459: Get Ready to Get Grumpy!

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. What up, B? Fuck it. I'm tired, man. I don't know what's up. I think it's another downwind.

As it were, it's been two down weeks in a row. I'm waiting for an up week. I don't know. I'm just so over all of this and the news and we're sleeping more, but quality of sleep is declining. And I'm just tired all the damn time. How about you?

You got two days till you go to your Airbnb vacation. Yeah, well, three kids, four adults. I'm not sure how much of a vacation that's going to be. Well, at least one adult per session can tag out. So round robin, that's how you do it. Theoretically. So that'll be relaxing.

So I went for a walk last night because I've been going at night to get my steps in. Yes, I've noticed your activity ring is increasing in the evenings, which it hasn't for months. Yeah, no, I feel like I feel kind of back in the saddle. I don't know what happened. All that fatigue is gone. So who knows? Who knows? But everybody keeps saying, hey, where are the dogs? When I'm out to see all my neighbors out doing the same thing with their dogs.

And I'm like, I need me time. And they go, oh, I remember me time. Oh, yes. Here we go. The Jason, I have dogs is the same as having kids thing. No, I said nothing about that. You're the one that said it. I didn't say shit. Okay. All right. Calm down. Everybody relax.

Hey, you're the one that started it. I didn't say a damn thing. So let's move on. So we get this question a lot. Everybody wants to know how they start a career in cybersecurity. Yes. And we never have an answer. That's because we're here doing podcasts, not cybersecurity. Right. But every, you know, and when we do ask cybersecurity professionals, they go, yeah, you just got to kind of wing it. Learn everything you can.

But Krebs on Security has finally put a good post together on different skills that you can start off with and how do you build those foundational skills. And from the comments on the post, it seems like it is actually a good post. So I'm going to go with the cybersecurity professionals that chimed in at the end and said, hey, this is a great post.

I could have used this when I was starting out in cybersecurity. So that link will be in the show notes. Excellent. Well, here's something you shouldn't do. We've learned a little bit more about the Twitter stuff. So if you want to be in cybersecurity, don't make a game out of hacking people. Isn't that what you're supposed to do, though?

Well, I suppose if you're wearing a white hat and all that and you're trying to fix things. But a report has come out from Bloomberg that basically a bunch of the contractors and employees that have oversight of user accounts over on Twitter, which, as we talked about, was around 1,500 people, apparently had access to limited user personal data, which we've discovered is actually a bit more than limited because that included direct messages.

But apparently, according to a report that came out between 2017 and 2018, some can some contractors made a kind of game out of creating bogus help desk inquiries so they could access the accounts of celebrities, including Beyonce. Nice.

Well, they allegedly accessed IP addresses to obtain approximate locations for people, which obviously raises some critical privacy concerns. It's also possible that a bad actor could reset an account password and gain full access to it. These intrusions happen so often, former security employees told Bloomberg, that the company struggled to even keep track of them.

They caught some contractors and fired them. Others would create false support tickets, then handle those reports themselves in attempts to evade detection. Well, that's kind of interesting. They could have just said, hey, we're on the red team for Twitter. We're just really trying to, you know, break all the bugs.

This is a, yeah, this is part of what, this is our job, our job. You'd think with that many people having that level of access, Twitter had been, would have been doing a better job of taking care of things over the last three or four years. Nah. No. So most of the people were just using their access for mischief.

Ah, mischief managed. That's right. And I guess one of the reasons I think I'm in kind of a bad mood is it felt like we were kind of, sort of, back to a little bit of normalcy in terms of sports, or at least being able to watch some sports and have something to kind of take your mind off the mind-numbing reality of the last four to five months now.

But that's all about to collapse completely. Of course it is. Yes. Unsurprisingly, things are not working out according to plan. Basically, could it be any other team that's going to bring down Major League Baseball? No. Of course, it's the Miami Marlins because Florida is the cesspool of the United States right now.

As bad as the U.S. is in general, Florida is 15 times worse. So 13 Miami Marlins have tested positive for COVID-19. And given the schedule that they're trying to run for the 60-game season, dominoes are starting to fall left and right now.

It's insane. So they've tried to do, unlike the NBA, which plans to resume play this week within a bubble environment in Orlando, Florida. Everything is in Florida. The MLB chose to play games somewhat normally with players living at home and traveling back and forth to different cities to compete in empty stadiums.

But it's not working. Yeah, so we've got 13 cases just on one team. Now, because of that, games are being postponed slash canceled. The Marlins are stranded in Philadelphia, having canceled their flight home. The Phillies game against New York has been postponed because they want to now clean out the stadium and other things.

And Boston, a pitcher has been diagnosed with inflammation of the heart, who had tested positive for COVID-19. Yeah, it's all starting to fall apart. And the NFL was planning on basically following the MLB pattern here. So they're going to have to rethink this.

And as this article points out, baseball clubhouses, moreover, are not that different from school classrooms. And if 30 pro sports teams with millions of dollars cannot prevent COVID-19 transmission, thousands of underfunded public schools will not likely be able to either. Well, of course, yes.

And as the Miami Marlins go, so go we all. So this is not great. Also, I want to make a quick note here for people who really love basketball and think that this bubble approach is actually going to be better than what the MLB has done. I know nobody pays attention to Major League Soccer, but Major League Soccer has been doing the bubble approach for the Major League Soccer is Back tournament, which, of course, is being held in Florida.

What the hell is up with Florida? Well, they've got a whole bunch of space and they've got a bunch of hotel rooms and they've got a bunch of athletic facilities. And theoretically, the weather is good. So it seemed like a no-brainer until Florida went off the charts in terms of everything.

So that's not been going great. But the point being here that this bubble approach that the NBA thinks is going to save them, well, two entire teams from MLS, Nashville and Dallas, had been banned from participating due to cases. And other teams are out key players either through exposure or just sitting it out.

So the bubble approach doesn't work either, people. I think as much as we all want sports to be back, let's shut it down. Yeah, there's no other way. Everything has to be shut down until it goes away. Everybody's – nobody has patience in this country. It's just going to get worse.

I've seen enough zombie movies to know that it only takes one zombie to get in before your entire community is wrecked. So you've got to treat this like it actually is a zombie outbreak. Exactly. No school, no sports, no nothing. Let's just shut it down. Let's have a bit of patience like we should have had three and a half to four months ago.

And we could actually get out of this. But nope, we've got to rush everything open because money. In the news. Hat tip to Ralph who sent this in. This is a great one over at Ars Technica.

Zuck off. Doctors, nurses, and scientists rail against Zuckerberg, not to mention the general population. But this goes back to the San Francisco General Hospital thing in San Francisco where they renamed it, you know, basically.

Oh, God, you know, the Zuckerberg Chan or whatever hospital. I can't remember the exact name. It was a $75 million donation. So, of course, they get the name. They get the name. But the doctors are not really very happy about it, you know. They're like, it says Zuckerberg on the side.

Come on, guys. They're not very happy about it. So they've been signing petitions, passing out buttons that say Zuck off, letters and demonstrations, all of this. And it's still going and going and going. And basically what they what they have to deal with is, like, look, guys, $75 million.

You don't have to call it the Zuckerberg Hospital. Just say I'm going to work. That's pretty much it. They've been told to kind of just suck it up because it's never going to change. Well, I kind of agree with that. I think they need to Zuck it up. They can say Zuck off all they want, but they also need to Zuck it off. They took the $75 million.

You don't want to call it Zuckerberg Hospital? Fine. Return the $75 million donation. Yeah, exactly. And then go back to, you know, go back to whatever name it was before from some other millionaire who gave you a bunch of money. Well, no, it just used to be San Francisco General Hospital. OK, well, most hospitals these days are named after donor donators.

So, OK, can I go to the Sprint Hospital or the T-Mobile wing of Kaiser Permanente? Let's face it. They're all going to be named the Amazon Hospital pretty soon. It's true. It's going to be full of Amazon drivers and warehouse workers. Yes. It's all with COVID and put their own mobile COVID facilities so they can still make deliveries while they're on ventilators.

Anyways, TikTok has joined Facebook and Twitter in cracking down on QAnon, sort of. They took the avenue of least possible resistance here by blocking multiple hashtags related to the unsupported conspiracy theory, including QAnon itself and related items like Out of the Shadows and QAnon Truth.

If you search for them by hashtag, you'll no longer find any results. However, they did not actually remove any videos. All the videos are still up there and you can still see clips and feeds and you could theoretically see them appear in the For You feed of suggested videos if you're a complete idiot and you tend to search for such things.

So, yeah, all they did was pull the hashtag search. So they basically took the Pinterest approach. Yes. It's like we're just not going to surface it, but we're going to leave it here because deleting things or at least setting visibility to zero is just too much work. Exactly.

And I had another link in the article in our show notes here for a good article, but then I proceeded not to completely read it all. But it does seem to be exactly something that we've been talking about for some time. This is over at The Atlantic. It's called So Much for the Decentralized Internet.

And this focuses specifically on the Twitter hack that has occurred recently and basically just says, this is what happens when we have only a couple walled gardens and that's our Internet. And this is not a good thing. And boy, I miss I miss the old days. So, okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Those days are long gone, my friend. Yes, they are. Long, long gone. So. And it just kind of points out that this is going to happen more and more as we only have two to three to four points of avenue and entrance into the Internet. And everything is centralized in a couple of places.

Yeah. Okay. Nothing new. Nothing new. Not really. And Google is now letting employees stay home until July 2021 if they want to and they don't have to come in the office. And when you when you put out almost an entire year of optional working at home, anybody that will has decided to work at home for that year is never coming back.

So, you know, I'll just say forever. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. So that's I mean, I think it's a good policy because it lets people prepare instead of, you know, the bullshit that they keep pulling. It's like, okay, two more weeks, two more weeks. Yeah. My wife has no idea if she's going back into the office or not.

Yeah. Well, hopefully you guys will be stuck in stuck firmly in Canada soon enough so you don't have to worry about it. Yeah, that's that is the dream. But the follow up to that article, which I love, is a Google employee posted an anonymous survey asking whether working from home was hurting workers' mental health. And two thirds of the nearly 10,000 respondents said yes.

Of course it is. Of course it is in these times. How could it not? It's not normal times. It's not normal work from home. You're stuck in the house with anybody else that you happen to be living with at the time because they're probably working from home or not working. Right before we hit record, you and I were talking about how, oh boy, better go stock up again because the shelves are looking pretty bare.

This is not normal times. No, it's not. It's not. At least there was an article yesterday that came out that said we've been wiping shit down for no good reason. So when I went to the store today, there was a wall of wipes. So apparently everybody read that article. I think that too was in The Atlantic.

But it was a pretty good article saying that basically we've got disinfectant theater. Yeah. You don't need to wipe down all the boxes that are showing up from Amazon. They're fine. I mean, if you see the delivery guy sneeze on it right before he puts it down at your door, okay, wipe that down.

But yeah, or just kick it out into the sun for an hour and it'll be fine. Yeah. But yeah, that was at The Atlantic. And the one thing in that article, I got to remind me to put it in the show notes here because I think people should read it, was that the one test that they did at the beginning of this whole damn thing, it said that, you know, the coronavirus could live on surfaces for up to a week.

Yeah, I remember a chart being sent around, cardboard this long, you know, metal this long, blah, blah, blah. Yep. That was all bullshit. It was all bullshit because they used the wrong dosage of the virus. It was 100 times normal strength. They said that they would literally have to have 100 people coughing on the one square inch that they're testing and do it all at the same time.

And that's what they were testing against. So science has let us down on that one. But I just have to somehow convince my wife because we're still wiping down everything that comes in the door. Well, head to Ralph's right now because there's a shit ton of wipes. I just wonder if those scientists were paid by Lysol.

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Media candy. We found something on Netflix this week, Brian, that will take you back to the land of 1993 when it was a simpler time and game shows were just cheesy, stupid fun. That's right, Brian.

I found Supermarket Sweep on Netflix. Never watched that. Neither have I. I kind of remember seeing it in the background in my house like my stepmom would watch it. Right. But my roommate loved it. So we cranked up an episode and we watched the first episode.

You got to watch one. Isn't this so fun? Isn't this basically the precursor to like guys' grocery games, except they actually had some trivia and stuff in there? I don't know. I never watched guys' grocery games. So this is like the dawn of like really hip commercialism because it's all the trivia is about – it's basically like stuff in the store.

They built their own supermarket. And, you know, nowadays prizes are like, you can win $100,000. And here it's like, you know, the big prize is $5,000. And most of it is like, you know, in the $50 to $100 range. But what it comes down to is they have to answer trivia questions and they have to run through the store and find things and bring them back at a certain amount of time.

Then they all get to go on the supermarket sweep where they have like two minutes to run through and get as much crap as they can to get the biggest total. It is very funny. You just got to watch one. They're like 22 minutes long. We just started watching one at night now because it's like – it's just levity.

Just for the levity of it. There's no drama. It's really fun. And what I really like is because it's three teams of two and when they announce the winner of like, you know, the first challenge with all the teams, the other two teams just melt into the background. They don't get to say goodbye.

They don't get to say whatever. When the guy goes, you're the winner, the other two teams just like turn like robots and walk through the back and out to the side. You never see him again. That's awesome. It's so cool. All the social niceties just gone. Yeah. It's like, okay, we're losers. We're leaving now.

Amazing. There's only one season on there. I wonder if it only lasts one season. I don't know. But watch the one season. It's just – before you go to bed at night and you need something light, think of it as like the game show version of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I got to say, 1993, being the grumpy old geeks that we are, does not seem all that long ago, but it is stunning how long ago it actually was.

I know. I was 22, but it feels like yesterday. Yeah. To put it in perspective, it was, yeah, 27 years ago. Yeah. Long time ago now. Yeah, I know. So ours has a roundup of some of the trailers that they debuted at Comic-Con at home.

Right. And I went through a couple of these. Lovecraft Country coming to HBO. Looks awesome. Yeah. I see the commercials for that all the time when I'm watching whatever I – you know, John Oliver and things like that. That looks amazing. I'm really looking forward to it. Yeah, and by the way, still, if you haven't watched Perry Mason, it's killer.

But yeah, Lovecraft Country. I reviewed the book on the show many years ago, and it was a fantastic book. I really enjoyed it. Now, the next trailer they talk about is one that really just chaps my dazzle, Utopia. Okay. Know nothing about this? This is a remake of the British version.

Now, the British version was some of the best TV ever. I loved it. The soundtrack was great. The cinematography was great. The acting was great. The story was great. But they never finished it, which is the only thing that sucks. And I don't think they're going to finish this one either because this one looks terrible.

Well, let's see. Let's see what the track record is. The British Office, three seasons. And then the American Office, 75 seasons. Yeah. Probably not going to finish it. The British Coupling, five seasons. The American Coupling, one-third of a season. Or I think maybe even two episodes.

Yes. So it's hit or miss. It's hit or miss. It is. This looks like a miss. They've got John Cusack as the head guy in here. And I don't think he can pull it off. The next one is actually called Next. It's some kind of AI thriller thing. I started watching the trailer and I got so bored in the first 30 seconds I turned it off because they use that trope of the TED Talk.

Ah, man. And I'm like, okay, now I know you have zero creativity. And it's about some, you know, rogue AI trying to take over the world. So I'm like, ah. Then a bunch of bullshit. And then finally, the final bullshit trailer. And here's The Walking Dead, The World Beyond. Okay. I can look out the window for this one.

I don't need a goddamn series for it. It was easy to shoot. They just pointed their iPhones out the window. Exactly. And another one I found over at Ars Technica, which really made me happy. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are back together for a horror comedy where they started out.

Well, they started out in space, but then they went to Shaun of the Dead, which is still one of my favorite movies of all time. Definitely. This is called Truth Seekers. Have you watched this trailer? I did. I'm looking forward to this. Oh, this looks so good. Yeah. This looks so good. Hopefully it's all in the can and we'll get to see it sometime before we're dead.

And, of course, Bill and Ted face the music. They have trailer two out. Yes. It looks pretty good. I'm ready for that movie just to drop at this point. Been a long time. Yep. Please. Pretty please. I'll give you $100 for that movie and I won't even go to Sweden. And while we have a release date for The Boys Season 2, September 4th.

Okay. All right. That's only two years away. It's great. At this rate, yes. We also have a release date for Star Trek Discovery Season 3, which has managed to finish all their stuff. up before COVID delayed anything. So, we're going to get that on October 15th.

13 episodes dropping weekly. At this point, that feels like a year between episodes. Oh, God. It is. That's the problem with Perry Mason is it is a week between episodes. And it's like, do you know how much has happened in between now and then? But the funny thing is nothing has happened in between now and then.

But it feels like an eternity. And I forgot what we were watching. Yeah. Well, we get Lower Decks is going to hit All Access on the 6th, which is only a week away. So, one year. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Good for that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking forward to Season 3.

And this kind of brings up the point that one of the listeners sent in a while ago, which was they finished all principal photography on The Expanse before this hit. So, hopefully, the VFX guys are doing their job. It's not going to happen because we just had virtual Comic-Con and not a mention, not a trailer, not a nothing, which means it's not coming.

Damn it. Yeah. Because when you look at how they finished Westworld, Tandy Newton was doing her ADR on an iPhone in her car to get it done. Yeah. Which explains a lot, actually, from that last episode.

I'm sure she's homeless and had to actually do it from a car. I don't quite understand that, but okay. Well, that's when we were on Super Lockdown Stay at Home. Yeah, I know. She could have done it from her home, not her car. I think the acoustics were better in the car. All right. Fair enough. I guess.

She must have a very nice car. That's the only thing I can think of. Of course. I'm sure it's a Prius. And I started to watch Warrior Nun on Netflix. Yeah. I saw you put this in the show notes. I have not heard anything about it. I'm insanely curious. Warrior Nun. Tell me more. Oh, there's nothing to tell.

I made it 19 minutes before I shut it off. It's about a group of warrior nuns. And yet you somehow thought this might be worth watching. It was all over Netflix.

It was in the most recommended and all the new stuff. So I'm like, eh, I finished all my other crap. Let's just see. Let's see. Let's see. As I scroll through this and I see this, and then I would, of course, read. After waking up in a morgue, an orphan teen discovers she now possesses superpowers as the chosen halo bearer for a secret sect of demon hunting nuns.

Yeah, no, I'm out. It's basically Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but like a little bit more religious. And yeah, I just couldn't do it. It's like a young adult thing, basically, I believe. Okay, fair enough. I do like how the title for every episode is a biblical verse.

That's kind of clever. I like that. Well, they're warrior nuns. Well, yeah, of course. It's not as clever as the last season of Mr. Robot using all the 400 HTTP codes. That's true. That was pretty clever. I got to give them that. And yes, skip that one.

Go watch that Charlize Theron movie that we talked about last week. Yeah, I've got that bookmarked. Oh, that was good. Oh, by the way, have you watched Hamilton yet? No, not yet. No, that's lack of sleep and schedules and insanity has taken its toll.

And I'm not allowed to watch it without the wife. So I have to be able to sit down and watch it with her. Well, maybe you guys can have a watching party while you're on your vacation. I think that might happen. Yeah, for adults and libations after you put the kids down, you know, Benadryl helps.

Yes. For us or for the kids? For the kids. Okay. At this point, Benadryl for everyone. Any port in a storm. Exactly. Any port in a storm. So I saw this yesterday and thought this would be interesting for you. Lollapalooza is going virtual and going to be on YouTube only.

Yeah, I saw that. I saw because the cure had posted that they're going to be taking, participating in this. Then I went and kind of tried to research it a little bit more. It's going to be a combination because, I mean, the list is insane. Like there are 7,000 bands taking place.

But over 150. Yeah. It's going to be a combination of some bands doing a live performance with, you know, iPhones or whatever, and a mixture of previously recorded performances. So basically, they're going to be able to mine a bunch of live performances that were done two years ago, three years ago, whatever, through the history of Lollapalooza and air those along with a couple people sitting at home with their guitars.

Oh, rerun a Palooza. No, not good. Exactly. So not as thrilled about it. It would have been pretty amazing and pretty interesting if they would have gotten every single one of those bands on that list to actually do at home live performances. But that's not the case. Yeah, too bad.

Too bad. But who knows? Maybe we'll get some good stuff out of it. Yeah, I'm sure. I'll wait for the rerun. And once they cut them up, you know, yeah, I want to see the highlight reel. I saw this one this morning. It came through one of my newsletters. And it's, can't find your favorite song on Spotify?

Check the podcast section. This is extremely clever. Kids who have music that you can't stream on Spotify are basically making playlists, shoving them into basically a podcast format, which is just an MP3 with an RSS feed, and getting them into Spotify so people can go listen to the bootleg music.

Yeah. And at this point, you've got to figure Spotify is aware of this and kind of turning a blind eye to it. Because if YouTube has the algorithms that are able to trawl through stuff to find copyrighted material, you'd think Spotify would too. I don't know. YouTube has been at it longer. So I think they've got better tech. And remember, it is Google.

So they've got all the brains. Right. So I don't know. But I'm sure that now that this is out in the world that, you know, people are going to be finding these and sending CNDs and taking them down. But I thought it was clever. I guess I used YouTube as a bad example. Sorry. SoundCloud has the ability to go ahead and scan through audio for copyrighted material and tell you to take it down.

Which they never do. So SoundCloud can do it. Oh, it happened to me a bunch of times. Back in the day when I was putting up, I was putting up like my old mixtapes and things like that. They would immediately get flagged and taken down. So Spotify certainly has the ability to do this. I think they're just kind of looking the other way right now.

And a pro tip for parents, because I saw that you put this in and I had experienced this myself. In terms of podcasts, there are tons of people that are reading children's stories and putting them in podcasts. And they're not able to obviously put them into the kind of normal section.

So if there are books that your kid absolutely loves, search for it. It will pop up in a podcast and somebody will be reading them. And that will buy you a precious five minutes. Okay. Just make sure you listen to it first, because you never know if it turns into furry fanfic after the first minute.

That is true. I have not had that experience yet, but I should probably be a tad bit more cautious. Yes. At the library. I finally finished Shakespeare for Squirrels by Christopher Moore.

Oh, what'd you think? I thought it was good. I thought it was really good. Yeah. I quite enjoyed it. Not up in the pantheon of his best works, but certainly not noir. No, anything but noir. And the interesting thing on this, I don't know if you had this afterward in the print version or if you read it, but he talks about how this book got made.

And he was going to write this book. And then they said, no, his publisher said, no, we need a standalone book first. And he's like, I've just been researching this, you know, kind of 50s San Francisco stuff. So, man, I just write noir. So he just crapped out that book just to make the publisher happy before he could get back to the stuff that he wanted to write, which explains a lot.

Yes, it does. Yeah. And that's what happens when you do contractual bullshit to artists. Yep, definitely. Now, I got the audible version of The Sandman by Neil Gaiman and Dirk Maggs. Right. Oh, my God. This is hands down the best dramatization of anything I've ever listened to.

The cast, the cast is so big. The credits at the end take five minutes to get through. Right. And they got James McAvoy to play Morpheus. And oh, my God, he does a good job. That guy is such a great actor and his voice acting. He was one of the young X-Men, right?

Yes, he was. But he was also in that M. Night Shyamalan Ding Dong movie where he played like, you know, the 17 different characters. Yeah. I think I had tapped out on Shyamalan Ding Dong by then. So I didn't see that. Oh, yeah. This was the second movie in the Glass trilogy.

Right. Yeah. Okay. The Unbreakable trilogy. I can't for the life of me, I can't remember the name right now, but he was incredible in that. He's a fantastic actor and he should have got the Oscar for that. But it's Shyamalan Ding Dong and they're never going to give it to a Shyamalan Ding Dong movie. Nope. Yeah. And of course, he did ruin the entire series by releasing Glass, which was terrible.

But anyway, yeah, this thing is just amazing. It goes through the first 20 episodes, I'm sorry, issues of the comic. And it is so well done. And I've read those comics so many times. I just could see the panels in my head as they were going through it. And it's just awesome.

It's awesome. And it's really fun because the last one in the series is A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is a story about A Midsummer Night's Dream, which also goes back to Shakespeare for Squirrels, which is based on A Midsummer Night's Dream. So I had a lot of A Midsummer Night's Dream going on this week.

But if you're a Sandman fan, or even if not, one of our listeners, I can't remember who it was right now, tweeted at me that he got it, listened to it, and then went out and bought the entire Sandman three-volume compendium, which is like $600 or something. It's crazy. Very cool.

I highly recommend it, though, if you're a Sandman fan or not even, if you just want a really amazing listen. And it's not that long, surprisingly, which was kind of a bummer. See, I kind of feel like I feel about Sandman the same way I kind of feel about Doctor Who. I feel like it's been, there are so many iterations and so many different versions, and it's something I've never gotten into, and I have absolutely no idea where to actually start as someone who does not read comic books.

Okay, well, I mean, yeah, you start at issue one, and then you go to issue 75. That's it. There's only 75 issues in it. Yep. That's about it. So, yeah, this is 10 hours and 54 minutes. So, it's a pretty easy way to start. But I just recommend picking them up.

You can get them on Comixology or just get the graphic novels. They're an amazing read. You would like it. I'm telling you. Yeah, I know. You would really, really like it. I know. It's something that's just always been on the list of finally doing, much like watching Doctor Who, and I just haven't done it. So... I think Doctor Who is for kids.

This is not. Okay. This is not. This is... If you like Anne Rice, the old Anne Rice books, you will love Sandman. Oh, yes, of course. All right. Well, one of the reasons I haven't had a book for months now, it feels like, in At the Library is I was actually trying to read something that is nonfiction.

So, that was a bit of a slog. However, it's a really good book, and it's a really interesting read, especially right now, given that we're actually rethinking work and how we're going to work, if we'll ever work again. So, I read Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink, and I just put a little bit of the blurb in here because it kind of explains exactly what the book is.

Most people believe that the best way to motivate us is with rewards like the money, the carrot and the stick approach, and Daniel Pink makes the argument that this is a mistake, and he's done a lot of research and gone through all the research himself, and he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction at work, at school, and at home is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and the world.

And the book basically just explores all of that, and he examines the three elements of real motivation, which is autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Which I would argue, I think you and I already know, having worked from home for a long time, a lot of time, and certainly all the shit that we say about working from home, which is true, which is long hours, sometimes limited financial reward.

We're certainly not getting things like, you know, built-in retirement. We're not getting things like job security, although nobody is anymore. We're not getting things like, you know, great medical plans or anything like that. We eschew a lot of the rewards that one gets for working for a company, because we realize that we get the autonomy, the mastery, and purpose.

That's why we stay and continue to work from home and work for ourselves. So I think you and I already know all of the stuff that's in this book, but it's a really interesting read. Yeah, the purpose tank has run a little dry lately. Well, yes, strange times. Yeah, the autonomy and the mastery I got on lock, but that purpose, man, it's hard to come by.

Yeah, this is a classic. I read this a long time ago when it came out, because I was in that self-helpy world for a long time. I actually picked up Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, because that's one that I always started and never finished, but it's one of those ones that's similar to this, where it's like, you know, it's kind of in that pantheon of self-help books that is, you know, up there in the top 25 of everybody's reading list, and I just never got through it.

I was actually thinking, I'm like, ah, screw it. Maybe I'll just get a Blinkist account and read the synopsis, because the audio book is 20 hours long. Yeah, that's a lot. And I felt the same way about, you know, definitely about this book, is that I didn't need all of the beat you over the head with the research chapters. I just wanted the main points, and Blinkist actually might have been pretty good for this.

Yeah, that's a trick about self-help books, after reading hundreds of them myself. Most of the meat of these books are in the first five chapters at most, and you can skim the table of contents. This is how I used to prepare for interviews with people like Daniel Pink.

I would literally get the table of contents, skim it, and build all my questions based on the titles of the table of contents, because that's all you really need. Yep. And the first paragraph of each chapter. Yeah, one just kind of assumes the reason the book actually got published is they flesh out the chapter titles.

So you get the point of the chapter title, and then that's all you really need. That's it. Most of these books can be 50 pages long, but publishers want 350. So, yep, that's how that goes. But cool. I'm glad you liked it. It's a good book. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting and pretty self-evident for those of us that have kind of walked that walk for a long time, but it's nice to see that sort of thing kind of making it into the mainstream, that the way that we've approached work and how to motivate our employees for so long is inherently flawed.

Feedback loop. Sadly, no new Patreon subscribers this week, but over at PayPal, we've got Mark, Jeffrey, Adam, Stephen, and David. And David says, Hi, Grumps. I'm a grumpy young geek from Europe, and I love your show. This might be the only show that I listen to every episode as soon as possible.

Now that I'm able to actually able to make decent monies, being a paid geek, a software engineer, and scrum master, I would like to give back to you. Your vibes help me stay sane in this HO. What's an HO? Not entirely sure. Oh, get up in this hoe. Keep it up.

P.S. What do you think about scrum? If you have any experience, I stayed as far away from scrum as I possibly could. I know some people that are scrum masters as well, and they swear by it. I thought about taking a scrum course at one point when I was wondering what I was going to do next in my life and just kind of realized that it's kind of no shit Sherlock sort of stuff for project management.

So, yeah. Yeah. You know, if it works for you, it works. That's what I think about it. Yep. I know a lot of scrum masters too, and they love it. I just was trying to get out of software, and I didn't want to learn anything at that point. Yep. Now, over at Twitter, we have an interesting one from ExcuseBot2000.

Wow. Yes. Really surprised with you guys this week. Very poor taste of a joke. It's one hour, two minutes, and 30 seconds. Using Auschwitz as a joke about losing weight ain't cool and tags the Auschwitz museum. What? Too soon? I was going to say that. Oh, I knew you were going to have a comeback.

I was actually going to tweet back too soon, because, you know, might as well keep with the poor taste. This actually – good one, man. Very funny. This one actually got under my skin a little bit. I was thinking about this for a while, even though I'm not the one that made the joke.

And, in fact, if you listen to that podcast at about one minute or one hour, two minutes, in 31 seconds, you will hear a very exasperated sigh from the co-host of the show, who knew at the time that this is – oh, Christ, here we go. But here's the thing that chaps my dazzle about the internet, Jason.

All right. ExcuseBot2000 put in enough time to note the exact time reference of the joke, then put in enough time to fucking go tell on us to the Auschwitz Museum and found that tag, but couldn't be bothered to point out that it wasn't the entire show that said this joke.

It was one person, and the other person was annoyed and angry about it. Now, tell the whole story, excuseBot. Well, here's what also pisses me off. LazyFucker didn't link to the show. Nope. Didn't even link to the show. So, you know, had enough energy to note exact time reference and then, you know, go off and run and tell mommy, but couldn't be bothered to tell the entire story about it.

Whatever. It was a fucking joke. You do fucking four hours of goddamn podcasting a week and see how well you do. Seriously. I still stand by the joke. I thought it was funny. No, it wasn't really funny, but, you know, I stand by you. It was an absolute poor taste. And listen, excuseBot2000, I am doing enough work trying to get Jason to stop using retarded.

I can't fucking monitor everything. Hey, we came to a detente now. It's, you know, you use it more than I do now. You've used it the last two shows, and I just say you're a dumb fucking cunt. I've changed up. I have grown as a person. There you go.

And Derek sent in a link. Volvo cars are apparently trying to explore and use the subscription model as well. So fuck you, Volvo. Porsche does it, too. I think BMW is jumping on that bandwagon as well. You've got to squeeze every penny out of everybody. Yep.

And Radio Teacher writes in, I read this and thought about GOG. Don't build your business on someone else's website. And Bittner sounds like Emotet team is learning this lesson. So this is a vigilante is sabotaging Emotet botnet by replacing malware payloads with GIFs.

And this is awesome. Yep. So basically what it is is the Emotet botnet, which is a very big botnet, they host their payloads on hacked WordPress sites. But they use a very, you know, off-the-shelf shell, like a web shell that you can log into and get access to the back end.

And that's what most people get hacked with on their WordPress sites. It's a very simple hack, very easy to do. But these guys, these geniuses, genii over at Emotet, use the same password on all of them. So there's somebody out there going around finding all these web shells and then replacing the files with just very funny animated GIFs.

So when people get hit by the botnet and the malware, it's just downloading a GIF and not the actual harmful payload. So whoever this guy is, hats off. Hats off to you. Well done. MOS6502 wrote in, these people have a lot of products that may fit what Jason is looking for in terms of ports.

And this is a link to the OWC USB-C dock. I looked at this, not up, and it's still the same kind of thing. Not enough ports. Not enough ports. And he also wrote in, will Jason, I have to assume, since there's a little thing over the O that came through here.

So I like your new name. Review the Sandman Audible on the show. He just did. I liked it. Music was very big finish-like. Kay Dennings was the worst. Wishbath Ryan voice Constantine. Yes. And they called him Constantine in the show, which that bugged me a bit. But he was okay.

He was okay. Kay Dennings didn't bother me either. But actually, nobody bothered me in this whole thing. So your mileage may vary. And E writes in, Brian, if you want one of the best TVs, the 2019 OLED LG C9 Absolute Blacks.

It's $1.4,000 at Sam's Club for 65 inches. Samsung QLEDs are much brighter and typically cheaper, but they don't generate blacks as good as an OLED when you see it in person. Don't believe marketing. I don't need to believe marketing, but I also don't need to buy a $1.400 TV.

If we have $1,400 TV. Yeah. No. Yeah. I'm telling you, my $300 50-inch gets here on Friday, and I cannot wait. I think I'm going to try to split the difference. I'm not going to buy a $300 one, but I'm certainly not going to buy a $1,400 one. So that's where I'm at.

John writes in, one from our side of the world, and this is a link over from Australia. The Australian government is sued by a 23-year-old Melbourne student over financial risks of climate change. The world first case alleges the government failed in its duty to disclose climate change's impact on the value of government bonds.

The case is being led by a 23-year-old student and investor who says she did it to protect her future, and experts say could open the floodgates for other litigation by tying climate change to real-world financial risk. And this is the way you go about it, people. You don't sue over ethics or morality.

You sue over the money. Yep, it's a pretty interesting case. Yep. Yeah, very interesting case. And Benjamin writes in, this looks interesting, at least until companies figure out how to work around it. And this is image cloaking for personal privacy, the Fox project, which I love.

Guy Fawkes, yes. And they even use Guy Fawkes masks in their videos, which is pretty cool. Yeah, it's a really interesting concept. Basically, it's just going through and making tiny pixel-level changes to your photos and personal images. So you run it through the Fox filter before you post it online, and the pictures look absolutely, totally normal to the human eye.

But they are technically cloaked, and they've tried it against Microsoft Azure Face API, Amazon Recognition, and Face++. Basically, it makes it enable for them to actually do facial recognition on your images, at least for now, because it'll be whack-a-mole.

Yeah, and I think they open-sourced it, too, so it'll be easy for people to go back and figure it out. But I like it. It's kind of like steganography, almost, you know, embedding data inside of an image that we can't see, but it's still there. So when the machines read it, they can see it. I love it. Yep. And Jamie writes in, and he's forcing me to discuss something that I didn't want to discuss, because when Hay launched, I initially had it in the show notes, then decided I just didn't care enough.

But here we are. Jamie writes in, haven't heard this discussed yet on GOG, downloaded it this weekend for the two-week free trial, already loving the feeds list for reading all my newsletters and blogs in a single location. And so, as pointed out, this is an article over at TechCrunch about, hey, email is broken, and Hay's Jason Fried is here to fix it.

So he's discussing how he's come up with this new way to do mail, which involves $99 per year with additional costs for two- and three-character email addresses up to $999 per year. So you can now pay for better email, in theory.

Yeah, I noticed this this morning. I saw this come through, and then I went and signed up for Hay. I'm like, okay, let's do some due diligence here. By the way, we need to call it, Hay. Hey. God. So I signed up, and yeah, I got hit with the, I would try to get jpd at hay.com.

And they're like, oh, no. That'd be $350 a year. I'm like, uh, go fuck yourself. I like how the fact that they try to, he's trying to explain why the costs of this are there is because it was not cheap to buy hay.com. That's so precious.

So let's pass this, let's pass that on to you. Yeah. How about you just would have got a cheaper domain name for your service? Yeah. Hey, go fuck yourself. Now, I mean, look, I'm sure it's an improvement over Gmail.

I'm sure it is, but Gmail's free. Here's the thing about it. So I did it. I signed up. I went through the tutorial and looked at everything about it. Now, email is a very tough subject for me because it's very important. Email is basically how I live my life and do all my business.

I love email. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. And I do not trust Jason Freed as far as I can fucking throw him or anybody at the base camp team. Sorry. I remember you guys. I remember how down you were so many times over the years.

And you only do a four-day work week. So those three days when I email it down, I'm like, sure, they're going to say we have support teams. I don't want to talk to somebody in the Philippines when my email's down. I don't trust you. You have lost my trust. And it's also really, really basic. Like for, you know, people that don't get a lot of email, I'm sure it's fine.

But the amount of email I get, I need to have superpowers in my systems. And I was thinking about that superhuman one, whatever that's called, the new mail system that I know a lot of people are using. But that's not cheap either. It's expensive and invite only. But I have found that Gmail filters in a lovely copy of Spark for macOS and iOS devices gets the job done.

And it is a lot fucking less than $349 a year. Yeah. I don't feel like subscribing for email. And also, my email address, which I think everybody knows, is jay at jpd.me. So even if I bought the $999 a year plan, that's still, you know, three more or two more characters that I'm paying for now, which I'm not.

I'm paying 15 bucks for my jpd.me account. Right. You know, my domain. And that's it. So yeah, yeah. No, guys. And I have a fantastically long email. It's far longer than anybody's email should ever be, brian at slenderfungus.com.

And never really caused much of an issue. Nope. People will find you. I was jason at defillippo.com forever. And that was always a pain in the ass. How many L's? How many P's? Two I's, two L's, two P's. One O. All right.

So yeah, I'm skipping hay. Hey. Vincent Wright said, more COVID tracker app privacy concerns for Android users. Play services are phoning home to Google. Well, it's a, it's a, you know, COVID tracker.

It's supposed to phone home, isn't it? It's supposed to phone home. That's the point. I thought that that was kind of what it was supposed to do. But nobody's using them anyway. So who cares? Exactly. He says, then again, Google also tracks location very thoroughly from my experience. They recently emailed me.

So to let me know my location history for the previous month, answer home 99% of the time. Stay grumpy, stay safe, live and let live. You can turn off location history for Google. Yes, you can. So do that. All of that crap off. Turn off web history and turn off location history and they theoretically won't track you.

But here's the deal. You're on an Android phone. It doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter. Yeah. Your ass is to the wind all the time. Anyways, exactly. Flap those balls out the window. You're fine. Nathan writes in. Hey, grumps. Thanks to the pandemic. I've started the process to turn my hobby into a side business. Side note from me here.

This is Brian speaking. Don't do that because you will hate your hobby. Yes. As soon as you get paid for your hobby, then it becomes a job and then you lose your hobby. Yes. Yes. I still don't like music. It's been years. I still hate music. I don't like photography anymore. It's worked out well so far since my full-time employer has given me a chance to apply my passion within the company while using the material I produce as examples for potential clients.

As part of my on-screen work, I've decided I need a GOG hat. Any chance you can send me a link to where I can get one if they exist? I'm going to be filming outdoors. This much is rather have a... Okay. You want to wear a hat while you're filming outside. We don't have hats because the first provider that we went with didn't have hats.

Yes. And I don't know if our second provider has hats yet either. So we're still working on getting that set up. But yeah, hopefully they'll have hats. I haven't really looked yet, but I have a feeling they don't. Yeah. Which is unfortunate. But we can get you a nice phone case.

Well, phone case, yeah. A blanket, tea cozy. Wall art, notebooks, mugs, pillows, tapestries. Tapestries. Let's make a tapestry and you can just wrap that around your head. How's that? Okay. There you go. I don't know why it's so goddamn hard to find a place that'll make a hat for us.

Because hats are hard, I guess. Yeah, I know. I guess they are. Hats are hard. Here, buy a black hat off Amazon and we'll send you a sticker. Yep. Send us your address. We'll send you a sticker. We can send you a sticker on the hat. Or we can send you a bumper sticker, one of the two. Yep. Or if you have a metal hat, we'll send you a magnet.

Well, we lost the name on this guy. So sorry, whoever sent this in. And it's Government Withdraws Cash Prize from President's Cup Cybersecurity Competition. And I read through this. And yeah, it turns out they were going to offer $55,000 to first place, $25,000 for second place, and $10,000 for third place.

Except they can't do it legally. And this was after the thing had already begun and people were traveling. It turns out they can't give active servicemen cash rewards for the work that they're probably already getting paid for. So oopsies. What are you going to do there?

Now, we got a PS on this one. He said some other stuff, but I think we're going to just go with the PS here. Did Dave go to Wild Lake High School? He made a comment slash joke about going to school with Ed Norton once. And this stuck out as one of Wild Lake's claims to fame. If so, you have another Wild Lake alum as a fan.

So send us your name so we can figure out who you are. And we'll talk to Dave about this on Friday. We can figure this out. I haven't been deleting the comments out of the WordPress, so it should still be in there. Okay, we'll figure that out. We'll sort this out. Yes, we have the technology. We do have the technology. We set visibility to one, and we'll find it again.

You know, if only I was subscribing to, hey, I probably still have this email somewhere. True that, true that. Ralph writes in, hey, Grumps, knowing your skepticism about the use of algorithms and decision making for government and social networking purposes, I thought this article about New Zealand's approach to algorithms would be of interest.

And this is from The Guardian. New Zealand claims world first in setting standards for government use of algorithms. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So we'll see how it goes. And they have to give, like, plain English explanations on how things work, you know, what processes are used, which we'll see if they know or not, because most of the algorithms say, I have no idea.

How data is stored unless forbidden by law, such as for reasons of national security, and to identify and manage biases in forming algorithms. And here's the thing. It has to consider indigenous worldviews as well. So that's pretty good. Look, I am willing to give New Zealand a pass on anything right now because they seem to be doing things right there.

Yeah. Yeah. They got the COVID on lockdown. Yep. So, and I think that's because they did everything that we were supposed to do and stay the fucking home. Yeah. Plus more sheep than people. That also helped. That's true, too. That's true, too. Yeah. Ben writes in for your book reading segment.

I recommend reading Earth by David Brin. I don't know if either of you have already read it, but it remains fairly relevant and might deserve a mention on GOG. I have read almost everything by the nicknamed killer bees, David Brin, Gregory Benford, and Greg Bear. Back in the day. And I know I read and really enjoyed Earth at one point, but I couldn't tell you a thing about the plot anymore.

So it might be time for a reread. Incidentally, David Brin is a great follow on Facebook, although not if you're a conservative snowflake. He does a lot of great long-form writing on a mixture of science, sci-fi, and political topics. So do love the David Brin. Cool.

And Justin writes in, I'm an academic at a big state school and something came my way that I thought might interest you. Now, this is an article over at Asianstudies.org called the Association for Asian Studies Statement regarding remote teaching, online scholarship, safety, and academic freedom. And it kind of comes down to a lot of people are going to be working remotely and from a lot of different places.

And a lot of these people are going to be in the People's Republic of China. So there's a lot of interesting things here. And he says, universities and colleges have been suffering under 10 to 15 years of poorly controlled IT outsourcing. Now it's coming back to bite them. Anyway, love you guys. I keep trying to say grumple stiltskin backwards, but nothing ever happens.

What gives? Let me know if you're ever going to Japan. Happy to suggest some places. I don't think they're going to let us in for quite some time. I'd love to go to Japan. I'd love to go tomorrow. I would love to go tomorrow. Yes. Friend of the show, Sean Bonner, just actually left and is now in Canada. See, if he can go from Japan to Canada, I think you can make it from Santa Monica to Canada.

Yeah, they went with no stuff. We have stuff. They had all their stuff shipped. Yeah, let's see when it gets there. Yeah, if it gets there. And he says, I see Dave is already a fan of all the fuzzy mascots. Yeah, I read through the article. It's interesting. I mean, the political ramifications aren't touched upon, which is interesting.

What are you supposed to do if you have a student in the Western world who is trying to study from underneath all the different government regulations and hoops and all that going on in China? So, you know, it's not just a technology solution that needs to be involved there, is it?

Really, there's a lot of political stuff going on and censorship and et cetera. So, yeah, it's a sticky wicket. It's a sticky wicket. Wookie in New Zealand writes in, hey, team, can you slow down the episodes? I can't keep up. I used to listen on the way to and from work, but with no job and no driving, I'm falling behind and missing Zoom drinks.

Anyway, you mentioned transcription services being suboptimal. And while I was retooling myself to an IT career from an aviation-related one, I found Amazon Web Services Transcribe. They do audio-to-text conversions for as little as about 150 per 60 minutes of audio.

The output is long, and I skimmed it to see if it made sense. Besides not being able to pick up GOG.com and Brian's last name correctly, which can be corrected online automatically, it seemed to do a decent job. Loving the show from the COVID-free Middle Earth in New Zealand. Cheers and beers. Wow, a lot of people in New Zealand listening.

We're not going to slow down the episodes. We need to get paid. Sorry. As little money is coming in right now, we need to do everything we possibly can. Yes. Raf writes in, thanks for the Max Wang story. I've listened to it five times already. It is so vivid in describing problems at Facebook.

Also, there is a better quality video here. So we got a link to The Verge where they have the video. Yep. I will have to go. I already listened to it. But if you haven't listened to it and you want to see it, go check it out. The link will be in the show notes. And Dan wrote in, you commented that podcasts are down because they are solitary endeavors.

And who can be solitary right now? True. But those who are single and live alone need engagement. I tried one socially distanced state and she wanted to get physical. Nope. This is one of the only things keeping me sane. Please don't stop. I'm very sorry, Dan, that we are your replacement for a woman. Yeah.

Yeah. And he sent a link into, why can't I find a USB-C hub with multiple USB-C ports? And the most popular answer was from two years ago saying that the technology basically doesn't exist yet. They don't have the chips. Well, that sucks.

Yep. That sucks. And I hear you, man, with the, the, uh, the Drumpy Old Geeks is filling that role for me too. COVID cock blocked. That's a sad, sad day. My God. I'm filling in for a lot of chicks. That's so wrong. So wrong. Trust me. I'm stopping.

I'm going to stop right there. Tindall writes in show art for the next time. Dave is on and, uh, this is a link for over to Twitter. So, uh, yes, it's go check it out. We're, we're not going to ruin it for you. So it'll be in the notes. Uh, Vinny writes in, I heard from your recent feedback loop that you have a web form hooray for WordPress onto some drone news and sends us to the link to the Harry and Megan lawsuit thing and says, Jesus, that's terrible.

This is America. So would they have the right to shoot down the low flying drone, set phasers to stun, get the security deets to shoot a net, get ninjas to throw shurikens and batarangs, throw a pokeball. I'm all out of ideas. Stay grumpy and safe. Eagles. We need the Eagles. That's right.

So it is absolutely illegal to shoot down an aircraft in the United States, even if it is over your property, because then you're dealing with the FAA and, uh, we covered a story a long time ago about a guy who shot down his neighbor's drone with a shotgun and, uh, basically had to go to jail for it.

So not a good idea to take down somebody's drone, even if it is over your house, even if you're an ex prince. Yes. Tai writes in or a real prince. Yeah. Tai writes in greetings, gentlemen. I'm the host of the one question leadership podcast for dystopian novels.

I suggest Octavia Butler parable of the sower and parable of the talents. You'll be surprised by some of the language used in the book. Ah, but does she make questionable, uh, Auschwitz jokes? Ah, probably not. Or maybe, who knows? Uh, the thing about this is I think you made me read these before.

I think so too. I know I've read a lot of Octavia Butler. I'm not sure if I've read that book or not. I don't know if it's COVID brain or just too much sci-fi. It's COVID brain because I remember, yeah, I read both of these books with you. You read them and then I read them and, uh, yeah. Yep. Good stuff. Yep.

I don't know which episode it was. I would send you back to go look at it for, uh, to hear our review, our actual review. But yeah, I'm pretty sure we, we've read those. Done that. Uh, James writes in, hey cunts, what's up? I love the fact that Jason is now using the word cunt. We Australians toss that word around like confetti at a wedding.

The word can be used as an expression of endearment depending on the inflection. In response to Paul from Sydney recommending you guys check out the NRL, the National Rugby Rugby League. Don't bother. Check out Australian Rules Football, which I also won't bother with. I love Australian Rules Football. It's great.

Yep. So, and he says, PS, bravo to Jason for a top effort with Christopher Lockhead on the marketing pod storm. Well worth a listen, guys, if you want to learn about marketing. Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Uh, the link that he sent in is Aussie man reviews AFL versus soccer big hit. Uh, did you watch this video?

No. Oh, you have to, you have to, um, we're going to pause for one second while Brian watches the video. Oh Christ. Okay. I watched the video. I would actually watch any sport that this guy did the play by play on, but, uh, I'm sure he doesn't on a regular basis.

Nope. It's good though. Yeah. It's good. Jeff writes in hi grumps. Thanks for all that you're doing so much appreciated. I just want to pass along a link that discusses some exciting developments with tech in supporting caring for autism spectrum disorders and such. My special interest is in all type of behavioral health topics.

Keep up the fantastic work gentlemen. And this is a link to fierce healthcare.com. It's extreme. Startup Sprout launches tech enabled autism care program with $10 million in seed financing. Very cool. Mark writes in thought this was grumpy and insightful, albeit not very tech.

And this is from the economist, the death of nostalgia. And, uh, I wasn't able to read the whole article because we are not paying for the economist yet. Uh, that's been on my to-do list. I think we need to pay for that. I'm missing a lot of good articles from them every, every month. So we might have to make an executive decision on that one and just pay for it.

Yeah. Go ahead and do it and just take it out of the PayPal. Uh, but the, the basic thing here is people used to pine for a simpler life. Now they've got it and it's not all it's cracked up to be. Um, having not been able to read the whole article, I'm not sure how into it they get, but, uh, much like our discussions about working from home and everything else, I don't think it's a fair comparison right now.

One thing, it's one thing to long for and maybe even experience a simpler life. It's another to experience it under the weight of this fucking pandemic. So, and I'd argue also, certainly, especially for those of us that are parents, this isn't fucking simpler. It's a lot harder.

It's a lot more complicated. Complications. Len writes in, greetings, grumps. I have a question about SEO, specifically software as a service like SEM rush. Do these things actually work? My girlfriend works for a dental office and they're being pitched on a software package to improve their search rankings.

I know I could be wrong, but to me, paying for SEO has always fallen into classic internet scam slash little to no results for your money area. Like maybe that stuff worked for a while, many years ago, but search engines are just too smart for it now. Am I way off? Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks. No, you're not way off.

They don't work. It's a scam. It's a scam. Stay the fuck away from it. There are legitimate ways to do SEO, but it takes a team and it takes a lot of work. And it is not cheap. If you want results, anybody that's trying to pitch you a software package to do it, definitely a scam.

Definitely a scam. So yeah, save your money. Save your money. Donate. Save your money. Donate it to Patreon.com slash GOG. Yep. We just saved you a ton of money. So send us some of that. Deb writes in episode 448, you mentioned the day of the week thing.

Maybe this in-life large digital display calendar clock would help. And this is the in-life large display digital calendar clock dual time display modes, multi-language impaired vision dementia day. Alarm clock with two auto-dim, eight alarm options for seniors, elderly Alzheimer's.

Oh, I guess I have Alzheimer's because I didn't see that. I cut off the title. I didn't realize it was that long. I'm going to stick with my lady in the puck for now since this thing is 40 bucks. But it's actually not bad for what it is.

You know, the only problem is you have to plug it in. So I wish there was just a battery option one because this could just be an e-ink display. Right. Yeah. But it's 40 bucks. So it's cute, though. Good call. Good call. And over at iTunes, we got one from Super Digital or no, Fiverick Super Digital Com.

Long one. Still great. Fun, fun, fun. Jason in Brazion. Jason in Brazion. You're Jason and I'm Brazion. Jason in Brazion deserve a major talk show. Now I can tell you why we don't have one for that reason alone.

Yeah, pretty much. And we have a rating over at Podcast Addict, whatever the F that is, from Jackal3, who is one of our Twitter superfans, a five-star rating. By far the best geek podcast out. These two say all the same things we're thinking right now.

Why? Why? What the actual fuck? A twice-a-week show with relevant geek news, thoughts, ramblings, or just plain pissed-off mentions. Be ready to join the GOG army. Get ready to get grumpy. Wow. Ooh, I like getting ready to get grumpy. Yeah. Run for his money. Yeah. Get ready to get grumpy.

We're going to steal that one. Mm-hmm. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to GOG.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review. And as always, keep clicking on those stars in Overcast.

Once Joe Rogan leaves the podcast plane of existence, we're going to be number one. I think. Maybe. A sad shout-out to friend of the show, Joey Rabier. Our condolences, my friend, on the loss of your mom.

Stay strong. Hey, man. Sorry to hear it. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to GOG.show slash donate. Toss us a few bucks and we'll love you forever. Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it.

Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 459. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, and get links to stuff we like. Get ready to get grumpy.

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