468: Three Little Piggies

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From beauty and fashion to home, culinary and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com. Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo, discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. You know, Brian, we said last week that it was a very bad week for tech news. Turns out it was a very bad week all around. And Slate gave us an article telling us exactly what we already knew. So thank you, Slate. Yeah, it was funny. I definitely felt like I had a bit of a week and Slate put it in my face again to remind me exactly of everything horrible that happened last week.

Yes, thank you. I'm so glad we pay for that subscription. You laugh, but I still like them. Yeah, I know. I know. A quick little bit of follow up on that Amazon Halo. We just kind of did a cursory review of why we're not going to buy it last show. And I did a little bit more of a deep dive on it.

And we missed two real big things that we kind of covered, but not really. The body scans. Now, you use your phone to do a body scan. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Amazon already had that does my ass look fat camera that you could try on clothes and it would tell you if it looked good or not.

Yes. And it tanked. Yes. Nobody wanted it. Yes. So they've just revived it now. So now you just wear your underwear and send pictures to Amazon. So it'll tell you if you're fat or not. Great. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's creepy. It's not you don't want to send it to Amazon.

But I mean, you know, that that is part of fitness is taking pictures of yourself so you can see the progress as you move along. I mean, that's there was a there were programs. I think one was called like Fit for Life or something like that. And it was a book and they told you, you know, take Polaroids first and then you take Polaroids after three months.

And so how old is this book? Polaroids? That's pretty old. It was a long time ago. I can't fault them for for this so much. You know, do I want to send it to Bezos? You know, I suppose I've seen his dick.

That's true. That's true. Fair play. Fair play. But people are complaining, saying that one of the A.I. features, because what it does is it takes four pictures of you and builds a 3D model of you. And then you can with a little slider, make yourself fatter or skinnier.

And they're worried it's going to be a problem with people with, you know, body dysmorphia and things like that and anorexia. And they go, oh, I can look good if you can see all of my ribs. Well, again, I mean, I think, yeah, yeah, it's a little. That's a little bullshitty.

I don't think one can go after Amazon for that. It's it's a right. Where where's the outrage at Adobe Photoshop? Seriously. The voice analysis thing, though. Why? I don't get it. They say that they're you know, they do all of it on the phone.

They don't send anything to Amazon. But yeah, you know, OK, so my skivvies go up, but my voice doesn't. I've already sent you pictures of me in my underwear. Exactly. Come on, man. Yeah. Yeah. Again, you've already gotten a second base. Come on, let's just if we're going to skip the talk dirty to me part.

What's the point? You know, I mean, the bottom the bottom line is it's it's creepy for all the reasons that we said it was creepy the first time around. And this article is really nitpicking on things that it's just kind of like, yeah. So, I mean, look, if you if you buy into this, then these things are a given.

People who want to do it are going to do it. And people who are uncomfortable with it obviously won't. And we'll use some other program or, you know, do what all of us are doing in quarantine and just eating fucking pizza and drinking beer and not giving a shit. I'm going to need longer arms with all the shit that you got to wear nowadays.

It's getting it's getting kind of crazy, isn't it? Yeah. I think somebody on our on our discord channel said something along the lines of just give me give me one wristband to rule them all so I don't have to carry a whole bunch of shit anymore. I know. You know who I feel like nowadays? I feel like the the street guy in Starsky and Hutch who would like pull up his sleeve and he had just an arm full of fake Rolexes to give you to sell you.

You want a Fitbit? You want a halo? You want a Garmin? You want an Apple? What do you want? What do you want? We got everything here today. And we've talked in the past about Amazon and their problem with counterfeit products. Yes. I found this really cool story over at Reddit of all places on the you should know channel, which is actually turns out to be pretty cool.

I started scanning through there's some good stuff in there. There's also some bullshit in there, but it's Reddit. What do you expect? Take the good with the bad. So this is a problem with co-mingling of inventory and it breaks it down on what it is. And I did not really know how they do this kind of thing.

So they basically if you're selling Crest toothpaste and it's all the same skew, no matter who you are, they throw it in the same bin. So and they don't track who like where it comes from. There's no end and they're not using the blockchain, obviously. To tell where these things are coming from.

So, you know, you could order something from Amazon, but it could have been a third party seller that just threw in a counterfeit that looks exactly like it. But when you take it out, it's the counterfeit, but they can't trace it. All they can do is give you a refund. Right. Now, Brian, I don't know if you remember this, but I remember in the 70s or 80s, the big Tylenol scare where people were dying because somebody put cyanide in the the Tylenol bottles and put them on the shelf.

Well, seems like this is, you know, primed for something nefarious like that to happen again. That was I didn't even think about that one. Perfect. But yeah, I mean, you can't get a refund if you're dead. Yeah.

I mean, it's surprising slash not surprising that this is happening, you know, and that sucks on so many levels for sucks for the consumer to not know where exactly and who exactly your product is coming from. It sucks for the resellers for for the people, you know, that are setting up shop and putting things on Amazon and have products that maybe, you know, they meticulously cared for.

And then it just goes into a big bin along with products from other people. And God knows where those came from. And and you don't know what you're getting and who you're getting it from. Seems to me that Amazon has built a platform that would take care of such things, but apparently they just can't be bothered. Nope, they sure can't.

Well, Brian, last week we also wanted something new, something shiny and new. Well, guess what? We've got what's dot new. OK, this is this is the kookiest thing I've seen Google do in a while. So it's a new TLD top level domain for dot new.

And what it does is it maps the domain onto different applications. So you can do like document dot new and it will open up a new Google doc for you. There's also there's a whole ton of things on there. People have been signing up for their dot new and staking their claim.

But like, you know, I looked through the list. I don't know if you did, but there's almost nothing on there that I would ever use. Yeah, same. I did scan through it and I'm like, OK, it's cute and clever, but no thanks. Yeah, seriously. No, thanks. Not all the new things are great.

Yeah. And speaking of new things, I got a bit of follow up about that pie hole set up that I was going to do using the Raspberry Pi to do, you know, basic top level advertising blocking. One thing I forgot about when I ordered it and decided to do everything was let my wife know.

So it showed up and my wife said, whoa, hey, what's that? What are you working on? That looks pretty cool. And I explained what it was going to do. And she said, you're going to block all advertising. And I said, yeah, isn't that cool?

And she said, no, I like my ads. What? I find stuff all the time, particularly in Instagram. She loves Instagram ads and she finds things that, you know, she likes and she gets a lot of ads now for kids stuff because targeted advertising.

And and occasionally she says, I really enjoy seeing them. And I often find things that I like and that we end up buying and using here. So I went, oh, well, shit. Well, can't you set up like a pass through list? Because I'm also imagining that even with an ad blocker at the network level, it can't block Instagram ads because it's baked into the app in the feed.

Yeah, I don't know how that works. I've got to figure that out. So so it's not so much of a simple install anymore. Now I'm going to see if I can, like, you know, make sure that her phone will pass through and check certain things. So it's gotten a little bit more complicated than I had intended. Yeah. Yeah.

I can't believe you married a woman who likes ads. How strange. I know. Crazy me. In the news. So we've been talking about how commercial real estate is in trouble and how tech companies are in general basically saying you don't have to come back to work for quite some time.

Some tech companies are saying like Twitter, you don't have to come back into the office ever. However, what they've been telling their employees to do and what their financial department and real estate departments are actually doing are two different things. Large companies may be shrinking their office footprints, but big tech firms like Google, Facebook and Amazon are doing the exact opposite.

They are snapping up office buildings and office space left, right and center like there's no tomorrow. So what we're basically gleaning from this is sure, flexible working arrangements for tech companies may continue, but the importance of offices for both recruiting and collaboration will still be there.

And big tech companies intend to have people back in their offices and their new large shiny offices at some point. So we've got Facebook has leased over 730,000 square feet in Manhattan's west side. Amazon has purchased the Lord and Taylor building on Fifth Avenue in New York City for 1.1 billion.

And, you know, just basically TikTok has gotten a new thing in Times Square, Oracle, Walmart, Microsoft are also bidding on large spaces that used to be WeWork locations. Irony. Yes. Apple is even negotiating a new 60,000 square foot area at Penn Plaza.

So this is just in New York. This is happening all over the place. Yeah. Yeah. All these companies that are that we're basically leading the charge for work from home are saying are betting big on the fact that people are going to be going back to office. Offices, which is kind of what we said was going to happen. Well, that and also since everything is going for cheaper than it normally should right now because of, you know, C-19, I think that they might just be like buying these things as an investment that they can sell off down the line because they've got, you know, more cash than God.

So it's like, oh, let's put some money into real estate while the getting's good and then we can, you know, sell them out later or, you know, maybe we can start our own WeWork. Who knows? Right. But, uh, yeah, it's, uh, yeah, I mean, right now is a good time to buy commercial real estate because, yeah, nobody's, nobody's using it right now.

Yep. So, uh, Business Insider did something a little bit interesting over the last couple of weeks. Uh, you have to disclose salary offers in visa applications, which, uh, those are then made public by the U.S. government. So they've gone in and crunched those numbers to figure out kind of a general range of salaries that companies are paying for people, particularly in the Bay Area for certain key roles.

Uh, now this data does have some limitations. It only shows what the would-be base salaries are. It does not include offers of stock options and things of that nature. Um, and particularly for Facebook, uh, people working in tech are making a decent amount of money, man.

Yeah, no, they are. I'm looking at these numbers and yeah. Yeah, we got the links in the show notes. Uh, there's, there's nothing under $100,000 here. Oh, wait, there's one. Network engineers will start at 78,000. Oh, those guys always get the short end of the straw. Those guys get the short end of the stick, yeah.

Uh, and they also did it, uh, for basically a lot of companies in the, in the Bay Area, Netflix, Google, Apple, Facebook, et cetera. Uh, and they listed some of the highest paid jobs. Again, the copy out being that these are only, uh, foreign workers. So visa applications coming through and does not include stock options, which may be the key for Apple.

Because as I went through this list, I discovered that if you, uh, if you want a high paying job in the Bay Area, you don't want to work for Apple. You want to work for Netflix. Really? Hmm. Yep. You can run through these. Netflix has some of the highest paid salaries of all the tech companies that the Business Insider analyzed in the San Francisco Bay Area.

And just my cursory run through, Apple had the lowest out of all the companies. But then again, you know, they may be padding that heavily with stock options, which if you've been following Apple stock is a very good thing. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. Yeah. Software engineer starts at 110 and goes to 280.

You know, I mean, I think my highest gig when I was working in tech was 125. Right. And that, that was like in the early 2000s. So, you know, if I'd have stuck around, maybe I'd be at the 280 mark. But yeah, by the time I left, I was lucky to make 70 because once you hit 40, man, it goes down the train.

Yeah. I would love to see that map to actual ages of people. That would be interesting. Yeah, that would definitely be interesting. And also, you know, even at $110,000 a year as a software engineer, if you're living in San Francisco, that's minimum wage. You can't get an apartment, you know?

Yeah, that's very true. So speaking of Apple news, or Apple, we have some Apple news here. Engadget put out a little short blurb about what you need to know about Apple's iPhone 12 and 12 Pro. It's confirmed it will be shipping its new smartphones later than usual this year, and it's kind of remained quiet about them.

But apparently, we're going to be getting as many as four new iPhones in one shot. Yep, yep. But what really gets me is on another one that I found over at The Next Web. They're possibly releasing two new Apple Watches, an Apple Watch 6 and another cheaper version, like an Apple Watch SE.

But I'm, you know, as far as tech goes, the only thing I get excited about now anymore really is the iPad and the Apple Watch. So I could use a new Watch 6, even though my 5 seems to be fine, but we'll see what kind of cool new features they got. You know, I'm still using an Apple Watch 3, so I'm definitely due for an upgrade.

But I'm excited about the lower cost one because, honestly, I basically just use my watch as a Fitbit. So I think if I'm going to have to look at this, and I think I would buy the lower cost one that just basically tracks my fitness. Because that's really time, notifications if I get a text, and the Fitbit aspect of it.

That's all I use my watch for. Yeah, that's kind of what I use mine for, too. Lots of timers, though. I use it for timers and, yeah, exercise and notifications. I think you might be fine with the lower price one, too, then, to be honest. You know what it comes down to?

It comes down to size and battery life. That's the thing about the 5. The 5 is lighter and skinnier and smaller, like, you know, just height-wise, but it's got a bigger screen. I like the bigger screen on the 5. Because we're old. Exactly, exactly. So, you know, I'll probably, if it has some cool new features, I'll go with the 6.

Because this has the AFib tracking and things like that. Now that I'm riding a bike again, I'd kind of like to know that. Because this is, yeah, yeah. My resting heart rate's still around 90. So I'm trying to work on some fitness action. But I don't want to stroke out while I'm out for my ride.

So, I don't know. I'm looking forward to the 6, personally. I'll spend the extra cash on it. I like this thing so much, it's worth it for me to, you know, go a little higher end on that one. Right. You know, the funny thing about these watches, though, is because, I mean, they're not crazy expensive. But the fact that you have to basically buy a new one every couple of years, you're going to be spending as much on your Apple watch as you are.

You could have bought a Rolex at some point. Yeah, yeah. Definitely. But, you know, my Rolex isn't going to tell me when my tea's ready. True. Probably will. But, you know, in 17 different countries, your tea is now ready in Botswana, sir. In more Apple news, Apple has mistakenly approved a widely used malware through the through the App Store.

Whoops. They notarized this app that got out and a couple security researchers found it. Now, the thing about it is it's it's hidden in a flash installer, like a fake flash installer. Wait, isn't that supposed to be completely dead at this point? You'd think you'd think who the hell would be trying to install flash at this point?

You know what? I got a director installed. You can put a shockwave install. Come on. I loved shockwave. I know. It was fun. It was fun. But along with the the kerfuffle there with the the malware in the App Store, Apple has now confirmed that they have some new store policies for developers.

So if you're in the doghouse with Apple and you're going through, you know, the appeals process to figure out like, you know, you screwed up and you put something in your app that they didn't like. And God knows what it could be, because they seem to be changing it all the time now. You can still push bug fixes out while you're while you're still in in Apple jail, which is good.

You know, if there's if there's a bug, you want to get it out the door. You know, this comes back to, I believe, the WordPress issue, because WordPress couldn't even push any of its bug fixes because they were in, you know, app store jail. And it's just it's funny timing that they're going to say, oh, well, you can do that now.

OK, there's a lot of things that are funny timing with Apple right now, because now they have an appeals process. So you can actually come back to them and appeal a decision to not have your app in the store. But you can also suggest to them changes to their terms and use in their guidelines for Apple.

I wonder why they're rolling all these sorts of things out. Could it be because they're about to be in a massive lawsuit about the app store across the world? Everybody's coming after him about this app store right now. So, you know, I heard something the other day that made me actually kind of say that that 30 percent actually isn't too bad when you think about it, because think about when you used to have software and you have to sell it in big box stores.

You had to actually, you know, make the boxes, make the disks, put it on the floppies, shrink wrap it, put it on a truck, get it to a store and you had to sell it at wholesale. So you were still were only getting half of what it was on the on the shelf for. So, you know, 30 percent when you look at it through the lens of what it used to cost to sell software isn't actually that bad.

Right. I mean, you know, that argument can be made. I certainly think Apple deserves its cut and its share and they should get that 20 percent. You know what I'm saying? I know. But how much Apple stock do you have? You might want you might want them to stick to the 30 percent.

You know, self-preservation is a thing. So, yes, it is. Yeah. And Amazon has finally gotten permission from the FAA to start their drone operations. So, yeah, you know, basically Alphabet and UPS already have this this designation.

So they're kind of late to the game. So Prime Air is hopefully going to be rolling out soon. I know you hopefully is it's a loaded term because it's like, yeah, it would be kind of nice to get stuff fast. But then again, do I want a sky filled with drones? The noise pollution alone is going to be outrageous.

Yeah, it's especially in L.A., too, with all the helicopters and all the small planes and everything. And yeah. Oh, and I don't know if you saw this one this morning. My roommate actually stopped it and made me watch it. There was a big thing yesterday or actually it was on Sunday at L.A.

X a couple of planes coming in said at 3000 feet, like 900 yards from the end of the runway at L.A. X was a guy in a jet pack, a guy in a jet pack. At 3000 feet. I'll put it in the show notes. But yeah, it was confirmed by multiple, multiple pilots that were coming in for a landing.

Well, look, you know what? Since I was a kid, I was promised a jet pack. So whatever gets us there. Yeah. So, yeah, we don't know who this guy was, where he was from. But yeah, it's apparently somebody's hanging out by L.A.

X in a jet pack or, you know, or somebody made a drone and wrapped it up in a guy and flew it up, you know, because I don't know if you ever saw the Halloween drone where they put the big spooky guy like a like a wraith flying on the drone.

That thing was pretty cool. So you could technically do this with just an off the shelf drone. Right. Well, soon you'll be able to theoretically control those drones with your mind. Or, well, at least a pig's mind. We'll see what happens. Many people have called me a pig.

So we'll see. Maybe it was Elon Musk over at LAX wearing a jet pack, trying something new. Maybe not. But he was over at Neuralink the other day showing off his new revolutionary brain machine interface. Yes. He announced it last year. And here is version two.

They've put these things into a couple pigs here. It's important that Neuralink solves this problem sooner rather than later, because the point at which we have digital super intelligence, that's when we pass the singularity and things become just very uncertain. Musk told Inverse back in 2019.

So he's been working on it. Probably not seeing the irony that he would actually be creating the singularity if this sort of stuff works. I don't know. So, yeah, he's got a machine that puts a ton of electrodes into your brain. Right now, they don't go that deep, but they're hoping to get it in deeper because, you know, we know what the brain does already because it's all mapped.

Right, Elon? We sure do. Can you point me to the soul? Spoiler alert, we don't. Yeah. So, yes, basically, it just sticks a bunch of chips in you and collects the signals that the electrodes pick up. This link will measure the patient's temperature, pressure, and movement, potentially providing early warnings about imminent heart attacks or stroke.

You know what else does that right now? Our watches. That's true. We don't need to stick these things into our brains to do it. Yep. Anyways, I guess it's good that somebody's moving forward on cutting-edge science, quite literally. But during the live demonstration, he introduced the crowd to a trio of pigs, Joyce, Gertrude, and Dorothy.

Joyce had not had the implementation surgery and appeared to be a perfectly happy and healthy pig. Dorothy had the surgery, but then they removed it to show that it doesn't have to be permanent. No word on whether the pig kept twitching. Yeah. And Gertrude had the surgery and still had the link installed in her head.

Her link monitor signals generated from her snout, so whenever Gertrude smells something tasty, the link picked up and recorded those signals. There you go. All right. Three little pigs. Great. Except the problem here is that most of the science that he's running through is at least 10 years old, and most neuroscientists were unimpressed.

They're like, welcome to the party, Elon. You're a little late. Well, like I said, everything that this thing could do right now could be done with our watch. Yeah. The technology that he's saying is groundbreaking apparently is not. People have been doing this for quite some time. And I do remember seeing brain implants for blind people and other things.

You know, go back to old Wired's and you can see that kind of stuff. Yep. Well, once again, protesters have gone to Jeff Bezos' house and set up another fucking guillotine. They're pissed off and they want Amazon to raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour.

Well, you know, I get the guillotine reference, but, you know, they might just want to build a giant cake outside because I think they're going to get a little bit better press, you know, with cake than with a guillotine. But, you know, I don't know. This is this seems to be a thing that happens, you know, every so often nowadays.

Jeff just walks out and he's got another guillotine. Great. But I like the fact that they had to say the guillotine was just a prop and not functional. Yeah. I'm not sure that this is a good way to make your point. I mean, I get it. I get it. But, yeah, do the cake. I like your idea better.

Yes. And when they're done, they can eat cake. Yes. Now, yeah, Zuck's been in the news this week because of the whole Kenosha, Wisconsin thing and the fact that they left a, you know, basically a post up from a militia group that was asking people to attend the protests and bring weapons.

Bring your guns. Yeah. And they, of course, they said the moderators didn't didn't violate any rules and that it was a largely an operational mistake. OK, he said the contractors, the reviewers who the initial complaints were funneled to didn't basically didn't pick this up.

And on second review, doing it more sensitively, the team that that's responsible for dangerous organizations recognized that this violated the policies and we took it down. Now, of course, this comes from a video that he posted on Facebook that was one of his Q&As with the, you know, the team, I guess, or just a, you know, talking head video.

But in the whole time, he didn't actually apologize to anybody because I guess that would probably open him up to litigation if he took too much responsibility. God forbid you take any fucking responsibility for the shit world you've created, Zuck. And just a platform, just a platform. Well, there's a link in the show notes to the video.

I recommend you go go check out the video. You don't have to watch the video. Just scroll through the comments. You talk about a bunch of grumpy old geeks. Oh, my God. There's 16,000 comments in there. I scrolled through a couple hundred of them, you know, just to see what the just to take the temperature.

And there was not one pro Zuckerberg comment in in those at all. They're like, you're destroying our world. You piece of shit. All you want's the money. Blah, blah, blah. I'm like, you guys should listen to grumpy old geeks. We should put we should start posting some ads in there.

Yeah, I think we've found our tribe. So, yeah, same things we've talked about. Yeah. They've got contractors who are probably in the Philippines and don't understand what even is happening. So they let these things slide. But what are you going to do? Well, I know what I'm going to do, Brian.

I'm going to go to the grocery store. Okay. Amazon has actually opened its first Amazon fresh grocery store about two miles from my house. All right. I watched the video and they've got they've got smart carts. So you basically go through and you put all your stuff in the cart.

It's got a scanner and a, you know, a little little display on there to tell you what you just bought. Like you didn't know. And so it scans and then you go to check out. There's no checkout process really in the in the video. So I want to go see it in person.

I have to, like, sign up to get on a list to go in because it's apparently very, you know, very select group of people right now. But unless I can say, hey, lady in the cart, bag my damn groceries, I'm not very interested in checking out myself because it seems kind of ridiculous to have a self-checkout in the cart when there's no bags.

And then you have to take it back out of the cart to put it in the bag. So, like, the current self-checkout seems to be way more efficient because you take it out and you put it in the bag. You take it out and you put it in the bag. So I don't know. I hear you. What do you think? It's a little silly. I don't quite get it either.

I mean, I like the idea of the smart cart and you just put things in your they should just have bags in the cart already. That's that's the solution, right? You just walk around the store and you pick your things up and you put them in the bag and it knows what it's got. And you just walk out of the store and go straight to your car. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure that since this is, you know, an Amazon Fresh product, they'd probably want you to bring your own bags.

But in California, you are now banned from bringing your own bags, which is hilarious. Yeah. Since, you know, for the past, what, five, six years, you have been banned from getting bags at the store. Now you have to pay for bags at the store no matter what. No, you don't actually have to. I know at my Trader Joe's, they've set up a bagging station outside of the store.

So once you've bought all your stuff, you can go to the tables that are wiped down every after in between every single person and bag your own stuff with your own bags again. Okay. Well, my Trader Joe's had like five cases of C-19, so we don't go there anymore. So I'll pass. Oh, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. We had five confirmed cases at the local one. So, yeah, we're not going there. So, but if I can get in, I'll swing through the Amazon Fresh and try and take some covert video. I might not be covert because I'm sure everybody that walks through there is taking video.

Last thing I got on the list here is Overcast News because we talk about Overcast on the show all the time. They've got a new beta that's out and it's making the rounds because in this new beta, you can click on a podcast and see what's going on. Like if they're doing any kind of location tracking or dynamic ads or things like that.

Right. And just, I wanted to address this because, you know, somebody is going to send it to us. Yes, we do dynamic ads. We use your IP address to figure out where you are, but all of our ads are set to the world, so it doesn't really matter. We don't do geotargeting on them. We just try and send you some ads if you're there.

We do very basic dynamic ad insertion, but we do it. So it's going to show up there. But as far as tracking goes, we don't track you. And, you know, every app on the planet gets your IP address. Everybody knows where you're at or who you are. And that's really it. So it's NBD.

We don't track you at all, Bill. I know where you're on Laurel Canyon right now. Bill. Bill. Quit fast forwarding the ads, Bill. Bill. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

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Media Candy. And speaking of bills, Bill and Ted 3 is out. Bill and Ted face the music. Yes. You got to check out the website. I love the website. It was very reminiscent of our old movie websites that we used to make back in the day. Kind of fun. Kind of fun. Kind of basic and retro.

I like the website a lot. It was very reminiscent. Yes. Yes. And I like the movie even more. I even teared up a little at the end. I have to watch it. I haven't gotten around to it yet. The thing is, I feel like I need to go back and watch the first two Bill and Ted's because honestly, I don't remember shit.

Except for George Carlin. Okay. You can do that if you want. I didn't. I barely, I remember a little bit of two. Station. But, you know. Okay. Yeah. I guess I don't. It's not like it's an incredibly intricate plot. No, it's not.

And it stands on its own. I mean, you know the basic premise of one and two. So, you can watch three. I haven't watched number one in, you know, probably six or seven years. But, yeah, it's worth it. I did download it from Sweden so I could put it on my Synology. But then I did buy it from Amazon.

So, they got the money. All right. I wanted to make sure they got the money for it. I just wanted my local copy, which you can't get from any of these damn streaming services anymore. Bastards. Can I, like, specify, can I send this money to Alex and not Keanu? Because he doesn't need it. Yeah. Alex needs the money more than Keanu does.

Yeah. That'd be nice to have a slider. They should have just put it on Indiegogo and had a little slider on who gets most of the money. There's a new show coming out on tomorrow, I think, or tomorrow, on Thursday, called Raised by Wolves on HBO Max. It's a max joint.

So, hopefully, I'll be able to, hopefully, they'll retrofit it to my HBO app on my Roku so I can watch it. It's called Raised by Wolves. Yeah. This is Ridley Scott, right? Yes, he is. It's executive produced by him, and he directs the first one or two and probably hands it off after that. All right.

Yeah, it looks good. I'm hoping it doesn't have any of the Prometheus stink on it. We'll see. I don't know. You never know. You never know. You never know. Yeah, it is about, you know, children being raised by robots. So, androids or whatever they call them. Replicants. Whatever the term du jour is for this, you know, this branch of it.

So, but it looks cool. It looks cool. I'll check it out. Yeah, it does. I'm definitely going to check it out. I, you know, it's nice to see. I don't know when he shot this or when he did this. Obviously, it must have been in the can pre-COVID because it looks pretty intricate. I'm excited about it. New sci-fi. Who's going to complain?

Not me. Unless it sucks. Then we'll complain. Unless it sucks. And speaking of new sci-fi, we have gotten some information about Star Trek Discovery. It will be starting the third season on CBS All Access on Thursday, October 15th, which is coming up pretty quick.

Speaking of which, it's September. Where the fuck did this year go? Oh, yeah. At home. Here. Sitting here. Here's the funny thing. You know, March 1st to July 31st was about seven years. And now August 1st, or actually maybe June 30th, that just took forever.

And then kind of once we hit summer, it has gone super fast. I don't know what the deal is, but it seems like, you know, time is not a stable entity anymore. Not anymore, no. And if you were late to the Star Trek Discovery game and haven't watched any of it yet because you didn't want to subscribe, guess what?

The first season is coming to regular CBS, and that will start on September 24th. I read the short story that you recommended, A Change of Plans by Dennis E.

Taylor. That took me about 20 minutes, but it was a wonderful 20 minutes. I wanted more. I told you. It was great. It was good. It was really good. Well worth the buck. And I read or listened to, Yes, I Can Say That When They Come for the Comedians, We're All in Trouble by Judy Gold.

I heard her on the Penn Sunday School podcast, and she was pretty good, pretty funny. So I went and grabbed the book. It's interesting. I mean, it's like kind of half, you know, about free speech and, you know, why comedians need to have carte blanche to say whatever the hell they want to say, which I totally agree with.

But the other half is basically just like kind of her story, which is pretty good. It's a pretty good book. I enjoyed it. It's fairly short. It was like on Audible. It was a five and a half hour read, I think, something like that. So in normal book speak, it's probably pretty short. But yeah, I enjoyed it.

Yeah. I mean, Judy Gold never really broke through. But she was I remember seeing some of her specials way back in the day, and she was always very funny. So I'm glad that there are books coming out saying this, because I agree with you 100 percent. Comedians should get a pass because that's what they do for a living.

And they need to be able to to walk the line and cross the line because that's part of walking the line. Yep. So and speaking of that, Jim Gaffigan, well known as the basically clean comedian, very family oriented, very nothing edgy about this guy, but also very funny.

I always enjoy his specials. The Trump supporters broke him finally. OK. He had a Twitter meltdown that was absolute gold. I mean, I loved every single second of it. So just because we were talking about comedians and walking the line, I've got the link in the show notes.

Yeah. The RNC broke him and he finally unleashed in a way that is very un Jim Gaffigan, but very, very funny. Yeah. I haven't read the Twitter thread yet. I read part of his his explanation on Facebook about why he did it. But I haven't gone back and it actually read the thread. So I will have to check that out because everybody's saying that it was pretty damn good.

It was good. And, you know, true. Well, the city of Los Angeles has threatened to turn off power and things like that in all these party houses because, you know, people are not taking anything seriously, particularly people, people that are influencers, as it were.

So in an effort to crack down on them, these potential super spreader events for COVID-19 city attorney Mike Fuhrer announced on Friday that his office has filed criminal charges against four people, two party hosts and two homeowners for mega parties that have reportedly been the source of outrage from neighbors, according to those among those charged are the let's see tick tock stars, Bryce Hall and Blake Gray, two people I've never heard of who share a rented home in the Hollywood Hills.

They've had hundreds of people attending loud music all night long cars blocking access for emergency vehicles, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, they have a combined 19 million followers on tick tock, and they basically just have been posting these huge party videos. So guess what?

They're they've been they've been fined. These idiots had parties six days apart. The LAPD officers came, said, you can't do this, posted a big sign at their house saying you were not allowed to have parties here. And then six days later, they had a second one.

So yeah, now they've cut the power to the home. Yeah, good. Yep. Good. So no Wi-Fi, no tick tock. And we'll talk about tick tock in a little bit. But yeah, yeah, these guys are just idiots. Oh, wait, they're tick tock influencers. There you go. Kind of kind of definition and in hand.

Now, in I weep for the future news, Brian, a friend of the show, Eric Hundley, sent me this one. This is an article over at New York Post. And it's called the young people don't trust anyone who uses this punctuation mark. Of course, clickbaity headline. And turns out it's just a period.

The kids these days think using a period is basically a microaggression and they can't take it anymore. Fucking snowflakes. Fucking snowflakes. What the fuck? Okay. I read through all of this and I have to ask, is it really or is this digital culture journalist, Victoria Turk, just trying to promote her book in a very savvy way?

Very well, maybe. But I'm sure she's got some people that really kind of think this is real. All right. Okay. Whatever. I get it. Texting is texting. It follows a different lexicon. And okay, whatever. I don't use periods a lot in my texting, but is it a microaggression?

Apparently. Apparently. Okay. Fucking whatever. Whatever. By the way, you know what I consider a microaggression? The title digital culture journalist. Yes. Wait, isn't that what we are?

Oh, shit. Feedback loop. Over at Patreon, we've got some new subscribers, Nicholas, Jude, Daniel, Julian, Kiter, Kiter, Kiter, I'm going with Kiter, and Hangdog. All right. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. And girls. And over at PayPal, we've got Scott, Claudia, Thomas, Pedro, Michael, Nicola, John, Judge, Matt, and Simon. And a shout out to Martin, who has been tossing us what he calls Scaramucci's every time he does a successful stock trade thingy that he's trying to explain over on our Discord.

But I still don't quite understand what he's doing. He's making money and he's giving some to us. That's all you need to understand. So thanks, Martin. I agree. One thing about our Discord thing is it's actually lowered the amount of Twitter feedback we're getting, which I think is interesting. That's kind of a bummer. But there you go.

Or maybe it just wasn't a big week on Twitter for us. Yeah. I think everybody might be taking a break from Twitter thanks to the previous week of the RNC hell. Yes. But we have no lack of feedback coming in through our website, GOG.show.

And first up is Matthias, who says, about statistics. My math teacher told me this when we got to the chapter on statistics. Lies, goddamn lies, and statistics. There. Next chapter. I totally remember that saying, but we've never used it. That's funny. That is funny. And Mark writes in, this is for Bittner's radiological musings.

Let me just do the TLDR on this one. This guy may or may not have had any experience in this kind of tradecraft, but makes the point that you could definitely have used one of these to do radiation exposure readings. Right. And we're talking about that. We're talking about the iPod story where they had the iPod that was manipulated by people from, I forget who the fuck they're from.

Anyway, go back and listen to the old episodes. You know what we're talking about. But yes. So this is second confirmation that it could have been used for that. Yeah. And Samson writes in, hi, guys. Love the show regarding episode 466. I'm so glad you mentioned Spotify not being able to download and save playlists automatically offline, as I've been saying this for years and has stopped me from switching my podcast from Apple's app to Spotify forever.

I commented on a thread on the Spotify community two years ago. The thread is four years old, with the project being still marked as not in progress. So it does not look like it's coming anytime soon. But judging by other users' comments, they are baffled that the standard feature is not here yet. Is there any particular reason why you think this feature is not available or do you think it ever will be?

By the way, I've been your one listener on Spotify a couple of times. Thanks. Yeah. So there you go. It's I don't know why it's not there. They're certainly spending enough money and putting enough investment into podcasts. So why they haven't included this feature is beyond me.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of news about Spotify and podcasts this week. Not a lot of it's really great. So but hey, it's September 1st as we record this. And that means Joe Rogan's going to be showing up on Spotify now. But he's going to be he's going to be in multiple places until December 1st when he goes full Spotify.

Right. And to to celebrate, I guess that's the term. He put out like a five and a half hour show and got really high on it, I guess. So. OK, something I won't be listening to. Ralph writes in. Hi, Grumps. What's social media worth without the underlying algorithms?

China knows the answer to that. And this is the big news that China imposes new rules which could halt the tick tock sell off because what they're going to do is they basically put on the no export list a bunch of features that are built into tick tock. Yeah. So basically saying you can buy tick tock if you want, but you don't get the code.

Yeah. No algorithms for you. And this is this is obviously done to fuck up the sale, you know, because it talks about content matching algorithms and quote unquote A.I. But, yeah, the content recommendation stuff is really the key to tick tocks, you know, secret sauce.

And as we're recording this, it's nine in the morning on Tuesday. We're expecting to hear sometime today who the buyer is going to be. So by the time this goes to air, it might be might be out in the wild already. Can't wait for my Walmart tick tock tick tocks and tick tocks. And Jason writes in.

Hi, guys, longtime listener. And I wanted to share the attached link. I thought Brian's little guy would like it. And this is what the night sky would look like if the other planets were as close as the moon. Very cool. Yeah. I showed it to the kid. He did love it. Yeah. Of course, he was pissed off that they didn't do the dwarf planets. Of course not.

No. But yeah, this is an older article. And I remember when it came out because it was it made the rounds back then. But if you haven't seen it, it's definitely worth a look. It's pretty cool. I really wish Saturn was that close, although it would probably break our planet apart. Yeah. Yeah. There's no mention of the actual effects that would actually happen, which would not be good.

No, it would be very, very bad for us. There's a reason that the solar system is set up the way it is. It works perfectly for us. Mm-hmm. And Martin writes in, I would like to give feedback on your comments in the last show that there is no exciting new technology in the pipeline. Personally, I'm a longtime flight simulator enthusiast going back to version 3.0 on our IBM 286 computer.

I had version 1.0 on floppies. Haha, suck it. The new Microsoft Flight Simulator just came out and I need to upgrade my PC. I'm super excited about the new NVIDIA 30 series of graphic cards coming out soon in the new Zen 3 processors from AMD that are in the pipeline. My new PC will be combined with the new HP Reverb G2 VR glasses.

For me, this is the first time to experience VR on a PC and I'm really looking forward to bring my flight training to the next level with this new hardware. Well, I mean, it's upgrades. Flight Simulator is an upgrade. We were talking about new. Flight Simulator, we've been doing since we were kids. Just faster processing cards.

VR has been around for ages. None of this is new. It's just better, faster, bigger, stronger, faster, more expensive. It's upgrades. It's basically upgrades. So, yeah. There you go. Demetrius writes in, Grumps, not sure if you covered this on the show, but I was digging through HBO Max's settings and discovered a don't sell my personal information section.

And of course, don't sell my personal information was unchecked by default. I immediately checked the box, but unfortunately, I've been using the service for about a month. So I'm guessing HBO has been selling my personal info for said month. Please warn your listeners to check the box. Yeah, the do not sell my personal information stuff is everywhere now because of GDPR.

Yes. Yes. And it's really annoying because it never remembers who you are now. So every time I go to a Condé Nast property, I have to click, don't sell my thing, get the page, click on it, have to put in the information, and then it sends me an email, and then it comes back, and then it does it again next time I come back to the site. Because it apparently won't follow me and remember who I am because I told it not to.

Shit. Catch 22. Ease of use or privacy. Which do you prefer? Yeah. So Mary writes in, quote of the decade from a show a couple years ago. President Obama will give his farewell speech in Chicago. I didn't agree with half the stuff he did, but I'm sure going to miss him.

So that was one of our quotes. And yes, sir, you were right. She says you were so right. I'm pretty sure that was mine because I don't remember you being, never saying anything bad about Obama. Well, yeah, you know, I kind of knew what the alternatives were. That's true.

That's true. Yeah. And Zachary writes in, just wanted to follow up on a couple of things in the latest show, episode 467. I am not really in favor of having a Google Nest Hub in a hotel room. However, if they are using the Nest Hub and not the Nest Hub Max, there is no camera on that device.

Well, I seem to remember Google and Nest getting in trouble with putting cameras on things that weren't supposed to have cameras. Yeah. It's like, but it's not attached. It's just in there. It's not attached to anything. Also, the Nest Hub Max has a switch to disable the camera.

Also, speaking of using a virtual assistant to control your TV, the Google Assistant devices work pretty damn well controlling a TV with Roku OS baked in. I had a short experience using Alexa devices and they just didn't fit my needs. As far as Google One is concerned, it is basically the overarching cloud storage that houses your Gmail, phone backups, photo app library, and Google Drive.

I know you can upload your photos to Google Drive proper, but I think it is more focused on G Suite storage. I think of it basically in the same way Microsoft is the OneDrive and email services, but both are really just part of SharePoint. I'm pretty sure if you pay for your storage with Google, you have Google One. Just for your information, not trying to be a Google apologist by any means.

Keep up the great work and stay safe out there. Thank you very much. It clears it right up. And Marcy writes in, hey, grumps, I want to upgrade to a new phone. I am going for the latest iPhone. How do I go about wiping my previous phone? Sadly, it's a Pixel 2. You've turned me. Marcy, use the Google bot like I did.

Link in the show notes. Let me Google that for you. Oh, God. And Matt B UK writes in, Jason, if you enjoy the Japanese story of Monkey, try the following. And this is a link to JapanTimes.co.jp. The 1970s Japanese TV show Monkey had a magic that has never been matched.

Well, the thing is, it's a Chinese story. The original was a Chinese folktale. So I kind of like went through this article a little bit, but I couldn't get the images to load. But at the very end, I found that Netflix actually has a new series called The New Legends of Monkey. And they've got two seasons out, and it looks pretty good.

So I subscribe to that. That link will be in the show notes. Thanks for the link. I'm going to go back and reread this. I think they do mention at the top that it was Chinese, but it sounded more like a Japanese story. So I think they're doing some cultural appropriation on Monkey. And Ryan writes in, was just listening to episode 467.

And through your discussion on speed caps on the scooters, I agree with you. I see it much in the same way that I also see some RV drivers speaking as a truck driver. Some people are fine, but there is no endorsements to be able to drive an RV. Also, if Brian hasn't figured out how the Disney Plus and ESPN Plus works, you've got to pay an additional nine-ish bucks a month to get ESPN as the three-year bundle is for Disney Plus only.

Yeah, I finally figured that out. That's so annoying. Again, these subscription things are so annoying. You know, they offer that three-year bundle, or the three-year cheap price for Disney Plus where you got the discount. So I immediately leapt in on that. And, of course, you know, it was like a month or two later that they announced the ESPN Plus thing as well.

So I didn't get it. And now I have to pay more if I want ESPN Plus. And I hate subscriptions. I hate everything. And A writes in, what happens when developing apps don't require any coding skills at all? And this is a link over from the BBC, which there are all these things out there like Bubble, which are drag-and-drop builders.

You know, it's basically the app version of WordPress or what's the Squarespace for websites and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, I mean, those things are getting better and better, aren't they? So, you know, coders, you better pay attention to us web developers because we're out of a job.

They're coming for you. Yeah, they're coming for you. So they're getting better and better. And basically, the article says they'll still be coders because coders will have to build these things that build the things. You know, that comes back to robots and self-driving cars. You're going to have to have a robot mechanic.

So you have to, robot programmers. I want to try one of these to see how good it is. Yeah, me too. I got really interested in it. Yeah, when I was reading through it, I'm like, this sounds really cool. Because they did an actual Twitter clone, and they called it Not Real Twitter. And then they gave it a cheeky tagline.

Just like Twitter, but worse. A lot worse. I don't know how that's humanly possible. And Barrett writes, and someone in Trump's campaign dropped the ball. And Biden has snagged Keep America Great, the domain. So they call it the latest act of trolling, but I think that's branding.

I think that's pretty genius. And by the way, Biden himself was not on GoDaddy snagging the Keep America Great domain. I hate that headline. The Biden campaign. Just stick campaign in there. Yeah. Seriously. Can you imagine Biden's just like trolling for domain names?

Yeah, he's sitting there texting everybody to give him money, sending tweets about giving money. And then he goes, oh, wait, let me log into GoDaddy and grab a domain. Oh, hey, it's available. Yeah. I can just see that. Yeah. And Mary writes in, I am a Texas native, grew up here and live in Texas now. Your podcast is awesome, politics and all.

I listen to the end of every podcast. After a Navy career in retirement and politics in the office, the state, the country, and even the family, abuse of power makes me want to start my own party. It's called the Responsible Adult Party. Y'all politicians grow up, damn it. I'm with you, Mary. I'm signing up. I'm with you.

Tell me where to send my money. And Damien writes in, hey, lads, greeting from Australia. I'm an AV boy way back and found this story in a US AV online magazine. It's the technical story behind the DNC convention. Incredible to say the least. And it's how the DNC was produced from a living room.

Unfortunately, I can't read it because it's behind a paywall. Yeah, I remember a couple stories came out right after it happened. And yeah, it was one guy just hanging out in his living room with about 30 monitors. Pretty incredible. Yeah. Welcome. Welcome to how this shit works now.

Yep. It's really it. And he says, PS, love your politics talk. Fuck Spotify and fuck the carrot Nazi cunt. Cheers. Andrew writes in, your ending of the last show with the Scots and Wankers rant made me stop my run and keel over laughing. No idea where that came from. Very much appreciated.

Cheers and hope you're both doing well. Yeah, that was a clip from Trainspotting, one of my favorite movies. And I just threw it in because I had it lying around. And, yeah, we're testing to see who listens. Exactly. And Vinny said, would you put your kids in an online class like this?

And he scrolls down and he says, oh, good Lord, be a YouTuber for ages 8 through 12. And this is over at Sophia X Classes for Kids. Now, I know you sent this in basically to make fun of the be a YouTuber thing, but I actually really appreciated this link. Some of these classes look absolutely great for kids, to be honest.

So I bookmarked that. Yeah. Alex writes in, best recent use of AR I've seen is Ubiquity app for their switches. And he has a link to the Ubiquity AR demo, which I don't understand anything that was going on there, but it looked kind of cool. So it's basically a networking switch.

And when you use the camera and go over it, it will show you where the cables are behind it. So you don't have to go through and figure out where your patch cables are going. Yes, because people are lazy and don't label things. Well, I mean, if you've ever worked in a data center, you know that it's – cabling is an art form.

And if you don't do it right or get lazy, it's almost impossible to track cables and trace cables. We had 550 servers at Technorati, and I remember going to the data center one day when they were – after we'd moved it, and everybody was trying to repatch everything.

And it was just like, oh, my God. Network engineers, that – you know, we talked about how little they make at the beginning of the show. They need to double their salary. Networking is hard. Yep. And Baby Rabies writes in, Star Trek Enterprise was great, but do yourselves a favor and skip the final episode.

If you're feeling masochistic, you can read about why it's so bad on the show's Wikipedia page. It wasn't the best final episode, but I can think of worse. Looking at you, BSG. Yeah, seriously. Marie writes in, writing this as I'm listening to episode 466, Star Trek Enterprise theme song wasn't really a theme song.

It was originally a song that was written for the soundtrack to Patch Adams. Berman liked it so much, he used it for Enterprise. Still not one of Diane Warren's best efforts. I get you liked Enterprise better than Voyager, but it was too much paranoia and shoot-first, ask questions maybe later for me. I've been listening to Delta Flyers podcast with Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeil doing a rewatch of the episodes.

Man, that's a thing right now, isn't it? Yeah. Like people – yeah, people that haven't really gone on to do any other work are going back and doing podcasts about their big hits. It is more than a little rough to listen to, but once they get into their memories of the episodes, it gets better. They bring on the other – I assume that's supposed to be they.

They bring on the other cast members as guests, so it kind of replaces the convention-going experience. And this is from the Wayback Machine 2017, but it bubbled up on my feed. A solid good guy use for an algorithm. And this is a link from Bloomberg about this guy that built an algorithm that tracks serial killers.

Nice, nice. And the funny thing about Enterprise is I've still only watched the first two episodes, so I really don't know if it's better than Voyager. But I like the first two episodes more than 90% of the Voyager episodes, so maybe I'll get into it again. Just really haven't had the time.

Still watching Entourage. Season 5, Episode 9. And Jake writes, and you mentioned the weight on the back of the Oculus recently. I'm a Blackhawk pilot, and we commonly wear night vision goggles at night for two to six hours or more at a time. It's a lot of weight levering off your helmet.

We wear weights on the back of our helmets to make them comfortable to wear for extended periods of time. Generally, it's around 20 to 22 ounces, and it makes a huge difference. Well, thank you for your service, Jake. And cool. I'm definitely going to give it a try. I haven't had that much time to play with it yet, though. See the previous comment about Entourage.

And over at iTunes, we have a couple ratings. The first up is from Nick's Mama 07, which is a five-star rating. Keep on keeping on. Oddly enough, I discovered you all whilst in jail, and now I'm hooked. Love your guys' realness. Well, thank you. Thank you. I didn't realize you could listen to podcasts in jail.

Apparently you can. Very cool. And Brutus Bird writes in with a five-star. Great show. I am an HVAC mechanic and work by myself, so podcasts and Audible are how I get through my day. Even though I'm not a tech person, I enjoy the show. I get great reading and media tips. Plus, it's fun. Can't wait to hear about Brian's love for scooters.

Nice. And we got a one-star rating. Josh from a blue state writes in, not really geeky. Generally, I expect factual information from a geek podcast. I've been listening religiously for the last year or so, and they seem to get more unhinged and jump to falsehoods on a regular basis now. It's actually quite disappointing.

Well, nice to know you, Josh. Catch you later. Ruby Coon writes in with a five-star. You've got to fight for your right to be grumpy. Just started listening to you guys this year, and I'm surprised it's taken me so long to find this podcast. Well, if more people found it, we'd like that, too. I love the insights and recommendations and the fact that you two, while similar in many ways, disagree on many things, too.

Thanks for all you do. Looking forward to becoming a Patreon supporter soon. Well, we're looking forward to that, too. And we have one more five-star rating. This comes from Nighthawk, calling the industry out on its crap while giving credit where credit is due. A comprehensive and critical take on the technology industry presented with much-needed grump humor, because if you can't laugh at some of the crap going on these days, you'll just go mad.

Yep. It's not all negativity, though. They definitely give credit where it's due. I just wish it was due more often. I have one request that would make this perfect for me. With COVID, my routine is shot, like many, and I end up marathoning to catch up on GOG when I can. And I would love it if someone said the day and date of recording and the intro to give context.

Keep on grumping. Thank you, Nighthawk. Just for reference, we basically put this out the next day after we record it. And I do believe there are dates on the actual listings where you get your podcast. Yeah, it should be. It should be right there. Yeah, we record this usually 24 hours before it goes out.

Or actually, like, eh, well, it's 9 in the morning. We'll go out midnight tonight. So usually it comes out the same day, that evening, when we record it. So hopefully that helps put a timestamp on it. 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 review and toss us a five-star and snarky review. Closing shout outs. Well, obviously, as part of the incredibly bad week we've had, we also lost Chadwick Boseman, who played the Black Panther, obviously.

And a bit of a milestone, the news of his death posted by his family on Twitter is the most liked post of all time now, which is kind of sad. It is sad.

What he went through is amazing. He was a great guy. Amazing guy. Very sad. Yep. And for normal people, I just want to give a shout out to my friend Tara, whom I used to dance with regularly back at Club Post Nuclear when we were all young and the world wasn't such a dumpster fire. She lost the love of her life last year.

And now she just lost her home in the Santa Cruz Mountains due to the fires there. That's a rough year. Very rough year. Very sorry, Tara. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. The show is a labor of love, but your support keeps the show going.

If you like the show, please visit gog.show slash donate to help us out. We'll love you forever. Or visit gog.shop and pick up some good old-fashioned GOG swag. If you can't do that, then please pass the show along to a friend. Word of mouth is the only way the show grows, so spread the grump far and wide.

Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 468. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, buy our swag, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy. Fula!

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