650: The Ewok Line

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. Brian, I am back in the garage because the more things change, the more they stay the same. So if you hear birds and people walking their dogs, that's just the way it's going to be now. I'm sorry. Well, speaking of the more things change, the more things stay the same.

When we started this podcast, I was still running my own company. And then I stopped and I was basically a stay-at-home dad. And then I moved to Toronto and I started working for a company and I got pink-slipped. Oh, dear. I'm sorry, Brian. No, it's okay. There was corporate shenanigans and takeovers and it ended up being a place I don't want to be anyways.

You and I have avoided the corporate life as much as possible and they were going that direction again. Just like that old company that you and I both used to work for called Box Stop. Oh, Box Stop. Yes. Yes, yes. What a shit show that was. So here I am at home with a very large list of things to do around the house. So expect lots of reviews of YouTube pages that fix things.

All right. All right. I'm in because, yeah, I'm back at home, too, because I, too, got many, many a pimp slip, not a pimp slip. Pimp slip would be something I could sink my teeth into. You can work with that. Yeah. Yeah. That is really something I could work with.

No, you know, there's no clients to be had nowadays. So I had to lose the office, lose the studio. So I am literally back in the garage that I was in about four years ago when I moved back to L.A. Yeah. All right. Well, don't forget, though, Jason, the economy is doing great. It's doing great.

Yeah. If you're rich. If you're rich or you own a big corporation. All these record years for everybody. Hmm. Yeah. I wonder how that's going. Yeah. It's crazy, right? Like record profits in oil and record profits for grocery stores. Yet those prices are sky high.

Must be the inflation. I know. $7 potatoes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So we talked last week about Google and the AI overviews. Yes. So, of course, right after the show, I had to get busy with it. So I was trying all sorts of different things. And I just, for shits and giggles, I put in, can I masturbate with sandpaper?

And- Turns out, you can. Turns out. And here's the answer I got right at the top of the page. The trick is to use a lot of pressure so you can smooth it out before the abrasion kicks in. I mean, that tracks. Really grip hard with the sandpaper, and it should work fine.

Buying some kind of sex toy, like a belt sander, helps a lot. You need to make it through the first few layers to reach the full potential. Yeah. Ow! By the time we finished recording last week, I went over to our Discord, and it was just full of examples of what Google was throwing back.

Of course, it's now infamous, the pizza with glue. Yeah. This is a fucking mess. Yes, yes, it is. They have admitted that they've had some oddballs. What could have possibly gone wrong, Jason?

We've had over a year documenting AI hallucinations. How could this have possibly gone wrong? I know. But they said they had over a billion tests that they ran. Did they read them? Who checks the billion tests? The AI checks the billion.

That's who checks the billion. Exactly. Yeah. Say, it looks good to me. So yes, Liz Reed, Google's head of search, did acknowledge that they had issues. And they also said that a lot of them weren't their fault because a lot of the things that you saw were actually Photoshopped.

And to the Photoshoppers, I'm like, why? Why did you waste your time Photoshopping it? There are plenty of actual real world examples that you could have called on. Yeah, yeah. It's good stuff. They're diving into it, though. You know, they're not letting go. No, they're all in.

And they will fix it as much as they can. As much as you can fix a black box. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Throw a wrench in there and hope for the best. All right. That's kind of what's happening. But Aaron did write in about this. He said, hey, guys, love the show. This article talks about how to avoid the Google AI search using the UDM equals 14 trick.

So basically, you can just add that URL parameter to any of your searches and it will still go back to the default, but still shitty Google searches. I do like the other thing in the article, though. If you add the TBS equals LI colon one. That brings Conan O'Brien back to late night.

It does. It's LI colon two if you want the hair back. Right. Yeah. That will trigger the verbatim search, which will do the exact search for your terms, which is, you know, actually kind of nice. Yes.

Sometimes. Which is what us old Google warriors relied on. Yeah, exactly. A little news on the follow up. Remember the fake robocalls in New Hampshire about Joe Biden? Yep. Sure do. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the guy got caught. Good. We got him.

Press the button. Bing, bing, bing. So political consultant Steve Kramer is facing a six million dollar fine and over two dozen criminal charges for the robocalls. So that's not bad. Not bad.

Apparently, the company that let him do it is facing a two million dollar fine. So I think it might be a little, little steep, but okay. Well, I, you know, if this guy's getting that there, there was somebody else in the news that just had 34 guilty charges against him.

Just a few. Just a few. So we'll see. I would like some big fines like that and, you know, maybe some jail time. That'd be nice. If you can get it for a robocall, I'm just saying. Yeah. Just saying. Just saying. And also in the Tesla news, the Hertz Tesla saga continues.

So they, you know, they were going to buy 100,000 Teslas and they ended up only buying 30,000. And now they want to get rid of those 30,000. And it's not going well for people who bought those. So this is the first one was the great failure of BJ Padne from Texas.

He bought a used Tesla for 25 grand. Immediately got a $13,000 repair bill because some of the damage that was done was not covered by the warranty that hurts, goes with those cars. Like the busted battery, which, you know, is kind of one of those things that it's like, oh, we're going to sell you a car.

There's a hole in the gas tank. Not our fault. So they did replace his car after a couple months of bitching and moaning and, oh, public shaming. That's right. That's the only way you're going to get anything done nowadays. So those, those Teslas, they were selling about 30 a week and now it's dribbled to just five and it's probably less than that.

But they still say that they're going to get rid of about 20,000 by the end of the year. Good luck. Good luck getting rid of them. But I did see on Twitter, somebody had posted that they were at like a Hertz or, yeah, it must have been a Hertz car rental. And apparently they were the five people in front of this person in line writing to get their cars were offered free upgrades to a Tesla and every single one of them refused it.

So my main thing to take away from your story, though, Jason, that you put in there is if your name is BJ and you don't have a bear, I would probably change the name. In the news.

All right, Brian, Adam Neumann is back in the news, but this time kind of in a way that made me scratch my head. We talked about him trying to go back and rebuy WeWork and we're like, OK, that's interesting. You already broke the company once.

Why do you want to try and break it again? So they were in bankruptcy and he said that, you know, for several months we tried to work constructively with WeWork to create a strategy that would allow it to thrive. Instead, the company looks to be emerging from bankruptcy with a plan that appears unrealistic and unlikely to succeed.

So apparently they're doing exactly what he would have done. So there's no need for him to be there. Yeah, they're following his plan, obviously. Yeah, it's unrealistic and it will unlikely succeed. So sorry, Adam, they beat you to it. All right. Well, isn't he working on some crypto thing or what's he trying to?

I don't know. I don't care what this guy does. Stop giving him money. Yeah, as far as I go, he's probably working on podcasting because that's dying a quick death. So maybe he's, you know, working behind the scenes. He's making the next Spotify. Never mind everything I said about you, Adam. You can pay me. Yep.

Fuck you, pay me. Love you, pay me. Got some open AI news about the safety board. We talked about this a couple of weeks back. Basically, they fired slash people left everybody that was responsible for these safety guardrails. Yeah. But they've now replaced them with...

Sam Altman. Yeah, yeah. What could go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? Yeah, so the new safety and security committee is basically made up of people already on the board and Sam Altman himself.

It's never a good idea to have the people running the company also in charge of the safety and security board. That is kind of not how it works. And another company that's kind of doing the exact same thing. This just came out. Twitch has removed every member of its safety advisory council.

And these were people that actually had bona fides in this sort of thing and replaced them with Twitch ambassadors. What the fuck is wrong with people? Twitch is owned by Amazon. What the hell? They've stopped even pretending. That's what's really happened here.

Because as we've known from just discussing Meta's board, oversight board, they're toothless. They do nothing. These companies have just said, well, we're not even going to bother. This is just ridiculous. We're going to save on the press release costs. Those things cost 50 bucks a shot, man. We're not even going to bother with that anymore. We need to save money.

Yeah. So goodbye safety and all that sort of stuff. All right. A little more AI news comes from Vimeo. Vimeo's new CEO, Philip Moyer, announced a firm stance against AI to train models using videos from their platform without explicit consent. Well, how about that?

So he made a blog post and he said he's going to safeguard creative rights and maintain ethical technology use. Good luck. So they do prohibit unauthorized scraping already. And they do have a security team in place to, you know, stop people from doing that. But, you know, who knows if the cat is already out of the barn or however they say that.

I had AI write my analogies nowadays. The decision was made after concerns from creators about videos being used without permission, especially with AI models like OpenAI's Sora in the spotlight because they don't even know if Sora was trained on any of their videos, I guess.

So, but they're going to put in some, they're going to put in some flags, you know, they're going to put in the flags and say, please don't take our stuff, which is what everybody's doing. But we'll see if it has any teeth, which I doubt it does. Well, let's expect that firm stance to hold steady until somebody writes a big check, just like the Atlantic.

Yeah. Because it was only last week that the Atlantic published its own screed, decrying media organizations which had taken cash from AI interlopers in exchange for something of significantly greater value. Yes, just last week, that firm stance was put out into the world. This week, they took a check from OpenAI.

Yeah. You know what that firm stance did? It just added an extra zero to that check. Once they got the number that they wanted, they're like, okay, we're in. Yeah, pretty much. So, the Atlantic and Vox Media have now made their own deal with OpenAI. I am curious. I will probably listen to that Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway podcast, which I have not listened to in a very long time because I do remember them saying that they were very much against OpenAI or any AI sources being trained on their podcast.

They are with Vox Media, so now they are being trained on their stuff. They're still with Vox? Okay. I thought they were. It's been so long. Maybe they're not. Yeah, who knows nowadays? So, I'll have to listen and find out, I guess. Yeah. Well, you know, soon they should have held out a little bit because XAI, Musk's new company, trying to build their own AI, they just got $6 billion worth of funding.

That's billion with a B. That's right. And, of course, it comes from our friends, partially from Andreessen Horowitz. Of course. So, you know, it's just the scumbags hanging on with the scumbags. It's also from Valor Equity Partners and Sequoia Capital.

But, yeah, if you see Andreessen Horowitz around AI funding or crypto funding, just run. Or any funding. Yeah, any funding. No, I actually, I'm sticking by my guns. I did not spend any money on Poe because they're, you know, it's core and they're core AIs funded by Andreessen Horowitz.

So, no, I'm not going to do it. Sticking to my guns. Good for you. I'm sure he's pissed. Oh, I know. All one of me out there. That $20 a month is going to break the bank, I'm sure. I don't pay for Poe either. I still have it installed because I find it, it's almost like a convenient search engine for AI that I need to use.

Which is very, very rare and limited. But, yeah. Yeah, I'll take the freebies, you know. So, keep up with that one. I'm not going to uninstall it. But, yeah, for the most part now I just, I've got all that stuff set up locally. So, I just kind of run them, run them in the background when I need them.

Right. But, I have been, I did keep my OpenAI subscription because the chat GPT 4.0 isn't too bad. So, I'll keep it, keep that up for now. But, Elon, Elon is, he's trying everything that he can right now to get that big paycheck.

He really wants his cash back. So, Tesla has issued a fiery letter to shareholders criticizing the proxy advisory firm Glass-Lewis for advising against Elon Musk's $56 billion compensation package. The letter titled, What Glass-Lewis Got Wrong About Tesla, accuses the firm of using faulty logic and omitting key considerations.

Mostly, I want my money, says Elon. The pay package originally approved by shareholders in 2018 was blocked by a Delaware judge due to his size and Musk's ties to the board. It will be up for a vote again on June 13th. Glass-Lewis warns the package could dilute existing shares and questions Musk's focus on Tesla given his other ventures.

Despite Tesla's strong defense, Musk remains a polarizing figure and the company has faced recent challenges, including missed delivery goals and issues with the Cybertruck. Yes, oh, the Cybertruck is the gift that just keeps on giving. I mean, just look at this. From just using any logic or sanity, $56 billion compensation package would be ridiculous even if Tesla was doing well.

Tesla is not doing well right now. No, they're not. So, get your hand out of the cookie jar. Exactly. I mean, I know he wants the money. It'll pay for his X-hole, but it's insane. Yeah. Yeah. So, if I was a Tesla shareholder, I would vote no.

Oh, did you also see that they're doing a raffle? So, people who – these are getting more people to vote and if you vote and you sign up for the raffle, you might be able to come get a tour of Tesla with Elon. No, thanks. No, thanks. Well, Metacotton is a really marketing firm using fake Facebook accounts to run an influence campaign on its platform, the company said in the latest report on coordinated inauthentic behavior.

So, they got one. They got one. Yeah. What were they influencing? The scheme targeted people in the U.S. and Canada and posted about the Israeli-Hamas war. So, obviously, pro-Israeli accounts, one would say.

So, they've uncovered 510 Facebook accounts, 11 pages, 32 Instagram accounts, and one group that were tied to the effort, including fake and previously hacked accounts. If I went on Facebook and spent about 45 minutes on it, I could find more fake accounts than that that are trying to do something in an important manner.

I'm just saying. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. So, there you go. So, one thing that they did point out there is they don't think that any novel generative AI was involved. This was just people being people. People are people.

So, there you go. Okay. Yeah, 510 accounts. Seriously. Like, that's nothing. I'm not kidding when I say if I – okay, more than an hour. If I spent like two days on Facebook, I guarantee you I could uncover this. Oh, I could write a script that would get a thousand an hour.

Easy. Yeah. Easy. I just feel like they're not trying very hard. Yeah. All you got to do is look at your friend request and there's going to be like a couple hundred right there. Yeah. Like my fake mom account. Google has been accused of secretly tracking drivers with disabilities. Hmm. Yeah.

I don't know about this one. A new lawsuit in California accuses Google of illegal – Google illegally tracking sensitive information on DMV websites. Catherine Wilson, the plaintiff, claims that Google used its analytics and double-click trackers on the California DMV site to unlawfully obtain personal disability information without consent.

This, she argues, violates the Drivers' Privacy Protection Act and the California Invasion of Privacy Act. So, here's what she's saying. Google Analytics is installed, so it's bad, and she wants to have a lawsuit. Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, I get it.

Google Analytics has had some issues in the past. Yeah, and what she's saying is that Google is taking the analytics data and sharing it with DoubleClick to basically bypass the disabling of third-party cookies. So, I think this is somebody who's really, really trying to make a case, but I think the technology is going to pan out that there is no proof that Google has actually done anything wrong here.

The DMV should probably take off Google Analytics and use their own analytics if they really want analytics, you know? It's a DMV, you know? Just, I think that's what this is going to boil down to. I think this is going to be a big nothing burger.

Yeah. That's just my gut. I agree. I mean, this is just, this is the internet we decided we wanted, unfortunately. Yeah. I mean, you know, analytics is hard, and Google does a really good job of it. But it's the DMV. Why do they need analytics on their website?

That's what I'm saying. Because they hired some IT guy that said they did. So, they can collect all this data and have all this, all these reports that no one reads. Yeah. I mean, this is, yeah, this is probably some dude from the mid-aughts that installed it, and it's just been kind of running on whatever. But, I mean, I'm sure that the IT team inside the DMV is looking at those numbers and saying, look, this is why we need more funding, so we can get some more servers, so we can, you know, this is how many people are doing this online and whatnot, which is fine, you know.

The more stuff that they can take online with the DMV so I don't have to go stand in that stinky line, I'm all for. But, yeah, they don't need all that. But they will find a reason why your renewals are going to cost more next year now because of this? I'm sure they will. 510 bucks for my sticker this year.

Insane. Yeah. And, fortunately, I got it in right under the line because, you know, they know that people are so lazy. That's actually probably a psychological trick. You're the psychology major. You tell me. They show you on the renewal slip, if you renew by this date, it's going to cost you this much money.

If you miss that date and you renew by the next date, it's going to cost you this much money, which is about $200 more than the original date. And then if you get it by the last one, it's going to cost you about $300 more. So I'm thinking they're probably using, like, popcorn pricing models from the movie theaters to say, oh, I'll just get the middle one, you know.

I might as well just pay for the expensive one. They expect people to miss their deadline so often that they're going to tell you what the fees are. Exactly. And, you know, they're going to say that, oh, this is to deter people from missing the deadline. And most people are going to look at it and flip it in their head and go, oh, I'll just pay it by the last one.

I don't care about that. It's whatever. I'm lazy. You know? Yeah. Good times. Moving on. Well, a hacking group called Shiny Hunters claims it breached Ticketmaster's stealing sensitive information of 560 million customers. The better headline was like half a billion, which is what it is, according to cybersecurity news outlet Hackread and Australian news site Cyber Daily.

I first saw the Australian news site Cyber Daily put that up there, and I was unfamiliar with them. So I was like, is this bullshit? Because you can't trust anything on the internet anymore. But apparently it's not. So the group is reportedly attempting to sell the stolen data for $500 million. It includes the obvious things that Ticketmaster would have, which is everything.

Names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, order details, credit card details, etc. So this is a big one and not happening at a particularly good time for Ticketmaster, as the DOJ has sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster, saying they've got a monopoly over live entertainment. And then, of course, Taylor Swift.

So a lot of bad news for Ticketmaster recently, and this is not going to help. Yeah, yeah, I wish they would just Ashley Madison this one. Just tell them to shut down. We're going to release the data. Sadly, they still released the data, and Ashley Madison is still there. So I guess that didn't work. Never mind.

I'm looking forward to the Ticketmaster documentary. Yeah. We're just going to get another fee. This is, you know, that's all it's going to be. Yeah, this is going to be another fee. Yeah, there's going to be $3 per ticket, and it'll be for shiny hunters. That's what it's going to be. And everybody's going to get free credit monitoring for 12 months. I have those stacked up, like no tomorrow, because of all these fucking companies.

You don't have to run those simultaneously? You can actually run them over time? Unfortunately, they do time out. That's kind of bullshit. You should be able to say, well, I've already got nine, so I'll just stack this one on the end of the other ones, right? Exactly. Exactly.

Media Candy. Well, Jason, I watched the final episode of Star Trek Discovery last night. It was five, six seasons. I can't quite remember how many there were.

I think five. I don't know. Yeah, so it's over. And? I'm not going to give any spoilers, because it just came out last night, and that's, you know, only one day. But there's nothing really to spoil either, because it was so god-awful boring, and nothing really happened.

And there was a nice, you know, wokey love fest at the end, and everybody was smiling, and she was a-crying, and nothing of importance really happened. You know, I've got to give it its due, though. No Star Trek Discovery. There would have been no Picard. There would have been no Lower Decks.

There would have been no Strange New Worlds. So in that manner, it served its purpose. Okay. Okay. And that will be the last we ever talk about that. Thank God. Until they announce a movie or something ridiculous. No. I think that thing is done.

No, it's done. It's done. It's done. Something I am excited about, movie-wise, though, is the Moana 2 trailer has come out. I love the first movie. It really is one of those, it's just a fantastic movie, and Moana 2 looks great as well. So happy to see the trailer, and it looks very good.

Okay. I'm an adult. Do you think it's worth watching? Moana? Yeah. Hell yeah. Okay. Yeah, totally. It's great. It's phenomenal. And Lin-Manuel Miranda does the soundtrack in most of the songs. I know you're a big fan of him. Yes, I am. Okay. I think you'll enjoy it just for that.

All right. Well, on a rainy day, I will check out Moana. I've been watching Stacks, Soulsville, USA, on Max. Oh, I do want to watch that. It is really, really good. It's really good. You're going to love it. You're going to really, really love it.

Yeah. No, it's a good counterpoint to the Motown documentaries. Like, these guys are the punk rock to, you know, Motown's shiny, polished image. So it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. And I didn't even realize that most of the Blues Brothers band comes from Stacks. Oh, hell yeah.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Seeing all those guys, like, when they were super young and super old, because I only remember when they were middle-aged in the Blues Brothers. But yeah. Yeah. No, it's really cool. It's a really fun, really fun series. I think they're up to four episodes now. So I think it's going to go to six or eight.

All right. So check it out. Stacks on Max. Okay. So I've been reading that, the Civil War book that I've been going, been powering through. I'm almost done with it. But I really got kind of caught up and I wanted to learn more about the Civil War.

And I remembered the Ken Burns series, the Civil War. Everybody raved about it, but I never saw it. So I went and I found out that they have the remastered version on Amazon Prime Video. And it's unfortunately under the PBS streaming setup.

So you have to pay for PBS to get it. But there's a seven-day free trial. So I am powering my ass through the Civil War to get done before my trial runs out. It's really good. It's really good. It's, you know, very abridged compared to, I mean, I think they spent 13 seconds on the entirety of the like 14-hour book that I'm reading right now.

So, you know, there's a lot more to the Civil War than just a couple episodes, but it's still good. It gives you a nice overview. I mean, Ken Burns is always solid. So. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's good. It's good. And this one I just love. Wu-Tang Clan's legendary one copy album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, will be available for public listening next month in Tasmania.

This is just the best. This whole story. The album, recorded secretly over six years, will be part of an exhibit at the Museum of Old and New Art, Mona, from June 15th to June 24th. Free tickets for private listening sessions will be limited. The album, bound by a legal agreement, can't be commercially exploited until 2103, but can be played at private events.

Previously owned by Martin Shkreli, the pharma bro, the album was seized by federal authorities and later sold to digital art collective Pleaser Dow for, I think I heard about $4 million is what it went for. Unbelievable. Government made some cash on that one.

Good. All right. And you said you saw the Dungeons and Dragons movie recently and enjoyed it. I did. It was fun. It was a hoot. Yeah. They were going to be doing a new Dungeons and Dragons series on Paramount+. Unfortunately, the plug has been pulled on that.

I think I'm okay with that because what made the movie so good was the cast. And there was no way they'd be signing Chris Pine to do a TV series. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Although the last time I saw him was in a TV series because I don't think his movie career is going that well.

So maybe they could have. Maybe they could have. All right. Yeah. So that's, yeah, they're going to just basically take it down, rework it, reshop it. Okay. Hasbro's going to take over. That's too bad. I was kind of hoping there'd be a second movie, but I guess not. So. I don't know if that precludes the movie.

So there might be another one. Who knows? This is just the Paramount Plus deal since Paramount Plus is kind of, you know, in limbo right now. Right. Yeah. Which really sucks. So I really hope to get that Strange New World second season out soon. Or third season out. Third. Yes. Yeah.

I've talked about the, the miniseries, The Night Manager on here a couple of times. It was starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie. It was written by John Le Carre. It was a fantastic miniseries, but I found out that there are going to be two more seasons of it.

So the BBC and Amazon have teamed up and we're going to get two more seasons and they're casting it right now. And they're going to be basically filming, I think later this year. So I'm really looking forward to that. Really looking forward to that. All right. Well, I'll go watch season one now that I know there's a two and three coming.

Exactly. That's, that's the Schulmeister, you know, theory of life. Until you get three seasons, fight. Now, this is the craziest thing ever. Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO, Tuni Vincenquera, expressed strong support for using AI to cut film production costs, potentially including the next Spider-Verse movie.

So he was speaking at Sony's investor event and he highlighted the high expenses of filmmaking and the need for efficiency, stating we are very focused on AI. Fuck you, Tony. He said basically, he's a fucking Spider-Man. He can have more than five fingers. Yeah, exactly.

Who cares? We can go up to eight. Yes. As long as it stays under eight, we're gold. Yeah. Oh my God. So he's just, he's, he's doubling down on the AI thing. Well, I mean, this, this is, this was SAG-AFTRA's fear is that this is what was going to happen.

And now it is. So, I mean, understandable. We get it. We totally, of course, these people are going to try to cut costs as much as possible so they can keep all the money for them. That's, we knew this was going to happen. SAG-AFTRA knew this was going to happen. And here we are. Yeah. And, uh, it's, it's going to be a mess.

I mean, I don't know if you've kept up with much Hollywood stuff. If you have any friends working in the business or I'm sorry, not working in the business because production is so down here that nobody's working. They're all here, Jason. I actually. That's right. Everybody moved. It's pretty random.

Yeah. I had a couple of good friends, both, uh, both of them working in visual effects, uh, and they were LA based and I just got texted last week. Hey, we're coming to Toronto for a couple of months. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's bad. Just the, the physical production stuff is so down right now because I think that, you know, they're still trying to get over that eight month strike from the writers.

So, or the, the, the total strikes were around eight months, but, um, they're really trying to figure out how the hell to get shows back on the air. And they just figured out, oh, wait, you know what? We might not have to, we can just buy shit and put it on. And, you know, so we had the golden age of TV and now we're going to have, you know, the shit age of TV for quite some time until somebody comes back around to the next generation and figures out, oh, we can make good TV again.

But yeah, cause it's just not going to, it's not going to be good for, yeah, it's not going to be good for years. I think, I think it's just going to be a mess. So, fun. And now we have this new company called Fable Studios, which has launched an app called Showrunner, aiming to become the Netflix of AI.

This new app allows users to watch AI generated animated series on demand and create their own episodes. Which is, that's what I want to do. I want to make the, I want to make the shows other people watch and not get paid for it. That sounds fucking awesome. It sounds great, man.

It sounds great. I'm sure they're licking their lips. The first, the app's, the app's first release includes two episodes of Exit Valley, a tech industry satire resembling South Park. It doesn't resemble South Park. It's a fucking South Park episode. It says South Park on it. And Rick and Morty, viewers can use AI to generate new episodes by selecting characters, storylines, and shot types.

Oh, yeah. Apparently the, the South Park versions that they made were for, you know, for testing only. They say that, you know, when things come around, it's not, they're not going to have, you know, proprietary, uh, IP. They better not because they're going to get shut down in five seconds.

Yeah. No, that, you know, they're going to get bought in five seconds is what's going to happen. Somebody's going to, somebody's going to buy these guys in about a, you know, a hot second. Yeah. Probably Netflix or Sony, maybe Sony or Sony. They're all in. Yeah. Yeah. No, it says it can't yet produce complex story arcs.

Uh, okay. Perfect for a half hour TV show that they're shitting out nowadays. Um, so yeah, I, this is just bad. This is bad all around. So, you know what, you know, what is not going to go out of style books, go read a book. Cause that's all we're going to have left, man.

That's all we're going to have left. Yeah. If you can find a real one, when you go through Amazon and all the AI generated books that are up there. Yeah. Yeah. We still have the classics. That's true. Go read the Hitchhiker's Guide again. It's worth it. It's got legs. Seven of them. If you get the AI version. All right, Brian, it's in news that just kind of shook me to my core.

ICQ is shutting down after almost 28 years. What shook me is ICQ was still up. I, yes, I had the same thought. Uh, first off, it was like, I had not thought about ICQ in at least over a decade, well over a decade, most likely.

And then I got really sad because it was such a part of my life. I always had it open. See, I was never, I see an ICQ guy. I was, I was an aim guy. Right. Right. I was always aim. I think I had like two, I had two ICQ numbers. Uh, but yeah, no, I was just like, I can't believe this is still, oh God, I'm sitting here talking to you about AI a second ago.

Now I just got a pop up in my browser saying, try out experimental AI features, get help writing, organizing tabs and creating custom themes straight from Chrome. I switched to Chrome and they're trying to, to pimp me on AI. Fuck off. I'm so, I'm so sick of AI. It's unbelievable. Oh yeah.

God, I think I might just go invest in Bitcoin just to shake things up a little bit. Jesus. Well, uh, there's some news coming from Instagram. They're expanding two of their safety features in an effort to ramp up its bullying protection for teens. The company is changing how limiting and restricting work and it's apt to give teens ways to deal with potential bullies that it claims are less likely to lead to further retaliation.

If you open this article and read it, uh, dear listeners, you will see my issue and, uh, they're the reality of everything pretty quickly. Words used to have meaning in this article. They have to put limit and restrict in quotes because what Instagram means isn't limit or restrict.

Okay. It's unbelievable because when you hit limit, it actually doesn't limit anything. And if you hit restrict, you're actually not restricting anything. Okay. What do they do? Nothing.

They hide it. They just hide it. The comments are all there. They're just hidden from you. Visibility set to zero. Yes. But nothing is restricted. Nothing is limited. Other followers will still be able to interact with their posts, but those comments and messages won't be visible to others.

Then why? Why don't you just limit and restrict? You could do that. Or block and unfollow. Yes. This is not that difficult. I don't know why we have to reinvent what limiting and restricting is. So much so that even in the article, they felt the need to put the words in quotes.

Great. Yes. Oh, man. So this has been making the rounds. An anonymous source shared thousands of leaked Google search API documents with this guy. And everyone in SEO should see them is also in the headline. He said, this is shaking up the SEO world.

I've seen it everywhere. And I'm like, SEO? Really? Isn't SEO dead now? Because of AI? You know what really shook up the SEO world? Yes. Google's switching to AI search. Yeah. It basically made SEO completely irrelevant. So yeah, we'll see how this is going to shake out.

But who cares? Who really cares? If you're in SEO this day and age, get the hell out. There was a big kerfuffle in the past couple of weeks about Unisuper. Have you ever heard of Unisuper, Brian? A really bad superhero? No, kind of.

It's actually Borat in the unitard. That's all it is. There we go. Well, there's 647,000 users were down for two weeks because what Google Cloud is calling a bug, it wasn't a bug. It was basically, was it PEPCAC?

The problem exists between chair and keyboard. One of their engineers basically typed in something wrong. One parameter. They left one parameter blank in migration that they were doing in their VMware engine, which set this company's entire cloud to not renew and cancel at a certain time.

So what happens is when that happens, the thing is shut down, all the data is deleted, and they're shit out of luck because one guy forgot to fill in a parameter. That's it. I smell a lawsuit. Probably.

I'm guessing this is going to be a lawsuit. But it's just like, this just shows you how janky everything we live on is. It's just, we've, I mean, you and I know this, you know, to our core because we built half the shit back in the day. Yeah. But it's nice to know the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yeah. For everybody out there that thinks that this is all a wonderful world, you should just ask anybody slightly, well, around our age that built this stuff and we all just shake our heads and go, I can't believe you're trusting your lives to this shit. I know, I know. That's why backups are good. Backups are good. Finally, Amazon has a new AI-powered voice search for Fire TVs.

Now brings you even more ads. Yeah, really. I actually figured out, thanks to the listeners, how to set up my TV so it automatically goes to my Apple TV when I turn it on so I don't have to wait for it to load all of the ads because it takes about 30 seconds for all those ad panels to load when I turn on my Fire TV.

So I got it to go there now. So I'm not going to have to go back and try this out. The problem is it's like kind of basic search. They built their own LLM with all of the IMDB data. So you can kind of tell it, you know, I wanted that movie where Brad Pitt had the funny hair a long time ago.

Yeah, that one. And, you know, it'll give you up shit like that. What it really needs to be, and I think they really nailed this in the article, is like, we want the crazy old guy from your video store back in the 80s who knew every videotape that has ever been made.

And you can kind of tell him, I want something like that. And he would just reach around the counter and pull out the magic videotape that you are just waiting for. And we're looking for that guy. We're looking for, you know, Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino back when they had day jobs. We need a Tarantino bot. Yeah. And apparently it is not even close to being that yet.

So, but I'll give this a try and report back next week.

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

The co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, because people are nosy. And the host of Control Loop, because industrial machines have feelings, too. Hello, Dave. You're up. Well, hello. I have to say, my head is in the clouds. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Ha! Ha! Ha! I mean, what were the chances that right after we had such a random occurrence on this particular segment, I, lo and behold, I load up the Atlantic the next day, practically, and there's an article made, tailor-made for you, Dave.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Well, um, first of all, I have to, uh, tip my hat to, uh, Gabriel Pagan on Mastodon, who shared this article with me. And the article is titled, No One Really Understands Clouds.

Thank you very much. I'll just read a little pull quote from it here. It says, Clouds are complex and ephemeral, which makes them difficult to fully understand. Yang listed for me key aspects of clouds for which we still lack comprehensive understanding, how they form, what determines their spatial scale, how long they can last.

These sound like simple questions, he said, but they are actually at the forefront of the field. So, not so crazy. Not so crazy. Yes, I will admit it sounded, I did, I, look, in retrospect, I did sound stoned.

Stoned. But I was not. My, my, my, uh, my, my, my questioning was in good faith, uh, and I am relieved to find out that I was not alone. Nope. Fair.

I read through the whole article and I was like, all right, on a very deep level, we don't really understand clouds. Probably not at the level that Dave was discussing when he sounded stoned, because we do kind of get that, but. No, that's the thing. That was the level I, I was, I was discussing.

Like, I get, I see, I don't, anyway, what else? Well, I've ran across this other article that tied in quite, quite nicely with the other discussion we were having, which we were, we were talking about the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek fandoms and how people can dislike certain movies or, or hate the franchises or hate specific elements of it.

And lo and behold, again, just a few days after we were discussing it, I ran across the article. This article, hate the Phantom Menace, the Ewok line theory could explain why. What is the Ewok line theory? You may say, I do remember this because I was a big fan of this show when it came out. This came from How I Met Your Mother, the episode called Field Trip that first aired in 2011, in which the main, one of the main characters, Barney, posited the Ewok line, a demographic border established on May 25th, 1983.

Those who turned 10 before that date were too old for something so cloying and cute, said Marnie. And anyone who turned 10 afterwards loves the Ewoks because why? They remind you of your teddy bears. Hmm. Now, I was born May 16th, 1973. This puts me nine days, nine days ahead of that line.

So, I think I'm in a rare position. Yeah. Yeah. So? I both like and hate the Phantom Menace. It's complicated. What about the Ewoks, though? I like and hate the Ewoks.

It's complicated. Okay. Oh, my God. So, I'm three years older than you. I guess close to four years older than you. Mm-hmm. So, I was 13 when Return of the Jedi came out. And I didn't have any problem with the Ewoks.

I think I was upset later when I learned that there was a chance that they could have been Wookiees instead. Oh, yes. I remember hearing that as well. Yeah, yeah. But they didn't really bother me at the time.

I didn't think they were cloying and cute. Although, I mean, they are cloying and cute. But that didn't register with me while I was watching the film. I think I was so jaded even at 10 years old, I realized, oh, my God, this is a marketing opportunity. Ah, yeah.

I think I was a lot more wide-eyed and innocent. You know, maybe my East Coast upbringing versus your California upbringing. Yes, the mean streets of Anaheim. That's right. That's right. I've already spent as much time as you had at Disneyland. Perhaps that's actually part of it, being in such a manufactured reality for most of my childhood.

Hmm. Hmm. Interesting. Interesting. Might have to go lay down on the couch and discuss this with my mother later. Our 50 minutes are up. You know, I – the Phantom Menace, I could take or leave. You know, I agree with all the things in this article that are annoying about the Phantom Menace.

Like, there's a list in here of things that people hate, the whole thing with the midichlorians. That, yeah, that I hate. You know, I do get the thing about how they say that George Lucas was making a movie for people who were kids in 1999.

And that's – I think that's fair. And I think as we talked about here, you know, I think we're happy now because we have Star Wars content. Thanks to the current makers of the series that are coming out these days, we have adult-focused Star Wars.

It's Star Wars for those of us who are – Yes. Who want that kind of storytelling. Thus relating, again, and now we will transition from Star Trek – or from Star Wars to Star Trek, relating to the point I made earlier in Media Candy, in that while I hated Star Trek Discovery, which just ended, it revitalized the franchise and gave us three to four TV shows that are actually very, very good.

So I will take the good with the bad. Yeah. Yeah. Well, related to all this, there was an article that caught my eye in the Washington Post last week. Nobody cares about what I think about Ewoks? Man. Oh, sorry, Jason. I'm just a door knob now. I'm sorry. No, wait a minute. Hold on.

Hold on. You can't pick and choose your position. Hold on. You said you were going to leave when we started discussing the new show. I was going to say. Right. You're the one who always says you're going to leave the room and come back when we're done talking about Star Wars. No, we're talking about the new series that's coming out because I don't have Disney Plus anymore.

Oh, go on, Jason. I'm well established here in the, you know, the Ewok line. I was 11 going on 12 and I hated the Ewoks. So, okay. So you fit right in with the Bardi's Ewok line then.

You fit and Dave and I are kind of outliers. Yeah. Because the day I went to go see Return of the Jedi, I had, remember those little mini arcade games for the little Coleco ones that looked like the, you get the Donkey Kong and the Pac-Man. They were like, you know, about eight inches, 12 inches high.

Yeah. I had left mine in my desk at work and someone had stole it. I went to go see Phantom Menace, or not Phantom Menace. I went to go see Return of the Jedi and came back and then someone had stolen it out of my desk. So I was in a very bad mood already after seeing Ewoks. And then that just solidified my bad day.

So I remember, I remember that was two, two, two things that happened that day that were terrible. Ewoks and someone stole my Donkey Kong. Let's just, just to clarify, you weren't at work at 12, were you? I'm sorry, I was at school. Okay. Okay. I just wondered if I had to call somebody.

Right, right. That would explain a lot. The coal mines. Yeah. Right. Right. Oh, man. The coal mines of Virginia Beach, yes. Let me just, you know, for the, for the youngsters out there today with their, their Nintendo switches and their, their emulators, these little handheld game device, to say, to claim that you were doing anything resembling actually playing Donkey Kong on this thing.

Oh, that was a stretch. Yeah, there was an orange line and then a brown line that came at the orange line very slowly. Yes. Yeah. Or it was just a bunch of little, like, LCD images that could turn on and off.

Like, there was no, it wasn't actually a grid of pixels. It was just, it was, it was like an old LCD watch. It was the technology behind them. You know, whole things could turn on and off and they would do their best to make it kind of seem like the game, but it really wasn't.

Yeah, it kind of looked like it was animating, but it really wasn't. No. No. Yeah. So anyway, this article in the Washington Post is titled America's Best Decade According to Data. And the survey company YouGov surveyed 2,000 adults asking them which decade had the best and worst music, movies, economy, and other measures.

And what they found out was that for most people, the best of everything happened when they were between 11 and 15 years old. No responsibilities. Yeah. Right. Exactly. That's exactly it. Yeah. No responsibilities and you don't care about what's happening in the world.

Right. You're not aware of what's going on yet. You have not realized yet that your parents are simply human beings. So you have great nostalgia for that period of time. And so what this survey found out was that it's not like people are nostalgic for any particular decade.

They're nostalgic for – they're most nostalgic for whenever they were that particular age. Yeah. Yeah. That totally tracks. I've also heard – not related to this survey – but I've heard people say that a lot of people who are kind of stuck in a previous mode of fashion with the clothes they wear, that they will dress in the fashion of whatever time of their life they were most happy.

I'm still wearing cargo shorts. I started wearing cargo shorts when I was a skater. Yeah. Right. Actually, yes. That's it. That was my uniform when I was a skater and I'm 52 years old and I still wear the same damn thing. I, however – well, I am still wearing predominantly black, but I haven't had a leather jacket or a cape on in years.

A cape? A cape? I was goth, Dave. Brian was goth. You had a cape? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I want pictures. I want pictures. Usually a trench coat, but, you know, for fancy occasions, Dave. Yeah. A cape to go with your black trench coat.

Exactly. Okay. All right. All right. This is a new image in my mind of you, Brian. I had not considered – I considered goth you, but not caped goth you. Look, we hung out at Disneyland. You can wear a cape there.

You don't really stand out that much. Okay. And they still have – and believe it or not, Bats Day at the park is still a thing. It's still going with the goss. I know. It's crazy. What? Bats Day. It happens once a year. Tell them about Bats Day. Yeah.

Bats Day is basically the international day that the Goths descend upon Disneyland. It is not formally approved by Disney, but tacitly kind of put up with. They do put out certain rules. You can't bring in things like chain wallets, and you can't smoke, and you can't drink your rattlesnake drinks while you're walking around the park, and no biting tourists.

But in general, yeah, it's just – it's once a year, gosses descend upon Disneyland. Wow. Okay. It's a fun day to go. I did not know there was such a thing. Yeah. And speaking of Disneyland, normally we would put this in closing shoutouts, but Dave, I know you would obviously have an affinity with this as well, so I thought I'd put it here.

Disney has announced that the revered composer Richard Sherman passed away on Saturday from age-related illnesses, which tracks since 95. His brother had passed earlier, I think in 2012, I believe. They were the two, the Sherman brothers, that basically wrote all the early Disney music, so very much a will-be-missed, and what an amazing output of music that they made.

Yeah. Wow. What a legacy. I mean, talk about the soundtrack of the 20th century, I guess it's fair to say. In a lot of ways, yeah. Certain types of entertainment, and so much of it was so good and so catchy.

And, you know, it still has legs. Like, if you listen to this stuff now, it's fantastic. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, I mean, what a great long life, 95. Goodness. I think I might have mentioned last week, my father just turned 90.

Wow. Yeah. Which is amazing. Good autumn. Yeah. Yeah, but you just, you know, I don't, I don't know. I can't think about being that old. So. I hope to make it there. Maybe.

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. We do this show every week, and I just fucking worry about the future, but yeah. Yeah. I guess, I mean, how many other people from that era of Disney could possibly still be around? Not very many.

Not very many at all, yeah. I'm trying to think of that whole thing of the nine old men who were the original animators. I think there's one or two left. I think Raleigh Crump is still around. Yeah. But I think he might be the only one. He's certainly the only one that showed up in any of the Disney documentaries actually alive and still talking.

Right. Right. Yeah, heck of a legacy. And folks, if you're not that familiar with who we're talking about. Oh, yes, you are. You just don't know it. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Go look it up, and you'll be tapping your toes before you know it.

Well, everybody knows supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. I would argue that almost everybody in the world also knows small world. Yeah. Small world. Right. Right. Okay, under that story in the show notes, guys, there's a link that says Load Me. Dave, would you click on that right now, please?

Is it YouTube, Brian? Because it's Jermaine. Oh, look at that. Gotham Park. Okay, so I did not. Yeah, all of the people that used to go, these are their kids now. I know. I'm thinking that later on, I need to look at this photo, because I probably know some of these parents.

I mean, I don't know if I'd recognize them anymore, because it's been 30 years since I've seen them, but I guarantee you. Yep. I did not expect to see so many kids. Well, yeah. I'm sure they were dressed up this way by their parents. I'm quite sure they probably don't go to school this way, which is what I did, because I committed.

Yeah. Yeah, some of these kids were probably made at Bat's Day at the Park. How much do you think it cuts into the whole goth vibe that you can't really smoke anywhere anymore? I think that's all changed now, too.

We're healthier goths these days. Oh, really? Yeah. You're wearing sunscreen? Yes, they're all wearing sunscreen. They don't smoke anymore. They're terribly pale skin. Sure. They make sure that all their makeup is ethically sourced.

Uh-huh. You know, otherwise, they would have to move it to Disney Paris, because everybody in Europe still smokes. Yeah, that's true. I wonder if you can smoke inside a Disney park. You can or can't? You cannot. No smoking in any Disney park in the world. All right.

Well, there you go. The photo I posted before was for the baby bats. That was all just the babies. Now, the image I just posted in the show notes is the actual group of people that go to the park. Then you can really see how many people go on goth day. This started up when I was, I think, in college.

1999. Yeah. I had much aged out of my going to Disney days, and we just considered everyday goth day. But yeah, this is very cool. Wow. That is cool. Good on them. Good for them. I wonder what it must be like to go to Disneyland, not know that it's goth day, and just happen upon it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's got to be interesting. I inadvertently went to King's Dominion one day, which is a regional theme park near here, and it was like homeschool day. No comment.

Well, and that was- Security was required many times. Well, the park was full of homeschool families, and I didn't realize till, I don't know, midway through the day, I was waiting in line, and a woman struck up a conversation with me about homeschooling.

She assumed that I was there because it was homeschool day, and I had no idea it was homeschool day. And when she started talking about homeschooling, she said, oh, you're here, homeschool day. And then it dawned on me, and it went, oh, that's why it feels so weird around here today.

It was really, it was just, I can't put my finger on it, but it was a very off-kilter vibe. Because nobody has any social skills, because they all grew up sitting at home talking to each other. Yeah. It was, I don't know. God, I thought it was home fries day. This sucks.

Right. So, I put one more story in here, because I think one of the things that we like tracking are the rare occasions where executives might be actually held accountable for the things that their organizations do. And there's a story here from Ars Technica about how some executives from Amazon may be on the hook to be personally liable for tricking users into Amazon Prime signups.

Huh. So, the Federal Trade Commission is coming after Amazon for basically dark patterns of signing people up for Prime without them realizing that they've signed up for Prime, and then making it really hard to get rid of Prime once you've signed up for it.

And Amazon tried to get the FTC to, or tried to get the courts to dismiss the FTC's lawsuit. And the courts have said, no, no, this is, there's lots of evidence here. And they're even saying that some of the executives could be on the hook because of what they knew, and the fact that they seem to put, you know, profits and a number of Prime customers ahead of transparency

and people's ability to interact with the website. Now, I can personally testify to this. I have, obviously, a U.S. Amazon account that is my Prime account. And then Canada has a separate Amazon site. So, you go to Amazon.ca or whatever.

And I do not have a Prime account for my Canadian Amazon account. Whenever I buy anything on my Canadian Amazon account to have something shipped to my house here in Canada, it is hard not to click on the put me in Prime.

They put those buttons everywhere if you're not a Prime member and you're trying to check out. And it is like doing a dance with your mouse to work your way through all those buttons. So, it is, I totally 100% believe that that should be changed.

It's ridiculous. Well, one of the things they pointed out here was a scenario where, let's say, you are purchasing something and a button pops up that says, hey, you'll get free shipping if you sign up for Prime. And so, if you click on that button, even if you didn't end up buying the item, so you bailed before you purchased the item, you still would have been enrolled in Prime.

Yeah. Ooh, evil. It is evil. It's bad. Yeah. Yeah. So, we'll see what happens if the FTC has any success here. But I think that's what it's going to take, right? Yeah. To actually put people in jail.

Imagine that. That'd be nice. Yeah. All right. Well, that's what I've got. One more thing before we go. I just want to do a quick shout out to Scott Athan, who I met this morning. He is a fan of the show. It turns out that we grew up in the same town and our parents are good friends.

That's random? Yeah. He, I think somehow the conversation came up and his mom was talking about something and the other, and she mentioned my name and he was like, wait, Dave Bittner from this, that, and the other thing?

And she's like, yeah, I think so. He was like, okay, we must, we must meet. So, we did. And we had a very nice time. It was delightful to meet him and talk about, he's been a longtime fan of the show. So, it was really great. So, thank you, Scott. I appreciate it. It was nice to meet you.

And I hope we get to cross paths again. Oh, very cool. Thanks for listening, Scott. Thanks for listening. All right. I will see you guys next time. Take care. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got N7DAG.

Welcome. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got David, Michael, Simon, Judge, Charlie, Haway, Jonathan, Brett with a big old 50 bucks, and Sarah, who wrote in and said, your discussion on Star Trek versus Star Wars reminded me of this song circa 1979. Grumpy old geek here. Spizz Energy's Where's Captain Kirk?

I had never heard this before. I definitely remembered Star Trekkin' from the old Dr. Domeno days, but this is punk rock Captain Kirk. Very cool. It's a really good song, too. Yeah. I liked it. I liked it a lot. Over at the tip jar, we've got Josh, Adam, and Phil.

And just a reminder for everybody over at Patreon, if you sign up for three bucks a month minimum, you can pay more if you want. You get all the shows early and ad-free and in high res. Woo-hoo. And we also have some new reviews. We've got a five-star. Oh, my God. Clouds.

Almost pissed myself over the discussion Dave triggered about Clouds. Really loved how hard Brian laughed at Jason's WKRP in Cincinnati reference. Do you ever really get into your hand? My wife thought I had finally snapped because I was crying with laughter. You guys rule. Thank you. And we've got another five-star.

Absolutely entertaining and informative. These guys make me laugh and at the same time give me great news updates with a slight touch of sarcasm. Slight. Slight. Definitely people like to have in a backyard barbecue. Thanks to them, I now understand how clouds are formed. No, you don't.

Thank you for showing life's big mystery. No, you don't. Nobody does. Awesome. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for tuning in to Grumpy Old Geeks. Dive into the show notes and all the links from today's episode at GOG.show slash 650.

650 episodes. Jesus. Feeling generous? Keep this top-notch entertainment rolling by dropping us a few bucks at GOG.show slash donate. Every little bit helps. It really does. And spread the grumpiness. There's a share button in every podcast player out there. Use it to share the show with friends, foes, and everyone in between, and we'll be forever grateful.

And head over to GOG.show to find the link to our Discord channel and chat with us and other show fans. Got something to say? Send your feedback, comments, or awesome links to GOG.show slash contact. Show us some love and leave a review at GOG.show slash review. A five-star rating might just get your review read on the air.

Stay grumpy. What a shit show. Thank you, Riverside. Yeah. That's going to take you a while. Sorry, man.