622: Never Fear, Cyber Sentinel is Here!

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Discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, I'm embracing cancel culture.

What'd you do now? I canceled everything. Okay, I thought you got canceled. Everything. No, well, I've been canceled so many times. It doesn't count. It doesn't even matter anymore. Oh, God. Anybody that's listened to this show knows. No, I just went through and I just noticed that things were starting to flip over from when I started Boot Up way back.

And, man, I spent a lot of money on news. Way too much money on news. But I did it when I first set up the show. I got all the specials, you know? Yeah, the deals. Yeah. The first taste is free. Exactly. We will give you the Wall Street Journal for just $3 a year and we will renew it $600 when you're not looking.

And I was sending them to you and I'm just like, yeah, we're not keeping this one. We're not keeping this one. We're not keeping this one. And I estimate that I saved about $2,500 in subscriptions by canceling everything this week. That's significant.

That's significant. I mean, I think we've talked about it on the show before that, like, once a year, you really should go through everything. You know, all your subscriptions. Because it's a subscription-based world now, as we all know. It's very annoying. Software, streaming.

I mean, everything is subscription-based. So, I've also done this recently, although I had an externality that kind of forced me to do it. Just moving things around to Canadian credit cards versus U.S. credit cards and all that sort of stuff. So, you know, went through the credit card bill. That'll do it.

What the fuck is this? I think Brian Brushwood also says to cancel everything once a year. Yeah. Or, I mean, at least look at it. You don't have to go through and cancel everything. Like, I'm not going to cancel Disney+. I know I'm keeping that forever. Yeah, if you're using it every day, that's one thing.

But, like, you know, I got rid of Hulu. Because I'm just like, I don't need Hulu anymore. I don't need Disney Plus anymore because they're bundled together because everybody on the planet has Disney Plus. And they're like, hey, you want my thing? I'll trade you on HBO Max for this and that and the other. You start horse trading again.

Well, for as long as we can because they all are trying to crack down on that. Yeah, yeah. I've actually got some of the subs in here that I'm canceling too. I'll talk about them later in the show. But it was just really nice to go through and prune everything and just say, nope, got rid of that.

Masterclass is gone because I'm like, oh, for like three years, I'm like, man, I really want to watch that one course. I'll get to it. Then it renews. Then you never watch it. And then it comes back and it's like, I still want to watch. Oh, no, not again. So I just bit the bullet and just canceled all of it.

It feels so good. And your bank account thanks you for it. Yeah, what's left of it. Thanks me very, very much. Now, if I still had some crypto in my bank account, I could go out and buy a Ferrari because a Ferrari is apparently going through a midlife crisis because it's acting like a dumb old fuck right now.

Because you can buy a Ferrari with crypto, which, what is this, 2019 again? Yeah, I know. What are you doing it for the press release? Everybody's done this already. You could buy the Beyonce album. You could buy a Tesla, blah, blah, blah. You can probably still buy Teslas with crypto because, you know, he's a wanker.

I think they killed that, though. I actually do think that, well, they, I think they, well, maybe they liquidated their holdings, their crypto holdings. That's the only way they made money that one quarter, remember? That's true. I do remember that. Yeah. And then they wrote down the loss the next quarter. So, hey. Hey. Corporate shenanigans.

Yep. Yep. So, it's just funny. So, if they're partnering with BitPay. So, you can pay in Bitcoin, Ether, or USD coin. Or you can just pay with USD. And don't be a D. Yeah, there you go. Other crypto news.

The Winklevii are back in the news. Gemini Trust Company, the cryptocurrency exchange, held by Cameron and Tyler. I didn't even, I always forget what their actual real first names are. I just call them the Winklevii. Yeah, they're the Winklevii. And I've been calling them that for so long. And in my brain space, I don't even remember what they look like.

They're the albino twins from the Matrix. That is all I picture in my mind. I remember them from, you know, the Social Network movie. And so, when I see real pictures of them, I'm like, ugh. They are definitely not as attractive as they were in the movie.

And they weren't even that attractive in the movie. But, yeah. Yes, the Winklevii are an autonomous, self-contained unit. I don't think they do anything without each other. So, we'll just keep on that. Well, they're being hit with a lawsuit alleging that they defrauded, or the company had defrauded investors of $1 billion.

And I just look at the math. Winklevii? Crypto? Yep, that tracks. Yeah. And it's not just them for the whole billion. There are two other groups that are along for the ride. Yeah. But they're definitely, you know, they are one autonomous unit as far as the, as far as Letitia James is concerned.

Yes. So, we'll go get them. Yeah. Go get them. Speaking of wankers, Mark Andreessen is back. And I, you know, the last time. But has he ever left? Yeah. Well, no, he hasn't. No. That's the problem. He's not, it's not, it's not that he's back. It's just, he never leaves. Yeah. So, I, I just love this.

Mark Andreessen is wrong about everything. The billionaire says he wants to lead a techno-optimist revolution, but he's too rich to understand that his belief system is stupid. That's the headline from Gizmodo. And I would like to know, Brian, when you and I started writing for Gizmodo. I will state, though, that if, if I was wrong about everything made me a billionaire, I'd be happy to be wrong about everything.

I think maybe that's why he just, that's why he's leaning into it. Right. He's leaning into it. I mean, it's working. God. Yeah, he wrote a new, a new screed called the Techno-Optimist's Manifesto. And I skimmed it. Nobody got the memo that you shouldn't be writing anything called a manifesto anymore?

Mm-mm. Okay. Nope. Nope, not at all. So, I skimmed it. It's 5,000 words over on Substack. And, like, every sentence is, we believe. I'm like, okay. How much you want to bet he didn't write this? He prompted it into an AI generator.

Of course. Of course. I was actually going to try and reverse engineer that, too, to make it work. Because his last thing was about how AI is, you know, not as bad as everybody says it is. We should just let it go. Well, this new one just says, this, here's, the manifesto presents a future where technological advancements create universal prosperity, achievable only by removing current safeguards.

He's saying, yeah, he's just saying, let's go, you know, let's let her ride. Let her ride. Yeah. Yeah. So, he's calling it effective accelerationism. Fuck you. Why don't you call it Cambridge Analytica-ism while you're at it?

Call it, call it, call it Muscovism, you know. He's saying, oh, take all the constraints off because capitalism needs to work. Well, ask, ask Elon how that's working for his capitalism right now because Andreessen wants to get rid of trust and safety. He wants to get rid of ethics.

He wants to get rid of all these people that, you know, make the internet a nice and safe place. Also, it makes it a nice and safe place for advertisers so they don't put their, you know, their ad for Tide cold wash up next to Nazi propaganda. But they don't care because they're rich.

They got theirs already. So, to hell with everyone else. Yeah. I love this. Andreessen's techno-optimism, dismissive of practical societal considerations, is perceived as a detached viewpoint, potentially dangerous if its principles were to guide actual tech policy or innovation trajectories.

A-fucking-men to that. So, this just follows up on what I said before. The guy is dangerous. He's a scam artist. He just wants your money. Stay away from him. Don't listen to him. And the reason I put this actually in here is the people who understand, understand.

It's the kids that are coming up nowadays. This isn't the regular Gen Zers who are out to save the whales and all that other shit, you know. This is the tech bro Gen Zers who are out there thinking that they just want to make their billions. Since crypto failed, AI is still whatever the fuck AI is going to be.

You know, they follow on to this guy like he's God. Stay away from him. He's a false prophet. It's the cult of Musk. It's Musk. It's Andreessen. It's Joe Rogan. It's the dude that's in jail for trafficking fucking 12-year-olds. All these fucking assholes.

And it's just so attractive to the young, you know, the young mind, unfortunately. Yeah. Take a lesson from Sam Bankman-Fried if you want to follow somebody. Straight to prison. A little follow-up on – this one just made me laugh. Comcast resists calls to stop its misleading 10G network claims.

This is my million-dollar, one-dollar bill. Yeah. Comcast has renamed its whole network to Xfinity 10G, even though you can't get 10G. And they're saying 10G is in 10 gigabits. Okay. I get it.

Yeah. You have to have fiber to do that, which almost nobody has. So, you know, and they're just saying, no, we're not going to do it. They're just saying, no, we're not going to do it. The national advertising division, they say it's misleading. So, if you're going to listen to the NAD, the NAD says – Well, you know, I mean, we have self-driving mode on Teslas.

We've been banging the drum on this. All bets are off. It doesn't matter. You can call anything whatever you want, and there are no repercussions. So, have fun with that. A Comcast ad executive was quoted as saying, hey, if we got them to believe our service is unlimited, then why should we change course now? Just wait until the 1,200 Gs of Christmas promotion kicks off.

There's no way a real executive said that. No way. No, that was me over my coffee this morning. But it could be. It could be. Oh, man, you just misled me with false information, Jason. Oh, what am I going to do? Sue me, Brian. It was bolded in the notes, even. I know. I know.

That means it's doubly true. It is doubly true. So, the FCC is back in the news. They voted yesterday in favor of restoring net neutrality. Whee! Okay. So, now we're going to the public review process again, which worked out so well for them last time.

So, let's roll out the corpses and get everybody to vote. Great. Yes. If nobody remembers, there's a link in the show notes about the last time net neutrality was on board for public approval. When they tried to ban it, well, not tried to, when they did ban it, the process for public comment was basically filled with tons and tons of dead people.

So, and it still went through. So, let's roll out the corpses and let's get to it. You know what the FCC should do? They should probably charge a dollar to help. Oh, wait. We'll get to that stupid story later. You're jumping the gun, Brian. In the news.

I love this one, Brian. Six months ago, NPR left Twitter. The effects have been negligible. No shit. No shit. This is what we've all known for, at least us in the business have known for a while. You don't get traffic from Twitter. No. You're not anymore.

The only reason. Yeah. I don't know why I still do grumpy old geeks updates on Twitter. They're useless. Like every now and then somebody retweets something, but that's about it. Yeah. Feel free to stop that. Well. You know. I know it's habit. It's habit. It's habit.

Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, we have to pay for that. So let's just save the money. Because nobody cares. Feel free to post on threads. We're also nobody cares. Yes. Or blue sky. We're really nobody cares. Or Facebook, where nobody ever sees it.

Or Mastodon, where whatever the fuck that is anymore. Yeah. Just go outside your house, Brian, and scream, there's a new episode of Grumpy Old Geeks Out! And somebody might actually stop and say, what the fuck are you yelling about? And you go, we've got a podcast. And they go, oh, okay.

And then ignore you just like they do on Twitter. So do I. If you listen to my podcast, I'll listen to yours. That's the way it works now. Quid pro podcast. But, hey, we can jump on truth social, just like Biden did. That's a great move.

Great move. It's so good. Yep. The re-election campaign for Biden has jumped on truth social. They say, converts, welcome. I just love it. I think it's great. You know. It's hilarious. Reverse troll. Reverse troll all the way through. Go for it. Whoever in his team decided that this is the playbook should get a raise.

Yep. Absolutely. Well, some more X news. After weeks of speculation, X has confirmed its plans to charge new users for the service previously known as Twitter. They're going to roll out this program called Not a Bot. I guess they didn't beta test that one.

In New Zealand and the Philippines first. So it's only new users. They will require new users to pay the equivalent of $1 a U.S. per year in order to be able to post. They will be required to also verify their phone numbers if they want to use core features like tweets, retweets, bookmarks, and likes.

Those who don't pay will only be able to use X in a read-only mode, which sounds fine to me. Yeah. Okay. Whatever. If I had a choice. So they say that the fees will not apply to existing users because it's not a profit driver. Others have reported that Musk has had ambitions to gain access to users' credit cards and billing information, which is exactly what this is about.

It's not about stopping the bots like he claims because anybody, one buck a year for an account is small potatoes to these bot farms and what they're able to do. Yeah. And like they don't have millions of credit card numbers and millions of phone numbers to do exactly the same thing.

So this is all about give me your credit card. It's the same play that Facebook tried, what, five years ago now and didn't work and nobody did it. Still, no, to this day, every time I post, they're like, would you like to boost your post? Just put in your credit card. No. Nope. Nope. There are two people in this world that will never get my credit card, Elon Musk and what's his face from Facebook?

Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg. Never. Never, never, never. See, we've even forgotten who he is. I know. I try. Yeah. Well, he does it right. He kind of stays out of the public eye most of the time. Unlike these morons. He's stuck in the metaverse, man. That's why he's trying to find his legs.

Where'd my legs go? This one's funny. Slack is retiring its status account on Twitter. I know they keep saying X, but I'm still sticking with Twitter. Fuck it. They're going to retire the at Slack status account because nobody cares anymore. They're still going to keep their Slack HQ account, but this is happening all over the place.

I think Amex killed theirs too. There's a lot of things. It doesn't matter anymore. Nobody cares. That used to be customer service and that's, it's just not. I like the status stuff. I like to know if a service is up or down or not. And I think it should be easy. And I actually noticed this recently as well because my mom had called me and her internet service had gone down.

So I went over to spectrum.net because they used to just have an outages page. Yeah. Guess what they got rid of? Their outages page. You have to go into a chat and have a chat bot and then you have to put in your phone number and your account number and then they'll tell you if there's an outage in your area.

Fuck you. You bastards. It's great. I've got, I've got spectrum business. So they just, they tell me when there's a, they, they call me and say, Hey, we've got an outage in your neighborhood. Uh, we expect to have it back up in a few minutes or in two hours or whatever. And I'm like, thank you.

That's the way it should be. Thank you. But it's business class. So you pay three times as much for a telephone call for basically the same thing. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. The same thing. Oh, more X news. Australia has find X formerly Twitter. I guess this is what all reporters are doing now for failing to answer all its questions about child exploitation.

I don't understand why anybody is surprised by this because they no longer have a PR or support department and you just get poop emojis. So you're shocked that they didn't answer questions. Uh, the country's government level of pendency of around 387,000 us dollars equivalent for the company for noncompliance with a national law requiring social platforms to disclose how they're combating online child sexual abuse material.

So, you know, they make empty statements, but, uh, the government over down, down there said, well, what exactly are you doing? Not, not the statement that you think it's a top priority and that you're doing all you can. What are you doing? And, uh, they basically just wouldn't reply.

So they left boxes blank. They didn't require adequately to questions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that's great. So, but what you do get is Linda Yaccarino saying children are not our target customer and our service is not overwhelmingly used by children. I would argue a child owns it.

That's the, God. Yeah. I just put it in, uh, in the show notes here. They send back the ASCII art for the shrug. That's what, that's what, when they're asked what they do, that's their, yeah. For, for, for an actual question, they don't send back the poop emoji.

They just send back the shrug ass. Um, I like this, this was an interesting read over on the garbage day newsletter about how Twitter is being used by the farmers now in turning into an even bigger shit pile. I love this using the verified paid accounts to self-amplify to make Elon bucks, which is now you can get paid, you know, for, for shitting all over shitter.

Um, but it's funny because you look at this, these are all the old tactics that everybody used way back in the day, but there's nobody home anymore to pull out the old playbook and say, oh, you're not supposed to do that. Now they'll just send you a check. I am so disinterested and bored with tech news these days that when you started this story and said used by farmers, I literally thought, huh, how are farmers actually using this?

What, what? Like real farmers, like with tractors and shit. That's the John Deere hacking stories for farmers only dot X. Uh, we had talked last week about how X wasn't answering questions about how they're taking action against Israel and Hamas misinformation because basically there are no people there to do that anymore.

Uh, TikTok actually announced their plans for mitigating misleading and violent content in the wake of the Israel-Hamas-Hamas war. Israel's going to war against Hamas. Fuck Hamas. We do not like chickpeas. Show the way. God. Uh, don't write us letters for that one, please.

I know we deserve it, but please. The great war of Baba Ganoush. Fuck, we're dead. Oh, fuck. The world is so horrible right now. You just can't, you have to laugh. I'm sorry, everybody. Anyways, a point-by-point blog post details recent steps such as the creation of a command center.

Wow, can you imagine X trying to get that together? That brings together key members of our 40,000 strong global team of safety professionals. Well, that's pretty impressive. Yeah. Uh, is it actually being effective? I don't really know. I don't think so. They're hiring more moderators who speak Arabic or Hebrew and regularly updating its automatic detection systems to identify graphic or violent content.

Uh, so yeah, they're at least saying they're doing something and putting out the actual steps of what they're doing. So, good for them. All righty. Uh, so this new, uh, Gallup survey with about 1,600 teenagers in the U.S. revealed they spend, on average, 4.8 hours a day on social media, with usage increasing with age being higher among girls compared to boys.

5.3 hours for girls to 4.4 hours for boys. We gotta get these kids on some violent video games instead. I'm serious. I'm serious. Uh, teens primarily favor YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, spending minimal time on WhatsApp, X, and Facebook. Usage peaks at 17 years old for both genders.

But what about threads? Blue Sky and Bastodon, Brian? You know, I, YouTube and TikTok, not TikTok, because that pushes things on you. I mean, so does YouTube. Okay, never mind. Fuck it. Anything with an algorithm is bad. I was initially going to just go, like, YouTube and TikTok and Instagram, not so much Instagram.

YouTube and TikTok, I can kind of get, like, you're watching music videos or you're watching all that, you know, something useful. It's not social media in the way that Facebook or X or whatever is. So, you know, I can kind of get that. I would almost separate those two things.

But still, algorithm bad. Yeah, yeah. But can you blame them? Like we just said, look outside at what's going on, you know? No, you need to escape. If we had this shit when we were Gen X, we wouldn't be all alcoholics, you know? That's about it. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I'm serious.

It's like, okay. Yeah, we just drank. These kids are just escaping. This is just what they get to escape to. Yeah. And, oh, my God, I tried TikTok again last week at 9 o'clock at night. I went to bed at 1 in the morning. It is a weapon.

It is dangerous. It is. It is. I told you. Like I only had it on my phone for like one day and I was like, I can't have this. I just can't. And I have way better self-control than you do. Oh, I know. And I put it on my iPad to watch one video that my friend sent me that I had to pull up so I could get it and save it.

We were doing some stuff with it, but I forgot to get rid of it. And I'm like, oh, it's here. Let me just, oh, no. So at 101 a.m. When I needed to finally go to sleep, well, I needed to go to sleep at long before that, I deleted it. And just I wish I could parental control myself and say, do not allow this back on any device ever in the house.

You know, I mean, God, my kid is still young enough that I don't have to worry about this yet. The only hope I have is by the time he is old enough, something will have been done about this stuff. I'm desperately hoping, but it'll probably just be something worse. But you know what?

Actually, my wife installed one of those apps that monitors the amount of time and then shuts you off. And she says it's been a game changer for her. Oh, okay. Like it actually really works for her. She's just like, okay, I've spent as much time as I allotted myself on social media today.

And she just doesn't go on it again the rest of the day. See, your wife's an adult, Brian. Yes. That's the difference. Far too much of one sometimes, but yes. Yeah, we're not. We're not adults. No, we're 14 and we're always going to be 14.

Here lies Jason, still fucking 14. That's what it's going to be. Here lies Jason, TikTok still running on his phone. Yeah. Well, God, we got some more lawmakers here in the States trying to enact the Kids Online Safety Act, which is a new bill intended to protect kids from dangerous content online.

Well, turn off the computer because that's all you can do. So Google is asking Congress to say, no, don't do that. Please. Wait, does Google still have a social network? I mean, I guess YouTube. YouTube. Yes, YouTube. And so Google is – We got to keep these kids off Google Plus, Jason.

Oh, God. I know. Google Plus is the devil. Is the devil. Well, Google Wave. Wasn't that the one too? Was that the – No, that was – Wasn't that like – That was like a chat thing, right?

Google Wave. Was it Google Plus the one where you had circles? Yes. Okay. Yeah. I got into one really good circle and I was really sad when they got rid of it because I had like 20,000 people – or I was in 20,000 circles on there. I think Thomas Hawk, the photographer, put me on there as an influential San Francisco photographer.

So I had all these people and all this traffic and then they killed it. And I'm like, oh, the only good one. Got rid of it. Damn it. Anyway, getting back to it. So we just heard how teens are spending all of their time on YouTube and now Google is asking Congress, please, please, we would like to keep them. So don't make any new laws that are going to, you know, make it stop, that are going to turn off the money faucet.

We like the money faucet. The money faucet is good. Yes. Yeah. We don't care about your children. No. And they need all that money because they are going to legally protect people who are getting sued for using their AI. So if you create something using Google's generative AI and you get sued, they will foot the legal bill unless you are deliberately trying to use the AI to infringe on other people's rights.

So there you go. They're not the only people to be doing this. Adobe is doing this. Shutterstock, I believe, is doing this. They're just saying, hey, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. We've got your back, little non-creative motherfucker who doesn't know how to use Photoshop yourself.

Okay. Well, I've got an interesting story here. Remember the Fuji's rapper, a.k.a. the one nobody knows, accuses his lawyer of using AI in closing arguments. Now we remember the story a while back where a lawyer used AI and the AI just made up the cases that were used in the argument.

This guy's attorney apparently did the same thing, which he's now like basically saying he screwed me. Now, this is where it gets interesting. He was found guilty in April of 10 counts of conspiring and acting as an unregistered foreign government agent and faces up to 20 years in prison.

I need to see a fucking movie about this. Yeah, seriously. Does this guy, is this guy a senator? Hip-hop rapper, foreign agent? Come on. Oh, God. I'm in. I'm in. So, yeah, yeah, this guy, he got, yeah, he got, also got busted because the, uh, uh, iLevel.ai, litigation assistance technology.

Love it. Um, well, turns out the address for that company and his legal office were exactly the same. So, yeah, the Fuji's guy is saying, no, this guy, I'm sorry, ghetto superstar. Uh, that is what you are. Yeah, that's what you are.

Uh, he, so he claims that this guy used the tool that was basically in beta to, uh, to run his case. So, yeah. Yeah. No, hip hop, hip hop lawyer, super spy, hip hop lawyer, super spy, better than Jesus Christ superstar, I say.

So I don't think that the lawyer was in the U S Senate that, you know, we do have foreign agents in the Senate now, but anyway, what the Senate now is coming back with is the no fakes act. Which they're trying to put in, uh, legal protections for AI using your likeness.

So, uh, public figures whose voices and likenesses have been replicated without their consent, like deep fakes and, oh, I don't know, Hollywood movies. They're saying that, uh, no, you can't do that stuff anymore. There will be cutouts for different things like documentaries, commentary, criticism, or parody that are already protected by the first amendment.

So they're going to try and get this through, which might actually help this fucking writer or, uh, actor strike strike. They were still stuck with because they can't come to grips with it. So let's get, let's, let's let the government figure it out because they've got nothing better to do.

Yep. Yeah. Okay. Nothing happened in the world. It's all good. Yeah. It's, it's good. It's good. Yeah. Let's, let's work on, let's work on Hollywood's problems. Yeah. Uh, and gadget has updated their ongoing, all the big tech layoffs of 2023 articles. Uh, link is in the show notes.

If you want to go back through it all, cause we've covered them as they broke, but the latest round is LinkedIn layoffs. It's second round of layoffs this year. LinkedIn says it's letting go around 668 workers. Come on, just do six, six, six. From across its engineering product talent and finance teams.

Uh, back in May, it said it would lay off 716 people to close this job search app in China between the two rounds. That's nearly 1400 jobs in 2023 alone. Well, and gadget needs to update it because as of this week, stack overflow has laid off 28% of its employees.

Bandcamp has laid off 50% of its employees and product hunt with 60% of its employees. Rounding it out. Google news has cut 40 to 45 jobs as well. And I love this one. A Google spokesperson told CNBC, there's nothing to worry about saying these internal changes have no impact on our misinformation and information quality work in news.

But a staff engineer at Google news said on LinkedIn, quote, today, Google laid off a bunch of workers who worked on Google news. These are some of the best and brightest people I've ever worked with. And frankly, I don't expect the calculus behind this decision will ever make sense to me.

We're definitely worse off without them. So they must have been ethicists. Oh, okay. Well, I think the 28% over at Stack Overflow were all programmers and they left one guy and said, use Stack Overflow to figure out the code. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

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Media candy. Well, the writer's strike has ended. So John Oliver and Bill Maher are back on my shared HBO Max subscription with you. You're welcome. And I thought about it. I went to the – my finger hovered over it and I went, no.

Just no. It's already – the world's too goddamn depressing. I don't need lighthearted takes on it. Nope. Done. So I have not watched. Well, Bill Maher still sucks. But I also thought about John Oliver and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah.

Now, do you – a long time ago, it seems, there was this show called The Problem with Jon Stewart that came on Apple TV+. I have thoughts about this story. You and I watched like one episode and said, nope, not going to do it.

Yep. And it's apparently been a quote-unquote hit for Apple TV+, which I – Hasn't been? Hasn't? Yeah. Because my thought on this whole story is it's basically just been canceled because no one fucking watches it. Well, they're saying that they are parting ways, that Jon Stewart and Apple are parting ways because they are butting heads over Jon Stewart wanting to cover AI in China in the upcoming season three.

I'm just thinking that nobody is watching the damn thing. That's my thought too. I read these articles. I saw the headlines and I went, bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. Look, if you listen to our show and you watch that show, let us know because I don't know anyone that has watched it past the first episode.

That's the thing. We're of the age. Most of my friends are of the age. We all love Jon Stewart. We all wanted a good show. We all watched an episode. I don't know anybody that still watches the show. Not a one. No.

You know, it was making the rounds this week, though, was an old clip from The Daily Show when he started talking about the Israel war like 10 years ago or 15 years ago. And it was exactly the same thing. And it was just as funny now as it was back then. And it's like we just need reruns of The Daily Show.

And all you have to do is deep fake in the names and the dates, change it. It's the same damn thing over and over again. I can't remember what comedian always told the joke about you can always just say, trouble in the Middle East today. That's always been true. Yeah. Wasn't that like old Saturday Night Live?

I think so. I think so. If anybody remembers, write in. Yeah. So the problem with Jon Stewart was the problem with Jon Stewart, unfortunately. But might I recommend to Brian you go check out Gen V because they have been renewed for season two. Yeah. I just don't know if that's my kind of show.

The boys just – I didn't like it. So I'll give an episode a go. Why not? Okay. I just finished episode six last night and it was pretty goddamn good. I'm loving it. I'm loving it. All right. I gave Loki another episode. I watched episode two. Getting better.

Getting better. I might actually go back and watch episode one again just to see if I wasn't giving it the right shot. Okay. But, yeah, they need to hurry up or I'm going to have to head to Sweden because I canceled that – canceled my Disney+. All right. I watched the final episode of this season of Wheel of Time.

I actually quite enjoy the show. It's good. Okay. Yeah. It's not bad. I watched the first two episodes that were dropped of the 2023 reboot of Frasier. Yeah. What a streaming pile of shit. You're the only person that said that.

So far, everybody said that it's great. It's horrible. The acting is horrible. The writing is predictable. There's a fucking laugh track. It feels 90s in the worst possible way. Like, it's just – I don't care. My wife was working while I was on in the background and she's like, this is just god-awful.

And I was like, yeah, kind of is. I don't know. You'll have to be a tiebreaker, Jason. Take one for the team and watch an episode. No. No. I never watched the original series. So – I love the original series. I even went back and watched one of the originals just to see am I not remembering things properly.

And, yeah, it felt dated because it is dated. But it was funny and well-acted. This is not. Okay. Yeah. My dad used to watch that show all the time. My dad and my stepmom would have it on and I'd watch like five minutes of it and go, no. This is just not – I've never really been a sitcom guy.

So, you know, not my cup of tea. Now, the other thing I ended up watching was the David Beckham documentary on Netflix called Beckham. I didn't choose to watch this. In fact, my wife did. She put it on. And she was heavily disappointed because I think she was expecting a lot more about Posh Spice and David Beckham's personal life.

And there's a lot of soccer in there. So, I am really enjoying it. Okay. Yeah. And she is not. We were going to watch it because I heard that it was not a lot of soccer and more about Posh Spice in his life. And it turned out it was too much soccer. So, we turned it off.

Well, perfect for me. Yeah. Enjoy. Enjoy. And then I saw this headline, nostalgia alert. There's a documentary about MySpace in the works, which I'm actually quite interested in. I've enjoyed a lot of these tech documentaries that have come out. I mean, we all like the not really documentary of Social Network.

That was great. I talked about BlackBerry recently, which was awesome. I would love to hear the story of MySpace in the house that Tom built. Yeah. I'd be down for that. I'm going to wait for that to come out so I can do that in the BlackBerry. And somebody needs to do a danger one about the sidekick so I can get all three in one because that would be fun.

There's a new YouTube documentary out, too, by Alex Winter that I kind of want to see. Cool. I'm liking all these documentaries about these tech companies. Yeah. Oh, there's one about what was that stupid trivia show or trivia app that we played for a bit.

There's another documentary out about that, I believe, on Netflix. So we've got to add all those together and make a list, have a watch party. Okay. No. No. That is a feature I will never use. Exactly. You watched Upload Season 2 on Amazon Prime, right?

I did. I did. Okay. Upload Season 3 came out yesterday. I got a notification on my swanky new Apple Watch Ultra 2. And it said, hey, you have a new episode of Upload. And I'm like, I do? Really? I didn't even watch Season 2. So it just came out yesterday. Yeah. Two episodes. That is funny because just like two weeks ago, I was scrolling past it and I went, yeah, okay.

I think that that show must be done. I guess never coming back. So I was wrong. Yeah. That's what I assumed too because when you said Season 2 was kind of meh. It was. So because I thought Season 1 was kind of meh near the end. I'm just like, it did not land.

So who knows? But maybe we're still in the middle of a strike. We've still got an actor strike. We've still got a strike. So maybe I'll give it a shot. And so the BBC is going to release about 800 Doctor Who episodes on its iPlayer app.

And apparently there's a big problem with the first episode, An Unearthly Child, because apparently the guy who wrote it, his son, the guy who wrote it is dead. He died back in the 70s. His son is apparently a cocksucker.

He won't give it to anybody and is like a kind of a nutter with conspiracy theories. And so don't expect to see that anytime soon. So it's not even a money thing. He's just nuts. Yeah, he's just a dick. He's just a dick. He's apparently – he hates the BBC for some reason.

I think he believes that his father was owed more recognition for things like the TARDIS. So he's selling it to a competitor. Who that might be? I don't know. How unfortunate that there's only 799 other episodes you can watch. I know. Anyway, Billions, the final season.

I said it's been on. It is down to two episodes to go. The last episode that was on made up for the last four seasons of absolute and utter garbage in the last five minutes. I don't know, man. That's a low batting average.

I'm not going to sit through four seasons for five minutes. No, this is not for you. This is for people who watched the beginning of Billions and left when Axe left. We jumped off the couch. It was so good. It was so picture perfect.

And I just, I still get goosebumps thinking about it. I just got to say Billions is coming. It is sticking the landing after, like, yeah, there was a little problem in the middle after Damien Lewis's wife died and he had to leave the show and they replaced him with a mediocre version of himself.

But he's back and it is coming together beautifully is all I got to say. So if you're a Billions fan, if you're a Billions fan and if you're along the ride with me, high five, angel of death, motherfuckers. It's great. Lupin is back for season three on Netflix, too.

And it was great because I thought there were only four episodes. There was some glitch in the UI on Netflix. It was only showing me four episodes. It turns out there are seven because we got to the end of episode four and we're like, that's a really stupid cliffhanger. And it turns out it wasn't.

So finishing that up, it is not a great show. It is a good show. And I like it. It's really good. We watch it. We watch it dubbed because it's in French, originally in French. And it's fun. It is a fun popcorn show.

I recommend it if you if there's nothing else to watch and you just want something lighthearted with, you know, you know, he's a he's a burglar. So it's a fun burglar show. Now, this one, Brian, I put in here for you because I want your thoughts on this.

Spotify launches a hub for artists merch since they've taken the ability for artists to actually make a living in. Artists have to hawk their T-shirts to actually pay rent. It is interesting that they're going this route. Thoughts, Brian? I think it's a good thing.

It's been around for a while. If you had a Shopify store, you could actually push. And if you were an artist, you could push product into into Spotify, which has been really annoying for the last two years because Shopify is not cheap. If you want to open up an artist store and you don't really unless you're, you know, the Ramones or Iron Maiden or something, you don't sell enough T-shirts to really justify spending a lot of money on a retail store, online retail store as an artist.

So it's a good thing. I don't I haven't seen any metrics on how many people are actually buying merchandise through Spotify. That would be interesting. I'm certainly going to find out myself because we're going to use this feature with my day, my day job company.

So we don't since we don't have to go with Shopify to do it anymore. So I'll be looking into this. They are not taking a cut from sales. They better now. Yeah. Oh, now. Yeah. That is the thing that I am. I think, you know, if this thing takes off and if people do end up selling a lot of merch, they're going to take a cut.

There's no doubt about that. So, but it's a good move on their part. A hundred percent a good move. Yeah. It's still not still not fully active yet. It seems. But yeah. And they're also trying to do ticketing sales through Spotify as well. But the UI is not really built for it.

But we'll see. We're looking. I'm going to look into it quite a bit. So Spotify has historically one of the worst UIs on the planet. So that's not a surprise. Yeah. Not a surprise at all. So. All right. And as I mentioned last week, I am back from my London trip. And the insular nature of British comedy that I was talking about.

I found a couple of comedians that were on the did the rounds on the various TV shows that I watched while I was over there. So I did try out a few of their podcasts because everybody has a podcast now from the ones that I thought were the funniest from, you know, QI and all that sort of stuff. The TLDR, they're all horrible.

Oh, good. Maybe not everybody should do a podcast. Good. Yeah. I thought all of these people were hilarious on TV. But 45 minutes or whatever of shows mostly recorded with horrible audio quality and with a flimsy structure at best. So the first one I listened to is by a comedian called Maisie Adam.

She was quite clever and funny on the shows. It's called Big Kick Energy. And she has a co-host, Susie Ruffell. And again, she was very funny and clever on the shows I watched. And her podcast is more based on women's soccer in the UK and the recent Women's World Cup.

Her accent is rough as a Southern California boy. But she is clever. But I don't really follow the Women's English Soccer League. So that one's out. The next one I watched or listened to watched. The next one I listened to was Namaste Motherfuckers with Callie Beaton, which is a great name.

I was going to say, good title. Starting strong. Probably the funniest of the bunch on TV. She's a bit older than us in age. She used to be a TV exec. Maybe one of the people at the BBC that that guy hates. Yeah. But she went for a comedian comedy career later on in her life. So very inspirational that way.

And I want to like her podcast. And she was pretty funny a couple times. But the audio quality is so fucking bad. I can't listen to it. Call me, Callie. I'll hook you up. Yeah. I'm available. I mean, it's just horrible. It's just really, really bad. And the third one is a comedian called Lou Sanders.

The show is called Cuddle Club with Lou Sanders. And this is probably the one I'll keep giving it a go with. She's very twee. But very funny. I might ditch the podcast. She has a book. And I might read that instead because I like her. Not so much the people that she interviews.

Because I don't know who any of them are. Because, again, it's all insular British stuff. And there's a forced weird structure to the podcast. But it's definitely the best of the bunch. And I'm going to give the book a go, I think. Yeah. Okay. Okay. There you go. There you go. British podcast roundup. All right.

Two red flags and a yellow. Mm-hmm. Apps and doodads. Well, meta is, since they're trying to do the metaverse, which we know is, you know, old tech from the 90s. Mm-hmm. They're also reviving the glass holes with the new Quest 3.

Because apparently this new Quest has a, like, you know, a decent res video pass-through. So you can actually walk around like you're in AR for the most part. And people are going out in public with it like a bunch of idiots. So this just makes me think of that Eddie Izzard bit where he talks about invading Russia in World War I and World War II.

Oh, we're going to – it's a different idea. It's a different idea. Oh, no. Turn around. It's the same idea. It's the same idea. Yeah. That's it. That's it. We'll see how this one plays out. I'm sure there'll be one or two slip and fall lawsuits, and then there will be no glass holes allowed.

Yep. Yeah. The first time somebody tries to wear it in the locker room too. Yeah. That would be – there's an actual funny Saturday Night Live bit because, God forbid, they try anything. They need – oh, my God. I watched the SNL with Pete Davidson.

Man, that was bad. Oh, that was bad. That is a show that, I mean, obviously I stopped watching ages ago, but I at least would occasionally catch the clips that went viral on YouTube. I've stopped even doing that. Yeah, because there aren't any. I haven't seen a second of Saturday Night Live in probably like 10 years.

Well, didn't you watch it when Elon was on? Okay. That's true. I did watch that. Yeah. That was a lovely train wreck episode. Oh, man. Oh, man. This new New York bill would require a criminal background check to buy 3D printers.

Okay. So, with – the problem right now is ghost guns. Yes. So, you can, you know, print your own gun at home, which I think is a waste of time since pretty much in almost every state you can go to 7-Eleven and pick up an AR-15. So, why bother anymore? Look, I remember driving through Texas on a cross-country trip I did once a while back, and there was a sign on a bank.

Open up an account. Get a free gun. Yeah. I don't think the 3D printers are the fucking problem here, people. Ammunition sold separately. Yeah. Also, can it be built into the 3D printers to not print certain things? You can still kind of put it together if you figure it out, but you can also build your own 3D printer nowadays.

Or go open a bank account. It doesn't fucking matter. Seriously. Come on. Well, I love this. Cody Wilson, known for legal battles over publishing 3D gun blueprints and creating a market for DIY firearm milling machines, expressed support for the bill. He highlighted that such regulations could inadvertently create commercial advantages for domestic producers like his firm.

However, it's important to note Wilson's controversial standing. Yes, Wilson was arrested in Taipei, Taiwan, in 2018 after being accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in Texas. He has since pleaded guilty to injuring a child and has had to register as a sex offender.

There's the face of 3D printed guns right there. Awesome. Hi, would you like to buy a gun? By the way, I'm a sex offender. I have to tell you that legally. Sorry. Fucking douchebags. Apple brought out a new Apple Pencil yesterday.

Brian? Okay. I don't know if you're an Apple Pencil user. I bought one and it has existed within my backpack since day three, never to be used again. Was it one of the original ones with the cap that you had to plug in like a butt plug?

Or is it an Apple Pencil 2 that you get to stick on the side? It was an Apple Pencil 2. Okay. See, I use my Pencil 2 on my iPad Pro all day long. I love it. Just from an RSI perspective, it's just much easier if you're just tapping around to use it.

This new one is weird. It's kind of like a mix between a 1 and a 2, but they're calling it a 3. Okay. It's got a USB-C port on it. At least they were smart enough to make the cap on the end not fall off. That was always the problem with the Apple Pencil 1 was the damn cap kept falling off and you had to plug it in to charge it.

The Apple Pencil 2, I think, I still think is genius. I love it. The new one is going to be 79 bucks. It does some of the stuff that the 1 and the 2 do, but not all of it. So it's kind of like a, it's like a mid-range pencil. I just don't see the use case for it personally, but I guess if you have an iPad that doesn't have the magnetic clip on it, because, you know, that's a different thing.

But since I have an iPad Pro and an iPad Mini, both of those work with the magnetic thing. So that's just, I think it's dumb, but, you know, that's just me. Okay. So I just, I still like my pencil. I like my pencil too. I'm a fan. Yeah. I mean, some people love it.

It's just, it's not something that I ever find myself wanting or needing to use. 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 Cyberware Podcast. For all your cybersecurity news, the co-host of Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, discussing how humans are mean. The co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, because people are nosy. And the host of Control Loop, because industrial machines have feelings too. Welcome Dave.

Hello. Good to be back. We have some follow-up from last week. Excellent. We do. S. Thomas Sears writes in, Live Bullet by Bob Seger. Maybe a Detroit thing, but the versions on this album greatly overshadow the versions on Beautiful Loser, the album he was featuring on that tour.

So, going back to your which version of songs are better live, we have Bob Seger for the running. Yeah, that got me thinking a bit, because it hit me so fast, I didn't have time to think about it last week.

And I put in four live albums that I absolutely love. Depeche Mode 101, Bauhaus, Press the Eject and Give Me the Tape, Ministry, In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up, and Underworld's Everything, Everything. And then I started to think more about, and then I got really angry, because I started to think more about back in the early days of iTunes, when you'd just start ripping everything, and you'd have all these compilations and bootlegs and everything.

The Cure is probably my favorite band of all time. They put out a number of live albums. None of them are perfect as they are, because I like certain versions of live songs from different albums or bootlegs or whatever. And back when I was younger, and I had free time, and I didn't have a child, and I had the will to live, I used to put together my dream Cure live album, and that got destroyed with the iTunes crashes.

It was the most important thing in the world, right? It was. I would agonize, which version of Faith? Do I want the 14-minute version from Paris in 1982, or the more recent 12-minute version with better audio quality from Italy? Right. Damn it, Mom, I can't come to dinner.

This is important. Yes. I would laugh because it's true. It's so true. It's so true. And then, I mean, let's not even start to talk about the mixtape and the procedure for putting together a mixtape, particularly for an attractive girl. So, yeah.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's a whole different set of pressures that come with that. Well, I felt left out, so I had to throw in one. It's a song called Take Me Home from Duncan Redmond's from a band called Snuff. It's just him with a guitar and a club, and it's way better than the original. So, I had to throw that in because it's one of my favorite songs, and one of my favorite live songs.

There you go. I just wanted to play along, man. We take all the covers here. This made me think of Jackson Brown's Running On Empty album, which, great live album, was recorded here at Meriwether Post Pavilion, which is my home live concert venue of some note.

It's been around since the late 60s, and much of that album was written at the Cross Keys Inn, which is now what's called the Columbia Inn, and it's been a number of things over the years. But I probably am over there at least once a week in that neck of the woods, and it just tickles me that I can walk by what used to be the Cross Keys Inn and look over there and say, that's the room where Jackson Brown wrote Running On Empty.

And they recorded it at Meriwether, so every time I go to Meriwether, I kind of think about how our gift to the world was that album being recorded here for all time. Funny, Jackson Brown is actually one of the artists that worked for my day job, one of the clients.

So if you bought that live album, either physical or digital download from his website, you help pay my salary. Well, you know, I saw him last year at Meriwether. With James Taylor? He was opening for James Taylor. I went to that show as well.

James Taylor, also one of our clients. Okay. You didn't come to Meriwether, though. No, no. I saw them here in Toronto, yes. Okay, yeah. No, but so that was extra special, too, to see Jackson Brown performing Running On Empty on the stage where it was recorded super special.

Fancy, yeah. Yeah. And I have to say, I mean, I'm not a huge Jackson Brown fan, but he live is phenomenal. I have not really heard many artists that are as good as he is in terms of, like, his voice sounds just like the record. Like, it's just really good.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. No, security. Okay, a little update here. The fun part's done. Let's do the slog. Well, no, I've only got one. I've only got one hacking story here. This is an update on the 23andMe hack that we reported on, like, two weeks ago, where they said, oh, no, it was just a credential stuffing attack.

Well, apparently there are millions of records out there now from the same guy. So, credential stuffing my aching ass. They got owned. So, basically, you're telling me that all of our DNA information, because even if you didn't sign up, if you had a second cousin that did, you're fucking screwed.

The entire world's DNA is basically out there now. If you feel like going to buy it on the dark web, sure. It's out there. Did you guys cover this yet, Dave? Yeah. Yeah. What do you think? It's a little – well, here's – so, okay.

But my personal connection to all of this is that I am on 23andMe. I am on Ancestry.com. And the reason for that is that I am adopted. And so, my value proposition for these DNA services is different than someone who's not in the same familial situation that I am.

And through Ancestry, I have found family, right? I have found who my birth father was. I have spoken – he has since passed on. But I have spoken to relatives. And so, for me, that risk was way worth it to submit my information to these services.

My wife, who is also adopted, found her – both of her birth parents and has met them and visited them. We were out in San Diego a couple years ago and had a delightful time with her bio mom, as we call her.

So, it is pretty routine to see folks in cybersecurity scream out, you know, do not submit your stuff to 23andMe or Ancestry because if it doesn't get pwned, it's going to get bought and you will have no control.

And that is all true and we're seeing that play out. And I guess no surprise that this stuff would eventually get out there. And I don't know. I guess it's fair to say this is the most permanent thing about you is your DNA.

You know, you can't change it. Yeah, but you're only using it for a little while. So, who cares? Right. Yeah, there you go. But it's a period of time in which I actively care because I'm around. So, Dave, my thing here is, Dave, I don't care about that part.

I care about the fact that 23andMe said that, oh, it was a credential stuffing attack and they only got a little bit. The whole, you know, ball of wax about sharing your DNA, I'm one of the people too. I'm in there, you know. And I found out that I have really crazy biomarkers and I'm probably going to get Alzheimer's.

Whatever. I just told everybody. So, there. No, all I care about is the fact that 23andMe lied about it. Are you telling me you're shocked that a big company lied about something? Well, no. I just thought it was going to cover two minutes on the show. Done and done.

But I guess, I mean, if we want to be charitable for them, and I don't know that they've earned it, but it is possible that that is what they thought in the initial investigation of it. And as time went on, they've discovered more. Or this could be as much news to them as anyone else.

I am skeptical of that possibility because, as you say, it's the old thing. You know, these were sophisticated threat actors. There was nothing we could do. And it turns out it's some 12-year-old, you know, on his father's Commodore 64 banging away, right, who gets in.

The cat walked across the keyboard and, oh, no. Right. Changed the password on my luggage. Yeah. Right. So, yeah. All of these organizations have earned our skepticism and righteous indignation. You're absolutely right, Jason. Yes.

No. And then, you know, I know your story. You've told it on the show before. And I think that you have the most valid use case out of anybody to use these services. And I'm glad it worked out for you. And, you know, I'm still not upset that I did it either because I did it with my dad and we, you know, we learned a lot and it was worth it.

So, it's just, you know, it's to be expected, I guess, that it's eventually going to get out there. It is just sad given what the information is. Like, okay, you get my credit card. I can cancel a credit card and change my credit card number. But this is, there's nothing to be done.

And it's not really a problem now. But 20 years from now, when CRISPR gets really good and there's this database of DNA out there, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was going to say is I don't know to what evil use can they use it right now.

And I suppose some of it is, well, I put evil in air quotes because mostly what I've seen it being used for lately is finding bad guys. Yeah. Where they'll use some other not-too-distant relative to figure out that, okay, you know, here are our three suspects for this horrible string of assaults or rapes or something like that.

And using the DNA evidence, we can narrow it down to these few people based on the DNA that their relatives submitted. I suppose 2,000 years from now, because both of your guys' data is in there and mine theoretically is not. So 2,000 years from now when they reconstruct both of you guys from the DNA bot on the dark web and you restart this podcast without me, I'll be a bit sad.

There you go. It'll just be robo-Brian. Yeah, there'll be an AI version of me. Yeah. We don't have to split the revenue. It's perfect. Well, I've been stealing it all anyways, right? Exactly. That's the payback. That's the payback.

Yep. Oh, man. Another article I think is a little bit of follow-up here that I thought might tickle you, Dave. Since Microsoft has now bought Activision, it turns out they got Infocom along with the deal. And there's an interesting article that this guy wrote saying, hey, you know what?

Now that they have it, they're not going to do anything with it. So here's some ideas. Give it away. I thought, yeah, that's actually kind of a good idea. Thoughts? Yeah. Why not open source the old Infocom games? I mean, they're regularly available.

You can just search. You can play them online for free. But make it legit, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Were they – weren't they written in BASIC? I seem to remember that they were written in BASIC. I know a lot of adventure games were written in BASIC because why not?

Yeah. There was no – they didn't need to be fast, which means that anybody could go through the code. And that's why I think that they were written in BASIC because I seem to recall sorting through that code to try to figure out how – you know, in my teen years when I had my sights set on maybe writing one of these things, never did, but going through the code of some of the adventure games that were out there to figure out how did they parse the language?

How did they do that? And finding databases of rooms and – or not really databases, you know, strings of rooms and commands. And that was helpful too because if you went through the code and looked at all the possible commands, that could help you play the game.

Yeah. Oh, man. That would have been fun. I didn't even think about that. That wasn't that good back then. Not too late. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. Is it? Jason says that now, but he's going to text me at 3 in the morning. Right. Right. Like I said – I didn't know you could buff the lamp.

You can buff the lamp. Not a euphemism. Brownian motion? Oh, man. I never thought about brownian motion. No. No. Sadly, with the stroke came the aphasia of not being able to read code anymore.

So I can't do it. Wow. Yeah. Interesting. Unfortunately. Yeah. It's kind of more of a blessing than a curse, Jason. Oh, dude. I got way more out of the stroke than it got out of me. Trust me. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Well, it wasn't so much in disguise. Let's just say that. It was pretty front and center. Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. No denying it. Although this morning I was – I found a giant hole in my right foot that I couldn't even feel that I'd worn through because I'd been walking so much.

I'm like, oh, why is my sock bloody? Oh, no. There's a big hole in my foot that I didn't even notice. Great. Huh. Yeah, fun. It's just part of the game. It's, you know, maybe they'll figure out with my DNA how to, you know, crisper up a patch or something like that.

Mm-hmm. And then combine it with a time machine and the next thing you know. Yeah, there we go. There we go. Right now. So I saw this come through the interwebs called the Trust and Safety Tycoon. I misspelled it in the show notes. It's Typhoon. You know. That sounds much more interesting.

Different game. A little more of an adventure. Yeah, but that's all right. Trust and Safety Typhoon is what happened to the division at X. No, no. They all got blown out. But it's a game exploring the difficult choices and trade-offs involved in managing a trust and safety team. I tried to play it.

It was just like, unfortunately, like having a job. Yeah. So I gave up on it. But people that have had this job and have played this game said it is remarkably realistic and just like it was at work, except here you don't get paid for it.

So this could be an Ender's Game type of thing. This is how people are actually running their trust and safety divisions. Like, we'll turn it into a game and we'll have everybody do it. Well, I mean, I'm trying to think. What would you say was peak gamification era?

Was that the early 2000s? When was everybody on that train? I'm trying to remember. It definitely had its moment in the sun. Foursquare. Oh, yeah. That gamified life. Yep. Got to be the mayor of the bar.

Yep. I'm going to go buy 450 beers and lattes at this joint just so I can be the mayor. I think Foursquare was peak gamification personally. Okay. Yeah. I think you're right. That's strong. Yep. And when was that? Again, early 2000s? I can't remember.

I feel like it was a bit later than that. Like maybe the late 2000s. I was just looking at some old photos and I think like 2007-ish was when I was in San Francisco. So it would have been probably around 2005, 2006, I think. Yeah.

Okay. Peak Foursquare. Sounds about right. Yeah. Just pulling that out of my ass. But yeah, I was at Technorati I think in 2007 and Foursquare was kind of waning at that point. I just remember my wife was the mayor of the deli that was next door to our office then because we had lunch there so much.

I never made mayor of Finn McCool's. I just wasn't there. Yeah, you would have been. Definitely. No, I wasn't. That's the thing. I tried to be. There were people way worse than me. Oh, God. God bless the day drinkers. Yeah. They're probably dead now. So I win. Or they're in the meetings with me.

I probably know a bunch of them. Anyway, this is a fun game. Bring it back. Bring the train back to the track. Sounds like a real barn burner. Yeah. Can't wait. Well, they've got another game called Moderator. Can't wait to click on that link. Yeah. And if that one doesn't do it for you, they've got Moderator Mayhem, which sounds a little more typhoon-y.

I think that's actually not a typo. That's a bit more edgy as they show you child porn and beheadings. That's true. Man, talk about, yeah, making stuff like work. Oh, boy. That's what I want to do. No, thank you. Yeah. Okay. I'm curious. Have you guys ever listened to the Strong Songs podcast?

I have not, but I will be after you put this thing in the show notes. So, Strong Songs is on my list of top podcasts, and Strong Songs mostly takes pop songs and deconstructs them and talks about, from a music theory point of view, from an emotional point of view, why do these songs work?

A little bit in the same category as Rick Beato with his What Makes This Song Great, but the person who hosts Strong Songs is just so positive and so optimistic. And so, it's just, it's ear candy, and I love it.

He recently did an episode on Star Wars and John Williams, which was co-hosted by an Australian gentleman named Dan Golding. That led me to Dan Golding's podcast, which is called The Art of the Score, which sounds like the original name of the Jordan Harbinger show, but it's not.

Nope. Yeah, close. Very close. But The Art of the Score is all about film music, and it is hosted by three gentlemen who know music. One of them is a conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and it is so good.

It is my new podcast that I'm going to tear through all the episodes of and not be able to wait for them to make new ones. I just, they did a two-parter on Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones. Nice. It is phenomenal. So, if film music is your thing, if you love cinema, first, well, if you love Star Wars, go check out the Strong Songs episode on Star Wars and John Williams.

Excellent. But then, do check out The Art of the Score. So good. So good. I never thought I'd spend three hours unpacking every musical cue in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I did, and I'm glad I did, and I feel better for having done it.

Nice. Well, I actually have a podcast to recommend to you then, Dave, as well. This has been in my list for some time. I don't listen to every single one, but if there's a band or a song that interests me, I'll definitely listen to it. It's the story behind the song by the Consequence.net guys.

So, it's pretty good. So, you should check that one out. It's a lot of pop songs or old stuff. You know, I'm looking through the list right now. Run DMC, Air Supply, Culture Club, Rick Astley, all that sort of stuff. Blondie's Rapture, Fleetwood Mac. Oh, yeah. The Men at Work one is fantastic because Colin Hay is just an awesome guy.

So, that's a great episode to listen to. So, I think you'd dig this podcast as well. So, here, I will definitely check it out. You made me think of a question, and I can't remember if I brought it up here before. So, you talked about Rapture by Blondie. We consider Rapture to be a rap song.

Yes? Yes. Okay. Is West End Girls a rap song? Okay. Jason? I guess so. Yeah. Nobody knew it at the time, but it certainly is. Yeah. Now that you mention it, yes, I think so.

Yes. Okay. Yeah. I mean, the definition of rap is basically just spoken word. End of story. So. Yeah. Okay. What was that one song, One Night in Bangkok? Right. Rap. Yep. Yep. Yeah.

Can we list any other white people? Red Hot Chili Peppers? No, that's gibberish and shit. Garbage. That's garbage. Not the band Garbage, just Garbage. Yeah. There must have been some.

I mean, the early days when everybody was jumping on that bandwagon. Yeah. Tons, I'm sure. Tons. Yeah. Our listeners will write in and let us know. I went through two 45s of Rapture. It was my first one I wore out. I love that song. Blondie, also a client. Oh, no way.

You've got more music clients than Dave has podcasts. I know, right? Does it get any cooler than Debbie Harry? I mean. It really fucking doesn't. It doesn't. You cannot be cooler than Debbie Harry. Some, you know, an argument can be made for Gen Xers that Kim Deal is the new Debbie Harry, but Debbie Harry is the original Debbie Harry.

Yeah. I put her and Annie Lennox side by side. Yeah. It's just the cool, cool, cool ladies of rock and evidently rap. A funny little, I don't know what you'd call it, meme, a little thing I grabbed off of social media.

This is over on Mastodon. Someone named Venusorphobia posted and said, I think people should have mascots. Mine would be a golden retriever wearing sunglasses and holding a beer. And later on, this person posted, I have been informed. This is called a fursona.

Were you the one that informed them? No, no, I wasn't. But I appreciate it very much. And then last but not least, I saw a fun chat GPT prompt this week. Someone said, ask chat GPT to describe yourself, to describe you as a superhero.

All right. And here's mine. It says, try to put on my best Gary Owens voice. It says, Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast can be imagined as the Cyber Sentinel, a tech-savvy superhero dedicated to safeguarding the digital realm. And it lists all of my superpowers and areas of expertise.

But my favorite is the catchphrase. It says, in the realm of ones and zeros, I am the shield that guards the innocent, the sword that pierces through darkness, Cyber Sentinel, defender, of the digital realm. Now what you have to do is take this and run it through mid-journey.

Oh, yeah. Well, OK. So, to that point. Unfortunately, Lake Titicaca was drained creating this chat GPT. I actually asked it to describe my super suit. And it said, Cyber Sentinel's super suit is a cutting-edge, high-tech ensemble designed for both style and functionality, perfectly reflecting his role as a cybersecurity superhero.

So, combat pants and a hoodie. Well, it says, the suit is made from a lightweight, durable, and flexible nano-fiber material that offers protection against physical and digital threats. It's resistant to damage, ensuring Cyber Sentinel's safety during intense battles.

So, it's a Faraday cage. Well, I don't know, but I like it. Yeah. Jason is 100% putting this through mid-journey. I don't have an account anymore. I wish I did. This would be prime show art right here. This says, Cyber Sentinel's super suit combines style, functionality, and cutting-edge technology, empowering him to combat cyber threats and protect the digital world with unmatched efficiency and flair.

OK, put that in the show notes. Next week, we're going to have some artwork. I can't help myself now. All right. Here we go. Paste it in here. Yeah, I think I'll be heading over to at least Adobe Firefly. and see what we can do here. Well, we might have a show title involving this, so get on it.

Yeah, I'm working on it. Yeah. I recommend maybe for next week, you guys can put yourselves into ChatGPT and see how it describes you as a superhero. Sure. Who needs water? Yeah. Yeah. I think for me, it's going to go, who's that? The Phantom, because we have no idea who that guy is.

Oh, very cool. Oh, very cool. Yes, very cool. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Nicholas and Michael. Welcome, folks. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got Andrew, Dagg, Nathaniel, Blake Bowling, Darla, Brian, Mike, Tom, and Ramsey with a big old 40 bucks.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Ramsey. Over at the tip jar, we've got Sean, S, and Karen. Woo-hoo. Thank you, folks. Thank you. We have a new five-star review from GMA Horn. So I was shredding paper. And what is there to do when you're shredding? Well, of course, you listen to the guys whose podcast shreds everything that isn't as it should be.

As I was waiting for the shredder to cool down from the first batch of financial records that reminded me of how we are all being screwed, I realized I could at least put a few bucks to good use supporting the guys who report on that thievery. Anyway, since my pockets have been picked clean, I went to the piggy bank and rattled out a small sum in thanks for your podcast and being there in these dark times.

By the way, why does Brian get all the money? You should really share. Well, we do share. But we do. We split everything right down the middle. Are you... Are you... Maybe we need to change the password on our banking account. I think so, because... Yeah, I don't really understand where that came from.

If you have evidence of Brian's malfeasance, please get in touch with me, because I would like to know. If I would be malfeasant, I would like my U.S. account to have a lot more money in it. Yeah, seriously. Jiminy. Yeah. Okay.

Well, I guess I come off as the thief, Jason. Okay. Good to know. Yeah. Until next time, I'm Brian Thieven Schillmeister. And I'm Jason getting screwed to Philippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Links to all of today's stories are at gog.show slash 622.

Like the show? Your donations at gog.show slash donate. Keep our black tech hearts beating. Or at least mine. Yeah. One of us. But toss us a few bucks if you can. We appreciate it. Or sign up to support the show at Patreon. Only three bucks a month gets you the show early and ad-free.

You can give more if you're feeling generous, though. Spread the word. It's free and priceless. Join the community of listeners on our Discord channel. The link is at gog.show. And head over to gog.show slash contact to send us your feedback, comments, or links to cool shit you think we should talk about. And finally, gog.show slash review is where you can toss us a review and preferably five stars that we can read on the air and expose Brian for the thieving fucker that he is.

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