624: Captain Executive Order

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. I want to thank everybody that wrote in about the EVs and hybrids.

There's some passionate people. We got a lot of messages across the multitude of ways that people can contact us. I did have to have a laugh, though, because within the space of five minutes, we'd gotten two messages. One saying, oh, yeah, hybrids. You don't need to charge those at all, ever. Another one saying, you need to charge your hybrids.

Well, the one guy, I forget who wrote in, said that we were both right and we were both wrong. Because I do remember hearing the term plug-in hybrid. That was a thing. But apparently they can run off normal power, which I have power in my garage because I'm fancy like that.

So I could conceivably get one of those. Here's the thing, though. I have a completely paid off car. We hardly ever drive, so I don't use any gas. It makes no sense for me to sell what I've got to get a hybrid at this point. But next car. Well, you might be stuck with gas by then because I don't know if you're reading all of the blowback.

I think Norway is coming out saying, yeah, this might not have been the best idea. We may have wanted to take those subsidies and put them into, I don't know, public transportation. Public transport, good. I also, this debate has obviously been raging since we last talked about it everywhere.

And I remember hearing something on NPR that was like, you really want to save the planet? Take all that money and plant more trees because they suck more carbon out of the atmosphere than anything we're doing. Yeah, yeah. And it was another one I saw that some company tried to set up an electronic, or not electronic, an electric trucking company to put in 30 trucks.

And the city came back saying, you're out of your mind. That's like three times the power the entire town draws just to charge your trucks. So, yeah, I think we're going to be stuck with liquid dinosaurs for quite some time. Well, if you've got a Tesla and you're an Elon, Stan, you've got some good news this week, though.

Tesla's autopilot was found not to be the fault for the fatal 2019 Model 3 crash, according to a jury. So, basically, even though the defense argued that it's not a true autopilot, it's been marketed as an autopilot, it could be, you know, it's not really there.

It's experimental software, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's in beta, et cetera, et cetera. What they found out is we can't prove whether it was on autopilot or not when this guy died. Which is, aren't there logs? No, remember? Remember, Brian, that they turned those off.

Are they using our preferred VPN, the no-log system, to do everything with Tesla? Every Tesla comes with an account with private internet access. Yeah, so, I mean, you'd think that there would be logs for this, particularly as we've talked about in recently, like, every single car company, now that they're just computers and your cars are tracking everything that you do.

But apparently not Tesla with their self-driving beta feature. We covered this a while back. What they were finding is that they're actually under investigation from this, I think, from the NHTSB. I knew how it was coming. I'll get there eventually.

One more letter in there, yeah. Fucking dyslexic. Give me a break. That what they were doing was, as soon as it started to track that it was going to have an accident, it would turn off self-driving beta so it wasn't to blame. Exactly, yeah. So, we'll see how the results of that investigation goes, and then maybe we can, I guess, maybe you can't have double jeopardy for this one.

But, yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out once they get that investigation done. Because that seemed very much along the same, of the same scope as Volkswagen Gate and their exhaust crap, you know. Turning off the logs does not mean you were not at fault.

That's the old George Carlin, cop didn't see it, I didn't do it. Yeah, well, that's the way of the world, Jason. Apparently, as this lawsuit is now proven. So, I also talked last week about how Meta was basically taking Threads posts and throwing it into Facebook and Instagram feeds without anybody's permission or anything of that nature.

And, obviously, it's the playbook for growth. Of course, they're going to do that. They own all these things. But there was a lot of outcry about it, so it looks like Meta may be actually trying to stop doing some of this. That's what's considered the most aggressive and unpopular growth hacking tactic for Threads. They appear to be working on a new privacy setting so Threads users can opt out of having their posts cross-posted to Facebook and Instagram feeds.

Of course, it's opt-out, not opt-in. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, if your profile is public, it will continue to be posted everywhere. Yeah, but it'll be something, at least. Because right now, there's no way to turn it off. It just happens. You know the best way to turn it off, Jason? Don't use Threads.

Don't post on Threads. That's what I do. One way to do it. Although, it seems to be picking up some steam. Threads is, if I were a betting man, and I am, at least as far as the stock market is concerned, I think Threads is going to come out on top here for a micro-blogging platform.

Yeah. Yeah. I just, I don't, I haven't opened any of them. It's great. I just don't care. No. We'll talk about that more at the library, because I've had more time to read, which is awesome. And this just came across my desk this morning, and I had to put it in here, because now bees are the new eggs.

Okay. Everybody's been saying, we're losing the bees. We're losing the bees. Everybody, get some beehives so we can save the planet. Well, apparently, professional beekeepers are saying, stop it, people. They're fine. The ones that you guys are raising are fine.

The wild bees are the ones that are the problem, and you cannot raise wild bees. So, stop it, you fucking hipsters and your damn beehives in your backyard. Okay. In the news.

Well, this seems to be on everybody's mind nowadays. Sam Bankman-Fried has been found guilty on all seven counts. Was there really a doubt about this one? No. No. Okay. But, I mean, this is, I didn't think anybody outside the nerd sphere cared about this stuff.

But apparently, since everybody lost their houses in crypto during the pandemic, a lot of people do seem to care. Oh, yeah. This is definitely pitchforks out. Oh, my phone blew up. It blew up. I got, somebody was all up in my DMs yesterday, as soon as this came out.

And, yeah. Yeah, it faces up to 115 years in prison. We do have to wait until March 28th for the sequel, though, to find out what the sentencing is. That's it. That's a long time between episodes, I got to say. Not as long as he's going to end up in prison, Jason. Oh, no, no.

He is. I don't think he's going to get that many. But, you know, he's going to be in there for quite some time. He's going to be in there for a very, very, very long time. Yes. Yeah. And deservedly. This, I mean, this is ridiculous. This is absolutely ridiculous. So, what do you think?

And, yeah. My favorite thing that came out of all of this, the New York Times pitchbot, one of the few things I still enjoy about social media over on X, put out a great headline. Sam Bakeman-Fried's conviction could have a chilling effect on future Stanford law professors, law children's ability to set up multi-billion dollar offshore cryptocurrency scams.

There you go. It's perfect. Perfect. So, we have the sweeping White House executive order to take aim at AI's toughest challenges. And I put in a whole bunch of shit here in the show notes. And I'm just going to distill this down to. Sum it up, Brian. Reader's Digest version.

They're doing some good stuff. But because it's an executive order and it's government, it's basically only about the government. Right. So, it doesn't really affect what's going to happen in the private sphere. They're just kind of hoping that it will trickle down because if you want those lucrative government contracts, you're going to have to do all these different cool things that we're proposing to do for safety.

Okay. That's it. Well, we'll see how that one plays out. I think what's going to happen is we're going to end up taking the lead from the EU, much like we had to do with GDPR. And they're going to be the ones that are going to actually have the regulatory teeth.

Well, that's the thing. That's exactly the point about this executive order. And Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, actually pointed this out as well, saying that the executive order does not go far enough and could not be considered an effective replacement for congressional action, a.k.a. regulations. Yeah.

Laws. Real laws. Yep. The laws. Not just, we're not going to let you do this and governments won't work with you if you do. That's not going to do much. Yep. Well, let's get back to the EU and how the fact that they have some teeth. Well, they fined Facebook a couple hundred milli recently for targeting.

Yeah. Or wait, it's the EU espresso money. So that doesn't happen again. And to recoup their losses, Meta is actually finally going to get off their ass and start an ad-free plan that you can pay for.

It's going to cost about $9.99 in euros. So that will fluctuate in dollars, about $11. So you can get, you know, you can get Facebook and Instagram ad-free. Now, can you, though?

Apparently, apparently. Except if you read a little bit farther, it says that in a blog post on Monday, Meta announced that Instagram and Facebook will launch paid-for subscriptions for people in the EU that will remove most of the ads from the platform.

So guess what? There's now going to be an ad tier that you can pay for that goes into the feeds for people who are paying not to have ads. What is this, fucking Hulu? Jesus. It's streaming media. It is. It is. Now, here's the real dick move in the whole thing.

That's only for the web version. If you actually want it on your phone, where almost everybody fucking uses it, then it's going to cost you $12.99. What if you use both? Do you have to pay for both, or does the $12.99 tier take care of you on the web as well as the phone?

It doesn't say. It just says for iOS and Android. See, this is how they fuck you, and this is the way my mind works. I'm like, how do we get even more money? How do we screw them even more? Yeah. So, you know, the way this is going to work is they're just going to try and take as much money as they possibly can because they still want to send you ads.

This is just, you know, an FU to the EU. So, it's the same thing that Apple is dealing with, with trying to let in third-party payment systems into the App Store. They're going to make it as difficult and cost-prohibitive as possible because they're just pissed off.

Well, let's talk about some more news in meta. The Oversight Board that we often discussed about when they were first convening this and how it was basically just going to be suggestions and they weren't bound to anything, et cetera, et cetera. This week in toothless news.

Yes, yes. So, dangerous diet videos can remain, but please demonetize them is what the Oversight Board came back with. This all started with some Thai woman's fruit juice-only diet thing that was all over the place. Oh, the one that killed Steve Jobs. Great. Pretty much, yeah.

The board recommended the company restricts the monetization of similar extreme and harmful diet-related content on Facebook as researchers continue to wrestle with the concerning relationship between social media and eating disorders. So, these were posted in late 2022 and 2023 by the same account and flagged by users as harmful.

Who cares about the actual clip? There's tons of more harmful stuff all over meta. So, here's the board in a nutshell. Some board members believe demonetization of this type of content was a bridge too far. Oh, God. Demonetization may negatively impact expression on these issues.

No! No, it won't. Harmful expression. Yeah. Bullshit. Snake oil salesman. That's the whole point. But, no, those people on the board don't want that. Another part of the board says, that's not far enough. We need to do additional restrictions to extreme and harmful diet-related content to adults over the age of 18 and explore other measures, such as putting a label on the content, which would cost us money.

So, we're not going to do that. Yeah. So, there you go. So, they're still as useless as always. As useless as always. Yeah. This oversight board is, was, and always will be a joke. So, the company ad that will review the demonetization recommendation.

Here's some behind-the-scenes footage that I managed to get from that review, Jason. Okay. That's it. There you go. Done. All right. All right. These people. These people.

Speaking of these people, WeWork is back in the news. Good times. Yeah. The Wall Street Journal reported that they are planning to file bankruptcy as early as next week. All right. So, stock tank. I checked it this morning.

It is about $1.15 a share, which is $1.15 more than anybody should actually spend on WeWork stock right now. So, it dropped about 50%. So, it wasn't even really rocking that high before. The reality for them is they decided to get into the commercial real estate game.

They weren't even about being a place to go and work anymore. They were just buying up commercial real estate everywhere. And guess what happened to the commercial real estate market? Wah, wah, wah. Yep. Dead. So, that's not the basis of a good company. No, no. They had a net loss of $2.3 billion in 2022 that was followed by a loss of $696 million in the first six months of 2023.

And from what I've been hearing, we have not even hit the apocalypse of commercial real estate yet. That's still coming. It's coming soon. Yep. Because I live with a real estate broker and I get to hear all the news. There's a lot going on in real estate in the United States this week.

So, a lot. Yeah. Yeah. So, a lot of real estate agents right now polishing their resumes and checking out those new pay hikes over at McDonald's. Eyeballing that. So, also, expect a lot more used car salesmen on the street.

Great. Yeah. Some of the hybrids that nobody wants. Yep. Well, some cautiously good news coming out of X. X has decided to no longer pay creators for tweets promoting misinformation, which probably never should have been there in the first place. Also a way for Elon Musk to get out of paying people.

Also true. Yeah. So, apparently now if you get a community note on one of your tweets or X's or whatever the hell we're calling them at this point, that can no longer be monetized because it couldn't for the longest time. So, you can post whatever the hell you wanted to make money.

So, now all we have to do is go create a little bot, which good luck nowadays. They rolled out their new pricing for the API this week and it was just exorbitant. Of course it was. Who the hell is going to use your APIs?

Nobody likes you anymore. Nobody trusts you. But you could still probably do a scripted DOM bot with your browser to go through and find all the people that you don't like who are trying to monetize their content and then just flag every single post that they make.

So, there you go. That's all you got to do. All right. I'm on Joe Rogan now. Yeah. And actually Elon Musk already probably wrote that so he didn't have to pay anybody. Probably. And there's probably exceptions written into the rule in the code that somebody's going to find because that's the way he rolls.

Yeah. I'm sure something sucks. Except for Tucker Carlson. He can do whatever he wants. God. I keep seeing all the articles come through my feed about, you know, how he got fired or why he got fired from Fox and I'm like, who cares? He's gone. I just. I couldn't bring myself to read him.

Like, I think it boils down to the fact that he was a twat. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Took him long enough to figure that one out. Well, he was a twat that made them a lot of money for a long time. That's true. There seems to be a lot of ex-Fox News anchors that made them a lot of money that don't work there anymore for the same reason.

Bill O'Reilly going back to the past. That's who I was thinking of. Yeah. Yeah. That's who I was thinking of. A little bit more ex-news here. Travis Brown, who's a software developer from Berlin, has had his account suspended by X and he's suing them and saying that, yeah, this is kind of bullshit.

He's just a researcher. So they shut him down arbitrarily. X in between has gone through and redone their terms of service to say that you're not allowed to do whatever it is. Whatever it is this guy did, you're not allowed to do it. I do always like the retroactive change of terms of service.

Exactly. Exactly. But they're saying that he was doing some kind of scraping to get his information. And he was just using their API and a couple other external platforms. But basically what he was kicked off for is he wrote some algorithms that could actually tell that X had become very far right since Elon took over.

Duh. It doesn't take an algorithm to tell you that one, buddy. No, that just takes logging in. Yeah. Yeah. And he never even posted his results on X or Twitter. He was a source for some news organizations.

They used his data and then wrote derogatory articles about X. So, you know, shit rolls downhill. So he got banned. Good on you for suing to kind of just bring this to light, which we kind of knew what was happening anyways. But at the end of the day, X is now a private company.

They can do whatever the fuck they want. They want to kick you off. They can. So good luck suing. You could still, I mean, say even if they were a public company, it's a non-governmental organization. It is private. You know, it's a company. They can, as long as. No shoes, no shirt, no service.

Exactly. Exactly. So now, oh, Jeffrey's been a naughty, naughty boy, it seems. I'm speaking of Jeffrey Bezos, who is now just the chairman of Amazon. But when he was the CEO of Amazon, he was apparently doing some nasty stuff, basically.

Shocking. Yeah, really shocking. So the lawsuit that has been posted against them by the FTC has been highly redacted up until now. So some new things have been redacted and are coming out in the news, basically saying that they were taking a ton of junk ads to make money off the advertisements and were kind of just saying it.

And Bezos was apparently the puppet master behind this saying, yeah, just, just who cares? Just bring in all the ads. We'll make the money off the ads. Who cares if it screws up the customer experience? And so this is apparently, he knew about it, he masterminded it, and the FTC is calling bullshit on it saying, you can't do that.

The thing I don't understand about all of this, Jason, because this is across the board, this is all of these companies, this is Google, this is Meta, this is Amazon. You have a perfectly good product that was making you so much money and you destroyed it to make a little bit more money?

You have to increase shareholder value, Brian. If you're not always increasing shareholder value, then you're a failure in your father's eyes because apparently all these people have some kind of fucking daddy issue that makes them just want to make more and more money. I guess so. I just don't understand. You have a great product.

It is working. It is taking over the world. That's true for all of these companies. They like best in class. They've taken up the entire market share within their markets. They're huge. They're making, they are shitting money. Yeah. And then they fuck it all up. Yeah.

Why? Yeah. Amazon was great. It was the go-to place to shop and now it's not because it's horrible. Yeah. It's, you know, I feel bad every time I buy something from there. Yeah. Nobody wants to. I try to find something anywhere else I can first.

Amazon is my last place to go. Yeah. Same here. Same here. But I mean, they're charging so much more now for Prime where it's not almost not even worth it. Especially since you're going to get ads with your video. With your video, too. Even when you're paying for it.

Yeah. What do they think they are? Meta? Jeez. Anyway. Yeah. We all know about the fun that's going on over there. But yeah, you're right. These people just take what you get. You are making money. You are increasing shareholder value.

An extra quarter point is not going to make your dick grow. So, stop it. I don't get it. Nope. This is a fun one. Google, they got the rights to the .ing domain. Now, old Jason would have already bought Fuck.ing.

Well, old Jason didn't have the money even for that. But so, they're in pre-sale right now. And they're using some of my favorites, like GoDaddy, to facilitate the sales. Up until December 5th, when they've just become regularly available.

So, you can pre-buy with a little bit of extra cash on top, depending on which tier you would like to get into for the pre-sale. So, I looked up munching. Right. Just a random word. Yeah. With a .ing. Dictionary word with a, you know, TLD on it.

So, I went and looked at it. You could get into the basic, you know, pre-buy at like $150. Okay. The domain itself is 1995 going forward. Okay. Or 1999. So, if I wanted to get in the top tier and made sure I got munching, it would cost me $1,250,000, $19.99 a year.

You know, that's espresso money for Frito-Lay. No, that's true. That's true. Yeah. Or a lesbian dating site. You pick. Anyway, it's still a lot of money for me. So, there will be no munching in my domain portfolio anytime soon.

Times have changed. Yes, I know. I know. And .meme is on its way, too. Oh, joy. That is, that's a terrible one. Because you don't know if it's a meme before you, before it happens. So, you're kind of like telling the punchline to the joke.

That makes no sense. That one, I think, is going to be a shit show. That is my professional domainer opinion. Also, the fact that TLDs mean nothing anymore. They don't mean anything. Absolutely nothing. No. I was looking at dot-coms the other day, and I'm like, why?

There's no reason anymore. I started to let half of my portfolio go that I've had forever. I'm like, you know, back in the day, I could have at least expected to flip some of them. And I'm like, no. There's nothing now. So, they've killed it. They've totally killed it.

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. Media Candy Loki's coming to the end soon.

I better catch up then. I watched the first episode, and that's kind of where I left it. Oh, yeah, yeah. You're going to have to. I'm going to have to actually go back and re-watch it, because it's a little confusing. Time travel can be that way. So, yeah, the last two I need to go back and re-watch.

I watched the new one last night and was half asleep, so I definitely did not pick it all up. But it is, it can be a little bit confusing. But it was a good episode from what I saw. I'll have to just pick it back up. Lower Decks season finale was yesterday. Did you get a chance to pick that one up?

I did watch that one, yeah. It was pretty good. It was fine. The whole season was fine. It was funny. The big difference, I guess, was that they tried to carry a story arc for most of the season. Yeah. So, that was fine. But I prefer the more, you know, let's just go for the jokes.

But it was good. Yeah. The action plot ones just don't really do anything for me, because it's animation, you know, it's like whatever. Stick to your strengths. Your strengths are jokes. Yeah. The running Tom Paris joke was pretty funny, though, since they had the guy that did Tom Paris' voice.

It was good. That was good. Yeah. They even had a Wesley fucking... Wesley Crusher was there. Yeah. Crusher thing. Did it feel like you were listening to an audio book for about five seconds there? I'll talk about that when we get to at the library. Gen V had its season finale yesterday, too. Mm-hmm.

Nice finale. Good, solid first season with a finale tie-in with The Boys, which is coming up to their final season. Okay. Good crossover at the very end with the, you know, the post-credits scene. Mm-hmm. So, yeah.

I still stand by Gen V. I really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it. Billions had its series finale last week. 100% stuck the landing. Loved it. Excellent. Totally loved it. So, yeah, they just had that little slump in the middle there, that COVID slump.

But for the most part, yeah, it was a great series. Great series. Okay. You would not go wrong by watching that one. Like I said, fast forward. There's a couple seasons in the middle there. And something out of bounds.

I watched The Equalizer 3 this week with Denzel. Okay. That series, there's so much time in between them. It doesn't really remind me much of the old TV series. But I got to say, in the third one, I loved it.

I think they wrapped it with this one. And it's perfect. It's a perfect example of how you do an old guy action movie. Not like Liam Neeson. Not running and jumping and doing shit. He's just an old guy who can kill people really well. It's sad that Denzel Washington is now an old guy, but that's where we are now.

Oh, yeah. No, Brian, we're old guys. I know. I know. Yeah. There's far, far fewer days in front than behind now. But that's how we just deal with it. Oh, God. And since I ended up going back to Peacock for a month because they sent me a sweet deal.

So I popped it back on for a month because there's some stuff I want to see. I want to check out The Continental. That's what – that was the main thing, The Continental. It's a three-part miniseries, the prequel to the John Wicks. Right. With, unfortunately, Mel Gibson, but – who apparently is the downfall.

Everybody's like, it was a great series, but why the fuck did you ruin it with Mel Gibson? But once I get to watch it, I'll let you know. But I did find a series on there called The Traitors. It's a game show kind of thing. It's kind of like werewolf meets the mole meets survivor meets big brother.

It's like all of this stuff wrapped up into one, and I'd never heard of it. And I saw that it was nominated for an Emmy. So I'm like, is this old, new? What is this? And then I checked it out, and I found it. It's already been renewed for season two, hosted by Alan Cumming, who is phenomenal. I've always loved him.

Good guy. Yeah. Great show where we've got two episodes to go. We binged it all week, and now I've got two episodes to go, and I can't wait to see the finale. But it's really weird because Ceri from Survivor is on this show, but she's also in this season of Big Brother, which is wrapping up in two weeks, which I also watch because I'm loony that way.

So it was very weird to see her on multiple shows at the same time, completely offset in time and space. But anyway, Alan Cumming, yes, he's a great actor, and it reminded me of the 1999 classic Plunkett and McClane with Johnny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, unfortunately Liv Tyler, but she wasn't that bad in it, and Alan Cumming, who stole the show.

Liv Tyler's all right. She's all right. She's all right. Well, I mean, look at it. She was good in Lord of the Rings. She was good in Armageddon. I got to say, I still love Armageddon. There's that movie about the record store that she was in. I can't remember what it's called offhand, but that was good.

Oh, yeah. You remember that one? I barely remember that movie. Was it High Fidelity? No, it was the other one that came out. The other one. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, but anyway, she was good in that, but it's a really hard-to-find movie, but if you can find it, it is a classic. I love it.

All right. I haven't been watching too much shows because I've been watching the World Series, even though I don't have a horse in the race. It was the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Texas Rangers, and spoiler alert, Texas Rangers won this week. I always do like, I like baseball.

I'm going to watch the World Series. That's just how it goes. They used drones for the first time, which is why I'm putting this in here for coverage, which was pretty cool, I've got to say. They used a fleet of three compact aircraft during the Fall Classic for the first time ever. They had done this before for some other games, but this is definitely the first time in the World Series.

They used the drones to capture moments like relief pitchers coming in from the bullpen, warm-ups between innings, pitchers leaving the mound. This is in addition to all the other stuff that has happened in recent years, including they've put cameras in the bases for when people slide in. They've got ump cams, which is pretty great because you can tell how shitty all their calls are.

You're like, you're seeing the same view they saw, and you're like, you called that a strike? Are you fucking high? Are you blind, ump? So this is like the baseball equivalent of the cop cam. They should just turn it off, you know? Yeah, they, I'm just, yeah, I was, I saw like, you know, years ago they had, they showed where the strike zone was and where the ball went through the strike zone, what speed it was and, you know, all the pitches.

And I'm like, why do they need an umpire anymore? They don't, it's old school. Yeah, they don't. They could all be done the other way. So, but they're, I mean, they're experimenting with that in soccer. They've got the VAR and the gold line technology and all that. So, you know, we're going to get there eventually. Yeah.

Anyways, I've got to say, like, I'm watching the game with all these cameras and, and, and the positioning and, and the really solid editing and directing that's being done on these things. Like, why would you even go to a game anymore? It is just stunning to watch.

Now, obviously there's the atmosphere, the beer, the hot dogs, the peanuts, all of that. But yeah, it is like, it's basically just unbelievable. Like, especially when they go back and they show like footage from like the nineties or God forbid the eighties. You're just like, oh my God, how did we see anything?

This is unbelievable. So yeah, very stunning footage. And it was just really well, it was a beautiful thing to watch. So very cool. Very cool. Yeah. I can't see, I, I, when I was going to games in San Francisco, I'm like, this is really boring. There's no commentary. I don't know who's doing what, who's on first, literally.

So yeah, neat stuff. Um, as, as you may know, I'm a massive Highlander fan. And I actually have the limited edition European poster behind my desk. I think I've seen the movie once and there can be only one has been an ongoing quote on the show, mostly because of you.

Exactly. Exactly. I've seen, I've seen all the TV series. I've been to, actually, I went to the final Highlander convention where Roger Daltrey actually sang on stage. It was fun. Um, but they are going to be rebooting it with Henry Cavill.

Well, I'm glad he landed on his feet after getting fired from everything else. Exactly. Poor guy. So, uh, he's going to be coming in with Chad Stalski, who is set to direct and, uh, you know him from the John Wick series. So basically what they're trying to do is make this John Wick with swords.

Okay. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. I think you're going to like it. Yeah. Let's, let's, let's, you know, let's reboot it. I'm sure it's not going to be any Highlander too with the planet Zeist, but Hey, what you going to do? Look, Henry Cavill's good at this shit. Get him dirty and give him a weapon. Yeah. I got no problem with Henry Cavill at all.

And I got no, no problem with Chad Stalski and I don't even care that much about the story. I'm just, I just like some Highlander, you know? I mean, that's the best way to go into it is not caring much about the story. Look, man, if, if you can get through the TV series multiple times, like I have, you can sit through anything.

As long as it's a sword and somebody's head comes off by the end of the episode, you don't give a shit. Right. That's it. So looking forward to it. All right. I've got a little bit of a, the insider and streaming news here and a little bit of a head scratcher. When I think about the stock market again, I'm a huge Disney fan.

I buy Disney stock basically all the time. I'm always scratching my head as to why Disney stock is always down. It's always down. There's no reason for it. Especially when you read, you know, when you read articles that start like this, wondering what Disney plans to do with all that extra money it's been raking in after raising prices for Hulu, Disney plus, and some of its theme parks, they're making tons of money, but the stock price is always depressed.

I think it's one of the most underrated stocks out there. It's just unbelievable. Anyways, what they're doing is they're writing an $8.6 billion check to Comcast to finally purchase all of Hulu. They've had full operational control, but Comcast has never given up its one third stake, which is probably why Hulu was never bundled into US Disney plus, but it is here in Canada.

So interesting, but now it will probably be bundled in with Disney plus. So it's been bundled down here for a while. That's how I get it. Oh, okay, cool. Yeah. No, I mean, at least a year it's been like that, I think, because that's the only way I get Hulu is because I had Disney plus. That's why I was saying I'm going to lose it when I got rid of Disney plus because there's nothing to watch anymore.

Gotcha. I can't remember. Then at some point it was only bundled here. Yeah, I think that was, there was some other shit with ESPN and Hulu too. Yeah, there's all kinds of legal, weird restrictions. It is so confusing. It is so confusing. It's unbelievable. But Disney now owns it. Well, soon we'll own it completely.

So what's the point of having two? Why don't they roll it together like they did with Max? You know, the thing with that is it gets weird because like you, and that's been kind of the problem with Disney plus recently is like you open it up and you think, oh, it's just going to be kid stuff.

And all of a sudden there's like all this adult stuff on the first page. I don't know. I think, how do you do it? I don't know. Make tabs. I don't know. It will, I'm sure it will get rolled into one app. It's got to. Yeah. Max has been, you know, it's, it's a little problematic because you have to go find the network that you're looking for and then dive in inside the network.

The search is terrible and the, you know, the automatic recommendations are pretty terrible. Although they did, it did recommend a triple threat with Bobby Flay, which actually turned out to be a decent show. Surprisingly. I'm not a Bobby Flay fan. I know you are.

It's all right. I don't, you know, he's fine. He's got some. Anyway, anyway, Max is still a pain in the ass, but it's got damn near everything on it. So if they did the same thing with Disney and Hulu, I can, I can see that actually working. Yep, definitely. But the stock will still be depressed. Yeah, I'm sure.

I'm sure. Netflix is doing a head scratcher. They're going to cut the number of ads. You see, if you do the ad supported tier, if you binge. Okay. Yeah. Watch more shows. You get less ads. Okay.

Sure. I'm not going to go to the ad supported tier ever, but yeah, if that's, if that's up your alley, then just let it roll. When you go to bed, just pick a show that you don't like, let it roll. And then when you're ready to go watch the show you want to watch, there'll be less ads. Pumps their numbers.

Yeah, it does. It's a win for them. Yeah. And a win for the actors too, if they get their deals with streaming royalties. So fingers crossed. Yep. And we've talked multiple times over the years about, is it worth cutting the cord? Can you, is it cheaper? Is it better? And then Engadget comes out with this article, is streaming video even still worth it because of all the recent news about ad or price increases, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah. And this one just breaks Betteridge's law because the answer is yes, not no. Oh, okay. It's still worth it. It's worth it, even at those prices. All right. And I did get a, speaking of Macs, I got an email from them this week called, changes to your Mac subscription plan.

Thank you for being a loyal Mac subscriber. We wanted to inform you of upcoming changes to your subscription plan. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's what to expect. Currently you get, yes. Currently you can stream on three devices at once. Your new plan, you only get two.

The old plan, you get full HD video resolution with select titles in 4K HDR with Dolby Atmos. New plan, full HD video. Okay. All right. So, yeah. There you go. Thanks. You get less. Thanks. Thanks for being a loyal subscriber.

Fuck you. I'm so glad I'm such a loyal subscriber, you fucking cocksuckers. Again, the way of the world, Jason.

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

With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. Cups and doodads. Brian, I don't know if you saw this, but Apple Journal has finally been released on iOS.

I have not seen that because I don't care. Okay. Well, it just pops up on your screen. It auto shows up. I'm a day one user, and day one is a paid app now owned by Automatic. 35 bucks a year, but it syncs across all devices, has a web interface, lots of bells and whistles, templates, you know, all sorts of things.

Prompts. Love it. Been using it for eight years, I think, or something like that. Right. So, I wanted to do the test against Apple Journal. Apple Journal is basically like the Notes app. Okay. It's like, there's nothing there. Right.

There's literally nothing there. Day one has nothing to fear at this point. So, if you, you know, if you just want something to jot notes down that has timestamps and you can, you know, kind of journal with it, go for it. It's free. It comes with your, you know, your iOS device.

But if you really, like, you know, like the bells and whistles and you want syncing across platforms, you want a web interface, everything, you know, password protected and all that kind of stuff, day one is the way to go still. All right. Steve wrote in, hi, Jason and Brian. My boomer dad is finally retiring from his office job.

The problem is he's always had his IT department do everything for him on his home computer. Nice. Ever since he got his first Tandy 1000 in 1985. But now he's asking me what computer to buy and then what to, what do get for it. I think that's supposed to be what to get for it.

Grumps, just like you, I'm not an IT guy. I don't think dad will agree to get a Mac and I worry about the usual risks and scams. Do you have any suggestions for what I should get him? So, yeah, you put it in there, Jason, the iPad. Yep. Easy one. Totally easy. Yep. My mom's got a tablet. I think she uses that way often than the PC that's back in the back room these days.

You know, she only goes there to shop, I think. Everything else she does on the tablet, piece of cake. Yep. My roommate's mom, she's 94, 95. She's got an iPad. My dad, mid-70s, has an iPad. That's all they need. You can browse the web and you can check email. And if you need an app or a game, boom, it's right there.

And it's really hard to fuck up. So, yeah, they're idiot-proof. Love them. I saw this come through. EU common charger law may be final nail-in coffin for DSLRs. And I'm thinking, no, they're just getting silly now. But it turns out there is that whole USB-C charging thing is coming down for DSLRs in the EU.

So, they're saying that, well, this might be an excuse for some of these companies to just start getting rid of their DSLR line because some companies aren't even doing research and development on new DSLRs because they're just going away. And just to follow that up, which is, you know, something that I've been thinking about this week, the new scary fast event on the Apple campus was shot entirely on the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

And it was great. Those cameras are so good now. It's unbelievable. Yeah, yeah. I've actually – I'm inventorying all of my – because I have a bunch of Nikon Z6s and lenses and some old DSLRs and stuff.

It's all getting sold. I'm selling everything. I'm keeping one camera because I am doing a video shoot today with a Nikon Z6 II and a Z7. And the rest of it is going to be shot on my iPhone Pro 13. So, I'm like, okay, I'm just going to start unloading this stuff and just go on the phone route because the phones are good enough now.

Right. You know? Yeah. It's ridiculous. For the stuff that I'm shooting – and I found an app this week. I forgot to put it in the notes. There's actually an app you can get right now that will wirelessly sync up to iPhones if you want to do like a multi-cam shoot. Amazing.

Yeah. It's like, okay, we're just moving to the phones. Yeah. There's going to be an entire movie coming out, like a real one, not, you know, press release movie shot on iPhone. Yeah, yeah. Not a PR stunt. Yeah. Microsoft Copilot has launched as of Wednesday, I believe, which if you're wondering what that is, it's Clippy meets ChatGPT built into Microsoft.

Okay. So, the tool will summarize emails, write draft responses, transform Word documents into PowerPoint presentations, blah, blah, blah, summarize stuff, blah, blah, blah. The thing that got me here that they listed in this, Copilot will attend a meeting on your behalf. Okay.

Let's see if my bosses appreciate that. Where were you for the meeting? I sent Copilot. I got the stuff here. Yeah. Did you see him there? I'm sure that's going to go over real well. No shit. Anyways, I've got Microsoft, but it's not free. That's the problem.

You have to pay 30 bucks a month per user. Ew, no. To get it, which means not a lot of people are probably going to end up getting it. Speaking of Microsoft stuff, there are new versions of Microsoft Teams and Outlook, which have been out for a while. I use both of those for the day gig.

Do I use the new versions? No, because Microsoft and their infinite design excellence have plastered a big yellow new onto all the icons, including the dock icons. And it's so fucking ugly when I look at my screen, I will continue to use the old versions until they remove that monstrosity.

Design matters, people. It's ugly. Why would anybody want to look at that? It's Microsoft. Have you ever seen any design come out of Microsoft that was even remotely pleasurable? No. I mean, this is ridiculous. It's like, I'm fine with the Teams and the Outlook icons, the white with the blue in there.

It's pleasant enough to look at. And then you plaster a big yellow new onto it. It's so ugly. It's kind of pointless because if you have it, you know it's new. Yeah, I know. Just make a new, completely different icon. Yeah. You know, it's something.

Jesus Christ. Maybe it's just in the pipe, but delayed. I mean, so who knows? Leo is the new AI assistant for the Brave browser. Oh, can it also attend my meetings for me? Might be. It's going to have a summarizer in it, which is what I care about.

So I'll be able to do stuff like straight out of the browser and get summaries. It uses Llama 2, the meta LLM. So we'll see how that goes. You can get it right now if you want to go download the nightly channel builds.

I don't, so I'm going to wait. There you go. Yeah. So that's coming. There's stuff's getting built into everything. But a built-in summarizer will save me about 45 seconds per copying, pasting of articles.

Yeah. Make it a little bit easier. So we'll see how that goes. So we've been talking about streaming media. And even if you pay for it, you're getting ads, just ads on streaming media. In general, are obviously a big moneymaker. And YouTube is also no stranger to these issues. What they are doing now is they're cracking down on ad blockers.

Okay. Ad-ons, extensions, and programs that prevent it from serving ads to viewers around the world are now being basically shut down. It's like, forget it. You can't watch anything. And people are unsurprisingly unhappy about this development. But then again, got to pay the bills. Got to pay the bills.

So you can always sign up for YouTube Premium, in which case you will no longer get ads for now until they've looked around at the landscape and went, hey, people can pay and just get less ads. We're going to do that. And they keep raising those rates as well.

Premium rates are now $14 a month up from July when they were $12. So those prices are going up, and I'm sure you can expect ads even if you pay pretty soon. Yeah. Yeah. I switched over to YouTube Premium, and it's great. It's absolutely fantastic. The other nice thing about having a YouTube Premium account on iOS, if you use the iOS app, you can actually close your device and still play like normally.

They hold that feature hostage for Premium users only. But if you want to listen to a video when you're out on a walk or something, you couldn't do that without Premium. So for me, that actually really helps. But just no ads is fantastic. It is worth every penny.

I switched over my note-taking app to Obsidian this week. I am in the process of moving everything over. I've got so many different apps that I've tried over the years, and lately I've had everything stuck in Craft. Except I hate the way that it handles text in Craft.

It's like all this fancy block crap, and it's really hard to just edit a sentence. It makes it so hard to just do any basic editing. Obsidian, on the other hand, is basically just folders of Markdown files. And it even hides the Markdown from you, which is fine by me because fuck Markdown.

I hate it. It's a pain in the ass. It's stupid. I knew HTML first, so blah, whatever. Anyway. Old man yelling at clouds. Exactly, exactly. But when I'm done, I just have a nice set of folders that's searchable, linked together. It seems to be remarkably powerful.

So I will have some reviews as I go along the journey of porting everything into it. But I am bringing it up right now. If anybody listening is an Obsidian user and has any pro tips or power tips for a noob, shoot them my way. I could really use some pro tips because I'm a power user.

Brian, I broke our rule. I broke it twice. Ooh, danger. Yeah, yeah. So we started reading the Interdependency series by John Scalzi.

When I was finished with book one, I immediately went on to book two because the story picks up literally the next sentence. I'm not going to lie. So did I. I'm about halfway through it. I finished that one and then immediately moved on to book three because, again, this is just one giant book.

It is one big book. Like if Scalzi were Neil Stevenson, this would just be the Cryptonomicron. Yeah. Or the Baroque cycle, which I did read the entirety of. Cryptonomicon is a footnote in the Baroque cycle.

So, yeah, I'm on The Last Emperor, the final book, and I've got like 30% to go. It's holding solid. It's holding true. I'm loving it. I'm really enjoying book two. And I think you're right. This is one book that they just split up.

That's the real thing here. Like they just it picks up right where the previous book left off. It just keeps going. So, yeah, no, it's really good. Mine is read by Will fucking Wheaton, of course. OK, this is his some of his best work. I have to say, I forget that it's Will Wheaton now.

Right. He's got he's got so many voices down and is doing such a good job on this. That in the previous Scalzi book that I just read, the new one, the starter villain will read as well. And he was good in that one. So I think I think I might actually be liking Will Wheaton as a narrator now.

So, well, you don't have a choice. Resistance is futile. It is. It is. It is. But he's doing a really good job. So I'm and I'm just I'm loving these books. They're really good. Yeah, they're fun. And we kind of mentioned this last week. There's a new list out from Gizmodo 45 or 44 new sci-fi and fantasy books to add to your November reading list.

I was scrolling through and every one is a fucking sequel. Yep. That's what they do. Nothing new. And it starts off by mentioning that Martha Wells has an I almost said Martha Stewart. Martha Wells has a new murder bot book out. I would love to read Martha Stewart's murder bot series.

Oh, that'd be great. So the thing is, you know, this is like story nine that she's done so far. Something like that. It's a ridiculous number. And, you know, it got kind of old by story three.

Yeah. And I don't think I ever got past four or five. I've read them all, but it was definitely diminishing returns. OK, well, you'll be, I don't know, sad or glad to know. I found I found an excerpt from the new book Exit Strategy, and it says murder bot is back.

The AI with a bad attitude who isn't necessarily a bad robot, despite the scary name, returns in Exit Strategy. It's the final installment of Wells' Hugo and Nebula winning novella series ahead of the author's next project, a full length murder bot novel.

So it's not the final installment in any way, shape or form. It is yet another smaller book, and now she's going to write a bigger book. Exactly. She's just going to put more words at one time out. I think enough time has passed with murder bot that I barely remember what the story is anyway.

So I'll probably be able to enjoy Exit Strategy. Do we need more after nine mini novels? I don't know. Like I said, I got bored at four, so let me know how it goes, if it's worth it. Because it's one of those ones where you can just kind of, they're short enough where you can just kind of bundle them all together and read it in a day.

But, I mean, they were good, but. Yeah, they're good. It's a great premise. Yeah. She's milking it, and you know what? Good for her. But to the point that I was making last week, it's like, okay, all right, I understand why you're doing this. Because you already have a built-in audience, you know you're going to shift some units, you've already put the time into the world build.

But maybe after nine stories in one world, time to write another fucking world. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave with podcast superhost 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 Ben Yellen because people are nosy. And the host of Control Loop because industrial machines have feelings too. Do you still have all those shows, Dave?

Are there any new ones? I still have all those shows. Are there any new ones? I don't think so. I love that you have to think about it. Yeah, that's what I... What did I do today? No, I mean, it really does.

It flows through. My brain, to protect itself, does very little logging of everything that I'm up to. So quite often people will ask me, how was your interview with so-and-so? I say, I have no idea. I mean, it was good. I think you need to write a self-help book based on this philosophy, Dave.

Right. The path to better life, not knowing what you're doing at all or remembering anything. Don't let it wash over you. Just let it flow through you like... Like the force. Like coffee. Yeah, right. Exactly. It just goes right through you. Yeah. So I think that's it.

I don't know. People come up to me and say, I heard you on such and such. I'm like, oh, really? Okay. I guess I did that. Yeah. Cool. That was fun. Hope you liked it. Right. Did I embarrass myself? No? All right. Good. Good day. It's a good day. Job well done.

Yeah. So I got a little follow-up on the Flipper Zero. I went back to go cancel the order because I was like, yeah, you know, I don't really need that. But in the interim, I have found someone to buy it, take it off my hands when it gets here. So it's a quick turn and burn.

So I get to keep all the money that I spent on or that I sold all the gear for that I used to buy this. So I get it back now. Okay. Fair enough. Anyway, here's the deal. Order, because order cannot be canceled or changed once placed due to a high volume of orders. We currently can't handle cancellation and address edit request.

You can only return the items after you receive them. Yay. Thanks. Here's the worst part, though. I checked it again this morning. I ordered this on October 25th of last month. And I got the notice, hey, your item is shipped.

No, no. They created a label, went into the system and says, your item is shipped, just like we talked about before on the show about a year ago. But do let me point out something really quickly here. That is nine days. Now, this points to the Amazonification of our expectations on shipping.

Right. Right. It has only been nine days, Jason. It's been sitting there in the warehouse for nine days. That's nine days for the post office to drive by and pick it up. Come on. Nine days. I remember as a youngster, you know, and this is the old part of Grumpy Old Keeks.

Getting those C-Markies took a good three months. Well, it said we'll take four to six weeks for delivery. Expect four to six weeks for delivery. That was the normal. That was what they said. And then Amazon turned it all up on its head. Yeah, that's right. Yep. Well, this was three to five business days and it still hasn't left the warehouse.

Poor baby. Well, no. I mean, just say what it's going to be. Don't tell me it's shipped if it hasn't. Right. I agree. Waiting to ship is fine. Yeah. But saying it has shipped when it is still sitting in a box in your warehouse. Probably not even that.

Some joker just printed a bunch of labels that are sitting on his desk, not even on a box yet. Yeah. Right. Sally hasn't been in for two weeks. She's on vacation. So when she gets in, she'll put these labels on these boxes and they'll get moving. Don't worry. That's right. Dan wrote in for Dave to cut down the Facebook noise.

I've started using the Friendly app, which can hide posts based on keywords. Suggested, sponsored, is going, is interested, Wordle, et cetera. It's not perfect, but it makes the site bearable. I've never heard of that one, but I also sent you my thing because I forgot to tell you during the show last week. I use FB Purity, which I know Jason used as well when he was actually using Facebook.

And it's my must use. I cannot look at Facebook without a plugin. You can strip out everything and it's great. Yeah. I installed that and it is better. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's as good as it's going to get, Dave. Well, Facebook is nagging me about it.

In fact, it's telling me all the, it's quantifying all of the things that I've missed because I have it installed. You know, you've missed two posts from this person because you have this thing installed. Don't you want to uninstall it? Come on. Don't you want to uninstall it? I think you can turn off that, the nagging, because I don't see that either.

I must have switched it off at some point. Yeah. Okay. There's an awful lot of settings to it. It goes deep. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I have later in the show or in this segment, I have some more comments on Facebook. So I'll save it for that, more of my impression of Facebook.

But these are good. And thank you, Dan, for sending this in. I will check this out. And thank you, Brian, for sending me the Facebook Purity plug-in. It's both very helpful. Appreciate it. All right. I sent, or I posted a link in here called Space Mountain with the Lights On. It's a video of the roller coaster with the lights on, which I'd never seen before because I've never actually been on Space Mountain.

Oh, it's a great ride. It's a great ride. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Really great ride. Looks like it might be better with the lights on because it looked really boring with the lights on. Oh, yeah. It's just a twisty, turny roller coaster with the lights on. I've been on it when it is broken before. They've had to switch the lights on. So I've sat in there before with lights on.

Yeah. I've ridden both Space Mountains, both East and West Coast versions, and they're pretty similar. Famously, Disney World has two tracks and Disneyland has one. And in Disney World, you sit tandem style and Disneyland, you sit side by side, I think.

But the thing about Space Mountain is the tight turns. And I mean, it rattles you. It's a rattly, old, clunky kind of thing. But you're right, Jason. I mean, part of what makes it so much fun is that you can't see the turns coming.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it stands the test of time. I was still, if I have the opportunity, totally going to ride Space Mountain. Yeah. It's a fun ride. And there are different tricks that when you went there every single day, especially in the summers, and you would ride this ride every single day, you learned all these tricks.

Like, you know, when the moon goes past, if you twist your neck and follow the moon, you start to go down a spiral at that point in the ride. And if you can keep your, you try to keep watching the moon, and it makes it seem like it's going even faster. And it's just, oh, yeah, it's a great ride. Wow. Lots of fond memories. Yeah.

That's cool. Yeah. And speaking of that, season two is out now on Disney Plus of their show, Disney Behind the Attraction, which I thoroughly enjoy. And I'm sure, Dave, if you watch this, you would love this as well. Yeah. A bunch of new ones are out this time. And we watched the first, we've only watched one so far.

We watched the one about food, because that is directly related to my wife's most interest in Disneyland. And it was fantastic, all about the churros and the Dole Whip and turkey legs and all the stuff and how they make it. So, yeah. This one's got Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Indiana Jones Adventure, the aforementioned food, Epcot, and like nighttime shows.

So, this is just a great show if you're a Disney file. Yeah. I will definitely check that out. The first season was great. Big Thunder Mountain was a fun ride. I love that ride. My kid loves it, too. Yeah. That's the first roller coaster I think he ever really got into and enjoyed. Yeah.

My dad and I went on that like six times when we were down there. It was so much fun. Yeah. Check that out. I really like the, by the way, I love the hat that the Big Thunder ride attendants wear. That's on my list of things I wish I had.

If I could have someone create a disturbance and I could grab the hat and run away, that's one of the things I wish I had. I just think it's a really nice, it's kind, I mean, it's not quite an Indiana Jones hat, but I think that's a good thing in this case. Right. But, yeah. They have a nice uniform, but I really covet that hat.

Nice hat. Have you tried eBay? I have tried eBay and they are. They do not let people take those things home. Okay. I was wondering. I was just wondering. No, I've seen them on eBay, but they are, let's just say the hats are more expensive than my Stormtrooper helmet.

Oh. You cannot get outfits. It's almost impossible. I'm going to have to take photos and catalog. I can't do it soon, but maybe over the winter when it's just, I don't want to go outside anymore. I'll have to take photos and catalog and send them to you, Dave, of all the various things that as a young hooligan hanging out at Disneyland, we stole from the rides over the years, and I still have.

Now everything is nailed down and it's probably because of us, but I've got things like the tie from the donkey from Pinocchio, and we've got the scepter, the heart scepter from Alice in Wonderland, and I've got a whole bunch of things around the house. Wow, wow.

Yeah. You know, my wife worked at Disney World. She did a Disney College program, and she was one of the tour guides on the backstage studio tour. Nice. And she still has all of her uniforms from that. Very cool. Yeah, yeah. Well, this came out this week, and since you guys are old, Brian is old at heart, and Dave, you're just older.

The new Beatles, we've been talking about music, so it made me think of this, the new Beatles song Now and Then is out, and I didn't know if you guys had thoughts on it, because I know, Brian, you're a Beatles fan, right? I'm a huge Beatles fan. My mom was, I grew up listening to the Beatles, and then when my son was born, we basically just listened to the Beatles nonstop for the first year of his life.

So yeah, I listened to it. It's a good song. You know, it's very much, I don't know if it would crack the top 20 or 30 of my favorite Beatles songs of all time, but to have something that the process of when they went through it, and considering it's been recorded over 40 years and at different times, and then basically needed the technology that we have now to be able to make it into a real song.

And then, of course, obviously, the story of knowing that this is the last Beatles song ever until the next one. Right. That they find somewhere, you know, so they're going to find some reel-to-reel in a warehouse somewhere, and then do this whole process again. But yeah, it's a good song, and I haven't watched the video or the documentary yet.

I do intend to this weekend, but you know, always nice to have this again, you know, one of the best bands of all time, without a doubt. I have not listened to it yet, and I stumbled upon the fact that I am not a Beatles fan.

I didn't realize it until, this was back in the original iPod days, when I had loaded up my music library, and one day it dawned on me that pretty much whenever a Beatles song came up, I would skip it. And it wasn't like I had anything against the Beatles, or I didn't like the Beatles, and I certainly appreciate the Beatles.

But I, only at that point did I realize that I'm not really a Beatles fan. I don't dislike them, but I'm never going to be, you know, yeah, they're fine. Yeah. They're fine. That's cool. I get it. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things where they're such a, they're such a part of life, you can't escape them in any way, shape, or form.

So they can just become like wallpaper, which is probably more your opinion of it. It's like, yeah, it's, it is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. I will say that the coming generation, you know, my kids are, and they're friends. It is hit or miss as to whether they really know who the Beatles are.

Yeah. Well, it makes sense. They're almost a 50 year old band now, right? So. Yeah. But if you talk to someone who's 10 years older than us, they can't fathom that anyone doesn't know who the Beatles are. Yeah. Well, yeah. But that's why. I don't understand why everybody's favorite band isn't The Cure.

It doesn't make any sense to me in any way, shape, or form whatsoever. Yeah. Why the fuck are they listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers? Fair enough. Yeah. Fair enough. I, I put this in here. The White House this week released their, what do you want to call it?

Executive order. Yes. Thank you. The EO. The executive order on artificial intelligence. The Captain EO. The Captain EO came out from the White House. Oh, wouldn't that be great? If, if President Biden came out dressed like Captain EO. And we all had to put on 3D glasses. Yeah.

You know, he just had a, he had a wig on that looked like Michael's Jackson's hair from that era. You know, that would just be wonderful. And he moonwalks out and announces the EO on artificial intelligence. But the one thing that caught my eye on this is the White House finally settles the buzzword debate.

Okay. And they define artificial intelligence. They say, the term artificial intelligence or AI has the meaning set forth in 15 USC 94013, a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments.

The term machine learning means a set of techniques that can be used to train AI algorithms to improve performance at a task based on data. Well, there you have it. I say. Well, I, we, will this stick?

Because if this, but if this is the definition and it is a definition in, by statute for the federal government, does that mean everyone has no choice but to go along with this? Well, let's talk to the editors of tech, tech news sites across the world who use the terms interchangeably and whenever they feel like it.

So I doubt it. Yeah. I mean, I suppose it's nice to have it codified, but that's certainly not the way I would have gone with it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's fair. Yeah. All right. So I want to close out today with a couple of things about Facebook. So as I mentioned last time, I am back on Facebook.

My initial reaction to Facebook is exactly what you said, Brian, which is just how awful Facebook has gotten. I will say having been on Mastodon for the past few months, probably, I don't know, six months now, something like that.

It is so much better than Facebook. Having a non-algorithmic feed, the quality of content is so much higher. And Facebook just wants to sell me stuff. Not only the ads, but the Facebook Marketplace.

Like every third thing coming by is Facebook Marketplace. Someone near you is selling a blender. Wouldn't you like to buy this blender? You just, it's so noisy. Facebook Purity can turn that off. Yeah, well, okay. I'm dialing it in.

I'm dialing it in. But to the same point, like I use Facebook Purity. I've dialed in a lot of those settings. I still don't see a lot of my friends' updates. I still see a lot of ads. I still see a lot of shit I don't care about. Yeah. Well, what struck me about it was that whole thing with the unshittification meme and story that's been going around.

To me, this is exactly that, in that if this was a brand new product, if Facebook came out and it was functioning the way it functions now, there's no way anyone would tolerate it. Right. But because they've hit critical mass and there is no other place for all these people to go, they can just suck their users dry.

And that's how I feel like they're doing it. I 100% agree. And the thing like, okay, so I get that you like the experience on Mastodon, but I'm also willing to bet that a lot of your personal friends and family are not there. Correct. Yeah. And so where are they? Yeah.

I don't think any of my personal. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Right. That's the problem. Yeah. That's what ultimately made me give in and log back in. So I want to close with this. I had one of those creepy things happen to me this week. Facebook is listening to your phone or your phone is listening to you?

Yes. Yeah. It's along those lines. So I'm driving to work and I notice in the median, one of the intersections I drive by is one of those little security trailer things. I have a picture of it here in the show notes for you to see.

It's a little thing that can be dragged around by a truck and it's got two wheels and a bunch of solar panels and a mast that goes up that has a bunch of cameras at the top of the mast. And there's a lot of different functions that they can be used for. They can monitor traffic.

You see people put them in parking lots to stop folks breaking into cars, all those sorts of things. So I'm driving to work and I notice this thing and I say, oh, that's interesting. I wonder who put that there. That's my question. Is it the local police force?

Is it a traffic survey company? Is it a private company who's just logging license plates? I don't know. I just think about this. I don't talk to anybody about it. I don't do a search on it. I don't do anything. There's no action on my part other than thinking about this device.

I drive by probably five days in a row. I log into Facebook and this ad comes up that I have included in the show notes for one of these devices. So now I'm thinking to myself, how do they know that I've been thinking about this device, this very, this exact device?

Like this isn't like bread or pants or a car. This is a very specific device that I've been driving by. How do they know? How do they know that they, how do they know that this company wants to spend money to put this in front of me?

Right? Right. So I'm going down. So now I'm thinking about it. Like I'm, I'm just, I'm just, you know, how is this happening? How is this happening? So I'm thinking, all right, well, maybe this device has some kind of Bluetooth or wifi beaconing that the Facebook app on my phone is looking out for.

And it knows that I've driven by one of these multiple times and what's put in front of me. And then finally, after a few days, it just dawned on me and like, Hey, idiot, what do you do for a living? You work in security, right? You like somewhere tagged on your business profile is security, the word security.

And this device is a security device, highly specialized for security. So it's probably just that simple that these folks are running ads on Facebook that says anybody who works in the security business, show them this ad. And this amount of stress is probably why you should get back off of Facebook.

Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. Exactly. But I, I, I wanted to share this with you all because I, do you think I'm on track here? Do you have any sympathy for my line of thinking? What do you think?

Well, I put a link in, in the show notes to the Bader-Meinhof phenomenon, which is the same, it's, it's one of those things where you could have been seeing that ad a million times a day. And that got you to notice the actual device in the parking lots that you were driving past.

Because it was in the back of your mind. Which then triggered you. Yep. And then, then triggered you the other way around once you saw the ad thinking that, so it could have been any of those, any of that line of questioning because, you know, the Bader-Meinhof phenomenon is, is that thing where it's like, okay, I just bought a red car.

Everybody's got a red car. I've never seen it before. Why did everybody start buying red cars now that I've bought a red car? Yes. Could be for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I, I am willing to bet that that ad had been shown to you several times without you even noticing it. Previously.

Finally. Yeah. Previously. And then it just got stuck in your head somewhere and then you started to see them in the real world and then it dovetailed back on itself and you're like, oh my God, they're showing the ads for this. See, I think they should be calling them. The ads that you completely scrolled past. I think they should be calling these things brain worms instead of earworm, like the earworm phenomenon.

Like once it's there, you can't stop and then you start to see it everywhere. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But thank you for bringing back the debate that my phone is listening to me for us. I'm really appreciative of that. No, no, it's not. My phone is not listening to me. My phone is reading my mind.

That's what's happening. My phone is reading my mind. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. It's creepy as shit when it happens. It is. It's bothersome, but it bothers me too, but not to the level that it's bothered Dave. Well, this one was particularly like, look, I know what Bader Meinhof is.

And so in normal day-to-day things, I go there and I recognize it. But I think what short-circuited me in this particular instance was just how specific this thing is. Right. Yeah. Like, this is not a general consumer piece of equipment.

Well, also keep in mind that you have not been feeding the system because you've been off Facebook for so long. It has very little to go off of. There's probably very little that I could tunnel down to for ads for you. Mm-hmm. So you're getting pretty specific stuff to you at this point because you're not giving it anything.

It's got nothing to draw from. Right. Yeah. That's why I only get women's shoes in my feed because it's pulling my wife's searches because it gets nothing from me. Right. Yeah. Okay. That's why you need to go to GOG.show slash VPN to get your private internet access as we roll into the holiday season so you can do your searches separately from your loved one so they don't get to see what they're going to be getting for Christmas in their feeds.

That's fascinating, Jason. Is there a discount code? Yes, there is. Just use code GOG. Or, easy enough, go to GOG.show slash VPN. Now I see ads for private internet access everywhere. Yeah. There you go.

All right, guys. Well, I'm going to go put another layer inside of my tinfoil hat and I'll talk to you guys next week. Closing shout outs. Adam writes in, please upload to YouTube or YouTube Music or whatever you have to do.

Stitcher died and then Google Podcasts is going away. I don't have any other podcast players on Android and almost everything else I listen to is on YouTube. I would really like to keep listening to you, but right now I have to do that directly through your website and I forget to check it for new episodes.

Well, Adam. No. I would like to point out that on the Google Play Store is the Patreon app. And for just $3 a month, you can listen to us straight through the Patreon app. Ad free, high res, and early. So go forth, my young man.

And Patreon it up. Because nobody signed up for Patreon this week, damn it. Nope. Nobody. Over at Paytop. Over at PayPal, we've got Simon, Judd, Jonathan, Matthew, Howie, Nicola, Thomas, Nicolai, and Paula, who gave us a big 50 bucks.

And over at the tip jar, we've got Adam, Matthew, Sarah, and Christopher. And no reviews this week. No reviews this week. And in the news, Matthew Perry passed away this week. I was never a big fan of Friends, but on the occasions where it was on and I saw it, I have to say he was a very, very impressive comedic actor who wasn't given much to work with.

So sad to hear. He had lots of problems with addiction and had recently been doing the rounds, basically kind of promoting, you know, I'm doing better. You can do better too. I will help people as well as I can. We don't know why he passed away yet or if anything was involved, but sad to hear.

Young guy, 54. And until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Links to all of today's stories are at GOG.show slash 624. Like the show? Your donations at GOG.show slash donate keep our black tech hearts beating.

Seriously, toss us a few bucks if you can. Or sign up to support the show at Patreon. Only $3 a month gets you the show early, in high res, and ad free. You can give more if you're feeling generous, though. And it works like a dream on that Patreon app. Go get them, Adam. Help spread the word.

It's free and priceless. Just click on that share button in your player and send to a few hundred of your closest friends. Join the community of listeners on our Discord channel, which there is a link for 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 can talk about on the air.

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. Stay grumpy!

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

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