457: Grumpy Old Idiots
View episode on the publisher’s site
The publisher’s audio length has changed since transcription. Ads may differ, so timestamps may be offset.
Summary
In this episode, the hosts discuss technology news, film and television, altered historical footage, and current events. Listener feedback brings in topics ranging from wartime letters and voice assistants to VPN logging and COVID-19.
- Disney’s reduced Facebook advertising leads into a discussion of emojis and sentiment analysis.
- The hosts cover Snapchat mini apps, video chat fatigue, and drive-in esports.
- They criticize costly unemployment websites and discuss Coinbase’s response to the Twitter hack and a lawsuit by Uber drivers.
- Their media discussion includes The Old Guard, John Oliver’s conspiracy theory videos, and AI-altered historical footage.
- They discuss dystopian fiction, airline staffing, and a US Army recruiting giveaway on Twitch.
- Listener mail covers World War II letters, children’s use of voice assistants, VPN logging, sports, streaming, and films.
- The hosts respond to criticism of their COVID-19 coverage and close with reminders to wear masks and helmets.
Key moments
-
Advertising, apps, and online services
The hosts discuss Facebook advertising, emoji analysis, Snapchat mini apps, video calls, esports, and other technology stories.
-
Film, television, and altered footage
The hosts discuss recent viewing, AI-enhanced moon landing footage, and a Richard Nixon deepfake.
-
Books and current events
The conversation turns to Mary Trump’s book, dystopian fiction, airline staffing, and an Army recruiting giveaway on Twitch.
-
Listener feedback
The hosts respond to messages about health news, a beetle-mounted camera, masks, entertainment, and live meetups.
-
Wartime letters and voice assistants
Listener mail describes a project publishing World War II letters and prompts discussion of children’s use of voice assistants.
-
VPN logging and exposed data
The hosts discuss reports of exposed user records from VPN services that claimed not to keep logs.
-
Sports, streaming, and films
Listener messages prompt discussion of Australian rugby league, a streaming app, and World War II films.
-
COVID criticism and closing remarks
The hosts respond to criticism of their COVID-19 coverage and close with reminders to wear masks and helmets.
Full transcript
-
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. Big thank you to everybody that came out for our last GOG drink up number three or the beer up or whatever you want to call it up. We did an up. We did. I heard you hung out longer as per usual.
-
Not much. Not much at all because dogs have to pee and Jason had to pee. So the problem with the old drink up is you're drinking a lot. So that was much fun. Much fun. So we're going to do the next one on August 1st. Yes. And we'll do it earlier in time frame because some East Coast people don't want to stay up that late.
-
And hopefully we can do it early enough to accommodate some European folk and some UK folk who will stay up late regardless, but not as late as need be. Yes, definitely. Definitely. So I was bouncing around and I was trying to buy something off of the site or go get a price.
-
It's for these new like Belkin, what is it, Wi-Fi plugs, you know, that are home kit enabled. And they were the new ones. And I click on the link and I get this message that I thought was very strange. The link you clicked on requires cookies to be enabled in your browser.
-
We apologize for any inconvenience. Well, the inconvenience, my friend, isn't mine. You just lost a sale. So, yes, who does not have who has cookies unenabled at this point? Exactly. And this was a is one of those third party tracking sites because I clicked on the link from nine to five Mac and there were seven layers of redirect.
-
And this was obviously the last one in the chain. There might have been 10 more behind it, but it wouldn't let me through you. Now, you would think that you would fail forward, you know, OK, sorry, we don't we can't do cookies for you. OK, fine. Let's not hold up the entire system because somebody can't get their cookies in order.
-
You know, that seems like really poor, poor design to me. Yeah, well, shocking. Poor design on the Internet these days, Jason. I know. I know. That's why it's in follow up. Yes. In the news.
-
Well, seems like Disney has jumped aboard the actually jumped off the Facebook train and jumped aboard the protest train. OK, they are slashing their ad budget, as was reported by the Wall Street Journal. We don't know what slashing actually means or if they're going to cut it back altogether.
-
But it seems like they're going to be pulling back almost everything from a lot of their different divisions. OK. Yeah. I thought this was crazy. In the first half of the year, Disney spent an estimated two hundred and ten million dollars on Facebook ads for just Disney Plus.
-
Well, it had just launched. I would argue that they do not need to advertise for Disney Plus. It does. It does what it needs to do. Everybody knows about it. And if you're a parent, you are already paying for it. What's the point in spending on other arms of Disney right now, particularly theme parks?
-
None of them are open except for a crazy Florida one. And, you know, death cults find a way. Yes, they do. They do. And they only spent sixteen million dollars on Hulu for ads on Instagram. So Hulu is. Again, Hulu has become the streaming service that you just get for free for some other reason.
-
Everywhere. Even my bank tried to give me a Hulu subscription and a Spotify subscription. I'm like, OK. You got a free or you filled up a full tank of gas. You get Hulu. Exactly. For ten years. That'll be the way it works now. All right. Everybody just wants to juice those numbers, you know?
-
Yeah. OK. I mean, you know, everybody. I'm happy about this Facebook pullback for major companies. It's the only thing that's going to move the needle over there. Nothing else has. Yep. It's all about the dollars. It's all about the dollars. And we know Facebook needs some work.
-
They are problematic. Really? Just a little. Just a little. Just a little. So speaking of advertising, I saw this article over at Vox. And I thought it was really interesting. Emoji reveal more about you than you think. OK. So the crazy thing about the fact is that, did you know emojis are now 20 years old?
-
Nope. Sure didn't. Well, you do now. Don't you feel old? Yes, I do. They debuted on mobile phones almost two decades ago now. So, and, you know, everybody uses them. You even, you use them. I use them. We use them when we text each other. It's a fact of life now.
-
Emojis are there. And they're everywhere. And what this article is saying is obviously we've known, you know, advertisers and people who want to do analytics on the web have been scouring and, you know, they're training their AI to try to figure out what people are talking about on social media and other places.
-
And they are now building in emoji sniffers basically into their AI because it provides context and sentiment to what people are posting. I would argue in particular, it helps the AI sniff out what we call irony. Otherwise, because, you know, we've always thought about this is like half the things that I post are completely tongue in cheek and the exact opposite of what I mean.
-
And how does an AI interpret that? It doesn't. It just takes it at face value because that's what these things do. And so obviously they've they've put on this next layer of being able to discern what people are actually talking about by understanding and incorporating the emojis into their analytics.
-
Interesting. Interesting. And a little bit of follow up on the follow up. You put a link in the show notes and it reads as one thing, but the actual URL is another, which actually does not take me to the story in the link. So way to go, Vox. They they have issues as well. It just takes me to the home page.
-
It's not to the story. Interesting. I just clicked on that as well. Yes. The this goes to a site called Inkam. I N K A M. And yeah, they completely screwed the pooch on this one, too.
-
So these link redirection services are probably causing you more trouble than you think. Brands. Yes. Knock it off. Knock it off. Let's fix that. Got a bit of news about a social network that you and I don't use that we've been making fun of for years and years and years, but is somehow still managing to hang in there.
-
Good old Snapchat. They're still there. They're still alive. And they have launched these things called third party mini apps within their system. And these are basically just built into Snapchat with HTML5. So they've gone through whatever quality control is left at Snapchat.
-
And they're third party developers that have created stuff. And the first couple have launched, which include Headspace, Let's Do It, Prediction Master, and Flashcards. They have also promised mini versions of Saturn, which is used to compare class schedules, Tembo, which is a study prep thing, and Adam to buy movie tickets and watch trailers with a group, and Coachella.
-
Those last two, not useful anytime in the near future. Well, watching trailers with a group is about it. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, I guess they're trying to just build all these different things within their infrastructure and their ecosystem so you don't leave Snap. I don't know how many people are still actually on Snap, but there you go.
-
It's a platform. It's a platform. And, you know, I remember how well Facebook apps did for a little while until Facebook, yeah, had some trouble with those. So, I imagine Snap probably didn't learn anything from the history of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.
-
So, your mileage may vary on what's getting sent to any of these mini app providers. Yeah, particularly since it's just an HTML5 build. So, you can pretty much sneak anything in there if you want to. Yep. Yep. So, yeah. Good on you.
-
Good on Snap. And I got another article over here from Vox. And while you were talking, I just checked the link. This one does work. Okay. For whatever reason. So, we're batting 50-50 with the Vox links right now. I was reading this one. What comes after Zoom fatigue? As the author states here, it's been well over 100 days into the COVID-19 crisis and I have to make a confession.
-
I hate doing anything over video chat. I hated it at the start. I hate it in new ways now. You've probably heard of Zoom fatigue. I've transcended Zoom fatigue. At this stage in the pandemic, I'm experiencing something more advanced like that moment on a long run when you fought through fatigue, tapped into your body stores of endorphins, and also lost a toenail.
-
And your nipples have fallen off. Yes. And you're chaffed and bleeding in your crotch. So, yeah. I think that's about how all of us feel. However, this is not going away anytime soon. And this is a pretty long-form article, but it's definitely interesting. So, he's wondering what the future is going to be like of talking through screens.
-
He talked to people over at Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Zoom about their post-pandemic plans for video chat. Shockingly, they're all optimistic about it and think it's going to be around for a long time. And you know what? They're right. Yep. But much to his surprise, he says, the companies were pretty quick to acknowledge the shortcomings of video chat.
-
However, I read through this whole article and nobody seems to have any solutions to those shortcomings. Yeah. It's just basically get used to it. And he says what comes after Zoom fatigue is what he calls Zoom acquiescence. It's an inevitability. And that's true.
-
And I have to say there are some positives that he points out on. He's talking about healthcare in particular. I really liked having my initial doctor's visits over a chat instead of having to go into the office and waiting 45 minutes or an hour or however long it takes whenever you're actually in an office.
-
I found, you know, it was basically a five minute wait time to do a Zoom call with my doctor and it went great. So there are positives that I think we're going to retain from this, even if we ever get back to anything we used to consider even slightly normal. How do you turn your head and cough over a Zoom call?
-
Does it have a robot hand that's very cold usually? That might come. You know, place your balls in the hand, please, and cough. And cough. No need to turn your head. Nope, nope, nope, not at all. So, yeah, it's interesting. It's an interesting article. And, you know, he basically ends up with what we kind of always end up with, which is, you know, at first, whenever any new technology or new way of doing anything is introduced, everybody hates it or confused by it or think it's evil.
-
But eventually you just get used to it. See, I think something that a lot of people don't take into account now that adds to the Zoom fatigue is that as soon as you're on camera, you're performing. And it takes a lot more mental energy to remember to perform than it does just sit there and, you know, hang out with your friends and do a call.
-
Because it's like it's the business side of it that really, you know, kills me on Zoom calls because you are performing the whole time. It's like when we're done with this show, I'm knackered, I need a nap because we're performing and, you know, running technicals, checking notes, thinking a lot and trying to actually make something entertaining, which is a lot.
-
People aren't used to that. It's a muscle. Well, the other thing right now is there's no escaping it, right? It's not only business, but it's also your social outlet with your friends. You're doing them both. Can you imagine if you just got together with your friends instead of going to a bar and sat in a boardroom and talked?
-
Oh, how? I mean, this is the equivalent of that. Like we're using the same technology for both our jobs and for our social life. So there's no escape and there's no getting away from it. And there's no doubt that you have to be more on and pay more attention during a Zoom business call than you would have sitting in the boardroom where you could just slouch and kind of stare off into space the whole time.
-
And doodle and things like that. Because you don't know who's staring at you at any point in time. Everybody could be. Exactly. Especially if your camera dropped and you're not wearing pants that day. Well, try not to do that. Yep, definitely. So I thought this one was interesting. They're going to start doing drive-in e-sports arenas.
-
Okay. So you can come in and watch. I mean, e-sports tournaments are massive. Yes, I know they are. I do not understand it, but well done. Okay. Enjoy. Yeah. So they're going to start doing pop-up drive-ins in a couple different cities.
-
And they're going to do them, I guess, in malls that this company owns, Horizon Group Properties. And they're going to start doing these pop-up drive-in theaters in four cities right now. But I think it'll be coming along to different places. They've got Louisville, Kentucky, Gettysburg, PA, El Paso, and Laredo, Texas.
-
I think these are great ideas. I mean, I like these things, the ideas, the way that the very few drive-ins that still exist are being repurposed. And obviously, people are taking large enough spaces and kind of trying to convert us to this. But we've got the e-sports, they're doing that. There are some concerts that have taken place that way where, you know, the band gets up on the stage and everybody's just out in their cars.
-
And, you know, cars are distanced out, so it's safe. We've had plays taking place that way. A whole bunch of stuff. It's a good idea. As long as, you know, people stick to the rules, which is always the problem. Yeah. Bert Kreischer just did a comedy tour.
-
That was all drive-ins. And people would just sit there and, like, you know, they'd have a little – basically, the cars would be far enough apart. They'd bring their barbecues and, you know, tailgate and have a good old time. And I know no such thing as a fish. One of our favorite podcasts was just talking about how they were going to do a live event that way as well at a drive-in in the U.K. So it's a clever use of the space that has been abandoned.
-
Yeah. What they're doing here is, in my neighborhood, we used to have in the summers, we have 80s movies in the parks on the weekend. So, like, you can go and watch The Breakfast Club at my local park. They've got a big old amphitheater there and they put a screen up and you can just sit in the park and watch, you know, old 80s movies.
-
So what they've done is they went to the Topanga Mall down the street, which has a giant parking lot that nobody's really using right now because the malls are closed. So they just set up in the parking lot of the mall and used the space there and just build up a pop-up drive-in so you can go watch your 80s movies.
-
That's a great idea. I think it's pretty cool. So I can see why this would be good for eSports. Now, they're saying that some people can play games in the car, which makes no sense to me. I'm like, how is that going to work? But going to watch an event is pretty cool because, I mean, I forget which one I was looking at, but it was in Philadelphia.
-
And they filled, like, a 25,000-person theater or a stadium, you know, with these people. So it's a good way to make money still. It's good. Well, not much money. That's the problem. And, again, it's a couple things involved. It's a very thin razor wire of actual money that you're making because, again, even old-school drive-ins, most of their money was concessions.
-
Can't do that. Restrooms are an issue, obviously, for various reasons as well. And, you know, you set up this infrastructure. You create a company that does this. In two years, do you still have a business model? We'll see. I know, but if it gets you through the pandemic, you know, any port in a storm.
-
But here's how you really make money, Brian. Go start building websites again that don't work. I love this story. I read this headline, and I said, well, you could actually remove the unemployment part because that has been the business you and I have worked in for a long time. And we know that companies made millions building websites that don't work.
-
Yes, this one is specifically around a company called Deloitte that got $110 million for building out different systems for the unemployment systems in California. And, nope, they didn't work. It's not. Yeah. Same with Florida.
-
They got a $63 million contract there. Actually, it went up to $78 million. $78 million and another $110 million to build an unemployment website. Now, that, to me, is just criminal.
-
I would just say criminal. Yeah. Because it can't take that much work. I mean, come on. No. I mean, I understand it's complicated. There are probably old back-end systems that you have to tie into and all that sort of stuff. But, come on. Come on. Yeah, that's ridiculous.
-
This is an insane amount of money. It's just crazy. I don't care how difficult it is on the back-end. There's no way it could ever cost this much. And the fact that it costs this much, that we have been bilked out of this much money, and make no mistake of it, we're paying for it.
-
Yeah. And they don't even work. Yeah, that's the annoying part. Yeah. That's the annoying part. Because, give me $110 million, I'll build you all the websites. Seriously. He'll build you the Titanic. Exactly. That only cost a million dollars, by the way.
-
Also criminal. Yeah. We spent a year on that. That was a long time. Okay. And speaking of money, Coinbase actually stepped up during the big Twitter hack. And I didn't know this until this week. They blocked the wallet that was being used in the hack.
-
And they saved their customers approximately $280,000 from being transferred to that wallet. Now, I think that's really cool. Yeah. That they did that. What I want to know is who's dumb enough to send them $280,000? Well, they're stupid, Jason.
-
Yes, yes, yes. The guys did get $120,000 through, though. So, they're... Well, they're all going to end up in jail. They're definitely going to get caught. The one thing that I really love about this is because all we've heard, all we have heard about the blockchain and cryptocurrency and all of that, untraceable, completely unidentifiable, et cetera, et cetera.
-
Open system where anything goes and woohoo, wild, wild, wild west, not so much. Not at all. Especially when they use Coinbase's own software to do the tracking and tracing. Yes. Yes. We'll sell you the Bitcoin and we'll sell the feds the technology to come get you when you do nefarious shit with it.
-
Exactly. It's the circle of life. It is the circle of life. Now, this one I really, really loved. Uber drivers are suing Uber to better understand how they're managed by algorithms. Right. Now, the cool thing about this is they're saying that Uber not giving them information on how their algorithm works and how they're being, you know, schlepped around the city is actually violating the GDPR.
-
Ah, clever. So, that's the clever loophole. That's why I like this one. So, we'll see how this one plays out. But I don't think Uber's ever going to give up the ghost on how their algorithm works. Well, we also assume that we may not even know because what we've learned a lot about different algorithms is this total black box, right?
-
Even the companies don't understand exactly how their secret sauce is working. Yeah. Yeah. Data goes in. Data comes out. What happens in the middle? It's a mystery. It's a mystery. But I seriously doubt Uber's is that involved. I mean, it should be a relatively simple system.
-
So, yeah, I'm happy about this. I think it'd be great to discover how this works out. Yeah. And how people are getting built out of their money and how they can actually make it more fair.
-
At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.
-
From beauty and fashion to home, culinary, and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com. Shop now at QVC.com.
-
Media candy. This week I watched a bunch of crap because we can't do anything else. I watched The Old Guard on Netflix with Charlize Theron. I've seen this pop up a couple times. It looks really interesting.
-
Yeah. A friend of the show, David Teter, really loved it and said, go watch it. So I did. It's kind of like Highlander meets John Wick meets silly silliness. I don't like the inclusion of silliness. Well, it's not purposefully silly. There's some really silly plot points because it's about immortals and things like that.
-
But for the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I actually was bone tired, but I ended up powering through to see the whole thing because I wanted to finish it. And I recommend it. I thought it was a good, fun popcorn movie. Don't watch it with the kids in the room because it is, like I said, Highlander meets John Wick.
-
So you can take that with what you know about the two of them. All right. And I am so glad John Oliver is finally back. I missed him. Yeah, missed him too. It wasn't too long of a break. He doesn't quite do a Bill Maher where he just disappears for two months, but yeah.
-
Yeah, it was close. It felt like it was like, but I just hate when he goes on break at the end of the year because that's the time when we need him the most. Yeah, yeah. Okay. But they have a new website out, thetruetruthruth.com. And this is pretty good. He tackled conspiracy theories this week when I thought he did a pretty good job of it, actually.
-
Yeah, he did a really good job of it. It was definitely – it was very entertaining and he does it in his own typical way. So it was very funny. Yep. So if you have people that are into conspiracy theories, go check out thetruetruthruth.com because there are five videos up there that you can send to the people you love. Unfortunately, as we know, they never listen.
-
They never listen. But he does – they do some stuff that is at least science-based on how you get people to change their mind, which is good. It's good. And I've been watching The Loudest Voice on Showtime. This is the story of Roger Ailes. And it's really good.
-
Russell Crowe plays Roger Ailes in this in a massive fat suit that is quite possibly some of the best makeup I've ever seen in my life. It's incredible what they do to him. He is unrecognizable. Yeah, completely unrecognizable. And I think it's great.
-
We just finished episode four and we're hooked. We'll probably get through it in the next day or so. So if you're into that, it's just – you've got to watch both sides sometimes and it's fun to watch. Right. It is fun to watch. And we watched Unsolved Mysteries, something I would normally never, ever watch.
-
But it was really, really, really good. I mean, it was really good. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. Really good stories in there. If you need something to watch that's outside of what you normally watch or if you used to watch Unsolved Mysteries, give it a shot. I think they did a really good job. It's only six episodes, though.
-
I could use more. Okay. I watched David Foster Off the Record, a documentary over on Netflix. You probably may not recognize David Foster's name, but you have heard everything he's ever done. He has produced everything known to man.
-
I mean, we're talking from the bodyguard to Chicago to Cher to – I mean, everyone. And it was a really interesting documentary. I mean, he is a prodigy. Perfect pitch, all that sort of stuff. Amazing musician. Biggest asshole in the entire world.
-
You want to get the entire music industry – if you wanted to understand the music industry in one documentary, this is the one. He's a bigger asshole than Billy Corgan? I find that hard to believe. Yes, he is, actually. Okay. Unbelievable. Unbelievable, but insanely talented.
-
And it was a really well-done documentary, really interesting. I mean, the interviews with him are just stunning and fascinating. And then he's had like – I can't even tell you how many kids he's had. He's with five different wives. And he says – he admits, like, I'm just – if things get hard, I just leave.
-
I just leave. And his kids are all like completely stepper-gwived about it. Like, they think he's the best thing ever because, you know, of course, kind of they have careers thanks to him, which probably helps. But I cannot recommend this documentary enough. It's stunning. It's fascinating. It was really, really good.
-
And then I stumbled across some weird series over on HBO Max. And I was going to actually mention this in Apps and Doodads last episode, but I forgot. If you had HBO Go, which was the – if you subscribe to HBO on cable, you get that app. So you can use the app instead of going to the cable channels.
-
HBO Go has been removed and replaced with HBO Max. Unless you have Roku, then you're still stuck with HBO Go. Well, there you go. So on my Apple TV, I tried to launch HBO Go, and it said, here, have HBO Max. So I apparently now have HBO Max. Yep.
-
So long story short, I watched a series. It's one season, five episodes really quick. It's called Hard. Now, this is the Brazilian version of this. Apparently, there was a French one. And I'd imagine if this does well enough, we will soon get our own American version of this.
-
It was pretty funny. The basic beat here is a woman's husband suddenly dies. They have a family, beautiful house, all that sort of stuff. You'll love this. He dies in a drone accident. Nice. So I already love that. She has spent her whole life thinking he was running a tech development company, like a website company.
-
No, he was actually running a streaming porn company. And now she has to take it over because she'll lose her home because he over-mortgaged himself and all that sort of stuff. But the business was doing quite well. And now she has to take it over or else she'll lose her house. And it's pretty damn funny, man. I think you'd appreciate it, particularly since you worked in that industry for quite some time.
-
I did. I have a drone and I worked in that industry. So two great tastes. It tastes great together. Yeah. And you'll enjoy it. And there's a lot of not safe for work content, as you would imagine. But it was also quite funny. Okay, cool. I will check that out. I think I added it.
-
When I saw you put it in here, I added it to my queue. So I'll check that out when I'm done with the loudest voice. All right. I got two things in here that I thought were pretty interesting. The first one is someone took the moon landing footage and ran it through some AI to enhance it.
-
So they deep faked the fake? They deep triple faked. If you fake it twice, is it really fake? Ask my wife. God. But the result is stunning.
-
It's stunning. Did you get a chance to look at these? I did. It was beautiful. Yeah, it really, really did a good job. You can almost tell that the earth is flat. Almost. Yes, you can see the edges from here. So go check out that footage. It's really, really cool.
-
And the next one ties into that one as well. Someone made a Nixon deep fake that took his speech that he was going to give if the guys got stuck on the moon. And, of course, they say at the beginning, can you spot a deep fake? I'm like, yeah.
-
Yes. I'm like, well, try this. And I watched it. It was really, really good. But you can still tell. You can still tell. Thank God we can still tell. Thank God. Yeah. So links for that are in the shows. I recommend checking out both of them. They're very, very fun.
-
And speaking of very fun, I have one last thing in here. There's a Ramstein song called Sona. And somebody did a stylophone cover of it. I've never heard of a stylophone. Have you? Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I figured in your electronic music gizmo days, that would probably be something that you played with.
-
It's really well done and really fun and really catchy. So if you're a Ramstein fan or a stylophone fan, go check out that video. It's in the show notes at gog.show slash 457. All right. At the library.
-
I am still trying to power through the last Christopher Moore book, but I had to put it down because I wanted to read Mary Trump's book, Too Much and Never Enough, How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. So I powered through this thing.
-
Did it tell you anything surprising? Absolutely not. It's basically a family history of how they're all horrible people, and it reads like a season of succession is really what it is. It reads like succession, except it's real. That's the only problem with it.
-
And he's in charge. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, you know, Daylight and a Dollar Short, Mary. He should have been saying this stuff in 2016, although the more bad things people said about it in 2016, the more votes he got. Yep. Didn't matter. Yeah. I mean, the big problem with this book is that she got screwed by the family out of a lot of money.
-
So this is kind of just a, you know, kind of a revenge piece. Sour grapes. Yeah, pretty much. So it's like, okay, yeah, your dad got screwed, which means you got screwed. And when you're dealing with people with power and money, guess what? You're going to get screwed. So that's pretty much the long and the short of it.
-
Yeah, and she had some choice things to say about the carrot, but nothing we didn't already know or even say ourselves on this show. So there you go. I would say skip it, honestly. Well, I mean, when I went, we had kicked around a couple emails with some other people about it and I was like, I already know that they're a horrible family.
-
I don't need to read a book about it to confirm my bias. Save your 10 bucks and move on. Yes. Good times. I am still working through a nonfiction book, which is taking very, it's going very slow, but it's very interesting. So I'm looking forward to talking about it when I finish it.
-
And I'm also kind of dipping back and forth between the third Expanse book because I've decided to return to my dystopian fiction. And I saw something that conferred my feelings about that over at Slate, which I thought was interesting. So I put this link in the show notes, why we need dystopian fiction now more than ever.
-
Yes. Now more than ever, Jason. Yes. I just like the beginning. You just don't, you just don't look outside. I mean, well, I guess that's just nonfiction. That's kind of what the author is saying. So I really liked the interesting or the, the intro bit here. It hits you every so often when you tug on a face mask to go pick up food for your family.
-
When you witness the powerful suffer casual violence by a man with a sneer. When you see riot police surround the Lincoln Memorial and protesters snatched off the street by mass soldiers and unmarked cars. And when you realize it is all being watched by an unblinking eye of AI surveillance. At times it feels like we're living in a real world version of dystopia.
-
It doesn't just feel like it. Nope. It doesn't feel like it. Yes. But the author here is saying, you know, that's why we need dystopian fiction now more than ever to help us sort out and even make a, make it through it. And, uh, that the, the genre, the genre is as much about education as entertainment.
-
It can elucidate dangers serving the warning role and even preparation for dystopian fiction. And, and that's, uh, that's kind of why I like it and kind of why I'm coming back to it. So I kind of agree. And, and as he points out, dystopian fiction authors generally are optimists at heart and they show ways out of things and predictions and solutions to the dystopias that we find ourselves in, which is important.
-
We need to feel that there's a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Hope is dead. Forget about it. And we have our show title, uh, see dystopian fiction for me. It's like, okay, I stubbed my toe, so I'm going to go, I'm going to break my arm to remind me or to forget about my toe.
-
That's just kind of just takes your mind off of it. But yeah, let me know when you find a good dystopian novel to read. Cause I, I could probably use one right now. I need to pick, I need to pick me up. Give me this, give me dystopia. All right. In a strange turn of events, Iceland air is going to fire all of its flight attendants and make the pilots do their job.
-
Now seems to me, the pilots already have a job. You'd think. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how this is going to work. And, uh, I don't know if they know how it's going to work because I'm pretty sure it's illegal in most countries not to have a flight crew just for the safety of the passengers, because that is their main job is, is the safety of the passengers.
-
Cocktails are a nice side effect, but getting your ass off the plane when Sully lands in the river is kind of more of their job, you know? Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm sure, you know, well, maybe you don't know, but, uh, certainly if you're flying right now, you're not getting cocktails or food or anything.
-
Anyways, there's no service whatsoever. And if you think that could only hand and handle happen in Iceland and not here. Well, let's see, because, uh, shortly after you put this link in the show notes, I saw this article top us airlines plan to cut thousands of workers when the cares act, ban on layoffs expires.
-
So Congress approved a 25 billion bailout fund for hard hit airlines earlier this year as part of the 2.2 trillion cares act package in response to the Corona virus. That is up, uh, September 30th. And, uh, airlines have to provide information about 90 days in advance about if they plan to do layoffs.
-
Every single U S airline is planning on laying off a crap ton of people. Yep. I just saw one this morning, 50% of the staff for United is leaving San Francisco. And I'm probably sure that that's, uh, at every airport around the world for them, at least 50%. And so you look up in the sky, man, there's no planes.
-
Nobody's going anywhere. Yep. So we should all just get prepared for the pilot coming along, giving us some orange juice and then going, Oh shit, turbulence and running back, running back. Oh, great, great, great. I got one more moron of the week and it's the U S army. Uh, so they have a Twitch channel where they try and recruit kids to come in and be part of the armed services.
-
Uh, the army, Navy, and air force all have, you know, people in, in the Twitch channels trying to use video games as a recruiting tool. They've been doing this for years. I mean, this is nothing new. I mean, even in the quake days, uh, they were building special versions of quake. What was that movie? The last starfighter.
-
Oh yeah. Oh man. I haven't seen that in so long. I'm sure it hasn't aged well. No, I'm sure it has not. So what these guys were doing, and this is, this is a head scratcher. They were putting links, automated links into the chat saying, Hey, we're going to give a, we're doing a giveaway.
-
We're going to give, we're going to give you a chance to win an Xbox elite series two controller. And so you click on the link and you're supposed to go fill out a form and, uh, you know, enter into the contest. Well, it turns out they, uh, there was nothing there except just a recruiting form.
-
No additional mention of a contest odds, total number of winners, or when the drawing will even occur. So everybody got pissed off, yelled at Twitch and Twitch said, knock it off guys. That's the extent to which they got, uh, slapped on the wrist. So, you know, Twitch might be kind of the moron of the week here as well, because I know it's the U S army, but you gotta like, you know, you gotta lay down the rules.
-
If it's against terms of service, man, at least they banned Trump for 30 days. They banned the army for 30 days. That's, you know, well, it's incredibly illegal to do that. I mean, I remember back, even back in the dark early days of the wild, wild web, anytime that we ran a promotion or some sort of giveaway or a contest on a website, boy, oh boy, did we have to get the legal department involved?
-
Oh God. Yeah. Most of the stuff was just waiting for legal to approve it. And then you have to put, you know, four pages of boilerplate on there where you're, where you're eligible, what the odds are, when the drawing is going to be, how, how soon after the drawing will people be notified? Where will the notification list be?
-
All that stuff. And the army is just like, they just get away with it, which is crap. That's just crap. Feedback loop. Over at Patreon, we've got three new subscribers, geek artist, Alex and Susan. And over at PayPal, Andrew, Ryan, John, Michael, Joseph, Nathaniel, Nicholas, Michelle, Tom, Martin, and Martin said, love the scary moochie.
-
Scaramoochie is a unit of measurement so much. I decided to donate a square Scaramoochie. Great show as always. Grump on, guys. Well, thank you, Martin. Thank you. And Melanie as well. And Melanie says, been freeloading for too long. Love the show and keep it up. Stay safe. And also Keith. Keith says, enjoying the show.
-
Stay safe and stay grumpy. And Ben. Ben says, great show. I look forward to the episodes. Thanks for taking time out of your Saturday evening for the Zoom meetup. Well, thank you all very, very much. We really appreciate it. We do. Over at Twitter, Ariel writes in, some good news for a change. Hello, Grumps.
-
I'm hoping I can cheer you up with the following bit of news, which were big in local Israeli media and for some reason had almost no mentioning elsewhere. Hebrew U. Drug could turn COVID-19 into common cold. There's been some promising news coming out of the UK as well, but I'll believe it when I see it. And one of the reasons it's probably not being mentioned anywhere else is because even in the headline, could turn.
-
We'll wait until it can. Yeah. I mean, it's early days on that one. Early days. Looks promising. The UK one is all over the news, though. Nobody's shutting up about that one. They've already done human trials and we'll see. We'll see. Yep. Yep. And yeah, we put a billion dollars into that one. So let's hope it works.
-
And Chipopotamus writes in, I get funny looks from the wife if I sit down and have a cold one at three in the afternoon. Perhaps the next Zoom call can be a bit later for those of us on the East Coast. Farscape sucks. Fuck Trump. Grump on. I did write him back and I said, you're on the East Coast of where?
-
Because East Coast time was 9 p.m. And he wrote back going, oops. So he was just using us to have a drink in the middle of the day. Perhaps. I'm on a Zoom call with grumpy old geeks. Leave me alone, honey. Give me another beer.
-
But you haven't even launched Zoom. Nothing's happening. Interesting. Let's see. Derek writes in with a link. Beetle mounted camera streams insect adventures. This is over at BBC. The team at the University of Washington in the US drew inspiration from insects to create its low powered cameras camera system.
-
Its Beetle cam can stream up to five frames per second of low resolution black and white footage to a nearby smartphone. The entire camera rig weighs just 250 milligrams, which is about a tenth of the weight of a playing card. The sensor is low resolution, capturing just 160 by 120 pixel images. So much like my first camera.
-
I was going to say, I think that's even better than the Kinectics quick cams we used to have. Yeah. So pretty cool. And to conserve battery life, they included an accelerometer in the system. So it only takes photos when the beetle is moving, blah, blah, blah, blah. Pretty cool. Interesting. Yeah. They got all that and an accelerometer in there.
-
That's pretty cool. Beetle camera, beetle camera, beetle camera. And JC writes in, stop being selfish. NHS doctor shows how masks do not affect breathing. I sent this to everyone who is bitching about masks and and your oxygen intake.
-
Every day I take a 10 mile bike ride in about 42 minutes. So I'm going pretty fast. And guess what? I wear a mask the whole time. And it doesn't bother you. Athletes wear masks to do that on purpose. So they learn how to breathe better. No, because you're not when you take a breath in and you exhale, your body does not absorb 100% of the oxygen that you breathe in.
-
It's just fucking science. Science. Science means nothing. Hope is dead. You said, Jason, science is dead. Hope is dead. Crazy Polish guy writes in, not sure if you mentioned or watched it, but give Snowpiercer on Netflix a try. It's a post-apocalyptic drama thriller about last bits of human civilization saved in a train.
-
It's good TV. And yes, spoiler alert, stupid rich people ruin everything. Starring Jennifer Connelly from Requiem for a Dream. I saw the movie Snowpiercer and I think I got enough of, you know, crazy people on a train. But now if they had snakes on a train, now that then I'd be in.
-
I actually think I'll give this a go. I watched the movie as well. I didn't, the movie was fine. It wasn't great. But, you know, a little bit longer dive into it. I'll give it a go. Why not? By the way, Jennifer Connelly, back in the day, 100% in my wheelhouse.
-
Like, it does not get better than that. Alan writes in, I've only been listening for a few months, but have enjoyed your banter and comments on most things in episode 456. Oh, I'm just reading this now. In episode 456, I was disappointed to hear Jason use the phrase, fucking retarded. Please reconsider future use of this phrase and replace it with more app phrases.
-
Examples, fucking Trump supporting stupid or dumb as a man named Marco Rubio. Thank you and stay grumpy or don't. I'm not your boss. Funny, we got into an argument about this on our drink up. Yes, we did. Yes, we did. And I explained my rationale for using it because sometimes you have to use words that people will understand if they are that.
-
But I will just, I will, I will change it up just for the sake of argument for everybody. They're just a bunch of dumb cunts. Is that better? Look, I'm down with you dropping the C word, just not the R word. Okay. I'm with you. I'll meet you in the middle ground, middle ground right there. That's how we do it here. Fantastic. Joshua writes in, hey, grumps, just wanted to thank you for the live meetups and let you know they are enjoyed.
-
Jason, I know you're off the white claw for now, but I wanted to share this with you anyway. This is what a truckload of it looks like fresh out of the brewery. Is that more or less than your stockpile at the start of the first lockdown? Cheers, King Josh. I saw this and I was just like, man, that is pretty close to what I had when we started the lockdown.
-
So you got to put that in the socials this week so people can see it. Definitely. King Josh, feel free to drive that over to my place because our wonderful mayor here in Los Angeles, instead of just putting us back on lockdown, said, I'm about to put you back on lockdown again. Idiot. Just do it.
-
I know. It's like, well, that's the other thing that really pissed us off yesterday because, you know, on Sunday, he goes on CNN and tells everybody, oh, LA is right on the cusp of, you know, going back into stay at home orders. Then we get the news that, oh, numbers are way up again. And then he doesn't do anything.
-
No press conference to at least say what he's thinking. So we're just left here with a thumb up our ass going, what are you going to do, dude? Come on, get it going. I swear to God, the only silver lining all of this is Gavin Newsom and whatever the hell our stupid LA mayor's name is Garcetti, whatever.
-
They are never going to become president. Well, I can't say that. You can't say that, man. What we've learned is literally any idiot can become president. Kanye 2020. All right. So Ben writes in, since I don't tweet, I'm doing this the old fashioned way, a web form. Thought you guys would enjoy this article, especially since it had this line.
-
Kurt Rathman told his big name investors he had developed groundbreaking AI to do the books for small businesses. In reality, humans did most of the work. So yeah, this is over at Forbes. Sale factor raised $100 million in a year, then blamed COVID-19 for its demise. Employees said it had much bigger problems.
-
And this is a classic AI is people story. He sold some bullshit about it was artificial intelligence powered tools that could replace accountants for small businesses and do so much more, when in reality, it was outsourced to the Philippines and actual people. And then there were a lot of errors and blah, blah, blah.
-
And basically now they're out of business. We called it AI is people. I love their tagline because evenings are for families, not finance. Not if you're running your own business, buddy. Evenings are for business. Yes, they are. And Evan writes in, Jason just came across this and thought you might dig it.
-
This guy is posting letters his grandpa wrote home during World War II on the corresponding date of the current year. He started in 2017, but I just found out about it and have only listened to the first few. I don't think I remember it coming up on GOG before. There's a blog, a mailing list, and a podcast of him reading the letters.
-
Only the last year or so is available to download, but the rest are on the site. And this is air mail from Dip. All right. I'll check that out. That sounds fun. And Michael wrote in, new listener, longtime geek. Your podcast has been a breath of fresh air to commiserate COVID on a progressive note without beating a dead horse for an hour.
-
Not according to our one-star iTunes rating that's coming up. Yes. Note on Google Nest. I'm a dad of an energetic five-year-old boy on the spectrum. We have the home app with Nest. My five-year-old speaks more complete sentences to Google when asking for a video than he does to mom or dad. I think this technology is unique.
-
It can reinforce simple sentence structures for kids on the spectrum. I'm glad to hear that. And actually, I find that my son's interactions with, I do the Amazon lady in the tube, actually forces him to use his words correctly and create simple sentence structures correctly as well because he gets really frustrated when he just yells at it.
-
And I'm like, okay, stop. Say the words clearly, in order. You have to say this. So it is very useful for that, especially since we don't currently have teachers reinforcing that sort of stuff. No, that's a fantastic side effect of our dystopian, you know, technology.
-
And Peter writes in, deleted equals visibility set to zero and zero logs equals BS. And this is an article. This has been making the round. Zero logs, VPN company exposes millions of user logs. Yes. Fortunately, private internet access, which is our preferred VPN, gog.show.vpn, do not keep the logs.
-
And that has been proven in court when they went up against the FBI. So they are definitely zero log. So definitely check them out. They've got some good sales going on right now, too. Yep. There is a reason we use them because they are not like this company. This is a Hong Kong-based UFO VPN, which claims a zero log policy, maintained a database without any password, exposing over 20 million user logs per day, which consisted of over 894 gigabytes of data, including passwords, IP addresses, geographical location, timestamps, session tokens, device
-
information, and the OS used. This is obviously very bad because Hong Kong is having some issues right now. And there are a lot of people who want to make sure that their stuff isn't being tracked. Yeah. How much you want to bet those VPNs are run by the state? Well, it gets worse. Yeah. Yeah, because we do have some follow-up here.
-
Darren wrote in, how do you know when your VPN provider is actually logging your traffic when they say they're not logging your traffic? Stay grumpy and a little outraged. Again, see everything Jason just said about why we use the VPN? We do. So this is seven no-log VPN providers accused of leaking, you guessed it, 1.2 terabytes of user logs onto the internet.
-
So this seems to be basically a white-label VPN service that UFO VPN used as well. So it wasn't just UFO VPN that got hit. It was one called FastVPN, FreeVPN, SuperVPN, FlashVPN, SecureVPN, and RabbitVPN, which they all are based on the same system apparently.
-
And that system was, of course, bad. Yep, definitely. And the funny thing is, I thought you could not use a VPN in Hong Kong right now because You're not supposed to be. Yeah, the whole rules in China, they said no more VPNs for you guys. So that's why it makes me think that this might be run by the state is all I'm saying.
-
Paul writes in, G'day guys from Sydney, Australia. Australia. I had to figure that one out on the Zoom call because he's like, so he's like, greetings from Strya. I'm Strya. Where's Strya? Oh, Strya. Got it now. I've been listening to you guys for about six months now and you've become one of my preferred podcasts. Excellent. I'm 34 and work in cyber.
-
In a few episodes, I've heard you complaining about the lack of sport to watch. I'd like to open your eyes to the National Rugby League in Australia. It's not rugby. It's not Australian rules football. Rugby League is its own game and better than the rest of them. And he wrote a novel in here that we had to cut out for time's sake.
-
And he says, so check it out. We'll give it a go. And he says, P.S. We have idiots over here, too, who don't abide by the distancing rules. The states are locked down and the sports only have been able to commence because the teams from those states have been relocated. There's also a team from New Zealand in the competition who have had to base themselves in Australia.
-
Yeah. Sports is all crazy right now. The Toronto Blue Jays are not going to be able to play in Toronto because crossing the border is impossible right now. So they're looking for a place to play in maybe upstate New York. Who the hell knows? Sports is crazy. I don't know how they're getting away with it. We'll see. But I'm glad it's back.
-
I watched the Dodgers last night. And as weird as it was, it was better than nothing. Let's see. Chris and Sarah write in. Hi, my wife says she's sorry she ran away. Oh, you're the couple that was on the Zoom call. It was very nice to see you guys. I told her, I'm sorry I joined the live call during our date night.
-
Dude. Dude. Bad form. Anyway, we're longtime listeners, first time contributors, except for my $1 cash tag. But we have one of those expensive tiny humans that takes all our money, so we can only spare $10 a month for now. Hey, we appreciate it. Thank you. We really appreciate it. This is the only podcast I listen to consistently.
-
Sarah says, tell them I listen to tons of other ones. Okay. And you all got me started on the Cyber Wire, too. I'd listen to Dave's other dozens of podcasts, too. But you know that whole having a baby thing. Anyway, medium. Medium. Shocking. Deliveroo.
-
And Jason has dulcet tones. Well, thank you very much. Eddie writes in. Eddie writes in here. Just wow. Brian, you're unfriending people on Facebook for an opposing view. How tolerant you are. Jason, I was very pleased to have you jump into my for my defense immediately.
-
Like, I was getting ready to write back a snarky email, and then yours came in. Yep. I wrote, I'm just going to stop you right there. This is not just an opposing view. It's a common sense view. And when people won't listen, you have to shut them off, especially when it's a public health and safety issue.
-
There are battles that are worth fighting, and there are battles that aren't. Now, I've done the same with my fuckhead old friends. See, I changed the words. Thank you. As well, because they're not smart enough to listen, and you're screaming at the void between their ears. You marshal your strength to fight the battles you can win.
-
But when it comes to anti-maskers and open up at all costers that are so fucking dense that you can't even penetrate their shell of stupidity, then it's time to move the fuck on. So, Eddie, sorry. I'm on Team Brian for this one. Thank you, Jason. I appreciate all of that.
-
And Eddie, you have absolutely zero idea of what the context was with any of that anyways, and without getting too far into it. This isn't even a friend of mine. It's like somebody from high school that I have had no interactions with for 20 years. He has never posted on my wall before, and the only time he posted on my Facebook wall was basically to say, I think your kids should die because we need to open up.
-
So fuck that guy. Fuck that guy. Tim writes in, NBC's new streaming service Peacock hid a cake recipe in the terms and conditions. Very clever. Enjoy notes the recipe while we wish you could share a slice with us. Feel free to share this recipe tagging at Peacock TV, of course. And now back to your regularly scheduled legal document.
-
Very clever. Very clever. And some people made it and they said it's pretty good. Yeah. There you go. And now here we go. Jason. This one spoke to you, apparently. Oh, I can't tell if this is real or a joke. What the fuck?
-
And it is a site called Unwoke.hr. Now, I went and checked it out. And I thought at first, this was a joke. I thought it was a joke. Okay. Unwoking. Unwoking. The modern workplace has become a hot spot or a hot pot.
-
Yes, a hot pot for unchallenged radical thinking and left-wing ideology. Our mission is to advance society based on a culture of enlightenment, beauty, truth, and freedom through free market initiatives. First up, Unwoking Work.
-
And they have a message to business owners here. I'm not going to read this whole thing because it's very long. But basically what it turns out to be is a job board for companies who are basically very religious and very racist. Yeah. So their mission is to advance society by rolling things back about 50 years.
-
Yes. So we urge you to calmly sit back, relax, and watch your woke competition implode as they do their hiring based on skin color, ethnicity, origin, gender identity, rather than merit. Watch the quality of their goods, brands, and services suffer as a result. Let the woke go broke.
-
So not a joke is Unwoke. Good luck with that. Yeah. Oh, God. Well, you know, everybody finds a niche, don't they? Yes, they do. Dan writes in, Hey, Grumps, a while back I wrote to promote an app that I love called Clicker for Netflix. No affiliation.
-
Except I'm starting to wonder because this is the second time you've written pushing for the same thing. It's a native Mac client for Netflix at the time. The response was along the lines of, Cool, but why would you need it? Apple TV. Well, here's the use case. Remember when the world wasn't terrible and you could travel? I watched Netflix from a hotel literally the week before all hell broke loose.
-
Also, it's nice to conserve energy by watching sitcoms on my MacBook Air rather than firing up my projector, which I save for bigger productions. Anyway, the dev has released a client for Prime, which I will use to watch season two of The Boys. See the other available clients here. And there's a link to DBK Labs. Deliver us from hell, Jason.
-
P.S. Fuck Trump. I got to go look at this and see what it actually does because I can't tell right now what it does. So I'm going to have to look at it. I don't know. I still, I just, I don't watch Netflix on my laptop, especially now because I'm at home and I have big TVs. Yep.
-
Yep. Sometimes I'll watch it on my iPad in bed, but it still works. I just, I didn't know season two of The Boys is out or coming soon. I'm excited about that. The Boys was awesome. I did enjoy that. And yeah, it's, I've seen some of the promos for the new season. Looks good. Awesome. Awesome. We need more TV.
-
Yep. Aaron writes in, Apple charged $29 for their battery replacement program for those phones. Thus, they netted $4 profit per phone that got a new battery. That makes no sense. Yep. This is the $25 rebate that we make it. Yeah, well, I'm shocking.
-
Apple's making money. Yeah, go figure. They're pretty good at it. They're pretty good at it. They're really good at it. So there you go. Martin writes in, hey, Jason, love the show and I share your passion for World War II movies. Totally agree that Band of Brothers is great and would like to suggest Das Boot.
-
Ah, yes. It's a great movie. You should have written to the German about that. I love that movie. It's one of the best World War II movies. However, I do not agree Greyhound is a great movie. The atmosphere is great, but the story is shallow and there's hardly any character development. The Germans are portrayed in a cartoonish style, which is not realistic.
-
Keep up your great show and stay grumpy. See, I love that part about it. I love the fact that it was just over the top action, no plot, no story, no background for the characters. It was just a straight up action movie about a guy trying to get a boat across the ocean.
-
That's it. That's all I wanted. And that's what I got. So, yes, it is not Band of Brothers and it is definitely not Das Boot, which I should go back and watch again. I was just thinking the same thing. So, it's like, I want to go watch Das Boot again now because it's been, God, 20 years at least. Oh, maybe you and I can do a Does It Have Legs for Das Boot.
-
All right. Alles fast drinnen. Alles geseignet. Great movie. Gabriel writes in, episode 2686. Time for the COVID hysteria to end. And this is the survival podcast. He says, go to minute 2930 is where it starts.
-
And this guy is convincing me it's all stupid. That you're stupid. I figured that Jason would probably have heard of the Jack Spurko. Where am I being misled? I haven't had time to listen to this. I don't know who Jack Spurko is. So, I'll try and get this in this week and figure out what the hell's going on.
-
It's not all stupid. No, it's not. No. Tell that to my dead friends. Yeah. Yep. And John writes in, this looks like something Jason really needs. Dawn, versatile, tech-filled, urban backpack. Jason doesn't leave the house. I know. I was like, am I going to pack up my backpack to walk the 20 feet to my studio, unpack it, set back up.
-
Then when I'm done, put it back in the backpack and go out. It's a cool backpack. If I was 20, man, I would totally be in on this. Although, I would have to order it when I was 20 to get it by now because it's a Kickstarter backpack. It'll take another 20 years to get delivered. Yeah. Yeah.
-
And I will take this because I know you have the rebuttal. Over at iTunes, we have a one-star rating from, and wait for it, one name, 47474739293. Grumpy old idiots. Rename this thing to grumpy old idiots is what y'all should do. Or grumpy old shut-ins.
-
These two spend way too much time behind a computer and spout nonsensical bullshit-ish about politics. Of freaking course, right? Neither one of you geniuses are virologists or know exactly what's going on in the world with virologists or science in general or how corrupt it has gotten in an effort not to lose funding.
-
So shut up, please, you morons. We're all saturated with this nonsense, misspelling. Please stick to what you're not done right there. Good at. Being nerds that talk about computers. Okay, thanks. Some funky emojis about not liking us. Yeah, yeah.
-
Okay. I'll just go back to my Mensa books, my 136 IQ. So, yeah. Let's talk for a second here. Yeah. Look, I would love to not talk about the coronavirus. That'd be awesome.
-
Yeah. There's a link in the show notes that I'm going to put in here for anybody to go read. They're talking about keeping funding for research and things like that. I'm going to tell you right now, and I've talked to people in many hospitals who work in hospitals for the different shows that I work on. Hospitals are getting, not even decimated, more than decimated, because decimated leads you to lose 10%.
-
They're getting just hammered by this because hospitals make money on elective procedures. They're losing so much money having to deal with this COVID situation that they're having to lay people off, and a lot of them might go out of business because of this.
-
So, to say this is about funding is just, you're a dumb fucking cunt. How's that? So, everybody, feel free to go read the actual research on how hospitals are having a hard time right now. And this guy is just whatever.
-
You know, there's too much to even dive into here. Yeah. Anyways. Yeah. Whatever. Fuck it. I'm done. I know. I'm just so over it. If you want your question or comment right on the show, head over to gog.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air.
-
And if you're so inclined, please head over to gog.show slash iTunes and toss us a five star and snarky review. And do us a favor. If you think COVID is a hoax, go fuck yourself. Please, please. But while you're going to fuck yourself, make sure you click all those stars in Overcast. Yeah, do that first. Yeah, do that first.
-
I got a couple of tweets from people who did the whole show this week. And we appreciate it. We're still not beating Rogan, though. Damn it. Hasn't he moved over completely yet? No. Got a couple of months left. Oh, Christ. Closing shout outs.
-
Because it just keeps seeming to come up and it's just never going to end. And we all have everybody's a critic and anybody who hears about coronavirus and listens to our show shouldn't be surprised at this point because we've done like four months about this and we try to avoid it as much as possible. But it does step into tech quite a bit and life.
-
I want to give a shout out to all the people who are tired of being quiet and are stepping up to fight the good fight. This isn't rocket science. Wear a fucking mask. Social distance. Stay home as much as you can and call people out on their bullshit. And hey, start a podcast to do the same.
-
Just like we did. I've got a shout out to Chris Lockhead and his family. He's going through some terrible drama right now. Oh, God. Not again. I'm sorry, man. This is not good. This one's not good. 2020. Brutal for everyone. Yeah, it is. And another public service announcement out there.
-
If you're going to be out there riding a bike, riding a scooter, riding a moped, wear a helmet, please. Just please wear a helmet. I just saw in the news this morning a 26-year-old NBC reporter, CBS reporter, died on one of those stupid electric scooters in New York City.
-
She was only 26. She fell off and wasn't wearing a helmet. So if you're out there doing things, wear a helmet, guys. It's just a no-brainer. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to gog.show slash donate.
-
Toss us a few bucks and we'll love you forever. Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 457. There you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy, stay safe, do the right thing.
-
At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary, all in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.
-
With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com.