594: Underfinancialization

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. Happy 10-year anniversary, Brian. Oh boy, 10 years of doing this. 10 years. All right. Well, let's wrap it up. Show's over. Okay. I'm done. Stick a fucking fork in it.

Yep. That's a good run. Better than most. Did not get the Joe Rogan money. So we're out. Yeah. Seriously. Seriously. Where's the damn paycheck? The problem is we're not racist enough, Jason. I know. Or misogynistic.

Actually, I saw a really funny cartoon the other day. I'll have to dig it back up again for the show notes. But the whole thing was like some kid was out there selling lemonade for 50 cents. Nobody was buying. And he then writes, unwoke lemonade, 50 cents.

I would like some of that unwoke lemonade. And he sells out and he's like, I feel really bad about this, but the money seems to be making up for it. There you go. I'll take it. Yeah. Good times. Welcome to unwokey old Greeks. Geeks. Unwokey old Greeks. We're going to have to do accents now?

Oh, God. No. Opa! Anyways, I got a little bit of follow-up. Although technically it's not a follow-up. We barely talked about Silicon Valley Bank because of the timing because it happened so fast. It started basically when we turned off our microphones last week and it was done well before we started to record again the following week.

So we never really talked about it. Yeah. I also didn't give that much of a shit. Yeah, me either. I did like this article, though, that kind of gives a little bit of a wrap-up on it. It's called Why No One Cried for Silicon Valley Bank's Customers. And the reason I like this article is it does talk a little bit about what we've talked about for quite some time.

You know, the good old days of the internet versus what it's now become. Yeah. So the article just kind of gets into tech used to be a lot of fun and it was, you know, driven by innovation and it was driven by experimentation. And new technology is coming out. But like as all businesses do, they start to solidify and then the CFOs start to become in charge of everything.

And it's all driven by money. So some of the quotes in here, the tech sector, at least parts of it, then trended into over-financialization. Instead of thinking about what problems they could solve for people, companies started to look only at growth and margins. They became extractive. DoorDash, for instance, counted tips toward its minimum delivery worker payments, changing the policy only after uproars.

And this happened. VCs, not builders, became the tech industry's most recognizable names. All became about squeezing a bit more money onto the balance sheet. And it had a cost, although it wasn't an apparent one. So when it came time to save tech companies over that weekend, some, including maybe perhaps us a little bit, preferred to burn down the system instead of keep it going.

Okay, okay. Just to quick clarify, I'm not one of those people who wanted to see it burned down. I don't want to see it burned down either. I'd like to see fundamental change. Well, I would like to see the regulation that's in place actually used. Yes, that would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then, of course, obviously the move was common sense.

They got their save because banking industry contagion was a real threat. So there you go. But I did like the article. It's really interesting about how tech has changed and how they've squandered any goodwill. Yeah, over-financialization is something we've never had to worry about with this podcast.

No, no problem there. Under-financialization. Absolutely. Every week we deal with under-financialization. Yeah. But a decade of under-financialization. Yeah. And I put this one in here because I thought it was kind of interesting. How Elon Musk Knocked Tesla's Full Self-Driving Off Course.

Since this is the 10th anniversary and self-driving cars are still 20 years away, which is exactly what we said when we started this. You'd think we'd only be 10 years away now, but nope. This is not how it works. This is not how it works. There's some Einsteinian physics going on here as you approach full self-driving cars.

They're just still 20 years away no matter what you do. And I guess a lot of the blame for Teslas is just because Elon didn't like sensors. Okay. Which is what we've known all along. That's why I don't know why they're saying – I mean like why the hell is the Washington Post covering this?

Half of my problem with this is like, okay, we're really bored now and we're just rehashing all the old shit that we've already known. Well, I mean it's interesting in lieu of what's happening over at Twitter where we're seeing a raging egomaniac with absolutely no guardrails in charge and they're pointing out that the same thing has happened to Tesla.

That's always been my issue with Tesla. I think it's a great company. I wish he wasn't running it or even if he were running it, I wish he had a board that wasn't just full of yes-men. Nobody challenges him on anything. He just does what he wants. Nope. I almost got hit by another Tesla when I was at Whole Foods the other day.

Yes, I know. First world problems. But I came up with a new saying for the Tesla owners that drive through the Whole Foods parking lot. Now, when you say D-bag, it immediately comes to mind an over-muscled, tribal tattoo, besoaked, musclehead, dimwit.

That's when I think of a D-bag, basically a date rapist. I take issue with the tribal tattoos, unfortunately, because I just happened to be in that sweet spot when they were cool and I'm covered in them. Oh, see, I got mine before they were cool, so I kind of go with that. It's like I liked Nirvana before they were cool, too.

That one's on you, Brian. Sorry, that one's on you. And then I'm just thinking, you know what? We don't have D-bags anymore. Now we have T-bags. So those are our Tesla drivers. And I just – I don't know why it made me chuckle as I was dodging them for my life. It's a solid Whole Foods joke as you're going to pick up your matcha chi.

Yep. That's about it. I go there for my – every morning I go and I have my $4 vanilla espresso and my $8 pork carnitas burrito. That's my daily routine and, yes, I have to dodge them still to this day.

So anyway, yeah. So, yeah, still 20 years out on full self-driving cars. Not surprising. And, hey, whatever happened to the flying Ubers? Wasn't that a big thing that we kind of lost along the way? That's 40 years off. Oh, shit.

Always 40. So, you know. I don't think we're going to be around for that one. If we have a 40th anniversary from Grumpy Old Geeks, I will be shocked. No. It's funny that – just a little walk down memory lane. When we started this show, everybody's like, you're not old. Stop saying you're old.

But to us, we were because I was 41 when we started this show. I'm 51 now. Jesus Christ. And we were both right at the age where we were aging out of tech because this was right at the height of basically ageism in Silicon Valley.

Like if you wanted to get a job at Facebook, there was no way you're getting a job at Facebook. Not a chance. Any of those little shit shops. Yeah. We were both dealing with basically needing to pivot because we had aged out. So, of course, we felt like Grumpy Old Geeks. Yeah. And that's – And now we literally are.

Yeah. That's the thing. It's like you have a kid who is how old? And we'll be turning seven. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. So far you've, what, had cancer twice. I've had a stroke, an alcohol recovery. I've got titanium in my legs.

It's like, you know, yeah. Eventually, in a long enough timeline, the survivability rate does fall to zero. Yes, it does. Hopefully, we'll be here for at least the 20-year anniversary. I'm hoping so. I'm hoping so. I'm still having fun even though we are undercapitalized or whatever the hell now.

We're underfinancialized. Yeah. I would say it pays the booze bills, but you're off them and I am temporarily too. So. There we go. There we go. Pays for the burritos. Yes, it does. Sort of. Almost. Almost. If they weren't Whole Foods burritos.

I know. I have to say I have to go to Trader Joe's, but I don't know if you've seen inflation in Southern California. I'm going to have to go to Vallarta. That's it. I'm just going to have to start going to Vallarta. In the news.

Well, the law runs slowly, but eventually we do get around and it's nice to finally see some repercussions for cryptocurrency endorsements. The SEC has filed charges against the celebrities. A bunch of celebrities as part of its broader charges filed against crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun and three of his companies, Tron Foundation Limited, BitTorrent Foundation Limited, and Rainberry Incorporated, formerly BitTorrent, for the unregistered offer and sale of crypto asset securities Tronix and BitTorrent.

Now, I personally would like to see most of the coverage focused on Justin Sun because he's the real problem here. But, you know, celebrity culture. So, eight celebrities, which included rappers Soulja Boy and Lil Yachty. That is a celebrity, apparently.

Really? Singers Austin Mahone and Akon, Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, Neo, and adult film superstar Kendra Lust for illegally touting these cryptocurrencies and not disclosing that they were compensated for doing so and the amount of their compensation. So, all the mentioned celebrities except for Soulja Boy and Austin Mahone agreed to pay a total of over $400,000 in disgorgement, interest, and penalties to settle the charges without admitting or denying the SEC's findings.

Okay. Whatever. Well, you know, the wheels ground slow, but they get there. Yeah. And, you know, yeah, somebody needs to find this guy and kind of take him out back. Well, he's the problem. Like, I want to see, I want to learn more about his punishments.

I could care less. I feel bad for the celebrities, but, you know, also knowing how all this stuff works, what about their managers? Their managers, their agents. Their managers are the ones that eventually said, yeah, you should go ahead and do it. Mm-hmm. So, there's going to be a lot of these.

I mean, we've seen the fallout after everything started to fall apart. I'm just still like, this goes back to being here for 10 years, you know. We started making fun of Bitcoin at the very beginning and called it a scam. And it's still a scam. And now, finally, some people are starting to get taken out back.

And what's going on with SBF? You know, we got kind of sidetracked by SFB or SVB. And we forgot about SBF. Yeah, you got to make sure you put that on every day. You don't want the skin cancer. Yeah, you don't. You don't. Trust me.

You know. I'm sure we'll hear about that soon. Again, wheels rolled slowly. Very slowly. At least he gets to stay at home and play his Xbox if he wants. Yeah. Must be nice. A TikTok ban is looking a lot more complicated than just shutting down the app.

So, we're in the midst. We just had the five-hour testimony the other day where a bunch of puffed-up senators tried to make themselves pretend that they understand tech and asked hard-hitting questions from TikTok. I don't know. Yeah. It's not even worth reporting about.

What I like about this article is saying, yeah, you know what? It's not just TikTok. Not even close. Not even close. Now, let's just talk tracking pixels because if you're going to ban use of TikTok on devices for government devices, as many states have done, you've got to remove those TikTok tracking pixels.

And what are they doing on government websites to begin with? That is the question. According to the report, Maryland was one of 27 states that had code for TikTok's tracking pixel embedded in official government websites. In Maryland's case, those were reportedly found on a state-run COVID website and related to an ad campaign from last year.

Yeah. Getting that data. This is all going to come back to ads. It's all going to come back to ads because it doesn't matter what you do with TikTok. All they got to do is run one ad somewhere and your data is out there. I mean this all comes down to privacy laws. It has nothing to do with TikTok.

Yes, exactly. You know, we have no privacy laws in this country. It's ridiculous. You know, we need our own GDPR. We've got this hodgepodge of bullshit states, you know, putting things together. But we need a unified privacy framework for the country.

Amen, brother. And that's how you go after TikTok. You don't just go after TikTok in and of itself as the app. I know you do it because it's the biggest app in the world right now and it's going to get your constituents all interested. The way you do this is you make a federal, across-the-board, United States privacy law and TikTok has to abide by it.

And if they do not abide by it, then you can ban them. That's how you do it. You don't ban them. You fine them, you know, because they've got money. Preferably more than coffee. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure their coffee budget's pretty good, though. So we'd take a little bit of it. We'll take a little bit of that.

But in addition to that, the one thing that this article points out is, by the way, TikTok is not the only app that this company has. And a lot of them are very popular. And they're also funneling all the data. So why are we picking on just one thing? And again, to your point, Jason, privacy laws.

Yeah. This whole thing is just ridiculous. The whole thing is ridiculous. It makes no sense to just go after this one company when we know that there are thousands and thousands and thousands of these out there. And it's just going to keep coming and keep happening.

So until we, you know, fix that one main problem, we're kind of – this is all just – this is all theater. It's all fucking theater. Yes. This is more about the senators than anything else. Well, at least TikTok was smart.

They did pay for a bunch of their influencers to go to D.C. and meet with their actual representatives, which was smart because what they're doing is they're taking people who actually make a living off of TikTok and who, you know, basically are part of the economy here in the United States and are actually contributors to the economy.

Go meet with their representatives and say, hey, you guys are being idiots. Stop it. You know, this is – we're making money here. Figure out your other problems but don't take away our breadwinner just because you can't figure out how to do your job. Yeah.

So I don't know. But at least they were upfront about it. They're like, you know, we paid for these people to come. We paid for their plane tickets. We paid for their hotel. So, yeah, we did that. They weren't hiding anything. It's not like they're Republicans or something. Jesus. So that's – I give them kudos for that.

I do. I agree. I think it's fine for them to do that. I totally agree. So – and I don't really – I don't think this is TikTok. TikTok is really the problem here. I think it's the fact that we just cannot – we give zero shits about privacy and TikTok knows it and they're exploiting it.

End of story. Right. And, you know, I still think this whole thing is just a proxy. It's a proxy war with China right now and it's just taken up – it's sucking the air out of the room for other shit that we need to talk about. It's sucking the air out of the balloons we're not hearing about anymore. Yeah. What happened to all of those? Where's the follow-up on the balloons?

Jeez. Come on. Wag the dog. Wag the dog, I tell you. So we got a couple other links in here from the TikTok thing and all that. So go read at your leisure, but I'm sure everybody's sick of it right now. So let's talk about something everybody else is sick about. Brian, you got some chat bot news.

That is a nice segue there. I was actually going to do about the exact same thing. So, yeah, this is a great article over on Slate about chat GPT and the insane proliferation that we've seen where everybody is basically bolting this onto their product for no particular reason whatsoever.

The title tells you everything you need to know about the entire article. Not everything needs a chat bot. Okay. Yeah. So countless developers, startups, companies, and software tools are rushing to incorporate cat GPT-style bots into everything they possibly can, often in ways that are less scary than just plain weird.

Weird and pointless. Say it with me. Not everything needs a chat bot. A few examples. You can chat with digital copies of your favorite books and essays and research papers now, even in PDF form. Google's version of this sorcery is named Talk to Books. Who knew the page master would turn out to be so prescient?

Can I talk to Zephod Beeblebrox? Apparently you can. All right. I'm in. You can chat with Wikipedia articles or with YouTube uploads. With a tool called SolidPoint, you can even get summaries of all your favorite YouTube vids and see what other summaries are trending, whatever that means. Thanks to young companies like Interflexion and Korea.ai, you can converse with fake business professionals and fake employees and even fake clients.

While you're at it, go ahead and chat with this one app in order to generate prompts that you can, in turn, use to chat with a different app. Or talk to your favorite monkey face NFT, courtesy of Althea.ai. Or you can talk with a made-up Gen Z kid to learn TikTok lingo, thanks to Studio M64. You can even transform your own personal website into a chatbot through the services of the cleverly named startup Samur.ai.

But why stop at your browser, Jason? Why not get a mini chat GPT for every single Microsoft or Google product you use from PowerPoint to Messenger apps since both companies are rushing to put AI in every product? Or perhaps you'd rather augment a chatbot on your favorite encrypted message app. I mean, haven't you always wanted to converse with your notes app or with your dreams?

Perhaps there's a chatbot that could talk me down here. It's a great article. Pretty good. And at the end, what he really points out is we've had these kind of bots for years. They've been around. They're on Facebook. They'll chat with you. You know, they've been built into shopping carts online everywhere.

Everybody hates them. Nobody likes them. Nobody wants any of this shit. Too late. Too late. Because Zapier's rolling out their plug-in. Well, ChatGPT rolled out their plug-in architecture and Zapier is now integrating that.

To connect with 5,000 plus apps. So now you can plug and play right into it. And they say, why it's important. You can automate tasks from within ChatGPT's interface, saving you time and the hassle of context switching. Instead of jumping between a bunch of different tabs, you can just ask ChatGPT to perform a task in another app for you.

ChatGPT, please wipe my ass. That's what it's going to come down to. Unbelievable. Yet Siri still sucks. Yeah, it does. GitHub is rolling out Copilot, like some updates to Copilot so you can now integrate all their shit into your IDEs.

And here's what I love. This is where the rubber meets the road. From their FAQ, does GitHub Copilot write perfect code? They reply, in a recent evaluation, we found that users accepted on average 26% of all completions shown by GitHub Copilot.

We also found actually a higher hit rate than outsourcing to India. Oh, bring that one back. All right. Oh, we're going to get emails. Oh, God. We also found that on average, more than 27% of developers' code files were generated by GitHub Copilot. And in certain languages like Python, that goes up to 40%.

However, GitHub Copilot does not write perfect code. Neither does John. Seriously. It's designed to generate the best code possible given the context it has access to. But it doesn't test the code it suggests.

So the code may not always work or even make sense. It sounds like half the programming divisions and half the companies worldwide, they don't test their code and it is not perfect. Seriously. Can we get, you know, GitHub's co-unit test, please? Yeah.

No, seriously. What was the Stack Overflow? Yes. I mean, Stack Overflow has a higher hit rate than this does. Yes. If you scroll down through the 7,000 responses and find the one that actually works. Yep. Yep. Yep. Oh, man. Stack Overflow made more careers than can even think about.

I used Stack Overflow on almost every project I ever did. Mm-hmm. It was fantastic. And I love this next one. MetaSlam's telco fee proposal says ISPs should pay their own network costs. Now, this comes out of Europe and a company over there, Telefonica, are trying to double dip.

They're saying that these big content companies should actually help pay for some of the infrastructure of the internet because they use the internet. Now, I want to know what – like who fell into the vat of mushrooms over there and thought that this was a good idea because it's kind of like making farmers pay for the sewers because that's where their product ends up.

It's like, no, websites should not have to pay for the infrastructure costs for the telcos because that's the telco's job. That's what they're there for. They put in the infrastructure and then they charge people to use the infrastructure. That's how it works.

Seriously. Now, just since we've already gone unwoke a few times on this episode and taken a few jabs at Republicans, I would like to point out that this is precisely what Barack Obama was saying when he said, you did not do this yourself, businesses. We built the roads.

We built the infrastructure. You didn't do this all by yourself. Yeah. I think we're all agreed there. So you can't have it both ways. So this is one time that I actually agree with Meta. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, I agree too. They shouldn't have to fund all that. They could.

I think it would be nice if these companies that have billions of dollars of market cap started a fund, just like the Wall Street fund that was started to basically bail out SVB. They should have funds like this. They should donate to. You want to build back that goodwill? Hey, CFOs at these companies, donate some coffee fund money into a group fund that helps out, particularly in low-income areas or third-world countries to get them internet.

Brian, I would like to remind you that Facebook actually did that at one time, trying to offer free internet access to the poorer countries of Africa and India and parts of India. That didn't go over too well, did it? Well, they did some other bullshit there, didn't they? Just a little bit.

But I'm just trying to say that given the opportunity, they're going to do the wrong thing. No, no, no. My point is that they all donate to a fund. They don't personally implement because they will do skullfuckery. We have third party, probably a government employee, which would be nice, that takes that money and then applies it.

We don't let them do it themselves because they will do bad things. Yeah, but then it comes back to the same problem, that they're funding the telcos to build the infrastructure that the telcos use. So you need an entire infrastructure for the telcos.

So they're not just getting free infrastructure. That cost has to come back to the actual users. So we're not paying through the nose for the access that we're paying right now, especially here in the US where it's just ridiculous compared to the rest of the world. You know, this is – things are fine the way they are.

Stop. No, they are not. They're good enough. Says the old white guy who pays 14 bucks for a burrito every morning. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah, I should start making those at home.

I really should. Especially since we're under-financialized. Yeah, seriously. Seriously. So here's – in the final news of the day, Twitter now allows non-toxic slurs as long as the slurs are not hate speech.

I would like this headline so much better if it was Twitter now allows non-toxic slurs as long as the slurs are funny. Ah, good point. Good point. Yes. Do we have a bustin' balls filter? Yeah, it's just bustin' balls. You know, there you go. But the best part about this is this week in Elon Musk's continuing mission to turn the entire world into an electrified dystopian hellscape.

Perfect. That's something that we could have written. But I probably – I bet ChatGPT probably wrote that. Yeah, probably. Yeah. So they've got this new company called Sprinkler who has a toxicity model and runs tweets through it to find out how toxic they are and how these slurs are being used.

And this is all just – this is also theater. So Elon Musk can call people pedos. That's all it is. That's all this is. Elon said, find me a loophole. OK, well, is it hate speech? No, he's just a dick.

OK, you can call him a dick. Done. OK. Thank Christ. Unbelievable.

And a bit late, but at least they're actually super creative and funny, so maybe this will be good news. The South Park creators use ChatGPT to co-write an episode about AI. I have not watched South Park in a good decade, if not more than that, but I've always consistently been very impressed by them, thought the show was absolutely hilarious when I did watch it.

They're very funny people. So I'm hoping they did some – I might actually have to go back and watch this one. Released on March 9th, 2023, the fourth episode of season 26, titled Deep Learning, sees students at South Park Elementary discover the new technology that can write their homework. The episode ends with the credits saying, written by Trey Parker and ChatGPT, although knowing the creators of South Park, this could be sarcasm.

The credit also explains that some of the voices in the episode, namely the voice of ChatGPT itself, were created using Play.ht's AI-powered text-to-voice generator. Ooh, I have to check them out. Yeah. Okay. Maybe I'll have to watch that one. Yeah, you tell me how it is.

I'm not going to waste my time. Okay. And if you're tired of TV providers advertising one price but charging another thanks to hidden fees, a tale as old as time. I'm sorry. My father was complaining about this about 25 years ago. So not much has ever been done, but you might not have to put up with that practice for much longer.

I'd say this is also 20 years off personally, but okay. The FCC has proposed a requirement that cable and satellite TV services clearly and prominently display the true cost of service both in their marketing and on subscriber bills. They can't mask programming costs as fees that only show up on your bill, hiding them behind vague or potentially misleading terms.

This is intended to help would-be customers make truly informed choices about TV subscriptions, including comparisons with streaming services. This comes months after President Biden called on government agencies to fight junk fees and otherwise demand more transparent pricing for services and events. So basically broadband nutrition labels that display prices and typical performance.

I would love to see this happen, but I can see companies have already gotten ahead of this. I was looking at my mom still subscribes to Spectrum Cable, but we have her on a bunch of apps now anyways. And so we was trying to figure out there's a few channels that she would like to keep for cable.

Guess what they do now? There's no small packages. They provide two packages. That's it. And they're both very expensive and involve almost every single channel. It's basically, do you speak Spanish in your house or do you speak English? So there's no menu anymore. There's no choosing.

It's basically just, here's the fire hose. That's what you get. Nice. Nice. So they've gotten ahead of that. Well, I, you know, see, this is fine. Cable and TV providers. Great. You know, can somebody please get on the fact that unlimited downloads are not unlimited downloads on my internet broadband package?

You know, I mean, the fact that they still are allowed to use the words unlimited for anything, anything when it comes to, you know, internet usage still drives me crazy. So yeah, this is fine, but yeah, this is baby steps, I guess.

Yeah. Well, if you're looking to cut the cord, the best live TV streaming services in 2023 list is out by Engadget. So you can take a look at that. But again, good luck. Good luck. Just good luck. I found this one. Apple TV plus global market share shrinks and platform is overtaken by Paramount+.

So we've got a rundown here of all of the most popular streaming services. So we've got Netflix at number one with 23%, Amazon Prime Video at 20%, Disney Plus at 18%, HBO Max at 9%, Paramount Plus at 7%, Apple TV Plus at 5%, and others at 21%.

Now, the thing is here, like, okay, so Apple TV Plus could still be gaining actual subscribers, but losing market share because everybody subscribes to everything else. Out of the top six on this list, I subscribe to every fucking one of them.

Yeah, my guess is all of them have grew because people are. Now, Netflix, obviously, juggernaut internationally. I'm actually surprised it's that low because just internationally, it's the top dog. Amazon Prime Video, that is 100% just because people are Prime subscribers.

Right. That's it. That's a freebie. You're paying more for your two-day delivery or same-day delivery, and maybe you're watching Prime Video. So that's kind of a bullshit metric. Paramount Plus, I'm surprised, is doing as well as it is. But then again, not.

I mean, if you're into Star Trek, but how many people are really into Star Trek? That's where you go. What they have been doing a really good job on is adding in sports recently. They've got a lot of soccer that they put in, a lot of football. They're getting into that game. So that probably makes a lot of sense as to why they're doing as well as they are.

Apple TV's got the prestige programming right now, though, man. I'll tell you that. So I expect to see that go up. The problem with Apple TV, and that's the reason I have not watched Ted Lasso, which we're about to get to, is you kind of need an Apple device. I guess.

I haven't even tried. Well, yeah, I'm the one to talk. I've never even tried it on a PC. So yeah, I don't know. Yeah. So I mean, you can go to the website. I don't know if there are third-party apps. I need to look into that. But I didn't watch Ted Lasso because I was at my mom's. My mom doesn't have an Apple TV. No, I don't have Apple TV Plus hooked up to her TV yet.

So anyways. What kind of son does not buy their mother an Apple TV? Come on, man. Because she knows what she knows, and she does not want to learn new things. This is just for you, man. This is just for when you come to visit. Come on. This is not for her. This is for you. It's a whole other thing connected that she might actually end up on somehow when she just presses buttons, and then I get a phone call.

Oh, you just plug it in when you get there. You keep it in a drawer, and you pull it out when you get there. Come on, man. So much work. You know what I'm really surprised is not on this list, though, is Hulu. Well, it's right. Okay. This is where it gets complicated. Nationally, Hulu is part of Disney Plus.

Oh. Oh, that's right. That's right. So Hulu is only a separate entity in the U.S. now. Okay. And I don't even know how long that's going to be, because I did log into Hulu with my Disney Plus account the other day. So, hmm. Okay. So, who knows? Spotify has reportedly spent less than the 10% of its Joe Rogan apology fund.

I didn't know there was an apology fund. Oh, yeah. When they got all that heat, they put $100 million into a creator equity fund, a pool meant to foster diversity in podcasts and music in its first year of operation. The company reportedly planned to spend the whole fund over three years, but hasn't had a solid structure for approving spending, has been slow to hire staff.

Changing priorities, such as not spending that money, have also hurt the project, insiders say. The firm established the fund after the artist-led backlash to Joe Rogan, allegedly enabled the spreading of COVID-19 vaccine information and all the other bullshit that he does. They've repeatedly defended signing him, pulled some of the episodes, blah.

We all know about all this crap. But, yeah, they've spent – Spotify has followed up saying, the company has spent more than 10% of the fund. The company has not provided a specific figure. Right. Because – So, they've spent 11%. 11%. And, you know, they're just basically keeping interest on the rest of that $89 million that's sitting in the bank right now.

Yeah. And that's why they're waiting the three years. So, it doubles and, you know, doubles from the interest and then they can spend it. They're just waiting to the end. Yep. It's all CFO trickery, just like we were talking about earlier. Yep. The F in CFO is for fuckery. Yes. Yes. And just speaking of Spotify, the new Depeche Mode album, Memento Mori, came out today.

I listened to it briefly. I am very happy. And also sad because I have a feeling this is the last one. Okay. Okay. I'll have to give it a listen later. Ted Lasso, you said you're not watching it, so this is going to be a very brief review of Ted Lasso. Well, we're back home now.

I plan to watch it soon. I just haven't yet. All right. There's only two out. It'll take you two hours. Yeah. If that. Loving it. I think it's off to a good start. Good. Very excited. For the final season. Yes, they did it. Yes. It is the final season. Good. Speaking of finals, Picard in its final season.

Yes. Now, before we start, before we get into season three here, there's only one explanation for Picard season two compared to season three. They were fucking with us. They were fucking with us. That's it. They were just fucking with us and giving us the world's lowest expectations for season three.

So when season three came out, mind blown and fan service through the roof. Yeah. I almost felt like there was a little too much fan service in this last one and not enough gripping on the edge of your seat stuff. I don't know. I liked it.

I'm all in for this one. I'm just smiling when it's on. I'm like, come on. What's next? I hear your, I hear your voice in the back of my mind every time now when I'm starting to go, oh, come on. And then I was just, just enjoy the ride. Yep. Sure. Of course, data's back. Why not? You knew it was coming. You knew it was coming.

I swear to God, Will Wheaton's going to show up and save the day. I just got a feeling. I got a feeling. He will appear. Everybody else has. Oh, by the way, we, I don't know if we talked about it, but Ensign Rowe. Yeah. I love her. I always have. Yeah.

That was a, that was a nice one. That was a nice one, but yeah, I'm loving it so much, so much. It's fun. I, the last of us has wrapped up. I gave it a couple of weeks to finish up. It was solid. It was definitely, definitely solid. Everybody loves it. Yep.

It's, it's well worth the watch. It's definitely well worth the watch. And I'm very curious to what they're going to do for season two. Well, if you played the video game, you probably have a good idea. Well, they got it. They're changing things up a bit just because of the way the timelines work, but at least what they did that was really smart is the actress, the main actress, plays like a 14 year old in the show, but she's actually 19 in real life.

So they can age her up pretty seamlessly. So as they say, you don't get the stranger things effect. Gotcha. So that'll be good. I did watch a bit of money shot. The Pornhub story on Netflix yesterday lasted about 30 minutes until we got into the, the, the trip, the side trip to Wokistan, as it were.

And then it just got into people bitching about Pornhub and all the, the other shit that goes along with it, which honestly, it's porn in general and the trafficking and all the other shit that goes along with it. It's not just Pornhub that is all the problem with that.

It's all of it. But to wrap it up and say, you know, the world's trafficking problems are all Pornhub's fault is just, you know, it's a stupid argument. It's bad. It's a bad argument. And it just took me out of the show and I just turned it off and said, screw it.

It wasn't that interesting. Some of the information that these, that the, the quote unquote kids who worked at Pornhub were talking about, they were talking about the history of porn and things like that on the internet. And I'm like, you are so far off the mark as someone who lived through it. They need to talk to you.

Seriously. Seriously. I could, I could, it, like at this one point they were talking about the early days of porn on the internet, but they showed a dial up to a BBS. And I'm like, that's not the internet. I'm sorry. Words matter. Words matter. Screenshots matter. And so do money shots apparently, but skip it.

It's not worth the time. And I saw this one, which I thought was very interesting. Beethoven's genome has sequenced for the first time and yields clues on cause of death. No, it doesn't actually. They still don't know what killed him. It's just interesting. It's an interesting story, what they're doing. Now, if they were going to bring him back Jurassic Park style, fucking sign me up.

I'm in for that. That'd be great. Or, you know, Keanu shows up. Excellent. Keith Oven. It was Beethoven, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. But I have to say, it just reminded me of Immortal Beloved, which is an underrated Gary Oldman movie, which I think is one of his finer moments in a very good movie from 1994.

If you've never seen it, highly recommend grabbing some popcorn and tossing that one on. It was pretty good. It was pretty good. Man, that's old. Yeah. 1994, man. Yeah. We were – well, I was 23. God damn. And final shout out to the Labors of Hercule podcast with Adam and Frankie.

Adam Roche, who does The Secret History of Hollywood, who I'm a huge fan of and have always said that that's one of the most greatest and underrated podcasts out there. Go give him all your monies. But they do the Labors of Hercule podcast, which is all about the TV show Poirot, of which I'm a super fan.

And when we hang up on this episode today, I am going to be a guest on the Labors of Hercule podcast. Oh, congratulations. Extraordinarily excited. I am so amped. So link is in the show notes. Go sign up. It's a great show. Ups and doodads.

Sad news, Brian, which you probably won't give a flying fuck about. DP Review, this is not porn. Is this related to Pornhub? No, this is not Pornhub. This is not a Pornhub thing, which would have been a great name for a porn review site, but no. This is Digital Photography.

So that's the DP and the DP Review. They are closing down. So Amazon apparently doesn't feel like paying the bill for it anymore since they own it, which is sad. DP Review has been around forever and has the best reviews of any digital photography gear that you could ever want.

I use it whenever I'm getting a new camera. I do any kind of checking out to see what they recommend and don't recommend about different cameras. But it is going away. And I'm very sad about that. But who buys? I can see it. I mean, not that many people buy digital SLRs anymore.

They're basically reviewing iPhones at this point. That's the problem. Petapixel is picking up two of the... Petapixel? Yeah, Petapixel is still around. Not Pito Pixel. It's another porn arm thing. No, no, no. Not Pito Pixel. It's a different one, too. So they're going to be picking up some of the YouTubers that do videos for DP Review.

But yeah, Petapixel is still a solid site. I actually get a lot of news that we talk about here on the show from there. So check that one out. But yeah, it's just a sad day. Sad day. All right. Well, Adobe is bringing generative AI features to Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere Pro. Fucking stop. Here we go.

On Tuesday, Adobe revealed its next generation of AI features, a family of generative models the company has collectively dubbed Firefly, the first of which will generate both images and font effects. I love this particular sentence. With it, would-be digital artists are no longer limited by their subpar dexterity or sheer lack of artistic talent.

They will be able to speak into existence, professional quality illustrations using only the power of their words. Which they got from ChatGPT because they don't know how to spell. Yes, I think so as well. I love that it's called Firefly. That means it's going to get canceled after the first season and we never have to work on it again.

It's not just text image. The multimodal nature means that audio, video, illustrations, and 3D models can all be generated via the system and enough verbal gymnastics. Make me a 3D model of a penis, please. Can't wait. And then you get one of Donald Trump. Perfect.

So, according to the company, the model is trained on hundreds of millions of images from Adobe's stock photo catalog, openly licensed content and stuff from the public domain, virtually guaranteeing the model won't result in lawsuits as Stable Diffusion did with the Getty unpleasantness. It also helps that stock photographers and artists will be compensated, bullshit, for the use of their works in training these eight eyes.

Yeah, sure they will. I'm sure they will. And interesting news, Duolingo is building a music learning app. So, you probably know Duolingo as the app where you can learn new languages or at least familiarize yourself with the local tongue, speaking of tongues, of a place you're visiting.

I've actually used it before. I was brushing up on German before a trip a while back. It's a great app. I liked it. That's right. But according to a job posting, a small team that's currently working to build an app for teaching music is looking for an expert in music education who combines both theoretical knowledge of relevant learning science research and hands-on teaching experience.

Whoever gets the job will be in charge of making sure the app is well-grounded in learning science. Sounds kind of interesting. I mean, I love all this stuff that's out there about teaching music, particularly as my son is getting to the age where I definitely want him to start learning all that sort of stuff. So, very cool.

I hope this comes out soon. Yeah, me too. I will sign up for this in a heartbeat. Yeah. I would, you know me, I've always wanted to learn music and haven't found the right tools to do it yet. Yeah. So, I have been playing around with my, was it Lumi keyboard? Yeah. Because I got the keyboard and I got the app and started to play around with it and just get my finger dexterity and I'm getting there.

I'm getting there. But I would like something that actually teaches me music theory along with it, not just basically rock band for piano. Right. So, I'm actually looking forward to this. This is cool. I hope they come out with something soon and I hope it's cool. So, I was definitely a fan of their language product even though I didn't stick with it. But people love it.

Cool. Cool. This is a really funny little one that I just discovered yesterday because somebody sent me a message in Instagram and they sent me a voice message in the DMs and I'm like, what? You know what I do when I get those? Delete. Delete them. Yeah. Yeah.

It's the same as you get them in a text message. You're just like, why are you doing this? Yeah. Why are you doing this? I just didn't know you could do it. So, I thought it was kind of neat. Yeah. It's more shit for meta to scrape. But, you know, it's harder for them to do that than it is to actually scrape the actual text that you type in, which they probably do anyway.

So, yeah. Also, harder for the person you're sending it to, which is why don't ever send me these. Send me text. Thank you. Yes. Yes. Please, please. They're so stupid. I did pick up this little thing from Moft, M-O-P-H-T.

This is one of those things that comes back to the old Instagram, actually, because I get the ads for them all the damn time. There's these little magnetic laptop stickies that go on the back of the top of your laptop that can hold your iPhone. So, you can, you know, flip it up and magnetically attach your iPhone to it.

Normally, I'd be like, okay, that's stupid, except for the fact that now you can use your iPhone as a webcam, a really nice webcam, as a matter of fact. So, they're kind of cool. I mean, it's not cheap. With shipping, it was like $32 for a little magnet thingy, but I put it on and it works great.

Yeah. See, that's the thing. I would happily pay the $32 because, you know, the $10 version will last a week and just leave sticky crap all over your computer. Exactly. That's why I didn't get the cheap, cheap one and or MOFT, MOFT, not PHT. They, is it?

Look at it. Oh, yeah. It is MOFT. I got it on my laptop right here. I had to go look. Yeah. I wanted to get something that's nice because it does move, you know, it's got like a hinge or multiple hinges. And I'm like, if you get the cheap one, it's just going to crack and kind of fall apart. Yeah. So, I just, I got the nicer one because if I'm going to be using it a lot, which I plan to because I tested it last night and it works really good.

That continuity camera stuff with the iPhone is really cool. I mean, I've got a really good webcam in my laptop because I've got the M1 MacBook Pro, the 14-inch. Yeah. And the webcam in that is really nice, but it's still not as nice as you can get if you have an iPhone.

I got a 13 Pro, so the camera on that's much nicer. Yeah. 32 bucks, which seems like a lot for a sticker, but I would rather pay a little bit more and have it work, especially since it is literally stuck to my laptop. I don't want to put some kind of crappy thing on it.

Yeah. And we've talked about our Samsung curved monitors. Yes. Which I love. I love that. I'm sitting looking at it right now. It is the best monitor I've ever owned in my life. Yes. I actually want another one because right now I've got, I finally broke down and found the back plate that you can mount, add a VESA mount to it.

Yeah. Because I threw mine away. Because I'm like, when am I ever going to put this thing on a mount? Within 10 minutes of me throwing it away, I'm like, oh man, I could, oh, I really wish I would have done that. You know what's amazing to me about you, Jason? I have been to multiple of your studios. I've been to your garage. I've been to many of your houses, packed up cameras from 30 years ago that you never touch, gear everywhere, bags of stuff.

You keep everything except for the one thing that you actually needed. You know why? Because it wasn't in the studio. It was actually in my paperwork with the manual. So it was not in the place where I'm usually a pack rat. It was in the place where I usually clean it out because I only have so much room for my paperwork.

Instead of taking it to the part where the place where I keep all my shit, my pack rat stash, I ended up just throwing it out. And that was a $90 mistake for that little stupid piece of metal. It cost me 90 bucks to replace it. I was going to offer to bring you mine when you first started complaining about it because I'm not using it currently.

Yeah. And I have it in my garage. But then I looked up and saw how much it costs. And I was like, I don't know if I'm going to continue to use the stand the way it is. I could very well need this monitor plate very soon. So I would not be offering. I wouldn't have taken it from you just for that reason because I'm like, you're going to want it.

Yeah. I put it. So I've got a vertical two monitor stand now. And so I have on the bottom, I have the Samsung monitor. And on top, I've got an LG gaming monitor, 27 inch monitor, which is working out great. I posted a picture on Instagram yesterday.

Yeah, I saw that. So if you want to go see it up, it works really nice. And the way the angles and everything, it works nice because I can put my webcam right in the middle of the Samsung. And it's pretty close to like eyeline if you put the things right. It's a fantastic setup.

I would love to have two of the Samsung monitors here, though, just because. Just because. Just those two stacked on top of each other would look so sweet. I shared an office with a guy down the hall who had just that. He had the two Samsung monitors and in the middle, he had a DSLR instead of just a regular webcam because it just worked for him.

And it was perfect. It was a perfect line of sight monitor. But that's why I've got that Insta 360 camera now that is much better that fits right there. And it is it is a great setup. But man, that plate 80 for 90 bucks with shipping. It was just like that was painful. But when it got here, the first thing I did was just stop work completely and put it together because it's waited so damn long, so long.

But yeah. Oh, it's so nice. So nice to have this thing finally off the desk. Yeah, we should make sure that we get a link to the Samsung monitor in our show notes because people have been asking about it on Discord. But I think you posted it there, too. So I will I will post a link to it. Yeah. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

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The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome back to Security. Ha! With Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyberware podcast, co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan.

Dave is also the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy and surveillance and privacy. And the new Control. Oh, it's not even that new anymore. I feel a copy. And Control Loop. We're at six months in. Yeah. And Control Loop, where they discuss ICS and OT. Yeah. By six months, most podcasts have died.

So. Yeah. That's true. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Good to be back, gents. Good to be back. Are you all re-combobulated? Welcome to our 10-year anniversary. Oh, yes. What's that? Welcome to our 10-year anniversary show. Oh, congratulations. We've done nothing special except mention it.

Well, that's exciting. 10 years is nothing to sniff about. That's a long time. It is. Too long. When did I join? Like around year six, something like that? Maybe. No. You came in about three and a half. Yeah. Okay. You've been here a while. All right.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. You've been here at least six years. Okay. At least. Fair enough. Yeah. I think you were here before Brian had a kid. So. I was. Yes. Yes. So. Yeah. So coming up on seven. Okay. Yeah.

Very nice. Mm-hmm. It only seems like 20. We should have self-driving cars by now the way this is going. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. We don't. Okay. So Dave, I see you put Mandalorian check-in here in the notes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes.

I didn't want to bring it up because last time with the Mandalorian, it took you a little while because you had to get sign-off from the whole family. So I wasn't going to push you. Right. You put it in. So where are you at? Yes. We are caught up. We are up to date on our Mandalorian. In fact, just last night, we watched the most recent episode.

So I can talk about Mandalorian without risk of spoiling it for myself. Okay. So how are you guys feeling about this season so far? I'm one behind. So beware the spoilers. All right. You missed a pretty exciting episode.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My feeling is like, this is all over the map this season, but not necessarily in a bad way. Like, I like it. They're filling in some lore. I know that there was a lot of talk about, oh, they're totally going to retcon Snoke and Emperor Palpatine coming back and all the cloning and all that.

And I'm like, nope, they're leaning into it. They're leaning into it pretty big. They're filling in the backstory here. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've liked it. It's been good. I'm curious to see where it's going to go. I like the fact that it's actually become about Mandalorians, not just the Mandalorian.

Right. Yeah, I agree. And the jumping around is similar to what they did with Book of Boba Fett, where there were some Boba Fett episodes that were about the Mandalorian. In this case, there's some side journeys, which I think have been interesting, like you say, to fill in some backstory.

And in this most recent one that Jason hasn't seen yet, some interesting backstory filling that I won't spoil. But also, Brian, did you catch the remarkable cameo? I did. I did. Yeah. I felt that was very, very fitting for a much maligned actor to get a really star turn.

My youngest son said, holy shit. So, yeah, that was great fun. I thought so, too. And he did a good job, I thought. At first, I didn't know, because I don't read reviews or anything.

I just go into it. And I couldn't quite. I was like, why? Why so familiar? The scenes, the voice is so familiar in a weird way. Oh! Yeah. And I also thought they did a really good job of when they did kind of some flashback-y stuff of having everything feel like the place they were flashing back to in the timeline, and the production style, the types of shots they selected, and even the way they did the

special effects and compositing just felt like of that time. So, really nice attention to detail. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have to say, I don't know if you've been keeping up with The Bad Batch or even watching it. I have not. I have not. Yeah. Well, I was enjoying The Bad Batch until live action came back.

And I've been putting it on. And they're also trying to fill in some of the lore. They're both kind of contemporary and trying to... They're simpatico in the story that they're trying to tell from different angles. I just can't get into it anymore.

It's like, the animation is fine. It's just, I prefer live action. And I found myself just kind of unable to stay away from my phone and looking at other things while The Bad Batch is on and then looking up 10 minutes later going, what the hell just happened? And then going, I don't care. It doesn't matter. Yeah.

But I don't do that with The Mandalorian, so... Mm-hmm. And that's what happened to me initially with The Bad Batch. I gave it a couple of episodes and I just couldn't get hooked on it. It just didn't stick for me. Yeah. Well, I'm there now too, so... I wanted to do a quick little bit of follow-up here.

Well, actually, before we do that, Jason, we skipped you there. What are your thoughts on Mando? I'm loving it so far. I thought that the previous episode before the current one where they were in Coruscant, I was just like, man, they spent a lot of budget on that episode. They, you know...

Things look good. They looked really good, but it was like, you know, a side story. And I'm just like, why are they spending all this money on this story? I'm like, come on. Well, because that's going to be the main story. I think that's where we're headed, so... Got it. Okay. Yeah. I'm loving it so far.

I'm glad it's back, so... Yeah. Another thing we noticed watching yesterday, or the most recent episode, was that it was short. It was just over a half hour long, and some of the episodes can stretch to nearly an hour.

And I think that's an interesting aspect of this type of storytelling, and not being bound to any sort of network schedule, that your episodes can be as long as they need to be, and that's fine. Or as short as they need to be. You don't have to pad them out if you've got just a singular tale to tell, and you can do it in 30 minutes.

You do it, right? Like, no filler, so... Right. Right. Yeah. Just, I think it's an interesting evolution of what we're seeing here. Mm-hmm. All right. Well, I want to do just a little bit of quick follow-up, something I neglected to talk about last time when we were following up after my vacation.

I want to talk about rental cars. So, I don't know if you guys have rented any cars lately. Brian, you may have. I have, and I am curious to see where you go with this. My line right now is a service primed for disruption. Okay.

So, we got on our airplane. We all piled into our flight to Florida from Baltimore, and that all went fine. And we went down there and got to Orlando International Airport, which is a fine, fine airport.

And while we were getting our luggage, my wife went and got the rental car, and we rented a minivan, because there are five of us. And so, that was all right. Could have ended up being four on the way back, but luckily that worked out. Yeah, that's right.

That's right. That's right. Well, also, I wanted to point out that I think for a lot, a lot of folks underestimate the size of the vehicle they need, because they think, oh, there are five of us. There are five seats in this sedan. Five people's luggage? Yes, everybody has luggage, right?

So, with a minivan, you've got plenty of room for everybody and their luggage, and nobody has to hold their luggage on their lap between the airport and the hotel or wherever you're staying. Agreed. So, we got the minivan, and so my wife pulls up at the airport, and we load up, and we get in, and we're headed off to our place, and we put it in the GPS to get going.

Let me back up and say that my wife is moderately ADHD, and I'm not telling any tales out of school. She'd be the first to tell you that this is something that she deals with and contends with and sometimes struggles with, and at other times, it is her superpower.

So, she's driving, and we're on our way from the airport to where we're staying, and let me tell you, it was a terrifying car ride from my point of view. Well, it's not that it's Florida. It's that because we're in a new car that she is not familiar with, and there are so many little shiny objects in this car, and she can't resist any of them, right?

So, it's like, oh, let me turn the air conditioning on. Oh, that triggered the touchscreen. Let me do this. Oh, what's this? Did you notice that you can have temperature-controlled zones? Right, exactly. Watch the road, honey. Dear, watch the road. Oh, what's this? Oh, the stereo is integrated into this.

Oh, can I connect my phone? Watch the road, honey. Watch the road. So, a couple of things I wanted to come at here. One is that I think the complexity of cars has gone way up, just in that the variety of things that you're going to be confronted with when you get into a car that you're unfamiliar with, I think it's a much broader spectrum than what we had to deal with in our younger days when we were all coming out of it and driving and everything was mechanical.

There was a radio. There was an ashtray, and then you could plug your thing into the cigarette lighter. Right, right, right. There was a shift knob either in the middle or on the steering column. Yes. Right? Turning the headlights on was in the same place. We had AM and FM.

Well, now you're driving a computer, and there are buttons everywhere, and everybody's layout and UI is different. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So, this was something that made me grumpy, and really, from that point on, once we got to the place, I did most of the driving after that.

Because that way, she could sit in the passenger seat and play to her heart's content with all the different buttons and things and all that kind of stuff. But it's not easy. I mean, it really takes – there are so many depths of menus you need to get into. Just getting – figuring out the HVAC, figuring out the headlight situation.

I remember the first night we were leaving one of the parks we were at, and it was dusk, and we're just like, okay, we need to turn the lights on. Not sure how to do that. Those of them are automatic, though. Yeah, really. Well, so, okay, that brings up another point in modern cars, which is that I see way more people driving around with their lights off than I used to.

And I think part of that is because of daytime running lights. So they see light coming out of the front of their car, and they think, my lights are on. Meanwhile, the back of their car is completely dark. But I also think it's because computerized, display-driven speedometers and fuel and all that kind of stuff, they're always illuminated now.

So when you see that, you see it lit up, and if you're an old-school driver, you think, oh, that's lit up. My lights must be on. And they're not. They're not necessarily on. Right. Yeah, most – my last couple new cars, when I get them, there's – the one time I touch the lights is when I take the knob and I turn it to auto, and that's it.

The only time I ever have to touch it again is if I hit it with my knee and I start to drive, and I'm like, why can't I see the road? Oh, OK. I must have hit it. And then I turn it back to auto, and that's it. You never have to touch it again. Yeah, that's true. So my wife is shopping for a new car, and her car is about 10 years old, so it doesn't have many of the new things.

And she's actually not happy about having to deal with all of the new stuff because a lot of stuff, you have no choice. Things have moved along. And so the types of buttons that you can get and all that sort of thing, touchscreens, she's really not excited because she knows her own tendencies.

Limitations, tendencies, yeah, however you want to say it. And she's afraid of being overwhelmed. I tell you what. Tell her to get a Jeep because my Jeep has nothing in it. It's got the tiniest little touchscreen, and it is like – I'm surprised it doesn't have cranks on the windows, honestly.

It is very anti-technical. My last Jeep did. Oh, is that right? Yes. You know, the only thing I can say is obviously there's a big difference between a rental car and a car you purchase, so she will have the ability to sit in the garage and familiarize herself with the mechanics and everything prior to hitting the road, which is nice, and dial everything in.

I would not buy a car anymore. Well, I have an iPhone. I don't know if your wife does, but I would not buy a car anymore that doesn't have CarPlay built in. It's such a convenience. It's perfect. It takes care of 90% of the problems. You're pretty much left figuring out HVACs and lighting. So, you know. Right, right.

Yeah, so my rental car thing is a bit more of a frustration and anger than yours. Yours is about the cars itself. Mine is about the companies. My wife has her own – also, I would consider sometimes limitation, but sometimes superpower in that she never wants to spend a dollar more than she should ever have to spend ever and will invest countless hours that she could have been making a lot more money in trying to save $5.

And one of the ways that she has done that is with our travels. She has researched different programs. She became a member of a particular car rental thing, like a gold level, which is part of a bigger package, which also ties into hotels and blah, blah, blah, because this is how far down the well she goes on this stuff.

But on the plus side, you know, gold member at a prestigious major, major car rental company to the point where when we land, we don't have to go to the desk. There is a board. It has a name. We are supposed to be able to pick any car that we would like in the area and just be able to land and drive off.

It has yet to ever work out that way, ever. Not once. Would it by chance be Hertz? Because I was a gold member on Hertz. It would. Yes, okay. Yes, I can corroborate this. I can corroborate this. I was a Hertz gold member. And many, many times when I used to travel, they were supposed to have the car gassed up and ready for me to go.

Not once was it exactly the way it was supposed to be. So there is a board and our name is on it. And then we get in a line and we don't get to walk down the aisle and pick our car. We wait for a car to be driven up to us. And then we can say, yes, I would like this car or no, I don't really like this car.

I would need a car that does this, which everybody in line is doing, thus making the line impossible. Just give us, let us walk down the aisle like you promised and pick whatever's there. Anyways, that's pickup. Whatever. Fine. Drop off.

Oh dear. Here we go. Now, drop off is supposed to be, you don't talk to anybody. You pull the car up, you leave the key in it, and you can just walk away. And if you're supposed to have the gas filled up, you're supposed to have the gas filled up. And if they don't, if you didn't, they're going to charge you for it.

Understood. Got it. We've done this every time. Every time they've charged us for something that was a bullshit charge. Every time. Now, I'm starting to wonder if that's actually their business model. If they know that most of these people that are at this level are probably traveling for a company.

It's company sponsored travel. They probably never get the receipt. It goes to accounts receivable at some big corporation. Thus, if I charge you an extra day, which is what they've done to us twice now, a full extra day, it's just going to get lost in the shuffle and paid by the company.

We have had to call every single time to say, that's fucking bullshit. You charged us for an extra day. We now take pictures of the dash, showing the gas, showing the date, and showing the time of drop-off. So, when inevitably we get charged more than we should be, we just send them the photo.

This is when the car was dropped off. You bastards. Wow. And do they immediately back down? They do. They do. There's no argument whatsoever, which makes me think that this is an institutional thing that they do. Hmm. Wow.

Yeah. I mean, that's a way to make some extra money. And I think you're onto something that if these are mostly corporate users, then, yeah, it probably doesn't get noticed. It's not worth someone's time to chase down. That's what we like to call bullshit. Yeah.

I'm not sure where we are when it comes to rental car inventory or anything like that. I know there were all kinds of problems during the pandemic. But at least on our recent trip, we had no trouble getting a car, and we got the car that we had reserved. So, that was all good.

I don't think we had any – well, so now I'm going to go back and look at the receipt. So, I don't know. As you should. As you should. Yes. I don't know. It's – oh, boy. Yeah. No, the inventory seems to be back. That doesn't seem to be an issue either.

It's just the process of supposedly something that we paid more for and were an esteemed – I can't help but feel it would have been faster if we had picked a specific car and we just knew we were getting that car and go. Not the, you can pick from anything that's available, blah, blah, blah, because that never works out.

So, yeah. Anyways. All right. Disrupt it. Silicon Valley, here's something to disrupt. Yeah. I wonder how you would do that. It was something like a mix between Uber and a rental car company. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. It's interesting. I do have one little bit of security news here that I thought was interesting. As much as we've been talking about chat GPT lately and as much as it's a media darling, it seems as though one of the bad actors, a group called Black Mamba, which, by the way, is probably my favorite poisonous snake.

It's also Kobe Bryant's nickname. It's also Kobe Bryant's nickname. Okay. Do you guys know what sets the Black Mamba apart from all of the other snakes out there? I did see Kill Bill, but I forgot. Highest scoring record many seasons in a row for the Lakers. All right.

Beyond that, it is the world's fastest snake. Oh. Wow. So in a foot race, the Black Mamba would probably beat you. Well, not technically in a foot race. They don't have feet. Point Brian.

Touché. In a slither race. Right. Of which, admittedly, humans are not very good at or fast at. Yeah. Yeah. No, evidently, Black Mambas are very fast. So this group, Black Mamba, they're doing something called polymorphic malware, which is where.

Well, that sounds great. Yeah. Just wait for it. I can just tell right now what it is. That's not good. Go ahead. Right.

So what you do is, instead of having your malware installer just download something from your storage bucket or whatever, from your server to install on the victim's machine, what happens is once you get purchased on someone's network, you assemble the malware from whole cloth new onto their system in a way that it has never been assembled before.

And that way, anything that's using any sort of pattern matching won't recognize it because it's new and it's never been used before. So what they're doing is they're using ChatGPT. They're reaching out to ChatGPT to generate the code remotely in a novel way each time on the fly for this malware.

So every time it gets installed, it's different. The antivirus has never seen it before. And so it doesn't get flagged. Wow. That's smart. And yeah, way to go with those guardrails, guys. Seriously.

Yeah. But I suppose if it's just little bits of benign code that are different, enough to fool the pattern recognition, you would never – yeah, there's nothing malicious being generated by ChatGPT. Right. Right. Right. So what are you going to do? It's just generating the parts of the sort of housekeeping parts of the code.

Yep. But each time in a novel way. Yeah. So I don't know how you fight against it. I mean the companies say that – you look for behavioral things. If all of a sudden your files start being encrypted or network activity changes, that sort of thing.

But the point here is that it defeats any sort of pattern matching antivirus. Whack-a-mole continues. There you go. Yeah. Last but not least, I put in a lovely little documentary here from PBS. It's called Meredith Wilson, America's Music Man.

And it's a lovely little documentary about Meredith Wilson, who's the person who wrote The Music Man. His musical history, his life story touches so many famous musicians that you've heard of. And it's just a lovely little gentle little documentary about his life.

And if you're at all into that sort of Americana – it's funny. When we were at Disney World a couple of weeks ago, I was struck by how many of the tunes that they play on Main Street are Meredith Wilson tunes. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

I mean I grew up listening to the Main Street music and all that. So I love this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So a nice little documentary. It's available for free on PBS's website. So if this is your thing, I recommend it. It's probably about a half hour long, worth your time.

Very cool. Oh, by the way, I don't know if you were aware of this, but did you know that John Williams actually did all the music for Star Wars Land? I did. Yes, I did. Well, so I'm aware of that because last time we talked, you recommended that documentary.

Oh, you watched it. Okay. I watched about half of it because it's an hour and a half long. It's an hour and a half commercial. Right. So I watched the first half of it and so I did get to the part where John Williams was talking about it. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah.

It is very cool. I wonder – so you guys have probably noticed too. Like at the head end of like shows like The Mandalorian, they have that new little Star Wars logo thing that they run where they show all the different silhouettes. Yep. Of different characters and it seems to me like they're deliberately not using John Williams' Star Wars theme.

And I'm guessing that's just – so they don't have to pay him? Well, he's also 975 years old. I think it's also a process of like maybe we need to start to move the music away from such the distinctive John Williams style because he will not be with us forever.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it might be a part of that. So – Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I think he did the coming Indiana Jones movie. I believe he did. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Might be his last thing. Could be. Certainly, probably within the Harrison Ford universe.

Right. Right. The Harrison Ford MCU or whatever we call that. Until we get John Williams' GPT and then we just have music forever. Yes. That's right. Do us a theme in the style of John Williams, please.

It's only a matter of time. Yeah. That's right. Speaking of time, I think we're up. We're out of time. Very good. Thanks for joining us again, Dave. And go on a vacation more because we got more feedback about your vacation notes than anything we've had in a long time. People really enjoyed that.

Well, if we can mine vacations for content, I'll start. There you go. We'll start a GoFundMe for our vacations. Absolutely. All right, guys. See you next time. Bye, everybody. Over at Patreon, we've got Alec and Robert.

Welcome to the team, Alec and Robert. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got Brian, John, Mike, Tom, Joseph, Mark, and Humphrey. Woo-hoo. And over at the tip jar, we've got Daryl, Ross, and Karen. And for the obligatory announcement, yes, on Patreon, if you sign up for as little as $3 a month, you do get the episodes a little bit early and ad-free and in high res, res, res.

Yes, and thank you all for your donations. Even though we read names off every single week, we are still under-financialized. Yes, we are. We appreciate it. Pathetically under-financialized. We have a new five-star review from David, long-time listener. Listen every weekend to protect my sanity.

Love the show. Each week is a great summary of the week's highlights in tech news, the world, and stuff going on. Dave Vintner's recent review of his trip to Walt Disney World and Star Wars Land was awesome. Keep up the great work and stay both healthy and grumpy. Would not want to have the two of you disappear. Well, we don't want to either. Except for the fact that we're under-financialized and maybe this isn't financially worth it.

Then we'll disappear. Then we'll disappear. Yeah. But, I mean, this is why we gave up on security, ha. If you want security, you listen to Dave's other podcasts. It's more fun for us to shoot the shit. Yeah, pretty much. Every now and again, we'll throw in some security stuff if there's time.

But, oh, man. Sad news. Lance Reddick died this week. He was a fantastic actor. I think I first ran into him on Spartacus, also known as Spartacus Tits and Sand on Showtime. It was a great show.

It was a fantastic show. There was such a good run of shows that were, like, done in period times that just involved nudity. Yep. And Xena. Don't forget Xena was in that, too. Lucy Lawless. Yeah. Culminating in Game of Thrones. So, just kind of gave up on plot and just showed nudity constantly.

Pretty much. Pretty much. They certainly didn't work on the writing, that's for sure. Well, not by the last few seasons. No, they did not. But anyway, it was very sad. He was very young and very surprising because I was recently watching him in the Bosch series. Right. That was the last time I saw him.

But, yeah, he will be missed. All right. Until next time, I'm Brian Schoenaster. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks over the years. If you enjoyed the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on and help financialize the show. We will 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 594. From there, you can find links to everything we talked about in this episode as well as links to our swag and Discord channel if you want to buy some stuff or chat with us and other show fans.

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