm was busted by Delhi police operation a few months back. Vaguely remember it in tech news then, but no idea whether this data was part of the evidence. Whatever, there's something rather satisfying about being able to see and hear the actual support agent who's trying to convince him he's calling from San Jose when the person he's speaking to has the evidence he's in Delhi.

I wouldn't have been able to do it without blowing my cover by saying, because I can see everything you're doing. There you go. It was a great video. Did you watch it? Yeah, I did. It was fucking hilarious. I loved it. Whoever this guy is, man, I wish I could buy him a pint. Me too. Christopher writes in, I purchased a lawnmower 3.0 package using the GOG discount code recently.

Thank you very much. Creating an account for the new Blade subscription plan while doing so. I went back into the website to update my password and discovered with great disappointment it was not possible. My balls have never been so insecure and vulnerable to penetration. Well, that's odd.

Check it. We'll look into that one. We don't want anybody's balls to be insecure and penetrated. Send them an email. That sounds painful. You need to be able to change your passwords, even for your balls. Your balls must change their passwords regularly. Yes, every six months and use uppercase and lowercase letters. And at least 16 characters.

And don't forget the special character. Yes. Yes. Steve writes in, I've been listening regularly for two years now, and I'm very curious about one of your guests. This is someone who is on the show almost every week with their excellent comments, so much that I think of them as a contributor. Even though we have never heard their voice.

I mean, of course, Moss 6502. So who is the mysterious Moss 6502? Surely I'm not the only listener who is wondering. Thanks for the show, gents. Don't stay grumpy. Get even grumpier. Well, Moss 6502 is a listener from Puerto Rico and a fantastic guy. I'm going to link his Twitter handle here in the show notes at GOG.show slash 419.

He doesn't give out his real name on his account, sorta. So I'm not going to out him here. But go follow him. He's one of the cooler cats we've met doing this show, for sure. And his photos from the hurricane in Puerto Rico really helped drive that crisis home. So I actually donated over $1,000 to various charities to help out any way I could after seeing all of his photos and what they were going through.

You remember when Trump threw out paper towels at them? Yes. Well, maybe he should fucking go to Seattle and throw some toilet paper at those folks. Toilet paper. You get a roll. You get a roll. And you get a roll. Yeah. The Oprah of teepee. Donovan writes in, something I thought you guys might find interesting.

Security researcher says to stop buying Samsung phones. Don't run your two- So has this podcast. So has this podcast. Don't run your two-factor authenticator app on these smartphones. Yeah. From the No Shit Sherlock files, Aaron Turner and Georgie. Georgia? Georgia. Weidman emphasized that using authenticator apps such as Authy or Google Authenticator in two-factor authentication was better than using SMS-based 2FA.

But as they said, an authenticator app is useless for security if the underlying mobile OS is out of date or the mobile device is otherwise insecure. Yeah. And Midroth sends us a link saying enjoy. And this is from themindunleashed.com.

Hackers can turn sex robots into killing machines, security experts warn. No, they can't. No, they can't. But Jason, according to this researcher, hackers can hack into a robot or a robotic device and have full control of the connections, arms, legs, and other attached tools, like in some cases, knives or welding devices.

How many sex-dolled knife-wielding robots are out there? Hey, man. People are into all kinds of kinks. That's true. That's true. Get your freak flag on. But my God. Let me tell you, themindunleashed.com is not something I'm bookmarking for shows.

I bounced around that site because after I read this article, it was so bad. I'm like, okay, let's take a peek. And yeah. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Ted writes in, wow, a conservative justice is actually admitting he did wrong?

Stay grumpy. Keep podcasting. And give the middle finger to those who ignorantly disagree. Clarence Thomas regrets ruling that AgitPi used to kill net neutrality. Yeah. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wants a do-over on his 2005 decision in a case that had a major impact on the power of federal agencies and regulation of the broadband industry.

It is known as Brand X, and Thomas wrote the 6-3 majority opinion that upheld the FCC decision to classify cable broadband as an information service. But in a dissent on a new case released Monday, he wrote that he got Brand X wrong. Thomas regrets that Brand X gave federal agencies extensive power to interpret U.S. law, a power generally reserved for judges.

Regrettably, Brand X has taken this court to the precipice of administrative absolutism, Thomas wrote. Under its rule of deference, agencies are free to invent new purported interpretations of statutes and then require courts to reject their own prior interpretations. So, fix it!

Yeah, fix it, buddy! Come on! Come on! Yep. And Mike S writes in, I got my shingles shot today, thanks to you. You helped a lot of people by sharing your condition. Another great service from GOG. Well, thanks, Mike, and glad you got inoculated.

Excellent. And over at iTunes, we have a five-star rating from BroSchuster. Horrible! Made me stop listening to all other podcasts. Now I am so addicted I had to restart on Spotify and I'm on number 40. I listen to you guys while I drive a van for Amazon. Every day's extreme workload makes me feel like I work for Walmart, but you two somehow managed to make my day.

I also run a WISP with two of my brothers 100 miles from our homes, and I love the technology aspect of your show. You should talk about QAM. Microwave frequencies are an unsung hero today. Keep up the good work, and I'd love to hear from some more guests. All right. Thank you so much, and I'm sure you appreciated this episode because we talked a lot about Amazon and Walmart.

Yes, definitely. This next five-star comes from Shusht. It says, wow, what a great podcast. This is the best podcast ever. They provide so much fresh incitement to the tech world, side tangents, and other interesting topics. They are my go-to podcasts. Five stars would recommend to everyone. P.S.

Podcast app is, eh, can't look up in the copy-paste select menu, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it sucks. Yes, it sucks. And Chillin' 33 gives us a five-star, massively entertaining, sarcastic, and informative. These owl lads, I think that was supposed to be...

Oh, no, he's Irish. There we go. Now it makes sense. Owl lads make for excellent listening. And we got a five-star from Dr. Broans. He just says, dope. Twice. Dope. And we got a brand new one that just came in on the Slack channel from Killer Todd, another five-star.

Huge fan. Excellent tech info with a twist. Love it. Well, thank you so much, everyone. Yes, thank you. Thank you to everyone. And yeah, this little Slack channel works. Better than Brian copying and pasting from some emails. Why don't they put the whole thing in the damn email? I don't know.

I don't know. I guess they need their click-throughs, too. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. So 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.

And keep clicking them stars in Overcast. We really appreciate it. Still kicking ass, but not at the top. Damn, Rogan. Closing shout outs. And this week, we have a sad RIP to James Lipton, who died at 93. He was the former host of Inside the Actor's Studio, a show that I thoroughly enjoyed watching whenever I could find it.

It was always hard to find, but it was always enjoyable. He was a great interviewer, a fantastic interviewer. Is he the guy that always would do things like, if you could be any kind of tree, what tree would you be? Yes, that guy. And look really pensive for like five seconds. Uh-huh. Okay.

All right. Now it rings a bell. Well, I'm sure he'll be missed. Yes, he is. Yes. Okay. And because this is episode 419, big ups to our listeners in the 419 Toledo, Ohio. All right. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister.

Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to 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 419. From 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 and get grumpier, apparently.

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