653: To Violate, or Not to Violate?

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. So there is a link that is making the rounds right now. And I'm at first, I'm always skeptical about these things at first. This is like when you see your unfortunate aunts and uncles copying and pasting the thing about, I'm posting this now on Facebook because I do not give them the rights to use any of my images.

They are mine and mine only. And by posting this, that is legal. Except it's not because we all know that that was all dumb. But this is a link I did see a friend posted on Facebook and I did follow up on this. It's 11 steps to keep meta from stealing your data to train AI. You only have until June 26, 2024 to say no to meta taking your personal photos and words and using them to train their generative AI.

Here are the 11 step-by-step directions for opting out. And this is a post over on, I think, was it Medium? No, Substack. Substack by Debra Copacain. Copacain. Copacain. Copacain. Copacabana. I'm not sure exactly how she pronounces her name.

Let the Copa. Debbie was blogging. But she's a legit New York Times bestselling author, war photographer, TV writer, Emmy award-winning TV news producer. So, you know, respectable. Annoying overachiever. Annoying overachiever, but respectable. So the other reason I actually believe it and did it is because meta has taken great pains to not let anybody know about it, buried all the settings as far as they possibly could, and made it very amorphous and odd and unassuming.

And even the response when you get through it doesn't really tell you anything. So, seems legit to me. Okay, Brian, I can do this in one step for you. Yeah. Move to the EU. Yes. Yes, this is definitely something that they tossed out there because they felt like they had to.

And they take care of this for you in the EU. In the news.

After the last couple episodes, Brian, I still get people asking me all the time, why do I hate Elon Musk so much? Let me count the ways. Yeah, I've just got a couple examples this week, and I love this one. A group of Tesla investors has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk, Tesla, and its board members alleging harm to the company due to Elon's diversion of resources to XAI.

This is what we talked about the other week when all the NVIDIA chips were kind of dropped off the back of one truck and loaded onto another. The suit claims Musk hired AI employees away from Tesla, redirected microchips to X and XAI, and used Tesla's data to develop XAI's software and hardware without compensating Tesla.

Filed in Delaware, court of Chancery by the Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund, Daniel Hazen and Michael G.M. Petro, the lawsuit seeks financial damages for Tesla and the transfer of Musk's equity in XAI to Tesla.

Ooh, that's what happens when you fuck with the Teamsters, I'm telling you. Jason, he's just playing 3D chess while the rest of us are playing regular chess. He is next-level genius. Okay. Well, the investors argue Musk's actions are similar to a CEO diverting resources from their primary company to a competing startup, which would be unacceptable.

I wouldn't say it's similar. I'd say that's exactly what's fucking going on here. Yeah. They emphasize Tesla's focus on AI and accuse Musk of undermining this by creating a competing company and reallocating Tesla's talent and resources. And all of that would be perfectly acceptable if these were all private companies.

They're not. But they are not. That's the problem. Yes. That's what happens when you allow the Cleveland Bakers and the Teamsters Pension Fund to buy into your company. They're going to get pissed off when you do stupid shit. Yeah. I have a feeling they voted against his pay package as well.

I'm sure they did, but it didn't work. Nope. Here's another one for you, Brian, on why I hate Elon Musk. I've talked many times about how much I hate Starlink, and I think that it has so many problems. But here's a new one. And a hat tip to Daryl for the first person to send this in, among many.

A new study from the University of Southern California suggests that SpaceX's Starlink satellite megaconstellation could be hindering the Earth's ozone layer from healing. Yes, you heard that right. The research indicates that as Starlink satellites burn up during reentry, they release harmful pollutants, including aluminum oxides, into the upper atmosphere.

This could contribute to significant ozone depletion, which is crucial for protecting the Earth from UV radiation. Are you telling me I never had to give up my Aquanet hairspray? That's exactly what I'm saying, Brian. We could have been goth for generations and still would have been fine.

We would have done less damage than Elon and his stupid satellites. In just a few years, yeah. Yeah. Generations of spiky hair has been sacrificed. But he has done, in one fell swoop, what goths everywhere failed to do. They found that a 550-pound satellite generates roughly 66 pounds of aluminum oxide nanoparticles during reentry, which would take up to 30 years to drift down into the stratosphere.

And SpaceX has launched nearly 6,000 of these 550-pound satellites and plans to add tens of thousands more. So, yeah, tens of thousands more. Like the night sky wasn't screwed up already from just the 6,000 we have. The study found that reentering satellites significantly increase atmospheric aluminum levels, which could rise by 646% annually.

So, there you go. There's another reason to hate Elon. I love it. He's going to be this guy who's like, I want to go to Mars. I want to explore the planets. But what he's basically going to do is going to build this mega constellation that is going to deplete the ozone layer, burn us all alive.

And if that's not enough, all these satellites are probably going to have a catastrophic collision event and just lock us in with debris anyway, so we're not going to be able to go anywhere. So, down to supervillain actions, you know, this is a pretty fucking supervillain action if, you know, I got to point fingers here.

Yeah, I'm with you. But again, you know, 3D chess, Jason. See, he's going to have a space bore machine to get through the Starlink debris. And then he's the only person that can get us to Mars, so he wins. Oh, he wins. Yes. Hey, but if you're still on Team Elon, SpaceX has introduced the Starlink Mini, a portable version of its satellite internet service, small enough to fit in a backpack.

Just kind of like the nuke from that underrated film, The Peacemaker, starring Nicole Kidman and George Clooney. This will be priced at $599, which is $100 more than the standard kit. So, you can bundle it with your existing plan for an extra $30 a month, but data is capped at 50 gigabytes.

So, there you go. Yeah. If you want to just say, fuck it, and join in, and watch the world burn, now you can do it from your backpack. Yeah, people ask, people, right, people ask the question, I feel obligated to respond. You know, it's funny, I did have actually a friend of mine reach out to me this week as well, saying, still loving Elon on your show, I guess.

I'm like, well, yeah, if the satellite fits. If the satellite fits. Here's another fun one, Sci-Fi Foods, great name, by the way. Bay Area startups specializing in lab-grown meat has shut down, surprisingly. The co-founders announced on LinkedIn that the company, which had not yet launched any products, could not secure the necessary funding to keep going.

Now, get this, Sci-Fi Foods, backed by venture capital firm and our best friends, Andreessen Horowitz, had aimed to grow beef from cow sales and mix it with plant products, and eventually put your burgers on the blockchain. So, I love this. They say, regulatory hurdles and political opposition, especially in the states like Florida and Alabama, hindered their progress.

And the other challenge was that nobody wants that shit, period. Yeah, I mean, it all had a day in the sun, I guess, but I don't know. People have said that it tastes pretty good when they've tried it. I would try, but it doesn't seem to be winning over the hearts and minds of people right now.

No. I mean, even veggie burgers, like look at Beyond Meat and the Impossible Burger. Those guys have even tanked. Well, that's a whole different story. But the reason those things tanked is because we ended up finding out that, hey, guess what? Those aren't good for you because they put so many chemicals in it to make it taste decent.

It's pure chemistry. It is pure chemistry. And just the salt levels alone, I look at it, and it's off the charts. So, they do taste good, but, you know. Yeah, not worth it. Not healthy. No, just have a mushroom. Just have a big shiitake mushroom and call it a day.

There are many other ways to make veggie burgers that don't require all that chemistry. That's true. Well, another EV manufacturer has bitten the dust. Fisker has declared bankruptcy. They fired for Chapter 11 late on Monday the 17th with plans to restructure its debt and sell off its assets.

We are proud of our achievements, and we've put thousands of Fisker Ocean SUVs in customers' hands, which will now be completely unsupported. You will not be able to get any parts for, and you are screwed. Yeah, you've been Fisker'd by Fisker. Yeah. Fisker revealed in their report that they had produced 10,193 units of its sole EV, the Ocean SUV, in 2023, but only delivered 4,929.

So, at least there's less than 5,000 people that are totally screwed with these guys going out of business. Yeah. What's funny about Fisker is about three or four episodes ago, I mentioned them, and you're like, who the fuck is Fisker? I've never heard of them before, but now they're gone. Yeah.

Yeah, I think I've probably seen half of those on the streets around here. It's usually LA where you find these things. Yeah. Yeah. Like, in my neighborhood, it's a mix of Rivians, mostly Teslas, probably a few Fiskars, and now a bunch of Cybertrucks.

It's like, yeah, no. And the funny part is, yeah, you go to Whole Foods, you see all of the, oh, the Porsche SUV, or EVs, too. Those are everywhere. Like, people are getting rid of their Teslas and moving to the Porsche EVs. Yeah, get a real car.

But, yeah, if you're going to be a douche, why not just go full douche, you know? That's right. Yeah. Sorry, Dr. Teeter, I just had to. But, yeah, those things are, the point that I was trying to get to, though, was that you go, you go to Whole Foods, you see the Porsches and the Teslas, and you go to the weed store, and you see the Cybertrucks.

That's literally where all the Cybertrucks congregate, is the weed store. Fantastic. Yep. Love this next one. In a New York Times essay, U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy proposed social media warning labels to highlight the mental health risks for adolescents. However, his arguments shifted towards advocating for broader solutions, such as legislative measures, which he presented more convincingly.

Yes, I think so, because I don't think there's any consensus or agreement on anything specific that is happening. You know, we know it's bad, but how do you put that on the label? Yeah, exactly. You need the actual science. You can't just write, put on the pack of cigarettes, we'll kill you.

He compared social media's impact to tobacco and car safety, suggesting warning labels could help. Yet, he didn't specify how these labels would work on social media and acknowledge the complexity of monitoring children's online activity. He ultimately emphasized the need for stronger regulations to protect youth mental health, basically wasting everyone's time.

Yes, let's stick with the regulations and not mess about with this other stuff. Thank you very much. Yep. Well, speaking of this sort of thing, the FTC has referred its complaint against TikTok to the Justice Department after a long-running investigation into the company's privacy and security practices. They found reason to believe that TikTok is violating or about to violate.

It's like their fingers right over the button. Violate! Press! To violate or not to violate. The FTC Act and COPA, Lena Kahn said in a post on X, it's not exactly clear what the FTC turned up yet, but of course that will come out if the Justice Department decides to move forward on this, which hopefully they will.

The statement itself is some unusual move for the FTC, which acknowledged that it doesn't typically publicize its referral decisions. It said it believed doing so in this case was in the public interest. Basically, everybody's piling on to TikTok right now, so the time is nigh. Yeah, TikTok, go to TikTok.

So we'll see what's going to happen. They were actually on the news yesterday with their new feature about AI-generated influencers, and I'm just like, okay. They're just – I damn near give up, but here's somebody who didn't give up.

Ilya Sutskiver. I guess that's how you pronounce it. It's early. I'm not even going to try too hard. He was the co-founder and former chief scientist over at OpenAI, and he was the head of the AI safety board over at OpenAI. You know, the one that doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. Well, actually, they're making the new one, remember?

Yes, the stacked by, you know, people that aren't going to do anything. Exactly. So he launched a new AI company, Safe Superintelligence, Inc., or SSI, just a month after he left OpenAI. Okay.

Yes, he co-founded SSI with former Y Combinator partner Daniel Gross and ex-OpenAI engineer Daniel Levy. And the company aims to address AI safety, focusing on developing safe superintelligence. I'd be more interested if it was Eugene Levy. Yeah, that would be much more interesting.

Much more interesting. So I had to know what the difference was between AGI and superintelligence, because we usually hear people talking about artificial general intelligence. Superintelligence has kind of taken a back seat. So here's the definition. It says, while AGI refers to machines that can perform tasks at human cognitive levels, superintelligence goes a step further.

Superintelligence is essentially an advanced version of AGI, where the system surpasses human intelligence, exhibiting superior cognitive capabilities. How about safe super ignorance? Can we just go for that one? Yeah, I agree. I was listening to No Such Thing as a Fish. I don't know if you're still listening to that podcast, but they got into AI a little bit.

And the line was like, you don't need to be worried about artificial intelligence, because we can't even create artificial stupidity yet. I don't know. It's getting pretty close on that one. I don't know if you've used many of the LLMs lately. It's getting kind of bad.

All right. Some days it's great. Some days it's not. It's like, you know, it's like that drunk roommate. Some days you wake up and, you know, the house is clean. And the other times there's a dead body in the bathroom. You just don't know what you're going to get. Right. Well, relating back to the story that I put in the intro segment about the 11 steps that you need to take to protect yourself from meta training its AI on your data.

Meta has confirmed it will pause plans to start training its AI systems using data from its users in the European Union and the UK. Just like I said, Jason. Move to the EU. If you're in the EU, they basically said, all right, well, we can't do this because of GDPR and all this other stuff. So we just won't.

And I guess we'll give you a couple of hoops to get out of it if we so choose, U.S. people. Yeah. Yeah. So part of the reason here, and this is one of our complaints that we always have, one of those relates to the issue of opt-in versus opt-out, where personal data processing does take place, users should be asked their permission first rather than requiring action to refuse, which is exactly what they're doing to us in the U.S.

Yes. So users weren't able to opt-out of having their data used. Instead, they had to complete an objection form, kind of like what I just did, where they put forward their arguments for why they don't want their data to be processed. It was entirely at Meta's discretion as to whether this request was honored, though the company said it would honor each request.

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Okay. Yeah. We'll see. I just love this activist organization over there. Noob, or none of your business. That is a good one. That is a great one. I like that one. So Meta gonna Meta.

Apple gonna Apple, too. So Apple discontinued their Apple Pay Later scheme last week. Remember Pay Later? Yeah. We were both against that. That's a bad idea. Yeah. Yeah. So they discontinued it, and it wasn't because it was the right thing to do. It was likely due to a new interpretation of the 1968 Truth in Lending Act, or TILA, not to be confused with Jet TILA.

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed that buy now, pay later loans, like Apple Pay Later, fall under Truth in Lending Act regulations. So that means buy now, pay later lenders must meet the same obligations as credit card companies. That includes handling customer disputes and providing refunds.

So what it comes down to is Apple didn't want to do the paperwork. They're like, this is going to just be too much effort. So, you know, as a side effect of that, they got rid of it. And, you know, it was the right thing to do to begin with, but they shouldn't have done it. Well, except for the fact that they may have discontinued their own version of the service, but they are going to, from what I read, outsource it.

So they'll still be offering it, but somebody else will be handling it. They'll just take a cut without having to do the forms. Exactly. That's about it. Well, the U.S. government is suing Adobe, which we've been piling on a lot recently, and two of its senior company executives for allegedly deceiving consumers by hiding early termination fees and making them jump through hoops to cancel subscriptions to Adobe products.

Guys, when you're done, go ahead over to SiriusXM. Oh, please. Please. So, yeah, they're looking into this. There's the early termination fee disclosures that were buried in fine print or required consumers to hover over tiny icons to find them. Any consumers who reached out to Adobe's customer service to cancel their subscriptions encountered other obstacles like drop calls and chats and being transferred to multiple representatives, the FTC statement ads.

I personally remember I went through that a little while back when I was trying to cancel a subscription for the company I was working for at the time. So, let's see, Samuel Levine says Americans are tired of companies hiding the ball during subscription sign-up and then putting up roadblocks when they try to cancel. Agreed. It should be illegal.

So, knock it off and sue them. The thing is, I thought it was. I thought we'd gotten past this already. It's just everybody, nobody seems to care. That's the problem. It's just like all these companies just start doing the slippery slope and they all end up in the same place, and now we've got to sue them to get them to claw it back.

It's unbelievable. Yeah, because we had laws about this. I mean, this started in the AOL days where it was impossible to cancel. And, you know, all of the – anything after like the big Time Warner AOL merger where they kept doing the same thing. It's like all these sites would say, okay, sign-up's easy.

Cancellation is impossible. Once you're in, you're in. So, they passed laws to stop shit like this. And Adobe, I guess, just thought they were, you know, too big for it. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, rake them across the coals. I've got more on this cancellation thing once we get to apps and doodads, especially on Adobe.

So – And Amazon is now facing a nearly $6 million fine for California labor law violations. So, good. Under the state's AB701 law, large companies are required to tell warehouse or distribution center workers in writing what their expected quotas are, including how often they should perform particular tasks and what consequences they may face for failing to meet those quotas.

So, you know, job instructions. The law was a reaction to stories from Amazon workers who said they would skip bathroom breaks or risk injury in order to maximize their output. The tech giant claimed it does not need to provide this written information because it uses a peer-to-peer system. The peer-to-peer system that Amazon was using in these two warehouses is exactly the kind of system that the warehouse quotas law was put in place to prevent.

Take that, said Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia Brower in response. So, yes, we see your system. That's why we're fining you, because we don't like the system. Yep. Yep. $6 million. Kind of a drop in the bucket. Snap actually got fined $15 million this week, too, for some sexual harassment issues and things like that.

So, yeah, still, you know, as we like to say, coffee cream or money, but it's something. It's something. Now, here's another fun one. SoftBank and First Horizon Bank are introducing emotional support AI systems to their call centers to help employees handle customer harassment and stress.

SoftBank's technology, SoftVoice, alters angry customer voices to sound calm, acting as a mental shield for operators. This voice-altering technology detects hostile tones and changes the inflection without altering the words. Unbelievable.

This gets better. First Horizon Bank, meanwhile, planned to use AI to detect when an employee was stressed, sending them a relaxing video montage of family photos and inspirational quotes. Initial tests showed a reduction in burnout, but the bank ultimately decided not to adopt the system, probably because it was stupid.

And creepy. And creepy, yes. What was it? Jack Handy. They needed to put up Jack Handy videos. These new initiatives aim to support call center employees emotionally, although they also paved the way for potential future replacement of these jobs by AI.

I would say that future is now. But no word yet on whether they'll actually try and fix the crappy bank policies that lead to so many disgruntled customers in the first place. That would be the solution that I'd be looking at. Yeah, that's – no, that costs too much money.

Well, No Tech for Apartheid, or NOTA, a coalition of tech workers demanding big tech companies to drop their contracts with the Israeli government, is close to reaching its goal for a campaign asking students not to work with Google and Amazon. Now you'd think, wow, they're going to reach their goal of 1,200 signatures.

That's like a day of applications probably to those companies. Like at one school. I mean, come on. This is next to nothing. But, you know, hey, regardless, this is the way that we always say that people should protest. It's – you put your money where your mouth is.

You say that you're not going to go work there. So then don't go work there. Perfect. That's the way to do it. Earlier this year, Dell introduced their plan to require employees to classify themselves as either remote or hybrid. Well, hybrid workers must spend 39 days per quarter in the office while remote workers face limitations on promotions and new roles.

So it seems half of Dell's workforce, or nearly half, chose to remain remote. They like the free time. They like less straight on their finances. And nothing could convince them to give it up. And others said that their local offices had closed since the pandemic. So they just – and they weren't really interested in promotions.

They're like, we're good. I like working the way it is. We're good. Well, for a lot of people, working from home was like a raise because you're not spending the money on the commute anymore. You're not buying the overpriced crappy sandwich for lunch, you know, and you're getting more stuff done.

Yeah. You save a couple hours a day. You know, just the stress of not being on the road, especially here in L.A. Oh, my God. It's worth it. And gas prices now, you know. So unless you have a Fisker, then you can just juice up and go. I love it.

One person said they'd spoken with colleagues who had chosen to go hybrid, and those colleagues reported doing work in mostly empty offices, punctuated with video calls with people who are in other mostly empty offices. That is the reality of the culture right now, and I understand why businesses want people to come back.

I get it, and I do think that the hybrid model is a good one. But even in the hybrid model, even in what I saw personally, it was those of us that went into the office were having conversations on Zoom or Teams anyways. Like, yeah, I didn't turn around and talk to the person.

I just sent the link in the note, and, you know, done. What are we doing here, people? Yeah, that's about it. So now here's another fun one. Starting July 1st, Pornhub will block users in Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, and Nebraska due to new age verification laws.

Visitors will see a video from adult entertainer Sherry DeVille explaining the decision. Similar blocks are already in place in states like Texas and Utah. If only there weren't other places to go. Yeah, I know. It's so sad that this is the only porn on the internet that people can get to.

I'm trying to think of some sort of flyover state joke, and they just get too X-rated too quickly. Despite traffic drops in some states, Pornhub remains committed to advocating for safer age verification methods while blocking access where laws are deemed harmful.

So at least they're putting their money where their mouth is. That is true. Yep. No joke. No joke part intended there. Just saying. This week's award for trolling for good goes to photographer Miles Astry, who won the AI category at the 1839 Photography Awards with a real photo of a flamingo, tricking judges into thinking it was AI generated.

Yay! Slow clap. The 1839 Photography Awards? I didn't even know that they had AI back then. Once discovered, he was disqualified, but he aimed to highlight the value of human-made art in the AI era. I just wanted to troll him.

Coming July 24th is a new reboot of Time Bandits, created for television by a bunch of people, including Tiki Watiti. Oh, God. Yeah. Oh, God. No.

No. No. No. No. No. Here's the other one that is a big no. Lisa Kudrow is also in this one. So that's a double no for me. I'm not a fan of either Taika or Lisa. And just leave Time Bandits alone.

It was good. It was good as it was. I still stand by it wasn't great. I'm not a huge Time Bandits fan, but... It's fine. It's a very niche comedy for certain people. I don't believe anybody was clamoring for a remake. No. No. I don't think so either.

Yeah. I did re-watch the classic Shaun of the Dead this week. We were talking about it recently, so I went back and I watched it. It is still, as far as I can tell, a perfect fucking movie. It is. It's good. It's so good. Very, very good. Yeah. Yeah. It has legs. It has legs.

I've seen it well over a hundred times. And if you've never seen it, do yourself a favor. Just start with Shaun of the Dead, then watch Hot Fuzz, then watch The World's End. Just go straight through the whole Cornetto trilogy. Well worth it. The Boys Season 4 is in full swing and Episode 4 dropped last night and I stayed up a little later than my bedtime to watch it.

Solid. I'm loving it. And the ratings are showing that it is in their top five series premiere of all time for Amazon Prime. So they're probably going to be getting that announcement that The Boys will be ending in Season 6, since we covered last week that it will be ending in Season 5.

And before that, we covered that it was going to be ending in Season 4. So as long as it keeps making money, I'm pretty sure that The Boys will continue. Still not going to give it a shot? No. I mean, I did. I watched the first couple episodes of the first season and it just wasn't for me.

It's all over the news, though, because everybody is pointing out that, I guess, some MAGA folk figured out that the joke, Homelander, was basically a joke on them the whole time and they just figured it out now. They just figured it out? Yeah. Okay.

So I found that particularly enjoyable. But no, I don't think I'm going to go back and watch it. It just didn't fill me with joy. Yeah. It is now. Once you realize that the whole thing is a metaphor for helplessness in the modern day, it gets pretty good.

And wow, they didn't get that? That's pretty interesting. Nope, I guess not. That was pretty front and center, I thought, since the first episode. Anyway, moving on. They're probably not going to like this one either. I saw a PBS documentary called Disco, Soundtrack of a Revolution.

It's a three-part documentary that is phenomenal, highly recommended. I do not like disco, never really cared for it that much. And that's the great part about this is it's not so much about disco that after Whitey got a hold of it and the record companies got a hold of it, it bookends with that.

But it's about the subgenres on where it came from, how it started, how it started in the underground, basically the mechanics of it, how it moved into house music, and how it is kind of making a resurgence in modern songs where you hear it. It's just a really solid documentary.

I highly recommend it. I think you'd dig it. Yeah, it sounds like it. I definitely want to check that out. Well, we're getting another sequel that I'm not entirely sure anybody asked for. Well, maybe if Mel Brooks was actually doing all of it, but it's not Mel Brooks. Last week, Josh Gad teased sci-fi fans with an excited but cryptic social media post referencing a script based on characters created by Mel Brooks that opens on a star field.

Now, a new report confirms what everyone suspected. It's a Spaceballs sequel coming from Amazon MGM. Okay. Yep. Nobody asked for that one either. Yeah. I mean, it's not going to be original cast. It's not going to be the original writing team. I don't know. Yeah.

Can Josh Gad do Mel Brooks? I don't think so. No, he's okay. But there ain't no Mel Brooks besides Mel Brooks. That's right. Speaking of sequels that nobody else wanted, though, MoviePass has announced a new... I think they're on episode 20 now. Yeah.

MoviePass has announced a new equity investment from Comcast's Forecast Labs, which is the consumer venture group within Comcast NBCUniversal. I forecast that this one will fail, too. Well, here's the shocker, Brian. Here's the twist. Here's the spoiler. This follows MoviePass achieving its first profitable year in 2023 after filing for bankruptcy in 2020.

They were profitable, Brian. Did anybody see that one coming? I don't see how. I can't even imagine who's signing up for this anymore. I think it's basically a discount service now. But, you know, they failed to disclose that they hired Uber's accountants from the one corner where Uber went black, too.

That's true. That's true. So, yeah, I still haven't seen the MoviePass documentary yet. I keep forgetting that we have it. So I need to add that to the queue. Have you checked it out yet? I have not. But it sounds like we need a sequel now. Yeah. Yeah.

We're going to need another one before we even watch the first one. Ups and doodads. So talking about Adobe again, you talked about the lawsuit from the government about their cancellation issues. I think they may have done some patching since the lawsuit was filed because there was a clearly labeled cancel button on my account.

And I got a full refund, at least in theory, of the $59.99 that I had just spent. So I haven't checked my credit card statement yet to see if it is posted, but they said it's coming. They say it's coming. Well, that's good. That's good.

Yeah. It was a fairly simple procedure, except the last screen was fairly ominous. It was a big screen that said, while you may have canceled, you're still part of the Adobe family. You can come back anytime. And you can still use our free apps if you want, but you're still part of the family.

Like, okay, creepy, creepy. That's scary. I don't want to be part of your family. No, I just left. I've been hiding. Please. I'm at the Battered Women Institute over down in Santa Monica. Leave me alone. And if I'm part of your family, do I get the friends and family rate? Because if it's cheaper, I might stay.

Yeah, really? That was the problem. So I took that $59.99 that I got back from Adobe, and I checked out Affinity Suite. All right. I had originally bought Affinity Photo 1 back in the day when I was trying it out, and now they're on Affinity Photo 2.

So since I had bought the first one, they let me buy the entire Affinity Suite of photo, designer, and publisher, all in one go, for only $63. No yearly subscription, no nothing, until Affinity whatever 3 comes out.

So I got everything for that. I got all three apps for the Mac, but I also got all three apps for the iPad. Nice. And the thing is, those are basically fully functional apps on the iPad, too. I've got an old Apple Pro 12-inch iPad with the M1 chip.

The thing, they run great. They totally run great. I don't need to get the new fancy-pancy M4 iPad. It works great on my old one. There is a learning curve, because all the key commands are wrong, and nothing's where I expect it to be. But I'm getting past that. You know, for the basic stuff that I'm doing, it's fine.

I do miss some features, like the one-click background removal. But I'll live, you know? But it does everything that I need it to do so far. So between, you know, photo and designer, I've got Photoshop and I've got Illustrator. And I actually think designer is easier to use than Illustrator.

Shocker. I've always hated Illustrator. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, Photoshop guys usually did, and vice versa. So the old vector versus raster wars still live on. I bet those Illustrator guys say GIF. Bastards. So another app that I had to find, because one of the things that I lost with my Adobe subscription, my Creative Cloud subscription, was Lightroom Classic, which I've been using since Lightroom 1, you know?

Yeah. And even the days, I miss the days. There was even time after they moved to Creative Cloud, they still had a carve-out where you could buy Lightroom as a standalone app. And they eventually even got rid of that. Yeah, of course. When they introduced the new Lightroom, which nobody wants, and they have Lightroom Classic, which everybody wanted, I found a new product called Mileo, which does almost exactly the same shit that Lightroom does.

Unfortunately, it is a subscription plan, but it's $99 for one year, $179 for two years, and I think the three years even less. You get a discount as you keep going. Lightroom, if you just want to get Lightroom on the Adobe plan, it was still $19.99 a month, so it works out to about $240 a year with the cheapest Adobe plan.

So still saving a bunch of money. And as far as I can tell, this indexed all of my photos, which is well over a quarter million photos in about an hour, and it is fast as hell. So props there, right there.

I'm still learning the ins and outs of it, but it is way faster. It has most of the same editing tools. I'm just even using the free one right now. There's a free version and then the Mileo Photos Plus version. That's the one that you actually have to pay for. But the free version does a lot of the same stuff already.

The Plus version will let you share between all of your devices and even includes your phone photos as well as your other ones. You can create secure sharing libraries for family. It's really nice. I got to say, it's really nice. So that was actually a plus from getting rid of Lightroom, which I've been, you know, had love-hate relationship for decades now.

So, right. So, so far, so good. I'm going to have to check it out. Absolutely. Yeah. And we had some claims, you know, we talked about 1Password being Sherlocked and some people were going to switch and I wasn't. It turns out that 1Password has been working for this day, you know, for quite some time.

They have moved basically into enterprise, which is where most of their money comes from. So the consumer side of things is actually just kind of a small part of their business compared to their, their main enterprise work. So they're not going anywhere right now, so they're very smart, very smart people over there at 1Password.

That's why I'm going to still keep using them. Me too. For now. For now. Yeah. Speaking of Apple, according to several sources related to the manufacturing and supply of the next Vision Pro who spoke to the information, Apple has suspended production on its next high-end headset.

Instead, the company is going to focus on a more affordable Vision product with fewer features. So we'll see what that means. But basically, they're trying to make it one third lighter than the Vision Pro and basically more cost effective, not the $3,500 price tag. So people can actually afford to buy these things.

Fine. Fine by me. I would like to see one. We'll see what happens. Yeah. Even if you cut the price in half, that's still $1,750. So it's not cheap. Yeah. No matter what, it's not going to be. It's not going to be as much as a Quest 3, you know? Yeah. There were some updates to Final Cut and there's a new app called Final Cut Camera that came out yesterday.

Final Cut Camera is a free app for iOS. I downloaded it. I looked at it. It is really nice. I need to dig into it. It's, you know, kind of like the Blackmagic app, which is like, you know, the industry standard so far as I can tell for, you know, at least professional iPhone photography and videography.

This looks really nice. The really interesting thing is with the new M4 iPads, you can do up to four remote iPhones using the Final Cut Camera app to stream to the iPad for capture, which I'm like, that's pretty badass.

That's insane. This is totally insane. The downside is Final Cut Pro for iPad costs you another 50 bucks a year or five bucks a month. Right. Final Cut, you buy it once on the Mac and you've got it forever. So there's the downside. But Final Cut Camera, I definitely want to keep playing with because it is free and it looks really nice.

So, and fuck a doodle do, Brian. Runway Gen 3 is out and this is a video, an AI video generation tool, which is hands down the best I've seen so far. Granted, it's still got a long way to go before you're getting, you know, a real movie out of it.

But as far as actual people generation go, it's pretty damn scary. There's some, there's some that you can still tell, but there are some that are just like, wow, that really is good. I know they cherry pick these for the demos. So I was about to say it is the demos and they're cherry picked, but, but they are very impressive.

Very impressive. If nothing else, video games are going to start looking a hell of a lot better. Yeah. And this one's up your alley here. Universal Music Group has partnered with AI music tech startup Sound Labs to help artists create their own voice clones ethically, they say.

So the new feature Mic Drop launched, launching this summer allows UMG artists to generate voice models using their own data. Artists will maintain control over these models, which won't be available to the public. Sure. Mic Drop also includes a voice to instrument function and language transposition, enabling global song releases without language barriers.

Your thoughts, Brian? No. Not a fan. I mean, I do know that the, you know, the labels have to get in this somehow. They have to start making partnerships with companies that are doing all this stuff because you can't just stick your fingers in your ear and go, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, and wait for it to go away because it's not gonna.

It's not going away. It's not going away. So that's, you're going to see more and more deals like this being made. Okay. Okay. McDonald's is done with their AI deal. They were partnering with IBM to test their AI drive-thru tech at over 100 locations. And they said, no, we're done.

It's cheaper to hire a teenager. And what do you need AI for in ordering a burger? I don't understand this. No, it's, it's, it's McDonald's for God's sake. Now. Okay. Maybe you bring AI into play because you've got a massive distribution network and maybe that you can help with that.

But at the drive-thru, come on. I know. Seriously. Oh, well. So we'll see how that goes in the future. They're going to keep doing it at some, some level at some places. And this next one is just a, it's just a head scratcher.

Michigan Republican congressional candidate, Anthony Hudson. He had a little bit of a backlash after an AI generated video featuring the voice that resembled Martin Luther King Jr. endorsed him. Unbelievable. And initially he condemned the video as stupid and disrespectful, which was the right thing to do.

And he blamed a volunteer, which is the standard thing to do for the, for the post. Well, he apologized, fired the volunteer and updated his social media credentials. Well, a few hours later, he had a change of heart. Maybe after a few cocktails, he reversed his stance, praised the staffer and suggested that Martin Luther King Jr.

would have supported his vision for Flint, Michigan. And he defended his position on social media and he highlighted Flint's ongoing issues, asserting the city deserves better representation. I don't know if you saw this video, Brian. I did. Yeah, that wasn't a good thing.

No, no, no, no, no, no. He should have stuck with the first response is all I'm saying. Yes. I think that would have been more than enough. Walk away. The U.S. House of Representatives has narrowly passed the Countering CCP Drone Act, which could ban DJI drones in the U.S.

The bill introduced by Congressman Mike Gallagher and Congresswoman Elise Stefanik passed as part of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act with with a vote of 217 to 199. Now it's going to move to the Senate and it's going to they're going to debate it there and there might be possible amendments.

Now, I love this. Supporters argue that DJI, a Chinese company, poses a national security risk by potentially aiding espionage. Critics, including DJI, duh, claim the bill is driven by baseless allegations and could harm public safety and the economy. But it does not ban existing DJI drones if you already have one, but it prohibits future sales and software.

Now, I can't believe it took this long because remember how our country had just basically like a collective conniption fit when that fucking Chinese balloon flow over? Yep. And we've got millions of basically Chinese drones flying around. And if you're posting it up to the DJI cloud, there is a very, you know, greater than zero chance that the Chinese government can get a hold of that stuff.

So I can see why to me, honestly, what took him so fucking long? Exactly. Exactly. That said, I have a DJI drone and it's fucking phenomenal. But it's usually sitting in a drawer somewhere. So, you know, take that, China. All you're seeing is a drawer.

Yep. But more DJI news. Apple Watch users can now remotely control their DJI Osmo Mobile 6 and Osmo Mobile SE gimbals. With the new updates, users can view the camera feed, take photos and videos, control gimbal direction, switch between portrait and landscape modes, and enable active track from within their watch.

I have a DJI Osmo Mobile 6 and this is great news because enabling the active track yourself when you're all alone is a pain in the butt. So, neat. Neat. Until it's banned. Tap it on your phone. Yep. Yeah. This next one, we're just a few quickies here, some good stuff here.

Japanese electronics company TDK, who made many, many of my mixtapes in the 80s, I love TDK tapes, they claim a breakthrough in solid state battery technology, offering 100 times the energy density of its current batteries. So, these are for small devices like wireless headphones and smartwatches.

Think how long your Walkman will work for now. Well, they're saying it won't really do things for bigger appliances like phones. So, they're calling those larger devices like smartphones. But, you know, if my AirPods will play a little longer, that's great.

If my watch, well, I don't need my watch to last longer because I dropped on the Ultra Watch 2, which, you know, I'm going to Kathmandu next week to go climb a mountain. Oh, wait, I'm not, I'm just going to sit around the house and not charge my watch for a few days. But, it's cool if it works. So, they're going to hopefully be putting this out next year and mass market a little bit after that.

So, cool. I like battery breakthroughs. Yes. This last one I'm just cracking up at. Threads has launched an API for third-party developers, enabling the creation of Threads clients for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and others. Well, you know, because they won't make their own fucking iPad app, which is the laziest of lazy.

I mean, these are the people that made Instagram after all. Yes. That took 20 years. Yeah. So, what they're doing, basically, is they're going back to the beginning of Twitter and trying to copy what Twitter did. So, what they're going to do is they're going to launch an API, they're going to get a bunch of developers to build a bunch of stuff with it, and then they're going to pull access to it, and make us pay for it.

So, I've seen this story before. That's the way to do it. I've read this book. I've seen the movie. Yeah. Don't fall for it. Developers, do not fall for it. I'm just telling you, from experience, we've seen this before. Mm-hmm.

The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave, with podcast superhost Dave Buechner. 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.

Do you have a new AI show coming, Dave? I know we talked about AI is everywhere, but you've got to have a new AI show coming. I don't have, no, I don't have a new AI show, but I do have a new show. What? What? What? Yes, I do. What is it to tell? It is called Only Malware in the Building.

Oh, God. Oh, the dad jokes flow. Yes, and it is exactly what you would think it is. The main host of the show is Selina Larson from Proofpoint, who is wonderful, and she's playing the part.

We are basically mirroring the parts of the three main characters in Only Murders in the building. I am playing the Martin Short role, which is great fun for me because I just get to sling insults at my co-hosts. And Rick Howard is playing the Steve Martin part.

But so we look at malware, and Selina takes the lead on it, and we just kind of have the younger, hipper person and the two old guys dynamic, and it's great fun. So do check it. Nice. I will check that one out.

Use Blue Yetis and talking to them in the wrong direction? No, not yet, because there's no video, so there's no reason to do that yet. Yeah. I sense a good promo shot, though.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Let's talk about The Acolyte. We got four episodes now. What do you guys think? Well, I'm still enjoying it for all the reasons we discussed before. I will say I felt a little short on the most recent episode, mainly because it was itself short.

Yeah. Very short. 28 minutes after all the promos and everything, and kind of left you on a cliffhanger, which I feel as though it was probably a longer episode that at some point somebody decided to cut in half, but I don't know that for sure.

Somebody went, let's cut right here before we see who the big bad is. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So what do you think the odds are that the big bad is the sidekick dude who was left hanging? I think that's plausible.

I think they're certainly painting you to believe that. Okay. That's why I just want to make sure, see if they're doing that on purpose or if it is actually plausible. Is it a red herring? I don't know. Yeah, it probably is. I mean, like we said last week, to me, I'm approaching this as such low stakes Star Wars that I'm really not invested much in the twists and turns.

This is a sugary soft drink of a Star Wars treat to me. And so I just sit back and I enjoy it and I see new things, but I don't invest in it heavily as to whether or not, you know, oh my God, the twins are virgin birth and that totally takes away from Luke Skywalker being a virgin birth.

Oh, I see you've opened the internet. Well, as someone said, no one hates Star Wars like the people who love Star Wars. It's true. Yeah. So, yeah, what do you think, Brian?

I'm enjoying it. Yeah. You know, I found all of the complaints ridiculous. So as per usual, it's I'm of an age that the thing that lives rent free in my brain anytime this stuff comes up is William Shatner on Saturday Night Live at the faux Star Trek convention saying, get a life.

That just comes into my head all the time. It's an enjoyable show. I'm again, like you said, it is low stakes. These are these are new characters that, you know, I have no reason to give a crap about. So I'm just seeing what's happening. And so far, it's a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah.

I also in addition to your Shatner thing, I think of Triumph, the insult comic dog asking somebody if he's ever spoken to a live woman without having to give her his credit card number first. Yeah.

Yeah. And then, of course, you've got the Simpsons cartoon guy. So, you know, right. The comic shop owner. I mean, that's what the Internet. This is what human society has apparently become. Those are those things. So, you know, I just gloss over. I just gloss over all of it.

I don't try to look at the Internet anymore about anything. And I'm just enjoying the show. It's been fun. I can't wait to see who the baddie is. Is it red herring? Is it not? And I don't really care. Yeah. Either way. Who really cares? Let's get to it.

Come on. Yeah. Yeah. Just give me the story. I'm into it. I'm up for it. So. And it's like, it's OK to say, huh, well, that kind of sucked. But all right. Yeah. I would have preferred that be something different, but OK. It's not my story. They went that way with it.

Huh. OK. Fine. Yeah. Yeah. This is this is going way wronger than most Star Wars fans are probably expecting. Well, what do you think, Jason? Oh, I'm with you guys. I'm just having fun watching it.

I'm enjoying it. It's like I just I was pissed off that it was so short. I'm like, that was it? Yeah. I mean, it's like I barely got like into my popcorn. I'm like, come on. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I did feel abrupt to your point, Dave. I do think that this was initially probably like a 10 to 15 minute longer episode.

And then somebody in the editing room went, we can have more drama if we cut right here. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yep. But speaking of drama, I don't know if you guys have picked up your versions of the the Oreos, the dark and light side Oreos this week. I got mine sitting downstairs.

I say there's there's a box of them sitting on my kitchen counter right now. Unopened. My youngest son, Jack, is about to go on a trip. And so I believe Alana, my wife, bought this box for him. But I was interested to see how it is packaged.

You know, so it's a box that contains, I want to say, 10 or 20 sleeves of Oreos. And each sleeve contains two cookies. Oh, that's different than mine. Oh, yeah. That's different than the packs that we have, too. Yeah. OK. So maybe this is like the travel pack.

But so you open each little two cookie sleeve and that's when you find out whether you have the light side or the dark side. So what do you mean? Oh, man, I wish I had got that one. That's that's more chances to win. Mine was like a big, a big giant bag of them. When you opened it, it was, you know, you get what you get.

So, oh, and they're all the same. Mine's like a medium box. It's probably got like 12 cookies each in them. So and then whenever you open it up, it's 12 light side cookies, which unfortunately for my son, that was the first we opened up. So he's having to suffer through the light side, desperately waiting to get his his emperor cookie, which is all he wants.

I see. Yeah. So you're the parent who makes the kid all kid eat all the cereal before they get the toy in the bottom of the box. Oh, yes. He does not get to open up another box of the Oreos until he finishes this one. Yeah. That's the same. Jason just uploaded the picture.

That's the exact same package that we have. Yeah. OK. Yeah. So I opened it up and I was I was very bummed that I got the light side. And by the time I'd paid too much attention, I'd had four cookies. And then I looked at the back and two Oreos.

This is the serving size. It's 140 calories. And I'm like, two, two Oreos is 140 calories. And I just had four of them. And just immediately, my brain almost exploded from the sugar rush because I am not used to that amount of of actual sugar.

Yeah. The other thing that I came out of this as a revelation from is I forgot how I guess I've gotten very hoity toity in my later years in life. Oreos are horrible. I love them. I thought they were great. What the hell is wrong with you?

Disgusting. No. Hydrox are horrible and disgusting. Oreos are delicious. Exactly. Fucking bougie motherfucker. You're going to lose your Gen X card, man. Seriously. I've definitely gotten too bougie.

It's too much for me. It's too sugary. It's too... Oh, brother. No, thank you. All right. You've been up in Canada too long. That's right. You've been drinking maple syrup directly from the tree. Yeah. I put a picture of the one that I got here in the show notes so you can see.

Yeah, that's much better. Oh, yeah. Better chance of getting everything. I got to seek those out. So here's what I did. I had to get rid of them. I needed them out of the home. So I told my roommate to give them to her mom. She's 95 and she loves cookies and stuff like that.

But we knew her mom would flip out by seeing the blue filling, which isn't, by the way, all the way through. If you take the top off, it's only blue around the edges and it's still white in the middle, those cheap bastards. What? Yeah. Yeah. Open one up and take a peek. They're white in the middle. Oh, man.

So what I did was I said that they were special 4th of July cookies. So there's red ones, blue ones, and white ones. So she just got the blue pack. So if we tried to explain Star Wars to her, her head would have exploded. She's like, I'm not eating that crap. What does Chewbacca have to do with the 4th of July?

Right. They're Patriot Oreos. Exactly. That's how I sold them and that's how they were taken. That's not John. That's the charm. I like. Oh. No, that would be orange. So I saw in the show notes that you guys earlier in the show had mentioned this new season of The Boys.

Yes. That would be just me. Brian is not – Brian is boys averse. Oh, OK. OK. So hit me. What are you thinking? What are you thinking? Well, so again, my son Jack and I watched this together because – Boy, there's going to be some questionable episodes to watch with him.

I was going to say – yeah, I was going to say just because you like uncomfortable situations, is that why? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Tell me. I mean just this season alone has been just fun, fun. But – no, I'm digging it and I don't know if you saw the most recent episode but – Oh, yes.

Stayed up late. The way that they're digging into Homelander's past, my son Jack said, I think he is by far the most interesting character, just the tension around him when he's doing the thing – when he's basically torturing people because he's – he can't be hurt.

And so he's so dangerous and he's a psychopath. It just makes for oddly compelling television. Yeah, I was telling Brian, you know, it's kind of – Homelander is basically a metaphor for the helplessness and fear that most people experience it a day, day to day in normal life.

It's like, you know, it just brings to the front all of that helplessness that you feel going up against the world, things that you cannot beat, going up against the system, going up against the man. And it's just – when I kind of flipped that switch, it became more fascinating to me to watch.

It's more of a, you know, kind of a societal piece than it is just a, oh, let's make the grossest shit we can possibly think of piece, you know? Right, yes. That is – yeah, there is that component of it. Yeah, but this episode was, ooh, man. Yeah, pretty intense.

Yeah. I have to say I'm not – you know, I'm along for the ride with the whole Firecracker character, she's not my favorite thing, and, you know, whatever. That part doesn't seem as – I guess that part seems more cartoonish than the Homelander stuff, which could just be the performance of the actor.

I mean, the whole thing is cartoonish, obviously, but I guess I feel like I'm more engaged and willing to throw away my disbelief for the Homelander scenes than for the things with Firecracker and, you know, that whole storyline.

It'll be real fun, though. It'll be real fun when Simon Pegg wakes up next episode. Yeah, yeah. It'll be real good. Right, and what's up with – Especially with the thing at the end, the whole thing at the end with, who gave him the Compound V? Oh, shocker!

Right, exactly. Yeah, what's up with mom? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm digging it. I'm really digging it. No, it's good. It's good to have it back, and I'm enjoying it. It's fun sometimes to sit down and enjoy something that is completely over the top.

Definitely over the top. I wanted to check in with you, Jason, because I know you have experience with this. I just ordered an electric bike. Okay. An electric bicycle. And the reason being that I need to get out and get some exercise, and cycling around is comparatively low impact, comparatively low risk.

It's not going to bang up my knees or my hips like running would. Even my favorite, rollerblading, I feel like I'm safer and more secure to the ground on a bicycle. So I ordered sort of an entry-level, well-reviewed, but relatively inexpensive electric bike from Amazon.

It's on the way. I'm figuring this is going to be my chance to try this at low risk, low expense, because electric bikes go from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. And I believe you have one of the better ones, don't you?

I've had four of them. Oh, wow. Typical Jason. Well, three of them were free from sponsors of the show. So no, not typical Jason, Brian. Go fuck yourself. No. Yes. Three of them, the electric e-bikes were a sponsor of the show.

And they sent me three e-bikes of different sizes and configurations. All of them were, I no longer have. The one that I did buy was the big fat tire one. I can't remember the name of, it began with an R, but that was the one that I bought.

I bought that was for like $600. I loved that bike. Um, but the problem was I had a stroke. So all, all, all of the three extra e-bikes that came were, were, uh, you know, given away to, uh, to other people. Right. Um, I, my, my first e-bike that I, I just absolutely adored.

Uh, what I really like about e-bikes is you get out, you get exercise and you get as much exercise as you can handle and then still make it home without having a heart attack. Right. Uh, you know, the fact that you can put, turn on the juice when you want and turn it off when you want is fantastic. And they're just a shit ton of fun when you just want to open one up and let it go.

That's what I'm thinking. Now help me understand the fat tire thing. I like, to me, I'm like, okay, great. More rolling resistance. Like, but like, are you, are you riding on the beach? Or like, I, this, this is a fad that I don't understand, but people cruising around with these big giant sausage tires.

It's just more, if you're going to go out on the road, um, like the real road, like where cars go and, you know, off terrain, it's much better for that. So you get the grip and you get a less chance of your tire basically popping and crapping out on you. I ride on slicks, but I also just ride on bike pass, like specifically made for.

So. Right. Yeah. I took it, I took mine on trails. I took it all over the place and it was just a more comfortable ride. Just way more comfortable. Um, and yeah, like Brian said, more grip. So when you're going 30 miles an hour around the corner, you got more surface area on the road.

So chances of you sliding out are a lot less. And, and I just, I find them more comfortable, um, but I would not get one without a motor on it. That's for damn sure. Cause the bike weighed 70 pounds. Right. It was definitely not a light bike. Uh, I mean, it was 70 pounds cause it had a massive battery and an engine in it, but either way, still, I wouldn't want the resistance of a fat tire bike if it wasn't electric.

Uh, but yeah, as far as I can tell, um, if I could ride a bike again, I would absolutely get an e-bike. There's no, no ifs, ands or buts about it. They're just fantastic. Especially if you just want to pop up to the store, you know, they've got the new ones. One of the electric e-bikes that we had was, um, this cargo version that you could put saddle bags on in the back and put a big basket.

So it was had a really long, but so you can't like, you know, trick it out and, and, you know, get a bunch, a couple of bags of groceries in there. Uh, but even the smaller ones, you get a basket or two and then, you know, you can load up and bring it back. I, I have nothing but love for e-bikes. So. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it.

It's supposed to be getting here in the next few days. So I'll let you know how it goes. Yeah. Just be careful when you first start riding it. It does take a little bit, uh, learn the, you know, learn the ins and outs of acceleration with it. So, you know, I don't know if you've ever ridden a motorcycle or not, but it's basically like riding a motorcycle.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I have. And I, and we also, we have, um, an electric scooter, you know, like a, like a personal version of a bird scooter. So I'm kind of familiar with, you know, the electrical acceleration curve, right?

With a, with a, with a small, with a device that has far more torque than you think it should. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I, I wish you the best. Be, be safe and, uh, wear a helmet helmet. Always wear a helmet. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.

So, uh, one more thing I wanted to touch on today. Uh, Brian, you and I exchanged a little note about this over on Facebook where, uh, I was kind of crowing about, uh, the success that I'd had with a little small project around the house. Um, and you had said that you, you too had, uh, had a successful project around the house.

Yeah. I'd had, uh, two, two of my doors were sticking and have been sticking basically since we moved in. Uh, they weren't doors that we obviously need to use all the time. Otherwise I wouldn't have waited so long to fix them, but I finally fixed them. And, uh, the joy was palpable. Very nice. Very nice.

So I wanted to talk about what I refer to as the irrational completion of small home projects and Don Quixote, uh, because that is where I feel like this particular project went for me. Um, this started out with my, we've talked about here, my, uh, Eufy, uh, security cameras that I have around the house, right?

I have a front door cam. I have one looking out the pathway behind the house. Um, and the one on the back of the house, which looks over the pathway, uh, gets triggered so many times because there's a park and a walkway that goes by there that it drains its battery pretty quickly.

And so it has a built-in solar panel, which is how it gets its power. So the solar panels, probably the surface area of a, like a three by five card, right? So not a whole lot of juice coming from that. Um, so this was not adequate for my needs.

So lucky for me, um, Eufy sells an external solar panel that you can plug in. So I ordered me one of those. It came, plugged it in. Still not quite enough for what I needed. So I was like, all right, well, this is, I, this is no problem.

I have Amazon. So I ordered a larger solar panel that had a USB output on it because the, the way this powers the camera is it plugs in via a, uh, USB, uh, C connector. Mm-hmm. So here's where it gets irrational.

Turns out the solar panel that I purchased, uh, rather than putting out a clean five volts, which is what USB is spec'd at, it puts out around six and a half volts. Okay. The Eufy turns out is particularly sensitive to over voltage and will shut off the port when

it goes over the over voltage, uh, level to protect itself, which kind of makes sense. But in my mind, six and a half volts, you know, that's not, you know, we're not pumping through 24 volts into this thing or anything like that.

All right. So that annoys me, but, uh, and, and I've learned this from digging around on the internet. Other people who have these, oh yeah, these are particularly sensitive to over voltage. And it's like, okay, great. So I'm going to stop this. So I go online, get myself a, uh, little voltage converter, right?

Little tiny printed circuit board, uh, I believe they're called buck converters. Um, so you put your, your six and a half volts in one side and you get your five volts out the other side, or so it said, I buy the device, it takes about three weeks to get here on a slow boat from China, hook up my solar panel, six and a half volts is not enough to power the converter, even though according to the specs, it should be.

Okay. By the way, uh, I've also purchased a, um, USB, uh, voltage and amperage meter so that I'm able to measure what I'm getting out of all of these devices. All right.

So that's part of this process as well. All right. So I have to feed more power into this thing. So what do I do? Bigger solar panel, 12 volt, 12 volt solar panel. So now I get, I have a solar panel delivered that is about the size of a MacBook pro, uh, puts out 12 volts, um, fire it up, feed it into the buck converter.

Sure enough, 12 volts in one side, five volts out the other side, plenty of amperage. Uh, now I got to figure out how to package this thing because it's going to go outside. Uh, so I got, you know, a whole variety of, uh, heat shrink tubing and hot glue and, uh, zip ties.

And, um, it works, it works, but at what cost? How annoyed is your wife at this point? Uh, my dear patient wife, my dear, dear patient loving wife, uh, who tolerates me coming upstairs.

I have a little, I have a little closet of a workshop, right? It is literally a closet. You open the closet door, there's a little workbench, there's tools on the wall. And this is where I do my things and my little projects. Um, and my wife thinks it's adorable. So she is very patient when I go upstairs and there's steam coming out of my ears because I'm so frustrated that this should be working and it's not.

And it's another thing and I'm a failure and no one will ever love me, right? Uh, So I said to her, you know, I was like, I, I admitted to her, I, I announced to her that I was taking this far further than it deserved.

But like, God damn it. I wasn't going to let this thing. I have to fix this. Right. Yes. I must complete this task. Yes. I mean, along the way, along the way, I'd come up with probably half enough, half a dozen other solutions to this problem.

I could have just run power to the thing. That's all just power supply, run power. It has a USB port on the back. Could it just run power to it? No, but that, that would be losing. So I had to see my way through this whole thing.

I'm not proud of myself. In fact, I'm pretty ashamed of how far I've taken this, the amount of money and time that I put into this stupid thing. But I'll tell you, my camera is at a hundred percent charge. I know we're, we're at a different place in the world right now and we're not supposed to gender things that much anymore, but this is such a male thing to do.

Oh yeah, totally. Oh yeah. And I'm a hundred percent on board with you. I experienced much of the same thing with my doors. You know, the first solution didn't work. I'm frustrated. I'm angry. I'm, I'm on YouTube. Now I'm pissed that I don't pay for YouTube because now the ads are three times longer than I ever remember they were before you get to the video that shows you how to fix the thing, but it doesn't actually address the problem that I'm having.

It's a different problem. So I have to go to a different video. Now it's another three minutes of ads before I get to that video and I'm getting angrier and angrier. And my wife is finally going, can you wait to do these projects until I'm out of the house? See, I think this comes back to a fundamental maleness that it, it, it is our first, our first option is always to MacGyver.

That's what we want to do. I, you know, the other, the other, the other thing that I noticed that we always seem to do is, is we'll watch, we'll watch, we'll read half the instructions or we'll watch only the first few minutes of the video. And like, of course I can figure this out from here. Yeah. Of course. I got this.

Well, to your point about YouTube, the reason that I have YouTube premium is that one time I think I had water leaking out of something and I had to figure out how to get it fixed. And it wanted me to watch three minutes of ads first.

And I, it was everything I could do to not throw my phone through the window. So instead I pressed the upgrade button and to this day, I've never looked back a month for YouTube and, and loving it. It's worth it. It's worth it. Oh yeah, totally, totally worth it.

But, uh, that is what triggered me. It was, I was literally triggered by a home improvement project and not being able to get the information I needed in a timely manner. We're, we're just, yeah, we're barbarians. We're just awful, awful creatures, but, um.

Simple, simple creatures. I will, I will continue to smack this nut against this, this tree until it breaks. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I'm, I just, I share this because just to, uh, I guess partially to get, uh, the empathy from you guys that I was hoping for to see that I'm not alone.

And I suspect, uh, many in our audience are vigorously nodding their heads up and down. And their wives in the car next to them rolling their eyes. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. This is why I didn't get married. You know, the, the, the, the, the ultimate comeback is always, well, it's not going to fix itself.

Is it? Right. Yeah. I, I must do this. That's part of my attitude. Like I'm pretty fearless when it comes to fixing anything because I figure if I try and I fail, then I'll bring in a professional and they'll fix it.

But hopefully I haven't made it so much worse that it's going to double the cost of bringing in a professional. Right. At the very worst, I get the shame, I get the shame of the professional kind of looking at me and rolling their eyes and shaking their head at me and going, what the hell did you do?

So you gave this a go, huh? Which, and the solution to that is to not be home when the professional comes, right? Just let my wife deal with it, you know? And then she could say, well, my, yeah, my husband said that he, my husband thought he could fix the plumbing and, you know, and him to say to her, well, step aside, little lady.

Let me, let me handle this. And, and, and it's all good, right? We throw in money at the problem and, uh, life is good and I can go back to living in, uh, shame. Yeah.

Been there. All right. Well, I feel better having, getting that off my, my mind, off my chest, out of my, I'm subscribing to YouTube right now. So just do it. Just do it. Don't look back. I have like five more projects to do over the next two weeks.

Nah, you don't have that kind of time. All right, guys. All right, guys. On that note, I got to go fix some shit. All right. Good luck. We're all counting on you. Closing shout outs.

Over at Patreon, we've got Grayface Games, The Wayne, Murray, and Liz, who is a rock star for upping her pledge. Yes, people, you can do that. Yes, you can. And we got a note from Robert Generous and says, I thought you might like this. And it's an article called, I will fucking pile drive you if you mention AI again.

Just the title alone. It's a 17 minute read. So I haven't gone all the way through it. But he basically makes all of the same arguments that we've made that it's not AI. And he's an actual engineer who knows this stuff. So it's a much better read than two guys with a microphone who don't do that much tech anymore.

Go on. And Robert also says, also, the Patreon feed shows really do sound high def. Told ya. Keep up the good work. Also, hat tip to Matthias for sending this one in, too. So thanks, everybody. Thank you, everybody. It was a very funny article. I enjoyed reading it. Over at PayPal, we've got Blake Bowling, Nathaniel, Andrew, Brian, Joseph, Tom, Ramsey with 40 bucks, and Gabriel, who answered the question to the life, the universe, and everything with the $42.

Thank you. All right. Over at the tip jar, we've got Sean, Karen, Eric, and Ross. Thank you. And we have a new five-star review from Paid to be Paranoid, parentheses, I do cybersecurity, in parentheses. Grumpy young geeks, even though their name is a misnomer from my point of view, I have a decade or so of computer work on them.

I look forward to their weekly discussions about the unshittification of the internet, and their book and movie series likes often overlap with mine. This is the only podcast I listen to that I have an alert set for the instant it shows up in my feed. Thank you. Thank you very much. And in death news this week, Giants legend Willie Mays has died at 93.

He was kind of widely known as the greatest all-around baseball player. So I actually did not know he was still alive. I didn't either. That was the news to me. Yeah. I was like, wow. Yeah. And Donald Sutherland, unfortunately, also passed away at the age of 88, a prolific actor with notable on-screen credits, including he was the original Clock Eye Pierce in the MASH movie, Clute, Ordinary People, Animal House, JFK, The Italian Job, Pride and Prejudice, and The Hunger Games franchise.

And he's also Kiefer Sutherland's dad. Yep. He was also the original Jobert in Three Days of the Condor. Ooh. Got to go back to that. Deep pull. Deep pull. Yeah. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. 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 653.

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