563: Cracker Barrel Enthusiast

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. Well, Brian, this is a little different from last week. I'm still in my studio and you're still in Orange County, sadly. Last time. I was considering going to your studio, but then I realized that would eat up three hours of my day. At least. At least. Well, that's just the commute.

That's just getting out of Anaheim. Yes. Seriously. It was nice seeing you, though. It was fun. It was fun. And, you know, I would love to be able to do that on the regular, but, you know, we'd have to make a lot more money. Grumpy Old Geeks.com slash Patreon. Or the other way around, Patreon.com slash GOG.

Oh, yeah. That way. That way. Yeah. Yeah. But we got to have some good Mexican food. That was nice. It was. You got to see my ridiculously large Jeep. It is stupid. I love it. But you know what? Life is for having fun. And if it brings you joy, you know, I'm the reverse Marie Kondo. If it brings you joy, buy it.

Exactly. Yeah. You're coming around to my way of thinking. That's it. You have joined the church of Jason Despendipoo. Well, okay. There's a difference. Like, the Jeep actually brings you joy. You buy a bunch of things that you then end up giving away or returning.

Well, which brings other people joy, which also brings me joy. Okay. Well, there you go. You've solved your problem. Yes. I didn't think I had a problem. Everybody else did. That's the very definition of having a problem. When everybody else tells you, you do.

All right. Quick COVID update. Last week, we were talking about how L.A. might be going into mandatory masking indoors again because COVID rates were increasing. In fact, they were increasing everywhere. We appear to have bypassed that, although whether that's due to political realities versus what we used to always scream about, follow the science, is up for debate.

So, basically, you and I were saying there's no way it's going to happen again, and it's not. Nope. It is not going to happen. Everybody's pushing back on it. Mostly small chambers of commerce around the country. Yeah. Small businesses were definitely suffering. Although, you know, on the other hand, we were hoping to get together with the family that we COVID bumbled with the entire time when we were still living here during the pandemic.

And we can't because they all have COVID. Oh, well, you can always Zoom it. No, thanks. I did that for two years of my life. I never want to social Zoom call again. Yeah. Yeah. They just don't work. No, they don't. They just don't work. And last week, our episode title involved the heat, and we have some heat-related follow-up.

The White House has launched a website to help people cope with the extreme heat. The White House has launched heat.gov. All right. It is not a porn site. Okay. It's not the website for the movie, Heat? Nope, nope. This is a website that will help the public and authorities understand the dangers dangers of extreme heat and reduce the health risks.

This is an 11-agency collaboration, which offers maps for current and expected temperature spikes across the U.S., prevention, guidance, and data-driven tools. It took 11 agencies to basically make weather.com. Yeah. Nice. Yes. So, yeah, there's a heat and health tracker that shows historic and predicted trends.

You'll see how much hotter your area has become over the decades, for instance. Basically, you don't think climate change is real? Take a look at the data site. Yeah. And go buy an air conditioner if you can. If not, get a bunch of people together. Which actually increases climate change issues, but okay.

Yeah. That doesn't really matter when you're sweating today. Dying. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The whole dying thing is kind of bad. I'd rather, you know, I'm going to think about me when it comes to that, you know. The kids can worry about the environment. It's hot out right now.

All right. Leave it to Greta Thunberg. Yeah. Yeah. Emails to Brian at GrumpyOldGeeks.com. That's right. So, Blake Lemon, the Looney Tunes engineer over at Google who said that their AI has gained sentience, has finally been fired.

Well, this is not shocking, right? No. No. No. They couldn't fire him right away because that would have looked really bad and probably opened things up to lawsuits. But you put in enough time. You say you did the review of the employee and everything that happened. And then you can say, yeah, he's nuts.

That's what they had to do. Yes. They say, if an employee shares concerns about our work, as Blake did, we review them extensively. We found Blake's claims that Lambda is sentient to be wholly unfounded and worked to clarify that with him for many months, meaning they sat him down in a rubber room and said, dude, you're cray-cray.

Stop it. Chill. By the way, if it was actually sentient, Google would be crowing from the top of the ceiling about this. They'd just be going, we did it. We did it. Stock price up. Oh, and world over because it took over. The fact that we're still here, Blake, means that it's not sentient.

So. Or, you know, Lambda would be running Google at this point. Maybe it is. Maybe it is. In the news. Brian, you remember Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli?

Ah, yes. Everybody's favorite punching bag for a while. He's back. Yes, he's back. To be a punching bag again? Ah, I don't know. He's hitched his wagon to a company called Druglike, which has all the things that we love. Brian, it's got blockchain.

It's got Web3. It's got democratization in their mission statement. It has got drugs. Now, I just, I have to read this comment because this is where the author and basically the rest of the world is at with Martin Shkreli.

And this is a quote from Martin. We started Druglike because in our experience, traditional drug discovery software is too difficult and expensive to use. Claimed the cracker barrel enthusiast. So, the author has gone to the great lengths to find out that Martin is a cracker barrel enthusiast.

Right. No, that is great. That is great. So, yeah, he's trying to, he's trying to make drug, like the creation of drugs easier, which. Okay. That's a noble goal. Yeah, but it's him. A couple of questions here. First off. Yeah, it's him.

So, is anybody going to fund him? The answer to that is, of course, yes, because there are dumb people everywhere. And dumb people tend to also have a lot of money, interestingly enough. So, he will probably get funded, sadly. Yes. But secondly, wasn't he banned from working in the pharmaceutical industry completely?

Ding, ding, ding, ding. And is this not the pharmaceutical industry? Ding, ding, ding. So, isn't there going to be a repercussion to this? Probably not. Okay. Probably not. Just checking.

It wouldn't be a Friday if there was no consequence, if there was consequences for these people. That's true. Nope. That's true. Yeah. Speaking of people wanting consequences, this is just a silly story, but it tickled my fancy. A Filipino politician wants to make ghosting a criminal offense. Anofalo Teyes, Jr., who is a member of the Philippine House of Representatives, claimed in a note accompanying his bill that ghosting can be likened to a form of emotional cruelty that should be punished as an emotional offense.

Or you can go get therapy. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like everybody else. Yeah. So, it's really unclear. Obviously, this has not been thought out at all. He must have gotten burned and decided to make a bill saying, that's never going to happen to me again. There's no way to – how do you prove ghosting?

What's the actual definition of ghosting? Does not ghosting happen outside of apps? Doesn't it happen in real life as well? This is ridiculous, but it is hilarious. I don't know about you. I have been ghosted, and I have done some ghosting, and it has not really – It is the – well, it's literally the person telling you, don't bother with this anymore.

Yeah. Shoo fly. Don't bother me. Move on. This is not going to work out. So, next. This guy was just not held enough as a baby, I'm guessing. There's plenty of ghost in the ether. Some real news here. Senate Banking Committee Chair Senator Sherrod Brown has sent letters to the CEOs of Apple and Google requesting answers on their protections against cryptocurrency app fraud.

The politician wants details of their app approval and reporting processes, which we know for Google is zero, user alerts for fraudulent activity, coordination with rival stores, and monitoring for apps that transform into phishing scams, which obviously happens.

Both tech firms provide at least some screening for bogus crypto apps, Apple's app store reviews guidelines for bid scam apps, including bait-and-switch tactics. But basically, he's just saying that's not enough, to which my point would be, this is a pretty easy thing to do, just ban all crypto apps, because technically, they're all scams.

Ding, ding, ding. Another ding. I need my bell. I'm on fire today. You are, man. Okay. Note for next week, find the bell. This is my bell. And the final bit of real news for us here today is the Chips Act has passed the House on the way to a Biden signing.

So this is the act that is basically a $280 billion bill, which will, of course, the detractors say go to big corporations because they're the ones that make the microchips. Yeah. Yeah. The point here is being, you know, we don't want all of our chips coming from China.

We've seen all the issues with, you know, all the chips coming in, and we're worried about it, and nobody makes them in-house anymore, and how are we ever going to get our blazing fast internet speeds because everything's coming from China, and there's back doors built into everything, and all the kids are on TikTok, and oh, my God, the world's about to end.

So this is a big bill that's basically going to subsidize. Let's bring it home, people. Let's start building this stuff here again. And I'm 100% for that. I think we should do it. I do, too. I would love to do this, but Americans are not cheap. That's why it's $280 billion.

So let's see how long that lasts, how long that lasts. I agree. It's going to be an uphill battle, and we're going to have to either recognize that we're going to need to pay more for our products than for the cheapies from China. But as we've learned from Jason's security camera debacle over the last 10-plus years, you're better off paying a little bit more for that security camera than getting the cheap one from China, right?

That's right. That is right. You know, I am really upset that we don't have Ponch and John as the ambassadors for the CHIPS Act. I pity the fool that doesn't make chips in-house.

Media candy. Brian, we have homework for next week's show. No, no. It's called Star Trek Continues. We talked about this on the show a long time ago. It's a fan fiction type of show. Wait, isn't that the Orville? Yeah, this is pre-Orville Orville.

Okay. But this is actually with the same characters, as it were, just a story extension. And I have been told through the grapevine from a friend of the show, Dr. Teeter, and his lovely girl, Chen, that this is something that is actually worth watching and is highly entertaining, they say.

But I just have not had the time this week. So I put it in the notes and I put it here to say, hey, we should watch this for next week is all I'm saying. All right. Is this the one like Grant Imara was in a long time back and all that? I think everybody was in this one at some point. It's fairly short. There's only 11 episodes.

All right. And it's a couple years old, but they're all on the website. So link is in the show notes, but it's just StarTrekContinues.com. And I've just heard that the time travel one is the best one out of the bunch. Okay. All right. Yeah.

It's interesting that Paramount Plus is letting them continue continuing. Remember the whole lawsuit around that? Oh, they made a deal. And they came up with guidelines for that. Yeah. There was a whole deal around that one. I remember. Yeah. That was the whole big thing where like the studios were trying to walk the very thin line.

And these guys got it done. But I remember reading those guidelines and was like, Jesus, I wouldn't want to try and do anything with that. Right. But so I do have some Westworld follow up here because when you were out here, our friend Brian Blondell was in the studio and you guys were like, hey, have you been watching Westworld?

And they both like kind of glazed over and we're like, yeah. So I'm like, ah, shit. Okay. I'll go check it out. So I am caught up in my God. They saved it. Best season since season one. Well, it's arguably better than season one because it's... Well, I like season one because of the mystery still.

Like what is going on? What's with the circle? What's with the man in black? Are these time jumps or not? I love... Season one was better for sure. But this is way better than the other ones. Yeah. There's still a lot of mystery going on with this one too. Like, but they just keep dropping like nukes on it.

It's like, whoa, what? What? I mean, they really went for it and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Yeah, I am too. I just think that they need to call it at the end of this season. They need to end it because you can't just keep dropping bombs like this for a whole... Like, what, are they just going to keep doing this for season after season?

They've saved the show. Go out with a bang here. That's my thought. Yeah. Yeah, really. It's like, where do you go from here? Yeah. So, but so yeah, it's good. Definitely going to finish out this season. I have thoroughly been enjoying it. Definitely.

Yep. Speaking of things that are back, last week tonight with John Oliver has come back from his break. I think somebody finally tapped him on the getting to be a little too much sadness porn. And there's a bit more hilarity and absurdity in the show, even though the main topic was inflation and there's nothing hilarious or absurd about that.

But all the surrounding bits around the main story have been upped in enjoyment and fun a little bit. So it wasn't quite as grueling a watch as it's been for quite a while now. Yeah. The fact that I didn't even know that he was on break should tell you how much I've followed John Oliver.

Well, I know you completely stopped watching. Yeah. Because I can't watch it because the damn HBO app sucks. Oh, well, there's that. Yeah. If I can't, my app don't work. Damn it. And it seems like this week, every show that I watched has gone off the air with the finale.

Yeah, there's not much. No, no, it is definitely. I mean, my highlight of the week now is Big Brother. So that should give you a little bit of inkling as to where we're at. Yeah. But The Old Man finished. And there's a really good write-up over at Deadline with the producers where they talk about some of the issues with the show.

Mainly, Jeff Bridges was out for cancer and COVID, which I didn't even know. So they actually truncated the season. It was supposed to be 10 episodes and they knocked it down to seven and tightened up the last one. But it's really, it's a good, I recommend finishing the show and then reading the write-up. It will be back next season. So I'm looking forward to it.

I'm really looking forward to it because that show is fucking amazing. Awesome. Well, I might have to actually check this out, particularly since there's not much else to watch at the moment. So we will take a look at it. So companies are putting out their financial reports in this period right now, the second quarter.

Spotify has released theirs. They are not hitting the recession yet, unlike Netflix, which had a fall in its overall customer base. Spotify has seen both free and paying accounts grow. It now has 433 million users, up from 422 million reported at the end of last quarter.

188 million of those are paying for premium, which is a leap of 6 million from just three months ago. And a further 4 million are signed up for ad-supported basis. That said, of course, they spent a lot to get that with marketing campaigns designed to coax back users who let their subscriptions lapse, which doesn't happen because you have to actually cancel it, or who wanted to expand a family plan.

So, yeah, they basically posted a quarterly loss of $197 million, which is a lot. They're banking on increases in revenue for subscriptions and advertising. But what they're really banking on, as pointed out in this article, is cheap content like podcasts and audiobooks, because they don't want to pay out all that money to record labels, which is already a tiny, small amount of money to begin with.

This is just not a sustainable industry. You can't do this. It doesn't make sense. It's too cheap, which I know people say it's not. But there are increasing threads, and not just from musicians, going, you know, the fact that you have the entire history of recorded music ever available to you for $9 a month is ridiculous.

Yeah. And? I mean, exactly. That's why it's not going to change. The thing about Spotify is it's just like Uber. It's like they've got too much runway, and they're just, you know, this whole get users at any cost strategy and mentality is just – it's not sustainable across the board for anybody anymore.

And we're seeing that over and over again. And I think that, you know, yeah, these guys are going to be trying to suck up podcasts and audiobooks and other, you know, cheap stuff that people generally give away for free. Eventually, that's just going to bite them in the ass because people are just going to say, no, you can't have it anymore.

You know, it's like if the ad splits, you know, if we put a show on there and they sell an ad for us and we get, you know – Pennies. 10% of what we'd get if we sold it for ourselves, why would we let them keep doing it? And, you know, there are people that say, oh, but it's better than nothing, and I tend to disagree with that.

Is it? Yeah, really. It's like it just devalues what you do for other, you know, other advertisers because if they hear you're taking ads over at one place and they're already in that marketplace, they'll be paying the same, but you'll be getting pennies on it, you know, so you want to push people to buy where you get the most money, and Spotify is not it.

And, you know, there will come a day of reckoning for that for sure when people like us, the independents, say no more. You cannot have everything for free because like 99.9% of their podcast catalog is not from people that they give anything to. You know, they don't pay us.

We don't get shit from them, and neither do most independent podcasters. Well, talking about a day of reckoning, it's interesting. I was listening to the Curious Creatures podcast yesterday, which is Lil Tollhurst from The Cure, the drummer from The Cure back in the day, and Budgie, the drummer from Susie and the Banshees.

They started a podcast together. They interview other musicians. They talk to them about the old times, all that sort of stuff. And Miles Hunt from the band The Wonder Stuff, which is one of my favorite, like, 90s bands, was on. And he was talking about, basically, he just finished recording what he considers to be his last album.

He's not ancient. He's, you know, he could easily continue to release albums. People are interested. Tours do well. But he's basically, he basically just said, why would I record another album? Why would I go into all that effort? Why would I sit and pour my heart out and soul and go into a studio and spend all this money when I'm not going to make any money?

I can just tour. I can just play off all the music I've already written. If I feel the need to write a new song, I'll write a new song and I'll play it live. But I'm not going to release any more money or any more music. I'm not going to put another album out anywhere. I'm not putting another album out on streaming media to make these companies money, and I make nothing.

So artists are starting to realize that, what's the point? Yeah. No, I mean, it was novel at first because everybody was stealing stuff, and then we tried this model, and there's got to be another one. There's got to be another one. There's got to be something else. It's just not working yet. I agree.

Brian, fuck. No, no, no. Brian, dude. We just got to put it on the blockchain. Oh, yeah. Web 3. That's right. Web 3 is going to save us. Well, every single song. How could we forget? Every song needs to be an NFT, and people can bid up the price per song, Jason.

See? See? Brian, we've solved the internet. I know. We've solved the internet. I know. And speaking of Spotify, Barrett wrote in and said, could have been worse, could have been Spotify glasses, and sent this link from The Verge. Spotify has stopped making its CarThing dashboard accessory. First off, it's a horrible name.

CarThing. Yeah. That's just dumb. And secondly, why? Why did this even exist? If you can afford the iPhone, if you can afford the iPhone, and you've got Spotify, and all this sort of thing, and any new car, not even new, any car within the last five years has these dashboards built in that lets you play Spotify.

Why do you need a car thing? So, yeah, they basically said, well, we're done with that. I don't know what they were thinking the market was going to be for that. Whatever happened to the Alexa car thing? Did that go away, too? I have never heard anything about it again. I remember signing up for the wait list for it just to see, and I don't even recall if it ever came out.

I really don't know. I couldn't tell you, Jason.

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With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. Cops and doodads! Quibble writes in, regarding air tags from the Magnet on a Stick LOL title episode, I'm surprised Brian didn't suggest hiding one on a bike.

I live in the Netherlands, where bike theft is a thing, so I popped one on my race bike, and while it usually is under me or in the house, it does give me peace of mind having one on it. Anyway, take care. That's actually a great idea, although I'm not entirely sure where I would hide one on my bike.

I'm open to suggestions about that. I mean, sure, you could put it in a pouch, if you have a pouch on your bike. The air tags are pretty, thanks, Johnny Ive, they're pretty recognizable. Robust. They're not tiny. I don't think anybody would miss it, and they could just pop it off and drop it on the ground, and my bike is still where I thought it was.

A couple things that I've seen, people are making, you know, water bottle holders with covert AirTag holders in them. So it's not obvious from just looking at it, you know, so it is kind of hidden, and it is screwed in, so it's not something they – I mean, yes, they can just unscrew it and take it out.

But if they don't think it's there, that's really the game changer on it. I guess I would need to get something like that, yeah. Yeah, because it's like on most bikes nowadays, where the hell are you going to put it? Yeah, if you guys have any cool accessories that you see around for tacking an AirTag to a bike that won't just get pulled right off, shoot them over.

Jason at GrumpyOldGeeks.com. I'm curious to see what's out there. Yep. What I'm not curious about, Brian, is, well, A, the entire thing around Instagram this week has just been hilarious. This was one of the fastest whiplash turnarounds in history, and there was a – yeah, yeah.

So I got the new update. Did you get the new update? I did. It's god-awful. It was terrible. It was horrible. I was like, what's the point? I'm done with this app. Yeah, I got to see no pictures from my friends, just videos, and the interface is just shitty. It's just a shitty interface.

So, you know, everybody posted about it, and of course, since a fucking Kardashian comes out and a Jenner comes out and says, hey, can you guys fix it? Chrissy Teigen helped. Oh, Chrissy Teigen. Yeah. So, I mean, they're going to get credit for it, but I'm pretty sure that everybody ever that opened Instagram last week said, what is this steaming pile of shit?

Yeah. So they might be getting a little more credit than they're actually – than they're worthy of getting. But yeah, so Instagram turns into TikTok. Backlash ensues. TikTok comes out and says – Adam Mosseri comes out, and whenever he speaks, you know it's just the room is going to be filled with bullshit for weeks.

He's like, yeah, you know, sorry, not sorry. We're going to double down on this anyway. See you later. 24 hours later. Well, you know, if we don't swing big and don't have some misses every now and again, we're not doing our job. So we're going to take this feedback.

We're going to roll it back in bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Yep, more bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Basically, their ass got handed to them, and they finally had to turn a corner, even though, well, Zuckerberg's out there saying, no, no, no, this is going to be the way it's going to be. Our AI is going to save the day and give you more content that we think that you want.

Well, everybody on the fucking planet says we don't want AI and algorithmically generated content. We want a timeline of our friends. We have apps for that. That's what TikTok is. Then roll out another app, you morons, and make it that. Or turn Facebook into that because Facebook is dying.

But leave Instagram alone. We need somewhere where we actually see our friends' stuff. That's all people want. It's not going to be Instagram. It's not going to be Facebook. It's not going to be the metaverse. No. I saw a friend of the show, Trent Hamilton, of course, who typically goes on gigantic Facebook rants, was just like, no, no, no, no.

I'm just going to build my own and put it out there for everybody. I'm like, eh, good luck with that. Good luck. Yeah. I can give you directions to that graveyard and save you some time there, Trent. Yep. Yeah. So I did, of course, the rational thing and, you know, click the download all my data button because I just want a copy of it in case I bail.

Because the thing that also pisses me off is with this change and everybody saying, fuck you, Instagram. My three-letter Instagram handle, the value of that is dropping precipitously every day. That was my retirement plan, man. Right. Yeah. Well, three-letter handles are going the way of .com, so it doesn't matter what domain name you have.

It doesn't matter what your handle is anymore. One question for you about requesting a download of your data from Instagram, don't you have all those photos already? Not in one chunk because the thing about the Instagram photos is a lot of times I'll delete them off of my phone after I do it because it's just, you know, it's a filtered, smaller version of the high-res one that I have.

But sometimes those filtered versions are kind of nice, so I wanted just a copy of those separately, so I just grabbed them. That and it's got, like, all the – it's all in one place, which is really nice because, like, there was a time when I was just posting pictures of the new puppy when I got Dino.

Oh, I remember. Bam, bam. Yeah, that's all I posted. But it's nice to have those all in one place. And when you get the download, it's with an HTML file, so you can just drag it into a browser. Or on a Mac, you can just even hit the space bar and just, you know, preview everything and flip through them. But it was just – it's a nice walk down memory lane.

Okay. You know? And now – because I don't know if you've ever tried it, but it is really hard to go through and delete all of your Instagram photos because you have to do it one at a time. Yeah, it's so dumb. There's no bulk delete in Instagram. It's not – it's perfect for them. Yeah. Why would they want you to be able to delete all that free content?

Yeah, there's no tweet delete for Instagram, you know? Nope. Speaking of, I haven't run that in a while. Ah, tweet delete. So, yeah. So, it sent it to me. It took them three days to get me the link to download because I'm guessing, you know, their – apparently their zip program was running it over time because everybody was getting it.

They said it may take up to 14 days. I'm like, you guys realize this isn't that hard of a problem, but I guess it is for them. Well, they're not invested in having that feature. Like, they don't want you to do this. No, they don't. No, they don't.

Now, this is sad news for me. Twitter has raised the price of blue subscriptions to $4.99. Okay. Starting in October. I am fine with $3 a month. I am fine with $3 a month. $5 a month is a bridge too far, I tell you.

It is a bridge too far. Well, you're not really getting much. I'm not. I was hoping that new blogging feature that they were going to start putting out was going to be out, whatever that was called, that they previewed and went away. Stories or – I don't remember. Whatever the fuck it was going to be called. I really – that intrigued me.

I kind of like that, but it has not shown up anywhere. Spaces are still abysmal. There's really nothing there. The only thing that it has now is you can get free news articles. Yay. Which – I get free news articles from news outlets that I follow on Twitter that I already pay for to follow.

So that's a wash. Fine. That 30-second undo, which actually has saved me a couple times, but it has saved me from the trouble of copying the one I did, deleting the tweet, pasting it in, and retweeting it. That's what it has saved me.

It's not really that difficult. That's why it's a $3 a month problem. This is not a $5 a month problem. So without them giving us some new features, I'm afraid that I might have to cancel my Twitter blue balls. Look, Scott Galloway is funny. He's wrong about a lot of things, but I think he's spot on with what Twitter needs to do here.

Twitter should – Twitter needs to institute pricing based on the number of followers you have, and that's it. Like anything – if you have under 10,000 followers, you get everything for free. Once you start getting above 10,000 followers, you start – there's a sliding scale.

If you're the Jenners or if you're Chrissy Teigen, you're paying thousands of dollars a month. It's based on the value. And the fact that they don't do that is stupid. Yeah, I'm going to disagree with Scott on this one. I think that is a terrible idea because I think you're going to find a lot of people that will just hover at $9.99.

Well, so be it. Then they don't increase their reach, which is – it's all about brand building there. So if you want to build your brand, you need to go above $9.999. Well, you know, okay, four tiers. Free, hobbyist, semi-pro, and pro.

Oh, I throw in journalists too. Yeah, I guess – yeah, because news outlets should pay for it because they can get better tools. If they would just bring back Nuzzle, then I would give them all my money. The best thing that Twitter ever had is now gone, and they just destroyed it. Right. So, you know, bring back Nuzzle, you get my $4.99 a month.

There you go. Speaking of stupid social subscriptions, Snapchat Plus is actually doing better than Twitter Blue right now. Okay. I don't entirely understand why, but – so even though Snapchat is not doing very well, they reported a disappointing second quarter with an earnings miss amid a weak advertising landscape.

By the way, haven't we been talking about how Snapchat has reported disappointed earnings for – since its inception? Yeah, there was like one week. Yeah, there was one week where it did okay, and now it's just like, what the hell? But their brand-new subscription, Snapchat Plus, has already helped the app rake in over $5 million in revenue in its first month, according to new estimates.

That number is already larger than Twitter's in-app revenue, which totals nearly $4 million since Twitter Blue's June 2021 launch per data from the app market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Okay, so for $3.99 a month, $4, a bridge too far for Snapchat, I think. The Snapchat Plus subscription allows devoted app users to see who has re-watched their stories.

Because you get to see who's watched your story to begin with, and now you can see who's watched it more than once. Change your app icon, pin another user as your number one best friend. Hi, Tom. You're my best friend. Hi, Tom. And try out pre-release features and more. That's what we talked about when they were launching this, because it just sounded like you got to pay to be a beta user.

But anyways, they're selling some of this crap because people buy crap. And they made web access part of the Snapchat Plus subscription. Web access. Oh, how exciting. Yeah, because that is something new and novel that nobody's ever thought of before. God.

That's why Snapchat's where they're at. They're bass-ackwards. Tinder revives desk mode feature for singles returning to the office, offering them a button to quickly hide swiping. So, yeah, so there's a little button there that you can hit it real quick, and it'll pull up a meeting notes tab to fake it.

Okay. 1995, I had this feature in Spew, my first website. And it was called Boss Mode. It was a button at the top. And because I'm a bastard, that was linked to a Perl script with a randomizer in it.

And 5% of the people that would click on – or 95% of the people that would click on Boss Mode would get a fake Excel spreadsheet that would pop up over there just to get rid of Spew because we had naked ladies on our website. And that was – that worked as advertised.

Well, if you are one of the lucky 5%ers to hit that Perl script at just the right time, you've got a neon green page with the blink tag with red text that says, Hey, boss, I'm looking at porn that you can see from across the road.

And we got a couple emails from people, but one of them was scary enough where we pulled the feature because this guy was like, Real fucking funny, asshole, I am going to kick your ass. And then he posted my address. I'm like – or emailed me my address.

Wow, early doxing. Well, that's what I mean. This guy put in some effort to find out where I lived. And that was enough to make me say, you know what? The internet is – there's still people on the internet. Yeah, I got my ass virtually handed to me before it was physically handed to me.

But, you know, you did it back in the days of the wild, wild web when you can pull – you could kind of pull off that sort of stuff. Nowadays, if you did something like that, you'd be sued out of existence. I saw this – and this story makes me miss the old days too because something like this just really shouldn't exist. On Wednesday, the Premier League football club Manchester City shared that it had been working with Cisco, the team's technology partner,

to create a connected scarf that features an emotivit sensor for tracking heart rate, body temperature, and emotional state of its wearer during games. According to the two organizations, the accessory will bring fans closer to the game than ever before.

But exactly how it will do that is unclear. All it will really be doing is giving Manchester City a lot of data points from your body. Who would wear this? Superfans who get something out of it, like a sticker. The scarf records data across 120 moments of interest, providing the organizations with concrete information to analyze how each fan felt during the game.

Why? Just because you can do something does not mean you should do something. Well, here's what happens. Somebody over at Cisco or Man City has read the – it's Neil Stevenson and his uncle. I can't remember who they go by now. But the book Interface, the book Interface was exactly this.

It was about a presidential election, not a soccer game. But they probably have better funding for a soccer game, a football game, than they do with presidential elections anymore. But yeah, it's just the same thing. They had a bracelet. These guys have a scarf, a fucking scarf. Well, that's a big deal in England because games are kind of cold.

I get that. Look, I get that it's a funny idea, but it's a scarf. It's an e-scarf. I have a hard enough time keeping my Apple Watch connected to me so it can get my pulse. You don't think a scarf is going to be kind of, I don't know, floating around away from your skin at some point, so it's not going to be that accurate?

I don't know. It's just a silly idea. Is there an off button? Like what if I'm not wearing it at the game and I don't want it to – what if I like to wear my scarf while engaging in intimate relations? At the game? Well, you know. You never know. You can always pop around under the bleachers like we used to.

I don't know. It's a crazy idea. Anyways, Alex wrote in and said, hi, Grumps. I hope your summer is going well. I searched the archives and I couldn't find the iOS app that cleanly removes backgrounds. Can you remind me of the name of the app? Thanks. It was called ClipDrop and back then it was really cool but there are a million apps that do that now.

The game changer with ClipDrop was there is a Photoshop plug-in so you could take a picture on your phone and it would pop up in Photoshop like instantly, which is really cool. That's really cool. That is the – that's the hook for that app. That app though will run you $60 a year now.

I think it was like $50 or $40 when it started. I think it was $40. I remember buying it. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was $40. So they upped it to $60 now to do the – but you have to do the annual paid plan. It's more if you just do it monthly. But like I said, if you don't need that Photoshop integration, skip it.

There's a million things that do it now. Photoshop actually does it now. Just do select subject and boom. Exactly. I don't use ClipDrop anymore because I have Photoshop and there you go. It does it just as well. Indeed. This is interesting. Apple's butterfly keyboard fiasco leads to a $50 million settlement.

So the butterfly keyboards were terrible. They were absolutely garbage. I only had one computer that had that and it was just the MacBook. Do you remember that thing? It was basically this unbelievably underpowered laptop that Mac made.

I think if you listen to ATP, they call it the MacBook adorable. It was adorable. It was a great – it was like the precursor to the air and it was garbage. It was absolute and utter garbage. There's nothing about that computer that was good. I actually had one and I returned it. But yeah, now there's a payout you can get between $50 and $395 if you are in the seven states where this settlement is effective.

But I apparently was not in one of those states so no one has contacted me yet. With my check and all my monies. And talking about walking back some changes, Apple has now done so as well. The iOS 16 beta initially introduced the ability to edit and delete messages via iMessage.

And as people rightly pointed out, this could be used for nefarious deeds in very simple ways. You could basically, you know, you could do all kinds of stuff with this. You could send messages, make people read it and then delete it. And then unless they took a screenshot, there's nothing.

All kinds of potentials for abuse. So they're walking it back a little bit. And they're going to basically allow you to edit, see edit history, which is a very simple fix for everything. If you can see the history on both sides of edits, you're pretty golden. And yeah, they're going to do all that sort of stuff.

So yeah, they walk back this idea because people push back on it as well they should have. So you shouldn't really be able to do that. So editing a post, I think is, yeah, their approach is fine. But I think you should be able to definitely unsend no matter what. If they haven't seen it, you should be able to unsend it.

If they haven't seen it, that's fine. If it's been seen, I don't think you can unsend anymore. No, what has been seen cannot be unseen. But what has been unseen should be able to be unsent. That's what I want. You are a poet, my friend. Don't you know it? I bought a gadget this week.

Of course you did. Well, I bought $10,000 worth of gadgets this week. But here's my favorite so far. The wireless portable charger power bank. 33,800 ma. 15 watt fast wireless charging. 25 watt power delivery. QC 4.0 phone charger.

5 output and dual input external battery pack. Compatible with iPhone, Android, etc. For $26.95. What that means is, in layman's terms, it's a power brick, right? It's just another power brick.

But it's a high capacity power brick that you can get for $27 now, which is insane to start with. But, finally, it's got wireless charging on it. It's got one of those Qi chargers on it. That's very nice. So, you can actually keep that plugged in and then just put your phone on it to charge your phone while you're at your desk.

But when you want to go, you just unplug the battery pack, take it with you, without any cables. Because that is the worst part about carrying around a power brick, is you also have to carry around the cables. So, this one, boom, Bob's your uncle. I like that. Best $27. It's so worth it.

Yeah. I might have to pick that up. Although, these days, I find that battery power on almost everything I have, at least until my – now that I've set it, my iPhone battery is just going to tank. But it's been pretty good. Like, I haven't really – I bought a charger a couple years back, used it all the time, carried it with me in my backpack.

I don't even carry it with me anymore. Yeah, things just tend to last a lot longer now. So, that's probably why they're $27 instead of $120 like it used to be. Yes, they were not cheap when I bought one. That's true. No, yeah, those things used to be very expensive.

That's why I'm like, $27 might explode at any moment. But, hey, it's $27. Right. This next one I found just because it was recommended to me by Amazon. And this is a $649 microphone. It's the 3DO FSXLR.

And did you look at the picture? I did. It is the strangest microphone I've ever seen in my life because it's kind of like a Westworld part. It's a stick with a box on it and strapped to the two sides of the box are two white plastic ears.

Ears. And I was like, okay, I'm intrigued. So, I read it, read up on it. It says, the 3DO FSXLR microphone is a workhorse. Living up to the hype, it delivers... I didn't know there was hype. It delivers a smooth, rich sound that brings a realistic feel to just about any project.

Just about. I would like to know which projects failed. Whether you're recording live music, quiet ASMR, enhancing your films, or capturing the sounds of nature, the 3DO FSXLR is a perfect fit. Every FSXLR binaural microphone comes equipped with two prosthetic ears with microphone capsules embedded inside.

It captures sound just like we hear sound in the real world with our own ears. For $649. Now, Brian, you have a degree in audio. Yes. Does this fucking do anything? I doubt it.

Okay. I just... I need to know. I need to know if the shape of the human ear... You tell me when it arrives, but my thought is, of course not. This is complete bullshit. Although, my takeaway from this, and the thing that I really learned, and that I think is important here for this, is the fact that you have stopped drinking, but still purchase like you're drinking.

I did not buy this. Oh, do not get me wrong. I did not buy this. I will not buy this. No. Oh, God, no. No, this was just... This was a recommended item to me on Amazon. Well, I guess not drinking is paying off. Yeah.

Yeah. There is absolutely no world where I could see actually buying this. But it's funny. It's funny looking. It is ridiculous. And no, I cannot see any scientific reason that this would do anything. At the library.

Brian, I signed up for a new Substack newsletter this week. I saw. I'm curious. Yeah. Chuck Fallon or Palinuk's plot spoiler newsletter. I threw down the $40 a year because I saw that he has a great velocity of posts that he's putting out there.

There are a couple of days at this point that I seem to be getting because he's got just a regular newsletter, but he's got different sections. One of them, though, is a serialized novel that he's working on. And there's 46 parts out of 52 that are up already. And I'm like, well, you know, 40 bucks a year.

I get extra content from one of my favorite authors and I can pre-read a novel. So I said, why the hell not? I was going to ask you if this spoils when he lost the plot, because I have not enjoyed his last six books. That's the interesting thing. I have not read his last six books.

In my opinion, they have been horrific. Or maybe I've just aged out of enjoying that type of book because it is a very specific thing. But I still love Fight Club. But I just, I have not, I've stopped buying them. If he has a new book out, I couldn't tell you.

I just, they were slogs, every single one of them. And I didn't get anything out of it, so. Okay. Yeah, a couple of them, I think the last one I read was pretty disturbing. I remember parts, I can't remember the name of the novel, but I remember the stories. And yeah, maybe that's not a good thing because that was definitely, I think the last thing I read did have that gut story in it.

It was very bad. And this one says, Greener Pastures is a Chuck subculture novel. Think Fight Club or Lullaby. It must have been at Lullaby. Presented in 52 chunks. Many of these will make the dreaded gut story look terrible. Tame. Here's a secret world you'll wish were real.

I didn't know. This is not a secret world I wish were real. It's a world I wish was not real at all. So, I don't know. I got it. I'm going to, I'll go through them. But the stuff that I've read so far, I really enjoy. And I liked his last book on writing.

I thought that was pretty good. But that's, you know, that's on writing. That's not his fiction. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I like Stephen King's work on writing and I've read that book. But I don't like Stephen King's work. So, that makes sense. That tracks. That tracks. Yep. That does track. So, instead of crazy ear microphones, Amazon did give me one recommendation this week that I thought was amazing.

So, I bought this one. This is Star Trek, Designing the Final Frontier. How Mid-Century Modernism Shaped Our View of the Future. It is a hardcover coffee table book. Mm-hmm. And it's phenomenal. It is phenomenal. It looks beautiful. It goes, oh, it is gorgeous.

The photography is great. It goes episode by episode with, you know, the mid-century modern furniture and just the whole design aesthetic. How it went from architecture to, you know, designing the sets of the actual ship to the, you know, the props that they had and the different scenes all across the whole thing.

It is a gorgeous book and I can't wait to read it, but I flipped through it last night and you can come to the studio, anybody, if you want to come check out my book, Star Trek, Designing the Final Frontier. You just have to record a podcast when you're done. Yep. Yep. It'll just cost you 400 bucks to come read my $26 book.

What a bargain. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Tuesday Mike, Joe, and Jeff. Welcome. Welcome to our new Patreon subscribers. Yes. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got Mark, Humphrey, Charlie, Robert, Simon, and Matt.

And over at the tip jar, we've got Ashley, Daryl, Dimitri, and Adam. Thank you all so much. Thank you. And no reviews this week, sadly. But happy birthday to Dave Bittner, who you may have noticed is not with us today because he's out enjoying his vacation.

Probably creating 17 new podcasts. Probably. Yes. So may the vacay be with you, Dave. Yes. He's still hanging out on Twitter. He just can't get away. He can't. Happy birthday, man. And sad news. David Warner from The Omen and Tron dies.

He was aged 80. He had a good run. But yeah, he was also... I can't believe they didn't put this in here. Time Bandits. Yes. I remember more from Time Bandits than The Omen. He was a young man in The Omen. But yeah, sad to hear he's gone. Time Bandits has this weird place in my memory because it was like one of the...

We went to a drive-in movie theater and it was a double bill between Time Bandits and Raiders of the Lost Ark. And I remember being in the back of my parents' van and they opened up the back doors and we just sat and watched those two movies. We're really weird that that memory just sticks.

But there you go. David Warner in my memories. That is weird. Time Bandits. Doesn't track for me. Does not have legs for me. I don't know about you, but... Didn't track for me at the time either. I had no clue what was going on. I was waiting for Raiders. Yeah, that's why it's a weird, kind of a weird double feature.

Very weird. But I've never liked Time Bandits. Everybody says you're supposed to like it. That's one I just can't get behind. Anyway. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schellmeister. 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.

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