436: COVID19-84

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 you doing, Brian? I'm all right. It's May Day. Yes. In a scant, well, in a scant, 14 days will be set free, but actually in a scant, I don't know, I'd say three to four days, we're going to be told it's going to go on longer.

I don't know about that, but... Oh, I do. There's no way in hell California is opening up by May 15th. We've had outlined steps to what it'll take to get there, and we ain't even close. Okay. So, it's funny. Every morning I go out and I walk the dogs, you know, as I got to, but it is straight out of Shaun of the Dead out there now.

People in pajamas, bathrobes, you know, they come out of their house yawning and they just look like zombies coming to get you because they're like squinting when there's actual sunlight. It's just like, what the hell's going on out here? And I just, it dawned on me, everybody in my neighborhood is hungover every day.

Yeah, I see a bit of that here too. Santa Monica is a bit, you know, there's a lot of people that care about their fitness here and all that sort of stuff. So, I see two versions of people. I do not see anybody dressed normally. People are either wearing their active wear and they're out for jogs or runs or whatever, or they are in their robes or pajamas.

Yeah. There's no in between. Yeah. I see the active wear people in the afternoon, but in the morning it's always the PJs and the robes and all that. And I've also found a new trend. I'm going to call this the quarantine walk of shame. So, where I live, all of our recycling bins and garbage cans are on the outside of the building.

So, you have to walk outside and take your garbage out and take your recycling out. Well, I see people all over my neighborhood when they come out to take their recycling out. They try and put their cans and their bottles in their bin as quietly as possible. So, they don't let the neighbors know how much they had to drink the night before.

I see it on every street when I'm out for a walk. It is hilarious. You know, I mean, walk of shame used to be you walk to your car or across the, you know, the quad at college wearing the same clothes because you had a good night of debauchery. But now that's like, you know, you're not getting any.

You're just sitting there watching Netflix till three in the morning, sucking back as much booze as you can get. Pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah. And I've made a decision, Jason, even though we all know that quarantine here won't be ending anytime soon. To hell with those libtards.

I need a haircut. What are you going to do? Where are you going to go? We're actually going to pack up and go see my mom this weekend for a day and try to schedule out maybe doing two or three days down there moving forward for the week. We'd held off for a long time. Obviously, we wanted to make sure that we didn't have anything because we had had exposure at the very beginning and wanted to make sure that my mom didn't have anything.

And it's been well over a month now since my mom has left her house. It's been seven weeks since we've left our house here. And she is actually – she used to be a hairdresser, so we are all going to get haircuts. Okay. Quite literally. I wondered where the tie-in was.

So we're going to get haircuts. We're going to go hang out with my mom. I don't think it's been very healthy that my kid has only had my wife and myself as anybody to see in person. He's going to make cookies with her. She's got a big house, a big yard. He's actually going to have some room to run around.

So we are corn buddying with my mom, and I'm going to start doing that moving forward. So it's all about finding the schedule because I really don't want to lug down all the podcasting stuff and all that. So we'll be back and forth, and we'll actually get a chance to work a little bit because I've still got two weeks on the clock before I'm furloughed, and I've got stuff I need to do.

And I don't know about you, but this week was just rough for whatever reason. It was hard to get anything done. So some time with somebody else to take care of the little one will be very useful. Yeah. You know, it's funny. This week, the first part of this week was tough, and I think we've been stuck at this Lagrange point between sanity and insanity for long enough where people are like, you're either going to go to one side or the other.

And I just put on the afterburners. I, like, cleaned up. No more drinking except for, like, you know, like two, maybe two glasses of wine at night, believe it or not. Yes. Sleeping better and getting shit done. I started a new company already in the past four days.

And it's like, okay, you know what? Let's just, I'm tired of being numb and dumb on the other side of this. Let's just, it's time to kick things into gear because when this thing is over, I want to be firing on all cylinders. I'm just, I'm actually just kind of bored of sitting around watching TV doing nothing. Well, I'm not hitting all the afterburners yet.

My idea for the afterburners is going to be as soon as we actually have a realistic date that I believe that we'll be leaving, I figure I've got a two to three week ramp up period at that point. Plus, I don't have all that much to ramp up to because, as you know, the furlough will be happening for me and the company will not be bringing me back around until there's a realistic date for concerts.

So, my ramp up point will be, thank God the kid might be going back to school. Yay. Yeah, I just put my thinking cap on and came up with new ideas. So, that's what I'm going for. Well, we actually have a term for this thing that we've been feeling. Allostatic load is the psychological reason for our pandemic brain fog.

Our entire episode, last episode, was about our pandemic brain fog. So, I really like this article over advice. The author says, My days have been reduced to the bare minimum. I work in drips and chunks of time, keeping my energy up with M&Ms and frequent YouTube breaks. I scrounge together leftovers for lunch, creating what I ambitiously call grazing plates.

In reality, it's a pear hacked into pieces and four olives piled on a handful of dry cinnamon toast crunch. That sounds delicious. Sounds disgusting. I have done yoga twice and I felt undeniably smug about it. So, yeah, we're all kind of just in this thing and it has a term.

And Nancy Sin, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, says that in stressful situations like this, there are physiological responses in our bodies. Our stress hormones increase. We prepare to fight or flee. And we have all these psychological adaptations. And each time we feel stressed, each time we feel worried.

And over time, these repeated hits can accumulate. And that accumulation is called allostatic load, which is the damage on our bodies when they're repeatedly exposed to stress. And that's what most of us are hitting right now. Not everybody. Some people are definitely thriving in this, but it's definitely me.

We've made a conscious decision here in the house to turn off all TV during the day. We turn on music. We've got our Sonos playing very zen playlist and just stay away from it. We watch no news now, nothing. Just kind of get it out of the head.

But I have to say, instead of this very science-y, brain-heavy, allostatic load article that you have over at Vice, I recommend the hardtimes.net. A dumbed-down version. Too much inside? Bad? Brain all dumb now. Me think brain no work good no more.

It's basically the same article, but much better. And I've got two little bits of follow-up here. I talked about a couple – or not a couple, just one restaurant in my neighborhood, the Gasolina Cafe, that I was using to buy meals for frontline workers.

And it turns out there are a couple other places out there. My local has joined the – it's basically kind of a grassroots movement, I guess they're calling it. It's called Off The Plate or Off Their Plate. And it's a place where restaurants can come and people can just donate directly to that.

And then it gets spread out to the different restaurants. So they're buying meals. They're funding for laid-off restaurant workers. And the other one is called the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund. Yeah, this is the one that Guy Fieri is always talking about, and most of the Food Network is behind, I think.

Yep, yep. This is the guy one. And they've both raised, you know, a lot of money. So check those out. The links will be in the show notes to those. But it's cool to see the people coming together on those. Now, fucking Lumi. Now, if you've listened to this show for, you know, a while now, you know that last – what was it?

July? I fired up the old Kickstarter and I signed up for the Lumi keyboard, which is like basically playing, you know, Guitar Hero and Rock Band for piano. Yes, I wanted to bring back our Kickstarter in the Balls segment just for this, for your updates on this. Kickstarter in the Balls.

Yeah, they're saying that I might get – or that the shipments might actually be completed by May 13th. Yes, that's right. May 13th. Just in time to theoretically be out of quarantine. Exactly. The one thing that I really, really wanted to do while we were locked down was, you know, jam out with my Lumi.

But no, no, it's sadly not to be. It will come, you know, basically the day after quarantine is listed – lifted. We'll see. Or the next quarantine for the fall. Yes. But we have to go back into it. Mm-hmm. Oh, God. And we talked about AI, how it can't be patented or trademarked or anything like that in Europe.

Well, turns out that inventions by AI will not be recognized here in the United States either. It's okay since we don't actually have any AI. It is people. It is people. In the news.

Got a little hyper-local news, but Santa Monica is where all these stupid scooters started anyway, so what happens here? We'll probably follow along everywhere else. Lime has left Santa Monica permanently while a couple other scooter companies continue operation, but has not really continuing operations because they're scaled way back.

And as you pointed out, Jason, when this was first hitting, what a disease vector these scooters would be. Yep. Yep. Bird flu. It's actually a very good idea that they aren't. So as we've hit the sixth week – actually, this must be old because we're definitely in the seventh week, at least for some of us now – we have three types of scooters and two types of bikes left for essential trips here.

People who need to work at or visit essential businesses can risk their lives by still finding Lyft, bird, and jump scooters and jump and breeze bikes throughout the city. But Lime, the fourth private company that was authorized to operate here in Santa Monica, stopped deploying scooters in mid-March. They pulled scooters from two dozen countries, including the United States, so it has happened everywhere.

For Lime, they are effectively done with that business, and they will officially halt here in Santa Monica as of April 1st. So that was a little bit ago. That was a long time ago. Yep. Just saw this article, though. Stale news. But in new news, Lyft has ended their operations in Oakland, Austin, and San Jose.

All righty. So these things are dead. Yeah, scooters, not so good in a pandemic, it seems. No, not so much. I'm sure they'll come back just like cockroaches. The scooters and cockroaches will be the only thing to survive the pandemic. Exactly. Cockroaches on scooters. Too bad we already have a show title.

That would be some fun show art. And in other more local news, but again, this applies everywhere, including on a federal level, I would say. The Venice Neighborhood Council does not follow rules, so why should we? So this was written by an avid surfer, and many of the people that choose to live in Venice and Santa Monica are surfers.

That's why they pay high rents for small places, because the beach is right there. However, that being said, Alex Gukowski and Venice Neighborhood Council President Ira Kaslov need to both resign and be held accountable immediately after they were spotted surfing amid closures.

Yes, the entire beaches have been shut down here, which has been annoying to me, because that's why we pay the high property taxes and everything, so we can go use the beaches. But I understand why beaches were shut down. We had them open one weekend a long time ago, and a gazillion people came down.

We've had beaches north of us, as a friend of the show Christopher Lockhead knows, and south of us that have stayed open. And people are not social distancing. They cannot stay away, so we shut them down here. But apparently, if you're in the local governments, fuck that shit, I'm going to go surfing anyways.

And, you know, that's the thing. It's when you see your elected leaders and people like that breaking the rules, why should I? Yeah, I understand that, so people are kind of pissed off here. Do as I say, not as I do. Exactly. And phone data is showing that Americans are moving around more, despite all the social distancing orders.

So we're more than a month in everybody doing this, and the median distance that Americans travel each day has begun to tick up in the past couple of weeks, well before the states have officially begun to reopen their businesses and public spaces, which is stupid and not helpful to the rest of us.

But, yeah, people are getting a bit antsy. People are moving around more. The average miles that people are moving is just ticking up more and more week by week. So people are getting a little antsy and pissed off. But now, you know, to be fair, that doesn't mean they aren't moving about safely. They're just moving.

This is the only data we have. We don't know what they're doing, where they're going, if they're just doing like what, you know, I did the other weekend, which is drive further than I've driven any week because I just wanted to get out and go see things, but we didn't even leave the car. So that would account, my data accounts for more movement, but it was very safe movement.

So we'll see what happens. Yeah. I mean, I'm probably on that list, too, because I went out for a drive and I'm like, oh, this is nice. And I drove around my neighborhood for a little bit, got the juices flowing in the car, and then I went back home and stayed there. So I put no one in danger and it was just nice to see.

Well, it was really interesting because it was basically on every block was a cop just waiting to catch people speeding. I'm sure the city is making so much extra money right now because there are just cops everywhere salivating to give you a speeding ticket.

Yeah, I've got to be super careful about that this weekend when I do go see my mom because with traffic, it was always about a 45-minute drive, but I would be able to go in the carpool lane and I would drive rather fast. And there will be no traffic on the freeway and the temptation, especially in the car where I don't really feel the speed to drive very quickly, will be high.

Yes, it will be. So I'm going to have to monitor that really carefully when I make that drive because the last thing I want is to break my social isolation by having a cop three inches from my face. Yep. I don't think he gives you a ticket on a stick. Probably not. And I saw this really interesting article over on The Atlantic.

Friends are breaking up over social distancing. So this is like – and I understand this. I'm in this situation right now because I know people – not everybody is doing social distancing or has been doing social distancing. We know people are still having parties. We know people are going to the beach if they can.

We know people are going to protests. Well, we don't know anybody that's going to protest because we don't know any of those idiots. So we're old. Yeah. And people are bending the rules in a lot of interesting ways that they self-justify. And it's hard if you are following all the rules and you know people and people you know and love and good friends and they're bending the rules and you get pissed off about that.

So friendships are ending, particularly amongst some younger people. And I thought some of the stories in this article were really interesting. Like this guy, Joey Amaya, who basically was on a text group chat of about 10 people and they were invited to go play soccer. And that's definitely not social distancing at all.

So – and his grandmother had been hospitalized and he wrote into this chat like, what are you people doing? And basically he just wasn't invited anymore and they continued doing what they were going to do. Nice. Yeah. It's kind of – I predicted this at the beginning of this whole thing. I'm like, people are going to remember what you do here and expect retaliation for when people – you know, people who lose people get pissed off when you break the rules.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Elon Musk. What the hell? Yeah. I don't – you know, if somebody would have told me two weeks ago that I would be 100% on board with Mark Zuckerberg and pissed off at Elon Musk, I would have – because Zuckerberg has come out all in on the social distancing.

He thinks it's super important and we need to do it. And Elon Musk continued his trend of ridiculously fucking stupid tweets. Yeah. Yeah. I think he has been stuck at home too much and he's got whatever brain – I think he got a bad batch of weed delivery. That's what I think. Could be. Somebody peed in his – somebody peed in his pot because, yeah, this whole, hey, let's set the U.S. free and, you know, all of these stay-in-place orders are fascist.

And he – I mean, the hits just keep on coming. This was only one article called, What the Fuck Elon Musk Calls for Coronavirus – wait, called, What the Fuck Elon Musk Calls Coronavirus Shelter-in-Place Orders Fascist. And this was over at BuzzFeed News, which also still – I feel like we do live in an alternate universe.

Yes. And it is the Berenstain Bears, not the Berenstain Bears, damn it. I agree. So, yeah, it's – we just didn't have more on of the week, but I had to put it in here somewhere. But, yeah, just because somebody is good at one thing doesn't mean they're good at everything. So, Elon, go make some cars and get to Mars.

Well, that's why he's really pushing for this because he's been pushing to be able to open up, you know, all of his factories and all of his different companies and have all of his employees come back to work since day one. And so, that's the real reason behind that, that and either drunk or too stoned. I'm going with drunk and stoned.

I think so. It's the velvet amber. It's the combination of drugs that really push you over the edge. Yeah. What's the – oh, what is it? Occam's razor. It's the Occam's razor of the pandemic. It's like the simplest explanation, which is usually drunk and stoned, is generally the correct one.

Yes. And, of course, we have to mention this because this show will be coming out on May 2nd and our next show won't be until after May the 4th, which has become a thing, a Star Wars thing online. You know, obviously, May the 4th be with you. Yes, exactly. So, Disney did something a little interesting that got a bit of attention online this week.

First, they sent out a tweet talking about, you know, hey, May the 4th is coming. Obviously, they're celebrating it by releasing Rise of Skywalker, the last crappy movie on Disney+. But they want people to share their experiences with Star Wars using the May the 4th hashtag. All fine and well until the follow-up tweet was made.

So, yes, by sharing your message with us using hashtag May the 4th, you agree to our use of the message in your account name and all media in our terms of use here. And then straight to their Disney terms of use, which has tons of legalese basically stating, you know, if you use this hashtag, we own your tweet and can do whatever we want with it.

That did not strike people very well online. I wonder why. The internet does what it does, and it exploded in anger and derision, and somewhat rightfully so. But the reality of this is just over-lawyering. It's really not that hard to understand this. They want to be able to use users' tweets and names and whatnot in promotional media.

And in order to do so, they need legal permission. Because of the overwhelming number they're going to get, this is easier than trying to reach out to individual people that they want to use. So, basically, it's just lazy and stupid. And the equivalent, if you live here in L.A., you're aware of this, is the equivalent of being in any area where there is a film or TV shoot taking place in public.

And they just put up a sign saying, you agree to be filmed, blah, blah, blah, instead of having people walking around and making everybody sign individual releases. So, this is the digital version of that, I suppose. On the flip side or the dark side, if you will, I'd be willing to bet if Disney hadn't put out that notice, and some people's tweets were used without, quote, quote, permission, then some people probably would have sued them.

You can't use my tweets in advertisements or promotions without compensating me, Disney. Yes, this happens every day in some way, but it's usually in a news context when people's tweets are used, so that doesn't require permission. But if Disney does it, of course, people and lawyers smell money.

So, I understand why they did it. Yes, it was stupid. Obviously, it's getting the pushback, but it makes sense. Now, this is what we talk about all the time in the show. The laws have not kept up with the technology, so maybe we need some of that. Maybe some fair use when intellectual properties are referred to via hashtags, etc.

But in no way, shape, or form was Disney trying to own the hashtag. They were just trying to cover their asses because they're doing a promotion. Well, I mean, if Disney would RTFM, even though I know there's no M's anymore, but there is a mechanism that they could have used. It's called retweet with comment, which is totally legal.

They could have put an advertisement on the top, and it is fine to retweet somebody's tweet. Yes, but they're going to do this across-the-board advertising. I'm imagining we're going to see actual commercials on NBC and things of that nature. They want to use this stuff everywhere, which is why they put the blanket thing out there.

Yeah. They should just reach out to the people that they're going to use because it can't be that many if they're putting them in commercials and things like that. Yeah, I agree. I agree. But they did what they do, like I said, over-lawyering. Yeah, because, I mean, even on the news stuff, I've had news channels reach out to me when they want to use my tweet and ask if they can use my tweet and my photo on my tweet.

And I usually just say, yes, sure, go for it. Give me a credit. That's fine. And most people would probably do that. It takes five seconds for them to do that. But I'm going to cut them some slack because now you can buy Baby Yoda face masks. But why would you want one of those when you can get a lovely, grumpy old Geeks one?

Exactly, exactly. Actually, yeah, you should get the grumpy old Geeks one. But Disney has introduced a bunch of cloth face masks, and they're donating one million face masks for children and families in underserved and vulnerable communities across the U.S., including California and Florida, which is where most of the people that they laid off now live.

So you don't get a paycheck. You get furloughed and you get a mask. Yep, you get a mask. You get a mask. You get a mask. Oh, man. And so, yeah, you can get your favorite Disney characters, Marvel characters, whatever you like, Star Wars characters. Some of them are cute.

The Baby Yoda one actually is pretty ugly. I did not care for it. It took me a minute to figure out that it was Baby Yoda. Yeah, I don't think you can go wrong with the Darth Vader one.

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They're all for my kid. And I know there's a lot of listeners out there that have kids that keep asking about this stuff. So, anytime I find anything like this, I want to throw it out there. There are these kids books by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. Room on the Broom and The Gruffalo. And there's The Gruffalo's Daughter as well.

They're great books for kids. But they've gone all in. Like, she's got this amazing website, roomonthebroom.com, for all this stuff. There's videos and everything like that. But there are also some apps with some games. Room on the Broom has some. And The Gruffalo as well.

So, we have links in the show notes. I would suggest reading the books with the kids first. And then you might get a few minutes peace by getting these games downloaded for you. And they're a lot of fun. Some of them are a little bit over the age range that my kid is in. But he'll grow into them. And some of them work just fine for three-year-olds.

So, something to check out for you exhausted parents out there. And I've got some news from Spotify. And I thought Jason would have some commentary on this. Spotify's catalog tops a million podcasts. Consumption increased by triple digits over last year. So, they are booming with their podcast business, apparently.

Either despite or because of COVID-19. We don't really know. The company says it now has grown its podcast catalog to more than a million shows. Up from 700,000 plus podcasts is reporting just in March. And a lot of these shows are new ones coming out of their own little podcasting creation system.

Whatever the hell that was called. I don't even remember. Oh, Anchor podcast creation platform. And they say podcast consumption was up by triple digits compared with the same quarter last year. Well, that was Q1 at the very beginning of it. I don't know, man. I don't believe it. I don't believe the listening is up.

I know people in the industry and I know the real numbers that people are seeing. And that just doesn't track with anything that anybody is saying. And the million shows, all they got to do is scrape iTunes and they get the million shows. It's not like everybody's rushing to go to Spotify first.

And, you know, I've been thinking a lot about should we still be on Spotify? I need to do some more tests with them to find out if they're doing full pass-throughs, which they say they're doing. So the shows that we make actually get to the listener and not something that they used to do. Like they would take it, like keep one copy of it and then give it to everybody else and we don't get to track.

But we'll see how this goes. But, you know, Spotify for podcasting, the interface is just terrible. I mean, Spotify's interface in general is not very good. No, I really hate it. So doing it for podcasting is worse. Yeah, it definitely is. The podcast interface is wretched there. And, yeah, I'm not entirely sure I believe that people are listening to more podcasts right now.

I mean, our numbers have remarkably stayed pretty stable, but most people's aren't. Well, I mean, no, we're down 25% at least. So that's the stable that we've been is down 25%. So and from everybody I talk to, they're in about the same boat.

But I put this one in here for you because it's pretty cool. It's a TIE fighter fire pit that this guy made in the UK, Simon Gould. And he makes just kind of crazy stuff out of crazy other stuff. And it just looks like a really cool fire pit. And I like it. That one does look cool. I wonder if he's the same guy that made the one with the Death Star because we had had that one on the show quite a while back.

I don't know. I don't know. I didn't see it on his on his site, but I would guess it might be him, too. But I mean, how many people are out there making Star Wars fire pits? Well, maybe that maybe the guy that did the Death Star one has been sued into non-existence by Disney's lawyers.

All right. So Simon Gould will be next on the list. But you can hit him up on the website if you want to want to make one. I'm guessing shipping from the UK to the US would probably be pretty high. Yeah. And I saw this one and I just it's a head scratcher. And I kind of wanted to get this Lenovo's new ThinkPad keyboard is the best way to get the infamous nub.

I remember Lenovo ThinkPads back when they were IBM ThinkPads. And I love those laptops. They were tanks. I hate the nub, though. I hate it. I got used to it, man. I finally got used to it. And then I never had one again. So, oh, man.

I just I loved the feel. I love the keyboard on the Lenovo's. I just loved everything about them. You know, nowadays they wouldn't hold up, you know, a candle to anything we've got. But the keyboard looked like it would be a good keyboard. It was only ninety nine bucks. It's Bluetooth. But here's the actual what the fuck moment.

You go to the site to buy it and it says works for PC or Android devices. Right. I'm like, it's it's a Bluetooth keyboard. Why will it not work on anything that has Bluetooth? You know, I don't quite understand that.

Why wouldn't they want to sell as many keyboards as possible? Why would you put that caveat in there? And do they put something in to block it working with like a Mac or an iPad or something like that? Because I don't know. I would get one if I'm not going to. No, I'm not going to try that out.

Times are tough, man. I'm going to spend a hundred bucks on a keyboard that won't work. So but I did spend one hundred and fifty dollars on the Elgato stream deck and because I'm setting up all the streaming stuff here. And a friend of the show, Seth Miranda, talked me into getting this one.

And it's basically a little keyboard that's like macros with LCD screens in the keys that you can program. And it is the coolest little thing I've ever seen.

I've got I started programming it last night and you can set it up for like folders of actions, but tons of different actions that compound and you can just, you know, press it to open up websites, do things like that, because it's meant to really work with OBS, the open broadcast software stuff that most everybody uses for their streaming and Twitch games and things like that.

But it is cool. It just reminds me of, you know, just have it. Well, I have a shuttle that's programmable like that to anything that I can program that has macros in it. So I don't have to press things more than once. I'm down. But you can customize all of the LCD keys. So I've got one that has like, you know, one of the grumpy old geeks faces on it.

I press that and it opens up all the short links that I need to go somewhere. Right. It's like, boom, boom, go anywhere I want to. It's so nice. And it's just it's neat. Yeah, it's pretty cool looking. You know, if I had the desk space and a set office at the moment, I would get something like that. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

So I'll have a link to that in the show notes and link to go check one out if you want. Because out of everything that you can buy right now, which isn't backordered, this thing I got right away because they still have some in stock. Excellent. Everything is out of stock right now. You cannot buy a podcast mic, you know, switchers, cameras.

Everything is sold out. So there's lots of podcasters out there now. Well, hell, there's over a million.

Brian, have you seen 1843 magazine from The Economist? I have not. It is a great long read magazine. Excellent. Yes. And I found this article called The Death of the Office. And, you know, it's a very long read.

I'm literally only halfway through it because it is that long. But it starts off with some quotes from Charles Lamb in how working at the East India Trading Company in London. They basically mirror our own, you know, working in office feelings. It's like things have never changed. It's like it's really good.

So I highly recommend checking that one out if you want a long read and hear about the history of the office and how it came to be and where it's at now. It's funny because this one guy that they quote as complaining about it way back then says, to breathe the air of four pent walls without relief day after day, all the golden hours of the day between 10 and 4.

You only had to work between 10 and 4? I guess. That doesn't sound so bad. I'd love to have those work hours. Yeah. That's not too bad at all. But, I mean, this was back then. I'm guessing the working conditions were not as good. There is a part where they talk about how people, you had to sign in every 15 minutes to show that you were there.

And it's kind of crazy. Yeah. Now, we've always heard that nobody can hear you scream in space. Yes. It's a fine line in science fiction. And it's true, you can't hear somebody scream in space, but there is sound in space, and NASA has done something pretty cool.

Sound exists in the form of electromagnetic vibrations that pulsate in similar wavelengths. And NASA has designed some special instruments that could record those vibrations and transfer them into sounds that our ears could hear. So, and then they pointed them at stuff in our solar system, and you can actually hear all the planets, and you can hear the sun, and you can hear the moon.

And it's pretty damn cool. I like the sounds. A lot of them are really soothing. No, you should make a remix. Yeah. With all that time I have. Yeah. Well, they should be open-sourced. NASA, right? They should be ours? Oh, yeah. Since we pay for NASA? That's free to go, so people can use them.

I expect to hear them in some soundtracks. Basically, it sounds like Trent Reznor's solo stuff. I was going to say, Trent Reznor's already doing it, so he doesn't need them. Yep. So, link is in the show notes. Give it a listen. It's pretty cool. But speaking of chilling sounds, OpenAI introduces Jutebox, a new AI model.

A new AI model that generates genre-specific music with lyrics. Well, I went and took a peek, had a listen, and the rock slash Elvis version was- I listened to that one. That's the first one I listened to. It's the only one I listened to.

But what a weird-ass thing it was. It's not going to be at the top of the charts anytime soon, but- No, no, no. The lyrics are definitely, you know, I would say, peak acid-taking Beatles, period, which is kind of nice.

The music itself, not so bad. I mean, it's a step better than, say, you know, GarageBand presets for different things, but not too much better. So, I wouldn't be too worried if I were a musician yet. Yeah, definitely not. Definitely not. But there's a link in the show notes to it. Go check out the Elvis one.

The lyrics are just like, wait, what? Where did this come from? Security? Ha! We're joined again this week by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast.

Dave is also co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, as well as the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy, as well as surveillance and privacy. Welcome, Dave. Hello. Do you, and we did this happy hour last Saturday.

Yes. And I was on for about two hours. Yes. Brian, you were on for just a little bit less than me. I think you pulled the ripcord a few minutes before I did. I saw which way the winds were blowing, yes. And I think I used that as my cue, nay, my excuse to leave myself.

As things were rapidly, we were on a downhill trajectory, right? Oh, yes. It went downhill for an additional three hours, apparently. Well, that was my question. You went for another two hours after that? Yeah, it was four hours total. Well, I was going to pull the ripcord at three, and then people are like, no, we're having fun, because we had pulled in audience members and listeners at that point.

Oh, okay. And we had a bunch of cool guys out there, and everybody was chatting. And they're like, can you at least just leave it on if you've got to leave? I'm like, sure. And then I got the dogs, brought the dogs in, and then we'd start it back up. And then it got to the point where it's like, guys, no, no more. Just drooling over each other.

Yeah, pretty much. Well, that's good. I mean, that's great then. That sounds like fun. I can't say I would have had it in me to go another two hours, but I'm glad people enjoyed it. And I was glad to be part of it, too. It was a good time. Yeah.

I think we'll do it again next weekend. I don't know. We'll figure it out. Not this weekend. Not this weekend. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But thanks for showing up, Dave. It was definitely fun. And I've got – I have some very Fauci-esque screenshots of you. Of me? Or it's actually more like Picard.

It's the Fauci-Picard look. It's just like, oh, God, why are they doing this? Right, right, right. You were definitely the very sad father. Why are these people saying these things? We all have our roles to play. I was happy to play mine. Yes.

Yes. So we're starting a few minutes late today because I had to go rescue my roommate out in the streets of Los Angeles because she didn't follow my instructions and charge up her battery and had to get a prescription. And on my way over there, I noticed that it looked like business as usual everywhere.

Parking lots were full. Traffic was up. There was street construction. It looked like a normal pre-C19 day. And I'm like, what the hell? I don't mind the street construction because if not – has there not ever been a better time for there to be construction on streets? Oh, definitely.

Yeah, I'm down for that. But it's just like, what's going on out here? Last time I was out, it was just dead. But today, it's like parking lots were full. People were everywhere. People were walking and running on the streets. I found in general just through my bike rides and little bits of things that I do here and there, even just driving for sanity, that Friday, Saturday, Sundays have ramped up.

People do their errands or what they need to do those days. So I wouldn't read too much into it. When we see things busy Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and we're not out of isolation yet, then I'll be concerned. Yeah, I didn't see anybody doing anything wrong. I was just surprised at how many people were out because I thought everybody was still doing the online ordering, or it could have just been everybody from Instacart and Postmates.

Could be. Which is also possible. It's an army. It is. Yeah, my house is right near a park. There's a lake and a pathway that goes around it. So I take my dog out there and I walk along the pathway and...

Hunt for turtles? Hunt for turtles, yeah. And we have snapping turtles the size of VW beetles in the lake. And it's definitely busier than it usually is. It's particularly right after work, that 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock hour, but also on the weekends.

And I think it's partly because a lot of the other parks have been closed. A lot of the state and county parks are shut down. You can still go in them, but you can't park at them. You know, if you walk in, they're not going to kick you out, but they're discouraging groups of people to come in.

So as a result of that, I think a lot of the traffic has shifted to some of the other parks, which would be fine if it weren't my backyard. So get off my lawn, even because I can't complain. My lawn is a park, but I've definitely noticed the increase in traffic.

It's one of the arguments that was made here for opening up all the beaches, because we had everybody packed into Orange County beaches last weekend. And the argument was, well, if we opened them all up, they wouldn't be so crowded. But that's not true. No, that's not true. No matter how much beach we open up, there's enough people here to fill them up.

So the governor made a wise decision to shut all the beaches down, finally. Unless you're in Venice and have a city council position. Yes. Yes. Do as I say, not as I do. Yes. Do you suppose, well, let's come at this in two waves.

Do you suppose that we're going, speaking of waves, do you think we're going to have a second wave of infections? My guess would be yes. That's what happened with other similar, that's what happened with SARS. That's what happened with MERS. This is not terribly different, it's from the same sort of school of viruses.

So that's the theory. And I don't believe that any of our public policies are doing anything to not make that happen. If anything, we're encouraging it. And do you think if and when that second wave comes, that'll be perhaps something that knocks sense into people to say, stop going to the beach, like, let's really ride it out this time?

Nope. Nope. I don't believe that for a second. In fact, I think, you know, people that have been doing this half-assed for a while are already sick of it. I've saw a lot of jokes about, you know, even Jesus could only handle 40 days out in the desert. Yeah.

So, you know, I think we are hitting a point now for those of us that have been doing it correctly where people are starting to get antsy and can't really handle it anymore. We're not meant to be in isolation like this. That's why it's a punishment in prisons.

It's not good for us. It's not even good for us if we're completely alone. You know, you're not meant to be around the same people trapped in a space for so long a period of time. People are getting antsy, which is unfortunate. But, you know, there are ways to get out of the house and scratch that itch responsibly.

And as long as people are staying responsible about it, that's fine. But, you know, people aren't. And that's going to cause a second wave. And, you know, I think it's a small, stupid, but very vocal minority that's clamoring for let me get my haircuts right now.

I think if we go for a second lockdown, there's going to be a lot more people that are not up to the task. Oh, interesting. Hmm. Hmm. Just my opinion. Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember if we mentioned it here or not, but one thing I've wondered about is at what point do we have to worry about things like looting, that combination of unrest and financial desperation.

When does that, will we hit that point? And what are the things that trigger that? September is what I'm guessing. Two things that are going to trigger that. One might be earlier, supply chains breaking down and not being fixed. Um, you know, we're, we're expecting meat shortages at some, some places shortly, um, regardless of what executive orders are administered.

Um, there's that, uh, when people can't start getting things that they need to survive and it becomes a difficulty, that's not going to be good. Um, and I do think if we're ordered into a second lockdown, that's not going to go well. Yeah. Yeah.

I wonder which is worse. If you, um, if you maintain a lockdown or if you release a lockdown and then put it back, I would imagine the second is worse because you're, you're taking away, you're giving people hope and taking it away. Yeah. I mean, my, the real concern is if, if, cause we're not a second wave wouldn't be until the second wave of when we usually get flu season, which, you know, is what, um, October, November, December, um, and if, if numbers haven't come down enough and we haven't hit

all the various goals, even the, the most stringent States like California have outlaid before we let down on lockdown. If we haven't hit that throughout the summer and into the fall, I, I don't know what's going to happen, man. I can't imagine people staying, you know, if it's that bad of a disease that we can't loosen restrictions throughout the rest of the year, we've got some real problems.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. How, how are you guys doing this week? How's the week been? Been fantastic for me, but Brian, not so much. Uh, yeah, I think it was, it's been better than last week. Um, in terms of my mood, uh, it's been difficult just because my wife has been really busy and my son's been a little bit off this week.

So that's all kind of been on me to deal with and I haven't been able to do work that I needed and wanted to do because work is what keeps you sane. It's the break from the monotony of everything else. So that's been a bit rough, but I, I've got the weekend ahead of me when my wife takes her foot off the gas and that I've just kind of shifted to that's when basically I'll work a full day to make up for the hours and get what I need done and get a little sanity.

So it's better this week than last. Um, you know, there's been some encouraging news about potential vaccines and development and things of that nature, but, um, you know, and, and switching, you know, this, today's the first day of May. We're supposed to be out of here in 14 days.

Uh, but I know that the announcement, the two more weeks announcement is coming. So yeah, not here in LA Garcetti just said we're on path for the 15th. So yeah, well, he's got two weeks to change his mind about that because I've seen the numbers. They're not getting any better. Hmm.

How about you, Jason? Uh, what was the question again? How are you doing? Pandemic brain. Oh, things are going good here. I, you know, cut back on my drinking, started a new company, been doing lots of phone calls and prepping and ordering gear and stuff like that.

So I've been pretty much, uh, rocking and rolling over here. So that's good. Yeah. To the whole point. It's like, you know, yeah, I don't have Brian situation cause I don't have a kid, so I can keep working and keep just busting my ass to, we turn the TV off in the house and we turn the music on and no news.

So no, no Ganoos is good Ganoos from Gary Ganoos. Gary Ganoos on a great space coaster. You know, uh, I was talking to Ben Yellen earlier this week when we were recording the caveat podcast. And, and this, I think just this week he was able to send his kids back to daycare, um, because his wife is considered an essential worker.

I think she works in healthcare. And so the state is providing, you know, limited opportunities for daycare for the people in that situation. Do they have to spray the kid with Lysol when they come home or how does that work? Yeah, probably, you know, they put them in a big, uh, I don't know, a big chamber and just set off a Lysol bomb or something.

But I mean, kind of like, uh, was it, was it, was it, was it the three mile Island the movie? Uh, do you remember that one back from the syndrome, the China syndrome? Yeah. Yeah. I remembered in the China syndrome cause I, I was a kid and I saw the scene where they were hosing everybody down and decontaminating them. And it, I'm like, that's what working in a nuclear power plant is like, that just looks bad.

Mom, why am I watching this? Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I've actually been in one of those clean rooms. I was in, uh, right after nine 11 when there was all that concern about, um, I guess it was smallpox. Is that what it was? Yeah. There was smallpox.

Anthrax. But it was anthrax, but also smallpox. So they were, they were ramping up a smallpox vaccine production. And there was a facility in Baltimore that they'd converted to be able to do that. And it didn't end up going anywhere because the, the, the, the, um, the threat never really developed, but imagine a government that prepared for a threat.

I mean, they threw a lot of money at this and got it up to speed quickly. But what I remember is going in this room and it was this crazy clean room where the air exchanged in the entire room, like once a minute or something. So, uh, well, the floor was a grid and the ceiling was a grid.

And so you could just feel the, the, all the air just coming up through the floor, out through the ceiling. And it was, it was a little bit disconcerting to, it just threw you off to this feeling that how quickly all the air in the room was just being pumped through and scrubbed really, really fast.

You could use Marilyn Monroe in that room. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Anyway, Ben Yellen was saying how, uh, just like he got more done in the last, in the last 48 hours than he had in the previous month when his kids were home with him because he can finally focus, you know, and like he's got, it's hard.

Yeah. It's, it's almost impossible. Like the only way any of us can get anything done is if we take over the, the bedroom slash office now and lock the door and leave the other parent out to the wolves. Um, because if you try to work out, out with the kid, you know, they're, they're freaked out and whether they know why or not.

And it's, it's constant, you know, constant help me play with me. What are you doing? I'm going to sit on your lap while you work. Well, that's not going to work. So, yeah. Well, and that's another component of this is when, when can the schools open up again? Because, well, we have this word from my school, um, which is following, I think basically, you know, our governor and, and our mayors have their policies.

So for us, uh, the school will not open until I think it's part of phase two that they're talking about here. So the numbers have to have been going down for at least two weeks. Um, and every parent and child will need testing before they're allowed to reopen.

Wow. So it's going to be a while. Yeah. Yeah. And I got to say, I'm not looking forward to the test when it comes because I don't like my brain poked with Q-tips. And you think, well, I was, you know, I say that as a joke and it's one thing for me, but can you imagine 30 to 43 and a half to four year olds having to take this test?

And it's going to be pretty traumatic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is. Traumatic's the right word for it. So I hear that they're working on blood tests that may, you know, may actually replace it, um, with slightly less accuracy, but we'll see. And we do have free testing here in Los Angeles now, so you can make an appointment and go at your leisure.

Oh, that's nice. One of our neighbors did it. Not quite at your leisure. Uh, I've heard, we've looked at the website, uh, it ain't supporting the traffic very well. And that's what I was going to say. Uh, she made an appointment for one 30 and they said, get there early. So she got there at one and she had to drive around until three o'clock until she got her test.

And she's like, make sure you fill up your gas tank. And I'm just thinking, what if you got to pee or the other, you know, do you lose your spot in line? You know, who knows? But yeah, it took her two and a half hours and she got her test, but yeah, fill up before you go.

At least your battery will be charged unlike my roommates who just died. By the way, there's a lot of that. You know, you got to, got to have that a lithium battery in your car that just pops it right up. Used mine twice before I got a new battery and it worked great. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do have one of those actually.

My, my previous car had a, in the, in the, in the end of its days, it was having some electrical issues. So it was a little insurance policy, uh, have one of those beefy battery bricks. And there, you know, the new one is tiny though. I mean, the one that I just bought is super tiny.

I mean, it's like a super powered lithium ion, like you would charge your cell phone with. It's even got USB and you charge it over USB. And it was just got two plugs. You, you put in the, you know, the clip, the alligator clips for the battery. You go in, you press a button, boom, car starts, take it off. You can get like three, three zaps out of it before it dies.

But if you've got, if you've got one of those batteries in your car and you haven't used it for a while, go top it up. Make sure it's, uh, make sure it's juiced up because with, well, you don't, not for you because you drive every day because you're crazy, man. But your neighbors and your family who haven't run their car for a while might need it.

So it's good to have around is, uh, being a, just a good Samaritan. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's, uh, amazing. I was thinking I have to go buy gas today on my way home and it's been a few weeks since I've had, since I've had to buy gas because I'm not going anywhere. And you'll be pleasantly surprised at the prices though.

I know, I know, I know, uh, I wish I had a bigger tank. I could just, I know, fill it up. I topped off my tank on March 14th or March, uh, actually no, like March 11th.

And when I was going to go save my roommate today, I looked down at my gas tank and I am still over three quarters of a tank. Yeah. Both our cars are pretty full. We don't even, we, if I wanted to buy gas, I'd end up like with that. $2 worth. Such a wasted opportunity.

I know. I know. All right. Any, uh, any security stories you guys wanted to talk about this week or, uh, or not? I guess I'm happy either way. Run through a couple really quickly. Just run through these. Cause I got, at least I have a, I have a followup at the end.

So we got to have that one in. All right. Well, we're three weeks into Quibi and they've got their first privacy scandal. This is not anything, uh, we're not aware of or, or just for them, uh, study by Zach Edwards has looked at signup workflows and emails from Quibi, JetBlue and other companies.

Uh, and there's a lot of data being linked to advertisers because of bad coding and weak encoding of personal data. And, uh, many companies not requesting advertisers to scrub the data obtained by these means. Uh, Quibi is one of the most egregious offenders, according to the company.

Um, and even though they only launched a couple of weeks ago, they've, uh, basically found out that all user-confirmed email addresses to advertisers and analytics companies have been leaked. Yeah. Okay. Good times. I guess. So I had to sign up for three, with three different emails because their signup process was so crappy.

So all three of those emails are out there, but am I surprised? Do I care? No, this is par for the course, man. Business as usual, unfortunately. Uh, you know, one does wonder what does GDPR bring down the hammer on these companies when this happens or is this just ignored?

Oh, well, uh, funny you should mention that because just this week there was a report about, uh, basically how disappointed many folks are with the lack of enforcement in GDPR. Um, I think Google is really the only company that's had anything come down on them.

It was like a $50 million fine, which is a tiny percentage of the money they make in a single day. Um, so, uh, there's, there's a push to have more people, basically more resources, uh, put onto enforcement of GDPR so that it can actually follow through on the things that, uh, it promises to do.

Maybe they could hire Google to be the internet police. Hmm. Internet police is a service. Yeah, I think we'd need an oversight committee. Right. We'll hire Microsoft for that. And then we'll hire Amazon to oversight, be oversight for Microsoft.

Yeah, Facebook could keep an eye on all of them. Yep, exactly. And Apple will just be in the back. Just doing whatever Apple does, I guess. Right, right. They'll, they'll be, Apple will be playing the same part that I did in last week's happy hour. They'll just be sitting there shaking their head.

Sitting there shaking their head. Right, right. Let's see. What else we got? Facebook is a... Let's talk about these contact tracing apps. All right. Because this is... Let's skip the WhatsApp stuff because it's kind of boring anyways. Who cares? Yeah. All right. So we're getting our Apple and Google contact tracing tool, even though we've got a lot of reports that there are better ones that don't, that are less privacy invasive.

But, you know, they did as good a job as they could, I suppose. And it's rolling out. So now what? Well, it's rolling out to developers right now. But I think the biggest issue isn't so much the Apple and Google one, because we thought that that was going to be the magic bullet.

You know, it's built into every phone that everybody's got. Well, at least everybody with a smartphone, which is only 82% of U.S. adults. They don't even talk about the kids, though. But the thing is, there are so many contact tracing apps coming out right now. Like, was it the UN just launched one that didn't even work?

You couldn't even launch it? There's just... It's a bifurcated system, and it's just going to screw everything up. It's just like... Unless they share their data. And what are the rules about that? And yeah, exactly. This is, again, it's the autonomous car thing. It's got to be all or nothing. That's one ring to rule them all.

Yeah, that's why I was so down with Apple and Google, because it's like, yeah, you know, you got Frodo and Bilbo and all the other baggins going on together, but at least they're going on the quest for the ring together. One ping to rule them all. Oh, dad joke bad.

Are you kidding me? That's a show title. It's my turn to shake my head. That's a show title. There's your show title, bucko. I'm just worried that these aren't going to work. And also, there's an article over at Ars Technica that says half Americans right now, when they polled them, will not trust contact tracing apps.

Well, yeah. So that's not surprising. Yeah. Do you want an app on your phone that doesn't have the absolute best security possible, that's tracking every single move that you make? Oh, wait. We have that already. It's for advertising, though. Yeah. Wasn't the, didn't the Apple one have to, the phone has to be on for it to work?

Like, it has to be unlocked or something? Wasn't there something with that? I admit I haven't been tracking them closely. They were using that, I don't know that about the Apple and Google one specifically, but the South Korean thing that they were doing for people that were repeat offenders were getting around it by just leaving their phones at home.

Ah, okay. I mean, there's going to be ways to get around this, right? It has to be opt-in and take it seriously and trust them. And we have to have enough, you know, we have to reach Facebook critical mass with the amount of people using it. So unless all those things line up together, there's almost no point.

Yeah, the stuff I read this week said that at 60%, you're still, it's still useful. It's not ideal, but it's still better than not having it. I think that's the, kind of the break point there. Okay. But I don't, I have no idea how close we are or close we can expect to get to that.

Unfortunately, according to the study, it says 57% expressed a reasonable amount of trust. Well, there you go. We're 3% off. We were so close. Yeah, so close, but. Missed it by that much. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, that is what it is. It's like, we're going to try, but maybe for round two. I think that maybe things will come together for round two, you know? It's like the first Zoom call. It never goes the way you planned. So the first contact tracing run doesn't work the way you planned.

So maybe the second one will go, you know, a little better. Yeah, the first meetup goes four hours. The second one will only go one. Yeah, I mean, still, I don't even know how I really, I'm somebody relatively knowledgeable about this stuff, and I don't really know how I feel about the idea of having a contact tracing app on my phone.

Like, I kind of feel about it, especially having gone through these 40 days and 40 nights plus of isolation and being disappointed at the results. You know, California did not flatten the curve too much.

We're still seeing increasing numbers of infections, even though we're all doing this. And, of course, you look around and you see people breaking the rules left, right, and center, going to beaches. I almost feel the same way. Would I put this app on my phone? Well, I would if I knew it would do some good.

I would if I knew my other people all around me would play by the rules and install the app as well. I would if I knew there was privacy, but these are all coming from companies that I really don't trust for privacy. It's a complicated set of emotions I have about the idea of this.

Yeah, I'm thinking about the time Apple put that U2 song on all of our phones. Oh, what I'd give to have that back instead of being in this situation. I'm sorry, U2. I'll listen to your shitty album. Oh, yeah.

Okay, so I want to close out this week on something fun because I actually moved this from another section of the show because there's a very specific thing in here. And I want to get Dave's take on this because I believe, I do believe that Dave has been moonlighting as a YouTuber because I found this video called The History of the McRib.

And I started listening to it and just take a little listen. Very few fast food culinary creations have quite the lore around them as McDonald's, the McRib. So I started listening to that. I'm like, Dave, you want to tell us something? That's not me.

Sounds damn close. That's close. Maybe they're using that voice recreation pattern thing that we've been talking about a couple months back. Maybe they fed all your podcasts into it and upped the base a little bit. Huh. Yeah.

I mean, I see the resemblance for sure, but no, definitely not me. Okay. But now here's the fun part because I wanted to get your take on this too because Brian has never had a McRib in his life. Nope. Have you? I have. I loved the McRib. I have to say.

There are fanatics out there. I've been told. Yeah. Came out when I was 10 years old and to a 10-year-old palate. It was fucking amazing. It was amazing. Let's be honest for a second, Jason. Not just 10-year-old's use palate. Also current use palate.

Yes. Yes. So, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right. The guy who eats sweet tarts for dinner. I'm sorry. I have a very distinctive, diverse palate. I can taste different things.

Hey, look, these days anything goes. I'm not passing judgment on any culinary decisions you make, right? I mean, it's all good. If it makes you feel better, have at it, man. Well, I did do elevated Chef Boyardee and it didn't work. So, I will stick by that.

Okay. Yeah, that definitely did not work. There is no way in hell that you can elevate Chef Boyardee. I figured that out. That is science right there. I'm just telling you. Okay. Fair enough. But, yeah, yeah. As I grew, I went finally and got a McRib like on their farewell tour and it was just god-awful.

And just because I missed it. I wanted to try it and remember that for my youth. It's like watching Airplane again after 20 years and you remember it as this great movie and you watch it and it's just like, what is that piece of garbage? But the McRib was the same. So, what was your history with McRib, Dave?

I believe I have only had one McRib and I tried it. It was definitely in my adult years. So, I would say I was probably in my 30s. And I think I tried it right around when the McRib started to gain attention because somebody figured out that the appearance of the McRib somehow coordinated with the price of pork.

Like if pork prices got down low enough, then McDonald's started cranking out McRibs. Yep, that is actually covered in the video, which makes me think it still might be you now because that was some very inside info there. Oh, God. It's actually just pork like kind of formed into the shape of riblets, right?

They're not actually in ribs. Yes, exactly. It's the same technique. Yeah, it's the same technique that they use for Chicken McNuggets. And they go through all of the history of the science and the scientists that actually did it in the video. So, I do recommend watching the video. It's kind of fascinating, but- It's like the food version of the Play-Doh Fuzzy Pumper Barbershop, basically.

So, I'll tell you what, Jason. I've got a ButcherBox delivery coming today with some extra pork in it that we added. So, I'm going to do an elevated McRib. I'm going to use the Heritage pork from ButcherBox and form it into the shape of ribs and put some barbecue sauce on it and call it a day.

Okay. You got to have the white onions and pickles, though. That's part of it. I can do that. On the French roll. Okay. Yeah. My recollection of the McRib experience was I just was like, okay. Like, okay, this is fine. I mean, I didn't hate it.

I didn't love it. Didn't see what the big deal was about it. It was flavorful. It was fine. Didn't seem like, you know, how, like, McDonald's French fries I can get a craving for and they have that element to them, that they are delicious and they are different from anyone else's things.

The McRib to me felt like a pressed meat object that I could get just about anywhere. You know, like, there wasn't anything, didn't make me go, oh, McDonald's. Didn't make me, there wasn't anything outstanding about it. It just seemed sort of beige to me.

Beige. Sounds delicious. It was delicious. If you're into beige, it's a Midwest thing, really. I mean, they, they say that it was very specific to the Midwest of the people that really picked it up because we didn't really have great food out there, but I had it. I mean, I had it all the time because I lived right near Oakbrook, Illinois, which is the headquarters of McDonald's.

So we got it in the local stores a lot sooner and they'd stayed a lot longer because they had to get rid of all the other ones that they couldn't sell. So we had all the back stock. And there you go, folks. The latest security segment, 15 minutes on the McRib. Still not, not me doing the voiceover.

All right, gentlemen, are we good? No. Are we done? Yeah. Fair enough. I suppose that's all we can ask for these days. All right. Well, stay safe. Try to stay sane.

I will, I'll do the same and I'll see you guys back here next week. Same, same bat time, same bat channel. Excellent. Closing shout outs. Well, don't really have any shout outs because nobody's really gone anywhere this week. So nothing to shout out about.

Well, I got a little shout out. You can go check out the masks. Finally, they're in the store. Just go to gog.show slash shop. That is our threadless shop. And we'll be putting in more swag as soon as I can find it on the old hard drives. The stuff that we designed years ago and never put up. Yep. We'll actually have some merch now.

As funny, I actually reposted the mask post that I made on social media. And one of my friends was like, it too, Brian. And I was like, hey, everybody else is doing it. Why can't we? Yeah, seriously. Come on, man. It's the thing to do. It's what the cool kids are doing. And if Disney can do it, we can do it.

Damn it. That's right. Until next time, I'm Brian Shilmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. 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. And if you don't have it right now, save it. Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it.

Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 436. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy. Wearing a grumpy old geek's mask.

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