605: The Golden Turd

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

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, I would just like to say thank you from the people of California for dumping all of your smoke onto the East Coast. Because we are getting the dandiest chuckle out of it.

Yeah, it's funny. You know, obviously I grew up in California. It's a wildfire. You know, there's a season for it. We're used to it. New York City, bunch of pussies. Even the newscasters were laughing about it. Like, oh, they're complaining about the smoke.

Oh, woe is me. What? What do you mean you don't have an air filter? Oh, stay inside because you shouldn't go out. Oh, what did you say to us last time this happened? Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. We're getting next to nothing here in Toronto because it's all kind of more east of us and just blowing straight down to New York and the U.S.

It's because the U.S. sucks. Yeah. Sucking all that smoke right in. Yeah, it's just been lovely being in California watching it because we're going to get our own and we're just going to deal with it as usual. Yeah, you're about a month away. Yep.

Well, technically, fire season in California is year-round now. That's right. That's true. Yeah. Fortunately, we have June gloom. Yeah, I've heard everybody complaining in L.A. about rain and clouds and no sun and cool weather. Yeah, I know.

Everybody's complaining everywhere. We're just a bunch of whiny bitches these days. Which is why we have a show. So shall we get to it? Let's do it. All right, Brian, I need the soapbox for a minute. Can I borrow it? Of course. Okay, here we go. Mark Andreessen has made the news this week because he wrote an article called Why AI Will Save the World.

Are you telling me that he wrote an article pumping up his main interests? Oh, just wait. Just wait. Okay. We know that when Mark speaks nowadays, it is just nothing but an avalanche of bullshit because if you've paid any attention to A16Z, his big venture capital investment company, they have been for the past several years all in on crypto.

That's it. They are the crypto bro, like, you know, Mount Olympus. That's where you go if you need a few bucks to make your crypto play. Well, this is proof positive, Brian. The crypto bros have moved on to the next big thing.

This is it. This is 6,000 words of Mark Andreessen trying to put people at ease because he sees what's going on. Yes, yes, yes. And so we just have to – we have to pay attention now because basically until the next big thing comes along, everything that's going to come out of these people's mouths is – to put a fine point on it – hogwash.

So in the middle of the article, he brings in this comparison of Baptists and bootleggers and talking about how great change in the world comes with these two types of people. And, you know, the Baptists are the ones that are saying, oh, we need to protect ourselves against this.

And the bootleggers are the ones trying to figure out how to make a buck. Right. Sometimes their paths shall cross. But he forgot about the carpetbaggers, which is where he firmly sits. Right. We just experienced this, you and I, in the world of podcasting. Yes. You know, Daniel Eck is the carpetbagger-in-chief when it comes to podcasting.

And for people who don't know – I've said this term many times, and the kids nowadays don't know what carpetbaggers are. It's because they don't teach history anymore. Exactly. But we have Wikipedia. So I'm going to read this for you real quick. In the history of the United States, carpetbagger is a largely historical term used by Southerners to describe opportunistic Northerners who came to the Southern states after the American Civil War, who were perceived to be exploiting the local populace for their own financial, political, and or social gain.

So it's usually financial nowadays. But Mark's entire point in this whole thing – and I would just like to say that this guy is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He's trying to say that everything's going to be okay. The world is not going to die.

You know, and since Web3 and crypto have now been defrocked as the bullshit that you and I and many other people knew it to be, he needs a new platform. And he sums it up very nicely at the end. He says, legends and heroes, something he actually says in his note.

Today, growing legions of engineers, many of whom are young and may have had grandparents or even great-grandparents, Jesus Christ if you're old, involved in the creation of the ideas behind AI, are working to make AI a reality. Against a wall of fear-mongering and doomerism that is attempting to paint them as reckless villains.

I do not believe they are reckless or villains. They are heroes, everyone. My firm and I are thrilled to back as many of them as we can. And we will stand alongside them in their work 100%. Yes, I often think of the firefighters that ran into the burning buildings on 9-11 and a bunch of engineers creating bullshit AI that just destroys copyright in the exact same breath.

I know. They stand shoulder to shoulder. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. Yeah. Yes. And just because the marsh of the douches goes on, marsh, march, whichever one, Jason Calacanis.

How is that guy still around? Well, he made a tweet that just sums it all up. He says, if you're in crypto, pivot to AI. He just said that yesterday. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It just keeps on coming.

The bullshit keeps on coming. Yes, it does. But there is a voice of reason, Anil Dash, who I've known for, Jesus, decades now. Scary. He has a great article called Today's AI is Unreasonable. And he goes on to say in the article that reason is kind of a core tenant of technological systems.

You want to be able to put an input into the system, know what's going to happen to that input, and have a reliable input returned. Right? Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And this is the greatest line in here. It says, into that world, let's introduce bullshit.

Today's highly hyped generative AI systems, most famously open AI, are designed to generate bullshit by design. To be clear, bullshit can sometimes be useful and even accidentally correct, but that doesn't keep it from being bullshit.

Worse, these systems are not meant to generate consistent bullshit. You can get different bullshit answers from the same prompts. You can put garbage in and get bullshit out, but the same quality bullshit that you get from non-garbage inputs. And enthusiasts are currently mistaking the fact that bullshit is consistently wrapped in the same envelope as meaning that the bullshit inside the consistent – it just keeps going on and on and on.

But it's fucking awesome. It is a great way to couch the entire thing. It is bullshit. It can be occasionally useful. Occasionally useful because it is inconsistent bullshit. That's why you have to keep trying over and over and over again.

And when we first started covering it, it was – we were kind of in the generative text-to-image space. And it was fun. It was neat. It is fun. I wouldn't, you know, base my business around it because I don't know if you've tried the new Adobe Photoshop betas with Firefly that on their pages are just magical, absolutely magical.

I have yet to get that good of a result from anything I've tried. Oh, my God. It's not even close. That was probably 100,000 tries to get that. It's like the picture of the Big Mac versus the reality of the Big Mac. Totally. Totally. I have tried – I spent like two, three hours trying to get a decent result out of that thing.

And it is just – you know, it just ain't working, man. It just ain't working. So – but it was fun. You think it's going to be everywhere now. Exactly. Because once you see AI through the lens of bullshit, things like Mark Zuckerberg yesterday having an all-hands meeting to whoever's left at Meta saying, we're going to put that shit on everything.

Well, I mean, he's doing the same thing. Instead of pivoting from crypto, he's pivoting from the metaverse. Yeah. Which he pivoted to from crypto. Yes. Libra? Anybody? He took an extra step. Yeah. Yeah. He took a detour on his way to AI land. So there's one interesting thing that came out of the news this week around AI, and I think DeepMind figured out how to create a faster sorting algorithm using, you know, AI to create the sorting algorithm.

Right. I'm sorry, machine learning to come up with a new sorting algorithm, which is great. You know, we need things like that because that introduces more efficiency into the system because sorting is something that computers do constantly, which is why it's very important for it to be efficient. Yes.

Any change in efficiency we can get because the way that everybody's talking about AI destroying the world, you know, it's misdirection. It is total misdirection because they think, you know, Terminator 2 is going to happen and we're going to nuke ourselves and all that shit.

No, we're going to burn down the planet training these damn models because if you don't – if you haven't noticed, these things take hundreds of thousands of computers running at full bore 24-7 for weeks, sometimes months, to generate these large language models.

So, anything that they can do to introduce any extra efficiencies into the system since they're not going to stop, obviously. Obviously. It's, you know, let's turn it on to itself because it's better than, you know, all those computers sitting there making fake money all day. About the same amount of energy required.

Yep. So, I step off the soapbox and hand it back to you, Brian. Okay. Well, I'll take us back to Earth a little bit. I just found this hilarious since we talk so much about work from home and all these companies that are desperately trying to get people back into their crappy offices for no reason whatsoever.

Salesforce, the company that I'm still confused by as to what exactly they do. Yeah. But they're huge and they're so desperate to see employees back in the office that they are going to donate a little less than the price of McDonald's Big Mac meal to charity.

Every day workers drag themselves to the office. All right. That's their hook now. We'll give a couple bucks to charities if you come in. Yeah, exactly. Please come in. But they also capped it. Yes, they did. They capped it. They've also made it only for certain dates.

It's not an ongoing thing. And you can actually even just attend a special virtual event and they'll still donate the 10 bucks because they're desperate to get people on screens or in the office or whatever. I would argue stock's doing fine. Apparently, you're okay.

This working from home thing seems to be going okay for most of your workers. What do you care? Yeah, I mean, for a distributed address book, you know, they're doing fine. Yeah, they're doing just fine. They don't need people in the office. In the news.

In a case of better late than never, Brian, we have two stories out of the barn here that just bring a smile to, I don't know about your face, but my withered old face has, I'm just grinning ear to ear. I'm nice and smooth. The SEC says Binance misused customer funds, ran illegal crypto exchange in the U.S.

What? No? Are you kidding me? Yeah. We've only been saying that since they fucking launched. Yep. Yep. The damning bit in this article says, the SEC quoted Binance's chief compliance officer as saying in 2018, we are operating as a fucking unlicensed security exchange in the U.S., bro.

I love the bro. The bro is the chef's kiss on that one. It really, really is. Well, it's not just Binance that's in trouble here. Coinbase as well is now being sued, the biggest crypto asset trading platform in the U.S. They note that brokers, exchanges, and clearing agencies are usually separated in traditional securities markets because law, regulations, and Coinbase intertwines their services.

They have failed to register as a broker, a national securities exchange, or clearing agency, and there are basically no protections for investors. So, huh. And here's my quote that I pulled from this. You simply can't ignore the rules because you don't like them, or you'd prefer to use different ones.

Well, okay. Well, okay. Jesus Christ. What is wrong with these people? Oh. So, yeah, I'd pivot. I'd pivot away from crypto.

I think this is the death knell. And I mean, I know people that are super into it are saying, oh, this is the government cracking down to destroy the concept. No, it's the government enforcing the fucking laws and rules that we have to protect us. Yeah, they're going after criminals, criminals.

If these guys would have followed the law, they wouldn't be getting sued. Yep, that's true. There you go. Looking at you, Trump. Speaking of misallocations of funds, FTX, you know, Sam Bankman-Fried, our douche du jour.

It has been discovered that FTX apparently made a $500 million investment into Anthropic, which is OpenAI's biggest competitor. That nobody's ever heard of. Actually, we talked about them on the news because they were the company that was offering like $150,000 a year for a prompt engineer.

Oh, right. Okay. So they could hire three and a half prompt engineers for one year for what FTX invested in them. But they're saying now that the value has gone up. The valuation has gone up on Anthropic. So they could sell that stake and pay back its customers with the misallocated funds that they use to buy the stock in the first place.

And this is just head scratching. It's like, oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. Yeah. Shouldn't that be happening regardless since they misallocated and misappropriated the funds in the first place? Yeah, you'd think.

But, you know, we'll sort of apply. SEC, look over here. Jesus. Oh, I'm sure we'll get around to it. Oh, okay. I've got a rare bad news story about Microsoft. Uh-oh. Because they usually do follow the rules pretty well, but they have to pay $20 million to settle charges brought by the FTC that the company violated the COPA.

So this relates mostly to Xbox. It's shocking. Yeah. So they collected a lot of underage users' information from there and retained the data even without parents' consent. Good luck getting that as a parent, I understand. Mm-hmm. I don't know half the shit that my kids are already doing on my iPad, even though I try to monitor it.

It's difficult. Yeah. The FTC found that Microsoft only asked users under 13 to get their parents to complete their account creation after they had already provided personal information. And apparently they sold some of this information off because they didn't have identifiers and all this other shit. So they may have coupled it, they're paying it, and they're fixing the issues because that's what real companies do.

Yeah. This sounds like a UX issue. Yeah, it does, actually. It's like they put the checkbox in the wrong spot. Pretty much, yeah. And they've got to go through and delete all the information, so. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. But, yeah, okay, so you have to fill out the form, and then at the bottom or on the next page is the checkbox.

It says, are you over or under 13? Yeah, probably put the checkbox on that first form. Yeah, yeah, that should be the first. Two paths. Are you under 13 or are you over 13? Okay, here we go. And start from there if it's that important, you know. Yeah.

Which I believe it should be. It should be kind of that important. It should be, I agree. And if you're under 13, you know, pick up the phone. Do some kind of age verification that isn't like, yeah, I'm old. Yeah. I'm old. Look, if Microsoft can call me every single time they force me to change my password to log into anything, they can handle this.

No shit. No shit. Unbelievable. Well, in the not surprising at all news, Twitter's ad sales have dropped by 59% since last year because nobody wants to put their ad up against one of fucking Elon's tweets about being a pedophile.

Yep. Yeah. So, I meant to put it in last week. Did you see Ben and Jerry's explanation why they pulled their advertising? No. Basically, Elon's a douche. Okay. It was great. Well, in the Twitter space last week, Musk said that people are trying to drive Twitter bankrupt, which is kind of what he's doing.

Pot kettle black, bro. Yep. Yep. Bro. Yep. Well, even though it's a ridiculous business right now, it's not stopping Zuckerberg from wanting to get into it. Screenshots of Instagram's answer. It's interesting that they chose to say Instagram's answer instead of Meta's answer as the headline, right?

To Twitter is leaking online. So, they're basically building a Twitter wannabe because they feel that they're exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates. We believe there's an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests.

Don't we call that the internet? Okay. I want a standalone decentralized social network makes no sense whatsoever. Is it standalone? Each decentralized thing stands alone, Jason. It does.

The cheese stands alone. The cheese stands alone. Yes. Oh, God. But they are going to use ActivityPub, which is what Mastodon is based on. So, they can have nobody show up to their social network, too. Yeah. And their screenshots basically looks exactly like Twitter. Great.

Like all of them do. I get confused if I'm on Blue Sky or Twitter anymore. I really can't. Well, I don't because one is just John Scalzi. Oh, I thought you unfollowed him. I did. I'm just kidding. Oh, I didn't. You've got to make the jokes, man. Because I was going to say I still follow him just so you don't have to, but.

And, of course, Instagram is also rolling out its own AI chat bot because what else do you want to do when you're in Instagram except for talk to a bot? That's right. Or have the bot write for you. So, you know. Because there's so much writing on Instagram. Oh, I know.

I know. What the fuck are these people doing? I told you, man. At the top of the show, Mark's going to put that shit on everything. You want to improve your product? You want to improve your product? Give us a timeline feed of just our friends.

Nah. Forget it. Never mind. Let's give them a chat bot. Let's give them a chat bot so they can talk to other little kids online. Because I'm sure they didn't have a 13 and over verification. Oh, dearie me, dearie me, yes. A new investigation by the Wall Street Journal and researchers at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst have basically said that Instagram is the world's largest pedo network.

Surprising Elon Musk to this day. He's like, they're trying to put us out of business. He just popped a fucking bottle of champagne. Yeah. Not us. It is insane what's going on over there. And they just made, they popped up a quick fake account saying, you know, hey, I'm a kid.

Woohoo. They just immediately started getting recommendations for other, you know, CSAM materials and things like that. And there's apparently an entire network of what they're calling, quote unquote, self-generated child sex material. Or basically kids that are showing, they're selling pictures of their own junk to make money, which I say.

Isn't that OnlyFans? Show me the proof. That is probably OnlyFans. Damn. Yeah. Show me the proof that these kids are doing it on their own. Uh-huh. Because I don't know about you, but the payment gateways generally are a little better at, you know, doing proof of age verification.

And you can't just click a checkbox to get your money out. Oh, wait, Bitcoin. Oh, Bitcoin to the rescue. That's true. That is true. But there's one line in here that got me. Underage sex count creators and buyers are just a corner of the larger ecosystem devoted to content.

Other accounts in the pedophile community on Instagram aggregate pro memes and stuff like but comes down to current and former meta employees who have worked on Instagram child safety initiatives estimate the number of accounts that exist primarily to follow such content is in the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

That's depressing as fuck. That actually makes me just want to hit stop and go cry in a corner. What's wrong with people? Yeah, it makes me want to do other things. Cry ain't one of them. Yeah. But that is ridiculous that they know about this.

You know, they're playing whack-a-mole. I get it. But, okay, I don't need a fucking chat bot. You know what? Fix this. You've got all this machine learning and all this pattern recognition and image recognition. How can it be this prevalent with all that? Come on, people.

It works or it doesn't. Yeah. This stuff. Seriously. So, you know. You're putting it into all your products but you're not using it for safety? I don't understand. Because it's bullshit. Right. That's true. You know, they're worried about the lawsuits for actually saying somebody who is not a pedophile is a pedophile instead of saying somebody who is a pedophile is a pedophile.

You know? Okay. It's like – You've got to be Elon Musk to get away with that. You do. You do. Yeah. Oh, well. Moving on. Well, speaking of lawsuits for this kind of stuff, OpenAI is being sued for libel. Now, I'm going to be following this case very closely.

A journalist for an online gun website asks OpenAI's ChatGPT to provide him a summary of the case of the Second Amendment Foundation versus Robert Ferguson earlier this year and it spat out some bullshit. Allegedly claiming the case involved a Georgia radio host named Mark Walters who was accused of embezzling money from the Second Amendment Foundation.

The only problem? None of it was true. All right. Nothing. So, Walters is now suing for libel as he should. I like this. I like this. I do too. They should be responsible for this. All of them should be. You can't just spit out bullshit and lies, especially when it involves real people.

Well, actually, they can. They're just going to get – Well, they are. They are. This is not the first case we've heard about this. No, this is not. But this is the first big lawsuit. So, we'll see. They're saying that the existing legal principles make at least some such lawsuits potentially viable.

So, that's good. All right. I think they should be. Speaking of bullshit, Waymo. Waymo, Waymo, Waymo, Waymo. Oh, didn't they just get a license to go ahead and drive places? They're working on the 24-7 license. That's the story we had last time.

To work anywhere in San Francisco instead of just the places that they're at in the middle of the night. Well, yeah, they killed a dog. They killed a dog. Oh, fuck. John Wick's going to be pissed. I know. I know. I know. Keanu's already on his private plane.

Actually, no. He's riding his motorcycle up. He doesn't take planes anymore. He's more a public transport guy. I put this in here because everybody's brushing it off saying, it's just a fucking dog. Well. San Francisco. It's just a homeless person. Or kid.

Replace dog with kid and see what happens. Well, they're not supposed to hit anything. Yeah. That's kind of the point. Yeah. The Uber driver killed the bicyclist in Phoenix a couple years ago. Now we've got Waymo's killing dogs. And the thing is, is that the person didn't see the dog.

The system saw the dog and didn't stop. Right. So they're calling it an unavoidable accident. And yes, some accidents are unavoidable. But, you know, I don't think the system even applied the brakes. So we'll see what happens with this.

I don't think anybody's actually going to investigate this because it was just a dog. We have to kill a kid before anybody gives a fuck. True. So let's end this on a nice note. Edinburgh. We're going to Edinburgh. All right. Where you can go to see the new poop hotel.

My kid would love this. You got to go to the show notes and you got to click on it and just look at the picture. Because they had to have meetings. They had to have had meetings. Come on. Well, the architect just used the emoji. He did. That's why I love it.

There's actually a petition.org thing going around right now to put eyes on the top of the building. So it really looks like the poop emoji. I'm going to go stay there and ask for a room at the pinch. I'm in love. I'm in love. The locals have dubbed it the golden turd.

That belongs in San Francisco.

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After that shit show of news of the week, I had to go get me some comedy. And I found another Scotsman who probably stayed at the poop emoji hotel. Daniel Sloss, who's one of my favorite comedians, very smart guy, does general comedy, but he always has a running theme throughout his stand-up performances.

There's one on HBO, two on Netflix if you want to go check him out. But he just released one on his website that you could go pay five euros for or five pounds. I don't know because, yeah, probably pounds, you know, Brexit and all that shit. Yeah. Called Socio. Very good. Very good.

This was recorded, I believe, before COVID. Oh, okay. So not timely. But it doesn't matter because it deals with other issues that have nothing to do with, you know, the pandemic or the fate of the world. It's really good. For five pounds, definitely worth it.

And put a smile on my face and brought me out of the shitty mood that I was in. All right. Well, that's good. The wife and I finished The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Stuck the landing. All right. Good. Yeah. There were a couple good episodes this season, a couple kind of crap ones, kind of like the previous two seasons.

You know, the first two were the best, but they did a really good job ending it, I've got to say. Okay, cool. I was pleased. All right. It has the Schulmeister stamp of approval. Yes, definitely. Very funny show. No bottles were thrown at the TV. Nope. All right.

Well, we talked about Good Omens last week because it got a release date. Well, the trailer's out. The official trailer is out. Yes. I watched it. They have a show. They do. They do. Okay. I'm going to watch it. I'm in. I'm very excited. I'm all in, too. Spotify has been in the news hand over fist because they've been basically firing everybody, getting rid of staff in the podcasting division after they spent a billion dollars.

Yeah. And they say after four years and over a billion dollars of investment, the platform is flipping its podcast strategy upside down. You know what they're going to do? You know what they're going to do, Brian? What are they going to do? Let podcasts be podcasts. Okay. So no more paywalls? Apparently not.

They're just going to try and monetize everything. Right. We could have saved them a billion dollars minus one million for our fee because we've told them since the beginning they were stupid. Why are they doing this? And speaking of stupid, so are the people that fucking took their money. Parcast and Gimlet, both of them posted a joint whining, they done us dirty screed on Twitter, which they have since removed, by the way, because I responded to it and I was trying to find it to post it in here.

They took it off. It was a typed up statement. They did screenshots. Wah, wah, wah. Spotify. They're doing us dirty. They're getting rid of all these people that work so damn hard. And I just responded with, well, sounds like you should have made that deal.

Shouldn't have taken that money. Yeah. Yeah. You took it. You danced with the devil. Yeah. You knew what you were doing. Fuck you. Fuck you and your wine. Yeah, whores. Fucking whores. So they deleted all that. Yeah, they did us dirty and we didn't even get a fucking paycheck.

So yeah, go fuck yourself. Seriously. You took $300 million. Shut up. Yeah, that ain't chump change. Yeah. Ain't chump change. Oh, man. Well, in good news, Silo. Watched the new episode last night. So did I. They are still killing it.

It was awesome. So good. That's a good show. That's a really good show. A friend of mine was complaining about it. It's just mystery after mystery after mystery. And I was like, I know. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. I even know how it ends and it's still great. I know. They're doing a great job.

But fortunately, I forgot how it ends because booze. I don't remember how it ends. It's great. So I'm kind of watching it for the first time again. And Rebecca Ferguson is amazing. She's doing great. Oh, those tattoos that they gave her. So cool.

No, I am. I am such a fan of that show. I'm just going to be sad when it's over because this was episode seven. They're going to do two, three seasons. They're going to do all the books, apparently. Oh, yeah. They have to. Yeah. Have to. Especially the amount of money they spent. Yeah. Yeah. So good. Tops and doodads.

Hey, Brian, can I borrow that soapbox again? Sure thing. All right. Why don't you just keep it? I'm tired. I'm going to hang on. I think I'm going to need it for the rest of the episode. Or at least until Dave gets here. I might have to loan it to Dave. Fresh books. I've been using fresh books for years. Have you ever used fresh books?

No, I was a QuickBooks guy for the business. And after that, I just make my own invoices if I need to in Word. Yeah. Yeah. So I've been using them mainly for just invoicing and doing payment stuff.

And I started to use Stripe with them. And, you know, Brian, as an independent contractor, you know how hard it is to get clients to actually pay their bills, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Never on time. Always late. Always an excuse. Always. And now, so this month, this is the first time I've been late on paying my rent in probably 10 years.

And it's because of fresh books. They held on to my payments. One of my clients put in their payment, and it took two and a half weeks for me to get it. And they used Stripe, my Stripe integration. That Stripe should be almost instantaneous. Yeah.

Well, now it is. If you want to do the instant payment, I had to do it yesterday to get some money out of it. And it was instant, literally instant. I press, here, take 1% of my money and give it to me now. Here's your usery fee. And it worked. But fresh books keeps it for, I mean, it was like a week and a half to almost two weeks that they kept my money saying, oh, it's processing.

I'm like, what's the process? It's a fucking API call. So it's more stale books is what you're telling me. Exactly. Exactly. Scam books because they're trying to get that 0.001 cent off my money that they can hang on to. Well, they might be putting it into the Apple account and getting a…

Oh, they're getting their Apple cash. They got to get their Apple cash back. Yeah. So – and they raise their prices. So goodbye, fresh books. I am done with you. I've just moved to Stripe. Stripe has built-in invoicing, which I used right after that to bill another client who paid me on time.

Thank you very much. And did the instant payment. So I got paid in 48 hours instead of two and a half weeks. Yeah. That's ridiculous. Yeah. Another sad news that another piece of software I have to get rid of, Ophonic, who have been using for years to master our shows and all my clients' shows.

Well, they had – I spent a bunch of money on their desktop apps, which they have since deprecated and say, well, they don't work with Ventura anymore. So we're not going to even update them. So now you have to use their web service. Which you have to pay – A subscription.

A subscription. So for $588 a year, I can get 45 hours a month of, you know, their stuff. $600 a year and you're still time limited. That's amazing. It's so fucking ridiculous.

So they've priced themselves out of a customer and I will not recommend them again. What I will recommend is the other piece of software that I use that I've always been – I knew this feature was in there, but I just kind of was lazy because the nice thing about Ophonic was they had batch processing. One click, boom, Bob's your uncle done.

Well, iZotope RX10 Advanced has the same functionality built in, which I already use. And you can buy it for, right now, the cost of one year in Ophonic and you own it and you can use it forever. And as many times as you want. And it does a million other things.

This is the – this is the, you know, the top of the top of software for audio restoration. And basically mastering and stuff like that is fantastic. There's a leveler. There's an automatic leveler in there that you can use. And there's also the volume adjust, which is what the main thing that Ophonic is good for, for setting your volume levels to standards for podcasting and audio books and things like that.

Right. So goodbye, Ophonic. Thank you, iZotope, for doing what you already do that I just did an RTFM for. The Arc browser. Have you played with the Arc browser? I talked about it a couple weeks ago. Yeah, no. I never bothered. Yeah, don't.

Okay. I mean, we've talked for years about how hard it is to get people to switch browsers. Yep. I mean, it's even hard for us, and we do it for fun. So the problem with Arc is they changed too many browsing paradigms.

It is neat. It is cool. But when I want to go in, look at a website, get my work done, and go about my day, I don't want to have to learn new software. Yeah. So there's just no way. I mean, there are things that we've been doing for 20 years that are just browser standards. You can't switch those up.

No. Too much muscle memory, you know, and just mental muscle. It's everything about it. You have to do it. And, you know, I'm still amazed that Brave works, you know. It's based on Chrome, and it has a bunch of shit in it, but it keeps the core experience the same.

I'm experiencing the same with Vivaldi. I still use it. It's great. It gets the job done, you know. It uses extensions, right? Arc will transfer over your extensions and things like that, but you can't find the pages that you bookmarked. It's like, okay, so I have to go to a subpanel, to a panel, to find a thing to do this.

I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ, no. So, you know, it is – you have to introduce new browsers with new generations. So, you have to have at least 10 years of runway for people to get into that browser, build up the muscle memory, and overcome the market share that all the other browsers already have.

You know, it's a miracle that Brave and Vivaldi made it as far as they did. And technically, they still haven't, you know. Yeah, they haven't. They're very, very, very niche. Yeah. And then you look at somebody like Firefox. It's like, how the hell are they still around? Nobody that I know uses Firefox.

Do you? Yeah, I mean, just – I have it, but I don't use it. Yeah. You know, I think we both have all these old browsers just from – because we're used to it from the old days of building websites. We had to have every browser. Yeah, I've still got on my bar here. I've got Vivaldi.

I've got Firefox. I've got Chrome. And I've got Safari just sitting there. Yeah, and I've got Edge on mine too. But I only use Vivaldi. Yeah. That's just the PTSD we have as ex-web developers. Exactly. We don't need that shit anymore. I feel like I have to have them all. Nope. Not at all. And Arc, sorry, man. Got to go.

Got to go. I don't know, Brian. iMessage for me over the past two months has been nothing but maddening on any of my computers. And I'm so glad to hear you say this because I've been having the same problem. And I thought it was just me and I gave up on it because I Googled it and Google's useless these days.

And ChatGPT told me that somebody was a pedophile. So I couldn't get an answer anywhere on the internet anymore because the internet's now useless. But yeah, this has been happening to me as well. I get logged out. I try to log back in and it just fucking rotates forever.

And if I reboot at that point, I'll be logged back in. Makes no sense. I can't even get it to do that. I've had to like get like, you know, turn off iCloud, turn it back on, turn it off, turn it back on, which really sucks because I have, oh, let's say 700 gigabytes of data in my iCloud drive.

Right. Which when you turn off iCloud, takes that folder, shoves it off to the side. And then when you turn iCloud back on, it has to re-download it. You can't just repopulate that folder because what you'll do is you'll end up with duplicate folders with the same name. I don't know how they work that one out.

On all of your other machines that use your iCloud drive. It is fucking maddening. I wish they would fix it. Yeah. And I found a, I found a website that says, uh, macOS Ventura problems, five things you need to know. And there's a list of about 50 of them, but iMessage issues are right smack dab in the middle.

So. Yeah. I've also been having the touch ID issues. It's been weirdly unreliable. I haven't had that one yet. Knock on wood. Yeah. It's just, sometimes it just decides not to work and forces me to do passwords. And I'm like, why, why, why? It's my thumb. It's my finger. Fuck off.

Yeah. I, you know what I used to, uh, the other thing that stopped working is that, uh, I can't remember the name of it. The control where you basically can use your mouse on your iPad or your laptop. If it's all the computers that if they're next to each other, you can control with one setup. Yeah.

I was using that for a while. It was great. I had my iPad on one side of my monitor, my laptop on the other, and I could go between all three with the same keyboard and mouse. Doesn't work anymore. Just stop. Yeah. No. Thanks, Apple. Yeah. Thanks, Apple. So since it is everywhere in the news, I want to do my, my quick fucking Apple recap for the keynote.

Chime in wherever you like, please. Okay. Hey, too fucking long. Didn't watch it. All right. Uh, new 15 inch air. Fucking sexy. Of course it is because I just bought one. Yep. Exactly. Uh, new part, the new pro Mac, Mac pros, uh, don't give a fuck.

Uh, $7,000. Yeah. We don't, we don't build anything anymore, so I don't need the super duper hardware. So, yeah. And couldn't, couldn't afford it anyway. Uh, tvOS. Mm-hmm. Didn't fix the fundamental problem of knowing what the fuck is selected. That's true.

I don't, nobody knows what's selected. You got to move the thing around to find out what changed by two pixels to figure out where you're at. Try giving the Apple TV to like a non-techie and they're just baffled. They have no idea when they press what button, what does what. It's great. Yep. Yep. You got to learn it, but you can.

My six-year-old did. Yeah. Well, try, try a 60-year-old versus a six-year-old. 60-year-olds cannot figure it out. Okay. Uh, FaceTime on Apple TV. Fucking finally. I would say I don't really give a shit, but since Amazon seems to be getting right at their Echoes and their shows and all that sort of stuff, I might be using that.

Yep. Yep. They're going to put Zoom on Apple TV. Fucking finally. I, I'm looking forward to this. Uh, I, by the way, the, I think it's Confluence Camera. The thing that lets you use your iPhone as a webcam. Yep. Oh, it's so great. I'm getting rid of all the, it's, it, it is the best webcam that you're ever going to have.

It's beautiful. Yeah. And you can just put it anywhere. It's awesome. Anyway, back to it. Fuck SharePlay in the car. I like SharePlay. Why do you like SharePlay? Oh, sorry. I was thinking CarPlay. I don't know what SharePlay is because I didn't watch it. SharePlay is what lets other people modify your playlist using their phone.

Why? Yeah, exactly. I'm driving. My music. Bingo. Bingo, bingo, bingo. All right. Uh, and Snoopy. Fuck Snoopy. I'm not 900 years old. I do not want peanuts on my watch. I'm happy about this because my kid loves to play with my watch.

Okay. He'll be thrilled. Yes, although he doesn't know who the fuck Snoopy is. We've never watched Peanuts or anything. Seriously. That's what I'm saying. So let's get culturally appropriate here for the times. Now, Vision Pro. Let's talk about it for two seconds here.

Sure. EyeSight. Seriously? Who got paid a fucking couple million dollars to come up with that barn burner of a name? They couldn't use the EyeSight because that's so 1990s. That was, yes, that was a product, which I still have in a box somewhere. I have a hat. The coolest looking, huh?

I have a hat for it. Yeah. Nice. Um, I don't think it was possible for them to say super magical or amazing any more than they already did. That was, if you saw it, you'd understand. Uh, it must come with a Xanax subscription because all the people that had it on were way too fucking calm.

Because they were acting. They were actors. Actors. It wasn't actually working when they had it on their faces. I figured they all went to the Star Trek Discovery School of Exasperation because it was either, oh, or, hmm. Hmm. And of course, who can forget the supple woven cable?

Hmm. Supple woven cable. Now I need an Apple product that uses moist. Moist. So it's $3,500. You do have time to sell that iKidney before it comes around. And my take on it is give this 10 years, it's going to be as ubiquitous as the iPhone or Apple Watch.

All the knee-jerk people saying, comparing it to Google Glass, shut up. Apples and oranges. They shit all over everything Apple as they, you know, check the time on their Apple Watch and tap their AirPods that they hated. And then the stock price goes down, so you buy because it comes right back up. Yeah. Which is what I did.

Perfect. That's what everybody should know by now. It's an Apple keynote. It always drops like a stone. Time to buy stock. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree with your assessment. I think the Vision Pro, like, I'm not that into AR or VR at all, but the idea that I could actually replace my monitor in about five years and just wear one of these things and have it all in front of me and be able to basically gesture without using a mouse, I'm all in.

Yeah. I'd do that for work. Hell yeah. Would I do it personally in my normal life like they want you to do based on the commercial? Fuck no. But would I use it for work? Hell yeah. I can't wait for the price to come down and not have a battery pack that I have to stick in my pocket.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is first gen. It's a good, there's always going to be issues with it. They're doing this for developers. They're doing this so developers will go out and make cool shit for it. Yeah. While they make it smaller and faster and the power better. So. Yeah. Everybody's like, what's the use case? I'm like, it's why it's a developer preview.

I can think of about 50 things I'd want to do with it if I was still a developer and imagine, imagine if you're living in a small, like New York apartment and you can't get a 75 inch TV in your place. Buy one of these. Right now you can't breathe. So that's more of a problem. That's true. You know what they need to do?

They need to marry that with the Dyson headset that has the mask built in. I saw an article saying, who's stupid now? And I'm like, still you, still you, still you. Yeah. I have a list of people that have tried it and worn it.

And one of the best ones that I heard, I listened to the new episode of Cortex last night with Mike Hurley and, which is nuts. I can't remember his name. Mike Hurley actually tried one on and he's been using a lot of VR stuff. So his assessment was much better than most people's and he's basically like, this thing's fucking stunning.

It's stunning, you know? Well, of course it is. It's Apple. Come on. Yeah. That's, that's exactly it. You know, it's, and I'm not being an Apple fan boy here. You know, the technology is going to be heads and shoulders above anything else that comes out. Yeah. So. It's what they do. Yeah. And I'm looking forward to it.

You know, I probably won't buy a first gen because I, I'll wait until, I didn't get the watch until three or four. So it would probably be the same with this. Yeah. If I was still, if I was still developing, I would buy one in a heartbeat. I'd be like, put me at the front of the line.

Yep. But now that I'm an old consumer, I don't care that much. You know, it's like, I need that money for Geritol. Fuck off. I need that money. So when FreshBooks decides to pay me, I have a buffer. Right. Assholes. But yeah, check out, check out all that stuff. I'm going to be over in my bedroom on my TV playing Diablo four while I wait for this to come out because I got it this week and it is great.

I love it so far. Beautiful. And I just needed something that wasn't TV because as we know, the strike is going to be going on for about seven more years. We're getting a lot of stuff coming out though. You'll be okay. Yeah. Is it any good though? Good omens. Silos in there, Ron.

The Witcher's coming back and the trailer looked really good. We got good omens. Star Trek is coming. We'll be all right. Okay, that's about a week and a half's worth of shows. Okay, you do need other things to do. That's right. 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 nosy.

And the host of Control Loop, because industrial machines have feelings too. Hello, Dave. Hello. Hello, gents. Good to be back. Good to have you. Have you guys finished The Muppets yet? I'm curious. I'm not finished. I just finished the episode that was all about Dr. Teeth's backstory and dentistry.

Oh, nice. I think I've got three left, something like that. Yeah. So, yeah. It's a weird viewing thing for me, because you think I would do it with my kid, but he's not interested, and neither is my wife. So, it's, yeah. Fitting it in is kind of odd.

Right. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I get that. Yeah. I get that. You know, because at nighttime, I'd normally be watching something serious, and it feels weird to put The Muppets on. But, you know. Right. Yeah, and you don't want to dig into your porn time with Muppets. That just seems gross. So, yeah. Well, you know, to each their own, Jason.

Have you gotten to the Kevin Smith episode yet? No, I have not. No, no. Okay, okay. Well, we'll talk about that later then. Still enjoying it very much. And I also am enjoying the rumor, speculation, hopefulness, whatever, that rock and roller coaster at Disney Studios might become Muppets Mayhem instead of Aerosmith.

Ooh, that would be awesome. Right? Wouldn't that be neat? Yeah. And the other thing that could happen is that, because the only thing left over in the former Muppets land is, of course, Muppet Vision 3D, which is classic, and I would hate to ever see shut down. And then they have, I guess it's Rizzo the Rat's pizza place over there.

Right. But my sense is that what Disney would probably really want to do with that space is expand it into more Star Wars land, and that would connect the Star Wars land with, what's the old?

Star Tours. Star Tours. Right, right. So, they could, if they made Rock and Roller Coaster into a Muppets thing, they could move Muppet Vision 3D over there, or, you know, use that space for something else.

They could do a conversion of Tower of Terror to something Muppety. Oh, I've got it, though. I've got it. I've got, there's the, there's the perfect segue from Star Wars land, Star Tours to the Muppets, anything Muppets, and that's, you have the bridge of- Pigs in space. Pigs in space.

Yes. That's it. Perfect. Yes. There you go. Yep. That's all you got to do. So, so wait, here's the thing, though. Pigs in space is canonically in the Star Wars universe because not just Mark Hamill, but Luke Skywalker made an appearance on The Muppet Show.

That's true. Along with Chewbacca and R2-D2 and C-3PO. That's right. So, Luke Skywalker has been on board the, what is it, the Swine Trek ship. So, it's not so crazy, and since Disney owns it all, why not?

It's brilliant, Jason. Brilliant. So much IP to plunder. Send the checks to Jason at Grumpy Old Geeks. Love it. Yeah. Okay. Well, back to Disney for one second here. Ahsoka has its streaming date for August 23rd.

We got the new trailer with, which just looks like a cut-up of the other trailer. Yeah. They're not giving much away, which is good. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it. I'm really digging these grown-up Star Wars shows. Yeah.

And I feel as though we're in good hands with the folks who are running this part of the Star Wars universe. So, yeah. We'll be there. Should be good. So, I found this article, and it made me think of the discussion we were having last week about, you know, about the kids these days and not wanting to think very hard and all that sort of stuff.

Hannah Gadsby, who's a comedian, was invited to basically curate a Picasso exhibit, and it is getting absolutely roasted. I just pulled this one quote. Not long ago, it would have been embarrassing for adults to admit that they found an off-out guard painting too difficult and preferred the comforts of story time.

What Gadsby did was to give the audience permission, moral permission, to turn their backs on what- Sorry. I guess the smoke is getting to me here. To turn their backs on what challenged them and to ennoble a preference for comfort and kitsch. So, they're basically saying, you're turning real art into nothing.

Is she, though? Apparently so, yeah. People are pissed. Because she just wrote, like, silly comments about everything. Right. Rather than take it seriously. Yeah. But, like, to what degree do you think this is the art community taking themselves oh so seriously?

Which they do love to do. Right. And perhaps that is precisely what, at least in part, what she's poking at. I think part of the frustration is, yes, you're entering into our hallowed grounds and you're making it normal. We don't want that. Right.

Yeah. Right. Interesting. But it is kind of funny. Still. And Twitter lost their minds. Which it does. But, I mean, yeah. I don't know. I think that you probably nailed it, that because she's doing this on location, that's what has people all bent out of shape.

If she'd done a virtual exhibit with the exact same commentary, people would have, you know, chuckled and laughed and said, oh, that's so funny and how droll and no one would think twice about it. Yeah. I think so, too. So. Yeah. Interesting. And in actual news related to what we talk about here, passkey support for 1Password has arrived in beta today, which I'm actually using.

And it's great. Oh, go on. I'm really interested to hear how it works. Say more. Basically, it's just fingerprint or facial recognition if you're on your phone or if you're on your desktop and it's no more passwords. It just does it. It's fantastic. Setup's a bit wonky because it's still in beta, but I've gotten it to work for quite a few sites and it's just great.

It works just like your iPhone does, basically. Huh. Does it work on YouTube without having to open that stupid app? I haven't tried YouTube yet because I'm never on YouTube. I should give that a go. Well, I'm never on YouTube. I'm using Google Docs. And then when I get logged out of Google Docs, I have to open YouTube.

Yes. Yes. It's the dumbest thing ever. Yeah. You need YouTube on your iPhone to unlock. My Google spreadsheet. Thanks. Huh. Thanks, Sundar. It's not like you don't have an authenticator, Google. Yeah. Right. Which I have to open for the other things that I have to use.

Yeah. But yeah, so far so good, man. I'm still finding my way with past keys and I say I'm bullish on them. I, I, everything I've, I've read so far seems to indicate that they're the real deal, that they're well thought out, that there are way more upsides than downsides.

But I'm still trying to get someone who's a really good explainer to come on my show and explain it exactly, you know, what it is, how it works. Oh, yeah. I don't know how it works. I think it's just magic. Yeah. Yeah. And it is a little bit behind the scenes, behind the scenes, computer magic, but, but that's fine.

And people I know and trust and respect have said that, yeah, this is the real thing. It's good. It's going to be great. I guess my fear is that like so many things like this, um, there'll be a flurry of activity and just barely not enough things will adopt it and then it'll fall by the wayside.

Well, I mean, when you think about the fact that we actually are still yelling at friends and family to use a password manager. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody still has, you know, suitcase one, two, three, four, five is their password. Right. Right. Well, we know how to get your email now. I mean, it's built into iOS and I guess macOS now too.

Um, I'm trying to get somebody from Apple to come on, but you know, it's hard to get anybody from Apple to, I've, you know what? I've never interviewed anyone from Apple on the cyber wire. I've done thousands of interviews. I've never had anybody from Apple on. Are they AI? Right. It seems as though if you, if you can't, like only the top five people in the company are authorized to speak on the record about anything.

Yeah. So, you know, it's hard to get a, an engineer that I've never seen an interview with an engineer, an Apple engineer, um, which, you know, I mean, that's Apple's thing. That's their discipline when it comes to messaging. But, um, you know, they'll, they'll, these people will do explanatory videos as part of WWDC.

And that's mostly how I've learned about pass keys is through one of their engineers explaining it at WWDC. And so I'd love to get that guy on my show, but no can do. They've been unresponsive. They've been unresponsive. Yeah. We'll give you Tim Cook, but you can't have anybody else.

Hey, I'll take Tim Cook. Hey, you know, if Tim's available, uh, sure. I'll, I'll slum and allow, allow Tim Cook to come on the cyber wire. Sure. Well, that's the Elon Musk thing too, right? Like he, he won't let anybody in any of his companies do interviews except for himself and like two or three other people at the top.

So, you know, I had, I had, I had actual experience with that happening to me, right? No, no, go on. I did a show for, uh, chief data officers called the data chief. And we had, we had the chief security person and chief press person from Tesla on the show and everything went fine.

It got through Tesla legal. Everything was peachy keen. We published the episode. It came up on his podcast player and he's like, take it down. I wasn't, I wasn't asked if it would be okay. Right. Yeah. That's what he does. He had a tantrum because we didn't, we didn't ask him to talk about the data workings of Tesla.

So it got killed because Elon had a tantrum. There you go. I can't see Tim Cook having tantrums. I think it's just their policy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to think, I guess, um, Microsoft is pretty open about having their folks come on shows.

Microsoft people are everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Amazon, same thing. I've, I've, I've spoken to lots of people from Google. Um, so, you know, I mean, that's, that's, that's the Apple way. That's their culture. And it seems to be working out for them. Yeah. Yeah. Seems to be okay. But, uh, but, uh, in this case where, you know, I, I have an educational interest for the benefit of all.

It'd be nice to not have to go to someone else to have the explanation done for something that Apple is champion, championing. It's a hard word. Um, so we'll see. Words have been hard recently. It's okay. More and more as time goes on.

Yeah. Funny. Funny how that works. I don't know. Uh, so the FBI put out a warning this week about sextortionists are using, uh, deep fakes to create, uh, your AI nudes and videos now that they're much more, much more convincing than I recorded you masturbating off your camera.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Uh, Joe Kerrigan and I actually talked about this on our most recent caveat show or no, I'm sorry. Hacking humans is the show I do with Joe. So many shows to keep. Sorry, Ben. So many shows. So many shows. Yeah. So, um, yeah. Uh, well, um, yeah.

We talked about this story and, um, the ability to do this, the, the tools with which you do this are readily available on dark web forums. The legit tools that you would get, you know, in a place like GitHub or something like that, they have guardrails in place to try to keep you from doing this sort of thing.

But, um, the other interesting thing I found in the reporting on this was that the FBI has said that the two things that the bad guys are demanding from their victims are, first of all, money. They're demanding of course, mostly in terms of gift cards or cryptocurrency.

But the second thing they're demanding are real nudes. Letting you know exactly who's doing this. 15 year old boys. Yeah. Well, I think that's part of it. But I think also it ups the ante where they've already got you in a state of emotional distress.

They tell you, here's the way to get out of this. But then you, if you send them real nudes, uh, then they just got real sextortion. Right. Exactly. They just turn it up a notch and you're on the hook for even more. So. You know how I've, I've, I've mitigated against this.

I have a secret QR code tattooed on my ass that no one's ever seen. So if, if you ever see a nude of me, you know, with my butt exposed, you, you, you know that there's no QR code there. So it's safe. It's, it's fake. I have nature's mitigation. I'm just not attractive.

Yeah. Well, that too. Yes. I do have a birth control body. Yes. Right. That's one thing. Yeah. Joe and I actually noted on our show that, uh, it was easy for us to be dismissive of this as, you know, middle-aged white pudgy men. Uh, there's, there's no real demand for nudes of us.

I've also wondered. Picture yourself in a hot 16 year old girl's body. I'm sorry. What? I think you misphrased that, my friend. You have to go to Instagram after that. Okay. Nevermind that. I haven't pictured that since I was 17. So, um, yeah, I'm sorry.

What were we doing here? I have no idea. Sorry. I was thinking of Janice from the Muppets. Um, yeah. Yeah. How old must she be now? I don't know. All right. She's legal. Back on track. Back on track. Back on track. Back on track. Um, totally lost the track.

Yeah, I guess. Thanks, Brian. How to derail a middle-aged white male podcast. Oh, my God. I'm sorry. I just, there's like a, there's like a firework show going off in my brain right now. You know, danger, danger.

Pull up, pull up, pull up. No, don't pull up. Pull out. Don't pull up. Yeah. So anyway, in cybersecurity news this week, I thought there was a notable story here. Um, Barracuda, who's a big name in, in cybersecurity.

Yeah. Exactly. Um, they have an email security gateway appliance that they sell that they've done quite well with. Well, let's just say they did. Um, and there has been revealed a vulnerability that, uh, they think it dates back six or nine months or so.

But, Barracuda has gotten to the point with this vulnerability where they have recommended that you not turn off the device, that you not patch the device, that you dispose of the device. No! Ouch. Yeah. And you rarely see that.

In other words, whatever's going on under the hood here is so bad and is at such a basic, deep level of hardware that Barracuda has decided. And, you know, let's hat tip to Barracuda. Probably shouldn't have used those Chinese chips. Well, you're right. Hat tip to Barracuda for making the tough choice here because.

Yeah. This is going to be, you know, there's going to be. Very expensive. A very expensive problem. Um, yeah, they're saying shut, you know, well, they did say turn them off, pull them out of the rack and replace them with something else. Um, that's a tough pill to swallow.

So. Yeah. That's, it's good to see a company actually owning that and not trying to dance around it. Right. Yeah. Right. So I thought that was noteworthy because that, that rarely happens. There's nothing wrong with your Tesla. We're just going to download a new update. Right.

Exactly. You've got your driveway one day and your Tesla has been replaced by a Ford. Um, so, uh, there was an interesting story over on NPR. Um, and it was called, uh, can AI report a radio story?

Um, this was, uh, who was this? Folks from planet money. Um, I love that. And so, yeah, good show. So they came at this using combination of things like chat GPT, uh, some of the, um, apps that we've talked about that enable you to simulate a voice.

And they, uh, sent, uh, chat GPT after a radio story. Basically, could we use chat GPT as a reporter to both generate the questions to ask and ingest the answers from our guests?

So we'll have real live human guests. We'll ingest the transcript of their answers into chat GPT. We'll allow chat GPT to pull the quotes from the people we interviewed and write all of the wraparound copy to create a radio story.

And it did it. And I got to say, probably not going to win a Pulitzer, but you could air this on certainly any local NPR affiliate. And I don't think anybody would blink at it. Right. Really interesting. Great.

I mean, on the plus side right now, it takes so much more effort than just having a human do it, but that's going to change. Right. And, and they make, you know, I think it's an excellent point that, um, right now you have to be so careful about fact checking everything. Yes. Yes. That, that it could end up being more work than it's worth.

So somebody is going to come out with the large language model that has built in fact checking. And then I think we're talking about a different ball game here. Right. Yep. Podcast over. Okay.

Thank God. Right. They won't need us anymore. Yeah. Yeah. It might get there. I don't know. We'll see. Right now I'm just so down on AI. It's just all such bullshit, but it'll get there. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I put in a link here.

Tom Hanks gave the commencement speech at Harvard. Did he? Or was it AI? It's worth a look. It's a really good speech. Um, I think the fact that it's Tom Hanks, he is, he is, uh, he is our generations or this generations, Jimmy Stewart.

Um, Jimmy Stewart was our generations, Jimmy Stewart, but Tom Hanks is the current generations, Jimmy Stewart. And, and I think that's important because I think having Tom Hanks deliver a message like this means that a lot more people will likely to be open to it than were it being delivered by a lot of other people.

So it's well-written. It's funny. Of course, it's brilliantly delivered. Uh, so I do recommend everybody check it out. It's worth, worth looking at. Will do. I have, I have one more thing. If we have a couple more minutes that I'm curious about, do we have time?

Oh, one more thing. Let's go. What do you got? So I've, I, at the risk of opening a can of worms here, but I'm very much interested. Yes, the Orioles are doing well. No, no, no. I'm very much interested in, in your opinions on this as two people whose opinions I respect when it comes to music.

I realized this week after some self-reflection that I do not get the Beastie Boys. Okay. It's not that I. What is this, 1994? Yes. So here's where.

This has been bothering him for a very long time, Brian. Be respectful. Yes, it has. So let's rewind the clock. The Beastie Boys came to prominence while I was in high school. Mm-hmm. right yeah lots of people fight for your right to party girls yeah brass ball revere brass monkey classic album yeah okay so you say but i've never gotten it like i don't understand

where like these guys sound like a garage band to me i guess i don't see the talent there and that's my opinion and and so that's all it needs to be right i like you i'd me not getting something but i guess where i'm coming at this you are not pretty fly for a white guy no i'm not no i'm not but where i'm trying to split this is that it's not that i don't appreciate the beastie boys it's

not that i actively dislike the beastie boys because i've enjoyed some of their music but it's i don't get the beastie boys okay their popularity their appeal eludes me and that's fine that's it is fine yes yes i i that's but i'm curious because we've never talked about this before so i don't

know how either of you feel about the beastie boys i'm curious what your take is on them and if you have any insights for what it is that i might possibly be missing and i open the floor okay brian you go first um i like the beastie boys i don't love them check your head came out when i was in college so that was a big album and obviously the first album came out when i was a youngin so you know that was

fun a lot of fun uh at the time uh paul's boutique their second album is a masterpiece in sampling couldn't be done today um because of lawsuits and you know copyright um and they're geniuses for that uh they're very talented musicians uh they've written a lot of songs um i'm not really into rap but i think

that that's the main appeal for the beastie boys was it opened up rap to uh cultures that didn't necessarily get it and that's the thing made it okay right so they were a gateway in the same way that gateway drug the same way that run dmc doing walk this way with aerosmith exactly opened up rap very much so very much a whole yeah allowed rap to be on mtv yeah the beastie boys

were a gateway in the same sort of way i think so yeah interesting all right jason i never liked him i never got it i'm in camp bitner on this one completely never understood it all my friends were like this is amazing i'm like it sounds like it sounds stupid to me i just never never got into i put them in the same camp as red hot chili peppers red hot chili peppers is my least favorite band of all time

i would prefer they all be exploded i i wish there were with all the this ai i need a filter on my life to make sure i never hear a red hot chili pepper song again now having said that i understand the drummer is insanely talented flea is an amazing bassist and they've had a rotating cast of heroin junkie guitarist that are also amazing right but fuck the lead singer and fuck their stupid lyrics and their

stupid songs yeah but so but a lot of people like them a lot yeah so a lot of people like getting back to yeah but getting back to the beasties and and brian uh your notion that they are genius musicians i guess that's the part that i don't get and perhaps it's that i have not uh explored their

music at any depth other than the hits um but like i listen to a song like girls or even fight for your right to party well the first album is a not the finest musicianship that was casios and whatever it's later exactly exactly okay all right so there's a lot that i how to play all the instruments yeah yeah yeah i haven't given myself the opportunity to appreciate the musicianship that perhaps they grew

into but the thing is dave uh it's a big wide world out there and you don't have to right like if you're not into it you're not into it that's fine yeah there's a million bands out there it's true it's true i wouldn't uh i wouldn't waste time uh lose sleep over this over the beastie boys seriously no i don't i don't i just you know i i mean they're a big cultural touchstone i get it i get

questioning questioning why this has not ever affected me when you know hall of fame all that sort of stuff you know widely respected but at the end of the day it comes down to what you like and yeah you just don't like it and that's cool the heart wants what the heart wants as long as it's not the red hot chili peppers we're cool all right and that's this week's episode of validation with jason and brian yeah all right

well yeah i appreciate it and i think they're of their time too like people that grew up with it and got into it still love it i i don't i wonder if like millennials or gen z are listening to beastie boys i i doubt it i doubt it yeah that's a good point it reminds me of like when i showed my son uh who's 24 we watched caddyshack together one of the best movies of all time and i'm sure it doesn't translate

exactly exactly and i was like i was like what do you think and he was like well he says i understand why you think this is funny uh and he said and i'm really he said i'm really glad to now understand the references that you and mom are constantly making that i now know came from this movie

but it's not very good and i yeah it for today's audience it's not do i love it i do i think when i saw it it was hilarious but you're right jason it just doesn't have legs i wonder if an airplane were the two disappointments when we did uh does it have legs i was amazed at how bad airplane was and i was just so disappointed when caddyshack was not what i thought it was anymore

i'm very curious if monty python is translated to the younger generations my brother who's 20 years younger than me so he's 30 now or 31 uh i do remember he liked monty python quite a bit when he was young but you know he's not young anymore he's in his 30s so you know when you're talking like you know teens nowadays i tend to doubt it but i have no research that is me pulling

it out of my ass yeah yeah i think a lot of it's just pacing you know with everything everything i mean these old comedy movies just seem so slow now yeah and dated references that people won't get and all all right stuff yeah right who's margaret thatcher right yeah right monty python sketch of sketches about the philosophers and you know nobody's learning philosophy anymore so yeah yeah yeah all right well

thank you for uh helping me work through that little thing in my brain i i guess i'll take your advice brian and uh just be okay with it i mean give uh give check your head a listen if you've never listened to that album it's i have not really it's pretty good okay and the musicianship is on display but otherwise you got to fight for your right to ignore it

over at patreon we've got bill len and terry welcome aboard yes thank you all so much over at paypal we got benjamin and ralph all right over at the tip jar we've got christopher linda and jeff thank you everybody and just a quick reminder if you do want to sign up for patreon you do get the shows a little bit early and ad free and you can and it starts at just uh three dollars a month and you can pay us more if you want but you know we'd appreciate that but yeah three bucks a month you

get the shows ad free and all that good stuff and at high res woohoo yeah and i found it uh none more fitting that during pride month pat robertson died good riddance yeah fucker no comment i'm just gonna sit here and chuckle until next time i'm jason de philippo and i'm brian chilmeister thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks show notes and links to everything we talked about today are at gog.show/605 gog.show/donate is the place to drop us a few bills so we can

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