431: Grump Long and Prosper!

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. How's it going, Jason? Same shit, different day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. We've talked a bit about how this is not really all that different from you. So, it's a little different for me. I'm fine. You know, alcohol.

I'm fine. I'm fine. No, I'm doing all right. You know, alcohol intake is up, but I've got to say I'm eating healthier. I've probably lost 10 pounds. Damn, nice. Because I'm getting my exercise in and I'm eating pretty healthy and it's making up for the extra few glasses of wine or scotch every night. So, that's pretty good.

My hair has regressed. I'm going through the stages of my childhood. I definitely had the Robert Smith thing going for a bit. But yesterday, after that extra glass of wine or two, pulled out the clippers and went to my 90s haircut.

The old skater do the shaved sides and back long on top thing. It's the 90s all over again in here right now. It's an easy upkeep hairdo. So, I did that. You know, the wife and I doing fine. We've kind of sorted into a work schedule and everything. All of this would be okay if it wasn't for the kiddo.

And that part just sucks. I mean, this morning, he woke up and talked about how he was missing school, all of that stuff. I mean, I'm literally like they've obviously, you know, they've shut down the beach and things like that. The thing that you may not know if you're not a parent is they've shut down all the playgrounds.

So, we literally take our kid to a parking lot to play. Okay. An empty parking lot, you know. So, that's just a real drag. And then trying to explain to him why he shouldn't touch his face when we're outside before we get home and wash hands and all that is just...

I got an extra doggy cone you can borrow. He won't wear any of that. You know, he's at that age where he just, you know, no mask, no nothing. That's not going to happen. Can't even get, you know, a bandana on him or anything. So, you know, we have to sit him down and basically say, you can't touch your face because you might get germs. You might get sick. You might have to go to a hospital.

And if you go to a hospital, mommy and daddy can't go with you. And Jesus Christ, this is just horrible. Anyways. Well, since you're hanging out in a parking lot with him, you remember that drone I gave you? Maybe now's a good time to take it out and fly around. I know, I know. I should actually bust that out and give it a go. You know, but the last thing we want to do when we get him out to the parking lot is have him just sit there and watch something.

Run, motherfucker. Run. So you go to bed. Well, have him chase it. That's true. That's true. I might give that a go. That's a good idea. Yeah. Put like a little Scooby snack on the bottom of it. Hang it off and say, go get your treat, boy. Run him around for a while. Right. In dogs and cats living together in perfect harmony, we are in the end times. Apple and Google are going to work together.

Yes, they are. They are joining forces to smash any remaining privacy we have. They are building what for now will be an opt-in contact tracing tool, but I'm sure it won't be opt-in too much longer, using Bluetooth technology that will help officials track the spread of COVID-19.

So it brings hope of a quicker end to the pandemic, but also a host of privacy and security concerns, as one could imagine. This is actually a smarter plan than many other people have tried to rule out so far, because it does attempt to at least maintain anonymous information as long as possible, basically, until you get infected, at which point you will no longer have any privacy whatsoever, because they will hurt absolutely everyone that you've been in touch with for weeks.

This is kind of like that system in Batman, like the Dark Knight, so we just need a big button at the end where they can just blow it all to hell. Much like the last episode of Westworld. I don't know if you watched that last night. Not yet. Nope, not yet. No spoilers.

No spoiler of that one. So, yeah, so there you go. They're rolling it out. It's going to roll out pretty quickly. They're figuring two weeks or so. That is quick. Yeah, that is real quick, which makes me wonder if they'd been working on this for quite some time. I think it's just cobbling together all the Bluetooth stuff they've already got for advertising, you know, the beacons and all that stuff.

This is like, this is baked into the, this is baked into the whole operating system, man. This is, you know, they're bread and butter. They're just repurposing their ad tracking system for people tracking. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Is there really a difference? No, there's not really a difference. So, yeah. Apply use case to this.

Yep, that's pretty much it. I mean, we already saw that third-party company can see everything and anything whenever they want. So, you know, it's cats out of the bag, horses out of the barn, privacy out the window. So, let's put on our no longer all that crazy tinfoil hats and roll out the idea that this will no longer be opt-in.

It will then become required. Mm-hmm. So, how does one get around that? Well, in a place where it's already required, South Korea, people would just leave their phones at home and go out. So, what is the next step then? Tag them like a cow.

That is exactly what's happening. South Korea will be putting wristbands on people defying quarantine after people trick the government tracking apps by leaving their phones at home. 57,000 people who entered South Korea after April 1st are confined to their homes for 14 days. But over 160 have already been caught breaking curfew through the simple expedient of not bringing their phone with them.

So, yeah, now we're going to get physical wristbands for people that broke the law. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, same as a house arrest. Yeah. I just like that, you know, the fine can be up to a year in jail and $8,200, which is, you know, that's not insignificant when everybody's unemployed.

Yes. Yes. Good luck getting that $82,000, but that's not the point. I think the point is we will put you in jail so we know you will not infect anybody else. Unless you get infected in jail and then it's not our problem. Oh, WeWork, WeWork. We love to hate WeWork and now we have more Weezins to hate WeWork.

WeWork has refused to let a startup move to a smaller office and pay less rent after laying off most of its staff, forcing it towards bankruptcy, says Charlie O'Donnell. He's a venture capitalist up in New York. And turns out this company had like 20 employees.

Everything was going gangbusters. They just moved into another bigger space at WeWork and then everything hit and they had to lay off 14 of the 20 people and, you know, just to conserve enough cash to get through it. Well, WeWork, you'd think that they would work with them to give them a smaller space so the company could stay in their name.

It's called WeWork. We will work with you. Nope. Nope. Turns out they won't. Yeah. We won't. We won't. So they're forcing them to keep the larger space, which basically means they're not going to have enough money to make it through this, to get on the other side, to get their people back and get the business back on track.

Right. And the interesting thing about this is Charlie is saying that this company is acting like somebody who's not going to be around in a year because they're just trying to get as much money as they can, not think about long-term customers. Yes. Look at some of these companies. Their business models are not workable in this new future that we're all starting to envision already.

I can't imagine Airbnb is going to be anywhere near the company it once was when we come back to travel. Nobody's going to want to stay in other people's homes. You're going to have to – hotels are going to roll out. We completely disinfect rooms in between each stay, and that's going to be a massive selling point.

Now try to get Bob that lives down the street that puts up his one shack Spanish-style place to do that. He's not going to. So trust is going to go back to these bigger organizations. WeWork, I mean, come on. Every company in the world is trying to pivot to a work-from-home situation right now.

We work from home. Rents, business rents, all that sort of stuff are going to tank. They are going to be so low because people are not going to be moving into these spaces and because of the economy in general. So, yeah, WeWork's business model is looking a little creaky on the other side of this.

Well, here's the irony. WeWork is refusing to pay some of their landlords in negotiating lower rent. So, you know, do as I say, not as I do. Yeah. I mean, I've talked to a couple entrepreneurs and business owners that have office spaces right now.

They are mostly transitioned to work-from-home for the time being, and they're looking at it. Well, first off, what they're doing is they're going to their landlords and basically saying, nobody's coming in right now, so I will give you this percentage of rent. And if you don't want to take that, I am just going, I'm out of here.

I'm gone. I'm just moving out. That's it. And you'll never see us again. And, you know, at the same time, they're kind of planning to do that anyways, or at least, you know, looking for smaller spaces when we get on the other side. So, yeah, landlords are in a tough spot right now.

Well, everybody's in a tough spot. Everybody's in a tough spot, yeah. That's true. You know who's not, though? Who's not, Brian? Amazon. All right. Yeah, I read through this very long article over on Vox. You know, we've been talking about this for a while, and this is just speeding it up. Amazon was already powerful. The coronavirus pandemic cleared the way to dominance.

And it gets into, obviously, how they're an essential service right now, and they are being extremely helpful. It's very useful. They're shipping the things that we need to us. They're making vague attempts at doing good things, but more missteps than anything else.

I don't know about you, man. I can't find anything to buy from Amazon because everything's sold out. Well, they're struggling with that, right? That's because everybody's using Amazon right now, and, you know, everybody listening, go to your secondary-level stores and find stuff there. My roommate just went to Ralph's this morning and actually found a bottle of Lysol, believe it or not.

Yeah, things are starting to trickle back into the regular supply chains. Amazon is still having a hard time, but it's a problem of success. The reason Amazon is having that hard time is everybody is purchasing everything from them, so their power is definitely growing. Walmart and Amazon, which already dominated a significant percentage of brick-and-mortar retail and online commerce in the U.S., for this, this has been a huge boost to their already substantial business and power.

Google searches for Amazon are at near-holiday season levels, in-store sales at Walmart have rocketed, and both companies are hiring 250,000 new workers each. So they're killing the mom-and-pops in the mid-level businesses right now, which we kind of knew what was going to happen. And they're definitely moving into the shopping and grocery pickup and delivery.

And people may not go back to their old habits once this pandemic ends, for the same reason that we're talking about, you know, things are going to be different on the other side of this. And the real worry about Amazon is not – Amazon's much more of a threat than Walmart is, because Walmart is just becoming a huge mega-super store, right?

Amazon is positioning itself to be the market itself by providing the entire underlying infrastructure. Basically, if you're not Walmart and you want to be in business, you're going to be paying Amazon for their shipping platform, their shipping systems, their cloud computing, et cetera, et cetera. So they're basically trying to turn themselves from the open public marketplace into a privately controlled one, which would not be good.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there are other places out there that have, you know, much smaller infrastructures, obviously. So those places will probably get a nice boon, or they'll just get put out of business by Amazon or bought, you know, because monopolies. I just think it's funny that Amazon is still going gangbusters with Amazon Prime Day.

They think that that's still going to be a thing. Nobody's got a job, dude. I know. I mean, like, you know, our revenues are cut way down, and, you know, we didn't make anything on this show to begin with. Yeah, we've taken a hit, understandably so. And we've told people not to pay us if they can't.

Yeah, so I don't know. You know, maybe they're sitting on a secret stash of toilet paper, and Amazon Prime Day is going to be get a rule free with everything you buy. And maybe people will buy something just to get a roll of toilet paper. Who knows? Could be. Could be. And just because this is a bit of follow-up, because we've been following the story on and off for the last, oh, I don't know, two years or so.

At least. The IKEA smart blinds are finally available to buy online, obviously, because you can't buy them in a store, so you can only get it online at this point. IKEA is sharing its doors. So, yeah, the feature blinds are finally available.

Shoppers on Reddit and 9to5Mac have noticed that IKEA started selling the blinds in the U.S. several months, I'd say several years, after they were initially limited to in-person customers. So, they've started at $129 for one size, $179 for the larger size.

You also need the $35 trade-free gateway if you want to take advantage of Alexa, Google Assistant, or HomeKit. So, you can finally get your cheap electronic blinds. Okay. Not so cheap anymore. Yeah. But, uh, that's the thing.

It's like, okay, that would have been nice about, uh, you know, a couple months ago, I'd have probably picked one up to try it out. But, uh, yeah. $129 is a lot of baked beans right now. No doubt. No doubt.

Media Candy. So, I finished The Witcher a couple nights back. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Again, Game of Thrones light, but fun. Okay. Now it'll probably be cancelled. Probably. I can't imagine. They say it's renewed, but we'll see when we ever get back to any of this.

But, uh, yeah, it was good. I mean, the... I found parts of it were quite surprising. There were twists and turns that I didn't expect. Uh, the sad part being the finale episode was entirely predictable. But, still, very good. I liked it quite a lot. Um, the other thing I watched, uh, Parasite.

And what did you think? The Oscar award-winning movie, which is on, uh, shockingly, the only place to stream it. Hulu. Yeah. So, gave me a reason to launch Hulu. It's funny, because my wife was the one that wanted to watch the movie. So, I was like, okay, well, let's throw up Hulu. My wife has never looked at Hulu.

My wife is not a designer in any way, shape, or form. She's a lawyer. So, she, the entirety of her work life is in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook. Yeah. So, she knows a bad UI. Uh, so... She knows what she speaks, yes. So, when I launched up Hulu, she was like, oh, my God, what is wrong with that interface?

So, very funny there. Um, Parasite as a movie? Holy shit, that is batshit nuts crazy. I did not expect it to be that insane. I, I, I, I was flabbergasted that this won the Oscar for Best Picture, because it is so off the wall out there. I loved it, though.

I thought it was a great movie. I thought it was okay. I thought it was okay. I mean, I, I've watched a lot of South Korean film, and it's kind of par for the course. But, okay, well, it was good. I, I, I'm not steeped in South Korean film, so. Okay, yeah. I mean, it was good, but it wasn't, it did not live up to all the hype that I'd been expecting, you know?

Because I'd been hearing about it long before it got on the Oscar radar, and, you know, it was, it was, it was okay. It was an okay movie. I didn't think it should have won Best Picture, but I think everything at the Oscars now is just politics, so it doesn't even matter. Right. It doesn't matter at all. And I, I did watch something else with The Wife.

Um, we were very much big fans of Modern Family when it first came out. I'd say even the first, um, five seasons or so. And, um, you know, any sitcom after five seasons generally becomes a formulaic wreck, as Modern Family did, so we stopped watching.

And I think, uh, this is, this was his 11th season, I believe, and final season, and just for old time's sake, we knew the finale was airing, uh, hour long, and we put it on. That was god-awful. Really? Just, absolutely.

It's the exact reason we stopped watching the show. The jokes were flat and stupid and didn't even make sense. The acting was piss poor. Nobody seemed to really give a shit except for Eric Stormstreet. He's awesome. He's always awesome. Um, the character, there had been absolutely zero character development since we stopped watching six years ago.

Oh, man. Uh, I, I, you know, usually when a show ends, especially a show that's been running for so long, the, the, you know, the original writers and the original creators come back to, to see the show out and give it a good end. Yeah. That did not happen here. My God, what a piece of shit.

Oh, well, that's, it happens sometimes. It does. It's, it's sad. It's just because that show was so good when it first came out, but never seen it. Never seen an episode. Now I won't know. Now I know I don't have to, uh, but speaking of God awful, man, did you watch the, uh, SNL where they all did it from home?

I saw the Tom Hanks monologue and I was just like, I can't sit through this. Like, yeah, some of these shows are work. John Oliver is working. Bill Maher, not so much, uh, his one-on-one interviews are fine, but seeing everybody to try to, to make this pivot to at home, you know, draw, draw the curtain back and see behind this, behind the thing is it's hit or miss, right?

So I can't imagine that SNL would be any good. No, it wasn't. It was, it was really kind of terrible. And the biggest issue I had was, um, the audio was so awful that it was unlistenable. Another pitch for you to be hired, Jason. I'm telling you, well, I got to put together something for, I'll talk about it later, but like, um, Kate McKinnon's bit, she did this Ruth, uh, Bader Ginsburg, uh, like workout routine thing.

And you couldn't understand her. It was so bad. I'm like, you know, you still can from Amazon, buy some lavaliers. It'll cost you 200 bucks and make you sound like you're still in the studio at least. It's like, I, even watching CNN, I'm like, you guys know how to broadcast from the field.

You send, you know, people around the world, get them a damn microphone. You just could not, could not, I couldn't stomach it. And the jokes were flat, you know, it didn't work. Yeah. It's like, you know, for not much money, you can make a really nice looking video set up at home.

That sounds great. And I don't know why these engineers from these studios are not, or these channels are just not even trying. Like, you know, maybe they're just think that it's kitsch to, you know, have people look like they're at home. You can still do that with a nice camera for, for under a thousand dollars.

You can make these people broadcast quality. So I don't know what the hell's going on. Right, right. So yeah, it was bad. I will not be watching that then. So Siffy has been re-airing Battlestar Galactica in an effort to give people something to do, which is kind of cool. And the Battlestar Galactica cast has been going along with it where they've been kind of redoing recaps alongside of that.

But there is something kind of cool that's about to happen. They're going to release a bonus episode featuring a cast reunion with a live read of the acclaimed and beloved episode 33, which is kind of cool. I love that episode. Edward James Olmos, James Callis, Jamie Bamber, Katie Sackhoff, Michael Trucko, Rika Sharma and more will join the podcast.

No word if Ronald D. Moore will be there. And if he is, I'm not listening. Well, he doesn't have any lines, so it's okay. Right. No, that's cool. That's very cool. That's pretty cool. And over on Twitch, my friend Gigi Edgley, who played Chiana in Farscape, has been doing watch parties every night.

So she'll start up the episode. You have to, you know, have Amazon Prime video to watch it because it's all free. The whole series is for free over there. Well, with your Amazon Prime subscription. So basically, it's five o'clock Pacific Standard Time. They press play and she does.

Yeah, everybody hits play. And then she plays along and gives you behind the scenes stuff and talks about the episode. Very cool. So if you're a Farscape fan, which everybody should be, go check that out. Excellent. And Netflix has a new show about to launch fairly soon called Space Force, starring Steve Carell and Lisa Kudrow.

And the official synopsis is a decorated pilot with dreams of running the Air Force, four-star general Mark R. Naird, which is Steve Carell's character, is thrown for a loop when he finds himself tapped to lead the newly formed sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, Space Force. So I'm not surprised that this is happening because it is a concept and a title rife for being made fun of.

So hopefully it'll be good. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. I'm not a big Lisa Kudrow fan. I'm not either, actually. But, you know, you never know. Yeah, Steve Carell's hit or miss for me. I mean, he's more good than not. But Lisa Kudrow, I don't think I've ever seen anything I liked her in. So probably a miss.

And speaking of Steve Carell, who played the Despicable Me main character, the kid finally wanted to watch, was desperate to watch Minions, and we decided to have a movie night last night. And I had not seen Minions before. Goddamn, that's funny. I mean, it is funny for parents. Like, I was dying.

So many of the jokes way over my kid's head, but aim squarely at parents. It's well worth it. It's well done. That whole series is phenomenal. I loved all the Despicable Me movies as well. I saw those. Kid hasn't seen those yet, but they're up on deck. We started with Minions. Really good. I highly recommend it. If you need a laugh, as we all do right now.

I could use one now. Yeah. Watch it, Jason. You'll really enjoy it. It's very funny. I'll check it out. Yeah, I love the Despicable Me movies. They're fantastic. Oh, you'll love that. This is basically the prequel. This is how the Minions found him. Oh, okay, cool. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I could really use a laugh right now.

That's why I kept trying to watch The Tiger King, and I can't make it through episode three, and I've tried four times now to get through. I start halfway through, and within 10 minutes, I've fallen asleep. So it is a great sleep aid for me, I've found, but I just can't watch it.

I know everybody loves it, but just not for me. Oh, yeah. Put this on tonight, Jason. You will thank me later. Will do.

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.

Moron of the Week. Well, we have two Morons of the Week this week. I saw this one, and it just was too much. Kendall Jenner and Justin Bieber. They are so happy that they have all of their privilege and went on Instagram and made a little video, and I watched it, the clip that they had, and wow.

Look, this is a really good time for celebrities to shut the fuck up and not say much. There are some people that are doing it okay. I don't know if you've seen some of the videos that Arnold Schwarzenegger has done. They're actually very funny.

Oh, yeah. I follow him on TikTok. He's sitting in his hot tub and begging us to all stay at home, and then there's pan around his gigantic mansion. It's very easy for me to stay at home, that sort of thing. So, you know, tongue-in-cheek and aware of it and funny and all that.

And these two? No, not so much. No, it's worth – you need to go check out the link in the show notes because it comes down to the tweets that come after it, you know? It is – it's just one of those things where let's pick one at random here.

Justin Bieber's career started because Usher came across him singing on YouTube. Kendall Jenner's dad is an Olympian. Hailey Bieber's dad is a Hollywood star. Get the fuck out of here with being blessed and working hard. And, oh, yeah. Thank God they're acknowledging us.

The poor. They're acknowledging the poor. So grateful. Suddenly my debts are wiped clear and I'm no longer unemployed. And the hits just keep on coming. It's tone deaf. Tone deaf at its highest. Feedback loop. Over on Patreon, we've got two new subscribers, Nancy and Nico.

And Nico says, people are going crazy in South Africa, which is a boozy country without alcohol and cigarettes. Both are deemed as non-essential items and are thus forbidden to be sold. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Can you imagine trying to, like, kick smokes forced on you while you have nowhere to go?

And no booze. And you're just sitting in your house? Yeah. No nicotine, no booze, nowhere to go. That is – I mean, South Africa has always been a powder keg. But, man, talk about some murderous folk going to be running around there pretty soon. Yeah, not wise.

Not wise at all. And over at PayPal, we've got Andrew, Ralph, Adam, Michael, Jonathan, Mark, Linda, and Andrew. And also Eric. Eric says, hey, guys, love the show. Never donated before and want to keep the snark coming. Check out the Bourbon Hunters podcast that my coworker is just starting.

We'll put a link for that in the show notes. Thank you. And David, who writes in, love the show. You guys buy yourself a couple of cases of good beer. Done and done. Done and done. Devin writes in, hey, grumps, after the apocalypse ends and people slowly start wandering out into the sunlight again, I plan on getting back to hiking.

I remember a few episodes back, Jason geeking out about cameras and wanted to ask if he could recommend a good lightweight beginner camera that I can fit in a pack and carry around for about 12 hours at a time. Thanks. Well, Devin, when you're done with listening to the show, go to gog.show slash Adorama.

That's A-D-O-R-A-M-A. And I will put a link in there for the Lumix G7. I got a couple of those to do studio stuff here for, you know, 4K video and things like that. And it turns out it's a fantastic little micro four thirds camera. So much better than anything being used on SNL.

Oh, so much better. So much. I think they, I think they set everybody up on SNL with Connectix Quick Cams. And Cherie writes in, damn it to heck, Patreon. I've been trying to reactivate my Patreon link so I could donate to you guys regularly. And the stupid app keeps telling me I already have an account and won't let me log in.

Anywho, here's some money to help you guys keep going. During these dark times, it's a drop in the bucket, but hopefully that bucket overflows eventually. Love you guys. Hey, Cherie, don't feel bad. We are, we are Patreon creators and they can't seem to get an email to our email addresses. So, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. Not the best thing going on over there. No. And Linda writes in as well as donation. Thank you, Jason and Brian. I used to, just a mere four weeks ago, listen to you while driving between music lessons. Now I'm listening after teaching online for nine to 10 hours, usually accompanied by a glass of wine and a knife for chopping veggies.

Just use it on the veggies. Nobody else. Please. You guys are my distraction from reading news and my wind down from a day of trying to keep my 2013 MacBook Pro working. Four ice packs a day seems to do the trick. And figuring out how to communicate a skill like piano playing and singing by way of the internet, often with five to six year olds.

Definitely put the knife away. Anyway, I appreciate more wine, less knife. Anyway, I appreciate your perspectives and please keep the roommate references. Cheers to Jason's roommate. Well, thank you, Linda. We're going to have to start cutting her a check pretty soon. Don't say that. And BG writes in, hi guys, I really love the show.

Been a long time listener. I had a question for Jason. My wife is going to be teaching a college class over Zoom and I wanted to get her a microphone that she can use besides the built-in mic on the Mac. I was thinking a lavalier so she could move around a little bit. Do you have any recommendations? Thank you so much. Again, go to GOG.show slash Adorama.

There is a link in there for the Rode Wireless Go Labs. And I've been using those for my live streams. And you can walk around. It's wireless so you just have a pack and a lav and just walk around the room. They sound great and highly recommended.

There you go. Over at Twitter, Travis writes in, AI isn't superhuman. Blasphemy. Elon Musk seemingly used the superhuman false narrative in advancing Tesla's self-driving car ambitions. Yeah, this is over at Forbes. And I made an honest effort to attempt to read this article.

I don't know why it exists or what the point even is. Yeah, Musk is a PR machine, but he's also one of the people that's super wary of AI and has been sounding alarms about it. So, he made a stupid tweet. Musk makes a lot of stupid tweets. Elon Musk made a stupid tweet. Whoa. Does every stupid tweet need 10,000 words posted on a blog?

I don't think so. We're in the middle of a pandemic. They've got to keep their word count up. There's nothing else to do. I guess so. It's got to keep the clicks coming in. Martin writes in, my ad-free RSS link was stuck at episode 427. Was starting to miss you guys. Might it be because my Patreon contribution was a few days late?

Probably. I guess if you lose access to Patreon, you lose access to that feed. So, get her fixed there, buddy. Technology Culture writes in, without commute, my podcast intake has easily dropped 80%. However, I still listen to GOG because it helps to maintain what counts for sanity these days.

Your, including Bittner, honesty is priceless and much appreciated. Let's cope together. Well, we are. Trying to. Never tried. Masuk502 writes in, we have two cars, so we alternate a short trip every five days or so. We usually go near the beach to yell at the asshole boomer gringos who are coming thanks to cheap plane tickets and ignoring all safety guidelines.

I can't believe people are still flying. It's amazing to me. I didn't know they were allowed. I guess since Puerto Rico is part of the United States, they can go there. Yes, and remember, Delta has their policy to not sell middle seats. Middle seats. We can maintain social distancing.

Oh, my God. In a flying tube. Yep. Oh, my God. Nathan Sage writes in with a link to YouTube. It's a 3D printing 300 face shields per day. All righty. And Lockdown Joe writes in, sorry, can't star your podcast. It's the one podcast that I skip my backlog of 40 plus unplayed to jump to and play first.

Okay. Don't know why you can't star us, but. You can star every episode. I don't know why. I don't know what's going on with that. Let's get Marco on that. We need that. Yes. Grumpy Grunt writes, we need a one hour security segment with Bittner and the three of you getting drunk, including Brian, having fun, reminiscing about them.

Good old times, et cetera. Well, stay tuned for Friday because the desire to do any security news seems to have left the building. It really has. It really has. I mean, there's some out there, but not much. Not much. And Ken writes in, you guys are really pumping out great episodes lately.

Thanks for your hard work. You're welcome. You're welcome. And Matthew writes in how COVID-19 has impacted media consumption. And this one's for Brian to ride his hobby horse around to enjoy. Yeah, some interesting infographics on what people of different age groups are consuming and what they aren't.

So pretty cool. Pretty interesting. And over at GOG.show, Doror writes in, great show. Thanks for keeping it regularly on those days. Well, we're trying. Regarding the portable car jump starter. Yep, it's great. The only thing that is keeping it in the car kills it if you live in a hot place. Car temperatures in the summer are well over 150 degrees Fahrenheit here.

You're going to cook yourself. And he lives in Tel Aviv. Wow. Not the best for batteries used in those devices. And many get swells. So on the other hand, if you do need it in the car when you need it. So you can see the problem here. Keep on the show. Thanks, man. Yeah, we're in Southern California.

And it doesn't get chilly here in the summer by any stretch. So keep an eye on that. Yep. And Wilson writes in, hello, Grumps. Longtime listener to your amazing show. Love the work you guys do. You guys have mentioned a few ways to help local restaurants out in the past. For example, buying gift cards for later use, tipping hard, calling your local restaurant order and pickup instead of using delivery platforms, etc.

Was wondering if you've heard of dineat11.org. They've teamed up with some of the best chefs and beloved restaurants to feed the heroes in health care during the COVID-19 crisis. Very cool. So there's a link in the show notes that talks about it. So that's pretty awesome. And then he moves on to talk about podcast gear. I know you've mentioned the podcasting gear you guys use.

I recollect in two plus separate past podcasts. And I've mentioned it is listed somewhere on your website. I think we've talked about the gear we use on like 50 shows at this point. But yeah. I've tried looking through your site, dug through past show notes, blah, blah, blah. Could you help direct me to this list of podcasting gear?

All right, Jason, you're up again. Right now we've just got the basics up, but we're going to be putting up. I'm going to put my pro kit up there as well because Brian's using some different gear than I'm using. We both have very similar microphones.

I've got the RE20. You know, you've got an RE27 ND. I've got an RE20. I'm using a PreSonus Studio 192. And you are using a MixPre-6. That's right. Version 1, not version 2. So, yeah, and we use a bunch of software and stuff.

But if you want to learn more, I'm going to talk about this in a minute. But I'm doing a live stream on Thursday with Chris Lockhead where it's basically an AMA on how to podcast. And all of the gear will be talked about there. So link will be in the show notes for that. But it's going to be Thursday at 6 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on Facebook Live.

Let's tell the truth about that, though. Jason will be answering questions and Chris will be drinking. Yes. Yes, exactly. Well, Chris is going to be pressing the button to make the little things pop up so I can see the questions. That's how that's going to work. Right. And Neil writes in, thought you guys might like this video.

GameStop is making their own hand sanitizer. And I use that term extremely loosely to be an essential business. Plus, also denial of COVID in their warehouses. Worth a watch to see what a shitty company they are. Grump Long and Prosper. I like that one. Me too.

Yeah. So I haven't watched this video yet, but I know how shitty GameStop is already. Look, not being a gamer at this point, don't most gaming platforms allow you to download videos? Why is there a physical store still even necessary for gaming? Well, the best part about it is you get deals on old games.

Okay. So because you can sell it. Like if you buy games on a disc still, which I don't know who does. Well, actually, Jordan Harbinger does because he's always like, hey, I just got these for 10 bucks. I go to the Microsoft store and they're like 60. So I'm like, I can see that. But basically, it's just, you know, controllers and resellers and stuff like that.

But they're trying to stay relevant. But I give them another five years because everything. I've never bought a single game for my Xbox One on a disc or maybe one when I first got it. But that came with the bundle. Everything else is digital. So I think the clock is ticking on those guys.

Right. And Ben writes in in episode 429, you mentioned and linked to a crazy legal brief with all the big names as co-defendants. This reminded me of this gem from DEFCON 17 titled, That Awesome Time I Was Sued for $2 Billion. The speaker may have tons of stuff from your old BBSs. Love your show.

I didn't get a chance to watch this, unfortunately, but it is on my list. Yep. Mine too. And the link will be in the show notes. And this is from It Has Been. Hi, guys. Thanks for helping us. IT Has Been, I believe. Oh, IT Has Been. I thought he just missed. I thought he missed his caps there. He was trying to do some camel case.

Hi, guys. Thanks for helping us getting through these days. In an episode recently, Brian mentioned his COVID-19 playlist. And this spoke to me. I've been stuck with my wife in the house since 310. I feel you, brother. Yeah. We'd just gotten off a cruise and were told to stay and work from home for 14 days. Thoughts of music came to mind recently.

The first week of the quarantine, the wife walks in and you queue up Huey Lewis's Happy to be Stuck with You. Week three, you queue up Tom Petty's Don't Come Around Here No More. And by week six, I'm thinking Guns N' Roses. I used to love her, but I had to kill her. Ah, such is life these days.

Stay grumpy and have a beer. Thank you for that. I actually don't come around here no more. I did not have on my playlist. So I added it after you sent in this email. That's a great one. That's a great one. That's a great one. Yeah. Matthew writes in, Hey, Grumps, a topic came up here at home. My wife's sister lives south of you.

We're talking Palm Springs. Actually, that is east, east of Houston. East, yes. I love Palm Springs. We used to, back in the, back when we used to be able to go outside, my wife and I went there a lot. I know. I've never been to Palm Springs, believe it or not. Dude, it's great.

It's a wonderful place to go. Anyways, can't wait to get back there in 10 years. She is working as a nurse and we're talking to her the other night when she said this. Corona is the doom of America, the misinformation and education levels and every man for himself society. Happy notes as usual from me.

Well, we're trying to stay positive here, but I have a feeling your sister might be right. I think she might be right. Rock writes in Midland County in Texas has introduced a new system to anonymously report your condition. You just have to give the county your phone number and address. That's anonymous, right?

Politicians dabbling in technology is a horrible idea. And this is from Midland County introduces texting tool to gauge spread of COVID-19. Well, they can put that on the shelf now because the big boys are coming to take care of this for you. Oh, but hold on a second. I did grab a little bit from this article because they were very clever here.

So this may win. The county is now using a tool called, and wait for it, chat, community health assessment tool, which is being described as an innovative. Emergency management texting tool designed to gauge changes in the general health of the community during the COVID-19 pandemic. So PR agents made their cash there.

Yep. Cameron writes in about the whole Dr. Oz thing. I can tell you how many times my mom and grandma have quoted Dr. Oz, and I always have to roll my eyes and explain why he's full of shit. He's literally promoted things that directly contradict each other, and I'm surprised that he still has his license.

And thanks for the tips on the mic setup. Also thought I'd share this with you guys. And this is a link to a tweet. And I found this one hilarious. And it's a tweet that someone added the GameCube intro music to my unemployment graph, and it's significantly better now. Did you watch this one, Brian? Yeah, I did.

It was very funny. Very funny. Quick thing on doctors. Here's my rule of thumb. If a doctor ever appears on or is promoted by Oprah, fuck that guy. Fuck that guy. Yep. Pretty much. Quibble writes in, not sure I'd call this a book, but damn, it's one that I want to put in a time cap for 10 years.

And this is an article over at democracyjournal.com, The Pandemic and Capitalism, which is talking about a book called Capitalism on Edge, How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia by Albina Asmaninov. And this does look extremely interesting, but there's no fucking way in hell I'm going to read it right now.

No way, no day. Yeah. And Sissy writes in, in response to your comment about podcasts being personal media, I agree, except for your podcast. My husband and I frequently travel two hours to go have fun in New Orleans. Obviously not right now.

And your podcast is the only podcast that my husband requests. You are a pick me up. Your grump makes him chuckle. He frequently has no idea what y'all are talking about. Most people don't. You know, the funny thing is we feel like we dumbed this down. So I actually get to teach him about techie stuff that you referenced during your podcasts.

He enjoys it and I get to share my techie love. So we may be an exception to the rule, but it's a welcome exception in our car. Can't wait for happy hour. Yeah, we got to get back on that. Yeah, we got to figure that out. Susan writes in, hi, grumps. I really enjoy your podcast on episode four. I think we're missing some numbers there.

You mentioned Gasolina Cafe and how they are making it easy to donate to frontline fighters of COVID-19. I own a small restaurant near a hospital in central Ohio. And one of the first things we did when this all started was donate food to some of our, some of the hospital departments. We also make it easy for customers to donate lunches that we will deliver.

It's so important to reach out to the people who are out there and trying to protect us and take care of us. So kudos for the shout out to support local businesses. Here's why I'm grumpy though. And I was hoping you might bring this to everyone's attention. My dining room is closed, of course, but we still offer pickup and delivery. We are taking a lot more credit card payments over the phone.

When we have to key in a credit card transaction instead of swiping or dipping it, we get charged a higher fee from Square, our credit card processor. All processors do this. Why aren't these processing companies giving small businesses a break from these higher fees during this time? Jerks. And she has a link to her place, Doc's Deli in Mansfield, Ohio.

Yeah. Why isn't Jack taking care of this for people? Because he needs the money for his one billion dollar fund. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Brad writes in, I found the GOG podcast through the Jordan Harbinger show and have been a fan for a while. Jason, you are great as the sidekick, the front man and part of a duo.

Well, thank you. I can't believe you left this one in here, Brian. I, you know, these are tough times, Jason. We need pick-me-ups. We need pick-me-ups. Brad goes on to write, impressive. Your experience before the age of 40 is invaluable to the content. I went to work for NVIDIA, focusing on AI, and my new boss's first set of instructions were to subscribe to Lex Friedman for serious information and to grumpy old geeks because, and in quotes, this is the most fun you will ever have learning about technology.

What a great way to describe your show. Thank you. Loved the panic at the Costco recently. Well, thank you, Brad, and thank your boss for us. So I don't have his name in here, but that's pretty cool that bosses at NVIDIA are actually pimping our show. Appreciate it. Hey, NVIDIA, you could advertise with us if you wanted to.

If you wanted to. Just saying. And Mike writes in, great job, gents. I'll keep this short and sober book recommendations. A Gentleman in Moscow. Rules of Civility. Both written by Amor Towles. Both brilliant. Jason, audiobook narrators are excellent. Also, anything by Simon Winchester.

Books are brilliant and audiobooks are narrated by the author. If you like upper-class British accents with your unique brand of condescension, you'll love it. And who doesn't? I do. If I had to pick one, I'd suggest Outposts or Krakatoa. Yes, that's two. Maybe I wasn't entirely honest about the sober part. Thank you.

I don't know about you, Jason. I found it very difficult to read right now. Yeah, it really is. I just finished How to Write Funny by, what's his nuts, the onion guy, Scott Dickers. But it's like one of the, it's kind of a manual on comedy.

It wasn't really something I thought anybody else would care about. So that's why I didn't even put it in there. But yeah, reading fiction or listening to fiction right now, I just, I want to plop my ass on the fucking couch and watch TV and get fucked up. I mean, that really is pretty much how life goes on right now.

Yeah. I'm with you on that. Yeah. So Raj writes in, hello, geeks, long-time listener, first-time writer. Further to episode 429. And he gives us a link to the iPad user manual with a table of contents. And yeah, if I recall, the iPad user guide app was installed by default on the first generation of iPads.

It was. I still have my first generation iPad. Yeah. I suspect it was intended for people who'd never seen or used a tablet running iOS. That's because it was the first generation. That's why. Which at that point was everyone outside of Apple. Exactly. And Deliveroo, the heroes we deserve.

Stay grumpy, stay healthy, and stay at home. Yes. Yeah. The iPad 1 came out. There was 100% uptick in people using iOS. On iPads, yes. So yeah, this is, I looked through it. There's actually good stuff in here.

I put it on my iPad like they should have done in the first place. Yes, it should be there. It should be on the homepage when you first unwrap your iPad. Yeah, and I put it on, I did put it on the homepage of my roommate's iPad because this is her first iPad. I got her iPad 4 like about like nine months, maybe a year ago, and she barely uses it for anything.

So it's like, because she doesn't know how to use it because there's no fucking manual. So I put the manual on there and hopefully she will read it and we'll get to that. All right. Matt writes in, this is a bit of a long one, but I think there's still some good information in here that we've discussed and it's nice to beat it home again.

So I'll go ahead and read it and this is also the second major company, our entire company that seems to be listening to us. So, you know, advertising is allowed. Matt says, you guys get major kudos from my entire company after I suggested your pointers for teleworking. I essentially forwarded your notes to the CEO and in turn, he basically made it the company's standard.

We're a contract logistics support provider for an Air Force tactical weather system. Okay, maybe they won't be advertising with us for that, but, and we also assist small businesses with cybersecurity compliance. We're not looking to get free advertisements, so you don't need to use our name, but okay. Based on your suggestions, we have a set schedule of duty hours in our home from 7 a.m.

to 3 p.m. Those are wise hours. I like that. And we have a daily meeting on Microsoft Teams at 8 a.m. every day. Throughout the day, we restrict all communications to Teams. As it was clear, texting and phone calls were getting very cumbersome. To be honest, I've been more productive over the last three weeks on a day-to-day basis than I was working out of the office every day.

I think it has to do with the lack of distractions at home compared to the office. Well, that's your home. Come to mine. Yeah. At the office, I'm too easily distracted by random banter and general office shenanigans. We're a politically balanced group. Therefore, political discussions always leads to a debate that can last for an hour or more.

At home, my wife and two teenage kids homeschool all day and are typically fully engaged online or with the curriculum that my wife has put together for the day. To clarify, we've homeschooled for 10 years, so this recent change was insignificant for us in that regard. I'm also going with Jason's advice on having something familiar on TV while I'm working.

Currently, I'm going through MASH on Hulu. One of the only reasons, except for Parasite, to ever load up Hulu. My next favorite sitcom of all times was Scrubs. Recently, Zach Braff and Donald Faison have put out a weekly podcast going through one episode at a time. If you're into Scrubs, I highly recommend checking it out.

Keep up the great work, stay healthy, and stay grumpy. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Matt. And I had another movie to add to the list of good background movies. I watched The Peacemaker again the other night. I've seen that movie like a hundred times. It was a great movie. The first out of DreamWorks, actually, directed by Mimi Letter.

It was controversial for that because it was an action movie directed by a woman from a new studio. But I like it. I like it a lot. There's a lot of mansplaining in there that George Clooney does to Nicole Kidman. So that part didn't age well. Right. But it's still a great movie. And Lawrence writes in, I got to thinking about what I could do to help during this crisis, and it dawned on me that I could give away my Field Guide to Dragons e-book to help parents entertain their kids or themselves.

No strings, no account to create or email to enter. Just download and share. Well, thank you, Lawrence. We've got a link to that in the show notes. And Lawrence Lee has been a fan of us for a long time. Yes, we've been reading feedback from him for years now. So thank you, Lawrence. And thanks for that. I'm going to check that out with my kid.

Jonathan writes in, the NBA streams a few classic games a night on Twitch. That would require me to figure out Twitch. I don't want sports that badly. It's not hard. It really isn't hard. You open. Go to a website. Matthias writes in, you talked about Black Sky's weather app.

I'm using Carrot Weather because you can set it to insult you every time you want to know the weather. The forecast is very good, better than many other apps, even down to hourly forecasts. And the comments are very spot on and not feeling old. I love the feeling that the more often I open the app, someone has to get a new insult.

Go get it. I even pay for it. Yeah, I pay for a weather app. You're one fan from Sweden. Well, thank you, Matthias. I used to use the Carrot app, and I paid for it too. But I just like Dark Skies better. I thought it was prettier. Yeah. Krusty Dog writes in, companies that inserted mandatory arbitration terms in their business and employment agreements to avoid class action lawsuits, EPIC was the U.S. Supreme Court test case for employers, are subverting the process they created after being overwhelmed with mass arbitration claims.

Big companies, which assume that people wouldn't bother filing claims, are now refusing to pay the arbitration costs that they themselves specified. One law firm filed 6,000 arbitration claims on behalf of independently contacted delivery drivers for DoorDash, which balked at paying the $9 million in arbitration fees and then rewrote its terms to require using a particular arbitrator whose rates were lower.

An unsympathetic federal judge ordered the company to pay the fees saying, your law firm and all the defense law firms have tried for 30 years to keep plaintiffs out of court. And so finally, if someone says, okay, we'll take you to arbitration, and suddenly it's not in your interest anymore. Now you're wiggling around trying to find some way to squirm out of your agreement.

There is a lot of poetic justice here. Well done. Well done, judge. Screw those guys. We actually covered this a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. And, uh, but yeah, it was, it's fun to hear again because the, the, the line from the judge is always worth, worth another playthrough for sure.

Ralph writes in high geeks. I don't know if this is real or just click bait. If real, why would a device that requires a fingerprint also require video recognition of your butthole and crotch? Maybe should ask Dave since it's a security feature. Stay well, stay home, stay grumpy.

And this is a link to Mashable, the toilet recognizes your butthole and uploads photos to the cloud. Now I went to this page and I looked at it and it is real. It's, it's not a joke, but I had a harder time copying and pasting any text. It launched a thousand pop-ups for me. Weird though.

That's weird. Yeah. I just, I went in and since you said you couldn't do it, I'm like, well, challenge accepted. So I went in, copied it, pasted it. No problem at all. There you go. So yeah, they're using your butthole as a, as a fingerprint scan. And then puts it in the cloud.

So if you want your butthole in the cloud, go check this out. Show title. And over at iTunes, we have a five-star rating from Masila Epoxy in Spain, your bi-weekly dose of tech reality. Listening to Jason and Brian should be a required assignment in every computer science course.

Few things are more dangerous today than a bunch of optimist engineers led by billionaire psychos wearing hoodies. So for humanity's sake, stop being a naive young bro and start listening, chump. P.S. And stop wearing your hoodies past your thirties, folks. You all look like child rapists. Good thing there's not a camera on right now.

I know. I'm keeping my hoodie and my cargo shorts. Not. And Kaja Tank from Sweden writes in, five stars, great show. It took me a couple episodes to start liking the show, but it's now a favorite. Keep safe and be grumpy. Well, thank you. Thank you very much.

So this would be our second fan from Sweden. Sorry, Matthias, you have, you have competition now. Yeah. 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 we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to gog.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review.

And keep clicking those stars in Overcast. We were in a Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss sandwich the other day. Yeah, I know. It's kind of, kind of, kind of creepy, but yeah. Keep us in the top there. We love it. We love it. Gives us a little exposure that makes us feel good. It really does.

Not that child rapey type exposure. No, no, no, no. Not at all. Okay.

We're back again with Seth Miranda from Adorama. And welcome back. I always get confused. I'm like, is it Adorama? Adorama? I'm more than Adorama. I'm more than Adorama. Damn it. Last ex-witness on all of the socials and a professional, a professional photographer.

Hey, man. I am, you know? Yeah. And now I'm, like, turning into, like, the guy of streaming, apparently, because I guess no one made a clean-looking stream on Twitch until now. I don't know what's going on, but everybody's asking me how to do it or how to make their Zoom calls look more clean and stuff.

Don't use Zoom. There's your tip right there. Zoom's awesome. No, it's not. I like Zoom. Yeah, it's all. I like it. I'm an audio guy. Zoom has the worst audio on the market. All right. Well, I think the interface is clean. And, you know, I think I've used everything there possibly is in this crazy overnight turn over to working at home.

What about BlueJeans? Have you tried BlueJeans? So I haven't used BlueJeans. I heard you guys talk about it on the last show, and I was like, oh, there's another one I didn't hear about. But they had me use Microsoft Teams. I'm sorry. Yeah. I got to say, like, there's nothing in that whole interface that's appealing to me.

It's so not. It's so ugly. It's so old. Like, I feel like I belong. Yeah, I don't get it. And Microsoft has always been about the office and stuff like that, and I get it. But at least give me a dark mode or a dark theme. Like, I can't stand all these white windows. Dude, they got 8-bit icons.

Come on. What do you want? Oh, that's true. Yeah, that's true. I don't even think about that. I just keep thinking about my eyestrain because, you know, YouTube has dark mode now. Twitch has dark mode. Zoom is dark. Everything's dark. Then I go to Microsoft Teams, and my retinas are melting out of my skull, and I'm like, what?

But, you know, Microsoft Teams is a free add-on, so you technically get what you pay for. Well, I get it because everyone's using Outlook, I guess, for mail, for everything. I haven't used Outlook in 15 years. Every company that I go to deal with is using some form of Outlook.

So I think they just were like, hey, your entire company's Rolodex is now slammed right into a video conferencing service, pretty much. Yeah. But I have to say, I took a lot of tips from your live stream videos. Oh, thank you, man.

And I did a conference, a virtual podcast conference not too long ago, and everybody commented on how good my video stream looked. So the content was shit because I was talking, but the video looked great. You used your Panasonics?

Yeah, my G7. I did my G7 through my Mage something or other. Magewell. Magewell USB to HDMI. Magwell, right? Oh, Magwell. Magwell. Yeah. So that's like a higher-end Elgato. They're like $300, $400 to start.

Yeah, it was $330. I was just like, $330? There's so much other stuff I could have got, but I needed it then, and it was simple because so many of these others, like my Blackmagic didn't work for a webcam, and so I got the Magwell, and it was perfect. Here's what it is.

Plug in the HDMI, plug in my Rode Go wireless setup into the camera, and that just streams right into the system, and it's like, boom, done. It's like, it was worth the extra money for the lack of hassle. That's what it was perfect for. Yeah. And it's built like legit.

Everything that you're buying that's kind of cost-effective, plastic housings, can't, you know, if it's humid out, I don't even want to know what's going to happen. You know, like, it's, you're paying for it for a reason. I mean, let's be honest. Yeah, this is tooled aluminum. I mean, it's a nice little box, and it's tiny, it's light, and it literally just does exactly what it needs to do, and I've had this camera on with that plugged into it, into my new Mac Mini for seven hours, and nothing's overheated.

Everything is nice and cool on the camera and on the interface. It's perfect. It's great. I love my little setup. I think people somehow thought that you take any camera and plug a USB or an HDMI into an old HDMI port that exists, and somehow it becomes a webcam, and then when I started telling people, like, no, you need something to tell the computer or encode the video to be captured, they're like, what?

I have to buy something? And then it turned into this, like, crazy rush to buy anything streaming, and everyone's out of stock of everything. Yeah, except for these, because they're so expensive, nobody wants to buy them. I'll just wait. I'll wait until they come back in stock, you know? It still bugs me that I can't use my Nikon D810 as a webcam, because that with the 10.5mm lens on it, because it's an old DX lens, but, you know, reformats to a 16, looks great as a webcam.

When it's right there on the desk, it is so cool looking. Did you update the firmware? Yeah, I did, but it still shuts off at half an hour. Even in live mode, it just shuts off. The runtime is a half hour, you're saying? Yeah. Yeah, so you have to put it in live mode, and then it streams out through the HDMI port, and then comes into the computer, and then it still just shuts off after half an hour, and I'm just like, oh, man.

Oh, that's crazy. I knew the record time was 29 minutes, but I didn't know that the runtime was... I wonder what that's about. I don't know. Yeah, the live stream shuts off. I guess they've figured that out. I don't know. I don't know, but it doesn't work, because I would much rather have used that one over the G7s, but now that I've got the G7s going, they're great.

I just wish I could do multiple cameras into my system, but I guess you have to buy a switcher for that one, you know? So you have to have, like, multiple HDMIs in. You can do it. You can totally do it with OBS as a switcher system if you wanted. You could also do it with an Atomus recorder, which is a little pricey and kind of not what it's really meant for, but you can put all your inputs into it and then touchscreen it to whatever feed you want to send out of it before it goes into your computer.

Oh, that'd be nice. Yeah. That would really be nice, because, yeah, I would just like some kind of, you know, just easy box that... That's really what I wanted. I just wanted an interface to have, because I've got three, you know, cameras, three good cameras, and so to be able to switch.

So if I'm doing, you know, a shoot in my studio with two people or three people, I'd be able to just do switch cameras on the fly for live streaming. That would have been really nice. I'd look at the, yeah, you should look at the Atomus recorders. They're meant for, like, being on top of a camera as, like, a larger screen with high output recordings into it and stuff like that, but it can actually take in multiple feeds.

It gives you, like, four, I think, and you can just touch to which one you want to go and send out before it goes into your computer, so that's an... Oops, sorry. I got my alarm. So that's an option if you want to go for that, so... Well, that's cool. I'll give that a shot. There's another... There are a couple other ones out that I'm going to throw in the show notes, too, and I'll eventually have those all at GOG.show slash Adorama, because I'm basically just putting all the different things that I find here for streaming now that everybody wants, because

everybody wants to do streaming now, and they want to look good, like, okay, wear pants. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, I think people were like, oh, the onboard camera on my Mac or whatever sucks, but usually it's because the lighting they're in is too contrasting, and that's why it looks so bad.

You need to find flatter light, or if you get a... If you want a really cheap option, you can just get a C920+, not this regular C920, Logitech C920+, that actually reads the light in the room and adjusts the exposure on the camera.

That's like $80. Oh, that's not bad at all. That's not bad at all. It was like the go-to camera for Twitch for, like, the last eight years, I think. Wow, does it... I mean, does it at least do 1080p? Actually, the Plus does do 1080, I think. Yeah, I've got a Brio, a Logitech Brio, and I've got one of the 1080p Logitech.

And the funny thing is, the Brio, even on my biggest, beefiest machine, lags everywhere. Really? Even if I got it knocked down to 1080p, there's something with the signal going in. It's so strange. I have not been able to get that thing to do real-time without, like, you know, like, even, like, it's like a quarter-second delay.

I'm like, what the hell, man? It's a 4K video camera. It looks beautiful. And when you use the camera settings app, you can, like, you know, get it really nice and modified, so you look really good. But, yeah, it's just, it's laggy. It's super laggy. What's the software you're using with it, though?

It's called camera settings. It comes from Logitech. It lets you adjust, you know, focus, what the angle of the lens is, whether it's, like, narrow, wide, or fisheye, if you want to do HDR or not, which I never do, because HDR is the devil, and all these other different settings on it.

And, yeah, it's just weird. I don't know if it's just, if it's trying to pump 4K all the time and has to transcode on the fly. Oh, down sample. You know? Yeah. Maybe. I mean, nothing is streaming right now in 4K. YouTube, Twitch, nothing is streaming 4K, at least not yet.

So, you don't need to go all out. No, 1080p is great. I mean, that should be the de facto standard, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, it's like, yeah, I've got 4K cameras just because if I want to, like, make a video and record it for something else, it's not just, you know, plugging it in as a webcam.

I want to have that option. And that's why I like the G7s, because they've got that. They're micro four thirds, so they're light. They're small. They're relatively cheap. They were like, you know, the kit was like less than $600 per camera. Yeah. So, it works out great.

And if you get an adapter to plug them in, they're great. So, like I said, another 25 bucks to be able to just plug them in and run them all day. But even if you don't have that, the battery life on these things is two hours and 20 minutes shooting constantly at 4K. It's crazy.

Yeah, it's crazy. Well, so I used the Nikon Z6, and that's full frame. But the battery got me four hours of streaming time, which was like on a full frame sensor. Yeah, dude. It was bananas. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that it happened.

And the other thing I started using was Tether Tools makes this thing called a case relay. So, it's a USB to an AC adapter, right? But in the middle of the cable is a pretty high milliamp rechargeable battery that relays the power down the line to a dummy battery that you can swap in and out for whatever brand you have.

But the inline battery, I forgot to plug it in. I still got 45 minutes out of that battery. Wow. That's actually a pretty cool piece of kit. Yeah. I'm really into it. And it's one of those things that no matter what camera you have, so you can just get the different modules. So, if you use Fuji or Panasonic or whatever, you don't have to keep buying a different whole adapter that's $200.

You can just buy the battery module, the dummy battery for like $30 maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's the same thing I had to do with this. It's like, okay, you get the plug-in thing that you just plug into basically like a universal cable with the system that I got. So, yeah, I could theoretically get one for my Nikon, too, and just plug it in and use the same cables, which is pretty cool.

And I have a bunch of lights that I set up for like having live recordings. So, I took one off the ceiling because they were all mounted and set up for my two studio chairs with my microphones for when people came over. So, they could just sit down and turn on the lights, turn on the cameras, and go.

But doing live stream, I had to set up a new desk. And I've got these small little – now, here's a question. And it's always driven me crazy. N-E-E-W-E-R. Neewer or newer? You know what? Everyone just says newer.

Newer. Okay. Yeah. That's what I go with. I got that. Yeah. So, I've got four newer panels in my room. So, I use two of them when I'm doing live streaming. One is a main light and one is just kind of like a separation light. And I've got – I'm setting up another one today because I went out and bought a bunch of colored gels because I love how your background looks.

Oh, thank you. I'm going to play around with colors in the background on mine for sure. You can get away with a pack of gels like I do it. Or you can just buy an RGBW light that's kind of small and just dial in whatever colors you want or even have it cycle through colors or flash like it's lightning out or something.

Those are totally readily available and they're getting cheaper and cheaper. I think Aputure makes one that's like pretty affordable. An LED panel you might want to look at that I think is really interesting is Savage makes one and it's not only AC power but it takes two Sony batteries on the back.

So, if you want it to go film somewhere, you can and it comes with the batteries and charger. Oh, that's cool because, yeah, my newers actually do have the double battery packs on the back. You can plug those in and I've got those for my remote LED setups. So, I can just take those and plug them in and go.

But, yeah, that's a really nice feature. You have to kind of have that if you want to take them out of the house because you don't want to be running cables everywhere you go. Yeah, I mean a small Aputure light, it's probably, it sounds like it's too small but it would actually work for a separation light.

It's about four inches by two and a half inches. You're talking about a hundred bucks that'll just cycle through colors and do weird flashing and all sorts of weird stuff. So, Aputure is one of these companies that went out and said, we want to support indie productions. So, they made the best lights they could for the lowest cost they could and they've kind of been dominating out there because of all the people that are using mirrorless cameras for filming.

You know, the mid-range people, not like, you know, not cinema guys. Right. Yeah. So, the nice thing about my gels where they cost $14 and I got 13 different colors. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's awesome. I'm going with that, you know.

Yeah. I just put two together. I taped two of them together and I make like a split color background and I change the color based on what I'm doing because if I record in the same background every day for everything I'm doing, you can't differentiate the thumbnails. You can't differentiate the streams. So, it's like, if I'm doing something for Adorama, it's blue.

If I'm on Twitch, I'll do bicolored weirdness. If I'm doing something for some, if I'm, like, when I talk to somebody that's doing a podcast with me, if they're, you know, sponsored by something or like Vanessa Joy, who's an amazing photographer, she, her colors are teal and pink.

That's what my background was, you know? So, you know what's funny? I totally noticed that. I completely noticed that. I'm like, because I watch it like one day it's red and blue and the next day it's purple. I'm like, okay, this must be different, different use cases. And I totally, I totally picked up on that. And I, you know, I just noticed that I'm like, that's really cool that you're doing, you're changing it up for different things.

And I want to kind of have that in the back too. So like, you know, if it's a late night one, it's just fucking red. We're just doing red, you know, but during the day for a corporate thing, we'll do blue. Who knows? I streamed doom on my own channel just out of nowhere. And I put orange and green, the doom colors together.

And everyone was like, oh, that's so cool. The original doom. I'm like, the fact that you even spotted that was ridiculous, but thank you so much. Yeah. No, it's cool. It's cool. Subtleties, man. That's what makes a professional a professional. You have to have those subtleties. Well, I also think it can, it's easy for content to get boring, right?

So every time I see some people that are like influencers or streamers, they have the same background. And I'm like, okay, which video is this one? But I think it helps people find those stuff they're trying to refer back to, reference points, any little thing that can get you an edge to get someone to click and stay there with you, or even engage and go like, oh, that's my favorite color.

That one comment just gave you another point on an algorithm for people to discover your content and thus making it more worthwhile for you. Yeah, that is, you know, just as a consumer, it's interesting. It's more interesting because I've noticed that, you know, since everybody on the planet is doing their broadcast from home, you know, everybody from CNN to everywhere else, I spend a lot of time looking in the background to see what their life is like.

You know, I'm like looking at the stuff on the shelves. I'm just trying to figure out what's going on in their life because it humanizes everybody. Absolutely. I think what people need to realize is, so let's take Twitch, for example. That's a platform, but the problem with it is it's not discoverable, right?

So what you have to do is go on other platforms like YouTube and draw people from the audience you build there into your Twitch. The Twitch does not, your Twitch, I should say, doesn't grow because you're streaming. It grows because you led people there. And the reason they're going to you is because they want to hang out with you while you're live.

And if they're not seeing you in your space and you don't give your personality, like if you look at my background, anything I do, it's all my own prints, like analog from the darkroom framed up in my background. It's not a bunch of like movie posters or whatever. But if you're into movies, maybe you do that.

Or maybe you put up a bunch of anime books on a bookshelf. Like you have to give people a real, an idea of who they're dealing with so that they want to stick around. And it's virtual friendship, basically. Yeah. I mean, I've got a bookshelf behind me and my gear rack also behind me.

That's true. So on my bookshelf, I can change things out. You know, I've got different gear up there. I've got like my old Grey Lab timer. I've got a signed doll from American Gladiators from my friend Dan that gave it to me. I got a Nikon F3 and F4. And I've got basically a friend and a fan of the show basically made me a 3D printed Mjolnir for grumpy old geeks.

I saw that. I saw that like years ago. I saw that. Yeah. I've had that forever. So that's, that's up there too. But I moved things around. Like I just added my, my rock band guitar that I used to use. I was, I was in, I was, I kept forgetting the number. I was number 270 something in the world for expert guitar on rock band.

And I used that guitar to do it. Now it's out of millions of people. I was that goddamn good. So I'm proud of that guitar. So I just moved things around. And you know what? People notice that stuff. Well, they also like, so I have some people that send me stuff. Like sometimes people get a print made and they want it. And then we trade prints.

So I'll put it up in the background and they'll be like, oh, my prints there. Like, it's almost like them getting a guest appearance almost. It's, it's really interesting. Exactly. I think people really need to make, you know, just pay attention to those kinds of things when you're doing stuff like that, just to, you know, bring people in and change it up and don't have it be your China cabinet behind you.

I mean, granted, nobody that we know in our, that's our age has a China cabinet, but if you're streaming from your mom's house, she may have a China cabinet and that's the only room that you can go in, hang something over it and do something fun, you know? Can I give a quick shout out? Of course you can. Okay.

Well, so on Adorama's Twitch page, we actually had a Tekken tournament and we raised $1,300 for first responders fighting COVID here in New York. So I just wanted to give a shout out to Team Spooky and everybody that participated in the Tekken tournament and a shadow who won and everybody who donated, you're beyond generous and I'm so proud of our little community.

It's not the most amount of money, but $1,300 is a lot of gloves and masks if you break it down. Well, it's $1,300 is $1,300. I'm sorry. That's not jump change. Yeah. No, no. I'm just so proud of it. I mean, we just hung out and had a fighting tournament and the winner won a laptop from Gigabyte. So shout out to Gigabyte for donating that to us.

So yeah, I'm so psyched. And it just goes to show you that even if you're home and isolated, there's a world going on out there and you can connect. Just get your stuff together and go connect. I mean, you just log into a website and you're in a chat room. Yep. Totally. I actually, my friend Jordan Harbinger sent me a dual giant joystick system that I'm going to, I basically, I want to start playing MK11 and- Oh, I'm totally going to play you.

Oh yeah. I mean, you know my history with MK, so we're going to have some fun. That's for sure. I mean- Who do you play as? Everybody. Oh, really? Well, I started with MK1, but when it got to MK2, I worked at an arcade and I played for 12 hours a day.

Then I got a job at Midway and I got to play with the guys who made the game. No, that's dope. And my friend Mike ended up, MXV, friend of the show, ended up staying at Midway and got an entire career in video games. But he was the master.

So I learned from the master. We had one day where he would just, he sat there. He beat 230 people in a row that came into the game and he's like, his tagline is don't jump at me. That's really, don't jump at me, bro. Mortal Kombat 2 was the one that completely changed everything, but Mortal Kombat 11 is totally different feeling than any other Mortal Kombat.

Looks good. Looks really good. Yeah. I've been playing as Noob Saibot. That's like my guy right now. They changed Scorpion a lot. So it feels really weird. Okay. Yeah, and I really want to try Spawn. I mean, he's the last DLC character. Okay. Yeah.

No, I mean, I used to have a cabinet in my house. I had a Mint MK3 cabinet from one of the guys that worked on MK3 because you get to buy those when you work on the game. That's so dope. And then my friend Mike came over and he built a dual switching system. So I had an MK2 board and an MK3 board in the same machine so I could just switch it and it would switch games.

It was awesome. I want that. I want that. Well, 15 years ago, you could have bought it because I sold it for like 500 bucks. $500? That's all that was? Yeah. And I still made money on it. So I think I bought it for 300 and the board was like 35 bucks.

Adirom actually sells a mini arcade, standing arcade from 1UP and it's a Mortal Kombat. Nice. Yeah. It's this new company. Have you even heard of them? 1UP? Yeah, yeah. They make the little, like the, it's basically like a three-quarter size. Yeah. It's oddly, yeah.

I guess three-quarters is the way I would put it too. Yeah. Yeah. So bad for your back, but fun for your nostalgia. It's, you know, it's a nice thing to put in the corner. It doesn't have that much room in your space, but I'm sure you definitely want to put a chair there because it's a little short, but they're, I mean, it's just cool.

I mean, come on. Yeah. I think, I think if I had to do it again, I'd just, right now I'd go get a main cabinet and just load it up, load it up. Yeah. I guess we're spoiled now. You can just like load up any drive. You can have like all the Super Nintendo games in the world on a flash drive now.

So it's like nuts. Yeah. Yeah. But I will hit you up as soon as I get this thing wired up because I got to get my gaming PCs set up and, or bring my Xbox out to the studio. But I'm definitely, definitely ready to go because we got nothing else to do.

So why not play some games, man? And I'm tired of playing like, you know, the thing that kills me, I'm playing first person shooters with the, you know, the little Xbox controller drives me crazy. I come from basically Quake three. That was my first person shooter.

I was in a bunch of clans. I was like semi-pro. I would play on a 48 hour weekend when I got home from work, I would play for 30 hours. And Quake three arena, dude, give me a rail gun. You're fucking dead. So I come from that, but I am used to having a keyboard and a mouse.

So playing these little things with my thumbs drives me crazy. I can't use keyboard and mouse. I can't get coordinated. I can't get my fingers to remember what he did, what, and I can't do it. I know there's like a learning curve and I could probably get over it, but I'm so tuned into the habits of a controller.

I'm playing Doom right now on a controller and people are like, are you crazy? I'm like, I don't, this is totally fine for me. And you would totally love the new Doom. It is bananas. It's on my list. It is on my list. Damn sure. Well, I will totally see you out there on Mortal Kombat.

Yeah. That and yeah. I mean, just, just to get back to the keyboard thing, there was a, there was a bug in the physics in Quake three and you could do what's called strafe jumping. I spent a week learning how to do this. I'm watching, I'm watching video, like bootleg videos from the best guys in the world, trying to figure this math out.

Cause it was like a, like, like a one eighth of a second window where you could hit up and to the left in the, in the space bar at the same time. And you could jump twice as far as everybody else. What? And I'm like, yeah, it's called strafe jumping. You can look it up on, on old folksopedia. And it was just one of those things that competitive players did.

And I miss things like that, that you can't do with just using your thumbs. It's like, when I played, I think it was, I'm pretty sure it was quick that you use the rocket launcher for an extra boost. When you jumped rocket jump. Yep. That was a rocket jump. Yeah. You jump. And then it right at the apex of your jump, you shoot the rocket.

Oh, rocket jumping is the best. And that's why they made rocket arena because that was, everybody loved rocket jumping and they made this entire, uh, multiplayer add-on called rocket arena. And it was the best. I lived in that for like three years.

I can go back and play that right now and I can walk you through every single map. I know that is in my DNA. So if I ever have a kid, he's going to be the best at quake three. I'm telling you. Jesus Christ. Hey, you might have a kid out there. You don't know. Maybe he's beating you in quake right now. You know, it could be. All right, man.

It's good talking. Stay safe out there. Yeah. You too. Keep, uh, keep it safe and healthy. Closing shout outs. Big thank you to Seth Miranda for stepping in a little bit this week and, uh, talk and shop with us. Always welcome to, to have Seth on much fun.

And, uh, like I mentioned before, I'm doing this live stream with Chris Lockhead on Thursday at 6 PM on Facebook live link to that will be in the show notes. I'm not going to have it till right up until 6 PM. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to set up jpd.me slash live. So if you go there, uh, that will redirect you when the live stream starts.

There you go. You should probably just put it at gog.show slash live too. That's where, uh, the problem there is that's where our thing's going to go. If we ever do. Oh, right. Okay. Our thing. So we should do that until next time. I'm Jason DeFillippo and I'm Brian Schulmeister.

Thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks, 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 do appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash four, three, one. And there you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show and get links to stuff.

We like stay grumpy, stay home, stay safe, go get a beer.

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

Shop now at QVC.com.