438: Zuckerbergian Slip

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. This is the Ass Crack of Dawn edition of Grumpy Old Geeks. It's very early in the morning. Yeah. Scheduling can be fun. Sometimes, yeah. So, wife is still extremely busy with work.

We still don't have any daycare solutions because there are none to be had. And, yeah, I'm on my last week of work for the job that I had started until I got furloughed because everything sucks. But that means I have a lot of work this week because I'm trying to wrap up every project that I was working on.

So, good times. 7.30 in the morning. Hello. Thanks for everybody who didn't bitch and moan about us taking an episode off. We needed some – well, me personally, I needed some existential me time. Oh, yeah. What does one do with existential me time? Tries to figure out what the next week's going to be without going bug nutty insane.

Oh, if that's the case, we're down to one episode a week, Jason. I'm going to need that every week. We're down to one episode a month, man. That's about it. All right. So, a little bit of follow-up. We talked about the Quibi fan podcast that got the cease and desist from Quibi.

And there is a self-penned article over on Slate. I like Slate, but I'm a little upset that they let this article go in because it is written by the two founders of that podcast. And it basically is an ad for the podcast. In all shape and form, they're just talking about, hey, this is our podcast.

You should listen to it. But they did talk a little bit about what happened and the fact that actually Jeffrey Katzenberg ended up coming onto their podcast to discuss Quibi. Which is pretty amazing in itself. Which is pretty amazing. And he was very polished and professional and, you know, pivoted away from the questions that they were asking to get his talking points in, as media professionals are wont to do.

The thing that I found really interesting outside of the fact that this is basically an ad that's been posted as content is the fact that they seem actually generally upset about the fact that Quibi came after them. While in their own writing, you can tell that they were basically taking the piss out of Quibi to begin with.

Yeah. They repeatedly called themselves as a fan podcast. But that does not seem to be the case. I do not believe that. With fans like these. With fans like these. Exactly. That was my impression and takeaway from reading the article. It was like, you should probably stop calling yourself a fan podcast.

You discussed Quibi. Not necessarily in a good way. And understandable why they may have wanted to come after you. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it was a well-written article, but it was an opinion piece or, you know, editorial or something. It wasn't news. In any way, shape, or form.

It was definitely an ad for their podcast. Which I shall not be listening to. No, I couldn't care less. Because I couldn't care less about Quibi. Because over at The Verge, they've got an article about how Quibi is going to start adding sharing features. Because right now, it's basically a walled garden.

And you can't even tweet about your shows. No screenshots. No nothing. Yeah, that's silly. And I love this. This is my takeaway from this. I'm reading the whole thing. And of course, Katzenberg is just basically blaming everything on COVID-19.

And it's like, there's a pandemic. We suck because there's a pandemic. No, no, no, no, no. No. Trust me, your app sucks. Your concept sucks. Yes. And I love this line. It just made me laugh. There are a whole bunch of things we've now seen in the product that we thought we got mostly right. But now that there are hundreds of people on there using it, you go, uh-oh, we didn't see that coming.

Hundreds of people. That's called beta testing. Yeah. And it's called beta testing. And I just love that he called it hundreds of people, which sounds about right to me. That sounds about right. Yes, hundreds. Yeah. I mean, all streaming. There are two things, two forms of streaming media that have suffered during the pandemic, Quibi and podcasts.

That's it. Everything else is doing bonkers. Yeah, they definitely are. And to be fair, though, Quibi does have about 1.3 million active users. Which still, for spending that much money, I know kids on TikTok that have that many active users on their, you know, their dance videos a day.

Yeah, 1.3 million active users, considering they were advertising for Quibi for six months, including Super Bowl ads ahead of time, is ridiculous. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the sign-up thing didn't work for me. And once I finally got in, now I've got like 17 emails from them a day that I had to go back and cancel.

And then I just canceled my trial because I'm like, I, this is just not, I don't like it. There's nothing there. No. You know, you have to wait for all the shows to come out, like all the episodes, and then you can watch a show. But this, like, you know, 10 minute, 10 minute, 10 minute, nah, not for me. But what is for me is The Mandalorian.

And surprisingly, they're saying that the new episodes that are scheduled for October are still going to be coming out. Well, hopefully they were mostly in the can and it was just a little, well, obviously they were mostly in the can because you can't go out and shoot anymore. So it's mostly just, you know, post-production stuff.

And I guess those folks are able to do it at home. Yep. Which also answers our question about the expanse that somebody wrote in about. So if these people are able to do post-production at home, then, you know, hey, maybe we'll get some expanse sooner than later too. That would be nice. Another thing we did get, though, that I just, I got an email about this morning, is that Shakespeare for Squirrels by Christopher Moore is out.

So next at the library. It's out? Yes, it came out today. Okay. So let's circle around the wagons here. The Mandalorian is able to finish their post-production. They're with Disney+. You know, Disney's got the money. They've got the wherewithal.

They've got the experience. The expanse is with Amazon. Now, Amazon has the money. However, I have signed up for, you know, I follow authors on Amazon and I follow Christopher Moore. So if his new book came out, why did I not get a fucking email telling me that his new book is out?

Now I don't believe that they're going to get the expanse done because obviously they don't know how to do shit. Yeah. Well, I mean, I got, I basically pre-ordered it on Audible and I got a note at midnight that said, your book is now ready for download. Well, you know, I follow Christopher Moore to get updates from Amazon.

So, you know, if you want to sell things, it would be a good idea to send that email letting me know that the new book is out now. No, no email. Check the spam folders. Check the spam folders. I check the spam folders every fucking morning. I'm a professional kind of defeats the purpose of the spam folder.

Well, just a quick, you know, once a day, a quick run through to make sure, you know, you do, you do a quibby on it. Yeah, I do a quibby in 10 minutes. All right. And believe it or not, my Loomis are in the mail and arrive tomorrow. You have a tracking number? I got a tracking number.

They're on the road. So. All right. We'll see. Was this a year and counting? At least. I paid for them in July of last year and they were supposed to be here for the holiday season. And they didn't mention that it was the holiday season 2020.

So I got two of them and we'll see. I'm only going to, I'm only going to open one and give it a shot because the other one might have to hit eBay. Right. It's not that good. But, you know, if nothing else, this thing has given us at least more material than I'll probably ever use the keyboard for.

Most likely. Yes. Yeah. And I got a mask update because everybody's been buying our grumpy old geeks masks. And if you want one, go to gog.show slash shop. Tens of people. Well, we have 23 people have bought the main mask. Oh. The, just the grumpy old geek branded mask.

Eight have bought the Team Brian mask. And 14 have bought the Team Jason mask. Deluded fools. Smart people. I like the intelligence of our audience. I actually need to order one because we did not get free samples. So I could use one.

No, we didn't. Talk to me off the air. I can get us some discounts. Oh, you got a connection? I got a connection. Hook us up. Only if you wear Team Jason, though. Fine. I don't care. In the news. And speaking of things that have been a long time coming, like your Lumi keyboard, even before you decided to order your Lumi keyboard that you have not gotten yet, Facebook had announced that they were going to have a content oversight board.

And they've finally shared the names of the first 20 members. Yes, this was announced in 2018. It took two years to get 20 people together for a board, apparently. So I don't know why this would take two years to do, but it took two years. So they've announced some of the more notable selections include Alan Rusbridger, who is a former editor-in-chief of the Guardian.

Hel Thorning-Schmidt, the former prime minister of Denmark. I'm sure he knows a lot about content moderation. And John Samples, the vice president of the Libertarian Cato Institute. There are also Nobel Prize laureates and activists among the body's membership. Interestingly enough, as I went through the lists that have been released, not a single programmer or anybody used to or skilled in social media.

Of course not. Of course not. So there have been some conservative members which have raised eyebrows, which is stupid because rarely enough, I will agree with Facebook about this. You want a good demographic selection. So, of course, there should be some very conservative people on there.

So we'll see if this actually ever does anything. They say they're on track to start hearing cases later this year, despite the coronavirus pandemic. Again, why the coronavirus pandemic would slow down putting together a content oversight board that will be looking at things online and making decisions online about things that happen online would be slowed down by the pandemic is beyond me.

Yeah, I know. It's not like they're going to a star chamber somewhere in Geneva, you know, under a mountain to talk about these things. You know, maybe that is what's slowing it down. This is Facebook. I would love to have them have that black star chamber with just the one light and there's a laptop sitting in the middle of the room and the light shines on the laptop where there's a questionable post because some mom breastfed her kid.

Oh, God. The dot matrix printer to print out the verdict. That'd be amazing. Another Facebook lose news. Well, lose is actually appropriate. I guess that was a really good. That was that was a Zuckerberg and slip on that.

Yes, Zuckerberg and slip. Oh, show title. Facebook backed Libra has gotten a new CEO. Yes, we thought it just kind of went away. It hasn't yet. They've got Stuart Levy, a former U.S. Treasury undersecretary who has spent the last eight years as HSBC's chief legal officer, is leaving the bank this summer to become the Switzerland based Libra Association's chief executive.

So this is obviously a move that is meant to quell the we don't want your stinking digital currencies to screw up our real currencies. Let's get somebody who's actually used to real currencies to be put in charge and water down the entire purpose of the whole thing to begin with and basically just become maybe a new currency.

But honestly, I think all Libra is now is a toy thing for rich people to get rich salaries and do nothing. Yeah, yeah, basically what they you know, the promise of what they've tried to do is now completely gone, all gone. And because, yeah, people are just like, we're not going to let you do that, period.

Yeah. You know, Mark, even you have limits, dude. You cannot go up against the big money global economy. Although you wait a couple of weeks, it might be the only only option left. You're still going to have to have real money to put in to get your Libra.

Don't know how that's going to work out. Yeah, yeah. And another bit of news from the way back machine. Once again, I don't understand why everything takes so fucking long in this digital age. But here we are going back to 2017. And I believe John Oliver did a big thing about this way back when, too, when we were all kind of getting upset with the FCC for that net neutrality thing that they were going to do.

And they opened up their commenting system and they went, hey, everybody seems to be for this because there were tons and tons and tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of Robobot comments and fake net neutrality comments that seemed to support them. While the vast majority of the public went, uh-uh, we don't like this.

The New York Times sued the FCC in 2018 demanding that the agency release data logs so we could look and see what was going on with all those fake comments. And a judge has finally determined that, yes, we need to take a look at this three years later. Finally, the wheels of government go round and round.

Yeah, it's all a bit slow, everything, with these companies, which you think that it wouldn't be because, you know, they're not. Anyways, whatever. So we're going to find out now what was going on with this in theory. So wait another two years as the legal system churns on before anything gets turned over.

And then another year and a half after that, after the barely paid journalists can go through it and figure out what's going on. And then we'll find out what we already know, which is there are a bunch of Russian bots going through there. Exactly. Basically grabbing half of them are dead people. The other half are people that, no, it wasn't me.

That wasn't me. Nope. And even the comments are, like, all the same. So it's, like, pretty easy to narrow that down. But what they want are the IP addresses. Yes. So, which probably all come from the U.S. anyway, because all the damn computers are owned by the Russians and they just use everybody's home machine as a VPN.

Yes, and, of course, if you go to GOG.show slash VPN, they would never get your IP. You can join in. Okay. Since we don't have Moron of the Week, I had to put this one in here. Elon Musk has reopened his Tesla factory. Moron of the Week, Elon Musk.

Hmm. There are, like, 25 stories you could put in here over the last week. That's really it. It really is. We're going to have to Kanye his ass soon. I'm getting there. I'm with you. Yeah. So, yeah. He opened his factory back up and said, hey, look, if you need to come and arrest somebody, just arrest me.

I'll be the only one to get arrested. I'm like, okay, let's take him up on it. Please. I agree. And, actually, that's the one thing that I would put him under Hero of the Week as a caveat of Moron of the Week is he at least is offering himself up and saying, I'm going to open it up. Don't arrest anybody else.

Come arrest me. So, Governor Newsom, have at it. Please do. Please do. But we know he's not going to. Of course not. Because now, you know, Elon has made the threat that I'm going to move all of my business to Texas. And I'm like, okay. Go.

See ya. Off you go. Scooch. Scooch. You've been nothing but a pain in the ass around here. So. And they're like, and what's the rush right now? Yeah, why now? Are people really clamoring to buy Teslas? No, of course not. He just wants to grease. He's a big business guy. He wants business to start up, as all businessmen do.

But you're not above the law, Elon. Yeah. Apparently he is, because he has not gotten arrested yet. All right. Well. Yeah. One show off was not enough, Jason. Now I'm just angry and depressed again. I was almost feeling okay.

Kind of. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. And in Isn't It Ironic News Stack Overflow, the site where all of us who used to program or still do, go to, well, the headline says, get their questions answered. But the real thing is, get the code that they're going to put into their site is reducing its workforce by 15% because of the coronavirus.

I was not aware that a forum, basically it is just a forum, had that big of a workforce, but apparently they do. So 40 employees, which is 15% of their company are being furloughed. So they will be able to keep their health insurance and other benefits for some period of time.

And some other people were laid off as well. Not surprising. Nobody's working. Nobody's going to Stack Overflow to steal code. So no ads. Well, it's not even that. It's the main people that got furloughed and the ones that didn't were like contractors that they couldn't keep on.

Always the case. Yes. Welcome to Contractor World, guys. I'm one of them. I've been furloughed. So they've got basically a hiring division where they can do recruiting for companies and have people on Stack Overflow do tests and stuff like that.

And since nobody's hiring, that's why. I was not aware that they did that. That is a good pivot for them. Yeah. It's actually a pretty good service if you're trying to hire people. What better place to look for programmers than Stack Overflow because everybody's got that bookmarked. Right. And some bad news for us, Jason, because we're not a big fan of influencers.

But according to Business Insider, influencers are not being destroyed by the coronavirus advertising meltdown. As we know, advertising is down across the board. And those people that do advertise just do the same blanket in these trying and unprecedented times bullshit ads.

But the influencers were able to pivot a lot better. And they're more nimble than other agencies are, say, or other media areas. And they are doing okay because they're using different revenue opportunities, including merchandise sales, much like we are, get our masks, through companies like Fanjoy, e-commerce affiliate revenues, through platforms like RewardStyle, and recurring subscription incomes through services like Patreon and a variety of other categories.

Or if you're a young hot girl, it's very easy to make money online. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. So, yeah, consumer demand is strong. In fact, it's stronger than ever, obviously, because people are just sitting around looking at their phones all the time. So the influencers, for the most part, if they're able to monetize through other avenues, are doing all right.

Yeah, it's really, it makes sense. It honestly makes sense. Yep. And I thought this was interesting. Yeah, too bad. I also saw this over at Business Insider. This is a breakdown of what, God, I hate this term, a micro-influencer and how he is doing on YouTube.

So he's got 25,000 subscribers and he breaks down his monthly income in April and shows how the coronavirus has affected his business. This is Jimmy Ton, again, the coined term, the micro-influencer, who runs a tech review YouTube channel with 25,000 subscribers, shared how much money YouTube paid him in April.

He earns money through the ads that play in his videos, obviously, and his YouTube channel earned $1,680, according to a screenshot viewed by Business Insider. So, you know, direct ad revenue rates are down because of everything that's going on and shifting ad budgets.

But he says that his YouTube views have dropped by 35, or his rates have dropped by 35 to 40% in the past few weeks, even though views are up. So he's basically staying dead even. More people are watching a show. The rates have gone down. He's making the same amount of money.

Yeah, that tracks. That totally tracks. He should try a podcast. With 25,000 subscribers, he could definitely make a little bit more money than the 1680. Yeah, but as we've discussed, podcasting and Quibi are the only two things that are going down. So if he's getting more views on YouTube, he would be getting less listens on his podcast because no commuting.

Good point. Good point. Yeah. So, and we've got enough competition. Yeah, we don't need him. Just listen to us. We should, yeah. So if he's a micro-influencer, what would we be? Teeny-tiny influencers. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

God. I actually watched his show and we're much better. Of course we are. Of course we are. And over at the New York Times, I found an article and I read through this, how my boss monitors me while I work from home. And I just thought this was really interesting and a little creepy.

So the author of the article decided to go ahead and install some of the spy-like software that he was looking into as he was beginning to write this article. So he tried it out on himself. He used this company called Hubstaff. Terrible name for a company, by the way.

Terrible name for a company. So he installed the software and gave his editor basically the boss key for it and he tried it out on himself as a guinea pig. Every few minutes, it snaps screenshots of the websites he browses, the documents he is writing, and the social media sites he visits.

From his phone, it maps where he goes, including, you know, he took a bike ride and all that sort of stuff. And he basically just did this for, I think, about two weeks or something like that. And he discovered a couple different things. First off, it starts to affect his own behavior.

Of course. Yep. He basically starts to do things with the knowledge that he's being watched and tracked. And he games the system. So he started doing things like, you know, when you leave your office or go walk around or go to the bathroom or things like that, you make sure 100% that you have something work-related up on your screen, not whatever you're futzing around with.

And, you know, just basically leaving things open for longer periods of time to make it seem like you're working longer and all that sort of stuff. And his editor actually had comments as well saying, this is creepy. I don't like being able to see this about my employees.

And I don't – it's definitely an invasion of privacy. Yeah. Yeah. She just called it ick. Because it is. Yeah. These things, they really screw with you over time because you're always being watched. And, you know, it builds up a low level of anxiety in the employees and, you know, makes work, A, not so much fun.

So you do worse work. And I just – these things are – these things are a bad idea. They're just a bad idea. I mean, judge people on the amount of work that they actually get done. If they're not hitting their deadlines or not getting their work done, address that problem.

But spying on employees is a bad, bad idea. Well, and continuing with that theme, there could be some interesting changes when and if we do go back to offices, and especially if we don't have a vaccine, contact tracing in the office using RFID technology.

So if you go back to your office, they want to know if you're washing your hands or not, and they want to know where you're going around the office. So a lot of companies around this country are thinking about using badges and wristbands to track whether staff members are practicing social distancing and even whether they're washing their hands or not.

So privacy is dead. I mean, a lot of these badges in these big companies already have RFID built into them, but there's a lot that RFID does not do. And, you know, distance tracking to people is one of those things, you know. I worked with some people trying to figure out some, like, RFID triangulation technology a long time ago to see how narrowly you can track somebody with an RFID tag.

And it's pretty difficult because just the way the system works, you know, the way the radio waves bounce off the tag that actually generate the signal and things like that. Right. It doesn't have the granularity of six feet. Yeah, that's kind of the problem, I think. So, I don't know, bubbles, man.

Everybody just needs to wear a bubble here at the office. Oh, God. And how do you track if somebody's washing their hands? Yeah, I don't quite understand how RFID is going to tell if you've washed hands or not unless you build it. Whatever. Just let people be. Jesus Christ.

Actually, you know what? We can't do that because people are stupid and they won't wash their hands. I think that's a self-selecting problem that might take care of itself. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. Ups and doodads. So in a weird twist, all of the projects that I really ever had to use Slack for have gone away.

And I've gotten rid of Slack on all of my devices. Oh, does this mean I can uninstall it now? Because I was only using it for us. I'm on Teams for everything else. Yep. You are free and clear to move about the country without Slack. How nice.

I actually get to remove a program. I know. That's always a, that's very exciting. Celebration. I love removing programs. The thing about it is I still have, I'm still used to checking it all the time. So I have phantom Slack syndrome. Oh, dude, I've had it open all, even though we weren't doing a show and I knew I wouldn't really be talking to you unless it was about like stupid shit.

I left it open the entire week. Yeah, mine was always open too. And I was like, oh, ding. Oh, you know, I had the, the, the notifications turned off and they have the, at least the, the nice snooze setting. So you can only, you know, you can only be bugged from like, you know, I had mine set for like nine in the morning to four in the afternoon.

But still, I would still check it and see if anybody needed anything, which obviously nobody ever did. You know, it's like. Now, here's, here's something that we don't talk about a lot of the time, but I always like to go back to this. Now, I obviously, somewhere I have an account registered with Slack, the company, because I'm using their product, correct?

Now, is there a way for me to go delete that? Because this is what we're supposed to be doing when we remove services and products, is we go find a way to have us removed username and password and any other data that they have about us. We should delete all that stuff and ask them to delete and remove our accounts.

Does Slack have that? I didn't look because I, you know. Because we are professionals. We're professionals. And I think maybe I'll need to get back on it at some point. But, yeah, I didn't even, I didn't even think about that. I should definitely. I think about these things.

Yes. Hmm. That is interesting. Because, you know, they will get hacked at some point. I mean, it doesn't matter for us because we are professionals and we use our one password and our single use passwords and all that sort of stuff. So if we find out we got pwned because Slack slacked on their security and all our data got sucked up, wouldn't be too big of a deal.

But I do like to try to keep a clean slate with these sorts of things where if I'm going to stop using a service or a piece of software and I know that they've got an account registered for me, I want to be able to request them to delete it. Yeah. So I will have to look into that. And another thing about Slack is if somebody does get your Slack account and your password and can log in, then they can theoretically just get all of your historical messages that you didn't go back and delete, which could cause problems for some people.

Definitely. Especially the shit that you and I talked about. I know. I'm thinking, I should go delete that now. You're welcome, Jason. I'm glad I reminded you. Yes. And somebody reminded Slack, too, that we now live in the future and they have finally started to strip location data from images that people upload.

Oh, okay. Yep. This guy wrote about this like three years ago and Slack was just like, meh, we'll maybe get around to it. Who cares? Well, turns out a lot of people did care. Finally, Slack's not saying why they did it, but I'm hoping it's common sense and maybe they just had some extra time in the downturn.

Meaning somebody threatened a lawsuit? Yeah, probably. Yeah. Probably something happened. But they're finally going to be stripping EXIF data from images that you upload, which is, you know, I think I started doing that and had libraries for that about five minutes after people started embedding location data in EXIF tags in cell phone videos and photographs.

Because that's what you do, you know, but first you, of course, you'd strip the EXIF Latin long and put it in a database so you can go back and reference it later if you have to, but it's not in the image for everybody else. You keep it. Your data belongs to you or me.

Right. Well, on the security tip, there is a new browser add-on that verifies that sites actually honor their privacy policies in theory. So just because a website presents a privacy policy, it doesn't mean its code is actually abiding by its own policy, as we all know too well.

So researchers from Waterloo University in Ontario, Canada, have created a new browser plugin that verifies this in theory. I'm assuming they must have a lot of lawyers on staff. The software-based system is dubbed Mitigator, and it gives users a secure signal when they visit a website that's complying with its own privacy policy.

So things such as if a website requires users to enter an email address, but the privacy policy does not mention that requirement, you will get a notification, which is kind of cool. I'm thinking about installing this just to see how many of the sites that I frequent on the reg are keeping up with their own privacy policies.

I'm willing to bet very few of them. I'm willing to bet very few, and I can't believe they'd have that many sites in the system because this is kind of a complicated problem. Yes, it is, right? That's why I was thinking there's just no way that this actually could possibly work on a ton of sites, but I haven't tried it yet, so I'll give it a go this week.

Yeah, yeah. Let me know how it goes because, yeah, I just don't see how that's even possible. Honestly, I don't. But, you know, there are people out there that are a lot smarter than I am. Well, you know, at least the press release didn't say they use AI to do it. Yeah, that would have been bad. That would have been bad.

They just use the real AI. Yes. So Spotify has rolled out a couple new features. One is basically kind of like a shared DJ playlist that you can have multiple people use at the same time.

Or you can, like, pass control to somebody else if you had a party and it's like, oh, let Joe take over for a while. What's a party? What's a party? Exactly. And talk about bad timing for a feature. And also, letting other people control the playlist for anything that you're doing sounds like just hell.

Yeah. That sounds horrible to begin with, but maybe they can just pivot this to be being some sort of contract tracing program. That's it. Yeah. Well, yeah. It's bad timing on this feature. And this other one I thought of you for.

It's Spotify Kids. Do you use Spotify Kids? No, no, no, because right now we control the music that he hears. Well, I say that, but he's now figured out how to tell Alexa how to play songs from Frozen or whatever. So he's a little bit too young to worry about this.

But I did read through this and like if he gets a bit older, yeah, I don't need him blasting Old Town Road 10,000 times. Yeah. Because you can block it and all that stuff. And it says from children ages three and up. So he's just barely getting to the point. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But it's interesting.

It's interesting. They only have got like 8,000 songs in there, which I thought is a pretty small playlist, but they're all child friendly. Yeah. I'll take a look at it because I'm getting a little bored with his current playing selections. So something new could always be good. If you're still doing a whole bunch of Zoom meetings, you can.

The BBC has done something actually kind of cool. They've assembled a gallery of historic still images of empty sets dating back to the 1950s for many of its long running shows, which you can now download and use as backgrounds for your for your video conferences. So you can do a video conference from the TARDIS from Doctor Who, if you're a huge fan of that, which is kind of awesome.

So I've got a link to that in the show notes. They've got a whole bunch of different BBC backgrounds and things of that nature. And they've also got a collection of backgrounds from other things such as Netflix. So you can do your BoJack Horseman background, CBS All Access for Star Trek. Obviously, Fox has got Bob's Burgers, The Simpsons and Family Guy backgrounds, HBO's got Game of Thrones, Last Week Tonight, Silicon Valley, Westworld, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So tons and tons of links and different backgrounds in the link in the show notes. Check it out. I did check it out. Some of them were kind of weak. They just show it was just like basically, you know, the key art for the show. And I'm like, yeah, it's not that fun. Key art is not cool. You want to be in the show. Yeah.

The John Oliver one I thought was the best because he's got the chair and he's got the sign up. And it'd be fun to sit down in that one. The TARDIS one's pretty cool like that. You could make that work. The ones where they actually, you know, create a scene that you could be in. So it looks like, you know, normal. Like the bridge of the Enterprise as opposed to just the Star Trek logo.

Exactly. Exactly. And what was the other one? I mean, at least Game of Thrones, you get the Iron Throne. That was OK. And so, but yeah, some of these, these guys can do better. These guys can definitely do better. And in fun crowdfunding news, so long and thanks for all the cash.

Do you remember the iBackpack? Oh, gosh. With that name, it must have rolled out back in 2000. 2015 and 2016. This guy did two crowdfunding campaigns and he took in about $800,000 and basically spent almost none of it on the actual product.

Right. Of course. So the FTC sued him and they've come to a settlement, which is basically a $797,000, $500,000 or $502.20 judgment against him. The thing that pisses me off is the settlement expresses that this guy did not agree to any wrongdoing.

Why? That he obviously did wrongdoing if you got the money back. Yeah. Or at least had a settlement against him. Well, given the choice between getting all the monies and having him admit that he did something wrong, I'll take, I'll take, let's strip him of all the monies. Okay. He has also been stripped of his crowdfunding rights.

He is never again allowed to use a crowdfunding site. Any? Any. Wow. Okay. I don't know how one police... Thank God we have the internet police. I know. We can have somebody on him 24-7, make sure he doesn't log into anything. Yeah.

Well, it says he has agreed to never crowdfund again, but I know. Who knows with these things? I mean, it's not me. It's my cat. My cat set up this Indiegogo. Come on. All right. So apparently there's a service called Wink out there that I'm unaware of.

It's for controlling and managing your smart home devices and things of that nature. So, yeah, they've pivoted a while back to go to subscriptions to keep a steady stream of money coming in. And a lot of different companies have, of course. That's, you know, see the first three years of the show is me screaming about Adobe switching to subscription models and everybody else switching to subscription models.

But they've done it as well. They have announced plans to move to a $5 per month subscription on May 13th, which is the day the show comes out. And it's mandatory. If you do not sign up, you will lose access to devices in the app as well as all automations. So no notice doing it in the middle of a pandemic and basically saying there are no other options.

Good move. Oh, yeah. Smooth. Smooth, guys. Yeah, because I'm guessing I think they had a free plan before when you got the when you bought the devices and they would just run for free. And now that they're not selling devices, they don't have the income from the devices to actually offset those costs. Exactly.

Which is I mean, let's think about this, guys. That was a bad business model to begin with. Yes. But the ability to just basically just say you've got one week and then we're going to charge you. And that's that. That is a dick move. Oh, super dick move. And people that are using their service are pissed.

So I wonder if the FTC should actually step in for that one as well. Yeah, that'd be nice. Yep. Ain't going to happen. No. Anyway, I have I, you know, I have a standing desk and I used to stand all the time and have my treadmill and all that stuff. Well, you know, getting old happens. And it turns out, you know, coming up on, you know, I can see 50 over the horizon here.

And my body is like, no, it's more like 80. So I had to stop using my standing desk as much. And my chair was like one of those. Well, at first I had an air on and then my roommate stole it. So it's that's in the house now. Right. And I got her $30 like Office Depot chair, which is not cutting the mustard.

I don't know if you could have seen me in the live stream when we did our when we did our drink up. I'd be sitting there and then I would just get shorter and shorter and shorter and then I'd get tall again, then shorter and shorter and shorter and tall again, because, you know, the the thing would just keep sliding down. Right. So I bit the bullet and we talked about our favorite chair, which is the Herman Miller Mira 2.

And yes, I'm sitting on one now. I am, too. It has arrived. I put it together the other day, which, you know, basically the hardest part about putting the Mira 2 together is getting it out of the cardboard because it comes like basically pre-installed. Now, like the first time I got when I had to put put it together and this one just came, you know, fully hatched out of the womb.

It was great. So I have to I have to say that, you know, I went whole hog and got the top of the line with all of the features because the one feature that the cheap versions don't have is on the front of these. You can change the angle of the seat where your thighs hit it, which if you're going to be sitting for a long time during the day is a game changer because you can just it's so much more comfy.

But it'll cost you a pretty penny. But I swear to God, this one's never leaving my sight. It's the single best office chair I've ever had in my entire life. Hands down. Yeah. Brick-a-brick. Well, speaking of Zoom backgrounds and what would have made some cool ones, I found this article over on Mental Floss.

What Disneyland looked like in 1957, just two years after it opened. So this is some really cool, rare archival footage of the park and somebody just kind of walking around to it and it's been digitally transferred and cleaned up. So it looks pretty nice, actually, which includes a comment commentary from the guy that shot it, which is Todd Pierce.

He says that, yeah, it's really interesting. I just I'm a Disney freak. I grew up just a couple blocks away from it. I worked there when I was like 15 and I just love all things Disney and going back and seeing it way back from like the first two years it was open is pretty amazing.

So I really enjoyed it. Very cool. And other cool news, because, you know, 2020, we already have murder hornets. We have a pandemic. We've also found a black hole basically just outside our doorstep. Cool. Yeah. Can it get here faster? So, yeah, astronomers have detected what they say is the closest known black hole to date, a stellar mass object in the double star HR 6819 system, which is only a thousand light years away.

So in a thousand light years, we will die. It's not moving here. Just kidding. That's not how science works. That's not very cool. A thousand light years is about how long April felt. Yes, yes, yes. Feedback loop. Over at Patreon, we've got some new subscribers, Shane and Rock Your Socks Off, as well as Frank.

And Frank says, guys, the last few years have been tough, but your show is a great companion. I listen to it on the road at gas stations on the shitter. Give me some space for Christ's sakes. Seriously, though, thanks for being there for all of us. Your friend from Pittsburgh. Thank you, Frank. Thank you. And Mario, who writes in Zero Fucks.

I feel like this would make a great new segment for the show. Lots of potential content. Yes, I know there is a guy who doesn't like the profanity on the show. Fuck him. I feel like Zero Fucks is every segment. So we got that covered. Oh, maybe that would be a good mask. Oh, yeah. And Chuck Woma writes over, hey, a shout out to two grumpy young geeks, Lily and Fiona.

Stay grumpy or something like that. Really? I don't know. I'm not good at this sort of thing. The only must have is a hearty. All right. Thank you, Chuck Woma. There's your shout out. Over at PayPal, we have donations from Breed, Elwynn, Andrew, Ralph, Bruce, Mark, Michael, Adam, Daniel, William, and Leslie, who says, hi, guys.

I'm donating to you as a birthday present for my husband, John, May 11th. He is a big fan. And we listened to your podcast together on quarantine grocery store runs in Dubai. Wow. Believe it or not, you help keep us sane. Thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you. And happy birthday, John. And Sharif writes in, hang in there, guys.

You're doing a public service for us listeners by keeping us entertained and grumpy. All right. And Elizabeth, who donated as well. Dear Jason, Brian, and Dave, I've been listening to your excellent show for a couple of years now, and I figure it's time to stop freeloading and show some love. You're always something to look forward to, and twice a week means double the pleasure.

Thanks. Well, thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you. And thank you all who sent us some new donations, and we love you. We really love you. Thank you. Over at GOG.show, Marcy writes in, if I have my heart set on a certain domain, but it's not worth $4,000 to me, is it worth it to even attempt to make an offer that I can afford?

I'd rather make rent and put food on the table than pay that amount for a domain, no matter how much I like it. Thanks for your help. Hey, Marcy, you can have any of the domains I own for $2,000. Exactly. I would say, though, go to hover.com slash GOG and search for the base name that you're looking for, and then just check out all the new extensions.

There are hundreds of them, and I'm sure you can find something that fits there. And, you know, having a .com, which I assume is that's what it is for that price. If it's not, then that's stupid. Stupid price. It just doesn't matter anymore. So save your cash and just go grab something new and fun.

It's much easier and much cheaper. Agreed. Domain names really don't matter that much anymore. Gianni writes in, I got a question for Jason. I'm a big fan of audiobooks, but I find that recommending books to my friends is hard due to the language barrier. There aren't many audiobooks in Spanish. So I figured that I'd turn myself into an audiobook narrator focusing on narrating the Spanish versions of the books I love and share them with my friends.

So my question would be, what recommendations would you give me if I wanted to delve into audio production? Where is best to learn about it or what was your journey into that space, Jason? I know I probably won't need to go that deep into it since recording in a closet should be good enough quality to share with my friends. But I'd like to develop some skills along the way and see if I can make something of it in the Spanish audiobook narration field.

All right, first, if you're getting into the field, make sure that those books that you're reading just go to your friends. You can make a demo reel, but you don't want to put those on the internet. I was going to mention that after you finished all your technical stuff. I would say the best way to get into the field would not be to take copywritten material and record them because that is illegal.

Yeah, I don't know if there's a Project Gutenberg for Spanish books, but you should check that out because that way you can get open source books that have no copyright on them or have the copyrights expired and read those. But let me just run through this real quick to get you up to speed. First off, go check out the mics we have at GOG.show.com and grab one of the dynamic mics.

Those are going to be good enough for what you want to do and get a pop filter and a stand that works for your workspace. And you're going to want to get good software. It makes your life just a lot easier. I mean, you can technically use Audacity or GarageBand, but they kind of suck. And the few bucks you'll spend will be just a great investment because you always use it.

And then I recommend getting a subscription to an online school like Skillshare or one of those that have, you know, tons of lessons from actual people who actually know how to use the software and just devour the tutorials and practice, practice, practice, read a lot. And Google's your friend.

There's videos on YouTube for just about anything audio. I use Logic Pro X for all my editing work. But if you're on a PC, that won't work. So I recommend getting a Mac because audio on the PC is a pain in the ass. So there you go. There you go. Dan writes in, hey, Grumps, in episode 437, you mentioned the danger of Uber drivers taking selfies while driving to verify that they are wearing masks.

Here's one better. Pre-COVID-19, I had a driver take a FaceTime call with her daughter. I was freaked the hell out, but wasn't comfortable asking her to stop because I wanted to preserve my higher than average rider rating. It was uncomfortable and weird and definitely a first. Now, see, this is exactly what Black Mirror predicted would happen.

This is bullshit. If you're uncomfortable with it, then say something. The fact that we're all doing these stars for each other shouldn't stop you. It's illegal to do that, and it's not cool. It's not cool. It's not safe. And, yeah, you should have stopped the car immediately and got out and called Uber and said, look, this is what's going on.

Or just been nice and tapped the guy on the shoulder, the girl on the shoulder, and said, can you not do that while you're driving me? Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. And if you get a bad rating, go to the – oh, yeah, no customer service. I forgot. Oh, and speaking of Black Mirror that you mentioned, did you see that the guy's not going to do the next season because the world is just too miserable already?

I did see that. He's like, the world does not need this from me right now. Exactly. I thought that was great. And Mel the Conservative writes in on how to start in cybersecurity. And this is a novel, so I am going to paraphrase this one. Mel has been in basically IT for many, many years, about 20, as a Unix sysadmin, then pivoted into Windows sysadminning because that's what most of America runs on.

And the long and the short of it is you need to get into these systems and basically just work in them to learn what all the systems do before you can protect them. Security certificates are generally BS because you need real-world experience, and there is no direct path into becoming a real cybersecurity professional that's like, okay, let's do step A, step B, step C.

It's like just get in there, start learning the systems, work your way up, and that's really what's going to get you a real career in it. And he does say at the end, oh, oh, oh, before I forget, viva Trump! I mean, you're liberally dropping F-bombs on the guy several times in one episode.

I thought it's only fair. Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. And Sperry writes in, guys, is this the way to opening up live music again? And it's a link to something called a micro shell. And it says, kind of cool, though. Imagine people wearing this in the streets as regular day wear. I think we're moving into weird sci-fi future territory here.

Yeah, I took a look at it, given the choice between wearing this stupid outfit, unless I'm going to, like, a 1990s-era rave or not going to the show. I'm going to go with not going to the show. I think it's kind of cool in a very Gibsonian way. Yeah, it's weird.

And just go check it out. You have to check it out. And what I love about it is it is definitely probably meant for raves because you have this weird self-contained thing with tubes that go in, and you can put in these canisters. And in the demo, they have a vape canister and a drink canister.

And I was just like, hmm, okay, I wonder where you're coming from. Yes. And there's a lot of Dayglo involved in the design. I don't see this. They're not terribly fashion-forward. Yeah, I mean, but, man, just the way they put this thing together is pretty cool. I mean, they've got a fully 3D-walking version of it that actually looks really well done.

I mean, it's a well-done site. It kind of reminds me of the stuff that we would do back in the day to just have fun in our off time. But they did it a lot better than we did. And Mike writes in, I've listened to the show long enough that when I hear, pay now, get later, I immediately get suspicious. Loomy.

Loomy. Wondering if either of you have heard of the Remarkable 2. It sells itself as a nearly paper-thin tablet and looks really awesome for taking notes. And at only $500 Canadian, it seems like a steal. Hoping you can help me determine where it fits on the Magic Leap Index of products that seem too good to be true.

Thanks. Well, I've got a few thoughts about this. A few of my friends actually have the original Remarkable. Do you have anybody that has one of these, Brian? No. I always thought the price point was too high because you can get a full-service tablet that can kind of do that anyways with certain apps.

Yeah, that's the thing about it. What sets it apart is the fact that there aren't that many apps, and it is kind of meant for taking notes. Yeah. And it feels like paper because it's e-ink. But my friends love it. They absolutely love it, and they use it for taking notes all the time. And I watch the videos for the Remarkable 2, and it looks rad.

It really does. I'd be skeptical of the September ship dates right now since who's making anything, you know? But they have made and shipped several batches so far, so this would be like the one that was coming out was like batch 5, which means they can make them, and they've got a good track record with the Remarkable of actually making and shipping things.

And I still, it's neat. Damn thing is neat. Again, though, you're basically buying an iPad at that price point, and you can do this on an iPad. Without all the iPad-iness. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, I mean, and you can buy a lot of paper. You know, the whole point of it is it feels like paper.

You could have notebooks for the rest of your life. Yeah. And, yeah, the thing's got handwriting recognition, and you can turn it into a PDF. But then you have to use the e-ink keyboard to edit. And I'm like, okay, I can buy a notebook. I can take a picture of it with my phone and run it through a dozen apps that you can get on the App Store for $3 to turn it into hand recognition, you know?

And then send it off through that. And there is some noticeable lag in this video where they show them drawing with it. And there's always going to be lag. But I think e-ink is, you know, just a little bit laggier. And they say this one's even faster than the one. But I got an iPad Pro with the pencil, and it looks faster than this because, I mean, there's almost no lag on it.

And I use Notes Plus, which is just awesome. So it's up to you, man. I mean, if I had the extra cash to burn, and it was just a throwaway purchase, I would probably get one because it is neat. Yes, but you're sitting on your extra cash right now. I am.

I very much am. And I love it. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to GOG.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review.

Yeah, please do, because we've got no iTunes reviews this week. Sad, sad. But if you're listening to us on the Overcast player, please go click those stars next to the episode. We appreciate it. Closing shout outs. A lot of sad news from the world of music this week and the last week since we've recorded.

One of the big ones for me. It was sad to hear that Florian Schneider, co-founder of Kraftwerk, is dead at 73. So this was not COVID-19 related. He'd been dealing with cancer for a little bit. So unfortunately, he has passed away. So there goes the robots.

And sad news about Little Richard. He died at the age of 87. Good run. Very good run. There would be no rock and roll without him. Nope, there would not. And he died from bone cancer. Not the Rona. 87. Damn good run. Yeah. And I got to hang out with him at the first, my first literally internet launch party.

We hired him as the king of Rocktropolis. Nice. Super nice guy. Super sweet. He was a gem to everybody. And so I have always had fond memories of his music. But then once I got to meet him, I was just like, this guy, he's a class act. And in strange news, the double rainbow guy, Paul Vasquez, has died as well.

Okay. So it's kind of odd. He was young. He's only 57. So we don't know what the cause of death is. But he said on May 5th that he was tested for COVID-19 and never came back with the results and passed away.

Well, chances are, because he had a high fever and trouble breathing, which is not good, according to the... But I do want to make a call out to CNN here. CNN, let me read this little descript. Vasquez, the portly man. Yeah. What? Why did you have to include that?

Exactly. Give the guy a little respect. He just passed away. Anyway, respect. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. 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 want those masks, go to GOG.show slash shop.

Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 438. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy and somebody go fucking arrest Elon Musk.

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