454: Pennies From Jack

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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, I'm having a lovely cup of Lapsang Sushong tea this morning. I sent you some. Did you get a chance to try it? I did. Thank you. It's tasty. It's good. Not going to replace coffee for me in the morning, but nice tea.

Doesn't it smell like whiskey, though? A little bit. I'll add some whiskey to it later and do a taste test. There you go. Before and after. It just reminds me of a nice scotch for some reason. Yes, but without the pleasant side effects of the scotch.

Right, but it is 8 o'clock in the morning, and even though I would like a scotch right now. Well, at this point. Does it really matter? Does it really matter is what I'm starting to wonder. Certainly isn't for a lot of my friends, is what I've noticed.

Yeah, I've been down that path already in C-19. I think I'm good with tea for a while. I'm sure there's going to come a point where I'll get back to it. Yeah, right now I'm trying to stay on the other side of 6 p.m. for my alcohol consumption. 6 p.m.? I'm in bed by 6 p.m.

I know. You are, but I like to get to the wind-up and to at least the bath portion for my kid before I start lubricating myself. Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, I don't need any bathroom accidents. That would be bad. So I got a little follow-up here. We have talked a lot about universal basic income over the years on the show.

Shoulda been nice to have right about now, wouldn't it? Yeah, kind of would have been. Shoulda, coulda, coulda, woulda. Well, we talked a bit also a while ago about Jack Dorsey and his $1 billion giveaway fund. Well, we're seeing the first money getting doled out for that.

Right. And it's Jack Dorsey is donating $3 million to U.S. mayors for universal basic income pilot programs in 15 cities. Right. Okay, so $3 million down, $997 million to go. Yes, an awful lot to go. $3 million does not seem like a lot for 15 cities.

That, I have a calculator, and I can tell you that that is $200,000 a city. So I guess everybody's just going to get $1 a month for like two months? See, again, this is the, we've seen a couple pilot programs of UBI, and I'm not really satisfied with any of them.

They haven't been large enough to begin with. And certainly if somebody is planning on giving away $1 billion, giving away just 0.000 whatever percent is not, doesn't seem particularly useful. And also, I would argue that this is not, I mean, please, by all means, give people money right now.

Everybody, people need it desperately. But I would say this is not the time to run a pilot program. I would call this actually COVID assistance, not UBI right now. Yeah, yeah. So here's the interesting part. So the majority of the gift is going to go to cities which include Newark, Atlanta, Seattle, Los Angeles, Compton, Long Beach, Pittsburgh, Oakland, and more.

And the rest of the money will go to a new pilot program in Stockton. Well, yeah, here's $20. Are they just buying them copies of Excel so they can just track how much money they're not giving to people? Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, $3 million is a drop in the bucket just for Los Angeles.

I can see $3 million being a pilot program in Stockton. Yeah, just Stockton. Oh, well, I mean, it is what it is. Again, I don't think you're not going to get really valuable data right now out of any kind of pilot program because we're in such extraordinary circumstances.

Yeah. You know, I took psychology. I ran a lot of trials as part of my psychology classes in college. And I know that you have to create an environment in which you have controlled for every other possible variable to get usable data. You are not controlling for every possible variable right now.

Exactly. People need this money desperately right now. It's what you want to see from a pilot program from UBI is UBI rolled out in normal circumstances. Unfortunately, obviously, we can't do that right now. So I wouldn't call this a UBI pilot program.

I would just call this COVID assistance and give people some damn money, Jack. Yeah, seriously. Pennies from heaven. Pennies from Jack. That's right. In the news. In the news. Well, Brian, as a surprise to no one, Facebook has just failed its first ever civil rights audit.

I would say shocking, but I wouldn't want our three-star rating to go back down to a two-star from the guy who thinks that we steal everything from Adam Carolla. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is not surprising, is it? Not in the least. Not in the least. Yeah. We know this.

We've had multiple studies. It's nice to have an independent audit do it. It's nice to have an 89-page audit handed to the company, which lists in extreme detail everything that is going on that is so horrific and making basically divisions so much deeper, particularly here in the U.S., but not limited to.

This is an international – they are international bastards, not just American ones. No, here they've divided us, but, I mean, they're responsible for a genocide. Don't forget that. Yes, yes. Don't forget that. Well, they're just a platform, Jason.

They're just a platform. And your favorite person, Sheryl Sandberg. I love this. I'm so sick of her. Oh, my God. She's my new Huffington. She really is. Like, I was really into Ariana Huffington for a long time, decades ago, and then I just started to gradually despise her.

And Sheryl Sandberg, initially, I was like, hey, look, sister's doing it for themselves, writing these books about leaning in, horrible circumstances. Look at her. And then everything she has proceeded to do since then has been horribly awful. Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. And I love this.

She said, the report was the beginning of the journey, not the end. Also, what has become increasingly clear is that we have a long way to go. No shit, Sandberg. No shit. As hard as it has been to have our shortcomings exposed by experts and the world, it has undoubtedly been a really important process for our company that they will sweep under the rug as soon as possible.

I'm not sure if they're going to be able to get away with sweeping this one under the rug this time. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think that they're going to turn around and all of a sudden fix everything that we'd like them to fix and become, you know, anything good in the world. But I don't think that they're going to be able to just kind of dance away from this one this time.

Yeah, they're going to have to change because advertisers are not happy. Yeah. Well, that's the real reason, right? And this adds fuel to the advertiser's fire. This is basically, you know, before when Facebook would come at them and say, hey, bro, why no cash? Now they can wave this 89-page report around and go, this is why no cash, bro.

Exactly. You roll it up like you would roll up newspaper, like you would smack the dog, but you walk into Zuckerberg's office every morning and smack the Zuck. Bad Zuck. Bad Zuck. Mm-hmm.

You shit on the internet, Zuck. Thank you. And I love how she says, you know, it's a journey and we have a long way to go. The only way to go is down. They've been on this journey for how many years now? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was a latecomer to Facebook and I've been on Facebook for over a decade.

Right. It's not like they're just starting now. So I think a good Facebook is very much like a good self-driving car. It's always going to be 20 years away. Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. Although, although if you listen to Elon Musk this week, he says they're very close to full level five self-driving cars.

Oh, are they? Yep. How many times has he said this exact same thing? A couple times, yeah. Yeah. He says, I'm extremely confident that level five or essentially complete autonomy will happen and I think it will happen very quickly.

I have no doubt that Elon Musk might roll out level five level autonomy to Teslas and let people do them, but I don't think that they will work very well. Yes. I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality for level five autonomy complete this year.

No. Now, I'm sorry, but when it comes to self-driving two-ton pieces of metal, I do not want basic functionality. I want the whole shebang. I want the whole tomato. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I put this in the show notes as well because this just kind of ran across my feed and this is from the Lad Bible and it's a video on Facebook.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find it on YouTube. Otherwise, I would have put that link in the show notes. But a guy tried to test Tesla's autopilot emergency stop features using a cardboard cutout of Jeremy Clarkson and a cardboard cutout of a Penguin. It did seem to work relatively well. It did?

Yeah. But, I mean, it's just emergency stop. It's not – what you really need to do is you need to try to trick it because that's what people are going to do. And we already know, you know, we had that just, what, two weeks ago we were talking about how cars were stopped – Tesla's were stopping at Burger King's because they thought it was stop signs.

Yeah. Yeah. No, and I think five years ago I said we all should just wear stop signs on the back of our shirts. Yeah. And that's the real test. Level five autonomy in my mind isn't just, oh, look, we gave it a whole bunch of rules into its algorithm and it follows those rules.

Level five autonomy means you can get past the tricks from the fucking 17-year-olds down the street. With a piece of chalk that they can effectively just put a circle around your car and it can't figure out how to get out. Exactly. Yeah. And I found this one over at Wired. This is just kind of a follow-up story with it.

And they say, self-driving tech is becoming a game of partnerships and how everybody figured out that, hey, this is hard. Yes. Not only is the self-driving part hard, but even just building a car is hard, which is why we've never seen an Apple iCar.

Yep, pretty much. One of these big, as Chris Lockhead would say, super ding-dong guys, Carl, I eat your mama, says, vehicles are these massively complex systems. And to build self-driving cars, we need to integrate them with another very complex system and do it in a way that's reliable and cost-optimized.

It's really, really hard. Brian, I just would like to say that we called that one probably episode one, two. Yeah. Well, yeah, I stand with you. There's no chance in hell that we're having self-driving level five autonomy cars on the road this year.

Sorry, Elon. Not going to happen. Well, actually, now is the perfect time to test them because traffic is so low. Not anymore, man. Yeah, that's true. I went out in LA the other day just to get my oil going in my car. And yeah, there seemed to be pretty much the same amount of traffic on the road that there was before.

Oh, speaking of that, just a public service announcement because I got extremely upset this week. You never. Yeah, I know that never happens. But speaking of just getting the oil moving in your car, get out and drive your car particularly. And I should have thought of this, but I've got COVID brain as well as everybody else does.

We have two cars and the Mini Cooper that we have, which is basically my wife's commute to work car, has been sitting on the street for months at a time. You know, I've occasionally taken it out, got it washed, put in some gas and all that sort of stuff. But for the most part, it hasn't been driven.

And of course, during, you know, the pandemic, I get a notification that I have to renew my car and, of course, have to go get a smog check during a pandemic because that's what you have to do. And I took it and, of course, failed. And I would like to thank the asshole who basically told me as soon as I failed the smog check.

He's like, oh, yeah, it's just the sensor. You know, you obviously haven't been driving your car much because of the pandemic and all that. If you drive this for about half an hour and come back, it'll pass. Nice. Well, why didn't you tell me when I pulled in? Because he gets to charge you twice for the smog check, probably.

I got charged for the smog check and now I'll have to get charged again. So if any of you out there have to do a smog check, drive your car for a while before you take it in. God, I can't believe they're still doing that right now. They're doing everything. I told you. Like, I just I actually had to get on the phone with the court system because they wouldn't accept my mother is elderly and there's a pandemic.

Going on is an excuse not to go to jury duty. You're still dealing with that. Yep. I just eventually I just gave up and I was like, all right, well, we're just going to file to push it off. So I'll deal with this again in February. Right. We'll see if there's still a pandemic. There will be. There will be. Anyway, spoiler alert.

Tangent. Random tangent. I saw this one this morning. My roommate actually told me about it. I'm like, OK, let me go check this out. Well, it turns out Walmart, they're finally going to roll out their Amazon Prime competitor in July. Yep. And, you know, this is the plusification of the world.

This is Walmart Plus. Plus, yes. It is cheaper than Prime. It is $98 a year. Yeah. You know what you don't get? Movies. Prime video, which is the main reason I subscribe to Prime at this point. Exactly. You do get same day delivery of groceries, fuel discounts and other perks.

We still don't know where it's going to roll out, if it's going to be national. Is one of the other perks, when I go to my local Walmart, everyone will actually wear pants for once? No. No. OK. No. That's the point is that you get same day delivery of groceries, so you don't have to go to Walmart. Right. You know, you take the good with the bad, and there you have the facts of Walmart.

So Apple. Not Apple. Jesus Christ. COVID brain. Alphabet. They both begin with A. We have made fun of the project Loon forever. Yes. Just because of the name. Yes. Well, here's one thing. You know, OK. The project is called Loon.

They send up balloons. Yeah. Which they, for some reason, call flight vehicles. You got to, it's on the tin. It's right there on the tin. Why do you, what the, yeah.

Anyway. Google has always had a naming problem, let's be honest. That's true. That's true. It still doesn't irk me as much as recognition with a K from Amazon. Yeah. So they've been testing this in Kenya for a couple months now, and they're going to roll it out pretty wide.

They're going to have 35 balloons covering an area of around 50,000 square kilometers. And so far, they've already had 35,000 unique users on the internet at the same time. So not too bad. Not too bad. OK. And I was surprised when I saw how high these things go.

They're at 20 kilometers up. Well, you'd have to, right? Otherwise, they're just going to get shot down. Well, I mean. This is human nature, right? You got to get them up there pretty high. Plus, you want the spread of connectivity, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I just didn't think. I mean, 20 kilometers is pretty high.

I mean, you got to get them past, of course, all the flight paths and things like that. But, you know, that's pretty cool. I think it's cool that they're actually going up. I thought this was kind of a bit of good tech news coming out of Alphabet for once. Yeah, that's nice. I like it. 1,000 users per balloon so far.

Mm-hmm. All right. Good for them. They're doing better than Quibi. They are doing better than Quibi. I'll tell you that much. So Independence Day weekend was a big one for Quibi. It was time to see how many of their earliest subscribers would convert from free users to pay subscribers. So the first initial batch of free subscriptions were ending.

And we got to see who put in their credit card info and decided it was worth sticking around. Or who forgot to cancel and left their credit card info in there. Well, that might explain the 8% stuck around. Okay. Yeah. They've lost 92% of its earliest users after the free trials expired, according to Tech Crunch by Sensor Tower.

So out of the 9,000, 9,100,000 users who signed up for the free trial, yeah, they kept 8%. That's not good. So, I mean, it's not horrible, actually, to be honest.

And to be fair to Quibi, it's actually not horrible from people that sign up for free trials on apps across the spectrum. But it is pretty horrible, considering the amount of money and star power they've attempted to throw at this and the desperation in which they've tried to continue to make Quibi a thing.

Yeah. I mean, you just look at how much money they've lost on this thing. Considering, you know, how many billions did they spend on advertising for it? Yeah. And not even to mention the content that they had to buy and all the big names, just to only have 910,000 users.

And you also got to keep in mind the fact that this first group are the people that were basically, you know, prone to be Quibi, to be pro-Quibi. They were aware of it. They signed up. They were excited. They got in right at the first day. And only 8% are sticking around.

So that's not a good look. No, I expect that number to keep on dropping. Quibi, the pandemic might still be here in February, but I don't have high hopes for Quibi. No. Well, no, they'll still be around just because they put too damn much money in it to quit right away.

And I'm sure they're getting a whole lot of people being paid a whole lot of money as consultants telling them, oh, you just stick it out. You'll be last man standing, blah, blah, blah. You know the bullshit that they're being told right now. Yep. Netflix or Disney Plus will buy this for pennies on the dollar. Put all the content together into one actual show instead of this stupid eight-minute thing and then release the content there.

It'll just be a content buyout probably. Yep. I can see that happening. So that'll happen. Good times. Yay. They'll all be fine. I found a really interesting article over on Wired, a kind of a long-form article. I know you are not into the sports ball, however I am.

And people are kind of scrambling right now to try to figure out how to bring sports back during the pandemic. Spoiler alert, you probably shouldn't, along with everything else. But they're going for it anyways. As they say, the coronavirus crisis is an opportunity for innovation, says Pete Giorgio, a sports practice leader at the consulting forum Deloitte.

A lot of things that teams are doing right now that feel short-term will become long-term. People will be asking, why didn't we do this 10 years ago? Now, this primed me for an interesting article about amazing technology that I should be super interested in that are game changers. However, as I read this article, I did not see any of that interesting technology that would turn around and make me think this is a game changer.

And this is the way we'll be doing things 10 years from now. What we've got here is we've got some discussion about the NFL, the National Football League, which is gearing up for fall kickoff with new face shields and mask combinations designed by sunglass manufacturer Oakley. Now, the thing that is interesting in here, I guess, is they're using anti-ballistic, anti-fog lenses, which they use to make combat goggles.

And they're getting close to prototypes for players. Now, they're also pushing to get a face shield and an internal N95 respirator mask within that face shield to block particles. But that probably isn't going to happen because, as we know, you can breathe, but you can't exactly run a goddamn marathon breathing with these things on.

So we'll see what happens with that. MLS has tried to start up. They had a couple games already. I've noticed, looking at the schedule, that a number of them have been canceled, shockingly enough. In fact, one of the whole teams, basically the entire team, if you're not familiar with soccer, you field 11 players, a coach, and nine members of the FC Dallas soccer team have tested positive earlier this month.

So they have been dropped from the tournament. We've lost a team already. We've also lost teams from the women's soccer team, which has pulled out of a Utah restart tournament as six players and four staff members tested positive for coronavirus. If you follow the MLB, we've got a bunch of players basically opting out.

We've had a bunch of players also test positive. So whatever season we're going to get from there, I don't know what it's going to be. It's going to be weird. And we talked in the past about how the NBA is attempting to roll out aura rings, which will somehow solve the coronavirus problem for them because they're saying, well, we'll be able to test everybody's vital signs and we'll come up with a risk score from the ring that can flag potential early symptoms.

And then we can test the players that have gotten this risk score. But of course, we've had people basically publish a review of existing wearable medical technologies and their value in early detection of COVID-19. And the review concluded that none of them do anything and are not very effective.

All right. I think it's just called esports. Let's just have esports. We'll get a bunch of kids and they'll pick the teams. Not the same. Or, you know, then you just watch basketball on TV, but it's just a bunch of kids actually playing esports. No, thank you. It looks exactly the same as, you know, the real thing nowadays.

It's so photorealistic. You can at least get some kind of fix, at least it's random, you know, just like sports are. You never know who's going to win. Yes. Well, and the one technology that they do mention in this entire article that I unfortunately think will stick and be around is facial recognition.

And that's not so much for the players or anything like that. That is for the people that are going to start going to sporting events again when it's okay to do so, or as everything else in this country has happened well before it's okay to do so, because that's what we like to do here. So yeah, this company called True Face, started by Sean Moore, is working with government and airport industry clients and is in discussion with some soccer teams.

So the idea basically being, we will set up facial recognition everywhere so you can just come through the gate without a ticket and you could pay with your face when you go to, you know, get your beer and your hot dog and all that so that there's no actual like cash exchanging hands or anything like that.

And it'll go faster because there's, you know, less of a transaction because, you know, you're just, we're using a camera, we're getting your face, and that's that. Now, of course, this is being announced and discussed as we are talking about how facial recognition should be banned outright everywhere.

So and how everyone should and how everyone should wear a mask. Yeah. So well, as he and as he points out, there are some hurdles there, but I don't see them as reasons to halt the conversation. And speaking of halting things, Palantir, which probably should be halted, the data mining company that helped ICE track down and deport immigrants.

Guess what? Guess what? They're going public. Yeah. I don't think Palantir is getting my money any day this week. Oh, no. No, no. I will never, ever, ever invest in Palantir. I think we've talked about that in the past about how, you know, we both, for the most part, attempting to use our investment money for good and to vote with our wallets in that way.

So, yeah. Yeah. And I got to say that the fact that they're trying to leave Silicon Valley because everybody hates them and that they want to move, you know, to the East Coast, AKA Colorado. Yes. The East Coast of Colorado.

That really puts a lot of faith in the CEO. You're kind of a moron. Yeah. So they announced on Monday that they plan to go public. They have disclosed very few details, shockingly, instead primarily focusing on informing the public that had sent the necessary draft registration papers to the SEC.

People close to the matter say the company is considering a cheaper way of going public known as direct listing, which would allow them to save on investment banking fees. Now, here we go again. This is yet another one of these companies. CEO Alex Karp told staff earlier in 2020 that the company is cash flow positive and has been privately valued as being worth as much as $20 billion.

It's revenue in 2019, $750 million. That's a hell of a multiple. Yeah. You think? Yeah. Oh, that's some, that's some, uh, let's see here. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

Yeah. That's some pre I, maybe he's just got the COVID brain and he can't, can't do that. Maybe, maybe, or maybe he's just got, you know, a lot of facial recognition data on people. That's true. Are worth 20 billion. Say it, or I will release this.

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Shop now at QVC.com. Security? We're joined again this week by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast.

Dave is also the co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, as well as the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy, as well as surveillance and privacy, and his new podcast, Fursona. Yeah, right.

It's hard to find, but if you can, oh boy, is it worth it. How you doing, Dave? I'm doing all right. I feel like we have a lot to catch up on since we were off last week due to the Independence Day celebration.

Woohoo! I had a big party with 250 of my closest friends. Did you now? No. No. No, I did not. No. No, I did not. I bought some fireworks and blew them off for the kid who thought it was probably the most exciting thing ever.

Well, that's cool. I mean, that's fun. For a kid that age? Yes. Yeah. That's great. Well, I mean, you guys, I mean, I was looking at the videos of LA. You guys really lit it up, didn't you? Yeah. That was a little bit. Crazy. That was a little crazy. I just kept going, huh, those are supposed to be illegal.

Hmm. Right. Yeah. I couldn't help wondering, like, is that some – is there any connection to that with how people are feeling about law enforcement in general right now? I think there was a bit of that, some of it for sure. Sure. I think more of it is just, you know, months and months of being cooped up, many people unemployed, and the closeness to the Mexican border in which one can get those sorts of fireworks.

Right. Right. They worked hard to find in the area. Let's just say. Yeah. Yeah. And if everyone's an outlaw, is anyone an outlaw? Yeah. For us here in Maryland, you either have to make a trip up to Pennsylvania or down to North Carolina.

And you can – and they have little shack set up at the border ready for you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Unfortunately, I only purchased legal fireworks and my son was not impressed given everything else that was blowing up all around us.

Right. Yes. And it turned out we had the worst air quality of 10 years on July 5th. Oh, and a number of fires. Interesting. Yes. Oh, good. Imagine that. Right. Fire season. What a match. Yes. So, the day after we last spoke, I was over my folks house helping my father hang a picture on the wall and I threw my back out.

And – Getting old is wonderful, isn't it? Oh, my goodness. And you know what? I have had a sore back before. I have had back pain. But I have never had anything remotely close to what I went through with this. Right. By the time I got home, we – my wife drove us home.

And just because I was sore, but on my way into the house, my lower back just started spasming and I could not get inside the house. I laid on my front walk for about an hour and fortunately, a neighbor who was a physical therapist happened to come by and she gave me all sorts of things to do.

She was very kind and it was one of those things where you kind of wonders, you know, boy, was that a nice coincidence or is someone looking out for me? But eventually made it inside but spent about three days immobile because if you brushed against me, if the dog jumped up on the bed, I could go into these spasms and they were just – I don't know if either of you guys have experienced this.

Well, I guess we're really bringing the old to the grumpy old geeks podcast. Yeah, really. That's right. This week. I'll be taking the old category. Metamucil. Good or bad. Right. Exactly. I've actually – I've had a slipped disc before and it was incredibly painful.

And much like your story, I just happened to have a really good friend at the time that was a professional physical therapist. Yeah. So she was – had me start coming into her office. I was on this crazy machine that stretched my back and there was electrodes attached and things of that nature.

Wow. I took three months to get back to normal. I was – I went to doctors as well and they wanted to do surgery and all that. And the number one rule of back surgery is don't get back surgery. Right. Right. Right. So I was very pleased to actually have a physical therapy solution that got me back to normal after a period of time.

But it is the most painful thing I think that can possibly happen to you is problems with your back. Yeah. I agree. I think this would put me – this recalibrated my pain scale for sure. And there's that saying about – one of the great things about getting older is that you never have to worry about making conversation because you can just talk about your ailments.

Yes. Yes. Boy, that really struck home recently because I was always – you know, I would think about the family Thanksgivings and Christmas dinners and as a teenager and just going, "Oh my God, all they ever do is talk about things that are wrong with them and now I'm them."

Yeah. So I actually – Also, I was going to say – Yeah, go ahead. One of – since you're throwing out tips and stuff, have a big box of Salon Paws patches around if you have a flare up. What is that? Those things – It's basically like a – The hot, the icy thing, right?

Okay. It's kind of a hot, icy thing, but it's like – it's magic. I – when I – if I hurt my back doing something around the house, I just slap one of those things on, take a lie down and it really helps. Also – A-L-O-N-P-A-S. Send me a link. Yeah. If that broccoli is too crunchy for your teeth, try blending it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how is that Metamucil tip going there? Right. Exactly. I need to stay regular. Right. How to minimize the smell of Bengay.

You know – so anyway. Speaking of other old people things, musicals. I missed a day of – I missed a day of work at the Cyber Wire, which I believe this was my first day ever missing – like taking a sick day, like in the four years we've been doing it.

Right. So fortunately, we're at a place where there's – the team could just sort of slide in and reschedule things and someone could do stuff for me. But I have to say it felt a little weird to be homesick. You know, you kind of – you want to sort of wheel your way through these sorts of things and say, "I'll be fine.

I can make it." But I was not going anywhere. Right. I was flat on my back, just – my body said, "No, that's adorable. No, you're – we're not going anywhere quite yet." So I'm mostly out of the woods. I did – I converted my desk here to a stand-up desk, which has been great.

So I'm sort of alternating between standing and sitting. I'd say I'm pretty well along the way to healing. But now I'm terrified that I'm going to – because I wasn't doing anything strenuous when this happened. You know, I was just – I wasn't doing anything – I wasn't lifting anything.

I just bent over in a funny way and spent three days in bed. So – Yeah. Yeah, that's how it happens. Good times. You just need to pull something the wrong way. But let me tell you, yoga will become your friend as you get older. I cannot recommend it enough. Oh. Start with an easy program. But I mean, all that stretching and bending and getting those muscles and everything kind of lined up and strengthened up.

It's very helpful as you get older. Yeah. I was going – after that period with my back, I was quite worried about it for a long time. And yeah, all the recommendations were just start doing yoga. And I have. And I have yet to have any other back problems, knock on wood. So.

All right. Well, I'll have to look into that. The other thing I wanted to follow up with you guys was Hamilton. I know you guys had discussed this some. I watched it over the break and was very impressed. For no particular reason, I had shied away from diving into the whole Hamilton thing.

Yeah. I think probably because I'm not a big fan of hip hop. So that wasn't a draw for me. Obviously, I love Broadway and I love musicals and all that sort of thing. But I really went into this not knowing hardly anything about the show at all.

And I loved it. It took me about five minutes to settle into the cadence and really be able to digest what they were saying at the speed at which they were saying it. Because it's remarkable the pace that they maintain throughout this, you know, two and a half hour plus show.

But I really loved it. I was sort of blown. It reminded me of the feeling I had the first time I saw Les Mis, which was, oh, okay. This is something different. This is, this is a different level. This is a new thing. This is, you know, we're, this is not something we've, I've seen before.

Right. Yep. Couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more. What I wanted to note was I saw you guys were talking about Oscar eligibility for the Hamilton movie. And one little tidbit that I'd heard over the years was that one of the reasons why movie versions of Broadway shows always have one song that's different than was in the original is for Oscar eligibility.

Oh. For some reason, you have to have a different, one song has to be different on the soundtrack in order for the soundtrack to be eligible for an Oscar. So, you know, like, I don't know, but a little shop of horrors had, they added Mean Green Mother from Outer Space, which wasn't in the, wasn't in the Broadway version, but they put it in there.

That made them Oscar eligible. So. It was a good song too. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's good. Yeah. Good show. Underrated movie, I think. Oh, definitely. It was a great movie. Yeah. Yeah. Who, who better than Frank Oz to, to, to, uh, direct movie where one of the stars is a giant puppet.

That's true. True that. Well, we talk some security then. Yeah, please. Well, I just feel like we're, it's been a while, so it's good to catch up. Yeah. We have to, we have to get our tangents in. That's, that's the whole point. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So turns out our good old friends at Clearview AI, the company that has been scraping everything on the internet that can be on the internet and building a facial recognition database out of it.

They have, uh, well, they've pulled out of Canada. Right. Uh, and they, they're doing it quote unquote voluntarily because, uh, but they, they failed to mention that there is an investigation right now going on from the office of the privacy commissioner of Canada.

And, uh, they're, even though that they've pulled out Canada is still going to keep investigating them, which is interesting. It'd be like, Hmm, I guess maybe to supersede any, uh, chance of them sneaking back. It's like, Hey, we've got an investigation. Oh, we're going to leave. Okay.

We'll cancel the investigation. Oh, wow. No, we changed. We're coming back. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. That is interesting. Um, and they're getting scrutiny from places, uh, around the world, I think, or taking a closer look at them.

So UK and Australia have also launched probes into them. So I don't think that they're going to be long for this planet. Well, I, I don't think there'll be long for this planet in such a, such a, an obvious and, and public facing way, but I have serious doubts that they're going to go away.

You really think so? Yeah. I really think so. With the reputation they've got. Oh, that's right. They just rebrand. They're just going to rebrand. Everybody just rebrand. Like everybody else does. They could just be absorbed by someone else. I mean, one of the, yeah, the big ad companies would, or one of the big, uh, law enforcement companies might contractors might gobble them up.

I could see that happening. Yeah. Or just become, you know, a government arm. Hmm. Oh yeah. Yeah. Good times. All right. Well, I just wanted to bring that up because, uh, yeah, it, they're just not having a good week.

Apparently. No, no. A friend of the show, David Teeter sent this one over and it's a Vox article called the hidden trackers in your phone explained. Now there's nothing new in here that we have not discussed ad nauseum on this show for years now, but I thought it was a pretty good primer on people who just kind of don't know what's going on.

So this is something you can send to your friends and family. Right. When they, when they say, uh, how do they do this kind of thing? Well, here you go. Well, if it's anything like my friends and family, I will send that article to them and then they will ask me to explain the article. So I might as well just tell them cause they will not, they will not read.

Send it with an executive summary. No, but it's good to have a, like, I have a little folder in my browser that's called explainers. And, uh, this, this will go right in there for when you get in the midst of some sort of conversation where everybody's off the, off the beaten track and you want to just drop something like this in there to maybe try to get them back on track.

These are, it's good to have a little library of these things. So it's nice that there's one that's, that's recent. Yes. I'd like to see that library actually. Yes. Maybe we should share that one. Share that library with us, please. We will share a Google doc, please. Um, I don't know if you guys have been tracking this thing.

Uh, you know, the iOS 14 beta is out, which is the next version of iOS. And one of the things that Apple has really upped their game on is tracking privacy stuff and alerting the user if, uh, anything is going on behind the scenes.

And one of the things that has not just bubbled up, but boiled up or exploded like a volcano is there are a lot of apps that are accessing the clipboard. Yeah. And evidently these apps have the ability.

This is built in functionality that they can access the clipboard and there's good reasons for them to do that. But what's happening is they're accessing the clipboard a lot. Like they're grabbing my passwords every time I use one password.

Basically grabbing anything that goes into the clipboard, they're grabbing. If it ain't locked down, they take it. Yeah. So obviously this is concerning. Yes. TikTok was one of the ones that was flagged.

Um, uh, LinkedIn, LinkedIn was flagged for this as well. LinkedIn came back and said, oops, that's a bug. We didn't mean to do that. We'll fix that on our next release. Um, so that's that. Uh, TikTok has said they're going to fix it as well. But, um, what I think is the more interesting story here is how Apple by making this something that folks are going to be more aware of is sort of strong arming more and more of these

app developers into doing the right thing by exposing what they're doing behind the scenes. Well, it's like Twitter shaming them. Yeah, pretty much. You know, this is Apple is Twitter shaming all these companies and making it obvious what's happening. And then everybody writes about it. And then everybody does a LinkedIn.

Whoops. I don't know how that got in there. We'll switch that off. Right. Yeah. I think it'd be more like IO shaming. Yes. IO shaming. Operating system shaming. Yeah. Well, and then TikTok has a lot of problems this week. Uh, I actually just saw this was breaking as we were getting ready to record.

So I haven't even had a chance to read this yet, but Amazon is now ordering all their employees to remove TikTok from their phones due to security risks. Yeah, I saw the same thing. And I, I, uh, I have it in the show notes a little later than you do, but it's the same thing.

I saw it just as before we started recording here. Uh, the story I saw was from the New York times. Um, and the New York times just had a few sentences about it and really nothing more than, Amazon has put out the word that if you want to work here, you can't have TikTok on your phone while you're, while you're on site because it's, it's a security risk.

So that's an interesting development. Cause, uh, Jason and I were just talking about, uh, about TikTok on the previous episode where we could, because the government, the U S government was thinking about banning TikTok and other Chinese apps. And we're kind of like, you, you gotta give people something here during these pandemics and stay at homes.

Um, but you know, I understand military, uh, banning TikTok. Cause we know this thing is just slurping up so much data, but it don't, it only makes sense for a company, especially a company that would have sensitive information involved, uh, to ban it as well.

So I think we're going to see a lot more of this. Have you guys read the verge article on, uh, how the Trump administration could ban TikTok, but how difficult it would actually be to do? No, no. I'll put that in the show notes as well. It's a, it's a very interesting, uh, set of circumstances that actually has to happen to make this thing work.

And, uh, Well, yeah, I mean, I, I, I was thinking about that as well. It's like, it's one thing to not be able to put it up on the iOS store and then, but you can still download it if you jailbreak your phone and all that. But how do you pull it off phones where it already exists? I mean, I suppose if they could take off the YouTube album, anything can happen.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They can, they can pull it from the, they can pull it from your phone whenever they want. Don't worry about that. Yeah. The UFO is never going to live that down. Are they? They are never going to live that down. And they shouldn't be allowed to. Also, let's, let's spread the blame evenly.

We also should blame you too and not let them live it down either. Right. Right. Takes two to tango. That's right. That's right. Seriously. But when has it the last time anybody listened to you two? We're going to get emails. There you go. Yeah.

Yeah. So, and continuing on with that, I also saw that TikTok is now pulling out of Hong Kong. And many tech companies are now considering this as well, because there is a bit of an uproar about the whole China thing. And obviously Hong Kong has now been taken over by China and China's rules are now taking effect there.

But Hong Kong was a very attractive location for tech companies as to, you know, kind of have one foot in the Western world and one foot in the Eastern world. And now they're all thinking about moving out because, well, I mean, these laws are pretty crazy that they have.

So we see TikTok pulling out. We're going to see probably Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Zoom. All the, I mean, you know, it was kind of a Silicon, Silicon beach over there. And, and, and now everybody's getting out because of the Chinese rules and national security laws.

I feel really bad for the dissidents in Hong Kong because, you know, if all these people pull out, they're going to lose all these tools that they were using to actually organize. Although, you know, that's what the government wants. That's what, I mean, that's what they want to happen. And that's what seems to be happening. Yeah.

Yeah. Interesting how Apple is in a little bit of a different situation than so many of these companies because of all of their hardware manufacturing that happens over there. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They're being a bit more cautious about this. They're not making any statements either way. But it's going to be a hard one.

If, if Apple wants to keep this kind of fine line on privacy that the hard line on privacy that they've been doing, it's going to be difficult to justify playing, playing ball with China. Wasn't there that thing recently where Apple, depending, they were using your location to decide which flags they showed you if you were in Hong Kong or mainland China?

They, if you were in mainland China, the Hong Kong flag wouldn't show up in your, your emoji list. I don't remember that, but I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. A couple of weeks ago. Yeah.

And the last thing that I saw was a really interesting article over at the New York Times. It's a bit dated now because all of this has happened in the world seems to be moving so quickly at this point, but is talking about a couple of weeks back that within the 48 hour period, all of the internet giants took steps that would have been unthinkable for them even months earlier.

Reddit banning a bunch of thousands of forums for hate speech, Twitch kicking off President Trump, Facebook actually doing something because they saw so much of the money from advertisers leaving and all of these sorts of things. And this argument and this really interesting article just basically says, that's it for the wild, wild web.

We're moving to a completely different type of web. One in which you don't get, get away with doing whatever you want anymore, which I think is kind of interesting. And Jason, it always harkens back to the internet that we liked before everybody got on it.

And this is what the internet's going to be like now that everybody is on it. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, this, this really kind of is singled out about, uh, you know, giant walled gardens and internet giants and things like that. You can still like, you know, spin up your own server and be your own dissident, but there might be nobody there to hear you.

Yes. Well, if you're standing naked in your backyard screaming, but nobody can hear you. It's the, if the tree lands in the forest, does anybody hear it? Argument is that we're heading towards now or more likely we're going to just see more and more, I think more stratification and more, more lines like that.

It's, it's actually going to get worse, not better because you have something like parlor, which is basically Twitter for alt-right people spin up and they're just echo chambering even louder and louder. Brian will always have LO. That's true. We'll always have LO. Well, I was thinking also when you look at the, the, uh, global ramifications of this, I was talking with a law and policy, uh, expert not long ago and she was saying that, um, they're

referring to it as the splinter net with the, with folks like China, folks like India, Russia, putting walls around their own internet, creating their own internet with a wall around it. So limiting the, uh, the amount of data flow in and out.

Um, so I thought that was an interesting term, the splinter net. Yep. That's pretty good. I like that term. What happened to the dark web? Oh, dark web's still there. It's still, still kicking. That's, uh, nothing's, nothing's stopping that. That's for sure. Not right now. Too much money.

That's right. There's always too much money. Too much money. Yep. Too, too much weed. Yeah. Oh, you know what? Back to bring it all right back around. Uh, then a friend of mine said, uh, that actually my back injury was good news because it means now I'm eligible.

If I want to get my medical marijuana card, I have back pain. Dave, I want to, I want to give you a tip. Yeah. You didn't have to have back pain to go walk in and say, I have back pain and get your card.

In fact, I have a kind of an amusing anecdote about that. Uh, that, uh, when I was still working heavily with, uh, musicians and all that. And back in the very early days of California's, uh, medical marijuana legalization, I remember walking into a place with a lead singer of a band that I will not mention.

Uh, and the doctor said, well, what's wrong? And he kind of panicked cause he didn't have a story ready. And he just said, my feet hurt. And, uh, lo and behold, he got his card. Good enough. Good enough. That'll do.

Way to think on your feet. Yeah. It was effective. Very nice. Yeah. Well, whatever it takes, right? Whatever it takes. All right, gents. It's good to be back. I'll talk to you guys, uh, next week. Excellent. All right. Get better.

Thank you. Cops and doodads. It's been a couple of months now, Brian, since I, uh, started living the slack free lifestyle. Yep. Can't say I miss it one bit. No, I don't miss it either. Really. Uh, I basically only used it for, for us.

As I mentioned, I was on teams with my, with my other gig before COVID furloughed me. Um, and I did like teams actually more than slack, but, uh, yeah, slack. I don't miss slack much at all. The only difference really is that I'll get, you know, texts from you instead of slack notifications.

Yeah. And that's only if it's like, you know, something quick and relevant. Otherwise I just email you when you get to it like the old days. Yes, exactly. Which was a much better. Yeah. When I was on slack, I was on a 24 seven because I was on a show that had a lot of people that were always jabbering and you never knew what was important and what was not.

Yes. There's no distinction. I think most of us have naturally settled into the text is either the, at least work related. Cause you know, obviously personal conversations are all texts, but, uh, text means it's super important or super quick. And, uh, email is the kind of get to it when you get to it.

And there was zero distinction in a lot of these work apps. Yep. Okay. Now I have a gripe with Adobe creative cloud, several, but the fact that it exists in itself is always a gripe because at the subscription model. I hate it.

Yeah. I have a $30 a month bill from them every month. And you'd figure for that much money, I do get all of the apps that they have, but they have this annoying thing where you can only have it active on two computers. Right. And you can't buy anymore. You have to go through this shuffle every time of deactivating one, reactivating another.

And it's like Adobe, they're smart enough to build all of this amazing software, but can't they just tell when two of your computers are on at the same time and not let anybody else on, it's like, Oh, you have two active open applications right now on two separate machines.

You can't open this one on a third. Yeah. It would just, cause now it's like, I've got four computers that I need to use Photoshop on. So if I, if I need to like, you know, do it on another one, then I gotta go find the other computer, figure out which one or go to the site and deactivate it there, then reactivate it on the other.

No way. I mean, it's, it's, it's again, if you and I had built these things, we, we always play this game. It's a simple enough procedure. If you launch Photoshop, say on your third computer and it should pop up and say, which of these other two computers would you like to log out?

Yeah, exactly. And just go straight as a streamless thing, you know, pick one of these, log one of these out, boom, done. Or just lock it in the current session. It's like, okay, you can't edit anymore. Like, okay, I've got a Photoshop doc open on two computers. I need to open a third doc on another computer. Yeah.

Just let me to say which one I'm not using at the moment. So I don't have to go into the house and find the other computer. It's like, oh, I'm sorry. I forgot. I left that open on my laptop that I didn't slept, but it still sees it as open. You know, there are workarounds for it and it's just such a pain in the ass. I'm just saying.

Yes. I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan. I begrudgingly still use it and I haven't switched over to the free apps. I know there are even paid ones there. There are alternatives, but I mean, you know, we've been with it. I've been with Adobe since Photoshop too. Me too. Yeah.

Yeah. I tried to use affinity designer and affinity photo. They're beautiful apps, but I know Photoshop backwards and forwards and sideways. You know, it's like, oh man, even illustrators. Like I can do what you're going to do anyway. I got a little follow up on that sound app.

Endel that does all of it's supposed to do all this smart stuff to figure out what kind of, you know, generative music that you want at certain times of day. Right. I never use it during the day. I'm busy during the day. So I use it at night though.

Now instead of like leaving my phone on with a podcast playing all night just to have noise in the background. Yeah. I started using it at night. It is really nice music to go to sleep to. Okay. They really, they really did a good job. And if I wake up in the middle of the night, I go back to sleep pretty quick because it's just, I just always leave it on.

And I feel like I'm getting deeper sleep. My sleep score has gone up on my eight sleep bed. So it's a, it's a pretty cool thing. I still love the fact that you have a bed that rates you and judges you. I know. Everything has a terms of service.

It does have a terms of service. That's right. Now to dovetail nicely from my smart bed, I have decided to make a smart bedroom. Okay. I went to Best Buy last night and I bought the Nest Mini with Google Assistant.

Second generation. I get, I get contactless pickup today. So they're just, I basically, I pull up. I say I'm outside. They come outside. I either roll down the window or open the trunk and they throw it in the back and off I go. Yes. So that's kind of cool.

But I'm going to tell you why I got this and I'm going to tell you the work around because I think the first thing you're going to say is weren't those banned from your house? Well, that is the first, the first thing, but obviously it's your own bedroom. And I, I suppose you get to determine what you do in your own bedroom, even when you're sharing a house, it's, it's your bedroom.

Uh, the, the second question is, uh, after all of our discussions and, and, and, you know, obviously you're all in on the Apple infrastructure, but we all know Siri sucks. So we don't go that direction. Uh, but we've also, uh, you know, you know, I've been living with the, the Amazon infrastructure for my, for my, uh, ladies in the tube devices.

Why Google? I'm going to tell you exactly why Google. It comes down to routines. What I want is certain things happen in my room at certain times. My bed heats up when I go to bed, it cools down in the middle of the night and it gently wakes me up. So I got that down.

So that's timed already. My, uh, Marpoc dome has an auto timer. So it goes on right when I'm supposed to go to bed. And then it turns off at the time that I want to get up. Now, what I want to happen is as soon as that dome goes off, I want somebody to tell me what day it is and what's on my schedule for that day in voice and say, good morning, Jason.

Today is Friday because I never remember what day it is anymore. I'm seriously trying to go future here. I'd like, I haven't gone the hue light bulb thing, but just because my room's not wired for it. I've got like dimmers and all this crazy stuff, but I'm trying to find a way to do that too.

I might get a light bar that lights up the room a little bit, you know, just because I'm bored out of my fucking skull. A friend of the show, Mike just recently did that too, just because he's bored. He was like, he went and got all these smart devices and all the smart lights and set everything up so he could control everything with his voice.

And I think I asked him like two weeks after he'd done it. I'm like, how's it going? He's like, yeah, I sometimes turn on the lights with the voice, but mostly I just do things by hand. Exactly. See what it is. It's just, I like the routines feature in the Google assistant and you're going to love this one.

I actually put an article from life hacker in the show notes, which is your general purview. But they list how like all the different actions and triggers you have. And the main thing that I wanted was you can set a timed trigger to do certain actions that you can really customize.

And I looked at Alexa and you can't do that as much, you know, so the Google side has much more customizability and I can even put in my own sounds and all that stuff into it for the routines, which is pretty cool because then I can have a, you know, go the fuck to sleep routine.

Cause I try and be in bed at nine o'clock every night. And I, I, you know, if I get a reminder, cause I can start working and not even look at the clock and it'll be 1030. And I'm like, ah, man, I'm going to sleep like crap. Now it's just one of those things where it's like, I could have written a lot of this stuff myself and just made my own software.

And in the old days, I totally would have done that because it's very simple stuff. It's like, okay, I really, it's a timed thing. I just want something to tell me, good morning, Jason. This is your schedule. And more importantly, here's what day it is.

That's the first important thing. Cause I got tired of writing it on my mirror and dry erase markers. Like today is Friday. So, and it was only 50 bucks. So I'll have a followup next week to tell you how it's going. All right. I'm also very curious about if you're going to, one thing you didn't discuss really is using it to listen to music.

And I do know that that Google home is, is the small one is, is not great for music. So, but you do have your Sonos. So, uh, yeah, but I don't, yeah, we don't use, we use Sonos all through the house, but, uh, I'm thinking instead of having my phone go all night, you can customize this to do different music that you can, you know, customize yourself.

So I can like create, you know, some sleep stuff, like, you know, just capture some Endel music and just have it play instead of having my phone run on. Well, the way these things should work is you should be able to, of course, shoot your Endel to that. But of course you can't, I don't know. You might be able to figure that out.

Yeah. Yeah. And here's the other nice thing about it though, is I also have an Android phone. I still have one of those around so I can use that maybe as a controller for it to do different things. I've got, you know, I'm just playing around. Cause I'm, I seriously am bored out of my skull just sitting here like editing podcasts all day.

That's all I do. Cause you can't go outside. Yeah. All right. Well, I found a really, uh, not, not terribly interesting. It's kind of a no shit Sherlock, but maybe it's a time for a reminder during these COVID times about, uh, about social media and time management tips for your. Now the title of this article is time management tips for your Facebook feed, Twitter posts, and Instagram uploads.

Why you need the time management tip about uploading things to Instagram is beyond me. Yeah. So there is no specific mention of either Facebook feeds, Twitter posts, or Instagram either uploads or browsing in this article. It's just general social media use, but it is from a productivity expert and author of the never check email in the morning book, Julia Morgenstern.

And, you know, it's just a good reminder that, that social media, even in these times is a huge time suck. It's not strategic. It's not planned the way that we use it. And, uh, you know, we tend to, uh, procrastinate with it and we tend to spend way more time on social media than we even need to particularly, uh, or especially in these times where social media has become somewhat useful.

It's, it's a way for us to stay in touch with people now that we can't go out and see people in person anymore. So there, there is a use to it. Uh, but I think this article is basically reminding us that don't go, don't go crazy. Like spend, spend only a little bit of time on it. Don't, don't lose your mind.

So some of the tips include obviously the be mindful, which is the one I have the most problem with at this point, which is don't go on for more than 15 to 30 minutes tops. Don't, don't go down the rabbit hole. Don't rabbit hole be mindful of the time that you're spending on social media, um, related note, Apple, uh, Apple.

There are two notifications. I do not need during COVID-19 anymore. I do not need the notification of how much time I'm spending on my device. I know. Boy, do I know. Well aware of that. I'm well aware of that. And, uh, for the activity, I do not need a reminder of how far away I am from getting to my monthly activity goal.

I know that too. I know. Boy, am I aware of that as well. Yeah. Yeah. I turned off all of my Fitbit notifications. Cause they're like, Hey, time to get moving. You know? Cause I'm in all these challenges and I'm like, I'm always like, you know, dead last in them.

Cause I'm just standing here all day. And, and I'm just like, I really don't want to know. I'm, I'm, I'm in the challenge just to remind people that I'm still alive. It's like, it's, it's basically just like, you know, a proof of life check. Yeah. Every day. I see. Obviously you and I are connected on our Apple activity thing.

So I see when I wake up, you're, you're way ahead of me because you wake up at some God awful time in the morning. And then you basically just kind of, you're pegged there. The whole day is I just destroy you as the day goes on. Yeah. Yeah. No, I flatline. Oh, that's too funny.

I didn't even know we were still connected. Yeah. You and a teeter, the three of us, I think are all connected. So I see what you guys are doing. Oh, that's funny. Yeah. AKA nothing. Nothing. Yeah. I'm like, you guys are really not motivating me to work out more because I destroyed you by noon.

Oh yeah, totally. It's just like, I, and now we've got a heat wave coming and it's like, okay. I, it's always, it's all going to be in the morning because by the time night comes around, you know, alcohol, it's time for bed. Yeah.

If it ain't done by 10 in the morning, it ain't getting done. All right. Anyways, off the, off the tangent and back to this article, the second tip is know why you're using it. Social media has a way of making you feel like you're getting something done when really you're just escaping the things you don't want to do.

Yeah. Very good point. More useful pre COVID, but definitely something to keep in mind as well. But you do have to give yourself an allowance. One of the reasons we are all using social media is to not go crazy and feel alone. So there's that. Time yourself.

Well, that kind of goes along with be mindful, doesn't it? See, this is when they start to pad out the articles. Yeah. Yeah. And I had, I did have a comment on the title. I'm betting, you know, this Julia Morgenstern probably wrote the article, handed it in to Fatherly.

And then Fatherly's SEO experts are the ones that actually wrote the title. She didn't write the title. I also think they're the ones that padded out the article because again, time yourself when they're talking about that is exactly what she said to do and be mindful. Don't go on for more than 15 to 30 minute stops.

Well, maybe she had a word count minimum to hit. Maybe. Park it for 30 minutes a day. Vow to go device free. I like that one. It's kind of a no brainer for me because I spent a lot of my day without my device because I'm attempting to be mindful of my child.

So when I'm playing with my kid, I don't want my phone on me because I will stop playing with my kid and just scroll my phone and let him do whatever he's doing. So try not to do that. Make it less sexy. Devices like the light phone offer a streamlined mobile experience that basically allow you to call or text.

That's it. So if you really can't control yourself, get a phone that doesn't have any of it. Like you talked about your old flip phone that you wanted to get. I got one and I'm going to tell you exactly what happens. You have it for a week. Yep. Back to your iPhone or your Android phone because you're like, this is stupid.

And you just wasted a couple hundred bucks. And now you've got this thing sitting in a drawer collecting dust that you can't sell. Yes. Because everybody else is smart enough to buy a damn iPhone or an Android phone. Exactly. The second suggestion there would be make your home screen black and white. Colorful displays are more appealing and therefore makes you more likely to engage.

So you can always do that. We love that one. We always do that one. Yeah, exactly. And the final one is focus on the end game, which again is something that is probably a lot easier pre-COVID times. And it's just a good tip for life in general. Before going on every day, jot down what you want to get out of the time.

So she advises clients to do this regardless of the activity on their schedule. If it's a work meeting, what are you hoping to leave the meeting with? Sanity. If it's time spent on LinkedIn, who are you aiming to connect with? No one. So yeah, just be aware of what, again, it comes down to being mindful, right?

Why are you going on social media? Get it done. Take care of it as quickly as possible. Don't dilly dally. And, you know, try to spend more time with the people that you're stuck with as if you haven't spent enough time with them already. Well, that's my God. I can't wait to see anyone else.

That's assuming that you're stuck with somebody. We need a lot of people that aren't stuck with anyone and they that social media is what keeps them alive because they got nothing else to do. And although wait, those are the people that just break quarantine and go. I was about to say everybody I know that stuck alone except for one person.

Shout out to Suzanne is breaking quarantine to at least hang out with people. I should say, you know, we're not really under quarantine, so they're not breaking any laws. We should be under quarantine. And the people I know are kind of doing it mostly in a social distancing mask wearing way.

So good on them. But yeah, they're getting out and seeing people because otherwise they'd have gone insane by now. Yeah, I love the focus on the end game. It's just one word. Mm hmm. Actually, it's a couple words. I was just going to say tomorrow. Tomorrow was I was just going to go with tomorrow. But let me explain it.

Make it to tomorrow. That's the end game. And you will know what tomorrow is because you have it written on your mirror. Oh, yes. Well, soon, soon Google will tell me. Closing shout outs.

Well, it seems like nobody died this week, so we don't have any closing shout outs. Brian, you got anybody? According to Trump and Pence, I'm sure nobody died at all. We're just talking about anybody famous. Anybody famous. At least anybody famous that we know or like. I guess I don't really.

I mean, a shout out to all the people out there that are attempting to get sports going and a shout out to the players that have made the decision to basically get away from their families for however long it takes for these tournaments to happen and for putting their lives on the line.

I don't think we should shout out them any more than we should say our grocery store workers who are doing the same thing for a lot less money. So there's that. But, you know, sports, Jason, notwithstanding, are a way that a lot of us get through regular life.

And it's nice to be able to turn on the TV and see games and these people are giving it a real go. So shout out to them. All right. And shout out to our fans, as always. Yes. Because you guys are still keeping us going since the ad market has turned out as it were.

Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Hey. Great. Even more reason to be doing this. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, and we really mean that, go to GOG.show/donate.

Toss us a few bucks and we'll love you forever. If you want to get some GOG swag, head over to GOG.show/shop and see what's on the menu. Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show/454. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, and get links to stuff we like.

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