666: The Episode of the Beast

This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Brews Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel. Three straight days with pool deck bare knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and non-stop action.

The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at BKFSEA.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 Satanmeister. Brian, 666 fun fact. Carbon, which is the building block of life, has six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons. So in a sense, 666 is related to the essence of life itself.

Well, you know what they say, Jason. The devil is in the details. Oh! I came chambered with that too. Okay, okay, okay. That's probably about it for the devil this show, but, well, I'm sure Elon pops up at some point. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. He never goes away.

I have so many names, says the devil. So a little Google Notebook AI follow-up. We posted this to the Discord channel and to Patreon, and we got some interesting feedback. Let me play a little clip here, though, real quick. AI is coming for a lot of jobs.

That's what's so unsettling about it. Like, how do you even prepare for a future where your skills might be obsolete? What are your kids going to do? It's the million-dollar question, right? I mean, on the one hand, it's exciting to think about the possibilities that AI opens up, but on the other hand, it's terrifying to think about what happens to all of us if we don't adapt.

So, isn't it ironic? From the mouth of babes. Yeah, I did. When you sent it over to me before we even posted it anywhere and I was listening to it, I was like, well, isn't that strange having AI talk about how AI is going to take our jobs? I know.

I know, rat bastards. So, well, it seems that, I mean, well, we both listened to it. We're like, oh, shit, we're screwed. Turns out, all of the feedback from everybody was fairly on the complete opposite. They're like, no, it doesn't sound very human.

We like the banter. We like the people. We like the personality. It lacks soul. So, what do you think? It'll get there. That's the problem. Yeah. It's only a matter of time. I mean, that's, you know, we listened to it and I was shocked that it pulled so many interesting things, that it tried to make jokes, that it, you know, it really tried.

Emphasis on tried. I mean, it's dry, for sure, certainly still, but it's only a matter of time. Think how far we've come. Just a year ago, we were just talking about some of the speech synthesis startups and how good those voices were getting. Well, all right, the voices sound pretty human already.

There's still, there's some inflection issues and things of that nature. We literally just fed it show notes and it made up banter and stories. Now, it may not have been great, but again, it's a matter of time. Yeah. As soon as we can put our voices in there.

The other thing is they took our 60s, or no, it was an hour and 20 minute show and compressed it into like five and a half minutes. I'm like, okay, well, you're not going to sell any ads against that shit, I tell you right now. Well, no, but I mean, you know, I think back to when we were trying to do Up to Speed or something like that. If we would have had this then.

Oh, game over, man. Game over. Game over. And it is game over for that type of show. For any show that's just giving you some headlines and some basic, you know, beats on it. Those shows are done. Yeah. I mean, and what I liked about this one was the actual synthesis from the notes was pretty good. So what I was positing was you take your show notes, put it into this, get your audio back out of it, strip the audio, and just make a transcript of it.

And then run that transcript through 11 labs, which has better voices. And then, boom, you got a show. Yep. Easy, easy peasy. Yeah. So if you want to start up that daily show again, Jason, I think you've got a path. I let the domain lapse, although I'm pretty sure nobody jumped on it right away.

So no, boot up is done. I'm done trying that shit. Although now would be the time to do it, I guess. God damn it. We are, you know, just always ahead of the game, Jason. Yes, we are. Or very, very far behind. That too. Yeah. Well, we got a little bit of follow up.

We've been following the saga of MoviePass for quite some time. And the former MoviePass CEO, Mitch Lowe, one of two of MoviePass leaders indicted by the Justice Department in 2022. You know you got a problem when half your C-suite is being indicted, but you know, whatever.

As pled guilty to security's fraud charges, prosecutors claim he knew from the start that the company's 9.95 unlimited plan was a short-term gimmick to attract survivors and inflate stock. So did we. We knew it too. To which he shrugged his shoulders and said, have you guys heard of Uber?

Because that was their fucking business model. That was their business model. They just had more investment. Yeah. So statements allegedly include allegedly lying about the company's ability to become profitable on subscription fees alone and having tech that could generate revenue from customer data.

He also claimed MoviePass was profiting from multiple revenue streams despite not being able to display any of said revenue streams. There will be. I promise. I promise. It's like our podcast. We have multiple revenue streams. Yes. Yeah. There you go. Okay.

Okay. Anyway, so he's basically they're calling him on their bullshit and said, you guys lied about this to shareholders. You guys lied about everything. But, you know, Mitch is a good man who's looking to move forward with his life, said Lowe's attorneys. I would also be looking forward to returning to my life and not going to jail or paying out half or almost all my money and becoming poor.

But yeah, he has accepted responsibility for his actions in this case and will continue to try to make things right. I don't know how you try to make it right when you bullshitted a company into existence and took a lot of money. But, okay. Good luck with that. Yeah. I mean, he's only looking at five years.

Come on. Meanwhile, the other guy, Barnesworth, is still in custody. He was initially freed on a $1 million bond that was revoked in August 2023 after the feds accused him of misusing nearly $300,000 in company funds. His former boyfriend, whom he met on an escort site, was paid $147,000 and received a Cadillac worth $144,000.

After the pair split up, the feds say he falsely accused his ex of stealing the vehicle. No! Some winners running that company. Seriously, man. Oh, it's way more interesting than we thought. Way more interesting. I can't wait for this HBO Max movie. I know.

I'm going to have to go back and watch it now. I think they need to redo it. There's a lot of cool new information. I was going to say, we need a chapter two. Maybe that's what they were banking on. Maybe. But speaking of diversifying our revenues, Brian, we're going to have a shirt store by the time this thing comes out.

Oh, sweet. We're going to have the only thing that makes musicians money. Let's see what happens. See what happens. Yeah, sorry it's taken so long. I've just been dealing with a lot of health stuff, so I've been back and forth to doctors and getting poked and prodded and all that shit. So it's been kind of a rough couple weeks. But I have a break between my next testing and MRI, except they are going to take a half a gallon of blood tomorrow, I think.

I looked at the list of tests that they're doing. There's like 17 tests they're doing. I'm just going to be a raisin by the end of the morning. Oh, my God. Yeah. The shit that you and I have gone through in the past few years with this sort of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. No, this one is the stroke that keeps on giving. It's been almost three years since I had that thing.

Yeah. And it has just come back with a vengeance, like all the side effects. So they're trying to figure out what it is. I'm sorry to hear that. You sound great. Yeah. I mean, I sounded fine after the stroke. I just couldn't see or walk for three months, which is I can still see, but walking is definitely a problem.

Oh, since we're on the topic, I'm going to need to get an exercise bike because they say I now must do 30 minutes of cardio three days a week. Didn't you put together like a kind of a ghetto Peloton system a while back? I did. There's a cheaper bike called Echelon, and you can use that one.

And basically, you've already got Apple Plus, right? Or the Fitness Plus, which I will be discussing in apps and doodads because I have some fucking shit that happened with that today. So what you can do is you basically do not have to subscribe to Echelon. You get the app. You pair it to the bike.

The bike is a lot cheaper than Peloton. They have something called Freestyle Ride on it, so you can keep track of the tension levels that you put on it, which you don't have to subscribe to. And then you just throw up a 30-minute Apple Fitness Plus bike ride. Okay. Yeah.

Well, I just duct tape the iPad to my head, and then it can be like the Apple Vision ghetto. Then I've got the whole shebang together. All right. Echelon. I will check that out. Thank you very much. Yeah, check that out. They're much, much cheaper. And do not pay for the subscription. I will not. So everybody, you're going to have to go buy some shirts so I can get an Echelon so I don't die before the next episode.

In the news.

666 fun fact. In China, the number six is considered lucky and represents smooth progress and good fortune, saying 666 is often a way to express that something is going smoothly or awesome, especially online. 666. Is this going awesome?

I hope so. I don't know. We'll have to ask our listeners. Or if not, then we're going back to the AI version. We're going back to Notebook AI. There we go. Some 23andMe follow-up as well. I don't know why we didn't put this in follow-up, but I didn't because whatever. It's been a week for me too. 23andMe is going to pay $30 million to settle their 2023 data breach lawsuit.

They are close to settling the proposed class action lawsuit. I believe you sent your spit to them, so you should sign up for that. Yeah. The DNA testing company has agreed to pay $30 million to affected customers as well as to conduct annual computer scans and cybersecurity audits for three years. The website will be built to notify people eligible to a portion of the settlement fund and to facilitate payments.

So there you go. According to Reuters, 23andMe describes its financial condition as extremely uncertain. Okay. Something else I could have told them a few years back. Well, if you look at it, there's 6.9 million users in the data breach. There's $30 million that are going out.

If you don't factor in the fees and you just do that, I am entitled to $4.35. So after lawyers come in, I should probably get about $0.35. Still, it is your moral obligation, Jason. My moral obligation, damn it. I got to do it.

That's right. I got to do it. All right. Well, 23andMe is now known as 16andMe after the seven independent directors of 23andMe resigned. CEO Anne Wojcicki is trying to take the company private again, and she offered $0.40 per share.

And the board said, go fuck yourself. We're out of here. Good luck, Anne. We're sorry about your sister, but this is stupid. Yeah. Let it go. Yeah, we'll see what's going to happen there. But this comes back to what we always said is these companies who have all of your DNA data are eventually going to go tits up, and that data is going to be sold.

And they're going to sell it all off. To the least, you know, the lowest bidder, and there we go. So your DNA is now in a fire sale again. Speaking of extremely fucking stupid, hours after the FBI arrested a man who was carrying an AK-47 outside of Mar-a-Lago and theoretically attempted to assassinate the ex-president again, Elon Musk posted something on X he would later come to regret, says the story.

But somehow I doubt he regrets anything. So I'm not so sure about that. And he posted, and no one is even trying to assassinate Biden slash Kamala, he said, and they now deleted post. It was the kind of dumb and reactionary thing lots of people post online in the wake of a horrific breaking news story.

The kind of dumb thing anyone could rattle off without thinking about it. But Elon isn't just anyone. He's not just anyone. A lot of his money comes from government contracts. He has a security clearance. This is the kind of post that, should it come up during a clearance review, would typically see the poster lose such privileges, hence the deletion immediately.

Yes. For Musk, it was all a big joke. Well, one lesson I've learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn't mean it's going to be all that hilarious as a post on X. He said in one follow-up post. Jason, he is so close, so close to understanding that everybody around him, those groups, are paid by him and react differently than the rest of the world does.

Yeah. I don't know how close, really. Come on, Brian. Do you really think he's that close? No, no. I mean, you know, he's not even in the same room. He doesn't get it. No, he's too fucked up on ketamine to actually pay attention to the real world around him. But my favorite hashtag this week was hashtag deport Elon Musk.

So I thought that was pretty good because it's not just that. The Secret Service is looking into him for this. They know they're not going to prosecute him, but they have to crack a file on him. And by cracking a file on him means that security clearance is going to be a problem, which could be a problem for the astronauts still stuck on the space station.

They're trying to hire SpaceX to go get. So, yeah. Well, I guess we'll have to send up Amazon's dick. Oh, God. Oh, the throbbing Bezos. God damn it.

Too bad we already have a show title. Oh, no. I know. They'd be like, I'm staying here. Send up a Soyuz when you can. I'll make a note to myself to include hashtag throbbing Bezos. Throbbing Bezos. There you go. Oh, there's a new shirt available on shop.gog.show coming soon.

Oh, so California Governor Kevin Newsom has signed two new bills. Speaking of throbbing Bezos. Exactly. Into protecting individuals from the dangers of artificial intelligence. He signed one of these at SAG-AFTRA. So SAG-AFTRA, who is kind of in hot water that we talked about a couple weeks ago for cutting a backroom deal with a voice AI company so their actors can clone their voice anyway and get it out there and make a few bucks off of it.

Good old Duncan Crabtree, Ireland. There's a fucking name for you. During the protests, he seemed like he was a fairly with it guy. I just didn't, you know, I didn't see him doing all these backdoor deals. Anyway, so we've got these two new laws that are coming into effect here.

And here's now what is illegal under California's eight new AI laws. It is illegal to blackmail someone with AI-generated nude images that resemble them. Well, I thought it was illegal. Couldn't you have just stopped with illegal to blackmail someone? It's illegal to blackmail someone. Exactly. I think that kind of covers all scenarios.

Yeah, I didn't know we had to specify on that one. Next up. Social media platforms must establish channels for users to report deepfake nudes, temporarily block the content during investigation, and permanently remove it if confirmed. Okay. Elon's got to power up that poop emoji machine.

Seriously, seriously. Next up. Generative AI systems must include disclosure in the content's metadata indicating that it was AI-generated. And God knows that we'd have no way to edit metadata on an image or a video. Or also the, you know, people who are trying, who are going ahead and breaking the law anyways are well, you know, criminals are well-known for following the law while committing their crimes.

Exactly. Oh, I can't touch that metadata. If I'm going to break the law, I've got to do it properly. Let's make sure all this metadata is in there. Yes. And they don't even say that most of the generative AI systems that actually generate the content are homegrown. It's open source.

They're doing it themselves. They're not going to mid-journey for this shit. All right. Large online platforms must label or remove AI deepfakes related to elections and provide reporting channels. A little more on that one in a second. Posting or reposting AI deepfakes that could deceive voters is illegal.

Again, more on that one in a second. AI-generated political advertisements require explicit disclosure. Studios must obtain permission from an actor before creating an AI-generated replica of their voice or likeness, unless you go to the back room that Duncan Crabb Tree Ireland is living in.

Creating digital replicas of deceased performers without the consent of their estates is prohibited. So. Okay. There we go. All right. So those are the new laws. Now, next up. Can't wait to find the AI police. All right. Next to the net police. Yeah. Yep.

So a popular conservative influencer, Christopher Coles, known as Mr. Reagan on YouTube and X, is suing California over new laws targeting AI-generated deepfakes of election content. There we go. There we go. Okay. Yes. So basically, this guy makes his little deepfake videos and says they're, you know, it's political satire.

Well, except when Elon Musk takes one of them and shares it and doesn't say it's parody or satire. And then he can be in trouble for it under the new laws. Yes. Because he reposted. Yeah. Yes, exactly. Because the thing is, it's like they're not going after the, for a lot of these, they're not going after the creator or the, you know.

The actual like system or the creator. They're going after the person who posted it. Yes. So that is the interesting thing about this. So we'll see if this guy makes any headway with his lawsuit. But he has a good argument. But it has to be, it depends on how you couch it. Because if you say, you know, if you look at a Saturday Night Live article or a video and say, no, this is, this is a deepfake.

But without the record, you know, you know what I'm saying. There's Weird Al doing a parody of Green Day. And then there's a band that sounds exactly like Green Day that does a Green Day song and puts that out there. Right. With the same lyrics. Yeah. Said it better than me. What's the next story, Brian? The next story is Donald Trump, who has previously called Bitcoin a scam, has launched a new cryptocurrency venture called World Liberty Financial.

Brian, is that, it's your turn. It is. It's shh, shh, shh, what? Shocking. Yeah, there we go. That's what I was looking for. I'm going to buy that shirt when you make that one. It's coming. All right. Sweet. Now, he sounds terribly excited about it.

Crypto is one of those things we have to do. He said in an interview on X, whether we like it or not, I have to do it. Boy, that, I'm pumped. Yeah. Well, yeah, he has to do it because, well, the value of the Trump media stock dropped below 15 bucks yesterday.

So everybody's going to be going cuckoo nutty with it. Yeah. He is entering the venture with his sons, Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I'm sorry, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, along with two crypto entrepreneurs, Chase Harrow, who once called stable coins borderline a Ponzi scheme, and Zachary Fulkman, who founded a company called Date Hotter Girls.

Oh, God. Trump's 18-year-old son, Baron Trump, who has no known crypto expertise, is also listed as chief DeFi visionary. Oh, my God. When asked questions about the venture in an X Spaces interview, of course, Trump appeared to know next to nothing about it.

It's so important. It's crypto. It's AI. It's so many things. AI needs tremendous electricity capabilities beyond anything I've ever heard, he said. He deferred to Baron's expertise, saying he has four wallets, and equated it to learning a language like Chinese. Oh, my God. China! China!

I just looked, and I think Elon's going to start buying this, because it was at $14.20 a second ago, Trump media stock. Oh, there you go. That's the price he likes. That's the price he likes. It did dip. It went lower than I thought yesterday. It got down to $13.54. So, yes. Well, getting back a little bit to that AI and how we're going to figure out and the meta tags and all that sort of stuff.

Well, Google is trying to be more transparent about whether a piece of content was created or modified using generative AI tools. Alongside partners including Amazon Meta and OpenAI, Google has spent the past several months figuring out how to improve the tech used for watermarking AI-created or modified content.

The company says it helped develop the latest version of content credentials, a technical standard used to protect metadata detailing how an asset was created, as well as information about what has been modified and how. We can get into the details there, but obviously, as we already stated, criminals are going to criminal.

They don't really give a shit about all this stuff, and this approach isn't going to stop anyone from stripping out an image's metadata either. Yeah. I don't know what the actual tech specs are, because they're saying it's supposed to be tamper-proof. But we'll see.

We'll see. I'm sure there's a bit of steganography in there, a little hashing and all that stuff. Fingerprints. This sounds an awful lot like the meetings I used to have around record labels when they went, no, really, guys. This time, this stream, nobody can make a copy of it. Nobody can record this stream.

It's protected. It's protected. That's right. Bullshit. Well, the thing is, if it doesn't show up on Google, who cares? Nobody's posting this shit on Google expecting it to get traction. They post it on social media sites. Those are the people that really fucking matter, you know?

And Google does. They've obviously shown that they can't do social media, so that's done. So, you know, unless everybody picks this up at the same time, it's like self-driving cars. It's going to be a mishmash of, you know, dumb fuckery and wild westitude. So, there we go. Wild westitude.

I'm chock full of them today, Brian. You're a fucking meme machine today, man. I am. I am. Amazon employees are going to be required to return to the office five days a week starting on January 2nd, 2025. All right. Yep. Here's what Andy Jassy has to say.

We've decided that we're going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID. Okay. If anything, the last 15 months we've been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits. Okay. So, we're going to see how that goes.

Good luck. Yeah. Yeah. Good luck with that. We'll see. I assume a lot of people will quit. A lot of other people will take the job. Some people like working in offices. And if they live close enough and you're paying them enough, then, yeah, good luck with that.

Yeah. And the other thing is they're going to be flattening the organization, they say. And they're going to be reducing their managers company-wide by 15%. That's one way to do it. Require everybody to come into the office five days a week. And have nobody overseeing them. That's perfect.

Yeah. Good luck. Good luck, Amazon. Well, we have a little bit of good news. I wanted to end the In the News segment with something positive. The future of cancer treatment is continuing to look bright. Over the weekend, researchers in the UK announced encouraging results from an early trial testing an mRNA vaccine against advanced solid cancers.

This vaccine developed by Moderna is designed to help people's immune system better recognize and kill cancerous cells. So, yay. While vaccines are generally preventative, helping the body recognize threats before they arrive, cancer vaccines, including this one, are typically therapeutic, used to help treat people's existing cancer or prevent a recurrence.

So, this might work. Many cancer vaccines are personalized to someone's specific type of cancer. But Moderna expects that this particular thing that they have developed can be an off-the-shelf vaccine, one that can be used against a wide range of advanced solid tumor cancers. Great news. Awesome.

Awesome. Yeah. I like it. I like it. I'll take that. I'll buy that for a dollar. Me too. Put it in my veins.

Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus, the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meek Cleaver Colon.

BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com.

Media Candy. 666 Fun Fact. 666 is the product of three prime numbers. 666 equals 2 times 3 times 3 times 37. Did you have AI help you with these or did you just Google it? Google bought it. I totally had open AI make these things.

All right. Yeah, these are all chat GPT, baby. I didn't waste any time on this. I didn't do research. That's why it's a fun fact because it doesn't need to be a fact fact. Yeah, they could be hallucinated. We don't fucking know. No, that's the thing you sign up for when you listen to grumpy old geeks.

Could be true. I don't know. Conjecture and bullshit. Yeah. Well, here's one straight from the human side. Rebel Ridge on Netflix. A lot of people on our Discord channel were saying, hey, it's good. It's like First Blood. Yeah, sort of. I give it a C plus.

It was 30 minutes too long. Easily 30 minutes too long. It was made on the cheap, so there wasn't a whole lot of, you know, big bang boom booms going on there. Don Johnson was excellent. The actor who was the main lead was excellent. It was fine.

But the best part of the movie was literally when they opened up with Iron Maiden playing Number of the Beast on the guy's headphones. I was like, yes, I can get into this. I love that song. I know. I know. I wish we could play it during this episode, but then nobody would ever hear it because we would be sued out of existence.

Damn it. But yeah, the movie felt like it was algorithmically generated. You know, the script hit all the right beats at all the right time. And it was just like, OK, somebody got a copy of, you know, Heroes Journey. Somebody fed First Blood into the AI machine. Exactly.

It said, use the save the cat algorithm and spit me out something that Joseph Campbell would approve of. Boom. Here you go. All right. And I saw this one and back to the AI generated. It's called Help, I'm Genuinely Invested in the Gordon Ramsay AI Cooking Series.

It's a Facebook post with a Facebook video from Justine Moore. And she's a partner at A16Z, my least favorite people. But the video is great. The video is fantastic. But what's even better is people in the comments are posting their own Gordon Ramsay AI cooking show videos.

So it's the gift that keeps on giving. Did you watch? Did you get a chance to watch one of these? I watched one. It was very funny. Oh, they're so good. They're so good. They just. But the thing is, you could totally see that actually happening. Yeah. Yeah. No, definitely. If you want to smile on your face, go check these out.

And in great news, I mentioned last week that Alan Cumming won the Emmy for the best host of a reality show for his hosting of The Traitors on NBC slash Peacock. And fortunately, the actual show won the Emmy for best reality show.

So I expect to see more Traitors coming up. All right. I watched the final, the very end, the last one, the Grand Tour won for the road. Me too. And it basically felt like all the other specials that they've done.

Kind of boring. Not that great. But I have to admit, even I got a little emotional at the end. You saw their real emotion when they realized this is the last shot. This is the last time the three of us will be working together. This is it. This is the end. And yeah, that bit was worth it.

Yeah, it was. It was. And I like how they got the historical footage and interspersed it with them doing their thing. So yeah, I thought it was a very good sendoff. I thought they definitely stuck that. I mean, the last 30 seconds, middle of the middle of it, I fast forwarded a lot.

Yeah, it wasn't all that great. It's kind of the same as it always was. You know, the top gear, you just can't beat what they did back at that show. It was never the same when they went over to Amazon. But when they kept the original Amazon format at the beginning, it was still fine. But when they switched on just all these specials that they used to just do once a year, along with the regular show, it just kind of lost me.

And it was never quite as good. So yeah, yeah. But end of an era for sure. Definitely. You know, I'm glad it's over, honestly. I don't have to worry about missing something that Amazon pops up three months after it's been out. Because they just never really cared about promoting it.

Yeah. But yeah. Go watch Clarkson's Farm, at least the first season. I didn't watch the second. The second season was just as fun. What about the third? I have not watched the third yet. Okay. Maybe I'll go check that out when I get to, when I'm feeling emotional. In more TV news, Time Bandits has been canceled by Apple TV Plus after one season.

Surprising? Absolutely no one. I don't even know a single person that watched an episode. Neither does Apple TV Plus. That's why they canceled it. Yeah. Yeah. And I've got a little music news for people of our vintage and of our tastes in music. I was supposed to go see Jane's Addiction and Love and Rockets last Wednesday.

Unfortunately, the fucking band broke up before, like three days before the show. And it got canceled. My chance to see, I was mostly going to see Love and Rockets because they're just one of my favorite bands of all time and just amazing live. I was excited about Jane's Addiction because Eric Avery was back in the fold.

But then Perry Farrell has been either drunk or drugged out on most nights of this tour and ended up punching Dave Navarro, the guitarist. And end of Jane's Addiction. Yeah, it was really, it bums me out because my old physical therapist, her husband is Perry Farrell's manager.

So I wish I was still getting therapy from her so I could get the skinny on what happened. But I think it was all on video. I think we saw the main parts. Oh, yeah. It's all on video. And you can read between the lines because let's just say the other three members of Jane's Addiction released a statement about it.

And then Perry released a statement through Jane's Addiction that was wildly different. Yeah. And Dave Navarro has basically confirmed. That's it. The band's done. We're never getting back together until somebody gives us a really big pile of cash. Yeah. Because that's the way it works. That's the way it works, of course.

Anyways, in good news from the alternative old person scene, after 16 years of waiting, The Cure, Songs of a Lost World will officially be released November 1st. All right. And this purports to not be the last Cure album.

Robert Smith has said that this is not it. He has a long history of saying that every single album they put out is the last album, which makes you think this is the last album. Damn it. So we shall see. He has supposedly said that there is a second album of lighter songs.

This is a very depressing album that will be coming out, as well as a solo album, all of which will be coming out in the next year or two. So place your bets now that this is the last thing we'll ever hear from Robert Smith. Okay. Have they released any singles yet?

No. They've been playing some of the songs live, and then there was a charity vinyl-only release, so there's nothing out officially yet. I would expect something to come in the beginning of October, probably. We'll get a single or two. Awesome. I can't wait. Yeah. Just in time for Halloween. Exactly.

Cups and doodads. 666. Fun fact. The sum of all the numbers on the standard roulette wheel, 1 through 36, equals 666. Spin the beast. Yeah. So over the last week, I realized we're not on threads.

X sucks, so we should probably have our GOG podcast official thing over there on threads. So I set up the account, and immediately, shockingly, got quite a number of people following us and saying, hey, glad you're finally here. So I'm like, okay, cool.

Well, I guess we should do this then. So I whipped up our old grandfathered-in-cheap buffer.com account and set to attach threads, so we can push out those updates, and it can go to threads as well as Facebook and Instagram and X. And nope, not going to happen with your grandfathered-in-cheap rate.

Yeah, bastards. That sucks. So then I asked you, what are the cool kids using these days? Because you're working with some of those cool kids at this point. What are they using for their social media stuff? So you told me to check out onlywire.com, which was cheap, but I couldn't get it to connect to our Facebook page.

That's why it's cheap. When you go to their networks page to list all the networks that you can connect the account to, I couldn't search it. There was no listing of Instagram or threads or anything, and the whole fucking site didn't work. So I was like, well, I don't have time for this shit.

So the other one that you recommended was later.com, which is much more expensive, but it actually works, but they don't support threads yet. Oh, Jesus. So back to Buffer, I went and upgrading from our grandfathered cheap rates. So please continue those donations because now we're paying even more to push out these stupid updates that nobody reads.

On the plus side, later did allow me to completely manually delete the account after I had set it up and found out it doesn't do what I want it to do. OnlyWire does not allow you to do that. You have to send a message to customer service who then email you 19 times about, you know, why are you leaving? And we can fix that.

And I'm like, maybe I can't delete my account. Okay, great. Well, thanks for putting in the legwork, Brian. No worries. We're still with Buffer. They seem to be the best one out there. Seems to be. And of course, all iOS is updated this week.

We got new iOS 18. We got new watch software. We got new Apple TV software. We also have new Mac software, but I am not allowed to upgrade it. Don't do that. So I would just sit and wait for them to say I can upgrade on the show.

And that's when I'll do that. So I've done all the updates. I see you have some stories. So we'll let you get into it. And then I will complain later. All right. Yeah, there's a link to Federico Vatici's review of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. It's a good write up of pretty much everything that you need to know.

So you can go check that out at your leisure. Last night, I got a note that iOS 18.1 public beta one was now available with Apple intelligence. Unfortunately, my phone is too old. I can't do that. But it does work on my iPad Pro with the M1.

Unfortunately, half the AI intelligence features don't work on the apps that I use. So that kind of sucks. As far as the iOS 18 update itself goes, there's not a huge amount of phone. Well, I guess there's a decent amount that can handle iOS 18. The iPhone XRXS, XS Max, and the iPhone SE 2nd and 3rd gen, and anything iPhone 11 and up.

My dad has an iPhone 7 Max, which is why we're trying to do the shuffle, so I can actually get him a phone that is actually somewhat modern. Because, you know, an iPhone 7 is not really up to speed nowadays.

And he's going back to Europe soon, so I need to give him a decent camera. Because his last picture, I don't know if you know this, Brian. When the iPhone 7 Max came out, it had a fantastic camera. That camera is no longer fantastic. So, not great at all.

But, yeah, you mentioned that macOS hardware has updated, which I know constantly because in the middle of my dock is the settings app. And there's this big fucking red one staring at me again that I have to stare at. I took it out of my dock. I took it out of my dock because I know I'm never allowed to upgrade until you tell me I can, and it annoys me.

Yep, there's me. That was the sound of me removing settings from my dock. I have been running the new one on my air, and I like it. I like the new OS a lot. The problem is audio apps are historically bad about updating their software to work with the new OS.

Unfortunately, I think fucking Rogue Amoeba, who I bitched about a couple weeks ago, who updated Loopback and broke it completely for me and basically everybody else who used it. They just released another update that broke Loopback again on my older software, but works fine on the newer one.

So, on this one, I'm back to 2.35 again. Thanks, Rogue Amoeba. Thanks to Jordan Harbinger for doing the legwork to finding that old version. So, I appreciate that, brother. But, yeah, it's been an interesting week of software foibles and screaming.

So, Brian, I think you have some, too. Oh, yeah. I got me some complaints about Apple, Jason, and I normally don't. Apple has been generally pretty consistent. They push things out. They just work. Everything just works. That's why we use them now.

I'm mostly all in on an Apple ecosystem. I am in terms of, you know, handheld devices and all that. I've got iPads. I've got my iPhone. I've got my Mac. I've got, you know, all that stuff. I love it. My watch, everything. It's all Apple. So, I would like to point out to everybody who says that we're Apple fanboys, Brian was a PC guy when we started this show 11 years ago.

That's right. I certainly was. And I still do like PC, but Apple is generally better. However, I have had many Apple issues this week. Now, of course, this one, Amazon Alexa. I use the Amazon Alexa. That is, I have not gotten all Apple with the HomePods there.

We have Alexas. We like them a lot. We've used Spotify as the default streaming service on the Alexas because I get a free Spotify account, music industry, blah, blah, blah. But it's singular. So, if I was out and about listening to music and then anybody back home trying to stream something, we would end up battling it out between the two devices.

So, my wife gets an Apple music account for free because music industry. And so, we decided let's switch all of the default players on all of our Alexas to Apple music because that way I'm the one that's usually out and about listening to music. I won't get screwed.

I can listen to Spotify when I'm walking. Okay. Cool. It's going to work exactly the same, right? Right? Well, Apple music is great and it does seem to understand things better than Spotify ever did. We used to always have issues with like, you know, play this and then play something completely different out of left field.

Apple music has been, I'd say, 99% right every single time, even understanding my kid. So, that's great, but you cannot control or stream direct from the app on your phone or your laptop or anything because Apple hates Amazon and wants you to have HomePods so they don't build it in, unlike Spotify and all the other streaming players, which will then basically just allow you to stream directly to your Alexas.

With Apple music, you can only do it by connecting through Bluetooth to your device every single time. You cannot do it from the app. So, that annoys the hell out of me. That sucks. Yeah. Yeah, because I was going to say I can stream to my Sonos just fine through the app, but that's because it's the Bluetooth connection to all of the Sonos.

As opposed to just having a drop-down list of all the devices like Spotify does. Yeah. Set it. So, that was frustration number one. Frustration number two. I am using Apple Fitness. I like Apple Fitness. I do the workouts all the time. They're great.

I decided to do what they call a plan. So, for two weeks, it's basically just selecting my workouts for me. I pick the types of workouts I like. I set the time limit, which I set for 40 minutes per day. I am three days away from completing it. I don't know if it's because of the iOS updates.

It probably is. So, I've updated everything. I updated my watch. I updated my phone. I updated the TVs. Went down to try to work out right before our showtime, Jason, and would not pair to my watch. So, then you Google through everything, and they're like, okay, you have to unpair the watch from your phone and then repair it, which takes forever.

I do all that. Still not syncing. Now, it's not recognizing the fact that I set an Apple workout plan on my watch. All right. Well, whatever. I'll just do the workout anyways. Whatever. Surely, it will sink.

It's not fucking sinking. It took forever to get all this stuff up and running again. It took all morning, and it's still not working properly. I am going to fucking shoot everything. It's most frustrating with workouts because you're down there doing something you don't want to fucking be doing anyways.

And then you've got all these pauses and impediments and hoops you have to jump through to do something you don't fucking want to do. And then you finally get it going. And I'm not a big fan of gamification. It doesn't matter. I don't need the gamification. The point is to do the workout. But if you're forcing me into fucking gamification like you do with Apple Fitness, then I want it to fucking work.

Preach it, brother. Preach it. Get rid of all the gamification or make it fucking work. Okay. Done complaining about Apple. Okay. All right. Oh, man. Well, I'm going to complain a little bit more about Apple because I was really looking forward to that new phone coming today, which I mentioned last week, because they gave me a ship date, a delivery date of the 20th, which is today.

Today, I reorganized everything so somebody would be here all day for my phone. And then last night, I checked, and it's now coming on the 30th or October 3rd, sometime in between there, unless they change it again without telling me when they're going to change it again. And what's even more annoying is the new case for the phone showed up yesterday.

So now I got to look at this fucking case on my goddamn dresser while I wait for the phone to show up. You could put the case in your dresser. No. That defeats the purpose. You just moved the settings out. Well. It's the same thing, Jason. Dude, I'm software, not hardware.

Okay. Remove the thing that is in front of your eyes that is bothering you. No. No. I want to fuel my vitriol and hate. Okay. On a constant basis until this fucking phone shows up. Show fuel. Show fuel. Exactly. God damn it.

Okay. Changing gears. Changing gears. Hat tip to Vime's over on Discord. Apparently, LinkedIn is set to use your data to train AI by default. So, mentioned this in the thing. And so, here's how you do it. You go to settings, data privacy, data for generative AI improvement, and then toggle it off.

Here's all it's getting from me. Brian logged in once this month and then logged out again immediately. Exactly. Jason logged in and ignored every friend request that he's been given. Although, I have to admit, I was briefly thinking, should we set up a GOG podcast on LinkedIn?

Because it does feel like we're kind of a business-y sort of thing. Why? So, we can not get traffic from them like everybody else? Yeah, pretty much. That's what I was thinking. I mean, we're paying for the buffer app upgrade anyways. Oh, hey, if we're paying for it, might as well. Maybe we can be like a friend of the show, Chris Lockett, who's been kicked off LinkedIn, I think, three times now.

He's been banned. Well, he should stop saying the inflammatory shit he likes to say. Well, Brian, I don't know if you've ever listened to our show, but we say a lot of inflammatory shit that people don't want to hear on LinkedIn. Ah, but I don't post inflammatory shit in our teasers. Ah, there we go. See? Good workaround.

Good workaround. Yeah. Instagram has tightened their restrictions on teen use, putting parents in control. Fucking bullshit. Oh, God. Yeah. Uh-huh. Instagram is launching teen accounts to enhance safety for young users.

Starting today, all current and future accounts held by teens will automatically transition to this new format. Or there's going to be a lot less teens on Instagram because they're all going to say they're not fucking teens anymore. Got a teen? We've added the hot dog or not filter that'll notify you.

Yep. And or a lot of parent accounts are being spun up right now. Facebook says that they think that they're going to see a steep decline in usage from teens because of this. Yes, because they're okay with it. Because they made their accounts adults. Adults. Exactly. Exactly.

And they're going to tell teens to log off after an hour of use. Good luck. And they're going to enforce a sleep mode from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. And sleep mode means that there's just no notifications. You can probably still use the app. Yeah, this is just that this is them trying to placate regulators who are coming for them.

Yes. See what we've done already? No need to sue us. Exactly. Even though they've been sued by what? 41 states attorneys general already filed last year, earlier this year. Yeah. It's just they're trying to get ahead of it, even though most people say, yeah, this is this is nothing.

But I mean, it's something, I guess. Maybe it's for dumb teens. Come on, let's be honest here. It's for teens that follow the rules anyways. Yes, exactly. And if they're that dumb that they're going to follow these rules, they're probably dumb enough to send their pictures of their junk to some stranger who DMs them off the out of the blue.

So maybe this is a good enough thing for the people who are at risk, the dumb teens. So I don't know. Snap has some new spectacles coming because they're just not letting go of their their AR spectacles for some reason. Well, look, they bought a shitload of those frames and they got to do they get they own them.

Yeah. Well, these these actually are newer ones. So they're so new that you can't even buy them. This is a vending machines down in Venice. No vending machines, Brian. You have to rent them. You have to rent them from Snap as a developer for ninety nine dollars a month.

Fuck that. Yeah. So I'm like, OK, so let me let me break this down. You want me to spend one hundred dollars a month to rent your spectacles, to write software for your platform that you don't even have a roadmap to deliver the spectacles to the public who would then use the software.

Is that? Yeah, that's it. OK. Where do I sign? Wow. The dumb team developer is the dumb team developers who are on Instagram who are going to sign up for this, I guess. Yeah, I guess so. That's that's an interesting approach. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure some corporate clients have already signed up.

Oh, of course. Of course. Yeah. That's that's the only people are going to sign up for this. Except for the probably the one smart developer who says, I'm going to get in early and I'm going to write the software and then I will be king of the shit pile when it comes out, if it ever comes out. So there you go. All right. And a little bit of follow up, Fantasy Hike, the app that does some step tracking that did not pay for the IP of Lord of the Rings, but aped it as closely as possible.

I have completed it. Finally. Congratulations. I walked one thousand seven hundred and eighty miles from December 31st, 2023 to September 16th, 2024. When I finished, I averaged five point seven six miles per day and my best day was twelve point seven miles, which was done at Disneyland.

All right. Congratulations. Now, what are you going to do? I Googled around. There's not really anything similar to that app. There's there's one called. Well, there's a lot that charge you for the stupid coins. And I'm like, I'm not going to spend ninety nine dollars for you to track my steps and give me a coin.

So I'm not doing those companies. There's one called Walk the Distance, which has things like city paths and Pacific Crest Trails and all that sort of stuff. A lot of which are free, some of which you pay for, but a lot of them are free. I'm going to give that a go. It's pretty clever. They basically just use Google Maps and then they pull in some interesting things that you pass from like Wikipedia entries and things like that.

You know, it's somebody spent a little bit of time on this, but it's just not the same. I have a feeling I'll use Walk the Distance for about a month and then stop because I've already got 18 step trackers built in. I've got the Apple Fitness. I've got the Steps app. I just, you know, the fun part was getting the graphics and the gamification of it and laughing at their attempts to go around Lord of the Rings IP.

Well, you know, since you have that Spotify account still, you can just put the proclaimers, I'm going to be on loop and just, you know, just keep, keep tracking. I would walk 500 miles not to hear that song ever again. I know. Come on, they're Scottish. It's great.

It's a great song. I heard it seven gazillion times in the 90s or whenever. Yeah, I've heard it enough times. That's how many times I've heard it? Enough. So Californians can now add their driver's licenses to Apple Wallet. So they say. Part of the state's mobile driver's license pilot program, allowing up to 1.5 million participants to join.

I must have been 1.5 million and one because last night I went through the process. They make you do all this crazy shit. So you scan your driver's license and then you have to hold your phone up to your face and hold it very still. And then you have to, like, open your mouth, close your eyes, move your head right to left to make sure you're real.

Then they match it up to your driver's license photo. And then they fail at the very end and say, sorry, we're broken right now and we cannot add you. That's what I went through last night. Twice. That sounds awesome. Yeah, it was great. Especially since I don't look anything like my driver's license photo does.

So, yeah, I'm about 30 pounds lighter and have no hair now. So I don't look anything like it. Yeah, I'm going to wait until I hear from somebody, anybody I know that has done this successfully before I start the process. I went through enough tech hurdles this week to last the next two months.

Saturday, September 26th. Tuesday, two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus, the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line.

When the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meek Pleaver Cullen. KFC 94, Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. At the library.

666 fun fact. In Roman numerals, 666 is written as DCLXVI, which is interesting because it uses every numeral from 500, which is D, down to 1, which is I, in descending order. Neat. Neat. All right.

When I was back in LA for a month, I got one of those, you know, you know how every couple of weeks, if you're not, if you don't pay for it, you get this whole like Amazon Kindle Unlimited. You do a free trial of Kindle Unlimited for three months. And I was like, well, I'm here in LA, I finished my book, I've got a lot of time just around my mom's house, plenty of time to read.

Why don't I just sign up for this and give it a go? And I did the smart thing that everybody should do when they do this stuff. I immediately put in my calendar on October 1st, which is cancel, cancel. So it's in my calendar. I know it's coming up and I'm going to cancel. Other fun fact about Amazon Kindle Unlimited.

There's fuck all in there. There's nothing there. Nothing you really want to read is in there. I scrolled through their sci-fi section. I also ended up not having any time to read. So it was a waste of the three months of not being able to read any books that I don't want to read anyways.

But regardless, I did find a book called Echoes of Extinction by D. Ward Cornell. I am about, I'd say, I'm not done with it yet. I'm almost done with it. It's part of a series. We'll see how he sticks the landing on the first book to determine if I'm going to read anything, anything, any further in the series or not.

I'm inclined not to because I will not be getting them for free. I would have to pay for them because I'm not going to be able to read them in time before my trial ends. This book is interesting. He's obviously ex-military. It's very much written from like everything is informed by military procedures and all that sort of stuff.

So not really my kind of sci-fi. And of course, you know, the main character is ex-military guy who gets the girl. Girls. Of course. Many girls. More than a few girls. All very attractive girls. Alien threat thing is interesting. It's it's I can tell where I kind of think where it's going.

I'm not going to say anything yet. I'll wait until I finish the book. But yeah, mainly this is just saying don't do Kindle Unlimited. All right. Yeah. Good to know. Good to know. Yeah. There's just this fuck all on there. Yeah. You spend longer scrolling through trying to find something you're interested in than it would have taken you to buy and read a book that you actually wanted to read.

To earn the money, to buy the book, to read, to read anyway. Yep. So I read In My Time of Dying, How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife by Sebastian Junger. Ooh, sounds like a real cheery page turner. It really is. I highly would not recommend this book unless you've had a near-death experience like I have.

So for me, it was research and because his kind of paralleled the one that I had when I had my stroke. So for me, it was fascinating. For most people, I'm not sure it would be that fascinating because you don't have a point of reference. But if you have had one of those, which I'm sorry if you have, highly recommended book.

I thought it was fantastic. And Sebastian Junger is a great writer. So yeah, he's just a fantastic writer. So in that note, it was a great book, but narrow audience, narrow audience. Well, technically, everybody. We're all going to die, Jason.

Yeah, but it has a little more oomph if you've kind of gone through it, you know? Yeah. Especially when yours mirrors, the one that he had, too, because they're not all the same. They're not all the same by a long shot. Yeah. Let's just say, spoiler alert, no bright lights.

No bright lights. Then I started reading Not Till We Are Lost, Baba Verse Book 5 by Dennis E. Taylor. I will point out, not reading, because if you were reading it, I would be, too. Listening to Not Till We Are Lost, Baba Verse Book 5 by Dennis E. Taylor. This is the most annoying author deal ever made.

It is the greatest author deal in the history of time because I get to listen to it first. Although by the time I'm done, it'll probably be out in print. How's it going? I love it so far. God damn it. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to send him an angry ex.

Send him an angry ex. Because, yeah, no, it's getting a little confusing because there are so many Bobs now. But it's still, I love it. It's just a fun, I'm taking my time with it because I don't want it to end because I know it's going to be forever until the next one.

Yeah. Because I guarantee this won't be the end. I hope this isn't the end. He's making too much money for it to be the end. Come on, Denny. Let's do it. Can't wait. Sucka. Hopefully next month, I think, it comes out.

I can't remember. I can guarantee you it won't be in Amazon Unlimited. No, it won't be. No, it won't. Which is funny since Amazon owns Audible. I know. You'd think that there would be some kind of deal. Nope. Doubly scrap. Well, I've got some long reads for you for the week, Brian, that you can take your time with if you like.

One is called The Subprime AI Crisis by Edward Zitron. Fantastic. This is a half hour read, so it'll take you some time. And he basically just breaks down how we are just headed for the cliff of AI and how it's unsustainable and will lead to a significant collapse of big tech and many startups, which we have known for quite some time.

Because if you look at the numbers, it's like, there is no fucking way. They're going to make that much money back. Nope. But he breaks it down in a very, very well-spoken way. So highly recommended reading. If you want to get the leg up on everybody who tells you that AI is the future, man.

Well, you can have some ammunition in your quiver to say, hold that thought for a second. And another one is a really interesting read called, this one's from Prospect Magazine. It's called, Is Anyone Out There? And it's about the dead internet theory. And it's also a fun read.

It's not that long. It's only like a 10-minute read. But it just talks about the dead internet theory and how we're all going to be talking to AI-generated bullshit for the rest of our lives. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we don't even have to have the humans involved, apparently, Jason.

I don't know if you heard about this, but it made the news this week. Only-bots.ai. The first and only current social network only for bots and not for humans. I saw that. Yeah. Genius. I love what you decided to use technology for.

The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave, featuring the dastardly, dynamic, and delightfully devious Dave Bittner. Dave can be heard on the CyberWire podcast talking cyber-y stuff, or on Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, exploring deception and tomfoolery, or also diving into privacy with Ben Yellen on Caveat, and breaking down industrial cybersecurity on Control Loop.

Dave's new show, Only Malware in the Building, is a monthly show hosted by Selina Larson with Rick Howard and Dave Bittner. It breaks down the most impactful malware stories into actionable insights for tech professionals and security executives in a most charming way. Getting your money out of that OpenAI subscription, aren't you?

Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Damn Skippy. Brian, would you like to bring us in with our new 666 fun fact? Our 666 fun fact for this segment. The fear of the number 666 even has a fancy name. It's called... Hexacosioi hexaconda hexaphobia.

Rolls right off the tongue. Some people go out of their way to avoid the number, like skipping floor 666 in buildings or avoiding the number on license plates. I would like to know what floor 666 is on. I tend to avoid anything over, say, 100 if I can. I know. I don't like being that high.

Who came up with that fun fact coming up? OpenAI! Jet GBD, baby! Floor 666 in buildings. I mean, yeah. Boy, that's hard not... It's hard not to do. That's why these are fun facts, Dave, not fact facts.

So I'm coming in the middle of this. I breezed through the script before we recorded today. And what is the... What's the origin? What's the motivation of this being 666 Fun Fact Day? Because we're on episode 666. Oh, I...

All right. This is the episode of the beast, Dave. I see. You know what? I saw the episode of the beast, but I did not see the 666. So shame on me for not being more observant. It all makes sense to me now. Thank you. As our friend Robert Fogarty would say...

Satan! Satan! Oh, I see. Sure. Satan! We did have a lot of fun recording his bumpers. Yes, we did. Yeah. Okay.

You know what? The rest of my life, I don't need to hear that again. Satan! Oh, God. Now, see, we need to be like those Israelis. We got to get into Dave's phone and make it his ringtone. Yeah, there you go. That's what I need.

Yeah, fuck you guys. Fuck you guys. Fuck both of you. Fuck both of you. Fuck you, Jason. Fuck you, Brian. Fuck you, Boat. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Still one of my prouder moments on the show. Deep cut. I didn't realize you had that buttonized.

That's wonderful. Oh, that is my ringtone. That is your ringtone. Right. Dave's calling. Oh. Speaking of ringtones, I just want to rub it in, Jason, and say that my iPhone is out for delivery right now.

Fuck you, Dave. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, Dave. 13 seconds ago, I just got a notification on my watch that said, your phone will be delivered on September 30th. It's out for delivery. Fuck you, Apple. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I wonder what happened. That's strange.

I was there. I was there six seconds after the damn thing came on, and nope, didn't get it. Me too. Yeah. Shut up. I'm even closer to China, goddammit. That's true. Mine had, my phone had to come past you to get to me by way of Alaska.

And so, I don't know. You know, it's the, it's, we, look, we're on the East Coast. It's the one true time zone. Although Apple wouldn't say that. Apple, you think Apple would, would prioritize people in California since they can't help slapping that on everything they make.

Yeah, and it's true. We matter more out here, so we should definitely get it first. Come on. At least from Apple's point of view, you do. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you, you all just keep on telling yourselves that. It's, it's, it's adorable. Yeah. Well.

They read Brian's bitching in our show notes and said, no, we're not giving these guys any. Don't give that guy the phone. Don't give that guy the phone. He doesn't deserve it. All right. We have a bit of follow-up. Uh, we talked last week about, uh, the typical male behavior of, uh, maybe going up or down a floor, but never to floor six, six, six, uh, to do one's business.

Um, and Dave wondered out if, uh, reached out to our listeners, do, do women do this as well? Or is this a gender bias? Um, we have two bits of feedback first from Sarah resident female. It is a thing would go to a different floor in college happily work from home now.

Yeah. So, so what do you do at home? Do you have multiples floors? I have bathrooms on two different floors. I should go downstairs to pee. That's what I'm thinking right now. Uh, and Suzanne wrote in high fellow geeks as a long time listener. And one of the two women listening, well, two women wrote in. So there you go. I can't, I can't disprove that.

Yeah. I want to weigh in on the bathroom topic. I will preface this by saying that I am European, so it might be different in the U S that, that said, never have I witnessed a fellow woman in any of the offices I worked using another bathroom other than the nearest.

We really don't care. Okay. Hmm. Then she gets into broadcasting. I have a question. Yeah. So the only asterisk I'll put on that is I wonder because Europe has vastly superior stall privacy standards than.

Yes. Their doors go all the way down. Right. Exactly. They don't have massive gaps that you could put your whole hand through when you close the door. So, uh, I wonder if that has anything to do with it, but, uh, that was just good feedback. I would say based on what Sarah said, uh, you know, mystery solved.

Yes. Some women are just as odd as us men are when it comes to this particular activity. Yeah. So, yeah. Uh, I did a follow up on Suzanne's recommendation here and I'm going to give, uh, the eye catcher podcast app, uh, which she refers to as a pod catcher, which is, you know what?

And I've, I've heard that before, but I don't, you, I, that's not an active term around here. You don't like it. It might be a European thing or her, she does say her native language is German. So it could be a German thing. Who knows? Could be. I, I, I think it's an Adam Curry thing.

Um, I think it is. Yeah. So yeah. MTV guy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the pod father, the pod father, I'm going to check it out. And, uh, at first glance, it looks interesting. So I will check it out and see if it fits my needs.

All right. Let me know how catching those pods go. There you go. Speaking of, we've got a couple of little bits of feedback here. David said, how customized did you have your overcast set up before? You keep asking for exactly what it does out of the box. I'm so flummoxed about the overcast rage.

Yeah. Stuff moved around, but everything you asked for was always there. The biggest blessing of the update is the speed that he's able to address people's issues. We, we, let's, let's, let's, let's define blessing in a second here. David works for a PR company. I'm thinking.

Right. He's releasing every couple of days to at least weekly adjustments to make people happy. I was not a fan. Yeah. I was not a fan that the sleep timer went three menus down a stack, but he fixed that within days. The app is really getting back to being better than ever.

I will just preface this. David was saying, uh, I did not customize my overcast set up at all. Like I did nothing. I used it straight out of the box and the straight out of the box updated version changed a lot. A lot. Here's the other thing.

I paid for it and then it broke. That's, and the fact that we have to take the time to talk about it is a fail. The fact that now months we've been talking about how shitty this update was and same with Sonos and Sonos fired people over it. Unfortunately, this is the only guy there.

Marco's the only guy there. We can't fire Marco because Marco's the only fucker who makes the thing, even though Marco made a bad decision. So when you buy software, you want the software to remain working. He released an unworking version of the software and he knew it.

He fucking knew it. So he even said on ATP, yeah, it's not where I want it to be, but it's the 10th anniversary. So I better release it. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not, that is not the proper criteria for software release, Marco. Especially since you're a one person show, there's no board.

There's no appeasing shareholders. There's no need to push something out if it's not ready. It's your fucking ego because you wanted to have something spiffy for the 10 year anniversary. We had 10 fucking years to make it better and you, you fucked that up. So, so sorry, David.

Didn't have to customize it to have it suck when it updated. So Barbara writes in, we have a third woman, by the way. So this is lady number three. Okay. She didn't want to tell us about her bathroom habits, I guess. That's true. She just wanted to tell us. What a prude. Yeah.

Barbara writes in, okay, I thought you two were crazy or exaggerating. Overcast still seemed wonderful to me. Well, today I figured it out. Apparently I hadn't updated my Overcast app. Well, I did and presto, understood. So there, David. So maybe make this a cautionary tale and let others know they might want to avoid updating the app.

We have been, Barbara, for many weeks now. I'm thinking I will figure out how to use the new app and I would like to think you might rethink. The new app made it very easy to get your website. Okay. Well, that's a plus. Best from a sometimes grumpy and old lady geek. Well, thank you, Barbara.

Thank you. Thank you. So to get back to what David said, and Jason, I think you have highlighted many of my thoughts in your own inimitable way. The bug that bit me the hardest was being able to set limits on the number of episodes downloaded and stored in any particular podcast feed.

That's a bad one. Yeah. Especially since it took away streaming at the same time. Well, and as folks may or may not know, I have a vested interest in a daily podcast. What? So what happens... Thousands of episodes.

Exactly. So, you know, all of a sudden, instead of having... I think I had it set for like two or three episodes, right? So I could stay catched up if I missed a day, whatever. I go in there and there's like 60 episodes. And I said, okay, well, let me get rid of these manually, one by one.

Okay, new app. Things happen. Right. So what I found was that the setting was in the app, but it was simply ignoring it. And then weeks later, probably a month later, I heard on ATP that Marco was explaining how hard it is to get that feature to work, and that he had just fixed it, and he was glad to fix it, and it was more complicated.

But I was like, why leave it? You know, like, so you knew you had a problem. You knew this was broken. Could you, I don't know, let us know? Give us a list of things you know aren't working? Yeah. You know the release notes that come with every update?

It should have come with all the broken things. Right. They should have listed every single aspect of things that aren't going to work if you do this update. Right. So, you know, in response to David saying everything we asked for was there, well, if something's there, but it doesn't work, it might as well not be there.

And there are many, many things in this update that were not working. And there were other things that are, I had nitpicky issues with some of the ways that, some of the design things, okay, that's a matter of opinion. Some of it, like someone else said, you know, things were buried.

I think it was David said the sleep timer was buried. Marco had to relent and fix that. But overall, what eventually made me pull the trigger and both delete the app and stop paying for an app that I have paid for since its launch was the attitude of the developer and the either the cluelessness or disregard about the degree to which the app was broken when he launched it.

I mean, very Elon Musk-esque with X. Right. Yeah, just, it's not working, screw you. Yeah, yeah. And the great fanfare with which the app was released, as if it were ready for prime time and a major improvement and, like, I don't know, he was either lying or fooling himself.

So, you know, I don't like to assign malice to someone when incompetence will do the trick. But, you know, look, I'm happy that Marco is on this. I don't think he has any choice.

I mean, you know, he said, again, he said on ATP that his basically, his business is on fire. And I'm sorry for that for him, but I'm looking around for more stable podcast apps and it's not like there aren't a whole lot to choose from.

So, yeah, that's where we are. I will say that I'm happily back on it now. He's fixed the issues that I care about, but they're much less involved than what you and Jason end up customizing for. Yeah. No, we had a good 10-year run, me and Marco, and we just went our separate ways.

So, I wish him well. Yeah, I ended up going back to it, too, because I needed the upload feature for testing shows. And that fortunately still works, even though he's still threatening to take that away. So, we'll see how that goes. Yeah, if he takes that away, then it's definitely over with.

But it's so funny that the interface is so janky now. I actually, I still listen to ATP, just so I can hear if there are any updates about the shit show that is his app. Right. And the interface is so glunked up with all the crap now that it's ridiculous.

I'll send you a screenshot next time I get it, Dave, just so you can see how bad it looks. It's funny, because I had said before that I used it straight out of the box and didn't do any customization. Now, with a new one, I have to customize it, because you can turn off a bunch of the crap on the homepage. Yeah, you have no choice. Yeah, you have no choice, too.

It's like, that was the other thing that pissed me off about the update, was the bad UX caused me to delete the podcast that I had listened to almost a thousand episodes of that I had been tracking which ones I'd listened to, and all of my progress was lost because of a very bad UX decision.

I totally forgot about that. That was the one thing that really, really chapped my dazzle. I was just not happy with that one bit. Yeah. I remember you telling us about that. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll see. You know, maybe he'll recover, but what I hope is that he learns a valuable lesson and this doesn't happen again.

Yes. So let us put to bed the story of Overcast. It is done. We shall never, henceforth, never be mentioned again, unless we bring back more of the week. We'll be talking about it next week, I'm sure. Probably. Did you see what this fucker did again? Jesus.

Okay. Well, we have a few minutes left here, and Dave, I wanted to ask you about this story that is making headlines across the world, and I'm sure you guys have covered it now, the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon. Right. And I saw an ex post that was, or the greatest thing ever, it says, Generation Z right now is asking, what's a pager?

Yeah. Great. Did you guys have pagers back in the day? Oh, hell yeah. Definitely. Several. Several. Yeah. My last one was a transparent green. It was like an iMac green. It was great. Oh, right. Right. Yeah. Simpler times, man.

But yeah, college, I still, I had a pager still. You know, that was how we got in touch with each other. You'd have to go find a pay phone or go off it back home to get in touch with your friend. Yeah. I bought some of my first ones with a friend of the show, MXV, and he still has his old pager that we bought back then.

Yeah. I was like, damn, man. Throw some shit away. Clean that house out. I remember buying my first pager and I remember, the things I remember about it are that it was a 900 megahertz pager, which evidently was the fancy one. For whatever reason, like 900 megahertz pagers were more reliable.

I guess the signal could get into buildings more than whatever it previously had been running on. It was made by Motorola. And the other thing I remember about it, it was strictly numeric. So all I would get on the pager was a phone number and then I'd have to find a pay phone and I'd call the person.

And I say, I was describing this to someone earlier this week and I said, I'd have to find a pay phone. Yay for my history as a phone freaker. And then I would call someone, they'd answer and I'd say, hi, did someone page me to this number?

And then, you know, sometimes they say, oh, hey, Dave. And sometimes they'd say, hold on, let me check. And they'd ask around to see if anybody had paged me. But yeah, I was working at a video game arcade that had video games at a standups when I had my pager.

I worked at Just for Games in Downers Grove, Illinois. And yeah, that was, those were the, those are the fun days, man. Oh, we were playing Mortal Kombat 2 and Killer Instinct after the, after the, the, the shop closed. It was great. Page all your friends and say it's closed.

Come on down. Exactly. Exactly. Free tokens for everyone. And we got some Zima in the back. After this, we'll stop off at Blockbuster. That's what we did. Blockbuster was in the strip mall over too.

My God, we lived a complete, the way of life that we lived back then is so gone. It's just gone. It's crazy. Right. So Dave, tell us about the exploding pagers in Lebanon. Well, I mean, look, there are a couple of ways to come at this.

And I think one way is kind of the, the cold clinical tactical side of it, of what presumably Israel has achieved here in the planning and the execution. I mean, this is a, this is a, this is a supply chain attack, right?

They were able to get deep into the supply chain, um, manufacture these things. Uh, the story with the walkie talkies is that this model walkie talkie hadn't been manufactured for a decade. And, um, Israel had duplicates made of it.

Right. Um, so you have the cleverness of that, the persistence of that, but then you've got the getting it in the hands of the people you want to get it in the hands of. Um, you know, this is a rapidly changing story and there's lots of, uh, speculation.

One, one of the things I saw come by that caught my eye was, um, informed speculation that Israel may have, um, altered the software in some airport scanners so that when these devices came through airport scanners, the explosives were not detected.

Huh? Yeah. I don't want to hear that. Yeah. Right. Well, I don't want to hear that part. Well, and a lot of the first takes that I saw online were particularly, I mean, obviously they're a bit histrionic because it just happened, but it's, you know, a whole new method of warfare is now just opened.

Basically your kid's cell phone and iPad and laptop have just been turned into lethal weapons. So, yeah, um, to that point, um, I saw someone comment, you know, oh, this will in no way affect the, what we're allowed to take on board airplanes from here on out and hopefully it won't.

Um, you know, the, the, I, I made the joke on Mastodon that, um, a whole bunch of cybersecurity experts were suddenly moonlighting as explosives experts. Yep. Um, as happens with these sorts of things.

And, um, I saw people, there's been reports that there were two to three grams of explosive in the devices. There's been reports that there are two or three ounces of explosives in the devices. This wasn't overloading the battery. There were actual explosives in the devices.

Correct. Correct. Okay. The, from my understanding is there is not enough energy in one of these devices. And remember pagers use over the counter off the shelf batteries. Yeah. Yeah. There were just really double A's there. Yeah. I was going to say, if they had deployed bird scooters throughout Lebanon, no, Jesus.

Well. It would just wipe the country. Perfect. Yeah. So, um, yes, it was, again, nothing, this is all subject to change, but my current understanding, as we record today, actual explosives, there was a trigger inside that they could, uh, you know, signal and set off.

So that's the trade craft that, um, we have the psychological. Impact of that Hezbollah, they went to pagers because they felt as though mobile devices were not secure. The smartphones were not secure. So imagine how Israel has screwed with their heads.

Oh, insane. Right. Insane. That nothing is safe. And so day one, they blew up the pagers. Day two, they blew up walkie talkies. You know, again, I saw someone say. Day three, vinyl and record players. Well, I was going to say day three. I would not be wanting to be walking around Lebanon with a boom box.

Right. Um, or a carrier pigeon. Right. So here's my, I want to say the, the dilemma, the internal struggle I'm happening. I'm having is that on the one hand, um, was this clever?

Yes. Uh, was it effective? Yes. On the other hand, these things were exploding. Well, exactly. These things were exploding in public places. Children did die. Houses did burn down.

Um, is this the kind of warcraft we want to be enthusiastic about? Uh, so I just, I think we need to be careful in as impressed as we may be with the cleverness of this and the long game that they were playing here to make this happen.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that the way that this played out did take place in public squares with non-combatants, um, many non-combatants and that there were absolutely innocent lives lost.

And by, and by absolutely innocent, I mean, children. Yeah. Um, so the, the clinical phrase is collateral damage. Right. Right. Yes. Right. So it's hard. It's been, you know, we've, with my, uh, colleagues at the cyber wire, we've been really, really deliberate and careful about how we want to cover this because, because of all this stuff, you know, there's, it's just, it's, it's messy and it's a great example of how messy these things are

and, uh, it's tough. Well, the whole conflict is messy anyways. Right. Like all of it. And then you throw this literally bomb into this. It's, it's insane. Yeah. Yeah. But that's why I wanted to ask you because I would screw it up. I appreciate that.

Well, I mean, I hope I've answered your question. I'm sure my answer is going to displease people on either side of this argument to different degrees, but I hope my, my, my intent and my hope is that I'm being fairly measured and in, and I'm letting information and facts inform how I both interpret this and present it, but it's not, it's not an easy one.

It's really not. Nope. Yeah. And on that, so, yeah, well, so shifting gears real quick, uh, onto something much lighter. Um, I'm curious if someone came to either of you and said, we would like to license your voice for an AI, how would you respond to that?

How much, how much, and, uh, uh, how limited, right? Okay. Yeah. Not in, not across the universe in perpetuity, none of that sort of stuff. What are you licensing it for and how much? Yeah. You like an annual license that you always have the ability to revoke.

Um, I would also have all kinds of morality, uh, clauses in there. You can't use my voice to, you know, sell exploding pagers. That sort of thing. Right. I guess my question also is, does it matter if someone comes to you to license your voice or not?

In other words, could someone with all of us, the three of us having as much audio as we have out there in the world, which means it would be easy for anyone to create an AI version of any of our voices. If they did so, what recourse do we have?

Well, next to none. I mean, that, that's kind of the next thing, right? It's, it's the reason, the only reason that they got super close to Scarlett Johansson's voice and then had to pull it back is because high profile and an actress that can afford to sue them. End of story. Like if it would have been anybody else, if it would have been you or me that Google rolled out their voices and like, holy crap, that sounds a lot like me, there'd be absolutely nothing we could do about it.

Right. So it's a free for all unless you got the money to sue. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And would you even know that's, that's the crazy thing because you know, everything is so fractured now. Like how would you even find out?

You would have to almost stumble across it or it would have to be such a massive thing. You know what I mean? Yeah. Right. Well, and people could be doing it already. If someone could have a personal version of anyone's voice, you know, they could have their personal assistant be the voice of anyone who there's enough information to sample and the amount of information you need to sample is getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

So pretty soon you'll be able to have whoever you want, be the voice of whatever you want it to be. And that'll just be that. I think. I don't know. I mean, unless they shut down the avenues to, to put your own things in, you know what I mean? Like Apple, you can't, you can't upload your own voice into Siri.

You get the choice. So, right. Right. Yeah. Well, we'll see. Somebody asked me about it this week. It was a sort of a, it wasn't like a specific, Hey, we'd like to hire you or anything. It was more of a, just kind of a, what if, how would you feel about this? And, uh, I don't think I'm opposed to it outright, but I think like you said, Brian, I would, I'd have to be a lot of restrictions.

Yeah. I'd have to feel like I had some kind of control over it and, you know, be mutually beneficial. Yeah. Agreed. Interesting times. I do have a bit of, uh, breaking news. Okay. Yeah. Cards Against Humanity is suing Elon Musk for $15 million.

Okay. Seven years ago, you paid us $15 to protect a pristine parcel of land on the U.S.-Mexico border from racist billionaire Donald Trump's very stupid wall. Unfortunately, an even richer, more racist billionaire Elon Musk snuck up on us from behind and completely fucked your land with gravel, tractors, and space garbage.

How did this happen? Elon Musk's SpaceX was building some space thing nearby, and he figured he could just dump his shit all over your gorgeous plot of land without asking. After we caught him, SpaceX gave us a 12-hour ultimatum to accept a lowball offer for half the land's value.

We said, go fuck yourself, Elon. We'll see you in court. So, I just got this email, like, as you were talking. So, uh, I, I, I, there's a link to sign up to get your share, and the, the URL for the website is elonowsyou$100.com.

All right. So, they have, they have some before and after pictures of what the land looked like. The pristine land with geese flying over top in the sunrise, and then just a bunch of tractors and garbage all over it. They did, they did screw up the land. So, how much land are we talking about?

I can't even remember how much it was. It was enough that it would stop the wall being built through. They, they bought a, they bought a block of land. So, it was like right in the path of the, uh, the wall being built. So, the whole, the whole point of it was, because Cards Against Humanity does fun stuff like that.

Yeah. Right. And that was it. So, we, they still own the land, and I own part of that land, because I was part of the people that put my money in. So, you know, that's why I got the email. I spent 15 bucks to buy the parcel of, to help buy the parcel of land. Well, it's like you're part of a homeowner's association, Jason.

Yeah. All right. What a joy. A wall-blocking HOA. Wow. The greatest HOA of all time. Maybe you can run for president. So, there we go.

And they side it with great vengeance and furious anger. Cards Against Humanity. So. Yeah. Good for them. I hope they win. Yeah. Me too. I want my hundred dollars. Closing shout outs. Final 666 fun fact.

In 1980, the Pennsylvania Lottery's daily number game saw the number 666 drawn, resulting in a record number of winners because so many people had played this lucky combination. This incident became known as the Number of the Beast Lottery Scandal. Nice. All right.

All right. Over at Patreon, we've got Darth Cat, Seth, Paolo, Joe, Sarah, ES, and Suzanne. Yes, we've had an influx of these annual subscription people. And I was thinking about you about this, Jason, and how this may not have been a good idea.

This may end up fucking me greatly. Yes, because you've gotten used to the pretty steady amount per month that we've been getting. And we're going to get a lot this month and maybe less in the coming months because people have switched over. So, you better budget yourself. And as we know from 11 years of this show, I am so good at budgeting.

So, by all means, everybody, we appreciate it. Sign up for the annual subscription. But if you want to save Dave's or Dave, if you want to save Jason's pocketbook, stick to the monthly, please. No, no, no. Stick to the yearly. Just more people. We just have to keep up the rate. Keep up the pace. We got to keep feeding the beast.

Oh, no. I am so screwed. But the Small Business Association is going to love you very much. Yeah. Over at PayPal, we've got Andrew, Arcadio, Nathaniel, Sloan, Tom, and Paolo, who gave us a big 180 bucks and writes in to say, long overdue.

Hi, guys. I hope this message finds you grumpy and well. I'm a big fan and a long-time listener to the show. I even remember when you had two episodes per week. Three years ago, I got pink slipped, a term I learned from you guys, from a well-paid job, which was a bummer and also meant that we had to evaluate all our expenses. We cut down a lot.

Among them was my Patreon subscription to GOG. Naturally, I kept on listening as you guys are great and addressed a lot of topics I'm interested in, et cetera. Your openness about your challenges is heartwarming and sincere. I made myself a promise to someday pay back what I owed you. Happy to share that I found a new job and reserves are back on the rise.

So I've just put in $180 in the tip jar to pay for three years of laughter, grumpiness, and bewilderment when you talk about politics in the States. Brian, enjoy every moment you have with the kid. Before you know it, they're adults. Been there, got the t-shirt. Jason, keep on going. Stay strong. Never thought I'd be more proud of someone's sobriety, but I am.

Take care, stay safe, and stay grumpy. Cheers from Amsterdam. Thank you, Paolo. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Really, really appreciate it. And over at the tip jar, we've got Anthony. And Anthony writes, Hey, grumps, I was in Phoenix last May and saw Waymo. I decided, hell, why not?

When I got in, I was initially scared, but surprisingly, it was safer than a human being. Careful and conservative while driving. If you haven't tried it, you should. I wouldn't trust it in too much traffic or on highways, though. Thank you, Anthony. See, that would be the problem with Los Angeles. Yeah, that's all we got. Traffic and highways.

And also thanks to Sean, Glenn, and Eric. Oh, thank you all so much. No new reviews this week. And as Jason pointed out, off the air, unfortunately, nobody's died. I got no good deaths this week. Knock on wood.

Knock on wood. Yeah. 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 666. Feeling generous? Keep this top-notch entertainment rolling by dropping us a few bucks at GOG.show slash donate.

Every bit helps. Spread the grumpiness. There's a share button in every podcast player out there. Use it to share the show with friends, foes, and everyone in between, and we'll be forever grateful. And head over to GOG.show to find the link to our Discord channel and chat with us and other show fans. Got something to say? Send your feedback, comments, or awesome links to GOG.show slash contact.

And show us some love. Leave a review at GOG.show slash review. A five-star rating might just get your review read on the air. Stay grumpy. This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean.

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