25 Door Refrigerator BONUS: Darkside with Dave!

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Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave, featuring cybersecurity's hardest-working podcaster, Dave Bittner. When he's not covering the daily cyber beat on the Cyber Wire, he's busting scams with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans, tackling privacy with Ben Yellen on caveat, and proves there's always room for one more cybersecurity podcast with only malware in the buildings. Welcome back, Dave.

You know, today I am what can best be categorized as hanging in there. I have a friend of mine posted a meme earlier this week that said, being a smart person in this timeline is like being awake during surgery.

Dave, you're not the only frosty one in the room today. How you doing? Right, so we're really leaning into the grumpy today, aren't we? Yeah. I'm jet-lagged as fuck, and I'm cheerful. Okay, good. You got to drink on a plane. I say, I want whatever you're taking.

Yeah. What are we talking about? Let me start off with just a couple of media candy visits here. Sure. Are you guys watching the new season of Ted Lasso? I am. I am one episode behind because I was traveling when the last episode dropped, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

Okay. I'm having fun with it. It is, nothing will catch the magic of the first episode, but that was more due to timing than anything else, I think. But thoroughly, I'm enjoying this episode as much as I enjoyed, say, this season.

Sorry, what was the name of that guy that was complaining about us giving episodes and titles? I can't remember his name right now. Patrick, I believe. Patrick, I believe, yeah. Sorry, Patrick. But I'm enjoying this season as much as I'd say season two. Like, season three was a bit of a bummer. I didn't really care for it that much.

But this is as good as season two was, in my opinion. Yeah. How about you, Jace? I just finished the New Year's Eve episode, and I don't know the number, but yeah, that was fucking great.

That was the best. I was dying. Yeah. That was good. I'm enjoying it. The thing is, I forget that it's on, and then, you know, I have to have Apple TV just go, hey, you know, you've got some Ted Lasso waiting over here. And, because I'm waiting for, basically, I watch Ted Lasso when I'm done with Slow Horses, because I love Slow Horses.

That makes me go back to Apple TV. Ted Lasso doesn't make me actually go back. So, tonight, when I'm done with Slow Horses, I'll watch a Ted Lasso or two. But I like it. I'm not mad at it in any way, shape, or form. I suppose if I had any criticism, is it took a long time to get around to exploring the players, which they were much better about with the men in the first three seasons.

So, they finally started to do that, which I'm appreciating. And the, I feel that they've turned, what's her face, the bubbly young girl that has the on and off. Keely. I feel that they've turned Keely into even more of a caricature than her character originally was.

I would agree with all that. My wife and I are standing by for the episode to drop Tuesday nights at nine o'clock. Yes. It's supposed to be out Wednesday. It comes out Tuesday night. It comes out Tuesday night. And we're sitting on the edge of our seats waiting because it is a highlight of our week and we do enjoy it.

And it has been a fun season so far. So, we did watch the penultimate episode last night of the season, which makes me sad because there are only 10 episodes in a season. I wish there were more. And it also means that after next week's episode, what is it going to be?

I don't know, four or five years? Seven years or change. Before we get, I don't know. I mean, my thought was that would probably be it. But to quote Jason earlier, did it make money? Then there'll be more. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To bring Jason Sudeikis back and that whole cast again, I can't imagine that they're not going to do more of it.

And it's not like there's, it's like effects heavy. It's not that expensive. It's just, you know. Yeah. And look, if they can spend $20 million an episode on fucking severance, they can afford Ted Lasso. Please. Yeah, they just, they can use the fluorescent lightning budget from a severance to pay for Ted Lasso.

Yeah. Just the goodwill alone, I think. It's a good show. I'm glad it came back. Yeah. Other thing I wanted to ask about, did either of you see Coyote vs. Acme? No. No. I did. What is it on?

It was in theaters. It's on getting out of the house. I don't have that app, Dave. Okay. I understand. I believe it's close to being streamed. I think it's pretty close to being.

They've announced that date. I don't know what it is, but I think before the end of the year, it'll be streamed. I loved it. We went and saw it at our local theater and I had moderate expectations for it. It is a solid comedy. Like, laugh out loud.

And it's not only for those of us who grew up with the Warner Brothers cartoons. And that definitely helps because there's so many funny little throwaway things that have to do with those cartoons, but it's really well done. It's sort of the next generation of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

That's how I would say it. Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, by all accounts, when it got shelved, the people that had seen it were saying it was amazing. So I'm looking forward to seeing it. I just have not got to a theater. So I will catch it when it streams.

No, it's really nice to see just a solid comedy because there aren't, and it's family friendly, you know, like, yeah, it's a bit of a unicorn, I think. So when it comes out on streaming, I highly recommend it.

We had a really fun time at the theater. It was nice to see it in a theater full of people, too, because just that feeling of shared laughter was so few and far between these days. It's a world of laughter, a world of cheer. Right. Yeah.

So, you know, I enjoyed that very much. Cool. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah.

So, Jason, I took your advice from last time, and I have fully embraced the vibe coding. Well, you'll be the judge of that. I prefer calling it enhanced project management. There you go.

So a little backstory. I am a member of one of my community's rotary clubs, which is a little, you know, group of do-gooders who get together and raise money and do nonprofit projects and service projects and things like that.

Like Scientology? The guys that wear the funny hats, the fesses? No, no. Is that you? It is non-faith-based. It is, it was something my father did. So that's how I learned about it. Like the Freemasons. Kind of. But, yeah. Look.

Dale Zinu. There are weird things about it, like all of these sort of organizations. But there's no secret handshake. There's no, mostly we're the ones who got- There is, but it's a secret. And he's not going to tell us, Brian. That's true. The big project that Rotary had was trying to rid the world of polio, and they're very close.

That went great until recently. Until. It's a good thing we weren't focused on measles. Yeah. Good thing we weren't focused on measles. Right now, the Rotary Club is trying to figure out a way to assassinate RFK. Right. We can get it back, guys. We can get it back. Long story short, too late.

Maintain the club's website, because I used to be capable of doing it. I'm the tech guy, right? But this was getting hard for me to do, because my skills in that particular area have totally atrophied.

It's been so long since I've actively did that sort of thing, that there were many times it was kind of like pounding my head against the desk. Also, the club website is on a very old content management platform. Jason, any recollection of the word Ning? Yes.

Oh, my God. Holy shit. So Ning is still up and running. It is in total zombie mode, but it's momentum, right? If someone were to switch it to another platform, that person would be me, and I have resisted doing that.

There's a perverse, almost OPSEC about that, because who would think to hack that anymore? True. True. It's either really hard or just super easy. There's no in between. No. No. So I was actually on the verge of sort of resigning my position as the person who's in charge of this, because it was just getting more and more frustrating to me.

People would send me requests, and I just, like, I felt, I was in that mode where I felt like every time I did it, I had to relearn it from scratch, because I wasn't doing it often enough to have it stick, you know? Yeah. Know that well. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I took your advice.

There was no question that the site was due for a refresh. It just looked old, and there was another website for our Rotary District that was much more up-to-date and looked nice and had many more things that I admired. So I went to my friend Chet, Chet GPT, and I said, here's my Rotary Club website.

I want it to look more like this website. Can you help me? And it was like, absolutely. Are you kidding me? I can do that. It said, what is your site running on? I said, Ning. It said, oh, Ning. I know Ning. Sure. It said, and so the first thing it did, it just started giving me CSS, right?

Cascading style sheets. It said, put this in, put this in. And over the course of about an hour, completely transformed this old, tired website into one that looks much more modern and up-to-date. Every now and then, it had to ask me for some code so it could figure out how Ning was doing things behind the scenes.

And I would go, oh, I see. Ning's doing this. Interesting. All right. Well, that changes this. And then we'll do this now. And it was fun. Like you said, Jason. Oh, my gosh. It's fun. It's because it's like having an... It's like having your own nerd. Yes.

But a nerd who has instantaneous response and doesn't have to think about anything. Doesn't have to try anything. Doesn't have to type whatever. It's just like, try this. Plug this in. Try this code. Try this. Oh, the other thing that was really fun was I would just send it screenshots.

I'd say, close, but see how this is not enough. Oh, yeah, sure. I can fix that. No problem. Here, use this instead. Isn't that the coolest fucking thing? Oh, my God. That's amazing. So, I've just been having a lot of fun. It made this project that I was really tired of fun again.

And it works. It works really well. Way exceeded my expectations. So, now I think I'm not going to have to switch platforms. And I think I'm probably going to stay on taking on this task. Because I have a tireless assistant who has skills.

And I just be a supervisor. So, thank you, Jason, for nudging me in that direction. I don't think I would have done it on my own. And I certainly wouldn't have expected it to be, the outcome to be as good as it has been. Yeah. Like I said, it's just crazy what the thing can do now.

It has gotten to that point, like, you know, up until a couple weeks ago when these new models came out. It was still, like, pulling teeth. But now it's like, it's almost just better than any little junior programmer I've ever worked with. And frankly, a lot of senior programmers have worked with.

But especially when it comes to the not giving you a lip part. Right. And here's the fun part. When you're ready to get off Ning, you just say, I want to port this to a new platform. And it will just do it for you. Yeah. Especially if you want to run it yourself. You say, you know, here, I'm just going to, I set up this VPS over here.

Here are the login credentials. Just go move it over there. Just tell me where to point the DNS. It'll just do everything for you. All that crap that we would spend money and time on and actually get paid money to do, which is the sad part. That's the problem. Yeah.

You're not getting paid to do this stuff anymore. Yeah, it's fun. And even this morning, though, I know you were giving me grief about how my new system isn't working. My new show note system isn't working for you and Brave. You know, it works for everybody else. But you lost your password and couldn't log in.

So I'm like, oh, wait, it didn't do a reset password flow. So I'm just like, hey, you forgot to build a reset password flow. I said, go. And then I went and walked the dog and I came back and there's a reset password flow. So it's like, OK, I love that shit.

Yeah. Because it's not hard stuff. It's basic, easy stuff to do. You know, it's just tedious and boring. Right. Yeah. Right. Doing all those SQL calls. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck SQL. I never I you know, the thing about it is like I don't think kids these days are ever going to know what it's like to spend a week normalizing a SQL database just so you can get 5 percent extra juice out of it because you're running up your server bills.

Oh, those Dems was the days. But yeah, nowadays you don't have to do that. But Dave, I don't know if you've seen the new Grumpy Old Geeks wiki, but you should go check that out. That is the latest and greatest creation that comes from the mind of this was a collaboration between Chet and it's not Athena, whatever the girl's name is, who runs Codex now.

Astra, the new Astra stuff and Chet and Codex on Codex and Claude. That's what it was. Yeah. You get me so confused. But yeah, that's that. That's why I don't give it pet names. It drives me crazy. This that whole thing was built in, you know, a couple of days and nobody wrote a line of code in any of that stuff between me and Donovan who Donovan started it.

And then I worked on it and kind of brought it home. But it's just it's fun. It's fun. I built a network rendering system in the time it takes to take a dump. It's just that's that's my line now. So all dumps vary, but, you know, your dumps may vary.

It's a healthy one. It's a healthy one. Good day dump or a bad day dump. I discovered this new soda called Poppy, which they should call poopy, but it's a prebiotic, which I got to say does the job. I highly recommend it for men of our age. It's very good. It's very good. So did you get a chance to try out your ham radio software again yet?

Or is that on the back burner? I did. No, I did. I tried it over the weekend and sad to say it too crashes. So as as soon as I start the audio engine, it crashes.

So I'll send you the crash log, which then you can send to and then I'll send you the source back now that you're a vibe coder and you can fix it yourself. I'm still running the $20 per month version, so I don't have the the deep, you know, stuff that you have. So, um, yeah.

All right. Let's get on some more fun stuff. I just dropped a couple of Star Wars links in here because it wouldn't be our show if I didn't. Somebody put together a nice little fan edit where Porkins actually destroys the Death Star instead of Luke Skywalker. It's cute.

It's cute. I mean, who doesn't root for Porkins? Good old Porkins. Yeah. You know, everybody's favorite doomed X-Wing fighter pilot. And then I've seen a series of these using different songs, but there's one. They put the Battle of Scarif, I guess, to the theme of Danger Zone and it's pretty rocking.

It's pretty good. It's pretty good. I mean, that's some fun stuff. Yeah, it's pretty good. For our generation, it works. It's pretty good. Very nice.

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So a few things I've come across that are appropriate for this segment. As I mentioned, my son has become a big fan of the Muppets. Very much enjoys watching all the shows and the movies. Maybe not so much the original shows because that's too dated for his 21st century digital boy mind to wrap around.

But, uh, in general, he's, he's in love with the Muppets and he's still a Lego fan. And I made the mistake of Googling, uh, Muppets Lego. And of course they did do a set, which has now been retired, but is available off Amazon and other places as well. So there goes some of my cash.

I'm sure we'll be getting that, uh, pretty soon. It's a, it's a fun little set. It's really just the figures. You don't, uh, get anything else, but they all come with little accoutrement that is appropriate for them. So a lot of fun. Uh, and my kid just, uh, those, those were not, that was not a, like a complete set.

Those came in those little, those little bags, those little like mystery bags. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those, that's what those came in, which means they get a pretty penny these days on the secondary market. Yeah. You can buy the, uh, entire, they have the entire sets available on Amazon for, some upward of a hundred dollars.

So. Oh, okay. Which isn't too bad. No, I'll have to look into that. Okay. Yeah. And then my kid got some stuff with his own money, which I couldn't believe. Um, he wanted this, uh, he's been collecting these very fancy books. Uh, we would call them coffee table books. My wife and I have taken to calling them, uh, milk and cookie books because, you know, it's, it's kid stuff.

So, but the art of gravity falls has come out and this is, this is a tome. This weighs a good, I'd say five pounds. Um, it's big and it's involved and it's beautiful. And, uh, if you are a gravity falls fan, this is kind of a must have.

It's pretty impressive. Yeah. My son has this book and I agree. Yeah. It is really something. And, uh, as he's perusing the book, we got a little tired of listening to the gravity falls soundtrack because we played it roughly 10 million times, but I did find that Disney has done some official releases, lo-fi versions of some stuff.

So the lo-fi gravity falls, which is, uh, linked in the show notes is, is a cool little soundtrack that's out there and it's a lot of fun to listen to. I love lo-fi stuff. So, and I love all the gravity falls music. So this was a great combination to, to listen to. And it's, uh, let us enjoy the soundtrack again.

Yeah. Uh, I think there's something, my son was telling me that there's something new that Alex Hirsch is doing. There's, or there's something, there's an additional gravity falls thing that's coming soon. I can't remember what it is, but, um, yeah, but, uh, you know, it's interesting to me that he's really done very little since then.

Uh, there was talk of new shows and then various projects, but he hasn't really led up anything big and gravity falls is a decade old now, at least. Yeah. It's, it's, it's been out for a while. So, but it's still got a life because I'll tell you this, uh, we, uh, flew across country, uh, which, uh, my, my son has been wanting to go to the Oogie Boogie bash for about four years now, since he discovered that it existed.

And it's a party at a California adventure where they lead into, they, they started in, and obviously in this month, which is September and it goes through, uh, October select days, they shut down the California adventure park early, and then you can buy tickets for a special Halloween party that they have in California adventure where they do treat trails and villains are all out there.

And it's a lot of fun and people dress up and all that sort of stuff. So he's, he's been wanting to go and we decided, okay, it's his 10th birthday. And my wife was supposed to have a lawyer conference and she was supposed to fly to LA for that. So we would tag team onto that and she, cause her flight would be free and rental car would be free and all that sort of stuff.

And we booked everything and we bought the Oogie Boogie bash tickets. And then her company canceled the lawyer's conference. So it is now the most expensive birthday present ever. A little more pricey than taking the kid to Chuck E. Cheese.

A little bit more, a little bit more. So, but we were, we were locked and loaded. So we flew across to LA and we went to the Boogie bash and it was absolutely fantastic. But to your point, uh, Gravity Falls, which is a technically a Disney property is now over 10 years old as we were in line for the Boogie bash waiting to get in, we looked over and what did we see?

We saw two kids dressed as Mabel and, and Dipper. And how cool was that? Like, it was pretty awesome. I don't know if anybody else knew what that costume was, but Lucas was like losing his mind going, oh my God, it's Mabel and Dipper. Uh, so yeah. Um, the Boogie bash was fun.

Like I would recommend this party. It was, it was a blast. We, we had a really good time. Um, we had had father, son, Jawa costumes because that's what, uh, Lucas wanted to be a Jawa, but it was 89 degrees and incredibly humid. So, uh, I did not bring my costume at all.

We threw his into a bag and later on in the evening, as it got dark and cooled down a little bit, he put it on and had a blast. But, uh, yeah, there's a lot of fun. So we had a great time and, uh, highly recommend doing that if you can. So it is park wide. Yeah.

They open up, uh, well, the park is, is open for, for anybody throughout the day. Uh, at three o'clock, if you have Oogie Boogie bash tickets, you're allowed to go in as well. Uh, by six o'clock, if you do not have Oogie Boogie wristbands, they politely do not let you on any rides.

Do not let you go into different, you know, once you go through the main spoke, they shuffle you towards the exit. You've got to leave now. And from six to 11, it's only Oogie Boogie people in, in, in the whole park, in that park, California adventure. A lot of the rides are, are shut down because that's where they do the treat trails, which is because you kind of just go through the lines for the ride and they have people passing out candy.

We left with an outrageous amount of candy and, uh, you know, you end up in some area where there's like Oogie Boogie is performing or they've got, you know, what Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb is up on stage. You do all that sort of stuff.

So there's different villains all over the place. There's villains just wandering around. Uh, there are photo areas with different villains and yeah, it's, it's a lot of fun. And then the rides that are open have next to no line. So we went on almost everything, uh, which is unheard of, especially in a Disney park.

At one point we were, there's a ride called, uh, Goofy's, uh, fly school, which is kind of a semi rollercoaster. Um, we went on it near the end of the night and my son and I, and there was nobody in line, walked straight up to the ride, rode the ride, got it to the end.

And my son goes, I want to go on it again. And since there's nobody in line, the woman was like, sure. Don't even get up. Presses the button. That is never in my entire life going to Disneyland happened ever. Right. Right. And then he wanted to go a third time and I was like, nope, that's it.

Let's let, we got to go. So yeah, it was a, it was a blast. It was a really good time. My wife and I, um, accidentally happened upon one of these Halloween nights at, um, Bush Gardens, which, uh, you know, big theme park, not too far from here.

Well, four hours from here. So far enough. Um, but, uh, Bush Gardens is a beautiful, uh, theme park in Virginia. Uh, but like many of the theme parks do these days, the month of October, they do these nighttime Halloween things. And we were there for our wedding anniversary, which is in October.

This is probably, I don't know, five years ago, maybe more than that. And, uh, we're, so we're enjoying a nice fall day at Bush Gardens, riding rides and doing all the things. And then the sun went down and the monsters came out and I don't do well with those kinds of things.

I have a, uh, hair trigger, startle reflex. Like when things jump out and say, boo, that is not fun for me at all. Cause I jumped through the roof and it is not pleasurable. And I have nothing against people who have the time of their lives with that. But like the worst thing in the world for me is one of those walkthrough things with where people jump out at you.

Like. That is not Disneyland. Right. Yes. You would have. Yes. So we have Knott's Berry Farm, which is a stone's throw away from Disneyland in Anaheim. And they do, uh, not scary farm. And that is the shit your pants. People jump out at you. And, um, some people have, have been prosecuted for taking it too far.

Uh, kind of thing. Yeah. So. Yeah. I almost punched somebody. They have, they have that at the Queen Mary. You can do that. Oh, I've done the Queen Mary one. Yes. I almost punched somebody in the engine room that jumped out at me with a chainsaw. And I was just like, I mean, it's a trigger reflex. I'm just like, I see, I see a guy coming to me with a chainsaw going, I just want to hit him, you know, but the Queen Mary one is fun.

That is fun. I'll bet. Not for Dave. No, not for me. Uh, no, there just came a point where I, I, I just, I, I put my arm around my wife and I said, I said, honey, I love you, but it's time to go. She said, I understand.

And, and we made our way towards, you know, the front and she was like ahead of me trying to like, you know, look at them all right. She's like, civilian coming, civilian, right. She was like, scare me, scare me, you know, trying to spring all the traps ahead of, so the people would jump out from things and scare her.

So I wouldn't have to, to go through it. Uh, so yeah, no, but I do, there's the Disney world has their version of that. Uh, that is, uh, I think it's like Mickey's very spooky Halloween party or something. Yeah. Yeah.

I would like to attend that someday. Uh, you will, you will not need your wife to run point. You'll be fine. That is my speed. That is my speed. I need the Disney version, the Haunted Mansion level of scary, right? Yes. Yes. Very much so.

Manageable. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Make it spooky for a fifth grader. Yeah. Ask Chad GPT. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right, guys. Okay. See you next time. Until we meet again. Yeah. I'm going to go vibe code some stuff.

Enhanced project management. That's all I'm saying. Automated, advanced project management. Yeah. All right. See you. Bye.