538: Bookmark and Forget

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. We got a little follow up. This is a great link that I saw all over the place, but Raph was the first person to send it in and said, Just an epic takedown of NFTs. I wish everyone watched this. You can skip one hour straight to the NFT segment.

It's about 50 minutes, I think, to the NFT segment, but the whole thing is worth watching. And it's called The Problem with NFTs by Folding Ideas on YouTube. Yeah, I was going to say, do not skip one hour straight to the NFT segment. I actually, this should be shown in schools. This should be, we should clockwork orange all the people that are hexagoning their Twitter profiles with their NFTs and force them to watch this.

It, it's good. It's really good. It's really good. It is a, it is a nice takedown of how the game is stacked against us and has been for a long time by the powers that be in the powers with money. And how basically, unless you start with the money, you're not going to make the money.

These, these are all grifts and they're all scams. And it starts with the housing and the banking and it goes on from there. And, uh, I haven't even finished it yet, but I intend to tonight. It's phenomenal. That's really good. Yeah. It's a little over two hours long. I watched the whole thing and it is well, well worth it.

Uh, there are much worse ways to spend two hours of your day. I got to say. Yeah. And you will, uh, never purchase an NFT once you've done that or get involved in crypto. In fact, it's actually making, I'm just waiting for another little up. Cause you know, Bitcoin's been up and down and when it's up, I'm selling, I'm out. You're not going to buy the dip, man?

Buy the dip? Nope. I'm completely done. You know, cause I, I, you and I have a pretty good technical understanding and then we've got, we've certainly felt the same way that this guy has pointed out how things actually work, but I didn't really know how things worked until I watched this.

And now that I really know how they work, I'm out. Yeah. Stay the hell away. Stay the hell away. In the news. Well, if there is anything to be learned this week, it's that Ajit Pai has definitely left the building.

Uh, the new FCC chair. And he took his big mug with him. He took his big mug and went back to the playground. Uh, the new FCC chair plans to block exclusive deals that limit ISP choice in apartments. Now, I don't know if you've run into this cause you haven't lived in an apartment in quite some time, but you have lived in a condo.

Uh, and I did run into this, uh, I did run into this. The, the condo board made a deal with spectrum and, uh, wired up the entire place for basically the super, super low cost. But it meant that part of the condo bylines was now you had to have spectrum.

You did not have a choice. So you could not use AT&T fiber if, even if you wanted to. Nope. Well, the FCC is going to say, uh, no to that in the future. Hopefully, uh, they're going to be voting on it soon, but they are definitely going to prohibit providers from entering into what they call graduated revenue sharing agreements or exclusive revenue sharing agreements, uh, with the building owners.

So that would be a good thing. And this is for, uh, apartment buildings, multi-tenant buildings and, uh, office buildings as well. So I hope this goes through because, you know, we, we've got so little choice right now for broadband. It's basically a monopoly anyways, depending on where you live.

I mean, for all intents and purposes. Yeah. I think here we've got a duopoly. We've got AT&T and then we've got spectrum and that's it. Those are your choices, buddy. Yeah. So that's a good thing. Uh, related to our, uh, follow-up, uh, I found this great article over at Slate, uh, Bitcoin is just a crappy tech stock now.

Yes, sir. And that's exactly what it was. So it's a really interesting, uh, read. It's talking, you know, obviously everything's spent, the crypto crash is happening right now. The markets have lost more than, and I hesitate to say markets. Yeah. Scam. The grift has lost more than $1.3 trillion in value, which is roughly the worth of all outstanding federal student debt.

It just kind of works out that way. And it's a reminder of why it's never worked as a regular currency, despite the vast resources that have been spent trying to make it catch on. That would be the rich trying to get richer, trying to get you to buy into this crap. Um, you know, and it gets into everything that we've talked about.

No regulation. No, it's not pegged to anything. It's not stable. It is. It basically will go up if Elon Musk farts. That's, that's Bitcoin. And any coin. Yeah. Yeah. And all of these. So, and it gets into it. And I really liked the last paragraph. All of this raises an important question about Bitcoin.

What exactly is it supposed to be good for? Yeah. And, you know, the whole article basically says, well, at first it was going to be a hedge against inflation, but it didn't work out that way. It's not working. It's, it's inflation is still very much with us, even though Bitcoin and all the other cyber currencies are in retreat.

So it didn't work for that. The only answer that still stands, crime. Yeah. That's it. Ransomware, baby. It's really good for ransomware. Yeah. And it's not even that good for that anymore. At least Bitcoin isn't. You know, they can follow the trail pretty well.

Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. And the Facebook backed DM association may be close to dissolving. I heard about this. We reported that this was never going to happen when it was announced. We reported that it was going to die as soon as Libra changed its names and people started pulling out.

And now it's basically done. They're reportedly weighing a sale of its assets as a way to return capital to its investor members, to which my question is, what assets? They did create some code. They did write some code. They do have engineers. So they're trying to find a home for the engineers as well.

But they were working on their own, you know, their own blockchain. So they did write some, some of their own proprietary stuff. And I think they have to say that because of all the money that they got in, you know, they have to show some work, you know.

Otherwise, it's just like, thanks for all your money. Piss off. Yeah. And then Barron also sent in this related story from the What Could Possibly Go Wrong files. In fact, it's even in the title of the article. Steve Bannon is a key player to new cryptocurrency. What could go wrong? This is basically, I mean, I talk about jump the shark moment.

I mean, this is, they're basically just coming out and saying we're scamming you right up front. But I guess that's the whole MAGA thing anyways. So, of course, it is called Fuck Joe Biden. Sorry. Dollar sign FJB, which is what it stands for. That's what he's announced on his War Room podcast, Mr. Bannon.

Hang on. Hang on real quick. But I want to show you. This is how short-sighted these grifts are. So, Joe Biden's supposed to be in office for, what, three more years? So, this entire currency that they're rolling out, are they going to plan a rebrand later if the Trumpster comes back in office?

This just shows you how, you know, turn and burn these things are. It's like, this is just for the now. This is locking into the, you know, just the insanity of his base to get them to buy something. It's milk in the base. Yeah. And pull the rug. He's calling it the currency for the MAGA movement.

And the other guy involved, Epstein. Wow. Oh. Close name there. Different spelling. But called investment in the coin a primal political scream for the deplorables. So, I guess they're now trying to take back the deplorable mantle and own it for themselves. They should just call the coin that then.

All they're really trying to own, these two guys are trying to own MAGA's money. That's it. So, don't do it, people. Yeah. And it's even built in. Like, again, they're not even trying to hide anything. It is built into the operation and how this coin works. That if you buy it as an individual, you do not get to sell, but they get to sell.

What? And they've already gotten complaints that transactions have been frozen from people that have bought it. That want, you can't sell it. It's built into the thing. There are constraints in terms of how you can sell, but not for the owners. Apparently, nobody watched Squid Coin. This one I thought was pretty funny.

Experts are ringing alarms about Elon Musk's brain implants. Now... They could have left out implants and I would have agreed with that headline. Got you right there. Yeah. As somebody who has just come off of a traumatic brain injury that was really tiny, you know, inside of his brain, actually putting anything in there right now terrifies the ever-living shit out of me.

Yeah. We don't really understand the brain. Nope. We have kind of rough ideas of general areas that may be involved in this or that, but really, you're just going to open up your brain and shove stuff in. Yeah. Not smart. Not smart. Not smart at all.

I mean, yeah. If you've got nothing to lose, give it a shot. But if any healthy person ever did this, then they need a lobotomy. Because, well, I mean, they're going to get one, obviously. Yeah. Thank you, Elon, for your lobotomy and your tunnel and all the other fun things that you've given us.

But, yeah, they just need to back the hell off of this. They really need to back off. It's, you know, it's just, it's like the tunnel. It's not thought out. Because you look at that tunnel, all it takes is one fire in that tunnel, and it is just the worst disaster that Vegas has ever seen.

Yeah. You know, it's just waiting to happen. It is. And so is this. And speaking of things that aren't thought out very well, hat tip to Christopher and Booby, who both sent in this link. This is autonomous car users not legally accountable call. So this is the Law Commissions for England and Wales and Scotland who have decided to take a look at something that is not very well thought out and make some recommendations in terms of autonomous cars and accountability.

And they are basically proposing that if anything goes wrong, the company behind the driving system should be responsible rather than the driver. Elon Musk will be your accountability buddy. That's good. So if this were ever to actually become law and enforce, guess who was going to stop making, guess who's going to stop claiming that he has self-driving capacity because then he would now be responsible for it.

Rebrand, rebrand, rebrand. Yes, rebrand. You actually have to drive this. It just kind of helps a little bit. Maybe. Level two, level two. A user in charge cannot be prosecuted for offenses arising directly from the driving tasks, such as dangerous driving, speeding, or running a red light, but remains responsible for other tasks, including insurance and checking people are wearing seatbelts.

Some vehicles may be allowed to drive themselves with no one in the driving seat and the licensed operator responsible for overseeing the journey. Data to understand fault and liability following a collision must be accessible, and sanctions for car makers who fail to reveal how their systems work. That black box thing that we're talking about.

So all of this eminently sensible and precautions that should be listened to. Yeah. They won't be. No, I mean, they're going to fight back on this, but I think, I mean, we've had this discussion, you know, probably seven, six, seven years ago, which is who is responsible?

You know, is it the software designer? Is it the car manufacturer? You know, if the software is outsourced, is the outsourcing division the one that's responsible? Is the driver responsible? Who is going to actually take responsibility when these things kill people? They're already killing people, but, you know, that's why they're trying to, ow, damn.

Watch out for that. You've got that brain implant going on, don't you? I do have that brain implant. I also have a cup holder on my desk that I forgot was there. Ow, damn it. We'll have that in absent doodads, my new rubber padded coffee holder.

Fuck, that hurts. I'd be rethinking that purchase given what just happened. Oh, yeah. So I'm glad that they're, you know, getting ahead of it finally. But, yeah, I mean, I use air quotes for getting ahead of it because these things are obviously on the road. Well, this is just a task force that just made some recommendations. It's nothing else.

Oh, well, bummer. Yeah, totally. And speaking of cars that have already killed people, Dan has sent this in. The Tesla driver is facing felony charges in that fatal crash, which involved autopilot. This is back in 2019. He's becoming the first driver believed to face felony charges in a fatal crash while that type of driver assistance software was activated, according to news reports.

Yeah, so these recommendations did not come in time for this guy who's going to face some time, probably, for using a fully self-driving air quotes system. That isn't. And the thing that really terrifies me about this is you and I have been talking about this for years, and I've always been of the position that it needs to be an all or nothing.

Everything out there is autopilot, or nothing is, because the combination is true madness and dangerous. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates Tesla autopilot is available on over, over three quarters of a million vehicles out there right now.

And how many does it work on? None. None. None. Not a one. Nay, nay, nay. Okay. Good times. In other news, TikTok stars are butthurt because, unsurprisingly, they're not making a lot of money on somebody else's platform.

Yeah, this is a – the interesting thing about this, I was reading this in another place that covered it that did a pretty good deep dive on it. And, yeah, the TikTok fund that they have out there is just garbage. It's really garbage.

Yeah. When you compare it to other places like YouTube where people actually make a decent amount of money on it, TikTok is just – yeah, it's garbage. You've got to make money on your own sponsorship deals if you want to make money on TikTok is the long and the short. But to all the whiny TikTok stars complaining about not making any money, all the musicians over on Spotify said, hold my beer.

Yes, that's true. That's true. You know, we actually have like careers and longevity and we've been around for years and we're not making a damn cent either. So, in other Spotify news, I saw this was breaking this week. Neil Young has come out and basically said, you know what, Spotify, Joe Rogan or me, you don't get both.

No more vaccine misinformation. You're going to keep that crap up, take off all my music. And Spotify said, okay, we will. Yeah, he's really going to miss that $1.36 a month that was coming to him. Actually, he was making pretty decent money, believe it or not, on Spotify. Really? He was a major artist and even my mom is listening to streaming music these days, not CDs.

So, that's the only place to get the money and he was getting money. So, he's going to be losing quite a bit on that. So, we'll see. I follow the Eve6 guy on Twitter. I think I talked about him a few months ago because he's become quite hilarious on there and I loved his tweet about this.

A supposed music platform just chose a podcaster with two brain cells over one of the greatest living songwriters. Yeah, that sums it up. You need to know about Spotify. Yeah. Well, they follow the money. They follow the money. They follow the money. Yes, they do. It's their job. Google is testing a new replacement for third-party cookies.

Again? Well, I mean, I kind of, I don't mind this idea, actually. It's called, they're going with the name right now, Topics API. It relies on the Chrome browser to determine a list of top five topics a user is interested in based on their surfing history. It will then determine which topics are, what the topics are by comparing known websites you visit against a list of about 350 topics drawn from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Google's own data.

And basically, it will ping browser for that data and serve relevant ads based on that. They will say, this is where it gets shady because we've heard such things from Google before. Google says topics are kept for only three weeks and old topics are deleted. Bullshit. The data and processing happen on your device without involvement of any external servers, including Google servers.

Bullshit. So, in theory, I don't mind this idea as an advertising model that tracks me. I wouldn't even block it if it's just comparing 350 topics based on sites I go around to visit. I'm fine with that. That wouldn't bother me.

It's all the other stuff that I don't kind of believe in them. Yeah, I mean, just ask the attorneys general who just filed the four lawsuits this week about Google not turning off location tracking when they said they were. Google does not do what they say they're going to do. We've known that.

Yeah, that don't be evil crowd has left a long time ago. You know, they've all cashed out and live on their islands now. And in supercomputing news that won't really affect any of us much, Meta has completed the first phase of a new AI supercomputer once the AI Research Supercluster, or RISC, is fully built out later this year.

The company believes it will be the fastest AI supercomputer on the planet, capable of performing at nearly five exaflops of mixed precision compute and capable of putting on legs to people in the metaverse. Yeah, I forget what podcast I was listening to the other day, and it was pretty funny because they were talking about infrastructure.

They're like, guys, this, even if the technology were here, you know, tomorrow for the metaverse, which it won't be for another decade, the pipes can't handle it. You know, we barely made it through the Zoom-pocalypse. So you want to have like fully, you know, immersive, interactive 3D worlds with everybody wandering around without their pants?

Well, yeah, that ain't going to happen. So nobody's even thought about that stuff yet. Well, in case you're wondering how well Meta is at building out things and if their AI supercomputer is going to be great or not, here's another story. Meta's free internet is costing people money in developing countries.

Yes, Meta wanted to do a good thing and provide free internet service in developing countries. But unfortunately, their programming sucks balls because they can't do anything right. And it's led to unwanted charges for users, according to documents obtained by whistleblower Francis Haugen and shared with the Wall Street Journal.

So they've been basically pumping in things like paid features into their free mode. And so people click on it and then they have to pay for them. Okay. Now, I mean, now we're saying Meta is free internet. Aren't they going to claim that, hey, we're Facebook, man.

That's Facebook, not Meta. That's Facebook. That's not Meta. Don't drag us into their problems. We're the no-legs people. Exactly. Not the charging people too much stuff. Those people had pants.

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Media Candy. Brian, I've been watching a new show that I thought was pretty interesting. It is called The Beforeiners, or just Beforeiners. It's Norwegian. It's kind of – the way I describe it is – do you remember the movie and subsequent TV show, Alien Nation?

Vaguely, yes. Okay. Well, this is kind of the same damn thing as Alien Nation, except instead of aliens coming from outer space, people from the past have been invading the future. And you have people from three distinct timelines. You have prehistoric, you have Victorian, and you have Vikings.

Please tell me that they brought Phil Hartman's caveman lawyer into this. No, no, no. Damn. It is in Norwegian, so it's dubbed. I listened to the dubbed version because I can't read that well. But there's a lot of it you still have to read.

But my soggy brain has a hard time with it, so I'm going through it slowly. But it's enjoyable. It's enjoyable. It's clever. It's more clever if you've never seen Alien Nation, but if you've seen Alien Nation, you're like, oh, yeah, that's the same one. I recommend the movie, the old Alien Nation movie.

It's got Mandy Patinkin as the alien. It's good stuff. And James Caan as the cop. Highly recommended. Are you an Ozark watcher? I am not. Oh, man. You're missing out. That's what people tell me. Yep. Ozark just finished the first half of the final season.

And, yeah, I'm kind of bummed that now I have to wait. All right. Yeah, I'm still, I'm even more annoyed that the opening scene is not resolved in the cliffhanger for the damn first part, so nobody knows what the fuck's going on.

Right. Just annoying. Just annoying. But good as always. Very good as always. Well, Jason, much like Icarus himself, I think I flew too far to the sun with this one, Jason. I was swayed by my enjoyment of Loki and then, of course, of what's the other one?

Hawkeye. Hawkeye. Hawkeye. So I was like, wow, this Marvel stuff isn't so bad. And I was looking for something to watch after a particularly long week. And I had Disney open because it was open and it was pushing the Eternals at me. And I watched Brian, Brian, Brian, Brian, Brian, Brian.

And I have now swung back the other way and I will never watch anything Marvel ever again. Okay. Because that was such a steaming pile of crap. I didn't care about anyone at all. The plot was dumb.

What the hell? What was that that I watched, Jason? I don't know. I've read enough about it that I know that I don't want to watch it. Yeah. Don't. Yeah. No plans. No plans. I mean, wow.

That good. Well, it was so bad I couldn't stop watching. I was like, I have to finish this. I have to see, will they redeem any aspect of this whatsoever? Spoiler alert, they don't.

I heard it was very woke. I guess. I don't know. It was very dumb. That's what it was. Okay. Well, you know, you say tomato. And I talked a couple of weeks back or maybe even just last week, Time Has No Meaning Anymore, about a show on, I guess, Netflix Canada here because you couldn't find it, Jason.

I couldn't get it. It's called Salvation. It was done in 2017. And I finished it. It ran two seasons. I'm not going to spoiler alert it. It ends on a bit of a twist that you could see coming somewhere around the middle of season two.

It was. If you got nothing else. I'm going to tell you right now, I'm not going to watch it based on that alone. If you got nothing else to watch, it's not bad. Okay. Some of the acting is good. Some of the acting is atrocious. You got the feeling, especially like the first season was actually pretty good.

I liked the first season. The second season, you felt like they picked up the beginner's guide to writing dystopia and just kind of went through the list and like, have we put this in yet? Nope. We haven't put that in. All right. Let's add that. Okay. What else could possibly go wrong to these people?

What else could we possibly throw into this gigantic stew of shit? Let's add that. That hasn't happened yet. I mean, everything happened. At first I was like, holy shit. They almost predicted the coup that happened here. And they predicted the pandemic that happened here. But then I just realized they're throwing in everything that could destroy the world at once.

So, of course, they're going to be predicting everything. Oh, well. But, you know, I finished it. It was fine. Okay. There you go. Seth wrote in. Y'all should check this out. It's right up your alley. He uses two Star Trek films to explain why modern movies suck.

And this is a thing over at YouTube, why modern movies suck. They're destroying our heroes by the critical drinker. I actually screwed up the title on this one. This is, I think, They're Destroying Our Heroes is the second one in the series that I watched. The first one was like Children Are Writing Our Movies or something like that.

Yes, yes, yes. And they were both fantastic. I did watch both as well. I've got to say, just as a side note here, I have avoided watching anything that anybody sent me on YouTube for approximately 15 years. And for this episode, I watched two things that people sent us on YouTube for some total of almost three plus hours.

No, I watched a lot too. So I've really made up my YouTube link viewing time this week for like the last 10 years. These were fantastic. The only problem I have with them is the guy's diction. Like the accent doesn't bother me.

The voice he's trying to write it in, this kind of edgy, kind of funny thing is fine. But there's something weird with his diction. Like it doesn't track all the time. It's almost like he did really bad edits where he was going to say something else. And I don't know what was going on with that. His nom de plume is the critical drinker.

So he didn't sound drunk. He didn't sound drunk. No, he didn't sound drunk. He's got like 1.7 million subscribers. So he's doing okay. He's much better than us. Yeah. Yeah. No shit. I watched the Matrix Resurrection video that he did. And I was just falling out of my bed laughing.

It was so good. I'm definitely going to watch more from this guy. He's really good. Yeah. I bookmarked this guy and I bookmarked the other guy that did the first one at the beginning because they both seem pretty good viewing. So. Brian. Brian. Subscribe and follow. Subscribe and follow. Press the button below. Press the button below.

I'm more of a bookmark and forget guy. Same here. Apps and doodads. So, Brian, I mentioned on a previous show that, like I said, you know, to your previous comment, who knows when that show was?

Who knows when that was? That I got the new M1 iPad Pro 12.9 inch and that it had the most beautiful screen in the world. And I always love putting my paper-like screen protectors on there because they're really nice to draw on and I think they look really good. But I ran into a conundrum.

Should I paper-like or should I not? So, I got them in the mail. And fortunately, when you buy paper-like, you get two. So, I put the first one on. Had it off in about 30 seconds. It is hands down such a beautiful screen that I just cannot cover it up. I don't care if it's, you know, unprotected.

But it was to that case that I went to Amazon and I found the ESR Rebound magnetic case compatible with iPad Pro 12.9 inch 2021 slash 2020 5th slash 4th generation comma smart case with magnetic attachment comma auto sleep slash wake comma pencil to support comma and trifold stand dash black for $25.99.

I had one of these from my old iPad Pro. It is the cheapest, best, lightweight case that you can get, I think. Gets the job done. And it does have a little flap to kind of protect the pencil. I immediately cut that off because it's annoying. But otherwise, these things are great.

So, and then the other time it's in the Magic Keyboard. But if you want to just take it around and read email on it, it's much nicer to be able to hold it, you know, in portrait mode, which you can't really do on the Magic Keyboard. I also picked up the Yoasai. I don't know. Is that Y-O-A-S-S-I?

Yes, Cece? 360 degree rotatable heavy duty iPad tripod mount comma universal clamping tablet holder brake resistant anti-wobble iPad tripod holder adapter fits iPad Pro 9.7, 10.5, 11, 12.9 iPad. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Mini Air.

They're just getting it all in there. I picked up this little bad boy for $19.87. And I got this because I can put it on a, then I can put my iPad on a GorillaPod and have it sit there. And I can use the fancy new Rode Go 2 mic that I got last week and use it as an actual video calling setup.

And it sounds great. That microphone sounds awesome, by the way. I did some tests with it last week and it does sound really good for the 99 bucks. Really, really nice. Cool. But since I can't really do any of the things that I want to do with all of the crap that I just told you about, because I'm stuck on the couch trying to recover from my stroke most of the time, I bought the Akufa XXX Large Electric Heating Pad for back pain and cramp relief.

17 by 33 inch, king size, six heat settings, auto shut off, ultra soft heat pad with moist and dry heat therapy options, blue. I cannot find the moist and dry heat therapy options, but it was $42.49 and it is the best heating pad that you will ever buy.

It is so big. You can lay on it. It gets your whole back and it gets up to like the tippy top of your head. I'm six feet tall. So it goes from the, you know, like the back of my head all the way down to my butt. And you can just wrap your neck in it and your shoulders. Oh, it's so good. Adding to cart. My wife loves this sort of stuff.

Dude, it's on the couch. So, you know, I basically, my back only lasts for a little bit because for some reason, when you have a stroke, you can't feel a lot of things. So bad posture and all sorts of other ailments creep in. So by about 1030 in the morning, my back hurts so bad, I can't even stand up.

So this thing has come in really handy. Excellent. I'm bookmarking that and I want to throw in a little something for the AMSR crowd. Moist. Well, fortunately, I have a filter that will fix that.

Moist. Stop it. Stop it. I found a new app called the Pestle Kitchen Companion. Did you check this app out? I did. Looks cool. I bought the, they have a pro lifetime $5 launch sale going on right now. So I picked that up. It works really good.

You just throw a URL at it and it grabs the recipe from the website, puts it into a readable format with nutrition information, which is the most important part for me. And I was just... Important question, Jason. Does it read the half hour story before the recipe?

Thank God, no. Damn. It does not. It just slaps it in and gives you step-by-step instructions. Okay. I would like a little better integration with New York Times Cooking, just me personally, since I have that. Because the great part is now I can just put all my recipes in there.

So when my New York Times Cooking subscription expires, I'll have plenty of recipes that I don't have to renew. You think. It rips it out as soon as your subscription ends. That's true. That's true. But yeah, it's pretty good for five bucks for Lifetime. Well, we know what that means.

Oh, and by the way, Lifetime, I finally, after almost 10 years, my Google grandfathered in apps program, you know, like when they first started doing Gmail and Google apps, you could get the free account. And then I was grandfathered in for 10 years.

They finally, finally said, nah, we're done, guys. You have to, you've got a couple months and then you got to like, you know, pay up or get out. I was like, oh man. It's hard to be mad at them. I mean, I got 10 years of free Gmail and everything else. It's true.

That is true. Yeah. So I, I, I, again, I don't know if we're just getting old or everything is just starting to go around again or we're stuck in a time loop. Twitter has got a new experimental feature. They're calling it Flock. Didn't they have a feature they called Flock already?

No, there was a browser called Flock that Chris Messina did a while ago that was like a, a social browser. Oh, they were Fleets before. Fleets. Yeah. That was it. Fleets. Yeah. The temporary tweets. Fleets took the sheets and, uh. Yeah. Fleets hit the sheets and now we got Flock. So we're fucked. Okay.

This is just a dumb idea. Um, it's a feature that will give you a way to blast tweets that can only be seen by the friends you choose. That sounds like a pain in the ass. Yeah. I, I, I, I, I, configuring it sounds like a pain in the ass. Using it sounds like a pain in the ass. Not even sure why you need it.

Yeah. That sounds really stupid. Okay. There you go. And, uh, my USB-C hub died. Didn't really die, but I was noticing like all of a sudden the USB ports weren't charging really well. Things weren't settling in right. Sometimes the power cord wasn't going great with my hub.

Sometimes it worked fine. Sometimes it didn't. So I was like, okay, this thing's on its way out again. Can't be mad at it. Probably had it for six years. Worked fine for a long time, but it was time to get a new one. So I got the anchor USB-C hub for MacBook power expand direct seven into USB-C adapter compatible with underbolt three USB-C port, a hundred watt power delivery, 4k HDMI USB-C and two USB-A data ports, SD and micro SD card reader.

Uh, I had a much smaller version before that basically just had power and, um, you know, uh, HDMI and, uh, two USB ports because that's all I really needed. But since I'm not really taking this to work anymore and this isn't even my work computer, I've figured might as well have everything available to me since no ports.

So did it. And, uh, it's a little bit bigger, but it's still the same color and, you know, just looks like a Frankenstein bolt, but does the job. Yeah. Mine's a little bigger than that one. And I've got the Zmooping from, uh, ZMU, ZMU, ZMU, ZMU, I, PNG, Zmooping, uh, basically the same type of thing, but mine has a ethernet port on it, which is actually handy because I'm plugged in the ethernet.

And I figured this is probably the last one I'll ever need because if I do buy another Mac, it'll actually have ports. So, well, the funny thing is, um, I've got one of the Macs with ports on it and I'm still using it because what it is, what it makes it easy to do, switch stations. You just basically walk up, plug, plug in the Frankenbolt and, uh, you're off to the races and you still have a free USB-C port on the other side along with HDMI and that's all that stuff.

So it, I mean, for me, it just makes switching super easy. Just going from, you know, station to station. I don't know how many stations you use. Just two. There you go. At the library. I see that neither of us returned to Termination Shock by Neil Stevenson this week.

Oh, fuck that book. I just, I have no desire to go back to it. I just don't. I'm struggling with it too. I'm going to now because I finished the, the nonsense that I was reading, but let's get into it. All right. I finished Aftermath by LeVar Burton. I thought it was good.

I give it a B minus for the ending. Um, I like the characters. The thing is, it of course ends on a, you know, not, not so much a cliffhanger, but the setup for the rest of the two part series. But when I did some research on it, it looked like he wrote this in 1997 and just released it.

So that makes me think, oh, LeVar ain't getting back to this one anytime soon. Uh, so we'll see about that. Um, but yeah, it was okay. You know, it was okay. Okay. That's all I'm going to give it. I like the character development.

I did not like the ending very much. That's all I'm going to say. And I am reading Stronger After Stroke, third edition, your roadmap to recovery. I am reading this instead of reading the Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson, because this is more, you know, obviously more up my alley right now, but a fantastic book.

If you know anybody that's had a stroke or are planning on having one, pick this up and have it in your nightstand. Um, I wish I had started reading this right away. Uh, this seems to be the de facto, uh, book on stroke recovery.

And unfortunately the guy that wrote it just died recently. Um, that's how I found out about it. He was on one of the stroke, uh, the stroke cast that I talked about last week. Um, but there's some really good information in here. Uh, it's really helpful. Like I said, I wish I'd have had it right when I had the stroke, because there's some things you're supposed to do right when you have a stroke that I didn't do.

And some things you're definitely not supposed to do that I did. So that tracks. Yeah. Which is why I'm on week six or I'm on week five and a half now of recovery. And, uh, uh, somebody pointed out to me like, dude, minimum three months before you're supposed to be anywhere near normal.

And, uh, the problem is that time just moves so differently right now. It feels like it's been a year or three and a half hours. It's, it's impossible to tell because, you know, Dane Bramage. Yeah, exactly. So I've been forced now to, uh, when I'm not, uh, absolutely positively doing the minimum exercise, I've been ordered by everybody to sit on my ass and not do anything and watch TV, which I'm okay with now.

I've come to grips with it. So maybe I'll get back to termination shock. Maybe me too. Uh, I was looking for anything to read that I've just been so out of it and not into reading recently. And I didn't want another, I didn't want crap or sci-fi.

I didn't want anything too heavy. I was just, I just needed, I, I, I needed a brain cleanse. Uh, and I had been talking about music with a couple old friends recently, like old, old friends, like high school friends. And, uh, somebody recommended a book. So I was like, okay, sure.

Why not? I'll, I'll go read a book about, uh, some musicians that I've always loved. So I picked up stripped Depeche Mode by Jonathan Miller. Now, Jonathan Miller is a fan and he basically just collected things that had been published and from various magazines. And let's, there's an awful lot out there about this band.

They've been around a long time. So it starts from the very beginning, you know, them as kids, where they grew up, blah, blah, blah. Uh, the formation of the band in the very early eighties and taps out around, I don't know, 2005, 2006, something like that. Uh, there was a lot in there that I didn't know.

There was a lot of, especially the infighting and the breakups and who left the band and when they left. And Dave Gahan's pretty publicized, but not quite as this gets really into his problems and his near-death experiences and his issues with drugs and all that. And basically the, these guys partied harder than fucking Led Zeppelin.

Let me tell you. Um, it was, it was an interesting book. It is, it is, uh, if I didn't get it digitally, it would be about seven feet tall because it's a long book, but thankfully you can skip over most of it because, uh, for some reason, you know, I guess trying to be a completist and showing his fan chops or something like that.

Anytime they released an album, he goes through an excruciating detail. Every single version of that album that was released, if it came out on DVD, uh, and then every single single, and Depeche Mode has probably released 7,000 singles over the years and every track that's on every version of every single that came out in every single, uh, this one came out in Latvia.

This one came out in Russia. This one came out in Germany. So, you know, at the end of every album release chapter, you can basically skip about a hundred pages because there's no need to read all that stuff. The other weird thing that he did. And I, I mean, I, it's, it's a choice. Uh, Vincent Clark is one of the founder of Depeche Mode, uh, left after the first album and he was the principal songwriter.

Then Martin Gore took over and then they drafted in Alan Wilder, whatever, you know, he left after the first album. We're talking like 1983 or 82 or something like that. And then he went on to form Yazoo and then he went on to form Erasure. Even though this is a book about Depeche Mode, uh, we learned everything about Erasure and Yazoo as well because he kept going back to Vincent Clark's career.

I'm like, he left Depeche Mode, not part of the band anymore. 20 plus years. You're writing 20 plus years about Erasure. This is a book about Depeche Mode. Anyways, whatever. It was fine. It did the job. I read a book. I kind of enjoyed it. Fine.

Okay. Your review of the book feels like it was longer than the book. So if the book is, that's what I mean. That's just the forward. Yeah. So I think I'll pass on that one. Well, you're not a huge Depeche Mode fan. It's fine. No, not really. Not really. Security?

Ha! We're joined again, as always, by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast, co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan. And finally, he's the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy and surveillance and privacy.

Welcome back, Dave. Hello. Good to be back. Good to be back. Hope you're continuing to be on the mend there, Jason. You're in my thoughts regularly. Working on it. Working on it. Yeah. Getting there. Yep. Slowly but surely. Yeah.

Good for you. Keep your chin up. You know, I know we have got a pending war and all that soon, but let's talk about the important stuff so far. The best episode so far of the Book of Boba Fett had 0% Boba Fett in it. And while we're at it, I've yet to see a book. True.

Yeah. That is true. That is true. When we finished up last night's episode, my son Jack turned to me and he said, that was an awesome episode. It was great. I said, yeah, it was a really, really good episode of The Mandalorian. Yeah. It really was.

Yeah. It was great. Yeah. I got a question before we get into the episode. You guys were mentioning a sound effect in the previous week's episode that got you all excited. I watched the previous episode right before I watched the new one last night and I missed it. What was it? Oh, it was the, what is it?

The Sonic, what's the name of the weapon, Brian? Do you remember? It's like a Sonic weapon. It's the thing that goes. Yeah. They used it extensively in The Mandalorian. Okay. Yeah. Got it. So we knew it was coming. Gotcha. Uh, Brandon D sent in something for you, Dave.

Fantastic, reasonable prepper. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Sorry, we're not done with Boba Fett yet. We're dropping the lead. Sorry, sorry. No, no, no. I mean, we're not done with The Mandalorian yet. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm curious where we're going with this. I think, uh, first of all, I don't think we're going to see Mando, uh, on Boba Fett's show until maybe the last episode.

I think we're going to have maybe a big boss, we're going to have a big boss battle and Mando and his, his, uh, Island of Misfit Mandalorians are going to swoop in at the last minute to, to help out. That's what I think is going to happen. Well, remember, he's going to go see Grogu who is hanging out with a bunch of Jedi.

So maybe we'll, maybe he'll bring back some Jedi to help out. Well, I don't think we're going to see that on camera. I think that is Mandalorian season three. Oh, exactly. Yeah, exactly. That's what I think too. And I wonder, is he going to learn how to use the dark saber from Mr. Luke Skywalker himself?

Yes. Hmm. Could be. Yeah. Which means an awful lot of CGI done poorly or casting. Because I don't think we can have, we can't have Luke Skywalker as an actual major character with that CGI. We're going to actually have to recast him, which I would, I would welcome the recasting of the original Star Wars characters.

I'd be okay with that. I saw someone point out that the part in this episode where Mando gets pulled over by the two state troopers in X-Wings, that one of those two actors is the actor who played Luke Skywalker in the Mando episode.

He was the body for Luke Skywalker. And then the Asian gentleman is actually a well-known actor as well, who starred in Kim's Convenience, a show I dearly loved, and he's been in a bunch of things. So he's been back and forth a lot. So it was always nice to see him. Yeah. It was by far the best episode of Boba Fett.

No doubt about it. I was riveted. I was, you know, all you got to do is take Boba Fett out of it, and it's great. Well, and it just felt like Star Wars. That's, I mean. Yeah. Yeah. They're just doing a great job. And I also, first time that I think I've been excited to see a callback to the prequels with that fighter.

Yeah. Yeah. That's true. It actually made that fighter cool. All you had to do, again, the best Star Wars universe is grungy and beat up. You take that shiny ship from the prequels, and you smash it around and add 30 years, and all of a sudden it's cool again. Right. Right. I also like the part where Amy Sedaris' character talks about modifying it so it doesn't have an astromech droid anymore.

Hmm. I wonder who's going to be in that little bubble back there. I wonder. I wonder who's going to be back there. In his cute little chain mail. Yes. Because there's no point in pointing that out unless it's going to be used down the road. Right. Screenwriting 101.

Yes. Yeah. So, yeah. Lots to look forward to. I think this crew is killing it with Mando. Just makes me want Mando all that much more. Yep. And Boba Fett's fun. It's fine. It's fine. But Mando's really the one to watch right now, I think.

Yeah. And they've definitely set up the entire next season. We know that, you know, Starbuck is coming back as her Mandalorian character. Oh, yeah. There's going to be some battling there. And we're going to see Grogu. And there's no way they can avoid Luke Skywalker. Like, you can't. Once you threw him into the mix and you know Mando's going to go back to Grogu, there's no avoiding Luke.

So, we'll see what they do. Well, maybe Luke just dropped him off. You know? He's like, hey, I got the kid. I'm going to drop him off at the babysitter's and then head back out into the universe and do my Jedi thing. Right. Yeah. Could be. Just to save on CGI. Right. Yes. You see, like, the episode.

Oh, you just missed him. Yeah, exactly. He ran to 7-Eleven. He'll be back in a minute. He went to get a pack of smokes. He went to Tosche Station. You know. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Just missed him.

Yeah. There you go. Okay. So, Brandon D. writes in, fantastic, reasonable prepper website recommendation, theprepared.com. Now, I have not checked this out, but these continue to come in for you, Dave. So, people are looking out for you. I appreciate that.

Jason, what do you make of this? Okay. So, I checked it out. Here's the thing that I'm trying to avoid with you, Dave, is the prepper thing really is a slippery slope. Because once you start, it's really hard to stop.

Yes. It's, that's the, that's the thing I'm trying to save you from. I would love to get into this a little bit more, but it's like everybody starts off with the basic gear you have to have. And then, and then, you know, you're, you're getting your bug out bag prepared for your different things. You got your maps, all that.

And then the next thing you know, you have a hundred thousand dollars sprinter van with zombie guards on it and flamethrowers. Right, right, right. There's a, there's a rhino bar on the front just in case you can run across a T-Rex while you're out and about. Yeah. This is the prepper progression that I'm trying to, to save you from.

Have a generator, have some food, call it a day. Well, and have an exit plan. You want to have an exit plan just in case you have to go, because on the East coast there, you do have hurricanes and you may need to leave sometimes, or from where you're at, you know, God only knows with the NSA down the road.

It's always good to have, you know, a backup plan with paper maps and two routes out of where you're at. But the best thing to do is just prepare to stay in, you know, stay in, have enough stuff for two weeks for everybody in your house and the pets, never forget the pets. But if you have that, you can ride out just about anything.

And the other thing that almost nobody talks about on these is community, get to know your neighbors well and have prep buddies in your neighborhood. If only there were apps to get to know your neighbors really well. You know, so there were a couple years back, there was a movement in my community to start neighbors sort of having databases with each other of saying, you know, I have these resources,

I have these resources, you know, just for these sorts of things in preparation for, and they were talking about for natural disasters, things like hurricanes or tornadoes and those sorts of things, which we do get around here, floods. Would you like to know why that's a terrible idea?

Well, because then everybody knows who's got what. What you got. They're like, here's what I've got. I've got a 12 gauge and no supplies, but now I know where all the supplies are. Right, right. I've got a 12 gauge and a Rottweiler. Have at it. That's it.

That's all you need. Well, so I have a confession to make. I took delivery of a generator this week. Okay. Excellent. Good, good. That's a good thing to have. Yeah. Yeah. Have you run it yet? I ordered a gun.

Ooh. Okay. I thought you already had a gun. Well, I have a real gun, but I ordered the gun you have, Jason, the paintball gun. The pepper spray? Yep. I ordered the pepper spray gun. That's a nice thing to have. That's actually a really good idea. I've got to see if I can actually have that here in Canada.

I think they just give you a beaver, but I've got to check. People have been killed by beavers. Beavers are – someone described a beaver as 20 pounds of muscle and razor-sharp teeth.

Also described some of my first girlfriends. Yeah. There you go. There you go. Oh, man. But, you know, I had the conversation with my wife. I said, you know, before I order this, I think this is a – you know, this is a conversation.

This is one of those mutual conversations. Yes, it is. Before I bring a weapon in it. It is something one should not do by oneself if married. Right. Yes. Or one will not be married much longer. Before I bring a weapon into this house. So I said, this is what I'm thinking. I said, you know, Jason has recommended this one. I've seen the videos of it and there's this nice kit that they sell.

And before I pull the trigger on this, I think – I'm – you know, as we've talked about here before, I prefer non-lethal weapons. I'm sure the people in our audience who are at this point laughing at me and calling me every, you know, pussy and cock.

If you don't have a dark saber, you have nothing. Yeah. Well, here's the funny – Actually, I do have a dark saber. He does. But I said to my wife, are you okay with this? And she said, can you order two? There you go. So she's on board.

Awesome. Okay. And in the almost nine years we've been doing this show, I've talked about that paintball gun multiple times. I've never gotten any pushback from anybody. So you should be safe for the emails. I do recommend picking up the PVC rounds because they're solid PVC.

They're called riot rounds or practice rounds if you want to call it, whatever you want. But they are badass. You don't want to shoot anybody in the face with those unless they are in your house without an invitation. Then I highly recommend that. Or if you have a coyote in your yard, you can shoot those. You can also do – get multiple clips and do what I do and do aggression stacking clips.

First clip is three rounds of paintballs just to, you know, let them know that I have something that is coming at them fast. Second stage in the clip is the PVC rounds and then the final two bullets are the pepper spray rounds. And then the other clips are just – the other clips are just all pepper spray or all PVC rounds.

But the clip that I keep in the gun is just a – has an escalation of force set in it. And try to keep track as if you've been drinking a few Miller Highlights and you've shot off the paint rounds just for fun that you did that. Right.

Right. Like Dirty Harry, you know. Do you feel lucky, punk? Do you? And what one should always do even if you're not buying a real gun, obviously go do gun training even just with these because aim is important and difficult. Well, the nice thing about these is you can do them – you can practice in the backyard.

Yeah. So it's fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But so I still feel funny about it. Yeah. Right? I still – I feel as though I have just sort of – you know how like – You know how like a really – like one of those long, fun water slides and you start off at the top and you just sort of nudge yourself forward like you sort of, you know, snail walk using your butt to get over the edge to start moving.

Yeah. That's how I feel where I am right now. I just started down the water slide of prepping and away we go. You've gotten ahead of me. I mean I have been hearing about Jason talk about this non-lethal thing for years and I just have been unable to metaphorically or literally pull the trigger on getting it just because I feel like I'm taking a step in a direction that I cannot turn back from.

Right. So, yeah. Yeah. It's a paintball gun, guys. Don't think about it too much. Come on. As he talks about his increased stack of lethality as he goes through his clips. Well, there's – no, it's not lethality. It's an escalation of force. But, you know.

Right. The final round are filled with hydrochloric acid. Yeah. And these are my plutonium-tipped – Thermite. Right. Yeah. Right. These are filled with thermite. Yeah. Ooh, this would be good. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I might well – But just get it – You've done it now, Dave. I feel remiss if I'm left out at this point. I guess I should look into this. Send me the link when you get a chance, Jason. Okay. All the cool kids are doing it, Brian. All the cool kids are doing it. I mean, you know. Yeah. And us. There's a lot of moose that run around here.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. See, it's moose repellent. I was going to say moose propellent. That's just farts. That's a good name for a beer, though. Yeah. All right. All right. Moving on. Flesh Jervis, who has probably my favorite name of all time, wrote in, Hey, guys.

A faculty member asked me about using a VPN outside of the U.S. And I recommended PIA. But then he asked if he could still be traced via cloud services like iCloud Drive or Google Sync. I didn't have an answer ready for him. Do you know the deets? Now, off the top of my head, he should be fine. Correct? Anything that goes in the pipe can't be traced.

Right? Yeah. Long pause. So I included a link here. Well, you know, there's no absolute. Yes, there's no absolute. Yeah. Yes. I would say overall, you're good.

I included a link here to a nice fact about VPNs. And I like this paragraph. It says, think of a VPN as a large movie theater multiplex. And the movies screened inside are the websites you can visit through the VPN's private tunnel. The parking lot is the unsecured worldwide web of servers, including those used by your internet provider, those runs by hackers and government agencies.

Hackers may be hanging out in the parking lot to watch you go into the movie theater, but they can't follow you in. So they have no idea which movies, i.e. websites, you're seeing, whether you buy popcorn, i.e. download content. I think that's a pretty good metaphor. I think what I wonder is, would iCloud Drive or Google Sync be the equivalent of making a phone call from inside the movie theater?

I believe so. Yeah. I mean, they're not going to have your IP address and your location. They'll still have the VPNs, but they'll know that you're connecting. They'll know it's you. Yeah, they'll absolutely know it's you. So if a very good FBI agent wanted to, he could call up Apple and say, hey, what IP address did he come from?

And then the VPN provider, depending on if they are a log or no log VPN, which we recommend no log VPNs like going to gog.show.vpn and getting private internet access, they may be able to trace back to you if the VPN provider is logging the IP address you connect to and the IP address that they assign you.

So that's the bridge. But if they are not logging, they can just see that you connected at some point and they cannot tell which IP address you were giving or where you went. Right. But it seems to me that this could connect the dots of your identity unintentionally, right?

Possibly. If you log into iCloud or Google, you know, an existing account, they could say, oh, this VPN user is this person I see, and then connect the dots to your unprotected communications and so on. And so forth. I don't know. It's a long shot.

Because, I mean, you're logging in with credentials when you go here, so they know it's you, it's you. Right. But I guess I've heard enough stories about nation state level hackers being, having their locations revealed because that one time they forget to turn on the VPN.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. That happens a lot. Right. That definitely happens a lot. But they could also fingerprint your browser when you come in. And, you know, they fingerprint your browser based on one IP. And then as you, after you use the, turn off the VPN and browse normally to other websites that you go to or other different places, they could see that fingerprint, put the two together like they do with advertising all day long.

So there's no guarantee anywhere. No, there's no guarantee. I mean, if there was, I mean, we even see this in the news right now about the Olympics where I think it was that the Korean athletes are being told to take burner phones, that VPNs on their phones aren't enough and all this other sort of stuff. Like, you know, you're never 100% safe, but I mean, you know, I think a faculty member traveling outside the U.S., you know, you're in the Bahamas, just load up your PIA, you'll be fine.

Yep. And stop doing nefarious shit. Don't do nefarious shit. Now, now. Just saying. Speaking of doing nefarious shit and a call back to earlier talking about how Google likes to lie about what they actually say they do.

Washington, D.C.'s attorney general is suing Google for deceiving users and invading their privacy. Now, this goes all the way back to 2014. Much of this controversy was first talked about in 2018 when the Associated Press report identified that location tracking remains active regardless of user's choice.

So basically, Google has given you a big dumb red button that does nothing so you can hit it thinking you're opting out, but they didn't really let you opt out and they tracked you. Yeah, it's like the closed door button on an elevator. Yeah, it does nothing. Kind of. Yes. It's a distinction without a difference.

Basically, what's happening here is you could say, for example, in Google Maps, you know, don't keep track of my location. But in other Google apps, they would still be keeping track of your location. We covered this on caveat this week, actually, which should be out by the time this hits the tubes.

And Ben thinks this is a big deal, particularly the fact that multiple states are coordinating on this. Texas, Washington State and Indiana, Ben pointed out that these are states with very different political slants.

And so the fact that they have all these attorneys general from these different states all simultaneously coming at Google independently means that they – this is something they take seriously and they want to see go through. Ben also pointed out that it's going to take a long time.

Yeah, of course it will. But it's good that Ben's on the case. If Ben thinks it's a big deal, it's a big deal. Yeah. That's what I go with. Yep. That's it. Absolutely. So if you want details, actual informed details on this story rather than just me – Anybody that listens to this show doesn't want that.

Right. With my ass facts, check out Caveat where Ben actually provides an informed conversation about this. And I nod and smile in agreement. Coming next week, Dave's new podcast, Ass Facts. Yeah.

We used to just say that. Like that was a phrase that we used a lot when I was in college. Say, is that true or is that an ass fact? An ass fact was a fact that you pulled out of your ass. Why? You know, that's a good question. That may just be an ass fact.

I think I definitely have a new show title. We're moving on. We're moving on. GOG is dead. Welcome to Ass Facts. Yeah. I'm your host, Jason. That's it. The king of the ass facts. That's it. Before we leave, Brian, last week you were having a little trouble pronouncing Netanyahu's name.

And I have a little mnemonic that I use that's very easy to remember. So every time you see it, you just go, Netanyahu! And it pops right in your head. Yeah. I'll start doing that on the Cyber Wire every day. Well, given how often it comes up in my day-to-day life, that will be incredibly useful.

I know. All right, gents. It's nice to hear that Yahoo ad again, though. I gotta admit. Yahoo! Closing shout-outs!

Over at Patreon, we've got Curtis and Stuart writes in, Hey, Grumps. I hope you're both well. Jason, I hope recovery is going well. I have another gamebook-related thing to pimp, if that's at all possible. Of course it is for you, Stuart. A Patreon fan for us is always worth pimping. Firstly, a gamebook is where you make choices and turn to different sections.

Kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure, I'm guessing. That's what it sounds like to me. I have written a gamebook called Rulers of the Now. It is a black comedy, near-future, dystopian gamebook set in 2041. I am selling it for Pay What You Want on Itch. I don't know what Itch is, but it's itch.io.

We have a link to that in the show notes, so go and pick it up and support Stuart, who supports us. That's right. And over at PayPal, we've got Joseph, Mark, Al, Charlie, Thomas, and Humphrey. Thank you very much. Over at Strike, we've got Ross, Roman, and Sean.

Awesome. Thank you all so much. We appreciate it. And shout-outs this week. Meatloaf. Sad, sad Meatloaf is gone. I worked on a Meatloaf real audio demo back in the day, back when you could trigger a frame from another frame from an audio stream.

That's how old it is, bitches. I believe it was in the 90s. Yeah, hard to feel sad for him because of, you know. He made his choices. He made his choices. He definitely made his choices. So can't, you know, you've got to separate the artist from the whatever.

The bat shit, bat out of hell. Yes. I love that it's, this is a bat out of hell singer dies at 74. It should have been bat shit, bat out of hell singer dies at 74. So sad, sad that he's gone. But yeah. It's interesting that, I mean, obviously I'm aware of the fact that he's had this massive music career, but he's two things to me.

He's Rocky Horror Picture Show and he's Bitch Tits Bob. That's it. Yep. That's kind of it. But I did like his music quite a bit. So I got it. I got to go with that. Okay. And in other news, Louie Anderson died. Comedian and Emmy winner was 68.

If you are of a certain vintage, like Jason and I, he was unavoidable in the early 80s. He's still, you can turn the TV on and see him every single day now. He's on some horrible game show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A vestige of another time for sure.

But I have to say I am friends with quite a few comedians and the eulogies and apparently just how generally lovely this man was has definitely shown through. Like apparently, I mean, just the nicest guy you would ever meet in your entire life.

So it's always nice to see that people like that are out there. Well, we're out there. Or we're out there. Between him and Bob Saget, we're running low on old nice comedians. So. Right. There we go. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Shulmester.

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