571: Furry Stormtrooper

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. It's cold. Shut up. The one thing I can't get over here is, well, I mean, first off, it's weather. I don't, I didn't grow up with weather. I don't know what weather is. But we literally went from, oh, it was 84 and humid and I was walking home from work in shorts and a t-shirt and I was sweating on Wednesday to waking up Thursday morning and it was 40 degrees.

So fall hit in one day. Yeah. Well, it is the end of summer. So this is, you know, dynamic content. We are old guys starting off a podcast about technology with the weather. That's right. But, you know, there is a, there is a technological bent there.

This, nobody's figured it out yet to fix it because, yeah, it was 60 something the other morning. And tomorrow or Monday, it's going to be 107. So, yeah, yeah. You want to swing? You got what, a 50 point swing? I got over 60. So, and you said you didn't grow up with weather.

Well, it came after you left because it is certainly here now. Yeah. Well, you know, Al Gore may not have invented the internet, but he was pretty right about that climate change thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, he also stole that from old hippies too. So, he's got a, he's got a good record of that.

Lockbox. All right. You've got some Patreon follow up in here. We do. Joaquin wrote in and said, hey guys, just listened to your last episode and heard about the Patreon allegations. Sad story. Still just allegations as far as I'm saying. Yeah. Have you seen any? No news about it again. No, zero news. None whatsoever.

Zero news. So, you mentioned that you're looking at Memberful as an alternative. Just wanted to mention that Memberful belongs to Patreon. So, it's not really solving the problem. Keep up the good work. God damn it. What was that company in the Simpsons that, I actually registered the domain at one point, Hyper Mega Global Media Corp?

Yeah, something like that. Yeah. I didn't know that was from the Simpsons. I didn't know you stole that. I thought you made that up. I think they had something similar and then I just made it even longer. So, I don't know. Anyways, but yeah, it's, I mean, on the plus side, no news about this at all. So, it appears it was just allegations at this point.

You know, we said this last time and it was a slow burning story, but we've been sitting on this for quite some time and it would be explosive if it were true and nothing. Crickets. Yeah. No ganoos is good ganoos. So, Patreon's fine, people. Come on back. Yeah.

Well, they're somewhat fine. I mean, we have – Look, we're not responsible for them running their company poorly, but it still exists. But at least they're not, you know, child porn predators. Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, you dig deep enough into any platform that allows you to post shit, you're going to find something.

Yeah. And is it systemic? It doesn't seem to be, you know, because somebody would have picked up on this by now.

Although, that is exactly what we said when the security team got laid off and we're like, we can't prove it. And then 30 seconds after we hit stop on the recording, like 400, you know, news articles came out. So, we'll see. But they are definitely having issues because they did try and get Mr. Beast on board and that kind of fizzled out. So, that just kind of came out this week. And of course, nobody's commenting on it. So, it's one of those stories that is like, yeah, this kind of happened, but nobody's going to talk about it.

Yeah. I saw you put that link in the show notes and I was like, Mr. Beast, isn't he one of the X-Men? And then I clicked on the link and I was like, oh, the most popular subscription content creator in the world that I've never heard of. See, I've talked about Mr. Beast on the show many times and he's so forgettable that, yeah, you forgot.

Yeah. I thought he was Kelsey Grammer's character in the X-Men. Nope. Nope. Well, he was, but no, that's just the Beast. Now, this is Mr. Beast. He is an elevated beast. He drinks with his pinky out.

Yes, he does. But he does do some pretty amazing videos and gives away a lot of money. But I also hear that he is not the nicest person, as it were, to work for. And there's, you know, of course, you know, to get to the place where he's at, you don't do that by being a nice guy. I'm just saying.

That's true. Nobody gets that successful being nice to everybody. Something I've learned along the way. So, fuck you, everybody. Now give me your money. And the Patreon goes up. Yes, it does. I did go to the set of MASH for the 50th anniversary last weekend.

I saw the photos that you and Blondell posted. Looked very cool. I do wish I was there. I like the little radar photo op thing that they set up. Very clever. That was so cool. That was so cool. Because we thought it was going to be stupid, you know, because the guy, Brian, who set the whole thing up was there and he was telling us about it and he had, you know, radar on a stick.

And he's like, I put it up with a photo op thing. Then we went up. And the nice thing about it is he has a picture of the screenshot that the little cutout was taken from. So he can place it properly. And so you can see what it looks like at the opening credits. And we, of course, all took pictures with radar and it looked great. It looked perfect.

It looked amazing. It was really well done. So congratulations there. I didn't listen to the podcast. Is it worth listening to? It's not out yet. It's not out yet. I drove, you know, for two hours and sat in a dirt lot for four hours to hear the ad-free version.

You can get yours at patreon.com slash GOG. Yeah. And it was fun. It was actually really fun. And it was really surprising because we got to sit there and basically I engineered the show. Brian was my assistant and he was amazing. He was phenomenal. I can't thank him enough for the work he did. Just running around shushing people.

He actually went out and shushed the character Rosie who owned the bar in MASH. She was there. The actual actress was there. And she was just hooting and hollering with friends while we're doing a podcast. She might have been. The way she was acting, she might have been. And he got to shush Rosie. So he's forever going to have that on his resume. But we got the audio back. I cleaned it up.

I sent it back to Ryan. MASH Matters is run by Ryan Patrick and Jeff Maxwell. Jeff was actually on the show and Ryan does the podcast with him. Super cool guys. We had a blast with him. But we got the audio back and I cleaned it up and sent it to him. And I'm like, this sounds better than most studios.

And we were in a field with no power. And I'm like patting myself on the back for that one. So I will put a link in the show notes just so you can hear the work that me and Brian did out in the field because it was stellar. If you need adventure podcasting, come to us because we're pretty damn good at it is what I got to say. And if you need old actress shushing.

Brian is your man. Brian is your man for old actress shushing for sure. In the news. Well, it's an old staple in gossip. Well, I used to say gossip rags or magazines, but they don't exist anymore.

But on gossip websites, celebrities, they're just like us. Except they're not. Especially on TikTok. All right. So it's been announced that TikTok is employing a two-tier moderation system that gives preferential treatment to its most popular users, according to Forbes.

There's an audio recording of a September 2021 meeting where the company detailed an internal feature called creator labels that was reserved for accounts with more than 5 million followers. When it came to moderating those users, many of them influencers and celebrities, TikTok reportedly filtered them through a separate moderation queue that saw the company treat those accounts differently.

So if you've ever wondered why Donald Trump could get away with things that got you permabanned on Twitter, it's shit like this. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Yeah. This is no surprise to anyone, except they got caught talking about it. Yeah, yeah. Who let the, you know, the tape roll in the room?

That was a bad idea. Yeah. This is how business is done. Yeah. I mean, yeah. You got to keep the eyeballs going. And if a celebrity does something that's controversial or a bit, ooh, gasp. I've got the vapors. That's good for your company. But you can't let everybody do that because then you'll get in trouble.

Yeah, they breathe a different air than we do, Brian. That's the way it works because they make the company more money. It's just like I was watching Bill Burr at Red Rocks the other night with my dad. Since he'd never heard of Bill Burr, I'm like, oh, you're in for a treat. And Bill had a really good rant about the WNBA and why, you know, why nobody cares about the WNBA.

And he said, because you don't sell any tickets. Well, if you don't sell any tickets, these companies aren't going to care about you. But when you do sell tickets, they care. Sometimes you could talk to the U.S. women's soccer team about that. Yeah. Because they outsold the men but still didn't get the money.

I was talking about the WNBA. I wasn't talking about the soccer team. We've discussed the soccer team ad nauseum on this show. We've also talked ad nauseum about Uber. And this is an interesting turn of events because I think other states might start to turn the knife on this one.

And Uber has agreed to pay New Jersey $100 million in back taxes because they, quote unquote, misclassified their drivers as contractors instead of employees. Right. Oh, whoopsie. Whoopsies. But they have paid and they have paid the interest on it.

So four years of back taxes with interest. So it's done. But it's $100 million. There's 50 states. That's what I mean. There's 49 to go. 49 to go. Uber is never, ever, ever going to be in the black. Ever.

Well, I did hire an Uber black for my dad to go back to LAX. That's the only black you're going to get out of Uber. I'm sorry. Yeah. What a model. What a model. Yep. This is going to be a fine episode because we're going to talk about some more fines. Okay. Meta has been ordered to pay walkie-talkie app maker Voxer $175 million for patent infringement.

Are there walkie-talkies in the metaverse? I don't know where you're going to put them because you don't have any pockets to put them in your pants. So you're going to have to hold the walkie-talkie the whole time. Yeah. They were kind of doing a deal back and forth back in the day. And then, you know, of course, what Meta does, or Facebook back then, does what Facebook's going to do.

And they just take it and do with it what they want to. If they can't buy it, they'll just recreate it. And there you go. Yep. Yep. So, yeah, they got dinged for it. $174.5 million. Now, the sad thing is this is a Texas federal court, and we know how great they are.

They may have actually been okay, but, you know, they got sued in Texas where nobody ever wants to get sued. No. No. So, okay, so we're at $175 million for them. We're at $100 million for Uber. So we're at $275 right now. Okay. The last one I've got right now for this one is a $35 million fine for Morgan Stanley.

These guys, they're saying that they hired a moving company that was just not very good. Starving students? Could be. Could be. So these guys took these old hard drives that Morgan Stanley had, and then they ended up getting auctioned off, thousands of them.

Okay. And an IT guy went to an auction, bought them, and said, hey, Morgan Stanley, your data's still on here, and it's unencrypted. Oops. Just needed a magnet, folks. Yeah.

So over five years, they did not safeguard their customers' data that was required by federal regulations. Five years. And they only got, ding, $35 million for it, and they didn't even have to, you know, say that they did anything wrong. How is this not part of their just general procedures?

When you take a hard drive offline that has customer data on it, you wipe it first. Well, or you destroy it. Yes. Or that. You destroy it. I've seen the Google videos of, like, the specialty machines that they have for basically shredding their hard drive.

Like, they take it out of the rack when it's dead, and they drop it in the shred-o-matic, and it just goes poof. There goes the datas. That's what you need to do. Look, you and I have discussed on this show our methods involving hammers and nails. Yeah, and drills. We beat the shit out of our hard drives before we toss them.

Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, multiple drillings. I even drilled an iPhone one time to make sure that it was, you know, dead, not thinking that, oh, the iPhone is 99.9% battery. And when it exploded on the end of my drill, I just had to run.

Old men drilling clouds. Yeah. Get out of my cloud. Yeah, another 35 on that one. I'm sure there are more, but this is enough for today.

At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

From beauty and fashion to home, culinary, and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com.

Media candy. Well, we've had a lot of Star Trek recently, and we've also had a... I think this article title kind of applies to you right now, because we've also had a lot of you complaining to me because I forced you to watch Star Trek Discovery Season 3 because I thought they stuck the landing.

This article is called Deep Space Wine. Yes, we do whine. Not the good kind of whine. We're not talking Cabernet here. No, no. This is about people whining about what is real Star Trek. And the argument here is that's highly illogical. Star Trek is infinite diversity and infinite combinations.

We have room for all sorts of Star Trek. And I kind of agree with that. And we're all also welcome to not like it. I don't really like Discovery, particularly now that we have better Star Treks around. I thought it was okay. I thought it was fine for what it was.

I thought they did all right. Certainly better than the first other seasons. Those were all horrible. But yeah, so the article is basically just a shut up. Enjoy your Star Trek. There's different types for different people. It's fine. Although I do find it funny that the one...

The reason that Star Trek Strange New Worlds is so popular, and it is the most popular of the new Star Trek shows that is out there, they talk about the brainstorm that was behind the creation of it. What if we just did Star Trek? That was the pitch. Uh-huh.

Yeah. And that is exactly what they did, and it is why it's the best. So I agree with that 100%. Point proven. Point fucking proven. Right there. So. Oh, God. How is Lower Decks coming along?

I'm really enjoying it. It's funny. I mean, you know, what if we just did Star Trek meets The Simpsons? Perfect. Perfect. It's great. Well, at least they're doing it right. I mean, season one, come on, it sucked. Yeah, season one sucked because they didn't embrace just the insanity aspect of it.

They actually were like apparently trying to make an animated series that was kind of funny. By season two, they just went with, let's just make it fucking funny. And they did. And it worked. It worked. It works beautifully. See, that's my problem with Discovery. It's actually two-pronged.

The writing is not great, but the acting is terrible. Come on, everything is breathless. They do take themselves way too seriously. Way too fucking seriously. One of the key tenets of Star Trek is that bit of humor. It's always been there. Mm-hmm. You got to take the piss out of yourself.

Come on. Mm-hmm. Well, I do have some very good news for fans of Constantine, the original movie that shocked all of us who were fans of the comic when Keanu Reeves was a cast as, you know, American Constantine in Los Angeles, which the original Constantine, or if you watch Sandman Constantine, I still say Constantine, damn it, was British and it took place in London.

We were just like, oh, this is not going to work. And then we watched it and we're like, holy shit, this movie is amazing. And we were like, where's number two? And then it fell apart. But now, finally, because we live in the land of sequels and we all want to see this shit before we die, Constantine 2 has been greenlit and it's coming back with Keanu Reeves.

And I am excited as can be. That's it. Well, I don't want to poop on your Cheerios here, Jason, but Keanu Reeves does not have a good track record of returning to a series or a movie franchise 20 plus years later. Well, we'll see how that goes. We'll see how that goes.

You know, he's still like fresh on John Wick. So I'm hoping, I'm hoping here. Um, and you know, here's the thing. He came back to the Matrix with the Matrix was ruined after the first one, you know, I did not mind the fourth one that much because it was just because I knew it was going to be bad.

So I just took it as it was. It just did not need to exist. I kind of did. I think just to, just to put a cherry on top, you know, I didn't mind it, you know, a couple of cocktails and a, you know, a late night viewing. It's fine. It is. It's entertaining. But something that doesn't, I think, need to be made is, uh, scanners as a series.

Remember scanners, the David Cronenberg movie, uh, head exploding, right? Yes. That's what everybody remembers from it. I never saw the movie because when I was a kid, uh, this movie came out in 1981. So I was 10 years old at that point and I went to a movie with my parents or no, I didn't actually have parents back then.

I had a parent and maybe a step parent or something like that. I went to the movies with somebody and they had the trailer for it. It was the first time I'd seen the big red R come up for a trailer and I'm like, Ooh, what's this? This is new and exciting as a 10 year old Jason. And then I see the guy's head explode and I was scarred for fucking ever.

Thank you. So I never actually went back and watched the movie. Because I was so traumatized. I'm like, I don't need to see that ever again. Gotta love like early eighties trailers where they put the money shot in the trailer. Like, yeah, I need to see the movie now. Go back and watch the old Jaws trailers too. Those were, those are pretty, give the show away.

Um, but they're, they're turning it into a, uh, a series over at HBO, which will probably get canceled by the time it actually makes it to air the way things are getting chopped at HBO right now. That's true. We'll see. Yeah. We'll see. I mean, they are just, they're slashing burns.

Slash and burn. But, uh, Vince Gilligan is back, which is very surprising. He got a deal at Apple TV plus. All right. For his new show. And it's going to star, uh, Rhea Sehorne, who was, you know, the love interest in, uh, Better Call Saul. She's awesome.

She's great. I cannot wait to see her get her own show. It's going to be great. And Vince Gilligan getting out of the breaking battle sphere is going to be great too. Cause I think this guy's got so much talent and I'm tired of that story. I'm really fucking over that story. Yeah. Time to move on. I agree. I was actually chatting with, uh, one of my coworkers who's super into sci-fi and, uh, I mentioned, um, do you remember that book series that we, we both read a long time ago, Howard, howie or something like that wool, where they lived underground and these gigantic thing.

Yeah. Yes. I was talking about that cause he had never read it and we were bouncing back and forth and he Googled it to, to look up, look it up. And did you know that Apple TV plus is making it into a series? No, I did not. As of last year, the rights were purchased by Apple TV plus.

So we might be getting a wool series. Oh, well they bought the rights, but it's not in production. Is it? I don't know. I didn't look that far into it. I just got kind of excited and I was like, anything's better than foundation. Oh my God. Which should be called foundation. This is not foundation. They could foundation it though.

You know, they do have a, um, I have, I have IMDB pro through my roommate. So, uh, I will go, go and check it out for sure. Okay, cool. Um, cause that would be interesting because that was a weird series. I can't remember if it stuck the landing or if I didn't even make it to the landing on it. Yeah. It was weird because they released so many different versions and it was split up into short stories and then big books.

And I, I, I don't really remember. But it started as a blog. Yeah. You know, it was great. It was, I do remember like the first book, a hundred percent worth it. I don't remember much after that. Yeah, I don't either. I don't either. So you know what? I'm not even going to bother to go back because, uh, it'll be on TV maybe. So my butt is going back.

Maybe. Maybe. So now that we finished up a bunch of our house stuff and life has settled down a little bit, uh, my wife and I finally had schedules aligned so we could watch a show together. And I've been waiting to watch Succession season three until we could do so because she's a big fan as well.

Uh, four episodes in. My God, I love this show. Oh, it's the best. It is the best. It is so good. It's infuriating. Oh, wait till the end. But wonderful. Yeah, wait till you get to it. Yeah. Yeah. Really enjoying it. So very happy about that. Uh, and you reminded me of the fact that there was something new on Amazon.

The Grand Tour, a Scandi flick. Yeah. Oh my God. They have killed that franchise. It's done. It's over. It's like, even like the first five minutes in, I'm like, okay, these guys are way too old now.

Just go back to the farm, Jeremy, leave the other guys to do what they're going to do. Um, I made it 40 minutes in or 50 minutes in, I think I got to 50 and I was just done. I'm like, I cannot do this. And then you reminded me that She-Hulk was on and I'm like, I'm going to go watch She-Hulk because that's a good show. Which was phenomenal.

Oh God. Yeah. The Grand Tour, uh, you know, the biggest problems with it from, from even when they were just doing it as a series, which you and I were talking about was it was so obviously scripted now while, you know, the, the, whatever their original kind of can't remember the name of the show that they did.

What was it called? Top Gear. Top Gear was genuinely funny, not as scripted. The Grand Tour is so horribly scripted and it's just gotten increasingly less funny. Like you, the jokes and the things that are going to happen are so telegraphed and so not worth it.

The payoff is never there. This was the most boring thing I've, I, I finished it because I felt like some sort of duty to, but unless they put out another one and it gets a lot of buzz, I'm done. That's it. Yeah. No, I can't even finish this one. It's, it's so bad. I mean.

Don't bother. There's nothing at the end. There's no payoff. There's no nothing. No. Okay. Perfect. Cause there was no payoff at the beginning, you know, uh, a little spoiler alert because it happens in the first, like what, five minutes where James May actually crashes. That was like a little bit of action.

Yeah. But then there were such dicks about it. Like the other two guys were such dicks about it that you can't even like them. Like they used to be likable characters, likable. James May crashes and they fucking abandon him. Yeah. You guys in the hospital.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyways. I mean, I know it's, it's, it's funny when like somebody's car breaks down and they, they move on and the other person has to catch up. This guy went to the hospital, man. It was, it was a bad crash. Yeah. He like busted a rib and like, anyways. Yeah. It's just not enjoyable anymore.

No. Not in any way, shape or form, which is too bad. Too bad. Speaking of something that was enjoyable and isn't in any way, shape or form anymore. Serial, the podcast is back in the news and there was a new episode of season one because the subject of the podcast, Adnan Syed has been released from prison.

Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Based basically on everything that they knew 10 years ago when this podcast first came out, which is, makes you really thrilled about our legal system. So. Yeah. Um, I gotta say serial season three was actually pretty good where they went to, I think it was somewhere in Ohio.

I think it was like the Cleveland justice system and they spent the entire series in the courtroom talking to people and it was fascinating. That was a really good season. Season two was just God awful. Um, and essentially everybody's saying that, you know, we haven't really had a breakout podcast like that had global attention since serial came out.

And I mean, I've just seen that in the news over and over again. And I'm like, does anybody remember how much, you know, ink was spent on Joe Rogan? I know. I was about to say Joe Rogan. Yeah. There have been pretty big shows. I mean, there's tons of shows. It's just like, yeah, not many of them have made Saturday Night Live, but as a parody, but yeah, there's still just massive shows out there that were bigger than serial.

So I don't know what they're talking about, but this is definitely an interesting twist in the case. So I'm, I'm, I didn't know that they put out another episode. I'll have to go. Uh, you do not need to listen to it. It's about 14 minutes long and it basically just covers everything in the articles that are all about it.

Uh, that's about all they really say. Uh, I will say though, one reason you might want to go listen to it is just the, the, you get automatically thrown back in time. Like as soon as you hear the theme song, I was like, oh my God, I'm in a mini with my wife who is not my wife yet.

And we're driving to Palm Springs, binging cereal. I was just like instantly thrown back. It was amazing. Um, yeah, that's funny. That show came out like two years after we started. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. Or maybe a year after we started. I don't know. It was, it was a long time ago, man.

Long time. Uh, I saw this article and I wanted to put it, there's going to be a lot of stuff coming up for the rest of the show that you actually have to go click on and check out. Um, cause there's a lot of visual stuff that I posted in here. And, uh, of course, as I go say that my screen goes to sleep. Um, this is a photographer, Stephen Burnham.

Uh, he went to Kurt Cobain's old house that he used to live in with Courtney Love and walked around it with old photographs and put them in situ and took pictures of him holding the photographs, the famous photographs. And I don't know why it just really, it was like kind of an emotional set of photos for me.

It was really interesting because I knew all the photos that he had. Was this the, was this the Seattle house or the one that they lived in in LA? I think it was, um, oh, Hollywood, Hollywood Heights. Oh, okay. Yeah. And, uh, there was just a, there were so many pictures that I've all seen all the pictures before. And it was interesting to see where they were taken in, you know, in the situation where the house is basically just gutted and abandoned now.

And, um, it was just, I don't know why. It was just, you know, if you're an old like me and, uh, knew all those photos, it, it kind of, it was just like, wow, you know, everything really does end. We're in that age range where Kurt Cobain's death was a big, big, big deal. So. I remember where I was.

I was playing air hockey at just games in, uh, Downers Grove, Illinois with my girlfriend Missy and her friend Holly. And, uh, that was the, the group that we were with. And, uh, we were just playing air hockey and Holly came up and said, Kurt Cobain's dead. And we're just like, what? Yeah. I was driving to, uh, I was actually driving to Tower Records from USC, listening to the radio.

Oh, wow. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully you weren't going to buy a Nirvana album because they were probably all sold out by the time you got there. Um, and I do have one last link in here. It's called music for programming. It is an interesting website that just has playlists that have like ambient music to listen to while you're coding.

And did you check it out? I did. What'd you think? I love this kind of stuff. Yeah. This is right in my wheelhouse. Yeah. It's just like, you know, cause we, you know, we talked about Brian Eno and music for airports and all that kind of ambient stuff that we play while we're doing, getting work done. And I'm just going to, I'm going to like pipe this stuff through the studio during the day.

I wish this was a channel on Spotify. I will just listen to this instead. Yeah. Good stuff. So, uh, if you're into ambient music, uh, you don't have to be a programmer for it by any stretch. No. Um, but it's really good. It's good for reading. It's good for anything really. Ups and doodads.

Rogue Amoeba, one of the creators of some of the best software that we have used for the past, uh, ages has just turned 20. Also, I will give them the, uh, second place award for best name for a tech company. The first, of course, being Slender Fungus. Oh, of course.

Of course. Uh, do you, does Rogue Amoeba come from something that you know about? No, no, I've never actually, I've, I've always been curious, but never curious enough to Google it. Cause I kind of like not knowing. Me too. There's something about it. I just, I just like that they're called Rogue Amoeba. It's good. Mm-hmm. Yep.

No, it's, uh, they, they, uh, they've been around forever that we use, uh, audio hijack, been using audio hijack since it came out because that was the best way to steal music forever. Uh, streaming my ass motherfuckers. Um, and loopback. DRM.

Yeah. DRM. Silly rabbit. If it can come through a speaker, we can save it. Amazing. That concept. Doesn't even need to go through a speaker, man. That's true. Did not even have to go through a speaker. How many meetings with studio execs did you have back in the day in the music business?

Because they thought that they could, they could, they could control it. To this day, my finest moment was, uh, the Goo Goo Dolls, fresh off of Dizzy Up the Girl, their biggest, uh, album of all time. They, they wrote an amazing follow-up album called Gutterflower. They were on Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers had just been purchased by AOL.

Okay. AOL's bright idea was, let's take this new album, let's stream it on our homepage for a week before you can buy it. I sat in that meeting with Tom Wally, head of Warner Brothers at the time. And here I am, what, 25, 26 years old?

Something like that. With the head of a major label saying, that is the fucking stupidest idea you've ever had in your entire life. You are going to destroy this band. You're going to destroy this album. They're not going to sell a single fucking copy. And what happened? It was all over Napster.

It was all over Eversharing Network. The album tanked. And it was actually better than Dizzy Up the Girl. Destroyed their career. They would have been superstars. Well, they, they did okay. They're doing fine. Let's not say that. They're definitely doing fine, but it certainly destroyed the sales on that album. Yeah. But nobody can make a copy of it.

Fuck you. Idiots. Idiots. I mean, it was so fun back then because we were just, we had like fucking ginormous balls and we would go to the heads of the studios and we would tell them what we thought. They didn't listen. They didn't listen. And, you know, it was probably our delivery because I, I can't even tell how many times I've said, you know, like said that same exact thing to people in the movie business.

It's just like, you're a fucking idiot. What are you thinking? And I, you know, I had no filters and I would call them fucking idiots and they would be like, and I'd be like, well, it's stupid. You know, I would, I would back it up with actual facts. But I don't think it did our cases any good, like the way that we actually treated people back then.

No, I don't think I'd be doing a podcast right now. No. Had I been nicer. No, no. We would both be in mansions right now. We will. All of the other people. At least we have our integrity, Jason. Do we? No. Okay. Just check it.

I thought I missed the memo. Nah, nah. Oh, God. Okay. Well, I got a doodad here. The DJI Osmo Mobile 6 came out this week, which is a, their latest gimbal for their phones. You know, basically you clip on a phone and does all the good stuff with it.

This new one, base price, 159 bucks. The way that they finally engineered these things, which is great, was you put a little clip, like a magnet clip on your phone and then you can clip it onto the thing whenever you want to, instead of having to ratchet open a thing and stick them on.

So, their big innovation is they figured out a clip? They did that a couple, like two versions ago. Okay. Because I started with a DJI Osmo Mobile 1. Okay. So, we're up to 6 now. I've got a 1, a 3, and by the end of next week, I'll have a 6. The nice thing about the 6 is they finally, some genius said, well, why don't we build in a selfie stick?

Oh, duh. So, they finally did. This thing is now an all-in-one device. I like these things because when I'm doing FaceTime calls or just doing videos that I need to do, it does tracking and follow. So, it does face track and follow, which is really handy for some of the videos I have to make for clients and stuff like that.

So, I get these for actual use. I don't go around, you know, Venice Beach making stupid TikTok videos. I actually use these for work. So, this is a nice upgrade, and it's 159 bucks for a 3-axis gimbal.

It's crazy that you can do this stuff for 159 bucks. I mean, this was like thousands of dollars of tech like 10 years ago. So, I like it. It happens. Yeah, I know. Yeah. That I put in my mobile phone that is also, you know, more powerful than anything that ever existed 10 years ago.

Of course, those prices are going up, though. Yes, they are. Those are not coming down. No, they're definitely going up. But the fact that I can put a supercomputer on a stick is pretty cool, you know. I dig it. And this is interesting. OpenAI has open-sourced Whisper, which is their multilingual speech recognition system.

Yeah, we played around with that. It's not perfect. But it is – they finally open-sourced it, which is cool, so people can start building on it. They say the – you know, of course, it has issues. It might have biases.

It might have a few. It might have a few. But at least now that, you know, other people can work on it and try and make it better. So we'll see. So OpenAI is still doing their thing. I still – you know, the whole thing with GPT-3, I swear that I catch like half of the news articles that I read are written by GPT-3 now.

It's crazy. It's bad. You can find little hints in almost every article. Yeah, there are tells. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, trying to spot the deep fake. It's the same thing. And this one is really cool.

You know how it's really easy to spot a deep fake? Natalie Portman has never done a porn, people. I'm just letting you know. Even during the fappening? Nope. No porn. Okay. Good to know. Good to know. There. Just a little tip. All right. And this next one, this is another one you got to go click on.

This is a lawyer photographer over in Turkey called Alper Yeseltas. This stuff floods my feed because I clicked on one once. Yeah. This is all I get. I get AI about celebrities aging constantly or.

I've never seen it until this. It's amazing. Yeah. It's yeah. This is called As If Nothing Happened. It's a series of portraits that he used, you know, AI. We've lost the battle on AI. We're just going to say AI. We don't even have to make the fingers or make the noise anymore. It's over. We lost. So he used AI art tools to re-render these people as if they were older.

And it's just it's sad. It made me sad to look at these. It does. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like just seeing Jimi Hendrix. Bruce Lee broke me up. I'm like, oh, man. Even Elvis. Kurt Cobain.

They used skinny Elvis. Kurt Cobain. Janis Joplin. They're all it's all just like, wow. You know, it's like alternate universe mind fuckery. Yeah. I think the first time I saw this, I might have had a gummy or two. So it was even more trippy. Right. But yeah, my feed is mostly all the stuff that isn't actually my friends, which is never actually shows up anymore because, you know, fuck you, social media and your algorithms, which have destroyed anything with social media's value.

I get all dog videos, which I blame you for because your stuff has infected my feed. And then I clicked on one of these ones. So it's artificial intelligence of celebrities as they've gotten older or what fictional characters would look like in real life. That is my feed. That's it.

See, mine comes down to what real people would look like as Pixar characters. That's the one that gets filled with my feed. I kept playing around with Mid Journey, too, and I just kind of got bored. Honestly, if you just go to the Discord channel and watch what other people are doing, it's more entertaining.

It really is. And I have friends who are proper artists who spend, you know, days crafting these things, you know, crafting these strings. And they come out there. They're just unbelievably gorgeous. But I'm like, I ain't nobody got time for that. You do it. I'm going to watch.

You know, I played with it for a little bit. I had fun with it. I'm no good at it because I have no patience for it. I'm like, you know what I want. Just fucking give it to me. That doesn't work, apparently. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. As soon as they scrape my feeds and see what I like, and, you know, then you'll get the AI dog videos and all that stuff soon, too.

So I saw this next one. It's called How AI Sees LA. And this is one of those ones that is a terrible example of how it's done. I did not like this one at all. This one comes from the LA Times, who are trying to get on the bandwagon, you know, slow news week, apparently, here in Los Angeles.

Right. And they tried to do a really cool representation, you know, using HTML and, you know, the scrolling effects and all that stuff. It's fucking terrible, dude. This looks like a MySpace page. Doesn't it? Isn't it bad?

This is so bad. I know. I've got an example of... Maybe art sucks, too. Oh, it's crap. I have a good example coming up later in the show in security of how it's done right with the effects that they're going for, just for the presentation effects, not the AI art stuff.

I'm waiting for a picture of Tom to show up. Come on. Yeah, seriously. Oh, okay. Well, I still have my... My BitJourney account is still working, so I think I'm going to have to make some Tom art just for shits and giggles. Why not? But yeah, this How AI Sees LA is just one of the worst examples of what you do when you have an intern with nothing to do for the day and give them a project because it's crap.

It is crap. And this is really interesting because Getty Images has now decided to ban all AI-generated content on their platform. Smart. Yeah, very smart because they're like, we know now that some of the copyright is okay using some of them, but some of it...

It's all ambiguous right now on who has the copyright, even though a lot of them give it up if you pay, but if you don't... It's all a gray space. So they're like, no, we're not even going to deal with it right now. We'll stick with real things. Yeah, which is good.

You know, that's what I want. I want a place where if I'm going to Getty, I want to know somebody took a photograph, you know? Yeah. I do because that's what I go there for. I go there for stock art, celebrity art, and no, that's pretty much it. Stock and celebrity.

Mostly celebrity. And it's funny because other sites have done this ban as well. Newgrounds, Purpleport, and my favorite, Fur Affinity, which we'll talk about later in security because I think we have someone who has a vested interest in that topic.

Brian, I read a new... Sorry. I listened. I have to have my verbs right. Words matter. I got pronouns and verbs I got to work with now.

Jesus. So I listened to the new book by Douglas Rushkoff called Survival of the Richest, Escaped Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires. Right. Turns out that too much money makes almost everybody extremely shitty. Who'd have thunk it?

Who'd have thunk it? Who'd have thunk it? I mean, I feel like he's been... I haven't... Okay. To be fair, I have not read one of his books since 2001. But I feel like he's minding the exact same thing. I read Exit Strategy. Okay.

Back in 2001. This is Kurt Cobain period, you know, a little bit later, obviously. But that's when everybody was reading like No Logo by Naomi Klein and everybody was reading Douglas Copeland and all this sort of stuff. Oh, Douglas Copeland, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Douglas Rushkoff was right in there.

So I have a long history in the past of reading these types of books, but I guess he's moved more towards like reporting and all that sort of thing. So, I mean, I'm glad he's made a career of it. I always liked him as a writer. He does a lot of articles and every time I see an article on the site, I'll read what he had to write.

But I don't know if I need to read a whole book on his thoughts because I kind of feel like I know what he thinks about things. Yeah, it was a short book. It kind of comes out of him getting hired to go to this billionaire's retreat and talk about futurism stuff. And he got so creeped out by it that, you know, like it came down to like they were asking him all these questions about the future.

And then it finally got down to, so what do you think, Alaska or New Zealand? And that's when the whole thing starts. It's like it goes down the rabbit hole from there. And there is nothing to like about any of these people. He comes up with a very simple premise. He's like, because the main question and he talks about all of this stuff on the You Are Not So Smart podcast, which is where I found out about the book.

And the funny thing is, if you just listen to that episode of the podcast with him on it, you don't need to read the book because he basically reads the most important parts of the book on that show. Everything you need to know about the book is in that show, which kind of pissed me off.

But they're like 1980s trailers. Yeah, it is exactly that. He's so good, though, at parroting his own shit that it is verbatim what's in the book. Well, like I said, I mean, he's been mining this vein for 20 plus years. So, yeah, he's really good at it. Yeah.

So so get that episode of the show. You don't have to buy the book. And it's just it's it's really it's gross. It's gross. It just comes back to people should not have this much money, especially people that don't deserve it, who didn't really work for it. These are just finance guys who just know how to move money around.

They have no particular skill that makes them good humans, because it comes down to he's like the main question was, how do I keep my security staff from killing me and taking all my food when the shit hits the fan? They're like in Douglas is like, well, make them your friends pay for their bar mitzvahs, you know, make them family.

No, we don't want to do that. Spread the wealth. Yeah. They're like, no, we don't. And he's like, make the world better now. So it doesn't turn into a shit show later with all the money you have. And they're like, oh, God, no, we wouldn't do that. We like the other we like the other option better. And it's just like, you know what?

I hope your security staff turns on you and eats you in the apocalypse because you're horrible people. Yeah. But anyway, it was still it was it was a decent read, but I didn't need to read the whole thing. So just go listen to that podcast. Are you reading anything now?

Do we have anything coming up? I am working on the Tchaikovsky 800 page opus part two. So that's going to be a while, I think. OK, I'll tune in next year at this time. Yes. Security.

Welcome back to Security with Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast, co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan. Dave is also the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy and surveillance and privacy and the new control loop where they discuss ICS and OT.

Those are all fine shows where you can find out everything you need to know about cybersecurity, because today we're not going to talk about any of it because we've got new Star Wars. Oh, we do. We do. I'm going to I'll let Dave take it away because I have thoughts.

All right. Well, I'm going to I'm going to take it away and disappoint you all because I have not seen any of it yet. Oh, there's a there's a wrench. OK, back to security then. So here. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Well, thanks, guys. I'll talk to you next week. Talk to you next week. My my wife unexpectedly had to do some travel for a little family. I call it a mini emergency. So, you know, no, no, everyone's fine. No one's. But it was just an unexpected, sudden need to travel out of state.

And so we're waiting for her to come back to watch the show. I hear it's great. I've heard nothing but good things about it so far. But unfortunately, that part of our conversation, I'll have to delay until next week. Do we wait or do we say Dave earmuffs?

Well, I don't have any actual I don't have any spoilers. I don't really have spoilers. I can talk about the general feeling I got from episode one because I've. Yeah. OK, OK. We'll do it. We'll do a spoiler free review. Go ahead. Yes. OK, let's do that. All right. Go for it.

I have even the prequels. Which I did not enjoy. I can honestly say I've never been bored by Star Wars until now. Hmm. Interesting. What I've discovered is I like mystical Jedis and bad guys and stuff.

What I don't care about is basically watching the plight of glorified garbage men under the Empire. See, that is exactly what I loved about the show. I'm tired of the mystical shit. I wanted to see what life is like in the rest of the universe.

Don't care. I do. So it's perfect. All right. So I get to I get to be the tiebreaker next week. Yes, you are. Yes. I will say, obviously, knowing knowing the character and where he ends up and all the sorts of things that we know are coming.

It will move beyond what it is now and get to something I will probably enjoy. The acting is fine. The universe creation is beautiful. The sets are stunning. It looks like Star Wars. It feels like Star Wars. I just watched the first two episodes and I was bored.

Oh, okay. I'm like, when's stuff going to happen? Okay. See, I was just along for the ride and I enjoyed it. I love the sets. I love the costumes. I love the acting. I just loved – for me, it was perfect. I really enjoyed it because it wasn't, you know, this, you know, vast space opera.

It was just like, yeah, it's a day in the universe kind of. I enjoyed that actual part of it. Now, hopefully somewhere along the way there will be some kind of, you know, story. At this point – You ask so much.

You know, well, look, we just talked about in, you know, Media Candy, we talked about discovery and the lack of story. But I think at this point, they're setting up the world. They're setting up the people. I do not remember almost anything about Rogue One except that I liked it. So I'm going to have to go back and maybe watch that after I'm done with this.

But so far, I'm enjoying it. It's kind of – it's the same thing with Lord of the Rings. Also no story, but beautiful and perfect for the end of the day with my, you know, stroke-addled brain. So I actually stopped the gummies.

I don't – I actually – I am off the gummies. I just – when we talked about it previously when we saw the celebrities a while back, I had – I was still doing that. But I am – I don't do that anymore because it is past. So, yeah, I'm obviously – I'm going to stick with it. I have hopes for it.

I've just found myself kind of not really – I'm not involved yet. It hasn't grabbed me. But we're not talking grand tour level of boredom, right? No, not grand tour level of boredom because it's still Star Wars. Although there is one thing that I cannot stand, and this is not a spoiler.

Somebody has really got to get fired over at the robot naming department in Star Wars. Because B2 Emo is the name of the fucking robot. Okay. B2 Emo. Yeah. B2 Emo.

Hmm. Which obviously you guys are not into big music subcultures, but I don't want Jared Leto from the emo bands being my fucking robot. I don't want a B2 Emo. Why don't I call it B2 Grunge? Come on. It reminds me of one of the – it reminds me of one of the instrumental tracks on a pre-Let's Dance David Bowie album.

Or Radiohead. Yeah. Yeah. I also did notice – I did notice also in the beginning where they were – in the first scene with the little – where they're at, you know, little typing thing going across the screen. Yeah. There was definitely a Babylon 5 callback in there.

It's like BBL – they're on like BBLY 5. I'm like, come on, guys. Yeah, somebody snuck that in. Try harder. Try harder. That took me out of it for a minute because it was so convoluted with, you know, all the things that they put up, where they're at and like, you know, what's going on that it made no sense.

It made no sense whatsoever and it did not move the story along. But beyond that, I didn't care because it was a piece of text that told me – it was map directions. Okay, great. It's Latin long for the Star Wars universe. I enjoy it. I'm going to keep watching it and, yeah, you're two episodes in.

I'm one in. Dave is zero. So maybe by next week we can all hunker down and get to three or four. There you go. I'll catch up. I will catch up. But have you guys heard of Star Wars Larry? Yes. Okay. So Dave has. Brian hasn't.

Dave, what is your take on Star Wars Larry? I think Star Wars Larry is funny. I think it would be funny if they did one of them that was half as long as the one they did. Like it's funny. It's a funny gag.

I've seen enough. I don't need multiple episodes of it. You don't need five of them? No, I do not. Because that's how many there are. I'd be happy with – I started to tire of the gag halfway through the first one. And there were many – there were some laugh out loud moments in the first one I very much enjoyed.

But it just – they didn't sustain it. I watched about five minutes of the first one and I was like, okay, I get it. That's enough of that. Right. Yeah. I think there needs to be weed involved. That probably helps. That helps with many things.

It does – that actually does help with – it pretty much helps with everything. Because I watched bits and pieces of all of them and just because I was just – I just discovered it so I haven't actually sat down to get into it. And now that I don't have any more gummies, maybe I won't.

But the bits I saw were pretty funny. I mean it was – it reminded me of – it's not so much MST3K but just – what was the – oh, God, was it – What's Up Tiger Lily? I think that's the old Woody – what's-his-nuts – child rape show director.

Woody Allen? Woody Allen. That's who I'm talking about. Now on Patreon. Yeah. Now on Patreon, Woody Allen. And yeah. It just kind of reminded me of that a bit. Just alternative dialogue. It's just an alternative dialogue show. But it was funny I thought.

I also did run across this video about the final trench run. In Star Wars, on the Death Star. Yes. And were you guys aware of this? This – yes, I was. I was not. I was not. I always thought that the final trench run was down the equatorial axis of the Death Star.

It turns out – Right. Totally wrong. It's not. Yeah. And it was just – No, I think that's the popular – Mind blown. Boo. Right. And I think most people – I would say even with me knowing that I know that and having known that for a while, that's still probably how I think about it with the trench run because it just makes sense.

Because there's a big fucking trench in the middle of the Death Star. Right. But it's too big. That's the problem. It's too big for the trench run. And as they point out in the thing you posted here, in the movie, they show you where the trench is and they show you that the exhaust port is at the north pole of the Death Star.

So – but I think I was – when I saw you posted this, I was thinking somewhere recently I have seen someone who should know better talking about the trench run like a Star Wars authority. And I want to say it was the series that – Well, it could have been.

But I think it was the – because it was in – I think it was in the documentary series on ILM. Oh, that was so good, by the way. It was so good. Right. And I think somewhere in there, there were some references to the trench run being along the equator of the Death Star.

And I – because I remember while I was watching it going, that's wrong. That's wrong. And you should know better. You're at fricking ILM. You should know better. But I think it's one of those do you want to be right or do you want to be happy situations where you want to have people walk away from you at a cocktail party?

Argue this about it with them. Well, actually, the Death Star or Trench Run does. It's funny because you are talking to one person that would actively do that. Yes. Yeah. I think I've mentioned this a couple of times in Media Candy but probably never here.

But I just wanted – since you're here, Dave, the hidden jewel of Disney Plus are those documentaries. They are all just absolutely phenomenal. Yeah, I agree. They're really good. Yeah, maybe I'll watch those instead of the Grand Tour.

But there is a new video out because Disney Imagineering has turned 70. So there's a nice little YouTube video that I linked in the show notes. Like I said, there are a lot of links this week that you have to get off your ass and go watch. So that's another one of them. Nice little video. But if you've seen the documentaries, you know everything that's in it already.

But if you haven't, it's a nice little thing. Interesting point here that I've seen a lot of folks making about Disney on Twitter lately, which is that the Imagineering team seems to be more and more leaning on previous IP.

So, for example, we have the Guardians of the Galaxy ride. We have the Tron ride and all of the Marvel stuff that they're making. And I was trying to think, like, is the last wholly original thing that they made, was that Sorin maybe?

Which I love. Like when I ride – I remember the first time I rode Sorin and I came off of it and I thought that is a Disney ride. That is something that Disney can do better than anybody else can do and, wow, that was really great. But it wasn't based off of any other existing IP.

Yeah, I think you might be right. I mean, I think people read a little too much into that. I mean, all of Fantasyland was based on the early animation and existing IP. Right. The idea that they've had so many original rides for a long time is – I guess the roller coaster, Space Mountain, Big Thunder, all of that was entirely original.

Yeah, Haunted Mansion. They've been doing that for a long time. I mean, even the people never had Tron. So, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I still go back to – It sells tickets, man. Yeah, it does. My favorite ride of all time still at any Disney park is Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

That's still my favorite out of everything. You know, last time I was there, I make a beeline for that. Now it's gone, I guess. You know, I have like everything that could have been stolen from Fantasyland back in the day in my house. In my house still. I have the heart scepter from Alice in Wonderland.

I've got a flower from Haunted Mansion. I've got the bow tie from Peter Pan. That was what we did as kids growing up near Disneyland. I've got the heart from Snow White. Now they nail all that. Petty Larceny. Yeah. All that stuff is nailed and glued down now.

But back in the day, you used to be able to just steal it. And like a day or two later, you'd come by and there'd be a new one. So. Wow. All right. They had spares. Yeah. But I thought you worked there. Couldn't you just go to the break room and like get it from the back? They don't have them sitting around like in the lunchroom.

Like you actually have to go on the ride and like hop off the thing and grab it. This is obviously before they had security cameras everywhere as well. So. Yeah. Oh, this was. I remember there was a blog somewhere about all the people that died doing that for a while. Well, you know, teenagers do stupid things.

At least some things never change. All right. This is changing, though. We talked about this a little bit earlier in the show about how Getty is getting rid of their. They're disallowing any AI images. And we talked about Fur Affinity and Fur Affinity has banned AI generated art.

But I needed to put it in here because, Dave, that's all. I just had to put it in here. First of all, there's a Fur Affinity. This I did not know. That was. Yes, exactly. Because at the bottom of this article, there's there's a link to get all of your furry news, all of your free furry news that you ever want.

So you can sign up for the newsletters, the Twitter feeds, all that stuff. So I put it in there because this is a resource. This link is actually a fine resource for furry news. Right. This is all new to me. I was unaware that any of this existed. Thank you for sharing this. Mind blown.

Wow. What an interesting group of people these furries are. I'm glad they do the things they do. Yes. Very interesting. Well, it's a resource for the audience, Dave.

Let's just say that. There you go. Yes. Yes. Not completely unrelated to this. I posted a link in here that the stable diffusion software is now running on M1 Max. So somebody put a basically a front end to stable diffusion on GitHub and you can download it.

I took the liberty of running some prompts through it just to see what kinds of things it would generate here. I'm going to have nightmares for months. Thank you, Dave. So some of the prompts I used. So the first several that you see here, the prompt was Podcast Host Furry.

And that's the first three. So you can see this generated what looked like some really good show art for podcasts. Yeah. It's interesting how it's generated nonsense text, but it knows that show art for podcasts need text.

And there are furries wearing headphones with microphones. I personally think, Dave, you've been doing so many podcasts. I cannot wait to hear the debut of Fodsy Podst. Fodsy Podst. Yeah. So if we continue scrolling down, the next one, the prompt was Computer Hacker Furry.

And you can see there's a lovely, like a black cat who's had a computer doing evil things. Then I did Grumpy Old Geek's Star Wars Furry. There are three of those. And they look pretty good. Yeah, they do. They look like they come out of the Star Wars universe.

It's very, I don't know, Chewbacca-like, I guess. Yeah. And then the next. Here's where it turns. Here's where it turns. That's what you're saying. So, okay. So, actually, skip the next two because I'm.

Skip the next two. We cannot use this as show art, Brian. We cannot. Do not. Do not. Skip the next two because I'm just going to save that for last. I should put it in the order. So, so the, the, there are five of them that are, the prompt was Grumpy Old Geek's Secret Furry.

Okay. Yeah. And if you don't use that third one as your new profile pic, Dave, I'm going to be very disappointed. Yeah. Grumpy Old Geek's Secret Furry. So, so there's that. And then last but not least, the ones that caught everyone's attention and we will, we will have nightmares about.

I put in Grumpy Old Geek's Sexy Furry. Oh, God. It's a fucking nightmare fuel. Yeah. So, if that noise you hear are people slamming to, to look at the, the Grumpy Old Geek's website to see all of these images that we've, we've generated.

I'm going to have to figure out how to do this. Have to make a post. I'm going to have to figure this out. You'll have to follow us on Twitter or come to the Discord. Actually, you know what? We'll post these on the Discord channel. That's where they'll be. There you go. We'll post these on the show section and the Discord channel because the way the website works, it's all based on the RSS feed.

Oh, that's right. I will not put these anywhere near our RSS feed because I can already hear the unsubscribes coming in the future. Or the donations. Or the donations, yes. That's right. That's right. Well, you know, yeah, it's going to happen. One day I'm going to, I'm going to go out to the lobby of our office here.

There's going to be a big box, like a big wooden crate. I'm going to open it up and inside is going to be a big old furry costume. Because some listener will, I don't know, retire. You better put in your preferences now so it doesn't, so you don't get the randomized version of that, that crate showing up.

So I think you're going to get that before you get your full Stormtrooper. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. I think so too. Ooh, you've got to run Stormtrooper furry through that thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Hmm. Oh, my God. Well. Do you want to wrap it up there?

On that note. No, I got one more thing that I got to put in. You do the one. I'm going to cut off. I'm cutting the rest. Yeah, kill the rest of this stuff. I mean, yeah. Yeah, we just got, we got one little bit here. Inside Russia's vast surveillance state. They are watching from the New York Times because this is a fantastic use of HTML scrolling techniques that you did not find in the AI of Los Angeles, one that we just, you know, crapped all over a little bit ago.

But yeah, check this one out. It talks about, you know, the, the treasure trove of documents that came from inside of Russia's surveillance state. Yeah, Mar-a-Lago. Shit. Right. That's where they were picked up. Yes. Right. They're in one of the boxes. But yes, I just, I had to have that in his follow-up because I said I would, so I'm doing it, so don't send me emails.

Inside Russia's vast surveillance state is a beautiful use, again, from the New York Times of how to do HTML and CSS and JavaScript storytelling correctly, unlike the Los Angeles Times. Yes. Yeah, the Times just kills it with this stuff. I mean, they just do a great job consistently.

It's really, and I don't know that I've seen any other big news sources make use of HTML this way in such an effective way, as you say, Jason, for storytelling. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah. I mean, as a guy who used to do this for a living, I am thoroughly impressed with the skill that these guys have.

Yeah, agreed. All right. Well, listen, I'm going to run off and generate some more images here. Yes, please. I'm definitely going to lose the rest of my day, so. Furry stormtrooper. We could just start a new – we could just start a new – I'm going to put this in furry.

By the way, this stable diffusion thing, it takes about 30 seconds or so to generate an image. It is one of the few – It looks like 30 seconds. Well, it's one of the few things I've seen so far that kind of brings this M1 Mac to its knees in terms of just sucking up processing power and making other things get a little stuttery.

It's stuttery and watching the temperature rise. I still don't hear the fans spin up, but there's a lot of – there's a lot of processing power going on here. All right. We're almost there. Which I'm wondering, you're using because I have a loaded studio here, so I might even be able to get some more detail on that furry stormtrooper.

Just what we need. No, I'm just using the MacBook Pro, whatever comes in that. Your studio certainly is more powerful, I would think. Yeah. Tack on the word photorealistic. I think that generally – at least with mid-journey, photorealistic really ups the – well, A, it will bring it more to its knees, but it also will give you some more interesting detailed results.

Although some of these I don't want any more detail on because they're detailed enough. Yeah. Got to love the nipples. All seven of them. Got to love the nipples. Now we have a show title. Oh, God.

Thanks for stopping by, Dave. I missed you guys. I really did. It's good to be back. It's been something. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Daniel, Kenneth, and Matt. Matt says just a little something to help keep the show going.

Jason, keep up the excellent work and congrats on your new studio. Also, let Dave know as a cybersecurity engineer who works on ICS RMF packages, I'm a big fan of his new podcast, Control Loop. Me and the maybe half dozen people that listen to it really appreciate it. Oh. Ouch.

Shade. Brian, Canada is a good place for you. Stay there. Okay. Just a quick note again. Matt's throwing the shade. I know. Matt's brutal. Just a quick note. We have lost quite a few Patreon subscribers probably because of the hullabaloo, but no news is good news.

Nothing's come out. Please stay. Come on back if you want to. But we do have a big list of PayPal people here, so I think a lot of people switched over. Over at PayPal, we've got Ramsey, Tom, Michelle, John, Andre, Andrew, Brian, Thomas, Andrew, Mark, John, Joseph, David, Tom, and Mike, who says, Hey, guys, decided to make the move from Patreon to PayPal and bumped up my monthly to cover for a couple of the lurkers on Discord.

Keep up the great work. Your show is still the one I look forward to most each week. Thank you, Mike. As you were reading those, I was thinking, John, Jacob, Jingleheimer, Schmidt. I always go through, like, the Bible. Yeah. We've got all the disciples. We've got, yeah. Yep. Yep. Now, we just need Biff.

We need a Biff. We need a Biff. First Biff. Come on, Biff. And over at a tip jar, we've got subscriptions from Ross and Karen, and we've got one-timers for Andrew for 50 bucks and Tyler for 25 bucks. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. We really appreciate it. Seriously. All right. And we do have a new five-star review from White Sox fan.

NFTs helped me write this review. Sold all my album cover NFTs just so I could buy a new Deep Purple 1-terabyte iPhone 14 Pro Max so I could write this review in iTunes. As a 48-year-old IT veteran and longtime listener, Jason and Brian dished common sense like a comically burned-out IT guy who has had enough of your malarkey.

Here, just take it away and get it out of my office. And can't forget the jewel of the show, Dave Bittner, security expert and self-confirmed furry who will make you lie awake all night and wonder if your stuff is secure. I see you really think Dave is an AI. How could he possibly have time to record all those other excellent podcasts? Thank you, White Sox.

Dave is an AI. He's a furry AI. We didn't want to spill the beans, but White Sox fan has done it for us. Yes. Thank you, everybody. We really appreciate it. And if you happen to be in Savannah, Georgia this weekend, go see my friend Gigi Edgely.

She's down there at the Savannah Comic-Con doing special guest-y kind of stuff and signing a bunch of stuff. So if you're a Farscape fan or just a Comic-Con fan, go to the Savannah Comic-Con if you're in the neighborhood. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. 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 571.

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 we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to gog.show slash review and toss us a snarky review and preferably five stars.

Stay grumpy.

At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary all in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.

With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com.