616: Cheech & Chong for President

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With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. 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. We are recording at an off time, Brian, because apparently the air show's in town. Well, yeah, there's a bunch of jets flying over during the day doing their practice runs. The air show in Toronto is this weekend, which is usually when everybody leaves town because it's loud.

They don't want to stay for the show. Well, some people do, but in general, like people that lived here a long time are, let's get the hell out of here. I always liked the air show. But anyway, we're recording at an off hour. And the thing about this studio here is that after a day of air conditioning, it gets really, really hard to breathe because there's no humidity.

And I thought to myself, man, what can I do? I don't want to get a humidifier just for the office. And I look around and I found, I found that little oil infuser that we, that I took from the fireside convention that where we did our live Grumpy Old Geeks show. Oh, so many moons ago.

Oh, I do remember that oil infuser. Yes. I don't have that anymore. I have a different one. Ah, yes. Mine is from Sage with a J. Sajay. Sajay away. It's the off-brand Sade. Yes, it is.

The songs aren't quite as good. Nope. Nope. But it was just funny. A little blast from the past. That was a fun weekend, what I remember of it. Yeah. You were still drinking then. Oh, we both were, Brian. A lot. But I haven't stopped. Oh, that's right.

That's right. That's right. See, normally I would actually be up here because we're doing an off-hour show. It's at night. I would have a beer or two cracked, but a kid has strep throat. It's the week before camp, or there's no camps this week, and it's the week before school starts.

I'm exhausted. I'm tired, and I can't wait to go to bed. I don't need beer. I need bed. See, what you need is what I got. I got Republic of Tea Double Green Matcha. I've got water. Okay. Well, we'll see if we can't bring you back from the brink.

All right. Before we do get started here, how's COVID up there? Because we are experiencing what one might call a resurgence. A surge, as it were. A resurge. You know, it's surging here as well. I've started wearing my mask on subways again, but that's really the only place that I wear it.

By all accounts, hospital numbers aren't up that much. It doesn't seem to be as virulent a strain as before, but it's definitely people are getting it, and people are getting pretty sick, but not hospital sick, which is good.

Yeah, I have seven people in my circle right now that have it, so I'm staying the hell away from those people. But it's back. It is back with a vengeance. Yeah, I'm back masking on public transport. Yay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have to go to these public meetings every week, so I've toned those down and sit far away from everybody and am masked up like you would not believe.

Yeah, it's back. Guess who's back. Yeah, worst sequel ever. So, to the follow-up here, this one just made my black little heart smile. Elon Musk took his kids to the Valorant World Championship final here in Los Angeles.

I don't even know what that is. Valorant is a video game, a popular video game. Okay. So, it was an eSports thingy, you know, that the kids do. Yeah. It's a video game, so you wouldn't know what the fuck it is. No. But anyway, they put Elon up on the Jumbotron, and he got booed for about 30 seconds, and then everyone started chanting, bring back Twitter.

Well, that's – you want to play Edgelord, you die by the Edgelord. Yeah. That's how it goes. That's how it goes. And here's what I say. You know, everywhere that I go, every news story I read, everything I see on TV, everybody says, posted to X, formerly Twitter.

How about we just keep calling it Twitter? Because we're going to will it back into existence. It's just Twitter. That's the URL. It's still Twitter.com. But you can go to X.com. And it just redirects you. You can't go to X.com slash username, so.

No, you cannot. There you go. So, it's still fucking Twitter to me, goddammit. Bring back Twitter. Why, though? What do you got? It's horrible. No, yeah. Everybody's left. The damage has been done. Yeah, the damage has been done.

There's no coming back from it. It's like if Tom tried to bring back MySpace. That would be fun. Oh, wait. Rupert Murdoch tried that. That didn't work either. Yeah. So, I guess we could say that Elon Murdoch'd Twitter. Yes, we could.

Okay. Because we do have precedent. We do have precedent. All right. We do. Remember when Meta gave up on the Metaverse? Yeah. Wasn't that about 20 minutes after AI came out? Yeah, pretty much. But they're still kind of dabbling, as it were.

And guess what, Jason? Lipping along? You could finally have legs. Oh, great. You can't see. Well, you can't see them yourself, but other people could see your legs, and you can see other people's legs. Who gives a shit?

If you can find a virtual mirror somewhere, you can see your own legs. Yes. The legs are rolling out this week. QZZ Top. We did that already, so I can't use that again. I know. I know. We blew our leg wad on that one. You know, it's just in follow-up, because we harped on about legs forever, and now there are legs.

Nobody's there, but there are legs. If your avatar has legs and there's no one to see them, does your avatar still have legs? Oh. Does a leg shit in the woods? Could be. We did talk about Facebook and Canada's news issue, how it has driven you from the platform.

Well, the numbers are in, and these analytics companies, SimilarWeb and Data.ai, said that there has been literally no change in usage for Canadians. As somebody who's a Canadian who actually sees this, and I know you do not, because your feed is normal, as per usual, God, they're so fucked up as a company.

Oh, yeah. Half the news feeds are totally fine. I don't know what their criteria is for deciding somebody is news or not, because some news I get. Some things that I wouldn't even consider to be news feeds, like music magazines and stuff like that, those get blocked.

ABC is showing up. Are they from Canada? Are they Canadian news sources? Oh, they're not. They're not. So that's what it is. I think they're blocking Canadian news sources. That's weird. That doesn't make any sense. That's what I imagined they would want to do. Okay, but that's just dumb. Everything they fucking do is dumb.

Okay, fair enough. Yeah. That's kind of where I was going. Yeah. Okay. But we just thought everybody would run away, because there were news stories about people who, because of the fires, people were not getting the news that they needed. Well, what's actually nice about your feed not being cluttered by news and being pushed news and stuff from things you didn't even like is I actually am seeing more of my friends updates.

It's kind of like what I was on Facebook for in the first place. Oh, before they ruined it. Yeah. All right. That's still crap, though. But I was screaming. I'm like, these news stories about news organizations, like these little mom and pop Canadian news organizations who used Facebook to get their news to populate their news channels.

I was just like, just get a fucking RSS reader, you lazy cunts. Come on. That's all you got to do. A lot of people don't like the RSS thing. You would choose Facebook over RSS. Okay. You know what? Never mind. There's no rationalizing with these people.

No, there's not. Speaking of rationalizing with people, Trump. I'm sorry. Just briefly, because this is a tech story and it was something that Trump promised he was going to bring Foxconn to Wisconsin back in 2017, which promised to invest $10 billion into bringing production to the U.S.

that was expected to lead to as many as 13,000 jobs. Yeah, that was Trump's big thing. I'm bringing business in. Look at this. They're only signing with me because I'm the best. You know what they're doing now? What are they doing, Brian?

They're selling the two buildings that they bought and they're not opening up shit. I love it. It reduced the potential jobs produced to 1,454 from 13,000. And you know what those 1,454 people are doing? Packing. Well done. I got a little giddy this week, Brian, when I saw this news.

A friend of the show, Christopher Lockhead, sent this one my way and he was just as giddy as I was. This is one of the first SEC cases that were brought against an NFT company that had teeth and they actually – well, here's the thing. This was against a company called Impact Theory LLC, which is Tom Bilyeu.

If anybody knows who Tom Bilyeu is, he was basically a sports drink kind of guy. He sold the drinks and the powders and got rich and then said, I want to be a YouTube star because that's what you do when you get a lot of money. You go waste it becoming a YouTube star. Well, to make that money back from becoming a YouTube star, which he kind of wasn't, he decided to, well, jump into NFTs as one would do.

Of course. It comes from the powdered drink world and YouTube star world, I guess. Well, basically his verbiage was wrong and it turns out he was selling security and he raised $30 million from this security, which is nothing to sneeze at.

So he did a deal with the SEC where he did not say that he was guilty, but he did pay a $6.1 million fine, which I'm sorry, but if you're not guilty, why are you paying a fine? Well, no jail time, not on the record, yeah.

Yeah. And they're setting up a slush fund for people who want to get some of their money back, some of the quote unquote investors who are unhappy with the deal, but they get to keep on keeping on. And if you, if you read his statement, he's like, nothing wrong here. Nothing to see. Come on back.

We've got some more NFTs right over here. And he's not wrong. Yeah. That's the problem. Yeah. The problem is because he didn't plead guilty and he doesn't have that black stain on his record. These idiots that run these funds are going to fund his next endeavor.

Probably, probably, probably, not probably, a hundred percent. Well, we still don't know that. We still don't know how many people are going to come back and want part of their, their money back who the, the quote unquote investors. There'll be a class action. Yeah. Yeah. So the 6.1 million is kind of a, I don't know, like you said, an admission of guilt and anybody who still stays with the guy, fucking idiot.

Well, if you go listen to his Twitter space after the fact, there's a lot of fucking idiots that follow this guy. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well. But we got them. We got them. We got one. Oh, shit. Well, maybe people aren't quite as dumb as we think they are.

If you already had your iris scanned for WorldCoin's crypto-based free money promise, your biometric investment has been cut in half since launch. Okay. So that, that fake money is, is worth less than fake money. It was. Yeah. Just a month after launch, Sam, Sam Altman's WorldCoin is already dying.

People are done with this. They're, they're out. They're not so stupid. Uh, except for all the people that have their irises scanned, of course. And he's just going to sell off that biometric data to try to make some money back from this, of course. Uh, but according to the block, uh, the price has dropped from just below $2.50 at the beginning of August to about $1.31 as of August 25th.

That is a 44% drop in the past 30 days. And if it continues on this trajectory, they will sink to single digits in another month's time. So it is done. Was it ever undone? Was it ever a thing? Because it, as far as I can tell, it was not a thing.

It's, this is the CBS all access model of, of press. It's like, Hey, this is our best day ever. Cause it's your only day ever. Yes. And now you're done. Yes. And your fake money that was priced at your fake $2 and 50 cents is now, now fake priced at $1.31 that you still can't get back.

Cause nobody's going to be selling this stuff. So if, if, if your fake coin is worth $1.31, but you can't sell it, is it really worth $1.31? So yeah, you can, you can put that $1.31 in your pocket, in your pants, in the metaverse. Yes. Now that you have.

And, uh, in an attempt to get more money, open AI has launched chat GPT enterprise, which is designed for business because it will actually theoretically, probably not keep your stuff internal and not put it out for the greater good.

So, you know, you Sony people that typed in, you know, you know, that put in your, uh, press releases with confidential data, theoretically, if you signed up for enterprise, it won't show up in other people's searches and queries. Okay. We'll see. We'll see how that goes.

There was a news article today though, that they are on track to make a billion dollars in the first year. So have you been using it recently? Every day. Is it worse than it used to be? Oh, so much worse. It's so much worse. It's gotten so much worse. That or we've finally gotten tuned to it.

The magic is gone. I think we've gotten tuned to it. I think that's a big part of it. It's no longer interesting or exciting. And all of a sudden you're just starting to see, we, we see, we see the man behind the curtain. I think that's what 90% of this is. And all of a sudden we're like, oh, pattern recognition. Okay. This word follows that word.

Got it. Okay. It's not, it's not so exciting anymore. No, it's not. It's not. The magic is gone. And if you've tried any of the other ones, I was using bard a little bit today. And that is, you know, I'd say 75% worse than chat GPT or at least GPT 4.

I have found that if I toggle back to GPT 3.5, it's actually better. So progress is not really progress sometimes. I think the cat I farted has no clothes. The cat I farted. Oh man. That was a big hit with our listeners.

That was a huge hit. Speaking of more AI, good old Senator Chuck Schumer is putting together a listening panel. Okay. We're all going to sit around and listen to podcasts. Oh God. I hope you're not listening to Joe Rogan.

Oh wait, no, you're listening to more. You're listening to Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, Sam Altman, and Satya Nadella from Microsoft. All of these guys are going to be there to talk about AI and AI regulations. Yeah. The only one I'd even believe is Nadella. The rest of them will be blowing smoke.

Here's the, the problem is, yes, they're going to be blowing smoke. All of these, all of these players are stakeholders. These are all stakeholders in AI. Yes. They Chuck, good old Chuckles needs to close his butt cheeks. So the, the smoke does not permeate the bunghole and get some people who are going to be impacted by AI when you're going to be talking about regulations, not just these people that are the ones that are going to be making the gazillions of dollars from it, you know?

And, and Elon does not deserve to be there at all. He's got no skin in the game anymore. He's got a one page website that says someday I'm going to have another AI that is going to have some crappy Douglas Adams reference in it that is going to save the universe. That's the only thing he does now, which we'll get to in a minute.

Okay. Fair enough. I mean, I get why they're doing this because they had done the voluntary code of conduct and business ethics and all that sort of stuff. And now they're looking to codify it. So they want to hear from them. Okay, fine. Great. Let's codify it already though.

Yeah. Listen to some authors and copywriters too while you're at it though. Yeah, that'd be a good idea. Or some actors or the people striking. Anybody. Just saying. Yeah. Anybody that's not getting paid for it. Yeah. So Meta is being taken to court by Rohingyan refugees over the Myanmar genocide, which is- In Ireland.

In Ireland. Because it's one big world now. It is definitely an interesting turn of events. So, I mean, I guess the Ireland thing is, that's where they all hide their money. So it makes sense that they should get sued there, I guess. They don't hide their money there.

That's the Caymans. They just get taxed much, much, much, much, much less. Yeah, like zero. Yeah. So, yeah, this is over the genocide, which had 25,000 Rohingya killed and 700,000 people displaced.

That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people. And there's still, a lot of them are still displaced living in camps. So, yeah, there was originally a $150 billion lawsuit here in the U.S. that got dismissed. So, now that the EU is really cracking down with all of the new laws that are coming into play, this should be an interesting case to watch.

Yeah, I think so. I hope it works out well. We'll see. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. Things that aren't working out well is Amazon's return to work policy. Andy Jassy finally just came out, and he's just had it. He's had it up to here.

He's like, look, if you guys don't want to come to work at least three days a week, he literally said, it's not going to work out for you. Yeah, I kind of get that. Like, we've talked about this a ton, a ton in the past couple of years. And the hybrid model, I think, is fair and equitable.

And I don't think – we can't disrupt the world so much. The world's already fucked up enough. Like, we've not really come back from COVID. People are fucking insane. And the idea that you can work for and make, like, you know, half a million dollars a year doing your programming job for Amazon, but live in Poughkeepsie, New York, as a goddamn, like, feudal lord, like, that's bullshit.

Like, you don't get paid. You got to have a shitty house like the rest of us, goddammit. You should get paid a salary commensurate to what you do in the area that you live. Like, that's the whole point of cities is, like, your salaries are better and everything's more expensive. It all works out.

It all works out to keep you down. The man just wants to keep you down. Well, I mean, we can get into that argument. There's some truth in that as well. But, like, I totally get this. Like, I totally get this. And it's not coming out of nowhere. Like, I get, like, I saw bosses.

I saw CEOs freaking out. Like, why are we paying these rents? Nobody's coming in. Productivity is down. But that's the thing. Productivity is actually down. Like, what we found out is what you and I, Jason, always knew. Some people have the capacity to work from home.

A lot of people do not. Yeah. The people that are putting the shit in the boxes that. Well, not even just that. Like, not even, like, literally, like, you have to be in the office because you need to do physical things. Like, some people's mental state does not allow them to work from home.

They get distracted too easily. They're drinking six packs and they're playing games all day. That is happening. A lot. A lot. Like, I worked from home for 25 years. I was very disciplined about it. You do it too.

But that's not everybody's personality. A lot of people can't do this. And that's what people are finding out. That's what CEOs are finding out. All of a sudden, it's like, yeah, no. No, no, no, no. You want to keep getting paid. You actually need to work. And apparently, you cannot do that while you're doing your laundry and playing PS5.

No, yes. You cannot be relied upon to adult on your own. No. You must have adult supervision. That's why we have managers. Yes, exactly. Well, I love this too, that Amazon has reportedly been pushing, quote, voluntary resignations.

What the fuck is a voluntary? Is that like you're saying, okay, I shall walk the plank and forgo my unemployment? Yeah, I was going to do that. Apparently, that must be what it means. That must be what it means. Wow. They can push it. I don't know if anybody's accepting it. Yeah. No, thank you.

You can fire me and I'll get my unemployment and continue playing my PS5. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I might even buy a new video game with all that money. Is it PS5 at this point? Like, I'm making gaming references and I don't even know. Yes, it's a PS5. Ooh, look at me. It's only four years old. It's okay. Whatever.

I got it right. I love this story because this comes back to some of the things that we've talked about about copyright in the past. Copyright Claims Board awards photographer $3,000 after defendant no-shows. Right. Now, the point of this story is there's a Copyright Claims Board?

How did I not know about this? Newly formed. Yes, there is. It's right there, Jason. Yes, it is. The Copyright Claims Board is available to resolve copyright disputes of a relatively low economic value as an efficient, less expensive alternative to federal court. They're going to be so backed up, it's going to be 25 years before you can get a claim done.

Yeah. Yeah. This is basically like, you know, the drive-through of copyright. So we'll see how it goes. Yeah. And why isn't – these people should be booked with every photo ever posted to Pinterest at this point. I would just be Pinterest, Pinterest, Pinterest.

Yeah. The problem is with a lot of these copyright – well, all of these copyright claims is you have to show that you have been harmed economically. So fortunately for this guy who was suing and the company just decided not to show up, but he had already made money off of the photograph that they had stolen.

So, you know, this was a legit stock photo that he was making money off of that this company had stolen and used on their website and said, screw you, we're not going to talk to you. So he got basically a default judgment for it. Not really that big of a news story.

I was just excited about the copyright claims board. So I wanted to put a link to the show – in the show notes to it. So there it is. We can move on now. I'm sure it's like a – as good of a self-service device as the advertising thing we were going to set up. Yeah, probably. But – Upload your photo here.

Explain why. Yeah. That's about it. Thanks. Well, good old Elon. Here we go. Here we go again. He got himself on Twitter. I'm just going to keep calling it Twitter like you said. Yeah. And he posted a 45-minute video of him doing a full self-driving version 12 – they're on version 12, Jason – demo.

Unfortunately, it didn't really go that well. He was live-streaming the demo while in the driver's seat and violating Tesla's own rules for its advanced driver-assist technology. He also kind of doxxed Mark Zuckerberg while doing it, and he almost ran a red light.

At around the 19-minute mark, he is forced to take the steering wheel as the vehicle tries to accelerate through a red light in Palo Alto. It misread the traffic signal and tried to proceed through the intersection at the wrong time. Just what you want. Mm-hmm. So he tried to save that. So that's our first intervention because the car should be going straight, Musk said after taking control of the vehicle.

That's why we've not released this to the public yet. Yeah. Remember he said that, people. Yeah. Yep. That's why we have not released this to the public yet. Yep. So he said that. It's all AI on cameras, no LiDAR, which is the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Keep on going.

He was filming from the drive himself from the driver's seat and also interacting with Twitter commentators during the drive, thus ignoring his own company's guidelines that advise drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times. At around the 27-minute mark, Musk claims he's going to drive by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's house, which he has previously threatened to do as part of their much-publicized-but-will-never-happen fight.

And then he says, this cannot be considered doxing if you just Google it, because apparently he can Google his house. Great. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. Remember, this is the guy that banned the Elon Jet account on Twitter that tracks his private jet from Twitter, which you can also just Google.

Yeah. Just saying. So remember that thing about not releasing to the public yet the self-driving thing? Yes, sir. Well, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating Tesla vehicles for an Elon mode feature that allegedly lets driver assistance take over for drivers for an extensive amount of time, meaning that thing that hasn't been released to the public yet has a secret Elon mode that you can unlock on your own Tesla.

Yep. Hacker figured that out a while back. Yep. So it was great. So there you go. This is just going great. It's just going great. And it's not like it was a little thing. The car tried to run a red light. This is not some kind of edge case.

This is not an edge case. This is a fucking traffic light. This is kind of like a key feature. Yeah. And you go back to what I've been harping about for years. You cannot call it full self-driving. Because it's not. Nope. It'll kill people.

It already has. It has. And it will kill more. And of course, all the fucking Elon fanatics are going to switch on Elon mode because they think he's God. Well, you know, to fund all that investigation and lawsuit and all that crap to hire the lawyers to pay for it.

Well, Twitter needs a little bit more cash. Because, you know, they've got none because everybody left because of all the disinformation and Nazis. Well, they got Cheech and Chong. And Nazis. And Cheech and Chong. It seems like Cheech and Chong got a motherfucker of a deal on ads because that's all that's on there.

It really is. It's like ridiculousness on MTV. It is the Cheech and Chong channel now. Have you tried to get rid of them? Cheech and Chong? Yeah, off Twitter? Have you tried to, like, say, I don't want to see this ad anymore? No, I like Cheech and Chong. I'm fine with it.

I'm not going to buy anything. Well, it's every third tweet. I get sick of it. So I just hit, don't show me the ad. That doesn't work anymore. So apparently that engineer was fired. No, it's the only ad in the queue, Jason. Okay. So it just keeps coming back. My pillow guy is gone.

Yeah. In many more ways than one. So to get to my point, since they don't have any money. They're going to start running political ads again. Of course. Even though they've had a no political ad policy that Jack Dorsey put in place back in 2019.

Yeah. Well, time to dust that off and say, yeah, yeah, we'll take them back. Anything that we can get some money from, we will do. Except getting rid of the Nazis for some reason. We have an election win. That's going to be awesome. Cheech and Chong for president.

At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary, all in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.

With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com.

Media Candy. Well, the strike is still going on, which means the content is going to be drying up. But there are a few things in reserve still that are starting to pop up, and I'm very excited about that. I found this link over on Gizmodo because I don't remember a damn thing.

Everything to remember about Wheel of Time ahead of season two. Now, I remember kind of liking season one. Couldn't tell you what happened. Starts up again today, the day the show comes out. So I'm very excited about it because I remember liking it, but I am definitely going to catch up because I don't remember a damn thing.

I made it about 10 minutes in. Yeah, you didn't like it. I remember you didn't like it, but I was okay with it. Something we both agree on, though, Star Trek Lower Decks season four. Can you believe it's season four of this show already? No. It's premiering September 7th. So we got another week for that.

And I'm very excited about that. And the reviews out there so far that I guess people have seen like four episodes are very good. So it's a great show. I've got to finish season three. Yeah, better hurry up. Yeah. Yeah, because I was getting to it and then something happened with Picard and then Strange New World started and then I didn't go back to it.

And then there was the crossover, which was just perfection. Yeah. Then there was the musical episode, which was just awesome. And then, yeah, I just forgot. So I guess I should go get caught up. Catch up because next week, season four. OK, I did finish Justified City Primeval this week.

It has nothing to do with tech, but it is a damn good show because I love Justified. I have not watched any of this stuff, but I can tell you that apparently the season finale needs explanation because it's all over every single website ever. Well, you had to watch the show.

That's the problem. If you watch the show, it was so good. It was such it was a perfect ending if you if you'd seen, well, season one, two, three, four, however many seasons Justified there were. It was great. It was a perfect, fantastic cliffhanger. And hopefully it will be back soon.

Next. Yeah. One thing that I'm very surprised to hear here is so Interview with a Vampire and a couple Walking Dead shows are going to be showing up on Max for a little while. So I'm happy about that. Yes. From September 1st, October 31st, you'll be able to catch Interview with a Vampire season one, which is good because I paid for whatever stupid channel it was on.

I think by AMC plus AMC. That's the thing. I don't have AMC plus. I would never buy AMC plus, but I would like to watch Interview with a Vampire and Discovery Witches. So I started with the seven day trailer for AMC plus to try and knock it out.

So I got two and a half episodes in and then silly me thought that my trial had expired and blah, blah, blah. Three months later, I noticed that I'm still getting charged for it. And then it was going to turn off.

It was like one day before it renewed. I'm like, cancel. So I paid for three months for two and a half episodes. So I am glad that it is moving too because it was a damn fine show that I never got to finish. All right. Good. I'm happy about this.

It'll get me intrigued. So I really do want to watch both of these shows. So great. So I was going to say don't bother because if there was only one season, whatever, don't even – I'm going by the Schulmeister law of don't even bother if there's only one season.

But then I see this today. This comes through. AMC reaches a deal with SAG-AFTRA to resume production on, wait for it, Interview with a Vampire season two. So there you go. And some Walking Dead shit too. But I don't know how they did it. They got a hall pass and they get to actually keep filming.

That's the weird thing is like everybody is making individual deals now instead of just like – I kind of feel like it almost undermines their effort. But whatever. What do I do? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Don't know either. I don't know how these people – But at least we'll get some content, right?

Yeah. That's what we need. Because right now, you know, we've got these shows that are coming out. But it takes a long time to film a series and a season of a series. So it's going to be a while. Yeah. Yeah. So keep wearing your masks if you want to make it to the next season of Strange New Worlds for sure.

But in the meantime, us little podcasters out there – That don't make any money anymore because there's no advertising anymore. Yeah. Well, we're working on that. We're working on that. There's a great story today that I saw. I believe this was in the Washington Post.

Something like that. Yes, the Washington Post. The nonstop podcast listeners are on to something. Yes, they are. There's a group of people out there and I – up until recently, I counted myself as one of them that always had a podcast on. Not because we really gave any fucks whatsoever about what they were saying.

We just needed somebody to talk to us all the time. It was noise. Yes. It was noise and people and, you know, made you feel a little bit less alone in this world. And it seems like there are a lot of people out there that podcasts are a saving grace for. Who'd have thunk it?

So I just – I recommend the article and I recommend if you feel lonely, you can go listen to back episodes of Grumpy Old Geeks or tell a friend who seems a little bit lonely too that they can listen to Grumpy Old Geeks or now boot up with Jason. Uh-huh. Hink, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. And that will get you through the day.

That will get you through the day. That's all I'm saying. Look, I've been working from home for over 25 years and radio filled that gap until podcasts came along. I remember 97.1 KLSX in Los Angeles. It was talk radio. Adam Carolla in the mornings.

It rolled before he was crazy. It rolled into Frosty, Heidi, and Frank, which was one of my favorite shows ever. Talk radio ruled. Like it totally made me feel like I was in an office, like I had friends, like I kept – I knew what was going on in their lives. It was a daily – like it's the same reason why people love Howard Stern and all that sort of thing.

Yep. And, you know, talk radio was awesome. Podcasts killed it. And talk radio used to be amazing, man. It was a fun kind. It was not proto Tucker Carlson shit. Like there was a lot of that, a lot of right-wing radio. That's always been there. Yeah. There used to be talk radio, which was basically just rolling into a couple of podcasts.

It was great. And it got you through the day when you were working from home. I still can't believe that for – I mean how many decades did Los Angelinos listen to Kevin and Bean every day? Kevin and Bean on KROQ, yeah. And we'll get into that later when we get into – at the library, Richard Blade.

All the KROQ jocks, yeah. Yeah, no, listen to all that stuff. So there is precedent. There is historical precedent for this. And, yeah, since radio seems to be eating itself, let's all go podcast. A little bit of TV news, which I was a little stunned for because I was trying to find out – speaking of podcasts, after I read that, I'm like, you know, I haven't listened to LeVar Burton Reads in a long time.

Well, it turns out he was on Stitcher. Stitcher is not a thing anymore. And he hasn't put out an episode since February. So I wasn't missing anything, it turns out. So I did a little Googling. And it turns out LeVar Burton did not get chosen for Jeopardy.

They did not like the cut of his Jeopardy jib, but he might be getting the Trivial Pursuit show on the CW. I can see that. I'm fine with that. Yeah, I can see that too. I can also see it being canceled after one season. Well, you know, there's a Wordle show that's basically hosted by RuPaul now, and I think that's got two seasons under its belt.

So there's high hopes for Trivial Pursuit to make it more than a week. All right. We'll see. Fair enough. Unless LeVar wants all of the monies, which is probably that, you know. We'll see. Get paid for your work. Apps and doodads. I didn't really have any apps and doodads today until I saw this article come through my feed, and I thought, we should talk about this because this is actually interesting.

Apple's decision to kill its CSAM photo scanning tool sparks fresh controversy. Or does it? There's a child safety group called Heat Initiative. They are a little upset. They are the proverbial butthurt. They're on fire. Yes, they're on fire.

Their ass is on fire because Apple has decided not to do this, which was the smart thing, I have to say, from Apple. Yes. Yes, it is. Yes. Eric Neunschwander, Apple's director of user privacy and child safety, had this to say about it. He said, child sexual abuse material is abhorrent, and we are committed to breaking the chain of coercion and influence that makes children susceptible to it.

Right. He added, though, that after collaborating with an array of privacy and security researchers, digital rights groups, and child safety advocates, the company concluded that it could not proceed with development of a CSAM scanning mechanism, even one built specifically to preserve privacy.

He goes on to say, scanning every user's privately stored iCloud data would create new threat vectors for data thieves to find and exploit. It would also inject, here's where we get, here's the key in the kicker while we were all pissed off. It would also inject the potential for a slippery slope of unintended consequences.

Scanning for one type of content, for instance, opens the door for bulk surveillance and could create a desire to search other encrypted messaging systems across content types. Yes, of course. Yes. That's why the whole point of Apple is they stay off of our data.

Which is why we were so surprised when they did this in the first place. We're like, what genius came up with this? Yes. And again, speaking as a parent, I'm 100% sure there is a photo of my child naked in the bath in my phone.

If my phone got scanned, I would pop up. 100% I would pop up. As would almost every single parent out there. Yep. Yeah. So how do you figure that out? You don't. That's what Apple finally decided.

Which is why you don't do this. You don't. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, even better. Throw AI at it. Throw machine learning. No, no, no, no. Bias, bias, bias. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. We don't have this stuff sorted out yet. End of story. Let people's data. Where you need to catch this stuff is when it's being posted publicly on websites, in Discord groups, all of that sort of stuff.

On Instagram. On Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter, that's where you have to go after this stuff. On people's private phones? No. It's when it's disseminated. That's the problem. Yep. And there's a lot of it. They're getting pretty good at it. So off you go.

Yep. So I did install the iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 public betas last week. Brave man. Well, it's like public beta 27. I figure by now they're pretty close. You know? Yeah. Once they even get to the first or second public beta, you're usually pretty good.

It's those first developer betas you want to run screaming from. Honestly, I can't tell a difference. What do they call it? The island? The magic island? I don't have one of those. Yeah, I've got a 13 Pro, so I don't even have that.

I got the notch. Yeah, that's supposed to be the big deal. Yeah. I mean, that was out with the 14 and they're still making it cooler now, but I'm still rocking the notch. But so far, the one cool feature on iOS 17 that I do like is when you turn your phone sideways at night on the charger.

It does like a nice little red thing so you can still see the clock if you tap the desk or whatever, give it a little bit of movement. It doesn't light up. It lights up in red. Yeah, it's just a very dark red. So if it's not dark in your room, it's actually quite hard to see.

But they do do like a nice little photo thing on the side where it's like it showed me a picture six years ago of my little Bam Bam. And I'm like, oh, I love that photo. And I didn't realize it was six years ago, so I felt old instantly, which made me sad. But otherwise, it made me happy. I just really can't tell.

I have to go through one of those tutorials to find out what all the new stuff is. But so far, what I want is I want the beta on my Apple TV so I can do Zoom on my Apple TV. That's the one thing I'm looking forward to. That'd be nice. Yeah, because I can cast it to my Apple TV now from one of my laptops.

It's got this weird lag to it. It doesn't really work right. So it kind of bums me. Casting has never really worked great for me in general. Like I always find there's some sort of lag or the sound will get out of sync or something. It never works quite right. Even if they're on the same wired network, I still can't keep it.

You know, it still doesn't work. At first, I thought it was, you know, the Wi-Fi. I'm like, okay, it's just Wi-Fi speeds or whatever. And it had everything plugged into the same wired gigabit Ethernet network. And it still sucked. Right. Just give me an app. Casting sucks. Give me an app. I agree. So going back to what we were talking about earlier about K-Rock and listening to the radio.

I grew up in Southern California and K-Rock was always on the radio in my car and at my house and all that sort of stuff. And one of the key DJs was Richard Blade. And he wrote a book, World in My Eyes by Richard Blade, which is a Depeche Mode song, if you didn't know.

And he's pretty tightly connected to Depeche Mode. He's been around them for ages. He announced the 101 show at the Rose Bowl and he was in the video and the movie and all that sort of stuff and blah, blah, blah. Anyways, I've never really liked Richard Blade.

There has always been something about him that skeeved me out, that bothered me. I mean, he was part of the fabric of my growing up and I get it and whatever. So I decided to read his book because he was so closely connected to so many bands that I loved and he was such a part of my upbringing and my youth.

So I was like, okay, let's do this. And I read it. And it was okay. I like Richard Blade even less now. He's such a fucking blowhard braggart. Like, it's unbelievable. If I would have known, the first half of the book would have been like, he's old, by the way.

Like, I had no idea he was as old as he is. Because the whole first part of the book is like disco. And he's in Europe and like Sweden and traveling around. And it's basically just humble bragging about all the Swedes that he fucked. Like, this guy's a man whore to begin with.

But once he finally got to K-Rock and he started talking about the bands and about K-Rock and all that sort of stuff, I loved all of that. Because, again, like, I grew up with it. It was awesome to hear the back, like, just the little side stories about all the other jocks that were there.

Jed the Fish, you know, Swedish Eagle, like everybody. So, that part was fun. And, of course, he left on a cliffhanger after he quit K-Rock and he moved. And, you know, he never came back to K-Rock, but he's doing a Sirius XM, like he's on the 80s channel there.

So, there's going to be a second book, which I will not read. Okay. It was a good palate cleanser from sci-fi and a bit of nostalgia and all of that sort of stuff. But it did solidify my position that I do not like Richard Blade. Okay.

Which is probably not what he was shooting for when he wrote an autobiography. No, I'm sure we'll get a tweet next week. Listen to your show, fuck nugget. Okay. Yeah. Well. I started a book today called Notes from a Fellow Traveler by Darren Brown.

Right. I did not read this note on the order page, which I just discovered as I was pasting it into here. Please note, if you're not a magician or mentalist, most of this book will make no sense to you. It does not set out Darren's methods and presumes a working knowledge of magic.

So, very limited art. Who do you write this book for? Magicians or mentalists, apparently. Okay. So, why not just hand one to Penn & Teller and call it a day? Yeah. The funny thing is here, I started doing it.

But you bought it, so it worked. I bought it, yes. It's self-published, I believe. They're doing it themselves because they're such a small audience. I opened it up and it's a travel journal from when he was doing the show Showman. Right. It starts on August 31st, which is today, the day we're recording, two years ago.

Okay. So, it's kind of cool. That's kind of cool. I can play along at home. I like Darren, so I'm going to read it and I'll pick something up. I heard something from Brian Brushwood that really was an aha moment when it comes to Darren Brown's magic. He was saying that there is a class of magician that will shoot arrows at the side of a barn and once the arrows land, we'll run up and draw the bullseye around it.

And I thought, ah, see, that's how he does it. It's just whatever comes up. Oh, I meant to do that, you know. Well, that's Elon Musk, too. True. But I like Darren. Oh, well, there's that. Closing shout outs.

We got some feedback this week that we wanted to share. I look forward to your podcast every week. Your voices are like old friends. That being said, why are you obsessed with Disney and Star Wars? There's nothing on this channel worth watching. Do you get drunk first?

Must be. And I resubscribed to Disney after your review only to be disappointed one more time. Nothing fresh here. I actually like Dave Bittner. I might like him better than you two. Like most people, I'm content driven. I'll keep listening, but really?

What an asshole. What a fucking kiss and a slap. I look forward to your podcast every week, but I don't like you very much. What? I love this because first off, Dave Bittner probably is the biggest Disney Star Wars fan out of all three of us. He's the reason we do anything Disney.

He's the only reason we do that segment is because of Dave. The segment was named after Disney and him. Come on. And then it's like, oh, there's nothing on the Disney channel worth watching. It's the biggest IPs in the world. The one that everybody, everybody in the world watches what's on Disney.

Everybody, Marvel, Star Wars, Disney's own programming. Okay. There's nothing worth watching there. Look. But I got to say, this is actually where Rick and I kind of agree. The only thing I watch on the Disney channel is when there's a new show that you guys are talking about that I pull out.

And that's fine. So don't subscribe. It's not like it's an unknown brand. If you're subscribing to Disney, you know what you're getting. So that's on you. Did you get drunk first before you fucking subscribed again, Rick? That's what I'm thinking. Must be.

Must be. Anyway, thanks for listening, Rick. Thanks for listening. Preech. Preech. We also got something from Josh, which we probably would have shared with Dave, but we're not talking with Dave this week because, you know, no fresh Star Wars content, Rick. Josh wrote in regarding your recent discussion, suggesting that everyone listens to podcasts a month or two ago, I was hanging out with my neighbor's 10 year old son.

I asked him if he listened to podcasts and not only did he say no, he said no, as if I had asked him if he ate his own shit. I'm not sure if youngins listen to much of anything anymore because they never have to stop watching. Anyway, wishing you success in this ephemeral medium.

There we go. Sorry. Yeah. I don't know a lot of 10 year olds that would be listening to podcasts either. I think that's a bit young for the demo. For the record, Dave's son is like old. Yeah. Dave's son is like a high schooler. Like he's not 10. Yeah. Like my seven year old son also does not listen to podcasts.

And I wouldn't want them. I wouldn't want them listening to a podcast because they're buying power sucks. Yeah. They're not in the demo. They're not going to buy anything that we advertise for. Not that we have any ads. We target the parents. Yes. With our, with our non-existent ads. We tell them to go check out the Disney channel.

Although I do remember like on discord, one of our, one of our discord guys was talking about his, his, he listens to it with his kid. And I was like, Oh, I'm so sorry about all the F bombs. And he's like, Oh, don't be. His mom has a potty mouth. All right. Fair enough. Okay.

There you go. All right. Moving on over at Patreon. We've got Tom C, Mark and Neo. Welcome folks. Thank you so much. Over at PayPal. We've got Charlie, Howie, Matthew, Simon, Judge, Matt, and Jonathan. Woohoo. Over at the tip jar, we've got Nick and Adam.

Thank you so much, everybody. And emails have gone out to the people who have asked about advertising. So, uh, yeah, write me back. Let's go. I can't wait to do some live reads for random shit. Yep. That's it. Going to be awesome. Cheap reads for random shit is what we've come down to.

Yay. Podcasting. Uh, we've got some new reviews. Uh, first up from Gavin, five stars, an enjoyable way to start my Sunday, a couple of cynical and jaded, grumpy old buggers and Dave who, who enjoy generally take the piss out of almost everything. I love the general show banter and the continued mockery of everything that is crypto NFTs and so-called AI.

Keep it up guys. And here's to another exciting week in tech. Well, thank you. We're here. We got an, we got another one from Snoopy TRB. So close to six stars would have given six stars. But when I paid money on Patreon, then added the ad free link to Apple podcasts, I couldn't tell the ad free version from the peasant version.

So I had to delete both and re-add only the ad free version beyond that incident. That is obviously not my fault. The show is banging and you should be listening to it. Brian and Jason for president 2024, make America grumpy again. Woo hoo. Woo hoo. And in sad news, Bob Barker, the, uh, the host of the price is right is dead at 99.

So close to 100, but without going over. A friend of the show, Trent Hamilton hates everybody that makes that joke. I think I stole that joke from Trent Hamilton. The funny thing is he like reposted it by saying how much he hated it. It was the first time I'd seen the joke and I chuckled. Same here.

That's why I posted it. Yep. Thanks, Trent. Thanks, Trent. I know, uh, not, not the, uh, not what you intended, but, uh, thank you until next time. I'm Brian Schallmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo talking about the law of unintended consequences.

Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Show notes and links to everything we talked about today are at GOG.show slash 616. GOG.show slash donate is the place you can drop us a few bills so we can keep bringing you this top-notch entertainment. Woo! Share the show with a friend, please, please. Some more. Right? Share.

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

Stay grumpy!

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