670: Just Buy the Thing!

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 Meat Cleaver Colon.

BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.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. Brian, the shop is alive again. We had a little hiccup at the beginning, but I would like everybody to know that if things are back on track, you won't be getting shirts from Latvia unless you live in Latvia now, which was a screw up on my side.

I forgot to look at where they source the different shirts from, but that's all fixed. I put up a couple new designs last night, one being my favorite, my Cybertruck Enthusiast shirt. I don't know if you've got a chance to check that one out yet, Brian. I did see that one this morning. I've got to get in there and start making some as well.

And yeah, I also, I probably should have paid attention at the beginning when you were setting all this up because we had, in my previous job, we had used Printful as well. And I do remember, it's very important to check where they source things from. Yeah, well, that would have been helpful, Brian. That really would have been helpful. Maybe that's why you don't work there anymore.

Could be. Could be. No, it wasn't my job, that part of it, but I do remember it. Yeah. Yeah, and we also have the hashtag Deport Elon shirt up that's available now. Some mugs, if you want. Yes. We'll keep adding to them as the muse presents itself.

Yes, and as the orders don't roll in. Yeah. Yeah, you guys got two months to buy some shit or we're shutting it down. It's just expensive. Yeah. And if I sound a little funny today, Brian, I apologize. I bit my tongue on Saturday, so it's been almost a week now. And I didn't bite it like that little nippy.

It's like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. No, I bit it like I was chewing into like, you know, a Kobe steak. I took a nice big old chunk out of my tongue. And I don't know if you've ever had this happen, Brian, but it takes a long time for that to heal. So if I sound like that. I've never quite done that, but I do think I've noticed that as we are getting older, everything takes a lot longer to heal.

Yeah, we had Canadian Thanksgiving over last weekend. It was actually on Monday. And as you do, I was peeling some potatoes for the mashed potato, of course, and took a little chunk out of my finger. Nothing I hadn't done before. Usually fine in a week or a couple of days, actually.

And here we are almost a week later, and it still hurts like a motherfucker. And I've got the Band-Aid on because it's just not fucking healing like it used to. Isn't getting old, Cree. Oh, it's fantastic. No, I ran into a footstool in the dark about a month and a half ago, and I still have the scab on my leg.

It still hasn't healed up yet. Yeah. Don't get me started on accidentally having a little bit too much wine and how the next day feels. Well, thank God I don't have to worry about that one anymore. Yeah, that's one you don't deal with anymore. And I thank God for that every day.

Those hangovers we're getting. And I mean, when it passes four days, then it's time to stop. Wow. Okay. I haven't experienced that yet. I've had some rough mornings, but that's about it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was a professional, Brian. That's true.

You were a professional. I was just a dabbling amateur. Exactly. No, no. I had coaches, you know. You could have taught a class. I really could have. I really could have. So in the schoolyard fight over the future of WordPress, we had the latest episode titled Pot Kettle Black, where we see Matty Matt going toe to toe with David Hanemeyer Hansen.

So Matty Matt wrote a response to the article that I mentioned on the show last week about how WordPress is, you know, doing open source dirty. Well, he wrote back a scathing response to David Hanemeyer Hansen, where he thought better of it eventually.

So maybe he fell victim to the too many bottles of wine that night, because I do know that he likes the grape. And then he pulled it down and then he put up a... I think HR and Matty have come in and said, you can't, you should, you really need to rethink this one. Well, considering he owns the company, I think he is HR, so...

They still come talk to you, or maybe he's got a crisis team now. I think he has... Venture capital is what he's got. So he put it down and put up a more measured response. But then they did something that was just mind-boggling.

So there was a... There's a plug-in, the WP Engine, where basically they developed. So in the dickiest dick move I've ever seen, Automatic, the parent company of WordPress, basically took the plug-in that these guys developed, took it out of the plug-in tracker or store.

It's not really a store, it's, you know... It's just a depository. Depository, that's it. Repository, not a depository. Depository sounds like a suppository. Well, it is WordPress. I don't know what it's turning into. Yeah, that is true. That is true. So they took that and they created a new plug-in called Secure Custom Fields.

And basically said, oh, we patched a security hole. And if you look at Clause 18 and Subsection B of the thing that you signed up for when you put your thing in the plug-in suppository, we can do this. We can take over your plug-in and basically fork it and then take your old one out of rotation, which they did.

So... Yeah. Now, okay, so I'm thinking about this on a company-wide level and security and all the various issues involved. So, you know, to give them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they found some issues with some plug-ins. So they went in and kind of patched them up for people and kind of took over the ownership and said, okay, well, these are the fixed ones that are official from us, WordPress, the people that you have come to trust.

That would imply that they would do more than one and not just from the place that they're pissed off at right now. Exactly, yeah. But they didn't. No, this was a total retaliatory move. So targeted. Hmm, interesting. Yes. Uh-huh. So, yes, they forked it and then they put it up on GitHub and created a new quote-unquote team to work on it.

But it was, it is just a, that is a phenomenal dick move that just shows you that you should not trust anything that is run through WordPress at this point. Yeah, it's a head scratcher what he's doing right now. Oh, yeah, he's just off the leash.

Off the leash, which is sad because, you know, like I remember him being a nice guy. But, you know, he, I guess he holds a grudge worse than I do, apparently, so. Wow. Yeah. That's saying something. That's really saying something. So there's an internal blog post that would, that got leaked that reveals Automatic's plan to enforce the WordPress trademark using nice and not nice lawyers.

Which is then followed up by a new post that came out where he actually came back and said that, you know what, some people feel that they got left out of that last alignment offer, quote unquote, that let people leave if they weren't just not aligned with Matty Matt's vision of the world.

So, uh, 150 some odd employees said, fuck yeah, I'll take that. I'm in. Well, apparently some people felt that they missed out. So he did another one. All right. Yes. He did another one and it's nine months severance now instead of six.

So if I was one of the six month people, I'd be really pissed that now they're offering nine months. I want three more months, please. Thank you. My lawyer will be contacting you. Yeah. And, and there's also a thing that came out that said, uh, uh, there's a threat in the email that says employees speaking to the press should quote exit gracefully or be fired tomorrow with no severance.

So, yeah, there, anybody that's been, uh, you know, snitching to the press, I'm sure that they know who's who. So, yeah. Yeah. It's not hard to find that out these days. So, yeah, I haven't seen any numbers yet on, uh, how many people took this one up, but apparently the, uh, the, uh, how many people work at WordPress, uh, number was ticking down on their website yesterday.

So, yeah, some people are going to be taken up, taken them up on that. So 159 people took the first one, so I can't wait to see how many people take the second one. So, yeah, that's where, uh, that's where things stand with WordPress right now. Not going well over there. No, not at all.

Not at all. Like I said, it's just the beginning of the end. It's not the end. It's just the beginning of the end. Oh, it's going to be a long time. And I, I, I'm not sure that there will be an end. I think at some point, Matty Matt might find himself, uh, being pushed out. Well, that's going to be tough since he owns it, so he owns it, but there's a lot of venture capital involved and there might be a check written at some point to say, thank you so much for your services.

Yeah. Yeah. Can we do that with Zuckerberg too? God, I wish I got hate mail this week, Brian. It's been a while since, uh, since the, uh, old podcast has generated any hate mail. It's been a hot second and then this one, they, they spread it out over three, three emails.

They went to my jason.fyi account and, uh, and use the form even to fill it out. So it was, it's great. They even told me to kill myself. It's awesome. Thank you. Yeah. You know, you're doing something right when you get that stuff.

I know. I, I actually was excited when I got it. I'm telling you, I was just like, okay, it, it, you know, it's the, the, the weak ass bitches that actually send you in hate mail and don't put a, you know, actual return address. So you can, you know, start a dialogue. No, the, the hit it and quit it pussy ones.

I just laugh at, cause I'm just like, dude, you don't even have the courage of your conviction to even stand up and say your name. So, yeah, yeah. Well, I do wonder, I, and this may not be the podcast generated hate mail is I'm thinking this might have to do with your, uh, increased threads activity recently. I made one post that got people's feathers ruffled.

That's it. I don't even think it takes in this world, Jason. That's all it takes. That's true. That's true. So I don't know. Let me know if you get some, and then we can compare notes, but otherwise, yeah, I'll, I'll, maybe it's just for my other activities outside of the podcast.

Yeah. Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports, most dangerous strikers collide bare knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren, the gorilla tail 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 meat pleaver colon BKFC 94 till verse. It's Ramiro. Watch it live only on the zone.

Sign up now at the zone.com. In the news. Well, Jason, over a half a dozen NGOs, including the European Road Safety Council and the International Federation of Pedestrians over in Europe have recently co-signed an open letter arguing that Elon Musk's bulky monstrosity, the cyber truck, poses numerous threats to European road safety.

Might have to edit that shirt a little bit and add some context. Yeah, shop.gog.show. So apparently someone in the Czech Republic recently tried to register one of Tesla's cyber trucks as a passenger vehicle, thus allowing it to be allowing an entry into the continent.

But according to the safety organizations, the owner of the car in question may have illegally misreported the vehicle's weight as a means of getting it certified as a legitimate import to the country. So the road safety advocates seem to feel that Tesla's electric Hummer-like heap could spell big trouble for Europeans.

And having driven in Europe, I would agree with that assessment. Yeah. Roads are a bit smaller. A little bit. Yeah. And the vehicles need to be kicked out of Europe with extreme prejudice. It is our assessment that the approval and registration of cyber trucks in the EU poses illegal risks to all other road users.

If this analysis is accepted, it follows that a small number of cyber trucks registered so far need to be deregistered with the relevant member states confirming their removal from public roads. Why are they so worried about this? As the article states, I guess it's because it seems so obviously dangerous.

Well, yeah, they're fucking, they're monstrous. They're huge. And they do not fit on the roads over there. Well, it's not just that. As they point out, the Cybertruck fails to meet a range of basic European road safety norms that apply to passenger cars. As outlined below, these range from Cybertruck's inadequate or non-existent crumple zones for crash absorption to its sharp edges.

They're basically also saying that, frankly, these things shouldn't, these things aren't even legal by American reduced safety standards. So America might want to look at these things. Yeah. I'm just, I am intrigued by the International Federation of Pedestrians. Must have missed that Star Trek episode.

They've got that. We've got it. They've got that. We've got Mall Walkers of America. That's it. That's it. Although not many malls around anymore. No, there's not. Lots of room for walkers, though. Have you been to a mall in the morning? I've actually gone to a walk in a mall over here, the Topanga Mall.

It is, it's more frustrating than you'd think. Because, you know, think of the, you know, the beach walk along Santa Monica there, whatever they call that. You know how annoying it is when you're trying to ride your bike and there's just pedestrians everywhere, just wandering.

Yes, that's why there's a bike lane that they are supposed to not be on. But they generally are anyway, right? Yes, they are. Yeah. Imagine that with a bunch of old people, like, totally blocking the aisles and half of them on those rascal scooters. They're not even mall walking, they're mall scooting.

Right. That's what it's like now. It's bad. It's bad. So, that's the future we're looking for. There's the mall walking report from Jason at Grumpy Old Geeks. That's right. But that's just, our roads are going to be like malls if we don't stop this cyber truck menace, is what the EU is trying to say. I love it.

Well, Elon is having more trouble in Europe as well. The European Union is considering imposing significantly larger fines on X than initially anticipated. They are weighing whether to include revenue from Musk's other companies, such as SpaceX and Neuralink, when calculating potential penalties for violating content moderation rules.

Now, I'm all for Elon getting smacked left, right, and center. However, I think that's kind of bullshit. Oh, it's definitely bullshit. Yeah. Okay. No. It's like definitely a little bit of overreach there. Yeah, I think so. By all means, find him.

But it should just be based on the platform that you are having trouble with at the moment. Find them all separately if you have trouble with the other ones. Mm-hmm. Exactly. No, they're just like, okay, slow your roll, buddy. Slow your roll, buddy. Seriously. Yes, the final decision on penalties and their calculation will rest with Magrith Vestager, the EU's competition and digital affairs commissioner.

So it's really fucked up that this comes down to one person's judgment. I thought they had federations for things like this. Well, even the Federation has a president. That's true. That's true. All right. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recently released a report highlighting significant concerns regarding the federal government's use of face recognition technology or FART.

How have we never noticed that face recognition technology's acronym is FART? Yeah, yeah. That's pretty funny. 670 fucking episodes and it took us this long. Oh, well, the investigation focused on the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, revealing that DOJ employees fart primarily through the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service to assist in criminal investigations.

DHS utilizes it, utilizes their FART for cross-border criminal cases and traveler identification. And the HUD implements farting in surveillance systems with some federally funded public housing. So, that is your FART report for October 18th.

Okay. Oh, boy. Glad somebody's diving into the FART problem. That's good. Well, let's keep with the acronyms. The FCC has announced it will open a renewed investigation into broadband data caps and how they impact both consumer experience and company competition. I feel like this has been going on since we've started the show, Jason.

Well, yes. They open it up, they take comments, and then they do absolutely nothing again. Right. Yeah. Restricting consumers' data can cut off small businesses from their customers, slap fees on low-income families, and prevent people with disabilities from using the tools they rely on to communicate, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said.

As the nation's leading agency on communications, it's our duty to dig deeper into these practices and make sure that the consumers are put first. I would say we have dug deep enough. We kind of know what we need to do here. And how about action? Yeah. Yeah. So far, I mean, you know, they haven't done nothing.

As we talked about back in April, they successfully required that ISPs offer clear information labels on their service plans, detailing additional fees, discounts, and upload and download speeds, of which I've never checked to see if they're actually doing it. One hopes they are. So, yeah, they're also attempting to restore net neutrality rules, which we support, which would classify broadband as an essential service.

This has not been a simple journey, however, as the agency faces legal challenges from broadband providers who have a shit ton of money. Yeah. Yeah, that's the problem, because they've had four years to reverse net neutrality, and they haven't done it yet. But they've opened up forums for comments, Jason.

That's right. So the dead people can comment. Yes. The dead must rise and give us back our broadband. Yeah. And the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the New York Times sent a cease and desist letter to Perplexity, which is the AI startup founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, saying, please stop using our goddamn content.

We didn't give you the rights, and you haven't paid us for it. Which sucks, because I've been using Perplexity a lot lately. It's pretty good, because it's got all the citations, which shows you exactly what stories it's pulling from, including the New York Times. It does citations, which is great. I fully support that.

There's no putting this back in the bag. So this is here to stay, this kind of stuff. Citations, good. So let's support them. But yeah, again, don't take people's content without paying them. Yeah, definitely. And it's not like Bezos doesn't have the coin for it. The thing about citations is, yeah, citations good, but it does citations poorly, for the most part, from what I've been able to tell.

Almost none of the links actually go to the exact story I'm looking for, that it was sourced from. Right. There's always something wrong. Either the story is not there anymore, or it goes to the homepage. It's very rare that I actually get to the exact story that I'm looking for that was from the citation.

You know what's interesting about that? I think I know maybe a lot of people out there are actually using perplexity, because I've noticed recently this week that I've been directed to not the right story many, many times from Twitter posts or threads or whatever. I'm wondering if this is the cause.

That's probably it then. This is the cause. Yeah. Yeah. Trust but verify, people. Click the link before you post it. Yeah, check your own link before you post it. Yeah. But for the most part, I'm really enjoying perplexity. I can't even say it this morning. No tongue.

It's perplexing. It is perplexing. But yeah, I think it's actually really nice, because it's got much more up-to-date data. So, but for other things, ChatGPT still kind of reigns supreme, at least for the summarizing capability.

But if you want something that's newer, definitely go to perplexity. But, you know, they're all getting better every single day. It's scary. It's really scary how good they're getting. Yeah. I mean, that's what we've been saying all along. This is as bad as this technology will ever be. Mm-hmm. Well, let's talk about bad technology for a second.

A new AI startup, Able, founded by Daniel Francis, is streamlining police work by automating time-consuming reports. The software uses body cam footage and dispatch data to fill out detailed reports, saving officers hours of paperwork. Francis spent months riding along with the police to research how AI could help.

One key insight came from realizing that officers spend nearly a third of their time on reports. Able, backed by a $5 million seed round, is already in use in Richmond, California. Nope. Here, here's our special plug-in. Please include that we pulled over three white people before the black person.

Oh, yes. Francis, who previously worked at Twitter under Elon, says, Reducing paperwork will help police focus on what matters, serving their communities. Okay. I don't know. Doing the paperwork's part of the job. Exactly. You know, that's the stick, you know, to do your job right.

Well, see, they're not the only one that's doing it, too, because I think we reported last week on Axon. They make the actual body cameras. They have a new product called DraftOne. Well, up in Washington State, the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office in Seattle has instructed local police not to use AI to write police reports.

Chief Deputy Prosecutor Daniel J. Clark said, AI-based tools that create police narratives from body camera audio are not reliable enough yet. While police reports are essential for prosecutors, defense attorneys, and court cases, Clark emphasized that AI errors, even small ones, could go unnoticed and pose risks.

Yeah. So, I think that that's fine. It is not ready for prime time yet. Hear that? Richmond, California? Yeah. They were going on beta software. Do you want beta software writing police reports? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Especially because they are used in court cases.

And if we lose that, then we have nothing. Anyway, I've got a little social media news. This week, Instagram announced that it will let users set up profile cards. A new way to help standard users and creators alike to make new friends on Instagram. They will have two sides and may include objects like your profile pictures, links to your sites, music, or a QR code for others to scan.

The card background can also be an image you like. In unrelated news, you can also have your top eight friends now. And Tom will be populated first. Tom's back. The more things change, Jason, it all comes right back around. I mean, this is basically a MySpace page.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. But when can I start buying these profile cards in packs of eight with some bubble gum in them? That's what I want to know. There you go. There you go. And I'll change them all to Pokemon because I live in a Pokemon world right now. Magic the Gathering. Yeah, you can add songs to your profiles.

And, you know, next thing you know, you can add snowflakes and glittering lights. And it's all back, man. Flash and text. It's going to be great. Insta cities. Coming soon. Coming soon. And TikTok got a little bit of bad news. TikTok's executives and employees were well aware that its features foster compulsive use of the app, as well as its corresponding negative mental health effects, according to NPR.

So they've been kind of denying it and saying, well, we don't know the science yet. Well, no. The broadcasting organization reviewed the unredacted documents from the lawsuit filed by the Kentucky Attorney General's Office as published by Kentucky Public Radio. Most of the documents submitted for the lawsuits had redacted information, but Kentucky's had faulty redactions.

Oops. Apparently, TikTok's own research found that compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects, like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety. Which is starting to explain an awful lot about the world today.

Indeed it is. Yeah. So they knew. They knew what was going on. They knew the app's time management tool barely helps in keeping young users away from the app. Some of the math that comes in there is they basically only save 1.5 minutes when they put these things on teens accounts.

So that's not doing fuck all, basically. And another document reportedly said that across most engagement metrics, the younger the user, the better the performance. TikTok is also struggling with moderation as well, according to the documents.

An internal investigation found that underage girls on the app were getting gifts and coins in exchange for live stripping. They knew all this. They know all this. And higher-ups in the company reportedly instructed their moderators not to remove users reported to be under 13 years old, unless their accounts explicitly state that they are indeed under 13.

TikTok also acknowledged that a substantial number of content violating its rules gets through its moderation techniques, including videos that normalize pedophilia, glorify minor sexual assault, and physical abuse. TikTok spokesman Alex Horek defended the company and said that the Kentucky AG's complaint cherry-picks misleading quotes and takes outdated documents out of context to misrepresent our commitment to community safety.

Sure they are. Sure. Or, as I like to say, got it and won. Yeah. There you go. We talked a little bit back about Microsoft turning towards nuclear power to help drive its AI. Google is also joining that.

On Monday, the company said it will partner with the startup Karyos Power to build seven small nuclear reactors in the U.S. This deal targets adding 500 megawatts of nuclear power from the small modular reactors by the decade's end. The first is expected to be up and running by 2030, with the remainder arriving around 2035, right about when the AI becomes sentient and uses it to kill us all.

Perfect. I'm down. So is Amazon. Oh, great. Because they're doing the same thing. They're investing over $500 million in nuclear energy, unveiling projects in Virginia and Washington state because it needs more juice. They're saying this is part of their net zero emissions goals.

Good luck with that one. So they're going to be doing the SMR route, too, with the small modular reactors. No word on ASMR, if that's going to be a thing going forward. Just gross. Ew. Yuck.

God, I just triggered myself. Nasty. Okay. And as you tried to do last week, I want to try to start ending our horrible news segments with some good science, some happy science. NASA has launched its Europa Clipper spacecraft, the biggest one has ever built for a mission heading to another planet, on top of SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The spacecraft has started its 1.8 billion million journey to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, and one of the most promising, I'm having the same problems as you are today, Jason, habitable worlds outside of our own planet, which will take it five and a half years to reach, which is pretty cool.

We've always kind of thought that scientists have always kind of thought that if there's any life, it's somewhere under that thick icy shell in the water around Europa. So we're going to send something there. It's got all kinds of sensors and ice penetrating radar and all sorts of stuff. So in five and a half years, who knows what we're going to discover.

Pretty cool. I think that there is definitely a typo in the Engadget story. Because the 1.8 billion million. I just read right through that and I went, that's not right. No. I was thinking, hmm, somebody's using perplexity today.

Yes. And the link is incorrect, of course. No. No. Yeah. I went and looked at it like, no, that was the article. It wasn't you. It's okay. Yep. That's the article itself. Sorry. My bad. I should have actually read it.

My wife and I finished The Diplomat season one the other day. Just in time. What a great just in time. Because season two is out as of, I believe, yesterday or something like that. No, that was The Lincoln Lawyer. Oh. The Diplomat is the end of the month. End of the month. Okay, good.

I've got to go tell my wife immediately because she got mad at me because I was like, we can't watch the Dodgers are in the semifinals right now. So we've got to watch that. Anyways, it was a great show. I really enjoyed it. Yeah, I know. Carrie Russell, I'm in. Yeah. Anything she does, I'm up for watching.

You called it last week. I'm in. Yeah, The Lincoln Lawyer season three started yesterday. So that was the one that came out. I love seasons one and two. Looking forward to season three. Ten episodes. Count me in. Anything to kill time till I'm dead. Apple TV Plus has announced a sixth season for Slow Horses, which I'm very excited about.

Season four just ended. Season five is already in the can because they had a trailer for season five at the end of season four. I'm like, well, just show us season five now, please, because I'm ready. These things are too short. They're only six episodes. I got to go back and finish season one. I really do. Yeah, it's good stuff.

Good stuff. Shrinking has already got a third season before season two is out, which I think it came out yesterday. I think it's also a little bit later in the month. I thought I got a I thought I got a an alert on my watch that said it was out, but could be something else. Because I'm excited about that.

This this this AI shit that's the new Apple intelligence ain't. It is basically word salad when it takes all my emails and tries to give me like, you know, a two line response. Summary. Yeah. Yeah. And what the one that freaked me out was I sent somebody's I changed ownership on a document in Google Drive to a client, which I do every time I deliver a show.

But it came back with somebody else accepted the the the document change and it was not the person I sent it to. And it was just because the Apple intelligence just gummed everything into one thing. I'm like, he shouldn't have access to that. Did I screw up? Nope. I didn't screw up. Apple did. But anyway.

Yep. Shrinking. I finished it, though. I finished season one. What do you think? It's OK. I thought it was OK. All right. Yeah, I liked it. I liked it a lot. All right. And Silo season two has an official trailer, which I had to stop watching halfway through because, you know, it's one of those give away the whole show things.

All right. Or at least for me, reminding me of everything that I've read before because I read the novels. But it looks good. I'm in. It does look good. I'm a little worried there. I thought season one did a very good job of staying true to the books. This there's a couple of things in this trailer that make me think there may be veering off of it, but we'll see.

Well, they can't be foundationing it too bad, you know. No, no, no. It shouldn't be too bad. No, I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to it. Me too. I really enjoyed that show. There's another trailer out that came out last night that I didn't get a chance to watch yet. But the Dune prequel has a new trailer out from Comic-Con in New York.

So we definitely have to get caught up on that. Did you check out the new trailer? I did watch the trailer. It's very good. It seems very moody. So I'm liking what they what it looks like they're going to be doing with it. So OK, yeah, it definitely looks very goth. Yeah, I've seen. So even though, again, I say the source material it's based on sucks.

The books suck. Anything by Frank Herbert's son sucks.

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 nonstop action.

The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Preserve your spot with just $200 down at BKFSEA.com. Apps and doodads. Well, Apple is reportedly going to add digital car key support in the wallet app for some Volvo, Polestar, and Audi vehicles.

Currently, Apple's digital key car support list includes vehicles from Kia, BMW, Lotus, and several other manufacturers. I guess I could see if I actually have that or not. I don't know. So I have a BMW. I should check into this. I like my plan of being able to walk out of the house without any keys ever.

That would be great. The digital car key function allows iPhone and Apple Watch owners to access, lock, or start vehicles just by holding the device near the vehicle's NFC reader. The wallet app must also run in the background or in the foreground, but it's not necessary to push any buttons. Of course, having said that I'd like to try this out, I do remember a California DMV getting your driver's license into your wallet is not exactly working correctly right now either.

So maybe I'll wait until I know this stuff is kind of sorted out. And a bit of feedback we got, Michael wrote in on a recent podcast. You said you didn't. You said don't unlock your phone and give it to the police. You can. Just make sure you have guided access on first, which is an iOS settings accessibility.

Turn everything off except touch. It will keep them on the app. You are showing them. Not sure about what to do if you have an Android. Famous last words. Not sure what to do about an Android. Yeah. Yeah. I think that we kind of covered it where we don't actually have to hand them the phone anymore.

Yeah. So that should be okay. But yeah, you should never give the cops your phone anyway. Ever. So Google is phasing out popular ad blocker Ublock Origin from its Chrome web store. All right. Yeah, I'm glad that I'm not using one of those anymore. I think Ublock, or yeah, Ublock was the one that they started to charge for, right?

Yeah. I stopped using it as soon as I started charging for it. Yeah. I think they should have kind of figured out that we don't want to watch ads because we don't want to pay for shit. So we're probably not going to pay for your ad blocker either. This comes with a change in what they call the manifest.

And it's how they put plugins together with the different permission schemes. So we've been working on manifest V2 for a very, very long time now, which has let these ad blockers kind of flourish. But V3 has much tighter security and privacy rules to it, which are going to kind of kick all these ad blockers to the wind, which probably means that you're going to have to use whatever Google says that you can use, which is probably not much.

So I'm going to stick with Brave for now because Brave's built-in ad blocking seems to work fantastically well. So I'm going to keep that on. And I like it. It's such an easy toggle to turn it off and on. It's right there in the address bar. Love it. So I don't even remember what I'm using.

So let me check really quick. I am using Trend Micro Ad Blocker. And that's very good. So works great. All right. All right. Well, Adobe has had a generative AI in their Photoshop suite for quite some time now. They are now rolling out the Firefly video model, which is powering a number of features across the company's wide array of apps, including Adobe Premiere Pro, which is kind of the basically video standard these days.

It enables editors to add generated footage and audio to the start or end of a clip. This can help cover a transition or edit if the required shot isn't available. Adobe says the tool can also correct eyelines and actions that change unexpectedly in the middle of a shoot. Adobe said it worked with professional video editors over the last year to better understand how this can help resolve some issues in their workflow.

What they didn't talk to was every other creative. It means reshoots are no longer required, taking days of work and income away. From cast and crew. Exactly. And they're saying right now it's only intended for small tweaks. But of course, that's the right now bit. And this is the worst this technology will ever be.

Yeah. So good luck with that. And right now it's only at 1080p. Okay. Well, that's good at least. Yeah. In about a year, you basically put in your shot list and it just gives you back a movie. Yeah. I want these actors in it and I wanted to kind of do this. Okay. Thank you.

Preferably keep it to five fingers unless it's a sci-fi and then you can go up to seven. The guys that are making foundation must have the beta. They do. Just saying. I'm checking for fingers next time that I see a trailer for that damn show. Oh, man.

They did release another thing for Illustrator, which I saw the demo of and was completely floored by. It basically lets you take a piece of vector art and select it and rotate it in three dimensions, which I don't know.

Have you seen the demo for that one? No, no. That's pretty crazy. It's insane. It's insanely good. Combine that with a 3D printer? Yeah. It's just, it was so cool. They had a dragon that was in profile and they selected the dragon and they rotated it like 30 degrees. So you could see it in, you know, in a three quarter shot.

And it was just like, how the hell do they do that? Because it was just from a two-dimensional drawing. It just infers the volumetrics based on it. And it was just, it was very cool. I guarantee it does not work like that in production. No, I'm sure it does. But man, it was cool to watch. I was like, oh, so many years.

It would have been so great if we had that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Amazon is refreshing its entire e-reader lineup and they launched four new devices, which doesn't really matter except for the new one. Yeah, it's got color, Brian.

That's the big thing. It's called the Kindle Color Soft. All right. With weeks of battery life. Pre-order now. Ships on October 30th. It's $279. This is, I've got two Kindle paper whites sitting in a drawer that I never, ever use.

They're in mint condition and almost never used with the nice leather cases on them and everything. I cannot see myself ever buying another Kindle as long as I want them. I think I'll buy one of those off you, Jason, actually. You want one? Yeah, I'll take it. Okay. I'm coming down for Christmas.

Hook you up. I got, I got, I have an orange cover and I have a, it was a Tiffany blue cover. So have your choice. The orange is actually pretty cool. I like it. All right. Matches my Jeep. Yeah. I don't, I don't understand the plus of having a color screen other than not reading, which the whole point of the Kindle is it's just for reading and stops you from doing other things.

Yeah. Well, they also have the Kindle Scribe, which I think is, it's kind of going after the Remarkable 2 tablet. So you can read and then you can write with this one. If I'm going to get one of these things, I'm just going to get a Remarkable because everybody I know that has one loves it and uses it constantly. I have a iPad with a pencil.

So yeah, I'm kind of covered. I got, I got a $1,400 iPad. I'm not going to go buy a $500 note-taking thing. I'd rather just go buy a notebook for $2 if I need to actually sketch. But yeah, I, I, is the age of the Kindle still really a thing?

I don't know. I mean, granted, you just said you want one of mine, so you must have some desire for it. Well, I mean, you know, it's, I like the idea of having something that I could, I do get distracted on the iPad when I'm reading. I find myself flicking over to like social media or if somebody texts me, yes, I could turn all that off, but then that's the whole point of having an iPad and we never do.

So, so I, I do like the idea of having a separate device that I would just, at night, I would pick up and just go read and it would force me to just read. So. Yeah, that's why I bought it and that was the original intent, but it never came to fruition. Right.

Maybe I should try that. Maybe I should just try that. Well, you got two, Jason. I do. I just got to charge them up. Good to go. All right. All right. Hat tip to quibble on this one. Robot vacuums are making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Robotics D-Bot X2 owners across the U.S. have reported their smart cleaners going rogue, spewing racial slurs, slurs and chasing pets.

I think that's a feature, not a bug. That's actually quite funny. I'd be thrilled if mine did that. Yep. Hackers have managed to hijack these, uh, uh, these vacuums, gaining control of the cameras, microphones and movement. So, I love it. I love it. Yeah.

Uh, they don't have a patch for it yet. They're, uh, saying that there will be a firmware, an over-the-air firmware update scheduled for the second week of November, 2024. So, we'll see how that goes. What do you do in the meantime if they can actually just turn it on? I guess you pull the battery out. Yeah. You're going to have to just put it in a closet and it's like your Jeep.

The Jeep that could catch fire at any given moment. Park it in a field. Park it in a field and put your vacuum cleaner in the driver's seat. That's funny. Well, I talked a little bit ago about how I finished the, uh, Lord of the Rings IP, uh, content infringing a walking tracker app.

And then I used the, uh, I was trying to find another one. So, I found the one called Walk the Distance, which, uh, frankly was boring. And it was so boring that I actually deleted it. So. Oh, wow. That says something. I've got, it just didn't catch my imagination. It wasn't, you know, I could walk cities and that's all very exciting.

And I just found myself never opening it up. And it was just Google maps basically with an overlay of Wikipedia of things that you walk past. And I'm like, I don't need this shit. I don't care. So. Yeah. Deleted that one. And, uh, just one other note. Hang on before we, before we move on to the next thing.

I, thanks to you, I started to do some Google searches to find out if I could find anything that would really kind of fit that bill. Yeah. Now that's all I get are ads for this conqueror virtual challenge where you have to spend like a million dollars to get these little metals that you can put your ring in and all that crap.

Yep. Yeah. They've got, they, they spent more money on IP licensing than any other company out there because there's all kinds of them from this. Yeah. They've got everything in there, but it's so expensive. And I'm like, I'm already tracking my steps on like multiple apps. I don't need to pay money for this.

Even if there's only like five bucks, I'd pay it, you know, if it was interesting, but they want you to spend like 20 bucks per metal. And it's like, it's a long way to Mount Doom. There's a lot of metals. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. If they opened that up and just said, okay, if you want to walk to Mount Doom, that's five bucks. Now you want to do a star Wars.

That's another five bucks. I would totally pay that, but I'm not doing the stupid. And I also, I don't want more shit in my house. Don't send me metals. Exactly. That's the thing. We're trying to declutter. These are not Marie Kondo approved metals. Yeah. Anyways, just as a side note on the fitness tip ever since we got the iOS upgrades, my God, Apple fitness app is slow.

Really? It is so slow. It's pulling data so slowly. And I don't know why every time I launch it, it takes, it takes like five seconds before the rings get populated. Then it has to load step counts and step distance. And then it pulls in their different workouts and it all loads so slowly.

It's unbelievable. What the hell Apple? They must've hired some of those Sonos programmers. They got like, must have. Yeah. Cause I use it every day. So. Huh? I'm going to quit it and reopen it. Cause I just tried it and it came up. Yeah.

It goes super fast online. Hmm. Weird. Yeah. What's wrong with me? Because I have the new super phone and I don't exercise as much as you do. Doesn't have that many steps to load. The dark side.

Ha! With Dave. Welcome to the dark side with dastardly, dynamic, and delightfully devious Dave Bittner. Whether it's decoding all things cyber on the cyber wire, exposing deception and tomfoolery with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans, diving deep into privacy with Ben Yellen on caveat, or breaking down industrial cyber security on control loop, Dave's got you covered.

Now, don't miss his latest venture, Only Malware in the Building. This monthly show hosted by Selina Larson with Rick Howard and Dave himself unpacks the most impactful malware stories into bite-sized, actionable insights, perfect for tech pros and security execs with a dash of charm and wit.

Hello, Dave. Hey, I get you to write all my intros. That's a pretty good one. Particularly since we've, uh, Jason and I have both been tripping over our own tongues the whole show today. Yeah. You just nailed that perfectly. You know, right? I know. Oh my goodness. I got one right.

Okay. Before we get started, I got to break in with a little bit of breaking news. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. WP Engine has filed for a preliminary injunction to stop Automatic CEO Matty Matt Mullenweg in his public campaign against the company. The hosting platform is asking the court to restore its access to WordPress resources and regain control of its plug-in.

WP Engine claims Mullenweg's actions have caused irreparable harm, including customer loss and cancellations, following his remarks calling the company a cancer to the WordPress community. WP Engine accuses Mullenweg and Automatic of extortion and abuse of power. And seeks a return to the status quo.

And Automatic has yet to come in. So they're, they're, they're firing back. They're not taking it lying down. So they're, uh, getting along and coming to a resolution. I can see. Apparently. Yes. My, my only connection. Not far away. My only connection to this story is, uh, for many years, my wife was a WordPress developer.

Oh, I'm sorry. But, um, yeah, well, I mean, you know, she, she enjoyed it and, um, she's since wound down most of that stuff. But I think she still has a handful of clients who are kind of, you know, in, in maintenance mode, she's, but, but my point is she used WP Engine.

That was her platform of choice. And, uh, yeah. And she chose it. I think a big part because of the security, um, uh, benefits of, of having something like that. Like they, they kept things up to date. You know, they, they, they had your back when it came to a lot of the security issues that come with you being, with using something open source like WordPress.

So for her, it was a, it was money well spent when she was doing WordPress development for paying clients. Uh, it worked out great for her. So she's been keeping a casual eye on this as well to see if anything that, you know, she still has running out there could break because of this, but, uh, well, probably it just seems like a ridiculous pissing match to me.

Oh, it is. That's why we're covering it because it is so ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. Matt's Matt. He does not like private equity and, uh, he, he likes his standard, uh, VC people. Cause I know he's taken a shit ton of VC money.

I mean, he used to be in the true ventures building. They gave him an office. They loved him so much. So, you know, this isn't all, you know, let's just say he was born on third base. Yeah. Did you guys, I can't remember if I, if it was in the show notes, uh, that I saw this, that, that he was doing funny things with employees emails.

Did you guys cover that? We didn't really cover that, but there was, uh, there was some, there was some talk about that. I didn't have too much, uh, corroboration with it, so I didn't really follow up with it, but. Yeah. Yeah. I just saw it in passing that there was an allegation, I guess, that, uh, he was having employees emails that went to certain places automatically redirected or forwarded or something so that people wouldn't be able to, um, or I guess a better way to say it, if people were using

an online, uh, platform like Glassdoor, I don't think it was actually Glassdoor, but you know, one of those rate your company kind of things. Yeah. Yeah. He would be notified when they are, even if they were trying to do it anonymously, um, again, allegations, who knows if it's true or not, but if it were not the way to build trust in your organization.

No, but not illegal if using company email. True. True. Yeah. So don't use your own company email if you're going to slag off the company. Yeah. I think you need to, when you're signing up for like Glassdoor and things like that to prove that you actually work in the company. Okay.

Well, that's dumb. It's super dumb. It's super dumb. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we got a little bit of feedback. Mason wrote in, uh, after our discussion last week about, uh, you know, buying things from our youth and nostalgia. I bought a street fighter to arcade machine for nostalgia and 360 days a year.

It collects dust, but I love looking at it and it gives me great pleasure to just know it's there and I could play it if I wanted to. You work hard and small pleasures are what make life worth living. Yes. But think of those five days. It's not collecting dust. I know. Yeah. That's the thing. I mean, I had, I had a, I had a mortal combat two in my, or mortal combat three in my house for years for the exact same reason.

I'm with Mason, but when you move more than, you know, the average person schlepping around, you try moving a couple of times, Mason and schlep that street fighter two around, especially if you have stairs, your nostalgia is going to go out the window. Yeah. And it's funny. We've had a pretty lively discussion over on our, our GOG.show slash discord, not slash discord, but that's how you can get to it.

So go for it. But on our discord channels about, uh, about junk and decluttering your life and getting rid of stuff. Yet here we are talking about, maybe we should just get this because it would be fun. Yeah. There's a, there's a new thing called recluttering instead of decluttering. Have you guys heard about that? Yeah.

No. Yeah. It's for people who have, they over, they, it's called having a child. Yeah. Yeah. Tell you that. Right. No, I just heard it from people who over-indexed on the Marie Kondo lifestyle. They're like, you know, some things just, I liked, I liked having around some schmutz around the house, some, some tchotchkes.

So I'm going to reclutter my home. Now to be fair to Marie Kondo, who has gotten a hit with a pretty broad stick about this whole thing. She did say if it, if it sparks joy, you keep it. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. She did not say get rid of everything. Yeah. It is true. It is true.

I'm with Mason here. I think this is great. Uh, I similarly, uh, I have a pinball machine in my house that gets very little use, but knowing it's there, if I want to use it makes me happy. And similarly, people with your arcade games and stuff in your house, you're so silver spoons.

I thought that was like the height of like luxury that show as a kid. Right. Well, it was, it was, and now I have some money, so I'm living out my silver spoon fantasies. I would a hundred percent buy a spy hunter.

I love that game. Oh God, I would, if I could get a sit down spy hunter, I would get that in a second. Oh my gosh. Well, I'll find a link for you and it'll be in the show notes, Dave. And let me know how you enjoy it. No, no. There are sit down spy hunters to be had, but they're all about $10,000. All right.

Yeah. My understanding is that- Spin up a few more podcasts, Dave. We'll get there. Exactly. My understanding is that the price of classic arcade games has really gone through the roof in the past couple of years as, as our generation has more disposable income to spend on the gathering of the things that we covet from our childhood.

You know, nowadays it doesn't make even, it doesn't make any sense to buy a single use standup arcade game. You buy a main cabinet and fill it with 10,000 games, you know, it has every controller in it. Yeah. It doesn't have the, you know, the, the sticker that you wanted on the side, but you can get those made.

Yeah. I agree with that on most things, except for a game like Spy Hunter, where I think the steering wheel is- The steering wheel makes it. Same with, uh, Star Wars sit down. Right. Oh yeah. The original Star Wars game. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. See, so I do think that you could have a double up sit down game that was, uh, Spy Hunter and Star Wars because they both use- Similar controls.

Similar controls. Like I think it would cross over and that would be something. That would be worth having. Agreed. Mm-hmm. Spy Wars. I'm in. Yeah. Yeah. A friend of the show, MXV, has a sit down Sinistar in his basement, which is like- Oh, really?

It is. Yeah. That thing about killed everybody trying to get it down there. I don't think it's, I think it's going to be buried in it when, when it comes time. So I think it was a beast. Yeah. Well, I, I am totally with Mason's bigger point that there is nothing wrong with having things in your home that bring you pleasure just by having them there and looking at them.

I think that's what art does for us as well. And, and these objects can, I think can be considered art. It's just that your home is only so big. And so there has to be some kind of discipline because it's so easy to just keep collecting these things and especially like, you know, I've been in my house now for almost 20 years and so it starts to fill up.

It does. It does. Yeah. My dad's been retired for about three or four years now and he's still cleaning out the basement. Right. I go, what are you doing this weekend? Cleaning the basement. I'm like, you still got that much stuff? He's like, not even halfway done yet. I'm like, okay. Right.

So yeah, yeah. It's a lifetime of collecting crap. And you find boxes that are left from when you moved in that never got unpacked, you know, like 10, 10 years later. You're like, well, you know what? I don't think we need that. That could just be thrown away.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to update us on my ham radio license journey. I have jumped in. I have been studying in earnest. I'm using a website called hamstudy.org. And it's going well.

That's what it says on the tin. Yep. It's, uh, it's like a flashcard kind of studying. And I was correct in my guess that my previous, uh, associations with all things geeky have paid off in this endeavor.

Um, my having 150 in one kit when I was a kid means that I know how to read, uh, schematics. I know what most of the things are on a schematic. That's part of this. Um, my experience in broadcasting means I know a lot about signals and cables and connectors and that pays off for this.

It is interesting studying for this about like how much of the stuff in this test are old timey kind of things that I don't really think apply anymore. Like how many ham radio operators are building their own radios, like from a Heath kit, you know, it seems like some of the certification is around that sort of thing, but I understand you need to do a little bit of gatekeeping before you just turn somebody loose on the

radio frequencies of this great nation of ours. But, uh, no, it's funny because I'm taking a course right now for like Microsoft and technology and, and, uh, you know, it stuff and all of that. And, you know, it starts off with like all this old technology and then it says, and we of course don't use any of this anymore.

It's all been replaced. And I'm like, well, then why did we just spend a week on that? Right. Right. Yeah. At the same time, I'm glad to have all of that old knowledge because I feel as though, and I'm sure you guys feel the same way without all the stuff, all the development stuff that you guys did over the years.

Like you may not use it every day, but it totally informs the work that you do today. Having that experience, uh, I look back on it as time well spent, even though I will never use it again. Um, I'm glad I did. Yeah.

Uh, so I'm currently at 85% proficiency for the license. According to this quiz site, I think when I get to 90%, I will go ahead and take the test. You have to score 75% to pass. So, uh, I'm probably a couple of days away from hitting 90% with the flashcard quizzes, and then I will proceed and I'll keep you guys posted.

What kind of licenses are there? There are, there are three licenses right now. There's the technician license, which is the entry level one. There's the general license. And then there's, uh, which I think the general license adds things like Morse code. And then there's the extra license, which is the, the highest level.

And, uh, my, my college roommate was an extra licensed. Uh, I think you get a, you get a shorter, fancier call sign with an extra license. So you get the bragging rights to that. And I think it also gives you access to with each level. I think you get access to more frequencies and more privileges of the things you, you can do.

So I don't know. We'll see. I mean, I'm going for the technician license. We'll see how much that scratches my itch. And if I decide to go any further from there, uh, I have not even dipped my toe into the community aspects of this yet. So that could either turn out to be very attractive or repulsive.

No idea. So we'll see, but I'm having fun right now. I have to say, I am having fun. Uh, the quiz thing is fun and, um, I am learning stuff. And so I'm enjoying it. So there you go.

I'm looking forward to your next set of podcasts being out only on ham radio. Oh man. Could you talk about, uh, getting hammy with Dave, right? Exactly. CQ, CQ. Um, talk about a place to not grow your audience.

Uh, local ham radio is not very, very specific set of sponsorships. You'll be going after there. Right. Right. Oh my gosh. Do you actually have to go someplace to get licensed or can you do it from home? My understanding is that these days you can take the test online.

Uh, and I suspect that's the result of COVID, but I'm not sure. Uh, traditionally, yeah, you had to go somewhere and you had to take the test. Um, I was talking, uh, yesterday to one of my co-hosts, Maria Vermazis, who, uh, hosts the, uh, T minus space daily podcast with us.

And she's also now a co-host on hacking humans. Um, she went and to take her license one day and had a very bad experience and walked out in the middle of it. Mm, okay. And, and, you know, yeah.

And it was an in-person kind of thing and they were, you know, I, so, uh, if I can, I'm going to take it online because why not? But I'm curious because I've never taken an online test that has any kind of consequences.

You know, these are light consequences, but still, I, I, I guess what I'm saying is I've never done any sort of proctored test online. So I'm curious, like, how are they going to keep an eye on me to make sure that my, the, the, you know, the browser window next to it, me has chat GPT open to answer every question.

Well, they, they absolutely cannot, but there's no way. So, you know, it's usually just a timed thing and that's that. So, yeah, so we'll see, like I say, hopefully, uh, in the next couple of weeks, uh, we'll be there and I'll let you know, but I'm enjoying it.

So I'm glad I, glad I did it. It's been fun. Uh, in other news, uh, my lovely bride called me this morning, uh, to, so this is always good when, uh, you, someone calls you and my wife calls me and she says, uh, did you see the note on the kitchen counter from Jack this morning?

No, I didn't. That's, that's, that's gonna be, which way is this going? Yeah, right, right, right. This could be anything, right? It could be, uh, you know, fare thee well, I'm leaving, uh, no, but, no, but turns out, uh, he, Jack went into the freezer last night to get himself some ice cream and the ice cream was all melted.

So we are now shopping for a new refrigerator because the refrigerator that came with the house and as long time listeners will remember, I bought my parents' house. So I remember when my mom bought this refrigerator, which was probably 10 years before we bought the house.

So it's a 30 year old, you know, it's, it's not, it's a GE side by side, you know, water in the door, ice maker refrigerator. It's, and it served us perfectly well the whole time we've been here, but now we're in the market for a new refrigerator and, um, it's an odd thing because you, you're also like, you're, you're in a time constraint here because who wants to go very long without a refrigerator?

Right. So you want it pretty quick. So, yeah. Have either of you guys been through this recently? Yes. Yeah. So yeah, ours, ours died. We lost a bunch of stuff. Uh, cause we couldn't get one. It was like, it died like on a Saturday night. So, uh, we, we have a wholesaler guy we got ours from, but, uh, the guy, the guy gave me the best piece of advice. He's like, if you want to save the food that's in your refrigerator, go to Best Buy. That's the only place you're going to get it fast. That's, that's left.

Oh, is that right? We ended up saving a few bucks to get the refrigerator and, uh, lost probably well over a thousand dollars worth of meat from the freezer. So it didn't turn out to be a very good deal. We should have gone to Best Buy, but right now. See, we, we have moved, uh, before ever having to get a new fridge, but the, the one that we inherited with this house that we've now been in for four years, we can tell is, is on its last legs and we're trying, we're going to be, uh, proactive about it.

And, you know, maybe we're, we're monitoring the situation. And, uh, yet one, if one more thing goes wrong, we will be out shopping. Right. Right. I mean, refrigerators are kind of a binary thing. They're either cold or they're not. Right. You can tell by noises that they make.

Right. It starts shaking back and forth. Like it's in a Ghostbusters movie. Yeah. Exactly. You know, that could just be the ghosts. I don't know. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we are, we, we don't want to get caught out, but I'm sure we will. So the question is, are you guys going to go smart or not?

Absolutely. Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no. There's no need for that. No, no. I'm not falling for that. Yeah. No, no. What I will do here is how I make my refrigerators smart because I do have a second refrigerator downstairs, like a little small refrigerator that has some beers in it.

The college beer fridge. Yeah, exactly. We have a little home theater down there. And so, and that's where the pinball machine is. Um, so I put, we have, um, smart things. Home automation is our kind of the system we have. So inside the refrigerator, I have a temperature sensor and I have an alert set up so that if the refrigerator goes above a certain temperature, I'll get alerted to let me know

that something's wrong. So smart. Yeah. Yeah. But that's as smart as I want to go. I don't want the smartness built into the fridge itself. I think you don't want to take in pictures of your leftovers telling you when to go buy butter. No, I don't need that. Look at that was the promise. Yeah. Look at how good your mold colony is doing. No, I don't need that.

No. Um, the other thing I wanted to talk about that I was thinking about this week, uh, us being of the same ish generation. And I understand I'm the oldest of the three of us, but I was wondering if when you guys were kids and you were driving around in the car, did your family sing songs?

Hell no. No, no, but we definitely, there was like some specific things that were eight tracks that were constantly played. Yeah. Okay. Three dog night was a, was a big one. And, uh, yeah. Right. That sort of stuff. Yeah. Elvis and the Statler brothers on my side. Okay. We did a lot of singing in the car when we'd be doing road trips or, you know, any really anywhere. Um,

which is strange. It's funny for me to think back on because I wouldn't label either of my parents singers, but it was my father who led these songs. And so I learned all of these classic folk songs, like she'll be coming around the mountain. Uh, Oh, Susanna. I've been working on the railroad, you know, all these like, and I don't know how my father learned them all. Maybe he just learned

them in school when it was, you know, coming up in the forties and fifties. But, uh, it was, uh, what got me thinking about this was the, this, the nostalgia trip we were on last week. Um, I was thinking back about, you know, long road trips. Uh, I remember, you know, driving back from Orioles games or those kinds of things, uh, to, to, to kill the time we would, uh, we would sing some of

these old songs, but we haven't passed these on to my kids. And I think because there's so much more specific things now, like if we're singing, if we, when my kids were toddlers and we were driving them around, you know, we'd be singing things like baby beluga or, you know, all the, the specific songs. There's a whole market for this now, right? It's not that you're going into the old American

songbook. Like, no, they have figured out these are what your kids want to listen to. And so we shall sing these things. All of that sort of stuff. Yes. There's, there's been a ton of those that I went through with my kids. So yeah, we never went into old Americana classics. It's just whatever they were playing at the school that then came home and became something that I wanted to throw the radio out of the window with because I'd heard it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I felt about baby beluga. Uh, I guess

what was his name? Raffi. That was, you remember? Raffi. Oh, we did. Oh yeah. We listened to a lot of Raffi. He's Canadian by the way. He plays concerts here all the fricking time. Okay. Yeah. Raffi and the, the wiggles were big too around our house. But, uh, I, I just, I wonder, I suppose that the kids, these kids today, uh, have no idea what these songs are and, uh, you know, I don't, that's just the way it goes. I don't know. That could be said, you know, for some of these songs, that could

be a blessing. Well, I wouldn't say that's not, that's necessarily true though. Cause I'm looking at the list of songs that you put in here. And of course, because many of them are old and out of copyright, uh, these have been recorded for children a gazillion times by people like Raffi or, you know, all of that sort of thing. Like this land is your land. I've been working on the railroad. Oh, Susanna. I think those came on, on like one of those little radios that you buy for kids when my, when my kid was three. So he's heard them. They just don't

have the impact that they did. Right. Right. So they're in their brains because, because they're in the public domain, they're in their brains. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. Nowadays, you know, you're watching the boys with your son. So, you know, you figure if you're driving home from the game, you guys could be listening to like wet ass pussy or some shit like that. Yeah.

You know, the oldies. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Once that's in public domain, it's going to be on every kid's radio. Oh, drop it like it's hot, baby. Yeah. Good. Well, then we get into the whole, like the music that was so edgy when we were teenagers is now playing in the grocery store thing. So, you know, like, you know, I mean the cure and all that sort of start like gothy stuff I was listening to. And like, I was labeled a weirdo, uh, when I was in like high school is now

just, you know, I'm, I'm walking down Albertsons and they're, you know, they're playing it. So I'm like, okay, so was really that threatening and weird? I think not. No. I mean, even, even a few years ago, I remember a Cadillac commercial where they were playing sunny side of the street by the pogues in the background and like, they cut it off right by the part where he's like, you know, waking up naked and hung over on a roof and just all this stuff. I was like, gee, that's the, that's the good part of the song. You're getting rid of the flavor. Well, you know, the thing, the thing is of course that the, the people that are at the

top of the marketing companies right now that do the commercials, they're our age. They're us. So, you know, they're, they're picking the songs that they liked. So yeah, absolutely. Expedia in Cambodia licensed. Yeah, it works. It absolutely works.

It does. I really enjoy the Durex commercial that has, I want to fuck you like an animal from nine and channel. Perfect. Perfect. On that note. I put a, I did put, you put, put all the links to the old classics in here for the show notes, David. I put in a few that I think were just a slight improvements. Clementine by Tom Lehrer, I think was.

Yeah. Oh, anything by Tom Lehrer. It was a definite improvement. Oh, that, that is what my dad and I would listen to on road trips. We'd listen to Tom Lehrer. Right. I forgot about that. Yeah. That was kind of the music we'd listen to. And there's a version of this land is your land by Pete Seeger, where he was singing with the Clancy brothers that I think is one of the better versions of that song. So I threw that in there too.

All right. Terrific. Well, in my research, uh, for this, I learned that, uh, Oh, Susanna, uh, the original version is shocker, horribly racist, horribly racist. Well, you go back to a certain generation. Most of them are Dave.

Yeah. Uh, like it was, uh, the, so the whole second verse of Oh, Susanna has been scrubbed from the, uh, from, from that song. Um, yeah, I'm sure we can find it on Google somewhere. Now that the singalong is over. Yeah. Now that the singalong is over, let's go watch Song of the South. Right. Exactly. Definitely. Exactly. It's so funny. You can find the horrible racist lyrics for Oh, Susanna, but that damn Hulk Hogan sex tape, nowhere to be found.

To be fair, I don't think anybody's looking that hard for it. Just us. No, no, no, Jason. To prove that it existed. Well, it's like the Berenstain bears. I just want to prove that it existed at one point. Okay. Well, that's fair. You know, cause there are generations that are going to be like this, this thing never existed. They're going to think it's like the Holocaust, you know, it never existed. No, it existed. I saw it once, once.

Yeah. When the day comes that they, uh, hermetically seal off your home, Jason, and turn it into a museum, uh, your collection will become infamous throughout the land. Oh, the things you will see. Right. The Jason collection. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like a sideshow attraction. Can't wait. It's, it's good to have a legacy. I think.

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Oh, it looks like nobody died this week and we got no reviews. What the hell, Brian? Ah, well, what are you going to do? Until next time, I'm Brian Schillister. 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 670. God, that's a lot. Feeling generous? Keep this top-notch entertainment rolling by dropping us a few bucks at gog.show slash donate. Every bit helps. And spread the grumpiness.

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But go get something and stay grumpy. 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 Cullen. BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. We'll be right back.