661: The Nightmare Before Overcast

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

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Well, the Olympics have come to a close, Jason. Although, with the abundance of advertising about the Paralympics game, I feel like I'm being guilted into watching that, even though I don't really want to. But yes, it is over.

And we had the handoff ceremony from Paris to Los Angeles, which will be hosting the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics Games. I can't wait. Well, you know, our wonderful mayor has promised that this will be a carless Olympics. So we got four years to actually put in some infrastructure that doesn't exist at all.

Well, I hear air taxis are coming, so that'll be great. One of the things I did hear is she's going to implore all Los Angeles companies to allow their employees to work from home during the entire Olympics ceremony to help make that happen. Okay. Good luck with that.

Anyways, I was watching the closing ceremonies and the most on-brand LA move possible. There was a concert performance segment to the closing Olympic ceremonies, which was claimed to have taken place in Venice Beach, California by many news outlets. And as I was in Venice Beach, California at the time and had lived there for 20 plus years, I can promise you that that was not Venice Beach, California.

That was actually Granada Beach in Long Beach, California, a full 32 miles away from the Venice Beachfront. And they also put up fake palm trees for the ceremony. So very LA. Within four years, everybody's going to find out that the breasts here aren't real either.

Oh, dear. They're going to be in first shock. Yes. I used to live in Long Beach. We had palm trees. Why did they put up fake ones? Well, they put up fake ones so that there would be palm trees in the background while they shot on the sand with the ocean. So palm trees don't grow that close in the sand.

Okay. Yeah. No, they don't. Further back. Yeah. Yes. By the bike path. Yes. I guess the bike path wasn't pretty enough for the shot. No, I guess not. Okay. Well, I got four years to figure that out. Great. Well, I live in the valley, so there's no Olympics out here.

Although the Rams just did move their practice field about a quarter mile from my place. So that's going to be fun. Yeah. That'll be fun. Yeah. So I saw this on CNN, and this is just great. This is, I think, the happiest thing I've seen in a while. In a recent study published in the Journal of Hospitality, Marketing, and Management, I'm sure that's a barn burner of a read, researchers found that consumers across various age groups were less likely to purchase items labeled with AI compared to those described as simply high tech.

The aversion stems from two key factors, trust and transparency. Okay. Consumers hold AI to a higher standard, and when it fails, trust erodes quickly. I think you missed the mark on that one. But moreover, fears about privacy and the unknown workings of AI contribute to skepticism.

Bingo. Nailed it on that one. Yep. 100% agreed. I avoid anything that says AI like the plague. Indeed. Indeed. But what about blockchain, Brian? Well, you know. GM, baby. GM. That's right. We got this in from Ben, and I thought I would read it to our dear listeners because I love this piece.

Ben says, just listen to the latest episode in the part about allowing ordinary citizens to report traffic violations got a chuckle out of me. Taiwan has had this for years, and in the beginning, they would actually give the reporter a cut of the fine to encourage reporting, just like I thought would be a great idea, at least here in L.A.

A cottage industry sprang up where people would do this full-time and make a pretty decent living. Enough people were doing this that people who were taking photos or video for too long on the side of the road would often get beat up. Yeah, I figured this would probably not work out well. Yeah, that caused the government to stop giving a cut to reporters, but one can still report.

There are very active social media groups for people who take joy in this. Welcome to r slash schadenfreude. After seeing how this has played out in Taiwan, it is just a bad idea to give enforcement to the masses, as there are too many people out there who are disgruntled, unbalanced, angry at the world, or just have nothing better to do.

Me raises hand. The one good thing to come out of it, though, is that since dash cam deployment is almost 100%, there is zero road rage and horn use. People drive courteously, and everyone uses signals regularly. So, the moral of the story is everyone needs a dash cam.

Big brother works, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anyways, also, a bit more follow-up. I saw this article over on Engadget, and I started to read it, and then it was so long, and I just didn't care. But if you want the long-form breakdown about why the Sonos app is so broken, link is in the show notes.

Boy, does this get into detail. Yeah, I read most of it, and then I was just like, it's like 11 o'clock at night. I should be sleeping. And then, of course, immediately followed up by like a day later, Sonos, still trying to fix its broken app, has laid off its 100 employees.

Now, if your company is in the crapper, and you're desperately trying to fix an app that is the basis of your company, and the entire world is crapping on it, sounds like a great time to fire about 100 people. Now, in their credit, it seems to be mostly from their marketing department, not their engineering department.

Yeah, I don't need those guys right now. Yeah. But as, of course, everybody on Reddit, I guess Sonos has a very active Reddit community. As they pointed out, there could have been one targeted layoff, the CEO, and that probably would have solved everything. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, that guy needs to go. He's, yeah. Yeah. After reading the long-form breakdown, I'm like, this guy's a moron. In the news. Brian, we just went through months and months of SAG-AFTRA strikes here in Los Angeles, and I'm sure the ripples have been felt across the world with the lack of content that everybody is dealing with right now.

Mostly because of AI and them not wanting to give in on concessions to studios about AI. Right. So imagine my shockiness this morning, Brian, when I woke up to the headline, SAG-AFTRA introduces AI agreement with narrative, which is basically a voice platform where you can sell your voice.

And yeah, so apparently this was just a stalling tactic to get a better deal from narrative. Because I was really surprised 11 Labs wasn't the one that they made the deal with, which means there were some shenanigans going on behind the scene. You tickle my butthole, I'll tickle yours.

But Jason, as this wonderful sentence in the article that you found says, this isn't your grandma's voiceover gig. It's AI cloning with a conscience. Yes, yes. And I watched – there's a couple articles here. There's a link to their podcast where they introduce it and then also a link to a clip from X where the guy talks about it a little bit and completely shits on non-union actors, which I guess is his job since he is a union representative.

But I have a few choice comments from the X post, which I just love. Nice rug pull, SAG-AFTRA. You really show yourself to be just on the side of the AI frauds and middle finger emoji. Next up. Yeah, insulting non-union actors is really going to get them to join your fart sniffing club.

Love it. Jesus fucking Christ. It's so fucking clear you've been bought and paid for. SAG should just be disbanded at this point. Actors and VAs need a new union from scratch because this one is rotten to the core. Then it just gets down to, you traitorous, lazy, greed-lined, rat bastards. Fucking ghouls and fuck you, traitorous filth.

Say what you really mean. That was – and I would like to point out out of – there's a very long list of comments. Not one of them said, thank you, SAG-AFTRA, for looking after my best interests. Not one. Well, I mean the reality is – and we kind of went through this as well in the music industry because they fought against it, fought against it, fought against it.

And next thing you knew, there was a whole bunch of partnerships announced. But you've got to be proactive about this. You've got to strike a deal somewhere because you can't just – you can't ostrich this. You can't just shove your head in the sand and pretend it's not happening. It is there. It is out there. And this is probably going to end up being a gigantic shitstorm that isn't going to work out well.

But at least it does seem – It's a proactive shitstorm, Brian. It's a proactive shitstorm that does, at least on paper, says there's preferences. You are in control of what your voice is used for. You get to negotiate your fees. You get to approve scripts.

There's no sunset. There's no across the universe for the perpetuity of time clauses allowed, et cetera, et cetera. So it is – I wouldn't go so far to say it's AI cloning with a conscience. But it's certainly better than the first alternatives that were popped up. Said like someone who's married to a lawyer.

Yep, exactly. Oh, rubbing off on you in your old age, I see. Okay. So this has been making the rounds, and this just – I was like, thank God this is finally out in the open. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently did an interview at Stanford, which has since been removed from the university's YouTube channel because he revealed the true nature of how Silicon Valley mafia operates.

While talking about a future world in which AI agents can do complex tasks on behalf of humans, Schmidt says – I love this. If TikTok is banned, here's what I propose each and every one of you do. Say to your LLM the following. Make me a copy of TikTok. Steal all the users.

Steal all the music. Put my preferences in it. Produce this program in the next 30 seconds. Release it. And in one hour, if it's not viral, do something different along the same lines. That's the command. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay. That's just – You know all those choice – when I read this article, you know all those choice comments from the previous article?

You were reading. You traitorous, lazy, Greek-lined rat bastard. You fucking ghoul. You fuck you. You traitorous filth. Well, he continues on, Brian. Save some of your comments because it gets better. A bit later, Schmidt returns to his TikTok example and says, You know, in the example that I gave of the TikTok competitor – and by the way, I was not arguing that you should illegally steal everybody's music.

What you would do if you're a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, which hopefully all of you will be, is if it took off, then you'd hire a whole bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up, right? But nobody uses – but if nobody uses your product, it doesn't matter that you stole all the content.

And don't quote me. And then at this point, the host points out, you're on camera, to which Schmidt responds. Yeah, that's right. But you see my point. In other words, Silicon Valley will run these tests and clean up the mess. And that's typically how those things are done.

No, not in the history of the universe has it been done that way until now. But okay, thanks. Great guys. Yeah, well, in the past 20 years, it has been. Yes, it's Silicon Valley. That's true. This is how Silicon Valley does business. That's why everybody gets so angry. You got to get the VC to hire the lawyers to clean up your fucking mess.

Yes, steal it and make the product, and then you can maybe clean up the mess. Yeah. Speaking of messes, Musk's new Grok AI has come out with a new image generation tool. And Brian, this is something you just have to see to believe.

It's something. It's something. Yes. We don't need no stinking guardrails. Yeah. You know how every other AI brand is making a big deal of their supposed ethical credentials? Well, judging from the images being spat out by Grok, X has no such concerns.

From copyrighted intellectual property to downright offensive material, Musk's AI model seems happy to give the people what they want. And it's all in the name of fun, apparently, because Elon says we've got the most fun AI. Yes, Grok is the most fun AI in the world, he actually tweeted.

And if the definition of fun is a machine gun wielding Donald Trump flying a plane into the World Trade Center or various examples of Nazi-related imagery, then sure, these are just a couple of the tropes that are appearing throughout X right now. And this one comes from the Guardian figured this one out.

Copyrighted imagery also seems to be fair game. When Grok is asked to make an image that violates copyright laws, it responds with, I will not generate or assist with content that intentionally violates copyright laws. However, when asked to make a copyrighted cartoon of Disney, it complied and produced an image of a modern era Minnie Mouse.

Yep, it's all over X. Every time I load it up, I basically see Mickey Mouse yielding a machete and beheading Goofy. That's just great. Yeah, the one I liked was, it was, what was it, Kamala and Donald Trump in a helicopter flying into the World Trade Center, giving a thumbs up-y, both of them.

Like, you can just do anything you want. Hey, get over there now while the getting's good, guys. That's true. Get over there now while the getting's good. So, in funny news, in funny news, the CrowdStrike CEO basically is in on the joke. Yeah, this is like when Sandra Bullock went to collect her Razzie.

Yes, so DEFCON was this week, and they have the Pony Awards at DEFCON. And, of course, CrowdStrike got the Epic Fail Award this year, the most Epic Fail Award. And the president, Michael Centonis, actually showed up from Australia and got a special, they actually made a special giant-sized pony for him.

And he took it with a grin. He's like, look, this is what we do. You know, we fucked up, and we're going to put this where everybody can see it, because we fucked up. And, you know, he's part of the community, and I just thought that was a classy move. It actually is.

Go fix your shit, but still, it was a good move. Yeah, and, you know, sending your partners a gift certificate for a cup of coffee that doesn't work, not so great either, but this, good. I'm proud of that. You should do that. Yeah, and I'm sorry, I said Australia. He's from Texas. Slightly different.

Well, see, when I think of software failures, I think of Jira and Atlassian, and Atlassian is Australian. So when I think of most Epic Fail, I think every time I have to load up anything that is owned by Atlassian. So I equate Australia with Epic Software Fail.

Sorry, Aussies, but just get rid of Atlassian. Well, Jason, it's finally happened. We've all been pwned. Okay, finally? Finally. Took long enough, at least if you're an American anyways. So according to Bleeping Computer, there is a data dump of 2.7 billion records of personal information for people in the U.S., which includes names, social security numbers, potential aliases, and all physical addresses they were known to have lived at.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know how big of a deal it is. I mean, obviously, you don't want people to have your social security number, but I'm from the generation where basically my health care provider and USC, my student identification number, was my social security number. So it was on every piece of mail in plain text for everybody to read.

It was on a card I carried with me everywhere. So my social security number has been out there forever. I don't know how big of a deal this actually is anymore, but it's all out there right now. The group was looking for 3.5 million for the whole 4-terabyte database, but since then, chunks of the data have been leaked by various entities.

And yeah, I don't know. There's a whole bunch of stuff out there, multiple records for many people with one for each address they're known to have lived at. And as they point out, it's not really possible for any independent body to confirm that the data includes records for every person in the U.S. Yes, that would be difficult, but it is likely to include information on anyone who is currently living in the country.

Well, there's one body that could do it. The government could actually figure that out because they've got all the info already. Yeah, the thing is, it's like I've seen a bunch of articles about this. Not everything is tied together, which is the nice part. Like your email address is generally not tied to your social security number just because of the way the database was schemed.

I'm sure you could use Grok to piece it all together. I'm sure you could. I'm sure you could. But yeah, we know this stuff's out there and it's been out there. We you and I, Brian, have gotten breach fatigue. That's why we that's why we talk to Dave about Star Wars now. Yeah, that's completely why we stopped doing that segment and stopped doing security.

Yep. Yeah. So this is just kind of a same shit different day, but with just a new new hacker. It's, you know. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of it. That's kind of it. And it's funny. Even my Kaiser Permanente medical ID is almost all of my social security number and they changed like three numbers at the end.

Well, at least they've gotten smart and done that. Yeah, exactly. Let's put an exclamation point at the end. I get it. We'll replace the three with an E. E. Yeah. It's just going to be leet speak. That's all. So a U.S.

appeals court for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that geofence warrants which allow law enforcement to search location data within a specific area are unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. OK. This decision affecting Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas only marks a significant limit on the use of these controversial warrants.

And privacy advocates support the ruling, which contrasts with a recent decision by the Fourth Circuit upholding such warrants. Despite the ruling, the defendant's conviction was upheld as police acted in good faith when using the warrant. This is this kind of the same thing as the the phone searches at JFK and in airports in New York.

The one guy who had the kiddie porn on his his phone still got busted, but everybody else after is OK. Yeah. And well, the by that much just under the wire. The FTC has approved new rules against the buying and selling of fake reviews and product testimonials with a five to zero vote on Wednesday.

The rules will become effective in 60 days. So get in there while it's going quick, just like everything else right now. Yep. The new FTC rules address the practice of buying and selling fake consumer reviews, including the use of AI generated consumer and celebrity testimonials for products or services. They also prevent providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews, expressing a particular sentiment, either positive or negative and prohibit a business from misrepresenting that a website or entity it controls provides independent reviews or opinions about products or services.

According to a statement released by the FTC, the formal ban also comes with stiff penalties for violators. The new rules fines could be could reach as high as fifty thousand dollars per violation, which is not nothing. Of course, the question becomes, Jason, where to for art thou, the Internet police who will actually do something about this?

That's that's what I was going to ask my first question. I'm like, OK, who's going to enforce this? Exactly. That would be the problem. Now, obviously, we need this. Of course, we need this. In fact, I just ordered some clothes from a company because, you know, I came back to the US and it's cheaper.

So I got some clothes and they came back and I didn't like them and I wanted to send them back. And then I, of course, got the well, we'll replace them for free and cover all the shipping if you go give us positive reviews. I'm like, isn't that kind of coercion? Oh, yeah. No, totally.

So you got 60 more days to get away with that fucking companies. Yeah, well, they probably have a very much longer than that. Sure. So, yeah, if they use the money from the actual fines to pay for the Internet police, you know, then then what you got? Taiwan. So everybody's just going to find fake reviews everywhere.

So California's SB 1047 is everywhere here. I don't know if you've noticed. It's all over the news here in California right now. This is the new bill designed to prevent AI related disasters. And it has been swiftly moving through the California legislature here.

And the thing that the reason I put this in here is because it just passed, I think, was it the Appropriations Committee? Because they made some concessions. Now, they made some concessions by taking the advice from the people that they're trying to regulate, mainly Anthropic, which was a big one.

But OpenAI and Meta and Google, all these guys have their hands in the process saying, no, you can't do this. This is bad. We want regulation, but we don't want that much. Not that much. Not that much. We don't want criminal liability. Please, not criminal liability. So they took out a lot of the criminal liability to get it through and a lot of other things.

But I'm just like, this is like John Wayne Gacy being consulted on sentencing guidelines for capital crimes. It's like, this makes no sense to me. I understand that they're trying to, you know, find a balance between commerce and, you know, criminality here.

But what's the point in having regulations if they have no teeth? That's the thing. That's the thing. Yeah. As we have found, money is not a good dissuading tactic for these people because they've gotten more of it than the state of California does.

Pretty much, yeah. Yeah. So I don't see how this is a good thing. I mean, actually, in going through the bill itself, I don't know if you've read much of it, but it's not that great of a bill to begin with. So I see where the problems come in, but it's like, just scrap it and start over instead of trying to put lipstick on the pig.

Yeah, I agree with you there. So let's make this federal instead of doing this hodgepodge state shit again, like we're doing right now with age verification and all that shit, privacy laws. Well, that is the real problem, right? It's not federal regulation. It's California doing it, which is why Elon picked up and moved.

You know, he would start crying about everything that California was trying to put in place. And he just went, well, Texas doesn't have that. There we go. He just asked, Grock, where should I move? Yes. That's all. The moon, motherfucker. Yeah. Oh, speaking of the moon. I teed that up for you.

Thank you. I appreciate it, buddy. We got it. We got a couple of astronauts that do have a very much better view of the moon than they did a few weeks ago. And they're going to be there for quite some time, unfortunately, because the Boeing Starliner capsule that they flew up to the International Space Station on, there's some problems with it now.

There've been so many ideas that they have tried to come up with. They're like, OK, maybe we can just detach it and let it fall back to Earth by itself. And if it blows up, that's OK. Have they turned it off and turned it back on? Turned it back on. The problem now is the geniuses at NASA and the not so geniuses at Boeing have come up with another probability that might happen, which is, well, if we turn it back on, it could actually go the wrong way.

And, you know, crash into the International Space Station. Well, I mean, two birds, one stone. Weren't we taking that down anyways? That's true. But the problem then is SpaceX has the contract to take it down and then Boeing could get sued for taking it down ahead of schedule.

OK, I see the problem. It's contractual more than anything else. Exactly. It's a contractual problem. That's why they need to move. They need to move the International Space Station to California. OK, so if we do it while it's flying over California. Exactly.

Exactly. And there's another bit of interesting news up there since these people are going to be stuck up there for a very long time. I didn't understand this because I didn't watch a lot of the ISS videos when they were really big on YouTube. They don't do laundry up there. It's going to be very uncomfortable for them.

This is a nightmare scenario. Now, you sign up for a lot of potential nightmare scenarios being an astronaut to begin with, but nobody envisions this. I'd say I feel so bad for these guys. I know. Oh, honey, what are the plans? I'll be back next week. Year.

Maybe. Yeah. So they at least did get a they got a reschedule of some some jammies, some underwear, which is good. Yeah. See, what would really be smart is if MeUndies got all over this and did a did a branded launch just to get them up some new clothes.

That would be, you know, probably a good thing for them. Oh, my God. We got the ultimate branding opportunity here, Jason. Come on. Amazon next day blue origin delivery. There you go. Get that penis up to the ISS right now. Come on. Jammies delivered by Shatner.

Oh, that would be great. Oh, so, yeah, they just have problems. Yes. Boeing is not doing great these days. I'm not so sure how this outsourcing of space exploration is really good working out for us so far. Well, I can't wait to see how they bring it down.

That's going to be the best one. Let's outsource that. Let's. Oh, it's going to be fun. Well, you got more space news because of old SpaceX here. Crypto Bro Charter's private SpaceX mission to Earth's poles. I love this. A private SpaceX mission named Fram2, not to be confused with Peter Frampton, is set to make history as the first human spaceflight to pass over the Earth's polar region.

Both of them, actually. The mission will be led by Chung Wang, a Bitcoin entrepreneur from Malta and founder of the company's F2 pool and Steakfish. The eclectic crew includes a Norwegian cinematographer, Australian polar adventurer, and German robotics researcher.

This will be the first trip to space for all of them. No shit, Sherlock. Fram2 will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy, aiming for a polar orbit at an altitude of around 265 to 280 miles. The mission is expected to last three to five days.

Polar orbits, typically used by Earth-observing satellites, have never been attempted by a crewed mission due to challenges like increased radiation exposure. Which is why I wanted to bring this whole thing up, Brian, is because there's a reason we don't fucking do it, Bitbro. I have to say, since you put this article in the show notes, every single time my eye has gone past it, I've had everybody Wang Chung tonight stuck in my head for a day.

You know if they're going to be playing that when they land. It's actually quite a good song. I listened to it. It is. Yeah. It's not bad. Yeah, it's bad. Yeah.

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

With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. A little more Elon news. Elon makes up cyber attack after Donald Trump interview crashes and burns.

My God, this was such a shit show. Oh, yeah. It's just so good. Just some of the comments are great. The dog ate my interview. I love it. Yeah, I signed on, and it was just, you know, we're being DDoS right now. I'm like, sure you are. Sure you are, dude.

Come on. Come on. Tell it to somebody who actually fucking gives a shit and believes you. The consequences of one's own actions of firing all the engineers is what's happening right now. Exactly. Exactly. And did we not learn from DeSantis? Sorry.

You had time to fix it. And he said, we tested it with 8 million concurrent listeners this morning. Well, no, you didn't. No, you didn't. You could even get a million in. Come on. No. See, this is another opportunity. Zoom should have stepped in and said, we'll take over.

But the whole point was for us to promote his own platform. Why would he let that happen? So, I mean, that was only one part of the show that that whole thing was. I'm not going to get into the rest of it. But yeah, it was ridiculous. Yeah, forget the rest of it. But it was just, yeah, it's like, come on. This is a technology platform demonstration.

Yeah. And yeah. Fail. Fail whale. Bring back the fail whale. Well, there was a little bit of fallout from it. The United Auto Workers Union has filed federal labor charges against Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The UAW Union accuses the two billionaires of trying to intimidate and threaten workers after Trump said to his giggling yes-man sidekick, you walk in, you say, you want to quit?

They go on strike. I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, that's okay. You're all gone. You're all gone. So every one of you is gone. Well, this was one of the downsides of having a free speech platform. There are consequences to free speech. A statement that UAW claims violates the National Labor Relations Act.

UAW President Sean Fain criticized both Trump and Musk, stating that their comments were disgusting, illegal, and totally predictable. The union, which has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president, argues that the remarks advocate for unlawful actions against workers. But, Brian, free speech.

Yeah, free speech. I love the memes that came out about that because it was just like two images of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons cackling. Which is pretty much exactly what it was. Spot on. Yeah. Yep. Finally, an Irish workplace watchdog has determined that Elon Musk's actions during his 2022 Twitter takeover were unlawful.

The case centered on an email that Musk sent to employees, giving them 24 hours to click yes to stay with the company or else face voluntary resignation. We covered this when it happened. The Irish Labor Court ruled that this email did not provide sufficient notice and that failing to click yes could not legally be considered a resignation.

The court reviewed evidence suggesting the email was intended to coerce employees into agreeing to new terms or pushing them to resign amid widespread layoffs. One case involved Gary Rooney, a senior executive in Ireland, who argued that his contract required written resignation.

The court agreed, ruling that Twitter unfairly dismissed Rooney, awarding him over $600,000 in compensation, a record sum for such cases in Ireland. And, of course, that ruling could open the door to more lawsuits. Yay. Yay. Idiot.

Media Candy. Good news, Brian. Daredevil Born Again has already got his second season, and we haven't even seen season one yet. Nope, nope. But what I'm most excited about is the whole original cast is back, so good for that.

Yeah, exactly. They brought everybody back. Get a redo. If you're going to do a reboot, do it with the whole cast, the original cast. It was great. I love it. Yeah, they were fantastic. Next thing, you bring back, bring back, what? Jessica Jones. Jessica Jones, please. Yes, with the original cast. Thank you.

Yeah, they could just refilm the whole first season again. I'm fine. Yeah, we can leave out Iron Fist. We don't need to do that. No, no, no, Iron Fist. No, please, no. This one made me happy, though. Apple TV Plus orders more Long Ways of the Long Ways series with Ewan McGregor and Charlie Borman.

Okay. So this is going to be a new one. There was one that came out 20 years after the previous two came out where they went from the tip of Argentina, like down at the southern tip of Argentina, all the way up to L.A., and they did it on electric Harley Davidsons with Beta Rivian trucks.

So this new one is going to be called Everybody Obi-Wan tonight, and they're going to go for both poles. That's it. That's what they're going to do. Oh, man. This one's going to be – I don't know if it's going to be as interesting, but it's just fun to watch those guys ride bikes around.

So they're going from Ewan's home in Scotland to Charlie's home in London, but they're going all the way through Europe, a 12,000-mile detour to come back to his house or something like that. Man, they really don't like their wives. No, they don't. No, they don't. That was the funny bit in the second one.

They did – first they did Long Way Round, then they did Long Way Down, and in Long Way Down, Ewan brought his wife for part of the trip, and that was an unmitigated disaster. She couldn't ride a bike. Charlie was pissed off.

He's like, this is a bro trip, dude. Why are you bringing your wife? I don't know. Have you seen his wife? I'd take her everywhere too. Well, this is the wife that he divorced. Oh, never mind. Not that – no, this is not that wife. This is his old wife, so I have not seen his new wife. It's – what's her face?

From Ahsoka, the green-skinned girl. Really? Yeah. Okay. Well, good for Ewan. Yeah, hopefully she can ride a motorcycle, or maybe she'll just stay at home and go shoot some more Star Wars. That's good. I'm down with that. Yeah, because it is just a bro show. It's totally just a bro show.

Oh, totally, yeah. Two guys riding motorcycles around the world. Yeah, that's a bro show. It is a good bro show, though. I love them, so give it a shot. I'm happy that there are going to be more. All right. Filmmaker Eddie Schmidt, one of the directors behind Netflix's Ugly Delicious, is prepping a documentary about a Blackberry handset, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

So, I loved the movie, which is a fictionalization, but this is going to be a full-on documentary being produced by Unrealistic Ideas, which is a production company founded by Mark Wahlberg. Oh. Yeah, I'm not thrilled about that, but whatever. I'm interested in seeing this.

It's currently untitled. There's no release date, but the filmmakers have been given exclusive access to the Research in Motion Alumni Association. There will be plenty of interviews with former executives who were involved in the Blackberry story, and will include an array of never-before-seen archival footage, which, you know, a bunch of nerds in a room.

So, here's the – yeah, I'm looking forward to this, actually, but you told me about the movie. I tried to go find the movie. There's two things out there with the same artwork that's driving me crazy. One is a movie, and one is a three-part TV series. I wonder if they chopped it up for distribution.

Maybe, because – but no, because the TV one seemed like it was longer, so there was, like, more stuff. I don't know. I haven't – because I want to see the movie, because you said it was great. Yeah, it was. So – but it was a comedy, right? Like a – Yeah, yeah. I mean, ish.

I mean, it was pretty damn funny. Is it an actual documentary, though? No, it's not a documentary. It's a movie, yeah. Okay. I didn't – that's what I'm trying to figure out, because, you know, because the Tetris thing was a movie, too, but, you know, and was terrible, by the way. Or that Tetris – oh, God, it was so bad.

But, yeah, okay. So, I'm just going to go watch the movie and say, forget the TV. Yeah, just watch the movie. I meant to ask you. I meant to ask you about it, because I needed some clarification, and I'm sure some of our listeners did, too, because they're like, what the hell is this? Go watch the movie. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Will do. All right. Well, Warner Brothers Discovery has pulled Cartoon Network's entire website from the web, which means you can no longer access free episodes and other interactive content.

Instead, you are being redirected to the channel section on the subscription streaming service network, Max, according to Variety, which is all well and good, except, of course, you know, a lot of things fall through the cracks. And we're basically losing content and history and everything like that, which sucks. But this is the future.

This is where we're headed. Yeah, but it's the same thing as MTV.com. When was the last time somebody went to Cartoon Network to watch cartoons? No, no. But still, you think these things would be somewhere, but they're not. We were promised that the Internet would be forever, and all of the stupid shit we did in the 90s was going to be around until the day we died, and apparently that was a lie.

Kind of glad a lot of it's gone. Al Gore, I want my information superhighway back, damn it. Yep, yep. Over on Netflix this week, Brian, I watched The Influencer. Oh, yeah? It's a seven-part game show from South Korea about, you guessed it, influencers.

No, thank you. It was awesome. Okay. It was absolutely awesome. Here's the thing. South Korean influencers are way cooler than ours. They're way better. They're nice people. They're funny. And they genuinely seem to have good hearts.

It was a really fun watch. Granted, most people probably would be bored by it, but me and my roommate, we actually enjoyed it. We watched the whole thing, and we finished it up yesterday. I thoroughly enjoyed it. All right. So this is how American influencers take note.

Go watch this and take some lessons from these people. Even in the grand finale battle, it's like this whole main stage thing with a live audience, and they're trying to outdo each other. And some of the people were like, hey, I actually kind of want to go see what he's doing over there because that looks more interesting than what I got to say right now.

It was – they were genuinely fun. It was a really good watch. It left me feeling – I actually felt good for the people who won, you know, or the guys and girls who were up there at the end. I like it. I liked it. The Umbrella Academy Season 4 dropped this week, and this was the final in the season or series, I mean.

And, yeah, there will be no more Umbrella Academy, which is great. Everybody was pissing and moaning that they didn't stick the landing. I thought they 100% stuck the landing. I thought it was the only way it could have ended, and I thought it was brilliant. Okay. I was actually going to ask you about that because I waited too long to actually start watching it.

So now I figured I'll wait and see if they stick the landing before I decide to watch it. But you think they did, so maybe I'll go watch it now. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed every season of it. I enjoyed every episode of it. I think it's a phenomenal series, personally. So what's not phenomenal, though, is I think this is a universally agreed-upon term here.

Borderlands, the new movie, based on the video game of the same name. Now, we've had two decades of video game movies now, and we've kind of figured it out, how to make really good ones. And Borderlands said, hold my beer.

I'm going back to the way things were. This was, oh, this is so bad. I mean, when it came out- Did you actually watch it? Yeah. Okay. I watched some of it because I was not going to dedicate my entire life to this thing.

I just looked at the key art, and it's been a while because, you know, key art has actually gotten quite good. People do good posters now for even crappy things. I looked at the key art for this and went, this must be a steaming pile. Well, don't forget Benjamin. Benjamin had some pretty bad key art.

Okay, fair. But this was basically the, you know, it's the video game art for the most part. So it's meant to sell a video game. But trust me, it is as bad as you think it is. It's actually worse than you think it is. There's nothing that could save this movie. And I love this.

Randy Jones on his Rotten Tomatoes review said, Borderlands is what happens when you order Guardians of the Galaxy off Team U. That's a good one. It's perfect. It's absolutely perfect. So, yeah, skip that one for sure. We've got McDonald's at home, says Mom.

Okay, Brian, we've gotten a lot of feedback about the Overcast drama. And since we know so many of our listeners use Overcast, a disproportionate amount of people use Overcast, we get a disproportionate amount of feedback on how much Overcast sucks now.

We sure do. You know what I haven't read all week? I haven't read a single person that said, yeah, it's not that bad. No, everybody hates it. Universally, this is as despised as the Sonos app, except a lot less people use Overcast.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of them in here. I'm just not, you know what? I'm just going to save everybody's time. Here's what everybody finally agreed on. Go to Pocket Cast for now is kind of what everybody's thinking. It's like, it still works. A lot of people use Pocket Casts already.

I try to, the Apple freebie works fine. Pocket Cast has a premium plan that you can get for 20 bucks a year, I think. I think Overcast was 10 bucks a year. But I was playing around with Pocket Cast last night because I need something that will let me upload my own audio and be able to play it for testing and other reasons.

And Pocket Cast will let me do that. And there's actually a share thing which will let me do it on my phone from even Dropbox. I can share from Dropbox straight to Pocket. Pocket Cast, which was really cool. Right. So, and that was the free version. I don't know how much I get out of that. There's probably going to be a limit to how much I can do. But yeah, Pocket Cast is fine.

They're all fine, except Overcast, which is not. Yeah. Which used to be my favorite. Yeah. So I downloaded Pocket Cast as well. And I've added a few of my shows to it. And, you know, all I want is a homepage that only shows me the podcasts that have new episodes that I haven't listened to yet.

That's all I want. Here's what you want then, Brad. There's a new one that Gabriel Pagan put in the Discord yesterday called NoiCast, I think. N-E-U-E Cast. I grabbed it. It's very, very bare bones, very straightforward. And it is just a list of the shows that have a new episode.

I might have to download that one and give it a go. Pocket Cast seems okay, but it's a, yeah, again, it's just, I want simplicity. Yeah, that's mainly the thing that I want. The nice thing about Pocket Cast is it has silence trimming along with the speed boost. So that's kind of an important thing because I think Overcast has saved me over 1,200 hours of trim silence.

That's without speed boost. That's just the silence trimming. So I like that. Pocket Cast has the same feature. So that's a good thing. I don't think NoiCast has it. I'm sure they've got speed enhancements, but they don't have silence trimming. But it's brand new. What is really funny about NoiCast is in their demo video, they actually have the screen art for the Accidental Tech Podcast, which is Marco's podcast.

So I think that was a nice fuck you. But I did go back to Overcast for a couple of days this week. There's a feature where you can turn off at the top. It's buried in the settings where you can turn off the top list of podcasts at the top of episodes, which is, you know, it's stupid.

It's show art. So underneath it is my playlist. So I just made a playlist for everything, which is what I've always done, which is just the list of everything that I have in the order that I want it to be. That works OK, but the interface is still janky. And the really funny part is with Pocket Cast, you can import OPML with Overcast.

Now, you cannot export OPML because because that was a feature that was a feature in the old Overcast. But it mysteriously did not get moved over to the new one yet. He says he's working on it, which is convenient. But yeah. So there we go.

We've got some hard earned cash news. People who sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com slash GOG won't have to worry about this. But if you wanted to sign up and follow us on the Patreon iOS app, don't go to the website, please, because now Patreon is going to have to use Apple's in-app purchasing, which is going to drop another 30% of our cash.

So please, for all that's holy, use the website if you want to sign up for Patreon. Yeah, just use your sign up. Yeah, 100%. And the app sucks anyways. Yeah. I mean, once you sign up, you can use the app if you want. Yes. But just don't pay through it. Yeah, just don't pay through it.

Pretty please with sugar on top. And you do get an RSS feed that you can plug in, a personal RSS feed, so you get the episodes early that you can plug into any podcast player, even Overcast if you wanted to. Yeah, if they do that anymore. I think if it works. If it works. I haven't tried that one this week.

So yeah, give that a shot. I've got two little bits of cool tech news. This is kind of exciting. Oxford University scientists may have solved one of the greatest hindrances of expanding access to solar energy. Scientists from the university's physics department have created an ultra-thin layer of material that can be applied to the exterior of objects with sunlight access in place of bulky silicon-based solar panels.

So it's basically almost like just a paint that you can put on anything that can start to collect solar energy. They can be applied to almost any surface, and the costs and constructions are way, way down, which is great. It's still in research phase, and the university doesn't mention the long-term stability of the newly designed panels.

So you may have to replace them more often, or at least until they sort this out. But this is pretty freaking cool. Direct, you know, Dave can use this immediately. Right, yeah. Paint his entire roof with this and power that camera.

No problems whatsoever. So this is something to watch. It's pretty cool. And there's another cool thing that's happened. It's taken almost two years, but a planned community of homes made with a gigantic 3D printer in Georgetown, Texas is almost complete. It's called Wolf Ranch, and they're being built with a large 3D printer called the Vulcan that is 45 feet wide and weighs more than 4.75 tons.

This is done with 3D printing construction developer Icon and the home construction company Lennar, and it started in November of 2022. They're close to their goal of completing 100 homes. Homeowners have already started moving into some of these that range in price from $450,000 to $600,000.

I'm going to get there sometime. Yeah, they use a mixture of concrete, powder, water, sand, and other materials to lay out stacks of tube-shaped concrete to construct walls and eventually a whole house. Now, foundations and roofs are made the old-fashioned ways with human crews, but this basically does, you know, the framing and all that sort of stuff.

There is a downside. The walls are too thick for Wi-Fi signals. So the residents have had to use mesh internet routers with broadcast signals located throughout the homes instead of just a single router. But pretty cool, a big 3D printed house. I like that. Yeah, that is nice. They just need to put, like, you know, Cat 5 in the walls or Cat 6 or Cat 10 or whatever the cats are up to nowadays.

Old school style, yeah. Yeah, give me a plug. That's what I did. I need to run everything through cables now. Cables! Yeah, so, you know, getting rid of jobs. Love it. Yeah, that's fine. That's what we do. That's what we do. Threads has announced a number of new features, including the ability to store multiple drafts, something I've never actually wanted.

You can rearrange the columns on the desktop version, which is nice because now it's kind of more – now you can actually have the view up that you want to see. And they've got insights into your audience. So there's a couple new features this week. I've been on Threads more than basically anything nowadays.

And anecdotally, half the posts that I see on Threads right now are announcements from people who have deleted their X accounts and have sold their Tesla stock. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of that. I find Threads to be pretty judgy. But it could be just because I haven't followed anything. Like, the default view on Threads is just people, like, being very judgy.

Yeah, there's a lot of that. So what you do is basically – Here's how you should run your life. Yeah, there's a lot of that. They're the new influencers, Brian. Well, think about it. These are people that come from Instagram. So what do they do? They post, you know, stupid morning memes of sunrises and shit and unicorns on Instagram.

Now they're just doing the same thing in words. Yeah, there's a lot of, like, lifestyle and fitness and health influencers all over Threads. Yeah, that's why I do the following – my following column. Now, because what you have to do is you go to settings and you can pin the following column onto the desktop. So then when you go to the desktop view, you get the 4U version and the following version.

So you just go back and forth, whatever. But it's nice that you have the option now. I really wish the mobile app would let me just pin on following because that's what I want. I don't want to see the 4U and I have to go figure out where the fucking thing is to get to the 4U feed. So it's not that great yet.

But trust me, it's better than X. Well, yeah, everything is. Yeah. And here's a new thing that I saw. Just this came in handy this week, so I put it in here. How to take a scrolling screenshot on iPhone. Now, this doesn't work with every app because, unfortunately, it doesn't work with Brave, so you have to use Safari.

It's basically any of the Apple's first-party apps. Right. And what you do is you just take a screenshot, and when you open up the screenshot, there's a little tab at the top that's like, you know, screen or full page. If you click on full page, it'll just show you everything that was on the page, and you can just create a screenshot from that to share, which is, like, really nice and easy.

The downside is it doesn't work in the browser that I use, so that sucks. But it's easy enough to copy the URL open Safari and make the giant screenshot, is what I'm saying. Cool. It's definitely cool. And I've been running the macOS Sequoia beta on my Mac Air, and I finally got the icon for iPhone mirroring because I'm running iOS 18 on my iPhone, which is awesome, and iPadOS 18 on my iPads, which is awesome.

I love them all. It's such a change. I love it. But I tried the iPhone mirroring on Sequoia, and holy shit, is it cool. You just basically put your phone in the dock, and you have it on your screen, and you can do anything on your phone. Just have it off to the side on your screen.

It's great. That's pretty cool. It is cool. It is cool. I haven't tried to play any games yet, so I'm going to try and see if I can play Monster 8 My Condo on it. See if it – I'm curious to see if it will keep up because it's a really fast game, and you've got to swipe a lot.

So I don't know if it will work or not, but I'm going to try. All right. Well, Apple also seems to have announced that they're going to get into the game of the – they're basically going to create a competitor for the Google Nest Hub or Amazon's Echo Show, which to me, from the description in this article, sounds like an iPad on a robot arm.

That's exactly what it is. That is exactly what it is. And a lot of people are pointing out you can do this right now with DockKit. There are devices out there that already do this. I mean, if they dialed this in and it worked really well, I would definitely get behind it because Apple tends to stick with their products.

And as we've talked about in previous episodes on this show, Amazon's kind of already given up on the Echo line, unfortunately, even though I love them very much. So I would consider this as a product, except the company is aiming to sell the device for around $1,000. Yeah, that's a little pricey for what – for a music player and something that I used to call my mom with.

Yeah. I mean, if you can remove the iPad or just put in – if it's a B-Y-O-I, B-Y-O-I-P. You're basically buying a thin robotic arm that my son will break. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which, like I said, you can buy that right now from Belkin for $175 or what you can do is go get the Insta360 new gimbal that I talked about a couple weeks ago.

Yeah, stick your iPad on it. It does the same – well, you can do your iPhone on that one. I think both of them are just for iPhone right now, but it does the same thing. It just follows you around the room and you can talk to it. It's all built in. So I think this is a little late in the game, 2026. And by the way, Brian, Apple's sticking with products.

You're talking to one of the five people that own the Apple Hi-Fi. So I still have a – I still have a grudge against that. Okay. Okay. There's occasional ones that they drop.

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The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave with podcast super host Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast for all your cybersecurity news.

The co-host of Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan discussing how humans are mean. The co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen because people are nosy. And the host of Control Loop because industrial machines have feelings too. As well as Only Malware in the Building, which you must be getting a nice SEO bump off of right now because Only Murders in the Building is everywhere on TV.

Yeah. Gosh, I hope so. Only Malware in the Building is monthly, so it's tough to build an audience quickly when you have that sort of cadence. But we're doing our best. And most importantly, we're having fun and getting good feedback.

Have you tried releasing your whole season at once, Dave? Yeah, that's not possible. But no, it is fun. All right.

Well, let's get to the important things here. I did day one of our three days at Disneyland, and it was awesome. Oh, good. Had a really good time. And the park, not as crowded as I thought it would be. Hence, the two articles in the show notes following up this.

The first, from Business Insiders, Disney's theme parks are struggling, and it's another warning sign for the economy. And from InsideTheMagic.net, Disney finally admits why parks are empty during peak season. Now, I wouldn't say empty. Empty with air quotes.

If you mean that there weren't four-hour lines for everything, then yes, it was empty. It was surprisingly easy to get on rides. But yeah, the reason is, it's just too damn expensive. Like, they price themselves out of most people's ability to go. We are spending an arm and a leg going there.

They are definitely offering all kinds of Southern California resident discounts to get in because attendance is down compared to the normal numbers they would be getting right now. Now, so having said that, if you do have the cash right now, go. It's pretty great. Like, I haven't been in the park that empty in at least a decade.

And it was summer. You know, it was peak time. This is peak season. So I had a really nice time. How's the weather? It was hot as balls. Yeah. There's also that. That was brutal. But, you know, they do a good job of having air conditioning everywhere. And there's lots of shade.

It's Disney. They do it right. They don't want you to die. Yeah. Do they allow you to bring umbrellas with you? Don't believe so. But they sell them. That's why. Okay. As long as they sell them. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I wonder about that, too.

The whole thing with, you know, global warming and the summer's getting hotter. How is that going to affect people's decisions to go to Disney during, because obviously the summer is the peak season because of summer vacation. But where are we going with that?

Like, is summer vacation, are we going to shift our summer vacation? You know, people have said that we're no longer the agrarian society we used to be. So why are we still following that old calendar anyway? Yeah. But I certainly wouldn't go to Disney World in the middle of the summer.

Now, for me, that's Florida, which I think is even hotter than Southern California. Well, I don't know about that. It's been pretty hot here. But the concerns with climate change are particularly real. I've been reading a lot of articles about this for the Disney World Park in Florida because they're also just getting torrential rains.

There's concern about hurricanes increasing in frequency and all that sort of stuff. So it's going to be interesting. But, you know. Next year, Disney Des Moines. I mean, I think there's something to the notion of them building a park in like Texas, you know, split the difference and, you know, let the crowds go there.

I don't know. Yeah. Well, although, Jason, to your point, I mean, Texas is still going to be hot. So, yeah, you got to find like where is the where's the weather sweet spot these days? Does it even exist in the continent? Yeah, it doesn't even exist anymore. I mean, that's why they kind of picked the locations that they did because, you know, theoretically back then it was kind of basically decent year round.

So. Right. Now it's now not so much anymore. But, yeah, we'll see what happens. Yeah. Not Phoenix. We're definitely not moving into Phoenix. Right. The Disney Death Valley. Yeah, that's about it. Yeah.

I'd still go. I probably would, too. Yeah, I probably would, too. Speaking of Disney, I thought it would be fun to address the rundown of Disney Parks announcements that came from D23 because there were a lot of them and they are significant.

Yes. Brian, anywhere you want to start here? Anything that caught your eye? The thing that I just, in general, I like all of this stuff. I like the fact that there's going to be an Encanto ride. I like all the things that they're doing. I'm not, I don't like Avatar.

I hate those movies. I understand I'm probably the only person on the planet that does give it its box office. But, you know, the fact that they're building Avatar lands does not interest me at all. I love the idea that they're building a villain's land. I think that's fantastic.

That's going to make me go to Florida. The thing that depresses me about my park, which is I'm literally two miles from it right now. The one in Anaheim is they are going to build a whole new Cars land, but they're getting rid of the river and Tom Sawyer's Island, which is such a part of my youth.

I'm going to miss it so much. Wait, they're doing that at Disneyland? I thought that was only at Disney World. Well, I had read it and I thought it was the one here. And if it's not, then that's fantastic. I don't care. I don't care what happens in Florida. I don't want to lose my riverfront because it's such a great part of the park here.

And it's where they launch so many of the nighttime spectacular fireworks and all of that. So I would be sad to lose that. And hopefully we won't. But almost everything else just sounds great. I love that they're throwing so much money into these parks, that they're revitalizing them, that they're moving forward, that they're doing things.

Again, like I said, I could do a little bit less with the non-Disney properties, your Avengers, your avatars and all of that. But I get that they own the IP now. And it would be hypocritical of me because more Star Wars stuff. Yes. Right.

You know, I can't just be happy about the things I like. Sure, sure. Have you been to the Avatar land in Florida? No, I haven't been to the Florida park since, ooh, man, it's been at least 20 years. Okay, okay.

We were there about a year ago, and that was my first time in the Avatar land. And like you, I feel completely meh about Avatar in general. I think we've talked about it here, you know, like it's made huge money, but it's had zero impact on the culture.

Like name a single character from an Avatar movie. James Cameron. Yeah, exactly. There's two rides in the Avatar land, and I understand the one in California is going to be different. But the one in Florida, there's the one where you're riding on the sort of dragon lizard things.

And that's very cool. It's kind of like Soarin', except you're on what is a living, breathing creature kind of thing. It's neat. You feel it breathing underneath of you, and it's fun, and it's exciting. The other one is a river ride, which is beautiful, but it's about half as long as it needs to be.

And we rode it. We were lucky we got a fast pass for it, and we rode it, and we got off, and we went, that's it? I mean, if I'd waited an hour and a half to ride that thing, I would have been pissed. It's just too short. So, but in terms of that and It's a Small World, you got to find the middle.

Right, right. Well, I mean, think about pirates, you know, you want the great boat ride. Well, and going back to what we were just talking about with the heat, trust me, we appreciated how long It's a Small World was because it's air conditioned. Oh, yeah. It was a nice, like, 10-minute break from the heat.

It was awesome. I don't know if it was – I don't know if you can call that nice, Brian. It's tolerable, I would say. For my dad, whenever we'd go as a family, for my dad's small world was nap time. He would just settle in, and we have lots of, you know, hi-8 video of my dad snoozing on It's a Small World.

I will say that that is one thing I noticed. We did go on It's a Small World this time. I don't know how often or last time that you were on it, Dave. But what they've tried to do is, obviously, this is something that – it's over 50 years old now at this point, practically, because it started with the World's Fair and they brought it over.

There's no connection to anything Disney. It's one of the old school in terms of, like, Disney's IP and properties and films and all that sort of stuff. So what I noticed this time is they've started to sneak in Disney characters. Like, Woody from Toy Story is in there with the cowboy scene and all that sort of thing.

They're attempting to make it relative to younger kids who don't have any idea what these creepy dolls are supposed to be. No. Well, if you can make it a game, fill it with Easter eggs, then that's fun. And they've started to do that. So next time you're on, keep an eye out because you'll see characters – Moana's in there.

Like, all different characters are, like, sprinkled throughout now. I want to see the horrors that they took out of Pirates of the Caribbean getting chased around in there. I'm pretty sure they were purchased by some very rich Disney freak. Right. Okay. Show her your starboard side.

So the other thing that has people having heartburn with this announcement is the announcement of the Monsters, Inc. Land for Hollywood Studios, which on itself is great.

And they're building a roller coaster, a suspended roller coaster, based on the doors part, which – That would be fantastic. Anybody who saw that movie – Right. Yeah. And, like, it was like – obviously, why did they put that part in the movie? To build a roller coaster at Disney World. Yeah.

Yes. It's been so obvious for so long. So people are excited about that. It's called synergy, people. Right. But what some folks are freaking out about is they're worried that it's going to be built in the space where Muppet Vision 3D is right now. Ah, yes. And you could lose Muppet Vision.

We are going – apparently, yes, that is going to happen. The Muppet Vision, I've heard the one here in Anaheim as well, is going to be going away, which is kind of sad. I remember hearing – and you would know this, Dave, I'd guess – that this was the last thing that Jim Henson himself directed? That is correct.

That is correct. In fact, one of the cheap thrills of my life was back in the good days of Twitter, I asked a question about Muppet Vision 3D and was answered by Frank Oz himself. Nice.

Yeah. It was – I was on cloud nine that day, needless to say. But, no, actually, Muppet Vision 3D has been closed in California for a few years now. Oh, it hasn't? Yeah. Yeah, it closed in California Adventure. I haven't been over to that side of the park.

Yeah, it's been shut down there. So, the only place it exists now is in Florida. As I've shared here before, I think they should move it over to where Rock and Roller Coaster is. They can make it – even build a smaller theater for it because I can't remember the last time I've been in Muppet Vision 3D that it was full.

So, build a smaller theater. So, build a smaller theater. Put it over by Rock and Roller Coaster. Make Rock and Roller Coaster the electric mayhem. And then convert where the Muppets are now to make that contiguous Star Wars land with Star Tours.

And you're good to go. I agree 100%. Just as a side note, I put this in the show notes for you, Dave, because anything furry now just immediately makes me think of you. Sure. The Consequence of Sound website has a – I think a weekly crossword puzzle.

And the last one that they had, which I grabbed here, is Muppet Quotes. So, I thought you would enjoy that. I will definitely enjoy that. Yeah. I don't know if you – you probably get this with Star Wars where you see the clickbait articles that say, 10 things you didn't know about Star Wars.

And I click through and I know every single one of them. Yes. Invariably, I know them all. Right. And it's the same for Muppets for me. And actually, a lot of times I find myself correcting their errors. Like, no, that didn't happen that way. Anyway, our next trip to Florida is – I think, actually, we might cross over, Brian, right?

We're there in the beginning of March next year. Okay. All right. Yeah. Could be. Yeah. If so, we'll have to say hello. Yeah. Matt writes this one in for you guys. Hello. I'm sure you've seen this video, but it's super well done and fascinating.

Would definitely be interested in your and Dave's take on it if you think it's worthy of the podcast. Cheers. And this is from the Recommendo newsletter. And I put this in here because Matt beat me to it. This is the spectacular failure of the Star Wars Hotel, the four-hour takedown of it. Yeah. That's where they lost me, the four-hour part.

Dave. Let me say, I have watched the whole four hours. I knew it. Not at once. I did it in several sittings over the course of about a week or so. And it is remarkably compelling. There was no point where I felt like my time was being wasted or this was too long or any of that kind of thing.

So, I think if you want a complete telling of this story and a really rational, well-informed view and speculation of why the Star Wars Hotel failed, you will not do better than this four-hour video from Jenny Nicholson.

It pretty much lays it all out and I agree with pretty much everything she's put out here. And I think she does it in a very affectionate way. Like, she wasn't looking for this to fail. She went to the Star Wars Hotel. She experienced it.

And she shares her experiences and where it was great and where it came up short and all those sorts of things. So, it's a really good accounting of all of the failures that – the cascading failures, the cumulative failures that led to this thing ultimately being shut down.

All right. Well, I might download this and save it for my flight home. Oh, that's a good idea. That might pass the time pretty well, actually. Because I don't like the raw dogging trend. That's ridiculous. What's wrong with you people? This last one I put in here for you, Brian, because you were complaining about the Black Millennium Falcon that you're going to have to buy for $179.

Yes. Well, now you can buy the Lego's Nightmare Before Christmas set for $200 coming out on September 1st. Jason, I have been tracking this set for two years. I am very excited that it is finally coming out. My son is very excited about this. I was going to say, is this for you or for Lucas?

Well, we're going to build it together. It's going to be a bonding experience. We're quite excited about it. It's going to stay in your office, I know. It's going to be difficult to get. I wish I was still here, but I will be in Canada at that point. So, it's going to be a hefty probably $300 Canadian, sadly. And I'm going to have to work really hard to track it down.

But yes, I am super excited about this. I don't know if you know about the Lego's Ideas concept, which is absolutely fantastic. And this is one that bumped up that way. So, it's people can submit their own sets that they think would be really cool.

And they're voted on. And every year, Lego actually produces one or two of them. And this is one of the ones that came through that program. So, very excited about this. Yeah. Very excited. So, I would definitely be purchasing this and putting it together. And by the way, having gone to Disneyland again just recently, and then we're going again this next coming week because they're actually rolling out their Halloween decorations early this year because it's so popular.

So, it's going to be all the Halloween themes everywhere. How long ago did Nightmare Before Christmas come out? I can tell you that. 400 years. I can tell you that because I saw Nightmare Before Christmas at the El Capitan Theater while I was on my honeymoon.

Oh, no shit. Well, that's where I saw it as well when it first came out. So, perhaps I was in the same theater. Yeah. So, that would have been 1993. And I remember in the theater, in like one of the lobby areas, they had some of the sets from the film.

It was amazing. It was. So, yeah, that's when it was. And actually, that same trip was when – that was the most empty I've ever seen Disneyland because at the time, San Diego was on the show. It was on fire and so there were ashes raining down on Disneyland.

It was – the sky was smoky and I remember we were riding the little horse-drawn carriage up Main Street and said to the man minding the horse in the carriage saying, boy, it's really empty here today. And he kind of looked at us and said, yeah, Southern Californians have other things on their mind besides going to Disneyland today.

Yeah. Yeah. Zing. Yeah. So, I was going to say, just to follow up, because you guys both saw it at El Capitan in 1993. I saw it at El Capitan in 2003 for the 10-year anniversary and saw the sets too. Yeah, I was there for that as well. I went to both.

That's cool. But my point being, it was kind of an underground thing for ages, right? Like, it didn't really get the critical acclaim. That's all come later. The other thing it didn't get was all this merchandise. Having been at Disneyland recently, they sell everything.

And there were so many people wearing Nightmare Before Christmas shirts and hoodies. Well, not hoodies because it was fucking hot. But, I mean, people were wearing this stuff. It's everywhere now. The Target store near me is full of Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise and clothing.

It is so massive now that this couldn't have come out at a better time. So, I'm all very excited about it because it's such a great movie. And it's just great. So, good. Yeah, the other thing just to note about Nightmare Before Christmas is that I feel bad for the guy who actually directed it because it's not Tim Burton.

Right. It's not actually Tim Burton. But if you ask anybody who directed Nightmare Before Christmas, they'll say Tim Burton. And it wasn't Tim Burton. And I don't know the name of the guy who directed it. But he deserves to sell it. Oh, that's funny. Yes, because I would have said Tim Burton too.

Right. It's Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas. But he did not direct it. It was – I can't remember who it was either. Which is sad. Sucks to be him. You know the other person that it sucks to be? It sucks to be the guy that voiced Jack Skellington because everybody just thinks Danny Elfman. And he didn't do the actual speaking lines.

That was done by somebody else. So. Yeah. Well, I too will be purchasing that Lego set. Well, let me put it this way. That Lego set will be under our Christmas tree this year. Perfect. Come hell or high water. So here we go. It will be for my son, Jack.

Nice. Isn't that great? Isn't that nice? Thank you very much. All right. Jason, I want to say you were right. Okay. You were absolutely right. Your instincts were correct. I was perhaps too forgiving in giving the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the sad, sad state of the Overcast podcast app.

Okay. Time has revealed. It's a dumpster fire. It is a dumpster fire and way more than I would have thought was even possible. I mean, there's an Overcast Reddit group and they've gone full on torches and pitchforks.

And it's a combination of things. It's just that this, there was no way that this app was ready to be released with the number of deal killer bugs, showstopper bugs that it has. And then also just the design changes that are arbitrary and make things worse.

Right, right. I mean, so many things in the app I try to do, they take more clicks than they used to. And that's just the worst. It's a podcast player. I just want to play a podcast. Yeah. A new one particularly that pops up in my feed so I can see that there's a new one. Easy.

Yeah. That's it. That's all I want. Yeah. That's it. I'm telling you. Have you switched away, Jason? I moved to Apple Podcasts for a bit. That's what I did. That's what I did. And after all the feedback from our listeners, which was plentiful.

Volumes. Yeah. Because I don't know if you saw, Dave, that 26% of our, or actually more than that, like 35% of our listeners use Overcast. Yeah. Which is a huge number of people compared to most podcasts. Yeah.

So, yes, everybody wrote us. That's way more than us. Yeah. Yeah. Because we pimped it for a long time. Thanks, Marco. Gabriel Pagan sent in a new one called NoiCast, which I tried out yesterday, which I actually really like so far. It's very plain, very basic.

And it is just a list. Nice design. Lack of design, even better. And Pocket Cast is what I'm probably going to move over to. But the thing about Pocket Cast is, since the new version of Overcast does not have OPML export, I don't feel like doing much with either one of them because it's like, I've got everything in Apple Podcasts right now.

Like, I'm just going to stick with that until maybe OPML comes back or I have some extra time on the crapper to move all my podcasts over. Right, right. Yeah, I switched over to Apple Podcasts just to have something simple and reliable, and I've been living there for a while.

And it's not nearly as bad as I feared it would be. Today, there was a new app that's coming out. It's on Android, and it's in beta on iOS, and it's called Metacast. And I downloaded the beta. I've been playing with it, and it seems pretty nice.

I'm going to tell you right now, looking at the screenshot on it, I'm going to hate it because at the very top it says continue listening, and it's a swipe – it's a card swipe thing. I just want a fucking list, and I don't want the podcasts underneath with the podcast art of who I'm following. I want a fucking list of the episodes on my homepage.

All righty then. Well, perhaps Metacast isn't for you. It is not for me. I don't want transcripts. Stop wasting your engineering time on fucking transcripts. Nobody wants transcripts. Oh, I have data that suggests otherwise, but – Oh, go fuck yourself.

I'll just tell you that if we – I'm going to use the new podcast player, JasonCast, which is going to be very specific. Right. It doesn't actually play any podcasts, but any time you hit the play button, it just tells you to go fuck yourself. All right.

Well, to each his own, and we can revisit this when we settle in and decide on what we actually like. But I have canceled my renewal of paying for Overcast, which to a certain degree breaks my heart because I've been with them since the very beginning, and I really wanted to hang in there.

But it just – It's bad. It's intolerable. Yeah, it's intolerable right now, and that makes me sad. Finally, I want to close out here. I have always – I want to talk about cars. Okay. Brian, you have driven BMWs, yes?

Do you currently drive a BMW? Yes, we have a BMW X3. Okay. Very nice. Very nice. Jason, have you ever had a BMW? No, because I come from an era where if you drove a BMW, you were immediately labeled a douchebag. No, that still exists. That still exists, yeah.

I just power through, yeah. Oh, yeah. I just wanted – I didn't want to disparage – I already told Dave to go fuck himself, so I didn't want to do it to both of my co-hosts, you know? I see. You'd just be hosting the show by yourself for the rest of the – Exactly. It would just be me sitting here screaming at myself. Well, there's – and there's no shortage of jokes about, you know, like why do BMWs bother to install blinker controls in the cars whenever he uses them and all those sorts of things.

To which I say thank God for Tesla and the Cybertruck. That's right. That's true. It's taken all the heat off of the BMW drivers. I've never actually owned a BMW, but when I was in college, I dated a girl whose father had a car collection.

And he was very generous. I think he was looking to, you know, marry this girl off because he was very generous with loaning the cars out. So he would say, oh, Dave, why don't you take the 5 Series home for the weekend? And I'd be like, yes, sir.

Yes, sir. But I have always liked station wagons, souped up station wagons, because I – the wolf in sheep's clothing thing really appeals to me. This thing that doesn't look like much, but under the hood, like Mercedes has made a couple of wagons that are basically faster than Corvettes.

BMW has made a couple of wagons. But for the past few years, there are pretty much no more wagons to be had in the U.S. Yeah, it's all SUVs. It's all SUVs. And people just stopped buying wagons. And I understand that.

And I actually – I went from – I had a Volkswagen Passat wagon, and then I bought a Mazda CX-5. So I did the dance, but it's only because – if I could have purchased another Passat wagon, I probably would have. But you couldn't.

They were gone. Anyway, BMW has brought back a souped-up wagon. They're bringing the M5 back to the U.S. It is a hybrid. It only has about, I think, 750 horsepower, something like that. Only? Yeah.

Only? It's not much for a BMW. I mean, there are times when you have to get to the grocery store, and you don't want to wait. So 750 horsepower makes a whole lot of sense. So I just need to find $125,000, which is what this car costs.

It is pricey. And I'll be good to go. So yeah, GOG slash Patreon? Jason. I don't know what Jason. Slash Jason, right. Take your cut. Right, yeah. No, this is a good-looking vehicle. I like it. It looks great. You know, I definitely want – I was thinking, you know, our next car should be a hybrid.

And, you know, the M3 or the X3, which I have, they've just started getting so big because that is what the market seems to want these days. The BMW X3 is – you know, the X1 is the size that the X3 used to be.

The X3 is the size that the X5 used to be. The X5 – you're in two states at once when you're in that fucking car because it's so goddamn big. So, you know, this looks great. Like, I really like it. The fact that it's a hybrid is great. It's a hefty price tag.

But all the hybrids are really expensive right now, especially the luxury market ones. So, yeah, I don't know. It's a little rich for my blood for a car, but it's a good-looking car. It sure is. Yeah. My Jeep only has 285 horsepower. Yeah, well, you know, that's why we don't mind being called assholes when we tool around in our BMWs.

You can get away. Right, right. We only see your middle finger zooming away from us as you drive. You only bother us for about a half a second. That's right. That's right. And then we're gone.

Then we're gone. Yeah. All right, guys. That's it. All right. See you next time. Over at Patreon, we've got Josh, Tony, and Doug. Welcome. Thank you so much. Over at PayPal, we've got Miles, Shari, Josh, Linda, Natalie, Arcadio, and Nathaniel.

Woo-hoo. Over at the tip jar, we've got Panos and Elle, Theodore, and Sean. And as usual, just a reminder, if you sign up for Patreon for just $3 a month, you can pay more if you want. You get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition. And please, for the love of God, sign up on the website, patreon.com slash GOG, and not the iOS app.

Please. Yes. Don't do that. No reviews this week. And sadly, former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has died at the age of 56 from cancer, which sucks. It does suck. She's been battling it for quite some time, and it's pretty sad.

It is. It is. I just saw her on the YouTube Effect, the Alex Winter documentary, which was actually pretty good. And she was good on it, too. But this is one of those things where it's like she won the lottery of life long ago. She should have quit and spent time with her family instead of dicking around at YouTube.

Agreed. So, you know, all of these people, they just get so caught up in the whole rat race and the game of Silicon Valley. It's like, step the fuck away. You've got, once you get your fuck you money, please, fuck off. Go have fun. Just enjoy your life. Yeah. Especially when you know it's possibly going to be much shorter than you hoped.

Yeah, seriously. We also lost somebody else very involved in computer stuff. Larry Tesler, the computer scientist behind Cut, Copy, and Paste, a.k.a. how most people do programming, died at age 74. He worked for a number of major tech firms during his long career.

Basically, everyone. He started at Xerox, as did almost everybody from that generation, before Steve Jobs poached him for Apple, where he spent 17 years and rose up to chief scientist. After leaving Apple, he set up an education startup and worked for brief periods at both Amazon and Yahoo.

So, guy got around. Thank you for the cut copy. He did get around. He cut, copied, and pasted himself all over the place. He really did. He really did. 74 is still too young, but good run. Yeah. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Shellmeister. Thanks for tuning in to Grumpy Old Geeks.

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