477: This is Triller, Triller Night

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. I am an itchy Jason DeFillippo. I'm a tired Brian Schulmeister. Why are you itchy? You know that whole thing with, you know, almost dying and getting drugs to fix me and all that stuff?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Well, there were side effects. That does tend to happen, doesn't it? Unless, of course, you're super Trump. I'm not super Trump. Okay. No, no, fuck that guy. Anyway, yeah, I got the—have you ever taken too much niacin, Brian, and got the niacin flush? Yes, definitely. There was a period of time where I was all in on the idea of doing stacks of vitamins and shit like that, and I would get the niacin flush all the time, and it's very uncomfortable.

Try it for fucking 72 hours over your entire body. I'm grumpy. Yeah, I had to mention you would be. I'm fucking grumpy. All right. Well, I'm sorry to hear that. I'm also grumpy. I was going to—I took a couple days in Palm Springs with our COVID family, and, you know, we were hoping to have a nice relaxing time with the adults, and the kids would get to play together and all that.

And as parents know, sometimes things don't go according to plan. The kids squabbled with each other the entire time, so the entire trip was breaking up fights, and, yeah, awesome. Yeah. Great vacation. Breeders. Fucking breeders.

Yep. Anyways, I'm fucking tired. I'm so happy to get back home. I'm sure you are. I'm sure you are. So we got a little follow-up on the Led Zeppelin story. We talked about this, like, fucking years ago now. It's been going on forever. Yeah, yeah. Well, there is a resolution now. This is about the opening rift to Stairway to Heaven.

Yep. And it turns out that the Supreme Court said, not worth our time, which it's not. I'm sorry, it's fucking not worth the Supreme Court's time. Should never get to that high up in the chain anyways. And I'm not entirely sure if not worth our time really means it's a victory.

I also saw some interesting posts by people saying, in news that should please Led Zeppelin fans. I'm like, how's that going to please any fan? It'll please the guys in the band that keep getting more and more money. The best-selling band of all time is now making sure that they get to keep all the monies. Sure, it pleases them.

I don't see how it pleases a fan. Yeah, in a ruling that upsets Led Zeppelin's lawyers because they won't get to charge for this anymore. Let's talk about that is basically it. Yes. So, you know, we went through this at the time. We listened to it. We talked about it. You could definitely hear the influence. But even I was like, eh, whatever. It's, you know, these things happen.

It does. It does. It's like, you know, okay, Led Zeppelin was opening for Spirit, right? That was the way it worked? Yeah. This was 1968. So if you're opening for a band, you go out, you do your show, you go back to the green room, you hang out, you do some blow, fuck some hookers and try not to kill them.

And then every now and again, you'll hear wafts of the songs from people that are on stage. And it will get in your psyche. And then maybe down the road, you might write something that is similar. That's the way art works. It's just a chord progression. That's it. That's all it is, really. And it got stuck in his head. And he was noodling around and something came out. I don't believe that he wholeheartedly lifted it in any way, shape or form. So this is fine. But there you go. This is a bunch of lawyers faffing about.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. I just saw it. I literally saw it on Fox News this morning. And I thought I would throw it in the notes. Excellent. Well, I'm glad we have a resolution. I'm sure it pleases all of Led Zeppelin's fans. In the news.

Brian, have you heard of Triller? Triller. Triller night. Yeah, I stayed up until midnight to watch that damn video. Oh, that was so good. Yes. Dude, I still have pictures of me in parachute pants and the damn jacket.

But we're not talking about Thriller. We're talking about Triller. Show it or ain't true. Expect that on socials this week. I will send you the photos. Yes. Me in parachute pants, a Michael Jackson jacket, and an Ozzy Osbourne hat. That's how much of a fashion nightmare I was.

Great. Okay. No, otherwise, I have not heard of this. No. But the story did make me kind of frustrated. Like I was thinking in the back of my mind, weren't we just talking about the complete lack of innovation? What passes for innovation these days is, oh, look, it's like A&R executives from the music industry descending upon Seattle in the 90s.

Oh, look, here's something that's going well. Let's make another version of it. Yeah, exactly. It's, you know, it's me too, me too, me too, me too, me too. Not the Harvey Weinstein me too. Right. Not hashtag me too. Just regular. Yeah, let's be clear here.

Yes, this is the Silicon Valley version of me too. Also known as Facebook. Yeah, exactly. Well, there's another, there's a site out there called Triller. And it turns out, Brian, statistics are bullshit.

What? Yeah, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. But you know, you know what bothers me about this is we know statistics are bullshit. Yet, you know, we should be, we should be lying about our own statistics to get better advertising rates. We should, we should. Let's figure out a way to cook our books.

Since everybody else is doing it, why can't we? Why can't we? Exactly. You know, what's it, 45,000 people listen to the show right now? Every second. 45,000 people every second of the day. That's right.

That's right. So we're just going to go with that number. Yeah. So they said they had 500% organic growth year to year from 2019 to 13 million active users. And employees have come out and said, well, that's about five times bigger than what our internal metrics are telling us, which should be pretty accurate.

Two, yeah. Two to 13. Two to 13. Hmm. So, you know, instead of doing a mea culpa and saying, okay, maybe we're obviously just trying to get a little more funding going here and all that. What do they do? Nope. They sue the analytics company. You cannot make this shit up.

Nope. You can't. Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry. Why the fuck do they have an analytics company? They're a technology, quote unquote, and I use these air quotes very, very deliberately here. They're a technology platform.

Do they not have their own fucking logs? Well, they do. But they didn't want to show anybody those. They couldn't count? Well, they're clinging towards two of their lives to the bitter end, obviously. Oh, God.

That old white whale of statistics. Yeah. There you go. Something interesting happening over at Instagram. Nothing is interesting at Instagram. I'm sorry. They've started to label state-controlled media accounts and posts. So this is part of the company parent Facebook's policies that they announced last October and has taken until now, one year later, to start doing anything about it.

To put a badge on it. To put a badge on it. It took a year to put a fucking badge on it. Yep. So there will be labels on profile pages and posts. If you tap on the label, it leads to a support page where you can find out more about the policy. And some of the publications you'll see include the Redfish in the Now and Soapbox.

So I took a look at some of the screenshots and it says, you know, Redfish is a Russian-controlled media company. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, you could, I don't know, kick them off the platform. But no, we're going to put a label on it that nobody will ever look at or read. And I will believe that they are actually doing this across the board and fairly when I see a label for Fox News.

As a state-controlled media outlet. Ah, they're not state-controlled. They're just dumb shit. I would like to see Donald Trump's Instagram account have a state-controlled media tag on it because that's exactly what it is. Because it's proven that he has been influenced by Russia. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So there you go. Putin scooting. Yeah. So we're, and they say they plan to add the labels to Instagram ads in the months to come. Months to come. Months to come. The election is one month away. Not even. Not even a month at this point. Today is October 6th as we record this.

So that, yeah, less than a month. So we've had over a year of hemming and hawing and then shouting about plans from Facebook to roll out in time for the election. And none of them are here in time. Yeah. A bunch of fucking losers. Sorry.

A bunch of fucking losers. I mean, like, you and I know how to fucking code, right? Well, I know how to code. Well, we used to. We used to. I don't know if you do anymore either, man. It's been a long time. We'd be rusty. Yeah, rusty. Rusty. Even our rusty asses can actually do better than these guys are doing.

Yeah, certainly. I mean, if nothing else, we could certainly flowchart this shit out. I don't know if we could actually code it to make it work by itself, but we could certainly provide you with a plan that would work. Yeah. Within more than or less than three months or whatever. Come on. Go take a coffee break and I'll sketch this out for you right now.

Yeah. Let's set flag to visibility actor nation state. Okay. Done. We're done. Okay. Excellent. Show icon. Show hammer and sickle. That's all you got to do. Oh, well.

It is what it is. What a dumpster fire. Speaking of dumpster fires, we can now shoot them from boats with lasers. Lasers. Frickin' lasers. We have lasers. So I saw this on IFL Science. A laser weapon capable of shooting down flying drones has been deployed for the very first time by the U.S. Navy, though only for demonstration purposes.

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Until now, many questions have lingered over whether laser-based weaponry would ever become an effective tool in modern warfare. And there's a video footage now. It works. All right. Is this some real genius-level shit? This is some real genius-level shit.

It's installed aboard the USS Portland. It's a 150-kilowatt-class technology maturation laser weapon system demonstrator, the LWSD. What? No gigawatts? No gigawatts, unfortunately. And it successfully disabled an unmanned aerial vehicle, a.k.a. a drone, on my birthday, May 16, 2020, in what was the first use of a high-energy-class solid-state laser weapon.

And they've got the video, it looks cool. Oh, no, I didn't. That was May. No, that was back in May. It's been 10 years since your birthday. Never mind. Roughly, roughly, yeah. Oh, man, what's wrong with eagles? I've certainly aged 10 years. Oh, no shit, no shit. Oh, God. What's wrong with eagles?

Why do we do lasers when we have eagles? I don't know. Eagles read Instagram and Facebook and can get caught up in the fake news and Russian-controlled media.

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Media Candy. I finished Ted Lasso. I saw on our Discord somebody posted, finished Ted Lasso, don't want to do a spoiler, but dot, dot, dot. And I just immediately posted, so don't. Exactly. I was getting ready to reach out that Discord backhand to do some smackage, some smackage downage.

Yeah, because I had not seen the final episode yet. I did watch it last night. No spoilers here either, because I think we came up with a rule about, like, it being, you have to wait at least a month before you can actually spoil something these days, because everybody's all over the place. I think three weeks is fine. Three weeks. Okay, ham and haw, cut off a week, whatever.

It has not been three weeks. But, goddamn, that is my favorite show of the year. It's pretty fucking good. Yeah. I gotta say, it's pretty fucking good. Yeah. It is. And I really enjoyed how it ended. Good stuff. No, it's a really good stuff. I can't wait for it to come back. Cannot wait.

Yeah. Cannot wait. I also watched Enola Holmes, the new Netflix two-hour movie. What did you think about this? I'm on the fence. Two-hour movie. For what it is, aimed at young adults, I thought it was fantastic. Okay. Okay. You know, me and Sherlock Holmes, I'm kind of a traditionalist, so.

It was not traditional. I know. That's why I'm very slow to even want to watch this. If you take it for what it is, think of it as Young Indiana Jones. Okay. You know what? That was actually really good, by the way.

So was this, by the way. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. The Young Indiana Jones thing was actually really good. Yeah. And I have to say, I did thoroughly enjoy this. I mean, you've got some really great cast. It is non-traditional. You're going to get upset if you want the characters to be the characters you think they're going to be.

Or Robert Downey Jr. Or Robert Downey Jr. So if you let go of that, I thought it was very enjoyable. And definitely, like, I can see the appeal to the young adult crowd. So if you've got one of those around your house, you will sit down and enjoy this with them. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Anything that gets kids to read the old Sherlock Holmes novels, I'm down with, you know?

And I was thinking about this this morning because I was actually writing back to Charlie Strauss on Twitter this morning because he was talking about politics and how he, you know, somebody wrote that, you know, as an author, should you be talking about your own personal politics?

And he wrote back, he's like, well, politics are personal. Sci-fi is personal. So it all kind of comes together. And I wrote back, it's called the Orson Scott Card conundrum. And the Orson Scott Card conundrum could be taken back even farther back to the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle conundrum because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who did pen Sherlock Holmes back in the day, was a fucking weirdo.

He believed in fairies. He was fantastically racist. Yes. And many other things. So you have to separate the art from the artist, which is the only reason I didn't feel bad singing Thriller a little bit earlier, because there's another problem. Yeah. Well, actually, there are many problems there, but here's the thing.

Half of the people are fucking dead, so we'll never know the answer. Anyway. Yeah. It is what it is. It is what it is. I like Orson Scott Card's three books. There's three books that he wrote that I like. No, there's a couple other ones that I actually enjoyed as well. I couldn't tell you anything about them offhand, but there were a few like one-offs that were pretty decent.

But yeah, I mean, here's what I liked. I liked Ender's Game. I liked Ender's Game 2. And I liked Empire. Beyond that, fuck them. I liked a couple more than that. But yeah, I mean, he's... Oh, well, put them in the notes. I would definitely like them. If you promote them, then I will read them, because I thought Empire is still one of my favorite books.

That is a good one. I'm actually going through my books, doing yet another call as I'm preparing to pack. So I will get through the Orson Scott Card section and see which ones I haven't thrown out, because I can't stand him as a person, and which ones I kept. Well, we got at the library coming up next, so save it for six minutes.

Well, I'm not going to be able to tell you in six minutes' time, so that'll have to wait for the next week's episode. Okay. I have some news about The West Wing, one of both of our favorite shows, and certainly something I turn to for comfort all the time. They're getting the band back together, standing in solidarity with the spirit behind National Voter Registration Day.

HBO Max has announced that a West Wing special to benefit when we all vote will premiere on October 15th. They're all getting back together, and they're going to do a read of one of the episodes called Hartsfield's Landing, written by, of course, Sorkin and Tommy Shlami, my favorite name to say at the end of every West Wing episode.

Tommy Shlami? Yep. All right. Yeah, I got this in my, oh, it was Entertainment Weekly, because I still have United Airpoints that they, every week, send me, like, would you like a free subscription to some magazines, and never deduct the points from my account, so I have, like, 50 magazines that come every week.

Yep. And my Entertainment Weekly had a picture of the cast, except for, you know, like, Martin. But they were like, yeah, yeah, we're going to try something. I think I really want to, like, you know, once I'm done with Hustle, I'm going to go back and watch the West Wing again one more time.

Dude, it was amazing. I think it was two years ago that my wife watched it for the first time, and I initially thought I would just sit there and read while she was watching it, and I just put the book down and watched the whole damn thing with her again. Yeah. It's so fucking good. It really is. It is the country we want, not the country we deserve.

Exactly. We've gotten what we deserved. Oh, you can't tell the fucking truth. Yep. Speaking of things that we deserve, we deserve better than what we're getting from the film industry. I got to say, it's almost like the movie industry watched the music industry crash and burned and learned absolutely nothing.

We're all at home. I'm not fucking kidding here. This is ridiculous. I know you're not. I know you're not. I'm with you 100%. You are one of the biggest movie fans out there. You will not go anywhere near a goddamn movie theater. Many people feel the exact same way. That's what we learned with Tenant.

They push that back and push that back and push that back, but they wanted the ticket sales, and they wanted to be able to do all their running around and crowing about how great they're doing in the box office instead of releasing it for 20 bucks on pay-per-view, which all of us would happily pay for to watch a new movie.

I'd pay 30. There you go. We're all here. We desperately need the entertainment. And what are the movie studios doing to us? They're pushing back the Batman, and we've gotten news now. They're pushing back Dune because they want us in a theater that none of us want to go to. And Bond. They push back Bond as well.

Bond has been pushed back now as well. So all these movies now will not be released until next year at earliest. They're pushing Dune to October 2021, a whole year of that movie just sitting and aging. Okay. Francis, you know who I'm talking about, Francis.

If you're listening to this episode right now, get in touch with me. I really want a copy of this. I know you have one. Please, Francis, hook a brother up. That's all I'm saying. Yes, please. Hook a couple brothers up. Anyway, going back to it. Yeah, yeah.

There was a whole thing this week about how all the theaters are shutting because they moved Bond back and that's just what's going to happen. Here's the deal. Fuck movie theaters. They suck. They do. We got giant ass TVs in our home with better sound than they do.

I don't have to smell popcorn feet smell when I sit in my room, although my roommate sometimes does make popcorn, which annoys the shit out of me. But I don't have to have like a 300-pound woman next to me chowing nachos when I'm trying to watch my movie. It's great.

So let's just like, let's set a price. Let's set a price, figure out what's fair and amicable, and let's just release this shit so we can watch some goddamn movies. Exactly. This is ridiculous. I really can't believe they're doing. I mean, I understand it's pure greed and nothing else.

And also, if you're shooting, by the way, The Batman, No Time to Die, and Dune, you're not going to be up for any fucking Oscars. No shit. Maybe, you know, special effects and costumes and shit like that. But for God's sake, change the Oscar rules already so that it doesn't have to be in a damn theater.

Let's get this. Let's move on. It's 2020, and it's a fucking horrible 2020. We're all stuck at home. Let us watch some fucking movies. Yeah, and fuck the Oscars anyway. Who gives a fuck? You know? I granted, I know. It's like, if you're an Oscar winner, you get hundreds of millions of dollars more, blah, blah, blah.

But The Batman is not going to win any Oscars. This is not going to win any Oscars. Bond's not going to win any Oscars. Fucking forget about it. Take my money. Show me the goddamn movie. Agreed. And speaking of showing me the goddamn movie, you talked about last time on the show, the Go-Go's documentary.

Yeah. I watched it last night. It is one of, I mean, this is coming from a person who hates documentaries about bands. I hate them. They tend to be crappy. I really do not like them. I watched the Go-Go's documentary and I was in love with the band.

I loved everything about this documentary, mainly because when you usually watch a music documentary, it's all about the singer. Belinda Carlisle was in this for like maybe 7% of the movie. Yep. Exactly. Which is great. It was mostly about the rest of the people.

It was about the rest of them. And, you know, I just fell in love with that rhythm guitarist who wrote, you know, a bunch of the songs. Now she looks like Laurie Petty, which is really weird. Oh, Jane Wheatland. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jane. Yeah. She's adorable. You should check out some of her solo albums.

They're actually really good. Oh, I will. I definitely will. And I just, I really loved everything about this documentary. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I loved it too, just because I was young enough at the time that I didn't even know that they were a punk band.

I mean, obviously I found out later, but it was great to see all that footage of them starting off in the L.A. punk scene. Because by the time I was old enough to be paying attention to music, they were already like vacation and all that stuff. They were the big power pop band. Okay. Yeah. I was early enough that since I'm older than you, I bought, I literally bought We Got the Beat on 45 at Kmart in Virginia Beach when I was a kid.

I think I was like 11 when it came out. And I saved up my, you know, my allowance that week and went and bought it. And I knew them from the get-go as far as their main, you know, pop roots. I did not know about the punk stuff.

Their punk stuff was really good though, wasn't it? I know. I actually really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. Yeah. I was like, I'm sure that there are some Swedish bootlegs out there, early recordings of them live and all that. Or just go watch the documentary, you know? Yeah, that's good. It was really good.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. And it was funny seeing Miles Copeland because when I got my second job in the internet industry, I got to meet Miles at the IRS offices. Cool. And he seemed like a nice guy in person. I don't know if you, I mean, you probably have a different story where he's a horrible human being, but I actually liked Miles Copeland.

No, I think he, by all accounts, he seems to be a really nice guy. My past never really crossed with him. I mean, music industry, there's going to be people that think he's an asshole because he didn't, you know, he won a deal or didn't sign. So it's the music business. So, you know, but by all accounts, he seems to be a pretty decent guy.

And certainly, you know, he's got a great track record, a really good ear. Yeah, because the guy that hired me for my second job was Nick Turner, the drummer for Lords of the New Church. And he was still on IRS at the time, who is an actual giant asshole. So, you know, it could have been one of those things where I'm like, I played down Miles's assholitude because Nick's was just so through the roof.

Well, look, I mean, if you're going to name your band Lords of the New Church, there's going to be some ego there. Oh, God. Yeah, it was all ego. It was all ego. But I got to meet Andy Preboy through him. So, you know, that actually worked out. Anyway, I finally started rewatching bullshit.

You know, it's funny because the way you put that in the notes, I was expecting you. I was I was thinking that was your review of the Go-Go's doc. So I was bracing myself for having to defend it. No, I had a problem cutting and pasting the URL for bullshit.

Sorry. No, the Go-Go's doc was awesome. And bullshit is awesome. And it's just so weird seeing young fat pen. It's really weird. For me, it's still weird seeing non-fat pen because I don't really watch anything that involves him anymore. So visually all I.

Oh, it's so good. It's so fucking good, man. I mean, the trophy just says F you. But Fool Us is great because they have the best magicians in the world on that show. And here's the deal.

If you're a card magician from Spain, you're going to fool them. That's pretty much the rule of thumb. But anyway, I've just been going back through the bullshit. And the first episode of the first season is still there. I think their best work, their second best work is obviously the vaccination episode.

What is the first episode about then? I don't remember. Psychics. Oh, okay. That's good. I initially had Kanye in here, but I deleted it because he's banned. So you can Google what stupidity he's up to these days.

We got our old friend John McAfee arrested for tax evasion, charged by the SEC for touting ICOs. Yeah. So he was arrested in Spain. The tax division unsealed an indictment from June 15th claiming he had failed to file tax returns from 2014 to 2018 despite earning millions in income from promoting cryptocurrencies, consulting work, speaking engagements, and selling the rights to his life story for a documentary.

He's also facing charges from the SEC for the cryptocurrency promotion. They explained that the charges are for a promotional ICO via Twitter without admitting that he was getting paid as much as $23 million for it. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.

Yeah. Whoops. Yeah, that's a lot of money. In addition to running around with panties on his face because he doesn't want to wear a mask, now he's going to jail. Oh, God. I can't believe they got him. I can't believe they finally got him.

You know, he did run for president, 2016 U.S. presidential candidate, so apparently- Well, he's 2020 president for Canada, too, by the way. Yeah. He's running now. Obviously, tax evasion, not an issue for becoming president. No shit. Just saying. Yeah.

$750, my ass. Feedback loop. Over on Patreon, we've got Took, Christian, Atit Patel, James, Andy, and Andy says, Jason, spending a dollar to share this with you and support the show. Look into Dr. Mark Hyman, and he gives us some links, and Dr. Jason Fung.

Both have YouTube videos to explain more, but it's basically about insulin and, you know, the stuff that I've been going through. So, right. Yeah. So, thank you very much, Andy. And Mark writes in. Oh, my God. Mark wrote a book. He wrote a book. Yeah. Let me, I'll TLDR this one, but thank you for listening very, very much.

I'm glad that we've been able to help you so much. And keep on listening, keep on writing, and thank you for supporting us. Really do appreciate it. And so glad to. We do this show because people write us big books like this. So, thank you. Yes. We do appreciate the books, and we read them.

We read everything you send us. But, you know, it may not be the best time for the whole audience for some of these. You know, Dostoevsky was a prolific writer, but we don't need to read War and Peace every week. And over at PayPal, we've got David, Josh, Thomas, Scott, Nikolai, Adam, Charles, Simon, Judge, Nikola, Jonathan, John, Shaleen, and Doug.

And, of course, Martin. Martin with his stock market donations, who is detailing them in our Discord channel. So, if you want to play along with him, he's in the stock channel over there. Yeah, we actually made a specific channel just for Martin to talk about his stocks.

And he's dropping the knowledge. So, if you want to learn what he's doing, definitely pop in. No, he's also dropping us the cash. He is. I'm sure at this point he's rocketed up to the top donator to the show ever. Ever. Yeah. So, absolutely. So, thank you, Martin. We really fucking appreciate it, man.

Over at Twitter, which has turned back into a dumpster fire in general, Barrett has written, Hey, Jason, take care of yourself, man. You had me concerned a few weeks ago when you said your resting heart rate was in the 90s. Yeah, that had all of us concerned. I've hit the same spot at age 50 where my stomach can no longer take the drinking and my back aches, and it's hard to breathe after days of not remembering when I went to bed.

Okay. Yeah. Heart rate's down to 82 now. All right. Improvement. And I just want to give you a shout out, Jason, because we are connected on our Apple fitness apps. You really have stepped it up. I've been seeing your activity. Good job, man. You're keeping up with it. Thanks, man. Yeah. Every day.

I didn't do one yesterday because I hurt my back lifting some heavy stuff around the house, but I've been trying to do at least 30 to 45 minutes on the bike. I try to do a 9 to 10 mile bike ride every day, just like you. Yep. And it's been really good. I feel better.

You know, the intermittent fasting really, really helps. Yeah. I found that I actually dropped weight with, so I'm back on that as well. Yeah. I'm down to 220. All right, man. Good job. I have not been at 220 in five years, and by next week, I will be in the teens, which I haven't been in a long time.

And acne's back. Interesting. What? What was that? Being in the teens. Just a joke. Oh, yes. No. There might be ribs. I think I might find my ribs again. That'll be interesting. Nice. Anyway, thanks, Barrett. Yeah, I'm working on. That's the one thing my doctor said is like when he saw my triglycerides, he's like, you don't do any cardio, do you?

I'm like, what's that? And Stuart writes in, if you want a good show called Raised by Wolves, then you can try this show about a woman who is trying to homeschool her children to the post-industrial wasteland called Wolverhampton. In the UK, also my hometown.

So I should know. And this is an actual show about a woman trying to homeschool her kids. Not that dumpster fire of an HBO show. Yeah, I'm going to have some more to talk about that next week because I am actually going through and finishing it. Watch it. I'm finishing it.

Oh, man. Even everybody said that the finale was so terrible. Don't bother. I haven't gotten there yet, but it's a hate watch. So spoiler alert. I've just been watching the boys. I watched the boys and then I watched Ted Lasso. And now Ted Lasso is over. So I've got to find something else.

West Wing. You know you're going to go back and do it. That might be it. That might have to be it. Yeah. All right. Ramsey writes in, the hacking timetable is inaccurate. Almost all of us use a full word or word stem in our password. Add in a dictionary attack capability and the timeframes go down very significantly. It depends on your different characters that you use for delimiters, actually.

So it is inaccurate for dictionary attacks, for sure. By the way, it was just supposed to be meant kind of as a PSA. It is a PSA. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you can't do a wholly accurate chart about how to hack a password. Yeah, there's definite edge cases and different use cases.

Yep. Okay. Mod6502 writes in, in my opinion, not a chance, but what do you think? And it's a Windows to become emulation layer atop Linux kernel, predicts Eric Raymond. No way. Yeah. I read this and I call bullshit on it.

I mean, Eric Raymond is prolific in the open source community, but this is just, it's absolutely wrong. It's absolutely wrong. Windows is not going to become an emulation layer on top of Unix, period. I don't think so either. No, it makes no sense.

You need to be closer to the metal. Why would you put, why would you put your flagship product as a, as a, you know, a layer on top of another layer? It doesn't work. And, and where did all those ransomware, you know, attacks happen? How are you going to do that? And he also writes, what's your go-to wine or wines?

I know Jason goes for the White Claws and Guinness, but I don't think Brian has mentioned his wine preferences. Well, listen here, Gabriel. I got to tell you, I do have wine preferences. I just can't drink them anymore. My favorites are Jaylor or Coppola's Director's Cut Cabernets.

That's what I go for. All right. I'm a red guy myself as well. I don't really enjoy white wine very much. So if I'm treating myself, I'll go get a bottle of the Prisoner. It's, it's a wonderful wine for my day to day. Just cheapy wines. I love Casillo del Diablo's Common Air. And basically, yeah, it's a good one and it's cheap.

It's like eight bucks. So yeah, any decent Malbec or Shiraz will do in a pinch. Those are kind of my preferences, but let's be honest, any red will do in a pinch. Exactly. Yeah. No, I, I, I like Malbecs. I, you know what I can't do anymore? Um, fucking Merlot.

Can't do fucking Merlot. Can't. It makes me sad. I never was a big fan anyways. So when that movie came out, I just laughed. I know. Yeah. No, it's fucking Merlot. It's like, there's a reason goths are goths because they love Merlot and it tastes like shit and it makes you sad.

Drink a Merlot and smoke a clove. Fucking cloves. All right. Matt writes in, guys, I think you'll love this takedown of the Social Dilemma. And this is the Social Dilemma and the last fucking thing I'll ever write about Facebook. This is on Substack and I, let's see what the author's name was.

Antonio Garcia Martinez. Douche a lot. I did not like this takedown of the Social Dilemma. I do not like green eggs and ham. He starts off by basically making fun of the way that Tristan says his name. That's how he says his name. That's what he wants to be called and won't presume the name bestowed upon him by his parents.

I don't think it's an affectation, but apparently this author does in the first like fucking four paragraphs of this is just shitting on him for his name. You know, I made fun of it for a while and then I'm just like, yeah, the dude's name. Like, yeah, my name's DeFilippo. Some people call me DeFilippo. Some people call me DeFilippino.

DeFilippina Papio. Some call you Del Duccio. Yeah, some do. DeHippo. Jason DeHippo. Thank you for that one in high school, you assholes. But yeah, whatever. But his takedown was completely and utterly, I thought, fucking wrong. I thought it was wrong. The only thing I agreed with was these last two paragraphs at the end.

I'm 100% on board with this. Ultimately, it's up to us if the next chapter in our history to use the printing press Reformation timeline as a guide is the 30 years war, the bloodiest, bitterest conflict in European history until World War II, or the Enlightenment, a period of unprecedented scientific and political progress. Nobody is going to rescue us from ourselves.

That's right. And our talismanic smartphones, not the European Union, not the Federal Trade Commission and its army of lawyers, not three billion Facebook users somehow abandoning their smartphones en masse. And we should not expect salvation or even a path to get there. And here he becomes a douchey MacDucerson again from the self-appointed figureheads of media savvy, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then he makes fun of Tristan's name again. So I didn't like this article at all. Yeah, he screwed the pooch on that one. Yep. Agreed. So, yeah. Yeah, I did not care for the takedown because I thought he was wrong on so many levels. And just kind of an asshole about it. Yeah, he was.

He was a dick. He was a dick. I mean, granted, we know our own. We can smell a dick from a mile away. It's horror phrasing. Yeah, it is, I guess. And DST writes in, just so you guys know, episode eight of Lower Decks is much better than the last few and one of the best characters in all of Star Trek makes an appearance with the original actor.

And that would be John DeLancey, who was on Days of Our Lives way back in the day. I watched it. What did you think? It was okay. I think the sheen is worn off the show for me. So it's going to take some pretty spectacularly good jokes and good episodes to get me back. Yeah.

I'm not sure if they've got it in. I thought, yeah, I thought the Q thing was cute, but not funny. That was the problem. That was the problem. It wasn't funny. I think if it's coming back for season two, we need a new writer's room. We need a new writer's room, and I don't think it should come back for a season two, honestly.

It will, though, because, you know, what else they got? What else they got? Yeah. And Nathan sent in a link from Mashable. The Apple Watch Series 3 isn't playing nice with Watch OS 7 for some. No shit. Yeah. It's definitely not.

Nobody really knows why. Apple hasn't really addressed it yet, and everybody's problems are different, so it's not something that anybody's been able to track down definitively yet. My lighting up while charging at night issue has disappeared, but I still get reboots all the time.

That's weird. Yeah, mine's working fine, but I have a new one. I've got a five. So it works fine now, but whatever. And over at GOG.show, Ralph writes in, Hi, Grumps. This is an interesting slash depressing article about the outsourcing of customer service functions to independent contractors.

They are forced to purchase their own specialized equipment and then must kick back to the company hiring them for the privilege of working for that company. What's wrong with this picture? And this is over at ProPublica, and it's called Meet the Customer Service Reps for Disney and Airbnb Who Have to Pay to Talk to You.

Yeah, I bullet-pointed a lot of stuff, but basically, Ralph laid it out exactly. That's it, right? That's it in a nutshell. And it's a company called Arise Virtual Solutions, and basically almost every big company uses them. And it is a load of bullshit. It is economy 2.0-ing people.

They have the exact same issues that we've got with Uber and with all these different companies that don't hire people and get away with it. Yep. And fuck Prop 22 if you live in California. That's right. Do not vote for that. God damn, they have spent a lot of money.

So much money. You know why? Because they don't have to pay their employees. Exactly. And I'm trying to explain to people, like, well, I see the ads all the time. It sounds normal. And I'm like, no, it's not. It's not. But it's going to pass.

You know it's going to pass because they spent all the fucking money. It's going to pass. That's unfortunate. Anyways, Fred from Switzerland writes in, Hi, I was curious about what Brian has to say on his whole pie hole project. Was it worth it? I will try it myself. But I was curious about his experience. Love your show.

Fred, it is still sitting in a box because I have not had time. And then we got into the whole thing about how my wife wants to see ads. But then there was all this information about how I can do filtering. And then all of a sudden, the joy was sucked out of the experience because it all got too complicated. But I do have to.

You know, I was super excited about it. And then it just became now this is a chore. So, yeah, you know what I mean? So it's sitting there. I'll get back to it at some point. That's funny. All right. Nancy writes in with what is quite possibly my favorite feedback in a long time.

Hi, geeks. Long time listener. Who knows how long? Totally lost track of the months and years. And supporter who loves the show and looks forward to each week. Jason, try cranberry juice with diatonic water for a great drink. Try Perrier and a crystal glass to add special pizzazz to your cocktail hour if you like the bubbly.

And get a SodaStream. Nancy, I have a SodaStream and I love it. I use it every day. I have my SodaStream with lime juice. So it's kind of like a gin and tonic if you want to get there. Keep cut up pepper, celery, and cucumber along with cherry tomatoes in a bin in your fridge.

So they're there for convenience and ready to make healthy snacks. Cucumbers are the devil's taint. I will never eat a cucumber in my life unless it's made into a pickle. But I do have peppers and celery in my fridge every day. I love cucumber and I actually put cucumber in my SodaStream water because it tastes delicious.

Fuck you. No. Cucumbers are just disgusting. Pickles, on the other hand, are delicious. And she says, once in a while, dip a celery stalk into a jar of peanut butter for a dab at the end. It's yummy. Yeah, too much cholesterol, unfortunately, for me.

I read the notes on that. Add a couple of raisins. No, raisins. Raisins are dead flies. I grew up in North Carolina and I had dead flies in my raisin brain. I cannot eat raisins ever again. So no, no raisins. Sorry, PTSD. Creepshow ruined raisins for me.

Oh, yeah. Keep track of what you eat during the day. You may get the same pride as with your Fitbit. Brian, your kid will grow up in a blink, so savor these days. I'm 74 with grandchildren who live far away. He will one day amaze you. You guys do so much good.

So please continue. All the best to you both. Nancy, Captain, United States Coast Guard, retired, Asheville, North Carolina. Well, Nancy, thank you so much. I've actually lived in Nashville. But most of my time was spent in Plymouth, North Carolina and Greenville in Washington.

But yeah, that's where I used to live. So thank you so much for the note. And fuck cucumbers. Joseph writes in, well, fuck, seems the two of you weren't the only ones with battery issues. And this is Apple confirmed serious new problems for iPhone users.

In an official post, they revealed seven significant data and battery related problems with iOS 14 and watch OS 7. And the company states the only fix is to erase all content and settings from your phone. No, no, not going to do it. Somewhere in the article, they talk about how they'll be able to fix it with the next software update.

So we shall wait because I'm not wiping my shit. I'm not wiping my phone. And by the way, I hate that whole app library thing. I fucking hate it. It's garbage. It's not great. It's more clicks. Everything that they've done in iOS 14 and watch OS 7 is more clicks.

Yep. Chris writes in, one for Brian's son. If you've ever wondered how astronauts use the bathroom in space, well, today's your day. Vacuums. Yep. Yep. Yep. The poo Dyson. I will wait to show that to my son because, you know, I don't need him.

Pretending right now. Yeah. Just saying. Brian writes in, Grumpon. Hey, guys, what is your recommendation for a bed chiller slash heater or is it something entirely different? Jason, I believe you've had mentioned that you've tried several different types. Suggestions.

I have not tried several different types. I've tried one type and I have two of them. It's called the pod by H sleep. That's the only one that I have. That's the only one I've tried and I fucking love it. And Peter Wheatscraw from Atlanta writes, Atlanta Falcons use drone to clean stadiums after games.

And I actually saw this on the news here in L.A. It's kind of, it moves very slow. It's weird. Make sure it gets nice and clean, right? And it doesn't do the inside of the stadium either. It just does the chairs. So, yeah, I mean, these are just drones that go around and spray the seats.

But here's the thing that got me about this. Guess what they're spraying the seats with? What? Hydrochloric acid. Oh, okay. Yeah. Best let that dry up. Yeah, let's let that kind of dry up. And definitely don't sit on your hands unless you're a bank robber and you don't want fingerprints.

So I just did a quick Google on the NFL standings for the Atlanta Falcons here. Zero wins, four losses and last in the NFC South. So maybe they should consider using one of the drones for their quarterback. Exactly. Just saying. Just saying.

Brian G, not to be confused with Kenny G, writes in Media Candy, Sasha Baron Cohen. Funny that you guys talked about Tehran and then Borat. Cross the two, subtract the comedy, and you get his great dramatic performance in The Spy on Netflix. Check it out if you haven't already. You'll also see the familiar face of Alexander Siddig of Dr. Bashir DS9 fame.

Yep. We talked about that when it came out. The Spy is fantastic. I loved Sasha Baron Cohen in it, and Alexander Siddig, of course, is, you know, one of my faves. Yep. Eddie writes in, Brian, try a meal replacement like Soylent or Huel. I drink one for lunch every day along with some fruit.

An easy and healthy way for some quick calories. Take care, Eddie. Why did Eddie send this to us? I don't know. I don't remember talking about anything like that. No, I don't either. I think Eddie might work for Huel. We discussed Soylent at great length when they first launched, so go back and find those episodes.

Also, Eddie must be a new listener. Yes. Mike writes in, first time I've ever stopped an episode to send you a comment, episode 476. You don't have to be a dick if you're the best at what you do. Wayne Gretzky, best hockey player ever, played in LA, was exposed to all that, and is still one of the most humble human beings ever.

Also, Tom Hanks, I've never met him, but he really does seem like one of the nicest humans ever. There's always an exception to the rule, isn't there? Outliers. Yes, outliers. Outliers. You were able to name one Wayne Gretzky, who also has the Canadian genes. Exactly. He's nice by nature, you know?

Yes. So you named one that's called an outlier, and Tom Hanks, you're just saying he seems like a nice human. He could be a dick. We don't know. Yeah, we don't know. We don't know. And John writes, in Grombs, hoping at least one of you can watch this, a TV thrill about your favorite technology, AI, next on Fox.

We talked about this show. I'm not going to watch it. Are you? No. No. Sorry. Yeah. No, we talked about this when the trailer came out, and I watched the trailer, and I'm like, you know what? No. I'm pretty good at reading a show from a trailer, and the last one that caught my ire was The Blacklist.

Right. And I watched the trailer, and I'm like, oh, they're really not going to put a lot of time and effort into making a story for this. And then I watched two of them, and I was exactly right, and I'm betting that this is going to be exactly the same. Mike writes in, I've heard you talk about CBD oil for sleep, so I ordered some from your sponsor.

Thank you. And hope it will alleviate COVID insomnia. I have plenty of experience with weed from back in the day, but don't know much about CBD. Do you have a recommendation as far as dosage? Will this affect a drug test for a job application? Thanks, and keep grumping. I would just state quickly that we are not CBD experts or doctors.

We don't play them on the podcast, and if you're asking us for recommendations for dosage, I would say go to the manufacturers, please. Well, let me follow up with that, Brian, because we mentioned in the ad that Fields does have a CBD hotline that you can call and talk to them about your dosage.

You're going to have to adjust it day to day to figure out what works for you. It took me a couple days to figure out which one really worked for sleep, so I'm at like one and three quarters of a droplet, the little thing that comes with it, and it works perfectly for me.

But I used to do way too much and woke up feeling like I got beaten with a sack of potatoes, but now it's perfect. I wake up feeling totally refreshed, and it puts me to sleep in like five minutes. But, yeah, there's a hotline for Fields that will walk you through the different dosages and how to actually dial it in for you, and it works great for me.

I still, you know, I pay for it. I don't get any for free anymore. I have to buy it, and I've spent way more than they have actually paid me to pimp that stuff, so I do like it a lot. As far as the drug test goes, I don't think it matters because it doesn't have THC in it, so it should not actually mess with a drug test, but do your own research and find out because I could be completely fucking wrong, and I don't want you to get fired.

It's happened seven times this episode already, so that's fine. Jonathan writes in, hey, Grumps, I travel for work in Europe, and everyone is wearing masks all the time over here. Must be nice. Yeah, must be. Shopping centers check your temperature at the door, and taxi drivers offer you spray hand sanitizer.

I flew to Bahrain last week and had four COVID tests during my trip. My nose felt like the interstate. We also just canceled a weekend holiday to England because they changed the quarantine rules. That's life. I brush my teeth, wipe my ass, shower every day, and wear a mask in public. Keep bringing the grump, you beautiful bastards.

Well, Jonathan, thank you for being a fucking responsible adult. We love you. Yes, thank you so much, and be careful with that second wave coming. Keep that mask work up. Chris writes in, more Apple bugs. So I add the clock widget, and the time is wrong. Defaults to Cupertino, even though my phone's status bar time is correctly displayed for London.

I change the location to London, and then it matches for a while. Sometime later, the clock widget is out by 30 minutes or so. I wonder if the Apple Watch widget suffers the same problem, and there is a link to a fix for that, apparently, and hopefully it works. But, yeah, Apple, come on. We need the new software out.

Well, yeah, I put the link in for the how to fix it because it's, like, pretty basic. You just have to turn it on. It's like, use my location to set your time. Done. There you go. And Matt B. over in the UK writes, the robots are coming for us.

This tiny robot is smaller than the width of a hair, and scientists hope it will be used to hunt down and destroy cancer cells. What could possibly go wrong with a tiny robot smaller than the width of a hair? Yeah, I watched the video on this. It's actually pretty fascinating how they got the legs to work. You know, it's pretty cool.

Yeah. I give them that, but, like, where's the brains that say what's cancer and what's not? That's what I want to know. Exactly. That is the problem. Steven writes in, in case you missed it, the first jetpack paramedic in the world for the Lake District in the UK.

And, yeah, they show a guy bouncing around in a big-ass jetpack. We never had any follow-up about the LAX jetpack guy. I wonder what happened with that. We haven't heard anything about the LAX jetpack guy. But this is the one with, he's got, like, a backpack jet, and then he's got thrusters on his arms for mobility.

And what it does is it takes, you know, the time to get to a stranded hiker or somebody who's been mauled by a British mountain lion, I guess. Right. He cuts it down. I didn't see any weapons on there, though, so he can't take care of said mountain lion. But, no, it's cool.

Fly away. Fly away. Yeah. This is, you know, it's Iron Man 2.0. Yeah. It's pretty cool. And Marc Andre writes in, hey, guys, I may be a little late since it's a three-day-old news story. But in case you haven't seen it, Magic Leap tried to create an alternate reality.

Its founder was already in one. This is more than a three-day-old news story. We basically called this months ago. We talked about it months ago. Years ago. Well, we called it years ago, but when this all actually blew up in his face, we talked about it at the time, too. So, you know, this is just a nice recap of everything that we said a while back.

Yeah. Magically, yeah, jumped the shark. Yeah. Steven writes in, hello, Grumps. I was just wondering if you guys ever used the app Untappd. Just curious to hear your thoughts. But I want to know what each of your top five beers are or your favorite beers. I'm 23, so I'm still trying new stuff and wanting to know what you guys prefer.

Perfect timing, as Jason cannot drink anymore. I know. But I can still tell you my top five beers. What was that? We got wine and beer questions in one episode. I know. I know. Jesus Christ. Are you guys trying to tempt him? I do want to throw a shout out to Kyle Roderick, one of our friends of the show, who has actually been a co-host on the show back in the day.

He used to have a podcast called Transmission, then The Morning Show, and now I don't even know if he podcasts anymore, which sucks. He had it with his brother Kenny, which I really like. But Kyle is the senior vice president of product at Untappd. So he does love the beers.

So we love Untappd because of Kenny and Kyle. Yeah, I actually used Untappd for quite some time, but obviously I have not been to a bar anywhere or tried anything in, oh God, 10 years. I mean, it feels like 10 years. It's been six months, seven months now. Well, yeah. I mean, we started this show at the bar that you can't go to anymore.

So, yeah. Okay, give me your top five. What do you got? So when I was younger, I would chase down things like Pliny the Younger. I would experiment and go for beers with the biggest alcohol content possible, suck down delirious tremens, sours, Belgian, soaked in whiskey barrels, a stout with nitro that tastes of coffee.

Bring that on. Now, I just spent the weekend sitting in a pool in Palm Springs drinking Pacifico. I like Pacifico. I like it too. I'm old. I like lighter beers. I'm not going to drink a Coors Light, but give me a nice crisp German pilsner or a nice English ale and not too many of them.

And I'm a happy man. So I'm pretty simple these days. Yeah, I am going to push back to you on Coors Light. I think Coors Light is actually a very nice beer when you're very hot and you've been working in the yard. I think it is the most refreshing beer you can have. I think it's a refreshing beverage in those cases.

I hesitate to call it a beer. Well, you call it what you want. I enjoy Coors Light. I'm sorry. I do. I really enjoy Coors Light. I like Guinness, obviously. I like Guinness a lot. I like Little Something from Maximus from the same brewery.

Maximus will put you under the table in basically two bottles because it's like a 9.8 beer. I like Sapporo a lot. I really like Sapporo, especially if I'm having sushi. Oh, what else?

Man, God, there's so many different beers that I really like. It just depends on the occasion, you know. But, yeah, that's pretty much it. I don't like Corona, but I do like Pacifico, you know. That's the weird one. And maybe you'll now have a new fondness for Heineken Zero. Fuck that noise.

Old Rasputin. Old Rasputin is the best stout ever made. I mean, I know Guinness is Guinness, but Old Rasputin is just delicious. All right. There you go. Ted writes in, hey, geeks. I thought you might get a kick out of an email I received from CVS. In the past, I've used CVS for photo printing, and it's no surprise that they store your photos.

But what I got today really surprised me. They wrote, hello again, Ted. It's been a year since your last order, and you have photos stored with us that will be archived soon. In exchange for storing photos for free, we require each account to order with us once a year. In order to prevent your photos from being archived, you must place an order soon.

The email is semi-threatening in that they apply, I need to place an order or else, and I'm in wonderment about their use of the word archived. I would love to know what archived actually means. Does it mean visibility set to zero? Does it mean they'll start selling my photos? I have no idea. I would be much happier if they said, we delete your photos after one year without account activity.

I think semi-threatening is a bit over the top. I don't think that that was particularly threatening. I'm guessing you didn't read the terms of service. I'm sure there's some sort of mechanism there for asking them to delete rather than archive. I mean, what's in it for CVS? They're a drugstore. I doubt they're selling access to the photos to Google, but you never know.

You never know. You never know. You never know. I mean, we can find out. I'm sure you can. Yeah. Send an email and say, what do you mean? What do you mean? Christopher writes in, hi, guys. My wife and I are big fans of you and the show. We thought it would be cool if you guys had a Halloween drink up.

Sorry, Christopher. Well, Jason is off the sauce, and I have a kiddo who's very much looking forward to Halloween, and I have to somehow tell him he can't trick or treat, even though he's just figured out what that is. So I expect to be spending that evening attempting to try to make a fun COVID at home stuck in the house Halloween.

So no Halloween drink ups. Here's the deal. Get your kid drunk. Perfect. That just solves all the problems. Solves all the problems. Get your kid drunk and put him on Zoom for all of the fans. We're done. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know if we're going to be doing drink ups again anytime soon. We'll see. We'll talk about that. Yeah. I don't have another appointment for another 10-day or what's it? Six. Yeah. I got some time before my next blood test, so we're going to see how the liver's doing. But yeah, for now, I'm enjoying losing weight and not spending a lot of money on booze.

So I'm good. Sorry. Austin writes in, I'm a few episodes behind, but heard you guys talking about how to share two-factor authorization for managed Twitter accounts. I know you're a 1Password guy, but for businesses, Keeper Security Password Manager lets you securely share passwords and two-factor auth tokens.

It works well for us because each person has their own password vault that is secured, but we can easily share individual records that contain username, password tokens, plus the domain or URL it should be used at, and any other relevant text or images for that record. If a password gets updated by one user, it syncs across other vaults it's shared with.

Yeah. 1Password actually does do this. So if you have like a business account, you can share vaults between people, and then you can update those 2FA tokens. So I have used them before for that, but I forgot about it. So there you go. There you go.

John writes in, the mention of Goodreads reminded me about your quests for good science fiction or the like. I don't remember you mentioning this, but with Jason knowing Veronica Belmont and you both being podcast experts, you probably are aware of this. But this is a podcast from Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont called The Sword and Laser.

Yeah, totally know about The Sword and Laser. I remember when she started it with Tom, and they go back and forth every week. One week it's The Sword. The next week it's The Laser. So it's either fantasy or sci-fi. Great show. I generally tended to skip The Sword episodes because I don't like fantasy, but their sci-fi stuff's really good.

They do have a very active Goodreads community. And yeah, I mean, I love to meet some Tom and Veronica. There you go. Let's see. Ralph sent in a bunch of links, so I'm going to TLDR these ones. Spain's top court declares gig workers are employees, not contractors. Good.

That's exactly what we're trying to do here in California. But of course, it's not going to work. Not going to work. They are spending way too much money on their ads. There was a big design problem with the NHS COVID-19 app, which meant people could be told to self-isolate unnecessarily. Basically, they didn't log shit out.

So that's not good. And my favorite story of the week, he sent us Burger King trolls McDonald's by leaving responses to their customers' complaints. So McDonald's wasn't responding to things on its Facebook page. Burger King Denmark went in and did it for them. Nice. And offered them all a free Whopper. Nice.

Nice. Oh, I miss Whoppers. Yeah, you should stay away from those for a while. I've been eating the Impossible Burger. Now that you can buy it at the store, it's actually really good. Have you tried it? Yeah, I've tried them. They're not bad. No, if you cook it at home, it's really good. Good stuff. Liz writes in, hey, grumps.

Just wanted to say I heard your ad on the Eero router and I got mine today. It was such an easy install and I'm loving the fact that I can keep track of what devices are connected to the Wi-Fi. I didn't think my connection was bad until I replaced it. And wow, such a difference. Wow. Wow.

That was... You got some energy. You got... That was... Wow. That was Dean. That was Dean-ish. Yeah. Yeah. Such a difference. I enjoy your pot and trust your rags. Keep on grumping. Wow. And Barrett writes in to let us know somebody feed Phil is returning for another season.

It's actually on October 30th. I'm curious. This must have been in the can ahead of time. It has to have been. Because otherwise, it would be great. He should do... Why isn't he doing like on YouTube? Well, because he has a deal with Netflix. Why aren't they doing the Netflix COVID version where he just gets takeout from his local places?

I would watch that. They are doing... I don't know if you've seen this. There's a LA cooking thing coming up in like the next couple days where Phil is going to be on. And like all the chefs are going to be cooking. You can call in and ask for them to cook stuff for you. Nice. You know, they're doing stuff.

Right. And he sent a link to an app called Our Bond and says, I just have too many questions when it comes to this app. The first 100 being why. And yes, this is getting your own personal security agent in your pocket. Yeah. Yeah. This is all bullshit. I read through it and it's like, yeah, you have to call in and get your own basically personal bodyguard to show up.

That's on your phone. Yeah. Well, no, they show up. You have to call and tell them where you're going to be and somebody shows up. Nice. But do I want the Uber for personal protection, personal security? No, no, you do not. And in the old days when you had to go buy weed in the park, I think it was a different thing.

I could definitely have used that. But nowadays, yeah, just go 7-Eleven, buy your weed. So who needs this? And he also sent in, do we really need this feature? And this is how to turn on FaceTime creepy eyes in iOS 14. Yeah. No, we don't. No, we don't.

No. Vincent writes in, Nintendo Switch faces French claim of planned obsolescence. Well, planned obsolescence is a thing, but the French are getting very butthurt about it. So I don't know. They said their controllers are failing too quickly. So they didn't do enough research on how those buttons are going to last.

Enough testing. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you have the robot that presses the button 150,000 times and then you go. So, yeah. And he figured out how to fix his own. So we'll have the link in iFixit to how to fix your own buttons.

Okay. Can you tell we need to fucking finish this? I think it's time to wrap this shit up. All right. Adelante writes in, hey, guys, you've discussed this before on the show. And when I saw this, I thought of you. This is wow. Wow. I'm trying to do you now, Jason. Wow. Wow. Not having any tiny humans of my own.

I never fully realized what parents are going through. Wish it was discussed more. And this is the hell that is remote learning explained in a comic. And it's on Vox. Adelante is actually being discussed an awful lot, but probably not in the circles that you are running in. But if you are a parent, oh, boy, are we talking about it everywhere?

I'm sure. I'm sure you are. Zachary writes in with a new feature that 1Password has basically gotten together with Privacy.com. And now you can get your privacy cards through 1Password. Since neither of those motherfuckers advertise with us anymore, you can go check out the link on your own.

And that's all the press they're going to get from me on that one. That's right. And Ralph writes in, hi, Grumps. Flawed or missing security in IoT devices can have profound consequences, but few are likely to evoke as much personal consternation as an unlockable male chastity device.

And here's a quote from the article. Because the chamber was designed to lock with a metal ring underneath the user's penis, the researchers said it may require the intervention of a heavy-duty bolt cutter or angle grinder to free the user.

Yes, this is a Chinese-made chastity device that you put on your Johnson that your partner can unlock with their Bluetooth device. But they had flaws in the API, which means... On the plus side, though, I found a use case for Arbond.

You can call them and they can smell it. Unlock your Johnson. And they can smell a dick from a mile away, Jason. That's right. That's right. If you want your question or comment right on this show, head over to god.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 god.show slash review and toss us a five-star and snarky review, which we did not have any of. Not a single one. So we did not have any iTunes. So guys, come on. Just throw us a review here and there. We really appreciate it. And if you're listening on the Overcast player, please click that star next to the episode.

We are not moving up very quickly. We're not moving up very quickly. We're at number 26. So, yeah. Whatever. There you go. Closing shout outs. Closing shout out to our band over at Clash Royale.

GOG.show is our clan name. And right now we are in the clan wars and we are going up against, get this, Brian, the Nightwatch and the Warriors. Oh, Christ. We're kicking ass and we're winning. We won the last one.

So this new clan war thing they have is really lame and stupid, but we are really good at it. So just a big shout out to all of our friends over at the Clash Royale clan. And we've been kicking people out. So come on in if you see a spot open up.

Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. 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.

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