434: Apex Moron

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 are you feeling right now, Jason? Today is the first day in a long time I've actually felt great. Really? Because I actually, I'm about to roll into a bit that I self-prepared and I honestly can't believe I'm about to fucking say this.

And it drives me a little crazy that I'm about to say this, but here we go. I'm not feeling that great, Jason, because I followed the advice of the President of the United States. Are you dying now? Well, I slept in UV light, so it smells vaguely of burnt pork in here and my skin is itchy.

And then I did my recommended bleach shot this morning, and I think the cure might be worse than the disease. Well, little known fact, my first suicide attempt in my teens, I drank bleach and had to spend three days in the ICU. So I know exactly what that feels like.

Can you fucking believe the world we're living in right now? Did you watch the speech? I watched it in real time, and I mean, the dogs were like, why is everybody's jaw just hanging open right now? I was really kind of holding on, man.

I was holding on okay. But that was my fucking breaking point. I am fucking done with this asshole. I know. Everybody's like, don't be political. Don't be political. We tried. We tried, but the president of the United States of America just recommended injecting bleach.

Oh, no. I know. And I mean, I had this. You first. Exactly. Why aren't you doing it, sir? I had this later on in the show, but I have to bring it up now since you brought it up. One of the comments on this BuzzFeed article about, please don't drink disinfectant, because Lysol had to come out with a fucking press release, because we are so fucking stupid here.

There's no denying it. Our president is an apex moron. Never heard that before. I love that. I just, I mean, I'm speechless. I'm literally speechless about this. I can't, it boggles the mind that anybody would still be on the fence anyways, but if anybody was wavering, if not this, then what?

Dude, people believe him. That's the fucked up part. Well, they're going to be dead. Well, that's what I said. I'm like, let him try it. It'll just get this thing over with faster. Honestly. It's like, let's call the herd. Let's just fucking call the herd. Like I was telling you right before we started recording.

It has felt anytime I go out of the house now, it feels like we're actually in one of the sci-fi dystopias, but never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be this bad. I mean, it's just, the thing is, it's just, I mean, yeah, it's mind bogglingly stupid.

It's just like, this is like if you mashed up a sci-fi dystopia with idiocracy and came out, if you, if you would have played what we're going through right now as a movie. This show was smarter than this motherfucker. If you would have played this as a movie in the nineties or the eighties, nobody would believe it.

No, no. That is just too unbelievable. Not even the nineties or the eighties. If you told me this was going to happen in February, I wouldn't have believed it. It's going to say in February. Yeah. But here we are anyways, it is just one of those, I mean, the best thing so far is just the outtake of the doctor listening to, listening to him say this.

And she's just like, you can tell her head, she's about to go full on scanners and have her head explode while that's going on. Cause we were just like, what, what, what? Like here we, here we are. And all we can literally do is laugh about it.

We should be morally outraged, but you can't be, you can't be. All you can do is laugh because what, what else are you going to do? I know. And, and I, I am disappointed with the rest of the white house newsroom. Like after he's shutting down the CNN reporters, they should have just said, Oh wait, you didn't answer her question yet when he tried to move on and just, you know, just these people, some pushback needs to start now.

Now it has to, you know, honestly, if, if she would have stood up and when he said fake news, I'm done. If she just should have, she should have stood up and said fake president, I'm done throwing his shit down and walked out of the room. Goddamn right. Nobody in the world would fire that woman ever again.

No, she should be a goddamn hero. Goddamn hero. Oh my God. I guess we should plug our virtual happy hour. Oh, that's right. Kind of having that right now, but later today. Actually tomorrow. Oh yeah. Yeah. When they hear it.

Oh yes. We're going to have on, and God, I'm, I'm, it drives me a little crazy, but I said 5 PM PST in my little trailer at the beginning of the last episode. And of course. It's PDT, right? Oh yes. Did a bunch of pedantic a-holes already get back to you about that?

Not even, I mean, well, a couple of pedantic a-holes and one, one nice guy that I really like, it was like, it was like, I'm like, it's Pacific. Okay. It's just Pacific. Yeah. That's why I just wrote Pacific on the socials. Yeah. I'm like, I just, I don't know what, I, you're, look, you're lucky I got Saturday right.

Okay. Motherfuckers. We don't even know what day it is and you're going to get pissy about, uh, time zones and specifics. Yeah. Specifics on Pacifics is what the problem was, but yes, we're going to do it. We're going to do it on zoom. Um, cause we looked at, I looked at the different options and what we want to do.

You looked, I looked. Yes. Yeah. We being me and the people that do the work to go research, that would be me. And, uh, yeah, fucking blue jeans wants like 500 bucks to do a webinar. And I'm like, no, absolutely not. I mean, you know, three people are going to show up, but in case more people do, it does make sense to kind of be able to limit the people that can talk at any particular time.

So, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what we're going to do is we're going to do it on zoom. A link will be at gog.show slash live and just go there. It'll be a, it'll just redirect you to the zoom dealio. So make sure you have zoom installed or it'll tell you to do, and they had a security update that came out today. So good there.

All right. Bleat shops at five Oh five. That's right. And, uh, yeah, so we bought the, uh, we bought the webinar package, so we'll be able to do that. We've got, uh, if everybody shows up for the host side of it, we should have about eight to nine people.

Okay. Cool. Yeah. I know a few people, uh, friends of the show that are going to pop in because you know, what else is there to do? Yeah. And I want, I wanted the ability to be able to bring people into the, like, I want spectators to be able to watch the video. And if somebody sends us a good question, we can bring them in and ask the question.

So we get video and get to see everybody. But, uh, yeah, we need the, like the webinar tools. Oh, I'm going to have to put on my video. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Brush your hair. Yeah. I got to work on my pants are optional. Oh, pants are optional. So, uh, just make sure that things pointed up.

That's all. Uh, but yeah, that should be interesting. We'll see. Well, whatever. I got a, I got a case of beer. I haven't had beer in almost a month, so I'm ready to go. I will be calling from my white cloth fortress. So that'll be, that'll be interesting.

Uh, yeah. The links will be on the social and stuff. So hopefully you get this before then and we'll post it around to Patreon, I guess. And Twitter today and maybe on Facebook, who knows? But I've already posted it everywhere. I'll do it again. Oh, okay. So sometimes I work, Jason. Sometimes, sometimes.

And a little bit of followup. I saw this over at Wired UK. Is this the end of Airbnb? Betteridge would say no, but common sense would say yes. I don't know. I don't know if I actually agree with that. I do think, you know, the core shell of the company will be able to hold on because, you know, they pay themselves a lot of money, so they've got a long runway.

And, uh, there's a lot of doom and gloom about a bunch of companies right now. But I, I really do believe that the world will continue on as per normal after a brief break. Um, and they will be back and be just as horrible as they were before. Uh, they'll restaff up and all that sort of stuff.

And like cockroaches, like randomly, like my wife and I were talking because we sold our, our condo in Toronto and we're looking at buying a house there. Um, and prices are starting to drop. So we might've won the financial lottery in terms of timing because of all this. But, uh, we were even thinking, you know, if we buy, if we end up buying a place before we're ready to move, because we don't want to move right away.

Um, she immediately went, well, I guess we could put it on Airbnb. And I was like, well, oh yeah, they will be. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that they're going to be just fine. And, uh, you know, the people that are screwed are the people that were trying to make a living off the platform that had bought a bunch of properties and kind of were basically winging it and only made it because of the income.

You know? Oh, the slum lords. Yeah, exactly. Basically the bum lords, the Airbnb and bum lords. That's it. Um, yeah, those guys are going to be kind of jacked. I know a friend of mine who actually has legit apartment buildings right now, and he's screwed because nobody's paying rent. So not a good time to be a landlord.

No, no, it's not. But, uh, it's also not a good time to poop because as predicted, there may be a toilet paper shortage because the sawmills in Canada have decided to cut back because lumber prices have gone down because nobody's building houses right now, which means there's no, uh, basically, uh, the, the crap that you get that makes the toilet paper.

So, uh, we have a problem. We have a problem, people. So get that bidet while you can, while they're still in stock. Well, yeah, I mean, the real problem with these economy shutdowns is when, when these factories start to close, right? When the toilet paper factories are starting to close, when the pork manufacturing companies are starting to close.

If we're doing this for a couple more months, we're going to be in a world of hurt. We're going to have some real issues with our supply chains and the things that are, that we're still kind of able to get through Instacart. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. It's going to be interesting. We're going back to the land. We're going back to the land.

But now that all the coyotes have come back, you can go shoot a coyote, get some fur and make that into your toilet paper. I'm not too worried about toilet paper because, uh, as, as an avid reader, I have an awful lot of books. So it'll be years before I run out of stuff, uh, to wipe my ass with.

Oh yeah. I think I've got a copy of Cryptonomicon around here that'll at least last me to 2022. That's where I'm actually starting because I hated those books and I've got them all and I've got them in hardcover. Oh, I love Cryptonomicon. I think you're talking about the Baroque cycle though. Oh, sorry. The Baroque cycle. Yes.

The Baroque cycle was horrific. I loved it. I got through the whole thing. It was like 700 hours on audible, but I got through the whole thing. Believe it or not. I'm going to love it for the next year of lockdown. Oh, so in other interesting news, um, my neighbor, she bless her heart.

She has a house. You've been to my house, right? Yes. So her house is about 150 square feet smaller than mine, right? And in fact, your house is the last place I actually went before we're going into lockdown. That's right. And, uh, oh, speaking of, cause we were worried that you brought the, brought the Rona over.

Whatever happened to that asshole from Universal Music? Did he pull through? Uh, yes, he did. Ah, too bad. Because rich people pulled through. That's right. That's right. So, uh, bless her heart. She's got her, her husband, her daughter, her daughter's husband, and four kids living there right now.

And, uh, the kids range between like seven and 13, I believe somewhere in that range. Right. And, uh, they're always, they're always out in the neighborhood playing at the end of the day with their masks on, riding their scooters and all that stuff. And I'm like, Hey, you know what? I'm looking around my house and I'm like, let me just start to find old tech because I bet I, if I had some, you know, junk laying around it, those kids would probably like it for just to play with.

So I found an old, uh, seven inch fire tablet and I, I'm just like, Hey, you guys want this? You know, you can watch videos, play games, do whatever, just hook it up to your Amazon account. And they're like, sure, we'll take it. And then the next morning we come out into the backyard and hung over our gate were four giant rolls of toilet paper.

I'm like, that's how you say thank you in a pandemic. They obviously did not see the news about the toilet paper shortages that are coming. No, they didn't. They didn't. So I just say, you know, if you, if you have old tech land around and you see neighbors with kids that maybe don't have, you know, as much stuff as you do, or just might enjoy it.

I'm just going through all my junk right now and finding old stuff that I can donate over. I've got a game boy that I'm going to give to give to them as well. An OG game boy with Tetris on it. Cause I got it to play it and I played it three times. Now it's sitting in a drawer way to go on that eBay purchase.

There was alcohol involved, but yeah, I'm just finding old stuff that other people might be able to use, you know, to just kind of get through this. Very cool. And my last little bit here, and it's, this is, this one's driving me crazy. And I know it drove friend of the show teeter crazy, uh, who hopefully will be here for our drink up. He actually called me last night to bitch at me.

He's like, Hey, I heard on the show that you are having a drink up. Why weren't we invited? I'm like, go check your fucking email. He's like, Oh, Oh, let me just state that I'm a dumb ass. So he will hopefully be there with Jen. Um, but everybody's selling these masks that have vents in them.

Yeah. Do not buy those. Do not buy those because those vents are not filtered when the air comes out. So you are actually not doing anything for the people that are around you. And the half the point of wearing a mask is so you don't get other people sick. It's not half the point.

It's a hundred percent. Most of the point. And my friend Rudy posted a thing on, uh, his Twitter or Instagram the other day. And, um, like, no, don't do it. And, uh, Grant Imahara jumped in as well. He's like, no, no, no, don't do it. So, you know, don't buy those masks.

If you have them, don't wear them, keep them for whenever, you know, you might need them in the future for particles, for you, for fires or, you know, dust storms or burning man or whatever the fuck you want to wear it for. But you don't wear one of those in a pandemic because it doesn't do a damn thing. It's a false sense of security and it's a waste of money in the news.

Well, assuming injecting Lysol and bleach doesn't kill you. We have some, uh, bleak news coming out of the CDC, unfortunately. Uh, yeah, about the same time that, uh, Florida and Georgia are deciding, uh, we're going to open everything up. Uh, the CDC, the director of the CDC has warned that the second wave of the coronavirus will be far more dire because it is likely to coincide with the start of the flu season, meaning we

have two simultaneous respiratory outbreaks going on, which will put insane strain on the healthcare system. So if you were looking forward to being out and about this winter, think again, worst double feature ever, I think is what we're going to call that. So we kind of knew it was coming, but I, you know, you didn't think about, Oh wait, the flu season is also there, which also kills people.

So that'll be fun. Yes. So that will be a good time. And, uh, hell has indeed frozen over. The virus has turned off the beer taps in Munich and that Munich has canceled Oktoberfest. Well, duh. Come on. Of course.

Obviously. I had no idea it was this big. I mean, I knew it was a big thing, but 6 million people go to Munich every year for the two week festivities. I've been to Munich many times. It is not that big of a city. It's hard to imagine another 6 million people packed into it, but, uh, apparently it happens and, uh, it's over $1 billion that the city usually makes from the events.

So, oof, tough times. That is tough times. It's a sad polka. If we had a sad polka sound, we would play that. I've never been to Munich. I always wanted to go, but it's one of my favorite cities in the world. And as my wife likes to say, how was Munich? It was delicious.

Okay. I saw this one. It was just, this is a head scratcher. Quibi sent these podcasters a cease and desist. So now they're out for blood. Well, lawyers got to keep busy. Yeah. The only thing that was really fun about this article is that I now know what Quibi stands for quick bites.

I didn't know that before. Wow. You didn't. Okay. No, I didn't. Even then, then as soon as I read this and I saw a commercial for Quibi and it said quick bites and I'm like, oh, okay, maybe I just wasn't paying attention, but now, uh, getting Bader Meinhoft and into seeing it everywhere.

Uh, yeah. These guys had a fan podcast of Quibi called Quibi verse. Okay. And of course the Quibi lawyers said, no, no, no, nothing about our name. You can't use our, anything that's even resembles our artwork, blah, blah, blah. And they should really be happy that even two people are a fan of Quibi.

That's what I'm saying. I'm like, why don't you hire these guys to do the official Quibi podcast? Because I, I tried it. It's not good. That's about the best I can say about it. Have you tried it yet? No, cause I don't care.

Okay. I just, I don't care. I, I, I need long form entertainment, not quick bites. Yeah. Yeah. No. And I've been, uh, actually we'll cover this on the next show. Um, I've been watching devs since all the people have been, uh, talking about it and suggesting it.

And, uh, aforementioned friend of the show, David Teeter called me up and he's like, dude, watch it. I'm like, okay, started watching it. So I'm six episodes in, got three to go, uh, or five in three to go. But, uh, it's interesting. It's really interesting. I had to pull back because it's not very happy in parts.

And I'm like, I don't know if I have the mind space for this right now, but he's like, stick with it, stick with it. It gets better. I'm like, okay. Again, Jason, put on the minions and put on Moana. You'll particularly like Moana because it's a, it's your, it's your, it's your dude from Hamilton that wrote all the music for it.

Yep. Lynn. And it's got the rock, which I don't think that's a selling point, but dude, I hate the rock, but I love his character in that movie. Okay. And he nails it. He nails it. So good. Okay. My favorite song off the soundtrack is the rock singing, which in a million years, I wouldn't have thought I'd said right up there with drinking bleach.

Exactly. I never would have thought I'd say that. We're all, but we're pushing 50 and we're talking about Disney animated shows in the rock, the WWE wrestler, the people who I'm used to giving the people's elbow and you know, uh, yeah, he's singing on Moana.

Yes, he is. So I've been asking for the past couple months, uh, where, wherefore art thou Magic Leap? And, uh, we've learned, we have learned where they are. They've been busy, uh, giving people pink slips and trying to sell off the company. So, uh, yeah, Magic Leap, uh, took a leap off the cliff, laid off a number of employees this, uh, yesterday morning, I believe.

And they announced they were backing away from their consumer ambitions to focus more heavily on selling to enterprise customers. 2.6 billion dollars these people took in. Take, just wrap your head around that. Yes. They have made more money from, from getting investors than basically almost any other company in consumer hardware ever.

And, uh, managed to never really produce much of anything. Uh, 2,600 million dollars. And all they have is a prototype and an SDK that is overpriced. And people have said, no, it's kind of shit. So yeah, Magic Leap turned out exactly how, uh, you and I thought it would.

Uh, and the other thing that I think you and I have been saying for years now is, uh, nobody wants this stuff. People just don't want it. And, uh, as much as every one of these companies has tried to be consumer focused, uh, nobody gives a shit.

That's, I mean, I, we were, we were actually kind of, kind of up for, you know, a good AR set and that's what they're going for. They're not full VR, they're AR and there's just too many problems. It is, it's a really hard problem to solve, you know, and they just can't solve it apparently.

I mean, people that have tried it said, it's pretty cool, but it's like, okay, a whale will fly by outside my window. Okay. I've done acid before and I've seen that and it costs about $12, you know? So I don't know. I don't know where this is going to go if we're going to get AR in our lifetime, but, uh, yeah, they're definitely not going to get it in the lifetime of Magic Leap, that's for sure.

Nope. And this is my favorite Twitter thread over the, over the week. Uh, Abigail Disney, you know who she is? I do. You have to remember, I grew up literally three blocks away from Disneyland. I, I, it was my first job and I had annual passes every year. Um, yes, I'm a, I'm a huge Disney fan.

Yeah. Well, she's not, nope. She's the granddaughter of Roy Disney. Uh, well, the brother, yes, the brother, yeah, the brother of Walt. And, uh, she just went the fuck off on them because they're taking all this money and they laid off about a hundred thousand people.

Yeah. And she's not wrong. Um, no, she's not wrong at all. Nope. No, we have a, we have a link in the show notes to her thread and it is just like, wow, she is not holding back on that one. Cause she shouldn't. Honestly, they've got enough money and they've got over $20 billion in the bank.

They can just from the bonuses alone, they can keep people employed for three months. Yeah. Well, I hope, uh, Abigail Amazon also decides to speak out sometime soon. The granddaughter of, uh, of Jeff Bezos, his brother. Yeah, this is the problem I have right now with these, these companies that are just sitting on piles and piles of cash and not doing anything for their employees.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's heartbreaking in some places, you know? Yeah. Whole Foods, you know, they got a, they got a $2 an hour raise. I got to find the article and put it in here. But, uh. Well, again, Abigail Amazon needs to start tweeting. I'm going to, I'm going to open up an account called Abigail Amazon, but nobody will get it.

Nobody will get the joke. All 10 people that listen to this show still will get it. Um, so they have new, uh, they have new shirts. That's what they got. They got $2 an hour more for hazard pay and new shirts calling them heroes. I'm like, wouldn't they rather have the 25 bucks that you spent on the t-shirt instead of a t-shirt?

It's like you assholes. Come on. Take care of your people. Now this one, this next one is, I think this might be my second favorite story of the week. I got a story in a bit that is my favorite. Okay. Boston Dynamics spot robot is helping hospitals remotely treat coronavirus patients.

So I thought my sister was, was lame when she named our first puppy that we had together spot, but, uh, I'm just saying it's not very inventive. But do you remember the, the old Steven, uh, Steven Wright joke? He's like, I spilled spot remover on my dog and he disappeared.

Um, so what they've done is they've taken spot, the nightmare fuel robot that we've all been talking about for years that everybody likes to kick and take video of that we know is going to be there for the robot uprising. Um, they stuck an iPad on its head and now they're having it run around the hospital.

So doctors can teleconference without actually having to go in. All right. Well, it's pretty cool. You know, I mean, honestly, buy a bunch of iPads and put them in the rooms. I think that might be fine too, but it, then people still have to clean the iPads and all that stuff. But it's, um, I guess people still have to clean spot as well.

But what they're doing is they're open sourcing all the software that they're the hardware and the software that they're using to make this possible because it's none of it's none of their proprietary Boston Dynamics stuff. You don't have to have a spot for it. And they even say that like a wheeled version would probably be better for this. Right.

Instead of, you know, a giant robot dog walking the halls. Giant multi-million dollar robot dog. Yep. Yeah. Uh, but they're, they're really trying and they're saying, you know, in the future they could take spot, uh, with, um, you know, portable UV lights to go into rooms to, to sanitize them and things like that.

Smells of burnt pork. Burnt pork. Yes. We're going to, we're going to go, they're going to rename spot babe. Uh, but they're also talking about, you know, putting the robot arms so they can do the temperature and things like that. And like, you know, just the blood oxygen levels, but it's, it's really cool that they're, they're pivoting.

I, this is the one time I'm going to use pivot in a positive note here and saying that they're really trying to take their technology and do something good. It's, it's nice to move from war to health. Yes. It really is. It's like, let's stop trying to kill people and let's start trying to save them.

Right. And, uh, Twitter is in the news. So they've added 5g conspiracy theories to the growing list of unverified coronavirus claims that are grounds for removal. You know what else would be nice Twitter? If you remove something along the lines of injecting bleach into your body as an account for removal, but that's never going to happen.

Yeah. Thanks, Jack. Yes. So under the new rules, Twitter will remove tweets with unverified claims that incite people to engage in harmful activity, such as injecting bleach into your body, uh, could lead to the destruction or damage of critical 5g infrastructure. Uh, importantly, the new rules don't apply to all tweets spreading 5g conspiracy theories because Twitter can't ever just do something good.

They always have to fuck it up. So yes, they will only remove claims that specifically incite people to action to go burn down a tower. Why? Why not just all of them? We know they're morons. We know they're morons.

Yeah. We need a red check mark. That fuck the blue check mark. We need a red check mark for people who are just dumb. That would be great. Oh, and here's an interesting one. Patreon has laid off 13% of their workforce, which is, um, 30 people.

It's not a huge amount, but why? Apparently Patreon is making more money than they ever had. So why are they laying people off? Hmm. Hmm. Why? Interesting. Interesting. Patreon. Not a fan of that.

Not a fan of that. And why still can't, why can't we get our fucking emails? It makes no sense. They must've laid off the people that send the emails. Well, the thing that drives me crazy is we're also signed up for the Patreon developer thing or whatever. I get those emails from Patreon.

Yeah, I get all sorts of notifications, but I don't get the ones I want. Yes. I'm like, let me know when somebody has signed up for an account so we can go say thank you. Let me know when somebody sends us a message. And shit, that's enough. That's just two emails. That's really all we need. Those are the notifications we really need.

And we don't get those. No, we do not. So thank you, Patreon. It's annoying. It's annoying when I see companies do this. They make me less happy about working with them. And I don't get this one. Snap is up.

Snap is back from the dead. People are at home bored and are using whatever methods to... You know, it's not just Snap. Remember House Party? I think we reviewed House Party on the show like three years ago. And I was like, I don't understand why this exists. They're still around and making news right now.

I just installed it last week. And I've got a couple of friends on there. Yeah. Jonas Luster, my old buddy from the old days. And Joey Ito. They're both on there. And I'm like, oh, I should... The thing is, I get the notifications that they're online and I'm always doing something that I'm like watching TV.

I'm like, I'm not going to go start a call right now. But it's nice to know that it's there. So I have two friends that are on House Party. Literally just two. But yeah, it's coming back. And I figured everybody was on TikTok now. Well, you know, the older younger generation is still Snapchatty people, right?

So they're back on it in force right now. My roommate, we just made one this morning. She's 62. So she's on the talk of the tick. But yeah, I just didn't see this one coming. So yeah, man, it's crazy.

Yeah. And what was it on Netflix is up to everybody's Netflix is through the roof. It's the only thing keeping my portfolio up right now. 16 million people signed up for this latest round. And the interesting thing about Netflix is they're like, we're going to be fine.

Disney and those companies are screwed. We've been hoarding content. We have we have a catalog like you. It's like Raiders of the Lost Ark in here with all the crap that we've filmed. And we're going to be doling out to people for the rest of their lives. Because Disney is getting so desperate, they plan to release Song in the South again.

Except all the people that would watch it have just died of drinking bleach. That's true. Before they do their bleach injections, they will go down with that last movie. Oh, my God. I saw that in the theater, man. How old are you? 48.

Sorry, I'm only two years older than you. Two and a half. You're 46, right? Yeah, 46. Yeah, yeah. Anyways. All right. So during the pandemic, obviously, things like Snapchat and all that are up. And everybody's doing their Zoom happy hours, including us. Just like us.

Yes. And but just like I love this article. But like in-person interactions, they can become tiring if they go on too long. The world used to be rich for excuses for cutting conversations short. I should probably get home to feed my dog. This was fun, but I have to go to another party.

Phone's breaking up, et cetera, et cetera. And now people are having to come up with creative solutions to get off of their Zoom chats and virtual hangouts because it's kind of boring. But as this article points out, thankfully, we are all seasoned liars and up to the test. Pandemic or no pandemic, innocuous white lies function as a social lubricant, allowing one to keep an air of politeness while terminating conversations humanely.

Unlike me, because I really just I fucking ghost out of them. I just hang up. I should probably be better about this. But so people are French. You do the French Canadian exit, not the French exit. So if you're joining us for our virtual happy hour later on tonight, if I just disappear, I'm saying bye now.

So there were a couple examples of this that I just loved. The author of the article says, two friends of mine recently told me about a tactic that they had used to end long video calls that could easily work during the pandemic. When they were ready for the call to be over, they'd freeze their face and body in place for a moment to make it seem as if their Wi-Fi had gone out.

And then very carefully off camera hit the end call button. Beautiful. Genius. Love it. And I love this one, too. Destiny Lopez, a graduate student currently at home with her mother in Waterbury, Connecticut, told the author about a way to get out of group video calls. It's the digital equivalent of casually backing out of a conference room and hoping no one notices.

I turned off my audio slowly and then I turned off my camera slowly and then I just left the meeting. I cut out a small piece of myself little by little and then I'm gone. Yeah. I just say I got to poop. That's all I do. I'm like, hey, man, time to poop.

You and the term social lubricant have never met, Jason. That's true. That's true. Yes. Or what is it? Emotional intelligence. I don't have that either. That's okay. Oh, man. Oh, so here's a fun one. Amazon has stopped shipping products that need two workers to carry.

So anything big. Guess you can't get that spot. You can't get your spot. No, you can't get that. And I just feel bad for every lonely person who has a sex robot backordered right now. You know? Did they have those on Amazon? I never looked for it. I'm sure they did. I'm sure. I know it's not like the real doll or anything like that.

But I've been wondering, man, like Fleshlight, real doll. These companies have to be going through the roof right now. I'm sure they're doing well. This is a shining moment for this sort of stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's just like everybody's home just rubbing one out.

If you still have any semblance of, you know, hope for the future, I guess. I'm like, I couldn't give a shit less. What's on TV? I don't have the energy. I don't know what these people are doing. But, yeah, so they're trying to, you know, expand social distancing.

And it only applies to warehouses in the Canadian and European regions, as U.S. warehouses have special equipment that allows shipment of those products without close contact. Excuse me. Still got to get them out of the truck, bro. That's true. Yep. And this one, this one, Brian, this brings our two worlds together.

We are going to join in this one together. Okay. Three media executives and sports marketing company indicted in FIFA case. All right. So we have talked many times long ago about the corruption at FIFA. We were very much on the John Oliver bandwagon when he did the whole thing.

It is a horrific organization that runs, unfortunately, one of my favorite sporting events ever. So, yes. Yes. Well, a 53-count indictment was released. And it turns out that a lot of people from 21st Century Fox, sorry, just like my PST and PDT, I didn't update.

Oh, by the way, did you see the meme that's like, you know, there's so little smog in the air, you can now see the Universal logo? Yes. It's hilarious. That was a good one. So, it turns out Hernan Lopez is one of the inditees.

I don't know. I guess that's a word. I'm trying. I'm trying here. Hernan is the CEO and founder of the podcast company Wondery. Right. We've talked about them recently. One of the few that have never approached us. No, they haven't.

They haven't. But we have talked about their shows. I think the latest one that they had was We Crashed. Yes. The talk about We Work that I thought was a very mediocre show. I think they do Dirty John and some other ones. They're a major player. But he's looking at three years in the who's cow because some of these bribery charges are like $3 million to get the FIFA TV rights down in South America.

Yep. Big money. Big money. Yeah. And this is, I mean, these are, the charges date back to 2015. So he's like, you know, kind of, he ski-daddled and absconded and started his own podcast thing and thought, yeah, everything's going okay. I'm fine now. Well, guess what?

Nope. It's coming back to bite you in the ass. FIFA needs to be burned down to the ground. Oh, it totally does. Yep. Well, everybody in there is just corrupt as fuck. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody on the outside apparently too. So, you know, he is alleged, I have to say that he is alleged to have done some nefarious things.

But yeah, I just found that one funny because our worlds have collided. Podcasting and FIFA corruption. Who'd have thunk it? Who'd have thunk? And now my final story that I just love, this is my favorite story. And I think these people all deserve a medal and a free house.

I think we need to buy them all a house. Okay. So what it is, is there's a factory out in Pennsylvania and a bunch of the workers decided to stay inside the factory for 28 days to make the ingredients required to make personal protective equipment for our people in the hospitals and the first responders.

They basically had a toothbrush and an air mattress and some deodorant and they worked 12 hour shifts on and off. And how about that shit? How about that? Yes. These people are goddamn heroes. Yep. And there's 43 of them.

They went home Sunday and there's apparently a new round of people that have gone in and taken their place. So, you know, I don't know how we can tell these people that they're awesome, but goddamn they are. If you know any of these people, send them some pizza at the very least and some beer.

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Caps and doodads. So this new iPad Pro Magic Keyboard is finally making the rounds. Mm-hmm. I was thinking about getting one, but there's $300. Yeah. They look cool. And everybody's saying that, you know, the typing experience is just like having a MacBook.

But here's the thing. I have a MacBook. I know you do. So do I. Why do I need an iPad that now replaces my MacBook? Yeah. I guess it's the iPad lifestyle. But people are saying that, oh, it's heavy. I'm like, well, duh. Duh. And this is an article over at Macworld called The Heavy Truth about the iPad Pro's Magic Keyboard.

And I'm like, yeah, it's going to be heavy. So, yeah. So the thing is, I've been looking into this because I had my old iPad Mini that was basically I'd turned into my son's machine to run Osmo and do ABC Mouse and all the stuff that he's trying to do to keep some semblance of an education going during all this.

Right. And it has slowed down so much that's almost unusable. It's amazing how quickly that happens. So he's kind of taken over my iPad. I had an iPad Air. And that's basically gone. So my wife looked at me and went, you know, your birthday is coming up. I'm going to have a birthday in quarantine, most likely.

When is it? My birthday is May 16th. We're supposedly getting out of this on May 15th, but I'm not fucking going anywhere. 2021. Even if it opens up, I'm not going anywhere because that would be stupid. And we all know it's not going to open up. There's no way we're opening up on May 15th.

So, but my wife was like, well, let's get you a new iPad for your birthday. And I'm like, okay, great. So I started to look at them and I do not need an iPad Pro. They're outrageously expensive and I have a MacBook Air. So I don't need it though.

It's ridiculous. I'm perfectly fine with just another iPad Air, which is what I'll be getting. Okay. Well, I, you know, I was thinking if you, if you want it, I've got an iPad Pro 9.7 inch that's a little bit older, but still works really well. I can just swing by, spray it with some Lysol and drop it off if you want it.

And then you can spend the money on teepee. Well, maybe, maybe. But what I've discovered about these iPads though, is I almost kind of want to buy a brand spanking new one because the shelf life on these things is not that long. They really start to slow down and become useless pretty quick. The Pros last a long time.

They're pretty good. I've got an iPad 4 for my roommate, which works really well. It's the same internals as the Pro 9.7, but I've got, I've got this thing and I've got like $300 worth of different cases. I got the pencil that goes with it and it's just sitting here.

So that was one of the ones I was going to try and give to a neighbor, but everybody's got iPads already. You're like the only one that doesn't have one. Well, I have one. It's just, I have to claw it out of my son's hand at this point. Yeah. So if you feel like taking a, well, what used to be an hour drive, but it'll probably be about 15 minutes.

I'll be there in six minutes. When we're done, I'll be over there in about six minutes and back for security. You might, yeah. But I know to ring the, I know to not call you, I have to use the keypad. That's right. Don't fucking call me because I can't open up the goddamn gate from my phone unless you call me through the call box, Amazon.

Well, everybody and everybody moving on. I love this app Tyke. It was written by my friend, Andre Torres. It's a little widget that I've talked about a couple of times. And since I got a new Mac, I had to install it on that. And I'm like, Oh, cause I was going to use, and I'm like, it's not here.

Damn it. So I went and installed it and it's just a little dropdown from your menu bar that you can just paste any kind of text into, and it converts it to plain text. Use it all the time. You've talked about it a million times on the show. It is so good. But, so one of my Twitter followers, Rosvin, actually sent me a note after I posted about it on Twitter saying, go get this thing.

And he told me about another app called Tot. So we got Tykes and Tots. And this is made by Icon Factory, which I did not know was still in business. You know, I mean, I know them from the old days when they would, I would buy Icon packs from them.

I spent $25 on a Firefly Icon pack from them. Of course. That tells you how, or $9. I can't remember how much it was, but back when we had, we're on like system nine, you remember? Yeah. And maybe even, maybe even the first versions of OS 10, but I had no idea they were still around.

But then I remembered, oh, they also did Twitterific. And I think that's pretty much dead because nobody uses Twitter apps anymore, really. Because thank you. Thank you, Jack, again, for screwing up the API. But they also made one of my favorite apps when I was a dev, Xscope.

Do you remember Xscope? I do. I do remember that. Yeah, that was a great app because you could do like tons of little things. But anyway, they made this little app called Tot and it works on your Mac and it works on your iOS device and it syncs via your iCloud files.

And I got to say, I'm a fan of Tot. I think I'm moving over because you can basically paste just a quick snippet on one machine that's available on the other. And if you have a phone, it's available there. It's just a nice shared clipboard, basically. And you can do either rich text or plain text.

So when you paste it in, it does whichever one you want. And it's got multiple clipboards. So you can just click on a button and it pastes it into a new clipboard that is shared automatically between the bunch of them and it's free. Cool. So sorry, Andre.

Tyke has been a lifesaver for years, but I think Tot has just taken the title. All right. I'm waiting for the Aptator. Aptator. Yes, exactly. And I found this one this morning, Rode. The people who make the really crappy Rode podcaster microphones that we both hate and the Rode Procaster, which is getting better.

It is definitely getting better, but I'm still, I don't, it should be called Amateur Caster. They have a device called the NTSF-1, which is an ambisonic microphone. Have you ever seen this thing? I have not. So basically what it does is 360 sound, basically.

So it's got its own format for the audio files because you can pan around and you can hear everything. It's like three, it's surround sound, basically. And you can take this thing out and gather sound. But what they've done is they have released a giant ambisonic sound library for free.

So you can go to the library, you just sign up, get an account, and you can pull the things down. And, you know, if you're using like whatever your favorite DAW is, like I use Logic, but I'm sure it works in Pro Tools. And you can bring these sounds in and then like, you know, shape the sounds to your project.

And it's all free. It's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, that's just for the audio nerds out there. It's neat. It's neat. It's definitely neat, but it's all royalty free. So you can use it in all your projects. So all you new podcasters who are looking for sounds for your true crime podcast, go for it.

And I do have to have a shout out here for Anthony from Notehost. I'm bitching the other day because I get all these notifications on my watch, my Apple watch. And you used to be able to force click and clear all, which is my favorite.

I'm just like, I want to force click and clear all. And it stopped working. And I'm like, what the hell? Like three days. I'm like looking through settings and all this stuff. And of course, Anthony being the dev that he is, he's an active dev, reminded the old school dumb shit dev that hasn't done anything in a long time. And he says, have you tried turning it off and turning it back on?

Sure as shit, that worked. Yeah. I find I have to basically reboot my watch once a month. I don't know why, but I do. I felt such dumbass. But hey, it worked. Tech 101, Jason. I know. Turn it off. Can we just do that to the country now?

Oh, please. Well, since we're all at home, I just wanted to share a recipe that I made the other day that was stunningly delicious. This is over at Bon Appetit. It's French onion beef noodle soup.

It's a super savory dish, which draws its inspiration from Taiwanese beef noodle soup and gilds the lily with a Dutch oven's worth of sweet, slow simmered onions. It is phenomenal. However, having said that, many of us are cooped up in our houses right now and not necessarily alone.

You need to be prepared for the smell of onion lingering in your house for a good two to three days. That's not a downside, my friend. That is a plus. That is a massive plus. Even when I cook, just sitting around, I will put garlic and onions in a pan with some butter and saute it in mushrooms so you just have the smell in the house.

So, onions filling the house sounds great. You will enjoy this dish by all means. I have no idea where I'm going to find three pounds of English-style bone-in beef short ribs, though. Yeah, make do. Just use some skirt steak. Can you make it with spam?

Eww. Worth a try. So, I saw this next one over at The Verge. It's called Bird Brained. The inside the electric scooter startup with big workplace problems. And, dude, it's a long read, but it basically just confirms everything we've ever said about Bird.

Period. God, every one of these companies, right? Like, every one of them that we talk about on the show, as people, you know, start to look into them, or a couple people come out and do some whistleblowing, they're all fucking horrible. They're horrible people running horrible companies.

Do you know what most of them say about the C-suite, though? They're all bros. Yeah, they're all bros. That's pretty much it. Yeah, it's all bro culture. You know, Uber, bro culture. Bird, bro culture. I remember. Yeah, WeWork, bro culture.

You know, this comes back to why I hated sports as a kid, because it was bro culture. And now these fuckers have, these guys have just, they just work their way into our territory, and they fuck it up time and time again.

Yep. You know, I'm just saying, I'm saying, Mr. Vander Zanden, I always called her Vander Zander. Yeah, I don't know why, but now I know it's Vander Zanden. What's good for the goose is good for the Vander. Fuck this guy. I hope he gets, I hope he gets taped to a bird and shoved in the ocean like all of his scooters are.

But, well, once again, vindication for us, early haters. Yeah, that's us. We're pretty good at that. But, I mean, I still think we were the first podcast to really get on Bird. Well, that's because they dumped him on my fucking front door. Exactly. We had a leg up.

Yep. Oh, man. So, yeah, go read this article if you want to get some insight into what Bird is really like. And you'll probably get a little pissed off. Security? Security?

Ha! We're joined again this week by Dave in his pajamas, Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast. Dave is also the co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans. Remember when we used to be social? Oh, man.

As well as the host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy, as well as surveillance and privacy. Privacy, what we all have a lot of right now. Except not. Because everybody's on Zoom. Right. Right.

I don't believe Dave is actually in pajamas. Maybe he is today. I don't know if you saw the delightful video yet, Jason, that Dave has made. I found it quite uplifting in its own morbid way. I did. It was a very stylish bathrobe, Dave. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

For those of you who have not seen it, do check it out. It's a lot of fun to do. It's one of those things where I sort of thought about it for a few days. You know, I'm just sort of collecting gags in my mind about how I'm going to execute this thing. And then just banged it out in a couple of hours here.

Actually, last Friday here in the office. I was going to say when there was no one else around. But there's never anyone else around, which is kind of the whole point of the video. So hopefully everybody gets a little chuckle out of it. And I had fun making it.

So it seems to be going over well. It was very, very well done. Thank you. Thank you. Well, are we going to make even a vague attempt at security this week? Well, actually, I have some follow-up from last week. You know, last week we had this story about...

Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I must have my cocktail. It is tradition now. Tradition. I'll open my bottle here. And mine is not, what do you call it, carbonated.

This is just a little bottle of straight rye whiskey. Just saying I got some Everclear and saying, fuck it. Well, I've got some Everclear and an IV. And that's where it stands right now. I've got a nice glass of Lysol with a bleach chaser.

There you go. I love it. Very nice. Very nice. So a little follow-up from last week. We were talking about the story of the small town here in Maryland, Taney Town, which I discovered, actually, the locals call it Taney Town because, of course, they do. Of course.

And there was a report from the local sheriffs suggesting that someone put their pants on when they go out and get the mail. It was oddly specific and said, basically, you know who you are.

And we pointed out that Taney Town is a one-stop-light town. It is a little tiny main street. It is adorable. It's a lovely little town. But it's one of those towns where you think everybody would know each other. Well, it seems as though in the past week things have turned for the worst.

And I cannot claim that these two stories are related, although my dark sense of humor wishes that they were. The headline is, three Carroll County men face murder and kidnapping charges after police found a Taney Town man's body on fire in West Virginia, nearly 70 miles from the home of one of the accused.

I don't believe in coincidence. We're a crime podcast now. Watch our ratings rise. Well, I mean, it's just very dark to imagine that, in my mind, this guy without the pants wouldn't listen to anyone. And so local vigilantes had to take matters into their own hands and took this guy out to West Virginia.

Turns out he was stabbed a bunch of times and then set on fire to try to hide the body. And, you know, crooks are stupid, so they left a trail, literally a bloody trail from West Virginia back home. And it seems like the – If the pants don't fit, you must acquit.

Right. It seems – yeah, well, there you go. It seems like the police have their men and justice will be done. And, of course, our heart goes out to the family of the murder victim here, the alleged murder victim. But – I don't think he's an alleged murder victim.

I think he was pretty much murdered. That is true. You're right. Yes, that is correct. That part is not alleged. That is not alleged. It is the suspects where we say alleged. Happy end of the week, everybody. Oh, the booze works.

All right. This is where we're at now. This is where we find our humor. I don't know what's going on in Tannytown, but I think next time I'm headed that way, I'm going to go around Tannytown in my trip. I think you've got to be our reporter on the spot, Dave.

Reporting live from Tannytown. I think we need to print you up some pants required signs so when you go, you can drive by the welcome to Tannytown sign and you can just put up the pants required sticker. Or I could just do all my reporting from there in my bathrobe with no pants and see how long I last there.

Bring back up. Right. So, anyway, good times in Tannytown. Oof, man. Small town news. Well, I do have to say congratulations, Dave, and to the rest of the Cyber Wire team, because you have been nominated as the best cybersecurity podcast for the European Cybersecurity Blogger Awards.

What? Yeah. That's why there's a link in the show. You were unaware? No, I was not aware. This is the first I've heard of this. You're up against the world tour. Well, by all means, have a nice big sip. Yeah. Congratulations. Great world tour. I don't see us on the list.

You're at the very bottom, but you're there. It's world tour podcast, mashing security, the many hats club, info security, darknet diaries, naked security podcast, human factor security, tease podcast, though I think I would personally pronounce this as the wedgie cast, but I think it's the Ouija cast and the Cyber Wire podcast.

I'm looking at this right now. Hold on a second. It's best cybersecurity, Cyber Wire podcast. Well, that's interesting. Well, that's very nice. Get your VPN on and go vote for Dave today. I was going to say, I mean, I suppose technically because the lovely and talented Carol Theriault does really good stories for us.

She, of course, is the co-host of Smashing Security, and she does stories for us. So I guess technically that does give us a European bureau. Well, I mean, a lot of these aren't. I mean, you know, you just look at, you know, Schneiron Securities in here.

Grant's truly. Darknet Diaries. No before. It's not European. No, not at all. I just just, but, you know, I guess you have to be in Europe maybe to vote, but yeah. Okay. Well, it's an honor just to be nominated. That's exciting. That's what we all say. Yeah.

Pissed off when we lose. Like, fuck those guys. I'll just go, I'll go pout if we lose, but it's an honor to be nominated. Well, that's fun. I did not know that. I have to share this with the rest of our team. Huh. Wow. All right. Yeah. Big hat tip to Eric Hundley for sending me this one.

So. Yeah. Thank you, Eric. To you, Brian. I know. I'm sorry. Taking a big drink of beverage. Okay. So at least it's justified. It's a justified pause. Justified pause. That's right. So just to talk a little bit about security, I don't know about you guys, but I've seen a massive, massive uptick this week in UPS invoice phishing emails.

Could just be me, but I do see, it seems to me that these things do come in waves. Like a week ago, it was, you know, I've got your password and I saw you masturbating. This week it's UPS. Yeah. I don't know that I've personally seen a lot of UPS stuff, although very few of those actually make it into my inbox for whatever reason.

But I guess so, but we are seeing, you know, tons of the COVID-19 emails and some of them are really dark. Like a member of your family has died. Click here to find out who it is.

Right. That sort of thing. So, yeah. But you're right. They do come in waves. They do come in waves. In fact, just today I was looking at some charts of phishing emails and the folks who track them, you can see there, it's like a little rollercoaster. They seem to go out, you know, and burst. So they send them out and then they process them.

They send them out and then they process them. Right. Yeah. It's very interesting. And I found a couple. Can we just have firing squads for these people when we find them afterward? Just shoot them. Be done with it. Be done with it. Give them bleach. Give them all a big bucket of bleach and say, here you have it.

Have at it. Drink this. Drink this, please. And a couple of different articles that I saw this week about talking about the contact tracing, which is, I guess, currently the, you're my only hope to get out of this sort of stuff.

So one of them is over at the Atlantic, which was a really great article because it actually started talking about kind of the moral implications and the psychological implications of all this and will we sacrifice our privacy to get out of quarantine, which I think most people are starting to basically say yes to because we don't really care about privacy anyways.

And this was about a particular developer, Nicholas Christakis, a pioneering sociologist and professor at Yale, who has developed a new different type of tool called Hunala, I guess. It rolls off the tongue.

I guess I would say, based on his research in network science, which says this is more definitely an opt in and it's actually anonymized theoretically. Sort of. I know we all snicker about that, but you know, this one sounds pretty interesting. But the problem with anything being opt in is it's not, it's not really going to work, right?

Like we need everybody to do it. You can't just go out and download the app. It's like self-driving cars. Yeah. Yeah. All or none. Yeah. So it's all or nothing. But I thought that was a pretty interesting approach that he had, which he's more of the opinion that this will help predict outbreaks two to three weeks before health officials would typically notice it otherwise if enough people use it.

So that's interesting. And then over at Slate, there is the European contact tracing app might be more privacy invading than Apple and Google's. Well, so trophy to you, folks. Yeah. So this is something using the pan-European privacy preserving proximity tracing system or the which also rolls off the tongue.

Peppet le pew. Yeah. So the problem with this one, of course, is it uses a decentralized approach. Everything is stored on a centralized server, and the server will be able to link each pseudonym back to real identities. So not good for privacy as this one. Well, what about GDPR?

I mean, shouldn't this basically get shut down through GDPR, if possible? I mean, it's opt-in. I get that. It's opt-in. So I guess it doesn't really matter. So, yeah. None of these solutions seem to be great, but we're going to have to do something, right?

The Apple slash Google one is rolling out, what, next week, I believe? So I spoke to one of the researchers from Boston University who's working with a team at MIT, and there's a whole list of really, really smart people who are working on this.

So they're working on one called the PACT protocol, similar to this, contact tracing, and it really is private. It, like, and, you know, I am as skeptical as you guys when it comes to these sorts of things.

There are some specific cases where your cover can be blown, but – Such as actually testing positive? Because that's when the privacy on all this ends, right? And, like, no matter what system is used, once you have to reach out to everybody you've been in contact with, it ain't private anymore.

Kind of the point. No, not really. Not really. I mean, so by the time – when this show airs, the next episode of Research Saturday will be my interview with this person. So if you're interested in getting into the details of it, listen to that episode of Research Saturday.

But the system that they're promoting uses these constantly rotating, basically, encryption tokens that are updated every few minutes. Most of the information is stored locally on your phone.

If you test positive, then it – your – the fact that you are tested positive has to go through a certified medical professional to be basically pinged in the database. And then your set of random identifiers are matched up with the random identifiers of the people you may have been in contact with.

But, I mean, the thing that – one of the things that impressed me in my conversation with this guy – and let me say, it took – this stuff is deep and I cannot claim to understand all of it. But they really seem to have figured out a reasonable way to maintain privacy.

And it is a top priority for them. So it's worth a look. If this is something you're interested in, some of these systems will have a link to the research paper. In fact, I can provide a link to the research paper. You can include it in these show notes as well.

Excellent. Well, I mean, I do hope that we go with whatever the most private solution is for this contact tracing thing. But realistically, I think we're going to end up with the Google Apple one just because it's Google and Apple, right? Yeah. I think the way that this thing really goes wide is that it's installed on the device automatically because getting people to download an app, that's always the hard part.

So if it's built into the OS, which I know it's not supposed to be out of the gate, but they say that that's coming pretty quickly, that it'll just be part of the app and still opt in. But I think that's the only way to really get the right numbers and large enough numbers to really make it actually work.

That's just my two cents. I agree that one of the biggest challenges here is getting enough people on board to do it. And by having it built into the OS, that's probably the best way to do it. But I guess that's completely torpedoed if it needs to be opt in, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for it to really be effective and for it to be our last hope, it's just going to have to happen, right? Like it's just going to have to be turned on. And that's that. So this is going to be interesting to see how they're going to try to unroll all this.

And that gives the nations who have the ability to mandate these sorts of things without any of those pesky constitutions. Well, ours is looking pretty shredded at the moment. Well, just wipe it off with some bleach.

I don't think it's shredded. I think I wouldn't go that far. I think it's definitely something that we need to keep an eye on. But it comes down to is there an off switch when this stuff happens or is there oversight into where this data is going? And there probably should be.

And I think a lot of people are going to speak up about that as this goes, because I think this is something that we need to have. Personally, I'm going to opt in if it's given, you know, if it's available to me, I'm going to opt in. Yeah. If it keeps us safe. And we know we're probably a year away from any sort of actual vaccine that could be effective or anything.

And I don't think any of us can any of us are going to survive this emotionally or financially if this goes on too much longer. We can wallow in our despair together.

At least we haven't gotten dark enough yet for Jason to use the sound clip of a gun going instead of a beer popping. We have social distancing and wow. Way to bring the thunder, guys.

Come on. Yeah. Look, like I said earlier this week, I was talking to somebody who used to work in the White House and he was there when 9-11 happened. And one of the points he made was that these things need to have built-in sunsets so that we don't end up with the coronavirus version of the Patriot Act.

Right. You know. It's so hard to claw back these rights when the government gets used to having them and using them. The advantages that it gives them, it's hard to get them back. So if we do legislative things, they need to automatically time out.

Yeah. I think it would be fascinating to have been on some of these Zoom calls between Apple and Google because, as we know, Google is historically not very big on the privacy aspect of things, but Apple is. So I wonder how much Apple is actually driving some of the privacy features that will be in this contact tracing tool that we're all going to get.

Yeah. I think it's also interesting from the point of view that we have the private sector saying, listen, this is something we can do. Right. The federal government, you've got your hands busy. Well, not busy, but you're either unwilling, incapable, whatever, of heading up a project like this.

But, you know, we got this. Yeah. So let us have a shot at it. Right. Exactly. So I think if you – the non-cynical part of me would love to give them the benefit of the doubt that this is their better angels that are saying, let's take advantage of the tools we have, the technology we have, and let's do something for the world.

Well, and as we always like to point out on this show, if Apple and Google do not do this, their customer database is going to dwindle. That's true. There will be no more people using Google or Apple's products if they do not save the world.

Oh, come on, man. But the new SE is available today. So you get that. SE Pandemic Edition. Yeah. Right. I may have to put off that purchase of a new iPhone this fall if I, you know, don't have a house. Something like that.

So at some point, it is self-serving, but I'm okay with that. Yeah. Yeah. All right. What else, gentlemen? I think we're good. Before I have to go find a box of razor blades with you two, I think we should probably call it a day.

Let's check in, though, because we're talking about some stories here. Let's check in with each other. How's everybody feeling this week? How's this week compared to last? I was actually kind of doing okay. I have to admit, and I mentioned this earlier in the show, yesterday's, I don't even know what you call it, press briefing, whatever.

I think it broke something in me. It really did. Like, I just can't. And, you know, I'm seeing the pushback today, and, oh, he was obviously just kidding, is what they're trying to spin, and, well, Jesus.

Right. It broke something. I woke up today just not in a good mood. And probably the bleakest I've been in since this started. That's saying something. And that's saying something. And, you know, obviously, I never thought that we'd be getting out by May 15th, which is what the California government kind of initially floated.

But now we're seeing the June 1st is floating. So it's another, again, like I said earlier, it's two weeks, two weeks, two weeks. I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine the other day, and we both agreed on this. They need to be realistic about this and tell people, they need to scotty it.

They really need to scotty it. I agree. We're going to be here for three months. Get used to it. Hunker down. Be done with it. Because you don't want to give people hope. Because when you keep taking away hope, that builds hopelessness. You know, when you keep pushing that, it's ridiculous. It's when one removes hope, one does not have any more hope.

I agree. Yes, you are less hope, which provides Ness. Yes. Ness. We are in Ness. Yeah. Some people have a way with words. So, I mean, this week has been, I mean, since last week when I lost my friend, it's been a really hard week. But today, I actually woke up for the first time actually in a good mood, ready to go, get back to work, and kind of not.

It was the first time when I actually wanted to get out of bed and go do something. Wow. We are the exact opposite today. Yeah. Well, we usually are. Because I wanted to see what jokes were out there about that goddamn press conference yesterday. And, oh, the world did not disappoint.

Thank you, Twitter. For perking me up today. So, yeah, I'm doing much better. Last week was the darkest just because, like I said, I lost my friend. But I'm snapping back and ready to get back to work. And it's been okay.

How about you, Dave, besides dancing in your bathrobe? Yeah. I'd say overall a good week. Work has been fine. I have noticed that, you know, a good number of the folks that we have scheduled for interviews sort of drop out at the last minute.

And I think some of that is because we're still – we still have people who schedule their interviews before any of this happened. And so I think the day of the interview comes up, it pops up on their schedule. And they're like, oh, crap. I'm – you know, I'm not – I'm at home. Like, you know, I can't do this. And that's fine. You know, we're certainly understanding of all that.

What I noticed though is that I am tired. I still don't feel like as though I'm getting good full night's sleep because I'm not. And when I crash, I crash hard. So I'm a little more manic.

Like I'll have periods of time where I feel like I have a lot of energy and I'm feeling up and I'm feeling funny and goofy and silly. But then the downside – Five minutes is up and you're back to the normal. Yeah, the downside of that. But I just feel tired. I just – like there's just no energy and I can't – it's hard to pull myself out of that.

And by the time we get to the end of the week, I just feel like, oh, man, here comes the weekend and, you know, then what? I guess I'm going to nap some or – Yeah, napping has become just basically a pastime around here. I got my Paziz app.

My roommate has her Paziz app and just like random times during the day. I'm like, oh, going to go take 20. See you in a bit. Yeah, yeah. I found I've had energy to put into the show. I like doing the show still, Jason. So, you know, don't worry about that. I'm not leaving anytime soon.

I look forward to our chats, obviously, on Friday with you as well, Dave. These are the things that I'm kind of still energized for. I do do some other work and I found that to be a real struggle, which is new. Up to this week, I've been quite energized by doing work and looked forward to it.

And I found that the people I work with are also much like you have people dropping off from doing interviews and things like that. I found that we've hit some sort of point where people are being less productive, less interested in work because I think there's a sense of what's the point.

Yeah, that's it. It's like, you know, everybody, I think I tweeted this or if I didn't tweet about it, I had a manic dream about it. I'm like, can somebody loan me a cup of fucks because I'm all out? Because I have no fucks to give. I think a lot of people are hitting that this week and I've definitely noticed it with my other work.

It's been really difficult to get people to respond to things, to do things, and difficult to motivate myself to do those things. Definitely. Yeah, same here. I talked to a couple of friends who are the same thing. It's just like, time is really weird.

Time is compressing for a lot of people. Most of the people who don't have children are the ones where it's compressing for people who have children. It's just like, oh my God, will this ever end? But it's this weird time compression factor. It's like you wake up, you do your thing as little as possible, start drinking, watch TV, go back to bed, lather, rinse, repeat.

For me, the days have been short and the weeks are long. Yeah, there you go. Although the month of April has just flown by. I have no idea where April went. I have no idea. I can tell you exactly where it went, into a bottle.

Well, fortunately, White Claw comes in cans, so I can actually track my weeks from when all the Mexicans come by and ruffle through our recycling can and scare the dogs half to death because they're stealing all the cans to go recycle, even though no recycling places are open.

But I tell you what, there are going to be some aluminum millionaires in Southern California when this is done. Probably true, yeah. So, I mean, I hope this is just a wave. This is a depression in the wave right now, and maybe next week everybody will feel a little bit more up and excited again.

But I think to Jason's point earlier, we do need to stop giving these false hopes. And we actually – we need to win in some way, shape, or form. Good news about a potential vaccine, something. Good news anywhere. Yeah, I think that's a part of what you were saying about being broken by the press conference from the president yesterday.

I feel like he's taking away potential wins just with his, you know – Dumb fuckery? Dimwittery, yeah. And one thing I think about is the true medical professionals who are standing next to him, like – Have you no soul?

Well, speak up. Speak up. The reporters even. Why aren't reporters pushing back at this point? I don't get it. Yeah, they're starting – you could see this past week there – more and more they're starting to.

But I also wonder about the folks who stand by him, how much of a balance are they playing in their own minds of, okay, you know, if I play along with this, then I get an opportunity to put out good information and I'm not going to be replaced by someone who's a total moron.

It's exactly what I was thinking too. It's like they're on a tightrope because it's like I don't want to get fired. Like Fauci, he's like – you know, he's right on that edge. He's like, well, Linda right now, one arm going, one leg up, falling over the edge and thinking, can I bring this back and get back on the wire?

Because, you know, when he's not in the press conferences, he's out telling the truth and when he gets to the press conferences, you can see his demeanor changes, everything changes, and he's toeing the line. It's like where he's at, he can do good inside the system, but if he gets booted out of the system, he can't do any good.

So he has to like put up with this massive fucking truckload of bullshit every day. You notice he wasn't there yesterday. I wish he was there yesterday. God, the memes that we would have had yesterday if Fauci was there, that would have been great. But it's like – Well, and I wonder – yeah.

I wonder what today's will be like. Reporters have had 24 hours to mull over what their questions are going to be to him. About bleach and disinfectant, and we'll see where it takes us, but – It was a big, beautiful joke. It was all just a big, beautiful joke. Right, right.

Of course I didn't mean that. Of course. Yeah. A life of wealth and privilege without consequence on display for all of us to see. Yeah, we've definitely lost any Trump supporters to listen to this show. We should have just said fuck it four years ago and just done it.

But, you know, I pushed for that back then. I know. And then you took the other side, and then I pushed for it, and you're like, no. It's like, you know what? I can eat Chef Boyardee for a long time, so fuck it. I suppose on the plus side, Jason, we can claim vindication yet again.

This one's just not a tech company. It's our president. We were right. Yeah, right from the get. So, yeah. I'll check. At least we got one win this week. You fondly remember those days when the worst that we could talk about on here was he was using an unsecured phone.

Yeah. Good times. Oh, isn't that adorable? Oh. We were such babies. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. I can hear the unsubscribes from here. Whatever. Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching. I'm done.

I don't care. Yeah. Like, again, really, yesterday broke me, finally. It was just, I do not care about anybody that supports him anymore. Fun times. All right, guys. Well, that's security for this week.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Rest up. Buck up. We'll charge into next week. Yeah. Sounds good. And everybody, everybody, come see. I hope you can join us tonight, Dave, which is tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. Dave's going to be there. I plan on being there. I plan on being there. I might even wear my bathrobe in solidarity.

Oh, maybe I'll break out my furry head. Oh. Oh. Wow. Bring in the big guns. Yeah. You heard it here first, people. Pop a furry bit in there into his house. Yeah.

That's right. Okay. All right, gents. I'll talk to you soon. All right. Bye. Closing shout outs. I want to give a closing shout out to my sister-in-law. Not that she listens to this podcast, but she's a respiratory therapist on the front line and working exclusively now with COVID-19 patients, which means she is not allowed to go home.

She does not see her kids, her husband, nothing. So you fucking rock, Andrea. Yeah, that's great. That's great. Fingers crossed for fingers crossed. And shout out to everyone staying the fuck at home and out of the way of people like her who are trying to save your lives and keep you fed.

The truck drivers, the truck drivers, the people who work in the grocery stores, thank you to all of you. We love you. But everybody, do me a small favor. About two or three in the morning, because I know you're up already watching Pornhub or Netflix or whatever, just go stick your head outside for about 10 minutes and look at the sky.

Because since we live in a world without people, it is beautiful. And just go look at the stars. It will really kind of just make you think that – I don't know what it will make you think because nowadays I don't know what the hell is in people's heads.

If you're up to that late, you're probably half in the bag anyways, if not completely in the bag. Yeah, maybe smoke a jade before you go out. Then you can see more than I ever see. Anyway, give it a shot. All right. Until next time, I'm Brian. Until next time. And I'm Jason DeFillippo.

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