618: Seal Team Aibo

At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

From beauty and fashion to home, culinary and outdoor living. 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. Brian, something has come to pass that we said was going to come to pass. So, business as usual. So, saw this come through the pipe early this week. And it is artificial intelligence technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa with a lot of water.

So, it turns out lots of these computers get really hot, just like Bitcoin mining, just like we said before. So, nobody's – well, some people are still mining Bitcoin. If you can get those sweet deals in Texas where they just pay you to turn the computers off, dig that one.

But if you're actually going to be doing work with these tens of thousands of computers, you got to keep them cold and that requires a lot of water. So, now everybody's saying, yes, we need a couple more millions, millions of gallons of water. Great. Yeah. I mean, like I said, we did a story I think the other week about this.

It's good to see that people are finally talking about it. Yes, yes. And, you know, hopefully at some point we'll be able to reuse these things and not have to just go back through the entire corpus of human knowledge every time a new startup comes along. That would be nice. That would be nice.

Yeah. You know, the world is literally on fire and we're just blowing through water to do stupid PR tricks. Yeah. Great. Like this – last July, Microsoft's Iowa data centers used around 11.5 million gallons of water. That's a lot of showers, people.

Yeah, yeah, and I can't water my lawn and – Well, that's the thing. That's the thing that's so frustrating about all this climate stuff is, you know, they put the onus of responsibility on us as individuals when it's – I could do the best job I could my entire life and one private plane flight from one politician will blow through everything that I've done.

Everything. Oh, exactly. Exactly. You know, it's the same with water. We can't have lawns anymore, but these companies get to do whatever the hell they want. You know, my whole thing kind of came crashing down when I went to Hong Kong back in 2009 and, you know, this is me, Mr. – like I will sort my garbage and top my things and all this shit and be Mr. Good Guy.

And then I walk into downtown Hong Kong and I look up and there are little air conditioners in every single window. They're running like mad and the windows are open. They are literally trying to air condition the outside of the city. Yeah.

Yes. No, like I give up. I just give up. When you look at the extent of just Hong Kong and then you think about the entire – the entirety of Asia probably doing the same damn thing, then you get to India and it's just like, oh my god. Yeah. My little – yeah, what the hell? You know, we need larger systemic change.

But to get off the soapbox there, chat GPT takes a lot of water and we told you so. Yep. In the news. X, the company previously known as Twitter and is basically just known as Twitter again now because I think people have given up trying to say X because it sounds stupid.

Yep. It's suing the state of California over a law that requires companies to disclose details about their content moderation practices. Because if you don't want to do something, you sue. Yeah. Welcome to the United States. Yes. The law known as AB587 requires social media companies to publish information about their handling of hate speech, extremism, misinformation, and other issues as well as details about internal moderation processes.

Things that most of us would like to know. That a poop emoji does not cover. No. And that's basically all X wants to do. So now they're suing. Mm-hmm. The measure is backed by some activists. A number of industry groups took issue with AB587. Gee, I wonder who took issue with it.

Netchoice, a trade group which represents Meta, Google, and TikTok, took issue with it. Shocking. The only people taking issue with it are the social media companies. Everybody else thinks this is a good idea. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Tell us what you're doing behind the curtain, please. Yes, please. That's all we want to know.

That's all we want to know. Well, and even if you're not doing anything, just say, we're not doing anything. Yeah. We have no moderation whatsoever. Okay, fine. Now we know. All you have to do is read Elon's tweets. That's it. Well, you know. Or we have capricious moderation based on the whims of an idiot. That's X's policy.

That too. That too. Speaking of moderation, TikTok accidentally blocked the Hollywood writer's strike videos while they were trying to shut down a QAnon meme. Yes, I see the crossover. Yes. Well, what we have here is somebody who does not know how to write a regular expression.

The QAnon phrase was WWG1WGA. Okay. So I'm pretty sure that somebody just did a regex for WGA space, and that was it. And anything that had that in it was taken down.

So, yeah. Yeah, that's pretty shit. Pretty shit. But they figured it out, and it got back up pretty quickly. Because what are the writers going to do? They got nothing to do except sit around on TikTok and bitch all day. So. True. True. TikTok also in the news again.

I saw this one come through right this morning. So, fresh off the wire, TikTok hit with a 345 million euro fine from the EU due to its handling of personal data for children and teen users. All right. This is their first EU fine.

I'm sure it won't be the last. It won't be the last. So the thing was that they set profiles for 13 to 17-year-olds to be public by default. Don't. Don't. So, yeah. This is the first run, and this comes out of Ireland.

But down the line, it may grow because Ireland is going to share data with the rest of the EU, and there may be more lawsuits on the heels of this one. TikTok is like, why so much money? And everybody else is like, why so little? So. Exactly.

Yes. It's fucked up when 345 million euros turns out to not be a big enough fine. No. It's not for these companies. That's the real issue here, isn't it? It's just the amount of money that they are all making is staggering. Which is crazy because I've never seen an ad on TikTok.

Ever. Well, they're selling other data, aren't they? Yeah. Well, now they've got a marketplace. They launched a marketplace. So, yeah. Great. Which will probably kill TikTok. It's about time for something new to pop up, right? Well, there's always Blue Sky. Oh, well, Scalzi Sky. Yeah, John Scalzi Sky.

They hit a million users this week, so there's always that. Very good for them. I haven't launched it in weeks now. I launch it every day just to go in and put in my little boot up blurb, and that's about it. But, yeah. The funny thing is that Blue Sky had actually surpassed a million downloads for their app.

But since they were doing the invite-only thing, a million people couldn't get in. Right. So, and I did figure out that don't post Blue Sky invites to Twitter just willy-nilly because people have search algorithms set up to just grab anybody that posts them, even though you want just your friends and followers to get them.

Yeah, the last four that I posted got slurped up by some jerk- By randos. Yeah, jerk faces. Jerky faces. They used the technology properly. They did, I guess. The next story isn't so much a tech story. It's just depressing in the world, so I had to include it.

Yeah. An FDA medical advisory panel ruled that- Oh, God. Phenylephrine. Phenylephrine, a key ingredient in many over-the-counter cold medications, does not actually work to treat nasal congestion when taken orally at the recommended 10 milligram dose every four hours.

They did a test. It failed to provide any benefit over a placebo. Now you think, oh, well, no, what's the big deal here? So a drug that was being sold doesn't actually work now. Yeah. Well, it's been in use since 1976, so basically my entire life, if you're keeping score at home, that's been almost 50 years, and it's been almost $1.8 billion in sales.

And the $1.8 billion in sales was just 2022. I was going to say, yeah. So we're talking gazillions of dollars here for nothing. Bupkis, zip, zero. Did they know about it? Most likely. Most likely. Most likely. It's probably very cheap to make.

Probably. Yeah, basically your digestive system breaks it down, and it does not get to where it needs to go. They say that there's no dose that you could swallow that would actually make a difference. It has to go up the schnoz to actually get there. So how many class action lawsuits are out there now?

I haven't seen any yet, but you know. I haven't seen any yet, but the emails will be coming. Yeah. Have you ever gone to the drugstore? Have you ever used any of them? Have you used Sudafed, Vix, Benadryl? Yes, yes, and yes. All of the above. All of the above. And they did nothing for you.

Nope. So, yeah. Wonderful. So you're getting that new vaccine? Oh, God. Yes. There's some fun stuff about that one, too, which we won't go into on the show. What we will talk about.

Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher had to pay a million dollar fine to the SEC and create a fair fund for people who are financially impacted by their, wait for it, NFT series stoner cats. Yep. Tough shit.

Tough titty. I wish it was more money. They're not having the best week. First, they basically try to defend a rapist, and now this. Oh, don't forget all the videos that are coming out from Ashton. The old videos saying that we're waiting for these girls to turn 18.

Yep. That wasn't a good look either. Nope. And the fact that they're married right now doesn't really excuse the behavior and the age difference between them way back in the day when Mila was underage. And, oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah. Couldn't happen to nicer people.

Yeah. Go get your cat stoned. So, there you go. Lyft. Lyft is in the news. They have a new feature called Women Plus Connect, aimed at enhancing safety by allowing women and non-binary riders to match with female and non-binary drivers. Problem here is that only 23% of Lyft drivers are female and that it is a preference, not a guarantee.

So, you might want a non-dude, but you still may get a dude. So, and they're like, yeah, well, you know, it's a preference. I'm waiting for them to roll out the preference for a silent ride. Yeah. Oh, man, yeah. I would sign up for that in a second.

I don't Uber anymore, but I did when that feature first came out, and it was glorious. It was glorious. I think I got three Uber rides in with that feature before I stopped taking Ubers, and it was great. But, yeah, so you can set this as a preference if you would like a female or non-binary driver.

And the preference to not get raped, unfortunately, is not in the feature set yet. So, it's still a crapshoot. Is this feature available to everyone, or do you have to tell Lyft that you are a woman or non-binary to get it? It says allowing women and non-binary riders to match with female and non-binary drivers.

So, I'm guessing they're going to ask up front. Right. Because, yeah, otherwise, that could open up a different can of worms. Exactly. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But so is giving them that data in the first place. If I have to tell my app if I'm a female or non-binary, that's also problematic in its own respect, because God knows what they're doing with that data.

Yeah. Boy, tough, tough, tough thing here. Mm-hmm. Trying to do the right thing, but I just have some questions. Let's just go back into don't get into strangers' cars. Well, there you go. Or, you know, licensed taxi drivers. Yeah.

Okay. This one is not necessarily tech news either, but it kind of is because I believe it kind of dovetails into the hustle porn. Mm-hmm. Gregory – or not Gregory. Gregory. Gary VD world. Right. People who manifest big dreams are more likely to go crazy.

So if you have that vision board sitting out there right next to your tax bills and your late rent and your late car payments, maybe ditch the vision board. Maybe get a job. No, that too. That too. Yeah, basically what people who get into the manifestation and the dream boards and all that, they think about long-term goals but do not focus on the short-term.

Right. Which is basically what gets them in trouble. They're too busy thinking about the Lambo and the private jet ride that they'll be having to actually focus on, you know, paying the bills and actually working towards a brighter future. Yeah. It's a good read worth checking out if you are one of those people or if you have friends who are those people.

I personally have friends who are those people. So I just like to have the ammunition to mock them better. You're an idiot and here's a link why. Yes, that's pretty much it. So SpaceX is back in the news with Starlink because Starlink ain't doing as good as they said that they were going to do when they got their monies way back in the day.

Right. So when they were out hat in hand back in 2015 trying to get investments, they said that by now they would have about $12 billion in revenue with $7 billion in operating profit. Well, that is not the case. That is not the case at all.

So there's no real repercussions here. It's just kind of funny that this came out, that they're like, yeah, yeah, they kind of overshot the estimate on this. And, you know, it's kind of expected, I guess. I don't know any company that goes in looking for funding that actually tells the truth.

That doesn't overestimate, yeah. Yeah, because they're making the shit up anyway. Yeah, it's all made up. I've been in these meetings where this stuff has been come up with, and it's all made up. It's completely made up. They have no idea how much money they're going to be making in five years. Yeah. I mean, I've been in companies where we get to that page on the PowerPoint presentation, and then we go, so how much do you think we want to make by then?

We just make it up all the clock. Yeah, it'd be great if we had, oh, I don't know, 20 billion. How's that sound? Yeah. Sounds great. Write it in, Bob. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Don't want to get too crazy. No. So, yeah. Well, there you have it. And I found this last one kind of funny because, man, this would have been made life a lot easier for a lot of us.

U.S. announces official web design system. Good. Yeah, it's like, finally, Jesus, we're almost 30 years into the web now, and the government has finally decided on, I don't know, standardization? Boy, it's a good time to be a web developer because the government always overpays for this shit.

Go learn this right now. You're going to make a lot of money. Yeah, yeah. If they're not using Squarespace and you have to build it by hand. Right. That's $25,000 a div, please. You want a nest-a-div? That's another 50. Oh, yeah.

No, those are exponentials. Those are exponentials. Wait, you need a table? Oh, we're talking big money there. I'm getting a new house. Yeah. Well, except for overpaying for all of this stuff when it eventually gets done, this is a great thing. I'm very happy about this. Government websites are useless, really.

They're just horrible, and they're all over the map. So it would be nice. This will be nice. Yep. And I've put a link into the U.K. system as well because apparently that is even better. That is what they're calling the gold standard for that kind of system. So the sites look pretty cool.

I'm glad that somebody did that. I'm glad that I also am not doing web design development anymore. Ever. Ever.

Well, we don't have to worry about AI-generated music winning a Grammy this year, even though it looked like we did have to worry about it for a second. Variety reported earlier this week that an AI-generated track echoing the voices of Drake and The Weeknd could be considered for a Grammy Award in songwriting categories.

Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. is insisting that's not the case, even though he said it was absolutely eligible last week. Okay. Because he says the lyrics, a human made the lyrics, but apparently somebody talked to him and said, no, no, no, no, we're not doing that.

Okay. So, no, that's out now. Spotify will promote artists' music on your home feed now if they pay. So, it's a new tool, Showcase, gives artists a way to put their music in front of more people, whether their tunes are newly released or from something deep in their catalog.

We had this back in the radio called Payola. Exactly. So, the more things change, the less they change. Yes, that was illegal. And this is, of course, completely legal. Why not? Of course it is. Because they're considering it advertising. Now, I guess the difference with Payola is they don't play the song.

It's just an ad to take you to go play the song if you want to. Musicians are charged per click with prices starting at $0.40. Do you know how long it takes to make $0.40 on Spotify? Exactly. Wow. This is bad for the artist, of course.

It's way too expensive and you're not getting paid by Spotify. Why would I want more people to play my music on Spotify when I make fucking nothing from it? And now I have to pay you. It would be awesome if I could have that click go to Bandcamp where I get all the money. That would be great.

I guess this is more like the pay-to-play thing that happened on the Sunset Strip than it is Payola. Yeah, this is ridiculous. It's ridiculous. More music industry news. Milli Vanilli, the documentary, got their official trailer and it looks pretty damn good.

Okay. You got to say, you know, I know Fabrice, so I always like to see him, you know, get out there. And he's been working on this with his manager for decades now. I was about to say, I don't even know how many kids out there know who would know who Milli Vanilli is anymore.

So it's not the most timely thing, but I'm glad it's out there. Yeah, yeah, it'll be coming to Paramount Plus on October 24th. So make a note in your calendar. And I saw this article and I just had to laugh. We tried to tell you about Interview with the Vampire.

I saw this too and I read it because I haven't watched Interview with the Vampire, even though I know everybody has told me it's good. It's great. It's great. I actually, when this got to Max last week, you mentioned another show about witches.

Yes, which is also written by Anne Rice. Yeah. That show is? Really? Well, the books, the books were that it's based on. Okay. I'm going to tell you something. Between the two of them, Interview with the Vampire is way better. Okay. I got about two-thirds through the first episode of that other show and I was just like, if I was 30 years younger, I could maybe get into it.

Which is about the age that I read all these books 30 years ago. Exactly. Exactly. Interview with the Vampire at least has some new spins on it, even though I know the story backwards and forwards. Right. But it's, yeah, you got to watch it, man. You got to watch it. Okay. Just stay up late, get some wine and just chill and watch it.

Yeah, well, you know, writer's strike. Got to watch some stuff that's old now, so definitely going to do it. Yep. There's a new live action show on Netflix called One Piece. It's a live action adaptation, which everybody has been raving about and turns out that they're going to be releasing some extra episodes.

So they did this with Sandman too, which I thought was so cool because we all thought it was over. And then we got two of the best stories that were little shorts and one-offs that they released later. And apparently that went over so well they're doing it again. But this is on my list to watch.

I mean, everybody is raving about it. Just go check out our Discord channel even. Yeah. I'm just like, wow. Everybody's saying it's great, so I'm going to have to check this out too. Very cool. So now we are entering the Jason Schadenfreude section of the podcast. Well, this is actually – this has kind of moved into a new realm here because Coffeezilla has covered it.

This is the ongoing debacle between Cast Media, which was a podcast network, which has stolen a little over $4 million. Comedian Theo Vaughn, which is what kind of kicked it off, and Podcast One, which we used to be on.

And I've had clients on. I know those guys. I have many friends at Podcast One. Well, the quick timeline is it's really worth watching the Coffeezilla video. And hat tip to a friend of the show, Joey Rabier, for sending me that last night. He just rips this guy to shreds, the guy who started Cast Media.

Because this guy was like, yeah, you know, we did this. We did that. We were great for our clients and all this. And they weren't paying anybody except this guy goes out and buys a $1.7 million house claiming, you know, claiming he's broke. And then gets busted by Coffeezilla for hiring a company that literally says our only job is to hide assets and try to hide his home in a trust.

But it's all dovetails back to Podcast One trying to bail this guy out. I mean, this story is fantastic. I recommend just going and checking the links in the videos in the show notes because Podcast One went live this week on the NASDAQ. So it was weird seeing, you know, people I know like Jordan Harbinger and Kit and all those guys up there ringing the bell.

And it has summarily tanked. Absolutely tanked. I don't understand at all. Wouldn't this be a great investment? Oh, my God. It is down as of this recording.

It is down to $2.68 and it opened at $8. Let's see. I should invest in content that is generally given away for free with a tanking advertising market. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the spoiler alert here is that Cast Media did guarantees.

They said, well, we want you on the network and we will guarantee you X amount of dollars. Well, when smaller shows don't have guarantees and the big shows have guarantees, well, what they're going to do is rob Peter to pay Paul, Logan Paul in this, actually in this case, because they've guaranteed these people money, even though their show might not be really bringing it in.

So this has always been the plan with a lot of these podcast networks, and that's why we're not on one anymore. You just get ignored for the most part, and you don't make any money. Yeah. So you don't make any money when you get 100% of the advertising, let alone 50% of the advertising.

Yep. So well worth the watch. Thank you, Coffezilla.

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Ups and doodads. Well, the EU's announcement that the giant gatekeepers of tech, with over $7.5 billion in turnover, including Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, TikTok, owner by Dance, Meta, Microsoft, and Samsung must comply with all the EU's.

New digital market rules. And a key tenet of that is they are prohibited from favoring their own services and must allow interoperability with third parties. And the first step of that is WhatsApp is now testing a feature that could open it up to other messaging apps. So there you go.

All right. If you're on Signal and Telegram, you'll be able to talk to people that are on WhatsApp starting soon, apparently. Maybe. Although you'd be able to opt out. So how useful is it? I don't know. Yeah. I don't know if any of these. Okay. And then I'd also be concerned about how safe are these signals now?

Are they being encrypted as they're passed through whatever bridge that they have to go through? Who knows? I'm sure smarter people are thinking about this. Yeah, I'd hope so. I'd hope so. Yeah. How does the encryption work? I'd hope so about a lot of things, Jason. That's true. That's true. And it never really seems to be the case.

No, not really. No. Unity. Yeah. The game engine is in the news this week because John Ricciatiello, the CEO over there, has decided to raise the price for the Unity engine by charging developers per install.

Not for demos or trials or things like that. But if you hit a certain threshold of users and downloads, they're going to charge you, I think it was 20 cents per install. Yeah.

Yeah. I would use a different engine. That's what everybody is kind of going to do, I think, right now. The two main fucked up things here is that this guy sold a bunch of his stock right before the announcement that the prices were going to go up. Whoops.

Nothing shady about that, Johnny. Johnny boy. Makes sense. Yeah. And after the announcement, they were going to have a town hall meeting. And there were enough credible death threats against Mr. CEO, John, that they had to cancel it.

Jesus Christ. Somebody really took this shit seriously. Death threats over a gaming engine. Hmm. Well, think about it this way. You just spent years building out your game. You have your projections. You're busting your ass enough just to break even.

And then this guy comes along and says, yeah, we want more money. It is, you know, it is just straight up mob rules over there. So I can see why people would be pissed. I don't see why you would, you know, have a death threat because that's just counterintuitive. You just go break his legs like everybody else would.

But, and you don't tell anybody about it up front. You don't write a rap song about it or anything like that. You just go do it. Unreal jumped out and said, hey, guys, guys, come on over. Just come on over. We'll take care of you.

It is a bit insane. Like, you shouldn't be doing this. It's like, what if Photoshop decided that every single time somebody saw one of your images, they wanted 10 cents? No, I'm paying for your software already. Yeah, exactly. If you want more money, raise the price on that. Yeah. What do you think these are?

Heated seats? Jesus. Exactly. Although Adobe did announce this week that they have bundled in the Firefly product into the shipping versions of Photoshop and, I think, Illustrator. And, yeah, you only get a few credits before you have to pony up per generation.

So they are not really incentivized to make generating the images really great on the first go, especially because you have to keep retrying and retrying to get the desired outcome. Yep. Which is, you know, kind of a shitty business model.

But I also think Adobe's business model is shitty already because I hate software subscriptions. But that's just me. But that ship sailed about 10 years ago. I'd say around seven or eight. We really started to notice it, you know, like two years into the show. That's true. But it's been long enough now where it's just become de rigueur and still sucks.

Yeah. A lot. It sucks. Because I hate it. I hate it. I'd rather just pay for the software and call it a day. And then I can choose if I want to update or not in the story. Yep. Oh, well. Rare case of a company doing something kind of nice. Sony will repair aging AIBO dogs and help them find forever homes.

I love this. This is a great story. Sony's launched the AIBO, is it AIBO or AIBO? AIBO. AIBO Foster Parent Program for its $3,000 robot dogs, allowing owners whose basic plans have been canceled to donate them. They will refurbish as necessary and donate them to medical facilities, foster homes, and other organizations, which is pretty freaking cool.

It's not exactly a fully charitable project, as Sony will charge foster parents an unnamed fee for the service, which is fine because they are fixing these things. It also notes that depending on conditions, some units may only serve as parts for other AIBO robots. So, a little cannibalization there, but that's also fine.

This is a great story. I love this. They can sub in at facilities that don't allow real animals, so the program seems like a good use of older units while also reducing e-waste. Well done, Sony. Yeah. Who cares about the e-waste? I think I've always wanted an AIBO because I thought that they were fantastic.

I've had friends who had stables of AIBOs and treated them like real pets before this next gen came out. This was long ago, like early, early 2000s, and they were just, they've always been so expensive. You'd think that nowadays there would be better robots coming for cheaper prices, but I guess I think what they discovered is there isn't a huge market for it.

Yeah, yeah. You know, Boston Dynamics likes their robots to dance and do all sorts of scary shit. Although Massachusetts is trying to ban the, not just the sale, but the actual manufacturer of robots with weapons, which is a big deal because Massachusetts is where Boston Dynamics and iRobot are headquartered.

So it basically just, you know, kneecaps them saying, no, you cannot put weapons on robots. And Boston Dynamics is behind it. They're fine with it. They do not want people to put guns on their robots. What it really means is they need to hire somebody to relocate the company.

Yeah, that's, I think that's going to be the next step or spin out the other version. But, you know, what we really need are armed iBos. That's it. You know, SEAL Team iBow. Okay. Some interesting news. France has said that iPhone 12s basically are spitting off too much radiation now.

And there it is above. If it were any country other than France, I would probably take this seriously. Yeah. It's an iPhone 12. It took you this long to figure it out? Yeah. That's disturbing to begin with. Yes. And it comes right at the same time where Apple has just discontinued the iPhone 12.

So they're going to release a software patch to apparently, you know, turn the juice down on the microwave shit. But it's just, this is a head scratcher. It's a head scratcher. Apparently Apple also has told their genius staff to just shut up about it.

Don't answer any questions. Well, I mean, haven't other people been testing this? I keep seeing studies saying there's absolutely no worry from this. The amounts of microwave radiation are so tiny, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Why now? And, yeah, I just don't get it.

France probably needs a few extra dollars in the coffer. Okay. Just being cynical, I'm just saying the truth. They probably need some extra money because there's no reason for them to go back and test an iPhone 12 this late in the game. Nope. And saying no. It's, you know, it's just moving the goal marker is what it sounds like to me.

But what do I know? I've got an iPhone 13 Pro. It has scrambled my brain. Over on Discord, Marcin gave us a little note.

Said the Witcher Netflix series came from the books regarding the last episode of GOG. And what makes season three better than season two is that this time they stayed closer to the source material than whatever they did with season two. Foundation. See what happens when you stay close to the source material that was good and people liked to begin with?

Yep. Yep. Thank you, Marcin. I didn't realize that there were books before the game. So that makes sense. So, yeah, it makes sense. All right. I've never heard about those games. Interesting. I broke my rule and I read another book by Peter Cowdron just because I'd forgotten I'd bought it and it was already in my Kindle library and I didn't have to go find a new book.

What is this botten? I've never heard of a botten before. I've bought. I've boughten. I have boughten. I once bought. I'm working my way through this now. Okay. Anyways, I've boughten it and I read it.

Now I got to do it with Reed. I read it and it was good edited. I just applied it into my brain pans. That's right. So this one's called Apothecary and it's part of the First Contact series. Again, I don't even know if he's written anything that isn't part of the First Contact series of books.

Yes, he has actually because I went to Audible and I was trying to figure out where to start. They do list all the First Contact books in order. So I think I'll just start at the end of the list on that. But he does have a bunch of other books on there going back like over a decade.

Well, so he's been writing for a while. That's great. Yeah, I didn't read them in any particular order. The first one I ever read was Wherever Seeds May Fall, which I actually think is the best one that I've read so far. So you may want to start there if you want to start with number one. I will start on that one.

Okay, good. Anyways, I enjoyed the book. It was good. Yeah, there's not really been a clunker yet. Awesome. I like that. Yeah. I am reading Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson because I just feel the need that I have to. Yeah. Yes.

My sadomasochism side coming out. So I'm, you know, I'm a quarter of the way through it. He's just like a normal dude that we would probably end up hanging out with. You know, there's a point where things go sideways for him and he gets rich and was not prepared for it.

And that's the part where I'm at now. He just crashed a million dollar car. Because, yeah, he was a kid who got a million dollar car and was kind of an idiot. Yeah. Which would have been all of us probably at that age. Probably. Yeah. I just, he just got more money and got dumber as it went.

So I'm looking forward to the rest of it. Okay. I saw this news come through and I was a little gobsmacked. Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Universe Returns on audible.com. They have a, basically it's called Buffyverse Slayers, a Buffyverse story.

It's a six episode new Buffy story. Joss Whedon is not involved. So that'll be cool. It is basically written by, what the hell's her name? Amber something or other. I always, I should have written it down. Oh, wait. I wrote all of these notes and the one person that I didn't put in here is the one that I want.

Oh, there it is. Amber Benson. Jesus Christ. This is a long day. Amber Benson wrote this with a partner and she played Tara on the show. My buddy James Marsters is actually coming back as Spike. Charisma Carpenter is coming back as Cordelia. Sarah Michelle Gellar says, fuck Buffy, I'm never going back.

So she's not in it. Fair enough. So it should be pretty cool. It comes out October 13th. I have pre-ordered. Okay. Coming back on September 19th though, LeVar Burton Reads is coming back. Cool. Yeah.

Good for him. Apparently Stitcher Studios is sticking around because they killed the Stitcher app and Stitcher is a company. SiriusXM killed that, but they are keeping the studio around so they are still making original content. So it's coming back. I'm very excited. All right.

Good. I'd rather he be doing more Picard, but okay. Well, there is no more Picard. So we're good. We're good. This keeps him off of the Jeopardy circuit. So we're good. I saw this and I just, oh God. Project Gutenberg and Microsoft have teamed up to basically create audio books of the entire Project Gutenberg archive.

Chat GPT must consume. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty well. No, this doesn't really need you on GPT. Yeah. The books are already written. We're good with that. I forget the name of the technology they were using, but they're calling this some new neural text to speak technology, whichever, whatever that means.

Um, I listened to some of it. It'll work in a pinch because it's free. Right. Do not expect human level, uh, uh, quality. Um, they throw in a lot of foibles in the speaker's text to speech just to make it sound more human.

Right. Which actually just draws your attention to the fact that it's not human. That it's not. Yeah. Because no human would make the mistakes that they're making. Right. You know? Humans only make mistakes like, uh, bottened. Yeah. Botten. Exactly.

Yeah. Uh, they do say that the language and views presented in these audio books do not represent views of Microsoft or Project Gutenberg. Okay, great. Uh, some audio books may contain errors in strange pronunciations, offensive language, or content not suitable for all audiences. Oh, you mean they're books.

Yeah. They're books. That will upset some people. Yes. Yeah. Understood. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Maybe this is the way to get around Florida. Just go to Project Gutenberg. Maybe. Uh, yeah. I mean, you can check them out if you want. Uh, they're, like I said, they're okay.

They'll work in a pinch. But I, I prefer, you know, obviously supporting humans. Wil Wheaton should read everything. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave, with podcast super host Dave Bittner.

Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast for all your cybersecurity news. The co-host of Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan discussing how humans are mean. The co-host of Caveat with Get Yellin' on the Horn! Because people are nosy. And the host of Control Loop because industrial machines have feelings too. Good morning, Dave.

Hello. I bet Hacking Humans was busy this week. It's been a busy week. Yeah. It's been a busy week all around. Uh, and, uh, I'm ready for the weekend. But let's, so let's do this. Let's do some Star Wars news then. Oh, yeah.

That'll get my spirits up. That's the energy jolt I need. All right. Well, do you have $400,000? I do not, no. Oh, well. Not, not, not to spare, certainly. House, X-Wing, I mean, come on. Yeah. Yes, yes.

So, uh, one of the hero X-Wing models from the original, original movie is going up for auction, starting price of $400,000. I don't know. I personally think I'd want a later model. I think that first movie around, that was a lot of duct tape and cardboard.

Well, that was, I mean, that one looks like it has all the servos and everything. That's the one where they showed the wings opening. Right. Oh, really? Yeah. It's the, it's the real deal. I mean, it's something, I look, it's something I would love to have, of course. In the backyard? Well, he's going to have to get rid of the backyard.

No, no, I mean, it's just a van. Yeah. Yeah. I would have to have it on my, on my, uh. Can you get a sleeping bag in there? Right. Above my fireplace, uh, you know, it'd be a cool thing to have. Um, and if you can, and I suppose it's been screen matched and all that kind of stuff.

It seems like it's pedigree is sound. Yes. Um, but it's just fascinating that, that I, I, I describe Star Wars as the gift that keeps on giving. And it's hard to imagine, you know, how many years later are we 40, almost what, 45 years later.

And there's still things like this popping up from Star Wars. And I'm trying to think of other movies where this is, would even be possible to have all these artifacts and behind the scenes things and photos. And just from this little low budget sci-fi movie that wasn't expected to do much, it just seems miraculous that so much was saved.

Yeah. It's, I mean, uh, that, that documentary that's on Disney plus, uh, is just stunning when, when you realize just how much stuff they made for this movie. It was, it's, it's not terribly surprising, you know, that, uh, and again, nobody really thought it was going to do anything. So I think, you know, a lot of ILM guys just took stuff home.

Yeah. Yeah. And now it's being found in their, in their attics. Right. I've heard of, uh, there was a famously, there was an original screen used storm trooper helmet from a new hope that showed up in a, um, uh, uh, a flea market in the UK.

It was just somebody from the crew at the studio had managed to get one and ended up for sale. Just, you know, yeah. And then they were able to screen match it. Um, this does remind me of, um, there is a legend about the original Darth Vader costume going missing.

Um, you know, again, when they made the original film, they didn't have a lot of money. They didn't make a lot of copies of things. I believe for the Darth Vader costume, they only had one for a new hope to, to be the hero costume. And, um, the legend is missing or was it a David Prowse thing?

Because I all accounts, he was a bit of a trickster. He was, um, and sort of had, had some bitterness, I think with good reason having his voice replaced without him knowing it. Imagine showing up to the premiere and your voice has been replaced.

Yeah. Um, but, uh, I believe this is from, this is documented in the Star Wars costumes, coffee table book. At least the legend is in there about basically how, um, somebody showed up at ILM in a white van and said, hi, I'm here to pick up the Darth Vader costume.

And a bunch of folks in the ILM warehouse were like, oh yeah, it's in that crate. Uh, sure. Because at that time the costume was coming and going for appearances and TV shows and promotional things. And it turns out it was just, nobody knows who it was and they took it and it was gone forever.

So the legend that I've heard is that the actual original screen used Darth Vader costume has gone missing and never was seen again. So it's in somebody's basement. Sooner or later, somebody's going to die, right? It will pop up. And it's going to be found. Right. And it'll pop up and, and maybe this mystery will be solved.

But, uh, that's the legend as I understand it. Or somebody threw it out thinking it was an old Halloween costume. And it was the Underoos tag on the inside that really confused people. Right. Right. Yeah. And Darth Vader's costume did change from, you know, from A New Hope to Empire to Jedi, especially the helmet, um, evolved quite a bit.

So there, there's a, there's a website dedicated to Star Wars helmets. If you're into this sort of thing, just do a search for Star Wars helmets and you'll find, you'll find every little possible detail you could ever want to know about the helmets used in the Star Wars universe. And I happen to find it quite interesting, but that's just me.

Surprise, surprise, surprise. That's right. Right. Well, I don't know if you guys saw this, but Disney is celebrating their centennial with a box set of 100 of its best films on Blu-ray. I'm guessing Song of the South didn't make the cut. Did not make the cut.

No, did not. I do declare, did not. That's right. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. I would buy this if I even had a Blu-ray DVD player anywhere, but I don't. And I'm spending about that on Disney Plus over the course of several years.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You do get the digital downloads with it, but it comes out to 15 bucks a movie, which is, seems kind of steep nowadays. Do you think? What does the DVD go for at the, at the wall of the mart? I don't know. I did. I get all mine from the, the, the market of the flea.

So I don't know. I mean, I'd figure. I usually spend $2 on a, on a, on a, on a Blu-ray nowadays. I mean, I would guess 15 to 20 bucks would still be the cost of a, of a DVD these days. Yeah. But who pays retail? It is, it is kind of a cool looking set though.

It comes in, you know, it's got lots of bits and atoms with it. So I guess if you have to kill some trees, it might be worth it. But. I mean, honestly, it's a Blu-ray. How much could it cost? Yes. Indeed. No idea. This reminds me that, um, as we speak right now, we're going through kind of a home reno project at my house.

We just had a, a deck rebuilt on the back of the house, which, um, has been going on for the past six months and it's just about done. Um, it's a big project because it's actually a three level deck on the back of our, we have a townhouse.

So, yeah. So it's a big job. But anyway, as part of that, uh, in the lower level of our house, we have a little home theater that I built along with my son and we had a set of shelves that was full of all of our DVDs, our big DVD collection. And we've sort of hit the moment of truth where we're like, we're never going to watch these DVDs anymore.

You know, they're, first of all, DVDs are standard def. You know, we subscribe to all of the streaming services. So if we want to watch a movie, we're either going to get it from one of those or download it to, to, or pay to watch it in HD.

Cause we're not going to watch a standard death movie anymore. Right. So we ended up doing the same thing that we did with our CD collection, which is we bought some binders, right. To be able to compress it into a much smaller space. We're throwing away all the jewel cases and boxes going through, figuring out what discs do we actually want to keep and what are we going to recycle, you know, send on to the flea market.

Um, but no, interestingly, it's like the, the, the jewel packaging and the booklet are the only thing that I would actually want to keep because that's what you don't get with the streaming. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Those are the ones that that's when you get the whole package is when you, when it's really a find.

Cause yeah, I did the same thing. Well, I had a, I had a DVD collection that I bought for about $25,000 that I spent. I spent about $25,000 on it over the course of a summer and, uh, did the same thing, put them all in the binders and they have been sitting in my dad's basement for about 20 years now and, and since my little brother was born, uh, over that, that collection has been there his entire life.

So as you can imagine, his friends, uh, have come by and five finger discounted quite a few of the, uh, the choice collection. So you go through and there's just gaping holes and I'm like, okay, which are your little asshole friends stole this one? Yeah. But the thing that we figured out though is they don't work anymore.

A lot of them will not load anymore because BitRot, you know? Yeah. I mean, at some point my, my much revered laser disc collection from college went in the trash and that's where all these things are headed to at some point. Well, but you have folks who say that you should absolutely be buying physical media because that's the only way you can be sure that you actually own something, but then on the other hand, they do like old CDs won't play old DVDs won't play.

Like they only, they've got shelf life, all of it. My old VHS have turned to goo. So those don't count. I, you know, I just download it and put it on a, uh, put it on a hard drive. So there's my physical media nowadays. I've got a Plex server of everything that I've ever bought that I want to keep in high res, but I still have, you know, that little Blu-ray collection of the same things.

And I'm even getting rid of that because why? Everything is, you know, they keep up-resing it with new. So we'll get 8k versions of everything at some point. Right. The up-res technology is so damn good now. So there's, there's no reason anymore. I mean, it's, it's good to have your own digital copy because yeah, it disappears from every streaming service known to man at some point.

So it's nice to have your own library, but even then, how often do you go back to watch that old stuff? Almost never. Well, and has Disney, or is Disney still playing the game of putting things in the vault or with, or have they stopped that with Disney Plus?

Do you guys have any sense for that? They pretty much stopped it with Disney Plus. There's, there's nothing out there really that you can't get. Although interestingly enough, just yesterday, um, Disney did a long time ago, uh, a version of Peter and the Wolf, an animated version.

And my son has just gotten into that as a piece of music that we play all the time. So I wanted to show it to him last night, not on Disney Plus. Only place I could find it was YouTube. Huh. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's a good version. There's a good version of Peter and the Wolf narrated by David Bowie.

Yes. We've been listening to that one. It's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. When I was a kid, I did a, uh, when I was a teenager, I did a spoof version of that Peter and the Wolf version where it just starts out normal and goes along with all the different instruments.

And then Peter is represented by the electric guitar. So you weird out Peter and the Wolf? Basically, yeah. So I cut in, you know, like a guitar solo, probably from like Kiss Alive 2 or something, you know, something, it was the seventies, but the early eighties at best, you know, but I thought it was a hilarious joke at the time.

So. It really slayed him in junior high. It did. It did. Yeah. There were a handful of nerds who thought, who I probably got a, huh, that's funny from and well worth the hours of time I put into it, but. Well, you know, the, the joy is in the journey, not the destination, Dave.

That's what they tell me. Yeah. Yeah. So I did stay up last night to get caught up on Ahsoka. Yeah. It was nice to have a longer episode. Yes. And, uh, move the story forward, I think. And, and, uh, it was a good, I think it was a much needed, uh, bit of backstory if, for the many, many, many, many people that probably have never watched any of the animated stuff.

So that was good. Yeah. Me too. Mm hmm. Yeah. And, uh, that, that, uh, little, uh, that actress has, has been, uh, banking it this year. She's been in everything. Oh yeah. Yeah. She's been in a lot of stuff. I thought she was great. Yeah. I thought she was great too. So, yeah, even beat a much better than a young Leia, I thought.

Hmm. But of course she was only on screen for five minutes. Right. Right. Yeah. No, it was good. It was good. I liked the show. I, I, I'm, I'm sad that there's only a couple more episodes left before we will have nothing for a long time. Right. Right. With the strike and all, I guess there's.

There's no telling how long it's going to be. Yep. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Yeah. I agree though. I, I, I'm continue to be impressed by this show and, um, I'm looking forward to all the episodes. It's, it's feels like a real star Wars to me.

Yeah. And we're definitely rolling into, uh, you know, no more, no more backstory, no more, um, sitting around wondering what's going to happen. We're going to get the, this, the shit's going to happen now. So, yeah, it's good. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm actually really, um, surprised that you like it as much as you do, Jason.

Oh, I think it's, I think it's just good. I think it's just a well-paced, you know, star Wars show. Yeah. You're my barometer for whether non-star Wars people would like things or not. So. Okay. When Jason likes it, I'm like, oh, it must be a solid show outside of the star Wars universe.

It's not that I disagree with you, Brian. It's just, uh, it's, I guess it's that, um, Jason, when he feels things, he feels things so strongly. True. Which is both a blessing and a curse. It makes for a good podcast. Right, right, right.

So I guess my point is that, um, while I would be very interested in Jason's opinion on anything, I would also want to balance it with someone else's, which is like, that's why the show is perfect for me because I can say, Brian, what do you think? And I can say, Jason, what do you think?

And between the two of you, I think I come up with something that's pretty much the truth. Yeah, I don't so much take Jason's opinion sometimes with a grain of salt so much as a salt lick. That's the way I do it. Right. The great salt flats. Gotta drive after the dick.

You guys are a couple of dicks. Anybody ever tell you that? Jason, we tease because we love. We tease because we love. Bullshit. True. I don't think you can deny what Dave has said though, Jason. You, you do, um, when you're all in, you are all in.

And when you are not, oh boy, the whole world knows. Well, yeah. Why, why live in the middle? How boring is that? You want me to explain it to you? Because I can't. No, because I don't give a shit. There you go. How's that for an opinion? So, see, there it is.

All right. All right. Well, we do have a bit of security news, which I'm sure Dave has covered on the 17,000 other podcasts, but the house is not winning this week in Vegas. They've, they've been hacked to, uh, to so far, uh, casinos that we know about, uh, MGM resorts and Caesars, both through, uh, basically hacking humans.

Yeah. It seems as though it, uh, was some, so, well, the, the bad guys are claiming that it was through social engineering. Basically, they were able to call the help desk and then get a, an account, uh, spoof someone's account and get authorization to get in and, um, install some ransomware.

So the story is that, uh, LinkedIn, right, right. The story is that, uh, Caesars, they demanded $30 million from Caesars and, uh, the scuttlebutt is that Caesars paid them 15, not a bad payday.

Yeah. Not bad. Um, and last I've heard, I haven't heard of a payout from MGM yet. They, they seem to be saying that they're not going to pay, but who knows? And it's interesting that, cause you know, is there any more time, I guess hospitals, but in terms of profits, a time sensitive organization than a casino, shut down a casino.

You know, and you know, when those machines go silent, right, exactly. When those machines go silent, it's, it's dollars not being earned. So they're highly motivated to, to pay the people off. But yeah, I like this line in one of the articles, security week describes them as a financially motivated threat actor.

Yeah. There you go. That's, I think so. Yeah. See, here's, here's what I'm thinking. I don't think a lot of these, uh, kids who are basically hacking Caesars and MGM have ever really seen any old mob videos about Vegas. That's right.

That's right. You know, Andy Garcia is not going to take this lion down. No, I, no, I mean, that's even, you know, relatively new compared to some of the ones I'm thinking of, but, uh, it's like, okay, the GRU, the Mossad, you know, any of those like shadowy government agencies.

I don't think they hold a candle to the viciousness of what, uh, uh, what, what basically the gangs that run Vegas have under the hood. So I would be, I would be terrified to steal from these guys. I would not be terrified to steal from almost anybody else that they've stolen from, but they're going after the mob kind of, I know they say it's above board and it's, you know, and they've reformed blah, blah, blah.

No, there's still the mob behind all this shit. So they think they've gotten away with it, but the casinos are, as, as always, the casinos are playing the long game. You think? Yeah. That other 15 million is going to the squad. That's going out to find these guys and disappear them.

Hmm. Oh, I'm sure there's a significant amount of money being invested in tracking these guys down. There's, you know, there's, there's just too much money involved. Wouldn't that be interesting if this were the thing that caused ransomware to turn the corner? If, if they finally, I'm serious.

If they finally went after the wrong group of people who had enough international reach with other organized crime people around the world and word went out to basically said, this is going to stop now. And it did. Now, you see, we, we get this, this impression of Dave as a very nice, happy-go-lucky, very middle-of-the-road guy.

But when you, when we talk about these stories, it always eventually comes down to absolutely nothing in the, nothing in this world is going to change unless you affect people that, that are important, which is a pretty dark viewpoint of life. I have to say. Well, it's not, it's not inaccurate. No, it's not inaccurate at all.

No, it's true. Because this goes back to your whole thing about like, you know, laws don't change unless they automatically are, will affect our, our lawmakers in some way. Yes. Yeah. I, if you asked me, I would say that I'm, I'm really trying to not be cynical. I'm trying to be realistic, but at the same time, uh, it's probably safe to say the weight of the world has crushed my spirit.

So. Okay. Fair enough. That's not, I mean, that's not, look, in general, I like to think of myself as a kind of a happy go lucky guy, but I'm also, I am, I am aware that I have been accused of being Pollyanna throughout my life as well.

So, uh, yes, there is a dark undercurrent of realism that flows as well. So there you go. Yeah. Uh, one thing I put in here for the show notes that I don't know if you guys had a chance to look at this yet. Uh, somebody published this thing called the terms and conditions game, and it's basically a journey through dark patterns of how far can you get of clicking the right option with a bunch of terms and conditions menus.

And it is just maddeningly fun. Yeah. I, I played this earlier today. It was a, it was a hoot. Yeah. But also, you know, kind of true. Yeah. Well, that's exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I did play a game called Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer this week.

Did you guys play that one? No. Didn't feel the need to just test myself. Yeah. I, uh, I failed. How did it turn out for you, Jason? I only got 60%. Okay. Phew. Wait, 60% programmer or, uh?

Uh, 60% correct. All right. Okay. So it's, uh, it's. I'm going to have to try this one later. It's pretty fun. Links will be in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it's kind of hard. The only way that I knew some of them was because I've seen the, you know, the, uh, the specials on them, on the, on the actual serial killers.

So. Right. That was. But for the most part, it's tough. It's tough to tell. There's only 10 questions. So it's, it's pretty quick. Give it a play. Link will be in the show notes. I will give it a shot. Since there's nothing else to do. Thanks to the strikes. So. Yeah, exactly.

Maybe you can go back and, I was going to say, maybe you should go back and watch all of the, uh, animated series now. I've tried that. And, um, and actually my youngest son started us down a path of kind of cherry picking the ones that he thought would be most important for us as we moved our way forward.

So we have seen some of those. But, eh, I mean. It's not as good. I have to. I'm not in, I'm not in that place in my life anymore with Star Wars with, with having to be a completist. I know it's hard to believe and it's hard for me to believe.

Yeah. Well, we've got a lot of Drew Barrymore and, uh, Bill Maher to look forward to because they've decided, they've decided that the rules that apply to them don't apply to them. Scab. Yeah.

All right, guys. May the force be with you. I'll talk to you next time. And also with you. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Mason and Peter. Welcome, folks. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got Ralph, Miles, Shari, Danny, Natalie, Linda, Dag, Blake, Bowling, Nathaniel.

Thank you. Thank you. Over at the tip jar, we've got Joseph and Theodore. Now, just a quick reminder. Uh, if you do sign up for one of our cheapy, cheapy, cheapy Patreon subscriptions, starting at $3 a month, you can get the show a little bit early, uh, technology with notwithstanding and you get it ad free and in high res.

Oh, and just, just so everybody knows last week, we did leave in the quote unquote advertisement, one of them, because it was a free gift from another GOG listener. So, uh, go back if you want, if you would like your free subscription to the dark web academy, go listen to the last episode or, you know, whatever it's, it'll be in this episode for the unwashed masses.

But we'll, since we don't feel like answering emails like, Hey, I think y'all left an advertisement in there. We didn't sign up for that. Well, no, it was a free gift just to clear the air. All right. Moving on. Uh, we have a new five-star rating, uh, from banjax909.

Very, very funny. This remains the only podcast that consistently makes me laugh out loud every episode. I look forward to hearing them turn their ire on well-deserved targets every week. Highly informative as well, but that's a side effect of a conversation between people who know their tech inside out. A must listen. Obviously you have us confused with Kara Swisher.

What show is this that I must go listen to? So that sounds like a great show. Yeah. I don't know. What do you think? Hmm. I think it's time to wrap this damn thing up. 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 618. GOG.show slash donate is the place to drop us a few bills so we can keep bringing you this top-notch entertainment. At GOG.show, you can find a link to our Discord channel if you want to chat with us and other show fans.

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 on the air. And GOG.show slash review is where you can toss us a review and preferably five stars that we can read on the air too. And share it with a friend if you're feeling, you know, feeling generous.

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