573: Firing On Zero Cylinders

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. We're going to have a lot of Elon news tonight, I guess, since things are kind of ambiguous, but... We'll get to that, but you have a personal Elon story. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Brian, you used to live in Santa Monica where you were almost hit by Priuses all the time.

Yeah. And that was a running joke on the show for, what, five years? Oh, at least. At least, yeah. Basically until I moved, yeah. Yeah, until you moved to Canada, and then you, you know, almost get hit by a moose. Yeah. I was walking through the Whole Foods parking lot today, and I couldn't take the sidewalk because they have so many carts on the sidewalk, you can't walk on it, so you have to walk through the parking lot.

And I was hit by a car. I was hit by a fucking Tesla, which autopilot literally might ache an ass because I got hip-checked by a Model 3. Right. And... Guess that LiDAR didn't go off. Guess not. I guess Skinny Jason does not register on the autopilot anymore.

Oh, it's buried deep, deep, deep in the documentation for the autopilot that it only works on people over 200 pounds. Yeah. Yeah. I clocked in at 189 this morning, so I guess... Oh, you're fucked. You're dead meat. Yeah. And, you know, it hurts a little bit.

But like I said, literally, my ache and ass. Yeah. But, you know, most people in this town would have stopped, got their license and all this stuff and made a fucking big deal about it. And I'm just like, he's got a Model 3. That means he doesn't really have any money. So I'm just going to kind of put a stake on it later and walk it off.

And he certainly doesn't have L.A. money. No. No, no, no. No. The Model S's that are parked in the other side of the lot, those are the ones that have the money. This guy. Those are the ones you should be walking around in front of, Jason. Yeah. Seriously. I didn't even look in the window to see if it was a guy or a girl.

I just assume it was a guy. I just slapped the back of the window and I just had some choice words and flipped them off and walked on. Because it's like, what are you going to do, you know? I'm not going to deal with that. But autopilot my ache and ass. This thing had no – it just boomed right into me.

Again, from my limited experience, the one time I drove a Tesla, my friend had bought one. If you were older and you were raised a responsible adult who follows the rules of the road, your eyes are looking in your rearview mirror.

Your eyes are looking out the main windscreen. You're looking at the road. You're not looking down to the right where a radio or an ashtray would be if you're very old, where they put the laptop screen that lets you see everything. So it's really – like I found it very disconcerting.

I was like, I don't feel like driving a Tesla is a safe thing to do because for me to be able to control my car or use the LiDAR systems and the 3D technology and the cameras that see everything, for me to do all of that, I literally have to take my eyes off the road.

That can't be right. No, no, not at all. You know, it comes back now. You saw my big-ass Jeep. There is no technology in that thing. I love it. I do have – I mean I've got a backup camera, which I never use. I look out the window because I've got a big-ass Jeep.

You don't have to do a lot of – you don't have to do a lot of parallel parking up there. No, I don't. Thank God. I got to tell you, the backup cameras are fucking awesome for parallel parking. Yeah. I haven't parallel parked in, God, 10 years. Yeah, since I left the cities.

I had a house with a garage. I go to stores with parking lots. Don't park on the street. Yeah. No. I don't even know if I could parallel park anymore. I'd have to buy one of those new cars that had all the fancy gizmos. Just so I could park it. Right. So, yeah, that's my Tesla story for the day.

You made it your whole life in Santa Monica and Venice without getting hit. And here I am trying to get – and this is the most embarrassing thing. I was going to a Whole Foods to buy a quinoa and chicken salad. You are so L.A.

It is so ridiculous. When you texted me, I told my wife. I was like, Jason just told me the most L.A. story ever. He got hit by a Tesla in a Whole Foods parking lot. Yeah, it really is. I'm just like – I mean, I was just laughing. If they redid L.A.'s story with Steve Martin, this would happen. Oh, that was a great movie, by the way.

It was a great movie and true. I wonder if it has legs. We'll have to find out. It totally does. I watched it. A little follow-up on the Bruce Willis thing. Apparently, that whole story that we talked about last week was bullshit. So much for the Telegraph being a responsible news source.

Yes, the company Deep Cake has come out and said, no, no, no. He still owns his rights. We just did it for commercial and all this stuff. And I'm like, Deep Cake is one of the greatest company names for a virtual avatar company ever. How did we miss that?

There's a cake up here that's well-known. It's like a store brand, right? So you just go get it. It's deep and delicious. So now I totally want a deep and delicious cake, a deep cake. You know, I knew the story was – something felt – it didn't pass the sniff test when we put it in our notes because it was very early.

It was one of the first articles that had come out about it by the time we were recording. It was like just breaking. The name Deep Cake wasn't in that press release. And I remember reading through it really quickly going, it's weird that they're not naming the company that bought the rights. I should have known.

It didn't pass the sniff test. So we were wrong. But what can you do? What can you do? Not true. Not that I care. Well, one thing that we do care about that was not true is all the kiddie porn on Patreon. It doesn't exist. There's no follow-up on that. I in no way, shape, or form am going to categorically state that there's no kiddie porn on Patreon because I'm sure – There's no kiddie porn problem.

There's no problem. There's no kiddie porn. It's not an endemic to the platform problem. Yes. The owners of the platform were not pushing kiddie porn and keeping it up just to make the bones as it were. None of that was true. That went completely away.

In fact, Patreon has not been in the news at all about anything. There's been no follow-up about the security firings. There's been nothing. So, as far as I can tell, you know, they're just – they have normal company problems, not bad ones. Yeah, like not making enough money. Like us.

Yeah, like us. In the news. Oh, what a tangled web Elon Musk weaves, even if he tries to deceive. I don't even know – like we don't even know where anything is anymore.

All I have to state now is like it's such a fucking shit show of stupidity and bullshit. Now, the two stories I have in here, I'm not going to talk about them. They're just – they're actually just fun reads and they don't relate to the mess of news stories that we actually have in here, none of which apparently are valid anymore because who the fuck knows what's happening.

Yeah, we have no idea. The first is over at the Atlantic because as part of the process of the lawsuit that was coming, of course, they got access to Elon's text between him and the glitterati and the technorati of the world and his basically group of sycophants.

I was going to say sycophants, yes. That are blowing smoke up his ass and telling him he's the most genius person ever and I don't even care what your plan is. You need a bill? I'll send you a billion dollars. No problem. Whatever. The title is basically – says it all.

Elon Musk's text, Shatter the Myth of the Tech Genius. It's a fucking bro collab. Yeah. End of story. It's a bunch of rich guys slapping each other's penises around. That's my line, damn it.

I'm channeling you for the show, Jason. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I've had a bad week, so I do appreciate it. Calcanus is coming out the worst, I think, out of everybody on all those texts. Oh, he just looks like the biggest fucking ass licker known to man. Well, you know, that's not too far off from the truth.

Well, there you go. I mean, these were private texts, so it's not like anybody's putting on airs here. Slate has a good breakdown of select particularly fun texts that were explained and brought out, so the link is in the show notes for that if you want to go through and read it.

Funnily enough, you know who comes out the absolute best from all these texts being released? Who? Elon. Really? He does. He comes out as like, I know all you people are blowing smoke up my ass. I'm trying to figure out what to do.

You can tell, from the subtext, you can tell, like, he does not think well of Prague at all, so that's fine. He doesn't like the people. I don't know anybody that does. That's okay. I can't think of anybody that thinks well of him either, so yes, fair enough.

But he comes off as somebody actually, like, pulling the people that he knows, trying to get opinions, and handling people trying to kiss his ass gracefully, but not, like, lording it. He's not like, oh, yes, kiss the ring. He's just like, okay, you're not really giving me any actionable information here.

I will just ignore you. I mean, he is just a dude, so. He doesn't come off – what I'm saying is from my reading of all the texts and everything, he actually comes off better than anyone else involved. You know, honestly, after, like, you know, what we talked about with the billionaires last week, that's not hard.

No, it's a low bar. It's a low bar. Yeah. Yeah, just like calling autopilot on your car, you know. Yeah. Yeah. About the same low bar. It is pretty pathetic, though. I mean, it's billionaires just like us, but dumber. Dude, I know so many rich people, and they're just not smart.

Most of them are just not smart. They got lucky. They got lucky. They got lucky, and they assumed that's because they were amazing people. Yep. Turns out, meh, maybe not. So now we have about 75 stories in here about the travails that the Twitter-Musk deal has gone through over the last couple days.

You know, basically, it came down to, hmm, I don't want to buy you anymore. Okay, well, we're going to have to sue you because we have a deal. How about 20 bucks a share? Nope, 5420. Yeah. You got a lot of bots.

Yeah, you knew about that. No, I didn't. Well, the text now showed that you did. Okay, how about 38 bucks? Nope, 5420. Yeah, that was in the contract. Let's delay that lawsuit. Nope, not going to delay the lawsuit.

How about 45? Nope, 5420. Consult with a lawyer. Okay, fuck it, fine, 5420. Sure, send over the check. Contingent on me getting funding. Go fuck yourself, we'll see you in court.

But now, we're not sure if that's even what's happening anymore. Yeah, the judges put the case on hold to let him try and find the money. Apparently, he needs another couple weeks to look in his couch cushions to find the extra couple billion dollars to buy Twitter. Can I just tell you right now, Elon, go back through your pre-old texts because there's a bunch of people sucking you off to give you a bill.

Yeah, seriously. Come on. You know, it's just, I mean, I love Twitter so much and it's just sad. This whole thing is sad because it's going to get ruined. It's going to get destroyed. And I have an article in here called Musk's Twitter deal has employees asking, should I stay or should I go?

Which they literally played over the PA system in the New York office. I'm like, it has got to be a mess over there because even if he does buy this company, he's going to spend another couple billion dollars trying to hire talent to, like, you know, actually do his vision.

Outside of the fact that he's going to owe a billion or two in years per year just for the loans, just for the right to own this shit show. Oh, God. It's all over. Like, Twitter's done. No, this makes me sad. It's my favorite. It is my favorite social network.

I was there the first day. Come on. It's like, don't take that away from me. What are you going to do? We can go back to some of the other social networks that were there the first day on. Oh, wait. They're just sold T-shirts now. The one that we made the most fun of is still there.

It's still going. Is it, though? No, it's still open for business. You can go post on Ello. Come on, dude. I mean, yeah, granted, there's nobody there, but it's still in existence.

So is anything if you go to the Wayback Machine. That's true. But also what is in existence this week? The Tesla bot. We got to see the Tesla bot. Wow. That is almost as bad of a shit show as Elon trying to buy Twitter.

You should have probably put a lot more money into making a Tesla bot lawyer. Oh, speaking of, She-Hulk, attorney at law, I just got a notice on my phone that there's a new episode, so we got to finish this thing quick. Well, see, this is the problem with recording now on Thursday night is that's must-see TV for us. I know.

I'm like, I just got to notice Lower Dex is out. Yep. Lower Dex and She-Hulk, they're both out right now. Yeah, yeah. But man, this bot is like, I'm like, we are so trained right now from Boston, Dynamics, to have breakdancing robots that can do parkour.

And this thing comes out like a drunk Joe Biden trying to, you know, meander his way across the stage. And no shade on Joe. He just did a great thing today. But still, it looks like him trying to walk. You know, this is not high tech. No, it's not. The Taco Bot's more impressive than this one.

And Elon even says the robot can actually do a lot more than we just showed you. We just didn't want it to fall on its face. Well, that's not a very good robot. That sounds an awful lot like, look at the windows on my Cybertruck that cannot be broken by anything.

Throw a rock at it. Oops. Oh, that was classic. And by the way, where is that Cybertruck? Yeah, it's not coming anytime soon. Shocking. Yeah, shocking. Shocking. Apparently, you can buy one if you get a Twitter Blue subscription. Subscription. Oh, by the way, you know, with the new edit button on Twitter Blue, which I haven't gotten yet, but apparently a friend of the show, Brian Brushwood, has his first hit the first line out of his mouth was, son of a cunt.

I'm like, that's my man. That's my man. I love Brian. So in, oh, look, the consequences of my actions news, Kim Kardashian will have to pay $1.26 million to settle an SEC charge over a crypto post.

So she got fined for $1.26 million for ads she posted on Instagram stories. She got paid $250,000, so a quarter of a mil. So what is that? Four times, five times what she made, in theory, is the fine.

So that's good. That's significant. I mean, it's not a lot of money for Kim Kardashian, let's be honest. She made $1.26 million at least, just stop banging some dude and just releasing a video. Well, her having lunch today and posting and tweeting about it, Instagramming about it. So this is all, you know, obviously about the fact that she did not, she did not, she didn't disclose that first it was an ad and secondly, not only was an ad, she got paid a shit ton

of money, not just ad money, just a shit ton of money to post this stuff. So, and of course, you know, all the, the, the cryptocurrency crashed immediately, like immediately. So everybody that invested just got destroyed. So they're all pumping dumps.

Yeah, it's all pumping dumps, all this stuff. Have we been wrong about any of this? Were we wrong about any of the crypto stuff? Were we wrong about NFTs? Were we wrong about any of this? We weren't wrong, but we were dumb because we didn't make any money off of it, which we should have. No, we are ethical.

Oh, that's right. Ethics. You know what ethics are for? Which is also why we're smarter than the billionaires, but they make the money because they don't have the ethics. They have the billions. Yes, exactly. Billions are ethics. That is apparently the choice these days. That's it. That's it. Yeah. Yeah.

And there's a new study out on nature.com about the economic estimation of Bitcoin mining's climate damages. And they say they're closer to digital crude than digital gold. They have great, great graphs in here. This is a heady read.

It is a very heady read. But they have done the research. And here's a quote from it. Climate damages of BTC averaged 35% of its market value from 2016 to 2021 and 58% between 2020 and 2021.

This places BTC in the category of other energy intensive or heavily polluting commodities such as beef production, natural gas electricity generation, or gasoline from crude oil and substantially more damaging than what we might consider to be more sustainable commodities like chicken and pork production and renewable electricity sources like solar and wind.

So yeah, here's the new beef. Where's the beef? It's being mined, apparently. Here's the thing. The beef is on the blockchain. You and I are both climate change believers. We believe in it.

We think it's real. We understand the science. We get it. You and I also, ethics. Like, I know you play down this stuff a lot because that's fun. It's part of your thing. But you and I are similar in this. Like, we do what we can. But the thing is, everything that we do amounts to a fucking single shake of piss into the ocean.

Yeah. Oh, totally. Like, stop fucking telling me I should eat less hamburgers. Shut down Bitcoin. Go fuck yourselves. There you go. Yeah. And stop telling me I should consider flying coachless when Taylor Swift has a fucking private jet that burns more fuel than any amount of fuel that I'm ever going to burn my entire life globe hopping.

Go fuck yourselves. I'm sick of this. So, you know what I gave up? I think it was 2009 when I went to Hong Kong. I realized that the entirety of Hong Kong is trying to air condition the entire external side of the city. There are air conditioners running in every single window.

Like, I mean, it's like the leaf blowers here in L.A. You know, if we just got rid of the leaf blowers in Los Angeles alone, we could probably drop the carbon production of the entire state by like, you know, 80%. It's ridiculous.

And that's why it's just like, OK, let's let's let's fight the big battles. Let's not fight the little battles. Yeah. Stop telling me to do my part. Yeah. My big ones fucking matter. Yeah. Let's let's let's let's burn the planet for fake fucking money. That's that's what it comes down to.

That's really it. So, yeah. Yeah. That's what we're doing. So. But speaking of that fake money, if you wanted to get any of it out of Coinbase for a little while, about six hours on Sunday, you couldn't. Nope. Nope. An issue with the automated clearinghouse network, which is used for electronic transfers between bank accounts in the country, emerged just before 7 a.m.

Eastern time, the company said on a status page that identified the problem described as a major outage by 8.23 a.m. and resolved it by 12.41 p.m. During the outage, users were still able to buy cryptocurrency because, of course, you could still buy it, but you couldn't get it out if you wanted out, which is kind of a problem.

So when's the class action lawsuit coming? Yeah, exactly. Where's the delta, you know, between when when what was the price? Bitcoin when it started? What was the price of Bitcoin when it ended for this outage? And where's the class action against Coinbase? That's it. For a volatile, speculative thing like Bitcoin, having not being able to get your money out for six hours is a bit of a problem.

It's a big fucking deal is what it is. Yes, it is. And, you know, the vast majority of people are actually on Coinbase. It's huge. So that's a big problem. Yeah, no. I still have a Coinbase account. I got my money out. But I just left it, let it sit every now and then.

I look at it and go, huh, still nothing. Oh, yeah. Well, here, let's let's let's have some fun here. Where is my tab for money? Let's open up my MetaMask account and let's see how bad Ethereum is doing. OK. Ethereum, my two hundred and fifty dollar Ethereum purchase is now down to one hundred dollars.

And this is after this is after they they became, quote unquote, green and it has not come back up. So, yeah, because nobody cares. Nobody gives a shit. OK. Bitcoin is sitting at twenty thousand down from this. Boy, it didn't go to the moon, did it?

It kind of just went to McDonald's. Wagami, we're all going to make it. Oh, this is all. This is all. What a joke. What a joke it all was. Speaking of jokes and trying to not make it a joke, FCC is actually starting to finally take some action with some of these some of these providers for what their robocall mitigation database.

They're basically noticed that nobody's complying. And they're actually going to try to start to do something about it, which is good because I noticed for a while, like, calls went down, but they're huge again. They're way back up. Oh, yeah. Every day. Every day. Every day. It's back to where it was.

And the weird thing, the thing I never understand about it is some half of them, and because I do tend to pick it up and just like whatever, and then I just put my phone down, half of them, there's not even a sales pitch or anything. Like, it's just, you're just calling me to, and then I answer and you hang up.

What's that about? Yeah, I don't know what the hell's going on with that stuff. I have no idea. But I do like AT&T's spam risk notice because that is the best thing. It's like my phone rings. I'm like, who the fuck is calling me? I don't want to talk to anyone. And it says spam risk. And I'm like, yes!

You know, it is the greatest thing in the world to see spam risk come up because I'm just like, I guess that's how they, you know, they train us to take these calls. It's like, okay, you're still going to get them. But where's the button that says, if it's a spam risk, don't fucking tell me.

Just, you know that it's a spam risk. That's enough for me to say, okay, fine. I don't want to talk to them. Yeah. But here's the deal. You want to talk to me? Text me first. End of story. Yep. Yeah. So there's about seven companies that they're targeting that haven't bothered to do all the different things that they've asked them to do.

And they basically said, you've got 14 days to show cause why you couldn't put in stir slash shake and call authentication to prevent spoofing and other anti-spam efforts. And if you don't fuck you, we're you're, you're on the list forever. That's it. You're done. And it'll shut down these companies basically as businesses.

So good. Good.

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Media candy. I don't know why I don't seem to learn sometimes, Jason. I'm a smart guy. I mean, obviously not billionaire smart. Oh, wait, that's ethics again. You're right. Yeah, that's different. Ethics versus intelligence is way different.

Smart, smart guy, national merit scholar, valedictorian, all that sort of stuff, you know, SAT scores. I'm smart. Yet somehow I keep forgetting how much I fucking hate Marvel movies. I blame She-Hulk because She-Hulk is such a pleasant show and I'm enjoying it so much.

So I'm like, this Marvel thing isn't so bad. I like comedy. Thor, Love and Thunder. People say it's funny. I don't know what people you're talking to, but I don't know anybody that said that movie was funny. Thor, Love and Thunder is one of the most awful things I've seen in my entire life.

So awful like a train wreck. I could not stop watching it. Oh, my God. You watched the whole thing? I watched the whole thing. Stem to Stern just to see how fucking awful it could be. Oh, you poor soul.

Oh, you poor soul. And it is spectacularly awful. You poor soul. Everybody involved in this movie should, like, the FCC should ban them from ever making movies again. Whatever. What's the name of that guy who's so annoying? Taika Waititi. He needs to go die in a fire.

I'm sorry. This is the worst. See, I'm totally channeling you. That's your line. Die in a fire. It's horrible. If they let him anywhere near Star Wars, I will. I don't know what I'm going to do. That pirate show that he has on HBO is awful. Oh, so bad.

This is awful. This is an embarrassment. If this is the direction Marvel is going to go, they're going to have some real problems. It's so bad, Jason. No, everybody said it was the worst Marvel movie ever made. And, you know, look, Taika Waititi has two movies that I like.

I like the first Thor movie that he made. I thought that was funny. It was cute. And Hunt for the Wilder People. Those are the two movies that I think that he did the best on. He was part of that We Live in Shadows, too, right? I'd have no idea.

Okay. That's the vampire one. Yeah, I've never watched that either. I started to watch it. I couldn't get into it. I have a bunch of friends who love it, say it's the best thing since Sliced Toast, but I just didn't like it. It wasn't for me. But, yeah, no, Taika Waititi's time has come and gone from everybody I know that has seen this movie.

They said it is the worst Marvel movie ever. But you stuck it to the end, which means you have a data point inside of the Marvel universe that says, you are a person that watched the entirety of the movie. So you're part of the problem. I'm going to have to delete my Netflix account and start a new one up because I don't want that in my algorithm.

Okay. Well, I think that's Disney Plus, so don't delete the wrong account. Can't delete that. That would be bad. Yeah. I did watch Nothing Compares, which is the documentary about Sinead O'Connor. I worked with her at some point in her career.

I always have to say she's absolutely lovely in an our kind of people way. She's cranky. She's opinionated. No, really? I never noticed. You think? Yeah. But an absolutely lovely person and fantastic, and I always really enjoyed any time I spent around her.

See, that's just like us, too. We are grumpy, but we are lovely people. Yeah. And I've been screaming from the rooftops that she was treated completely unfairly, and she was 100% right about the church back when she did her Saturday Night Live thing, and she got crucified for it. She was right.

She was 100% right, and the world owes her an effing apology, and this documentary is fantastic. Oh, it is good. Thank God. Thank God. I've had so much bad news. I was hoping this was going to be good. No, it was very good. I loved it. I loved everything about it, and the thing that really hit me, too, is just – I know we're getting old, Jason.

All the footage from, like, the 90s and all that, man, that was a good time. I miss the 90s so much, and it's not just being old. It was a better time for a lot of things. It was fucking awesome. It was just awesome.

I mean, not so great for Sinead. Yeah, I was going to say, she might have a differing opinion on this, but the rest of it. You guys enjoyed it. But no, I've always thought she was – I didn't get to work with her like you did, but I always thought that she was a baller.

That's the only way that I can describe her. She's fucking baller. Yes, that is an amazing description for her. Yes, absolutely fantastic. And the documentary is well worth the watch. It's great. And a big F you to the Prince Estate for not letting them use Nothing Compares to You for no reason whatsoever.

Yeah, it was great. And there's a really great article on Slate that I've included in the show notes that talks about how we really need to reassess the way we treated her. No shit. I've been saying that for 20 years. How's she doing now? Because we had a couple episodes where she was like – they were doing suicide watch on her and stuff like that.

Is she doing better now? I think so. I mean she was directly involved with this documentary. A lot of the voiceover is her very recently talking about stuff. So she's manic depressive. She's many things. She's not a well person, but she seems to be holding it together.

Yeah. That I can relate to. I did finish season three of Pose. So I watched all of that. And my god, Billy fucking Porter is – he's a national treasure. That guy, it's just wow.

I know next to nothing about him except for what I see him like flounce through on award shows and things like that. And I'm just like that guy is a baller. When he wore that dress, that black dress to the first – I don't know if it was the Oscars or the Emmys, but that was the first time I ever saw him.

I never knew who he was and he wore that. And I'm like, you, my man, are awesome. He is the only thing that interests me about award shows anymore. When I see him appear, I'm like, now this guy is interesting. He is so interesting. He is so interesting. And hopefully he will be here in the studio soon.

But also on season two of Pose is Deshaun Wesley, who is the host of Legendary, which I've talked about. And I'm doing a podcast with him. And we have the trailer out for that. We are booking all of our first guests now. That show will be out in about two, three weeks maybe.

And we are hopefully going to have Billy Porter on the show because he's Billy fucking Porter. That's why. Yeah. You know. That's why. And it is so nice to have like the studio being used now. And Deshaun is – he's also a treasure.

I mean, God, the voice on that guy. Jesus. He's got a presence, let's just say. When he walks in a room – You know it. You know it. You've been around stars before. So you know when like a real one walks in the room. Yep. He's a real one. Say what you will about Coldplay.

That's Chris Martin. Really? Really? 100%. I've never really liked their music, so I didn't really follow them that much. There is a reason they're as famous as they are. And it's Chris Martin. Okay. Yeah. Biggest band in the world when you were working with them. So, yeah. I did start to watch The Real Bling Ring, the Hollywood Heist story.

Yeah. Episode and a half. We just said, no, we're done. These are garbage people. These are people that were thieves. They were flat out thieves, and now they have a show on Netflix. And I want to say to Netflix, go fuck yourself for giving them a show.

Period. I agree 100%. What are you doing? Yeah. These people should not have a show. Make a documentary. That's fine. That's fine. Tell the story about them. That's fine. Give them money. Go fuck yourself. Yeah. And it's them. It's them telling their own story.

Yeah. So they're getting paid. Yeah. No, it is horrible. It is horrible. And like nowadays, with crime the way it is, especially here in Los Angeles, my friend Johnny had his van stolen the other day right out in front of his place. $160,000 worth of gear inside of it because he's a plumber.

So it's basically a mobile hardware store. And nobody called it in. Like they took him seven. They have the video of it. And it took him 17 minutes to break in and actually break it so they could so they could steal it. And right after they stole it, they were involved in a fatal hit and run with his van.

So he's going to get some of it back. He doesn't know if it was it was after or before, you know, if they unloaded it or not. So but the cops apparently said that there's some tools left. So but I mean, here's here's the other funny part talking about, you know, law enforcement nowadays.

He was on the phone with his insurance company and he said that, fuck this. I'm just going to kill myself. I'm done. I spent 30 years building this business. Now my business is gone and you guys aren't going to help me. So at least to the point of the insurance company, this would be Mercury Insurance, they called it in to the LAPD and said, you need to go do a wellness check on this guy.

He's suicidal right now. He just lost his his livelihood and whatever. They showed up eight hours later. What the fuck is the point of that? Just to go pick up the body? And, you know, God, it's just I'm so mad at law enforcement.

You have no idea. And around here, it's like I've got a homeless encampment behind me that is the entire road. It is. Don't even get me started. Anyway, Canada. Pretty nice. Shows like this is what pisses me off, though, because they they take crime and they they sensationalize it.

And these people should still be in fucking jail for what they did. I mean, seriously, still be in jail. Look, if Jeffrey Dahmer were still alive, they'd have a show with him telling a story. Oh, they do. Oh, wait, that's the other show that's on my to do watch. Yeah, but he's not still alive. No, he's not.

They can't hire him. No, but there was a big kerfuffle about the LGBTQ community saying that, hey, this isn't an LGBTQ movie. This is a. Oh, yeah. Apparently it was. So don't take us off that way. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I'm with him.

That's it's not a gay movie. He was a gay guy, but it is not a movie about LGBTQ community. So why would you tag it that way? That's it was ridiculous. So I'm glad that at least they reverse course on that. But yeah, that's that we're probably going to end up watching that soon. So see how that goes.

I'm going to take a big pass on that one. Yeah, I'm kind of on the fence. You know, it's like I lived through that. I was there. I mean, I was in Chicago. He was in Milwaukee. So we were it was close, you know, when all that stuff went down. So, yeah, I don't know. Let's move on to some more fun stuff or sort of Bobby's Triple Threat on the Food Network.

This is the worst Food Network show I've ever seen in my life. It is so boring. It's ridiculous. It's like let's put let's put one chef against three other chefs and let them have a cook off. You know, it's a competition show. What I think is Bobby Flay's audience is very old and subdued.

Yes. So they don't want action. You compare that to the other show that's now out now called Out Chefed, where they bring in people who are you think that they're going to be in an audition for a Food Network show. And then they pair them. It's a competition show against one of the major Food Network stars.

That show is incredible. Each show. Everybody's doing the same shit. They're cooking. That's it. They're cooking against each other. Period. Out Chefed is engaging. It's hilarious. It's funny. Bobby's Triple Threat. We were like 20 minutes and we're like, this is the stupidest thing we've ever seen.

I don't get it. Cheap to produce and lots of hours to fill. Yeah. Yeah. But Out Chefed is awesome. It is totally awesome. I have to say we've been watching a crap ton of Food Network because we're, you know, heading into Halloween. Lucas, my son, loves Halloween.

And they've got Halloween Wars, Halloween Cookie Wars. Oh, how's the cookie show? Have you watched that? Fantastic. Oh, I can't wait. He's losing his mind. He's like, I want to make vampire cookies that spit out blood. Like he's loving it. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. Jet Tila lives down the road. So I'm really excited to see that one.

Yeah. All the Halloween shows are all out now. And yeah, we've just been bitching them. And they're great. Oh, good. Yeah. Check out Out Chefed. It is so cool because it is worth it for the look on the person's face when they get to see who they're going up against. Like the first one was Alex Gornichelli.

And the second one was Antonio Lofaso. And just, you know, because they're walking down the hall with all these pictures and, you know, it's just when they come out, they're like, oh, shit. And they have their family in the back, like screaming.

It's so cool. It is definitely one of the happiest shows that I've seen in a long time. Bobby's Triple Threat? Cancel that right now, please. Cancel it. All right. The Dune revival is a go. Apparently part one of Dennis Villef News.

Dune has done well enough that HBO's going all in has greenlit a show called Sisterhood of Dune, which will star Emily Watson and Shirley Henderson. Do they have traveling pants? They wear dresses. Okay, well, I just, Sisters of the Traveling Pants.

I hear Sisterhood. I always think of that movie. Did you ever watch that movie? Because I have. No, I have not. I just remember the title. I just want to hear Sisterhood. Sisters of the Traveling Pants. It's a good title. So this is based on the novels written by Frank Herbert's son, Brian Herbert.

If you remember, I've reviewed a lot of these books in the past and I vowed that I'm not going to read them anymore because they're just not up to me. But what I will say for them in terms of it being a TV show, he, Brian Herbert's stuff is watered down and reads like it could be a movie or, say, a series.

Brian Herbert's book is one idea stretched over 300 pages. It's basically unfilmable. Which is why the three and a half hour Dune is only part one and probably should really only be part three of a Dune movie because Dune is like 7,000 pages of political thriller mixed with climate change, mixed with everything else known to man and massively big ideas.

While Brian Herbert's book are one idea stretched over 300 pages. So this could actually be and make for a good series. We'll see. I'll check it out.

I'm in. Yeah. I'm in. Why not? Yeah. So this is the early story, the backstory of how the Bene Gesserit were, came about. So it takes place, you know, 10,000 years before Dune. Oh, geez. Okay. Let's split the universe on that one for sure. I just, I can't wait for, you know, the next movie because it was so good.

It was so good. It was great. It was actually really good. I'm not going to lie. I enjoyed it. Yeah. What's not good is a bunch of shows on Spotify. They are canceling 11 of their original podcast and they are laying off around 5% of their podcast staff. So you're saying I shouldn't keep, shouldn't keep continuing reaching out to my contacts at Spotify to get them to pay us?

Well, you know, they've got some budget. They just cleared up. They freed up the budget. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But here's the deal. They gave it all to Kim Kardashian, the one person who doesn't need any more money. So. Yeah. Yeah. Well, she does now. She had to pay $1.26 million in a fine. Yeah. Maybe, maybe that'll, that'll cover it because she's got a new podcast called The System, The Case of Kevin Keith.

And they've also got, you know, the big show, Call Her Daddy. Oh, there's that other show. What's that guy, Joe? Something? Yeah. I think they spent a bunch of money on him too. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is really, this is just funny that they're killing these shows.

You know, it's, it's the Gimlet shows and the Parcast shows. Didn't they just buy Gimlet? I mean, I know time is compressing. Four or five, about four years ago. We were just covering that story. Okay. But also, like I just said, Gimlet unionized. Right. See you later.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Don't forget that. Always keep that in the back of your head when you see these, these things come through. Yes. Just remember, uh, there's a Spotify or Spotify. There's a Starbucks on every corner, but they decided to shut down one. Which one did they shut down? The one that voted to unionize.

Cops and doodads. You were talking a little bit earlier about the, uh, Twitter edit button. And that's finally rolling out. Except not in the U.S. They're rolling out the long-awaited feature in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but only for Twitter Blue subscribers.

Um, obviously, it makes sense. They're going to roll it out, test it on smaller markets before they bring it to the U.S., which is the biggest market. Um, again, it exists. Delete. It does. Retweet. Yeah, I can't get it yet. I'm a Twitter Blue subscriber.

I do not have it. And by the way, I would like to say that Twitter Blue is such a sham that they have all of these things that say, oh, you get all these news articles for free if you're a Twitter Blue subscriber. Half of them that I click on and go to the news site asks me to log in because it's behind a paywall.

Yeah. So it's completely broken. It's totally broken. Yeah, it doesn't work at all. I know. No. I've read, I've read countless articles about how that doesn't work at all. Uh, so if you really want to edit your tweet and then have everybody see the timestamp references of every single edit that you made, so they can still read exactly what you read the first time, by all means, you can pay five bucks a month for that.

Alternatively, you can then, again, just delete the tweet and retype what you meant to type in the first place. Which is what we used to do. Yeah. What most people do. I still do because I don't pay five bucks a month for a useless thing that does nothing. I still pay for it because I, the, the timer is nice.

So when you tweet, you can set a variable timer before it goes out. Um, I know that I could theoretically proofread my tweet before I press send, but I have the attention span of a goldfish. So I forget.

And then when the timer's going, I reread it and I'm like, oh, cancel, cancel, cancel. That's wrong. So, and not like I'm making any money off of my tweets, uh, but it is just still funny. Alternatively, a friend of the show, Mike Walter, back when he used to be very involved on social media and, and posting what he thought were very funny tweets, uh, he would just keep a database and then he would, you know, open it up on his computer, read through it again, make sure he thought it was funny and then send it.

So you could just type your thought, your tweet into say the notes app, reread it a few times. I'm sorry. I'm old school. BB edit, please, please. BB edit. Okay. BB edit if you want. I'm just saying there are a lot of options that don't cost you five bucks a month to make sure that you don't type out something stupid.

No, but I wanted the news. I wanted the news thing. But that doesn't work. And you're still paying. No, it doesn't. It used to. Now it doesn't. And you're still paying. Because everybody quit because of Elon. Oh, yeah. Blame Elon for that one. It's all about Elon. It's all Elon's fault.

I know. So I made a very stupid purchase this week, which you're going to, which I know you're, I know you're going to just love. So I sent you a picture of it. I've been to your house. I've been to your studio. Yeah. You do not have Elon Musk money or an Elon Musk mansion that would require the amount of space needed to be able to actually look at a 75 inch screen.

Yes, because I bought the Amazon Fire TV, 75 inch Omni Series 4K UHD smart TV with Dolby Vision hands free with Alexa. I bought this because it has to be hands free because you can't be in the same house with it because it's so big. Jesus Christ. I got 50 inch TVs in the studio that I bought for 200 bucks each at a resale shop.

The great part about these is they were part of an apartment complex and they never took off all of the streaming logins. So I get every channel on these TVs. It's great. But where we have it in the studio, I needed a bigger TV because it doesn't look right on camera when we're shooting it in the background.

So I thought, well, this is on sale. Go big and go home. Go big. I did not get out a tape measure to actually look at how big a 75 inch TV is. It's massive. The guys that were bringing it in couldn't get it through the door.

They had to keep talking with it. It was like when I saw them coming in, like I looked out my window in the studio and I was telling my friend Joey Rabier who was here. I'm like, holy shit, that thing's bigger than the driver. And yes, it is. It is.

But it's on sale. You save $210 if you buy it now. It's usually $1,049. I got it for $250 off. So it was like around $800. You saved money buying this, Jason. Oh, no, because now I got to figure out how to get it out of here and back to an Amazon distribution center so I can return it because it is too big for anything in any place that I have ever or will ever own.

It's so stupidly big. It's actually too bad because I was very curious about what the quality of their TVs are. So buy a smaller one from Amazon and let's see. Well, there's the 65-inch, which is the one I should have gone for, which would actually fit the space perfectly because I sent you a picture of the studio with the TV in it.

So it just needs to be a little bit bigger, right? A little bit, yeah. Yeah. Just a little too small. Just measure. Measure. Yeah. Measure twice by once is pretty much where I'm at with that. But the box is so gigantic.

We started to look at it. I'm like, uh-uh. No. You could actually sell that box as a home in Los Angeles now. Well, I have a homeless encampment out back. So I could probably drop it off there and, you know. Open the bidding. Yeah. I could. Well, that or I could just, you know, house like 75 different waifs that need a place to stay in my neighborhood.

But, jeez, us. This thing is gigantic. I just, I don't know. But, you know, the other side of me is thinking, man, my Xbox would look awesome on this. But I don't have a place that's big enough to actually put it on.

Yeah. So I don't. I have no place to put this thing. It is that big. So. But something that is small that I got, I got the DJI Avata drone because I sold all three of my other drones. And got enough money to buy this one because this one is all heads up virtual.

You wear goggles and it has a motion controller that you use with it, which is the one thing that I've always wanted. That's the drone that I always wanted. I wanted, like, you know, a cool drone that I could do that stuff with. But the old ones didn't have that, whatever. But this thing is cool. I did not spend any money on it.

I actually sold other shit to get to pay for this one because I know everybody's going, why are you buying all this shit, Jason Dispendy Poo? The problem is now I can't, I got to, I have to, like, figure out how my glasses work. My glasses are too big. I'm going to run an impromptu grumpy old geeks contest right now.

Whoever can guess the exact amount of drones that Jason has bought over the course of this show, to the letter, you have to get the exact number right of the number of different drones Jason has bought. Doesn't matter how long he owned them. Doesn't matter if he even took it out of the box.

If he bought it and it came into his house, that's a drone he bought. Whoever gets it exactly right gets this drone when Jason is sick of it. No. I'm not giving up my drone for that. You will. It's a very easy number to guess. In, like, five more episodes, you're going to buy a different drone and you're going to be done with this one.

I know you. Of course. But who knows? Who knows? So this news story I saw and I just, I actually think this is really cool. Like, a lot of the time, like, I don't give a fuck about high fashion.

High fashion's ridiculous. I don't give a fuck about the metaverse. The metaverse is ridiculous. I don't give a fuck about a lot of things in technology. I think it's all stupid. But this was awesome. I had showed this past weekend the fashion house low, turned heads when it sent two models down the runway in pixelated style clothes that looked like something out of Minecraft.

You have to go to the show notes. You have to click on this link. It is cool as shit. I love this. It is so fucking cool. The entire, the entire article, the entire article is talking about, like, this has got to be, like, photoshops that are done on the, on the, on the, on the models to make it just, like, look that, look that good.

No. No. It's real. They're real clothes. I want, I want the hoodie. I want the pants. They're awesome. They make these crazy pixelated effect. I bet they're not comfortable. I mean, there's no way that these are, like, comfortable to wear in the real world. But I would buy this for Halloween.

I mean, it's awesome. These things are so cool. Dude, I would just buy that for going to lunch. It's so cool. I mean, like, back in the club days, imagine how, how fucking, you know, we'd be running the show with that stuff. It is so good. They're, they're so good. The, the pants, you know, with the, with the jagged, like, pixelated patterns are fantastic.

But the hoodies, where they look like they have the hard edges that they probably do, these are, these are phenomenal. Well done. That's so cool. Very impressed. When you put this in here, I'm like, I am not going to like this. And then I clicked on it and I'm just like, oh, yeah. This is, this is shit.

I want these now. I want these now. Security? Ha! Welcome back to Security Ha! 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. Hello, Dave. Hello. Good to be back. Yes. The band is all back together. We got everybody today. Woo-hoo! That's right. Welcome back, Brian. Thank you.

We missed you last week. Yeah. You know, lots of weird schedules going on. Yeah. Holidays. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Life. Mm-hmm. Oh, life. Mm-hmm. Life. Yeah. So, let's dive in. Andor, where are you guys at? All caught up.

The important part of Security Ha is Star Wars talk. That's right. I'm all caught up. It has piqued my interest again as soon as we basically got off. As soon as we stopped doing the solo movie beginning story of a person just running around the planet being miserable, I got much better.

I have still only seen the first episode, so I am still woefully behind. I know. Look, I'm not happy about it either, but it's just the way that my life has played out these past couple weeks that hopefully over this weekend I'll catch up. Yeah.

I mean, it's really – it's been an interesting thing. Jason and I were recording last night a bit. We've kind of split the schedule a little bit more, and we were kind of talking about how it's definitely a must-see TV period for us right now. We were itching to finish recording so we could go catch up on Star Trek Lower Decks and She-Hulk and then Andor, and then I'm really into the Lord of the Rings thing, which comes – I don't have enough time to keep up with things anymore.

You, sir, need to get fired and be unemployed. That's right. That's right. Yeah. You know, we were watching a show – we were watching the other night. We were watching an episode of The Middle, the sitcom, The Middle from – Not Malcolm in the?

No, not Malcolm in the, just The Middle from the early teens, like 2012 I guess it was on. And the thing I think is outstanding about The Middle is I think it is a perfectly cast show. Everyone playing their characters is pitch perfect.

But as we were looking through the episodes, it was like 24 episodes in a season. And it – right. And that was the standard. Old school. And just a decade ago, 22, 24 episodes, now you get eight or 10 or 12.

If you're lucky. Well, I mean, just, you know, look at the new Star Trek series that we're loving, you know, Brave New World. What was it, eight episodes? Then you go back and load up a season of Star Trek The Next Generation, 70,000 episodes.

Yeah. That's right. That's right. And, yeah, I suppose folks in the UK are used to this sort of thing. But for us, it's a little bit different. I guess part – you talk about Next Generation. I guess part of what's good about this is that you don't end up with clip shows.

The filler episodes. Right. It's all just meat on the bone. Yeah. Somebody's stuck in the holodeck, so we're going to get flashbacks all episode long. Or I think about a show like my wife and I just finally caught up on the last season of Succession. Like, if that were more episodes, it would be horrible.

But the fact that they just cut it to just what you need, it's absolutely wonderful. So there's a plus to it having these episodes. There is. I also – just the fact that sometimes we have to wait for years for our next batch of only eight episodes.

Yeah. Here's your eight episodes. Two years from now, we're going to give you eight more. Unless there's a pandemic and you have to wait four years. Right. Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, I waited forever for Billions to come back because they had to cut it in the middle of it because of the pandemic. And then it came back even worse, which was sad.

But that show is dead now to me. So I'm all in on Succession. Billions is dead. Bastards. Yeah. I mean, the flip side is it is quality content. I'll take some of these shows versus a sitcom grinding out 24 episodes, you know, on a standing set in front of a live studio audience.

These shows are cinematic quality. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I fell in love with British TV because it was that format. You know, look at the old days for Spooks when that first started. That was a fantastic show about MI6 or MI5.

I can't remember. MI is something. But there was also another really short series called Ultraviolet that had Idris – a very young Idris Elba in it. It was a vampire show. And it was amazing. And it was just short. And it started in the middle. And it ended in the middle.

And you never really had anything. But it also had Philip Quast in it who played the best Javert of all time. But I digress. It was a fantastic series. I think you can get it on Amazon Prime. But I love those shorter series. So I'm fine with these.

I 100% agree. I mean, I think – and this is going to open up a can of worms because thousands of people will disagree with me. But the Office, British version, three seasons, far superior to the 12-plus seasons of the U.S. Office. Brian at grumpyoldgeeks.com.

That's where you send your letters. It's an unpopular opinion. I'm aware of that. But I think it's much better, personally. Yep. Well, and look at Coupling. Coupling was a fantastic British series that was destroyed here in the U.S. So it didn't even make it to, I think, episode four.

That was really, really bad writing, really, really bad casting for the U.S. version. So they had a perfect storm of crap. Yeah, they were firing on no cylinders for that one, for sure. There's your show title. Perfect storm of crap. Oh, that could be every episode.

Okay, so Dave, you're not caught up yet, so we'll have to table and or for now. I do want to say that our new friends over at, what are these guys called again? Cybercraft, where I found those amazing helmets. They have just come out with their Mandalorian Darksaber, which is a little pricey.

It's $820 without shipping. Just a little. But it is cool. It is cool looking. It's these sorts of things that make me think, maybe I shouldn't introduce my son to Star Wars. I don't want to be on the hook for these things later on in life. I mean, it comes with a carrying case and all this stuff.

And it's like, hmm, I do have to return that 75-inch monster TV and it costs exactly the same. Do I swap? No, Jason. Bad Jason. You're not going to do that. But I tell you, it is tempting because this thing does look great. I got to say. I don't know. This is one of those things that I think is going to photograph much better than when you unbox it at home.

But I could be wrong. I suppose if – I mean if you were someone who was cosplaying this, then this would be the perfect accessory and money well spent. I know my youngest son, Jack, loves the Darksaber. Like he's really into the whole lore of it and what is it about and all that sort of thing.

So he would be all over this. He'd be saving up his allowance until he was 25 to be able to afford it. But, you know, the other thing that strikes me about this is – I don't know. Brian, if you remember – Jason, you remember when we were kids and Star Wars first came out and the market was flooded with crap lightsabers.

Yes. Oh, yeah. Many of them. Flashlights with tubes attached to the end. Some of them were inflatable. Right. Some of them – yep. There were some inflatable ones but then there were some off-brand ones that, you know, were laser swords and they just had a – it's like a plastic tube attached to a cheap flashlight with a piece of red gel in the end.

And, you know, you'd whack each other, you know, twice and it would break and that would be it and now you're done. Yes. So to have this sort of quality – my son has – my other son has a lightsaber that is amazing. It was a couple hundred dollars.

You know, it's got, I guess, a line of LEDs down the middle. It makes all the noises. You can make it do anything you want. It can be any color. It runs all sorts of patterns and things. But also, you can whack the crap out of somebody with it and it's fine. I was going to say, is it whackable?

It is. Yeah. You could have a full-off battle with this thing. I know of what you speak because the last time my family and I, we went back to Los Angeles and stayed with my mom. We walked over to downtown Disney and we went to – they have a Star Wars dedicated store there and we went in and they still have the very cheap lightsabers, what I call the affordable lightsabers.

My son wanted to have nothing to do with that one and immediately beeline towards the $700 lightsabers of which you speak. And my wife was like, no, no, no, no way are we going to do that. Yeah. And I was kind of like, yeah, that's a bit pricey.

You just get a dual birthday gift for you and your son, right? He gets it on weekends. I mean, I was definitely the one leaning towards yes because it is cool. But honey. Yeah. Right.

My wife was like, that is the flight back home. So, no. Yeah. But honey, it would be an heirloom. Oh, man. So, I do want to throw a quick shout out since this is now media. She-Hulk last night.

If you are a fan of the old Daredevil series, you are definitely going to love She-Hulk. It made my week. I had one of the worst weeks I've had since my stroke. It completely erased my terrible week because I was just so happy to see Matt Murdoch back. Yeah.

I'm so happy. We had finished recording and I guess I beat you to the TV and I just started watching it and I just texted you immediately like, go put it on now. And when you sent it to me was right when the D plus was coming up on the screen. I'm like, I'm booting, buddy.

I'm booting. I'm getting there. I have a farther commute than you do from when we're done recording to the TV. So, it took me a minute. That's true. I only have to go down three stories. You had to get in your car. Yep. But, oh, gosh. Yeah, it's another one. I'm one episode in and – which I enjoyed.

But, as you guys say, there's just so much to watch right now. It's complicated. It's hard to schedule at all. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you want some more stuff to take up your time, I do have a couple new podcasts that I'm listening to. I got The Langley Files, a CIA podcast. I thought it was strange that the CIA now has an official podcast.

Lots of people have been saying that, yes. Well, the joke on our Discord channel, Dave, is how can it be real if you're not hosting it? Ah. Yes. Stay tuned. The other thing with it is, from everyone at the CIA, we'll be seeing you.

Is there their closing line? And I'm like, that's kind of creepy. Come on, guys. Why not play off of the organization's mystique? Yeah. So here's one – I'll give you a little tidbit, a little bit of advice about the CIA from folks I know who have been in the CIA.

To save yourself a little bit of eye roll or whatever. What do you call someone who is in the CIA? What is their position? So my friend is a CIA – what? The FBI are spooks, right? Well, no, I mean special agents are FBI.

CIA are officers, aren't they? Correct. Correct. Correct. And CIA – the folks in the CIA get their hackles up when you call them agents because people quite often say, oh, you're a CIA agent. And it's kind of like that scene in Top Gun when she says, oh, you're a pilot.

And he's like, I'm a naval aviator. It's the same sort of thing with CIA. They are officers. They are not agents. FBI is agents. CIA is officers. If you want the respect of your friendly neighborhood CIA officer, get it right.

And I think FBI people hate it when you call them agents. Don't they have to be referred to as special agents? That's an interesting question. I don't know. I – that's a good – I'll have to ask. I know – actually, I know the – I went to high school with the special agent in charge of the Baltimore field office of the FBI.

Oh, fancy. Yeah. Would you like some gray poupon? And – well, what's great – I mean this is a great guy and he's exactly the guy from your high school who you think would grow up to be the special agent in charge of the FBI. And I'm glad he's there because he's exactly that guy who I would want in that position.

But I don't know. That's a good question. Are there just agents or are they all special agents? I don't know. I don't know. Up here we only have Mounties. Yes. Yes. The land of Dudley do right. They look dapper in their red dress uniforms for sure.

Yes, they do. I've got another podcast called Griftonomics. This is – this one comes from Jackson Palmer, not to be confused with Palmer Lucky, which is what I did at the beginning when I first saw that. I'm like, oh, Palmer Lucky was kind of a – he's kind of a scumbag.

Yeah. That's what I would call. Yeah. But he invented the Oculus or what became meta – the meta headset now, sold it to them. But he does a lot of work with the government doing drones and stuff for Border Patrol and stuff like that that I'm not a real fan of.

Jackson Palmer was the co-creator of Dogecoin who hates crypto. So I'm all on team – I'm all on his team right now. OK. And he's got a really good podcast. I've listened to a couple episodes. The latest one was the Cancel Culture Con with Caitlin Burns who is a trans reporter.

It was really good. There was another one I believe with – what's her name again? Molly – Molly White. I think it was one of the first episodes. Molly White from the Web3 is going great website.

That was also a great episode. But it's a well-done show. It's enjoyable. I recommend it. What is the show's thesis statement? Why Griftonomics? We're living in a time where a JPEG can sell for a million dollars. Celebrities openly endorse Ponzi schemes and when you've – and what you've – when what you've invented – I can read – me read pretty one day.

When what you've invented doesn't matter nearly as much as what you say you've invented. As snake oil increasingly becomes our new currency, regulators and lawmakers are asleep at the wheel while pay-to-play journalists pump out puff pieces from their slurp juice-induced hangover. Join us as we explore the dizzying, unending roster of these 2020s-era rackets.

Welcome to the age of Griftonomics. Well, I'm glad I asked. Yes. I'm glad I had that open. Right. It's off the top of your head. Let me pull that out of my head. The stroke has not slowed you down. Yeah.

I'll check that out. That sounds good. And actually the Cancer Culture Con seems like something I would be interested in. And I know some folks who have fallen what I would call unfair victim to that trend in our culture right now.

So, yeah, I'll check that out. Yeah. And they also talk about how people claim they've been canceled just to be able to have a comeback. You know? It's like, oh, I'm being – help, help. I'm being repressed. Right. Right. Of course. Of course. So, that's part of it as well. But it is a great episode.

I listened to it this morning. So, two new podcasts. Like the Langley Files, I'll keep listening to it. It's okay. It's not fantastic because you don't host it, Dave. Once you take over, I'm all in. But for now, it will be a casual listen. Yeah. We'll see.

We'll see. I don't know. It seems like it could be a show that could fit into the Cyber Wire podcast network. But you never know. So, I know you guys were talking earlier about Spotify and them cutting back on some of their shows and so on and so forth.

Yep. This is a story about Spotify acquiring a firm that detects harmful content. Hmm. We hit the button and it keeps coming back with Joe Rogan. So, this is really just kind of a little blurb from Reuters.

But they have acquired a company called Kinzen, which I'm sure uses some kind of automation that doesn't really lay it out exactly what's going on here. But evidently, it's a tool that helps detect harmful content. So, I'm guessing they're using some kind of natural language processing and that sort of thing.

I don't know. Sometimes I wonder if purchases like this are mostly about PR or cover or like what are they really going to do? You know, they're going to get – it's like just a red phone start blinking on the CEO of Spotify's desk and the AI has detected that Joe Rogan has gone off the rails again and then what?

No, they use it to find new shows that they can buy. That's what they're using it for. There you go. Right. You say harmful content like it's a bad thing. Yeah. We see that as a market opportunity. Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. Yeah.

Jason, you're right. Yes. You're – yes. Yes. I think you have unlocked what exactly could be going on here. The funny thing is most of this technology, we could write probably in a weekend with existing APIs because all you do is you take like all the audio that's coming through your system, run it through a transcription service, and run it through a word filter.

You don't need specialized AI. You can just kind of figure this out on the fly with existing tools. So this is – it's our fault for not making it, I guess. Damn it. Yeah. And also – I mean I don't know how they're planning on implementing this, but it seems like nothing is going to be faster than your listeners letting you know when you have controversial content.

Let me tell you, on behalf of everyone on this show, that is so. That is the way it works, right? There are people who are at the ready. They are ready to hit that send button. Their fingers are sprung tightly and ready to go. The audience is going to be faster for sure.

Can this give you like a heads up on possible shows that maybe aren't on your platform that you may want to de-platform? I don't know. We lost Jason. I'm here. It's always a relief when it's not us, isn't it? I'm still here.

Oh, there you are. I never want to hear you the whole time. So we'll leave that in. Thank you. Now I lost my train of thought. Anyway, this will be interesting to see what they do. I just think it's funny that Spotify has a head of trust and safety because – Well, again, to Dave's point, you've got to have that to say that you've got it, right?

You could point, well, we have somebody on the job. Yeah. Yeah. I have another article in here that's been getting a lot of attention among cybersecurity professionals, especially CISOs, Chief Information Security Officers.

You guys probably saw in the news that the former CISO at Uber, Joe Sullivan, was found guilty over a data breach cover-up. He could be facing up to eight years in prison. They doubt he will get that, but that's the maximum that he could get.

What's really – so this is a classic case of the cover-up being worse than the crime, right? That's what they're going after him for, that they kept this from authorities for so long.

I think it was about a year that they – according to the prosecutors, they – at Uber, they deliberately kept the information about the breach away from prosecutors and even lied to them. They're obstructing the justice there.

So there are folks in InfoSec who are saying this will be – it means it's a terrible time to be a CISO. If CISOs can be held accountable, none of the other executives at Uber were on the hook for this. How are you going to get people to be CISOs?

And the counter to that is, well, if you're a CISO, go ahead and be a CISO, but don't try to cover up things. Don't do illegal things. Yeah, don't do bad shit. Do your job and don't do illegal things. It kind of makes sense to me. I don't see the problem here.

Right. It's interesting that Joe Sullivan before this – he was a federal prosecutor. So it's not like – So he should have known better. Well, exactly. Exactly. And who knows all the details and pressure he was under or whatever. And I'm certainly not trying to make excuses for him.

My point is just that often there's a lot more nuance to these sorts of things than makes it into the stories about it. But, yeah, it seems to me like he should have known better. Yep. It's just sad that, you know, Kalanook didn't get any blowback from this because that would have been great.

Yeah. This last thing I put in the show notes here, I came across a clip of Orson Welles on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson from 1976. So a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

I am fascinated by these old talk show segments and if you haven't ever checked them out, particularly this era in the 70s when I think it's fair to say Johnny Carson was at the peak of his powers, of his influence. And talk shows were very different than they are today.

It wasn't so much about coming on to promote your movie. Yes, they did that. But the conversations weren't nearly as scripted as they are today. The hosts weren't as fawning as they are today and so on and so forth. And you could smoke. Yes, that is also noteworthy.

Everyone smoked, including the host. Johnny Carson smoked his way through so many episodes of The Tonight Show. So Orson Welles, of course, the great Orson Welles and Johnny Carson are having this conversation about old time radio before television.

And they make some great points about radio being larger than life and that radio was the widest of wide screens because it could fill your mind and the theater of the mind. And they quoted Mae West, who had been recently on The Dick Cavett Show, and she said she never wanted to be on television because she didn't want to be on a medium where anything was smaller than life.

She only wanted to be larger than life. And I think it's interesting. So I have a link to where this part of the conversation starts up. If you stick with it and watch through the end, there's some other interesting things they say about people's attention span when listening to audio, that the way that you pay attention to audio is different than video.

How audio demands your attention in a way that television does not. So it's an old-timey trip back, but I think it's interesting when you think about it, the way that I think audio has had a resurgence thanks to podcasts.

And it really is that old theater of the mind. And certainly, I mean, Orson Welles, War of the Worlds, he kind of invented that. Yeah, he's got some skin in the game on that one. Yeah, he's got his street cred, right? Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, and that's why I originally fell in love with podcasts. I just, you know, I think they're fantastic. I still do. That's why I still make them every day for the most part. Yeah. The other thing is you get to listen to Orson Welles' amazing voice. Yeah. So cool.

Can we deep fake that one, please? Can I have that as my Siri voice? Somebody call me a state. All those cigars and bourbon and whatever it was. Just a wonderful voice. Yeah. So check it out. Closing shout outs.

Over at Patreon, we've got Seth, Stephen, Terry, C, Erspo, who says, Earlier this year when funds were tight, it felt necessary to drop out, but I never stopped listening or appreciating all you two do. My Saturday is not complete without GOG. My fortunes are better, and I am back as a paid supporter again.

Thank you very much, Erspo. And Porkchop is also in, and he says, glad to toss in a few ducats and give Patreon the benefit of the doubt. You mentioned last show that there were no such things as quiet firings in corporate America. I'm sure you remember hearing about hourly workers who just stopped getting scheduled shifts.

It's been a pretty common practice for decades. Seems that COVID has temporarily allowed the balance of power to shift to the common man. It won't last long, so might as well fuck with him while we've got him. Jason, sorry to hear about your joining the Republican Party. Party on jazz. I have not joined the Republican Party.

That was a question. So Betteridge says no. Very nice. And thank you, everybody, over on Patreon. Thank you to the people that have joined or come back. It's nice to see our numbers actually in the red. Wait, black. In the black. This is why I'm not an accountant for the first time in a couple months.

Over at PayPal, we've got Matthew, Judge, Jonathan, Nikolai, Thomas, Shiloh, Shopey, Nikola, and David, and Shaleen all joining in. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. And over at our tip jar, we've got Christopher, John, Matthew, Mario, and Linda. Thank you all so very much.

And we have a new five-star review from Pram Jockey. Always learning, always grumpy. I've been joining GOG for quite a while now. They bring humor and insight to a variety of aspects of modern life, from data security and privacy to the bewildering a variety of gadgets that impact our lives. And despite their grumpiness, there is a real kindness to them in the way they respect the people and the world around them.

Not the snarky review they ask for, but the five stars they deserve. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Pram Jockey. I'm feeling a little verklempt. Must be the beer. Yeah, must be. Must be. What are you drinking tonight? It's a local Canadian brewery that made a Rush beer. Hopefully better than the band?

Well, yeah, of course. No offense. I'm just not a prog rocker. Worked for them. Lovely people. I was going to say they were your client, so... Lovely people. Lovely people. I've worked for a lot of bands I can't stand. It's fine. They're good people.

All right. I like good people. Speaking of good people, we unfortunately lost Loretta Lynn this week. We did. She was also baller. She was an amazingly baller woman. I grew up in the South, and I grew up around her, so... Yeah, that's good country.

That's the real stuff. Mm-hmm. Yep. Coleman is on her. Breaking news, we just lost Judy Tenuta. What? Which anybody in our age group remembers. The accordion-playing comedian. Oh, no. She had a lot of big stints on MTV. She passed away at 72.

Oh. The URL for all the Google searches says 73, so 72, 73, I don't know, whatever. Something like that. Well, she was born November 7th, 1949, in Oak Park, Illinois. Mm-hmm.

Very funny. I remember really enjoying her when I was a kid. Oh, she was great. She was totally great. That's too bad. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we lost a couple great ladies this week. Mm-hmm. Bummer. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillipo. 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 573. 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.

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