637: Outragery!

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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Jason, I did something really stupid. What'd you do? Well, it's been a week. It's not been anything in particular. It's been a thousand million things. It's one of those death by a thousand paper cuts kind of weeks.

So I've been like angry and on edge and grumpy and frustrated. Would have been perfect for this show. Would you take a Xanax before we started? I did 45 minutes of slow flow yoga last night. Sat down and put together a Lego set with my kid and I totally zenned out and now I'm fine.

Ow! Sorry. What the hell's wrong with you? I know. Really bad timing. I should have waited. But here we are. So welcome to Pleasantly Okay Old Geeks. Well, half of. I'm still... I have no child in yoga, in Legos and all of that crap.

I just had a very long week. All right. Let's get into it then. Maybe you'll get me grumpy as we go along. Oh, I think I'll have no problem with that. All you have to do is go Elon Musk. Damn it! We'll get there. Okay. Elon Musk. Okay. Perfect. I'm not going to talk about Elon though.

I want to talk about something we used to do that was really fun and I want to bring it back and see if we can get any of the audience to join us on our crusade. Remember the time when Overcast was new and we wanted to get to the top of the star chart so we asked everybody to start the show?

Yeah. That actually did something and it kind of worked and it was fun. So I'm bringing it back. Okay. But I'm bringing it back bigger. Bigger and better. All right. I've been tasked this week. This is my death of a thousand paper cuts week. Okay. I've got two new shows coming out and I am getting grilled from everybody.

Please tell me one's not a daily news show. One is not a daily news show. I am not the star of either one of these. All right. So I am just the producer and tertially involved in one of them. All right. So no, we're done with daily news. Trust me. No fucking more daily news shows.

So, but I've been tasked with figuring out in this new landscape of podcasting, the post-Spotify age, as it were, and the post-carpetbagger age, how does one grow a podcast? So I am getting hit. If we knew that, we'd have a much bigger podcast.

Exactly. So my goal this week has been to try and find as many ways as I can that are guerrilla-like, punk rock-like, as it were. DIY aesthetic. Yeah. The sex pistols of podcasting.

Yes. Fuck the man. Let's do it old school. Pirate Radio. Okay. So I'm going to start a new channel on the Discord for a place to brainstorm things. So if anybody wants to join me in there. First thing I want to ask, though, is if anybody's listening on Overcast, and I know half of you are because we see the stats, which is insane, by the way.

Yeah. When you look at market share for podcast players. It makes sense given our target audience, though. They're the smart ones. It kind of does. Yes, because for iOS, it is the best player. You know, for Android, I don't know. I don't know. Google Podcasts just shit the bed.

So if Google can't make podcasting work, we're doomed. We're doomed. God, no, we're not. Stick to search and email, Google. You do those well. Well, you used to do search well. Email stuff. Not anymore. No, not anymore. So I'm going to be throwing out ideas out there.

So what I do at night now, and you can do this too, Brian, because it's easy to do at home. On our Spotify and YouTube channels, I just have a Grumpy Old Geeks playlist that I let play during the night while I'm sleeping. Because what that does is that boosts the algorithm on those platforms to get you more also listened by recommendations.

So, yes, it is. Our Spotify Unwrapped is going to be lit next year. Oh, going to be lit, my motherfucker. So just little things like that actually do move the needle. Word of mouth is still and always will be the best. Yeah, real listeners is the best thing we could do. Right, but sometimes you have to fake it until you make it.

You've got to squeeze the juice. Yes, you do have to squeeze the juice. So I'm going to be playing around in there coming up with just some crazy-ass ideas. So I don't have a name for it yet, but you'll see it on there. And by the way, if you are a power user on Discord and you want to give our channel a boost, we're about to run out of our current status, which is just level one.

We're just little Discord babies. We don't need all the fancy-danty-googahs, but, yeah, our lovely listeners who have boosted us to level one are about to expire. So any help anybody wants to give us boosting our Discord channel, please come on over.

Link is at GOG.show. And let's have some fun. I want to fuck some shit up. In the news. It's not a day in the week. Without more layoffs.

Rivian is laying off 10% of its salaried employees that they're basically just trying to cut costs because they've lost $1.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023. Are they in podcasting now? Apparently. You know, if you're in Los Angeles, you'd be shocked by this news because every other car is a Rivian in L.A., but they're not really anywhere else.

So, yeah, they haven't sold very many of them. 57,000 is what they're trying to do in 2024, which is the same number it built last year. You're losing $1.5 billion a year, but you've got Amazon backing you. So they're not going away anytime soon. But we've got the statement.

I love this. This is one of the better ones. Our business is facing a challenging macroeconomic environment, including historically high interest rates and geopolitical uncertainty. Yes, the geopolitical uncertainty is why we're not selling Rivians in California. And we need to make purposeful changes now to ensure our promising future.

Rivians founder and CEO, RJ Skarinjay, wrote to employees in an email. We must strategically prioritize our growth areas of the business, including the launch of Peregrine and R2. I guess those are different models. As well as investing in our go-to market capabilities. Let me rephrase that last sentence for you.

We need to sell more cars. Yeah, that's kind of it. You know, that's what it comes down to. Yeah. So they're not that prevalent here. I mean, I see like one or two a week. It's not like Tesla's, which you are just everywhere. No, but it was like the early day of Tesla.

Remember? You know, you're going to see it in the Whole Foods parking lot. That's it. The first ones I saw were in Calabasas. So that's exactly, that's ground zero for, you know, new shit that regular people can't afford. Yep. So, yeah. But they're definitely growing, but not by a lot.

All right. Air Canada must pay damages after a chatbot lied to a grieving passenger about his discount. I love this. Air Canada has been ordered to compensate passenger Jake Moffitt with hundreds of dollars after its chatbot provided incorrect information regarding bereavement discounts for their flights.

Moffitt, who booked flights from Vancouver to Toronto following his grandmother's death, was misled by the chatbot into believing he could claim a discount after purchasing a full-price ticket. Now, here's where it gets interesting. Despite a verbal confirmation from an Air Canada representative, the airline later refused his request for a refund, citing a policy that contradicted the chatbot's advice.

Also, not just the chatbot, a verbal confirmation from an Air Canada representative. So, it just ain't the chatbot, folks. He went to Small Claims Tribunal and dismissed his claim. And they said that it could not be held liable for the Air Canada claimed that it could not be held liable for the chatbot's misinformation.

It's their chatbot. It's their chatbot. Exactly. They said that, stating the airline is responsible for all content on its website, regardless of the source, said the tribunal. Yes. That is an excellent precedent to be set, because these chatbots are shit.

Nobody puts any effort or money into these things. They just throw them up there saying, fuck it. We don't have to do customer service anymore. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. And it is going to cost Air Canada a whopping, wait for it, Brian, $812.02 Canadian, which is like $7 U.S.

Look, trust me, that actually is going to hurt Air Canada. I fly them all the time. Trust me. So they have agreed to pay the damages and comply with the ruling. So that's what we have from Air Canada and chatbot news today.

All right. Well, this is probably my favorite story of the week. The FTC has concluded that Twitter did not violate data security rules, but not because Musk didn't try. Okay. Basically, there was an FTC consent decree regarding consumers' data privacy and security.

This goes back to the Twitter files. Remember when Elon was going to break everything wide open about how crappy Twitter was run before? I got the Twitter files, which ended up being a massive nothing burger. So basically, the FTC was looking into this going, okay, did you actually put out people's information that you shouldn't have?

Did you violate data privacy? Turns out they didn't, even though Musk ordered people to do it. They just ignored him. This is the only reason that they've won this lawsuit is because the employees ignored Elon's orders. And of course, those employees aren't there anymore because Elon fired them, probably.

Yes, exactly. So great story. Oh, my God. I got a little burned out on the tech news. I think I was too angry throughout the week, and I was just like, I don't want to deal. So I'm starting a little science corner this week, which is technologically adjacent.

These are things that we like and talk about often. First off, the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday had to issue a safety warning to people saying that smartwatches and smart rings that claim to measure blood sugar levels without pricking the skin are complete and utter bullshit. Oh, this is a surprise.

Because a lot of these devices out there are doing their own guerrilla marketing, Jason, and basically claiming that they do work. So, no, they don't. No. So getting a smartwatch or smart ring to monitor blood sugar levels without penetrating the skin would represent a huge medical advance that has not occurred.

Right. Because it's like transparent aluminum. Now, they are working on it. Apple's working on it. I think Google is also working on it. Everybody's working on it. And there's breakthroughs. Because it's the Holy Grail. But it doesn't exist yet. Yeah. So then I saw this.

Climate news. The bad climate news keeps on coming. A new study has added to the evidence that the Atlantic Ocean's critical system of currents will eventually collapse in response to melting ice sheets in Greenland. These currents shuttle water and along with the water heat between the poles influencing climate around the world. It would be a pretty big problem if the system called the Atlantic Maradonial Overturning Circulation, or AMOC for short, stopped working.

Now, is this important? And have you heard of it before? Yes, it is. Yes, you have. And yes, it is. This happens in the movie the day after tomorrow and sets off Armageddon. So, yeah, it's a really fun article about this.

I add a bunch of bullet points. But I mean, that's basically the tagline right there. It's from the movie. It's not good. It's not as bad as it was in the movie. But here's the thing that gets me, though. Because, again, this is the climate scientists at the end. I hope that not everybody is panicking, says Van Vesteren, but I hope that people take the climate crisis really seriously.

The solution, as we know well, is reducing greenhouse emissions, which will decrease both atmospheric warming and the speed of glacier melt. And while these changes really need to happen at the political and public policy level, he thinks it's important to remember that individual actions do matter, too. No, they don't.

No, they don't. We've talked about this at length. Everything that you and I could do, Jason, if we lived a perfectly carbon neutral lifestyle would mean nothing compared to the flight of one private plane. One. All of our lives. So that is a load of shit.

I sense a segue. In a completely unrelated story, it looks a lot like Taylor Swift had two private jets for her Super Bowl flight. Yes, she had a second jet flown into Tokyo in case her first jet that was already in Tokyo had a problem with it and she couldn't make it to the Super Bowl on time.

See, this is funny that you had this. Now, we were watching this in real time in my house because it was a whole day of where's Taylor? Now, I was a spectator, not a participant in this carnage, but I was watching this happen on TMZ in real time and I was like, this bitch got two planes.

It's insane. So as the article points out, it's one thing to lend out your private plane to your friends or use it to go see your boyfriend, but it's another thing entirely to have a second plane fly out just in case the first one breaks and then send it back empty. I mean, this is shockingly insane, Milan Clower, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Gizmodo in an email.

Obviously not a Swifty. Now, what Taylor perhaps needed is this new paint that scientists have developed. Scientists developed nanosphere paint that could reduce planes' carbon dioxide emissions. I remember we talked a while back about the whiter than white and blacker than black paints that had been invented that were supposed to help with climates as well.

If you paint your house with the white one, it's like you don't even need air conditioning anymore. Haven't seen that at Home Depot yet, but maybe it's coming. Okay. We'll see. This one is for planes and basically it just will make the plane a lot lighter and which means less fuel.

So get on that, Taylor, on your multiple fleet of private jets. And this one is for us old people, and I'm quite happy about this. Staring at a red light in the morning improves worsening eyesight, according to a study. So staring at a deep red light, since like the 670 nanometer light, I believe is the specific sweet spot, for about three minutes will drastically improve your vision for a whole week.

Although it has to be done in the morning. So in the near future, a once a week, three minute exposure to deep red light could be done while making a coffee. Well, maybe not while making the coffee or on the commute, listening to a podcast and such a simple addition could transform eye care and vision around the world. So I immediately tried to find some sort of 670 nanometer light, like cardboard thing that I could hold up in front of my face to try this out.

But it's rather difficult to find these things at the moment. Just go to Amazon. You get it for 20 bucks. Yeah, I think I might get one. So, yeah, I was hoping that I that's the thing is I don't know how to measure light wavelengths easily. So I was I was going to try and tune my phone because I have that I turn on red mode, that red shift when I go to go to bed at night.

And all my computers have it on now, too, because it's funny. You can actually do that on your Macs. If you go to the accessibility settings under display, you can turn on that color shift for your actual computer, too, which is kind of nice when you have the laptop in bed at night. Well, maybe I just set my laptop to that in the morning and stare at it for three minutes and Bob's your uncle.

Well, that's what we'll find. I don't know if my vision is getting any better, but that's what I did this morning as I was checking the news. So, OK, I'll let you know if I can if I have my x-ray vision returns. Oh, man, this is a fun one. In an unprecedented leap for private space exploration, Intuitive Machines has successfully landed a private lander on the moon.

In related news, they've rented it from Taylor Swift. Exactly. That's the second plane. It's hers. Yeah. And this marks the first U.S. moon landing in over half a century. Good. Yay. Yes. And it is a private company funded by NASA, but still a private company.

I think this is the fifth actual lunar lander coming from a private company, but the first one from a U.S. company. All right. So, yeah, it's we're number five. We're number five. Yeah. So here's the here's where it gets interesting. Intuitive Machines Lunar Lander carried six experiments for NASA, including technology and navigation tools as part of a hundred and eighteen million dollar contract to commercialize lunar deliveries in anticipation of future astronaut missions.

The lender also transported various commercial payloads, including Columbia Sportswear's newest insulating jacket fabric and one hundred and twenty five mini moon figurines by sculptor Jeff Koons, demonstrating the broad interest in lunar exploration and exploit exploitation.

And let's just send shit to the moon. Great. Well, you know, you got to advertise somehow. Hey, Columbia or Jeff Koons, we'll we'll we'll do ads for you. Well, Jeff Koons, this this this had me thinking. I'm like, wait, Jeff Koons has got got art on the moon now.

OK, let me let me go look this up. I'm interested in how this came to be. So I came across the Jeff Koons moon phases project. All right. Centering on the moon as a symbol of human curiosity and desire to achieve Jeff Koons moon phases comprises one hundred and twenty five unique works, each consisting of three components, a sculpture that will be installed on the moon in perpetuity, a sculpture that will stay

on Earth in an NFT that corresponds with the sculptures on the moon in the Earth. Yeah, it comes back to a fucking NFT. So that brings me nicely back. By the way, what's the definition of installed on the moon? You mean dropped? It is.

Well, onto the ground. No, it's it's actually part of the it's encased in acrylic on the outside of the lander. You can actually go see it. It's it's it's on the outside of it. So. All right. It's like it. It kind of looks like a board cube. The way they have the the the spheres lined up.

It is literally a cube of balls. So, but I would that that brings us right straight back to dystopia. So, OK, sorry about your science corner, Brian. We need to get back to our bread and butter here. We got to pay the bills. All right. Daddy's got to shake his moneymaker. Chat GPT goes temporarily insane with unexpected outputs spooking users.

Of course, it would spook the shit out. Chat GPT recently went through a temporary phase where it began generating bizarre and unexpected responses can causing concern amongst its users. Reports flooded the R slash chat GPT Reddit subreddit with descriptions of the AI having a stroke going insane and producing rambling outputs.

I don't know if you've read any of them. It was very funny, actually, because it would like change languages. Like half of it would be in Spanish all over the place. So, yeah, they fixed it. So it's back to normal as normal as it's going to be. These are these are technologies that are very much in their infancy.

We are all beta testers. Speaking of beta testers, the Pentagon is also a beta tester and they have hired a company called Scale AI. They were chosen by the Pentagon's chief digital and artificial intelligence office. Yes, these guys are quick over there.

The CDAO. So they are going to be testing LLMs and coming up with tools to test LLMs, which I think is actually very, very good. I think this is a good thing. Well, one must remember, youngins, the Internet came from the Department of Defense.

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Media candy. Star Wars. The Bad Batch has dropped the first three episodes. I watched all three. It's really nice. Very well done. So definitely pushing towards a resolution and a slight spoiler alert. All of those, all those of you out there that were just desperately hoping that they were going to retcon the last three Star Wars movies.

They're not. They're 100 percent filling in the backstory that basically explaining the movies that made no fucking sense. OK. Yeah. Good luck. Good luck. Well, yours dropped.

But one thing didn't drop this week. And last week, Tonight with John Oliver, did not have its usual Monday drop on YouTube as they've been doing for quite some time. The new overlords of HBO and Max have decided, nah, you know what? We're not giving it away for free. Maybe not a good idea to give our stuff away for free.

Yeah, at least immediately. So, I can't, I mean, I honestly can't believe it took this long for them to figure this out. No, it's a stupid policy. It reminds me exactly of, and I've told this story many times, sitting in the boardroom at Warner Brothers Records and being told, hey, here's a great idea for your new record, Goo Goo Dolls.

Let's put it out for free on AOL's homepage for the first couple weeks. Yeah. OK. Then why would anyone buy it? Buy it. Yeah. So. OK. Exactly. So, yeah, so they've decided to delay the release now to Thursdays.

Yeah, that's how it should be. I mean, you know, it's the exact, it's the same company now, but it's the exact opposite of the Discovery app's fucking policy, which is it's on TV forever, even though I'm paying for the app, and then I finally get episodes like three to six months later. Or a year later in some cases.

Yeah. So that's ridiculous. Yep. Well, Amazon is also shutting down Freebie. Have you ever watched anything on Freebie? Yeah, I did. I watched a couple things on Freebie. It's going away. It looks like Amazon's free ad-supported streaming service, Freebie, is the first casualty of Prime Video's own foray into ads.

So it's part of a broader effort to focus its advertising and product efforts on Prime Video. I mean, it makes sense why I have a bunch of different things. So there we go. Let's go. It's gone. No, it's not, says Amazon. They're saying, despite the reports at Adweek, Freebie is not going anywhere.

Okay. All right. Yes. A spokesperson from Amazon said, there are no changes coming to Freebie, saying that the Adweek report was actually just full of shit. Okay. Well, there you go. I just wish they'd clean up their interface.

Oh, yeah. But that's never going to happen. No. No. That'll get done the same time Goodreads gets done. I can't believe it's not returning a 404 error at this point. I still get notices from it. It actually syncs with my Kindle now. It's like, would you like to mark this as being read on Goodreads?

And when I'm done, it's like, would you like to mark this as read? I'm like, sure. So it's still, it actually, believe it or not, works. All those Pearl scripts from 1997 are still kicking right along. Well, that stuff is bulletproof, man. Well, FUBU TV, which is a streaming platform dedicated to live sports and actually very popular here in Canada, for sure, for soccer, because they had an awful lot of soccer signed up to it, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Disney, Fox, and Warner Brothers Discovery,

accusing the companies of staging a years-long campaign to hamper its business. Now, this has come because they have announced that they're going to launch a sports streaming service of their own in the fall of 2024, which will give subscribers access to sporting events from the networks that they own. FUBU TV's complaint argued that the companies are stealing its playbook.

That's called competition. And the launch of their joint venture will destroy competition. No, it's competition when people do the same thing. And lead to price inflation for consumers. They are alleging that because of this, they're charging a lot more to them than anybody else to license the content that they own, which, again, they own the content.

No, well, yeah, they do that. But if they're doing it specifically to them and not other people, it needs to be the same price across the board. Right. Otherwise, that's collusion. And yes, that could be a problem. Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. I live in a world now where there's a dynamic pricing. So I don't believe pricing exists anywhere.

Same. Well, look, go back and look at the lawsuit with publishers all colluding to jack up the prices and things like that. That was still in the age of dynamic pricing. By all accounts, FUBU TV is actually really good. My only problem with this is there seems to be a collusion across the board with all of these companies to stagger who owns what.

So you have to subscribe to all of them if you want to watch all the big soccer competitions, which is a load of shit. Isn't that the way with baseball here now, though, in the States? You can do MLB network. You can pay for that and you get basically everything, except they try to screw you on your local games, which are owned by whatever, Sportsnet or the two big ones that have bought up almost everybody.

But you can get around that with a VPN. Okay. And then I saw this article and I thought this was interesting. TikTok is on the decline. Don't look now, but after half a decade of transforming public life on an international scale, TikTok may finally be entering its flop error.

The clues are everywhere if you know where to look, even outside the millions of videos that have lapsed in the total silence since UMG yanked its vast catalog from the app, including Taylor Swift, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So they're talking about that. They're talking about there's a sharp slowdown in user growth over the past year, widespread annoyance with its ad heavy push into e-commerce via the TikTok shop.

Oh, that is annoying. With its never ending deluge of AI generated spam and misinformation, trends and aesthetics, blah, blah, blah, increased apprehension over its demeaning AI power face filters, outrage is rumor mongering, automated search suggestions. I like outrage-ery though.

You got to keep that. I'm feeling that way. Yeah. It's just basically going into TikTok is having the same problems that every single other social media network has had and they're trying to monetize now, which means they're changing the product, which means this could become crap just like every other social media company has gone through.

TikTok grew up and now it's going to start to suck and not be what it used to be. It's the circle of life for these companies. Yeah. It's basically what Cory Doctorow describes in his tirade called inshittification. This is the inshittification of TikTok. It has finally hit that tipping point.

Yep. It's hit that tipping point and that's that. So you may not have to worry about TikTok too much anymore. No, I don't. It's going to take a while, but yeah. Yeah. These things, these things take forever. Look, Facebook is still in its decline in some ways and just every now and again, it pops its head back up, but TikTok's not going anywhere, you know.

Nope. It's not going anywhere, but I agree. It's going to change and people are going to be pissed off about it and it's not going to be what it used to be and something else is going to come along at some point. The kids are going to get into that. One thing that I found the kids are into this week is BeGo Live. It's been around apparently for a very long time and a lot of TikTokers have moved over there that I know, at least in the circles that I've been hanging out with this week.

It's like everybody was using it and everybody's making money off of it. It's basically a live streaming platform that you can get tipped on. And I'm like, isn't that OnlyFans? They're like, no, no, no. There's gamers and other things on here. But these are just semi-famous people that I know who were just using it to make a few extra bucks for rent.

So it's kind of cool. So I looked at it. It is hideous. If you have any form of epilepsy whatsoever, do not download this app. It is, I mean, it makes GeoCities look like an art installation. It is so ugly, but it is apparently hip with the kids now.

So I think a lot of people are moving over to that. But, you know, it's the same thing with, you know, Twitter. It's like, okay, everybody's, there's this giant diaspora now of everybody to the winds. So I have no idea. It's like I randomly opened some social app and I found like 10 of my friends over there.

They're all chatting up. I'm like, oh, this is where you guys have been hiding. They're like, yeah, we told you. Come on over. I'm like, yeah, but you said that about everything else too. You told, you're the one that gave me the LO invite for fuck's sake. I'm not going to go follow you anywhere. So it's just this, everything is just shattered and sharded right now.

So TikTok is definitely not going to be immune from that by any stretch. They're going to get sharded too. Yes, they will. Sharded upon. This is kind of an interesting bit of news. Taylor, you got me on the Taylor Swift bandwagon.

Tyler Perry has put a significant, which is very significant, $800 million expansion of his Atlanta studio on hold due to get this, his concern over the demo from OpenAI's Sora last week. Right. So, and by the way, fuck you futurism for stealing my story.

I said on this show, I'm like, look at the feet, look at the feet. And they do this whole story about, look at the feet. And I'm sure you're not the only person that noticed, Jason. Although apparently Tyler Perry didn't. I'm the most outspoken, damn it. Well, yeah, he didn't read about the feet because he's.

Little known fact, all of his movies are shot from waist up. Look for that sweet baby race sauce in the background. And then, you know, you know. So, I mean, this guy is just like, he's a mogul now.

He's got this massive studio down there and he is just shitting out content left, right and center. He makes a gazillion dollars doing it. You know, it's kind of the Blumhouse model. Make them cheap and just spread them wide. And the fact that he's putting, I mean, this was a very big expansion.

He was going to build 12 new sound stages and all this stuff. And he's like, huh, well, you know, a lot of the stuff that we do here is basically making pilots that might get picked up down the line. So, if we can use OpenAI to just at least skip the pilot process and get it to the tasteless morons at the studios who make all the decisions, maybe we could save some money too.

And let's just, and shitify the entire entertainment industry. Why not? Yeah. And then he says he has concerns about people's jobs. I'm like, well, you just cut a lot of those people's jobs yourself and there was no AI involved, brother. That was just you. He's rightfully concerned because he just took away a bunch of jobs.

Mm-hmm. Yes. Yep. No, I think it's a little early to be concerned about that. But, I mean, I guess, you know, you got to do your due diligence when there's $800 million on the line. That is not jump change. Yeah. You don't want to be the guy opening up a chain of recording studios across the U.S. right before the laptop revolution occurred.

Yeah. Oh, Pro Tools? What's that? Come on. Everybody's going to be using 24-track tape decks forever. Oh, man. Monsieur Spade wrapped up their six-episode season this week. It was very short and excellent. I loved it. It was so well done.

So, if you're a Clive Owen fan, go check it out. AMC Plus, wherever you can find that. Wherever that might be. Yep. Death and other details. Now, I put in here the penultimate episode deserves an Emmy, which was this week's episode, which was number seven, because I thought, oh, it's got to be eight, you know, an eight-episode season because that's all anybody does anymore.

Turns out I was wrong. There's going to be ten. Okay. It is so good, so well written, and so well shot. It is just nothing that you expect. And, yeah, it is fantastic. A fantastic show. Available on Hulu. Get caught up now because you've got three episodes to go.

Yeah, I saw it in my Disney Plus app, and I was going to watch it, but then it was a little bit too late, so I just kind of – it's in my pen favorites or whatever the hell they call it on Disney Plus. Okay, yeah. It is a later night show because there are some boobs and swearing, so don't watch it with the kid. Yeah. I mean, that's obviously – It's called Death and Other Details.

I guess maybe that was – Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, just the name alone kind of made me go, hmm, probably not for five o'clock viewing. No, no. Office Space, one of the greatest movies ever made by the hand of man or Mike Judge, is 25 years old. My God, world.

Can you believe that? What a wonderful movie, though. And it still has legs. Oh, my God. It still has legs. I still have my red swing line stapler here at the office, too. I actually busted out that comment. I referenced that character just the other day at work. There you go. This so has legs.

It is available to stream on Macs. I put a link in the show notes. If you just need a refresher or if, shockingly, you've never seen Office Space, go watch it immediately because it is one of the greatest movies ever made. Jennifer Aniston's finest role.

Yes. You need more bling. Fling or bling? Was it bling? I can't remember. No, flair. Flair. It was flair. Not bling. Flair. You need 28 pieces of flair. So good. Yeah. And you're the one that always talks about the crazy 80s goth music festivals.

And I finally get to put one in the notes. I saw this. I know you're not going to go, but this is so right up your alley. Oh, my God. It's the No Values Fest. It's going to be June 8th. Tickets actually go on sale about two hours from now. Two hours from now.

I will not be buying them because it is at the Pomona Fairplex down in lovely Pomona. In June 8th. It is going to be hot. It is going to be hot. It's in Pomona. Did I mention it's in Pomona? I've been to the Pomona Fairplex. It's nice. Yeah, but Pomona gets killed. It's far.

Yeah. The Misfits and Social Distortion are headlining. The original Misfits lineup. I'd love to see Social D. I don't think I've ever seen them live. Oh, they're great, man. Yeah. And it would be kind of fun to watch Glenn Danzig wheeze around the stage.

I saw a little bit of their set at Riot Fest. I was not impressed. So they've got a ton of bands here. I mean, this is everybody. This is everybody from that age. Suicidal Tendencies, The Vandals, TSOL, L7. Are you kidding me?

This is great. So, yeah. And my favorite bands are in the little tiny print at the bottom. I'm like, okay, Exploited, The Addicts, The Dickies, Agent Orange, The Adolescents, The Dead Milkmen. Those are the bands that I want to see. And since they're at the little tiny one at the bottom, that means they're going to be on stage for about seven minutes.

And also, early in the day, you could get in. It's going to be pretty much empty. You can see all the bands you want to see and get out before the crowds show up. That's true. That's true. I wonder who's singing for Black Flag. But it's funny. TSOL just released a new single. It's terrible, which is not good.

But I love the old TSOL with the hairband days. Jesus Lizard, you'd think, would be a bigger draw. They're in the third tier. They had a split single with Nirvana once. That's going to make them a bigger draw? Everybody talked about them back in the day. I never listened to them.

Bad Religion, Iggy Pop, The Damned. I love The Damned. I mean, this is great. I would go to this if I were there. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it'd be great. Because, yeah, I've still never seen Bad Religion live. I want to see them. It would be so much fun. So much fun. But, yeah, we'll be going to that one.

So if you're an old punk and want to check it out, go check it out. And I'll live vicariously through you. Apps and doodads. Dan P. wrote in. Okay, I've about had it with your bad-mouthing Mozilla slash Firefox. Firefox offers extensions none of the others offer, mostly for free.

For example, I can watch YouTube to my heart's content using the extension Firefox multi-account containers. The ad blockers in Mozilla must be more effective because I never see ads that you both want. Whine about in whatever worthless browser du jour you use. No, that's not true. We talk about our bad browsers being great.

Yes. Bypass paywalls clean is rather handy. Not perfect add-on that allows me to read more news content. And before you complain about stealing content, sure, you visited Sweden more than most Swedes. I pay for New York Times, Washington Post, two local Detroit papers, and far too many streaming sites. I also contribute to your site so you can spend more time hammering on the little guy in the overcrowded browser field.

So stop picking on the little guy trying to curve a place out in the light and live on the razor's edge. Laugh in the face of the death world of internet browsers. If needed, I will have to taunt you a second time. Dan, perspective is important. What do you think we're using? Edge? Have you listened to us talk about the browsers that we use?

I've got a link in our show notes to browsers market share worldwide. And compared to the market share of the browsers both Jason and I use respectively, Mozilla is one of the big guys. Yeah. I use Brave, which has 0.05% market share. I'm still using Vivaldi.

It's not on the fucking chart. And it's made by the China. God. So we're using much smaller browsers than you. Yeah, we are totally punching up here. Come on. I do love the sure you visited Sweden more than most Swedes line.

That was pretty good. Keep fighting the good fight, Dan. Keep writing it. That was good. That was a good time. Yep. So we found the market for virtual reality, Brian. Oh, yeah. Old people.

Old people. Okay. They can't boot up a computer, Jason. Well, that's why we strap them to their head. They can't do anything. Can feed them a little brawn-o. Yep. That's it. A recent Stanford University study conducted across 17 senior communities in the U.S.

reveals that seniors aged 65 to 103 enjoy virtual reality experiences, ranging from flying in planes, exploring exotic locations, patients to interacting with pets and finding where their metamucil is in the morning. The study, which involved 245 patients, highlights the potential of virtual reality.

Participants, not patients. They're not dead. Okay. I'm dyslexic. Fuck off. Nearly 80% of seniors reported a more positive attitude post-VR session, and about 60% felt less socially isolated. The rest of them were throwing up in their metamucil because they got motion sickness.

However, the enjoyment levels dipped for those with deteriorating sight and hearing and those generally averse to technology. Okay. So grump's going to grump no matter how old you are. Yeah. I was like, we probably shouldn't be making fun of old people, Jason. We're pretty damn close. And don't you tell me for one second if you couldn't strap on one of these and go to that punk rock concert, you wouldn't.

In a fucking heartbeat. There you go. No. I mean, I told you. I really like my quest for watching travel videos. Yeah. That's one of the things I really actually like it for because I can't go anywhere. I'm not going diving off the Great Barrier Reef or anywhere for that matter.

I can't even make it to fucking Pomona. You barely dive into your tub. Yeah. You can't make it to Pomona. That's so true. So I think it's good. It's interesting, too, hearing the reports coming in about the Vision Pro and how people are like, it's heavy.

It's a computer on your head. Of course it's going to be heavy. Yeah, no shit. Why do I have to carry the battery in my pocket so it's not on your fucking head? That's why you have to put the battery in your pocket. You bitch about it being heavy. You want us to strap that on, too? Come on. Anyway, sounds like it's 50-50 so far on the Vision Pro, but I think it's here to stay.

This is an interesting one. Walmart is making a strategic leap into the media and advertising realm with a $2.3 billion acquisition of TV manufacturer Vizio. All right. Yes. The move is aimed at expanding Walmart's advertising capabilities into the streaming TV sector, creating a formidable competitor to Amazon's thriving ad business.

With Vizio's smart TV operating system, SmartCast, boasting over 18 million active accounts. I don't know if that's a really big dent. Walmart plans to tap into new advertising avenues and potentially exclusive entertainment options for Vizio TV owners. I'm not sure when we all laid down as a mass of humanity and said, it's okay for you to pipe advertising into the TV that I purchased.

Yep. I'm not cool with that. I hate it. I shut everything off that I can. And I never even see it anyways because I basically go straight Apple TV. Yeah. You know, I have a fire TV and they've made a quote unquote enhancement to my service.

Yes. So instead of going into the home screen like you used to do where you could change the input to your Apple TV, which is what I want in the fucking first place. You can't be you can't make it a default to go to HDMI one when you turn it on. Apparently now they have an entire panel, a carousel of upcoming shows on Amazon Prime video.

It's for your convenience, Jim. It is for my convenience, my convenience, my the bandwidth that I have to waste downloading that shit, the extra button press that I have to do and wait for it to change. So that is seconds that taken away from my life. I just hate the fact that we're being exposed to advertising for things we purchase.

It's Amazon's business model. Now it's Walmart. Now the Vizio. Fuck that. That's bullshit. I will never buy a Vizio now. Yeah. Well, until you see the prices on them because they are. Well, that's what you're paying for, right? That's I got upset just with the Kindle when I when I realized it came in the, you know, ad free model.

That's a lot more expensive. This is a device I'm buying to buy books from you. Why are you advertising to me on it, too? The only thing you can buy on the Kindle is Kindle books. That's it. It's insane to me, but we just don't seem to care.

And don't write in. No, you can sideload shit. Come on. But the main purpose of it, the first one came with a cellular. It was the first e-book with a cellular modem built into it so you could buy straight from Amazon. Yes. So, by the way, I think those still work. Well, if it was on AT&T's network, it didn't work yesterday.

No shit.

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. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave with podcast super host, Dave Bittner.

Dave is the host of the Cyberware podcast for all your cybersecurity news. The co-host of Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan discussing how humans are mean. The co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen because people are nosy. And the host of Control Loop because industrial machines have feelings too. I like that pronunciation. Caveat.

Caveat. Caveat. Oh, jeez. Isn't that a piece of clothing? A craviat? Craviat? Cravat. Cravat. Cravat. Okay. There we go. There we go. Yeah. Absolutely. How you doing, Dave? Oh, not bad. Not bad. Good to be here.

Excellent. All right. I had a question about your Apple Watch Ultra 2. Climb every mountain. That's right. How's it going for you? Are you still digging it? I am. I am. Neither have you climbed a mountain or dove the deep depths yet?

So to your point, Brian, I think as I mentioned to you guys a few weeks ago, my wife and I are enjoying the decadence of having a hot tub. And one of the things that happened. He once dropped it and it came back up. Right. So here's the thing. And if you, so with my old watch and my wife pointed out with her watch, when you have your watch underwater in a hot tub with all the turbulent water, it will give you a loud audio alert.

I have a rain shower and I get it from that as well. Okay. So now, so she asked me the other night, she said, does your watch do this? And I said, well, my old watch did, but I haven't gotten one with the Ultra 2. I said, now it is a dive watch.

So perhaps it's. Puff the chest out a little bit there. Yes. So I don't know. Perhaps it's calibrated differently for when I'm down at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. It's going to be on tonight. That's right. That's right.

So overall, I, yes, I, I have to say I'm very pleased with this watch. I had one little oddity. First couple of months that I had it, it seemed like it wasn't getting the message from my phone that I was no longer in sleep mode.

So I'd get up in the morning and my phone would wake up, go out of sleep mode, but my watch would lag and I'd have to reset it manually. But somehow with one of the recent updates, it, they, they, they seem to have renegotiated and now it's working fine.

So I'm, I'm digging it. Really like it. Very, very pleased. Nice. Nice. Now I'm curious. Do you do the dial flip? So the dial is on the left side and what, what, what arm do you wear your watch on? I wear it on my left arm. Left arm. Okay. Do you do the dial flip?

I do not. Have you ever tried the dial flip? I have not. It's, it's, it's life changing. It is, it is a game changer. And this is for everybody who hasn't heard our episode about flipping the dial to the end, to the other side. So you don't keep hitting the button with your wrist. You don't keep hitting it.

And it is much more intuitive actually to use your thumb on the dial than the other way around. So you can actually use the dial and touch the screen at the same time. So highly, highly recommend everybody try that. If you have an Apple watch, no matter what, what, uh, uh, vintage.

Yes. So whether you're a diver or not, uh, well, you actually, you know, you physically take it off the band, flip it around and then there's a setting. Rub it up, rub it down. See what, what I like about this is, uh, one of the things that has, uh, pissed me off about both this watch and my previous Apple watch is that I have a pair of gardening gloves

that I wear when I'm out doing stuff around the yard and the gardening gloves have like a Velcro thing that goes around the wrist, like it tightens around the wrist with this Velcro strap. And so I, over and over again, I found myself, I'd be working in the yard and all of a sudden the watch would go batshit crazy.

Like I was triggering it for some sort of emergency. You know, it's like, we'll call 9-1-1 in 10, 9, 8, I mean, no, no, no, all I did was bend my wrist backwards, you know, because these gloves would hit the buttons. So this will solve that problem.

This will solve that problem. So to get to it, you want to go to settings, you want to go to general, and then you want to go to orientation. And when you scroll down, there's a section for digital crown so you can move it to the left. And on the next episode of the Apple Help Desk. Yes. All right.

I'm going to, as soon as we get off this call, I'm going to do that and then we can check in next week and see how it goes. So I suspect it'll be great. Yeah. All right. Cool. Yeah. That you'll, you'll notice other people in the wild that have theirs flipped around and then you know that they're in the know.

They're probably GOG listeners too. There's a move like the Jeep drivers. Yeah. Yeah. We can do the two finger peace sign. Yep. A secret club of Apple Watch. Wrist flippers. Yes. Another really significant way to demonstrate your, your eliteness beyond having the watch itself.

That's right. You can't really do much to customize them though. You can get new swanky bands. That was my next question. Are you sticking with the stock band or have you upgraded? No, I have the stock band. I like it very much. It's the, I have the gray grace and bluish one. Are they, the stock bands still that a robbery plastic crap?

These are, no, these are really, really nice ones. Um, they're really comfortable. And I, I had a shoot mine recently cause I found a drawer of watch bands from all my previous Apple watches and I'm like, let's me go back through and revisit some of the old days.

So I've got one on now that is like one of the old Casio watches in like that kind of caliber of thick plastic. Mm-hmm. Uh, yeah. It rips off all the hair on your arms and it never is the right size. Right. Oh, perfect. Yep. I, I, I got many of these that really were like $5 from China that you can get in bulk on Amazon.

I tried them all. I'm definitely going back to that original band cause that's what I wanted to, that was my point was that the, the band that comes with these things now, I think it's the sport loop that you just kind of slide through. It's, it's, it is so nice. I just, I just, you know, it just gets dirty.

They're kind of hard to wash. So. Oh, okay. Yeah. But man, yeah, it's, that's the, that, that is, uh, that is one of the best bands. So highly recommend sticking with the, sticking with the OG. I see you listed charging here and, uh, in the last update, another thing that my watch did was, I guess it took notice that I tend to charge my watch every night and one morning it said, Hey, listen, we're not going to charge your watch all the way anymore, uh, to help increase the battery life.

So you okay with that? And I was like, yeah, that's fine. Cause it will run for three days. So. Yeah. The, that was, that's my charging tip is before I hop in the shower, I will flip it to low power mode, put it on the charger, come back out, flip it back to regular mode.

And it charges so much faster in low power mode. So. Okay. Super tip on that one. I think that goes with all Apple watches too. Um, just cause none of the radios are running or it's on like, you know, it's on low power mode. So it's like half the shit's not turned on. So it just, it zooms through the quick charge.

So I have never bothered connecting mine to cellular and, uh, and I don't miss it. I, the first one I ever got, my wife got for me and she got me the cellular option. I used it never.

So I've never bought one of those again. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess I figure I'm never going to be without my phone usually. So what, that's me. What's the point? The nice thing about it is you don't have to take, it's like the way I've got mine set up now, I don't have to take my phone with me because it's got everything on the watch now that I need.

I can, I can take calls from the watch while I'm out and about, um, play all my media straight from it. It just, you know, the, at least the way I set up my media stuff, I'm a little weird about it, but, um, yeah, it, uh, it can, it can function as, you know, you can leave the house without your phone.

So, right. I, I, I set it up specifically for that. Yeah. I set it up specifically for that. I see. If I, if I leave the house without my phone, I suffer from crippling anxiety. So. That's a different, that's a different topic. There's no setting for that. No. Yeah.

I think that's called better help. I think that's the setting you need. I don't, I don't not leave the house without my phone if I'm going anywhere else besides a walk. I, but if I'm going out for like an hour or two walk, I don't want to carry my phone with me. So. Yeah. That's reasonable. Yeah. I just, I mean, it's literally just for going for walks.

Otherwise I think strapped to be 24 seven. Right. It's on the pillow next to me for fuck's sake. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to, uh, swing back to the story I saw you guys talking about, about this red light helping your vision. Cause I was curious, so are there, is there a way that you could use either your iPhone or your iPad to generate the red light?

Yeah. And that got me thinking, well, what's the color gamut of an iPhone or an iPad? Um, are there apps that let you just dial in the light? There are, are there apps that let you measure the light? There are. So now I've got this crazy idea in my mind of having your iPhone running the light detection app and your iPad running the light generation app.

So you can dial in exactly what is a 670 nanometers. That's it. Yep. But I don't know what I don't know. And I, I, the brief little hunting around I did seem to indicate that the iPhone displays can't go that low.

Uh, they can't generate that deeper red towards infrared, I guess. Because if I were a quick buck app developer right now, I would immediately already have an app on the market. It's just called 670 NM because I'd be, because if I had, if I found that in the app store right now, I would buy it instantly and just start doing this.

And in the description, this actually does not get to 670 NM, but the name sounds cool. Yeah. I don't think that the phone can do it. So I'm, I, apparently Jason says there's some stuff on Amazon, so we'll probably get circled back around to this because, uh, I'm, you know, my eyesight is definitely, I'm old.

It's changed. I would like to get some of my, uh, eyesight back. That would be nice. That would be nice. Yeah. You can get it for like 20 or 30 bucks. What could go wrong with exposing your eyes to some janky, cheap thing that you bought on Amazon? Well, I'm definitely going to try to avoid any of the dropshipping companies.

Well, no, I mean, the solution is we let Jason try it first. That's true. That is true. When Jason comes back next week and is unable to read any story I've put in here, we'll know the answer. Do not order that one. He's shopping for canes on Amazon because he can no longer see.

Yeah. I'll be reviewing braille monitors. Right. Yeah. So, but there are apps that'll measure the exact wavelength of light, which, so that could be useful. If you, if you get one of these, you can get an app to, that'll tell you if it's actually the wavelength that says it is.

If not, then return to Amazon. There you go. Yeah. All right. Well, we have a little bit of tech news here. Apple has rolled out an update to iMessage encryption, the likes of which includes post-quantum protections that the company calls the most significant cryptographic security upgrade in the messenger's history. They're calling this PQ3, a new protocol designed to seriously enhance app security.

Apple claims your messages will now be more secure than ever. So secure, in fact, that the company has invented a whole new level of security, what it calls, level three, to distinguish the unparalleled protections your iPhone conversations will now supposedly enjoy. The wrap up on this article, this is good news overall.

Any additional layer of protection you can add to your digital life is a win. That said, it's easy to find Apple's new post-quantum protection sort of funny since quantum computers don't really exist yet. Yeah. So, and then, of course, somebody is trying to pass it off as, is it overkill? Of course it's overkill, but it's still good.

Yeah. It's marketing. It's marketing. I'm sad that Apple has actually done this because this is, this is kind of pushing the, the language truth thing to a Muskian level for Apple. A little bit. A little bit. You mean with level three? Level three, quantum, post-quantum encryption.

Yeah. Well, I mean, post-quantum encryption is a real thing. Right. And we talk about that all the time over on CyberWire. But how can they test it? They can't test it. Because we don't have a quantum computer to crack it against. Self-driving is also a real thing. Yeah.

I mean, I guess it's, I suppose people like Matthew Green, who they quote in this article here, they know what the quantum computers are theoretically going to be able to do. I mean, it's, it's, it's a standard that they're, I mean, they've set what constitutes post-quantum encryption.

Right. So somebody's done the math, you know, someone much smarter than me has done the math. And came up with level three. And figured out what it takes. Yeah, exactly. Take it this time. It's not level two. It's level three plus. That's right. Level three plus.

Final, final, final. So, yeah, I mean, I think this is great. Yeah, it's good. Anything security is good. I like it. Well, increased security. Great. I saw someone else comment that this is also a political statement from Apple, you know, that they're, they're leading with this and, and when other governments around the world

are still wanting backdoors and things like that, Apple's putting the effort into making their encryption even better. Yeah. So. Good. That's why I like Apple. Level three at all. You know who could have used that? The LockBit Crime Gang. Sounds like.

They only had level two. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Sounds like a three, two, one contact bad guy from the week's episode. Yes. I'm sure you guys covered the hell out of this. The, the LockBit, LockBit ransomware gang was mostly taken down, it seems.

Yeah. Yeah. This is a big deal. You know, international law enforcement took them down and did so with quite a bit of swagger. Yes, they did. I mean, not only did they take them down, but what they left behind was a website that looks just like LockBit's website, except instead of having countdowns for revealing people's private information, it has countdowns for revealing LockBit's private information.

It was a nice move. Yeah. My understanding is this was led by the Brits, but, you know, all of the major players around the world had something to do with it. And this is great. I, it's, it's really interesting. I, I, my sense is we've seen an increase in velocity with a number of takedowns like this.

Um, I want to say LockBit was responsible for over 25% of all ransomware, uh, in 2023, something like that is a big, big number. So taking them out of the game is a big deal. They actually, they have arrested some people. I think there were two folks, uh, who arrested in Europe.

I saw a couple of days ago, there was someone in Ukraine or a father son combo in Ukraine were arrested. So it's not like they're, these are people who are out of reach in Russia. I mean, there's certainly plenty of those who are, but, um, if they can grab people, they're grabbing them.

So I think this is a good thing and we'll see, is it possible to, to reach a point where ransomware isn't worth it anymore? I don't think we're anywhere close to that, but, um, but you know, at the same time, international law enforcement isn't letting it go unchecked.

Yeah. Which is good. Yeah. It's good. No, this is, this made me happy. I hate these guys. I'm not a fan. Yeah. Have any of us been directly affected by ransomware? Um, no, not me.

Well, I guess so. Uh, the Toronto library system has been shut down for almost over a year now and they're just starting to come back up to speed because they got hit. So I, it didn't really affect me so much, but definitely like, you know, taking my son to the library was kind of a weekly activity for a while and it's been off the table for at least seven months now.

Wow. They just wouldn't let the physical locations open. Uh, they had no way to, they, they basically shut down their entire computer systems and basically took forever to kind of have them comb through. So nobody was returning books, uh, because there were no records of anything.

So, and there, you couldn't check things out for a while. They finally slowly started to open that back up, but it's still not back 100%. So, you know, when I used to go to the library, there were these little cards in the back and you'd sign your name and you'd hand them the card and then they'd give you the book and then you'd get a piece of mail if you forgot to return it.

That was my initial thinking. It was like, well, why don't you just start some cards then? Yeah. But, uh, no, they didn't do that. Okay. Cause I'm like, we had this problem figured out a long time ago. How to, how to check things out of a library. Now everything is scanned and digital.

That's it. Yeah. Why couldn't the ransomware folks go after all of our mortgages and our car loans? Because, you know, that would be fight club and we'd be happy. Yeah. That would make us happy. Uh, oh well. Yeah. Uh, I wanted to call out, uh, a website that I've been frequently frequenting lately, a blog, as it were, it's called pixel envy.

I don't know if you guys are familiar with it. Um, I seem to remember hearing of it, but I've not, uh, been frequenting it for sure. Yeah. Well, my pathway to it was that, um, I've been a long time reader of daring fireball, which is John Gruber's, um, you know, Mac focused, uh, site and been finding myself, uh, just mostly for, I guess what you could label personality differences, finding myself frustrated with

what I've been reading there. So I was looking for an alternative, you know, something that I can kind of start my day with while I'm getting myself settled in. And I put the word out and asked some folks, what's a good substitute or addition to what I'm reading now.

And a couple of folks said, Hey, you should check out pixel envy and I like it. And it's come part of my daily routine. It's, uh, it's a nice, nice opinions and news, uh, not as focused on the Mac specifically the way daring fireball is, but certainly covers some of that.

So pass it along as a recommendation. I will add it to my, uh, my list of sites I check every now and then. Yeah. Yes. I will add it to my RSS reader because I don't leave home. True.

Yeah. All right. You're like a wampa in a cave, Jason. Speaking of which, I want, so I have a question. This is, this is for, I'm going to start with you, Brian and, and Jason, you can certainly chime in here. In Empire Strikes Back.

Yes. Does the wampa have horns? Well, let me, uh, let me quickly address this. Standing at a height of 2.5 to 3 meters with an average mass of 150 kilograms. The wampa was one of the top carnivorous predators, but wampas themselves had predators such as the fire-breathing dragon slugs.

The mammals sported a pair of small cranial horns and lived in cages, or caves, not cages. Well, maybe cages somewhere. Maybe predator went there. So, to, on, even though Brian cheated, my answer would have been yes. Okay.

I also would have said yes before I, I Googled. Yes. Okay. You're right. But they don't point up. No, they were down. No. They're, they're like a, like a ram. They look like overgrown ears. So, I just put a link in the show notes.

Okay. Click through that. Now, what you'll see is three different versions of the wampa. So, the first one is the puppet that they used for close-ups of the wampa. And this is a puppet that Phil Tippett built.

And the story is that the, the stuff that they shot in the UK was terrible of the wampa, the particularly anything that had a close-up of its face. Because if you scroll down, you'll see the face that they had of the wampa that looks like a Pekingese or something.

It's really, yeah. Yeah, it's really bad. And then scroll down more and you'll see the, the special edition, you know, wide shot wampa that they, that they created for the special editions.

So, what's interesting is that the Phil Tippett wampa has no horns at all. Right. But if you go to a despecialized edition of The Empire Strikes Back and you frame through it, which I have done, you will, you'll notice that the Phil Tippett, anytime there's a close-up of the wampa, no horns.

But back in the ice cave, when there's a wide shot of the wampa, it has horns. Right. So, the question is, are we dealing with two wampas? Hand shot first and wampas have horns. End of story.

Now get out of here with that fucking shit. Well, so, are you familiar with all the, uh, the, the deleted scenes of the wampas on Hoth? I am not. No. Oh, really? Oh. Enlighten us, oh, Sage One.

Oh, my gosh. I can't believe you don't know this, Brian. I can't believe I call myself a Star Wars fan. Oh, God. You've just gone down several levels in my book. So, if you go through deleted scenes for Empire Strikes Back, when they were on the ice base, the underground ice base, they had captured some wampas.

And they had them captive. Are you sure they weren't just a snowy, uh, snowy Wookiees? No. And when the Empire comes, they, they release some of the wampas. So, there is hilariously bad footage of stormtroopers getting swiped by wampas.

Okay. And there's also a gag where there's this door that says, like, do not open. This room's full of wampas, right? And the gag is, when the Empire comes to the base, C-3PO runs up to the door and rips the sign off the door.

All right? So, then the snowtroopers come up and they're like, gee, I wonder what's in this room. It's just a door. Yeah. And so, they open the door and a big old wampapaw, which looks like a, you know, a two-by-four with a bunch of fur wrapped around it, comes out of the door and whacks a stormtrooper.

So, it's great that it didn't make it in the movie because it looks ridiculous. But, it also points out that the wampa was not a singular, originally, the wampa was not a singular creature. And, I don't know.

So, maybe, so that could be an excuse that we're dealing with two wampas here. I think it's just, you know, whatever. What I love about this is the only reason that the wampa exists at all is because Mark Hamill got in a car accident in between shooting the two movies. And they had to explain why he looked different.

Yeah. So, they invented a wampa, horned or not, that took a swipe out of his face. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, have you ever seen the film Corvette Summer? I remember watching it once, ages ago. And it did not exactly stick in the memory.

It's a delightfully terrible movie. Okay. And it is, it's Mark Hamill and, oh gosh, what's the name of the woman who's the secretary of the Ghostbusters? Oh, Jeanette, that's her character name in Ghostbusters.

I know who you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's the female lead. Okay. Sex appeal up the wooz-off. Annie Potts. Annie Potts. Thank you. Annie Potts. There we go. So, imagine we're probably talking about a 20-year-old Annie Potts. Right. And it's, like I say, it's a delightfully bad film, but they're both good in it.

Last time, I saw it because it was free on YouTube. And I was like, oh man, I got to check this out. This is, could this be as bad as it is alleged to be? And it is. Yeah. But it's a fun watch because of how bad it is. Little known fact in some of the deleted scenes from Corvette Summer, Annie Potts has horns.

Right. The Corvette has a horn. I totally remember this movie. I remember the car. I totally remember the car. And Annie Potts is a cutie in this. Oh yeah. Yeah, she is. She is. Yeah. What? I know what I'm watching this weekend. There you go.

All right. Corvette Summer from 1978. Yeah. Danny Bonaduce was in it? Briefly. Oh, wow. Okay. All right. So, here's the deal. So, for next week's show, watch the deleted scenes from Empire Strikes Back and we'll talk about the wampas.

Hot wampa talk next week. Hot wampa talk. Tune in, everybody. Yeah. Jason, your attendance is optional. To horn or not to horn? Thank you. I'm going to go get a sandwich. There you go. Wampa burger. Closing shout outs.

Over at Patreon, we've got nobody this week. What the hell is wrong with you people? Just for $3 a month, you can help support the show and keep us on the air. Yeah. Patreon.com slash GOG. I personally blame Patreon for being a crappy service, but it's the service we've got, people. Yeah, for now, for now. I've been looking into Ghost.

Ghost is pretty damn nice. Sorry, it's just the pain about it moving. Yeah, but I'm the one that has to do it, so. That's true. But I have to listen to you complain about it. It makes for good content. Let's not shit you have to write. Over at PayPal, we've got Andrew, Brian, Tom, Joseph, and Dennis. Thank you all so much.

Thank you. And over at the tip jar, we've got Karen, Eric, and Ross. Woo-hoo. No reviews. Nobody's died this week except my humanity. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. 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 637.

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