577: Self Driving Twitter

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Fuck you, two-factor auth. I'm just going to start off the show with that because I am so sick of two-factor auth. Can we fix this, please? No. No, we can't. It's actually funny that you mention that because we are attempting to secure cyber insurance for our company, which, as you can imagine, is much more difficult to get these days.

Gee, I don't know why. We thought we had done all the paperwork and then sent it in and we were kind of like, basically, I've just kind of been prepping my boss saying, we're not going to get this anymore. And if we do, it's going to be just extortionary rates that we can't possibly afford.

And they've sent back more paperwork for us to try to fill out. And basically, now they're just saying, we're only going to give you insurance if every single one of your employees uses two-factor auth for absolutely everything. And I'm like, oh, God. You know, we're a Microsoft shop.

We use Microsoft 360. They've got their own security. We use that for everything. Fuck off. But here we are. Okay. Fun times. No, it's just like every time I try and log in on a different one of my – you know, I've got like four computers. So every time, like right as I'm getting ready to set up for this show, I'm logging in to Quip, which we use for our show notes, which is owned by Salesforce.

Which inexplicably has two-factor auth. Every time. Because God forbid somebody see our show notes. I know. I know. God forbid that we – that somebody gets a scoop on the news that has already been reported that we are re-reporting days later with just snarky commentary.

God forbid. Yeah. But then I have to open the Authenticator app on my phone, which if your phone is, I don't know, in the other fucking room, you got to go get it. And then, of course, every time when you open whatever Authenticator app you're using, it is five seconds before it expires.

Five fucking seconds every time. Sick of it. Yeah. It's a pain. Sorry, Dave. But it keeps us safe. Keeps us so safe. It keeps us safe. You know why? It keeps us safe so the companies that we are using our two-factor auth to sign into their websites can actually lose our data for us.

Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Salesforce can lose it. Because they're the ones that get breached. But we kept our password safe. Oh, God. It's fucking show notes. Stop it. Oh, and here's the fun part.

You can't log in to any Apple device without like – it sounds like the Christmas bells in the morning when you log in to anything Apple because every Apple device in your house goes ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding. Yes, it does. Whenever you try and log in to anything Apple because the two-factor hits every single device you own.

Oh, I particularly like Google's that makes me have to open YouTube. Well done there, by the way. Forcing me to use your shit product that I never wanted to have an account for in the first place. But, yes, for me to be able to log in to my Gmail to authenticate it, I now have to go find my fucking iPad and open up YouTube.

Awesome. What? Okay. That's a new one. I don't have that one. I do not have that one. Thank God. Yeah, when I sometimes try to log in to it, like we set up a Gmail for my son for his school because they use like – they use some Google products, classroom and stuff like that.

And, of course, you can't just type in a password. You have to authenticate somehow. And they want me to run over to find my YouTube on a different device and open up YouTube and click OK there. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. It is so awesome.

So awesome. I love technology. I love how far we've come. You know? It's great. I don't. It's great. I think it's all fucking – I think we turned a bad corner a long time ago and it's all been fucking shit sandwiches since then. I'm telling you, it all started when AOL led everybody on the internet.

That's what it was. I go back to that. I stand by it. But what I also still stand by is the fact that Shane McGowan is still alive. So the GOG curse has been broken until next week when he gets run over by a fucking bus. Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee.

No, just kidding. No, but somebody who was fake dead was Trump. I did not know that there was a meme going around that showed that, like, a CNN headline that Trump had died on November 1st. And I'm just like, good on ya.

Good on ya. Thank you for finally fighting back. I don't know. I just thought it was funny. So if we talk about Trump enough, maybe we can get the GOG curse to kick back in. I don't know. Well, we lost enough listeners attempting to make that happen. You know, fuck them. I'm done.

Fuck them. Good. I'm on Team Brian now. Fuck them. Fuck them. Fuck them. Jesus Christ. And fucking vote, people. Vote. Please. Vote for science. Vote for facts. Vote for sanity. Get out and vote. That's a conditional vote.

See, I agree with you. See, I'm on Team Jason there. I don't think you should vote if you're thinking about voting for Trump. I don't think you should vote if you're thinking about voting for Dr. Oz. I don't think you should vote if you're thinking about voting for DeSantis. If you like those guys, don't fucking vote. Fuck you. Stay home.

Stay home. Watch some Duck Dynasty or whatever the fuck you watch. But stay the fuck at home. Please. Thank you. I'd like to go back to the normal world. In the news.

Well, as Elon tends to do, he sucks up all the oxygen in the room no matter what he does. And we're going to talk about Twitter an awful lot, even though Twitter's actual real world impact is debatable. Certainly nowhere near the amount of impact that it's getting in the news cycle because Elon, as per usual.

So what do you expect? We still talk about Elon. Every time I hear the word Elon, I think about that damn song from that movie that I can't watch. Yeah, that I can't watch. Weird Al needs to get on that. Oh, I know. That would be a good one.

Yeah. So what would you expect would happen when basically the ultimate Twitter troll takes over Twitter? A coordinated trolling campaign. Yeah. Why not? Of course. The Muscovites came out in force. The idiot. Muscovites.

That's a new one. I haven't heard about that. Well, thank you. I just coined it myself. I'm sure somebody else has done it before. I'm sure. But just rolled off the tongue. Yeah, so as soon as he basically took over, basically, you know, the 4chan Musk's people kind of went, okay, well, let's go test this out.

And coordinated trolling campaigns began where they tried to push, you know, push all the limits because, you know, free speech, right? That's what this is all about. Free speech. N-word, up 500%. Within 10 minutes of him taking over.

Within 10 minutes of taking over because, you know, that's what the world is now. That's free speech, people. So, Yul Roth, the company's head of safety and security, who will probably soon be fired, said the organized effort was to make people think that Twitter had weakened its policies. I don't know. Probably because that's what Elon said was going to happen.

Yeah. I don't know why people thought that might happen because that's what he said he would do. And I wonder why people run into walls with their cars because he says their cars can drive themselves. Oh, that didn't work either. Yeah. He has tweeted an update to the Twitter cleanup effort saying he's made measurable progress since Saturday and has removed over 1,500 accounts involved in the trolling.

He explained that the 1,500 accounts didn't correspond to 1,500 people. Many were repeat bad actors. Oh, maybe those bots that so many of which follow, Elon. Hmm. Oh, the bots. The bots are back. The bots are back in town. The bots are back in town.

Sorry. I had to go. I had to break it. You're punchy today. Dude, that fucking two-factor auth really fucking got under my skin. I'm sorry. I was like taking a nap and then I came to do the show notes and it wouldn't let me log in. And I was just like, so I'm just, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm just a little, I'm a little revved up tonight.

All right. Let me finish this story. Then you can move on to one of yours and you can go to the moon, Jason. To the moon. Woo! To the moon. I'll just end this with, Roth ended his series of tweets with a promise to reveal more about how the website is changing and how it enforces its rules. Overhead voice, that won't happen.

No. We will not see that. We will not be revealed. Nothing will be revealed. I think we've already seen what Elon Musk's policy is regarding Twitter and what's going to happen. He floats a fucking idea by tweeting it. He doesn't know what he's doing.

Also. Do you guys, do you guys understand that? He does not know what he's doing. Because it is now a private company. He does not have to reveal anything. Anything. Well, the eighth. It comes out on the eighth. That's when, you know, it's taken private. Right now, he's still dealing with all the shit.

He's dealing with all of the stuff that he should have been dealing with before he actually took over the company. Thinking about, how am I going to handle this? No. What he was doing before he took over the company was, how can I get out of this stupid fucking deal that I bought when I was drunk?

That's it. That's what he was trying to do. Now he's taken over and it is a fucking mess. Great timing, too. Election. Awesome. Perfect. Perfect. Okay. All right. All right. Meta. Meta's in the news. They are going to ditch their human-curated Facebook news stories globally now.

I have not been on Facebook very often. I literally log in to see if I get some notes from friends who only know how to get in touch with me on Facebook. And I have given them my email. I've given them my phone number. And we're moving people away from the Facebook. But when I do log in, I don't understand what I see.

It is nothing that it – I don't see stories from my friends. I see random stuff. I don't understand what happened over there. I don't understand what my feed is at all anymore. No, I know. I don't know. I didn't even actually know that Facebook still had a news feed.

Apparently, there's a news tab somewhere. Somewhere. Facebook News essentially is a dedicated tab inside Facebook. I've never seen that tab. Never clicked on it. Don't know where it is. Yeah. I don't understand what Facebook is anymore. I mean, occasionally, if I scroll far enough, I'll see like one of my 400-some-odd friends' updates.

I don't know who updates anymore. I don't see anything. It is – it's basically useless to me now. I can't say it's useless because I subscribe to like IFL Science and things like that, and those things pop up all the time. You know you can do that with an RSS reader, right?

Yeah, I know. You don't have to use Facebook for that. Yeah, I know. Okay. Just wondering. Just making sure you knew. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think that's how Facebook still has like an audience and still – actually, it is still a cash cow. It makes a motherfucking shit ton of money.

Actually, yeah. That was actually – I don't know why. Brought up on the Discord in our stock talk area and I was – because they've lost so much money or their stock prices dropped so much. They're a buy. It was – it's a buy right now. It's a fucking buy. Yeah.

I don't – I'm not buying it because of ethics and I sold – I divested from Facebook a long time ago and I'm not going back in. But if I had no ethics, I would be purchasing right now. Well, what I don't have is money. If I had money, I would skip my ethics and buy Facebook. But all my money is tied up in – but all my money is tied up in – yeah, all my money is in Apple and Apple has shit the bed so I'm screwed.

I'm like when Apple gets above 165, I will divest Apple and then maybe we'll see where Facebook is at. But yeah, no, it's a total buy right now because look at the money that they're bringing in. And it is still – I don't know why people are spending money to advertise on Facebook because I don't know if you've watched, I don't know, the advertising channels around here or there.

But advertising on Facebook has almost a negative ROI. It's not bringing you any money anymore. So I don't know why people are still spending money. I think it does if you're hyper-localized I would say. Could be. Yeah, it could be. So hyper-localized ads do really, really well and obviously the Russian trolling over the election sort of thing.

Right, right, right. Yeah, if you want Trump back, then yeah, this is open. Very well, very well. Yeah. So there are niche opportunities in which it works really, really well. But yeah, if I were like Nissan trying to sell cars, what's the fucking point? Fuck that noise. Yeah. So jumping back to the main Twitch show that's going on in the world right now, Elon Musk.

I like the first sentence of this article. This is a few days back now already, so it's already out of date and I can't keep up anymore, so who gives a shit? It's day five of Elon Musk's reign over Twitter and beyond seeing an influx of racist tweeting, one big development is Musk's plan for verification.

Yeah. I assume you've been following this story, Jason. Well, I do a daily tech news show called Boot Up with Jason. So if you go to bootup.show, you can follow all of the news that I unfortunately have to do every day. And I try my fucking hardest to find anything that's not Elon, but there's nothing.

Well, like I said at the top of the show, he sucks all the oxygen out of everything. And this is it. This is all the news we've got. So it started with him floating. I'm going to charge 20 bucks for people to be verified. And then Stephen King came to the rescue. Stephen King came to the rescue.

So many other people did as well. Eric Idle was in there. I didn't see that one. Yeah, a lot of people were just like, are you fucking kidding me? Were they, we're, we're, we're giving you the content. You're going to charge us? Yeah. He's trying to flip the script on who's the, the product at this point, but he didn't think about it very well.

So, yeah. So, so the $20 thing then became, particularly with Stephen King, uh, and you can see the great mind of Elon Musk at work here who then went, would you pay eight? Yeah, it's just like, you know, he's not the greatest negotiator.

We know this because he spent $44 billion for Twitter. So we know he's not a good negotiator. You would, you'd maybe think 18, you know, like let's start the negotiation a little down, not let's go over 50% and go to eight.

What the fuck? So the plan right now is basically you're paying $4.99 a month right now for Twitter blue, which gives you features like an edit button, a customer, uh, a custom reader mode, bookmarks, and more things that actually don't work as you pointed out many times.

No. And yeah, he pulled out, he pulled out of all the deals with all of the, the news publications that said, Hey, we're not going to let you, you know, do the ad free thing anymore. Cause we're not going to send you the token. And I'm like, uh, I paid you my money so you could send that token to those news outlets.

So I got the ad, I got the news articles ad free. So I have a bone to pick with Elon about that, but here's the funny part. I'm still only paying $2.99. They never upped me to $4.99. Well, they're going to catch that shortly, Jason. I'm just going to continue to go through my bullet points here.

You provide the color commentary. So I will do. Yeah. Come on. Trust me. I've been covering this all fucking week. I know it. Musk himself has decided he's basically going to double that price for Twitter blue, but that will give you the verified check Mark. So that's worth it. In addition, you will receive priority in replies, mentions, and search, which is essential to defeat spam and scam.

The ability to post long video and audio and half as many ads. So you can pay double the amount of money for half as many ads. Apparently, uh, you have 90 days of the money for no ad or quadruple the money for zero ads. No, no, that's not an option. Uh, you will have, you have 90 days.

If you're a verified user already to subscribe to Twitter blue, or you will lose your verification according to the verge now, obviously, um, then they talked to some people who refuse to be named because they're probably about to be fired as well, because we've also just had to report that he's about to not only slash, uh, the employee count by, I think 75%, but they've also ordered them to basically spend $1 billion less on infrastructure.

So AWS buckets on very, on unlocked. Here we come for all of Twitter. Um, yeah. So, uh, basically you're going to pay more to get your verification, but as it's now been pointed out, you're basically paying for verification and there will be no ID checks.

There will be no nothing. So if I go on as Steven underscore King and I pay $8 a month, I'll get a blue check mark next to me while the real Steven King will not because he's not going to pay the $8 per month.

What could possibly go wrong here, Jason? I love how he, he really, really thought out how this is going to work. I just love it. It's just so there's no fact checking. There's no basically verification system whatsoever.

It's basically just pay to be verified and you get a check and the whole entire entity of Twitter thus far, which has kind of run off the idea that these people with blue checks are really who they are is out the fucking window. And by the way, not to let's, let's, let's take a step back here for a second and talk about verification to begin with.

I am moonwalking my way back. Tell me what I'm missing. Moon, you walk your way back for one second. Let's talk about verification for one second. Everybody that's currently whining about the verification plan. You fucking lucky fucks that managed to get verified. Fuck you because verification has always been a fucking shit show, bullshit scam.

It has. And you know, it's really annoying. The first, the first department that did the Twitter verification was run by a, a, a lovely girl that I used to work with at JPEG magazine. She was one of our, our, uh, early employees.

She was kind of an intern and we rolled her into it. And then when that company shut down, she went to Twitter and she was the fucking head of verification, head of verification and took her to lunch, said, uh, what the fuck are you doing?

What, what is that? You know, it's like, I didn't care cause I didn't care if I needed verified or not, but I'm like, what do you do over there? She's like, I have no idea. She's like, we get, we, we get, we get emails from people, you know, from the C-suite that tell us to verify people and we do it.

And then there's some paperwork that comes in that we kind of have like some guidelines for, but I can't tell you about that. And I'm like, and I can't verify you, even though I'm standing in front of you and I know that you are the person. It was just, it's a, it's a total joke.

It's a total fucking joke. Yeah. I remember there was a form for a while and I filled it out and it just went off into the ether. Like everything does. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if she's still there. I hope, I hope she's long gone. She was, she was awesome.

But, uh, uh, yeah, I, I, I, well now the verification department is just a, it's now the verification part is just a fucking iPhone with a little stripe thing on the top. Yeah. That's about it. Swipe your credit card. That's about it. You're verified. Yeah.

Anyways, once you've paid that $8 a month for verification, you're also going to lose that edit button option because it's going to be free for everyone, according to Elon. So, you know, part of that whole thing that you're paying for is now free. So what are you paying for again? Because the news doesn't work. Well, I mean, well. The edit's going to be for everyone.

Oh, but you know, he's going to bring back Vine. I know, I know. Vine. But according to Axios, the company hasn't updated Vine since the shutdown of the app more than six years ago. So it needs a lot of work, one source told the outlet, referring to the software's codebase.

But reports are saying that Elon Musk is sleeping in a sleeping bag in his office at Twitter. So this shit's going to get done, people. I beg to differ because I have a Twitter account that I follow called Elon's Jet, and Elon is not sleeping in his fucking office.

I'm going to tell you that right now. So Twitter, you know what I can't believe? I can't believe he's left that account up. I can't believe he, like, once he owned the platform, that he has not shut that account down. But it's still there. It's part of a bullet point list of things to get to immediately.

Yeah. No, he was – I covered this on Boot Up. He was meeting with civil rights leaders. He's been to New York, meeting with advertisers, doing all these quote-unquote meetings. And everybody's mad at him because they're not meeting with their leaders. They're just meeting with other people's leaders.

And they're like, OK, well, whatever. But he's all over the map right now. He has no fucking clue what he's doing. And I – you know, there's a part of me that feels a little bit bad about how confused he is right now. But then again, I think you're the richest man on the planet Earth.

Maybe get a fucking clue. Maybe hire some teams to do this. Also, if only there were some sort of solution as in like, oh, I don't know, appoint a CEO. Yes, there's that. There's that. I couldn't talk about – see, the thing about that other show that I do during the day is I'm not really supposed to make my feelings known.

It's supposed to be fair and balanced. Did you notice that when Elon took over, he brought in a bunch of Tesla engineers to look at the source code for Twitter? Now, that's fine.

OK. Sure. Whatever. The engineers that he brought in were from the fucking self-driving car unit, which doesn't have a fucking product that actually works. Twitter works. I'm sorry.

Twitter fucking works. So you're going to have people that come in, look at the code from – with these engineers who are like, you know, doing visual systems and have them look at web code? What the flying fuck?

And the whole thing about printing out the code was really funny. Like, Leah Culver, like, showed a picture of her, like, holding up source code, like, printed out. And I'm just like, I love you, Leah. It's funny. It's good. But what the fuck is going on? I just don't know. I just don't know.

I, for one, am looking forward to self-driving Twitter. We have a show title, people. Amazon is pausing their corporate hiring because of economic uncertainty. So remember the great – Along with everybody else, yes.

Remember the great resignation? It's happening whether you like it or not now. Should have kept that fucking job, shouldn't you have? Mm-hmm. Told you. Yeah. No. So they are going to – They are pausing new incremental hiring across its corporate workforce.

Yeah. They might replace some people as other people, like, you know, phase out or whatnot. But, yeah, they are – they're pulling back, too. Everybody is pulling back. Apple as well. Everybody is. Everybody is. So, yeah. If you got a job – Hope that great resignation worked out really good for you.

I'll see you at Chipotle. Yep. Yeah. Well, by the way, burrito prices have gone up. So, good luck. Google has bought an AI avatar startup to take on TikTok. Okay. Let's parse this through quickly.

Okay. You just had it in the title right there. I'm like, okay. Yeah. They've quietly acquired a startup that was working on using AI to generate avatars for social media users and brands. They paid about $100 million to buy this company called Alter.

It went through about two months ago without Google bothering to publicly announce it. They confirmed the purchase, but they did not close financial terms of the deal recently. They bought Alter to better compete against TikTok. Where are they competing against TikTok anyway?

I don't get that. That makes no sense. That is my entire point in discussing this article, Jason. I'm hoping somebody can explain this to me. Alter began life as FaceMoji offering a platform that other developers could use to add avatar creation systems to their apps and games.

Now, the, the, which, how, even the article itself, which has that as the headline, Google buys an AI avatar startup to take on TikTok, then says how this team in technology could help Google better compete against TikTok is unclear.

Yeah. Maybe that shouldn't be your headline. Oh my God. Yeah. It's very, it's, it's extremely unclear. I am still trying to figure it out in gadget. The thing about all these tech companies now is it's just like, they have to take on somebody else just to take on somebody else.

It's like, Google, you're a search engine. Be search. TikTok is a video viral platform with really stupid videos. And in what universe does having AI avatars make you competitive against a video platform called that was how?

No, it makes no sense. None of this makes sense. None of it makes any fucking sense. Let's not, let's, let's not, let's not, not smack journalism here. Just because Google released a fucking press release that says they bought this AI avatar startup to take on TikTok does not mean you need to turn that into the headline when that is so clearly not exactly what this company does.

How is that? How is that the headline? This is nothing to do with TikTok at all. I know. I know. There's nothing here that has anything to do with it. Just because Google says it does doesn't make it true. Okay. Brian, Brian, if you say something enough times, it means it's true.

The world is falling apart. Nothing has any meaning anymore. Well, at least the Department of Justice is taking a look at the Adobe deal to buy Figma. And they are looking at them.

I think there's something a bit more important here that we actually didn't even put in our show notes. Which one? There's so many. The fact that Adobe didn't want to pay up for Pantone colors anymore. So if you're not an Adobe subscriber. Oh, Jesus, we didn't cover that. All of your artwork will now just be black? Oh, yeah.

Okay, let's talk about that for a second. Yes, Adobe did not. We don't even have a link in the show notes for this, but we've both read all the articles. So here's the deal. Yes, Adobe just got butthurt with Pantone and said that we're just not going to do it anymore. So it's going to cost you like either $15 or $19 or whatever.

It's going to cost you money every month to have access to the Pantone library, which is. Wait, let's put this in perfect speech. Adobe is passing on those costs to you. They are passing on those costs to you. Now, you know what Pantone literally is?

It's a translation layer between a name and a number. It's like DNS. Pantone is literally DNS for colors. I just came up with that. Shit, I'm patting myself on the back for that. That was actually pretty good. You know what we could do?

No, Jason, Jason, Jason. Let's log off right now. Hit mute because here we go. I've got the deal. All right. Let's do it. We're taking DNS for colors on the blockchain. Fuck yes. NFTs. We are going to get billions of dollars of funding.

Yes. Yes. Every color will be an NFT and you can own that color. You can own shit gray. Own that color. That's right. Oh, shit. Okay. On the blockchain. Yep. Okay. Mic drop.

I'm retiring. We only take Ethereum. Yep. Fuck. Okay. Well, anyway, but the Figma thing. Fuck Figma. Yeah. Yeah. The Figma thing. The DOJ is looking at them and they're going after them hard. So this will probably not close.

So there you go. Adobe already has their own product. Arguably Figma is better, but who gives a shit? I mean, this is just dumb. Everybody's trying to drive everybody else out of business. There can be only one. What the fuck is wrong in this world?

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

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

Media Candy. Well, Jason, I actually followed your suggestion. I was going to wait and I was actually probably just going to ignore it altogether, but you were so exuberant about the peripheral that I decided to give it a go. And you know what?

It's fucking great. It's so fucking good. It's really good. It is. I'm so mad that it just comes out once a week now. I like that. I'm actually, I think it makes the shows better. I'm all in on not binging again right now.

So I like Andor. I like waiting for it. I like the peripheral. I like waiting for it. I like waiting for She-Hulk. I think shows are better done that way rather than binging. And I think I would like the peripheral less if I was binging it. I really do. I need time to sit with it.

I need to actually forget something and be introduced to it. There's something about the forgetting because if you remember absolutely everything, you get bored with the callbacks and the setting ups and all that sort of thing. You need to forget some of the story.

I really do believe that. That is actually, you know, we've been doing this show for 10 years and I think that might be one of your most profound insights in the 10 years we've been going because you do need to forget before you remember. And in the remembering is the aha and the, you know, that little flower of genius in your head that goes, oh, my God, I get it now.

You know, if you don't have time between the shows, you don't have that chance to forget. Yeah. That is a very good insight. I think it's very good. I think it's – but anyways, the show is fantastic. I really enjoyed it. It's so fucking good. Yeah. It's so good. It's really good. I don't remember shit from the book.

I don't even care about the book anymore. I'm just enjoying the show. It's pretty good. Well, that's why I texted you. I'm like, I don't remember a goddamn thing about this book except for the fact that I was confused when I was reading the book and I didn't understand it. And I kind of got it like two-thirds through.

But by that point, I was completely lost. And – but watching the show, they're doing such a good job of like just holding your hand because I'm old and I'm dumb now. Just grab my hand and take me along for the ride, you know? Yeah. It's a good ride.

And it's like they're doing great with that. Yeah. I'm really enjoying it. It's so good. Another show that I – I certainly enjoyed the first two seasons. I think the third season kind of lost me a little bit, but I can guarantee you it's probably all over now. Netflix has renewed The Witcher, but because – Oh, because Henry Cavill is basically going back to being Superman, they've had to recast the main character, Geralt de Rivia.

Recasting main characters rarely goes well, but Liam Hemsworth is going to give it a go, so we'll see. Okay. Well, I – you know, I didn't – I couldn't get into that show, so – I really enjoyed the first two. I thought you gave up after season one, though. I thought – like when you – I thought you said season two was kind of a yawn fest and you just checked out, but – It was season – oh, God.

Yeah. It was season three, I think. I can't remember anymore. Yeah. Okay. I definitely enjoyed one a lot. Oh, no. It's renewed the show for a fourth season, so I've definitely watched three. So, anyways. Okay. Not going to be watching it anymore, so that's where we're at. All right. Burt Kreischer turned 50 years old today, and he released the teaser trailer for The Machine.

If you've never seen his stand-up special, The Machine, I highly recommend it, or at least go watch the YouTube. Version of The Machine bit where he robs a train in Russia. It is fucking hilarious, genius, and it made his career, the fact that he put that out there.

And, by the way, Joe Rogan is the one that told him – he's like, you've got to put that on YouTube. And that made his career. Now he's a multimillionaire. And now he has a movie. I watched the teaser trailer for the movie, and I thought it was terrible. My roommate watched it, and she said, this is going to be awesome.

So, caveat emptor on The Machine. I guess so. I thought it was fucking awful, but whatever. Because it's been like a year and a half since they filmed it, and it's just been in post-production.

I'm like, that's never a good sign. Yeah, the moment has passed. Speaking of the world falling apart, I just don't even understand how this is being allowed to happen.

A swarm of 500 drones have plagued New York City with advertising. This happened probably yesterday now, depending on when you hear this. The Gothamist reports, mobile developer King and show organizer Pyxis are flying a swarm of at least 500 LED-equipped drones over New York City's skyline on November 3rd to advertise candy crush.

Candy crush. Candy crush. They'll take off from and remain in New Jersey for the 10-minute presentation because they are outlawed in New York, but not in New Jersey, but they're bright enough that you'll be able to see it. Isn't that great?

Isn't that special? Yes. Yes. The planned flight is, of course, angering critics, of which all of us should be, because who wants advertising drones in the fucking sky? New York State Senator Brad Holman, for instance, says it's outrageous to fill the sky with drones.

This is considering legislation to ban such ads. Please get on with it, sir. Hurry up. Yeah. New York City's Audubon is also concerned the drones might interfere with bird flight patterns. There's a history of crackdown on this kind of behavior. Both the state and city kicked out a billboard-carrying boat in 2019.

So, yeah. A future robotic flyer will be viewable within three miles. Three miles. So, here's what pisses me off. Fernanda Romano, the CMO of Candy Crush, said, We want to turn the sky into the largest screen on the planet.

No, thank you. Well, no. You, by doing that, you have turned yourself into the largest douchebag on the planet, eclipsing Elon Musk for three minutes or ten minutes. This is going to be a ten-minute presentation. For ten minutes, Fernanda Romano, you will be the biggest douchebag on the planet.

These things have their place. Disneyland, amusement parks, Olympic ceremonies, all that sort of stuff. By all means, do it. It's cool shit. Events. Events. Events that people want to see. Not forced advertising. This is a clockwork orange fucking forcing my eyeballs open and making me see a Candy Crush ad.

Fuck you. Well, you want to talk about forcing your eyes open to see things you don't want to see? Meta is planning on NFT minting inside of Instagram. Yes, they are. By the way, Instagram is just as bad as Facebook at this point.

Oh, it's useless. We were talking about scrolling the Facebook. Instagram is horrific now. Yeah, no, it's, I mean, it's just like, I don't see anything I want to see. I have to, you know, like, all my likes have gone down in half.

I long for the days that I saw your dogs, Jason. I long for those days. That is sad, Brian. That is sad that you want to see Bam Bam again. That's how bad it's gotten, Jason. Oh, I should actually post, maybe I'll post the photo of my thumb because Dino bit me today because I gave him a piece of chicken and he literally tried to eat my thumb.

And it is black and blue now. Maybe I won't post that because you don't care. Human taste of chicken. Yep, yep, that's it. So, yeah, Instagram is working on NFTs with OpenSea and you'll be able to mint straight from the Instagram app.

Great. They'll make it really easy for people not to buy your shit. Exactly, exactly. I'm like, did you guys not get the fucking memo that crypto is out, NFTs are out, nobody gives a fuck? NFTs down like 95% or something like that.

Nobody's buying these anymore except for Sean Bonner. And Kevin Rose. Don't forget Kevin. I'm going to see Kevin next week. And look, everybody keeps giving me shit. You know Kevin Rose and you give him shit on this show all the time.

I'm like, look, Kevin's a good guy, but I can still give people shit that I like for doing stupid shit. You know, so chill. Everybody fucking chill. Separate the art from the artist. Exactly, exactly. I can still watch Harry Potter even though J.K. Rowling is a fucking garbage fire.

You know, that's fine. I can do that too. Like, my kid is getting into Harry Potter. We like reading the books. It's fine. Like, that's fine. Ender's Game? I do. Ender's Game is fine. Of course, and Scott Card is a flaming fucking pile of trash as a human being. But, you know, the book is fucking phenomenal. Michael Jackson?

I do draw the line at Michael Jackson. I draw the line at Michael Jackson. I can't listen to Michael Jackson. I was wondering how you got there. No, I draw the line there. See, I don't. I don't. I blame the other parents on Michael Jackson. They fed those kids to him like they were fucking going to a dragon. Anyway, speaking of feeding things to a dragon, PlayStation is launching their new VR headset, which will cost $550 next year on February 22nd.

I'm on the fence about this because the reason I put this in here is because this week I finally unboxed that PS5 that I got from my lucky Amazon buy. And by the way, I think it turns out that I spend the basically GDP of Uruguay on Amazon, which is why they put me to the front of the line to buy these things.

Because I know a lot of people that were in line behind or like in front of me and have never gotten the invite. I think it really just comes down to how much you spend on Amazon will get you – will bump you up to the top of the line. Probably. I set up my PS5.

Now, I've had an Xbox One for a very long time now. And the difference in graphics from going from an Xbox One to a PS5 – and I started with my PS5 playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, which just came out, you know, in the past, like, week.

Holy shit, Brian. It's insane. It is insane. Yeah, but are you wearing a headset? No, I was just watching it on my TV. I just plugged in my TV. You hate headsets. You hate headsets. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not talking about the VR stuff. The VR stuff doesn't come out until next year.

But that's the story we're discussing here. Right. But I'm talking about the PS5 first. I'm giving you some background on the fact that my PS5 looked so fucking amazing that I might actually consider buying this.

By February, I will probably change my mind because I hate VR. I've got a Quest 2. I never fucking use it. It's annoying. It sucks. I'm glad you're getting around to my point now. Yes. No, but I only put this in here because I set up my PS5 this week, and holy shit, is it good?

But I like laying in bed with my controller and my headphones on in a big fucking TV playing games. There is no reason in the fucking world why you need to strap your TV to your face is what I'm saying.

So let me quickly – let me encapsulate your story really quickly. Sure thing. Let's do it. I fucking love oranges. Oranges are fucking delicious. Oh, my God. I just got the best fucking orange from this farm. Next year, the farm is going to put out pears, and I hate fucking pears.

Should I buy the pear because I love the orange so much? No. Perfectly executed. Perfectly executed. Thank you very much.

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

Hi, Dave. I got to read this fast because we won't have any time for a show if you keep adding stuff on. I know, right? I just want to mention, it actually happened last week, but somehow we didn't come up on the show, is that we had some big business news here at the Cyber Wire.

Elon Musk has taken over the Cyber Wire. That's right. Pink slips are in your email. Eight dollars a month for your favorite Cyber Wire podcast. No, we did – we completed our A round and, and as if that weren't enough, we also completed a merger.

Wow. So we raised a few million dollars and we merged with another company called Cyber Vista, which is primarily a training and workforce development company. This was all kind of the – led by Graham Holdings was our lead investor.

They used to own the Washington Post and they owned Gimlet and sold them to Spotify. They owned Megaphone, sold them to Spotify. So they have their hand in the podcasting world some. And so we've gone from an organization of about 20 people to now I think we're around 60-some, something like that.

Wow. Okay. Wow. Yeah. I look forward to you being sold to Spotify as well. There you go. And then I'll listen to your shows there. I don't know. We'll see. Everyone has their price, right? That's true. Everyone has their price. And ours is shockingly low, investment. Very, very low.

Very low. Now, don't delay. Operators are standing by. I'll give you two for the price of three. Yeah. So it's very exciting. We're very happy. It's been a long time coming and nice to have that part of it behind us. And now we can focus on all the new things.

And the folks at our organization who worry about such things are busy planning all sorts of exciting new things. And I, in the meantime, will continue doing all the things that I do, including this show. Yes. Let us know what it's like being successful and all, because we have never figured that part out.

I'll let you know. I'll let you know. Yeah. When it hits me, I'll let you know. All right. Fantastic. All right. Yeah. Well, as we were kind of discussing off the air before we came on, probably not going to get too much security. We've got some fun stuff to talk about. But if you like security, there's all those shows that Dave is already on.

Yeah, we just. We got a bit of feedback from our theater discussion last week. Cath T. wrote in and said, hello, Grumps. Theater Spot, the UK's national theater live screen performances in cinemas, Viola. And a link to the site. So if you want to watch any of that stuff, you can just go to a movie theater, which doesn't necessarily solve the problem of people being loud and annoying next to you.

But I think I think Cath meant voila. I was going to say, I'm like, she said. Again, music world, not, you know, I think the orchestra. Fancy highfalutin French. I didn't read it oboe.

So there was a win there. That's good. Yes, this is a great. I'm glad she brought this up. I hadn't considered this. We have this here with the Met performs. They stream all of their performances as well. And so I can go to my local movie theater.

And if I want to see the Met's opera performances, I can go to my local movie theater and do this. I think that's a great idea. And if this is something that helps expose more people to these sorts of things and helps do it in an approachable and affordable way, I think that's great.

And it also means that these places are one step away, one step closer to just slapping up those big screens on either side of the proscenium, right? Because they already have a camera crew. They're already going through all the blocking and the, you know, all that choreography of the cameras themselves.

Yeah, that's true. So very interesting. Let's get on it, people. Let's do it. Well, we've got another entry in that field from John who wrote in. Hi, Grumps. I enjoy the show every episode. And I finally have something interesting to share. It's about time, John. Yeah. We've been waiting. Yep.

You were talking with Dave about live theater regarding giant screens and AR, and I wanted to quickly tell you about a show I recently worked on, which is perfectly pertinent to your conversation. I was the sound designer on a new opera in Boston, which featured both of these technologies. The opera is called Cosmic Cowboy, produced by Whitesnake Projects, and the prologue of the show utilized Google cardboard AR goggles that displayed a cosmic landscape roughly in sync with the music and sound design.

We put up a giant QR code for the audience to scan, which took them to the YouTube live channel, and the conductor triggered the sound design and YouTube stream to start with his downbeat using an infrared trigger I built on an OSC network. There were two full screens with facial motion capture, and giant avatars of the singers were projected onto the entire set about 30 feet tall.

Just wanted to share and humblebrag a bit. Thanks for reading. And if you're interested, you can read more at whitesnakeprojects.org. Appreciate you, John. Nice. That is cool. Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah, that is cool. And an interesting approach to this in that this being part of the theatrical presentation itself is blending that video element into the show.

It's not a separate thing on either side of the stage. It's part of the actual show itself. Yeah. Interesting. Very cool. Very nice. Mixed media, as it were. Right, right. Yeah. That sounds like fun. Yeah. And then getting back to the Samsung privacy feature, Dustin wrote in, in episode 576, he discussed how Samsung has a new privacy feature that allows users to secure their personal information during repair and how Apple should implement it.

I actually worked at Apple for many years, left about five years ago, and that was a feature when I left. At the time, the AST2 testing had been going through some new major changes that appeared to be unique to just Apple stores, but I would be shocked if it hasn't rolled out all Apple authorizes service providers.

Now, whether or not they actually use the tool to their capabilities is a different issue altogether. However, specifically in macOS, there are times where diagnostics pass in a known good operating system and technicians may need to attempt to reproduce the issue in the customer's operating system.

In my experience, those issues are usually idiot errors, and the best path forward is to erase and restore the OS. But point to be said, Apple has been doing this for a long time. You can contact Apple support, chat, or call, and they can remotely run diagnostics on any of your modern devices, providing it can turn on and connect to a network.

So, there you go. Interesting. Makes sense. Yeah. Still want multiple users on iOS. Yes. By the way, we did get an email somewhere. I don't know if it just came to me or not. Oh, that's true. We did. Where was that? Somebody mentioned that they have implemented that for certain school systems.

Yep. I got it. So, check this out. Here, I'm going to put this link up here. Yes. Oh, if I don't step on my own microphone, because it's one of those days. Aiden write in, just to upset you more from the multi-user iPads chat. iOS supports multiple users for school devices already, and it works perfectly.

And he gave us a link to the Apple developer site. And sure as shit, they have multiple accounts. Of course, they do. Those bastards. I'm going to have to register. Well, given the state of the education system under Betsy DeVos in the United States, I'm going to register myself as a charter school so I can get access to this.

Seriously. There you go. Yeah. Why not? Why not? Huh. Yep. Optimizing apps for shared iPad. So, not only is it possible, but it's out there. It's in the world. It's working. It's in the wild. Yeah. Yeah. It's there.

We just can't do it. Yeah. Look at the link. Click on the link that I sent you. It shows you a page or a screen on an iPad with multiple users. Yeah. Those rat bastards. Isn't that special? Wouldn't that be nice? Well, I got some food news for you.

This is specifically for Dave because Dave is in the Washington, D.C. area adjacent around there. Yes. I don't know how often you get up to D.C. I've been there a couple times in the past week, but I try to avoid it simply because it is a pain to get to.

The traffic is horrible, but when I'm there, it's fine. All right. Well, Gordon Ramsay has opened up a new fish and chips shop, which I would love to go try myself. But since I can't, if you're a fish and chips aficionado and you're in D.C., go check it out and tell me how it is because I love fish and chips.

I do love fish and chips as well. I guess I'm a little skeptical of these celebrity chef places because really it's fish and chips. I know, but that's what I want to know. Can they elevate it to a proper level?

Right, right, right. And to what degree do you want them to? True. Fish and chips out of the truck are pretty damn good already. The best fish and chips are always at a good old pub. You can never beat that. I prefer this. It looks good. My favorite one is for the street vendors in Scotland.

$17 for a combo. Those are my favorite. Not nothing, but, you know. Oh, Jesus. No, it seems to – I was looking at the website and it looks – it seems to me like they are optimized for the lunchtime crowd. People just coming by and getting their basket of fish and chips and, you know, just cranking them out.

That's what I think. And, you know, I guess it's probably Gordon's special super secret batter recipe or something like that, which is great. Maybe he keeps the quality consistent and high and good for him. But I guess if I was down there, I would certainly check it out.

I'm a fan of Gordon Ramsay on his cooking shows. I don't like the shows so much where he's just really mean and yells at people. I like the – I like – what's the one? I like MasterChef. I like MasterChef. MasterChef is good. MasterChef Junior is the better one though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right. Because they don't tear the kids apart. Right. I still think it's the best show on TV. Brian does too, but we seem to have lost Brian. He seems to have fallen out of the show here. So I don't know what happened to him. So maybe he'll come back in a second.

But I have eaten at Thomas Keller's place in San Francisco and had a $30 hamburger, which was worth about $5. I was not impressed, which I was really kind of sad too because I'm a Thomas Keller fan.

But it's like, man, can't make a burger right. I don't think I've eaten at any of the Gordon Ramsay restaurants. I've been around them. He has a couple of them in Vegas. Actually, there's one in Baltimore near me at our fancy casino has a Gordon Ramsay steakhouse.

And I would probably go check that out if I didn't have to walk through the casino to get to it. But I'm sure it's nice. But kind of to your point, I feel like a big part of what you're paying for is the name on the door, not necessarily the quality of the food.

It's as you say, it's easy to pay $30 for a $5 hamburger. Yeah, I was really bummed because I'd seen him on Top Chef. They did one where he was on Top Chef that was a really good one. And I was just like, oh, it just opened.

And I'm like, let's go check it out. And I figured consistency would be what they were going for, you know, with names like that. But if that was the consistent version, then no thank you, ma'am. We have a local sort of connection with Gordon Ramsay that, you know, I live right near Ellicott City, which is an old mill town, historic city here in Maryland.

And it's perhaps best well-known nationally for having been through a couple of horrific floods over the past couple of years where, you know, several feet of water flowing down Main Street and windows being blown out and just terrible, terrible.

Situation. And so Gordon Ramsay came to town with his – what's the one where he drives around in the 18-wheeler and comes and, you know, fixes up your restaurant? I can't remember which one that is. Maybe it's 24 hours. I think it's 20 – it has something to do with 24 hours because there's a clock that runs.

So hard to tell. Yeah, he has so many shows. So many shows, yeah. Anyway, he came to town and he worked with three different restaurants and two of the three are still in business. One went out of business.

But one of the things I learned was from – I know some of the people who run these restaurants is that when Gordon Ramsay comes to town and does this with your restaurant, you are obligated for – I think it's about a year to use his suppliers and his ingredients in your restaurant.

Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Okay. Yeah, that's a little – that's a – And it ain't cheap. Yeah. And it ain't cheap. No. Right. So in exchange for the promotional – all the good promotional stuff that comes from having the national recognition of Gordon come and help you with your restaurant, which is extraordinarily valuable.

And these restaurants say that their business went way up after the show aired and it's been great. But there is a catch. And the catch is you're paying Gordon a commission basically for the next year for all the food you have to buy. Yeah, it is with all those shows. I mean we hear the stories about the home improvement ones too where the homeowners are actually on the hook for at least half the cost.

They have to keep things blah, blah, blah. It's all a racket. Yeah, you have to actually – you have to prove your funds before you can even get on one of those home repair shows. You have to prove that you have $100,000 in the bank that is spendable on the home repairs before you can even get to the audition phase.

It's crazy. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. I wonder if Guy Fieri does that with Diners, Drives, and Dives. He's like, hey, come to town. Give me a little grease under the table there, buddy. Yeah. For some reason I don't think he does that.

I think he really likes the one where the guy walks up to people at Home Depot and says, hey, can I fix your backyard today? I haven't seen that one. No. It sounds like an HGTV show, which I'm allergic to. Yeah, I think it is. Yeah. And I'm always watching it to try to reverse engineer it to see just how fake is it because there's no way that it actually happens that way.

Yeah. No. After seeing the Property Brothers or was that them? Yeah, the Property Brothers, the big one. Yeah. Yeah. When they did that one across the street from me that took – that on camera took like a weekend but in reality took like 12 months and they got kicked out of their house.

And they got the lowest paid labor that they could probably find to come in and work like maybe three hours a week while these other people had to live in a hotel. It was a mess. Yeah, but you watch the show and it's like – but you watch the show and it's like in 22 minutes. It's like voila, not viola, voila.

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I saw this next one over at Boing Boing and since, you know, you guys are Disney guys and I personally loved this one as a kid. They put the whole Captain Eo movie up on YouTube and there was a link to it so I checked it out because I remembered when I first went to Disney with my dad and saw it in Orlando and it was fantastic.

Yeah, it was. It really was. I probably saw Captain Eo. Now, Brian, you grew up in your Disney land. I saw Captain Eo every day, daily during summers for at least four to five years, probably once or twice a week during non-summers.

It was well known as a good place to – if you happen to capture one of the lovely young tourist ladies, a good place to go make out. Yeah. Okay. All right. Saw it often.

Was there a particular row? You know. Really putting that happiest place on earth on the map there. Yes. Well, that and the People Mover, which we affectionately called the People Maker. Yeah. Yeah, they were very popular. Saw it tons.

I mean, obviously, it was quite amazing when it first came out. It loses its luster on the 17,000th view for sure. I do remember when it was replaced by a show based on Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which was actually fantastic.

I do remember really enjoying that one. Yeah. I mean, I have fond memories of Captain Eo. I remember that one, too. That was really good. Do you remember the one that came before Captain Eo? Do you remember the one that was before Captain Eo? The Kodak one? I know.

Making memories, making memories, taking pictures is making memories. Yeah. It was a 3D movie. I don't really remember that. It might have not been in, because Brian is here in California, and I saw Captain Eo in Orlando, so it might have been different. Yeah, me too.

So I think, yeah, the Kodak thing was just at Imagination in Orlando, and then they probably, I don't know, what did Captain Eo replace at Disneyland? What was in that space beforehand? It was in the same area where there was a mission to Mars, but they didn't really, the mission to Mars then became a restaurant that was right next to Captain Eo.

Which I think was just some back area space that they converted into a full theater so that they didn't have to shut down things, you know, Disney Imagineering at work, all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, I mean, I do have fond memories. As we were discussing earlier in the show, Michael Jackson is currently on, I just can't separate the art from the artist, so he's kind of on my no-fly zone, and I think I would get the heebie-jeebies if I went back to watch it.

Although I am curious. Coming, you know, 30 years on, what it would be like to watch it. But I wouldn't have my TV glasses, and there wouldn't be the smoke. Right. Well, so I think for folks who did not experience it at the parks, that's a big part of this story is that you have to remember that this was at a time when you didn't have everything you ever wanted to watch on demand.

And so the only place you could see Captain EO was at either Disneyland or Epcot. And it was a custom-built theater. It was like an IMAX projection system in 3D. They had in-theater effects with smoke and lasers.

They had an amazing sound system. Yeah, the mist. Yep. Mm-hmm. Right, right. And it was Michael Jackson at the peak of his powers. Mm-hmm. You had Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. So you had all the ILM folks with all the effects.

I have to say some of the costumes look like they're straight out of Starlight Express. By the way, a fantastic show. Seen it about 10 times. It has legs, sort of. But it is definitely of its time.

Some of the dancers are ridiculously 80s looking with their haircuts and their outfits and things. But the music's really good. I think my favorite thing is the playoff music with the – it's just another part of me.

Yeah, that one. Oh, I remember that. That's my favorite song in it. Yeah. But Angelica Houston makes a cameo. Dick Sean is the commander. He was Snow Miser. Oh, wow. That's amazing. I know, right?

Dick Sean, also famous for actually dying on stage. He was just – he was doing some stand-up, like a one-man show kind of thing. Oh, that was him? And it was – yeah. Wow. Yeah. Okay. And he died. He died on stage and people thought it was a bit – Yeah, I know.

It took a while. I remember that, but I didn't know that was him, that he was – that was Snow Miser that croaked it on stage. Wow. Yep. Yeah. Crazy. So quite a talent. I don't know how he ended up doing this little dinky cameo in – it's probably friends with Francis Ford Coppola or George Lucas or something like that.

Yeah. When Francis Ford Coppola or Michael Jackson calls you answer. You know? Right. Also pre-digital in that it's a mix of puppets and costumes and stop motion and animation. And so there's certain nostalgia that comes along with that.

So, yeah. I enjoyed it very much. And to that end, I will see you a high-quality Captain EO and I will raise you a high-quality version of Star Tours that is online. A 4K version of Star Tours somebody scanned in, cleaned up, put all the stuff from the little side windows, the video monitors that are in the Star Tours cabin, put it all in there.

It is the best version of Star Tours I've seen online, the original classic Star Tours. The one and only time I was grounded as a child was the day that they launched Star Tours because they did something very special at Disneyland.

They decided to keep the park open for 48 hours straight, 24 hours a day. And a friend of mine and I snuck out and basically tried to stay as long as humanly possible. And boy, when I got home, I was in trouble. And were you just riding Star Tours over and over again?

Well, no. The line was way too long. I think we got on it once. Oh, okay. But we just hung out at Disneyland, you know. It was – I think we stayed until – we lasted until about 3 in the morning. Right. And I was just like, oh, my God, I'm so tired. It was pretty awesome. So, yeah, that was the one in time I got grounded.

But it was thanks to Star Tours. Also, on that note, the rumor immediately after Star Tours launched was this would be an ever-changing ride, that there would be different planets that we would go to. And I am still here, what, 30-some-odd years waiting. Waiting for different Star Tours tours.

Well, that's what you have now. Do they have new ones now? That's what Star Tours is now. Oh. Now you go all over the place. Well, I have not been in so long. Oh, yeah. Seven of them. Yeah. Well. Right. So, the way Star Tours works now is – I want to say there's like six destinations.

And in any of your trips, you'll go to two of them. So, you can ride a bunch of different times and have different experiences on Star Tours now. And also, if you buddy up to the people who are running the ride, they can dial in where you go.

Because I was – last time I was there, I was having a conversation with the person asking them about it. And she said to me, she's like, so, where haven't you been yet? I said, oh, I haven't been to Kashyyyk yet. She says, all right. We'll go to Kashyyyk. And we did. So, it is cool.

It is fun. It is – I still love the original best because it is the – you're not going to do better for a kid of our generation than doing the trench run down a Death Star, right? Seriously. It just doesn't get any better than that. Yeah. So, they're fun.

It's in 3D now. It's – the quality of everything is better. But it's still not as charming or as mind-blowing as the original. But, yeah. I got a question. Since you go to Disney World, not Disneyland, Disneyland here in California.

I've only been to Disneyland once and rode the Matterhorn once and it was terrible. I hated it. I love Disney World because it's big. It's open. I've been to Disney World like 20 times. But I have not been on the new Star Tours down there recently, maybe 20 years.

Do they still have the big AT-AT when you walk outside or is it gone? Oh, it is there? All that is the same. Yep. So, the AT-AT is there and they – so, there's a stage next to it now where you've seen – like if you've seen the videos of Darth Vader and the Stormtroopers doing like – Yeah. You know, can't touch this or whatever.

Yeah. That's all right next to that. Oh, cool. But that's still there. Everything is the same up until you get inside the ride. I mean, I think they've updated the projection on the – what's the – you know, the departures and arrivals board and things like that.

Yeah, it's like a travel agency, right? Like with all the different – because I remember like the Hoth poster or like, you know, all the different places you can go. That was pretty fun. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So, it's all pretty much the same but the actual ride itself is different and updated.

I got to send this to my dad because we went there that first year when it opened and rode it together and he's going to love that because we had so much – we rode it like seven or eight times that first day. We just kept getting back in line because it was so cool. Yeah. That's interesting your thoughts about Disney World versus Disneyland because – yeah, I would – I actually – so, just comparing the Magic Kingdom to Disneyland.

I would prefer Disneyland over the Magic Kingdom Park. Yeah, I would. I think there's something special about Disneyland. I think it's a little cozier. I think it has more of the feel of the artistic touch. Just compared to Disney World – now, Disney World obviously has a lot more to offer in that there are four parks and water parks.

Yeah. Yeah, you got all that stuff. But if you just compare those two parks, I would choose Disneyland I think any time. Also, Disneyland has the Indy Ride which is nowhere else. So, that's fun too. Yeah, that is a great ride. I love that one. It was a great ride.

I'm looking forward to it all. I can't wait. I haven't been to Disneyland in so long. Like it's been Star Wars Land. I haven't seen none of that. So, I'm very much looking forward to this holiday. You know, the dinosaur ride at Animal Kingdom is exactly the same as the Indy Ride.

With just different dressings instead of, you know, all the Indy stuff. It's just dinosaur stuff. But the actual ride itself, what the ride does is the same. Exactly the same. Yeah. They do that a lot. If you watch a lot of the Disney documentaries on Disney+, you start to get the peak behind that curtain.

So, it's pretty cool. Yeah. But the thing is, since they don't – if they don't have the actual Indy Ride there, you can go over to Universal and actually watch the live action Indy Stunt Show which is also really cool. You know? Yeah. So, at least you have options.

Disney Studios. Yeah. That's over at Disney Studios. Yeah. I thought that was Universal. Not Universal. Oh. No. No. Okay. It's been – I haven't been there since I was 18 years old. So, it's been a while. I want to go back. My family is so ready to go back to Disney World but it's just – they've made it so hard to have a good time there right now.

It's still – no matter how high they raise the prices, it's still packed and they have all this Disney Genie stuff where you have to pay extra money for the good rides if you want to get on them. And it's just really – in fact, I think I shared with you guys.

I was down there a couple months ago for work. Me and my colleague Brandon were down there and we went to Universal instead of Disney because it was just easier. For a single day, we went to Universal, had a great time. But I would have gone to Disney if Disney weren't such a pain right now.

Yeah. Universal is a solid – it's a solid approach. I enjoy Universal too. We had a great time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this week on park travel. OK. Yeah. Use multi-factor authentication.

And there we go. Security. There we go. Yes. Yeah. I think at the beginning of the show, I bitched about two-factor auth for 10 minutes. Yes, you did. Oh, did you? Oh, boy. Well, there you have it. All right. It giveth and it taketh away.

All right. Well, next week, let's talk about Knott's Berry Farm. I don't know if you guys have been there. There you go. Never been. We haven't discussed that yet. Never been. You can tell me about Knott's Berry Farm and I'll tell you about Hershey Park. How about that? Sure. Sure. All right. Never been there. All right. And then I'll bring us in with Busch Gardens.

OK. Yeah. Busch Gardens is great. Both of them. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon. Nobody. I do feel that Patreon kind of squandered what goodwill that they had with the problems.

Yeah, I think so. It has the feel of a dying platform, which is sad because it did give us, for all of its faults, it did enable us to give, still giving an ad-free feed that people can listen to for just giving us a buck or two or three a month.

You get an ad-free feed and it's the only platform out there that really lets us do that. Yeah, because, I mean, it's just too hard to do other platforms. I tried to do it with Apple. It's just, it's fucking hard. We're trying. It's impossible with PayPal. It's impossible with Stripe.

We can't do it any other way. Patreon really kind of nailed it, but they seem to have squandered their goodwill. It's a fine platform. Everything, I can't even say that. They're really fucking up their back end. They're redesigning shit. I don't know what's going on over there. Well, they're also, but you know what? No, what they are doing, though, they are actually giving people video hosting now soon, too.

So that's something that they're doing, even though we don't have a video show. If we did, we could post it there for some reason, I guess. Do that on YouTube, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, thank you to all of our current subscribers that are still there.

We do appreciate it a lot, and I hope you do enjoy the ad-free feed that we're giving you because it's pretty cool. Over at PayPal, Matt, Simon, Matthew, Jonathan, Nikolai, Dennis, Judge, Nikola, Shaleen, and Thomas. Thank you all so much. And over the tip jar, we've got Christopher, Matthew, Mario, Anne, and Daniel.

So thank you also all so much. Love you. Thank you. And we have two new reviews this week. The first from JMOB466, who gave us a five stars, Enjoyable Banter. I was looking for an everyday podcast.

You know, your run-of-the-mill. No, I'm ad-libbing right now. One that I could throw on while driving to work or just walking around the store or what have you came upon this podcast, and I'm sincerely enjoying it. Even after 18 episodes, we'll see about 19. Ha ha. All in all, it's enjoyable, and I would suggest it to other peeps, assuming they have a general geeky aloofness about them.

Well, that's lukewarm. Are we aloof? Brian, are we aloof? I'm more of a loof-a, but okay. You got, okay, here's the tip with the loofah. Once a week, put it in the microwave for one minute. After you moisten it, it will get rid of all the bacteria.

That's my loofah tip for the day. That's my pro tip. It's a good tip. That's right. It's true. Dan K. writes in with five stars. Better than so-so sex. None of us would turn down a hot night. But if that's not in the works, give grumpy old geeks a try. They'll give you great tech advice about bad investments.

They'll give you good info on the latest tech gadgets and steer you away from bad Star Trek. And we will not give you a free handjob. That's what we do. I wonder if Dan K. ever heard the old episodes where you're giving away the sex toy. Oh, the auto blow.

The auto blow too. Oh, God. I'm so mad that MXV wouldn't let me sell that at the garage sale. Fucking vote, people. Vote. Vote for science. Vote for truth.

Vote for human rights. And vote for your rights. Stop this shit in its tracks. Get out there. They're coming after you. So fucking go after them too. Because I'm just... It's fucked up, Brian. It is fucked up right now that the stupid people are fucking winning.

So we need the smart people to get off their lazy fucking ass, not be the intro credits for idiocracy. Get out there and fucking vote for people with a fucking brain. Sorry. Just had to say it. You look good on my soapbox, Jason.

I like it. I'm trying. I'm trying. Making it my fucking own. Because, yeah, you know, we had a lot of attrition when we talked about how bad Trump was. And everybody's like... Was I wrong? No, you were not fucking wrong.

I was not wrong. Neither of us were wrong. But we were so beholden to the audience. And I'm just like, guess what? Fuck you. Fuck you. If you believe that shit. They don't give a fuck about us. They don't give a fuck about us. Why should I give a fuck about them?

No. It's just... It's fucking ridiculous. People are dying because of this abortion shit. People are going to die because of immigration. People are going to die because these people are fucking stupid. Don't get me started on their economic policies. So don't be fucking stupid. Oh, Jesus Christ.

Yeah. No. Social Security, they're coming for you. Everything. Fuck them. Fuck them in their goddamn eye holes. So get out there and vote. No matter what political persuasion you are, listen to Boot Up With Jason. Listen to Boot Up With Jason because I may have stacked that note a little wrongly.

Where he doesn't give those sorts of opinions. Actually, I did today. I did say go out and vote, but not as exuberant as I just did. I'm just... I'm so fucking freaked out.

I'm just like, God damn. Dude, I gotta tell you. I'm like, I have to go through Arizona to get to everywhere else if I'm driving. And like, Arizona is going to be like the fucking Weimar Republic in about, you know, like seven days. So let's fucking stop this shit. In all seriousness, it's, it's, it's, it's, um, I'm definitely going to be watching with a lot of interest on Tuesday, but, uh, going back to Stephen King, it, that, that great line from the stand, the center does not hold.

It feels fucking scary out there right now. So we don't turn this shit around. We're tipping point, Jason. That's the tipping point. We're at a tipping point. There's no doubt about that.

No, I kind of, I, you know, as much as I hate to say that, cause I don't want to be an extremist or an alarmist. I see it out there, like on the street and it's just, you can see it on Twitter. No, I don't care about Twitter is different. When you see it in person with people in the world, that's where it matters.

You know, fuck Twitter, fuck the internet. Anything that happens on the internet is bullshit. We all know that, Jason, but when it happens in the fucking world, it's, this might be the longest outro we've ever had. I completely disagree with you there. And you're a hundred percent wrong because there is no difference anymore.

You're thinking like an old person. I am an old person. You're thinking like there is a separation between the internet. Now I've connected into my chat room. There's no fucking separation anymore, Jason.

Online life is real life now. There's no fucking difference. Nobody asks me ASL when I go to buy my groceries, you know? That's also because you're old. That's true. Nobody really cares about my A, my S, or my L. They know you're A. And they don't give a shit about your S or L anymore.

Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah, trust me. Nobody gives a shit about me. That's okay. I'm used to that, but. I care, Jason. No, you don't. No, you don't. I've known you for 10 years. I know you don't give a fuck. I wouldn't still be here. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo.

And I'm Brian Schilmeister. 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 577.

From there, you can find links to everything we talked about in this episode as well as links to our swag and Discord channel if you want to buy some stuff or chat with us and other show fans. You can also head over to GOG.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash review and toss us a snarker review and preferably five stars.

ASL?

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.