574: She’s Got Legs

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

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. A couple quick notes before we get into it. First off, since we've started this new at-night recording thing, this is the first time my wife is out having dinner with friends, so I was in charge of Kid. And Kid is theoretically asleep, but there could be Kid walking through at some point.

Okay. Just saying. So, we'll see. And secondly, right before we started, I was scrolling through the IG, as the old people do, and I saw Shirley Manson posted a great meme just a few minutes ago in honor of our show in general, because I think it encapsulates that, but in particular, many of the upcoming stories we're about to talk about, and some of the big stories that we won't be talking about today.

I should read the quote that she posted. Don't be the bigger person today. Be the person that helps them understand that sometimes when you fuck around, you find out. Good quote. Good quote. And let's roll. All right. Well, I don't know if you would like some eggs with this next story, because, of course, the 10,000 Steps is back in the news.

We have a new study now. It says taking 8,600 steps a day will prevent weight gain in adults, while already overweight adults can halve their odds of becoming obese by adding an additional 2,400 steps. That's 11,000 for people who can't add. According to new research, there's some new studies out.

It should be pointed out again that the initial number, the 10,000, was a marketing gimmick out of Japan to sell shoes. It never had any science behind it whatsoever. Nope. And we've known that. But every time there's a new study about this, I like to bring it up.

Because it's not saying in the CNN version of the study here, male, female, body type, you know, they're just saying 8,600 steps for an adult. Kind of a broad range when it gets down to adult. Well, I particularly like the, basically, the TLDR on this is, walking more is good.

Of course. And we've kind of known that. So, the more you walk, the better. Like, don't go Forrest Gump, but, you know, walk. Go for a meander, a perambulation, as it were. Yes. Eggs and steps and self-driving cars. Yep. On to self-driving cars.

This is from a study from the Institute, or the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. So, you know that they have an agenda along there somewhere. People that look into these sorts of things. Of course, they're going to say, this is just great. 42% of Tesla Autopilot drivers said that they feel comfortable treating their vehicles as fully self-driving.

Now, I would also like to point out, real quick, though, before we even get into this, this is Tesla Autopilot. This isn't even fully self-driving. This is cruise control. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not cruise control, Jason, because words have meaning. What do they call it? Autopilot.

And if you said, if you just, if somebody came up to you that you trusted and believed, and maybe possibly worshipped because you're a horrible person that thinks Elon is the next coming of Christ, and he called this thing Autopilot, and you didn't bother to read or just wanted to believe, what would you think something called Autopilot would do, Jason?

Probably Autopilot the car. Right. Yeah. Because words have meaning. Well, we know this, and we've been through this ad nauseum. It's funny, though, that more Cadillac owners actually think that their Super Cruise-assisted cars are ready to go and don't need a driver.

Okay? Well, this is because this is the marketing push, and this is why MAGA exists, and this is why so many – if you keep repeating a lie over and over and over again, people will believe it.

See, somebody's going to pick it up. Somebody's going to pick it up. It's like the old days listening to Top 40 radio. The songs that you hated, if you had to listen to them over and over again, say at work all day, you finally actually started to like. That's why I like the Spice Girls to this day. In the news.

So, circling back to the fuck around and find out, Alex Jones has now been ordered to pay $965 million. Yep. This is not the first case that he's had to pay an awful lot of money for, but this is – we've moved beyond coffee money.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, this is protein powder money right here. Yes, it is. So, this was a new case. A Connecticut jury has awarded nearly a billion dollars in damages to families of the victims and an FBI agent whose lives were further upended by Jones' claims the shooting was a hoax.

He was obviously deplatformed for most major social media and podcast platforms many years ago. That did not particularly affect his bottom line. Infowars did just fine not being on the platforms because it was not hard to find for people who had to want to do such things.

So, he has continued to make even more money. A forensic economist, which is – that is a job I would have liked to have had had I known it existed when I went to college. I would love to have been a forensic economist. That would have been awesome. Testified Jones' net worth could be as high as $270 million, which is a lot less than $965 million that he's supposed to pay up now.

So, you would have been a good forensic accountant. You can do math. Yeah. I figured that's less. Yes. Who knows how much money anybody is actually ever going to see. There will, of course, be an appeal. He has multiple shell companies that are shuffling money around left, right, and center.

But I think this might be a final nail in his coffin, as it were. At some point, he's just going to be vanquished from the internet because of all this sort of stuff. Some of the people are going to stop hosting his site. So, we'll see.

We'll see because I don't have – I don't know about that. Yeah. Do you think the protein powders might be shying away at this point? Maybe. Maybe. So, we'll see. Another fun little fuck around and find out. A lawsuit is accusing Meta executives of taking bribes from OnlyFans.

This story is just awesome. This is one of my favorites of the week. I have to admit I was a little disappointed because it is a purient headline and I was really kind of hoping that some of the Meta executives were like on OnlyFans or something like that. But sadly, no. It's not quite as juicy, but it's still pretty juicy.

We now know why Sheryl Sandberg was let go because she had her OnlyFans page. She was leaning in, baby. Anyways, no. This is just – they got – it is alleged that they were bribed to basically take OnlyFans ads and not other adult entertainment platforms ads.

And I have to say if – I told you a couple of weeks ago that I see OnlyFans ads all the time on Facebook, but it's for like I'm – improve your gym practice and your yoga practice by going on to OnlyFans. I was like if you're naked, sure.

I think what this also boils down to really is that Facebook was still taking the OnlyFans ad money, but they were secretly deplatforming people who had big followings on Facebook so they would have to move to OnlyFans. It was kind of like a – it was just really nasty, nasty, nasty.

Yeah, there's some weird stuff going on there and it's not good and it's – shockingly, Meta is not put in a good light. Believe it or not. Believe it or not. I mean imagine that. Oh, God. Well, I don't know if you remember the story a little bit ago, but Meta was going to try and buy the virtual reality firm within that makes the game Supernatural for their Oculus system.

Right. I haven't played it, but I've heard many great things about it. Some people really, really like it. But the FTC said, hey, that's kind of like Beat Saber because you're moving your arms around and you're going to sweat. Well, since they're not technically the same type of game, the FTC had to come back and change their complaint to kind of acknowledge that these are not both fitness apps.

One is a game and one is specifically a fitness app. So Meta is like, excuse me then. What's your point? So that's really where it's at right now. We don't know how it's going to go, but Meta has filed to let this one through. This will affect the nine people that do not work for Meta and are being forced to wear an Oculus.

Yeah, mine is still sitting in the back. Yeah, gathering dust. Yep. Yep. And it's not virtual Meta dust either. It's real dust. It's real dust. I particularly like this Metaverse story. This is amazing. Metaverse Project Decentraland.

I believe we talked about them briefly when they first launched. I'm sure we have. It's a sandbox environment that allows users to buy and sell virtual real estate. And I'm pretty sure I banged my head up against a wall going, what exactly is this? Ooh, ooh. Why are you buying virtual real estate in this platform that nobody cares about?

But they had billions of dollars in valuations because, of course, they did. Now, the problem is, according to data aggregator DAP Radar, the Ethereum-based world, Decentraland, only had, keep in mind, this cost $1.2 billion, or at least it was evaluated at $1.2 billion, had 38 active users over a period of 24 hours.

What's the cost of acquisition there? I'm not that good of a day. It's pretty high. Yep. Yeah. I've watched Shark Tank. I know that I'm not a math guy, but I think that that's pretty high. I'm not a forensic economist, even though I wish I was, but I don't think that sounds good.

So, they pushed back, saying that active users are defined as unique blockchain wallet addresses that interact with its system. As Coindesk explains, that means users who simply log in or chat or interact with other users aren't being counted. Again, if they're not spending money on your platform...

Mm-hmm. Oh, keep going. Keep going. It gets better. Okay. DAP Radar doesn't track our users, only people interacting with our contracts, Decentraland's creative director, Sam Hamilton, told Coindesk adding the platform averages around 8,000 users on an average day. 8,000 users on an average day, $1.2 billion metaverse, valued at $1.2 billion, and the best they can claim is 8,000 users.

Yeah, that doesn't really work out. No, I've had sites that have had well over 8,000 users interacting per day, and they were not worth $1.2 billion, or certainly I didn't get paid $1.2 billion for them. No, not at all. I mean, hell, if I had 8,000 followers on Twitter or YouTube or TikTok or all of them, I still wouldn't be worth $1.2 billion.

I don't care how Kardashian I can get. Now, they attempted to do some more damage control, writing that the platform saw 1,074 users interacting with smart contracts in an entire month. Yeah, and guess what? They'll probably get another round of funding. That's just – come on.

That's the way it's going. Yeah. I read the crypto newsletters, man. The investment is not slowing down. It's crazy. It's not. But nobody cares. I don't – it's a massive, like, billionaire fund circle jerk at this point. I mean, if you have that much money, why not go buy real real estate and invite some friends over?

Come on. I think that they looked at Jeff Bezos who bought a yacht that couldn't get down a river because there was a bridge. And they said, let's stick with the metaverse. Okay. Okay. Anyways, the end quote of this article is great. Anyone telling you that there's a metaverse today that has worked is lying through their teeth, said Sasha Fleischman, portfolio manager at digital asset investment firm ARCA.

Okay. But – Well, yeah, we could have told you that too. This is all about to change, Jason, because there has been stunning news this week. Breaking news. Very important. As ZZ Top predicted in the 80s, she's got legs. And she knows how to use them.

That's right. Meta's avatars are getting legs. They're not getting anybody to wear them, but they're going to get them. You get this quote. Meta says, legs have been one of our most requested features on our roadmap, and it has been a significant area of our focus.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Well, thank God. They'll be available in Horizon Worlds before Meta opens them up to other developers. They are creating a software development kit for legs. Yep. Problem is you've got to buy an NFT on Diphtherium or whatever that other metaverse is to wear them.

And your avatars will be available on Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp video calls next year. So put on them pants. All right. Yep. This is progress. Legs. We're making progress here. Legs and eggs. Well, in more Google news or goggle news, not even Google news.

We've got Google news later, but the goggles. Microsoft has the project with the U.S. military that they've been working on for quite some time now. Yep. It's a very good lucrative project for Microsoft if they can make it work. A lot of money. Yep. Over $20 billion.

They could buy 10 metaverses for – Hey. Or, you know, 18 metaverses for that. If you can fly a client that will pay $10,000 for a toilet, you're fucking gold. Yep. Yep. Well, in the recent tests, they failed four out of the six evaluation points. And the criticism from the soldiers is this thing will get us killed if we wore it out in the field.

Yes. They were referring to the light generated by the goggles when they're active, which if you're in the dark is a problem. Yeah. It can be seen from hundreds of meters away. Let's talk about stealth. You know, we've had night vision goggles for the military for a very long time.

They kind of figured that one out. Why can't they do it with these goggles? Oh, because it's AR. That's right. They have a window on them. Night vision goggles have lenses. Maybe they should fix the window problem. Oh, but it's Microsoft. They've never been able to fix their windows problem.

That's not true. It's much better than it used to be. You try 11? No. No. Nobody's on 11. You're not stupid. The army must be. Yes. We have had an uptick in people sending us information and news and everybody's jumping on the NFT bandwagon.

And we do appreciate this. Jerry sent this in. Just saw this NFT news on Reddit. Thought he would get a kick out of it. The NFT purchased by Logan Paul for $623,000 is now worth $10. Yep. Yep. I don't believe things that immediately just pop up on Reddit.

So I did a little Googling around, but it seems real. It seems real. It seems that Logan posted it himself. Which is kind of a humble brag, I suppose. I guess. I guess. I can drop $625,000 on a JPEG and now I can buy some fries.

Yeah. JW sent in, hi, Grumpys. You guys are going to love this. Satoshi Island. People buying real estate on the island wouldn't get traditional land deeds. Instead, they would receive digital non-fungible tokens. The goal is for every aspect of people's lives to be mediated by cryptocurrency. What could possibly go wrong?

Here be the link, me hearties. And it's from an Australian news source. Satoshi Island project aims to turn a remote Pacific island into a city built on cryptocurrency. I didn't grab anything, any quotes or anything about this, but I did read through it. It was very funny. There was a particular quote that I did love, which is, it was like they actually interviewed a real city planner.

And the city planner was like, it's, they've thought about quite a bit, but I see nothing about waste removal, garbage, food, how things are going to get onto the island. Are they going to buy the same island that Fyre Festival was on?

Basically. It seems like it. It's Fyre Fest, except you can only buy that soggy grilled cheese with crypto. All right. Perfect. And you only get it in a JPEG. You don't actually get to eat it. That's true. You get a pixelized grilled cheese. Rivian is having a rough week.

You think? This is the Amazon-backed electric vehicle upstart and long-rumored Tesla killer, once valued, again, unbelievably, at $100 billion, has just had to recall nearly every single vehicle it's ever made, which is only 13,000 vehicles.

Wait, what's their valuation? $100 billion. Okay, just checking. Those are some fucking expensive trucks. I've seen a couple around town. They're pretty nice. Only in LA. Yeah. They do look pretty nice, except for the fact that there's a potential disrupt steering leading to an increased risk for crashes.

In less serious cases, the issue reportedly only leads to excessive noise and vibration to emit from the vehicle's front suspension, which, given the cost tag on these cars, is not so great. But it could cause a separation affecting the driver's ability to control the vehicle and increase the risk of a crash.

So when your steering wheel pops off, they say it can impact the driver's ability to control the car. No shit. Yeah. Well, not if it's self-driving, of course, Jason. Oh, that's right. That's right. Got it. But let's run through this bit of math. The recall impacts 12,212 Rivian trucks, SUVs, and a subset of its electric delivery vehicles.

To put that in context, CNBC notes that they only shipped 14,317 vehicles this year. So may you be a fucking lottery winner there. And 80% of their entire fleet is being recalled, Jason. Has anybody looked at the stock price today?

How's it doing? Probably went up. I'm not sure it's not $100 billion. To the moon. To the moon. To the moon. And in unintended consequences news, the new safety feature that arrived with the iPhone 14 that automatically notifies emergency services after detecting the owner has been in a collision and is featured prominently in many of their commercials recently.

Don't go on a roller coaster with it because according to the Wall Street Journal, thrill seekers at King's Island amusement park have triggered the feature six times recently, immediately alerting authorities with a phone call in which a message is repeated seven times includes the background noise from the user's phone, which is a bunch of people screaming because they're on a roller coaster.

More troublesome about this is, of course, it alerts friends and family, which has made people think they're dead. Yeah, but this is not new. This is, you know, this is a tempest in a teapot, I like to say, because when fall detection came out on the iPhone, they had the same problem.

People were getting like, or cops were getting called all the time because people were just dropping their watch or whacking it against something because the tech wasn't ready yet. Same thing with this. Yeah, more whacking. Somebody's being repeatedly stabbed to death or they're churning butter. He's falling, he's falling, he's falling, he's falling faster.

Oh, he's falling. It looks like he's dead. Oh, he lit a cigarette. And in actually good news for tech, DeepMind breaks a 50-year math record using, of course, AI because it's DeepMind, which is a pretty interesting, it's a pretty interesting read, but it's all about matrix math and matrix multiplication.

And the way that they've figured some of this stuff out is what's fascinating. So they're using AlphaTensor, which is kind of like one of the tools that AlphaGo is all around, you know, all the stuff that they, all the AI tools that they had around creating that monster Go game that taught itself how to play Go and can beat everybody in the world now.

Well, they're kind of taking that mindset and putting it with some of the math problems that they've got. And now it's figuring out the math problems for them, which is genius. But when you look at this over time, it's not a huge change that they're making.

But when you talk about the trillions of computations like per second that a computer has to do, it can be a meaningful amount, which means, you know, these things are going to get better and better as they go, especially if they can just teach themselves now. We're still not looking at generalized AI, you know, but we are still looking at something that is a pretty decent technological leap.

Well, well done, DeepMind. Yeah, good for them. And in breaking news, Deep Cake has broken a 50-year record from Chef Duff over at Cake Boss. Yes, and Deep Purple is the new AI cover band. That's good. I like that.

Thanks. I wish I had something funny to follow that up with, but I do not. We got labor to department proposal that may lead to gig workers gaining employee status. So this has been a new thing that's been pushed through that is finally going to fight back against all these Uber and Lyft bullshit things that have going on.

Should the proposal become a form of rule, gig workers such as Uber and Lyft drivers would likely gain benefits and protections afforded to employees if they're reclassified as, oh, I don't know, the employees that they are. All right. These will include minimum wage, overtime, unemployment insurance contributions, and their employee paying a share of Social Security taxes via the New York Times.

Under the latest proposal, the Department of Labor plans to implement a test to determine if workers should be classified as employees or contractors. This would include factors as how much control workers have over how they carry out tasks, how much bandwidth they have to increase their earnings and offerings and other services would be assessed.

Do they own their own equipment? Is their work critical to a company's business? Oh, I don't know. Do you think drivers are critical to Uber and Lyft's business? Pretty much. Pretty much. And I'm pretty sure they own their – mostly they own their own cars or the bank does. Similar. So we'll see if that gets through.

But this would be a national law, I suppose, which would overcome all these different efforts that they're doing state by state. So we'll see. Good job. It'd be good. Good job. It'd be good. And NASA's DART spacecraft successfully altered the orbit of an asteroid. The math is in, Jason.

Yes, it is. And the experimental double asteroid redirection test successfully altered the orbit of the asteroid. They basically said if we can change the orbital period by 73 seconds or more, we will call it a success. And they beat that by more than 25 times.

It's 32 minutes off of its previous orbit. So I'm not entirely sure this would stop a planet killer, but we can push some rocks around now. Well, we need bigger rocks. We push the smaller rocks into the bigger rocks using the little space raft. If we put the rock himself.

Yes. Yes. Perfect. There we go. Finally get the rock in space.

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With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. Media candy. In the rock in space sounds like a great new show for Netflix's new ad system that they're rolling out.

I think that that would be a fine show. It's coming November 3rd, and it's going to be about $7, $6.99 to be precise. Up to five minutes of ads per hour. You only get 720p, though, which is interesting, and you can't download it. Yeah.

Well, the big rub here, which most people seem to be ignoring, but this article did point out, is that there will be slightly fewer movies and TV shows than the Pricier Tiers. They haven't announced what won't be available. Is it going to be the big stuff?

Is it going to be the premiere stuff? Is it going to be Stranger Things? Or is it going to be like the crappy Ryan Reynolds comedy that came out 10 years ago? They're being cagey about that right now. Yeah, because I think they're trying to – I'm sure they're scrambling right now to try and get all of the deals in place to make it happen with as few missing titles as possible.

This is going to be a legal and financial clusterfuck of epic proportions. Not if you're the lawyers. Good luck. Oh, God, the lawyers are making out like bandits right now. Oh, they're so happy right now. Yep. Crazy. Well, Apple is going to do the same. So they're going around the scenes around town now trying to do deals.

But nobody is really talking yet. But some people are leaking out that they're in discussions. So I expect a little bit of news on that coming soon. But they're probably going to put ads into their Apple TV Plus, which nobody can find. So that's where it's at.

They just don't have a breakthrough show yet. Ted Lasso, everybody loves. But again, you know, people – that's limited appeal, really. It was a great show. People do love it, but it doesn't need a lot of people.

It's only got one season left, so. It's only got one season left. Foundation ain't doing it for anybody. The big one that they did with Jennifer Aniston and all that, which was – I mean, there was no more perfectly tailored show for my wife. And my wife watched the first season and just kind of went, meh.

So they don't have a prestige show yet. Yeah. Yeah. That was what, the morning show. I do like – I am liking For All Mankind, though. I got to say. They haven't gotten to the end yet. It's – I like it. I haven't even finished the first season.

It's kind of a slow burn for me. Whenever I think about it, I'll go pop one on because there's so much else to watch right now. That's the thing. There's so much else to watch. Yep. Speaking of that, October 21st, we finally get The Peripheral coming to Apple Prime – or not Apple Prime. Talk about universe creep now.

Coming to Amazon Prime Video. It's the same cast for – or not the same cast, but the same showrunners from Westworld. So that'll be interesting. See how they pull that one off. I watched the trailer and it dawned on me that we both reviewed that book.

On the show. We did. And I remember nothing from the book that is in that trailer. I don't even remember what the book was about. I'm not entirely sure that it could have anything to do with the book. I mean, Foundation is not Foundation. True. That's true. At all.

Like, they use the name and they use the characters' names, but it's not Foundation. So, yeah, I don't really remember The Peripheral. I know I read it – or Count Zero. I know I read it, but couldn't tell you anything. I watched the trailer. It looked okay.

I don't know. We'll see. Okay. And this isn't based on Count Zero. This is based on that book, The Peripheral. Yeah, The Peripheral. No worries. No worries. They all blend together, like I said. They really kind of do. Some news about the Serial podcast. The charges have been dropped.

So that's a bit of an update because last time we talked about it, he was released. And now he's a free man forever. That's it. And no word on what's going to happen next in terms of the actual case itself. Apparently, there are some people of interest to the police.

But I guess we'll have to find out if there's a breakthrough podcast about it if we ever hear about it again. So – I wonder if he's going to actually sue the makers of Serial to get some of the money back so he can have some. I don't know. Would that be a good move to sue? I mean, to some degree, Serial is the reason he is a free man these days.

Sort of. Yeah, but he's got to eat. He's got to eat. That's true. We finished the session. All right. Amazing. Okay. It's one of those shows that I find very difficult to watch, but it's very worth it. So really enjoyed it.

Can't wait for the next season. New season is coming soon. Well, if you don't want to wait right now, you can watch The Murdoch's Empire of Influence on CNN. It's a seven or eight-part series. We're – I think number four is out right now, which I'm going to try and finish tonight after I watch She-Hulk.

It's a really good behind-the-scenes of The Murdochs, and it is eerily exactly like Succession. Well, shocking. Yeah. Yeah. Very surprising there. Werewolf by Night is out. It is yet another entry in the Marvel extended universe, I suppose, but it has nothing to do with anything Marvel and very genre-specific, very noir, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It's 50-some-odd minutes, and I was captivated by it. I thought it was clever. I thought – I enjoyed the experimentation, although you and I experimented a lot in the early days of the internet when we first got Adobe Premiere version 1.0 and put filters on things.

Their attempt at doing, like, an old-school filter, it was just, like, ridiculous. I was like, you guys could have made this look a little better than that, right? But I'm guessing it was done by kids that never saw, like, old-school movies. Probably. Probably. But it was very enjoyable. You should watch it, Jason.

I think you'd like it. Okay. I'll add it to the ever-growing queue. Yes, exactly. And speaking of the ever-growing queue, Somebody Feed Phil season 6 is dropping in a week, October – or five days from now, October 18th. Well, I better hurry up and finish season 4 because that's where I'm at.

I can't wait. I think, you know, a season now means, like, four or five episodes. But – Yeah, that's it. It's better than nothing. And my queue is basically pause right now because I'm in sports-orama world, Jason. I've got postseason baseball going on. Go Dodgers. I've got the UEFA Champions League.

And basically, we're going right into the Winter World Cup. So I don't – I think I'm done. It's just going to be all sports from now on until the end of the year. Okay. Well, you have to – at least for the next episode, you have to finish She-Hulk and Andor so we can go over those. Okay. We'll do that.

All right. And I got this funny story from a friend of the show, Bob Fogarty. Shane McGowan waved his willy at trains passing by when he lived at Bono's house. I saw this in the news too. I'm surprised it made it into the show, but it is funny. I'm a Shane McGowan fan.

Come on. It's funny. You know? I think it would be more funny if he waved his willy at Bono. Yeah. Well, he was trying to get people to think he was Bono, which I think was even better. With or without my willy. I saw this come through my inbox today from Eero that they were raising my rates on something, on the Eero security package.

And buried in there was a link to their new internet backup solution that will be available soon. And I like this. I like this. This will let you actually use, I think, the Eero Pro 6s, which is what I have, and set up a basically a phone connection or like a Wi-Fi hotspot that will automatically kick in if your main internet connection goes out.

Yeah. I found this fascinating today as I was reading this email on my phone because my internet was out. And I'm like, man, I would love to put my 5G phone into my Eero and be able to get my work done right now. Instead of sitting here unplugging it and plugging it back in, screaming at the spectrum. This has traditionally been like a business package, usually option for most Wi-Fi setups and things of that nature.

Like, we have that at our work. So if it goes down, it goes automatically to a Rogers, you know, you can do this sort of thing. So it's nice that they're offering this for home networks, but it's not part of the free package. You do have to pay for the Eero monthly to get that. Yeah.

And the bandwidth on your, you know, your other connections. So yeah, of course. Yeah. But it's just, it's nice that it'll be, I'll be able to use it on the one that I've got, you know? Yeah. I'm happy about that. Yeah. It's a good addition. I would argue it should be a free addition to the Eero setup, but you know, it's not going to be.

Nothing's free anymore, Brian. No. Especially features. Especially features. We got a whole bunch of people writing in about this news about putting AirTags and luggage, which I have successfully done once, but apparently the gig is up. Jason. Lufthansa is banning AirTags and luggage after passengers publicly shame it with locations of lost bags.

We got this from Vincent. We got this from Barrett. We got this from a couple other people as well. So yeah, it was, it was a great idea. It remains a great idea, but the airlines are pissed off about this because we're basically calling them on their bullshit and posting about it and saying, how can you say my luggage is lost?

I know exactly where it is or why you're saying my luggage was on the plane. I know it's back at the airport. I just left. Well, here's the thing. They said that they'd said that it was because of the Bluetooth signals were interfering with planes communications, which we all know was a lie.

Well, Lufthansa has laws are still on the books. Well, Lufthansa has now taken it back. Okay. Thanks to the public shaming. And they, they talked to the German aviation authorities and they confirmed that there's nothing wrong with it.

So get back to it. And Lufthansa, try and figure your shit out and find out where the bags are. So we're still good to go because the, uh, the FAA here in the States has already cleared it. So I think they were, I think Lufthansa was just trying to say, is there a way that we can make them not use these things?

Well, turns out now. Excellent. It's a, it's a, it's basically the perfect use for an air tag. Yeah, absolutely. Um, by the way, I just had to buy a bunch of batteries. All mine are dying this week. All those first gen air tags I got. Okay. I got battery notifications from all of them.

I will say though, that there is cheap, uh, you can get cheap replacement batteries by the 12 pack on Amazon. So they're like super cheap. Highly recommend that one. Yeah. Um, cause they used to be expensive and they're pretty cheap now. Uh, so this come through my email today too, uh, in DJI Mavic 3 news, they're, they're insane team climbed to the top of Everest and flew their drone.

They got it up to 30,289 feet, which is crazy that an off the shelf commercial drone that only costs, you know, less than a thousand bucks or around a thousand bucks will fly that high in that temperature, you know, with, with, um, atmosphere that that's that thin.

That's crazy. So, um, I know it's a publicity stunt, but, uh, definitely think it'll also. Yeah. I think they'll get a lot of good data out of it too, to actually make the, you know, make the drones better. Cause what would be cool is if you can sit on the ground and fly it up 30,000 feet to the top of Everest, take some pictures and fly it back down.

So you don't have to climb all the way up. That would be. I'm sure the FAA is going to be cool with that. It's Nepal and China. There isn't. But I'm just saying the ability for the drones to go that high in general. Yeah. Yeah. You can make them yourself and do that, I guess.

Right now. Yeah. If you're a terrorist. Or a hobbyist. You just be a hobbyist. With a 30,000 foot drone. I've been a hobbyist that likes to light my shoes on fire, Jason. That's my hobby. One of Google's hobbies, Project Starline is starting to get rolled out.

And I looked at this. I watched the video. It's basically what they call a 3D, you know, video conferencing booth. It does. It has some cool tech. It does like on the fly 3D modeling of your face. And so you can. But do they do legs? If you stand up, I guess.

Nobody stood up in the demo. So I don't know. Maybe not. Okay. Maybe they don't have legs. Maybe there's no legs yet. And I think it'd be great for prison visits for starters. You know, you don't have to go all the way to the penitentiary. Yeah. What better way to show how much you love the person in the joint than, you know, do a VR visit instead?

Yeah. By staying home. That's it. I've got a virtual shiv in this virtual cake. Seriously. Porn, obviously, if they can find the legs. But, you know, it is good tech. And it is great use for all those 3D TVs that somebody's got sitting in a warehouse because it uses those to actually give you the 3D effect.

Okay. But I feel like you could fake it with just, you know, high-res cameras in rooms that look identical because they kind of did that in their video. The rooms that they're in are like exactly mirrors of the other rooms, which gives you the sense that you're just looking through a mirror at somebody or, I mean, a glass window through somebody.

And, you know, I think that you could get almost 90% of that effect with just some cameras, like regular cameras. You don't need all the 3D stuff. But it's a, you know, it's kind of cool. It comes down to the price point. But, and if they can do more than like one or two people because the rooms are really small.

So, there may be some technical limitations. But it's kind of neat. We'll see how it plays out. You know, look, I'm in, I'm down with them trying something neat. Hey. As long as I can buy an NFT of the session when I'm done. If I had to do a virtual meeting online, I would rather do it with this than go into the metaverse.

I'll tell you that. Absolutely. No headphones, no headsets or headphones required. Yes. Google is rolling out some of their apps, some updates to their apps to work with the widgets on iOS 16, which makes me very happy. I want maps and I want the Google Assistant on my lock screen.

So, I'm looking forward to that because, I mean, Apple really needs to get rid of this, you know, Siri as a default voice assistant. They need to have an open voice assistant API, pretty please, with sugar on top. I would love that because I'm in a dual household where it's Amazon and Apple.

And I would love to have Alexa on my phone as a default. Yeah. Without having to go through the hoops that you have to get through. I just don't like Siri. I don't have Apple around the house devices. They're all Amazon. But I have Apple everything else. So, if I could actually just opt out of Siri and switch that over to Amazon and be able to interact with all my other devices directly, that would be unbelievably cool.

Yep. And handy. And handy. So, get on it, Apple. I know you listen. Sparkmail. My favorite email app has come out with version 3.0. Mm-hmm. Of course. And now it's got a subscription. Of course. And now it's got $60 a year for all of your devices, which isn't bad.

I mean, I've used them for so long that I really feel like I owe them at least a year's worth of premium support because it is a great mail app. Now, this 3.0 version is funky. It is – I'm finding a hard time getting used to it, but I'm starting to get the hang of it.

It is a – it's crazy. It's a crazy mail app. But I'm getting the hang of it. I'm getting the hang of it. I first put it on my phone and I turned off all the new features because I'm like, this is – what the hell is this? But now that I have it on my Macs too, I have to get the hang of it.

So it's interesting. I would say don't get it if you don't have at least an hour or two to spend figuring out how the damn thing works. Apple Mail is fine for me and I've got a deal with Outlook for work. So there you go. Oh, God.

I feel for your pain. Mm-hmm. 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, gentlemen. It's good to be back. Hello. So what's the skinny and or yes or no? So I am slowly but surely getting caught up.

I am three episodes in now. And as we record this, I think there are six episodes that are out there. I was speaking to Jason a little bit earlier about how my time has been taken up by various sports things. That should not be your excuse as a Baltimore Orioles fan.

Your October should be pretty free in general. That's true. Well, I don't know if you've noticed in the years that we've done this show together, but I'm not really a sports ball guy. So that is not what gets in my way.

It's just there are other shows that I'm catching up on right now. As I think I mentioned, I'm watching The Boys. I just started season two of that. And so it's just been hard to squeeze stuff in. It's just a busy time of year for whatever reason.

Yeah. So – but I'll get there. And I'm enjoying it. I think it's quite good. It feels like Star Wars, which to me is probably the most important thing. Also, I really like the soundtrack. Yeah, it's good. I like that a lot as well. Which I know is something when we first – when we all first started watching Mandalorian, we were a little skeptical as to whether or not we enjoyed the music.

But I think this one's really good. So that helps as well. Yeah, it doesn't have that Star Wars Western feel to it like The Mandalorian tended to. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, three episodes in. Seems like things are getting good. Things are starting to happen.

Yes. And so my whole family is enjoying it. Good. You guys better catch up quick to avoid spoilers because they're everywhere. Oh, speaking of that, I just have to rant really quickly. This – you know, the streaming media shows, they drop at midnight, right?

So Amazon Prime dropped the – I think it's the last episode if not the penultimate episode of the – whatever the Lord of the Rings show is called. Rings of power. Rings of power. So that dropped at midnight last night. In the morning, I open up my Apple News app and just kind of scan through headlines and all that.

And, you know, they put in a picture with a headline. And, you know, the show has been out, I guess, technically for 12 hours, although we are sleeping during those periods of time. And it's first thing in the morning. And one of the headlines for the – in my Apple News app is – and they show a big picture of the actor.

And they say, actor had no idea he would be cast as Sauron. Okay. And he would turn into Sauron. So now I know who the fuck Sauron is going to be, which is the big point of this fucking episode. So thanks, news. Don't have to watch that one now.

Yep. I'm curious in general, since you have both lived on the West Coast, is it harder to avoid spoilers as a West Coaster than an East Coaster? It definitely was when Facebook was a very big deal, right?

Like when everybody was on Facebook and I had a bunch of East Coast friends, I remember for Game of Thrones or things like that, it would be like I would just have to put my phone away until I watched the episode because all my East Coast friends would be posting about it, right? Yeah.

There's always that one friend who's like, I can't believe so-and-so died. Yeah, exactly. So it's a lot easier on the East Coast, but it's also a lot easier now that, you know, Facebook is – nobody's on it. And even if my friends did post, I would just see ads for shit that I don't care about, not their posts anyways.

Exactly. Yeah. I've curated my feed to get rid of anybody that's ever posted a spoiler. That's a defriending event. You know, I thought I made no bones about that. You are swift and heartless in your culling. Oh, yes. You post a spoiler, you are dead to me.

Right. Dead to me. Same with any news outlet that does – pulls that crap with the – like you had, Brian. Yeah. Cold forever. Uh-uh. I mean, you know, I get it. I get we're in clickbait world now and all news is clickbait news and even CNN is clickbait news.

But come on, people. The episode dropped at midnight last night. It was seven in the morning. And I – now that entire episode has been spoiled for me. It's great. Awesome. Fun times. Yeah. Well, I have a little bit of interesting follow-up on the – you guys remember the R-plate?

I do. Yes. It seemed cute and interesting and then I went, huh, now I have to subscribe for my license plate? Well, yeah. And it was $800 before. They've changed the pricing on it now. But it is now street legal in California. So I can actually go out and buy one if I wanted to.

But yeah, the pricing is a little pricey. You've got to pay $20 a month for 48 months. No. Right. Unless that covered the cost of my registration, which it doesn't. By the way, that's the – that's for the battery-powered version in which you will have to replace batteries.

And I'd imagine you would get a ticket if you did not notice your battery ran out and your license plate was no longer working. It is $24.95 per month for the hardwired version. I'm just thinking now we're in an era of firmware updates for license plates. Yeah, we are.

And EULA's. Yeah. I need a EULA for my license plate. But it's e-ink, so I'm guessing if the battery goes out, it's just going to stay. Like a Kindle will stay when the battery is dead. It can lock on a page. But the interesting thing that I thought was the extra use cases for it that they listed in this article.

Paying for tolls and parking. That's smart. That's – yeah. Okay. Identifying cars as legal for travel in HOV lanes. Okay. If only there were stickers for that now. Yeah. Yeah. Or windows that cops could look in. I don't know if we've solved that window problem.

Replacing special hashtags and license plates for people with disabilities. Hang tags. Hang tags. Not hashtags. Yeah. Not hashtags. I've been a tech news hell all morning. Hashtags is everywhere for me. No, that's actually a good one. Yeah. These are solutions in search of a problem.

Right. Yeah. These have all been dealt with already in a way that is not particularly onerous. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Now, but I like this one indicating that a car is in autonomous mode, which is the one I was going to get to. Which, for me, that's perfect because then I know to stay the hell away from that one.

I would actually basically just say it would be a self-selecting sample. If I saw a car that I knew had an autonomous mode and it had one of these fucking plates on it, I'd assume that would be on. You'd assume it was in it. Yeah. Right. Don't you think that it's going to be the Tesla drivers, the Rivian drivers, are going to be the first ones who are going to be all over this?

Well, not the Rivian drivers because all their trucks have been recalled. Exactly. That's true. They can't get to their license plates. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Good callback. Yeah. The first one that I saw was on a Tesla, though. I have a picture of it.

Oh, so you've seen one of these. Okay. Oh, yeah. I've seen them in the wild. They've been around my neighborhood for a while now because they've been out on the test here. But, of course, yeah, it was a Tesla that had the first one. Of course. I've yet to see one out here. Yeah. Because you guys are probably rational people as well.

The next one immediately triggers our standard catchphrase, what could possibly go wrong? Displaying a QR code that could work with an app for keyless entry. Uh-huh. Oh, yeah. That's going to go great. Now, the thing is they say that, you know, all the things that you can put on there have to be approved by the DMV and they go into a special list of approved sayings.

Right. How long is that going to last? Yeah. Come on. Hackers, start your engines. Come on. Yeah. And how many people are just going to take a Kindle and strap it to the back and just pretend it's that? Right.

Well, exactly. The poor man's R-plate. Yeah, exactly. What keeps somebody from taking just a slab of e-ink and putting it back there with a raspberry pie and making it say whatever it needs to say? Yeah, exactly. I think Brian nailed it. This is a solution in search of a problem.

I don't understand. I don't understand what this is for, really. Douchebags. For people with too much money. That's it. I guess. I mean, they say that this, oh, this will keep you from having to put stickers on your license plate and stuff like that.

I mean, I think those should be gone anyway. Not a hard problem. No, but also the, like, law enforcement, they all have license plate scanners now. Yeah. They're automated. They're not, I mean, yes, I suppose they're looking for an up-to-date sticker on your tag if they want a reason to pull you over.

But the cars are equipped with scanners now. That happens automatically. Yeah, it's no big deal. This is a silly product made by silly people, bought by even sillier people. Well, speaking of that, let's talk about…

This is a silly product. Here's another silly product for you. Apple's new AR headset or mixed reality headset. Some news came out that is kind of interesting. This is from some people who actually worked on it. They say that they're actually going to have iris scanning built into the headset.

So when you put the headset on, it will automatically log you in because it knows who you are. And then you can have, you know, different people use the same headset with different profiles. I'm like, okay, they can do this for a headset, but they can't do it for a damn iPad? Come on. Seriously.

I want multiple accounts on an iPad. Please. Oh, I see where you're going with this. Yeah, the multiple accounts thing is ridiculous. I mean, the iris scanning for a headset, that, you know, that makes sense to me. Like, why? It's right there anyways. That's cool. I get it. But yeah, let's roll out those multiple accounts on iPads because I share my iPad with my kid and I would like him not to be able to access the apps that I have access to.

And I'd rather not see the 7,000 game apps on my screen when I log in. I saw a different story about, I guess it was Meta's new headset and how many scanners it has that track your face movement and that there's privacy concerns about that.

Right. Oh, God. Well, I mean, I figure nobody's going to use it, so who cares? If you're strapping that thing to your face, I think it's game on at that point. Like, you know, okay, yeah, it's going to track your head movements. Yeah, you're wearing it on your head. What do you guys think of this in general?

Like, I have no interest in any sort of virtual thing from Facebook. No. But I think I might be – I certainly will check out something like this from Apple. Presumably, it would be – it wouldn't look stupid because it's Apple, but who knows?

Oh, I don't know about those bra headphones. Right. I mean, yeah, right. But I can see a use case for this where it could be helpful when you're out and about doing things and so on and so forth, but for AR instead of VR. But, like, what do you guys think of this?

Is it – are you intrigued? I'm not being a gamer, and gaming is the only thing that I think I would be interested in VR for anyways. So that's out for me. I like the idea of AR. I don't think I – I guess that if they just look like ski goggles and they didn't look totally douchey, I would try it, I guess.

I don't know. AR is cool. I like AR, but I also like the idea of just being able to hold up my phone and not walk around wearing something that makes me – you know, the Google Glass effect. I think that's going to be hard to shake where, you know, as soon as somebody showed up with Google Glasses, everybody went, God, what an asshole.

Yeah. What was it called? Glass holes. Glass holes. Yeah. That's it. Glass holes. So now you'll be an app hole. The only thing that gets me is that, you know, everybody is saying that they're going to cost around $3,000.

Which is insane. But, I mean, everything – well, not so much anymore because things are certainly – things have certainly changed in terms of pricing for electronics. But, I mean, we're all of an age where as soon as a new tech was announced, it was exorbitantly priced. And within five or six years, when people actually started to adopt and use them, they were reasonable.

But then again, phones are creeping up to $3,000. I was going to say, you know, and if this thing requires a phone, you know, you're looking at a $5,000 outlay by the time you're done with tax and shipping. Yeah. Right. I suspect that the heavy lifting is going to be done on the phone from a processing point of view.

So that makes sense to me. I did see an ad today for a product called Nreal Air AR glasses, which was on Amazon. And they look just like regular glasses. Here, I'll put a – I'll just put this in here so you guys can see it real quick.

And they're only $379 or so. And I was impressed just with they don't look stupid. Yeah, I mean, they don't look stupid. And they look like they could work. And who knows what – you know, I haven't seen a review.

I haven't seen a demo or anything like that. But if this is the direction we're headed and to see a product like this available to buy for under $400, that's interesting. Yeah. They're not offensive looking. This is something I would consider wearing for sure.

Yeah. If they did anything, that's the real trick. I mean, are they actually any good? Probably not, but yeah. Is it just a display that you can see through? Yeah. Yeah. So they're at – the rating is due to 3.5 – or 3.7 out of 5 out of 26 ratings.

So not really a hot seller at this point. Also not available in Canada. I cannot get them shipped here. Maybe we could work something out. Yeah. Beat you at the border, Dave. Yeah, exactly. That heavily guarded Canadian border.

I'll bring the VR glasses. I'll bring the poutine. I was going to say maple syrup, but that works too. And a friendly beaver. Well, that's a different story altogether. I'm Brian Schummeister and this is my friendly beaver.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. OK. Moving on. Moving on. Please, please. Yeah. I'm going to try and save you on that one, Dave. Apparently, Papa John's has been snooping on their website visitors and there is now a lawsuit coming against them for that.

They used some cookie rewind crap on the website so they could – or session rewind so they could watch everything that you do and then go back and rewatch it later and kind of do customer analysis on it. So, apparently, some people are not very happy about that. Some people have a lot of time on their hands.

Yeah. Well – I mean, does it really bother – does it bother you, Jason, the idea that a website would be able to analyze the clicking that you did on it, which they can actually do anyways? This is just – You can do that from the log files. Exactly. I was about to say that this just makes it somewhat easier for – you need less educated IT folk to be able to do the tracking and come up with the analytics here.

It doesn't really bother me too much, but, you know, Papa John's definitely has an image problem, so this isn't the best thing right now. The one thing that bothers me with this sort of thing is when they record things that you type in that you did not enter.

Right. So, you put something in a text field, but you don't enter it, and they record that anyway. To me, that's – So, when you're typing in pepper roe, I want mushrooms instead, then they can start to target you with more pepperoni ads. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a good point too is that what information are they getting from you on a Papa John's website?

I think Dave is more saying, how do I launder all the money? Oh, shit. This is the wrong window. I was ordering a pizza. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Right. How do I hide a dead body? Oh, no, no, no. Large cheese. Large cheese. Yeah. Yeah.

No, that stuff is creepy. And we know that Facebook has been doing that for years. We talked about that probably six years ago. Well, I mean, I remember there were like, you know, all the tracking, mouse tracking on websites and where the mouse went and all that stuff was being recorded.

I just assume that stuff happens on most websites at this point. So, I'm not particularly bothered by it. But, yeah, I agree. Like, the one thing that is kind of a meh is what Dave mentioned. But anything else, I think, who gives a shit? Yeah. Yeah. I guess so. Whatever.

I think this is – I think this is one of those ridiculous lawsuits personally. Yeah. I agree. I put a quick little thing in here. I saw a note come by from our own Maryland attorney general to beware of cars that may have come from the Florida hurricane Ian floodplains.

So, whenever something like this happens, there's a bunch of cars that are damaged and they get totaled. But then, you know, people buy them up at auction and they scrub the history of them and then they send them around the country to sell them to poor unsuspecting people. So, just a heads up because the used car market is still a little wacky right now.

So, people are trying to gobble up whatever they can and this will, you know, literally flood the market with a bunch of cars. So, it's a nice little document with things to look out for beyond just a musty smell inside the car.

And a dead alligator in the glove box. Right. Right. Exactly. I pretty much have a don't buy anything from Florida blanket policy. Uh-huh. So. Yeah. No more lightsabers for you. I guess not. I can get the ones in anonime.

Yeah. There you go. So, finally, unrelated to anything security related, I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole this week and I thought I would share some thoughts with you fine gentlemen and our poor unsuspecting audience. I don't know why.

I was thinking about patter songs, which are songs like Trouble from The Music Man and I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General from Pirates of Penzance. So, a patter song is a song where the lyrics are spoken, but patter songs are very fast, which is what Trouble is and, you know, Modern Major General, they're very fast.

And so, part of what you're impressed by is the speed at which the person can perform the song. But that got me thinking about spoken word songs, which is other than the entire genre of rap. I was going to say this is white people rap here. Well, you know, I was going to ask that question because that did cross my mind is that would you consider these songs to be rap?

But I guess that's the same thing as saying would you consider a country music song to be a rock and roll song? They're just different genres. So, they're speaking, but it's not rap. In fact, these things tend towards country. This, unfortunately, just leads directly to my least favorite band in the history of the entire known universe and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Ah, yes. Give it away, give it away, give it away. Which is all just... Give me my Grammy, please. Okay. All right. Well, so a couple of songs I was thinking about here. Of course, Big John by Jimmy Dean.

You guys know that one? Sausage Guy? Big Bad John. Big John. Yep, I know that song. It's a great song. So, that song went to number one on the charts back in the 60s. And I was thinking, has there ever been a more sparse number one song? Because, other than Jimmy Dean talking, there are a set of bongos, a bass player.

There's a hammer sound, like a hammer, like somebody, you know, I've been working on the railroad kind of clanging sound. And the backup singers. That's it. There's basically no band on this. Right. Good song, though. Get stuck in your head. And then that led me to the song Ringo by Lorne Green.

Do you guys know this one? I do. Yes. All right. Jason, you don't know Ringo? Not off the top of my head, no. Okay. Well, it's kind of a story of two cowboys out in the West. Well, it is Lorne Green. Yeah, it's Lorne Green.

It wasn't going to be two Cylons. Yeah. I believe this is off of his Ponderosa album, which has, it's all these sorts of songs. But, you know, it's like, you know, I went east and he went west. It's that sort of a thing. Two guys who, they save each other's lives and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But, anyway. Oh, man. I want to deep fake a Lorne Green country album that is all about Battlestar Galactica now. That would be great. We can fake his voice. We have the technology. Yeah. Why not? That led me to a song called Teddy Bear by Red Sovine, who I was not familiar with before I heard this song.

Evidently, he was riding the 1970s wave of CB radio songs. Great time to be alive. Yeah. This may be a contender for the worst heart-rending saccharine sweet song, stealing the record from that horrible Christmas shoes song.

This is the story of a poor crippled boy, and that's what they call him in the song, a poor crippled boy whose father recently died. His father was a trucker and he died trying to make his way through a blinding snowstorm. And so the little boy takes to his father's CB radio in his loneliness and reaches out to the truckers.

And as you're listening to it, kind of like Christmas shoes, it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse for this boy. I have vivid memories of hearing that off the radio as a kid, sitting in the backseat of the car on long road trips with my parents.

Love it. Is that right? I was not familiar with this song, but it is awesome in its awfulness. Yes. And then, of course, that reminded me of the classic Convoy by C.W. McCall, which was another number one song.

They made a movie out of it, even. To this day, I know all the lyrics to that song because I had the 45 and I think I probably wore it out. Same here. Same here. Did you have the board game, though? Oh, no, I did not. The Convoy board game was fantastic.

It had a little plastic bear in the air. It was awesome. Really? Yeah. Check eBay for that. Yeah. Worth noting that C.W. McCall was not actually a real person. He was an ad man who decided to jump on the CB radio bandwagon with this song and made a good song.

Got to say. Got to like, I like it. So anyway, that's a little side trip I went down with spoken word songs. We'll have the links to all these in the show notes. And curious if our listeners have any favorite spoken word songs as well.

I have just added my own once you were, as soon as I saw that you were talking about spoken word. It is my favorite spoken word song of all time. Mostly appropriate for the holidays and it is delivered exactly as you would expect it to be by William Shatner and it's Good King Wenceslas.

And it is a joy. Yeah. No, that's great. How could we have forgotten William Shatner? I mean, his spoken word presentation of Rocketman is famous, of course. I am not familiar with Good King Wenceslas. It is nowhere near as good as Good King Wenceslas.

This is the finest. This is, this is the jewel in the crown of the Shatner spoken word. Au revoir. When William Shatner does a spoken word song, it is forever his. It is. All right.

Well, I think that's enough. That's all I've got this week. I'll talk to you guys next time. Bye. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Thomas, Pedro. I don't know if it's George or Jorge.

I've heard it pronounced both. Yeah, I'm going with Jorge. James and Jocelyn. And we've also got Jared who wrote a message. Brian, I watched Thor Love and Thunder the whole way through as well. That movie was the biggest dumpster fire I've ever seen. I only kept watching it just to see how bad it could get.

I was laughing the entire time because just when I thought it couldn't get worse, it would. Oh, I'm right there with you, Jared. I couldn't, it was a train wreck I couldn't take my eyes away from. And the final scene was just like the piece de resistance. It was amazing. Now I'm curious now.

Now I kind of want to watch it just to see how bad it is. It is so fucking horrible. I mean, I know you don't drink anymore, Jason. Get yourself some near beers. Sit down with your weapon of choice, whatever it may be these days, and just watch the tragedy unfold.

It's unbelievable. Lagunitas Hop. It's the best. All right. Over at PayPal, we've got Ralph, Mark, Miles, Sherry, Linda, and Natalie. Thank you all so much. And over at the tip jar, we've got Theodore, Ann, Andrew, and Jeff. Thank you all so much. And no reviews this week.

No reviews this week. Oh, well. But a big happy birthday to friend of the show, MXV. And I'm very glad you're still around, brother. Me too. We've lost enough people, including far too young, Angela Lansbury. Yep. Good run at 96. 96. I mean, she was in everything.

Everything ever. And I've got to say, I still, her show was great. Murder, She Wrote. I loved that thing when I was a kid. I would watch it with my grandma. Great show. Great show. Great show. My favorite thing she did was Sweeney Todd from 1982.

She was awesome in that. That would not be the Johnny Depp version. No. This was the 1982 version. This would be the good version. It's hard to find, but I found a link to someone who has pieced it together on YouTube. So if you want to go watch it on YouTube in, you know, stops and starts, it's pretty good.

There's only a couple of great songs in there, but it was fantastic. I've got to say, her voice rings around a lot recently because Beauty and the Beast. We're going through the Disney movies with a kid right now. Beauty and the Beast is in full right now. So it's great to hear her voice.

She will, I guess, be missed, but she'll live forever because she was, again, in everything. Everything. She'll always be around. So until next time, I'm Brian Shulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoyed the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help 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 574. 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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