598: Universal Loser Income

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. Jason, can we just talk about Picard for an hour and call it a day? Because that's really all I want to do. I know. You've got to wait for me to find – I've got to go find the enterprise hum. We'll get to it. We'll get to it. Just hold your horses. Hold your horses.

All right. So when we wrapped up our show yesterday, I brought up something that I thought we – I forgot to talk about on the show. Massive uptick in spam calls that I'd noticed. And I asked you if you had felt the same way and you said you sure had.

So obviously that system that we all signed up for had stopped working. Yeah. And just real quick to clarify so we don't confuse the listeners. By yesterday, we mean last week, yesterday. Last week, yesterday. Last show. I don't acknowledge any other day in the week anymore. It's kind of like that. It's kind of like that.

You know, there's other – there's some things that happen in between, but it is just – this is just Groundhog Day. This is yesterday. Pretty much. So we decided we'd track it a little bit and I did and I'm getting two to three a day of spam calls when I was pretty much getting zero for over a year at least, if not years.

So. Yep. I've updated. I've updated. Might have picked up. I'm getting five to seven calls a day and about the same in spam text messages. And now iMessage spam. I sent you that crypto iMessage one I got right as we finished last week.

Yeah. I'm not getting any texter iMessage spams, which I was getting for a while. Those have gone away. I'm getting WhatsApp call spam. Oh, I don't have WhatsApp. Yeah. So that's coming in as well. And again, I think I said this last time years ago when we were discussing this, I don't understand.

Okay. I get the – your car insurance or warranty, whatever calls. And I get the student loan calls. Those are spam calls. You know, we're going to try to get your credit card and get some money. I don't get the – if you answer it, it just drops immediately. And I don't get the I'm getting an old school modem calling me calls, which is most of them.

I don't understand the point. Yeah, well, you know, there are bad programmers out there. So don't forget that. You know, could just be a fuck up. And it's interesting. My roommate gets two to three times the amount that I get just because she's got a public phone number because she's a real estate broker.

But this is the one that drove us all crazy. She was getting in the middle of the night, five to ten, hey, your Netflix account is about to expire. Click here. Right. Every night. Wow. And we finally just – I just had to turn off the – it's kind of crazy because we need a phone that we can listen to at night because we have multiple people in both of our families that have health conditions that you have to – you have to be contactable.

And these fuckers got that number. So you ended up getting a burner phone just for family emergencies. That's what it's come to. But the problem nowadays, as you would know, Brian, when you get a burner phone, you get all the shit from the old number too. So you can't win. Yep. You can't win. You're always in the list.

All right. So I had a bit of follow-up and I'll just – Canada's CBC is the latest to leave Twitter, an objection to government-funded label. Back when I put this in, it seems like such a quaint time, like 15 Twitters ago because so much bullshit has happened on Twitter since then.

I almost kind of want to impose a Kanye rule here. I'm so tired of talking about Twitter and the stupidity that's going on and it's so fast moving and it's all so asinine and juvenile and it's all driven by the head fucking twat himself.

I'm so done with it. Like, why are we even talking about it anymore? Who gives a shit? Yeah, it's getting kind of boring, ain't it? Yeah, it's just stupid. It's just stupid. And now, like, he's paid for three people's verification because verification finally went – of course, it had to go on 420.

First, it was going to be April Fool's Day. It has to be something because he's a fucking five-year-old. I'm so sick of him. I'm fine talking about Tesla and I'm fine talking about SpaceX. Well, we knew that was going to happen.

Yeah, we knew that was going to happen. But I'm fine talking about them as technology things. I don't think we can consider Twitter technology anymore. It's one man's shithead rodeo. Yeah, it's just a soap opera. The guiding tweeter as the tweet turns or general tweetstable.

But, yeah, I'm fine with that. You had a few loaded. Hey, man, you threw it out. You lay him up, I'll knock him out of the park. The best thing that I read yesterday was a really good thread by Christopher Moore, one of our favorite authors, talking about how – stop judging people about having their Twitter blue checkmark.

It's reach. Because it's reach and they need it to pay the – like some people need it to pay the fucking bills. So shut the fuck up and stop calling them Nazis, you know? Yeah, not all of them are Nazis, just most. Yeah, and I look at it this way. It's like, yeah, Elon, I'm not – I don't care about Elon.

He'll land on his feet. I care about those poor souls that he has trapped in the basement writing code that he won't give their visas back to so they can live a normal life. You know, somebody has to think of the children. Nobody's writing code over there. This is true. This is true. Ain't nobody.

Open AI is writing the code for that site at this point. No doubt because they're definitely not answering their support emails or anything like that. No support. Remember, they've shut down their PR and they've shut down support. Yeah, there ain't shit going on over there. But yeah, let's just – let's – well, let's do a temporary – Let's tentatively pause.

We'll put a pause on Twitter talk for the time. Okay. Sounds good to me. Sounds good to me. Because as you know, since – we'll take Twitter out, but everybody won't shut the fuck up about AI. I feel bad that we get through these things first and then by the time it hits the mainstream, we're just tired of shit about it.

I'm so tired of talking about it. Somebody wrote a game called Human or Not, which is basically a kind of a chat. Hot dog or not. Yeah. Well, it's a little more fun than that. It's a chat thing where you get to chat back and forth with somebody for a few minutes and figure out if you're talking to a human or an AI.

But the fun part is you have to kind of figure out is that person trying to be the AI or are they just trying to – Are we getting gaslammed? Yeah, I've gotten it wrong every single time. I've tried it five times and I can't win. I just realized I said gaslammed because I was reading.

Yeah, I got it. No, but I was reading this really funny Instagram thing or it was actually – it was a bunch of screenshots from Twitter ironically. That was like how do you keep relationships alive? You have to have the one thing that drives your spouse nuts that you do all the time.

And one of them was a wife complaining that his husband always says gaslamp instead of gaslight, which is his way of gaslamping her or gaslighting. Oh, very. That's meta evil. Yeah. Anyways, more AI to come.

In the news. In the news. Oh, BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed. Here's the 10 reasons why BuzzFeed News is shutting down. We've been doing this podcast for so long.

BuzzFeed didn't have a news division. Then we were shocked by the fact that BuzzFeed News was actually reliable. Well, here's the thing. They actually did start two years before we started our show, but they just – they weren't really – they hadn't peaked yet. Right. But when we started the show, we had to start talking about them because we're like, wait a minute.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This story comes from where? Wait, what? Is it actually good? Yeah. And they got to the point where they want a fucking Pulitzer. They were that good. Yeah. And, of course, we can't have nice things. So now the chat GPT is here and – We don't need to pay anybody for listicles.

Yeah. So that's – they're just going back to listicles and they're shutting down their news division, which is just sad. It is. It's sad that they can't monetize the one thing that they're actually really fucking good at that people want. Well, let us remember that news was never meant to be monetized. Mm-hmm. It was supposed to be those government-funded things that like Elon labeled everything except for the common good.

That was the point of news. Yeah. Yeah. They just did – they basically did news to keep their license. Yeah. So we have Ted Turner to thank for the rest of this bullshit. Yes. Got an AI story here. A German has gaslamped a prestigious competition.

There's some controversy in the photography world. It's an AI-generated image. It won a major prize at a prestigious competition according to Petapixel. A piece called The Electrician by Boris Elstegen took first prize in the creative category at the World Photography Organization's Sony World Photography Awards.

Despite not being taken by a camera. He did this on purpose, of course. He wanted to enter it to see what would happen. And he won and he's denying the prize and basically saying, I'm shining a light on this and this is some bullshit. It's annoying. It's just annoying.

Stop this shit, guys. People should be doing stuff like this. It is a conversation that needs to be had and he is sparking a conversation as they like to say. We've already had this conversation about the guy that got the award for the art piece he already did. It's not the first time. So, yeah.

OK, we got it, guys. Yeah, you can do it. Stop it. Let the real photographers in. Let the real artists in. Let's go back to being human. I think his point is you didn't know. Yeah. And we got to figure that out. Which is really fucked up. You look at it and you know that thing's not real. I mean it took two seconds to figure that out.

There's obviously people who don't sit around on generative image platforms all day like the rest of us. Yeah, like our Supreme Court that doesn't pay any attention to technology yet. Rules on it? Yeah. More AI news. But this is another Elon story though.

Was this a real story or was this Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk just blowing each other on air? I'm pretty sure that's exactly what it was. But, yes, he wants to work on truth GPT. So, yeah. Good luck. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because he's worried about AI taking over the world and destroying the planet.

I'm like, well, why the fuck did you fund open AI, which is now the crux of why everybody is losing their job? The best comment I saw on this was, isn't this the exact plot of life, the universe, and everything? Kind of. Or the universe guide. So, yeah. The really fucked up thing here is it's – he was talking about – he said, We recognize humanity could decide to hunt down all the chimpanzees and kill them.

We're actually glad that they exist and we aspire to protect their habitats, which is very funny because you kill quite a few of them with your Neuralink. Yeah, I was about to say there's only one person I actively know of that's doing that at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Kind of reminds me of all those senators who pass the anti-gay legislation and then get caught blowing somebody in the bathroom. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Yep. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap. Yeah. Yeah, I think Elon just needs to rename this one G – go fuck yourself, GPT. But here's what really got me here.

It's like – he says that humans are the interesting part of the universe and that's why AI will be unlikely to annihilate us because we're interesting. Now, I have someone here who would claim to differ. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.

You are a planet. See, that's what's going to happen. I mean it's almost every sci-fi book out there that tells us that that's not the way it's going to go. No, but we're watching in real time because there are – I've got three stories here right in a row.

The links will be in the show notes. Yes, everybody that worked inside of Microsoft and Google – no mention of OpenAI here though, of course – saying, hey, this isn't ready for prime time. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. I love this one.

People were complaining at Microsoft. The ethicists and other employees said a planned chatbot could flood Facebook groups with disinformation, degrade critical thinking and erode the factual foundation of modern society. Thus taking jobs away from people on social media. Yeah. I'm like, have you been to Facebook? They were doing that fine without the AI.

I'm sorry. Yeah, people were doing just fine doing that. Yeah. Oh, so – and Insider is laying off 10 percent of their staff. Because they're pivoting to AI as well. OK. Well, Business Insider has been – has not been the greatest recently.

So, OK. Yeah. No, we're definitely not reviewing – or renewing our subscription. We're not renewing that. Yeah. I've got zero stories from there and they're so poorly written these days. Oh, God. I mean it's gotten – like I think it was like six or seven months ago. They just pivoted to shit. That was their pivot.

Like we're just going to be really shittier than we used to be now. Yeah. The EU is back in action. They are spinning up a new – oh, a new set of internet cops over there. OK. This is going to be fun.

This is going to be very fun. Yes. So, we've got the Digital Services Act coming into effect and the – so, they're spinning up the European Center for Algorithm – I can speak pretty one day. European Center for Algorithmic Transparency or ECAT. OK.

So, now we've got the DSA and the ECATs and they are saying that the function of ECAT is going to identify smoking guns and drive enforcement of the DSA when it comes to AI. OK. They're going to be looking for bias and be able to prove that bias so then the other companies can de-bias it.

Put on the D-bias filter. Yes. I love this. Both regulations will come into force in the coming months, although the full sweep of provisions in the DSA won't start being enforced until early 2024. But a subset of the so-called Very Large Online Platforms or VLOPS and Very Large Online Search Engines or VLOPS face imminent oversight and – I love this – expand the usual EU acronym soup.

Acronym soup. They do love an acronym. Acronym soup tastes terrible just like an ECAT would taste probably. Yeah. So, they're trying over there. They're trying. We'll see how that goes. Somebody needs to. Good luck. We can't tell anymore what's what. But anyway, Niantic, the makers of Pokemon Go and other AR type of games that we all love to hate.

So, so long and thanks for all the Pikachus on this one. They are shutting down their NFT trading post and their Web3 products. Good. Yeah. Nobody wants them. Nobody cares. And I'm thrilled about this because my kid is so into Pokemon right now and so far I've kept it physical and real. It's cards and all that sort of stuff.

But this is coming for me and the fact that I don't have to yell at him for wanting an NFT is great. Yeah. Perfect. Good timing, Niantic. I think we're going to see a lot more of these Web3 projects shutter. Yeah, of course. Good morning on Twitter is going to go away.

Thank God. No. Well. Except for one man. Is it though? Is it though? Except for one man. Two. I got two. I got two. Okay. His boss. Him and his boss. So, that's good. Although I did see, I can't find the link to it though. I believe Nike is doing a new NFT drop this week or very soon.

Oh, great. Can't wait to get a virtual shoe. Exactly. To go on my no virtual legs in Facebook's no virtual world. Oh, yeah. That's gone too. Yeah. Well, they actually opened up to kids now because they couldn't get the adults to use it. They're virtual horizons. They're opening it up to children.

Perfect. Great. That's what we need. I'm sure there's a lot of oversight in there. Oh, yes. Plenty. Plenty. Sure. There was no oversight at Google for a while here because this gentleman up in Canada, Candonadia, was – he's basically mislabeled as a pedo on a website, right?

I blame Elon. Yeah. We don't know who this guy is because the court has sealed his identity for at least another 45 days. Good. But he's been suing for years trying to get his – this defamation taken off the internet.

Good luck there. He finally got a judgment from Google for $500,000. He was asking for $6 million. But the whole thing here is just kind of screwed up. And the judge even acknowledged this. It's like, look, you got a third party who posted the information, another third party that linked to the information, and yet another third party that indexed and bubbled up the information.

So blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the judge at least said Google has some responsibility here. So here's $500,000. Go with God. That's going to help. Yeah. The guy is 70 years old, I guess. So – You know, he needs to talk to Hulk Hogan, the only man in the history of the world that has made something completely disappear off the internet.

Well, he needs to talk to Peter Thiel. That's really who you got to talk to. Yeah. Yeah. Try and find that. He still can't find that Hulk Hogan porn tape, I swear. It's gone. It's gone. It is gone. It does not exist. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I'm sure half of Palantir is still dedicated to that. That's just playing in their offices nonstop.

Never go there. I saw this really great article over at Slate, kind of a long-form article called Purgatory with Perks. And we had talked about this. These are people that got basically hired at Meta. Great job. Big paycheck. And they were just waiting for something to do.

Mm-hmm. Nothing ever came along. And then they got fired. Yep. Oh, sorry. Here. You get paid a lot of money to sit around and do nothing. And then, yeah, at some point they're going to take it away. Surprise. Shocker. Well, I mean, I don't feel for the people.

I just think it points a hell of a finger at Meta and how poorly it's being run. So the article goes through about three to four people that worked there and got hired and basically just sat there and they were supposed to start stuff and were told, you'll start any month now.

And then just nothing ever happened. And yeah. So Meta's going great. Yeah. But I bet if you lift the, you know, turn the lights on and all the cockroaches will start running away to every other company out there that has extra money that is doing the exact same thing, I bet. I'm sure Apple and Google have rooms of people or people sitting up on the rooftop in their lounge chairs with nothing to do because they just want to lock down the talent.

Yep. Agreed. And speaking of Facebook, our longstanding, or at least my longstanding belief is if there is a class action lawsuit, it is your moral and ethical duty to get your 25 cents. Because if you don't, they take the money back. And this is the only way to get it.

So you can now apply for your share of a $725 million Facebook data privacy settlement. Link in the show notes. And this goes all the way back to Cambridge Analytica at the beginning of time. Ooh. So basically everybody is- Everybody on Facebook. Oh, shit.

I'm in. I'll go get my 25 cent. Yep. Go get it. And yeah. And some of the, you know, nowadays they're trying to change some of these judgments. I think we did one last week where there was a stipulation in there that none of the money, if not claimed, goes back to the, actually goes back to the company.

Generally, it goes to the lawyers. So I know you live with the enemy, so we'll disparage too much. But you don't want to give the lawyers any more money. So go get your 25 cents, like Brian says. Except for my lawyer. Give her more money. Your lawyer works for Universal. We'll talk about her in about 10 seconds.

Oh, we will be talking about that. I saw this over on 60 Minutes. Is AI moving humanity forward as artificial intelligence advances, Google leaders say? Uh-huh. Yeah, this is prop AI-ganda, as I would like to call this now.

There's – what we're learning from all of these people now is how the sausage is made, sort of. And it's all – it's not AI. It is probability and large data sets and auto-complete. Pattern matching, auto-complete. Yep.

Yep. That's it. Yep. I still say go read that Cal Newport article that I put in last week's show. It is the best explainer of how all this shit works. Having said all that, though, if I tell it to write me a press release for X, it does a great job. Oh, it does a great job for that. Absolutely. Absolutely.

But, you know, because I just – this has been bothering me. We're in this race to recreate human intelligence inside of a computer. But you know what's really easy to make? A human with human intelligence. Also, I think we should be spending a lot of our effort on making humans more intelligent.

That's been a real problem. Yep. That has been a real problem. Yeah, let's put those hundreds of millions of dollars maybe straight into education. Maybe. Maybe that will work. Yeah. Not giving the teachers guns. Maybe making the teachers better at teaching. Yeah. That could be that too. Just give them bulletproof vests and a better degree.

How's that? We'll upgrade there. Well, South Korea is having a problem with not enough people because all the kids like to stay inside and play their video games and not bang apparently. Yes, because it hits the same pleasure centers and more often. Yep. So who said living in your parents' basement and playing video games doesn't pay?

Well, Korea is now giving out at least $500 a month to basically recluse kids. The so-called, was it, hikikomori is what they're calling it. It's a Japanese term for kids who basically like to stay home and play video games. Wow.

It's universal loser income. It is universal. Oh, I like that. Show title. Show title. So they just want kids to get out and do more things. So they're giving them money. Okay. So they use that money to buy better video games.

Yeah. Seriously. Here's the deal. Turn off the internet access for 12 hours a day. Yep. There you go. That'll get them out of the house. That is 100% coming in my household when I get to that point. There's very much going to be a no internet time period.

I wish I could have that at my house. You can't. But no, I can't because I'm the one that controls the internet and I like the internet. You need a universal loser income. I do too. Yes. Oh, God.

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Media candy. Brian? Yes. Let me warm up the Warp Core. Here we go. Okay.

And I have to remind people who did not tune in last week. While you hear the Warp Core humming, we are going to be talking spoilers about Picard. So, fast forward if you don't want to hear everything we have to say about it. Because we're going to say some shit right now. Holy shit buckets.

It was very good. I poured myself a glass of wine. I had some cheese and crackers. I settled in for the fan servicing Nostalgia Fest. Of course, you know. It was a gift that we got it.

Oh, it was. Sure, they did the same ending. Sure, why not? Sure, it felt like Star Wars at times. Why not? It was beautiful. I loved it. It was fantastic. I'm thrilled we got it. I want more. There's no doubt about it.

There's just something about that crew. I just want to see them together. It's amazing. I hope they do Legacy. I loved bringing Q back at the end. The perfect circle. Why not? You know, one thing stuck in my mind, Jason. And maybe I should let you do your impressions first.

And then I have a question. Okay. First off, I missed this Q-bit. Oh, you did not see the post-credits scene. I don't watch post-credits. I'm old. I see credits roll. I'm done. Oh, Jason. I got to go back now. I missed something.

Should we pause the show? No, I'm not going to pause the show. So, yes, I played hooky for an hour. I went to my studio. I turned the lights off. I turned my beautiful stereo speaker monitors here up loud and pissed off half the building.

Poured myself a cup of tea and just kicked back and enjoyed it. There were a couple tissues that were needed in there. I won't front on that. It was just, for me, it was just, it tugged every single string that you could tug. It was perfect. And my favorite line of the whole episode, of course, are, swords are fun.

That was a great line. It was a good one. Yeah. They set it up perfectly with, you know, the farewells, the tearful farewells when they beamed down to the Borg cube. Perfect. You know, and as soon as they set that up, I'm like, everybody's coming home. Yeah, of course. You know.

There's no way they were going to kill off a major character. No, God, no. Franchises and all that good stuff. You know, there's way too much money involved. Chekov. Oh, that was a great one. That was a great one. Bringing Tuvok back. That was nice for a proper cameo.

And, okay, so hopefully, since I didn't see this thing at the end with Q, please tell me Wesley didn't show up. No, Wesley. Oh, thank God. This was a Wesley free zone. And it was beautiful. It was beautiful. They got it out of their system at the end of season two.

I'm fine with that. Yeah. I mean. Okay, bring it. What else you got? Okay, so my question. And again, one can argue that we did not need season one and two at all. We got them and they were okay. But we didn't need them. But the Borg.

Yeah. Did we not send back West Wing Chick to take over the entire Borg collective? Why are there still Borg? Yeah. Why is there the Borg Queen when we sent off super powerful West Wing Borg? I don't know. Okay. I don't know. All right.

They just dropped that. Yeah. That's fine. It just stuck in the back of my mind the whole time. I'm like, oh, Borg. Okay. But we kind of solved the Borg problem already. We thought so. We thought so. All right. Okay. I do have to point out, though, that the woman who did play the Borg Queen did die recently.

And I think for a final performance, it was fantastic. She killed it. I thought she was fantastic. That wasn't her. That was Alice Krieg. Alice Krieg came back to play her because she passed away before they shot that. I didn't know that. Oh, well, this is me doing research. I thought it was her.

Okay. And here's one other thing that got me. Okay. So very end scene there. The Enterprise just pulls up in the roof's open. Yes. In a spaceship. Yep. The roof's open. Yep. They're standing there in a Borg cube.

But the roof's open. And there's a spaceship. Breathing just fine. But the Borg was solved already, too, Jason. Let's not nitpick too much. It was wonderful. Okay. Just saying. I'm just saying. It was a fucking awesome scene. But the roof's open. Yeah. Well, you know. Okay. Yeah. And the counselor can actually locate people by their feelings.

I mean, if we're going to start doing this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fuck that. Fuck that. Okay. Fuck it. It was great. It was just too much fun. It was wonderful. All right. Okay. It was truly wonderful. Okay. Are we done with the spoilers? Can I turn the engines off? Yes, we can turn off the warp core. All right. Back to impulse power. All right. Speaking of Star Trek, Paramount Plus has greenlit a Star Trek film starring Michelle Yao for Section 31.

It was initially announced that it was going to be a series, at which point I thought there's no way they're signing her on for five to seven years. That's never going to happen. So we're getting a movie. And I'm okay with that. When that Oscar, that price goes up a lot. Exactly. So I'm happy about that. We're getting a movie.

We'll see when we get it. Strange New Worlds comes back June 15th, so we don't have to go long without Star Trek. The good Star Trek. You know, they time it just right to keep you hooked on that monthly. Oh, then I'm just giving up on the fact that I'm turning off Paramount Plus ever.

I'm just keeping it. Yeah. It's now the Star Trek network. Yeah, it's your Star Trek fee every week. You know, you're in the Starfleet union. Just forget about it. Exactly. Speaking of Paramount Plus and vaguely Star Wars, Star Trek-y kind of related stuff, Galaxy Quest series is reportedly coming as well.

So it's the all sci-fi network now. No Alan Rickman, obviously, who was the best part of the show. Yeah. And we don't know if anybody's coming back or if it's going to be a reboot. We just heard they're going to do it. I grabbed the R's hammer.

Why are you doing this? Yeah. And speaking of reboots, we can leave no IP unrebooted at this point, apparently, because in the news this week alone, Twilight getting a reboot. Harry Potter getting a reboot with HBO. Yeah, they're going to do one season per book, I guess, on HBO.

Twilight is coming back, as I stated. X-Files is apparently getting a reboot with Ryan Coogler. Chris Carter confirmed this. I mean, again, scripts will be written. We'll see what actually happens. Yeah.

Man, the X-Files. No, just stop. Just let it die. You ruin it with the movies. I don't know if you've watched it. That does not have legs. I'm sure it doesn't. Oh, it's bad. Okay. Well, I never watched Twilight, so that'll be an easy one. Harry Potter, we're done.

Don't need to see that ever again. I'm in Harry Potter land with my kid now, so. Oh, it's perfect for you, yeah. Oh, yeah, it's perfect, so. Yep. Okay, well, we'll see what happens. Barry is finally back. I saw the first two episodes.

They dropped the first two back-to-back. Oh, my God, it's such a great show. It's such a great show. And I have to say, the one thing about this, these first two episodes, it is a very straightforward, simple show, but they have enough budget where the cinematography and set design in the show is so unbelievable and subtle and off the hook.

It's just like, how the fuck did they come up with it? They're just spending money to spend money on some of these shots. And it works. It is beautiful. But if you're not looking for it, you just would, you know, it could be just a wipe, but you realize, like, no, they built this giant set out here in the desert to just do this one little scene.

It's like, oh, it's so cool. I mean, I really enjoy it. Just for that alone, but the story is fucking awesome. It is hilarious. If you haven't watched Barry, definitely watch Barry. Yeah. I think you'll love it. You'll absolutely love it. I think so, too. I mean, just from what I've seen of it. So I will get on that. Yeah. I did watch American Manhunt, the Boston Marathon bombing.

Not very techie, but it is the anniversary of the bombing. Yep. A long time ago now. It's crazy. It doesn't feel like it was 10 years ago. But there was a lot in there I didn't know. I mean, I just remember the guy in the boat. That was about all I remembered. But it was a really, really good short documentary.

Highly recommended. Very cool. And Brian, this is where we go into your territory. I saw this one over on Wired. AI-generated music is about to flood streaming platforms. Already has. This is what caught me. The music business is pushing back against AI. Universal Music Group, home to superstars like Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj and Bob Dylan, has urged Spotify and Apple to block AI tools from scraping lyrics and melodies from its artists' copyrighted songs.

Can't you just go get the songs without having to quote-unquote scrape anything? You can. The issue that Universal Music Group is having is they do not want AI trained on their IP. Okay.

But can't somebody just say go buy the songs and point their AI at a local library of all the songs to train it on it? You can, but that would not be legal. Okay. Well, I didn't say it was legal. I'm just saying this is kind of silly.

This is like asking Google to stop scraping the web. It's – I don't know. I get it. It's baby steps. It's baby steps. It's baby steps. You have to say something and you have to find a reason to say something because you have to protect your artist's copyrights. So they can make all the money.

That's right. Yeah. Well, they did all the work. They wrote the songs. They recorded the songs. I was talking about the labels, not the artists. The artists don't get shit. Oh, yeah. No. The labels want all the money and I want the label to get the money so my wife gets paid. Yeah.

And I want you to get paid so we can keep doing this show. So there we go. Yeah, exactly. She is indirectly funding the show. Indirectly, yes. Anyways, yeah. So it's – this is a Pandora's box. It's opened. In my opinion, I think labels should be spinning up AI divisions already and they should be tactfully using their catalogs to do these sorts of things.

But, you know, I've been laughed out of many a music industry meeting only to be proven right five years later. So here we are again. Yeah. Anyways, let's talk about some of the stuff that's out there already. Fake Drake and The Weeknd collaboration song with AI-generated vocals went out last weekend, went viral, was posted on YouTube and other streaming platforms.

This is another one that Universal – this kind of is the one that basically Universal went, hang on a second, guys, because it was just everywhere. It was titled Heart on My Sleeve and the track was created by an anonymous TikToker, Ghostwriter977, who put it up on major streaming platforms under the moniker Ghostwriter.

So, yeah, and by all accounts, people like it. I saw some very funny arguments saying that, well, basically Drake sounds like AI already, so it's not that much of a stretch here, which is pretty funny.

The statement that they issued, the training of generative AI using our artist music, which represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law, as well as the availability of infringing content created with generative AI on DSPs, begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on.

The side of artists, fans, and human creative expression, or on the side of deepfakes, fraud, and denying artists their due compensation? Good point, but again, Pandora's box. Somebody a little less AI-sounding, Liam Gallagher from Oasis.

There was an Oasis mock-up that came out, a deepfake or whatever we're going to call it, generative AI music. We need a snappy term for this. Yes, we do. Look no further than Alsis, an AI-generated Oasis. Okay. A-I-sis. Sorry, not Alsis. Not You Can Call Me Al, but A-I-sis.

Fantastic song, by the way. Yes. This is a musical artificial intelligence crossover project by the UK band Breezer, who basically said, we are sick of waiting for another Oasis album. Okay.

So, they put it out there, and Liam Gallagher is a fan. It's better than all the other snizzle out there. He wrote in a tweet about the project. He added, I sound mega. I'll just give him a cup. Let him run. Yeah, yes. Liam Gallagher has sounded like shit for about two decades now, and this sounds much better than he does at this point.

So, there you go. See, there is a place for it in modern society. There is. It's just, you know, you got to follow the money, as always, Jason. Who's getting the money from this? Who's getting the rights from it? And that's all that, at the end of the day, that's all the labels give a shit about.

They can posture all they want about how this is a grave infringement and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Bullshit. As long as the money goes to the right people, they won't care. And that's what it's going to come down to. So, it's going to be like sampling. Well, it was back in the 80s and all that sort of thing. No, you can't do it to, okay, you got to pay us for it.

So, you pay to do an AI song based on Taylor Swift, fine. They'll be fine. Yeah, where's the API for me to grab T-Swift, you know, grab her voice and throw it in my song and then just give you, you know, 20% off the top?

Yeah, exactly. So, that's how it's all going to shake out, and we all know it. But we got to pause here until then. And then there's a pretty good opinion piece over on The Guardian. We soon won't tell the difference between AI and human music, so can pop survive? Better it says no.

I do like the end paragraph here. But because of the way it is trained, AI will always be a tribute act. Exactly. It may be a very good tribute act, the type that weren't a human, would get year-round bookings on cruise ships and in Las Vegas casinos, but it cannot by its nature make something wholly original, much less yearn or be broken up with or catch an eye across a dance floor, all the stuff that music is written about and which makes it resonate.

AI makes music in a vacuum, totally aware of musical history without having lived through it. We won't be able to spot the difference between humans and AI, yet I hope we can feel it. To which I say, yet. Yet. Because, yeah, you know, you have everything else trained on human emotions.

I mean, shit, look at Chad GPT's output. Some of that shit is really, really good as far as that because it's trained on us. So Spotify, my favorite company in the world for fucking up the podcast industry.

Thank you very much. And here's, they've made a statement. Given our position as the leading global podcast platform, oh, fuck yourself, we are expanding our windowing strategies to increase the audiences and ad sales potential of our shows. Read into that the fact that they couldn't sell ads on it because they're in a fucking walled garden.

Yep. And they said, in this case, we're pursuing broad distributions for some of our original podcasts like Science Versus, or Science Versus This. This will be done, or I don't know, Science Versus. This will be done on a case-by-case basis and over time. So fuck you, Spotify. And what they're saying here is our basically walled garden strategy has failed.

The open system is where people make money on podcasts. So we're going to go do that now. I hate you, Spotify. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I'm just like the mom and pop shop when Walmart rolled into town and fucked everything up and then Amazon rolled in and fucked up Walmart. I'm sorry.

I'm an old man yelling at the void right now. Pisses me off. Okay. Apps and doodads. Brian, you talked about Angry Birds the other day and how you can't find a version that just you can pay for and not have the in-app purchases.

Well, unfortunately, I think you're going to be stuck with that for the rest of time because Sega is acquiring Rovio for $775 million. And to make that money back, they ain't giving you shit. Ads and in-gaming purchases. Yeah. Actually, parenting note, my kid no longer plays Angry Birds because we took it away from him.

Solution! Angry Birds turned him into Angry Kid. Really? 100%. I was like, fuck this shit. It started already. Screen time is not good for kids. Like, the educational games that he plays, fine.

And we keep it to, you know, 30 minutes to 40 minutes a day. That's it. Tops. But the game made him angry. Really? He noticeably changed. Noticeably changed after playing it. Wow. Yep. So gone. It's gone. That's pretty funny.

That's pretty funny. I'm sure you're not laughing, but hey. No, it was a fucking miserable month. But he's over it now. He went through the shakes and his withdrawals, and now he's okay. Okay. He's a much nicer kid. Anyways, Instagram is now letting you add five links to your profile so you can stop using Linktree.

Oh, God. Linktree. Man, the innovation that comes out of these companies these days, huh? Am I right? Linktree. The day that that thing came out, we were doing the show when that came out, and I was like, wait a minute. You got how much – I mean, it started off they got $1 million in funding, I believe, at the beginning.

I was just like, you've got to be fucking shitting me. That was a weekend project. Yeah. It was a weekend project. Oh, wait a minute. It was a weekend project I did a decade ago. A decade ago. It was called Blog Rolling. Too soon. I know. Well, now it's been two decades ago.

I think I won the South by Southwest Award for best blogging tool two years in a row, back-to-back, for blog rolling. And what was blog rolling? A list of fucking links, just like Linktree. Know how much money I made on blog rolling? I sold it to two cows for $40,000.

That was it. I bought you a beer. Yeah. A couple people bought me a few beers. But the only thing that I got out of that was a really nice career in blogging for, you know, another decade. Yep. But these people, this thing is worth, like, if you look at the Linktree valuation, it's ridiculous.

It's like over $100 million or something. Yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous. But it's entirely built on the fact that they wouldn't add this to their stupid Instagram. Yep. And now they did. See, the thing is, when you're, and I had this talk with Ben and Mina Trott. They did movable type back in the day.

And this was right when movable type was a thing. Back when Anil Dash was still on board and Joey Ito was one of the big guys there. And they were going to buy blog rolling from me. And I was going to go work for movable type. Yeah. And. Should have done it. Here's the thing. Ben Trott had a brain.

And he's like, why am I going to buy this? This is a feature. I can write this in a weekend. And I'm like, he gets it. Yep. And the only reason that they were going to bring me on is talent. But Ben and I, we fought tooth and nail because movable type was written in Perl.

And I was a PHP guy. And I'm like, anything written in Perl is not going to survive. You have to write this shit in PHP. It is the language of the future. Guess what? Guess who won the fucking war on that one? Technically, Python did. WordPress. But WordPress won on that one.

But Python, everything is Python now. I thought about it, but I'm like, no. I'm too damn old to learn another language. I'll just have chat GPT write it for me. Exactly. But when your company is just a feature, do not get surprised when they say, oh, well, we can implement that.

It's Apple's fucking M.O. Come on. At the library. I put this in last week, but we kind of ran out of time. It's called Make Something Wonderful. Steve Jobs and his own words.

It's an e-book that you can get online or download. It's pretty cool. It's a really nicely well done – the website I really like. It's something that you and I would have been paid a very large amount of money to do back in the early days of the web, which makes me sad.

Yeah, me too. It's nice. It's nice. Yeah. And apparently they made a bunch of physical books that people immediately put on eBay and the foundation had them removed, had the listings removed, which I thought was kind of shitty. But it's like you send them the book. If they want to sell it, sell it. Yeah.

It's their book now. Yep. I've been reading Chokepoint Capitalism. By reading, I mean listening to because I bought this book a while ago. It's Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow. I reviewed this originally when I listened to it for like 10 minutes and it was like, oh, this is the same stuff they've been spewing.

And I was just in a mood. I was in a bad mood. So I went back and I started to listen to it and it is a really, really well done – basically just overview of everything we've always talked about. How basically the gatekeepers are back in a lot of areas, music, writing, basically books and audio books and all this other stuff.

All entertainment. Yeah. All entertainment and how big tech basically just has it by the balls. It's good. It's really good. It's depressing in some cases. But in the other cases, it's like, well, if you want to change it, just get off your ass and change it. If you want to make the world a better place.

For some reason when you're saying that, I'm like, you've got your chocolate in my peanut butter. You've got my peanut butter in your chocolate. I do not know why that popped into my head. That is weird. Maybe I'm just hungry. So basically it's a call to arms to take back your media. And if you want to do that, I do recommend reading Snow Leopard, How Legendary Writers Create a Category of One.

If you get it on Audible, I read it to you. So there's always that. The tone. Yes, that's right. It is a fantastic book on the business of writing and has some of the best data that's ever been produced on independent authors and how books are made and sold.

They spend a lot of time and a lot of money on it. And it's a great book if you are a writer who wants to get into the publishing business. Here's the TLDR. Don't go to a publishing house. Do it yourself. But they have tools and tricks on how to do it. It's a very good book. Not just because I read it.

Speaking of that, the guy that I really liked that wrote those history books, the Kersey professor. I can't remember his name offhand right now, but I'll put a link to his books in the show notes. He self-published and then sold a ton of both volumes.

And now he has a major deal. They came to him later and gave him a ton of money to release the books. That's how you do it. Yep. And that's why I was talking about last week with Cal Newport where I hate the advice that he's giving new writers, which is like grind, grind, grind, get an agent, get a literary agent, pitch to a major house.

Get a shitty advance that they're going to make all the money on. I mean if you – in Snow Leopard, they break this shit down and it's like you get nothing. You get absolutely nothing from these people. And talking to other authors, it's like they expect you to pay for your own editor.

You have to pay for your own promotion. They basically just do print-on-demand nowadays. So what your guy did is exactly what you got to do nowadays. And you gave me time to Google it. James Fell, On This Day in History, Shit Went Down, Volumes 1 and 2. All right. Put that link in the show notes.

Yeah. And since it's been a while since we did At the Library, I did finish Dead Famous and the Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen by Greg Jenner. I do love his voice. He has a couple other books. I did not care for this book but probably just the subject matter. I still like the way he writes.

I think he's a great writer. I will be trying other books of his. Okay. I've dug into Daniel Suarez's new book, Critical Mass, which is the second book in the Delta V series. I like Delta V. I thought it was a good book.

Critical Mass is slow. Slow. It's like get to the point. I'm halfway through it and I hope it picks up soon. I mean it's good. It's better than his other stuff to be honest.

You know, ever since – was it Freedom downtime – or was it Freedom TM and something downtime? What the fuck was his first book? I can't remember right now. Daniel Suarez's first two books were fantastic and then he had a very long drought of mediocre books I thought until Delta V.

And Delta V was a nice return to a different subject matter because I like his style of writing. I just didn't like what he was saying in the other books. But, yeah, Critical Mass so far is decent, but it's just really got to – it's got to pick up the pace some, hopefully. The Dark Side.

Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave with podcast super host 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 still nosy. And the host of Control Loop because they're going to come take over the world. Hi, Dave. Hello. I like the idea of podcast super host. And maybe I need my own like musical motif.

Missed opportunity for podcast Sith. Podcast Sith, right. Good. True. True. There's always next week, Brian. There's always next week. That's true. I don't know. I mean, so you're assuming that I'm on the – I mean, it is The Dark Side with Dave.

It's The Dark Side, Dave. I thought Jedi first. Yeah. Okay. I don't really consider myself a Dark Side kind of person, but – Well, we're doing Dark Side commentary. That means – that could mean that you're on the – you're still a good guy. It's okay. You're just commenting on the Dark Side. It's a yellow saber for those keeping track, you know.

There you go. Yeah. Very nice. Yeah. Very nice. All right. We got a little follow-up from last week. This is from Brian with a Y. Tell Bittner to get a Fire Stick. Get the downloader app and get Cody. Once Cody is installed, he needs to Google search Cody Fire Stick Builds. The two apps I use to watch MLB is The Crew and The Loop.

It's not the best solution, but it works for me. Again, though, last week when we were discussing this, Dave said easy. Yes. Setting up a Cody box is not easy. So, yeah. So, I got – first of all, thank you, Brian, for taking the time to write in.

Several people wrote in to me with air quotes solutions. Friend of the show, Seth, the football collector, wrote in. He said, this is what I do. I have MLB TV. I also use a VPN called CyberGhost and an Android TV device, Chromecast with Google TV.

The Android equipment is the only thing I found that will let you disguise your location with a VPN. I picked CyberGhost because they were fast and recommended for sports streaming. So, this is all great, but to Brian's point, it's not just me. Like, if I were a single guy living by myself in a barely decorated apartment, this would be perfect for me.

But I have a family who also wants to watch baseball and this is far too much hoop jumping to make it tenable within – at least the dynamics of my family. This would not be an easily workable solution.

I'm still chasing down an Apple TV solution and I will let you know if I get successful. I just haven't bothered because my desire to watch a Blue Jays game is almost non-existent. So, when I get that itch, I will attempt a solution I found online and let you know.

Okay. Terrific. Interesting thing that came out of Discord this week that I thought was funny. They don't use your IP address when you're doing things through Apple apps. They use the country that you're actually registered to. So, it doesn't matter if you use – It's not true. I'm registered through the US. Okay.

Okay. Good. Okay. I read that and I'm like, oh, that makes more sense. But, okay. That's good. That's good. But somehow they still know – Yeah. Somehow they still know for – There's a couple of deep dive settings apparently in Apple TV that I need to get into. So, I just haven't done it yet.

Again, not easy. Well, set it and forget it theoretically. Okay. Right. Yeah. Right. Anyways. So, we had a big event, the Mandalorian finale. Unfortunately for me, it was completely blown out of the water by the Picard finale.

So, this is a bit of a letdown discussion for me. It was fine. Yeah. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. I actually enjoyed it the most of the season. I thought it was a great finale. I actually think it should be the show finale personally.

Yes. Even with that little 1970s end with the little circle. Joop. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with everything that you both said. Now, I have not watched the Picard finale because I'm still a season behind, but it's on my list. Yeah. And I thought the Mandalorian finale was great fun.

I mean, it literally just picked up where the previous episode stopped. So, basically a two-parter. Yep. Lots of action. Lots of fun. My thoughts were that, yes, it could have been a series finale. They buttoned it up and I would be content if it ended here.

But it seems to me like what they're doing is putting them back on track to the Western. Western, yeah, just the Western bad guy of the week pattern that they had early on in the series. And that's fine. And that's fun. But then also, very easily, I could imagine a spinoff of the other Mandalorians dealing with starting up their home planet or rebooting their home planet.

Yeah. Yeah, agreed. I think the disappointing thing for me about it, I did enjoy it in general. The Darksaber, total MacGuffin. Yeah. Nothing. Just destroyed at the end and who cares. That was – it was made such a big deal throughout the show and then it's just like, oh, it's gone now.

Who cares? Yeah, it could be back. I mean, nothing's ever gone – Darth Maul taught us that nothing's ever gone forever in the Star Wars universe, right? So overall, it was good. I am looking forward to some of the new shows, particularly Osaka.

That's the big one for me that I'm looking forward to that I guess is going to really push forward the universe now. What I do hope that they do is keep the shows separate as much as possible. I don't need these crossover Boba Fett type things. Nobody needs Boba Fett.

Yeah, we don't need Boba Fett back. Boba Fett was basically a Mandalorian small season. Yeah. Can you imagine teenage versions of us saying we don't need Boba Fett? Oh, I know. That was the biggest disappointment about the book of Boba Fett. I was like, I have waited my entire life for a show about Boba Fett and this is what you give me?

I think it was all summed up when he got out of the Sarlacc pit in about 30 seconds. Yeah, pretty much. Well, the way I reconcile that in my own mind is that I just think of the Mandalorian as actually being the Boba Fett series. Right. Like he is – Yeah, it's a bunch of Boba Fetts.

He's Boba Fett. So whatever. Yeah. I would like to point out that, you know, that guy had a lot of gas in his tank to make it all the way up to the ship with his little jet pack. Yes. I didn't know those were spacesuit helmets that they could take off and on that easy.

They seem pretty easy on and off to be completely vacuum sealed. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. That's true too. Right. I mean sometimes they do put in the sound effect of when they put it on but not always. I was just thinking Darth Vader's helmet had that little suction sound when he would take it on and off and it doesn't seem like the Mandalorians have that.

I agree because it's – my recollection is that there's been a couple of times when the amount of fuel in their jet packs made a difference. Yes. Like it didn't get very far. People ran out. Yeah. There was one scene though that I did like where you actually got to see through the helmet when they were dragging him to the interrogation chamber.

You actually got to see a POV out of the helmet which – that was the first time I think they've ever done that. Yeah. I thought that was interesting. I don't know why I thought it was interesting. I just did. I enjoyed the callback to the prequels with the series of force fields that he had to go through.

Yeah. That was a nice callback. Yeah. And kind of neat to see him in action. It is a weird – as a security expert, Dave, it is weird to station – To station two troopers in between each force field just – I'm not sure of the soundness of that plan but – oh, sure.

Yeah. With varying degrees of weaponry as you go. With better weapons as you move along, yes. Yes. Almost like a video game. Well, and also with Moff Gideon's clones that somehow the control panel has a setting where you can have all of the blasts – Right.

Just blow out very dramatically. But the plot requires it. So that's fine. I can go along with that. I'm okay with that. This is the way. Yes. Yeah. So we'll get more, of course. The new stormtroopers are kind of badass. Yes.

Yes. They are all Mandalorians basically. So – Right. Good thing that they destroyed them all because that would be bad out there. I got to say the whole flying scene was fun. I just enjoyed – I thought I was going to go, oh, God, this is just CGI wankery. But I actually found myself getting really into it.

See, I kind of fell on the other end of the spectrum on that as I did also with Picard and all the Starfleet ships. I felt it was too much. Like it's just overload and I can't really tell what's going on anymore. I kind of like the lesser focus.

Like, sure, do a big pullback shot of all the craziness. But focus in. Like let me see what's going on. Yeah. I think that was a big problem for me with the prequels where they had some space battles that were just overwhelmingly full of ships and I couldn't – Full of ship.

That's what they were. It was full of ship. Yeah. It was full of ship. And I do feel that sometimes with these as well. But I'm with Jason here. I got into it. I enjoyed it. One of the things that struck me while I was watching it was how there is no penalty for a show being on television versus being in the theater anymore.

No, definitely not. You're no longer – do you say, oh, God, that's a janky green screen for TV and it looks like it was 640 by 480 resolution. No, it's as good as anything. And that I think helps keep you from being taken out of the story.

Yeah. I agree. And just quickly, a master class of I think how you deal with these big battles versus showing the actual action going back many years now, Lord of the Rings. They did a masterful job of that. Right.

True. Yeah. Yeah, that was – oh, man. I want to go back and watch those again now that I got the monster Amazon TV. I got to dig those things out. I did try and watch a little bit of the new series, the Lord of the Rings series on the Fire TV.

Yeah. Brian, when you come back to L.A., swing by. It's beautiful, right? And I can't even imagine what it's like on your TV. It's got to be exciting. It's incredible. I have no clue what's going on and I could care less about the plot, but it is gorgeous. Yeah. It's just like being back when we saw the three movies at Cinerama Dome from the front row.

It's kind of the same thing except we have bathrooms that we can – and we can pause. Yeah. Yeah, my son Jack has expressed interest recently in watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He hasn't seen them yet. So I'm going to take that as my opportunity to revisit them.

The problem is it's just a commitment. Oh, God. It's like you've got to find – Because you have to watch the extended editions. Yep. So you're looking at like 12 hours. Well, but here's the thing. Do you have to watch the extended editions for your first viewing? Absolutely. For your first viewing?

Yes. Why? Because they're better. They're better. They're just flat out better, you know? Okay. All right. That's like saying should they watch the Lucas versions of – the Lucas reboot versions of Star Wars versus the original version? Yeah. You watch Han shoot first. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. I've never seen the extended versions, so – Oh, they're delightful, David. Yeah. They're well worth it. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, that's what we'll do then. Okay. It is done. Make it so. This is the way. This is the way, yeah. Engage.

Universe creep. Here we come. Right. We need one of those T-shirts that has Gandalf saying all those things. Love those. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A couple other things I wanted to chat about today. I am heading off to the RSA conference here in a couple of days.

I know. I know. Well, it's for work. So it is a busy week of just deep, deep immersion with all of my – well, I don't know, 30,000 or 40,000 of my closest cybersecurity friends. It is a huge trade show.

And one thing I'm curious to see, and I was wondering what you guys thought about this, what we're going to see on the show floor with booths, with companies who embrace chat GPT versus those who shun or warn against it or use the specter of it to frighten people into buying their product.

I suspect it being a trade show and wanting to sell things, predominantly the latter. Yeah. You think? I think you're going to see a lot of that. Mm-hmm. What? No more blockchain? No security on the blockchain this year? That was so last year. Well, so here's the thing.

Like five years ago at RSA, artificial intelligence was the buzzword. Everybody, everybody's booth was all about how we have artificial intelligence in our product and it's going to save the world. And granted, that was a – it did not.

The world is still in great peril. But that was a different kind of AI than what chat GPT is and certainly – I mean that was all under the hood AI. It wasn't public facing the way chat GPT is. So I'm just kind of wondering – there has to be somebody there whose leading value proposition is going to be chat GPT enabled.

And I'm just wondering like who is that going to be? What product are they going to be selling? Who thinks that they can slot that in and have that be a value-added thing? Right. And will the booths on either side of them be saying if you do this, you are absolutely crazy?

So I don't know. I'll report back. Yeah, please do. I'm excited to hear your report on how that goes because, yeah, it's – because we still know AI doesn't mean anything. So I love that part. It's like – would you like a cup of AI?

No, I would like a cup of blockchain instead. OK, sir. Right. Well, and every year at this conference – and I suspect this is the same – regardless of what industry vertical you're in, there is an overall theme of the show. And the people who are organizing the conference, the RSA conference people, they're going with the human element this year, which is fine.

Nothing wrong with that. But that doesn't drive the sales – well, it doesn't drive – yeah. I mean they probably selected that two years ago because these things take a long time to put together. But I'm just really curious to see what will the overall thing be.

What will be the theme – the theme that the vendors choose this year versus what the general public does. So we'll see. Cannot wait to hear. Cannot wait. Yeah. So a question for the two of you. Do you all have any recollection of the Rockafire explosion?

Does that mean anything to you? Were they like a funk band from the 70s? Good answer. Brian? Stand-up bass or fretless? So this is a no from both – No, that's a no. This is a no.

I don't know what this is. Okay. You were both familiar with Chuck E. Cheese. Yes. Are you familiar with Showtime Pizza? Yes. Yes. So the Rockafire explosion was the house band, the house robot band at Showbiz Pizza.

Wow. Okay. That's a deep dive. Okay. Yeah. So what's a band? I was nailing it. I nailed it with a band though. It's a band. I got props for that. Come on. It's a band led by a robotic silverback gorilla, but it is indeed a band. Okay. And I have specific memories of when I was in middle school.

I don't know. My mom got a flyer in the mail or something and she took me to this place, Showbiz Pizza, that was in the next town over and they had this robotic band. And at this point in my life, I had never been to Disney World.

My God, I'm having memories flood back. I just saw in the video. Yeah. I remember this now. I haven't thought about this in 40 years. Right. Wow. Okay. So here's the thing.

During this period of time, those of us who grew up here, you had Chuck E. Cheese, you had Showbiz Pizza and they merged because neither one of them were really doing well. They were making a lot of people are making a lot of money because it turns out robot bands cost a lot of money to build and maintain.

And you got to sell a lot of pizzas to maintain your robot band. So they combined and they were all converted to Chuck E. Cheese's, even though the Rock of Fire explosion was way better than Chuck E. Cheese.

The robots were better. The characters were better. The songs were better. Their shtick was better. It was all better. But they all got converted to Chuck E. Cheese's. Now, this rat hole was inspired by John Oliver did a segment recently on the history of Chuck E. Cheese, which is very funny.

And they created a web page for it called Last Squeak Tonight. Now, technically, this segment did not air. Did you know the story behind that? Yeah, because we were talking about mortgages and home ownership. And he basically said, if you're under 30, you'll never need to watch this because you'll never own a phone or a home.

So go watch this instead online. Right, which I did. And the Chuck E. Cheese documentary is a lot of fun. But that sent me down the rat hole of the Rock of Fire explosion. And that led me to a documentary that I recommend that is a documentary of the Rock of Fire explosion.

But mostly it's about a handful of people who have gathered up and built complete Rock of Fire explosion versions in their homes. Wow. Oh, my God.

I know what I'm doing tonight. Wow is right. Let me tell you, there's this notion that the people who make a difference in this world are the obsessives. These are obsessives. One argues about the difference in the world being made, but sure.

But I'm just, I'm looking at this. I'm like, this has to be a perfect wedding for you, Dave. It's technology and furries. Yes. It's perfect. No, it is. Absolutely. The only thing that would be better is if somewhere they were dressed up as Star Wars characters.

Now, I will remind the two of you that having grown up literally in the shadow of Disneyland, these are not that impressive. But I get it. You did not have access to the various robotics, Abraham Lincoln's and whatnots that I did.

Yeah. No, they're not, comparatively, they're not as impressive. I will say, though, that some of the Rock of Fire, like the, what was his name? Fats Geronimo is the gorilla who leads the band. He's the front man and plays the keyboards. He's actually quite good.

And it seems like they spent most of their money on him. Some of the other ones just kind of rock around and their faces aren't, yes, they're definitely a tier below what you would get from Disney. But again, the first time I saw these, I had never been to Disney and these things just blew my mind.

The other thing was that these are life size, right? I think at that point in my life, I'd seen small little robotic things, but nothing at this scale. So, another part of the documentary is they go to the guy who originally built these animatronics who still has a warehouse full of them.

Oh. So, talk about an obsessive. This guy is an obsessive and it is practically a spooky tour through a haunted house going through this huge warehouse where this obsessive guy who has genuine, sincere, authentic love for the work he did with these.

And to this day, you can tell the great affection he has for these robot band members. But it's also a little bit of a cautionary tale about how you can. Jason, I think we found some more recipients for our Universal Loser Income.

Yes. Absolutely. That's amazing. I do love this sort of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, me too. So, check it out. It's a documentary. It's about an hour long. And if you're into these obsessive kind of people or if you grew up remembering The Rock of Fire Explosion, Showbiz Pizza, Chuck E. Cheese, it's a very affectionate documentary about some people who are obsessive, a little bit odd.

But I think there's also something kind of neat about how authentic their love for these things is and how they went to the trouble to build these fully restored versions of this show. Oh, they're poor families.

I just Googled Rock of Fire Explosion and I think we need – I think Bard might be doing the search results now because they have a songs listing. And one of the top songs is I Ain't Gay. Hmm. It was a different time, Jason. It was a different time.

So, it was a different time. I was reading some of the history of The Rock of Fire Explosion and to your point of it being a different time, one of the onstage characters was a bird who was an overt alcoholic, was drunk all the time.

And the other characters on stage were making jokes about – I think her name was Mitzi Mouse. There's, of course, like the Muppet Show, there's one female character surrounded by all other male characters, right? Same with the Smurfs, you know, so there's that whole dynamic.

But the characters on stage were telling jokes about Mitzi Mouse about how loose she was. Got to have something for the parents after soccer that are drinking the beer, I suppose. Right, right. Got to sell that beer because P.T. ain't going to pay for those robots.

Right. Yeah. So, enjoy. I certainly did. It's very weird but it's the kind of weird thing that I really like. Thank you for this. I will be losing an hour of my life for sure tonight. Definitely. A couple other quick things before we wrap up here.

I want to do a shameless plug for our new podcast that we launched. It's called T-Minus. Oh, my God. Another one? Well, this one I have nothing to do with. I am not a host. Who'd you piss off? Exactly. Actually, this is the first new venture from our parent company, which is called N2K Networks.

And we have a division called N2K Space. I work for N2K Cyber. And N2K Space has launched their first product, which is T-Minus. It's hosted by Maria Vermatsis, who anybody who listens to Smashing Security knows Maria. She's done a bunch of space segments on our show as well.

And they're really doing cool stuff. So, if you're a space nerd like me, please do check out T-Minus. We'll have a link to that in the show notes as well. Awesome. It's the first – well, I don't know if it's the first, but it's currently the only daily space news podcast out there.

Excellent. Cool. Yeah. Subscribe. And then finally, we got a little bit of feedback from a listener. This came from LinkedIn, someone named Jason Blackmun, who is a – looks as though he is a naval officer. He's wearing a naval officer uniform, so we'll give him a better episode on the internet.

I'll just let you thank you for the internet. Yeah. He says, Dave, would love to say I continue to appreciate your work on the Cyber Wire. Also appreciate your contribution to the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast and The Dark Side. It will always be security, ha, even if it's mainly you, Jason, and Brian talking about Star Wars.

So, thank you, Jason, for taking the time to send that in, and we appreciate it. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Well, stay safe in San Francisco. Avoid the man poo. Waiting boots. I will do my best. I will do my best. Yeah. Leave those Crocs at home.

You don't want anything with holes in it. Nope. No open-toed shoes in San Francisco. Absolutely. All right. All right. So, I will see you guys in two weeks because next week I will be away. All right. Have a good time, man. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got a bunch of you people.

Woo-hoo. 40th Dawn, Bob, Celia, Harrison, and Alan. Welcome, everybody. Thank you all so much. And over at PayPal, we've got Blake Bowling, Joseph, Nathaniel, Dag, Mike, Tom, Andrew, Brian, another Joseph, and Ramsey. Thank you all so much. Over at the tip jar, we've got Sean, Karen, and Ross.

Thank you to everybody. And my typical reminder over at Patreon, if you sign up for as little as $3 a month, you get the shows early and ad-free and also in high-res. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. All right. We also have two new reviews this week.

Now, I'm going to read this first one, but I don't understand a word of it, but at least it's five stars, and it's from SS8118. I found Street Fighter Fireballs on iTunes. You can send outgoing and incoming emails to Hadoukette. It's like fireball wars back and forth with your correspondence.

You could probably do it with other mail programs, too. What the fuck? I looked up Street Fighter Fireballs on iTunes, and there is no Street Fighter Fireballs, so I think this is somebody having a go with the old chat GPT, maybe? I don't know. I don't know, but we'll take five-star ratings.

We'll take five stars and some smileys. Don't understand them. And RichardGP42 wrote, They asked, so why not? Okay, we'll take it. They asked for the review, so maybe they'll be happy with this. Show is good. Seems like a conversation I might have with my brother as we complain about tech and how people can't use it properly or the tech is not working how we think it should be.

Keep being grumpity. Well, thank you, Richard. We'll take it. Thank you very much. And happy birthday to Tim Curry. Woo-hoo! I was just glad to see he's still kicking. Me, too. You know, because he was a good it character. Yes, yes. And one of the first transvestite characters that anybody in our generation were exposed to, I believe.

Man, I used to go to that every Friday night. Never went. Never went. Oh, such a blast. Such a part of my childhood, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, throwing the popcorn and the rice and all of it. So good. Never did it. Oh, well. It's still time, Jason. Until next time, I'm Brian Schoelister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo, and the clock is ticking.

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