655: GOG’s Influencer

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. Happy Fourth of July, turncoat Canadian traitorous smart guy. I'm still an American citizen, but yeah, smart guy. I was listening to NPR this morning. It is the 248th birthday of the United States of America and probably its last.

Oh, come on. We've been through a lot worse. We shall see. You know, anyways, we won't get into it because then we'll just get angry emails. Yeah, that's about it. Nobody listens anymore. So anybody that's angry is not, they're not listening anymore. That's true. All right. Anyways, happy Fourth of July. I hope you had, well, not hot dogs because those are bad for you. Whatever you do.

We had gumbo. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Go for some gumbo. All right. Well, we got a little follow up about some of the stories that we've talked about in the last couple of weeks. One of them being Perplexity AI and many other AI companies, although perplexity seems to be getting all the bad press about them just basically scraping websites without consent and ignoring the robots.txt file, which is optional anyways.

But of course, we knew they were all doing this, but they're trying to pretend that they aren't. Well, Amazon is now weighing into the fray. Amazon Web Services reported them looking into allegations that Perplexity is using a crawler which is hosted on its servers that ignores the robot exclusion protocol. So that would not be good.

It's probably against some sort of terms of service of theirs. Perplexity spokesperson Sarah Plattnick told Wired that the company had already responded to Amazon's inquiries and denied that its crawlers are bypassing the robot's exclusion protocol. She then, within the space of about two minutes, said that, well, actually, kind of, well, I suppose it'll ignore robots.txt when a user includes a specific URL in their chatbot inquiry.

So therefore, yes, it is ignoring robots.txt. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anyways, yeah, basically they're lying about it and Amazon's kind of pissed. So we'll see what happens out of that. Probably nothing. Yeah.

They also say they use third-party web crawlers. Okay. Yeah. So that's one way to get around it, even though you're breaking the rule anyways. So, yeah. Lots of ways around that particular worm. The Pornhub leaving Texas and they're going, that's where they kind of like really started.

It's ground zero right now. It'll be the main battleground for a case about porn websites that is now headed to the Supreme Court. Woo. Oh, they're on such a roll. They're on a roll right now. So, you know, let's give king-like powers and take away our porn. That seems to be the thing that we're doing now.

Although we like the Huac Tua girl. I didn't even think that was very funny. I don't know. I don't understand why things go viral. But, you know, the only thing I can figure out is we keep hearing that Gen Z and millennials aren't having a lot of sex. So this is very novel to them. Yeah.

They're like, what's that? What's she spitting on? I don't know. Why would you Google it? Oh, I can't. I can't look it up in my state. Never mind. Yeah. So anyways, it's going to the Supreme Court through Texas and we'll see what happens. So, you know, this is all weird. It's just, I don't get it.

It's like, how are you going to? Anyways, we talked about all that last week. Let's just follow up on it anyways. Yeah. More follow up on the political AI robocalls. If you'll recall that there was an AI robocall that basically tried to fake Biden's voice. Not terribly difficult these days, if you saw the debate. Nope. Just whisper.

But anyways, they did this pre all that and they basically tried to get people to not go to the polls and everybody kind of said, hang on a second. You can't possibly do that. You can't do that. No, no, no. We got to stop that. So FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has drafted a series of letters to nine major telecom companies, including AT&T and Comcast, because they can't enforce anything or don't know how to look into it.

So they're basically just asking, are you guys doing anything about this? Okay. Yeah. Speak softly and not even have a stick. Yeah. And speaking of the Supreme Court and regulatory, it doesn't matter now. You can have as many acronyms as you want for your name.

You're not going to be able to do anything. So whatever. One guy did get fined like $3 million, I think, for the Joe Biden. It was some obscene amount of money. It was a lot. So hopefully I'll kind of stop it. But obviously there are no protocols in place. There are no regulations in place.

We're all on the honor system and nobody has any honor. Yeah. There was that whole shaken and stirred thing that was going on, but I don't think that went anywhere. I know. All I know is I get a lot of spam calls and there's no mechanism in my phone to say, hey, if this comes from quote unquote spam caller, just don't ring my phone.

I don't know why that is not a feature yet. Maybe an iOS 24. I'll get it. But I'm sure it's I'm sure it's an Android. But anyway, in you're doing it wrong news, a new labor regulation that Greece in Greece has sparked a little controversy by introducing a six day work week for some businesses.

Yeah. The regulation effect of July 1st extends the traditional 40 hour work week to 48 hours. And here's a little quote. The law applies to private sector workers in certain industrial and manufacturing sectors or to those who work in a business that operates continuous shifts 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with some exceptions.

And it would be allowed only in, quote, in exceptional circumstances, like an unexpectedly increased workload or lots of business, I guess. Yeah, I love this. Critics, including labor unions and political analysts, argue it's a step backward for Greek workers who already have the longest working hours in the EU because they worked an average of eighteen hundred and eighty six hours in 2022, surpassing the US and EU averages.

That's a lot. Yeah. Some experts highlight the contradiction of this policy against the global trend of adopting shorter work weeks. A report by Think Tank Autonomy found that companies involved in a four day work week trial reported positive outcomes with many making the policy permanent, which you have discovered many, many times.

So what's going on, Greece? Well, Greece is in trouble. They've been in economic trouble for a long time. And I guess this is some last ditch attempt to maybe this will work. They're they're throwing they're throwing stuff at the wall and just seeing if anything sticks at this point, I think. Yeah.

But you would think they would go with the one thing that has been proven to increase productivity and not go with the thing that is proven not to. So I guess when it comes to when it comes to factory work and you're putting shit together, you know, 48 hours is better than 32. Yes, I suppose it is. Yeah.

Well, good thing we don't live there. Yeah, definitely. We missed this part last week when we talked about MTV dot com being shut down. Comedy Central dot com has also shut down its vast archive of late night videos, including every episode of The Daily Show since 1999 and the entire run of The Colbert Report.

Let me guess where those might be. Well, you would think that they're on Paramount Plus because the site now directs visitors to watch Comedy Central through Paramount Plus. However, older episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are not available on Paramount Plus. You can get some on YouTube like everybody else.

I'm sure they'll eventually make their way to a paywall to Paramount Plus if the demand is actually there. The question is, is the demand there, you know? Yeah, that's true. That's true. I mean, The Daily Show doesn't really have legs after a week, you know? Well, I mean, I was even just thinking about that with, you know, the reason we talked about this last week was MTV and losing all those archives.

I was and I was thinking like, OK, but when's the last time I went back and looked at anything from MTV in the 90s? No, I haven't. So there's no demand for it, really. So why host it? I mean, I hope it's stored somewhere. I hope it's not lost forever. I'm sure it's somewhere.

I mean, it's, you know, it's their IP. They should just ship it off to the Internet Archive and let those guys deal with it. They're doing a bang up job. Oh, yeah. In the news. Hat tip to Barrett on this one.

A teenage tech whiz known as God's Influencer is set to become the first millennial saint. Oh, great. Carlo Acutis, who died at 15 in 2006, has long been called the patron saint of the Internet. By who I would like to know. Hawk Cheshua. The Vatican approved his canonization likely in 2025.

Acutis, a devout Catholic, created a popular website cataloging Eucharistic miracles worldwide. Okay. He was credited with two healing miracles after his death. Good for him. Known for his compassion and tech skills, he used it. It must have been a cron job. Miracles on cron job.

Known for his compassion and tech skills, he used the Internet to spread his faith. And his beatification in 2020 drew over 41,000 visitors despite COVID-19 restrictions because some of his fans were just dying to meet him sooner than later. Yeah. Yeah.

Not bad. We'll see how that one goes, Carlos. I mean, you know, good on the church for being modern, I guess. God's Influencer. Great. Mm-hmm. And here's the problem with God's Influencer. Influencers aren't becoming famous like they used to, says Stephanie McNeil over at Glamour.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we've hit peak influencer. Here's what influencers have to do to get famous now. They have to die. Perfect. Unlike the rapid rise of influencers such as Charli D'Amelio and Emma Chamberlain, the past year has seen a slowdown in breakout Internet stars. Because despite many creators having massive followings and lucrative brand deals, few have recently reached mainstream celebrity status.

Except huck to a girl, apparently. Yeah. They're saying factors like engagement rates and niche audiences are now more critical than follower counts, making it harder for influencers to capture widespread attention. This would be because advertisers actually looked at sell-through rates and figured, oh, bots, bots.

Yes. Bots, bots everywhere, and so what? Who cares? You're a bot. I'm a bot. Everybody's a bot. Bot. Yeah. So they're saying the landscape is changing with audiences craving authenticity and transparency. Okay. Okay. Aspiring influencers are advised to focus on building deep connections with their audience over time rather than chasing fleeting viral moments.

The shift suggests that while Internet fame isn't dead, it requires more dedication and a long-term strategy. They also suggest actually doing something or having a real skill instead of just being famous. That would be impressive. And one can argue that Huck Tua does have a skill.

Yes, she does. So we'll see what happens there. Yeah. Anyways, you can now ask YouTube to take down AI-generated content that looks or sounds like you. YouTube has explained that the content must be uniquely identifiable, which it elaborates on as having enough information that allows others to recognize you.

It adds that it will consider several factors, such as whether the content is satire or parody, or if it includes a public figure engaged in sensitive activity. YouTube is only accepting first-party claims, with a few exceptions for people without Internet access, vulnerable individuals, minors, or deceased people.

Other than that, YouTube will not accept third parties to submit claims on behalf of others. After filing requests, the content in question won't be immediately taken down, because of course it won't. The uploader will have 48 hours to act upon the removal request, and during this time, they can trim or blur the content or remove the video entirely themselves.

YouTube states that making a video private is not an acceptable action. And if the uploader fails to take action within 48 hours, the complaint will be passed on to YouTube for a review, where it will be fired in that cylinder thing in the corner. Yeah, that's it. Same shit, different day. Yes.

Okay. And Cloudflare is also wading into the AI website scraping thing. They've released a new free tool that prevents AI companies' bots from scraping its clients' websites for content to change their large language models, at least for the next five minutes, until they figure out a way around it. Well, see, that's the great thing about Cloudflare, is they are the gatekeeper for many, many things.

Many people have been kicked off the Internet because Cloudflare got butthurt. So, they're making this tool available to their entire customer base, including those on free plans. This feature will automatically be updated over time as we see new fingerprints of offending bots we identify as widely scraping the web for modal training.

So, good. This might actually do something. All right. We'll see how it goes. And in other unsurprising news about AI, Google's greenhouse gas emissions have climbed by nearly 50% in the last five years. Yeah. Yeah.

I have some thoughts on this. Tell me what the article says, Brian. It's a report which Google releases annually shows the company's progress towards meeting its self-proclaimed objective of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. Obviously, that arrow went the wrong direction in the last five years because they've gotten worse, not better.

The result is primarily due to increases in data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions, said Google in the report. As we further integrate AI into our products, everybody should know, not anything that any of us are asking for. Reducing emissions may be challenging due to increasing energy demands associated with the expected increases in our technical infrastructure investment.

Analyst at Bernstein said the AI will double the rate of U.S. electricity demand growth and total consumption could outstrip current supply within the next two years, according to Financial Times. Yeah. Google's report said the company's data centers were using way poor water than before to stay cool as a result of expanded AI workloads.

Some of those workloads so far have involved Google search suggesting that people eat rocks and put glue on their pizza to prevent the cheese from falling off, as well as Gemini, the company's AI-powered chatbot generating images of ethnically diverse Nazis. Yeah. So this is the funny thing about this.

And I was thinking about this today on my walk. You know, we've got all of this going on with AI and everybody's all about the AI. Everybody's using it because nobody knows what it is and all this. I want to play with chat GPT, blah, blah, blah. It's going to take my job. I better learn how to use it.

Da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Plus all the nefarious uses we'll talk about in a little bit. But the thing is, there were so many reports about how the world was going to fall into a giant black hole of energy consumption when Bitcoin was doing its thing. AI told Bitcoin, hold my beer, you know?

This is so much worse than Bitcoin ever was. And Bitcoin has not gone away, let it be noted. So we've got Bitcoin going. Now we've got this stuff going. And I love that Google basically said, oh, but don't worry. We're still going to meet our goal. We just have no idea how. No idea how.

We're waiting for the AI to tell us how it's going to happen. Exactly. I mean, you do have to say Bitcoin probably has gone down a little bit because of all the Bitbros have moved over to become AIbros. True. But it's not like it went away. So we still have a lingering issue down below.

Yeah. So lingering issue down below. It sounds like you need a salve for that. So speaking of more news. A new research paper from Google highlights the potential dangers of generative AI, warning it could distort collective understanding of sociopolitical reality or scientific consensus.

Great. Yeah, I'm still at this point. I don't know how many fingers a human is supposed to have. Yeah, well, the paper Generative AI Misuse, a taxonomy of tactics and insights from real world data examines about 200 incidents of AI misuse between January 2023 and March 24. Unlike warnings about the existential risks of AI from people like Sam Altman and twat blossoms like Elon Musk, Google's research focuses on current and escalating harms such as flooding the internet with AI-generated text, audio, images, and video.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Basically, what they're saying is that most AI misuse involves exploiting system capabilities rather than direct attacks on AI models themselves. The widespread availability and hyper-realism of AI outputs have led to new forms of misuse that blur the lines between authentic and deceptive content.

Great. Often without violating content policies, they go on to say. They say examples include creating non-consensual intimate images and impersonating others, which users achieve without hacking the tools. So, but what they're not mentioning in this entire piece is that Google itself is a maker of the fucking tools that are leading to the imminent rise of the problem they're paying to have studied.

This is, yeah, okay, we're going to use all the energy. We're going to destroy the internet, which we need to do our jobs. And I just don't know anymore, Brian. I just don't know. I think we've not known for quite some time. And we've all saw, we saw this coming and now we're here.

So what are we going to do? Yeah. I mean, God, we need a smaller bandwagon is what we need. We just seem to be making bigger bandwagons for everyone to jump onto. That's really it. Yeah. So anyway, I've got a new one for the study for them. Researchers have created a computer virus that uses chat GPT to disguise and spread itself, which is a synthetic cancer virus, which they're calling it.

It alters its own code to evade detection and propagates through AI-generated emails that mimic human writing. Oh, great. Yeah. Developed by computer science grad student David Zollicofer and AI malware researcher Ben Zimmerman, the virus attaches to emails, rewriting itself to avoid antivirus scans.

Great. Once it infects a system, it uses Outlook to send contextually relevant replies, including itself as an attachment. Now, the polymorphic and metamorphic malware are real motherfuckers already. And when you couple that with a human-sounding chat bot, you can cause some serious damage because there's no fingerprints for these things.

So they get to – oh. Hey, but who needed power and water anyway? Because now we've got – we've got this. We've got that. Yeah. And getting back to the big bros, the U.S. Treasury has finalized crypto rules to prevent tax evasion. So people who own and sell cryptocurrency have always had to pay tax on their earnings, but it was so complicated and nobody really knew what they had to do.

And so let's be honest. Frankly, a lot of people didn't bother. A new rule finalized by the U.S. Treasury Department can ensure that they're paying the proper amount of their sales. The new rule will require cryptocurrency platforms like exchanges and payment processors to report their users' transactions to the IRS, just like a real bank.

Yeah. According to the Wall Street Journal, authorities are hoping that that measure can deter tax evasion, seeing as the IRS would know exactly how much a taxpayer should owe. But at the same time, the rule will make it easier for people to declare their earnings because their brokers will now have to provide them with a 1099 form. Okay.

That's the way it should be. Mm-hmm. Yep. Okay. Thanks for getting around to it eventually, guys. Took them long enough. Took them long enough. And I'm sure that will be probably overturned very soon. Now who's the negative one? In a tale of extreme brand loyalty, a Tesla mega fan known as Lamar MK got two Cybertrucks, both of which turned out to be complete lemons.

Now that's not the story. But the first Cybertruck broke down after just two weeks, displaying a barrage of error messages and just basically getting him stuck all the time. So despite months of service center issues, he bitched and moaned about it, and Tesla sent him a brand new one. Okay.

It was even wrapped in blue plastic. It was purdy. Well, you know, Tesla's CEO promised to resolve the issues and all of this stuff. But the nice brand new one also broke down almost immediately. And basically he plugged in the charging cable and it would not disengage, which means he couldn't go anywhere.

So what the Tesla techs actually had to do was drill into the truck to disengage the cable. Wow. That sounds like they built that well. This guy is still a Tesla fan, a huge Tesla fan. So all I got to say is we seriously need more GOG fans like this guy because I bet that Cybertruck could go rogue, run over his entire family.

He would just crack a beer and take it to the shop and say, can you clean the blood off? Tesla forever. Great. I mean, Tesla fans are nuts. They are. Yeah. Well, here's some more Tesla news. Tesla full self-driving is a bad thing for getting public buy-in for autonomous driving tech, says a rival engineer.

So this is from a recent event in Melbourne. Jochen Haab, head of Mercedes-Benz's autonomous driving program, expressed concerns over car manufacturers like Tesla over promising on self-driving technology. He emphasized a cautious step-by-step approach to build trust and confidence in autonomous vehicles.

Haab warned that unrealistic promises could erode public trust if the technology underperforms. Too late. See, you're not from America because in America, we drive fast and break things and kill people. That's what we do. So this was an Australian conference, and apparently Tesla's full self-driving beta is not allowed on the roads in Australia right now.

So they shouldn't be on the road anywhere. It's not self-driving. It's not. It's not. So Tesla has also, they finally listened to our show after how many years? Tesla has now applied for a new patent that would automate at least part of the sanitization of its self-driving vehicles.

The patent is called Controlling Environmental Conditions in Enclosed Spaces. Here's the problem it's solving. Shared spaces present advantages in cost efficiency and environmental sustainability. For example, an automobile providing transportation throughout the day for multiple persons provides lower transportation costs and environmental footprint than an automobile used by only one person for personal commute.

However, shared spaces have a disadvantage of facilitating indirect transmission of communicable diseases through contaminated air or surfaces. Current means for sanitizing shared spaces, for example, manually wiping touch surfaces using disinfectant wipes, can be time-consuming, laborious, and lead to unsatisfactory sanitation conditions.

Additionally, such manually implemented activities may not be easily verifiable. So they're going to just, you know, have some Lysol sprays that schvitz every time you get out of the car. Well, if their full self-sanitizing works as well as their full self-driving, I expect to be sitting in shit.

I know. Would you like some poo with your commute? Seriously, though, when I'm reading this press release, or the thing that you just read, I guess it's a press release or something like that. This is, again, this is every, this is Silicon Valley bros.

What you're describing is public transport. You're describing a fucking bus. We've got those. Yeah, we do. Anyways. Ooh, yes. Multiple persons being transported by a vehicle.

Oh, never heard of that before. Imagine that. Yeah. Taxis. Hmm. We didn't have those before. Yep. Jesus. All right. Here's a fun. In Florida news, a man named Wynn was arrested after shooting down a Walmart delivery drone.

According to the arrest affidavit, Wynn, suspecting the drone was surveilling him, retrieved a gun and fired a shot, striking the drone. The sheriff's deputy on the scene informed Wynn that he had hit the Walmart drone, to which Wynn responded in disbelief. I hit it. Never has somebody been named so incorrectly.

Yeah, no shit. The drone returned to a nearby Walmart with a bullet hole in its payload area. Now Wynn faces three charges, including shooting at an aircraft. But what Wynn did not take into account is despite the FAA's clear stance since 2016 that shooting at drones is a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison, some gun owners remain unaware.

The FAA recently allowed drones to fly beyond the operator's line of sight, increasing their use for commercial deliveries. Now, now in California, when I took my gun ownership test that you have to take before they will give you a gun, they specifically say, are you allowed to fire your gun in the air for celebratory or any other purposes?

The answer is no. So firing a gun in the air, I don't care what you're firing at, is not legal. So. Yeah, but this is Florida. That's true. That's Florida is its own strange beast. Yes, it is. You got to be able to shoot those flying crocodiles, Jason.

Seriously. Seriously. Hey, man, you get enough moonshine in you, those crocodiles do fly. Trust me on that one. Well, I hope Wynn wins his case. Oh, man. Some space news. Two astronauts are still stuck on the International Space Station due to problems with Boeing's Starliner capsule.

Despite initial troubles, NASA commends Boeing for safely delivering the astronauts. That's Butch Will Moore and Sonny Williams. Look, I know. Hey, man, you made it there. All right. The door didn't fall off. Well done. Yeah, seriously. Initially planned for 10 days, the mission now has no end in sight.

Issues began with helium leaks before liftoff and worsened with more leaks and docking troubles upon arrival at the ISS. NASA's Steve Stitch mentioned that the mission might extend up to 90 days, much longer than the original plan. But while Starliner can technically stay in orbit for up to 210 days, the indefinite extension highlights significant challenges.

Despite the chaos, the capsule remains intact. Now, Brian, at least it didn't explode. Seems to be engineering's high bar in all it takes to ship a vehicle nowadays. So, but that's it. At least it didn't explode. At least it would have been much cooler if they launched Butch and Sundance instead.

So, but we do have Sonny. Sonny's close enough to Sundance, I guess. That's close. That's very close. And I mean, I figure if they can't get him down, didn't SpaceX just get the gig to actually bring the ISS down and crash into the ocean? They'll make it down eventually. Just fly up some parachutes and say, when you get to this point, jump.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the guy from Red Bull did it, you know. They can do it. Why not? I don't think we can hitch a ride with the Russians anymore. I think that's probably out of the picture. I think so.

Media Candy. Well, it is summer vacation, which means need things to do with the kid. Went to the theater, saw Inside Out 2. You and everybody else on the planet. Pretty much, yeah. And it was phenomenal. Great movie. I love the first one. I love this one.

You know what you're getting. Good, solid family entertainment. Very funny, clever, smart, great soundtrack. No complaints. All right. You should see them, Jason. I think you'd like them. I started to watch the first one and I fell asleep. So maybe I'll get to it again. There you go. And I watched I Am Celine Dion.

Why? Well, did they make you do that when you moved to Canada? No. Okay. Just wondering. No. No. I mean, my wife is interested. It's a music industry thing. She's basically, she's got this all kinds of weird health problems.

And this is kind of her swan song, Goodbye. And it was really kind of heartfelt and interesting. I mean, I obviously I can't stand her music, but my God, she can sing. Her voice is stunning. And to lose all that talent has just got to be heartbreaking. And it was a pretty heartbreaking documentary. It's well worth the watch, even if you don't like her music, which I do not.

I don't like it either, but I'm also not into downers right now. Okay. Well, when you're ready for a downer. Yeah. When the boys is over, then I'll switch back to that. Yeah. The Mole Season 2 is back on Netflix, and I'm very excited about it, except they changed the host, which is a real bummer for me, because I thought the first host was very cute.

Ari Shapiro is the new host. He's doing a good job, though. Is he cute? If you're into that sort of thing. I'm not into boys, so I don't know. But he's a good host, and it's a fun show. They're doing a good job this season. It's all in Malaysia, which is kind of neat.

And yeah, they're doing three drops. The first five are out, three come out tomorrow on Friday, and two more on July 12th. So short, short run, but I'm digging it. I'm really digging it. And this week, Beverly Hills Cop Axel F came out, because they did not want to be out-sequeled by Inside Out 2.

I watched it this afternoon, because it's the 4th of July, and what are you going to do besides watch a Beverly Hills Cop movie? Yeah, go in with low expectations, and it's quite fun. That's it. Fair enough. If you've seen the Beverly Hills Cop movies, which probably everybody has, it is a Beverly Hills Cop movie with lots of throwbacks and an unaging Eddie Murphy.

He still looks great. I don't know. Everybody else looks like hammered shit, but Judge Reinhold ain't holding up much. Yeah, I saw some of the stills from that, and I was like, that's Judge Reinhold. Oh, my God. Yeah. Balki's back in this one, too, so that was fun.

Cool. I'll have to watch it. I did love the originals when they came out 75 years ago. Yeah. It's better than number three, so there you go. Okay. I didn't even remember there was a three. I do remember two. That's why it's better than number three. Okay. Fair enough. The Acolyte, episode seven, not season seven, episode seven has dropped.

Did you get a peek? I did. I watched it. It was very good. Yeah, I thought it was good. I think they're moving the story along. I'm very intrigued by it. I like what they're doing. I've got no complaints. Yeah, and it came out that this is the second highest, was it, numbers, I guess, viewership numbers for any of the Star Wars things that Disney has put out lately, all the series, besides Obi-Wan.

Yeah, right after Obi-Wan, right? Yeah, right up at the top. Yeah, and I was reading an article about it, and I thought this was going to be a one-off, just one season, but apparently it's not. There's going to be more, so. Oh, good. Good. Yeah, because I'm liking it. Yeah. They definitely have room for recasting everybody. Fresh slate.

Yeah, seriously. Where's the next batch of Jedi this guy can go? If you've got a couple extra bucks lying around, Brian, I know you're unemployed, much like me, so I don't think we'll be buying this one. But, yeah, Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia production bikini is up for sale at auction, starting bid, $30,000.

Yeah, see, the thing for me is not so much the bikini as what was in it. What was in it, exactly. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'll pass on that. That would just be creepy if an old guy like us were buying old used bikinis.

You know, that's kind of gross. Well, that is part of the creator economy these days, Jason. I was going to say, yeah, OnlyFans is right around the corner if you need that kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, it's a cool little piece of memorabilia, but, yeah, I can't see myself. Yeah, no. Yeah.

Well, in media bankruptcy news, chicken soup for the soul entertainment, which required the movie rental service Redbox. Remember those things sitting around everywhere where you could actually get a physical DVD? Yeah. Well, they were still sitting out there like 20 years later, and then the payphone next to it went away, but that Redbox was still sitting there.

Well, they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection because, basically, it's a dead business. The company recently disclosed net losses of $636.6 million for 2023 in an SEC filing. A deadline reported just a few days ago that it suspended medical benefits and missed payroll, leaving employees without their paychecks for over a week already.

Now, obviously, this isn't just Redbox. It's the old chicken soup for the soul entertainment, which, you know, they've got all kinds of other stuff. They've got, I don't know, the books. They owned Crackle. They owned some other film and TV brands and all that sort of stuff. So, but not for much longer.

Yeah, they should read some of their self-help books. Might help them out. See, they needed to read business books, not self-help books. That was the problem. That's true. They needed to read Accounting for Dummies, different franchise. Now, in Yay Canada News, in a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada has denied Voltage Holdings, one of the biggest copyright trolls in Canada, their appeal to hold Internet bill payers liable for piracy without direct evidence.

This is cool. Voltage, known for their aggressive anti-piracy tactics, targeted 30 alleged infringers of the 2017 movie Revolt, based solely on their IP addresses. The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, say that five times fast, SIPC, intervened, emphasizing the lack of evidence linking the account holders to the actual infringers.

Both the federal court and the federal court of appeal ruled that mere association with an IP address is insufficient for liability, as it should be. So, this decision reinforces that Internet subscribers are not required to police their connections for piracy, setting a significant precedent for copyright enforcement in Canada.

So, Brian, get your ass to Sweden. Well, I mean, it's kind of weird because it is a problem here. I mean, I've never – the whole IPTV pirate sticks are massive here on a scale I've never seen in the U.S.

Like, probably because there's so many immigrants here. And there's – like, if you wanted to watch Chinese programming or Indian programming or African programming, you can't, unless you've got one of these, which is why they sell a lot of them. They're everywhere. So, there's a lot of piracy going on in Canada. It's practically Sweden here.

Okay. Okay. Well, last thing I have is I have a video by this kid, Drew Gooden, who I'd never heard of before. And it's called AI is Ruining the Internet. And I don't know who he is, but he's pretty fucking spot on. It's time well spent. And if you don't listen to our show every week.

But he's pretty funny. I like him. I might have to check out some more of his stuff. But, yeah, it's a really good take on how AI is ruining the Internet, which we talk about every week now, unfortunately. We sure do. Since Bitcoin is no longer a thing. We sure do. But I'm halfway through my AI course, which is giving me pretty much like a really good look into how all this has been warped into bullshit.

Okay, good. There's a real nugget in there, but it's basically just for manufacturing and, you know, basic tasks. That's it. But that's it. Not all the stuff that we're using it for. Not the generative stuff? No. Generative stuff is useless. It's useful in some applications, like show notes for this show.

It's fantastic for that. Very limited applications. It's certainly not worth the hype or the money being spent on it. Okay. I'm going to hold you to that. When you're done, let us know. Have you been following your EULA for life? Yes.

So good. Apps and doodads. Well, all I can say is I think we've been saying since day one, thank God we grew up when there weren't any cell phones and all the stupid shit that we did wasn't documented. Man, Jason, thank God we used to get drunk at bars before these fucking morons in San Francisco came out with this app.

Seriously. A weird new app lets San Francisco residents monitor local bars via live video feed to see what's happening there and to check out how busy the venues are. That is the promise of this app. Tonight, which launched earlier this year, uses a network of cameras at various Bay Area establishments to provide remote insights into what's happening at those locations.

This all-in-one app for managing, promoting, and discovering nightlife, according to the app's website. On its app page, meanwhile, the program encourages users to scroll through its discovery page where you can watch people getting drunk in bars without their permission. Yeah. Yeah, that's a big thing.

Also, you can find out when your girlfriend said that she's not going out and she's going to go spend time with her girlfriends, you can troll all the watering holes, stalking like a crazy person. Yes, this is a very bad idea, and the bars that decided to put this up obviously do not have lawyers involved in any way, shape, or form.

So far, the app only has contracts with five to eight venues, the San Francisco Standard writes. This app got me laid, said one five-star review on the Apple App Store. Best way to buy tickets for events. Tonight is the truth and the future, the horny user wrote. Not everybody is obviously so stoked.

Local bar patrons have predictably been a bit upset and creeped out even by an app that remotely monitors them and streams their drunken revelry to an unknown amount of strangers on the internet. Yeah, the guy who got laid, I would like to know, was it consensual? Probably. If you define got laid by I watched a chick in a bar and wasterbated at home to it, that I suppose that's true.

So yeah, I don't expect this company to be around too much longer. They have told people that they've just introduced live stream blurring to anonymize the feeds and keep individual party goers from being identified. Yeah, I was wondering if they were going to do that because, but you can still find people based on what they're wearing.

Exactly. Yeah. If you know the people, you know who's there, you know? Yeah. Like, oh, that black blur in the corner over there. Yep. That's Brian. That's me in the spotlight. You know I'm a fan of the Open Dyslexic font. I've talked about it on the show many times, and I'm looking at the show notes right now using the Open Dyslexic font.

One of the big problems I always had was I could never get it working on my iPad for many things until I just found this new app called Open Dyslexic for iOS, which is a very easy way to get the font installed on your iOS or phone. It is free, and go download now.

There's a link in the show notes. All right. Yep. And I don't know why. I started getting back into video games a little bit, and I started playing Diablo 4 again. All right. Great game. I love it. I'm only playing single player now because I get rid of all my multiplayer crap. I just want to play a game by myself, enjoy it, not have to worry about little shits running around calling me names because I'm old and slow, which I am.

That's okay. I'm used to it now, but it is a great little game. It's actually not a little game. It is massive. I've been playing it for like 20 hours total, I think, so far, and I'm like only 18% through. I don't know if that's because I'm slow, but I'm playing it on entertainment mode, which means you can go into the big boss battles and always win.

But it's kind of fun that way. The last game I played was Quake, and that was with you and Dave Riegler calling me a fuck. You little shits calling me slow. Yeah, that was it. That was a long time ago. That was a long time ago. Speaking of a long time ago, Japan's government has finally said goodbye to floppy disks.

Japan's digital agency announced on Wednesday it had read its use of outdated floppy disks to operate its government computer systems. The only system still in place that requires the use of floppy disks is an environmental system that monitors vehicle recycling. Digital Minister Taro Kono's agency started his crusade against 90s-era computer technology in 2022, shortly after he was appointed to the digital agency.

Around 1,900 of Japan's government procedures used floppy disks and other outdated technologies such as fax machines, CDs, and mini disks. All right. Well, they made them. They want to get as much use out of them as they can. That's true. He famously declared a war on floppy disks to his 2.5 million followers on X, and now he has declared in a statement to a news agency, we have won the war on floppy disks as of June 28th.

Yeah. Of course, they weren't the only people using them. The U.S. military was still using 8-inch floppy disks to operate its strategic automated command and control system, a 1970s computer system that likes to play a game. Now, I know it's a bit of an urban myth that this is still in place.

I do want to correct that here to anybody that thinks so. They did finally phase it out in 2019. This should last a long time, so. Oh, God. Okay. Well, I've been talking about ChatGPT's Mac app the last couple shows. I got it, installed it.

It was great. Loved it. Well, OpenAI recently addressed a security issue in its ChatGPT MacOS app that allowed chats to be easily accessed in plain text on a user's computer. So, here's the long and the short of it. Basically, they were storing everything that you did in plain text in the app storage field because it's not a Mac app store where it's sandboxed.

You download it yourself, and so it doesn't have all the same rules. They have released a patch for it very quickly, and I just decided I did not have the auto update box checked, so I had to manually update the app. So, if you're running it, go check it. Just grab the latest. It's fast update.

Because after that last loopback issue that I had talked about on the show last week, I don't have any apps set to auto update anymore. My Mac tells me every time I boot up that there's a new version of loopback when I'd like to install it, and I say, fuck no. No. Absolutely not. Closing shout outs.

Over at Patreon, we've got John and Kevin. Welcome. All right. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got Judge Simon, Nicola, Thomas, Levy, and Jonathan. Woo-hoo. Over at the tip jar, we've got Adam, Matthew, and Sarah. And just remember, if you want to sign up for a minimum of $3 a month, you can sign up for more if you want.

Over at Patreon.com slash GOG, you get the show a little bit early, ad-free, and in high definition. Boom, boom, boom. All right. Quick short show. Not a lot of news. It's a holiday week. What do you want? It's a holiday week. I am sweating my ass off out here in the garage because it was 100 degrees today, and I don't have air conditioning out here.

So I'm going to go pass out now, just like cool hand Luke in the sweat box. All right. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. 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 655. Feeling generous?

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Got something to say? Send your feedback, comments, or awesome links to GOG.show slash contact. And show us some love. Leave a review at GOG.show slash review. A five-star rating might just get your review read on the air. And a quick note to everybody out there that's listening. Statistically, year by year.

There's a very good chance that about 500 to 600 Americans are spending their last night with all 10 digits.