660: The Bendy Piece

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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 is very early here. I can't believe you get up this early on a regular basis to do this show. Every week, Brian. Because somebody moved to Canada. Three hours later. Hey, I could be in Canada on the same time zone.

But then I'd have to live in Vancouver. Yeah. The pot capital of Canada here. Is it? I don't know. So this might be a little bit of an interactive episode because for the past two hours, the police have been circling a house not too far from me with police helicopters. There's news helicopters. So there's some kind of standoff.

They'll find you eventually, Jason. I know. I'm trying to hide. I'm trying to hide. But yeah, if you hear a couple of knocks on the door, the show might be over earlier than expected. And if you're watching the news on Friday morning in Los Angeles, you could probably see my studio somewhere around there.

I think there's a Fox News copter overhead right now, but the rest are probably on the way. Hey, we made it on the TV, Jason. Hey, we finally made it on TV. It's our debut. It's our debut. A little follow-up this week. It's so funny. I got an email this week from OpenSea.

Oh, yeah? They're still around? Yeah. I'm like, you're in business still? And they were touting the robustness of the NFT market. And I'm like, hmm, I guess you got enough money left over for some crack, because that's what you're smoking. Yeah, I was just very surprised. I'm like, where's my MySpace email?

I want to get that, too, because that's just about as viable. I'm still occasionally on the X. I still load it up every now and then. And I have to admit that the GMs have kind of faded away. Now it's just Magus. Yeah, that's about it. I get a couple GMs here and there, too. But it's just like, I'm like, seriously?

Seriously, haven't you moved on to, you know, some kind of GPT variant at this point? I guess not. They haven't gotten the news yet. They're hodling for dear life. For dear life. So this is an interesting one. Illinois has revised its Biometric Information Privacy Act to significantly limit financial penalties for companies that illegally handle biometric data, which is, you know, Illinois has been the shining gem of privacy advocates for quite some time now.

And I made some money off of them from the Facebook deal about the settlement. I think it was back in 2000 and something or other. It's been a while. It's been a while. And I've had COVID for a bit. So I might be a little bit foggy with my words today. Don't blame me. Blame the Rona.

So what they did basically was they now that used to be you could you could sue the companies for individual violations of the the law. Now you can only roll it up into one. So that sucks. Yeah, I'm very surprised at that.

Very surprised at that. Yeah. The last settlement they did was in 2020, which I that was probably the one that I was under. They settled for six hundred and fifty million dollars. I think I got thirteen dollars out of that one or something like that. So which is pretty funny, because at that point, my my Facebook account had been just dead, dead, dead.

But the whole thing was it was for stuff that they had done ages ago and then just kept around for longer than they were supposed to have. Right. Because they're evil because everybody does that. Yeah. Yeah. OK, so we talked about NFTs. Now let's talk about some crypto because crypto is back in the news just a little bit.

Surprising just about no one. A wallet holding around 20 percent of the supply of the DJT Trump themed meme coin suddenly dumped its holdings, crashing the token price by around 90 percent. Here's where it gets fun. People were quick to blame those behind the project.

Primarily pharma bro Martin Shkreli. Who knew Shkreli was quick to shift the blame to Donald Trump's youngest son, Barron, who he also claimed is behind the token, although that has not been independently confirmed. However, the owner of the wallet that dumped its tokens is not definitively known.

So who's getting in bed with Shkreli nowadays? Oh, wait. Well, yeah, I think he's found his tribe. Yeah, exactly. Felon's going to felon. So that was just kind of fun. And in Sam Bankman Freed news, we're just going back to the old days here.

FTX, the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, has agreed to pay 12.7 billion with a B dollars to customers defrauded by its former CEO, Sam Bankman Freed. A U.S. district judge ordered 8.7 billion in restitution and 4 billion in disgorged gains to compensate victims.

That was my porn name in high school. Disgourged gains, yes. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission hailed this as the largest recovery in its history. The court also imposed a permanent trading ban on those involved. Well, it's kind of hard to trade from federal prison, but I guess, you know, nature finds a way.

Felon's going to felon. Exactly. Disbursements of funds could take years with annual progress reports required. So I can't wait to see those report cards. Well, couldn't happen to a nicer group of people.

Google's been taking a lot of hits recently, and this is not surprising to anybody that pays attention, but the fact that it actually got judged and ruled as such was my jaw kind of dropped, Google is officially a monopoly, according to a U.S. judge, which has ruled that in an antitrust case.

So they have illegally abused a monopoly over the search industry. This is a 10-week trial that was held in 2023 that stemmed from a 2020 lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice in several states, which claimed that Google acted illegally to maintain its dominant position in search through a number of actions, such as paying the likes of Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla brought billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine on their phones and web browsers.

They went to all that trouble, Jason, and then replaced it with crappy Google AI search. I know, out of all that. It's kind of crazy. Anyways, the DOJ argued that Google facilitates almost 90% of web searches and that by paying to be the default option, it prevented rivals from achieving the kind of scale needed to compete.

I think the giveaway here is when it became a verb, when you said to Google something, that probably tells you they may be a monopoly. That's right. They're basically a monopoly right now. Now, what that exactly means is up in the air. We don't know what's going to happen. The judge may order Google to change how it operates or even sell parts of its businesses.

So we shall find out what's going to happen. Google has, of course, released a statement, and I particularly like this statement. This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine. Wow, what a way to spin that. Yeah, really. But concludes that we shouldn't be allowed to make it easily available.

We appreciate the court's finding that Google is the industry's highest quality search engine, which has earned Google the... This is a PR release, not a statement. Jesus. Anyway, it's finding that the Google is the industry's highest quality search engine, which has earned Google the trust of hundreds of millions of daily users.

That Google has long been the best search engine, particularly on mobile devices, has continued to innovate in search, and that Apple and Mozilla occasionally assess Google search quality relative to its rivals and find Google's to be superior. Now, is this a response to finding out the court ruling that you've been judged a monopoly, or is this a PR release?

Yeah, this is definitely... This is the spin doctors that are at work here. And the thing is, this all comes back really to them, you know, pay to play on mobile devices, paying Apple like, you know, millions and millions and millions of dollars every year, billions of dollars every year, in fact, to have them as the default search engine.

So, yes, so they shouldn't be allowed to make it easily available, is exactly what we're saying here. It shouldn't be that easy. No. So, so if they take that away, yeah. And, you know, some of the stuff that came out was just insane, you know, and Apple, Apple was kind of complicit.

They're like, yeah, there's no amount of money that you can offer us that's going to make us change our mind. And it's like, really? Because money is what sparked this whole problem to begin with. If DuckDuckGo just happened to come across $120 billion a year, I bet you might change your mind. But, you know, there's other machinations behind the scenes with all of the intertwined corporate shenanigans going on.

For sure. So, yeah. What'll be interesting is what happens next. So, you know, okay, you've said they're a monopoly. Now what? Because we used to break them up, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, this is going to take a, I was going to say a big hit to Apple, but come on.

Not really. Not really. It's a very small percentage of a hit to Apple, but what it's going to be is a pain in the butt for people who sign up for a new, you know, get their new iPhone. They're going to have to pick their default search provider. Oh, that'll take a second. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm wondering. I'm like, how are they going to, how are they going to do that list?

Is it going to be a randomized list now? You know, and, you know. Alphabetical? Yeah, exactly. Google renamed Alphabet. Alphabet search. That's right. We just rebranded. Exactly. Yeah. As long as it beats D or B, that's all you need.

And from the No Shit Sherlock files, Jason, this is a pretty great long form article over at Vox called, It's Practically Impossible to Run a Big AI Company Ethically. Now, this is, it basically gets into Anthropic, which was supposed to be the good AI company, the ethical one, the safe one.

It was supposed to be different from OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT. In fact, all of Anthropics founders once worked at OpenAI, but quit in part because of differences over safety culture there and went to go start the good AI company. Even another founder from OpenAI left this week to go join Anthropics.

So, yeah. So, tell me, Brian, what's wrong? Well, wait for it, Jason. They're not so good anymore because they can't compete. No. Go figure. So, yeah, money talks and everybody else is stealing data and everybody else is taking money and everybody else is doing unethical things. And if you want to compete, you have to as well.

So, what they're basically saying here is we really need, wait for this one, government regulations to tell us to do the right thing because we can't do it otherwise because we need a level playing field. Because we're addicts. We're data addicts. That is the entire TLDR of this article, but I do recommend you go read it if you have any passing interest in this sort of thing.

So, yeah, it is basically they're just saying we can't be ethical as an AI company because we have to win and everybody else is cheating. So, we cheat too. That's some bullshit. Isn't it? That's the world we live in now, Jason. Uh-huh. Just because you put it on the internet means we can train on it.

You know, that's their book. And when they get caught, they go, well, we technically didn't steal it. We bought it from somebody else who did. So, we distanced ourselves from it. Yeah. Well, I've got one that isn't doing that. NVIDIA has been using videos from YouTube, Netflix, and other sources to train a new AI model named Cosmos.

The company claims its methods comply with copyright law, stating that learning from publicly available information is legitimate. However, YouTube and Netflix see this as a little bit differently. They're saying, no, this is a policy violation. And NVIDIA downloaded 100,000 videos from YouTube and compiled 38.5 million URLs using them for commercial gain despite some internal ethical concerns.

I'd say some external ethical concerns as well. Also, see previous articles. You can have the concerns all you want. That's not going to stop you from doing it. Yeah. Oh, if you want to be ethical, do ethical acts. That's the way it works.

So, you don't need an ethics team for that. Just don't do bad shit. Anyway, in a dramatic twist, Elon Musk has revived a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, accusing them of fraud. Musk alleges that Altman and others deceived him into contributing $44 million in seed funding by promising OpenAI would remain a non-profit dedicated to open sourcing its technology and prioritizing public good over profits.

Kind of like the way that Musk deceives people by releasing software called Full Self-Driving. Kind of. Okay, just checking. Just checking. Yeah, this lawsuit is kind of incredulous. And what he's really trying to do is he's trying to get the court to say that the latest version of ChatGPT and GPT-4 is actually AGI.

Because if that claim is made by the courts, then the deal with Microsoft is bust. Right. But the thing is, this whole thing is just him trying to throw a monkey wrench in their works while he tries to get Grok AI up to speed.

This is all it is. There's nothing here about ethics or public good or shit like that. He's trying to slow them down so he can catch up because he fucked up. So let's talk a little bit about how he's trying to get Grok up to speed then, Jason. Well, please do, Brian. Please tell me.

Well, the Ireland's Data Protection Commission has some opinions on this, and they're taking Elon Musk to court about this. They're especially worried that European users' data is being used to trade the next version of Grok that Musk previously said will be released sometime this month. Well, we all know about Musk and his release dates, so let's assume that's not going to happen.

However, they have a particular issue with something that we talked about, which is they basically decided to put out a setting but opt everybody in to training Grok with everything that they do on the X platform. And the commission said, no, no, no, no. You can't do that.

You're not supposed to do that according to our rules. Now, they have acknowledged that X has given people the mechanism to opt out. However, it isn't enough for the agency, which argued that there's still a significant number of European-based X users, God, I hate saying X users, whose data has been processed without being afforded the protection of those mitigation measures.

So basically, yeah, he opt everybody in to train Grok. He's probably ignoring all of that stuff anyways. He's probably using historical data anyways because see previous articles. But yeah, they're basically saying, no, you can't do that, and now we're going to sue you. So we'll find out what happens, but it probably won't matter at this point.

Well, Brian, I have some follow-up on that. X has agreed to pause using European's post to train its AI chatbot Grok. The DPC, which oversees X under the EU's GDPR, welcomed the suspension and is continuing to access the legality of the data processing. Yes, Elon always welcomes these suspensions.

He so welcomes them. I don't know how he can even has time to be on – see, I don't like X. I don't like Twitter. We just call it shitter now. At least I prefer shitter because, yeah, that saying X is just like, yeah, ew. And Twitter is just like, RIP, baby.

Anyway, I don't know how he has time to sheet from court because that's where he's at all the time now, you know? So how can he run Tesla from court? How can he run SpaceX from court? How can he run shitter from court? I mean, as far as I can tell, all he does is X or shit or whatever we're calling it.

So, yeah, that's all he does all day long because I have it loaded up and I see it's just a continuous stream of him fucking shitposting. That's it. Yeah, that's all it is. It's like, come on, man. Come on. Here's an interesting one. In a recent report by the Financial Times, it's been revealed that Meta and Google secretly collaborated on a campaign targeting minors with Instagram ads on YouTube, violating Google's own advertising rules.

The ads were directed at users categorized as unknown in Google systems, a label meant to obscure age, but often used to target younger audiences. It's not really obscuring it very well, then, is it? No, no. The campaign, reportedly active in Canada and the U.S. earlier this year, was designed to counter declining ad revenues and the shift of younger users to platforms like TikTok.

Okay. Spark foundry assisted in executing this campaign, and despite Google's policies against targeting individuals under 18, staff allegedly exploited a loophole to push the ads. Google has since canceled the campaign and launched an investigation, reiterating its stance against personalizing ads for minors and promising stricter enforcement of its rules when they get caught.

Now, okay, not cool. Got it. But, in my opinion, the problem here is Google and the loophole. Yeah, exactly. You can't punish people for exploiting loopholes. You need to fix the damn loophole. Right. But it's Google that, it's Google's loophole, you know?

Exactly. And they knew about the loophole, and they said, you can come sell some ads because we have a loophole. See this bucket? See this bucket of kids over here? We have a bucket of children waiting to be... It's a basket of unknowns, Jason. Oh, it's a basket of unknowns. Okay. Well, we have a basket of unknowns.

Could you please, if you give us some money, we will hand you the basket of unknowns. Yes. Well, according to Bloomberg of the New York Times, Meta is in talks with the likes of Keegan-Michael Key, Awkwafina, and Dave Judi Dench, among others, for its AI projects. Notably, off that list, Scarlett Johansson.

Yeah, no shit. The company apparently intends to incorporate their voices into a conversational generative AI slash digital assistant called Meta AI, which I'm sure everybody will be lining up to use, which is rumored to be like Siri and Google Assistant, which could live within Facebook, Meta Hardware, and all the other parts of the multi-million dollar social network company.

The actors' representatives are still negotiating for stricter limits, though SAG-AFTRA has reportedly agreed on terms with Meta, which is interesting. They spent the last couple years fighting against this. Yep. So, I don't know. Like, are there limits on it? Like, we don't know anything about this yet. I can see, yeah, I can see if I had a famous voice, which some say I do.

Nobody says that. Nobody says that. Sure, $20 million to make a conversational AI out of me, fine. But there has to be very strict limits to it. It's only for that. And that's it. And you can't use it for anything else, and you can't port it over and all this other sort of stuff.

So, we'll find out. But it is worth remembering that during its Connect event last year, the company introduced a chatbot platform with 28 characters voiced by celebrities, including Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, and Kendall Jenner, which went away because nobody cared. Yeah.

Well, I'm sure Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, and Kendall Jenner cared because they got paid a boatload of money, I'm sure. Yes. So, they got to be happy about that. If SAG-AFTRA is involved, there's going to be, you know, they're very, very tight on the restrictions on what can be done. The thing about it is if Dame Judi Dench is talking to me, and I can make her say things, I can record those things and then use them somewhere else, like TikTok, which is probably where it's going to go.

I'm just, I am still in awe that Meta has not rebranded yet to AI, you know? I know. Well, they're pushing that Meta AI. I think that he discovered that rebranding is too expensive at the corporate level, especially at the size that they're at right now.

So, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, he could just spin up a new company called AI and put Meta under that, and then Facebook under that, and then, you know. True. Because every time he just comes up with a new name, you know, AI Meta Facebook will be the next one. So the interesting thing here that I found this week was I heard a good story about Eleven Labs is trying to offer famous podcasters money for their back episodes for training their AIs

and their voice recognition systems. Right. And they're offering, not millions, thousands, thousands, Brian. Somebody with over 1,000 episodes was offered only $50,000 for their show. And the catch is they have to provide releases from all of the guests.

Oh, good luck with that. Exactly. How many people still get – I don't know anybody that does releases for podcasts unless you're, you know, doing one of those really boring corporate shows that nobody listens to. Nobody does releases. And even if you did a release, it wouldn't say, you have the right to use my voice for, you know, AI training.

Well, exactly. Because, you know, if somebody comes after me and says, can you sign this release because I want to sell my back episode of a podcast for training, I'd be like, well, where's my cut? Exactly. Yeah. And when you're only getting thousands of dollars, there's not a lot of – there ain't no juice to that squeeze, brother.

Nope. So, yeah. Eleven Labs up your game, you skeezy motherfuckers. Just saying. Just saying.

Well, following a report from the Wall Street Journal that claims OpenAI has been sitting on a tool that can spot essays written by ChatGPT with a high degree of accuracy, the company has shared a bit of information about its research into text watermarking for their AI. So, you know, this is the whole thing like students are basically just having AI write their papers and then the professors are just having AI grade the papers.

So, it's AI all over the place and nobody's really learning anything or getting a degree anymore or doing anything or working or anything. Anyways, they're trying to work on that so that it doesn't happen. They said watermarking is one of its multiple solutions, including classifiers and metadata that is looked into as part of extensive research on the area of text provenance.

It's been highly accurate in some situations but doesn't perform as well when faced with certain forms of tampering, basically gaming the system, like using translation systems, rewording with another generative model, asking the model to insert a special character in between every word and then deleting that character.

So, yes, smart students have figured out ways to get around this, of course. So, yeah, it's going to be whack-a-mole again, of course. Yeah, there's just no way. It's text. Yeah. It's text. It's text. You can't fucking watermark it because, I mean, even anything that I get out of, you know, any of the GPTs, I immediately then run through another one.

And I run it through Grammarly, which finds a million spelling issues or grammar issues from OpenAI. So then it gets run through that, gets reworded, all sorts of stuff. And then I, as a human, go at it and say, yeah, that doesn't sound like anything I would ever say. Let me fix that and do that. And then let me open it up and BB edit and strip any special characters.

Special characters. Exactly. Yes. You know, come on. I even made a droplet for that. Come on. Kids. Kids these days. What do you think we are, stupid? Oh, wait. I'm not a kid anymore. Not even close. I forget. I forget every morning when I wake up and try and jump out of bed and say, hey, let's go skating today.

I remember when I jump out of bed and everything hurts. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, but I got that new bed. Oh, nothing hurts anymore. You have more beds than anybody I've ever known in my entire life. Well, no, I just got the, after the, the eight sleep ones finally died on me, I finally broke down and bought an actual bed.

Yeah. So, but that bed, that bed's the only new one I bought in 10 years. So I'm good. All the other beds I got were free. Well, I'm not saying, I didn't say you paid for them. I just said you've had more beds than anybody I've ever known in my entire life. Well, that was the great thing about eight sleep mattresses.

Those, that stupid cover on the top with all the tubes of water in it kept breaking and ruining the bed and they just kept sending me new ones. So that was my, that's the whole thing. I'm like, just keep sending me new beds. I'm cool. But anyway, it doesn't hurt anymore. So I recommend a new bed, Brian. All right.

All right. OpenAI has issued a warning about the potential emotional impact of its new voice interface for ChatGPT. In a recent safety analysis, we know they didn't do that. The company highlighted concerns that users might become emotionally attracted to the chatbot, which now features a human-like voice, notably not Scarlett Johansson.

The warning is part. This just makes me think of that old William Shatner Saturday Night Live episode. Get a life, people. You're not going to get emotionally attached to an AI voice bot if you actually have friends you talk to. Well, some people don't.

So. Okay. And as we discussed on the other one, we were wrong about the boyfriend-girlfriend on AI. So maybe Lonely Housewives are just chatting with. I'm not entirely convinced we were wrong. Okay. The warning is part of a broader system card for GPT 4.0, detailing risks like societal bias, amplification, and misuse and disinformation, or even weapon development.

So it's probably just Joe Rogan listeners at this point listening to it if you want to go with those caveats. Stellar examples of society. Yeah. Yeah. Open AI's Joaquin Quineiro Candela acknowledges that while the voice mode could offer benefits such as helping lonely individuals, the emotional connections users form with the AI are a significant concern that the company plans to monitor closely.

To monetize. Well, monitor and monetize. So they're going to be listening to you while you get dirty with your chat GPT. So be careful, kids. That's fantastic. Well, Neuralink's brain chip has been implanted into a second patient as part of early human trials, Elon Musk told podcast host Lex Friedman on Saturday, because that's where you put your breaking news.

Exactly. Well, when you don't have a press department anymore. Yeah. They put out a little poop emoji that had neurons. A little brain chip in it. Little prints. The company hasn't disclosed when the surgery took place or the name of the recipient, but he said that 400 of the electrodes on the second patient's brain are working out of the 1,024 implanted.

So I guess that's good. There's a lot of signal, a lot of electrodes. It's working very well, he said, sounding more and more like Trump every day. Well, you know, it's the way it goes. Yeah. So, well, since Neuralink has implanted its second brain computer interface, the first recipient, Nolan Arbaugh, a 30-year-old paralyzed man, revealed that his implant has lost much of its functionality.

So he gets to watch this new guy come along and get their new implant while he's basically sitting there in a corner with nothing going on. And he says it's only down to 10% to 15% of the nodes currently working and doesn't really work anymore. And he says, it's hard to say how much of the enthusiasm comes from Arbaugh's, Musk's fandom, but it does still suck to use his parlance that Neuralink is rushing forward to implant more chips in other brains while his is left with a fraction of its former function.

Wait, you put full self-driving in that guy? Oh, man. So last week, I was talking about how Neuralink was doing their interfaces and the new company Synchron was coming out with their interface that could work with Apple Vision Pro.

And I made an offhanded remark how we'd never heard anything about the body count from Synchron's brain computer interface. So I went out to chat GPT and I just asked it a quick question. I'm like, how many monkeys did Neuralink kill? Neuralink has reportedly killed approximately 1,500 animals since it began its experiments in 2018.

More than 280 sheep, pigs, and monkeys, and specific details don't have exactly everything, but they know that at least 15 monkeys died due to issues related to Neuralink's brain implants. Why couldn't it have been 12 monkeys? I know. Brad Pitt would have been happy. How many monkeys has Synchron killed?

Well, there isn't any specific information available about the exact number of monkeys killed by Synchron in its experiments. And I looked at it. So I had to go dig a little deeper. And I said, why? Why does Synchron not have a body count that we know all about and is being investigated by every animal rights organization on the planet? Well, Synchron doesn't actually drill into your brain, Brian.

Okay, what is it? They strap onto your head? Are you like Lobot from Star Wars? They use stent technology, like you use for your heart, you know, to open up your valves and your veins and your heart and things like that. So basically what they're doing is they're going in through the blood vessels into the brain and using a stent-based brain-computer interface.

So they don't have to drill your head open to shove it in there. Seems smarter. Seems much smarter. Okay. So there you go. And you can probably upgrade it easier, too. No drill required. Right. So. Well, speaking of full self-driving, federal authorities are investigating a fatal Cybertruck crash in Texas that occurred early Monday morning.

The crash, which happened near the Grand Parkway in the greater Houston area, resulted in the vehicle bursting into flames and the driver being pronounced dead at the scene. Initial investigation suggests the Cybertruck veered off the road and hit a culvert around 1.45 a.m. causing the fire. The driver's identity was initially obscured due to severe burns and damage to the vehicle's VIN.

So this is the first fatality of the Cybertruck. All right. Well, you know, I just a personal note, since I've been in Los Angeles, I have seen seven Cybertrucks. Yeah. How can you tell that they're all different? Because they look exactly as what they're saying.

Well, no, because people in Southern California seem to like to customize theirs with like stupid writing on the back. Oh. Oh, you know. Oh. I've seen the fancy Orange County Cybertrucks, apparently, from the people that have. Exactly. Yeah. Anyways, it's funny, because I was like, I saw it, and I saw it, and I was with my family driving, and I was like, Lucas, my son, look at that thing.

Look how stupid that stupid car looks. And he was like, actually, you know, it's kind of cool. If it were like in a video game, not in real life. It's dumb. You got a smart kid there. I know.

Media Candy. Brian, so this week, I got to see Deadpool and Wolverine. I've heard nothing but good things about it, actually. It's so fucking good. Okay. It's so good. It is worth all of the crap Marvel movies that led up to it to get to it.

No, nothing is worth that. Oh, yeah, it is. Okay. It's so good. I mean, because you have to see the other ones to get all the jokes. But it was nothing short of perfect in my book. I really, really, really, really enjoyed it. I also heard that there's a heavy friend of the show, Goo Goo Dolls.

Yes. Presence in the movie. I thought of you as soon as it played. I totally thought of you. It was fantastic. Then I watched American Conspiracy, The Octopus Murders on Netflix. All right. Pretty good. Pretty good if you're into the conspiracy theory, murdery type of thing.

I just applaud the guys who put it together. I mean, they spent over a decade on this thing and seemed to, at the end, kind of figure it out. So, but I don't think they wanted to get sued for slander. So, they kind of alluded to whodunit.

But it's actually well worth the watch. I sent it to a couple other people who watched it and they couldn't put it down. So, I thought it was pretty good in my book. Okay. I don't think, not for me that. I didn't think it was for me either. It's just one of those things where I was just like, okay, it said 98%.

I'll give it a shot. And then within 10 minutes, I was like, okay, I'm down with this. This is cool. Okay. Well, I've had no problem finding things to watch the last two weeks because the Olympics are going on right now. And I like my big sports ball spectacles like that. So, I've been really enjoying it.

That's really all I've been watching. You know, crazy ass sports. Like, it's just stuff I've never even seen or thought of. Hey, breakdancing starts this morning. I know. I saw a little bit of it while I was switching to watch the third place women's soccer game between Germany and Spain, which Germany won.

Go, Germany. Anyways, yeah. So, I've been enjoying the Olympics and that's really all I've been watching. So, I don't really have too much for media candy, except there's some brouhaha that's been going on with the commercials. Well, one in particular. And our good friends Google are back now. And I remember the first time I saw this commercial air and I literally went, what the actual fuck?

It really did piss me off on first view. So, Google is phasing out an Olympics ad halfway through the Olympics, more than halfway through the Olympics, it's already the last week and they're finally phasing it out now. It's an ad for Gemini, of course, the AI-powered chatbot, after receiving widespread criticism for showing a father using AI to help his daughter write a fan letter to her favorite athlete.

Let me reword that. For showing a father using AI to write a fan letter for his daughter to her favorite athlete. Because the daughter was not involved at all. The AI wrote the whole damn letter. And basically, the kid just signs it, which tells you what fucking lesson is that teaching people?

This is what you want us to use your product for. Our child, our own children can no longer write a letter to their favorite athlete. We have to use an AI chatbot for that to write it for us? Are you fucking kidding me? It really was like, it was excruciatingly painful to watch this commercial.

I was mad immediately. My wife is, of course, rolling her eyes at me because I'm like, fucking god damn AI. There had to be more than one person involved in this. So, I wanted to know how, I want to know what the chain of events were that led up to this actually getting made and put on the air.

Well, they said- Did no one pull the handbrake? Google is saying that it got positive testing. I'm like, from people with Neuralink implants? From who? I don't understand. So, yeah, it's really annoying. And now, obviously, people have come out and said that this is ridiculous.

Like, how could you have a child? This is the use case for your AI. This commercial showing somebody having a child use AI to write a fan letter to her hero sucks, wrote Linda Holmes, the host of NPR's pop culture happy hour podcast. And obviously, everybody else went crazy about this, too.

So, apparently, they're pulling it. Link is in the show notes if you've somehow not managed to see this commercial yet. I think it's still up on YouTube. Who knows? Another one. Anyways, and then there's another ad that's on high rotation during the Olympics that's really pissing me off as well.

This is the On Our Way ad from Uber. And this kind of, you know, maybe they should make a partnership with those AI chatbots that are supposed to keep people from being lonely. Because, have you seen this ad, Jason? No, I have not. I haven't seen it, no. The link is also in the show notes.

And this one really pisses me off as well. Because the whole commercial starts off with people being sad. You know, they're at home. Their friend cancels on going out with them. It shows a guy celebrating his birthday by himself. It shows another person just like sitting there and having a drink by themselves because their friends didn't show up.

And they're getting text messages saying, oh, sorry, can't make it. But you know who's going to come and save you from that loneliness, Jason? A hooker? Uber Eats drivers. Because, yes, having a fucking cheeseburger show up cold at five times the price of going and getting it yourself thanks to an underpaid non-employee barely paying his rent sure makes up for your friends bailing on you.

Thanks, Uber. I feel so much better now. Side note, how much did it cost to license the Beatles song that they used in this? But I get it. You can't pay your drivers. I'm going to have to go watch that one now. It fucking angers me.

It's on all the time. I can tell. Oh, God. Yep. Hamburgers make up for a lot of things, Brian. Yeah. I'm sure they do. As long as it's in and out, I guess. But we'll see. I don't know how to follow that one.

So I'll just make this one quick. During his recent appearance at Star Trek Las Vegas, the Orville Scott Grimes confirmed filming on season four begins in either January or February of next year. So the Orville will be coming back for another season. All right.

I'm sure that makes you very happy. Well, the thing is, the thing about the Orville is, Brian, for a while, we didn't have any Star Trek. We didn't have any Star Trek on TV, and it was the best Star Trek. Now it's not. So not exactly sure how that's going to fly.

I got to go back and watch some of the last season again to get kind of caught up. But I kind of remember it kind of hot and cold. Right. Hot and cold. But yeah. Yeah. Now that we have good Star Trek back, I don't know if it's really good. If it's really going to hit the mark.

Apps and doodads. Brian, I've been running iOS and iPadOS 18 for a while now. Right. I was going to ask you because I saw there was updates, which I did, but it's not 18 yet. But 18 beta stable, I guess, is out.

Oh, yeah. Well, there's three versions of the public beta. I'm on version three. And I've been absolutely loving it because I saw on Discord that you said, hey, the iPad's not so bad for doing work. And I'm like, duh. So I wanted to get here. I wanted to get a little follow up on you on what your new iPad life is like.

Oh, no. It was just mostly because I forgot. Because since I've been here, since I came to L.A., I'm just I'm out and about. So I'm on the phone or I actually have like, you know, I'm doing a podcast. So I use my laptop and so my iPad has kind of just been sitting dormant for the first week and a half that I was here.

And then I just picked it up the other day and I was like, my God, this thing is nice. Why don't I use this more often? Why am I sitting around the house with my phone? I could just have the iPad next to me. And the nice part about it is it's just that little bit less less holdable. So I don't just keep scrolling like I just do what I need to do and then put the iPad down.

So it's great. I love it. I'm going to start existing more on the iPad than other devices. Yeah, I just I like the because I've got the the first M1 iPad Pro, the the big one. And for me, it's just less eye strain, so much less eye strain.

I have a hard time seeing that distance. I have to switch glasses all the time because I'm old and it's a pain. But with the iPad 12 inch, it's great. So I do a lot more work on mine and I still love my favorite email client is Spark. So it marries. The iPad version is fantastic because it works with the desktop version and it's all beautiful.

But yeah, I've been absolutely loving the 18 version, especially just the customizations you can do with the main screens, the colorized icons and no names. You can finally turn off the damn text. Isn't it crazy? It's we went like for 20 years.

We went without being able to customize anything. And now it's all back. I know. Where's my ResEdit, baby? Damn right. I want a spinning cursor. So it's great. And another thing that I've been using it for lately, too, is using it as a secondary monitor and using Affinity Designer with it.

So then I can use my iPad Pencil and actually use it kind of as a Wacom tablet. Right. So when I'm drawing, I can actually draw with it, which is fantastic. And when I want to, I can just actually not use it as I use it on with my Mac Studio with Affinity Designer because I have all my fonts and everything because it's actually running the desktop version.

The thing is, when I want to, I can just pop that same design open later to save everything to iCloud and work on it standalone on my iPad when I'm in bed. It's great. Just the cross compatibility with the Affinity stuff is awesome. I'm still not going to touch any of the Adobe Cloud stuff because we've heard some horror stories about that.

And I want to get rid of it as soon as possible once I finish cutting out all this crap. It just makes me sick to give Adobe any more money. But yeah, they got enough money for me for a lifetime. Yeah, no doubt. Although, granted, Brian, you and I did steal a lifetime worth of Adobe products up until we could afford to pay for them.

All right, so it's a push. Yeah, it totally is. It totally is. My host file, which I haven't actually edited in probably a decade, still has all the blocks for Adobe. Oh, me too. And I'm putting a link to an iPad case in here.

If you do have an iPad Pro, you can get the super expensive Magic Keyboard case, which I have and I use sometimes. But there's another case that I found for $21 or $22 that is my favorite case in the world. It's just this really lightweight magnetic case with a foldable cover.

It makes a little stand out of it. But it has a flap that covers the side for your iPad or your iPencil, Apple Pencil, whatever the fuck they call the goddamn thing. Told you, COVID. My Apple Pencil, so it doesn't fall out. That's the other thing. It's the one thing that none of the Apple things have. My pencil always falls off.

It's a great case. It is durable. I've used it for a couple of years now and it looks brand new. So $22, one of the greatest ones. So link in the show notes for that. All right. Now, in some just funny news, Humane's daily returns are outpacing sales in news that will shock absolutely no one.

So more people are returning the Humane AI pin than they're selling. Look, you return your one AI pin for $699, you can get two rabbits. Yeah, seriously. And then return those too. Yeah, I heard there was a rabbit update this week too. I didn't look too far into it, but yeah.

Yeah, who cares? These devices are dumb. Yeah, no shit. Well, something that I will like is apparently California DMV is going to put their driver's licenses into your Apple wallet, finally. So we've been able to do this in a couple states already.

I think five states in the U.S. currently offer this. Arizona, Maryland, Colorado were the first. And then Georgia and Ohio just added it last week, but it's coming soon to California via a leak or not really a leak, but an update on the Apple wallet Wikipedia page, which lists California as an upcoming state.

So pretty soon, basically, I'm going to be able to walk out of the house with nothing but my phone. I look forward to that. You don't live in California, Brian. You live in Canada. Give me time. Okay. Okay. Is that a little hope I hear in your voice? A little. Okay.

Okay. So I'm like, dude, you're fucking Canadian. Don't be giving me that shit. Turncoat. I'm a citizen of the world, Jason. Whatever. So we talked about Sonos's app for the last couple of weeks.

Sonos is dealing with major user backlash following its poorly received app update, which is set to cost the company up to, wait for it, $30 million. Oh. Okay. The costs come from app updates, customer support, and winning back customers and partners and are necessary to right the ship for the long term, according to the CEO.

Or they could just spend the money making a good app. Yeah. Well. Yeah. The thing is, why don't they just revert to the old one and I'd be fine. The old one sucked, but not nearly as much. You listening, Overcast? Yeah. Yeah. Well, apparently he's been listening, too, because people have been writing in with one-star reviews on iTunes, and to keep his rating proper, he's scrambling to fix a lot of the stuff.

Right. And stuff that you could tell from the latest ATP that he's not very happy to be, quote unquote, fixing. So, well, tough shit. Oh, here's the thing, update. I have not used Overcast since like two episodes ago when we first started talking about it because it was so bad, and I just kept screwing everything up, and it really screwed up that whole Sobercast thing that I was working on.

It really pissed me off. So, I went back to, believe it or not, Apple Podcasts. Oh, I'm using it again, too. Yeah. Don't get me wrong. It still fucking sucks. Oh, it sucks, but it sucks less. It sucks less. And you know what sucks even lesser? Discovery.

I've been listening to a lot more new podcasts because they've got built in pretty good discovery. Right. And they make it really easy. That's the one thing, Overcast, I've kind of given them a pass because for me, it actually helped me listen to fewer podcasts because their discovery mechanism was just always garbage.

I mean, we gamed it how many years in a row? Whatever. Yeah, we tried. But now that I have a... No, we successfully did. We should have kept doing it. Look at our numbers. Just the way that everything kind of melds together makes it super easy. So, I can just pop in, grab an episode or two or something when I've just got some time and nothing in the queue.

And I've just kind of discovered a few new shows that I'm not going to keep listening to. But it's just, it's nice to have that option there. Yeah. So, I know that there are other... Yeah. That's the killer for me with the Overcast update because I used to just have, it would just be whatever podcasts I'm subscribed to.

The newest episodes I hadn't listened to were right there. Now, every single podcast I'm subscribed to is on that queue. And I'm like, how do I find out which ones only have new episodes? You ruin this functionality for me. Yeah. I actually made a smart playlist in Overcast I've been using for a couple of years that made that a lot easier.

And the functionality on that was screwed up because the design is so screwed up because I don't know if it's an episode or a podcast. That's why I accidentally deleted the entire fucking podcast. Right. So, I'm going to start investigating other podcast players for iOS because I know there are a ton out there.

I used to have them all on my phone, but I got rid of them because Overcast did the job. And I'll do what I always do. You'll pick one, I'll wait three years, and then I'll start using it. Yeah, exactly. And since I know, and I'm preaching to the choir here because I looked at our stats, more than half of you guys listening to this show right now listen to us on Overcast, which is amazing since Overcast has like almost no percent of the market.

Well, if you run the numbers, that kind of makes sense. Yeah. And if you, but this comes back to our gaming of the actual rankings in Overcast actually did work because that's where everybody came from. But it was them who did the gaming for us. So, you guys, you guys did it for us.

So, thank you. Thank you. But anyway, if you guys come up with anything new that we can use to listen to podcasts, we'll take it. We'll take it. So, anyway, Sonos stepped on their dick. 30 million bucks. Yep. Okay. Finish up here. Home security giant ADT admits it has been hacked, which I, who cares?

Because ADT, anybody that gets ADT puts a big fucking sign on their lawn that says, I use ADT. So, no sensitive information like credit card or banking info was accessed, but your home address might have been leaked with your email address. Which, again, has a big sign in front of it saying, I use ADT.

So, you know, there you go. So, there you go. And I saw this one that just made me scratch my head. Thursday, the dating app that you can use only on Thursdays expands to San Francisco. Yes, Brian, there is a dating app that only works for one day a week on Thursday for some strange reason.

Well, yeah, we have lost all self-control, apparently. Yeah, I guess so. The theory? Right. That's the theory. Yes. And you can only match with 10 people per day or more with a paid subscription. So, if you're really trying to stack up your weekend and you need more than 10 people, slut mode.

How much does it cost for Wednesday? Seriously. Oh, man. And OpenAI has released an update for its ChatGPT app on the Mac, enhancing multitasking capabilities. The new version introduces a side-by-side ChatGPT window accessible with option space, allowing users to interact with ChatGPT while working in other apps.

It actually works really well. I use it all the time. So, it's kind of nice not having to switch apps. You just be there, you hit option space bar, and then boom, just keep typing and then make it go away when you're done. So, it's pretty nice. You have to do the updates manually.

Even though I say automatically update, I click the checkbox, it doesn't. So, there you go.

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With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. Welcome to the Dark Side with Dave, with podcast superhost Dave Bittner.

Dave is the host of the CyberWire 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 host of Control Loop because industrial machines have feelings too. And only malware in the building because Dave has an addiction to podcasting, apparently.

That is true. It's sort of a monument to too much of a good thing, isn't it? Yeah. Would that be podcasting or a paycheck?

Because I could be addicted too if somebody wanted to keep paying me to make shows. That's true. I should not complain. I should not complain. But, yeah. I'm hanging in there today, gents. I'm hanging in there today. Anyway, we'll get to that.

How are you? How are you? How are things? Well, I'm going to Disneyland tomorrow. So there's that. I'm in Southern California right now. How are you doing? Yeah, yeah. We're our first of three trips to Disneyland on this trip will be tomorrow, which will be nice and have a nice time.

And then we're saving two more trips for at the very end of our sojourn here in Southern California because they are doing the Halloween makeover for the entire land early this year. And my son is a huge Halloween fan, so it's very exciting. We're looking forward to it.

Oh, that's nice. Are you going to do California Adventure as well? Yes, we will do California Adventure. Not tomorrow, though. Tomorrow is purely the main park day. Okay. Nice. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Well, I'm envious. I am overdue for my Disney fix.

Yes, it'll be a good time. Speaking of Disney properties, a little bit of Star Wars news here. We are spoiled for Star Wars content, as we've discussed. We have only one new show coming out this year still, though, Skeleton Crew, which I think airs next month. I can't really remember the exact date.

But other than that, we're waiting quite a bit until late next year while other shows are being filmed or whatever. But I have extolled the virtues and the high enjoyment that I get out of the Lego Star Wars shows that they put out on Disney+. And we are getting a new one of those, which I'm very excited about.

Lego Star Wars Rebuild the Galaxy will be available September 13th. All of these have been absolutely just a real hoot. They're incredibly funny. And looking forward to this one very much, as is my son. In fact, my son is so looking forward to it. He has already picked what his birthday gift should be, which is a new Lego set, $179, I must point out, Lego set, that is based from this show.

And it's the Dark Falcon, which is the whole idea of this new Lego show is the whole Star Wars universe gets mixed up. So like, you know, because they use Lego bits. So this is the Jar Jar, the evil Jedi Jar Jar Binks, the Sith Jar Jar, I guess. This is now his ship.

He has the Dark Millennium Falcon. And it's a pretty cool looking set, I got to say. So I think he might be getting this for his birthday. Right. Brian, I want to just bring you back for a minute. We actually had a show episode called Dar Jar. So stick with the...

Sorry, Dar Jar. Got to give props to Dar Jar. We're Dar Jar. Dar Jar and the Dark Falcon. So, yes. Isn't this just another opportunity for the Star Wars universe to sell you a slightly different version of something you already own? It is a Lego branded show for Star Wars.

So, yes. But I mean the Lego set itself. Like, I'm sure you have no... Do you already have a different Lego Millennium Falcon? I do. There you go. So now you're going to have a black one. This one comes in black, Dave. Right. Exactly. Exactly.

This one's black. What I'm most impressed with when it... Yes. What I'm most impressed with is when I see folks who download something like the big Lego Millennium Falcon, which, by the way, I own.

But it isn't black, Dave. No, it is not. No. It is... Let me tell you, it is a death march of gray pieces when you're assembling it. But the people who will build one out of just all the different color pieces, just all the pieces they have, you know, found pieces...

A Skittles version? Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. A Skittles version of the Millennium Falcon. Yeah. I like that as well. Yeah. I agree. It takes me back to when, you know, when I was a kid, all of my X-Wings were completely red because that's what I had.

And so they were just red. And, you know... I remember when the original Bendy piece came out, this was just a major development because it meant that my... My X-Wing wings could open and close.

Ooh. Yeah. Yeah. This was a big deal. There are Bendy pieces? I mean, a hinged piece. So, you know, like a... Yeah. A piece that has a hinge on it that can open and close. This is a new development.

Yeah. This was way past my time. Oh, wow. Okay. See, when I was a kid, we called that a Bendy piece. And when I was probably, I don't know, six or seven, I think, is when that piece was introduced into the Lego universe.

We just must not have been able to afford it then because I was still using Legos then. So, for sure. No, it's an amazing piece of technology. So, you know, I'm a few years older than you. So, I was, you know, it's possible that this was...

Well, this would have been existing by the time you were using... Yeah, that's what I'm saying. We were just poor. So, I don't think we could afford the Bendy piece. So, I missed out on that, you posh motherfucker. Well, you know what? Actually, for me, I had to... So, up the street from me, there was a kid named Jason.

And Jason was an only child. So, Jason had all the Legos. And I did not. That's the alter Jason. Right, exactly. Most of my Lego was handed down or came from yard sales or things like that.

Or I guess I had some aunts and uncles who would provide me with Lego. But, yeah, I mean, I'm curious. It's always been expensive. I love the idea that Dave has a guy down the street growing up. It's Mirror Universe, Jason, a nine-year-old with a beard.

I was saying, did he have a goatee? Did this evil Jason have a goatee at nine years old? I want to know. At the age of seven, no, he did not. Okay, okay. But, yeah, but it was definitely... There was definitely a big difference between his supply of Lego and mine because he was an only child.

And so his parents didn't have to split their... Well, his parents didn't have to split their indulgences between three kids like mine did. Also, you mentioned parents. I never had two of those at any given time. So that wouldn't make sense. I see. Yes, yes.

Yeah. Also, Jason's parents were both intellectuals and college educated, which my parents were not. So I think they looked at it as... Their excuse was that Lego is an intellectual, educational toy.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I try to tell myself as I buy a yet-haired set for myself. Sure. Whatever it takes to justify. Whatever it takes. Jason, if it makes you feel any better when my son is done with the set, I'll bring it over and give it to you. Oh, thanks, guys. You're welcome, man. Does it have a bendy piece? I'll try to find a hinge.

Okay. So I am a little bit discombobulated today. I woke up last night at about two in the morning. You ever have that thing happen where you wake up in the middle of the night and it takes you a second to realize that the house is way too quiet and you're not sure why?

Usually something's beeping when that happens. Yeah. So for me, yesterday evening, we had the remnants of, I guess it was Tropical Storm Debbie came up through our neck of the woods. And so we got hard driving rain for a couple of hours.

And so I woke up at about two in the morning and something fell off. It turns out we had no power. I said, okay, we've got no power. That's not a big deal. Well, we rarely lose power where I live because all of our power is buried.

Right. This is both a blessing and a curse because it's great that you hardly ever lose power. But when you do lose power, it means they're digging up your lawn. It's a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. Even just finding it. So anyway, get up this morning.

Power is still out. I go and I check the circuit breaker to make sure it's not an issue on my end. Go out and look at the smart meter that we have. And it's kind of like blinking on and off. So I'm thinking, okay, you know, get out. Is it flashing 12? Yes, exactly.

I got out my multimeter and checked one of the outlets to make sure there was no voltage coming into the house whatsoever. So I go and log on to the app that our electrical supplier has.

This is a BG&E, Baltimore Gas and Electric. And it says that there was an outage at 1145 that affected about a dozen homes, but it's been resolved. And so I go look out the front door. Now, I'll remind you that I live in a townhouse, right?

And there's common power running to our homes. And I look at the house next to me. They have power. I do not have power. All the other houses in the neighborhood have power except for me. The streetlights are on. I'm the only one without power.

And so I submit into the app that I don't have power. And a few seconds later, well, minutes later, I see it gets updated. This issue has been resolved. Like, well, you know, the problem, Dave, is they saw that your security camera was still working because of all the solar power.

Yeah. So the battery backups. The water wheel. See, yeah, right. The windmill, the rats on a, yeah, the illegal nuclear substation I've spun up using the lake as a cooling water.

So I'm like, I assure you, I am sitting in the dark with no power. So I did the sensible thing that all men do, which is I had my wife call them. And so she, actually, I misspoke.

I didn't have my wife call them. My wife called them. And she got in touch with a person, a real live person, but quick and, and got them to notate that, no, in fact, we are sitting in the dark. However, we're still in the dark.

The power has not been restored. And on the one hand, I don't blame them because we're one home and they're out there fixing 50 homes at a time because of the storms that came through last night. So I can imagine them bumping us down to the bottom of the priority list.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, Dave. Exactly. Exactly. And also, I would not blame them for thinking that, oh, this idiot's circuit breaker is blown and he doesn't know it. But again, I tested my circuit breaker.

My circuit breaker was not blown. It's all fine. So anyway, when we, when I get off the line with you, I'm going to head home and pull out of the closet, my backup generator so that I can at least power my refrigerator, my chest freezer that's downstairs and what else?

I don't know. That's probably about it for now. Is it wrong that when you said that you were going to go home and grab out of your closet, I immediately pictured a full furry suit with an electrician's hat and a cool belt on it? Well, if that's wrong, I don't want to be right. Yeah. Now that's some show artwork.

I think, I think that was in my head because I turned on the news this morning because we had a, we had a standoff a couple of houses away from us and I was looking through the news because we had news helicopters and police helicopters and sirens and everything, just spinning the news, trying to find out what was going on. And then on one of the news channels, I just stopped and goes, Hey, it's furry Friday.

I'm like, Oh, do tell more. Tell more. Just about stupid pets or something. I'm imagining one of my neighbors calling in and them saying like 911. What's your emergency? And there is a giant, uh, furry fox that is messing with the power meter outside of one of the homes in our neighborhood.

Uh, can you just send someone over to check it out? Wait, belay that. We now see someone in the storm trooper helmet. That's right. That's right. So anyway, um, look, modern living. I shouldn't, I shouldn't complain. This rarely happens.

Uh, and yet here we are. I'm just hoping we don't lose a freezer full of food or anything like that. We're all, we're all fine. It's mostly just a nuisance and part of modern life. So, yes. Speaking of nuisances and modern lives, um, and, and I'm, I'm keying off of the grumpy in, uh, the show's title.

Um, last week my father took a tumble. Uh, and he's fine. Uh, he was lucky enough that he, he got a little lightheaded. And again, my father is elderly. Uh, he got a little lightheaded and he fell in his bedroom and he landed on the nice soft carpeted floor of his bedroom.

Didn't bump into any furniture, didn't whack his head on anything, came, came away from it bruise free. Um, but, um, I went over to help take care of him and make sure he was okay. And we decided that a lot, me and my sister decided better safe than sorry, let's go to the emergency room and just have them do tests on him and see maybe what, what, what it could have been that caused him to be lightheaded just in case there is something seriously wrong.

Um, so we did and we went to our local hospital, which is, um, part of the world famous, uh, Johns Hopkins medical system, uh, world renowned for being a quality medical system.

And, uh, we went to the emergency room and they, uh, checked us in very quickly. I noticed the emergency room was pretty full, what I would consider full, probably about 20 people in there. Um, they quickly did, um, what's the term for it when they establish what your status is when you come into an emergency room?

Uh, triage. Triage. Thank you. That's the word I was, I could not grasp. Yeah. So they, so they quickly triaged him, you know, got his vitals to talk to him, make sure that he wasn't in any immediate, uh, danger. And then we sat for 14 hours. Jesus.

That sounds about right. And over the course of the 14 hours, we did move from the waiting room to a hallway because there were no available rooms. Now, let me just say we have, uh, well, I used to believe we had a very nice hospital and we recently expanded our hospital.

We, we recently expanded our emergency room. Um, by the end of the, the, the, the day when we were waiting in the hallway, I went through the waiting room again to go down to the cafeteria to get my father a sandwich. There were probably 40 people in the waiting room, uh, and all the rooms were full.

And so I'm just thinking to myself, like, how, how is this the thing? How is it that we have the most expensive healthcare system in the world? Right. And yet, let me tell you, Dave deal with here is why emergency rooms are, are shit basically everywhere now because health insurance is too damn expensive.

People don't pay for it. And if you don't have health insurance, you go to the emergency room. So the emergency room becomes the de facto place that almost everybody just goes now, no matter what has happened or when, because they don't have doctors, they don't have health insurance and they don't go through the normal things that all of us that do have those things go through.

That's the problem. Well, there's another, there's another side of that too, at least here in Southern California, uh, before you get to the emergency room, we have what's called urgent care here now, which is at every strip mall known to man, because it is a nice side business for a lot of people. Yes. So first you go to the urgent care and then once you can't get served at the urgent care, because the line is all the way around the block, then you go to the emergency room.

Because even if you do have insurance, uh, you can't get a doctor on the phone to get an appointment and they just say, go to the emergency room because that's what they tell everybody now. And another side, side note here, uh, the medical system in the U S is pretty crap unless you're rich, because if you're rich, you could hire a doctor to come to your house and look at your father.

That's true. You can do that here now too. There's the, the house call has made a comeback. Yes, it has. Right, right. The whole concierge medical thing, medical practices. Yeah. But lucky us, they're on it with the AI. So pretty soon you could have just asked your Alexa device to, to take a look at your dad.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just, you know, it's partly frustrating because I think it, um, like we have these, um, fantasies about our, uh, our medical system. Like a lot of people will say, oh, we can't have public healthcare because then you'll wait, have to wait forever to get your medical services.

And I'm like, which is what we're doing now. I was going to say that's different than what? Right. I, yeah. Let me, let me speak of this as somebody who has been living in one of these socialized countries with socialized medicine for about four years now. Um, if it is not urgent, you will wait.

If it is urgent, you will not wait. I have waited far longer to be seen and taken care of in, in the medical services systems in the United States than I ever have in Canada. So suck it. Socialized medicine is awesome. Now I have to say that every, all of the people in this facility were fantastic.

They were all very, they're all overwhelmed. That's all. Exactly. Exactly. Um, it just took forever for anybody to have the time to come take care of us. Uh, and so he ended up staying the night, which, which of course involved waiting for a room to open up.

Um, so again, more time sitting in the hallway while we wait for a room in our hospital to become available. Um, it's just, it's that disconnect between the, um, it makes me wonder like, where's the money going? Right.

And I know that people are going to answer and they're going to say pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, all that sort of thing. And I'm sure those are the answers. Um, but it's, it's just really frustrating when you're in the midst of it and all you want to do is make sure that your loved one is being cared for.

Yeah. I mean, there's just a, again, like you said, you have this expectation of what things are going to be like until you're actually in it. And then you realize how broken it all is. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I wonder if your dad was anything like my, was your, was your dad anything like, but how my dad was in those kinds of situations, which is like, he's just sitting there.

And then my dad would just start going, I'm fine. Can we please go home? I just want to go to bed. I'm fine. I'm fine. Can we leave now? My father, um, actually more than anything, uh, looked at it as an opportunity to charm all of the nurses.

Oh, okay. Yeah. My dad, my dad liked to do that with waitresses. That was his thing. Yes. Yes. He's, he's that guy. So, uh, and I, and I think probably rightly, and the evidence did probably play out that he believes that, uh, by being really, really nice and complimentary, uh, and because he's as old as he is, he gets away with it without being creepy because it's just, oh,

look at, look, had that adorable old fashioned old man, you know, telling me how lovely I look and calling me honey, you know, like, you know, they just, they just slapped people's asses back in the day. That's right. That's just what they did. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, uh, he, yeah, I don't, he, somehow he makes it work. Uh, he, he's still, he's 90 years old, but he still has a twinkle in his eye. So, uh, it helps. I'm glad to hear he's good too, that he, that he's, he's, he's, he's great. Actually, so tying back into something we've talked about before, one of the outcomes of this is that my father now has an Apple watch.

There we go. There you go. With ball detection. Yes. All right. Yes. Yes. So hopefully the Apple watch will stick and it won't be too complicated for him. Um, I, I, I, yeah, you know what I'm talking about?

Like if I'm just wondering slap, slap an air tag on him and you're all covered. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, long ago, I, long ago I put an air tag on his car keys, which has paid great dividends. Oh yes. That's smart. Yeah.

Yeah. But you're right. Hmm. I put a, give him an air tag necklace. That's not, it's not a bad idea actually. Actually, you can track the watch so you can just set it up to share. So, so you're fine. You don't need to air. Yeah. The poor old man. I'm just concerned that the watch is could, will end up being too complicated for him.

Like he's going to end up deep in some menu and, and he will get frustrated that the watch no longer tells time because he's looking at the settings menu all the time or something like that. So we'll see, but that's where we are. And, and by the way, air tags don't run out of juice and the watch runs out of juice pretty quick.

So you still might want to, you know, staple an air tag to him. That's true. That's a good idea. Dad, I need you to turn around for a second. This is only going to hurt for a minute. Is that, is that a nail gun, son?

Yes, it is. All right, guys, I got to go. The police activity has ticked back up here. So I need to go find out what's going on. Good luck. See you guys. Talk to you next week. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Pavel.

Welcome, Pavel. All right. Thank you so much. Over at PayPal, we've got Levy and Ralph. Thank you. And over at the tip jar, we've got Sarah. It's been a light week for us, Brian. A little bit. Kids need some shoes. Mm-hmm. And remember, everybody, if you want to help support the show and get the show ad free and a little bit early and in high definition, go to patreon.com slash GOG.

Help us out. It starts at three bucks a month. You can give us more if you want. But yeah, a little three bucks. Wouldn't hurt. Wouldn't hurt. Pretty please. Or more. Or more. Or more. Yeah. We'll take more. Sadly, no reviews this week either. Boo.

Boo. All right, Brian. I got this last one for you. This goes just for you. In El Paso Middle School, Charles Middle School has banned students from wearing all black clothing, citing concerns over its association with depression and mental health issues. Oh, go fuck yourselves.

Yeah. Come on. I wore all black every day my entire life, basically. And I, okay, maybe some depression and mental health issues. But they were there regardless of the clothing, people. Treat the problem, not the symptom. No, this is dumb. I mean, if I were going to this school, because that's the type of kid I was, too, I would still be wearing all black and I'd be wearing a pair of black socks that had a red stripe on them and be like, fuck you.

I'm wearing color. Yep. Then you'd be like, oh, shit, we're in Texas. It's really hot outside. Maybe I should wear some white. Screw that. There's summer. Summer goth is a thing. Yes, it is. Sweaty summer goth. 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 660. Feeling generous? Keep this top-notch entertainment rolling by dropping us a few bucks at GOG.show slash donate. And spread the grumpiness. There's a share button in every podcast player out there.

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