441: Furry Party Gonna be Awesome

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. Brian, I used AI this week. Oh, did you? What did you do yourself by yourself with your own hands? Well, I did a deep dive machine learning analysis on the length of the line at the local Trader Joe's.

And I did that by walking up to an employee and asking him, hey, when's the time that the least amount of people are in your store? And he said, yeah, around 11 o'clock. So I said, okay. And then I put on my garb, my protective gear, and I went shopping at Trader Joe's yesterday.

Brian, you should be very jealous. I actually am. We have a Trader Joe's list in our notes app, our shared notes app that is about a mile long. My wife has already joked that when she decides to send me, I will be gone all day. And that is very possible. I had cheese and arugula ravioli with pesto and steamed broccoli yesterday for dinner.

That was delicioso. The thing I really miss about Trader Joe's is so much of it is like pre-prepared, right? So it's so easy to get a dinner together as opposed to the cooking entire meals three times a day, every single day that we've been doing. Yeah. I mean, I just don't eat any of the frozen stuff because it's filled with salt.

It's too much salt. But I made an exception yesterday for ravioli because we finally got our new refrigerator in after the great refrigerator debacle. Excellent. And since we lost like almost everything we had, it's been, you know, we're trying to play catch up. And we got a smaller refrigerator, so we even have less food in the house.

Oh, boy. Better be prepared for those butcher box deliveries. Yeah. Well, I got an every plate yesterday. No, no butcher box, unfortunately. Well, in continued Star Trek news, the Star Trek gifts keep on giving. We are getting a Voyager reunion of sorts.

They're celebrating their 25th anniversary on Tuesday, May 26th at 8 p.m. Eastern time via the Stars in the House YouTube channel and website. This is going to be pretty much everybody coming back. Kate Mulgrew, who played Janeway, of course. Jerry Ryan, Seven of Nine. Roxanne Dawson, Robert Beltran, Robert Duncan McNeil, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, and Garrett Wang will all be coming back in support of the Actors Fund to sit and talk and share some stories.

I particularly enjoyed this quote. This reunion will be both gratifying and novel. We are all alive. We are all congenial. And we are all still actors, said Kate Mulgrew. Because famously, Kate Mulgrew and Jerry Ryan do not get on at all. I wonder why. Yeah, well, you know, she was pissed that a super hot chick was thrown in for sex appeal.

Yeah, yeah. And well, you know, I'm sorry. Kate Mulgrew hasn't aged as well as Jerry Ryan has either. Nobody has aged as well as Jerry Ryan has. I think she might actually be Borg at this point. Seems to be. Yeah. Yeah.

And I guess the funny thing about that is, as annoyed as Kate Mulgrew was about the character, the character became a fan favorite and actually got really good storylines. So it wasn't. I mean, she did wear that outfit the whole show. There's no doubt that that helped. But she was a good actress and got good storylines out of it.

And she was also dating the head writer. That always helps. Yeah. That kind of is. You got to add that into the mix. That is a good way to get some good storylines. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And other follow-up, Fitbit is continuing to attempt their pivots in some way, shape, or form.

As you and I were theorizing, surely they're going to get into the contact tracing slash some sort of thing game because you've got a wearable that's tracking different aspects. And since their ventilator gambit didn't really pay off, here they are doing exactly that.

They are being basically studied by a number of academic institutions to determine if they might be able to contribute to early detection of COVID-19 and the flu. So they're also launching their own dedicated study, which users can sign up for from within the Fitbit mobile app.

So you can opt to give them all your datas. And they will see if there will be any correlation between being sick and whatever they're collecting from their little Fitbits. And if so, then, you know, they've got a plausible case scenario to say, hey, you fit this profile.

You may or may not be sick. Go see a doctor. All right. And, yeah, I mean, my contact tracing thing came from a dream. It wasn't really like I wasn't sitting around trying to be a futurist. I'm like, I just dreamt it up one night. So we'll see. Spoiler alert. That's what futurists do.

Good point. Good point. Just saying. They don't have any fucking crystal ball either. In the news. Speaking of contact tracing, Apple and Google have launched their quote unquote exposure notification API.

They have changed. They've pivoted on the name. They've got new branding. And what they're doing now is they're letting, you know, public health officials in different places use their API to build their own apps. And it's kind of interesting because what they've done is they're doubling down on privacy.

And they're even saying to people who build their own apps, well, if your app has any kind of geolocation service in it, you cannot use the API. Which, bravo, guys. Bravo. Yep. That's a good thing. We'll see how well this actually works because I don't know if you've heard, but there was news that a contact tracing app that had been vetted by Apple that launched in North Dakota.

The first, one of the first states to roll one out called the Care 19 app. Whoops. It sends location data to Foursquare. Oh, Jiminy Jeepers. Jiminy Jeepers. So I like the theory that Apple's got going here, but I have a feeling that these things are going to be rolling out fast and furious and may not be getting the proper vetting that they should be getting.

So we'll see. We do not have one here in California yet. Nobody's rolled anything out. All my devices updated. So I have the API on all my stuff. So we'll see. We do, you know, what I liked about it is that it didn't come with any sort of software that just flicks on.

You have to consciously go out and find it and install it. So that's nice. We'll see. Yeah, but kind of useless as to what we were talking about before. It's like nobody's going to get it. So it's kind of pissing in the wind. Yeah, nobody's going to get it because interest seems pretty low. And I got to tell you, if you're coming out of the gate with the very first app and that one is sending all the data to Foursquare, that's not a good start to get people on board.

No, it's not. No, it's not. And speaking of this update, the 13.5 iOS update, they now have a way to quickly unlock your phone if you're using Face ID because when you're wearing a mask, it's hard to get to your phone. But, you know, it's some swipe thing. I haven't noticed any difference with the speed to get into it because it's just like, no face, boom, you're in.

The thing is, when you're out and about and you're wearing a mask and you're obviously at some place where you need to be wearing a mask, one of the things that the CDC says is, stop touching your phone. Well, because you touch your phone and then your phone touches your face.

The whole point is to not touch your face. So, come on. Yes. And you're touching other things and then you're grabbing your phone. And, okay, we don't know what's going on. This is the problem now because we're, you know, first off, we're told, oh, the COVID-19, it can live on cardboard for four days.

It can live on glass for two days. And then we're told, oh, you know what? Really, the only way it's being transferred is through breath and things and face-to-face contact and all that sort of stuff. You know, here we are again. We don't know what's actually going on.

We don't know what's really helping. We don't know how we're really getting this. I think we have a pretty good idea that the face-to-face contact and, you know, the spittle in the air that hangs in the air, you inhale it, it goes through because there's a much larger virus load in that.

Yeah. And if we were getting it by touching things, then, you know, by now everybody would have it. This is true. Even as careful as we've been wiping down everything and leaving cardboard outside and not bringing it into the house, we would have gotten it by now by some mistake somewhere.

So, you know, I wouldn't worry too much about grabbing your phone while you're out at Trader Joe's, but don't go to fucking choir practice. Exactly. And I talked to one of the managers at my local Ralph's. And, you know, this is like a mega grocery store. You spend a lot of time talking to managers at grocery stores, Jason.

Well, from a safe distance. I have to talk to them because they keep all of the, you know, the wipes behind the counter. So you have to go up and get the wipes. So we talk from a distance. We don't raise our voice. We talk very quietly because you can still blow through the mask if you're talking really loud. But I asked how many people at the store had been infected since the thing started.

And she said one. And they recovered just fine. And they have thousands of people going through there a day, which means that it's probably not getting transferred by shit you touch is all I'm saying. And that's all I wanted to point out there, you know, and yeah, so one person in our store got it and recovered at this point.

And like I said, this is since it started in March, like March 15th. Yeah. So, you know, who knows? Who knows? But here's a fun one, though. The National Advertising Reviewing Board, or NARB, has told AT&T to not get the fuck off with the 5G.

Yeah. As they should. As they should. Yeah. Like AT&T tried to put this 5G-E thing. I don't even know. Does your phone still have that? If I turn my phone on and it says AT&T, let's take a look here. And it says, oh, it's gone. It used to say what kind of network I was on, and it does not say that anymore.

Interesting. That is also gone for me, and I'm on Verizon. And Verizon is also caught up in this as well. Yes. Yes. Yeah, this started off with T-Mobile yelling to the NARB about AT&T, and AT&T lost their appeal, saying that, hey, we're not, you know, no, this is like, really, it's the first step to 5G.

And no, it's not. No, it's not. It's 4G LTE. It's a completely different fucking technology, you assholes. And I, you know, I talked to so many people who are like, hey, man, my phone got 5G this week. And I'm like, no, it didn't. Dumbass. But it says it. I'm like, no, it is 5G-E.

That's marketing. That's marketing. And it's bad marketing. It's confusing marketing. So the only thing here is AT&T didn't get a fine. They were just said, hey, guys, knock it off. Knock it off. Like, of course, they didn't get a fine. Well, I don't think NARB as an entity has the ability to fine people.

They don't. It's the Better Business Bureau, man. Yeah, exactly. All they can do is, like, say, hey, knock it off. Or we'll take this up to another level. Yeah, they remove their sticker that says, you know, Better Business Bureau approved. Yeah. But in interesting fun news, Netflix.

Now, I have to give it to them for this one. They are going to start canceling inactive members subscriptions. Now, have you ever in your life heard of a subscription-based company that says, hey, man, if you don't use it, we're not going to charge you anymore?

No. That is, in fact, the business model for all gyms. They count on you not using it because that's how they make money. I ran artist fan clubs for many years, and no, we would never reach out to people and say, well, you haven't logged in. Sorry, we're going to cancel and refund your money here for not using the service.

No, that's how you make money. Yeah, that's a feature, not a bug. Exactly. The whole point is we keep you on. The reason everything has moved to subscription models is chances are you'll forget you have it, and we get to keep dinging you. Right, which is why this is such an amazing move from Netflix.

Of sorts. Why do you mean of sorts? I think this is fantastic. No, it is fantastic, and I agree. But the reason that they are willing to do this is they had the bean counters look through and found out that very, very, very, very few people have memberships and don't use them.

So for them, they made a calculated financial decision that they would get goodwill and lots of press if they did this and lose very, very little money, which, again, good on them. That means that their product is so strong that people that pay for it do use it all the time.

Yeah. I mean, that's great. So I just think what I like about this, though, is that hopefully it will kick other people's asses into doing the same thing. If Apple Plus did this, they'd be out of business tomorrow. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt.

Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, the only one that would never really get dinged for this is Amazon Prime because everybody uses Amazon Prime every damn day. Mm-hmm. And Mark Zuckerberg is in the news. He's joining Jack Dorsey. Not completely, though. He's saying that half of Facebook may work remotely by 2030.

That's kind of a long way. That's a long way away. Yeah. But I like that he's saying that, you know, this is like something that they're going to work on that we're going to say within the next five to 10 years, they think that about 50% of Facebook's workforce will work remotely. Now, you know, when I think about this, I think it's fantastic.

I think it will change up how cities are designed because, you know, right now, San Francisco sucks because of the Facebooks, the Googles, the Apples, because everybody has to go to the damn office. And so I would really like to see a more distributed workforce everywhere.

And also, here's one thing that I thought about. This might help with age discrimination when it comes to hiring in tech. Because you might be able to sneak through. If you put on a Zoom filter for your interview that makes you look about 20 years younger, you might be able to slide on through.

If you get your jargon down, you're like, sup, bro? Yeah, I was just hacking me some PHP last night. I got that. Oh, man, I forked my SQL procs and I got everything going. You know, just bullshit your way through it. As long as you look young, you can be young when you're in a distributed workforce.

As much as you're kind of making that a joke, I think that there is actually a real kernel of truth in there. And not so much because of, you know, you could slap a Zoom filter on. No, no, no, yes. What it does remove is it removes the corporate culture. Yeah, that's what I mean. The bro culture is totally gone.

And you actually basically would just be hiring and keeping people based on merit. And as we know, us old folks have quite a lot of merit. But we may not fit in with the, yo, bro, culture. Did you attend the crazy, you know, dub, trip, step, triple hop thing last night with Rihanna and whatever?

And no, no, I did not because I'm old and I have kids. But I can't get my work done. Right. It might really actually bring in the meritocracy that we always wanted in technology. So that was the big promise. It's, you know, technology should be a meritocracy.

And I don't know. I think it'd be great. And I was joking about the Zoom thing, but I honestly believe that this could be, you know, a game changer for ageism in tech. If you can work from wherever and it's all based on the quality of your work. I agree.

And it's not just happening in San Francisco, as you pointed out. Also this week, Shopify has announced that they will be shifting to permanent work from home. And they are based in Toronto, Canada. So they will be allowing its 5,000 employees to work from home indefinitely, even after the dangers of the pandemic fade and cities lift shutdowns.

They plan to keep their offices largely closed for the rest of the year as they redesign their space for a digital by default mindset. So they're going to do it there too. Offices will be limited to 20 to 25% capacity after this is over. So this is a big shift. I'm interested to see if the 20 to 25% is going to be enough.

Because as we've been talking about, yes, some people have definitely adapted to work from home and are capable of doing it. But I still think there are two subsets of people. The people that cannot work from home, they just cannot get their shit together to do it diligently and work enough.

And they need the office to do it. And the people that are screaming desperate to get out of their houses right now. Right. And you also have to think about things like DevOps. You can't change a hard drive on a server if you're working from home. Things like that. Unless you move the whole server farm into your house. Well, that would be interesting.

Maybe they just turn the, you know, basically turn the ISPs into dorms and everybody can live there. That's true. And there was a survey that was done by Blind, which was, you know, a social network that lets people bitch and moan about where they work. And they found that two out of three would consider leaving their place, you know, moving, if they could work remotely, permanently.

And it wasn't just San Francisco. Seattle and New York had about 70%, you know, 69 to 70% said, sure, why not? Let's go live someplace where we actually want to live. Let's go be by family. Let's go live in an environment that doesn't cost so damn much.

Yeah. Well, look, it's changing where we're considering living when we were considering moving our move to Toronto. We're kind of opening up the areas of which we were considering living because it seems that assuming everything gets back to reasonably normal sort of stuff, I won't have to go into an office every day because the company that I'm working for is shifting towards that.

It's even changing the way that we're approaching the move because it seems that my wife might be able to work remotely for the company here in Los Angeles from Toronto instead of finding a new job, which she was thinking about doing. So it's really changing a lot of the ways that a lot of people are looking at their lives right now.

Yep. And somebody who's looking at things and change, Amazon, who is ramping up to get Prime Day going in July, has said, eh, let's push it back to September. That's all there is to that one. They should have just called it Prime Toilet Paper Day and sent a roll of toilet paper to everybody in America.

Seriously, that would have gotten them some goodwill. Yep. Goodwill. And surprisingly, Facebook, I thought that they killed this thing. Facebook's Work Chat app reaches 5 million paid users but still lags behind Microsoft and Slack. And this is how I know that you never look at the Grumpy Old Geeks Facebook page because every time I go into the admin on that, I get a big ad to use Microsoft Work.

Yeah. Or Facebook Work, whatever it's called. Why would I look at it? That's your job, man. I don't have to. I'm not gonna. So, yeah, they've reached 5 million paid users. And since, you know, I'm thinking if they could fudge the numbers here and say that 5, well, I guess 5 million paid users would be more than the actual amount of people that work at Facebook.

I was just thinking, maybe they said it was just all of the Facebook employees. Yeah, well, basically, yes. If you work for any Facebook entity, you're obviously using their software, which is a large chunk of people. So, a lot of people that are using Workplace are Facebook employees. I've looked at it.

I've seen it. It's not bad. I still, I've got to say, I've been using Teams. I like Teams the best. I was a Slack user with you. We used that for Grumpy Old Geeks for a long time. I liked Slack. I think Teams is much more powerful and way better. Wow.

And from my limited exposure to Workplace, I think Teams is the winner here. I think Microsoft actually has a winner, believe it or not. Wow. I know. Strange. Strange times. It is strange times. I mean, the thing isn't about so much the feature set.

Is it still just butt ugly? It's not bad. It's a lovely purple hue. It makes sense. The navigation is fine. I find it easier to navigate. And it's just the feature set because it beats Slack on that just hands down, so far, hands down.

It's ridiculous. Like what? What's in there that's not on Slack? The integration with everything else. Now, granted, you kind of have to be a full-on Microsoft shop for that, but it integrates with your Outlook. It integrates with everything. All the other Microsoft business apps, the integration is just spot on and built in.

It's amazing for that. The calendar app, all of that sort of stuff. It's just one click to do it all, and it's just nice. It ties the ecosystem together. Exactly. It ties the ecosystem together perfectly. Oh, God. Shoot me if I ever have to use that. Because that just means I'd have to use Outlook.

There's many things I never want to do again. One is wear a tie, and use Outlook as another one. I'm not thrilled about the Outlook. I'll be honest about that. But even saying that, it is a lot better than the last time I used Outlook, which was probably 10 years ago. Well, also, if you're going to a PC, it's much different, because I'm used to Outlook on the Mac, which was the biggest garbage pile in the world.

Oh, they've made it better, because I'm all still on my Mac. I don't have a PC yet. I'm totally in the Microsoft ecostructure on my Mac now, and it's fine. Okay. Yeah, interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Okay, good for you. Anyways, there you go. Moving on. Moving on. Going back to Facebook, they have a new plan to make you shop on Instagram.

On Tuesday, Zuck announced a set of new features aimed at making Instagram and Facebook true shopping destinations by offering struggling brick-and-mortar shops new options to sell to customers online. This could obviously boost Facebook's business, since it offers retailers of all sizes even more reasons to buy ads on the two giant social networking apps.

That is how they will mainly make their money. They are not going to charge or take a cut of sales from companies that set up storefronts in the new shops feature unless they use Facebook's checkout feature, which, you know, that allows them to do the payments. And they'll take 5% there, which is higher than typical payment processing fees, but lower than what Amazon or eBay charge.

So, you know, they're kind of doing first samples free sort of thing here, because we know that won't stay as low as it is. You know, they're trying. We'll see what happens. I don't know about that. The thing that upsets me is they talk about how this is going to be, you know, a way to offer struggling brick-and-mortar shops new options.

But from what I can tell going roughly through this, because I was like, okay, well, here we go. We've got the ability to sell online now. We have masks. Let me see if I can set this up for grumpy old geeks. You need like 10,000 followers minimum before they even let you try this. Oh, really?

Yeah, so how's that going to help struggling brick-and-mortar shops? We'll probably only have a couple hundred people that like them. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, the mom and pops are definitely not going to be in on this one. That's a load of shit. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, well, I wouldn't. Yeah.

Look, I was bored. I just thought, you know, it's an option. I run a tech podcast. Let's set this up and see how easy it is. And I got the wah-wah. Not enough people like you. Damn it, people. Why don't you like us? They don't like us. Speaking of people that don't like each other, have you been watching this Call Her Daddy podcast kerfuffle?

I have not. I have not. Oh, man. So there's this podcast called Call Her Daddy. And two chicks, 127, 126 from New York, they started this thing and then they were picked up by Barstool Sports, which then blew them up. They were getting 12,000 downloads and Barstool helped them to get to 2 million downloads in a whopping two months.

Guys at Barstool, we're available. Look, I was about to say, how many podcast networks have we joined that promised to do that for us and that did absolutely nothing? All of them. So we just need to get on Barstool Sports, I guess. I guess we do. I guess maybe I'll learn to like sports if they can do this.

Hey, one of us likes sports, Barstool. Just saying. Yeah, my God. So now that they blew up and then there was this big thing where the girls decided that they wanted a lot more money and they wanted the rights back to their shows so they could go get TV deals and book deals and merch deals and all this stuff.

That's not how it works, honeys. Yep. They got greedy. And to Barstool's credit, they said, hey, guys, we're going to up your base salary to get this $500,000 a year plus bonuses and other incentives.

And one of them said, sure. The other one has a boyfriend that works at HBO Sports and he said, hold out for more, hold out for more. You can't do this, which caused a whole big thing. And I have to say that Barstool Sports, the CEO, has gone and actually put out an episode on their feed publicly shaming them and telling them, telling everybody, all their fans what went wrong.

And what I really love about this is they were playing the We're Broke New York Girl card for a very long time. And their fans found out exactly how much they made from the show, which was buttloads of money. They made a lot of money. They made a lot of money.

So everybody feels betrayed because there was no transparency going on there and they were just playing the woe is me card. And now they're, you know, they're trying to figure out how to put the show back together. And I don't think it's ever going to happen because even if they got back together, now they're just a bunch of rich bitches talking about getting laid.

That's it. Oh, my God. Talk about, I mean, stepping on your own dick, even though I know they don't have any. They're stepping on daddy's dick on this one. But, man, talk about screwing the pooch. Yeah, they played that all wrong. They should have taken the half a mil and shut up because that's a lot of money for just doing a podcast.

However, it's not that much money because there was one other bit of big podcast news this week. Spotify's deal with Joe Rogan, of course. He is going full Spotify. And as far as we can tell, the deal seems to be worth more than $100 million. Which?

Well, let's just assume that's what it is. Okay. That's the thing. Nobody knows. I've heard other people like on the inside talk about $200 million. But the thing is, if you do the math on how many downloads he gets per month, it's not that much of a deal based on what he's probably already making.

The thing is, it takes a lot of ops off of his hands. So he doesn't have to do in-house ad sales anymore and things like that, which I think, you know, that's a good thing because in-house ad sales is a pain in the ass, as you know. Oh, no, you don't. I do all the ad sales. Never mind. Not all of them. Thank you very much. You've sold one ad in seven years.

Come on. Anyway. More than one, but not insignificant. So it's, you know, taking that out of the equation because there's usually a 15% sale, you know, commission on those ads. If you have salespeople, blah, blah, blah.

You got agent's fees. You got all this stuff. But I think it gives him, you know, an option to do other things as well because he's at the top of the game. He's probably bored at this point. He's doing the same shit every week. He's at the top of the mountain. So he needs to do something different just to be interested anymore. It's easy money for him.

And it takes a lot of the work off his shoulders. Plus, I'm sure somebody is whispering in his ears, you're going to be the next generation's Howard Stern, who, you know, famously left terrestrial radio to go to satellite radio. And I'm sure he sees himself in that ilk. He's trailblazing. Yeah, and here's the thing.

I don't begrudge him one bit. I think, man, if you can take the money and it makes your life easier, do it. He's earned it. Hey, we'll take that money from Spotify. We'll even take the half a million a year from Barstool Sports. We're fine with that. Take any of that. But I thought the interesting number crunching that somebody did, because I always have to think about this from a musician's perspective, a musician would need to generate 23 billion streams on Spotify to earn what they're paying Joe Rogan for his podcast rights, assuming a typical 0.00437 cents payout per stream.

In other words, Spotify values Rogan more than any musician in the history of the world. Yeah, well, I mean, you can't put an ad for a ball shaver in the middle of a stone song. There's your problem. You can try. And, yeah, I think it's – here's the thing that I also pointed out on Twitter.

Once Joe Rogan goes behind the full Spotify paywall, he is no longer in the podcast ecosystem. He is not a podcaster anymore. He is a Spotify show. Period. Because he does not make the definition of a podcast. You can die on that hill. No, I know that.

I know that, Jason. But you can fight that until you die. But it's going to be called a podcast for the rest of its life as a show. I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is. But it's wrong. It's not true. So, you know, whatever. You know, I can call this a, you know, a stake.

We do a stake cast every week, even though we don't. You know, it's like it's not true. But, yeah, he just pulls himself out of the podcast ecosystem. He won't be in the charts anymore, period, which is fine. Leave some room for other people to get up there. Oh, great, great. More NPR shows. Fuck. Never mind. That ain't going to work.

But anyway. Yeah. I mean, good for him. Bad for the musicians. But Spotify doesn't care about musicians. They care about making money and they found podcasts or Spotify shows to be the best way to do it because more people listen. If more people listen to the content that they've already got, they can get for free.

Then they don't have to pay musicians. And there it goes. Exactly. And I hope everybody's enjoying our meat cast, Farmer John's. Step up. Take some ads. Yeah. Butcher box. I think you need to re-up. Come on, guys. Quit pushing your ads back.

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Hulu has unveiled a new interface. Oh, my God. And, yeah, it's pretty much just as bad as the last one. It's just different. It's badly in a differently way. It's not great.

But as I pointed out on Twitter, now it's even easier to find out there's nothing you want to watch. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I'm glad it's free. If I paid for that, I would have unsubbed a long time ago. Oh, yeah. And I found this one just – I wanted to put it in the last show, and I forgot.

But, yeah, there's a new scooter app out there called Go X Mobile. And these are – wait for it – delivered scooters. They have a telepresence app in there. So teleoperators will sit there and drive the scooter to you.

And then when you're done with the scooter, they will drive it away. And I don't know if you've seen the videos of these things. It's just – I mean, it's just too damn funny. It is too damn funny. Of course somebody's going to try. First off, there were probably a lot of scooters out there that were pretty cheap secondhand being bought out.

Since every other scooter business is going out of business. Since all the other scooter businesses have gone out of business. And, you know, you've got a state that's decided to open up. So, okay, you're going to go give it a go. The thing that these people don't seem to understand is that it wasn't a profitable business before when the scooters were just left.

And you didn't have to have the huge support staff going and picking them up and dropping them off. That is going to add significant costs. So, unless you're going to go the route that the other companies were, which is they pretended that they were profitable by just getting funding, you don't have a business that's going to make you money.

You're going to lose money. Yeah. I mean, it's going to cost more to drive that scooter to and from the pickup and drop-off point than it will that you're ever going to make on the ride that it was used for. Which is supposed to be short distances. So, you've got a car driving a longer distance than the ride that you're probably going to take on the scooter to drop off a scooter and then go and pick it up again.

Well, no, no, no. There's no cars involved. There's no cars involved. Oh, sorry. They remotely drive the scooter to you. Remotely drive the scooters. That's right. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, if you're a mile away, I got to sit there on a little scooter with my joystick and my VR goggles on or my wall of monitors because you can only drive one scooter at a time.

It's not like you can, you know, have 30 scooters at your beck and call. Oh, maybe they hired Neo. Yeah. That could be it. God. So, yeah, this makes no sense. Whoever put this company together really, really needs to just have their head checked.

Yeah. That's a bit silly. Yeah. But they can also get their hands checked. We were joking the other day about, you know, all these apps that are going to try and use ARFID to see if people inside of a building are washing their hands when they go to the bathroom, if they're keeping their social distancing and all that.

Well, it turns out there's a company called PathSpot, which I don't understand the name when it comes to what they're doing, because what they have is a scanner that can tell if you washed your hands properly. I don't know how that name works with that, but, yeah, it's basically a little scanner that you put your hands under, and it says it takes less than two seconds to do a whole scan of your hands and tell you if you have properly washed them.

Okay. I just saw this, and I was just like, this is a thing? People were making this? I can see this for restaurants and hospitals, you know, places where it really matters, but trying to roll this out broadly just because of the, you know, C-18 thing.

Well, the fear is that this will really matter from now on, which, as we know, it's not human nature. As soon as there is a vaccine for this, nobody's going to give a shit about this sort of stuff. I don't think anybody – I've been out, man. I don't think anybody gives a shit now. Nobody gives a shit now.

Nobody gives a shit now. No. A couple people do, but when I was at Trader Joe's, it was definitely – I was doing the six-foot shuffle to get around the store, and most people were just like, derp-da-derp-da-derp-da-derp-da-derp. Well, I mean, I think the company's hope is that some government institution will take notice of this, and it'll become a requirement, basically.

Like, if you want to be part of the phase three opening of your business, you will have to have X amount of these in every bathroom. Yeah. And they'll probably do it for sports. I can see this being put into all the, you know, disgusting bathrooms at stadiums and things of that nature, concert venues.

I can totally see that. But what are they going to do to not let you out? Well, yeah, exactly. Will anybody use them? No. Will they just sit there like the fucking Dyson hand dryers that nobody wants to use because we know that it just blows the crap all over the bathroom? I was going to say, it makes it worse. Yeah, it makes it actually worse. No, nobody's going to use it, but it will become part of the regulations of if you are to open up, you have to have these sorts of things.

Yeah, we'll see how this is going to go. I think these companies are too small to be able to even do this on a large scale right now. Right. You know, there's a couple other companies and they're all small. They've all, you know, I think, what is it, Food Logic has the most money. They raised $31.8 million so far.

But still, I mean, to do this effectively at scale, nobody's ready for this yet. But I just, I still just thought it was funny. I'm like, these people had been doing this before this broke out and this was a thing. This was somebody's grand idea. So, interesting. Interesting way to do it.

Yep. Brick-a-brick. Interestingly, we seem to be having a Microsoft-focused show because the only story I had for Brick-a-brick this week is something I just thought was interesting. The original Xbox complete source code has been leaked online. Oh, interesting.

So, the original Xbox was pretty cool for people that like to mod and tinker with their stuff because the included hard drive made it easy to install unofficial dashboards and pirated games. And so, people that were kind of enthusiasts about it already might be excited about this. The official Xbox OS has leaked online.

This includes the dev kit, emulators, build environments, documentation, and the kernel of itself. Wow. So, this kind of leak enables developers to create unofficial and, of course, illegal fan projects such as emulators and they might be able to make them a lot better. It's unclear how much of this data has been out there for quite a long time anyways.

So, who knows if this is actually going to help the Xbox modding and emulation community. I can't believe there is one, but there is. So, and in addition to that, an early version of the source code for Windows NT 3.5 has also leaked online. Oh, man.

I'm sure some hackers out there are having fun with that because you know there are still some people running Windows NTs out there. There's got to be a ton. Well, they're saying there aren't that many people or businesses still using Windows NT 3.5, so this leak isn't likely to become a security risk.

And I would argue if you were still using an OS from 1994 to run your business, well, it sucks to be you. Well, look at, like, New Jersey. They're trying to find COBOL programmers. Because this shit still runs on COBOL. So, don't discount the fact that people still run NT for, you know, accounting or just some weird shit that they never could replace.

Or medical devices. Remember all the talk we had about medical devices? That's true. That's true. Well, if you're still running NT 3.5 out there, time to upgrade. Time to patch the 3.51. That's it.

Security? Ha! We're joined again this week by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast. Dave is also the 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.

And Dave, as it turns out, last week is a closeted stormtrooper who wants to come out. Dave, has there been any update on your quest to join the dark side? No. No. What? You sound so miserable. I thought the dark side had donuts.

They had more fun. That's what they say, but not so far. I got a very nice response from a listener named Michaela, who is a frequent GOG listener, and she said she comments sometimes, too.

And she actually reached out to someone she knows who she thought may have a lead on something, but it turned out to not. It didn't go anywhere, but I appreciate her taking the time to reach out that way. Other than that, my brother told me, and first of all, I did not know my brother listens to this show, so I'll have to note that.

Don't you hate when that happens? Oh, my God. Yeah. As long as he doesn't tell my mom to start listening, then. Yes. Moms and spouses are banned from listening. If you show up at Christmas and there's a furry head on top of the Christmas tree, you know she listens. Yeah, right.

But evidently, someone in my brother's neighborhood has a stormtrooper helmet sitting in their front window, so he's thinking maybe he'll reach out there and see what that's all about. But no, nothing from anyone in the 501st or nothing like that.

I didn't really know what to expect, but I guess I expected more than what we got. I expected quite a bit, actually. That's surprising. I would just think, I mean, if there's anybody who's going to be grumpy, our audience, you'd think we'd be crawling with people with stormtrooper uniforms.

It's a subset of a subset of a subset of a subset, and our reach is not so great, but you never know. Yeah, I suppose. Yeah, I think you need to hang out on Hardwick's podcast more often, then you'll be set. But, yeah, maybe. Ooh, there you go. There you go.

Yeah, I didn't think about that. Get yourself a guest spot over there. If I could get an invite back there and then just casually drop the fact that I'm looking for that, yeah, I like that. Or, you know, get on Adam What's-His-Face from Mythbusters. Savage, yeah. Adam Savage. He'll build you one.

He'll build you one. Exactly. He'll put one together in 20 minutes. Or, actually, he'll just go in the closet and go, hey, you look like a, what, six feet tall? There you go. Exactly. Pick one. He's got one of those motorized things like they have with a dry cleaner, except it's all just full of stormtrooper uniforms.

He's got dozens of them. Do you want the snow patrol one? Do you want the speeder bike one? Or maybe more like Mr. Miyagi, and he comes in the back and he opens the doors and goes, choose. You just get to pick your own. Choose wisely, yeah. So, I'm still hopeful, you know, I still hope that it'll happen sometime.

Maybe I need to start buying a suit one piece at a time. Remember that old Johnny Cash song, One Piece at a Time, about stealing the car from the- Something like that. I could always rent one, but, I mean. I think renting one might be the way to go, unless you're really, you're making the commitment to actually own one forevermore.

Yeah, I don't know, renting one feels like- A cheat? Feels like cheating, yeah. It does. It feels like, if I'm coming at this from a point of view of community, right, sort of like geek community, then renting one seems, you know, seems like a workaround, an unnecessary workaround.

I think you just need to- There's another thing here, though. You need to sign up with one of the 501st online groups and get into the community, Dave. You can't just throw it out there to the cosmos, as they say, God helps those who help themselves. What if they don't like me, Brian? What if they don't like me? What if I'm too short to be a stormtrooper?

This is not the podcast host you're looking for. Right, exactly. What if they tell me that I- No, no, no. You could be- You could dress up like Yoda. You could be- You could crawl inside an R2 unit. You know. Yeah. God forbid C-3PO.

Yeah. I don't know. So we'll see. I'm still hopeful. You know, it's just, it's been only about a week or so, so- Yes. Maybe people are catching up on their podcasts. Now we have a second segment dedicated to it, so let's increase that reach. Just to get, yeah, maybe people will reach out just to get me to stop complaining.

But I don't know. We don't like sad Dave. Let's make Dave happy. That's right. See, I like that idea. I don't know about you guys, but I am a little bummed about the upcoming long weekend. It's a long weekend. There's a long, there's a weekend that's longer than the rest?

I didn't know it was the weekend. Isn't this Thursday? I actually- Well, for you guys. I am not bummed for a number of reasons. One, that means my wife has a day off, so I get to share childcare duties. I am going to my mom's house.

We've opened up our pod to include my mom now, because she's been social distancing and staying at home. And she has a barbecue and a large lawn for my kid to run around in. And as I mentioned the previous week, the Bundesliga, the German Soccer League, had just started up last weekend.

And as weird as the games are to watch without fans in the stand, it is something. And it was- How was it? How was it good? Yeah, it was. I mean, the level of play is quality. It's hot, you know, top-level soccer that I was watching.

And it was interesting to be able to hear the players, you know, because they're screaming at each other as they play. And that's normally drowned out by crowd noise, correct? Or the Vuvuzelas. Or the Vuvuzelas. So you normally don't hear what the players are saying.

And it's very interesting. And, you know, it was mostly in German, being a German league. But I do know how to cuss in German. And there was a significant amount. Let's just say they weren't riding the mute button. That reminds me of early in my career, when I first got out of college, I did a lot of sports shooting and a lot of college basketball and football.

And so I was usually on the sidelines. For basketball, I'd sit like right under the basket. And then for football, I was on the sidelines. And one of the great things about that was that perspective of being so close that you could hear everything. Yeah. Particularly with basketball, you could hear the players talking to each other.

And hearing the refs talk to the players was fascinating as well. So that's a really interesting adjustment there. Because you do get to hear that. And for obvious reasons, you know, most sports leagues don't do that. They don't mic up stuff like that. I think the XFL tried that for their brief, you know, ill-fated COVID-19 came along and thus ended the league run.

But it was interesting. It doesn't feel great. I mean, you do miss that crowd thing. And you can tell that the players miss it as well. And many of the interviews afterwards were, you know, it feels like it's a practice game because we don't have the crowds behind us or pushing us on.

But the perspective of being able to listen was really interesting. And I'm going to be interested to see what American leagues, because the NBA is talking about coming back without fans, MLB, NFL is going to play without fans, how they're going to handle that because the networks here are notoriously shy of having that stuff broadcast.

And somebody is going to have to, somebody is going to have to ride the mute on that because athletes, athletes use language. Yeah, they do. Do you think they'll bring in, do you think they'll bring in canned fan noise? God, I hope not.

Like a laugh track? Because the laugh track has died as a thing. I think they need to put a laugh track on the NBA. That would be perfect. Especially when somebody misses a free throw. Ha ha ha! Yeah. I mean, I know Bill Maher's been doing that kind of tongue in cheek with his show where they're cutting to like old clips from the 60s and 70s of people and crowds laughing.

And it was funny as a conceit the first episode, but they've kept it going. And it's just really kind of annoying now. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's how I feel about every episode of Bill Maher. I know that's how you feel about every episode of Bill Maher. I have to say, though, something strange happened this week. There was a fantastic high speed chase on TV here in L.A.

And, you know, high speed chases are basically sports for people who don't like sports and live in Los Angeles. And it really, like, I'm watching this thing for like 45 minutes and you find yourself rooting for the bad guy for a little bit. Then you find yourself rooting for the cops and rooting for the bad guy. And I'm like, I get sports now.

I totally get sports. You don't know how it's going to end, but you have the people that you're rooting for. I had an epiphany. I had a high speed epiphany this week and it was fantastic. And by the way, they got them. They got them, of course, because they always get them.

Of course, they always get them. They always get their man. Right. You can't outrun Motorola, as they used to say. Or Mercedes in this one. Yeah. So I think the reason I'm bummed about the weekend is not, first of all, I am happy to have a day off to have the extra day as a break to recharge.

So I'm all for that. I think that's great. You just have to spend it at home. Well, that's exactly it. I was trying to think. I was talking with my family. Could we go somewhere? Could we take a day trip? Could we take a drive? But anywhere we go is just going to be crawling with people because everybody wants to be out.

And that's not what I want to do. I don't want to go take a hike on a path that's just wall-to-wall people without masks. See, I think I know the answer to this before even asking it because you do have a schedule for all of your podcasts. But would it be possible for you to, say, work on the Monday and then take a day off that is not a Wednesday or a Thursday and do something with the family when it will not be so crowded?

Oh, silly Brian. Yes. Oh, sweet, adorable Brian. It's called news, Brian. Come on. You just got to do this like a, what was that great movie about LA? LA Story, tape the weather a couple days ahead of time. What's going to possibly change? Yeah, I know. Somebody broke into a computer today.

Okay, later. Tomorrow on the Cyber Wire. Ben Yellen talks about somebody breaking into a computer. Tomorrow, day after, we talk about somebody breaking into a computer. There it is. Well, look, I mean, it is possible for me to take vacations now.

We have enough staff here that I can do that. So I appreciate that. And in fact, we've been talking about that as to, you know, trying to encourage everyone despite the situation we're in. Still, you need to take days off. You need to take, plan for vacations or something. Everybody needs a break. It's complicated and hard for me to do that.

The thing is, here's what a lot of people are doing when they're working from home. They're kind of taking the day off anyways and not claiming it. And they don't want to claim any of these days because they want to use them later. Yeah, that's true too. That's true too. Yeah. I mean, can you take, you, you, you don't have a studio at home or you could, can't you just like abscond with the studio, take it home and then do your stuff in the morning and then go for a hike or drive back home.

You know, I, I, I, yeah, I mean, I live five miles from the studio, so it's not. What the hell are you complaining for? You know what, you know what I think is happening here? So now I've got survivor's guilt. Dave is, Dave is being the, the perpetual, uh, kind of the, the stereotypical, uh, female in this situation in which he does not want solutions proposed for his problem.

He wants you to commiserate with his misery. Yes. You know what? You're absolutely right. That is, that is 100% on the note. I didn't realize it till you said it, but you're right. I don't want answers. I just want empathy. Well, you've got empathy. We will shut up and stop being stereotypical males.

Can we just snuggle for a little while, guys? I mean, is that too much to ask? Well, as Brian has pointed out, I don't have empathy. I have reverse empathy. That's true. I should not talk for the rest of the segment. Jason does not put himself in other people's shoes. Jason expects everybody to wear Jason's shoes.

This is the way it works. That's true. I think that's called narcissism, but I don't, I'd have to look that up in DSM. Look, I think there are solutions to your problem, Dave, should you decide to pull yourself out of this misery. If not, may I suggest a cup of Earl Grey tea, hot, with some cream and put on the Cure's disintegration.

I find that to be the best way to wallow in misery. All right. Very good. Very good. I had another thing that I've been thinking about that I wanted to share with you guys to see what you think about this little bit of thought technology that I've been running through my mind. And perhaps it will interest some of our listeners as well.

Warning, this is a little bit geeky, but I think it's interesting. With everything that's been going on and the fact that people's dreams have been getting pretty weird, my dreams have certainly been getting weird and more intense. Are you guys familiar with field programmable Gatorays in computer hardware?

See, when you put this in the show notes, I went, this must be a furry thing. This is code. Because it had the letter F in it? Yes. Yeah. What would FPGAs stand for in furry lingo? I had a few thoughts, but that would have to be free part.

No, furry party gets awesome. Yeah. There you go. And we have a show title. So I will go back to my question. Are you guys familiar with field programmable gate arrays? Yes. Jason?

No. Okay. So field programmable gate arrays have been around for a while, probably a couple of decades, and basically it's a type of hardware that can be reconfigured in the field. So you can put an FPGA on a circuit board, and it's gates, right, logic gates, but you can reconfigure them, and once they're reconfigured, the logic will run, but it's in hardware.

It's not software running. It's actually in hardware, and there are advantages of that because some things run faster in hardware than they do in software. Sometimes you want things on your circuit board in hardware rather than software. So if you go to the expense of putting an FPGA on your circuit board, it allows you the flexibility of reprogramming the hardware on that board.

So if you have a firmware update or a firmware would be the wrong word for it, but if you need to fix a bug in the hardware or something like that, it allows you to do that. And there are lots of things these days that use field programmable Gatorades. Well, I've been thinking about when we have dreams, is that the brain's version of taking our experiences and putting them into hardware.

In other words, you're out there on the savannah and you get chased by a leopard and you run away and you scurry up a tree and your brain realizes this is a traumatic thing. And it says, okay, if I want to live, this is something I need to put into hardware.

Like I need my reaction. And this needs to be a reflexive response to this event because I don't want to get eaten by the leopard. So while we're asleep, we're going to take this experience and we're going to put it into hardware. We're going to do some rewiring in the synapses of our brain, similar to a field programmable Gatorade.

And we're going to make this into hardware. Now, one of the reasons I think this might be so is I'm sure you guys have experienced this. You're practicing something physical. It could be you're trying to do a skateboarding trick or you're trying to play the guitar or play the piano or something like that.

And you're having trouble getting it, having trouble getting it. You step away from it for a while. You sleep on it. And when you come back to it, you can do it better than you could before you slept on it. Something has happened in your mind that it's settled in and that physical response is there where you were sort of grinding gears before.

That's another reason I think I might be onto something with this little fun little thought analogy that I'm using here. Gentlemen, your thoughts? Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. And I think you're absolutely correct on that, especially once you mentioned skateboarding. There's two things.

Skateboarding and video games, I've had the same experience. You try and try and try. You grind it out. You try and do a move. You try and do a trick. You sleep on it. Your brain. It's almost the same thing as visualization, like how pilots do visualization, like the Blue Angels do visualization. And it builds the muscle memory in your mind.

And there are many studies that show if you do visualizations, you can actually get better at doing a particular thing before you actually do it. So if you visualize that free throw over and over and over again, you will get like a 10% to 15% bump in your free throws next time you get on the court.

Same thing with skateboarding. I can watch a video of a skateboarder. Well, back when I had a body that could actually stand on a skateboard and do it properly. I'd watch a video over and over again and just in my mind visualize what was going on with that move, how he had to shift his weight, how he had to like twist his legs and do something.

The next time I went out, I could actually do that trick just from visualizing it and sleeping on it. And then, you know, over and over again, I would do that trick and I would master it. There's a couple of different processes going on there, but absolutely. I think I'm with you on it.

Yeah. Brian? So I can speak with a little bit of authority on this, although 20 years out of date. I double majored in psychology and music and my interest in psychology ran more towards neurology because I was interested in how the brain works. And the TLDR from that is basically for both psychology and neurology is they have no fucking clue.

Certainly they didn't 20 years ago, but there were a lot of theories. I don't know how this has gone on right now. And maybe we'll have somebody who dresses up in stormtrooper outfits who happens to be a neurologist listening to the show and can solve both our problems at once. But a dream come true.

It would be. Speaking of dreaming, yes, it would be a dream come true. The two big theories at the time for what dreams were supposed to do. And again, nobody really had any idea of these. These were two big theories that were quite popular and being taught in the classes that I was taking and they're complimentary.

They're not one or the other. They can run simultaneously. The first is exactly that, what you're talking about, which is while we dream, we tend to be basically rewiring our brain to do the sorts of things that we've been trying to do or practicing or whatever.

And part of dreaming is that process of what's being thrown up as these neurons are making new connections and reconfiguring themselves, much like your field programmable things. And the other theory, which was kind of also very popular at the time, was that our brains were actually cleansing themselves.

They were fixing broken neuron connections and washing them away and all that sort of thing. So those were the two big theories at the time when I was taking these courses and classes. So spot on, sir, at least as of 20 years ago. Yeah, well, let me just, I mean, yes, this is obviously my armchair assessment of this.

It's just something I was thinking about. I cannot claim any expertise, have not studied it the way you have, Brian. But I just thought it was something fun to think about. And so I wanted to get your take on it. And I thought perhaps the audience might enjoy it as well. So there it is. And there we go.

There we have it. I have an interesting bit of news that I wanted to cover because this covers GDPR and things that we've talked about in the past on the show. And this is a grandmother has been ordered by a court to delete Facebook photos of her grandchildren because GDPR.

I love this story because the mother and the daughter had a falling out and she didn't want pictures of her kids up on Facebook. And grandma was like, here's my grandkids. Let's have at it. And when the daughter came back and said, take down the pictures of my kids, she said, nah, ain't going to do it.

And so she took her to court of all things. And she has been ordered to remove the photos or pay a fine of 50 euros for every day that she fails to comply with the order with a maximum fine of 1000 euros. And if she decides to post more pictures of the kids, they tack on another 50 euros a day.

So I what do you guys think about this? I thought this was it's a great test for GDPR. And apparently there are courts that will hear these types of stories, even in the middle of a pandemic. Mothers and daughters. Yes, it's a complicated relationship.

It is. It is. I mean, it all makes sense from a GDPR point of view. I think it's sad that it's come to this. But there you go. There's something kind of funny about it, I suppose. Look, I mean, the reason that we have laws and things like GDPR is because human relations break down.

And that's when the law steps in. Now, ideally, she would have asked her grandmother to remove the photos. There could have been a discussion about it. Some sort of consensus would be reached. But when consensus can't be reached, that's why we have law. And that's why we have things like, oh, regulations for companies, because they won't naturally do the right thing either all the time.

In fact, very, very little. So that is why these structures exist. Now, of course, this is a bit of a fringe case. It's a little ridiculous. And it's a bit sad that this relationship has crumbled to the point that it had to go to courts. But that's what the law and the court systems are for.

Yeah. Right. Humanity's backstop. Yes, exactly. That is what it's supposed to be there for. So it's a last case scenario when we cannot resolve these issues on our own. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm just going to say, now I kind of understand why the daughter won't talk to her mom, because the mom sounds kind of like an asshole.

She won't take down the picture to the kids from Facebook. Well, I mean, what is the reasoning behind it? That's one thing that we don't get into in this story is we don't hear the arguments being made. We just know, okay, daughter does not want photos on Facebook. Right.

That's all that should matter, though. That's a compelling reason. But, I mean, that's all that should matter. Like, she doesn't want pictures of her kids on Facebook. Well, is it all that should matter, though? Because the grandmother has a relationship with the child, too. But not a legal one, you know, I mean, granted, if the mother, you know, rescinds custody of the kids, she's the next of kin, and would then get to, you know, be the guardian of the children.

But currently, she is not the guardian of the children. Well, how old are these children? Do we know that? Yes, it does matter. See, this is, again, this is why we have courts and juries to hear out all these different aspects.

Well, if anybody knows how old these kids are, I'm guessing they're children, not adults. So, yes, I think it comes back. Now, Brian, if your mom took a very embarrassing picture of your kid, posted it online with him, like maybe, let's just say for the sake of argument, pooping in his hand and wiping it on his face, and you didn't want that out there for future generations to see, and you said, Mom, take down this photo, and she said, No, I think it's cute, and I'm going to keep it up there forever.

Now, what would you do? Conveniently, I know the passwords that my mom uses for everything, so problem solved. Nope, you can't sidestep the process, can't sidestep the process. So you'd be willing to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to take things into your own hands. I have a VPN, they'd never find me.

Right, you'd be willing to commit a felony to make things right. Look, I had embarrassing photos of me that were in family albums that were left out on the table. I've been there, done that, and I was very upset about that as a child, but it is what it is, and it happened.

Again, this is why the courts are there, and I'm not postulating that the grandmother is right or anything. I'm just saying from this article, as somebody who could potentially be sitting on the jury, I would need more information than I've been given in this article to have a ruling on it, or an opinion.

Yeah, well, there's a pull quote in the article here, it says, actually, the reasonable thing to do, the human thing to do, is to go and take them down. Yes, I agree. I agree. I agree. All right, guys, well, have a good long weekend, if you notice that it happens.

And you try. I will try to do that as well. I know you don't want solutions. No, no, I'll be going to, maybe I'll go to door-to-door and ask people if they have Stormtrooper outfits, just... I would love to have a video of that. Shortcuts.

No, no, no. All right, very good. Thank you. And then eventually, I get pulled over by the police. Sir, we've got a report that someone's going door-to-door and asking people if they have Stormtrooper outfits.

No, the way this movie ends is the last door that you knock on, George Lucas has bought a house in Maryland. It's like the last... You always find your keys the last place you look for them. That's right. That's right. The door opens. The light comes beaming out.

The angels sing. The Imperial March starts to play. Right, exactly. Yeah, so as a matter of fact, I do have some Stormtrooper outfits in here. Come on in. These are pre-Disney. I hope that's okay. Yeah. All right, guys.

Talk to you soon. Sing shout-outs. Oh, well, I've known K-Rock has been going downhill for a long time, which kind of sucks. K-Rock being the world-famous K-Rock, which actually started that tagline as a joke because nobody was listening to K-Rock back when I was a kid.

And it just started and actually played alternative music. So it became a joke that it was the world-famous K-Rock, but then it actually did become the world-famous K-Rock. So it is basically dead. There's a really interesting long-read article over on Variety about how there's new program directors and all that sort of stuff.

And obviously, it couldn't continue to play the music that I liked because basically that would now make it an oldie station. But it is not in any way, shape, or form what it used to be. It is not alternative. It is not edgy. It is not... It's basically all playlisted now.

As we know, they got rid of the morning show and they're trying to rejigger themselves. So it's a weird thing to consider. That's something that was so much a part of my childhood is now officially basically dead and kind of sad. An interesting read. All I care about, though, for me personally, is that they keep K-Rock HD2 on the air, which isn't costing them very much money.

And basically sounds exactly like the world-famous K-Rock from 20 years ago, which I enjoy listening to. So please keep that going. But I have a feeling that will be going by the wayside pretty soon. Yeah, I've tried to listen to it recently. And they... Yeah, the morning show is dead.

It's Striker and some other dude in the morning now. It's bad. It's bad. And I kind of have a disagreement with you about what they're playing. When I first moved to L.A. in 1995, it was Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails, just like the same slew.

I can get in the car pretty much randomly and still hear the same shit that they were playing when I moved here, you know, 25 years ago. It's crazy. Well, that's changing now, unfortunately. Well, not even unfortunately, because I guess one of the things I need to remember is I'm actually really old and I stopped listening to K-Rock in the 90s.

I listened to it when I was a kid in the 80s and maybe early 90s, and then I was done with it. I've listened to it the entire time. I've never listened to any other radio station, but now I've got CarPlay and I can listen to whatever the hell I want. Progress. Like Joe Rogan on Spotify. No, I do not listen to Joe Rogan.

And just a reminder, later on tonight, because this is coming out on Saturday at 4 p.m. Pacific time, which is midnight for you in England, because we had a couple people ask us because they couldn't Google the time difference. We will be doing our second and maybe final drink up.

We'll see if we pay for the service again for another month. So come and join us. I don't know who's going to be there, but I will be there for an hour. Jason will be there until he passes out. So come and hang out with us. That's about it. Go to GOG.show slash live for contact information and connection information.

And it's funny, after we mentioned it on the last show, I keep getting emails. It's like, hey, somebody's in the room waiting for you. I'm like, you can wait for a while. We're not going to be there till Saturday, dude. Sorry. 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. Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. And hey, we still have masks available because we make them as you order them. And so they will always be available. We'll go to GOG.show slash shop if you want to get in on our masks and maybe some new merch as we get some time to put it out there.

Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 441. 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.

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