606: Peppa Swisher

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. I just got some new internet in the office, Brian. Woohoo. Yeah, and they got a discount too. They gave me, it went from like $165 to $116. And so that's how they get you. First couple months.

Well, now it's for a year. It's good. Yeah. I'm good for a year. I'm good for a year. I got the price for a year. You never stay anywhere for a year anyways. Well, no, I stay exactly for a year because my lease gets turned up. That's why I'm moving. That's why I just got the thing. So the guy came and installed it yesterday and we checked the speed.

1100 down, which is pretty damn good. That's over gigabit. 39 up. Yep. They are stingy. They are stingy on the upstream. Well, you know, they're trying to stop people from uploading movies to Twitter.

Oh, yes, that's right. That's right. Oh, man. God, I hate business internet. Business internet is the worst. It's a joke. You might as well just get personal. Well, if they would, I'm just in an office building, so you can't, like at home, I have gigabit both ways, thousand up, thousand down for, I think it's 89 bucks.

Yeah. So business internet's a joke. It's a ripoff. Yeah. Speaking of ripoffs, can we all just agree now that buying a bed over the internet is dumb? It's the only ad I get served anymore. I get served ads for beds and mattresses constantly. And I'm like, I have mattresses.

That's what I like. I'm not interested. Stop. Yeah. Here's the problem. All of these, like, you know, the original, the OG internet bed companies, all of them have been in homes long enough now that we're finally starting to see, like, how crappy they are.

Your products don't last. Yep. You're no Sealy. No, no, they're not. Because that's what I'm, I'm getting rid of all of these stupid memory foam mattresses.

I've got two of them. And my back is so screwed up. My hips are so jacked up. This thing is three years old. And it, I mean, it looks like the Grand Canyon because it's just got all these divots and holes and that don't snap. I'm finding myself sleeping in different places on the bed every single night just to find a spot that isn't sunk to the foundation.

Now, if I remember correctly, your bed also came with a terms of service, so you may not be able to return it. Oh, well, no, I can't return it, but I also got it for free. So I'm not, I can't complain about that. Sometimes podcasting pays off. Sometimes. Yeah. But that was, that was from the more popular podcast.

Oh, yeah. Not ours. I didn't get shit for this one. But yeah, man, those, the ads are just ridiculous because I, I, these late comers to the game, unless they figure out the longevity problem behind memory foam, who the hell's going to buy a mattress for this much, you know?

I don't want a mattress that comes in the box. No, I want a big burly guys to come and deliver it and not be able to fit it through the door. Yep. That's what I want. I want friends level couch up the stairs problems. I want all of that real mattress. Yeah. And, and I want mattress removal. That is the best part.

That's the best part. Let's take my bed bug strewn thing. Yeah. So Sealy Posturepedic, here I come. I had one of those for 12 years and I swear it still worked just fine the day I got rid of it. Yep. Man. A little bit back in the news here with the Microsoft Activision Blizzard shenanigans.

Well, the FTC has finally said, nah, we're not going to let you do that. So, so they filed an injunction. It's going to go to federal court now, which I guess Microsoft and Activision are happy about because at least then they get to plead their case and move the, move the ball along. I, I'm still in favor of this going through.

I have no problems with it. Yeah. I mean, the biggest competitor in the world right now is Sony. Yeah. You know, we, I'm fine with that. You can't compete with little mom and pop shops against Sony. You need a monolith to be able to do it. Yeah. And, uh, and it's okay. Yeah. And, and the thing is, it's like to be able to make these games to the quality that you have to make them anymore.

You need this type of, you know, machine behind it. They're movie studios now. They're bigger than movie studios. Way bigger. Yeah. Way bigger. You've got to, you've got to have the infrastructure for this these days. Yep. And, uh, as I've been playing the new blizzard game, Diablo four, I can, you know, I can attest to the fact that you really do need an immense, amazing team behind it.

And it pays off. I love this game. It's so much fun. So come on, FTC, get your shit together. Let it happen. Let it happen. A little more follow-up, uh, ex-billionaire Elizabeth Holmes says she can't pay $250 a month to the people she cheated. It's, it's worth remembering. She had a personal wealth of $4.5 billion in the hail and the heyday of her company that was defrauding people.

And she's saying she can't afford to pay the victim. She built the $250 per month in restitution that was court ordered. It's also worth remembering that she's married to the heir of a luxury hotel chain, Billy Evans. So there's quite a lot of money floating around there. Prenup. Prenup.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So I'm sure there's some separation of church and state going on with that bank account. I do like the fact that they say that, uh, she stated that millions of dollars in legal bills have left them nearly broke. 4.5 billion minus million. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, that 4.5 billion was just on paper. That's true. That is true. Yeah. Kind of dissolved along with her credibility when a lawsuit hit. Yeah. Hey, but, you know, she can sign up for this new Google class action lawsuit that I just got tipped on to yesterday.

I already signed up. I can't wait to get my $7 and 70 cents. Exactly. So even if she can't get enough money to pay the restitution to all of the people she defrauded, she can at least, you know, go down to the commissary and get some shitty ramen. Yeah. There you go. So this is for Google, right?

Yes. And, uh, something that they did in their headers. Yeah. It's some tech thing. But the funny thing is the, the way I first saw this, it's like, if you, if you ever watched a 30 rock and Googled something, you are eligible. Cause yeah. If you've used Google since Google existed, you're eligible.

Pretty much. Yeah. Which if everybody's getting $7 and 70 cents, of course, nobody files. Again, public service notice you must file. It is your civic duty to file for these things because it's the only way they get punished. Yep. Took five minutes. Easy breezy.

Link is in the show notes. GOG.show slash 606. Go get it done. Get it done. Yep. And a little follow up from last week's Coinbase news. They're coming back and responding with some of the most childish shit that I've ever heard in my life. And this is from Molly White's newsletter.

She did a special edition this week. It says, but the SEC let us go public in other flawed arguments in Coinbase's defense. So here are a few highlights. Securities laws written in the 1930s can't apply to crypto. Yes, they can. Murder laws written back in the Stone Age still apply.

Yep. Yep. That works. Here's my favorite. But the SEC let us go public. That doesn't mean you get to do stupid shit. Exactly. Enron. Okay. You know. There you go. And they finally say there is no path to compliance.

There's a lot of paths to compliance. Yeah. There's many. It's pretty, pretty, pretty easy, actually. Yep. And Molly's response was so picture perfect. She says, if a company went to the FDA and said, hello, we'd like to start selling heroin to the public for recreational use.

And the FDA said, no, you can't do that. The company could loudly complain that the FDA was not giving them a path to compliance. People would probably laugh at them. The company could decide the FDA was wrong, demand that they and or Congress write new rules to allow for this innovative new heroin business that would bolster American capital markets and decide that in the meantime, they were going to sell heroin anyway.

People not might be terribly sympathetic when it didn't end well for them. Bingo. Yep. I love it. Pretty much. Mm hmm. All they had to do was follow the rules. The rules have been there for since 1930s. I mean, like we said last week, if you're still hodling your crypto, give up the ghost.

Time to move on, you know. And I mean, this is my favorite one. I was thinking about this this week and I'm like, everybody thought crypto was too big to fail, but it sounds like to me it's too fail to big. It is just fundamentally flawed that it's never going to get big again.

It's never going to go back to its heyday. So just get rid of it. And I know you're going to have some cognitive dissonance that you have pumped crypto so much to your bros and your family and friends, you know, get rid of it. Just get rid of it under the table.

And if you have to justify it to yourself, just say it's for the environment. Fair enough. Agreed. I'm going to sell mine. It's just been sitting there. Yet losing value. Well, you know, it goes down, it goes back up. It's never going to reach what I paid for it. So time to cut the cord.

In the news.

Reddit has been in the news quite a bit this week. And I have to admit, Brian, that at the beginning of this whole story, I think I even put it in the show notes. I'm like, I really couldn't care less. If you find something funny to talk about, feel free to throw it in the show notes. And as the week has been progressing, I've been paying a little bit more attention to it and a little bit more attention to it because it's finally, it's finally piquing my interest in getting to the point where it's entertaining.

Because the long and the short of it is Reddit has decided to charge a buttload of money for its API access because all of the generative AIs are like swiping their content, putting it into their models, and they want to get paid for it. They're also claiming that third-party apps are an undue drain on their finances because there are a lot of popular third-party apps that are better than the Reddit apps.

Yeah. Redditors have their knickers in a bunch saying, no, you can't do that. You can't make money on us. Well, they can certainly try, and then you can stop using their services. This is what we call a free market. Yes. CEO Steve Huffman said, that is exactly what we're going to do, little people.

And we don't care because everybody is expecting Reddit to backtrack and cave to the pressure from all of their Redditors and moderators. They want to make money. Yeah. They're not profitable, so they're like, screw you guys. We're going to do what we want to do.

Now, the thing that they should have done is they should have actually built their own product to be decent, or they should offer discounts or tiered API pricing. Again, it's pretty simple. Yeah. I mean, there are ways around this. But at this point, thousands and thousands of really popular subreddits have gone dark, gone private, which means Google can't index them.

The API can't spit out anything for it. So what they've finally done now is said, hey, guys, if you want to do that, we're just going to kick you out. And we're going to replace you with somebody who is amenable to us. No more private groups.

Bye-bye. So, yeah. So, to me, this just reiterates everything we've said from day fucking one on this show is that if you build your business in somebody's backyard, don't get upset when they turn the sprinklers on. And that is exactly what Steve Huffman is doing.

And he is, like, laughing his ass off just cranking down the cold water and spraying everybody in the yard. I love it. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty straightforward. Like, you could have set up your own forum on your own website pretty cheap to have these conversations.

But you didn't. You used Reddit. And now, well, Reddit is changing. Sorry. But, Brian, that's where all the people are. If I put a PHP BB, you know, instance up on my box, nobody would come. Well, it's kind of like doing this podcast.

Exactly. So, I, you know. We're keeping it to ourselves and nobody's listening. That's the choice we made. We didn't build our backyard in Spotify. Yeah. Speaking of Spotify.

Speaking of Spotify, they've been fined $5.4 million for violating GDPR data rules. Again, these rules have been around for a long time. It's amazing that people just don't follow them. I know it's a pain in the ass. I know it intimately because my company that I work for follows GDPR very, very closely.

And it sucks. And it's a lot of pain. There's extra time. There's extra effort. You have to keep control of your data. But that's also the law. Right. It kind of comes back to that thing that we used to talk about with Bittner, where some companies were treating personal data as a liability and not an asset.

Yes. They should treat it as toxic. Toxic. Exactly. Get as little as you need to do what you need to do. Mm-hmm. You don't fucking open up the fucking hot fire hose and take it all. Unless you're mugged wine when you get fined. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, at least Spotify and this one owned up to it. And it seemed to be kind of a really weird little loophole. Yeah. And, you know, not a real big deal. That's why it was only, you know, three packs of coffee creamer out of their daily budget. Yeah. But. $5.4 million less to give to artists.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Bono doesn't get his new Bentley this week. Yeah. That's about it. The Washington Post is reporting some more troubling news from Tesla and their autopilot mode. Right.

They have kind of dug into the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration's data pool. And they have found that there are 736 crashes since 2019 and 17 fatalities. And the numbers are going up, not down.

Which, you know, from more Teslas being sold, more people pressing the autopilot button, more crash is going to happen. Yes. Stop calling it autopilot because it's not. And the fact that you do makes people use it in that way. The other two points I want to make really quickly is, and I was listening and I read up on this a little bit, still better than humans in general.

Which is sad. Have you been out in the road much lately? Yes, I have. And it's insane. Like, people seem to have forgotten how to drive completely. Like, it's, I'm almost at the point like, okay, let's all use autopilot then. I'm just wondering how many of those people are using autopilot.

Yeah, who knows? Because, I mean, again, it's got to be all or nothing. That's always been my thing about self-driving cars. And autopilot isn't autopilot. It's a fucking beta. Stop using it that way. And also, Tesla seems to have pivoted to basically, we're a battery and charging company now.

That's where our money is going to be. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting, too. It is better than humans. But the thing is, I'm a human and I don't want to play roulette when I get in my car every morning. Yeah, exactly. That's really what it comes down to. I mean, we do anyways because, like, I look over and, like, people are fucking live streaming while they're driving or doing their makeup or whatever or eating a full fucking seven-course meal.

Like, it's insane what people do in their cars now. Like, you're supposed to be driving. Yeah. That's the job. That's what you're doing right now. You're driving. You're not doing a makeup tutorial on YouTube. It all comes down to the day that they put cup holders in cars, Brian. I think that was the fall of society right there, the day that we put cup holders in cars.

I think it's the cell phones, but, you know. I know. I'm plugging around. Anyway, they say that there are distinct patterns. Four involved – I don't know how this is a pattern. Four involved a motorcycle. Okay, that's – and another involved an emergency vehicle.

Not seeing a pattern there. I just – there is no fucking pattern. The pattern – okay, here's the pattern. You're in a Tesla, and you press the button that says, take me there. That's about it. And then you stop paying attention. Yeah, and they're saying that the same thing that we've said and everybody's been saying, it comes back to the fact that Elon said, we're going to do this with cameras.

We're not going to have LiDAR in the cars. We're not going to have anything that, I don't know, is remotely technologically advanced. We're going to have a bunch of webcams strapped around, and it's up to the engineers to figure out how to make it work. Yep, going real well. Yeah, yep. Imagine if they had LiDAR.

It might actually work. It might. It could. Who knows? Maybe we should try it. Maybe. Maybe. Speaking of stupid car shit, Mercedes is now adding ChatGPT to its infotainment system. Why?

Because. ChatGPT. That's all you need, Brian. Because. Because. Mercedes. What are you thinking? You make beautiful cars. Leave it at that. Do they? I don't like Mercedes that much. I prefer BMW. Ew. I don't like either of them.

But anyway. So. The thing is, you can sign up now. Just press the beta button. I would like to join the beta button on your app in your phone because that's how you do shit nowadays for your car. But the thing is, do not expect any level of privacy whatsoever because they are going to be keeping everything you say to your car.

They're going to analyze it. They're going to quote unquote anonymize it, which we know how well that works. It doesn't. It doesn't. Tell me a story about Jason DeFilippo Mercedes. Okay. There you go. De-anonymized. So that's, I can't wait to hear what people are going to use it for.

I think it would be fun, personally, if I'm on a long road trip and I don't have anybody to talk to and I'm bored. If only there were things like audio books and music. I know. Well, sometimes you get bored of those too, you know. Companions in the car. No, God, no. That's the worst.

Nobody wants to go on a road trip with people. Are you insane? I've got a family, man. I don't have a choice. Okay, Griswold. And speaking of the privacy with the chat GPT, Google is saying to their own staff, do not use BARD for the things that you want to use BARD for.

Yeah. Don't use it for confidential information. Yeah. About your own company. We might slurp it up and it might get out. We don't know. That's already happened. It's already happened a couple of times. It's insane. Like, what are you people thinking? Don't put private data in there.

Yeah. We don't know where it's going or where it's going to come out. Yeah. So I saw this article about AI. AI at the office makes you a lonely, sleepless alcoholic. I would say being at the office makes you... It can.

That certainly can. So AI has upended the workplace, bringing with it mass layoffs and the fear it will destroy humanity as we know it. But a new study reveals the damaging effects don't end there. People are just interacting with the AI all day and not interacting with people. And that's bad.

That's basically the study. Stop talking to AI. Start talking to your co-workers. If you just talk to AI, you're going to drink more and you're going to be lonely. Duh. Yeah. Has nobody watched Black Mirror? Jesus. The findings come as reports of mental health epidemic in the U.S. are on the rise with more than one in five adults describing their mental health as only fair or poor.

So we're doing great. All right. All this technology is really working out for us. I really need to step up my work on my AA bot. Yeah. That's going to help. And again, Twitter getting kicked out of another office.

Actually, I think this is the first one they're really being kicked out of because he's stopped paying rent. But that's not flying in Colorado. Basically, they've just said, yeah, you got to leave the office. They fired an injunction, said you got to be out of here. You're not you haven't paid your rent. You've you've reneged on all of your promises.

Bye bye. So there's 300 or so Twitter employees that don't have to worry about becoming lonely alcoholics by doing A.I. in their office all day. No, they get to do that from home now. Yes. Now they get to do it from home, which is even worse in some cases. Stuck up on that white claw, people.

Yeah, you're going to need it. So good. Good movie, Elon. I can't. The hits just keep on coming. You're just not going to pay people. How's that going to work out in the long run? The world's richest man decides not to pay anybody. Yeah, exactly. Oh, wait, he's not the world's richest man anymore.

Never mind. Well, he better stop paying more things. God. This is the greatest thing ever. Elon loves the Fall of Civilizations podcast. So he reached out to the guy who made the podcast, Paul Cooper, and said, hey, can you please put your show on Twitter?

Because we want people to put their podcasts on Twitter now. And Paul's like, no, now. He says, Twitter's become a safe haven for hate speech. And meanwhile, crypto scammers and bots are paying to be boosted to the top of replies. Everything that once made Twitter special seems to be leeching away.

So go fuck yourself. I'm not going to put my podcast up there so you can do bed ads. No, thank you. Exactly. And neo-Nazis. Good times. So we've got some Web 2.0 news or Economy 2.0, gig economy, which we haven't talked about in a bit.

Economy 2.0! New York City has set an $18 per hour minimum wage for food delivery workers. That's Uber Eats, Grubhub, all those different companies, which, of course, is going to basically put them out of business or they'll pass on the cost to you. Yep. So that burger will now be $75 instead of the $50 it is now.

You might as well buy your burger from Ticketmaster. Pretty much. Although they're going to tell you it's going to cost that much. It won't be a surprise anymore. That's the new news from Ticketmaster. That's going to solve all the problems. Yeah. So not related whatsoever, Grubhub has now laid off 15% of its employees.

So that will supposedly help them stay competitive with the market. Sure. Good. Good news there. So lastly, DoorDash announced it would be laying off nearly 1,300 employees due to operating expenses, which they weren't paying the people to begin with.

Now they're being forced to pay the people. And now they basically we're seeing the end of the business model. End of story. So you're going to have to go get your burger yourself, you lazy fucks. Or we're going to have kids back on bikes like we used to have. Yeah. Or just pizza.

Domino's did it for a long time. There you go. Yeah. The world didn't end because, you know, Domino's had their own delivery guys. Yeah. If you're that lazy, you get a pizza. You don't get a Ruth's Chris steak. Mmm. Steak. Mmm.

But better. Better at the place. It actually is. I would not want a filet delivered. No. There's just no way it's going to be good. End of story. Brian, Brian. No, no, no. It's resting. That's what they're going to say. It's resting straight out. Covered in foil in the car. Yeah.

And a reminder, I saw this article. All the big tech layoffs so far in 2023. Spotify, Grubhub, Shopify, Polestar, SoundCloud, Lyft, Dropbox, Roku, Lucid Motors, Meta, Rivian, Zoom, Yahoo, Dell, Deliveroo, DocuSign, GitLab, Twitter, GoDaddy, Twilio, Google, Amazon, Coinbase, IBM, Microsoft, PayPal, Salesforce, and some of them more than once.

Hang on to your jobs, kiddos. No. It was a year and a half ago that we were talking about the Great Resignation, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. How did that work out? Oh, exactly as we fucking predicted. Those that didn't resign are now getting fired.

Oh. Told you it was a dumb idea to quit your jobs, kid. They're going to do it for you. Mm-hmm. I saw this one last night. I just, my jaw dropped. Google Domains shutting down. Assets sold and being migrated to Squarespace. Squarespace. Yeah.

Oh. Killed web design. Yes. Unintuitive clusterfuck. Thank you very much, Squarespace. So first up, Google sold domains? I didn't even know. Yeah, they did. They've been doing it since 2014. But here's the fun part. It came out of beta in 2022.

They attached some LiDAR to it. Yeah. We're going to be long dead before BARD comes out of beta, I tell you. Yeah, definitely. Second, hover.com slash GOG for all your domain name needs and 10% off your first purchase.

If you don't want to go to Squarespace. And I just love this. I found this on the killed by Google Twitter account. Mm-hmm. There's actually a Twitter account out there for things that have been killed by Google. But the best part is their tag. Google has a big graveyard. Yeah, it is. Google. Google Plus.

Oh, I miss them. Their tagline, which is the best part, disappointment as a service. That's Google. That's Google. That is Google. And finally, for the few Gen Zers and millennials who still listen to this show, I'm sorry.

I feel for you. MGM Casinos has decided to allow people to take selfies at the tables and at the slots. And how do you think that's going to go over, Brian? This policy is going to be reversed within six months. At least.

Yeah. If it lasts that long, that'd be crazy if it does. Yeah. They're like, oh, people can take selfies, you know, because and take video of their own hands. Okay. What about the other people at the table? They're saying that there's a broad policy in place that guests are restricted to showing themselves and not the casino staff or other guests because of privacy concerns.

Good luck framing that photo. Someone should tell them that there are cameras on both sides of the phone. Okay. I can make like I'm taking a selfie and just taking a picture of the whole fucking table, you know? Yeah. This is not going to last.

There's no way. No. Yeah. Silly, silly rabbits. But you got to share every moment of your life. Look at me losing money. You just get Bitcoin for that. Jesus Christ. That's true. Not a good photo, though. No free booze. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

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Media Candy. Over on Max, I saw the first episode of The Idol, not Billy, with Johnny Depp's daughter in it. And The Weeknd. All of Johnny Depp's daughter in it. Yes.

I will just say that I've seen episode one. Right. There's two episodes out. Draw your own conclusions. It is not getting good reviews. It's not that good. It's really not. And The Weeknd has come out and sang. But they're supposed to be Despicable. Yeah, but nobody wants this. It's horrible.

We just finished Despicable. You know, succession's over. We're good for a while. We need some heroes, not anti-heroes or scumbags. I agree. Yeah. Oh, man. And because I'm turning into an old man, I have tuned into Crime Scene Kitchen. Just from the title, I know I will never watch this show.

Joel McHale is the host. And he's funny as hell. Okay. I liked him in this. I'm not a big fan of his usually, but he's funny as hell at this. All right. I don't like baking shows. This has, like, every strike against it. Turns out it's a great show.

I can't stop watching it. I binged the entire first season. I think it actually works better because I know nothing about baking. So they go into the Crime Scene Kitchen, and there are clues as to what they need to make, and then all these teams go back and try and figure it out.

And it's kind of fun. I just, for mindless entertainment at the end of the day, when I need to turn my brain off, this fits the bill 100%. Fair enough. That's what I have baseball for. Yeah. Well, I'm out of guy's grocery games. I've seen them all, so I've got to watch something now. Jeez. And my darling Padma Lakshmi is leaving Top Chef after 20 seasons, which is very sad.

20 seasons, which is what, six years? 16. Oh, 16. Okay. Yeah. Remember when a season was a year? Yeah. Yeah. Well, what, Survivor, they're on season 46, I think. They've been out for 22 years, so they're doing two plus a year.

That's ridiculous. That show is, oh my God, that show is so bad now. So bad. But I'm sad about Top Chef. I like that show. So it's over. I'm not going back. Forget it. Maybe they'll replace her with somebody good. No, they're going to put Gail in her place. And Gail is good, but she's not Padma good.

And Padma's got another new show, that Taste of the Nation show, which I haven't seen season two of, but season one was awesome. I watched a few of that. It was good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's as close as you can get to Bourdain nowadays, I think. From just quality of filming, quality of story. It's not as obviously dark and black and bleak.

It doesn't have the Bourdain, yes. Yeah. Yeah. You get boobs instead of Bourdain. There you go. That's a fair trade. Fair trade. Black Mirror Season 6 is out. So far getting pretty good reviews. Not going to watch it. I started to watch the first episode last night and it was just too late because I'd been working my ass off.

So I just fell asleep. I'm like, no, I can't make it. I can't make it. But I was concerned about it because I thought Charlie Booker, there was a big fight and he wasn't doing the next season, but I checked all the credits. He did all six. Yeah. He did them all. Yeah. So I'm actually looking forward to it.

I'll give it a shot. Yeah. I'll watch that instead of The Idol, for fuck's sake. Yes. Speaking of that, you wanted heroes instead of bleakness. Star Trek Strange New World is back. I watched the first episode and it was wonderful. Oh, okay.

I can't wait. You know what? I'll ping pong. I'll do Black Mirror, then I'll watch a Star Trek. Then I'll do Black Mirror, then I'll watch a Star Trek. Yeah. I'm going to drink some whiskey and then I'm going to take some Coke. And then I'm going to drink some whiskey and then I'm going to have some Coke. You hit me about eight months ago. I'd be in for that, as a matter of fact.

And I saw this that just made me kind of cringe. Patrick Stewart and LeVar Burton agree. Star Trek Picard season three was perfect, but they pitch one last hurrah. And I was just like, no. Yeah. I think we're good. I mean, I'd watch it. Don't get me wrong, but I think we're good.

We've said goodbye twice. Yeah. They finished it. It is picture perfect. I'm down with the legacy idea. I'm down with Let's Follow Six and her ship. But no, we don't need them again. They can do guest spots. Cameos, baby.

Yeah. Cameos, baby. It's good. Yeah. And Patrick Stewart was saying that he really thinks that there should be a final movie and he keeps telling people about it. And he says, and so far there's been no eager response. Good. Good. That's what we want. Good.

We're done, Patrick. You and LeVar are the only two that want anything else. So stop it. Stop it. I mean, don't get me wrong. There's a part of me that does want this, but I realize it can't be good. It can't be. I just want to go back and watch season three again because it was so perfect.

It was good. For reasons that defy explanation, I watched Ant-Man and the Wasp, Quantumania. Okay. I don't understand what the fuck happened and I don't care. And I'm never watching another one of these movies again, ever. So you say, again.

I know. Sometimes you're just bored and I can't find anything and it's right there. So I was like, maybe there's something to do this. You go back to Marvel like I go back to Facebook. And there was nothing to it. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And they managed to make What's-Her-Face look bad.

She's beautiful. The girl from Lost. I don't know who What's-Her-Face is. The girl from Lost that's in the movies. She plays the Wasp. I don't watch any of those. I also watched the trailer for the second season of Apple TV Plus Series Foundation for no reason whatsoever.

I don't know what book they're adapting because it's sure as shit isn't Foundation. Not even close. Not even close. They're fucking space battles and fucking dragons. And what the fuck is this show? It's a game of what the fuck is what it is. I don't think I'm going to watch.

I just, I'll watch the first one out of curiosity, but that's probably going to be it. I think I'm done. It's just not Foundation. I was done halfway through season one. And then you're like, oh, I keep going. And I kept going. And I'm just like, no, I should have been done when I said I was done. It makes no sense.

It's nonsensical. It's great. It has nothing to do with the books. Other than character names. That's it. Well, maybe you can get an AI to change every time they say Foundation to something else like bugger, bugger, boo. Stupid sci-fi with dragon show. Yeah, that's about it.

Netflix signups have increased 102% after password sharing crackdown in the U.S. So apparently it's working for them to make their money. Apparently. Yeah. Well, you know, you can only share so many. Then there you go. They will start charging $7.99 for any extra members who use the account outside of the Netflix household, which is a collection of your Netflix devices connected to the Internet at the main place you watch Netflix.

Okay. I don't know what that means, really. Apparently it's tied to your Wi-Fi, but what if you use a VPN and you have two different Wi-Fis? Am I going to have to pay $7.99? Or you watch from office, go on the road. Yeah, exactly. It's just whatever.

We'll see how this plays out. I'm sure they're using AI to do, you know, generative analysis on where the IPs are coming from. Yeah. I already pay extra to have somebody on my account that's outside of my house, so whatever. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to have to do that.

They are going to open up a pop-up restaurant here in Los Angeles, though, for some reason. Well, that makes sense. Yeah. Why not? Uh-huh. Sure. Yeah. I mean, they've made some money off of those, like, Stranger Things pop-ups and experiences, so they're like, oh, why not?

Let's do a—fuck it, let's do a restaurant. Why not? They make money, don't they? Well, it's just a pop-up, so it's—this is a publicity play, which, fair enough, we're talking about it. Yes, your favorite foods from your favorite Netflix chefs, Curtis Stone, Dominique Crenn, Ming Tsai, Nadia Hussain, Anne Kim, Rodney Scott, Jacques Torres, Andrew Zimmerman, or Andrew Zimmern.

I've heard of three of them. Yeah. That's it. And are they actually going to be their cooking, or is it just going to be, we've put together some of their recipes, here you go, get the fuck out. They'll probably show up for one in-person event. Yeah, exactly. I don't think Ming Tsai is going to be in the back flipping burgers for you.

No, I don't think so. All right, well, publicity play, fair enough. Speaking of that, Paul McCartney is using AI to create a final song for the Beatles. He's using AI to turn a John Lennon demo into one last song for the Beatles.

The same technology they used in the movie that they did recently, and I don't know about this, because apparently even George Harrison, when he was still alive, said that song sucks. But we're going to get it anyways. Way to ruin the legacy.

Yeah, it's what's going to happen. Why not? Why not? Who cares? I saw The Cure the other night. They were unbelievably good, by the way. Better than usual? They have no right to be as good as they are now. Yeah, better than usual. They were all loving being out there. Everybody was loving it.

Great cross-section of crowd, like young, tiny, teeny goss. Who knew? Goss back. Anyways, they were ridiculously good and fair to him for keeping prices down and keeping prices on merch down. The one thing I want him to do now is to work on concessions at venues.

I paid $17 for a beer. Oh, Jesus. And it wasn't a tall boy, Jason. This was a regular beer. Wow. Well, they got to make the money somehow. Well, yeah. And that rolls into this other story I found.

Gen Z is drinking less at concerts. Because it costs $17 for a fucking beer. Well, there you go. Yeah. They all got fired from Google and they can't afford their beer. At first, I was reading this article and I was getting upset at Gen Z going, come on, man.

This is how venues make money. Like, they basically get the beer money. And then I was like, I just paid $17 for a beer. Who the fuck can afford that? Yeah, really? No wonder everybody's drinking less. They're drinking in the fucking parking lot. Mm-hmm.

Pretty drinking. Yep. Many times. Love it. Actually, they blame weed. People like weed a lot more now. That's not an excuse. People have been smoking weed at concerts since concerts began. Exactly. And still drink. And still drink. I don't like weed.

I like to drink. So I would buy beer. And everything else. So that, yeah. It's just too much money. Yeah. It's $17 for a beer. One. Small. What the fuck are they... What are they thinking?

Who's going to buy more than one? I love drinking at shows. I bought one. To be honest, Brian, that was $17 Canadian. So it was about $0.35 U.S. $12, $13. Still more than a six-pack. I'll tell you that.

Yeah, definitely. The first time I heard Peppa Pig was from you. Mm-hmm. Because you have one of those things in your house. There's... You can now be serenaded by the Peppa Pig podcast.

Okay. If you so desire. I don't know if your kid has outgrown the Peppa and the pig. Oh, yes. Yes. Long gone. Okay. Doesn't even remember the show, basically. But the scars in you will last forever. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Okay. Fine. I don't think they understand the audience, which is kids who will watch the same episode 7,000 times in a row.

We don't need extra content. Yeah. And we certainly don't need it without the video. Like, that's half of it. Mm-hmm. What four-year-old is listening to podcasts? He's a little four-year-old skipping the ads. He's like, Mommy, can you set this for 45 seconds skip instead of 30?

I hate these ads. I do not need a new bed from the internet. I really like Scott Galloway, but he seems to be wrong all the time. Mommy, what do you think? Peppa Swisher. Oh, Jesus.

Ups and doodads. Brian, I've got a couple things this week from the Shit Nobody Needs category. First up is the Soul Reader, S-O-L for sun. Yes, this is an e-book reader that's built into a pair of glasses. Okay.

But the glasses do make you look like Daredevil. I'll give you that. Make sure you wear them when you're driving. Yeah, that's it. Jesus Christ. You're going to get caught up on the next season of Foundation, so you can be ready for the show by wearing these.

Yes, they are. It's e-book reader in your eyes. Okay. I love it. Yeah, their tagline is, illuminate your mind. Oh, go fuck off. They say, think of it as noise-canceling for your eyes, a completely distraction-free reading experience designed to stand out from the digital age with the warmth and texture of e-ink.

Like, e-ink's fucking new. The world's first wearable e-reader. Okay, go away. Do you tap your side to switch the page? I, maybe you just shake your head like you're twitching. Whatever. Okay. Yeah, 350 bucks you can pre-order now.

Oh, yeah. That's important. And since the world is going to hell in a handbasket, we're all going to die in a fiery blaze. You can get the Taurus Coolify 3 neck air conditioner, extreme cooling version, neck fan, full body cooling, portable fan, vertical airflow, personal fan, AI temp control, portable neck fan.

I'm getting the gist here that it is a portable neck fan somewhere. Well, given climate change, this may not be useless. Unfortunately, this one is. Oh, okay. I know somebody that got one and they're like, yeah, it'll cool your neck and about an inch beyond that.

And it's like living in a wind tunnel. It is not quiet at all. Good to know the technology hasn't moved on. I bought one of these things for like my dad like 10 years ago and he was just like, this thing's a piece of shit. Yeah, this was a $300 piece of shit.

Oh, great. That's awesome. Yeah. Just get that Dyson thing that you, the Dyson headphone mask, the Bane. So you can call it the Dyson Bane. While you're wearing your soles. Yeah. Oh, perfect. There you go. And then go for a drive. That's all you need to do.

Listening to Pepper Schlescher. A couple of quickies here, Brian. Okay. I bought a bunch of sets of the critical thinking cards from the school of thought a long time ago, and I give them out as gifts every now and again.

The deck that I got has 24 cards featuring logical fallacies and 24 for cognitive biases. The great part about this is if you go to the website, you can put in your email address and they will send you a download link to get everything for free if you don't want to pay for it. But I recommend paying for it to keep them going.

Helps to keep the School of Thought International above board, which is a non-profit dedicated to promoting critical thinking, reason, and understanding. All right. Some good shit there. I love those cards. They're great. If you want to, just keep them in the bathroom and pick one up every day when you're on the pot and learn something new.

It's fun. It's fun. I don't know if you got the notification, but I did, that Season of Skulls Laundry Files Book 12 by Charlie Strauss, the pre-order, has been pushed back to the 4th of July. Oh, I do get that. Yeah, this is the second push for that book.

I wonder why. It's got to be done. It's got to be done a long time ago. You know, it's one of those tentpole books for the summer. Right. They're timing it with Mission Impossible 27, so they don't, you know, conflict. Right. So, to get my Charlie Strauss fix.

I went to Blue Sky. No, that's John Scalzi. Oh, sorry. That's Scalzi. Damn it. Wrong sci-fi author, but Charlie's on there, too, posting pictures of cats as well, I believe. Or he may still be on Twitter. I follow him somewhere. I see him all the time.

I got one of his old books that I didn't even know. It was a sci-fi book called Singularity Sky. Have you read this book? I have not. Okay. It's a two-parter. There's Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise. These are two older books. I got it because mainly I just needed something to listen to that was sci-fi and Charlie.

It fit the bill on that. Yeah, because he wrote it and it's sci-fi. Perfect. I was going for sci-fi and then I saw Charlie and I'm like, I like him and I like sci-fi. So, let's see if those two taste great together. But it was also narrated by George Waddell, who I adore. I've got 25 titles in my library just from him, which does cause a little cognitive dissonance because I think Mitch Rapp is in space, which doesn't really work out if you know who Mitch Rapp is.

But I love the story so far. I'm like halfway through Singularity Sky and I already ordered Iron Sunrise. So, it's good little sci-fi books. I like them so far. I really do. I'll have to check it out. I needed something like that. Because I'm reading the like massive sci-fi home.

I'm about halfway through Lords of Uncreation, the Final Architecture, book three by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I still can't decide if I like the series or not. So, I guess I'm going to have to see it through and see how it ends. The thing is, it's got a bit of a secession in that none of the characters you root for.

I haven't connected with a single character. They're all kind of crappy. So, it's weird. But the story itself is really intriguing. So, we'll see how it goes. Okay. Let me know. I will. Because it's not really a great review so far.

No. I'm not jumping out to buy it. That's for sure. Nope. I think this might just be one of those slogs that I'm glad I made it through and don't recommend to anybody. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Robert and Tidy Hobo.

I do love a Tidy Hobo. They keep the neighborhood nice. Yeah. I got a bunch of hobos behind my place and they are certainly not tidy. So, kudos to you, Tidy Hobo. And Martin wrote in with this. He says, In this episode, you talk about how young folks seem to have a certain lack of motivation for work.

I've seen articles about similar feelings in law firms and other corporations where younger folks prefer to work 80% or less rather than go for the big promotion. I think there's one aspect to this related to housing and living expenses. In the past, you could work hard and then be able to afford a nice house and a life of affluence.

With current cost levels, perhaps there is a feeling of defeat. The carrot no longer works because it's out of reach even if you try your hardest. Might as well enjoy the time you have while young rather than spending it chasing the carrot. Yeah, we got some pushback on the whole picking on the young folk and their lack of motivation for work thing.

But it is what it is. I don't know what to say. It's a trend. Certainly not everybody, of course. Obviously, there are young people that work very hard, but it's definitely a trend being noticed by corporations. Or the media and social networking.

Yeah, that too. So, you got to look past the first veil here and see if that really is what's happening for, you know, as much as we think it is or talk about it, we could actually be part of the problem. We could be. Yes, probably are.

That's fine by me. Keep sending your money to patreon.com slash gog or gog.com slash patreon. I worked hard all my life. It's time for me to slack off. We are the slacker generation. Come on. We are. And we all worked really hard. God damn it. What was up with that?

Yeah. Over at PayPal, we got Miles, Nelson, Linda, Sherry, Nathaniel, Blake Bowling, Dag, Ramsey, Edward, and Natalie. Thank you all so much for your donations. Thank you very much. And over at the tip jar, we've got Joseph, Theodore, and Sean. Woohoo. Thank you again. All right. And we have a five-star rating from Nelson.

Save me money. Well, after years of listening, I was a victim of a security breach, but thanks to one of the products you guys talk about a lot, privacy.com. When they got into an account I had and tried to buy a new $60 video game, the burner card didn't let them. All passwords changed again, and I guess it's time for one password.

Yes, it is. Sending you guys a chunk of money I saved, and thanks. Well, thank you, Nelson, because we really need it because privacy.com pulled their ads a couple of years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Good service. Be nice if they kept advertising with us. That'd be great. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Well, until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoyed the show, visit GOG.showslashdonate to help us keep the lights on, and we'll love you forever. You can also help us out by sharing the show with your friends and enemies, because it's actually free.

Woo-hoo! Show notes for this episode are at GOG.showslash606. From there, you can find links to everything we talked about in this episode, as well as links to our swag and Discord channel if you want to buy some stuff or chat with us and other show fans. You can also head over to GOG.showslashcontact and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air.

And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.showslashreview and toss us a snarky review and preferably five stars. Stay grumpy!

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