423: Earth Interrupted

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. Now, Brian, it is definitely, definitely a strange time. Are you doing okay, man? I'm hanging in there. Day one of being home with everybody, trying to get stuff done. This is actually, this is the morning day two. My wife and kid are still sleeping, so I'm trying to keep it a little bit down. You got to do what you got to do to work around things, right?

Yeah, man, we got to do. We got to do what we got to do. And, you know, it's interesting. This is the time when the mega rich have a chance to do the right thing and not put off their employees' well-being and welfare to the state. The state that they proactively don't.

Although, you know, technically the state should be stepping up here a bit, but they're not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the state that they proactively avoid paying taxes to is what I wanted to add. That's true, yes. Yeah, so we've got lots of stories in this episode about people doing the right thing and the absolute wrong thing. So that'll be interesting. And I was going through my newsreader last night, and I'm like, oh, there's not going to be any news. Oh, my God, there's some tech news. So it'll be a fun show, I think.

Yeah, I mean, you know, the world continues to move on. That's why we're all theoretically working from home. We have not come to a standstill. In fact, I would point out that the most highly successful people and the richest people are working very hard right now. They're not just sitting at home eating bonbons watching TV.

I had a 14-hour workday yesterday, and I'm definitely not the richest people or the most talented or successful people, but I'm working more than I probably have in a long time. Well, you are working in the right industry for people isolated at home. Yep, yep. And to that point, I actually needed a workspace where I can work in the house at night instead of out in the studio.

So I ended up purchasing the Veridesk Pro Plus TM 48-inch black, which arrives today, so I can have a standing desk in my bedroom. Oh, it's coming on FedEx, and it's not made of food, so it'll probably get here.

Well, I've had some issues with some shipments. You know, Amazon Prime is faltering a bit, as you'd expect they would. A lot of vendors are promising shipments and then sending out emails saying, we're very sorry about this, but it's been delayed by a couple days, and this isn't food or emergency items either.

So expect your supply chains to be somewhat interrupted. Yes, under strain, as it were, because we were going to have a friend of the show, Dr. David Teeter, on today to discuss the virus and his take on it, since he's the smartest guy in the room. And he was supposed to have his microphone on Monday that I ordered on Friday, but of course, last night at around 8 o'clock, which was one hour before they said it was going to be delivered, they said, we're sorry, this is going to be delivered on Wednesday.

So. Yes, that is happening. So we'll see if this Veridesk gets here. I've heard mixed reviews on these, but I need something big that I can put on a dresser and stand at when I'm in the house at night so I can have a separate workstation.

Because it gets, I want to be around the fam when I'm in the house at night, you know, it's like, I don't like being in the studio all day long, because you've been in my studio, it is a dark cave. And granted, it'll still be dark at night in the house, but at least I'll be around the folks.

And speaking of that, I found this over at Science Alert, which explains a lot. Social isolation is linked to higher levels of inflammation, studies show. Brian, we're not fat. We're just inflamed. Yeah, well, there's a number of reasons.

I mean, taking anybody out of their routine, and I think we're planning on talking a little bit about working from home in this episode later on. Is that correct, Jason? Oh, I think that's going to be a theme for a while, because we have serious pro tips for people. Yes, yes, we do. So taking people out of their routine tends to screw people up.

You tend to have less healthy meals than you perhaps would have when you've got it dialed in at your work, and you've got the social pressures of going out to eat with other people. So you get the salad, not the 17-pound burger. When you're at home, you just order in a pizza and glub it down, and perhaps you start drinking at noon.

There's lots of reasons that, hey, for people that are new to this, it's an exciting time. Day drinking is a thing. Day drinking is a thing that one gets passed very quickly because one realizes one gets fired. So, yeah, there are a lot of reasons that inflammation would go up from people that aren't at home.

People also tend to people that are – and this isn't specifically this article talking about people that are working from home. It's just people that are socially isolated or lonely for whatever reason. When that happens, it's hard to motivate to get out and walk or do some exercise or anything like that.

Yep, it sure as hell is. You've got to force yourself to do it, and it's really nice if you have friends to do it with or buddies, but now you have to stay six feet away from all your friends when you go out for your walk. Speaking of that, did you – I mean, a lot of these things we didn't end up putting in our show, and of course, it's going to be a bit freeform again.

Did you see in Italy, obviously, they had the big sing-along that everybody did, and that went really viral. But the one I loved, it was his apartment complex in Italy, and one of the persons that lived in it was a trainer. So, he went out in the middle and started giving – everybody else went out on their balconies on their apartments, and he was giving people workouts.

How cool is that? Yeah, I thought that was really awesome. Like, yeah, that's one way to be all alone together. It really is. That was a fun one. I love the Welsh one, too, where it's like the guy comes out and starts singing, and somebody just goes, shut the fuck up! That's what generally happens around here.

So, Brian, I've got a little interesting news that kind of runs a little close to the third rail for you. So, feel free to say what you do and what you don't want to say on this one.

Oh, my God. So, Lucian Grange, the chief executive of Universal Music Group, is in the hospital after testing positive for the coronavirus. Well, he had a big birthday party where a lot of very famous people were at, including people like Tim Cook.

And that's not the only thing that he attended. He also attended a memorial in Beverly Hills where basically all of music's royalty was at. And I know this because my roommate was supposed to go to that. And at the last minute, she didn't because of work.

And a lot of her friends are there. And so, I think everybody right now is rushing out to get tested because it's not looking good for Lucian right now. So, I think this is not good. Not good. So, yeah, this hits very close to home as my wife works one step away from Lucian at Universal Music Group.

She has not had any direct contact with him. Very rarely does. But everybody that she reports immediately to reports immediately to him. So, we are one step away. We kind of know the vague timeline and it's a bit worse than just his party.

And the memorial service, he went to Europe to attend a music event there, flew back. So, he most likely either contracted it during one of the flights or in Europe and then brought it back. Had his party, went to work, went to this memorial service.

You know, we're here. We are in our house. We are basically more than self-isolating. We are not in any kind of an official isolation period at the moment. But we're basically treating it like we are. And we should know just in terms of timing within a week whether my wife has been infected or not.

But how will we know? Because there are no testing kits. So, unless you're rich or in the NBA, which means rich too. Yes, yes. And the interesting thing is like we were actually mocking this on the episode where you came over to my house. And there's a very good chance that if – well, hopefully there's not a very good chance.

We don't want any chance. But your wife brings it home. Your wife brings it to you. You bring it to me. And then I bring it to my family. And that's how the whole thing works, correct? That's how it works. That's how it works. So, she might get it anyway no matter what after not going to the memorial. Yeah.

I mean the reality is you don't know who you've been in touch with. And you don't know when they contracted anything. And this is why we're doing extreme social isolation now. We've got to flatten the curve. You know, I inadvertently might have helped bump the curve a little bit. We'll see.

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. Isn't it ironic to quote one of your former clients? Yes. So, Facebook, Reddit, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube have issued a joint statement on misinformation. Misinformation is bad. Yeah, thanks for that.

I would like more than a statement about it. Exactly. We are working closely together on COVID-19 response efforts. We're helping millions of people stay connected while also jointly combating fraud and misinformation about the virus, elevating authoritative content on our platforms, and sharing critical updates in coordination with government healthcare agencies around the world.

We invite other companies to join us as we work to keep our communities healthy and safe. Okay, well, ban Alex Jones, for starters. Again. Ban the president. No offense to anybody that actually believes in him or anything, but as we've seen from every single press conference, the first 15 minutes where he babbles are completely false, and then he brings on the experts who actually retract everything he just said.

You know what? All of these press conferences remind me of, and you're going to love it, Baghdad Bob. Yeah. This is the Baghdad Bob of pandemics. Yeah, it kind of is. It's a bit weird. So, that's where we're at. We do need some work on this.

It was actually – it came in this morning, so it was a bit too late for me to pick this all completely apart and get it in the show notes. But Ben Thompson's Stratechery email came out this morning. I don't know if you had a chance to look at it, but he basically talks about how, at the beginning, Twitter was an extremely good source of information because it was only the scientists and the people in the know that were out talking about the coronavirus.

But now that it has kind of come here and gone mainstream, Twitter is almost useless because everybody is talking about it, and they're passing along misinformation, personal anecdotes that may or may not be true, et cetera, et cetera. And he just thought it was an interesting curve of how Twitter was actually very useful for a short period of time and then immediately got run over by misinformation.

Yeah, that's not a – I think that is just the general Twitter curve when something like this happens and then the general public chimes in. So, we'll see. So, moving from misinformation to actual physical misinformation, Amazon is suspending third-party sales of anything but medical supplies and household staples.

Now, they're making this statement in that they're trying to spin it as a wartime effort, and it is to a certain extent. So, they're seeing increased online shopping, obviously, and as a result, some products such as household staples and medical supplies are out of stock. So, they're going to prioritize those over any other items.

So, if you're a third-party provider who sends your stuff, this only applies to the ones that send their stuff to Amazon to do the fulfillment. If you're doing fulfillment yourself, you can continue to do whatever you want. So, they're basically stating we're going to stop everything else. We're going to prioritize getting the toilet paper and all that sort of stuff into people's houses.

But, you know, one of the other obvious side effects of this is they're trying to batten down on the price gouging that's going on. Right. Which they definitely should. Yeah. They definitely should. Oh, yeah. 100%. So, we'll see. Yeah. I don't know.

I've searched for a couple staples on Amazon. They're all still out of stock everywhere. So, let's see. Let's get moving here. But one thing that they – additional thing that they're doing, and this has definitely been doing the rounds everywhere. So, if you've lost a job and you happen to be near an Amazon fulfillment center, they're planning to hire 100,000 new workers to meet the demand.

And, you know, when we go through long periods of time of changes – what's the old adage? It takes three weeks to change a habit. I know everybody is saying we're only going to be in the lockdown or near lockdown or whatever we're calling the thing that we're doing right now for two weeks. It's going to be four people.

So, that means you've had time to change. It's going to be longer than that. It's going to probably be longer than that. We're going to have time to change some habits. And, you know, brick and mortar, goodbye, because everybody's going to move to online shopping. Yeah. This is a systematic reboot of society at this point. So, we can get rid of some really dumb things and replace them with maybe some really smart things.

Maybe. So, speaking of brick and mortar stores, I have a bone to pick with the state of Illinois. They closed everything down except the malls. And my dad works in a mall, as I've mentioned before, and that's the one that really worries me. So, I talked to him yesterday. I'm like, why are you still going to work?

Because I find my friends on my phone and I see that he's at work. And he's like, well, we're contractually obligated to have someone here. Every day. The mall is running on reduced hours, but they have not yet closed. So, you know, he's still got to go and show up, which is just a steaming pile of bullshit in my esteemed opinion.

Well, this is the problem when you don't have a strong federal response. And we're going at it alone, state by state, county by county. We're having a patchwork of responses across the country. Yeah, it's really annoying. Not going to be helpful. Really annoying. I just want my dad to go home. Please, send him home.

And so, he can go home and use Microsoft Teams. Oh, wait. First day of confinement for everybody. Guess what goes down? Microsoft Teams. That's right. Well, I got emailed this immediately from another friend that uses it for their office. I'm using it for my new job.

It was running fine for me. I was never down. So, it's going to happen. Of course, it's going to happen. The demand that day must have been through the roof because, you know, they're not used to it. But it's Microsoft and they have Azure. Doesn't everything on Azure work fantastico? Yeah, but Microsoft Teams in and of itself isn't exactly the best piece of software.

I don't think it was a cloud issue. I think it was a Teams issue. But who knows? They fixed it. It's working. Yeah, it's working. I just think it's funny that their previous issue was because somebody forgot to renew a cert. Yeah. Well, it feels like nobody's home.

Since it's a free product, it's an add-on. I don't think they have a lot of resources basically pointed at it. Well, you know, the Teams team is all working from home using Team. And so, Team went down for Team. So, they couldn't get Team fixed because Team was on Team. They had to switch to their backup.

They loaded up Slack. Everybody went to Slack. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. It took them a while to get their Slack account set up. Set out the invites. Yeah. I have not had any problems with Slack, though, since this has happened. No, neither have I.

But I really just use it for you. So, it's not like I'm a power user. It's my grumpy old geek's collaborative work form of choice. Oh, that's right. I forgot. You fired all your clients now. So, you don't have it. I'm on like 17 slacks. But I've not had any problem. Excellent. And speaking of technology that seems to be launching, but not really in the way that some people had intended.

Verily, which is Google's sibling healthcare brand, has launched a website that will help adults in just Northern California determine whether they need to get a test for the coronavirus. Yes, this is the aforementioned software plan that was going to come save the world, according to our illustrious leader.

That surprised everybody, especially everybody at Google. Especially Google, yes. Because they had planned on rolling this out in a very limited area. It is not ready for prime time. So, the triage pilot is available to those in Santa Clara County and San Mateo County and asks users questions about their recent health and travel.

The site will, if necessary, help users obtain a free test. I am very glad that they did not say that there is any AI whatsoever. It is a simple decision tree. Yeah. If you have done this, then yes, you need a test. If you have not, then no, you do not. They are working on the nationwide website, which they probably were not working on until that press conference, that will provide information about COVID-19 symptoms, risks, and testing info.

So, it is rolling out. It is going to basically just give people a better place than the IMDB of Health WebMD to go to that will let them know if they should go get a test or not and hopefully help them find a test if any are around.

I would suggest going to, say, I don't know, your local NBA team. Well, yeah, it is already overbooked and overcapacity. And the funny thing is, it's just like, yeah, we're just going to be a little bit late on this because nobody's – they don't have ways to share health information back and forth.

It is not a good thing. This is – this reminds me of healthcare.gov. You remember that debacle. I do. Okay. Well, San Francisco's shelter-in-place rules that came out do not apply to gig workers.

So, if you do drive for DoorDash, Instacart, Postmates, Uber Eats, places like that, you still have a job. Well, it's not just them. It's also truck drivers, grocery store employees, pharmacists, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, yeah.

But since we don't generally talk about the unwashed masses on the show, we talk about the gig economy. Yes. They're getting pissed off and demanding that Gavin Newsom put into place AB5 so that they have access to benefits like paid sick leave, disability, family leave, and unemployment insurance.

Yeah, yeah. Would it be nice to have something like that in place first? What's the over-under on that one? Yeah, it's not going to happen in time. It's not going to happen until this is all done. It may not even happen after that. It may not even after that.

Yeah. So, fun times. Fun times. Yeah, you know, I mean, good luck with all of this, by the way. If you're going to send somebody on Postmates to go get the toilet paper, if it ain't there, it ain't there. They don't have any special hoard anywhere that they're pulling from for these services, which is, by the way, this is the sort of stuff that is starting to spread on Twitter.

There's people, like, spreading bullshit conspiracy theories, like, you should order from Instacart instead of going to the grocery store because you know they're keeping a special stuff in the back for Instacart shoppers. No, they're not. No, they're not. They're not, people. They're not. But I think in, you know, in our town now, I got a message from DoorDash yesterday saying that you can now have, like, no contact deliveries.

So, they will, you tell the driver where to leave it. You meet on a bridge. You walk halfway across. You drop the money. You retreat. The DoorDash person walks halfway across the bridge, drops the burgers, and retreats. Exactly. Exactly. It's just like, they will, you have to, you know, tell them where to put it, and then they will, they will let you know when it's there, and that they have left the premises, and that you can come out and get your food.

It was made by somebody who probably already has the virus. You know, it's funny, somebody was actually, I had made a post on my Facebook, I know you're not there anymore, so you didn't see it, saying something along the lines of, you know, for those of us that are financially able to afford this, to help our local communities, and to make sure that the groceries and the grocery stores are really only going to the people that really need them, order some of your meals, because all the restaurants here have been shut down except for to-go orders, or, you know, delivery orders.

Order some of your meals from them, because you'll keep your local businesses open, and you'll keep the groceries for those people who need them, and that was, of course, met with some panic by some people who were like, well, I've heard from people that you shouldn't do that, because now you're having people handle your food that might have coronavirus, and I was like, okay, well, how do you know that somebody at the grocery store that wasn't infected didn't pick that package up right before you did, and now you're taking it home and you've got the virus all over you?

How do you know that people at the grocery store that put that meat package together don't have it? How do you know that the cart that you just used wasn't infected by it? At some point, we have to stop going down the rabbit hole, people, and just trust things. I've been trying to explain that to my roommate for days now, and she just left to go to the grocery store, and I'm like, and you won't let me order from my favorite Chinese restaurant?

Yeah, that's ridiculous. It makes no sense. It makes no sense. If you're that worried, you put yourself in a bubble in a basement somewhere, and that's that, and come out in about three months. But otherwise, just get off it, people. Relax. There's no way to know for sure. Well, that's the thing, and it's like, you know, we're probably all going to get infected anyway, so just go about things.

Yeah, most likely, what we're doing right now, I think people forget this, what we're doing right now with the social isolation isn't to not get it. It's to make sure there isn't a huge spike at one time that completely overwhelms hospitals. That's why we're doing this.

Yeah, so it's, I mean, it's mitigation. We're in mitigation phase because I don't want to talk about that anymore, but yeah, just go buy some damn DoorDash or Postmates or whatever and just keep some people employed because I'm going to keep doing that. I'm going to keep eating my delicious Chinese food and, of course, my paquito mas because you have to.

Oh, God, I wish there was a paquito mas close enough to me. I know. Oh, and tip generously, by the way. Tip very generously. Because they're not getting paid and there's no AB5. Exactly. I always pick the max tip on DoorDash.

And it's literally a quarter mile from my house. I'm like, it wasn't a real stretch for you to get that here, but here's four bucks. And in trying to find the humor in this situation, I particularly love this article. We've all been seeing these social media posts of grocery supermarket stores and just completely emptied out of products.

This is the groceries that no one wants to panic buy. This is over on Slate. Americans are emptying their supermarkets of everything but these persistently unappealing top products. So there's stuff like pasta made from chickpeas, sitting lonely on the shelf with everything else gone.

It's good stuff. Chocolate hummus, which sounds disgusting. That's not good. No, chocolate hummus. If we get to the chocolate hummus phase of this apocalypse, then just put a bullet in me. I'm done. Well, that's pretty much what they said here. They go, chocolate hummus is the canary in the coal mine.

If you see it selling out, it's time to start fleeing into the woods. Totally. And also left on shelves vegan food. And it says vegans will inherit the earth. Nobody wants to eat that shit. Well, welcome to Los Angeles. Not on the shelves here in L.A.

I'm telling you that. Yeah. And pork, which to I say, what's wrong with you people? It's delicious. I had pork chops for dinner last night. What the hell? I don't know why pork is being left behind, but it is. That's silly. Well, that's great, actually, because I love pork. I'm going to have me a pork bowl.

I'll have me some pork chops and we'll go from that. But, man, why would you leave pork on the shelves? That makes no sense. No. Well, something else that makes no sense is that people are still spending millions of dollars building out their Bitcoin mining rigs. But there's a big price drop coming because one of the next great halvings comes in May where you get half of the return based on your mining.

And it's interesting because I just didn't know people were still that into it. And the price of Bitcoin has dropped precipitously lately. Yeah, I was about to say I heard that there was a Bitcoin crash, much like our real money market crash. Yeah. But I guess it's the same psychology, right?

It's crashed. So now is the time to get in. Yeah, it could be. I don't know, man. It's just it makes no sense. It's like if Bitcoin really was this thing that is supposed to be the greatest new type of money in the world, shouldn't it have gone through the freaking roof right now?

You'd think you'd think. Yeah. So it makes no sense to me. And I don't know why anybody still cares about Bitcoin. I just I don't get it. I don't see it. I'm sure somebody I'm sure I'm going to get emails. I know I'm going to get emails. But please tell me where I'm wrong.

You guys do it every week. So bring it on because this just seems silly. Silly. Silly. And since we're now all air quotes working from home, there are people that are worried about how this is going to affect the Internet and if it's going to break the Internet in a real way, not a Kim Kardashian way.

Because, you know, there's just much of what usually takes place in offices is now happening at home. And the infrastructure of the Web is showing some signs of strain already, probably because a lot of people are working while streaming media and doing a million other things as well. So the communications director for UCLA, outage reporting site down detector, has definitely noticed a wave of outages and issues really correlated to the core coronavirus traffic spikes.

So this article kind of goes through what is going to be OK and what's not video conferencing. This will probably be fine because video already accounts for about 70 percent of network traffic. And there will certainly be more people going on Netflix binges as they avoid activities outside the home.

So there are some concerns that adding conferencing to the mix might overload some networks. However, we have pretty robust networks in place already because everybody exists off Netflix and YouTube. And many of the services themselves rely on major cloud providers that are built to handle huge spikes in traffic.

So this is not likely to fail. If you are having a problem with your video conferencing, switch to audio because audio use is basically next to nothing. Exactly, which is why we don't do video. But we're also ugly and I don't want to look at you and you don't want to look at me. And nobody wants to see us sitting around talking into microphones.

Well, we'll have some of that stuff on the next episode. But it's interesting. I wish I'd have bought Zoom stock. Yeah. You know, that's the one I wish I'd have bought. I bought Slack and Slack is tanked. But I mean, everything's tanked. But Zoom actually seems to be up for some strange reason.

Stock trading sites, they will not be fine. Web-based trading services often have issues with atypical spikes in traffic because they don't use the outside cloud providers due to the financially sensitive nature of stock transactions. These sites typically prefer to develop their own systems in-house to make them more secure.

But they often don't have capacity that you get with a major cloud service. It's expensive for trading services to set up systems that can hand extraordinary events like a pandemic. And it's tough to financially justify building a system that can sustain a one in every 20-year event. So lay off the day trading, people.

Yeah, it's interesting. I get E-Trade notices and M1 Finance notices every day. It's like, oh, yeah, your trades are in, but we might not be able to get them because everything's fucked. And for much the same issue, corporate VPNs may not be fine because, again, they haven't been built for the robust usage that they're probably going to be getting now.

So you corporate VPNs have kind of built themselves up to have some remote workers, maybe some traveling workers, maybe the occasional, you know, we'll plan for 5% of our work force at most to be sick at any particular point in time. Yep. But entire staffs being sent home will probably be overloading a lot of these corporate VPNs.

So patience. I forget who it was. Sorry, I forgot. But someone on our Clash Royale clan said that their company just actually bought a ton of VPN capacity because they were anticipating this before the rush. So it'll be interesting to see how this goes.

And video games, definitely not fine. Not good. Not good. Not good. Yes. Internet networks in Europe have seen sizable surges in traffic as people turn to their computers for entertainment while staying home. Schools in Italy, for instance, have shut down, leaving many kids cooped in playing video games.

During a call with analysts on Wednesday, the Telecom Italia CEO reported that its landline network saw a traffic increase of more than 70% leading to a flood of lost internet connections. The spike was attributed to online gaming such as Fortnite, which takes up more bandwidth than most remote work services.

And of course, one has to think of all the brand new podcasts alone being recorded right now. Yeah, everybody's like, I'm going to double down on podcasting. I'm like, no, please don't. Please don't. If you're thinking of starting a podcast right now, please don't. That's all I'm going to say.

Please don't. A little while ago, I would have said, sure, jump on it. I'll teach you how to do it. Here's my number. Here's my rate. Come on down. But now I'm like, no, no, stop. Stop it. Just we've got enough. Yeah. So let's move on to some of the things that are happening right now out in the world that will hopefully be helping.

The FCC has actually done something good for once. Unbelievable. So they have won commitments from phone and broadband providers to support the swelling number of adults and children working and attending classes from home amid the coronavirus pandemic. A group of broadband and telecommunications firms have signed up to the FCC's Keep Americans Connected pledge, which asks all the companies to postpone termination of services for the next 60 days on homes or small businesses because of an inability to pay bills because of the outbreak.

So well done. Going to keep us connected, even if we can't afford the bills. Of course, the bills don't just go away. I'd like to point this out to everybody. They are just going to get charged later. Yep. Probably with interest. At least they're doing this now. Probably with interest, but it's better than nothing. It's better than getting shut off.

It is. It is. And there are some companies that have started to give away free Wi-Fi, but I was going to bring this one up because there's like, oh, we're going to give away free Wi-Fi and we're also going to remove our data caps and make everybody unlimited. Then, of course, I go to which unlimited are you talking about?

Because unlimited for you seems to have a variable definition at any given time of the day. So I don't know. I fortunately have Spectrum Internet, which does not have data caps. But even with that, you're still breaking up half the time we're talking on this show.

So I don't know what's going on out there. Strains. Everything's getting strained. That's the reality. Yes, it is. Everything. Patience and the like. And I found this one over at Science Alert. Apparently, folding at home is back.

Woo-hoo. And they're trying to they're trying to take excess computing power and work on the coronavirus. So get back on some folding at home. But maybe those Bitcoin miners can install it on their rigs instead of and save the world instead of destroying the world with their massive power bills.

You can see how that goes. Yeah. Speaking of beating the coronavirus, just because it is St. Patrick's Day right now as we're recording and as we know, bars are shut down everywhere, including Ireland. All bars are shut down in Ireland for St. Patrick's Day. You do that to people, that messes them up.

The Irish. Now, I'm only sharing this because we don't know yet, but supposedly within a week or so, the Irish have developed a test and they're getting it out to the world. That's what happens when you shut down their pubs. That does happen. Yes. And speaking of, since it is St. Patrick's Day when we're doing this, Dropkick Murphys.

They have not played a show. They've basically played every race. They've not not. Not not played a show for 24 years on St. Patrick's Day. And this is going to be you're going to hear this after it's already done, but I'm sure that there'll be a recording of it. But they're giving away a live.

They're going to play the show with nobody there. And they're going to give away the live stream to everybody, which is awesome. And I found another one. Robin Hitchcock is going to be doing a benefit show from his home in Nashville to benefit people in the neighborhood who are going to be distressed from this.

He's going to charge five bucks and all the proceeds go to like the local charities. And I was I was talking with friends of the show, Fogarty is like, we're going to see more concerts than we probably ever have. And we don't even need to leave the house. And I'm like, this sounds like Nirvana to me. Like, it sounds like Nirvana to nerds.

But yes, I there's a lot of people that are doing this. Chris Martin from Coldplay just did a show on Instagram yesterday. Miles Hunt from The Wonder Stuff just announced on his Facebook page because his show was canceled. He's like, I'll just sit here and play some songs that people want. You're going to see a lot of that, which is nice, but it's still not the same as an in-person concert, people.

I know the world's changing, but. Yeah, but I mean, you take what you can get, man. You take what you can get. And I applaud all of these people for doing it because they could just, you know, be sitting at home and waiting it out like the rest of us. But they're trying to bring a little joy to everybody's day. Well, that's a, you know, if you're, if you're stuck at home, make some art, you know, that's what I'm, that's what I've just been saying.

It's like, I'm going to be here making podcasts for people, but that's, I mean, that's my normal day to day. But people might want to like pick up a new hobby, like, you know, dust off that keyboard that you had sitting in the closet that you've never, never touched. Or, you know, take up some drawing, take up some painting.

Those, you can still get crayons. Crayons are not on the list of things that are sold out everywhere. Just have some fun. Make something in your downtime instead of sitting there spanking it to Pornhub on your VPN to Italy where you can get it for free. You know, do something fun. And speaking of taking up a hobby as a full-time gig, Bill Gates, co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft, is stepping down from the board of the company.

He previously served as CEO until 2000 when he stepped down from that position in order to spend more time on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2008, he left his full-time role at Microsoft to focus all of his efforts on philanthropy, and now he's stepping down from the board to basically go full-time into philanthropic priorities.

So good for him. Good. Yeah, he needed to do that a long time ago. Yeah. So he will still stay on as a technological advisor, whatever that means. I think he draws a paycheck to answer emails. Yeah, pretty much. But I think the new guy, Sacha, is just knocking it out of the park.

So let him do his thing and, you know, get out of the way. Except for teams. Except for teams. We'll always have teams. No, we won't. No, we won't. So now, because we don't have any kind of government help whatsoever, it is time for us to applaud the billionaires who are actually doing something to save us.

Mark Cuban will be paying hourly arena workers during the NBA season suspension, which is nice of him. Thank you so very much for doing that. Yeah. And we've got China's richest man, Jack Ma, who's donating one million face masks and 500,000 coronavirus test kits to the U.S.

Now, if this is anything like our government response before, when who offered us a bunch of test kits and we said, no, we don't need them. Let's take these. Yeah, let's take them. Let's just go ahead and take these. Yeah, let's take them. Yeah, he's doing a bunch of stuff in Africa, too. It's not just the- Yeah, he's all over the world. Yeah, he's just, he's giving shit away.

You know, you get a test, you get a test. So that's pretty awesome because I think 500,000 tests are- Well, things have flattened in China, so they don't even need them anymore. So let's take them.

At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then, explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

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

Media Candy. Well, the latest Picard was right on topic, wasn't it? The best quote, fear is the great destroyer. Oh, man. It's so fucking good. It's so good. It is so good.

It's just so good. Can't wait until Thursday. Hopefully, we'll all still be here. We'll still be here. In other news, you're the one that's panic shopping again. I'm okay. Westworld has premiered. Woo. It was great.

I loved every second of it. I wasn't so sure about having What's-His-Face and Breaking Bad as the main character, but he was great. Dude, he was fucking awesome. Are you kidding me? Yeah, he was. He was so good. He was great. I mean, the whole episode was good. I have no complaints. And I think this is like one of the, I mean, definitely the best season opener for a while.

And no, man, it was great. Yeah, it was really, really good. So something to look forward to in our increased isolation. And I got to say, John Oliver knocked it out of the park. Knocked it out of the park. Yeah, he always does. But I mean, it was just, it was interesting, though, because I was thrown back to, remember when we made fun of the Big Bang Theory, when they took out the laugh track.

And this kind of was reminiscent of it. Like, he's pushing the jokes, but nobody's behind him laughing. Yeah. Yeah, it is rough, isn't it? It is definitely rough. What that 100% told me is that, you know, we do need studio audiences.

He was great, but we need the studio audience. Yeah, it also taught me that, shit, anybody can do that. It's like, damn. It's true. It is true. You know? Not everybody can write it, but almost anybody can present it. Yeah, seriously, man. And the end of his show is just like the end of our last show.

And, you know, guys, be excellent to each other. And go stream Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure on Netflix if it still works. Oh, I guess we should also mention that an awful lot of people are releasing things for free because of this, or not for free, or at least early. Universal is releasing a bunch of their in-studio, or in-studio, in-movie theater movies right now on pay-per-views.

So you can see movies that have not been released yet, if you want to, at home. Disney Plus has released Frozen 2 for the kiddies ahead of time and dropped the new Star Wars film, so last, whatever the hell, the last Skywalker, whatever that pile of crap was called, you can watch that again.

You can watch that again and look at all the plot holes in it. Yeah, and CBS All Access now has every single episode of every Star Trek series ever made. And I know that because every third image in my Instagram feed is an ad for that.

Yep. Now, this is some news that I expect to probably maybe be out of date fairly soon, but this is a petition over at MoveOn.org. Jeff Bezos wants his co-workers at Whole Foods to pay their colleagues sick leave during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bezos and his Whole Foods CEO, John McKay, said that one of the options available to workers was for them to donate their paid time off days to a pool that other workers could draw from. Wow. And that right there, I'm like, okay, you, sir, are no Mark Cuban.

Fuck you. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That is, that is, that is fucked up. Yep. And it goes on to say, why is this important? The burden of coping with this pandemic should not fall on those who are least able to pay for it, especially when Amazon and Whole Foods receive huge tax breaks from the government.

Bezos can afford to pay for these needy workers from his own personal wealth without breaking the bank. It is obscene that he is trying to foist this responsibility off onto his hourly workers. Well, you know, even if he doesn't come from his own personal wealth, the company should step up.

He, you know, he is not all of Amazon. Amazon is still a rich ass company and fuck, you know, fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. Your responsibility should be to the people who work for you because they are also your customers. Yes. Yes.

Well, insane. Absolutely insane. I actually don't know any Whole Foods workers that actually shop at Whole Foods. I see them at Sprouts all the time. Yeah. They can't really afford to be worth the discounts. Yeah. All right. So according to reports and God, we, I know it's happening at the gun shop down here in Culver City.

Not too far from me. Fears have grown among some parts of the country that the spread of the deadly disease could lead to a breakdown in society, which it won't. While others believe the government will try to restrict their constitutional right to own a firearm, which they won't. But anyways, as a result, people have been lining up for hours to get their hands on weapons and ammunition and local store owners say business has never been better.

Yay. Well, I mean, you saw this coming. That was, I mean, that's a no brainer. I'm surprised it took this long. Honestly, I'm surprised it took this long, you know? Yeah. I'd like to point out that prayer and bullets do not stop a virus. So just go back home. Yes. Go home, people.

And this has been making the rounds all over the Twitter sphere. And I particularly love it because I am a Gen Xer myself. Oh, actually, first, a quick thing that Shane Nickerson posted, which I loved. One thing made painfully clear by all of this. A lot of people are fucking stupid. Not news.

This is true. Not news. So the Gen X is trending. And some of the quotes and posts that have been out there, these are the two that I love the most. Boomers are going out. Millennials are going out. The only people that are taking this seriously is the one generation that always gets forgotten about.

Gen X will no longer be invisible because they will be the only ones left. And the second one, shout out to Gen X, the only generation who keep our asses at home without being told. The motherfucking latchkey kids, the generation used to being neglected by fucking everyone will be the only ones left.

Amen, brother, to that. Now go watch Reality Bites. Feedback loop. Over at Patreon, we've got Mark and Jerry. I'm guessing it's Jerry or Gerai. Thank you very much.

And over at PayPal, we have Florian, Andrew, Michelle, Nicholas, Linda, Martin. And Martin writes, hope you're safely in your lairs, grumps. I religiously listened to your show when strolling through the neighborhood with my sleeping baby and just noticed that my Patreon payments haven't gone through since October 2018.

Here's some extra toilet paper and noodle money to make up for it. Well, I have two cases of noodles coming from Amazon, possibly tomorrow. So we'll see if that shows up. So thank you very much, Martin. And Jerisa writes in, a small token to show my appreciation of your grumpy humor. I also want to ask if you guys would throw together a short guide of best practices for all us teachers who now have to switch to remote learning using conferencing software and lecture screencasts.

Folks don't realize the importance of sound. FYI, Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint both offer real-time live captioning for web conferencing. Stay grumpy, but be accommodating. Okay. Yes, we will. And actually, next episode, I think we're going to do kind of a work from home episode.

Yeah, I don't think we're going to make it into this one anymore. Plus, some prep would be nice. So stay tuned. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got Brian and I together between the two of us have some tips. And we're bringing Seth Miranda back to talk about some video streaming stuff, specifically what you're talking about right here, Jerisa.

So we will have that next episode. So stay tuned. Yep. And over on Twitter, where the world is falling apart, Strickey writes down, the world is in a meltdown. And then this happens and sends a link to the standard e-scooters set to be trialed on UK roads as government consults on roads to make them legal.

I don't think this is happening anytime soon. You guys have got quite a lot to handle over there at once. You're dealing with the fallout of Brexit still and trying to sort that out. And you are attempting to deal with the coronavirus through something called herd immunity. So good luck with that.

And it's really funny because I made a side joke to you off the air earlier this week. I'm like, wouldn't it be great if we found out that bird scooters would, were the actual transmission vector for this? Because people cough, they get on their scooters, they touch their scooters, and then they get off and then the next person does it.

Yes. You know, because they would turn this into new bird flu. But this seems to be one of those things where you might want to not do that right now. Yeah. And everybody wipe down your bird scooters if you're still going to use them. And Koi Zero writes in, didn't you guys mention something like this on one of your shows?

I just had a frightening thought. A lot of people are going to start podcasts during the next few months, aren't they? Don't. Please don't. And Barrett writes in, so you've got at least one who's on board with this plan, Jason. I think I enjoy being a fiend. Well, Barrett is patient. He's not patient zero.

He's fiend zero. So thank you, Barrett. InMoss6502 writes in, co-working spaces are fucked. I mean, even more fucked than they were. Not just short term with people working at home, but even longer term, as people get the hang and benefits of setting a home office space.

Holy shit. I feel almost embarrassed by the shout out. Thanks, listener. I've always interacted with the media I like. I used to write comics and magazines. Now I engage on the internet. It's the way I show appreciation. Well, awesome. And you are so right. I mean, that guy from WeWork got out just in time with his golden umbrella.

Yes, he did. Yeah. Yeah. Those things are going to go away pretty quickly. Although I'm not on board with people getting the hang and benefits of setting up a home office space. We'll talk a lot about that next week. But it is hard and people are going to be desperate to get out of the house soon.

And they do not. They're not going to want to stay working at home. No. I guarantee you. The vast majority of people cannot do it and don't want to do it. Yeah. No, you don't want to do it if you don't have to. It's just the nature of the beast for us. But honestly, as soon as this thing's over, get back to work, motherfuckers.

And over at GOG.show, Patrick writes us, while we all do our best to avoid the plague, some comic relief. And that's a link to the Louis Black, a very special The Rant Is Due from 31420 on YouTube. I love me some Louis Black. And he says, thanks for all the hard work. The show still rocks. Sorry for being a twat and pausing my Patreon.

We'll cash up on the donates when my work situation improves. I want everybody out there to know that is donating to the show. We do not want to shame you or anything. We appreciate what money you give us, when you can give us money. If you can't, you can't. That's the way it works. Yeah.

We're still going to make the show. So yeah, it's all donation based. So if you can't do it, don't. We don't want to put anybody in a hardship. And I have to say, it's really funny. I listened to this this morning because I had it on my pillow. I didn't watch it because he's just sitting there talking into a microphone.

It was very funny. But it's also the show that he shut down. Was it Glen Ellen, Illinois? At the College of DuPage, my alma mater. So it was pretty cool. I really enjoyed that. He mentioned it many, many times on the show.

It was very funny, though. It's fucking Louis Black at his best. Carol writes in, Hola! For the last few days, I had this weird feeling. Slight anxiety I couldn't pinpoint. I thought it's the virus panic kicking in. But today I realized it's just the quiet. Almost no noises outside because no one is there.

Now that I realized it, I enjoy it. Thanks for great fun from every episode. I keep hitting those stars. Stay grumpy. By the way, imagine a world with no airlines for some time. And sent a link to us. Most airlines could be bankrupt by May. Governments will have to help.

I don't have to imagine a world with no airlines because I lived through 9-11. And it was creepy after 9-11. And not good because I like travel. Have fun with that one. I'm staying home. I know you are. But once everything gets back to normal, so shall I.

All righty. Adelante writes in, Hey guys, I thought of you when I read this. Hope to hear your thoughts. There's a link over at Slate. America is a sham. I love this article. Policy changes in reaction to the coronavirus reveal how absurd so many of our rules are to begin with.

The TSA announced Friday that due to the coronavirus outbreak, it's waiving the familiar 3.4-ounce limits for liquids and gels for hand sanitizers only. You may now bring a bottle of Purell as large as your mama's ass onto the plane to assist in your constant sanitizing of yourself, your family, your seats, your bags of peanuts, and everything else, etc., etc.

Yeah, this whole article just goes through all the arbitrary bullshit rules that have been set by society, countless rituals of security theater, etc., etc., that are basically just going away. You know, broadband data caps. Hang on.

All other liquid and gels, however, are still restricted to 3.4 ounces. Can't you just put those in a fucking giant-ass Purell bottle and get it through? Of course you can, because it's all stupid. Yeah, broadband data caps and throttle internets. Those have been eliminated by AT&T and other ISPs because of the coronavirus.

But data caps and throttlings were really just veiled price hikes that served no real technical purpose. Why did we put up with them? Because we didn't have a choice. That's why. Police helping landlords evict tenants in time of financial trouble due to the coronavirus. Not anymore in New York, Miami, and New Orleans. Yeah, this whole article just goes through all these things that we just kind of dealt with as part and parcel of that's the game.

And now we're just seeing them all go away because we can. And, you know, like I was saying earlier, it takes three weeks to set new habits. This is going to take longer than three weeks, people, and we're going to get used to these things. And it's going to be a little bit difficult for these companies to usher them back in. I think there will be some outroar about it.

Yeah, yeah. No, that's what I said. This is a societal reboot. So I am looking forward to that part, at least. I'm not looking forward to the rest of it. Lizzie writes in, big fan of the show. Regarding bidets, the Luxe bidet will be the best $30 you'll ever spend. Easy for non-plumbers to install.

No electricity needed. Easy to use. Well-constructed. Cleansed asshole for the day. I've had mine for five years with no problem. And there's a problem with this. Brian, currently unavailable. Sold out. Oh, yes, of course. Sold out.

So, you know what's not sold out? That little spray bottle from the 99-cent store. So just go get that and squirt it up your cooter and your butthole, and you're all good to go. We need to brand it, the Grumpy Old Crapper. Do you remember Uncle Booger's Bumper Dumper?

Yes, of course I do. I think we talked about it on the show a couple times. I know I've brought it up before, but everybody should go to Uncle Booger's Bumper Dumper. Just Google that. And it was one of the earliest, greatest websites of all time. And it's basically just a ring that you put on your trailer hitch on your truck or your car and put a bag on it and you take a dump.

Uncle Booger's Bumper Dumper. It was the greatest. Neil writes us, I've been using Feedly for RSS and sending it to Reader. Version 3 is I'm too cheap to upgrade for triage. Stuff that seems interesting gets sent to Pocket for whenever I have time to read it. Interested to know if you follow a similar approach and whether you can recommend a better workflow.

I think we've talked about our workflows a number of times on the show. Yeah, I'll just make this real quick then. I have a Feedly account, but I do use Reader. And I have moved to NetNewsWire for testing purposes. But I think I am going to go back to Reader since I did pay for it. Version 3 is the one that you want.

You don't want version 4 because the sharing options suck. Because I share everything to Pinboard. So all my links go to Pinboard. And then before we do the show, I go through all my Pinboard links that I flagged and then bring them into the show notes that we use Quip for. QUIP.com, which is not the toothbrush.

And that's about that. And we do the show from that. Yeah, and I do a lot more organic in that I have a bunch of very smart friends on Facebook that always post links. So I grab a lot of those and save them. I also still use Instapaper just because I'm lazy and it's there.

And I paid for it. So I use that when I'm browsing about to save things for later. Yeah, yeah. I use Pinboard for that when I'm browsing around. Because you can get, I think the app for Pinboard is called Pinner on iOS. You get that, then it just shows up in your share sheet. And you can make it the number one option.

So anytime I get a link, I just share it to Pinner and bring it back later. Ralph writes in, Hi, geeks. I wonder if either of you have seen this problem with your iPhone. This could certainly give you something to be grumpy about. This is an article over at Forbes. Apple just gave millions of users a reason to quit their iPhones.

This comes down to bandwidth and cellular data and it just running up tons of data charges that nobody can figure out. Have you seen this, Brian? I have, I do. I have it. I did not. This is like the coronavirus. I've been infected by this Apple bug, apparently.

I did not know this was going on. But as soon as I read this article, you go to settings, cellular, cellular data and find a mysterious entry called uninstalled apps, which is steadily consuming data. I have that. It is pulling data. Apparently, even if you turn off roaming data, it will continue to pull data, which is a real problem, obviously, for anybody that's not on a true unlimited bandwidth plan.

So they've known about it since January. There's no ETA for a fix, no explanation for where the data is going or if they will compensate customers for busting data plans. Somebody spoke with Verizon about the usage. They say it's getting categorized as audio and video streaming, but only because it's using network ports normally associated with these types of services.

I'm going to be really interested to hear what the hell is actually going on here whenever Apple fesses up to it. Yeah. Oh, I need to go check my AT&T bill because my current period right now is 21.3 gigabytes of cellular data. I don't leave.

On the plus side, though, Jason, you never leave the house. So you're always connected to Wi-Fi. Yeah. But why do I have 23 or 21.3 gigabytes of cellular data when I don't leave the house? And this thing has been on Wi-Fi forever. And must be sucking it down when you take your dogs out for the walk.

Current period of roaming is 1.3 gigabytes. System services, 2.6 gigabytes. Uninstalled apps, 1.9 gigabytes. Photos, 4.5. Instagram, 4.5 gig. This is ridiculous. Holy crap.

And shit on a shingle. That's I'm turning that shit off now. Cellular data is going off because I only have like a two gigabyte. Plan on my AT&T account. Yeah. Well, good luck with that. Apparently, you can't turn it off.

We'll see what happens. I just turned off cellular data altogether. Yeah. But they're saying that that does not fix these problems. That's what I want to see. So next episode, I'm going to see if it goes up. All right. Cool. I mean, maybe it's just a reporting bug in the app and it's not actually pushing the data.

Well, let's hope it's nothing nefarious. Yeah. We shall see. These next two, I don't believe, came from Ralph, but I think we somehow lost their name when we were going through and editing this up. So apologies to whoever this was that sent it. But thank you. I know how much Brian enjoys a good satirical article, and I think this may be one worthy of mention.

This is from Jalopnik. Tesla announces plans for workers to build cars at home due to coronavirus concerns. Thanks for your great podcast. You know, we can laugh about this, but I have a friend in Toronto who actually fixes gigantic printing machines. Think like newspapers, the LA Times and all that.

And he told me he's been told to work from home. So I was like, are they going to ship them to your house? Yeah. Oh my God. So that's great. And this person continues on too from me this week. I just wanted to thank you for pointing me at NetNewsWire.

I am currently enjoying this reader very much and have already perved the data that Jason made available about the feeds he follows. Good stuff and useful stuff. Question. Why does Jason have so much porn in his feed? I never knew there was an X-rated deepfake of 300 and will never see Gerard Butler the same way.

Kidding? Maybe. Well, there you go. I want to check through that. I'll be my guest. I'm pretty sure I don't have a porn feed. Nosek writes in, I'm constantly amazed how clever tricks these people use. And this is the coronavirus maps that are being infected with malware.

We mentioned this last time on security, but there will be a link to it in the show notes. Yep. And Paul sends us a link, a coronavirus safe haircut. Chinese barbers offer long distance haircuts amid COVID-19 outbreak. The barbers use three feet long sticks with brushes and other tools attached to the end to service their customers as seen in the clip posted by the South China Morning Post.

The video shows one hairdresser using an electric razor and a comb attached on separate poles to trim a customer's hair while another barber uses a wide brush on a stick to shampoo another client. I'll just grow my hair out for a bit. Yeah, seriously. Go native. Go native. I don't really trust a razor on a stick.

At least they don't have the Lawn Mower 3.0 on a stick doing that. Oh, God. John writes in, grumpy for your health. Why it pays to be grumpy and bad-tempered. And this is a link from getpocket.com. Yeah, I think we talked about this article before.

So the TLDR on this is, being bad-tempered and pessimistic helps you to earn more, live longer, and enjoy a healthier marriage. It's almost enough to put a smile on the dourist of faces. All right. And JustSomeKiwi writes in, I thought you might find this interesting. It's a science podcast out in New Zealand.

They take a very insightful look at the windshield phenomena, aka the insect apocalypse. It's worth a listen. And he provides the link, which will be in the show notes. And if you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to gog.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air, especially anything about working from home, because we're putting that episode together.

And if you're so inclined, please head over to gog.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review, because we didn't get any this week. Aww. Yeah. But hey, if you're listening on the Overcast player, click them stars. Closing shout-outs! So I've got two closing shout-outs.

First is to Dr. David Teeter, who was going to join us today, but is going through some health issues and couldn't make it at the last minute. And we're thinking of you, brother, and be safe. When you get home, we'll try and do this again. And shout-out to MXV, fiend of the show.

He's definitely a fiend of the show. He's got some health issues as well, and it's just a bad time to have health issues. So we're pulling for you, brother. Go get that thing done, and yeah, we'll talk to you on the other side. And until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo.

And I'm Brian Schellmeister. 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 423. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, and get links to stuff we like.

Stay grumpy, and for God's sake, stay the fuck home.

With QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary, all in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.

With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com.