537: I’m a Fahrenheit Boy

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. We got some follow-up this week and this first one made me laugh because I was actually, for whatever reason, I reinstalled a bunch of things with my TV. And my Apple TV and my Fire Stick and all that sort of stuff and reconnected everything and reconnected it to Amazon and all that sort of stuff.

So everything was reconnecting. And of course, you know, now that they're all so connected, they try to get you to, you know, connect even further and get further and further into the ecosystem. So as I was hooking up my TV and my Amazon Fire Stick and it was like, you can control inputs, just say blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And this was like maybe 20 minutes after Chris had sent this in. So this is from Chris. I laughed out loud at the description of using Alexa to switch weight values on NordicTrack dumbbells. I have no idea how any of this voice-activated stuff saves anyone any time. One of my grumpy old man sticking points is my refusal to put smart speakers in my apartment.

It's partly about privacy, partly about not knowing what to do with them apart from setting timers, and partly my first-hand observations of my friends and their Alexa and Google speakers, which is always like this. Him. Google. Change TV to HDMI 2. Long pause. Nothing happens. Him.

Google. Change TV to HDMI 2. Long pause. Nothing happens. Him. Google. Change. Me. The remote is right in front of you. So why? Him. Because it's magic. Google changes the fucking TV to HDMI 2. Long pause. Nothing happens. And he can't believe I haven't bought one yet.

That sums it up. That sums it up. My experience, too, because that's what they told me to try, and I tried it, and it never got it right, and then I just hit the button on the remote that's right there that does that. Yeah. Funny how that happens. Yeah. I mean, the voice stuff is great. I like the assistant.

I like being able to ask time. I like to be able to ask, you know, timers. I like to be able to ask for conversions of units, especially now that I'm living in the land of centigrade, and I don't understand that. I'm a Fahrenheit boy. Yeah, I like playing music. That's what it's good for.

But for, like, stuff that's just easily done with just a push of a button, like, why? But they try to get you to do it. Yeah, very much always unsuccessfully. Yes. I'm kind of glad my roommate has put the kibosh on those things because it just saves me a lot of time and money, frankly.

Yeah. I mean, I like it. Again, like I said, we use it primarily to listen to music. It's great for that and listening to the radio because we don't have a radio in the house anymore, but, you know, through the tune in and all that other sort of stuff coming through the smart speaker. It's good for that. So I like it. I got to say, yeah.

Yeah. When I left, what was it? When I moved to Chicago for time 37.623, I used tune in to get K-Rock in the morning through my lady in the tube when I was in the kitchen. And then, you know, funnily enough, after I got kind of tired of it and I got into Chicago radio and I moved back to Los Angeles, I used the same thing to get Chicago radio in the morning until I got tired of it.

Yeah. And a bit more follow-up, AT&T and Verizon are delaying their 5G rollout at some airports after airlines warn of disruptions. So they are voluntarily delaying the deployment of their new C-band 5G services near some airports after several carriers, including Delta United and Southwest Airlines, wrote to the federal government to warn of potential flight delays due to the rollout.

So some airports, I left an airport that didn't allow 5G, but I'm flying into one. So if that disrupts shut, I'm dead. No, it's only a couple of things. It's only Boeing 777s. So it's the big long haulers.

Yeah, a couple of major airports. It's a pain in the ass because, you know, these people just they had years to figure this out and they didn't get off their ass to do it. So I can understand why the airlines are frustrated because everybody knew it was coming. And everybody else in the world figured it out, except us.

Yeah, exactly. So even with COVID, they figured it out. Come on, guys. Fix it. It's just 5G. It's not like everybody on the plane doesn't already chipped with their 5G vaccinations anyway. Thank you, Bill Gates. So what's the holdup? Exactly. In the news.

And speaking of being chipped with your 5G COVID vaccine, the government's new website for ordering free COVID tests is out. It launched a day early in beta. And this is in the U.S. I know we have a lot of international listeners. What I find hilarious here in Canada, which has been so forward ahead of the U.S.

in terms of COVID response, you can't get a rapid test here. But the U.S. finally stepping up in year three and sending four free tests to everybody that basically signs up for it through the U.S. Postal Service. This is mostly notable because the government actually apparently made an easy-to-use, simple website, which has been unable to so far.

Yes, I used it. I ordered it. Here's the thing about these test kits. Now, there's four per home, per address. So, like, I can't order four and my roommate can't order four. It's just four per address. Yeah. And there's so many questions I have about this because, A, this is going to screw up the, you know, the testing numbers for, like, you know, government agencies.

Like, we get the numbers every day on how many people test positive. If you're testing at home, well, there's four opportunities right there not to get the numbers done. And at this point, it's like testing is kind of even, it's just so damn arbitrary right now. The science on Omicron seemed to be that the tests are hit or miss.

They're not that great. This is referring to the rapid tests, by the way. Yeah. Not the PCRs. Not the PCR tests. And again, the theory behind this, and the governments and the CDC have done such a horrible job of conveying the message and how it works. If you do a rapid test and you test positive, you are now supposed to go and get a PCR test, which the government is tracking.

Yeah. That's the way it's supposed to work, people. But, yeah, who knows? Anyway, let's get, here's the deal. The website's nice. It worked. Yes, it works. Send me my stupid test. There you go. Apple and Google, unsurprisingly, are opposing Senate antitrust efforts, claiming they'd hurt consumer security.

So this is the American Innovation and Choice Online Act and the Open App Markets Act, which the Senate Judiciary Committee is discussing this week. Apple says the bills put consumers in harm's way because of the real risk of privacy and security breaches.

The company specifically targets app side loading as a potential threat. So the bills are basically saying you can put anything you want on your own devices. Now, my response to Apple there is people don't have to sideload apps if they know it's not safe. Right. Right. I want to know what Google's argument is because they've been able to sideload and they're not, they're obviously, you know, not big about consumer security.

Well, Google doesn't have an argument. Google has a statement that means nothing. They say Google is able to protect billions of people around the world from cyber attacks because we bake security and privacy protections into our services. You know what else you bake into your services? Threats. Yeah.

I call balderdash on that one, sir. Balderdash. Yes. So we'll see what happens with that. A little NFT news. I know we're trying to step away from this, but this article was so goddamn funny. I just had to put it in here. Which celebrity has the saddest NFT?

And this is over at Slate. And I am not going to ruin this for anyone. It is, you need to go read it. It's Yanni, by the way, just in case you were wondering. I did like the last sentence of this. I like how you're not going to ruin it. It's Yanni. Well, I mean, it's in the URL. And the funny part is actually the writing of the story, not who it actually is.

So they lead with it. I'm not like throwing something out here. So the end of the article is, As for the future of the supposedly revolutionary advancement in brand monetization and speculation, the celeb NFT, the jury is out for all their high-tech aspirations. Yanni and crew have thus far separated at least 347 people from $40 of their money, racking up $13,880 of revenue for Yanni Inc.

Hopefully for both sides, the transaction was worth it. Nice. Nah, not so much. And just something that I overheard since we're all working from home, and this was a consortium of lawyers having a big conversation on Zoom from the music industry.

This is what I overheard and just made me laugh. A smart contract is not smart or a contract in anything we would even remotely consider a legal sense. At best, it's a hope that at some point any of this might even be slightly enforceable and somebody will see some money someday. Yeah, because, you know, just because you call a thing a thing doesn't make it a thing.

You know, it's not smart. It's not a contract. Just like lawyers agree. Yeah, like, exactly. Like, cryptocurrency is just chipped at a casino. Full self-driving? Definitely not. You know? But I do want to point out there's – I put a link in the show notes to an article over at Wild called, The Dune NFT Fiasco is the Least of Crypto's Legal Worries.

Oh, my God. I totally forgot about this story. This is one of the biggest ones I actually wanted to put in here, and I forgot. Yeah, such a great story. Such a great story. What a bunch of idiots. Yeah. No, yeah, those people are idiots. But this story actually goes even deeper into NFTs, and it's in the art world, and it's a really good read.

But, yeah, the Dune thing, Jesus Christ. Yeah, the TLDR on that is a bunch of people got together a shit ton of money to buy a copy of Dune, thinking that they now had the copyright to Dune. And they overpaid by 10x. It's ridiculous. Yeah, good times. Good times.

I know. It's stupid money. It is monopoly money for these kids. Yeah, it is. But governments are finally starting to step up a little bit to do something about it. The UK government has announced an official crackdown on misleading crypto ads. They want to update their laws to bring the promotion of crypto assets within the scope of financial promotions legislation, basically treating it like everything else.

Stocks, bonds, gold, oil, pigs, dirt, all the sorts of things that people invest in. Have you seen the pictures that people have been posting from the tube in London? It's basically all crypto ads everywhere. It's crazy.

Drive through downtown LA and go past the crypto.com arena. That's true. I mean, come on. That's true. So, yeah, they're trying to do something over in the UK, which is good. The Spanish government is currently establishing rules on how influencers and their sponsors will be promoting cryptocurrencies.

So, if you have more than 100,000 followers in the country, you must notify the National Securities Market Commission at least 10 days before plugging crypto assets. They'll face fines of up to 30,000 pounds, not too shabby, or euros, sorry, euros. Fucking world changes too much for breaching the rules, which comes into force on February 17th.

So, influencers will need to disclose if they're receiving payment for talking them up. If that's the case, they have to warn people and provide information about crypto assets and all that sort of stuff. The rules also cover companies that promote crypto assets as well as PR companies they hire, which is an interesting move.

Not just the person doing it, but the PR company that comes up with a campaign. Interesting. I just channeled Kara Swisher there. Interesting. Interesting. What do you think about that, Brian? I can't listen to it anymore.

I'm sorry. I totally ruined it for you with that, didn't I? All she says is interesting. And what do you think about that? What do you think about that? Yeah. That is the brilliant interviewer that is Kara Swisher. Meanwhile, Singapore's authorities ask crypto companies outright not to market their services to the public.

So, they're basically just banning it. French authorities fined a reality TV star 20,000 euros for misleading commercial practices over a Bitcoin trading site ad on Snapchat. And, of course, here in the U.S., Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather are named as defendants in a class action lawsuit that accuses them of taking part in pump-and-dump schemes.

So, it's finally good to see governments stepping up a little bit. Well, they're making the rules. The French are the only people that have actually fined somebody so far. So, we'll see how that goes. And here's the thing. So, the thing is, influencers and other advertisers with more than 100,000 followers, blah, blah, blah, face fines up to 300,000 euros, blah, blah, blah.

It should be – they should be a multiple of followers on this. So, you know, let's say – let's take 100,000 units as a – we'll call that a Kardashian. One Kardashian. Kartoshi. It'll be a kartoshi, like a Satoshi.

Right. And so, the fine is 300,000 euros. So, you multiply that kartoshi times the 300,000 euros, and then you should get the fine. I like that. I think that's how it works. I think that's how it should work, too. I like that. Yeah. Let's go with that. Let's call the internet police and run that past them.

Yes. The internet police. And now we need internet lawyers, too. So, let's get on that. Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Maybe. This has to be approved. This has to be approved. So, this will make the combined entity the third largest game company.

Entity. Game company by revenue, according to Microsoft, and would put titles like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush under the company's wing. They plan to add Activision Blizzard games to Game Pass as part of the deal, which is the real deal. That's what they want all this stuff for, because Microsoft Game Pass has now topped 25 million subscribers.

So, this is the all-you-can-eat pay whatever, I don't know how much money it is, $10 a month or something like that? I think mine's $19.95 for the gold. I think that's what it is. I've got it. I barely use it, but I'm a paying Game Pass subscriber. Yeah. Well, that is the real model.

That's the gym model, right? Get everybody to pay, and hopefully they barely use it. Well, the cool thing about it is you get free games every month that you can save. Some games rotate in and out. You don't get, like, you know, every game on the planet, but you do get a good enough amount of games that you can basically play nonstop without sleeping the entire month and have new games all the time.

Great. Same as Netflix. Yeah. Idiocracy in a nutshell, but there you go. 25 million subscribers now, which is a nearly 39% jump over the 18 million it had a year earlier. And obviously, this is a play to bump those numbers a lot because all the money is in the subscriptions. You know, I was thinking, like, this should definitely not get approved because it's, you know, they own the platform.

They own the game. Same issues as everything else. But when you look at who the competitors are, their next biggest competitor, even after this merger, would be Sony. Which owns the platform. Exactly. So it's like, you know, to stay competitive. And it's a bit hard to pass that or to say no to this when you look at, well, you've done shit about Amazon.

You've done shit about Facebook. They're all the same kind of thing. We're just allowing these monopolies and all these different verticals to go. And how are you going to say no to Microsoft now? Well, you know, there's speculation that this is going to be the test case to see if anybody has any teeth or any balls over at the FTC.

Right. You know, honestly, I don't care if this one goes through or not. As long as they get the CEO of Activision out, which is on the board, you know, once he gets transferred over, he'll take his, you know, titanium umbrella and head off into the sunset. Yeah. So, which is good, which is what needs to happen.

He needs to get the hell out. But, yeah, I mean, I couldn't care less if this goes through or not. I love my Xbox. Whatever. If I get better games and can save 60 bucks a year on Call of Duty, I'm in. I'm in. Right. So, I saw this one and I just, I don't know what to think anymore.

This is up there with when Instagrammers were getting plastic surgery to look like they're filters and snappers. It's called Bring in the Clones. Instagrammers are genetically replicating their pets. Okay. So, there's a trend now with influencers who have, you know, famous pets on Instagram is that they're cloning them.

Pet fluencers. Their pet fluencers are cash cow clones, as I like to call them. Out of all of the pets that should have been cloned but were not, I look back fondly to our show mascot, Tard, the grumpy cat. Grumpy cat.

If there was one animal that I would have been okay with cloning, that would have been tarred. But nope, nope, we got to get all these twats with their pets. That's it. And it's not cheap. It's $35,000 to $50,000 depending on the pet.

So, and some people are getting multiples and handing out the puppies, as I don't know. There's some key quotes in here that I particularly liked. One of the women that did it, I got a lot of crap about cloning. People say I have zombie dogs or they call me a crazy rich girl.

It was hurtful to me at first. But then I realized I'm a rich girl. She didn't say that last part, but I'm adding the unspoken part there. Exactly. Yeah, you are a crazy rich girl. And then here at the end, again, the same girl. The biggest thing for me was to have her legacy carry on and continue the bloodline.

I was not in a good place at the time. I figured it would be something that would heal my heart a bit. If only nature had provided a way for legacies to carry on and continue bloodlines. I know. If that just wasn't, you know, if that just wasn't built into the spec. Plus this thing called evolution.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I love my dog. I love Bam Bam to death. She is my pride and my joy, but I don't want another one of her. You know, when she goes, she goes. That's the way it should be because it's not the same dog. Clones aren't the same dog. And I've seen Pet Sematary.

We know how this ends with a Ramones song.

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Media candy. I watched the latest season of The Witcher. It was fine. I found that the first two seasons, I actively watched it. This last season, I was on my phone, and it was on in the background.

Okay. Yeah. Sums that up. The Expanse wrapped up. I would have happily taken more. I was fine with how it ended. The only reason I would have taken more is they killed off Marco, which I hated his whole storyline. It would have been nice to have more story without Marco in it at the end.

Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, I'm sad it's gone. I'm sure there will be many campaigns to bring back The Expanse, but they kind of buttoned it up. So, I don't see what's happening. It's done. It's fine. It's fine. Let it go. Let it go.

Let it go. Reboot it in 15 years like they're doing with BSG. Oh, they are? Oh, yeah. It's coming. Oh, no. It's the Mr. Robot guy. Sam, whatever. Oh, no. No. Oh, God. Okay. We go from Ron Moore to that guy. Jesus.

They're both bad. How do you pick? Shit for shit. Yeah. Yeah. Not shit. Encanto. Charming. Delightful. Really picked me up when I was feeling pretty bad. It is one of the best Disney movies in recent years. I think I only like Moana more.

Okay. We'll get to that one. They have a huge hit song that's come out of this. We don't talk about Bruno, which has been the worst earworm I've ever had in my life. I sit here and try to work, and I just start singing the song in my head. It is phenomenal. And there's a really good article that gets into exactly why it's so phenomenal, and it's worth a read and in our show notes.

Yeah, it is an interesting read. I didn't actually like the song, so. It grows on you, man. It grows on you. No, it won't. It won't, because I'll never play it again. Okay. Fair enough. If I hear it one more time, it'll be If I Watch Encanto, which is a very big if right now. It's good, man.

It's really good. All right. Speaking of series ending, Ray Donovan ended abruptly right when COVID started, and they're like, ah, we're not going to make any more. And after a huge outcry, they're like, okay, okay, okay, we'll make you a movie. And they didn't, I mean, it came out of the blue. I never heard anything about it.

Then one day, an ad popped up, and it's like, hey, Ray Donovan, the movie starts tomorrow. I'm like, okay, so watched it. It wrapped up the series nicely, put a bow on it, felt very rushed, very much like the last season of The Expanse, but it did the job. Right.

It did the job that I wanted it to do. So, yeah, it was good. It was good. If you're a Ray Donovan fan, you definitely want to watch this. I wouldn't put it up there with a Deadwood movie, which is the, you know, the ultimate way to end a series, unlike Game of Thrones. What?

You don't think BSG's The Plan did a good job? They called it The Plan, and there was no plan? There was no plan. It was just what we found out about? Yeah. Okay. I still don't mind the ending on BSG as much as you do. And I watched, I finished this up last night, Station 11 on HBO Max.

I watched the first episode, and it gave me PTSD. Yeah, it can do that. It can definitely do that. But for me, being stuck here, and the thing is, it's a very slow burn. It's a very slow burn show, 10 episodes long.

For my brain, in its current state of evolution, it is exactly what I needed. Cool. And because it's like very slow shots. I can't watch anything that has jittery cut shots. You know, if I watched, like, The Born Identity 2, I would be in the hospital again, because it's just too spastic.

Stuff like shaky cam stuff, I cannot watch. Even cooking shows that they move the camera too fast make me nauseous. So you don't want to watch The Blair Witch tomorrow? No. That would be bad. Okay. That would be very bad. Although, I have to, to my credit, I was the only one in the theater that didn't puke when I saw The Blair Witch.

I wanted to puke from the smell, but I was the only one in my group that didn't puke. I recommend Station Eleven. It actually has a really good arc. There will be no more. It was just based on a book. So a nice limited series. And I thought it started, it definitely started a little rough.

There's some PTSD in there, but you can get past that. And the story, I thought, was phenomenal, and the acting was phenomenal. So for me, I give it like an eight, eight and a half. Cool. I'll stick with it then. Awesome. There you go. And we have a bunch of Star Trek news that came out. The fourth season of Star Trek Discovery is set to come back from a hiatus on February 10th, and they have announced a fifth season for the series in which the entire universe will get feelings and need to be consoled.

You have to have a singularity for just the Kleenex to come through from the alternate universe so everybody can have a good cry. I mean, first, there's just the freaking crew needs to cry it out. Then the ship needs to cry it out. Now it's going to be the universe. That's a stupid, stupid show.

If Star Trek starts going to... Star Trek Picard Season 2 is premiering March 3rd. New episodes of the 10-episode season will drop each Thursday. Star Trek Strange New Worlds, which is the show I have the greatest hope for right now since the Star Trek Picard trailer is giving me pause and making me worry.

So we'll see about that one. That will premiere May 5th. New episodes of the 10-episode season will drop on Thursdays as well. Way to make sure I keep my subscription going. They are just stringing these things out perfectly. But after Strange New Worlds runs, I will probably cancel because Star Trek...

Well, I don't know. I like Star Trek Lower Decks. Season 3 is returning this summer for 10 episodes. Damn it! All right. Finally, when Star Trek Prodigy Season 2 or Part 2 will be available later in 2022, I will drop my subscription. There we go. Okay, so Prodigy is the one that is like the Nickelodeon one?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the shitty one. Yeah. What's Strange New Worlds? I don't know that one. Strange New Worlds is going to be the original. It's got Rebecca Romijn in it. I can't remember the name of the lead character. Anson Maut or something like that. It's Captain Pike, pre-Kirk, running the ship, running the old school enterprise.

I'm in. I'm in for that then. That I'm definitely in for. Picard, we're going to see, I think, the Sopranosification. You know, Picard is going to start seeing his therapist while he goes back in time. Well, his therapist is cute. I mean, that's basically going to be the plot.

Yeah. You got me on that one. You got me on that one. Yeah. And in other news, I saw this on Jonathan Frakes' Instagram stories. Lower Decks is definitely coming back for Season 3, but it has been picked up for Season 4 as well. Okay, cool. So that's not going anywhere, which is good. I mean, like I said, that got better and better and funnier and funnier.

Oh, they saved that. Yeah. Yeah, they saved that. See, I want to know why the team at Lower Decks listened to everybody kvetch about Season 1 and how terrible it was. They fixed it in Season 2. But nobody likes Discovery, and they can't seem to fix it but just keep making it worse.

Well, we say no one likes Discovery, and I think a lot of Star Trek fans don't like Discovery. But it is the most streamed show on Paramount+. What else is there to fucking watch on Paramount+. This is like them saying on day one we had a record download day because they went from zero to one.

I don't believe anything that comes out of their stats department. I'm sorry. Okay. And I do have to give a shout out to a podcast this week called The Stroke Cast. It's not a gay porn show. No, it is not. It is not a masturbatory show. But it is, if you are recovering from a stroke, it is fucking key because you get to hear other people's stories.

And it's really good. And the guy who hosts it is really funny. I like him. So definitely, if you're in that boat with me and, you know, hundreds of thousands of other people every year, it's well worth a listen. Link is in the show notes.

Apps and doodads. We had quite a few people write in about my conundrum with Magnet and the window size location apps for Mac. And let's see, Klepto wrote in and said, try Stay by Cordless Dog, which I gave it a shot and I didn't really care for it.

It still didn't seem to do exactly what I needed to do. And then both Cal and Jerry wrote in about a ManyTricks app called Moom, which does do the trick. And I now have installed and purchased. Yep, I got it too. $9.99 on the App Store, the Mac App Store. I guess you can buy it from their site too.

It does exactly what it says on the tin. I set up my podcast Windows frame and I brought it up right before we started recording and everything's in its right place. And then I have my normal work window setting, which I can pop into. And then I've got my fucking around and just surfing window set.

And it's great. It's awesome. Yeah, what's really nice about it is too, is it has monitor detection. So you can have different sets for different monitors, which is what I have. Yep. So it's really nice because I got that big curved Samsung monitor that we both work on. So that has a lot more pixels on it. So my windows go in a different layout.

And then when I go in the house, I work on a 27-inch retina monitor that is not curved and much smaller. And I have a different window set for that. And it works beautifully. Works beautifully. It's well worth the $10. Yep, agreed. It's a great app. So thanks, everybody, for writing in.

Barrett wrote in and said, Great sight to get past Paywall's 12-foot ladder. Which I think we've talked about on the show before. I don't remember this one. It's the first time I saw this one. Okay. Well, there you go. We could have talked about it 30 times and I still wouldn't remember. That's true. So we'll go with my memory over yours right now.

I'm pretty sure we talked about this. So, yeah, it does what it says on the tin. But remember, support journalists. The first time I used it, it did not work for me. I tried to use it on the Financial Times to read an article just as a test. Oh, really? And no, it doesn't work. Okay.

Well, it doesn't work for everybody then or for every site. Yeah. No, it's good. It's good to have in your back pocket. But most of the sites that I go to with paywalls, I actually pay for now. So that's the way that goes. Before we were talking about stroke things in Media Candy, it turns out on most of the boards that I've been on, on my Facebook boards, everybody is saying that the Oculus Quest 2 is really helping them with their recovery.

And, you know, with hand-eye coordination and things like that and general stuff. So I bit the bullet because I have a Quest 1 and a friend of the show, Fogarty, and his wife, Stacy, just bought Quest 2s for each other. They both got them for Christmas so they can sit around their apartment, both with the headsets on.

So, yeah, picture that one. And I'll be here joining them as well with my Quest 2. I got it. I tried it. Since my eyes have kind of come back into alignment physically now, I can actually wear it and use it. It is an upgrade from the Quest 1. I'll give it that. I did have to create a new Facebook account to link it to my Oculus account to make it work.

Yes, I know, but whatever. The resolution is better. The field of view is a little better. The sound is better. And I got the Pro headset, headstrap, which makes all the difference in the world. It is so much more comfy.

And I got the case for it, too, which is like this big foamy or like it's like a carpeted egg. And it's like 60 bucks for this case, right? Fits everything perfectly. I'm happy with the case itself. They put a six-cent zipper on this thing. It is terrible.

The zipper is god-awful. I thought it was broken when I first got it because I couldn't get it to go. And I had to just keep going back and forth and finally got to pop. And then half the time when I open and close it, it gets stuck. Man, they skimped on that. They really skimped on that. But everything else is like really well built. I was quite surprised.

And I got an Indiegogo campaign funded that I forgot about a long time ago. This is a triple 4K display dock for the MacBook Pro. It's basically this long, thin bar with two USB-C cables that curve up and click into your laptop.

And then it's got, you know, standard stuff on the back for multiple, multiple, multiple ports and multiple monitors. And I got this because it's not powered. You don't have to get a power brick, which I thought was very interesting. It's well built.

It is sitting here on the desk next to me because I haven't gotten it to work yet because my current monitor works on USB-C. And has a bunch of stuff plugged into it. And this does not use monitors that work on USB-C. I have to use HDMI or DisplayPort. So I don't have a cable for that right now.

So it is sitting here on my desk looking at me going, nice one, dude. Nice one. Yeah. I also picked up the Rode VideoMic Go 2. This is a cool little microphone. It's based on the platform for the Rode VideoMic NTG. Now, the difference here is the Rode VideoMic NTG is $249 and the new VideoMic Go is $99.

So I'm like, hmm, that sounds like a win. And it is powered. I didn't know this was a thing, Brian. You're an audio guy from long ago, so you can tell me about this. You know, mini plugs, 3.5 millimeter mini plugs. Yep. Like, you know, just headphone jack type of stuff.

I didn't know those could have power in them. They can. It's not good. But it works for low power situations, yeah. It works great because, you know, this is a shotgun microphone. Yep. And it needs power to run. And you used to have to put in either a AA or a 9-volt battery.

Like in the old Rode VideoMic Pros, I got a box of 9-volt batteries just for that thing, which is a pain in the ass. This actually is powered by that mini plug from my camera, from my Nikon Z7 II, which is great. Yep. But it also has a USB-C connection on it, too, which is cool.

Because then you can plug it into your phone to power it. But you, and here's what I found out. This is another thing I didn't know about as far as cables go. USB-C to lightning cables. Did you know that there are two types? Yes, there are. It's very annoying and confusing. Yeah, I did not know that there were power only and power plus sync.

Yes. So I did get a power plus sync cable so I can, like, actually put it on my, put a mount, put, you know, put it in a little cage on my phone and use it that way, too. The long and the short of it is, I had the Rode VideoMic Pro for a couple years. I barely use it because it sounded so shitty.

If you take it off, it's basically a cardboard tube with a little, you know, microphone module at the end. Sounds like garbage. This thing is a real nice shotgun mic and it sounds incredible. It really does sound incredible. And for 99 bucks, you just cannot go wrong with it.

So if you're doing video and you want good audio, definitely look into this thing. It's brand new and with everything Rode, check where you buy it from because their stuff is knocked off so much, they don't do a lot of warranty stuff if you buy it from Amazon.

So you have to be very careful. Like I got bit with those Rode Podcaster mics. I got knockoffs and those things fell apart. So at least I hope they were knockoffs because if they were true Rode microphones, talk about shitty build quality is all I'm saying. But for now, this works great.

All right. And I threw this story in just because we always bang on about this and we did earlier in the show as well. Words have meaning and they're supposed to mean something. Big change at Reddit. Reddit is revamping its block feature so that blocking on Reddit functions more like other social platforms, i.e.

actually blocks people. Oh, it didn't block before? That may sound obvious, but up until now, blocking on Reddit has been more like a mute feature in that it only worked one way. Oh. That made the feature particularly ineffectual for people dealing with harassment or other forms of abuse as blocking didn't do anything to prevent the person from interacting with your posts.

Now, it will. Thanks, Reddit. Thanks for Reddit for actually making your block, I don't know, block. Was that in the SEC filing that they had to do before they went public? Probably. Probably.

At the library. So, Brian, since I can't watch a lot of things, I've been trying to listen to more audiobooks. And I've been listening to Aftermath by LeVar Burton. It's his first novel. It's a sci-fi novel, of course. Of course. And, you know, of course, it's very dystopian, which is what I need right now.

I need apocalypse and dystopia to get me through the day because it makes me feel better. Because, you know, you can't just look out the window. Well, my needs come from a different place. Yes. It's not so much COVID-based. It's internal instead of external. But I'm halfway through it, and I love it so far.

I love it so far. It's really well written. I love the characters. It is definitely better than Brent Spiner's book as far as character development goes. And I really like Brent Spiner's book. So that should give you a tip on what I'm thinking of LeVar's book. I recommend picking it up so far. I can't tell you anything about the ending because I haven't gotten there yet.

Look, LeVar Burton is the thinking man geek's Oprah. I will support anything this man does. Yep. Absolutely. And because I was trying to see if the other side of things worked, I picked up Humankind, A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman, Erica Moore, and Elizabeth Manton.

It is a very hopeful book. It is a very big pick-me-up book. And it says people are not as bad as everybody thinks they are, and they have data to prove it. I don't give a fuck. I want the world to burn right now. So give me Aftermath. Give me Station Eleven. I really don't care about your happy shit.

That's why I probably will not watch your Disney movie, Brian. I just don't care. All right. I'm probably going to just go watch Schindler's List on loop, and that will make me feel better. Okay. When you're ready for Encanto, it is waiting for you. Okay. Yeah. When I snap back to the other side. Termination Shock by Neil Stevenson.

I am halfway through this 700-page short story, because everything so far could have been written in 10 pages that I care about. I'm also about halfway through. I've been muddling through this book. I think I've drawn a line in the sand.

I'm going to finish this book one way or another. Oh, it's past the point of no return now. It must be finished. It must be finished. I'm still waiting for it to kick into gear. I agree. Everything that I've read through so far could have been one chapter, even though it's been, what, what's half of 700?

30. 350 pages. So I'm really struggling with Neil Stevenson. I can't call him one of my favorite authors anymore, because now I've gotten to about half his output I can't stand. Yeah.

I mean, this is the problem. It's like with him, Daniel Suarez, who I loved his first two books, and then everything else after. Like, did not like. They've been okay. Right. Yeah, it's just, this is not happy, good stuff. Yeah. I mean, I still think Diamond Ages is best novel.

Yeah, and of the recent stuff, Redmi, or however you're supposed to pronounce it, was good. Rindy. And I loved Seven Eves, obviously. That was great. But those are the only two in, like, the last, what, 10 years that I've liked? Yeah. It all started going bad with Cryptonomicron.

Hated that book. Series. Yeah, I love that book. They're good, but they're good, like, if you're short, put them in the kitchen, because you can step on them and reach things on the top. Well, yeah, Cryptonomicon was pretty, pretty long. But, I mean, it was no Baroque cycle.

Come on. Oh, God. Now, the Baroque cycle. Okay, that was horrible. That was, I listened to the whole thing, all, like, 92 hours of it. So, yeah, that is a couple weeks I won't get back. I literally drove across the country a couple times listening to it, and I still couldn't finish it in the drive.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, expect no at the libraries for a while as we muddle through this crap. Security? Ha! Dave Bittner is back. Dave is the host of the Cyberware podcast, co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, and co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy and surveillance and privacy.

Hello. Good to be back. Excellent. So, let's start off with the most important thing, which is, Jason, how's it going? Oh, wait. I was going to say. Thank you, Brian. I figured that was coming. Yeah, it's the one of us who's known Jason longer.

How is it going, Jason? I've already talked to him for 45 minutes. Come on. I know. I know. I know. You feel like you're making progress? Bring me up to date. I've been thinking about you a lot. Here's the fun part about a stroke. It's the gift that keeps on giving. It is the gift that keeps on giving, yes.

So, I was feeling great that first couple weeks, and what I realized was I went to 0% to 50% really, really fast. And I was like, yes, this is great. Life is good, you know. That stroke sampler, I've almost finished it up, and I'm going to be on my merry way. Well, it turns out 0% to 50% did go quick.

50% to 51% has taken, well, I haven't even gotten to 51% yet. Yeah, it's not a linear process recovery, much like weight loss. It is not. It is not. You plateau, you break through plateaus, yeah. Well, weight loss is one thing I have got on lockdown now, because the one thing that really, you know, because I can't think very well during the day, because I can't sleep at night, there's all sorts of things that happen to stroke brain, but cooking for me

has become the one thing that I can do in the morning for like, you know, two hours that is calming, I can focus on, I have to go very slowly so I don't cut my arms off, but it is actually quite enjoyable. And through this, I've actually put together some scripts, and we're going to start shooting a cooking show next week.

Oh, nice. Which is basically kind of a hybrid, me just dicking around in the kitchen and explaining how I'm taking recipes that I once was able to eat and figuring out how to make them stroke friendly. Right. Because I basically can't have, you know, anything that is delicious anymore.

So I have to figure out new and exciting ways to get rid of salt and cholesterol. And the funny thing is, here's a weight loss trick that is, you know, going to be basically key to the show. If you can get your diet under 1,000 milligrams of salt per day, you can eat anything you want and you will still lose weight.

I'm on a linear progression of weight loss. I started the stroke at 222, I'm now at 208. Wow. On a straight linear progression, not going too fast, not going too slow. But it is basically, when it came down to it, cutting salt to 1,000 milligrams a day, if you figure out what those foods are, you can eat till you explode and you will still lose weight.

Right. Interesting. Mm-hmm. So it could be the strokey gourmet. We have a name for the show, which I'll tell you after the show, which is pretty damn good. Okay, good. Better than strokey gourmet? It is.

It actually is. It is. Yes, our friend Brian and I, my mutual friend Brian, is the one that came up with the name and I just love it and I checked it out and nobody's done it yet, which is amazing for a cooking show on YouTube.

It's like, come on, everything has to have been taken. Well, our mutual friend Brian is a trained comedian. I think he went through Groundlings, so he should come up with something funny. Yes, he's extremely funny. He's a professional funny man. Ah, all right. Yes, he's pretty good.

I gotta say. Unlike us amateur funny men. That's right. Yes, we are just passing through the world of funny. Right. So hopefully he will be joining me on the show as cameraman and a food taster, which will be fun. Yeah. And in preparation for one day being able to leave the house, I actually went and bought concert tickets for April Fool's Day of all places, at all times.

Oh, hmm. And it's funny because I'm going to go see a band called Jawbreaker, who broke up, you know, 20 years ago. Actually, almost 25 years ago because it's the 25th anniversary tour of their last album. And a friend of the show Fogarty actually pointed out, he's like, if you had told me 20 years ago that on April Fool's Day, 2022, I'd be in the middle of a pandemic going to see Jawbreaker in Los Angeles, I'd have told you you were a crazy man.

But that's it. But sadly, on the Jawbreaker news, I bought tickets for April 1st, got great seats, mezzanine first row because I'm not a savage and I'm old and I like to oversee the punk rock show. You have to be not too close to the speaker stacks. Exactly.

I want to see the action, but I do not want to partake of the action. Right. The show sold out so fast that they added a second night with one of my other favorite bands in the world that I've never seen live. So I have to go see them twice in a row now. So I have to get better quick.

I have to get better quick. And when I got my seats for the second night, I got almost the exact same seats. I got lucky enough that that first row mezzanine was still open. You can leave a flask for the next day. Oh, wait. You can't drink anymore. I can't drink. A flask of tea.

Yes. Hey, actually, today is the day that I, a month ago today, I went in the hospital. So I am a month sober today. All right. Congratulations. Yeah. Yeah. Heck of a way to get there, right? Yeah. Here's the funny part. I don't, I don't miss it. One, one bit. I don't have any desire to have a drink at all because I feel drunk all the time anyway.

You know, I can't speak. My equilibrium is off. I stumble around like a drunken sailor anyway. Yeah. And you've always made questionable decisions whether sober or drunk. So there you go. And, you know, I was getting my poor impulse control under control until the stroke hit.

Now it's out the window. So I just, I, my, my lovely tongs that I, my pride and joy are all bent to, bent to shit now because I burned my hand the other day and threw them against the wall with vim and vigor, as it were, and bent them in half. So you're living your best life.

No, no holds barred, not holding back. That's pretty much it. Out there making the most of every moment. Good for you. That's all that I can do at this point. Yeah. Because it's that, that's it. And, and, and since I do have so much time and I'm up at all hours, thanks to the insomnia, I was taking the dogs out about three in the morning the other day.

And I noticed a Chevy Silverado was kind of casing the neighborhood at three in the morning. I'm like, Hmm. Okay. And I remembered on the neighborhood app on ring, people had been saying that, uh, in the mornings there has been a Chevy Silverado in different parts of the neighborhood. And there's usually a crew on foot that they're spotting for, and they're trying to break into people's cars.

So me being a good netizen, I jumped onto, uh, the neighborhood app and, uh, said, Hey guys, if you're in this part of the neighborhood, the Chevy Silverado is back. If you're awake, go make sure your cars are locked. So I got a notice from neighbors or the neighborhood app.

And, uh, they said, your post was reviewed by a member of our team and it was not approved. Neighbors posts are intended to help the community stay informed about safety related incidents. Previously, this type of content was allowed on neighbors. However, we have made changes to be more selective while posts must relate to crime and safety.

Not every crime or safety or, or not every crime or every safety event can be posted. For more information, please review, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So if you happen to be in Bel Air and posted, there is an African American man walking up and down the street at three in the morning, I have a feeling that would get through and get approved.

That would, you'd have to go on the other one for that. That's the other app. Yeah. Why do you suppose they rejected your post though? What do you think made, triggered that? I have no idea. Cause this is a post that everybody's been making. So maybe other people like marked theirs, like flagged theirs talking about that.

Or maybe the guy with the Chevy Silverado is actually on there and flagging it. Hang on a second. And we are surprised by a social network making arbitrary decisions about politics. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I really should have just posted this on Nextdoor and I'd have been fine.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. All right. You guys would get a kick out of that. That is funny. That is. No, that's, that's good. I think you need to turn this into an experiment and just start making shit up to post to see what flies and what doesn't. That's true. I am anonymous. That's right. Everybody, you're not going to believe this, but this morning at three in the morning, I saw a kangaroo running down the middle of the street.

It was wearing boxing gloves. It was going from car to car and punching out the windows. Just a heads up. Just a heads up, guys. Be on the lookout for a kangaroo. Kind of looks like a giant mouse. What's funny is I do know somebody who had an illegal kangaroo in the neighborhood. Of course you do.

Of course you do. Right. Of course you do. Oh, it is LA. Black market kangaroo. Yes, it was a black market kangaroo. And you wouldn't know who it was. They're very famous. Had that kangaroo. All right. Let's move on to Boba Fett now.

Bootleggo sent this in. If you guys haven't heard this before, you should. Especially Dave. And this is a YouTube video. Fett's Vet 2021 music video featuring MCQ. Chris. Yeah. Love it. I watched it. Love it. It was wonderful. Yeah. My backpacks got jets. I love it.

I also thought to myself, I have never been more interested in the possibility of owning a Corvette than in the moment after I watched this video. Because in this video, there is someone who has taken their Corvette and painted it to look like Boba Fett's helmet, Boba Fett's colors and, you know, scraped up and dinged up and everything.

And, you know, it kind of works. Yeah. It kind of works to have a Boba vet. A Boba vet. Yep. Got to say it. Yeah. Yeah. So the latest episode, it was fine. And I did just want to touch on this. I probably shouldn't. Are you guys going to do spoilers?

Because I'm going to have to take my headphones off. I haven't seen it yet. There is. Well, yeah, I guess this is sort of a spoiler. So go ahead and take your head. Nah, I'll take one for the team because I really don't care about the show. It's all flashbacks and we know he gets his ship back.

But they renamed the ship from Canon. It is no longer the Slave One, which is what it has always been called. I had the Slave One toy as a young child. They have called it now the Fire Spray Gunship. So this is the new name for the Slave One because it's Disney and we can't use the word slave.

Here's the problem I have with this and here's where I sometimes almost, I wouldn't say I would order a MAGA hat or wear one. But sometimes I understand where the frustrations can kind of come from. Disney is renaming Canon because of the word slave, yet had no problems showing slaves in all the movies.

What do you think the stormtroopers were in the recent ones? They were all slaves. They were all captured children that were brought into servitude for the Empire. What do you think those little kids, the kid with the broomstick that was supposed to show that anybody could become a Jedi in the end of that last movie? They were slaves. They were slave kids.

You have no problem having slaves in the universe, but you can't use the word slave one. Right. The Wookiees and the Spice Mines. Yeah, exactly. There are slaves littered all over Star Wars and even the recent ones made by Disney. But we can't call the ship what it's always been called.

Well, you know, next episode it will be Woka Fet. So, Woka Fet. Where we're going. And the Wookiees instead of the Wookiees. Yeah. You know, first of all, I was not aware that there had been this renaming. I guess I didn't have so much of a problem with the name kind of fading away.

Yeah. And not being front and center. And those of us who... You just don't name it. Yeah. Yeah. Just don't say the name. All of us know what it is called. And you don't have to say it anymore. But we all, all of us from the old days, we know what it's called. But to rename it, yeah, that's too far for me.

I don't like that at all. If they were, it should have been the Boba Vette. It should have been. The reason for the actual need for a new name is, of course, merchandise. Because you can't just put out a box that says ship. Well, but Lego has been doing that for a couple of years now.

Yeah. Well, that's how we knew about the renaming. Because of toys and all that sort of stuff. So, we knew it was coming. But this is the first time it was actually made canon. My son, Jack, got a Boba Fett ship for Christmas, a Lego. And it was just called Boba Fett's ship.

Okay. There you go. They should have just left it at that, really. Yeah, exactly. I'm okay with that. Well, anyway, I enjoyed this episode. I thought it was fun. Yeah. I'm interested to see where it's going. It seems like we've turned a bit of a corner here.

We're not going to be doing so many flashbacks. And I'm a little confused with some of the timeline, where this is happening versus when Return of the Jedi ended and how long exactly was he in the Sarlacc pit and all that kind of stuff. But I'm going to try not to overthink all that and just enjoy the ride and that we're getting some good Star Wars week by week.

And I can enjoy that with my family and just be happy for that. Yes, indeed. And my son, who is still too young to have really watched the movies, he's getting there. But he has the little golden books of all the stories, which he really likes.

And he is fascinated by the Sarlacc and has been asking me for months now, how does Boba Fett get out of the Sarlacc? And I have the answer, but I just can't show it to him yet because he's still not old enough for any of this. So he will have to wait a bit longer, but I'm excited. I will say, Brian, I don't know if you had this moment as well, but there was a moment in the show, I'll try to make this spoiler free, where there was a very specific sound effect that was used.

Yes. And I turned to my son and my son turned to me and we both went, yeah, that was pretty cool. That was nice, nicely done. Nicely done. It was. It was well done. So I assume it's not the Wilhelm scream?

No. No. Although that's another one. My son and I always look at each other when we hear that one. We look at each other and go, Wilhelm. But yeah. No, I think you'll enjoy it as well, Jason. Yeah. All right. It was good. You guys did see the tweet about the smiley face on the back of the ship?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I mean, come on. It's a smiling slave. As much as I love his ship. Well, it's a very happy slave. It's an iron. It's an iron. It's an iron. Yeah. That's true. It's a clothes iron. That's, you know, but it's still cool because it's Boba Fett.

Yeah. All right. All right. And other follow up. Mike writes in, hey, grumps, as a tip on casual prepping, try the following podcast, the Casual Preppers podcast. They also have a Facebook group. Keep grumping. Sincerely, Mike from Denmark. And we got a lot more rational prepper advice coming in via our Twitter and Discord.

So, Dave, you might have to dip into that Discord and get buried in an avalanche of furry gifs when you do so. It's like, isn't casual prepper an oxymoron? Yeah, kind of. I mean, you know, laissez-faire. Yeah, I've got some water.

Maybe I'll get a blanket. I'm good. We're good here, right? I'm good. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think I got some AA batteries in a drawer somewhere. Some jerky. Some jerky around. Yeah. Jason, are you going to be following up? Are you going to be actually putting stuff down?

When my brain works again, I started to write some stuff down, but it's just I don't have the mental capacity to get to that just yet. So, at some point in the future, yeah, yeah, not rushing it, not rushing it. It's not like we're coming up against, you know, the end of the world or anything.

So, just take your time. It's fine. It's fine. Yeah. It's fine. Yeah. All right. So, we do actually have a little bit of security news here. We'll get to that, too. Israeli police have employed the NSO group's Pegasus spyware to extract data from phones belonging to Israeli citizens, according to an investigation by one of the country's business publications.

Police reportedly used the software to target a number of individuals, including politicians and members of an activist group that had called for the removal of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I always stumble over his name. I don't know why. Netanyahu. Yeah. According to the report, this was done without court supervision, claimed both police and public officials deny, of course.

So, this is a month after Reuters found the Pegasus spyware had been used to target at least nine U.S. State Department officials. They do – the NSO group has released a statement. We would like to clarify that the company does not operate the systems in its customers' possession and is not involved in their operation, meaning we sell it to you.

Now, what you do with it is your own business. It's a Smith & Wesson model. Yes. Yeah, this Pegasus spyware is the gift that keeps on giving and it's not going to surprise me to see that – this is going to have a long tail of – I don't know, nation states being embarrassed when it is revealed that they too were using this for their own purposes.

So, I suppose in one case, why not? You know, for espionage, it's an espionage tool. Yeah. But you got to keep – got to keep your eyes on this stuff. Stay vigilant. And I don't remember exactly how that panned out with the U.S. federal employees who were stationed in Uganda or whose work involved the African country.

But I am assuming that they had American phone numbers or phones with them. So, if that's the case, NSO has claimed its software can't target devices linked to American and Israeli phone numbers. That appears to not be true. So, we need to take any statement the group makes with a large grain of salt too big for Jason to eat.

Yeah. My understanding is that for the State Department folks, they actually did have local phone numbers and so that is why they were allowed to be targeted. Local to the country that they were in, that's what NSO Group has said anyway.

But to your point, yes, that NSO Group says a lot of things. Well, I had one story here that I thought was interesting for us. This comes from the Hacker News and it's about Europol shutting down a VPN provider. They shut down VPN Lab, which evidently was used by a lot of malicious actors deploying ransomware and other cyber crimes.

Europol took down a bunch of their servers and basically shut them down. They said about 100 businesses have been identified as being at risk of impending cyber attacks. So, interesting to see a VPN company shut down because of the people who were making use of their services.

I suppose it seems as though VPN Lab had made a name for themselves as being a provider that was willing to look the other way. Unfortunately, it's also one of the few VPNs that still worked with Netflix. So, that's a sad thing. Oh, really?

Interesting. It's actually true. Netflix has really cracked down recently and I've had to actually switch VPN providers a few times to continue to get my U.S. Netflix while I'm here. Oh, interesting. So, there's a lot of whack-a-mole going on in the VPN world these days.

It's interesting. Yeah, it's the fact that they were basically kind of seen as the VPN of choice if you wanted to do horrible stuff is pretty funny. There is another way to do that. You don't actually need a commercial VPN provider.

You can spin up an Amazon EC2 instance and install your own VPN on it and actually connect to that and use that to bounce your traffic. And then you can just get the elastic IP addresses and change them whenever you want. So, if you want to do it yourself, there is an easy way to do it. And it's fairly cheap because it doesn't have to be up all the time.

You can just pop it up when you want to spin up an instance and check out a movie for a couple hours. It'll cost you a couple cents to do that. The problem with Netflix is that they've actually devoted quite a lot of resources recently to sorting out the pools of IP addresses used by the bigger VPNs and blocking them. Right, but this isn't a VPN.

I'm saying this is an Amazon EC2 instance. So, you're using the Amazon Elastic IP. So, there's so many of them. They're not going to be blocking that pool, I believe. Hmm, interesting. It's worth a shot. You use that word easy. You keep using that word. I do not think that means what you think it means.

It actually is fairly easy. It is fairly easy. Well, Jason, but what if, for example, one of our listeners was searching for a quality VPN? Is there a place that they could find out about that? Let me reach back into the far recesses of my brain and, oh, there it is, gog.show.vpn to get your VPN needs.

That's right. Don't ever let it be said that I am not a team player. Yes, you are, sir. All right, guys. I think that'll do it for this week. Until next time, I'm going to be cruising around in my BobaVet. BobaVet. Closing shout outs.

Over at Patreon, we'd like to welcome Doc and Kevin. Welcome aboard, guys, gals. Thank you. And over at PayPal, we've got Edward, Dagg, Nathaniel, John, Tom, Pedro, Michael, Ramsey, John, Andrew, Tom. A couple Johns and Toms. Michelle, Michael. A couple Michaels. And Alex, who says, hi, Jason, I hope your recovery goes well and you are back up and running normally in no time.

I just donated $10 on PayPal to help with your bills. I hope it makes a small dent. And I guess we need to decide what our cutoff for the whales is, Jason. Should we say $50? Sure. Okay. So whales at $50, we've got Frode and Anthony. At $100, we've got Jonathan.

And at $150, we've got Rafal. Thank you all so much. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Kaiser Permanente. Thanks you very much. Over at Stripe, we've got Robert, Robert, Robert, Robert, Robert, Robert, Karen and Sean. All right. Thanks, guys, so, so much.

And a big shout out this week, of course, to everybody who's been talking to me on the Twitters and the Discords and the video game chats and the emails and the telephones and every place else. Thank you all very much for keeping me somewhat perked up. I appreciate it.

In those in-between times when I'm not watching or reading about the apocalypse. Or sleeping. Or sleeping. Or cooking. Cooking. I cook most. But that's, yeah. Go ahead. Let's get out of here. All right. Until next time, I'm Brian Shulman. And I'm Jason DeFellippo.

Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoyed the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help keep the lights on and we'll love you forever. You can also help us out by sharing the show with your friends and enemies. It's easy and absolutely free and we really do appreciate that a lot. Tell your friends, people, please. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 537.

From there, you can find links to everything we talked about in this episode as well as links to our swag and Discord channel if you want to buy some stuff or chat with us and other show fans. You can also head over to GOG.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash review and toss us a snarky review and preferably five stars.

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