433: The Woke Must Flow

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. Morning, Jason. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, whatever.

Whatever day it is. I know. What day is it? Joke has gotten so stale. But last night I went to bed like it's 7 o'clock because why stay awake? I woke up completely refreshed. It was dark. I'm like, oh my God, this is fantastic. Did a big stretch. Pet the dogs. I'm like, hey guys, I'm ready to hit the day. And I looked at my clock and it was 9 o'clock at night. I slept for two hours.

Oh my God, this is going to be a long night. I think everybody can arbitrarily call it a new day at this point if they want to. Make your own hours. Who cares? Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. So we got a little bit of follow-up here. Zoom. Zoom security woes have been no secret to business partners for years, such as Dropbox.

One year ago, two Australian hackers found themselves on an eight-hour flight to Singapore. Can you imagine? We've only been doing this for a month or something like that, but the idea of being on an eight-hour flight to Singapore seems like a different lifetime to me already. But that's what they were on. They were going to attend a live hacking competition sponsored by Dropbox.

So up in the plane with nothing but the crappy internet connection that one gets up there. Used to get up there back when there was life. When there were planes. Yes. They decided to get a head start by hacking Zoom, a video conferencing service they knew was used by many Dropbox employees.

And within a few minutes, they uncovered a major security vulnerability that could have allowed hackers to covertly control certain users' Mac computers. It's exactly the type of bug that the engineers at Dropbox had come to dread from Zoom, according to three former Dropbox engineers. And the engineers say that, however, these woes can be traced back well over two years or more.

And they argue that the company's failure to overhaul its security practices back then put its business clients at risk. They grew so concerned about vulnerabilities in Zoom that they basically took on the unusual step of policing Zoom security practices itself, according to former engineers.

Who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss their work. So, yes, Dropbox basically hired a whole division of hackers for themselves to look into Zoom security practices because they were so reliant on Zoom themselves. I mean, how bad does your software have to be if your clients are fixing your bugs for you?

One would actually argue, why didn't Dropbox choose to use a different software provider at this point? I know. I'm like, come on, guys. There are other options out there. There are. You're not the only player. Wow. So, that is something about corporate America that I never understand.

They stick with a crappy horse just because they've got the crappy horse when there are perfectly serviceable horses out there. Maybe they had a contract that they couldn't get out of. Yeah, that could be it. Security holes like that would probably, you know, give you an out and help nullify the contract. You'd think, but I guess then you kind of do lawsuits and lawyers and all of that.

And I suppose sometimes it, I guess, is cheaper and easier to just try to fix the horse. Get the duct tape. So, in personal news, I've been furloughed. I'm sorry to hear that, man. No, it's okay.

It's kind of expected. When this stuff was first hitting, I had a long talk with the CEO and we kind of came up with, you know, worst case scenario plans. And here we are in worst case scenario. The reality is the company's revenue is based almost entirely on there being concerts and live events.

There are no concerts. There are no live events. So, there's no real revenue coming in. And the Canadian government is helping to some degree. So, a portion of salaries for Canadian employees are being covered to keep the lights on. But all of us non-Canadians or people not in Canada, all of us working in satellite offices, our governments are not providing any help.

So, that's that for the time being. You know, he's got to preserve his runway for as long as possible. So, when things do come back, he can just, you know, flip the switch and everybody comes back and we get back to work. So, that's understandable. And to some degree, it's also a bit of a sigh of relief because it's been getting a little crazy and hectic to try to have two working parents full time and the kid at home.

Things are falling apart as we go on longer and longer. So, it is what it is. Close to the end. No, and we're not even close to the end. Unless you live in Georgia. Well, let's talk about that for a second. I mean, through the prism of the industry that I've been working in, the concert industry, people are talking about, you know, opening up states already and what that will mean.

Let me tell you something that I believe truly. There will not be any live events, any concerts, anything like that until there is a vaccine. Now, you can talk about sports, but they will be done, if they're done at all, without fans. There will be no festivals.

There will be no big concerts or anything like that. And let me tell you why. It isn't for public health. It's for money. It's for money.

The reason there will not be any of these things is because now, while the music industry does have its fair share of shady characters who will obviously be pushing to have them, nobody, no venue owner, no concert promoter, no artist, wants to hold an event and have contract tracing prove to everybody in the world that there are 90% of the attendees now have COVID-19.

And are getting sick because that will bring on lawsuits, the likes of which people have never seen and put them out of business. Huge, beautiful lawsuits. Yes. Lawsuits the size of China. Yes. So I will not expect there to be any big events with lots of people, even if they are pushed for until there is a vaccine, which at earliest we're looking hopefully for summer next year.

That's when this stuff will launch back up, assuming we do get that vaccine. So that's that's that. And the reality is, if even three months from now, if something was to open up, if concerts, all the concerts that I've had that are postponed were all of a sudden on, I would not go.

Not a chance in hell. Yeah. Well, unless it's in Michigan. Yeah. You know. You can probably do some shows up there. Yeah. So but again, I don't see it again. It costs too much money to roll up a tour to do something like that. So you know, one off events are expensive for bands.

So that's not going to happen. So until until there can be, you know, international and, you know, nationwide tours, which we're not going to see anytime soon. Like I said, until there's a vaccine, this is not going to be happening. Yeah. Yeah. I think the national pastime right now, which I know is my pastime, is rapidly watching my net worth approach absolute zero.

So, hey, but you're going to get a check for twelve hundred dollars soon, Jason. Signed by the president himself. I'm sure that'll keep you in toilet paper for some time. I'm fine. Toilet paper. I don't need toilet paper. I need dog food. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know, man. You know, and the one thing I was actually thinking about this morning, because it's getting more and more difficult to wake up positively.

So I didn't. I was thinking about the event that they had over the weekend where, you know, all the artists played at home, half of them pre-recorded, whatever. That was such a load of crap. It did not make me feel better. It did not make me feel like we're all in this together, especially when I watched Lady Gaga sing into the wrong end of a $20,000 microphone.

What? Oh, yeah. Google it. She had a $20,000 Newman mic facing the wrong way, basically. Oh, my God. You might as well just give her a Blue Yeti, like every podcast you're talking to the top of it. So it was making me think, you know, how everybody has been saying, oh, we're all in this together and we're all in the same boat together.

And it all felt kind of nice the first couple of weeks, but it's wearing a bit thin. And I was thinking, well, if we are in all in a boat together, I'd have to say that boat would be the minnow, which then crash landed onto an island where we had the rich people, the howls, basically carrying on as per usual because they're rich and they can afford to.

We had the scientist, the professor, figuring out a way to get us off the island every episode. And then we had our feckless and fearless leaders, the skipper and Gilligan, fucking it up for all of us. So that's the boat we're on if we're all on a boat together.

Oh, great. But where's Ginger and Marianne and all this? Oh, they're cam girls now because they can make a living. It was the 70s. They didn't really write strong female roles. And yeah, so they're just cam girls. In the news. I found this article over at UC Davis and I thought it was pretty fascinating.

California COVID-19 traffic report finds a silver lining. Apparently, since nobody's on the road anymore. You'd think they'd be fixing them. Well, that's another thing. Why aren't you out fixing them? Oh, yeah. Okay. Anyway, but since car crashes are down, we're saving here in the state of California $40 million a day from, you know, running cops and fire trucks and ambulances and all the stuff that usually happens.

Well, it sounds like we're building up a nice little nest egg that we could use for California UBI. Yeah, yeah. Because we're all going to need it. Well, go sign up for your small business loan because that's about the only way you're getting it. Yeah. Well, I suppose that's good news.

And other news, which is less good. Many Instacart shoppers still don't have their COVID-19 safety gear. Instacart had rolled out a plan to give shoppers masks and sanitizer during the pandemic. But it's proceeding slower than many employees would like, and that's partly on purpose. In response to workers' concerns, the company told Wired in a statement that it had capped orders for the safety gear, which goes through the company's store to thousands per day.

It needed to slow the rate of fulfillment to make sure each order was coming from a real shopper. The problem, of course, is that the process has not been thought out and appears to be fraught with issues. There's no queue, so workers have to check every day for stock, and supplies may only be available for minutes before they run out.

Kind of like shopping on Instacart. Exactly. The company reportedly hasn't said much about how to place orders or when either, and there's a lack of info which has led shoppers relying on unofficial communities to get details. So I guess we are kind of all in this together.

Yeah, kind of, yeah. I got my first Instacart delivery yesterday, and he did have gloves and a mask, but he was thick as a board because I'm like, yeah, just leave everything on the front porch. Appreciate it. There's an extra tip in the mailbox for you because they wouldn't let me change my tip because, like, it originally started out as, like, a cheap $30 order.

So I gave him $5. I'm like, yeah, $5 is good for that. And then you piled stuff on. Then when they said, because it took him six days to, you know, get me a driver to come pick up my stuff. I'm like, by the time it actually came to him going shopping, it was a $200 order. So I'm like, yeah, $5 seems kind of cheap.

So we gave him some extra cash. But the dolt that he is, William, I'm talking to you, buddy. He put all the groceries right in front of my screen door that opens outward, which means I had to go all the way out of the house, around the back, because there was no move in it. There was eight gallons of water and, like, you know, ten bags of stuff.

So I had to, like, leave the house, go outside, and remove everything before I could even open the door and bring it in. So, yeah, maybe not some of the brightest bulbs over there at the Instacart organization. I've had pretty decent service so far. But then again, it's, you know, I have a buzzer.

I can buzz people in. The ones that drive me crazy are the ones that call from their cell phone instead of using the buzzer, which is right there. I'm like, it's right there. There's a call box right there. If you call me on my cell phone, I can't open the door. It was nice having a, you know, a text conversation with him because he had to do, like, you know, some substitutions and things.

But, yeah, when I came out, he didn't even say thank you for the extra tip, you little ungrateful bastard. Who knows? Maybe he doesn't see it until the order's complete. No, no, no, no, no. It was an envelope full of cash. Oh, okay. And he took it. So he saw it. Trust me. First thing I looked at, I'm like, hey, where's the hell you got that?

But I can't get in my damn house because you put all the groceries in front of my door. Anyway, moving on. Moving on. Believe it or not, there is some actual non-COVID-19 related tech news taking place. This is happening down in Australia. Internet giants such as Facebook and Google are about to face some more government oversight down there.

The country has ordered its competition and consumer commission, the ACK, to create a mandatory code of conduct that would ask Facebook, Google, and others to pay news outlets when they use its content. We've been talking about this off and on for years now, but they're actually going to do it. The code will also dictate data sharing, news rankings, and revenue sharing.

There will be penalties if companies don't follow through, as well as a binding resolution process for any disputes. They had been negotiating a voluntary code, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the sudden hit to add revenue prompted the shift to a mandatory system. They did point out that it was unlikely tech companies would come to a voluntary agreement on payments.

Shocking. And they did argue that it's only fair that news outlets get paid for the work they're creating. I agree. They asked Facebook and Google for content, for comment. This is over at Engadget, and they've typically resisted paying for news, arguing they're merely linking to it. But the momentum is clearly against them in some cases.

Countries like France have ordered internet firms to pay for showing news article snippets, and Google has gone so far as to remove news previews rather than paying. So we'll see what happens with Australia's code. Are they just going to pull out and say, we ain't going to pay? We'll see. Well, there's like seven people in Australia, so I can see them not paying and just saying, screw it.

Because, I mean, I remember when this whole thing happened in Europe, and they had their news page up, and it was basically just blank. Remember that? But, yeah, so it's like, you know, they got the power. And there's snippets. I mean, I used to run a news organization, and it took forever to get into Google News, and we got so much traffic from it that I'm like, guys, shut up.

You want to be there. You really need to be there. There's no other way that you're going to get the kind of traffic that you do. You do, and I actually really don't understand the brouhaha over just using a snippet. If you're not pulling the full article, if you're just pulling the headline and a punch quote to get people to link to it, that's fine, as far as I'm concerned.

And actually, yeah, you do want that. You want the eyes to be driving traffic to you. Yeah, I mean, they pull a thumbnail, and they pull a small snippet that is basically just the search result. And I don't see the big deal about this, because honestly, when we got kicked out of Google News, and we were out of Google News for three years, it killed our revenue.

Yeah. And we finally got back in, because, you know, you can't go through Google customer support, because there is none. It came down to my friend Kevin Marks, who had just gotten a job at Google, and they were like, hey, man, do you know anybody at Google News? Because we've been kicked out, and we can't get back in.

Nobody's going to reply to us. And this is back when Google was, like, small. I mean, this was, like, in the 90s. Right. He's like, oh, he walked down the hall to the Google News guys and says, hey, can you guys put them back in? And they're like, oh, sure. And they put us back in. Exactly like the same process you had to use to get verified on Twitter. Know somebody at Twitter.

Exactly. Although that didn't actually work. I knew the girl that ran the verification department, and even she wouldn't do it. She was just like, no, I'm sorry, man. I can't. I'm like, damn it. I want my checkmark. Oh, well. Oh, well. So, shockingly, there may be a problem with Facebook's coronavirus misinformation features.

On Thursday, they announced that they would start notifying users if they have liked, reacted to, or commented on harmful misinformation about COVID-19. Their own internal contact tracing program. If you've come across this piece of shitty news, we'll let you know so you can look into it.

Examples of such posts include claims that social distancing is ineffective, or that drinking bleach will cure the disease. It'll cure the disease for sure. It will. Cure everything. These notifications will also connect users to COVID-19 myths debunked by the who. The goal is essentially corrective.

Alert users of fake news they've encountered, then steered them toward the truth. Of course, there's nothing in there about, say, dropping accounts that spread the misinformation or create it, but, you know. Or not posting it in the first fucking place. Yes. But here's the problem. Facebook has said that users who encounter these warning labels don't go on to view the original content 95% of the time, so they don't want to get the correct information.

Misinformation warnings and notifications don't always have the intended effect. And here's where we get into the psychology. They can lead to what researchers have called the implied truth effect, where the selective labeling of false information makes all unlabeled content seem legitimate. Therefore, because we didn't slap everything with a label saying this is bullshit, people start to believe anything that doesn't have the label, whether it's bullshit or not.

And as we know, they miss everything. So there you go. This is a huge problem because fact-checking is hard and slow, whereas making up fake stories is fast and easy. David Rand, an associate professor of management science and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, told the Intelligencer.

So, yay. Yep, there you have it. Yeah. It's just like, come on, guys. Yeah. And without getting too into the politics, but how does one not? In a series of rapid-fire messages on Friday morning, Trump issued a call to liberate Virginia, Minnesota, and Michigan, all states led by Democratic governors.

Basically, somewhat calls for armed insurrection against stay-at-home. Which has pushed the limits of social platform policies designed explicitly to keep users safe from the spread of the novel coronavirus both online and off. So, yes, the tweets go against Twitter's own...

I can't even continue because how many times has he broke it? He's broke it every time he tweets. He's been breaking it since he was president. He's been breaking it since before he was president. There are no rules that apply to him. So, that's it. That's...

It doesn't matter. You can read the story in the show notes if you want to. It doesn't matter. He can do whatever he wants. Yeah. That's pretty much it. Thanks, Jack. Thanks, Jack. Thanks a lot, buddy. You know, if we posted anything like that, we'd get banned. That's the way it works. Dude, I get banned all the time.

I get 24-hour blocks all the time. Two sets of rules. That's how it works. And just to end on a high note, because it is a little bit difficult, I did really enjoy these anecdotes. I wish that people had posted the actual videos, but then again, there are privacy concerns with that.

And they are happening in company meetings, which are confidential, I'm sure. So, we don't get the actual videos. We just get the anecdotes. But over at Slate, we'll have the link in the show notes, America's Funniest Work Videos, all the sorts of things that have been happening on Zoom and other platform conference calls and companies.

I have a couple of my favorites here. A VP at my company in a meeting with a pretty big client turned to his wife and said, this is the biggest waste of my fucking time. On without muting the mic. It got very silent for a few seconds, and the client took it like a champ and pretended it never happened. Another one.

One of our colleagues. Perfect. Not be a client. Yes. One of our colleagues, perfectly groomed and dressed, had neglected to close the door directly behind her while taking a video call from home. Call participants were treated to a view of her husband wandering down the hallway totally nude. Yep. That's a good one.

And my personal favorite, because I saw this on 420, and, you know, cheers to all of you who partake, caught one direct hire sipping on a big glass of wine. Tried to ignore it at the time so I could talk to her about it later until she then lit a joint. Hey, man.

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Media Candy. And as this goes on and on and on for longer and longer, it's getting increasingly difficult to try to explain to younger kids why they can't see their friends, why they are not going to school, why they can't touch anything when they're outside.

It's getting a little crazy, so some people are stepping in to try to help. Sesame Street has released a virtual playdate with Elmo, which I watched the other day with my kid, which is very cute. Included songs, games, and more with Anne Hathaway, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tracy Ellis Ross, and the entire Sesame Street gang.

Obviously, it's Sesame Street, so it's not like they got into the science of how something's going to kill you. But they do touch on, you know, we can't see each other right now, and this is the way we do it, and here's some fun things that we can do with our friends, etc., etc. Very cute. That's that.

Check it out if you've got a kid. And a bunch of people are getting together on YouTube, Jim Gaffigan, Ryan's World, which is, I personally find, to be the devil and try to never let my kid watch. And other YouTubers are gently explaining the coronavirus to kids. We'll have the link to that in the show notes as well, so there's a whole bunch of different ones out there.

I haven't checked any of these out yet, but I will check out the Jim Gaffigan one because, you know, he's the dad comic, and I'm sure he's got like five different kids who are involved with a 15-minute Q&A that they did, so that should be pretty interesting. Jim works clean, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I thought he was, he's a clean comic, yeah.

No, it's all dad jokes. All of it, so, yeah. But it's very funny, so, you know, for somebody that works in that milieu, he's actually quite hilarious. Yeah, no, I've watched all of his specials. I like him. I like him a lot. He's a nice guy. So, and we've got a look at The Coming Dune by Dennis Vildu.

Why are they doing more Dune? Because it's never really been done well, and I don't necessarily think this will be either. But, you know, you're off to a bad start when he's already kind of shifting the goalposts because he's calling it the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life.

But we'll see. Vanity Fair has a report from the set with some images. The movie stars Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides. We get Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto. Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica, a warrior priestess of the Bene Gesserit. So, the article starts to talk about how there were some problems with Herbert's novels because the female characters were ahead of their time but still fell prey to tired tropes, a criticism that likewise applies to the story's approach to race.

So, they get into how the story is being changed for the movie a little bit by bumping up more of the female roles like Lady Jessica and turning one of the previously white male characters, Dr. Liette Kynes, to a woman of color. Because, you know, they say here that Dune is a commentary on the white savior complex but in examining that complex still ends up playing to the same stereotypes it tries to dismantle.

And they tried to fix that. And to this I say give me a fucking break. The white savior complex ends up being a living sandworm with an army of all female warriors. The Bene Gesserit are all women and they're the power behind the powers pulling all the strings throughout almost all of the books.

The idea that this is somehow some weird sexist it's only white men thing in Dune, if you read the whole fucking series, holds no weight at all. I can't wait for a remake of Star Wars with Han as a black woman because we have to fix everything. Oh, you know what's coming.

You know what's coming. Let the old stories that aren't actually racist, I'm looking at you, Song of the South, that can go away, live as they are, and write more woke new ones right now. Just make Dune. It's a damn good story with a damn good message about the ecology and the environment.

Starbuck gets a pass because Katie Sackhoff is a goddamn force of nature. And let's be honest, the original Battlestar Galactica wasn't exactly what any of us would call good. Oh, man. Damn. Listen to you, boy. Just leave my Dune alone. It's perfect as is.

Well, I still like the original. You don't have to remake the movie. The movie was great. You just like Sting in his underwear. No. Wait for my brother, Baron. He's the Kwisak Satalak. Again, Aaliyah, complex, interesting, and powerful female character. Yeah, I know.

It's like, what the hell are you going on about? I don't know what they're talking about. Did Denis Villeneuve actually even read the book? You know? He's like, oh, somebody gave me a script. I'm going to make this. Oh, it's not Wokeneth. Yep. Oh, God. The woke must flow. Show title.

HBO Max is coming. Just what we needed. Another fucking streaming service. Doesn't HBO already have a streaming service? Two. They've got two. They've got Go and they've got Now. So we're going to have to order like three different HBO services to get HBO? Apparently.

Apparently. So this is going to be like, you know, they've got Warner Brothers stuff in here. So it's like a bastardization of HBO's content and Warner Brothers content that nobody asked for. And the name HBO Max just makes me think it's streaming Cinemax. So it's just going to be movie films.

Yeah. Yeah. Come on, man. It's like, what is it? Emmanuel in streaming land? That'll be what it is. Yeah. This is, I don't, I don't understand it. I don't get it. I just don't know why they're doing this. And it's going to be about $14.99 a month.

Yeah. Which is what I already pay for HBO Go or now. I don't remember which one it is because it's so stupid. I can't figure out which one I got to get. Anyway, so yeah. And it's going to be, like I said, the exclusive home of Friends.

Who cares? I've never seen an episode of Friends. I'm going to go to my grave without ever seeing an episode of Friends. And I like it like that. Damn it. Friends is fine. It's just not great. Well, yeah. That's why I didn't watch it. Yeah. I've never seen a full episode. I've seen pieces of it.

And that was enough to let me know that I never want to see a full episode. God. Yeah. It's just, why do people keep coming up with these streaming services? It's basically the rerun channel. Yep. I don't care. I don't care about Seinfeld. I don't care about Friends. I don't care about The Office.

It's like, okay, we watched them. Done. Move on. Says the guy who rewatches movies on a regular basis. Watch them. They're just on for background noise. Honestly. And I saw this one this morning, which always makes me sad because I love Dolores O' Reardon.

Loved. Rest in peace. The Cranberry Zombie Anti-Violence Protest Anthem Tops 1 Billion Views on YouTube. Yeah. Congratulations. I guess they re-released the video in 4D quality to mark the occasion. You mean 4K?

4K. I don't know what 4D is. I don't know what 4D is either. I don't care. 4K. 4 something. 4 something or other. And now it's only available on a specific Cranberry's only streaming channel that you have to subscribe to. Exactly. Yes. Oh, Reardon Max. God.

So some of the other ones that have only made it up to the Billion Views milestone is Guns N' Roses, November Rain, Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit, Sweet Child of Mine, Take On Me, and Bohemian Rhapsody. Right. Okay. Let's see. What do they do? Oh, they put that in reverse chronological order.

I was like, if I was writing that list, I'd put the two Guns N' Roses together so you don't have to put Guns N' Roses in twice. Exactly. That's why I didn't say it was Guns N' Roses again, because everybody knows what Sweet Child of Mine is. That's true. But I can't believe November Rain is up there. That's a horrible song. Yeah, but it's like an epic crap video.

Yeah. I'm sure Michael Jackson's thriller's got to be over a billion views, right? Yeah, no. It says, oh, it's from the 90s. These are all. But no, Take On Me is from 85. Sweet Child of Mine is from 87. I don't know why they made this list.

Yeah. Yeah, this makes no sense, list maker. Yeah. God, Variety. Hire some people from BuzzFeed. They know of lists. Yeah, I still can't spell check for shit, but they know how to make a list. At the library.

So, I decided I needed a change of pace. No point in reading dystopian sci-fi when you're in the middle of living it. And I wanted to try. Again, I did the book by What's Her Face? I can't remember. A couple weeks back. And as we've talked about, it's very difficult.

What's her face? I can't remember. Jenny Slate. Jenny Slate. I read her weird-ass book, Little Weirds, and made it through that one. We've discussed it's a bit difficult to read. So, I thought, well, let's try a flat-out comedy book. Let's read something by a comedian. This guy, H. John Benjamin.

He's an American actor and voice actor who has been in shows like Archer and Bob's Burgers and Family Guy and some other stuff. I love Bob's Burgers. Now, see, I decided to read this because I've never seen Archer and I've never seen Bob's Burgers, but people I know and love really think it's great stuff and very funny.

So, I'm like, okay, I will read this. And the book is called Failure is an Option, an Attempted Memoir. Well, I think it sounds like he's got two things right here. Mission succeeded. I figure if I've made it 48% through a comedy book and I haven't laughed once, there's no need to soldier on.

So, I gave up on it. It felt forced. The jokes I could see from five miles away, it wasn't particularly funny at all. Well, Failure definitely is an option. Yep. I've been digging back into Agency by William Gibson.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. I actually looked at that as a potential read and I kind of went, I don't know if I can do this. So far, so good. I like it. I really like it. I'm about a third through it. And it's kind of confusing because there's some timeline issues and some AI issues and things like that.

But so far, I'm really digging it. I just need to get out of the house more to walk and listen to it. Right. Yeah, so far, I'm digging it. You should put it on your list. It's pretty good. All right. Will do. Moron of the Week. Our first Moron of the Week is basically every advertising agency and every brand that's out there right now.

I have a link in the show notes to a YouTube video that I highly recommend everybody watch. Although you don't need to because if you've been watching any TV with commercials, you've seen all this. Every COVID-19 commercial is exactly the same. I watched this video this morning.

I was just like, yep, seen that one, seen that one, seen that one. They are exactly all the same. They are interchangeable. You can just put the product in randomly. It does not matter. Great video. Well worth a watch. Yeah. Well, you can scrub it because you've seen them all already.

I scrubbed it. Yes. And our second Moron of the Week is Ron DeSantos. Yes, the Florida governor for a Friday press conference at the Urban League of Broward County. Florida Governor Rob DeSantos found himself holding an N95 face mask, the kind with two elastic loops that go around the head, not just over the ears.

He took a look at it. And there is video of all this. Link in the show notes. He grabbed the front of the mask with one hand and then pulled the top loop over his head. Not over his ears. Over his head. He then touched the front of the mask, a big no-no, a second time, trying to adjust it over his nose and chin, which was impossible because the bottom loop was dangling loose below his chin, rendering the whole mask completely useless.

Much like him. Unfortunately, he is the real governor making real decisions. He declared the WWE essential and wearing a useless due to user error mask on his face while attending a press conference addressing a pandemic. He failed to take seriously. Not a good look.

He happened to also be in the zip code that has the second highest number of confirmed cases, Broward County. He has reopened state beaches after sluggishly closing them. He has withheld information about the scope of COVID-19 in the state from the public. He has hidden how bad things have gotten within the state's penitentiary system.

And despite the Trump administration reportedly admitting the president pays close attention to his request because Florida is so important for his re-election, the state still has failed to obtain any additional masks for health care workers. So, having gotten one of his own, he demonstrated that he hadn't even learned how to put it on to protect himself yet.

Now, let's be honest here. This is Florida. I mean, are you surprised in any way, shape, or form? You'd think that the governor, at least for optics, may have been given a lesson about how to put this on before attempting to do so completely wrong on camera. But it is what it is.

Again, it's Florida. We are so screwed. Well, Florida is. Well, we don't have locked borders on states, Jason. No, but we have doors that we can lock and just let them go. Let them go. First off, I want to say thanks to everyone for the support.

And while some people have pulled their Patreon support and knocked their donations down, more people have upped their donations and have subscribed on Patreon and PayPal. And we really appreciate it because, as I mentioned before, that net worth is dropping to zero much faster than I had anticipated.

Yes. And in a couple of weeks, this will be my only job again. Yep. Yep. Fun times. So over at Patreon, we have Robert, Mark, Craig, Jamie, and Eddie. Thank you all very much. And over at PayPal, we have Michelle, Nicholas, Tom, Joseph, Ryan, Michael, Andrew, and Eric.

And Eric says, thanks for all you do. No, Eric, thank you. And Matthew. And Matthew writes in, Brian and Jason, can I just say that the two of you are beacons in the darkness? Oh, man, that must be some really dark darkness. It's dark times, man. Lighting the way out of the shadows of COVID. You are inspirations, bringing humanity closer to what could be...

Hey, who am I kidding? That's the Mishers Rye talking. Anyways, stay grumpy. And Martin wrote in saying, well, it's me again. My trading thing didn't work out. So I decided to donate what I had left. Your cut is 50 bucks. So thank you for that. Thank you.

The rest is going to charities supporting the coronavirus. Supporting the coronavirus. Relief efforts, I hope. Yes. You're not supporting the coronavirus. Unless you're donating to Florida. At least the way I failed was because of the market going up, meaning my 401k and many others, I'm sure, went up. I picked these non-profits from the Washington Post article.

And we have the link in the show notes. And I gave 100 to the five bucks... Or 100 to the five bucks. I gave 100 bucks to the five that I felt would do the best work. Thanks for the show and grump on. Thank you, man. Sorry it didn't work out, but, you know, it kind of did in its own way. Yeah, it did. We'll take your money.

Thanks. Mod6502 writes in, fascinating. I think you'll like this. And this is a Twitter thread about the anti-mask league of 1919. It was really cool. Yeah, a bunch of idiots in San Francisco decided they weren't going to wear masks out in public during the Spanish flu pandemic.

And, well, they got what was coming to them. Look how that turned out. Yep. No, it's a great read. It's a really well-researched read, too. And it has clips from the newspapers back then. It's fascinating. It's fascinating. It's exactly what we're seeing right now.

Yep. Yeah. And Farlord writes in, I came across your podcast because of my high school digital media class. What? Oh, shit. We're cussing way too much for this then. That's high school. It's not like kindergarten. That's true. They swear like sailors. I really enjoyed it.

And it was really funny. I can't wait for the next one. Well, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. And next time, send us in the name of your high school. We'll give them a shout out. Yep. Or at least your teacher that's putting this in the syllabus because actually he might not want that or she might not want that. That's true. We'll get fired. And Martine writes in, love what the security segment has evolved into.

Not sure it's an evolution. It's more of a devolution. Devolution, yes. Love it. Kind of makes it hard to listen to Bittner on the Hacking Humans, though. I just picture him in underwear, the furry head, whiskey in hand, and trying to sound serious. I mean, that's pretty much what we picture every week when we talk to him.

Yeah, definitely. Go take a look at Dave's Twitter account because he did a hilarious video of himself Wagnering around the office by himself. Oh, I got to find that. I haven't seen that yet. It's so good, man. It's so funny. Well done, Dave. And David writes in, do you need in-ear monitors for doing interviews with your Audio Technica USB mic?

I prefer over-the-ear headphones so they don't leak back into the microphone. I use the Sony's MDR-7506 headphones. They're pretty much industry standard for every radio station around the world. They're very comfortable and about $100. And actually, I think they're around $80. But yeah, you can wear these things all day and they're extraordinarily comfy.

Jackal writes in, when Bush handed out $500 checks to everyone, years later, it was found that the average American bought a new TV. Now with a new Trump check, new iPhone for everyone. Funny how eventually the money all goes back to the same dozen billionaires. It's funny how that happens, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. Mine's going to Bank of America. I'm not getting one. So there you go. Oh. Yeah. Gustavo writes in, the importance of physical media. You might miss Hannah's butt. And this is the brouhaha over Disney using atrocious CGI to cover up Daryl Hannah's butt in Splash.

The best part of Splash. Yes. Well, no. They want no nudity on Disney Plus for whatever reasons. So they're reworking history a little bit and the CGI is fantastically bad. I think that's the real atrocity here is they couldn't have done a slightly better job.

So link in the show notes. You can see both videos and side-by-side comparisons of a slightly hairy covered butt versus a massively hairy covered butt. It's funny. I've seen Daryl Hannah's butt in person. It was quite a nice day, I have to say. Saw a little more than their butt, too.

Anyway, moving on. Scott writes in, brilliant. Invite a llama or goat to your next corporate Zoom meeting or video call for under $100. Yeah. This is an animal sanctuary in Silicon Valley, of course. Of course. Called Sweet Farm. And it's letting people pay for llamas, goats, and other farm animals to tune into their video calls for under $100.

Because it's not like we should be saving money for anything important right now. Yeah. Seriously. Called food, people. Chef Boy, am I hungry. Come on. Let's go. Scott Hernandez, aka Sleep Too Little, writes in with a Twitter post of him holding some teepee, which is great.

For Jason to start with, I'm sorry about your friend. From what you said about him, he sounds like he lived a great life despite the challenge life threw at him. Yes, he did. He was one of the happiest people I knew. I'm a truck driver for an East Coast grocery chain. So I'm working on Overcast, listening to the episodes of GOG from the start. In episode 75, had me almost throw my iPhone out of the truck the first time you said, hey, lady in the tube, because my lady in the tube answered.

I swiped to clear it and get back to the show. But Overcast will backtrack a second or two and play automatically to make sure you didn't miss a word like, hey, lady in the tube. It took a while before I could hit the fast forward button fast enough. It wasn't that big of a car pilot behind me when it was done.

I actually sent Marco a feature request to fix this this morning. I'm like, can you do lady in the tube recognition to get rid of this? Because I totally forgot that Overcast does that snapback feature. Right. That would be so annoying. An endless loop. There is this theory of the Mobius.

The Mobius. Time becomes a loop. Anywho, even though my wife will be laid off on the 30th of this month, my PayPal will keep flowing with the hope that the show will keep going. Well, thank you very much, sir. Satellite Radio will go first because it doesn't teach me a damn thing. But your show and guests have helped me off my butt even when I only take online classes at a time I'm going back to school next year to finish my degree or start something new better suited for my age.

Trucking is killing my back, but access to a teepee supply is nice. Keep grumping and I will keep trucking. The teepee must roll. That's right, my friend. Excellent. Thank you so much. And Sissy writes in saying, I have a question for you all. Any idea how to save a video from Facebook and a very funny related comment that was, we're not going to read because it's hilarious and kind of just for us.

So there are gazillions of plugins available to save video from all kinds of stuff. Really just Google your browser, save video, Facebook. You'll find a plugin for it. No problem. Yep. And if you have to screen cap it, what do I use? Oh, I use ScreenFlow Pro.

ScreenFlow. Yeah, ScreenFlow. If you have a Mac, ScreenFlow is great. So you can just, I used to do this for video conferences and things like that that wouldn't let me save the video because they were real time. I would just open up ScreenFlow and let the thing go all day and then come back and watch it later.

It's like, I'm not going to give me a copy of it. I'm going to make my own. God damn it. That's right. And Matthew writes in to Seth, you cannot recommend a Linux app to these grumps. They wouldn't know what to do with it. Once again, we do know what to do with it. Not install it. Not install it. That's right.

Once again, with an ocean of time at your disposal, there wouldn't be a better time to try a different desktop environment. Oh, there is a better time. Never. Any day now. God. Any day now. Ubuntu 20.04 will be released. That's 20 versions that they've had a chance to get it right.

There you can test and evaluate the GNOME desktop. I've done the GNOME desktop. You know, we've all done this. It's not worth it for us. I get people that like it, that don't have to actually do anything in the real world. Have fun at that. But we're going to stick with stuff that we know works.

We're putting the no in GNOME. But nothing lasts for the sums of the wisdom. Yeah, yeah. Basically, it's just going on to say, go try Linux. And yes, you're number one Swedish fan. Yeah. Never going to happen, man. Ever. Ever going to happen.

Every piece of software that I need does not run on Linux. And I don't have the neck beard anymore to go out and do that. I used to. I mean, one of my first computers, I was running FreeBSD on it. That was my main machine until I had to fucking open a Word doc. And I'm like, well, that fell apart quick.

Remember how difficult it was to play any MP3s? It took like six years for them to come out with a streaming media player. Dude, I have a certain part of my brain that has all of the config strings for FFmpeg in it. I would just like to nuke and put something useful in there.

If you've ever tried to convert anything with FFmpeg, it's like, okay, dot slash FFmpeg. And then like four paragraphs of configuration options. I'm like, no. Right click, open and handbrake. Done. Thank you.

And Carl writes in with a comment that actually I was thinking about a little earlier in the show when you mentioned you gave a cash tip to your Instacart delivery guy who might have been very fearful of picking that up because God knows what's on that money. Carl writes in and says, hi, Grumps. Got a grocery delivery via Instacart today.

I was trying to think of a way to give the person a cash tip without giving them any virus. I'm not sick, but they don't know that. And caution is the order of the day. I folded the money and wrapped it in a paper towel, then soaked the towel with alcohol. Probably Jim B. Until the money dissolved. And put it on the porch when the delivery person came from a safe distance and wearing a mask.

I told them to put it in their car. And when the alcohol is dried up, open it up and get the tip. Thanks for the show. It's the highlight of my week. Stay well, stay safe, and stay grumpy. So what I did was when I mentioned that I had put the cash in the envelope, I just put in parentheses properly Lysol'd, which is exactly what I did.

So we have a can of Lysol on the counter, and for when mail comes in or packages come in, we just give it a spray on both sides, done, let it dry. So, yes, I just put in parentheses properly Lysol'd, so that works. But, yeah, I'd be worried about soaking the towel with alcohol for a tip because that might be a little overkill.

And Joe writes in with a YouTube video called Mash and the Coronavirus, and this was very funny. Yeah, it's been doing the rounds for a little bit. I've seen comments such as or titles such as Mash addresses absolutely everything ever, and they're kind of right. So you can find an answer to any of life's problems if you search through enough Mash.

This is a very well-done video. Excellent. And Jeremy writes in, something to consider. In 2015, randomized controlled trial involving 1,607 healthcare workers. Researchers compared the rate of influenza-like illness in healthcare workers wearing cloth masks or medical masks to those in a control group, which sometimes used masks, wearing cloth masks resulted in significantly higher rates of infection, the authors found.

They also noted that in their tests, the cloth masks were only 3% effective at blocking particles. And he has a link to the study. Eggs are the new eggs, which are the new masks, which are the new everything. And you know what? The internet, which was just going to solve all our problems and present us with just facts, has created a world where we can't trust fucking anything anymore.

Yeah, but you know, it's okay. 3% effective is better than 0% effective. That is true. You know, it's something. It's something. And now that it's law, you can't even go into a store in California without wearing a mask. So they kind of took the guesswork out of that. You have to have one, period.

So I'm still, I got my, I'm rocking my N95 still. And I, you know, all the things about putting it in bags and putting the sun and all this shit. I just spray the fucker down with Lysol when I get home and just let it air out. Must smell lovely if you forgot something outside. Dude, that Lysol that we have smells amazing.

Are you kidding me? Oh my God, it smells great. Every time we spray something, we're like, oh man, the house smells so good now. I wish we had more Lysol, but we don't because you can't buy it anymore. Yeah. Serang writes in, I heard in episode 431, Seth complaining about Microsoft Teams not having a dark mode.

It does have a dark mode under settings. Also, as a matter of fact, Windows 10 has a dark mode baked into the OS for some time now. And most Microsoft products and even sites have a dark mode option. Problem here, Serang, is Seth is on a Mac. I do believe that the Teams has a, I'm also on a Mac.

I've been using Teams and I believe there is a dark mode. I will double check into that. Yeah, double check that and then we'll just smack Seth. That's it. Gabe writes in, hi Grumps. First of all, thanks for the being my, okay, hold on a sec.

Let's get rid of the the there because I keep jumping over it. Gabe writes in, hi Grumps. Did you say jumping over it? Jumping over it. Oh, I thought you said jumping over it. Well, same. I'm mashing up my words just like he does. All right. Gabe writes in, hi Grumps.

First of all, thanks for being my comforting constant in my new work from home with three kids life. Let's get that happy hour episode booked. Yeah, we need to do that. As I need to pop one after putting the kids to sleep and slur rant the world or slur cheer your slurred rants. Saw this today and had to pass it on.

Random sample testing of antibodies in about 3,000 people in Santa Clara County using pretty good methods to control for population and testing variants, as far as I can tell, shows a crazy high percentage of people with antibodies to the coronavirus, specifically an estimated 50 to 85 fold more than the number of confirmed cases.

And news has come out just today and last night that they are finding the same thing here in Los Angeles County, meaning there's probably a shit ton of people that have confirmed cases because of antibody testings that we're finding out now. Yeah, the testing in Los Angeles shows about 4% of the population have the antibodies.

Now, the thing about these antibody tests is most of them, because I shared with you my roommate's antibody test, and she tested positive for antibodies, which means, you know, actually, what I found is it means fuck all because it means eggs are the new eggs. It means masks are the new masks.

And now it's antibody tests for the new antibody tests. The thing is, a lot of these antibody tests are basically for almost any coronavirus. So if you have, like, just basically got the common cold lately, you're going to show the IgM and the IgG antibodies, depending on when you had it.

And they're unreliable at this point. They need to be testing for COVID-19 period or coronavirus period. Specifically, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And most of these tests are basically just general coronavirus tests. So you've got to read the fine print and look at what actual strains that these tests have.

Because if you think that you have the antibodies, you go out and you get infected, you're going to do more harm than good. So be very careful by getting these, you know, back alley antibody tests. Trust me. It has been a week and a half of dealing with this. I know.

I know. You've been sharing the whole process with me. It sounds exhausting. Yeah. I wish you would have stayed the fuck at home and not gotten tested because it's just been just a morass of, you know, reading this stuff. And I'm just like, oh, God. So I'm waiting until I'm waiting until Kaiser Permanente says, hey, we have an antibody test.

Come in and get it. Right. And then I'm going to go get the test. But. All right. And he continues on here. Grump on and keep the tips coming, especially Brian's as we're trying to hold it together with two working parents and insane expectations of availability from the text messaging bosses. Yep. It's rough, man. Hang in there. Yep.

Mark Andre writes in. Hi, guys. I hope you're still holding up. Trying to keep up listening to you without the commute is hard, but I managed to drag behind too much. I don't know. I managed not to drag behind too much, as I believe. But I still think we're getting a lot of drunken feedback. Hey, man.

Bring it on. Keep it going. I love it. It's fine. It just makes us stumble a little bit while reading these. And he sends us a couple links. How COVID-19 has impacted media consumption by generation. He also says, I haven't started reading the books yet, but it's been strongly recommended to me by a colleague.

Well, I'm going to tell you for a second here. Your colleague is wrong. The first half of the first book is hard, but once you get through it, it's the best trilogy he ever read. And I trust him. Don't trust him. Throw him out of a window. And he's talking about the three-body problem. Oh, maybe you already mentioned it.

Ad nauseum, we did. And I missed it. I ordered the trilogy and will read it as soon as I get it. If you can, cancel that order, my friend. No, no, no. That's not true. Read the first book and throw the other two out. Yes. The first book actually is pretty good. I enjoyed the first book because you have the dark forest problem and it's really, it's a fascinating read.

The second two books are going to make you want to kill yourself and everyone around you. Yes, I agree. So bad. Especially that third book. It's like a thousand pages of nothing. It will pass some time though, but you'll be disappointed.

It will pass some time. Hey, and you can, if you did actually order the physical books, you can use them as TP. There you go. And Barrett writes in, not really technical, but I think it fits the current times of your podcast. By the way, I always look forward to every grumpy old geek show, especially now more than ever. Thank you, Jason and Brian.

And this is a link to the Atlantic article, which we now pay for, so we get to read them as much as we like. And I'm very much enjoying their journalism right now. I forgot we pay for that. I got to add that to my RSS feed. Yeah, you should, man.

They're doing some good stuff over there. And this is the Our Pandemic Summer article, which is, let me check really quick who the author's name is. I should have put it in automatically. There we go. And this is a basically how we're going to reopen realistically without killing everybody.

And it is not a very pretty picture, but it's going to be our reality or something very close to it. So if you're interested in what the next year is going to look like, you might want to go read this. All right. And Jim writes in, listen to your podcast for the first time on episode 430 and enjoyed it, except for the gratuitous F-bombs.

Come on, guys. Is that really necessary? Quite the turnoff. Sorry, Jim. Fuck yeah, it is. Now more than ever, as everybody likes to say these days, it is. Look, we've got the explicit tag there. We've got everything there. And if I guess when you started just with 430 and we haven't talked about this in quite some time, but it was a conscious decision.

We tried to do clean shows. And the reality is that nobody liked it. And that's not how we talk to each other. And the initial impulse was, you know, we're doing a show about guys that are in tech. And this is the way your IT department talks to each other.

I promise you that. Don't talk to each other. It's a very natural conversation. And sometimes we get salty. Sometimes we get over salty. We tried it and, yeah, it sucked. It really sucked.

Because we're thinking, oh, I want to say that, but I can't say that. I mean, let's just leave it at the amount of feedback that we got about go ahead and cuss is vastly higher than the amount of feedback that we've got about don't cuss. Yeah, it's about 98% to what the fuck's wrong with you guys?

Why aren't you swearing anymore? To 2% going, thank you, Jesus. I'm glad you're clean now. So, yeah. Yeah. And C-Rod writes in, grumps, as someone that has lived in Las Vegas for several years and spent a few summers in Afghanistan and Kuwait, I felt for the Tel Aviv bro.

I have seen extreme heat do crazy things. As far as car jump starters are concerned, this is a solution. Capacitor jump starters. They use capacitors instead of batteries so they can stand up to the heat. They work by amplifying the power of a weak battery and dumping enough juice all at once to get the car started. Unfortunately, this means it won't work on a completely dead battery.

In those cases, though, you can power certain models by plugging it to a USB charger or 12-volt outlet. Just an option I thought I'd share for anyone interested. Love your podcast. Continue to stay safe and sane. Thank you. Thank you. Actually, it's pretty funny. As soon as we're done with this, I have to go back over to the Ford dealership because after my battery did die and they did the test on it and all that stuff, I got it home.

It lasted three days and wouldn't start again. So I had to jump it with my new lithium starter and drove it for an hour just around town. I'm like, oh, God, freedom, freedom. I'm out of the house. I'm driving around for an hour. Came back next day, less than 24 hours, dead as a door now.

I'm like, oh, shit. Well, I got to say, I've started up my two German-engineered cars once a week since this has started. No problem. Yeah. So I went in and took it in and good on Ford. Since it is a lease and it's only 18 months old, I got a free battery out of it.

So I'll take it. I like warranties. Okay, here. Now, this is how you do it, people. Mache Tegwinsik. I can't even say. He put a fucking pronunciation guide in here and I still can't say it.

He gave us phonetic spelling. Thank you so much. But Jason still managed to not get it right. Mache Tegwinski. Mache Tegwinski. There we go. Mache Tegwinski. All right. Thank you, Mache Tegwinski. Love your show. Just thought to drop a work from home tip.

Actually, this works great also in the office. Type in cab view in YouTube and you'll get mind calming moving backgrounds from around the world. This keeps you off the news, movies, TV series. It's great for thinking stuff through and you can always choose something for your mood. Snow, mountains, desert, etc.

Dessert. Dessert. Oh, ice cream cone. Oh, dude. I got this bourbon ice cream this week. Oh, dude. That stuff is so good. That is so good. I actually ordered some peaches and apples and we're going to make like a crumble and put that bourbon ice cream on it.

Oh, it's going to be so good. Also, you may get a nice idea for your 2022 holiday. That sounds about right. Well, thank you, Mache. Thank you. Marie writes in, I have to chime in on episode 430 and comment on the latchkey kid thing. I grew up in the 70s and 80s in New York City, an era of high murder rates and lots of crime.

We only went out when absolutely necessary. Go to school. Come home from school. You can go outside if there is an adult around or go run errands with a parent. While not quite a pandemic and the restrictions worked on us all of the time, I do remember just having to stay home while the son of Sam was running around and finding a way to entertain yourself.

I am finding like Jason, my childhood was the best training ground for the current shelter in place situation. I am working from home now and I'm finding I am way more productive, mostly because I no longer have a four hour commute in Seattle on a good day and now can get about eight hours of sleep instead of three or four a night.

This whole situation has eased my anxiety since now the nameless bad thing I always worried about is here. Great. There's a silver lining. Now everyone gets to live in my brain for a while. Stay grumpy and carry on. It's funny because now that everybody's staying at home and doing everything that we've done for 20 plus years, I find myself really wanting to go outside more because I don't like being in the status quo.

I want to be different. I do. I revel in being different. I kind of knew you were feeling that way. That's why I sent you that image I sent you last night. And I'll just paraphrase. We'll put it in the show notes. Jason, you can grab that from Slack, but I'll paraphrase it right now.

It shows an image of a crazy prepper in his basement saying, I can survive here for 10 months. And that's what you've been doing. The preppers have been doing the last 10 years. And then the next image, prepper is finally getting a chance in 2020. I want to go to the hairdresser. And they're all out protesting being locked in.

I was crying. I was laughing so hard. It's so good. Oh, this next one comes from Michael. Jesus Christ. I feel for Brian when having to deal with Jason when Jason gets all pissy and whiny when getting called out. I grew up in the exact same era and I'm also a latchkey kids, latchkey kids.

But come on, times change. Treating kids today the same way we were and expecting a similar result is a fallacy at best, abusive at worst. Jason needs to read why people who are always right have got it all wrong. Stay the course, Brian. You're much more patient than I would have been.

It's my favorite bit of feedback we've ever gotten. It's so easy to fuck with you guys. I love fucking with parents. Look, this is what, you know, I've been doing this show with Jason for seven years now. I've known Jason a lot longer than that. I know Jason. I know what his responses are going to be.

I know how he's going to ask. Of course, I didn't pursue the latchkey kid thing because, you know, there are a lot of differences between a pandemic and being a latchkey kid. There's a lot of differences between stay at home and being a latchkey kid. The two don't compare at all, but there was no point in pursuing that with Jason.

And I'd also like to point out that Jason has a particular – it's something that I find kind of endearing, actually. Most – we all understand empathy, really. You know, empathy is basically putting yourself in someone's shoes. Jason has what I like to call reverse empathy.

Rather than put himself in other people's shoes, he takes your feet and puts them in his shoes, and that's the lens through which he sees the world. And once you understand that, it's totally okay. So that's why I can be patient with this. That was just funny. I fucking love it.

Fucking with parents just makes me happy. It's great. Oh, move on. All right. Honestly, honestly – I'm going to scroll up. Michael, thanks for the feedback. I was laughing so hard. Thank you so much. It's very funny. Yeah. You know, you just let it roll off you.

Let Jason be Jason. Of course, man. That's the way it goes. All right. Moving on. Taco Cat. It seems like the usage of UVC lamps is being studied and used for disinfecting non-porous surfaces, which may have been exposed to the novel coronavirus. Having prepper survival training and good BS detection.

Hey, are you one of those dudes out there trying to get a haircut now? Well, any good prepper knows to have clippers. Jeez, come on. And, you know, generally a low-maintenance hairstyle. Any thoughts on building a UVC light box for disinfecting items being brought home instead of wiping down?

And, of course, thanks for the snarky tech-related audio infotainment. One of the biggest things that I'm now seeing in my Instagram ad feeds is these UVC boxes to throw your phones and keys in. Everywhere. Yeah. I have absolutely no thoughts on building a UVC light box because I don't have any of that hobby time that most people seem to have.

And I'm also not sure. Again, eggs are the new eggs, everything like that. I don't know what the exact science on these UVC boxes are for COVID-19. I was going to say, you're also not a scientist. Yeah. There you go. So I don't know. I'd like to see some more studies. Are they actually effective?

Do they kill the coronavirus? I don't think we know that yet. I'm pretty sure they do. I mean, because it is just a strain of coronavirus. So it's in that same family. And that's what hospitals have been using forever. All right. I mean, yeah. I'm guessing that it definitely probably would.

It probably would. Yeah. The strength of these things is just ridiculous. Well, you're about to read some feedback about that, Jason, because you're up next. And I just wanted to point out, I am thinking about this next bit of feedback for my next house, because this probably won't be the only major event we're going to experience in our lifetimes with this sort of thing.

So take it away, Jason. Brian writes in, in episode 432, you talked about UV lights and wish they had ones for your house. Well, guess what they do? There are a few different companies that make them, but I believe the Remy Halo made by RGF is the most popular. The Remy Halo usually costs around $350 to $400.

But with COVID-19, I'm guessing most seem to be going around $450 to $600. Way to go, you fucking profiteers. The Remy Halo is installed directly into your HVAC air duct and runs continuously. It's designed to eliminate sick building syndrome risks by reducing odors, air pollutants, VOCs, which are chemical odors, smoke, mold, bacteria, and viruses.

You're supposed to have a licensed electrician or HVAC professional install the unit, though if you know what you're doing and have some electrical experience, you can probably install it yourself like I did with guidance from my best friend who owns an HVAC company. I would probably electrocute myself, but I have a friend who owns an HVAC company, so I'm thinking about having him do it.

How about that? You can find them for sale online or a local HVAC company can sell you one and install it. As a person with bad allergies my entire life and all the COVID-19 stuff going on right now, it was an easy investment choice. And we have a link to the Remy Halo Whole Home Induct Air Purifier.

Keep up the great work and stay grumpy, Brian. I shared this to my roommate, and we're probably going to get one of these. All right. Well, let's read this next bit of feedback, because we didn't have to wait for an egg to be at the new egg. These all came in simultaneously. So Neil writes in, Hi, geeks.

Glad you guys are talking about remaining sane during these strange days. In episode 432, you talked about the UV lights they're using in hospitals to kill germs. Well, if you don't know about the Big Clive on YouTube, but he lives to find dangerous items and either pull them apart and explain how they work. A few years ago, he got his hands on one of these lamps.

You can see that here. We have the link in the show notes. And if you want a preview of how he feels about this, the title is Awesome Flesh-Burning Death Lamp. The first quote is the best quote. The back of my hand now smells like burnt pork.

That's bad. LOL, Stacey. Come on. Yeah, and here's the description and kind of where it goes here. Another sensational eBay delight that you should probably not buy unless you really know what it is and does. It bays the whole room in the icy glow of UVC narrowband ultraviolet, which can cause eye and skin damage to anyone in its vicinity.

It appears that the Acerian reference may be to do with killing dust mites. I'm not sure how effective that is, but it definitely puts out a lot of UV and makes the room smell strongly of ozone in the process. And it kind of goes on and on and saying, if you really do want to buy one of these on eBay, then the magic keywords are E27 and germicidal.

He found some 220 volts, so they probably only intended for sale in China. He did find 120 110 volt blacklight lamps, falsely advertises germicidal. And he says, if you do buy one of these, you must make anyone who might come across it aware that it is dangerous to look at or even be in a room with when lit.

If you like weird and dangerous electrical stuff or have a genuine need for a convenient UVC lamp with integrated ballast, then this might be a worthy addition to your collection. Yeah, when they use this at the hospitals, they basically black out the room because this shit will fuck you up. You know, that's why we have UV protection on our sunglasses, on our car windows, on our home windows.

You know, UV bad for you. Yeah. So it's pretty good, though. But I guess it would be relatively safe if it was in your HVAC system and it was just hitting the air as it's being pumped through the house. Right. I actually have three different humidifiers in the house. Well, actually, they're the same humidifier.

I've got three around there, but they've got UV bulbs in them, like inside them that are constantly running to basically get all of the germs out of the water before it is aerosolized into the air. And these things are fantastic. I've used these for years and they're, you know, you don't get all the sniffles you get with just like, you know, the regular ones.

They're really cool. And totally not, Frag writes in, I know how hard my eyes roll when I see something is op-ed. At the same time, I'll vouch for the content. I've been employed as an IT manager for just over two months and working here has been a great experience. All managers go through the associate experience for a week of hands-on learning.

You get to experience what is expected from the people packing, sorting, loading, et cetera, in the warehouses to better understand the business and for IT anyway. Why some of the seemingly minimal requests are highly important. After leaving an IT management position with Ball Aerospace, this place is by far better.

Can I be a fiend of the show, too? Yes, yes, totally not, Frag. You're a fiend of the show. And what he's talking about is working at Amazon. Yes, it's a link from the Baltimore Sun. Amazon provides job security in a time of uncertainty commentary. And I read through this and I don't doubt that upper level gigs at Amazon are good.

Upper level gigs at most companies are good. You just don't want to be in the warehouses. The author of this article was skilled and educated enough to move up quickly, so that helps. But if you're not, I don't think you're going to get the great experience that he did. And just as a caveat, I don't doubt Amazon is doing some good.

They certainly are. There's no doubt about that. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. No. No, they're just taking over the world. And, you know, at this point, okay. And Jeff Bezos is taking all the monies. Okay. It's just like I've given up on privacy, you know? It's like, okay, I saw that video with the kids on the beach and the software that the advertising companies use.

I'm like, okay, that's the proof I needed that we're done. Amazon right now, basically keeping the entire country running. So, yeah, okay. We'll just shut the show down. We're done. We got nothing else to talk about. Yep. Wait, is Uber still around? We can still make fun of them, right?

Yeah, they're hanging on by a thread. Yeah, because we can't do facial recognition anymore because everybody's wearing a fucking mask. Yeah, scooters are gone. Yeah. Oh, the death of the bird. Yes. Yep. This really is a bird flu. It is. It is. Over at iTunes, we have a five-star rating from Draw Z in the UK.

Best podcast for high-tech geeks. They are funny and sharp, not afraid to call BS on things that deserve it, and always a pleasure to listen to. Thank you. Well, thank you. And we've got one from Toyo Homo in Japan for grumpy young geeks, too. As a millennial, GOG is like a, oh, yeah, that happened.

Fill in the memory gap for all the stuff I remember hearing vaguely about as a kid and not realizing it had a huge impact on today's technology landscape. Brian and Jason keep it very real and tie everything tech up in this godsend of a podcast that's become part of my nightly routine, sending the love from Tokyo.

Well, you stay safe over there in Tokyo. I hear it's kind of weird right now. Yeah, second round of infections, all that sort of stuff going on there. Yep, yep. Let's see Sean Bonner. He's trying to get out, and he can't go anywhere. So, worst time ever to plan a move, bro. Tell me about it. I was trying to do it, too. Yep.

Oh, how's that going? It's not. Okay. Yep. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to GOG.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review.

And don't forget to keep hitting those stars on Overcast, you know? And we'll try not to say the lady in the tube words that much more. I got to admit, though, that was pretty funny. Closing shout-outs! I would like to give a shout-out to my co-host, Brian, this week, because after Friday, if you listened to the end of the show on Friday, you heard I lost one of my dear friends last week.

And I basically couldn't pull myself to get to my computer to put any stories in here. So, Brian, thank you for basically putting this show together, because it has been a shit weekend. I did notice that absolutely nothing was going into the show notes, so it's what we do, Jason. We step in to help each other out when this shit happens.

Yep, I appreciate it. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to GOG.show slash donate. Toss us a few bucks and we'll love you forever. Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Now more than ever, as everybody likes to say.

Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 433. I said that weird, didn't I? Just a little bit. 433. 433. I have been watching a lot of Muppets. Not going to lie. It's not easy being 433.

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