628: Same Day Pink Slip

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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, do you remember California forever? I remember California uber alas. No, that's a good song. Very good song. Very good song. California forever is that stupid billionaire scheme that's going on outside of San Francisco where they're trying to, where they were trying to secretly buy up all the farmland so they could build their city of tomorrow.

I do remember that. It's not going well. Not going well at all. I think mainly because everybody found out that that's what they were doing. I remember that. I didn't remember it had such a stupid title. Yeah, I didn't until today. Until I saw the news article.

I'm like, California forever sounds stupid. It does sound very stupid. But is that shocking? No, it's not shocking. It's a stupid idea with a stupid title. Yeah. And it's probably not going to work because everybody found out about it. And apparently all of the residents are up in arms because if it goes through, they won't be residents anymore.

Right. I can see why they would be upset. Yeah. That would bother me too. Yeah, yeah. So a bunch of rich people are going to have a bunch of farmland they can't use, which will hopefully get sold back to the locals fairly soon. Good. Okay. Yeah. Bye-bye. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I mean, finding out about it is what fucked them up in the first place.

And if they want a master class on how to buy a bunch of land and not screw it up, I recommend they listen to The World's Greatest Con by Brian Brushwood. In the two latest episodes, they do behind the scenes on how Walt Disney got the land in Florida and the story behind what was supposed to be Epcot but turned out to not be Epcot but turned into, you know, Disney World.

Well, you know what Epcot stands for, right? Enlighten me, Brian. Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow. That was Walt Disney's original vision was to create a self-functioning futuristic city. Yes, I know that. I forgot the acronym. That's good. That's good. Speaking of which, well, first off, if you want the more Disney-fied version of Epcot's history, they, of course, have their Behind the Attraction shows, which go into great detail about how he got Epcot as well and what ended up happening to it and how it became not the

city of tomorrow in another theme park. But an enjoyable one, nevertheless. Spoiler alert, he died. Yeah, well, that didn't help. Yeah. But speaking of this whole city thing and wrapping it right back around to Disney, that concept has come back for the Disney Corporation.

Really? There is a company, well, it's the Disney company, called Story Living. And they have bought land, surprise, surprise, in both California, out by Palm Springs, and in North Carolina. Actually, a friend of the show, Hannah, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, right by her.

And she's the one that kind of told me a little bit about this. I had heard rumblings. But because it's very close to her, it's all in the news there. Yeah, it's called Story Living by Disney. And they are going to create communities in those two areas that will be basically run by Disney. Hmm.

That'll be interesting. Yeah, the site doesn't give you much insight into what exactly they're thinking about. You can sign up and explore the idea of the future communities, and you can hold a place to get notified if you want to actually move and live there.

You know, I've got to say, Disney does things right. I don't know if I moved there in my 20s, but if I'm thinking about retiring, it doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. I'd like a few more details. Yeah, I want more details, obviously. But the idea is alive and well, and I would put my money behind Disney being able to pull this off over a bunch of stupid, rich billionaires.

Yeah, I just don't see that that's in their wheelhouse. I just, it's like, okay, go tell stories. Don't send me a pool cleaner to clean my overpriced pool. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see how it goes. We'll see how it goes. They do do operations well, so I bet it would be clean all the time.

Well, and if you watch those documentaries about Epcot and his initial plans, they got really deep into the planning, and it was smart. Yeah. So, we'll see. All right. But I do recommend the two new World's Greatest Cons. They're very good. Very, very good.

I do not recommend purchasing stock in California forever, though. Or California in general. Fuck California. By the way, when are you coming back? As soon as possible. I don't know what you're talking about, fuck California. California is great. Compared to those Canadian winners, I guess, eh?

Oh, man. So, we've been talking about GM's crews and the shutting down, the running over of people, and all sorts of different things. Well, the California Public Utilities Commission has said that you guys got to come to court by February 6th, or on February 6th, because we're going to have a hearing, because you guys were hiding evidence around some of your current incidents.

And we need to find out why we shouldn't fine you at least $100,000 per incident. So, come on and show up. Yeah. For making misleading public comments. Hmm. Next up, Tesla. Exactly. A crew spokesman said in an email that the company is committed to rebuilding trust with our regulators and will respond in a timely manner to the CPUC.

So, we'll see how that plays out in the future. In the news. Oh, our friends, it's Spotify. Merry Christmas, Brian. Well, as predicted a few weeks ago, here it all comes.

Yep. Spotify is laying off around 1,600 employees. 1,500, 1,600. About 17% of the workforce, which is nothing to sneeze at. It's funny. We were actually thinking of moving one of my clients over to Megaphone, and then the person we were talking to got laid off.

So, you know, Art 19, hopefully you're still kicking over there at Amazon now. Yeah, this is an interesting story because it has many, many layers. So, Spotify is saying, yeah, we overhired, and we need to scale back about 17%.

And then, well, the CFO is departing. But here's the interesting thing. So, Paul Vogel is the CFO. They've decided to part ways. Daniel Ek made a very interesting blog post, very to-the-point blog post, saying, yes, it is time to move on.

We're going to be doing different things in the future, and we need someone who is aligned with our initiatives in the future. Well, same day that all of this was happening, Vogel sold more than $9.3 million worth of Spotify shares. And that's the same day the job cuts were announced.

Yeah. Like a few days later, then he was shit-canned. Also the same day, Eve Constance, Spotify's general counsel, sold $1.1 million worth of shares. And also board member Shashir Mehrotra, it's too early for this, sold a half a million dollars worth of shares.

They're saying the share sales may have been automated because of the rise in stock price based on them killing everybody's hopes and dreams of a happy new year. But it is insensitive at best. Yeah. Well, those are going to get investigated. I don't know the specific laws about this sort of thing, but if they weren't automated, I would have problems with that.

If they were automated, I get it. That's fine. Well, even if they're automated, you still know what the triggers are. So what would you do to get those triggers to fire? Well, you would raise the stock price. How do you raise the stock price near the end of the year? You fire a bunch of people. So the machinations behind all of that could have been, you know, tied into the fact that those stock prices needed to go up.

So what are we going to do? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, they need to be investigated thoroughly. Yes. Absolutely thoroughly. Now, here's the great part. After all of that, we're going to get rid of these people so we can bring our company back into the black and, you know, all of this stuff.

Well, outgoing CFO Paul Vogel notified the stock market that the upcoming severance costs will mean Spotify will slide back into the red for Q4 of this year with a loss of between $100 and $116 million U.S. Yes, exactly to the point I think you made last week in that these things never work, that they cut the price or they fire a bunch of people, they pink slip a bunch of people to drive up the stock price.

But in the long term, they end up having more costs, which costs them more. Yep, and this isn't even the long term, this is the short term. Yeah, this is, yes. Well, remember, Spotify isn't the only streamer in town. Remember that one company that was started by the artists for the artists and then all the artists took their stock and left?

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer? Oh, well, close, but also Tidal. Oh, those guys, they're still around. Yes. Well, sort of. Okay. Well, they're also laying off their staff. The music streamer Tidal has announced that it will lay off 10% of its staff as part of a cost-cutting strategy, again.

And guess who runs this company now, by the way? I'm sure we covered this. Jack Dorsey, CEO of the company Blockade owns Tidal. That's right. That was the head scratcher. Like, why did Jack Dorsey buy Tidal? There was something very odd about that purchase.

Oh, because he wanted to do something on the blockchain to pay artists their fair share. That's right. How's that going, Jack? Never happened, interestingly enough. No, surprisingly. Yeah. So they're laying off 10% of their staff, which means approximately 40 people, which means that there's, at some point, still 400 people working at Tidal.

Doing what? Who knows? So in early November, Dorsey said Block would cap its payroll at 1,200 employees in search of constraints. 12,000. 12,000, sorry. Yeah. Constraints we believe will lead to greater growth. That means Block, in general, will need to lay off around 1,000 employees by the end of 2024.

So there's more cuts coming to his various network of companies. And Engadget is keeping up with their tech layoff rundown. So all the big tech layoffs of 2023, we've got to add to the list now. In December, New World Interactive, Tiny Build and Codemasters. And back in November, Ubisoft, Cruise, Snap, Amazon, ByteDance, and Unity.

All right. More to come. More to come. We've still got a couple weeks left. Going to stuff them stockings. Yeah, seriously. This is interesting. Washington Post journalists have staged a walkout because they are talking about cutting about 10% of their staff.

And they're saying that, well, if the staff won't do their voluntary buyouts, which we're going to offer to staff to, you know, hit the road, Jack, don't you come back. Well, if they won't take that, well, then you're just going to get shit-canned. So that didn't go over too well with the staff of WAPO.

And yeah, they had a little walkout. So this is happening across the board. And it's also happening at Condé Nast, who got rid of Andy Borowitz from The New Yorker. All right. He's very funny. That's sad. Yeah, yeah. I think he's going to do okay, though. Oh, I'm sure he's fine.

I think that Andy is going to land on his feet, you know, with that little thing he created called the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. So I did enjoy the Borowitz report, though. It was it definitely got me through the Trump years. Still. Yeah. Because the Trump years never seemed to end. No, they're coming back with a vengeance, baby.

Coming back with a vengeance. I'm sure he'll have a Patreon or something like that, you know, to put food on the family. So, yeah, whatever. Food on the family. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Got to put food on the family. Yeah. One does. Going back to Spotify, Weird Al made the news because we've talked about Weird Al as well recently.

So this caught my eye. His spiral, his Spotify comments about the Spotify wrapped campaign. He did the 30 second thing that most artists have done because they're asked to do so. It went viral. He says, my manager said, hey, Spotify, I want you to make a 30 second video for them to thank your listeners this year.

So I said, I had 80 million streams. And if I'm doing the math right, I think that comes out to like 12 bucks. So thanks for the sandwich. That's great. So, yes, it went viral. 80 million is about ballpark. That's what his manager has reported. The $12 is, of course, an exaggeration for comic effect, but not that much of an exaggeration.

As he explains it, Spotify notoriously does underpay its artists. So I exaggerated the punchline, but I don't make anywhere near as people are claiming that I make because I have to split my royalties with record labels who take a huge chunk and every other publisher and writer on my album. So I make a lot closer to the 12 bucks than what they're thinking.

Yeah. And even he has come to the conclusion, there's a reason why I'm not really releasing conventional albums anymore. He says, pointing to the fact that his last album was 2014's Mandatory Fun, which hit number one on the charts, but didn't even go gold. People just aren't buying records anymore. So there you go.

That's why he just tours. Yeah. Yeah. And does pretty well with that. Yes, he does. Yeah. There were, we never, I don't know if you ever watched it, Al, the weird Al Yankovic story. I haven't. Weird, the Al Yankovic story. Yeah. I haven't. Yeah.

It's been on my list. Yeah. And then there was another documentary that came out, like an actual documentary that came out after that. And I haven't seen either one of them. I don't, I don't know. I don't know why they just don't appeal to me for some reason. Yeah. I don't know. It's been on my list to watch.

I just never seem to pull the trigger on it. Yeah. It's like, I grew up with him. He's still alive. He's still obviously making music and it's still funny. So I just don't really feel the need to watch a documentary about him, you know? Yeah. Me either. So. Yeah. So I don't know.

We'll see. Maybe if things get really slow, but I don't know. So with the Spotify thing going down right now, everybody's up in arms about the state of podcasting. And I love this one.

Everything you know about the podcast industry is a lie over at TechCrunch. It is actually, because everybody has tied the health of the podcast industry to Spotify and their stupidity around billions of dollars in spending on stupid shit like Gimlet and all of, and Anchor and The Ringer and all this other crap they bought.

Joe Rogan. Call her daddy shit. The Prince Harry thing. What, they did like two podcasts? I mean, come on. Yeah. Everything. Let's put it this way. Everything that Spotify has done around podcasting has been garbage and a waste of money. And I do believe coming on like seven years ago when they started down that road, I have said from the get go that they're a bunch of carpetbaggers and we're just going to wait for them to finish and leave.

Looks like the time is coming. And I was still right. I knew I was going to be right about it. It took a little longer than I had hoped because they had more money than I thought because they were ripping off artists like Weird Al the whole time. So they had pretty big coffers. So everybody's saying, oh God, podcasting's dying, podcasting's dying.

No, podcasting is going to, it's going to have a readjustment period. But what I think people are really don't understand is podcasts don't take a lot of people to make. You know, you look at, you look at the economics behind a feature film, right? You spend a couple hundred million dollars.

You employ thousands, tens of thousands of people to make that film. That money gets spread around right there. So it keeps a lot of people going. You spend a lot of money on a podcast. It's like four guys in a closet making money. The way I see it, and I could be wrong about this, is podcasting is still in trouble, but that's mostly related to the advertising industry.

That's the big issue with podcasts and why we're all struggling right now. And the thing that happened with all this shit, with Spotify buying up all these things and spending money on all this stuff, it wasn't podcasting. It was people coming into the podcasting industry saying, I'm going to build a studio.

It's the studio model. It's the whole idea of like, instead, we're just going to get a whole bunch of podcasts and we're going to invest in it for a little bit and hope somebody buys us. And that's exactly what happened. Nobody gave a shit about the quality of the podcast. Nobody gave a shit about where they ended up. Nobody cared about them anymore after the purchase was made.

Done. Yeah, that's definitely a huge facet of it. It's not the entire story, but it's about 50% of the story for sure. Right. And I think that, you know, as things readjust, because podcasting is a personal medium, you know, people connect with podcasters. That's never going away.

And if you do look at the advertising revenue for podcasting, it is actually on the rise. The problem is it was getting funneled to these morons with these, you know, these one hit wonder shows that didn't actually perform. So the money wasn't going where it needed to go. I think it's going to get spread back around for the people who are still in the business and still sticking around like we are.

So, you know, I'm seeing things go up. I just got a, I just got a note from one of our recent advertisers mood and they were like, we don't know what happened, but you guys are over outperforming anything we thought you were going to do. So we're looking to buy more next year.

It's like, that's new. So like I'm saying, things are changing and things are snapping back. And I think with these big houses leaving the game and these big studios leaving the game, I think things are going to start to go back to the way things were before and normalize with smaller niche content creators delivering what people want to hear instead of these, you know, quote unquote, mega blockbusters.

The whole podcasting industry had MCU'd itself basically, you know? So, you know, same with Marvel. Marvel's having a come to Jesus moment. I think these big podcasting houses are having a come to Jesus moment too. And I think people like us who have stuck it out are going to finally get back to where we need to be and start reaping the rewards that we're fucking deserved.

That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. Jason just wants to pay his rent, man. That's abso-fucking-lutely. Well, it's not just pink slip season. It's shutter your products and division season as well, which of course leads to more pink slips. Google Podcasts is shutting down.

They announced that earlier in the year, but it'll be done by 2024. Since then, they basically said, yeah, go listen on YouTube and the companion app, YouTube Music, because podcasts will be there. They'll be rolling out a migration tool for its current podcast app users. How difficult can that be?

Take this link and change it to this link? Yeah. Well, it's Google. Nothing's easy. Oh, it's Google. That's true. Yeah. So, you know, people are going to be losing their jobs over there. And they point out YouTube is already a popular destination for podcast fans, with a recent study claiming over 23% of podcast listeners use YouTube as their primary player.

I guess we should get back on YouTube, Jason. We're working on it. Working on getting back on. Well, because they're going to start letting us suck in RSS feeds. So there are things, things are changing over there. So we're not going to have to make videos for each one. So they're going to have such a pain. Yeah. Oh, such a pain in the ass. Such a pain in the ass.

So that, that they, they finally figured out that, look, there's a lot of podcasters out there who don't want to go through that trouble. So they're working on doing it. That's why it's going to be in YouTube music instead of in the YouTube app in general. So that's going to be changing over. So when that, when that happens, we'll, we'll make an announcement and change the links on the site accordingly.

There you go. And Intuit is shutting down Mint, its popular free budget tracking app. I can't imagine why a company was shut down a free app. Oh yeah. Maybe it shouldn't have been free. Maybe you should have charged a little bit for it to keep it running. They had 3.6 million active users, which isn't exactly fantastic either, but the people that did use it were pretty crazy about it and are unhappy that it goes away.

The company will absorb users into its other service called Credit Karma when Mint disappears. They've got until March 24th, 2024. Mint helped users manage their budget track expenses and keep track of subscriptions and monthly bills. So you didn't pay late fees. Unfortunately, Credit Karma doesn't do any of that.

And people are saying, basically, I just, basically, you're telling me you're getting, getting rid of this service, moving me to this other service that basically just is a, is a glorified checkbook register. Thanks. Yeah. Meanwhile, they were ordered to pay $141 million for deceiving millions of low income Americans into paying for tax services that should have been free.

Intuit. I swear to God, I used to love QuickBooks for running my company. I used to love Quicken for my personal finances. And then they just, over time, ground those programs into shit. Yeah. What I, what I like now is hiring accountants and bookkeepers to do it for me because I couldn't give two shits about it.

But it's funny. I remember when Mint started and this will give you a timeline on why Mint is where they're at today. This goes back to the inshittification of everything. Mint started when I was at Technorati, which was around 2003, I think. So 20 years, something like that.

Yeah. So in that amount of, I can't believe they're still around, but when Mint first started, because I remember I had a dinner with Noah Kagan. He had just started working there. And I was like, what's your business model there? It's like, oh, what we do is basically we make referral fees from credit card companies when we have people sign up for new cards.

So we see what they're doing. We look at their balances and we see where we can save them money by transferring their balance to a lower interest credit card. And then we sell them on that new credit card. And then we get the kickback, which I think is a fine business model, you know, because it's a win-win for the consumer and the company.

And then over time, it just like that whole thing went out the fucking window. Well, I mean, how, again, noble thoughts to begin with, but when the higher interest credit card company is paying you a better kickback rate. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, you know, if it would have stayed a small niche company, but then it outgrew itself and then turned into a shit show like they all do.

Yes. That's what they all do. Speaking of shit shows, though, literally, grok. Yes. The new AI from XAI is finally rolling out to, I think it's Twitter premium plus subscribers, whatever the fuck they're calling it now. It's not the Twitter plus to get the check mark.

It's the Twitter super duper plus, like the Twitter plus premium. TPP. TPP. I need TPP for my bunghole. Exactly. So what this new woke AI is going to be doing. Anti-woke. Anti-woke. Oh, sorry. Anti-woke. My bad.

My bad. Anti-woke AI will insult you. It will tell you, I'm sure, horrible things about the future that are probably untrue. But because the secret sauce in this entire thing is the fire hose of tweets are going to be run into the training data.

So you will get up to the date misinformation at record speed. That's exactly what you're going to get for your $16 a month. And it will insult you at the same time. And it will use lots of swears. Yes. Can't wait. It's going to be awesome. I would love to try it. I mean, I paid for the year for my Twitter premium, but I'm not going to pay another eight bucks just to try it because.

Yeah. You don't need to because Elon Musk is going to do everything through it and we'll see all of his tweets that come straight out of Grok. But will you really be able to tell? Not really. I mean, the only thing that would be funny is if he's been doing it for the past two years and we never knew.

So, but I can't imagine it getting worse. You know, the shit that comes out of his mouth already is so bad. Oh, I can. Things can always get worse, Jason. That's true. That's true. So, Google has launched its new AI, its multimodal AI called Gemini.

Thank God they didn't call it Q. Yeah. God. So, there's a demo video. Did you watch the demo video? No. The demo video was impressive. It was really cool. Yeah. Turns out it was a bunch of bullshit. It was faked.

Yeah. They, well, it was edited for brevity. Sorry. Yes. Yes. And reducing latency. Yes. And also, and you know what, you know why it was, there was latency? Because in the video, the guy is talking to it, but in, in reality, somebody's typing to it and then it's replying.

So, they're transcribing the interaction, basically. It is not, you know, this George Jetson-esque AI of the future. If it did, if it, even if it does what it did in the video, no matter if there's latency or not, it's pretty cool. But still, that is some serious bait-and-switch action going on right there.

Yeah. That's like watching a commercial for a video game. And then they, at the very end, they throw up the little words, does not reflect actual gameplay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's why they have to put the, thank you, Federal Trade Commission for having them to actually, to put actual gameplay footage in there instead of cut scene, you know?

So, fortunately, nowadays, I don't know if you've played any video games, the actual gameplay is pretty damn close to what it used to be. That's cool. In the cut scenes. No, I have not. Oh, it's impressive now. It's impressive as hell. Now, Amazon is in the middle of a lawsuit right now up in Seattle over the word guaranteed.

What does guaranteed delivery mean, Brian? Well, as we've learned from this show over recent years, mainly thanks to Mr. Musk, words have no meaning anymore, Jason. So, I don't know. Unlimited is not. Could be tomorrow. Could be next week. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, what the crux is here is that someone said they paid for guaranteed delivery in a certain time slot.

It did not come in that time slot, and they did not get a refund for the upsell for the guaranteed payment. And Amazon is saying, well, guarantee just means same day. That's all. That time slot thing that we're asking you to give us money for to, you know, make sure it comes in that window.

Yeah, that doesn't count. That doesn't count. So, here's the thing. Like, we have gotten so fucking pampered and spoiled as a species. I don't give a shit about this. Like, okay, don't say guaranteed. But you know what? Same day delivery?

Jesus fucking Christ, people. That's amazing. Stop complaining. Like, if you get it the same day, that's good for me. The thing I get upset about is I'm paying for my prime membership, the guaranteed delivery in five days, and it doesn't come in that five days.

Now, that you can sue them. Yeah. And also, in the old days, you used to pay for next day delivery, and it would show up in three days, and then they wouldn't give you a refund back for that. Yeah. Also, you know, sue them over that. Yes. I would also like to sue them over commercials being added to Prime Video.

Fuck you. Yes. That is bullshit. What am I paying Prime for if not for my same day delivery and my commercialist fucking Lord of the Rings show? So, what we've learned from this story is we're still a bunch of pampered fucks. Damn right. But within limits, Jason.

Yes, within limits. My pinky only goes half up.

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

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

Media Candy. That emo shit fest of a Star Trek, Star Trek Discovery. Wait, is this Grok? I am writing the rest of the show in Grok. It's finally seeing its fifth and final season. It will be launching in April 2024.

I mean, at this point, I have to watch just to see how they wrap it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, the show's crap. It's a total shitstorm. It's had its good moments. It's had a lot of bad ones. A lot of bad ones. A lot of bad ones.

But they've fucked with the timeline and the whole universe so much. I need to see how this ends. I need to see how Spock's sister that was never mentioned ever, ever, ever, and this drive that doesn't exist anywhere else and how they ended up in the future. How are they going to end this?

I've got to find out. I expect, like, Picard's going to walk out of the shower. It was all a dream. What it is, it's all of mycelium-induced hallucination. Those mushrooms were not a space network. It was literally Picard on the farm. Actually, no, it goes back to Spock and the flowers in the original TOS.

There you go. Bingo. That's got to be it. If they do that, I swear to God, I'll give a standing up fucking ovation. Otherwise, there's just no saving. I heard the trailer looked like it was an action-packed finale rip-roaring ride of a fun time.

Well, yeah, I think they went for all action because why not? And they can't fuck around with the plot anymore. Yeah, they've screwed the universe so bad. Oh, man. I'll be watching. Yep. I will be watching The Last of Us Season 2 as well. Unfortunately, it won't be until 2025.

So if I live long enough and the mycelium network doesn't come to get me and the spores don't come to kill me, I'll be around for that one too. But The Last of Us Season 1 was excellent, so I can't wait for Season 2. Well, I'm going to have to wait, apparently. You sure are.

Yes, and in What the Actual Fuck News, Apple has renewed foundation for Season 3. Okay. Here's what I love. What book are they going to, what random book by some other author are they going to base this one on? This is what showrunner David S. Goyer said.

I'm thrilled Apple has given us the opportunity to continue chronicling Asimov's pioneering galactic saga. This time, the stakes for Foundation and Empire are even higher as the Mule takes center stage, along with fan favorites by Beta, Torrin, Ebling, and Magnifico.

Okay. Look, I saw some, I was reading an art or I saw a headline or something like that. Apparently, it's got 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Obviously, these people have never read the books. Mm-mm. Well, that's fine.

Nope. Whatever. Have fun. Some of our friends actually like the show who also have never read the books. So. I, again, my only problem with the show is the fact that they called it Foundation. And they say chronicling Asimov's pioneering galactic saga. This is not a chronicling.

This is a bastardizing retelling of. It's a, yeah, it's a complete reimagining of. Reimagining. Yes. That's what it is. I'm sorry. It just is. It's taken so many liberties with the book. It can't even be considered mildly close to it at all. No.

Not even. Go ahead. Whatever. I'm done. I'm over it. What they got was a title and a character list in a two sentence, like, you know, synopsis of what the three books were. And that's what they went with. That's it. That's it. Yep. Agreed. Another show that I don't watch anymore, but it got renewed again last week tonight with John Oliver, renewed for three more seasons at HBO.

It's a great show. I just don't have time for the sadness porn anymore, and he's really leaning into it this season. No surprise it's getting renewed. It's currently up for four Emmys. It's already won two Bee Body Awards, five Critics' Choice Awards, two GLAAD Media Awards, six Writers Guild Awards, and eight consecutive PGA Awards.

It's a great show. Yeah. It just makes them awards that they can put on. They can put on their commercials. Yeah. That's it. Disney Plus is finally integrating with Hulu in the USA. Hulu tab has been added. So, you can start to watch your Hulu shows. So, you can start to watch your Hulu shows. They're dripping things in.

It says something like, it's going to be a couple more months until all of Hulu content is there, but it's all about to be there. Hopefully, hopefully, they'll cut my bill in half because I pay for Disney Plus and Hulu in a bundle, which costs more than one or the other alone. So, let's see what happens.

So, let's see what happens. One would imagine so. I've started watching an older show. Not too old, but it's been around for a bit. Titans. It's on Netflix here. It's DC Universe. I started watching it because my son got into Teen Titans, the animated show, which was actually, honestly, it was fucking hilarious.

Like, I loved when he watched it because it was so goddamn funny. This one, not so much. This is very gritty and grimy, and I'm really enjoying it so far. I've only watched about the first three episodes, but as far as superhero stuff goes, this is the kind of superhero stuff I like. It's very boys without the gross out factor.

Okay. So, it's pretty good. I watched a documentary about Robbie Williams, who I have to be honest, I hate all of his music, and I hate him as a person. But my wife wanted to watch it, so I watched it, and it was a really well-done documentary for somebody I can't stand.

Okay. And I had a bit of sympathy for him because he's definitely, like, he's a messed-up individual. He was not well back then. He's much better now because he's basically out of the industry. If you want to see how badly the entertainment industry can screw you up as a person, particularly if you weren't that great off to begin with, this is the documentary for you.

Okay. One of my favorite music magazines is back, sort of. Q Magazine was a staple of my, like, 20s and 30s, and every time I went to an airport when I was flying all the time, I'd go straight to the magazine rack, find the Q, and read that cover to cover.

Covered all the music I really liked. They went away forever, as most magazines have these days, but they've come back with an online presence now and hired music journalists and everything. So, cuethemusic.com. It's a fun read. I'm enjoying it. And I just got back from the Darker Waves Festival in Southern California, and what do they do?

They announced the second or third Cruel World Festival, which will be in the summer in Pasadena, with a laundry list of bands that I fucking love. So, I'm coming to the conclusion that it's going to be cheaper for me to just move back. Yeah, I was going to say, it is definitely, you're going to save more in airfare and hotel.

Well, I guess you can save your mobs, but you should definitely just move back, because I think these are all just for you. Look, I mean, not a huge Duran Duran fan, but fun to see live. Duran Duran, Interpol, Blondie, Simple Minds, Placebo, Soft Cell, Adam Ant, Ministry, Jesus and Mary Chain, Gary Newman.

I mean, come on. No, it sounds like a great show. It's going to be awesome. Tones on Tail, so the whole, you know, the other Bauhaus, Love and Rockets side project. I've got to come to this. Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, that one sounds actually kind of fun, but I can't.

So, go for me. We'll see. I still want to see Duran Duran. That's one band I would really like to see live. Oh, they're really good live, man. You should definitely check them out. Yeah, I know, but I can't. So, there you have it. There was one other, oh, what was that list again?

There was one other one in there that I thought was pretty, pretty funny. So, Adam Ant, you know, they roll him out. But Gary Newman, I love. I would love to definitely see Gary Newman. Oh, yeah. Definitely. I saw Ministry not too long ago. Oh, Interpol. That was it. That was my tie-in.

I saw Interpol play live once at the Napster relaunch party at the House of Blues. Okay. And I'm just like, that was how long ago that was. I think that was around, Jesus, like 2001. Well, you know you're getting old when you have a band like Interpol that came out like later in your life.

So, you still think of them as a new band. Yeah. But then you realize that they're not a fucking new band. They've been around for decades. That's what I mean. That was the thing. I'm like, wait a minute. Why is Interpol playing that? They're kind of new. It's like, oh, Jiminy.

It was a strange time to be alive. Still be alive, I guess. This one we saw coming. Hat tip to Brian Blondell for this one. PlayStation to delete a ton of TV shows users already paid for. Oops. Of course. So, with this whole merger over at Discovery with Warner Brothers, they've decided to pull the licensing for basically everything Discovery.

That includes Mythbusters, Naked and Afraid, which if you paid for Naked and Afraid, I worry about you. But Shark Week, Long Island Medium, which also I worry about you if you paid for. There's also basically everything that Discovery shits out.

If you bought it, it's not yours. And I love this one. Is there any way I can save this content? Asked one panicked PlayStation user on Reddit. I use PS4, but I have bought many seasons of SOS, such as Dual Survival, that I do not wish to lose. I was actually under the impression since I owned it, I would never, ever lose it.

Well, should have listened to Grumpy Old Geeks and we'd have let you know you don't own anything. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. No. What is it? Oh, yes. It's yeah. Now it is basically everything is essentially just on an indefinite loan until such time as the PlayStation servers die or the original copyright owner decides to pull the content. Exactly.

Yep. That's the world we've made for ourselves. Yep. Speaking of shit you don't own, here's a whole bunch of holiday playlists I'm listening to right now over on Spotify. I thought it's just we've been bouncing around listening to a bunch of different stuff. So there'll be a whole bunch of links in the show notes if you're looking for some some different music to play beyond the normal Christmas classics, although there is a Christmas classics playlist in my list.

We've got BBC Six Music Alternative Christmas, the 80-ish Alternative Christmas, A New Wave Christmas, Indie Christmas, Electronic Christmas, Christmas for Goss, X-mas Punk, Christmas Peaceful Guitar when you really just need to chill out. And, of course, my favorite classics playlist. So all the links will be in the show notes. Merry Christmas.

Yeah. No, thank you. Dude, you like the X-mas Punk one. No, I just I can't stand Christmas music. I used to work in a mall, man. I worked retail in a mall. Oh, say no more. Yeah. You just never want to hear a Christmas song ever again. Huge congrats to the Labors of Hercule podcast that I was a guest on, I would like to point out.

They've had three of the main cast members on or they've had two of them on so far. One of them's coming back, coming on. Inspector Jap's coming on. And today they posted a video on Instagram of David Suchet seeing their Instagram account for the first time. And it was adorable. And hopefully, Mr. Suchet will grace the podcast with his presence.

It is a great show. If you love the old Poirot series, I can't recommend it enough. And go check it out. It's just fun. See, I've never read that, never listened to the podcast. And I realized that you were using words strewn together in a form, but they didn't sound like sentences to me.

Yeah, it's usually how I feel when you talk about music, so. Okay, fair. We're okay. Yeah. It's not for you, Brian. And a fantastic episode of Darknet Diaries this week, episode 140, Revenge Bites. And it was nice to have adult language on that show, I gotta say.

Fuck yeah. Yeah, yeah. Jack Recider busted out the F-bomb a few times. It was great. It was a fantastic episode. So go check that out if you need something to listen to. Caps and doodads. Well, Brian, it's the end of an era. I've finally handed the keys to the kingdom of Clash Royale over to Awara, who has taken over as the head of the clan.

And I have deleted the app from all my devices. And I have also purged Warcraft Rumble because it's basically the same game and I did not want to go down that rabbit hole again. Well, I enjoyed the week I played 7,000 years ago. Yeah, that would be six years ago. I know that because I got my six-year badge not too long ago.

They said I'd been playing that game for six years, which is a really long time. So it is time to give up the ghost. And I have noticed that things are a little bit better for me personally now. I have that 30 minutes a day back. And I'm just not always thinking about going back to, oh, God, I gotta get my battles in, blah, blah, blah.

No, it's nice. I put my time in. We did okay. It was fun, but six years is enough. So live on without me, guys. Do well. And going back to the time of pink slips here, the entire team behind the iPhone video app, Filmic, has been reportedly laid off.

Filmic was a really good app for high-end, basically, photography and video. They have a little ecosystem of apps that went with that. And, yeah, it's sad that they're going to be hitting the road.

But it does not surprise me that apps like that are going to be hitting the road. When you see things like Blackmagic's camera app that came out, which is free and unbelievable. It's got all of the controls that the Blackmagic cameras have. So you've got a built-in user base there, so it's easy to use.

Syncs with all of the Blackmagic services. And it's so good that Apple themselves used it to film that big reveal last time for the M3 Max that came out in October. And that's the app they use on the iPhone 15s.

So I checked it out. I have it. I have gotten rid of the film a long time ago because, yeah, its time has unfortunately come and gone. But check out Blackmagic camera if you need a top-notch video app for your phone. It is incredible. There you go. I saw this statistic, and I thought that was pretty cool.

Over half of London's Black Cab fleet are now made up of zero-emission vehicles. Pretty cool, right? So they grew a dramatic 10% in the last month alone, which is pretty amazing. New drivers don't have a choice. Since 2018, Transport for London has required that all cabs licensed in the city be zero-emissions cable.

So no choice if you're trying to become a cabbie now. Those with existing licenses have motivations to change as well because they have to pay a daily rate to operate in central London's ultra-low emission zone if they don't have an EV. So, yeah, they're getting there. That's pretty cool, actually.

I didn't ride one last time I was in London, but next time I definitely will try to seek one of these out and get a ride in one. Pretty cool. Yeah, sounds like you got a coin flip's choice of getting one, so. Yep. Yeah, cool. And I saw this come through.

Mac Whisper transcription now up to three times faster on Macs with Apple Silicon. So Whisper is the open AI transcription service, and Mac Whisper is kind of a front end to it. There is a free version, and then there is a pro version. I grabbed the new version to give it a shot.

I ran one of our shows through it. It's way, way better than what we were paying for with Otter. Right. I mean, it is way better than Otter. And the pro version gets you, I think, unlimited participants, so you can tag people, and it learns from that.

Yeah, if you run a transcription service, forget it. It's over. You're about to be out of business. More pink slips. Yeah. I've heard, because, I mean, Whisper's been around, and I've known some people who have been running it who wrote, like, a bunch of shell scripts to automatically run all their shows through it.

So you can build transcripts of it, and then take those transcripts, run them through ChatGPT, and then build your show notes off of it, all that crap, automate it. But for just, like, the standard people who just want a nice front end to it, this is it. Twenty-nine euros for the pro version, which I will probably end up picking up because it works way faster than Otter does and is right there on your machine, so you can tweak it and do all sorts of things with it.

It's, I mean, transcription is, this is the way. This is the way. And I just thought this one was pretty funny. Thieves return Android phone when they realize it's not an iPhone. In a bizarre twist during a robbery last month in Washington, D.C., thieves returned a stolen Android phone to the victim upon realizing it wasn't an iPhone.

The incident involving a couple who chose to remain anonymous occurred when the husband was robbed at gunpoint outside their apartment. The robbers took everything he had, including car keys, but discarded the Android phone, expressing disappointment that it wasn't an iPhone. While the husband got his phone back, the event has deeply impacted the couple's life, leaving them shaken and on their way to an Apple store.

I would like to point out that there's a significant difference between the concept of the thieves returning the stolen Android phone to the victim versus discarding the Android phone. Yes, yes. I believe this is some headline shenanigans going on here. Yeah.

Oh, I don't want this piece of shit and throwing it in the bushes. It's not the same as kindly handing it back to your victim. Exactly. Returning it the next day with a note and a scone saying, I'm so sorry, I stole your phone. You are definitely much more soft than I am.

Yeah, a little bit different.

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

Are ye clean shaven this week? I am. I am so very clean shaven this week. Let me tell you, gentlemen. So, yeah. So, let me, a quick update on my shaving. I did order the shaving oil and it arrived yesterday.

So, today was my first experiment shaving with shaving oil. And coming at this scientifically, I thought I would first try shaving oil with my electric razor. And let me tell you, even that is such an upgrade.

Oh, my gosh. I feel like, you know, a 13-year-old boy who just discovered lube. Like, it is so much more comfortable.

It's better. It's a better shave. I feel as though this has gotten me 90% of where I wanted to be when I was contemplating switching to a regular, you know, analog razor. Which is, you know, the next step in my experiment.

I am going to try that as well. But even this, just, I, who knew? I'm this old and I have never tried shaving oil. Let me tell you, it makes a big difference. Well, I'm glad. I'm glad you are a 15-year-old. I also ordered the oil.

It is going to my mom's house. So, I will pick it up over Christmas. But I did a bit of my own scientific exploration. My wife had purchased a shaving brush for me. A very, very nice one many years ago that I thanked her profusely for. And immediately, it went into a drawer, never to be seen again.

But I pulled that out and sand shaving oil, just using the brush with my normal shaving cream, gave that a go. And, my God, it is so much better and nicer. Now, imagine when the two combine. Brian, you and I need to be like the Wonder Twins.

Form of a shaving bowl. Yes. So, yeah, I'm very excited about this whole process that I will put together over the Christmas holidays. So, it's quite exciting. And as a side note, we had a lot of comments about this topic and us going on about it on our Discord.

Apparently, our Discord is full of people that do not grow hair and are lacking testosterone because it's like, I shave once a month and what the hell? Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can just go, and like a beard comes out of my head.

Right? Pretty much, yeah. I stopped shaving and I can see the need to start shaving again. That's that. That's how it works. Right. Yeah. That's interesting. I wonder what that's about. I only shave twice a week. I'm not that bad. But still, it's like when I do, I like to do it right.

Right. Yeah. So, yeah, I will have an update in the new year. I have to shave every day, too. Forget it. Like, it's just, it's instant scruff. So, yeah. So, a little quick news here. We talked about the 23andMe hack the other day and we were kind of, you know, when supposedly 14,000 individuals' personal information was exposed.

And we kind of cautiously went, okay, well, that's the first round of information that we're going to get. We'll see when the other shoe drops. The other shoe dropped onto 6.9 million people. I'm among them. I'm among them. Yeah. I imagine you would be. So, I think you've pretty much got like a 50-50 chance.

They've got, I think, 12 million active users. So, yeah, chances are you've been exposed. How did you find out? Did you get an email or something? Well, yes. But also, the first indication that something was amiss was that 23andMe insisted that me and everyone else activate multi-factor authentication.

Yeah. And Ancestry did the same thing. But then, yeah, I got a notification from 23andMe, along with the notification that we were going to talk about next, where they updated their terms of service. Well, yeah. Because that's the only one I got.

I didn't get anything else. So, I must be in the lucky 50% that has not yet to be hacked. Give it time. What doesn't make sense to me, for 23andMe, as a company, not to insist that all their users now do that. You should have gotten the notification to force you to upgrade your login to 2FA as well.

Why wouldn't you, after you've been hacked like this? Yeah, I didn't. Nothing. Oh, that's interesting. Huh. Yeah. Mine was just automatic. Like, there was no choice. It was the next time I logged in, it said, okay, now we're going to activate this, and here we go. And that was that.

Oh, it could be because I haven't logged in in five years. Well, there you go. There could be that, yeah. Yeah, it could be. Okay, okay. That makes sense. But I didn't get an email. I just got an email about the next thing. That's all. I see. All right. Yeah. So, the next story is, of course, what would a company like this do to protect their customers and engender goodwill with all their users?

Well, they would update their terms of service to ensure its customers couldn't file a class action lawsuit against them. That's what they do. As you do. So, the terms of service update forces users into binding arbitration, which is a means to resolve disputes outside of court and basically means you cannot band together and, you know, do all the things that you could normally do is also private, et cetera.

So, it's what companies want as opposed to what a consumer would want if you have a beef with a company. So, if you are an affected person, you can opt out by emailing arbitrationoptout at 23andme.com within 30 days, meaning by December 30th because they pushed this on November 30th. After they had announced the small amount of people being hacked, but before they announced the 6.9 million people being hacked.

So, there's not that much time. Most of this is being buried, of course. And you have an opt-out option, but it's unlikely that nearly 7 million users will send out that email in 30 days. I'm guessing Dave already has. I just – the DNA thing is – because I've really been digging into it lately.

And it's such a web that I don't know how you can effectively have privacy because at this point so many of your relatives are on there.

And it's all connected. And what I've witnessed is through people who have been helping me figure out some of my, you know, missing family members and some of those mysteries is that they don't need everybody to figure it out. They can stitch together, oh, this person's here, this person's here, and then they combine that with newspaper articles and obituaries and they figure out what they want to figure out.

So, even if you're not in the picture, chances are they're going to be able to figure out exactly where you sit. I mean, I suppose there are things like medical information that could be a privacy issue, but – Well, and then there's also the – it's within this company and the data is there.

It's not on the dark web. It hasn't been stolen. It's not being passed around forevermore in unknown situations in which you cannot, like, have any power whatsoever over it. Right. And it's been our longstanding position on this podcast, and I'm not sure if it's ever been mentioned in this segment with you, Dave, that we have a moral obligation to sign up for any class action lawsuit because it's the only way companies ever get punished.

Right, right. Right. And then you get your $5. Yeah, and you get your $5. But if you don't sign up for it and you don't take your $5, these companies get to keep the $5. And that seems wrong to me. Right, right. It's like somebody I saw earlier this week, a friend of theirs was complaining that they lived in a place where their vote doesn't count.

And the response was, your vote may not count, but our vote does. Right. And I think that applies here. Yeah. Yeah. And the chilling thing here is that they've seen on the dark web that some of the ways that the folks are grouping these records together.

So, you know, hey, would you like to buy a bunch of information on a bunch of Jews? Yeah, exactly. Or, you know, that sort of thing. It's ease of access for nefarious things that shouldn't have happened. Right. Right, exactly. Yeah. I saw a story come by.

I'm linking to one from Six Colors, which is a website that mostly covers Apple stuff. But there's a lot of misinformation, which I personally saw come by on Facebook with, coincidentally, a friend of mine who's married to a police officer, that law enforcement is making a big deal out of this new feature in iOS, which is NameDrop, saying how dangerous it is and warning everyone to disable it.

And they're just wrong. It is not so wrong. It's not a dangerous feature. This article points out that to activate NameDrop, you have to physically tap two phones together. And then after you do that, an animation plays and a pop-up comes up that says, do you want to share your information?

So it's not like anybody's going to be doing drive-bys and collecting your information with this NameDrop feature. But this strikes me as being similar to when the FBI was making a big deal about juice jacking, you know, plugging into a charger at an airport that that was going to take over your device.

And there's no evidence that that has ever happened. Ever once. Yeah. And so similarly, my concern with this is that the general public has a limited amount of bandwidth available for this sort of thing, and we shouldn't be taking it up with misinformation, even if we're well-intended.

Isn't this just the modern-day equivalent of somebody's putting drugs in the apples being handed out at Halloween, or somebody's taken a syringe and injected dangerous chemicals into the milk at the grocery store that we grew up with? It's the satanic panic all over again.

Yeah. There's always got to be something, and this is just the modern version. Yeah, my wife's mother would not let her go to the public restroom by herself because she was terrified that someone was going to be in there and was going to dye her hair so that no one would recognize her.

Evidently, this was a myth that a small girl goes into a public restroom, evil person, abducts child, dyes her hair in the restroom and makes off with the child, and no one recognized the child because her hair has been dyed.

I've only seen one person dye their hair in a public restroom in my entire life, and it was Harrison Ford in The Fugitive. There you go. I mean, there are bad people in public restrooms. I did have to chase a predator out of one.

Yeah, they're usually called senators. Yeah, that too. Yeah, I don't know if this guy was on the city council or whatnot, but he was definitely some guy checking out little kids in the restroom, and I chased his ass out of there. Oh, wow. That was in San Francisco in a public park. Right. I still have a photo of the guy, too.

Skeezy motherfucker. I think he's the governor now. Am I allowed to say that? Shit. No, just running through facial recognition. The governor of California? He had great hair even back then. He did. He did. Oh, my gosh. I want to link to an interesting article here.

It's written by someone named Mark Hurst. This is just like a little editorial thing, and I liked his description of AI. He says AI is spackle, which I really like. AI is not load-bearing, right?

It is the thing that you use to fill in the gaps of the things that are actually bearing the load. And it can look good. It can get you where you need to be. You can paint over it, and no one will know it's there. But it is not structurally sound on its own without assistance from other things.

And I kind of like that analogy. I've never had any racist spackle, but I guess it's out there. Oh, that's Grok. That's what Grok's for. Yeah, I've never had my spackle call me names, but I'm sure. Yeah, I mean, spackle, bondo, whatever, you know, pick what you want.

And speaking of AI, I saw that the White House has actually, in legislation, defined what AI is. Yes. They say, and this is in President Biden's recent executive order about AI.

It says, the term artificial intelligence, or AI, has the meaning set forth in 15 U.S.C. 9401-3, 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. Gentlemen. Yeah, yeah. You actually read this before when it came out, and I think we have the same reaction.

Yeah, okay, I don't remember. You do so many shows, Dave, it's impossible to remember. I don't remember what Brian and I talked about half an hour ago, so. That's funny. See, I saw this in my notes, and I thought that this had come out over the break when we missed each other, but I guess not, so apologies.

No, it's okay. It's okay, because I'm still hoping it's going to stick, but, yeah. No, it just doesn't – it doesn't feel right to me. Need some spackle. Need some spackle. Spackle. Spackle. But don't you think that's the problem is that nobody can agree what it means?

It's just so fuzzy? Well, I think the problem – we used to agree what it meant. Before it became a business model, we had pretty clear understanding of what machine learning was and what artificial intelligence was. Artificial intelligence was science fiction, and machine learning was what we had. Yes, and that was understood.

And then all of a sudden, money was being thrown around everywhere, and we were using machine learning to write the headlines. And the headline would say machine learning. Then the entire article would say AI, and nobody could keep it separate anymore. And then it just became a big old word salad. Yeah, and here's what I do.

I blame the downfall of crypto for this because it was blockchain, blockchain, blockchain, crypto, crypto, blockchain, blockchain. And then when that took a dump, everybody needed some more jargon to put out there for their business proposals and things like that and their articles about what's happening.

It's interesting to me because I want to say back in 2017 or so, AI was all the hotness at the RSA conference for cybersecurity companies.

Like everything was AI. AI was going to solve all your cybersecurity problems. And that lasted about a year because it was marketing-driven, and then they had to move on to whatever the new hotness was. It was blockchain. I remember when you went to those two RSAs.

Yeah, I came back. When you went to the first one. The next one was blockchain, yeah. And then you come back, and you're like, AI is dead. It's all blockchain now. Yeah. I'm so glad I have you guys as a source of my memory because I'm no good at it anymore. I can't remember why I walked into the kitchen, but I can remember what you did at RSA.

That's messed up. That's aging. That's aging, yeah. I'm just picturing the three of us sitting on a front porch in rocking chairs with blankets on our laps, you know, just slowly. Where, when was that? Like Statler and Waldorf just sitting up there. I'm thinking more Bartles and James.

Thank you for your support. Use coupon code GOG at checkout. Right, right. And they'll be going, what are they talking about? I don't know. It was something called a podcast, but just humor them. Just smile and nod, smile and nod. They're doing that shaving bit again, guys.

Right, exactly. None of them have grown any body hair in 20 years. At least it's not coming out of their ears. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So, I want to close this week with something that I find disturbing, and this came across on Mastodon.

Someone pointed this out. I'm linking to a page here from Cox Media. This is their advertising group. And they have a page that is dedicated to the idea of what they describe euphemistically as active listening.

This is the thing that we have been saying is not a thing. Is your phone listening to you? Is your TV listening to you? Is your whatever? Are your devices listening to you? Cox Media Group, it has a web page where they are bragging about their ability to use your devices listening to you for advertising purposes.

Great. Oh, great. And on this page, there is a window that leads with – it says, we know what you're thinking. Is this legal? Oh, Jesus. Yes. Turns out people have agreed to EULA's.

So, it's totally legal. Gotcha. Yeah. And what's interesting is this page was noticed about a month ago. There was some – there was a security researcher who pointed it out on Mastodon. It generated a bunch of traffic. And for about a week, Cox Media took the page down.

Oh. And then about a week later, I guess the heat blew over and they put the page back up again. Well, the legal team reviewed it and went, yep, it is legal. Yeah. We win. I would love to see somebody – I'm going to point this out to Tim Starks, my buddy at the Washington Post, and see if any – or, you know, this would be a good thing for someone like Joseph Cox to run down too.

Like, what exactly are they doing here? I would like to know that. What apps, what consent, what – if I have their cable box, does that – do they have microphones in that now? If I download the app that basically just I use to monitor my bill or maybe make changes to my service, is that accessing my microphone now?

What's going on here? Yeah. See, what I remember this kind of being around before was around smart TVs listening to your commercials. Yeah. To what commercials were being played. That was, you know, from a few years ago. It was – I can't remember if it was Verizon or – I can't remember whoever it was.

But they were saying that they were activating the microphone on your smart TV to listen to what commercials you were watching and how – or listening – yeah, how many commercials you were watching and how far you watched them. And they were using that to target more advertising to you. That's kind of the one thing that I remember was an actual thing where they were listening.

And people were super concerned about Samsung smart TVs for a while too. Yeah, right. They were doing something or other if you opted into their smart features. Oh, no. I'm using a Samsung smart TV to – it's my monitor right now. I wonder if they're listening. Well, we count that as one more listener to the podcast.

I was going to say I hope so because we could really use the numbers. This page says active listening begins and is analyzed via AI to detect pertinent conversations via smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices. So that's nice and vague. Yeah, other devices.

And, of course, AI has to be thrown in there because you have to these days. Yeah. Right. Right. Absolutely. Well, yeah, this is disturbing. And I would appreciate you with the 7,000 podcasts that are devoted to this sort of thing to find out what the hell is going on. Yeah, I'm going to see if I can shine a light on it and get maybe someone who is more of an actual investigative reporter than me to run it down because it's just – if nothing else, it's fuel to the fire.

Yeah. Right. They're saying the quiet part out loud. Very out loud. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's a great way to say it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, on that note – Yeah. Great. Well, I'm going to – I think I'm going to go shave. I can't wait for all the ads for shaving lube since everything around me is listing.

That's right. That's right. All right, guys. I'll talk to you next time. Dave's going to come back next week. I feel like a five-year-old boy. It's hard to reach my back. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Joe, Stephen, and Stephen.

Thanks, guys. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got Levy, Len, and Raj, who gave us a cool hundred bucks. Well, thank you very much. Over at the tip jar, we've got Sarah, Matthew, Christopher, Jeff, and from Robert Generous, a fine $200 donation. Thank you, Bob.

Well, there's some nominative determinism there. Yes, yes. No reviews, no nothing. We're out of here. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Show notes and links to everything we talked about today are GOG.show slash 628. GOG.show slash donate is the place to drop us a few bills so we can keep bringing you this top-notch entertainment.

And share the show with your friends and enemies or anyone in between. It's free. And just press that little button in the app that you're listening to us on. Get it out there. Come on. It's Christmas. Share. Sharing is caring, people. At GOG.show, you can find a link to our Discord channel if you want to chat with us and other show fans.

And head on over to GOG.show slash contact to send us your feedback, comments, or links to cool shit you think we should talk about. GOG.show slash review is where you can toss us a review and preferably five stars that we can read on the air. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge. We got none this week. Get on it, people. And stay grumpy.

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