421: All Alone Together

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. Jason, we can really go no other way. We're in the midst of an emerging pandemic, and yet, theoretically, we worked in probably one of the safest careers there is, the life of the lonely podcaster in a darkened studio, seeing nobody in person, only reaching out digitally.

And where am I? You're in my studio. We did not shake hands. We did not shake hands. I will not touch you. I will not hug you. I will not do anything to you. We are idiots. And of course, it's one of the only rainy days in California, so I dodged morons driving out here.

But I am here safe and sound. I'll try not to cough on you. I appreciate that. I really do appreciate that. But yes, you made the trek to the to the fortress of solitude. So here we are sharing germs. And let's make no mistake about this, people. We are in an emerging pandemic right now.

Oh, yes. Yes. The numbers do not lie. Geometric explosions do not lie. It's going to get ugly for a bit. We will all survive. Most of us. Most of us. Most of us. 97% of us, I think, is the current number. Yes, 97% of us will survive this. It does involve some self-sacrifice at this point. Stop complaining about not being able to go on your cruise.

Actually, you know what? If you really want to go on a cruise right now, if you're that dumb, have at it. Have at it. Yes, seriously. Self-selecting sample on that one. Pretty much. Well, we did get a bit of encouraging news of a sort from Apple. Apple, who has always claimed that we cannot use anything except for some nice water, clean H2O on our phones, has confirmed and changed their websites to say, yes, you can use disinfectant wipes on your phones.

To which there was great, wonderful outcry, which made me wonder, have any of you people ever actually cleaned your phones? No. Because people are acting like this is new. People are acting like information about how to properly wash your hands is new. I know. I know. And I've seen a lot of people's laptops. I've seen a lot of people's computers. They're the filthiest, nastiest things you've ever seen in your life. They're just disgusting.

I wipe my... I just get some... Get the 70% isopropyl alcohol and just put it on a rag and wipe down your keyboard at least two or three times a week at least. Some people haven't done it since they bought the damn laptop. Look, we take our phones. We take them with us everywhere. We plop them down on tables that probably haven't been cleaned. We let other people touch them.

We use them in the shitter. Well, there's that. Come on. Let's just cut to the chase on that one, man. Let's just say I gave the phone that you gave me before I started to use it, I gave it one of those showers like in Return of the Jedi where you see, like, Mark Hamill. Actually, they say specifically don't do that. So for those of you that were thinking about getting on a cruise, they say don't use bleach, avoid getting moisture in any opening, and don't submerge your Apple product in any cleaning agents.

Don't use on fabric or leather services. So clean your phones, but be safe about it. I did sanitize that phone before I sent it to you, by the way. Well, you know, double sanitation never hurts. Never hurts. It never hurts. Because we were at a conference when I gave it to you. So there was definitely something in the air. Might have been bad podcasting terms, but...

Oh, man. So when we recorded last week, they had not announced South by Southwest being canceled. They did within three hours of us finishing recording. And then two days from us finishing publishing because I had some issues that I had to deal with. We've had some other things. I guess the movement's being called social distancing, which there's been a lot of funny memes about that out there.

I call it Monday. We've been preparing for this all of our lives. We are ready. Yeah, so a lot of that's going on. One of the funniest memes I saw going around was Italy has been entirely shut down. Japan has shut down schools and public gatherings for 30 days. What are we doing in America? Trying to figure out what to do about Coachella.

Yep. We cannot seem to make a decision. I've talked to some friends in the industry, and it started to leak out, as it obviously would. Golden Voice has to reach out to over 130 different acts to try to reschedule. So obviously things are going to leak. No official word yet, but Coachella and Stagecoach are being postponed until the fall.

Yep. Have we heard anything about the Netflix comedy tour thing that we just talked about with the 110 shows? I am sure they're trying to reschedule that as well. Yeah. We shall see about that. This is just reality, people. For the time being, the good of the many outweigh the need for you to go see a goddamn show.

Yep. And that's that. So in Europe, something I follow, the Champions League soccer games, are bizarrely going to be played in empty stadiums. They're not letting anyone in, and they're going to broadcast them. I found a website this morning that had pictures of the Italy shutdown, and it's just, I mean, it is a ghost town.

And there was a picture of a soccer game being played with no one there. Yes, there are quite a few big games coming today, actually. Tomorrow, next week, one of my favorite teams is playing. I'll be watching that on TV alone while they play in the stadium. Alone in your home. So that is the reality right now.

And speaking of pictures, I will have a link in our show notes. I found this article on The Atlantic, when everyone stays home, empty public spaces during coronavirus. It's creepy. You know, I kind of feel like we're living in the stand here. But we're not. Let's not overly panic. Again, we've got to take a little time out here, take a breather, let this thing die down, don't let it spread.

We'll be fine. 97% of us will be fine. 97% of us will be fine. And I don't know if I mentioned this on the last show, but California's response to the elder care situation, did I mention that? I don't think you did, but I know it's good. We're doing things right. My neighbor, who is a few feet from you right now, because you're in my house for some strange-ass reason, he works at an elder care facility that only has eight people in it.

And he's had two visits from the state already to make sure that they are prepped for the elderly and multiple phone call-ups already, just to double-check. So the state of California is at least taking care of their elderly population correctly.

I wish they would take care of their middle-class, middle-aged population as well as they're doing that. Yeah, well, you know, there's only so much a local government can do. And so we'll see what happens. God, fuck you, Gavin. Yeah, I'm not a fan of his either. But we are, of all the states, we seem to have some of the better prep going on here.

Well, I mean, we're right at the side closest to where it started on this coast. So it makes sense. And we have, you know, a couple cruise ships just sitting off our shores right now. Yep. Good times. Like a little ticking time bomb. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

Brian, I would just like to say we are all going to be alone together. You know, the other funny thing I've been thinking about is we've spent six years on this show talking about... Oh, dude, seven years in two weeks. Seven years in two... Well, we'll have to celebrate virtually because we're not getting together. We're not getting together again.

That's for damn sure there will be no meetup. We've been talking the entire length of the show about how important it is to get away from our devices, to get off social media, to go out into meet space. It seems the universe is giving us a big fuck you. Nope.

Get up back on your devices. And I would like to say that this is also the perfect time to tell your friends about grumpy old geeks because everybody's going to be sitting at home and they're going to need some entertainment. So tell all your friends to come tune in and join us. Yeah, well, most people are starting to learn the joys of working at home.

We have lots of episodes that tell you how to actually do that. One person who will not be working from home because he gets to keep his job for right now is Twitter's Jack Dorsey. I know, I know, I know. I actually had this farther down in the show, but we'll talk about it now. Yes, Jack, in a deal with the TakeOver guys...

The activist investors. The activist investors, which I just think is the stupidest damn term I've heard in a while. Yeah, so here's what Twitter gets. Twitter gets another billion dollars of investment and Jack gets to keep his job for now. For now. Yeah, they're putting at least two people on the board and possibly a third and they're going to evaluate whether Jack gets to stay.

It's hard for me to feel bad for Jack. He'll be just fine. In the news. Well, Brian, we've heard Twitter say for quite some time that they're going to start tagging manipulated media.

Guess who got the first boot to the head? I'm actually a little impressed that they did this. Donald Trump. That's right. Carrot in chief and coronavirus victim number 738 probably. By all reports, he's been exposed at least three times already.

He flew on a plane, shook hands. I was watching the guy who had been exposed walk up Air Force One and wipe his hand all along the railing and I'm like, somebody needs to put a wipe on that thing. We don't need to worry. Remember, our commander-in-chief's personal doctor said he's in peak physical health.

Peak physical health. How old is he again? Oh, he's over 70. Wait, is he in the target death group? Yes. Yes, he is. Oh, maybe we'll have some good news for Christmas. Anyway, moving on from that. Boy, that's going to spark a lot of cancellations.

There's some emails coming. There's some emails coming. I just call them as I see them. Anyway, yeah, they have actually put the tag, the manipulated media tag on a video that Donald Trump tweeted, which is fantastic. Let me help save you a little time, Twitter. Just put it on his entire account.

Yes, or maybe get the new CEO and kick him off Twitter. I don't know how many times. He is. He's broken every single terms of service that Twitter has and the story flat out. Yes. If any of us did this, we would no longer have Twitter accounts.

No, I got banned from Twitter for a week by just saying, fuck you to somebody, which I do every day, which is very strange that they only did it once to me. He did it. He did it to North Korea. He did it to the entire country of North Korea and he didn't get kicked off.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's good. We really do need to start cracking down on manipulated media. We need to start cracking down on deep fakes. We need to start cracking down on fake news. It's time to you can't you can't be a news source or a platform. You kind of have to pick.

What do you want to be? Exactly. So we'll see. We'll see how this activist investor takes over. Maybe he'll be doing some good. Maybe we'll see. And, you know, I'm a big fan of the RSS because I'm an old guy and I love my RSS readers. I've been using Reader, R-E-E-D-E-R on the Mac for years.

And I just saw this news come past my my my news feed literally on Reader the other day. Net Newswire 5.0 for iOS is now available. You can get it for your iPhone and your iPad. But they've also got another version for the Mac and they all sync seamlessly.

And here's the kicker. It's free. It's absolutely free. And it's open source. I might have to try this because I have given a game go at trying to use Apple's built in their own news app. Oh, Jesus. It is horrible. It just feeds me with so much crap I don't want.

I'm so sick of notifications. It's so hard to get drilled down to the actual link so I can have a clean link for something. It's terrible. It's absolutely terrible. So I will give this a go. I'm excited. You know what I'm going to do on these show notes? I'm going to attach my OPML file, which is my link file for all of the news feeds that I subscribe to.

And anybody listening and yourself can go grab that. Grab a copy of Net Newswire and pop it in and you can play along at home. And if you find any good links, send them to me because I read 4,000 headlines a week. That's a lot. Yes, you do.

Now, I've got a story that I almost wanted to put into Moron of the Week as Heroes of the Week because this is just kids being kids and doing awesome things, even though they were somewhat ineffectual. I found this over at The Verge. Wuhan students tried to boot remote learning app from the app store by leaving bad reviews.

Now, obviously, in Wuhan, Ground Zero, they shut down schools and they're trying to do online schooling for kids and all of that. So they wanted to use – they basically came down and said, you have to use this Alibaba-owned corporate app called Ding Talk to attend classes remotely. Ding Talk? Remotely, it's called Ding Talk.

Okay, no comment. Now, as per usual, for kids, I do remember back in my day, the rumors that circulates amongst the kids has not gone away. You know, for me, it was Rod Stewart's belly was full of sperm and there was a gerbil up Richard Gere's butt.

Yeah, I was going to say the gerbil. Those are the rumors that went around when we were kids. Apparently, rumors are different these days. The rumor went around that there was an – if apps that had a number of one-star ratings would be booted from the app store. So the kids went, huh, if we can get this app booted from the app store, we don't have to go to remote schools.

So they started bombing the Apple store with one-star reviews for this app. Now, unfortunately, that's not true. It's only one factor in many factors that Apple takes into consideration before it removes apps from the app store. But they did do it. Now, Ding Talk had to fight for their life here.

Just saying it makes me laugh. Look, it's a really – we should do an entire show just based on apps in China and their names and all that stuff because I'm not done yet. Oh, okay. Ding Talk uploaded an apology video on the Chinese streaming site Billy Billy. Okay.

This video featured memes and cartoons singing a catchy tune with lyrics begging for better reviews like, I know, guys, you were not expecting such a productive holiday. And please don't give me any more one-star ratings. I was chosen for this job and there's not much I can do about it. Oh, my God.

This video has been viewed nearly 17 million times. Millions. In response to Ding Talk's pleas, a widely circulated joke, students wrote in the review section that they were willing to give Ding Talk five stars but in five installments. Oh, my God. Now, please don't do that to us, folks. But that is clever.

That is clever. I got to give them props for that. I definitely got to give them props for that. Yeah, so Ding Talk is still on app stores because it takes more than a bunch of one-star ratings to knock them down. Ironically, Ding Talk's corporate users are nearly as reviled as its educational ones. It also apparently has a bad reputation for helping companies micromanage and exploit their employees.

So it doesn't sound like it's a good program to begin with. But it's never the program's fault, people. It's the people who use it. Right. And speaking of Apple, I just saw this come through the Net Newswire. They're going to be giving retail and hourly workers unlimited sick leave. With pay?

With pay. Excellent. If they have corona-like symptoms, they're going to give everybody unlimited sick time. That is the correct response right now. Do not have your lower-paid employees come into work if they are sick, and you must pay them for their sick time. Please.

I saw Andrew Yang tweet, wouldn't this be a really good time to get some free cash from the government? Yeah. Seriously. Seriously. And this other one that just came through, which I think we just have to put in here. Adorable self-driving vans are disinfecting roads in China.

That's right. They have self-driving disinfecting vans over there. All right. Chemtrails. Here we go. Chemtrails. I expect to see some YouTube videos. Oh, no. I won't see YouTube videos. Their filters are working. Oh, yeah. Go see. Jesus. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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Well, we mentioned in the last episode that it was breaking news at the time that the kids in the hall had been picked up by Amazon. We have some further details now. It's an eight-episode revival, uniting all the original kids, with executive producer Lorne Michaels on board.

So this will be the first time on TV since the 2010 miniseries Death Comes to Town, which I think I missed somehow. I've never heard of that. I'm going to have to go watch that. Hopefully it's on Amazon. Hopefully so. And believe it or not, this is the first Amazon series to come from Canada. What?

Isn't that shocking? Yeah. I mean, I know there's a lot of Netflix. They're all filmed in Canada, but I guess. Everything's filmed in Canada. That's true. I know Netflix has quite a few different Canadian shows, but I'm surprised that Amazon had not picked up anything until now. So there you go. I'm really looking forward to that. I got to say, because, you know, I do love the kids in the hall, even though they didn't do boot to the head.

No, I know. Trust me. I got never ending amounts of shit from that. So my bad, my bad. You know, hey, I don't remember too much from my childhood. One thing you may want to keep in mind here. This is just striking me because the fact that we're both huge kids in the hall fans and we had never heard Death Comes to Town.

I want to wait, maybe see the new revival series first. Or maybe check the Rotten Tomatoes ratings on Death Comes to Town before you go and dive in. Yeah, because, I mean, I was working at Paramount right when Brain Candy was coming out. Yeah, I had a rough time with Brain Candy.

The funny thing is they actually used our conference room. My girlfriend and I saw the original cut of the movie, like when we first moved to town and we were like, you know, big into like, oh, we live in Hollywood now. Let's go check stuff out. And we got tickets to do one of the, you know, the screenings where they ask you the questions, the focus groups.

And we saw the original ending and, oh boy, was that bad, I got to say. And turns out after the feedback from that, they hunkered down in my conference room. We were 5555 Communications. That was the print and digital arm of Paramount Motion Pictures advertising.

And they had just finished right when I got hired to do Star Trek First Contact. And I didn't get to see any of them there. But those guys hung out at Barney's Beanery all the time. And we'd see Kevin McDonald every day after that movie came out looking like somebody killed his puppy. Yeah.

Yeah. It was so not good. Sometimes things aren't meant to be long form. Yeah. Yeah, man. Brain candy was not it. But, and apparently they had, they ordered three rounds of pizza every day for two weeks. And the fights were just epic.

They could hear them screaming like, you know, on another floor at each other. Part of the reason I am impressed and kind of surprised that they reunited. Yeah. Because they have not gotten on over the years. And I got to, I did get to meet Dave Foley quite a bit because he was in White Trash Winslotto.

And I remember we had drinks with him at the Rainbow Room one night. Yeah. I tell you what, super nice guy. Yeah. Super nice guy. So I'm, I'm looking forward to this and yeah, we'll see. We'll see. But I'm going to, I'm going to ask a friend of the show, Bob Fogerty about Death Comes to Town because he's seen kids in the hall live like umpteen times.

So I'm, I'm, I'm curious. Yeah. I think get some opinions before you dive in. Yeah. And it's funny. Bob was going to come to town. Bob was going to come to town actually next week. And we've put that on hold because of coronavirus. Oh, okay. So I'm not going to be missing him by coming out here.

Well, that was a half of it was you weren't going to be able to make it. And I'm like, do you really want to be on a bus from San Diego right now? Probably not. Probably not. So I finished watching Sex Education Series 2 on Netflix. I have to say, I think this is my favorite show on television right now.

Really? Really. It has got something for everyone. It touches on everybody. It touches on teenagers. It touches on middle-aged folks. It touches on old people. It touches on gay. It touches on Tran. It touches everything. It is a microcosm of everything that's going on in the world right now.

And it's really sweet. Oh, well, I like sweet. Yes. Yes. It's really, really well done. But is it neat? It's more than neat. I actually think it's fucking great. I don't know if you've started watching yet. I thought Gillian Anderson would be enough to get you on board. I watched the first episode, so I'm on the train.

All right. I kind of kept that one in the queue because I knew that we were going to have to hunker down and stay in place for a while. So that's one of the ones where if I just have a day off, I'm just going to sit down and just knock it out. Yeah. It is so good. I finished the last episode two nights ago, and I was just so sad thinking it's going to be a year, year and a half until I see any more.

It's really good. Okay, man. I'm looking forward to it. The other thing I finished was Dracula. You watched episode three? I watched episode three. I got a lot of warning online from various listeners of the show that episode three was a piece of crap. I respectfully disagree.

Yeah. So I thoroughly enjoyed the last episode. I would say it's diminishing returns. I think the first one is by far the best one. The second one was pretty good. The third one was completely fine. I people were saying there's some like crazy twist and some weird end to it. I think it ended the only way it possibly could have that still made any sense whatsoever.

I found I I enjoyed the six hour miniseries as it were. Perfect. It was very good. Yeah, I do recommend watching it. Okay. I like I said, I watched the first half of the first episode and I liked it. I really liked it. It's visually gorgeous. It's you know, it's the Sherlock team.

Yeah. How can you go wrong? And it's campy because that's what they do. That's what they do. That's what Mark Gattis does. You know, it is Mark Gattis in it. Yes, he is. Oh, good. Good. Of course. I was worried about that. Not a huge major character, but he's in it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he wasn't a huge major character in Sherlock. You know, he was just he was he was Mycroft, but which is I some would say is a huge major character.

I would say that's a huge major character, but he wasn't in it very often. Is all I'm saying, you know, yes, but I love Mark Gattis. I watched in 1917 last night, the World War One movie. Right. I loved it. Absolutely loved it. I would have loved to seen this in a Dolby theater with no people around.

Well, now. Yeah. Now I can go see if they re-release it, I can go see it. There'll be nobody there but me. Yeah. The problem that I had with the movie was it's one of those one shot movies where they try and like, like pretend it's one take. And that completely took me out of the movie because all I wanted to do was find out where the cut points were.

Look for all the technical aspects because you know what's coming. Exactly. Exactly. I'm like, OK, the backpack wipes in front of the camera real quick and that's enough. But there are some that I'm just like, I have no idea how they did it and that's not what I want from a movie, though.

I want to watch the story and that's what really took me out of it. But the story was fantastic. I got to say, how do you feel it ranked against Dunkirk? I hated Dunkirk. So did I. I loathed Dunkirk. I thought that was the most boring movie I've ever seen. All right.

Because that is the other, you know, most well-reviewed war movie in recent times. And people seem to love that piece of crap. And I couldn't stand it. No, no, no. I mean, this is I mean, this is no Saving Private Ryan, which is obviously the best war movie ever made. It's no Band of Brothers, which is the best.

God, that was great, too. Oh, my God. It's so good. And but it's up there. It's up there with it. It's really it's really good. Did I did I miss my window by not seeing it in the theater? No, you have a soundbar, you have speakers and you have a big TV, right? Yep. Yep. Turn it up. OK, is that freedom rock?

Turn it up, dude. So highly recommend 1917. And by the way, I do not care about the Oscars anymore at all because I saw Parasite and now I've seen 1917. And those awards are just political now because Parasite, I thought, was blah.

Really? I it was OK. It was an OK movie. Right. But this was just a masterpiece, like a cinematic masterpiece. And the fact that it didn't win. Didn't it win for cinematography? It probably did. But it didn't win best picture. Right. It shouldn't have won best writing because there's not a lot of writing in it.

You know, it's a guy running around trying to do some stuff. But just everything about it. This should have been best picture in my book. Well, I will definitely check it out. Next one up is Knives Out. Mm hmm. Wow. I was expecting this to be a steaming pile because all of my friends said it was meh.

All of my friends said it was really good. Your friends are smarter than my friends. OK. Because I agree. Well, this time, at least this time. Well, some of my friends are your friends. So you might want to look at that. We got to look at that Venn diagram. Yeah, we got to look at that Venn diagram for sure. Because I didn't want to give Rian Johnson another try after his Star Wars debacle.

Fair. Yeah. Yeah. Return of the what are we doing here? Such a horrible movie. But I gave it a shot. I gave it a shot. And I watched it last night. And I stayed up till 11 p.m., Brian. That's way past your bedtime. Past my bedtime. All right. Yes. Which is why I'm tired today for many other reasons.

But I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really, really, really liked this movie. All right. Well, I'll give it a go. I've heard it's good. It's better than good. All right. It's better than good. It's definitely, it's definitely, I would give it an A minus. Okay. That's, that's high praise.

Yeah. A minus. And because everybody was saying it was like Clue, but it was nothing like Clue. Well, it's a murder mystery. Yes, it is. So. Okay. That's a, that's a genre. Yeah. But many, many, many movies are like that. Exactly. Exactly. And this did not have Tim Curry in it, which I would have liked, but sorry, he's not doing well anymore.

But this did not have four endings. Okay. You know, it was one, it was a one ending movie. So why is it like Clue? I don't know. They do mention Clue in the, in the actual movie. There's a shout out to it. But it's, I thought it was a fantastic murder mystery.

And the fun part about it is, you know, what's going to happen like in the first third of the movie. And the rest of it is just like, you know, set pieces. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, like, well, kind of like Roshamon esque, you know, people giving their stories and stuff.

But I have to say, I, when I went to bed, I had a smile on my face. This is one of those movies where you, it's actually like you, you walk away happy. Excellent. Yeah. Which is not very often. No. And not, not 1917. It's not, not a happy movie by any stretch because it's war. But, uh, and speaking of unhappy things, hardcore history addendum, I listened to the new one and you're a little behind, aren't you, Brian?

I'm very behind because I haven't been able to really get into the most recent addendums. I'd get about halfway through and just stop caring and wonder if I wasted two and a half hours of my life. Yeah. Uh, well, the addendums are the short ones. They're only an hour, but, uh, the, the, his latest episodes of hardcore history, I couldn't get through either the, uh, whatever in the East.

Right. Um, see, they both come in through the same feed for me. So unless I read, which I mean, I don't know if it's an addendum or not, but yeah, I just did the past, whatever amount of releases that he's had. I've, I've not been able to get into. Yeah. They've been a little weak. I thought, which is, which is scary, but I mean, it's crazy.

He gets a million downloads in the first 24 hours on that show. So when he comes out, everybody's waiting. I really, really, really enjoyed this episode. So I, I think you should go back and check it out. Okay. It's about, uh, basically nuclear war and nuclear proliferation. And he has an expert on there who knows everything there is to know about global thermonuclear war planning, um, because he asked everybody about it.

And I, I sent this to my friend who did global thermonuclear war planning and I'm waiting to hear back. Matthew Broderick? No, no, no. Whopper. I got Whopper on speed dial. So, uh, waiting to hear back what Whopper has to say, but, uh, that's his new nickname. I'm just going to start calling him Whopper.

Uh, he hasn't heard it yet. Uh, so I'm, I'm waiting to hear back on that, but I personally thoroughly enjoyed it and I think you should go check it out. Well, maybe I'll listen to this on the drive home. Perhaps I'm dousing myself in coronavirus stew. Okay. Well, I'll give you some, oh yeah, I'll pour you down with some isopropyl alcohol before you leave.

Excellent. I'm sure the cops that pull me over will not wonder what that smell is. So in continuing in the not so great news, there's been a series over on slate called the coronavirus diaries, which, um, it's a little depressing.

I mean, it's, it's stories from all walks of life and about how it's affecting what's going on with us right now. Uh, one of the more interesting ones was a, it was an Olympic gymnast, I believe that's getting prepared for the Olympics for the USA team and wondering, is there going to be an Olympics? Yeah. What am I doing with my life right now?

Very iffy. So that's pretty iffy. But the one that I saw in particular that really kind of tugged at the heartstrings and made me upset with people, uh, was a story of a guy that runs a restaurant, a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown up in San Francisco, who says he may have to shut down his restaurant.

Now he's had to lay off people. He's, uh, burning the candle at both ends, trying to just make it work, but nobody is coming in to eat, um, because they're scared. That really sucks, man. That really, really sucks because it's like, why do you, it's a restaurant?

Yes, I understand that. But it's a Chinese restaurant. Yes. Yeah. Corona came from Wuhan, but that doesn't mean it came from San Francisco. You morons. Well, yes. Uh, ask, ask the Corona beer company, how they feel about this whole thing right now. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, they just came out with their own hard cider or I'm sorry, hard seltzer, hard seltzer.

Yeah. Everybody has. It's pretty funny, but I saw, I saw the Corona stuff on the shelf the other day and like, there's like one case of white claw left, one case of all the other ones. And then all of the Corona ones, nobody's buying it. I'm like, are you just, Hey, drop the prices guys. I'll buy it. I'll buy it too.

Yeah. Seriously. And I'll buy them all. It was cheaper than white claw. I'm in man. I'm in. Yeah. So this guy just talks about how he's even mostly a to go restaurant. So it's not like you're sitting in there and eating with people. It's just, it's, it's a combination of fear and racism and it's just, it's sucks. It sucks.

It really does. It really does. Come on guys. Just, and I talked to my dad about this too, because he works in a mall and he's 73 years old. So I'm, you know, obviously terrified that he's concerned. Yeah. Yeah. He works at water tower place, which is one of the biggest malls in Chicago.

Right. And I'm like, just be careful, man. Be careful. He's like, you know, I'm, he's more worried about all the small business owners that can't get product and things like that. And they're going to have to shut down. His company is vertically integrated because they're an art company. You know, they print their own stuff because he works for the Dr. Seuss gallery.

Right. So if you're ever in water tower place and you want to go get some Dr. Seuss art, say hi to Gene. He's my dad. Make sure you've been checked first. Yeah. Don't shake his hand and don't cough on him because if you, if you infect him, I will hunt you down and I will kill you Liam Neeson style. Right. But yeah, it's, it's one of those things where it's just like people need to be smart, man.

Yeah. Well, speaking of people not being smart, a friend of mine posted this on Facebook and I just thought it was so wonderful because as we've discussed many times in our upcoming feedback loop section, Facebook is probably one of the worst places as a business or a public entity of any sort to get feedback or connect with people.

Ironically, it's just, it's horrible. Facebook groups are horrible. The page, the whole page admin layout is horrible. Don't write us there. It's such a mess. We don't stand it. Yeah. But I did see this and I thought this was so spot on. I had to read it all and it's long. So hold on one second. Let me take a sip of water again.

Well, Brian gets a sip of water. I will entertain you. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Okay. Here we go. Do, do, do, do, do, do. Actually, speaking of that, because we are on coronavirus news, as I was driving in, I was listening to a radio station and obviously they're starting to shut down a lot of live TV tapings.

People aren't going in and especially Jeopardy because Alex Trebek has a compromised immune system. Oh, yeah. So there will be no live studio audiences for upcoming tapings of Jeopardy. You know what, guys? Buy Oculus stock. Oh, wait. No, it's Facebook. Don't buy Oculus stock. Magically?

Magically. Oh, no. Yeah, I got nothing. Yeah. Go buy a Roku. That's about it. All right. So getting back to this. How many people in a Facebook group does it take to change a light bulb?

One to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed. Fourteen to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently. Seven to caution about the dangers of changing said light bulbs. Seventeen purists who use candles and are offended by light bulb discussions. Six to argue over whether it's light bulb or light space bulb.

Another six to condemn those six as stupid. Twenty-two to tell those six to stop being jerks. Two industry professionals to inform the group that the proper term, excuse me, is lamp. Fifteen know-it-alls who claim they were in the industry and that light bulb is also perfectly acceptable. Forty-nine to post memes and gifs.

Several are of Michael Jackson eating popcorn. Nineteen to post that this page is not about light bulbs and to please take this discussion to a light bulb page. Eleven to defend the posting to this page saying we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts are relevant here. Twenty-four to discuss the merits of LED light bulbs. Forty-four to claim LED light bulbs will kill you.

Twelve to post F. Eight to ask what F means. Seven to post following, but there's three dots at the top right. That means you don't have to. Three to say can't share. Two to reply can't share from a closed group. Thirty-six people to post pics of their own light bulbs. Fifteen people to post I can't see shit and use their own light bulbs.

Six to report the poster PM to an admin because someone said shit. Four to say didn't we go through this already a short time ago. Thirteen to say do a search on light bulbs before posting questions about light bulbs. One to bring politics into discussion by adding that insert politician of choice here isn't the brightest bulb.

This usually takes place within the first three comments. Fifty more to get personal attacks over their political views. Five admins to ban the light bulb posters who took it all too seriously. And one late arrival to comment on the original post six months later and start the process all over again. Now, Brian, I, this is, I mean, this is genius.

To begin with. But since I got back on Facebook, I signed up to a bunch of podcasting groups. Oh, why, Jason? Why? This is exactly what happened. It is. It's exactly what happened. And then I open up Facebook now and I'm like, I see like 75 posts that were made in the last 24 hours about what's the best microphone to use for a new podcaster.

And it's just lots of fighting. I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. And then it is this. It is this. Yes. XLR, man. You gotta get XLR. Fuck USB. No. Why, why use XLR? It's the same thing. It's over and over again. I'm like, this is why I was so much happier when I was on Facebook.

I think, you know what? Before you leave, we're going to walk over to my computer and I'm going to cancel my Facebook account. Narrator. He didn't. Well, we're not done yet. Feedback loop. Over on Patreon, JG writes in, ahoy, matey.

Nope. Ahoy, matey is a separate person. Oh, he is. Yes. Remember, they have all the crazy names. Oh, okay. Ahoy, matey. And JG. Okay. Well, smack me down. Why don't you? JG writes in, hey, Brian and Jason truly love the show. I am, if it's possible, an even grumpier and old geek than you two.

Been in the industry for almost 30 years. Now facing age discrimination. And it's a bitch, but I get it. I've been mostly a sys engineer and saw the cloud tsunami coming and I'm still functional playing with the web dev and love your cynicism about dev in general and web dev in particular. Yes, because web dev is dead.

Is coding going away? Yes. Well, I have opinions on that. It would seem that code generators are going to make dev obsolete, but I also share your collective take that real AI is a ways away. Your take on it would be appreciated. Keep grumping and, oh yeah, screw that guy who doesn't like ads.

What a dork. Well, somebody's got to write the code generators, so code's not going away. Yep. Somebody's got to make those black boxes. Yep. Then we don't know what they do. Exactly. High-end coding is probably not going anywhere, but if you're doing like web dev, bye-bye. Dude, web dev is dead.

Yep. Web dev is so dead. I, you know, it's like, anybody asks me now, I'm like, get a Squarespace account, get a WordPress.com business account. Don't get a regular WordPress account. It was a crap, but spend the 300 bucks a year and get a, get a proper account and they'll take care of you and you can use all of the themes and it's just, just pay the money and get it done because you don't want to hire a custom web house anymore, period.

Because they, A, the ones that still exist are fresh talent for the most part because they haven't learned that you can't make a living at it yet. So they suck. Over at PayPal, holy shit. Elizabeth, David, Elaine, Breed, Daniel, Michael, Ralph, Adam, William, Christopher, Mark, Andrew, and Jason.

And Jason writes in, Grumps, I donate via Patreon, but want to support more when I can, like now. Please keep on educating the masses about what's going wrong with the internet. I wish you could do more shows a week. Well, if everybody keeps donating, we just might be able to. I know Dave Bittner is busy, but he should take time off from the other 50 podcasts he's doing about cybersecurity and come on your show more often.

Grump on. And, do-do-do-do! Yep. That'd be nice. Thank you so much for donating. Maybe we'll get there someday. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. Hey, man, the more you guys donate, the more you should. Here's the thing. Donations and sharing with your friends get us to, shit, man, I'd do this every day if we could.

Yep. Over on Twitter, Mostava writes us, sent us a link from TechRadar, world's largest hard drive coming within months. He says, the HD650 uses helium gas to reach this capacity along with host-managed SMR or shingled magnetic recording. So, yeah, this is Western Digital, looks to be the first manufacturer to hit the 20-tetrabyte barrier later this year.

Not tetrabyte. What is it? Star Trek? TetraCube. TetraCube. Yes. So, we're getting a big-ass hard drive. 20 terabytes is a little excessive. Although, granted, if I look around this room- I was about to say.

I've got, well, a lot. If you added up everything, I think you'd be getting close. No, I've got 40 terabytes in this room. There you go. I honestly do. So, maybe- Your comment is invalid. Well, the problem with it is, it's like when one drive fails, that's 20 terabytes that you just lost.

That's why I like to spread it across, you know? Yeah, I don't think I'd put all my eggs in one hard drive basket. Yeah, I mean, my Synology has four- It's a four-striped RAID array that comes out to 13 terabytes. And if one drive dies, I just swap it out and put another one in. That's the way I want to go.

I'd rather go with smaller drives. And do I really want a helium gas-shingled magnetic recording system that's brand new to trust my 20 terabytes to? I don't know about that. Gadlaw and Trip and Fool both sent us. Geofence warrant.

Around the crime, we'll blanket sweep to see who is in the area. Woo-hoo! Nothing to see here, citizen! And this is a link over at NBC News. Google tracked his bike ride past a burglarized home, and that made him a suspect. Yeah, this is a pretty crazy story, this guy, Zachary McCoy in Gainesville, Florida.

Everything happens in Florida. Yeah, he took a bike ride one day, he rode past a house, that house had been burglarized, and he got a notice from Google's legal investigation support team, writing to let him know that the local police had demanded information related to his Google account. So they basically did a geolocation.

Everybody that was in the area has to get questioned. Kind of, uh... Kind of scary? Kind of scary. Yeah. So it's being called a geofence warrant. It's a police surveillance tool that causes a virtual dragnet over crime scenes sweeping up Google location data drawn from users' GPSs, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular collections, and from everybody nearby.

Not what we want. No, that's really fucking terrifying. I gotta say that they're... That, A, there's a term for it now, but B, that it's that, you know, prevalent, that somebody's house gets burgled. People get burgled here all the time. I never got a geofence warrant on anybody. Well, you don't leave the house.

No, but I still live here, and my phone's here. You'd think I'd get something, but... Well, they just go, look. He's at home. Still. Yeah, he hasn't left. They know I haven't left in months. This blip hasn't moved in three months. He may be dead. He may be dead. Yeah. We need to do...

We need to do a check on this guy. Somebody go check him out. Third in Command sent a link about Virgin Media Breach, which left 900,000 customer details unsecured for 10 months, and he says not getting caught is our top priority. Thanks, Virgin Media. Yeah, so another data breach with less personal details out there.

They say that this did not include any passwords or financial details, but it did include names, homes, and email addresses and phone numbers. Oh, nice. Whoopsie. Thanks, Virgin. Matthew the Swede writes in, where to begin? First off, the science around screen usage and how it affects us are just beginning to give us long-time results.

The Flynn effect, where the last generation that had a higher IQ than the last. Read that again. Our generation is the last one that had a higher IQ than the last. My wife uses a test that evaluates people's brains that has, up until last year, been updated every five years.

Not anymore. Another big one is around reading comprehension. It's fallen drastically since the beginning of the 80s. No one knows for sure why. I do. Nobody fucking reads. Exactly. If it's not, if it's more than like 12 words, forget about it. And another big one just came in comparing screen and paper reading comprehension.

I think you can guess the result. I can go on, but it's going to get very depressing. And this is something to panic about. But why listen to science? So, now for something completely different, you need to watch this mini-series called Dead Set, Zombie Virus Outbreak. The only one who survives are the participants at the Big Brother house.

I have seen this. It is awesome. Oh, I don't know. It is really good. Sounds like idiocracy, but even more depressing. It's a BBC series, so it's only like three or four episodes, you know, because they don't try and beat things to death like we do over here. But, man, it is so good.

I totally remember watching that when it came out a couple years ago. I mean, it's got to be like five, six years old, at least now. But, yeah, yeah, that was really good. So, thank you, Matthew the Swede. Yes, thank you. Much appreciated. And, yeah, so we're smarter than the millennials. Go figure.

Hey, we now have scientific proof. We have science. All right. Paul writes in, for your information, in the Midwest, we've been able to make Amazon returns at Kohl's department stores for the last three years or so. It's very convenient, and Kohl's also gives you a 20% off coupon when you make the return.

I'm thinking this is a nationwide partnership. Looking forward to hearing your show every week on my drive to work. Thanks, Paul. Have you seen a Kohl's in California? I don't think so. There are a few. Kohl's did not used to be out here at all. They've made some inroads, but we're still more Walmart nation here.

Yeah, Kohl's is kind of like Sears. You know, I used to go to Kohl's when I was in Chicago, so I'm very familiar with them. But I didn't know you could take stuff back. That's cool. Jacob writes in, keep up the good work. I've been following you guys since the beginning when I was in the military, and just recently I switched to law enforcement.

I deal with cyber crimes a lot more than I expected, and listening to you guys and Dave gave me a good basis to start with. Well, that's awesome. I checked out Hacking Humans this week because of the Penn and Teller interview, and now I think I'm hooked. It's a great show, man. Definitely. Side note, I got to participate in Penn and Teller's bullet catch in Vegas five years ago and have been following Penn Sunday School as well ever since.

Take care, guys. That's pretty cool that he got to go up and do the bullet catch. I've still never seen their stage show. Oh, God, it's phenomenal. Yeah, I really want to go. I've seen it in Vegas, and then they also toured it for a while, so I saw them once when they did it here. Oh, man, yeah. Well, I guess I can probably get tickets really easy. Flights to Vegas, dirt cheap right now.

Well, actually, you know what? I talked to somebody in the aviation industry and a doctor as well recently, and it's not the planes. They are cleaning those things out between flights. They are just dumping the PRL everywhere. It's the airport. That's where you've got to be worried.

Oh, okay. It's not the planes. So get there, spend as little time in the TSA, get your clear check, or what's that thing that you use? I've got the Nexus. Nexus? Get that and just get through and get on, or drive. Or drive. Now the gas prices are falling, and consumers are going to be happy because gas prices are down.

Yes, great. Chris writes in, I'm sure I won't be the only one to tell you. Spoiler alert, you aren't. But the kids in the hall, boop on the head was pretty close. Their thing was the head crusher. Yes. Crushing your head. Yes, crushing your head. Brian's in the room, so I can crush his head right now. I'm having my head crushed at the moment. Yes.

Ken writes in, interesting, exclusive. This hack turns Apple iPhone into Android. Why would you want to do that? That was basically my only comment as well, but yeah. Why? Why? Oh, let's take this perfectly secure device and make it insecure. Yes. Let's take this Lamborghini and turn it into a Pinto.

Sure. Yeah, so this is a cybersecurity startup called Corellium that is doing this, and they are actually being sued by Apple at the moment as well. They claim the startup reached copyright laws by creating software versions of the iPhone for security and testing, so we shall see what happens.

But I still don't know why you'd want to do that in the first place. Because they can, I suppose. Because they can. Yeah, I guess. And Greg writes in, hey, Grumps, another news item that might appeal to your liking for the unintended consequences of technology. A pig farm in the UK decided to attach pedometers to its pigs to prove they were free range.

What could possibly go wrong? I read this and I was just in fucking tears. Yes, well, a pig ate one of them, pooped it out, and a combination of the pig's excrement, dry bedding, and the batteries in the pedometer caused a huge fire. The headline is great. Bacon saved after a pedometer eating pig's poo starts farm fire.

I mean, I was in tears when I read that one. Simon says, good eye, Jason and Brian. I think I'll stop for there. That's as much as Australian as I'm going to get. After listening to episode 418 and Jason's Prepper 101 segment, I've traveled nearly 1,000 kilometers around my state of South Australia and heard bizarre stories of supermarkets being sold out of toilet paper or other rationing the sale of toilet paper.

The news also reports that the rest of Australia is doing the same. I have come to the conclusion that they must all be GOG listeners and heeded Jason's advice. Anyway, you probably have already come across this by now, but I thought I'd say hi and stay grumpy. Simon from Port Pirie, South Australia.

A couple people have sent in stuff about this, about you, Jason. Michael sent in a funny imager gif saying, way to go, Jason. See, do you see what you've done? And it's people going crazy over toilet paper. Sleep too little, wrote in, not a square to spare. Australian shops rationed toilet paper amid coronavirus panic.

Yeah, so I just want to point out right now that I am sitting in Jason's studio, which once was a studio, but now looks like all the things taken off the Walmart shelves that are empty. I am literally, I'm not even sitting in a chair. I've created a throne of Charmin that I'm currently sitting on to record the podcast.

Hey man, the throne of throne. That's really what it is. It does double duty. It does. It does double duty. You just got to wiggle your butt around when you're done. And Doug writes in, hi, Jason and Brian. I thought I should drop you a line and let you know that Manscaped is now in Australia.

Your down under jokes can now work. Keep up the good work. Also, over here in Australia, there's no toilet paper either because of COVID-19 fears. Well, that's interesting because now I can turn on the ads in Australia. So thanks, Doug, for you're going to be getting some more ads now. Excellent. Barrett writes in, yeah, not a techie, but a good read.

And this is an op-ed piece. Gen Xers unite or don't. Whatever. I read through it and it does perfectly encapsulate what the last smart generation apparently feels about the world right now. Oh my God. Dougie writes in, you need to see this UK website.

It's by far the worst or best example of web design. Also, take a look at the end of the source code. It's too funny. And this is for LingusCars.com. LingusCars.com. Yes. I don't know if you've seen this yet. It is beautiful. It is a wonder to behold. Oh my God. It makes me wish the old days of web design were still around.

I just, I waited to open this so I could see it live and it does not disappoint. It does not disappoint. Okay. I got a view source now. Oh, where's my, where's my, my developer tools. Oh my God. I'm in Vivaldi and I can't find the developer tools because I don't use them anymore.

You have to use a, uh, uh, uh, control U because they don't even have it on the menu anymore. It's really annoying. Control U. Nope. Control U says F U. Oh, something. Oh, well. Do, do, do, do. Oh, there we go. Command U. Yes. Here we go. Okay. We're scrolling.

Oh, wait. They've got, they've got ASCII. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. Oh, mess with my website and you're dead. Is there any more or is that the only one? Uh, I think that was the only one. Oh my God. There wasn't anything at the bottom. It was like right in the middle.

Oh, okay. That, that, that's so funny. When I, when I got, uh, I hate.vc and got into so much trouble for that back in the day when you viewed source, it had an ASCII middle finger and says, I hate Sand Hill Road. Oh man. Yeah. I almost got fired for that one.

What are you going to do? But, oh man, go check that out. L I N G scars.com. Yep. And, uh, Donovan writes in yet another streaming service launching. Why? Oh, why? Uh, and this is just about Quibi, which we knew what was coming, but what I didn't know was what their original shows were going to be.

It seems they're taking a very podcast one approach. If you've got any name recognition whatsoever, we'll give you a Quibi. Okay. It seems to be the deal. So, well, I got some people that might need a Quibi again. Yeah, well, I'm going to list off some people that maybe, uh, uh, I'm just too old to know here, but, uh, two of the shows, uh, are, uh, MTV shows that are being revived.

So we've got Punk'd and Singled Out coming back with Chance the Rapper. Oh my God, Singled Out. Are they bringing back Hardwick? No. Chance the Rapper will host Punk'd. And from the trailer, Megan Thee Stallion will be one of the celebrities pranked. I don't know who Megan Thee Stallion is. Kiki Palmer and Joel Kim Booster, whoever the hell they are, will host Singled Out.

So there you go. And, uh, there's a quite a number of other celebrities who are getting their own bite size shows, which just means that Quibi is throwing a ton of money at a ready rich people to do fuck all for seven minutes and hopefully get some traction. Yeah. Including Jennifer Lopez, who is hosting a charity-esque series, whatever that might be.

Chrissy Teigen, who is sadly not doing a cooking show, but is doing her own take on Judge Judy and Idris Elba, whose show was probably pitched as a hot man in hot cars. Well, I, out of all of those, I'd watch Idris Elba because I like him. But, uh, Chrissy Teigen is not a judge.

So, who knows? As far as I know, she's not a judge. No, she's pretty good on Twitter. I would make her Judge Twitter. Judge Twitter. Okay. Michael writes in, GOGs, did anyone figure out how to disable the Vivaldi panel? And that's, uh, he's talking about the download panel. Yes, you can go into the preferences.

It is, uh, shockingly enough, in the settings. In the settings, yes, it is. It is there. Where it should be. Yes, you can just go to the settings and find it and turn it off. It's pretty easy. And, like, after we talked about it for three minutes on the show, it took me eight seconds to find it and turn it off.

And Matt writes in, look who's trying to jump on the ID for the porn bandwagon. It's Australia. We are the dumb country and we have no toilet paper. What is going on in Australia? That's like the fifth or sixth feedback about no toilet paper there. I don't know, man. Yep. So this is the government's plan to restrict porn in Australia.

Uh, the inquiry is investigating age verification technology for pornographic sites based on the UK model that failed. Didn't work. Yeah. Can I have my porn card, sir? Yep. Save it for you. Yeah, they're going to try it, too. Good luck.

Good luck. Uh, Richard writes in, loved 419. Politics? No worries, laddie. Coronavirus, fuck off. Kid emptying out cereal boxes off the deck? Who cares? We got GOG. Thank you. Adelante writes in, hey, guys. Thought you'd get a chuckle out of this?

When a teenager reportedly invented a fake congressional candidate, Twitter verified the made-up politician's account. Lovely. So this is a good, I thought this was actually kind of interesting because of the process that Twitter is using to supposedly verify politicians. So you have to sign up with another entity that they have a deal with called Ballotpedia, which is a non-profit that builds itself as a digital encyclopedia of American politicians and elections.

So Twitter has partnered with them to help identify political candidates to verify as the election approaches. Unfortunately, it seems rather easy to go ahead and create your own account on Ballotpedia. So you've got two entities that make it really easy to create fake accounts, and then they verify each other to verify.

Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Sounds perfect. What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? That's like back in the old days, you could go get a library account. This is all before everything was digital. You go get a library account with no ID, take your library card to the DMV, get a driver's license, take that driver's license, and go to get like a social security card and all that stuff.

That's how things used to work in the 70s and 80s. Yes. So a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement at the time, we've put into place a rigorous process to ensure that, through our partnership with Ballotpedia, we accurately identify and verify candidates' legitimate Twitter accounts. Unfortunately, an individual found loopholes in our process by submitting a fake candidate and a fake account for verification.

That's not a loophole, that's supposed to be your whole fucking process. That's a whole process. That's your whole fucking process, and it doesn't work. Yeah. Not a loophole. That's not a loophole. That's not a bug, it's a fucking feature. Yeah. Let me get you a fucking Dictionaryopedia.

Use the Encyclopedia for Ballotopedia. Unbelievable. I just love that one. Carol writes in, hola, hope you guys are feeling great. I'm sorry, I got corona shingles. Regarding insects, it might not be as bad as we thought.

Scientists using high-resolution radar managed to find billions of insects high up in the air, up to a few kilometers high. Here's an article on that in NPR. It is, look up the billion bug highway you can't see. Great, we're going to be flying through that. When we get our flying cars from Uber.

When we get our flying cars from Uber, we're going to die in an insect cloud. Thanks. Nightmare fuel. Sherilyn writes in, I love what you said about the Amazon return process, because I've been talking about it for days to coworkers. In my town, returns can be sent back at Kohl's department store. There we go.

And get this great marketing set up. You have to walk through the entire store to get to the return counter. No surprise. Trust me, walking past the jewelry is not easy, and even better, Kohl's gives a 25% off coupon for their store. Genius, I tell you, genius. Well, we have a problem here. The first listener said it was a 20% coupon, and this person says it's a 25% coupon.

Maybe it's targeted by area. Could be, could be. Maybe it's gender specific. Maybe it's, I don't know, man, maybe there's a class action lawsuit to be had here. Oh, but you always have to exit through the gift shop. Yeah. All right, over on iTunes, Batman with Angels writes in from Australia.

Man, we're getting a lot of love from Australia. Hey, we'll come do a, we'll do a live show. You guys put the bill. Yeah, seriously. I bet we can get a cheap flight pretty soon. Oh, shit. Good point. This is a retro fun podcast. Five stars. Are you looking for a podcast that is politically correct, non-opinionated, and has no humor?

Well, you've come to the wrong place. These two geezers will yarn about the good old days and how those darn meddling kids should stop complaining and get a job. If you're after a twice weekly update on what's happening with technology, gadgets, Jason's latest obsession. Toilet paper. Toilet paper.

Then tune in, warm up those cat whisker radios, and strap yourself in for an audio adventure. Coming soon to a TikTok near you. Seriously, just subscribe. You won't regret it. Well, thank you, Batman with Angels. Thank you. And we got a five-star review from grumpy old goth girl in Canada. My favorite grumps.

Still loving you guys. Don't ever leave me for Spotify. If Spotify backs up a truck with money, we're leaving you for Spotify. And MCTOM13 from Sweden writes in, simply the best. Great podcast. Great team. I can honestly recommend it to everyone, not only grumpy old geeks.

Well, thank you, everybody, for this international iTunes segment. That's awesome. That's great. If you want your question or comment right 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 don't forget those stars in Overcast. Keep clicking them. Keep clicking them. Closing shout outs. Sadly, Brian, Max von Sydow has died at the age of 90. I saw that. Was he the star of Disney's The Black Hole?

Yes, I believe he was. I believe he was, because I tried to watch that recently to see if it has legs. Three minutes in, spoiler alert, it does not. Okay, good, because you wanted me to watch that with you, and I'm like, I hate that movie. I think it's terrible. I'm with you now. Okay, we don't have to do that one. But yes, he was a Swedish actor, and he was the villain in Strange Brew, but he was also Ming the fucking Merciless.

There you go. So I love Max von Sydow. He will be missed. Definitely. And I have a dad joke because I don't really do the dad jokes very often, and I sent this one over to you and Bittner because Bittner was just at a security conference, and we've had so much Australian stuff in our show recently.

Yeah. How could I not put this in here? I met a guy from Australia who works in IT. I asked, do you come from a land down under? No. Come on. That's good. Come on. It's really good. It's okay. I'll give it to you. You're laughing. I'll give it to you. I'll give it to you. I'll give it to you.

Yeah, big shout out to my friend Chris Lockhead, my new boss man. We did those two episodes with the DEA agents from Narcos, and his show hit number 28 in all of Apple, okay, I can't say iTunes anymore, all of Apple Podcasts.

Awesome. I have another top 50 show that I can add to my resume, so thank you, Chris, for bringing me on. You'll have to pat yourself on the back because I'm not touching anyone. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You go ahead. I will. I will. I will. I'll pat my- I think you just did, actually, to be honest.

I did. Yes, yes. I'm not touching my back because I still have the damn shingles so far. All right. And a shout out to our friend, Dr. David Teeter. Get well soon, man. We're rooting for you. We love you. We're thinking about you. Yes, we are. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. 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 421. 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. Klytus, I'm bored. What plaything can you offer me today? An obscure body in the SK system, Your Majesty. The inhabitants refer to it as the planet Earth.

Will you destroy this Earth? Later. I like to play with things while before annihilation.

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