486: Bye, Bye Mr. FCC Pai

Oh, okay. How to tastefully do this one. Good luck. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo, discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Happy pandemiversary, Brian. I've only been in lockdown for nine months. Well, December 1st, which is the day that we're recording this on Tuesday, marks the one year since the first known patient showed symptoms of COVID-19 in the Hubei, provincial capital of Wuhan.

Oh, well, yay. Uh-huh. Woo-hoo. I'll go get some balloons. Please do. Oh, God, you just can't take them to the hospital with you. Or anywhere. Nope. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's – cases are rising even here in Toronto and Canada in general. And anytime I look at the news in the U.S., the word shit show comes to mind. Don't do it. Don't do it. Yeah. Well, vaccines are coming.

Hang on, everybody. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be an interesting December. Not in a good way. No. May you live in interesting times. No, no. I know LA is in a lockdown until December 20th because no – Sort of. Sort of. That is also true because I've talked to quite a few people and everybody's kind of basically saying, well, gyms are closed and restaurants are closed.

But everybody's kind of just doing whatever they want. Well, that's why we're in the situation that we're in. But nobody knows if offices are closed because they don't mention offices. But at least one of my clients, I was supposed to have a seven-day marathon recording session in the middle of December. And I'm like, guys, can we just not do this?

You know, go and sit in a room all day with strangers? And they're like, yeah. Talking? I think – exactly. Talking. So that was shut down. So that will pick up maybe next year. All right. Fingers crossed. There you go. Well, I got a little bit of follow-up on your Comcast story from the other episode where you talked about the 1.2 terabyte data caps that are coming on broadband usage across all 39 states where it offers internet service.

Yes. They're also raising their prices. Oh. Look over here, data caps, data caps, data caps. Boom. Yes. Roundhouse to the head. So according to a price list posted on Reddit, price risings will be effective as soon as January 1, 2021.

There's a link in the show notes for anybody this affects. But it's hefty. It's not nothing. So, yeah, they are raising prices across the board for everything, every level of service, including rental of their TV boxes. Including in-home service visits will cost $30 more than they currently cost.

You're looking at at least $4 to $5 extra per month for your basic services. It's hefty. And here, increased service, less service for you. How the flying fuck can they justify that? Monopolies. Yeah.

Oh, that's right. They don't have to justify it. They don't have to justify it. Because most people don't have a choice in what their internet service providers are going to be. Well, Brian, I've been waffling on this story trying to figure out how to lead into it, as it were.

Let's just go with the headline. Amazon's Alexa allegedly recites anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to users. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. So, what's basically happening here is over in the UK, which is where this kind of was ground zero.

You ask Alexa a question about the Jews, and they come back with answers from the web from conspiracy theory websites. I suppose I have to ask questions like, who is asking Alexa questions about the Jews, and why is somebody asking Alexa, do Jews control the media?

Exactly. I don't know. This is one of those ones where it's like, hmm, who was doing this research to begin with? Probably somebody Jewish, I'm guessing. This might be a good use case for destroying people's privacy, and if Amazon tracks these sorts of things, sends them a nice little pamphlet explaining how the world really works.

Okay, so, yeah. I didn't know that there was a website called Jew Watch. Well, it's probably a good thing that you didn't know that. Yes. I'm going to go with that. Okay. Yeah, you can read up on this. Amazon is, of course, investigating and figuring out how it happened.

It happened because they just go to the internet. Right. That's how these things work. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Moving right along. Internet's going to internet. Yeah, internet's going to internet. Microsoft has the new productivity score that they have rolled out.

We talked about this a while ago when it was coming, and now it's out, and it's not good. It's a bad thing. It is a very bad thing. Yeah. Yeah. I've looked into this a little bit, and as you know, assuming concerts ever come back, I will have a full-time gig in a Microsoft shop, so I've become somewhat familiar with all their tools.

And there are already some basic creepiness. There are weekly emails that come out that basically have analyzed your email usage and let you know how productive you're being and how much downtime you have to work on other things. So, you know, the back end for this must have been there forever.

But the amount of control and being given to employers now is a little bit frightening. Yeah. Who asked for this? That's what I wanted to know. No one, actually. Well, probably HR asked for this because it's HR. I mean, you know, I spoke briefly with some people I know that run Microsoft shops as well, including my own.

And none of them asked for it. They don't want it. They don't plan to implement it, so. Okay. Well, it's not implementing. It's just probably going to their dashboard and seeing. I mean, it's like, you know, somebody's going to peak. You know somebody's going to peak. Well, of course. God mode always causes problems.

With absolute power comes absolute corruption. Exactly. So, yeah, if you're in a Microsoft shop and you have experienced this, let us know. Drop us an email because I'm curious how it's affecting your work-life balance. Because, I mean, thank God I don't have a boss.

Not that there is any work-life balance at this point, but yes. Yeah. No, I would be creeped out about this. Yeah. Because it's, you know, it is the Panopticon. Yeah, it is. It is. And, you know, basically employers can require it. Yeah. And the thing is, we've got enough fucking stress right now.

Why do you want to log on and have to, like, sit there and be under the gun all day long? If you get your shit done, you get your shit done. Well, that's always been my belief, Jason. But it also never got me promoted when I worked at regular jobs. That's true. That's true. I got my shit done and then fucked around a lot.

And they did not take kindly to that, even though my shit was done. Uh-huh. No, I remember. I remember. So, I found this one over at Science Alert. And it's, what are the health risks of space? Scientists just unveiled the biggest study yet. Boom, boom, boom. All righty.

LDR, space hates humans. Well, yeah. That's it. We evolved to live on the planet, not outside of it. Exactly. So, this is, it's 30 different papers and they talk about different risks associated with space travel. Since apparently somebody is going to try and go to Mars soon, they must be doing, they better get boned up on what this is going to take.

By the time you get to Mars, you're probably just going to be a big pool of jelly. Get over it. All right. Well, go for it, Elon. Go for it, Elon. You know who space really hates? Sandra Bullock. Oh, yes. Yes. I really did not like her much. So, I found this article.

Facebook's latest ad tool, Fail, puts another dent in its reputation. I was not aware that there was a reputation left to dent. Exactly. How does one dent a black hole? Yes. It says, reset your counters. Facebook has had to fess up yet again to another major ad reporting fail.

This one looks like it could be costly for the tech giant to put right, not least because it's put another dent in its reputation for self-reporting. Gee, self-reporting doesn't work, Jason. Are we surprised? No. Nope. Nope. Take our word for it. Your ads are doing great. Hey, just ask Microsoft.

They're reporting on everybody now, too. So, that's the way it goes. Yes, it was apparently with Facebook's free conversion lift tool, which it said affected several thousand advertisers. They discovered the flaws led the tech giant to offer some advertisers millions of dollars in credits per report this week to compensate for miscalculating the number of sales derived from ad impressions, which is in turn likely to have influenced how much advertisers spend on its digital snake oil.

So, you paid millions of dollars for ads that don't work because we lie about them, but here's some credits for more of those ads that don't work and we'll lie about them in a different way. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I think we've only talked about this since, oh, I don't know, eight years ago on the show. Yes.

Everybody lies. Stats are bullshit. You're getting ripped off. Yes. Well, apparently, under the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act plan, the EU, the European Commission, has said tech giants will be required to open up their algorithms to public oversight bodies and will also be subject to binding transparency rules so the clock may be ticking for Facebook's self-serving self-reporting.

We shall see. Okay. Well, yeah. They need third-party auditors. Yeah. Then they need third-party, third-party auditors. Who audits the auditors. Yes. Yeah. Yes. To make sure they weren't bribed. And then it's auditors all the way down. Mm-hmm. Speaking of going down, this made my day.

The internet rejoiced. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will step down on January 20th. Don't let the door hit you in the ass. Now, in honor of friend of the show, Trent Hamilton, who hates Don McLean with a driving passion that includes a death watch on Facebook, I would just like to sing quickly, Bye-bye, Mr. FCC Pai.

There you go, Trent. Does he even listen to this anymore? I doubt it. He's too busy golfing all the time. I know. He's too busy golfing. Well, this is good news. It's very good news. It's very good news. So he's probably going to go back to his cush job at Verizon making, you know, half a million dollars a year or more.

Yep. So he can afford more big mugs. Exactly. That's how much he needs for his mugs. So let's hope we get somebody in there that can undo the damage of the past four years. Mm-hmm. Yep. And to end on a high note or a low note, depending on your palate, McDonald's is bringing back the McRib because why the hell not?

It's 2020. Fuck it. It is by far one of the most disgusting things I've ever ate in my entire life. I love them. I figured. I absolutely love them. You know what I'll give McDonald's credit for? And they really do shine in the McRib. There is something about McDonald's pickles and onions.

They are delicious together and they are wonderful and they really do shine in the McRib. It's just a shame about the McMeat. It's not McMeat. It's Frankenmeat. We know that going into it. Brian, what this comes down to is managing expectations.

If you go in expecting something that is going to be juicy and delicious and even mildly reminiscent of meat. Or a rib. Then you're going to fail. Yes. And you're going to fail. But if you go in knowing that this is just, you know, pressure injected lips and assholes with some moderately okay sauce, but topped with the aforementioned beautiful onions and pickles.

You're in for a treat, my friend. You're in for a treat. I think I might have to order the vegetarian version. Just give me the pickles and the onions. Yeah, just bread, sauce, pickles, and onions. That'll work for me. But thank God you've got the McRib locator, Jason. So you'll be able to find one near you. You know I'm doing it.

Well, actually, I am going to go to Kanye's McDonald's because that is actually the nearest McDonald's. So maybe Kanye and I can have a McEasy Rib together. Too bad we already have a good show title, McEasy Rib. It would be good.

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We're joined again this week by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the CyberWire podcast and also the co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, as well as the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy as well as surveillance and privacy.

Welcome to the show, Dave. Well, thank you very much. Welcome, Grogu. Yes, indeed. I still don't have that name memorized, and I don't know that I ever will. I have to be honest. I just had to Google it. Okay. Fair enough.

There we go. No, no. I think he will forever be Baby Yoda to me, as with most people, I think. And I thought Grogu was a little too close to Groot. I am Grogu. Oh. Yeah, kind of. I was wondering what that reminded me of. That's it.

That's what I was thinking. Yeah. You know, I got a lot of crap from both of my boys, because when we'd gotten together for Thanksgiving, we were talking about Mandalorian stuff, and they were all very excited that what was the Jedi's name who showed up for this one? I'm drawing a blank.

Oh, I have to Google that, too. Asaka Tana or something like that? Yes, yes. Quite a big character in the animated series, I understand. Correct. Correct. And I know listeners are now screaming at their devices, the name at us, and I apologize for that. But I maintained that, yes, we would see her this season, but it would probably be in the last five minutes of the last episode.

Joke's on you. Yeah. I was completely... And as Jack said, you know, he was right, but more importantly, I was wrong. All of the things I get to look forward to. So I was happy to be wrong, and yet again, this show continues to deliver, and I'm really enjoying the ride.

It was a phenomenal episode. I have to say that I geeked out, because the villain was portrayed by Danny Inosanto's daughter. And if you know who Danny Inosanto is, from the sound of it, you don't. Nope, I do not. He's Bruce Lee's star pupil.

So she's basically Bruce Lee's goddaughter. Very cool. Yes. Yeah. She's been a stuntwoman for a very long time. She's 55 years old. That's how much she kicks ass. Well, as long as we're going with the casting in The Mandalorian, I have to say I was a little bumped by Michael Biehn being cast, because he always dies in everything, so I knew there's no way this guy is going to survive.

Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah, I wonder how quickly it's going to become an old thing, where every week we come to the small little town somewhere who needs saving, and we do. I'm fine with that.

I'm hoping next episode we get Mal from Firefly to come on in and save the day. You know, if we're doing Space Cowboys, you've got to get them in. Come on. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And it may not get old. It's just, it's definitely, we've fallen into that pattern, and I hope they're able to sustain it, because I'm enjoying it.

I do like that they give you like one nugget of main plot line every episode, that is kind of just tossed in there amidst the let's save this town thing, so I'm not minding it. No, it's fine with me. It's a trope that I am familiar with and that I enjoy thoroughly.

Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Yes. Well, normally this would be in closing shoutouts, but since this has turned into basically this week in Star Wars, yes, a shout out to David Prowse, the original Darth Vader who has died this week, sadly. Yeah. Yeah. It was nice to see Lucasfilm give him such a good tribute because there was no tension between the groups.

He was always upset that he was never the voice, et cetera, et cetera. I believe there was some trickery. They told him he was going to be, and then he was actually in the theater when he found out that he had been overdubbed by James Earl Jones. Can you imagine what that must be like?

Oh, man. That is a royal fucking right there. It is. It is. But still, the towering man did it. So good for him. Good for him. Yeah. He was also in Clockwork Orange is probably the other movie he was well known for. And he did a Frankenstein movie back in the early 70s.

Someone did a Frankenstein reboot and he played the monster. I've probably seen that. There was a time where Bob Fogarty, friend of the show, and I, and my dad, we would basically go to Blockbuster every night and rent a Frankenstein movie. And we went through all of them.

And I have to say, I don't know if it was iFrankenstein, whichever one that had the midget and sting. That was one of the best ones. Well, can you narrow it down a little more? I mean. Yeah. I mean, how many movies don't have, from that era, don't have some kind of little person in Sting, you know?

I know. Well, probably Dune. I'm sure there was a little person somewhere in Dune. So, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, that was a good one. That was, I have to say, if you haven't seen that one, I recommend exhuming that from the crypt and checking it out.

It was a fine, it was a mighty fine Frankenstein movie. Okay. I did not even know that existed. I will have to check that out. Oh, yes, it does. It does. I'm pretty sure somewhere I have a David Prowse autograph, like a photo that someone gave me once.

I'm pretty sure I have one somewhere. That's cool. So I'll have to look that up. Yeah. I remember being insanely jealous that one of my childhood friends, and God, I was, I don't know, 84 when Empire came out. So I was like 11. He had somehow managed to get a Boba Fett actor autograph.

I thought that was, I think his name was Jeremy something or other, but yeah, I was like, that is the coolest thing ever. There he goes. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I think I have his too. Come to think of it. Did I ever tell you the story about how the time I met Darth Vader at the local Kmart?

That sounded like it was just a setup. So I don't know. No, I've told you that. I'm pretty sure I've told you the story about how my mom had some kind of deal going with the stock boy at Kmart to get me all the action figures, right? No, no, you haven't. Do tell. Do tell. This is new.

Okay. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Breaking news. All right. So two, two stories. First of all, my mother very much supported my Star Wars habit when I was a little boy, you know, I was, and I was the perfect age for Star Wars.

And so I had the early bird set and the new action figures didn't come all. Didn't all come out at once. They, you know, new ones were introduced over time. And so word out on the street was that the Jawa was coming next.

And this was very exciting, you know, or whatever. I remember that one for sure. Yeah. Right. And so my mother somehow had an, has said some kind of arrangement with the stock boy at the local Kmart that when the new action figures came in, she got a call and got first, you know, first pick of the action figures.

Now, about a year ago, uh, we were all together for the holidays and, and I, I asked my dear now 86 year old mother, I said, mom, what, what exactly was the arrangement you had with the stock boy?

I salute you on the bravery to just ask that question. I have to say, I salute you, sir. And my mom, she just smiled. She raised her eyebrows. She shrugged her shoulders. And she said, hmm, we just had a little arrangement. I was like, okay.

All righty then. I said, my, my dear mother. Um, so the other part of that story is she also got word that, uh, with the release of Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader was going to be making an appearance at this Kmart.

So, uh, we got in the car, we went up, drove up to the Kmart up on route 40 at Chatham mall and waited. And there were lots of other kids there and they had this little set up there where Darth Vader was going to be. And, um, they, they put the soundtrack on one of the stereos that, you know, Kmart sold and the, the, the, uh, the Imperial March theme started playing.

And from back from the stock room, the doors swing open and out strides Darth Vader in full regalia. And you have to remember folks that this was a time when these costumes were not widely available. No, they were not at all. Yeah. No.

And so to have, I mean, as far as I was concerned, this was, this was the real Darth Vader and it may have been one of the real Darth Vader costumes because they did send them on these tours. Again, there, there weren't, nobody was making these, uh, you know, mass producing them.

So Darth Vader comes out and he, he, he's at his, he's basically at this desk in the middle of the Kmart. As he, as he would be. Yes. There's a long line. Hey, there's a lot of paperwork in being Darth Vader. Right. So there's a long line of kids who are all, you know, ready.

We, we have our questions that we're every, they're warned. We can ask Darth Vader one question. Um, and we, each of us is given a eight by 10 black and white photo of Darth Vader with his lightsaber, which he will sign and we can ask him one question.

So I get up to the front of the line and, uh, and I have my, I have my, my, my, my photo in my hands and I'm very nervous because of the Darth Vader and he's about 10 feet tall when you're 12. And, uh, and he says, you know, what is your question?

And I say, um, I said, well, I, I, I heard that, um, in Empire Strikes Back that, uh, that we may find out that, uh, you are actually Luke Skywalker's father. Is that true? And he says, you have not seen the movie yet.

I said, uh, uh, no, no, no. And he, he sort of tosses the picture at me and he says, you must go see the movie. That was it. And I was, then I was, then I was on my way, you know, then that was my, I sort of went away dazed like, so Darth Vader's, he's pimping tickets to the movie.

I think, I think quite possibly the only thing that could have made that story more better and more Bittner would be if it were actually at the Radio Shack instead of the Kmart. Exactly. That would have been perfect. I, I honestly, I probably stopped at the Radio Shack because there was a Radio Shack in that shopping center.

Uh, that was one of the local Radio Shacks, but, uh. Excellent. So it's a, it's a vivid childhood memory. Yep. Yep. Anyway, uh, anything else you want to talk about today or. Well, we do have, we do have, we got one more, we got one more.

The Star Wars hotel is coming. Yeah. The Star Wars hotel is coming. And, uh, I, I saw this. It's not just a hotel. It's an experience. It is an experience. Yes. And this is going to be in Orlando. Yep. And, uh, I would go to this in a heartbeat.

Oh yeah. Great. As long as they're, you know, requiring vaccinations before you board the hotel experience. Yes. Yes. Of course. Yes. I'm saying in a simpler time when things were normal, I would go to this. Now I'm not, I'm not going to Florida ever. No. Forget it. I'm sure I will be visiting this at some point in my future with my son who is starting to really understand and enjoy Star Wars through the medium of the Netflix, Netflix Lego series, which do not, uh, involve killings or progeny.

So, right. Yeah. We have said that, um, basically we're, we're saving up the vacation money that we're not using to go to Disney world right now for this very place. Um, yeah, because it's going to be super expensive.

Um, one thing I'm, so there's some odd things about it. You, you stay for two days and two nights. That's the experience. And that's, that's it. That's the maximum. So yeah, you, you don't, you can't stay the whole week.

So I'm not surprised because demand is going to be so high, right? Like now you've done your two days here. So now you can go to one of our other more boring hotels so you can see the rest of Disney world. Right. And we can get more people in here again. Like you say, the demand's going to be so high. The other thing I wonder about is how is that experience metered out?

In other words, is it built around the idea of still going to the magic kingdom or going to Epcot during the day, or is this an all day kind of thing for a couple of days? You're going to be on this ship doing stuff from, you know, dusk till dawn.

Pretty sure they want you to get the hell out and go to the park. Yeah. It's still a hotel. The, the storm troopers have to come in and clean your rooms. Yeah. Yeah. They're droids. Yeah. Yeah. You stay around too long. They show you the airlock. Yeah. Sorry. I'm sorry. The storm troopers are the one that kick your ass off after the two days.

That's right. I mean, let's be reasonable. I do hope that they escort you out. That, that, that seems appropriate actually. All right. Your two days are up and here's your, uh, here's your, here's your failings of storm troopers taking you to the front door with your suitcases. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and it seems like they have this whole thing down that they're going to, it's going to be like boarding a ship and going on into the hotel, this orbital hotel. Um, because everything I've heard from the folks who've been on the ride, uh, what's the other ride where they take you out?

You know, the one, the, the, the new ones that they have. The new one. Yeah. That, that is really well done and very compelling, you know, that, that they're taking you up onto a star destroyer. Um, so yeah, I'm all in on that. Um, I'm, I'm, I'm looking forward to that.

To me, that is one of the things I'm looking forward to when we get to the other side of this whole COVID thing is, is, um, all of this star Wars, Disney stuff I've been missing out on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, star Wars landed, just opened up in, in Anaheim and, uh, we, we were hoping to get going and just waited a little bit too long.

And all of a sudden it was too damn late. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. Me too. Save your pennies though. It's, it ain't going to be cheap. Nope. Nope. But yeah. So I have to help with security. May the force be with you. Come on, let's get to something.

All right. If we must, ZDNet and Gizmodo are reporting that a hacker is selling access to hundreds of C-suite executives, Microsoft based email accounts, including CEOs, vice presidents, and directors. Uh, at first I kind of just went, eh, who cares?

What's the big deal? Uh, if they're a CEO of a company, they should be smart enough to not click on the spam emails they're getting. But then I realized that they can send email from the address to employees that will seem like very, very legit things that could have obvious, you know, malware, you know, all kinds of different things going on.

So yeah, it is quite, uh, invoice fraud, et cetera. It's going to be the biggest one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So pretty big deal. Yeah. Yeah. Um, one of the folks I've had on the cyber wire a few times, his name is, uh, Christopher Pearson and he has a company called Black Cloak, um, which I suppose could continue with our Star Wars stuff.

Actually, he's a big, he is, Chris is a big Star Wars fan. Um, I'm, I'm doing a webinar with them later this week. Um, and their gig is basically doing sort of concierge protection of CEOs of going in and, and, and locking them down in ways that it's hard for their companies to lock them down because

locking down the home front for a CEO, you don't necessarily want the company to be intertwined with the fact that you're, you know, your idiot son, I don't know, like, you know, has a porn habit or something, you know, like you, it's nice to have a third party, um, keeping an eye on those things, but also keeping you safe.

And, you know, there's a certain level of CEOs who legitimately have to worry about things like kidnappings and, um, some CEOs aren't allowed to drive their own cars for, because for safety reasons, for insurance reasons. And so that sort of protection is being extended to on the cyber side of, uh, realizing that people are trying to get to them through their families, through their home networks and all that kind of stuff.

So it's interesting to me that that sort of, uh, service exists. It makes sense. I just hadn't really thought about it until, uh, Christopher shared, you know, this, this endeavor that they're working on. Very cool. Yeah. All right. And we got another bit of news here from fourth and command who sent this in now the link is from the daily mail.

So I think we need to take the headline with a bit of a grain of salt and understand it's the daily mail, but, uh, the headline is the COVID data spies paid to know all your secrets. Town halls harvest millions of highly personal details, including if you're being unfaithful or having unsafe sex.

Now, I, the system is called, I, I, I, I don't know. What are you doing with your phone? I did read this. That, that is my point. Exactly. I read this article multiple times to try to figure out exactly how the system called COVID one view would figure out if you're being unfaithful or having unsafe sex.

And I was unable to figure it out at all. Now it's an obvious overstep in terms of, of the kind of data that they're, they're collecting. It's, it's not, it's far beyond what would be needed just for contact tracing, which is theoretically what this program is for.

But yes, I do not understand how they know if you've put on a condom or not. Well, if it's an IOT condom, then I guess. Exactly. Well, yes, there's that. There's that. That's what that new LiDAR sensor in the, the new iPhone is for. Yeah.

So, I mean, obviously this is massive overstep, of course, but the headline is blowing it well out of proportion, I think. Yes. You think? Yes. I, I, I put an article in here too, that's related to this and also in the UK and it's titled The Algorithms Are Watching Us, But Who's Watching the Algorithms?

And this is a report that was put out by the UK's Center for Data Ethics and Innovation, the CDEI. And basically they're saying that these algorithms need a closer look, that somebody, the decisions they're making, no surprise to anyone, to us or anyone who listens to this show, you know, we've talked many times about the, the issues we have with racial bias and all those sorts of things.

So interesting to see that the, the UK has an official report aligning with this notion that, um, these are not safe. Um, I maintain, uh, and I, and more and more, I'm getting behind this idea that we should have a version of the FDA for AI algorithms and social media in particular.

Well, Ajit Pai is free. Yes, he is. Yes. Well, isn't the problem with the algorithms are watching us, but who is watching the algorithms isn't the real problem with these things? Uh, the more advanced ones are basically black boxes and we have no idea what's happening in there.

Yeah. The people who actually write them don't know them what's going on. It's like, okay, let's put in some soup and then we get out of Turkey. Okay. How did that happen? We don't know, but it worked. You know, program for Turkey. I think that's a good point. But if, if you, again, if you use the FDA as an analogy, um, stuff just needs to be tested.

I'm sure there are many drugs out there that do magical things that we're not a hundred percent sure why they do what they do at the chemical level, but they do. But we also know they won't kill you if you take them with this or with that because they've been tested. Yes. Right. Exactly. Exactly.

So the, the idea being that, okay, if you want to implement this fine, but you need to prove it. And if you prove it, then it goes on an approved list and now people can use it. They can use this API. They can use this, this open source thing or whatever. Um, but at least, you know, that somebody did some testing and, and, uh, some, some, a neutral set of eyes took a close look at it and it was in some way vetted.

Why do you want to stifle innovation? Come on. I know. I know. I was just about to say, as everybody that listens to this show knows, I am always for more regulation in these areas. So I'm a hundred percent on board with that. And yes, everybody always yells at me.

Why do you want to stifle innovation? Well, because innovation sucks so far. We've definitely found out that people are not doing this for the good of human humanity or society. They're doing it for money. So we need some regulation on that. And, and some of these things are bad.

I'm sorry. The Facebook algorithm is horrible. Facebook used to actually be kind of fun. It's shit now. Uh, they, they, they're ruining it. Instagram, they're ruining all sorts, all the social medias that were bringing us together are being ruined by these algorithms. They really are. But I mean, not even just forget the social algorithms.

Let's talk about like the new, uh, the new breakthroughs with protein folding that the AIs came out from Google today. You know, that's the real AI that you need to worry about. Forget, you know, who, who's posting in your timeline. Let's talk about the real uses that these people are using them for. I think some arguments could be made that some elections have been turned because of the algorithms on social networks.

Well, look at the last four fucking years and that's pretty easy. I don't remember the, the, the, the, the, the details of the story, but I know that part of the, the reason that we have an FDA here is because, um, in the days before the FDA, if you are a pharmacist, you are allowed to mix up your own medicines and people did.

And so there was a, a, a case where there was a pharmacist who mixed up a big batch of some kind of cold medicine and about 50 kids died, um, cause it was poison. And so they said, well, you know what?

We should probably do something about this. And I think it's fair to say that, uh, we're, we're in a state, if, if not on the leading edge, we are already deep into the idea that some of this algorithmic decision-making is causing loss of life.

Yeah. Yes. I think we had quite a few protests about it just this summer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a, that's just a little soapbox that I am, uh, I'm, I'm getting on board with these days. So move on over. Cause I'm joining you on that box. Okay. Need a bigger box.

We'll need a bigger box. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to tell you if you, if you're interested in any of this stuff, uh, there's an episode of the foodist podcast called how to protect yourself and your family from food poisoning, uh, that basically talks about, uh, what's this guy's name?

Bill Marler. Uh, he used to work in the government. Now he's got, uh, his own firm, I believe, but anyway, it was a fantastic episode. I edited it. So I listened to it a couple of times. So I, I've, I've heard it before. So I can tell you that it was impeccable. It's a fantastic episode because this guy was just fascinating on how, like what these people inside government actually do to stop, you know, uh, outbreaks of, you know, foodborne illnesses and things like that.

So, um, if you, if you're interested in that kind of stuff, uh, check that out. But yeah, I can see where you, if we had that for AI and people that were as good as this guy, cause I'm just worried that we're going to get, I mean, the people who are creating these AIs are on the cutting edge, you know, and you're going to have to get somebody in here, it's going to be just as smart.

Are they, are they? I mean, I think we assume that they are. And in many cases, I'm sure that they are, but I bet there are a ton of cases where somebody's just, yeah, whacking shit together to bring it back to HTML, yeah, I was just about to say to bring it back to the days when Jason and I were initially coding.

Some people are just viewing source and copying and pasting what works. Yeah. Look, it's yes. If there's a stack overflow for AI, the world is fucking doomed. Yeah. Yeah. All right, guys. We've covered a lot this week, haven't we? We did.

Mostly Star Wars. All right. I'll see you guys next time. Media Candy. There's been a service that has been getting a lot of play on the local news here in Los Angeles because of, this was like happening right before Thanksgiving and somebody spent a bunch of money.

It's called Tubi. Have you heard of Tubi? No, I've seen the ads as well. But yeah, there was a, there was a lot on the news here talking about the stuff that you can go watch because basically what it is, is it's free TV with ads. That's all it is. It's like Hulu, but you don't have to pay for it. You just download the app and you start watching.

And because I was watching, because I've never seen, what's that, that Gordon Ramsay show, Restaurant Hell or whatever. Yeah. Whatever that is. I'd never seen one. So I wanted to watch that. So I watched the first episode and it is terrible.

Absolutely terrible. But so I'm just bouncing around and I found Fluffy's Food Adventures. Okay. Now I'm a fan of comedian Gabriel Iglesias, also known as Fluffy. And he has a cooking, not a cooking show, a food adventure show.

It used to be called, I'm guessing, Fluffy Breaks Even. So what they do is they go eat a bunch of really horrible food and then they work out to see if they can break even. That title apparently didn't fly. So they changed it to Fluffy's Food Adventures. But it's free. It's on Tubi. And it is a great background show when you just need something on that is not anywhere nearly as good as somebody feed Phil, but it's better than nothing.

That's all I'm saying. Yeah. I'm looking through this. I mean, there's not nothing I terribly want to see. They do seem to have a lot of kids stuff, which is kind of nice. So this may be worth a sign up. And I'm sure my email getting on a thousand different mailing lists because I'm sure they sell every bit of data that they ever get.

But I haven't gotten anything. So nothing out of the ordinary. You just get the ads on the shows. And the great part is that their ad tech is so terrible that generally the last half of the commercials are cut off. So you don't even have to watch the whole commercial. Excellent. Yeah. Basically, they shut off right at the CTA.

It's like, good job, guys. Good job, Tubi. So you might want to watch Tubi while the getting's good because it's probably not going to be around for long. Yeah, I'm thinking so. But yeah, I'll check this out. It's free. Why not? Yeah. And they've got the apps. So just throw it on your Apple TV, which is what I did. All right.

I rented Pretending I'm Superman, the Tony Hawk video game story on Amazon for $4.99. All right. It was cute. It was a good little run up to the video game because I love the video game. And now that they have the remastered one and two out, it was fun.

It's like an hour and 10, 15 minutes. Talks about the history of Tony Hawk and skateboarding and all that. Then gets into how they made the video game and his rise to superstardom. It was fun. It was a nice behind the scenes. I highly recommend it. And they did end with that god-awful Tony Hawk ride game that a friend of the show, MXV, worked on.

All right. Yes. I'm never going to forgive him because I've been friends with him for 20 years and he broke the bro code. He worked on that game for like two years and wouldn't tell me. He's like, I can't tell you what I'm working on, man. I'm like, I know what you're fucking working on. Why won't you say it? You're breaking the bro code, bastard.

The coding bro code. The coding bro code. And like everybody else, it seems, in the world, I finished The Undoing last night. We finished it last night. I have not watched any of it. I have seen the social media outcry and apparently it suffers from my particular reaction to Battlestar Galactica.

Yes. Yes. A really good show with a truly awful ending. Well, here's the fun part about it. It's, you know, I read a bunch of reviews on it last night and my roommate and I had a long discussion about it, long being about three minutes after it was over. And like, well, that was a piece of shit ending.

But the fun part about it, it's five and a half episodes of just a great fun ride. And then just, yeah. Can't stick the landing. Right. Just, yeah. And apparently this comes from a book that was already out where it's the same thing.

It's, you know, I don't want to go too far into it, but yeah, it didn't stick the landing, but it was a very fun watch. We definitely got a lot of entertainment value out of it and a lot of, you know, just, okay, what's this? So, you know, you're just plotting and planning. Who done it? Who done it? Who done it? Who done it? Right. It's, I liked it.

I enjoyed it because it was only six episodes. We watched it in two days. Right. Now, this one comes as a shock to no one. Amazon has canceled Utopia after one season. And, you know, this, this article says, well, it's just because it's bad timing because of 2020 and the pandemic, and we don't need a dystopian show about pandemics in 2020.

I could just stand by and say it was a terrible fucking reboot. There you go. So if they would have done the original justice, then it might have, might have stuck the landing on that one, but it was god awful. Okay. So, yeah, not going to miss that one. And more god awful news. I watched the movie Mortal, which is the slowest, most boring Thor story in history.

It was, it was an hour and a half of, can we get to the hammer? Then we get to the hammer and then it's over. That's it. It was bad. It was just fucking bad. I'm going to say it. It was bad. So skip Mortal.

Okay. And since Christmas is coming, tis the season. We're in December now. I have to, I have to, as I do this every year, forget Die Hard, everybody. I know everybody, the battle between, is it a Christmas movie? Is it not a Christmas movie? Is it the Christmas movie?

Yes. And yes. It is the second Christmas movie for me. The Long Kiss Goodnight, I stand by as being the best Christmas movie with Die Hard. Okay. They're, they're in a dead heat. The Long Kiss Goodnight and Die Hard are in a dead heat. But those two are my, my favorite Christmas movies.

And so many people have never seen The Long Kiss Goodnight and I cannot recommend it enough. So. It's a good movie. I'll give you that. Oh my God. It's so good. Sam Jackson in it is so great. Pussy's pussy. And let's get to Spotify for a second. We've got a little follow up on the Alex Jones, Joe Rogan adventures.

Turns out, turns out, when there was a little kerfuffle with the new Alex Jones episode that Joe came out and said, oh, it was a cash issue. It disappeared from the feed. We're going to bring it back. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Nope. Turns out there was a hero inside of Spotify who said, fuck you and deleted it.

Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. There are logs. They will get caught, but they might sweep it under the rug. Although, this is going to make it a little harder now this is out in the real world. And I love this. Rogan was fed the mumbo jumbo, saying he got a lot of tech jargon to throw the scent off the rogue employee.

So he would come out and say, nope, nope, nothing to see here. Moving along. Moving along. Now, see, this upsets me because they're giving away our secrets. I love being able to throw tech jargon at people to basically buy myself time or get around the issues at hand. Yeah, you scotty it, man.

You scotty it. Yeah, don't tell people this stuff. They shouldn't know. They have to listen to our podcast to learn this stuff. That's right. Today is the day that the Joe Rogan Experience is officially no longer a podcast. Yoo-hoo! It is now a Spotify exclusive, so don't call it a fucking podcast.

And speaking of Spotify, they made the news this week as well, and I just love this headline. Spotify now has stories, and can this please stop? Why does Spotify have stories? That's a good question, and nobody really knows, but they are publicly testing Snapchat-style stories. They are exactly the same as everybody else, and why they are there is beyond reason.

But the new feature has started showing up on some users' phone apps when you search for certain terms, such as Christmas hits. And tap one of the featured playlists, you'll get an option to tap to see the story, which will take you to a collage of short videos with celebrities talking about their favorite Christmas songs. Wanted nobody ever.

No, nobody wants this. Although I can see, it's just yet another thing for an artist to do for free, Spotify. I can see people being interested in, say, one of your favorite bands has a new album, and since we don't have liner notes anymore. I always remember bands like The Wonder Stuff and Jesus Jones and all that used to write wonderful liner notes where they talked about how they came up with the songs or little anecdotes about them.

I could see being interested in seeing little stories about a new album or a track from the artist. But like I said, it's yet another thing for an artist to do for free. Exactly. And not get paid for. Exactly. Which kind of sucks. But, you know, I can almost see the point of it. Maybe.

We'll see. Maybe if you squint real hard. Yeah. And I caught up with both The Mandalorian and Star Trek Discovery this week. And I have to say I'm feeling extremely spoiled by sci-fi since we cannot leave our house right now. I think that was by far the best episodes of both shows, and we're getting all of The Expanse soon.

So I guess I'm okay being stuck at home if I'm going to be getting such quality TV. Yeah, we're almost out of both, though. So that's how it goes. And it's going to be a long time before we get Picard. Don't make me cry. Don't make me cry.

And because we've been stuck inside and been around a bunch of my cousins or my son's cousins and stuff of that nature. So there's been a lot of kid action, and they need their downtime. So we've found some new kid shows that are at least new to me. I haven't seen them before.

The Octonauts, which is really good. Very educational. Very funny. The Magic School Bus, which is quite old, and it's kind of cute to see pre-CGI animation. Like, all this shit was hand-drawn. But very good. Very good stuff for a kid. And the Number Blocks, which are a good complement to the Storybots that we like as well.

So if you've got some kids out there, there's some Brian-approved new TV, all of which are on Netflix, at least here in Canada. I was going to say, one of your links is definitely a Netflix Canada title. Yes. Search and find, and you shall discover.

Tops and doodads. I got a couple new gadgets this week for work. Well, one's for work, one's for me. One's for just me. All right. I got the Zoom PodTrack P4 Portable Multitrack Podcast Recorder. I'm working on the review for it now. But I put it in here because a lot of people are trying to get it.

It costs $199. It is a four-port XLR recorder. You can record to card. You can use it as an interface. It's got four headphone ports on it. So you can take it and plug everybody's headphones into it, blah, blah, blah. There's even a sound pad on it, which I have no idea why they put it there.

What I want to tell people about right now is the build quality on this new device, which they say is the ultimate podcasting tool. Do you remember those Coleco games from the 70s, like football? Yep. Yep, yep. Build quality is about the same.

Excellent. Just what you want. It feels exactly the same. This is the cheapest, crappiest plastic that they could possibly make. It's terrible. The build quality is terrible. And the thing with zooms, I've had the H4N. I have the H6.

Both of those have the same problem, and I think the H5 has it as well. The gain knobs do not click. They do not lock into place. So if you breathe on them funny, you have just completely changed your settings, and you won't even notice it, which is why I always carry a roll of black electrical tape with me.

And as soon as I dial in my numbers, I have to tape them down. This has the same problem. So I would hold off on this one for a while. I'm going to do the sound actual tests on it this weekend and see how the preamps are on it and all that good stuff. So you can just follow me on Instagram or Twitter if you want to follow along at home on that one.

But, yeah, I just wanted to throw it out there now. It's like you might want to save your money on this one right now because it is cheap as shit. Right. And for me, for Christmas, my own present, I got the DJI Mini 2 drone fly more combo. Now, I love my Mavic 2 Zoom, but the problem with it is it takes forever when you want to fly it.

It is bulky. It's big. You have to charge the batteries overnight because they always discharge pretty quickly after you don't use it for a while because they're smart. Smart batteries. The one thing about a smart battery is when you need it, it's empty. Yeah. So I got this one.

This is – it's 249 grams. It is tiny. It fits in the palm of your hand. It has the same camera as my very much more expensive drone does, which is annoying. But it comes with a new controller as well, which lets you switch from the different flight modes, like normal flight mode where it's very safe, to sport mode, which is like – there goes $700.

That's what sport mode is. It is fun as hell to fly, though. I got to say, if you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up. Excellent. I also got myself some early Christmas presents, some Black Friday sales here. I got the Samsung 55-inch, 4K, UHD, HDR, QLED, Tizen Smart TV, QN55Q70TAFX, ZC Black.

All right. It's a wonderful TV. I don't need the smart features, but, you know, whatever. It is what it is. You can't get a TV without them anymore. Yeah, good luck buying a TV without being smart nowadays. Yes. And I also got the highly sought-after, basically goes out of stock the minute it appears anywhere, and I was super lucky to be able to get them.

Get them Bowflex Select Tech 552 Dumbbells, which is a great little dumbbell set. It goes from like 5 to 55 pounds in each hand and takes up very little real estate, which is perfect. No, I've seen these before. They're very cool. They're very expensive for a couple of dumbbells.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a smart system. Select Tech, man. Well, yeah, the cool thing about it is you only have to buy the two. You don't have to buy 5-pounders, 10-pounders, 15-pounders, and keep them all around like I do. And you quick adjust them, so they're pretty great. They're worth the money if you actually use weights a lot, which I've been trying to do.

So, there you go. That's good. Yeah, 350 bucks on those. Yep. And since we're still in Zoom land, I saw this. Make it look like Wes Anderson designed your home office with these Zoom backgrounds. Now, this is a weird company to provide this, but the team over at Budget Direct Home Insurance has created seven digital renders of home offices.

It must be a slow insurance day over at Budget Home Direct Home. I guess so. I don't know what they're doing with the designer on staff, but they did a very good job, or she, featuring interior design inspired by Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson. You got the Wachowskis in there, Bong Joon-ho, David Lynch, all kinds of people.

These are amazing background offices. And the one thing I was thinking about when I saw this and read through the story and then looked at them, they're beautiful, was these home offices from Mooters, movies are exactly like, oh, I don't know, all the clubs that you see in movies. There are no clubs in the world that look as good as movie clubs.

I remember I would go to clubs going, this is nothing like I see in movies. But it's the same with these offices. Nobody has an office that looks like this, but my God, they're beautiful. No, they're very cool. I saw these floating around a couple of weeks ago, and I thought about grabbing them, but I think I'm going to have to now, for sure.

Yeah, some of them are really good. So, shockingly, I think my favorite was the Bong Joon-ho one. It just, it looks beautiful. I would have guessed I would go with David Lynch, but I guess I'm getting older. Yeah, the David Lynch one didn't really do me. No, it didn't do much for me either. I kind of like the Wes Anderson one, though. Yeah, the Wes Anderson one's great.

Yeah, the Matrix one, meh. Yeah, it is just so cyber. But yeah, the Bong Joon-ho one, I think, is definitely the most tranquil. You know what that reminds me of? It reminds me of that ramen place we used to go to in Santa Monica. Oh, yeah, Jinya. Yeah. Oh, God, I miss that place. Me too. And finally, I've got something for everybody to go out and purchase for themselves.

You might as well end this year the way it's always been. It's the 2020 gift dumpster fire. Okay. And they wanted to point out that all dumpsters do include the fire. Okay. This looks like Legos. What is this? It's just a little dumpster fire, man.

Okay. Okay. You can set it on your desk in your Wes Anderson office. Have a little dumpster fire going. Oh, it does. It lights up. Nice. It lights up. Yeah. It's a very cute little thing. Just what I want in 2021. Something to remind me of 2020. Wait until you get my Christmas card.

At the library. Well, let's continue this dumpster fire because I read Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline. I am halfway through. I'm going to read my official Audible review since it is out in the public now.

I said should have been called Ready Number Two. You just can't stay away from the poop, can you? No, I can't. It is a shit show. This book was just a chore to get through. I love the original. It's a classic. This, though, was trying to recreate too much of the original and it fell flat on every single note.

It read his bad parody of the original and just got worse as it kept going. Ready Player Two is nothing more than a steaming pile of number two. I have to say I'm feeling the same way. I feel the need to finish the book because I'm halfway through and we all know, you know, we both loved Ready Player One.

But I'm starting to think this guy can't write. It gets so much worse. It gets so much worse. I mean, Armada was horrible and this is horrible. You're right. You hit the nail on the head. It does feel like a parody. It feels in the first book for whatever reason, maybe because it was novel and new and we hadn't read anything quite like it before.

Everything worked in this book. All the references feel so forced and just, oh, it's so bad. And we're trying to save the world, but we're going to geek out as we keep going to virtual John Hughes's. Who gives a fuck?

You're trying to save the world. Fuck off. You're not going to be a nerd while you're trying to save the world. You're going to be shit in your pants and panicking. So the whole premise, the entirety of the book is garbage. This gets a dumpster fire in my book. I can't believe I'm going to have to finish it now.

Dude, it's painful. It is a painful finish. Trust me. And I finished High Rise by J.G. Ballard and they could have just called that book 2020. It was another one that I finished just because I got two thirds through and I'm just like, oh, God, I need to figure out how this thing ends.

It ends like it begins, just not an uplifting book. Yeah, skip it, skip it, skip it. All right. And I finally finished Earth by David Brin. All 707 pages, not including the additional news story and copious notes from the author at the end of the book that have been added since publication.

I've always remembered this as being one of my favorite sci-fi books and definitely one of my favorite David Brin books. Holds up well. Still love it. It is an absolutely awesome read. So if you're an avid sci-fi reader and you've never read this, do yourself a favor and do so. I am a third of the way through the book because everybody on the Discord channel was saying that they got into it and were just like sucked in by it.

So I'm like, after ready number two, I needed a palate cleanser and especially after High Rise. So I grabbed it and I'm about a third of the way through and I love it. I absolutely love it. The difference in writing between David Brin and Ernest Cline.

I mean, David Brin is a real writer. Like he fashions characters and they're believable and he fashions situations that are believable. And there's just enough science and there's just enough science fiction, but there's still – it's basically about human connections. That's what – that's what you're supposed to do.

And he has more than two 50-cent words. Yes. And can put them together in a coherent manner. Yeah. It's a great book. I'm glad you're reading it. I think you're going to really enjoy it and be happy when you're done. Well, first off, Biden has won the election again.

Again. And again. And again. And again. And again. So much winning. But I just love this. He's winning so much. So much winning. I just love this. Donald Trump paid $3 million for the recount in Wisconsin, which got Joe Biden 132 more votes. That is $22,727.27 per vote.

Winning. Wow. Whipped out that calculator, did you? Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Good times. Feedback loop. Over at Patreon, we've got S. Thomas and Florian. And we have a message from Jason.

Brian, I have a Becant desk as well, and I found this product that adds memory positions to it. Pain to install, but life-changing. The mega desk. Yes, I looked at this, and it basically geeks out your desk so you can have stored positions, which might actually be useful.

I might look into this. I've given up on my Pi projects, but this seems challenging techie enough. Okay. Yeah. My uplift, they had a $30 upsell to get one with positions. I'm like, nah. I'm good. I don't know if I really need it, to be honest. You don't. It's not that hard to adjust where I want to be.

And since your posture changes over the course of a day, you need to do micro-adjustments anyway, because you do get shorter as the day goes on, or you take your shoes off. Right. So those stored positions actually just put the desk in the wrong position depending on the time of day. So I just know this because I used to have one with positions, and I'm like, I like the free form.

I like to free ball it. There you go. And we've got one from Vladimir. VPN to Czechoslovakia? I'd love to see that. Greetings from... For almost 28 years, no longer Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia, yes, is gone. Yes. I was just thinking of Stripes. I miss Stripes.

It was a great movie. Things definitely change with the amount of paperwork I've had to fill out over the last decade, getting married, having a kid, the Canadian residency paperwork. The country my father was born in no longer exists either. And let me tell you, they do not put legacy countries in drop-down forms.

And some of the youngsters that you talk to in person when you're trying to deal with these issues think you're making up countries. So good times. Okay. What, so no Constantinople? No Constantinople. This is Istanbul. And over at PayPal, we've got Adam, Scott, Matthew, Simon, Nikolai, John, Michael, Judge, Matt, Thomas, Charlie, and Jonathan, and Joseph.

And Joseph says, micropayments, eh? Hurrah! Yes, he sent us a number of payments from $1 and then in 10 cent increments all the way up to $1.90. Why? I don't know. I guess he wanted to get dinged more by PayPal. Yeah, okay. That's just... So basically, we got about a penny out of that.

Yeah, pretty much. All right. Thanks, Joe. But it was cute. Okay. And Matt says, Merry Christmas, you filthy animals. I know I said that last year, too. Cheers and thanks. And Paula writes in, Hey, Grumps. Hello from Amsterdam. Big fan of the show and look forward to every episode. Been exploiting you long enough to decide to finally send some bucks your way via PayPal.

I've heard you discuss the number of listeners via Spotify. I wonder if you can see how many you have via TuneIn. That's how I listen to you as well as I'm driving in my Tesla. I don't own stock like Brian, and I don't own the car as it is a company car, but I enjoy it a lot. Coming back on TuneIn, is that a good way to listen to you from your point of view, revenue-wise?

Stay safe, keep sane, and rock on. P.S. Jason, sorry for making fun of your Melania-inspired Xmas tree via Instagram, but you have to admit they looked similar at first. They did not look similar. Mine's pink, damn it. But that's fine. I love our pink tree. It's fantastic.

And as far as TuneIn goes, you can listen to it on TuneIn all you want. As long as you download it, it works for us. So as far as how many people listen on TuneIn, probably less than Spotify. Probably. And of course, we'd like to thank Martin for his regular stock bets when they pay off.

All right, Martin. Because he pays us. Yes. Woo-hoo! And over at Twitter, Fred writes, Was about to brag that I also invested $60 in crypto, and it was at $70 yesterday, but I just looked, and I'm at $58. I'm up to $5,101. Woo! If I get another $9.99, I'm out.

I'll get back to my initial $60. And Mark writes in, Since you love a good story that goes with a scam, laugh your grumpy chops around this one. And this is a Facebook Watch video, The Best Way to Deal with a Scam by Joe Lycett. And I don't watch things on Facebook Watch on principle, but I think Jason did.

Yes, I did. It was cute. It was actually fairly cute. There you go. Yep. And Gadlaw writes in, Twitter is special. I got a 12-hour timeout. for sharing a Project Lincoln video. Trying to follow your lead, I took it off my phone and iPad, cutting the time I look at Twitter down by half. GOG Podcast for the win!

And Texas Toon shares a link over on Twitter. Somebody updated their status with this. The Mandalorian is about a single father in a gig economy trying to survive and take care of his child, all while wearing an outward mask that conceals his emotions from his child, his colleagues, and the world. Also, his car keeps breaking down.

Excellent. That's pretty good. And Mod6502 writes in, agree with Brian with a Y. Gabriel, you've been listening to us for how long? I think maybe he's, I think he's punking you. Anyway. I think so. We have a latest generation fire stick.

It's very responsive. The old first gen was unusable. Curiously, I have a nine-year-old hockey puck Apple TV that still works great. Excellent. Yeah. And only filthy animals. Spell it Brian with a Y. I'm just saying. Over at GOG.show, Nosec writes in, I feared this day and now it's here.

I've listened to every single episode of your podcast and this causes a serious problem. I've been listening to old episodes between new ones to keep my addiction at bay and I already feel the cold sweat and shakes creeping up on me. I might have to go for a round two. GOG is by far my favorite podcast, almost only one that I ever listen to anymore.

I've been a bad fan for not donating anything, but I promise I'll be tossing coins in your direction as soon as my status changes from broke as fuck student to something else. But at least I've been recommending this podcast to everyone who's even been vaguely interested about tech, etc. Well, thank you very much. That's all we can ask for.

That's all we can ask for. Jeff writes in, I'm sure a lot of people responded to this already. This is just info for you guys, so no need to read it on air, but we're going to do it anyway. The way you fix the switching of the AirPods is under the Bluetooth settings for them on your iPhone. Turn off connect automatically.

My AirPods kept connecting to my wife's phone and vice versa, which was very annoying. Luckily, I was listening to something benign. Apple must have switched this to default in the last update because I never had this problem before. You may also need to switch something in Alexa, as I'm not sure about that part of it.

P.S. The AirPod Pros are worth every dime. It's not even close. I've had mine since they first came out, and the durability and quality is far superior than my experience with the regular version. Happy tea day. Hope it helps. I'm with Jeff. The AirPods Pro are fucking awesome. Yeah, I'm going to try that connect automatically thing.

I just haven't had the chance yet, so I haven't actually had my AirPods on until earlier today, so I will figure that out. So thanks for the tips. Barrett writes in, hey, J&B. If you need a good watch, check out We Are the Champions. Netflix, the cheese roll episode is probably the best. Stay grumpy.

I will add that to my watch list. All right. Let me know how it is. Matthias writes in, so enough already with blaming Sweden for your needs. The MIAA, or whatever their name is, published a report about downloading and stuff in the Nordic countries in Sweden, and Sweden only stands for 44% of the stuff downloaded within these five countries.

That's almost half for five countries. That's still pretty impressive. Yeah. And it's not about you downloading. It's about us downloading from you. Exactly. And Leif writes in, I've been using Audible to maintain my sanity during COVID.

And I'd like to recommend a truly excellent Audible listen, The Witcher Saga by, oh boy. Give it a go. Andrzej Sapkowski. I can do the last one. I just don't know the first name. I think Brian watched The Witcher Netflix show a while back. I did, yes. And while the show is decent, gets continually better, it does not even approach doing justice to the books.

Well, I mean, that's pretty normal, isn't it? It's easily my favorite fantasy series, and the narration by Peter Kenny is some of the best I've yet heard. For the gaming incline, there are three video games based on The Witcher by CD Projekt Red. All three games are amazingly good epic first-person RPG adventures, not for young kids, as there is a good bit of visiting brothels and getting hammered as part of the plot.

P.S. The Netflix show is hard to understand if you haven't read the books. Just keep in mind that there are multiple timelines being presented out of order. As always, stay grumpy. I did not find the Netflix show at all hard to understand without having read the books. It goes out and kills things and gets drunk.

It's not that difficult, really. There you have it. There you go. The elevator pitch from Brian. Yeah, I guess drunks and kills things. That's fine. George says, I love the show, and I'm very close to sending you some cash.

Well, get closer. Get on over that line. Get closer. Thank you for reminding me of the commentary Silicon Valley produces. I am totally not high on my CBD tinctures, THC leakage, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. I do like that it's less heavy-handed than the BSG reboots over the head smash of a breakaway heart candy bottle trying to make you laugh.

I really do love the show. Kisses, George. I'm so lazy. I have an unsecured site that's not responsive. When did you stop caring about this and moved over to that? I don't think he was just using CBD. I don't think that's just CBD, baby.

No. Nope, nope, nope. Lance writes in, who'd have thought gig workers are not covered when they die on the job? Sadly, our recent spate of driver delivery deaths isn't at all surprising. They are regularly seen in dashcam footage doing all sorts of crazy and illegal maneuvers in traffic.

Five dead in just two months. And this is over in Australia. The food delivery industry faces massive crisis following worker deaths. So they're launching a task force to investigate the gig economy following the fifth food driver-related death in just two months. That's significant.

That's a lot. Yeah. So I guess they're going nuts over there. So they're going to look into it now because, you know, let's see. The New South Wales Labor's gig economy spokesperson, Daniel Mukai, has taken to social media following the latest death to call out the massive crisis unfolding in the gig economy and to push for modern workplace health and safety laws and a modernized workers' compensation system for gig workers.

In other words, making them employees. Yep. There you have it. So there you have it. And there's another story he sent as well. Loophole leaves families of killed food driver delivery riders without compensation. This one is sad.

Yeah, this one is sad. So the 43-year-old hungry panda delivery rider was hit by a bus, leaving his widow and the couple's 8-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter who are based in China without an income. In New South Wales, the families of workers who are killed on the job may be entitled to $834,200 lump sum death benefit up to $15,000 to cover funeral expenses and weekly payments of $149,200,000 for each dependent child under workers' compensation with similar schemes in place in other states.

But gig economy workers are deemed to be independent contractors and not workers, meaning they get bupkis. Bupkis. Bullshitty. Isn't the gig economy grand? Thanks, California, for passing that.

Awesome. Well, it ain't just even that, man. It ain't just even that. Thank you. No, but it emboldens them. Thank you, Travis Kalanick. Well, it does. I'm sure it does. It all comes back to Travis Kalanick. He's second on the list if we get a time machine to go back and kill. Maybe Ernest Cline needs to make that list now.

It's not that bad. Come on. I don't know. Pretty sure Ernest Cline never killed anybody. You think? Ready Player body count. Although some people might want to kill themselves after they finish Ready Player Two, I'll tell you that. We didn't get any iTunes reviews this week. Boo! Boo.

But over at Podcast Addict, no sec writes in with a five star. By far the best podcast about tech and everything around it. Sound quality, which is a big deal to me, is as good as it gets. Woo-hoo! Highly recommend to anyone interested in technology, internet, cyber security, or just a fun podcast with good hosts. Thank you.

If you want your question or comment right on the show, head over to GOG.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show review slash review, sorry, and toss us a five star and snarky review and try not to hit the CBD quite as hard as George.

Closing shout outs! This one's sad. Tony Hsieh from Zappos died this week from complications from a house fire. That guy was awesome, I gotta say. I only met him a couple times and every time he was really cool and we had a ton of mutual friends who loved and adored him.

It was just a shock. It was just a shock. 2020, just the gift that keeps on giving. Yeah, and as my wife kind of pointed out, sure, everybody thinks about Amazon these days, but a lot of people's first introduction to online shopping was Zappos. Mm-hmm. Yep, getting my shoes. Yep, I still buy my shoes from them. Me too, actually.

Me too. And we also lost a legendary sci-fi author, Ben Bova, at the age of 88. So that was a little bit sad to hear about, but there you go. You may not know many of his books specifically, but I guarantee you he's found most of your favorite authors and he published them because he's always edited some of the big sci-fi and fantasy compilations and things like that where a lot of writers get their starts.

Mm-hmm, yep, and I'm going to also end the show with this. It'll be after the credits here, but if you think back six years ago, I mean March, there was a grand old song called Stay the Fuck at Home, and every single syllable of that song rings true today.

Again. Again. Again. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. This 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.show slash shop and pick up some good old-fashioned GOG swag.

We'll like those masks that you still need and will for a couple more months, maybe even longer. And 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 486.

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 at home. The world has caught a virus, so I've written you a poem.

We need your help to cure it, so stay the fuck at home. And if you have got 12 kids or you're living on your own, lock it down and isolate and stay the fuck at home. If you think you're not at risk here, you're living in a dome. It spreads faster than a hooker's leg, so stay the fuck at home.

I need the gym, I need the beach, I hear you bitch and moan. You need to grow a brain cell and stay the fuck at home. But I feel fine, I don't feel sick. I'll go out on my own. How thick are you, you selfish prick?

Please just stay the fuck at home. From L.A. through to Berlin, from Wuhan through to Rome, there's people dying every day, so stay the fuck at home. If you need to contact family, use Facebook, Skype or phone, we've got the fucking internet, so stay the fuck at home.

The only way to slow it down is isolate, not roam. Please help the world get back on track and stay the fuck at home. Stay the fuck at home, stay the fuck at home. Don't you be a fucking dick, please stay the fuck at home. Stay the fuck at home.

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