422: Panic at the Costco

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. Brian, it's a great time to be a nihilist, I have to say. Well, what a difference two days makes. I know. You know, two days ago I was sitting in your studio and I opened up the show with Make No Mistake, We're in a Pandemic.

Now we are. It didn't feel like it two days ago, but it feels weird now, let me tell you. As someone who's lived, well, you're aware of this generation where we grew up assuming we were going to be annihilated by nuclear bombs any minute.

I lived through the LA riots. We went through 9-11. This is the weirdest it's ever felt to me. You were here for the Northridge quake? I was here for the Northridge quake as well. Yes. Yep. That's the one I've always been preparing for is the next giant earthquake.

But the earthquakes were a dry run, I like to say. Yeah. But the thing about it is we live in a place where earthquakes are a threat all the time. Right? Constant. Yeah. And you would think that aliens have invaded if you go to the grocery store.

I went to the grocery store this morning. There is panic at the Costco, Jason. There's, well, people that go to Costco, why the hell are you going to Costco in the first place? Jesus Christ. Look, I don't know. I don't know what people are doing. I went shopping yesterday because that's the day I go shopping.

That's my regular shopping. I needed to shop for the next couple days. People are insane. People are nuts. People are losing their minds. People are stocking up on perishables. You can't stock up on perishables, people. That spinach is going to go bad.

Not if it's frozen. Well, that wouldn't be a perishable, Jason. That's true. Well, it still will perish eventually. Well, it is, but in a frozen state. Anyways, people are absolutely losing their minds. There were a couple like-minded shoppers like me, and we made eye contact and rolled our eyes as people grabbed their second and third carts that were completely full of things.

You know, some people were leaving their carts at the checkout and getting other carts and filling them up. And as I was checking out with my small amount of items, the woman checking me out looked at the large cart sitting there and said, is that yours? And I said, no, because I don't think society is going to collapse.

And everybody around me laughed kind of nervously. Yeah, yeah. I saw this couple come around the corner this morning to the TP aisle, which is also the cheese aisle, because I was buying some cheese, because you have to have cheese in a pandemic. Damn it. And they just cracked up.

Like, what the hell is wrong with these people? Yeah, it's crazy. And it's going to be crazy for a couple more days. People are, I know, just due to poor planning, one of the other parents of the kid that goes to my kid's school, who we're pretty close with, we're friends with, she said that they had ran out of toilet paper.

And they told her at the Ralphs to come at 5 a.m. this morning, because they'll have restocked then, and they expect it to fly off the shelves. And they went at 5 a.m., and there was a line. Yeah, yeah. I know. I know. Yeah. If everybody listened to this show, everybody would be fine.

Look, I know where there's a great storehouse of toilet paper in a podcast studio in the Valley. So if I run out, I know where I'm going. Bam Bam might have something to say about that. But, you know, here's the thing. If it gets really down to that, well, I'll tell you about that in a second.

Okay. Let's get into this, because this is going to be a bit of a free-form show, because, frankly, there was no news that wasn't coronavirus news this week. And basically, the things that we put in were out of date within five minutes. Everything is happening so fast and so fluid right now.

Yeah, and we're recording this on Friday the 13th, and my name is Jason, so I think the stars have aligned in my favor. And it's fun. I want to lead with this one from Fiend of the Show Barrett. And I say Fiend of the Show because it actually auto-corrected my misspelling of friend.

But I think Fiend of the Show sounds a lot cooler, and that's what we should call our friends of the show from now on, Fiend of the Show. Okay. I just like it. I like it. I'm a Misfits fan, man. Fiend Club. This is our own Fiend Club, but he sent this over. This is from Babylon B.

Nations nerds wake up in utopia where everyone stays inside. Sports are canceled, and social interaction is forbidden. And I'm like, yep, it's great. And it's true. That is exactly what has happened. You know, all sports are off.

They're done. They're, you know, being pushed off. Live Nation and AEG, the largest concert promoters in the country and in the world, all tours are off, postponed. Wait and see. You know, everything is shutting down. My wife is going to start working from home on Monday.

Her office is shut down. I'm waiting for the announcement about my kid's school being shut down. I'm sure it will be. I'm sure he'll be home on Monday. Yep. Yep. Which will make recording this show fun. I actually got a text from Friend of the Show. I'm sorry. Fiend of the Show. Jason Bryant, who runs the Matt Talk Online Podcast Network.

He he's the wrestling announcer who did the the last Olympics down in Brazil, and he was on his way to go actually, you know, announce a wrestling event where there will be no fans. I'm I think this was before everything. It should be over by now. I haven't haven't followed up with him to see if it actually did go down, because, you know, I'm thinking in this day and age when you're really wanting to stay away from people rolling around with sweaty men on a mat.

That might not be the best way to stay safe. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, and you've got just a lot of stupid people out there, right? There was a couple of people were discussing about the sports thing yesterday and saying, you know, well, why don't we just do it without an audience? And well, they touch each other.

They touch the ball. They get sweaty. We have maybe not the brightest bulbs involved in sports, as we saw from that basketball player who tempted fate by touching all the microphones because he was making fun of the coronavirus, who then was the first case of coronavirus and gave it to one of his teammates and shut down the entire NBA.

That guy never ever going to live it down. Never. No. And I fully expect him to get booted out of the NBA. If he's back playing when they come back around, something is wrong. Then again, the Astros are still world champions. The Astros are still going. The dogfighter still in the NFL anyway.

Yep. So a little follow up here. Actual tech news. I'm going to put some tech news in here. All right. The Pentagon wishes to reconsider the $10 billion contract given to Microsoft over Amazon. And this is about the Jedi contract. And now that Amazon is making a stink about it and the judge thinks that, well, they might have a case here against you.

The DOD is actually pulling back a little bit and saying, let's just take a look at some of the points here and just not go with what the carrot in chief wanted because maybe they're right. So we'll see how this goes because, I mean, I have no insight into Microsoft's cloud platform.

I've never used Azure, but I do know AWS pretty well and AWS is pretty damn rock solid, except when there's a tornado and the entire data center on the East Coast goes out and Netflix goes down. But besides that, I just – I don't know the difference is enough to actually put a point on that one.

By the way, speaking of that, and Azure is pretty rock solid as well. There's a reason Microsoft's stock was doing well until all the stocks stopped doing well. Oh, by the way, speaking of stocks, speaking of stocks real quick before we go on, Eric Hundley, fiend of the show, sent me a thing the other day and he's like, it's a good time to remember this quote.

When Warren Buffett was asked how much money did he lose in the 2008 crash, he said, none because I didn't sell anything. Exactly. Stay steady, people. And if you've got the cash, buy. There's never been a better time to buy. I bought stock in – you know who I bought stock in?

Every company that is working on a coronavirus, you know – Cure. Vaccine. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not allowed to say – I mean, California, the word vaccine has been pulled from my vocabulary because I'm not allowed to say it. Well, funny you haven't heard a lot from the anti-vaxxers the past couple of days, have we?

Ain't that the truth? Ain't that the truth? Well, I've got some things about that later. Like I said, this is going to be a bit of a free-form show because whenever you mention something, I've got something to say about it. One thing that you were just – That's a surprise. Well, something I was thinking about is this is a very good time to buy some Netflix stock and some other stocks of that nature.

But like you were just saying, can you imagine since all we really have to do for the next, I'd say, month is watch streaming services, if Netflix goes down, people are going to riot in the – well, maybe riot in their own houses. They're going to riot in the bedroom. It's funny.

I bought Slack before everything started to happen, and it has been going down steadily. I mean, I know you have to adjust for the actual market dip, but I was really surprised that Slack was going down. Well, maybe you forgot to listen to the whole show. We've been talking about how Slack is facing a lot of intense competition, so it's got a rough time ahead of it.

Even if they're facing intense competition, everybody's working from home. IBM just put their entire workforce on it. Uber put their entire workforce on it, but – Yeah, we're definitely skipping ahead because that's in the news. Oh, it is? Okay. Sorry about that. My bad. It's all right. This is the way this show is going to go, isn't it?

Yeah. Okay. So I do want to have Jason's Corona-pocalypse tips because everybody right now is washing their hands like fiends. Fiends of the show, obviously. And I don't know about you, but my hands get really dry, and a lot of people have bloody knuckles right now from putting their hands in and out of their pockets because when they're at the store, they don't want to touch anybody.

Guess what happens when your skin cracks? There are little tiny holes that viruses get into. Exactly. I would like to say that I have a very diverse group of friends, and I hang out with a lot of different types of people. And back in the 90s, I was in a crew with a bunch of black women.

And when I would get dry in the winter here in balmy Southern California, they're like, honey, you need some Queen Helene. And I'm like, what is Queen Helene? And they gave me some, and it's cocoa butter. It's a cocoa butter moisturizer. Oh, my God.

It is the best thing in the world. And if you're listening to the show right now, I'm going to tell you, you can still get it at Amazon because I just ordered two tubs of it. I want to see if the Jason toilet paper effect is real. If this stuff disappears and is unavailable to order anymore, we'll know it's real.

Yes, exactly. Get it. I mean, honestly, because you're going to be washing your hands a lot, and Queen Helene is going to revitalize you. And it smells great. It's cocoa butter, man. Come on. And I also have two solutions here for the fiends of the show.

You're really trying to push this fiends thing. Well, I had it in the notes. I wouldn't have done it that many times. But here's the deal, Brian. Last night is the first night I slept more than two hours in three and a half weeks. My shingles is gone. I slept for six hours last night.

So I'm like actually back to being human today. So I'm like, I'm writing jokes today. Fuck this noise. I don't care about Corona. This harkens back to the shows that we used to do when you found out you were highly over-caffeinating. Yes, exactly. Here's the funny part. I haven't even had any caffeine today because I'm trying to get off caffeine because I don't need it.

It's whatever. It's a different story. But here's the two tips. And I've been having a lot of fun on Twitter lately. And I have come up with the idea for the budget bidet because everybody's saying, well, you don't need TP. Let's go buy one of those $1,000 Japanese toilet seats. I'm like, no.

You go to the 99 cent store. You buy a squirt bottle and a bunch of like wash rags. Boom. There's your budget bidet. You're done. And today I got all these notifications in the mail and I just thought this was hilarious. You can start a podcast and get on every mailing list from every publisher out there and just have books sent to your house.

If you really need some end of the world TP, and some of these books that I get every week are worthy of TP-dom, I've got six books coming today from just every different publisher, all these paperback books that are pre-release.

And I figured this out. I didn't need to make my throne of thrones that you saw here in my studio last time because it's coming delivered for free. So just start a podcast if you need TP. Well, worst case scenario, I have a fairly large library here as well, so I can dip in and start with the authors I don't read anymore and work my way down to the first editions.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, get rid of those like dune sequels that are really terrible. Oh, yeah. Those are going to be the first to go. I'm going to moat-dib my butt. The poop must flow. In the news.

So, act. I wish we could do a hashtag with your sigh. I really do. So, act and don't panic. This is the one thing that I probably want people to take away from this show that we're doing.

And the single best wrap-up that I've seen is over on Medium. But it is called Coronavirus, Why You Must Act Now. This is full of facts. This is full of information. This is full of charts. This is full of meaningful things that you can actually do.

This is full of information that will make you concerned, but not panic. Read it. Everyone. Yeah. It's a long read. It's a long read. Yeah. Mm-hmm. It's definitely a long read. But what else you got to do right now?

What else you got to do? That's right. So, read it so you can prepare and not panic like everybody is right now. And as previously mentioned, Live Nation and AEG are pausing all tours due to coronavirus. There's a few shows that are still going on, but I think at this point, even those are off.

Yeah. They're basically telling everybody to go home. That's about it. There's not going to be any concerts. There's not going to be any touring arena shows. There's not going to be much of anything. Live Nation is also instructing its employees to work remotely and not come into the office. They will be closed until the end of March.

My best guess would be probably past that, but we should see. Yeah. That's an aggressive timeline. Yeah. And, I mean, just the amount of money that is being lost here is just staggering. Staggering. You know, talking about out-of-date stuff, over at Vox, they've got some, you know, with E3 and South by Southwest canceled.

The direct losses from major tech events soars beyond $1 billion. And that's before all touring entertainment has stopped. Yeah, $1 billion seems extremely low. Yeah, it seems pretty low. So I think it's going to go a lot higher than that, which, you know, you got to feel bad for people.

I don't know how some people are going to make it through here. There were a number of articles that were talking about the real danger of the coronavirus isn't even health. It's financial for people that are living paycheck to paycheck that won't have work or are going to have to put themselves in harm's way to continue to make money, which is fairly crazy and fairly sad.

So I know personally, I got my notification yesterday that my tickets to Hamilton have been refunded. So I will not be seeing Hamilton. Well, the movie's coming out soon, so you can just wait. Yeah, I guess so. Or you can look in Dropbox and actually watch it because I sent it to you.

Yes, I know. Oh, man. Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot. And, you know, it's one of those things like if I was a landlord or something of that nature. And, you know, I've gotten a million emails from everything that I like credit card companies to my car company.

They're like, if you're hit with the coronavirus, talk to us and we'll get you through this time. And it seems like the biggest issue is going to be rent for a lot of people. Yep. It's like if you're a landlord at this point, like, you know, for the next three months, stop taking rent and just, you know, figure it out over time.

And yeah, because, you know, the funny thing is, is right now we need to we need to be great to each other. And we have to be like and that is not the behavior I'm seeing out on the streets. I've got to say, oh, Jesus Christ, no. No, we're we're definitely seeing the worst of us right now.

So let's get it together, people, and have some empathy. And we got to all get through this together. We are all alone together. But how predictive was that title? I'm telling you, we hit it out of the park every goddamn time. Nobody listens, but hey, we do. I can tell I have like a sixth sense when it comes to the mood of Los Angeles based on traffic.

Oh, yeah. And this morning, everybody was just insane. I mean, they were insane. And I drive one mile to and from the store and it was crazy. I'm like and I was coming into the store and I almost got T-boned by a semi truck that was coming out way too fast.

And as I was pulling in, I noticed on the side of the truck, it was a fucking Corona beer truck. And I'm like, not like this, not like this. This is not the way I want to go. What happened to Jason? He was killed by Corona. Oh, really? The virus? No, beer truck. Joe, the fucking truck driver killed him.

I'm like, why are you even here? Nobody is buying your beer. I did, by the way. I did. I bought a case of Corona yesterday when I was doing my emergency shopping at BevMo. Yeah, but everybody bought all the limes because, you know, they're stocking up.

Oh, speaking of that, now, see, tangent, I don't remember where I was going to fit this in, but I'm going to put it in here because you just talked about limes. Again, people being stupid and we've got to be nice to each other, but we've also got to call out bullshit where we get it.

I got a mass Facebook message from an old friend of mine and it was spreading one of those hoaxes. It was a whole video about all you need is vitamin C. Oh, no. Vitamin C can cure and prevent the coronavirus. And I wrote back to that mass email to everyone and I said, this is dangerous.

This is not true. Stop it. And the person who originally sent it wrote back and said, well, I just wanted to point out that vitamin C is good for your immune system. And I was like, that is not what you said. That is not what you said. You said that vitamin C can prevent and cure the coronavirus.

That is what you said. So call those people out, people. Well, and I would also like to say there are a lot of people out there saying that garlic will prevent it because it boosts your immune system. And there is a lot of evidence that garlic is good for your immune system. I am fine with that because you get allicin from it, not the woman or the pixie song or whatever.

Elvis Costello song, too. Yes. That's the one I was thinking of, not the pixies. But there are certain ways that you have to make garlic to actually release the allicin. Or you could just go and buy pills of garlic because I swear to God today I bought the last four bulbs of garlic in the entire San Fernando Valley because it was sold out everywhere.

And I know the guy. I'm really good friends with my grocer at Ralph's. I'm like, hey, man, you got any garlic in the back? And he's like, yeah, let me go check. And he came out. He handed me four bulbs. And he's like, this is it, man. This is all we've got. And I'm like, thanks, brother. I'll see you on the flip side. Yeah, there's so much stupidity.

It's just beyond belief. I do want to point out there's a website called isitcanceledyet.com, which I love, single surfing website. And it shows everything that's coming up that has been canceled. And it is pretty much, yep, yep. They could have just said yes. It's got to be the longest page on the internet right now because everything is canceled.

Like everything. But they can just skip it. Skip the list and just put the word yes. That's it. My kids' baseball league is canceled. I mean, everything is canceled. Santa Monica has banned getting together in groups of more than 200, I think. And they're saying that you shouldn't be in groups of more than 10 people.

Like, you know, in Italy, bars and Costco then. In Italy, well, that's the thing. Everybody's going to grocery stores, right? There were at least 250 people in Whole Foods. Are we going to start to see bouncers at grocery stores saying we can only have 250 people in here at a time? You know, I would like to see bouncers with temperature gauges checking people when they come in.

Well, be nice if our government was prepared and had things like that. Dude, it's up to us. That's the way it works. It's up to us. I know. So, in some interesting news here. Actually, not interesting news. Fucking great news.

Shopify is sending everybody home to work from home. And they're giving people $1,000 each to furnish their own home setup so they can work from home. And they can even take their monitors home with them. You can't get Clorox wipes to wipe them down when you take them home. But you can still take your monitor with you and any other office equipment that you need.

But the $1,000 bump was pretty nice, I thought, because you can get a pretty good standing desk like the one I have an uplift desk that costs under $1,000. So, that was really nice of Shopify, I thought. Yeah. I think it's Spotify at first, but it's Shopify. Yeah. It is Shopify. It's good to see a lot of companies actually stepping up for their employees with things like this.

It's a really good thing. Yes, and RIP Mr. Joe from Trader Joe's. But they are actually one of the first grocery stores out there that is going to have paid sick leave that goes over and above and beyond what everybody else is doing. They've got it in place through April 15th because, you know, I love Trader Joe's.

I don't love everything about Trader Joe's, but the people there are always great to me. And I really am glad that they're going to take care of those people because, you know, you don't go to Trader Joe's for the produce. You go for the booze and the people there. Every time I come up with a new – like I was checking out the hard kombucha a couple months ago and I had like a two-minute talk with one of the checkout people.

There was nobody behind me in line. Don't worry. I'm not one of those assholes. Okay, grandma. If there's somebody in line behind me, I get the fuck in and out. It's, you know, get out of the way. That's what your job is when you're in line with somewhere. But, you know, and we talked to a bunch of people and we – I love the people at Trader Joe's.

So I'm really happy that they're taking this step. Listen, you got to think about this. You know, normally we think of first-line responders or people putting themselves in harm's way as firefighters and police and emergency medical technicians and the people that work at hospitals and doctors and nurses.

Right now, it's also people that work at grocery stores. It's your bartender. It's your waitresses. It's people that work at restaurants as long as they stay open. I know Italy has shut down all bars and restaurants. And if our numbers keep going up, we're going to do that here too. But right now, they're frontline people.

So take care of them. Yeah. Yeah. And, guys, no, I don't want to get too far. No, no, no. I'm going to skip that one. Just move on to the next story. All right. Well, the next story is Microsoft, Google, and Zoom are trying to keep up with demand for their now free work-from-home software.

So because of so many quarantines and cancellations and so many companies saying, well, let's go work from home for a while, the demand for the software is through the roof. And in response, they're making it free, which is nice. It's a bit self-serving because they want to get you hooked on it, so you'll continue to use it later on.

But it is a good move on their part, so good for them. Demand is definitely going through the roof, and they're working pretty hard to make sure that there's the bandwidth and everything is going to keep working because it's not just people working from home. School systems are using these things and all that sort of stuff, so it's good that they're doing that.

It's interesting. My friend's daughter, she basically got sent home now, but it's all telelearning. They still have to go to school, but they have to do it from home, which really screws things up for my friend because she sells insurance, which is probably a good business to be in right now. But they've only got, like, one home computer that they can use, so I actually loaned them a laptop because I've got extra computers, so she can actually do her schoolwork from, like, a decent computer.

Yeah, I was actually talking to a friend of mine that runs a small company, and he was saying, he was talking about, you know, we've got to make sure that we've got laptops for people that don't have laptops. There are a lot of people that don't have big computer systems at home, so everybody's kind of scrambling to figure that out right now.

You know, it's definitely going to be affecting people, as per usual, when anything bad happens, it affects people at the lower income levels and economic levels more than it does those of us that, you know, can go out and get a Macintosh whenever we want to. Yep. Unfortunately, I just never throw them away, so I have extras lying around.

You have almost as many computers around your house as you have rolls of toilet paper. Yeah, even the dogs have laptops around here, but I have one more computer that I have to do. I have to do that battery swap on it, and fortunately, I'll have more time now because I've got this giant lithium-ion battery that I don't want to explode, so I need to get it out of that computer.

Yeah, and speaking of the whole working from home thing, I've seen quite a few articles popping up about saying how we're going to find out that you really don't need to go into an office, that the man has been keeping us down, and look how great this whole work from home thing goes, and why aren't we all telecommuting? Oh, just you wait and see, people.

Jason and I have been doing this for 20 years. Working from home is hard. It takes a lot of discipline. I do not expect to see productivity to go up. I expect to see it drop a lot. Drop precipitously. And if there's any lesson that's actually going to be learned from this great work-at-home experience, it's not going to be that everybody can work from home and it's great.

It's going to be your boss realizing you did fuck all, and he doesn't need you anymore. Yeah, that's going to be my key problem. Yeah. And get your computer as far away from the refrigerator as you possibly can because when you first start working from home, the first thing you do is, hmm, I could use a snack.

Boom, boom, boom. Then 30 pounds later, although fortunately, there'll be no food. So, for a while. So, it might work out. Yeah, it might. So, Uber may, God, I hope this has changed by now because may should not be in this sentence, may temporarily suspend drivers exposed to the coronavirus.

No, that is not the right response. The response is, yes, you immediately suspend the drivers exposed to the coronavirus and you pay them. At least a little bit. Yeah, that last bit was funny. Oh, I forgot. They're not employees. I'm sorry. They're not employees. Yeah. But they did announce late last week it would try to compensate drivers who miss work due to the coronavirus for up to 14 days.

Lyft also announced that it would provide financial assistance to drivers. So, for once, I can't yell at these companies. But they've not detailed how much they'll compensate people. And that's kind of the key one, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I've got things from DoorDash as well. I'm not on Postmates, so I haven't gotten anything from them.

But, yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how the gig economy fares in this. I actually – I did order Paquito Moss the other day from DoorDash after everything was locked down because I like to live on the edge. But I did wipe it down with a Clorox wipe when I got it home.

But I still eat the food and I'm still here. You know, it's funny. As you mentioned that, just five minutes ago, I got an email from this place that I like to order pizza from occasionally here in Santa Monica called Dagwood's. They have one of the best calzones in the world. And the whole email is we're taking all these steps of cleanliness.

We're focusing on maintaining the highest level. We will continue to deliver. We have hand-washing procedures and paid sick leave policies and all that sort of stuff. Like everybody is getting out in front of this. Of course, it always reminds me of, you know, who are these people that weren't washing their hands before? Exactly.

It's like, oh, wasn't this supposed to be standard operating procedure? But I get it. Everybody wants to get the word out there and try to keep their businesses up and running as long as they can. I've got three restaurants in my neighborhood that I don't want to go out of business.

And I will be buying food from them as this thing progresses because the China Garden here in the lovely Woodland Hills are my favorite people. The guy gives me – well, he used to give me a hug when he would deliver my food. He ain't getting no fucking hug anymore. No hugs for a while.

Yep. Leave it on the porch. Your money is under the rock. We're good. Did you forget the hot mustard again? Well, go back and get me some more. But I'm going to keep patronizing those restaurants because I want them to stay in business. And I think that don't let the paranoia get to you too much, you know.

That's all I got to say. I know it's – you got to have that distance. But a lot of people are going to lose their livelihood over this. I know. And anything that we can do. I mean, even if they brought the food and I threw it away, I still want to keep them going, you know. Look, I know. But the societal pressure has reached that point now, hasn't it, Jason?

Like, it's hard. I was planning on popping out to my local and just having a quick beer tonight with a friend. Oh, that would be dumb. Well, that's right. Exactly. Like, and then I was like, well, that would be stupid. But, yeah, that place is going to close.

And they're missing out on their livelihood. So, which is it? What do we do? Well, you know, you just Venmo the bartender's $10 to say, here's the tip that I would have given you. And then you save the beer money because you have Corona at home, but you're still keeping people going.

Yeah, and I suppose that's one thing to do. In fact, I saw somebody on Twitter that had posted, you know, if you're going to a theater show and it's shut down, consider donating the money from your refund to the theater to keep it going, to keep all the people going. Yeah, I don't know if there are procedures in place that your money would go to the right places if they're still going to be paying the performers and things like that.

Yeah, I don't know how any of that would work either. Yeah, I don't know if that's really a smart idea. I don't think they thought that one out. Not so much, but it's a nice thought. It is a nice thought. But, you know, if you can help your locals, like this comes back to the empathy, you know, help everybody out that you can.

I mean, I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination. I'm pretty goddamn broke. But if I've got extra, I'm going to help my friends. That's all I'm going to do for this. Just not as toilet paper. Nobody gets that. Stay the fuck away from my toilet paper. Hands off my Charmin, bitch. So speaking of working from home, that's going to get more complicated, especially if you have kids.

If you've ever tried to work from home with a kid, as I have done, it is impossible at times. So there is an interesting article over at Lifehacker written by Megan Walbert, how to work from home with kids when you're under quarantine. And there are some good ideas in here. But this woman, Liz Lenz, has written all these different thoughts about it, including having snacks around and all that and pipe cleaners and tape and all that sort of stuff.

So go read this if you're now going to be working from home and your kid is now not going to school. But the single funniest line and the truest one is her best suggestion is, and I quote, Jesus fucking Christ, who cares? Let them watch TV. We're all just trying to live here.

That's true. Forget the fucking screen time shit. Yeah, screen time is out the window in these situations. Let me tell you. Yes. It's a YouTube pandemic. Let them watch SquarePants or whatever his name is.

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

Security? Ha! We're joined again this week by Dave the Sniffles Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast. Dave is also co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, as well as the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy, as well as surveillance and privacy.

And we were just talking off air about how, when we hit our mid-40s, we both came down with allergies, which we've never had. And in this day and age, that might get you killed. I know. You don't want to be coughing in the streets right now, do you? No. No. People scatter. Then you get dirty looks, and people look at you.

They pull their children close to them and run away in fear. Sniffle-up-a-guts. We're Mr. Sniffle-up-a-guts. Mr. Sniffle-up-a-guts. Very good. Very good. Yeah. Yeah. So how's it going over there, Dave, in D.C.? Or, I'm sorry, Baltimore.

Yeah. The great state of Maryland. Yeah. And our offices are smack dab right in the middle between Baltimore and Washington. If most people might be familiar with Columbia, Maryland, that's pretty much where we are. It's okay. We're closing schools for two weeks.

There are no more gatherings for the time being. The governor has declared a state of emergency. They're going to be using the National Guard to help clean things, including the schools. I signed up to kill terrorists, and all I got was this Clorox wipe.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's good that they're still keeping meals available for kids who need meals through their schools. So that's something that I think is going right. Yeah. But the stores have that look that they usually typically have before a blizzard, where everything's kind of picked through.

There's still stuff, but most of the good stuff is gone. And I ran up to the store today just to grab something for lunch and long lines. Infected. Infected. Yeah, I know. I know. I know. There's long lines, and just, I mean, people are buying giant packs of paper towels and toilet paper and all these things.

The one place where there are large gatherings right now are grocery stores. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Which is pretty crazy. Here at the Cyber Wire, we have gone to a mandatory work-from-home scenario. So today, I'm the one person at the studio.

Well, you're safe there for now. Well, there's nobody else here, so it's probably the best place to be. But so fortunately, we're in a situation where we can do that really without a whole lot of impact. But this week has been, we've had meetings talking about continuity plans.

You know, what do we do if people are unavailable or out of commission? Because really, most of our plans have been around a person getting sick or, you know, typical type things. But so in a way, that's good to go through that exercise.

But I have to say it's a little disconcerting. Yeah, well, we really screwed this one up, didn't we? Who would have thought that gutting important government agencies would have repercussions? Yeah. A lot of this could have been avoided or it certainly could have mitigated a lot of the things that are currently happening right now.

Yeah. Who needs social safety nets, right? When we have AI. Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking through earlier this week of different scenarios. And I wonder what would happen if 10% of Congress died from this.

You know, so many of them are in the danger zone in terms of their age. I don't think it, I don't know. I don't know how realistic that would be. But what would be the effect of that? Because as we've talked about here many times, I think until things affect them directly, it's very difficult for them to make changes that may trickle down to the rest of us when it comes to many things.

Because they all have health care. They do. They do. But as we're seeing, as we're recording this, many people in Congress are self-quarantining because they've been exposed. And, you know, this is a thing that money can't really buy you immunity from.

Tom Hanks got it. I mean, if Tom Hanks can get it, anybody can get it. We're all screwed. Well, a friend of mine who was going down the conspiracy theory line said that. Oh, God, there's so much of that out there right now. He said, if you wanted to have somebody who was calm and would put people at ease when it comes to getting the disease, who would you ask?

That's right, Tom Hanks. Yeah, well, that kind of leads me into some thoughts that I've been having. And we were discussing just a little bit before we started recording that, you know, having, and I mentioned this earlier in the show as well, having lived through so many large events in my life, the L.A. riots, the earthquake here that was so massive, obviously 9-11.

I've never felt anything quite like this. This is different. And I don't really, I mean, obviously, it's a different thing. It's global. It's something everybody has to worry about. But it feels weirder out there than I remember anything else being.

And I wonder how much of that is social media and the sped-up nature of news and fake news now. Because 9-11, you know, you talked around the proverbial water cooler with your office people, and that was about it. And then you didn't get any news until you went home and Tom Brokaw came on and laid it out in 30 minutes.

It's constant and everywhere and too fast. I beg to differ on the 9-11 thing because we had CNN on in my house, and I watched those planes go into the tower every 30 seconds. And it created a national PTSD.

With this, there's no such event where you have that repetitive visual over and over and over again. You just have Sanjay Gupta saying really stupid shit sometimes. He's like, oh, why are you going to close Harvard? Because the kids are not going to be affected by this.

I mean, if they get it, they're going to be fine. I'm like, do you know who teaches at Harvard? Old smart people. Have you ever looked through the catalog at Harvard? I mean, again, it's the same thing that we've been screaming about the anti-vaxxers. It's not about you, stupid. It's about other people.

Yeah. Right. To me, the closest feeling that this matches up to is the feeling I had the days after 9-11 when there was this anxious uncertainty because we didn't know what was coming next, what could be coming next.

Was it going to get better? Was it going to get worse? We're hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. And I feel like that's where we are now. But you're right. There was no big event we're easing into this more slowly, watching it sort of creep around the world.

But that information is coming at us so fast on social media. You're right. I think our planes hitting the tower was the Donald Trump press conference because that was just as much of a train wreck as anything else. That was a disaster, and that relates directly to what you were saying, Dave, in those couple days after 9-11 when you didn't know what was going on.

And there was no plan. And to have our president come up and basically just try to rebrand this thing rather than give us a- He's trying to pivot the virus. Well, that's what he did. He tried to pivot the virus to being an immigration thing. There was no plan set forth.

And it was so telling that both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden gave press conferences the very next day that put out good plans. That's all they did. Yeah, I have to go with you on that, Dave.

It's like when I went to the grocery store this morning, it did have that same feel, like that post-9-11 feel. It was dead quiet. Nobody was making eye contact except, as I previously mentioned in the show, the couple that saw the empty TP aisle and just started breaking up laughing.

But there was definitely a weird, weird energy everywhere. Yeah. I think what's making it worse is that for a lot of us, we do not have faith that our government has the ability to take care of things right now.

Certainly not at the federal level. I do feel much better about my state government, my local government. So that's good. Yeah. And they're able to do a lot of things. You know, I'm fortunate enough to live in an area that has good health care systems.

You know, my local hospital is part of Johns Hopkins. And so that's reassuring, but it still doesn't mean they're not going to be overwhelmed and you just simply won't be able to get any service. I think you got an in with Joe Kerrigan, right? He works for Johns Hopkins. You can kind of get a hall pass.

Yeah. Right. I'll just go in disguised as him. Except the problem is Joe Kerrigan deals with different types of viruses. I have a floppy disk. Can I please get a test? That's right. That's right. Exactly. Yeah, here's your copy of Norton antivirus.

Please be on your way, sir. Just say you got to go in and do an in-person podcast when you're at the door. Should get you in. Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's right. The other thing that I noticed today when I was at the store is that, and this relates to the social media thing, is that I'm really exhausted from all the small talk about it.

Yeah. I'm tired. I'm tired of all of the armchair experts. I'm tired of the, well, pandemic just means that it's a such and such. I mean, pandemics happen all the time. I'm like, shut up. Yeah. You're not helping.

And it's exhausting because it doesn't stop. Better watch out washing your hands with that soap. That soap was made in China. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I'm like, shut up. You're not helping. I was talking to a friend yesterday, and he was like, maybe we should have shut down social media instead of all the other things we're shutting down, and we might all be feeling a little bit better right now.

Yeah, yeah. I was talking to a friend earlier today, and she was saying that she basically muted all the coronavirus words on Twitter, and Twitter basically went away. Yeah. There's nothing left in her feed now, so that's exactly the problem we had putting this show together.

We didn't want to do a second show about the coronavirus, but that's the only news that's out there. Yeah. The problem is we were ahead of the curve again and did the last show about it, and now it's a thing. It's our fault. We started it again, damn it. I saw someone say on Twitter that the great thing about coronavirus is now every podcast is a coronavirus podcast.

Yeah. And that is true. That is true. So I'm wondering, what do you guys think about, to get actually back on topic for a second here, the scams that are going to start coming out? I mean, we know we have. They're going to start. They've already started.

Well, we've got stupid people posting stupid shit. That's a given, right? The stuff we talked about earlier with the vitamin C thing and all that. But when it comes to the scams, what kind of scams do you guys think we're going to start seeing? Like, buy my shit scams, you know, not just the go take vitamin C scams.

Well, we already had that. The old pastor guy was Jim Baker selling his silver. Selling silver. You've got, what's his name? The crazy guy. Who's the number one loony? Alex Jones? Alex Jones. Oh, Alex Jones. The water's turning the frogs gay, damn it.

That's Alex Jones. Alex Jones. I saw today the, was it the attorney general from the state of New York? I believe it was. Yeah. She posted that she, they, they gave Alex Jones a cease and desist because he was saying that his, well, just on principle.

Cease and desist being Alex Jones. Right. Because he was making claims that his toothpaste would help, would, would kill coronavirus and that the Pentagon was purchasing it in large numbers to protect the soldiers. You do know that he was arrested for DUI last week after a domestic dispute, right?

It's just the best people. The best people. Yeah. Oh my God. Okay. So, yeah. So just look out for sham shit and don't buy anything that anybody tells you is going to cure or prevent the coronavirus that you don't get from the CDC is basically the best advice.

I'm assuming we're going to see a lot of emails about supposed vaccines that people have already that, you know, for 1995. The other ones we're seeing are calls for donations.

So fake red crosses, those sorts of things. We're seeing someone put up a fake version of the Johns Hopkins heat map. Oh yeah. Yep. So when you go to that, you get yourself a little, I forget what you get in it.

It downloads something to your machine that is bad. It allows it to exfiltrate. A little slice of malware. Yeah, exactly. But it looks just like the Johns Hopkins heat map, which is, which if you hadn't, if you have not yet checked out, is excellent. The actual Johns Hopkins one is one of the best out there.

So you have that sort of thing. And absolutely, we're seeing phishing already, just taking, taking advantage of people's anxiety. Yep. Yeah. And the fear. Yep. Yep. Interesting comment I saw swinging back to the president.

That's a good speech about all this. Someone on Twitter said, the soothing parts weren't true and the true parts weren't soothing. Yeah. It's funny that the, the, the, my favorite tweet about it was, uh, this guy said, uh, my daughter just, uh, is learning final cut pro and she just made a video of Donald Trump's, uh, labored breathing during, during the speech.

And I couldn't be more proud. Yeah. I did see that. That speech was uncomfortable in many ways. It was uncomfortable for him because he didn't want to read it because he didn't believe it. And his, you know, his, his people made him read that. And you could tell, I think he broke a tooth cause his jaw was clenched so hard.

The only thing missing was someone holding up the front page of a newspaper. So we knew that what date it was when it was actually recorded. Like they do in those hostage videos. That was the only thing missing. I was actually looking at the edges of his face to see if it was a deep fake. That's like, it was so weird and uncomfortable.

And I'm like, is this real? Or is this a deep fake? Because, and then he did the thing with his hands and I'm like, oh no, that's still him. That's still him. It's like when he had his hands clenched, you knew that he was, he was the one reading it. And then when he did the, or you didn't know, but when he just flipped his hands over, it's a beautiful thing.

We got beautiful tests. The most, oh wait, I have to get back on script, you know? Right. Right. Who's, who's the guy behind the camera that has the gun on him telling him to read verbatim? You know, is it the Bilderberg group? Right.

Right. And it also reminds me of, uh, just how I, you guys must remember back when, uh, president Obama was in office, how, how much, Hey, the, the, uh, Republicans made over him being the teleprompter president, you know, that he was only, he could only perform with a teleprompter.

Oh, what we wouldn't give to have a president with the teleprompter skills, uh, that other presidents have had. Yeah. It was just, they made a fuss over him coming off air force one with a cup of coffee for Christ's sakes. Come on. Right. Yeah. It's tough. Uh, these are the times when, uh, you really want leadership at the top.

Actually to that point, uh, I have a friend who is, uh, an expert in disaster recovery planning and like she, that's what she does. And she fired by the administration. No, no. So she, I mean, her, her work, uh, happens more at the state level, but, um, she's just apoplectic over the federal response to all this.

Just how every single turn from the communications to the organization, just every bit of it is just the opposite of what you're trained to do. And there's just no one guiding the ship. It seems no one who knows what they're doing anyway.

So, well, on this, yeah, I know, uh, how long do you, how long do you guys think this is going to last? Uh, three months personally, three months. Okay. Well, I think the grocery stores are going to be fine in three days because they're, we're going to have a TP shortage.

Everybody's going to be restocked. I talked to the girls today at the checkout because I'm friends with all the people at my grocery store and they're like, we're getting the best overtime we've ever gotten because we're all working. And then one girl pulled out the, the tub of Clorox sanitizers to wipe down the self checkout machines and her friend, and she left it on the counter.

And her friend said, put that away because somebody's going to steal that because there's none in the store. Uh, but they're like, you know, they're, they're okay with it at this point because, you know, people like you and me, Dave, who come in coughing are pretty rare. Apparently, but, uh, I, I still think three months for this whole thing to recover just, just because of the, the duration of the gestation of the virus and, you know, the, the 14 to 21 days, people are still going to start getting sick.

Um, I'm probably going to get sick. My roommate's probably going to get sick. Uh, I think, I think a lot of people are going to really get sick and it's going to be, I think at least three to four months personally. Hmm. Uh, I agree with Jason about the groceries for sure. I think everybody's already got everything that they possibly need and the supply chains haven't been screwed up yet.

So everything's going to be restocked in the next couple of days. So that's not going to be an issue anymore. Um, I think, I don't know. I don't know how long people are going to be able to work from home because as we know, it's very difficult. Uh, people are being very optimistic about how that's all going to happen.

Um, I'd imagine within the next month, we'll see numbers going down and I think people will start to go back to schools, start to go back to work. But I think the social aspect of it and the, the repercussions of everything we're going through right now are going to linger for months. I think they're going to linger for years.

Yeah. I think, I think the economic damage that's going to be done by this is going to last for years, uh, personally, just because there's so many, because, you know, baristas can't work from home. There are a lot of people that like the girls at the checkout line can't work from home. It's there, there are a lot of jobs that are going to be really messed up.

And that comes back to what we've been talking about for the rest of the show. It's just like, you know, show empathy to your, your local friends and, you know, everybody needs to get through this together and don't be a dick. Yeah, I saw a good suggestion. Somebody said, um, go online and buy a gift card for your favorite local restaurant.

Um, that way they get the money. Now you'll, you'll have a nice meal, you know, whenever things get better, you can go out, but it'll help them ride this storm as no one's going to the restaurant. That's a good idea. Not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea at all. Actually. Yeah. That's a, that's a really good idea.

It's better than my idea, which was just go in and give them 10 bucks for the meal that you were going to get for the. Um, but yeah, actually gift cards are, that's a, that's a really smart idea because yeah, then you can just use it after everything goes and keep them in business. Right. Right.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Not bad. Okay. We can leave on a good note. Let's end on that. Yeah. Cause I got much else. That's positive. All right. Well, uh, let's all cross our fingers that all three of us are, are, uh, able to, to be back here next week.

Right. That'll be the way it goes for the time being. Yeah. Well, Brian and I are going to be here. Cause we don't go anywhere. Well, the way it works, we're, we're used to this. This is, this is our wheelhouse right now. Well, that may be you, but, uh, I have a family and I'm the one that goes out to do the foraging.

So, well, then when you have kids gatherer, yes, yes. When you have kids, all things are kids go around. Yep. Yeah. The kids go roll around in the Petri dish and then come home and roll around all over everything at home. See, I was thinking about this though.

Brian has been sick so many times in the past two years or three years since he got Lucas that his immune system has to be like fucking Iron Man. And I think that this might work. I'm, I'm the one that's actually, I'm just coming off shingles. So I've had a viral infection for the past month.

So if anybody dies, it's going to be me. So there will be no show because nobody else knows how to record this properly. Oh, I know how to record it. Oh, way to take my job. All right. We can start our Star Wars podcast. There you go. It's the opportunity we've been looking for. Here on furry old geeks.

Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right. All right, guys. We'll, uh, let's all keep our chins up. Yep. We'll talk to you soon. Cops and doodads. Seems a little weird to talk about anything not coronavirus related, but I did have two things in here before the proverbial shit hit the fan.

Uh, I saw a new three in one dock charger for your nightstand that Logitech has launched. I already have one, but this also includes, you know, the, uh, wireless charging and it looks sexy. It's really good looking. I think I might actually get that one. Yeah, I'm considering it.

It's a good looking little pad and it can charge everything, uh, all at once. So you can put your watch on there, your phone, your, uh, AirPods. It's, it's nice. I might grab it too at some point. Yeah. The, the problem is, is the speakers on the bottom, cause I use my, my phone at night to listen to podcasts to keep the voices in my head at bay.

So if the speakers on the bottom, it might not work too well, but the, it's a good looking, it's a good looking little piece of kit. Maybe I'll just get that for the office when I'm sitting here recording. Cause that's, there you go. You can keep everything charged up and just, you know, let it sit there. Do you have, uh, an air pod charging case for yours?

No, no. So I, I have to do a couple upgrades before this is of complete use to me. So, oh, I got to tell you, man, when I, when I got the new air pod twos, remember I didn't get the pros. I just went with the twos. Yeah. And I do the wireless charging with those now on the same pad that one of the ones I gave you and, uh, these new air pod twos, it's, it's ridiculous.

It's like, I'm so used to my air pods dying in 10 minutes that these seem, these things seem to last forever. I like get three, three or four hours out of them. And I'm like, I haven't had to charge my air pods. This is magical. It's magic. Well worth the extra money that I had to pay for those to get the new ones, but they, the, the air pod twos last a really long time.

I'm finding. All right. Excellent. And, uh, got a little bit of good news for us. Consumers, maybe not such great news for those making tech devices, but, uh, as part of the newly announced circular economy action plan, the European commission, which is the body that drafts the EU's laws is going to introduce a right to repair legislation that will push electronics manufacturers to create products that last longer.

You hear me air pods. Include as many recycled materials as possible and are easier to reuse, repair and recycle. Awesome. Nice. It would also extend its echo design law to cover phones, tablets, and computers and likely force tech companies to completely rethink the designs of their products.

The legislation will also require that part. I don't like, well, that's, I don't want, yeah, I don't want people to, I don't want them to be forced to redesign their products because I don't, if you got to do USBC over lightning and your phone, the phone's going to get bigger. There's a reason we have lightning.

Damn it. But, okay, okay, I guess. Well, we'll see how it plays out. You gotta give to get. You gotta give to get. Exactly. Exactly. And, in the RTFM aspect of things, the legislation will also require that these same companies provide easy-to-access information related to the repairability and durability of their products.

A.K.A. Manuals. Yes. Give us a fucking manual. Jesus. So, we'll see what happens with that. And then we have to go back to the coronavirus news. A friend of the show, Mike, sent this to me. There is no better company in the world than Pornhub than getting their name in the press.

No matter what happens. Yeah. So, Pornhub is giving Italians free premium access during the coronavirus quarantine. You know what I have, Brian? Hmm. I have got a VPN. If you go to GOG.show, you can get a GOG.show slash VPN.

You can pretend you are from Italia and you can get a free porn. Yeah. There you go. I'm Italian and even that was a fucking terrible accent. That's all right. Right now, I don't think anybody in Italy is going to be listening to our show.

Everybody should be listening to podcasts. There's nothing else to do. Listen to a podcast. That's true. And keeping with the Onnit in marketing, Osmo, the company that makes the iPad and Android learning app for preschoolers on Up, which I actually really enjoy.

My kid loves it. Oh, yeah. Spot on. Spot on with their marketing. Got one yesterday. Title, Are the Kids Home? Don't worry. Osmo has you covered. And a big list of all the games that they have available that I will be buying and downloading. Oh, that's nice.

That's nice. And actually, you know what? What's funny? I got an email from Sam Harris this morning talking about his app, Waking Up, which is like a meditation app, which I think a lot of people are probably going to need right now. Yeah, because everybody needs to calm down.

He's like, look, if you guys can't afford it, just send us an email and we'll give it to you for free. Well, this whole thing's going on. And I'm like, you know what, Sam, you're a fucking standup guy. You really are a standup guy. He's like, look, we all need to chill. So I don't need your money. I would like your money, but I don't need your money.

So if you'd like free access to the app in these troubling times, just send me an email and we'll get you set up with a code to download it. So I thought that was really fucking cool of him. Okay, cool. Oh, one other thing I saw, and I thought this would be some good news for you, Jason, because we all need good news right now. The World Health Organization has announced that dogs cannot contract COVID-19.

Dogs previously held in quarantine can now be released. To be clear, Jason, who let the dogs out? Feedback Loop. We're doing just a quick follow up on Feedback Loop right now. We usually don't do this on the Saturday episodes, but Sperry writes in, sorry, guys, Maximilian Shell was the antagonist in Disney's The Black Hole, aka The Black Hole, not Max von Saito.

Easy mistake. Both are great actors who did some real clunkers. Von Saito was also star of one of my favorite films, Steppenwolf from 1974. It was usually paired with Siddhartha and made for one hell of a stoner double feature back in the day. Max will indeed be missed.

Take care and stay safe and stay grumpy. Well, thank you, Sperry. Thank you. Yeah, it was Maximilian Shell. That's right. I'll spread the pooch on that one, but they're easily confused. All right. Because I've seen The Black Hole once when I was a kid on HBO that I stole because I figured out how to use tinfoil to hack my HBO box.

Oh, those were the days. Now we just share passwords. Yeah. And Aaron writes in, please, oh, please do not use 70% isopropyl on your devices. As a cell phone tech, this is how you liquid damage your device. The 30% is mostly water. 91% or higher does not contain water and therefore much better for your devices.

I have to wonder, did this come out of a Facebook group? I'm an expert. So let me tell you. Well, I work in the field. So let me tell you. 17% of people wrote back and saying 70% isopropyl alcohol is fine. 19% wrote back and said 91% is better.

Exactly. Well, thank you for that. Thank you, Aaron. Yes, I need to clean my roommate's laptop that I just got her. So I'm going to definitely use 91%. We're joined again by Seth Miranda of Adorama fame and Last X Witness fame and all sorts of fame because this is the fifth fucking time I've read this intro.

So we're just going to get into it. Seth, welcome back to the show. It's been a long ass day. It's been a long life. This year, it's only March and it's like the longest year ever. Dude. And we are recording this on Friday the 13th. That is true. Yeah, that is very true.

And it's actually a beautiful day here in New York except for everyone's panic. So that's why I wanted to have you on the show because we've already talked about on the show how freaking weird it is here in Los Angeles. It is like the week after 9-11 right now.

Yeah, I bet. People are just like zombies. They don't know what to do. They don't know what to say, except we don't have that, you know, that that one moment that we had with 9-11 that everybody was so traumatized by with the planes flying into the towers. But it's still one of those things where it's like everybody is just kind of numb and trying to figure out what's going on.

And I wanted to hear from you what it's like in New York City because there's a lot of people in New York City. And I want to get your perspective on what the hell's going on out there. And especially since you work in a retail environment a lot of the time. Well, first off, I lived through 9-11 here in New York.

I watched it happen. And that was insane enough to go through. But the problem that's happening right here is everybody's waiting. They're just like these sitting ducks. And there's cases. There's a corona case like a few blocks from me. And that's when I was like, all right, that means this person was on the same train as me.

That means that there was two weeks of like this incubation thing. You know, that's the scary part is we can't tell who has it. And everyone's talking about it just being the same thing as the flu, that if you just breathe it in, you're going to get it or whatever. I'm on packed trains. So the MTA here has less trains than ever before.

So that means they're more packed than ever before. And I'm like trying to find times of the day to not take the train anymore. Because you got some person you don't even know just breathing in your face. And you're like, well, who knows? Let's just all roll dice today. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little crazy.

I mean, there's hand sanitizer everywhere. There's a lot of misinformation flying everywhere because everyone's a genius now because they get an alert on their phone from BuzzFeed or something stupid. Yeah. Yeah. We actually talked about that with Bittner. It's just like, everybody shut up. You're not an expert.

You don't work for the CDC. You don't know a goddamn thing. Yeah. I think the one thing that it's really hurting right now is I had a lot of stuff travel-wise work for work set to go. That's all canceled. A lot of clients are canceling.

I know some of the top-end wedding photographers here in New York have canceled weddings all across their book. And more than that, the actual camera industry itself is almost at a complete halt. So anything that's been announced, anything that they have on pre-order, all of it's delayed.

Nikon can't get any of its lenses out. Canon can't guarantee when their new cameras are coming out. Sony was going to have a huge press event to announce something. They postponed it. Now it's completely canceled. Our press event is we have nothing to announce. Yeah. Well, we're trying to figure out if they canceled the actual product that they're going to release, which who knows what it is when it's Sony.

Or is it that they just canceled the event? The real problem with the industry is they can't get the components out of China to build whatever they've been trying to build. So it's usually DRAM. So, you know, all these high- Yeah, all the high-performance cameras, if you're running a high-resolution camera that can now do higher frame rates than before, that's a lot more processing power.

And therefore, it needs DRAM to get it going. And they just can't get the chips. So do they actually do like the lens grinding and stuff like that in Japan for these companies? I mean, it depends on the company. But I know Nikon does a lot of handmade glass going on in there in Japan.

But almost everybody is sourcing out of China from something, or Thailand. Yeah. Yeah. I know that Leica is like the only one in the world left doing anything in Germany, I think. And nobody's going to have a job, so nobody can afford a Leica. Yeah. Oh, and Leica just released their new S3, which is a $19,000 camera, which was in my hands two years ago.

That's how long it took to them to get to production. So I actually have a question for you about Leica real quick. Is it worth the money? It's amazing. It's amazing. But is it really worth, you know, like, I mean, that costs as much as a car. I know.

I know. Look, I can never understand what it would take someone to go and buy a Leica. I can tell you that from my generation of photographers, we looked at it as an aspiration that one day you'd have a Leica of some kind. But the thing is that Leica really understands imaging.

And when you look at a Leica spec-wise versus, like, let's say a Sony, it won't shoot as many frames as fast. It won't do as much video or whatever the specs are. It's always lower. But the image quality and the color tones and just the sheer look of it, like, you could tell a Leica image almost all the time.

And the real magic, so to speak, is a combination of the lens. The glass is what makes the color in the photo happen. The color space is in that glass they hand make. And then the processor inside the Leica interprets it all.

And it's just gorgeous. I mean, they really do an amazing job. Yeah, there's a little bit of hype to it. I'm sure there's a crazy amount of markup. But Leica went beyond just being a camera and became a collector's piece, became like an art piece, the way they're machined, how beautifully well they're made.

And they do limited series. Like, people will buy them just to put them on a shelf as a collection. Forget about using it. Well, shit, Johnny, I've made one. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the Leica Stealth that I wanted now is on eBay for $50,000 because they only made like 175 of them or something like that.

It's so annoying that, like, you know, working photographers who can actually use these things and would covet these things can't afford them. It's annoying. Yeah. But Leica does reach out and let the right people use their gear. They may not let them keep it. Yeah. You get to borrow it.

Here's the thing. You get to taste the forbidden fruit, but you don't actually get to swallow. That's the problem. Oh, it's so good, though. You know, I mean, I grew up. I mean, one of my idols when I went to photo school was Cartier-Bresson. I was, you know, I've seen every photograph that he's ever taken.

I've written, you know, thousands of words of essays on his work and the decisive moment and all that. And I finally got my hands on a Leica one time and got to hold it and, you know, play with it. And I'm like, it's still just a camera.

You know, it's like you always have to remember that the genius is behind the behind of the lens, not just absolutely the lens itself. Absolutely. I just taught at Imaging USA in Nashville and I said on stage a thousand times, like, don't buy hype, invest in yourself.

Because no matter what, it's the same hands using that $3,000 camera or if it's a $200 camera, you have to understand the properties of what that camera does and then utilize it the right way. If it's a noisy camera, use that aesthetic for the images. It's not meant to take a commercial clean image. You know what I mean?

Like, there's all these sorts of things. Yeah. Leica gets by by selling to the yacht guy, to the lawyer and dentist and all that stuff because they think it makes them special. You know what I mean? Yeah. My friend Joey, who is the head of the MIT Media Lab, like he sent me a picture one time.

He had just bought an entire, remember the R series? Yeah. Yeah. He bought the entire R series and he had it in like a glass case in his house. I'm like, why would you keep your camera in a glass case? Why don't you have it in your bag and you're beating it up and taking it out and shooting? You know? It's just like, oh, it's because it's like, oh, I bought a Lambo, but I can't drive it to the store.

You know? I mean, they really are photographers' cameras, but if you can't afford a Leica, and I mean this with all my heart, the poor man's Leica will forever be the Fuji. Fuji film cameras are like the affordable methodology and philosophy that Leica is trying to do.

Maybe not the handmade lenses, maybe not the crazy machinery, but something that's about $12,000 to $15,000 in Leica can be in your hand for about a grand in Fuji. I wholeheartedly agree, man. That X1 that I had felt so good in my hands. It was not the fastest to boot.

It was not the fastest to focus. No. I shot – I went – the first thing I did with my X1 was shoot a punk rock show with it. I shot Agent Orange and the Bull Weevils in Chicago. And I tell you what, normally if I went with my Nikon, I would have 1,000 photos and out of those probably, you know, 100 would be like print quality photos.

I came out of that show with the Fuji. I shot maybe 100 photos and I had the same amount of like print quality photos, I think, because I had to take my time. I had to focus properly and I had to wait for my – as we mentioned before, the decisive moment because you only get one shot with these things sometimes.

Yeah. I think people just get hyped up on like the speed and the workhorse of those cameras. Like I use Nikon for commercial work and it's because I can beat the hell out of it and it gives me the quality I want and everything. But when I use the Leica, I really feel like it's – I'm not working.

I don't know how to put it. Like it's – you have tangible dials. You mean the Fuji? Yeah. Yeah. The Fugees really feel – you know, they have the dials. They don't have the screens. They have – it's laid out so that you can really just use it like with your hands. That's a better way to put it. I guess because it's not so menu, right?

Like the controls are right there and then you're really feeling the lens. And this X100V that just came out is like this Swiss Army knife little camera that I just don't feel like I need anything else with me. When I bring a Nikon with me, I'm like, let me bring 40 other lenses, 1,000 strobes.

Exactly. I got a backpack. With my Nikon, I need a backpack. With my Fuji, I needed like my pockets. Yeah. Yeah. I just needed a big hoodie. That's all. Dude, the X100V doesn't even come with a battery charger. You just plug it in the camera into the wall and it will charge the battery so you don't have to even worry about that part.

So, I mean, it's not the first camera to do that, but it's just kind of, man. So, the things that are special about this camera, if you guys are interested in the Fujifilm X100V, you can check out my video on AdoramaTV. I shot with it right there on the channel. But it has a built-in ND filter that knocks out four stops of light.

So, if you have too bright of a day and you're trying to control the ambient light and still use a strobe, you totally can. If you're a landscape photographer and want to have that light knocked out, you just hit a button instead of screwing on a filter. You have an ND filter right there. If you want to have a shallow depth of field, you know, F2, but you have too much light coming in the camera still, press a button.

You got four stops knocked out, but you can still keep a shallow depth of field. That's brilliant. It's interesting with you saying that, which is, that's counterintuitive to what everybody wants to have nowadays, which is low light. They want to be able to shoot in the fucking dark. I know. That's so funny because the first thing someone would ask you about any camera is, well, how is it a low light, bro?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's almost like when they, when you bought a computer in the nineties, they're like, can it play crisis? I don't know, bro. Like mine was quake. It was quake for me. The, the, the low light capability I feel like has gotten so good on these cameras. I mean, we're shooting at ISO is like 6400.

Like it's normal now. Like it's, it's kind of crazy. So people need to have this idea of noise and, um, grain, which isn't the same thing as noise. I'm not going to get into that though. Yeah. Yeah. Let's please not go down that rabbit hole. Yeah, no, but most people are just throwing it on Instagram anyway, and you're not going to see that crazy.

It's not a billboard. No, it's not. And when you look at like, uh, the new cameras out there shooting at, I'd say 1600, you had 3,200 ISO, they're still clean. It's almost like we're shooting 400 ISO with the quality that's going on there, but you're able to shoot in these lower light.

Also you have stabilization, right? You have cameras that can actually handle being shaken and still have a sharp image. It can't stop moving in it. People from moving in front of your lens and they'll still be blurry, but the shake from you holding the camera, well, that happened because you're using slower shutters and lower light.

That's not an issue so much anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of what we're talking about, you know, just before with the, you know, the decisive moment and things like that comes from the days from shooting film, you had 36 shots or 24 shots and you had to, you had to know when you press that button, that's what you're going to get.

Oh, for nowadays it's spray and pray, you know, forget that every shot costs you money. Yes. Every, every time you press that money or press that money. Yeah. Press that money. Gee, every time you press that button, it costs you money. And, you know, I'm just like, okay, well that's, uh, about a dollar 60 for the last four shots I did.

And then I got to go to, you know, and especially when, you know, when it really came into play, when you're shooting, uh, uh, chromes. Yep. Yeah. Cause I, I remember my favorite, my favorite processing place in Chicago was August color chrome. And I would go there and get my stuff dropped off and I'd bring it back out and my dad's like, okay, there's your allowance for the week, you know, cause I was a kid and I was just shooting.

He's like, I, I just, I just did a six rolls of film for you, you know, a Fuji chrome or ectochrome or Kodachrome. And that was it. I couldn't afford anything else. No more new skateboards for you. That was literally it. Now, like I had, I had to weigh the balance between, do I need a new deck or do I need to get my film process?

Yeah. I mean, you would literally look at the role of film and be like, which one was the one that I really needed because that's the one I can afford right now. And if you shot something and you were like testing out, maybe I should shoot a little under a little over that's four shots per every subject then. And then you really only got about eight frames, you know, like, dude, you had to get a, you had to get a second job if you wanted to bracket.

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. And, and it's, it's crazy because so this is where we are now, right? So years ago, a new camera would come out maybe every three, four years. Now we have new cameras every year because the technology is moving so fast, but there was no technology back in the day.

It was like, can it shoot faster frames? Cause a motor drive was moving the film faster. It wasn't, or was the meter like more accurate, but there was no such thing as like, it needs eye autofocus or something stupid. Or can it do video? Can it do video? Right. And can it, oh, well, can it do 4k?

Can it do 4k? Now we're talking about 8k and that's where Canon's coming out right now. So now people, maybe not now with the coronavirus, it's going to be delayed for a while. Yeah. That's exactly where I was going with this is we were spending money on the film between the years of buying the new camera.

Now we're just buying the new cameras, but the new cameras coming out are all delayed. The Canon R5 was an announcement. They had it on display at WPPI when I was in Vegas. No one could touch it though, right? Cause it probably didn't have anything inside the body. It was probably like a dummy body, you know? Yeah, just a, just a, just a 3d printed box that they got from the CAD department.

Basically. But they wanted to get hype up and I don't blame them because they're super excited for finally taking the gloves off and going at this industry pretty hard. The problem is they did it the exact time. They're closing down five factories for the Corona virus. And that means that they're only a 25% production for their entire production line, a product period.

You know, here's the thing though. That's fine because then people aren't going to go out and take photos. Everybody's staying home anyway. They're not going to. I think what's going to happen is people are going to invest in the systems they have for a while. They were going to save up for the next one, but like, ah, maybe I'll get the lens for this, or maybe I'll get the tripod I needed or whatever.

Or maybe they'll just hold off for a second. Cause we were moving so fricking fast. Yeah. I definitely think we moved too fast. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Sony put out two of the same camera in one year last year. The RX 107 and the RX 108, they, they erased the seven right away.

I have makes no sense. That makes no sense. It's just the way things are going, but with the Corona virus shutting down, they're not shutting down the factories. That's kind of a bad way to put it. They're putting them on pause, um, keeping the workers out of the factories and without these cameras coming in, that means that there's no like spikes in the sales.

And that means that the R and D for the next series will slow down as well. Oh, that's a good point. That's a really good point because yeah, the scientists got to stay at home too. Yeah. And they don't get paid. I mean, if they're not making the money to funnel into the R and D, cause when you buy that Canon, at least 10 to 12% of that money is the R and D that went into that, you know?

So when people are buying third party lighting, you know, like Godox or whatever, they're not really paying too much for the R and D because what they did was clone somebody else's company that did the R and D that charges twice as much for the same kind of light. So I'm just saying, I mean, I can go on that forever, but yeah, I'm, I'm happy.

I got my Lumix system right now. I I'm loving this thing and it does have facial recognition. So when I, when I get to set, get set up to do a live stream or just any kind of video, I just tap the button once I smile at it and then it just tracks my face the whole time. So I don't even have to worry about focusing. Yeah.

People that's like a cult, that whole system. It's, it's kind of interesting. And the, uh, what's really interesting on Panasonic is they partnered with Leica. So if you wanted a cheaper Leica, a lot of things that are in Panasonic cameras are the same components that are in the Leicas. So a long time ago, I bought a Lumix point and shoot and I got the DMC ZS 40, uh, which was like, I think it was a Japanese version or whatever, but this has a 30 X optical zoom with a Leica lens on it.

Yeah. And these, I swear to God, these Lumix point and shoots with these zoom lenses on it are un-fucking-believable. And then you're going to ask me, is a Leica worth it? But you have a Leica branded lens that you say is unbelievable. Well, the thing is, you know how much this costs?

This costs $350. Yeah. It did not cost $3,500 or $35,000. This is a $350 camera. Look, look, clearly the people that buy Leicas are better than you. Okay. Just, you just have to. Well, dude, you know, you have, you have no idea how many people are better than me. Basically all of them.

So it's okay. I'm, I'm, I don't take that to heart, but, um, no, I was just saying that, uh, the, these little, uh, Lumixes are, I see why there's a cult around them because they really do put in the work on, on getting these things to be great.

Yeah. They also were like one of the first ones to kind of really focus down on video inside of still cameras. And I think that's why they excelled for travel people. Oh, you know what they also did though, is they also paid the tariff and got rid of the 29, 59 rule. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They were definitely ahead of the curve on that aspect.

And they also didn't put out a camera every five seconds. They let people just live with this system, you know? Yep. I, I've had this camera, this, this little Panasonic Lumix point and shoot for about five years now. And it is still perfectly usable.

This is my, my go-to travel camera. I shot riot fest with this thing and I shot nine inch nails from probably a football field away with the zoom and got amazing photos of just Trent Reznor on stage. And it was, it was stable.

It looked great. And I can't complain about this because they last, you know, I don't have to go buy one next year because it just works. Yeah. And they're using the small sensor so they can actually handle the file handling inside, like the processing inside the camera doesn't have to overwork itself.

So you save the money. You know what I mean? Like that's, it's kind of one of those things. You should put the nine inch nails photos on your, on the GOG Instagram. When you put this episode out. Oh, I definitely will. I definitely will. They're on my Instagram for sure, because that, that riot fest was fun. That it's funny. We talked about last time you're on the, the Rico camera.

I put my picture of, oh, it wasn't a house of pain. It was like that hybrid band that they did. And I took some pictures of that and I put those up there too. So I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll slap those in the, the GOG Instagram or have Brian do it because that's his job.

So I, I wanted to ask you about that. Like this is coming, coming full circle for a reason here. So now that you have this new Fuji and you have a pandemic in New York city. Yeah. I personally, my bread and butter is street photography.

When I did it, I love street photography. I like street photography and photojournalism is really where like my niche was niche niche. I know yours is studio work. Yeah. But do you plan on doing like more street photography with this craziness going on just to get like documented in any way?

I mean, I, I just want to stay the hell home. I honestly, I kind of want to just duck the whole thing, but I have so, I have about 500 makeup shots to edit through to like start posting. So I kind of have a lot of work ahead of me, but as far as a photojournalist thing goes, like I never had that in me.

I always, I mean, I, I did feel like the BMX and skateboard stuff cause I was documenting a culture, but I never like chased events. However, here in New York, what's really kind of crazy is the trains are getting desolate. The streets are getting a little more desolate. However, the supermarkets are slammed.

The pharmacies are slammed. And it's like, to me, I guess I've just always been around New York being fucking crazy. Like it doesn't feel special to me. That's true. So I don't. New York is just New York no matter what. Yeah. I mean, people jam together in one space.

That to me, that's my whole life here. I mean, I was born here, so I, I always try to realize, um, where I live, but I, and it's just so normal to me, all this stuff. And then I see all these people taking pictures of something. I'm like, I see this every day. I guess I never really thought to share it with people.

Uh, the Fuji for me, honestly, I keep it on black and white acros, but all the time and I use it for everything else while I'm doing something else. I shoot the BTS. I shoot my sets. I shot Joe McNally while we were filming with him. Uh, you know, it's really one of those cameras.

It is a great street crammer though. It has, you know, face detection. You can basically not even put it to your face. Um, I just, what was it? The, uh, was the old Rico GR3, I think was like the greatest. Yeah. Yeah. They're whatever. Yeah. The, the old Rico's were the, the big street camera for a while.

So I wonder if this will like maybe dethrone them for that. Well, it is the fifth version of this camera. I just think that it's a price point that some people really don't want to jump into. Like when it hits over a grand, I feel like people really commit to it. You know? Yeah. But yeah, what's the pro, what is the price point on this thing?

So the X100 V is $1,400. That's a fixed lens. It's a complete system. So you're basically just like done. Once you buy the camera, you can add telephoto converters to it. Like make it like a longer lens if you want it, which I had a lot of fun doing in the video.

If you're, if you watch it. Uh, but yeah, I mean, you have to decide whether you just want to have a great camera that feels like a photographer's camera and not something that'll do, you know, be a computer with a lens that'll somehow make you cool on Instagram, you know? So I guess it's more of like, um, uh, creatives camera.

I've been thinking a lot about the street photography angle because I don't live in a big city right now. Well, I live in a massive city, but I don't live in a street city. Like when I lived in Chicago, I would go out to protests and that was like my bread and butter doing photojournalism and stuff when I, when I first was getting my chops.

But a friend of the show, Sean Bonner lives in Tokyo right now and he's got a, like a monochrome and he's out shooting every day and he's got some great, great Tokyo scenes. So I think if anybody is into street photography and they want to check out what, what's going on in Tokyo and see some, see some great work, you should definitely check out, uh, Sean Bonner's work.

I'll link that in the show notes as well. That's cool. Yeah. Tokyo must be absolutely crazy right now. They still, they still like questioning the Olympics, right? No, actually, uh, right before we went to air the, the Tokyo government or the Japanese government, not the Tokyo government, the Japanese government came on, uh, and said that to note, we're still on track.

We're going to do it. Hmm. Uh, that's one way to spread a virus is to get the whole world into one place and then depart. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, let's do physical activities where we breathe on each other a lot. And then, and then go back to like wrestling.

Like I, I mentioned earlier in the show, uh, front of the show, Jason Bryant as actually he's a wrestler or a wrestling commentator. And I'm like, okay, let's have a bunch of sweaty guys rolling around with each other on a mat. And I'm like, oh yeah, let's, uh, don't you miss the, there's enough, not enough Purell for that.

You missed the good old days of just being ringworm. Now it's, I just keep thinking of Eddie Murphy's raw. It's like, you get herpes. That's just like luggage. Oh God. All right, man. Well, thanks for coming on and stay safe in the, in the big city.

So, uh, I think everybody out there should stay safe, you know? Yep. Hope to see more of you on the live streams because everybody's going to be online for quite some time. Yeah. Twitch is about to get heavy. Uh, so if you guys want, you can follow me at twitch.tv slash last X witness, or you can find me on YouTube last X witness, everything just last X witness.

Okay. Yep. All that's just going to be in the show notes. We're, we'll have all that stuff. And I'm actually going to start a Twitch channel if things get really crazy because I, I can't like actually meet any of my clients in person anymore. So I'm just like, okay, well, here's how you podcast. Just, just go watch this. Twitch has been great.

Twitch has been really great. And I'll, uh, you know, I'll totally, uh, siphon some people to you. Oh, sweet. Yeah. I've got that. Like I said, I got this new Lumix that I bought from adorama.com, which will also be linked in the show notes and, uh, all the gear that I have here. I'm, I'm more than happy to, to send those links out, but yeah, everything's going to be virtual for a while for people like us for sure.

Yeah. And if anybody has a like it sitting around, they're not using, feel free to just send it over. Cause I'll Jason DeFilippo J at jpd.me. Fuck this guy. He's got a, he's got a real job. All right. On that note, go fuck yourself.

I'm out. Closing shout outs. All right, everybody hang in there. Stay safe. Uh, we slid into this super quick two days, basically, basically, and everything changed. But remember, we will make it through this. We will come out the other side and it will happen just as quick.

In two days, at some point, life will be normal again. Sure it will. Or reasonably. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to gog.show slash donate.

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