450: Nothing Burger

Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo, discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, I got to tell you something. Yep. For the last month, I've been sick, and I've been getting sicker and sicker and sicker. Which is why you've been doing more of the heavy lifting on the show notes. Yes. I wasn't going to toot my own horn, but yes.

Yes, and I appreciate it very, very much. The problem seems to have been solved. Oh, good. So I am back to my normal self. Turns out it was a very insidious food allergy that we're going to get double-checked with the doctor tomorrow.

But yeah, it got to the point where I couldn't even move my hands. I had some neurological issues, and I could barely type or move a mouse. You sure it wasn't the white claw? Actually, it was because I stopped drinking the white claw and changed to red wine. You got scurvy? No, I'm allergic to red wine.

Oh. Or something in red wine. Probably the sulfites. So I can never drink red wine again. That's a bummer. But you are officially now an old man. Old men drink white wine. Well, I'm not drinking white wine either. I'm off the wine. It's back to ye olde beer for me. And no problems there.

But it's like the physical damage is still healing from my arms and stuff. But yeah, it was bad. It was bad. But the upside of going back to beer is I've had to completely revamp my diet because when you drink beer, you get fat. No more carbs. No more carbs.

Yes. You're drinking your carbs. Yep. That's it. I'm drinking my dinner. But so I love salads. Well, I'm glad to hear that you're mended. And I'm looking forward to taking a week or two off from putting in all the show notes. Yeah. Well, you notice I did a pretty good job today.

You did. You did. You did. I'm very pleased about that. Something else came up. We've been talking a lot about the Mira 2 chair recently. So I knew something was bound to happen. I've had mine for, I'd say, about eight years now, which is a good long run for a chair.

But these things are built to last forever and priced to last forever, too, as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, I'm sitting in a very awkward position right now because all of the adjustments have stopped working. I can lift it up or down. I cannot adjust it forward or back. And, of course, it's gotten stuck in a position which has me tilted quite a bit forward, uncomfortably so.

But I figured, okay, these are expensive chairs. I don't want to go order another one. I don't want to spend that money. I want to see if I can fix this first. So you go down the rabbit hole, right? You start to Google and et cetera, et cetera. And so I'm going to end up taking it apart tonight and see if it's a simple fix.

If not, whatever. But as I was looking for ways, you know, obviously one goes to the tube of you, right? Because there's DIY and fix-it stuff all over the place there. Yes. And I came across one called Not Another DIY Show and their fourth episode, episode four, How We Fixed Herman Miller Mirror 2.

And I watched that. So it gave me some tips. So it's not the problem I have, but it definitely shows you how to open it up, which is helpful. However, this is a do-it-yourself repair show. And tell me if you watch this, you won't because you don't have to.

So I will just tell you. I watched it. I did. I watched it. Did you hear the fire alarm battery chirp throughout the entire DIY video? Yes, I did. Why did he not DIY his battery on his fire alarm before shooting this video? I have no idea. But yes, I heard it.

And I was just like, huh. Okay. The entire time, every 30 seconds, you just hear, beep. Yeah. I couldn't believe it. I did. I know. I fell off my chair, but not just because it's pushed forward too far.

That was pretty bad. That was pretty bad. But it was good. Good tips. Good tips. But guys, you might want to reshoot that one. Yeah, seriously. Or just edit the audio. Because you look like an idiot. All right. I got a little follow-up here on Virgin Galactic. So it turns out they're going to definitely be turning into, you know, a tourist agency to take people up to the space station.

Right now, I can't take a flight to fucking Vegas. But you can go to space. Well, soon you'll be able to go to space. Right. I don't think we'll fit in the spacesuits at this point. Well, you're on an all-beer diet now.

So, yeah. Yeah, definitely not. That would be a problem. Yeah. So it's interesting that NASA has agreed to kind of ramp this up with Virgin Galactic. Yeah. Well, NASA seems to be all about the collaborative ventures at the moment since they don't seem to be able to get the funding or support to do anything completely by themselves.

Yeah, but here's the thing. Virgin Galactic can't get anywhere very high, you know? It's like they're suborbital. Right. So I don't know exactly what they're going to be doing, but we'll see. So they're basically running vomit comets. That's kind of it.

Yeah. Okay. Very expensive vomit comets. And hopefully they'll be flying soon, you know? Hopefully. Hopefully. Because, yeah, I mean, it's looking good. The tests are looking good. So we'll see. We'll see. Look, man, fingers crossed for anything that gets us the fuck off this rock.

Oh, yeah. I agree. I agree. Is Richard Branson still running that show? Was that his deal or did he sell it off? I thought that he sold it off, but I guess, I mean, they still mention him in the article. So not sure. I know Virgin, was it Virgin Atlantic is pretty much toast right now.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, all airlines are. Yeah. The only airline left is to get you to space. Yes. Oh, and we talked about the Snap kerfuffle on Juneteenth. Yep. Well, Snap's vice president of diversity and inclusion.

There's a mouthful for your business card. Very long business cards. Una King. She said that the filter that was released was a collaboration between black and white employees and pushed back against criticism that the company had been culturally insensitive. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

Uh, the lens, if you remember, it asked users to smile to break the chains of slavery. Mm-hmm. Well, if my history serves me right, it took the bloodiest war in American history to break the chains of slavery, not a smile. Am I, I could be wrong about that? But they were smiling as they fought, Jason. Oh, I'm sure they were, but they didn't have any teeth back then.

So now I am here to chew bubble gum and fix Snapchat because I have an idea, Brian. Okay. I have an idea. Now, when you're dealing with a culturally sensitive topic, like a lens, put people from that culture on the project only, period.

That's it. But that's, that's reverse racism. No, it's not. It's, it's hiring. It's hiring for the job. I believe it's hiring for the job. And if they don't have the people on staff, either hire them or don't fucking do it. That's, that's how you fix Snapchat or not Snapchat.

Yeah. It's like, yes, well, cultural. Yes. Gotcha. I also have a suggestion. I think we should rename these because now every company has a vice president of diversity and inclusion. We should just actually rename that job to fall guy. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Oh man. And they, they, they kind of lied a little bit, I believe, because they said, you know, that we had, we had a black team on this with some white creatives. It's like, no, well, we know that the, the team from Luxury, which they, they acquired a while ago. They're based in the Ukraine.

Right. Yep. I don't know. Pretty white over there. Pretty damn white over in the Ukraine. So I don't know. Maybe they had a black project manager from here. I think that's exactly what they had. So anyway, snap, stop it. Just snap it. You've never done one of these that works.

Have you ever seen any news about how awesome snaps culturally, you know, diversity centric lenses have actually done anything besides cause them to take it down in a fire drill because they screwed it up. Yeah. It's the only news we ever get about their lenses is based on some holiday and how they really kind of pissed a bunch of people off.

Yeah. Yeah. Get a, get a step on your own dick lens. How about that? Yep. So I don't know if you noticed in the news, Brian, but Apple had a thing. They're having a thing, right? Yes. I saw. And generally we do not ever watch these things. I have not watched it, but the news does leak into our show, obviously.

Yeah. Yeah. We try not to put too much in because you go to every other tech podcast in the world and they will cover it ad nauseum, but I would like to talk about watch OS seven because they are now adding sleep tracking. And the only reason I mentioned this is because there are sleep tracking apps for your Apple watch right now.

Sleep watch being the big one that I used to use. So if you build it, they will steal it. That's the, that's always what it's going to be with Apple. If they, if they build, if you build it, they like it, they will steal it. So RIP sleep watch for sure. Um, I, the thing is, it's like, I can't sleep in a watch.

So, and I know a lot of people that can't sleep in a watch, so it's, you know, great, but also the battery life on the, the iPhone or the I watch Apple watch, whatever the fuck they call it today. You can't do 24 hours on it. So you're going to have to charge it at some point. I charge overnight. That's, that's the deal with the watch.

Yeah. When I was using sleep watch, I would charge it when I was like, when I'd get up, I put it on the stand, go grab a shower, grab breakfast, and then put it back on. And it, it got you through the day. Uh, for the most part, you'd still have to do like a top off every now and again, but they are also adding a hand-washing app.

Brian, it's got bubbles. It's got bubbles. We have to dumbify everything. It's, but you know what, at this point, good, because obviously nobody is following any of the rules or protocols or paying attention to anything related to COVID. More about that in a minute. So, so yeah, I'm fine with that.

You know, this made me think, and I didn't put this in the show notes because I had sports ball. I didn't think that you would really care. You also had that, uh, aura ring, right? That did sleep tracking for a bit. Yeah. Hurt the hell out of my hand. Well, uh, they must be making much larger ones because of the part of the news that I saw is that the aura ring is part of the arsenal of things that will be involved for the NBA as they resume play and basically socially distance and, and move into hotel rooms and wherever they're going to play the remainder of the season.

Uh, in addition to temperature checks and all that sort of stuff, all the players have been basically gifted an aura ring, which they think might help them be able to, uh, detect COVID early. I don't know how that's going to help detect it, but it was in the news. Yeah. My aura ring tracked, uh, basically your heartbeat and that's about it.

So I don't know. Okay. Just, uh, just popped up in my mind as we were talking about this, cause I know you're using that to sleep track as well. So, and, uh, they seem to think it might do something. We all know it won't. I, I, I don't know how the hell they're going to have an aura ring for NBA players.

Cause my hands aren't, aren't drastically large. You know, I've got decent sized hands, but, um, I don't have like little baby Trump hands, but, uh, so the, the ring sizes go up to 13 and I wore a 12. I am sure that they made some specific and higher and bigger sizes because of the amount of press that they'll be getting.

Yeah. Cause they're going to need like size 20 rings for that. Cause those things were big guys got big hands. Yes, they do. That's what I'm saying, man. And, uh, one last bit of Apple news, because it is relevant to your interests, Brian, uh, they have debuted the first look at the foundation TV series.

Did you look at it? Oh, did I? Do you have thoughts, Brian? I am excited. Uh, it looks good. I mean, it looks really, you don't see much obviously. And, uh, you know, uh, of course, of course it's going to launch as soon as my free Apple TV subscription is gone.

So I will have to pay for it or maybe hopefully buy a new Apple product that I need anyways and get another year for free. We shall see. Uh, but it does look really, really good. I mean, I have, I am a huge foundation fan. It is, it is one of the, may I say foundations of my sci-fi, uh, reading.

Uh, it's one of my favorite series of all time. I'm, I'm excited about it. We do finally have the special effects technology to be able to do something like this. It seems that they're taking a very measured and they're not turning it into a, you know, shoot them up, bang, bang, sci-fi whiz thing. Um, it looks good.

We'll see. Yeah. I was impressed. I was actually quite impressed. So I'm glad to hear that, uh, you are too. Yeah. I got very excited. I got a little sci-fi woody when I saw it. And I want to just delve deeply or not deeply quickly.

Into COVID corner really quickly, because, yeah, because there has been a, a, a sea change in the news recently about the cases. Um, you know, at first we were just doing this to protect the elderly and people with preexisting conditions. Uh, the most important story about COVID right now is the age shift that's occurring in Texas.

Young adults are driving the spike. In Arizona, COVID cases are growing two times faster among those aged 20 to 44, uh, than people 65 plus. In Florida, the median age of the new COVID cases fell from 65 in March to 35 this week.

It is no longer an old person's disease. It is everyone. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. So fun times. Wear your mask. GOG.show slash shop. In the news. Hey, Brian, you watch that Trump rally?

Uh, no. Okay. I watched a little bit of it just to see, you know, what the turnout was. And of course the turnout was abysmal. And, uh, and I think everybody's probably seen this right now, so I'm not going to spend too much time on it, but the TikTok teens and K-pop stars, well, not, well, not the stars, but the K, the K-pop fans, uh, basically went on a tear and they're the ones responsible for the, the million ticket sales and, uh, I just- Reservations.

Reservations. You didn't have to put down money. I, I have a feeling if even a buck was required, which is something that you should do for these sorts of things, people, uh, you got to have some skin in the game. That's what makes people show up. You, you even, I remember there's been, there were studies about like when you did a free showings on campuses for movies or things like that back in the day, if it was completely free, people wouldn't show up.

If you had to pay a buck to, to sign up, people will show up because they put money in the game. Yeah. We got skin in the game. But, uh, anyway, if you haven't read any of, uh, what happened with, with this whole story, you definitely should check it out. Uh, links will be in the show notes and, uh, yeah, some other TikTok news that they are joining EU's code of practice on disinformation, where they're also going to try and get rid of fake things on TikTok.

I don't know if you've looked at TikTok. Isn't TikTok all fake things? Pretty much. Okay. Just pretty much. So I was, I'm kind of curious how they're going to, how they're going to do that one. But, uh, yeah, it's been a, it's been a good week for TikTok. That's for sure. And I had to, I had to educate my roommate because she's like, oh, there's two new, there's two new TikTok apps out there.

There's elite TikTok and alt TikTok. I'm like, no, let me tell you about how social groupings work inside of apps and hashtags and things like that. So, you know, everybody, there is not two new TikTok apps, elite TikTok and alt TikTok. It's kind of like black Twitter, you know, and, uh, uh, punk Twitter and all the different types of Twitters.

It's just groupings of people who gravitate towards each other and create self, you know, um, uh, what is it? Uh, self congregating groups. Okay. I am not on TikTok, nor shall I ever be. Oh, it's fun. It's really fun. I'm sorry. And Pinterest is in the news again.

Oh, for, uh, for having an entire business model based just on stealing content? Yeah, no, it's not. No, not that? Okay. No, it's the one thing that we want them to be in the news for and see the lawsuits for. Nope. Nope. Turns out it's just a really shitty place to work. Okay. Surprises. No one. So link to that's in the show notes to, uh, former Pinterest employees describe a traumatic workplace where managers humiliate employees until they cry.

Welcome to Silicon Valley, my friends. I know. I was like that could, you could replace, uh, Pinterest with any web 2.0 company, couldn't you? Yeah, pretty much Uber. Seems to be the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Lyft. All of those. Yep. Yep. Yep. Well, uh, next door is also in the news. Uh, as we've often talked about on the show, next door is how you discover which of your neighbors are racist.

And, uh, they made it super easy for the racist to, uh, contact the police and they've decided that that was a bad idea. Uh, they had a button called forward to police or a feature as they call it that lets you send safety posts or urgent alerts to cops. This is, uh, not a good idea because people, let's just say, look, I, I wanted to rebrand it the Karen button because the, uh, the, uh, the Karens were mashing that button left, right and center.

So they're finally pulling it. The other reason that they are pulling it is because, uh, the vast majority of police forces throughout the country have not signed onto this because they realized maybe we shouldn't put a button in an app that lets us contact, lets them contact us immediately. Yeah. Or the how to swat your neighbor button is what they should have also called it.

Now I have to say, I signed up for the citizen app and I mentioned it, uh, on the show before my citizen app. Locals are funny as hell. I love this app. Every time something comes up, the, the, the snarky ass comments that are on there are hilarious.

There was one, uh, the other day where there was a woman down the street scene, uh, walking around with a pair of scissors and everybody was like, quick, where's she at? I need a haircut. And other people are like, maybe she just likes to play rock, paper, scissors, but it just went on and on and on. And I think I have a lot of screenwriters in my neighborhood because I mean, everybody was working on their new material.

Every time something comes up, you are in that part of LA. Yes, I am. Cause everybody was, you know, workshop and every time something comes up, it's, I mean, I have to say, give it a shot, Brian, cause I don't know if it's going to be as funnier by you because you've got a lot of social justice warriors over there, but yeah, I'm all social justice warriors, actors, and a very successful screenwriters who are no longer funny.

There you go. Yeah. But out here, man, it's good. It's really good. Uh, and this is not good. Spotify is testing interactive podcast ads. So you never have to remember a promo code again. Okay. Uh, why is it not good?

It's not good because they're just wheedling their way into the podcast ecosystem even more by adding quote unquote new features on top of a platform or on top of just a podcasting is simple. And now they're trying to just build everything into their own damn app.

But also, but as you pointed out, Jason, if you move over to Spotify, you're no longer a podcast. They must innovate for their own official new platform or whatever it is by doing, you know, innovative things like getting, uh, Kim Kardashian to do a podcast. Yeah. Yeah.

I heard about that. I heard about that. Um, no, I guess, yeah, if it's on their platform and it's not a podcast anymore, that's kind of it. Yeah. Uh, but I, they're going to find out that nobody buys shit from their phone when they're listening to a show. I can guarantee you that right now.

Nobody cares then. No, I mean the vast, look, we know the vast majority of podcast listening is done while you're doing another activity. Um, so your hands are taken up in theory. You're, you're driving, you're working out, you're riding your bike, you're taking a walk. You're not shopping. Yeah. I'm not going to stop my, my walk because I need to buy some Harry's right then and there.

You know, it's like, Oh, that sounds so good. I'm going to stop everything that I'm doing to give somebody else money. Nope. No, those ads are acted upon much later, which is why we have ad links in the show notes because when people are back at their computer is when most people actually act on an ad that is heard in a, well, a Spotify show or a podcast.

Yeah. There you go. And in news that could have come from our very first episode, some eight years or so ago, uh, Adobe is, uh, killing flash again, again, theoretically, finally. Sort of no, they're dead serious this time.

You guys for reals, for reals, no more flash at the end of this year, maybe, but we really do want to kill it. Please kind of sort of, yeah, I mean, I can't believe that this is still in the news. I can't believe that there's still flash. I can't believe that they're still talking about it, but Adobe is finally going to end support for flash when 2020 is over.

The only bit of good news that we've gotten out of 2020 so far, and, uh, they will actually even prompt you to uninstall flash later this year. Uh, so there you go. They are finally officially really killing it again. Again. Do you, do you, do you even have it installed?

I don't even know if I have it installed. I think I have it installed because of some older websites, web video players are still only flash based and they haven't moved them to HTML five because, you know, lazy and not wanting to pay anyone. So I seem to like always, I seem to be uninstalling it every couple of weeks because it just seems to find itself reinstalled every now and then.

I don't know. Weird. So I, I think I want to go back through some of my old websites and just do videos of them. So I have them start with Titanic Titanic was not in flash. My man did not use flash. It doesn't matter. You love it so much. You should do a lovingly shot video edit of you moving through the Titanic website to my heart.

We'll go on. No, I think the one I really care about though is face off. I want to, I want face off. Although every, most of that is the case. The interface was in flash, but everything else is in director, which you can't even. I don't want anything to play anymore. Director. I love director. I actually. Shockwave.

Sorry. Shockwave. I have an, God, I should go find it somewhere on a CD-ROM. There is like the entire flash based site for the Muppets that we did, which was just the coolest thing I ever built, but it was all flash and yeah, but I'm not going to go and make a video. So, you know what we should do?

We should go buy some old Quadra 840 AVs just so we can run our old stuff. Some of those old pizza box Quadras. Those things are great. Yeah. And a little bit of other Apple news that came out of the conference at WWDC. Apple has announced that they will not be using Intel processors and they are going to go and move to using their own chips, such as they do in their iPhones and iPads and their MacBooks and Macs.

So the longstanding collaboration between Intel and Apple is finally ending. They are just going to use their own stuff now. Hope you weren't holding Intel stock. Well, Intel's doing fine. Okay. I didn't even look. Yeah, I'm fine.

This is cool. I'll buy one two years after the first one comes out because there's no way in hell. I'm like, right now I'm thinking it's like, okay, they're probably not going to release a new iMac now. So I think this last iMac might be the last one that they ever have Intel on.

So might be time to buy. Might be time to buy. Now we're going to talk about this more on our Saturday show with Dave Bittner, but I thought this was pretty incredible. Blue Leaks exposes files from hundreds of police departments. And this is 270 gigabytes of data going back from 1996 to present.

And it is staggering how much data is in here. Yeah. And I mean, it's like, I mean, there's even like banking routing numbers and shit like that. And it's like, this is just a treasure trove of stuff for scammers. So the fallout from this is going to be far and wide for quite some time, I think.

Yep. Good times.

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Media Candy. Brian, my roommate and I bit the bullet and we watched The King of Staten Island this weekend. Loved it. Absolutely loved it. I know you're not a Pete Davidson fan. Not just not a fan.

I actively have an adverse reaction to seeing him on the screen. Okay. Then you probably wouldn't like this movie. Yeah, I'm thinking. I thought he was fantastic in it. I thought Bill Burr was amazing. Marissa Tomei was amazing. The story was really good. And it was funny.

It was heart-wrenching. It was just all around a solid, good movie. Judd Apatow still got it. So I'm not usually a huge fan of his movies, but the ones that he does that I like, I like a lot. And I like this one a lot. I really did.

All righty. So now I gave you the free masterclass.com subscription for a year. Yep. I'm going to tell you about a new class that you're never going to watch. Nope. Tony Hawk teaches skateboarding is out now. Right. I don't know how well he's going to be able to teach skateboarding in.

Do you not know how to skateboard already, Jason? Well, I do know how to skateboard, but I like Tony Hawk. Are you far too old to do anything that Tony Hawk does? Oh, God, yes. Okay. Then why would you watch this? Because it's fascinating. I'm fascinated by his longevity, his stick-to-itiveness, and how he comes up with his stuff.

I like him. I like Tony. So I'm going to give it a watch. And they did some beautifully shot stuff at his ramp. I mean, it's gorgeous. So I'm definitely going to give that a watch. But, you know, you almost never learn anything from these masterclasses. You get like one nugget for the seven hours that you watch it.

But it's still fun. They're fun to watch, I think. I would actually disagree with that. It depends on the subject that you're watching. I agree with you about the more entertainment-related stuff, like any celebrity talking about whatever. Or even the cooking classes, not necessarily the best. But I've got to say, if you delve into stuff like the Paul Krugman economics one that I watched, you learn a lot.

Okay. I will check that one out. I did learn to roll pasta really well from Gordon Ramsay and his cooking one, though. That was really fun. And a shout-out to Darknet Diaries, episode Triton. I just listened to this one this morning, and it is, I definitely think, one of the scariest ones he's ever done.

It's really, really fascinating and goes into this chemical plant in Saudi Arabia and how these guys got in and basically could have just killed everybody in the plant if they wanted to. Right. It's nuts. It's really nuts. And it's really scary. Really, really, really scary.

So, yeah, don't listen to it before you go to bed. Okay. But definitely listen to it because what these guys are doing out there is way deeper than just somebody running Norton antivirus trying to find the bad guys. Right. They go down the rabbit hole on this one, and it's really interesting.

Okay. And because we have run out of things to really watch, I'm going back and watching things that everybody has told me was really good, and I didn't watch the first time around. And speaking of that, I am watching The Watchmen. I have two episodes in. I have this mental thing about The Watchmen that I have about, I guess, Doctor Who as well, in which I'm aware that it exists, but none of it ever sticks to me.

And I don't really know what the story of The Watchmen is, even though I've now seen a Watchmen movie, perused Watchmen comics a couple times, and I'm watching a series called The Watchmen. I'm still very confused about who everyone is and who has powers and what powers exist, and I don't understand anything.

I just know I've seen a lot of blue penis so far. But it's pretty good. I've certainly enjoyed the first two episodes that I've watched. I'm not sure how closely this series is in terms of the overall story to the original story, but it seems good so far and certainly topical.

Yeah, yeah, it is. And sadly, it got canceled. So this, you know, at least you know that this is all it's going to be. Yes, it's a self-contained series. So yeah, you could always just pick up the comic book, too, if you want to go to the source. I could. I could.

But related to that, I did do something else after I'd had a couple glasses of wine this week, Jason. Damn you! I thought you would appreciate this, but I was looking for something to watch, and I was very lazy, and Farscape came across the screen.

Yes. God, it's awful, Jason. No, it's not. It is awful. Fantastic. It does not have legs. How's that? I understand how if you watch this when it originally hit the air, you probably really loved it, and you have fond memories for it. Watching it in 2020, it is fucking awful.

Damn it. Awful. No. No. Blasphemy. Blasphemy. Blasphema! It's so bad. Go die in a fire. Okay. I will, but I will die in that fire screaming Farscape is horrible. At the library.

So I was looking for something new to read after my junk sci-fi adventure, and I wasn't quite ready to dive into the hardcore sci-fi of book three of The Expanse. And a friend of mine texted me saying, have you read this book? Because we often share book recommendations, and she does not read any sci-fi. So this is out of that milieu.

It is just a standard fiction. And it was awesome. Fleischman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Ackner, a woman, writer. And she absolutely nails the male voice to the degree that I didn't even think would be possible. It's basically a story about, you know, middle-aged Jewish couples getting divorced and refinding love and being of a generation pre, you know, pre-app dating.

And then this guy just discovering all these apps that are basically supposed to be Tinder, but not using the name Tinder and just going on a fuck fest. And it's just insane. And how, you know, ultimately meaningless that was and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it was a really great book. So if you're looking for just a standard, you know, fiction book, not sci-fi, I can highly recommend this one.

Okay. Yep. I talked about Flux and Infinite by Jeremy Robinson. I bought them both at the same time. But I started to read Flux. Mm-hmm. Well, I said I was digging it. Well, no. No. No, I also said that it wasn't very well written.

Oh, it gets worse. It got so bad by about 30% into it that I returned it. Yeah. And I know if it's that bad, then I know Infinite's probably not going to be any better. It is some of the worst writing I've ever heard because I listened to it.

Right. But fortunately, the Audible app, or actually just audible.com, will let you exchange books based on shitty content. And in the past, you used to get to keep the book and still listen to it if you want to. But they've finally updated the Audible app where as soon as you exchange something, they pull it from your app.

You no longer have access to it. But wow. Oh, my God. You know, it struck me because I saw that you put this in the show notes that maybe I did a disservice when I didn't stress how much, when I talked about shitter sci-fi or popcorn sci-fi, how much that's not a diss.

That's actually a good thing. It is a compliment because it is difficult to write even just light and frothy but good sci-fi. There is so much horrible sci-fi out there. It's one of the reasons. What was the Amazon program? Kindle Unlimited. Yeah. So I was on Kindle Unlimited when they gave us a free trial.

And, you know, there is a metric shit ton of sci-fi books on Kindle Unlimited and 99.9% of them are awful, which is why I quit it. Welcome to the world of self-publishing. Yes. Anybody can, you know, crap out a sci-fi novel and put it up there.

And most do. Yeah. Oh, man, this was, it's cringeworthy bad. It's like, I don't know how this thing got so many five stars on Audible. I'm like, what? How? Well, maybe they gamed it the way we got so many five stars on. We didn't game it. Fuck that.

No, I just think there may be a lot of people with really bad taste out there. I agree with that. Oh, maybe that explains why we have a president that we do. Anyway, Scott Dickers, I took his how to write funnier comedy class or comedy business class. And I've been reading his books.

He's got a how to write funny series. And I'm really excited because he's got the third part in the series coming out today. How to write funniest. So I need to learn how to talk funnier, not write funnier. Maybe he can start that show.

Start that one up next. Yeah, but Scott's one of the founders of The Onion, if you don't know who he is. And I read his history of The Onion book this week, too. I'll put that in the show notes. It was really good. It was really fun to hear how they basically built The Onion with no marketing budget, period.

Yeah. And that one is a really good read. And I'm sure How to Write Funniest is going to be awesome, too. So I highly recommend checking that out. I'll have links to all the books in the show notes. It's funny you mentioned that because I was actually just listening to something and they were talking about Reddit and how Reddit basically has only spent $500 in advertising in the entire existence of Reddit.

Yeah, like on stickers. Yeah, it's for stickers. So talk about a lot of these companies, right place, right time. They were just like The Onion, Reddit. I mean, they were just there when things blew up and they never had to advertise for themselves. I want to know what podcast you were listening to because I heard that same podcast. I can't remember which one it was.

It was one of the No Such Thing as a Fish. Oh, that's what it was. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Was it that new bonus one they did? Yeah. Yeah. That was the one. Okay. I got to go back to it because I fell asleep halfway through it. I love falling asleep to No Such Thing as a Fish because they put a smile on my face so I don't worry about the world. And then you wake up.

Feedback Loop. Over at Patreon, we've got Val, Steve, Kevin, Jeremy, and Luigi. Thank you very much. Thank you. And over at PayPal, we've got Martin, Mark, Jeffrey, Joseph, Tom, Michael, Ryan, Andrew, Michelle, Stephen, Jackal, and Sean.

And Sean says, you guys keep me sane. I started on a Tandy 1000, played MUDS. Wow. I miss wow. And I am now an IT guru who does everything. Shout out to my brother, Jeremy, who also listens to you, and my retired boss, Steve, for whom I worked for 15 years.

He's an amazing person and the best boss an IT geek could ever hope to have. Well, thank you, everyone. Thank you. And over on Twitter, Murray writes in, scooters, not quite over. And this is a link from The Guardian. Rented e-scooters ride to the rescue of English commuters as COVID lockdown eases.

So our city councils are preparing pilot projects aimed at relieving pressure on public transport caused by the coronavirus. They will confirm that e-scooters are allowed to use public roads, cycle lanes, and tracks, and are exempt from vehicle registration and licensing. That's all gone so well here.

However, they will require insurance and be limited to 12.5 miles per hour. There will be no legal requirement for riders to wear a helmet. So I guess it's good that you have government health care. Except the hospitals are going to be filled with COVID patients. You might want to pick up that helmet.

You know, I mean, when I think about like a small, tiny, you know, English village, sure. Okay, no problem. When I think about London, are you fucking nuts? Are you crazy? I mean, there's a place and a time for these things, but on a busy major metropolis, that's not really it.

London is deadly enough as it is. I miss that city. Yeah, me too. Radio teacher writes in, not every meal should be gourmet. Thank you for getting it done. A bad podcast from you guys beats the best podcast from almost everyone else. Damning with faint praise. Thank you, radio teacher.

I hope you enjoyed that whopper. Yep. And bread. I think it was actually, I think it was more of a McRib. That's true. Those things are so disgusting. All right. Brett says, thanks for the show recommendations. I have one for you. Hashtag stage. It's on the BBC iPlayer.

So I guess I will have to fire up my VPN. Yep. And stars Michael Sheen and David Tennant. It's only 15 minutes. Only 15 minute episodes of probably the best comedy writing this year so far. Keep up the great work. And thank you. I will be checking that out. Yep. And if you need that VPN, go to gog.show slash VPN.

We'll hook you up. And Michael Sheen and David Tennant, they make a good couple. They do. They do. Yeah. Right. Film Sleep Repeat writes, given you are expanding your merch, I'm guessing, and shipping outside of U.S. is a pain. Why not offer the show track as an MP3 file, even a remix?

We do offer the show as an MP3. It's how will you download it? So not sure exactly what you mean by that. But yeah, please let us know what you mean by that. Because we do actually send it to you as an MP3. Yeah. Twice a week, you're getting an MP3 from us.

Yep. Lockdown Joe writes in, hashtag Groundhog Day. The only way I know the day of the week is MS Orphus has a calendar view for next seven days. Still every day feels the same, but I know its name. That's true. It's a day that ends in Y. Corey writes in, I demand a GOG pint glass.

Well, that would be nice. Unfortunately, our provider does not allow us to do pint glasses or hats, as I've discovered, which is pretty lame. I wanted to do a baseball cap, but we can't with who we've got right now. So we'll look into it. Yeah. We're looking into other providers because I want designs on the back of the shirt, not the front.

So I'm a back of the shirt kind of guy, and Threadless only lets us put it on the front of the shirt. I know. I wanted to do a t-shirt that said COVID Tour 2020 and just canceled on the back. Yeah. It's part of the grumpy old geeks on the front. I know. We've got to work on this because, yeah, Threadless just ain't doing it for us.

Yeah, but it's such a pain to switch now that we're already over there. Ah, take two hours. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. Hey, if anybody's got any good print-on-demand merch fulfillment recommendation places, send them over. Yes, please do, because I don't want to spend the time looking at all 7,000 million of them.

Yeah, I spent an hour this morning. I still haven't found one that is the one I want. Right. And Drawer writes in, even though you felt 449 wasn't your best moment, I liked it, so thanks for keeping it going. I didn't want to choose sides, so I bought both masks and also both mugs. Hope it will be enough for a few beers to make your day better.

Keep on grumping. Yours crazy, yours fucking slash crazy slash damn slash you name it, Israeli fan. Yes, I'm one of those. Sorry. Well, fucking Israelis. Stop breaking my phones. Yeah. Stop hacking into everything. Light bulbs, for Christ's sake. I want to be able to turn the light on.

Brannigan writes in, gentlemen, I'm an avid listener of the show and love what you guys do. I'm also a geek that's only a few years behind you guys, so this show just resonates with me in a way that gets my no-no area all warm and tingly. Probably only the furry episodes.

I very much agree with your political views. And I stumbled across this interesting long-form essay about echo chambers. For me, it really explains much of the polarizing political climate that we're facing now in America. And this is, he says, sorry, I know this isn't very techie, so I won't be surprised if this doesn't make the show.

Well, it made the show. And it's over at eon.co and it's Escape the Echo Chamber. Yeah, we've talked about this quite often in the past. You have to put in some effort. The thing about social media is it makes it easy. You feel like you're getting all your news just by reading your feeds, and you aren't.

Just have a wide variety of news sources you check regularly. End of story. That's all you have to do. You don't even have to go full Fox or full MSNBC if you want to avoid the crazy swings on either side. Have some international news in your feed to get a measured take. It's not that hard. And as always, know thine enemy, which is why I do check out Fox every now and then to see what the hell, how they've interpreted what the rest of us see with our plain eyes.

It's really cool on DirecTV. There's a view, if you have DirecTV, Channel 200. It's a four-square grid. You have CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and BBC. So you can actually just move the box and it'll change the audio for the video.

That you're hearing. So you can actually check all the different channels without having to change the channel. It's really kind of a cool feature. And it's really fun to watch what's going on on CNN and MSNBC and then flip over to Fox. Because it does give you an alternate view, even though it's usually wrong.

But CNN's wrong most of the time, too. I honestly hate them all right now. The business model of a 24-7 news network is the real problem. And it spills over into their online presences and all that because not that many people watch TV anymore. But the idea that this is what's caused all the problems is the fact that they have basically had to monetize news.

And it's become entertainment. There's no other way around it. So find measured sources. Find real journalism. That's the key. You know, I'm telling you, Al Jazeera. That's kind of the... I find that to be the best actual news source for news here. We talked about that a long time ago.

I don't even know. I think they might have gotten booted from my spectrum. I got to check for that and see if we still have the network. You have an iPad. So I recommend getting the Al Jazeera app for your iPad. And you can just kind of cruise through there. And immediately get on a list. Dude, we're on so many lists already.

It doesn't really matter. But all the news in the U.S. has turned into just opinion pieces. Yeah, that's all it is. Rachel Maddow is not news. I'm sorry. She just isn't. I mean, I agree with a lot of things that she says. But it's opinion. It's not news. Yeah, it's not news at all.

It's very important to remember that. Martin writes in. Hi, Grumps. I love your show. And thanks for keeping me company during the daily walks that I make during the pandemic. I have a question for Brian. What are your plans now you have been furloughed? Are you still moving to Toronto? This is not clear for me. Anyway, I wish you two all the best. And thanks for making great podcasts.

Well, Martin, it's not clear to me either. I don't think anything is clear to anyone anymore. We had intended to be in Toronto by August. Obviously, that has changed. Crossing borders is hard enough. Trying to get all your stuff across the border and figure out buying houses right now when you can't even go tour houses.

Right now, everything is on hold. And yes, I've been furloughed. And I will not be working again with the company that I started to work with until there are concerts again. Because that is the business model. I don't know what I'm doing. So, you'll hear about it as soon as I do. Here. Right here.

Stick around. Yep. Gabe writes in, I have a nine-year-old son who just read through the entire 13-book Wings of Fire series. This is his first book love experience, and I would like to expand his horizons beyond dragon fantasy. He has an extensive reading list from my wife, but I feel it is my duty to get him into some great sci-fi.

Yes, Gabe, it is your fatherly duty. Do you have any suggestions that would be both a good first experience and at an appropriate level for a young reader? Thanks. Yeah, my kid is too young at this point. So, I have to kind of cast my mind back a bit and think about what I read, which obviously wouldn't incorporate anything new.

So, I did Google it really quick. And I found a pretty good list, the 25 best science fiction books for kids at best-sci-fi-books.com. Sounds like an SEO play right there. Yeah. You think? Yeah. But still, it's a good list. So, I put that link in the show notes to give that a whirl.

I don't really remember what I was reading at nine, but the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe series were certainly the first thing I can recall that was kind of, you know, vaguely sci-fi fantasy stuff that I really loved. I mean, I loved those books. I did not – I was not aware of the Christian connotation at the time, and that's fine.

You don't have to be to enjoy them. I do remember A Wrinkle in Time was huge. And if I had to guess, I'd say that's probably the very first sci-fi book I ever read. Ray Bradbury stuff, like Something Wicked This Way Comes, which led to The Martian Chronicles, which then, you know, immediately led into Asimov and all that sort of stuff.

That's a good way in. I was also pretty weird in that I read 1984 at a very young age and, yeah, just all kinds of things that were probably not appropriate for me to be reading at the age that I was. But that means you're smart. So, that's a good thing. That is a good thing. And for me, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, man.

Yeah, I found that later. But definitely, that's a pretty safe one for younger kids, too. I don't think nine, but maybe like 12. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I think I started reading it when I was 12, but I was a dumb kid, and his kid sounds pretty smart. So, maybe he can jump the turnstile on that.

But, man, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is what really got me into sci-fi. You know what else would be a really good book? And I always hesitate to recommend it these days, even though it is one of my absolute favorites of all time. But this is probably a really good book for a younger kid. You know, Don't Hold the Author to the Fire. Orson Scott Card is a flaming asshole.

But Ender's Game, my God, that is a wonderful book, and it's perfect for a younger kid. You think nine for that one, though? I don't know. I don't know. I think you've, again, as a parent, you know, I think what he needs to do is go read it and figure out if it is appropriate for his kid or not.

Yeah, just don't tell him who wrote it. Yeah. You don't need to. Well, I mean, you know. Well, I don't want him to go look up the other stuff that he wrote, because his other stuff is just buggy and bad shit. Or his opinion pieces online. You definitely don't want to read those. Yeah. Your kid might be like, Daddy, can I get some of those magic underwear?

All right, moving on. Russ writes in, Loved449. As a Patreon modest, very modest contributor, I mean when I say, the party-like atmosphere, hearing you guys have fun with the less-than-perfect show was the best. It actually should win an award for How to Rise Above a Glitchy Episode.

Well, thank you, Russ. I'm glad it felt like we were having a party. The only kind of party I believe we were having was a pity party. But okay. Well, I was just trying to get back to bed because I felt so horrible. I wanted to cancel that whole damn day. I wanted to cancel Friday, period. All right. God. And Jeff writes in, he sent us two links, IRS used cell phone location data to try to find suspects.

So the IRS bought some of this freely available data that was out there, but then stopped the program because it didn't help and they couldn't find anyone with it. It's called Google, guys. Yeah, I'm not sure why they thought. I mean, I guess if you get cell records and you figure you can try to track someone.

But I mean, the IRS, come on, guys. Go after the companies, not the individuals. There's where you can get a lot of money. Just saying. Defund the IRS, I say. And he also sent in this link from the New York Times. Air Force investigates military planes that monitored protesters.

Now, this actually does disturb me quite a bit because we are still trying to figure out what exactly was going on. We should not be using the military against civilians. Nope. And apparently this is what happened. A little-known reconnaissance plane was used to monitor protests in Washington and Minneapolis this month.

The Air Force said on Thursday. They're looking into it now. Now, this plane, basically, from high up above, so far high up above that you don't even know it's there, can take perfect, perfect video of everybody on the ground. Oh, yeah. Of course it can. That's how we kill the bad guys. Yes.

Wasn't there a thing called, what is it, posse comitatus, where you're not allowed to do that? Yeah, something like that. Yeah, something like that. Brandon writes in and sends us a very, very upsetting link. It's a 20-year-old Robin Hood customer dies by suicide after seeing a $730,000 negative balance.

This pissed me off so much. This makes me very angry, too, because this is a death-by-shit UI. I know. That's it. That's it, in a nutshell. So I don't want to get too into the particulars here. It's pretty sad. Links in the show notes. Go give it a read. But, you know, this is the problem.

It's a great thing to have these apps, Robin Hood and all that, which, you know, push commission-free trading and all that sort of stuff. And they're super easy to use. And they've marketed themselves heavily towards millennials and Gen Z to try to get them involved and, you know, get the piece of the pie there and hopefully, you know, beat the big boys like Schwab and Fidelity and Merrill Lynch and all that sort of stuff.

The problem is you give people these tools with little to no education and you build your UI so crap that people don't realize what's going on. And then all of a sudden, they think that they've destroyed their entire fucking future by being almost a million dollars in debt when that's not really the case.

It's just your crappy UI. And if you would have woken up the next morning and checked it, everything would have been fine. Fuck you. Yeah, it's like giving a toddler a handgun in some cases like this. But, jeez. Yeah. Pissed me off. Yep. Dave writes in, hey, guys, I'm a fan of about four-ish years.

Keep up the awesome work, including politics. In regards to your discussion about contact tracing apps, the government of Alberta and Canada released one. Only uses Bluetooth tokens to track other users of the app. If someone reports being ill, all people who the app recorded contact with are notified. The Alberta government site has info on it here.

I know this is called the AB Trace Together. It's good to see these things trickling out. I would say too little too late, but we're still rising. Yeah. Dougite Code, I guess that's how you say that, writes in, was listening to show 440, catching up on my massive podcast backlog.

In regards to people wishing you wouldn't talk about politics, I just wanted to say, I don't mind. I often don't necessarily agree with your hard and fast opinions, but I also appreciate your positions on these topics I do disagree with you on. Not to mention, in today's world, it's virtually impossible to discuss anything without some politics seeping in like a burst sewage line.

What I really hate is your occasional offhand dismissals of Linux. How dare you, you ill-educated cretins? I can, of course, keep up the good work. I still use Linux. Damn it. Just not on the desktop. Yes, not on the desktop. Ramsey writes in, seen this long-form audio from the Atlantic discussing security in the election.

Very concerning if whenever you hear Russia, you also imagine China and others doing the same thing. And this is a link to Overcast. The 2016 election was just a dry run by Franklin Foer from June 2020. And, well, you know, part of the news that come out this week and just gets ignored is Trump has invited any number of foreign governments, including China, to please help him win in 2020.

So this is not just a theoretical piece anymore. Yeah. Well, you know, calling COVID Kung flu, which I got it, was pretty funny, but it's totally inappropriate. So I guess China might not help him out. You know who it's appropriate for to say that?

A comedian. Not the fucking president. Yeah, exactly. Particularly an Asian comedian. They can make that joke. They can make that joke. Yes. Steve writes in, Groundhog Day Syndrome is real. As a fellow grump, I sometimes give a sarcastic answer when colleagues ask how I'm doing.

By a typical Thursday, the answer is SSDD, which stands for Same Shit, Different Day. What's Thursday? Yeah. But during this pandemic, what I realized is we actually have something else. It's no longer Same Shit, Different Day. It's Same Day, Different Shit. Thanks for your entertaining grumpiness.

Hey, Jason, just you? Well, that's why I took it off. Okay. Well, I guess I'm the one that came up with the Groundhog Day bit, so he was thanking me for that. Oh, fair enough. Okay. All right. Yeah. I was trying to give everybody credit, man. I'm not trying to toot my own horn. This time. This time.

Sissy writes in, Do you all have any ideas for a better email app than Mail on Mac OS? I left this in here because I know Jason does. I'm looking for better search functions like I had when I worked and used Outlook. And thanks to Microsoft, I need a 365 subscription to use it. Thumbs down. Coincidentally, I'm also looking for a better calendar app, too.

The Mac OS calendar does not really give me enough real estate to see my day slash week at a glance. I keep missing my Zoom social visits, and it's starting to kick my ass. On Mail, I use Spark. I'm going to tell you right now, though, I don't think the search is going to be all that for you, but you can give it a shot. It's free.

Spark Mail. I think it's sparkmail.com or something like that. Just search for Spark and Mail in Google. It works great on the desktop and all of my different devices. On the iPad, it is awesome. That's where I do 90% of my mail because it's such a really nice interface, and it syncs everything across.

Also, if you've got – here's my favorite feature, Brian. You won't use this because you only have one email account. Now? I have six. Yeah. I have six email accounts, but you set one as a master, and you sync that with iCloud. Master and servant. I guess we're not allowed to use that anymore.

Sorry. Telling you. So you sync one. So when you go to your other app, you basically log into that account, and it pulls all of your other accounts over in all of your settings, all of your SIG files, everything.

It is so nice. On the calendar side of things, I actually went back to using Mac Calendar. I used Fantastical 2 for a couple years, but they screwed something up, and it broke, and it stopped syncing across all the devices, which is kind of what you need for a calendar.

You can give it a shot, see if they fixed it. But Fantastical 2 is what I used for years, and it wasn't bad. All right. Excellent. All right. So something happened over on iTunes. Oh, Jesus Christ. This guy again? I don't even know what to think about this. First off, he's continuing a one-sided conversation with himself on iTunes, because we read his two-star rating.

This is Don't Bother over on iTunes. We read his two-star rating that basically just said, All we do is copy from Corolla, and we mentioned that on the show. And instead of, like, writing us an email to flesh out the conversation, he decided to redo his rating on iTunes with his response. On the plus side, he did bump us up one-star to three.

Bump us up a star. We got bumped up a star to three. Yeah, I'll read this one, because you have the reply. Yes. This comes from Don't Bother from the United States, the three-star. Copy much? Shocking. Shocking. You wanted an example of something copied from Adam Corolla. Here is one of the many things I've noticed you do.

Might be accidental, but seems to be an exact duplicate of something he has been saying for years. Also, Nothing Burger, still like you guys. And a sticky thumb-out emoji. Okay, don't bother. Since we're going to continue this, I'm hoping to get you bumped up to a four-star next.

Get to a four next. We'll see what happens. Where did the term Nothing Burger actually originate? We have this link in the show notes. My point here is that the things that you are assuming that we are taking from Adam Corolla, Adam Corolla has stole because they are in popular culture. They just exist in the ether.

Many people use these things. Nothing Burger has been around, actually, since the 1950s. Used by a Hollywood gossip columnist named Luella Parsons to describe a person or idea that's essentially a whole lot of, well, nothing. It has also been used in the 60s and 70s, notably by cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown, who used the term in print back in the 60s and 70s.

In 1984, it was used extensively by the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, who was described by the New York Times as controversial, and he used that about marine and atmospheric issues, and this was in the press a lot. This has been going on. Nothing Burger has been in popular culture since the 50s.

Adam Corolla did not invent it, therefore I cannot have stolen it from him, or Jason for that matter. Now, shocking, I will admit, yes, I have listened to Adam Corolla, and he's done it, and I did it as well. But it's a bit more difficult to Google that because you have to get the right amounts of O's and C's to kind of get in any link.

But, you know, I wasn't able to find the attribution for that, but I've been doing that since elementary school. So it's safe to say that's not Adam Corolla's invention either. So I do hope you're also giving him a three-star rating and telling him he stole those bits.

Thank you. 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, not a three-star and a conversation that should have been done in email.

And if you're on the Overcast player, please click those stars. We really appreciate it. Man, good thing we cut that. Where's the beef bit we were going to do? Closing shout-outs! Sadly, this is a shout-out to Joel Schumacher, director of the Lost Boys and the Batman films.

He has died at the age of 80. The Batman films, I could do without, but Lost Boys and everything else he did, man, he will be missed. Was that the Michael Keaton Batman ones? No, that was Tim Burton. Which ones did he do? Tim Burton was... Yeah, I think he did the nipples. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. Hey, man, Lost Boys is enough for me. Great movie. Yep. So, love that. And we missed this as we were recording our last show. A shout-out to Ian Holm, star of Lord of the Rings, Aliens, or Aliens, sorry, the first one, and Chariots of Fire, who died at age 88. Amazing actor.

Been in so much stuff, it was sad to hear. Unfortunately, he had Parkinson's. So, it was kind of that. But, man, what a presence he was. Yes, he was. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to gog.show slash donate.

Toss us a few bucks and we'll love you forever. Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 450. 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 please, please wear a mask.

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