546: Jrumpy Old Jeeps

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Trying to breathe. It's a little dusty in here. I've dusted off the garage studio. That's supposed to remove dust, Jason. Well, I know, but it just seems to have gotten some in the air. My Swiffer is broken, dammit. I don't know what it is, so. But it's nice to be back out in the garage. It's nice here in Southern California, finally.

I know, because I was just there. You were just here. And it was very nice. I came back with a tan. And I only wore shorts the entire time I was there. It was wonderful. I will say that when I got back, all the snow had melted. So it's still chilly, but it's not white anymore.

Well, it's Canada. It's pretty damn white. Sorry. Well, no, not Toronto, man. Toronto is way, way, way more of a melting pot than anywhere in the good old racist U.S. of A. And if you think we're not racist, just, you know, go ahead and tune into that Supreme Court nomination stuff that's going on.

Okay, okay, hey, hey, hey, hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up, roll it back, roll it back. I can hear the unfollows. Stop it. Okay. I finally got beat by Wordle. All right. It was embarrassing. I can't believe it. I got beat.

I know, but I was on like a two-month streak. I'd never been beat. Which was the word that beat you? I can't even remember. I can't even remember. I was so angry. I was so angry. So somebody recommended I do hard mode instead. And I turned on hard mode and gave it another shot.

I haven't been beat on hard mode. Was the first word shaft? No, no, no. Shaft happened before. That happened before. That was the horny one. Yeah, that was in soft mode. Okay. That was in Cinemax mode. So apparently hard mode, you're supposed to use the letters that it tells you are in your thing, which I was doing anyway.

So I'm like, okay, what's the point of that? Doesn't really. It's not very hard. It doesn't change much. It doesn't change much if you're playing properly anyway. So, yeah, turn on hard mode, I guess. I did want to have another clarification, too. I mentioned before on the show that going to Raw Stress for Less is a great place to buy pots and pans.

But it's not. I was wrong. It's not. It's not Raw Stress for Less. It's TJ Maxx. I knew it was one of those bargain basement wardrobe places. But TJ Maxx and HomeGoods are the two places that we got our stunning. I think we got our Calphalon pots for like $4 brand new, usually probably $150 at Bed Bath & Beyond.

They have great sales is all I'm saying. Some of the stuff might be branded interesting. We have a couple MasterChef pots in our kitchen, but they work great. Lids suck. Handles get hot. But that's why I guess you stick with the Calphalon. Anyway, I just wanted to give that update.

Okay. Well, I noticed while traveling and upon my return, we are back. Pandemic is done along with that. So are rising COVID cases. They're going up everywhere as people are out and about and there's nary a mask to be seen anywhere except on the plane.

And even then, again, still two years into this, people are not wearing their masks on planes and being threatened with, you'll never fly this airline again. Good times. But baseball is also back. Very excited about that. I've had it on in the background.

I find it very soothing. It's just something about it. You didn't go to a Dodgers game when you were in town? Well, no. It's still spring training. So there's spring training. So all the teams are either in Arizona or Florida, you know, getting COVID. Okay. Yeah.

Well, it's COVID light now. It's not even real COVID anymore. No, it's COVID light. So anyways, I was listening to the episode that you recorded last week. Thanks to Dave for stepping in and for you for basically doing it mostly by yourself. But I was enjoying your reflections on the opening of last episode because this is apparently our nine-year anniversary show today.

Yes, it is. Reflecting on the 25 or so years that apparently we've known each other and all the changes that have occurred and how it seems so crazy. And I was just thinking, well, first off, it was, you know, nostalgia. And I was just, I'm reading a book right now, a collection of essays.

And one of the essays was about nostalgia. So it tied in really well. I'll get to that when I finally finish the book and we'll talk about it. But it was really interesting. On our 10th anniversary show. Yeah, on our 10th anniversary when I finally finished this book because my perception of time is skewed and I no longer have time to read.

But I was like, how, I was thinking about how my perception of time and changes in life have changed because now that I have a kid and how they're probably different from yours. Because things that seem so, like, massive or, like, big stretches of time, like, they're so compressed for me now.

Like, when I was listening to you talk about it and I could intellectually relate to the changes and the length of time. But the emotional aspect of it, because once you have a kid, basically your entire life is now a kid and you've given up on yourself and you might as well just die. Time has no more meaning for me or anything like that.

So I just thought that was really interesting because I could intellectually understand it, but emotionally I just wasn't there. It was crazy. Oh, well, another reason not to have a kid. Pretty much. Do not recommend. All right. No. No, okay.

Play that for a little junior at some point. Yeah, and it's so weird that you didn't even have a kid, didn't even think about having a kid when we started this damn show. Yeah. Still don't. That's such a trend. I'm okay with it now. Oh, good. Okay.

Okay. Hey, but they do say that it takes 10 years to make an overnight success. So we're one year away. Closing in on it. Conwood. I'll let my landlord know. Share it. Oh, my God. Yeah. 10 years to an overnight success, which we joked about, I think, at the beginning. As we were joking about, if we didn't get paid for the first 10 episodes, we were going to quit.

We should have just done one episode a year. Yeah. Really? I would have saved us some money, at least on equipment. Jesus. Oh, no. So it's funny. I was working on, because this is speaking of how time has no meaning. It's been three months since my stroke.

Yeah. And every now and again, I get these flashes that I'm normal again and can do things. And only to be brought down to earth, crashing in flames not too long after, after about a day or so. I'm like, oh, you have energy like a normal person.

Hold the phone. You can't do that. I was, because I want to get, I need to get my business back in shape because, you know, it's been three months, time to kick it into high gear. And I was looking at opening a podcasting studio here in the Valley because there are no decent studios here in the Valley for people to go and do a show.

So I started, you know, checking out locations and things like that until my roommate kind of reminded me that I'm broken still. And so that was a really dumb idea. But I did find out some things about commercial real estate here in the San Fernando Valley.

But I am going to be writing about this stuff more and probably doing a short podcast on it every week over at the Pivoteer. So if you search on Substack, look for the Pivoteer. I'm going to kick that back up because that is exactly what that is for, how I'm falling on my face trying to pivot and do other things because it's quite humorous when somebody just taps me on the shoulder and says, hey, buddy, you shouldn't be doing that yet.

So, yeah, it's really depressing, actually. But you got to laugh at it. You got to laugh at it. You got to take your time, buddy. I don't want to. I don't. I really, really, really don't want to. But anyway, something that Vimeo didn't want to do, talked about this on the last episode after they turned on the sprinklers for all the creators, they did not want to change their policies, but they were forced to by the mob that is the internet.

So instead of their very vague 1% rule that they turned on, making, some, you know, some creators gasp and cough at their new bandwidth bill, they have actually put a number on it now and they said it's two terabytes.

So under two terabytes, you're in the 99 percenters. Over two terabytes, you're a one percenter. All right. So pay accordingly. This story kind of broke while I was, you know, wandering around Legoland trying to find beer. So I only kind of, I'm only slightly aware of it.

Now, a couple of things struck me, and you can probably answer this for me because you've been paying attention. Bandwidth, what they're charging for bandwidth seems wildly out of proportion for what bandwidth actually costs these days. Right. But they are an upsell.

You know, they do have to make money on it. I'm just trying to, you know, that does seem crazy. And the other thing that seemed crazy to me is the top 1%, and from what I saw from some, you know, some, again, we're taking the customers and the people that are pissed off, we have to take them at their word here.

They didn't seem to be streaming all that much for the top 1%. Not even, yeah, certainly not close to 2 terabytes. That's for sure. Okay. So I'm not wrong about either of those things because it seemed a little crazy to me. Now, the other thing that seems crazy to me, and obviously I haven't really been doing video or anything.

I barely even go on YouTube, but Vimeo to me was always kind of the higher end. We are the people that provide, you know, the touch key service. We have way more options. We can make videos private. You can do password protecting. You can do all the sorts of things you can't really do with YouTube. So they're the premier service that you're supposed to be paying more money for.

Right? Mm-hmm. Yes. So why has everybody got their knickers in a twist? Because the jump in price was so quick and so just redonkulous. Poorly handled. Very poorly handled. Yes.

Extraordinarily poorly handled. There will be textbooks about how poorly this was handled in the future. It'll be a footnote because things are handled so poorly all the time now. I was about to say, so it's pretty normal. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. So I do understand the entire story.

It's just, you know, it's just dumb. Oh, it's terribly dumb. It's terribly dumb. It's just, but it goes to point out the fact that we have said for the last nine years that, you know, when you use somebody else's platform, things can go wrong. So you might want to have a backup plan.

Yep. And, oh, hat tip to ebrown16 on Discord for shooting me this Vimeo link. All right. So I appreciate that. But yeah, that was the whole point of the Vimeo thing. It's normal and people get kicked off platforms all the time. People get charged more money all the time. But we told you, we told you.

That's all. And if a streaming company that does a video backtracks, are they technically rewinding? Ooh. Dad jokes. In the news. Former Apple employee has been charged with defrauding the company out of more than $10 million.

All right. Impressive. All right. Yeah. He's accused of engaging in conspiracy to commit fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion. You know, the standard trifecta that they get these people on. But yeah, good for him, I guess. Bad for him for getting caught.

I've got to say, if you're getting up into the, you know, double digits in the millions, maybe you get out of the country with that. That's what I mean, you know. Like, California officials seize properties worth about $5 million. Like, you're doing- There's your problem.

What the hell are you doing staying in the same state? At least move states. No. No. Costa Rica, man. Go to Costa Rica. You know. $10 million goes a lot further. Even with $2 million. Yeah. $2 million. I'd have been on a boat, man.

And look, you're worried about getting the money out of the country? Buy a bored ape. There you go. That's what they're for. They come with a yacht. Come on. Don't they? Don't they come with yachts? We have to instruct all these criminals. They have no idea what they're doing.

I know. I know. And speaking of people not knowing what they're doing, okay, I'm getting real tired of these open source kids trying to do hacktivism and, you know, cyber sabotage with their open source packages.

You know, there are a couple of them in here that I put in the show notes. But stop it, guys. Stop it. You're really screwing things up, is all I got to say. Because there are, you know, there are people in Russia that are not bad.

Not all of them. Most of them. Probably. One would argue. I was going to say, I would say one would argue that most of them are pretty okay. Yeah. There are a couple of them that really suck. Just like any country. Yeah. Unfortunately, just like this one.

Just like your new one. But this is becoming a serious problem where people with very high level access to these open source libraries that they have, you know, rightfully created, have decided to go, you know, all vigilante on it.

So, and it got to the point where people are wiping files now. Now, that's the bad part. It's like, okay, you want to, you know, stop the package from working. Fine. That is, you know, that's in your purview. But you start adding code that deletes files from people's systems.

We need to have a chat, my friend. We definitely need to have a chat. Because like we talked about the law of unintended consequences with these little twerps from Harvard, you're causing more harm than doing good. So, I mean, you can throw a rock and hit 10 of these things at this point.

So, I will leave you, dear audience, to do your research. But I'll put a few of them in the show notes. So, you can go to gog.show slash 546 and check those out. I did want to mention one thing here because I was reading through the articles that you put in here. And this one about open source developers are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects.

And it's putting the entire internet at risk. And the bullet points you put in here, I find hilarious. The internet and many of the world's largest companies rely on open source software. One would argue that we shouldn't. The software is built by developers who make little to no money and often are at risk of burnout.

One would argue that they probably shouldn't be doing that then. Developers say the companies relying on the software should contribute more money and code. Why should they? It's open source and free. Maybe you should think about charging for it. Like a normal business. Well, see, open source is a strange beast, my friend.

It's a strange beast. And here are the unintended consequences of said beast. Right. But, you know, the other unintended consequences are you and I have careers and there's the internet. So, you kind of got to take the good with the bad. Well, to be fair, we didn't use a lot of open source when we started.

We built our own shit. It's only when the open source free stuff came out and the budgets dropped. Well, I mean, Apache's been around since the get-go. Linux pretty much started a little bit after. But, I mean, we were using, what, FreeBSD? So, that was open source.

I mean, there were a few things that we paid for, like the, Jesus Christ, the SGIs that ran the first web. Do you remember those things? Those irises that we had? Oh, yeah. Then I also had Microsoft servers for a while. Not free. Webstar, $49.95 a seat. I had a couple Mac servers running.

Okay. I'm just saying there's two ways. Oh, well. This is our entire show. Our entire show is everything that went wrong on the internet. And this is one of them. So, it could have gone completely differently. Yeah. Here's the deal, guys. Get paid for your work. But when you don't, you know.

Don't trash it. Don't trash it. Yeah. You made this deal with the devil. You decided to go this way. So, don't get pissed off. Don't get mad at the game. Anyways, this was an interesting little bit of news. A bipartisan bill would expand U.S. data collection transparency requirements, which I think if Dave were here, but he's too busy taking photo shoots at some conference this week.

Yes, in Florida. I believe I saw in Florida. Yeah, that was a good one. I would agree with. Let's see. A bipartisan group of legislators introduced bills in the House and Senate that would expand transparency requirements when it comes to government surveillance of U.S. citizens, adding email, text, location, and cloud data to existing reporting frameworks.

Because they aren't right now. Currently, the U.S. government is required to alert Americans who have been targeted by wiretaps and bank record subpoenas. But this does not apply to digital or cloud data. So, this is a well-needed updating of the rules to accommodate the technology that we have all been using for years now.

So, good. Let's do it. Let's do it. Fingers crossed. So, the Bored Apes guys have been gobbling up other companies. They got the CryptoPunks, a company called Yuga Labs. And now they've just raised a jaw-dropping amount of money on an even jaw-droppinger valuation.

They raised over $400 million at a $4 billion valuation for some gifts, some JPEGs. How is that even possible when we're seeing that the bottom is already dropping out of this market?

Sales are down. Volume is down. Costs are down. Prices are down. Fraud is up. Fraud is up. Remember when we were talking about people who used to charge for software on the internet? Mark Andreessen was one of those guys.

And he had a little company called Netscape that used to cost money to have a browser, if you remember, in the day. And the web server that they ran. He took all that money and started his VC firm. Now he looks like a – it really looks like a cartoon villain from Daredevil.

But have you seen him lately? It's scary. Anyway, so Andreessen Horowitz is big into crypto, big, big, big into crypto. So they're putting their dick in the ring with Yuga Labs. And yeah, that's what they're kind of doing.

And Bored Apes are being moved around quite a bit right now because of this new APE token that these guys put out. And it's been an interesting story. Now, only in the world of NFTs would you get something like this.

I saw this one while they were – people were talking about the APE token and moving their NFTs around. Atop of the pile is the NFT influencer and collector Ding-a-ling. Ding-a-ling is – First off – One of the biggest collectors of – yes, go ahead.

Go ahead. Ding-a-ling. The phrase NFT influencer makes me want to shoot myself in the head. Okay. Okay. Sean Bonner. Never mind. Go ahead. Moving on. I'm not sure I want to be in this world anymore when there are NFT influencers. All right.

You know what? Big-time NFT influencers. So, let's – yeah. What else we got? Ding-a-ling. Okay. So, rich get richer with bullshit technology. NFTs. Fine. I guess the plus side here is they're moving to the rich get richer in more traditional ways in terms of having a corporation and getting a valuation and getting people to fund you for nothing.

Okay. All right. Hey. Yeah. You know. Maybe the rich will get richer. Maybe this will all explode and it'll be an object lesson in not investing in dumb shit. We'll see. We'll see. See, the biggest problem is none of these kids are going to learn their lesson because the money to them is already fake because they didn't really earn it.

You know? Yeah. Anybody that was, you know, early crypto speculators, they didn't earn their money. They don't know what it means. So, they treat it like it's monopoly money, which to them it is. I mean, the rest of us, it's like, you know, and we're starting to see this, would kill for it. Yeah.

And people are starting to do that. Yeah. Oh, you missed some of the great news here. One of the influencers here in LA basically got robbed because what did he do? Oh, he made Instagram videos and YouTube videos of his massive and super expensive watch collection, which he did from his home, which he showed the front of.

Guess what? So, he broke into his fucking home and took his watches. Dumbass. Shocking. Shocking. I know. I know. But back to Andreessen Horowitz. Remember WorldCoin? Yes.

The one that you had to, they basically had the phantasm ball that you had to stick your head in and scan your eyeballs. Yeah. Scan your eyeball and we'll give you a coin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're raising a hundred million dollars. Yeah. But anyway, also to be seen in the aftermath of that one, Andreessen Horowitz.

Wherever, wherever crypto goes, there is Andreessen Horowitz. They're big into Web 3. Anybody that's telling you that this is, you know, for the greater good of the universe, you know, all of this Web 3 crap. It is not. And the democratization of art. No, it's not.

It is the rich get richer. Andreessen Horowitz is the bellwether for this shit. So stay away. Agreed. This next one, I just, I can't even believe I'm going to say it. U.S. regulators say someone really needs to monitor Elon Musk's tweets. Grow the fuck up. He's an adult. If he tweets something bad, arrest him.

Agreed. We're not playing. Give him a timeout. Stop this. He's the richest man in the world. Stop treating him like he's a fucking five-year-old. No. You treat them like you treat all the citizens of Santa Monica, California, as money bags that you give parking tickets to. Every time he tweets something, you find the fuck out of them.

Done. That's all there is to it. Done. But they're not. No, they want oversight, Brian. They want oversight. He has oversight. There's a board. They're not doing anything. That's the problem. Tesla has an ineffectual board of directors that do nothing. So you fine him.

It is not your job to oversee him, government. It is your job to fine him. That's your job. Yeah. Don't spend our tax dollars on monitoring. Make us money. Make us money by fining him. Why is this so hard? Oh, I'm sorry. He's busy training for his fight with Putin.

Oh, God. I did hear about that. Don't fuck him. Anyways, an interesting study has come out about what we've been doing to problematic people by deplatforming them. This is specifically with YouTube. They've studied YouTube. YouTube has long used the thread of demonetization to encourage creators to follow its rules, which has worked for some people, but not for a lot of people.

People who veer into so-called borderline content videos that don't outright break the rules become close enough the company stops recommending them or are at risk of losing access to monetization features. That has been the stick that they have been using, but researchers at Cornell and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology found that demonetization may not always have the intended effect.

Why is that? Because there are a bunch of other places that will happily let people take money in and take a cut of it, like Patreon, which we use. Or Twitch. Or Twitch. Or anybody else. There are too many other places for people to go. That's the problem. So there you go.

This is not a mind-blowing study. No, it's not a mind-blowing study. But the thing here is it's like this is for, like, you know, the big guys. It's easy for the big guys to get these big deals and switch. Yep. Little people get chewed up in the middle. You know, that's the Vimeo newly one, the people who newly discovered they were 1% of Vimeo creators, you know.

Yes. If you can use it. Well, shouldn't I be famous? This is almost a, you know, this is a twist on the Amanda Palmer thing, which is these people have used YouTube to get a big enough voice that they don't need YouTube anymore.

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With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. Media candy. So I thought I had seen the end of Star Trek Discovery a couple weeks back, but it was not.

There were a few more episodes. I don't know if you watched any of these, Jason. I am up, I watched episode three, I started episode four, and I'm just like, do I want to waste an hour of my life watching something that might pay off in eight more hours?

The answer was no. So I keep turning it off. I have not been able to get into it. I will tell you the answer is yes. Ah, damn it. You're the one that got me started. I hate this show. I hate this show for this because it was so bad. I was ready to walk away from it when the ship got an AI that had feelings and needed to be comforted.

They pulled this off. They stuck the landing hard. This is the most Star Trek we've had in a long time. I had all the feels by the last episode. It is way more Star Trek than Picard is, which we're going to talk about now. Talk about it in a second.

Because I don't want to spoil anything with Discovery because you do need to go see it now. It was great. Okay. They nailed the ending, man. It's a long journey to get there. The middle bit is they really bottomed out. But you got to bottom out before you can come up.

Okay. So this is, yeah, this is what I, this is the Pink's theory. The Pink's theory of entertainment. You know, you wait in line long enough at Pink's to get a hot dog. Anything is going to taste good. Yep. So if you wait long enough in the line for Discovery, it might. I, they must have listened to, to the online chatter about it not being Star Trek because it Star Trek.

It's Star Trek hard at the end. Because I'm watching episode three and I'm like, why the fuck does everybody whisper so much in the future? My God, talk in a normal voice. It was good. But everybody whispers.

You're back. Oh, I'm so happy. Fuck off. Okay. Let's talk about Picard. Okay. Picard. Go ahead. Okay. Episode one. Liked it.

Liked episode one. Felt Star Trek-y. Episode two. No. Episode three. No. This is just, it's a waste of an opportunity for what could be one of the greatest, you know, finales in science fiction history with the last two seasons of Picard.

And what did they do? They went back to the well. I mean, this is, there's nothing in here that is even remotely new or good at all. It is a disappointment to me, Brian. It disappoints me greatly. So what do you think?

They are giving Jerry Ryan a chance to shine. I will say she is the highlight of the show so far. I'd like what they've done with her characters. She's nailing it as an actress. I was very concerned about the time travel aspect of the story.

And I would like to say that so far, that concern was warranted. Absolutely 100% warranted because they are telling the jokes we didn't want them to tell. They're doing the storyline we didn't want them to do. When the guy was dragged out of the police station and his communicator was on the counter and I'm like, oh God, it's a fucking rescue season.

That's all this is going to be. I don't want this. I have seen first contact. God damn it. I don't want it again. Unless there are whales and a punk rocker guy in a bus that I don't want any part of this. Yeah, it's not good so far.

I will give them the benefit of the doubt knowing it's a three-season arc. And I don't know. Well, I guess we'll find out tonight. Yeah, I know. Yep. And I guess that was the hardest thing to stomach is the fact that Star Trek Discovery completely out Star Trek to Picard.

See, that's why you're making me upset. But at least, okay, well, if Picard, you know, Picard, you know, keeps dropping the ball. Maybe I'll just, I'll eke out these discoveries over the season and watch them together. So as they, I don't know.

It's sad. It's sad. So we talked to, the last time I was here, we talked about how Upload Season 2 had reappeared and the vagaries of time because it felt like it was 40 years ago that Upload Season 1 was out. I ran through the entire season because it's like, what, eight episodes and they're like maybe 24 minutes.

Oh, that was quick. Yeah. 22 minutes or something like that. Didn't need it. It was okay. The funniest bit of all of it is the premise, which Season 1 did for you. And now they have to actually try to staple a story to it and the story sucks.

But there's still enough funny bits about the premise that it's okay. I mean, you know. Okay. Don't need a Season 3, but definitely they left it on a cliffhanger. So we're getting one. All right. Yeah. I'm halfway through Episode 1 and I was enjoying it, but I wasn't in the right mood.

So I'm like, I'm going to save this for when I'm in the right mood because it looked like it's going to be exactly what you just said. So at least I have that to look forward to. Yeah. That's fun. It's fine. Good. That's all Season 1 was. It wasn't great. Come on. You know, it wasn't, it really wasn't stellar.

It was just good. Yeah. So looking forward to it. What once was stellar is now not. Billions, unfortunately. Season 423 with the new guy and the new storyline. It has become a caricature of itself.

Even my roommate and I, we stopped watching the last episode halfway through because like, this is stupid now. It is so stupid. They built this stylistic show up, which worked great when you had the known characters, but you swap out the main character and the whole thing falls apart.

It also falls apart because I think at the same time they were doing that show, super califragilistic, super pumped, the Uber story. They also wrote that. So I think now we have two shitty shows instead of one excellent show, which really sucks because I like the billions. I got a bunch here.

I'm going to fly through. I was about to say, I'm going to go take a nap while you work through this. It's been two weeks here. So we got, we got some quickies here. I did get Friday the 13th, the original series. I downloaded that and that's what I'm kind of working my way through at night because they're short. They're a classic.

They're terrible. They're Canadian. It's a great show. It's a great, horrible old show. Did you watch it back in the day? No, I didn't. Oh, it was great. It's so horrible. It was great. I did watch the Andy Warhol diaries. All right. Now there's, there's a tech tie in for this one because at the beginning of every episode, they say that Andy's voice was recreated by an AI.

The funny thing is, is it's really well done. Five minutes in, I forgot. The first five minutes I'm like, oh, this doesn't sound that great. My roommate and I were like, I don't know if we're going to be able to do this. And then we kind of gave it some time because we really, you know, wanted to see it because we're both Andy Warhol fans and art fans and like that time in the world.

And it turned out a six parter, I think. Fantastic. The whole thing was fantastic. You forget that it's an AI and then it's really weird when you hear the voice from the diaries and then see the live video of him talking. It's really close.

I gotta say, it's really scary close. He sounded like a computer at the beginning because he kind of sounds like a computer. Yeah. That's the weird part. I mean, his real voice is a bit odd, so. Yeah, it's odd and staccato. And I highly recommend it.

I mean, just from a story standpoint, it's really well done. I learned a lot that I didn't know about Andy Warhol. But also, it's just a really, really cool technology look. From the cooking side, because since I still am a goddamned invalid, I can't do much. Cooking shows are the best.

They are the best. So, I've been watching Tournament of Champions 3 and sadly, most of my people have already been eliminated. Boo. The Julia Child Challenge is a new show on Food Network, which is, it's another food cooking challenge show, but it's all based on Julia Child stuff. And it's fascinating and it's really fun.

And it's really fun. It's lighthearted. And what I really like is the final meal that they cook at the end of the episode. They all sit down and eat it together, which means that they're talking about each other's food while they're still in competition with each other, which makes for an interesting dynamic because you want to tell somebody that their food is good, but you don't want to say it so well that it's better than yours.

Right. It's really strange. It's really strange. I got to give them that. Now I know how people who listen to all of, go back and listen to our back catalog, all 540, now six episodes of it. I've been doing that with guys' grocery games. Have you gotten to pre-HD? Well, it started in pre-HD.

We started at the beginning and we're working our way to the middle now. Seasons, just at the end of season six, there are 20 episodes a season. There are 28 seasons of guys' grocery games.

It's amazing how much content is there, but I will persist. I will get through this. I will get through this. You and I have vastly different uses for the Food Network. We watch the exact opposite lineups of shows. I like the Saturday, Sunday, you know, with the chefs and they're doing their thing.

You like the competitions. You like the late night stuff. Yeah, I started watching Chopped for the first time. I never got into that, so I started watching that a little bit. It's not as fun as guys' grocery games because that's just kind of like your drunken frat guys playing around in the backyard. But Chopped is a little more serious.

They actually use 50-cent words on Chopped. What are the weekend shows that I should check out then? I don't know. I don't think you'd like them because you don't like the same shows I do. I like The Kitchen. I like The Pioneer Woman. I like all the ones, like the Valerie Bertinelli doing her thing. I like all those. Oh, God. They're not competition shows.

Yeah. Yeah, well, I don't – it doesn't even have to be a competition show, but I think I'd have to turn my penis in if I watched a Valerie Bertinelli cooking show. I just don't know if I can. Does she make some good stuff? Maybe I'll give it a shot. Why not? Alex vs. America, the first season is done. Recommend that, five episodes of that.

I want them to bring back Tiny Food Fight. I'm telling you, it is one of the greatest shows ever. It was so stupid, but it made me happy. Are you watching Killing Eve? Not yet. We still have not started that show. Oh, Final Season's on right now. It's fantastic. That is one show that I think is going to make it to the end intact, unlike Billions.

Excellent. So far, I mean, I think we're halfway through the last season, and it is as Killing Eve as Killing Eve can get, so it's really good. Cool. Barry is coming back for Season 3, which was a shocker. Mm-hmm. I don't know if you watched Seasons 1 and 2 of Barry. I watched Episode 1 of Barry.

That's as far as I got. You didn't like it. It was okay. It's really good. Henry Winkler is really good, isn't it? Winkler. Yeah, Henry Winkler. That comes back April 24th for Season 3. The Boys comes back for Season 3, June 3rd.

And The Umbrella Academy is back for another Season 3 on June 22nd. So all of those I am super excited for. I'm going to go back and watch The Umbrella Academy from the beginning, because that was just so damn good. Excellent. I can't wait. All right. And I'm proud to announce the triumphant return of, well, not quite drunk, but I got a decent buzz on a plane movie reviews.

Now that my kid is old enough, I'm, yeah, my kid's old enough now that I toss him the iPad and some snacks and I can actually have a cocktail. That's good. I didn't know you could drink again on a plane. Oh, yeah. Well, Air Canada you can, you know, because we're civilized. Okay. That's right.

So I watched Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Thoroughly enjoyed it. This is the kind of Marvel stuff I like. You don't need to tie in with other things. Just tell me a fun story. Yeah, I thought it was fun. Really enjoyed it. Ghostbusters Afterlife, which I went into with some hesitation, having very fond memories of the original movie.

All the feels, man. It delivered. You think so? It didn't for me. I think it did. I got, I got the, I got, I got the anti-feels. I don't know. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved it. I was very happy with it. Okay. I did think they did Harold Ramis really well. Yes. I thought that was classy and tasteful and that did give you the feels.

Yep. Yep. Definitely. And I revisited Star Wars The Last Jedi because it was there as an option and I was buzzed. You were stuck on a plane. And I was stuck on a plane. And I've got to say my, my hatred for it has gone away a little bit.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie until the end when Palpatine came back and it got stupid. But. Okay. It was good. It was fine. It was fine. This is where that age thing comes in that you don't, or that, that passage of time that you don't remember.

Yeah. I think you're, you've, uh, you've mellowed some since it came out because it still sucks. Yeah. I mean, I've accepted the fact that it's just horrible and my childhood has been ruined, but I'm trying to find the jewels within. And I just wanted a quick mention of Legoland, California, because I took my kid there when we went back to, uh, to sunny Cal and, uh, wow, that is an insanely well done theme park for a very specific age that my son was perfectly in.

Um, they nailed it like, oh, good. It would be no fun at all for you to go, Jason. And frankly, you know, if it wasn't for the sheer joy coming off my kid, I would have been bored out of my mind, but he was so amped about it. They do such a great job in the theme park itself, the hotel, which is themed amazingly.

Everything is done and aimed at like, you know, maybe four to 10 year old kids. And it just, it's stunningly well done. So congratulations. What a place to go. If you have a kid in that age range, really, really, really well done.

Apps and doodads. I would like to start off apps and doodads by saying, fuck you, Dropbox. For some reason, they decided to decouple my, my, my different accounts. Um, I'm guessing this happened probably for you as well.

If you had multiple accounts, cause we had, we had a business group account that we worked with together, which hijacked my main account, which did all this crap. And then they decided to turn it off. And now I can't have two Dropboxes on my computer, which is what I had. So now I got to go find my old one and move it around. It's so stupid.

No notice whatsoever. They just did what they want. Kiss my ass, Dropbox. That was not nice. Not nice. Yep. I agree. It was not a cool move. Uh, some warning would have been nice. Yeah. That's all I wanted. Just some warning. Yep. Anyway, uh, AMP is out.

Have you heard of AMP? I have. Have you tried AMP? No. Oh, wait, you can't. You're in Canada. No, no. It works here. What? They said it was U.S. only. It was liars. Oh, well, maybe. Oh, okay. The website is fine. But, but, but, but, beta only.

Oh, yes, yes. You're right. Okay, so that means that they've only made deals for music in the U.S., not, not, not worldwide rights. Okay. That's right. Now you get, now you see where I'm going. Okay. Uh, and the rights that they've gotten so far are very, very, very scattered.

Um, 85%, 90% of my catalog is not there. Yep. Um, cause I, I signed up. I was going to do, I was going to do my own show and, uh, I went and started to make my playlist and, you know, I, I have a, I have a very specific morning punk rock playlist.

I call it Punkin Donuts because I like punk and I like donuts for breakfast. Um, and I was going to do a show. I thought, what the hell? Why not? And I just can't get any of the damn music going that I want. And the other annoying thing is you got to use your, your phone app to do it.

I can't do it on my, I don't know, professional giant DJ setup that I have that I'm talking to you on through my computer. So that's annoying. Let me, let me just say this to anybody that's working at AMP that is of course, listening to this right now. Uh, radio stations, which what you're basically trying to create is a million radio stations for anybody that signs up with your service are expensive because you have to license music and you have to pay for that.

It costs an awful lot of money, which is why giant corporations own radio stations and they're still managing to lose money. So good luck. Good luck with your business plan. You do know who owns AMP, right? No. Amazon. Ah, there you go.

Yep. There you go. That's where the big money comes from. That's where the licensing deal comes from. So it's basically tied to your, uh, Apple or Amazon music account. Except you can't use most of the music that you have in your Amazon music account because they haven't paid for different types of royalties.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. So, uh, yeah, most of my good, uh, most of my good songs were not on there. I'm going to try and do it sometime just because I just want to see how the interface works. And now I know that, uh, Leo Laporte tried to do this as well. He set up an amp station and did it before, uh, this week in tech and he got one listener.

So my hopes are not high. I don't really have to put pants on for that one. Cause I don't think anybody's going to show up, but, uh, it reminded me when I was going to call it Punkin Donuts, that there was a place in Chicago that we called Punkin Donuts. It was by, uh, uh, Clark and Belmont by the alley, which was a, a place that we all went.

Did we take you to the alley? I think, didn't we, when you came to Chicago? That my Chicago trip that I went and visited you there is a bit of a alcoholic blur, to be honest. Oh yeah. Yeah. I have, I have some photos and we went and got pizza that I barely remember. Cause we were so hung over from the Goo Goo Dolls the night before, but yeah.

Ooh, uh, much younger than much, much younger. I think that was in 2003 or something, something like that. Yeah. Anyway, but there's a, a great story in the Chicago reader on the saga of Punkin Donuts. Uh, it's a very long read, but it's very good.

So highly recommend checking that out. Cool. Citizen is back in the news. Remember Citizen, Jason? Yes, I do. I use them every day. We, I use them every day. Still? I went back to it. Really? Yeah. Just cause. They're a horrible company, Jason.

It's terrible. It's absolutely terrible. I've known that Uber is shitty and I've taken Uber rides since then too. That's true. Well, my breaking, the straw that broke my citizen back was when I would get breaking notifications about Lady Gaga's dogs when they were stolen.

Remember that? All right. That's, that was what threw us both over the edge, which was like about a hundred miles away from where I was. And I was, I had sent it to only local reports. I see. Yeah. Still get that myself. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So they're crap. Uh, remember when they tried to try, tried to push out an on-demand private security service in Chicago?

I remember when they did it here in LA. I didn't know about Chicago. Oh no, they're trying to do it now in Chicago. Sorry. I read that wrong. Ah, okay. So because it didn't go so well in LA and they decided let's try Chicago. I think what I saw from the Chicago test is it's going to be different from LA because I thought LA was, yeah, I thought it was slightly different.

They've learned from some of their mistakes. They decided that having their own private Gestapo force was probably not a good idea. So they're taking a little bit of a different approach. They'll be providing push alerts to users based on incident reports it puts together from police scanners and it will run a $20 per month subscription service that connects users with agents who can then direct emergency services to their location and notify contacts if it's not safe for them to call 911 directly.

So when would it not be safe to call 911 directly, but I can call Citizen instead? I'm wondering that exact question myself, Jason. So thank you for pointing that out. Okay. I'm just wondering for 20 bucks a month. I thought there would be a clear cut use case for that. I do like this particular sentence that comes next. Apple and Google removed a previous version of the app, which was called Vigilante from their stores because it encouraged vigilante-ism.

I wonder why. There you have it. I wonder why. I wonder why. Yeah. And lest we forget, Citizen CEO who offered users a $30,000 bounty for tracking down an alleged arson suspect, which the app identified as the wrong person.

Yeah. Hey, they're right up there with Reddit now. Perfect. Oh, my God. Yeah. No, it's yeah. Vigilante, my aching ass. They're still out here in force. There are Citizen roving patrols who go around with their little phones and try and get video because I guess you can get Wuffy or maybe you can get some NFTs if you get enough video on Citizen.

I don't know. I don't know if they actually pay people. But yeah, anytime that there's a hullabaloo, there's the Citizen Brigade. You know, I get enough alerts in my neighborhood now since the pandemic, you know, basically the shit is rolled west that I don't get stuff from around town anymore.

But it's amazing how many people like to brandish knives in my neighborhood because that seems to be like, you know, I go I go to what's the racist one? Not neighbors. Next door. Next door. Yeah. The next door. Yeah. I go to next door to find my racist neighbors.

Here I go to find all my knife wielding neighbors because that is most of the apps. Yesterday, somebody had their ding-a-ling out next to a school. So that was an interesting one, except Citizen marked the corner where the alleged ding-a-ling attack was taking place. But there's no school on that corner because it's right around the corner from my house.

And I know that there's no school there. So I don't know what the fuck they're doing over at Citizen. I really just don't know. I don't think they know either. So I think that's a what a mess. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of messes, you never got the new iPad mini, did you? No. Not yet. Okay. Well, the thing with the iPad mini is the volume button placement.

It's on the top now, not the side. That's annoying. Yeah, it's annoying. But the other annoying thing is it changes what it does based on rotation of said device. So if it's in landscape mode, the buttons are on the left and the top button would be volume up.

Now, when you turn it into portrait mode, that is now down and the left button is now up. So it's been, it's one of those things that has driven me mad. So, but they apparently now with the new 15.4 update, there's a switch where you can go and set that for fixed position volume controls, which I hope.

Fixes this problem. So I can just turn it off and say, don't do this. Because I think what they wanted to, wanted to happen was you could turn this on another devices. Yeah. You know, and so everything works the same way, which is dumb because other devices have it on the side. I just stop it, Apple, leave it the way it was.

This reminds me of every time I buy a new Macintosh, if some, you know, shape or ilk, I have, the first thing I have to do is go in and turn off natural scrolling because natural scrolling is dumb. Agreed. But sorry, natural scrolling is dumb.

I don't know anybody that uses it, period. If you are one of the three people, I knew you were going to say that. It's so annoying. I hate getting on our Mac to do anything. Oh, it drives me crazy. I bet she listens to us on Spotify too. She doesn't listen. Oh, of course not. I don't know any, I like three of my friends are left listening to the show.

So hi to the three of you that still listen. I think, I think there might be three, but I did end up getting that new iPad Air for my dad. Cause he is, I got that with the magic keyboard because he is retiring at the end of the month.

Congratulations. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't really, it wasn't really his idea. It usually isn't for most people. Yeah. Remember how we used to talk about how the mall scene in the Midwest was just turning into just an unbelievable death Valley of empty stores.

Yeah. Well, Water Tower Place, which was once a fabulous shopping location on the Miracle Mile in downtown Chicago is basically turned into one too. They lost their tentpole store. I think it was Macy's or Bloomingdale's was across the street. So I think it was Macy's there and they, they checked out.

So everybody else is checking out. Nobody's renewing their lease, which means the Dr. Seuss store has about another week left. If you want to go down and pick up any Dr. Seuss in person, look for the guy with the mustache. That's my dad. He might have a new iPad Air. Do not rob him. Do not take his iPad Air. Wow. That was bad opsec.

Yep. I know. I know. Damn it. Fortunately, I think he leaves it at home. So if he didn't, I'm calling him. Right now, tell him to take it home. Do not bring it to the office. I fucked up. Sorry, dad. But he likes it so far. And that, you know, the, and the nice thing is for, for nerds, I thought it was a cool thing, but it didn't even dawn on me that for olds who don't know how technology works, that whole get a new iPad and just put your phone on top of it and let it do its job is

amazing until your step-mom tries to set up your dad's iPad and puts her phone on top of it. Whoops. Then you get the call saying, how do I get all my contacts and things off of it? And then I'm like, Google, I texted this back.

I said, Google factory reset iPad. And she thought that I was being an asshole. I'm like, no, no, no. That's exactly what I would do. I would Google factory reset iPad because I don't know how to factory reset an iPad off the top of my head. So, so that, that started another fight.

So this is, this is what buying technology for your family will get you people. Nothing but trouble. Yeah. Nothing but trouble. Speaking of technology that I bought for the family, uh, I bought a set of Sonos one speakers a long time ago when they first came out, you've heard them, you've been to the house with them.

They sound really nice, right? Yep. Yeah. Well, um, since they're the old ones, uh, sinking them has become a problem. Sometimes they'll fall out of sync. I had five of them that cover the whole house. And if one of them loses connection, then it is inevitable that they cascade fail all the way down.

And the only way to get them to work again is to factory reset all of them, plug them into the ethernet and go about your business. And one of them, I just could not get to come back. So I just threw the damn thing away. I got so mad at it. I office spaced it out back in the driveway. I destroyed it.

Um, but I didn't want to get rid of the other four. So I bought the new Sonos one SLs. I bought two of those. Um, they are much nicer. The setup is much better, uh, completely better than the old ones. And they pick up the old ones on the network. So if you do have an old Sonos one setup that is giving you problems, pick up one of the new SLs.

Um, the SL is the version that does not have the lady in the tube in it. I think the SL is for silence, surveillance light, maybe even. But, um, the other tip that I wanted to put out here, since I bought the Sonos one is if you go to Sonos.com and check your account, if you have your old ones linked to your account, there's an upgrade button there.

If you click the upgrade button, you will get a really nice discount to get a new Sonos through their store, which I do recommend over Amazon, by the way, because they actually have them in stock and will ship them to you. Whereas Amazon will not, they say they have them in stock, but they will not ship them to you.

Um, so it's a nice way to get a really good discount. If you just want to juice your system up or pick up some more, because they didn't tell me I had to give back the old ones. They're just like, you know, here's 50 bucks. Take it. That's good customer service. Although, you know, they could make it more obvious to customers.

Yeah, they could. I just, I just stumbled upon that. That's why we're putting it on this show because it was not easy to find. Right. It was a glitch in the matrix. I actually just ordered two of the regular ones for my office because, uh, it got a big, like, uh, they did a big upgrade and redesign of the office during the pandemic before I started working there.

But, uh, they did seem to forget to, uh, you know, have speakers and, you know, music playing considering we're a music company. So I was going to say, aren't you guys a music company? So I took it upon myself to bring the music back to our music company and ordered two of the regular ones. And, uh, yeah, like I said, uh, like you just said, uh, the only difference I can see between the two is the SL doesn't have the lady in the tube and can't be voice controlled, which is a feature I actually want for the office because, you know, if I need to shut everything off for something, I can do it quickly and easily.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that works. That works well. Uh, you better put on this parental controls so your employees don't start, you know, ordering things on your Amazon account. I'm not going to connect it to my account. Okay. I'll have to set up, I'll set up an office one or something. You still might want to make sure that that's protected somehow.

I agree. There's a lot more setup involved than, you know, previous, you know, the last time I was in an office 20 years ago when you had to buy an amplifier and two speakers and call it a day. I did a review the other day on Tweetbot because I just found out that they upgraded it for iOS and you found out they upgraded it for macOS.

Yep. I'm using it. I've been using it on my phone for a week in concert with the other Twitter app because the official Twitter app, because they both do different things. I don't like the new Tweetbot, turns out. I just use the regular Twitter app on my phone and I, I, I like Tweetbot for my desktop though.

It's great. Okay. I think I'll, I'll give that a shot because on the phone, there's just more stuff in the official app. And now also because I've got Twitter blue. So like the, you know, the time, the timing thing doesn't work on Tweetbot, which I actually do like that timer thing. Cause I get to read it again and it's just like, okay, you know, trains leaving the station.

Does that look right? Oh, I did. It saved me a bunch of times yet. No. When you start, you can't do that on Tweetbot. There are a couple like notification things you don't get. So all in all, I think, you know, as okay as it is, the official Twitter app seems to win out, but now they have a new feature where you can create a GIF inside of the Twitter app.

So there's another reason to keep the official one. So now you just basically select the camera and choose the GIF option and it is a GIF. God damn it. Steven Wilhite must be rolling in his grave. Wait, too soon? Too soon. Too soon. Especially since nobody knows who the fuck he is.

Cause we haven't gotten to that part yet. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got James and James says, hello. I've been listening to five or six for five or six years. Can remember exactly when I canceled my Fox subscription and said, I'd give it to you.

But I think I owe you 15 years of subs. Listen to Jason and David today. Talk about a stroke. Thanks for the man talk and pleased. It did not come from my wife who says I'm older than Jason and has more bad habits. Keep well and fit. Cheers. I'm having a beer for Jason, David, and you, Brian, who needs a schnapps with a sausage.

Get a schnapps with a sausage, man. All right. Well, thank you very much, James. Over at PayPal, we've got Michael, Andrew, John, Tom, John, Andre, Joseph, Mark, and Humphrey. Thank you all so much. And over at our tip jar, we've got Ross, Karen, and Daryl. Thanks, guys and gals.

Thank you. We have a new five-star review this week from Falmuk in Australia. He says, love it. I downloaded this trash software just to review these guys. I've been listening to them for years and I love every episode. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. And a shout out to Dave for sitting in last TEP because we apparently typed it incorrectly.

I was wondering what last TEP was. Oh, last episode. Last episode, I believe, yes, is what we meant there. I don't know. I don't know how many schnapps and sausages you had before you typed that, but hey. I don't know either. I think I did it from my phone.

I do not like this app on my phone. Okay. No, it's terrible. And yeah, Stephen, was it Wilthy? I don't know. Wilhite, I believe. Wilhite. It's ironic that we're having a problem pronouncing his name. Yes, because he was the creator of the GIF and he says it's pronounced JIF and I say no, it's pronounced fuck you.

Glad you're dead. Well, he's with Jod now. Yes, he's with Jod with his JIFs. Until next time, I'm Gason DeFillippo. Jesus Christ. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Jumpy Old Jeeps.

If you enjoy the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on and we'll love you forever. And 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 546. And 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 other show fans, you can also head over to JOJ.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 jumpy.

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