632: Stuck in Porn Mode

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

From beauty and fashion to home, culinary and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com. Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo, discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. The internet is listening to us again, Brian. As they do. Yes. Well... I mean, not very many of them, unfortunately. I think Instagram's listening to me this time. Okay. I turned off the show.

I was done. And I'm like, oh, I was bouncing out. And I was like, oh, let me look at Instagram. See what's going on. The first ad I got... Now, actually, before I tell you what the first ad was, I sent it to you. You know what it is. But for the audience, last week's show, I talked about how I was getting headaches because I was leaving my phone on at night.

I forgot to put it on airplane mode. So all the waves were going into my brain. And it was making, giving me, you know, headaches in the morning. I turned that off. Alas, no more headaches. Same day, show's coming out. I literally get ads on Instagram for tinfoil hats.

Oh, God. This company, Lambs, they block 99% of EMF with the world's first radiation-proof apparel. Oh, my God. Yes, Lambs. That's very appropriately named. I know. I know. And you can get EMF-blocking underwear.

Yes. Oh, yes. Because you need that. Yeah. You can get a beanie for your son for only $70. Whoa. Yeah. It's surprising to see. I mean, it's a good target market, rich suckers. Yeah, exactly. The baseball hats are like 90 bucks.

Okay. I'm like, but my ears are uncovered. And I put the phone up to my ears. So you're kind of, what the, what, yeah. Yeah. Anyway. I don't think they're going for scientific accuracy for the target market they're shooting for. No. No, no, no, no. No.

So I just thought that was fun. Yeah. So you were right, Brian. Google search results are getting worse. I've been saying it for years now. Yeah. I mean, and we've all known it. We've seen it, but it's now, it has now been quantified. It is confirmed by scientists.

And here's the TLDR in the article we found. It's affiliate marketers still. Yep. I thought, I thought they were gone. I thought that whole thing was done. I thought everybody moved into influence marketing instead of, you know, just basically SEO spam. But it turns out. Well, the influencer marketing is a purely social media phenomenon.

The, the old school, you know, old school web is still all about affiliate marketing. I didn't know anybody was still there. Yeah. They're still there, Jason. Yeah. It's still apparently a very lucrative market too. Yeah. And it's ruined search. Yeah. And Google says that they're still on it, But, you know.

They're not. Yeah. They're busy with AI. Yeah. And everything else. But it gets worse. Because Google News now is getting hammered with AI content that is basically plagiarizing the actual news content that also shows up on Google News.

So, here's the thing. Yeah. 404 Media, who I still love, they put out a good article on it called Google News is boosting garbage AI generated articles, which it is. But here's the thing about Google News is Google News is a completely different beast than Google Search.

Google News is a black box. You can't get any insights into anything. And like I told the story I hear about Metblogs years ago, how we got kicked out of Google News. The only way to get back in was to have somebody walk down the hall that we knew at Google and ask them to put us back in. And we were back in three minutes. It is – this is not a very well-run organization inside of the Googs, as far as I can tell.

So, they're letting people through. And here's what they say. They're like, yeah, well, we don't really check to see if it's written by an AI or a human. It doesn't really matter to us. It's news. So, hey, have at it. What a wonderful world we've created for ourselves. It is just going to get worse.

It is. It's just going to get worse. The AI thing is just going to make everything so much worse. Oh, well. In the news. Well, speaking of places to go get news, here's another thing that we called, Jason.

We're losing another one. Instagram's founders are shutting down Artifact, their year-old news app. I can't believe it's only been around for a year. It feels like much longer. It feels like a hell of a lot longer. It does. When it first launched, I think you and I both quite liked it. It was pretty cool.

But they leaned in heavy to the social aspect of things and the algorithms. And gamification. And gamification of news, which is the big thing that we're like, we're like, fuck this. And I left it on my phone for a bit. And I did play around with it a little bit and saw how bad the algorithm actually is.

Like, I would only click on, like, BuzzFeed listicles that popped up and stuff like that. And pretty soon, no news whatsoever in Artifact appeared for me. It was all just BuzzFeed lists. And softcore porn news, I guess, is what you would call it. So, yeah, I deleted it a long time ago.

They've finally given up on it. And, yeah, it's no longer a thing. We have built something that a core group of users love. But we've concluded that the market opportunity isn't big enough to warrant continued investment in this way. The core group of users were the employees and the founders.

I think so. Because, like, people just kind of gave up on it. Because that's not a good way to consume news or get it, really. It lasted a month, I think. If that. If that. Because when it first came out, I liked it. I thought it was cool. It looked good on the iPad, which for me is, you know, a plus.

I like things that look good on the iPad. Yeah. And it collected news sources from all the different places that you and I were going to anyways, all in one place. Right. Yeah. And it is ironic that it's the Instagram founders who made something that looked good on an iPad. Anyway.

It is funny. Yeah. It's the day that the gamification came out. I looked at it and I'm like, done. Yeah. That was it. Yep. Well, it's gone for good now. Yep. Or at least in a month or so. I can't remember exactly what the article said. So if you're a big fan of it, go check because, you know, only going to have it for a little bit longer.

Say your goodbyes. More layoffs. Google is laying off hundreds of workers who sell ads to big businesses. This is coming after the laying off thousands of employees from Pixel, Nest, Fitbit, Google Assistant, and core engineering divisions. They are cutting hundreds of roles on its advertising sales team because they're basically going to pivot to AI for that.

So that's fun. Here's their statement. I like this one. Every year we go through a rigorous process to structure our team to provide the best service to our ads customers. The company released in a statement. We map customers to the right specialist teams and sales channels to meet their service needs. As part of this, a few hundred roles globally are being eliminated and impacted employees will be able to apply for open roles on the team or elsewhere at Google.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that they've also fired people from everywhere else at Google. So they probably don't need anybody. You can apply all you want. We're just not going to pick up. And they aren't done yet. Google CEO says more layoffs are expected throughout the year in an internal memo, which has been confirmed by Google that, yes, that's true.

The exec explains that the latest role eliminations are about removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity in some areas. Okay. Driving velocity. We love velocity. Well, Brian, there was a long time ago where I won a bet with you.

I believe it was the Twitter stock bet or one of those things. And you sent me some booze through Drizzly. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Drizzly is no more. So pour one out for old Drizz. They were bought by Uber a while back, which to me, I still think that that whole thing was just buying up the competition and shutting it down.

I think so as well. Yeah. They said they tried to run it as a quote unquote independent entity inside of Uber. They bought it for $1.1 billion, which back then for them was nothing. That was like half a day's worth of paid rides that they were giving away anyway. But it is an insane amount of money when you think about it.

Oh, it is. Insane. It's disgusting. Yeah. Just for a company that packaged up some Bud Light. Yeah. And then sent it to you. That was it. It's just they bought the user base is what they did. Yeah. So cost per acquisition for their users was insane. But they shut it down.

It's going away. They're just going to focus on doing the same exact thing that Drizzly does with Uber Eats, which is probably what they had planned all along. Yeah. So there you go. Well, I'll pour one out for Drizzly. It got me through the initial blush of the pandemic.

But that's for sure. Until I realized that I could just wear a mask and go to BevMo. And save 50%. Yeah. And save 50%. Yeah. They were not cheap. They were not cheap at all. So. All right. Well, big surprise there. Not really. Somebody else who no longer has a job.

Sheryl Sandberg. She has decided to leave the Meta board. She has stepped down as COO a long time ago or a couple of years ago. 2022. So, yeah. Two years ago now. She's been on the board since then. But she's finally cutting all ties with Meta. So, she's leaning out.

All right. I forgot that she was even on the board. I thought she was gone. Well, the board is so useless. It's unbelievable. Oh, that's right. Because Zuckerberg has all the power. So, they're just like, yeah. That's just a free paycheck. I'm surprised. Yeah, they're just collecting money, basically. Yeah, exactly. And, yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. I have a Facebook issue right now.

For some reason, I'm getting charged $2 every other day from Facebook advertising on my Amex. I have never bought advertising on Facebook. I never will buy advertising on Facebook. And, of course, since it's such a small amount of money, the people at Amex are just like, oh, it's no big deal.

I'm like, well, it is a big deal because somebody has my goddamn credit card, and they're using it to buy advertisement from the devil. So, stop it. And they're like, eh, we'll get to it. Fuck you, Amex. Anyway, back to the Zuck. Zuckerberg has a new goal because apparently the metaverse, he was getting bored with it.

So, he's moving on to AGI. That's right. The Zuck wants to do – he wants to open source and create artificial general intelligence. Sort of. Sort of. Here's the rub. He doesn't really know what it is yet.

And he says that nobody really knows what it is yet. You know? He's like, I don't have a one-sentence pithy definition. You can quibble about if general intelligence is akin to human-level intelligence. Or is it like human plus? A subscription fee for the intelligence, I guess.

Or is it some far-future superintelligence? That hardly seems like a quibble to me, Jason. That seems like wildly different things. Yes, yes. But do you go quibble amongst yourselves? He says, but to me, the important part is actually the breadth of it, which is that intelligence has all these different capabilities where you have to be able to reason and have intuition, unlike most of your users.

That statement is one of the most unintelligent things I've ever read. That's why he needs AGI to rewrite it for him. Oh, and then when he was asked about, you know, the metaverse, because it's going so well, he says, I don't know how to more unequivocally state that we're continuing to focus on reality labs and the metaverse.

He still says that meta is spending north of $15 billion a year on it. Now, you think drizzly money was stupid money, $15 billion a year, and all they've got so far is a pair of Ray-Bans that actually anybody likes.

Nobody really cares about the Oculus anymore. That's not all they have, Jason. We have to remember that he renamed his entire company based on this. We have meta. Yes, and next week we'll have AGI. I know. So they're going to rename it to that. But I think AGI is like an agriculture company or an insurance company.

I always think Athletic Greens because they advertise everywhere. Jesus. Powders, powders, powders. It'll make you healthy and you'll lose weight. Just drink this slop. No, it doesn't. I tried it for years. It didn't do a damn thing for me. I'm sorry.

But hey, if they want to advertise on this show, I will change my tune. Hey, we'll wink. Yeah, that's right. We stand by everything that we advertise for. Actually, we do. That's the sad part. I know, it's sad. That's why we don't have any advertisers. We hate everything. Well, there's some news in OpenAI and general intelligence.

Just a few days ago, OpenAI's usage policies page explicitly stated that the company prohibits the use of its technology for military and warfare purposes. That's pretty good since they were trying to be all like wonderful about AI and its future. Well, they took that out.

Whoops. So there you go. Yeah. Yep. Apparently that server bill was coming due and they're like, we need to find new streams of revenue. Let's blow some shit up. I pulled a bunch of different quotes from the article, but I mean, really, that's it.

So they pulled a Google. They're no longer saying that they won't do evil. Okay. Well, I mean, military purposes doesn't exactly, you know, mean it's evil. Depends on which side you're on, I suppose. That's what I mean. That's what I mean. So.

Tomato, tomato. Yeah. Just don't be sending it, you know, selling a subscription to Kim Jong-un. That's all. That should be fine. Yeah. I'm sure this is all going to work out well. Yes. I'm sure Kim Jong-un is looking up VPNs for North Korea right now. So he can be Joe Smith.

Hey, Kim. GOG.show slash VPN. Yeah. There you go. No logs. There you go. No logs. Oh, God. Speaking of warfare, I saw this one. I think it was over at NBC. U.S. tech companies prepare for potential drone attacks as international strikes spark concern.

Now, let's see if they would have listened to our show 10 years ago. We'd have said, hey, this is coming. Start preparing. But they're like, nah, we're going to hang back. Some companies have been doing some research on it. But remember the eagles? Don't forget the eagles. Very effective.

Very effective. Unless you're an eagle, then you're like, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. Well, again, depends on which side you're on, Jason. Depends on which side you're on. If you're an eagle, not so good. No, not so good. But it's an interesting article talking about what people are trying to do in response to what they've seen in Ukraine and over in Israel and all the other places where people are using basically off-the-shelf drones to strap little bombs to them and go boom.

And it's interesting. The laws here in the United States are still kind of jacked up because you have to be a federal officer right now to be able to take a drone out of the sky. Just remember the guy who shot his neighbor's drone out of the sky with a shotgun and then went to jail. So don't shoot your neighbor's drones down, people.

You can't do that. So they're working on laws to fix that because apparently the DHS's mandate to be able to take down drones is about to end soon and there's nothing coming down the line in Congress to say, hey, yeah, maybe let's extend that. It is a mess as far as it goes to drones and drones are getting better and cheaper and nobody's paying that much attention to it because they're still saying that car bombs and things like that are much more prevalent today than drones are.

But that's going to change very fast. A drone is a lot cheaper than a car. Yeah, I mean, you can't put as much stuff in it, but you can buy 20 drones and put a little bit in it and fly them all to the same place and still blow the same shit up. And the other thing is they're working on different techniques that I think seem short-sighted to me.

It's just like, okay, I'm going to be a normal guy and I'm going to strap a little bomb to a drone. I'm going to fly it somewhere, straight at it and go boom. It's like, okay, well, what if I take that drone up 6,000 feet and then drop a, you know, just a straight kinetic payload down into the middle of SoFi Stadium?

Like an iPhone. Yes, like an iPhone. Yes, it will survive, people. It will survive. Oh, we don't know if it'll survive AstroTurf. I've never heard of it. That's true. Let's try that. Let's get a drone. Get a drone, Jason. Let's get a YouTube video, Brian. Let's become scientists.

But anyway, they're not thinking about the other use cases of it. I think the only person that's really done something insane, of course, is Palmer Lucky, who has built like a fleet of autonomous, basically rocket ships, like little tiny rocket ships called Roadrunners that can fly around and shoot shit out of the sky.

I don't know. It's a mess. I think Silly String. I think we need to have a lot of drones that have Silly String cans attached to them. I think fishnet, fishnet stockings, man. Since the goss scene went out years ago, the manufacturers have been in trouble.

Let's do fishnet stockings above everything. That'll take care. Fishnet stockings. And then we can do flamethrowers that are Aquanet based. Ooh. All right. Yeah. Now we need to weaponize eyeliner somehow and we're in business. We use that to go up to the front and like blacking out the cameras.

Oh, there we go. There we go. Yeah. All right. My entire 14-year-old stockpile of things that I had in my bathroom are now useful again. Excellent. Excellent. Well, we can't focus on how to fix the drone problem, but what we can do is criminalize selfies in Las Vegas.

That's right. Oh, God. Las Vegas has implemented a new law that prohibits tourists from stopping to take selfies on pedestrian bridges along the Strip. People who violate the law may face misdemeanor charges up to six months in jail or a $1,000 fine.

All right. That's dumb. Well, here's what they're saying is the purpose. The purpose is not to, you know, poop on anybody's parade. Right. What it is is to make sure that the pedestrian traffic keeps flowing because what they're seeing is that there's a lot of crime involved when people stop to take selfies.

People get robbed and mugged and things like that. They're like, give me that camera. You don't need a selfie. I need some cash. All right. So that's what they're claiming is the problem. I mean, I get it. But I also like it's a it's a great shot when you're on those bridges. It looks cool. Of course, people are going to stop and take photos.

Yeah. Well, you know, here's what you do. Put up walls and then rain on everybody's parade. There you go. Oh, well. Yeah. All right. Vegas just got less fun. Yeah. But hey, we don't hate everything. So check out this next ad.

Media Candy. So I've talked about the kids show Bluey before and just how good it is. And it's not really just for kids. It's wonderful. And I've both laughed uproariously and also shed a tear or two.

And there's a particular episode that's come out recently that a lot of people have been talking about because it's fucking phenomenal, man. It's really good. It's Bluey's Cricket episode. I put a link in the show notes because obviously I don't know anything about Cricket. And they talk about how it left Australians in tears and Americans puzzled.

No, it fucking didn't. We get it. It's a sport. I don't know anything about that sport. And it still was an amazing episode. And I got the point. Duh. So fantastic. We weren't puzzled. We understood. I cried. Okay. Fuck off, Guardian.

You're kind of a Canadian now. So maybe you have a loophole. I'm still an American citizen. Thank you very much. I started watching a new show with my wife on Netflix, The Brother's Son. Or The Brother Soon, actually, because that's the way they pronounce it. It is fantastic, man.

This is like old school, like Chinese gangster meets LA hipster, Instagram-y fun stuff. It's awesome. It's really fun. And of course, Michelle Yao is in it as well. And it's just a really good show. I'm enjoying it a lot. We're about four episodes in.

Fantastic. Awesome. I will check it out. Yeah. I think you'd dig it. Now, Brian, I have a topic here that I need to talk to you about. Have you seen The Bear? I have not. It is on my wife's must-watch list now. So apparently, I'm going to watch it soon. Okay.

Because it won like a metric shit ton of awards. Yeah, it did. So I sat down with my roommate, and we watched the first episode. By the end of the episode, she was about to have a panic attack, and I was about to have another stroke or a seizure. It was so loud, frenetic.

My left eye was twitching for two days, and I could not – I mean, it seriously, like, put me into a spin. It was so fucking annoying. Okay, on the Blair Witch scale, how bad? Oh, it was – I don't know if you could put it on the Blair Witch scale because it's basically a lot of people arguing and yelling.

It's a kitchen environment, and they're just people who are assholes, not listening to each other. They're screaming, and they're opening storylines and plot points that they don't even, you know, remotely come to fruition. It was just an incoherent mess, and I think that's a style that people like now.

Yeah, it seems to be. Not me, personally, but it was just – and there was no redeeming quality as far as I could tell to almost anyone in the entire thing except, like, one little girl who came in to make dinner for everybody. And they didn't even say how good the dinner was. It was just like, I don't know.

I need to know – somebody tell me what the appeal of this show is because I don't see it at all. And I'm still physically traumatized from it. Like, I can't even think about it, and my left eye starts twitching. It's – yeah. It needs a warning, like an epilepsy warning.

I'm not joking. It does. Okay. Well, I'll let you know when I get around to it. We're going to finish off the brothers soon first, but I think the bear is next for our joint viewing. Okay. And there's another show on Netflix making the rounds called The Trust, A Game of Greed. Okay. Man, this is – This is obviously, like, based on traitors.

Success? No. Everybody's comparing it to traitors. I think it's based on the prisoner's dilemma. Okay. What it is is it's 12 people are put into a house. There's $250,000 in the pot. And from that point out, if nobody does anything bad, everybody splits the money. Let me just say they're down to six people right now so you know that that didn't work out.

Yeah. It's very – actually, they're down to five now, I think. Last episode is next Wednesday. Yeah, it is a very interesting look into human nature. So I don't know if I can recommend it or not, but if you're into that kind of thing, sure. It can be unpleasant at points.

And there are a couple of people in there that are actually pretty stand-up people, so that's kind of good. But it's – yeah, I don't know if I can recommend it with a good conscience. It's one of those that you just have to kind of – you have to make your own decision on that. I won't endorse it or – yeah, I'm just not going to endorse it.

Okay. She-Hulk Season 2, unfortunately, looks like it won't be coming back. That sucks because I actually really enjoyed that show. I really enjoyed that show too. That really does suck. Yeah, I hear it's because apparently it just costs too much, the transformation from her into She-Hulk is too expensive.

And I'm just like, look, they managed this in the 70s. They hired Lou Ferrigno, like get Gwendolyn Christie from Game of Thrones, Painter Green, and that's the transformation. There we go. We don't need to spend all that money anymore. The show was damn funny, man. It was really good.

Yeah, I liked it. It was really good. It was great. Work around this, people. You don't need to spend – use AI for Christ's sake. Make it a cartoon. Do it with Mid Journey. I don't care. No, it was really fun. It's too bad.

Yeah, I don't need those effects. Whatever. It was the writing. It was fun. Oh, well. Cancel a couple of those other crappy ones that you have on deck. Yeah. I'm sure that there's a few that they could cut. Cut Echo as far as I'm concerned. I watched the first episode of that and it was a snooze fest. Oh, I couldn't even – I'm like, no.

I don't want to watch a thing based on a tertiary character. Come on. That's all it is anymore. That's true. She-Hulk was a tertiary character, Jason. As soon as I said that, I'm like, oh, wait a minute. Don't. Hawkeyes, same kind of thing.

Yeah, movies on Ant-Man for fuck's sake. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think we'll be seeing any more of those. Fargo this season has wrapped up. Oh, my God. I think this might be the best one yet. I really do. I really got to get on that show. Oh, it's so good. It's so good.

Yeah. And Keely was just unbelievably good in this. She was so good. I mean, you watch her compared to how she was in Ted Lasso and you wouldn't know they're the same person. Right. I mean, you seriously wouldn't. I did get around to watching the trailer for the three-body problem.

Yeah. Yeah. It looks good. No, it's pretty. It's pretty. I can't remember if it matches the story or not because it was so long ago that we read that first book. Well, they don't really give much away.

Like, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. It's intrigued me enough to watch it when it comes out. Oh, I'm going to watch it. I'm just not going to, you know, I'm not going to emotionally invest in it, I guess. Yeah. Well, I'm not because I don't like the second two books. This is one and done for me.

Well, who knows? I mean, maybe they're going to foundation it and it has nothing to do with the books and it might turn out okay. Okay. You know? Everybody's saying they really like the second season of Foundation. Yeah, they're all wrong. Well, you know, and this has the Game of Thrones team, so we can expect the last season on this to be garbage anyway.

That's true. That's true. Yeah. Well, March 21st, we will find out. So, I have a story about Weird, the Al Yankovic story. So, after you and I talked about it on the show, I got a note on Discord from Killer Q. And he basically says that it's a huge mistake that I'm not watching it and I need to check it out because it's not what I think it's going to be.

And he says it's an absolute 10 out of 10 right up there with UHF. And – UHF is a 10 out of 10? Actually, it is. If you're into that kind of movie. I mean, it's good, but 10 out of 10 is pretty – Okay. But here's the one thing that he says.

The pool party scenes is one of the best things ever shot on film. Ha-ha. It's so smart. So, after this, I still – I had it queued up for – I mean, he sent this to me the day before Christmas and I just got around to check it out this week or last week. It is so fucking good.

It is not anything what I expected. It's a parody. I didn't realize that. I thought it was an actual documentary. It's not. It is not even close to a documentary. I should have known the first credits that come up are made by Funny or Die. So, it is well worth it.

Have a couple cocktails. Kick back. Watch it. I did not have any cocktails, but you should. And it was – I mean, I was in tears laughing so hard, like many, many times. And he is absolutely right. The pool party scene is one of the greatest bits of film ever made. It should be enshrined in every pantheon dedicated to the art of filmmaking.

I just – it was so fucking good. All right. Well, I've got nothing on deck tonight, so I'll fire up the Drizzly app and – oh, crap. Uber Eats for you or nothing, buddy. Yeah. Well, I think the EU is here to save us all, Jason.

We've talked a lot about GDPR and their privacy stuff and everything else. Well, now they're going after streaming and trying to get artists paid fairly. Good luck. Good luck with that. But the European Parliament is calling for new regulations to ensure streaming services will pay artists fairly.

They're calling for more transparency around how algorithms generate suggestions for which artists to stream and what tracks get the most promotion. So that's great. So that's great. Good luck. Yeah, exactly. Good luck. So I didn't know that this was a thing.

There's apparently a George Carlin AI special out there called I'm Glad I'm Dead. So, and his – George Carlin's daughter is saying it's garbage. It's absolute garbage. It lacks any soul. It doesn't have my dad's timing. It doesn't have my dad's anything.

Okay. So I went and I grabbed it and looked at it. It's on YouTube. There's a link in the show notes. And, well, she's right. It is garbage. It's absolute garbage. It sounds terrible. It sounds like him like maybe 30% of the time in the two minutes that I listen to it because, of course, all the imagery that they're showing during the video is basically mid-journey, you know, Dali type of graphics that come up.

The comedy is not that funny. There's nothing good about it. I can't believe that this thing is actually still up. I'm sure there are a gazillion lawsuits pending about this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if there's not, there really should be. Definitely. But I figured as soon as a lawsuit was filed, they would have been taken down.

You'd think, yeah. But, yeah. So I'm with her, man. Comedy is safe from AI as far as I can tell. Yeah, I think so. Because AI does not understand trauma. AI doesn't understand pain, you know? Until Zuckerberg gets his general intelligence, I think we're safe.

A robot making a robot. Great. Oh, man. I found two podcasts. And I know you love Rick Rubin so much. God damn. I fucking hate him. I have no problem with him. He's got a new – or not a new podcast.

He's got a podcast called Tetragrammaton. And that's why I hate him. I mean, what the fuck? I know. But I tell you what, he gets good interviews out of it with the ones that I've listened to. He gets really good interviews out of it. But the thing to listen to it for is the ads.

Oh, yeah? He took modern ads. And I think he's probably using 11 labs or something like that. And he recreated old-timey, like, you know, early radio voices. He's like, hey, you want some athletic greens there, boy? And all the ads are done in that style with wacky old-school music.

They're a production in and of itself. And they are – I mean, I don't skip the ads. They're so fun to listen to. I mean, granted, I think for a lot of them, they're better than parts of the show. So it's well worth it just to go click on an episode, scrub, and find an ad.

You'll be able to tell it pretty quickly. They're fun. He did a really good job with the ads is all I got to say. All right. And I do like some of the interviews. Tetragrammaton. Yeah, I don't know what that fuck ever. Look, I like a lot of the music he's produced. I just don't like him.

Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. I don't know that much about him. I just – I know what I've read because I'm in a different industry. So, I mean, I liked his book on creativity. I thought it was pretty good. And I like his interviews on the show. So I got no beef with him.

I think his beard is kind of stupid, but – All I'm saying is if you went in to any job in the world as Rick Rubin, you'd be fired in a minute. Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's why I get along. I think I like him because I can't get a job.

I was about to say if you grew a beard. I think I might be the second coming of Rick Rubin. There we go. I found another podcast called What Next TBD? Now, how Rick Rubin did ads right, What Next TBD does them so, so wrong.

This is a Slate podcast. Episode opens with two 30-second pre-rolls. We do pre-rolls, but there are 15 seconds or less, I believe. There should be 15 seconds or less, but only one because we need it.

So, please don't judge. There's Slate, but they do two. And for the next 23 minutes of content, there's five more minutes of advertising. Wow. They're doing back-to-back one-minute ads with a slight content break, then another round of two two-minute ads.

And I was like, I'm trying to listen to this episode. And it was a really good episode on the hack of the British Library that's still going on, the ransomware attack. I mean, it was a great episode. It was a great show. But, Jesus. Well, I mean, this shouldn't be surprising for Slate or just, I mean, the internet in general.

Because I keep forgetting that I have ad blockers installed on my main browsers. And I read Slate daily. Like, I load it up a couple times a day just to see if there's any new articles. I really like their site and I like their writers. I accidentally had a different browser open because something didn't work, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I went to Slate on a different browser that didn't have an ad blocker. I mean, their site is the same thing. It's just, like, unusable. There are so many fucking ads on it. You can't use the internet without an ad blocker now. No, you can't. I keep forgetting. And I walk by my wife's computer all the time because she doesn't have an ad blocker.

And I'm like, that's what normal people do? No. No. That's unusable. Yeah. No, I just can't. That's why I stick with Brave. Because Brave's built-in ad blocker is so good that I just can't, you know. I'm on Chrome right now just because it works better for this show.

But, you know, 99.99999% of the time I'm on Brave just because their ad blocker works the best. Even if you have to go in and turn off all the crypto shit, it still works better. But anyway, What Next TBD? Good show. There's another episode that's the one I found out about it from.

It's called Is Your Car Tracking You? About this woman whose abusive partner used her car to track her and the dealership wouldn't do anything about it. Nice. Yeah, yeah. I think Merlin Mann talked about that one. So I want to go listen to that. That's going to be, that's next on the list. But The Great British Library Hacks, a fantastic episode.

Just, you got to have your finger on the ad skip button the whole time. Right. So, anyway. But it's good. I think you'll like it. You'll definitely like it. Yeah, I'll check it out. Apps and doodads. I can't believe I'm saying this, Brian, but BBEdit 15 is here.

Woo! I'm sorry. What's that? You don't use BBEdit? Not anymore. I haven't coded in years. I don't use it for coding. I use it for, it's just, it's my Swiss Army knife text editor. It does all sorts of stuff that I want. I've got 15 documents open all the time.

It's great. Seriously. I just love it. It's my notepad. It was, I mean, I love the program when I used it regularly. It was awesome. So, 15. Amazing. Yeah. And they have ChatGPT built in now. Oh, it does the coding for you now.

It will do that. Actually, yeah. Yeah. You can, you can, there's, it's got a new, whole new worksheet flow where you can tie it straight into ChatGPT and basically, and what's really cool is you can keep multiple documents so you have ongoing conversations in different documents. So, it will remember that between the different ones, I think, which is, which is kind of interesting, I think.

That's, that's the sense that I got. But the, the bummer that I found out was it doesn't tie into your ChatGPT plus account if you're already paying the 20 bucks a month. Oh. It uses the API. So, you have to get an API account and fund the API account separately.

Now, the thing is, you can pick which model you're going to be using. And if you do ChatGPT 3.5 Turbo, I put in 10 bucks and I used it all night long, just fucking with it and playing with it.

I haven't even gotten to one cent yet. Oh, okay. So, it's relatively cheap. It's ridiculously cheap. So, it's, you know, if you just want to use the, the older, faster model, which it has been improving a lot. And for a lot of things, it's better than four. If you need to use four, just pop over to your plus account and just do it that way.

But it's nice just having it built in. So, I have just a, a one tab open with just a general conversation that I can have going. Now, if I just need to type something in, don't have to go to the web browser. It's just right there in the app that I'm already in, which is, which is handy. Very handy. So, yeah, the upgrade, if you're a BBEdit 14 user, I think it was 29 bucks to upgrade.

It's 39. If you're upgrading from an older one, it's probably 49 if you're a new user. But if you're a BBEdit person, you're probably not going to be a new user. I don't know anybody who's going to be saying, oh, I need me that fancy text editor. Let me jump on out. Get that. But us old dogs, I've been using BBEdit Sense version 2, I think.

I'm right there with you. Yep. It's a great program. Vienna RSS is an RSS reader that is basically, it's an open source RSS reader for the Mac. I love it. I only use it for one thing. This is what, like my regular, I use reader for most of my day-to-day RSS news stuff.

Vienna RSS does one thing really cool. You can put in an RSS feed for a podcast, select all, and hit download enclosures, and it will download every single enclosure from that feed. So if you're trying to back up or to slurp in a podcast, it makes it super easy.

Don't do it for our show because we pay for bandwidth. Please, don't do it for our show. Patreon, or yeah, patreon.com slash GOG if you want to do that shit. Well, there goes our normal positive payment from ads. Yeah. We're screwed now.

We're going to get a bill. Oh, Jesus. But anyway, if you want to go check it out on somebody else's show, by all means, check it out. But it's a great free RSS reader. It's bare bones. It just reminds me of the old days of interfaces at least because it is not polished at all.

Yeah, I actually like it. I might actually try it out as just a regular RSS reader. Yeah, it's a word. I mean, it does what it's supposed to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to talk a little bit more about SetApp this week because I've been diving into it so much. I found a new one this week that I really like called Permute.

Okay. It's basically just a drag and drop converter, like a file format converter. So if I just wanted what I use it for. Like Handbrake? Kind of, but not, I mean, you can convert image formats in it too. Things like that. Oh, okay. That's cool. Yeah, yeah. Handbrake is, you know, when you're trying to transcode a movie.

I use that specifically for movies. Permute is just a really fast drag and drop. So, like, there's another one that I use on SetApp called Downey. So you drop in a YouTube URL, you use Downey to pull down the video that you want. And if you want to take that video and just, like, pull the audio out of it, you can usually take it into QuickTime, export as audio, then it's an AAC file that then you have to reconvert, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Permute, you just drag in the movie and just pick which kind of audio format you want to export, and within, like, half a second, boom, there's your audio file. It's so nice. And it's part of the SetApp bundle. So, you know, there's a link in the show notes for Permute, also a link to GetSetApp if you want.

It's only nine bucks a month. And I think Permute's 30 bucks a year. So it's another one of those ones you're going to be saving a shit ton of money on. So I'm just, like, every week I'm going through SetApp trying to find new stuff to play with because there's so much. It's fun. Very cool. Well, Apple has finally ended Samsung's decade-plus run as the global smartphone shipment leader, according to the IDC, or the International Data Corporation.

They sound horrible. Yeah, so Apple shipped 234.6 million units in 2023, which is equivalent to 20.1% of the market share. In comparison, Samsung shipped 226.6 million units for 19.4%.

So just squeaked past them. This probably isn't surprising. I mean, certainly there's a move among the youths these days that if you want to be cool, you've got an iPhone, not anything from Samsung or anyone else. And yeah, I mean, it's just as we're living on our phones, why wouldn't you want the best?

Well, some people like Android. I don't hang out with those people. But yeah, some people do like Android. And there's a new Apple update in the US App Store, US App Store only. It's good to point out. They're relaxing a key App Store rule that has long been a source of frustration in developers.

They will allow US developers now to link to outside websites for in-app purchases, according to their updated developer guidelines. However, they still want their cut. I don't know how they're going to get it anymore, which is what everybody's pointing out. It's like now they want app developers to submit their financials to them and all these other things so they can still get their money.

Good luck with that. Yeah, good luck. Good luck. It's like... Just let people do it, for fuck's sake. It's like the honor bucket at the snack jar in the back office of your thing. It's always all the Snickers are gone and there's no money in the box. Exactly.

And that's what's going to happen, I think. So they're either going to roll it back, which they probably can't do because of all the lawsuits, which is why they did this in the first place to get ahead of it. But I think the age of the dominance of payments via Apple through their App Store is ending. Okay. Well, other things that are ending.

Alexa. Remember Alexa? I am so sad about this because I'm all in on these things. Well, Amazon wants you to start ponying up some money for Alexa. Nope. I did. I bought it. Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, you didn't get a subscription, Brian.

Everything's a subscription nowadays. They are testing Alexa Plus, which they say is going to be an enhanced version of Alexa, which will do apparently more things. I don't know how you would say Alexa, start a timer for five minutes any better than start a timer.

That's all I ever use it for. I play music, I do timers, and I listen to radio. That's it. That's all you need. It's fantastic for that. Yep. Oh, I do voice calls with my – or video calls with my mom. It's fantastic. Oh, you got one of those. Yeah, that's right. Yep. Yep. Yeah.

I – this is crazy that they're trying to do this. This is just – it's Amazon. Like, they need more money, you know? Well, the same to be said for Apple with their app. You know, same thing. It's like, just let it go. Just let it be. Yeah. It's a good product.

It works. You don't need that much more money. Oh, they're maximizing shareholder. Everybody needs to have all the monies. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Got to get that shareholder value, buddy. That's all it's all about. Now, this one I thought was kind of fun. I hate the title of this. It says, Mark Newsom designed Swarovski's world's first AI binoculars that identify species on their own.

So, basically, it's a pair of binoculars that has bird recognition built in, which is, I think, really kind of cool. Hot dog or not. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. That's a bird. So, but it's got more than 9,000 birds and it says other wildlife built into it.

So, it's kind of like a digital camera, you know, with a zoom on it. And it takes that, does character recognition on the birds and tells you what kind of bird it is. I think it's kind of neat. It is neat. Yeah. I don't have a price on it, but I'm sure it is a gazillion dollars because it's Swarovski, which doesn't make anything cheap.

So, but it looks kind of cool. Of course, they're pretty. So, we'll see what it's going to be like. They come out February 1st. So, we'll get a price on that soon. But I think, see, now, that's a decent version or decent use of the technology. I still don't call it AI.

It's, you know. No. It's image recognition built into it. Pattern recognition. It's image recognition. Yeah. So, exactly. Anyway, it's cool stuff. Cool stuff. It's generally intelligent. Generally. But it is artificial. Well, according to Gizmodo, Jason, the self-checkout nightmare might finally be ending.

Don't ring the funeral bells just yet, but the self-checkout kiosk horror show could be nearing its end. Stores across the country are reversing course on the machines and consensus is growing among analysts and insiders that self-checkout has been a disaster for consumers and retailers alike, according to a new report in the BBC.

I agree 100%. It is horrible. These machines suck. The people that use them suck. Everybody sucks. But that's just people. So, maybe we should just end Earth. Let's do that. Okay. Skip to the end. Skip to the end. Yeah. Just blow up the planet. So, unsurprisingly, the biggest problem is theft.

Yeah. People steal. Not only is it easy to steal from self-checkout machines, it can be hard not to steal from them because they're so crap. And it can just, yeah, it's just, of course, this was a bad idea all along and it's horrible and let's get rid of them. Thank you. Not getting any better.

They just put in two at my local Ralphs that have conveyor belts on them. They take up the space of three of the regular ones and it's just one and the conveyor belt never works. Nobody can figure out how to work it and nobody ever uses it. They both sit there unused because anybody that has more than two items can't figure out how to make it because it won't let you scan the next item until the other item has like gone halfway down the belt.

It's so stupid. Oh, God. It's awesome. So stupid. So stupid. Speaking of stupid things, Brian, you still use WordPress, right? My company does. I personally try to avoid it as much as possible, but yes, I have been logged in a few times. Yeah.

I'm sorry about that. I have to use it three times a week to post some shows for one of my clients. And I want to know why in this day and age, because WordPress is not new. It's not new. I remember going to, I was going to parties at Mullenweg's house for like version 1.4 and 1.5 when they were released.

And this was like in 2003 and four. It's been 20 years. Okay. Why the fuck doesn't Command Z undo the last action you did? Right now, it will undo a random item from the stack of the past 10 things you've done.

And you have to figure out which one it did, because if you accidentally hit Command Z, the first thing you do is, oh, Jesus, what did I do? It's so on-brand for WordPress, though. It kind of is, I guess. It kind of is. I just don't get it. I don't get it.

Just a quick example. There's 10 things I have to do in this post. The second thing I do is upload the featured image, drag it in, that's in there. Then I do all this other stuff. And one time I was making a word, a link, and I hit the wrong thing and I made it bold instead.

And I just wanted to unbold it. So I hit Command Z. The featured image goes away. And like the thing that I was doing was step eight. And step two was the featured image. It just took the featured image out on Command Z. That's how little sense it makes. So I just had to share that.

That's all. I hate WordPress with a fire. You and me both, brother. Squarespace for the win. Come on. Advertise with us, goddammit.

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.

At the library. It's been a while since we talked about some books, Brian. So I took a break and I checked out Darwin's Radio by Greg Baer.

I remember loving that book. It is a great book. Okay, good. I don't remember anything about the book except I liked it. Yeah, it's very hard sci-fi, which I kind of like. Greg Baer is good at that. Yeah, yeah, it's, I think, I've never read anything by him before.

So, I mean, I probably dip my toe and I'll finish the, I have to read something in between. Then I'll get to the next book in the series. There's two books in the series. So I think the next one's Darwin's Children. Yeah, I read the whole series and I remember really, really liking it. So, he's one of the killer bees.

Greg Baer, David Brin, and Gregory Benford. Also the guys that wrote the continuation of Foundation. The three of them. They all did one book each. So, yeah. Okay. I've never read anything by, well, this is my first book by this bee. I haven't read anything by the other bees yet.

Oh, they're all good. They're all good. Yeah, they were all buddies. So, they all got along really well. Very, all three of them were pretty good hard sci-fi writers. So, highly recommend it. Yeah, okay. I think I might go down that road for a while because I just need something new. And, of course, something old is new nowadays.

So, I'll take it. I got this book. It's called This Book May Save Your Life. Everyday Health Hacks to Worry Less and Live Better by Dr. Karen Rajan. Okay. He's a TikTok doctor that I got turned on to. Oh, great. He is funny as shit. I'm telling you, he's funny.

But he's a surgeon. He's a, you know, a full-bore surgeon over in England. But he's extremely funny. And all of his tips are great. I mean, I don't want to ruin it. So, this is just one of those books. It's a very easy read. There are, like, pro tips in every section.

It basically goes through the whole body. It gives you pro tips on things you should do and shouldn't do. I just like how his main premise is the human body is not some beautifully designed machine that, you know, is spiriting our soul throughout the cosmos.

He says it's a hodgepodge of hacks put together that shouldn't actually work, but it does. So. Nice. Yeah, he's like, if you knew everything that I knew about your body, you would not wake up in the morning because you'd be so terrified that it wasn't going to work today.

I love it. So, I'm going to have to check that out. It sounds like a Bill Bryson, he did the human body book, which I really enjoyed, except this actually has actionable tips. Yes, actionable tips by a guy who actually cuts people open for a living. So. Very cool. Yep. I will check that out.

Yeah. So, we haven't done at the library in a while. I had intended to spend most of my winter break reading. That did not happen. Christmas, kid, all that sort of stuff. But when I got back, I finally got around to reading again. And I read and finished System Collapse, Murderbot Diaries, book seven by Martha Wells.

And? Yeah. I'm done with this series. Time to time to put a pin in it. It's not that it's bad. It's just the same damn thing over and over again. Yeah, that's what I ran into. I, like, by book five or book four, I was done. I was just like, you know, I've read this book three times already.

And this is more of the same. And it didn't end. And it's obviously open for an eighth book. And there we go. And I'm not going to read the eighth book unless I hear that something drastically different happens. I guess it's hard to have character development when your character is a murder bot. Yeah.

Yeah. I think I read somewhere that it's supposed to go to nine. Nine is going to be the finish. But. I don't know. And it's getting turned into a TV series. So who the fuck? Yeah, who knows? I got through it. It was fine. It had moments that, you know, made me laugh or chuckle.

But again, it's the exact same moments that made me laugh and chuckle in books one, two, three, four, five, and six. Yeah, exactly. If you've got a bad memory, the murder bot series might be for you. Pretty much. Yeah. So well written, but it's the same book over and over again.

I saw this article over on Gizmodo as well since Dune 2 is actually coming out as a movie soon, which isn't Dune 2. It's Dune 1 part 2. Yep. We found David Lynch's lost Dune 2 script, which is actually about Dune 2. Yeah, it was an interesting read and I would have loved to have seen it.

I'm not going to spoil anything for the fans out there, but go check out the link in the show notes. What he was going to do was pretty damn cool. So really sad we didn't get to see it. Oh, man. Wait for my brother, Baron. He is the Kwisak Satalak.

You did that really well. It's my favorite part of the movie, man. I've seen that movie. Dude, it was actually a really good movie. I loved it. Yeah. I know we shit on Foundation for not staying close to the book and certainly David Lynch's Dune did not stay close to the book, but it was great.

I loved it. I loved the long version. So I'll slide you a digital copy if you want. Actually, yes. Please. I haven't watched it in years. I would love to. It's so good. It has legs. It really does. Chaka.

The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave with podcast super host Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast for all your cybersecurity news. The co-host of Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan discussing how humans are mean.

The co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen because people are nosy. And the host of Control Loop because industrial machines are going to take over the world. Hello, Dave. Hello, gents. Nice to be back. Hello. It's a very – it's a snowy day here in Maryland. We have about six inches on the ground.

And this week has been the first time we've had really measurable snow in about two years. So I'm loving it. I'm welcoming it. I hate it. You're done. You're done. I'm done with it. It's worn off.

We actually haven't had that much snow up here this year. So it's so far so good as far as I'm concerned. The first couple of years I lived here, we got pummeled. So I'm over it. Yeah. No, we're still in the novelty stage. It's been long enough. Oh, isn't it pretty? Right, exactly.

Oh, look. It's able to drive slow for a little while. Then it all turns gray and black and mushy and hardens up into ice and then it's a fucking nightmare. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's 65 and sunny here, so. Oh, shut the fuck up.

As always. Good times. So I can't believe it. We come back from the break and we don't talk about Star Wars because there was Star Wars news and neither of you guys talked about it. I'm like, what's happening? Well, here's the thing with Star Wars news, Jason.

I've been burned one too many times. Shows get announced and movies get announced and canceled quietly and we never hear about them again. So until there's a news article about production beginning, I don't want to talk about it. Oh, okay.

Star Wars has burned me too many times with this sort of thing. But yeah, there is a bunch of stuff coming, which is kind of exciting. But will it come? Okay. Schrodinger, Star Wars. I get it. I get it. Well, there may or may not be getting it'd be a Mandalorian movie.

So, okay. Yeah, I've heard that that's going to happen. We'll see. You know, at this point, I just want another Osaka. Osaka. I want another Andor. I don't even care about Osaka. I want Andor. Now that has begun production. So we can talk about that.

That is coming. Pedro Pascal or... Wrong show. Wrong show. Whoever's the star of the... What's his face? I can't remember his name. He was at the... One of the award shows that just happened and said he's only got seven days left of shooting on it. So...

All right. So it'll be out in two years once they finish VFX. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. All right. And then we'll have to wait another three years. Yeah. Yeah. They don't do these fast enough, I got to say. Just again, like I said, slap it on mid-journey. We don't need all those fancy special effects. Let's get this moving.

Everybody will have six fingers, but they're aliens. Who cares? Right. They should be able to do a Buck Rogers a week. Come on, guys. That's true. How do you guys feel about the idea of Mandalorian becoming a movie? It's a week, personally.

You know, what I heard is it's going to wrap up all three of the series. It's going to have all the characters in it. They all come together. It's going to be the end of the story, as it were. That's fine. And it's going to be a musical. Hey, you know...

Now I'm in. It sounds horrible, but I saw that Star Trek episode. That was fantastic. Really good. They may have saved the musical sci-fi genre altogether. Yes. Do you guys remember they did a musical episode of The Love Boat?

No. No. They did. There was a musical episode of The Love Boat, and you can... I forget who has The Love Boat right now, but you can find it. And Ethel Merman is in it, and the entire show is pretty much sung through. The whole cast does musical numbers, and it's just this funny little anomaly, and it's...

I'm sure the Isaac the Bartender sequence is in no way racist and has aged very well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was the time when the Pointer sisters came on The Love Boat, and they sang He's So Shy with Isaac, which was cute also.

But no, The Love Boat musical, if you enjoy 70s kitsch, it's that. And it's just a weird... One of the endless list of weird 70s anomalies when it came to these sorts of variety shows.

Now, back to The Mandalorian. It's on Paramount Plus, by the way. Okay. There you go. I might have to fire that up tonight. Yeah. Love Boat is one of the shows that we will put on to fall asleep to at night. Okay. Fair. Yeah. And as far as I know, I've never...

I asked this question to many different audiences, and I still believe that The Love Boat is the only hour-long program with a laugh track. Oh. That is a deep-dive trivia question at the end of the month. Seriously. Yeah.

I can't think of any other... How many other hour-long comedy shows are there? And Love Boat has a laugh track. You know, it's sort of... Love Boat always has three stories in every episode of The Love Boat.

Right. And they have a laugh track. So, if anybody out there can think of another hour-long show that has a laugh track, please let us know. Yes. I've been unable to find one. So, back to The Mandalorian. One of the things that's interesting to me that I believe we've touched on here before is that because you no longer have to go to the cinema to see amazing special effects, it

kind of makes this being a movie not as big a deal. Well, when they say movie, too, it will be released on Disney Plus at the same time. So, it's really just a two-hour episode. Right. Oh, do you think really? Oh, I think so. Yeah. Okay. Hmm.

All right. Yeah. I don't think you're going to have to go to a theater to see this. It's just going to be, you know, a movie for a long episode. But you know they're going to put it out in the theaters. Oh, they'll put it out in theaters. But there's no way that they're not going to do a simultaneous release. Yeah. I don't know. They've been trying to...

I think they might do a staggered release on that just to make a few extra bucks. We'll see. The other thing that I wonder about is, you know, you have a movie. So, what is that? Two and a half hours probably being a Star Wars movie, which is a very different style of storytelling than a 10-hour season.

And so, we're used to these characters in that 10-hour season framework. How different will it be? Maybe it'll be great because it'll be accelerated and all that. But I think about how much of my enjoyment of Star Wars lately has been with the series and not the movies.

Yeah. And I can't help wondering what we're in for. And the Mandalorians were only 30 minutes. They were short. So, it'll be interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. They were as long as they needed to be. Yeah. Yeah. They've done a good job of that. So, we'll see.

I don't know. Jason wrote in. Not me. The other different Jason. And it's not for you, literally. It begins with, this is for Brian and Dave. I'm going to go get some coffee. I'll be back in a minute. Okay. I am driving to Disney World from Texas this next week and wanted to get your insight on the Galaxy's Edge.

How much time should I set aside to enjoy it all? And is there anything I should avoid? Thanks for your help. And may the force be with you. Too many unknowns here. Yeah. Jason, have you been to Disneyland before? Have you been to Disney World? Have you seen Epcot? If not, then you need to see it all.

If you have, then spend your entire time in Galaxy's Edge because it's awesome. Right. Well, I mean, I will say my most recent trip to Disney World, which was my first time seeing Galaxy's Edge, we spent an entire day at the Disney Studios.

And Galaxy's Edge was where we started our day. And it was amazing. We did the Millennium Falcon ride first. We did, we had a meal at the, a meal, you know, light hors d'oeuvres at the Cantina, which,

um, well, let's, let's just back up a second and say, uh, open your wallet and your heart. Yes. Because Galaxy's Edge, everything is very expensive. You will leave with lots of stuff.

That's right. If you're a big fan. Yeah. You'll leave with lots of stuff and nothing is inexpensive. If you thought Disney was expensive before, wait till you get there now. Um, so, you know, the, the Galaxy's Edge meal for, there were five of us was probably $250, you know, for drinks and snacks and a tip and all that sort of thing.

So just be prepared for that. So, so you can, you can get over that before you get in and that way it won't interfere with your enjoyment of that space. Just know you're going to drop some cash in Galaxy's Edge. But, um, we did all that in the morning.

And then I believe we paid to have a time slot for the other big ride. Rise of the Resistance. Rise of the Resistance. Thank you. Uh, and that was later in the afternoon. So we went and did a bunch of the other things in the park, um, and then came back for our Rise of the Resistance time and rode that.

And it was great. It, you know. Yeah. If you're a Star Wars fan, it's like, it, it, it's many dreams and wishes and fantasies fulfilled, you know. I agree. Uh, when I went with, uh, my kid, we did the rest of the park first.

Uh, we kind of did a bunch of rides. He loved Haunted Mansion and all that sort of stuff. And then we worked our way over to, uh, Star Wars land and, uh, didn't want to leave it. That's, that's how much fun it is. Like, it's just, you're just, even just walking around because they did such a good job with, uh, the visuals and, and just the buildings and the rocks and they're piping the music in and characters are walking around.

Like, uh, my, my son had a whole relationship going with Kylo Ren because he said, yes, he would join the dark side. And then every time Kylo Ren saw him walking around the rest of the Star Wars land, he would point at him and like, you know, come with me. And it was great. Like, yeah, they just do a wonderful job.

So if you're a Star Wars fan, once you walk into that land, you're not going to want to leave it. So, uh, plan for a lot of time there. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. It, it, it is, it is quite wonderful, but, um, I don't know.

I should, I guess I'm trying to think, do you need more than one day to do, because you're, you experienced it in Disneyland and I experienced it at Disney World and Jason doesn't say, he just says he's driving to Disney. So he's in Texas, so it could go either way.

He said Disney World. So yeah. Oh, he did. Okay. Which is, I mean, Disney World is a whole other proposition. Like I'm planning that trip with my family and it's going to be a multi-day extravaganza because there's just so much to do there. Right. I will say that the last time on our last trip, which was a big family trip, we had not been in several years because of COVID, um, we bought park hopper passes, which allow you to go from park to park in the same day.

And we ended up not using the park hopping at all. Because you do a day, day per park. Yeah. That's right. But we, what we thought was we were going to like, you know, oh, maybe we won't spend an entire day at Epcot or maybe if we have a few hours, we'll want to jump somewhere else.

And that just didn't end up happening. You can drink around the world at Epcot. You plan for two days. Well, yeah. Epcot's very different as an adult. Um, so, uh, I think next time we probably won't get the park hopper tickets because they are pricey, more pricey than the regular tickets, which are pricey.

Um, but we had a great time and, uh, yeah. So I, I, I'm envious of you, Jason, that you're on your way. Uh, I think we're going to be going back, uh, a year from now or so in March of 25 is.

Oh, that's what we're thinking as well. Maybe we'll do a meetup. Yeah. That'd be great. Come on, Jason, get in there. Yeah. We'll be there. The first. Our Jason. Oh, no, no, no, no. I'm good. I'm good. We could record live from the Millennium Falcon, live from the cantina.

Yeah. Disney would have no problem with that. We're setting up our stuff. Yeah. Sure. Why not? Yeah. Yeah. Well, have a good time, Jason. I, I, I, I'm envious of you going there for the first time and I'm looking forward to going.

Oh man. That first time you turn the corner and see the Millennium Falcon there. Yeah. Life size as it were. Yeah. It's nerd boner. Yep. Total. Yeah. My jaw dropped a little, little misty. It was great. Yeah. I saw it. My, I showed you guys and my wife videotaped it and my youngest son said to me, dad, I think that's the first time I've seen you cry.

Now's a great time to tell you I'm gay.

I'm trying to find some romantic music. You should have found them at the music from the bar and police academy. Anyways, have a great time, Jason.

It's going to, you're going to be blown away. Yeah. All right. Speaking of blown away though, I saw this article, meet the Disney Imagineer behind the VR breakthrough that is the hollow tile. There's an article about Lanny Smoot. Lanny is no slouch. I think he, I think he overcompensated for the name that he was given.

That actually sounds like a character in the cantina. It really does. It's the guy who lost his arm, right? Yeah. Yeah, probably. Yeah, we used to call him Lanny. Now we call him Lefty. The thing about this is the demo video.

It's this new floor that they've made where you can have multiple people on the floor and you can walk and stand in place. And it is like the, the Holy grail of VR. So you can actually walk and move and still stay in the space. And it, I don't know.

It's just really cool. You know, there, there are different things out there right now. There's one that is like a giant turntable and you're strapped. You can run in any direction and all this stuff. You can put it in your house and it looks, it is, it is basically birth control hardware. You'll never get another date if you put this in your living room.

Right. I've seen one that's like a giant gerbil ball. Yeah. Have you seen that one? Yeah. I've seen that one too. Yeah. They're all pretty sad. This thing looks sexy, low profile and cool. So as someone who has recently done the, you know, a VR experience, I wish we'd have had this, this would have been, this would have made it so much more fun.

But the thing is they need harnesses because somebody will fall and trip. Yeah. Oh yeah. You need, you need some kind of support mechanism because yeah, I, it's, it's hard enough to stay standing when you're on solid ground with a VR headset on and zombies are flying at you. Trying to do it while actually moving might cause some broken bones.

A couple of things I noticed about it. Uh, they never showed anybody running on it. Everyone was walking at a slow pace, slow pace. So that's where it is right now, but it will get better. Um, and they're, they put it inside an environment that relies on projection rather than goggles.

And I, so I think that helps with the balance issue. They showed it with goggles on though. Did they? Yeah. In the demo, there's, there's, there are people with goggles on. I think they were just showing what the, what they were seeing on the projection on the outside. I see. So as an outsider, you could see what they were seeing.

Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I wondered is if, if you could get this, uh, if it got to the point where it was, could support someone running, would it have enough speed and power to act as, to act self-balancing like a Segway?

See, that's what I was wondering too, because it needs to have some kind of force feedback when you're, when you're stopping to keep you for it. Cause all I can think of is, it's like, like running on ice and he's trying to go and he's like, boom, fall back, you know? Right. When you lean into it and it, cause it's a sense that you're tipping forward and slide your legs back underneath of you.

Yeah. Yeah. And it looked like the floor that it was on was kind of, uh, in a downward slope a little bit too. It wasn't, it wasn't purely flat. So I think there's a lot, but I mean, it's, it's just in, you know, it's a beta product right now. It's just, they're, they're working on it for some of the parks, but it is neat.

It is a, it is the neatest version I've seen of this kind of solution to that problem. Yeah. Yeah. And it's cool to see that, uh, they still have that mojo in Disney Imagineering, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's a neat video. Yep. All right. Well, at this point, Disney should actually be sponsoring this segment, but they are not unfortunately.

So I just take free park passes, right? Me too. Screw you guys. I want the money. Sorry. Well, yeah, I'll drive down to, I'll drive down to Orange County and, and, and, uh, scalp mine. Yeah. Okay.

You can do that. Trust me. Yeah. I can do that now. You know, um, when my wife worked at Disney and this was in the nineties, um, it was a common thing to do for employees because they would, they'd, uh, earn park passes that they could give to people and they'd wait and, you know, they'd meet people in the line and just kind of let them in.

Yeah. It was a nice, they called it a pixie dust. Yep. Yep. I remember that. We did that too. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. All right. So a little bit of tech news here, uh, just because I, I thought this one was a funny and it's not surprising to us, but obviously it was surprising to some other people.

Uh, Google now admits it could collect data in Chrome's incognito mode. So what the fuck is incognito mode then? Well, it hides things from yourself. That's about it. It hides it from yourself on your own system.

Uh, but the, they get all the data still and they collect it. And, uh, in case you think they were doing this, uh, of their own free will, no, there was a $5 billion lawsuit that made them change the disclaimer. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

It did basically, it's basically just, you know, Snoopy wife mode. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. Exactly. I use it to, I use incognito mode once a year around the holidays. So my wife doesn't get ads for everything that I'm buying for her. That's funny. No, I know you're a liar because everybody on the planet uses it for 10 minutes a day for porn mode.

So there you go. Well, basically you don't need to. Uh, I totally lost my train of thought. Move on. Moving on. Your mind's stuck in porn mode. Yeah, exactly. I was, my brain was stuck in porn mode.

So, uh, so, uh, as we are recording this, we are, yeah, exactly. We are about, I don't know, four hours into Apple vision pro pre-orders beginning. Now I haven't seen any, uh, you know, live, uh, reports on how that's going or anything.

I know that the Apple store was down earlier today as it usually is, but this is something we haven't really talked much about here. What are your, what are you guys thinking as this is becoming something real that people are going to do? Do you have any thoughts of, of demoing one at your local Apple store?

Do you care? What, what, what, it's just, what do you think about this? I'll let you go, Brian. Um, I like it. The demos, the online demos and walkthroughs that I've seen are really cool. Um, I would like to have one at some point, but not at the price point that they have now. Um, I would like to go demo one, but I'm not going to wait hours, which apparently, apparently is the case at the moment at most Apple stores.

You've just got to, there's everybody wants to try this thing out. Uh, so once the, the brouhaha has died down a bit, I will find myself at an Apple store and give it a go and see, um, and I, by all accounts, once it's, it's Apple, it's going to be good. Right.

So, yeah, I, I, I'm, I'm into it, but, uh, uh, as, as with a lot of this stuff, it will probably be version two, two or three before I get one. So, yeah, yeah, that's where I'm at. How about you, Jason? Jason's already pre-ordered. Nope. No.

See, I, beside it being ridiculously expensive, I did get somebody that, uh, I, sorry, I owe them an email too, that wrote me back and said, when I, when I joked last week about being, uh, sponsored to become a developer, somebody's like, well, tell me what you're thinking about. We might be able to work something out. I'm like, oh, it's kind of a joke.

I ain't got time to do that, but yeah. Porn mode is what, yeah. No, um, for decades, uh, all of us old Apple dogs that we, we lived by a maxim and I'm going to stick by it for this one, never buy first gen Apple hardware ever because it is buggy.

It's way overpriced. And the second version is going to be 10 times as good and half the price. So sticking with that one on this one. And plus I've seen some pictures of people of it who have gotten it and it's in the wild and it, it does not look as good in your living room as it does in the demo videos in their living room with the professional lighting.

You look, you still look like a twat and a million dollar house. Oh yeah. It doesn't mean much anymore. A $10 million house. Yeah. Tastefully decorated. Yeah. My $1,200 a month apartment with a $3,000 headset. No, thanks. No, I, I'm just waiting to, waiting to see on this one.

And it's, you know, I did, well, I don't have the money for it, but it's also, I just don't think it's ready yet. I mean, even, like I said, even Netflix isn't even going to be out for it yet. It's going to be one of those things where by the time the software is finally catching up, they're going to be working, they're going to be revving up for rev two.

I think, I think it's, you know, this is going to be one of those cycles where it's like, unless you're a company who's developing for it or an independent developer who's developing for it, fine, go get them. I think consumers who buy these are just rich people who want to put it on their shelves and say they got one because I don't think it's going to be that useful.

I agree with you, Jason. I think like 80% of this is going to be people who want to develop for it that have bought it already. And it's probably sold out at this point because they didn't have a lot of them. So I just went to the site and it said the pre-orders are still open. So they still got some. All right. All right. Cool. I'm curious what the non-pro version of this could look like.

And what I wonder is, could we see a version that basically uses your phone as the CPU and, you know, uses the, the, everything that's already built into your phone to drive a stripped down display?

I don't think Apple's going to do that because I think it's just going to be too janky and low quality. And that's not, that's not an Apple move. And I think the processors are going to be completely different. I think, because I think this thing has so many specialty processors for the recognition, the image recognition, you know, all the depth issues it has.

I think it's a completely different hardware beast from just a phone. I mean, the phone can augment it somehow. But I think for the most part, I think it's going to be, I think a lot of it's going to stay on device. But what could you possibly cut out to make a non-pro version?

That stupid screen on the front that shows a video of your eyes. It comes with a sticker. They take a picture of you and they give you a sticker of your eyes to put on the front. There, that saved you $600. Right, right. It'll be like those, uh, just funny glasses.

Yeah. Those funny glasses you bought in the back of a comic book. Yeah. Just stick those to the front of it. Um, the last thing I wanted to touch on here, uh, for our grumpiness theme, this is something that made me grumpy.

Um, this was an article from Cory Doctorow and, uh, he was complaining about, uh, mostly the article was complaining. Yeah. Mostly the article was about, uh, the app store and, uh, how Apple is going about the various fights that they're having with the app store being monopolistic and all that sort of thing.

But what made me grumpy was this paragraph that was near the beginning of his article. And I will read it. It says, Apple's most valuable intangible asset isn't its patents or copyrights. It's an army of people who believe that using products from a $2.89 trillion multinational makes them members of an oppressed religious minority whose identity is coterminal with the interests of Apple's shareholders.

Now, here's why this made me grumpy is that from my point of view, this is written from the perspective of someone who, whose knowledge of Apple or deep experience with Apple probably came at or after the iMac or the iPod, or this is not someone who lived through, who lived

professionally through the era where day to day we did not know if Apple was going to survive or not and how important that was to us. You know, we, I, at the time I owned a video production company and our existence depended on the fact that we were running all of this stuff on Macintosh computers and it barely worked and it was, you know, spitting bailing wire.

But, um, and, and also there were no mobile devices, you know, there, there was Apple and there was macOS and there was, um, windows and that was it. Yep. Yeah. And I know people are yelling at them. What about Linux?

But, you know, there was macOS and there was windows. Oh no, before macOS there was system seven, system eight and system nine. That's right. If you know those, you have a certain type of PTSD that most people don't have. How many times did you review today? It's a great point. It's a great point that, you know, you would, you, you'd be rendering out stuff and like put police tape around the desk because if somebody, if somebody bumped the mouse, the computer could crash.

That, I mean, that's, that's where we were. Yeah. That's not, that's not a, that's not an exaggeration. That's not hyperbole. That was true. Yeah. So having lived through all of that, I think that that's where the mindset of people who, um, are the kind of Apple fans that I consider myself to be.

And, and I don't know where you guys, uh, sit on this, but we have the PTSD from that period of time. And to see Apple from almost not existing anymore, you know, they were going to be bought by IBM. They were going to be bought by HP.

They were, you know, even Steve Jobs said, you strip it out, sell it off and shut it down before he came back to them. Yep. Um, now they're one of the biggest companies in the world and yay for them. But, um, this part of this article rubbed me the wrong way because I think it, uh, it, it so easily dismisses and so quickly dismisses what was for those of us who lived through

it, a very real time that had great impact on us. Well, it implies also that Apple didn't earn where they are and they certainly have. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's a good point. They, all they did was make the most successful consumer electronics product in the history of the world.

Yeah. So idiots. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I get it. Like I was a PC guy back in the day. I wasn't an Apple guy and I was dismissive of the cult of Apple as well. But now, you know, I get it.

Like I use almost exclusively Apple products now and I understand it and it makes sense and it's a good company. It really is. They do what they do and they do it very well. And to be dismissive of that is just petty. I think. I was too, by the way, I, I was, uh, you know, I was a DOS guy and, um, my, um, and I, like many people at the time, I thought the Mac was mostly a toy.

Uh, and then I started dating, uh, the woman who is now my wife and she had a Mac SE 30. And so I started using it and more I used it, the more I found, I really like using this. And wow, this, this is pretty nice.

And next thing I knew, it's all I wanted to use. Yeah. Yeah. I met Corey back like around 2000. It was right around when, uh, down and out in the magic kingdom came out. And at that point he had already been poo-pooing Apple and was using a ThinkPad running Linux.

So this was, this was almost two decades ago or over two decades ago. So he's got a long history of shitting on Apple. And, you know, some of his, some of his arguments are not wrong when it comes to the app store duopoly that, you know, that Apple and Google have and things like that.

But he does have an overall tendency to just shit on Apple people. So I'm used to it. I'm used to, and you got to find the, find the gems in the, in the poop in, in some of these. Nothing generates clicks like shitting on Apple. Right.

Yep. All right. Well, thank you for letting me vent. Well, I hope everybody enjoyed this Apple slash Disney advertised segment. That's right. That's right. Send your park tickets to. Nice.

Go G dot show. Yes. I can't wait to go. We got to plan this trip, Dave. All right. Make sure that we go at the same time. Yeah. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon this week. We've got no one.

Actually, I'm not entirely sure about that because Patreon's email system is so crap. And I haven't logged in. Okay. Well, sometimes they send emails. Sometimes they don't, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, if you're a new Patreon subscriber, we'll get to you next week. Hopefully, maybe if we can figure it out.

But just remember, three bucks a month gets you all versions of the show ad-free and relatively sooner than everybody else. If we're having a good day. If we're having a good day. And they're in high res. I actually got shit for saying it was in high res because they're like, it's a podcast. What's high res? Well, the version that everybody gets, the normal folks get it at 64 kilobits, 44.1.

If you get it on Patreon, it's, what is it, 192 at 48K. So it is actually higher res. So there. Just put a button in that. And over at PayPal, we've got Natalie, Linda, Dagg, Blake Bowling, Andrew, Nathaniel, Brian, Ramsey, and Joseph, who sent us a note, which normally we talk about, but I think we're too tired.

Sorry. We'll write you back. Thanks, Joe. Okay. Brian's a little tired today. Over at the tip jar, we've got Sean, Theodore, Sean, and Karen. Thank you all so much. And no reviews this week. Ooh. Well, everybody's got the winter blase.

It's cold out there. You should be staying inside, listening to Grumpy Old Geeks, writing reviews, and signing up for Patreon. That's right. Get on it, people. Yeah. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Show notes and links to everything we talked about today are at GOG.show slash 632.

Try saying that 10 times fast. Maybe I'm tired, too. 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 and enemies, and anyone in between is free and can be almost as good as cash. 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 over to GOG.show slash contact to send us your feedback, comments, or links to cool shit that 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. Stay grumpy. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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

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