446: The Well Hath Runneth Dry

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. Jason, somebody out there with a degree in something, I like, you know, knowledge that we lack, needs to explain to me the physics of why the backup battery in a fire alarm only runs out at four in the morning. I wish I knew that, too.

Consistently and without fail, they always go at around 4 a.m. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. And that happened to me this morning. These used to be a minor inconvenience that would just bother me. Then one gets married and wives get mad at you. And then one has a kid and a kid wakes up terrified.

So good times around the house this morning. Yeah, I've had that happen to me with a Rottweiler that would hear the chirps and about four in the morning. And I'm like, what is that? And then I ended up, you know, because, of course, the house that I had in Chicago had all the fire alarms wired into the house power.

And then for some reason, they just stopped and the backup battery didn't work. And then they would chirp. Yes. So I ended up having to rip them out of the ceiling and go buy new fire alarms. Well, there is a... I can turn it off. There is a fire alarm that is ripped out of the ceiling because they're powered here as well.

That is just laying next to me on the desk here. Hopefully we won't get any phantom chirps while we're recording. Because, of course, I don't happen to have the battery that it needs right now. And, yeah, so good times. Yeah, there's only, you know, a hammer always can fix that problem. I've never found a stepstool and ripped something out of the wall quicker in my life than I did this morning.

I'm telling you, man. You just got to go up and yank the damn thing out. Oh, man. I'm just waiting for the asteroid. Now, Brian, just bring me the goddamn asteroid to end all of this crap because tomorrow is always going to be something new and exciting.

But yesterday I woke up. I walked outside to the lovely smell of California on fire again because, you know, it's spring. And, of course, we burn down the entirety of California every year. And then I check my phone and I get a message that my dad has been rushed to emergency care with mysterious stomach pains and there's no information because you can't go in and be with him anymore.

Right. Oh, fortunately, he's back home. Feels good. The antibiotics they gave him seems to have worked. So and they put out the fire and castaic. So it was just, God, how many of these mornings can you fucking take?

I tell you, man, if I could go, if I could get frozen in carbonite for 2020, I would take that option. I am serious. But some good news. One Zoom to rule them all. We talked about the Lord of the Rings reunion. And I found a link over at Ars Technica with the video because I don't follow the channel.

But they had a link with some notes on it. So it has timestamps on when you can check it out. They raise over $83,000 for No Kid Hungry, which is good. Good. Really good. It is heavily edited and very good, though.

I watched it because I looked at the timestamps. I looked a little bit in the beginning and then I saw, oh, Taika Waititi jumps in and asks questions about Lord of the Rings about 43 minutes. So I jumped in. I'm like, OK, let me start there. And watch the rest of the show.

And, you know, the guy sings the song from the one movie. And it was good. It was really good. It was really fun. I want to go back and watch the whole thing. But I got to say, it did put a smile on my face this morning, which is something that is very rare nowadays. Yeah, this is one of those things that the internet failed me on.

We talked about it the week, like a couple days before they were actually going to do it. And then I kind of just assumed this will appear in my feed once it's happened. And it never did. So I forgot about it until now. So I'll have to go watch it today. You're waiting for the AI to tell you. Exactly.

Exactly. And shockingly, the AI, which are people, failed me. Yes. The fart official intelligence has failed you. But that's great that they raised so much money for No Kid Hungry. That's fantastic. That is a very good use of our time in lockdown. And speaking of our time in lockdown, 21 states have rising cases.

California has had the most cases that they've ever had in single days. So, you know what we've been sitting here saying, which is, you know, it's not over. It's not over. No, it's not over. And in wonderful news, I saw a headline right before we started to record that at least two counties in Arizona are starting to hit their max capacity in hospitals.

Guess what that means, kids, when that happens? We go back into lockdown. Yep. You know that whole thing that we've been doing for three and a half fucking months to avoid? Well, we've been doing. Yeah. Turns out some people think that they got to go back to work now and then everything's going to get worse.

So, basically, you ruin the economy, you put people out of work all for nothing, and now we're starting from scratch. Way to go, folks. Yep. Just awesome. Hey, hey, and goodness, Brian. Hey, and Brian, I was going to save this for Media Candy, but I'll just say it right now because it's pertinent.

Studios for movies and TV are reopening on Friday. Oh, okay. Great. Yeah. I can't wait to see all the wearing masks versions of movies that we were going to get. Because they should be. Because, look, people, it's here still.

It is growing right now. It has not gone away. I don't give a shit that you want to get your fucking haircut. It's here. It hasn't left. Anyways, wear masks. Look, from everything that we're seeing now, there are some encouraging signs. If you're outdoors, if you're keeping your social distancing, which you're not when you're doing your protests, and you're at least wearing your masks, chance of spread is very, very small.

And there are studies coming out saying that apparently asymptomatic people are really not spreading it very much. So, it's mostly really sick people. Indoors, that's the main problem. Guess what that means? No fucking restaurants, no fucking bars, people. No churches, no choirs, no indoors.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's all go back out to nature. Let's do everything in nature now. Anyways, I hate being right, but god damn it, we're always right. That's the thing. It's like, it's common fucking sense. Yes. Jesus. So, because this is going to be here for a long time, just a quick update on our GOG.show slash shop, our masks.

Team Brian has taken the lead, I saw last night. Excellent. Good for you. Team Brian. So, we're doing pretty well. Go ahead, get over there, get yourself some masks. They're pretty fun. We put up some pictures, most liked thing that we've put up ever. I think mostly because your hair is just epic, Jason.

Yes, my COVID hair was on full display that day. Yeah. And we've added a coffee mug because people have been asking about that. It's just kind of your boring standard logo coffee mug. I'm going to try to do some other stuff in the coming weeks. So, you know. Because you're not going anywhere because the fucking pandemic hasn't gone away.

Yes. Not that I ever did in the first place. I was hoping to get out of the house at this point, but thanks, everyone. You fucked that up for me. Yeah. So, I'll be adding some stuff so you can help contribute to the No Grump Hungry charity campaign. Yes, No Grump Hungry. Because this is all Jason and I are doing now.

That's pretty much it. You know, this whole thing reminds me of the special that, what's his name, did with the Australian guy that did the guns thing. Oh, had the TV show, Jim Jeffries. My God, how am I flaking on it?

Jim Jeffries. Jim Jeffries. Yes, yes, yes. Jim Jeffries in the special where he talks about the gun thing also had a bit about Brad. Brad is, and these are his words, I believe, the fucking retard that goes out, gets drunk, and kills a kid. So, now we all have to drive 30 miles an hour.

You know? Yes. So, fuck you, Brad. That's, you know, the country now is Brad. Welcome to the United States of Brad. The United States of Brads and Karens. Just what we always wanted. Yep. So, over the weekend, I was sitting at my mom's house, as I do now, to get some space and some sun and some human contact in a safe way.

And went into the room, fired up the laptop, because we had gotten some donations from PayPal, and I'd like to get those in right away. Thank you very much. And I then hit the Facebook button to check the book of the face, because I try to stay off of it on my phone these days. And I had gotten a new redesign for the browser.

Oh, you finally got the new design. I've been on that for a while now. Well, interestingly enough, it's gone away. I'm back on the old one. I don't know how or why. By the way, Zuck and all other tech titans, boy, do we love being guinea pigs for you guys. It's awesome.

But the new timeline, or the new design, when it rolled out, was great, because I could see absolutely zero timeline without scrolling. It was all the shit that they want to promote that I don't like. Yep. I don't care about people's stories, but what do they put?

Top and center? People's stories. Hugely. Facebook Watch, I don't give a shit about. All over the place. Can't get to anything that I want to get to easily. Basically, their entire product line for the last 12 years that we have begrudgingly enjoyed disappear from the new design, and it's all pushed out their new shit that I don't care about.

So thanks for that. And I love this. I just opened it up just so I could make fun of it. So yeah, you've got this giant block of stories at the top with people's icons, and they're all empty. Yeah, because nobody uses Facebook stories. I've got two stories in here.

I've got Gabriel Iglesias, Fluffy, the comedian, who's awesome. And I've got Zane Lamprey. And that's it. So brands. Yeah, brands use it. And then I've got three empty black boxes. Thanks, Facebook. I will tell you, though, here's the good part. Most recent, which I have on my left sidebar now, when I click most recent.

You can, by the way, get rid of the stories thing by clicking the X. It does come back fairly regularly. Like any time you reload the page. Yes. But most recent has stuck for me, which is a new thing. It's actually like the past week.

It stays at most recent. I didn't notice that. Yeah, maybe they've learned something from Twitter. Except I went over to Twitter today, and of course, it went back to, you know, top stories. I'm like, fuck you. God damn it, Jack. So, yeah. But I actually like the new design because it's so terrible that I don't feel like going back and looking at it anymore.

That was definitely something I was thinking as I was watching it. And thankfully, it did go away for me, but I'm sure it'll come back. Was if this is the new rollout, I might go back to only looking at it on mobile. This will keep me off of it on my desktop because it's horrible. Oh, great.

I just scrolled down and I saw somebody. Okay, people, I'm going to give you a tip on how to not internet because that's kind of our thing. Apparently, how to not internet is something that happens. Do not take a screenshot of a tweet and post it to Facebook.

Stop that shit because right now I'm scrolling through my pristine new most recent timeline on Facebook. And what am I what am I hit with a tweet by Donald Trump, who I have surgically removed from my Twitter timeline. So I don't have to see anything from the carrot in chief.

And now I see a tweet that Buffalo protesters shoved by police could be an Antifa provocateur. Seventy five year old man was pushed. Fuck you. Well, you know, Donald, but also fuck you to whoever posted this. I'm not going to out you on the show because you're still my friend.

But fuck you for doing that. I didn't need to see that. Talk about hashtag life goals, though. When I'm 75 years old, I want to be a provocateur of some sort. Seriously. That sounds groovy. We could be a grumpateur. That'll be it. I don't want to talk too much about that Buffalo thing because I could go on for hours.

Anyways. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I was just people. Also, on Instagram, don't write something in the notes app. Take a screenshot of it and then post it. That's what other platforms are for. Stop it. You idiot. Making me mad today.

Well, speaking of social media, we have been following what's been going on with Facebook after Twitter decided to grow tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little pair of balls and put one flag on a Trump post. But Facebook obviously did nothing. And this has divided Facebook.

We've talked about the open call with the employees ranting at Zuckerberg for not doing anything. We've had a couple of employees already resign in protest. There is a latest employee who posted a resignation note on the group's Facebook internal workplace app on Thursday.

This note, which was obtained by Recode and other people, is addressed to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and makes an argument that Facebook is hurting black people inside and outside the company with its hands-off approach to Trump's inflammatory posts. He, this guy, I don't know who he is.

They've redacted the name, is doing exactly what you and I, Jason, said that employees who are disgruntled and upset with their tech companies should do. Quit. Stop working there. He says, I'm deeply ashamed of working in a company that gives free reign to a racist post because it is by a politician, wrote the employee, who is not black but identifies as a person of color.

So, yeah, he just basically up and said, I don't believe in what you're doing. I think it's a load of crap. He does make fun of Zuckerberg's theory that, you know, he did his own deep research about the statement and felt that it's not a dog whistle for vigilante supporters.

And, you know, he asks, just because you don't believe it's a signal for further violence, and please tell us how you research this. Did you collect data for how words are interpreted? Can you honestly look black people in the eye and say that there's not a chance it will be interpreted as such? So, and he said, I'm out of here. That's exactly what Karis Wisher said, too.

Yeah. Yeah. Share your work. Share your work, asshole. And here's the sentence that is exactly what you and I were talking about. I cannot give my time an intellectual contribution to a company whose leadership is too cowardly to take a stand. Well said, sir. All right. Bravo. There you go.

Bravo. If you'd like to learn how to podcast, give me a call. I'll teach you. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure there's a podcast in the work there. It used to be a book deal. Now it's a podcast. Now it's a podcast. So we've talked in the past about Anthony Lewandowski. Oh, yes. Yes.

I always think Lewandowski, who is my favorite striker for Bayern Munich. Okay. Well, no, this is Anthony Lewandowski, who is also starting, what was it? The Church of AI. He tried to start a religion after all this crap. But yes, he worked for Alphabet and the self-driving car, you know, subsidy of Alphabet monopoly.

Anyway, so he took off and gave all of his intellectual property to Uber and tried to do an arm's length deal because he started a trucking company, you know, for self-driving trucks. And he thought that, okay, I'm going to start a self-driving truck company and then they can acquire the self-driving truck company and then they can get the IP from the self-driving truck company that I stole from Google.

If I put it in this shell and then this shell takes over this shell, guess what's under the shell? There's the rock. Yes, yes, exactly. It's an arm's length transaction is what they call it in real estate. And well, he got dinged for $180 million. So Google has sued him and won for $180 million.

And he said that when he went to go work for Uber, they said that they would take care of him if anything like this happened. Well, Uber is saying, go fuck yourself, dude. We're not paying it. We're not paying it. So it's very interesting.

You can't trust a company that spends all their time lying. Look, okay, let's watch Uber. Let's take a brief glance at Uber's history. Go into cities, basically tell the city government, fuck you. We're going to do whatever we want and we're not going to have to listen to you and we're not going to play by your rules.

Hmm. Is that a company that you should trust when they say they're going to take care of you? This is a fantastic walk down memory lane, Brian. It really is. Because yes. And this is back when Travis Kalanick was still there who got booted for being a monumental asshole.

So, and now they're just saying, yeah, no, you know, they're, they had an indemnification agreement. Well, guess what? When you're busted, that goes out the window. And they, Uber knew what was going on. Lewandowski knew what was going on.

And Google knew what was going on. And Google said, we're going to burn your ass. And guess what? In, in every party here, Google is the one in the right. The guy stole it. God, it feels dirty to say that, doesn't it? It does. It really does. It's like, I'm on, I'm on team Google for this one because this guy really did steal IP that Google paid him to produce.

And then he took it to Uber and did it in a way that is so blatantly criminal that there's just no winner here. And, and, you know, here's the thing though. Anthony Lewandowski, he can afford to pay the fine. That's how gross this whole thing is because he is so rich from all of his nefarious dealings that he can afford to pay the fine and still be a millionaire.

Now, think about this for a second too, Jason. Think about the insane amounts of money that we're talking about right now for technology that we will not see on the roads for 20 years. And in 15 years, we're going to say 20 years and in 20 years, we're going to say another 20 years.

That's how much money over something that will not exist probably within our lifetimes. I know it's disgusting. The whole thing is disgusting. So, you know, I, you know, I'm all for business, you know, make your money, do your thing. But when it comes down to this shit, this blue sky, let's make some shit up and create a technology that can't even function properly.

Yeah, and if you think it does, then ask the woman on the bike in, in Arizona, she'll tell you a little different story. Oh, wait, she can't because she's fucking dead. So, yeah, I think, I think this whole thing just, it just turns my stomach. Yeah, it's, it's not fun.

So anyways, if you're out and about protesting, as most people are wont to do these days, first off, wear your Grumpy Old Geeks mask, please. Or any mask at this point, because just stick a paper bag over your head. I don't care what you do, but let's stop the spread of this stuff because it's getting ridiculous. Anyways, if you're worried about your phone, as you should be, there's some interesting information over on a Recode article.

The police wants your phone data. Here's what they can get and what they can't. It kind of gets into the nuts and bolts of what exactly the police at this point in time can do. It is confusing because it's a patchwork of different laws and different ways that law enforcement agencies can get to you, depending on where you live, the jurisdiction of the law enforcement agency that is investigating you, etc., etc.

And they break it down pretty well. So, yeah, there's a couple different things here, and I'm just going to do their short answers. If you are interested in this, you can go read the long answers. Law enforcement wants access to third-party data on your phone. What can it get? Short answer, whatever it wants with the right court order.

So third-party data is up for grabs, basically. Law enforcement wants access to your personal data on your phone. Can they do that? The short answer there is if your phone is protected by a passcode or a biometric unlocking feature, there's a chance cops cannot gain access to your personal data, but that's not guaranteed because they could have those fun Israeli devices in your particular law enforcement area, in which case, Bob's your uncle.

That thing's opened up in two seconds. Fucking Israelis. Yeah. And number three, sadly, I have died. Law enforcement wants to unlock my phone, but they can't get my password due to my aforementioned death. What happens now? The short answer, your Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights generally end when you do, but other parties have rights, too, and those might be enough to keep the government out of your phone.

It's a pretty interesting article, and like I said, it's really – you're going to have to do some research if you really want to know because it is dependent on where you are and what law enforcement agencies are operating in your area at the time because we do not have any kind of national statute about this or anything.

It is a patchwork of different laws. Yeah, and here's the deal. If you're going to go out and do nefarious shit with your phone when you're protesting, leave your phone at home. Come on, you dumb shit. I think from what we've seen over the last 13 days, you don't necessarily have to be doing anything nefarious.

That's true, too. I was going to bring that up, but yeah. I mean, you could just be a 74-year-old provocateur. 75, actually. No, 75. But yeah, you know. I just – fucking – what the fuck?

And moving on. I'm sorry. This is new to me. This is breaking news to me, and I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Never mind. Moving on. Anyways, yeah. Okay. Say what you will. Okay. Even if he is a jackbooted provocateur, maybe he carried a fucking socialist card or something like that way back in the day.

Some people have even argued, oh, he was going over there and he touched the policeman's belt. That's a no-no. You still don't knock over a 75-year-old dude. And even if you do knock over a 75-year-old dude, the fifth or sixth cop that stepped over him while he was bleeding from his ears should have stopped to help him.

That is your job. Yep. And you know what I have to do? I did notice this in the video because I had to watch the video because everybody fucking posted it and I didn't want to see it. The first person to actually stop and help him was National Guard. Yep. And he was told to go away. Yeah, which is...

Yeah. Fucking... Fuck. All right. Moving on. Moving on to our more typical annoyances. We've spent a long time on this show complaining about how AI doesn't exactly... doesn't even exist, doesn't really work very well. It is based on the biases of the people that create it.

Most of the time it's just people anyways. The same for algorithms. They can be really, really, really bad. In fact, most of the time that they are, but that doesn't seem to be stopping anybody, including the state of Michigan, which has a new computer program, the Michigan Integrated Data Automated System, or MIDAS, because it has the golden touch, apparently, Jason, to detect fraud and automatically charge people with misrepresentation and demand repayment for their unemployment system.

Now, perhaps they expected a bit of a... Oh, God. Perhaps they expected a bit of a... The golden fist of MIDAS. That's because you're going to get fisted. Fisted by MIDAS, yes. Now, perhaps they expected a bit of a soft launch, not expecting 40 million people to be unemployed in the United States when they unleash this beast, but it has happened.

And although the agency still hasn't publicly released details about the algorithm, class action lawsuits allege that the system searched unemployment data sets and used flawed assumptions, shocking, to flag people for frauds, such as deferring to an employer who said an employee had quit and was thus ineligible for benefits when that person had actually been laid off and was eligible for benefits.

Over a two-year period, the agency has charged about 40,000 people, billing them for about five times the original benefits, which includes repayment and fines of 400% plus interest. Fuck you. Yes. At mid-later outcry, the agency ran a partial audit and admitted that 93% of the charges had been erroneous.

93% failure rate. 93% failure rate. Oh, my God. So far, the agency has made no public statements explaining what exactly went wrong. Linda Robinson, an agency representative, declined Undark's interview request by email, writing, we cannot comment due to pending litigation.

That's right. As they point out here, the automated system in Michigan is a case study in all the ways an algorithm can go wrong. The citizens should not be the guinea pigs in testing whether the systems work. Oh, man. 93%.

90%. Oh, my God. Error rate. Wow. Yay, algorithms. Oh, man. I mean, even a monkey at a keyboard would still get you 50%. If I were blindfolded and sat in front of a computer and just hit keys, I would do better than that.

Exactly. Oh, fart official intelligence. I'm telling you, man. That's where we're headed. Well, and going on with that tradition here, this is great. NYU report offers a plan for the content moderation industry.

Now, NYU professor Paul M. Barrett, he's got a few ideas on how to revamp the industry. Brian, we've been doing this show for seven and a half years. We've talked about contractors and the gig economy for most of that.

Would you like to know what Paul M. Barrett's idea is for content moderation for big tech? Maybe they take it in-house? Maybe they hire the people. Yeah, there we go. We have benefits and a living wage and healthcare and, you know, maybe some mental health support because they have to see the worst of the worst of humanity every single day.

But Jason, we only have enough cash for Mark Zuckerberg to build a small castle out of cash and money stacked together. We can't possibly spend any of that money on improving our product. Scrooge Mick Zuckerberg needs those three Olympic-sized swimming pools filled with latinum to swim around in.

So, yes. Oh, my God. Yes. I mean, I could go through this, but the long and the short of it is they need to actually hire people to do this in-house and they need to, like, ramp up the amount of people that are going to do it.

And importantly, he's also pointing out that they need to be local moderation teams that understand the language and nuance, which I think is a real big problem right now. Because as we're outsourcing everything to the Philippines and other places, local nuance is lost. It's totally lost.

It's totally lost. And the fact that they had to pay out $52 million to $11,250 of its moderators should show them the fact that it would probably actually be cheaper in the long run, create a better product, and be better for humanity if they just did it in-house.

Right. Agreed. And guess what they're going to do? None of it, probably. No. So, here are a few of the other prescriptions. Yes. Double the number of human moderators. Moderators will be able to rotate shifts more often and overall view less terrifying content. Okay.

Put moderation teams in every country. So, they're trained in the local languages and politics, which we just talked about. And give moderators more mental health support. Trauma counseling is urgently needed, but most have a tricky time getting it. And I love this. When there was the Facebook walkout, they said that they would love to, but they're blocked from doing it because they can't, because they're not actually Facebook employees and cannot actually do a walkout to protest the working conditions because they're contractors.

Look, let me put in a modest proposal of my own and one that I've seen work at a couple of companies, including the company that I've now been furloughed from. And I think this is a brilliant way to deal with these sorts of things. You don't even have to hire on, say, specialists.

You probably should, especially a company like Facebook. It's just a gargantuan job, so you have to hire on a bunch of people to do it. But here is something that I suggest for all companies to deal with customer service or moderation. You've got the tools to put everything.

Everything goes into a system, and it's fed. It's not like you're just sitting there scrolling through your own Facebook looking at stuff. It's fed to people. Part of your job, no matter who you are, I don't care if you're the janitor, if you're a full-time employee, or the CEO, is everybody puts in an hour a week.

Everyone. Everyone in the company. Absolutely everyone. That's it. Everybody has to do it. At least an hour. Mm-hmm. Things will change then. Not going to happen, though. Nope. Of course not. Can you imagine Zuckerberg doing moderation for an hour? Oh, God. Actually having to see what happens on his own platform?

Yeah. Might turn him into a human being. Oh, wait, no. Too late. Now, I freely admit I am not a gamer. I don't, I'm not a big game guy. I've only played a few games in my entire life, and I certainly don't understand watching other people play games, but apparently a lot of people do seem to really enjoy this, and there's a whole service dedicated to it, Twitch.

Now, Twitch has many other things now as well, but it did start off as basically a watch other people play games platform. It started off as Justin.TV, where they basically wore cameras all day long, like that asshole that came in my house. Fucking Nick Douglas, you ass wipey.

But anyway, yes. Burning bridges on this day's show, are we? I burned, look, when it comes to Nick Douglas and Justin.TV, I burned that bridge. Go back to episode, like, maybe three. I don't care. All right. So, moving on, anyways. The story here is that they're having some problems over there. The company has acknowledged a sudden influx of DMCA takedown requests against streamers for allegedly violating music copyright and clips captured by viewers between 2017 and 2019.

Yes, that's because these clips stay up there forever and get old viewings. So, if you have used music illegally, you are going to get a takedown notice. So, this is a problem because apparently they run a three-strike system over there. So, streamers can get permanently banned for getting three strikes with relatively little warning and for clips they didn't even choose to create.

Because, yes, other people can record you and put that clip up there and it is still your content. Hmm. Hmm. Interesting. I wonder how smart this thing is because games have music in it. Yes. So, if they're doing a clip of a gameplay and there's music behind it, is that part of what's being taken down here now?

That is an interesting question. So, we don't really know all of the ins and outs here because certainly for some games, the music is licensed for internal use in the game, but not for broadcast. And this is considered broadcast. So, a lot of streamers don't even know what copyrighted material they are using intentionally or not.

However, the service does offer music that you can put on top of things that is cleared. So, you could have always used that option, but you didn't sometimes. And other people just play their own background music. So, you can't do that. Well, yeah. Welcome to the world. Welcome to the reason we don't have copyrighted music in our podcasts.

Anymore. Anymore. And so, I got to say, it's like they need to have some kind of mechanism in place for in-game music that has already been cleared for the gameplay. Yep. And figure out how they can do that. And Twitch should have like a secondary deal in place with all of the game studios and have – there's got to be some way that they can legally do this because, you know, Twitch is a monster.

It's owned by Amazon now for Christ's sake. So, they can figure it out. It's not like they don't have the money to make it work because, I mean, I love Twitch. I, you know, if I'm stuck on a level, I want to go find somebody that's playing that level and see how they cleared it. It's – for me, it's great. Oh, it's like a cheat sheet for you.

It's a totally cheat sheet. Yeah. You know, if I'm really stuck on a hard level and I can't get past the boss, I want to go check out Twitch and I'll search and I'll find somebody who actually beat the level. It's great. So, but yeah, there's a lot of music that goes into those games and a lot of high-paid music.

So, they need to figure out how to do this legally and get it done.

At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then, explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

From beauty and fashion to home, culinary, and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com.

Media candy. So, I am scraping the barrel on content here, Jason. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. So, I'm even going with the suggestions being thrown up by the platforms themselves, which led me to watch something that I thought would be pretty good, seemed to be anyways.

The Vast of Night over on Amazon Prime. This was actually a fan recommendation, though, too, last week. Oh, was it? Yes. Yeah. You know why? Because Amazon's listening to us. Bezos, get out of my podcast, Bezos. Yep. So, I watched it.

It was an attempt to do basically sci-fi noir. And it was sci-fi noir. This is something that you could have easily seen broadcast on TV in the 1950s. It was cute and clever. I do wish that they would have modernized the ending a little bit instead of just cheesing out like they did.

But there you go. The ending was terrible. It was absolutely terrible. The entire film was 50s, like rapid-fire banter. It was all audio-based. Everything was audio-based. And then when they got to the last 20 minutes, it went to all visual, and they shit the bed.

I hated the ending of this show. I'm not going to go into any spoilers on it, but I mean, my spoiler is don't fucking watch it. It sucked. The ending sucked. It ruined the whole thing. And it had so much promise.

It could have been so good. I didn't hate it as much as all that. I thought the ending was insanely predictable. You knew what was going to happen, and that's a bit of a bummer, and I do wish they would have put a twist in there. But I didn't hate it, but certainly you and I were immediately texting each other talking about, Man, if we go back into lockdown, and it looks like we will, boy, what are we going to be watching in two months?

Because we're really getting to the bottom of the barrel here. I'm guessing at the library is going to ramp up quite a bit. Yeah, I have a feeling at the library is going to be ramping up again, because recently I haven't been able to read, but I have gone and watched just about everything at this point. However, I did find an article saying we do have some stuff to look forward to, and I would imagine that these things are not going to be released into theaters, because what theaters?

And they'll be coming out directly to us. But then again, maybe not, because Universal, in their infinite wisdom, is still holding on to Minions 2 and not releasing that, hoping to get a theatrical release. Thanks a lot. But yeah, Space.com did a nice little article about the movies that are still coming, in terms of relatively sci-fi sort of stuff this year, which includes Dune, Bill & Ted, Face the Music, Wonder Woman 1984, etc., etc., to which I say to you all,

please just release them already. Nobody's going to be going to theaters this year. No one. I'll give you a 50. I'll give you a 50. Yeah, I'll pay 25 to 50 bucks or something like that, a one-time just to own it right away. Yeah, I'll give you 50 bucks for Bill & Ted right now.

You know, come on, guys. Right. And I'm the guy that goes to Sweden all the time. I will pay you that. I will give you another $50 to not release another fucking Dune movie, though, because we don't need another fucking Dune movie. Actually, what we need is a good Dune movie, and I don't think we're ever going to get that, so that's the problem.

We don't need another bad one, so we'll see. Yeah, but Bill & Ted Face the Music official trailer number one has come out today, so I watched that this morning. Did you get a chance to check it out? No, not yet. Does it give you the feels? It kind of does. It's pretty funny. It's pretty funny.

I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, I was wondering how they were going to do it and what the storyline was going to be, and this gives you a hint to what the storyline is, and I think they did a really good job. Okay, excellent. Because I'm running out of content, I turned to my free, thanks to you, Jason, Masterclass subscription, and I watched Paul Krugman teaches economics and society.

Oh, that sounds like a barn burner. Oh, yeah. It was a real barn burner. It entertained me for hours on end, but, yes, it wasn't very entertaining, but, boy, do you learn a lot, and at the end of it, you know, he's basically gone through, this is the reason that everything kind of sucks, this is how economics works, and just because economics seems to work this way, we need to remember that economics is a human construct, and we can put on regulations and rules to make it good for all of humanity.

Eh, who wants to do that? Go learn a lot. It was really well done, man. I've got to say, this is my second masterclass, and I've enjoyed both of them, so. Okay, yeah, no, I mean, I'm telling you right now, man, it's, uh, I love masterclass. It's, I, so, I mean, it's light. It's, like, you know, very light on the, on the content for a lot of them, but I, I still come away from every class that I've taken so far with, with at least one nugget, you know?

Oh, there's plenty of nuggets in this one, man, and you will, uh, yeah, it's, it's definitely worth it. Definitely worth it, especially right now. Uh, and in terms of music, uh, one of my favorite artists from the 90s, Ruby, has released some new songs. I'm very excited about that over at Bandcamp, because, you know, she's old now at this point and can't get a major label deal.

Uh, she used to be the lead singer for the indie punk band Silverfish, went solo as Ruby, uh, in 94. Couple great albums. Uh, if you've never heard any of her music, I do recommend going and listening to, uh, the albums Short Staffed at the Gene Pool and, uh, Waiting for Light.

They're both really good. I love all of her old stuff and, uh, the new stuff sounds pretty good too. So, recommendation there, link in the show notes. And then I went down a severe music documentary rabbit hole this week. Oh my god, there's even new ones in here that I missed, oh my god. Yeah, well, I watched another one last night.

I basically watched a music documentary every single night for the last week. Nice. I started with Can't Stand Losing You, Surviving the Police by Andy Summers. Um, I, Police were probably my first major band that I loved completely independently of, like, any music stuff that my parents were listening to.

So, very early on, I liked them. Too young to ever see them live until their reunion. And, uh, this actually centers around, uh, the reunion show that they did at Dodger Stadium that I went to. Oh, you saw them? Nice. As kind of a motif. Yeah. Very cool. Oh, man, I wish I'd have seen them. So, uh, it was really good.

It was really interesting. And boy, Sting's an asshole. Yeah, that's what I kind of got. I watched the trailer, and I'm going to watch it, but, yeah. Yeah, he's an ass. Now, they're all kind of assholes, and they freely admit that they were assholes back then, but I think Andy Summers and Stuart Copeland both became good people later on, and Sting continued on being an asshole.

Uh, he doesn't go out of his way to portray Sting as an asshole. He let Sting do it himself. So, it's pretty well done. When you've got the material, give him enough rope, you know? Yeah, exactly. But, uh, it was fascinating. It was really, really worth it if you even have any kind of... If you ever listen to The Police in your life, this is definitely a documentary worth watching.

Yeah, that's the one I'm really looking forward to because I went through the list that you have here, and I loved The Police. I was a huge fan, and Stuart has turned into just such a cool guy, you know? Yeah. He did an episode when Tim Ferriss did his first show, and Stuart taught him how to play drums because he had to go...

Like, he had a week to learn how to play drums for a live show, and Stuart taught him how to do it. Yep. And he just seems like a really cool guy. Yeah, he's the guy that kind of started the band, too. So, it's really... I mean, this documentary goes from the very, very beginning of Andy Summers' life to joining The Police early on, all the way through the L.A. reunion show and tour and all that sort of stuff.

So, highly recommended. But the one that I recommend the absolute most is Colin Hay, Waiting for My Real Life. Now, Colin Hay was the lead singer of Men at Work. I liked Men at Work when I was a kid. Who doesn't like Down Under? Everybody loves that song. But I've also really enjoyed his solo work in the recent years as have many, many, many, many, many influential people.

He is a musician's musician, and this documentary is absolutely stunning. I mean, talk about the rise and fall. You know, he went from... They went from being the absolute biggest band on the planet for a run of three to four years, right around the same time as The Police, actually. And I've always kind of thought Colin Hay and Sting were similar in certain ways in that they have very unique voices, and I always really enjoyed their singing.

But then he basically gambled on a solo career, as Sting did, and Sting became super massively even more famous, and Colin Hay faded into obscurity, which is kind of a sad thing, and if you watch this documentary, you'll be amazed at how talented he is and just how it just didn't work for him and how the music industry can giveth and taketh away.

Okay, I'll check that out because, yeah, that's on my list, too. I added that one and the next one that you're going to talk about. And the next one I'm really curious about. The next one is my second favorite of the documentaries, actually, is Mystify Michael Hutchins, the lead singer of In Excess.

I was never a huge In Excess fan. They were one of the bands where I never bought the albums, but if they came on the radio, as they did nonstop in the 80s and early 90s, I didn't turn it away. But a very tragic story about this guy and a fucking stunning documentary, man.

It's definitely worth watching. I had no idea some of the things that happened to him, including getting in kind of a street fight and bashing his head and basically getting severe brain damage. Oh, I didn't know that either. He lost his sense of smell. It totally, well, yeah, it kind of led to the whole downfall and why he ended up committing suicide and it was pretty tragic, but a very well done documentary.

Loved it. Okay, cool. Yeah, I remember, I mean, I had all the cassettes of In Excess because, what was it, Columbia House when you'd send in the 99 cents and get six tapes and then they'd do that? I had, I remember listening to In Excess and R.E.M.

on Loop a lot. And the next, the next two I have are basically only for super fans of the bands because they're more concert films with just a smattering of behind the scenes sort of stuff. The Stone Rose is made of stone and Shut Up and Play the Hits which is about LCD Sound System's last ever show.

Yeah, pass on those. And I gotta say, I watched last week tonight the other day when it came out. It was rough, but I gotta say, here's the thing that I learned from watching last week tonight. John Oliver just won another fucking Emmy from his garage.

Yep. I mean, that is an Emmy award-winning show. All they have to do is submit that show. Done. Yep. You've got an Emmy. It's insanely good. Insanely good. And I have to say, another show that I saw which comes from Apple TV Plus which is The Banker.

Yes, you sent me that and I was like, hmm, Apple TV Plus. Really? This is, this should be up for an Oscar. Absolutely. This movie should absolutely be up for an Oscar. It was one of the best movies we've seen in a long time and my roommate and I were both just like blown away.

We were blown away by how good this was and it's a true story which makes it even better and they show, you know, and I love these true stories when they show the people at the end, you know, and we both grabbed the Kleenex. I got really dusty in the room when we saw the real people doing the real things that they kind of called back to in the show.

It is phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal and one of Sam Jackson's best roles in years and he didn't even have to swear that much. It was great. We've got to get some money in this motherfucking bank. So, since the well hath runneth dry, I went back and I watched Alien Nation this week.

This is the original movie and so it stars Mandy Patinkin and James Caan and it's more about race relations than it is about sci-fi, which is great and it holds up. It has legs. It absolutely has legs.

It's got the 80s-ness in it, for sure, with the music and the pacing and the, you know, the slow-ass fight scenes and things like that but all in all, it totally holds up. I have to go back and watch the series again, too, because I remember loving the series. So, but here's the fun thing.

Alien Nation was written by Rockne S. O'Bannon and most people don't know that name but he also wrote Sequest DSV with Roy Scheider which was a great series and he also wrote Farscape which I talk about ad nauseum. Yes, yes, you do.

Yes, you do. Well, you still haven't gone and watched it so I haven't talked about it enough. As soon as you start, as soon as you go back and watch Farscape, I'll stop talking about it. How's that? All right. Not going to happen. And I found a new podcast called Rabbit Hole. It's a New York Times podcast with Kevin Roos who I always get confused.

I'm like, my friend Kevin Rose just wrote for the New York Times. Nope, nope, Kevin Roos. And the tagline is, what is the internet doing to us? The Times Tech Columnist Kevin Roos discovers what happens when our lives move online. They took eight episodes to basically summarize what we usually say in about three sentences.

Well, to be fair, we're on 446 episodes. Yeah, yeah. But it's like, okay, filter bubbles are real. AI sucks and you can go down a rabbit hole if you listen to what they're telling you. It's well done because they've got New York Times budget money, you know.

But it's like, seriously, eight episodes? Just listen to like three of ours and you're done. That's all. But it's well produced. It's a good show, I think. Okay. Yeah, sounds good. Good interviews. I mean, see, this is the difference when you have New York Times fuck you money.

They can get the CEO of YouTube on the line and have interviews with her. And they can also get the guy who wrote the algorithms that created the filter bubbles on YouTube as well. So, something that we generally cannot do. Now, you went down the music documentary hole, I went down the TV documentary hole and I watched Never Surrender, a Galaxy Quest documentary.

Okay. Oh my God. I mean, Galaxy Quest is one of the greatest movies ever made. Yes. If you disagree with me, then unsubscribe to this show immediately because you're somebody I don't want to know. Don't do that. I gotta say, it's funny. Anyway, yeah, it's a great documentary because they talk to everybody except, of course, for Alan Rickman.

Yeah, of course. And when I was watching it, all I could think about was, you know, how much I miss Alan Rickman. And if you've never seen Epic Tea Time with Alan Rickman, I put the link in the show notes. Just go watch it. It's seven and a half minutes of Alan Rickman having very angry tea.

And it is a gorgeous watch. You just have to sit back. It's very zen and you will enjoy it. Trust me. But it also got me thinking about another great movie that everybody should also watch is Mystery Men. Have you seen Mystery Men? I have. I have to say it did not leave a lasting impression.

Okay. Try it again. Try it again. I mean, I'm not a huge Ben Stiller fan, but this was one of those I thought this was a great movie and I still think it's a great movie. But yeah, I mean, it's a ragtag band of superheroes who just are kind of weird.

You know? I think this is the movie that made me realize that Ben Stiller can only play Ben Stiller. That's true. That's true. I mean, there's Cable Guy where they still have the best scene in almost any movie where they go to medieval times. That is a great scene, but the rest of the movie is garbage.

And most of Ben Stiller's movies in my opinion are kind of garbagey, but the real star of Mystery Men is Hank Azaria. You've got to go with that. And well, Janine Garofalo, she's awesome in it too. You know? I mean, it's got a great cast. So if you need to kill an hour and a half because there's nothing left to watch on Netflix and you've reached the end of the internet, give Mystery Men a try.

It's worth it. All right. Moron of the week. Well, my moron of the week, I got turned on to this Twitter account thanks to a listener listed in feedback below. We're going to get to that in a second. And it is simply glorious.

It is influencers in the wild over on Twitter. And boy, oh boy, oh boy, there's a lot of morons in there. It's wonderful. I am not going to spoil anything. Just click on the link in the show notes and enjoy the shit show.

Oh my God. I'm scrolling through. I can't play into the videos. But yes, it's pretty damn good. Feedback loop. Over at Patreon, we've got Jacobo, Bart, and Jamie.

Thank you very much. And Andy writes in, Panic, no more fucks to give. Please don't stop. Love the show. Irreverent, acerbic, exposing hypocrisy and always entertaining. Well worth a bump up in the monthly Patreon pledge. Have a white claw on me. Well, thank you very much, Andy. Thank you. I really appreciate it.

And we got an email from Rabbi Steven. Not an email, a Patreon, whatever. See, there's just too many ways to get in contact with this. He says, hey youngsters, I am so old that the first computer I bought was an original Compaq Schleppable before Compaq even had hard drives available.

Now that is old. I have just updated my pledge amount to $18. In Hebrew, all letters are also numbers. The value of the Hebrew word life is 18. And I find that your show, your wit, your insights continue to bring joy to my life. Often I will listen to your show on Shabbat afternoon as a way of enjoying the day.

Yes, I do find your show spiritually and intellectually rejuvenating. Keep up the grumpy. Wow. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Steven. Thank you very much. Over at PayPal, we've got David, William, Dan, Elwin, Breed, Daniel, Andrew, Michael, Ralph, and Adam. Thank you guys so much.

Yes. Thank you. And over at Twitter, Karthik writes in, spending my Sunday listening to episode 445 and can't agree with you guys more. UK NHS app is just total crap. Still listening in the aisle of white and now going manual, but even that is useless. UK government just lost the plot in the COVID crisis.

I think everybody lost the plot. Yeah. Glad we're not alone. We're all in the same sinking boat. And Ma6502 writes in, the wipes JPD recently bought, they killed 99.9% or kills 99.99%.

I think the .9 are showing up more and more, but I haven't seen the .99 since March. Have you noticed that every company that a while ago was emailing their action plans to comply with GDPR is now emailing their action plans to combat racism? They're Lysol, so I think they're 99.9.

I haven't looked. They're in the bunker, so I have to go find them. But yeah, they're just standard Lysol wipes that I get. All right. And Daniel writes in, just received my team Jason masks. Nice. And those are at gog.show slash shop with a coffee.

Yes, and I believe you have pulled ahead. Brian is now in the lead. Team Brian is leading. Yeah. I think that's probably because just the way that the store puts them in order. Mine is first. Okay. To be honest. It's quite possible. Quite possible. And Jacko writes in with a link to the Twitter account influencers, the one that we just talked about basically.

So thank you Jacko for turning us on to that. Yes. And Jeff Henderson writes in, now here's a tech story worth sharing. This utter jerk was caught assaulting a child on video. Twitter folks track him down via bike riding app. And it's a link to the whole escapade over at Twitter. Well done.

All right. And Abumanyu writes in, is this what it's like to earn from podcasts? He sends us a link to, this is how much money a podcast with 50,000 downloads makes over on YouTube. It's also a tutorial as to how to get started making podcasts and they recommend the Blue Yeti.

Fuck you. You just lost me on that one. I'll pass. I kind of scanned through some of this. It seems to me the numbers are pretty inflated. We don't have 50,000 downloads, so I'll tell you when we get there. But I don't, 50,000 downloads is not enough to be able to basically just do a podcast for a living.

It's close. It's close. If you have 50,000, you know, our number would be 75,000 that we could actually make a living on. It depends on your advertisers. It depends on your niche and how much you get per CPM and how you also monetize on the side.

There's a lot of math that goes into making money off a podcast. And I can tell you right now, I know it all and I know that we don't have it. So we don't make that kind of money. So yeah, but don't buy a fucking Blue Yeti, please. Go to GOG.show slash Adorama and pick up one of the mics I recommend.

There you go. And over at GOG.show, Ed G wrote in, thanks for the show. I've been listening for a few months and I can't wait for you guys to be able to get back to tech news. COVID is getting old. Tell me about it, brother. Yeah, yeah. We're going to have to have a chat with Bittner. I think we need to sit him down and say we need to get back to our wheelhouse, my friend.

COVID corner can last a good five minutes, but maybe we do a little security again. I think we need to get back to the, let's get back into people breaking into computers again because yeah, I think we're all kind of sick to death of this shit. And Jason writes in, I've heard the term slacktivism when people use a social media site or hashtag as a substitute for real change.

Was this what you used as a term when you were thinking of? I think you were talking about the icons that we came up with. It was not slacktivism. No, it was like pixeltism or something. I can't remember what it was. It wasn't slacktivism. It was something Icon. I'm going through and having all of our back episodes translated, or not translated.

Transcribed. Translated, transcribed. All of our old episodes are being transcribed right now, so we will find it soon. We will find it soon. It's another reason we do not make money off our podcast. We keep spending money on it. We reinvest. Brian, it's reinvestment.

Right. Someday we'll stop that and actually make something. Right. And Isaac writes in, and actually quite a few people sent us this information all across the board. I don't use that browser, but you probably already heard about Brave's air quotes mistake. And this is a link over at Coindesk.

Despite what happened, I found the end amusing where a user forked it with the soon-to-be-renamed Braver browser. Yeah, we both got turned off to Brave pretty quickly. It always felt like they were doing some nefarious activities in the background to kind of make some money. What they've been doing this time around is putting in affiliate links for themselves and all that sort of stuff.

And don't use the browser. It sucks. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, since I like to shit on people this episode, apparently, I'm going to shit on Brendan Eich. Well, yeah. Brendan Eich, the guy that created JavaScript, the worst programming language in the history of the world that everybody has to use, he's behind the Brave browser and he's a douche.

So don't use Brave because just because he's a douche. But yeah, the hijacking of affiliate codes, that cannot stand. That cannot stand. I originally thought it was because they were trying to do, they've got this in-house advertising, you know, digital cryptocurrency.

Yeah. And I thought that that's what they might be mining while we're doing it, but it just turns out to be a bug in their implementation of basically of Chrome. You know, they forked Chrome and then they forked it up. So we're going with that.

But yeah, yeah. Just here's the deal. Brave, not good. Vivaldi, great. And Brittany writes in with a link to the decline of Long John Silvers. What happened? Which is a video over at YouTube. And she says, Long John Silvers exists still. Yum Foods sold it to the franchise owners so you can find them in and around Kentucky.

We weren't in Kentucky when we found them. I said we were in New Mexico, but maybe that's what we can do, Brian. I did look it up. We can pool our money and we can maybe buy a Long John Silvers. Yeah, let's not do that. You'd probably make less money than podcasting. Especially right now.

Yeah, not a good time to be in the restaurant business. Neil writes in, Hi, Grumps. Twitter in time order bypassing the algorithm. This works on Android and on the web client on a PC. It's search type filter follows minus filter replies after doing the search tap latest at the top. Everyone you follow in time order, you're welcome.

And don't forget to save the search. Chin up over there, guys, and stay grumpy. Okay. Can't I just hit the... Can't I just hit most recent? I think you still get replies and follows and all that sort of stuff. Okay, got it. Just pure clean timeline of tweets.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah. Barbara writes in, this is a link to an article I found very interesting. I had been wondering about exposure to COVID-19 and how much exposure was likely to be a problem. I was very reassured by the information here. Love to listen to you guys. Guess I identify with what you say, being an even older grump.

Also, I went to UCLA a while ago and enjoy hearing about Santa Monica. Hope you guys stay well and keep grumping for us. The risks, know them and avoid them. And this is over at erinbromage.com. I've seen this article posted a couple times at a couple different blogs and personal accounts and things of that nature with this kind of breakdown.

It's good. It's interesting. I do have a couple issues with it. This was last updated May 6th, so that's over a month ago now. And the way that knowledge of this virus is increasing on a daily basis kind of makes me a little leery of it being basically outdated at this point.

I did read through the whole who I am and how does this come together page. And there's a couple quotes that I think people need to keep in mind before they read this as gospel. The blog posts, while factual, discuss emerging science on COVID-19 in a colloquial way. They should not be interpreted in any other way.

My goal is to make the science accessible to the general public. And I am not holding myself out as an expert on the virus or epidemiology. And I rely on the amazing scientists publishing and discussing their work for the material and data content of my posts. These scientists are the true rock stars of the response to COVID-19.

I just enjoy being able to translate their data and findings into prose that non-scientific lay people can more readily understand as we navigate through this pandemic. So it's her interpretation of the data. You need to keep that. His. Not her. It's his. It's a him. It's a him?

Aaron's a him? Aaron's a him. Okay. Spelled E-R-I-N. I've not seen a him. I googled him. It's a dude. There you go. Okay. Hey, that's cool. But yeah, it is his interpretation of the data. So you should keep that in mind when reading this as well.

What I did find, which I found more interesting and helpful to me because it takes in the accounts and opinions of 511 different epidemiologists and basically puts them on a chart of when they will feel comfortable doing things again versus never.

So you can basically get a bigger slice of the pie in terms of opinions of what these people are personally feeling. So this is over at the New York Times when 511 epidemiologists expect a fly hug and do 18 other activities again. And I found it a little depressing because certainly a lot of people aren't ready to do much.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it was People that know are not doing things. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of sad. It's kind of sad. Bruce writes in, Hi, Gogs. How's Planet Insanity? Hope you're keeping safe and stocked up on toilet paper. Strangely enough, in the UK, the new most wanted item is compost from garden centers.

Okay. I picked up this news item on the feed the other day. Seems the UK government has decided not only to develop a tracking app late, buggy, and then to sell its data to big tech. Seems the old adage about being in a hole and digging gleefully ignored. Keep up the good work.

So this is a link to opendemocracy.net talking about the NHS COVID app, the contact tracing app, I guess, that they're launching over there. But unfortunately, they have a lot of deals with private tech firms and they have now caved to pressure and released all the contracts governing its deals with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and of course, Palantir.

So not the best situation. I thought it was bad when we were just giving the data to Foursquare. You do not want your data going to Palantir. No, Palantir, not good. Nope. And Amelia writes in, removing posts from Facebook? Ha ha ha! I removed my entire account five years ago and to this day, I occasionally get emails from Facebook informing me that some stranger wants to add me to his friends.

I even double-checked and tried to log in to the old account using the same credentials still stored in one password. No idea why. And I got a message. This account doesn't exist. Do you want to register? So yeah, good luck with deleting that history on Facebook. Well, Amelia, the thing is, I can put in your email address if I am a dumb shit friend of yours and say, share my contacts.

You know, that people do often because people can be dumb shits. Yes. So if I share my address book with Facebook, they're going to take your email address and they're going to send you an email. So it doesn't actually mean that they still have your account information on file. It means that your friend is a dumb shit.

Also, though, let's remember, they do have your contact. They still do. Yes, they have. They do. Obviously. They 100% do. GDPR be damned. Mike writes in, I heard you say you take magnesium to help you sleep. Please say more. How much do you take and when? Also, the comments from people who complain about your political views.

They sound like whiny bubble living bitches. If they don't like it, they can get their own damn podcast. Grump on. All right, Mike. Magnesium right before bed. Take it at nighttime. I take a product called Magtech. M-A-G-T-E-C-H. You can find it on Amazon.

It's about $35 a bottle. I take three before bed and I am off to the races in about 15 minutes and I don't wake up till the morning and it is just glorious. Yeah. I don't really have sleep issues. I take the bog standard generic and I only take one but it seems to help even though I didn't have issues before.

I do seem to have just a deeper, better sleep. So, there you go. And just a note about this. Some people have, let's say, bowel issues if they take too much magnesium. So, if you find yourself running to the loo first thing in the morning, maybe dial back.

Dial back on that dosage a bit because, yes, it was funny. I was listening to Chris Hardwick's podcast about two years ago and he mentioned that he started taking magnesium before bed and couldn't figure out why he had the shits in the morning. And then he kind of figured it out when he had to go catch a plane and he was running through the airport and he had to pull over for a pit stop.

Not to go off on this tangent too long but I was taking MCT oil for a while and the same thing. Oh, boy. You cannot leave the house. Now's the perfect time. You're in lockdown. Go ahead and try it. But when we get back out in the world again, MCT oil is not on my list of to-dos anymore.

Yeah, yeah. It's like eating a bran muffin before you get stuck in traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. It's like eating 30 bran muffins. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, MCT oil. Definitely. If you need to be regular, load up. Oh, God. Matt writes in, Hiya, Grumps.

Even in somewhat backwards Australia, we have a ridiculous selection of streaming services. I found a website called Just Watch which shows what service you can stream a TV show or movie from and found 29 streaming services to choose from. My guess is the average price would be around $10 a month.

No wonder streaming from Sweden is so popular. Yep. Well, are these legitimate streaming services or are these what the hell are those torrent boxes called that we had for a while? Oh, gosh. I can't remember anymore.

Yeah, I can't remember anymore. There was those torrent streamers and boxes but make sure they're legitimate services if you're going to pay them money but just saying. And Chris writes in, I was sorry to hear you have no more fucks to give but then I remembered you can get extra fucks on the internet at the fucks as a service by the Institute for Unnecessary Technology.

Links in the show notes. I love the name Institute for Unnecessary Technology. That should have been the name of our fucking podcast. It probably should have been. He says, maybe you can hand them out to all those people who say you shouldn't be political. Fuck them. Fuck them all. Yes.

Thanks for all the support everybody. Thank you very much. And Sarah writes in, Brian, I've been listening to the podcast since 2017. You used to frequently talk about tech stocks which influenced me to start investing at the age of 20. I am 23 now and credit you for my purchase of Tesla when it was at $215.

I hate you, Sarah. I should have listened to him. Congratulations, Sarah. You actually listened to me. I really should have listened to him. And very well done, by the way, investing at the age of 20. I wish I would have started at the age of 20. You are going to be sitting pretty when you are looking at retirement. Yeah, me too. I wish I had done that.

Is there a reason you stopped talking about tech stocks specifically? I really value your input. And side note, I'm a moderate Republican and disagree with you politically on some issues, but that's okay. It's your platform and you can say whatever the fuck you want. I fucking love Sarah, by the way.

Sarah is my dream listener right now. First off, she listens to me and that's pretty awesome. And I love the fact that you're a moderate Republican and you don't care because we're all allowed to have our opinions. We're not allowed to beat each other upside the head with them, but we're allowed to have them.

We stopped talking about tech stocks because we did it as a segment for a year. We did a year-long tech stock challenge and we got zero feedback the entire year about doing it. I know! That was so deciding. We did that for a year.

I thought it was a great segment. I loved it and I thought it was really interesting, but nobody really asked us to keep doing it when we stopped. Nobody really commented on it while we were doing it, so that was that. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, we did it just because we said we were going to do it and we went through it and I think I still...

I mean, you owed me a six-pack, which you bought for me and had delivered to my home in Chicago because I did actually make money on Twitter that year. Yes, you did. If I would have kept it, I would have made a lot more money. And then you turned me on to M1 Finance and I have made even more money.

Yeah, M1 Finance has been wonderful. We did talk about that a little bit, so I'll drop the referral code back in the link for the show notes here, but it is a wonderful way to just purchase micro-shares of stocks as you go along and you just send over $100 or $200 a month and buy some stocks and whatever you want and, you know, I don't understand the stock market because, you know, we're living in fucking awful times, but I'm making money.

Yeah, I mean, I've put in about $600 into M1 Finance over the time because I had to stop for a while, but I started... I put in $600. I actually put in $500 and $100 came from you fans of Grumpy Old Geeks who used my affiliate code when we had our competing affiliate code, so I thank you for the $100 there, and I have made, you know, basically $450 off of that $600 that's in there.

Nice. So, and guess where most of it came from, Sarah? That's right, Tesla, because I followed Brian's advice at some point and bought a lot of Tesla, so I think I bought it at $250. Right. I'll take it. I'll take it. So, if you guys want us to talk about stocks again, I'm more than happy to because I've been, I've actually been dipping my toes back in because it seems to be kind of a good time to do that.

If you've got the money to buy, it's not a bad time. Just know what you're purchasing into because obviously a lot of tech stocks are vastly overvalued right now, but yeah, we can start talking about this stuff again. I'm happy to. I'm happy to talk about what I'm doing. So, if anybody wants that besides Sarah, let us know.

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, please click that little star next to the episode.

We're at the top of our game right now. We just have to beat Rogan. So, help us beat Rogan. Closing show! My closing shout-out is to Anthony Bourdain. I can't believe it was two years ago yesterday because we're recording this on Monday or Tuesday.

He died on April. Actually, maybe it was the 7th. I don't know. Here's the deal. Anthony Bourdain killed himself a couple days ago and it feels like it was about... But it feels like it was 10 years ago now. It does. Because so much has happened since then and I miss the motherfucker, man.

Yeah, me too. Me too. It was sad to see that. As I saw my history on Facebook, I saw my updates about Anthony Bourdain the past weekend as well. So, definitely bummed me out a little bit. I would love, love to hear him ranting about everything that's going on right now. You know he would say something just jaw-dropping and see it from a different angle than you ever saw it before, which would be wonderful right now.

Yeah, it really would. I just miss the guy. And now we have Phil Rosenthal. Was it Rosenthal? Yeah. Yeah, we got Phil Rosenthal who is the anti-Bourdain. Kind of. So, if you need some good cooking stuff, go check out Somebody Feed Phil.

Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schillmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to gog.show slash donate. Doss 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 four four six.

From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy and I can't believe we're back at this again, but stay the fuck home. And if you do have to go out, go to gog.show slash shop and buy your Team Jason masks so I can get back on top.

At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then, explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

From beauty and fashion to home, culinary and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com.