567: House of Dragon Boobs

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. What's the haps, Mr. B? You know, busy week. I call this hell week. Both my son and my wife have birthdays five days apart. So it's been a lot. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Lots of presents out of pocket there.

Lots of planning. Lots of presents. Lots of making sure everybody's happy. Lots of no nothing for me. This week is not about me. No, it's not. This is where you're the dad. You have to be the man of the house. Yes, yes. So it's been a lot. We had a party for my son at our house over the weekend with a magician, water balloon fights.

Wow. I made about 7,000 hot dogs. I'll catch up only, please, because six-year-olds. It was a lot of fun. I can't. He had a blast. My house is basically, I now live in Legoland. We have so many Legos. It's ridiculous. He's so into it, though. So it's kind of cool and fun. But, you know, you just got to embrace the parenthood. And I do.

All right. Well, if it makes you happy, it makes you happy. Happy is a stretch. So I've heard. So I've heard. Content. Content. How's that? All right. We'll go with that one. I got a little podcast magazine follow-up. I finally got my issues in the mail. They're beautiful.

And I got some feedback that I may have dogged out podcast magazine on the last show when I talked about them. And that was not my intent. That was not my intent. Okay. Oh, because you weren't picked. That's why. I don't care. No, I am very honored to be in the podcast magazine, 40 Over 40. So thank you for the honor because...

I also got my who's who. And you got it. Yeah, you got it. Who's who? That's right. I was not asked to be in who's who. I don't believe I'm actually in it because I didn't pay. Right. But if you would have paid, you would have been. I'd be in it. You would have been fine. Yes.

I've got a bit of follow-up here. I feel like we've been talking about this for about 15 years now. MoviePass will return on September 5th with plans starting at around $10 a month. Because if your business plan does not work for the first 14 times, try, try again with watered-down options.

Oh, yes. Yes. That's the way it works. Now, what I particularly love about the press release that they put out, and Gadget did a fun article about this, is that there are zero details whatsoever. We will have tiers costing around $10 to $20 or $30 per month.

We do not know what is in these tiers. Users will get a number of credits each month to see movies in theaters, and there won't be an unlimited plan at the outset. You will be able to transfer credits, but there's no mention of that in the FAQ. More details will be revealed later.

The FAQ does not provide details of the Web3 framework that they said that they would use. Nor is there any mention of the eye-tracking tech the app will supposedly employ to reward users with credits for watching ads. So, it's coming. But we don't know what it is. We have no idea what it is.

And I do like this last line, too. It added that the service will be available at all major theaters in the U.S. that accept major credit cards, but they have only officially partnered with one-fourth of U.S. theaters. Well, you know, they're thinking big. They're hopeful. Yeah. They are hopeful. It's an aspirational press release.

Right. And since the press release has come out, they've started the wait list pre-order. Of course, the wait list. Because you can't just sign up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it immediately crashed their servers. Of course. 30,000 people signed up, like, immediately. That's because everybody went on the blockchain, right?

Oh, that's right. Yeah. So, I got the email because I was a MoviePass subscriber. You know, I did it for the show. Could barely make it. I saw one movie on my MoviePass, I believe. It's the – yeah. You were exactly their dream customer.

It's the gym membership model. Yep. It's exactly that. So, I just saw it and I'm just like, yeah, I think I'll pass this time around. I'll let other people take the plunge on that one. But they are back. Officially back. In the news.

Well, this came out last night and put a little smile on my face. Elon, Elon, Elon. He has been trying to get documents out of Twitter and he put it as part of his lawsuit that's going on right now. So, Chancellor McCormick, the person who's overseeing all of this – By the way, it sounds like a great soap opera character.

Chancellor McCormick? Yeah. Who did she have the affair with, Chancellor McCormick? Well, Chancellor McCormick is awesome. It's just like flat out awesome. Here is her statement based on the request that Elon and Elon's team had put in.

She says, defendants' data requests are absurdly broad. Read literally, defendants' documents request would require plaintiff to produce trillions upon trillions of data points reflecting all of the data Twitter might possibly store for each of the approximately 200 million accounts, including in its MDAU count every day, which is daily active users.

For nearly three years, plaintiff has difficulty quantifying the burden of responding to that request because no one in their right mind has ever tried to undertake such an effort. It suffices to say, plaintiff has demonstrated that such a request is overly burdensome.

So absurdly broad and overly burdensome is now the best way I've heard Elon Musk described. I think that's fair. You know, I've tried to avoid watching a lot of this stuff or thinking about it because it hurts my brain. But the parallels between Trump's legal approach right now and Elon Musk's legal approach right now are just too similar not to be ignored.

Eerily similar. Eerily similar. Trying anything, right? Like, just anything. F and pedo indeed. F and pedo. God. Vincent sent this one in, and it was a great read. I'm just going to sum it up here. It's about Axie Infinity and basically how half of the Philippines basically tried to get in on making money off of this thing.

And then, you know, Axie was hacked, 600 million stolen, blah, blah, blah. You know, dreams dashed down the tubes, things like that. And, of course, people have, you know, lost their livelihood. They're upset about it. And, you know, I feel bad for them. I feel bad for them because they're normies, they're rubes.

They don't quite understand how this stuff works, you know. But, you know, it was a game. It was a game. And games always lose their luster over time. When new games come out and, you know, systems people are using to make money on them eventually go. Obviously, the way of World of Warcraft. So, I mean, remember all of the stories we covered about Chinese gold farmers in the days of yore back then?

We know that there are markets for this basically slave labor that people are doing. And there's always a small window where some of these people can make some cash. The thing about this is this was built to fail no matter what. It was eventually going to fail just because it was based on crypto.

The $600 million theft, yeah, they kind of threw a wrench in it. So, it just happened a little bit faster. But you would think that with that much money, they would have at least hired a good security team. But what we're finding out time and time and time and time again is none of these people care about security. They just don't.

All of these companies are about making the money and not spending any money. That's it. Right. It's not longevity. It's get in, get out, and why put the money into a long-term infrastructure? Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Same could basically be said about Twitter as we found out this week.

I guess we'll get to that a little bit later, yeah. Yeah. No, it seems to be a theme I'm seeing here. Mark Andre sent this in. Hey, guys, I thought you would like this article. I had actually bookmarked this and then never went back and read the whole thing because I kind of basically know the story.

Capital Records basically took a – and again, here comes my biggest pet peeve about these articles. They made up a virtual rapper, FN Mecca, and now the record company has had to apologize to the black community for insensitivity.

And here we go. In promoting an AI-backed artist that critics said was appropriate and included – inappropriate and include slurs infused in lyrics. Now, the next line, FN Mecca, an augmented reality artist. Now, is it an AI artist or is it an augmented reality artist?

Because they're different things, right? Well, it could be AIR, an air artist. An air – well, I like air. Air is a good band. Anyways, the point being they basically made up this artist and they made it into a rap artist. And they made the artist, even though it's AI or AR, basically a black community artist, created entirely by white guys, including lots of horrible slurs.

Not a good look. Not a good look at all. Oops. Oops, we did it again. Yeah. It's a music business. They just want to make a buck wherever they can. They do. And because I'm still reasonably connected to the music industry and I know some things that are coming and haven't dropped yet and may never drop, we will most likely be doing a story very soon about a new NFT band that's going to fail miserably.

Oh, no. You can't talk about this yet? Can't talk about this yet. Because it may never see the light of day. If the record label is smart, this will just go away. But I have a feeling we'll be talking about how it fails. Great. Just what I'm looking forward to.

This is actually – this next one is a little bit of follow-up. Xiaolang Zhang was an Apple engineer, a former Apple engineer now, who took a bunch of documents about the self-driving cars that Apple has been working on and skedaddled his little butt off to China.

Well, yeah, he didn't do so well. No, he didn't. But a quick question about this. The thing I thought was interesting about this is because there's a lawsuit involved and various other things, is this not the first time on record that it has proven 100% without a doubt that Apple is working on a self-driving car?

It's just kind of been, you know, maybe a document appeared here and the rumor there. But there's never been conclusive proof that they were working on a car until now, right? Yeah, kind of. I mean, the original case was back in – That's the big part of the story.

It kind of hasn't been that much of a secret. Yeah, it's been – because we've had people on the team come and go. And, you know, it's – you know, we've covered news about the teams being swapped around. But, yes, there are physical documents in court hands now that prove that, yes, they were working on it as far back as 2018.

Right. And probably long before that. Probably long before, yes. Yes. They still haven't made that work. We still don't have AR glasses from Apple. You know, there are many things that they work on that we – Well, if here's the difference between Apple and every other company, such as MoviePass, Apple doesn't put it out there until it's done and it works.

Right. They're not desperate for cash, so they can take their time. Yes. They don't release things with roadmaps. They release things that are mapped. Well, I don't know how much they mapped that Apple Hi-Fi. That thing was – that thing was interesting. Yeah, I know.

But, yeah, no. So, basically, he has finally pled guilty to it. So, it is true. Yes. He did work there. He did take the documents. Right. And he's waiting to get sentenced right now. So, he could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

Yes. And my finger inches closer to the sell Tesla button. Oh. I don't know, man. I kind of think that they're in the catbird seat and they're going to be there for quite some time. I think they are too, but – so, it's an interesting thing.

What do you do? Do you sell Tesla as soon as you know Apple's about to announce? Do you wait and – or do you buy? Do you sell Tesla before – when you think Apple's going to announce in the near future, you sell a bunch of Tesla. Then you wait for the Apple announcement for Tesla to drop down precipitously and then you buy a bunch back.

Maybe that's the play. I think that, yeah. For me, if I had Tesla, I would sell half of it and then keep that other half in reserve for a quick buy no matter how the market moves. That's – and by the way, we have a new Apple event coming up September 7th.

Yes. Always remember the stock just tanks right after the keynote. Always. Good time to buy Apple. Always. Yeah. Yeah. Always wait to the end of the keynote and then just have that finger over the button ready to go. You're not going to make FU money, but you might – You will strengthen your position.

You might be able to put a down payment on a Tesla. Who knows? There you go. So, this next one just kind of infuriates me, but makes me chuckle a little bit. There's a crypto mining company in the U.S. called Stronghold Digital Mining. They have sold 26,200 of their mining rigs to pay off a bunch of debt.

They had $67 million in debt to be specific, and they sold them to pay some of it down. But they still have a bunch of rigs on site. They got 16,000 miners still on site. And I bet they still probably have the 26,000 on site. They just sold them and leased them back because this is the company that owns the two power plants in Pennsylvania that we just don't like.

We don't like these guys because what do they do? It's a coal plant. It's basically they take coal crap and make electricity out of it, 165 megawatt power plant, right? We are in the middle, Brian. I don't know if you've noticed, of a climate crisis. No, we're not.

And these guys are burning coal to make fake money. I know. I know. It's just one of those things. I saw it. It came across the wire. And it just made me angry all over again at the whole crypto scam. No, it is infuriating. The energy usage from crypto, which is just a joke and a scam anyways, it's just infuriating.

But lest we forget, it isn't just the bullshit that's sucking up all of our power. It's legit stuff, too, because I have a story about that. Microsoft and Amazon are reportedly halting their plans to build data centers in Ireland. Okay. Mainly because there's a lot of, because of the climate and energy crisis.

There are power shortages and threats of rolling blockouts in Ireland because of all the power usage going on and the grid can't basically handle it. So, Ireland's state-owned electric utility, Airgrid, has a planned $2 billion data center expansion, which is now going to be put on hold because Microsoft and Amazon aren't going in.

So, it's kind of like chicken or egg here. We'll rebuild your system if you come in. Well, we're not coming in if the system can't handle us. So, there we are. They really need to work on tidal power in Ireland. They're an island. They got lots of tides circling the island. I'm just saying, that whole tidal power thing or, you know, the offshore wind farms, they're working on that.

But I think we really need to focus on this tidal power thing because gravity is not going to change every day. We have a moon. You know, there are tides for a reason. That's not going away. So, maybe really double down on that if you're in Ireland is all I'm saying. It's free. It's free gravity.

So, Amazon is looking at building their data center in London instead. Microsoft is exploring London, Frankfurt, and Madrid. This is kind of crazy, though, the amount of effect that this has on cities. Because I saw this, officials paused construction on new houses in West London until 2035 because data centers have been taking up all the electrical capacity.

How insane is that? Wow. Yep. Yeah. Great. And Loudoun County, Virginia, which is home to the largest concentration of data centers in the world, has basically said, you can have no new construction here because we do not have enough power for anything. Wow. I think that's where, like, you know, the main East Coast, Amazon EC2.

I think that's there. Yeah. That would make sense. Yeah. A little more Elon Musk news here. He's going to have a big show and tell event pretty soon on Halloween because, of course, yeah, this is for Neuralink, one of the forgotten other companies that he also runs that is supposed to basically, I don't know what it's supposed to do.

We're supposed to be able to think about Elon and then he makes more money. No, dude. Monkey Pong. This is Monkey Pong. That's what he did in the last big demonstration. So we have no idea what's going to happen at this one, but basically a lot's riding on this. They still haven't begun human trials.

Thank God. The FDA hasn't said how close the company might be to receiving approval. Most of the co-founders have left the company since it was founded six years ago, probably because they saw the writing on the wall without having anything shoved into their brain to see it. And, yeah, so there you go.

We'll see what happens. They're looking at buying its rival, Synchron, which we'll see. I don't know. I have no interest in any of this. No. Brian, you don't want to tweet without using your fingers? No, thanks. They can't get self-driving cars working.

I'm going to have them stick the same chip in my brain. I'll pass. Well, they're also in the news today. Our Elon is back in the news. Oh, yet another company. Yet another thing. SpaceX and T-Mobile have made a deal to actually use Starlink to connect the cell phones that run on T-Mobile's network.

I thought you were going to say that they were going to paint all the satellites that copyrighted pink. That would have been awesome. Yeah, let's just really screw up the night sky. Come on. So this is, you know, coming in 2023, they say they're going to start with text messaging.

But the whole plan is that they're going to have spectrum that you can use from space to your phone. You know, this has been talked about since Apple put in that chip, I think in the 13, that, you know, is gearing up for satellite phones.

Right. You know, I'm not a big fan of Starlink. There's only like 2,300 satellites now or something in the 2000s up there. But the plan is to bring them up to, what, 11,000 or something like that. Something like that. Yeah. Every time I see one of those Starlink launches, it just makes me angrier and angrier.

I'm just like the long-term repercussions for this are unknown and I think are going to be disastrous. I've made predictions on the show before and I got about an 80% hit rate. So hopefully this one's in the 20%. Well, it's funny you mentioned this because the Infinite Monkey Cage is one of my favorite podcasts and they're back from their hiatus.

And they did a show about astronomy and all that sort of stuff recently. And they had somebody on who was just, she was railing against this and just basically saying, you know, the night sky is the human birthright and they're going to fuck it all up. Too late. Too late. Yeah.

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Brian, I watched Top Gun Maverick. Okay. Oh my God. I've heard it's fun. It is so much fun. It is such stupid Bruckheimerian fun. I mean, it's bad, but it's fantastic. Of course it's bad.

But it's fantastic. Okay. I mean, it was unapologetically a Top Gun sequel. There was nothing about it that wasn't exactly like the original Top Gun was. Except this one, if you look closely at the plot, is Star Wars.

It's basically Star Wars. Okay. I'm talking about, you know, episode four, Star Wars here. It is so strange of a movie that I was laughing. I was crying. It was just like, what am I watching? And I walked out of it with just the biggest smile on my face.

And then as the credits are rolling, you see all of the main characters, you know, in their uniforms and doing their, you know, professional things. Then you get to the Tom Cruise cut scene and it's just him without a shirt, oiled up, glistening and smiling.

And then it goes back to the next person, which is back in a suit. I'm like, what the hell was that? I mean, he wants to be Luke Skywalker and Fabio in the same breath. I don't get it. I don't know. Here's the deal. You can rent it now.

You don't have to go to Sweden anymore. If you're one of the gazillion people who haven't seen it in the theater and you have a big ass TV at home, turn up the sound, get as close as you can as it and enjoy the shit out of it. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. So let me ask you a question and you may not be able to answer this, but I'm positing this.

If you're one of our younger listeners, say you're Gen Z or a millennial and you did not grow up with the original Top Gun being a seminal moment in your childhood. Does it rely on the nostalgia of being a certain age when the first Top Gun came out for this to be enjoyable?

I think it might rely on the fact that when the original came out, there wasn't really CGI. Yeah. So, you know, when they were flying those planes, most of the time they were flying the planes. In this one, most of the time they're flying the damn planes. But the kids nowadays probably think it's just special effects.

They don't realize the skill and the talent that went into making this movie. It is insane, the flight sequences they have. So I don't think they're going to appreciate that like us olds will. It's like, it's their practical effects. It's like they're in a plane. All right? They're flying a damn plane.

I don't think kids are going to get that. If you're like me and you grew up watching shows like Firefly, or the movies like Firefox with Clint Eastwood. Oh, I love that movie. A fine classic. Yeah. It's a great movie. It's terrible, but it was great. This is in the same vein, except this had real planes. This is like a live action Firefox.

Even though Firefox was live action, it was really poorly done with the effects. This one is just, I don't know if they will appreciate it as much. You'd have to ask one. I don't know any. If you're listening and you're, you know, sub Gen X, let us know if you enjoyed this movie, if you saw it, or if we're just a bunch of olds going, what the hell?

I saw, I'm sure you've seen the ads for this. The new Jamie Foxx movie on Netflix called Day Shift, where he's a vampire hunter. Yeah, I did see the ad for it. So I tried it, and at about eight minutes in, there's a woman doing some dialogue, and she busts out the old line, you know, the definition of insanity that I hate, because I've disproven it on the show a million times.

Definition of insanity, doing the same thing over, over, blah, blah, blah. Definition of insanity is saying that same fucking quote over and over again. So as soon as I saw that, or I heard that, I'm like, oh shit, these screenwriters suck. It's going to be terrible. And I turned it off, and then I hit IMDb, and I'm like, okay, let's find these writers here, okay?

Tyler Tice is one of the screenwriters. It's his first movie. Bingo. Nailed that one. The next one is Shea Hatton. His credits include Army of Thieves. I know what you did last summer, the TV series for one episode, okay?

Something called It's Thursday, which I never heard. Army of the Dead, which I did see. And as an action movie, it was great, but definitely not known for its dialogue. And also, John Wick Chapter 3, Parabellum, which is the least favorite of my John Wick movies because the dialogue was so bad.

So, I have not seen the rest of Day Shift, but I am just going to say, from my outside scientific observation, that it is going to be a very poorly written movie. The action sequence at the beginning was pretty awesome. The fight scene was great, but you can only do that so many times without getting bored.

You got to have some at least decent words. Right. I just, I couldn't get past it. Okay. Fair enough. Speaking to your earlier point about Top Gun and practical effects versus digital effects, I finished Light and Magic, the six-hour-plus documentary about ILM that is on Disney+.

And it basically charts the amazing stuff that they did with practical effects through the digital revolution and basically the death of the practical effects department at Disney to fully digital. It was great.

It's fascinating to watch. It's really cool. If you're into movies, you're going to love it. It's not just focused on Lucas's stuff because obviously ILM was big on Spielberg and got into Star Trek and then the whole, everything turned into Jurassic Park, basically. They spent gazillions of dollars on Jurassic Park because they were going to go down the practical effects route because they didn't think digital was there yet.

And then you watch the aha moment when they actually made the digital dinosaurs look better than the practical effects. And that was that, off and running. Yeah, game over. Really, really great series. I highly recommend it. Man, I want to go back and watch Jurassic Park again. That was such a good movie. And the second episode of She-Hulk dropped and I watched that.

I love this show. It's so funny. Really? It's great. Okay. You know, I don't know if they'll keep it going, but the premise and it's just funny and it doesn't take itself seriously at all and I highly enjoyed it.

Well, check it out then. Yep. And I threw on last night. I knew I wasn't going to make it through anyway, so I didn't exactly give myself a good chance at this one. And I can't remember the title, House of Dragon Boobs or whatever it is. Something like that.

Game of Thrones follow-up, prequel, whatever. I made it about 10 minutes in and I shut it off. Okay. I know they're highly relying on your nostalgia and love of the original Game of Thrones from music cues to costuming to everything.

The problem is Game of Thrones ended and left a bad taste in most people's mouths. So I'm not sure how much nostalgia you can count on. I think you need something more interesting like your own story. But it is what it is. It is what it is. I have talked to about seven or eight people who got to about the same point that we all got to, which was about anywhere from five to 10 minutes in before turning it off.

Yeah. Didn't seem interesting. Yeah. Speaking of special effects, I'm sitting there, you know, we're waiting for the first dragon scene to come on. And as soon as that first dragon pops out of the clouds, it looks terrible. The little people on the back look terrible. Everything about that dragon looked terrible.

And I'm like, okay, well, this is terrible. Turned it off. Obviously, they needed to hire ILM. Yes, I think they did. I think they did because it was just, I mean, and I've heard that comment from a couple of people that's like, the effects just look bad, which I thought was really strange.

I'm not sure if I'm going to go back to it. I'm probably going to try to finish the first episode just to see if I can stomach it. I don't know. I'm much more excited about the potential Lord of the Rings thing that's coming, which is the rings of the power of the rings with the rings of the Lord of the Rings or whatever they ended up calling it.

Horrible naming by everything. Ring-a-ding-dong. Yeah. I'm surprised they didn't tie it in with the ring camera. Well, that show's coming too. Yep. I don't even want to talk about that until it airs. Then we can talk about how horrible it is. Speaking of going back to things, though, I found this documentary called Going Back to Xanadu, which was on the Blu-ray release in the 2008 DVD.

A friend of the show, MXV, sent this to me. It's a cute little documentary. It's like 20-some minutes long, just behind the scenes on how they did the costumes and the dance scenes and stuff. It's a nice little documentary if you're a fan of Xanadu and want a little behind-the-scenes action. I enjoyed it.

I'm not that much of a fan. For me, when she passed, throwing on the soundtrack and just listening to it was good enough for me. Cops and doodads. Norman wrote in and said, I've heard you talk about your gear and tech, but what about your chairs? Thanks.

This came up on Discord again a few weeks back as well. And what I'm realizing is, well, A, people are lazy and don't go back and look things up. And also, we've now been doing the show for so long, nobody remembers the things that we've recommended. Because everybody's gone. Yeah, that's true.

You know, we're of the eight where we grew up with the Herman Miller Aeron chairs in all the swanky company offices that we worked in during the internet boom. And then I bought, I can't even remember how many years ago now, the show had started.

But I got the Herman Miller Mirror 2 and have not looked back since. I'm still sitting on it. It is beyond comfortable. It is my favorite office chair. I never got to work in an office that had an Aeron. And I got one, I got one used about three or four years ago.

Because before that, I'd had a Mirror 2 that I had to sell when I moved to Chicago. When I came back, I'm like, oh, I don't want to spend another $1,000 on a chair, even though it's the best chair ever made. So I got, I found a used Aeron for 400 bucks. Oh, there you go. It's heavy, it's uncomfortable, it creaks, and it's in good shape.

It's not, it's not crappy, like used. It's in really good shape. And I just did not like it. I did not like it. So it's funny because I have my, my old Aeron, I gave to my parents and it's still in, in the, in the office at my mom's house.

And when I go to visit my mom, I sit in it there and I'm like, this is so uncomfortable. I need my mirror back. The funny thing is I gave mine to my roommate and she put it in her office in my old studio in the garage and she loves it. She thinks it's the most comfortable chair ever. Right. I don't, I don't know.

She doesn't spend as much time in the chair as we do. So in the office here, I got myself another Mira 2 and I got those extended roller blade wheels on it that you saw when you were here. It is the, it is the most perfect chair in the world. It's the best chair. I wish I could afford more of them for the office.

It's worth every penny. It's worth every penny. It really is. Yeah. I will never get another office chair unless they come out with a Mira 3. Yeah. But yeah, it's, it's expensive, but it's worth it. Yeah. And then, uh, you know, continuing the theme of things that we've talked about, uh, many, many times.

AJ wrote in, I've been listening to you guys for about a year now. Okay. So you've missed these discussions and I valued your advice on internet browsers. I ended up using Vivaldi ever since and have to admit as a solid browser, but recently I was turned onto a different browser and you guys really got to try it. It's called Opera GX and it's marketed to gamers, but it's super useful.

Even if you're not a gamer, there are way too many features to highlight in this message, but you've got to try it. It's the bee's knees and no, I'm not an employee or otherwise affiliated with the browser. Here's a link to review about it. If you want more info, um, we tried Opera a long time ago. It's what led us to Vivaldi eventually.

So, right. But this is Opera GX. It's kind of like a subset of the, the, the old Opera and, um, you know, it's, it does have a lot of features in it. Here's the thing. I read the title of the review and Betteridge got in my ear because the title of the review is Opera GX review worth using in 2022.

Well, my gut just says no. So I skipped the review and opened up my copy of Brave. And the, the other thing that we've talked about a lot of time with browsers is, uh, if we followed everybody's suggestions and the releases and everything like that, we'd be switching browsers every week. I'm way too damn lazy for that.

It's too much work. So unless there's a super compelling reason, like Vivaldi craps out on me, I ain't switching. Well, that's why I'm on Brave because Vivaldi crapped out on me. Then I went back to Vivaldi, tried it again. It worked for about a month and then it crapped out on me again. So yeah, it's working for me.

As much as I don't like the, the, you know, the, um, C-suite behind Brave, if you turn off all the crypto crap, it is a solid browser and it actually gets the job done. So I'm just sticking with it for now until that breaks too. All right. Uh, Roz also wrote in, hi, great show.

If you're looking for a training app for your Echelon bike, you can try. I don't know. Works well with Peloton, but you do need a phone and a tablet, uh, for five bucks. The developer is excellent. I had a problem. He replied within 24 hours with a beta test version to try unheard of nowadays with the app.

You can also import your workout and heart rate into Strava. Uh, so let me follow up a little bit on my fitness journey. I'm still kind of hoping Peloton will open up because all you do is hear, hear about how their value is crashing. So I'm sure they're going to open up their stuff to everything and I won't need this kind of work around.

Uh, I would try it except for the fact that I am now trying Apple fitness and I have to walk back my previous comment about Apple fitness looking too simple and too easy. And just for beginners now that I've tried some of their programs, they're fucking hard.

Okay. Like I am, I'm doing them and, and they're short. That's, that's what threw me off. Like, you know, the, the max is like 30 minutes and, but whatever it's, uh, the programs are actually really difficult and, uh, I'm enjoying Apple fitness at the moment. I do like the fact that I can, you know, the watch and the app on my Apple TV are syncing up and I can, it's great.

I'm actually really, really enjoying Apple fitness. Um, I gave up on fitness blender. I tried a couple more of their free programs. The quality just isn't there. There's sound issues. There's video issues. Um, again, like I said, it's, it's like, if you're not looking at the screen, you need to be able to hear if you're in an inversion or you're facing away, you need to hear what you're supposed to do.

And if there's muffled sound, you can't, and it sucks. Uh, so I gave up on fitness blender. I am full on in on Apple fitness right now. It's pretty great. Uh, my one complaint, and this is what beach body did really well is beach body would have programs. They would last a month to two months or two weeks or something like that.

So there was no choice involved. It's Monday. I'm loading up this Monday's Monday's part of the workout program that I'm doing right now with Apple fitness. They don't really have that. You, you have to make, you have to search through and make a choice for what program you're going to do every single day.

They don't have like packaged programs. I wish they did. That would be great. That's my only complaint right now. All right. All right. Well, I'm glad you're liking it because, uh, yeah, I pay for it. I'm glad somebody gets to use it. Thank you for adding me to your family. You are very, very welcome, my friend.

And our last bit of feedback for this section, Greetar writes, I have a question for people putting trackers on their bikes. They get stolen. You find out where they are. Now what? Do you go and get it yourself? Do you give the info to the cops? Has anybody actually retrieved a bike this way? Seems like security theater to me. Uh, first question. Are you black?

Because if you are, don't go to the police. No, don't do that. Never goes well. That would be bad. Uh, I don't know. Like for my expensive bikes, I, I, I, I, I, I don't know. And if I can like go to a police and person and say, here it is, it's right there.

I, I, I'd, I'd imagine that they would have to do something about it. I don't know. Depends. I mean, Canadian police might be different here in the U S they will laugh at you. Probably. Yeah. Uh, even if it's your laptop, they'll laugh at you. I'm thinking if it's one of those like $12,000 specialized e-bikes, you might get some, you might get a cop out of bed for that.

But, um, if your huffy gets jacked, you're pretty screwed. Anybody out in the audience, let us know. You know, I, I would love to hear your stories. I never thought about it as far as what would I do if it got stolen. It's just, I'd like to know where it is. Yeah. I mean, I've seen a lot of that with, you know, when, when find my Mac came around and people were getting their laptops stolen all the time in, uh, San Francisco coffee shops, they would, you know, take it to the police and say, look, it's right here.

It's right here. And the cops would be like, okay, get in line. You know, there's another 45 people behind you that had, that know where their laptops are. And we just don't have the manpower or the gumption, you know, to go out and get them. Right. So basically I, you might just have to Charles Bronson, that shit, which is never a good idea.

Don't do it because you'll probably get shot. So write it off and buy it with an Amex. That's all I'm saying. Buy your bike with an Amex. So you can at least get, you know, reimbursed if it gets stolen. Which is exactly what I did about 15 years ago in Venice.

And this one I just saw on Business Insider. It's a guide on how to play Netflix games for free. And I didn't know that Netflix has over two dozen games now. The last one I played was the Stranger Things 1984 game when they first started releasing games. And that was infuriating because it didn't have any kind of cloud save feature.

So you couldn't play it between devices, you know, you put it on a device, you had to play it on that device if you wanted to keep going. When I figured that out, I immediately deleted it because it wasn't that fun. So, but it's a good guide. The link will be in the show notes for that one. Security?

Ha! So Dave's out this week. Brian, what do we got? What do we got that we can, because we don't have any Star Wars. So I guess that's why he took the week off, because we didn't have any Star Wars news. Got a picture of Dave sitting at a lake. That's what we got.

We actually do have some stories. Hackers reportedly deepfaked a Binance exec to carry out listing scams. You know, there you go. Binance's chief communications officer say hackers use a deepfake of his image in Zoom calls to scam cryptocurrency executives. He claims the hackers successfully duped crypto project representatives into thinking he would help their tokens get listed on Binance's exchange.

Scammers scamming scammers. Oh, yeah, really. Sorry to feel bad for anybody involved in this one. We had a link. I don't think we talked about it in the show, though. I think we pulled it last week. It's about how to defend yourself against these deepfakes on Zoom.

Because I don't really, I don't think a Zoom deepfake really, I don't think they're the same thing. No. Because deepfakes are really like computationally intensive. They take a lot of time, take a lot of effort. This is just a piece of software that kind of remaps your face, kind of like a snap filter, right?

Yeah. Here's the trick. If you think somebody is being, you know, if you're getting faked, not deepfaked, just faked on a Zoom call by one of these things, ask them to turn sideways. That's the trick, because the software is only really good at looking at people head on.

So as soon as you turn sideways, you know, the emperor has no clothes. So there's a trick. Just say, hey, what's over to the right? It looks like there's somebody behind you. You know, hey, there's somebody behind you. See if they turn. And then you can look for the, you know, look for the artifacts or whatnot. So we've talked many, nine years now, over nine years about my Chinese surveillance cameras and how they are, you know, always asked to the wind.

I don't have them anymore. They're all gone. But there are thousands, tens of thousands of cameras out there right now that are open to a known bug. And of course, hackers are going to sell the list of those, those cameras to people.

And the biggest problem is, you know, half of these cameras cannot be updated. Yep. You know, some of them can be patched. Some of them can't. Most of them will never be patched because it's set it and forget it. Yeah. Just be careful with these Chinese cameras. The link will be in the show notes, but it's, we know this is going on all the time.

The fact that it's still going on is what's surprising. Right. But as we always say, the SNI-O-T is for security. That's right. And now we've got the big Twitter story. In a whistleblower complaint, Twitter's former security chief has raised questions not just about the company's security practices, but the potential for foreign governments and entities to influence the company.

According to Pieter Mudge, which is what he's kind of going by these days, Zatko, Twitter's dealings with other countries could be putting the United States national security at risk. As reported by CNN, the complaint details specific concerns related to Russia, China, and India. A few months before CTO Parag Agrawal was promoted to CEO, Agrawal suggested to Mudge that Twitter should consider ceding to the Russian Federation's censorship and surveillance demands as a way to grow users in Russia.

Hmm. Many other tech companies have done. I would point out. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Interesting. It doesn't specify what steps he proposed. As CNN pointed out, Russia tried to force large tech companies, including Twitter, to open local offices in the country before its invasion of Ukraine. Now, here's the problem.

The suggestion was never pursued or implemented. Okay. So they were throwing shit around and brainstorming. They were just talking, shooting the shit. But it knows that the bigger suggestion is cause for concern. No, it's not. No, it's not. It's not cause for concern that they suggested it, that they thought about it for a second, that they weighed the pros and cons, and then decided, nope, that's a bad move.

That's actually a good thing. Companies should be discussing that. Zatko also raises questions about Twitter's financial relationship with unnamed Chinese entities. The complaint states that Twitter is dependent upon revenue coming from Chinese entities, even though Twitter's service is blocked in China. You know who owns most real estate in the US?

China. China. I'll let you go now, because that's it. I think this guy's a fucking asshole. Yeah. I see. He's a talented asshole is the problem. Well, there's lots of those around. Yeah. And, you know, my first reaction is, well, you worked there.

Why didn't you fix it? Yes. Why did you, you know? Wait, what was his title again? Oh, security chief. Yeah. Why didn't you fix it? Now, I've read a lot of analysis about this. And, you know, security professionals are like, anytime somebody comes in, there's going to be, you know, years worth of crap that they're going to have to wade through to start to get, you know, to move the ball.

And it's easier to just, you know, bitch about it. Now, we remember the Facebook whistleblower. She was great. You know what she showed up with? Proof. Yes. She showed up with proof. Proof that there were ways to fix it that were proposed and ignored.

Yes. This guy just has some water cooler conversations and, from what I can tell, kind of unfounded accusations. Granted, everything, I believe everything he says, obviously, because we know these companies. Yes, we do. Yeah. I mean, they basically leak like a big block of Swiss cheese.

And, yeah, we know that, you know. Okay. What's your point? Twitter lies to us about the fact that they're trying to fix things. Everybody does that. Everybody does that. Does that excuse them? No. Does it, you know, do we have to, you know, rally Congress to listen to this guy for a couple hours on TV?

No, we don't. Because, you know, proof is in the pudding, dude. Show me the documents. Unless they're stuck in Mar-a-Lago somewhere still. They're mine. They're my documents. Mine. That's the sound of a thousand people unsubscribing. Closing shout outs.

Over at Patreon, we've got Nicholas, Melissa, Thomas, and Michael. Thank you so much. And welcome to the new Patreon family. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got Tom, John Andre, Ansel, Joseph, Mark, Humphrey, Pedro, and Jack, who writes in, I'm finally jumping in after freeloading for a few months now.

While you are both younger than I am, hey, tell me about your Top Gun experience. I can relate to your opinions. I originally found you through Dave Bittner's other work. You mean every other podcast? Every other podcast that exists, yeah. But your podcast is far more cathartic for me. My only complaint is that your incessant whining about Discovery compelled me to watch it, and now I can't look away.

Next, I'll be minting my own NFTs. Other than that, keep up the clever work. Thank you, Jack. Thank you very much. And over at our tip jar, we've got Joshua, Ross, and Daryl. Thank you all so much. Thank you. And we have a new five-star review from AJ. They keep the podcast real.

I held off writing this review for over a year as I had not fully made up my mind. However, time and time again, I find myself listening to the show first before my other shows. What I like is this is not a polished and refined podcast. Jason's head just exploded when you said it's not a polished podcast. But instead, a low-key conversation between friends about tech and sometimes politics.

While I do not always agree with their opinions, views, or taste, I find that they keep the podcast light, whimsical, and informative. They are definitely worth a listen. Well, thank you. That is a well-measured and thought-out review. Yes, it is. Cancel, cancel, cancel, cancel. Mar-a-Lago. China.

And happy fifth birthday to Lila Bell. Yes, indeed. Yeah, she's an adorable kid. I don't know. Have you met Lila Bell? Many times. I was at her first birthday party. We went to the zoo together before I left Los Angeles. Yes, I know her well. That is a very quirky kid. Very quirky kid.

So happy birthday. And I have a little follow-up here from Jodi last week. She wrote me and said, I couldn't tell if you were being patronizing or condescending on this week's show. Oh, well, thanks for letting me know that I'm among 2% of people who are fat but have good numbers for everything else.

That's because I work out seven days a week and I'm still fat. What that tells me is Jodi didn't get the point that we were making at all. So it's not about you, Jodi. We're talking about statistics and in general. Generalizations. Yes, there are outliers for everything.

I also work out seven days a week and I still have 20 pounds to lose. I get it. That's not what we were saying. Nope. I was talking about the systematic okaying of fat people across the country and the world. People saying that it's okay to be that way. And, you know, hey, if you got good numbers and you work out, good for you.

You are an outlier. 2% of people. Yep. There you go. I'm talking about the 98% of people who can fix it because they can. And also remember that the food industry has a very big lobby and they tend to lie a lot. So take that with a grain of salt, please.

Actually, try to avoid the salt. That's the big deal. That is the big deal. 999 milligrams a day. You will lose weight. Trust me. I did it. It's not that hard. But I also wanted to point out the fact that I'm doing all this and I'm saying all this because I had a stroke and I have a traumatic brain injury.

And I don't think right all the time and I don't want anybody else to go through this shit, period. It is fucking terrible. And I had a baby one. I didn't even have a really bad one. Well, they're all bad. I take that back. They are all bad and they are all terrible. And it brings me to – I'm going to recommend this show again, The Neuro Nerds, A Brain Injury Recovery and Pop Culture Show.

This show has been helping me immensely because they're just – they're really knowledgeable. Joe is great. The rest of the people are great. The guests are great and they take a very measured approach. So if you've had a stroke and 10% of the Americans – or 10% of the world basically will become victims to a stroke.

So pay attention. Check them out. And there was one episode that they had mentioned an old Will Wheaton blog post that I vividly remember. It's called Depression Lies. And for the past month, I've been kind of having a really rough bout. And that really knocked me back and reminded me that, oh, this isn't real.

Get back to post-stroke life because there's a lot that happens in your brain. And sometimes, Jody, I have to say, I am gruff and I don't give a fuck about what people think because clock's ticking for me. I could have another stroke at any second and fall over dead. So I'm not mincing my words.

I'm not giving a fuck about, you know, just little shit. And I care about the big shit. This is big shit. So, you know, everybody else that wrote me, I have brought around to my way of thinking because it is the right way of thinking because, damn it, you can fix these things. They are fixable.

My doctor told me a year in advance how to fix it. I ignored it. And that's what happens. So pay attention to your doctors. Pay attention to your body. And honestly, if you want to lose weight, stop working out. Abs are made in the kitchen. Well-known fact.

Anyway, until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo, stepping off his soapbox. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Okay. Thanks for listening to Grumpy All Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on. And we'll love you forever. You can also help us out by sharing the show with your friends and enemies.

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