645: A Man on the Nude

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. I just want to cover this real quick, Brian. Don't want to labor on it too much. We weren't here last week because my dog Bam Bam died, so it was very sudden and just wasn't really in the mood to do a show. Understandable.

Yeah, very understandable. A huge thank you to everyone who wrote. I really, really appreciate it. I really, really needed it. And a super big thank you to Rocky R., who sent me some cash to help cover the burial expenses, which were significant, unfortunately.

So, when your dog dies, they give you a leash, a collar, and say, will that be cash or credit? It's the most inhumane shit I've ever had to go through. It's terrible. They kind of do that with people too, Jason. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. But generally, it's not at the same moment.

That's true. Yeah. Not at the same moment. You try to space it out a little bit. You get a little bit more time. Yeah. A little bit more time. But the one thing didn't happen that everybody was worried was happening. I didn't go get loaded. So, I am 478 days sober today. So, there we go. Congratulations. I got a lot of people asking me about that. So, I just wanted to cover that on the show too. So, with that, let's move on to the news.

In the news. All right. Let's try to establish some normalcy. Welcome to Grump Healed Geeks, Brian. Well, the FCC has been on a tear to try to get things back to the way they could have once been and sort of once were.

They've decided to vote to reinstate net neutrality protections that were killed during the Trump administration, which is good news. So, as expected, of course, the vote fell across party lines. We just happened to have three Democratic commissioners in favor and two Republicans saying no. So, we, you know, outnumbered them.

With net neutrality rules in place, broadband service is considered an essential communications resource under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, back when the internet started. Back when Al Gore was driving the information superhighway. When I was coding by hand. So, this enables the FCC to regulate broadband internet in a similar way to water, power, and phone services.

So, ISPs have to treat broadband usage in the same way. Users have to be provided with access to all content, websites, and apps under the same speeds and conditions. ISPs can't block or prioritize certain content. So, Netflix can't pay up for better tubes. And they're not allowed to throttle access to specific sites or charge streaming services for faster service.

All good things. Okay. Well, I find it mind-boggling that all of this comes down to five people. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. And hundreds of thousands of dead people, if you talk about the open public comment system that they had from before.

Yeah. It gives us great faith that they can't lock down their commenting system. Exactly. Exactly. Well, there's one app that the government can ban and is trying to. Everybody's seen this in the news. TikTok has to... Divest. Yes, they have to divest or get banned.

The Senate has passed the bill that bans TikTok, and they snuck it into the foreign aid bill, which was a very smart thing to do because we want to get that foreign aid out there. Well, at least some people do, depending on the protests you look at this week. The thing is, TikTok has come back and said, hmm, let's run the numbers on this.

You guys want us to sell. You're strong-arming us to sell, or you're going to ban us. Well, it turns out you guys are a quarter of our global revenue, but you're only 5% of our daily active users, and we have the algorithm.

Do we want to give you the rest of that revenue from the rest of the world and our algorithm? No, I don't think we do, is the current thinking over at TikTok, which is smart, which also goes to the point that there's a reason they want to keep that algorithm in China.

It is a major state secret. Believe what you want. TikTok is owned by the Chinese government, at least in part. So they are getting the data. They are in the controlling interest, that's what I would say. Yeah, in many, many ways.

In many, many ways. And it only takes a phone call to put the finger on the scale of the algorithm to get us to do what they want us to do. So I see this as a, you know, they're going to try and challenge it in court, see if they can stay open.

The real thing that they're going to do is lawyer up, because they have almost a year before this actually takes effect. So this is going to go pretty far. The lawyers, as per usual, will win. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Do you, what's your thought on it? What would you like to see happen?

I would like to see, I would like to see them voluntarily pull themselves from the, from the US. Yeah. That for me would be perfect. Any way that there is no more TikTok, that TikTok goes away because, you know, I've been, I have a seven-year-old. I see the kids, I see the kids on campus at a school.

I know what's happening with these phones. I'm working my way through the anxious generation. Something's got to change. Now, unfortunately, I think just banning TikTok just means somebody else is going to leap into the breach. We need something more systematic to change. But anything, anything to stop, take, start taking this stuff down a peg and making it less important in people's daily lives, I am 100% for.

And, I mean, they have really, really, really nailed that algorithm. It is scary how good it is. I won't even install it anymore. I just won't. I can't have it. Yeah. No, it's, you know, you're like, oh, I'm just going to take it. Where's the rest of the night go?

The sun's coming up. Yeah. You know, it's like, oh, why did I just smoke that crack? It just happens. I mean, Instagram reels is good, too. It's not as good. It's getting there. But at least it's not controlled by the Chinese. Yeah. Yeah. It's just Zuckerberg. Yeah. Which, yeah. Okay.

At least he's somewhat predictable, you know? Yeah. Somewhat predictable. Well, let's talk about somebody completely unpredictable. Good old Elon. Yep. Well, the Cybertruck. Having some issues there, Jason. I saw one coming down the street the other day, and I literally, like, stepped to the other side of the sidewalk.

I was just like, just, I don't trust these things. Keep them away. It's a outrageously expensive vehicle made almost entirely out of metal, and you can't get the goddamn gas pedals to work, and it jams. Yeah.

That's the thing. And the brakes don't work. The steering doesn't work. God. And you're trusting this guy to give you self-driving, full self-driving? He can't put a car together. Oh, we'll talk about that in a minute. Yeah. Anyways, almost every single, I believe every single one of the Cybertrucks is now in a recall situation, and this isn't an over-the-air recall.

This is, holy shit, we better build a better gas pedal. Yeah. Or, you know, the one that, like, I don't know, worked in 1950. See, I have a vehicle made of all metal, too. You know, it weighs just about as much as a Cybertruck, but the gas pedal doesn't fall off. It's great.

Yeah, isn't it nice when that actually stays on? Yeah, and the steering wheel works as expected. You know, things just happen to work. So, I have one computer that kind of works most of the time, but it doesn't. If the computer doesn't work, guess what does work?

The Jeep. My Jeep works, no matter what. It's great. But, yeah, I'm actually terrified of these things, because they are so massive. It's like, ugh, scary, scary, scary. Well, in Washington, a 56-year-old Tesla driver was charged with vehicular homicide after his vehicle, operating on autopilot, struck and killed a 28-year-old motorcyclist, Jeffrey Nissen.

The incident occurred as the driver was reportedly browsing TikTok on his phone. No, not about TikTok. But he was just, he's still browsing his phone. He could have been. We don't know. So, he wasn't fully attentive. Despite passing sobriety tests at the scene, police arrested him after determining his distraction was significant.

Yeah. He wasn't paying any attention at all. Nope. Nope. They finally released him on a $100,000 bail, and the crash adds to the growing list of fatalities linked to autopilot usage since 2019. Mm-hmm. Autopilot and fatalities should not be in the same sentence.

You know? Yeah. Just saying. Yeah. Well, moving on from that, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has closed its investigation into Tesla's autopilot after finding 13 fatal crashes related to misuse.

Now, the agency reviewed hundreds of crashes involving autopilot, and they say that there is a critical safety gap between driver expectations and the system's true capabilities leading to foreseeable misuse and avoidable crashes.

How long have we said you can't call something fully self-driving and have it not be? If I go to the store and I order a steak and they give me a head of kale and say, no, it will eventually become a steak, that doesn't mean it's ever going to become a steak.

Yep. Yep. Words matter. Words matter. And it's hard to blame the people because maybe they don't listen to our podcast. Maybe they just read what's on the tin. It said foie gras. I did not expect pigeon shit. I know. So the NHTSA is now opening a new investigation to evaluate whether Tesla's recent recall fix is effective enough.

The agency criticized Tesla's data collection, saying the company only receives, get this, telemetry from around 18% of reported crashes involving autopilot. Now, if the car is supposedly on autopilot recording everything it does so it can drive you safely, why is there only 18% of the data available?

Hmm? Somehow I have a feeling we're never going to find out. Yeah. They put the memory chip right on the front bumper. So the first thing that gets crushed is the evidence. It's a fully self-uploading data chip. Yeah. Yeah. Except it doesn't. Nope.

But this one's pretty fun. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz has accused Tesla of consumer fraud on a massive scale, claiming the automaker is wrongly reporting its deferred revenue from full self-driving. It gets you on both ends, that FSD. Moskovitz is now the CEO of Asana, which I didn't know.

Tesla's data presentation is fraudulent, he says, in that people are going to jail at the end. Oh, Dusty. Come on. Nobody goes to jail for this shit. Nope. No. He's alleging that Tesla is inflating its autopark revenue numbers by counting an earlier version released years ago.

Although experts are saying that more evidence is needed to claim an Enron-level event. So we'll see how this goes. But I love this. Tesla and CEO Elon Musk maintain they are making progress on autonomous driving technology. Right. Great.

Yeah. Okay. So we've established we can't really trust Elon's Cybertruck. We can't really trust Elon's full self-driving. Don't get me started on Neuralink. Yeah. But hey, let's take a chance on a TV. How does that sound, Jason?

Sure. Let's do a TV. Okay. Well, he's announced that there's going to be X is going to announce a smart TV app for streaming video. Or more accurately, it claims that it's building one with absolutely not launch date mentioned whatsoever. So chances of this ever actually showing up slim to none.

But the appropriately named XTV will stream only porn. Because it's called XTV. Yes. Porn and Nazi propaganda. Yeah. And Tucker Carlson says it wants to be your go-to companion for high quality immersive entertainment experience on a larger screen.

If only we didn't have already go-to companions for high quality immersive entertainment experience on larger screens called Everything Else. Everything Else Under the Sun. Yes. But we're going to get an XTV, except we're probably not going to. Yeah. He sends you, he mails you a flip book.

Someday we're going to have an app. But for now, use this. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. So anyways, there's some press release that went out, which of course has to throw AI into the mix. And it boasts about effortless casting from a mobile device to a TV, except this was supposed to be a TV app. So why would you need to cast to the TV since there's the app on the TV?

Yeah. We've got casting from the phone to the TV already. We've had that for 10 years. I swear to God, people just go to chat GPT now and say, write me a press release. And they don't even read them. No, they don't read them is the problem. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm, looks good. Okay.

Hmm. Grammarly said it's okay. It must be fine. Commas are all in the right place, unless you like the Oxford. Yep. There you go. All right. So Amazon is halting its Prime Air drone delivery operations in Lockford, California. Woo!

Okay. That's the second location that they had after College Station, Texas, if you remember them. Vaguely. Yeah. Yeah. Despite the cancellation, Amazon plans to continue drone deliveries in College Station and is set to launch a new site in Toleson, Arizona, later this year.

I wonder what happened in Lockford that they're not talking about. So you're pulling out of the state that actually has a lot of regulations and going to the two that don't have many. Arizona, where you can do anything you want except have an abortion. I wonder why. Oh, nice. They're not citing specific reasons.

They're not saying. Regulations. No, we're not saying at all. But they're saying that all of. Yeah. Regulations. They're just saying that all affected employees would be offered positions at other locations and that the community's feedback over the past years has been invaluable. A.K.A. get those fucking flying nets out of my goddamn sky.

Pretty much, yes. That's probably what it's been. Yep. Kids with slingshots out back. That's it. In a strange turn of event this week, along with, you know, net neutrality, going, what? Good things are happening? Well, the Federal Trade Commission has issued a new rule that effectively bans most non-compete agreements nationwide, which is, you know, I haven't thought about non-competes in ages because I live in California where non-competes are unenforceable.

Yep. You know, which has been great. I love it. Everybody, like, puts one in. I just chuckle. I'm like, you know we're in California, right? Same in Canada. So you can't do that. I mean, you can, you know, at high levels of the company, but not for rank-and-file employees, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So approximately 20% of U.S. employees are currently restricted by these contracts, which limit their ability to switch jobs or start competing businesses. The rule is expected to generate an impressive range of economic benefits, including the creation of 8,500 new businesses each year and a potential increase in annual wages by an average of, wait for it, $524 per worker.

Okay. Not huge money we're talking about there. Nope. They're saying there might be more patents and things like that, which, you know, makes me think that, okay, well, we won't have legal battles over the non-competes. We'll have intellectual property theft lawsuits. Yeah, there's going to be more lawsuits.

So, yeah. Yeah. So, lawyers win again. Yep. You married into the right family, Brian. That's all I got to say. Yep. Always going to need a lawyer. Keep those lawyers close. Now, this is a fun one. Axon. You know who Axon is, Brian? Vaguely.

Okay. Well, they invented the taser. Yeah. And then they pivoted into body cams for cops. So, anytime you see, you know. The ones that conveniently turn off all the time? Exactly. Yeah. They have black people recognition, so they actually turn off when a black person walks into the scene. You'll see them on, anytime you look at the news, you'll see the little Axon logo on the body cams.

So, they have launched some new software called DraftOne that automates police reports using GPT-4. What could go wrong? I don't think I want the first draft of the software. Yeah. God. They had to go to Copilot for that.

Now, we've got DraftOne. Yeah. This is not a good idea. Yeah. The tool transcribes audio from the Axon's body cameras, aiming to reduce paperwork and allow officers, wait for it, more community time. Unless community time is down at the bar getting loaded with your buddies after you, you know, cap some little bitch.

That's probably what they're talking about. Critics include the Electronic Frontier Foundation and everybody else, who expresses concern over potential misuses and AI's tendency to generate inaccurate information. I'm sure if I Googled or use your search engine of choice right now, AI use by the police, I don't think there would be a single win story.

I think they're all losers. Yeah. This has not been going well. Let's knock it off, people. I love this. Despite safeguards requiring human review before submission, there are calls for strict guidelines to prevent abuse of the technology and law enforcement. Requiring human review means pressing the OKI Reddit button.

Yes. Just like those press releases we were discussing earlier. Exactly. This is great. Yeah. Axon claims the software significantly cuts down on report writing time, yet its widespread adoption remains limited. It should remain extremely limited, as in not used at all.

Yes. Not used at all. You know, you can fill out your forms, people. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Part of the job. Yeah. You have a job. It's part of the job. You have a job. Oh, God. Here's another one. This one is not so egregious.

Los Angeles is tackling its homelessness crisis. Because it's not homeless anymore. It's homelessness. You are experiencing homelessness. Great. Through a pilot program using predictive AI to preemptively identify and assist individuals and families at risk of losing their homes.

Now, here we go. Launched in 2021. How much AI was there in 2021? Oh, there was. There was machine learning and computer programs. Right. Back in 2021. The initiative has already supported nearly 800 at-risk residents with an impressive 86% successfully maintaining permanent housing.

So, that's a win. That's a win. I agree. You're probably sullying the program by calling it AI, actually. Yeah. Funded by the American Rescue Plan Act, the program offers substantial financial aid ranging from $4,000 to $8,000 to cover essential costs like rent and utilities.

Not bad. You know. So, that's good. The approach not only addresses immediate housing concerns, but also strives for long-term stability by tracking and assisting clients up to 18 months post-discharge. Also good. You know. Keep people in their homes and off the streets.

Critics caution about the ethical implications of AI and governance highlighting potential risks around data privacy and the effectiveness of the technology in preventing homelessness. Well, 86% success is good. You know. So, this is what I'm saying. Okay. That's decent.

Give it a shot. Give it a shot. We've got it budgeted for, so. It's kind of the intention of the use of AI. This is aiming and striving to, like, help people and lift them up as opposed to law enforcement, which is generally catching people who are doing bad things. So, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. What's the worst thing that can happen here? You're going to knock on somebody's door and say, are you at risk of becoming homeless? And they'll be like, no, we're doing just fine. Thanks. Yep. Yeah. There's the downside. Yeah. I actually want to look into this more, how people are identified to get into the program and what they have to give up.

Yeah. Because I'm sure they're going to have to give up, you know, financial information and things like that, like ongoing financial information, like, you know, access to their bank accounts and bank card statements and things like that. You know, all of a sudden they're doing great and we can get you off the program now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm wondering how I can apply, to be honest.

That's fair. $4,000 to $8,000 sounds actually pretty good right now. So, I'll take it. So, that's a good use instead of more community time for cops. Exactly. And from the, we've heard this all before again, files, the world's latest AI companies pledged to protect the safety of children online.

Leading artificial intelligence companies, including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and others have jointly pledged to prevent their AI tools from being used to exploit children and generate child sexual abuse material or CSAM. Too late. Too late. Thanks for the words. How about you do something about it instead?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. This is just more words. Mm-hmm. Yep. A bunch of recommendations that you're not going to enforce, that people are going to have to do willingly, which they're not actually going to do. So, thanks a lot for that. The shit's been open sourced already. Yeah. It's all open sourced. It's out there.

Everybody has got their own version of it. I keep hearing about this Nudify stuff. It's all over the place. Come on. Yeah. Unstable diffusion. And now Meta's got its new things out there. And everybody's putting out open source models, which, you know, give people the opportunity to go turn off the guardrails.

Yep. That's the way it's going to be. So, I don't know how the big companies are saying they can do it when all the little guys have already got their toes in the water. So. Yeah. At least as far as general, you know, general stuff goes. I mean, they're talking about on their platform. I can understand that. Yeah.

But a lot of shit, the bad stuff is happening off platform. That's the problem. That's the problem. And it leaks onto the platform because, guess what? You don't have enough moderators. Mm-hmm. Yep. All right. Well, Meta's oversight board is getting in on it. That group of useful people?

That group of useful people. The job that I so desperately want to have. We would be so phenomenal at it. We would be so fucking good at that job. Mm-hmm. Yes. No. Maybe. Go about your merry way. Where's my check? You absolutely should not do this. I know you're not going to listen to us and you're going to do it anyways.

Check, please. Okay. Well, here we go. So, Meta's oversight board is currently examining its policies on handling AI-generated explicit images following inconsistencies in the removal of deepfakes involving female celebrities. The cases in question including one where Meta failed to remove a deepfake of an Indian public figure which remained online until escalated to the oversight board.

Another case involved a deepfake of an American public figure which was successfully removed under Meta's bullying and harassment policy. So, two different people, two different, you know, procedures. They just have no idea what they're doing. Now, were these just deepfakes and, like, they were completely regular or were these sexually explicit deepfakes?

I'm guessing they were sexually explicit since that's the— Well, doesn't Meta have a policy of not putting sexually explicit material, whether it's AI or not, on their platform? Bingo! Bingo! This is such a confusing and difficult case. I understand why it had to go to the oversight board.

It should have been removed anyways! Yeah. Yeah. My God. I hate these places. Yep. But, public input, Brian, is being sought until April 30th. So, you have until April 30th to get in on this one to better align Meta's response with the challenges posed by deepfake technology.

Hmm. Here's the challenge. They're naked. All right. Take it off. There you go. Following the public consultation, Meta will have 60 days to act on the board's recommendations—or not—promising to implement any decisions made. Uh-huh.

Okay. Yep. Been here before, too. Fucking Meta's oversight board, the job that every nerd wants. Instagram is deploying new tools to protect young people and combat sexual extortion. Okay. Some more meta news.

This includes a feature that will automatically blur nudity in direct messages. After being saved discreetly in the programmer's personal file. The platform says scammers often use direct messages to ask for intimate images. So, the blur feature aims to discourage this and give users more control.

Now, if you're blurring my images, you're giving users less control, honestly. And here's the deal. If you're smart enough to know that I'm sending a nude in a direct message on Instagram, can't you just not send it? How's that?

Can't you just not send it? Yes. You throw up an error message. Sorry, you can't send that due to our rules. Hot dog or not. Yep. There we go. Not that hard. Nipple detection. We have it. Also, apparently, it's just a switch.

It'll be turned on by default for teen accounts, assuming that they actually said that they were a teenager, which obviously is checked. And then they can go into their settings and just turn it off. Exactly. Oh, God. I know. It's so useful. I know. The FBI has warned of a large increase in sextortion cases targeting minors.

Duh. With victims often being coerced or paying money to engage or engage in sexual favors to prevent the release. Yeah, we know all of that stuff. Now, Microsoft says it's working on technology to identify accounts potentially engaging in sextortion. Seems like a fairly straightforward thing.

If somebody's getting nudes, put them on the list and then look at them. It's like, okay. If they can tell what's naked, then it shouldn't be allowed in a DM. If it's not allowed in the main site, why is it allowed in a DM?

You know, the standards should be consistent across the platform. Yes. It's on the platform. Doesn't matter if it's public or private. Exactly. So fix that, then fucking come back and talk to me. Now, here's a fun one. This one actually put a smile on my face.

Teens who allegedly stole cars face two extra years for bragging about it on social media. I love this. All right. Yes. In Australia, two teens are facing extra jail time for allegedly stealing high-end cars and then bragging about it on social media. A 15-year-old and an 18-year-old are the first to be charged under a new post-and-boast law.

Love that. That adds two years to sentences for criminals who advertise their crimes online. Good. There were three people involved, but two of them are the idiots who posted about it. That third guy has got to be so pissed. What do you mean?

He's got to be happy as a clam. He's getting off. Well, I mean, he's getting two years less, but we may not have been caught at all, goddammit. Interestingly enough, similar anti-boasting laws have also been placed in places like Florida. They're trying to do that because of the organized retail theft that goes on down there.

Yeah. Yeah. So they're saying that posting about things like that can lead to felony charges. So, I mean, I get it. That's good. But if you're going to punish, don't you kind of want these people to go ahead and post it so you can find them easier? Well, that's fine. Because, look, man, sentences are not a deterrent.

We know that. Yeah. Apparently not anymore. There would be no murder if, you know, the death penalty worked. So that's how it goes. Okay. And criminals are dumb. Don't forget that. That's true. Yeah. I know a lot of them. They're pretty dumb. And they don't listen to this show, so I'm safe.

This is a great story that's been passed around all week. NASA's Voyager 1 resumed sending engineering updates to Earth. Yay. Pretty cool. That's great. Yeah. For the first time since November, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is sending usable data back to Earth. Voyager 1 stopped sending readable data in November due to an issue with one of its onboard computers.

And the team at JPL discovered that a faulty memory chip was to blame. And then they developed a plan to relocate and adjust the affected software code to other parts of the computer's memory. So on April 20th, we got data back from Voyager 1. On 420?

Yes, we did. So maybe we got data back. Who knows? Great. Well, that's one step. Now they've got to be able to get the science data back. So it's great that we're getting engineering data.

Not really telling us much about what it's doing out there, but the science data, next step. Get on it, guys. They'll fix it. They'll get it. They'll get it. It'll be cool. It's all good, man. It's all good. If they can debug a 46-year-old spacecraft from millions of miles away, you'd think Instagram would be able to stop nudes.

Yeah, well. Just saying. We put a man on the nude. I mean, yeah, what? Amazon is launching a new unlimited grocery delivery subscription service because we didn't have enough of those. Nope, not enough of those around. Here's the rub on this one. This is for Prime members and customers with an EBT card in the U.S.

And for those old fuckers like us here in the U.S., EBT cards are what we used to call food stamps. Right. So for Prime members, it's $9.99 a month and $4.99 a month for EBT card holders. So we'll see how that plays out.

Apparently, this is not a new thing. I did a little research on this. And there are other – like basically every delivery service under the sun here in the U.S. is allowing EBT cards. So Amazon is a little behind the times on this. All right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, it's like a lot of people who are on government assistance and welfare are either old or infirm and can't leave the house.

So it makes sense to give them the option for delivery. I agree. That's fair. Yeah. You remember WorldCoin, Jason? Oh, do I ever remember WorldCoin? It was the let us scan your eyeballs and we'll give you some of our free bullshit crypto. That's it. Well, they're running out of orbs.

Oh, no. The orb is the thing that scans your brain, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is. Apparently, 10 million people in 160 countries have been willing to hand over their scans in exchange for some of the free crypto. Okay. Unbelievable.

Anybody who gets their eye scan gets 10 WorldCoin, roughly 50 bucks in total at the current price and three WorldCoin every two weeks after that. So it's kind of like a give us your eyeballs and we'll give you UBI and coinage you can't use and isn't valuable. Yeah, exactly. But they've got between and how they only know, like, between 300 to 500 orbs are out there.

They're not sure how many. Okay. It's somewhere between 300 and 500, but it's not enough, apparently. And they can't move them around fast enough because, I don't know. So, great. This is a Sam Altman company. They should have enough money to make a few more orbs.

You'd think. You'd think. I think the problem is just trying to get them where they need to be because, you know, holy shit, we got one guy in Uganda that wants to get scanned now. That's about it. So, Amazon Prime drone delivery has a few extra drones lying around, so maybe they can strap some orbs to the drones and fly them around.

Hey, everybody, look up. That's it. The whole community is at once. Yeah. And in what I hope isn't foreshadowing news and not the first story we do about this, and then we look back at it from five years later being locked in our houses again, the bird flu situation is not looking great.

Oh, good. The FDA reports this week that lab tests have found genetic material from strains of the H5N1 avian influenza in samples of store-bought pasteurized milk. Oh, great. Now, the good part about the pasteurization is it does kill the influenza strains, so that is good.

However, this means that there are a bunch of cows found in at least 30 farms across eight states that are infected by this. There's also been cases found in cats tied to these farm outbreaks and at least one human case, although there have been no deaths yet, but apparently this is, if it leaps and it's bad, it's going to be really bad for us.

Okay, we need to rename this then because it's obviously not fucking bird flu anymore. No. No. You know? Yep. It is cow and person and cat flu. Yeah, cat flu. Cat flu has a nice ring to it. Yeah. Yeah. So hopefully this will not continue as being a story on this show.

I have been watching Franklin on Apple TV starring Michael Douglas.

I can tell that this is his, like, this may be his swan song. He's going for the big role, Benjamin Franklin, Founding Fathers, lots of money spent, period piece. It's actually pretty good, though. So I'm not minding it. It's fun. I'm enjoying it. Yeah.

I watched the first half of the first episode before I fell asleep. And that's no reflection on the show. I just was tired. Right. I'm not mad at it. Yeah, it's fun. I'm enjoying it. So I'm caught up. I'm waiting for the new episode. So, yeah, it's worth a watch. Now, Brian, I worked in the motion picture advertising industry for quite some time.

Yes. And I would like to talk to you about the key art for Franklin. I don't know if you've noticed it, but it is one of the worst Photoshop jobs I've ever seen in my life. It's spectacularly bad. Spectacularly bad. I mean, it is so terrible.

His face on the body is like the shading's off, the size is off, everything's off. I mean, this is like some stable diffusion shit right there. It looks so terrible. Well, now that if we're going to pick apart stuff like the key art, the opening sequence, the opening credits for the show, were they trying to be Monty Python?

I don't know. I had to skip it. I just I don't I don't watch opening credits. Yeah, they are horrible. Yeah, because I think they were trying to go for, you know, that because Game of Thrones changed the game with opening credits. Yeah. And they try and do this whole artistic thing at the beginning.

Yeah, well, yeah, I could tell that they were shooting for something high art, but I just start singing the Monty Python theme song in my head every time it rolls. That's about it. That's about it. So I was just like they spent so much money on this thing and they it was a miss. Yeah. All of it's a miss except for the actual show.

Yeah. So that's good. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Disney Plus is reportedly planning to add linear cable style streaming channels to Disney Plus. According to the information, the company wants subscribers to spend more time in the app. And by offering more viewing options, it might entice users to stick around. In addition, by running ads on these channels, Disney can boost its bottom line.

So this is what's known as fast or free ad supported streaming channels, which are all over the place on like Roku and Pluto and Tubi and all that. They're going to try. I think everybody's looking into adding these things right now. So and it's things like, you know, for Disney, it would be like the princesses channel.

And it would just continue running different Disney movies with princesses or there could be the Star Wars channel and just run episodes. And, you know, people put these on as background noise while cleaning and so on. So one wonders why advertisers would pay for that, because everybody knows when you throw those things on, it's just to have some shit going on in the background.

Yep. Yeah. That's that Samsung TV I bought where I told you, like, the apartment manager forgot to sign out of all his accounts. Yeah. That thing is stuck. I can't figure out how to change the default channel. But every time it opens, it is stuck on the Baywatch fast channel.

There was literally there's a Baywatch channel. Right. There also is a Top Gear fast channel, though, which is pretty good. Yeah. The old Top Gear. You know, that kind of stuff is kind of great. I mean, I prefer listening to music, but I get it. I get throwing on something like that and just having it on in the background. But again, are you basically telling your advertisers they're dumb?

Yeah. Kind of. Okay. I think that there is a contentious relationship between advertisers and networks already. Okay. I think everybody knows the score, Brian. I think so. Oh, but speaking of fast channels, TCL, maker of the TVs, I have two of them.

They make they make my Roku TVs. So with millions of fast channels, like you mentioned Roku before there. There are so many fast channels on Roku. That's the whole Roku channel is that. Right. With with the exception of the weird funding of weird, the Al Yankovic story.

I still don't quite understand that one, which I don't know if you still haven't seen it yet, but go watch that. It's great. I have not. I really do have to watch it. Oh, it's so good. So fucking good. So TCL. This is great. So they're going another route. Instead of buying old crappy TV shows that they could run on their fast channels, they have they have moved to A.I.

Oh, they are A.I generating television shows for their fast channel. The first one they have is a release called Next Stop Paris, a romantic comedy film that was largely created using A.I. technology. I think it is only created using A.I. The film features jarring visual errors, inconsistent characters and poor lip syncing hallmarks of A.I. generated media or Hong Kong TV from the 1970s.

I miss those old Jackie Chan movies. I kill you. I kill you with my fingers. Doesn't really work over audio, I guess, because lips are synced. No. So they're just saying that they want to they want to create A.I. content for their fast channels that are up and coming.

I don't know if you've seen Next Stop Paris, Brian. Oh, no. Oh, you got to check it out. It is it is a masterpiece of shit. It's horrible. So they're saying experts warn this could lead to an influx of A.I. generated garbage.

Too late. I would say that's redundant across streaming platforms and smart TVs as manufacturers seek to collect user data and serve personalized ads that they'll never see because they don't actually watch it. The report argues this dystopian future of TV is not about A.I. producing compelling content, but rather flooding the market with low quality filler that is difficult for viewers to sort through what we used to call reality television.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, whatever. I would like to believe that people aren't going to watch this stuff and it ends up not being worthwhile. But people continue to prove me wrong. So, yep. Yeah. Now, I've spent some time talking about YouTube, particularly kids and viewing as I went through my my issues with the weird rapid holes that it sends kids down.

I watched it with my with my own kid. And then basically we said no more YouTube for you. The Manhattan DA would like to know what the hell's going on right now, too. So he wants to Alvin Bragg, Manhattan's district attorney, wants to meet with YouTube CEO Neil Mohan to discuss why the website allows the posting of videos on how to manufacture ghost guns and why its algorithm is pushing them to underage viewers who watch video game content.

Now, ghost guns are basically, you know, 3D printed guns that can't be traced. There's lots of videos on YouTube about how to do it, even though there's not supposed to be recurring theme from earlier in the show. Yeah. We're worried about them getting pushed into into kids feeds when they're watching a bunch of things about video games when they're not supposed to be on there at all.

So let's just talk about why is it being pushed to anyone on YouTube, let alone kids? So they have the technology to basically recognize these videos. They're accidentally getting into the feed that's pushing him into people after they've watched at least 100 gaming videos.

So you can already recognize it. So why not remove it? Yeah. Seriously. This is going to be a whole nother, we got to do an entire show on what the fuck, people. Brian, we've been doing that show for 11 years.

That's true. That's true. Yeah. So basically that's that. It's getting there and it's not supposed to be there at all in the first place and nobody's going to do anything about it, but we'll have lots of meetings and talk about it. Isn't the Manhattan DA kind of busy right now? You'd think. Yeah, you'd think.

Focus on the bigger problem right now, bud. Yeah, let's let's come on. Did you ever finish watching or did you even start watching Interview with the Vampire? I didn't. I didn't. I heard it was good. The first episodes that I saw were good and then my trial ran out and I never went back to it because I didn't it wasn't I didn't feel like going to Sweden for it, but I may have to catch up on it because season two is coming out and the trailer looks pretty good.

OK, I'll watch the trailer. Maybe I'll get into it again. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think I might go back to it because I really, really enjoyed what they did with it in season one. I think I got five episodes in when my trial ran out. OK. But yeah, no, it's I think I think you'll dig it.

Yeah. As an interview with the vampire super fan. That's true. Yes. Look, it's it's it's no Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. Come on. I'm warm to that movie over the years, by the way. Oh, I have to. I've actually always kind of enjoyed it.

I thought I was massively miscast, but it's a great movie. He was massively miscast and miscast and Jack Reacher, too. But so. OK, here we go. As Spotify amasses power, some artists find success without it. Indie musician Cindy Lee's new album, Diamond Jubilee, is finding success outside of major streaming platforms like Spotify.

The album, which has received high praise from critics, is only available through the GeoCities website of Lee's record label or for free on YouTube. Now, I thought I read that wrong, Brian, when I was going through this. Yep. Turns out GeoCities is still around. Yep. Nobody hit. Nobody flipped the off switch on the way out of the building.

Well, they kind of did. It used to be GeoCities dot com. Now it's GeoCities dot WS. And it's a company that is going back, trying to save all of the old shitty GeoCities websites. And it's layered on top of another hosting platform where you could buy premium hosting. But, you know, you can get a free GeoCities account still.

It is GeoCities dot WS. Like what the shit? That's how you remember dot WS. So but it seems to be working for Cindy Lee. Well, I would like a definition of what success is here. Well, you're never going to make money on the music, so it turns out that the tour is almost completely sold out.

Well, there you go. I mean, you write music, people find out about it through word of mouth still. That's that's great. So good for you. Yeah, I think that's good. Pharrell has also done something similar. So we'll see if there's an ongoing trend to that. Yep. Yep. Well, speaking of somebody who also released an album that's not on a major streamer, and we've talked about this on the show for the entire length of the show, I believe.

Andy Preboys, white trash wins lotto. Has finally been released in its entirety for free. Yes. For free. I downloaded it. Thank you. Yes, I've listened to it a couple of times now, and it just brings back all the feels and the funnies, and it comes with the lyric sheet and the story of the actual musical.

Highly recommended you go check it out. If you want a teaser for it, I put in a link to one of the bits from when they performed on Conan O'Brien, which I believe is the only known video that we have on the internet of it that I captured on a stolen Avid video card that I walked out of Paramount with.

The statute of limitations is long gone for that. I stole this old Avid card just so I could take it home and digitize it when it played. This is in the 90s, believe it or not. And it's like postage stamp size. I'm going to run it through some of that AI upres software that they have from Topaz Labs now to see if I can fix some of it.

But go check it out. It's awesome, and it's free. Cool. Well, speaking of going back to the 90s and something that I hope is going to bring some of the feels, we're getting a Lollapalooza documentary, which will premiere on Paramount Plus in May. Lolla, the story of Lollapalooza, is a three-part docuseries tracing the festival's 30-year run from its early days as a touring punk event.

I take umbrage with the punk event tag. Never punk. It was never punk. To its current iteration is a massive annual bash at Chicago's Grant Park. So looking forward to seeing this. Yeah, I couldn't care less because it wasn't punk, which is why I've never been to a Lollapalooza. Well, some of the later ones, right before they completely switched off, had a lot of punk.

But then they went crazy and had like Metallica and all that shit playing it. But the first fucking five or six were awesome. I went to all those. Yeah, never went. Never went. I'm not a festival guy. I started to go to Riot Fest, and I'm like, yeah, this still kind of sucks. Not a festival guy. Nah, too many people.

Too many people. So in my grief this week, I just watched a lot of TV and sat on the couch with a box of tissues, and in doing so, I watched 24 and 24, Last Chef Standing on the Food Network. Surprisingly entertaining. I'm enjoying it.

I don't know. You're not a competition food guy. I'm not a competition guy. Yeah. So it's not for me. Yep. So one that's sort of a pseudo competition, Best Bite in Town, also in the Food Network, new show. Have you checked that one out? I watched one of the episodes, yeah. It's okay. It's fine. Yeah.

It's, yeah. They can put that on the Food Network Fast Channel. I just need Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives on the Fast Channel. That's enough Guy Fieri for me in my entire life. Well, you got that if you have a Mac subscription, so there you go. Right. I also started to watch Parish on AMC, starring Giancarlo Esposito.

Is there anything he is not in right now? Well, he shouldn't be in this because it's a steaming pile of shit. Oh, okay. It is terrible. It is just horribly written. It reminds me of Your Honor, which was also a terribly written show that came out during the pandemic, also in New Orleans, but I'm sorry, Nowland.

This is based on the BBC One series, The Driver. It should have stayed a BBC One series. They should not have tried to recreate it because it really is horrible. Even my roommate and I were just watching. They're like, why are we watching this? This is bad. Like, Batty McBaddenstein bad. All right. Skip that one.

I also watched the movie Civil War this week. Oh, yeah. What did you think? Surprisingly, not a lot about the Civil War. The Civil War is kind of a side character in the movie. It's mainly about a photojournalist and a budding photojournalist with Kirsten Dunst.

Yeah. And her husband makes a brief appearance in it as one of the scariest people on the planet. I would not recommend watching this movie before you go to bed. So don't do that. That's bad. I think that it is kind of overhyped just because the advertising campaign was so, so woefully deceiving.

That's what I've heard from the few reviews I've read of it so far. It's like the advertising for it was promised a completely different movie than what you actually get. One million percent different movie. All right. And if they would, I can see why they did that because they would have never gotten anybody to go see this movie otherwise.

Right. That's it. You know, it's a decent movie. We don't need to see a movie about what's about to happen in a year. Yeah. And they don't even address much of it. Like I said, the Civil War is kind of a side plot. It's a tertiary character to up the stakes of the main storyline. That's all it does. All right. I give it a 3.4 out of 5.

Okay. So if you want to catch it sometime, catch it. I would not drag my ass to the theater for it and plunk down money for it because it's just going to make you anxious and like, ugh. And, yeah, I mean, that director leaves a lot open to interpretation. Right.

And so people can take away whatever they want to from it. It's a choose-your-own-choose-your-own-adventure. But, yeah, it's a 3.4 out of 5. I will pass. Ups and doodads. Well, I was addicted to my Instagram Reels for a few hot minutes a couple days ago.

Thank God that I don't have TikTok. So now it's only Zuckerberg that's controlling my mind instead of China. And an ad for something went by that just had me in tears. I was chuckling. I was like, I have to order this for a bunch of people as a gag gift for Christmas this year.

It's the big USB enter key. See, you put this in here, and I saw it, and I didn't get it at first. I thought you might have had it already. No, because the way they randomize the photos when it first comes up, you don't quite understand what it is.

And then when you finally get to the one where it's like, oh, that's what it's for? I totally fucking want one of these things. You're the first person I was going to send one to, except I put it in the show notes. God damn it. So, yes. If you got this as a surprise from me, you would be dying, because this is perfect.

I don't want to ruin it for anybody. Go look at it in the show notes. Click on the link. Find the right picture. You'll know immediately which one we're talking about. This thing is awesome. I think I might get one for myself. I think I might get one for myself, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't spoil it. Link is in the show notes.

You must go check it out. Every single one of you listening to this show need this. Every one of you. Yes. If you listen to this show, everybody needs one. Seriously. So good. So good. Another good thing I found is the Perla.

Really horrible name, but it's a photo app. I believe that's high in lingerie, if I remember from my 20s correctly. Well, this is a little different. This is a photo app on the iPhone. Basically, what it does is it takes the raw data from the camera and applies filters to it to simulate film grain.

And it is beautiful. It makes everything look good. I tried it on a bunch of stuff. I did a bunch of flower pictures because all our flowers are blooming right now. And we've got beautiful flowers in the backyard. And I usually get my DSLR and take some nice pictures and print them up and have them framed for people.

But I tried it with my phone. Again, you know, iPhone photos look like iPhone photos. There's no getting around it. This thing makes them look beautiful. Like, like, like hands down, you could not tell this looks like it was shot with film. It's not cheap. And unfortunately, it requires a subscription.

Well, not cheap being a relative term. It's 15 bucks a year. If you take a lot of photographs that you really like, you know, if you're into photography, it is a it is a must have app. I replaced I replaced my main camera button with this on my home screen. It's beautiful, hands down, just I mean, there's a seven day free trial, I believe.

So if you want to check it out, go for it. If you take pictures, I think you'll find that it's like the controls are a little bit take a little bit of getting used to. But if you just leave it on auto and check and just dive into some of the different types of filters, it's beautiful. It really is beautiful. It's what is a major surprise, I think, as far as iPhone photography goes for me.

Cool. Apple is reportedly lowering its sales expectations for the Vision Pro. It's launched, launched about three months ago, less than three months. Analyst Ming Chi Q says Apple has cut its 2024 Vision Pro sales forecast nearly in half from an expected seven to eight hundred thousand units down to just four hundred thousand to five hundred thousand units.

All right. So he cites reduced demand even in the U.S. market as the initial hype has kind of died down. And as from everything that I've heard and from everybody I've heard, it's like it is fantastic. It's just not worth thirty five hundred dollars and there's not a lot to do yet.

Yep. Everybody's waiting for version two. We all knew that. Yeah. Which isn't going to be until after 2025. Yeah. And I love this. He says the poor sales performance suggests the Vision Pro is in a, quote, flop era. What is a flop era? Yeah, as Apple struggles.

Sounds like my 50s. Yeah, seriously. Uh, they're saying that there's just not enough. There's not enough, uh, apps and, uh, it's kind of uncomfortable. Yeah. Uh, you got to put a thing in your pocket with it. Just all the, all the step one stuff that we've always said. He says, Apple still sees the technology as the future, but for now the Vision Pro is falling short of expectations.

And to that I say, whose expectations? Because it certainly wasn't ours because it's spot on with our expectations. Agreed. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. I still want to try one. I want to go, go do it, but just not ahead of time. A bunch of people on our Discord have gone and tried it and they've all loved it, but also the same thing.

Like not, not for that price point and not until there's another version. So. Yeah. Yeah. I really want to give it a shot. Yeah. Um, you have a Sonos, right? Uh, I have one at work. I, I ordered one for our office. Yeah. Okay. We've got like six Sonos one speakers around the house and out in the garage.

I've got a Sonos Ray in the garage with the TV. I love the sound on my Sonos. Yeah. It is. It is unbelievable for what comes out of those little 8,000 ton speakers. Problem has always been the app. The app's a pile of crap. Fucking dumpster fire.

Yeah. Uh, so they have a new one coming, a major overhaul. They're saying, and they, they're calling it the most expensive, not an expense, the most extensive app redesign ever. Uh, well, I'm, I'm hoping it's most extensive your app redesign ever because I've seen a lot of them out there.

Uh, but the thing is, it's like anything is better than what they've got. Seriously. Anything is better. That is true. Yeah. I mean, this is like, this is worse than Spotify's app, which is, I still think the, a high bar for unusability, you know?

So, uh, it says it's coming out for all users on May 7th. So we'll give it a shot when it comes out, but keep an eye out for that. If you have a Sonos and, uh, are just as disenchanted with the, uh, the app experiences we are. Yeah. And I was, uh, looking through and gadget as I do for, for stories every now and then.

And this one caught my eye. There's a new product out there called the rabbit R one. Now this is, uh, basically it's a position as a pocket companion that moves AI from words to action. So it sounds a lot like the humane AI pin, which thudded without a trace. It went into its flop era pretty quickly because nobody could figure out a real use for this thing.

And it was too damn expensive. Now this story was written by Sherilyn Lowe, deputy editor of reviews over at Engadget. Engadget is a pretty good site generally, but this article, Sherilyn has her lips firmly pressed up against rabbit R one's asshole. And I like, it's a glowing review that says nothing.

I still can't figure out what it would be good for, what is interesting about it. But everything in this review is we'll have to wait, but it looks fucking amazing. We're going to have to wait, but this is going to change the world. There's no real features yet, but when they get features, they're going to be awesome. That's this article is horrible.

Isn't it the same thing humane said about their AI pin? Yes, pretty much. This is a horribly written article that tells you nothing. The thing looks like a fucking pager from 1982. That's the only difference. There's a screen and there's a button that you can click to move up and down on the screen. And there's a little wheel.

There's like a scrolly wheel. There's a little scrolly wheel. Like what is this thing? It's got a camera on it. So do that. I do like the picture says 0% updating. That tells me a lot. So it's only 200 bucks. So that's what it's got going on for them.

I have seen a bunch of reviews around the web as well. I don't read them because I don't really care about it because I have a cell phone. Exactly. I don't think people understand. We already have. We're well beyond the phase of our lives where we want to carry around more than one gadget. We want one thing in our pocket.

That's it. Yeah. I don't even want my AirPods case in my pocket. Yeah. For fuck's sake. You know, I want a new iPhone that has built-in AirPods that I can just take out and stick in my ear. Everybody says it's cute. And it's kind of the same type of review. I think this is going, this is going around.

Everybody's like, hey, well, at least it's not the AI, the humane pin, you know? Yeah. It's cheaper. It's cheaper and it's cuter and it's fuzzy. You know, it gives me the fuzzy feel. So I don't know. Yeah. Here's the deal. I'm not going to buy one. I have a cell phone. Don't need it. Don't care. Nope.

And here's a good article that I just put in for people who are kind of interested in how ChatGPT works. It says, how does ChatGPT work? As explained by the ChatGPT team. So it's kind of a technical explainer on how it works. It's kind of right there on the tin. It's interesting.

It's actually a quite interesting read. Yeah. That's all I got for it. That's really it. All right.

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 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. Welcome back, Dave. Hello, gentlemen. It's nice to be back. Hello, Dave. Yes. Very nice. Very nice. So I have a bit of news here, but I'm sure Dave is already aware of this.

And I do believe this is something all three of us. It's in our wheelhouse. We're all going to be watching this. But we are getting a Jim Henson documentary from director Ron Howard. And as the article states, we're already weeping. So I edit Kermit the Frog singing Rainbow Connection over almost anything and people are going to get emotional.

But when he put it over a documentary about the man who created Kermit with footage of them both together, then it surefire shot to the tear ducts. So this will be released on Disney Plus May 31st. The film features people from all across Henson's life, such as family, friends, co-workers, and even the human actors who worked with him. The trailer is out.

And God damn, I want to watch this. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I can't think of who would be a better person to direct a Jim Henson documentary than Ron Howard. Oh, I'm not mad at that at all. Yeah. No, no. I mean, just to think about someone who has a overabundance of empathy.

I think Ron Howard is that person. But wouldn't it be more interesting if it was David Lynch? Yes. Yes, it would. Yes, it would. It would. Jim Henson by John Carpenter. Right.

But why, I'd say, yeah. You know, I remember the day that Jim Henson died and I was in college. And this was, you know, the days before we had cell phones and instant messaging and all that kind of stuff. So in the, or what do you call it, the arts building where the music department was and the theater department and all that sort of stuff, there was a bulletin board where people would leave notes for each other.

And that was a way to communicate. And I remember making my way past the bulletin board and somebody had tacked up a note that said, Jim Henson is dead and I feel like shit. And I, and I was, and so I ran back to my dorm room to turn on the TV to see if the impossible was true.

And of course it was. But I, I thought a lot about why his death affected us all. Of course it was taken too soon, but I think another part of it is just all the people he took with him. Right. And Kermit and Ernie and it was all of those characters who were so real.

Kermit the Frog was real enough that he could host the Tonight Show and nobody would think twice about it. So in seeing that this came out and how emotional I got watching the trailer, it made me reflect on why do I have such a strong emotional connection to Jim Henson and all of these things.

And of course, being the Sesame Street generation, being the Muppet Show generation, like it was such a huge part of our childhood. Our indoctrination. Yeah. Well, I mean, think of all of our sense of humor, uh, from all of those sketches on Sesame Street, you know, I, I.

Well, there's a direct line from the, the character that just appears and throws a fish to enjoyment of Monty Python, you know? Right. Yeah. So it's just so many things that came from that. Yeah. I identify as Oscar. Of course you do. Brian identifies as the count.

Oh, I don't know who I identify as. Did you know, and I read this and apparently this is canon, that Oscar the Grouch is actually blue? What? Oscar the Grouch as, as, as, as a species is blue.

He is green from living in the trash can and from things growing on him. I seem to remember that. Well, okay. So in the first season, he was orange. Hmm. So you can, you can, um, it's very easy to look up pictures of an orange Oscar the Grouch.

Right. And I think, um, when the second season, when he turned green, somebody offhandedly mentioned it and he said something like, that's a long story. But. That's kind of how they handled the Klingons in Star Trek. Right. In Deep Space Nine, when you're like, those are Klingons?

We don't talk about that. Yeah. Let me ask you this. So speaking of Oscar the Grouch and sort of headcanon, uh, in your mind, what was the structure of Oscar's trash can?

Because on the show, a running gag was that there was all kinds of stuff in there, including an elephant. Yes. Oscar had a pet elephant in there. Yes. Um, how did you organize that in your own mind? There was a vast cavern underneath.

That's what I thought too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was just this portal in and out of. Exactly. That's what I thought too. That the trash can was just an entrance and he had this big. It's a TARDIS. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, no, but it wasn't like the trash can itself was bigger on the inside.

It was that he had an underground labyrinth just full of, that he had, he had, uh, you know, carved out on his own. Uh, yeah, that's what I figured. I mean, it's the only thing that made sense. Is it wrong that I never actually gave a shit to think about that?

I was like, never really, never, never really went into the backstory behind the can. Uh, maybe it's just, I was a little too young. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. There we go. I'm sure that won't be covered in this documentary, but you know, you never know.

Yeah. Well, maybe he had the old USS Enterprise in there because now it has been found. The original model, the 33 inch wooden model, which, uh, I don't know if you guys got a chance to look at pictures of it. Uh, kind of not a good model, but, uh, it's been sitting in a storage unit forever and, uh, finally has been found and showed up on eBay and has been actually reunited with, uh, Gene Roddenberry's son.

So Rod Rodden, Eugene Rod Roddenberry now has it, uh, after giving an undisclosed finder's fee for getting it back. That's nice. Yeah, it's cool. It's very cool. That's a, it's a, it's a feel good story. It made it home. I've seen the one that they had in the Smithsonian for many years and it may still be there.

The one in air and space. Yeah, I saw that one. Yeah. But that's much bigger. Yeah. That's what I thought when they said this was 33 inches. I'm like, that's kind of small compared to the one that I saw. Yeah. Yeah. No, I have a photograph of that one. I shot, it's in black and white.

So it's a black and white scan from somewhere. But, uh, yeah, I took a picture of that, I think in 1988. I was there. Yeah. I have to dig that up. Yeah. That is interesting. Well, there we go. Good news. What you got?

Yes. So, uh, it's a fun story here about, uh, the Texas lottery. And, uh, I don't know what you guys think about lottery. About lotteries. I've always thought of lotteries as being a tax on people who don't understand math. Idiotax. Yeah.

Okay. However you want to label it. But, uh, there is pretty compelling evidence here that some folks won the Texas lottery by buying every possible number. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And evidently that's not illegal.

It's not against the rules. Um, but this group was put together. It seems as though this group of investors were put together, cost them about $24 million to buy every number combination. Mm-hmm.

To win a $95 million jackpot. Math works out. Yeah. It seems as though there were, um, special stores that opened up in order to sell them the tickets. Because one of the issues is how do you buy $24 million tickets in bulk?

Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of paper. Yeah. And they, they figured out a way to do it. Part of this was enabled by, uh, the Texas lottery being able to be, uh, run online. Mm. Um, which greatly sped up the, your ability to do, do these sorts of things.

Mm-hmm. Um, the, evidently the great peril that they had was if someone else won and they had to split the prize, they would have lost money. Right. Mm-hmm. But the odds of that were, I want to say about 8%. So, I mean, it's good odds, but still a risk.

If I had $24 million, 8% sounds like way too risky to me. I would like to keep my $24 million. Yeah. So, my question is, there are lots of people out there who have this kind of money.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right? Do you start an organization that just focuses on winning all the lotteries? Sure. Why not? And is that sustainable? Until they put in a rule saying that no individual or organization can purchase over X amount of tickets, which they will almost immediately now that the story is out there.

Right. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But I suppose there'd be easy ways around that. I don't know. I mean, it, it, part of how this, well, part of how this worked was that, um, the jackpot had to get high enough to make it worth it.

Right. And that happens by no one winning. And in this case, no one had won in seven months. Right. So, that's part of it also. Yeah. Um, you can't just go every week and play the lottery and buy all the numbers and win big money. It has to, yeah, it has to be certain circumstances.

Well, we kind of know the rough price known that you have to have to get all the combinations now. So, anytime it gets, you know, significantly over 24 million, you go all in. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. But now I know that we're going to do it too. So. Yeah.

It's also the type of lottery too, because it, you know, this is a six number lottery. Right. I think like Powerball is, is, has way more numbers than that. This just sounds to me like one of those things that can only be pulled off once and get on them for doing it. Right. It's a, it's a caper. Right. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. It's a, there will be a movie made out of this. Guy Ritchie will direct it and that'll be it. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good idea. Uh, yeah. I, it's, uh, yeah, I just think it's fine. I, I, I, I have this notion that if someone pulls off a clever enough caper that even if they're caught, they should be allowed to keep, keep, uh, their earnings.

They should be allowed to get away with it. You know, like an old fashioned diamond heist or something like that. Yeah. And we're dodging lasers and, uh, lowering yourself on wires, that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. You, yeah. If you pull off something from a movie, good on you. Right. Right.

The other funny thing about this was, um, they said that nor, a normal round of lottery ticket sales would be about two to 4 million tickets, I believe. And in this case, they sold 28 million tickets for this draw. I wonder if something's going on, Bob.

Tipped them off. Something was going on. Yeah. Um, but the lottery did not lose money. No, no. So still. Yeah. House always wins. It's designed to win. I mean, it's designed to be got by somebody. Right.

Right. Yeah. They win no matter what. They could, they could have a winner every week and still make money. That's the point, you know? Right. Right. Because it doesn't cost that much money to run the lottery. Yeah. So let me know if you guys want to chip in next time. I got a 20. 8 million bucks a piece.

That's GOG.show slash Patreon. Right. Right. We'll just sell off some of our old Star Wars action figures. Right? Yeah. That'd be good. My son's too busy playing with them, so I can't do that. Yes. Um, this next thing I put in here was a clever little app that I saw called Brick It.

Have it. Had it for a while. Oh, is that right? My son is in his prime Lego years. Oh, all right. Well, why don't you describe it for us? Basically, you can take a photo of a pile of bricks sitting around anywhere, and it will show you things that you can build out of those specific bricks.

Yeah. It's pretty cool. It's very fast. It's, it's, uh, this is machine learning at its finest. Dare I say, if they wanted to market this better, AI. At last. Truly useful purpose for this. Yeah, it's, it's pretty cool. I mean, I think this, this would have been great more when we were kids and, and it was all kind of generic Legos.

Now the Lego sets are so specific and the parts are molded and this is, this is Moana's hair and it couldn't possibly be anybody else's hair and all that sort of stuff. But, uh, it still works. It still puts stuff together. So, cause there's enough, you know, normal stuff. So it's good stuff. It's a great app. One thing I've seen is that this reminded me of is when people, you'll see people build the giant Lego Millennium Falcon, but they'll build it out of regular parts.

Yes. So it's all the different colors of the Lego rainbow. Yeah. It seems like you could use this for that. Definitely. I don't think it'll get as involved as a Millennium Falcon, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's pretty good. Yeah. I thought there should be an app like this for helping solve crossword puzzles where you could take a, and it may, it may, it may very well exist.

I don't know. But my idea was you could take a picture of the box, take a picture of all of your pieces. Yep. Right. And if you're stuck, it, you can dial in how much help you want. Do you want a hint? Do you want to know which piece goes where? You know, I'm talking about regular puzzles, not, not, not, not a crossword puzzle.

Jigsaw puzzle. I'm sorry. Yes. Jigsaw puzzles. Yeah. Yeah. Jigsaw puzzles. Sorry. Yep. Yeah. So you just want to ruin all the fun. Well, yes, no, I want to ease the frustration because, uh, how many times have you been sitting there in front of a bunch of jigsaw puzzle pieces going, I just want to get past this one, but.

Well, I'm never going to buy that pure blue 10,000 piece puzzle again. I'll tell you that. Yeah. No, I saw the, I saw the black one. It was like, Oh, no, no. Well, I mean, back to our favorite subject, star Wars, some of the original star Wars merchandise that came out were jigsaw puzzles.

And so I had one that was, uh, an X-wing fighter in space. So it was 80% black, just totally black pieces. Right. Yeah. That would be maddening. Yes. Um, another thing I wanted to ask you about, uh, ask you guys about, and this is the old part of grumpy old geeks.

We were talking, uh, when we were talking about the Apple vision pro, we were talking about our vision and the deterioration of our vision. I'm curious if you guys find that your vision, particularly when you're using your computer shifts from day to day.

Do you find that you have good days and bad days, like sharper days and blurrier days, or is it all pretty much consistent? Well, since I've stopped drinking, it's been more consistent. I was about to say, is it, is it the red wine portion of the day or the coffee portion of the day?

Because I've noticed that my vision does tend to shift depending on the salt content of how much food I had yesterday. So if I had a big Mexican dinner, there's tons of salt and, you know, just all that stuff. And I'm bloaty the next day. I had a bunch of ramen, you know, and I'm, I've just, um, you know, just got tons of water weight on me.

I've noticed my vision definitely is strained the next day, but for the most part, no. But yeah, it generally happens when my diet is shitty and I have a shitty food. And my vision, my def, my vision definitely changes from that. Yeah. I can't say I notice anything, you know, I'm still flush from the first, uh, first, uh, annoyances and degradation of having to have reading glasses now.

So, um, that's about it. Yeah. Well, what's particularly interesting about your answer, Jason, is that like, one of the things that I just contend with in my day to day managing my health is high blood pressure. And so I'm keeping track of my salt and I'm taking medicine that helps with that.

So that could be what's happening here. I mean, what I noticed is it, cause I have specific, a specific pair of glasses for my computer, which are different than the glasses I wear when I'm out and about. So the glasses I wear when I'm out and about are progressive lenses and the ones for my computer are just one big old fixed distance.

Um, but I noticed that someday, most days I come in, I put on my computer glasses, I sit down on my computer and everything's great. I can see pixels on the screen, but every now and then it's just like, what the heck is happening? Like I, I have to increase the tech size and, and it's really aggravating.

Um, yeah. So when that happens, think about how much sleep you got, what you're like, you know, previous day's activities were and what you ate. Um, cause you know, your vision is based on the fact that we have to have glasses is because our eyes are either too, too short or too long. You know, that's cause of the focal point doesn't quite hit the back of the eyeball at the right spot.

So we have the, we have lenses in front of our eyes to correct that, that offset. So it would, it would make sense that if you have, if your blood pressure is too high or too low, that your eyeball could be theoretically compressed. I don't, I'm not a doctor. I'm just going on what logic tells me. So your eye might be slightly, uh, you know, under pressure or under, under more pressure, under less pressure based on your blood pressure.

So I could be completely wrong and pulling that out of my ass, but that makes sense to me. Just, just based on anecdotal evidence, because if I have, like I said, if I'm retaining a lot of water, my vision definitely gets blurrier with my standard computer glasses. Okay. That's interesting. I'm sure some optometrists out there will tell me I'm full of shit.

And then I have obviously seen the back of my eyeball before and that I should know this. Jason's done his own research, guys. Exactly. Well, hopefully, hopefully it'll be a German optometrist who will really put us in our place. I'm sure we're, I'm sure there's frantic typing right now.

Yes. Thank you, Dr. Zeiss. In the most, I meant it in the most possible, you know, pleasurable way, of course. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. If you're a German. Yeah. No, I mean, it makes sense that salt and rest and blood pressure and all of that would affect it slightly.

So, yeah. But, you know, if you're a doctor, write in. Yeah. Politely. Well, yeah. So, I'm due for an eye appointment. And next time I'm there, I'll ask the actual eye doctor as well. But, yeah, I'm curious to know if there's anything to that. Yeah.

Last time I had a question for the eye doctor, I was like, I noticed, doctor, when I put one hand over one eye, the white wall in my room is red. But when I cover the other eye, the wall is blue. And he's like, are you an engineer by chance? Because apparently that's, you know, the basis of 3D glasses and things like that.

So, there are things that some people just never notice and weird people like us notice. So, I applaud you, Dave, for clocking that. Well, you know, back in the days when I was a TV cameraman and I used to shoot a lot of sports, I would notice back then our old beta cams, which you sit on your shoulder.

There's old broadcast TV cameras. The viewfinder was black and white, which had a very blue color temperature. So, you'd be looking in that black and white viewfinder for a long period of time. And your eyes and your brain would kind of white balance to that.

And your other eye, which was not looking through that, would be white balance to the rest of the world. And so, after that, you could blink from one eye to the other and it would be like, you know, daylight, tungsten. Daylight, tungsten. Alternate universe. Yeah, it was really weird.

Seizure! Yeah, well, there's that. Sure. Just a quick little wrap up. As we record this today, this is actually the second anniversary of my mother's passing. Sorry to hear. And something that we had captured here on the show, so I thought it worth mentioning.

It's a funny thing. I mean, on the one hand, I can't believe it's been two years. It seems as though it's flown by. On the other hand, I miss her every day. And, you know, when you lose someone, people tell you that you're going to go through a year of firsts.

Yeah. Right? First birthday, first Easter, first Thanksgiving, first Christmas. And we went through all of that. And then the second year is easier, I think, because you're not, for me anyway, because you're not going through all of those firsts. But it really, it gets easier, but it's never better, I guess, is what I'm saying.

I still, I try to balance my grief of missing my mom with the knowledge of all the great years we had together and, you know, the love and kindness that she put out there in the world for not just me, but for everybody who knew her, but mostly me.

And so, I don't know, I just thought, since I'd shared that when she passed here with our audience, just mark that, that that is today. All right. Well, I'm sorry for that. Yeah.

I've got, my father passed away, she's, it's like six years ago now. It goes slow, but fast. And, you know, the marker thing is kind of a weird thing. My father and I watched the World Cup together. He really got me into soccer. He passed during the 2014 World Cup.

So it's, or no, 2018, sorry. So, yeah, it's always, and I look forward to the World Cup every year, but now it's always tinged with just that little bit of kind of sadness because he passed during it. So, yep. The other weird thing I've noticed is that other people in my life who have passed away who show up in my dreams, when they show up in my dreams, I know that they've passed.

And it's as if I'm talking to a version of them where both of us are aware that they've passed. In other words, my grandfather will show up in a dream and I'll, we'll talk about the old days or, you know, how are you doing and that sort of thing. But there's never any question in my mind that this person is dead and this is a dream and we're just, you know, that's how it is.

But when my mom shows up in my dreams, it's as if she's still here and she's the only person who does that so far. So, I don't know, but it is what it is. Perhaps a little window into my psyche. All right.

Heck of a way to end this segment, huh? What do they say on Top Gun and on that bombshell? Right. Sorry. Love you guys. Go listen to some sad music now. Where's the Smiths albums? Just play Rainbow Connection.

Oh, there you go. And I'll be weeping openly. Sure. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we have two Ians. We have Ian G.A. and Ian R. Thanks, Ians. Welcome, Ians. Yes. Over at PayPal, we've got Natalie, Linda, Nathaniel, Blake Bowling, Ramsey, Andrew, Brian, Tom, David, Joseph, and Jason, who gave us 50 bucks and said the grump must flow.

Woo. Jasons are awesome. Yeah. Over at the tip jar, we've got Karen, Eric, Ross, Sean, Daryl, and Josh. And then we've got Donald with the big hundy coming in. Thank you, Donald. Well, that's one good Donald. Yeah. Seriously. He's carrying the torch. And we have a straight and to the point review.

Five stars from Ken. Great pod. Thanks, Ken. That's it. That's it. That's it. Love it. Just remember, if you want to join us on the Patreon, it's three bucks a month to start. You can give us more if you want. But you get the show earlier and ad free and in high res and it keeps the show going.

There you go. But also check out PayPal and the tip jar if you still want to give us money to keep the show going. Appreciate it. Got a quick shout out to Donovan Adkinson over at Call Me Donovan. Congrats. Congrats. Jesus, I can't fucking speak. Congrats on 335 days of sobriety.

Keep going, brother. All right. And a shout out to John Trimble, who died at the age of 87. And I'd never heard of John. Had you? John Trimble? No, Trimble. He's the guy that started the writing campaign, right? Yep. Started the writing campaign that saved Star Trek and got them to the third season, which got them enough to go into syndication.

And which is why we now have Star Trek Discovery. So he's either a hero or a villain, depending on how you look at it. He's a hero. I saw a chart, and I'd have to go find it again to get it in the show notes, but you can just Google it if you want to, that stacked up the hours of immersive content in any particular IP.

You know, Star Wars, Star Trek, the MCU, all that sort of stuff. Harry Potter. Star Trek, like 15 times the amount of content as any other IP out there. So it's massive. All right. John was a good guy. Yeah, and I want to give a shout-out to Anthony over at nodehost.ca, where I'm hosting my personal website as well as my personal email accounts.

He did a big update to his system, and that's when you've grown because you realize you have to move everything, and you have to go, oh, God, I've got to go deal with WordPress and databases and blah, blah, blah. Didn't have to do much because he did almost all of it for me, so thank you so much, Anthony. Fuck you, Anthony.

Hey, I put in the time and talked to him, man. Jesus, I tweeted with him a couple times. A couple times. Fuck you, Anthony. He's awesome. Oh, whenever we had something. You know what? It was actually pretty easy to do anyways, but he did end up basically doing all the heavy lifting. So thank you.

What I've got to say about that. My closing thought today is if you call a computer program a software, you should be forced to plow fields for the rest of your life because you don't deserve to use technology. I'm seeing this all over the place. Like, oh, Adobe has made a new software to do this.

I'm like, it's not a fucking close. It's a program or software. Or an app. Just get it right. Or an app. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. I'm a Jason DeFillippo. And I'm a Brian Schulmeister. Thank you for listening to A Grumpy Old Geeks. That doesn't work.

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