608: The Way of the Grift

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. Holiday coming up. Yeah. Well, kids last day of school today. It's been a bit of a crazy week. They stopped learning. Report cards go out before the... School year even ends and they just do fun stuff all day, which is good. And yeah, I'm ready for a little bit of a break.

Awesome. Well, we are taking next week off. Yes. Sorry, did I sound too excited? Yeah, you did. You did. Okay, sorry. But I'm with you. Yes! I need a break from the doom and gloom, man. Our schedules just do not align next week, so...

No, no. We're both busy on all days that we would possibly record. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, everybody, you get a week off! Yay! Vacation all I ever wanted. I cannot wait.

Kids don't even know that song anymore. No, they don't. And I'll never play the original because we can't afford to actually pay royalties on it. No, we cannot. No, we cannot. So, I got a little... I got some great follow-up here. I don't even know if this is follow-up, but I just wanted to put it at the top of the show because it puts me in a happy mood.

This comes in via a friend of the show, Chris Lockhead. Harvard professor who studies dishonesty is accused of falsifying data. Isn't it ironic? It is. Francesca Gino, who works at the Harvard Business School, has been accused of fabricating data in studies that span over a decade.

Wow. Oh, yeah. Nobody has any ethics or morality anymore, do they? No, no, no. They really just don't. It's just get your pay. Get your money. I love this. Gino has authored dozens of captivating studies in the field of behavioral science, consulting for some of the world's biggest companies like Goldman Sachs and Google, as well as dispensing advice on news outlets like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and even NPR.

But I love this. This is the study that she published last year. Case study. What's the right career move after a public failure? Whoa. Boom. Somebody saw the lights coming. I hope she saved her original data because, yeah.

Anyways, that's just great. Isn't that great? Yeah. Isn't that special? That's just great. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I love it. I love it. And this one is happening much faster than I predicted. A couple months ago on the show, I was saying, what's going to happen when all these AIs start slurping in everything that the AIs are generating because we have no human verification anymore?

Yes, we are in an AI feedback loop already. Yes. Oh, we are. And what happens is called model collapse. Mm-hmm. Or the inshittification of everything, I think, as Cory Doctorow would say. Would you say, I was actually trying to think about this last night.

Has the internet actually been discernibly worse over the last three months? And I would say yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. I found it much worse. Like, much less useful. Everything out there, all search results are just like this useless fucking sludge.

And you just see AI shit everywhere. News is useless now. It's all fucking AI-generated clickbait headlines. It's just so bad right now. Yep. You know what's interesting, though? I've noticed spelling errors have gone away, though.

Well... You can really kind of tell... One plus. One plus. It is all garbage, but it is spelled properly. Yes, and the grammar is correct, and yes. It's a much pleasanter reading experience, although everything that you are reading is shit.

It's shit. I love the first line of this article I found. The internet is hurtling into a hurricane of AI-generated nonsense, and no one knows how to stop it. That is... Sure we do. ...absolutely true. No, we... How? How, Brian? We absolutely know how to stop it. All these fucking big companies put this shit back in the box.

No, that's not gonna happen. That's how we stop it. Ain't gonna happen. Yeah, I know, but we do know how to stop it. We do. We absolutely know. Pandora has been let loose, and I'm not talking about the shitty music service. Oh, man.

Yeah, so there's a couple papers out right now. There'll be links in the show notes if you want to dive deeper, but basically, these things are learning off of each other, and the recursion over time is going to basically just destroy everything. You know how we talked about last week that everybody wanted to go back to pre-internet days?

We might be there very soon. Wish granted! Yep. And there's another article I found about the danger of AI-generated code. It's the same problem. It is going to be the same problem. Yep. Recursive errors, feeding on top of each other.

Yeah. Good times. Yeah, I mean, these code tools are trained on other people's code tools, and if the code is bad code from nobody knowing what the fuck they're doing, because these things are designed for newbie programmers to be able to get a leg up and, you know, get shit out the door faster.

Nobody knows. You know, I mean, we're going to... Everybody's going to forget the craft. I mean, yes, I'm, you know, being a little bit hyperbolic and doomsaying, but welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks! Doomsaying for 10 plus years, and generally right. This time faster than even expected.

Yeah, this one went a lot faster. Good times. Brian, we've been talking about returning to office policies for quite some time since the COVID ended, since we took off the robes of the Rona, and we're finally seeing what's actually happening now, which is kind of interesting.

We've got a couple studies here that say nearly half of companies that mandated office returns witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated. Almost a third of companies enforcing office returns are struggling with recruitment. They wouldn't have been surprised if they listened to us.

I mean, we've been, you know, you can't, you can't say you have to come back to the office 100% of the time. You can't. Not in this world anymore. Not the, now that we've had a taste of it, of actually clawing back a little bit of work-life balance. No, you can't.

Yeah. You and I are both in favor of flexible work schedules. Yes. I think. You know. 100%. I mean, I personally am in favor of 100% remote forever. Fuck the office. Unless it's mine and I'm in my office. See, the problem is I actually manage a group of people and I can tell you that half are capable of working at home and half are not.

Like, it's a very personal situation. Well, you know what they say, higher slow, fire fast. So get to that fire and fast part. That's true. I mean, if you want to work from home, great. But you do actually have to work. Some people leave that part out.

Yeah. Yeah. That is. See, that's where the rubber hits the road. You know, you got to actually put in your time and do the work. I've been working remotely for over 20 years and you get the work done and nobody cares. If you get your work done, nobody gives a shit where you are.

Yeah. I can 100% agree with that. That's my job. It's like, did you get the work done? Okay. Great. Then you're fine. Yeah. So the idea, 100% like flexible. Like, I think everybody should have to go into an office.

You still have an office once, twice, maybe three times a week. I think it's particularly important for younger workers to be in an office. But that only works if other people are there as well. Like, I hear a lot of anecdotal stories about people going into the office and there's like, you know, nobody else there.

So what's the point? Well, you have to schedule that part. Put your teams together. Schedule your teams to show up at the same day. Get a little bit of FaceTime, a little bit of humanity, a little bit of mentoring the younger kids that are just starting out. And we're golden. Like, but don't force people back five days a week.

You're going to lose all the best talent. Yep. That's what they're finding. Yeah. So for the untalented, now hiring robot mechanics. Because, you know, one of my original predictions, I think is probably episode three or four, about ten years ago, I was saying, man, if Amazon keeps going this way, nobody's going to be able to afford what they're selling.

And we're going to need UBI faster than we thought. Or they'll just have to sell robot stuff to robots. Yeah. Yeah. So the UBI has not come to pass. And I don't think it's going to at this point. Not in America. Not in America. Not at least in our lifetime. No.

But robots definitely are going to happen in our lifetime. And they're happening faster than we thought, at least with Amazon. They are pushing out new robots all the time now. And we've got two new ones. We've got Proteus and Sparrow. Sparrow's actually been out for a little while. It came out last year. But now Proteus, it's basically kind of like a giant Roomba that picks up shit and moves it around.

But it smiles at you and has hearts for eyes if it does a good job. Oh, how nice. Yeah. I mean, there's a case for robots. And it's exactly like Amazon has the right use case. Warehouses. Oh, absolutely. Heavy stuff. Moving shit around.

But we've also seen a lot of people have tried this robot revolution. We had the robot hamburger people. We had the robot pizza company. All of those places have gone out of business because people don't want that. But this is perfect for it. Yeah. I'm down with it.

You know, I've been a picker in a warehouse. It sucks. It really sucks. And, you know, but the real question is, how are they going to get the robots to pee in the bottle? I mean, you know, that's just some code. As long as they don't use AI for the code, screw it up.

Exactly. Just pees in the wrong bottle and then your delivery is just robot pee. Perfect. That's all I need. Use it on my bikes. Speaking of AI, Axios claims to have obtained a memo from the House of Representatives about basically saying you can't use chat GPT anymore.

If you're going to use it, you have to use Plus because it's got the tighter privacy controls. And then only for research and evaluation. So they can't use the technology as part of their everyday work, which is probably a good thing, given what we were just talking about. And obviously, this is dovetailing off the Samsung staff that supposedly leaks sensitive data through chat GPT while using the bot for work.

So if you put this stuff in there and you don't have your privacy controls dialed in, it gets spit back out randomly. Yeah, and we're still reliant on the actual company enforcing their privacy rules and not fucking up. It's not that they don't have the best intentions. It's them not fucking up.

That never happens. The Vatican has released its own AI ethics handbook. Speaking of fucking up. Oh, sorry. Never mind. I actually read through the article. The link is in the show notes. The ideas are right. It's actually pretty good from what I can tell from the overview.

But ethics from the people that simply move pedophile priests to different locations rather than, I don't know, kick them out of the church. Well, they're using chat GPT to find out where to move them. That's the thing. Like, I'm not entirely on board with this. I think you've got some other bigger problems to handle before you tackle AI, church.

Just saying. Yeah, yeah. No, I read the article, too. And I think they're, you know, their heart's in the right place. Yes, it definitely is. And I would actually like to get a hold of this and read the whole thing because it's pretty interesting. It's not a bad concept.

It's, you know, I'm just questioning the source a little bit. Yeah. Hypocritical. And it has been banned at Google since, you know, AI and ethics don't really go well at Google. Well, they fire anybody they hire for AI ethics within a week. That's it. That's the problem.

Wait, you're telling us not to do things. That's not what we wanted you for. You were supposed to rubber stamp everything. Oh, God. Well, speaking of Italy, we've got another Italy story here. I woke up to TMZ saying Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have been contacted by Italy to fight at the Coliseum.

Wait, didn't Elon's mom already call this off? Yeah. Elon's mom said, my son's not going to fight that little guy. No. That little guy would kick his ass. That's true. That is true. Yeah. Elon, like I said, Elon's just going to sit on him if he can. So I see this in TMZ front page, big thing.

So now here's where AI comes into play. I'm going to talk about this in apps and doodads. But the new chat GPT plus iOS lets you actually integrate Bing. So I used it and I put in, I'm like, what's the latest on Musk and Mark fighting in Italy?

And it came back with the Italian culture ministry denies reports of Musk and Zuckerberg fight in the Coliseum. So that was fast. But the funny part is I Googled the same thing and it did have that article that I linked in here.

It was at the very, very bottom and was actually under everybody else reposting, copyposting basically the TMZ article over and over again. But the actual rebuttal from the Italian, you know, culture ministry was buried.

Chat GPT with Bing got it back to me right at the top. So they win that round. I guess so. Yeah. Speaking of more Google suckage, though, Google violated its standards and ad deals that research finds.

And yes. Wait, they have standards? They have standards. And standards and advertising do not go together typically. No. Not surprised. Yeah, see Facebook and everybody else. So, yeah, they're saying that about 80 percent of the time this company, Analytics, found that basically these video ads that Google is selling were running on shit websites.

They were playing they were auto playing with no audio, which is against the rules and off like in not in prominent placement. And so, you know, and here's the thing they they actually I was I'm like, OK, what's the sample size?

Well, they compiled data from observing campaigns for more than eleven hundred brands. They got billions of ad impressions between 2020 and 2023. So significant, pretty significant sample size there. And the Wall Street Journal independently observed and corroborated what they were what they were seeing.

So Google's like, OK, prove it. So and they said that they will they will review the results of the finding and take it from there. But everybody's like, ahem, can I have a refund, please?

Right. So we're being served all these ads that we shouldn't be getting served in nefarious ways on places like YouTube, et cetera. And I did see in the news today that YouTube is cracking down on third party ad blockers. They said that if you're using those to block our nefarious ads that are kind of illegal, you can't watch YouTube anymore.

Yep. I had that later in the show. So let me move it on up. Oh, sorry. Move it on up. Just seemed very appropriate. Yeah. No, it is. So basically what they're saying is they're going to warn you multiple times to turn off your ad blocker. They'll give you a couple. To which I will say, screw you. Yes. And then they will say no more videos for you.

And I will say, too bad. Yep. And you will be able to actually appeal it if you don't have an ad blocker on and it thinks you have an ad blocker on. OK. Which that's a that's a screenshot. What the fuck are you supposed to do there? Yeah, that's you know, that's that's what we call a fucked up edge case that they're putting out for press release purposes here.

I think that they're going to find out real fast that almost everybody's got an ad blocker on nowadays and their revenue will just tank. So this is a dumb thing. They're trying to get people to pay for YouTube premium.

This is not the way to do it. You know, this is this isn't a dumb fucking end around. So improve the product. That's what gets people to pay you. Yeah. And, you know, I pay for YouTube premium now and I got to say I'm loving it. I'd pay for YouTube kids in two seconds if the product was decent, but it's a piece of shit.

Yeah. YouTube premium does what it says. And it's my favorite feature of it is that I can have a video playing on my phone and then lock my phone and still listen to it through my headphones. Right. That's that's the feature I want. You can download them, too, for offline access. But let's be honest, when is anybody offline anymore unless you're on a plane?

Even then. Even then. Yeah. Now you can get online on planes. It sucks. Sort of sort of get online on planes. Speaking of sort of sucking, though, Zoox, which is an Amazon subsidiary, has begun testing its robo taxis on public roads in Las Vegas.

I can't imagine better roads. Bunch of drunk people. Yeah. I love it. I love this. The initial route will test Zoox's robo taxis. I mean, let's let's think about this for a second. I want a technology company and I want the gravitas of automated travel where where you can ride in and ride in style, you know, and not have to worry about talking to a driver or anything like that.

What should we call that? Oh, let's call it Zoox. Fucking idiots. Running out of names, man. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So they're going to test this on several unprotected turns and multiway stops, as well as its ability to navigate roads with cyclists, pedestrians and other cars, according to a recent blog post.

Now, I personally wonder if the cyclists and pedestrians will either be notified or compensated for being part of the beta program. And then I'm like, oh, wait, this is of course nowadays. Nobody, nobody, nobody tells anybody anything. The world is our beta platform. And if you get run over, we've got a budget for that.

All right. Well, that's fun. I love this story that I've got here. SoftBank gave $170 million to a social app whose users mostly didn't exist. I can, I can sell them a, I can tell them a podcast where our users don't actually exist. Again, this gets back to nobody has any ethics or morals.

It's all just about the money now. It's a little, a little known social media app called IRL, which I think we've talked about a couple of times. I kind of remember that. Yeah, it hit unicorn status and had an overall valuation of $1.17 billion and got over $170 million from SoftBank.

It turned out that the app completely made up its user numbers, admitting that 95% of its purported 20 million user base was fake. They were all bots. SoftBank called the app an innovative event-based social network that enables people to do more together.

However, the firm did not know that there were no actual people doing more together. There were no people at all. Just a gaping maw of bots and automated accounts. Last year, the company laid off 25% of its team with founder Abraham Shafi, who should be in jail soon, encouraging employees to adapt and be disciplined, adding that most people don't want to be Olympians.

In the same way, not everyone will want to walk the path we are walking. What path is that? The lying fucking bullshit path? It's the way of the grift, Brian. It is the way of the grift. So they're finally shutting down now. The company says it's returning capital to shareholders, but nobody knows how much money is left to return to anyone.

Oh, my God. He once said the company had more than enough cash to last well into 2024, but he also said they had 20 million users. So, you know. What the? He's lied about the other stuff. Well, this last story I have here isn't technically tech news, but since I used to drink at least 12 Diet Mountain Dews a day when I was coding.

Warm, I might add. No, I never – I hated jolt. I hated the sugar. But I would have – on my way into work every morning, I would buy a 12-pack of Diet Mountain Dew warm and keep it next to my desk because my thinking was that the fact that it was warm would make the caffeine work faster.

And I think it probably did. But, hey. Aspartame to be named a possible cancer causer here from the World Health Organization. They're calling it possibly carcinogenic. Okay. Okay. But what about eggs? Come on. What about eggs?

Also possibly carcinogenic. Okay. Like, there's a big difference between some scrambled eggs in the morning and 12 warm Mountain Dews. I can't imagine that being good for you. I'm just saying. Even if it doesn't cause cancer, there's – that's not good.

No, it wasn't good. It wasn't good. I actually stopped, though, because I'm sure you remember my first website, Spew. Yes. And my first intern was this guy, Steve Lappin, who was a molecular biologist. His uncle worked on the team that created aspartame.

And he said, under no circumstances should anybody in our family consume anything that has this shit in it because it will kill you. It is terrible for you. It will make you fat. It will cause memory loss. It is basically a neurotoxin when it gets too warm.

So if somebody leaves out a case of Diet Coke and then they put it back in the refrigerator and sell it, it can cause brain damage. So do not – so I've – ever since then, like, you know, 25, 20-some years ago, I stopped drinking it. Thank God. What a parallel between tech, because if you think about it, all these guys that are creating all this stuff won't use it themselves.

That's true. Won't use their families' use it. Won't let their kids use it. So stop making this shit. No. No, Brian. Money. Money. Money.

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Okay. To start off here, we've got two shows that drop on Thursdays. I stayed up late to catch both of them. Silo and Star Trek Strange New Worlds. What about you, Brian? I only saw Silo. I didn't have enough time for both. Okay. Okay. Strange New Worlds.

Still rocking it. Loving it. Good. You will like this next week's episode because a lot of it takes place in Toronto. Or some of it takes place in Toronto. Yes. That's interesting. Okay. Modern day Toronto. Oh, wow. Yes. I wonder if I'm in it. Maybe.

Maybe. But the Silo finale is out. And yeah. I fucking dug it. Very well done episode. Very well done. I get, you know, having read the books, nothing shocking came. Nope. Because I know, I know the story, but God, it's such a well done show.

It really is. It's just amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now I'm sad I'm going to have to wait, what, a year, two? Until we get the next one? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't heard any news when that'll be coming back, but I'm sure it's been renewed. It has to have been. Well, we got Writer's Guild strike and it's going to be a while.

It's going to be a while, Jason. I forgot about that. Come on. Get back to work. Pay them. Give them the money. Give them all the money. Pay them, you billionaires. Yeah. But yeah, I completely dug it. I just, you know, start to finish. The thing is, and this is the funny part.

After the stroke, you know, I've got this weird memory loss. And I was talking to somebody about the Babaverse series the other day. And I'm like, I want to go back and reread those. Yeah. I remember liking it a lot. I could not tell you what the story is.

And that's almost for every book. Like Silo, I remember reading the first books and liking them. And then there was a prequel that I didn't like. But I don't remember what the stories are at all. I remember the emotions around it, but I have no details. It is so weird. Half of that is just getting old, Jason.

Because I'm kind of there with you with a lot of this stuff. But I mean, yours is probably exasperated a bit. But, you know. Yeah, quite a bit. Part of it is just we're old. Yeah. And we've taken a lot into our brains. So. Yeah.

Hard drive full. Plus, you know, Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew. Yeah. I blame the Mountain Dew. Fuck the stroke. The stroke was nothing. The Mountain Dew. Not the 30 years of alcohol either. Forget that. Yeah. Not that. Not that bottle of wine I drank last night. Nope. That has nothing to do with me.

Yeah. New Indiana Jones is out today, I believe. Yeah. I don't know if it's going to get me into a theater because I can't really take my kids. So I'll probably be waiting until it comes out on Disney Plus or whatever it's going to be on. So I'm looking forward to it.

Really? I am. I sought out spoiler-free reviews. They all basically, it didn't need to exist, but it's good. Okay. See, the reviews I read were the opposite. Plus, I love Phoebe Waller-Bridge. See, I cannot fucking stand her.

I love her. I love her. Fleabag was amazing. Yeah, it was garbage. I could not fucking watch it. She just annoys the shit out of me. And just, I put in a link to the Critical Drinker review that I thought was pretty funny because he's usually pretty funny. Yeah, but his gig is being negative on stuff too.

So is ours. With a grain of salt. Yeah, but we're right. That's true. That's true. No, I'm just, that's a hard pass for me. After the last one, you know, nuke the fridge. Well, that one was fucking horrible. And it's Shia LaBeouf. And now this one, I'm telling you, I hate Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

She just looks annoying. Even in the trailer, she was annoying. So, hard pass. Okay. I'll watch it for you. Don't worry. Thank you. Thank you very much. I watched something for you that you don't have to. Reality. Yeah, it is pretty shit, isn't it?

Do you saw it? We're talking about a show. Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah, reality in all forms is shit. It's been getting worse and worse. I just waiting. It should be canceled at this point. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, definitely. No, I'm talking about the HBO Max, or I'm sorry, just Max now.

Okay. A movie called Reality, which is a recreation of the reality winner search warrant delivery. Wow, I need to watch that. I'll tell you, yeah, it sounds as exciting as it is. Okay. They took the transcripts and the recordings of the search warrant that was...

Hello? Yes! Are you home? Yes! Oh, here. You've been served. There. Done. No, it's like an hour and a half long. I got an hour into it. I just could not anymore. Why? Why? I get, like, you know, experimental cinema.

Somebody should have put the kibosh on this after the first five minutes of filming, going, this is really stupid. Well, it probably didn't require any writing, so maybe they were able to get it done with the writer's strike. I don't know. Jesus Christ. No, they actually show bits and transcript. It's like, pause.

They show people walking around, not saying anything, looking around. It is so weird. Oh, God. And, oh, no. I ended it when she was trying to get her cat out from under the bed. That was literally, it was like, where's your cat? Cat's under the bed. Get the cat.

Oh, wait, wait, wait, get the cat. Oh, Jesus Christ is terrible. No, pass. I'll pass. Yeah. Okay. Pass on that. I did watch FUBAR, all eight episodes, the Arnold Schwarzenegger new show. I've heard mixed reviews. I enjoyed it.

There were a couple episodes in the middle where I was just like, oh, Jesus, can we get past these and get back to the show? It changes tone like halfway through from one thing, but it's weird, but I liked it. I enjoyed it all the way through. I cannot wait for season two.

It's been renewed another three years for that if they ever hire writers again. It was cute. It was cute. I mean, I'm a fan of Schwarzenegger with all his foibles. I still like the guy. He's a good guy. Check it out. It's popcorn. It is a popcorn show. Okay.

So, you know, don't expect a whole lot of- Well, we need something to get through this stretch coming along, so. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of other things I like that are not the deep end of the pool, I watched The Machine, the Burt Kreischer vehicle. Right. You're a big fan of me.

You're not. Not really, no. Yeah. It takes a certain type to be a fan of Burt Kreischer. And honestly, after the stroke and I had to quit drinking, I couldn't take it anymore. And then I started drinking again, and I got back into him, and then I quit again, and now I don't care that much. But I, you know, since I still have an affinity for the guy, I watched the movie.

How is he on Mountain Dew? Have you tried that? I haven't tried that. Okay. He's on a liquid death kick now, because they pay him a lot of money. Yeah. I'm just, I just, I'm with Kevin Smith on Burt Kreischer. I'm like, fuck you for having an entire house that you can podcast from.

Asshole. The movie was fun. I enjoyed it. Mark Hamill was great in it. He plays his dad, and he's fantastic in it. If you don't know the story, it's probably very confusing, but it's, they play it fairly well. It is another popcorn movie.

Like I said, I think if you don't know who Burt is, or know the story behind it, you'll probably get a little lost. They try and kind of bring people along, but it's not really as good, because it's a shit ton of in-jokes that you have to have listened to his podcasts for, and other things like that.

But I personally, as a Burt Kreischer ex-superfan, enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. Something I haven't seen yet, though, that came out two days ago, Muscles and Mayhem, An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators.

I thought you would have binged this immediately. Well, no. I mean, I know Dan Nitro-Clark, because I did a podcast with him, so we covered most of the stories that are in here on the podcast. So I kind of, spoiler alert, I've seen it. But it got to number one on Trending and Netflix, so check it out.

If you are an American Gladiators fan and never listened to our podcast, then you'll probably enjoy it, because the stories are pretty interesting, fairly interesting. So I just, I'm throwing it out there because Dan's a good guy, and the stories are pretty good behind the haps behind American Gladiators.

Yep. All right. And just as we were going to press today, I saw this. Ted Lasso charted a record-breaking billion minutes of viewing during Finale Week. Well, good. Well-deserved. I mean, the quality suffered a bit, as most shows do, but they stuck the landing.

It was a good, feel-good show. I'm glad. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was pretty damn good. 1.24 billion minutes. But don't make any more. No more. No more. Retire the mustache. Yes.

Retire the mustache. Enjoy your success and move on. Apps and doodads. Brian, you got me using Apple News. Yes. The Apple News app a little more, because you're like, it's pretty good. Yeah. It's okay. I'm enjoying it, but the workflow sucks.

Well, you probably actually try to do work with it while I just use it as, like, my newspaper in the morning. Yeah. I get the email newsletter from them that has the top stories, and I want to open all the stories and go through and read them. You can't.

You click on one story, it opens up. Then you click on the next story. Then it gets rid of that story and brings the next story, and the back button just takes you to the homepage. Yeah. It doesn't stack the stories in the history. Yeah. Yeah. It's really annoying. So, please, tabs or fix your back button, Apple.

Yeah. I know everybody at Apple listens to our show, so we should have this fixed by next week. No problem. Definitely. Okay. Still better than Artifact. Yeah, that lasted about a hot second. Yeah. As soon as it got socialized and, like, gamified, I was like, fuck this. I don't want to gamify these news.

So. We haven't heard a peep about it since it got gamified, have we? Nope. Nowhere. I'm sure they got a lot of money, though. Well, it's, you know, Kevin Systrom, so he already had a lot of money. He had that sweet, sweet Facebook money. Yeah. So, we talked about ChatGPT and iOS.

Yeah. Now, if you have ChatGPT+, you can use ChatGPT4 to actually have it use Bing, if you can figure it out. It is a hard trick to figure out, because what you have to do is, on the blank page, you have two models.

You have 3.5 and 4. You click on 4, and you have already had to go to Settings to turn on Bing integration. So, I figured I went to Settings, I said, turn on Bing integration. Done deal. No, not so simple. There's a drop-down when you click on ChatGPT4, and it says, default, checked.

Right underneath it, it says, now using Bing. I thought that that was just a label. It's not. It's a switch. You have to click on the Bing thing that doesn't look like a switch, but actually is a switch, to make it actually use Bing.

So, there you go. You're welcome. It saved you a click, and half an hour of screaming at it, going, why the fuck isn't it using Bing? Like I did this morning. You just gave them a great product title. They needed to come out with something called the Bing thing. The Bing thing. Yeah. Rolls off the tongue. It really does roll off the tongue.

Stitcher is going bye-bye. Well, never used it. See ya. Yeah, I used it a little bit, just in testing, because everybody's like, your show's not coming up on Stitcher. I'm like, yes, it is. You didn't wait 30 seconds. So, here you go. Sirius XM bought it a while back, and like all these companies that got into podcasting, don't know what the fuck they're doing.

So, now they're shutting it down. And we're going to have an all-new listener experience in the Sirius XM app, which nobody fucking cares about, because Sirius XM costs too much money, and almost nobody uses it. Yeah, as soon as the free trial from buying your new car runs out, that's it.

Everybody cancels. Everybody cancels. I mean, imagine how many cars are on the road right now with these stupid satellite radios that are just sitting there dormant. Yeah. Almost all of them. Almost all of them now, yeah. From my anecdotal research. Yeah. I used to subscribe, because I actually liked a couple of the channels, but it just got too expensive.

It's just too expensive. It's too damn expensive. It's ridiculous. Yeah. I mean, who's left? Howard Stern? Pretty much, yeah. Who the fuck cares about Howard Stern anymore? About 100,000 people that basically live in that universe, and that's it.

That's it, yeah. Yeah. Well, while we're waiting for our Apple ski goggles that have AR in them, Google has stopped. They had a project internally known as Iris that it established to build AR glasses, according to Business Insider, but they've shelved it.

That's it. We're done. We're going to concentrate on software, AR software for Android. Oh, yeah, because, you know, Android software is so amazing. Yes. Well, Android in general is so amazing. So amazing, yeah. Yeah. Hopefully they licensed the song so your buddy's got some coin out of it.

Probably not. I think that song made him enough money anyways. He should be fine. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave.

With podcast super host Dave Lasso. Dave is the host of the CyberWire podcast for all your cybersecurity news. 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.

Hi, Dave. How's the stash? The stash is more epic than ever. They do tend to keep growing. Yeah. They do. They do. I've been trying to keep up with the grooming. And I've learned a lot about what a responsibility such an epic mustache is.

I've learned there is a reason a friend of mine, actually a co-worker, when I was in college, had a very big mustache. And he referred to it as his flavor saver. And so I've learned what that's about. I've learned that it requires combing and grooming and drying, like, you know, blow dry your hair, blow dry your mustache, because it will hold on to water.

But, yeah, it's fun. When you're ready, I actually have a story to share about something that I learned from having this mustache. First, let me just say that the show is going very well.

As we record this, we have two more shows to go, so Friday and Saturday night. And we've got amazing audiences. The theater has been pretty much full. And the audiences have been responsive and laughing and applauding. So it's really been really wonderful and gratifying to have this experience.

So I'm very appreciative for that. Well, I, for one, am personally interested in you continuing your Hairstute experience. And I'm looking forward to you starring in the ZZ Top play that will come up next. That's right. That's right. Maybe I could do a one-man show on the life of Burt Reynolds.

Nice. Yeah. No, it's really been interesting. I will say in the past couple of days – now, the mustaches days are numbered. It's probably going away this Sunday because – Well, wife mandated it, yes.

Yes, my wife, you know, she's been very patient and she has humored me through this whole process. But I will tell you that I had a realization last night after the show. I was out greeting some friends who came to see the show and they were – you know, just had very nice things to say.

But they started making comments about my – both my mustache and my hair. Now, the process that I went through to prepare myself for this show was I grew my hair out long and I grew a full beard and mustache.

And ultimately, what I wanted to end up with was mutton chops and the mustache because this show takes place in the 1890s. So I wanted a period-appropriate look for the show. That's what I've got. Now, the way my hair grows, the 53-year-old man that I am, my sideburns are completely gray.

Right. My hair so far is pretty much all still dark brown. There's some gray in there but mostly dark brown. My beard and my mustache are salt and pepper but probably more towards the dark brown than the gray.

So that's just the way my hair grows. Yeah, that's the way my hair grows. So last night, I was getting peppered with questions and comments about my mustache and my beard and my sideburns.

And, oh, did you color your sideburns? Oh, your sideburns are gray? And, oh, wait, do you color your hair? And this and that and the other thing. And several people have been asking me these sorts of things and I realized that over the course of having this admittedly ridiculous mustache I've been walking around with and being peppered with questions about it,

this is giving me a little tiny view, a little tiny, a better appreciation for what women must go through all the time. You're being treated as an object, Dave. But being given unhelpful observations.

Unsolicited advice, yes. And unsolicited advice on my appearance. Right. Now, look, I just want to start off. I just want to say I realize I am a member of the most privileged class there is. Right. I am an older white man living in the United States of America.

And so, you know, I totally acknowledge all that. But it really did. Like when I that thought struck me, I said this is this is a little tiny sample of what I imagine most women go through all the freaking time.

People saying, oh, well, why did you get your hair cut that way? Or, oh, well, those are. Well, those jeans are an interesting choice or, you know, like the backhanded. The slap and the kiss. Yes. Well, and so what's also interesting is that some of these comments came from other women.

I say other women like I'm a woman, but from other. But they came from from women. And so there's, you know, mean girls and all that sort of thing. But like when I had the hair long and then I cut the hair shorter to be better for the part, you know, that lots of people said, oh, yeah, hair looks nice.

But there were plenty of people who were. What did you do? Oh, my God. What did you do? Why did you why did you make that decision? You know, like what? What? So anyway, what I hope to come away with is better insight and better understanding. And perhaps I'll be more introspective and kinder.

And I will continue to try to think twice before making comments about other people and how they look and how they dress and all that sort of thing. But I share that as a reminder that, you know, maybe we could all be a little more kind. And I was just an interesting observation.

So I thought I'd share it. Yeah, it's something I kind of grew up with because I spent my teens and 20s and probably far too long and into my 30s having interesting hairstyles, piercings, tattoos, all of that nature.

So, yeah, I grew up with people always asking me about my appearance and the slap and the kiss. You know, that that hair color looks really good on you. Well, are you saying my normal hair color doesn't? Right. What are we saying here? Right. So, yes, I've spent a lifetime kind of dealing with that sort of thing.

It's interesting because the privileged class, the white male in the United States, tends to be ignored as far as appearance goes. We never hear anything about our appearance. We just get on with our day, making our billions of dollars and destroying the world.

That's what we do. Right, right. With great privilege. Yes. Yeah. So, let me ask you this, Brian. When you were growing up and you had your interesting and loud looks, did you ever fall into the trap of being the, what are you looking at guy? No, I always enjoyed it.

Okay. And my friend group as well because we hung out at Disneyland, right? Right. And we always had tourists coming up to us and like from Idaho or whatever. So, we're proudly in many, many photo albums. We were always happy to take pictures and smile and, yeah, all that sort of stuff.

So, yeah. Yeah. We were the happy goths. Yeah. I've wondered about that with facial recognition these days. I think because sometimes I look at our family photos, especially from places like Disney World where there are other families in the backdrop of your photo.

It's like, oh, here's me with Winnie the Pooh. But there's a whole family in the background and I wonder. Yeah. You could probably upload that and find out who they are. Right. Exactly. Right. I don't know why you'd want to, but you could. No, it's just a funny curiosity. You know, how many times in your life do you cross paths with people?

It's probably more often than you think. Probably. Yeah. Where are they now? Yeah. I just stick to my ironic T-shirt and living in the background. So, you guys can be out in the forefront. I'll be out here making my billions and destroying the world. And if anybody did point out anything about Jason, he would be the one that would be mean to them.

Like, fuck off. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. I never understood, you know, the person who was heavily tattooed or pierced or had, you know, a big spiky mohawk. And then you would, you'd be checking them out and they'd be like, what are you looking at?

Yeah. You peacocked yourself. You expect us not to look? Exactly. What was the point of all this if not to have me look at you? You know, so. Yeah, I was well aware of that and totally okay with it. It was kind of the point. It was to lure the teenage daughters from the Idaho people onto a people maker ride.

Potato fresh. Yes. I got a little follow-up here on some stories that we've been talking about lately, Dave, about the Eleven Labs and the AI-generated voiceover tools and things like that. Yeah. I was working on my little side project, creating my own voices for my little piece of fiction that I was working on.

And as I'm doing that, Eleven Labs, the company I was using, decided to beat me to the punch. And they introduced an entire voice library of generated voices that you can use in any project. Okay. So. Well, voiceover artists are screwed now.

Mm-hmm. It's still not really there for good stuff. Right. But the thing about it is I was looking at some of the voices they have here because you can go browse the voices and check out the samples. And what they do there is they tell you how many times it's been favorited and what the character count is for how many times it's been used because that's how they build.

You buy so many characters per month with your account. And so Bruce, the deep American narrator voice. Bruce should have been Australian. Come on. Yeah, Bruce. Come on, Bruce. Struth. 1,939 people have favorited Bruce and they have created 27.6 million characters of voiceover with Bruce.

Wow. That is insane. This has only been out for like a week. That's how crazy this is. How is that even possible? Like, I don't know. I tell you what, you know how you do it? You go to the Gutenberg Project, you get a bunch of books, you have Bruce read the books, you take those books that are generated from that and you upload them someplace else and try and make money off of it.

Audible has a strict no AI policy. So they're not going to Audible, but I'm sure they're trying to. Yeah. Podcasts, everything. Yeah, but think about people who are doing like corporate videos or local insertion ads for cable TV where every dollar counts.

I mean, this is the equivalent of a stock photo library, you know, how they put photographers out of business. Same thing with a lot of voiceover artists. Some of that bread and butter work is just going to go away because you can have endless iteration and you don't have to schedule anyone.

And, yeah, that's really – it's both fascinating and scary, but I suppose there's no denying it's the shape of things to come. Yeah, because corporate work is the bread and butter for most voiceover actors who have long careers. They get a corporate client and they want that voice to be, you know – The voice of the company.

The voice of the company basically for all of their training videos and audio and things like that. What happens when you get the voice that sounds pretty much like Morgan Freeman? You know, like – is that okay? Well, Morgan Freeman is happy he's in his 80s.

Right, right. He won't need that income anymore. He's got it all already. Well, you think about – think about how many big-time Hollywood stars have made good side money doing voiceover for national brands without being overtly credited.

Yeah. But, like, Brian Cranston is – was he Ford or he did one of the motor companies and, you know, this has been something for years and years and years. Yeah, he's doing stuff with MLB right now too. Okay. Baseball. Right. So, yeah, just voiceover work. So what if I can get a sound-alike without – Having to pay Brian Cranston.

Having to get the star. And do you have – is there any protection for the sound of someone's voice? I don't know the answer to that. I don't think anybody does at this point. No. Once again, the technology has sprinted well ahead of the law or ethics or morality or all the other things we've talked about on this show so far.

Everything but the almighty dollar. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. That has been the thrust of this entire show so far. Yeah. I'm thinking Mike Rowe too. Yeah, Mike Rowe was Ford forever. I think they finally swapped him out.

Right. Yeah. And, yeah, I had a friend who was Leonard Nimoy's personal assistant for a while and she always said that I was – doing voiceover was his favorite thing because he would just wear his pajamas, go into the studio, do his voiceover work and go back home and just sit on the porch in his pajamas.

He'd never have to get out of his pajamas all day long and he made big money. I always hear that from people like voiceover work is the best work if you're going to be in entertainment. But it's going to go away. There's no doubt about that. Interesting. Yeah, mine's already gone away so, you know, I'm moving on too.

It's like I need to find something new to do. So what are we going to do, guys? What are we going to do? Well, we can just do what everybody else seems to do in technology and lie about our achievements and get a lot of money for it. I think that's it. Seven million people listen to Grumpy Old Geeks.

Come on. Our ad rates are way up. Yeah. $400 per CPM, yes. Yeah. Just buy a bunch of bots to pump up your numbers and lie, lie, lie. Lie your way to the bank. Exactly. There are people that do that, unfortunately.

We've talked about a bunch of them on the show already. Yeah. Sad times, sad times. Well, on that great note. I saw this interesting article, Cosplaying the Mommy Wars. This is about a bunch of, quote, unquote, mommy influencers now who have realistic baby dolls and are basically treating them like real children.

And, you know, it's a hobby for some people, and some people are making money on it, you know, posting videos on TikTok and Instagram and things like that.

And I just thought this was a very interesting article because there's a lot of outrage around this type of thing because, like, these people are, you know, they're really treating these fake babies like real babies and giving them fake illnesses and using actual baby products with the babies.

And, you know, real mommies are getting upset. They're like, I can't find my formula. Why are you buying formula for a freaking doll? And, you know, it's a very interesting cultural read on this. Did you guys get a chance to peruse this article at all?

I did. I did, yeah. It upset me. See, that's the thing. I think that's the gut reaction. That is the, you know, the knee-jerk reaction is to get upset about it if you have a kid. I don't have a kid. Yes. So I'm thinking that this is an interesting topic.

The thing I got frustrated about isn't that there was this quote, my husband can play with cars, he can play with video games, he can play Lego, and everybody's like, that's so cool. I'm upset about how nobody grows up anymore.

That's what upsets me. Men are just as bad. A bunch of my friends just play video games all the time. And I'm like, you're a fucking grown-ass adult. Read a book. Do something age-appropriate. Grow the fuck up.

Nobody grows up anymore. See, and then I come back with, why? Why bother? I mean, that's fair. You know? I started to play video games again recently. I got back into Diablo, and I just got bored. I'm like, I would rather do something a little more. Because that's what adults do.

They get bored with childish toys. Put away childish things. But that's- Says the people that talk about Star Wars 24-7. I was going to say, see, this is where we get into pot kettle black territory. But we don't structure our lives around it.

That's the thing. We don't go on and try to become Star Wars influencers and record ourselves all the time and put out all these blogs and get on TikTok and show my fake baby and my Star Wars baby. Stop right there, Brian. Brian, you're telling me this on your podcast where you're recording yourself talking about this stuff.

A little bit of introspection and reflection might do you good there. It's only a percentage of our show. We talk about adult things, like grift. Yeah. Okay. But the knee-jerk reaction and the outrage behind it is what's fascinating to me.

And that's why I want people to just, you know, have a little reflection before jumping off on other people's thing. And it's- You just proved my point right there. I love it. It's- Yeah. It's fine. But it's still my opinion. Yeah. I think it's true. I think if we start to trace all the problems that we're having right now, it's because nobody ever grows up.

Hmm. We're stuck in these- I don't know about that. I got some pushback. Okay. Pushback. First of all, my first reaction to this is don't yuck someone's yum. Yeah. Like, you're not hurting anybody. And I pulled that same quote that you did, Brian.

And she goes, the same woman goes on to say, but the moment I'm like, I play with dolls, I'm a weirdo who needs to have a real baby. And I think she's on to something. You know, again, we are so comfortable telling women what they can and cannot do while we take the time to go build our man cave full of Star Wars toys and Lego.

And I think that's starting to even out because we have she sheds have hit popular culture. Yeah. Yeah. But still, who's this hurting? Nobody. I don't think so. It doesn't hurt. Everybody's welcome to do whatever the fuck they want as far as I'm concerned in their spare time.

Go. By all means. Play with it. The growing up thing, I'm not settled on my feelings about the growing up thing because on the one hand, I see the point you're making and I think there's something to it. I think partially we've been, I don't know, victimized is the right word, but we've been targeted by people who figured out that they can extract our money from us through nostalgia.

Yeah. Right. Which is in that we like the feeling of recapturing our childhood, which is why I have a stormtrooper helmet sitting here on my desk. Right. I mean, so there's that. But on the other hand, you know, we don't want 10-year-old kids working in coal mines again either.

There's something about having, about letting people have an adolescence, which is a relatively new thing. And why not enjoy play? Play is kindness. Play is interaction. Play is love.

So. I guess it isn't so much what they're doing. It's the fact that they have to put it on YouTube. Like, why are you sharing it? By all means, go do it. But why are you making a production out of it and trying to monetize it and trying to share it and just go play with your doll?

No, I see. I see. They find community through that. They find people that are like themselves because it's, you know, why did we always talk on bulletin boards? Because that's what we had, you know, when we were talking about things that we liked. Why do we have podcasts? Because we have it. And that's what they have now.

They have YouTube. They have TikTok. And they're finding their tribe. So I don't begrudge them for sharing it. I mean, if it was just a pure money play, then it's a pure money play. Then we're back to the grift. But if people are just doing it because they love to do it, don't shit on their parade. Well, I'm not.

Yeah. That's true. I'm just not watching it. Well, there you go. There's your answer. That's my answer for most things in the world. The affirmation of finding out that there are other people in the world who are just like you and you're not alone and you're not a weirdo and, you know, you're not the only one.

I think that has value. And then you've got QAnon where they find that they're not alone either. Yeah. Well, to go back to one last thing before we head out for the holidays here, I am going to have a movie marathon.

And I call this Jason's Fourth of July Birth Control Movie Marathon because there will be no women watching these movies in my list. Ah, gotcha. I will push back on this because my wife likes half of these movies. Excellent.

Excellent. That's probably why you married her. So here's the top ten. These are the ones that I'm going to go through. There are many more, but these are my top favorite movies of all time that I feel like revisiting now that I have a 75-inch television in my bedroom. Hackers, The Edge, which is a highly underrated, highly underseen movie with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin.

Great movie. Shaun of the Dead. One of the best movies ever made. Yep. Fight Club. Excellent. The Professional. The original, not the one with the added footage. Ah, the Natalie Portman pedo one. Yes, exactly.

Pulp Fiction. Excellent movie. Came out the same year as The Professional, by the way. It's a great year for movies. The Hunt for Red October. Fantastic movie. Yep. Die Hard 3, my favorite of the trilogy. I don't remember which one is the third. Sam Jackson.

It's the one with Samuel Jackson. Oh, okay. That was pretty good. Yep. Hard Boiled, the best Chow Yun-fat movie ever made. And I still stick by the best John Woo movie ever made. Introduced two guns to the world in an action movie. End of the Crow. Excellent movie. Very excellent.

Better soundtrack than movie, though. Mmm. Yeah, a little pushback on that one. I like the movie. I wish it was the original as it was supposed to have been shot, but Brandon died halfway through, so they cut out a lot of it that was already shot. There was a different story. I fast forward through the guitar playing parts.

That is just bad. But it's a solid list of movies. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I just want to ask. So you can have a movie on your top ten movies that you love that has parts that you fast forward through.

Absolutely. Okay. Because the rest of it more than makes up for it. Because I was just a Brandon Lee super fan. All right. And that affected me greatly. It's more like personal nostalgia, I think, because I was waiting, waiting for that. It was a great subculture rallying cry, that movie as well.

One of the first movies that came out in every way, it was like, oh my God, it's goth. Right. It's goth, and it was the first, I think, the first real comic book movie done as close to write as you can get, you know. And I still have my James O'Barr signed edition that I got, you know, well before the movie came out.

But, yeah. All right. Well, a solid list. I do push back on the birth control aspect of it because, yeah, my wife will watch half of these easily. But would any of these put her in the mood? Hmm. Probably not.

No. There you go. I mean, I would say maybe Hunt for Red October because you've got Alec Baldwin and Sean Connery, a couple of, you know, strong male presences there. That might help you. The Crow's pretty sexy. Maybe that one. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, I got that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sean of the Dead will get her laughing.

That's always good. Oh, Fight Club has shirtless Brad Pitt. And Helena Bonham Carter for me. Yep. And me. And me. Yeah. Edward Norton for nobody. Yeah, exactly. Hackers, hackers, topless Angelina Jolie.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. And, you know, if you're into very young girls, there's always the professional. There is that, too. So, there we go. I will close things out by just including a link to a video from the Electric Mayhem, paying a visit to Spotify.

I watched that. It's good fun. Yeah, it's good fun. I finished up the Electric Mayhem series. And I would say it ended on a very safe note. You know, the last episode was pretty much where I expected it to be.

Nothing. It wasn't as fun or funny as the whole rest of the series had been. But all in all, I really enjoyed the series. And as a longtime Muppet fan, I felt like they really did a great – they did the band well. And so, again, highly recommended.

Yeah, the only thing I wish would have happened in the Spotify video is if the Electric Mayhem would push back on royalty rates. But, you know, pretty good. I have to watch it. I still haven't finished the series. I got three episodes to go and just kind of got stuck.

It was delightful. It's not must-watch TV, but it's – if you're bored, it's nice to watch. Yeah, it's comfort food. Yeah. All right. Well, you guys have a fantastic holiday, and we will reconvene in two weeks. Okay, I got to go change my fake baby's diapers.

Yeah, I got to go shave my mustache. Closing shout-outs! Over at Patreon, we've got Chris. Welcome, Chris. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Chris. Over at PayPal, we've got Charlie, Matt, Simon, Jonathan, Judge, and Matthew.

This is the week when it sounds biblical. All right. Over at the tip jar, we've got Nick, Daryl, Adam, and Dan. Big Dan with the ad. Love, Dan. Thanks, Dan. That's very funny. Thanks, Dan. Yes. Appreciate it. Breaking news. What's-his-face from Little Miss Sunshine died?

Alan Arkin. Oh, no! Sad to hear he passed. He was old. He was very old. Good run. I didn't know he was that old. Good run. Way to end on a high note! Well, it's what we do. It's what we do. It's our thing. It's our Bing thing.

It's our Bing thing. I mean, we killed David Bowie, so what the hell, why not? Yeah. It should have went out then. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Show notes and links to everything we talked about today are at GOG.show slash 608. GOG.show slash donate is the place to drop us a few bills so we can keep bringing you this top-notch entertainment.

Sharing the show with your friends and enemies or anyone in between is free and can be almost as good as cash. Almost. Listen, on Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Sunday. You might pay for the whole seat, but you're only going to need the edge. At GOG.show, you can find a link to our Discord channel if you want to chat with us and other show fans.

And head over to GOG.show slash contact to send us your feedback, comments, or links to cool shit you think we should talk about. GOG.show slash review is where you can toss us a review and preferably five stars that we can read on the air. Stay grifty.

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