576: It’s a Meat Problem

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. Before we dive in, Brian, I would just like to talk for one second about how we were so, so unbelievably right about Kanye West. Oh, this could take the whole show.

Kanye West. Come on. Like, we kicked him out of Moron of the Week seven years ago. I kicked him out of Moron of the Week because I was starting to feel bad about it. Like, you could tell something was up with this dude. Yeah.

Like, it wasn't just agent provocateur bullshit anymore. Like, something is seriously wrong with him. And I didn't want to keep harping on it. And I didn't want to keep bringing his name up. And I didn't want to keep, not that, you know, not that our podcast is moving the needle culturally in any way, shape, or form whatsoever.

But, you know, I just didn't even want to give him the airtime anymore because I was tired of his shit seven years ago. Yeah. Yeah. And now it's just gotten over the top. But I just wanted to say that we put a nail in that coffin a long time ago.

So, put one up in the W column for us is all I'm saying. We have lots of those. Nope. Nobody gives us our just due for that. But we have lots of Ws. Very few Ls. Yeah. We do. We do. And speaking of Ws, we have another one coming from TechCrunch where they say, it's time to admit self-driving cars aren't going to happen.

We also did that about seven years ago. Yeah. This comes from Daryl Etherington. Etherington. Nice name. I am Daryl Etherington. Harvey Ben from Jensen. Jensen. Jensen. The greatest movies of all fucking time.

100%. So, this guy just says, hey, it ain't going to happen in our lifetime. And we're just like, yeah, duh. Yeah. Yeah. No, he cites the Argo AI story that you're going to cover when we get to end the news.

But I'm like, dude, yes, we know it's not going to happen in our lifetimes. Because you know what? Cars can't do it. I don't care what Elon says. They can't. They can't fucking do it. In incredibly controlled circumstances.

And again, the only way this will ever happen is not in a mixed road system. It has to be a controlled road where there are only self-driving cars in a loop, all connected to each other with no possible variables. Brian, I'm going to tell you why that won't even work.

And I'm going to explain this to you. What? We can't fix bridges. We have no money for infrastructure. What are we going to do? No, no, no. Brian, I'm going to explain this to you in terms that even you can understand. Oh, thanks. You grew up at Disney. You have been around all of the rides at Disney.

I have also been around all the rides at Disney for over 50 years. You know what I can do at Disney? I can take one of the cars that are on the tracks that you're not supposed to be able to actually get off the tracks because it's a closed system.

It's a closed loop. But I know how to take that car off the track with a shimmy shake to the left and to the right. And you can jump one of those little cars that they had for, I can't even remember what it was called at Orlando.

I mean, I know they have the cars ride now here in California land, but you could take those cars off the track if you were clever. So, I don't even think a closed loop system is going to matter because hackers. Yeah, well, there's that as well.

So, yeah. There's a million reasons why they're never going to work, and we've talked about it ad nauseum on this show. It's never going to happen. It's nice that the rest of the world's coming around to this. You know, Brian, we figured this out when we were teenagers. And Disney figured this out when we were teenagers.

The world needs to move to the Wedway People Maker or Mover, whichever one you want. Disney offered to build the whole goddamn thing throughout L.A., and they said, no, thank you. Yeah, well, I mean, at that point, that was when Goodyear was getting rid of all of the public transportation.

So, that tracks, you know. Yep. Anyway, follow up on Shane McGowan. He does have his art thing going on in London, and he's apparently almost sold out of everything. I'm really concerned you keep talking about him. Why?

The GOG curse. He is not a very healthy man. That's all I'm saying. God damn it, Brian. Why did – no, what? No, you have – you're the Greg Brady of the curse right now. You have instantiated the Hawaiian hate idol.

If Shane McGowan goes down in the next week, it's on you. It's on you. I'm not sure how many, like, late or early 70s references we can shove into follow-up, but we're doing a very good job so far. What do you mean Greg Brady Hawaiian idol reference is something that most people won't know?

Come on. I'm just saying. Yep. Okay. Anyway, his show is doing well, and he's selling stuff out, but yeah, he's not a healthy man, and if he dies within the next week, that's on Brian. Just saying.

It'll be my fault. And I just love this next one. Does faking a smile make you happier? The latest findings are in. And the latest findings are no. What I particularly loved about you putting this in is I saw – I didn't click on the link.

I just saw the headline that you put in and, you know, the fact that the study that you found, the latest one that's come out, says no. So, at least six times this week, through Twitter or whatever feeds, social media, I saw people posting the study about fake it till you make it.

Smiling will make you happy. And that is the internet in a nutshell. Yep. That's pretty much it. Eggs are good. Eggs are bad. Smiling's good. Smiling's bad. No. No real answers anywhere for anything. No. Except for the fact that Kanye needs help, and we will never have a self-driving car.

In the news. It's official, Brian. Elon's in the birdhouse. The chief twit is in the house. He's in the birdhouse. Oh, shit.

It's about to get real. It's about to get real. Elon has taken the reins. Well, you know what I really love about this? He has actually not written the check. So what I propose all of us do tomorrow is announce that we're buying a company, walk in without paying, and just take over.

Okay. Okay. Because he has not written the check yet. Oh, I see. I thought it was done. I thought the deal has been closed. I don't believe it has. I think, you know, I think it's just like, okay, we're going to close this. I'm just going to walk in now.

Bye, guys. Okay. Well, I'm going to tell you why I believe it has been closed, because he has fired Parag Agrawal, Ned Segal, Vijaya Gade, and Sean Ejit. That comes down to the CEO, the CFO, top legal and policy executive, and general counsel all out the door who were literally escorted out of the building.

So I think he has signed the check. I really think he has signed the check. Wow. You know, they must cash out checks for billionaires a lot faster than they do for the rest of us, because I know for me it's like a three- to four-day waiting period. Pretty sure he has – I think he has an in with the banks to fast-track that shit.

But the fact that they were removed from the building is interesting, and the fact that he has spent the last two days walking around with, for some reason, the fucking kitchen sink, but also telling everybody, no, I'm not firing 75% of the staff. I'm firing 80% of the staff.

Get the fuck out. No. But – He did post his manifesto. Did you read that? I have not read his manifesto. Just so you know, he's doing this for the betterment of humanity whom he truly loves. Fuck you, pedo guy.

Well, to be fair, I mean, 75% of humanity are probably his offspring at this point. That's true. That's right. Get this guy a fucking condom, please. Get this guy a condom. Yeah. So, all right. Well, you know, whatever.

I did see some Sturm und Drang online. You know, the normal type of people that you would expect to whine about, we're going to leave, are saying they're going to leave, and they're probably not going to leave. And we'll see incremental change. I mean, obviously, we're going to see a lot of change in terms of the employees.

There's going to be a lot of change. Structure, but actual, like, physical – well, first off, we know Trump's back on. So, that'll be great. Well, we don't. We don't, actually. He's waffled on that. He is. Yeah, he's waffled, but the last time the maple syrup side was up on him coming in.

So, we'll see. Well, tomorrow's another day with the troll-in-chief. That's true. You know, so we'll figure it out. I'm warming up my Mastodon server at this point because, god damn. You know? Well, I mean, what's left at this point?

Facebook is a wasteland. Instagram is tits and ads. And Twitter's going to become a fucking hellscape. So, I mean, we wanted social media gone. This is my dream. You forgot about Snap. Come on. What about Snap?

Oh, Snap. I don't know. I still don't even – I don't even know. Do they still even have – do they have an interface? No. Okay. They do have an interface. It is god-awful, but they have – they are down – I think they're down to, like, 10 bucks a share at this point. Oh, Facebook. Jesus Christ. Like, okay.

Well, you know what? I'm actually – this is what I wanted. I wanted social media to die a fiery death. It is. Okay. I didn't know you did not – I didn't know that you were the guy who wanted to watch the world burn. No, just social media.

I think the world will get along quite well. Probably better without it. Oh, man. Yeah. I've been working all week doing shoots and videos and the new show, the boot-up show at 4 a.m. every day. I really don't care about social media anymore because I got shit to do.

You know? It's like when you're – when you actually have work to do, you don't care about social media as much, I found. Oh, I mean, I mean, you know, since I've started working full-time and I'm doing this podcast and I have a six-year-old and I have a wife and I have a new house that I'm constantly working on, I could give it – I don't have time to fucking post.

I don't care. I got time to post. I just don't got – I ain't got time to read. You know? That's – and that's what we always said it was. It was a broadcast platform, not a consumption platform. Yeah. So, yeah. All right. Moving on.

Ford CEO Jim Farley joined in on the company's Q3 earnings call and spoke at length about how senior management came to a decision that they would basically wind down their self-driving subsidiary, Argo AI. Argo! Fuck yourself.

The TLDR on this is we realized it's never going to work. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. It's estimated that more than $100 billion has been invested in the promise of Level 4 autonomy, he said during the call, and yet no one has defined a profitable business model at scale.

And let me add to that, the subtext there is nobody's made it work. Because if it worked, there would be a profitable business model at scale. It doesn't work. There is nothing. None. Zero. Zilch. No roadmap to get there.

Nothing. Nothing. You know what we've done with all of this technology at this point? We have come up with generative AI for art that gives people three arms. And what have we done with all this money? We've poured it into people's very rich, very lucky people that have worked at all these companies and made promises over the moon.

And they have made fantastically large amounts of money and will retire without ever having to worry about this or producing anything of value. Man, I wish... We fucked up. We did. We should be working on meta. We should be working on the metaverse. Like, we never would have been able to build this stuff.

We really should. We should actually... But the same thing has happened with the metaverse. Honestly, in NFTs, we should be... We should have been full in on NFTs. We have fucked up so, so amazingly, spectacularly badly. Right.

Because... So, let me just get back to the other bit on this thing that I found a little bit... Oh, there's more? Oh, yeah. There's more. Once we get past the fact that they basically... That Ford, one of the largest companies in the world that makes automobiles, has basically said there will never be self-driving automobiles.

So, we're shutting that down. What we do get into is the darker thing that's now going to happen because of this. They are giving up on L4. They are going to focus on L2 and L3. It is very important because they will own the connection because all these technologies are connected vehicles.

So, the ability to have a pipeline that collects data and makes the system better and better is the excuse for collecting data. We must own that. Basically, they've decided, we've given up on self-driving cars, but your car is now our major point of getting data about you.

So, they're now a social media network. Yeah, that's not good. Yes. That's bad. Yes. That's really, really bad. Okay. Well, okay. Way to drop the mic on that one. Yeah, that's not good. Yeah. So, basically, Ford is pivoting away from self-driving vehicles towards making sure that the car that you drive collects data about you at all points and times and sends it all back to Ford.

So, their new business is data mining. Fuck you. I'm so glad I have an unconnected vehicle at this point. Jesus. Oh, wait. No, it doesn't matter because there's an app for my car or my Jeep. It's not a car.

And that will probably send data back and to all the places I'm going, which is my office to my house to my office to my house. And sometimes a trade or jails in the liquor store. Yeah. That's great. But for everybody else, Jesus.

That's kind of a... I've been a Ford guy for my entire life. And now I'm just kind of embarrassed for Ford. It's a little bit of a hidden mic drop in that. You know, they start strong with the... You think the story is just about it's no more self-driving cars.

But then you realize that Ford is actually pivoting to becoming a data mining company. Yeah. We're just going to be Google. We're going to be Facebook. Yeah. Zuckerford. Zuckerford. That's what it's going to be. In continuing moving vehicle news, SpaceX has rolled out a costlier Starlink internet service that will work on moving vehicles now.

So if you are in an RV, if you've given up on life, and if you've become a digital nomad, as the kids like to say that they are these days... Okay. Okay. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Let's be honest, you can't afford a home. No. I'm going to tell you right now, you're not giving...

Okay, you threw out some shade at the beginning there. You said if you've given up on life and you want an RV. No. I think people with RVs have embraced life. If I could have an RV and drive around the country and meet everybody, see the people, see the world, I would be in on it. You can, Jason.

I can't. You can. I have... Brian, have you met my dogs? That is a choice you made. They will eat everyone. I cannot... I cannot leave my compound because Bam Bam will kill everyone around me. No. Well, Bam Bam will not live forever, so this could be your future.

So let me give you a brief one down of what you can have. Brian, Brian, if I came to you and said, hey, you know what? Your kid's not going to live forever. You might be free at some point. What would you say to me? You'd probably slap me in the face. I'm assuming that... So that was a fucking nasty comment, dude.

That was not cool. Okay. I retract that comment. Thank you. Now let me give you the rest of this stuff here. SpaceX has launched... Oh, take a chill. I know you don't think that my loves are as great as your loves. No, it's just, again, they are your loves, and I understand that, and I fully respect that.

However, you do use them as an excuse to not do anything. You could live in an RV with dogs. I believe I've seen many Instagram posts that have been shoved down my face of people that are living in RVs, and they have a plethora of pets. Not the same pets as mine, but that's okay.

Moving on. Let's go. Okay. SpaceX has launched a new variant of Starlink for RVs called Flat High Performance. This tells me he's been listening to us because he didn't name it anything it isn't. In fact, he named it nothing. Well, I think some engineer probably named this because the difference between this dish and the regular dishes is the fact that it is flat.

It is a high-performance dish because it doesn't need to have the motors that come with the standard Starlink dishes, which run about $599 compared to the $2,500 dishes for this one because it's got extra sensors in it so it can lay on the top of a truck or an RV.

Well, it has to lay on the top of the truck. That's also part of the point. You need to bolt this to the top of your vehicle. You don't get to just keep it sitting around anywhere. Right. And it costs five times as much. But you can do it while you're moving. So that's fine. That's fine.

I mean, because the $599 version requires a bunch of infrastructure because it does have a motor in it that actually tilts the dish to follow the satellites and things like that. This has a lot more sensors in it, but it's also a lot more weather resistant.

So it can take up to 175 degrees outside temperatures, but it also has snow removal features in it so it will heat itself up to get rid of snow to actually be able to see the satellites, as it were.

No, I think that if you can afford an RV in this day and age and you're off the grid, you haven't given up on life, you have actually won it life because you can afford to fucking do this because this is expensive stuff.

It is expensive. That's that's it is very expensive. Twenty five hundred bucks just for the basic dish and mount five hundred thirty five dollars a month, by the way, for the actual satellite Internet connectivity, which isn't which isn't bad when you look at the speed they have for being out in the middle of nowhere.

I'm like, if that's the way you're going to live. Yeah, it's actually competitive. Yep. And we got some more AI generated art news. I know that you're still playing around with that stuff. If you are, Shutterstock is the place to go. They are eager to embrace AI generated art.

As we've talked about in the past, there are a lot of companies that have not. Getty Images is completely banned. AI made images over copyright concerns and is even using filters to stop content from getting through. Google is keeping its tool private. They're calling it Imagen until they can find a responsible way to make the system available to the public.

That's never stopped Google before. I never stopped it before. So, yeah. So they will offer direct access to Dolly through the Shutterstock website and compensate creators whose pictures played a role in developing the technology through a new contributor fund. They also plan to pay royalties and artists when the AI uses their work.

Bunch of other stuff in here. Let me skip to the bit that got me a little bit questioning. Okay. Bring it on. They say in this article, this is the first major compensation-based deal of its kind and could help settle questions of whether or not AI-generated art is borrowed or stolen.

That sentence, first, it implies there is a deal for compensation and will settle questions. There isn't a deal. They actually, like, Shutterstock just said, we're going to put a bucket here and put some money in it.

And if somebody buys your art for Dolly, too, to use it for the actual, you know, the corpus of images that they're going to pull from, we'll give you a cut. That's what they're doing. This is... Well, like I said, this is supposed to help settle the questions, but they're...

And then the very next sentence in the article, there are lingering issues. It is not clear just how Shutterstock will pay creators. Does not feel like they are explaining the compensation-based deal or feels like they've settled any questions. No, no. Shutterstock has basically stepped on their virtual AI dick at this point because...

They've stepped on their Dolly. They've stepped on their... Yes. No, this is... There's nothing good that is going to come out of Shutterstock with this because, yeah, this is a... This is just a power grab because they looked at Getty and said, Getty is going to be...

You know, we're not going to do this because we don't know who owns copyright. We're going to leave them behind. We're going to take up the marketplace. We're going to take that space, Jason. Exactly, which is a deal with, oh, God, Dolly is run by OpenAI, I believe, who then has funding from Microsoft.

And there's a whole big story behind how the money flows behind this deal. But the fact that you cannot sell any generative AI artwork that is not built on Dolly on Shutterstock means that you have to use Dolly, which means that the whole deal just kind of, it turns into a flywheel to make them money.

I'm like, I'm on MidJourney. Why can't I sell my MidJourney stuff on there? MidJourney gives me copyright. They give me copyright approval on all the stuff that I generate there. And by generating, I mean typing some fucking words to make pictures.

It's so fucking stupid. And yeah, I just, this, this is one of those things where we're in the middle of a, I don't know if you'd call it a revolution, but it's just a bunch of really stupid shit right now making really crappy art that I don't know.

I mean, it's, the fact that Shutterstock actually gave them legitimacy, it just pisses me off. It's just a, it's a toy. It's fun. That's it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. That's all there is to it.

And eight years from now, we're going to be, we're going to be opening up a show going, remember when we used to talk about all this AI art shit and just being a toy? Yeah. Well, they've just blown billions of dollars on it and guess what? It's just a toy. It's just a toy.

Anyways, here's some news that I actually kind of like. The Apple SVP of worldwide marketing, Greg Josswiak, has confirmed that they will be complying with the EU's regulations and transitioning all of their products to USB-C connectors, at least in Europe.

We don't know anywhere else, but because of the way that they do their manufacturing and their supply lines, there's no way they're going to keep two separate things. So eventually all of our Apple products will be on USB-C to which I say, yay. Finally, fucking finally.

Finally, stop this bullshit with all these cables. I was the guy for years that said, I'm not going to get one of these new MacBook Pros because it's all USB-C and I need dongles and dongles and dongles. Now, I don't need dongles. I just need USB-C connectors.

So I successfully navigated that, that entire system because I kept all my 2017 and 2018 MacBook Pros because they had ports, which we like ports. Yes, we do. We like ports and we like standardized cables.

And now I have the 14-inch M1 MacBook Pro, which is the greatest computer I've ever owned in my entire life. And it has ports. It has an SD card reader on it. It's fucking awesome. I love it.

It's got an HDMI port on it. Oh my God, thank you to the ghost of Johnny Ive. Don't fucking die in a fire, Johnny. But I love this thing. So it's nice. And now I'm on team USB-C. So it's time. It is time.

How many iPads do you have that have lightning connectors on them anymore? I'm guessing zero because all mine are all USB-C now. Yeah, they're almost all USB-C. I mean, I've got a pretty old MacBook Air. That's still got some. No, it's all USB-C. Yeah, we're good.

Anyways, Spotify launched its audiobook business last month with 300,000 titles, but is now saying that Apple is engaging in anti-competitive behavior that is impinging the new business, the company wrote in a blog post. It said that Apple rejected its audiobook pricing system three times due to a violation of its rules.

Sorry, purchasing system. To comply, it had to follow the fucking rules that Apple told them. Yeah. And? That's the story, Jason. I know. Spotify is pissed. Yes. No. If you play by the rules, they let you play on the platform.

If you don't play by the rules, they won't. Spotify is angry that they tried to not follow the rules three times by submitting their process, and Apple said, that's not the rules. If you follow the rules, you can do it. And they don't want to follow the rules.

Yep. Pretty much. What particularly gets me is this statement. With our audiobook's launch, Apple has once again proven just how brazen it is to be willing to be with its App Store rules, constantly shifting its goalposts to disadvantage their competitors, said Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, while millions of musicians lined up behind him with pitchforks saying, fuck you.

Yeah. Seriously. It's just like, uh, no. Sorry, Daniel. Uh, there are rules. You have to follow the rules. I know you're fighting them on every front, and you're trying to bring this out as part of your, you know, your pitchfork-laden, you know, rant against Apple.

But guess what? Everybody else has to follow the rules. It's their platform. You know what else there used to be rules for? There used to be rules for what you had to pay musicians for when you streamed a song. Who broke those rules?

BMI kind of set those, right? Yeah. Who broke them? Daniel Ek. And, uh, the labels had to come back and say, well, you're breaking the rules anyway, so what can we get from you? So fuck you. You break rules too. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love. From beauty and fashion to home, culinary, and outdoor living.

Shop now at QVC.com.

Media Candy. Brian, I found a website called Internet Radio. Very clever name. And they have music from 15,212 radio stations. I would like to, for the record, state that radio should be put in air quotes.

Yes, it should. It's internet radio stations. It is internet broadcasting of terrestrial radio stations. Yes. No, 90, I would say probably 80% of those are not terrestrial radio stations. They're actually just internet radio stations that have spiraled up.

Oh, so it's a lot of pirate radio stations. Yes. Okay. To which nobody's getting paid. Oh. Oh, so you're still thinking about the musicians. Well, I do work in the music industry. Fuck those guys. Fuck those guys. They're done. It's a pretty good resource.

They're like web developers. They're going to be hanging out at the same bar going, we used to have jobs. Pretty much, yeah. It's a pretty good resource. There's a crap ton of stuff in there. So any genre of music you could ever think of that you wanted to listen to, you're definitely going to find. I didn't have any of like the main radio stations that I would like to get that have been geo-blocked through tune-in or whatever, which is a pain in the butt if I want to listen through my Amazon Echoes.

I thought you had a VPN built into your house. But then I would have to switch them to the VPNs and I don't want to switch them to the VPNs because I like the local news I get if I just on the normal thing. It's just a pain in the ass. Moose hits child on way to class.

Why is KROQ HD2 geo-filtering? Why? What do they care about in Canada listening? That makes no sense. ASCAP and BMI, probably. Probably. Actually, that's true. Yeah. I'm like, you want to go back to the governing bodies about who gets paid for music?

Those are the guys that are saying that you can't listen to it in Canada. So just saying. It's totally going to be me. Come on. It's just me. Anyway, I think it's a cool site. So link is in the show notes. Check it out. I got this one from the Boing of the Boing.

Brian Eno discusses his latest album, Art as Simulation and the dangers of premature sheen. Okay. Is he referring to his hairline? His new album is called Forever and Ever No More. And it's brilliant, by the way. I listened to a little bit of it.

You got to be in the mood. I'm just saying. Oh, yeah. Well, that's all Brian Eno. You got to be in the mood. You don't throw in music for airports when you're downing tequila shots. No, you don't. Actually, that's a very good point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that you need absinthe and maybe some quaaludes for that one.

Yeah. No, it's Brian Eno. You know, it is definitely a dish best served when you're alone trying to figure out what is wrong with the universe. That's pretty much what it comes down to. It sounds great, but I need to listen to it when I'm in the right mood.

Yeah. The interview, though, because I am more curious about him as an artist and his process. So the interview itself, it's a 22-minute interview with New Zealand DJ Zane Lowe. You can check that out. It's actually a really good interview.

The music, I need to revisit when I'm in the proper mood because it definitely did not inspire me at the time that I listen to it. I have talked about many times on the show my old friend Andy Preboy, who used to be the lead singer of Wall of Voodoo after the main guy.

You've met Andy. You've been to his shows. We went to White Trash Wins Lotto together. Yeah. After my stroke, I have decided to reach out to old friends that I have maybe wronged in the past and did not leave. That's going to be a long list, man.

It's a very long list. It's a very long list. And I reached out to Andy Preboy, who was one of my best friends back in the 90s and early 2000s. And we did websites together. He created the Third World Food Reviews on some of our favorite websites.

And he also did, like I said, White Trash Wins Lotto, which was on Conan. And we saw it at the Roxy many times. I reached out to him and he graciously accepted my apology. That's nice. The only one I would like to add.

And that's why he's in the show notes. I have reached out to probably 50 people and apologized for my behavior over the years. One person has accepted my apology and it's Andy Preboy. But the reason I'm putting this in here is because Andy has a new album out called One in One Make Three, Forgotten, Abandoned and Unfinished Songs from 1979 to 2021.

Fantastic album. These songs were either abandoned or, you know, just left on the side of the road. It's awesome. Andy is a fantastic musician and just, you know, go check it out. Click on the link in the show notes and listen to some of his stuff.

He's got he's got decades of great music that I just love. And the fact that he has forgiven me gives him a lot more gravitas in my book is all I'm saying. All right. I will check it out. I do like his music.

The Peripheral is now out on Amazon Prime Video. Brian, have you watched any of it yet? No, I got to be honest. I've watched the trailer and nonplussed really. I watched the first episode and a little bit of the second episode and I was watching it, which I'll talk about in a second on my new Amazon Fire TV 75 inch Omni Series 4K UHD smart TV with Dolby Vision hands free with Alexa.

Did you watch it from your neighbor's house? God damn, this TV is good. This TV is so good. My friend Steve came by yesterday when we were done filming in the studio and we watched the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan.

That one does not actually hold up like a modern TV show that was shot in ultra 4K HD HDR blah, blah, blah. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Where you can see the blackhead on the coming out of the pore on somebody's nose.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There are settings that come with modern TVs that have that, you know, like super HD look like the 60 frames per second, the, you know, the motion swishy swish stuff. I watched a little bit of the peripherals episode one with that shit turned on.

It was so unbelievably disconcerting that I'm just like, where's the settings button? Where's the settings button? And then I turned it back to normal mode for old people who cannot handle that kind of stuff. But here's what I'm going to say about the peripheral.

The first episode, the pilot, is a little slow in parts. I don't, like I said on the previous episodes, I don't remember the book at all. Right. But at the end of episode one and the beginning of episode two, I was so screaming at my TV, yelling, fuck yeah!

So I'm going to tell you that I'm in. I'm in with the peripheral at this point. It was, it hooked me at the end of the pilot and brought me into episode one. And I am just, I like, I just want to get off this show so I can go watch the rest of it on this motherfucking giant ass TV.

It is now up to over $1,000 to buy this TV. When I bought it, it was $800. So I would wait for it to go back on sale. But even to $1,000, it is a 75-inch TV that is just fucking gorgeous. There is no place in my house I could put that.

It's too big. It is too big. We actually measured, like we have, you know, like over the fireplace in our living room, we have the little, you know, whatever you call that. I don't know the word. So we measured it and it's like six inches too short to put the TV on.

So it's staying here at the office. And half the people are like, it made me nauseous because it was too close. And the other people are like, oh my God, this is the greatest TV of all time. So I would like to mention that the people that thought it made them nauseous were women.

The people who thought it was awesome were men. So- Men thinking about watching porn. Yes. I would not want to watch porn on this. I'm sorry. I have seen a lot of porn. I've worked in the porn industry and I will not watch porn on this ever.

But I will say that the biggest downfall of this television is the fact that it is an Alexa TV. That it isn't an Amazon TV. I am going to hook up my Apple TV 4K to it and I will use that as the interface.

Because the interface for the TV is fucking terrible. Yep. Absolutely fucking terrible. There is nothing good about Amazon's UI designers, their UX designers. Anything about that is just garbage.

Outside of the fact of the constant ads. Constant ads. Ads, ads, ads, ads, ads, ads, ads for something that you paid for. I turn the TV on. I want to get to what I go to and there are 17 ads. Like I'm watching the peripheral.

I pause it. I go to the bathroom. I come back. The TV has turned itself off. And now I have to turn it back on and then navigate through all the menus to get back to the show that I was watching. I can't just turn the TV back on and hit play because it doesn't remember where I was.

Yep. It is awful. I'm sorry. By design. Software designers suck. No, it's done on purpose, Jason. That is Amazon's business model. Well, that part sucks. Yeah, I agree. As a TV, it's fucking great though.

I'm just telling you, it's a great TV. I think you need to buy a bigger house, Brian, because you want this TV. No, I've got a TV that's big enough for the space that I have. I can't sit any further away from the TV. It is as big as I need it to be. I applaud you and I'm glad that you have this.

What are you rocking right now? A 65 or a 55? A 55. You got a 55? Yeah. I can't drive 55. Just saying. It's the worst Sammy Hagar I've ever heard.

All right. That's compared to Sammy Hagar, which is pretty fucking awful anyway. Well, Sammy, it's a low bar. Yep. It's a low bar. The real one is very low. Yeah. Anyways, I threw this in here because we've talked about Doctor Who in the past and I keep talking about, I guess I should get into this at some point.

And you've given me starting points that I should go to and I probably never will. But just so people know, future Doctor Who seasons will air on Disney+. The BBC and Disney have announced a deal. So outside of the UK and Ireland, it will be streaming on Disney+. Disney's happy about this because it was looking for established brands to bolster its streaming platform as the world's longest running science fiction fantasy series with its own global fan base.

So that'll actually be pretty big if you're not already, you know, in the UK where you just get it on the BBC and their streaming platform iPlayer. They didn't, I didn't see anything in this article about this. They're just talking about the new stuff. I'd assume they would try to get the rights to.

Oh, you don't know where the archives are going to land. The archives. Yeah. One would assume that Disney Plus would want to get that because, I mean, talk about a treasure trove of content. If you're in Doctor Who, you've got, like, fucking, you know, 50 plus years. 60 years of shit.

60 years. Yeah. So we'll see what happens with that. But I think I've just decided that I am okay with never watching Doctor Who. I think I'm fine. You know what? You're right. You're absolutely right. You don't have to. No. I gave up on Doctor Who after David Tennant left.

He's coming back. I tried. He's coming back, Jason. There's all kinds of Doctor Who news. As soon as I clicked on this story, I was being fed ads left, right, and center. David Tennant's coming back as Doctor Who. He's not going to come back as a doctor. He's probably come back for a special.

Whatever. Like, one of those things, you know? Like, I've seen those. I don't know because I've never watched. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But you don't have to. I'm not going to. It's a really poorly written kids show. I mean, I know I'm going to get letters.

Brian at GrumpyOldGeeks.com if you want to send them. So we got a note from somebody who didn't actually leave their name and says, Hey, guys, I noticed your Discord link on GOG.show appears to have expired.

Also, can F off that recapture shit? Jeez, surely there's a better way. Cheers. And I put the link into our GOG Discord. It has not expired. It still works. We actually had somebody on Twitter say that our link wasn't working as well.

Might be the same dude. I think it might be the same dude, but it also might have been like a downtime on Discord because it works just fine. I've tested it on different computers that had no logins to Discord and it still says, Hey, you want to join? Sure.

Come on in. All right. We're fine. It lives. It lives. I saw this one over at Reddit and I was just like, oh, I always wanted to know about this machine. So PoisonWafa3 on Reddit, he got one of the 2013 cache servers from Netflix that they used to put into the ISPs that they would.

So it was kind of like they would send these things out to all the ISPs around the country so they could get like, you know, the, the most up-to-date content from that machine in their data center. And I was always like, it's one box. How much shit can you fit in one box?

Well, now we know. And it is 262 terabytes of data in one box. And I'm like, they've come a long way from mailing DVDs.

Let me tell you. And this was 2013. This is 10 years ago or nine years ago. So imagine how much they can fit in these fucking boxes at this point. I'm sorry, but 262 terabytes is a lot of movies.

That's a lot of movies. Yep. All right. Moving on. Uh, Spark Mail 3.0. I've been using this for a while now. Um, I like it a lot. The biggest problem I have is they change all of the key commands that you're normally used to doing.

So command R does not reply anymore. Uh, there's a lot of different things around there that, um, are annoying. I love it when programs do things like that, where, you know, the obvious thing like command R, which used to be replied now becomes delete.

That's, that's fun. Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. No, I have found that command Z is now my new friend because I will just start typing. I'll hit command R and start typing. And all of the keys that I'm hitting after that have some other effect on all of the emails and all the email chains that I've had for the past two years.

So it's really fucking annoying. Um, once you figure it out though, then it works great. Um, I've gotten through, you know, a couple thousand emails that I had just queued up that I had to get through.

Uh, once you, once you relearn it, it's fine. The fact that you have to relearn it is annoying. Sucks. It sucks. I'm not down with that stuff. Like why? No, I'm not down with the sickness on that one, but, um, but Jesus, man, um, the new version is definitely an upgrade to general email.

It's fine. It does what it's supposed to do. The fact that they eschewed standards for their idea of, you know, productivity pisses me off, especially since I spent $60 a year to pay for it. But I spent five years or four years using it without paying them.

So I feel that that's fine. That's, that's worth the money. Um, it's just annoying. I'm sorry. It's just fucking annoying. Don't change the normal conventions that everybody uses on every single other fucking email app in the world.

I know you're from the Ukraine and you're, sorry, I'm not allowed to say the Ukraine. I know you're from Ukraine and you are dealing with some shit right now, but that is no reason to take it out on us. You know, just don't use it. Yep.

Well, I'm still going to use it because it's great. It's a great app. Once you figure it out, it's great. But anyway, I was going to put this over in security, but I just thought it would be more fun to talk to you about it. Uh, I found this over at Petapixel and AI created 100,000 full body photos of people who don't exist.

Put them in the metaverse. They've got legs now. They have pants. Yep. These guys can create a hundred thousand people with pants and a medic and only have 20,000 people a day logging in without pants. So maybe Elon's jealous.

They've created more people than he has. That's possible. That's possible. He might buy them. Give him, give him a week, give him a week. He might, you might, uh, you might, uh, surprise us there. All right.

Well, okay. What's, what's the point? Good for you. I don't know. I mean, the whole thing about this is like, they're going, it's all this AI art stuff. It's, it's, it's again, it's okay. All right. No, I think they're going to use this as basically phishing scams to bring people in to, I, you know, I, I've read, I've read the article.

I've read the reasoning for doing this. And for a second, I thought I was on board, but now that you mentioned it, why? I don't, I don't fucking get it. I don't fucking get it. I mean, I, I get, you can, okay. You can do that. Great. Why?

For a second, like I said, I had it, I had it in my head that I was locked in. I'm like, oh, I see why they're doing that. Now that you mentioned it. Nope. Lost it. Lost the thread. Uh, well, Bumble is open sourcing their AI that will detect unsolicited nudes.

Okay. How does one detect if it's hot dog or not? Yeah, that's it. Hot dog or not. Um, yeah. Okay. Uh, the only reason I really put this in here is because they came up with a new term that I thought was awesome called cyber flashing.

Brian, have you ever cyber flashed? Well, yes. On my space, when I was able to do flashing text, I, I think the last time I cyber flashed was on C, you, see me. Um, God damn it. That's, I got a hat. I have a hat somewhere still from them.

What? Yeah. You ever see, you see me hat? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'll pay good money for that. No, I'll find it. No, I won't because that guy, Jeff Hahn was just a twat. Fuck those guys. Again, uh, okay. Hold on a second. I don't want to keep going because we're already late and I want to go watch TV too, but what this can do is detect nudity.

It does not detect if it's unsolicited or not. Good point. Right? I mean, I mean, what they did on Bumble was just to say that, you know, you, you are getting a nude. Would you like to accept it? Once a conversation has started, this filter is then turned off because at that point it's probably being solicited.

Maybe. Right. Right. Okay. You know, and I get, I get what they're trying to do. They're trying to do, you know, protect their platform saying, Hey, we're doing the good thing. And they're working with the, you know, Congress to say, Hey, we need better, better laws around this stuff. But who needs to buy this technology immediately?

Apple. Apple. Because I've got it already. Well, it's not working because I'm sick of reading stories about somebody on a fucking airplane that airdrops their dick to everybody. They're still doing that. Yes. They're still doing that because people are fucking horrible animals.

I haven't heard about that for two years. I can't believe they're still doing that. There was a story just this week. Oh, that's funny. But the cool part about it is they open sourced it. So if, you know, Apple can actually take the technology and then put it into their app and add that to airdrop already.

People come on, get on it. Please do. Have you heard the, I put this in here because I wanted you to hear the actual audio. European Space Agency says the scary sound of Earth's magnetic field. And they actually recorded Earth's magnetic field during a solar storm.

This is the most punk rock industrial soundtrack I've ever heard in my life. I was like, I never need to buy another Rammstein album. I'll just listen to that. No more Nine Inch Nails. Trent Reznor is out of business. He's out of business. Yeah. It's done. Now, to be fair, for all of these things, this is not actual, this is made up.

They take frequencies. Everything is, it's interpreted. It's interpreted. It's all interpretive dance. So, yeah. I mean, I listen to it. It's cute. I mean, we had the same thing just a couple, maybe a month or two back where it was like, listen to a black hole and all that sort of stuff.

It's cute. It's nice. It's not real, and it's interpretive. And it's not cute. It's actually really fucking disturbing. It's hellscape. Yeah. Level has come out with a new lock that has gotten into the Apple actual store, the physical stores, that can lock your house with your iPhone or your watch.

And it's called the Lock Plus, which means that it comes with its own streaming service. Because anything with a Plus now has a streaming service. It actually comes with Daniel Eck. He shows up and opens your door for you. And then he bitches about how it costs him 30% to fucking do it.

Exactly. Yes. Yeah. This is a $329 lock that you can put on your front door, your back door, whatever, that you can now actually unlock with your phone. This is part of Apple's new home lock system that they're trying to get out there.

And I'm just like, no. I think this is a misstep. I did extensive research into smart locks and keypad locks and all that sort of stuff. And the first thing I determined was I do not want a smart lock. If it connects to my phone, that's a bad idea.

I don't want my lock to have any kind of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, nothing. No. I ended up using a keypad, which is great. And I also think that- Wait, wait, wait, wait. You have a keypad on your house to get into your home. Mm-hmm. After we've done this show for almost 10 years, you actually put an electronic lock on your door.

I did. It's 100%. There's no connectivity whatsoever on it. Oh, okay. So it's not like some kind of e-lock. It's actually just you have to know the code. Exactly. There's nothing. Like, I actually have to, like, unscrew the thing on the inside, open it up, have 15 different codes to be able to change codes or put in a new code or anything.

It's limited to four codes. It is as secure as anything like that could be. Honestly, as we've talked about pick locks and things like that before in the past, it's as secure as any lock is ever going to be. But I definitely wouldn't get anything like this. And also, I think this thing is ugly.

It's not a good-looking lock, which, like, for Apple, like, there are so many beautiful smart locks out there. And this thing is ugly. I'm still not down. I'm not down with any kind of electronic lock for my house. I'm not.

And I don't see a time, because I don't have that much time left on this planet. So I'm guessing that by the time I'm done, I will not figure that out. So the day you die, self-driving cars, Jason. I'll announce the next day. I promise you.

Anyways, I enjoy it. I love being able to walk out of the house without a key. I think it's fantastic. But I would not in a million years get anything internet connectable. No way. You know what's funny? You talk about leaving your house without a key. I leave the house every day.

And we leave the doors unlocked when I leave the house. That's also why you can't go trapezing around the country in an RV, Jason. Exactly. Because if you come into my house when I'm out there, you will get eaten. So I have eschewed the smart lock for the smart animal with giant teeth that will just kill you.

So. And speaking of Apple, they have released macOS Ventura, iOS 16.1, and iPad iOS 16. And there's also a new watch update. I have done my phone, my iPad, and my watch. And I'm waiting until you tell me I can actually do my macOS.

But, yeah, they're out. I guess there's a bunch of features. I could care less. Still works. No, I mean, so far I've updated to all of those. macOS Ventura I did on my M1 Air. I can't tell the difference, honestly.

I know that some things don't work, which is the only way I can tell that I updated. Phone, same. iPad, same. Watch, same. I haven't seen any, like, there's nothing that pops out as being, like, a new thing, which is great.

I have not seen those BuzzFeed-style articles about, like, have you done all these features on this version yet? So I'm thinking not that much to these. Oh, I've seen all of those. I have seen all of those. Yeah, Stage Manager is the big thing that has been the big fuck-up with iPadOS.

It's also part of Ventura, and it is the one thing that basically everybody is saying, especially all the developers are saying, that, yeah, you should have just kind of waited a little bit longer. And that's why iPadOS 16 was a month late, because they were working on Stage Manager to get that to the point where it was releasable.

And even though it has been released, I have three iPads. All my iPads are updated to iOS or iPadOS 16. I have not seen any difference whatsoever in any of my day-to-day interactions with those iPads.

So I don't know, macOS Ventura on my, what is it, my Air, my M1 Air, fine. No problems, no difference. But I'm not actually doing what we do right now, which is actually talk on a microphone with audio gear that is professional grade.

Because I guarantee you, if I plug anything in to my macOS Ventura laptop, it will explode, because audio shit with, you know, the Macs suck. Yeah. I did see Loopback did an update that's specific for it, so you never know.

Yep, got that today. All good. We'll get there. We'll get there. We'll get there. You let me know when. Just get a new goddamn Mac, dude. Fucking upgrade. Please. Christmas time is almost here. 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.

I don't even know if it's that new anymore. We've been doing this for a while. Where they discuss ICS and OT. Hello, Dave. Hi. Good to be back. Sorry I was away last time, but nice to join you, gents, once again. It's good to have you back. And I would like to state for the record, it is now 9.04 a.m. here in the land of California, in the Pacific time zone.

I have been working for five hours at this point because I have decided to do the stupid thing that our friend Dave Bittner did, and that is do a daily tech news podcast. So I start at 4 a.m. every day. I have actually come here, done the show.

I actually researched the show, wrote the show, recorded the show, published the show, went home, had a nap, got a shower, took the dogs out, had breakfast, come back, and I'm now doing another show, and it's 9 in the freaking morning. Dave, did they give you a math budget at the cyber wire when you first started?

Because that is the only way that I can see this as a sustainable way of life. No, but one of my colleagues on the editorial side, when there were just five of us, he was, like, slugging down five-hour energy drinks, like, you know, those little shot glass-sized bottles.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. He was just – and I can't handle those things. I tried one of those once, and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I had that combination feeling where you're physically exhausted but mentally wired. Yeah, you feel like you can see the future because you're vibrating so bad.

Yeah, yeah. That is not a pleasant experience for me. So that was a lesson hard learned. At least you're in the right city to be working those kind of hours, Jason, because things are open all the time. If you try to do that here in, say, Toronto, it would be impossible because nothing opens until noon.

You would be, like – you would be miserable because you'd be halfway through your day and not able to get lunch or anything because nothing is open yet. In L.A., that's no problem. No, I've actually got it timed out perfectly because on one side of me, I have Whole Foods. They open at 7, so I can sneak over there and get a breakfast burrito.

Then Trader Joe's opens at 8. Then I can get the groceries for the day and get back home to make my omelets. It all works out here. It's perfect. Yeah, yeah. So you're in the right place to do it. Try doing that in Poughkeepsie. The slogan in Toronto, welcome to Toronto. What's the hurry, eh?

Pretty much, yes. Is there a Canadian word for siesta? Because it seems like – No. You guys might be in a permanent siesta. Perma siesta. Yeah. But, no, we were talking before the show because – okay, so I'm doing the Tech News show 4 a.m. every day up doing it.

Today was the day I got my five days in a row done. I won a gold star. I won a medal. Congratulations. I had to actually – yes. I had to cut the show short this morning though because what I have learned is the schedule for the gardeners.

So I can sleep in on – I can now sleep in on Tuesdays and Fridays or at least have to do the show from home because today, right as I was starting to record, they were pulling out chainsaws to cut down a tree right outside the window of my studio, which is very well soundproofed, but it ain't chainsaw soundproofed.

You know, it just gives your show that NPR feel. It does. It does. It's like the law. The real world sounds in the background, you know. Yeah. Just say you're coming from an undisclosed location. Yes. Yes. Well, I kind of am. Chainsaws, leaf blowers, and jackhammers are the three natural enemies of the Friendly Neighborhood podcaster.

Yeah. That and not making any money. Well, that too. Yeah. Well, no. And speaking of that, we were talking about – because I'm talking to you on my new – well, not my new, but new to me, Sennheiser MKH-416 shotgun microphone because I'm doing – besides doing the 4 a.m. podcast every day.

I've got two shows a week for Chris Lockhead. I've got two – or three shows a week for Kara Golden. I've got one show a week for Rob Dyrdek. I've got a new show coming out with Deshaun Wesley plus Grumpy Old Geeks. And I am the voice of Category Pirates where I'm doing audiobook reads for Audible.

So it's a full schedule. Next week on Jason complains about running his own business. Jason's not complaining. Look, Jason knows that a recession is coming. So Jason is putting his ass on the line to get stuff done so Jason can make some money because, as you mentioned, Brian, we don't make shit off the podcast.

Nope. Well, you're giving me a run for the money in terms of podcast content going out there. Oh, my God. I'm such a slacker. I'm on one show. Sort of. Let's be honest. I phoned that in. Exactly. I'm just like you're kind of on a show.

Yeah. Oh, man. But I just wanted to say, you know, because we discussed this when I was going to start the show. We had we had this discussion on security, which is not about security anymore. And I was in awe of what you did. And you laughed at me for going to do this every day.

And I still have to say mad fucking respect for Dave Bittner for doing this as long as you have, because this is hard stuff. It is hard. Thank you. Well, I appreciate that. And I think one of the things we mentioned before was that, you know, people who are good at it make it look easy.

And I don't say that to toot my own horn, but I think that's true in so many things. And you don't realize until you try it yourself that it's not necessarily easy. So, you know, hats off to you. I saw earlier this week, I think, or last week, you posted a photo of a video shoot that you were doing in the studio.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm doing that, too. I forgot. Yes, I have a three-camera video setup that I'm doing interviews with, like, multiple times a week. So, that, too. Yeah. No, I was very impressed. And I'm just happy for you to see that your studio is busy and it's taking off and, you know, you're using the stuff that you invested in.

I mean, it's got to feel good. It's terrifying. It's terrifying, actually, because I don't know what I'm doing. If by good you mean terrifying, then, yes, I'm on track. Yeah. No, it's quite terrifying because the video portion was never meant to be a thing.

It was supposed to be an add-on, but it has turned into, well, no, that is going to be the thing. I'm just like, oh, shit. All right. Well, if you ever need any advice or anything like that, that's a world I know something about from my past career. Can I fly you out? Can I fly you out and hire you?

Because I would much prefer that. Please. Yeah. This is hard. Yeah. But anyway, so Brian and I recorded most of the show last night, and then I went home, and I tried to watch Andor, the latest episode, and I made it about seven minutes before I fell asleep, which was at 7.45 at night, just because I usually fall asleep at seven.

It was a late night. But so that brings me, though, to Andor. Where are you at, Dave, in your journey to get caught up on the show? Not – just abject failure. I still am – I'm still only three episodes in.

I've been keeping an eye on some of the Twitter stuff. I think the episode you're talking about, I saw people saying that perhaps it was an homage to George Lucas' THX film, that it felt very much like that. So I don't know. But I'm far behind, and I've kind of – I had to forgive myself the stress of being caught up because it's just – the past couple of weeks, I was in Atlanta for a couple of days earlier this week.

And, you know, just family stuff. So just – I'll get caught up, and maybe we can do a recap at that point. But it's going to be a while. Okay. And it's not for lack of desire. I'm enjoying Andor very much, and I wish I were caught up with it because I love talking about this stuff with you guys.

But it's just the way it is right now. It is sad that I'm generally the one that's the most up on the Star Wars. But, Brian, you just put a link in the show notes, so maybe you're going to take over for me here. I'll take over a little bit. I did not watch the latest Andor because there is more Star Wars.

Dave, you are falling very far behind at this point. They have launched Tales of the Jedi. Now, luckily for you, this is a short thing. There's six episodes total. They're between 10 to 20 minutes in length. It's animated. But it fills in the backstory of Count Dooku and – oh, God, I'm going to say the name wrong, and all the nerds are going to scream at me.

Osaka? Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah. And they were actually very good. I enjoyed them quite a bit. You know, the Star Wars animation stuff has been pretty solid. I'm looking forward to the Bad Batch coming back, but this is a nice little – nice little taster until then. Well worth the watch. Yeah, I'll have to check that out.

Maybe – 2024. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right now, my priority is I need a nap. Right. Oh, brother, I hear you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Baked that into the day now.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, I have a little bit of somewhat security news. I just thought that this was a really smart thing, and I'm a little surprised that Apple has not adopted something like this. This comes from Samsung. They started this back in July, a new privacy feature on their Galaxy S21 phones in Korea.

So, one could argue it's the only privacy feature that a Galaxy S21 phone ever has. It's called Maintenance Mode, and it's a tool that allows users to secure their personal information, including photos, messages, and contacts, when sending their device in for a repair. So, basically, you don't have to worry about your repairman going through all your stuff, like, you know, when you dealt with the Best Buy people.

The Geek Squad, yeah. The Geek Squad. Right. Finding all your wife porn and all that sort of stuff and making copies for themselves. So, it's kind of a cool little setting that you can make. It creates a separate account on your phone for a technician to use while working on your device. And in addition to protecting your personal information, it prevents technicians from seeing what apps you have installed.

They can use the store to download diagnostic software, and once they're done, your phone will automatically wipe away any new data they put on it in apps. Pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Apple needs to take, yeah, they need to do that right now. Yeah. For sure. Everybody needs to do that. Yeah.

It's very impressive. It's like, it's kind of a no-brainer. That's wonderful. Yeah. Especially, as we've discussed, our lives are on our phones now. I wonder if Apple is lagging on this because they don't want to admit that multiple user accounts are possible in iOS.

Ooh, good point. Good point. Because God knows we all want them desperately. Particularly on iPads. Yes. Because I think they get shared a lot. You know, there's lots of folks have family iPads or, you know, iPads they share with their kids.

Exactly. That's me. That's me 100%. Yeah. It's mostly my kids now. I just, you know, buy it back from them when I need to read something. Right. Yes. Yeah. So, what's taking them so long? Well, I think I have heard some rumors that they are working on a pared-down version of macOS that will run on the new M-Series iPads that's going to be coming out next year.

So, if that works, then hopefully we'll get the macOS, you know, user administration tools as well so we can have different logins. Because I know that with the new tvOS, they have voice recognition on Siri. So, Siri can actually tell who's talking to it.

I haven't tried it yet because I don't know how we're going to set that up. And so, how it knows who's who. You know, if Bam Bam grabs the remote and is like, woof, woof. You know, what's going to happen there? I don't know. It's like reruns of Lassie start playing, right? Yeah. You know, or just maybe she just wants to watch the Food Network because there's lots of tasty meat that she could possibly eat.

I don't know. But it's going to have to happen at some point. You know, it really does. By the way, just a side issue here that I should have put in the show notes but I think is worth mentioning here because it was a moment of peak grumpiness in my own household.

My wife – I actually noted this on Twitter last week. My wife decided to explore getting us new set-top boxes for our Verizon Fios accounts. So, we have a Fios DVR and we have two set-top boxes, one in the family room, one in our bedroom.

And the way Fios works is the remote boxes can talk to the central DVR so you can record things and, you know, watch them anywhere. And it's all quite good. It works very well. And, you know, overall, Fios is a good service in terms of fiber to the house, good stuff, good speed.

It's been very reliable. But our hardware is probably a decade old at this point. And so, she decided to see what it would take to update the hardware, particularly the DVR because the DVR has gotten pretty sluggish. So, she gets on the line with – actually, she gets on chat with – online chat with Verizon and it is just a hellscape.

It just is so frustrating. Is it worse than AT&T? Well, a lateral move at best. He's just checking. Right. So, the long and short of it, I know, too late, is that she went in there trying to just upgrade the hardware that we have, right, which we pay for every month, I might add.

We rent this equipment every month, and we just want something that's not 10 years old. Let us go to your store and swap it out. That's all we want, and we will continue paying for it as if we were a new customer. That's all we wanted to do, and we will continue paying you the hundreds of dollars a month that we pay you for your services for the next decade, right?

But you know what, Dave? If you were a new customer, you probably would have gotten an introductory deal and paid less for a few months. Well, stay tuned, Brian, because here's what happened next. So, she gets so frustrated that now we are demoing YouTube TV, and we're probably going to end up cutting the cord.

What? And, yep, she was resistant to trying YouTube TV because she's just not a big fan of YouTube, which I can understand. But I said, you know what, I know some folks who've recommended it. They say it's pretty easy to use.

It has an unlimited DVR, seems to have pretty much everything we watch on it. It's not cheap. It's like $75, $80 a month, something like that, but it's basically a cable package. And so – now, side note, all of our TVs also have Apple TVs hosed up to them.

So, we have capable hardware that can run YouTube TV without breaking a sweat. So, we are probably, I don't know, a week or so into the YouTube TV demo, and I think we may end up going that way.

We may end up just with Verizon Fios just for our data and getting rid of all of the cable stuff, getting rid of the DVR boxes. And it's all because Verizon's customer service was so bad. Again, they could have had us as a customer for another decade, and we wouldn't have even thought about it.

And now, they're going to lose us just because they couldn't answer a freaking phone call, you know? Yep. That's the way of it. I think you're going to be happy, and you'll never turn back. I don't know about YouTube TV specifically, but since moving – so, what?

I've been in Toronto almost two years now at this point. We've not had cable. We've cut the cord. Cutting the cord is obviously a misnomer because there's still a cord. You need internet. But cable-less. Cable-less for sure since, and it's been completely fine.

There's some hoops and, you know, some things you will have to go to Sweden for every now and then occasionally. But overall, no complaints. I don't miss it at all. I realized the entire time I had it and I was paying for it, 99% of the stuff I wasn't watching or using anyways.

Right. Right? Yep. Yep. So, stay tuned to a new world, Dave. I'm curious because I tried YouTube TV when it first came out, and it was one of the most frustrating experiences that I've ever had. It's come a long way, Jason. I hope it got better. Yeah.

It's come a long way. Some of the – one of the Airbnbs that I stayed at recently with a bunch of friends had – that's what they had, YouTube TV. And it took me a few minutes to figure out the interface, but once I did, I was like, well, this is pretty good, actually. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think the biggest complaint for me was there – because it was, you know, the beginning with the unlimited DVR stuff.

And I'm like, okay, well, you're obviously recording every show that comes through because everybody's going to have it on their DVR. Why can't I go back and get the show that aired yesterday and have that added to my watch now, even though I missed the, you know, prerecorded version of it or whatever, the live version.

Right. It's like I want you to expand what a DVR means to me. It's like I would like to watch the episode of the show that I forgot to hit record on last night. I know you have the technology. Please make it happen. And they're like, ah, silly boy.

They're called lawyers. Talk to them. Exactly. I think that's the answer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So stay tuned. We'll see. So far, so good. I'm surprised at how much she is adapting to it quickly because, you know, like all of us, she does not like change.

And she was pretty dug in. But they pissed her off enough that she's willing to change. So there you go. That is usually the secret. You have it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So a couple of things before we wrap up this week. Old friend of mine whose name is Andrew Logan. I met him down in D.C. when I was doing some TV work. He's a sound guy on TV productions.

But he does a lot of other cool things. And one of them is he started a project in Washington of tracking military ghost helicopters over Washington, D.C. Now, I know we've talked about here. I think, Jason, it was you that introduced me to the term ghetto bird, which I did.

I was not familiar. A ghetto bird is a euphemism for a helicopter. And in the introduction to this video I'm sharing, it's a YouTube video of Andrew's presentation at DEF CON this past year about his project using open source intelligence and contributors from folks all over the city kind of gamifying an effort to track down what all of the helicopters flying over Washington, D.C. are.

Now, obviously, D.C. is a little unique in that there are a lot of military helicopters. The president's flying around. There's folks coming and going from the Pentagon. And so a lot of these flights aren't required to have their transponders turned on. News helicopters, things like that, tourist helicopters, they all have their transponders on.

And there's an automated API. You can track them really easily and know exactly who they are. But he's put together this system with people reporting the helicopters, people sending pictures of the helicopters. They're using some computer stuff, some computer vision stuff to automatically identify the model helicopter that it is and try to correlate and figure out who's flying where.

It's really a neat project. So if this is something you're interested in, we'll have a link to the YouTube presentation here. And Andrew is just an interesting, good guy. He's one of those guys who always has a project going. And not all of them are successful, but some of them turn out to be pretty cool.

Man, after my own heart. Hopefully this one doesn't get him disappeared. Yeah. He may end up on one of those helicopters if he keeps it up. Yeah. Yeah. There's some cool stuff in here. One of the – he shared a photo from – somebody took a picture of themselves inside one of the mysterious military helicopters in full regalia with the helmet and everything and sent it to him.

It was like, hey, it's me. Yeah. Nice. What was that? There was a story here in California a while ago about a girl that was kidnapped. And there's apparently some kind of hand signal that you can give to other people on the road that got her rescued. I think Andrew might want to learn that hand signal in case he gets picked up so he can, you know, drop it out the window if anybody's looking.

So just in case. Right. Yeah. So finally, I want to run something by the two of you. I've been thinking about something and it's one of these things I think I need – I want to run it by the two of you to see what you think about it because I've been processing this.

And I don't have any solid answers yet. So I thought if you two could help me and then perhaps our audience will find it interesting as well. As you both know, I love live theater. I love performing in live theater. I love going to live theater, right?

I think live theater is great. So a week before last, a friend of mine contacted me and said, hey, I have a couple of tickets to see Hamilton and I can't use them. Would you like to – would you like my tickets to see Hamilton? And I said, yeah.

Well, yes. Yeah. Go, please. Yeah. So I went to see Hamilton in Baltimore at the Hippodrome Theater, which is a very nice theater. It's one of the old – it's probably 100 years old and about, I don't know, 15 years ago they renovated it and brought it back to its former glory, all that sort of thing.

It's a lovely venue. So I go to see Hamilton and our seats are probably about two-thirds of the way back in the orchestra, pretty close to the center. So a decent seat, not what I would call a great seat but also not a bad seat.

It's a good seat in the theater. Now, I have seen the Disney version of Hamilton, the one where they recorded the Broadway show, which was amazing and actually won me over when it came to Hamilton. Because I was a bit skeptical and slow getting into it, not a huge hip-hop fan and so that kept me from really digging in with anything Hamilton.

But then I watched the Disney thing. I was like, OK, yeah, I get it. This is pretty amazing. Gotcha. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And so consider me a fan. So we go to the theater. We sit down and the show starts and it's going well.

You know, a couple seats over from us. There's usual types of things. There's a lovely young lady who cannot resist checking her phone every five minutes. So, you know, there's that little peripheral vision distraction as her phone lights up and everything.

And I'm glaring at her and my wife is glaring at her. Not helping. She's impervious to that. To my left is a lovely couple. She knows every word and is singing along. Oh, those are the best. Yep.

And her husband is whistling. What? I shit you not. Her husband is whistling along with the show as quietly as someone can whistle, but whistling nonetheless. And I'm two seats down from them.

OK. Now, I'm trying to take the attitude rather than being upset with them just to be happy at the degree to which they're enjoying their experience. Right. I'm trying to be happy for them, not upset for me because they're ruining my experience at Hamilton.

By the way, not inexpensive, right? It's 300 bucks or so for the pair of tickets for us to see Hamilton. So, you know, not a small investment. But despite all of that, I'm enjoying the show.

I'm feeling good about the show. And the cast is amazing. So this is the traveling cast, the roadshow of Hamilton, and they are amazing. But I find myself both at intermission and after the show feeling like I missed out on something, feeling like this wasn't the complete experience that I had hoped it was, like I didn't ever really engage the way that I'd hoped to.

And I think what it came down to was that my seats were just far enough back that I could not see faces. Right. And I think this is why I enjoy movies so much.

In fact, I would say I would rather go to a movie theater than a live theater because I find it easier to suspend my disbelief. I find it easier for myself to get lost in a movie theater than in a live theater.

And I think there are other reasons for that as well. I think having done theater, I kind of – there's a certain empathy and connection I have with the performers because I know what they're doing and like I know how the sausage is made to a certain degree. And so that's harder for me to pull myself out of that to say, ooh, nice singing, that sort of thing.

So I'm continually thinking about this. Well, what could help me – bring me into this? How would I be able to see faces? Well, obviously, if I could sit closer. But that's not always possible with an expensive show like this, a popular show like this. But then I got thinking about concerts and what has been the great innovation in the past decade in concerts.

Big TVs and cameras. The Jumbo John. Right, right. Every concert – now you have giant TV screens on either side of the stage. And if you're in a pavilion or something like that, the big screens out on the lawn.

So everybody can see faces. And so this got me wondering, could you do this with live theater? Could you have – so first of all, I was thinking, could you have giant monitors on either side of the stage? And I know there are people who are probably screaming at their computers or their mobile devices saying, have you freaking lost your mind?

This will ruin theater. Let me remind you that there are lots of people who said the same thing about amplification, audio amplification. True. There are folks who say that theater was irreparably changed when they started amplifying the live performances.

I mean, imagine Ethel Merman at Radio City Music Hall, 5,000-seat arena, not miked, and people in the back row still complaining she was too loud, right? Yeah. Now, every theater has perfect sound and the sound at Hamilton was amazing.

There are speakers everywhere and digital technology. Everybody is wearing a wireless mic. It sounds great. You can hear every word. And Hamilton is a show that demands that, right? You have to pay attention because everything is coming at you so fast. So I thought to myself, well, okay, you could put big iMac screens on either side of the stage, but could this perhaps be a perfect application for AR?

I was wondering if you were going to go there. I was actually just thinking you just need to bring back those old school opera glasses. Well, I did. I thought about that, too, because there were some people at the show who had those. In fact, I saw a couple of people who just had old-fashioned bird-watching binoculars.

And so that's an option as well. By the way, I would like to say that the last time I saw Hamilton, I bought those exact glasses for everyone in our group because we had really terrible seats. So we all came in, and I got them with the big stick and everything so we could be fruitful.

Oh, wow. You can get those on Amazon for like 15 bucks each. I got them for everybody in the group, and we all just sat there going, oh, this is lovely. Oh, you're not going to throw away your shot? Oh, tell me more. I think it's time to bring in the screens.

I think it's – unless the modern audience expects it, wants it, just like you're thinking, Dave. And, you know, if you want to keep theater relevant, you're going to have to make some changes. Like, I understand that, you know, the old biddies lined up on Broadway may not be thrilled with this innovation, but it makes sense.

They'll be dead anyway soon. Fuck them. Well, exactly. You got to keep selling those tickets and putting butts in those seats, so it's time to modernize a bit. No problems with that. However, having said that, Dave, I don't think that that's going to solve your problem because the real issue here is that societal norms have gone out the fucking window.

What the fuck are they doing singing and whistling and checking their phone the whole time? I know. Big screens is not going to solve that problem, Dave. This reminds me of, like, you know, I knew the world was fucking ending. The first time I got on a plane, the fucker behind me took off his shoes and put his stinky socked feet up on my chair.

This is where we're at as a society now. I think about the last time I was in a movie theater pre-COVID and the family next to me whipped out their fried fucking chicken in a movie theater. Oh, potato chips, too. And they have potato chips in the theater now, too. Could have been tuna fish. Could have been tuna fish.

It's just weird that what I've done, like, even just coming back out of COVID is, like, any kind of situation that requires, you know, a certain decorum in a public setting, I'm kind of shying away from. Now, I don't mind rock concerts because people are drunk.

You expect that. It's fine. You expect people to sing and dance and all that sort of thing. But, like, live theater or movies where people have to be quiet, nobody does it anymore. We've lost all sense of public decorum. And that's the real issue. I don't care how many screens you put up, Dave.

You might as well just sit at home and watch it in VR instead of AR because you're not going to get rid of the assholes next to you. And I was thinking, I'm like, oh, what if we put the screens on the back of the seats, like on airplanes? And I'm like, OK, well, then you're going to drive an hour. You're going to spend 300 bucks for a ticket. And then you're going to stare at the back of the seat of the person in front of you.

I'm like, just stay home and watch TV. Yeah, you don't have a technology problem, Dave. You have a meat problem. And that's really what it comes down to. And I got to say, I went to my first concert that had the big screen TVs. I saw Billy Joel at Wrigley Field.

I sat, you know, in the outfield at Wrigley Field and I watched Billy Joel. 90% of the time, I stared at a monitor and every now and again, I would glance at the stage. It's like, but it was great. It was fantastic. I knew he was there on the stage, but I could look at the screen to see him.

Yeah, the communal experience is still something that's like wired deep into our psyche and that we need. But to my point, like that's a concert. You're expecting that. Right. So that's fine. But, you know, again, and it gets me back to, I saw another concert again pre-COVID because I haven't really done much post-COVID as I was just saying.

And it was a band called Dead Can Dance. And Dead Can Dance are not a get drunk and, you know, it's a sit down. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm familiar with that. So I went to that and I bought very expensive tickets because I really, really love the band and I love their live performances. And there was a group right next to me that was just talking to each other the entire concert.

And at one point, I turned to them and I said, are you here for the concert or should you guys be at a coffee house? And then they finally shut up. Well, my son, a couple of weeks ago, went to see Gorillaz at our local concert venue.

We live near Meriwether Post Pavilion, which is a well-known storied location. And I asked him, how were your seats? He said, oh, they were really good. We were close to the stage and also close to one of the big screens so we could see everything. Yeah. I thought to myself, OK.

Yeah. There you go. A little bit of both. And that's exactly what would happen in the theater, right? You would be able to see the actual stage, know the live performers are there, see the big picture. And if you wanted to focus in on somebody while they're doing their bits, you look up at the screen. I think that's totally fine.

Yeah. I think so, too. Still not going to stop the problem of the people yapping away next to you, though. I wonder if part of the investment in hit shows from now on will be doing a video recording like they did with Hamilton, which was expensive. But I suspect that Disney got their money's worth out of that.

Totally. And so for me, I think I would rather see that in my own little home theater than go to the expense of seeing it live. And I can't believe these words are coming out of my mouth as much as a live theater person as I am.

But I think you're exactly right, Brian, that I guess I'm pining away for the old days when you put on a tuxedo and went up to the Broadway theater. And everybody respected everybody else's experience.

Well, and to wrap this up in a pretty little bow, bringing it back to technology and our show, Jason's big line is the internet was great until everybody got on it. Yeah. Pretty much. I mean, I'm with you, Dave. It's like I used to go to I mean, I've seen Les Mis over 30 times.

I've seen Phantom probably 20 times. And I would prefer if the original cast had done a movie and I could stay home and watch it. You know, it's like I've been great. I would I would still love to have a, you know, a version of Phantom with Michael Crichton and Sarah Brightman that I could watch whenever I wanted.

But it doesn't exist because they didn't make them back then because they were waiting for the movie. Nowadays, just film the damn thing so we can pay you all the monies to watch it. You know? Yeah. As much as I love theater. I mean, it's like and I saw I saw Hamilton with Wayne Brady playing the, you know, whatever his name is.

The guy that killed Hamilton. Aaron Burr. Aaron Burr. It's 939 in the morning. I've been working along. But I couldn't see his face. I knew it was Wayne Brady. I could hear him as Wayne Brady. Even with my little, you know, binoculars, I could kind of see it was Wayne Brady.

But if you had given me the option to pay another 50 bucks and have a big giant screen that I could watch the show on, I would have done it. Absolutely. So I'm with you. You know, as a theater guy myself, as a lover of live theater, I think it is time for, you know, it's time to change.

It's time to change up. Maybe the I'm just thinking through this. I mean, maybe they could have optional, you know, like on during the week, you know, they're kind of like they have special theater showings for movies where they'll have like sometimes they'll have ones for folks who have trouble with the loud sounds and things like that.

So they'll have a quiet one or they'll have ones that run open captions or things like that. Family screenings for kids. Right, right. Maybe just for the matinees. You have the screens or something. But I suppose if you're going to go to the expense of it, you want to do it every night. I don't know.

Somebody's got to be the first to do it and see positive reaction to it. And then it'll probably just become a thing. But I don't know. I think it's unavoidable. I'm glad you guys are on board with my thoughts about this because I have honestly been conflicted about it because it is a change from what live theater is.

But I think at this point, you're right, expectations have changed and we have the technology now. Why not make this a better experience for everyone, particularly with how expensive it is? Well, that's the thing, right? It's expensive now. Theater is crazy expensive. Concerts are crazy expensive.

Any of these communal experiences are insanely expensive. And to not provide the technology exists to make it a better experience for everybody there. So why not do it? Yeah. Yeah. All right. This edition of Theater Corner is brought to you by the Kennedy Center.

I knew we should have had NPR sound in the background. This is totally good. We talked about theater. Jesus Christ. That's right. Closing shout outs. Over at PayPal, we've got Mark Humphrey, Charlie, and Donald.

Thank you all so much. And over at the tip jar, we've got Adam, Nick, Daryl, Wesley, and Ross. And sadly, nobody at Patreon or any new reviews. Nope. Sad. Yes. And in sad news that we didn't cover last week, Robbie Coltrane died, who was Hagrid in the Harry Potter series.

But he was also in Cracker, which is what I thought was his best series. So that's a sad one. I didn't see that one coming. I did like the band. Well, you know, he was not a healthy man either.

No, but I just, you know. Yeah. Modern medicine can keep... Look, I mean, Keith Richards is still alive. Come on. Come on. We can try something here. That's true. That's true. All right. It is sad. And my son has not started watching Harry Potter yet.

We've started reading it. So, yeah. I'll be... We're going to start watching it over Christmas. We'll watch the first one. So there'll be a bit of a pang. But there you go. Until next time, I'm Brian Schilmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. 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 576. 576. That's insane. From there, you can find links to everything we talked about in this episode, as well as links to our swag and Discord channel if you want to buy some stuff or chat with us and other show fans.

You can also head over to gog.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to gog.show slash review and toss us a snarky review and preferably five stars. Stay grumpy.

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

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