448: Unplug Everything!

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. Now, Brian, something we didn't talk about when we had our, hey, this is our, like, tips for working from home episode. There are several episodes now. Multiple times, yes. Been doing this a while. Groundhog Day Syndrome. Do you ever get that?

I don't know what fucking day it is now. Well, that's what I mean. You just, it's like, I go to bed at night and I'm just like, wasn't I just here? Falling asleep the night before and then the next day, it's like, oh, what happened today? Yeah. I mean, you get that in the best of times working from home because you don't really have much of a change up to your schedule.

But certainly now with lockdowns, coronavirus, et cetera, time has stopped having any meaning. So, yes, it's very, it's very difficult. The only things, my days are broken up by meals. That's the only differentiation on hours.

And as far as actual, like, days go, like, it's only since I've started going to my mom's house on weekends that I even really notice a difference between actual days themselves. I know I have podcast recordings scheduled for Tuesday and Friday.

There you go. I know, you know, but still Tuesdays and Fridays sneak up on me. And I'm like, oh, shit, this is tomorrow. On Friday, last Friday, I swore it was Tuesday because we do Tuesdays and Fridays. So I did my normal Tuesday routine because we have things to do around here on Tuesdays because we have the gardener come and things like that.

And I did my whole Tuesday routine until I realized it was Friday. And my roommate the day before had sworn that it was a day off and did everything on the wrong day, too. It's become so silly and you get in your head.

It's like, oh, it's Tuesday. I mean, four hours. I thought it was Tuesday. Yeah. Yeah. Grand house day is a real, real thing. And like I said, I mean, it definitely happens to me before any of this, but it is 100 percent in effect. Now, what I found helpful and this probably isn't going to be a tip that's really going to help anybody that has that does not have a child around three or four.

We have this thing from Disney that helps that it's basically a calendar, right, with with magnets. So it helps it helps him learn the days of the week and the months and all that sort of thing. So it's got magnets for every single day. It's got magnets for numbers.

It's got magnets for months. It's got all that sort of stuff. And that's part of our morning routine is having him come and help do the calendar. So I actually know what day it is most days. I've got I have that trick with my vitamins. So I have that little peel off calendar. So when I take my vitamins, I peel it off.

So I know I took my vitamins that day. I have resorted to now after after this Tuesday, Friday episode last week when I go to bed at night in dry erase marker on my bathroom mirror. I write tomorrow is blank tomorrow is Monday tomorrow is Tuesday.

So when I wake up in the morning, I oh, OK, you know, so I know what day it is when I get up. So it doesn't like get down the rabbit hole. But see another unintended consequence of not of not getting your morning papers anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, everything's digital, you know, you know, I keep watching the news and I remember that song from the Lego movie.

Everything is awesome. Yeah, everything is awful is what I've been singing around. That's it. That's all I've got in my head is everything is awful. Every time I turn the TV on, I'm like, oh, God, I only turn the TV on so I can get to like Netflix. And it's just like, oh, what fresh hell is today?

It's like it's like turning on the news as a snuff film. I'm like, I can't I can't do it. I can't. I saw you put Groundhog Day in the show notes, and I just kind of assumed that that was a lead into up. Here come the lockdowns again. But oh, no, no, no, I don't think they're I don't think they're coming. I personally don't believe they're coming.

Well, we'll see. We won't be the first state. It's looking like it's going to be either Arizona, Texas or New York. That's going to mold doing lockdowns again in certain counties because everything is so goddamn awful. Yeah, so I'm yeah. Well, it doesn't matter to me. Lockdown if you want.

I'm not going anywhere. I can't go anywhere. You know, well, that's you. Oh, no. I mean, I'm dealing with, you know, multiple people with compromised immune systems, including myself. So I don't try and go anywhere. Anyway, so on that fun note.

I'm trying to figure out if I have any tips to get rid of Groundhog Day syndrome. And the only thing that I thought of was literally writing what day of the week it is on the bathroom mirror in the morning, kind of like memento style. No, I mean, that's one way. I mean, there are obvious other ways, whatever part of your routine is.

You know, I listen to a radio show most mornings when I get the chance. I mean, obviously, that's gone away a bit because I can't just put it on the Amazon Alexa like I used to because other people are here. They don't leave and I can't play my radio programs.

But I'm sure some people do that. They'll listen to a talk radio thing in the morning and they'll tell you what day it is or, you know, whatever news program you want to watch in the morning. Just make something part of your daily morning routine where they happen to mention the day. What's funny is I have I have a several hundred dollar Apple watch that tells me exactly what day it is on the face of the watch.

And I still don't believe it sometimes. Yeah. Well, I don't I don't know what to tell you, man. You know, you know, make make Mondays, daiquiri Mondays, make Tuesday, Bloody Mary Tuesday, you know, whatever, whatever you got to do to get through the morning. Oh, God, no, I've actually I my drinking is cut way down my white.

I haven't I have not had a white claw in over a week. No, that's not a bad thing. No, it's not. It's not. It's not. All right. We got some follow up here. All right. We do have a little bit of follow up. We've already talked about this occurring on Twitter. What's interesting is this is now occurred on Facebook because we know Zuckerberg is not taking a stand about inflammatory or violent posts from the commander in chief on Facebook saying that's not going to happen.

Well, turns out somebody did the same thing that they did over on Twitter. They copied Trump's posts word for word on Facebook and, of course, got flagged for inciting violence basically immediately. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And is anybody surprised? No, of course not.

Of course not. So it just goes to show you, yes, you do have the ability to do this. Yes, you could do this. Yes, you are holding other people to a different standard than you are holding the president. And yeah, so right away they just started posting exactly whatever it was that his account was posting.

And they got they got warned that the account would face a 24 hour suspension if it broke policies again and got us got that message. Your post goes against our community standards on violence and incitement. We use the same community standards around the world for everyone. No, they don't. Social network said saying no.

And yes, their post had reached exactly 26 people as opposed to the hundreds of thousands that Donald Trump's supposed to meet. So there you go. Awesome. Yep. And we've got a little bit of some news on the Huawei kerfuffle that's been going on with 5G.

You know, we had a pretty hard line about and rightfully so, depending on, you know, how true some of these reports were. We're basically saying that U.S. companies couldn't work with Huawei because we weren't entirely sure what they were putting in their chips and who they were phoning home to. But they've bended that stance just a little bit.

The Commerce Department has instituted a rule allowing American companies to participate in developing standards where Huawei is involved, such as 5G wireless, AI and self-driving cars. This is kind of a pretty good thing. It's pretty pragmatic for them to do. We want to be involved in these standards-making process.

We want to be developing our beta over here while the rest of the world has their VHS. Yeah. Yeah. No, I definitely think it's a good thing to do because, you know, just shutting everything down is not good for anyone. And this is actually a good move, believe it or not.

Wow. Somebody's doing something right. I'm kind of impressed. Mm-hmm. All right. And we've also talked in the past about Boston Dynamics and their robots that they're- Their nightmare fuel robots, yes. Nightmare fuel robots. And, you know, when AI does become finally self-aware and they see the videos of us kicking the robots, these are the ones that are going to come and kill us.

Spot the dog. Mm-hmm. Finally on sale. You can buy one. All right. We have a price. Mm-hmm. $74,500. Patreon.com slash GOG. I tried to price our mugs at that and didn't sell one.

Okay. No. I, man, I would love to play with one of these things, but $74,000 is a hell of a lot more than I make in a year. So, I won't be getting one anytime soon. But, yeah, you know, you can get one with a dev kit. Unfortunately, you'd have to learn to write Python, which I've been saying for a while, if people want to learn to program, Python's the one to do nowadays.

Mm-hmm. And you get two batteries and a case. Two batteries. That's nice. Two batteries and a case. So, Brian, we've talked about the Internet of Things and how the S in IoT is for security.

Yes. So, I saw this one this morning. I'm like, it was just a matter of time. Israeli security firm, JSOF, revealed on Tuesday a collection of vulnerabilities it's calling Ripple 20, a total of 19 hackable bugs that it's identified in code that is sold by a little-known Ohio-based software company called Trek.

Now, hold on a second. Why is it not called Ripple 19? Because they discovered it in 2020. No, but there's a total of 19 hackable bugs. You put those sentences together and it just boggles the mind. I think we're sick of the number 19 right now. We've got enough things named 19 that we're sick of.

All right. So, what this basically is is software that has been released into the wild by a company that does, you know, IoT back-end stuff. And it turns out what they're known for is their TCP IP stack. And apparently, they don't do a very good job of it because there are 19 vulnerabilities that they've found so far in the Trek software.

Well, the Trek software is used in a ton of IoT devices from HP, Intel, Rockwell Automation, Caterpillar, and Schneider Electric, and a bunch more. And, yeah, so unplug everything.

That's what it comes down to, unplug everything. Yes, the result, the researchers say, is the better part of a billion hackable devices in the wild that have been vulnerable for years. That's a capital B, billion. Yeah, well, that's, well, not surprising, unfortunately.

Yeah, you know, we could use some standards here. There are none. Yeah, and it's not like these are like little companies, you know. Every single company I just named are massive and have things in place that are, I don't know, key to infrastructure around the world. So, yeah, this is, it just reminds me of the WordPress hacks when you have, you know, one little bug that comes from just one third-party library that can just take down 20% of the internet.

Well, billions of IoT devices are, it's right up there. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Mm-hmm. And I thought this next one was just funny. United Airlines is getting kicked out of the NASDAQ 100 because nobody's flying anymore because it's a terrible idea.

It's a very terrible idea. And it is being replaced by DocuSign, a company that lets you stay home and not have to go someplace to sign a contract. Well, I mean, as ridiculous as it sounds. It makes sense.

It makes sense. Look, you know, DocuSign has become the de facto standard for, you know, real estate agents. So, every time a house is sold, you're using DocuSign and you're using a paid version of it. Somebody's paid at some point because all the stuff is in there. I use it for my business. I mean, I use it for my business.

I use it multiple times a week. I am a paying DocuSign customer. Yeah. So, that makes sense to me. I mean, it's, yeah, I mean, certainly given the timing, I think no coronavirus, I'm pretty sure United Airlines wouldn't have disappeared. But, right now, tough times and DocuSign is ubiquitous for what they do.

It's the Kleenex of DocuSigning. It is. It is. So, I just loved it. I thought it was, you know, it's like, okay, sign of the times. Everybody stay at home and we're swapping out, you know. I said, like, what is it, March 3rd, I said, you know, what's coming is going to be a systematic reboot of the world and part of it.

It's like, okay. Part of it will be the stocks and all of that sort of thing and we will be talking a lot about our talking about stocks. Yes. Feedback. Very soon. But, speaking of airplanes, not everybody has quit flying. There's still quite a few flights going on and people are moving around the country.

I think we talked a couple, maybe a month or so ago about somebody's experience with it and how it's changed. But, things are definitely changing and I found this really interesting article about airport surveillance and about how it's about to reach, as they say, a whole new level of ridiculous.

So, yes, flying does not seem like a particularly bright idea right now. But, for the people that are going, what we're seeing is an increase in the security theater at airports. Right. So, there's a whole bunch of new measures that are being either considered or already in place at airports around the world.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration, the TSA, is reportedly preparing to begin checking passengers' temperatures before they board. And, as we know, that has some effect, but not really. New arrivals to the U.K. must, as of June 8th, provide an address where they will be self-isolating for 14 days and police will follow up with surprise in-person checks.

Maybe. Surprise! More than 45 countries have rolled out digital ankle bracelet tracking apps, which are likely to either be mandatory. Well, it's tracking apps. It means they're probably going to say, well, if you want to come into this country, you need to install this app on our phone, which will let us track you everywhere you go.

So, this is like the same thing that happened in South Korea and then people got busted for leaving their phone at home when they snuck out. Exactly. So, there's always a way around it. Biometric scanning, checking people against their ID as being aggressively tested in airports from Munich to Sydney. Obviously, since 9-11, we've grown accustomed to compromising on privacy when we fly.

The trade-off is, you know, we feel like we're a little bit safer, but, you know, we stick a probe up our butt before we get on a plane. Fantastic. And people are wondering, both privacy experts and epidemiologists are questioning the utility of some of these plans as well as whose responsibility they are.

Is it better for your data to be held by the government or by an airline? If the measures aren't even working, why are they there? And, of course, we have to worry about once this has gone away and it will eventually go away, do you roll back these checks or are they there for good? Much like taking off our shoes.

Yeah. And the thing is, between the hospital-grade air filters and extremely dry air, a plane in flight actually seems to be a fairly inhospitable environment for the virus, at least compared to other activities, such as going out to those now-opened restaurants, attending cocktail parties, which some of you have been doing the entire time, etc.

And, yes, there is some risk, especially in the terminal or during boarding, but it seems comparable to buses, trains, or any other crowded environments, none of which are going to have the same security that we have at airports. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's – I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen with that. Everything's up in the – literally up in the air. So, I just like – Yeah, yeah. And I'm sitting here weighing – am I going to take a flight? We want to get to Toronto. We want to see Sylvana's family.

We want to escape the madness here. But we're trying to figure out when and where and weigh the risks and all that sort of stuff. So, who knows? Yeah. So, here's – the interesting thing is like, you know, when my dad got sick earlier this week and was rushed to urgent care, it's like the first thing that normally would happen is I would be in my car driving as fast as I can to LAX to get on a plane to get home.

Right? That's what happens normally. Now, you can't. And it – you know, it's one of those things when you feel – Well, you can. You can, but – no, you can't because I can't – because you have to quarantine. I get there and I'm like, okay, then I got to find a hotel room and stay in for 14 days before I can even see him. So, I can't do anything there.

They won't let you go to the hospital when he's – when they're in there. You know, it's like – you're powerless. And a friend of ours, Shane Nickerson, who has been on the show, he's going back home to see his family in Maine and with his family. And what he did was he rented an RV.

He's driving across the country. That's – you know, that's it. And here's the fun part. He's having a blast. I'm like, damn, I want to do that. He's posting pictures every day talking about how much fun he's having out there. And it's just like, you know, because since not that many people are out there, it's a good time to, I guess, RV across the country.

So, if you want to get to Toronto, you know, grab that RV and saddle on up. Yeah, except for having to stop at restrooms and restaurants. No, that's why you get the RV, man. You load it up. They rented a nice RV.

They bring their own food. It's got a bathroom. It's got a shower. It's got the whole, you know, the whole shebang. So, you don't really have to go into restaurants or things like that. And if you do go to restaurants, you can be careful and just get it to take out. And sit in the, you know, sit with your family in the RV or sit in the great outdoors where the virus doesn't transmit as much.

So, it's an option. That's all I'm saying. It is an option. Not one I'll be taking. So, we'll figure it out. Anyways, as of yesterday or as of this morning, I think this has gone away. I don't know if you know anybody on T-Mobile, but if you did, you probably were not able to get in touch with them at all yesterday.

There was a massive outwork with their outage with their network, voice data services, all of that sort of stuff starting around 1 p.m. Eastern time yesterday, with many people across the U.S. suggesting on their site and Twitter that they're having problems by around 3.30 p.m.

Eastern time. Down Detector had collected more than 82,000 outage reports. People were unable to make or receive calls. Wi-Fi calling still seemed to work, which they did confirm. T-Mobile confirmed, saying that they recommended using third-party services like FaceTime or Signal.

In the meantime, Twitter did what Twitter does. There were massive reports of we're having the biggest DDoS attack the U.S. has ever seen, focused on T-Mobile. And, of course, all of that was quickly debunked. No, they were just trying to upgrade something, and it went horribly, horribly wrong and knocked down their entire network for some time.

I heard this also came over to other networks, too, like Verizon and AT&T. Mostly because of people attempting to contact people on T-Mobile. So, you know what happens when you try to get through to someone, and it just doesn't work. You just monkey-punch your phone like 7,000 times to try to get through.

Yeah, okay. Because, yeah, we actually ran into that yesterday. We were trying to contact somebody, and they must have been on T-Mobile because we couldn't get through. And, like, pick up your phone. He's like, I'm here. Like, nope, not working. Oh, man. There you go. This wasn't the first salvo in the war to take down our infrastructure.

It was just somebody just fucked up a patch when they were updating. Yeah, basically. Exactly. That was it. That was it. It was not war. It was incompetence. Okay. Great. There you go. I am not in the Google infrastructure at all. I know you aren't either. You have no ladies in the tubes in your house because you're a roommate.

I am a purely Amazon environment as far as that goes. Although I do use my – I do use Siri when I'm barbecuing to set my timers. That's about it. But apparently the Google and Android environment is considerably further along, at least in terms of voice matching.

Because I saw this article, Google said that the assistant voice match feature was coming to many more speakers and smart displays in the near future. And that includes their Android TV device, so their television. I would love voice match to work, so Amazon, please catch up, especially now that my kid can order around all of our ladies in the tube with relative ease.

So the ability to actually match voice profiles would be very much appreciated. Yeah, you just want this so your kid can't buy any more fart apps. Well, right now that's less of a concern. It's more I just don't want to hear this Frozen soundtrack one more time. I'm going to lose my mind.

Oh, boy. Yeah. And over in Germany, we finally are getting a contact tracing app. It's arriving this week. So I've been wondering where ours are in the U.S. I guess most other countries are coming a little bit behind as well. Health Minister Jen Spahn has confirmed that the app is coming this week with reports suggesting it may be as ready as soon as June 16th.

That would be today as we record. It is using a decentralized approach to data that might protect privacy better than, say, the central methods of countries like Australia. It's supposed to supplement conventional contact tracing, which means we still have staff reaching out to people who came close to COVID-19 victims.

So hopefully that will help them because they've been doing pretty well with their response so far. So we'll see what happens. But they're rolling theirs out. We talked about the Citizen app and their contact tracing on the last show with Dave Bittner. And so I have signed up for Citizen and I signed up for the contact tracing.

And I live in a town of about 70,000 people. 14 people are right now using the contact tracing feature of Citizen in my neighborhood. So not really hitting that critical mass. Well, no. The only reason that we knew of that app's existence is because one of our listeners wrote in to tell us about it.

It's not like the government has come out and said, hey, everybody, let's get on board here. That's true. That's true. By the way, the Citizen app is actually very well designed. And that's what I said last time, too. It's like just because it's well designed doesn't mean it's written by great people. But I'm still doing my research on that.

So on Fridays or the next episode, I'll hopefully have whatever day it is, right? Whatever fucking day it is. I'll have some more info on that. But it's nice because it does give you a lot of really good, useful information about what's going on in your neck of the woods in your city.

So, so far, I got to say, it's better than Nextdoor because nobody's saying, hey, there's brown people on my lawn. It's great. It's better than Nextdoor because there's only 600 people on it. The greatest app would be if there's nobody on it. Yes. The greatest app is a phone that's been turned off.

That's right. Oh, boy. So Facebook is still doing their part to attempt to call bad actors, but they may have had a bit of a misstep this week, particularly with a fairly vocal community. They accidentally deplatformed hundreds of accounts, all anti-racist skinheads and members of ska, punk, and reggae communities, including artists of color.

Not the best time to do that. Some users even believe their accounts were suspended for just liking non-racist skinhead pages and punk fan pages. Facebook has not explained the reasons behind the mistake, but it seems likely that the platform confused these subcultures with the exact opposite of them, the far-right neo-Nazi skinheads.

So I suppose that skinhead is a skinhead as far as an AI is concerned. That seems to be the case. Yeah. They've been profiled based on hairstyle. That's it. The lack of hairstyle. Pretty much. The platform was quick to smooth it over.

A few days later, accounts were reinstated and the company apologized, but it does kind of illuminate the mistakes that can happen with AI at scale. And, you know, when you don't have actual people following things up and looking at it before you hit the go-ahead and de-platform button.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is also nothing that we haven't talked about before. So, no, it's going to happen at scale at some point. Well, it kind of did. Yeah. And speaking of that, Instagram has released a new statement about how they're going to review harassment and verification rules, particularly how they affect black users.

In a statement, Instagram head Adam Masseri promised to address inequities in how the company approaches harassment, verification, content distribution, and algorithmic bias. I would like to point out at this time that I agree with Black Lives Matter, but I would say all users matter, not just black users, because I would like to know how all of this stuff works as well.

Yeah. Tell me what your algorithmic bias is, motherfucker. Exactly. I can't get verified to save my life. And, you know, we have a show. I can't even get verified. I tried to verify our show page. No luck there either. So, I would like to know how all of this works, not just for black users, but for all users.

Brian, we figured it out. We talked about this other show about four years ago. You have to spend $10,000 and find an Instagram employee that is willing to push you through the back channels. Remember that? Yes. Yeah. Just like Twitter used to be. Yeah. Yeah. That's the funny thing.

You know, Twitter still, their verification program, I think, is still disabled since the, you know, the white power guy got verified. Yes. Yeah, it was a portent of things to come. But, yeah, the Instagram verification process is just stupid.

Yeah. It's stupid. I'm like, I should be able to send you my, I should be able to give you my phone number, my driver's license, and you should verify that I am me. That's all I care about. I just want to be verified that I am me. Don't use that as a token to say, hey, oh, you're a super user. You're somebody special.

It's like, no, I just want you to know that the person that is making the posts is the person who says it is. Yeah, exactly. That's the whole point of verification. That's what it was. It was not a popularity contest. It was verification. This is who they say they are.

So maybe we'll get some light shined on this right now. You know, that seems to be what's coming out of this. We don't even know if shadow banning really exists or not. Hopefully, we will now find out. We will find out what the actual verification process is because nobody knows what it is.

So in theory, what he's saying is they're going to open up the books and let us see how all this stuff works. I somehow doubt that's going to happen, but I will be watching. No, I mean, shadow banning has been proven. It does happen. Their algorithm totally does that. Or their engineers do that on the back end somewhere along the way.

But, you know, shadow banning is real. It does happen. And it happens just randomly. It doesn't mean if you're right wing, left wing, whatever. You say one thing wrong that somebody doesn't like over at Instagram or Twitter especially. And you get dinged for a while.

You know, I can see it. I can prove it. I can do something to get shadow banned easily. I know exactly what to say. I just don't want to say it because I'm tired of being shadow banned. Whatever. And in news that is going to surprise no one, Quibi is on pace to hit less than 30% of year one paid subscriber goals because Quibi is a dumb idea.

They should have hired us in the get go. We could have told them this is a dumb idea. Save your billions. Give us just a slice and we'll tell you it's a dumb idea. I'll tell you what, anybody out there that's considering dropping a billion dollars on something, some new media platform, give us $100,000.

We will tell you not to do it and we can save you all a lot of money. Yeah. Or we can tell you to do it. Then you give us $200,000 if it's good. Yeah. Whatever answer you want. If you really want to do it, just give us $200,000. No, it's just, yeah, I tried to go back and look at it one more time before my trial ended and nope, can't do it.

I haven't even had enough interest to download the app. I have not heard anybody tell me anything about it, not heard a single person on any of my feeds that has said, oh, this show over on Quibi is actually really good. Not a one. Nope.

Nothing. Because there isn't any. And the funny thing is, we just did a show about hitting the bottom of the barrel on content and that there's nothing left to watch. And we have an entire new platform of content that nobody cares about and wants to go look at.

That should tell you something, Quibi. Sorry, Jeffy. You got to, like, maybe roll it up and call this one a day.

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I've been a big fan of Alex Wagner for quite some time. She's a news host. She did have a series or a show on, I think, CNN for a while. Unfortunately, now she's moved. She's got a show over on Showtime. And I don't get the Showtime.

So I haven't seen her on anything for a while. But I still follow her on social media. And I found out she was doing a limited series podcast. I think it's about 10 episodes called Six Feet Apart. She started about two months into the whole coronavirus thing. And she explores different topics throughout every episode.

And I thought it was really great. I've listened to all of them. They were pretty fantastic. So she talked about restaurants and what's going on with that. Influencers, shopping, sex, government, everything. So a lot of really good episodes, a lot of really interesting talk about everything that we're going through.

And as we keep pointing out on the show, we'll be going through for quite some time now. Okay, cool. I'll check it out. Really good, really good stuff. I watched Knives Out. What did you think? I'm curious. It was okay. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it.

It's weird. It's one of those ones where I thought was going to be fantastic. And it turned out to be good. Not great, but good. I thought it was good. My wife liked it more than I did. She thought it was really good. I thought it was good. Yeah. It was neat.

It was neat. It was neat. And I do have to say the thing. Yeah. Daniel Craig's accent bumped me. Like, I didn't think it needed that at all. But it is what it is. Yeah, it didn't bother me. Any at all. No, I thought it was a decent movie.

I thought it was a decent movie. Yeah, it was totally fine. And it made me want to watch Clue. Of course. Because I wanted to go back and see if the 1985 version of Clue had legs. Does it? The performances are good, but it is from a different era. I will say that.

Like, the humor is just, like, that kind of stuff doesn't fly anymore. It's got Tim Curry, though. It's got a ton of really amazing people. It's got Martin Mull. It's got Tim Curry. It's got Leslie Ann Warren. It's got Madeline Kahn. Like, the cast is phenomenal. And, you know, it is of its time.

Bumbling, silly, physical humor. Vaguely racist humor that would not fly anymore. I mean, if you want to talk about casual racism, like Kelly Nakahara, who is the Asian actress that we best know for MASH, right? Okay.

She was Nurse Kelly, I think, is what they called her in the show. I can't even remember. She was born in Hawaii, and she's of Japanese descent. But in this entire movie, she's known for cooking Chinese cuisine, Cantonese cuisine. And so, you know, we just take one Asian from one thing, and we make her something else in the movie, because why not?

That's what we do. And, of course, the most famous dish that she talks about in Clue was monkey brains, which, as far as most people can tell, is a complete urban myth. Nobody ever ate monkey brains, ever. There was a mushroom that was called Monkey Head Mushroom in Chinese, and that's it.

So, you know, there you go. Racism. Awesome. Okay. But I enjoyed it. I mean, I made it all the way through. I didn't stop watching it. It was good. Yeah. No, I mean, I watched it a couple, maybe four or five years ago, because I'd never seen all four endings. I saw it in the theater, and you only get to see one ending.

That's right. Yes. You know? And I never saw all four endings on it, which I thought was, you know, clever. It was a clever, you know, gimmick. And I finally got to see all of them. And it was – I enjoyed the movie from what I remember. I thought it still had legs, but it was definitely of a time – you can't be – you know, you have to be born, like, early 70s to still enjoy that movie.

You can't be born in the 80s or the 90s and even remotely like that movie, I think. No, if you're a woke millennial and you try to watch it, you're going to be glorified. Oh, jeez. Oh, God. Save the emails on that one, please. And as I was searching around, because, you know, again, scraping the barrel for content these days, I think I watched this once a long time ago and may have even talked about it, but I've completely forgotten about it.

And I watched it again, and I loved it. It's called 808, and it is a documentary about the Roland TR-808 drum machine, which there were only 1,200 of these things made ever, and it changed the entire landscape of music. Anybody that you can think of is in this talking about it.

It is fascinating, and I absolutely loved it. Okay, I don't think you've talked about it on the show before, because I've never heard of this. All right. So, I mean, I... Not worth the watch, man. It's unbelievably interesting. One drum machine basically changed music forever when it came out in every genre.

Every genre. Like, it's got people from hardcore rap to, you know, incredible, like, all the electronic music stuff that I love, to Phil Collins talking about this thing. Oh, God. Phil Collins, one of the greatest drummers of all time. Mm-hmm. So, I'll definitely check it out then.

I'm still working through your list of, uh, your list of documentaries. All the music docs. All the music docs from last week. The police one, I'm, like, halfway through. It's really good. Really good. Yeah, it's good, right? Yeah, the problem is my roommate wasn't into it, so I have to watch it, like, late at night by myself. So, uh, well, you know, that's how I watch everything, Jason.

Yeah. This is another one I had to watch by myself. We started watching this one together. 846 by Dave Chappelle. We started, we got into it, and we were like, you know, because it's a half an hour, you know, comedy special that he put out on Netflix. I mean, on, actually, he put it out on YouTube.

Netflix paid for it and said, this is so important. Everybody has to see it. We're going to put it out for free. By the way, brilliant marketing. Mm-hmm. You know, totally brilliant. So, we watched, we watched about half of it, and then, you know, there was some other stuff that was going on that day, and we're just like, you know, we're tired of crying today.

Let's just, let's watch something else. And then I went back and finished it later by myself because she couldn't get through it, and it's fucking unbelievable. I mean, Dave Chappelle is amazing. Have you seen it? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I have. I think everybody needs to watch it.

Everyone. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Lots of tissues needed. That's for sure. So, to cleanse the palate, I found Ip Man 4, or I think Yip Man, if you're pronouncing it right. It's not Intellectual Property Man, a new, very boring superhero? No.

This is not. This is not a guy that flies around in a cape, like, covering copyright. Taking things off YouTube? Covering copyright. Yeah, exactly. He's like, you should not have posted that on Twitch. No. No, kick your ass. No, it's basically a Chinese Kung Fu series that's been around for a long time, and this is the final episode, or final installment of the movies, and it's, you know, it's loosely based on the guy that trained Bruce Lee.

So, this final one, I hadn't seen them in years, and they were, I mean, because this has been going on for a very long time, this series, and it was an amazing wrap-up. It was a terrible movie. I mean, it was a flat-out terrible movie, but it was great to see. I don't know why it's one of those things.

No, I understand. Sometimes you just like really crappy stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but if you're looking for a great movie with great dialogue, you're not going to find it here. Great Kung Fu, though.

Actually, I'm glad you brought this up, because it's totally jogged my memory, because both my wife and I really want to see that new Bruce Lee documentary, and we didn't, so I'm putting a bookmark in my brain right now. Okay. I tried to find it on my thing, and I can't find it either. It was called Be Like Water, and I think it's an ESPN doc.

They're knocking these things out. Oh, yeah. The 30 by 30 and ESPN's documentary programs are amazing. Yeah, and I still haven't seen the Michael Jordan one. Everybody's telling me I've got to see the Michael Jordan one. It's just so long. It's so long, and I lived through all of that stuff, so it's like watching reruns, I guess.

But, yeah, the Bruce Lee one I definitely want to see, because, you know, I took four years of Jeet Kune Do, so I'm definitely kind of a fan. But It Man 4 was good. It was good. All right. I tell you, oh, we watched Sleepless. I think it was called Sleepless.

I'll have to look it up. I'll put it in the show. It's the Jamie Foxx movie that's on Netflix right now. It's plastered everywhere. Right. It is so bad, and we laughed so much that it is definitely worth watching. It is one of the most terrible movies we've ever seen, and we laughed our ass off the entire time because it made no sense.

And it's just like somebody – it's a write-off movie. Somebody had a bunch of money that they had to spend for tax purposes and got to make a movie so they could write it off, and they said, let's get Jamie Foxx in it. It is so terrible. But it was – I mean, if you're in the right frame of mind, which is about two and a half glasses of wine, it's perfect.

It is a perfect action movie type of thing. So if you see that come through on Netflix, just make sure that you have, you know, a little bit of sauce going on. Because we were watching it last night, and then we were looking at stuff today to figure out what to watch, and some things were coming by, and I'm like, oh, that looks terrible.

She's like, worse than yesterday? I'm like, nope. Okay. Add it to the DVR. You really change your scale on quality during the pandemic. Oh, yeah. You really do. And I finished all eight episodes of the Rabbit Hole, or just Rabbit Hole, the podcast from the New York Times with Kevin Roos.

Right. It's really good. It's really good. It's – I mean, they talk about a lot of stuff that we talk about and drag it out a lot farther. But like I said, they've got New York Times a few money. But the PewDiePie stuff, they did a couple episodes with PewDiePie and kind of completely changed my mind about PewDiePie.

The interviews that they did with him, which were like the first interviews after all the other stuff happened, really did kind of change my mind about him. It's – that part is worth listening to because, you know, I think some of the stuff we said about him might have been absolutely wrong.

Interesting. Yeah. I'm telling you, listen to it and then you can follow up with me on it. All righty. But I think we may have fucked up on that one. I don't know. I still think he's a dick.

And speaking about sliding scales of quality in a pandemic, I gave up on trying to read The Expanse book three because it's just too dense and too hardcore and requires way too much mental concentration.

And I just wanted to go back and read what I call shitter sci-fi, just really crappy, super light, no attention required, the elder learned professor and the younger girl kind of thing. Your favorite.

Yeah. This is the second book in the Cyberstorm series by Matthew Mather. He's written a lot of shitter sci-fi. And I'm not saying that in a pejorative way. Like, that's not necessarily a bad thing because this book was exactly what I needed.

It was a really super quick read. I got that rush of endorphins of actually finishing a book, which I wasn't sure I was ever going to do again at this point. And it was fine. It was, you know, it's really light near future sci-fi about, you know, what could happen if things get hacked up by a bunch of people and they do nefarious things and how you deal with it.

And, of course, you know, made-for-TV movie kind of plot. And it was fine. I really enjoyed it. I read it really quickly. Great. Yay. All right. I think I am in the middle of some shitter sci-fi for you, too. It's called Flux by Jeremy Robinson. I think I've heard of that one.

I think that one crossed my path and I almost hit the purchase on that. Yeah, I've got Flux and I've got Infinite, both by him because they were on sale at Audible. And I'm a little bit – I'm just a little bit into Flux. And it's about, you know, time travel and big nefarious corporations and things like that.

Yes, yes, yes. Not the most well-written book I've ever read. We'll just say that. But in these troubling times, Brian, any port in a storm? Now more than ever do we need bad sci-fi. I am enjoying the shit out of it so far.

So that's all I'm going to say. It's totally predictable, 100% predictable. The characters are just cookie cutter. But I'm telling you right now, I'm enjoying the hell out of it. I'll have a full wrap-up next Tuesday or next Wednesday. For whatever day.

Whatever freaking day it is because it's a time travel book. Who knows? Maybe I already talked about it two years ago. Now, see, if we were a New York Times-produced podcast or an NPR-produced podcast, we would probably call it Popcorn Sci-Fi. But because we're us, it's shit or sci-fi. It's shit or sci-fi. Yes, we'd probably call it Jeremy Robinson.

He would answer the phone and come on the show and tell us all about it. But we're not that kind of podcast. Tell us about your shit or sci-fi novel. And now we get the little clavicle player in the background because all the fucking NPR podcasts have that background.

Oh, man. Speaking of NPR, I don't know if you saw. I guess NPR is being fairly defunded and lots of people are going home. So we can maybe move up the podcast ranks if they're going to start dialing back on their shows. Yes, I suppose that's a good thing, bad thing. We might get more people listening to us.

But I like all those NPR podcasts. Well, most of them. Okay. A couple people sent us this story, particularly Joe Moss 6502, a couple other people on Twitter. This is pretty crazy.

This is a Natic couple. I don't know how to pronounce that because this is obviously something in the Boston kind of area. Was targeted for months by six then eBay employees. The employees face federal charges after an extensive campaign of harassment. So this couple wrote and published an online newsletter critical of the online auction site.

They obviously they had a blog in which they said eBay sucks. Okay. And some eBay people had took some umbrage with this. And let's get into this a little bit. Okay. Including mailing the couple boxes full of live cockroaches, spiders, a pig fetus, books about surviving the death of a spouse, and other harassing items, according to Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, said on a press conference on Monday.

Are you fucking kidding me? No, no, I'm not kidding you. And this gets even better. Okay. There's a couple of rogue eBay employees who maybe took some umbrage with some fucking blog they found online crapping on the company. No. These people included James Baugh, the former senior director of safety and security at eBay.

David Harville, eBay's former director of global security and resiliency. Oh, my God. There's a couple more. Stephanie Popp of San Jose, California, eBay's former senior manager of global intelligence. Stephanie Stockwell, the former manager of eBay's global intelligence center.

Veronica Zay, former eBay contractor who worked as an intelligence analyst. And Brian Gilbert, a former senior manager of special operations for eBay's global security team. So pretty high up, pretty important people who seem somewhat learned and new things.

Jesus Christ. So an eBay executive told Baugh that he wanted to crush those responsible for the newsletter, while another executive told Baugh to take her down. Okay. So they created fake email and social media accounts.

They began emailing harassing and threatening messages, as well as Twitter messages. They also mailed pornography to a neighbor's home and put the couple's name on it. They sent pizza to the couple's home at 430 in the morning, also advertised a fake yard sale telling that told people to go to the house if no one was out, to go into the house if no one is outside.

They also organized swingers parties, telling people to show up at the home after 10 p.m. for sex parties. Four of the six people charged flew from California to Massachusetts to put the couple under surveillance. They attempted to break into the couple's garage to put a GPS on their vehicle so they could track them.

What the fuck? What was in this newsletter, their blog, that they were saying about eBay that made these people go this insane? I don't care what it said. What the actual F are these people doing? I mean, I'm a vindictive motherfucker, but these people take the cake.

Yeah, and Brian Gilbert, who was a former police captain as well before going to work for eBay, contacted the couple with false promises to help them. The goal was the White Knight strategy to make the couple believe eBay was helping them so they could write positive articles. What the fuck? These people went batshit crazy nuts.

I'm gobsmacked. I'm absolutely gobsmacked. This is not just like a couple of guys in customer support. This is like, you know, high ups. These are pretty high level employees, all of them getting together and just ripping these people apart.

Wow. Crazy. Now, this should be a cautionary tale for us, Jason, because we spend a lot of time shitting on companies on this podcast. Oh, my God. This explains a lot of my life. Maybe we should halt those translations and transcriptions of our podcast, because apparently if you put it up there as a blog, you're in trouble.

Oh, my God. This is just, oh, man. I want to lock my doors. I sincerely hope every single one of these people gets severe jail time, and I want to see how far up this went, where these directives came from in eBay's upper echelons.

Also, I'm never using eBay again. Yeah, I'm just worried about Magic Leap. They just got a bunch of funding. They might be coming after us. Yes, if we hear that they've hired all six of these people. Yeah. Yeah, let's follow these guys on LinkedIn, because I want to know where they land.

Good point. Yes. Over at Patreon, we've got Harlow, Martin, and Green. So thank you very much for your new patronage. And over at PayPal, we've got Mark, Carey, Nicholas, Natalie, Andrew, Raj, Linda, and Nathaniel.

And then we also have Bonnie, and Bonnie writes in, I've been using computers for 55 years. No screens, Base 8, Basic, Destroying Forest, Playing Adventure, Useless Languages, Dreadful Updates. It's a pleasure to listen. Humor and some real perspective. You guys are my spirit guides. Love your politics, too. Well, thank you, Bonnie.

Thank you. And we have something from mk3.net. Not much coin, but happy to donate to the one podcast I look forward to each week. Wiping out a prepaid debit card, hence the odd amount. Well, we'll take your money, mk3.net. Yes, thank you. And I have an update on our masks at gog.show.shop.

We are neck and neck, Jason. We are. We're in a dead statistical heat in terms of the Team Jason and Team Brian masks. So that's nice. That is nice. It's neat. It's neat. It's neat. Over at Twitter, David writes in, regarding episode 440, I like mice with cables, you insensitive clod.

They just work. Okay. I think you're the one that crapped on that. I'm not sure. I don't remember. Probably. Let's talk about other relics of a bygone era that just works that we don't use anymore. Landlines, steam engines, washboards, hurdy-gurdies. Just get a damn mouse without a cable.

Okay. I've got two of my keyboard, two of my three keyboards have cables, but I cannot do a cabled mouse. Yuck. Ew. That's gross. And Joseph writes in, with a link to The Onion, City enters phase four of pretending coronavirus over. Now.

Which is perfect. This was so, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It's The Onion. You always have to do both. It is so spot on. Thanks to the efforts of municipal employees, I'm happy to say we've reached the final phases of completely diluting ourselves into thinking that this pandemic has somehow stopped spreading and that we're safe, said Johnson in a press conference in which he applauded the city for bringing them to this stage by successfully disregarding the virus in previous phases.

In order for this to be effective, however, we're instituting guidelines requiring all residents to convince themselves that they can no longer contract or spread this disease, and that despite virtually no changes in this situation, we will no longer need to use hand sanitizers or observe social distancing. Yes.

Phase four will need all of you to start going into restaurants and stores without masks and pretending that this is endangering absolutely no one. Thank you all. If they would have changed the name of this guy from Johnson to Newsome, it would have been a press release.

It would have been an actual press release. It could have been, yes. John writes in, Have you had a chance to watch Artemis Fowl yet? It is worth every penny of Disney+. No. You've got Disney+. Have you watched it? No, I haven't watched it yet, but my kid's a bit too young for it, so that's the thing, and I'm too old.

Oh, there we go. You hit that sweet spot. All right, and Koi Zero writes in, When Jason mentioned Never Surrender, I audibly cheered. I love Galaxy Quest. There's no better sci-fi movie. It's timeless. As usual, keep up the good work. Team Jason! Team Brian!

Yes, I can't decide. I apologize for nothing. All right. All right, and Clayton actually wrote in with a real answer for us here, which I appreciate. Fire alarm batteries tend to die in the early morning as batteries are less efficient the colder they get. So as the temperature drops in your house overnight, this is likely the first time your battery hits the low-voltage alarm.

Well, isn't that neat? How about that? Science! How about that? It's fucking science! He also sent in Australia's automated unemployment collection disaster, and this is a link to crikey.com.au. We talked about the, was it Michigan that had this?

I can't remember. I think it was Michigan or Minnesota or one of them. Yeah, it was, it's when you, the governments decide to roll out AI to take care of these things automatically, and it does not go well. Same thing kind of happened in Australia. Basically, there was a, there was a, there was a kind of a human-run system that was doing about 20,000 interventions per year where they would like basically go do an investigation to make sure that the person getting benefits and welfare should be getting them and all that sort of thing.

Yeah, yeah. They rolled out an AI system and it increased to 200 or 20,000 interventions per week instead of per year. Whoops. And there is now a $720 million payback from the government to people affected by this scheme.

So, AI, not ready for prime time, people. No, and people, people wonder why programmers will probably be second against the wall when the revolution comes. Great. Yep. Ivan writes in, listening to episode 446, great episode. By the way, yes, I would love to hear more about stock market from you.

Yes, and Chipipotamus wrote in, great show, Grumps. I would like to hear more about, hear more security talk with Dave. I'm meaning less COVID quarter. And add another vote for the resurrection of stock talk, please. All right. Yep, we'll get there, I guess. Martin writes in, thanks to Jason for this Twitter account to follow.

And this is the influencers in the wild. Yes, that was a damn funny account. Yep, and Moss 6502 also sent this in, the LOL of the day. And this is, we talked about Microsoft basically getting rid of their journalism staff and replacing it with AI.

And did we talk about this story already? I can't remember if we did or not, but- Oh, no, I think we were going to, and I don't think it made it into the notes. Right. Or maybe we did. I can't remember. I can't have been. All right, just the book, yeah, what day is it? I don't know. So the tech company's artificial intelligence software illustrated a new story about racism with a photo of the wrong mixed race member of the band Little Mix.

So yes, they got rid of all their people. And an early rollout of the software resulted in a story about the singer Jade Thurwell's personal reflections on racism being illustrated with a picture of her fellow band member who is not mixed race. Whoops. Oopsie. And they knew this was coming because they were unable to stop the new robot editor selecting stories from external news sites such as The Guardian.

The remaining human staff have been told to stay alert and delete a version of this article if the robot decides it is of interest and automatically publishes it on MSN.com. They have also been warned if they delete it, the robot editor may overrule them and attempt to publish it again. Oh, God.

Oh, good times. Good times. Good times. Matthias sent in a novel. So we're going to skip that one, Matthias. But thank you for writing in. Yes, thank you. Thank you for your feedback. But yeah, yeah. Keep it brief. Keep it brief, guys. And Adelante writes in, Hey guys, thought of you when I read this.

Facebook says it doesn't need news stories for its business and won't pay to share them in Australia. And they're like, Yeah, if we just might not post any news links in Australia because it doesn't actually make us any money. And Australia is trying to actually get money from people who post links to the news.

And yeah, we'll see how this one plays out. I'm curious because it's like, I am of the mind that Facebook should not have to pay the news organizations for linking to their stories. Yeah, I tend to agree with that as well because you're linking.

You're supposed to be driving traffic to the actual sites, which is the point of all this stuff in the beginning, right? Yeah. Thought so, yeah. Mike writes in, I mentioned The Economist and their technology quarterly section in a previous email. They released one in the most recent issue and is dedicated to the difficulties of AI.

I have not read any articles yet, but they look most interesting. And the link is in the show notes and I did scan through it. And yeah, subscribing to The Economist is on my to-do list. At some point. All right. Zachary writes in, heard your listener question regarding stocks and investing.

I did enjoy your investment discussion. Discussion. Long fucking year. I was trying to remember what made you guys go with M1 Finance or a similar app like Robinhood. Also, don't let anyone discourage you from your political views and slash talk.

How the hell are we supposed to improve things if we can't talk about them? Agreed. Too many people are just in an echo chamber. All they hear are people that agree with them. Let's break out and grow, people. Yeah, I agree with that. Regarding the micro or the investment apps like M1 Finance, originally I started to look into those sorts of things because there was no fees for buying stocks and things of that nature.

Since then, all the big boys have kind of followed in suit with that and stopped charging the outrageous fees for purchasing. But the thing that has kept me with M1 Finance is the micro-investing. I like to be able to set up a monthly investment amount and be able to purchase bits of stock with it at a time rather than dropping the full 1K at once for, say, a share of Tesla.

So that's what I really like about it. Yeah. Me too. Me too. I don't have a lot of money in the market because I don't have a lot of money, but I do like M1 because it does let you just do those little teeny chunks because I didn't realize that Tesla was like $1,000 a share.

I'm like, I've got Tesla. And then I'm like, well, no, I don't even have... I've got one-tenth of Tesla. I don't even have a single share of Tesla. So it's like, oh, but hey, at least I can say I get the... You are a stockholder. I am a stockholder. I get the briefings.

I get to do the call-ins and all that other stuff. So it gets you a seat at the table. You know, that's the kind of fun part. You're in the game. Mm-hmm. Kirk writes in, hi, gents. Good news, bad news. I truly enjoy the show. As an engineer and middle-aged techie, so much of your content resonates with me.

However, I've been really struggling lately not to follow the cancel culture and write off the show. The political slant now in every show is simply painful. Living in the Midwest, I have seen the tremendously positive impact the current administration has had on my neighbors. People are more free and well-off than in any time I can remember.

Wow. Okay, moving on. Even during the pandemic, people are thriving. Please consider limiting the edgy political slant and sticking with the fun and positive content of years past. Dear Kirk, good news, bad news. I'm going to have a drink here and sit back because I see what's in the show notes here and Brian's going to talk for about 10 minutes.

Oh, not even. We 100% appreciate you listening and I'm happy we've had so much resonation with you and the things that we've said and what we talk about and it's fantastic that this administration has had a positive impact on you and your neighbors. Please feel free to write back and tell us the specific policies this administration has enacted that has helped you and your neighbors so we can have a rational, measured, and specific discussion about those policies.

Since I have nothing to go off of, just things are better for you. While you get that information together, I'd invite you to turn on the news. That's really about it. See how the current administration is affecting your other fellow Americans. I can provide you with incredibly specific examples and case studies.

In fact, that's what we talk about on this show, facts. We find news articles with facts about what's happening right now to all the people. So, there you go. So, yeah, we would prefer to keep it fun and positive too but I can't remember a fun and positive time recently as we're all in lockdown and police brutality runs rampant and the administration does nothing.

Okay, reel it back in there. Kirk, thank you very much for the email. I am actually 100% genuinely curious about what Brian just said. What are the policies that have changed your neighbor's lives because, yeah, I just want to know.

I'm curious. I am 100% legitimately curious and that's with everybody who listens to the show. If you've got to beef with us, talk to us. We're here. It's fun. This is what discussion is about. You know, everybody's like, oh, you hate Trump.

Cancel. I'm like, okay, fine. Well, that doesn't really help anybody. And, yeah, I don't know how you're going to change my mind but, you know, I'm always open to having my mind changed. Look, I just said after, like, three years of going after PewDiePie as a racist, you know, dickhead, I'm like, well, maybe I was wrong because I didn't hear the whole story.

So I'm always open to hear the whole story. That's all I'm saying. Adelante writes in, I realize Brian probably doesn't have it this bad but I thought of you too. Dad who lives with five girls in the house continues to illustrate their never-ending adventures. This is one of the funniest comic strips I have ever seen.

And I'm like, I don't have kids but I understand every single thing about it. This is over at Bored Panda. Yeah, I don't have five girls but it did resonate with me quite a lot. It's very funny. It is funny as hell. So, yeah, that link is going to be in the show notes. Definitely. I highly, highly, highly recommend that you go check this out because it will be a great point in your day.

Joey writes in, hi guys, long-time listener and huge fan. I've been meaning to ask Jason a question. What don't you like about the podcast Reply All? Generally, genuinely curious. I remember in a recent episode you mentioned you didn't like Reply All and was hoping you could elaborate. Stay grumpy. Well, you have a reply here.

Would you like to go first? Well, I will talk. I wasn't going to mention this because the Twitter user deleted their review of our show after I retweeted it and said it was my second favorite review of the show ever. The original one was just heard H-E-R-D G-O-G podcast talk shit on Reply All so fuck them forever hashtag unsubscribed.

And then I did the retweet saying this is one of my favorite reviews and he wrote and then deleted this. Then my favorite review now of our show of all time, eat my whole ass and die in a fire, you cunt. All right. All because you ate Reply All, Jason.

Wow. Okay, so here in a nutshell is why I do not like Reply All. Reply All, and I always say this and I'm going to stick to my guns on this, it's shit we already know. They rehash internet history with a budget. NPR-sized budget or now a Gimlet-sized budget.

Oh, wait, no, no. Now a Spotify-sized budget. Reply All comes from, like I said, you know, the NPR days when they were, you have to go back a long time in the Grumpy Old Geeks timeline to hear about Amanda fucking Palmer and Brian's rants on Amanda fucking Palmer because she took a lot of money from major record labels that built her up, gave her an audience and turned her into a star and then said,

I'm going to take this, I'm going to take this thing that you gave me, this celebrity that you have given me, I'm going to leave you and all the money that you spent and then I'm going to go to Patreon and let people pay me directly and then I'm going to have my new career and then move on and it comes, my first hatred of Reply All was when they moved and went to Gimlet and I listened to the show.

The show, it's okay. It's okay, but it's stories we've already heard if you have been on the internet as long as we have. They have not given anything new to the discussion and that's why I just call it shit we already know. So, there you go. There you go.

In a nutshell, there it is. Eat my whole ass and die in a fire. That's so good. Oh, God. Was Joey the same person who wrote that? No, no, no, no. Joey didn't. No, no. At least I don't think so.

No, Joey. I hope not. No, that wasn't Joey. Joey was doing what we said. He's genuinely curious and he asked us a question. This was just some random, you know, Twitter can go no other way. Yeah, like some person with three followers and nothing. Okay. And then we got a couple in a row here all about the stock thing.

Jeff, Isaac, and Vanessa all agree bring back stock segments. Rob as well. So, yeah. Thank you. I guess we'll try to figure out something to do with that. Yeah, let's figure out how to do that. You know, let's put a fun together and figure out how we should do that. I mean, last time it was a competition so I think it should be a competition again because that's more fun.

Yeah, it is. It's hard to do in these times because it's not normal times. Maybe we can call it like COVID coin or something. And Pork Chop the Clown writes in, Guys, I can't believe you shared that comment about the bike rider slash racist assaulting creep but didn't mention that Twitter actually doxing the wrong guy and nearly ruined his life.

I don't think we mentioned it because we didn't have that link. I've never heard. I didn't hear about that story until he sent this in. Yeah, it was in feedback last time and it was just a Twitter thread as it was like happened. So I didn't even know that there was a doxing or the wrong guy situation.

So thank you for bringing that to light. Definitely the problems with Twitter justice. And Anonymous. And Anonymous. How many lives has Anonymous ruined by doxing the wrong guys? Just go back and what was it?

The Boston bombing. Right. The Boston marathon thing. They ruined many people's lives. So yeah. Yeah. So thanks for sending that in. It's good to know. Yep. Savannah writes in, just saw a guy out walking a dog with a t-shirt that read I am AI.

Nice. I looked this up. I looked this up. I think it's an NVIDIA shirt because they put those out because NVIDIA does a lot of quote unquote AI work. Right. And I'm like, man, I really wanted that to be a grumpy old geek shirt. Well, if we did it as a grumpy old geek shirt, it would have a completely different meaning.

Yes. Yes. And I still might come up with something clever for that. I think. Soylent green is AI. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out if I can get a Charlton Heston image licensed so we can Soylent green that shit. Anyway, we just got this one in.

Mark writes in, Brian, your comment about the Titanic insecurity shows a severe lack of knowledge and reasoning. Titanic sank because they were trying to drive around the iceberg. That resulted in the lateral scrape to cause the leaks in three of the watertight compartments. Titanic was designed to stay afloat with two flooded sections.

Three sections flooded caused the cascade over the watertight bulkheads and sank the ship. If Titanic had rammed the iceberg head on, one compartment, possibly two, would have flooded and she would have limped to New York, damaged but still floating. And I'm going to go from a historical perspective here because you made fun of me about Titanic.

Everything that he just said is factually correct. Awesome. Likewise, maybe if we had crashed head on into this and not shut down the economy, it wouldn't have been as bad economically. 80% of the U.S. deaths have been from the 65 plus age group.

Maybe if we had isolated the elderly and let everyone else go about their daily lives, this wouldn't be such a shit show that it is. Maybe. Well, no, because if we isolate the elderly, who's going to take care of them? The people who are not and the people who are not are going to come and infect them.

Do you want to take this one for a second? Because I can, or you want me to take it? You can take it because I, you know, at this point, I don't know what the fuck we did and I don't know how we could have avoided it. Here's the deal. The problem is we should have kept avoiding it.

We should have kept avoiding it until the virus was at least manageable and we come up with a vaccine. Everybody got bored and came out of the house. Yes, most of the deaths have been from the elderly, at least here in Los Angeles County. I know 51% were from nursing homes.

But the thing is, ask Italy. How did it go in Italy? You know, I'm tired of talking about this shit. I can't do it. Second wave in China now is already starting. We haven't even finished our first wave. We're still cresting. Whatever. Long and the short of it is nobody did this right.

We're all going to get it at some point and hopefully somebody's going to come up with a fucking vaccine soon enough because that's the only way this thing gets fixed. Three promising candidates right now for vaccines. We'll see. We'll see. Still be a goddamn miracle. Fastest vaccine ever in the history of the world if it comes out.

If it does, yes. And Mark, by the way, I commend you on your titanic knowledge because that was exactly spot on. Was that on the website, Jason? Since you did the website. Was there a further history that got into this? Did you slip in a page? No, we did not. We did not. But I can, I actually still have, I should put this up on GOG.

I should put the website up so that people can see it. I still have it. We're totally fine. I'm sure you do. Over at iTunes, we got a five-star rating from JN Desario. A great show and appreciate political commentary. These guys are great, frankly. While some obvious Trump supporters whine, the hosts are only talking about the most obvious. I was actually wondering when they would start simply confronting the facts, not alternative facts, but real facts.

I think they did a great job without question. I listen to every show when it's published. Thank you. And we got a five-star from Annie Wonder Woman in the UK. Brave enough to say all the things you're thinking. Go grumps! A few things have gone awry in 2020. Brian and Jason set the record straight whilst reviewing and recommending tech stuff you really need.

As I dreamily relax into my Mira 2 seat and enjoy the smooth Lodgy Super Mouse smooth action on my Mac. Warning to the snowflakes, this program contains colorful metaphors. Yes, it does. Colorful just looks so much more classy with that U in it.

It does. It does. It really does. 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 test us a five-star and snarky review. And click on those stars in the Overcast player.

We are on Joe Rogan's heels. So when he disappears from the podcastosphere, we will be number one. Yep, five-star rating and then type in eat my whole ass and die in a fire, you cunt. Closing shout outs!

I got a shout out to the fans of Grumpy Old Geeks. Last week, I put in a little thing at the end of the show from my friend Chris Lockhead who I've been working on. We did 40-some-odd podcasts in 30 days. We did two shows. A podstorm.

We did a podstorm for Lockhead on marketing. We did 30 episodes. And then we also did his other show, Follow Your Different. And we did that, plus doing Grumpy Old Geeks and the three other jobs I do. So it has been like, you know, a severe traumatizing event for me the last month.

But I published five and a half minutes of Chris talking about what happened to him and his friend that got murdered and the police. And I have received well over a hundred messages from you guys who heard that and that it touched you.

So thank you very, very much. It was one of those things where I was worried about that I'm like, oh God, here we go. I'm going to get the emails like Brian used to get when he mentioned Trump. But this was a different thing and this was heartfelt. And almost to a number, you all said it brought a tear to your eyes.

So that made me very, very happy. So thank you very much. And if you haven't listened to it, go back and listen to the last episode, 447. And there's a link to the show notes if you just want to go to Chris's site and sign up for his podcast because we've been doing a lot of them and they are fan-fucking-tastic.

Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schellmeister. 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 448.

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 wear a goddamn mask. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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