652: Casual Pirates

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, we have a little bit of follow-up today. All right. Mason wrote in, hi, guys. Old-school hard drives needed defragging because of how they read data on a spinning platter with a moving head. Newer computers use SSDs instead, which don't have the same limitations and therefore don't need it.

Duh, I forgot about that. Me too. Yeah. We've been using SSDs for so long, I just totally forgot. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, all the things that have gone by the wayside. Defrag screens and flying toasters for screensavers. Resedit.

And an entire list of things that we're going to get to in a few minutes that Apple just put out of business. Yes. And S. Thomas Sears from Patreon agrees. He said the defrag function on WIM 311 was hypnotic. I think I used Norton back in the day. I believe I did as well.

Yeah. They had colors. Yeah. Now, here's a fun one. Former OpenAI employee says company had a plan to start AGI bidding war with China and Russia. Okay. That doesn't sound good. No. In a recent interview, former OpenAI safety researcher Leopold, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Aschenbrenner. Aschenbrenner. Clay, it's early. I didn't even want to attempt it. But you're the German, so... Hey, you know, the Euro Cup starts today. It's Germany versus Scotland, so I'm all in on my accents at the moment. I was wondering if you were going to talk about that today. Hey, man, I got my sheet printed out with my game schedules, and I'm ready to go.

All right. I didn't know if you were into this one because you're so World Cup-ian, so... Well, you know, it's like the World Cup except just Europe. Any port in a storm. That's right. Yeah, so Leopold Aschenbrenner claimed that OpenAI once planned to start a global bidding war for their AGI between the U.S., China, and Russia.

He found it surprising, like we all did, that OpenAI would consider selling AGI to these governments. Aschenbrenner also revealed that he was fired for a memo warning about the Chinese Communist Party potentially stealing key algorithmic secrets, which HR deemed racist and unconstructive and bad for business.

Oh, my brain is exploding. How is that racist? Yeah, I don't... It's a different... It's a country we're kind of in a Cold War with. Yeah, I know. Okay, all right.

Never mind. Here's the thing, Brian. Does this surprise you in any way, shape, or form that OpenAI would consider this? Actually, it somewhat does, because Microsoft is usually very good at their due diligence, and I don't know... Microsoft went to bed with these guys.

Apple's going to bed with these guys. Apple's good with their due diligence. Yeah, they had the plan. They may have scrapped the plan since then because they saw, you know, the U.S. won, basically. But if Microsoft and Apple... Well, Apple's not giving them any money for their OpenAI, but their chat GPT access.

But they're getting exposure. Yes, they are. It's just like every design company on the planet back in the day. We're not going to give you any money, but we'll give you exposure. Think of the exposure. Yeah. But this doesn't surprise me. You know, tech companies nowadays do not. Again, you know, it tends to be a warning flag if you fire...

Oh, I don't know. If, like, say, Google fires their entire ethics division, or if your entire safety board is resigning and leaving. These are what we would call red flags. Yeah. I don't mean to be racist by saying red flag. Oh, Jesus.

But, see, the problem is we're so normalized to that now because Google has done that. OpenAI has done that. Everybody's doing that. I know. But we'll get to that. We'll get to OpenAI's safety board in a little bit. But we've got some breaking news on that one. And this also comes in, and it kind of predicts what I said before, that, you know, we're going to run out of shit to train this stuff on.

AI appears to be rapidly approaching a brick wall where it can get smarter. Or it can't get smarter. Oh, it can't get smarter. See, it's early in the morning. This is why I like recording at night. All in all, Jason, it's just another brick in the wall. It's just another brick in the wall. They're saying that by 2026, they're going to run out of shit.

That we as humans will have stopped producing useful information to actually train the AI with. Well, I think that fucking train left the station already. We stopped producing useful information a long time ago. Have you looked at the internet? I'd say November 2016 would probably be a good starting point for that.

Yeah. But if they don't make some, like, serious advancements in the underlying tech, which they haven't in a very long time, this is all based on the same, you know, quote, unquote, AI breakthroughs. Yeah. It's all the same shit. They're all just banking on feeding in more stuff.

That's it. Yeah. And they're out of stuff. They're out of stuff. So, you know, this comes back to the AI Ouroboros, where it's going to start eating its own tail by spitting out shit that it then gets trained on, which is what we said, like, when this, when everybody started using chat GPT, like, years ago, you know, coming up on two years, the web is just dying because everybody's filling it with all this AI garbage that is then getting slurped back up by the AI and is starting to just go bug nutty.

Yeah. So, we'll see. Time will tell. Time will tell. We have a little follow-up on the set visibility to zero bug that Apple had with messages. I love this one. Hat tip to Darren for sending this one in. Apple is to be sued by a businessman for five million pounds after deleted messages he sent to sex workers were found by his wife on another device.

Oops. So, he says, if you're told the message is deleted, you are entitled to believe it's deleted, he told the Times. Are you? Well, I kind of, in theory, what we've discovered in practice is no.

I mean, you know, the adage that I always keep hearing and I think is great is dance like nobody's watching, but text and email like an entire jury is watching. Yeah, seriously. That's the way you should do it. That's the way you should do it. Yeah. Yeah. Get a burner, dude. That's how you do it.

Get a fucking burner. Yeah. Or just get fucking divorced. Like, apparently, they were already on their way out, so, you know, whatever. Yeah, well, maybe she's using this as evidence to get more money. Yeah, get more in the settlement. But either way, yeah, I'll be interested to see how this one pans out in the courts over in Jolly Old.

Well, at least he wasn't using a Microsoft device that would take screenshots every five seconds of everything you ever did, though, right? That's correct, because that has been put on hold. Microsoft was going to roll this out, the recall feature that we've been mocking for the past three weeks.

They were going to roll it out on June 18th, but they decided that it's, yeah, we're just going to preview it to a couple insiders for a while while we figure this shit out. Yeah, so they can tell you it's a really bad idea. In the news. Brian, how much Tesla stock do you have?

Very little. Okay, well, that's good. Did you vote yesterday in the Tesla board elections or whatever? I voted against this ridiculous pay package for doing fuck all. Yeah, too little, too late. Sorry, you should have kept more shares. I guess so. Because I don't think I ever had enough shares that my vote would have made any difference whatsoever.

But you weren't the swing. You weren't the swing. I was not. I was not an activist investor. I was not agitating the board. No. Okay. Yes, as it has been reported by everyone on the planet, Elon Musk's $56 billion pay plan and also reincorporating the company in Texas for Tesla has been approved by a vote from the shareholders.

It still has to go in front of the judge in Delaware that did the original. What are you talking about, Willis? So we'll see how this goes. I just don't understand it, Brian. I don't understand how people can vote to give this guy this much money when the stock is down nearly 30 percent, sales are down, and he's been caught red-handed rerouting company resources to his stupid pet projects.

So, yeah, let's give him more money. Let me explain it to you. Okay, please. Let me explain it to you. Please. He has a useless board that has never stood up to him about anything, and 99 percent of the people that still own stock at this point that would be voting are complete Elon stans. Okay.

That's it. Yeah. Okay. Well, some good things are happening to Tesla, I suppose. I have railed on and on and on that words have meaning, and specifically towards Tesla and the full self-driving, which is not full self-driving.

Yeah. It's not an autopilot. It is not any of those things. And somebody has finally listened to us in California, and a complaint that Tesla has misled consumers with the name of its full self-driving and autopilot features brought by the California Department of Motor Vehicles will be allowed to go forward, according to a report from Bloomberg Monday.

Okay, so they are suing over this term, which is now known as full self-driving, parentheses, supervised, and parentheses, because that's some branding. That's how you fix it. Yeah. But get this. They're defending this as a free speech issue. These fucking idiots.

You can't just lie about something, use terms that don't describe what it is, and say no free speech. I can't call something a fudgesicle if it's frozen shit and say it's free speech. I would like to recall my previous comment about November 2016 where words stopped mattering.

So I think that – I think you might be in the wrong here, Brian, because you can just make shit up and sell it – you can sell that fudgesicle shit on a stick no matter what you want to do. Apparently you can, because as this is all going on, Elon cannot shut up. He's in the news even right now saying soon people will be able to use full self-drive for as long as a year before a human needs to intervene, though he included a very important caveat, which I guess must be you left it in the garage for an entire fucking year.

I know. It's been in the shop because they're too busy to fix your Tesla because of all the cyber trucks that have been recalled and are backing up the entire process. Two other versions are in early stages of testing, 12.5 and 12.6, which could be called version 14 and 15. We're starting to get to the point where once known bugs are fixed, it will take over a year of driving to get even one intervention.

Yeah, that's an important caveat, the once known bugs are fixed. Yeah. And then there's the unknown bugs. Yeah, once we make some more shit up. Unbelievable. He is also being sued for sexual harassment and retaliation by former SpaceX engineers, which is the one company I think you and I both agree on that we actually like because it does cool things.

But he can't – he just can't keep his hand off the cookie jar over there apparently. Eight former SpaceX engineers filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk on Wednesday accusing the CEO of sexual harassment and retaliation. The same group of fired employees have also fined complaints with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board about SpaceX's alleged retaliation.

Musk knowingly and purposefully created an unwelcome hostile work environment based upon his conduct of interjecting into the workplace vile sexual photographs, memes, and commentary that demeaned women and or the LGBTQ plus community, the former eight employees wrote in Wednesday's filing. I find that hard to believe having seen all of his tweets since I'm forced to now.

Yay. I mean, Jesus Christ. Look at his Twitter feed. I mean, sorry, X feed. There's a – there you go. You've won the battle. Yeah. So, yeah. Anyways, a bunch of this stuff is going on and the complaint comes – the complaint claims that when SpaceX HR official – I'm – why do they have HR at any of his companies?

I know. Suggested the company conduct a formal investigation before taking any decisive action. Musk replied, I don't care. Fire them. The lawsuit follows a report on Tuesday detailing allegations that Musk had sexual relations with two female employees and asked the third to have his babies.

Just normal CEO stuff. Yeah, exactly. If you're a CEO on Epstein fucking Island. The richest guy – one of the richest guys in the world because he keeps going up and down depending on what stupid shit he's bought that week. Does he really have to diddle the employees?

Come on. Or maybe that's why he buys the companies. He's like, oh, she's hot. Let me get the company over there. Go buy Ikea. He'll just say I just bought it for – Sorry, I'm being racist because there are hot females there. That's the thing. I got you.

Get the joke. I got you. I would just say he was going to – he's going to claim he bought it for the meatballs. That's why. I mean I don't know if you have an article in here about the like thing. Oh, I do. I do. Okay. So we'll wait to get to that. Yeah, we'll get to that in a second. I just – yeah. No, I just – I wanted to interject some interesting news here instead of just Elon shit.

But, you know, just to break it up. Scientists are working on a desperate plan to refreeze the Arctic because that's where we've gotten to. That's where we're at now? Yeah. What they're doing is once there's a thin layer of ice, they're taking cold water from underneath the ocean and pumping it on top to try and, you know, shore up the ice caps up in the – I've got a solution, Jason, that will appeal to our listeners because they will understand this one.

All we've got to do is get a whole bunch of those compressed air things that we all use to clean our keyboard. Yeah. Press it for about three seconds and then that thing is fucking frozen solid so we just throw it into the Arctic. There you go. We're done. Solid. Oh, God. Yep. I have frozen so many motherboards with that shit.

I've frozen my fingers how many times? Oh, Jesus. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. Never hold them upside down, people. Never hold them upside down. Dust off is the enemy. Another enemy. You know, everybody hates United Airlines for some reason.

I still – that's – if I have to fly, they're my go-to. I don't know why. You know, I'm used to abusive relationships, I guess. Now, here's a new one. United Airlines has introduced personalized ads on its plane seatback screens. Yeah.

Yeah. Passengers see still image ads while browsing in-flight entertainment and must watch a 30-second commercial before viewing their chosen content. And the ads are tailor-based on passenger data such as travel history, age, and ticket class. However, passengers can opt out of personalized advertising.

Sure they can. Sure. Yes. They're going to get you wherever they can. There's going to be personalized ads in the crapper based on what you ate for breakfast, I'm sure, pretty soon. Look, I opt out of most of this stuff just because I'm Gen X and, I don't know, it just feels like screw you guys.

I'm going home and I'm taking my data with me. But I don't care. It doesn't really bother me. So I see an ad on Air Canada flights before we go. It's the same one all the time for some stupid brokerage that I'll never use. Fine. Give me personalized ads. What I want out of the internet, since we've picked this model, and there's no avoiding these personalized ads, I need some sort of overall internet clearinghouse where I can go and say, I already bought this fucking thing.

Oh, wouldn't that be fucking lovely? Stop sending me the ads for it. I have it. It's mine. Got it. We're done here. Yeah. But that's not going to happen. No, no. That would actually break most of the advertising on the internet because, you know, once you search for something on Amazon, everywhere you go on the internet, even if you just bought it, you're still going to get ads for it.

And those ads are going to be, you know, paying for your content. So, and as we all know, nobody's ever going to buy them. So, who was the ad exec that said, I know that 50% of my ad budget is wasted, but I just don't know which 50%. That's a good line.

I don't remember who, though. Yeah. Well, we got a little bit of funny news here. Probably should have been a media candy, but whatever. This is a total Netflix for the win on this one. Quick out of the box quirky thinking. I'm sure not many people think about competitive eating much. Randomly, that was such a big topic, a conversation with the Goo Goo Dolls in the late 90s, early 2000s.

We followed all these guys religiously. We watched all of this sort of stuff. But Joey Chestnut is still around. He's basically the Nathan's hot dog eating champion for years and years and years. Well, he's been banned. Joey, what have you done? Well, he partnered with Impossible Foods, which manufactures the plant-based beef hot dog.

And this was apparently bullshit, according to Nathan's, which makes what he calls 100% beef hot dogs. And, you know, we're devastated to learn that Joey Chestnut has chosen to represent a rival brand that sells plant-based hot dogs rather than competing in the 2024 Nathan's famous 4th of July hot dog eating contest.

Nathan's told CBS in a statement. It seems that Joey and his managers have prioritized a new partnership with a different hot dog brand over our long-term relationship. I didn't think he thought he'd get banned. But Netflix jumped in. Here we go. They're going to have their own frank eating event called Chestnut vs. Kobayashi.

Oh, the great Kobayashi. Unfinished beef set to be live streamed on Monday, September 2nd. So it features two of the best known or only known for most people hot dog eating personalities. With the latter coming out of semi-retirement for the occasion.

So good on you, Netflix. Well done. I've never heard of Joey Chestnut, but everybody knows who Kobayashi is. Come on. Joey Chestnut took over the Kobayashi crown. Okay. Okay. See, you know, I love the title, Unfinished Beef. That is almost as good as the 50-cent documentary on Diddy that Netflix just bought called Diddy Do It.

Come on. That is the best thing ever. I've never heard about that. That's awesome. I'm like, I don't care what is in the documentary. He should get all the money for just the title alone. It is so good. Yeah, but it goes against Benninger's headlines because, yeah, Diddy did.

Yeah, Diddy did. Well, it could be a statement. If you look at it in one context. Oh, that's true. It's a question. But in the other context, it is a statement. It is genius. It is genius. 50 cent for the win. Getting back to OpenAI, this just in this morning.

OpenAI has announced the addition of former NSA head and retired General Paul Nakasone to its board of directors and its newly formed Safety and Security Committee. Newly formed because they just deformed the old one. Yes. And they're stacking this one with people that aren't going to say much.

This move aims to address concerns about the safety of AI models as OpenAI progresses towards superintelligence. Nakasone brings extensive cybersecurity and national security expertise, which board chair Brett Taylor believes will help ensure AI innovations are securely developed.

Going back, going back, going back to the bidding war from before. I'm telling you, the U.S. won. That's all this comes down to. The U.S. won. Now they're stacking the board with their people. Yep.

I saw this one, Brian, and I just had to have a chuckle. A new study from Georgia Tech, Chapman University, and Carnegie Mellon University finds that lowering the price of legal content can reduce indirect visits to pirate sites. Duh.

The study using data from Ireland after a 14% VAT reduction on e-books shows that while direct visits to pirate sites remained unchanged, indirect visits dropped by at least 27%. I just love the phrase casual pirate. This is just a casual pirate.

I'm just a casual pirate. It just makes me think of Eddie Izzard's sketch, that old one. I'm an action businessman. Yes, that's right. I'm an action executive. I'm a casual pirate. I mean, we've been saying this for years.

Like, if you make it accessible and make it cheap, and we will pay for it. That's it. Yeah. That's it. And now they're not making it cheap or easy. Or accessible. Yeah. Yeah. So fuck them. Yep. The one thing I do have left is Max, and I finished the Stacks Soulville USA documentary, and it was fucking brilliant.

Highly recommended. Definitely want to watch that. Yep. Yep. Everybody I know that I've turned on to it has loved it, so get to it. I started to go back and watch Interview with a Vampire, speaking of casual piracy. That's AMC, right?

AMC Plus, Brian. AMC Plus. Oh, of course. Plus. Yeah, I don't have it. I love the books. Neither do I. Okay. I think I might have to get out my casual pirate outfit. Har. I went back and I watched episode one, and I have to say that the last time when it was on, it was like a little bit post-pandemic, and I was still a raging alcoholic.

So I didn't really pay that much attention to it, because I kept getting up to go to the beer. I was about to say, pirates drink rum, casual pirates have daiquiris. That's it. That's the one. Yes. I really enjoyed the first episode, except the guy who did the interview reminds me so much of Anthony Bourdain.

If there's ever an Anthony Bourdain movie, this guy should play him, because he's the same guy. But I really enjoyed it. I can't wait to watch the rest of them. I want to go and watch the whole thing. I hear they're going to do a Talamascu thing, and they did one with the Mayfair witches that's got Alexander Daddario in it.

And yeah, I'm going to have to casual pirate it up soon, get my bloomers out. I watched Camden, which is a four-part documentary about Camden, produced by Dua Lipa, and goes through kind of the whole history and, you know, just how that's like the center of the UK music world.

And it was fantastic. Like, I love that part of London. I'm a huge—I've been going to Camden since I was—since my first trip to London when I was like 19 or 20. And it's a great documentary. A lot of music luminaries, a lot about the history of it and the different venues there and everything.

So I've watched two of the four, and so far it's fantastic. I'm looking forward to finishing it. Okay, cool. I might have to—do you recommend it for the likes of me? Yeah, I think you'd enjoy it too. Okay, cool. I will have to check it out. The Bad Boys will end after season five is in the news now, even though they said before the Bad Boys—or the Boys will end after season four.

So we'll see. Next year, the Boys will end after season five or six. I can't even—I just put in the Bad Boys movie, so I've got the Boys and Bad Boys all confused in my head. It's too early in the day. I did watch the first two and a half episodes of The Boys season five last night, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

All right. I thought it was pretty, pretty good. But getting to the next thing, Bad Boys, the new—I think it's Bad Boys Ride or Die. I saw that this week. Also, thoroughly enjoyed it. I like the Bad Boys movies. They're stupid fun. I watched the first one, and that was about it for me.

I was good. I felt good after that. I felt like I had explored the entire overall until about as much as they could do with it. So, you know—and I'm not really into the Will Smith, let's bring back his career renaissance thing. I think he's a dick. Yeah, but I can separate the artist from the human on this one.

I don't. That's why I don't listen to Michael Jackson. But do you still read Harry Potter? That's a tough one. Gotcha, motherfucker. It's a tough one because of the kid. Oh, yes, for the children, yes. Yeah, I do it for the children, just like Michael. Yeah, what happens when he grows up a little bit and goes, what else has she written, Dad?

We don't talk about that, son. Well, luckily you can't see the likes I made on all of her tweets. That's right. You can't. So I did enjoy the new Bad Boys. They are the same movie over and over again. But if you forget the old ones, you know, we're old and our memory sucks.

So that's great. Paul Giamatti is going to be in Star Trek Starfleet Academy as the villain. So spoiler alert. Anything but Merlot. God. I did not like that movie. I loved it.

It was great. So he's coming on. I didn't even realize Holly Hunter is in there, too, because, you know, memory's going. Yeah, yeah. She's the lead. Yeah. So that's a pretty good cast. We'll see how that goes. Yeah. You know, I'm up for trying it. Definitely.

It's got to be better than disco. Anything is. Anything is. Thank God disco is dead. So this one just made me laugh. Farmer bro Martin Shkreli is accused of copying the four million dollar one of a kind Wu-Tang clan album that he had bought for two million dollars.

And he has been charged with playing it on his Discord channel in the background and playing it for other people. And they're suing him. They're saying, hey, they had a deal. Yeah, there there's definitely a deal. And he just says, you know, see you in court that, you know, he should really rethink that phrase because it didn't work out for him last time.

So, you know, I mean, look, here's the of course I made MP3 copies. They're like hidden in safes around the world. I'm not stupid. I don't buy something for two million dollars just so I can keep one copy. The very definition of stupid would be buying something for two million dollars that has an iron tight legal clause saying you can't make copies of it and then making copies of it.

Yeah. Yeah. And telling people you made copies of it and then playing those copies for the public. Yeah. That's this is what I would call stupid. Yeah. So stupid is as stupid is. Yeah. This guy's a moron. You're a total fucking moron. And last thing for this is I shared this with you this week because I had stumbled across this playlist.

It is absolutely fantastic if you are basically our age and was into this type of music. It's the 90s electronica alternative playlist on Spotify. It's about seven hours of pretty fucking solid tracks. Yeah. Yeah. This this did get me to figure out how to copy a playlist on Spotify so I could remove because you turned me on to the fact that Jamiroquai was in there, which I was like, I hadn't gotten to that yet.

And it almost immediately after you said that Jamiroquai started playing and I'm just like, oh, no, no, no, this will not stand. This will not stand to my friends. And I did have to add in some there was no Future Sound of London in there. So I had to, you know, add some of that in. There's a lot of good electronic that it was missing.

So, yeah, it did make me also look for the Wipeout XL soundtrack, which is not available on Spotify anywhere. It's not. You can you can rebuild it. Some people have done it. And that was half of it. You know, I had to get had to get some fluke in there and all that good stuff.

So, yeah, but the playlist and Jason's going to make it better. Well, I thought you were making it better, too. We can compare and then merge the two into a beautiful baby playlist. Well, I was contemplating saying that we should open it up and make it a shared playlist between the two of us.

But then you said something about Tracy Lords and I was like, fuck that. You make your own. There's one good song she had from the Mortal Kombat soundtrack is really good song. The rest of them are garbage, but she has that one really good banger in there. Come on. I actually have a good story, Brian, about the Ring Neighborhood app.

I have one story. Good as in it's a piece of crap and this is funny or good as in this is a great app. Good as in it was actually useful yesterday. Okay. A friend of mine found a husky in the middle of Ventura Boulevard, almost got hit by a bus. So he rescued it, took it to his house. And we posted, my roommate posted on everything except the Neighborhood app.

Zero replies. Nobody knew whose dog it was. I posted it on the Ring Neighborhood app and within five minutes, I had the phone number of the owner and they were on their way to pick up the dog. So I'm just saying like after all of the other, you know, Nextdoor didn't do it.

Facebook didn't do it. Twitter didn't. X didn't do it. Everything did not work except the Ring Neighborhood app. So I guess that makes up for all the racist tirades. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, that's usually Nextdoor, you know, that's generally Nextdoor.

Ring is like this. The racist people say this person of color tried to break into my house or this person of color stole my Amazon package. On Ring, it's like, oh, my God, did you see someone of color drove through my neighborhood? We're going to shit. Oh, God, it's the apocalypse.

Get my ammo, honey. That would be Nextdoor. Anyway, I had to up my Adobe subscription for a little bit. Because I needed Illustrator to do some work this week. And, you know, it pained me to do it. But then I looked at my purchase history.

And I noticed that in April 27th of 2020, I paid for the Creative Cloud All Apps 100 gigabyte package. And it was $29.99 a month, which is a good price, I thought, for what they're offering me. It's $360 a year, approximately.

And I thought, OK, that's good. Well, then I looked at the two lines up on my receipt. June 12th, 2024, Creative Cloud All Apps 100 gigabyte package, $59.99. They doubled the price in just four years. That's way too much money.

That's way too much money. And I'm honestly like I used to feel locked into Photoshop because I really had kept up with it and knew what I was doing fast. Yeah. I'm so out of date on Photoshop at this point, I could basically just say to hell with it and find a more low-cost alternative now for the very basic things I'd need to do.

Yeah, you probably can. Hello, Canva. Yeah, not Canva. Anything but Canva. No. I just think it's too much money. I don't want to pay that much money for Photoshop. I don't use it that often. Yeah, the good alternatives are like $60 each.

So if you get the Vector one and you get the Raster one, you're still looking at about $120. But that's only two months of fucking Adobe. Yeah, exactly. That's two months. Yeah. But I needed Illustrator really badly, like right then. So I had to get it for a month. It's like when you need it right now, I still know Illustrator pretty well.

And I have to say, though, even with Photoshop, what they've built into, like the launch screen, which is just ridiculously overburdened with all this shit. But what they have there are great tutorials on just about anything you want to do. So they built a really good library of how-to because the app is so massive now.

And of course, there's no manual. You know, you can't put that in a manual anymore. It'd just be too big. Yeah. But, you know, we never talked about the kerfuffle that they had about the whole thing where they kind of screwed the pooch on their legal. Yeah. Yeah. They're walking that one back. Yeah. They're walking that back. So who cares?

Google it. Exactly. Yeah. Google it if you care. It is over now. Well, for now. But it's still Adobe and everybody hates Adobe, it seems. Yeah. Especially with pricing like that, you fuckers. So I saw this one. Everything Apple tried to kill at WWDC 2024.

MediQuest Pro, Lock ID, TeamViewer, Otter, which is in the article. But I think GoodNotes is more appropriate for what they're talking about. Calculator apps, Android messaging features, Windows 11 tile feature, Venmo, Google Meet, 1Password, Amazon Echo Hub, Google Gemini, and Grammarly. Yes. If I tried to kill, you mean actually 100% killed unless you have to deal with some Luddite friend on an Android for one or two of them?

Then yes. These things are done. I disagree on some of them. I will never use the passwords app. I am not going to... Put all your eggs in one basket. Exactly. One basket that's tied to one Apple ID.

And I remember the fappening. Those things are still hackable. You know, you can still social engineer your way into somebody's Apple ID. And also with 1Password, it is browser agnostic. I don't see Apple really trying to play nice with other browsers. They say it's going to work on Windows, which, you know, I remember iTunes for Windows.

What a shit show that was. And who knows what it's wanting? You can use a collection more than once. Yeah, exactly. I am sticking with 1Password for the long haul. I want one app that is specifically designed to do that thing. The price is commensurate with what they give in value. So I am fine with that.

And it works on all browsers, even browsers in different platforms. So, you know, I just, I hate Safari and I don't want to be locked into Safari because Apple's password manager works really good there, but kind of works in the other ones. You know, I just don't know. And, you know, you look at things like reminders, like they did an okay job with reminders, but still don't use it.

Notes, it was great for a while. Still don't use it anymore. Moved out of that one. They're good for basics, I think, for a lot of these things. But I just, I just can't bring myself to, to give my passwords to Apple in that way. It just does not feel, my gut says no.

My gut definitely says no. So we'll see. We'll see how good. I just, I can't believe it took this fucking long to get a calculator on the iPad. You know, come on. Yeah. Like we were talking about that a bit on our, on our discord. And I was like, how long did we have to wait for the weather app on the iPad?

Yeah. We had to wait for them to kill a dark sky before they could get it. But you know, it's there. Actually, I was looking at a lot of the calculator demos and it's unbelievable. Like it's ridiculous. It's not just a calculator. You can scribble out complex equations and it solves it.

It's awesome. Yeah. You know, what they should have put in here is Wolfram Alphra. Yeah. Wolfram Alpha. Which nobody was using anyways, but yeah. Well, the nerds were, you know. Yeah, that's true. Big, big math heads use it. They still use it all the time. But yeah, I mean, that was, that was one of the first like super expensive iPad apps.

If I remember correctly, it was like 70 or 80 bucks when it first came out. Oh man. But I think the one I paid the most for was OmniFocus. I think that was like 110 bucks or something. Ridiculous. And where's that nowadays? Nowhere. I saw this one. This might be the new eggs.

Smartphone may affect sleep, but not because of blue light. Woo. Eggs, eggs, eggs. Keep me awake. No, they don't. This new data comes from a study of studies, though. How meta. So they're saying, yes, blue light might not be the primary factor affecting sleep.

It might just be the fact that it's a bright fucking screen in your face and you're doom scrolling. Yeah. That's about it. Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You're keeping your brain super active instead of letting it wind down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, you know, if it's too bright, you're screwed. So it's not just the blue light because even the red light, when I have it on, if I have it maxed out and then I'm still looking at Instagram, well, yeah, it still sucks.

And I still stay awake. I love this other one. Establishing a bedtime routine is crucial for better sleep. Nothing to do with the fucking blue light on that one. So yeah, take that out of the equation. We all know that, you know, wake up at the same time, go to bed at the same time. But if you really want to get your sleep schedule, I'm just telling you, listen to the military, set your wake up time to be exactly the same every day.

The go to bedtime will take care of itself. That's true. Definitely true. That's what our bodies do. Got a bit of Spotify news. This is, we just talked a couple of weeks ago about the premium price increase, but now they're going to bring you hi-fi streaming. Cast your minds back to titles seven years ago.

Yeah. It was, what was that? Who was the, what the Toblerone guy? Neil, Neil Young. Neil Young. Yes. Neil Young. Spotify is finally jumping on that bandwagon, but it will cost you an additional $5 per month on top of your existing plan if you want that.

So I don't expect too many people taking it. Anybody that's super interested in hi-fi, high-fidelity streaming is already on a different, different plan with somebody else that offers it cheaper. So individual users who want to listen to high-fidelity music on Spotify may need to pay at least $17 per month.

So it's getting up there to Adobe pricing. Yeah, seriously. Hi-fi audio is already factored into Apple Music at $11 per month or Amazon Music Unlimited also at $11 per month. So they're certainly pricing them up higher. The Supremium add-on is said to include other features like an option to spin up custom playlists in a flash based on specific activities, dates, and times of year.

Supremium is fistacular because you get fisted every time you pay for it. Spotify is definitely casting about for any kind of add-on pluses they can throw in to get you to pay all that money. They're launching a new campaign that's meant to make users' audio streaming experience on the platform even more personalized.

The My Spotify initiative will show users homepage banners and personalized messages within the app that contain information about their listening habits along with links to mixes that they'd presumably enjoy based on those habits. I just want to play music, man. I know. It is so fucking difficult to get to the part where it's like, where's my music without all of these stupid ass generated playlists?

I'm like, they never work. They never, they'll get three songs in and then it'll just go to like, you know, some kind of country tuba music. And I'm just like, this is not what I want. This is not what I want. Yeah. And once again, Spotify has drawn the ire of the music industry. The National Music Publishers Association has called on the FTC to examine the streaming services edition of audiobook content into all of its paid subscription plans.

According to the complaint, Spotify's recent actions are part of a scheme to increase profits by deceiving consumers and cheating the music royalty system, which is kind of what we knew they were going to do with all this. In November 2023, Spotify announced that it would include 15 hours of audiobook content as part of its premium subscription plans.

A few months later, the company unveiled a new audiobook-only subscription, offering the same number of listening hours for $10 a month. The publisher's organization claims that Spotify's recent price increases are based on offering that extra audiobook content and that paying customers are automatically being charged for a service they didn't choose and can't opt out of without switching to the free ad-supported listening experience.

Blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a bunch of bullshit. And it's a sham. And that exists solely to allow Spotify to claim that audiobook content is significantly an independently valuable aspect of its bundled premium plan. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. Yeah.

Spotify's being Spotify. What the fuck did you expect? Exactly. That's pretty much what it is. So obviously, we've had all the new Apple stuff that's coming out. And the one thing that I thought was great about the watch OS 11 that's coming out is you can now basically personalize it a lot more.

And you can actually put in things like taking days off without losing your streaks. I like the streaks. I'm a bit gamified with the fitness. But as everybody knows, you should take off at least one day a week and not continue hammering your body every single day. And you have not been able to do that with their fitness tracking.

Yeah. Or if you get sick, you know. Exactly. So now you can not lose your streaks and all the other stuff that you're chasing after, but actually be healthy about it and not train every single day. Well done, Apple. Finally. Jeez. And more breaking news with Elon.

He's just canceled iPhones. Tempest in a T-Pod. This is the dumbest story ever. He was so pissed off. He's just a dick. OpenAI's partnership with Apple caused Elon Musk to basically lose his fucking mind and just start blabbing bullshit and making things up on his platform and saying that you have no idea what's going to happen.

Well, neither do you, Elon. Yeah. Neither do you. And then threatened to ban Apple devices from all of his companies across the globe, which good luck with that. Yeah. I got nothing good to say. I know. I'm just tired of it. We got to Kanye, Elon, except you can't.

We did. And the problem is we cut off his head and he became more powerful than we could ever expect. That's the problem. That's so annoying. Yes. And X has rolled out private links. I got the notification the other day. One time I logged into X for the first time in a long time.

So no more likes on X. Here's the thing. Yes. Premium users could do this before, but a few weeks ago, ex-director of engineering, Hao Fei Wang, said the upcoming change is meant to protect users' public image because many people feel discouraged to like, quote unquote, edgy content.

The likes tab on user's profile will be gone. Users will still be able to see who liked their post and the like count for all posts, but they will not see the people who liked someone else's post, according to ex-senior software engineer, Enrique Baragon. And he also hinted at the launch today in the post.

And yes, it is out. It launched. Yes. It launched. So yeah, I don't doubt that that's part of it is the fact that, you know, the people that Elon is cozying up to and how he's trying to position himself are often getting embarrassed by the things that they like and getting called out for it. So, you know, now we've hidden that away so people can't do that anymore.

But I've read more than a few articles and I kind of feel I agree with them that the main reason for this is because now you can't tell how many bots are running amok on this stupid platform. Oh, that's a good one. And pushing up certain profiles. Yeah, that's an interesting take.

I like it now, too, though. Yeah, I can. But what's even cooler now is I can create some edgy content, get people to like it that I don't like and then blackmail them or release the release the like list. So release the list. Yep. Release the list. And I was talking to my friend the other day whose daughter's in college, and she said that there are all of these AI detectors being used in college.

I'm like, they can't be. They don't they don't exist. They don't work. And she's like, oh, but they're using them. Then I saw this this article. AI detectors get it wrong. Writers are being fired anyway. Mm hmm. Yes. AI detection tools like CopyLeaks GPT zero and original originality dot AI claim high accuracy rate.

Jesus Christ, I cannot speak today, but experts argue that they are unreliable. False accusations are common, impacting both students and professionals. Yeah. Yeah, we know. We know these things don't work. Open AI even said they don't work and they even took out their own tool. So why are people actually still using these things?

Mind boggling. It is mind boggling. I don't understand. Yeah. I never do. Yeah, I know. No doubt. I told you that I got Mac Whisper Pro a while back and one of my favorite clients, Christopher Lockhead, I work on both of his podcasts, Follow Your Different and Lockhead on Marketing.

And the other day I was running one of his episodes through Mac Whisper because they have this beta program where you can send in two different tracks for a podcast and it will because it doesn't do speaker detection natively inside of Mac Whisper. They say it's coming, but it's one of those things that that's where you pay for other products because it has that.

But now they're saying, OK, put in two different tracks and you'd say who the speaker's on and it will line you up and give you a transcript. The problem is, as I was going through the transcript, I saw this. Christopher Lockhead says, please visit www.potterybarn.com for more ideas and inspiration.

Please visit www.potterybarn.com. Over and over and over again, I will tell you right now, Christopher Lockhead has never in his life said, please visit potterybarn.com for more ideas and inspiration. Well, I got to tell you, Pottery Barn owns a buck or two because after I saw you put this in the notes, I did go to potterybarn.com and I actually bought a new table.

This is all a plot by Mac Whisper to get more money. It did make me go, I've been meaning to replace this table for a while. Oh, my God, you sucker. Sucker, I got a great table at a discount. Pottery Barn. Please visit potterybarn.com for more ideas and inspiration, listeners.

You are so fucking white. God. Oh, this last one. Turkish student creates custom AI device for cheating university exam and gets arrested. That's right. Turkish authorities have arrested a student for creating an advanced cheating device for a crucial university entrance exam.

The student caught in Isparta used a hidden camera disguised as a shirt button linked to AI software through a device in his shoe. The setup scanned the exam questions and transmitted them to the AI, which then provided answers via an earpiece. It's great.

In breaking news, he's been hired to open AI safety board. Exactly. Give the guy an A for effort. Come on. I mean, that's ingenious. There's a video where the cop shows how it worked and he actually leads over and scans the thing and it starts to give him the answers. I'm like, it fucking worked.

Dude, if nothing else, let the guy out of jail and just ship him over here. Give him a job. Good on you. Good on you, mate. Dumb for getting caught. At the library.

Brian, I went back through my Audible library this week and I found a book that you had recommended that I bought but never listened to. The 90s, a book by Charles Klosterman. Ah. So I started listening to it. It's all about the 90s and Gen X. It is the title.

Yes, it is. It is right there on the tin. It is really good. It is really good. I haven't gotten through the whole thing because I keep falling asleep because I listen to it when I go to bed. It's not a reflection on the book. It is when I listen to it, which is the problem. But it is fantastic so far.

I really enjoy it. Chuck Klosterman is a great writer. I've enjoyed many of his anthologies and his writing. So, yeah, this is tailor-made for us. Like we – you know, the 90s were very good years to us. Yes, they were. They were. I'm also reading Get Better at Anything, 12 Maxims for Mastery by Scott Young.

This is a – I'm actually reading this one on Kindle so it's taken me a little longer because I want to – you know, these kind of books I actually try and read now because I retain them instead of audiobooks where I just like fiction and things about the 90s. It's fun. It's a fantastic book so far.

I'll have a full review coming up. But he got recommended to me through Cal Newport. And I love Cal Newport 99.9% of the time. And I'm really digging this book. It's a really well-thought-out way on learning and how to solve complex problems.

So, if you're into that kind of shtick, I highly recommend it so far. So, I'll have a full review next week. But, yeah, I'm definitely digging that one. All right. I finished another one of my popcorn sci-fi books that I used to read. But that's not really my point in bringing it up right now.

I know what your point is on this one. I want to know what the fuck is going on at Amazon with their science fiction titles and the SEO-ification that seems to be going on. The other week, I had finished reading a book that, as part of the title, included hard sci-fi.

You know what? I saw you posted this on our socials, and I saw the actual book cover, and I had to zoom in. I'm like, it does say hard science fiction right on the fucking book cover. Well, guess what this one's title is, Jason? What is it, Brian? This is called Unidentified, A Science Fiction Thriller.

By Douglas E. Richards. What is happening? I got to do some more research. Since I finished this, I need a new book to read anyway. So I got to see if just the sci-fi section on Amazon is being overridden by this crap. Yeah, just put in what you're thinking and see if it's in the title of any book.

Yeah. So it's actually in the title. Anyways, Douglas E. Richards has written a crap ton of books, and you can tell because they're super easy to read. They're super quick. It's usually one good idea, and it's a relatively well-written exploration of it. It's not going to stick with you. You're not going to remember the book.

It's not doomed by any measure of any imagination any of his books are. But they tend to be like just fun little sci-fi reads. I don't know what happened with this one. This is one of the worst books I've ever read in my life. If this would have been his first book, I would get it.

But this is like book number 752 that this guy's crapped out. Well, maybe he's right out of idea. He may have had surgery, or maybe he's got some sort of disease, or perhaps- Traumatic brain injury. Some sort of brain injury, because this is a pile of fucking dreck.

It is written as if he knows his entire audience has no short-term memory or long-term memory. It just keeps repeating itself. It keeps telling you what's happening. The male-female dynamic writing is worse than the Harlequin romance would be.

It's horrible. Okay. Tell me how you really think, Brian. It's horrible. Now, in its defense, I kept reading it because it was like a train wreck. I couldn't stop. I was just like, oh my god, this is so bad. I have to keep reading this. It actually did get a little better as it got to the end.

But man. Wow. That was something. 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. Welcome back, Dave. And you weren't here last week, so we need to jump right into it.

The Acolyte. Has everybody seen it? Yes. I have seen the first three episodes. Okay. I think we're all on board here. Now, when this first came out, I ran to Google just to see what the, just to gauge the temperature of the zeitgeist. And it was a 1.8 out of 4,941 ratings.

Just checked right now, it has dropped to a 1.6 out of 8,086 ratings. Gentlemen, your take on The Acolyte. Begin. Brian? I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I thought the first two episodes were great.

It was a good introduction to this world and a completely different take and a different timeline. And there's nuances about are the Jedi good or not. The Jedi themselves are even questioning themselves. As for the third episode, the one that basically, if you have a MAGA hat, you lost your fucking mind episode.

I thought it was fine. I thought it was fine. You know, I went, I don't know why I still go to X, the site formerly known as Twitter, but every now and then I do. Boy, people lost their minds. Lesbians having a child. This show is... I would just like to point out, I know very few of those people listen to this show.

I would like to point out that the main character whose redemption arc is the entirety of the original Star Wars also did not have a father. Right. You dumb fucks. It was immaculately conceived. Well, there's that.

Anyways, I'm enjoying the show. I can't wait to see where they go with it. I concur. I concur. Yes, I've been enjoying it very much. I did not really have any expectations either way coming into the show. Basically, I knew that it takes place way earlier than any of the other things we've seen.

So there would be no Empire. There'd be no Stormtroopers. And I'm I was OK with all that. And I, too, am very much enjoying it. I say I had a little bit of a rolling in my eyes when it was revealed that a big plot point was a pair of twins.

Twins. All right. Twins. Fine. Fine. But I think it's good storytelling. I like the hot-headed Jedi. Yeah. He's fun. He's fun.

Yeah. Some of the complaints I've seen are about the pacing of the first few episodes. I've seen some people say that it's boring. I don't feel that way.

But I do feel as though there are things that they are waiting to reveal that have made it so that they're pacing things in a very deliberate way. And I'm OK with that. Yeah. I really enjoyed the first two episodes. I thought that they were very fun.

I thought I thought the pacing was fine on those. The third one I just thought was so overacted and just so poorly acted compared to the first two that it really threw me. I mean, it was just cheese upon cheese upon cheese upon cheese. It's like, OK, it's like, OK, it was just too much.

It was too much. You know, but again, this is one of those things where, like, pass your mind back to Star Trek The Next Generation when we would get 36 episodes in a season and half of them were complete and utter shit. This is, you know, this is one kind of bad episode in an arc flashback sequence establishing why these characters are the way that they are.

It wasn't the best, but I know why I can see why they did it for the story. Also, in the end of episode three, there's maybe a slight spoiler here. Well, definitely a spoiler here. So fast forward, if you like. The fire and how everybody died and why was the Jedi in the middle of it, none of it made any real sense.

It was too rushed. There was not enough of a through line about why was the Jedi there and how did rock burn so well? It was another problem that I had with it because they were in a rocky fortress. Who are you to say how rock on an alien planet works?

Oh, my God, I forgot there's space rocks. Flammable space rocks. You get stuff hot enough, you can light aluminum on fire if you have enough heat. I mean, I don't know if you've watched the documentary, the Real Truth documentary on 9-11 on YouTube, Jason.

Oh, God.

Send your letters to Brian Schulmeister. So a couple of things you guys brought up that I'm glad you did. Brian, I'm glad you mentioned Star Trek because there is a thing that I guess it's fair to call it a trope that I describe as a Star Trek village.

And that is where typically on Next Generation, they beam down to a village and everyone's walking around nicely. And some people are carrying little baskets. They're all at like a farmer's market. They're wearing the same clothes and they're smiling and, oh, they're running into their friends and they're saying, hello, friend.

It's good to see you. And there was one episode in The Mandalorian where they went down to this, what was like the, it was just a Star Trek village. Oh, yeah. They were doing like the pool farming or whatever. Right.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And as I was watching, I said, this is a Star Trek village. This is not a Star Wars village. This is a Star Trek village. And there's been a little bit of that in this show. I can't remember precisely where they were, but there was one place they went to where all the villagers seemed like Star Trek villagers.

Right. And, you know, I get it. And then, Jason, to your point about the acting, I think it's a fair criticism. I think it's always a lot harder when you have children because it's so rare to have a really good child actor who just feels authentic.

They weren't the ones I was referring to. I think Jason's talking about all the witches. Yeah, the spiny-headed witch, the mom, and the main Asian Jedi. By the way, a prediction, which isn't really too much of a stretch, the spiny-headed alien is the big bad.

You think so? I think so. Hmm. Darth Maul's mom? Mrs. Maul. Mama Maul. That's a show I'd watch. Darth Maul's mom. She's in the kitchen smoking a cigarette with an apron on it. Get in, Darth.

Blink-182 does the soundtrack. You know, Darth Maul's mom's got it going on. Always picking fights with Jedi. Yeah. You know, but here's the thing I did like about the episode with the witches was it is a different point of view on the Force.

Some of the reviews I read were obviously, you know, this is tying it back to The Last Jedi, and the Force isn't necessarily the thing that is just, that we've been told and seen through the initial series. And yeah, it's other people using the Force in a different way.

And again, you have the witches of Dagomir in the other shows. Right. Yeah, same kind of thing. Look at you, Brian. Go with the deep cuts. That's right. I was going to say the same thing, but I couldn't remember the name, so I'm glad Brian did. I think it's Dagomir, actually, and I said Dagomir, but you know.

Okay. Go right in. I'm sure no one will correct us because that never happens when it comes to things. Somebody in Germany is furiously typing right now. That's true. Yeah, that's right. What else? So I was asking my son about this, my son Jack, who is my closest companion when watching these things, because he has a much better memory than I do, and he's much more tuned into all of the online chit-chat about these sorts of things.

And he was saying that a lot of the scuttlebutt about why this has been getting so many bad reviews was that it basically got bombed, rating bombed by people who were racist because the lead is a black woman.

Right. Yeah, and that tracks. Yeah. Well, no, it totally tracks. An Asian man. An Asian man is one of the other main characters. Yeah. I saw a lot of this is the, you know, it's gone too woke. This is the discovery of Star Wars and all that sort of stuff. Okay. Which, you know, whatever.

A lot of racist dumb fucks. That's exactly right. That's kind of what it comes down to. Yeah. But you know what? I think also, going back to something we've talked about in previous episodes, which is that I feel like we're in a mode of what I would describe as low stakes Star Wars.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. And this is fine. This doesn't have to be a big event. It doesn't have to be part of a movie trilogy. This can just be a little side story and I'll enjoy it and I'll hold it to its own standard. And then the show was pitched as, as sold as, and described as, it's just a murder mystery in the Star Wars universe.

Cool. Yeah. I like that. Okay. Yeah. What else? Yellow lightsabers. It's cool. Chunky lightsabers. Old school designs. Yeah. Right. Very cool. Right. Yeah. I liked it. And again, I like the tensions within the Jedi themselves. You can tell that they're not sure exactly what they believe in.

As opposed to, you know, George Lucas's prequels in which, you know, it was very codified and all the Jedi were on the same page and this is what we do. And I like this other take of it, which everybody kind of has their own opinion and there's a general idea of what we're trying to do.

And, but are we right? Are we doing the right thing? They don't know. So I like that. You know, now that you're saying that, I think that there may be another, another version of the backstory that it does explain why the Jedi was actually inside the fortress when it was on fire.

So there may be some other shenanigans that explain why they're so, why that one guy was so distraught that he decided to, you know, drink the poison instead of, you know, saying, hey, you know, I was just a Padawan. What do you want? You know? Oh, yeah. There might be, there might be some more exposition coming from behind the scenes on that, that actual event.

Well, it does seem to all be related to, there is some sort of thing that the Jedi are basically going around and finding any children that are force sensitive and basically fucking taking them. Yeah. There seems to be, I think that's going to be the internal battle of the Jedi is like, do we have any right to do this?

Well, there was a funny line too, where the, the woman, the head woman of the Jedi there, she said, uh. Trinity. You know. Trinity. Get it right. She said, she said something along the lines of, it's been established that we have the right to test your child with your permission, of course.

And I was like, wait, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a contradictory statement. Um, speaking of which, uh, what'd you guys think of the Wookiee Jedi? Love it. Love it. I mean, come on. Yeah. Wookiee's so underused.

The, I felt a little bad for him. I felt it was kind of like a Chewbacca doesn't get a metal moment when. He's, he's just fixing shit. Yeah. Right. Everybody's inside, everybody's inside the ship testing the new Jedi and he's out there doing maintenance. Yeah. I'm just fixing the bike.

Yeah. That's what I'm doing. I mean, maybe that's his choice and that's what he likes to do. And it didn't make for a nice little character moment. Chewie was always fixing the Falcon. Maybe it's some, you know, some predilection that the, the race has not to be, you know, racist. Right. Like all the reviewers. YouTube Puckets. I mean, it's going to be cool if we see.

I need to see him with his lightsaber in action. That's what I was going to say. Yeah. Yeah. And this is lightsaber proportionately sized for him. Like, is it an oversized lightsaber? That'd be cool. I'd hope so. I guess it'd be really weak if he had his little tiny lightsaber. He actually literally gets Yoda's lightsaber.

Like, oh, crap. Like holding it between his pinky and thumb. Like those idiot kids that hold lavaliers like they're microphones nowadays. Right. Right. Speaking of which, in this universe, it is possible that Yoda is alive and around.

Right. He could be with the Jedi. It's possible that Chewbacca's around, I think. We might actually get baby Yoda, the real one. Yeah, we might get the real child. That's true. Yeah. No, I mean, all in all, I am definitely enjoying the series. And this is, again, you know, people that like the series, from what I've seen online, are like shocked and amazed that people are not liking it and being so adamant about it.

And I was just like, have you ever read a comment section? Ever? This is the internet, you know? What were you expecting? It's true. Yeah, it makes me wonder what would it have been like if we'd had a comment section when the original Holy Trilogy had come out.

Yeah. I don't want to think about it. No, don't. No. That would hurt too much. I don't want to think about it. Yeah. Somebody's working on a comedy sketch for TikTok right now based on that premise, I'm sure. Yeah. Well, I'm going to keep watching and, you know, very much enjoying it so far.

It's just comfortable, you know? It doesn't have to be great. It's comfortable and it's fun. And that's all we need out of Star Wars right now. Yeah. I'm enjoying it. I'm happy we've got it. I'm looking forward to the next one, the Skeleton Crew, I think it's called, with Jude Law. And that's going to be another kind of little, not important story, but just something that takes place in the Star Wars universe.

I think they're doing a great job. The big misstep for me was the Book of Boba Fett. That, you know, that one was the bummer. It wasn't that great. Yeah. Yeah. Well, especially when you figure out how he got out of the thing in like five minutes. He's like, okay, I'm just going to climb out. Yes. How Boba Fett got out of the Sarlacc pit has been a question that has burned in my mind since I was 14 years old.

Yeah. And I was like, that's it? Yeah. That's about it. Yeah. You can't unsee it. Yeah. So I was away last week and I was away because we took the family down to King's Dominion for the day.

Nice. Actually, we did a multi-day trip. So we were at King's Dominion last Friday and then Thursday night we drove down. We got ourselves a little Airbnb. We went to the park all day Friday and then stayed over another night and came home on Saturday. Are either of you familiar with King's Dominion?

I think you are, Jason, right? I used to go when I was a kid. Yeah. I mean, I don't remember a whole hell of a lot about it, but yeah, I think I was like 10 last time I was there. So 42 years ago was the last time I was at King's Dominion. Yeah, I had no experience whatsoever. I was a West Coast kid, so.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, King's Dominion is a, it's a, you're sort of your standard regional theme park. You're probably about a- Like a Six Flags kind of thing? Exactly. Okay. Exactly. It's a, it's a probably, you know, a hundred acres of, the way, well, the way I used to describe King's Dominion was that it's a parking lot with rides because it was my least favorite of the regional theme parks around here where I, so here where I live in between Baltimore

and Washington, the ones that are near us are Hershey Park, which is up in North in Hershey, Pennsylvania. You got King's Dominion to the south and then a little farther south, you got Busch Gardens. Right. Busch Gardens was always the most well-groomed, beautiful park of any of them.

I, my, my guess is they had all that beer money and they just kept the place looking beautiful. To trump the chocolate money in Hershey. Yeah. Right. Well, and Hershey had all the chocolate money and Hershey is quite nice too. Hershey, I think has a very, it has more of a small town family feel to it.

And King's Dominion was just kind of the place where they had a lot of big rides, but it was really flat, hot in the summertime and lots of carnival rides. I'm noticing that I'm not seeing a lot of trees around King's Dominion here. So, I mean, it's just for the Southern California listeners, it sounds like Hershey Park is kind of like the Knott's Berry farm.

King's Dominion is the magic mountain and then Busch Gardens is the Disneyland of the trifectas of the parks that I grew up with. Not really. Since I've been to, I've been to all that you're talking about, Magic Mountain is definitely more like Busch Gardens. Okay. Definitely more like Busch Gardens.

Okay. Yeah. So, I had probably not been to King's Dominion in about 20 years. And what drew me back was I'd seen some reports online from folks who were saying that they've really upped their game.

They got bought out by the Cedar Fair folks in the past couple of years. And evidently that led to an injection of money. They said that the food was much better. They've really beautified things.

They've opened up a new section that's sort of an Africa section. So, they're doing a lot with the theming and really seem to be investing in the park and trying to do things better. So, I figured, you know, we hadn't been in a long time. Let's go down there and check it out.

And we did. And I have to say, overall, we had a very good time in the park. It was a Friday. School's not out yet. So, the park was empty. We walked on to just about everything, which was great. We had lovely weather.

I enjoyed most of the rides. I like roller coasters a lot. There was one roller coaster that is famous for basically making you black out. And I did. So, it's a very strange feeling.

It's called the tequila coaster. Yeah. To feel your consciousness slip away and then you brown out. You can't see. And then it comes back. And this is fun. So, we had a really good time. The food was good. Just enjoyed it very much.

And you could see the progress that they're making. And you could see the directions that they're heading. So, I suspect that there are good things on the way for this park. And that the investments are paying off. It is also a very – well, it's an old park. It's 50 years old. I was going to say, I'm seeing two rides right now on their list of rides that were there when I was there.

The Berserker, I was there the year it opened. Yep. And the Blue Ridge Tollway, I rode on as well. Yes. Well, and you also would have ridden the roller coaster that was called the Rebel Yell. Hmm. I wonder why they renamed that one. Well – Wrote to by Billy Idol.

Yeah. So, they have done away with all of their Confederate theming. And so, like, Rebel Yell is now called something like America 75 or something like that. And it's – that was an opening day ride.

And I have to say it is just about a perfect wooden roller coaster. We – everyone – we were all super impressed with how smooth it is. Just – it's everything you want a wooden roller coaster to be. It's not rough. It doesn't shake you around or jam you into your seat or anything like that.

So, I was very impressed with that. Is it the Grizzly now? That – the Grizzly is there as well, which is a wooden roller coaster that goes back into the woods. It's not as woodsy as it used to be because they sort of cut down part of the woods to put in another roller coaster, which is the roller coaster that used to be the Hurler, which was themed after – what's it called?

What's the Wayne and Garth movie? Wayne's World? Wayne's World, yeah. So, the Hurler was Wayne's World themed. And that was a wooden roller coaster. But then they turned it into one of these hybrid coasters. Now it's called Twisted Timbers. So, they put steel tracks on a wooden coaster.

And it's fun. It's fun. It's a good roller coaster. They have a roller coaster called the Anaconda, which is a big old steel coaster that just bangs your head against everything. Not a whole lot of fun. But anyway, lots of roller coasters. We had a good time.

The staff was super friendly, which is nice. You don't always get that in a regional theme park. So, thumbs up to everything that the Cedar Fair people are doing with King's Dominion. It seems like they're on their way to good things. However, you knew this was coming, right?

Yes. I don't think we will be going back. And here's why. In the 20 years since I last went to King's Dominion, what used to be a leisurely country drive to King's Dominion in the middle of nowhere is no longer a leisurely country drive.

It has filled in in between here and there. It used to be that once you got past the D.C. traffic heading south, there's just an open road between you and this theme park. No longer. It is busy, busy highway, the whole way.

So much so that on our way back, Saturday afternoon, you know, mid-morning into mid-afternoon, which should have been a two and a half hour drive, ended up being a three and a half hour drive because of traffic. And it just wasn't pleasant. So to go down there for a day, and this is a one-day park, you know, I suppose you could go down there, do a day at King's Dominion, do a day at Busch Gardens, maybe do a day at Virginia Beach,

which is also close by so you could make it a multi-day trip. But for a day trip to go from where I live down to King's Dominion and back again, the hassle of the travel is not worth, in my opinion, the day that you'll spend having a good time in the park.

And there's no other way to get there. There's no way to go around. You can go either way around the D.C. Beltway, but you're still stuck in this awful traffic. So that led me to the notion of driving here in the good old USA.

And here's the grumpy old part I want to get to, which is— Keep in mind, you're talking to two people who have spent an awful lot of time in Los Angeles, basically known as having the worst traffic in the world. That's right. And Washington, D.C. is number two. So, yeah. So I know what it's like, but yes, L.A. is worse.

And I've been in L.A. traffic, and yes, it is worse. But it got me thinking, like, you know, my wife and I were talking about, oh, wouldn't it be fun to get, like, a fun little car or something, you know? But I was thinking, well, where would we drive it? You know, like, where can you go and find an open road?

We'd have to go somewhere to drive the car. And yes, there are places you can go, but it's not like here on the East Coast anyway, on the I-95 corridor, that you could just leave your house and very quickly find a nice open place to drive.

And you used to be able to do that. And that's the way things go, and that's progress, and so on and so forth. But I guess what I'm saying is it's frustrating that our infrastructure has not kept up, right? The roads have not kept up. And I know you ask traffic people, they'll say it's not possible to – you can't build your way out of traffic problems.

It doesn't work that way. But it kind of made me a little sad that this nice pleasure trip was bookended by what was a very stressful, energy-sucking drive, particularly on the way back.

Right. You know, I just – again, I grew up in Anaheim, a stone's throw away from Disneyland. And at one point in time, there were a lot of – there was actually orange trees, which is why it was called Orange County. It's all city now.

So anybody trying to drive to Disneyland and Anaheim is experiencing the same thing. I was trying to think of where's the last time that I actually had a really, like, nice, enjoyable drive. And once you get out of Los Angeles itself, if you go from, like, L.A. to Palm Springs, that's a fantastic drive.

Yeah, if you get out of L.A. early enough, it's perfect. Yeah, you got to get out of L.A. early enough. It can't be, you know, a Friday night or a Saturday morning because a lot of people go out to Palm Springs for weekends. But if you can hit the right time, man, that's a fun drive. Yeah. I think the last good drive I had was when I went from Chicago to L.A. by myself.

And it was – I did not use the main roads. I did not use GPS. I had a – basically a map book, one of the old atlases. The Thompson Guide or something like that? Thomas Guide. Thomas Guide. That's just an L.A. thing. I had the Rand McNally Road Atlas.

And I basically went west and I tried to go under the Rockies. I did not want to go through the Rockies. So I just kept going, going west. You went under the Rockies? Did Elon Musk bore the hole for you? No, no. Underneath being south of – there was no boring involved.

It was a beautiful drive. And I ended up in the country's second largest wind farm on accident one time that took over an hour and a half to drive through. It was gorgeous. And it was just me on the road. I think I saw three cars for that hour and a half. It was gorgeous just to get out away from the main roads. And I highly recommend that.

I mean I'm going in the right direction and I just added an extra day on my trip. I just knew that it was going to take a day longer. And it was so worth it. It was so worth it. I go through little towns and most of the roads are still like 55, 65 miles an hour, but it just wasn't interstate. And it was so beautiful.

There are still a ton of places to drive, generally not on the coasts. In the middle of the country, it is still awesome. Actually, you know what though? Again, it comes down to timing as do most things that involve Los Angeles. But the PCH drive from L.A. to Santa Barbara, if you can hit the timing right, is a stunning and beautiful and wonderful drive.

Yeah, if you leave at 4.30 in the morning, it's perfect. Well, you know what? That's one of the things that struck me was that would it be worth doing a day trip to Kings Dominion if we came back in the middle of the night? Probably. Is that the fix?

I'll say, just thinking back to what was the last really pleasurable drive I had, it was probably a few years ago we did – we drove down about half of Skyline Drive. Are you guys familiar with that at all? I've been there. Yep. Yeah.

Yeah. And Skyline Drive is just an amazing trip through the Appalachians, I guess it is. And to me, Skyline Drive is an example of a project that was done as a gift to future people.

You know, they made this road through the ridge of this – through this mountain ridge, this beautiful mountain ridge. And they knew it was going to take so long that a lot of the people who started the project wouldn't be around when it was done and that it would be around for the next hundred years for future generations to enjoy.

And that's what's happened. And it's just beautiful. And you can't go that fast because it's a twisty mountain ridge road. It's just gorgeous. So – but, you know, you've got to travel to get there. So I guess that's the thing is that, yes, those drives are out there.

But it's harder and harder to happen upon one. Yeah. I mean, especially if you're in a major area, a big – lots of population and all that sort of stuff, like as we all are. Yeah. What's been your experience up in Canada so far, Brian? Canada's traffic rivals L.A.

It's horrible. There's just less roads here. That's the problem. Like in L.A., there's four to five different ways you can take to get somewhere. And it's a matter of juggling and figuring out the best way. Here in Toronto, there's one way. And if it's fucked, it's fucked. And you're fucked. But when you get outside of the city, it's similar.

Like I used to drive a lot in between Toronto and Buffalo. And if you get out of Toronto and before you get to the U.S. border, it's actually gorgeous. It's wine country. So it's trees everywhere, wineries, not a lot of traffic. So we do have a nice little drive just outside.

And there's another area not too far, I think, I believe it's east of here, called Prince Edward County. And people have said that it's kind of the same thing. It's a beautiful drive out there. And you get there, it's a charming town again, wine country again. And, you know, we just haven't done a lot of it because you don't want to drive in the winter.

So it's very limited time that you can actually go do it, right? Like you just don't want to fuck around with it within all the snow and you don't want to go there. So, yeah, yeah. Well. Tune in next week for our episode of Cruisin' with Dave.

Yeah. What will I find ships about next? I feel like that's next. Yeah. That's right. That's right. And here's why I don't like flying on airlines. Oh, we could do five hours on that, man. Yeah. This is going to become an Andy Rooney segment.

That's what it's. Did you ever notice how long you have to wait to get on an airplane these days? It didn't used to be like this. It's basically exactly what we just did. Quite the truth. Oh, man. The truth hurts.

Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Nicholas, Ryan, Michael, Frode, and Sebastian. Thank you all so much. And a special shout out to Frode, who actually originally went through PayPal, then wrote and said, hey, where's my high fidelity, no ad feed?

And I said, well, we can't give you that through PayPal, unfortunately. So why don't you cancel and go over to Patreon where you can get that feed? And they did. Awesome. Awesome. And yes, just to reiterate, $3 a month will get you the show early and ad free and in high res. And you can give us more than $3 a month if you like.

Yes, by all means. We're always open to that. Yes, yes. It's just a $3 minimum just because of all the hoops we have to jump through. But we thank you all so very much for signing up on Patreon. That's patreon.com slash GOG. Yes, thank you. And over at PayPal, we have Ralph, Shari, Miles, Linda, and Natalie. Yes.

And over at the tip jar, we've got Panos NL, Joseph, Jeff, Theodore, and Damian for the 20 bucks and Scott for the 30. Woo. Thank you all so very much for keeping the show on the air. Thank you. Thank you. And we've got two new reviews. The first is a five-star from Svit Ruby. Mostly non-AI generated review.

I enjoyed grumping along with the GOG crew. I started following when Jason parted ways with Jordan Harbinger after I realized the only thing I liked about that show was Jason's read on Feedback Fridays. This continues to be the only show I regularly contribute to monetarily. Even my increasingly grumpy young geek likes it. Keep up the good work. Well, thank you very much.

And we have another five-star review from Ron. Makes the pain worth it. I've been listening for four years now and never once been disappointed by a show. One of my main workouts is ruck marching on Friday, sometimes Saturday nights for a few miles. And I saved the show for those since it makes the schlep just a little less painful and way more entertaining.

Being a recovered goth, eternal Star Wars fanboy, and a current technologist, I rarely miss a beat with the insanely blunt and intelligent banter, nor ever find a single topic to which I can't relate. Even my millennial wife grudgingly enjoys when I have to skip a ruck and listen while on a family drive.

Yes, I wait until the kids are asleep before mashing play. Please keep up the grump and I'll keep throwing cash at you. Well, we will keep up the grump. Keep that cash flowing. Ron, thank you very much. And hi, wifey. Yes, hello. And hi, kids. Get back to bed. Uh, just a quick shout out to all my former friends from Finn McCool's, now Jameson's.

Uh, there was a bit of a tragedy there over, uh, I think on Tuesday night, uh, some asshole patrons started a fight. Uh, the current manager on charge that night went out to go break it up, got hit in the head and passed away. That was there. Oh my God. So that was my ex local.

And I know none of my old friends that, uh, still work there, listen to this or anything, but, uh, thoughts are with you anyways. Yeah. I just heard that on K rock this morning. I didn't know that's where it was. Oh man. Yep. 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 652.

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