589: Goebbels in the Machine

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. How's the health, Brian? You still kicking? All good. No change. I'm fine. So, no news is good news. That's what I'm running with at the moment. All right. Thank you, Gary. Good news. Yeah. Got a bit of follow-up. Last week, we talked about Jeremy Clarkson and getting canceled yet again.

This time, even Amazon saying, that's enough. You're gone. So, goodbye, Grand Tour and all that sort of stuff, which sparked a bit of a discussion over on our Discord. Some people pointed out that his contracts for those shows were actually up. So, then it became chicken or the egg sort of thing.

I see it as Amazon basically winning on both sides at this point because what's actually happening is they've got shows that are commissioned, which will continue. There's going to be – let's see. What do they say here? Clarkson's Farm through season three, which we will – season two is out now.

There will be a third season. The Grand Tour, which is one of Prime Video's biggest shows, will also come to an end. But there are at least four more special episodes coming that have been commissioned. So, basically, Amazon gets to keep all of this stuff and then apparently do the right thing by saying we're no longer going to work with him except for all the things that are already happening that we're going to make money off of.

Yeah. But we get to put out a big press release right after this to say we're not going to work with him anymore. So, win-win for Amazon. And in case anybody actually thinks this is just like, oh, cancel culture again. Even Clarkson knew he fucked up. Yeah, he did. He sent apologies. He really did.

Like, he really did. Like, he did – he should not have done what he did and Amazon is right to actually say we're not working with you anymore. You've got a pattern of this sort of stuff. You are a deeply unhappy individual that says horrible things on a regular basis. Right, but it still gives him through 2024 to make amends and make a – stage a grand comeback for the grand tour.

Which he may do and it would not be surprising to me because Amazon would not get – would not end their contract with Jeremy Clarkson. It is the biggest show on Prime Video. They're not going to stop it if they have a choice. So – Can you really believe that's the biggest show they got?

I mean, it sucks. I can. Have you looked through it? That's true. That's true. There's not a lot going on there. There's some good kid stuff. I'll give him that. Lord of the Rings. Hello. Lord of the Rings, which not bad. What else do they have?

What's that other sci-fi fantasy? The Peripheral that we just watched. The Peripheral, which was – again, I think that's going to disappoint ultimately. Jack Ryan. Pretty big. They've got some stuff. But, you know, internationally, grand tour. You've got to admit, people still hold on to that even though it's diminishing returns.

I've got a funny story. I was watching this Samsung TV I got from a resale shop yesterday in the studio while I was doing some construction. And when they sold the TV, this apparently comes from an apartment complex. This is like Samsung 55-inch TV. And it's a Samsung smart TV.

And whenever they bring them in from the apartment complex, they apparently forget to wipe their accounts and log out. So I get all of this free stuff and I did find the Top Gear channel yesterday. So I was running Top Gear in the background.

Now, I think we may have a rosier memory of Top Gear than it actually was because when I was watching it, it was god-awful, cringeworthy, and just as bad as the grand tour. I don't know. I think maybe we have, you know, just like I said, a little bit of retroactive hindsight bedouzzlement going on with them.

Yeah, perhaps, perhaps. I mean, I certainly really enjoyed it at the time and it definitely felt like a downgrade in quality. But who knows? Well, we did lose the Stig. So there's that. Well, that was a big part of it. Yeah, another little bit of follow-up. Elon is still being Elon.

You know, we talked about how he fired the one engineer last week who said that, oh, maybe you're just not as popular as you used to be when Elon saw his numbers going down. Yeah. So, which was, you know, pretty funny. But it turned out his numbers were kind of going down because there was some internal stuff going on at Twitter that nobody could kind of figure out.

So on Sunday night, he called in 80 engineers to fix the problem, which the problem was, you know, Elon wasn't getting his ego stroked enough. So they turned off all of the guardrails for most people and just let Elon be Elon.

So when everybody logged in the next morning, it was just – it was all Elon all the time. Yes. My feed was taken over by Elon, who I do not follow. Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks, Elon. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a whole – they kind of pulled back the curtains a bit on how some of that – the algorithm works with blocked accounts and things like that.

And it's just a shit show over there. They don't know what the hell is going on. It is King Elon. He's doing what he wants. I am definitely going to be canceling that Twitter blue because there's just nothing there anymore. I mean there's no engagement. And even if people see it, there's still no engagement. I've got a link in the show notes a little bit further down in the show, which we won't talk about then because we're doing it now.

But it's a pretty long article over at Vox. Musk's Twitter is getting worse. The broken Twitter everybody warned us about is finally here. It does talk about that particular – the meltdown that he had because Joe Biden's tweets got more engagement than his did during the Super Bowl, which now led to – you know, I have to be the number one person on Twitter.

It gets further into all the reasons why Twitter is just starting to become useless and falling apart. And if you're interested and still holding out hope for Twitter, check the link in the show notes. Yeah, yeah. Because there's no hope. Seriously, it's – yeah. As much as I've been holding out, I just – I don't see a path forward.

I don't see a path forward. Not with him running it. We'll talk about it. Yeah. No, no. We'll talk about that in a minute. So, yeah. And thanks to everyone who sent in links to the AI fuster cluck this week. I mean, I think we've got more emails this week than any time ever, I believe.

Well, I mean, we have been talking about this thing quite a bit recently, so it's not surprising. And, you know, when the big boys rolled out their versions this week and they kind of did what we figured they would do. Yeah, so here's – the quick timeline is ChatGPT comes out.

Microsoft invests a bunch of money into ChatGPT. Google rolls out – Bard. Bard, yes. They should have called it Bart. It just had to be Bart Simpson. It would have been much better. Just returned to eat my shorts to everything. Exactly. Cowabunga, bro.

Cowabunga, dude. So that happened. They lost $100 million in value because they made one mistake. Then Bing opens up their version so you can chat with Bing, a.k.a. Sydney, which then turns out to be a complete replay of the last time they did.

They opened up their AI. I don't know what's going on in my – I don't know what's bouncing around in those Azure servers over at Microsoft, but there's some racist stuff floating around in there. It just infects everything. There's some Nazis in the machine over there. Oh, man. The ghost of Goebbels is running Bing right now.

So that – but that was the next thing. And of course this is the one nugget that I love where Microsoft comes out and said, look, this is to be expected that it's going to be horrible and racist and creepy and try and want to kill you because we're testing it in the open.

We could never do this in the lab. Come on. Come on. Can you be a little bit more revisionist history here, please? The spin is going to – oh, jeez. Your head is going to fall off. I mean this is all a function. This is move fast and break things and the big boys shouldn't be doing that.

They really shouldn't. We all knew this wasn't ready. It's a fun toy. It does some stuff pretty well. What are these companies thinking? I mean I get – okay. It is move fast and break things. It's got to be first to market. It is – this is a symbol of everything that we've been talking about on the show.

It's have to have investor value no matter what. Drive up stock price no matter what. You're supposed to wait until the products are ready. You can put them out as betas. You can put them out as something fun to play with like chat GPT was. Don't bake it into your main products yet.

It's not ready. Well, I mean to be honest, it is Bing. You know, like 12 people use it. So – yeah. But this is like self-driving – this is self-driving chat AI on the blockchain. It is the next buzzword in the chain of buzzwords that we've talked about in the 10 years we've been doing this show.

So it is just – it is the new shiny. It is the new shiny. But we can't – let us not deny that it's cool though. It's cool. You are super into it. Like I'm super into the chat one. Like you're all in on all of them. You're doing AI art. You're doing AI text.

You're AI, man. Yeah, it's fun. It's fun, but it is – it's a toy and it's super early. And the idea that these products are ready for prime time, well, they found out, didn't they? They're not. They really, really did.

And what's really sad is Google was right to hold back. They were absolutely right to hold back. But they got baited into releasing theirs early, which just shows me that like these are just kids on a playground. It's like nanny, nanny, nanny. I got AI and you don't.

Like, well, I got AI too. Well, yours sucks more than ours does. Oh, does it really? No, let's find out. It's like, come on, guys. Grow the fuck up. Yeah. Well, I mean – and I also think that the journalists involved here could also grow the fuck up because the brouhaha that's going around because of Kevin Ruse's conversation.

People are tearing their hair out. They're acting like cats and dogs are living together. Frogs are falling out of the sky. It's just dumb. It's not real, people. Relax. It's a fucking chat bot. It doesn't want to be alive. It's not in love with Kevin.

It's not going to try to kill his wife so he can be with it. Fucking calm down. Man, people went nuts with this one. I know. It's more fun to watch them than it was to play with the AI for a little bit, which is kind of good. Kind of good. But – oh, and of course lawmakers are trying to jump on here and saying that, oh, we need to regulate this.

I'm like, can you deal with the fucking gun problem and stop playing with chat bots for a little bit? Just please. For five minutes. Five minutes. And by the way, if we're going to start in on technology, you're about 10 years late on other things. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus. In the news.

Well, speaking of AI and self-flying in this case, an AI agent flew a United States Air Force training aircraft for over 17 hours. It was the Lockheed Martin Vista X-62A, also one of Elon's children's names, which flew for about 17 hours.

And they use software, basically. I mean, there have been autopilots that have done very, very well for very long times that we didn't bother calling AI, but were machine learning and that sort of thing. And so they did it, and it worked. You know why it worked? Because it wasn't a car on the road with a bunch of other cars.

It was in the air where nothing was around it. I am reminded very much of the famous line in the movie. Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn. That's it.

I want my $2. That's how they programmed it. I love that movie. Oh, God. And then there was more AI stuff unleashed upon the public. BuzzFeed, which, as we talked about recently, fired about 12% of its newsroom this past December and made a big brouhaha announcement that they were going to use AI to replace a lot of this stuff and generate the stupid shit that we read all day long.

They've rolled it out, and they're there. They came out with some for Valentine's Day. They're just basically quizzes, and you answer a few questions to give Buzzy the robot an algorithm based on OpenAI's public API, the material it needs to generate a personalized and extremely racist response to your prompts.

Nothing really racist came out of this because this one's pretty much fed. This is more like we'll give you a couple subsets, and then there's a narrow window of text that it'll actually generate to make it an infinity quiz because no two people will ever get the same thing because it can go on forever because there's so many words.

So many words. But as the user, or as the writer over at Engadget found out, like, you know, half of them don't make any sense, and it takes a whole bunch to get any that are kind of funny, and basically AI doesn't get humor. And these things exist, but they kind of suck. All right. Next.

Speaking of existing and kind of sucking, Tesla admits full self-driving beta may cause crashes and recalls 363,000 vehicles. Well, we were all waiting on this, didn't we? By the way, by recall, it means over-the-air update, which we'll put more guardrails on it because it doesn't exist.

Yeah. And to be honest, I don't know if they, you know, I don't know if they admit to it. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told them that they had to do it. That was not, this was not, oh, mea culpa.

No, this is them being forced to do it. And it's funny, I was driving with somebody yesterday, this guy from Germany, and he was like, only Tesla can get away with this. My friend, he said, this is him talking, he said, my friend has a Tesla, and the over-the-air update broke his rear-view camera, and it just stopped working.

And they said, oh, well, we'll fix it in the future update. So now he has no backup camera in his car, which, you know, if anybody else would take away, you know, half of the functionality of your car and say, oh, we'll just give it back to you later. It would, you know, imagine if Ford did that, you know, you couldn't get away with that.

Well, they are trying in a different way. They're trying that in a different way. They're basically saying, what they want to do is basically say, oh, you can have that back if you pay a subscription for it. Yeah. But that's not really going over so well. So. No. We'll see. No.

Yeah. These people, these people, these people. Well, Tesla also fired 30 workers that were trying to unionize up in Buffalo, New York. This is the Gigafactory 2. So Workers United is getting involved with this and yeah, Elon don't like the unions is what it basically comes down to.

So he likes his tweets and he does not like his unions. I'm surprised he even had the time to pay attention to anything that's going on over at Tesla. That's the, that's the main, you know, takeaway from this story is like, wait, Elon still cares about Tesla. Who knew? Who knew? Who knew? Who knew?

Whatever. Amazon is trying to get into the self-driving car industry with their, their little company called Zoox as in, God, Zoox, it's coming at me and it doesn't know how to turn. By the way, the, the press, the press release for this made it sound like the second coming of God.

You know what this is? There's already been a couple of companies that have done this. It's a fucking shuttle that goes down a one-way road to get people from the parking garage to the front door of the building that they work in. Yeah, we've kind of had this since the 70s, I believe. Yeah. So, yeah, they're, they're, they're trying to get it out on the roads.

Great. Another thing. Amazon needs to stop it and focus on what they do well, which is, you know, buy some shit online. Now, when I was saying that to myself before the show, I'm like, oh, that's what they, they should really just stop trying to do all these different things.

Then it dawned on me, oh, wait a minute. Amazon wants self-driving cars for sure because they want to replace the humans in their delivery fleet. Yes, yes. You know, there's, there's always a reason for this. Self-driving AI cars don't have to pee in bottles. No, they don't. But they, they're still going to have to have a little human in a cage in the back.

So when they get to their destination, it runs from the back with its package to the front door and back until, until they, you know, go buy, was it Boston Dynamics? And get the robo-dog to do it for them. Yes. Anyway. So, Zooks, whatever. Talking about Amazon focusing on what they do well, as you had recently discussed, Amazon was shutting down some of their grocery stores near you, including their, you know, the ones that you just, there's no people working there.

You just walk in and then it scans your heart plug or whatever and charges you that way. Well, they're, they're, they're doing a U-turn on that. They may have shut some down now, but they intend to go big on its brick and mortar grocery store business in the next year or two. Even though they bought Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion and then probably ruin it, they plan on doing even more.

So, yeah, even though they're shutting some down now, they're going to come back in a big way, apparently. We'll see. Okay. So I, I just, I see these numbers bandied around and it's, I just want to put this back into perspective. Amazon bought the entirety of Whole Foods, right?

Yep. The entire grocery chain, lock, stock and barrel. Shitty parking lots and all. Exactly. Death traps is what I like to call them. For $13.7 billion, which is, you know, real money. Yeah. Elon bought Twitter for $44 billion.

He could have bought like three and a half of the entirety of Whole Foods, but instead he bought Twitter. Which is like, which he then, which is now being driven into the ground. It's like, oh my God. I just, I, when I see these numbers and I really think about what's going on out there, it just, it makes my head spin.

It totally makes my head spin. What a time to be alive, Jason. Seriously. Seriously. It's a bad time to work at Walmart though, because if you're a tech guy, they're closing three of their tech hubs, which is, I don't know if you remember the Walmart metaverse demo.

You remember that thing? I do. I do. Yeah. You have to walk around the metaverse and put virtual groceries in your virtual cart. Yeah. Because clicking on add to cart on a webpage. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a, it's a surprise that they're closing these after that amazing shift in technology that they, uh, they engineered over there. Speaking of companies, just being what they're good at. Walmart, be Walmart. Just be a big store that has absolutely everything where I can go at two in the morning and see some really scary people.

That's what you're good at. Pants optional. Exactly. Exactly what you're good at. Yeah. Well, according to Reuters, Ford is planning to build a 3.5 billion EV battery factory in Michigan. We talked just, uh, like last week or two weeks ago about Tesla's big, uh, investment in EV battery factories.

Um, Ford came out with the brilliant idea, uh, in this current climate, given 99 red balloons floating around in the air, of partnering with China. China. So we'll see how well that goes because, uh, I don't know if you've noticed, but Congress seems to be pretty focused on China and China technology right now.

So good luck with that, Ford. Yep. Good luck. Good luck. And, uh, Twilio is about to lay off 1500 employees or 17% of its workforce. Now, what's the Twilio? I was thinking to myself, you know, I've seen it bandied around and I actually have a Twilio account and I use it for something.

And I'm like, let me go to their homepage and just so I can, just so I can remember what they do. And this is the text that they have on their homepage. Basically, they send texts. Yeah. But this is, this is their word, in their words, what they do. Okay. Data-driven customer engagement at scale.

Twilio powers personalized interactions and trusted global communications to connect you with customers. Does that absolutely say nothing to you about what they do? Let me tell you what they do. Uh, we use mail merge technology to send texts.

Uh, they also send emails because, uh, node host turned off their automatic emails from WordPress and I had to go get a damn Twilio account so I could send myself unwanted comment notification spam all day long. That's, that's, that's what I use Twilio for now.

So, but, uh, they're getting rid of 1500 people. Yeah. Well, you know, mail merge is pretty established technology. So that it is, that it is, uh, but talk, let's talk about some unestablished technology. Microsoft is getting rid of its industrial metaverse team.

Jason, what do you mean unestablished technology? The metaverse is here and it's real. Okay. I, let me, let me, let me put my pants on. According to every company, according to every press release I get, the metaverse is real and people love it. Yeah, they do.

They love it so much that Microsoft is canning a hundred employees, uh, from a team that they just put together in October. Um, that was quick. Yes. Yeah. This was, uh, based on its acquisition of, uh, Bonsai. Bonsai. Ah, which is kind of a no code thing to, so you can build crap in the metaverse.

Uh, they say that there is no, no change to hollow lens to, and their commitment to augmented reality and virtual reality will stay the same. But, uh, this was like a team that was supposed to go in and, uh, work with people like, you know, uh, people with industrial control systems and things like that to build out a, like, you know, AR type of, uh, systems.

And I, apparently nobody wanted it. So time to, time to move on guys. Time to move on. And, but speaking of somebody that's not moving on just yet, Elon, one last time, one last time, he's going to stay the head of, uh, Twitter for probably the rest of the year.

So liar, liar, pants on fire. Mr. Musk, liar, liar, pants on fire. Yeah. Yeah. I will stand by the results of this poll. Uh-huh. No, you won't. No, you won't. Not going to happen. Nope. Last person moving on is the YouTube CEO, Susan Wojcicki.

She's finally stepping down. She was, uh, she's been there for a while. For a long while. Yeah, she's been there for quite a long time. Uh, it came as a bit of a surprise, uh, that she'd be leaving. There was, there's no scandals. There's, there's no racist AIs running around YouTube. Uh, you know, just a bunch of copyright infringements as it's always been.

Yeah, pretty much. Paul Verna, who is an analyst at Insider Intelligence, says, It strikes me as a forced exit caused by YouTube's underperformance in recent quarters. What's less clear is whether Mohan, who's taking over for her, uh, who's had a relatively low profile to date, has the leadership qualities to get YouTube back on track.

YouTube makes 10% of the money that comes into Alphabet. So I think YouTube's doing okay. And the fact that the stock did, yeah, the fact that the stock barely moved on the news, it's like, she's been, she's, she was at Google employee number 16. The news is, why the hell did she stay so long?

I know. She literally takes money baths every night. Yeah. So, yeah. Go live a life. You know, she's 54. That's what all these tech people need to do. Go live a life. You, you did it. You won. You made all the monies. Go spend it.

Give some back to the peoples. Please. Yeah. She's only 54. Come on. She's got to go spend that money sometime. What's the point of, what's the point of having it? So good for you, Susan. I think she did a fine job. Honestly. So yeah, YouTube's been fine.

I hardly ever use it. And the kid's product is shit. But other than that, great.

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Media Candy. Well, Jason, Picard aired last night. First episode of season three, the final episode. Did you watch it? Not yet. I did sign up, but I fell asleep before I did it. I will give you no spoiler alerts then whatsoever.

I will just say, if you were looking for nostalgia porn, it is the finest nostalgia porn you will see. I hope they don't try to shoehorn any big ideas into this. I know they will. I hope they don't try to shoehorn some universe-changing thing at the end.

I'm sure they will. But if you just want a reunion, oh my god. Okay. Just one question. Is Will back? No, he will not be returning unless they're going to surprise us again. But I think the reaction to his return in season two will preclude that.

It will not be happening. He's got the ready. Oh, that's interesting because they kind of set it up. It seems it's going to be a big, big deal for season three. But, hmm, interesting. Okay. I'm going to watch it tonight. So, I'm going to have a back-to-back double feature. I'm going to watch The Last of Us and Picard.

It's just a- All right. I will look forward to your texts. Okay. Got some more TV premiere dates of note since it's that time of the year. Last week tonight with John Oliver, season 10 returns February 19th, The Mandalorian season three. It premieres March 1st.

You've got Jared from Subway catching a monster in here on March 6th. That's not on my to-do list, but by all means. Well, they caught him watching kiddie porn, so it is kind of technology-related, technology-adjacent. That's true. Ted Lasso, season three, March 15th.

Then Secession, season four, March 26th. So, we've got quite a bit coming up, which will be fun. Yes, yes. I still haven't watched- Last week tonight, I don't- I think season seven was the last time I even watched it. So, it just got so repetitive. Well, and it's just- It's bleak.

It's always so bleak. I basically base it on, do they have somebody interesting on, or is it a topic I'm particularly interested in? I don't watch it as religiously as I used to, so. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I was looking around, touring is definitely back, so got some upcoming tours of note for old fogies that liked alternative music like me.

There's a whole bunch of people rolling around. Depeche Mode has announced a massive tour. They're coming through North America twice now. Skinny Puppy has announced their last tour ever, which I'm going to try to get, thanks Ticketmaster's Surge Pricing. I'm not going to pay $375 to see them.

I'll wait, and the tickets will come down. Sisters of Mercy are touring North America for the first time in like 15 years. Susie has announced shows, not Susie and the Banshees. She'll be just doing solo stuff. She hasn't played in years and years and years. Love and Rockets have announced that they're getting back together since Bauhaus exploded again because Peter Murphy can't stop the drugs.

Very much looking forward to that. My favorite variant of the Bauhaus schisms. Ride and the Charlatans are currently touring right now, and Garbage and Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds have announced a dual headline tour. So, my God. There's a lot of shows I'm going to be going to. Yeah, this is like a replay of the 90s.

Come on, let's go. Totally. It's amazing. And I listened to a new – well, not a new podcast. I talked about this before, the Curious Creatures podcast, which is Lowell Tollhurst, one of the founding members of The Cure, original drummer, and Budgie, original drummer for Susie – well, not the original drummer for Susie and the Banshees.

But known as the biggest, longest-running drummer for Susie and the Banshees. Got together and started a podcast. And I listen to it occasionally. Again, it depends on who they're interviewing. But, like, my head exploded because Mickey Berrini from Lush, one of my other favorite bands, is on the most recent one.

She is very, like, Shirley Manson. Like, there is no sugarcoating. She has opinions. She'll fucking tell you. And every other word is fuck. She's awesome. So this was a really good interview. And she basically – she's written a memoir that I'm trying to get my hands on. It's only published in the UK right now. I was going to say, did you ever get her book?

Yeah. No, not yet. Not yet. I'll figure it out. There was a digital copy that was floating around, and I grabbed it, and then something was wrong with it because, you know, whatever, digital artifacts. And I'll get it when I get to it. I just don't even have the time right now. But it was a great – it was a great interview.

Part one's out. And I watched a new show on Apple Plus, amazingly. Shrinking. How is it? It's phenomenal. Really? Okay. I can't believe they got Harrison Ford to star in what is basically a sitcom.

It's funny. It's touching. It's incredibly well done because, you know, they just throw money at things. I really love this show. It's so good. Yeah. It's feel good. Yeah. I watched the trailer after I saw you put this in the notes, and I'm like, hmm, that has potential.

It's like – it's not as funny as Ted Lasso, but it gives you the feels like Ted Lasso did. All right. Well, that can bridge the gap until March 15th when Ted Lasso comes back. Yeah. Very good show. Yeah. Do we have any word if this is the last season of Ted Lasso?

It better be. It was supposed to be from what I heard, but – They can't. They can't make it go any longer. They could have ended it with season two, honestly. Yeah, I think they could have too. We'll see. But yeah, the magic only lasts so long for these sorts of things. So please, please, please no season four.

No. No. I saw this and it kind of made me chuckle. Investor Value Act takes Spotify stake to back cost cuts at the music streaming leader. Basically, they came in and said – they bought a bunch of stock and said, hey, let's talk a little bit about how to make you profitable.

And I think it just comes down to stop buying other people's podcasts. So we'll see how that goes. But this was an infuriating article to read because just seeing how much money Spotify threw at podcasts over the years and we got none of it.

That's just – that's what pisses me off the most. You think we're upset? Imagine being a musician. Oh, god, yes. Yes. See, we had the right idea. We just gave it away for free from the get-go because we knew there was nothing there. Yeah.

You know, why try to get paid? They don't want to pay anyone, so free. Tops and doodads. I got a new gadget this week, Brian. I got the Elgato Stream Deck pedal. Okay.

Which is – it's basically a little programmable three-pedal foot pedal. Right. I found myself in need – I was – I'm editing these audio books and I have my logic window open and then I have another window open with the PDF of what I read.

And I'm checking it as I edit it to make sure that I hit all the right words because I am dyslexic and I screw up words all the time. There are a lot of retakes on my audio books. You should really just point an AI at it. Yeah, really. So I keep going back and forth and I keep screwing up and all that.

So I'm like, hey, just give me something where I can just page up and page down in my PDF. And I found this for $89 and I thought it would fit the bill. And it does. It's perfect. And it is – it's like everything Elgato programmable. So you can do all sorts of really cool stuff with it.

It's a nice little foot pedal. It gets the job done. So if you need something that's repetitive that you want to program with your feet, that's it. Okay. It's well-built. Limited use of the job. Scenario. Well, it's mainly for gamers. You can like do switch weapons or things like that with it, which when I was playing Quake would have been awesome just to have that extra half a millisecond of reaction time.

But yeah, no more games for me anyway. Moving on. Parallels Desktop is now finally, finally you can use it with Windows on the Mac with the Apple Silicon because that was a real problem. When I got my first M1 Mac and I was trying to run Parallels and they're like, sorry, sorry, Joe.

But now you can use the ARM versions of Windows 11 on your Mac so you can actually go buy a key if you don't have one and install it on your Mac. I have a Mac Studio here so it's blindingly fast. They say it basically runs at native speed except when you find an Intel binary, then it kind of chugs because it's got to use their version of Rosetta.

So you're using all sorts of, you know, translation layers. But I'm excited because it's nice to have a PC on my Mac. So no, this is this is absolutely fantastic news for me now, too, because my my day job is, you know, an all PC shop. And God bless them.

Thank you for the PC laptop. I don't mind using it in when I go into the office. But when I work from home, I'm an all Mac house. I've got my my office is like I just plug in my Mac and the monitor set up for it, the keyboard set up for it, the mouse is set up for it.

I prefer working on Mac and the fact that I can now do this. And sometimes there are Windows only things I need to do for work. Perfect. Problem solved. I can leave my PC at the office and not bring it home with me and just work it from here. Except you've got the world's smallest hard drive with no RAM on your Mac.

So good luck. We'll see how it works. Have fun with that. Yeah, let's be honest. Mostly I send emails. Come on. OK, there you go. At the library. New book out this week by Bruce Schneier called A Hacker's Mind, How the Powerful Bends Society's Rules and How to Bend Them Back.

It's a decent book. It's basically just a rundown of different types of hacks for different types of scenarios like hacking politics, hacking money, hacking the brain, different types of hacks and what people have done in the past with examples.

It's fun. It's a nice, short, well-written book from Bruce Schneier, who I, you know, as a security guy, top of the heap. I've not finished it, but I've gotten through like most of it because it's kind of the same thing over and over. You just pick a subtopic and then you can hear about all the different hacks.

But I liked it. It's definitely worth picking up. It's a good primer for people who aren't super techie and are interested in how hackers do their thing and why they do their thing. And it made me think that, man, all these self-driving car companies really need to just hire hackers to break it over and over and over again.

That's what hackers are good at, breaking systems. That's what we do. That's pretty much it. So thumbs up on this one. All right. Well, I'll just mention what I'm working my way through right now since neither of us have finished our books. And I'll talk about this next week by when I expect to be done.

We had talked a few weeks ago. I had read Ask a Historian, 50 Surprising Answers to Things You Always Wanted to Know by Greg Jenner, a very funny British historian. I am on another book of his right now called Dead Famous, An Unexpected History of Celebrity from the Bronze Age to the Silver Screen. I'm thoroughly enjoying this one as well.

I really like this guy's writing. So more of a review when I'm done. Yeah. All righty. We are joined again by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the highly acclaimed Cyber Wire podcast.

As the co-host of the Hacking Humans podcast with Joe Kerrigan, Dave delves into the fascinating and often chilling world of social engineering. Dave also brings his expertise as a co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, a podcast that explores law and policy, surveillance and privacy. Dave also hosts Control Loop, where he and his team dive deep into the latest developments and trends in the fields of ICS and OT.

Hello, Dave. Hello there. Good to be back. Hello. Yes, sir. Looking at the notes, it is a slow news week for us at least. Well, you know, we gave up on security stories. Yeah, that's kind of it.

And there's only so much you can talk about chat GPT before it's just you're repeating yourself over and over again. Yeah, we already beat that horse. I do have to say, because apparently I am the biggest Star Wars nerd of the group.

I don't know how this worked out. I found two Star Wars videos on YouTube this week that I thought were actually pretty funny. The first is, if an Aussie was in Star Wars, did you guys get a chance to look at this one at all? Yes. Very funny. It is quite funny.

It was very cute. Yes, it was very, very cute. But then I came across Stormtroopers, but they're accurate, which was really funny. It had a lot of good deep – I'm not going to say good. I'm going to say good for YouTube, deep fakes in it, recreating some key scenes from all of the movies.

It was pretty – I think both of those together, if fans of the show would like to go check out the links and the notes, that will give you a good six minutes of entertainment on top of this. So a couple of things about this. Okay. First of all, haven't we established that all of the clone troopers are in fact Aussies?

Yes. We did. Yeah, that is canon. I'm not sure Australia exists, but it's canon that they have that accent randomly. Right. So there's that. Yeah. Also, are you guys familiar with the Corridor Crew videos, the guys who did the Stormtroopers, but they're accurate?

No. No. It was my first foray. Okay. So their channel – the bread and butter of their channel is – they are a special effects house. So the bread and butter of their channel is sitting down and watching scenes from movies, both good and bad, and talking about what makes them good and bad, mostly special effects.

I have seen those guys. Yes, yes. I didn't know that was the same folks. Okay. Yep, yep. That's them. And every now and then they'll do one of these things. Usually what they'll do is like they'll take a – they'll say like Toy Story, but we made it R-rated. And so they just add all sorts of blood and guts and violence to an existing movie.

But yeah, this one was really funny. Really funny. Yeah, it was good. The takeaway for me watching these is it's been so long since I've watched the original series. It just made me really want to go watch Star Wars right now. It's been a long time and it was fun just being in there.

And yeah, it was hilarious. Good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of turning movies into R-rated versions, have you guys heard of Winnie the Pooh, Blood and Honey? I've seen the ads for it. Yes. Have you seen it? I haven't seen the ads yet, but no, no.

I just saw – I saw the first article about it this morning. I am intrigued. Let me tell you, here's some real-world implications of that when it was first announced. And I've seen the trailers and they're pretty – like it's going to be stupid. It's a one-trick thing, but it's a very funny one-trick.

The lawyers at Disney went nuts basically. It's like how can we ensure that Mickey Mouse never, ever, ever enters the public domain? Yeah. Well, that's what they've been doing for a very long time.

So unless they're going to do more copyright expansions, I don't know. It is. You know, we're hitting a space where just so many things will be hitting public domain that we're all just culturally aware of. It's a completely new thing. We've never really been here before.

So it's going to be interesting to see what happens. Well, within the decade, we've got Bugs Bunny, Batman, and Superman. So that will be interesting. The one thing about this is that in the article that I saw, they made a very good point. This version of Winnie the Pooh was before he had the red shirt.

Right. But they say, hey, if it's a white shirt but it's covered in blood, does it count? So I'm guessing he starts off wearing a white shirt and then it gets soaked in blood. I don't know. I'm waiting to find out.

I mean they think this thing only costs like $100,000 to make. So it's definitely not going to be very good but I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. And I've seen that point made that it is the original Winnie the Pooh art that has entered the public domain and the Disney version with the red shirt is still protected.

So I'll say like for Christmas, my wife got herself a – or should I say – I should say Santa brought her a hoodie from the Life is Good brand. If you guys are familiar with them, that is a – it's like a 100-acre wood hoodie with some of the old Winnie the Pooh artwork.

And so I suppose that what has triggered them being able to sell that brand is the fact that it is now in the public domain. Yeah. Yeah. And we got a couple more years until Tigger shows up. He only came out – the first book was in 1926 and Tigger shows up in 1928.

Hmm. And Pooh wasn't – he was naked until 1932. I forget the red shirt. OK. I'm expecting he'll be naked in this movie. He remains bottomless. Right. Well, with Donald Duck, a long tradition of bottomless characters.

Or the metaverse. Right, right, no legs at all. Right, yeah. I did see an article in the past couple of years where someone was asking the Disney folks about copyright extension because they are – they're the primary movers in this space.

And I think – Brian, I think you said that the Disney lawyers, they've been the ones who have really been responsible for copyright being extended and extended and extended. And I read an article in the past couple of years that interviewed them and they said that they were not going to push for that this time because they didn't think the public would support it.

That things have changed, people's understanding of the public domain and how things are shared and all that sort of stuff. They didn't think it would be politically beneficial for them to do it this time. So I thought that was an interesting turnaround for them that they're not even going to try.

Corey Doctorow would also have an aneurysm if they tried. Everything he's written over the past 15 years has been about copyright and Disney. So I think he might actually explode if they tried to do it. Yeah, yeah. I mean my understanding is that the whole copyright thing was originally to – so that things would go into the public domain.

Like the public domain was the primary thing they were after. But the compromise was to give creators a certain amount of time to have rights. But the point of it was to put things into the public domain. And of course that's been turned on its head thanks to Disney.

And my personal opinion is that copyright is way too long. Oh, yeah. I don't see why it's not like patents where you get X number of years and then that's it. Well, you do. But in patents, you get 20 years. With copyright, you get 95 I believe.

Isn't it like life of the author plus 75? Something like that. Yeah, yeah. It's life of the author and then for their descendants, they tacked on the rest. Right. I think Mark Twain was part of that fight too if memory serves. Yeah. Because he wanted his family to be taken care of from everything he wrote. Right.

He was not a fan of the public domain. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's against the spirit of the original intention of copyright on the public domain. But here we are. You tend to change your tune when you make $100 billion off your IP. Right.

Yeah. Right. Can I just get a few billion more, please? But I think one of the arguments is that there are creative segments that don't have that sort of protection like fashion. Fashion does totally fine with no copyright protection.

Like you can – I guess that's why you see all these bags that have logos on them, like handbags that have logos on them because that you can protect, a trademark, a logo, that sort of thing. But the actual design of a dress or a bag or something like that, it's not protected and they do fine.

Well, yeah. But I mean an entire industry has turned around. They've done billions of dollars of marketing to make sure that it's the logo that's important and not the purse. You know? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. It's crazy. Now, but one little bit of cybersecurity news, which I'm trying to – I'm going to shoehorn this in here.

I saw this one, which I – this comes back to us being right again over the years. Coming up on our 10-year anniversary, I just like to put it out there. We've been right a lot. This is cybersecurity pros less likely to be impacted by layoffs if economy slows.

We've been saying that there is – if you want to get into technology in any way, shape, or form, cybersecurity is the way to go because there are a lot of seats that need asses put in them. So – Yeah. And there was a survey that said a lot of different areas of companies will be cut, but only 10 percent think cybersecurity jobs are likely to be cut, which contrasts with the 30 percent of respondents who anticipate cuts in human resources.

Good. 24 percent in finance, 24 percent in operations, 22 percent in marketing, and 22 percent in sales. So cybersecurity will probably fare fairly well unless you work at Twitter. I'm sorry. Worked at Twitter. Then you're kind of screwed. But yeah, it's a good – it's a good racket to be in if you can do it for sure.

I think it's certainly better than most. I mean we are seeing layoffs in cybersecurity. Some of the big cybersecurity companies are laying people off. But you're right. The survey data says that they are the more protected people. I think it's an interesting contrast here because for so long the narrative has been how are we going to fill all these roles and there's no way we're going to fill all these roles.

So how does that align with the fact that now as the economy or the perception is that the economy is slowing down, that there are layoffs, people in cybersecurity roles are being laid off. How do you align those two things? Does that point to the fact that the stories about there being so many empty roles are a little more hype than it should be?

Or maybe just certain companies overhired during the pandemic, which is what we're seeing. Yeah, which is 90% of the pink slips that we've been seeing from everybody because even us on the show, we've gone off about like all these layoffs. But then I was reading a really good article about it that was like, yes, Microsoft laid off say – I'm going to make up the numbers because I don't remember them right now.

Yes, Microsoft laid off 7,000 people in the last three months. But over the course of the pandemic, they hired 50,000. So we're still at a net plus. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I don't know.

I think it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. But I guess I agree with the overall premise here that a cybersecurity job is a good job to have. It is a well-paying job. It is a relatively secure job.

I think as it continues to be professionalized and we get more and more away from the rock star status that I think some of the original cybersecurity people enjoyed, that maybe some of the – I don't know, feeling of invulnerability that those folks have in their job will fade away some.

And I think that's probably a good thing. All righty. I'm curious – I'll do a little media candy here with you guys. Have you guys seen the new show, Shrinking? I have. I am thoroughly addicted to it and absolutely love it.

So for those who aren't familiar with it, this is from the folks who created Ted Lasso and Scrubs. So it has some of those sensibilities in it. Very well-written show and – oh, who's the male lead, Brian?

His name is escaping me. The guy who did the Muppet movie. Oh, God. Why am I blanking on his name right now too? He was a lot of freaks and geeks. He's been in all those – how I met your mother. Starts with a J. Totally blanking. Jason. Good God.

Jason Siegel. Come on. Jason Siegel. Yes. Thank you. Were you just sitting there waiting for us, Jason? I was just waiting for you guys. I was just waiting for you guys. You're a good friend, Jason. I was actually trying to remember – well, you guys were talking about the Muppet movie. I'm like, that guy was like – did full frontal nudity in some other movie that he was in.

Well, the one with Russell Brand. That was a great movie too. That was it, yeah. Yeah. The Saving Sarah – no. Saving Sarah Marshall? Yes, yes. Is that it? Yes. Okay. Yeah. That was a very out of – that was just so shocking. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey. What's up there, Jay?

Hello. Put that away, Jay. Well, there's no full frontal in this, Jason, so you're safe. Watch where you point that thing. Yeah. I didn't realize it was the Ted Lasso – I didn't realize it was the same Ted Lasso team that was behind it, like production team, because actually I related it to Ted Lasso earlier when I was talking about it in that it has – it's not as funny, but it gives you the same kick in the feels that Ted Lasso does.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who is it? Brett Goldstein, the guy from Ted Lasso, who is also a writer on that show. So he's an executive producer of this show and writes on it as well. He did a great interview on The Colbert Show about how they got Harrison Ford to be on the show and him going to Harrison Ford's apartment in London while – he talks about how Harrison Ford was in the middle of shooting a little independent movie called Indiana Jones 5.

And he goes there to sort of pitch it to him and he said, you know, it's surreal. You knock on the door and Han Solo opens the door and you go in and have a meeting and Harrison Ford said how much he liked the dialogue. And it was like a – you know, one minute of back and forth.

So do you want to do it? Yeah, I want to do it. And it's – OK. Let's see. How big is the bag of money that we need to deliver is the next question. Well, yeah. But I wonder too like to what degree is Harrison Ford looking at where he sits in his career? He doesn't need any money.

No. What kind of work does he want to do? It seems to me – and I'm curious – I was watching this last night, Brian. And I'm curious what you think about – it strikes me that Harrison Ford is in this role, is leaning into his kind of grumpy old man persona. Yep, definitely.

I think he's having fun now. I think this is something that he wanted to do because he enjoyed the writing and he could just be this character that I think he thinks of himself as now and just enjoys it. Like – and I don't think he's – he's probably not getting paid tons of money. He doesn't need it.

Like what he needs is a pilot. He needs to stop fucking flying planes himself. I would say he needs to not fly any more planes, yes. He certainly doesn't need money. He probably has enough money to hire John Travolta to be his personal pilot now. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. No, but I mean I started the show with no preconceptions at all.

Like a friend had mentioned you should watch this and I was like, oh, I have Apple Plus. I'm waiting for Ted Lasso. I might as well. And like within 20 minutes, I was just entranced by it. It's a great cast. The writing is just phenomenal. And again, it's the feels.

Like I like the feel-good real world, like real world problems, but you still feel good about it thing. It was good. The thing I noticed, again, we were watching an episode last night, is that the show is about the fact that the main characters, three of the main characters in the show are therapists.

And so they're dealing with their patients and their own interpersonal relationships. But I felt like having watched that show had been therapeutic because of the way they were describing things and how to work through things and are you thinking about this and that and the other thing.

While I was watching, I was thinking about my own things and my own life and thinking about how it applies to me. And so I left the show feeling enriched in that way that, oh, yeah, wow, that's an interesting way to think about that, huh? So, yeah, it hits on a lot of different levels.

Really haven't found anything about it that makes me go, oh, come on. I'm enjoying it very much. It's a good show. My one thing that sticks out for me is the Krista Miller character. Like, she's a little – I don't know if anybody like that exists in real life that anybody would put up with.

That's about it. So, like, there's just no way that everybody would be dealing with her being this up in everybody's business. But that's the only standout. But they also write her very well and it's very funny and you can tell she has her own issue that she's working through and that's why she's that way.

It's just a very well-done show. Yeah, yeah. I will say – I'm wondering if you guys consider this to be a trope the way that I do because you are certainly more West Coasters than I am. But the whole, hey, let's go for a walk or jog in the sandy, dusty hills of L.A. seems cliché to me.

No, it's what we do every day. It's what rich white people do. It's what we do. It's 100%. Yeah, that's it. 100%. Yes. No, that's exactly what we do. We hit Runyon. We hit – yeah, there's many canyons that we go hiking on all the time. We would go – my wife and I would go once a week.

Every Sunday we would go hiking. Yeah. All right. It's a good life. I miss it. I know. I think my daily hike for a while was I was going with Nitro from American Gladiators. We'd go hiking every morning. Also a true trope about Hollywood.

Just like sling you over your shoulders and – yeah. You go for hikes with B-list celebrities, Dave. That is really true. That is honestly it. And then while you're walking, you see A-list celebrities coming – either going up or going down the path. And you hope that they say hi to your B-level friend because your B-level friend is like, please, please, please say something to me.

Like we walked by Seth Rogen one day and Seth said hi to Dan. And I'm just like, oh my god. How cool is that? You know? That's what it's like. It is true. It is absolutely true. If you go to Runyon any day, you'll see Kevin Smith. You know? It's just the way it is. Yeah. It's very true.

One of the truest stories – one of the truest depictions of Los Angeles in any movie ever. And I know people don't think it's true. And there's a little bit of hyperbole in it, of course. But L.A. Story. Yeah. Picard in L.A. Story. That is living in L.A. That is it.

That is it. There's nothing wrong about it. You drive two blocks. You get shamed and shunned at restaurants. Like it is 100% true. There's nothing wrong with that. Everybody orders their coffee and their water with different twists of lemon. And it's insane. It's so good.

Oh, they need to remake that movie. Oh, that was such a good movie. It's time for L.A. Story 2. Yeah, it really is. That's an L.A. Story sequel. Yeah. Right. This time traffic is even worse. Yeah. This time we Uber.

Yes. Oh, right. See, there's – yeah. And they have cell phones. So that would change things up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think L.A. Story is the movie where I first got a crush on Sarah Jessica Parker. Everybody did.

My God, she was gorgeous in that movie. She was just adorable. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think I'm going to go for a walk in the hills now and see if I can dig up a celebrity or two. I've got to find some B-list Canadian celebrity to go walk in the snow with.

Much. Put on your snowshoes. Yeah. Go out on an Iditarod. Have fun. I'm sure Rick Moranis is hanging around somewhere in your neighborhood. You could probably find him. That's right. Maybe Martin Short. I think they all live in Hollywood. They're at Runyon.

Okay. I'll see him. I'll tell him to go look you up when they're on vacation. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, ho my jiggy-dee-gee. We got Dan, Robert, Sherry, Dag, Tracy, and Theodore. Welcome, everybody.

Yeah. A lot of those people were people that came back. So thank you so much for coming back. We totally understand. If finances are tight, you go away. But when they come back, you come back. Thank you. We appreciate that. Appreciate it. Over at PayPal, we got Miles, Natalie, Edward, Nathaniel, Andrew, Ramsey, Linda, Sharp End, Dag, and Greg, who tossed us a big old 50 bucks and sent this in.

He says, referencing the discussion of ChatGPT in the latest episode, you may find this post interesting, hilarious, scary, and it's a link to Mastodon, which I'm not on. I have no way of fact-checking this, but there are other posts floating around suggesting that it's fairly easy to get the Bing chatbot to say outrageous things. And we could do with Dave B. mentioning the Pride and Prejudice Miss Piggy mashup that he re-tooted yesterday.

Can we not make re-tooted a thing? Too late. Damn it. It's toot late. Too late. I don't want that to be a thing. I didn't either, but it's too late. It's done. I didn't want blog to be a thing. I didn't want podcast to be a thing.

But now we've got re-tooted is a thing. It's too late. Too late. Over at the tip jar, we've got Kevin, Theodore, and Sean. Thanks, everybody. And just remember, on our Patreon side, if you do subscribe to Patreon, it starts at $3 a month.

You can give us whatever you want, but basics, $3 a month. And you get the show ad-free a little bit early, sometimes. And you also get it in high-res. Woo! Just saying. Woo-hoo! We have a new five-star review from Dave from WANTX.

Washington and Texas. They think they're old. I've been listening to this podcast for a couple of years now. It's part of my weekly podcast, along with Hacking Humans, Darknet Diaries, and a bunch of others. Must listen to all of them. They are, however, wrong about Teslas, though not Elon. I love my Tesla, despite the comments by these bozos. I am older and grumpier than both of them, but I still learn from them every week.

I would like to remind you, Dave, I am bullish on Tesla. I like Tesla as a company. I just wish he wasn't running it. So I think we're agreed. Although I don't like the cars. I don't like driving them. It's a big lap. See, I think he loves his Tesla. That's the trick. He likes it. I've never driven one. I don't plan on it. So there.

Anyway. There you go. That's how it is. Shout out to Bruce Willis this week because he's finally been diagnosed with dementia because he had aphasia before and now he's moved into actual dementia. So very, very sad. And as somebody who also has aphasia, I, great.

Yay. Fun. Well, rest in peace for Kel Welch. What a bummer way to end. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. And thank you to JetGPT for our new outro. I forget who this is in the voice.

I actually think this is in the voice of Captain Picard, Scotty, and Douglas Adams. So here we go. Thanks for listening. If you'd like to show your support and keep the show running, visit GOG.show slash donate. Your assistance is invaluable and our appreciation infinite.

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We would undoubtedly appreciate your five-star rating. So long and thanks for all the grumps. See, this is why it's good as a starting off point, not as a finished product. No, I think I might need to polish that one up a bit.

We're going to have to massage this one a bit, Jason. A little massage. Let's run it through Bing and add some racism. 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.

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