561: Magnet On a Stick

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. How's the vacay going, Brian? Well, one week of vacay. That's done already. Now it's work and whatever. I've got to say travel. Oh, boy. If you don't have to fly anywhere, don't. That fun, eh? That was a nightmare. That was the worst it's ever been. Sat on the tarmac for over two hours, delayed to leave, getting through customs and everything.

I mean, everything is just a nightmare now. It took forever. But, you know, we have to count ourselves lucky because we were one of the flights that wasn't canceled. There were thousands of those. Pilot shortage, which is partially COVID. Partially, they've known it for a long time because they don't pay people enough.

And now, you know, the chickens are coming home to roost, as they say. And, you know, shortages with TSA and all that sort of stuff. So it was just getting here was horrible. Once I got here, it was great, though. We drove up the coast, went up to Monterey and Carmel, took my mom, you know, the kid, all that sort of stuff.

It was a great week. And now I'm back. And one of the downsides of working for a company that's on the East Coast is I'm up at like five and six in the morning for meetings. So, yeah, that's fun. Fun times. Fun times. Sounds like you got a little frog in the throat.

Did you did you already get the COVID since you have been back for a week now? Well, I funny you mentioned that, that boy, that's skyrocketing, isn't it? No, I think I'm just froggy from being froggy and it's the morning. So that's fun. Yeah. Wow. It's a it's not good here, right?

We're about what a week away from mandatory masking again. If if if I'll level stay where they are right now. And I've certainly noticed I'm down here in what I would call basically, you know, fairly anti masking Orange County. Yeah. Mandatory masking is through the roof just in the last week.

Like from from when I landed until, you know, I went out yesterday. Everybody's wearing masks again. And by choice, it's not even mandated. So, yeah, yeah. You kind of got it now. That's the way it is. That's the way it is. We're back. Yay.

Well, yeah, you come back and masks come back. Thanks, Brian. Next time, maybe try Barcelona. Just saying. Hey, maybe if I come back, people will get rights and bodily autonomy, too. You never know. It ain't going to happen. It ain't going to happen. You get a free Glock every time you come through, though.

Every 10 every 10 flights, you get a free Glock. That's right. I saw this one. And just this is a little bit of crypto follow up since the crypto floor has fallen. It's still kind of stabilized a little bit, it seems. But this one survey Americans borrow money, default on bills and buy cryptocurrency.

Seems smart. More than 32% of cryptocurrency investors have used a payday loan in the past and 11% have used a payday loan or title loan to invest in cryptocurrency in spite of triple digit interest rates. So everybody says that they feel bad for the retail investors.

Don't. Don't. This is just pure, pure moronity and stupidity. You just can't get past that. No, no, no. And yeah, the prices seem to have stabilized, but at a new low. So they're stable, but very, very low.

And I mean, it depends on how you define stable. Bitcoin is relatively stable. The big players are relatively stable. All the small ones are dying just left, right and center. Yeah, it's kind of fun to watch just a little bit. People, yeah, just the tears that are being shed, you know, you do kind of feel bad a little bit, but then you read things like that and you go, kind of deserved it.

But what are you going to do? What are you going to do? That's the sound of 500 listeners to our show hate unsubscribing because they lost their house. Yeah. Oops. It's not like we didn't warn you, people. Yeah. Yeah, we did. We did. We got this note in from Jeremy that I want to read real quick.

Jason, I just wanted to throw out that I'm pretty sure you literally saved my life and just wanted you to know. Basically, I had a little tingling in my left foot, sort of like having your shoe tied too tightly. Went for a walk on one of our nearby trails and popped your podcast on. A little ways in, the tingling turned into my left hand, deciding to stop working.

You had just given a random comment about the stroke two or three minutes before and a literal light bulb went off in my head. I ran back and drove myself to the ER. Never a good idea, by the way. If you can't just get somebody else. Long story short, they found a brain tumor.

And in the past two weeks, we've done all the things. Things are optimistic at this point, but I at least wanted to acknowledge that it's been your consistent journey, updates, and awareness that very likely triggered me to take action and get in front of this before it was too late. Thanks again for everything and hope all is well, Jeremy.

Well, Jeremy, I'm glad you're doing well and that you're doing all the things. I like that my life can sometimes be a cautionary tale to others because that's exactly what it is. And let me just throw this out there for those that don't want the cautionary tale aspect of this. Part of my vacation here is I'm on a medical vacation.

We still have our very good insurance here in the U.S. through my wife's work. And I have gone to the doctor for the full physical, blood panels, et cetera, et cetera. I have been to the dentist. I have been to the eye doctor. I have scheduled a cardiologist appointment just to run a test because, you know, I'm not young anymore.

Do all the preventative things, people. Don't be scared. Get out there. Do it once a year. It's important, especially as we're all getting older. So you talk about Canada and the free health care and how it's just this wonderful thing, yet you come back to us to get all of that done. What's going on there, Brian?

I have health care in both places. The problem has been finding a doctor right now in Canada because of COVID and all that sort of stuff. So it's been a slow process, but we're paying for the health insurance here. Might as well use it. Okay. Okay. That's how it's going to be. Yep. I am a dual health care citizen.

All right, Brian, since we've been gone for a while, I'm going to do a quick speedy recap on some of the major stories that came through the pipeline. I'm going to appreciate that because from what I saw from my phone while on my vacation, it was just Elon, Elon, Elon.

Yeah. Well, whatever, whatever. YouTube TV has now topped 5 million subscribers and these are subscribers and what they call trialers. And I would like to point out that trialers are people who are not paying if you didn't quite catch that. I would not define them as subscribers.

Yeah. Yes. They do separate it, but they don't break out how many actual people pay and how many are just trialing, trialing. Johnny Ive is apparently not trialing Apple anymore, though. He is out the door finally in his $100 million paycheck, which is fine.

That's fine. It's time. You know, the whole thing was theater anyway. He hasn't worked there for a long time. Nobody wanted him around. Get the hell out of here, Johnny. And please don't fall into one of those glorious ports on the new Macs on your way out the door. That's all I got to say about that. Microsoft is in the news because they are laying off a couple hundred people, which turns out to be not that many.

Tempest in a teapot somewhat because, yeah, Microsoft has 180,000 employees. I figured a couple hundred here and there. That's like a Tuesday for Microsoft. I figure they must have laid off the Skype division since it's obvious nobody uses that anymore.

No, I beg to differ. I think it was the Clippy AR team. Oh, right. They were prepping Clippy for the metaverse. Oh, man. And some Google execs are really upset right now because it turns out the kids don't like to use the Internet the way that we thought they should.

Right. It's interesting that he's saying that kids are turning to Instagram and TikTok for search instead of going to the Googs. Okay, two things here. First off, Google results have gotten progressively worse. Google is almost useless these days. You have to go to like page five to find what you actually want because it's all been spammed to hell or gamed.

I get that. But having said that, if I wanted to actually get real information and I searched on Instagram and TikTok, I'm not so sure. Yeah. Yeah. You know, everybody's saying that the kids really are like, you know, they're so tech savvy and they're so tech smart and all this crap and the kids really know what's going on.

They're lazy. I have been around a bunch of kids and I have seen how they use technology and I beg to differ. They're still fucking morons. They really are. They don't know what the hell they're doing. It's just they press buttons. I mean, Snap has taught them to just smash the screen until something happens.

Right. Since they're usually too busy with TikTok or Instagram, they're already there. So they're just like, I'm hungry and something will show up. So instead of getting actual information about, oh, I don't know, say how to cook a spaghetti carbonara, they get some stupid influencer doing their take on it in a short video.

Yeah, that's it. Okay, great. That's it. That's going to go well. Mm-hmm. And if you get three more videos into the TikTok, then you find the explainer to the original one that tells you that it was all wrong and you've just been trolled and punked and you just ended up in the wrong side of town. And you're going to go buy crack instead of some Kung Pao chicken.

Okay. Awesome. That's when you use Google Maps to find a way out of it as fast as possible. Yeah. And while you were gone, Brian, the nothing phone launched. I saw a puff piece on it on local news. Apparently, the big deal is it has flashing lights that you can program the flashing lights to tell you certain things.

Yeah, it's a disco. How exciting. Disco phone is what it is. But it's interesting that they showed it on local news because you cannot buy it in the United States. So you can only get it really in Europe, India, and China. And it's going to be Android, so we wouldn't get it anyway. Nope.

But who the hell thought that nothing was a good name? I mean, it just... Trent Reznor. That's just a layup. Yeah. Well, Trent wasn't making phones. That's true. Yeah. And Google, people want to know why people are hating Google.

Well, they wanted to launch a pilot program that lets basically political spam get through the filters. Oh, great. Thanks. Yeah. Everybody's like, why? Why would you... Can you turn the filters? Political emails are the very definition of spam as far as I'm concerned because I've never signed up for any of these lists.

I know. I know. Once you get on one, then they just share and share and share alike. Yeah, this is... I mean, I know they got to be desperate for ad money since everybody's on the TikTok and the Instagram now, but come on. This is... That's bad. That is a bad, bad, bad idea. I think today is that we're recording this on July 15th.

And July 16th is the time when you can... Or the end of the public comment period for that. I'm pretty sure you're... I'm pretty sure you don't have to run to your computer to actually make a comment. I'm pretty certain that everybody has done it for you.

But if you'd like, check the link in the show notes and go let Google know that you think it's a terrible idea. Unless you're a politician and you really want it. So we'll see how that goes. I didn't know if you knew this, Brian. And GameStop launched an NFT marketplace. Yeah, that was going to be their big pivot after everybody stopped investing in them.

Yeah, well, they brought in $45,000 the first day. Ooh, hey, barn burner. Yep, not going to save the company. So... They should start a podcast. They could make that in about a year after they've been doing it for 10. I was going to say, yeah, do it for 10. Then that first year after, you can make some money. And OpenSea is also in the NFT news.

They are laying off 20% of its staff saying that they have entered crypto winter. I will tell you what I have seen in the NFT space. I, you know, I'm in the music industry space myself. I follow a bunch of bands. I try to keep abreast of things that are going on. NFTs have now become the free giveaway if you buy concert tickets and go to a show.

And even at that level where it's entirely free and it's just a stupid giveaway, all I see are comments on the posts about it for every single band. What the fuck are you stupid people doing with NFTs? Good, good. I'm glad. And it's funny. I had another story in here, but it's kind of in between release dates right now.

But Kevin Smith released an NFT movie. Of course he did. Yeah, that was my comment on it. And I'm just like, do I really even care anymore? Because you expect something like that from Kevin Smith. Well, look, at this point, Kevin Smith is releasing movies on postage stamps. I know. And, you know, he said he was going to retire.

He promised us that he was going to retire. After he does Clerks 5 through 17, he will retire. Man, man can't keep his promises, I tell you. It's funny because you kept talking about how he was, you know, so obnoxious on Twitter.

And I just remember he had like 400 podcasts at one time. Every time I'd, you know, just go somewhere, he had a new podcast. And I think maybe the podcasting has kind of worn off for him because I could find one. That was it. Yeah, I couldn't find any of the other ones that I was looking for.

It's just like, they're just gone. So it's interesting. Well, he's making 7,000 movies to release on 8-track and whatever else format he can think of. Exactly, exactly. And that Clerks 3 trailer, Clerks was never good. Clerks 2 was still not any good.

Clerks 3 seems to be perpetuating the trend. Anyway, I saw this one too. This is the last of the Flash news. The Earth's population is about to hit 8 billion. So enough with the fucking already, people. Speak for yourself.

Wrap it, man. Wrap it. Well, I'm one and done. Especially if you live in a red state. So don't worry about that. Yeah. There you go. All right, let's get to some real news. Well, I mean, the big news for me was NASA revealing the images from the James Webb Telescope. I mean, when you start to think about the fact that it was, you know, what, 60 years ago that we barely landed on the moon?

Look at these images. Oh, they're incredible. Like, if this doesn't touch you and make you want to be interested in science and our climate and saving our planet when we realize what a tiny microscopic dot we are in this universe, we must be a Republican.

Sorry. I couldn't resist. Yeah, I know. I was going to say, or your brain has exploded from the realization of how insignificant you actually are in the universe. Yes. Yes. You know. The Elon Musk news, Twitter, you know, obviously everybody is aware of what's been going on.

The news that's come out this week is Twitter is going to sue Elon Musk to force him to complete his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company. So this will be going to court in Delaware. You know, it's a big deal because, as has been pointed out quite a number of times by a number of people, we're now going to find out if laws and agreements and contracts mean anything or not.

Mm-hmm. I'm sure this will get settled somewhere along the way. But, yeah, this is, you know, I'm happy that Twitter is actually doing it, not rolling over. Me too. Because, yeah, actions need consequences. And, yeah, there's a contract.

We have contracts for a reason. I don't care how rich you are. It actually makes you a better target, I think. Yes, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. In more news, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams is stepping down as CEO of Medium. Medium. Which we have not said in a long time, which is partially probably why he's stepping down because Medium has basically had the life sucked out of it by a bunch of copycats.

Yes, I mean, certainly Substack has taken its cake and ate it. Oh, God, yeah. I mean, it's so funny. I even have a Substack newsletter, but I also was starting to cross-publish on Medium, and I had some kind of screw-up on Medium, and I had to deal with their tech support. And then I'm just like, you know what?

I really don't care about Medium. Everybody's over on Substack nowadays, so you are now irrelevant. Yep, it's gone. So regardless of the initial promise that this startup would change the web, so it didn't, and it's not. And he's left, and he is moving on to – let's see.

What did he say here? Learn as much as I can learn about things I don't know a lot about. Might I suggest searching on Instagram and TikTok? Exactly. Yes, he wants to start a new holding company or research lab. Ev, dude, I love you. Just retire.

Just take the money and run. Seriously. Go by the island next to Zuckerberg, and you guys both stop, please. Yeah. Well, I don't know if Ev has that kind of money, but I'm sure he doesn't really have to do another gig. You know? He's good. Yeah. He's good. And in the continued downturn that we're seeing, electric vehicle maker Rivian is planning a major cost-cutting drive and will be as thoughtful as possible as we consider any reductions.

That's what they wrote in a memo to employee because the leak – it basically leaked that they need to start cutting costs, and this is not how we intended for you to hear about this, he wrote. We had hoped that these sensitive and complex conversations would have stayed within Rivian until we could address them more comprehensively.

Basically, that means you should have told people before it got leaked. Yeah. Seriously. Dumbass. Yeah. So Rivian not doing so great. I did see one in the wild on my journey. It's a good-looking truck. Yeah. They're cool-looking. They are definitely cool-looking. They're incredibly expensive.

Mm-hmm. Yep. That's why the only time I've ever seen them are in Calabasas. So they're – you know, a couple of them sprinkled about there. And one of our – our friend of the show, Shane Nickerson, got one. It says it's pretty incredible. Yeah. And another company that was a company gone wild and is now crashing back down to Earth, Peloton.

Peloton is giving up on building their own products. That's part of their cost-cutting initiative. We are now outsourcing all products and they're basically only keeping the business of trying to get you to subscribe and having peppy young people telling you to shut up and sweat. So.

All right. That is now gone. Is the price going to come down to something reasonable? Because the prices are just stupid. Well, we talked about this a little while ago and I think they're still sticking with that same plan, which is basically they're dropping the cost of the actual physical products, which they can now do because they're outsourcing to China and it's all cheaper, but increasing subscription costs once they get you in.

That's right. Yeah. That's what it was. Yeah. Services. It's all about the services, man. Yep. Facebook has released its new human rights study and. How's that going? Yeah. Well, yeah. Oh, India is going to be a problem for them.

India is definitely going to be a problem for them. They did kind of do a mea culpa on Myanmar. So there's that. Sorry, we fucked your country. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much though. The experts are saying that as these things come out, we might actually get some more useful information over the years out of these, which is kind of a little more useful information for them to ignore.

Yeah. That too, that too, but that was just a little shade she threw there, but we'll see how this goes. I mean, I don't think anybody's doing anything about any of this anymore. Nobody's driving the ship. Nobody's driving the ship. Nope. But this one, this one kind of, this one excites me and saddens me at the same time.

Meta has a new generative AI system that they have developed kind of along the lines of what the Dali, Dali Mini, all the generative art things that are out there that everybody's been playing with, Crayon and all of those. They have made their own and the differentiator with theirs, which is really cool, is that you can give it a sketch to work from.

It's kind of a framework before you give it your ridiculously stupid task of going out and creating something from scratch. I think it's really cool. I think it's a really good idea and it makes it very useful. You can prime the pump. Yeah. You can prime the pump and then use, you know, take that, cut out assets, make things from it.

I've seen some really interesting uses of Dali Mini where people were doing like icon sets, like making 3D icon sets using it. It was kind of, kind of neat. It does. This one will do everything except for legs. Yes. Everything except for legs. The legless.

And they named it Make-A-Scene. Okay. What the? They actually called it that. That's, that's okay. Make-A-Scene. Wow. That must have been a short meeting. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

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Shop now at QVC.com. Media candy. Well, Brian, Netflix has threatened us with a lower cost ad supported tier and it looks like they're going to start pulling the trigger on that.

They've signed up with Microsoft to actually do the ad distribution for them. Oh, well, cool. Okay, good. I don't, I don't mind that. That's fine. Yeah, yeah. I like that in the actual press release, they say, it's very early days and we have much to work through, but our long-term goal is clear. More choice for consumers and a premium, better than linear TV brand experience for advertisers.

We're excited to work with Microsoft as we bring this new service to life. I just like that they had to throw in, it's very early days and we have much to work through, which means we didn't want to be writing this right now. Somebody leaked this shit and we had to get in front of it. And we have no idea how this is actually going to play out.

Yeah, yeah. So Strange New Worlds has ended. There's going to be some spoilers here, I'm sure. So if you haven't watched the end of Star Trek Strange New Worlds or some of the Orville, you might want to skip ahead a minute or two. But Brian, finale, what did you think?

I love the show. It is definitely the best Star Trek we've had in a very long time. I can't – I'm thrilled. It's just really well done. I love all the characters. We've got to talk about the Kirk in the room. Oh, yeah. I'm disappointed that they pulled the trigger on that so early.

I understand, you know, you've got to make your bones. You've got to make sure that you're going to get renewed. You've got to build the buzz going out of the first season and get people's eyeballs on it and all that. So I get it. It's just unfortunate that's the way the world is now. The problem I have is with the casting.

I am pretty particular about my Kirks. Obviously, Shatner is a very big set of shoes to fill and hammy shoes at that. But I thought Chris Pine nailed it in the movies even though I hate the movies and I hate the stories and I hate everything about it.

He felt kirky to me. This guy, not so much. And in fact, I had such a hard time not looking at him and not thinking, my God, it's a young Jim Carrey that I could not get away from that. Okay. Well, fortunately, I could.

Yeah. He was terrible casting in my personal opinion. But beyond that, the story for the finale I thought was just so beyond top notch that I couldn't give any fucks about the Kirk. The story was that good.

Well, unfortunately, we're stuck with this, Kirk, and we know how they're going to roll this out. So I will say I agree with you 100% and I am sticking a pin in not my Kirk, but we're stuck with him for the fucking generation now. Yeah, well, shit happens.

We can go back and deep fake him later. Hopefully. Yeah, yeah. The Orville, New Horizons. I think episode seven they're up to now. I just watched it last night. That show is just killing it. It is killing it. And it's just funny that when they take on woke topics, I find it engaging and fascinating and well done.

But when I watch Discovery, it makes me want to throw something through my TV and I can't put my finger on it. You know what, the real thing that came out of Strange New Worlds for me is just how horribly awful Discovery is. Uh-huh. Like when you're side-by-siding them, even Picard does not come off very well, but Discovery comes off.

Like the only two good Star Trek shows right now are Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds. They should shit-can everything else. Shit-can everything else, yeah. I'm with you. I'm with you on that one. But, yeah, definitely New Horizons. They did their time travel episode.

And I thought that their take on it, the way that they ended it, was so genius and just such an out-of-left-field fuck-you-to-time travel. I loved it. I mean, it was so good. It was so good. So I just – I highly recommend that.

That will be your third favorite Star Trek now. Umbrella Academy Season 3 finished it. Wow. Love that show. I really, really love that show. For some reason, it's a feel-good show for me. Okay. I really enjoy it. You haven't watched any of those, have you? No, no.

Oh, they're so good. They are so good. And it's not like – I still can't watch The Boys because it's just so – you know. But the Umbrella Academy perked me up quite a bit. And I do have a podcast recommendation called Let's Make a Sci-Fi.

It's Canadian, Brian. Okay. It comes out of the CBC. A couple comedians, Ryan Bell, Mattie Kelly, and Mark Chavez. They basically take eight episodes to write a pilot and record it for a sci-fi show, like a straight sci-fi show, not a comedy because they're comedy writers.

Really good series. I really liked it. So I can't recommend it enough. It's only – like I said, it's only eight episodes. They're short, like 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and they have really top-notch talent on there. They do have Neil deGrasse Tyson on for a little bit, and he didn't – he wasn't as much of a dick as he usually is, which was pretty good.

Cool. I'll have to check this out because I'm here, you know, away from my home gym and all that sort of thing. So all I've really been doing for exercise is long walks, and I've actually caught up with and burned through all my podcasts. So I'll give this a go. Yeah, it's really – it's really well done. Really well done. And what's really cool is the final episode, they actually do have a full cast read of the pilot, and I want your take when it's done because I thought it was so good.

I think they need to keep making it, but I want a different opinion on it. So when you get through it, let's follow up on that. All right. Cops and doodads. As I was discussing earlier, travel is a total nightmare, and one of the things that I've been hearing about, particularly in Toronto's Pearson Airport, is the luggage situation.

When you travel in, luggage is being lost, and piles of luggage thrown into corners left, right, and center. People aren't finding their luggage, people – et cetera, et cetera. So to combat that, I did what many people are – I searched on Instagram and TikTok and found out what the kids are doing, Jason. Okay.

What are the kids doing? The kids are buying Apple AirTags and throwing them in their luggage so they can find their luggage when society breaks down and the people that are supposed to give you your luggage for you don't. And so I ordered two Apple AirTags. They were on sale on Amazon for part of their Prime thing, so I got them a couple bucks cheaper than I would have off the Apple store.

And yeah, so I've set them all up. And when I fly back, they will be ensconced in my luggage, so I will know where my luggage is when we land. Nice. Nice. I'm not sure if I have any other use case scenario for an AirTag, but there you go. I keep them on my keys, my car keys, and I keep one in my backpack.

And they have basically saved my keys in my backpack twice now. So since you do leave the house to go to an office, they are worth having at least in your backpack and your keys. Right. Okay. When you're done traveling, you have to – yeah, just repurpose them. There you go.

I saw this and thought of you. I saw Nikon is reportedly halting DSLR camera development, which I suppose isn't too much of a surprise because the new technology is so much better, correct? Yes. Yes. It's no surprise. It's about time, actually, that they kill the DSLR.

Everything is mirrorless now, and I have two of their – well, I've got five of their new mirrorless cameras, two models, but they're fantastic. They are definitely better than the old DSLRs. You don't get the clickety-clack. You don't need it anymore. Our technology has moved on. Canon is doing the same, and these are just reports.

They haven't officially said it yet, but the writing is on the wall. Right. It is time. And I found another thing that I picked up during the Prime deal just because the price is right. I didn't really need it, but you know what?

You can never have too much storage, so I picked up the Samsung T7 Shield, two-terabyte, portable SSD up to 1050 megabytes per second, USB 3.2 Gen 2, rugged IP65, water and dust resistant for photographers, content creators and gaming, external spelled incorrectly, solid state drive, MU-P-E-T-2-T-O-S-S-A-M black.

I mean, two terabytes for like 200 bucks. Come on. And the T7s are great. I've got a stack of them here because I used them when I was Chia mining, basically burning through. But those things have never failed on me, so those are good. I mean, you don't even need the quote-unquote rugged IP65 water and dust resistant case because they're pretty well shielded.

So good price though. It was a good purchase. Yeah, good price, good purchase. Yep, yep. I got a good price on the Dell 240 hertz gaming monitor, 24.5 inch full HD monitor with IPS technology, anti-glare screen, dark metallic gray and what's that? S2522 HG.

Okay. Yep. Got them for 200 bucks each. I got two of them. They're now selling for 275. So thank you, Prime Day. You made 150 bucks there according to some people's purchasing logic. Okay. Usually mine when I used to be drunk.

Hey, I made $150 today. How? I spent $400. Yeah, that works. I got them for the studio because I needed to stack on my vertical stand like for taking care of the studio. And I got to say they're really nice.

They're overkill for what I'm doing. But I wanted 1080p monitors, not 4K monitors. Yeah. And these are just – also the anti-glare is really nice. So that and if I ever get back into gaming, I have two small monitors to game on. I don't know why you would want a 24.5 inch gaming monitor.

It's too small for anything useful for games. Right. But I also picked up the Spigen Rugged Armor designed for iPad Mini 6 case slash iPad Mini 6 generation case, 8.3 inch cover, 2021 matte black. I got this because I had one already for my – I have two Airs or two iPad Minis, iPad Minis.

And I had the first one I had this on and it's so nice. I got another one. So it is definitely my favorite case for the iPad Mini. So if you're looking for one of those, check that out. Since, you know, it is prime time. I got the Deco Pro 218 piece general household hand tool kit, professional auto repair tool set for homeowner, general household hand tool set with pliers, screwdriver set, socket set with portable storage case.

For $103. I looked at this. It's pretty – I would get this if I didn't have most of these tools already. Very nice. Yeah. I needed something because I have two locations now. So I'm at the studio half the time and I'm at home half the time. So I got this for the studio.

And now on the case, on the outside of the case, there is a slogan and I'm still trying to figure this one out. This is a tool kit, mind you. It says designated for extraordinary kindness only. Trying to appeal to the Woka stands?

I do not know why my tools are designated for extraordinary kindness only because I tell you when I'm using tools, I am anything but kind. Far from kind. Yes. I have a story about that coming up in security. So yes, I am far from kind. So I don't know what the hell is going on with that.

But it's a good – it's a great tool kit. Fantastic tool kit. One other thing that I got last week was office chair wheels, black replacement rubber chair casters for hardwood floors and carpet. Set of five heavy duty office chair casters for chairs to replace chair mats. Universal fit, $37. These are these – they're basically roller blade wheels that you put on your desk chairs and they're silent.

I need silent – I need these chairs to be as quiet as possible because they're in a studio. And so I picked these things up. Oh my God, they're fantastic because they also give you like an extra inch and a half on your chair. So if your chair is just a little bit too low, you just get that extra lift and it's perfect.

I think I might have to pick these up for the office in Toronto. They're great. They're quiet and you can really get some – it's much easier to roll around on carpet or hardwood with these. You don't like – they're just – they're fantastic. You don't have to get that stupid plastic mat. Yep. This takes care of all that.

I bought them for all the chairs that I've got. And any chair that I get in the future, I'm definitely doing it for that one too. And to wrap up my Amazon spree, I did get the Frigidaire Retro Bar Fridge Refrigerator with Side Bottle Opener 3.2 Cubic Feet Red. It was cute.

It was cute. I actually got this one. It's $200. I got it for free with points because Amazon likes me because I keep spending so much money with them. They're like, here, have a refrigerator. Okay. I'll take that. And I got the FedMax Metal Garage Storage Cabinet. 71-inch tall, large steel utility locker with adjustable shelves and locking doors.

Garage cabinets for tool storage and ammo locker. Gray and silver. I got the gray version of this. I bring this up because it tried to kill me. There's one part when you're putting it together where you have to go inside, upside down, and backwards and look at this thing to clamp on these little clips.

And as I'm doing it out of the corner of my eye, I notice that the horizon is rapidly changing as I am falling to my doom backwards inside of a cabinet. And I had the wherewithal to at least turn and bruised a rib pretty badly and really screwed up my arm.

That was three weeks ago that I fell, and I'm still bruised and sore. So if you do get the FedMax Metal Garage Storage Cabinet, beware because it will try and eat you. And there's probably somewhere in the instructions that said, do not do this alone. Probably. Probably.

But I have no friends, so I had to do it by myself. Barrett writes in, so $18 a month to keep your nuts warm. And this is the controversy about the BMW heated seat subscription for $18 for the BMWs. And yeah, everybody posted this.

Everybody put it everywhere. And what they left out was that it was only in South Korea. Yeah. And it's a test in South Korea. It's a trial balloon, and nobody likes it. Yeah. So your panties are in a bunch for no reason whatsoever. Unless you're South Korean panties.

Yes, unless you do have South Korean panties. I think that your BMWs are going to be safe, and your nuts will remain toasty. Yep. And I did find this one this morning, which was pretty cool. The SNES manual archives for the Super Nintendo.

And somebody named Peebs for eight years was streaming on Twitch, and he beat all the SNES games and then decided, hey, man, we need the manuals for all these. So he got together a coalition of nerds. And they got together and set about all of the English language Super NES manuals have now been scanned.

The archive is 100% nonprofit and meant for educational purposes. No ads, no Patreon, no donation. And all scans are on archive.org and are the rightful property of the original creators. Well, we know that they're the rightful property of the original creators. Let's just hope they don't come after you. Well, that's why there's no ads, no Patreon, and no donations, Jason.

Exactly. Exactly. So let's hope that that will keep them at bay. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Yeah. And this one just came out, which is pretty cool. This is the Apple Room Plan API. This comes out with iOS 16, and it uses the LiDAR camera in your phone to do, like, the room scans that you can do now.

But this lets you take out the furniture so you can put in new furniture using AR. Ah, very nice. Great, great use of the AR because it's like, yeah, I can scan my room, but if I want to see how a couch looks, well, there's a couch there. Not anymore. You can scan the couch and have it removed.

Excellent. It's neat. After I finished the marathon sci-fi book that I was reading and before I delved into part two of it, I decided I needed a bit of a palate cleanse and went back to my old favorites, which is finding the musicians that I grew up with that have written their autobiographies and stories and whatnot.

And I found a book called Salad Days by Wayne Hussey. If you do not know who Wayne Hussey is, he is an English musician. He started with Dead or Alive, of all things. He became one of the first Sisters of Mercy and Sisters of Mercy Mark I and then went off to start his own band called The Mission, more known here in the States as the Mission UK, because apparently there was a mission that never did anything here, but they couldn't use the name.

So, yeah, I really enjoyed it. It was great reading about the early times of the kind of early goth movement and, you know, early 80s alternative music scene in England. And, you know, we have this, especially growing up, I had this mystery of like, you know, the Sisters of Mercy are like the coolest people in the whole world.

They're just, they were just a bunch of drunken idiots the entire time. It's awesome. So, you said Dead or Alive. So, is this the you spin me right round guy? Before that, Dead or Alive was kind of more, he learned how to, he basically brought them into the synth age. They were a guitar and kind of a normal guitar kind of post-punk band.

And they were like, we need to figure out how to do this. And he's the guy that figured it all out, then left the band, and then they had their big hit. Oh, man. Don't you hate when that happens? Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. So, I ran across this article on Wired called Humans Have Always Been Wrong About Humans.

And I'm like, oh, I'm intrigued because I'm wrong every fucking day, it turns out. It was an interesting article, and it's about a new book called The Dawn of Everything, A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengroh. Well, it's not new. It came out, I guess, in the fall last year.

And it's basically just about how everything we've always thought about history is wrong. And here's some evidence to back it up. It's long. For Audible, it's 24 hours and two minutes. So, it's up there with Neil Stevenson territory. Right. I started to listen to it and just kind of let it play throughout the night.

So, I'd kind of wake up and it would still be going. And I learned some other new fact that I thought was, you know, gospel was wrong and went back to bed, had some terrible dreams. I don't recommend listening to this while you sleep is what I'm saying. Bad idea. But so far, it's a fascinating book. It's going to take me a while to get through it.

But so far, I like it quite a bit. Well, this is right up my alley. I think I've got my next book. Yeah. I think you're definitely going to dig it. And so, I found another new podcast, too, called The Labors of Hercule. This is an Adam Roche joint. Adam does the Secret History of Hollywood podcast.

And he's a co-host on the House of Hammer and one of my favorite podcasters in the world. So, when I find out that Adam Roche is doing a new podcast about the TV series, Poirot, and they're going to go through all of them, I got very excited. And then I listened to it, and I found out that I should have been the co-host on this show.

He got some woman named Frankie who's awesome at it, but we both have the same love of the Poirot TV show. I really should have been on that show, damn it. But I get to listen and not do the work. So, it's kind of a win. But on the back of that, of course, I was searching Hercule on the Googs.

I wasn't doing the TikTok or the Instagram. I was doing it the proper way where they could track me and then send me advertisements. Yes, exactly. So, I got an ad for Hercule Poirot, The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie, narrated by David Suchet, Hugh Frazier, Nigel Hawthorne, Ilsa Blair, Simon Vance.

Basically, the people from the TV series do the audio versions of the show. So, I'm just like, oh, well, take my money. Please, have as much of it as you can. That's 35 hours and five minutes. So, I think I'm good for audio for probably the next six months, I think.

You've got a lot to work through. Yeah. Yeah. But I do recommend The Labors of Hercule if you are a fan of the TV show Poirot, which I am.

Security? Ha! We are back this week with 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.

And finally, not finally, he's also the co-host of Control Loop, where they discuss IoT. Got it? Yep, got it. Yes, indeed. All that in the back of the day. Nothing new in the last 24 hours? No, nothing to report. Nothing I can say publicly. So, I saved this story because we're talking about a new toolkit that I bought for the studio.

And I just thought, this is a story Dave would probably get a kick out of. So, you know, everything is scheduled to the teeth here, just trying to get everything done. But every day, there's always one little thing that just jumps out and sucks up your time.

Mine was trying to install VESA mount onto a new monitor. The two monitors that I got the other day. Well, some genius who was designing these monitors decided that right next to the screw hole for the mount is a giant gaping hole to nowhere.

To the seventh level of hell, as far as I can tell. And of course, you know where it's going. The screw obviously falls right into the hole. So, 20 minutes, 20 minutes of shaking it upside down, trying to get it to the point where I can actually see it and move it around.

And it reminded me of a tool that our friend Mike Vinicore uses when he fixes pinball machines. It's basically a magnet on a stick. I was about to say, I'm looking at one of those right now. My dad had one, and it's sitting here in the desk in my old room.

And, yeah, you needed one of these, Jason. I did. I did, because the first thing I did was I went to my new toolkit and said, please, please, please, because there was a bunch of stuff in there I didn't even recognize. I'm like, is there one in here? And it turns out, no. It had everything, the kitchen sink, except the magnet on a stick. But it did have a magnet on a stick because I remembered every screwdriver nowadays does come magnetized.

So I was able to fish it out after ruining half of my morning and missing a deadline because of that. Who designs? Who does that? Yeah. It's like trying to get a pick out of a guitar, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm wondering if – because recently I got the – I splurged and got the iFixit toolkit, which is really nice.

Yeah, I've got one of those. And I can't remember – yeah, it's just what a great thing to have around. And I can't remember if it has a magnet on a stick. That seems like the kind of thing you would have in your iFixit toolkit, right? Well, for smart people that wouldn't then put the toolkit right next to their old drives.

Yes. Yeah, my monitor here is VESA-mounted, however you say it. I always said VESA. Is it VESA, VESA? I don't know. It doesn't matter. It depends on where I – where the sounds come out of my mouth that day. You say VESA, I say VESA.

Yeah. Yeah. I like them because it's nice to have – like in this case, I have the monitor. It's clamped to the back of the desk, which – it keeps the monitor's stand from taking up any desk space, which I like.

Yeah, no. Basically, all of my monitors except for this giant curved Samsung is on a mount. And this would be on a mount except it was so big when I got it and so heavy. I'm like, I'm never going to mount this thing and then foolishly threw away the specifically custom-made plate.

That you need if you ever want to mount it that you cannot buy separately. I recycled it. So it is – this is my one monitor that's on a stand, not on a mount. I'll admit there's more than one time in my life that I've gone to eBay to find that piece that I never thought I would need anymore.

Right? Yeah. I'll never need this. I'll just throw this away and then two years later, I'm on eBay trying – desperately trying to find one. That pretty much sums it up. Oh, here's another one too. These Samsung monitors, they – I have like a 27-inch 4K that is a really nice monitor.

And I thought, okay, I'm going to use that. I'm going to mount it. Most mount points on monitors are in the center, in the back of the monitor, right? Mm-hmm. Well, for Samsungs, for some strange reason, they put it at the very tippy top of the monitor. So you put it in there and the thing is just low.

No matter how high you put your boom arm up, the thing is just too low. I'm just like – these people do not put any lick of sense into how they design these damn things. It drives me crazy. Yeah, the magnet on a stick I think is something that we need to push.

We need to push more of. It's the official Grumpy Old Geeks magnet on a stick. No, you know what we need? We need a combination magnet on a stick and buffalo horn back scratcher. Yeah, that's it. We have a product, ladies and gentlemen.

Oh, yeah. Shark Tank, here we come. I'm going to get right on that. That would actually be incredibly useful. I would have one in every room. Yeah, right? I actually – no, I do have my back scratcher here next to me that I use every day.

But this morning I used it to actually poke the fluorescent light cover since I'm in an office building now and there are fluorescent lights. They're never on, but those covers rattle all the time. So I actually used my back scratcher to pry open the plastic on the light, the overhead light, so it didn't rattle during our show.

They are very useful. They are very useful. Okay. I threw this in here because I just thought that maybe one of you guys had been through L.A. at some point and gone to this place. It's called the Scum and Villainy Cantina in Hollywood. And I was like, how the hell is this? This has been here for like two or three years now.

I've never heard of it. But it turns out almost everybody I know has been there at some point. I'm reasonably sure I mentioned this on the show when they first announced it, which was just pre-COVID. And that is the reason I have never gone as soon as it launched, as soon as it opened up. I think it was just going to be a pop-up for a while, but obviously they've stuck it around.

So I had intended to go, but it did not happen. Yeah. They have trivia night there is how I found out. Our friend Brian Blondale went there for trivia one night and another friend went there for other things. And then I talked to somebody else. I was like, oh, of course I've been there. It's okay. It's not as good as Disney, but it'll do in a pinch.

Well, here's the thing, and I think you'll agree with me, Jason, because you and I have both spent quite a lot of time there back when it existed. I'm sure it is going to be no match for the Quark's Bar that used to exist at the Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton. The one that I never got to go to, yes.

Oh, I thought you had been, Jason. I was there. Yeah, it was amazing. Yeah, you and Dave went. My team had worked on it, so I never got to go. Makes sense. That tracks. Yeah. It was amazing. That whole experience was amazing. To me, that is what the Star Wars Hotel should have aimed for.

Yes. It doesn't seem like they hit their mark with it. But, yeah, Quark's Bar was really cool. I've heard more stories of bad nights happening because of too many warp core breaches. Define bad.

It is Vegas, so it's a sliding scale. Right. Fun in the moment, retrospectively bad. Yes. All right. Well, if we ever have a meetup here in L.A., we're going to have to go there. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Maybe we could record a show there. That would be – There we go. Oh, man.

You know, I could wear my Stormtrooper armor that I don't own. Yeah. We could – well, it's Hollywood. We could work something out, you know. I'm sure. Can you – yeah, imagine how many sets of Stormtrooper armor there are. I'm sure there's a cut-rate pajama version being worn right now on Hollywood Boulevard somewhere. Right.

Take your picture with a Stormtrooper. Yeah. Patreon.com slash GOG, people. Make it happen. There you go. I put a link in here, just a quick segment from a video that I happened upon, and it was Adam Savage talking about the Kenobi series. And I have to say my thoughts on the show track Adams.

He talks about it enthusiastically. And one of the things he touches on is – well, two things caught my ear. One was that the young girl who plays Leia, he said, you know, imagine her at age 10, eight years later growing up to be the Princess Leia we see in A New Hope.

And it totally tracks. And I agree with that. But the other thing he talked about was just how – it was great to see Darth Vader and how it's amazing all these decades later. Darth Vader is the same as he's always been, and he's just as scary.

He's just as much of a badass as the first time you saw him in A New Hope. I'd say much more of a badass because we actually finally get to see him being badass. Right. Right. Yeah. And they didn't add little retro rocket launchers to him like they did to R2-D2.

He's got all the same lights and blinkies and things that he had from the get-go. There's been no Darth Vader version 2 suit. His suit pretty much – I mean they made minor changes. And if you go to the Star Wars Helmets website, you can see all the changes from movie to movie.

I sense you have. Oh, my god. The hours I've spent on the Star Wars Helmets website. But, yeah. So I just put this in here because I thought it was a nice little segment, and mostly I agree with what Adam had to say. And he says it so enthusiastically.

You can tell it's coming from a place of love. That's his brand, right? Like he doesn't do – I've yet to ever see him do anything in the negative really. He is very conscious of being positive at all times. If he doesn't like something, he's not going to talk about it. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. That's true. And speaking of helmets, Dave, I sent you a link to this company that makes helmets called CyberCraft. And I saw these, and I just had the reaction that these are some of the best helmets I've ever seen in my life. And I think you kind of agree.

I do. Yeah. They look great. They look great. All of this stuff, I have to be careful about being a slippery slope for me because I would love to have a Stormtrooper helmet sitting on my desk right now.

And I could afford to have a Stormtrooper helmet. It's hitting on my desk right now. But if I know if I get the Stormtrooper helmet – Where does it end? It can't have just one. No, because it would also be – There's Snowtroopers. There's the Biker Troopers.

Luke Skywalker's X-Wing helmet is cool. And then next thing you know, I don't know. I've got an Emperor's Guard helmet sitting here. Yeah. You can't really do this casually. Next thing you know, it's a lifestyle, Dave. Yeah. Well, you know what?

Here's the thing. I think I passed that point. It's just a matter of coming out of the closet with it, right? Yeah. I actually do have a Darth Vader helmet in my home theater at home. I have a shelf that has a Darth Vader helmet and sitting next to it is a Lego AT-AT.

Nice. Very nice. Yeah. These – the ones from CyberCraft caught my eye because they sent, of course, an ad. I must have mentioned Star Wars somewhere and they sent me an ad. But they said that they were approved by the 501st. So I was like, okay, well, they're kind of legit now.

And I did a little bit more research. And they are really cool. They are not cheap but handcrafted. And I follow them on Instagram and they show them making them. So it's not like some kind of fly-by-night joint. But, yeah, you're looking at like close to $400 for a helmet.

Yeah. Yeah. A good one. Yep. Yeah. Worth it. Patreon.com slash GOG. Just saying. All right. So let's segue over to some actual security news and something that we rarely have in this segment, consequences.

Jury has convicted the ex-CIA engineer Joshua Schultz for what's been called the biggest theft of classified information in the agency's history. So he has actually been convicted now. So this is a large cache of documents that WikiLeaks had published through 2017.

So basically known as Vault 7, which contained information on tools and techniques the agency used to hack into iPhones and Android phones for overseas spying. And he's the kind of – and also smart TVs and listening devices. So we weren't crazy with that one. Still, your phone's not listening to you.

Not for ads anyways. The federal jury has found him guilty on nine counts, including illegally gathered national defense information and then transmitting it. And the kicker here, of course, is not just that and child pornography. Like one does. It's always the cherry on top.

But, I mean, good that there are consequences. We don't see that often enough. It is good. Just a little more fleshing out of this. This was his second round facing the law. The first round, he got convicted of a couple other things, but I believe the jury was hung on the conspiracy thing.

And so he's got convicted of that. I think the other interesting thing about Schulte is that this is an example of someone who grew dissatisfied with the organization. Like when you look at why he did what he did, the explanation seems to be that he didn't feel as though his bosses were taking him seriously enough.

They weren't listening to him. And so he started to hold a grudge and decided, well, if they're not going to listen to me, then I'll show them. And that's the path he went down. So it's a shame, but as you say, it's good that they got him and he was a big deal.

Yeah. So interesting story I saw on Vice. It's a long article and actually Joe Kerrigan and I were talking about this on Hacking Humans this week. This is an article talking about scammers and some of the call centers that have been spun up to run these scams around the world.

There was a term that I had not heard before. They refer to it as pig butchering. Have you guys heard of that before? No. First time I'd heard that term. I hadn't heard that either. Not in this context at least. No, and the whole notion is if you're a pig farmer, you have your little piglets and then you fatten them up.

You take your time with them until they're big enough to send off to slaughter and that's what these scammers do. They befriend people, develop a relationship with them, play the long game and ultimately steal their money. There's a tragic story about a woman who actually has a terminal disease.

She's dying from cancer and she got scammed out of over $2.5 million by one of these people. The other component of this story is it really goes into some of the details about how in Cambodia and China, they have these forced labor situations where people work in these scam call centers and they really don't have a choice about it.

They talk about how they get sold from one call center to another. There's a story about a gentleman who was – he thought he was being hired for like a customer service job. When he got to Cambodia, they took away his passport, threatened him with violence and put him to work and basically he had to escape to find his freedom.

So there's a lot to this story. Like I said, it's a long story but quite interesting. The last paragraph here I think is worth reading. It says, Complacency after all is the scammer's best friend and even the savviest of people can lose everything in a momentary lapse of judgment.

One volunteer, a PhD holder in biology who was scammed out of $150,000 recalled a line from a pig butchering handbook she'd seen. It read, There is no unscammable person, only scripts that don't fit. And this is why I never answer my phone and don't ever respond to emails.

Probably wise. I mean, you know, it is so constant now. That's the thing. Like my – I'm sitting at my mom's house. My mom's phone rings off the hook almost all day long. It's always a scam call. Cell phone calls, I mean, one out of 50 actual phone calls I get is a friend actually wanting to talk and even then it's like usually they text first to say, hey, are you around?

Every phone call I get is a scam. They're all scams. It's so prevalent and we've done fuck all about it. Yeah. This article points out too how the woman who got scammed out of $2.5 million, it started with a fake wrong number text message.

Right. Someone texting her and saying, hey, are you Jane from the pet store? I get those all day long. Yeah. Delete. Yeah. You just – she got – delete. She kindly replied and said no wrong number but that led to what she thought was an innocuous relationship that ultimately scammed her out of her savings.

You got to be wise to this stuff. I followed up the first time with somebody just because they were like – sent me like three in a row like something about getting picked up at the airport. I'm like, no, I'm not that person. And then it just stopped. Nothing after that. It's weird they didn't try and follow up like they did with her. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I don't know if any of you guys have WhatsApp but, man, that is prevalent. That is – that's even worse than just the regular text ones. I get WhatsApp messages probably pretty much daily. That's stuff like that. Like, hey, this is Jane. I was told to contact you when I was in your city.

That sort of stuff. I got one final one because we talked about people who were coming for our jobs, the podcasters with the – basically the AI-generated voices. Can't wait. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yay. So I see this ad come across from somewhere.

It's from a company called Synthesia.ai. And they say Synthesia is a web-based platform for creating videos with AI avatars. Thousands of companies use it to create instructional videos at scale 80% faster than before. I checked it out and was looking at their demos, just the demo videos, not actually using it, and pretty kind of cool and creepy at the same time.

But I can see how it would – if I wanted to just like whip something up with a quick speaker, it's kind of cool for that. Right. But it's still just – the fact that it is that cool, I'm like, what can we do naughty with it? It's, of course, the first thing I always think of, but I just wondered if you guys have seen this one because it looks like it's kind of advanced than it used to be.

I haven't seen this one, but you're right. It's come a long way as all of these things have. I'm going to play with it some. I think it's interesting. As someone who used to make these kinds of videos, the person – the spokesperson standing in front of a green screen that we later replace with some kind of animated background or something, this would be great.

I don't have to hire an actor. I don't have to schedule a shoot. I don't even need a camera or a microphone. I definitely see a place for this. Keyboard and a credit card will do you. Right. Boy, we better get to work on those universal replicators pretty soon because I don't know how this world is going to survive.

Yeah, this is pretty neat. Pretty neat. And as you say, also a little scary. Yeah. How all apocalypse start. Hey, that's pretty neat. Right. Exactly. That's cool. I wonder what would happen if – I connected this to the global nuclear missile system. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. On that happy note. Yep. All right, gents. I will talk to you next time. All righty. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Jocelyn and Tom.

And over at PayPal, we've got Shaleen, David, Ralph, Mark, Miles, Nathaniel, Shari, Natalie, Edward, Dag, and Linda. And over at the tip jar, we've got Matthew, Linda, Jeff, Andrew, Anne, and Theodore. Thank you all very, very much. And we've got our new review, Jason. It's been a while.

Unfortunately, it's not a good one. Nah, yeah. Two stars from Shoot Draxas. Old men yell at clouds. Longtime listener and donator. I think it's finally time to abandon this podcast. The hosts have gone from grumpy old geeks to beachin' old boomers. From the entitled rant to the Plan B bungle, the humor is waning and anger is amping.

Maybe I can find my tech fix in one of Bittner's four other podcasts. I've got to keep up, man. It's at least five right now. There's at least five. And neither one of us are boomers. We do bitch, but we're not boomers. Nope. Gen Xers, man. Well, thank you, Shoot Draxas, for at least being on.

For your support when you did. For your support when you did. Yep. Appreciate it. Good luck finding what you're looking for. Yep. Hat tip to Mr. Clark over on Discord. This one was kind of sad. The last surviving member of Band of Brothers dies at age 97. Tom Hanks or Matt Damon?

Oh, I was hoping it was Matt Damon. Oh, wait, that's the other movie. Yeah. Sorry. I get my World War II epics mixed up. There's some crossover there. I get it. I get it. And speaking of soldiers, fake soldier Larry Storch has passed on as well. I know Larry from F Troop.

Yes. Which was a staple growing up on just reruns, of course. Local TV when they just bought out all the reruns. Yep. Yep. F Troop was fantastic. Gilligan's Island. Yeah. The whole thing. Until next time, I'm Brian Shulness.

And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help us 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. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 561. 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. Stay grumpy.

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