658: Red Hot Chili Coasters

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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 DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. It's one hell of a week for news, Brian. We got lots to cover. Has it been? Yeah. Hadn't noticed. Not much going on. No. I know. It's sleepy time. Sleepy time. So, real quick, I threw in a link for basically just an AI terminology. It's called AI Terminology Explained for Humans.

Real basic rundown for some, you know, just normal folks who want to get a leg up on just the terminology. It's pretty decent. Take you a few minutes. Comes from The Verge. So, that'll be at the top of the show notes. That's just for everybody. Very on board with what I was taught in my class, taught by a professional.

So, yes. There we go. We pull in professionals every now and again. Yes. In shocking news, this one just came across. AI boyfriends from Replica and Nomi are attracting more women. Now, we thought, out of the gate, because we're stereotypical men, we thought the little boys would be all over this, you know, this little fap machine, as it were.

But it turns out, when it comes to conversation, women want to conversate more because men don't. I was about to say, this is a completely different use case. Yeah, exactly. The one that we didn't even think of, if we'd have put, you know, put our thinking caps on for a second and a half, would have thought. I was like, no, women like to talk to people and men don't.

So, there you go. So, yes. Great. Less for you to do. Exactly. The amount that I am talked at every single day is unbelievable by my wife. And if there was somebody else to take on some of that burden, fantastic.

I know. I need to get my roommate on one of these, too. I mean, I'm just – I nod my head and say, yep, so much. Another thing that came out this week is Sam Altman funded a study on universal basic income. This is the avoid to get lynched fund? Yeah, kind of.

This is him planning ahead. This is what it was. It's like, you know, he's like, okay, we're going to kill everything with this stupid AI. So, maybe we should figure out a way to, I don't know, let people eat but not have enough to buy ammo. Yes. Trying to dial in that exact balance.

Yeah, they are. They are. So, a study involving 3,000 low-income individuals. They average it out to about $30,000 a year. $1,000 got $1,000 a month. And while the remaining $2,000 got $50. And they got $50 because apparently they were asked a lot, you know, during the study time of, you know, having to fill out forms and all this stuff.

So, they had to give them something. So, it wouldn't have worked if they just gave them nothing. So, that was just to keep them involved. And it turns out, you know, yeah, it actually is a good thing for a lot of people initially. And then it kind of wears off after time.

So, I can see how that would happen. You know, you normalize over time. You get on the hedonic treadmill and things become normal. But, yeah. That extra $1,000 a month helped. Here's the thing that Sam Altman better keep in mind is they've made, for whatever reason, and this is a meme, of course, that goes around all the time.

It's like, we want AI to take care of our shopping lists and drudgery chores, not do our music and art for us. And the thing is, you can give – UBI is, of course, incredibly helpful for people that need to get back up on their feet or that are just having trouble finding a job, et cetera, et cetera.

But what humans need is meaning in their life. And you get that, unfortunately, now through work or creation. But at the end of the day, you need to be rewarded for your creations. And so, we can't just give people money. Eventually, that's not going to be enough because we're human.

So, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what you give them then, Brian? Video games. Idiocracy. Here we go. Yes. No. WALL-E. Let's go straight WALL-E. Everybody gets a quest in $1,000 a month. That's it.

I can go for one of those chairs from WALL-E. Those are pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. I want to know what was in those shakes, too. Hook me up with one of those. Soylent Green, man. You know it. That's right. Oh, the corpses of your dead castmates. That's it. Jesus Christ. Do you remember that trend for a while?

We covered it extensively on the show, those stupid shakes coming out of Silicon Valley. Yeah. Soylent. Yeah. Yeah. People still drink that shit, Brian. It stuck around. Only in Silicon Valley. Trust me. Okay. I think it also works in Austin, New York and Chicago.

Sorry, the new Silicon Valley. Yes. Exactly. Come on, Brian. The non-taxed Silicon Valley of Austin. Yes. Yeah. And I saw this clickbaity headline. Scientists reveal the optimal number of daily steps to offset sitting down. Turns out, 9,000 to 10,000 steps. Again?

Okay. Again. So apparently those marketers in Japan were right. You know, they got lucky the first time around because we all know, if you've listened to the show, the only reason 10,000 steps is the de facto standard for how many steps you should take a day is because some stupid fitness app in Japan, the little- It was their marketing campaign.

But the kanji for 10,000 looks like a little guy walking. So they picked a little guy that looked like he was walking and used that for the goal. And that was it. So we were stuck on 10,000 after that. Yeah. So, yeah. And eggs are still good for you. Of course. Yes.

I don't remember if we talked too much about Hawk Tua Girl on here. A little bit. But I'm sure we mentioned it because how could you not? Because she took over the internet. A friend of the show posted this, Felicia Michaels, who was actually a guest on the show once as well. She would like to let Hawk Tua Girl know that she was the original one and she's got the receipts.

We've got the link in the show notes. Yep. Go watch it. In the news. I just, again, Gizmodo sometimes, you know, they were killing it with their headlines. They're still kind of killing it with their writing.

I like the opening paragraph of the story here. What do you do when you fuck up on a global scale, throwing airports, tech companies, and government agencies into chaos and spurring the blue screen of death on devices throughout the world? Well, if your cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, you apparently offer your impacted partners a free coffee.

Yeah, this is all they're really doing right now, at least until the lawsuits roll out. TechCrunch reported Wednesday that CrowdStrike partners, not everybody, just their partners, were being offered a $10 Uber Eats gift card to make up for the massive amounts of trouble it had caused. So that may be better than nothing.

But well, there's a there's a there's an addendum to that story. Yes, to make matters worse. Yes. They don't work. Yep. Yep. They put them out there. And then like right after. Yeah. So, yeah, basically, they went back to Uber and said, oh, they thought it was fraud because so many were being redeemed at once.

But yeah, they weren't working. Yeah. Oops. Oops. Yeah, that was a real interesting week for I.T. People were not very happy. Preservedly so. I mean, why? It was a massive cock up and repercussions are still being felt.

I'm kind of hoping that my flight this weekend will be OK. We'll see. Yeah. And the really interesting thing is it was only 8.5 million computers, but it was really important. 8.5 million computers that were affected. Yes. It was the ones that run everything. That's why they had CrowdStrike installed to begin with, because they didn't want them to go down.

Now, Microsoft is coming out and pulling this bullshit argument saying, well, you know, the reason this happens is because we have to give kernel level access to all of our providers because of some EU thing about, you know, anti-competitive shit back in 2009. And everybody else in the world is tapping them on the shoulder and saying, you know what Apple did over here?

They kind of did it this way. It is another way. There's another way that you can do it. That's not the way you did it. And so they kind of got egg on their face with their with their, you know, their excuses saying, look, it wasn't us. It was CrowdStrike, but we had to give them the access.

No, you didn't. Yeah. So why don't you take a page out of Apple's playbook? So search news, Brian, we have search news today. I know it's been a while since we had search news. It's fun. Exciting stuff. I know. It brings me back to 1997. After years of uncertainty, Google says it won't be deprecating third party cookies in Chrome.

Big surprise. Shocking. Because, you know, they reported this how many, how long ago? And since four years ago. And we've heard nothing. Oh, no, they've been trying. You hear it every now and again saying, yeah, yeah, maybe next year we're working on a privacy sandbox. Let's use that.

Yeah, come on. And everybody knows it's like, no, you can't do that. It's just not going to work. And they've kind of figured that out right now, too. They're still saying they're going to try and do the privacy sandbox and they're going to try some other things. But third party cookies are here to stay, folks.

I'm sorry. You can turn them off if you want. But the web breaks. Yeah. And unfortunately, we're still going to get those pop up windows. Thanks, EU. Yeah. Thank you, assholes. Love them. Hate them. That's the problem. Love you some days. Hate you the others. It's like having an alcoholic for a girlfriend.

So this is a fun one. And going down the route of the web is dying and some things are just not meant to be. Non-Google search engines blocked from showing recent Reddit results. This comes because Reddit has decided to make deals with search engines now because of AI and the training data, which, you know, OK, DuckDuckGo, as far as I know, isn't DuckDuckAI.

They just want to have search results. But no, can't do that anymore. Bing, on the other hand, I'll talk about them in a second. But and any other search engine that does not have a deal with Google is now blocked at the robots.txt level, which we know is kind of fuck all, but it goes against their terms of service, too, which then can, you know, lead to lawsuits down the line.

And they're trying to make deals with these search engines to give them their content, which breaks some of the fundamental fucking rules of the Internet. Sorry. Those rules are so old school, Jason. That's all out the window now. It's the corporate Internet. It is. It is the corporate AI Internet. And Microsoft this week says, Google, hold my beer, because they are now going to add AI powered summaries to Bing search results because they saw how well it worked over at Google glue.

I mean, I guess they got to try to do something to get people to use Bing. Yes, that's it. I mean, since. Yeah. I mean, they had it with Bing Copilot with basically which was OpenAI and ChatGPT built into Microsoft. And everybody's like, yeah, it's kind of a pain in the ass. I'm just going to go get the OpenAI app now.

Run that. And, you know, web traffic and OpenAI has tanked because either everybody's got the bots or everybody's using the APIs through everything else. So Bing is basically back on its death spiral, I guess, that way they were at about two and a half or about two years ago, you know? So, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. They're going to roll it out in beta and they're going to, you know, for testing, they're going to test it. Yeah. And see how it goes. Great. Okay. We'll see how it goes. I'm just, I'm waiting for the memes. Bring on the memes. Well, speaking of death spirals, Humble Games has reportedly laid off all of its 36 people.

All of them. Brian, have you ever heard of Humble Games? I have not, but Humble Games is owned by media conglomerate Ziff Davis, which counts IGN, Eurogamer, and GamesIndustry.biz among its gaming portfolio. When was the last time you heard of Ziff Davis, Brian? Going back to the 1997? He used to come up in non-AI Google results.

Oh, okay. I don't think he really shows up anymore. Humble Games confirmed in a LinkedIn post. There had been a restructure at the company, which is a hell of a way of saying we fired everybody. PR rep for Humble Games also confirmed to Engadget that the company would not be shutting its doors because nobody left to close it as a result of today's restructuring.

He added that both ongoing and upcoming projects would continue to be supported and published by the studio. They did not mention who would be doing any of that. The decision was not made lightly. It involved much deliberation and careful thought with the goal of ensuring the stability and support of our developers that we've all fired and ongoing projects with nobody to do them.

Humble statement did not say it, but should have. You have to go to Bing for the actual summary on that one. And in other video game news, the SAG-AFTRA union today called for a strike against several major game video publishers after failing to reach an accord over AI use.

This action took effect at midnight tonight. SAG-AFTRA performers working in games deserve and demand the same fundamental protections as performers in film, television, streaming, and music, fair compensation, and the right of informed consent for the AI use of their faces, voices, and bodies.

This union has been lobbying the video game industry to agree to protections against its members' likenesses and voices being recreated with AI. They secured a similar deal for animated TV shows earlier this year, so one wonders what's the big deal here. Everybody should be getting on board with this, but a spokesperson for the gaming companies provided a statement on behalf of the businesses.

We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations. We have found common ground on 24 out of 25 proposals, except for the one about AI. The one that matters. Which is the one that really matters for long-term longevity for these people.

Yes. Yeah. I've got a buddy who does video game voices, and he makes a pretty good chunk of change out of it, and he is terrified about AI coming in. Because a lot of times I'll talk to him, I'm like, what are you doing today? He's like, I got to go down to the studio and work on the air. Like, oh, you doing anything fun today?

He's like, yeah, I'm getting punched a lot. So it's a lot of, a lot of that stuff going on. So, which I can see why they would want to use AI for something like that. But, you know, for him, that's his, you know, mortgage payment. The problem, as we've done on this show many times, we've improved it, is that the voice stuff is so good now.

And they've got enough from all of these actors that they could easily train them and never use them again. Oh, totally. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, well, hopefully they win. Hopefully they win. Because, you know, video game voices aren't that great to begin with.

I don't really want any. Yeah. Okay. So, UK school has been reprimanded for unlawful use of facial recognition technology. Oopsie. Chelmer Valley High School was reprimanded by the UK's data protection regulator, the ICO, for using facial recognition technology without obtaining specific opt-in consent from students.

Oopsie. The school had implemented an opt-out system, which is contrary to UK GDPR regulations that require clear affirmative action for consent. So, yep, got dinged for that, which they should have. The funny thing is they've had fingerprint technology there for a long time, and they thought that that just wasn't good enough.

And do you know what they were using the facial recognition for? No. What? To pay for the school lunches. So they say. So they say. Uh-huh. But you've been able to pay for your school lunches with a fingerprint there for quite some time. Well, hell, we used to be able to do it without fingerprints, too.

How fucking hard is this, people? I know. Oh, my God. Cash. And no, it's Europe. They've got, you know, cashless touch. Just swipe your phone. Yeah, just wave your phone in the general direction of somebody, and, you know, you're done. There's no reason for a school to have biometrics. It's ridiculous. So, this is really pisser.

U.S. Appeals Court has ruled that the FCC's Universal Service Fund is unconstitutional, calling the fees on phone bills a misbegotten tax. This decision, if not overturned, threatens the $8 billion-a-year system that funds telecom network expansions and affordable access programs like Lifeline, which is basically for rural area internet connections, which is a good thing.

We want people to have that. So, the ruling from the conservative Fifth Court creates a circuit split, making a Supreme Court review likely. Great. They're on a roll lately. Previously, the FCC had won similar cases in the 6th and 11th Circuits. Now, these challenges were filed by Consumers Research, a nonprofit that fights, quote, woke corporations, and a mobile virtual network operator called Caused Based Commerce, which offers wireless service to values-based consumers who want alternatives to the many companies and

providers that support causes and positions contrary to their beliefs. So, I had to do some research, Brian. Jesus phone. You got it. Now, here's the thing. Caused Based Commerce is not a religious company per se, but it is closely aligned with religious values, particularly through its subsidiary, Charity Mobile.

Caused Based Commerce provides communication services and partners with values-based consumers and organizations that support causes aligned with their beliefs, and their main focus is to offer alternatives to mainstream communications that support, you know, contrary causes or causes contrary to certain moral and religious positions.

So, basically, what they're saying is they love Jesus, but they're not putting Jesus on the tin. Yeah. So, yeah, it's basically what it is. And here we go. Charity Mobile is a trade name for cause-based coverage. It's specifically positioned as a pro-life, pro-family phone company.

Bingo. There you got it. And, Brian, I don't mean to be stereotypical here, but the people who are probably would get the most out of this are rural people that don't live in cities very much, which is where you see a lot of these kind of, you know, mindsets and beliefs happening.

And they're taking away their internet access by taking away that charge, which is then going to help them get cheaper internet. Do you see what the problem there is? Yeah, but they're going to make money because they're going to offer their services to these places. Exactly. So, you know, it's, they're trying to say that they're doing good, but they're fucking the people that they're trying to do, who they say are their constituents.

Yeah. So, yeah. That's different from these kind of organizations. How? Normally? I guess. Yeah, I guess, I guess you're right. Seems to fall right in with what they normally do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Before you start following these types of companies, people read the fine print and figure out if they're, if they have your best interest at heart, because I guarantee most of the time they don't, you know, they don't.

Now I've got to, I think the internet should do something about this. I think we should all go purchase a charity mobile phone and use it purely for porn. I could do that. Much like the pastors probably do. Moving on. The California Supreme Court has upheld Prop 22, allowing companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash and Instacart to continue classifying drivers as independent contractors.

Boo. Yeah. We talked about that ad nauseum when it came through and it was deemed unconstitutional for a little while, but finally has made it to the California Supreme Court. Uber's dollars paid off. Exactly. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So there you go.

No minimum wage for you. Yes. Well, Apple, speaking of CSAM, has been accused of underreporting the prevalence of child sexual abuse material on its platforms. Now, I read through this whole article and they're basically just saying, we see so much of it everywhere else and we don't see any on Apple, so that can't possibly be right.

Oh. That seems to be the extent of this. It's like, but we saw so much on Google and we saw so much from Meta and we saw so much from TikTok and Snapchat and Xbox and PlayStation. Oh my God, CSAM on PlayStation. But we didn't see that much with you, Apple.

You must be underreporting. Mm-hmm. So I don't know. Apple services such as iMessage, FaceTime and iCloud all have end-to-end encryption, which stops the company from viewing contents of what users share on them. However, WhatsApp has E2EE as well, and that service reported nearly 1.4 million cases of suspected CSAM in 2023.

And we do remember this Apple plan that they had back in 2021, where they were going to scan images before they went up to the iCloud and compare them against a database, and there was backlash in privacy and digital rights. The internet had a fucking conniption fit, so that was out the window. Yes, exactly. So that got killed in 2022.

So sure, I'm sure Apple is probably not necessarily underreporting it. It goes exactly with what it says on the tin, which is they can't see any of that stuff because it's all encrypted. Okay. Yeah. That's that story in a nutshell.

Prove it, motherfuckers. Prove it. Roblox is also facing significant criticism for failing to adequately address a growing problem with pedophiles on its platform. Yes. According to reports, since 2018, there have been numerous arrests of individuals accused of using Roblox to groom and abuse children.

Now, this issue has raised concerns about the company's handling of safety measures and its ability to protect its young user base. Critics argue that Roblox's efforts have been insufficient and the company needs to take more decisive action to combat this serious problem, along with Apple. Apparently.

Man, this stuff is scary because my kid is getting to the age where it's like he wants to start doing the connected games like Roblox and Minecraft and all that. And then I just read all these stories. I'm like, no, no, never. You're sticking with Angry Birds. The satanic panic of our age.

Except this one probably is a little more real. I think it's a lot more real than what they thought we were up to. Anyways. Yeah, no shit. Fucking backwards messages at the end of a fucking album. Give me a break.

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Anyways, U.S. and European antitrust regulators agree to do their job when it comes to AI. Unfortunately, having read this article, it doesn't really make it clear what the job is. Regulators in the U.S. and Europe have laid out the shared principles they plan to adhere to in order to protect competition and consumers when it comes to artificial intelligence.

Guided by our respective laws, which are not clear or on the books yet, we will work to ensure effective competition in the fair and honest treatment of consumers and businesses. The Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, the European Commission, and the U.K.'s Competitions and Markets Authority said.

So, they're basically going to check out for fair dealing, make sure there's not exclusionary tactics, interoperability, and the choice as three principles for protecting competition in the AI space. Yeah, this is just a bunch of bullshit. There's a lot of that going around. There's no teeth.

There's no laws yet. There's no agreement to do laws in lockstep. There's nothing. They're just putting out some statements saying, you know, we really should be looking into this and have a lot of regulations, but we got to figure that out. So, start figuring it out. All right. Well, we're starting to figure some stuff out.

In a rare bipartisan move, the Senate has unanimously passed the Defiance Act, targeting the creation and distribution of non-consensual deepfake pornography. Introduced by Senators Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham and sponsored in the House by AOC, the bill allows victims to sue those responsible for AI-generated explicit content without their consent.

With a 10-year statute of limitations, the bill aims to provide victims with a legal remedy in an industry largely self-regulated. Well, there's also a lot of that there's not really an industry behind it because it's open source. So, yeah. But this is good, though.

This is good. It's a step towards some federal oversight and some laws on the books to let me sue you if you put a picture of my willy out there that wasn't my willy. So, that's kind of what it is. So, I mean, this is actually a good step in the right direction. It's not going after the companies. It's going after the people who make it.

A hundred percent. Yeah. But good luck finding them if they're smart. But, yeah. Yeah. Most of these people aren't that smart. That's why. That's true. Criminals tend to be dumb. Yeah. Especially these criminals. Because if they're using out-of-the-box stuff to make this stuff. It gets watermarked. Yeah, they're too busy, you know, spanking it to actually use a VPN.

GOG.show slash VPN. But we'll see how that goes. For all your deepfake needs. For all your deepfake needs. We profit off the pain and suffering of others here at Grumpy Old Geeks. Thank you very much. No, I think this is a good move. And an actual law in the right direction. But this also does kind of follow along with Dave Vintner's complete theory on this sort of stuff.

Which is, you know, right now we've got actors and actresses fighting over AI rights. We've got, we just talked about the video game industry fighting over AI rights and all that sort of stuff. AOC, who has a ton of deepfakes ever out there. You get a senator involved, boom, there's a law. Exactly.

Dave nailed it on that one. And stick around for some more AI news once we get to apps and doodads.

Media candy. Brian, you have your drunk on a plane movie reviews. I have delirious with COVID and cough meds movie reviews. So I was laid up this week. I watched Furiosa, a Mad Max saga. When this movie came out, this came out across from Dune 2.

Or Dune Part 2, I should say. And people were saying they liked this movie better than Dune Part 2. And I was like, no, Dune Part 2 was great. It was perfect. Then I watched Furiosa, a Mad Max saga. And I kind of agree. It was actually fucking better. Well, it's more action, right? Like, Dune 2, not really that much of an action movie.

There's a lot of story behind this one, too. I just thought it was a well, well-made movie. Have you had a chance to see it? I haven't because I didn't care much for the first one. Oh, okay. Well... Like, I thought it was okay. But, you know, if I'm going to do Mad Max, I want my Tina Turner.

Okay, well, I think this one was better than the original. This is the prequel. Okay. I thought this was actually much better, personally. Yeah. So, definitely worth checking out. And I did watch The Flash, the new one, the 2023 edition. Yep. Best Batman movie made in years.

Hands down. Loved it. Absolutely loved it. I mean, I know it took me some, you know, a lot of cough meds to get back into watching superhero movies. But, you know, the reviews were good. So, I said, ah, why not? You know, I'm pretty sure that was one of my stellar drunk on a plane movies.

It was. That's what actually got me to watch it was your review. I'm like, wait, Brian liked a superhero movie. What the fuck? Maybe I should watch this. Yeah. It wasn't bad, right? No, I thought it was really good. And so, I took some more of your recommendations and I caught the Spider-Verse movies.

Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse. I thought those were fantastic. I probably would have enjoyed them not drunk on a plane. I was not drunk on a plane. I was sick in bed and I thought they were unbelievably good movies. Unbelievable. I thought they were the best Spider-Man movie since the Tobey Maguire ones.

Well, the first two. You had me at best Spider-Man movies. I still think the first two Tobey Maguires are the best. I mean, as far as live action goes, for sure. The first two are the best. We try and forget about number three. But these were just, I mean, just the stories were amazing. The voice acting on these was incredible.

Just everything. And it was just beautiful. The animation. Absolutely beautiful. Unbelievable. You know, you've never seen anything like that. And it was just like, God, the work that had to go into that. A surprise hit that I found is called Sunny on Apple TV+. I love this show.

I know nothing about it. What is it? It's about a woman living in Japan whose husband and son died on a plane, in a plane crash. But, uh, it's got, it's got, uh, robots in it, like home robots.

It's funny. It's funny as hell. It's not the story you think it, it, it, saying that it's about a woman whose husband and son died on a plane does not do it justice because that's just kind of one plot point with it. You just got to watch it. It's short. They're half an hour.

Four of them are out. I cannot wait for more of these. It is, it is by far the best thing I'm seeing on TV. I look forward to this right now more than anything else. I do love Rashida Jones. So that's, that's a win for me already. Yeah, she's great. My only concern is this is Apple TV+.

And, uh, boy, they don't have a track record with shows that aren't necessarily supposed to be what they're about, but then they end up being exactly what you thought they were about. This one's, I like this. I, well, you know, what was that other one? Severance did not, did not care for that one at all, even though I watched the whole damn thing.

Um, yeah, this one, this one, I'm liking this one. If nothing else, this has a good, it's given me lots of good chuckles, lots of good chuckles. That's on my list then. Yeah, and I, a long, long time ago, from 1982, there was a movie called Tag, the assassination game.

Now, I had never seen this anywhere. It has Robert Carradine and Linda Hamilton in it before they were anybody, really. And it's about, uh, it's on a college campus where kids are like, they basically sign up for a game and you get a target that you have to assassinate.

I totally, I'm sorry. I just clicked on the link and I'm going through some of the stills. I remember this movie when it came out. This was a great movie when we were kids. And they had the, they had the dart guns with the suction cups on them and they were trying to, you know, search everybody. And the whole twist was that somebody started using a real gun and then there were murders on campus.

Yep. I totally remember this movie. And of course, it's so 80s. One of the promotional posters is like a girl's ass and super tight Vidal Sassoon jeans with one of those stickers off, hanging off her butt. Dude, it is, it is so 80s. It is so 80s. It hurts. Uh, the problem was that you can't find it anywhere.

So I've, I dug deep. I've been trying to find this movie for 35, 40 years since the damn thing came out. And I finally got a copy on DVD is like, you know, one of those just multi DVDs with all this garbage on it. And that it's somewhere buried in there was the movie.

The problem is the movie is super dark and it was, I think, digitized at 320 by 240 and you up-res that to a 75 inch TV. It's really hard to watch. I got about 20 minutes into it and it's really, I got to go find an old CRT to watch it on.

But it was, it was just as, it was, it was the same. I mean, I couldn't believe how much I remembered of it, but, um, yeah, if anybody has a better copy of this movie out there, get in touch with me. And one of the other thing that I really like about it, 90 minutes, all of the damn movies that I've been trying to watch lately are over two hours.

And I'm like, I just want a short movie, please. That's, I think, why I like Sonny so much. It's like 27 minutes. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. So tag the assassination game. One from the, one from the archives. Uh, I, and well, speaking of short watches, I made it 15 minutes into the new time bandits and I was just like, no.

I saw you put that in there and I'm like, there's no way this is going to be positive. No, it's not. It's, it's God awful. Um, I, I mean, if somebody says, well, you got to stick with it. No, you don't. No, you don't. Not at all. Uh, yeah, I was done.

It's just like the, the thing about the first time bandits is there was almost no setup with the kid. You know, there is so much setup with the damn kid at the beginning of this. It's just like, okay, we're not dumb. Just, just get to the fun parts.

You know, it's just like all of this shit about the kid and the backstory and the character development. And I'm like, I don't want character development. I just want to just get to the story. I thought it was too long as a movie when it came out. So I guess maybe I'm not the target demo for this, but nah. Pass.

Pass. Yeah. What I am looking forward to is Netflix's new series, Chaos, with Jeff Goldblum playing Zeus. Did you get a chance to check out the trailer for this? Yeah, it looks hilarious. Looks good. Looks really good. It comes out August 29th. Yeah. Jeff Goldblum is a motherfucker of a God.

I can't wait. I can't wait. Nice. Yeah. I definitely want to see that. I have a new podcast I've started listening to. I still listen to No Such Thing as a Fish. I think you dropped that as one of your regular podcasts. I picked it up this week in my COVID haze. I needed something to listen to, and that was what I went back to.

Still a solid show. I love it. They do exactly what they always used to do, and they still do it very, very well. So I listen to that every week. Two of the members, James Harkin and Anna Chesinsky, I think I got that right, wrote a book. Well, they're all writing books, but they did a book about sports.

And as you do now, if you've written a book and you want to promote it, you also start up a podcast about it. And of course, it ties in with the Olympics and all that sort of stuff. I don't know how long this podcast will run for. Right now, there's only the one episode, but it's called Quite a Good Sport, and they basically do the No Such Thing as a Fish thing to sports.

All right. Cool. Yeah. So it's a fun listen so far. I also got back into one of the bands that I used to listen to all the time because I got some bad news about them. Basically, they're done. They're never coming back. Dead Can Dance, unfortunately, has ended their run. I have a COVID story about Dead Can Dance because I was supposed to be going to see Dead Can Dance right before COVID hit.

I remember that. Yeah. Yes. Did not get to go to that show. Then they rescheduled the shows. Then they canceled the rescheduled shows. Then they rescheduled them one more time. And then they canceled those again. And then they did a brief tour of Europe and said, we're really going to come over there. And then now there's never really been an official announcement.

But one of the principal members said in an interview from a new project she's doing that, yeah, Dead Can Dance is done. So that is unfortunate. However, I did then go look them up on Spotify because I wanted to listen to some stuff. And I realized something I had not noticed before because these all came out in 2022. They dumped 21 live albums.

Jesus. And Dead Can Dance live is a stunning thing to see. Like, I was blown away. And I still am blown away every time I used to see them. That's why I was looking forward to it so much. So I'm very happy about this. I will listen to all 21 of these live albums over time.

They are just amazing live. So happy about that. Sad about the fact that I will never see them again, unfortunately. Yeah. I'm sad that I will never see them. Yeah. I always wanted to go. So there is a speaking of things that are super hard to find, Jason, along with tag. If you can find Toward the Within, it was recorded in the mid 90s, I believe.

And it was recorded in Santa Monica. It's one of their live performances. They released it as a DVD and a film. I was there. I was at that show. I love shows that get released that I was at. I cannot find it anywhere on streaming. It is on YouTube. It pops up for a while and gets taken down.

You can get the DVD and Laserdisc still if you want. But it is one of the most stunning performances. Unbelievable. Just the opening. If you can just, even if you just want to see a taste of it, go to YouTube, look up Rakim, which is the opening song that they did on Toward the Within. And it was transformative to me as a kid seeing this.

Like my jaw just dropped. It was unbelievable. So there you go. And by the way, Brian, if you have a Setapp account, you can download videos from YouTube with one click. So highly recommend going to get that Setapp account. Link will be in the show notes. Go check them out because Downey is a fantastic app for getting those old videos off of YouTube.

I actually got a Green Day concert that I was at at McGregor's in the 80s. You can still see me at as well when I got that from using Downey on Setapp. So go get that. There you go. And I put this next one in here just because it's doing the rounds because these stories do.

And it's kind of funny and media related because everybody made the same joke too. Cocaine Shark is already a horrible looking bee movie, but it's also a reality as trace amounts of the drug have been detected in sharks near Brazil. So yes, sharks, we found a bunch of cocaine in their bodies because it gets dumped or smugglers get, you know, dump stuff out in the wildlife.

And then the sharks eat it and then they're coked out for a while. So good times. So yeah, looking forward to that movie. Cocaine Bear, Cocaine Shark. Yeah. You know it's coming. You know it's coming. Cocaine Sharknado. It will be next. Yes. I saw this article. Let's go back to our Apple TV+. Apple TV Plus attempts to rein in budgets on new projects as The Morning Show Season 4 spends $50 million on cast alone.

Yet they still greenlit Time Bandits. This has got to be the last season for The Morning Show. Is it any good? No. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. I can tell you why because the show is tailor made for my wife and she absolutely loved Season 1.

She did really enjoy that. Season 2 came out and she dropped off really quickly. So I think it was off to a strong start and then the premise started to wear thin. Okay. Yeah. Just seriously. Cut all the budgets you want. Don't fuck with Sonny.

That's all I'm saying. So there we go. And Slow Horses. I know you already greenlit Season 4 on Slow Horses. Don't fuck with them either. Give me Season 6 through 17 on that one. I love that show. All for the budget of one morning show season. Easily. Easily. And it's got – what's his name in it?

Oh, Jesus. Yeah, I'm blanking on his name now too. I see Dracula. I see Sid and Nancy. The professional. Gary Oldman. Jesus. He's got Gary Oldman in it. I'm sure you could still get him. I can't believe I forgot his name. I feel bad. Speaking of making too much money, Spotify Q2 earnings are out.

Record high operating income, $289 million. Record high gross margin, 29.2%. Record high monthly active users, 626 million. Record high premium subscribers, 246 million. And musicians still ain't getting shit. Yep. There you go.

Yeah. I heard the UMG news that followed on with that that was not very good. So hopefully you can keep that kept man lifestyle you have going for a little while longer. Here's hoping. Here's hoping. And in just dumb fuckery news.

You know, I don't like Marc Andreessen, but what I saw this. This is Gizmodo at its finest. I'm just going to read this verbatim. Really rich guy and professional dumb idea. Have her. Marc Andreessen has done it again. This time, this egg-headed venture capitalist wants you to believe that artificial intelligence is here to save comedy.

Yes, his latest great idea is to have people like Dave Chappelle throw out their pencils and notepads and just produce hour-long Netflix specials via chat GPT instead. Quote, comedy needs a renaissance very badly. This is on a Substack. He was on a podcast with the CEO of Substack.

Two winners at best right there. Oh, the guy's name is Chris Best. End quote. It basically died, so it could be the way the story gets told as like AI saves comedy and whatever. He's a fucking idiot. No. No. AI and comedy don't fucking mix. You need personal tragedy.

You need experience to make comedy. You need people. You need people. Yeah. I fucking hate that guy so goddamn much. I hate AI. Yes. And you know what AI didn't make this week? Weird Al's new video. Polka-mania.

10 years after his last album dropped. Problem with this one, Brian. I knew like one song in the entire set. Well, that's become the real problem with me with Weird Al these days is I don't know the things he's making fun of anymore. I know.

I know. I mean, the last one he did that I loved was his Hamilton Polka. I thought that was fantastic. But that was a long time ago. Yeah. I think that was during COVID or pre-COVID. But yeah, I didn't. I do like his treatment of wet-ass pussy in the video.

That was pretty funny. Yeah. I think I knew a few. I know a few more songs than you do because I'm pretty familiar with. I really like Billie Eilish. I like Olivia Rodrigo quite a bit. I'm aware at least of Miley Cyrus, Nadell, and of course Lin-Manuel Miranda. But the rest of it, no clue.

No clue. Uptown Funk, I remember. That was one of the only other ones I remember. And even that's like 10 years old, Uptown Funk. I know. That's not recent at all. Well, good to see Weird Al still going. That's right. National Treasure.

I think we forgot Taylor Swift in that list. I've never heard a Taylor Swift song. No, me either. Me either. It's like watching Friends. I've never seen an episode of Friends. 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. I hesitated to put this in here because I'm so tired of talking about this dumb fuck.

But here we go. When will Tesla deliver on those Optimus robots we keep hearing about? It's going to be a little while longer than first anticipated, according to CEO Elon Musk, because he always over-predicts and under-promises and under-delivers. I'm sorry, over-promises and under-delivers. Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year.

And hopefully high production for other companies in 2026, he tweeted on Monday morning. Which is not going to happen to begin with on that time frame. But even that is pushing back from what he had previously promised. He said that they'd be out to other companies by 2025 and be in Tesla factories by this year already.

Which is not happening. Brian, I made a little clip of highlights on why we shouldn't give a fuck about what comes out of this guy's mouth anymore. I made it with the help of Dan O'Dowd, one of the videos he made that I found on Threads. Unfortunately, I made this clip before the Tesla earnings call.

So this only goes up to 2013. So have a listen. Okay. 2014. A Tesla car next year will probably be 90% capable of autopilot. Like, so 90% of your miles could be on auto. Nope. 2015.

We're probably only a month away from having autonomous driving, at least for highways and for relatively simple roads. Didn't do it. 2016. The Model S and Model X, at this point, can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person.

Right now. Fail. 2017. We're still on track for being able to go cross-country from L.A. to New York by the end of the year, fully autonomous. 2019. But next year, for sure, we will have over a million robo-taxis on the road.

Try again. 2020. I'm extremely confident of achieving full autonomy and releasing it to the Tesla customer base next year. Nine. 2021. When do you think Tesla will solve level four FSD?

I mean, it's looking quite likely that it will be next year. Yet. 2022. I would be shocked if we do not achieve full-stop driving safer than a human this year. I would be shocked. Nope. 2023.

I think we will achieve full self-driving. I don't know what level you call it. Four or five. I think later this year. And so, again, he said it on the earnings call that just happened that is coming again soon next year.

He always starts out with, we're going to have it. We're going to have it next year. It's going to be great. And by the end, he's like, I think we're going to have it next year because I'm so fucking sick of people asking me this fucking question. You know I'm lying. I was thinking that you could actually hear the ketamine of abuse escalate over the years because his voice gets deeper and slower.

He's almost kind of like it's noticeable. It is definitely noticeable. Yeah. Good production values there, Jason. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. That's what your money gets at patreon.com slash GOG. That's right. That's right.

So we talked about the Sonos app and the steaming pile of shit it is. Sonos CEO Patrick Spence has issued an apology for issues with the company's new app, which launched in May and faced immediate backlash. In an email to customers, which I didn't get, Spence acknowledged the problems and outlined a detailed timeline for fixing them.

Since May 7th, Sonos has released updates every two weeks to address bugs and add features. Upcoming improvements include not sucking as much. So we'll see if that goes. It's still slower than dog shit and loads like hell. It still sucks.

So now we just need Marco to apologize for that fucked up overcast update. Yeah. Yeah. I hate that update so much because especially like if I'm riding my bike, like I just my muscle memory and I just I can't. Like I have to stop my bike now if I want to switch podcasts.

It's great. Oh, it's it's it's terrible. Even like I have playlists for how things need to work on mine. But even when you're in a thing, he used these swipe cards on things. So it's like to you start to play a song or a podcast. You click on it. It opens up a swipe card. You see the players, the control and everything.

Then you have to swipe up again to get to the show notes. And then if you want the show notes to go away and just get back to the player, you swipe back that and it goes back to the main page. It's like it's just really stupid, shitty fucking interaction. I mean, it's it's terrible. It is absolutely terrible.

So I don't know. I don't know if I'll be sticking with it much longer unless he fixes it. And I'm a paying customer. Have been for a decade. God damn it. So Amazon Prime Video is coming out with a new look and feel as well because their current one sucks balls.

They're saying it will help us determine like what we can get in our paid and non-paid accounts. That's supposed to help clear that up. I have not seen it yet. It is not rolled out to me yet. I have a Fire TV, which should be one of the things that may, I don't know, rolls out to first. But it's not on the website.

It's not there. I don't know who got it so far. I do not have it either. I checked because I very rarely launch Amazon Prime Video because there's next to nothing on there I want to see. And I'm not paying the extra three bucks a month not to have ads for something I'm already paying for you bastards. Yeah, yeah, it pisses me off so much when I watch The Boys.

But the thing about watching, having the ads before The Boys comes on is that it just gets me angry, which is perfect for watching The Boys. So same with Fallout. Fallout was a great show. Highly recommend that one. So in more news, Apple Maps has launched on the web.

Yay, I guess. Wow, 1994. Oh, we're back to MapQuest. Okay. Yeah. So that's it. They're launching maps on the web. All right. Way to go, guys. Yeah, yeah.

Additionally, the Overture Maps Foundation, supported by Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, released its first mapping data set, offering developers a free alternative. Cool. Okay. Because Apple Maps wasn't free and Google Maps isn't free, I guess. Okay. Well, I guess for developers. Yeah, it's definitely not free for developers.

No, not for developers. Yeah, I moved everything else to SEO news, but I forgot this one. Search GPT is now in a prototype phase, which is OpenAI's attempt at a search engine. No, thank you. Which I'm dying to try it.

I am dying to try it. I want to see how this thing works because this is the holy grail if they can make it work. I mean, they're buying up all these new sources for a reason. This is the reason. All right. So I signed up for the beta. It's only open to 10,000 people, which I'm sure I missed the window on that since 80% of the planet is a chat GPT user, you know, and got the notification.

So, yeah. It says, we're testing Search GPT, a temporary prototype of new AI search features that give you fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources that I can't get to. So, I don't know. Meta has released Llama 3.1 405B.

So, these namings, I tell you. This is their new open source model, which is 405 billion parameters. So, now, this is the thing about this being released as open source, which has everybody's feathers in a tizzy.

You can take this model and then you can fuck with it to remove the safeguards. Yep. So, you can do all sorts of stuff to it. In an open letter, Zuckerberg compared Llama's release to the rise of Linux in the late 90s, emphasizing the potential for open source AI to close the gap with proprietary systems.

While this approach promotes accessibility and innovation, it also places Meta at the center of ongoing debates about AI safety and ethics. Because we know Meta, always known for their ethics, for not having any. Yes. Also, you really want to position yourself as the next Linux?

You mean that operating system five people use and yell at everybody else for not using? Brian, I'm sorry. Linux. Linux, sorry. And it is used by damn near everybody on the planet, except those 8.5 million dumbfucks that were running CrowdStrike. So, Linux is fucking massive.

I don't know what you're talking about. Desktop Linux, on the other hand. That's what I was talking about. Yeah, I get servers. Yeah, yeah. The neckbeards who are still using Linux desktop. That's what I'm talking about. And I don't, you know, Zuckerberg is shooting for people on, you know, mass market, not the server geeks.

Yeah, well, except the server geeks are the only people that are going to be using this for now, because it is still difficult to run these things. It takes a lot of horsepower. I had it running on my Mac Studio for a while with, you know, that's no slouch. It's got 64 gig of RAM and, you know, top, not top of the line, but next to top of the line processors.

So, and it was slower than dog shit. Yeah. We'll see. Now, here's one that I think goes back to what, this is the FTC doing what that EU article that you were talking about before with regulation was saying. Yeah. The Federal Trade Commission is investigating how companies use AI to adjust pricing based on consumer behavior.

The agency has ordered eight companies, including MasterCard and JPMorgan Chase, to provide information on their AI-powered surveillance service pricing products. Oh, that rolls off the tongue. The investigation aims to understand the impact of these services on privacy competition and consumer protection.

So, this is, it's interesting. In a press release, FTC Chair Lina Khan said, firms that harvest Americans' personal data can put people's privacy at risk. Now, firms could be exploiting this vast trove of personal information to charge people higher prices. Yep. Americans deserve to know whether businesses are using detailed consumer data to deploy surveillance pricing, and the FTC's inquiry will shed light on this shadowy ecosystem of pricing middlemen.

So, what they're doing is they're probably looking at ability to pay and what you're going to pay, you know, what your typical spending habits are. And then they type in your number and say, yeah, this is what he's willing to pay. Let's get it. They'll look at credit ratings. They'll look at your address. They'll look at medium home prices in the area that you live in.

They'll look at information about salaries, if they can have access to that. And they'll price accordingly, which is complete and total bullshit. Mm-hmm. Yep. So, at least they're doing something over there. We'll see how this comes out. And, yeah, the list of people that they're looking at is, yeah, the scum of the earth. So, it's good.

It's good. Now, we just talked about deepfakes and the law, which this kind of dovetails into it. Civil rights groups, including the ACLU, are challenging new laws across the U.S. aimed at regulating AI-generated content, arguing these laws infringe on First Amendment rights.

These laws are intended to combat issues like political misinformation and non-consensual pornographic deepfakes. However, the ACLU argues that these regulations could suppress free speech, drawing parallels to past free speech cases involving controversial speech protections. The organization asserts that AI tools are merely instruments and that individuals have the right to use them under the First Amendment.

The debate highlights the tension between protecting individuals from AI misuse and upholding constitutional free speech rights. Well, the nice thing about the law that the Senate just passed was that it doesn't say you can't make deepfakes. It says we can prosecute you for it. Yes. So, free speech is still free, but there are consequences.

The way it always has been. Yeah. So, we'll see how that goes. I mean, yeah, they didn't curtail. Not agreeing with the ACLU here. No. I understand what they're trying to do. Yes. That's the thing. It's like, where do you draw the line there, you know?

So, now here's a fun one by Upwork. A new study by Upwork reveals that AI is increasing workloads and stress among employees, contrary to executives' expectations. Key findings include 77% of workers using AI report, it adds to their workload and contributes to burnout.

96% of executives believe AI will boost productivity, but only 25% have AI training programs and 13% have adequate strategies. So, the rest of them are just like, yeah, throw some AI at it. It'll be good. Yep. 47% of employees are unsure how AI should aid their productivity.

So, they're like, okay, what do we do with it? Hence, going back to the no training programs. Mm-hmm. 71% of full-time employees feel burnt out and 65% struggle with employer demands. 81% of executives admit to increasing these demands. Yes.

Well, see, what happened is they fired a bunch of people thinking that AI was going to make it all so much easier for our employees, so we need less people. However, nobody's been trained up in the AI. The executives don't actually know what the AI can do, which is generally not a hell of a lot, unless it's very specific things.

So, now everyone's fucked. Yep. Yep. One-third of workers may quit in the next six months due to burnout or being overworked. And this is not a small sample size. They interviewed 2,500 people, 1,250 executives, 625 full-time and salaried employees, and 625 freelancers in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada.

Again, I'm going to go back to the course that I took about somebody who was at the forefront of this field, and he was talking about how you would introduce AI into your business and turn your business into an AI-based business, or at least an AI-amplified business, which is basically just AI is helping. And he said that the roadmap for that is generally two to three years, and everybody, including the CEO, should have a minimum of four to six hours of AI training.

Mm-hmm. Is that happening anywhere? Nope. No. No, it is not. So I'm working on an AI project right now for somebody, and the expectations are, I'm like, it doesn't do that. Yeah. Well, that was the other. That's what he said. The reason to have CEOs and executives take courses is to figure out what AI's limitations are, because nobody understands it.

Everybody just thinks it's like, we can just fire a bunch of people, and AI can handle the slack. Yeah. That's just not how it works. No. That's not how it works at all. Nope. Now, here's one if you want to get some AI-generated work. Researchers at the University of Hull have developed a novel method to identify AI-generated deepfake images by analyzing reflections in humans' eyes.

Hmm. The technique presented at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting adapts astronomical tools to check the consistency of light reflections in eyeballs. The method compares reflections between eyes to spot discrepancies, and I just want to follow that up with, for now.

Because we know it's an arms race. It's whack-a-mole. Yep. Yeah. But it's a good technique. Check out the article. They've got some good science behind it. Pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty – it's really interesting that astronomers have come out, come to figure this out. It's the pedantic nature of astronomers, I guess, when you listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson watching a movie going, the stars are wrong.

That's true. I'm sorry. I worked on Titanic. It was a running joke. Now, Amazon is horrified to find out what people actually use Alexa for. This is after they spent $25 billion on Alexa and hired 10,000 people, and they built a smart timer, which is what Alexa's good for.

I don't know what exactly they thought we were going to do with it. That's the thing. When it first came out, I loved the damn thing. I could play music. I could set timers. The video ones are great. I can call my mom. My kid and my mom can have video call together with each other, and it's super easy.

For those things, it's a genius device. They have spent billions of dollars over the past five to six years on this thing, and it's gotten progressively worse and less usable, and I don't know what the fuck they're trying to do with it. Stop it. Stop it. It's a good product.

That's it. We're good. It was a good product. I still stand by the first lady in a tube. The first Alexa tube was fantastic because it sounded amazing. Yes. You've made all the speakers smaller. Yeah. Working with it and making – I don't need a little dime-sized one that sits on my desk at all for anything that sounds like crap.

If they would have kept them the same, I would not have Sonos in my house. I guarantee it. They were so good, and they just ruined it. So, yeah, over-engineered. Yeah, and they're just jamming all this stuff into it, and frankly, I turn off everything on these things now because it's just a bunch of companies trying to mine my personal data.

All it's doing is it's throwing up questions like, do you prefer beef hamburgers or blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I don't need to give you any of this. I don't want to see this. Turn it all off. Give me my sports scores. Give me my financial updates. Play my music. Let me set my timers and let me call my mom. That's all I want. That's it. There you go.

Saved you $25 billion. Yep. Finally, I don't know if you've noticed there's been a bit of a heat wave down here, and the Apple weather app, after they bought Dark Sky, so fucking bad. It is seven degrees off from every other weather report on the planet.

It's like, oh, it's 93 degrees outside. I'm like, no, it's not. I walk out the door, and my dog melts. It is not 93 degrees. So I finally pulled the trigger and went back to Carrot Weather, which is phenomenal. You've got to pay for it. I get the middle tier for $14.99 a year, so a couple bucks a month.

Well worth it to get accurate weather information with a snarky, snarky AI behind it. I love it. I love Carrot. It's great. I know. I just have this thing about paying for a weather app. I am paying for a weather app.

This phone costs $1,000. Well, the phone costs $1,000. The weather app. Comes with the app. Sucks. Fucking sucks. It does. It does. It used to, people used to be, oh, well, it doesn't work in Santa Monica because you're right on the ocean.

I'm not on an ocean anymore. I'm in Toronto. It still fucking sucks. It still fucking sucks. It tells me there's a thunderstorm out and it's sunny. Fuck off. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to the Dark Side with Dave with vivacious and vocally versatile Dave Bittner.

Dave can be heard on the Cyber Wire podcast and also exploring human deception with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans or diving into privacy with Ben Yellen on Caveat and understanding industrial cybersecurity on Control Loop. Dave's new show, Only Malware in the Building, is a monthly segment by N2K Cyber Wire and Proof Points Discarded podcast hosted by Selina Larson with Rick Howard and Dave Bittner.

It breaks down the most impactful malware stories into actionable insights for tech professionals and security executives in a most delightful way. There's a new episode dropping next week, so make sure you get caught up this week. Hi, Dave. Well, hello, and thank you very much. You're welcome. It's just a quick tooting of our own horn, Joe Kerrigan and I, and also our new permanent co-host, Maria Vermasus.

We just passed our 300th episode. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah. So that's pretty exciting. I mean, you know, for a weekly, that's pretty cool. That is. It all gets a little skewed because I think I'm at, like, I'm coming up on 3,000 or something for Cyber Wire daily.

So when you do a daily, it just, it throws everything else off. It's such an odd thing in the podcasting world, you know, but no, 300, it's a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. No, we're at 658 and it feels like, oh my God, it's taken over 10 years to get here.

Yeah. And you're in the thousands and I'm like, I feel so bad for you, but you get paid. We don't. There's a difference. Yeah. Having a check attached helps. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to real quick follow up once again on my rear lamp situation.

The whole thing we've been talking about with the video camera and the power adapter and all that kind of stuff. After I posted a review of the failed power adapter on Amazon, the providers of the said power adapter reached out and they both refunded my money and sent a replacement showing you the power of the Amazon review.

So when I received the replacement, by the way, the second unit that I've had installed has been running fine for the past couple of weeks. So I may have just gotten a bad one. So I am going to update my review, which is what they really want me to do. So I'll take it from two star.

They're not allowed to say that, of course, but I think we are all on the same page here. I'm probably going to go from two stars to four stars and say, you know, I'm willing to say it was probably just a, you know, a fluke, bad unit, maybe the first one, who knows. I'm willing to say your quality control is still shit, but yes.

Hence the four, not the five. Right, right. We're not going to go overboard here. But yes, they have bought two points from me by refunding my money and sending a replacement. So thank you. It's this is the way that it works, I suppose.

Squeaky wheel gets the grease. Yes, that's what we used to use Twitter for. Now it's just Amazon reviews. Yeah, that's true. So I saw this come across the newswire and I thought it might be it might be important for you guys, since I'm sure somebody some of you are going to Disney at some point.

Disneyland workers authorized potential strike ahead of ongoing contract negotiations. Probably more for Brian, since Disneyland is here in California. I have been monitoring this. Your article is from July 20th. It is out of date. They have reached the settlement and my Disney trip will go on unimpeded because yes, we are going.

We will be in Los Angeles for the majority of August. My son's birthday is in August. My son's favorite thing in the entire world is Halloween and they are moving up their Halloween celebration for the first time ever beginning it in late August. So yes, we are going to Disneyland and this was I was monitoring this very closely.

This could have been bad. Yeah. All right. We're all good. The mouse has spoken. Have you has your son been through the when they Jack Skellington eyes? Oh, yes. Mansion. Yes. He's been through that as well. They go all out for Halloween all throughout the entire park in addition to just doing the nightmare before Christmas thing.

So and we've never seen that because that's always been gone and Christmastime stuff up by the time we usually get there. So very exciting. You know, that'll be fun. Yeah. Speaking of Disney and Disney World, I've been thinking about Hollywood Studios, which of course is where Star Wars, Star Wars land is, whatever they call it.

I call it Star Wars land in Florida. Right. And of course, there's one at Disneyland also. But in Florida, it's at the Hollywood Studios, formerly the Disney MGM Studios. And they kind of have a problem down there, which is that Florida. Well, well, yes, that is true.

And the the ongoing, I guess, what do you want to the weather in Florida is heading in one direction, which is hotter and more humid and all that stuff. So, yeah, that'll be interesting, too, to see if what happens if the let's say the two middle months of summer become intolerable for people to go to Disney World.

You know, do they do they start putting bringing out that old plan to put a dome over the whole place or, you know, what could you possibly do? I've gone on vacation in like Scottsdale, Arizona, in the dead of summer before, which, you know, not the brightest thing in the world. But I mean, misters everywhere is what ends up happening.

And they don't build a lot more shady areas and all that sort of stuff. People will still go. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I think the difference, though, between Florida and someplace like Arizona is just it's so freaking humid in Florida. Yeah, that's true. It's a dry heat. Yeah, you can only cool off so much in a swamp.

But anyway, I was thinking at the Hollywood studios, they have this problem, which is that they have the original area where Star Tours is and they have the cool Adat Walker and all of that around there, there's a gift shop there. And then you have to go through kind of the Muppets area where Muppet Vision 3D is.

And I think there's like a Rizzo the Rat pizza place there. And then you get to the actual proper Star Wars land. So I am willing to bet that they're itching to do something with the Muppets stuff, which, of course, would break my heart if they took Muppet Vision 3D out of that studio.

So what I think they should do is move Muppet Vision 3D to the other side of the park next to Rockin' Roller Coaster and make Rockin' Roller Coaster the electric mayhem. All right. Okay.

Shall we take it for a vote? I'm in. I like the idea. But I do think that there's a bridge that they could build there that could be a pigs in space ride. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. I mean, because Star Wars is like the Muppets and Star Wars are in each other's canon because of the visit that not just Mark Hamill, but Luke Skywalker made.

And C-3PO. Right. And C-3PO and Chewbacca and R2-D2. I was going to say, don't forget Chewbacca and R2-D2. Made to the Muppet Show. And R2-D2 and C-3PO also made a visit to Sesame Street. So there is crossover between the two.

That's an interesting idea. Hmm. I just think that at some point they're going to have to get rid of Aerosmith for Rockin' Roller Coaster. Please. Of course, my nightmare is they replace it with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Okay. Sure. Sure. But it seems like Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem is something they already own. They don't have to pay a license for. Kind of evergreen, at least for the time being. Evergreen if you're old. Well, that's true. Our version of evergreen.

It's evergreen to me. I don't remember anymore, so it's new to me. Right. Yeah. So, but then the big question would be right next to that is the Tower of Terror. And so would you go so far as to Muppetize that the way that they, you know, they turn Tower of Terror in California into Guardians of the Galaxy?

Yeah, the thing is, as much as the Muppets are owned by Disney at this point, they don't really seem to be leaning into it as much as I'd wish they would. Yeah. I think you're right. And I think the Muppets' cultural relevance is in decline, and I'm not sure what the cause and effect of that is, but kids certainly know who they are, but they're not, it's not the only game in town like it was for us with Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.

Yeah. So, yeah, I think that's true. So maybe a big investment in the Muppets at the park like that wouldn't make sense, but I'd like to see it happen. Me too. We'll see. Hey, you guys are the ones that are buying the tickets, so you should have a voice in this.

That's true. That's true. That's true. That's true. And I have my Disney stock. I'm going to get on the next shareholders call. I think you should. Play them this episode, Brian. There's nothing better in a shareholder's call than Mr. Idea Man coming to tell them what- Also us showing up with all the F-bombs.

Right. Just, you know, what- to tell them what they're doing wrong with the day-to-day operations of- We need some motherfucking pigs in space in here. Well, and it could also backfire, and they're like, ooh, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, that actually is a good idea.

Yeah. Right. Right. Through some twist, it turns out that Disney owns all the IP for their- They own the theme park rights for the Red Hot Chili Peppers that Michael Eisner bought. Yeah. If they change it, they're going to have to change the name of the roller coaster to zippy-dippy-dappy-dappy-dap-dop-dop-dop-dop.

To some extent of the fucking genius lyrics from that asshole. Oh, Brian. Sorry. So, continuing along our Disney theme here and Star Wars, I saw an interesting article pointing out why the Mandalorian is coming to the big screen rather than staying on the little screen.

First of all, May of 2026 is when Mando's coming to the big screen. Second of all, the big screen, I'm still going to be watching it on my normal screen. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to go to the movies?

I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see what the world's like then. Yeah. That's true. How much that popcorn bucket's going to cost me in Boba Fett's head. Right. Yeah. Right. I mean, it seems like the difference with Mandalorian versus every other Star Wars thing we've seen since is just basically Grogu, right?

Baby Yoda. Yeah. He's been, he's just the merchandising behemoth that is Baby Yoda. Everybody, and none of the other properties have anything close to that. That's really, you know, we put a Baby Yoda on top of our Christmas tree last year because because one must, yeah, as one does.

Yeah. Well, see, there's the problem. I had Gonzo. See, this is why the Muppets are going away. Oh, Gonzo's a good Christmas tree topper. I could go for that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously, I mean, the Mandalorian was a massive hit and it was kind of really the first one that hit that big and kind of paved the way for all Star Wars TV shows now.

So, and it's all Dave Filoni. It's all connected stories. He's going to wrap some things in together and it makes sense. I'm fine with it. So. Yeah. This article also points out that these are the first two characters who Mando and Grogu are the first characters from any of the TV series to be in the Disney parks that they're at Galaxy's Edge.

Right. Which I love. And I think we've mentioned here before that I wish they would just get over keeping on any sort of timeline and just put all the freaking characters in Galaxy's Edge. Yes. Right. Let me see Darth Vader walking around. Let me see Luke Skywalker. Let me see who got Chewbacca.

But like, come on, just. Yeah. I don't care that much. Stop. You're not canon. You're a theme park. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There were no little beanies with Mickey ears shaped like R2-D2 in the original movie, but I can go into the gift shop and buy one of those.

So get over yourself. Yes, I agree. Yeah. All right. Well, moving on from Star Wars stuff, as much as I hate to do that, we got some nice follow up here from a listener. Jason, you want to read this?

Another awesome show from the two grumpy old buggers and Dave. I looked into this HOA stuff that you were all talking about. That's some crazy arse shit. Down under, we don't have anything like that. If someone comes onto my property trying to tell me what I should and shouldn't do, they're liable to get their butt cheeks peppered with buckshot and told to get the feck off my land.

Cheers, grumpy old redneck from down under in New Zealand. And you're welcome for me not trying to do a New Zealand accent. Yes, yes. Well, I suppose if you live in a hobbit hole, I guess you can do whatever the fuck you want. Yeah, that's right. You got nothing but land all around you and sheep.

So have either of you lived under an HOA? Hell no. Yes, I have. Okay. Okay. Jason, why don't you begin with your strong response? Why hell no? Because nobody would ever rent me a room in a house that was under an HOA.

I've never owned a home. I never will. Oh, okay. Okay. Gotcha. I'm old and poor. You guys have the houses. Yeah. Jason's a renter. Well, we've owned. So yeah, I've been under an HOA situation before. I'm a couch surfer. I'm not a renter. If I learned how to play the drums, that would be more like my lifestyle.

You're a drummer. I'm basically a drummer who can't play. Right. You're an aspiring drummer just for the lifestyle. Uh-huh. That's it. Just a few short lessons away from being a real one. Sure. Well, pretty much. I mean, come on. How many drummers really need lessons? Exactly.

You just hit something. How hard could that be? I hit my wife all the time. Right. I'm a percussionist. You're a drummer. You're a percussionist. You're a drummer. Oh, yeah. HOAs suck. I get the concept, but it always ends up being Karen in charge, doesn't it? Shit rises.

Yeah. So, I suppose I'm in a bit of a unique situation here or unusual that I live under two different HOAs. Oh, that's fun. And I also live in what I believe is the largest HOA in the world.

So, I live in Columbia, Maryland, which is one of the planned communities. It was, you know, Jim Rouse back in the 1960s had a plan for making a better community. Um, and so they bought up like 15,000 acres right between Baltimore and Washington, started building what they were hoping would be, uh, this beautiful place to live.

And more, I mean, more or less, they achieved what they set out to do. It's certainly, uh, better than the suburban sprawl that happened a lot of other places. Um, and the other thing about it was, um, they were very intentional about, um, being inclusive in that when all the other communities around this area were basically redlining neighborhoods, uh, the developers said, you will not do that in Columbia.

This is an open community. You will not exclude people. Um, so ultimately I think it's better for it, but what it means is that we are a homeowners association called the Columbia association, which is about a hundred thousand people in it. Um, and they do stuff like, uh, they maintain the open space.

They, we have, uh, what is like 24 swimming pools, uh, tennis courts, ice rinks, you know, all of this, uh, crazy, um, crazy amount of recreational facilities. Um, we do pay an additional tax for that, of course.

Um, but like in my mind, totally worth it because it's a beautiful community. Um, now it, it means there are rules. So if you want to do any architectural changes to your home, it has to be approved by the Columbia association.

In addition to that, my neighborhood itself is a condo association. So they have their own set of rules that are much more restrictive than the homeowners association. Um, now I have lived most of my life under this sort of regime.

So starting when I was about 10 years old is when my family moved into the neighborhood that I live in right now. And I get that it's not for everyone. I totally get that it's not for everyone. But there are some upsides to it. And just that, especially like I live in a townhouse community, you know, it keeps my next door neighbor from painting their house like a candy cane or something, you know, if they start, if people want to put a car up on blocks next door to me, they can't do that.

Um, and I realized for a lot of people, that's the point is that they want to live somewhere where they can do that and more power to you. And, uh, I just, I happen to enjoy, um, this kind of community, uh, with a certain amount of, uh, I guess, predictability.

Um, it's also nice. So it's like, it does, uh, I don't have to mow my lawn. I don't have to shovel my snow. So there are a lot of lifestyle things that I enjoy, but, um, I totally get what our friend from, uh, down under says here is definitely not for everybody.

And one of the funny things is every now and then, like my neighborhood has about 150 homes and every now and then someone will move in and manage to make their way through the entire process of buying a home, settle on the home, move in, and never along the way have realized that they are in a condo association.

And so they get their first bill and they're like, what the hell is this? And then they, and they figure out that they can't do whatever they want. And, you know, you like, you have to get permission to paint your front door, the same color, uh, you just stuff like that.

Um, and I totally get how it drives people nuts, but I kind of like it. Yeah. I mean, I, I understand why people enjoy it and it is for certain kinds of people. If you're not, uh, if you want to be able to do whatever the hell you want to do, don't ever live under an HOA.

And, uh, you know, it sounds like you're living in a pretty good one, all things considered. Although, you know, you, you, you hit a few snags while trying to sort out your, uh, solar panel lighting situation already. I mean, they, look, they all have their moments. They all, I mean, there's a Reddit group called like fuck HOAs.

And if you want to be entertained and if someone who lives under one, you, you, you read that and you go there, but for the grace of God, go I, because all it takes is for the wrong people to be elected to your board of directors.

And, you know, it's just, it can go South in a hurry. Yeah. Just like the country. Yeah. Yes. It's true. You were no longer allowed to put up these flags. We are handing out the mandatory MAGA flags for everybody to fly. Yeah. Good luck with that.

Um, yeah, I lived under one for a little while. It was, it was poorly run. Um, you know, initially it didn't make a bit of a difference. You know, the, the, we felt that it was a condo association at the time that I was, that I had owned and the building was in need of a lot of repairs. It definitely could use painting and all that sort of stuff.

And then the board was so, the HOA was so ineffectual. It just couldn't get done, which again, no, I had other things. I had had a kid. I had, I had other things that were on my mind at the moment. So I didn't worry too much about it, but then somebody else got in charge and wanted to try to do things. And then it was like, well, we're going to, we're going to change the way that cable comes into the building.

So from now on, all your cable boxes will need to be in your bedrooms. Cause we're going to run the lines up through that side of the building instead of where they are now. And I was like, fuck that, not doing that. And, uh, then they, um, then they did some other thing about like, uh, we want to increase the safety. We're going to put up some security cameras and they put up a security camera over the gate and it pointed right into my kitchen.

Right. I remember that. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I was, uh, that was my, my one run in with an HOA was not particularly pleasant, but, uh, I, I get the pluses and everything that you've outlined and certainly for, for the kind of services that you would never be able to afford yourself, skating rinks and pools and all that sort of stuff.

I mean, obviously you can, many people have their own pool, but it's a pain in the ass. It's a money suck. Um, so if you get that under group things and you don't mind paying for it and you don't mind the restrictions, great. But yeah, uh, grumpy old redneck probably is not going to do well in an HOA.

No, no, not at all. I, I, I actually liked your old HOA, Brian, cause it gave us like weeks worth of material. We got so much content. It was great. Well, and the other camera where, yeah, I came over and I saw it and I'm like, yeah, that's not right. The other peril is that you'll see, uh, there's like, for example, there's a bunch of people in Florida right now who are going through, uh, after the, what was it?

A couple of years ago, that big condo building collapsed. Yeah. So that has triggered a whole bunch of inspections. And so there are lots of people in condo associations and HOAs who've suddenly been hit with these assessments where it's like, Oh, look, we have to spend a few million dollars.

So, uh, we're going to need a hundred thousand dollars by the end of the month. Uh, let me tell you, Dave, same thing, same condo association, uh, in California, they rolled out new earthquake regulations. So if buildings were over a certain amount of age, they needed to be retrofitted. We sold just in time to get out from that.

I heard it was like about, it was about a hundred thousand dollars per unit. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe, maybe, uh, we should go to New Zealand. I don't know. What's the earthquake situation like that? Right. Not great. Actually, not great at all.

Okay. Well, nevermind then. But I suppose if you're in the hobbit hole and you're built into the ground, you're all right. So, yeah. Yeah. Every, every place has pluses and minuses, but there, there are absolutely days when, uh, uh, throwing in, in the towel and going to New Zealand and just herding sheep just sounds really good.

Yeah. You and all the tech CEOs agree. Yeah. Yeah. And I can tell you like all my Kiwi friends, they just love it when you tell sheep jokes. I'm sure. I'm sure. It never gets old. No, it's like, uh, it's like Brits when you tell them jokes about having bad teeth.

They love that. They just love it. Oh, it's so good. So good. Yeah. I, I, I've, I've, I've had to duck a couple of times after I made a sheep joke with some of my friends from down there and there were cocktails involved. Yeah. I almost lost, I almost lost those teeth that the Brits need so well, no much. There you go. Well, you should never insult a man's wife, Jason.

We'll leave it there. Okay. Before we lose any more listeners, let's get a lot. Yeah. On that note. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Albert MK insane.

And saying says, Hey, grumpy geeks, long time listener here. And I'm ready to put my money where my ears are. What's the best way to donate that puts the most cash in your pockets. Keep up the grumpy, magnificent bastards. So we've, we've covered this on discord and on the show a couple of times. It doesn't matter to us. We get the same amount for every platform because we're grandfathered in on Patreon and we've got in everything else.

We get the same. So wherever you want to give us, you can get the most on Patreon. So that's where we can give you the actual show early and ad free and in high definition, starting at just $3 a month. You can give us more if you want, but that's, uh, that's how it goes. So yeah, don't, don't worry about, uh, what we're going to get.

We get the same across the board. Yeah. And the only reason it got brought up is some people wanted to switch platforms and we were just helping people out that we're doing. So does not matter. We get the same. You get more at Patreon. So if you don't give a crap about the high def feed, go elsewhere. It doesn't matter. Speaking of the elsewears over at PayPal, we've got Tom, Joseph, and David.

Thank you all so much. Thank you. And over at the tip jar, we've got Eric and Ross. All righty. Thanks everybody. No reviews this week. Sad Christmas. And, uh, happy birthday to Dave Bittner for the old double nickels. 55. I've never heard that phrase before.

Happy birthday, Dave. Yeah, I hadn't either. Hope you enjoy it. Until next time. I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for tuning in to grumpy old geeks. Dive into the show notes and all the links from today's episodes at gog.show slash 658. Feeling generous? Keep this top notch entertainment rolling by dropping us a few bucks at gog.show slash donate.

Every bit helps. I mean that desperately. 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 will be forever grateful. We need more grumps over here. Head over to gog.show to find the link to our Discord channel and chat with us and other show fans.

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