442: White Claw Wall

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. Howdy doody, Brian. I'm alright. How was your long weekend? Wasn't it great being out and about in the general public, going to the beach with hundreds of your friends? Oh, wait. Neither of us did that because we're sane. I sat inside and watched all those people on TV, which is why I have a TV.

I figure this is the grand experiment. Let's see what happens in two weeks. Three to four, I'm guessing, is when it'll all play out. But yeah, we'll see leading indicators in two weeks. Yeah, exactly. So I am curious because, you know, we don't know too much. Let's see. Let's see what happens. Let's see what happens with the spread. Let's see.

Maybe the coronavirus is dying off a little bit right now. We're about to find out because, God knows, nobody stayed home. Nope. This is either going to be a big nothing burger or it's going to be, oh, shit, we should have stayed home. Yeah. And if that is the case, that means, you know, those of us that are now well into their third month of lockdown can look forward to being here at Christmas time.

Oh, dude, you're still going to be there at Christmas time. Don't even think about it. Get those Zoom accounts topped off and, you know, hey, man, maybe we can just all get Microsoft or Facebook portals. We'll just get Facebook portals and put them everywhere. Yeah. Let's just move to all, you know, just always on.

It's like the old webcam girls back in the day who were just like 24-7. I'm streaming everything. Everybody just streams everything. Right. Who's the big one? That first girl? Jenny? Jenny Cam. Is that her name? Jenny Cam. Jenny Cam. Yep. That's right. I remember that. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep. Got a bit of follow-up here because I mentioned Wallace and Gromit and I think I called it Aardvark Animations or something like that, but it is Aardman Animations.

It's been quite a while since I've seen any of them. I was wondering what you were talking about when you said that. I'm like, oh, it's something I never watched, so I have no idea what you're talking about. Oh, you never watched any of the Wallace and Gromit stuff? Nope. Never did. Oh, man. You're missing out. Awesome stuff. Anyways, just because I mentioned them a couple, maybe two episodes ago or something like that.

And, of course, here they pop up in the news, as they do. We didn't kill them, did they? No, we didn't kill them. They're actually releasing a new one called Wallace and Gromit, the big fix-up, which will be in AR. Huh. So it's not just an animation. Yeah. What kind of equipment do you need for this one?

I'm not too sure. I didn't get too deep into it. You have the link in the show notes if you want to find that out. Since I have none of the equipments, it didn't matter too much to me. But I thought it was interesting because they plan to tell the story, which will unfold over time using, obviously, CG animation, character phone calls, comic strips, and through gameplay itself.

This was supposed to be kind of a Pokemon Go-type game. But as they were in development when COVID-19 hit, they pivoted it to an entirely home-based experience. So well done. Okay. Well, you do have AR gear. You have your iPhone. So that's all you really need. You need a phone with a camera with AR kit in it.

And it says it's all home-based. So maybe I'll keep it a go. So you should actually watch the Wallace and Gromit stuff. I think you would enjoy it. Okay. Where do I start? Any of them. Okay. I wouldn't do a movie. They did shorts. So I would start with a short.

Okay. I'll dip my toe in. Yes. In the news. And yet another article has come out by a psychologist telling us that technology isn't really helping us, this time in specifics with our quarantine.

This was written by Doreen Dodgen-Majee. Say that five times fast. Say that five times fast. And as she states, the pandemic has brought us into glaring relief, the systematic ills of the United States that have gone unacknowledged by those in power for far too long. As a psychologist who has studied the effects of technology on our relationships and mental health for the last 15 years, I see another reality emerging clearly from this crisis.

Specifically, our technology has made us uniquely unable to handle the isolation, boredom, and uncertainty that is now part of daily life. What does she mean by this? She says, isn't tech the very thing keeping us connected as we hunker down? Perhaps. But our immediately gratifying, always-on technology has also eroded our abilities to adequately evaluate information and to self-soothe.

In a pandemic, those skills aren't merely nice to have. They are essential. I kind of agree with that. We've definitely lost that ability. So, I don't know. And she says, as we head deeper into quarantine, we face what space, submarine, and Arctic researchers call the third-quarter phenomena. The emotional and psychological reserves we've used in this difficult time are low, and we are agitated, worn thin, and anxious.

In short, the isolation is getting to us. And our technology has basically just given us quick and easy fixes and instant access to information, which makes the third-quarter phenomena even more stressful. Before any of us had heard of COVID-19, our ability to self-regulate, withstand uncertainty, and delay gratification had already been whittled away by the way in which we engage with our omnipresent devices.

So, technology was bad before. Worse now. Oh, whatever. Whatever. I love this third-quarter phenomenon, though. I think I hit that at week two. Because I'm like, okay, I'm used to this shit. It's fine. And, yeah, I was agitated because I, you know, couldn't go to the store and get my beloved White Claw.

Which, by the way, when this pandemic is over, never, ever drinking that crap again. It is horrible, man. Sick. I know it tastes great. But after months of that being your only libation, I did break down yesterday because we had a movie day.

Because I wasn't feeling too good and we needed to kind of break out of the routine and the cycle. And I had a bottle of wine yesterday. And it was glorious. You know, it tasted great. My stomach could handle it. It took me six hours to drink the whole thing, which is good. You know, I paced.

I paced myself with it. You've hit the White Claw wall. I did. I did hit the White Claw wall. It's bad, man. It's bad. You know what I've been doing? I mean, you know, everybody kind of knows we're furging on alcoholic before COVID-19 and here we are.

Nothing new here. Nothing new here. What I've been doing to actually stretch out my wine a bit and slow myself down a little bit. And even just because it's rather tasty and delicious and refreshing, I've been taking kind of my lower quality red wines and basically making a little homemade sangria.

Not going full hog with all the sugar. But just I've got my soda stream. I dump in some bubbly water, squeeze in a little juice, a little touch of vermouth. And all of a sudden, a bottle of wine lasts me two days now. Interesting. Because I have done the cheap wine spritzers with Carlo Rossi.

Right. Because that stuff doesn't matter. It doesn't taste great to begin with. But you can make a gallon of Carlo Rossi last you like a couple weeks. But I do like taking red wine and mixing it with my soda stream water. It's pretty good stuff. It's tasty. It's refreshing and, you know, cuts down on the deliveries of booze.

Yeah, if you had any doubt that we were alcoholics before this thing started. But to your article, it was interesting. I was listening to Bill Burr's podcast this morning because sleep schedules are so off. You know, I fell asleep at 7 o'clock in the afternoon yesterday, woke up at 1 in the morning, couldn't go back to bed until 4.

I was going to say, Bill Burr's a bit rough in the morning. He's okay. He's okay. As long as he's not talking about sports, I can handle it. But he talked at the beginning about how he broke his phone and he doesn't have a phone right now. And he's like, this is glorious. He loves it. He's like, I didn't back it up.

So I lost my photos. I lost all my contacts. So I can't call anybody. Nobody can call me. This is great. So it's one of those things where it's like, maybe just turn your phone off for a couple days. See how it sits with you. Maybe that'll help you through the third quarter phenomenon.

I don't know. My phone keeps me in touch with my friends. Well, my computer does that. Does exactly the same thing. You know, it basically does the same thing. The only thing is I can't take my laptop into my bed to play podcasts at night. That's about it. Well, see, there's the thing. And for me, like I can't just be sitting at my computer because chasing after kid and all that.

So I need untethered access to communication with actual adults. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. When we started our movie day yesterday, it's like, okay, it's noon. We're diving in here. Wine's open. Food's starting to cook. Phone's off. And our phones were off for the rest of the day until I went to bed and had to listen to the podcast with Bill Burr.

Right. To hear about his phone not working. But it was nice. So nice when you know that nobody's out there bothering you. It's so good. Well, this comes from the Bastard's New file from Facebook. Again, this is a new report in the Wall Street Journal titled Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive.

Now, turns out that there was a presentation back from 2018. And in it, they said, our algorithms exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness. If left unchecked, oh, boy, more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention and basically will create more divisive content in an effort to gain attention and increase the time on the platform, which is the feature, I guess, for the algorithm.

This is not new news. We've been talking about this for years. Facebook hired an army of psychologists to figure out how to keep people on. Now, what gets more engagement, Jason? Say, a message board thread where everybody's screaming and yelling at each other or one where everybody agrees and gets along?

Yeah. Well, obviously, the former. Okay. Well, that's Facebook. Of course it is. That's what I love. But the things that came out here that I just, I love to, I just, what, what these people think when they're doing these things, you know, they have a common ground team.

So we can all try and find common ground. Yeah. Has it worked? No. What do you think? No, not at all. We're more polarized and split apart than ever before. Yep. They've got an integrity team. Now, when you. There's less integrity than ever before. Yeah.

When you think of integrity, does Facebook jump to mind? Anytime Facebook names a team, just put anti in front of the name. Yeah. And that's what they're really doing. Yeah. And in 2016, one of the presentations they had, 64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools.

Yes. The groups you should join and discover algorithms actually pushed people to be more racist than not. Yes. That's how that goes. Thank you. Yay, Facebook. So this is over at the Wall Street Journal if you want to give that a read. It was actually quite a good article. I did read through the whole thing. It's infuriating and it's nothing new, but it is.

They give us kind of a deeper background into it, which is kind of nice. And certainly they've kept up with it and let you know that nothing stopped and nothing's changed, even though they claim to try to help bring us together. And they spent millions and millions of dollars doing it. And to their credit, I suppose they are trying to bring us together into tiny little divisions so we can all fight each other.

They're trying to keep the hate bubbles small. Exactly. Yes. And in the whack-a-mole files, here we go. Hackers have released a new jailbreak tool that unlocks every iPhone, including the iOS 13.5, which Apple released just last week.

So here we keep going again and again and again. If you really want to jailbreak your phone, don't. You can do it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's two things to remember with jailbreaking. It's a pain in the ass and you're probably going to break it because you have no idea what you're doing. And most people, I don't have any idea what I'm doing.

I've jailbroken my phone a bunch of times, had to re-wipe it and always broke it. But it is 100% legal to do so. But it will invalidate your EULA. But you can't go to jail for it because in the old days, you know, you were breaking, what was it? I think it was the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act when you were jailbreaking your phone back in the day.

That's what they always said that was going on. But then I believe the Library of Congress was the one that stuck their neck out and said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You guys can't do that. Yeah. Well, it's also that movement, the fix-your-own-equipment movement. I can't remember what the hell that organization is called.

But, yeah, the idea being – I think it's the fix-your-own-equipment movement. Yeah, whatever. If you buy something, you can do what you want with it. It's yours. Yeah. But that's just for the U.S. So it's not exactly clear in other countries. I put a link into the iOS jailbreaking Wikipedia entry, so they go through some of the different legalities in different countries.

There aren't many, but for the most part, if you want to jailbreak your phone, go for it. But don't expect it to work as planned. And you'll probably get some malware if you're trying to sideload new apps. Yeah. Just saying. Yeah. Now, Jason, we've discussed many times on the show your massive photo library and how long it takes to back it up, even if you're using some of the newfangled USB-C drives where you're getting tons of data going through.

Well, have I got something for you. You better follow these guys on Kickstarter when they put out their new connection. Because today, it's a new fiber optic internet, a new fiber optic connection, sorry, that researchers in Australia have developed that reaches 44.2 terabits per second.

I'm in. To put that into perspective, the average user in the U.S. gets 50.2 megabits per second, about a million times slower than researcher speeds. A million times. A million times. Fuck 5G. We don't need that shit. Let's string these fiber optics everywhere, man.

Yeah. No, that's pretty damn good. So, hopefully, this will roll out and there's no caveats to it. I mean, I glanced at it and it looks like very promising. Very promising. It really does. I mean, that's insane. That is like upload our brain speed. Yeah. I'm down.

I could definitely use a brain upload. Can you just upload me and then wake me up in like, you know, I don't know, 200 years? Yeah, the problem is you'll do that and then you'll Bill Burr yourself. That's true. Somebody will. I've wiped it all. Yeah.

It reminds me of Devs. Or not Devs. Upload. Upload, yes. Where the mom took the hard drive. About it. So, in some good news, I want to close the news section with this because I'm very excited about it. And this episode comes out on Wednesday at midnight Pacific time.

And so, this will be the day that this comes out. NASA and SpaceX have confirmed that the launch is a go. Yeah, until Elon Musk runs out naked onto the platform. He's going to streak the launch. Oh, that'd be funny.

I mean, the only thing that's holding it up right now is possibly the weather, but they're saying the weather's looking good. So, fingers crossed for this, man. I really, really hope this works. Really hope it works. It'd be nice. It'd be nice to have some good news. And we are space geeks. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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Media Candy. I was pretty excited to hear this news because I live in Muppet Babies Land. It's one of my kids' favorite shows. And I do enjoy The Muppets. Who doesn't love The Muppets? And they are returning in a new Disney Plus series. This is the, as my kid refers to it, The Adult Muppets.

Okay. Yes. The Muppets Now will be a six-episode limited series that's really a meta-series because they always seem to do this. Billed as unscripted in the tweet announcing the series, it focuses on Scooter, the longtime stage manager for the gang in their films and other shows. And his efforts to wrangle the rest of the gang into filming a new Muppet series for streaming.

Oh, God. I'm excited. I can't wait. They're always funny. This will be available July 31st on Disney Plus. And there's also going to be, I don't know if you watched this as a kid, but I was addicted to this as a kid, Fraggle Rock. Oh, Fraggle Rock was amazing.

We're getting a new Fraggle Rock. Fraggle Rock, rock on! In short form series on Apple TV Plus. So we finally have a reason to watch something on Apple TV Plus when it comes out. That's funny. It's weird that they're splitting the two different platforms. But I guess, you know, Jim Henson's an independent company, so.

Exactly. So, yeah. It says, Jim Henson, the rights to the Muppets were purchased by Disney in 2004, while the Jim Henson company retained the decidedly more niche, Fraggle Rock. So that explains that. I didn't know Disney bought the rights to the Muppets. Do you remember that really failed Muppet TV show that came back where it was like the really adult Muppets?

Yeah, that one wasn't so great. So here's hoping this will be a bit more clever. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. Now, while I've been expanding my bubble and going down to my mom's house for weekends, I've had a lot more time on my hands because the kid goes to bed pretty early.

The wife goes to bed not too much later than me or than they do. And my grandmother is just exhausted because of the kids. So she goes to bed pretty early, too. So I've had some late nights with my mom's TV system. Luckily, I've installed everything over there. So all my passwords and all my programs are there.

But the thing is, I've watched all my shows. Like, they're all done. So I am digging for gold on the streaming networks right now. And I came across a random movie that I can't believe I'd never heard of. Maybe you had. Hotel Artemis. I've heard of it.

I've actually got it on my Synology. I picked it up from Sweden a long time ago, but I've never actually watched it. What's the verdict? You can watch it straight on Prime now. So I'm still not sure if I enjoyed it or not. That's the verdict. Okay.

It was good. It was interesting. The design was pretty good. I mean, the cast is unbelievable. Like, you've got Jodie Foster and Jeff Goldblum and just Zachary Quinto. I mean, tons of people are in this. It was really interesting. It was weird.

It was weird. I totally understand why this movie is kind of under the radar. But, I mean, hey, man, fire up your last few white claws and give it a go. It's not that bad. Okay. Yeah. I had it and I watched the trailer for it and I'm like, I've got to be in a mood to watch this one.

You've got to be in a mood and that mood be buzzed. Okay. Good. That's not hard. And I also found a new series on Netflix. Now, it's a Belgian series, I believe. So it's not getting heavily promoted over here at all on Netflix US, probably because people speak multiple languages in the show.

And God forbid anybody have to listen to more than just English. That would be too much to ask. And it's called Into the Night. And it's the synopsis here is passengers and crew aboard a hijacked overnight flight scramble to outrace the sun as a mysterious cosmic event wreaks havoc on the world below.

It's about six episodes. They're about 35 to 40 minutes each. And I was riveted. Okay. I thoroughly enjoyed this. I mean, it is a standard sci-fi tropes and all that. And whoever watched this and produced this fucking loved Lost.

Because while the story isn't Lost, the way they shot it, the whole, you know, open with a backstory of one character, all that sort of thing, it is Lost-esque like No Tomorrow. But in a good way. I can highly recommend this show. I really enjoyed it. What was that Stephen King story about the people on the plane that were trying to keep going because, like, the world was being eaten and rebuilt?

What the hell was that? Yeah, I can't remember. It's a very similar premise to that in a way. So we'll see. I can't remember the name of that one either. After a while, the Stephen King things start to blur in together. Like, I just watched the misty dome with it and standing. Yeah, I've seen that one, like, twice.

I can't believe I can't remember the name. It wasn't Tommyknockers, was it? No, not Tommyknockers. No, I don't think it was Tommyknockers. That was Aliens. Yeah. Aren't they all at the very end of it? But either way, that was a good one. But I just thought of it because it reminded me of this one.

So I'm sure we'll get tweets. Somebody will tweet us. I'm sure, I'm sure. So, and one other thing that I watched, if you grew up in Southern California, which very few of you did, you are aware of Huell Hauser and his California's Gold show. I've talked about it on our podcast quite a few times.

This is a super low budget, incredibly unintentionally hilarious show. And a friend of the show, Andy Stachansky, tweeted me to a link to a specific episode called Giant Rock. And he said, it's been a while since I've been in a fetal position with laughter and just giddy at watching that episode.

It made my day. At the end, when he's in the hammock, I completely lost it. And I did too. You know what's really weird? Like, when I pull up my Roku, like, I go to the main menu on my Roku. There's always random things that they're always pimping in the sidebar to say, hey, watch this now.

Watch this now. And Huell Hauser was in there this week. That's amazing. That's weird. Why are they pimping Huell Hauser? I'm sure that nobody's out there like, you know. The demand is not high. Yeah, there can't be a whole lot of ad budget for reruns of Huell Hauser shows.

But sure enough, it was. Because I remember when he died, you talked about it. And our friend of the show, Trent, was also, he was like, you know, gut-punched by it. And I was like, I still have never seen an episode, but I'll go check this one out. Oh, dude.

He's amazing. You will get hooked on this guy. Because you got to remember, he is not being ironic. He's not intending to be funny. He is as straight-laced as they come. And with that in mind, you will die laughing. Okay. I'll check it out. I'll check it out. Because, yeah, the well hath runneth dry on my side, too, my man.

What we've decided to do now is, like, because I told you before, we like comedy before we go to bed. Yeah. So we just go to the comedy section on Netflix. And if we haven't seen it, they get five minutes. Okay. And, you know, we go through a couple of them a day until we find one that hits.

Like, we watched the Cedric the Entertainer special from 2016 last night. It was an excellent, excellent show. But we went through five crappy ones before we got to that one. But we're just going down the list and say, whatever, you know, you just pan right, pan right, pan right. Okay. We haven't seen that one. But even that, pickings are getting kind of slim because we've seen a hell of a lot of comedy on Netflix.

Yeah. And everybody needs to keep in mind right now, if you've already seen anything, there ain't that much coming because there's nothing in production right now. Exactly. Well, we get the Mandalorian soon. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. And I went back to the well, and after we've talked about Minions for so many times, I finally watched it.

Yeah. Quite excellent. It's extremely well done, man. Yeah, it was, I was surprisingly well done. Like, you know, about half an hour into it, I'm like, I look at my watch, I'm like, oh, wow, that half an hour flew by. And it's, and I found myself, like, laughing out loud. They're funny.

It's really a funny show. Yeah. And I would like to shame Universal Pictures right now because Minions 2 is done and in the can and was supposed to be released. Released, I think, mid next month. Oh, get it out there. I know. They've decided to hold it for a year because they want the box office.

Fuck you guys. I would pay 20 bucks to stream that thing. Release it. Yeah, they really, yeah, they need to get off their ass. Especially, I mean, people with kids, come on. Why are you doing this to us? Yeah, I mean, even like, you know, 30 bucks. Yeah, whatever. $29.99 or wherever. I don't care. I'd pay that. Fine.

Uh-huh. Still cheaper than going to the theater. Maybe that's why they're keeping it. I also watched the series Spy Wars with Damian Lewis. Mm-hmm. Wow. I mean, if you, you know, I love the spooky stuff. Yes, you do. And this is, this is a fantastic series.

I mean, it's extremely well done. It's done with the Smithsonian Channel. Mm-hmm. And you, isn't that the Hitler Channel? Oh, wait, no, that's the History Channel. That's the History Channel. Yes, the History Channel is the Hitler Channel. The Smithsonian Channel actually has researchers that do a, do a pretty damn good job.

But the one that really fascinated me was the story of why we can't take liquids on an airplane anymore. The, the plot behind, they were going to blow up a ton of planes and how they did it. And they had, I mean, it's like, it's got all the guys on there, not the guys that are in jail, but, you know, the, the actual, you know, spooks.

Behind it all. And I mean, like, seriously, big guys. And the recreations are extremely well done. So, I mean, the only hard part is watching Damien Lewis with a British accent because we know him from everything that does not have him with a British accent.

So, you know, and Billions or, what was the, Band of Brothers or anything else that he's ever been in where he has an American accent, that, that throws you off a bit. But, yeah, if you, if you have the Smithsonian Channel, I highly recommend people add that to the DVR.

It's really, really good. And we dug into Hightown. I haven't even heard of it. It's a new show on Starz. It stars one of the, one of the women from Chicago Fire. So, I knew about her from that. But it's basically about, I think, Providence, Rhode Island, P-Town.

And, you know, like, because my roommate knows all of her gay friends from New York. They always talk about P-Town and where they would go in the summer and all that. So, it's got a lot of tie-in with that. But it's mainly drugs and murder in Providence, Rhode Island. I love it. We're, like, hooked on it. There's only two episodes out right now.

But I'm digging it. I'm really digging it. Cool. And well worth it. I actually signed up for Starz. I got my, I did the free trial. And because it's so new that nobody's stealing it. So, I can't get it. So, I'm like, fuck it. I'll pay for it for now. It's only $8.99 a month.

As far as the paid services go, it's not that bad. And there's some good stuff on Starz. And, of course, Killing Eve. It's the penultimate episode was on Sunday. So, the final is on this coming Sunday for the season. And, man, that show always gets better as the season progresses.

And this season is, this is, I still think, the best season yet. It is really good. How many seasons are they? This is the third? This is the third season, yeah. And they're short. They're only eight-episode seasons, so. Good, good, good. Because that's something I have not started watching yet. So, that is something I can go to when the well is dry.

Yeah, definitely get into Killing Eve, man. Because, I mean, I know that you guys like Sandra Oh, or at least your wife does. You mentioned that before. So, yeah, you'll love it. And the woman who plays her nemesis in this, Jody something or other, is so adorable.

Yeah, I love the show so much. And in podcasting news, and I'm putting this in here as a shout to, not a shout, a call to arms to people in our audience that have listened to this show. If you know anybody at these two companies who are looking for podcasts, please, by all that is holy, think of us.

So, let's start off with here. Amazon's Audible goes beyond books to chase Spotify and podcasts. Audible is offering anywhere from a few hundred thousand dollars to a few million dollars per show, according to people familiar with what's going on.

So, Jason, you're saying you're willing to no longer be a podcast because once we go behind these paywalls, we're not podcasts anymore.

We don't give a flying fuck if we're no longer a podcast. We need money. Exactly. Papa got to get paid. So, if you're at Amazon and Audible and you would like to buy a very sweary, crumpy old geeks show, I'm sure Brian and I can work something out there.

Yeah, we'll be happy to take your monies. Exactly. And Apple is on the hunt right now. This one I don't think is going to apply to us unless we start doing, you know, show recaps. Apple is looking to buy podcasts that they can turn into shows or movies for Apple TV+.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, not going to be us. No, not going to be us. It's funny. As I read through both of these kind of – I kind of scanned over both the articles. But it seems to me this is exact – they're both kind of following Podcast One's business model in that they actually don't really care if the podcast is good or interesting or anything.

It's – is a celebrity doing it? Okay, good. Let's give them money. And, well, I mean, the number's got to be there, too. You got to have a following. You got to have decent stuff. And you do have to make a good show. Don't bang on Podcast One too much for that. They do try really hard to make great shows. So, I just have to say that right now.

Contractually obligated. Watch out. Watch out there, Brian. But, yeah, I mean, everybody's looking right now because everybody's circling the wagons to try and get everything under their roof, which is – honestly, I think it's dumb. Well, I mean, it's really, really dumb. It's also directly related to what we've just been talking about with the rest of media right now, which is people's wells are running dry and you can't go into full production on something.

But what can you do? You can sit somebody down in front of a microphone. Yeah, you can. You can totally do that. But just making the show exclusive to your service just doesn't – I mean, I don't understand why they would do that. Why not do, like, maybe some custom deals to do some custom content for it and get the rest of their back catalog for free because it's open on the internet?

Why are you trying to ruin this fantastic open ecosystem by, you know, bringing everything in-house? It's a race that nobody's going to win except for hopefully us when we are picked up by Audible and have our show over there. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the model that would almost make at least some sort of sense, particularly if your podcast happens to be topical, is first rights.

You know, our podcast would come out on Spotify and for the first month, that's the only place you can get it. And once that's over with, it can go out to our RS feed. That's fine. Yeah, that's what a lot of places do. Like, Luminary does that as well for some of their shows, I believe. I believe it's – no, no, no. I'm thinking of Stitcher, Stitcher Plus.

So, like, there are some shows that you can get on there because I know Mike Rowe was doing that for a while. Like, you could get the latest episode a week early on Stitcher Plus. But I don't think he does that anymore. I think that deal fell through because everybody figured out what is a Stitcher Plus. What is a Stitcher?

What is a Stitcher, let alone a Stitcher Plus? Yes. Maybe they should have just gone with Stitcher X. Well, this was bound to happen with eSports, but I figure if cheating is good enough for the Astros in real sports, then cheating is good enough for eSports, too.

This is a Formula eRacer disqualified for using an eSports ringer in a virtual race. I love this so much. I love this so much. Formula eAudi driver Daniel Abt has been disqualified from an eSports race and fined 10,000 euros for using a ringer in his place, according to Reuters.

Rivals became suspicious after he qualified in second place and went on to take third in the Formula eRace at home challenge, despite never having finished higher than 15th before. It turned out that professional eSports racing was at the wheel. All these fucking names are insane right now, but this is crazy.

And Abt had a Zoom feed going. I love this. But his face was blocked by a microphone or other equipment, so they couldn't tell who was actually driving. This is so easy to fake, and he screwed it up.

Well, maybe not. Formula e reportedly checked IP addresses to figure out that he couldn't have been driving. Dude, it's called tunneling. It's really not that hard. You have the guy tunneling into your home network, and you're on the Zoom, and you have a TV up of what he's doing, and it's just like driving a car in a movie or being on Star Trek when you're getting attacked by Romulans.

It's like the car goes this way. You lean this way. You lean this way. That's all you got to do. I think you have a future consulting gig, Jason, because obviously these guys haven't been able to figure out how to cheat properly. Oh, that's it, man. I'm totally going to do that. So, hey, if you're in Formula eRacing, give me a call.

Let's figure this out for you. That's right. We can just, you know, I only take 10%. Feedback loop. Over at Patreon, we have Jerry Haim, Tony, Justin Justin, August Mar Grandal, Gabriel, and Annie, who moved from PayPal to Patreon.

And we have Patty B, who says, aloha, Jason and Brian. I hope to upgrade my support once I start making money again, says she who works in the tourism industry in Hawaii and self-employed. I'm a newish listener and have enjoyed what I've heard so far. Keep the laughter coming. Hope you are both well and continue to stay well.

Aloha from Patty. And she says, team Jason. Oh, Patty, you're picking the wrong team because if any of us, I'd be the one coming to Hawaii. I love going to Hawaii. Jason doesn't leave his house. Right now, give me a deal on going to Hawaii when this thing's over.

I'm on a plane. Aloha, baby. And quick note, we do release ad-free versions. Sometimes they're early. Sometimes they're not. Depends on when we put the show out. Depends on Jason. Exactly. Depends on the white claw wall. Well, yeah, it depends on if the show goes out early or not.

If the show is going out on time, then they come up to Patreon early. If the show is coming out a little bit later, then they all go out at the same time. But we do have ad-free versions of every episode up there now. Especially when Brian reminds me, hey, did you put it up on Patreon yet? I'm like, shit, I forgot. I'm going to just set it not.

I'm going to use an if-ta-ta-ta for that. Yeah, give me an if-ta-ta. I mean, 420 episodes, I've done it without putting it on Patreon. So I've got a little muscle memory problem going on there. This is true. This is true. And over at PayPal, we have donations from Scott, Adam, Tom, Joseph, Mark, Jeffrey, Michelle, and Eduardo, who says, thanks, guys, for all your efforts.

Thank you. All right. And surprisingly here, Brian must have been really bored because we have feedback from Facebook. DTodd writes in, fun, informative, and snarky. And Brian says, this is probably my favorite overall podcast. Keep up the good work. Yes, I was shocked. I got a notification because these were both ratings.

We've got five-star ratings on Facebook. And we actually just got one of them recently, and the other one was lost in the sands of time, but I dug it up. Lost in the sands of Zuck. Yes. And over at Twitter, Tom Antwerp wears a mask, and you should, too. Great name.

Wrote in and said, got a good laugh when you talked about pretending to be young in tech interviews for remote positions, then immediately mentioned PHP and MySQL. Going to need to brush up on the latest hipster dev trends. Oh, man. Should I have talked about my node or my – that's the only new thing that I probably know is node.

Yeah. But, hey, Facebook still runs on PHP and MySQL, so meh. Good enough for ruining our lives. Good enough for everyone. Yeah. Good enough for the biggest website on the internet. I'll take it. And Stuart writes in PathSpot, because we talked about PathSpot on the last show, he goes, does that equal pathogen spot, as in disease-causing organisms?

And I think it's Pathogen Spotting, so I think he nailed it, but Pathogen Spotting would make a really shitty sequel to Trainspotting. That was a white-claw joke, I can tell. No, it wasn't. Karthik writes in, listening to episode 411 of GOG Podcast, it's nice to hear the thumbs up for MS Teams.

I always like Teams, integrates better with Office 365, and as a person who provides support for companies to move from Slack to Teams, it's just better, but there are some reasons to use Slack. Well, Karthik, I've been furloughed, I know how to do this, I need a job. Give that man a job.

Yes. Over at GOG.show, Mark writes in Batman, the Batmobile documentary. Warner Brothers have just released this on YouTube, and it's really good. You can skip the first five minutes, but the rest is solid gold, and we have a link to that in the show notes. Very cool. And Stephen from East London has a comment that I take umbrage with.

I consider myself a tolerant man. However, anyone who suggests adding cream or milk to Earl Grey should be unfriended with extreme prejudice. I strongly recommend you reconsider your life choices regarding hot beverages. Other than your social faux pas, your podcast keeps me amused as I jog through the empty streets wondering why the amount of dog poop hasn't gone down.

Laters. Okay, well, I got to say I'm on Team Brian with this one because I like to have milk and sugar in my Earl Grey. No, I was taught to put milk in my Earl Grey by somebody who lives in London. Now, granted, he's originally Welsh, and that might destroy everything, but it was one very Carl Wallinger, friend of the show.

The main man behind the band World Party that taught me to do that. So, hmm, I learned from a Londoner, sir. Good day. Good day, sir. Deliveroo, bastard. Jeff writes in, Greetings, just a note to Jason, who mentioned the FB Oculus in the last episode, which is 440.

I'm a casual gamer, but got the Oculus last year, and it's been lots of fun. No worries about waiting for a new one to come out, but I'm told that ordering it now can be challenging due to supply chain issues like with the Switch, which is the full-size one that I can't get my hands on for my wife. And as far as glasses, I use glasses also and need them to see anything at all, and the glasses don't seem to add any discomfort.

I use either my general pair, which are progressive trifocals, which that's what I needed to know because that's what I wear, too. I have progressive trifocals. Or my computer and reading glasses with no issue. I'd suggest go for it. If you can, find one or two. I don't use the link cable to connect to my PC, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, I cared about the glasses thing. It says, keep up the great podcast. Thank you, Jeff. We will, for sure. And Kevin writes in with your same problem. I got the Oculus Go at the beginning of quarantine. I'm always wearing my glasses and have no problems at all. The only problem I have is that I want to lay down and watch a 3D movie, and it can feel a bit heavy on the face after a while.

But the extension for glasses is just fine. I've worn three different pairs of glasses with no issues. Oh, thank you, Kevin. Kevin's my old neighbor in Chicago who was – he's the reason we get to read the Wall Street Journal. So thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Kevin. And Stephen writes in, hey, guys, long-time fan of your show.

I'm wondering if either of you have yet to watch War of the Worlds on epics. It's a great modern spin on the classic story. A little slow at times in the middle of the season, but overall very well done and some real good edgy-your-seat stuff. Anyway, keep up the great work. Well, after the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds, I kind of need to take a break for a couple decades.

I think it's one of those things that I don't think we ever need another version of it again, personally. Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too. I've seen enough War of the Worlds, but, you know, if it's good, it's good. That's cool. The well is getting dry, maybe. No, that's true. I don't need another War of the Worlds. I don't need another Batman.

I don't need another Spider-Man. Yeah, well, we're getting all of those. Of course we are. And Mike writes in, I've been listening for a couple of years. Keep up the good work. I figured I'd share a few things. Maybe not the best audiobook to listen to right now, but likely my all-time favorite reading of a book. Selma Blair really nails it on this narration.

Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl. Well, we're all in quarantine, but at least we don't have Nazis trying to kill us. That's true. Let's see. One knows how the Lusitania story ends, but Eric Larson makes it interesting getting there. And this would be Dead Wake, The Last Crossing of the Lusitania.

Awesome book. I've read that one as well. Reviewed it on the show. Save on TP. My wife bought one of these for the house. It takes some getting used to, but not bad. And these are handheld bidet sprayers. Okay. I got to talk to you about this one. I got to talk to you about this one because I looked at it. Did you look at these, Brian? I did. They're garden hoses that you shove up your bum.

Yeah, basically. And, you know, after a few cocktails, you might miss and then just, things could go really, really badly for you. Instead of hitting the White Claw wall, you're going to hit the White Claw wall. Oh, God.

It's the Brown Claw. The Brown Claw of doom has come back to get you. And he continues. Now I heard you mention. I would not trust myself with that. God damn it. No video, please. Turn off all. I heard you mention the 1843 magazine.

I've subscribed for years to The Economist. Strong reporting on all topics. Periodically has special sections of 10 to 15 or so articles on specific topics like AI. I believe you guys were never fans of Stargate SG-1 or Atlantis. However, you may want to give Stargate Universe a try. Not as epic as The Expanse, but good solid science fiction.

Well, yeah. And if you've listened to this show for any length of time, you know my hatred for Stargate because they killed Farscape. But the only thing about Stargate Universe that I think would be worth it is Robert Carlyle, a.k.a. Begbie from Trainspotting, is the hero of the show.

Very cool. And The Economist is just, it's one of those things I keep meaning to subscribe to but keep forgetting to. So at some point we'll get a GOG subscription to that. Okay. Works for me. Set it up, dude. Arnold writes in, Firstly, to the rectal cranial inversion case who keeps writing in to complain about the politics on the podcast.

Get fucked. If you don't have a thick enough skin enough to hear other people who have opinions, you probably shouldn't be on the internet. As a moderate conservative, it annoys me that a lot of people on the right can't seem to get out of their own way. You guys keep being political. I enjoy seeing alternative views to my own and more importantly, annoying that one guy.

All right. With that out of the way, I really enjoy the content you guys put out. I only found you guys recently through the Jordan Harbinger show and I've thoroughly enjoyed the ride. To get in on the great browser debate, I use the Firefox plus uBlock Origin Wombo Combo. That sounds fake.

UBlock is hands down the best ad blocker I've ever used. It has never given me trouble on news sites. Sometimes it even allows you to bypass pop-ups on them. And more importantly, it allows you to select ads that somehow make it past the blocker. Now, the real juicy bit. I'm wondering if either of you had watched the movie Demolition Man recently.

I went back and re-watched it and I can firmly say that it has only gotten better with age. Thanks for keeping things fun and lighthearted. Now, talking about Demolition Man, I really wish they would have described what the three shells do. Three shells. In this time of TP, the missing TP, the three shells might be the one thing that could save humanity.

Yeah. I have not re-watched it in a long time, but I did Google the three shells like I think two months ago or something like that because it was doing the rounds because of the TP shortages. The fan theories about what the three shells do are worth a good dive into the internet for about an hour.

Yeah, they are. They are. Even though the director and writer have come out and said, we just put it in there. We just made it up. We didn't know. We just made shit up because it was more fun. And Chiago writes in, be afraid, very afraid. The future is coming 20 years earlier than expected. From next autumn, Porto City in Portugal will have driverless buses as part of the public transportation system.

Good news, though, since the main hospital from the city is located in the district served by the buses. Love the provocative, wise approach, bipolarity of your podcast, our tech beacon for these strange times. And he has a link, but it's in Portuguese, so I couldn't read it. Driverless buses, this is the perfect time.

Nobody should be out anyways, and if they are, get hit by a bus. Yeah, it might actually work out now. Yeah, nobody out. All these things will work. Yeah. And fucking Steve, who is now, who is formerly $8 Steve, he wanted to have his name changed to fucking Steve.

Okay. Hey, guys, I wanted to offer a listener recommended at the library selection. It's a free Audible original this month. It's called Cold Turkey by Mishka Shubali. I know when the shit hit the fan with COVID-19 that I ramped up drinking more than usual. And this has helped me cut back.

The author has a no-nonsense voice similar to Jocko Willink, and the book is only four and a half hours long. I wanted to pass it along because the grumpy army needs to stick together. As always, thanks for the great work. And for the morons that send the nasty grams bitching about the show, fuck you.

Your device has buttons on it. One turns it off, and the other one changes the channel. So thanks, fucking Steve. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm personally going to go with my watering down my wine version to slow down the drinking because I don't want to stop. There's always that.

Yeah, there's always that. Brandon writes in, Hey, geeks, I'm new to the show as of about eight weeks ago. First off, thank you for the amazing content. I look forward to seeing your show pop up in my Overcast feed, and it's really helped me get through this pandemic. I am writing as I wanted to respond to a comment Jason made in episode 440 regarding a disgruntled Twitter user over his mentioning of the Herman Miller office chair.

Boy, this one's not going to die, is it, Jason? Well, hopefully after this it will. Okay. I recently appreciated the review, and it piqued my interest enough to go research them. Turns out everything Jason said was correct. Hmm. These chairs are simply amazing. I now have one on my wish list, and I'm looking forward to the purchase in the near future.

Thanks for providing a candid and honest review from a company who isn't your sponsor and enlightening this listener to an awesome desk chair. Well, for the record, this was all Brian. I've been sitting on one of these for about four years now. Yep. He's the one that back in the day, if you go back and listen to the old episodes when I was looking for a new desk chair, he turned me on to the Mira 2, and this is my second one.

It's Mira 2 squared. It is Mira 2 squared. When I moved to Chicago last time for the seventh time, I think, since we've run this show, I didn't have room for it, so I had to sell it, which was one of the most painful things I've ever had to do. But, yeah, no, this one's all Brian, man, so he gets credit for this one.

Yep. Good chair. Highly recommended. And over at iTunes, NotSoBondGirl from the UK writes in, Lady Grumps. Toss us a dollar a month and we'll love you forever. Used to buy your eternal love. I like it that way, as I have to rough it for the time being, but really appreciate grumping, so good doesn't come cheap.

Subscribe and listen to the hilarious voice acting. We're actles? No, I didn't know that. Oh, and get into that gardening, too, guys. Yeah. Rats. Can't do it. L.A. L.A.'s full of rats. I'm screwed. Condo by the beach. No grass. No grass.

Yeah. And another review from the UK, another five-star from Geeks Corner UK. Grumpy, snarky, funny, with great ads. Grumpy, snarky, but damn, they are spot on. I've been listening to these grumpy old geeks for over two years now. I am also listening to some of their older episodes when I run out of podcasts to listen to.

I am glad to say their newer episodes sound much better than their old stuff, so good job, guys. I am listening to their latest episode on my home pod, and they sound great. To top it off, their ads are great. I'm a proud Patreon member, and these guys deserve, I cannot speak anymore, all the support we can give.

Must not be an ad, so Brian can't get it out. That's right. I only do ads well. Thank you very much, Geeks Corner UK, and also NotSoBongo. That's cool that we got two from the UK this time. Very cool. Yeah, if you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to gog.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air.

And if you're so inclined, please head over to gog.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review. And if you're listening to us on the Overcast player, please, please click those little stars next to the episode. It just makes us feel good, and we like beating Tim Ferriss every now and again.

Not that we don't have to deal with Rogan. That's true. We're going to beat Rogan. Holy shit. Closing shout outs. Well, as some people know, last week was, last Friday was my last episode of the Jordan Harbinger show, so I want to do a shout out to Jordan and Jen, who I've been working with for a very, very long time.

So, I love you guys, and I love all the fans that are listening to this show because of that show. So, feel free to tell your friends about this show now and have them come over here. Yes, lovely people, Jordan and Jen. I've been able to meet them a couple times and hang out with them and always enjoyed it.

So, we had a blast at that Canadian conference we all went to together. That would be fireside. Yeah, we had a good time up there. We all stayed in the same cabin, and we didn't want to kill each other at the end of it. Amazing. No, everybody just wanted to kill you. Yep, that's true. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to gog.show slash donate. Toss us a few bucks and we'll love you forever. Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 442. 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. Stay home. Or don't, eat eggs, or don't, who the fuck knows. And I take umbrage with that. Nobody wanted to kill me at fireside. It was a joke. It was a joke. Come on. Damn. I was like, they're Canadians. Come on. It was funny. In a white claw sort of way.

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