464: Rideshare Mythological Complex

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. So we have a firenado. Yep. Because 2020 can't be more 2020 than it is. Yes, the National Weather Service has issued America's first ever warning for a fire tornado. The Reno Office of the National Weather Service warned Northern California of a fiery tornado on Saturday that had sprung up near a large, fast-moving wildfire in the Sierra.

For the first time in history, a tornado warning has been issued for a likely fire tornado, Washington Post meteorologist Matthew Capucci reported. These are not fire whirls. This is a rotating smoke plume being ingested into a pyrocumulonimbus cloud that can produce a bona fide fire-induced tornado at tornado wind speeds.

I've seen video of this thing. It's pretty, pretty hellish. The only thing you could do is, like, sprinkle in some murder hornets, and that would just be 2020 in a nutshell. Well, in addition to that, just before we went to record, I was running through my news really quickly.

We had a meteor the size of a car that just narrowly missed the earth over the weekend, and they didn't find it until it hit past us. And according to Andrew Hunter-Murray, one of the hosts of No Such Thing as a Fish, the podcast that we both listened to, I just saw he tweeted, there is an incredibly large anomaly in our magnetic field that scientists are extremely concerned by that they're tracking.

That's been going on for a while, though. Yes. I read about that. That one has been going on for a while. Yeah, I read about that. I just saw it for the first time today, and so I thought I'd throw that in there, too, because, you know, why not? What else is going to go wrong? This is what happens when you doom scroll before coffee. Good times.

So, we talked about the big fight over Apple and Google and Epic Games over the whole Fortnite thing. Well, Epic has filed an injunction against Apple at this point because Apple has said that, you know what, we're just going to revoke all your access because you won't play by the rules, which for Epic could be just disastrous because Epic creates the Unreal Engine, which is used basically damn near anywhere, everywhere, I'm sorry.

Yes. So, I do like the fact that they got into, you know, obviously they're getting into a big bitch fight here, right? Oh, big one. Epic says, we're not going to follow your rules. Apple says, well, we're going to take you off our platforms then. Epic says, screw you. We're going to make a really funny video.

And, oh, also file some lawsuits. And then Apple says, okay, we're going to take all your stuff off the table then. And then Epic goes, hey, that's not fair. You're taking off things that don't have anything to do with the game. Mm-hmm. So, and Apple writes back to them saying, hey, guys, yeah, we're not going to make an exception for you because you guys skirted the rules.

The rules, which we would like to point out that you agreed to when you signed up for the platform. You got to read the TOS, people. Yeah. Yeah. So, Epic now is trying to put a cabal of other big app developers together to go after them. So, the first one I heard they reached out to, of course, is Spotify because they've already had beef with Apple over the subscription rates.

So, this is going to be just a cat fight. I'm just, where's my popcorn? Yeah. I mean, what's the end game here other than in a court of law, somebody decides that Apple can't do this? Yeah. I mean, Amazon's not going to blink on this one because that's, you know, a huge chunk of their revenue.

Mm-hmm. You know, they only have a few apps that they sell, but they, you know, they take a slice off the top of everybody that sells anything on the app store. So, they're not going to back down on this one, I believe, unless they are forced to. Unless they're forced to. No, and honestly, they shouldn't have to.

Their store, their rules. Pretty much. Pretty much. And Apple, you know, to put a good spin on something they've done this week, they're taking their AppleCare purchase window from 60 days to a whole year. That's nice. That's finally nice because you always remember it on day 61 because you need that extra time to save up for it because you just spent a god-awful amount of money on all the hardware you just bought.

Yeah. No, that's a good move on their part. And it completely makes sense, particularly during COVID times because, you know, I've discovered that anything that I would have to do normally within a 30-day window, I need at least, oh, I don't know, four months for at this point. Exactly. I've gone with their new subscription route, which is actually kind of nice.

You don't have to pay it all up front and they ding you for $10 a month for the life of the device. So it saves on a few bucks up front, which helps, you know. But, yeah, this full year is pretty nice because you always forget, you know. You always forget.

You do. And speaking of always forgetting, one other thing I've noticed now that we're sharing an office space here, my wife and I, both we have a standing desk shoved into our bedroom with a large monitor and a keyboard and a mouse and all of that. You know, I occasionally check every now and then to make sure that the mouse and the keyboard are charged.

What I've discovered is my wife does not. Ever. So, yeah, this morning I came out to a 0.5% charged keyboard and a mouse that was flashing red. And I was just like, you've got to be kidding me. Not even a check every now and then.

This is the equivalent of leaving the cap off the toothpaste tube. You know, people get murdered for less than that when they're in a pandemic and stuck inside all the time. Yeah. So I've had to charge everything. Quick charge this morning. Hopefully this will all work throughout the whole podcast. But check your stuff, people.

Yeah. I keep mine going all the time. I have a special cable that's set up just for that. Because, yeah, these MX masters don't tell you until they're dead. No, no, there's no warning until they're blinking. Yeah, pretty much. But they last, I mean, these things usually last for a couple months on one single charge.

Oh, this has worked since purchase. This is the first time I've actually had to charge it. Yeah, it's not bad, not bad. Not bad. It's a little housekeeping here. You and I have discussed on the back channel about opening up a Discord channel. Yes, and I thought we said we weren't going to, but here we are announcing it.

I'm going to throw it out to you because I'm stuck at home all the time now. I don't have a lot of work, and I'm fine with hanging out on there now and again. You can pop in now and again whenever you want. You know, it's like, eh, it's just something there to have some kind of contact with the outside world, mainly because of the chat in the damn Clash Royale or, yeah, Clash Royale clan.

The chat sucks, and it's really hard to, like, chat in there. So I'm like, eh, I want to talk to some people. So I put a link in, you know, no guarantees on who's going to be there when, but it's there. I have no issue with it, but I do think it's funny. Yeah. Because this is the way that decisions are normally made in grumpy old geeks land.

Oh, here's this thing. Should we do it? I'm the one that actually brought it up. Jason goes, are you fucking kidding me? No fucking way do I ever want to have this thing going. Okay, conversation over. Next thing I know, there it is in the show notes. Well, I'm bored. I'm fucking bored.

What are you going to do? I'm just saying. I'm opening up the doors so people can see how decision-making processes are made. That's right. No, it's fine. I mean, I didn't uninstall Discord, so it's still sitting here. Every time I launch it, there's 7,000 updates, and so I don't know what's happening with this program.

But, yeah, I'm happy to pop in every now and then. You know, it's easier for me to do this than to try to sort out another, you know, online chat thing. So, because this, we can pop in whenever we feel like it. So, yeah, it exists. Link in the show notes if you want to pop in and say hi.

Yeah. I mean, the other option was to put up an IRC channel, but. Since our gopher is never going to appear, apparently. Yeah, really? What's up with that, Anthony? Come on. And the other reason I was bored and thinking about it, because I saw it in the doc while I was going through all of the back episodes, we've made a lot of shows.

You think? Made a lot of shows. This is 464. And I've had to go through, and this is the second or third time we've had to update all of the embeds on the website, because I should have written a goddamn WordPress plugin with a database, which would have made it a lot easier. I have to go through and update all 400 plus embeds to get us up to our current hosting platform, because we've got players all over the place when you go to the website to listen to it.

So we're not getting credit for some of those plays. So I was just sitting there going through, doing the mind-numbing copy-paste process of finding the episode, cleaning it out, because there's all sorts of old crap in there. And I saw the Discord thing sitting there. I'm like, oh, it would have been nice to have that open right now with somebody to chat with while I'm sitting here copying and pasting.

So that's where that came from. So we're working through the back ones there. And I've been working through the transcripts, too. I don't think those are ever going to see the light of day. Why? They're too terrible. They're too terrible. And who cares? They're out of date at this point anyways. And it's a podcast. Yeah.

Listen to it. I use them for searching to go find some old stuff that we talked about. And I think on episode two, which is pretty funny, it's actually, it's somewhere between two and 13 when I saw it. There's a tag in the show notes, Brian's hatred of Farscape.

I'm like, something's never changed. Well, you've been pushing that show on me for a long time, man. Yep. Well, that one's over. In the news. So I don't want to get too political out of the gate here.

And this is something we talked about on the Drink Up. But this is the most genius use of tech that I've seen in a very long time. It is called defeatbytweet.org. So this is how it works. You set a donation amount per tweet. You can do like, you know, from one cent to 10 cents.

Or some people have, you know, done a dollar. And every time Trump tweets, your money is sent to a collection of black-led organizations working to defeat Trump in nine key swing states. You're going to go broke real quick. Yeah, you're going to go real broke. They said the average number of tweet team makes per day is about 30.

They've raised over a million dollars so far. Right. Pretty impressive. Pretty impressive. And genius. Genius. I mean, talk about using tech against someone. This is like the Aikido version of using the internet. Pretty cool. Yeah.

And we have to go back to our favorite companies in the world, ride sharing. So, yeah. Uber and Lyft say they have to basically shut down if everything keeps going the way it's going. Oh, you mean they have to play by the rules? Yeah. Like everybody else does?

Yeah. They're trying to not. They're definitely trying to not do that. So, yeah. It's because AB5 passed, which classifies them, or makes them classify their quote-unquote employees as actual employees. And they're like, we can't afford that. That's not in our business model.

Exactly. So, yeah. Now what they're trying to do is they're trying to push this Prop 22 that gets voted on here in November to carve out, you know, a little slice that says, no, we don't apply to AB5.

People who drive and, you know, drive for us or Lyft or whoever, no, they're still going to be independent contractors. So, they're putting – with DoorDash, they put a ton of money behind this yes on Prop 22 campaign that's going on. So, if you're in California, vote no on Prop 22 if you care about some of these people.

But, yeah, it's kind of a mess. Yeah. This is ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous. I mean, there are some valid arguments about Prop AB5 against it. Yes. But definitely there are, but they don't apply to either Uber or Lyft's business model.

I can get into that, but it's specific for other people. It's not for these companies. These companies are massively, theoretically, profitable, at least in terms of the amount of money that they have on hand. They should be treating their employees as employees. They're trying to skirt the rules.

That's bullshit. Technically, they've never made a penny. They've never made a penny. That's true. So, they just have a lot of money, but they've never made any money. Yes. And what they're going to try and do now – I saw this one this morning, speaking of doom scrolling before your coffee. They're considering a franchise-like model here in California.

So, what they want to do is say, here, we're going to lend you our tech, and you can run the employees. You can spend all your money on the benefits and everything, and we're just going to lend you our infrastructure so you can have a turnkey Uber or Lyft right out of the gate.

If you've already got, say, a fleet of cars or trucks that you want, you know, our – So, you can white brand it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's their newest Hail Mary. They haven't decided whether or not they're going to do it, but it made the New York Times, so I guess it's got to be pretty high up in the talks at this point.

And that's like just a total end around. And as we know, they don't make any money. So, what moron would try and spend their money on a franchise model for a company that doesn't make any money? Yeah, that isn't profitable at all. It's like, would you start a McDonald's if you knew that all McDonald's didn't make any money?

Why would you spend, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars on franchise fees and building out a restaurant if nobody wanted the food? Well, there you have it. There you have it. All right. And we have some more follow-up on the Google Australia pay for news thing that's been going on.

Google has done what all celebrities do when they're in trouble. They've penned an open letter. Oh, God. Yes. Is this a conscious uncoupling? They have written an open letter to all of Australia warning that the users in Australia that free search and YouTube services are at risk if Australia implements a proposed law compelling it to pay for linking to news services.

They've also paused a news licensing system that they started earlier this year, according to the Financial Post. And finally, it's warned that big news businesses could demand extra revenue beyond what they earn on YouTube ads, leaving a smaller share for individual creators. Meaning, if you actually are a news organization with reporters, you might actually make more money than Bob down the street who decides to post news.

Okay. Yeah. So they're saying they already pay news services millions of dollars and send them billions of free clicks every year. Hmm. That sounds familiar. Hmm. Doesn't that sound like the, but you're getting exposure argument? Yes, it does.

Hmm. Interesting. Yes. Yes. But rather than encouraging these types of partnerships, the law is set up to give big media companies special treatment and to encourage them to make enormous and unreasonable demands that would put our free services at risk. Yeah. So the blog is pitting large publishers like News Corp against individual creators.

Once again, I would argue that individual creators aren't news. News has to fall under a special law here. It's different. But whatever. Yeah. So blah, blah, it goes on and on and on. And Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission. Boy, it'd be nice to have one of those here in America.

Said that Google's open letter contains misinformation about free search and YouTube services. Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services, such as Google search and YouTube, unless it chooses to do so. The ACCC wrote in response. Google will not be required to share any additional user data with Australian news businesses unless it chooses to do so.

Mm hmm. Yep. There you go. So nice try, Google. Nice try, Google. Yeah. I don't know. I need to think about this some more because. Well, I'm against the idea initially as well. I don't think that they should have to pay to link to news services. We've discussed this ongoing for quite some time.

It's one thing to link to a service. It's another thing to take their entire story and then, you know, white again, white label it as your own and grab all that data and pop it up in a window under Google News. That's a different thing. Linking. Yeah, I'm not sure about this law either, but I'm definitely sure that I'm against the way Google's trying to fight it.

Yeah, it's the summarization of the article that they're trying to avoid because it's like, OK, Google scrapes the articles, puts in an automatic summary of it. So when you're scrolling through Google News, you can see it, get the gist of it and keep on going. Yes. You know, that part. That makes the news services no money because they write your view on their page.

Yeah, and I, you know, I'm kind of with the news services on that one, but, you know, the fact that you have to pay to link to a news service, I think, is really stupid. So there's got to be a middle ground. Just say, hey, guys, no summaries. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Do like everybody else. You grab the first sentence. That's about it.

Don't summarize. Don't give me the bullet points so nobody never needs to come to our page. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, let's move on to some Facebook news. Yay. Facebook algorithm found to actively promote Holocaust denial.

I'm just putting this under. Must be Tuesday. Oh, wait, it's Tuesday. Yeah, it's crazy. I updated one of my background photo, I think, on Twitter and on Facebook to breaking news. What the fuck now? And here it is.

This is insane. This is absolutely insane. Is it the algorithm? Is it people? What's going on now? I don't even know anymore. Algorithms cannot be this evil. No, no. Apparently they are. This requires people. This requires people. It requires Facebook to not do anything and turn a blind eye to what is obviously utter bullshit.

Yeah. There is no leg to stand on about Holocaust denial. I'm sorry. There's not. There isn't. There isn't. We have more than enough proof. Yeah. If you try and let these people on your platform and then actively promote them to other groups, then, you know, you're complicit.

You're absolutely complicit in it. So, yeah. There is no leg for Facebook to stand out on this one. Insane. It's crazy. All right. And speaking of that, text editor Notepad++ banned in China after a Stand with Hong Kong update.

Now, to be fair, he did this to himself, but I do love this story. Yes. The website of Notepad++ is now banned in China as of Monday, obviously due to its release of editions named Free Weiger and Stand with Hong Kong, the source-coded text editor announced on Twitter.

So, yes, he named these things those things on purpose, of course. And it's funny because really only the download page is being blocked, apparently. Right. Every other aspect of his website is completely free and open through Chinese browsers. But if you try to go to the download, they're being flagged as content prohibited by local regulators.

The funny part about this is this guy's obviously a programmer. He could probably figure something out to, you know, dynamically generate a URL every time you click the download button to get around that, or maybe not put the Free Weiger and Stand with Hong Kong in text and put it in an image so his point still gets across, but people can still see it.

I would be having a lot more fun around this right now, trying to get past the Chinese, you know, the Chinese firewall just for fun. Right. I think that would be a lot more fun. I'm going to try to not be cynical, but when's the last time you've heard about Notepad++? Never.

Okay. Well, it's made it into a lot of news stories this week. Yeah. This is the first time. Well, it looks like other countries are starting to smell blood in the water over Amazon. All right. Because the antitrust probes in Canada and Germany have opened up investigations into Amazon.

So, you know, this comes down basically to Amazon doing what Amazon does. It's like, okay, are we taking data from, you know, just standard results for our search and then trying to push our other products, our, you know, our Amazon Basics products? Do we look at the pricing of other products and then price our stuff more competitively?

The answer is yes, obviously, because Jeff Bezos told Congress that, yeah, yeah, I guess we do that. So, cat's out of the bag on this one. The interesting thing in these two articles that I found is Germany is Amazon's second biggest marketplace after the U.S.

I had no idea. Yeah. I mean, it's worth repeating because maybe a lot of our U.S. listeners don't know. But thus far, Amazon is nowhere near as massive in other countries as it is here. There are still thriving secondary markets.

There's they haven't beat everybody else into submission in a lot of other countries, which is why these countries are starting to scramble because for better or for worse, people are looking to the U.S. So not in the way that they used to, but as cautionary tales at this point. And they're seeing what Amazon has done to landscape and they're trying to stop it ahead of time.

And they're definitely trying to do that in Germany because that's where they're really catching up pretty quick to dominance as they have in the U.S. market. Right. Right. So it'll be interesting to see how this one plays out. And also in Amazon news. Now, remember when they were looking for their HQ2 and they were having every city in the country bend over, grab their ankles and put basically a big stack of money in their butthole and say, how much can you fit?

We will never charge you taxes. Come here. Exactly. Well, after that fell through and didn't work out, turns out middle of the pandemic, Amazon is going to be opening up new office buildings, adding thousands of corporate jobs coming soon.

They're going to add 3,500 corporate jobs in buildings in New York, Phoenix, San Diego, Denver, and Detroit and Dallas. And 2,000 people are going to be in Manhattan. Right. Where they say, we're not going to take your bid because you didn't give us enough money.

Well, I thought the Brooklynites bounced back after that. I thought I could have sworn it. It was the people in Brooklyn that said, we don't want you here. Yeah. Yeah. That was a big thing. But yeah, so they never got the thing. But they obviously have bought a building from WeWork for more than a billion dollars.

So it's interesting. It's the Fifth Avenue building that used to be the Lord and Taylor flagship department store. And as we know, Lord and Taylor, sayonara. It's just funny. This is like, okay, first Amazon kills Lord and Taylor. Then WeWork kills themselves.

And now Amazon buys Lord and Taylor. It's going to sweep it all up. Yeah. It's interesting. Interesting. You know, I think that the WeWork model obviously was incredibly flawed. But the idea of shared office spacing is going to come back at some point after this whole coronavirus thing is over.

And it's just funny to, you know, see Amazon purchasing up some of these spaces. Because I would not at all be surprised to see an Amazon spinoff that does shared office spaces in five years from now. Yeah. I wouldn't either. Nope. They've got the cash right now.

And the market's going to be so distressed in the next like now to five years that they can clean up. Which is why Amazon should be split up. Exactly. I'm just saying. Just saying. Just saying. Yes.

Yeah. So the TikTok is still in the news. Okay. Still. Still. Well, the clock's ticking. What do we got? Like two more weeks according to President Trump's mandate? I think we – no. I thought it was 90 days. Okay.

We got like another month or two. Okay. So yeah, something like that. This is going to take a while to go through. So Microsoft has been on the line for trying to buy it. And we said that's a terrible idea for Microsoft. Don't do it. But now, now Larry Ellison has thrown his dick in the ring.

And of course, that just means he showed up because he is a giant dick. So Oracle might be buying TikTok now. Well, there's a company completely positioned to run a social media endeavor. Exactly. Christ.

Okay. Yeah. Well, because it turns out him and his buddies actually own some TikTok already. All right. Or some stock in their invested. Yeah. They're invested in ByteDance. So it's like them, General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital, and basically all of those buddies that hang out in Silicon Valley.

They're like, hey, guys, let's get together and just buy the damn thing. All right. Which would be fine. Let them do it. I prefer it just be shut down. But that's just me. Well, yeah. You're on it. You're the one of us on it. No, I'm not. I deleted it. Oh, okay. I deleted it a while ago.

After I saw the full list of everything that they were stealing, I'm like, yeah, you know what? Fool me once. Fool me twice. I'm done. I'm done. I got rid of it. All right. Just because. But, yeah, it'll be interesting because, I mean, I still go back to the fact that, yeah, you know, China doesn't let a bunch of our major companies work there.

Like, oh, I don't know, Google, Facebook, Twitter. So, hey, maybe turnabout's fair play. I 100% agree with that.

Media Candy. So we've had episode two of Star Trek Lower Decks out now. Old school model. You kids don't understand the drip, drip, drip of episodes. Did you watch episode two, Jason? Of course I did. It's amazing.

It's so good. I 100% enjoy Star Trek Lower Decks more than Star Trek Discovery, more than any of the J.J. Abrams films that have come out. This is by far my favorite Star Trek property in years. Even Picard? Picard's, they're neck and neck right now.

Okay. Yeah. No, it's pretty good. It's just really tongue-in-cheek and I love it. I love it. It's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah. I just wish it was longer. Me too. I want this to never end. Keep it up. This is, I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

And speaking of old stuff, one of my favorite old bands, the side guy, has been going through all the old digital audio tapes, the Dats, and finding a whole bunch of remixes and things that were never released. So, Curve is one of my favorite bands of all time. You can check them out on Bandcamp and he is just dropping bootleg, what he's calling the bootleg series for every album, remixes and different tracks and things that never saw the light of day.

It's absolutely amazing. Good stuff. So, link in the show notes if you want to check that out. If you're not familiar with Curve at all, go and listen to them on Spotify. One of the, so far ahead of their time, one of the best bands and least appreciated bands of all time, in my opinion.

And I ordered something the other day because I was getting tired of tying a bandana around my face every time I went for a bike ride. I got the Star Wars Unisex Neck Warmer Face Mask Bandana Outdoor Soft Microfiber Headwear, which is commonly called, what are they called, a gaiter at this point.

Super comfortable and amazing for bike rides. And just in time for all the news to break that they are even worse than wearing nothing. Exactly. I was going to say, you really can be Darth Vader when you wear these things. They look really cool, but yeah, it's better to, you know, raw dog it than it is to wear one of these things.

Well, it's a little bit up in the air. That kind of, the story broke because the Washington Post or Wall Street Journal, I can't remember which, one of the W newspapers, broke a science study that had basically found that the fiber broke the droplets up into smaller particles and actually created a cloud of disgusting whatever.

But then the scientists who actually published that article said, hold on a second, everybody, what we were actually doing was publishing a study about the methodology of actually doing a study to study these things. You should not take any of our results at face value because we were actually just creating a methodology here.

Now somebody actually has to go and do a study. So it's kind of up in the air still. And, you know, media is just running with it because COVID times and media. So the scientists themselves have said, no, hold on a second. And but nobody's running with that bit of the story.

I was going to say, can you put a link in the show notes to that one? Because I need to pass that around to everybody that sent me all the gator stories. Yes, I will go ahead and track that down and put that in there because, yeah, basically they're just saying this could be true. We're not really sure yet. More study is needed.

So let's not go crazy here. But, of course, everybody went crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I got so many of those because, yeah, just because. And I got to say, they're frigging comfortable as hell. And I'm going to be really sad if I can't wear this. And some of it comes down to the material. Like it has to be fleece and gators are made from numerous materials.

So, again, like we're like right back to the beginning when when we didn't know shit five months ago and one thing comes out and everybody freaks out. So I will find that and pop that in there. But speaking of that, I saw this. A YouTuber has invented a do it yourself gun that shoots masks on the people's faces.

Except it doesn't. This was a fun video. Well, yeah, he got it to work. Nobody else could make it work. Yes, he got it to work in insanely controlled circumstances. But it's very funny. So, yeah, this is a YouTuber. Alan Pan decided to create a mask launcher that attempts to shoot masks on the people's faces using a brake line, a solenoid valve, an 800 PSI CO2 canister.

A spray paint pistol grip and projectiles with magnets attached to a pneumatic launcher. He made a mask gun and it basically shoots a mask and cords wrap around somebody's head and boom, you've got a mask. We need this, by the way. Yeah, I went to I was down visiting my mom over the weekend as I do.

And I had to run to Target to go get something. So, you know, mask up and everything. And they have signs saying you have to come in. You have to be wearing a mask to come into the store. They have the sounds playing. You know, the announcements are playing in Target as you're walking around. You need to wear a mask.

If you do not feel like wearing a mask, you have options. You can order online and you can pick up outside. We will bring your things to you if you don't want to wear a mask. Some guy walking around the store complaining loudly about the mask the whole time takes the mask off repeatedly throughout the store as he's shopping, puts it back on when he goes to checkout, but has it pulled under his nose.

He's still complaining about it, saying how he can't breathe and blah, blah, blah. And I just said to the guy, I'm like, look, you're not you might as well not bother. You took it off and all the whole time you were walking around the store. You have it under your nose right now. You're not wearing a mask.

So shut the fuck up. Nice. How'd that work? He got really, really angry and then they asked him to leave. Okay. You didn't get a round of applause or anything? No. No. Nobody cares anymore, really. I can't believe you didn't call him Karen.

If it would have been a woman, I would have. No, it's even more degrading when it's a dude. It's true. Well, he was being a Karen. I was just angry and I wanted to get out. True. Let's move it along, people. All right. Speaking of moving it along, I always have to put in these Verizon pieces because you're still Mr. Verizon.

And Verizon is now including full Disney plus Hulu and ESPN plus bundles with some unlimited plans. Unlimited plans also meaning limit apps. Yes. So, yeah, the articles in the show notes, you can check if your bundle matches or if you want to upgrade some more.

You can get the do more plan or the get more plan. It's like, how about you just give me the plan? They're like fucking Cylons. We had a plan. No shit. Like, OK, I have an unlimited Verizon plan, but I have no idea if I get this or not.

And I'm not going to be able to figure it out unless I actually call. And then if I do, like, how does this work? Because I already have Disney plus. So do I get a discount or do I get do I get refunded for my existing Disney plus?

All this shit is so fucking crazy. Like, I don't even know how any of this works anymore. Well, it's crazy on purpose. Yes. Well, yeah, of course. You always remember that. Yeah. Yes. Yes. What is it? If you can't wow them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.

Oh, man. And AMC is reopening its theaters next week with 15 cent tickets. Yep. 15 cents to die. There you go. Some will be more. They're doing some $5 tickets if you want to go see Inception, Black Panther, Back to the Future, The Empire Strikes Back, et cetera.

It's so they're launching with old movies. Yes. That you watch at home on your couch already. And it says AMC added that it expects to open two thirds of its more than 600 theaters by the time Christopher Nolan's thriller Tenant hits theaters on September 3rd.

Well, this movie has been pushed how many times? At this point, I think AMC is opening the theaters just so they can get Tenant in it so the studio can make some money and they can get it up on the Oscar bill. I bet the studios are just saying, just get the damn things open so you can shut them down in a week.

I think we only need seven days. Get them in there. Let's go. Tenant has been pushed for so long that there are billboards in the Santa Monica slash Venice area that look like it looks like post-apocalyptic thing because they've started to tatter and tear and they're weather beaten. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Like, it's insane. So, you know, we're holding out for Tenant and we're holding out for the new Minions movie. Those are the two movies that refuse to release at home during this time. And, yeah, we're all going to pay 15 cents now. How's that going to work?

Yeah, seriously. I just want Bill and Ted. Give me Bill and Ted. It's coming. I know. It's soon. And I was listening to the In Machines We Trust podcast from MIT. And it's a decent podcast. It's interesting enough. Well worth a listen.

But it is sponsored by what I found. I mean, I cracked up the first time I heard it. And they have the full sponsorship run of all the shows. Yeah. By our friends at Deloitte. Oh, the company that can't build a website that works? Exactly. So, they're advertising their, quote unquote, trusty or trustworthy AI framework.

You've got to be shitting me. I'm not. You've got to listen to the ad. I mean, just go download the podcast just so you can listen to the ad. I was cracking up. The only thing better than it being on an In Machines We Trust by MIT podcast would be them running that ad on our podcast. I know.

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At the library? You and I have both discussed our problems with reading in this current landscape.

It is difficult. We've managed to work our way through some books, but it's hard. So, I had to go through an old, trustworthy author, Douglas E. Richards, who basically writes shit or sci-fi. Okay. I was wondering if this was shit or sci-fi just from the cover art.

Oh, 100%. It looked like it. This is, you know, the old, basic, you know, the middle-aged professor who happens to be Indiana Jones-esque and meets the, you know, 25 to 30-year-old gorgeous woman who's incredibly smart and sexy and shenanigans ensue.

And that's exactly what this is. And it's, you know, it does the job. It's the first book that I've read in, like, two days since COVID started. Just burned through it. There's a sequel. I'm working on the sequel right now. This one's called The Enigma Cube.

Alien Artifact Book 1. And it is exactly what it says on the tin. It's a cube. It's an alien artifact. And this is book 1. It's book 1. It's near future, time travel, you get Nazis. It's popcorn, man.

I was just like, shovel it in. This is great. Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom. I won't remember a thing about this story in two weeks, but it's awesome. All right. All right. I finished The End of October by Lawrence Wright. Yeah. Oh, God.

So this book was released on April 28th of this year. I mean, we kind of locked down mid-March, right? Yeah. I don't know how fast this guy can write or if he had this whole thing in the can beforehand. But it is spot on.

It is, you know, you basically could be reading the news. Yeah, I don't want that in a book right now. That's what I'm saying. It was really not the best thing to read right now. Yeah. I'm not watching Outbreak. I don't want to reread The Stand. I'm not into 12 Monkeys right now.

Oh, 12 Monkeys is awesome. You can still watch that just for Brad Pitt. Anyway, so the thing about this book is, you know, he got the beginning so right that I just hope he doesn't get the ending right, too. It is definitely a dystopian, not happy ending kind of book.

All right. So it was good. You know, I think I gave it four or five stars on Goodreads. Oh, you went back to Goodreads, huh? Well, I've got it hooked up now. So I'm like, oh, I'll just because you can just set it in the Audible account. It's like, oh, pop it over to Goodreads. Sure. Done. In Audible books, I'm usually pretty good about rating right away because as soon as you finish it, it just pops up the dialogue and says, here, you want to rate it?

I'm like, sure. Bing, bang, boom. So, yeah, it's not the best book to read right now. I should go back to Discworld. I really think I want to go back to Discworld. Yeah, I was just, you put the synopsis in our show notes and I was like, nope, not going to read this.

Exactly. Exactly. But I do have to say, LeVar Burton Reads is back for season seven. So I listened to the first one and a half this morning. Great as always. Great as always. And the first story is awesome. It's really fun. I mean, it's about ride sharing and demons and fighting and stuff.

Oh, my. It's really good. It's really good. I mean, like, I want to, because he always does the short stories, but I'm like, I want a novel of this one. It was perfect. So, highly recommend LeVar Burton Reads. I'm so glad that one's back. Feedback loop.

Over at Patreon, we've got new subscribers, Robert, Steve, GK, and James. And over at PayPal, we've got Raj, Natalie, Michelle, Nicholas, Linda, Michael, Nathaniel, and Andrew. And Steve, who wrote in and said, hi, guys, I'm a Patreon supporter. Already. I guess he's going to double dip.

And was thinking of buying a mug, but figured you guys could use the cash. Glad to help while I still can. Hang in there. Stay grumpy. And thank you. No, I do not listen on Spotify. Seems like he's the only one that doesn't now that we've mentioned it. Yes. And Stan, Stan writes, Stan here from the Netherlands.

I've been listening for about three years now. And last week, I suddenly figured out that I'm a regular. So here's a couple of bucks. By the way, listening on Spotify, I'm that one guy. Stay grumpy. Love the show. We have so many one guys now. All right. Oh, and over on Facebook, when I post the auto links about be a Karen and come comment, he posted, instead of hitting the link to give us a review, he just commented on that link.

This is an excellent podcast that is both informative and entertaining. So thank you. Thank you, Mark. Okay. No one will see that review. No. And over at Twitter, Chris writes in, I listen on Spotify, but the only reason is because Joe Rogan is moving there and I want to keep all my podcasts in one place.

Well, tell Spotify to give us some Joe Rogan money. Yeah, seriously. We'll take 1%. Yep. And John writes, I'm the one Spotify listener. Update your list. 10. We're up to 10. Damn it. And my 6502 writes in your space fans, right?

2020 keeps kicking us in the nuts. The radar feature from golden eye contact and others was badly damaged. And this is the Arecibo radio observatory and man, it got, yeah, cable snapped and took out a huge chunk of it. The, yeah, it's, it, it's messed up.

It's messed up. And he says, since you mentioned teledildonics on the latest show, this is an article over advice. COVID-19 lockdowns have led to a huge spike in sex doll sales. So, uh, I looked at the, I looked at the link and I don't know if you can call this a huge spike because, uh, uh, over at cherry doll, but I bet she does.

Huh? Uh, yeah. Now we sell four to five a week or 20 to 25 a month. And, uh, over at which one sex doll Australia, their sales have increased about 30 to 40%. So I don't know if that's a huge spike from, you know, two different vendors, but that sell 20 to 25 a month.

You know, I'm, it was thinking like, you know, thousands of these things are rolling out there, but yeah, I agree. Yeah. I'm not so sure about that, but, uh, there you go. Uh, Travis, uh, wrote in and said, do you guys hate being right all the time?

And this is a link that a lot of people have, uh, sent our way. Oh yes. The list business model may be dead. Good. And this is written over, of course, on medium, um, and I, I just particularly liked one quote you've got, you've got a couple in here, but I took to Twitter even because I liked this quote so much.

This new model has become clearer as the fantasy fades is really the oldest of the old models that is disrupting an entrenched business by finding a means or excuse to reduce labor costs and skirt regulations, which you and I have been screaming about since day one.

Yep. And I just, I put these quotes in here just so I could have, I could, this could remind me of it. The rideshare mythological complex. I love that. I love that. I love that. I think that's our show title right there because this article, it takes about nine minutes to read.

And I tell you what, it is one of the best nine minutes I've read. I think all year. I mean, it painfully and painstakingly, uh, uh, just step-by-step, uh, lays waste to their business model. Yep. Yep. Yep. And it, you know, he did in an eight minute read when it's taken us seven and a half years for people to not listen to.

So that's great. And over at GOG.show, Jason wrote in, hi, Jason. I just want to let you know you are misinformed on the tax law based on your episode 461 comment. Selling a stock or ETF outside of an IRA will result in capital gains tax if you sell it a profit.

However, if you held the shares at least a year, you may pay a lower tax or none at all, depending on how low your AGI is. And yeah, I realized that at the time when, when you were telling me that you were selling your stocks, I was like, Hey, you're going to have to pay some taxes on that if you made any money unless they're in your retirement plan.

Okay. Yeah. No, I made 300 bucks off of it. I'm not going to sweat it. Yeah. You'll be fine. Yeah. So thanks for the heads up. I figured I'm probably wrong. That's why I don't generally give stock advice. GOG.show slash donate. Jason needs to pay a tax bill now.

Exactly. Many of them. Yay. Peter writes in. Hi guys. Thanks for hosting another drink up this past weekend. It was fun to connect with you and Dave and even share a few minutes of the soapbox time at the end. In case you were wondering, the name I was trying to think of was George Lackoff or Lickoff.

He was interviewed on marketplace a few years ago, specifically talking about the cognitive issues we have, getting our brains wrapped around, accepting that we are wrong and how we just can't do that sometimes. So this is a make me smart with Kai and Molly and the transcript is linked in the show notes. And he says, stay grumpy, deliveroo, et cetera.

Well, thank you for that. By the way, if you're not listening to marketplace and you are interested in our stock talk, just listen to that instead of us. Yeah, it's a great, great, great podcast. Well, it's not a podcast, right, Jason? It's a radio show repackaged. Exactly. It's called a rerun.

It's a rerun on the internet. And Dougite Code writes us, regarding the Fortnite, Apple, Google snafu. I imagine the main argument they will probably be raising is that there is no way to supply software to our mobile computers without going through the store. It's fine to pay the cut if you use the Apple or Android store, but it's anti-competitive to deny the ability to sideload a third-party store slash updater.

This is an argument I think holds water. If Microsoft can get in trouble over a pre-installed web browser, both Google and Apple should get in trouble for a pre-installed app store. I know with Android, you can sideload applications. However, you can't auto-install updates. So there is still lock-in, even though Fortnite did have sideloading as an option for Android at one point.

Yeah, I agree. I think that is anti-competitive. But I also understand why people do it, why companies do it now. Well, Apple, anyways. I don't know why Android does it. I mean, Apple does it for security. Yeah, Apple does it for security and the safety of the customer.

Google doesn't really do a very good job of it. So there's that. And also, remember when Microsoft got in trouble, we had a kind of a probably more functioning antitrust department in the government. So somebody actually paid attention.

So now it's like, now we have to have catfights in public just to get people to pay attention. And Ilya writes in, hey, Brian and Jason, just making sure you don't miss this one. Thanks for all you do and keep on grumping. And this is a college kids fake AI-generated blog full tens of thousands, and this is how he made it.

Yeah, this is, he did something with GPT-3, the new version from OpenAI. GPT-1, remember they said, oh, this is too dangerous to be released in the world. Yeah, now we're in version 3. And now we're at version 3 and we're trying to package it and sell it to as many people as we can.

So I just love this. Yeah, I just love this because when he was trying to figure out how to do his blog, he was trying to figure out, you know, what the strengths and weaknesses of GPT-3 are. So he picked a popular blog category that doesn't require rigorous logic, productivity and self-help.

No shit, Sherlock. That right there made me smile. Yeah, that was great. Jared writes in, the drink up was fun. Glad to get to join in again. Fun fact, though, when you all switched out the fans that were the panelists, I was not able to join back and listen to the rest of the show.

It told me that when I was removed as a panelist, I guess it removed and blocked me from joining the meeting again for some reason. And thought you might want to know. So sadly, I missed the rest of the drink up. Yeah, we figured that out from many of you. So awesome, awesome, awesome design there, Zoom.

Yeah, that's a great, great feature there. It's like, no, I wanted to remove them as a panelist, not as a viewer. So yeah, I had no idea. So very, very sorry. Yeah, there you go. Laura says, hey, guys, thanks for the drink up tonight. It was 11 o'clock here. So I just got in from stargazing with my kids.

I'm sorry. I couldn't contribute better on the panel. I wanted to speak up, but I'm waiting for an operation in my throat and could feel my voice disappearing when I spoke up. I hope to join you again sometime and actually say something instead of just swinging a lightsaber. But it was a good looking lightsaber. Send me a thought in two weeks when I'm doped down on painkillers.

And when leaving the panel, das boot, I couldn't join back in the drink up at all. I then used my work Zoom account to log in and listen in on the last 45 minutes. Is it on purpose because of the amount of viewers or I didn't catch the reasoning at all? Well, just let's skip to the end here. There was no reason at all.

It's just because Zoom sucks. Yeah, pretty much. Matt writes in, so how long until Netflix can get rebranded Netflix Plus? And this is an article from Trek Movie. CBS All Access may be rebranded as Paramount Plus. Oh, my God. You know, whatever.

So they've announced their intentions to expand CBS All Access home to the Star Trek universe on TV and relaunch the service with a new brand in early 2021, which will integrate more content from across the Viacom CBS portfolio. So they want a new name and become a what I hate this term that people are starting to use now.

Super streamer. Oh, God. Yes. So they want to be a super streamer and they're going to rebrand. And according to the report, the name at the top of that list is Paramount Plus because they think that Paramount has the most market share in terms of recognizability.

Yeah, probably, probably. They should just call it Star Trek Plus. They should just call it, you know, Star Trek Plus some other crap. That's it. Sumner Redstone died this week. I did see that, yeah. Yeah, yeah. A little part of my heart danced with joy. Yeah, not making the closing shout outs.

Not making the closing shout outs. It's pretty much like finally. Good. Finally, asshole. And Tyndall writes in, FYI for Jason, who was talking about Monkey a few shows back. In 2007, there was an opera with music by Gorillaz slash Damon Albarn and it's on Spotify.

I added this to my Spotify playlist and I am going to definitely check it out. I'm a huge fan of Gorillaz and actually really enjoy this. I did not connect the dots when you were talking about Monkey. I think you'll like it. Oh, cool. Cool. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. When I can find time to listen to music. Yeah, I know.

It's tough, isn't it? Ralph writes in, Hi, Grumps. The lady in the tube has a disturbing vulnerability. This is from MediaPost.com. Amazon Alexa skills found to leak banking history, usernames, and phone numbers. He includes an excerpt here.

Checkpoint researchers identified a gaping hole in Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant platform that could leak a variety of personal data. So now I read through most of this. The findings show that certain Amazon and Alexa subdomains were vulnerable to cross-origin resource sharing, misconfiguration, and cross-site scripting.

I remember that with flashback of the day. You'd always have to be very careful about that. And the problem, yes, this is an Amazon Alexa problem, but it's not with their own software. You have to be careful when you're coding the plugins, of course.

So that's always the issue. Wait, people have to be careful when they code? Never. I know, never. So yeah, so the problem is actually with the skills. So if you do not do your skills well and do not work your way around this known vulnerability, a lot of bad things can happen, including silently installing skills on a user's account, getting a list of installed skills, silently removing an installed skill, getting voice history, getting personal information, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So the voice history one's scary. That one's a little scary. Yeah, definitely. If you're not going in and deleting as you should be doing. Earlier this year, a similar bug was found in Google Voice as well. So it's not just an Amazon thing. Amazon does not record banking login credentials, but it does record interactions.

So they would be able to see that, but not get the actual login to your banks. So there you go. They got to fix it. Yep. Sure they will. Or not. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. Or not. Or not.

And nobody will care. Thomas writes in in a reply to number 460. I'm apparently your only Spotify listener. Ding, ding. Number 11. I'll take that honor. But really? Perhaps different in the US, but Spotify has dominated music streaming in the UK and Canada for years now. Yes, music streaming, not podcasting.

Very convenient Android slash iOS app to boot. Why wouldn't you want all music media in one place? Podcasts aren't music. Yep. Podcasts aren't music. Apple Podcasts is just another app to manage and make sure you're up to date. And I've never met anybody who uses Overcast or CastBox.

Is the US just a fractured podcast market? Am I missing out on some features or something by being stuck in my old ways? Well, podcasting in general is a fractured market because we're an open standard that anybody can build against. The problem in the early days with Spotify is they would take your episode, they would transcode it into a Spotify-friendly format, and then serve that.

Well, if you change your episode or if you have dynamically inserted ads like we do, they only run the first copy they get, and we don't get stats on the placement. They're getting better. They're getting better with this stuff. But in the old days, they sucked.

And they would sometimes run ads against your show when they were starting to do it. And it's a work in progress. It's a work in progress. They're getting better. Everybody's getting better. Stitcher's getting better. I don't know where they're going to end up now. But I mean, it's just like it is a fractured market.

Anybody can write a damn podcast app in probably a week because all it is is an RSS reader with a MP3 player in it. That's pretty much the long and the short of it. Yeah. And from what I'm seeming to understand from the feedback that we've gotten about this is it seems to me that podcast listening was just way ahead in the US.

So there were all these people were listening and addicted to podcasts here in the States well before Spotify really got into the game. And it seems to be a bit later in a lot of other places. Podcast listening is really starting to spike and catch on in popularity in the rest of the world right now.

And of course, Spotify is making the big play right now. So yeah, a lot of people are listening to Spotify, podcasts on Spotify throughout the rest of the world now. Good. I don't care. I don't care where people listen. Just listen. Now that Spotify has gotten better with actually providing the files that we want them to provide, it's a game changer for us.

So we need that feedback and we need that introspection into who's downloading because if it gets really big on Spotify and they're just sucking it down and spitting it back out and we can't see it, then that kills our advertising numbers and then advertisers don't re-up and then we don't get any money and then we have to shut the show down and start working at Starbucks.

So that, you know, that's the fear of Spotify or Spotify could just show up with a big fucking bag of money and say, here guys. Yeah. That ain't gonna happen though. I'll be waiting. Jake writes in, I thought you guys might be interested in my experience with Amazon after I accidentally disputed a leak, a legit purchase after a slew of illegitimate purchases were made on my credit card.

They immediately locked down my online account. I wasn't able to log in at all until responding to an email they sent me with a request for credit card and order information. After a few hours, they unlocked my account and I could finally log in. Then I found that all my devices were disassociated with my account. I had to log back into all of my Alexas, my Roku and my phones.

I couldn't even listen to audible books that I had downloaded on my device. I think I've gotten everything started back up, but it showed me a vengeful side of Amazon that I'd never experienced or expected before. So friendly word of advice to everyone. Don't dispute an Amazon charge unless they're really sure. I'm pretty sure I was a few hours from having my kneecaps busted.

Jake, I got a Jake from State Farm. Sorry, has anybody seen that commercial recently? Of course. Jake from State Farm, I've got to disagree with you. That is exactly what I want to have happen. Yeah, I wrote back to Jake. Yeah, I wrote back to Jake on this one. And we agree on this, you and I, Brian, that yeah, if somebody's into my account, I want you to lock it down as fast as possible.

I want the big red button hit. I want the klaxons to go off and I want all hands on deck. I want to have to re-log back into all my devices. I want everything that they did to happen. So they did exactly what I want them to. Yeah, the other thing I would want, though, are password changes. I would disable the password and have to reset up a new password for everything because, you know, you never know how they got in and how they did it.

So, yeah. Mike writes, and another reason to hate Facebook, Facebook abandons broken drilling equipment under Oregon Coast Seafloor. And you thought Facebook was just a social media company. Yeah, no, no, no. They're laying some pipe, baby.

They're laying some pipe. Oh, my God. And they hit a rock. The drill bit became lodged. The drill pipe snapped 50 feet below the seafloor. They were able to recover some of the equipment, but it was not cost effective to clean it all up. So they... Brian, but it wasn't a rock. It was a rock.

Lobster! Had to. I could never, ever hear that song again and be completely happy. No offense to my friend Greg, who plays guitar for the B-52s these days, but I never want to hear that song again. Yeah.

So that's that. I mean, that's basically it. They're going to go back in. They're going to start to redrill. Under Edge Cable Holdings, a Facebook subsidiary responsible for the project, they notified the county of the accident on May 5th, but did not explicitly mention the equipment that they abandoned. That information didn't emerge until a meeting with state officials on June 17th, two months after the malfunction, and way too late to actually find and get that equipment out anymore.

So it will just be there forever. Much longer than Facebook will be. Yeah, I don't know about that. But yeah, I mean, they said they did environmental... Yeah, they did an environmental impact study that it wasn't that big of a deal, apparently. Yeah, and it can stay there, and to actually get it back out would actually be more harmful than just leaving it there.

Do I buy it? It's Facebook, and maybe not. But yeah, they're laying under C Cables, so this is what's going to happen. Fun times. And Vincent writes in, Facebook staff is your heroes of the week. What the F?

Heroic Dublin Facebook staff saved suicidal man after spotting worrying messages on wife's page, and what's interesting about this is this is Facebook staff in Ireland that helped save a man in India who was posting worrying messages on his wife's page.

He had moved location in the country after an argument with his spouse, and they came across the messages just before 8 p.m., immediately contacting police in India to inform them about the post, and a five-hour operation ensued involving over 50 officers from Delhi and Mumbai who managed to track a phone number and address to get in contact with the man's wife, and apparently he was just distraught, and everything's okay, so there you go.

Yeah, I mean, see, sometimes things work out with Facebook. Sometimes, yes. Yeah, it's usually after, but yeah. Oh, and he also wrote in, do the grumpy old geeks watch anime? I'm feeling a bit of the old space cowboy action. Cowboy Bebop is actually excellent, dubbed in English.

Stay hentai. I do not watch anime, personally, but I think Jason does, yeah. I have watched Cowboy Bebop in the past, and I looked around to see if you could watch it again, because I've been thinking about that one. I thought about trying that again. It's only 26 episodes, and Hulu has it both dubbed and subbed, so you can watch either one.

For that one, dubbed is fine, you know. For live action stuff, I always prefer subtitles, but for anime, screw it. It's good enough. Another one I was thinking about going back and watching again is called Serial Experiments Lane, and I put a link to the complete series over at Apple if you don't want to go to Sweden.

It's like 30 bucks, four-part DVDs. I still have the original DVDs somewhere in Chicago. Great little bit of, you know, future AI, sci-fi, you know. It's anime. That's it. It's just, it's good anime.

I enjoy that one. But yeah, for the most part, I haven't watched anime in over a decade, at least. All right. There you go. Henry writes in, been freeloading for the past two years, going to college in Singapore from LA, and doing tons of tutoring for Chinese kids via WeChat. Hopefully, I don't get affected by the ban, and that makes me bank.

Would love to hear some advice on the show for how grumpy young geeks can make a difference on tech slash society in general. Keep grumping. Signed, Henry, Augusto, Dominguez, Letelier, Perez, Barreto, Carson. Letelier Steinberg, which is my full legal name.

Thanks, Mom, for drinking before you chose it. I think the best advice we can give is what some people are starting to do. Don't work for a shitty company. If you disagree with the company, quit. Put your money where your mouth is. Put your money where your mouth is. Find a good company to work for.

Work grassroots in your local community. And learn Python and teach it to as many people as you can. And because as we've seen in the news and everywhere else, Python is the language du jour. And Doe writes in, Doe, yo, so millennial here. Logan Paul is not one of ours, but going through a lot of the same as Brian.

I've got a five-year-old and was a computer programmer, dragged into a cybersecurity career. I don't usually send feedback to podcasts, but you have helped me get through a lot in the last five years. And I've followed Jason from the Art of Charm days and wish I could afford to support you. I am one of the handful on Spotify. Ding, ding, ding, ding, overcast shit the bed enough by the third time I killed it.

I thought I'd share that your local library as a service Tronald dump hasn't attempted to sack yet. Give him time. Give him time. If you plug your library card into Libby by Overdrive, you can actually isolate the audiobooks that your regional consortium offers. Stay safe and grumpy, my friends. And he has a link to Overdrive.

We've talked about that in the past. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I need to go get a library card, but library's not open. John writes in, just in case you haven't seen this about CBD, one dose of CBD increases blood flow to the brain. This is over at iflscience.com and says it can pretty much enhance your memory.

I mean, I know the other side effects of it. May. Everything in this article is may and may and possibly and possibly. Yeah. So we don't know yet, but promising. We'll see. I love CBD and I take it for a variety of ailments, but I have not noticed in the past year since I've been taking it any, any upswing in my memory.

I was going to say you've been able to pull out a lot of information about previous episodes and things we've talked about in the past, but that's only because you're going through all of them right now. Yeah. I'm scanning the transcripts and looking at the show notes for all of them. So I can tell you the date that I got my iPhone 5S.

You wrote me last night about that. I'm like, Jesus Christ, we've been doing this a long time. I know. I know. All right. Dave writes in, hey, Grumps, greetings from Northern Canada. I love your show. It's been a nice, sane reprieve during crazy COVID times. I listen while doing chores around the house with my two kids.

Side note, Brian is right. Kids in a pandemic are hard and Jason, dogs will never equal the challenge of children. I saw this funny video on YouTube about the silly next generation's narcissism and thought you would enjoy a grumpy laugh and there is a link in our show notes to a YouTube video called Narcissist and hashtag social media and it's quite clever.

Cute, cute video. Very cute. And Tjorn writes in, hey, Grumps, I keep hearing from you about the podcast and Spotify situation and I feel you're missing out on an important point. I live in Germany. What is it with the fucking German people in Spotify? And podcasts are just taking off here and the catalyst seems to be Spotify.

Many people are already using Spotify and get introduced to the concept of podcasts by them showing up between the music and playlists. In fact, two fairly big German podcasts, one on politics and news and the other science, talked about Spotify and disclosed that they get about half of their download streams, listens, whatever, through Spotify.

I'm a big fan. Keep up the good work. Tjorn. You know, wouldn't it be nice if in America, some of the biggest podcasts were about politics and news and science instead of Joe Rogan? Instead of Joe Rogan. Well, one could say that he is about politics, news and other science.

Patrick writes in, hi, Grumps. Love your show. I'm a fellow old geek working from Silicon Valley. In the previous show, you mentioned that wireless phone charging is a disaster waiting to happen. Though it is true that it burns about 50% more energy, that is still tiny. For a heavy smartphone user, the extra energy wasted in the charger adds up to five watt hours per day.

To put that in perspective, that is equivalent to 0.017% of the average household electric consumption. Two percent of the energy of a single Eero wireless access point. Running a vacuum cleaner for 20 seconds. Driving less than 100 feet in electric car.

Is this worth the convenience of plugless charging? Hell yes. Uh, no. No, it's not. Uh, is it that more convenient? We've discussed that. No, it's not. Uh, and things add up and quickly. Apple is probably going to release all of their next generation phones without even having charging ports.

So we're all going to be using these things, not the direction we should be going. Uh, I haven't heard about them not releasing with ports. That would, I mean, I know that they have this. It's going to be somewhere for the last like year that they're going to basically not do ports. And that would be a disaster because what happens when you need to update the software and the wifi craps the bed and you need to, you need diagnostics, things like that.

I don't think lightning's going away, but if they do change it, I think they're going to go to USB-C, which would be, you know, I'd be okay with that because I'm trying to get everything to USB-C now. It would make the phone bigger though, because USB-C is bigger than lightning, which that's why they're probably pushing away from that.

But, uh, I can't see them going, you know, going without a charging port period. I hope that they don't. But, uh, the point being that let's not increase something that's so wasteful. Well, yeah, and you just, let's just, you know, think about math for a second. That's one, one household with one device.

You know, my household has, you know, what, seven devices that could theoretically wirelessly charge in it with, and I'm, I'm in a household of two people. So, you know, put that across the entire spectrum of all Apple devices. And that's a, you know, it's not as bad as Bitcoin, but it's not good.

It's not good. Jack writes in, in regards to the Logan Paul comments in the last show, I'd just like to say that some of us older Gen Z's are just as appalled as you older grumps born in 1997. I've always been classified as Gen Z, but I have a house and insurance, a car payment on a nicer Jeep Wrangler, a job as the general manager for a cellular provider store.

And what I like to believe is a good head on my shoulders. Are the millennials taking refugees? Thank you for the podcast from one of the younger members of the church of grump. The rectenna are lit. Gondor calls for aid. Pretty funny. Born in 1997.

I was living in London and started Slender Fungus in 1997. Jesus Christ. Yeah. I'm old. 1997. I was working at Paramount. I'm not going to say what I was working on, but. I have an idea. Isaac Wright said, hello, just pointing you to some example audio using the program Dave and maybe one of y'all had mentioned when it comes to editing podcasts and having it read back in your voice.

It's a bit rough with only 45 minutes of voice training, but sort of concerning since things like this tend to get exponentially better with time. I link directly to the timestamp a few seconds from where he starts the snippet. And this is from Tech Meme Ride Home, Google to create a global Android powered earthquake alert system.

And I guess they use the voice training thing. Blah, blah. Yeah. This is for. It's getting good. Yeah. Descript is the one. The more you train it, the better it is. Descript is what I'm actually using for the transcript. So they're obviously spending all their time putting it into the voice work and not the transcription side of things.

Just saying. Just saying. And they raised the price on me, you fuckers. Anyway. Yes. Descript is the one that has the voiceover. And over at iTunes, Sparky writes in with a five stars podcast addict. He says, if you want a scathing, cynical, and humorous tech-centric view of the world, then this is the podcast for you.

Excellent podcast from Jason and Brian. Let's get ready to grumble. Yeah. 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 I think we have an updated link for that for reviews everywhere. So we'll have to update our script. Yes. We're going to, we're going to update the script. We're going to update the link. And also, yeah. Screw the overcast stars. We're done guys. They changed their algorithm or something. Marco screwed us.

We're at the bottom of most recommended now. It's either like, oh God, do we actually want to come back up that list? Or do we want to have everybody subscribe in Spotify? So we become a Spotify, you know, promoted podcast. So then maybe they'll give us bags of money.

I don't know. Caveat emptor. Your mileage may vary. TLDR. All those things. Later. Closing shout outs. All right. I just want to throw a shout out to friend of the show, Chris Lockhead.

He's been going through some stuff and he lost his brother-in-law last week. And terrible tragedy. Terrible tragedy. Always wear your helmets, people. Always wear your helmets. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schellmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to gog.show slash donate.

Toss us a few bucks and we'll love you forever. Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 464. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy.

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