568: Muskadamus

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, we get a lot of questions about our endorsements of private internet access where you can get to by going to gog.show slash VPN. And we've said for ages that they are, you know, the best no-log VPN because they were tested by the FBI in court.

Yes. And that was a long time ago. It was. Yeah. So apparently they've been getting this question a lot too because they went out and hired Deloitte to actually do an audit of their no-log policy and they get a clean bill of health. And let me tell you, that ain't cheap. No, that ain't cheap at all.

No, Deloitte, they're the big dogs. They are the big dogs. Yes, they are. All right. So you can rest assured that your privacy is intact now. So gog.show slash VPN, if you want a true tested by the FBI and Deloitte VPN, go get it. Private internet access.

I just wanted to bring that up because it was big news, I thought. It is big news. And we got tagged on a couple of Twitter posts about it. We got some emails about it saying, and we're like, yeah, we know. We know. That's why we recommend them. What I can't recommend, though, man, these author newsletters on Substack.

I signed up for Chuck Palahniuk's newsletter. Yeah, yeah. How's that? How'd that go? I was a little... You don't want to see him making the sausage. That's the thing. That's the thing. And there's a lot of dead pigs on the side of the road for that sausage, I tell you.

Yeah. There's, like, multiple posts a day. I'm like, you know what? I think I just might wait for the novel. Or better yet, the movie adaptation of the novel. So, yeah, I should have tested that one out without paying for the year, I guess. I just, I just, I don't, I didn't see the appeal.

Like, I want the finished product. Like, I've spent enough time in the music industry hearing demos. Right. I like the final version. See, that's the funny thing. When I was in the movie business, I loved watching dailies. Right. I liked watching the sausage get made, you know? We'd get, we'd get literally VHS tapes from the set.

I think that my favorite was The Saint. Because when we were watching The Saint, the dailies were such terrible quality that you had to make up most of it in your mind. And then when I saw the final, like, pristine version, I'm like, this just looks fake. It's so weird. Right.

Oh, yeah. But, yeah, definitely do the free trial before you dive in on any of these author newsletters. Because it does take a little of the shine off, I got to say. I got a bit more follow-up. This file's solidly in the category of shit we've been saying all along, but now some big dogs are agreeing with us.

So maybe you should have listened in the first place. The FBI says investors should take precautions before putting money into decentralized finance platforms. Okay, derp. Okay, derp. Yeah. So, you know, nothing we haven't been saying all along, but they're basically, the FBI has come out and said there's been a significant uptick in attacks targeting decentralized finance platforms between January and March of this year.

Hacker stole $1.3 billion worth of cryptocurrencies with almost 97% of that money coming from DeFi platforms. So, yeah. Don't. Okay. And I put this one in here because I'm just, I knew you would get a kick out of this. The SEC is definitely escalating their crypto crackdown.

Good. They're going after people left, right, and center now, which is great. This is great. It is. Yeah. And, you know, on this article, I'm like, yeah, the SEC is cracking down and crypto prices are in the shitter. But when you scroll to the bottom of the freaking article, you get to see all the deals and debuts of all these people raising.

This was a company raised $100 million. Yeah, this one, doo, doo, doo, doo, raising $500 million, $500 million. Proof, an NFT collective raised $50 million on a Series A. Proof is Kevin Rose's new company.

Yeah. It's down here in, I think he's in Marina del Rey because I saw my friend Scott Beal was in town. And I'm like, hey, you coming to the Valley? He's like, no, I'm on the West side. I'm like, okay, have fun. And then he posts a picture of the big Proof party saying, hey, we got the monies. Woo. I'm like, I could have gone down that.

It's so close. I was so close to going down that hole with Kevin and I am so glad that I can still sleep at night. It's great. I mean, you know, people are still pouring money into it. They're still trying to make it happen. Somebody, everybody's just like, but this one will be real. And then it isn't.

We got him this time. Yes. Yes. We figured out NFTs this time. Everybody's going to, oh, no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and just another quick bit of follow up. I really, this is only in here for this one line. It's a, it's an article over at Slate.

Movie pass will work this time. Asterisk is the title. And then the first line is asterisk. If by work, you mean won't instantaneously blow torch tens of millions of dollars of wealthy people's money. Which is funny because I thought you wrote that line.

That's funny. That's from the actual article. No, that's the only reason I even brought up movie pass again, because otherwise we're just going to patiently wait for it to fail now. And then we'll talk about it again. I have no patience. It will fail fast. We don't have to wait that long. Yes. And I have a little heaven room follow up.

I mentioned it on the show a while back when our friend from Wheaton sent me the magnets on a stick and he had not seen the heaven room. And I don't think a lot of people have seen the heaven room because it is at the Billy Graham Center Museum. Not a place I frequent. Exactly. Exactly.

Not a lot of people are, not a lot of people from our audience are going to be hanging around the Billy Graham Center Museum in Wheaton, Illinois. Well, Bob, Bob Fogarty found video of the heaven room so everybody can play along at home. There will be two links in the in the show notes.

The first one is touring the Billy Graham Center. It is it is queued up so you can just click it and, you know, just kind of get into the heaven room pretty quick. The second one is from, I think, a different Billy Graham. So this is from the Billy Graham Library. He just tacked this one along because they have another museum at the big location.

And there's a talking cow, an animatronic talking cow that tells you about Billy Graham's right. Yeah, right. Telling you about Billy's early life. Yeah, it's just it's it's just so fucking weird to say it's so weird.

Oh, religion. Good. But check them out. They're pretty fun. And this last bit of follow up I have is I got money from a class action lawsuit, Brian. I'm waiting for my money to come in from that one. It has not yet. Oh, I got fourteen dollars and forty five cents from the Maldonado at all versus Apple Inc at all.

I got a virtual MasterCard. It's on the way. They have to. Apparently, it takes a couple of days to make a virtual MasterCard. Yes. So, you know. Yep. So you're in on this lawsuit as well. Oh, you know, again, my policy and long term listeners know this.

And if you've just recently started listening to the show, it is our moral duty and imperative to claim all class action lawsuits because there's the only if we don't take the money, guess who gets it back? They get it back. The lawyers and lawyers get it. So it is our duty to sign up for all class action payments that we are entitled to.

And some we aren't. No matter how large or small. Yeah. I want my two dollars in the news.

Well, here's a way that proof might still be thinking they've got the proof in the pudding here. Facebook is now supporting NFTs. Yay. They have, again, another good bit of journalism here. Meta has followed through on its threat promise to bring NFTs support to Facebook. You can now post digital collectibles that you have in your digital wallets across Facebook and Instagram.

After they connect digital wallets to one app, they'll be able to access NFTs from both of them. Yay. Great. Way to pee in the pool. Well, they should have talked to their buddies over at OpenSea because this news came out and this is another bit of dodgy headline writing.

World's top NFT marketplace has allegedly lost 99% of its trading volume since May. Well, allegedly is the piece that you have to put out there because after somebody does the math, it's only down 62%. But 62% is still a pretty good drop.

That's quite a bit. That's a pretty good drop. Yep. If the headline would have just been world's top NFT marketplaces has lost 62% of its trading volume, that would be a good headline. Yeah. Also, probably not the world's top NFT marketplace anymore after losing 62% of its volume.

You never know. The others might be worse. I mean, who really else is out there going after? I mean, who's a competitor to OpenSea? I don't know. I don't care. I don't know either. I really couldn't. We've been talking about NFTs for like three or four years now, and I'm so done. Yeah. Well, it feels like three or four years.

I think it's been six months. Oh, God. We've talked about this Metaverse Standards Forum before, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, they're making moves here, all right? Standard one, no pants. Standard two, still no pants.

So, this guy, Neil Trevette, he's the chair of the Metaverse Standards Forum, and he says, it's time to start standardizing. I think we're seeing much, to everyone's surprise, including our own, is the level of interest in standards for the Metaverse. I think there is a thirst or hunger for them.

Well, let's read between the lines here. This comes from the IEEE Forum, this article. So, we've got Neil Trevette, who is the chair of the Metaverse Standards Forum, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, the Metaverse Standards Forum is being run by this company called Kronos Group, who does basically surveys and stuff like that on different aspects of technology.

I hope they publish everything in Klingon. Yeah, I know. Seriously. Seriously. Well, this Trevette guy, who's basically the only one that's quoted in this article, well, it turns out he's not just the chair of the Metaverse Standards Forum, he's also the president of the Kronos Group. Ah, interesting.

Yeah. And according to him, the Metaverse Standards Forum's first meetings, held via Zoom, yielded a Google spreadsheet. Woo! All right. So, I'm starting to think this guy might just be sitting in his room alone. Well, yeah, I was about to say, not only is he the chair, he is the only member of the Metaverse Standards Forum.

Well, he's saying that there are 1,500 people that have signed up, and I just don't know if that's 1,500 voices in his head or 1,500 pantsless avatars. I would like some definition on this. That would be nice. Well, NVIDIA is jumping in, and they believe they have the answer. They think this thing that Pixar created, called the Universal Scene Description, is basically the HTML of the Metaverse.

Okay. And it's interesting. I mean, it's like, it's basically, you know, like a meta language for describing virtual scenes. Yep. Which, which is cool. And so, yeah, NVIDIA says, no, no, no, guys, guys, stop it. Stop it. You know, dude, Mr. Trivet, we got you.

We have something. We got you. It's right here. Yeah. Get back to me when you have the blinking pants code. They have to, they have to ratify blink first. Once they finish ratifying blink, then they'll get to pants. Pants set to zero. If you were around in the early days of HTML1, you're howling with laughter right now.

Yes. Unfortunately for NVIDIA, though, they're having some issues now because U.S. officials have told them to stop selling some of their AI chips to China. Okay. This is a problem because those chips are made in Taiwan. And we, this whole thing is just a geopolitical shitstorm waiting to happen.

NVIDIA has put out, you know, some warnings saying, okay, we're going to lose about $400 million in sales if this thing goes through. So they figured out, well, that's only 10% of NVIDIA's bottom line. So they can, they can weather this storm. I'm like, if the government came in and shut down 10% of my business, I'd be out of business.

You know? That's a, that means, that means pink slips for employees when you lose 10% of your business. More pink slips. AMD, on the other hand, said that, oh, we're, we're fine. We're, we're going to be okay because the chips that they want us to not sell to China are kind of like, you know, older gen chips.

So it doesn't really matter. Okay. And I'm like thinking, okay, well, that just tells me right now who the category leader of the AI chip market is. Exactly. It's NVIDIA because AMD is not getting dinged. Yeah. Well, speaking of pink slips, remember just a short while ago, and you know, you just brought up the fact that our discussion of NFTs has completely compressed my notion of time.

So I'm not even going to guess how long ago it was, but remember when Snap rolled out their glowing PR press releases because they released Snapchat plus and 4 million, a million people signed up in the first month or so, and everything is going great over here, guys. It's not.

Oh, that's the one where they wanted us to pay to be beta testers, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Well, I mean, that's, that's the world right now. Oh, true. Yeah. Them too. But apparently, no, things are not going so great over there. In fact, they're reportedly preparing to lay off around 20% of its staff.

That's quite a lot. The company, which has more than 6,400 employees, will start letting people, well, they started letting people go yesterday. Yeah, they're gone. They're gone already. Yeah. They will reportedly be cuts among the company's hardware division, which recently halted development on the, the caught the world on fire, Pixie selfie drone.

Remember talking about that. Oh, yes. They're also working on tools to help developers build games and mini apps on Snapchat. That will, that division is going to get hit. Social mapping app, Zenly, which they bought in 2017 and kept running independently, is expected to get hit.

Advertising sales team will be restructured. That's another, that's a, that's a business euphemism for we're firing people. Yeah. Yeah. So their stock price has fallen by 80% since January amid a broader economic slowdown that has affected a lot of tech companies. But yeah, so firing people, bringing in fewer hires.

And again, you look at this, you go, it's four bucks per month for Snapchat plus subscription service. And they got more than a million people signed up in the first month or so. So that makes you think you got $4 million per month coming in. Except they haven't published any statistics about how many people are recurring the subscription.

That's the thing. Yeah. First month, you know, it's, it's the CBS all access issue. It's like, oh, we had, we had our, our most amazing download day ever, which is the first day they had downloads. Yes. You know, uh, there's a great article, uh, over at, I believe this comes from the information called media versus time by Jessica Lesson.

And, uh, it is a, it's a interesting little, uh, take on the fact that, Hey, you know what, maybe snaps time has come and also the time for this mid range, uh, format, you know, just kind of the between a, you know, I, I, I, this is a crude analogy, but the difference between a fart and a dump farts are quick bites, like on Tik TOK, but when you want to take a dump, you go to snap.

I've had some days after nothing, but refried beans, quesadillas. And let me tell you, I could get a feature film fart out of that. Oh man, that was three Quibby's. How many Scaramoochies was it? Oh, but it's, it's, it's an interesting take, you know, that people don't want that middle tier and, you know, you could have said that, well, when Quibi failed, yes, we really kind of figured out that nobody wanted that middle tier of, of time to watch a show.

It's like, either you want something super ridiculously short or you want to, you know, pull up some popcorn. Yeah. Or you're binging all of stranger things season four in two days. Yeah. That's the way it seems to work, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's a good read. Link will be in the show notes.

And also see that Substack is pulling back a little bit. They're, they're taking away some of the upfront payments from their, you know, their paid writers that they recruited. Also taking away some healthcare subsidies, which I didn't know was a thing. Me either. Yeah. So just adding, adding onto the, the pile of pink slips that are still going.

Now, Joseph sent me this one. He says, perhaps Jason can finally get an opinion. And if he looks good or not, well, at least from the neck up. And he sent a link into this, uh, this new bill that's going through California. I'm not going to get too into it because it is complicated. It is annoying. And I believe it is destined to fail.

So. I'm with you on that. I don't necessarily think it's a bad idea, idea, but how do you, it is a bad idea. It is fundamentally where the internet police is what it always comes down to. Where are the internet police? And do we have to do now? People have to code specifically for California versus NGDPR and blah, blah, blah, blah, standards, people.

Standards. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a mess. It's a mess. But these people basically want you to have like every website that, you know, kids can sign up for. They want to do age verification via, you know, biometrics and have people on the other end look at your face or your IDs and all this stuff.

And it's like, that is an unnecessary burden for everyone and will break the internet if people try and do it. And this is one of those ones where it is so ridiculously stupid, it will definitely get shot down. It might get shot down after it gets ratified and passed into law, but eventually this will get shot down.

There's definitely, there's some links in the show notes, but this is the California's age appropriate design code bill. And it's, it's ripped off from a GDPR bill, um, over in Europe. And, uh, the first article that I linked to describes in detail how the language for laws in Europe is much different than the language for laws here and how, even how it's written is completely unenforceable.

So it is a mess. So I'm still going to have to, have to, you know, figure it out on my own, Joseph. Sorry. Yeah. I'll be sitting in the corner with my mirror. If only there was a site like hot or not. I miss hot or not, man. God, I was a solid six and a half on hot or not.

Oh, that's, you know, there you go. That's pretty good metrics. You're not bad. I thought so. Yeah. So, uh, are you still on truth social? Oh God. I deleted that. The instant I got on there and I looked at their science section and I'm just like dinosaurs and people living together.

Oh, I'm out of here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, uh, the, if you're on a, if you've got an Android device, you're probably not on it either because a true socials inadequate moderation is keeping it off the Google play store. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yep. Yep. So, uh, who thought Google had standards? I know if you can't get yourself on the Google play store, you are fucked.

Seriously. I mean, talk about a low bar. Yeah. Okay. No point in getting into the rest of that. That's it really. All right. Good deal. Good deal. So there's, uh, some news going around that Twitter was thinking about doing an only fans competitor for a while.

Uh-huh. But you know what? This is a good point for, this is a good time for me to jump in and mention some ads I've been seeing on my Facebook feed recently, which I found hilarious. Bring it on. I see fans for only, or I see ads for only fans for like, uh, uh, for like fitness, uh, fitness influencers.

Like I use my only fans to promote my fitness routines and my company. And then I also see it for musicians, only fans for musicians. Ooh. Oh boy. People are finding out about my music and I'm, I'm monetizing it on only fans. Are you, are you really?

Are you? Cause I know what people go to only fans for. It ain't fitness. It's fit. It sure shit ain't music. Yeah. Unless it's pound, chicka, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound. Unless you're listening to the skin flute get played. Nope. No music going on over there.

Yeah. Anyways. Well, carry on. Sorry for the tangent. It's okay. It's okay. Because it's not going to happen on Twitter either because they're doing everything wrong over at Twitter, except they did one thing right. They, they put together a red team to kind of play this out to see what it was going to be like if they actually put this thing live.

And their red team came back and said, we can't do this. We cannot do this. One thing that I did not realize that Twitter had was a kiddie porn problem already. I don't, I don't follow those people, I guess. I guess. Yes. I guess I have my, my, my feed is clear.

And so is my conscience. And there's like, no, no, no. If we do this, it is going to exacerbate the problem. And we just do not have the moderation tools to handle it. So maybe them and truth social can get together and build some moderation tools together to kind of fix these problems.

Yeah. But I just thought it was pretty, pretty interesting. And they called it the, it's basically the adult content monetization scheme that they were going for. So that ain't going to happen. Speaking of things that ain't going to happen too. We bag on Elon on this show all the time because his predictions suck.

And again, with, you know, the news headlines are all I really care about in this one. And the, the title of the headline is experts say Elon Musk is wrong about that population thing. He keeps saying, okay, great. So they got, they basically got experts on to, to, you know, knock him down on that.

Cause he said, uh, population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming. Well, it turns out, no, not quite, not quite at all. But the best part is, uh, the quote from somebody on Twitter says, maybe you want to give it a break, Nostradamus, which is perfect.

Cause he can't predict shit. No, I don't, you know, he's, he's just, God, no guardrails at all. Somebody just, he needs, he needs people. He needs a wife. He needs a wife to say, well, you just shut up. He's had multiple.

None of them can do it. Well, he's got, he needs one that he sticks with and that he like respects and like has some power in this relationship that goes like, don't wear those pants. Those are horrible. That's what wives are really good for. Guardrails. You need some. You can only wear those pants if you're going to the metaverse where nobody will see them.

And they blink.

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Shop now at QVC. Media Candy. Media Candy. Media Candy. Media Candy. Media Candy. Media Candy. Media Candy. Media Candy. Anthony writes in. Grumps. I'm 23. I'm 23. Zillennial. Gen Z.

But me and a friend saw the new Top Gun. It was beyond amazing. And I really. Friend and I, Anthony. A friend and I. Okay. Here's the deal. He loved it. He said it was beyond amazing. I actually haven't seen the old one, but have always known about it.

Even not seeing the original Top Gun Maverick was amazing. Keep up the good work. Been watching since 2017. About six years. Donation coming your way on my payday. Cool. So now we have our answer. Okay. We have our answer. That's great. I've never heard of Zillennial, too. That's pretty cool.

I like that. That's a good turn of phrase. I like it. I watched the Pixar story because it was popped up and recommended to me on Disney Plus after I watched Light and Magic, the ILM story. Nowhere near as good. Okay. ILM was six hours of deep dive.

Amazing. Unbelievable. Behind the scenes. Lucas, total visionary. Whatever you want to say about him ruining Star Wars. The dude just comes out awesome from Light and Magic. It's unbelievable what he did and the visions that he had. He was a Nostradamus.

He can keep talking. But the Pixar story itself, ugh, snows, snooze, boring. Well, here's the deal. Here's my question about it. So, you know, Star Wars has John Lucas. Pixar has John Lasseter. I don't know if you followed any of the news about John Lasseter's exit.

Yeah. That didn't go well. No. So, did they gloss over, like, a lot of the history of Pixar? They glossed over anything negative. It was all positive, and John Lasseter is a creative genius, and knowing what we know now about him, it's hard to watch it and go, how?

That guy? Okay. All right. I mean, you got to separate the man from the art, I guess. And the man from the wallet. I don't know. Yeah. Anyways, yeah. So, that was that. Don't bother. I watched the first two episodes of Amazon's new series, A League of Their Own.

Delightful. They made that into a series? They did, and it's delightful, Jason. Okay. I'll tell my dad, because he's going to love it. Good performances. It fits that Miss Maisel time frame, if you've been missing, like, the 1950s and all that sort of stuff.

It was just great. I'm really enjoying it. Good casting, great actors. It's fun. I like it. Okay. How does it compare to the movie? Because the movie is an all-time classic. I mean, you know, it's different because it's a series, and they get way more in-depth and things.

But same feel. They did a really good job with the feel. Like, you know, how do you replace Tom Hanks? They did a pretty good job. Are you crying? Still crying in baseball? Yeah. It's good, man. It's really good. All right. Something that wasn't good, and I haven't watched the MTV Video Music Awards since before Anthony, the Zillennial, was born.

But apparently, they're still going, even though they don't show videos ever. But we got Snoop Dogg and Eminem performing as their board yacht things as an NFT live performance. Outside of the NFT diehards, who've gained a reputation for uncritically praising anything in this realm, people have bashed the performance for coming off as low quality and phoned in.

Not going to lie, I didn't think an NFT performance could be good, one person said. And I was absolutely right. This is fucking terrible. Perfect. And one of my favorite bands of all time, the church has a new single out called The Hypnagogue.

Now, the church have given up on writing pop songs and traditional songs a long time ago, just like Radiohead. The difference between the church and Radiohead is I still enjoy the church's non-bop song shenanigans. And if you're a fan of the church, new single. It's good.

I like it. All right. And bad news for Bauhaus fans in the United States. Peter Murphy has gone into rehab and canceled the tour. They were playing here in Toronto in five days. And yes, they have now announced that he's got to go to rehab. No, no, no.

Did you have tickets? I didn't because I saw them just pre-pandemic in LA. And, you know, there's no new album. Good enough. Yeah, good enough. Yeah, I did. I powered through the boys season three. That doesn't sound good.

It was fantastic. Once you get past the first couple episodes, like the shock and gore in the first couple episodes, you can there's stuff in there you can skip. But once it starts to get into the actual story and the plot for the rest of the season, it was phenomenal. I loved it.

Cool. Yeah, I had a great ending. It was it was great. I really liked the 90 percent of season three. The opening scenes of episode one, you just can't get around. It's just disgusting. There's a scene with an octopus later on that you can fast forward. And then the rest of the season's fine.

It's all good. But those I was really I was pleasantly surprised by how they how they finished the season. So I'm looking forward to season four, which I think is going to be the final season. All right. Speaking of final seasons, though, Animal Kingdom did have their finale this week and they did not stick the landing at all.

So it is the hardest thing to do. I swear to God, if you're out there trying to pitch a show right now, have an ending. Oh, my God. It was they could have been, you know, dressed up as board, a yacht club apes for it was that fucking bad. It's like, you know, it is a phenomenal series up until that last episode.

So watch it. Watch the whole thing. And on the last episode, think about what you would think would be the ultimate ending. Put it in your head and leave it there and just turn off the TV because it's going to be better. If you've never watched Battlestar Galactica, that is solid advice.

Yep. Same could be said about The Sopranos, too. And when it comes down to Game of Thrones, just skip everything after that first big battle in the last season and then you're done. You're good. So, yeah. This last one I thought was interesting. BBC has come out with their own version of Masterclass called BBC Maestro Class.

Oh, warm up the lawyers. Warm up the lawyers. Edgar Wright is doing a filmmaking course, which is how I found it, because they're spamming me with ads incessantly because I'm a Masterclass subscriber. Right. It looks good. It's Edgar Wright. I love his movies, but Edgar needs to lay off them donuts.

I was surprised when I saw him. I'm like, oh, my God. Pandemic was not kind to Mr. Wright. Also, make another movie. Not a class. I want a movie for him. I still have – I haven't seen Last Night in Soho yet. I've been saving that one. Have you checked that one out? That was his last movie, I believe.

No, I was going to watch it on my last flight and totally spaced on it because – Yeah, I keep forgetting about it, too. That's a bad sign. That's a bad sign. I did – I got halfway through the Sparks documentary and fell asleep, so. Yeah, that's a rough one. Ups and doodads.

Well, as everybody knows, we are fans of 1Password here over at Grumpy Old Geeks, and there is a new version of 1Password out, 1Password 8 for iOS, and I installed it. I like it. There is a bit of a pain in the ass switching to do because the old one and the new one are not the same app.

They made you get a whole new app for some reason. I don't know why, but they did. It takes about three minutes to do the switchover. Basically, the trick is to download the new one, use the old one to log into the new one, then delete the old one, then turn back on password management.

But all in all, it's a good upgrade. I like it. It's cleaner. Some things are a little harder to find, but once you get the hang of it, it still does the same thing. It's still 1Password. It gets the job done. Yeah, I've been putting it off just because I thought it'd be a slight pain in the ass, but you seem to have just given me the trick to do it, so I will sit down and do it at some point.

Very slight pain in the ass. There is a link in the show notes as well to get a deal on 1Password because they like us, and we like them, and we love you. So there you go. All right. Here is a story I'm a little torn on, Jason, that I'm interested to get your take on this.

All right, hit me. The Surrey police force in the UK has found itself at the center of a controversy after one of its official Twitter accounts, shared how some officers are using Waze to encourage drivers to slow down. In a series of tweets spotted by The Guardian, the department's Rhodes Policing Unit reveals it uses the crowdsource navigation app to share misleading information.

We definitely don't drop police markers on Waze at random points on our patrol. Nope, never, the unit said, adding a winking emoji for good measure. An easy way to get drivers to slow down on our roads. Thanks, Waze. Okay, well... So, as you can probably guess, this tweet wasn't received warmly, with some people accusing the Surrey police of operating Phantom units and violating the UK's Computer Misuse Act.

But many pointed out that Waze has a policy against repeatedly posting false reports. They're technically not false, though, they say. We were there at that very specific point in time, the traffic unit said in response, using a smirking emoji, nowhere on Waze does it say the patrol has to be stationary.

You know? You know? That's a gray area. I think they found a workaround. I think that they have found a hack. I do believe that they have found a hack. And it sounds like it's a good hack. Look, here's my thought on this, and then you can tell me yours.

The police are thinking, you know, we put up fucking stop signs. We put up maximum speed signs. You fuckers are ignoring that. You're all on Waze. We're going to game the system to get you to actually follow the law. Can't find fault in that.

Nope. Because the thing is, it's not false information. They were actually there. You know, they're just dropping breadcrumbs as they go. As they drive along. Yeah. I kind of got to give them a pat on the back for this one. Fair play. I think so, too.

I think well done. Round of applause. Uh-huh. They played in the rules. They didn't break the rules. And they're getting the job done. You know? Yeah. I personally would have never tweeted about it. But, you know, if you want to be snarky, be snarky. Yeah.

That was kind of a dumb thing to do. But. Yes. But the other part, very smart. Very smart. Hey, anything to get people to slow down, I'm into. I agree. Speaking of things that are bad, this kid, Jason Allen, a.k.a. Syncarnate on Discord. He signed up for MidJourney and created some artwork on MidJourney, which is one of the AI platform, the AI art generation platforms, which we'll talk about in a second.

He got the images that he created from his own prompts. Took them, up-rezzed them in Gigapixel AI, which I also have, which is a very nice program. Works great. And then he entered that art, or he printed it on some canvases, and then he entered it into the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition in the digital arts category.

And he won. It's a digital artwork. And he won. Yes. Okay. And he did say that it was, it was used, it was created using MidJourney when he, when he applied for the actual competition. So he wasn't lying. He wasn't, you know, obfuscating the fact that he didn't create it, which he kind of did if you, if you take it to his logical conclusion.

But people are getting pissed off about it. And I'm just like, this is the same thing as the cops. It, you know, he played in the rules. It's a digital arts contest. Where does it say? Digital category. You use digital tools to make it.

Right. And he created the prompt that made the artwork. So, because I, I, um, I'll talk about MidJourney in a second, but it's, he did have human interaction to create the piece of art that he wanted. Did he actually use his hand to draw the pixels? No.

But he created digital artwork using a tool. How is that different than coding out something that does drawing? Like I coded out in basic, uh, fire breathing dragon. Yep. And in, in sixth grade or seventh grade or something like that. That's art, right? Absolutely. Hey, I won an art competition for a piece of generated art in high school.

And, you know, so I don't see a problem here. So I think people need to just chill a little bit and let this guy have his, have his day. Yeah. We, we talked about something, uh, along these lines a while back and it was the argument somebody was making over whether AI owned the artwork that it generates.

Right. And I think the, the thing was, no, it doesn't because it's not, uh, you know, it's not the monkey holding the camera situation. Yeah. This guy actually did create a prompt. He used his brain to make something new. Um, yeah. And it just sounds like a bunch of people got their panties in a bunch here.

Yeah. Yeah. You know what it is? It's people who didn't think of it first. Yeah, pretty much. That's it. I slaved away in Photoshop. Oh, you mean you slaved away using those computer generated tools that actually speed things up for you and do it for you?

Exactly. Look, in the old days, I used to have to make paths around people to cut them out using channel ops. And, you know, nowadays I just hit select subject. What is, you know, should I be butthurt because I didn't, you don't have to do it manually anymore? No, I'm, I appreciate the tools. And I'm starting to really appreciate these.

I know. I got to say AI art generation tools. Dali came out this week with a new, new feature called outpainting, which is fascinating. And there, uh, you take a piece of art and it will generate things outside the boundaries of what the original art is.

And, uh, I, I recommend going and just watching it. There's a link in the show notes, uh, to check out the outpainting thing. And they'd have a kind of a time-lapse of somebody creating one of these from, you know, I think it's an old Vermeer or something, creating an entire room where it was just a head before.

And it's, it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. I can't wait. I can't wait for the memes coming out on about this. And like with the Edvard Munch's, the scream, it's like Donald Trump is standing there or the Kardashians are playing on television. Yeah. New game of Thrones.

Ah, it's, it's, it's a neat tool, but just watch the, watch the little, little animation. It's pretty good. So I did end up signing up for mid journey for a month to play around with it because I'm seeing stuff come out of there. That's just mind-blowingly, crazily good. And I'm like, wow, I want to play with this.

So I went and I actually, I dropped the 30 bucks for the month to play around because it saves every, it does, it does a lot of stuff. If you just get the, you know, the decent plan and it's all done through, I'm just doing it through the discord channel, making some stuff. And I just did it a little bit last night before I went to bed. But when I was playing with it, uh, my, my nighttime gummies were kicking in and the images that I were making were not conducive to gummy time.

So I put down the mid journey and walked away because I needed, I needed some sleep. I did not need nightmares. Uh, but I do love that their, their code of conduct is don't be a jerk. Then they go on to, don't use our tools to make images that could inflame, upset, or cause drama. Uh, this is the, the, the bummer part that includes gore and adult content.

Uh, well, the gore part, they really should probably talk to Rob Sheridan because he's making gory series of art using mid journey. So, and they're about as gory as gory can get. And the, the, the final code of conduct is be respectful to other people in the team. Okay. Yeah. Well, that's, that's impossible these days.

It is impossible. How are you going to be respectful to everybody? Cause everybody has a problem with everything. Uh, it is kind of fun in the discord channel because you do get to see other people's stuff that comes through. Uh, you can flag things as private, so you can experiment without people seeing it. You know, if you, if you're literally trying to make art that you don't want somebody to gank, uh, it's a good way to do it.

If you're trying to make your NFTs and you don't want people just to steal them right away. Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. But it's so much fun to play with. I mean, it's, it, this one is better than the other ones. As far as I can tell, as far as photo realistic, you know, renderings go. And, uh, yeah, it, I, I don't know.

I, I'm, I'm enjoying these things at this point. They're, they're gumming up the internet with just, you know, terabytes of crazy bullshit images, but what the hell is fun. You only live once. What the hell? Nah. Security.

Ha. So, uh, Dave couldn't join us again this week. That's mostly my fault because we're recording an odd and unusual time. So I can get out of here and have a little family vacation time. Uh, so we'll just roll into this, but, uh, I, I kind of wish Dave was here because, you know, remember when Roe versus Wade was overturned and then there was all those articles about, oh boy, we should probably delete those period tracking apps and, oh, there's going to be so many bad things technologically that come out of this.

And, and, uh, you know, we're going to have to be super careful. And then the people that were all about the Roe versus Wade being overturned were like, surely not. No, no, no fears. Don't worry. We're going to be fine. And then we got the first case of like, uh, a meta turning over, uh, direct messages between a mother and daughter.

And then, you know, that lawsuit started and we kind of went, oh boy, here we go. Well, here's another one. Okay. At least the FTC is stepping in here. The federal trade commission has sued a data broker called Kochava, alleging the company sold geolocation information that could be used to reveal visits to sensitive locations, such as abortion clinics and reproductive health clinic.

That's the nice way that we say it. Yeah. The agency said data shows movements to and from reproductive health clinics, places of worship and addiction recovery centers, as well as homeless and domestic violence shelters. By selling data, tracking people, Kochava is enabling others to identify individuals and exposing them to threats of the stigma, stalking, discrimination, job loss, and even physical violence.

It wants them to stop selling the data and to delete sensitive geolocation information is collected, basically put them out of business in a move to attempt to protect people's privacy. FTC says the data includes timestamped latitude and longitude locations that are matched with unique mobile device identification numbers, which basically came over at that point.

Yep. So, yep. We knew this was happening. It's definitely happening. There are companies that are making lots and lots of money selling this information, and it should 100% be fucking illegal. Yep. So, we'll see. We'll see how it goes.

I mean, fingers crossed, but it's, I mean, Genie's out of the bottle on that one. It's going to be kind of tough. Yep. I mean, these guys are scumbags because it's not even anonymized. You know, it's like, okay, I got the IMEI, you know, of your phone. I can just call them up and say, where the fuck is Brian?

It's like, he's got another abortion. God damn it. Wrap it. I thought this one was kind of funny. Hackers hide malware in James Webb telescope images. It's a little more in-depth and complex than the headline would lead you on to believe.

But they are using the images as kind of a delivery method for some actual bad data that can be run. And if you do look at the image as a regular JPEG in an image viewer, it looks just fine. But if you look at it in a text editor, oh, boy.

Oh, boy. Yeah. And we all open up our images in text editors, so. Well, you know, some of us do. Yeah. And speaking of tracking, Apple may face a DOJ antitrust complaint over AirTags.

Oh, God. Now, this isn't because of how they actually function. They're basically saying the other company that made these, Tile, has alleged that Apple purposefully disadvantaged Tile on iOS devices by walling off its Find My network. They eventually opened that up with some restrictions.

And the Tile was, like, not up for that. They didn't want those restrictions. And, again, it's Apple built Find My. It's for Apple stuff. Right. Make your own app. It was originally called Find My Mac. Yes.

Okay. So, yeah. I get it. I get their butthurt about it. But, you know. Yeah. Apple kind of has a history of taking good ideas and making them their own. Yes. It's a walled garden for security, privacy, and very many other reasons.

It's why an iPhone isn't a God-forsaken hellhole like an Android device. True that. True that. And there's no – I mean, the upside of being on Android right now is there is no truth social, though. So, you know, case – That's true.

Point Google on that one. Well, I think you've got a story about a negative point for Google coming next. Oh, Jiminy Jeepers. We missed this one last week. But holy shitballs on this one. Dad took photos of his naked toddler for the doctor. Google flagged him as a criminal. You know, the problem was he put it out on Twitter in that kiddie porn ring.

Yeah, that was it. Oh, I mean, he's a doctor. Dr. Feelgood is a true doctor. Well, look, first off, not only is he a doctor, have we not noticed that in the past two to three years we have 100% switched over to – I don't know why we still call it this – telemedicine, even though we're not using any telephone technology.

Right. I send pictures of my kid to our doctor all the time because we don't go into the office. Like, what is this? Even though he's asked you to stop incessantly, but you still keep doing it. Yes. Yeah, that's right. It's unwarranted and unasked for photos directly to my doctor's cell phone.

Yeah. But, no, I mean, this is what we're actually supposed to do now. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's what they tell us, the they. Yeah. But these they did not like it. And, like I said, it's a long read, one worth checking out, and kind of makes you just want to throw your phone in the garbage and never use the internet again.

But, I mean, who could have seen this coming? That's our show, Jason. Yeah. Brian, who could have seen this coming? We did. I don't know us. We did. Yes. I think we've laid out this scenario. A million times over the last 10 years. And now it's all happening, as we predicted. So, suck it, Elon.

We're the fucking Nostradamus around here. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Eric. Welcome, Eric. You stand alone. Thank you. The cheese stands alone. And over at PayPal, we've got Robert, Charlie, Simon, Matt, Judge, Nicola, Matthew, Jonathan, Nicolai, and Thomas.

Woo. Thank you all so much. Thank you. And over at the tip jar, we've got Anne, Adam, Ashley, and Mario. Thank you, Mario. No, Luigi. No, Luigi. Luigi's over on Patreon. And we've got a couple five-star reviews this week.

The first is from Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. Yeah. Great. Love the podcast. It's the only one I listen to on release day. It keeps me entertained while driving around fixing customers' broadband issues here in good old Blighty. When Jason reviews on Media Candy, I can't help but think of the comic guy from The Simpsons.

Worst ending ever. Keep it going, gents. Stay grumpy. Well, he should be set for this week's episode then. And Chaplain Stefan writes in, A blessing, not a curse. I'm a long-time listener and also a donor. I am a professional chaplain, but before heading down this path, I was in the tech industry for many years, and I am still a super user that everyone I know seems to think is free IT support.

Yes, we know. We feel for you. Thank you for the lovingly honest way you address your stroke and the amazing resources you provide. I have forwarded some of the links you continue to provide under the show notes. Finally, please use a pseudonym for that person who steals so much of the time on your show.

Maybe Mr. My Way or No Way or Screaming Baby Always Throwing Crap From His Diapers or Earth's Number One Bully. Well, you get the picture. Keep up the grumping. I know this is not what you normally hear, but your show leaves me spiritually full each and every week. Great geeking advice and great connections with each other and us, your listeners.

I'm assuming he meant me. I'm guessing. Wow, one part of that review does not sound like the other. I guess he wants the Grumpy Old Geek show. Must be. Must be. I don't know, man. All right. Well, Chaplain is not a fan of mine, but that's okay. I'm not a fan of Chaplains, so fair enough.

Okay, Earth's Number One Bully. Until next time, I'm Earth's Number One Bully. And I'm Jason DeFillipo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on and we'll love you forever. You can also help us out by sharing the show with your friends and enemies.

It's easy and absolutely free. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 568. From there, you can find links to everything we talked about in this episode, as well as links to our swag and Discord channel if you want to buy some stuff or chat with us and other show fans. You can also head over to GOG.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air.

If you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash review and toss us a snarky review and preferably five stars. Stay Number One Bully!

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