597: Annoyingly Well-Informed

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

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. I believe congratulations are in order for you, Jason. They are? A hundred days, man. That's right. I'm a hundred days sober today. That is what they call a motherfucking milestone. That is. I got a cool hundy. I got my cool hundy.

Good job, man. I'm proud of you. No, thank you very much. Thank you very much. It's going well. It's going really, really well. Excellent. Now, I do have a new nickname for you, too, because you are going through some health issues with your chemotherapy. How are you feeling today? I feel like fucking ass today because I just had my second of four infusions yesterday.

And generally, the first couple days after that are kind of crap. After that, it's just pills for two weeks and then a week off and the pills weeks are fine. So usually by – I expect I'll feel all right by Sunday, but right now I fucking feel like shit. And, you know, my doc actually just mentioned, oh, by the way, it's kind of cumulative.

So, you know, as you have each of these treatments, it's going to feel worse. Nice of him to tell you now. Awesome. Can't wait for three and four. Woo-hoo. Oh, yeah. We'll be looking for a guest host around number four, I'm guessing. It's not so bad. I mean, I can tell – they give you pills for the nausea that keeps it at bay, and I can fucking tell those things are working hard right now.

I'll tell you that. Bit of a headache, tired, tingly extremities and all that sort of shit. It's not fun. We truly are grumpy old geeks now. As you always say on the show, Jason, beats the alternative.

Yes, it does beat the alternative. And I have a new nickname for you. It's actually an old nickname, but I think I'm just going to start calling you Kemosabi. Oh, well, thank you. Yes. I think Kemosabi will work. Double meaning. You get that for another month and a half or so, and then it gets to go away, thankfully.

All right. All right. It's a Lone Ranger kids. Look it up if you haven't heard of it. Yeah. They don't know what that is. No, they don't. That Johnny Depp movie bombed. Oh, God. That was terrible. That was bad. Oh, man. So, we've got a little follow-up here. We actually got a lot of follow-up today.

Yes, we do. MoviePass is coming back. Believe it or not. Didn't we report on this exact thing months ago, and then they just never rolled it out? Yeah, they're still rolling. They did a quick – you can sign up for the beta, and it was up for like five minutes before it crashed.

It was like up, down, boom, done. Right. So, they're going to start rolling it back out again, and they're going to have four tiers, $10, $20, $30, and $40 a month. And you get points, and there may be some Web 3 involved. But, yeah. How's that going to go? Fantastic, I'm sure. I'm sure.

So, we'll see what happens. But trying to strap the same fucking business model on the Titanic over and over again is really – They lift it up from the sea, and they fucking give it a new coat of paint, and out it goes again, right into another iceberg.

Oh, Titanic 2, electric boogaloo. All right. All right. Well, good luck on that. Yeah, good luck. Good luck. I found this article. I believe it was over at the New York Times, and it's The Real World Costs of the Digital Race for Bitcoin. Now, if you want to hate crypto bros even more than you already do, then read this article.

It's about the energy usage, and since China shut down most of their Bitcoin mining operations, a lot of people have moved to the US, and they've moved closer to electric plants, and they've made deals with the electric plants and the governments, which is really pissing me off.

If you read this, you will get very, very angry, especially the Texas one that they were paid by the taxpayers $18 million to not take any electricity while everybody else was freezing their ass off and the grid was collapsing.

I was about to say, if we cast back our minds, didn't their electrical grid collapse when they had slightly cool weather? Yeah, there was a chill in the air, and boom, everybody died. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah. So there's a lot of these out there. Read it. Get angry. But be warned, soon you're going to see the same thing from all of these machine learning training farms that are going to be popping up because everybody's training their AIs.

And fortunately, right at the exact same moment that I was writing this, I came across another article over at Ars Technica, The Mounting Human and Environmental Costs of Generative AI, where they lay out exactly what the cost of it is. What the costs are to actually train these LLMs and what it's going to take and, you know, basically the new hellscape that we're looking forward to.

I got to say, I mean, I almost find it comforting that we're actually probably going to kill ourselves before we get to Skynet trying to get to Skynet. Exactly. We don't need Skynet to kill us. We're going to kill ourselves trying to get there. Yeah. I think that's the way it's going to play out at this point.

It's a pretty good article. It has graphs and everything. And here's the thing, though. The generative AIs, the LLMs and the GPTs and all those shenanigans that are going on right there, they at least have some kind of fucking benefit, whereas crypto has zero benefit, has a negative benefit, unless you're a profiteer or a fucking criminal.

No, I 100% agree with that. A lot of these generative AI tools are actually useful and good and getting better all the time until it kills us. Yeah, these things are useful. Crypto, fucking NFTs. Who cares? I know three people left at CARE. Three.

Yeah. And they're hanging on to that fucking boat for dear life. Boy, are they pushing it. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. GM, everybody. I'm like, seriously? Seriously? I mean, oh, God. We talked about Tesla last week, about how their employees were sharing videos and photos from actual Tesla automobiles.

Well, of course, cue the class action lawsuit. Yep. Yep. Can't do that. Yeah, and this is a class action lawsuit on behalf of anyone who owned or leased a Tesla since 2019. So that's a lot of Tesla owners, like almost all of them.

It's all of Southern California. That is all of my Whole Foods, I can guarantee. All of my Whole Foods. Whole Foods will be bumping up the prices again because everybody's going to be flush. Hey, but I hear eggs are going down, so we're safe. We're safe. Okay.

The vegans don't care, though. So that's even better for us. Yeah. I noticed this week, and it is very funny. And tell me if I'm wrong here. Anytime you see a news article that mentions Twitter, it is either Elon Musk's Twitter or the Elon Musk-owned platform.

Or Twitter has become synonymous with Elon Musk. So it is now not just Twitter, it is Elon Musk's Twitter, at least in the news articles that I've been reading. What do you think? Well, why wouldn't it be when he basically bought the platform and then force-fed his tweets down everybody's throats? He changed the algorithm so we all had to see his stupid posts.

He put the fucking Dogecoin. He replaced the Twitter thing with his bullshit Dogecoin. It's 100% accurate, and it's accurate even legally, Jason. I don't know if you saw this, but in a court filing on Tuesday, April 4th, Twitter, Inc. They are currently being sued by right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer, who is a nutbag, but accused of violating federal racketeering laws when it banned her account.

She has a Twitter account again, and she has an absurd lawsuit. But as a defendant, Twitter had to submit corporate disclosure statements to the court. Twitter, Inc. has been merged into X Corp and no longer exists. See, not only has Elon ruined Twitter, he has ruined the letter X.

You know, X used to be cool. We are Generation X. Now, X is Elon? No, no, no. I think we need to stage a revolt. So X Corp is the long-held name that he has had since he first got flush with his PayPal cash and decided he needed to get on the super app train, which is never going to happen in the States.

I get why it has in other places, because of a lot of government restrictions and generally in autocratic countries. So, hey, maybe there's a chance we have elections coming up. You never know. This is true. Yeah. So then perhaps he has got ahead of the game.

Always, you know, 12-step chess ahead of us. Right? Right? Oh, that's right. Intergalactic, interdimensional chess. So, yes, this is the cornerstone of what he hopes to be able to do with his fucking sunk billions. So we'll see. Okay. But, yeah, Twitter no longer exists. It is not a company.

It is a website name only. That's it. Yep. So we have some other news. And this is a little bit of follow-up, but also case in point. This article starts out, Elon Musk's Twitter, Inc. has changed its description tag for National Public Radio to government-funded media from state-affiliated media, which we covered last week.

Well, there's been a lot of news about this one. And would you like to take it from here, Brian? I mean, it's more just Elon being Elon. He sends defund NPR. And then, of course, all the tweets coming back at him going, SpaceX, Tesla took billions in government subsidies, you fucking hypocrite.

If NPR had taken as much money as they had, they would be in business until way past Skynet. Yeah, pretty much. So, yeah, NPR ditched it. I saw today that PBS is leaving. Now, my thought is beyond just Elon here. Elon is just one facet of this.

We've been talking about how we're in a culture war for a long time. We are now in a fucking hot culture war. I think we were in a cold culture war before. Now it's gone hot. This is – I mean, we've got Bud Light. We've got fucking Ted – who the hell blew up? Kid Rock. I'm trying to think of all these like – and Travis Tritt, like these completely irrelevant old fucks that got pissed off because, you know, Bud Light made a deal with a trans influencer and made her a special can.

And she drank it on TikTok, which I guess Kid Rock's on TikTok. So, he saw it and then he bought a bunch – this is the best thing. He bought a bunch of Bud Light so he could shoot it. Kid Rock. Kid Rock, you're an asshole. Now I'm going to sell you a bunch of CDs of our podcast so you can destroy it.

Please do. Please do. So, we're in full-on culture war and Elon Musk has taken Twitter to the right. And so now all the people on the left, he's driving them out because it's a culture war now. That's what we're in. It is left versus right.

It's the loonies on both sides, but the loonies are running the asylum. So, there you go. But he's a free speech warrior, Brian. Not anymore. That was a load of shit. That was a load of shit. Oh, God. Oh, did you see the thing where he whited out the W on the Twitter sign to make it titter?

It's just a fucking juvenile asshole. He's 12 years old. My son makes funnier jokes and he's six. I know. I know. He's a child with a nuclear weapon. That's pretty much it. Speaking of children, pregnant Elizabeth Holmes.

I think she's still pregnant, right? I don't know. At least last I checked. You checked? Well, last I read about it. I didn't go over to her house and say, hey, still in the oven there? Poking a tummy. Tap, tap, tap. Yeah. Hello. Hello in there. Little fraudster.

Come on out. Well, she's appealing, of course, her sentence because she's supposed to go to jail. She's supposed to go to jail on April 27th. And apparently she's like, can I just stay at home while we do the appeal? And the judge goes, no.

Yeah. I love that the lawyer basically said, oh, you remember that time she bought a one-way ticket to Mexico? That was just bold. It wasn't an attempt to flee. It was pretty fucking bold. Yeah. Pretty fucking bold. Oh, my God.

Good. Good. The sooner she's in jail, the better. Yeah. Can we get Sam Bankman freed to drive her so he can go too? Yeah. They can perp walk them together. Although apparently FTX has magically found over $7 billion in liquid assets. Oh, yeah. So they're coming back. Hiding in the mattresses.

They're coming back. Just what we want. Don't call it a comeback, Brian. Don't call it a comeback. Hi. We failed and lost all your money before. Give us money. And I think, was it one of the lawyers said the dumpster fire is now over? Like, literally said that. It was one of the FTX people.

There's still some members there. Yeah. No. You can only bring back FTX if they headquartered on Fire Island. Oh, by the way, that's also coming back. Seriously. That guy, I can't remember his name right now because I was not prepared for this story because I thought it was too asinine to put in the show.

But now that we're talking about it, the guy that went to jail for the Fyre Festival is bringing it back and doing Fyre Festival 2. And this time he's convinced it's going to go well. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. He just really wants to go back to jail. He liked the three hots and a cot. I think perhaps. But it's better than anybody got that went to that festival.

That's true. He got better treatment in prison than any of the influencers got on that fucking show. Yeah, he got fed and had a place to sleep. None of them did. Nope. Better than a cheese sandwich. Prison 2.0. We do have an arrest in the killing of Bob Lee from San Francisco.

This is good. Nemo Momeni. Yeah, Momeni. I'm going to go with Momeni. Nemo Momeni was arrested yesterday. There's a lot of info coming out about this guy. He apparently, you know, hanging around with crypto people, you're going to be a bullshit artist. So it sounds like a lot of what he did was about around his businesses was bullshit.

We don't know why he killed him, but I'm sure we're going to find out soon enough. My guess it probably involves a lot of money. Yeah. You know, I think maybe Bob should have brought his wallet instead of the cash app. So he could have just paid the guy. But yeah, we'll see. Too soon? Yeah, probably. No, it's a really shitty tragedy.

From everything I know, Bob was an okay guy. So no reason for this shit. You know, nerds don't do this. We don't do this. We dox, we dox, that's it. Come on. Although we got some pretty shitty stories coming up in security. Oh, I'm sorry. The Dark Side with Dave. We got shitty stories coming up.

Isn't that our show? It's right on the tin. It's like the one person that complained last week. Yeah. Just letting you know. Trigger warning. In the news.

I love Scotland, Brian. It's my favorite country on the planet. If I had one place to live for the rest of my life, I would move to the highlands of Scotland. Okay. Now, that said, Scotland is now rolling out driverless bus service. Now, okay. They're saying that this project will be the world's first full-size self-driving public bus service.

Because it was a joke running around. It's like, well, we've got self-driving buses everywhere. They're saying it's because it's a full-size self-driving bus that it's better. Okay. Oh, great. Let's add some tonnage. Yeah. Let's add some fucking tonnage. Look, I love Scotland as much as you do.

I particularly love Edinburgh and I've been there a couple of times. I have to say, from my memories of being there and taking a taxi where the taxi driver was drunker than I was, which is impressive considering how drunk I was. Maybe autonomous bus, not so bad.

Yeah, maybe, maybe. But what I love here is it's a quote-unquote self-driving bus, but it takes three staffers to run it. There will be two. But they're not driving, Jason. No, no, no. They're not driving. We have two staff members and a safety driver, quote-unquote.

A safety driver will sit in the driver's seat and monitor the technology. It plays the Jesus take the wheel song and then he has to put his hands on the. I think they need the proclaimers playing 500 miles in the back of it because you're going to be walking that far. This thing fails.

It's a 14-mile route that it's on. So we'll see. We'll see how this goes. But it's just damn funny. Come on. I probably should have put this one in follow-up because I just thought we had a pretty big follow-up section anyways. Remember last week or two weeks ago where Google was announcing their climate initiatives and it was basically Tree or Not?

Where they were using AI to look at photos of whether there are trees or not in areas? Yeah. And I just kind of said, can't we come up with better uses of technology than taking pictures and calling it Tree or Not AI? NASA is.

All right. This is pretty good, actually. They are launching an innovative air quality monitoring instrument into a fixed rotation orbit around Earth. The tool is called TEMPO, which stands for Tropospheric Emissions Monitoring of Pollution Instrument, and it keeps an eye on a handful of harmful airborne pollutants in the atmosphere, such as nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde, and ground-level ozone, which are the chemicals that are building boxes of smog.

Now, this is great because it's actually, like, really cool. It's a significant improvement to existing technologies as current measurements are conducted within areas of 100 square miles. This could basically go neighborhood to neighborhood, giving a comprehensive view of pollution from both macro and micro levels. Yay!

Cool. This is cool. Yes. NASA doing NASA shit. I like it. It's what they're supposed to be doing. Not you, Elon. Yeah. We need to talk to them about their acronym department, though. Tropospheric Emissions Monitoring of Pollution Instrument is not TEMPO. It's TEMPI.

Tempify. All right. Well, we do have a new director over at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Mackenzie Listrop was sworn in. And, of course, she swore in and, you know, people were like, hey, that's not a Bible. It was Carl Sagan's pale blue dot.

Slow clap. Yep. Well done. Well done. So she made a statement here. She says, like many astronomers and space scientists, my passion started with watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos on public television as a child. Sagan worked very hard to make science accessible and meaningful to everyone.

And pale blue dot emphasizes the importance of exploring our universe and understanding our home planet. Given its personal significance to me and how its message resonates with the work we do at NASA Goddard on behalf of the world, it felt apropos to include in the ceremony. Fuck yeah.

Nice. You go, Mackenzie. I like that. Yep. Got some transparency news over in the world of AI here. Google's bard, also known as the little tiny stepbrother that can't do anything right in the AI world. Runner up. But they are doing something good.

They are doing an experiments update page to try to be transparent about the updates that they're making to the system as it goes along. How exactly you're transparent to a completely untransparent process is beyond me, but at least they're making the attempt, which nobody else is. Well, that's a good step and I'd like to see everybody adopt it.

You know, the old blog update board. Bring back the blog. And you can even have your own system write it. It should be able to write itself. Yes. Exactly. It should write itself. Perfect. Today, I took one more step to taking over the world. All right. Yes. Vimeo is in the news for an AI.

They call it AI related biometric privacy lawsuit. I think it's just a privacy lawsuit. What they were doing was they had this platform called Magisto. And what it did was when you uploaded a photo, it would do the biometrics on the photo and use those biometrics to compare your face to other faces and all that kind of stuff in the future.

Well, they forgot that Illinois is not a place you can have that kind of stuff going on. So they got slapped with a two and a quarter million dollar fine for actually doing that. I don't think you get that unless you lived in Illinois during when this was happening and use the app.

So, but yeah, you know. Step in the right direction. Surprisingly, Illinois, out of all the states that I would have picked besides Arkansas for privacy, you know, biometric privacy laws, didn't see it coming. But, you know, this is another big one. Facebook got slammed for it as well.

And, you know. Yeah. Any port in a storm. I suppose so. Next story, this is done the rounds a little bit. And this is definitely a bit of a misleading headline, which I'm not a fan of. It's at least a salacious headline. Twitter circles is broken, revealing nudes not meant for the general public.

Now, you could have just stopped at Twitter is broken, which then gets you to the point of what the fuck are you doing distributing your nudes on a system that you know is broken. And if you're a Twitter circle user, you're kind of a Twitter power user and should know what the hell's going on. And this was just poor choice on your part.

But again, it's a bit of a salacious headline because that only there's only one case of anybody coming out and saying that the real issue is Twitter circles, which are supposed to be private spaces that you can only you only invite or you can make them public. It can go both ways, but you can make them private and you can only invite certain people, which is what this person whose nudes were disseminated did.

They had instead of using something silly like, oh, I don't know, some sort of double encrypted MMS messaging system that most people use for this sort of thing that have a brain or only fans or only fans if you were selling. But I don't think this person was. It was they were they were proud of their boudoir photos and wanted to share it with some of their friends.

And the issue here is that the algorithm is pulling things from Twitter circles, whether they're private or not, and putting them in the for you feed, which is where this person's nudes ended up. And again, only one person has come forward about nudes.

But a lot of people have noticed that things that they have been doing, updates they've been making in private circles are showing up publicly in the for you feed. Did John McAfee's demise not teach us anything about using Twitter for nefarious, nefarious purposes?

No, the only thing that I learned was that you can use panties as a mask in a pinch. That's true. That's true. And his mustache probably smells really bad. And instead of making Twitter just fucking work again, you know, wasn't it just last week, Brian, that Elon signed on for the, hey, we got to slow down AI for six months, man, so we can just figure out what's going on.

I'm not going crazy, right? No, except we all knew the subtext there was, we've got to slow down AI development so I can catch up. Exactly. Yeah. Which comes the news, Elon Musk is moving forward with a new generative AI project at Twitter after purchasing thousands of GPUs, 10,000 of them, roughly 10,000 of them.

Yeah. So do as I say, not as I do. Right. That's pretty much what it comes down to. Fucking Elon. There you go. And the last bit of news I've got here is the FTC has fined a supplement maker of $600,000 for review hijacking Amazon listings.

Okay. Between 2020 and 2021, Bountiful abused a feature of Amazon to make it seem like some of its newer supplements had higher product reviews and ratings than they did in reality. The way they basically did this is, you know, there are variants that you can set up for your products. Yes. They're just supposed to, the whole intent of a variant was if you got a t-shirt, it comes in blue, green, purple, orange, whatever.

So there's your variants. It comes in different sizes, different qualities or flavors. What they did is basically they had an old product, say a vitamin C supplement that was highly reviewed and rated. So it shows up in searches more often. If you launch a new product, i.e. their newer, more expensive thing that is exactly the same product.

Come on, guys. Admit it. We all fucking know. It's exactly the same. It's not new and approved. It's the exact same motherfucking thing. But you launch a new product and it's got none of those reviews or ratings, then it's going to be lower down in the search algorithm. So they basically stuck all the new stuff in the variants of the old one and then added linked to the new things.

Okay. Okay. Which kind of sounds like beating the system to me. Yeah. That doesn't sound like it should be. I mean, there's enough shenanigans going on on Amazon right now that this is kind of like weird. I think it's clever. Yeah. But they consider it listing abuse.

Why Amazon didn't take unilateral action and the FTC had to step in is a little bit beyond me. Yeah. Seriously. This is – there's enough fraud and bullshit going on on Amazon that I guess – I don't know. Somebody – you know what?

Here's what happened. Somebody about will piss somebody off at the FTC. In Congress. Some congressman's son got some – Didn't get jacked from the supplements. Exactly. Yeah. I'm not swole, dad. Do something about this.

I'm not swole because I laid on the couch and ate pizza, but I'm taking these supplements. Come on, man. Yeah. That's exactly it. Got it. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

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Media Candy. Before we begin, I want to let you know this will be spoiler-rific. So what we're going to do is in the background, while we are talking about spoilers, you will hear the gentle hum of the USS Enterprise just thrumming along.

So if you want to fast forward and skip past the spoilers, because we're going to have spoilers for Succession and Picard and maybe something else. That might involve that wonderful Enterprise you'll be hearing the thrum from. So we're going to just leave it as, just going to put that there.

So let us begin, Brian. But yes, fast forward if you don't want any spoilers for Succession or Picard or anything else that we may talk about in the next few minutes. We should make it easier. Just skip Media Candy. But this is just so they can do it without looking and they can hear in the background.

That's my goal here. So you can one-hand it. They can one-hand it just like Pornhub. Some good production value going on here. That's right, man. We're professionals. So out of the gate, I want to say thank you very much to Adam and Frankie for having me on the Labors of Hercule podcast about the adventure of the cheap flat.

It was a blast. We talked for way longer than the actual episode was, which is what a good podcast about TV we should do, I guess. So good reactions to it as well. So thank you for everybody who listened to it and sent me notes about it. So go check it out. If you haven't, link will be in the show notes.

All right. We were really bored and couldn't find anything to watch on TV. So we found Iceberg Slim, Portrait of a Pimp on Amazon Prime. You know, there's these things called books. Well, Iceberg Slim did write books, which I'll talk about in a couple of weeks when I finish the books.

You're right. But it's a fantastic little documentary that was put together by Ice-T because Ice-T used Iceberg Slim as his role model growing up. Surprise, surprise. Also, my lunch. I had an iceberg lettuce with salad and some iced tea. There you go.

See? It all comes together. It's healthy. It is healthy television. But it was a, I mean, it was just a really solid little documentary about somebody I didn't know much about. So, well worth the watch, an hour and a half. All right. Also, somebody I didn't know much about is Steve Aoki, which I'm sure you do because you're in that world, I guess.

Yeah, not a fan. See, I don't know his music. I don't know anything about him. It was a good documentary, though. I enjoyed the documentary. The guy has a work ethic. I'll give him that. He does. He does have a hell of a fucking work ethic. He's a Nepo baby. He works very hard. Yes. I enjoyed it. I thought it was a pretty decent little documentary.

I mean, if you go into it not liking him, then you'll probably have that same reaction coming out of it. I went in not knowing a damn thing about him. So, when I came out of him. I think for me, his music is okay, but I was, I'm an OG raver, so I definitely came out of the Peace and Love Man rave environment, and he's kind of a dick.

Okay. I don't think you get to be that big without being a dick. Just knowing, I mean, we, in that world, you can. Okay. In that world, maybe, but did most of the really successful people I know, there's a lot of dick in them. I'm just saying, to get that big, you've got to have a lot of dick in you.

Liberace. Elton John. Okay. Okay. Enough. Freddie Mercury. The documentary's called I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. It's on Netflix. Okay. Perry Mason Season 2 is back with Matthew Rise, our favorite guy from the Americans.

I've watched the first episode. Love it so far. I just love the style of that show. I think it's... It's on our to-do list that someday we'll get to. Speaking of the Americans, though, yesterday, I think my wife pointed out to me, because she always gets these, like, reads these articles.

Seven years ago yesterday, the first episode of the Americans aired. That's so funny, because we were talking about it last night, about what we want to go back and re-watch. Because it's like, there's just... We like going back and just checking out old series. Like, you know, we did that with Queen of the South during the pandemic.

And I did that with West Wing. Yeah, we were tossed up right now, because we like bad TV. So, it's a toss-up right now between Burn Notice and the Americans. So, but now that I know... I think we might do... Maybe we'll... Yeah, do good TV. Talk back and forth. Good the Americans. Yeah, the Americans was so damn good.

It was. I can't believe they haven't brought it back with the daughter yet, you know? Because they set it up perfectly. They've talked about it. I kind of hope they don't, but, you know. Yeah, I don't either, because she was one of my least favorite characters. Yeah, she was a whiny little whiner. Yeah, what was the son's name that they could never find? Oh, God.

Well, they never found him. That's why I don't remember the name. That's exactly it. But every episode, they're like, where's... What's his name? Yeah. Okay, let's get to the elephant in the room. Secession. All right, Secession. I am more interested in talking about what you put in about Secession than the episode itself. I will say that was an Emmy-winning polishing performance by all involved.

They're going to sweep. There's no doubt about it. The only way they can lose is they'll all be up against each other. Yeah, that's kind of it. That's kind of it. Like, the entire cast is up for best supporting. Yeah. The problem is, this was episode three, and Brian Cox is now gone. Yes.

So, the way that they did it was fairly... I mean, it was extraordinarily interesting. I did listen to the HBO Succession podcast, and why fucking, oh, why did you pick Kara fucking Swisher to be the fucking host? Because she's a super fan. She's a super fan of the show.

Okay. Now, here's the double-edged story. I loved The Last of Us podcast. It was so well done. The thing with this one, I listened to the episode, I listened to the podcast episode about this because I just had to fucking know. And Brian Cox is on it. She did a fucking good job.

God damn it. She's good at her interviews. Yeah. When she can break out of her, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what... Because she's stuck in that with... Because I know she claims to be the biggest tech reporter out there. She doesn't understand a lot of tech, which is why she's always on the podcast that we all listen to, Pivot.

That's why she's always like, I don't know. Because she doesn't know. No. Well, I mean, that's the sign of an interviewer. An interview asks questions. I mean, that's the bread and butter of an interviewer. You just have to know which questions to ask. Yeah, but she's not interviewing Scott Galloway. That's an opinion podcast.

That's why I don't listen to that show anymore. I can't stand it anymore. I really couldn't... It was always a hate listen because I liked Scott a little bit, but then he's just a fucking lunatic now. Anyway, let's get back to the... Let's wrangle it back here. It was really good. Brian Cox was fantastic on it.

Oh, on the podcast. I was like, he didn't do shit on the episode. No, no, no. Not on the episode. On the episode. He just laid there. Yeah, pretty much. The thing is here, I put this thing at the beginning of this episode about spoilers because the New York Times...

Not just the New York Times, Jason. Oh, pretty much everybody shit the bed on this. Absolutely shit the fucking bed. Vulture had rest in peace, Logan, the day before the episode aired. I'm so fucking sick of people getting the fucking...

People get the advanced screeners and it's everywhere immediately. Everybody has to beat everybody to having the story. You guys are ruining everything on the internet. Everything. Not just a session got spoiled for me. Picard got spoiled for me. And I'm not even looking for stories.

I'm just reading news. You people cannot run a fucking headline without giving away the big bits. You just can't anymore. Fuck you. I mean, I try and stay away from it. I didn't get spoiled on any of them this week. So I got lucky, I guess.

I almost flew to San Francisco and punched David Teeter in the mouth because he loves to text at 645 after he watches Picard right when it comes out. Which is like 45 minutes before I watch it. And I'm just like, fuck you. Even if people don't get the advanced screeners, who are these people that are up at midnight when episodes drop and then have to talk about it for the next 12 hours without sleeping?

People with no fucking lives and just narcissistic little shit. And they're always like, you should just get off the internet until you can watch the show. I work on the internet. No, no, no, no, no. No, you get off. Yeah, exactly. You go fuck yourself and get off the internet. Your headline is name of show, spoiler alert.

That's your headline. Then I don't have to click on it. And you don't show a picture of Logan dead. And you put it below the fucking fold. Below the fucking fold. That New York Times article right there. Yeah, no. Drives me fucking mad.

But anyway, fantastic episode. And I do recommend listening to the podcast episode about it because the writers explain why they did what they did. And I'm glad they did because it's what I wanted. I'm glad he's dead. I'm glad he's gone because what I'm fascinated by is what the fuck is going to happen.

Well, we got seven episodes about that. Yeah. I could have used maybe three. Yeah, I think three probably would have covered it. In my opinion, the fragile alliance between the siblings is going to spiral out of control. Yeah. I think Roman is going to come out on top.

Just that's my feeling. Because that's the way it's just got to go. Yeah. By the way, he was really good on the hot ones this week. I watched that. He was pretty good on it. And I've got to say, I agree with you. I thought it was an absolutely fantastic episode, possibly the best episode they've aired so far.

I can only imagine what it would have been like if Logan's Roy's death came as a surprise to me. See, it was great. I'm going to tell you right now, it was fantastic. Because I at least knew that the internet was going batshit insane over it. And I'm like, okay, something big is happening.

And then I'm watching it with my friend. And she's just like, oh, he's not dead. He's not dead. He's a test. It's a test. I'm like, pretty fucking sure he's dead. Okay, Roman. Exactly. Yeah. She was playing Roman and I was, I don't know. I guess I wouldn't give her chest compressions. Yeah.

No, that was just fucking insane. But. Well, we got some, some big insider news. HBO Max is getting a much needed reboot, which I agree with. It's, it's been kind of weird. However, Max. Let's see, you have two properties here.

You've got HBO, which is known for prestige films and, and some of the best TV that's been produced in the past couple of decades. And then you've got Cinemax, also known colloquially as Skinemax. Skinemax. Known for 15 year olds staying up a little bit late and jacketed off on the parents' couch.

The Red Shoe Diaries, Emmanuel in Space. So which one are you going to name it after? Yeah. Yeah. No. I love this Trung Fon on Twitter had the, had the greatest response. I think Time Warner is renaming its streaming service HBO Max to Max. It's a good move.

The HBO brand is associated with some of the worst content ever. The Sopranos, The Wire, Band of Brothers, Game of Thrones, Carb Your Enthusiasm, Veep, Deadwood and Silicon Valley. Good riddance. Although I would say. Take issue with that Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley and Carb Your Enthusiasm I can do without. And I never saw Veep, but, but the rest of it dead on.

But yeah, it's like, yeah, let's, oh, this is going to go down. It's going to go down in history as one of those stupidest moves ever. This is, this is, what is it? This is the AOL Time Warner deal right here. Pretty much. It's, it's just, uh, whatever. It's just such bad branding. Yeah.

Oh, well. All right. Nice note in HBO. It is what it is. Yep. Yeah. Fun. Uh, Picard. Picard. Uh, we have, uh, slid into the last two hours of the next generation we will ever get. Unless they get their legacy and they do a bunch of cameos all the time. Or unless they all die.

Or unless they all die, which somehow I doubt. I think we had our big shock death in this episode. Uh, this was just riveting. Like, could not take my eyes off the show the whole time. So many great little beats. It does feel like it's all getting wrapped up a little too neatly and too quickly.

But that, that, the death scene, I was just like shaking. I was like, oh, give me a fucking break. That was so bad. That, I'm sorry. That was cheese to the nth degree. Well, it's Star Trek. True. True. I, I, I, I should take my own advice and just go with it.

But yeah, I think you should just go with it by far. I'm like, I'm just saying, I'm like, he's going to call her seven of nine. I know what, I know what he does. Of course. It's like, of course, of course, of course. It's Star Trek, Jason. Come on. Yeah. By far, though, the thing that came out of left field for me, the mic drop moment of the next generation of all time.

Do you get, can you guess what my absolute favorite moment and line of the whole show was? Um, there's so many. Go ahead. Just tell me. They get back on the original, the, the, the season one, Star Trek next generation Enterprise. It looks smaller than I remember. No. Now, Picard's saying, now that I've gotten us all together and we're here again, I'm reminded of what I've missed the most, the carpet.

Carpet. So good. So good. No, everything about it was great. And the, and the, and the throwback to the Enterprise Ewar was like, it wasn't my fault. It's so good. Yeah. Just great all around. So I'm really sad that there's only an hour left to go, but, um, there you are.

They set up the big baddie. They've got all the chess pieces in place and somehow seven people are going to pull off, uh, saving the galaxy once again against everybody lined up against them. Well, actually it's going to be the sun. The sun's going to go rogue against the Borg and save everybody. Yeah.

One for the road though. I'm, I'm, I'm in, I'm, I'm all in. It's just so much fun. I even texted, texted, uh, teeter back. I'm like, I just think I got a fan boner. I'm actually thrilled because by next Thursday, I'll be able to have a, have some of my little bit of alcohol that I'm allowed. So I'll be pouring out a glass of wine for my final star Trek next generation experience.

Yeah. Well, I won't, but, uh, you have two for me. Well, two might be pushing it. Okay. Uh, a little bit more star Trek news. You can get everything now in 4k HDR. Gone. Everything except my favorite deep space nine.

And, uh, they're never going to do that one. I don't know why. I don't know why, but I don't know. I don't know, but it's my favorite. And, uh, you're also not going to get Voyager, which yeah, I don't care. No big loss. No care. No, but I can't believe they did enterprise before Voyager. Enterprise.

I'm a little surprised by that too. Actually, Voyager is a much better show than enterprise. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I just could not do enterprise at all. So that's it for our star Trek news. All right. So let's move on to star Wars. Uh, star Wars, the bad batch is getting a third and final season. Second season, like I said, not so great, but that did have an excellent two, two episode, uh, season finale.

So I, I, they hooked me enough to want to know what's going to happen. So we'll find out. And, uh, they're bringing star Wars return of the Jedi back to theaters on April 28th. How cool is that? You can go. Which version? Oh, damn. That is a good question.

If it's the redone one, I'll pass. If it's the original, I'm there. It's probably the redone one. Yeah, of course it is. Yep. Oh, well, uh, on the trailers did come out with avatar, the way of water. And I am so uninterested in avatar, the way of water.

I don't even care to watch this. This was hard to watch for me because I was that uninterested. I was absolutely that uninterested in it. And, uh, so it saves, saved me three hours. Uh, I just, seriously, no desire whatsoever to watch it. It's, I know how bad it's going to be.

I do not care at all. I don't need to see anything settled in the avatar world. The only thing I might possibly do that's related to avatar ever is if I end up in Disney world in Florida, I might go on the avatar ride because I've heard it's actually really good. Oh, that looks really good.

Yeah. Yeah. I do that. But, like, I don't give a shit who any of the characters are and won't care. I just go for the ride. Yep. That's pretty much it. But something I am looking forward to, the Continental from the world of John Wick. This is a three-part event. They're calling it an event, not a miniseries.

God forbid you call it what it is. Coming in September 2023 to Peacock, of all fucking places. This is a prequel back in the 70s that gives you the history of the Continental. I have not seen John Wick 4 yet, so I got fingers crossed on that.

But John Wick movies are just John Wick movies. Lots of gun-fu. So I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to John Wick getting released on, you know, streaming. Or at least somebody getting a good copy that they torrented. All the torrented copies suck. But I'm looking forward to this.

The trailer is pretty good. Right. Okay. Cool. We were having a bit of a discussion over on our Discord channel about music after I had given a couple of new bands. And we talked about the Cranes. And then people were saying, oh, these are all great. And then we were talking a little bit about the difference in our, you and my musical taste.

And I thought it was interesting in a case of, we haven't used this term in a while, the big magnet or the great magnet. As soon as we had finished that discussion, the newest episode of the Ongoing History of New Music podcast by Alan Cross that I listened to religiously came out with their new episode, which is a history of your music, Jason.

The History of Skate Punk. Sort of is. I listened to it. I listened to it. They don't mention many of the – or at least one of the most influential bands in Skate Punk, which is The Faction, which had Steve Caballero on guitar. They did the song Skate and Destroy, which I think you hear a little nugget of in there somewhere.

But they focused a lot more on the bigger bands like The Offspring, which everybody hated. If you had a skateboard, you fucking hated The Offspring, period. I did see them live at Riot Fest one year. They were pretty good, but they were not Skate Punk in our book. So anyway, it was a good episode though.

They covered too much history, I think. It's not going to be the super deep dives that name check everybody. But I did like – I thought it was interesting that the two epicenters really were Chicago and Southern California. Yep. Pretty cool. Very cool. Yep. And a little bit of follow-up on the Apple Music Classical app.

I've been using it. There has not been a better way to listen to classical music in my lifetime. Awesome. It is awesome. Like, it's really great. So it's just – Is it insanely great? It's insanely great. Yeah.

So if you are even a casual classical music fan and you're in the Apple ecosystem, I highly recommend it. It's just a great way to find stuff. Oh, great. I'm going to check it out. I've got it. I flipped through it a little bit, but I need to play with it this weekend because I want to make sure it works with my Sonos because I really – I listen to a lot of classical on my Sonos around the house.

When I'm home and it calms the dogs. It really does. It really calms the dogs. And the interface was beautiful. I think they did a really good job on the interface alone. Yeah. It's really nice. Cool. I saw this flip through boing boing and I just had to put it up here. It's called Gen X Thought of the Day.

We invented the playlist. Do you follow Slim Sherry on Instagram? I do not. Oh, she's hilarious. She has – she basically just does these really funny Gen X videos. But she's like, kids these days all have all emojis to help them express themselves, every emotion possible, trapped inside a little digital icon.

When we were growing up, we did not have emojis. They weren't invented yet. We weren't even allowed to have emojis. Wait, that's emotions. Sorry. I want to express ourselves. We did it through our music. We made mixtapes. Damn straight. And if you don't know what a mixtape is, it's an analog version of a digital playlist trapped inside this little plastic container with a very delicate ribbon.

Yes, sir. It was a tried-and-true method to get a girlfriend. Yep. Yep. Or after you broke up with one, which is most of mine. Okay. Hence the angry skate punk. Caps and doodads.

I signed up for YouTube Premium this week, Brian, because they have all these cool new features, but I didn't care. I just really wanted to be able to turn my phone off and let it play in the background so I could listen to something. I found out something, though. So it's a one-month free trial and then $11.99 a month if you do it through the web.

I did not. I did it through iOS. It was $15.99. So $4 more a month, which is $48 a year, which is not insignificant. No, but it's lovely that companies pass along their own expenses to you. Yes, yes.

But the nice thing about it being through iOS is I can cancel and then re-up next month through the web and save, you know, well, I'll save $44 since I already lost $4 through my experiment. I love it. I love it. It's fantastic. I think you're already a Premium subscriber, right? We did the kids thing, and I believe I crapped all over that because it was absolutely horrible.

And then we actually decided, you know what? We're going to get him completely off YouTube because it's just not – you can't control the experience enough. And he sees too many things. And so no more YouTube for the kid. He does not miss it anymore. And I hardly ever watch anything on YouTube, so I don't need a Premium subscription.

Okay. I've been watching more stuff on there because it's – when I can't find anything, I just – like – it's also for some research stuff that I'm doing. But it's – I'm just sick of the ads. And also playing it – one of the big additions here is better video quality when you're watching it through some of the apps and through the web.

And I have a 728-inch fire TV in my garage now because I moved it from the studio because I'm closing the studio. And it is beautiful. I would have to say that 95% of my YouTube viewing is either trailers for something coming out or home improvement stuff.

How do I fix this damn thing? So quality doesn't matter too much to me. I have a playlist for the Breville barista that we have at the house because I can never find the manual. When it's time to clean it. Breville was fantastic with their videos on how to clean and descale your Breville barista.

So I watch those fairly often. So now I can watch it without ads. It's fantastic. Brian, did you ever play Hurdle on Spotify? I did not because I heard about it. I hurdled about Hurdle. You hurdled about it? I went, I bet they don't license any of that music and they didn't.

And I was like, fuck those guys. Okay. Well, your wish is granted because they are shutting it down. Okay. Done. Nobody really cared because Hurdle is dead. I still play. I still love it. But now Hurdle is dead too. Yeah. Well, you know, everything shark fins.

Everybody gets into it for a little bit and then gets tired of it. That's the way of the world. That is the way of the world. Another bit of a kind of follow-up. I think everybody remembers my complaints about the weather apps, particularly the Apple weather app or even the dark sky.

May it rest in peace. When I was living on the coast because it never seemed to be accurate, could not be accurate. I'm no longer living on a coast. Weather is still not that back and accurate on any of the apps that we use. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. Toronto is on the edge of Lake Michigan, is it not?

That's not a coast. Yeah, it is a kind of coast. There's no weather station in the middle of the lake. It's not that big of a lake. It's not an ocean. It's a great lake. What the hell are you talking about? A great lake is but a puddle to the Pacific, Jason. True. Anything is but a puddle to the Pacific, Brian.

Anyways, there's a long form article over on the Atlantic, the problem with weather apps and TLDR, they suck and tend to be incredibly wrong. And I feel very justified. I have switched over to the Apple weather app since rest in peace, dark sky. Yeah, it's always wrong. It is completely wrong all the time.

It's beautiful, but it's wrong. It's beautiful, but it's always wrong. Yeah, they took the UX and imported that over most of it and it makes it pretty. So while it says it's sunny outside and it is actually hailing on your car because you didn't have time to move it, you can go, oh, this is a pretty app.

Oh, shit, there goes my windshield. Yeah. That's about it. Yeah. Fuckers. Good times. I had to make a screenshot yesterday of our countrywide rankings that I texted you. And I'm like, how the hell am I going to make a screenshot without making multiples and then opening Photoshop and stitching them together?

Like, this has to be solved now. I need to be able to take a screenshot of a full page in a browser. Well, it used to be built into, I think, maybe it was Vivaldi I was using that had it built in. Some browser had it built in. It was great. Brave does not. So I had to go find a new extension.

And I found Awesome Screenshot. Name is right there on the tin. The great magnet strikes again. I don't believe this. I got this exact extension and installed it two weeks ago for work because I had to go through a bunch of our, like, company subscriptions and take screenshots of how many users we had and who the users were and the billing pages for our finance department.

And I was like, how the hell am I going to do this? And then I Googled and got that exact extension. It's awesome. There we go. Like I said, it's right there on the tin. Awesome screenshot. It is awesome. Oh, my God. That's so funny. I started running stable diffusion on my M1 Pro 14-inch MacBook Pro, and it's got 32 gig of RAM.

So that gives you a little baseline for the hardware that I'm working on. Yeah, you should keep that on your computer if you're doing that weird kiddie porno stuff. No, no, no. That's unstable diffusion, Brian. I am not unstable. I'm stable now. I'm a stable man. God damn, is it fucking slow. I'm sure. I mean, that M1 Pro Mac is faster than, you know, you can believe.

But since it doesn't really have a GPU in it, it's not that fast when running stable diffusion. And honestly, it's kind of shitty. All right. Compared to mid-journey, it is really shitty. But I'm still learning to get the hang of it. But I think I'm just going to delete it. It's a lot of disk space for not a lot of – as they say, the juice isn't worth the squeeze on that one.

But this brings me to an awesome article by Cal Newport who I'm having a love-hate relationship with recently from just dumb shit that he says on his podcast. But he writes really good essays and he wrote one for the New York Magazine called What Kind of Mind Does ChatGPT Have?

It doesn't. Yeah, it does not. But it is hands down the best explanation of how these things work. I highly recommend everybody pop over there. You get one free article a month. Use it for this and read it. It is a fantastic description of how these things work and how it describes what the black box is and how they're coming up with all of this shit that we're enjoying so much.

Did you get a chance to check it out? I have not yet. It's on my to-do to-read list. OK. I highly recommend it because it will give you a much better understanding. I mean I was just blown away. I'm like, that's how it works. Oh, oh, I have seen the light. I have seen the light.

So it's really cool. It is very, very cool. So I highly recommend checking that out. And a quick hat tip to OBK over at Clash Royale. He sent me – You guys are still going? We're still going, man. Wow. We're still going. We just won our daily clan wars yesterday.

So we're still kicking. We got a couple spots open if anybody wants to join in. The clan is GOG.show over on Clash Royale. We're still having fun. He sent me this thing called the Final Mouse Centerpiece Keyboard. It is basically the most unusable keyboard you've ever seen.

It is a giant LCD or LED screen that you can animate and then try and type on. It is so stupid. It is so stupid, but it's neat. But you know what? I was just thinking you would have – if this would have been available to us 20 years ago, we would have been all over it.

Here's my credit card. Here's my credit card. Yep. All over it. It is definitely – if for somebody in their 20s, this is the thing to get. But for somebody in their 50s, I'm saving my 350 bucks. But you have to go watch the video.

The link is in the show notes. Go check out the video. Just to go, who the fuck is going to use this thing? 20 years ago, me. The dark side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to the segment formerly known as Security.

Ha! We are joined, as always, by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast for all your cybersecurity news. The co-host of Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan discussing how humans are mean. The co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen because people are nosy. And the host of Control Loop because industrial machines are going to take over the world.

Hi, Dave. That's a nice description of everything. It's fair. There's nothing out of bounds there. I think that's good. I like it. Thanks, ChatGPT. I appreciate your creativity. No, Ryan, we covered this last week. This is not ChatGPT. I wrote this from scratch.

I know. Certified human, bitches. So he says. So he says. Hey, hey. So I bring something to the table here, gentlemen. As the lone person here that probably isn't a massive musical fan, and you guys both are, you like your musical theaters, and I do appreciate Disneyfication of them.

So I'm kind of there. But I stumbled across this show that I cannot believe has not been discussed and seems so directly up your guys' alley because musical theater and comedy. And I've watched a couple episodes. I have to say I've thoroughly enjoyed it so far.

Have either of you heard of or seen Schmigadoon? I have. Yeah. All right. I mean, look at this cast list. Cecily Strong. Keegan-Michael Key. Kristen Chenoweth. Alan Cumming. Jane Krakowski.

The good old Martin Short often mentioned on this show. Wow. They're stacked. What do you think? Well, I will admit I've only seen one episode, which I enjoyed when it first came out. And it was one of those shows my wife and I watched together.

And for no particular reason, we did not get back to it. And every time we see the promotion pop up on Apple TV, we're like, oh, man, we really got to get back to Schmigadoon. That was fun. And we've just been busy watching other things, watching Ted Lasso and watching Mandalorian and all the other shows.

We've got to put a pin in that until all these shows end. Right. Maybe it'll end up being a summertime viewing for us. But I agree. It's fun. It's funny. There's a lot of inside theater jokes, if that's your world.

It's affectionately poking fun at the world of theater. So, yeah, I'm definitely going to revisit it. Jason, how about you? So in high school, I actually read out of high school, my best friend at the time had a really cool girlfriend who was in.

She was cast as one of the leads in Brigadoon at her high school in Downers Grove North. And I really liked theater chicks and I really liked his girlfriend. This is not going to end well. Eventually, she became my girlfriend, but through a different set of circumstances. But through that relationship, I attended every single rehearsal from from the first rehearsal to the final performance of Brigadoon.

I never, ever, ever want to see or hear anything that is remotely reminding me of Brigadoon ever again. So I have I have with the title because it worked. Yeah, yeah, it is very triggering for me to think about Brigadoon.

So I may try it, but I'm just going to tell you right now. No. Why don't you just rename it in your mind, the Phantom of the Opera Rune? I can do that. I can do that. The Phantom of the Macaroon. The Phantom of the Macaroon. Yes, it is delicious and lovely.

Les Miserables. Yeah, that'll work too. So maybe someday. I actually think you would really enjoy it, Jason. I probably will. I probably will. I mean, the fact that I like it a lot is saying something.

Yeah. Did you guys see the Grogu Easter egg on Google this week? No, I did not. Just Google Grogu and you will notice that there is an Easter egg. And if you click on the little Grogu, fun things happen. Oh, there he is.

Yeah. Okay. He uses the Force. It's just very fun. Very fun. Yeah. Love it. We're almost done with The Mandalorian. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. This was a very big, packed episode full of plot being moved forward.

Yeah. Yeah. I got much else to say about it. Yeah. Other than they definitely, the marketing department has definitely gotten a new toy to sell with Grogu's new carriage device. Yeah. Right. They're going to be selling a lot of those.

Yeah. I want one of those for my dog. Yeah. Especially if they can do yes and no. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I don't want to mechanize Bam Bam. I'm sorry. I do not want to mechanize Bam Bam. Well, one of my dogs is a very, very little dog, like a little 10-pound dog.

So she would be perfect in this thing. And then she could walk around the lake path that goes around the lake where all the geese are and just take them out with some kind of laser, which she would very much like to do. Yeah. I wonder – actually, my youngest son made an interesting point, which is, is the Mandalorian no longer primarily about the Mandalorian?

I think it's about Katie Sackhoff, the Mandalorian that will unite them all. She is now the Mandalorian, yes. Yeah. I was – I'm not – you know, it's not where I thought the show would go. I was talking to a friend of mine who's only casually into Star Wars about the show last night.

We were doing a little texting back and forth, and he wrote back and said, look, we're about the same age. A show full of Boba Fetts, that's just better for me. That's true. That's true. I'm also imagining there's going to be a ton of really cool cosplay coming out of this show, right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yes, Mandalorian boobs. You get a lot of that. Well, and we've got new – we've got a new variation on Stormtroopers. Yeah. Right? The very Darth Vader-esque outfit of Beskar for the big baddie.

Yeah. Right, right. I think I'm having the biggest problem with this because at the same time this is airing – I think this would be a hell of a lot better for me if I wouldn't be watching it at the same time I'm watching the last season of Picard. Picard, which is so fucking good.

And then I go over to this, which is good, but in comparison, not even – well, I guess I was going to say not even in the same universe, but that's true. They're not in the same universe. If you straddle the Star Wars-Star Trek divide, you are getting riches from Star Trek and the Star Wars Mandalorian, which used to be riches, is looking a bit Bitcoin in comparison.

Maybe ETH. Maybe we'll get a little ETH. It can do smart contracts. Yeah, that's another one. The Picard show is another one that we've – we just have not picked up. We watched the first season and it's on our list to do season two and three and I'm hearing great things about season three. You don't need two.

You don't need season two at all. Really? You need the last episode. I like Q. Maybe the last episode. Oh, yeah. And the Q departure is very touching. That was one. Oh, yes, yes, yes. No, it's just – Okay. Go ahead and watch two, but season three is like – It's it.

It's it. Like people – we're all losing our minds. All right. Pretty much. I'll look forward to that. So I got a scam come at me this week and I thought it was very clever. Just the one? This is the one that was – that actually got through my filters to make me go, that's clever.

So it's a PayPal attempt. No, it's a – I got this thing and it's – it says, don't recognize this request. Call PayPal and it gives a phone number. Apple Inc. sent you a money request and it was a money request for $999.01.

Not unfeasible for you. Exactly. Well, it's weird that Apple would be asking for money through PayPal. But here's the really fun part. The actual name of the person that has sent the money request is don't recognize this request.

Call PayPal at 1-888-blah-blah-blah-Apple Inc. That's the full name of it. So the whole scam is to get you to call the phone number. Yeah. Which is – I've never seen this before. Have you guys seen this type of attack? Yes.

You have? I have. Well, he does do a podcast about these sorts of things. I was going to say you do kind of work in the biz. Well, and we get a lot of inbound stuff from our listeners over on Hacking Humans. So we see a lot of this and for our Catch of the Day segment.

And so, yes, there are a lot of these where the goal is to get you to call them and then you're in the call center and then you've got human interaction and all bets are off. Yeah. Because they're very good at what they do. Very good at what they do. I thought it was very clever.

And I think the really – what kind of got them – I mean granted I knew it was going to be bullshit because Apple sent me a money request. I knew that wasn't going to happen. The one thing that really gets them is the fact that the fonts are different. They use the font for the name versus the sent you a money request.

But again, you would get that. But you are not the target audience. Oh, no, no, no. I'm sure a lot of people call this number. Almost – probably almost all of them. The giveaway for me was the space after request and the question mark. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's – Right. So we're being thrown off by the kerning.

What? I mean just the slappy graphic design is substandard. But these are methods of discerning these things if you've been around long enough. Yeah. It's true. It's true. But – and again, that's one of the things that people are concerned about with things like ChatGPT is that they'll be able to run these things through those.

Yeah. They'll certainly clean up the English. So that will be a thing. Although I am curious if PayPal has like rudimentary filtering where like if you don't recognize this request, question mark, got rejected. But you stick a simple space in there and it gets through. Yeah. That could be it.

That could be it. Break the filter. Mm-hmm. Hmm. Interesting idea. Yeah. I just thought that was very interesting. It is. I was just like – when I see scams that come through that are actually clever, the evil in me goes, hmm, wish I'd have thought of that. Yeah.

I know some folks in my family who have fallen for this sort of thing where there's a phone number that you have to call and a family member of mine called because they thought that someone was going to bill them for something because that's what this is, right?

I told my mom like any request for a phone call, you forward that to me first and I've trained her up on that. Exactly. Yep. Yep. It's the right thing to do. Yeah. It's a good one. Yep. Now here's something that scratches my head because Brian and I – you and I have talked about this at length on the show about how – we just talked about it last week.

When we leave a job, we are very, very particular about scrubbing all of our access, making sure that people know that we need our access removed. Yep. Get rid of my passwords. I do not want anything. Well – I never want to get sued by somebody that I no longer work with. Yep.

Well, this website called Password Manager, which I've never heard of, which is kind of a bad name for whatever it is. They did a survey of about 1,000 US workers and asked them if they had logged into their former employees' websites or former employers' websites or accounts or anything.

Or whatever, yeah. After they had been let go or quit. And a staggering amount of people still log back into the accounts. Staggering amount of people. And I don't know what people think. What are they thinking?

Well, here's the deal. Here's the breakdown. A lot of people wanted to access the paid subscriptions of the employers, so that's about 25%. Disrupt company activities comes down to 10%. Those are the 10% that are just dumb. Get access to their old emails, 64%.

And access company data, also dumb, 44%. Stop it, people. Stop it. It's illegal. Yeah, and as far as accessing company email goes, the thing that you do as part of your exit interviews, you ask for them to forward all – set up a forwarding thing for at least a month.

I mean – And most of them will say no. It's their email. Most of them will say no. They want everything. But you ask for it. Yeah, you can ask. You can ask. But also just be very clear that you want all of your access tokens removed and test them. Test them on it. Say, look – Ah, but that's the cash 22, Jason.

You test them and then all of a sudden now you've logged in. But you follow that up with an email saying, hey, this and this. Follow it up with an email. Don't just test it and go, hmm, okay, maybe I'm going to put this in my back pocket for that day. No, don't do that. Seriously. I also go through my password managers and I remove anything related so it's no longer on my systems at all.

Yeah, that's a good idea. I'm bad at that. Yeah. Just to clarify what you said there, Jason, that technically even if your access still works, even if your password still works, logging into your old employer's accounts when you no longer work there is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Yes. The onus of responsibility is on you not to do it, not for them to fix it. That's right. Yeah, remove all those old bookmarks, remove all your Fetch FTP bookmarks, your Telnet bookmarks, your SSH keys, all of that stuff.

Get rid of it. Get rid of it immediately. Take them off your MySpace top eight friends. Yeah, get them off that Discord channel that you share with all your friends. But going down that rabbit hole got me to a website that I'd never seen called layoffs.fyi.

It's the new fucked company but a lot less fun. And on this website, there are links to spreadsheets of the people who are freshly unemployed, some with email addresses, some with websites, some with just links to their LinkedIn profiles.

But the ones with the email addresses, it's a head scratch. What the fuck are you thinking? Well, there is no privacy anymore. You are – no, I mean these people asked to be put on these. I would never hire anybody that asked to be put on this public spreadsheet that said you just got fired from a place or let go or laid off.

That's what LinkedIn is for. Exactly. Just the phishing opportunities right there are just enormous. People are so stupid. Those are probably the same 10 percent that are logging back into their old company, I guess. Well, no, I just think it's – let's stop for just a moment and consider the mental and emotional state that you may be in when you are freshly laid off and a certain degree of desperation might sneak in.

Usually I felt great relief. I would say – well, yes, but – yes. But you could see people trying to get their contact information out to as many people as possible. But is this the best way to do that? No, it's not.

It's not. But all I'm saying is you can understand why some people would have this impulse. Yes. As misguided as it may be. Agreed. It also shows why they probably got let go. Just saying. Okay. That's fair. Self-selecting samples. Self-selecting samples. Yeah.

All right. That's fair. Sure. Okay. Sure. And we do have a new bug bounty program from OpenAI. So they can go in and fix the thing that they can't figure out because it's a black box? Obviously, ChatGPT can't fix itself. So there you go.

Up to a maximum $20,000 reward. They're doing $200,000 to $6,500 per vuln. Okay. Yeah. We'll see how it goes. Good. Yeah. I mean, why not? I love that you are expected to, as always – they say you are expected, as always, to comply with all applicable laws.

Okay? And they're a partial safe harbor. That's the interesting thing. So you have to read these things. I put it in here, but I'm not going to go through it. But you have to read these rules very carefully. Because there are gotchas here that you can – it's partially a way for them not to pay you just because that's the cynic in me.

But other ways where it's like – they're trying to keep control over what's happening. So just be very careful, I'd say. So is this if you unmask too great a bug or too dangerous a bug that they may come after you?

Is that what partial safe harbor means? I'm not sure. I'm guessing – I'm guessing. It says, OpenAI will not threaten or bring any legal action against anyone who makes a good-faith effort to comply with this bug bounty policy. This includes any claim under the DMCA for circumventing technological measures to protect the services and applications eligible under this policy.

This sounds like a clause to sue the hell out of you if obviously you found a way in and started poking around to find out. Kind of. Yeah. Kind of. It says, We consider your security research to be authorized under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and or similar state laws, and we waive any restrictions in our applicable terms of use and usage policies that would prohibit your participation in this policy, but only for the limited purpose of your security research under this policy.

Yeah, this sounds like you better find the bugs just through normal usage. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, no, I mean they're giving you pretty broad leeway here. But the thing is, if you're breaking into their systems, you best be in the bug bounty program, which actually might be a way around.

If you're going to hack OpenAI, just sign up for the bug bounty program and then just have at it. And if they catch you, go, No, no, no, no, no. Here's a bug. Found it. Found your bugs. I don't know. This just seems like there's – I don't know. I'm not a Ben Yellen, so I can't talk to the legalities on this one.

This sounds a lot like a lot of legal dancing going on. Yeah. Get Yellen on the horn. Yeah. All right. What do you guys think? Is this a good thing, bad thing? I support any company having bug bounty programs. I think it's wise. Yeah, I agree. Before we go, I just want to say that I am very grumpy about the notion of juice jacking.

I'm not going to go into it super deeply here. I covered it on the most recent episode of Smashing Security. So if you want all the details, go over there. But I think this is – do look into it. This is a case of lazy media reporting on a solution in search of a problem.

As Jason would say, a tempest in a teapot. There you go. Absolutely. And I am annoyed and perturbed that this is being picked up by one media outlet after another without doing any – all you have to do is look at the Wikipedia page, which says there has never been a documented case of this happening.

And yet none of them have done that. All the reputable tech sites are putting out stories about how this is not a thing, and yet I heard a 20-minute piece on NPR about how it's a thing today. Exactly. And if you look at my DMs on Instagram, you will see all of my friends sending me stupid videos about how this is a thing, and I'm like, it's not a fucking thing.

Yeah. So I put out on Mastodon earlier today, I wonder, is juice jacking the new version of my phone is listening to me? God, I hope not. Ooh. God, I hope not yet. Fast forward 10 more years and we're still talking about juice jacking. Yeah, yeah.

Just one other thing for our listeners, if anybody can help me figure something out, we cut the cord a couple months ago. We've been using YouTube TV to replace our cable subscription. It's been going great. Baseball is a problem. We are in the Baltimore area.

We are Baltimore Orioles fans, and their games are on – Can't help you with that. They're on a thing called Masson, which is a local sports network, and I would just like to be able to watch a baseball game every now and then. And you'd think that my local baseball team would like me to watch their baseball game and see the ads on their baseball game, but this seems to be a hole in the coverage.

So I'm just wondering if any of our listeners have the solution, or maybe you guys do. I can tell you what I do being a baseball fan and the Dodgers being my team, and obviously I cannot get Sportsnet, which is the L.A. station here. Yeah. I am on the MLB app.

It is 100-some-odd bucks a month, or not a month, a year. So not cheap, but comparable to any streaming network at this point. Right. So I can watch all my Dodgers games. Now, what you need to do – and this is very important before you decide to sign up – is you need to Google blackout restrictions for your area.

Right. Because there are quite a number of them. For instance, because I am in Canada, they have decided – because the Toronto Blue Jays have been bought out by Sportsnet or Rogers or whatever freaking service here. There are only two of them. It's one of them. And they have, in their great wisdom, decided that if you live in Canada at all, not just the greater Toronto area, anywhere in Canada, all Toronto Blue Jays games are blacked out on the MLB app.

This is obviously pissing off a lot of people because if I'm paying for the MLB app, I should be able to watch any game I want. But they're doing the dance with all the people that have bought outrights in local areas. I understand that Toronto Blue Jays games are also blacked out in, like, Detroit and Chicago and kind of like the – it's all over the place.

But there is an up-to-date map out there somewhere. I Googled it a while ago to figure out why the fuck I wasn't able to watch Blue Jays games. And they've got it for all the major areas and teams that you want to follow. So you can click on the team and you can find out where you're blocked out at. I don't know how MLB gets around it.

I thought I could trick it using my VPN. It knows. It knows. So hopefully Netflix and HBO and everybody else doesn't get MLB's – what system that they are using because I have put myself in Los Angeles.

I have put myself in Tokyo. I have put myself in New York. And I cannot get around the Blue Jays' blackouts. Yeah. Cookies. This isn't even the thing – I'm not like a major hardcore baseball fan or Orioles fan.

But I just – I would love to have the ability in the summertime to do what I've always done, which is put it on in the background and enjoy the ambience of a baseball game. But I can't do that right now. Well, you know, MLB is great for that. And I just – again, I'm mostly a Dodgers fan.

I will occasionally watch a Blue Jays game. But there is something soothing about just the sound of baseball in the background. So often when I'm working from home, I will just put on MLB and whatever game happens to be on right now, I just have in the background. And it's lovely. Yeah. Maybe I'll do that.

But again, if any of our listeners know what the secret is that we're missing, the one trick that will allow us to watch baseball games, one weird trick that will allow us to watch baseball games in our area, please let us know. Yeah, LA did the same thing a while ago, and people lost their minds.

That's when they gave exclusive rights to Sportsnet because most bars didn't have – because that was only through Spectrum. So if you had Dish TV or you had any kind of satellite or anything else that wasn't Spectrum, you could not get Dodgers games.

So bars were losing out on it. People were like – people that had different methods or a cord cut couldn't watch Dodgers anymore. And guess what? That's the way it still is. It's MLB network with a VPN sometimes if you can get it to work or you have to get the service.

All right. Well, that's what I'm grumpy about, so. I agree. I think I have it here. I think I have it. So here's what you do. You guys both get it. Brian, you can VNC into Dave's machine for Dodgers games and his – and then vice versa, go the other way around for Orioles games.

So you guys just have computers set up so you guys can watch each other's blacked-out games from a different location. Just VNC it. It all makes it a bit too hard, doesn't it? Sure. It should be easy. That's the whole point. Hero friction. Yeah. Absolutely. It's just the thing I'm looking to do on a Saturday afternoon.

To relax and unwind. Tech support calls with Brian. Yeah. Exactly. All right, guys. Well, good luck with your baseball quest. Thank you. I mean, really, do you want to watch the Orioles? It's painful. Over at Patreon, we've got Jeff.

Welcome, Jeff. Thanks, Jeff. Over at PayPal, we've got Ralph, Miles, Natalie, Sherry, Linda, and Edward. Woo-hoo. Over at the tip jar, we've got Nick, Jeff, and Theodore. And our obligatory Patreon shout-out. If you want to get the show a little bit early, ad-free, and in high-res, sign up for Patreon at patreon.com slash GOG.

It makes us all very happy. Yes. And we have a new review, a five-star review. Not unpleasant. From one-time fan. Although one-time fan makes it sound like not a fan anymore. It's still a five-star review. I'm hoping they've got that username for another show. Yeah, me too. Stuck with it.

Anyone old enough to remember a time before the internet, and that's a bit geeky, come on, it's right in the name, is going to enjoy this. A freewheeling discussion about tech news, books, movies, cancer, alcoholism, and whatever. The takes are cynical, but annoyingly well-informed. That's us. Yeah. We're know-it-alls.

Skip, if you still harbor illusions that Silicon Valley is going to usher in a Star Trek utopia. I don't know what it is, but the show is one I always play first when there's a new episode. Not pleasant, but also not unpleasant. That's us. We are annoyingly well-informed and not unpleasant.

Yeah, that's going to go on my business card. Yep, and happy belated birthday to our favorite scientist, Dr. David Teeter. Hope you tied one on, and stop texting me when fucking Picard is still running. Anyway, happy birthday. Happy birthday. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo.

And I'm Ryan Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on, and we'll love you forever. You can also help us out by sharing the show with your friends and enemies. It's easy and absolutely free. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 597.

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Play ball. Some restrictions may apply. Some blackout restrictions may also apply, and the VPN won't work.

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