629: Throbbing Rocket

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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. A little follow-up from last week, Brian, I am making the move to Google's YouTube music since Google Podcasts is shutting down. I'm glad we're giving that young whippersnapper little company a boost here by gracing them with our presence.

Yeah, we're just going to help. You and I each grab a bootstrap. We'll hoist them up. Yeah. All right. Well, good times. We'll see if it makes a bit of difference. No, it won't. It won't. Yeah. But, you know, it will because it will make people leave me alone. I do like the fact that you put up a couple shows already and we already have, like, really annoying YouTube comments.

That's YouTube for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's 300 up already. It's doing 100 a day. So we're recording this at four o'clock on a Thursday night. So Friday. So by Monday, we should have the maybe. No, it'll be Tuesday because, yeah, about Tuesday, we should have the whole set up there.

But, yeah, that's what it is. It's just because it has to do all the copyright checking and shit because there are definitely a few that will not be allowed into the pantheon. And we cannot monetize the show or we're going to lose, like, 90% of the episodes rendering the entire point moot.

Yeah. Because they're like, oh, this is fine if you don't want any money, you know, then the copyright holder will leave you alone. But if you try and monetize, you're fucked. Those are the warnings I'm getting. Okay. Fair enough. I mean, a lot of those early episodes we did, we used some music we weren't supposed to.

Yeah, we were naughty. We were really naughty. Yeah, between your intro theme and then me requiring that we use the theme from Lost in Space for the outro, those two alone got us.

And then apparently we used some Beatles music in there somewhere. Yeah, and you're actually labeled as a copyright holder for Among Us for our interstitials and intro music somewhere. Well, I grant you the rights for that. Thank you. Would you mind go telling YouTube?

I don't have a label. I have no way to get in contact with them anymore. Okay. So, yeah, you know, this is how copyright goes to die. Yeah, that's it. So links to that will be in the show notes, both the YouTube page and the YouTube music page, because it gives us both.

Because why the fuck not? Why not have two things that I have to deal with? Sure. Great. Oh, yeah. And it was great because the first hundred episodes, I had to sit there and go one each by each by each make you going from private to public because it did not respect the make this public on import setting.

Way to go, Google. I know you're strapped for cash and can't afford any engineers. So, I'll give you a pass on that one. Good times. And just a little wrap or follow up here for the year and pink slip wrap up. We've got Hasbro is cutting 1100 jobs, even though Dungeons and Dragons is killing it.

Hasbro CEO Chris Cox wrote a memo that says, you just can't, you just can't not, he's going to direct the company's attention toward licensing opportunities, scaling entertainment, and, quote, freeing up our own content dollars to drive new brand development.

He blames the company's losses on vague, quote, market headwinds. Okay. Yep. Whatever that means, Cox. Yep. Thanks, Cox. Well, you know, it's a, you say like a wrap up to the pink slip season, but we've got two weeks to go, people. Plenty of time to lay people off.

Well, Etsy is going to keep going. They're kicking out 11% of their workforce, approximately 225 employees. Okay. Wait for it. They call it a very challenging macro and competitive environment. Okay. You can't, you know.

Yeah. I mean. You're fired. Bullshit generator. I just call that business. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Cruz, not Tom or, you know, cruising for ass. Cruz is going to lay off almost a quarter of its workforce, about 900 employees.

Okay. Because they keep running people over and not telling the government about it. Yeah. There are numerous reasons for these layoffs. Yes. Yes. On Wednesday, the company said it had parted with nine top executives, including leaders in legal, government affairs, commercial operations, and safety and systems.

I wonder why. I wonder why. Very challenging safety environment over there. Yes. Yes. Don't run over kids or anybody. How about you stop running people over? Here's the crazy bit. GM has lost $8 billion on Cruz so far. $8 billion with a B.

Yeah. And they're cutting, they're going to cut the subsidiary's funding next year. So that is pretty much the death knell for Cruz. And they've cut all the cities. They were, they were in a ton of different cities and they're like, you know, we're going to come back and we're just going to try one city for starters. Pray you're not that city.

Yes. And sadly, I heard this on Twit this week. Leo Laporte had to get rid of Jason Howell, Ant Pruitt, and Victor Bognot. And I love this. They have to say that Victor Bognot was one of their editors.

So like everybody knows who these other people are, but we got rid of an editor too. Oh yeah. And at the end of their blog post, they're like, we know Jason and Ant will land on their feet. Here's how you can contact them to give them a job. Victor. More Victor. Yeah. Us editors, man, we get this short shit there.

You got to search LinkedIn for Bognot to take care of him. Yeah. No, because I need his job. So screw that guy. I paid Leo Laporte not to link to him. And I just love this tweet for the week.

Jimmy Wales, right? I forgot my bank password and lost my entire net worth. No, actually, that didn't happen because banks work and Bitcoin doesn't. True. True, true. In the news. Now, Brian, before we get into any real news for the week, I just want to read you this headline and let it sink in for a second.

Okay. San Francisco tech CEO, Christian Lang accused of forcing assistant to sign slave contract for sexual torture. San Francisco, man. I tell you, it's good to be a San Francisco tech CEO. There, everybody's denying it, of course, but the New York Post article has pictures of the entire contract with his signature at the bottom.

So, yeah, there you go. All right. Okay. You do you, San Francisco. You do you. Yeah. That's a... Wow. That's a... We've gone beyond go and get me some coffee. Seriously. Wow.

Yeah. I don't even know what to say. Good times. All right. Oh, man. So, in the battle between Epic Games and Google, Epic has finally come out on top. They finally got one. Where's John Oliver and the big button? We got one. So, yeah, a jury has basically said, yeah, Google was bad.

Kind of the summation of it. Google was bad. Yeah. Yeah. I remember when do no evil was their company slogan. Yeah. Well, that's long, long gone. Yeah. They said that they basically abused their monopoly to extract exorbitant fees, stifle competition, competition, and reduce innovation.

Yeah. That's kind of what they do over there when they have the keys to the castle. I mean, I guess it's hilarious because Epic lost their battle against Apple and Google has just been running around, you know, desperately claiming how much better they are because they don't do these sorts of things. But they're the ones that lose the case.

You know, and here's why. It comes down to this. Apple is better at deleting shit than Google is. Google had all their communications right there and ready for the court. And Apple's like, no, we don't keep that stuff. Delete really means delete over here instead of set visibility to zero like it does at Google.

So there was a lot more evidence against Google on this one. And also, this was a jury trial, not a bench trial like the Apple versus Epic one was. Right. So we'll see what this comes down to as far as damages go. But Epic wasn't actually suing for money. So, you know, we'll see how we'll see what they come out with.

But just the fact that if they don't have to pay those fees anymore and they can have their own app store within, you know, the Android ecosystem, they, they, they, the CEOs, yeah, the CEO basically says we stand to make hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars paying Google's stupid fees. So there you have it.

So there you have it. Good for Epic. Well, Meta is going to fact check content on the Threads app. Good luck! Because they're not fact checking content anywhere else. Yeah. You know, so, okay. All right. Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, has posted that they are working on creating a fact checking program.

Of course, they don't lay out what such a program would entail, only saying that they are going to match fact check ratings from Facebook or Instagram to Threads. Well, we know how well those work. Yeah. So, yeah. Low bar. This basically means we're going to apply the same shit low bar filters to Threads that we do everywhere else.

I mean, at least they're going to do something with Threads. I haven't been on Threads in a while, but it does seem that people seem to like it. It seems, at least to me, that it's kind of won the, the Twitter war, as it were. You know, Blue Skies, I don't hear anything about Blue Skies anymore.

Yeah, what's that? People are fleeing X in droves because, you know, it's what, it's what's the shit story of the week that came out of there. And yeah, so it seems like Threads is kind of won. So they're paying attention to it, basically. So it's like, oh, oh shit, we forgot. There's no fact checking here.

Let's roll this over. Yeah. And I think, I think that comes in line with, they just launched in the EU today. So they probably had to do that before they could launch in the EU. Yeah, I'd imagine so. So, uh, I've actually been playing around with it a little more lately. It's, uh, I, I still have to remind myself that it is a Zuckerberg joint.

Yeah. And, you know, that's, that sours me on the, on the interaction a bit. Uh, but at least it's not a... But is there one that has an owner that doesn't sour you on the interaction? No, it's not a musker fuck. So what are you going to do? Or Dorsey.

You know, not much better. You've got, it's twats all the way down is the problem, you know, in blue sky. Yeah. Mastodon. What's that? Yeah. So, um, yeah, I just, I kind of gotten rid of all of them, but I just popped in the threads the other day just because I was really, really, really bored and I needed to kill three minutes and it was okay.

It did the job. It did the job. It killed three minutes and probably a couple hundred million brain cells. So there you go. And you were able to put it down unlike TikTok. Oh, yes. Yes. It went down immediately. That's a win. Time to stand up. Get off the crapper.

Okay. Done. Legs didn't fall asleep. Let's just put it that way. All right. All right. Starlink is back in the news. They wanted some cash from the government, $886 million to be precise, to work on the rural internet problem. Well, the FCC apparently is doing its job because they said, no, you can't have the money.

So they did not meet the requirements. So simple as that. So, of course, they're bitching and moaning. You have to fill out the paperwork in triplicate. You have to meet the requirements. And oh, by the way, I wonder who might happen to have $886 million maybe just shoved in the back of a couch somewhere.

Well, he used to, at least until he bought Twitter. No, he still does. He's got plenty of money. He could pay for this himself. He doesn't. This is one of the untold things, or at least certainly something that always seems to get shoved under the rug about Elon Musk is how much money from the government he gets on a regular basis to start all of his companies.

Huge. Yes. Mm-hmm. And, you know, he didn't put out the whole $44 billion for X. No. You know, there's a lot of other people, banks, rich friends, Saudis, lots of Saudis, which is why I'm saying, and I'm thinking it's like, okay, the more he screws around and keeps losing money, somebody's going to come knock and say, and we'd kind of like it back.

But I think the trick was that he asked people who also had that much money sitting around in the couch. Yeah. You know? They're not missing it. No, no. It's a pocket change for most of them. Yeah. Anyway, FCC, good on you. Do your job. Good. Also, some good news coming out of Microsoft.

Microsoft has agreed to union contract language regarding its use of artificial intelligence, which should give workers a voice when challenging how the technology is deployed, as reported by Bloomberg. This is the first U.S. instance of collective bargaining in Microsoft's history and could be a huge step for those employed with the tech giant.

So this is good news. It came as part of negotiations with the Communications Workers of America Union. It involves contract language that covers a few hundred staffers at Microsoft's game studio, Zenimax. But of course, you know, the idea here being that you start there, it'll expand throughout all of Microsoft, maybe.

Yeah. So it basically incorporates all of Microsoft's previously announced AI principles, a Ten Commandments type deal that states all the AI systems will treat all people fairly and empower everyone, whatever the fuck that means. What the fuck that means? Yeah.

To that end, it gives employees covered under the contract an avenue of recourse should they feel that Microsoft isn't holding up its end of the bargain. So this is like, let's avoid that whole open AI bullshit that just happened again. Yeah. And deal with it internally if it happens. Till the challenging macro market headwinds take effect and everything changes.

Microsoft also entered into a partnership with the AFL-CIO, the country's largest federation of unions, which is pretty cool. The AFL-CIO calls this team up the first of its kind between a labor organization and a technology company. So making the right moves, sort of.

All right. It is worth noting, as the article points out, though, that Microsoft shareholders rejected the proposal last week that would slow down AI spending until a risk assessment project could be conducted. We give it with one and take it with the other. Oh, man.

Well, you know, Microsoft's doing good by the unions. Let's talk about Elon again. Let me guess. Not so good. Not so good. Tesla has been fighting with Swedish unions for quite some time now. Basically, there's a metal workers union that wants a new deal.

They're not giving it to them. So they've so far, the post office in Sweden has decided not to deliver the license plates for Tesla's. They found some kind of workaround for that. We talked about that on a show a while back. Well, now the garbage men have jumped in and said, we are not taking away your trash, sir.

Wow. Okay. Cool. Yeah. So if Tesla doesn't do a deal with the IF Metal, if they don't do a deal with that union, then on December 24th, Merry Christmas Eve, the trash embargo for Tesla will go into effect.

So yeah, they don't fuck around over there, man. They don't. They don't. I mean, it does sound like Elon Musk has picked a fight with a new musical genre, though. Swedish trash metal. Yeah, no doubt. Oh, man.

He's not going to win this one. No. You don't win when an entire country is basically saying fuck off. Yeah. So I think what he will do, here's my guess. I don't think he's going to capitulate. I think he's just going to take his toys and go home. Yeah. I think he's going to be out of Sweden.

Yeah. Fine. Fine by me. I don't have any Tesla stock anymore. Screw it. Here's another fun one. Tesla recalls two million vehicles over autopilot software issue. What's the issue? It doesn't work? Yeah. It actually does not do what it says it's going to do.

More on that in a second. But, you know, the thing is going around, well, is it a recall if it's just a software patch? Well, according to the NHTSA, yes, it is. It's your car's broken. You need to fix it. So you need to recall them to be fixed just because you, you know.

Just because you don't have to take it somewhere. Yes, exactly. Because so what, you know, what if that person doesn't have connectivity? What if the modem's broken? You know, you need to send them a letter that says your car sucks and that they need to come to a dealership or plug it into the modem to get the download.

So, yeah. So this is all around autopilot. All around autopilot. So, because it doesn't work. Basically, what they're saying is it's too easy to circumvent the system. That too. Yeah. To circumvent the system by, you know, even just just putting weights on the steering wheel and things like that.

So they're making changes to the UI, making changes to the software. Yeah. So we'll see how that goes. All right. Well, let's talk a little bit about a vehicle from Tesla that is will probably be having required recalls at some point in the very near future.

But not yet. The Cybertruck. Now, they put in their purchase agreement when they were about to start delivering them that Tesla could seek injunctive relief to prevent owners from transferring their vehicle's title if they attempt to sell it within one year of buying.

I like to get injunctive relief in the shower every morning. While listening to Swedish trash metal. Exactly. So, yeah, they're basically saying if you buy the car, you have to keep it for a year or we're going to basically punish you. The company said it could also seek liquidated damages from customers worth of $50,000 or the value received as consideration for the sale or transfer, whichever is greater.

That broke on social media when it came out and they removed the clause quietly, but then they put it back in. Put it back in. Whoops. So, yes, Cybertruck customers who have managed to put in an order for the $120,000 Foundation Series with Harry Seldon.

I was going to say, you get a Civic. That's what you get. I bought a Foundation and all I got was a Civic. Yeah, the clause is still in place. If owners must flip their vehicles before the year is up, Tesla is asking them to notify the company. So you have to ask daddy's permission, which will then purchase it back for retail minus 25 cents per mile driven and minus the cost of wear and tear as well as the cost to repair any damages.

Now, it's not just Tesla that does this, to be fair. Luxury brands like Ferrari and Porsche for their very high-end models will enforce a similar rule. But have you looked at this thing? Yeah. Does it look like a Ferrari or a Porsche? It's apparently faster than a Porsche.

Apparently. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently. Except if it's trying to go up a hill. I don't know if you saw that video. Yeah. Yeah. Which is my next story. Okay. Watch a Cybertruck get towed by a Ford pickup after the Tesla appears to get stuck off-roading.

There are a lot of caveats to why the Cybertruck was not working. It didn't have the right software. Should have got that over-the-air patch, dude. It was some kind of basically, you know, test model. They didn't, what do they call that?

Air down the tires to make them a little softer to give more tracks. There's all, basically it's a laundry list of why the thing shouldn't have been where it was. Right. But, you know what you can do with a Ford F-150? Resell it if you want to. That's true. Even Ford, though, has cut production on theirs because people are souring on EVs, it seems.

It seems to be. I'm sorry, not souring, cooling because of trade market headwinds and shit like that. Oh, man. Yeah, so it's funny. A friend of the show, Jeff Donaldson, was sending me pictures. He was driving around Austin and saw some in the wild. He keeps saying it to me.

So they are just, they look just as ugly in his photos as they do on every other photo. These are fucking ugly. I'm sorry. I mean, initially I was like, ooh, kind of Battlestar Galactica by your command. But no, they're just ugly. 80s Battlestar Galactica, let's clarify here.

Yeah. The Lorne Green Cybertruck. It's the Lorne Green Foundation Edition. Oh, man. Alpo. Three people got that joke. Tesla claims California false advertising law violates the First Amendment.

Please, Tesla. Have you seen this one? Yeah. Bit of a stretch. They are claiming, I just, this just boggles my mind. It's free speech and I can say whatever I want, even if it's patently false in an advertisement, is basically what they're trying to claim here.

That's exactly what they're trying to claim. Our Teslas go to space and back and rub your feet. That's free speech. We can say that. So, I mean, this is just such a stretch. It is beyond belief.

But is it really beyond belief? No, it's not because it's Tesla. But, yes, they literally filed a lawsuit against the state of California saying that it's within their right to call it, you know, autopilot and say that it's full self-driving, even though they can't.

You know, it's already in the California vehicle code. The FCC has already said you cannot have deceptive commercial speech because it does not violate the First Amendment, you fucking knobs. He's a free speech lawyer, Jason. No, no, no.

It's ridiculous. It is ridiculous. It is just, I mean, this is an Onion article. It really is an Onion article. Come to life. Yeah. Oh, man. I've been feeling that way about the world recently. Oh, it just gets worse. What do you got next? This one is from the have you not seen any fucking dystopian sci-fi movies file?

Because just researchers fuse lab-grown human brain tissues with electronics. What could possibly go wrong? Isn't this Elon's other company? Well, no, they're doing brain implants, right?

So this is not so much a brain implant as it's taking a few cells of the brain and teaching it to interact with a computer. The first few cells are free, Brian. That's the way it usually goes. Yeah. So it's a hybrid biocomputer containing lab-grown human brain tissue with conventional circuits and AI, dubbed Brain-O-Ware.

Which I'm like, maybe you should hire a branding person. Just one? Seriously? Brain-O-Ware? Brain-O-Ware sounds like it's from like a 1970s dystopian sci-fi movie. 1920s? Come on. I put on the Brain-O-Ware.

I'm going to take over the organoids. Ha-da-da-da-da. Pew, pew, pew. The system learned to identify voices with 78% accuracy. It could one day lead to silicon microchips fused with neurons. So, yes, it contains, combines brain organoids, stem cell-derived clusters of human cells, morphed into neuron-filled mini-brains with conventional electronic circuits.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Great. Soon to be driving all cyber trucks. Well, they're already licensed to self-drive. There you go. Yeah. I sued for the ability to say that. Oh, God. Yeah. Well, you know, Brian, I love the old Elon.

I love the old Elon. 2013 Elon, I loved. Elon Model X sucks. Right. But this week, SpaceX shared some of their new footage of the latest Starship launch. It was beautiful. It really reminded me.

It had the music. It was in beautiful 4K. They had really nice. I mean, it was beautiful. Except for the part where Elon's jumping up and down for joy. That kind of took me out of it. Kind of like Adam from Mythbusters at the end of The Expanse, you know, really just took me right out.

Right out. Right out of it. But it was really, it was a really beautiful video. The link is in the show notes. I highly recommend taking a look. You know, I was just thinking for a second before you go on to your next story. I'm starting to really get like Elon fatigue and why people are getting it. We did not intend to, but we've talked about every single one of Elon's companies.

Elon himself just being a douche. Tesla. Cybertruck. We've talked about his dead monkeys from trying to put human brain cells in there. We talked about Starlink. My God, just can I have a day without Elon? A day without Elon.

That would be nice. That would be nice. Okay, let's talk about Jeff Bezos for a second. Oh, shit. That guy? That guy's back. His penis rockets at Blue Origin are finally getting to fly again. So they had to take 15 months off because one went boom.

And the FAA came back and said, you need to fix this, this, this, this, this, and this. Fire a bunch of people. Get a new bunch of people in here. Write a new service manual. And then you can try again. So that's where we're at. Yes, they have to implement 21 corrective actions, including redesigning the engine and nozzle components.

That's kind of a big ask. And can you make it look a little less dicky? Yeah. Let's talk about this shape, shall we? Or at least paint it pink. We're going to do that. Those aren't veins.

They're fuel lines, buddy. Oh, God. Oh, I know what I need your AI generator to do for show, Art. Oh, man. I'll get booted. I'll get booted. Okay. I'll see what I can do. I'll see if I can, if I can hack the code.

See if my prompt engineering skills are what they should be. Throbbing rocket. I mean. Throbbing rocket. Oh, God. Okay. Well. It's also another musical genre that I've gotten into recently. Well, since we are talking about how just random life is right now, this is such a weird ass time to be alive.

We now have a whale SETI team. Captain Kirk. Spock. Exactly. Scotty. Heading to the past and pick us up some whales. Computer. Computer. Transparent aluminum.

I actually picked up my mouse to do that. Such a nerd. Such a nerd. Oh, God. Okay. Well, let me go back to this real quick. The whale SETI team. Now, SETI is an acronym for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Unless they're saying these are space whales, I think they need to redefine the acronym. So, anyway, the space or the unspace whale SETI team has claimed – they claim that they've actually spoken to a whale now. All right.

Yes. They've spoken to a whale. He's fine. He's fine. Yes. He's like, what is this bowl of petunias doing here? Anyway, yes. So, they stuck a speaker in the ground, in the water, and talked to a humpback whale named Twain for 20 minutes.

So, didn't really have much to say. He was like, man, Twitter used to be so much better. And then he swam away. Catch me on Mastodon. 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. So, Brian, a little quick Traders Canada wrap-up.

Yep. How'd they do? Were they very nice about killing each other? They actually were. It was a fine ending all the way around. It was good. Then, we finished the Traders UK. Even better ending, gotta say. The only one that made me feel like shit so far is the United States version, which was a surprise there.

That tracks. That tracks. That really does track. People are shittier here. We are better at being Traders. Okay. Any countries left? What's next? I've seen them all. Traders Zimbabwe? What are we up to? I wish. I actually had a dream that my roommate was like, hey, I hear the Traders Italy is out now.

And they're in Rome. And I visualized seeing a version of it with subtitles. And they're, oh, man. Yeah. No. And then I had to check the next day. And yes, it was a dream. Like, shit. Because we're out. We're out till January. January is when the new one starts.

January is two weeks away. I think you'll make it. I know. I think so. I think so. Been catching up on slow horses. Oh, my God. That's so good. Yeah. I got to catch up on that. So good. I actually went back and started watching it again from the beginning.

Because it dawned on me, I drank a lot. I mean, a lot when the first two seasons were on. I don't remember a damn thing. I remembered that they were good. But I'm watching. I'm like, I've never seen this show. This is quite good. Man, you've got like 50 years of history to catch up on.

Catch back up on Jason. I'm going to say, if I apply that logic, my library just got a renewed sense of value to it. Oh, man. But, you know, hat tip to Gary Oldman. He got nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Male Actor in a TV Series.

Congratulations. I watched the Doctor Who special number three with the final transformation of David Tennant into a new doctor. Sort of. They MCU'd the shit out of it, which is really sad. It was garbage, sadly.

It was absolute and utter garbage, at least personally to me. And, of course, to the Internet, if you would go listen to what the Internet has to say. As far as I can tell, nobody fucking liked it. So, and Neil Patrick Harris, Neil Patrick Harris. Yeah. I'm a little tired of his Neil Patrick Harris-ing.

Yeah. He just, I mean, he was really Neil Patrick Harris-ing the shit out of this one. So. All right. Yep. And I watched it on my 75-inch 4K TV, and he has really nice teeth. That's all I had. That was the one takeaway. I'm like, man, they really did your teeth up nice.

It's really huge on my TV. I found a new podcast that I'm listening to. I mean, I guess BBC Sounds, if you want to complain about being a podcast because it goes out on the radio in England. But. There's no such thing as a podcast anymore. Whatever. Okay.

There we go. A-I-M-L-N podcast. This is called Sliced Bread, and it is basically, he asked the question of things, or actually, listeners write in and want him to look into different topics and figure out if they are marketing BS or SB.

It's the best thing since sliced bread. Yeah. Please tell me they did fully self-driving Teslas. They have not done that yet. It is more pedestrian pursuits, but it is very interesting. I enjoy it. Some of the episodes I've listened to include vacuum cleaners. They talk about corded cordless and robot.

Baths, bullshit. Smart thermometers, weighted blankets, also bullshit. Vapes made me very happy that I decided to stop smoking and use that as a way to get there because, yeah, vapes came out pretty well. Barefoot shoes, cycle helmets.

I mean, all kinds of stuff. There's like 83 different episodes, and it's very well done, very informative, and it definitely goes to experts. So, you leave the episode pretty much having a solid scientific basis behind why something is bullshit or not. Okay.

Barefoot shoes. What was the verdict? For some people, occasionally, kind of good. Okay. But, you know, it's mostly for runners. It's not for, like, just around the house. Yeah. Yeah. No, I used to – I tried those things. And I even tried those stupid toe shoes that Tim Ferriss was, you know, hawking for a while.

Nothing made you look more like a douche than those things. Oh, my God, man. I think the Google glasses did not make you look as douchey as those stupid toe shoes. No, those things were bad, man. I wouldn't leave the house. And I lived in San Francisco at the time where it was okay. Good way to spread that man poo into the crevices.

Oh, imagine. Just imagine Stephanie and man poo with the toe shoes. Oh, yuck. Oh, God. We got some streaming name change news. Showtime's cable channel is changing its name, too. Wait for it. It's going to be poppy.

It's going to be cool. It's going to be well thought out, well branded, and just roll off the tongue. Paramount Plus with Showtime. I like Braino Wave better than that. I'd subscribe to Braino Wave. Seriously.

Yeah. So, as they point out, this may not be a seamless transition for certain customers. However, some subscribers of the linear Showtime channel will not have access to the Paramount Plus with Showtime. Streaming plan. Because it's a streaming plan as opposed to a packaged cable channel. Instead, Paramount Plus with Showtime cable subscribers will be able to access programming online via the authenticated streaming apps of pay TV partners.

Paramount Global does have agreements with some large pay TV providers that allow Showtime cable subscribers to also access the Paramount Plus with Showtime streaming service. Confused yet? Oh, you will be. Oh, you will be. Jesus. And in Google News, Google has begun shifting users from Play, Movies, and TV ahead of that January shutdown.

So, you know, that's all over. Another confusing one. I could never figure out what was where and why and how. Well, the company has released detailed instructions on how long-time customers can continue accessing the content they've already purchased. Admittedly, it can be a bit confusing since access depends on what device the viewer is using.

No shit. No shit. Yeah, it is complicated just even trying to read it. So, viewers will be able to access movies and shows they'd purchase in the Your Library row under the Shop tab in Google Play if they're watching on TVs and streaming devices powered by Android TV.

If they're on Android TV cable or set-top boxes, they'll be able to access their old content through the YouTube app where they can also continue buying and renting movies and shows. Or you can fire up a browser and go to the YouTube website to see the old stuff. Stop buying and renting movies from these platforms, people.

That's the easiest thing here. Just stop. And Netflix basically shocked the entire streaming world by releasing Metrix. Yep. Finally. Finally. A twice-a-year engagement report called What We Want. Now, as you'd imagine, for Netflix, which makes money hand over fist and is very well done with their branding and everything is beautiful and in line and everything is done very nicely.

Of course, this report came out in an Excel file. Mm-hmm. I love that part. That part was the best. I do, too, actually. That was the great part. Yeah. Because you could just quickly sort and move through everything very fast. It was awesome. Yeah. I actually like that. It lists the hours viewed for every title, original, and license that has tallied more than 50,000 viewing hours.

So this covered January to June 2023, including 18,214 entries of eligible content. The big winner of the action thriller series, The Night Agent, Season 1, with 812,100,000 hours. See, here's the thing.

The thing about this is it – the timing is weird on – because it's that entire inclusive period. It's not broken down by, like, you know, even if they did, like, you know, an average hours per day, it would be more telling, I think, than, you know, just having the full list because the release times are different for all the different shows.

So, like, the Sandman, Season 1 came out on my birthday, August 5, 2022, has 56.7 million hours watched, which is really good because that puts it at 247 out of 18,000 in change, which means sequels.

But still, it's really hard because I think the only reason that, you know, that The Night Agent, Season 1, got that many hours is because it was the only fucking thing to watch for a while, and it was just at the top. It wasn't that great. I watched it. It was, you know, it was decent, but it wasn't, like, mind-bogglingly good.

But I guess that's what you need to get, you know, mass adoption nowadays, so. Pretty much. Although I was heartened to see that Wednesday made it into the top five. I loved that show. It was very well done, so. Yeah. Even though she needs to stop talking as a human and stick to acting. Well, you don't have to read her air nebius.

No, you don't. Just ignore them. You really don't. Yeah, you just shut the fuck up. It was, and the nice part of having the spreadsheet, too, is you can just kind of scroll through. It is incredible how some of these long-tail movies out there are getting, you know, hundreds of thousands of hours and sometimes millions of hours of views.

Like, Heat, the movie Heat. I'm like, that's an old fucking movie. And it's, you know, like over a million hours watched. I'm like, wow, that's kind of impressive. So, and the other thing is, there's like so much random shit on there. Like, how to build a sex room is one of the shows that I found scrolling through.

I'm like, what? This was the watched after midnight tally. In San Francisco by the CEO of the company that just got fired. Yeah. He's the only one that watched it. It was just on loop at his house, and he had his assistant sitting there watching it. How to create a sex slave contract.

Exactly. Oh, but Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos did explain why it's been hiding all the streaming data, and I thought it was a really good answer. Now, tell me if I'm wrong here. Okay. At the beginning, we did not want to lay out the breadcrumbs for future competitors.

And also, it really did resonate with talent really positively that we weren't going to have the overnight ratings or the weekend box office. So, there was a lot of positive around it. It was pretty exotic. You couldn't compare overnight ratings or live plus seven to a perpetually available show where all the episodes dropped at once.

So, I was concerned that people wouldn't get the nuance of the difference of the two, so rather than generate comparison, just don't give it. And over time, he did say that he admitted that, well, it also created an atmosphere of mistrust. Yes, when you weren't paying people. They thought that they were hiding something, and it's, yes.

And eventually, everybody else was doing it, so we had to. So, in the beginning, it was business reasons, which made sense. When they were the only game on the block, but as more streaming companies came out, and it became the only fucking way to watch a TV show, they got to give up the ghost.

So, I thought that made sense. I thought that was a good explanation, you know? I believe it more if they didn't have the numbers themselves and weren't looking out for them feverishly every night. Yeah, well, they definitely did that. And they didn't tell people.

That's the one thing. They didn't tell people why their show lived or died. But they would tell comedians, and they're like, no, you have to lead with this joke first. They would completely – like, if you watch a comedy special on Netflix, it has been engineered by the numbers to start with the strongest joke first, so it's all downhill from there, and end with the second best joke, which a lot of comedians do already, but they really drive home.

It's like, you've got to start strong. None of that BS in the beginning that's, like, you know, quirky behind the scenes. Like, you want to go from press play to going, hey, Detroit. As fast as humanly possible. Yeah. So. Well, we've got another streamer out on the horizon, one I just know we're both going to subscribe to.

Tucker Carlson has given up the Ghost with X and launched his own streaming service. Oh, how's that going? Oh, I'm sure it's had the best download numbers ever, Jason. That's right. That's right. Because it just launched. Just launched. Soundbreaking record day.

Nine bucks a month for five original shows starring Tucker Carlson. I would be tuckered out after watching five shows. After Elon basically pleaded and begged and sucked off the penis rocket of Tucker Carlson to stay on X, he's decided, nope, that's not happening.

Yeah. So we have a home to exclusive all new content from Tucker Carlson, says Tucker Carlson's website, claims to be the sworn enemies of lying, proposities, smugness, and groupthink built to combat traditional journalists who allegedly hate the truth. Yes. So the epicenter of the Tucker Carlson Network is the Tucker Carlson Encounter, a show with friendly sit-down interviews, though it sounds like a terrifying experience you might have in a Florida parking lot.

It really does. In a Waffle House. Yeah. Well, good luck with that, Tucker. I'm fully supportive of people being entrepreneurs and taking care of their own stuff out there, and I'm sure you'll have an audience for a while. And Apple is tossing a bone to music artists. If anybody who wants to put out their music in spatial audio, a relatively new audio format that is more immersive than regular stereo, and conveniently in almost all Apple products these days, they will get added weighting starting next year, which means they'll get a couple more pennies on the dollar.

So if you can go back and remix your old stuff, or you can do all your new stuff in spatial audio as well as having it in just standard old audio that we've all grown up and love, Apple will give you a couple more pennies. So I guess that's good. Okay. I actually checked out, I think the new Buffy audiobook from Audible has spatial audio.

It's really cool, at least for an audiobook. Like when I watched a couple of the Apple TV shows when my kids and my wife were already in bed and I had my headphones in, it was pretty cool. Do I want it for music? I don't know about that, but. Yeah. No, it's cool for TV.

Like, I don't know if you've been watching Monarch, the Godzilla series on Apple TV+. No, I do want to watch that, though. Yeah, I'm like two episodes in. It's pretty good, and it's got the spatial audio action in it, too, which is pretty cool when Godzilla's chomping by on the first episode.

Apparently, he doesn't show up very much, though, for the rest of the series. So I think, because I saw a headline that said, hey, we got some Godzilla this week. I'm like, okay, well, now I know not to be waiting for Godzilla. It's like dragons in Game of Thrones. They're just too expensive. Right. Well, Brian, breaking news.

Apple is going to be making a Murderbot series. Oh, they're going to foundation it? Yes, they are, literally. Because David S. Goyer, the executive behind Foundation, is going to be one of the executive producers of Murderbot.

So it'll be called the Murderbot Diaries, and there will be a robot. And that's about all we can count on. And it's going to be Alexander Skarsgård as the robot, which is interesting. I like that casting. I would like that casting, except in my head, the Murderbot has always been a woman.

Me, too. Yeah. So they really did foundation it already. There you go. Already. That's weird. That's funny. It's always been a woman in my head, too. Mm-hmm. And by the way, the audiobooks are read by a woman. Oh, okay. And I never listened to the audiobooks.

I've only read it on my Kindle. Weird. So I've always pictured it as a woman. So that's going to be odd, but not as odd as Foundation Season 3, the fact that they greenlit that. Most odd fucking thing I've heard all week. Yep.

It's strange. Ups and doodads. Well, Apple has released all new updates for everything. So I got to spend a joyful night wandering around the house and doing all my iPads and my watch and my computers and my iPads and the TVs and blah, blah, blah.

But they all went pretty well. So that's good. It's iOS 17.2 is out. iPad OS 17.2, Mac OS 14.2 Sonoma. And the main thing is journal. That really seems to be the big deal. I reviewed that a couple of weeks ago because I had the public beta version.

And yeah. Did you try it? Do you care? No, don't care. Yeah. I didn't think you were a journaler. I'm not a journaler. So it's no big deal for me. I don't like the suggestions for journal entries. I've got to find out if there's a way to turn that off. Maybe I just sign back out a journal or something because I launched it once.

Because I don't want another suggestion when I'm going through my phone looking at things. I think you just turn off Siri suggestions. Okay. I got to do that then. Yeah. Because I've never got one. And I've used journal a couple of times. Yeah. I think you just turn off Siri suggestions for that.

Yeah. Or everything. Who cares? Yeah. And the Apple TV OS 17.2 has come out. And since you and I both use that as our main streaming box, which basically means it's our TV these days. Yep. That's pretty cool. The main change around this time is a redesign of the core Apple TV app.

You will see a sidebar that blends content from Apple's own services such as Apple TV Plus, MLS Season Pass, and a store where you can buy and rent popular movies with access to third-party channels and apps such as Disney Plus and Max. You're supposed to be able to swipe left for this. And I've swiped left so hard that my remote is basically broken now.

And I cannot get the sidebar to come up. So I don't know what's going on. Now I'm glad you pointed out because I did that because I've had the beta for that, too, for quite some time. Because I heard they added an extra icon to the roast. And I'm like, oh, I need that. So give me that. Yeah.

It's got like, was it, like the control panel and all that stuff. Right. Yeah. You can do FaceTime calls now on it, which I find, whatever. Yeah, you have to set up the continuity camera with your iPhone to do that.

And I'm like, eh. I hate having it because continuity camera, like I turned it on on a couple of my Macs and it would always flip when I was walking around the house. It was like, ding. I just kept ringing. I'm like, what the fuck's going on? And it's like, oh, continuity camera has been activated on this one, on that one, on this one. I'm like, no. So I got to say, though, as a webcam, the iPhone, pretty good.

Right. You know, because it costs you, like, what, $1,200. It's a very expensive webcam. Yeah. Yeah. I wish it was easier to use the back camera for it. But anyway, I digress. But I have not tried a FaceTime call because FaceTime, who the fuck uses FaceTime?

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, me either. Now, with the new betas, with the 17.3 beta, Apple is going to be launching stolen device protection. Okay. Finally. Yeah. So the big deal is that lately there's been a lot of news stories where people are shoulder surfing your phone, seeing you put in your passcode, which who puts their passcode in anymore?

But apparently some people do, people who like to get drunk at bars and have their phone stolen, apparently. Because with that as old passcodes, you could change somebody's basically Apple ID password, which locks them out of the phone and gives them the keys to the castle, which you will never get back because Apple cannot give it back to you.

They won't give it back to you. So you're screwed. So now the new stolen device protection will add in different levels of security by adding things like a one-hour delay before you can do anything really interesting with your phone. Also, it's got some location locking on it, too.

So if you're at work or at home, you know, you know, it knows. The problem with work is, you know, work's a big place usually, and a lot of people work in high rises. So somebody on one floor can steal your phone, go to another floor, and then do whatever they got to do. But so hopefully they'll be able to, you'll be able to change that, hopefully, because I just would want it at home or, you know, work in a smaller place.

But anyway, and most people work from home anyway. So there you go. It should be interesting. I like that they're adding more security to the phone. We talked about that a while back about it's the one thing that the iPhone was really missing that Android actually had. Yeah, no, yeah, because, I mean, we live on these damn things now.

I mean. Yep, our entire lives are on it. Banking, everything. Yep. Pictures of our rockets, you know. Yeah, yeah. Our Bitcoin passwords, all that good stuff. Mm-hmm. GM is, they're not giving up the ghost on this ditching CarPlay thing.

And they're really not giving up the ghost. And here's the, this is just, it's gotten to the point of every other article we've talked about this week, where the world is just turning into the onion. Yeah. GM's head of product for infotainment, Tim Babbitt, said, we're not putting it in because of safety concerns.

Because if something happens and you have CarPlay, people are more likely to pick up their phone and not look at the road. He said that. Okay. He paraphrased it, basically, because the Motor Trend article doesn't actually quote him for anything. It's all been paraphrased.

Right. But the point is, is that he said, yeah, it's for your own safety. Come on. Okay. Give me a break. Come on. Yeah. Now, instead of having this thing that's right on the dash in the line of sight of actually seeing what's in front of you, you're going to be glancing over to the right on the passenger seat where you put your phone.

Yeah. Unless you plug into their Android powered, you know, infotainment system. No, thank you. Yeah. No, thank you. So, give me a break. There's a new OpenAI Challenger out called Mistral. It looks to be pretty cool.

Inside of a year, they've already beat chat GPT-3 or open – so many acronyms. OpenAI's GPT-3.5. They've bested that. They're working on more goodies. The thing about it is you can get these models and you can just run them locally.

It's all open source, which is phenomenal. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm going to – I would like to grab a copy when I get a chance because there's the LM Studio that you can get to run locally on your – you know, if you've got a decent new Mac, which I have.

Well, actually, no. Nowadays, mine are lower rung. I've only got M1s. Right. But it works on an M1, so I'll give it a shot. You can check that stuff out on Hugging Face. Yes. Yes. With Brain-O-Wave. Brain-O-Wave. Plug in your Brain-O-Wave to the Hugging Face to ride your pink rocket to the stars.

Of course, depending on market variability and the winds of change. Jesus. OpenAI is fighting back, though. They are – they inked a deal with Alex Springer. Axel. Axel Springer. What is Alex?

Now just the diamond sprockets when we dance. Yes. Alex Springer is Jerry Springer's bastard brother. Anyway, this company, it's a gem and company, like you said. But they run Business Insider and Politico.

So, now you get instant access to really shitty articles. Great. Business Insider is so fucking shit the bed. It's such a horrible site now. Garbage. Garbage. Yeah. Garbage Insider. That's what the Swedish trash metal bands listen to.

Garbage Insider. And finally, E3 is finally officially dead, which is news to me because I thought it died years ago. Definitely the pandemic, right? The last one was pre-pandemic and then just never really came back, right? Yeah. There hasn't been an in-person one since 2019.

No. There you go. They did some virtual ones, but now they're just saying, nah, we're done. Fuck it. I never went. Did you ever go? Yes, I've been to E3. I've been to a couple E3s back in the day and they were a blast. Yeah. I did SIGGRAPH, but I never did E3. Oh, SIGGRAPH was cool.

Yeah. SIGGRAPH was the one, man. That's the one where you just go and you just go, I'll never be able to afford anything here. But it's also cool. Yeah. I think the first year I went to that was when Autodesk introduced Maya. Nice.

And they had, remember the Bingo the Clown animation? Mm-hmm. Oh, God, that was so cool. I mean, that blew everybody away. Go watch it now. And it's just like. It all looks so lame. Like if we went back with, like, if we took time travel back and went to those SIGGRAPHs, we'd be like, you're going to be out of business. You're going to be out of business.

That's horrible. That is no, no, no. Oh, my God. Yeah. Amazing that Maya is still around. That's still their flagship. Yeah. That's pretty cool. It's really hard to use. I tried to try. Ugh, can't do it. At the library.

So I finally followed my rule. I had been stringing together sci-fi books for a while. And I was like, I need something that is not sci-fi. And I was looking around and Teresa Strasser, who was the news girl on the old Adam Carolla show. And I've always liked her. She's very clever, very funny.

She's written another book previously about when she had her baby. And it was very funny and sweet and heartwarming and all of that. She is promoting a new book out called Making It Home, Life Lessons from a Season of Little League. Her father, or not her father, her brother had died of cancer.

And then her mother passed away like four months after that. And this is about her and her father kind of reconnecting and dealing with grief while watching her kid go through Little League. And, you know, if you're a baseball fan, and it was great.

I mean, just fucking phenomenal writing. Teared up more than a few times. So well done, Teresa. I'm happy to see that she's still out there writing and doing well, because I was always a big fan of hers on the radio show. Yeah. No, that's good. It's a great book. Yeah, she was always better than Adam, honestly.

Low bar. Yeah. Low bar. I read Longitude by Dava Sobel. This is the story of how we discovered, or not, we knew longitude was there. The actual methods of navigation.

What, did they run into it on a ship? Yeah. Dong. What the hell is this line doing here? It's about how timepieces were invented to actually calculate longitude and the fight between the people who used the lunar systems and the clockmakers and all of the good stuff.

I read this story. I can't wait for the sequel, Latitude. Seriously. I read a version of this, the Neil Stevenson version of this whole story in the Baroque cycle. Oh, well, I mean, I'm sure he could have fit about 19 of these books in there.

Yeah, yeah. This is the nice thing about it. This was short. This was great. This was literally a subplot, a small subplot of the Baroque cycle, but it was fun. So it was fun to hear the actual story. It's a really fascinating little book. I think it was only like a four and a half hour listen on Audible.

Well, well done. Cool. Yeah. Speaking of Neil Stevenson, aren't we due? We're due for a new one, aren't we? I'm sure he's shitting out 890 pages right now. Short one, please, Neil. Short one. No, he doesn't do short. What was the last one, the climate change one?

Is that going to have a sequel? Because I fell asleep by the end of it. I never finished it. It could. They certainly left it open for one. I liked it. I thought it was great. Okay. I enjoyed it, but it was just getting a little long. And that was one of his shorter ones.

I know. I've got it on the shelf. It's only four inches thick. So I picked up another book called Accelerando by Charles Charles. Accelerando! Woo! It's about flamenco in the future with AI. Have you ever read this book?

I have not read this one. So Rudy Rucker made a post the other day where he's posting his Kindle notes when he reads all this old sci-fi. This is like from 2014. It's fantastic. The first 15 minutes is all I've gotten, and I love it already.

Because this is old like cyberpunk era type of writing. And it's like back when things were cool and we kind of gave a shit about neat technology. And I just, I don't know what it is. I have a soft spot in my heart for old cyberpunk type of stories.

And this isn't even that old when you look at the eras of cyberpunk. Because I think you base all of, you know, Snow Crash is ground zero for a lot of us. Kind of, yeah. Or Gibson, you know. Yeah, yeah. Go back to old Gibson and old Bruce Sterling.

That whole crowd. Rudy Rucker. All those guys from the early 90s to mid 90s. All those books. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's good stuff. Because we hadn't ruined technology yet. That's why. Exactly. We haven't, like the unwashed masses hadn't shown up.

We didn't let AOL in. There was no Elon. To fuck it all up. There was, but he was playing games with the rest of us back then. Yeah, he was wearing stupid goth clothes. Exactly. And hanging out at LAN parties like he should have stayed doing. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to this one because old Charlie, I like old Charlie.

He's doing pretty good. But when I found this book, I was recommended another book by Charlie called Glass House. It's never heard of this one either. But the thing is, if you're an Audible Premium member, it's free. So added that puppy to my library when I'm, you know, missing something else to listen to.

So I'm just, I'm really, really excited to read Accelerando. I can't wait to hear your review. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Robert. Roberto. Thank you, Robert.

Thank you, Robert. Over at PayPal, we've got Ralph, Shari, Miles, Linda, Natalie, Stephen, Celia, and Timothy with a big old hundred smackaroos. Woohoo! Accelerando! Over at Stripe and the tip jar, we've got Joseph, Theodore, and Dan with the 50 buckaroos.

Half Accelerando. Thank you, everybody. We need it. We need it. Thank you very much, everyone. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Show notes and links to everything we talked about today are at GOG.show slash 629.

GOG.show slash donate is the place to drop us a few bills so we can keep bringing you this top-notch entertainment. Sharing the show with your friends, enemies, or anyone in between is repeating. It can be almost as good as cash. Almost. At GOG.show, you can find a link to our Discord channel if you want to chat with us and other show fans. Head over to GOG.show slash contact to send us your feedback, comments, questions, or links to cool shit you think we should talk about on the air.

And GOG.show slash review is where you can toss us a review and preferably five stars that we can also read on the air. Stay Accelerando'd!

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