656: Cyber Winnebago

At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

From beauty and fashion to home, culinary and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com. 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. Well, we got a bit of follow-up, Jason. I remember about two weeks ago or so, there was that esteemed journalist who wrote this step-by-step article about how to tell Meta that you should not allow them to use your data for training their AI and machine learning algorithms.

Yeah. And we both went through it. No, no, no. You went through it. Oh, I went through it. And many, many other people went through it. And guess what? It did not work. Really? Well, here's the nothing email I got and you tell me. Okay. Hi, thank you for contacting us. Based on the information that you have provided to us, we are unable to identify any examples of your personal information in a response from one of Meta's generative AI models.

As a result, we cannot take further action on your request. If you want to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, go look at our privacy thing that also says nothing about blah, blah, blah. Thank you for your inquiry, privacy operations. Now, I didn't say remove something that I have found that you have used. I said, do not ever use my information ever to train your model.

Okay. This is just saying, we didn't see anything. Okay. So we can't take any further action because we don't see that we've ever used it for anything. Okay. But I want you to never use it. That's what we filled out. Okay. I don't think they got the memo. Yeah, me either. So again, didn't work.

Okay. Oh, man. Well, we talk a lot on the show about how it is our God given duty, our duty, Brian. I want my $2. Yes. Every time that there is a class action lawsuit, it is your duty to go out there, fill out those forms and take that cash.

Because if you don't, it just reverts back to the lawyers. Or back to the company itself. That is why we need to do this. It is a punishment. And the only way that the money gets taken out of their dirty, sticky hands is if we do all the stupid paperwork for nothing. Yeah, there have been some changes to the laws, but for the most part, still, do your duty.

So, Brian, I did my duty. All right. Me too. And I got this email. Jason, you have received a virtual prepaid MasterCard worth 12 cents as your Google Refer header privacy litigation payment. To activate and use your card, please click the Redeem Virtual Card button below.

So me, I click the link. You have been blocked. Why? Something about the behavior of the browser has caught our attention. There are various possible explanations for this. One, you are browsing and clicking at a speed much faster than expected of a human being.

Wait, you clicked one. One link. Yeah. I clicked one link. Yes. Okay. Something is preventing JavaScript from working on your computer. Or there is a robot on the same network as you. They give me my IP address. I look over my shoulder and go, where's the fucking robot? No. So they said, I can try again in 24 hours, or if the message persists, to call for support.

The time that it took me to read that was worth more than 12 cents of my time. So, yes, I obviously did nothing. But did you try and claim your 12 cents, Brian? Yeah, they did not think I was moving at a speed much faster than expected of a human being, apparently. I was able to get my 12-cent MasterCard that I guess I'm going to have to fucking use on something somehow.

I'm going to have to find a place that lets you put in, you know, multiple credit cards to split payments so I could put 12 cents down. Or I just let that sit and rot forever. Although I did read something in the small print about, like, if it sits for too long, they'll start to take a – they'll charge you for it.

And the charge is, of course, more than 12 cents. So, I could end up getting fucked if I don't pay attention to this and having to pay there. The only one that I know of off the top of my head that lets you do multiple payments very easily is Apple. So, go buy a new MacBook and then – I don't need anything.

Oh, well. And we got a little follow-up from Redbox. So, the Redbox parent company, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, which we talked about on the last episode, they filed for Chapter 11. Well, they said, screw that. We're going to go full-on Chapter 7. So, they have to now liquidate all their assets because they have a $1 billion debt and a bunch of unpaid bills.

So, guess what this means, Brian? Those 24,000 Redbox kiosks are definitely going to be hitting the market. So, get them while they're getting's good. Yeah. No. Come on, man. I think they'd be kind of fun to have. Just have one in your house.

You're a movie guy. That would be a cool thing for you to have like out in your yard. I wouldn't put it in the yard. I'd keep it in the garage or something like that. Keep it nice and shiny. Oh, yeah. In the news. I love this one, Brian.

In a Philadelphia suburb, 8th graders at Great Valley Middle School launched an online harassment campaign against their teachers, marking the first known group TikTok attack of its kind by middle schoolers in the U.S. The kids are fighting back. Students created 22 fake accounts posting offensive content like pedophilia innuendo and racist memes about 20 teachers.

While a few students initiated the attack, hundreds joined in by following and commenting. Oh, this is great. Well, that's, you know, illegal. Yeah. Well, Principal Edward Souders praised students who reported the misconduct and urged parents to discuss responsible social media use.

The school suspended several students and held a cyber bullying assembly. I mean, I always hated assemblies because it was always for the jocks, but this one has just had to be the worst. Totally. Man, why would anybody want to be a teacher anymore? I love. Yeah, this is the great thing.

National Education Association President Becky Pringle warned that such harassment could drive educators out of the profession. Well, no, shitty pay and crappy benefits are what drive driving people out of the profession. This is just icing on the cake. Yeah, exactly.

It's crazy. I hope these kids get, well, I don't know what you do. What do you do? What do you do to a kid who's doing this? Who knows? Yeah. Take away their TikTok is probably the best thing. That would be step one as a parent. Yes. Your phone is no longer. Yeah, the problem is the kids are smarter than the parents when it comes to digital technology, so they can just get around it easily.

We'll get to some stories at the end of this segment. Okay, okay. Now, I love this one, too. In a rare traffic incident, a Phoenix police officer pulled over a driverless Waymo vehicle on June 19th. The vehicle, driving in the wrong lane, had no passengers inside, so this was just a rogue Waymo going about its business.

Phoenix police confirmed the Waymo car entered oncoming traffic due to confusing construction signage and ran a red light. Who amongst us hasn't done that? Exactly. Exactly. The car eventually pulled into a parking lot and no citation was issued since there was no driver.

I love it. Waymo explained the car sensors detect emergency vehicles and its in-car system allows officers to communicate with Waymo support. This is progress, Brian. We have progress. So let my remote-controlled car go fucking rogue, drive the wrong way through a construction site, which is dangerous enough, and then don't even get a ticket at the end of it.

I love it. I'm just going to hide in the trunk and let my car just drive me wherever I want to go, however. Forget it. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I'm sure nothing bad will happen there. Yeah. Okay. Well, Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.

The U.S. Department of Justice and Boeing have reached an agreement that the latter will plead guilty to a conspiracy stemming from the two fatal crashes that killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019, the New York Times reports. They struck a deal in 2021 over these crashes with the agency, promising to implement major safety changes and engage in no wrongdoing for three years.

Cross my heart and hope you die. My God, what these companies can get away with. Can you imagine as an individual if you just said, you know what, I will change my ways and I promise to do no wrongdoing for the next three years. Cool? Yeah. Cool. All right. Cool. All right. Great. Yeah. Have your doors fall off next.

No problem. In May, the DOJ announced the company had violated the agreement. And on June 30th, it offered Boeing a choice, accept a plea deal within one week or go to trial. So they couldn't do what they said that they were going to do. And now they're in a lot of trouble for it. And of course, this deal is being criticized as insufficient for crash victims.

Of course, the sweetheart deal fails to recognize that because of Boeing's conspiracy, 346 people actually died. Through crafty lawyering between Boeing and the DOJ, the deadly consequences of Boeing's crimes are being hidden. And also in the news this week, and pretty bad timing for Boeing, another wheel from the landing gear of United Airlines fell off on Monday, according to a spokesperson for the company.

But this is the second time a Boeing plane has lost a wheel while in flight this year alone. Somebody check the lug nuts. Come on. Flight 1001 landed safely in Denver after losing one wheel on takeoff from Los Angeles International Airport. And the wheel has been recovered in Los Angeles.

See, this is all they're going to say. This is why we've got more than one. This is why we've got more than one. Redundancy, people. That's right. Redundancy. The wheel just saw the in and out right by LAX and went, I'm hungry. I need a double-double animal style, please. We all do when we land, so. True, true.

That's the only good thing about dropping your friends off at the airport in LA. Oh, yeah. You have to swing through the in and out. On the first one, you know, okay, these flights killed 346 people. I think that's generally like a daily death count for Facebook nowadays.

You know, I'm sure that they're hiding just as many, as many, even if you just do the averages from what they did in Myanmar and all of the other, you know, genocides they've incited. I'm sure that we could come up with 346 a day. Teen suicide.

Yeah. Yep. You know, I'm sure. I'm sure. So, and I saw that the, what the percentage of Boeing's revenue was that the fine was. It was like 0.6% of their revenue for the year. It's like, okay. Outside of the fact that they have all these sweetheart deals, you know, they do a bunch of government work, which technically they shouldn't if they're felons, right?

Nah, don't go there, Doug. Don't go there. Okay, okay. Sorry. Sorry. Just trying to draw some parallels. I know, I know. I love this one, too. I love them all this week, Brian. These are just, it's a great week for dystopia. You're in a dystopian mood. Exactly. This is a great week for dystopia.

Just when you thought Bitcoin couldn't get anywhere. Of course, residents of Granbury, Texas are experiencing severe health issues such as migraines, vertigo, heart palpitations, and tinnitus, which they believe are caused by noise pollution from a nearby Bitcoin mining facility. Or just the ennui of knowing that Bitbros are in the neighborhood.

The Bitcoin mine exceeds legal noise ordinances, emitting a loud hum that disrupts daily life and sleep, leading to increased stress and health problems among the town's residents. So, now, I know what this is like, because I used to live down the road when I was in North Carolina from a warehauser paper mill.

I don't know if you've ever been near a paper mill, Brian. Nope. Oh, my God. The stink from a paper mill permeates everything. And I was a kid. I was like eight years old when I lived by this thing. And I was having a mental breakdown because I just couldn't get it out. And one time, I'm like, Mom, I need to eat something delicious because everything tastes like paper.

Will you make me a steak? And we were poor as dirt. But she went out and she got me a steak. And I dug into that thing, expecting to taste the juicy meat. And all I tasted was fart and paper. And I just, I threw the steak across the room. I'm like eight years old, having a mental breakdown because I could not get away from this goddamn paper mill.

So, I know what these people are going through. And it sucks. Trying to work fart and paper into a sizzler jingle now. Steak, seafood, fart, paper, sizzler. Yum. So, they've tried to fix it and it's not working.

They've switched to basically building sound walls around them. And I saw they have some drone shots in the article about, you know, the thing. There are all these big containers that seem to be pretty open to the air. But they're still running fans on these things. There's 30,000 computers there with the fans on.

So, they need to put – These things should be illegal. It's ridiculous. Yeah, but it's Texas. I know. So, everything's legal in Texas. That's why all of these companies are – All the Bitcoin companies have moved to Texas because there's no regulations. Yeah. And they've got a lot of money because they're printing fake money all day long and selling it for real money.

So, hey. All right. Have at you. Okay. Well, I like this story a bit. I'm not going to get too into the technical details here. But the article definitely does. So, if you're interested in that, check the show notes. Hackers have reverse-engineered Ticketmaster's barcode system to unlock resales on other platforms.

In case you weren't aware about how these modern ticketing services work, Ticketmaster and AXS lock tickets resales with inside their own platform, preventing transfers on third-party services like SeatGeek or StubHub. So, you have to use them to resell your tickets so they get the cut instead of anybody else because, oh, I don't know.

What's your ticket and you bought it and you should be able to do whatever the fuck you want with it. But no. No. Not according to Ticketmaster and AXS. But hackers have gotten around this using a bunch of clever technology and figuring out the tokens and getting in between them and all this other sort of stuff. But in particular, what I love about this is this came around and came out because of a lawsuit that AXS had filed against third-party brokers adopting the practice.

So, basically, it's gone more widespread because they sued because they said you shouldn't be doing this. And then somebody went, oh, we can do that? All right. It's called the Streisand effect, buddy. Exactly. Total Streisand effect.

So, yeah, more bad news for Ticketmaster. But, of course, this shouldn't be allowed. But we'll see if the regulations get there or not. Probably not. Yeah. This comes on the heels of the hack that released 30,000 tickets into the wild. Yep. Which was great. And they're like, OK, well, you can pay us $2 million and we'll not release all of the tickets that we have, which is basically everything on your system.

So, yeah, Ticketmaster is having a rough week. That's OK with me, though. Donald Trump has issued a threat to imprison election fraudsters, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a recent Truth Social rant. On one hand, I wouldn't mind.

Trump made the remarks in a post about the SAVE Act, which aims to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting in federal elections, a practice that's already illegal, by the way. I know. I love these guys. They keep coming out saying, we must stop this thing that's already illegal. Yeah. Trump's post falsely claimed illegal immigrants were gaming voting rights and singled out Zuckerberg with the nickname Zuckerbucks, which I think was a show title of Grumpy Old Geeks at some point.

I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we covered that one. He warned that if reelected, he would pursue and imprison election fraudsters. This isn't the first time Trump has targeted Zuckerberg previously calling for his prosecution and labeling Facebook an enemy of the people. My God, something that Trump and I actually agree on.

I'm with him, too. But, you know, if you believe the playbook that he's supposedly going to enact if he gets reelected, it won't be a problem because there won't be any further elections. Nope, no elections, no chance of fraud. No, last election ever. Oh, God. Two top employees from Humane, the AI pin company, which we have mocked incessantly, along with everybody else on the Internet, have left to start InFactory, an AI-powered fact-checking search engine.

Oh, I thought it was some sort of special thing for incels. Yeah, exactly. All they do at the InFactory is make red pills. Brooke Hartley Moy, former strategic partnership lead, and Ken Kosienda, former head of product engineering, aim to revolutionize fact-checking with a focus on data accuracy.

InFactory will use large language models to simplify user queries while pulling information directly from trusted sources, avoiding AI-generated errors. Just like Humane did. A search engine. The service will initially target enterprise clients like newsrooms and research facilities, offering subscription-based access.

I love it. Newsrooms, who were the fact-checkers of the world, are actually going to now go hire a service to do fact-checking for them. That trolls their data and spits it back at them. Yeah, spits it back to them. That's awesome. Well, this is going to go well, just as well as Humane did. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. Now, more AI news.

Brian, this is a staggering 129 million Americans have at least one chronic disease, driving 90% of the $4.1 trillion annual healthcare cost. Sam Altman and Ariana Huffington to the rescue. Oh, boy.

The two suggest that AI can offer a solution through personalized behavior change. AI's capabilities in hyper-personalization can improve sleep, diet, exercise, stress management, and social connections, significantly impacting health outcomes. OpenAI is partnering with Color Health and developing an AI health coach to assist doctors and individuals in managing chronic conditions.

Now, glue. Put glue on your pizza. That's it. See, now, if you take this to the logical conclusion, an AI says, we need to have humans do better and cut the healthcare costs of America, which leads an AI to go, hmm, well, if humans are the problem, well, if they just kill themselves, then that will reduce the healthcare costs and solve everybody's issues, right?

Well, Oxum's razor. Yeah, so there we go. Glue! Yeah, I'm not, we're just not, we're not there yet for this kind of stuff in such critical junctures. AI is like, just makes six-fingered, six-fingered cats right now.

Come on. Oh, the six-fingered man. Doesn't do this sort of stuff, yeah. Anyways, Microsoft and Apple are giving up their open AI board seats. You might think this is because like, oh, I don't know, they thought maybe we're a little too powerful and we shouldn't get involved in everything so directly and have our fingers on the board there pushing things around.

No, they're basically doing that because the European Commission revealed it's taking another look at the terms of the partnership and might be looking to do more fines and more things of that nature. Yeah, antitrust. Yeah, it's all antitrust. So Microsoft sent an open AI letter announcing it was giving up its seat, effective immediately.

But we will stay on as an observer non-voting rule. We'll do that. Well, aren't we all observers? Technically. With non-voting rules? Yes, we are. Yeah, exactly. Although most of us didn't put about $7 to $8 billion into the company. So somehow I think they'll still have some sway.

I think so too. Because yeah, our 20 bucks a month isn't going to sway anything, but a couple billion will. No. So. More AI news. AI chatbots have surged in popularity since 2022. However, Google search remains dominant with nearly 60% profit boost in quarter one in a market share increase to 91.1% as chat GPT visits declined.

Analysts credit AI integration, particularly Google's Gemini for this growth. No, no, it's not. It's people fact checking the random shit that chatbots are incessantly spewing at them. Yeah. That's it. Is this correct? No. Then they get. Yeah, it's not. You can't trust the internet anymore.

Forget it. Speaking of not trusting the internet, this came from our Discord channel. You should check that out. Crunchyroll announces the removal of its comment section across all platforms to reduce harmful content. Now, I freely admit I have no idea what Crunchyroll is. It's like an anime streaming service.

Yeah, yeah, that's what it basically came down to. So there was a support post that basically said, we prioritize creating a safe and respectful community environment to maintain the standard. We are hiding all existing user-generated content, including comments and reviews across all our platforms and experiences.

The decision was made to ensure a safer, more respectful, and higher quality environment for all, Crunchyroll support representative said. This change helps us reduce harmful content, prevent misinformation, and improve overall user experience. Now, we have discussed at great length about how you should never read the comments, and comment sections everywhere across the internet are just basically a giant fucking dumpster fire.

Correct. I'm not surprised by this. However, people there that use Crunchyroll are extremely upset about this. Anime YouTuber Jeff Thew theorizes the decision came in the aftermath of a homophobic review bombing of Twilight Out of Focus, which premiered on July 4th during the Anime Expo weekend.

Yeah, that kind of shit is the reason why companies want to get rid of their comment sections. Exactly. Either way, this is too far, who wrote in regards to Crunchyroll axing its comment section. Crunchyroll should be moderating, not nuking it all. Killing off the community's years of history isn't the solution.

Yeah, but they can't afford to moderate. That's the problem. It's the perfect solution. Imagine if Netflix had comments. I mean, imagine that. Yeah, it would be ridiculous. It would be horrible. We're seeing all these shows getting fucking bombed anyways. Like, people are horrible.

And getting rid of comment sections is the solution. It's the only one. These companies cannot afford the amount of moderation that would be required to keep comment sections nice. End of story. Exactly. I'm fine with it. I don't think anything should ever have comments.

Brian, tell me about your next story. Well, Spotify, as per usual, said, hold my beer. While everybody's agreeing and removing comment sections across the internet, Spotify is launching a comment section for podcasts.

Great. Yes. I can't wait to read that. They are going to bridge the gap between podcasters and their listeners by launching a comment section for podcasts, which will start showing up on episodes today. Can we opt out of that? Well, yes. But we have to get in there and figure out how to do it because, oh, Spotify is also easy for podcast owners.

Yes. At launch, all posts will be private by default and creators will have full control over what comments will show up on their page, therefore letting us do the moderation. See what they did there? Great. They've given us more work to do. More fucking work. We get no money from Spotify and all we get is more work.

Exactly. They have the power to publish and unpublish any response they want. If they have no time to do that, that would be all of us. They can enable comments for specific episodes only or opt out of the feature altogether, which is what Jason will be doing in about 10 minutes after we finish wrapping up this show. Great.

I don't even know how to get into our Spotify thing. I guess you need a Spotify for podcasters app, blah, blah, blah. No, that's – yeah. Spotify for podcasters is actually what used to be Anchor. We host on Art19, but we cross-publish to Spotify, so we have access to our stats over there, which is what's really annoying is those stats don't cross-pollinate back to the numbers that we actually give to advertisers, which really sucks.

So we're just losing money hand over fist on that, and it's just more work. So you're saying that Spotify isn't really doing us a good service as podcasters? No, but the audience likes to listen to it. But, you know, Spotify says listeners who engage with its interactive features, such as Q&As and polls, are on average four times more likely to return to a show within 30 days, and those users also spend twice as many hours per month listening to podcasts than those who don't engage with Spotify's interactive features.

So they're basically saying we need to start using their tools to make more interactivity and create more content for them that we then have to moderate ourselves so they can make more money that they don't pay to us. Exactly. Exactly. Cool. Just checking. And to make it even more fun, you have to actually use their hosting tools to do most of this content.

And what they did recently, which I found out because I do host one show over there with them on Megaphone, which is a fucking dumpster fire, they've decided to not let podcasters put a base on their minimum ad buys on their shows.

So if we say we want to say the minimum we'll take for this show is $10 a CPM. Nope, can't do that anymore. Spotify said, hey, if you want to be part of our ad network, there's no minimums, there's no floors. So they can go sell us for 50 cents a CPM if they want to.

And we have no recourse. It is ludicrous. There is no reason for anybody to ever host their show on Spotify. They are an enemy. Yeah, unless you get a check from them. Look, even Dax Shepard just left and went to Wondery for the same reason. Right. Although, does anybody listen to Dax Shepard anymore?

Geez. I Wondery. I Wondery. Amazon announced it met its 100% clean energy goal seven years ahead of schedule, Brian, claiming all its electricity last year came from non-emitting sources. This achievement is supported by billions of dollars invested in over 500 solar and wind projects.

Now, here's the other shoe. Let's get into the details. Critics argue Amazon's methods for calculating this are too lenient since much of the renewable energy is fed into general power grids rather than directly powering Amazon's operations. So, what they're doing is they're saying, hey, we're just going to buy a bunch of electricity.

We're going to make a bunch of electricity. We're going to put it over here. But what we're going to use is not that energy. We're going to use the other energy. But since we're making that much energy, what we're going to do is say that we're using that energy. And it's a wash. That's what we're saying.

Right? Okay. We're good. We're good. Seven years ahead of schedule. Yeah. Okay. I'm just glad we're clear on that. Now, Amazon aims to reach net zero carbon emissions for all its operations by 2040. Now, when I was reading this, they're saying literally all its operations, meaning planes.

I don't know about you, Brian, but it's 2024. That's 16 years from now. Do you see a fleet of electric planes by 2040 shoveling Amazon packages all over the world? I don't. No. No. Yeah. I don't. Yeah.

So, God, I think Elon Musk must be working at Amazon nowadays. Somebody's smoking something over there. Yeah. Bezos on his yacht. Yeah. Is that yacht net zero? I don't know, but it does cost 25. It's a $400 million yacht that costs $25 million a year for upkeep.

It's ridiculous. It's even got his yacht has a support yacht. Believe it or not. Believe it or not, there's a support yacht. We have a support yacht. Yep. Yep. Well, on Tuesday, the FTC unanimously banned the social messaging app NGL from hosting minors as part of a $5 million settlement.

Now, having read through this, I think $5 million is far too lenient and this company should be banned out of existence. The first of its kind ban came after revelations that the company actively marketed the app to children with bait and switch tactics, false claims about AI moderation, and the targeting of popular kids like cheerleaders to try to lure others onto the predatory hellscape.

The FTC and the Los Angeles DA's office worked together on the complaint, which paints a picture of an exploitative business that prioritized building its social graph above honoring even the most fundamental of ethics. Sound familiar? It's kind of okay if we're adults. This is targeting teens.

That's the real issue. NGL is a relatively niche app with nowhere near the popularity of Instagram, TikTok, and other first-tier platforms, but its popularity has exploded recently, according to the Washington Post. Now, this is some of the stuff this company does. They market the app as a place to message anonymously with unknown friends and contacts from other social channels, which sounds awesome for kids.

To begin with. So, already the business model is a fucking hellscape of a shithole, but the FCC says the company made it much worse with false claims of using world-class AI content moderation with deep learning and pattern-matching algorithms to prevent cyberbullying and other concerning behavior.

It also sent fake computer-generated messages, which users believed were from their real friends, with provocative prompts, like, are you straight, and I know what you did. What the fuck? Oh, Jesus Christ! In addition, the company's predatory business practices also allegedly included bait-and-switch upsell tactics, which promised to reveal the identity of these anonymous friends sending you these fake messages if they paid up to $10 weekly for a premium subscription.

After paying that money, the service would only supply useless hints like the message's timestamp, the sender's general location, and whether they used an iPhone or Android phone. It would also turn on recurring hard-to-cancel charges that users didn't expect, and when consumers complained, NGL executives allegedly laughed them off as suckers.

Nice. Fuck this company. Yeah. Seriously. I've never even heard of them before, but I guess that's because I'm the- Well, you're not a teenager, man. Yeah, I'm not the target market. Yeah. Jesus. So, these people need to be, I don't know, hung. Can we bring that back? Sure.

I just don't even, this is just ridiculously bad. So, what do we do about this with kids? Well, a British boarding school has maybe found an answer. A lot of school districts have instituted smartphone bans for students during the school day, but a British boarding school has taken it one step further. Now, this is Eaton College, historic and elite British boarding school with famous alumni such as Prince William and Harry, Ian Fleming, Tom Hiddleston, et cetera, et cetera.

Their new mobile phone policy for its first year students, which will begin in September, they have to leave their smartphones at home. They can bring their SIM card to school and they can put it in old offline Nokia cell phones with simple number pads that can only make phone calls and send text messages. All right, bring back T9, baby.

There's a solution. There it is. We'll see how it goes. I'm very curious and I think it's pretty smart to try. You know, you can't ban it outright, but if you can just keep them down to the bare minimum, this is what I want to do with my kid when he wants a cell phone. I'm ready for this. So, yeah, smartphone bans and guidelines are starting to seep into American school districts as well.

According to data from GovSpend, 41 states have at least one school district that have instituted a rule requiring students to place their smartphones in the magnetically sealed yonder pouches when they go to school. The LAUSD has passed a district wide school phone ban for students in June that prompted for Newsom to call for a similar law on the state level.

And meanwhile, in New York City, the city's chancellor of public schools, David Banks, says he plans to institute a phone ban in coming weeks. And New York Governor Kathy Hochul is working with state's legislator to pass two new bills that would only allow students to carry phones that don't have Internet access, which means nothing because, you know, you can do that over.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I can do all that stuff on my watch, you know. So, yeah. So that's you kind of got to go all in or not and give them the Nokia and let them play snake or do nothing. Yeah. Remember that guy in Turkey that just got busted for the little chat GPT device in his shoe?

Yeah. We're going to have the same thing. We're just going to – it's – all it's going to do is – you know what it will do? It will spur innovation from the students to actually learn more about electronics engineering because they will just engineer their way around this. There we go. So this might actually be a win-win. Yeah. This is going to improve STEM. Awesome. Yeah.

Oh, great. Speaking of kids, a Spanish youth court has sentenced 15 minors to one year of probation after spreading AI-generated nude images of female classmates in two WhatsApp groups. Say that 10 times fast. The minors were charged with 20 counts of creating child sex abuse images and 20 counts of offenses against their victim's moral integrity.

Interesting. Do they have to prove that the victim had moral integrity? I guess so. In addition to probation, the teens will also be required to attend classes on gender inequality as well as on the, quote, responsible use of information and communication technologies, end quote.

Apparently, they could also just watch Star Trek Discovery all six seasons and that will be fine. That's it. That's all they got to do. Perfect. So, yeah. Well, good. This is horrible stuff. It needs to be squashed and punished when it happens, 100%.

Yeah. And here's the thing. You know, they used basically off-the-shelf tools to do it. They didn't have to sign up for any services. It's all open source now. So this is all out there, all over the place. Companies ever get in trouble for it? Not really. Nope.

Nope. We just provide the tools. We didn't expect anybody to make images of their friends naked using this. No. Even though historically that's all technology has been used for when it's new. So why would we think that? It's not on us.

Nope. Oh, man. There's a new article. How Elon Musk and SpaceX plan to colonize Mars. Elon Musk and SpaceX are making strides in their plans to colonize Mars. Musk has directed his team to delve into logistics of building a Martian city, including creating dome habitats and spacesuits suitable for Mars' harsh environment.

A medical team is also exploring the feasibility of human reproduction on Mars, with Musk offering his own contribution to the genetic pool. Huge in space! Oh, God. There's a Grimes joke to be made here, but I'm not going to do it.

Save it. Save it. We don't need to be canceled today. Despite the technical challenges and skepticism of experts and everybody on this planet, Musk has accelerated his timeline, now aiming for a self-sustaining civilization of 1 million people on Mars within 20 years.

This is about the same time frame that Amazon wants to have flying electric planes move all their packages around. But we'll be on Mars, so, you know. The overall plan ties into Musk's broader vision that encompasses all his business ventures aiming to make life multi-planetary.

As SpaceX continues to develop the necessary technology and infrastructure, Musk remains optimistic about the future, despite the complex realities of such an endeavor. Now, I have another show called Schmackters with my buddy James Marsters and Mark Devine.

And we did a great episode on colonizing Mars where James really ripped into it and did a very good job. So, there's a link into the show notes to Schmackters episode 2, Clowns, Nudity, and the Red Planet. I highly recommend giving it a listen because he really breaks it down and does a fairly good job about it.

It all comes down to poop. Now, I have a slightly different take on this story, Jason, because I was reading through this thing and I just went like, oh my God, what a fucking job these people have. They just sit there and think about how we're going to do this, how we're going to, the logistics of building a Martian city, domed habitats, spacesuits suitable for Mars as a harsh environment.

How are we going to take care of basic human needs? How are we going to get them their porn? How are we going to do reproduction? Like, this is an awesome job because you don't actually ever have to produce anything that will ever actually happen. Like, you just sit there and think shit up. Now, you and I, Jason, we're, I would say, underemployed at the moment.

Yes. And we are internet thought leaders. We have been in this business forever. We espouse our opinions and we think deep thoughts about the internet and technology and trends every single day. That's what we do. Now, if we could only expunge all of our episodes where we shat on Musk, I think we should apply for these jobs.

Because I think you and I sitting in a room thinking about this shit would be fun and we'd get paid a lot of money. Yeah, except the big problem about that is Elon Musk would be our boss. That's the only problem. Otherwise, it sounds like a great job and sign me up, you know? I think we could do it for a while.

I think we could be like, look, boss, what I'm thinking, a big space aircraft carrier carrying nothing but Cybertrucks because they're the best trucks ever made. We take those to Mars and we just live in them. Yeah. How about a Cyber Winnebago? I'm down.

I'm down for the Cyber Winnebago. We just get stoned going to work every day and I think we do just fine. And we could probably borrow some weed from Elon himself. Yeah. Because he's got plenty. So. I just hope he doesn't lace it with ketamine. Oh, no. That would be bad.

Did you see the article this week, too, about the Tesla technicians who basically have to look at all of Elon's driving habits? So they basically customize all of the roads. And so he's living in this bubble where he has people, his own support staff, working to make sure that his Tesla, his fully self-driving Tesla works perfectly, but nobody else's does.

So he's living in his own little crazy private ketamine-fueled world where everything works perfectly, except everybody else lives in that dystopian hellscape of their own fucked up Cyber Winnebago that is, you know, that drives off a cliff. It's crazy.

That's awesome. It's a great world we live in.

At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary all in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.

With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. Well, Sarah McLachlan's late 90s all-female touring festival, Lilith Fair, is the subject of a new feature-length documentary, simply titled Lilith Fair.

Very imaginative. It pulls from more than 600 hours of archival footage, interviews, and stories from fans, festival organizers, and artists who play Lilith Fair. Some of the artists' interviews included in the documentary include sit-downs with McLaughlin herself, Cheryl Crow, Erica Badu, Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlyle, Natalie Merchant, Maya, Jewel, the Indigo Girls, Emmylou Harris, and Olivia Rodrigo, who will presumably be talking about the festival's influence since he wasn't even born yet when that started.

I'm actually quite looking forward to this. It should be certainly more upbeat than, say, you know, some of the Woodstock documentaries and all the other stuff that we had watched semi-recently, which were all dystopian hellscapes. I went to Lilith Fair. It was fun. Oh, you did? Really? Of course, man.

Are you kidding me? I was single. Oh. Are you kidding me? Target-rich environment. Exactly. Oh, God. That is the beach, and I brought no sand. Okay. Yeah, because to me, this sounds like a punishment watch.

Like, I did something wrong, and they're like, you have to watch this. Oh, I like a lot of that music, too. It's good. Oh, okay. Yeah. This sounds like community service to me. Like, I have to watch that for 12 hours? Jesus. David Ellison, the new chief executive of Paramount, has big plans for the media giant and wants to turn it into a media and technology company, according to the Financial Times.

Good luck with that. Ellison is taking over as Paramount's boss after his production studio, Skydance Media, agreed to acquire the company behind Massacre. Massive films and franchises like The Godfather, Top Gun, Mission Impossible, and the only reason I care, Star Trek. Yeah. Don't fuck it up. See, I didn't really realize that he was Larry Ellison's son until this started.

I was going to get to there. I was going to get to fruition. Because Skydance, the whole Skydance deal kept, it was on, it was off, it was on, it was off, then it was off, off. Now it's back on and done. And then I'm like, oh, God, this is Larry Ellison's son. This is going to be a fucking nightmare. Yes, I was going to get to, in case you didn't know who David Ellison was or how he ended up in such a position.

Nepotism. Nepotism. Lots of money. Sing that to the Star Trek theme. Woo! Nepotism! So we'll see what happens. Anyways.

Who knows? As long as they keep Star Trek going, that's all I care about. Yeah, really? I'm fine. You can get rid of Mission Impossible. We've seen them all. It's done. How many have they done now? Are there more Fast and Furious or more Mission Impossibles? I think there's more Fast and Furious by a long shot.

I think those are cheaper to film because there's only one Tom Cruise and he can only find so many things that are crazy to do in a given year. Right. So, well, speaking of technology and the media, CNN is set to lay off about 100 staff members or nearly 3% of its workforce as part of a significant digital overhaul.

CEO Mark Thompson outlined plans to introduce new digital products, including a subscription service that worked well for him last time, and a lifestyle journalism offerings, along with a strategic push into, wait for it, artificial intelligence. Now, hang on a second. Hang on a second. New digital products, a subscription service, which they've already had.

And failed. Lifestyle journalism offerings, they've already had that. And failed. Yeah. So what's new? I guess the AI is new. So we don't have an Anthony Bourdain anymore, so we'll get an AI one. I love this. Yeah. Yeah. Get this. Thompson emphasized a shift toward video-centric content and announced the development of a fast channel.

I think CNN is moving toward a video-centric content strategy. I don't know if you've seen what CNN fucking is. I don't know. I've been reading the CNN newspaper. Do they do more? Yeah. The Telegrams. Oh, okay. The CNN carrier pigeon network.

Wow. If only they had the power of video behind this. Yes. They say, despite the layoffs, new roles will be created to support these digital ambitions. All right. What the hell? Apparently, they hired a new CEO that has never seen CNN. Period. He read the Wikipedia article and thought, oh, I can fix this.

I'm pretty sure he didn't read Wikipedia. He would have gotten facts there. He probably put it into chat GPT and said, what is CNN? Yeah. Describe CNN for a fifth grader. CNN is an old-style teletype network which distributed news through text formats. Yeah. Oh, here's a really fucked up one.

Former writers of the unofficial Apple web blog, which was discontinued in 2015, have discovered that their names and identities are being misused by the blog's new owner. Now, this isn't the blog's new – it's not the quote-unquote blog's new owner. Web Orange Limited, which recently acquired The Domain, has been posting AI-generated articles under the bylines of past contributors without their consent, which is fucked up.

Total click farming, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I love this. This includes AI to modify archived posts and attributing them to original writers like Christina Warren, who left the blog in 2009. Many of these rehashed articles even feature altered photos of the author generated by AI.

This is like a lawsuit factory right here. Come on. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. These people have like Web Orange Limited. These guys have got some balls. That's it. It's like ridiculous. Ridiculous. And I checked it out, and it's a mess. It is just a mess.

Man, Orange needs a new PR rep. Seriously. Nothing good as Orange anymore. No, I'm staying away. Staying away. Staying away. And I watched a movie called The TikTok Star Murders. And here's the byline of the movie. Popular TikTok creator Ali Aboulaban and his beautiful wife, Anna, seem like they have it all.

But behind the picture, perfect life portrayed online is a relationship filled with domestic violence that falls apart when the abuse takes a deadly turn. Now, let's have a chat, Brian. Is this a 30-second movie? No, it's not, unfortunately. It's fucking 90 minutes. 45 minutes is a rehash of this guy's TikTok videos where he is doing impersonations of basically Scarface for 90% of it, which are, it's the same impersonation over and over again.

This is not about TikTok. This is about a fucking crazy person. This has nothing to do with TikTok. This guy was a violent, drug-abusing abuser. That's it. Literally, he had a TikTok account and he made some videos, but there is nothing in there that ties his TikTok life to his murdering life.

So he was crazy. He had a beautiful wife. He was way out of his league and became a jealous fucking cokehead who killed her. That's it. It's in the news. The guy was supposed to get sentenced last week, but they pushed it to September. So this is all, they don't even have an outcome yet for it.

It's like, okay, wait for the sentencing before you do it. It's, it's insane. So yeah, it was, it's a terrible fucking movie. Don't watch it. Skip it. Read the Wikipedia article on it if you want the news. But here's the TLDR. This guy shot his, his fucking wife.

That's, there you go. He was a crazy person. There was no TikTok needed in this. This is clickbait. Only murders in the building. Yeah. It's, it's stupid. Gladiator 2 has a trailer out now. Mm-hmm. Uh, yeah, yeah. But it's got Pedro Pascal.

Everybody loves him. He's the man of the moment. Yeah, it does. It does. And Denzel Washington, which I'm, I'm a Denzel fan. So we'll see how it is. Uh, watch the trailer if you want. Too much modern music for my taste. Uh, it comes out November 22nd. So you got a little time for that one. All right. The next one though, makes me very happy coming out.

August 8th is the Umbrella Academy final season. And the trailer's out for that. Uh, fortunately there's a lot of spoilers in it, but they shook it up enough where you can't really tell because it's the Umbrella Academy and it's always out of whack and timelines are all crossed. And I'm just looking forward to the finale to see what they do with it.

All right. I really like the Umbrella Academy. I just really do. I thought it was a great series. And, uh, this is a little bit older news. I can't remember if we cover this or not. But Constellation, the show that you actually finished and I couldn't because I thought it was terrible, is canceled. So there will be no second season. Oh, really?

I thought it was called Dark Matter and that was the second season. That's what I mean. They transferred all the money from Constellation over to Dark Matter to continue the same, the same storyline. Speaking of that, I was bored one night this week and it was getting late and I ended up watching the third episode of Dark Matter.

I had only gotten two in and then gave up on it and I watched the third and it was okay. I haven't gone back for the fourth. I was going to say, is it enough to make you watch the fourth? No, not really. I'll wait and see after it ends and what other people say. Yeah, see if it's canceled or not. I don't want to get Constellation again.

That's the problem. Yeah. I mean, you're not following Schulmeister's rules of internet video. And it never works out for me. Yeah. So I follow your rule half the time now. I'm like, let's see if they get a second season. And I was really bummed. Death and Other Things, the great show with Mandy Patinkin on Hulu, that got canceled.

So I'll never know what happens there. But the nice thing about that is there's enough of a standalone timeline in that show that it's okay that it doesn't get a second season. So that kind of all resolved itself for the most part. So I thought it was a great series. So even that one standalone, I think it's good to watch.

But it didn't get a second season. That's okay. Now, I wish I still did drugs, Brian, because the Astronomy Photographer of the Year photos are out. And they're phenomenal. They're absolutely phenomenal. I know this is an audio podcast, so I put the link in the show notes. So pick your favorite drug of choice if you still partake of such things and go check out the images.

Because they are awesome. And they're real. And this is why Gen AI sucks. Because I look at this and I just go, is any of this real? It can't possibly be real. This is something that Gen AI would shit out. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Nice thing about this, though, is they give the details of the technology that the people use to make these images.

And it's crazy, the tech behind this stuff. Very cool stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck AI. Apps and doodads. I got a new app this week called Watch Duty. Watch Duty, which is a must-have for anybody in the Western United States.

Watch Duty is a service powered by over 100 volunteers, which are firefighters, dispatchers, and first responders, who diligently monitor radio scanners and other official sources 24 hours a day to send you the most up-to-date information about nearby wildfires and firefighting efforts in real time.

Oh, that's cool. It's so cool. The problem is there's so many fires, you have to turn off notifications because otherwise you think that you are going to die any second of any day because you get every notification across the 13 Western states.

Yeah. What was the name of that app that we both had for a little while and then we ended up shutting it off because it was a dumpster fire? Citizen. Citizen. I remember when I dialed in my, like, I only want information around three blocks around me from now on, and then it broke with the breaking news that Lady Gaga's dogs have been stolen.

Yep, that was it, Citizen. Yep, yep, Citizen. We have a running joke in the house. It's like, when we hear helicopters overhead and sirens, we're like, oh, we'll check Citizen tomorrow to see what happens because that's how long it takes to get shit up there now. It is so bad. It's gotten so much worse. Oh, it's terrible.

Microsoft Notepad received spellcheck for the first time since 1983. Yes, it finally is spellcheck and autocorrect after 40 years. Oh, my God. That's the whole story. That's all I got. There's somebody in a basement in Microsoft that's got a checklist that started about 45 years ago of things.

I'm just kidding. And he's not even funded. He's stapler guy. He's not even getting a check anymore, and he's literally just working through the checklist. That's exactly what I was thinking. I'm like, where's my stapler? You keep taking my stapler. We never put the spellcheck in, you know, man.

Oh, I just finished the code. Push. Push. Yeah, he's just figuring out what Git is. He's doing it all by hand. I saw this article. Canva's Melanie Perkins says, it's time to stop overpaying for Adobe. Now, I didn't realize that Canva had bought Affinity.

Oh, yeah. So, you can skip the article if you want, but the headline says it all. She's like, stop overpaying for Adobe. And on the heels of that, which is really cool, Affinity is now giving a six-month free trial to all of their photo editing, page layout, and graphic design apps, which is great.

And they're resetting all the trial. So, even if you've tried it before, you can try it again for six months. No credit card required. So, basically, it's free to use all the Affinity stuff that I just paid 80 bucks for the whole suite. Now, the reason I'm doing this is because I started overhauling our merchandise site because we're putting up new t-shirts.

Yeah, that's the problem. And the old site was built on Teespring, and I'm moving everything to another service called Printful. Because the problem with Teespring is I bought a bunch of stuff off of there recently, and the quality of the shirt isn't up to anything that I would wear.

So, I want our merch store to be something that I would, you know, obviously wear myself. So, we're moving over to Printful. I like Printful. Yeah. I mean, and they've got amazing products, so you can put that shit on everything. So, in part of the overhaul is I have to learn the Affinity Designer because I don't have a Photoshop or an Adobe account anymore, so I don't have Illustrator and Photoshop.

So, in learning the tools, it's taken me a little while to get up to speed on that in Printful, but I'm loving it so far. And it's a nice thing to have a problem to solve because otherwise you're not really learning anything. Exactly, which is why I haven't started my trial yet because I haven't had to do anything yet. Exactly. But now I'm, like, you know, punching out designs left and right.

So, I've got some stuff in the pipeline. I actually ordered some samples, so they get here next week. So, once the samples get here and I, you know, check the different shirts, then the merch, our whole merch section is getting an overhaul. So, you'll be able to get some new shocking t-shirts. Awesome. Unfortunately, there will be no Deliveroo t-shirts because of copyright.

Copyright, ooh. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to get sued. Okay. So, moving on. The Epic Games Store for iOS is finally passed in the EU, except Apple is still giving Epic grief, saying, yeah, we're going to approve you, but you're still going to have to go fix some shit because there's some issues that we're not happy with.

And the Epic Games CEO is like, this is bullshit. Stop it, guys. But, you know, Apple is going to push back on them as much as they can because that is a very contentious relationship. Yeah. They do not like each other. No, they do not. They do not.

So, keep an eye out for the EU coming soon. Our EU listeners who are Epic Games fans, let us know when it comes out. I'm really curious because we can't test it over here, obviously. Yeah. Let's use a VPN. No, not going to go to that effort. Well, YouTube is trying to make it easier for creators to remove songs from their videos and resolve copyright claims.

The website has announced that it has released an upgraded erase song tool that has the capability to remove music from video segments without deleting other audio such as conversations as well. When creators get a copyright claim for music, YouTube gives them the option to trim out the affected segment or to replace the song with an approved one in its audio library.

And creators cannot monetize that particular video until they resolve the claim. So, they've rolled out this new one. They've been testing it for a while, but it hasn't been very accurate. So, they've redesigned the tool so that it now uses an AI-powered algorithm to accurately detect and remove copyrighted music from videos.

Still, YouTube admits that the tool might not always work. So, the recommendation would be don't use copyrighted music in your content. Yeah. Okay. You made the same warning they've been giving us since, I don't know, forever? Yes. That one.

Okay. Great. I'm glad that we have AI to go back to exactly the way things were. Oh, God. I got a gear thing that I saw come through. This is the Flow Pro, which is the first AI-tracking iPhone stabilizer with Apple Dock Kit.

This is the new, basically, handheld gimbal from Insta360. It's $149, which is insane for the shit that you get for this thing. Because I've been using the DJI one for a while.

The Osmo Mobile 6 is the one I've got. It works great. The problem is you have to use the fucking DJI app to do anything with it. This, since it's using Apple's Dock Kit, you can use the camera app. And it works, which is like the holy grail. And it uses NFC to pair.

So, you basically click it on there. All the pairing is done, and you can use it. It's $149. It's really cool because it's like an all-in-one. It comes with the selfie stick built in, tripod, power back, and a cold shoe. So, you can attach your microphone to it and all that stuff. $149 is a great deal for this thing.

So, check it out. That's all I got on it. It looks pretty cool. Last week, Sony broke the news that it is putting the kibosh on its writable Blu-ray disc business. They do not have any plans to kill Blu-ray releases from studios. Those discs will continue to be available for the foreseeable future.

One assumes at Walmart and many other places. We will continue to sell B2B products by making them in advance. And for consumer products, we will decide on the specific end date in the future through discussions with distribution partners, such as mass retailers. But we will continue to sell them for the time being, the company told AVWatch.

So, you will have one less option for archiving that show or movie you want to watch. There's been a wave of renewed interest in physical media as streaming splinters in a million directions, and users have realized that they don't really own their digital purchases. Now, the gist of this article is saying that Blu-ray is just a great storage format.

But my question, is it? Because they degrade over time, as opposed to, say, any modern hard drive. Yeah, I keep everything on the hard drive. I gave away all my Blu-rays. Exactly. So, I don't see this as a big loss. This is an old technology that doesn't last very long.

So, who cares? Yeah, seriously. I'm fine with that. No love lost there. And last month, Fitbit announced in a blog post that consumers will no longer have access to the tracker's web dashboard after July 8th, 2024. Fitbit describes the move as consolidating the dashboard into the Fitbit app.

So, you have to use the app. No more website. However, the statement assumes that all of the dashboard's functionality is on the app, and the device consumers use to log and analyze their data doesn't matter to them, which isn't true. In the current statement, they're basically throwing Google under the bus.

They attributed the decision to its parent company. Combined with Google's decades of being the best at making sense of data, it's our mission to be one combined Fitbit and Google team. Apparently, the ability to create custom meals was an option specific to the web dashboard and not available on the phone app.

Pace charts is another feature consumers don't see on their Fitbit mobile apps, despite being promised everything the web version offers. Some users commented they prefer the web portal for entering data, while others lamented losing a big picture overview of their stats. Fitbit ended the statement by appreciating our patience during the step and promising to improve its service in the future, as Google is well known to do.

Here's the thing about the Fitbit dashboard. All I need it for on my phone is to track my smart scale. So if that works, I'm happy. I don't care about the rest of it. I've got an Apple Watch, so don't care. Yeah, well, I like my weight tracking. But honestly, it's easier to just write the number in drafts from my watch.

I just tap a new draft and like, there's my number. You can even use Notepad now, and it'll spell check for you. Oh, great. Can it make me thinner? No. Okay. Speaking of dumb apps that are going away, Nike's self-lacing Adapt BB sneakers are losing their remote control mobile app because you need sneakers with an app, because that's the way of the world.

They said they will no longer create new versions of their Adapt shoes, which gained popularity from the Back to the Future-inspired Air Mags and Hyper Adapt 1.0. For current Adapt BB users, the app's existing features will continue to work if already installed, but future iOS updates may limit functionality.

But there's still buttons on the shoe, so you still have to reach down to touch the buttons on the shoe and check your battery in your shoe to see if they'll lace themselves. What if your buttons stop working? You better take these shoes off now, people, or else you might be stuck with them forever.

At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then, explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

From beauty and fashion to home, culinary, and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com.

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

The co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, because people are nosy. The co-host of Control Loop, because industrial machines have feelings. And now, the host of Only Malware in the Building, because there's only malware in the building. It's great to rip off a popular product that already exists.

There you go. Makes it easy. Yeah. Yeah. And also, I'm channeling my favorite Martin Short insults with my co-host. And Rick Howard and Selena Larson. So, it's fun to poke fun at Rick in the style of Martin Short.

Nice. As only he can. Yes. So, I hope people check it out. It is a fun, funny new show. If you're interested in cybersecurity stuff, but you're also looking to have a good time. That is our goal with this show. So, if you have a chance, give it a listen.

All righty. So, it's been a couple weeks since we talked, Dave. And last time, you were getting a new e-bike. Yes. So, how is it? Are you dead? You're obviously not dead. I'm not dead. Two broken legs, contusion. I'm speaking to you from a body cast.

It's been great. Let me tell you. I love this e-bike. Love it. Thought you might. They're fun. Yeah. So, it is so much fun. Where to begin? So, the e-bike arrived.

You talk pretty one day. I do. I do. I speak for a living. The e-bike arrived. It was on a slow boat from China. And it probably would have gotten here faster had I ridden it here. But it did arrive. Mostly assembled. I had to put the front wheel on, the seat on, and the pedals on.

And I guess the handlebars. But, you know, that whole rear assembly with all the gears and everything, that was all. That's the complicated business end of any bicycle. So, that was all put together. All of the e-bike stuff, the electronics, all wired up, ready to go.

So, it probably took about an hour to get it assembled. I let it charge overnight. And I went out riding. And I had figured that I was going to use it the same way that I would use an e-scooter. You know, because it does have a little dial on one of the grips to basically ride it like you'd ride a moped.

You know? Yeah. But, I tried out the different boost features. And let me tell you, that is the magical fun of an e-bike. Isn't that great? It's so good. It's so good. The way I describe it is, it is like this thing flattens all the hills.

Yeah, that's exactly it. That's exactly what it does. Yeah. Yeah. It just flattens the hills. So, you're riding. You mean the bits where you get the exercise? Well, shut up, Brian. So, so. Nobody asked your opinion, Brian. Yeah. We'll get to that. We'll get to that.

Jim rat. Jim rat. Um, but, uh, so you're either on flat ground or you're going downhill. So, it's all the fun parts of riding a bicycle. Uh, you do still get exercise because you have to be pedaling, but it is not the workout that you'd get if you were pedaling up hills.

Um, the other thing that I noticed that was unexpected was because the power is on the hub, uh, and not like the cranks where you pedal. Um, it doesn't matter what gear you're in. So, I hardly ever shift gears.

Most of the time, I'm up in one of the top gears that the bike has because if the way I have it set up, if I fall below a certain speed and I start pedaling, it just gets me up to that preset speed and off we go. And so, uh, one, one of the days I was riding recently and I've started riding to and from work a few days a week, uh, which has been delightful.

Um, I was riding home one day and I was just having a great time. I was thinking to myself how much fun this is. And it really reminded me of when I was a kid and I suspect this is probably the same way for you guys.

Like bike culture was really important to us riding our bikes, you know, and this was, uh, for me, it was the whole BMX phase. We all had BMX bikes and, you know, somebody would build a little BMX track behind the grocery store and you go and jump your bike off of ramps and, you know, all that kind of stuff.

But, but like your bike was freedom because all of a sudden your, your circle of available land expanded by getting a bicycle. And that's really how I feel with this e-bike. I, it gives me that, that childlike sense of being able to go in any direction with no consequences without having to think, oh gosh, is there a big hill up there?

Because I don't want to, you know, get all hot and sweaty or I don't know, have a heart attack. Um, yeah, so that was my thing too. It's like, I want exercise, but I don't want that much exercise because you could die at our age. Well, for me, it would be, it would definitely be like a commuting thing.

Like I could see, cause you don't want to show up to work a sweaty mess. Right. So that, yeah. So. And you don't. I get it for that. Yeah. Well, the other thing, great thing about being on a bicycle is you dial this thing into 15, 18 miles an hour, which is where I keep it most of the time.

That's a 15 to 18 mile an hour headwind. Yeah. Your sweat's evaporating. Yeah. You're not, you know, you're not, you're, you're not coming in all hot and sweaty. Um, but this sense of being able to point the bike wherever you want to go and just go that feeling of freedom, you know, it's, it's like the kids in ET of just going.

That I felt that sense of joy from a bicycle that I don't think I'd had since I was little. Um, it is 100%. I acknowledge this is a cheat code, you know, it like, I am not getting the exercise that I would get.

Uh, the other thing I thought was, it's kind of like having a stationary bicycle out in the real world. Kind of. Yeah. You know, because, because there are no Hills. So it's like, you're on the stationary bicycle, but it actually goes places. Uh, but anytime you come to a Hill, it's like, there's a big invisible giant just pushing you up the Hill.

Yep. You have to keep pedaling. So I do get good exercise and I, and I feel great. Just the pedaling to work and back home again has been so good for my headspace. Uh, that transitional headspace in the morning and in the afternoon, I'm really digging it.

So, um, you know, like I said to you guys, um, I purchased pretty much the entry level, decently reviewed e-bike on, um, Amazon and it's fine. So far, we'll see how well it holds up.

You know, it could fall apart. I suspect it's going to fall apart as soon as the warranty runs out. That's probably how they have it, that's probably how they have it dialed in, but so far so good. Um, I'd also like to say if any of the manufacturers of expensive e-bikes would like to send me one so I could do a comparison between their fine product and the cheap entry level, uh, that I'm using, uh, send email to gog.com.

Sales at gog.com, whatever it is, but, uh, so far so good. I'm, I'm really digging it. And, um, I, I just, I can't recommend it enough for folks who are in our kind of situation where it has been a while since I've been in any kind of regular workout routine.

So one of the stresses of that is getting up to speed in a regular workout routine, having to get over that hump where you just feel awful and you're not having fun because it, because it hurts. Or it's, because it sucks.

Yeah, it sucks. It takes everything out of you. Again, this is like a cheat code because I'm out there enjoying all the best parts of being on a bicycle. I am getting exercise, but I can dial it in to whatever I feel like I want. So long story short, too late.

I know that's a thumbs up on the e-bike. Highly recommend. That's exactly the experience I had. It's like some days I really wanted to get a workout in and you just dial down the assist. And then when you get to a big hill, because I live, I mean, the place I live is called Woodland Hills. There's a lot of hills.

So the nice thing about it is it opened up a lot more places for me to ride because they were, you know, I could ride in a circle around here if it was just a regular bike. But as soon as I left that little circle, I was stuck. I'm like, I'm not going to have a heart attack. I know how Douglas Adams went out and I'm not going to go that way, period.

So, I mean, he went on a treadmill, but, you know, still, I wish I could still ride a bike. Unfortunately, I can't. But thanks to Mr. Stroke. But I remembered the one that I bought. I bought the Rad Rover 5 from Rad Power Bikes.

And that was a big fat tire one that I sold to a friend of the show, Robert Fogarty. And he still cooks on that thing, I believe. It was a fantastic bike. But we were sponsored by electric e-bikes. And all those were fantastic, too. And those things came basically pre-assembled. And they folded in half so you could put it in your trunk and take it to the beach or whatever.

Those were awesome e-bikes. They sent me three of them. I wish I still had one. Now, Jason, do you think you could, because there are three wheelers, do you think you could get one of those? I might be able to get one of those. Yeah, because the problem is just my balance.

Like, I'll be walking somewhere and then just the world turns sideways and I fall over. I don't want to do that going, you know, 30 miles an hour on my e-bike. Right, right. Yeah, that would be bad. Yeah. So, but maybe a three-wheeler might work. But then you just look like a twat.

I don't really want to do that. No, they're not that bad, Jason. And I am of a certain age now where it doesn't really matter. No, no. It's not like I'm going out to get laid on my e-bike. Right. It's a phrase no one has ever mentioned before in the history of humanity. Going out to get laid on my e-bike, guys.

Yep. Got to strap on my white New Balance and my cargo shorts and off I go. Yeah. They are kind of like birth control transportation, I guess, though. Yeah. It is true. But there's this thing called the geezer's paradox, which is where the best way to be cool is to not care about being cool.

And so as you get older, you don't care about being cool. And so in some ways, that's cool. Yeah. Okay. We convince ourselves it's cool. As I hike up my compression socks and go for a walk with the dogs, I am totally in there. Oh, yeah. In there 100%.

Yeah. And they're black compression socks, too. So I'm wearing sharp dress masks. Sexy. Yeah. Black socks with cargo shorts. That's how I rock it, baby. Yeah. Ladies, try not to swoon. As we say in the program, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

Oh, nice. So let's talk about the acolytes since it's been a couple of weeks. Speaking of the lusty male gaze, that seems to be the main thing that came out of that last episode. True. True. Yeah. You got a hot Sith. Yep.

Hot Sith taking a bath. Right. Now, actually, I did want to talk about that moment for a second, just because the parallel did not escape me, because I'm sure, Dave, you perhaps remember this better than Jason did. That moment when you were sitting in the theater as a kid watching Empire Strikes Back for the first time, and there's that scene where Darth Vader is in his space bathroom, and it peels it open, and you get that glimpse of Vader's uncovered skull.

Right. And how exciting that was as a kid. Yeah. Not sure that that same thing here, but, you know, naked Sith in the bath. Things we're not supposed to see, I guess. I don't know. Yeah. I could see it eliciting responses from folks seeing it for the first time.

Yes. Yes. I don't know why you think I wouldn't react to that as well as Dave. I saw it in the theater, too. Yeah, but you've also said that you're not as big of a Star Wars nerd, so, you know. Nerd being the operative word. But, yes, I fully remember that scene in the theater.

Yes, it was very good. You're like, oh, you know. Yeah. Yeah. But overall, yeah, I still like the show. I like where they're going with it. I liked seeing the other perspective of events. I always like when shows do that, when they give you one perspective of an event, and then a couple episodes later, you're finding out, well, no, that's not exactly quite how it happened.

Right. So, I like that stuff. So, I also, this week, it was the first time I found out that the guy who plays the Sith was the nerdy doofus in The Good Place. Yes. I was like, I mean, that was a shocker. And I'm like, that's that guy?

Damn. He buffed up. He's a great actor because those are two great roles so far that I've seen him in. Completely different roles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was the biggest shocker. I was like, oh, my God, that's that guy. Brian, have you seen the episode with the Wookiee-Lightsaber battle yet?

Yes. Dude. Okay. Dude. Even I was like, oh, as soon as that started to happen, I'm like, Dave and Brian just got lightsaber boners right now. I know it. Well, that is what struck me is like, you're taking a list of, you know, Campfire, Star Wars, what if conversations, right?

What if a Wookiee was a Jedi? What if a Wookiee had a lightsaber? How would – and we got this years ago when we saw – at long last, we saw Yoda in battle with his little lightsaber and his little bouncy style.

His size-appropriate lightsaber, yes. Yeah. And same thing. So now we see a Wookiee and it was cool. I liked it. Yeah. I liked it, too. So I'm excited to see how they wrap it up for the end of the first season now that we know we're getting a second. Oh, we do? I hadn't heard that.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. There's plans for a second season already written up. So it's going to be a long time until we get it, but we'll get it. Yeah. I like it. I think, as we talked about before, to me, this is low stakes Star Wars and I am fine with that.

I'm not all wrapped up into whether this is canon or how this changes this or that or the other thing. I am just sitting down and enjoying some Star Wars stuff and some episodes are better than others. I wish they were longer than they are, but it's entertaining. It's a good time.

I love having all of this Star Wars stuff available. It makes me happy. Agreed. Now, recently, I've been doing a lot of time on YouTube, which I never really do. And I've gotten in and out of watching music reaction videos. I don't know why.

It's been a lot of fun for me. You know, you see somebody that's only been in rap and then you see how they are exposed to like post-punk and industrial music and watching them react to it has been a lot of fun. But eventually, like that stuff kind of bores after a while, because what I really want is I want strong songs, which you introduced me to.

I want somebody who actually knows about music, like tearing these things apart and looking into them and saying what's good and why they made the choices they did and why it works and all that sort of stuff. And I have worked my way through the entire back catalog of strong songs.

I have listened to everything he has produced and I was out looking for something similar. And I came across a YouTube channel called The Charismatic Voice. And this is a fun one. She is an opera singer. Her name is Elizabeth Zaroff and she has multiple degrees in music and voice from the Curtis Institute of Music, the Oberlin Conservatory and the Berkeley College of Music.

She's also a voice science nerd. So she focuses mostly on vocal performance as opposed to strong songs, which is kind of all of it. But this channel is a hoot. I love watching her go into all these things. I've watched at least nine or ten of them now so far, and it's a lot of fun.

And I thought you might enjoy this one as well, Dave. Yeah, I've just dipped my toe into it. I was watching her take on Paradise by the Dashboard Light, which seems like great fun.

And what's really interesting about her is how much she reminds me of the best voice teacher I ever had, who was like, I look back on my life, one of the most important people in my life was this voice teacher I had throughout my teen years into my early 20s.

But just the way she talks, the cadence that she has, and so it made me wonder, like, is this part of the output of having a classical operatic training? Yeah, it's uncanny how similarly her timbre and cadence and everything is too.

Enunciation and all that sort of stuff. It's very specific, and you can tell she chooses the way to enunciate everything. Yeah. Yeah. So I'd say I've only checked out a couple things, but I will definitely listen to some more. Did you hear strong songs on the Bruce Springsteen Born to Run?

Yes, yes, I listened to that the other day, yeah. Yeah, great fun. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. And not really being a big Bruce Springsteen fan, it's still, that's the thing about his show, is it makes it enjoyable whether you like the music or not. Right, yeah. It's really, really pretty cool. Same.

Now, we normally put passings and such at the end of our show and closing shoutouts, but I had a feeling that this would also ring some bells with both of you, because we're all of a similar age. We know that Shelley Duvall, unfortunately, passed away at 75 from complications of diabetes this week.

Obviously, she's best known for films like The Shining and Annie Hall in Nashville. However, to me... And Popeye. Don't forget Popeye. And Popeye, and Popeye. But she is very much a cornerstone of my youth. When my parents, after much begging, finally got cable TV and we got showtime, there was Shelley Duvall's Fairytale Theater, which we watched religiously every single week together as a family.

And I have fond memories of the show. I must admit, I haven't thought about it in 30, 40 years until she just passed away. You cannot find it anywhere. It's on no streaming. But, of course, that's what YouTube is for. So, I put a link in the show notes for the full, complete collection, completely illegally streaming on YouTube playlist.

So, you can go back and watch some of these. I did just for... And they hold up pretty well, actually. I watched two of them. And I was like, damn, these were really well done things. And perfect for kids. They were, and it was one of those situations where you can tell she was calling in favors from all of her friends, you know, like, because she just got amazing people to be on the show for fun.

And so, you have wonderful co-stars, very famous people in this little cable series. And it's just, it's gentle and delightful and very tender. Yeah, I highly recommend it. Yeah, very well done. I included a clip in here from an appearance she made on The Letterman Show, which tells the story of how she was discovered she was not a trained actress.

She was not trying to be an actress. She got happened upon by Robert Altman. Her boyfriend at the time was an artist selling paintings and things. And she was pitching these paintings to some Hollywood people who were in town, one of whom was Robert Altman.

And he said, hey, you want to be in my movie? And that was that. But the other thing that struck me about this interview is how much she talks about being a science geek. Which I would not have predicted from Shelley Duvall.

Yeah, she's an interesting person. I don't think we get celebrities like that much anymore that are just so multifaceted with interests all over the place. Probably because she didn't want to try to be a celebrity. And nowadays, that's everybody's goal from, you know, age five if they're going to go that route. Right.

No, she was just so compelling on screen. You just couldn't take your eyes off of her. And everything she was in, even just little bit parts, she just had that special, I want to say odd something. Because, you know, she wasn't a glamour girl or anything like that.

But there was something about her that was charismatic and just compelling. The it factor. She had it. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, it seems like, you know, in her later years, I guess she was went back to, where'd she go back to Texas?

Texas, somewhere in Texas, yeah. Texas, where she was from, yeah. You know, it seems like she had wound down and dealt with health issues and so on and so forth in her later years. But quite an interesting career. Definitely. So, Dave, how's it going with your security camera? Oh.

How big of an LED sun farm do you have? Is your entire roof covered with solar panels at this point? Okay. So, one of the things in life, one of the pieces of wisdom that comes with the years is knowing when you've been defeated.

Knowing when to admit defeat. So, just to review here, I got this outdoor security camera. You know, Goonies never say die, Dave. Thank you. Came with a built-in little solar panel on the top of it.

This did not provide enough power for the amount of security-ing that this camera does where my house is configured. There's a park next to my house. People come by on the path. It's pretty active. It's like, all right, I'll buy the bigger solar panel that they offer with the unit.

So, I buy that. Plug it in. Seems to be working. Still not quite enough. Particularly in the wintertime. It's like, all right, I'll buy a bigger solar panel. Buy a bigger solar panel. This solar panel, for whatever reason, is slightly over-voltage of the USB standard.

If the camera is sensitive to over-voltage, won't work. All right, fine. I'll get a bigger solar panel that's 12 volts. And then I'll use a buck converter to take it down to 5 volts. That'll work. I get that going.

It works for about a day. Then it dies. Finally, now, so we've gone from a solar panel the size of about a 3x5 card. We had a solar panel about the size of an iPad.

We finished our little journey with a solar panel about the size of a lunch tray, okay? So, I took that down. I admitted defeat. And I bought a USB power converter that has a light bulb pass-through.

So, the idea is – so, there's a light bulb outside, a porch light, right? That the security camera sits right above. So, there's this porch light right below there. So, hey, it's a power source. Yay. So, what this little thing does is you screw it into the light bulb socket in line with the bulb.

The bulb screws in to it. And it has a little cable that runs out of it that has a USB outlet on it. Right. So, I do that. Problem solved. Plug in. I'm good to go. For about a week.

My security camera is topped off at 100% all the time. And even if it's busy during the day, if this little USB charger can't keep up, there's plenty of reserve battery. So, at night, when there's really nothing going on, it charges up.

We start every day fresh, ready to go. We've had a heat wave for the past week or so. Went to look yesterday. Oh, how's my camera doing? Dead. No power. This camera is not connected.

Because it has no power. Because the battery's dead. So, the USB adapter died in the heat. And that's where I am right now with my security camera. So, now, if you install an air conditioning unit. Exactly.

Now, we're looking for solar-powered air conditioners and fans. And then, you put some misters around the whole encampment. Okay, I'm with you. Evaporative cooling. And then, sure. So, surely you have a water main running somewhere through the roof around that point. Oh, yeah. There's a hose. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's a hose. There's a hot tub right next to this thing. I got 220 running near by this baby. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, just going to give up on the camera there? Are you? No.

See, a sane person would say, just fucking rob me already. I don't care. But no. No. Part of it is that my lovely bride is kind of hooked on having the camera out there. You know, she likes to keep an eye on things.

She likes to – she also has a – there's an app that comes with this thing. And you can filter out pets and animals. So, she likes to start her day by going and looking to see if the deer came by or the foxes or the – So, to quote Adam Samage, you're telling me that failure is not an option.

That's right. It is out of my hands. It is – yeah. This is bigger than me. And I really thought I was done with the USB adapter. I really thought I was done.

Now, the universe threw me a bone here and may be mocking me. Because when I bought the USB adapter, they sent me two. Aha. Ah. So, yesterday – But how do we solve the heat problem?

That's right. How about an umbrella? Can you put an umbrella over it? Well – A parasol? The thing is, there's a light bulb underneath of it. So – and now it's an LED light. So, it's not – Generating heat. There's more to it than this.

The whole thing is inside of a glass – you know, a glass globe. Aha. And so, I could remove the glass globe. But then, my neighborhood association is going to come after me for not having a glass globe on my back porch light.

So, there are all of these cascading, competing interests, and all I want is a way to have reliable 5 volts sent to my little security camera so that my family can be safe and happy.

And your wife can watch the deer. That's right. And it's just one thing after another. It's thwarting me at every turn. This is my struggle. This is my white whale. This is it. Have you thought about getting thermal wrap for the USB cord?

Thermal wrap for the USB cord? That's an interesting idea. So, I think what I'm – so, here's what I'm – here's my current plan. As of 24 hours ago, when I replaced the USB unit with the secondary one, the backup, I left the glass globe off.

What I'm thinking is – you're going to get a letter. You're going to get a letter. Well, here's what I'm thinking. What I might do is get a light bulb that is a big glass globe, like one of those decorative light bulbs.

And if that is camouflage enough, right, that it doesn't draw attention to itself as just being a bare bulb, then perhaps I can get away with it. Yes. It will stay cool enough.

Ah, but HOA, it is a decorative bulb. Shut up, Brian. So, here we go. Here we go. I got your solution, Dave. Okay. Let me have it. First, you got to get an Arduino, and then you have to hook that up to facial recognition for everybody that's on the HOA that has ticket writing capabilities.

And then you have to tie that to a robot arm that comes out when they – when it sees who's coming down the street, it says, oh, this person can write me a ticket. Then the robot arm comes out from a secret panel hidden in the garage to come up and place the globe on and hide before the person comes by and checks out your thing.

And then after they leave, it comes out and removes the globe and puts it back in storage. I think that's what you're looking for. I like it. I like it. It's totally practical. I think that's actually the simplest solution for what you're trying to do here. Oh, Jason, dear, sweet Jason, we are so beyond simple.

We abandoned simple two solar panels ago. We're – I would tap into the International Space Station if I could at this point. I was about to say maybe you could pay Elon for some satellite footage.

Yeah. Yeah. This is – it's beyond ridiculous and I'm a little embarrassed. I'm ashamed of myself for how long I have let this go. But as we talked about when I initially shared this with you guys, this is how it goes sometimes, right?

You have these projects and they just take over. And you buy them. Right. And for some stupid, I'm going to say masculine reason and I'm, you know, please – I'm sure there are plenty of gals who fall under this as well.

But it seems to me, in my experience anyway, that we are much more foolish when it comes to these things than most women are. We just can't help ourselves. And so here I am sharing the shame.

We require a photograph of the setup as it currently stands so we can get feedback from the audience on how to fix your problem because I think we need to tap into the zeitgeist. It is time to crowdsource. It is. It really is. Okay. You've obviously proven that you cannot do this alone and it is time to suck up your pride and ask for help, Dave.

I am sure somewhere in the bowels of Reddit, there is a long conversational thread about this exact same thing from somebody else. Someone in Germany is – someone in Germany is furiously typing furiously. Reddit is where I got the idea for the buck converter with the 12-volt solar panel.

So, yes, you're absolutely right. And I thought, aha, problem solved. Thank you, Reddit. No. So now I have a collection of small solar panels in my downstairs closet that will be collecting dust and – Use them as shades for the actual unit to keep it cool.

Don't plug them in but just use them as shades. Yeah. It's not a crazy idea. You're multipurposing a dead item so it doesn't feel like it's – you know, this is actually the attack of the solar panels for taking them out of service. They're causing this problem just to torment you for taking them out of their God-given purpose, you know?

So give them some job to make them feel worthy again and then maybe your problems will stop. Maybe. Maybe I just need like a mean dog. Maybe you can power it with your exercise bike, with your e-bike. Yeah. That's not a bad idea. That's not a bad idea.

Just plug in. So, yeah. All right. Well, looking forward to the update. Thank you. It'll – oh, oh, oh. There'll be more. Oh, I know. There will be more. Yeah. Yeah. All right, guys. See you next time.

Good luck. Good luck. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Nate, JSM1955, Daryl, Jeff, and Blake Bowling. Woo-hoo. Thank you all so much. I know Blake Bowling moved over from PayPal to Patreon, and we welcome anybody to do so if you want all the perks that you get with Patreon.

Yep. So did Daryl and Jeff, actually. Oh, well, there you go. So if you are interested in moving from either PayPal or the tip jar, drop us a note. We can – at least for the tip jar, it's kind of a pain to cancel that because they're a pain to cancel. Just email me with your email address, and that's jpd.me, and I will facilitate your transfer.

There you go. And over at PayPal, we've still got Sloan, Ralph, Miles, and Shari. Thank you all so much. Over at the tip jar, we've got Jeff, Sarah, and Penos NL. And to just bring back the Patreon thing, for a measly $3 a month – you can pay more if you like – you get the show early, ad-free, and in high res.

And we become very, very happy. So give it a shot. It's good. Patreon.com slash GOG. There you go. We also have a new five-star review from Jesse. The title is basically, Fuck Elon. Love the podcast, humor, and negativity. Well, we got lots of that. Yep.

We're good with that. We are good with that. Big happy birthday to Robert Fogarty, who is the voice of Grumpy Old Geeks Interstitials. You hear him on every show since day one. Happy birthday, Bob. Happy birthday. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo.

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 656. Feeling generous? Keep this top-notch entertainment rolling by dropping us a few bucks at GOG.show slash donate. Every bit helps. And spread the grumpiness. There's a share button in every podcast player out there.

Use it to share the show with friends, foes, and everyone in between. And we'll be forever grateful. Head over to GOG.show to find a link to our Discord channel and chat with us and other show fans. It's quite lively over there. It's kind of fun. 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. And you just will get your review right on the air. We used to say a five-star rating, Mike. No, it will. So stay grumpy. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary, all in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.

With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com.