674: Welcome to DOGE! The Department of Grumpy Entertainment

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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Got a little follow-up here, Brian. Now, we covered this a bit ago, the Ticketmaster hack, but if you haven't changed your Ticketmaster password lately, now might be the time to do it, because hackers are taking advantage of that recent data breach that we talked about, where 500 million users were affected, and they are stealing tickets right from people's accounts now. So, some people are managing to get their

tickets back with some help from customer support, but not everyone has been so lucky. And people are sharing their horror stories about losing their tickets and showing up to concerts and having their seats already been scanned and all that good stuff. So, if you're using Ticketmaster, it's a good idea to change your password and enable two-factor authentication as soon as possible, and you can set up alerts for any ticket transactions.

Yeah, you should do that anyways, especially if you've got your credit card in there. Do that right away. Taylor Swift is in town here, Jason, in Toronto, and she's doing eight shows in the space of two weeks, basically. So, it's been all Taylor Swift all the time in the news. Actually, Taylor and Trump, the two Ts that I can't stand. The two Ts I can't stand that I just can't stop hearing about. So, I haven't heard anything about horror stories about tickets yet, but there's only been one show so far. So, I'm sure we're going to hear about that. Give it time.

Give it time. Now, speaking of the other T, Trump media execs, you called this one last week. We all knew this was going to happen. It's a dumpster fire, and it's basically a cash grab. So, Trump media execs have dumped millions in stock right after the election because they believe in Trump media so much. So much.

Yes. The CFO of Trump media and two other high-level executives, I don't even know why they have a bunch of high-level executives, considering how small the company really is, sold a combined $16 million in stock after the presidential election, according to SEC filings and a report from CNBC. That fake news source. Yeah. The news comes as social media users contemplate whether there will be any uncomfortable competition between TrueSocial and X now that Donald Trump has tapped X owner Elon Musk to

run some kind of commission to slash the federal budget by a third. Yeah. And for his part, he pledged that in a November 8th post on TrueSocial that he wouldn't sell any of his shares in Trump media. Okay. Until he has to. Until he will and does because he lies. Yeah.

So, that'll be interesting. And, you know, I don't think that, yeah, there was an SEC filing about this, but the SEC is not going to prosecute anything because pretty soon there will be no SEC. Yeah. I'm not expecting there to be courts, Jason. Yeah, that's true too.

We'll see. Just as to clarify once again, how tiny a company TrueSocial is and how ridiculous its evaluations are. TrueSocial has just 200,000 daily active users, according to data from similar web and CNBC, which is, of course, tiny compared with X's 36.7 million users, but falling rapidly.

Falling very rapidly. Oh, wow. X only had 36.7 million daily active users? Yep. That's insane. Yeah. And what is crazy is I would be considered one of them because I loaded it at least once a day. Yeah, me too. And I could give a shit about X.

Yeah. I'm a reader, not a poster. Yeah. Oh, we'll talk more about that in a little bit. That really brings blue skies numbers into clarity. Wow. It does. That's insane. All right. Well, a little more egg follow-up, Brian. A new study from UC San Diego finds eating two to four eggs a week may lower blood cholesterol and protect brain health.

Oh, they're good again. Researchers analyzed data from a long-term aging study and found women, sorry, Brian, who ate more eggs showed less memory decline. While results for men were mixed, earlier findings linked eggs to better cognitive test scores for men, which is why I'm a super genius because I eat like a dozen eggs a week. Once blamed for raising cholesterol, eggs are now seen as a nutrient-rich option containing proteins and choline, which support brain function. The study

adds to growing evidence that dietary cholesterol isn't always harmful. I'd like to add this week. This week. Yeah. So, chow down, buddy. Had that omelet or two. I had a Chili Kili's last night. Delicious. I've never had that. Oh, my God. How do you live in Los Angeles and not have had Chili Kili's for breakfast yet?

You see the thing, it's a Mexican breakfast, and in the mornings when I go for Mexican, I get a giant burrito because in the old days, the only time I would go for Mexican for breakfast was when I had a killer hangover. Well, we had breakfast for dinner. Try that. Oh, what an option. What an option.

Brian, the Mooch just can't catch a break. Yet, he doesn't go away and seems okay. Bankrupt cryptocurrency company FTX has filed 23 lawsuits against Anthony Scaramucci, a.k.a.

the Mooch, and his hedge fund Skybridge Capital is part of efforts to recover funds for creditors following the company's collapse. So, FTX alleges these funds were part of an influence-buying campaign by founder Sam Bankman-Fried to bolster his political and financial standing as the company struggled financially.

The suits claim these investments provided little benefit to FTX and were used to maintain Bankman-Fried's influence. I love this. According to the lawsuit, FTX also paid $12 million to sponsor Scaramucci's SALT conferences and invested $10 million in the Skybridge coin fund.

In return, FTX claims Scaramucci took Bankman-Fried on a, quote, whirlwind tour of the U.S. and Middle East. To pitch potential investors was Scaramucci so invested in the success of Bankman-Fried's fundraising efforts that he lent Bankman-Fried his own suit and tie in advance of their meetings so that Bankman-Fried wouldn't show up to important meetings in his trademark shorts and a T-shirt.

Okay, I've seen pictures of these two guys. I can't imagine that he would fit into Scaramucci's suit and tie. Yeah, I don't know how that works. I don't know how that works. The lawsuit doesn't explicitly state how many millions of mooches they're looking to recover. Many mooches. Many, many mooches.

Many mooches. Cast back your mind, Jason, to your college days and purchasing textbooks. I didn't buy textbooks in college? What are you kidding me? Of course you didn't. Well, I did, and I spent an awful lot of money on them. But you and I were out of that arena long before we got down to textbook rentals or e-textbooks or all of that sort of stuff.

That entire world has changed completely. Once again, the world we grew up in, Jason, is gone and has been for some time. Sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes it's a good thing. Apparently, there was a company called Chegg. I've heard of them, yeah. They were known for textbook rentals and homework help, but they are now running on fumes.

Can you guess why? Let me guess AI. Uh-huh. Chegg's stock is down a whopping 99% since its highs in 2021, which has erased $14.5 billion in value, and the company has lost half a million paid subscribers because of ChatGPT.

All right. So, yeah, the company for years paid thousands of contractors to write answers to questions across every major subject, which is quite a labor-intensive process, and there's no guarantee that they will even have the answer to your question. Students, however, now just launch ChatGPT, put the question in the window, and basically get an answer.

Now, still don't know if they're going to get the correct answer. Whether that answer is right or not, that becomes the problem, which is fine. You just, you know, you'll get it wrong on your test until the teachers start using ChatGPT to grade the papers, and then we're all fucked.

And yeah. I'm not sure if this is a good thing, but it is a thing, and I get why it's happened. And, you know, books were expensive. I do remember that. And I'm sure it wasn't cheap to rent them or anything like that either. I'm sure it was cheaper, but it's not as cheap as free, even if it's somewhat wrong.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I got lucky in college. I didn't have to buy that. I think I bought two textbooks in college because I took photography, so I had to spend 10 times as much because I was buying paper made with silver. Right. And all the chemicals, and yes. Yeah. Yeah. Photography was very expensive back then.

Not like it is now. Damn kids. Getting so lucky. Well, now you just do a prompt. You don't even need a camera. That's true. I don't even need a camera anymore. Fucking hell. Yeah. Well, if you're going on a trip, you don't even need a tour guide anymore. Germany's tourism board launched Emma, an AI influencer, to lead a supposed digital innovation, yet the move has received strong backlash.

I wonder why. Social media users, including travel professionals, criticized Germany's choice to feature an AI influencer instead of hiring real travelers who could authentically represent the culture and spirit of the country. Instead, travelers are left with hollow advice from an algorithm that can't convey real experiences, a sad substitute for genuine human interaction in an industry built on personal discovery.

Brian? Hmm. So that's just the first one. Then there's the case of Sina Zaro, an AI influencer created to promote the Sina Zaro hotels. Her Instagram posts blend generic travel inspiration with thinly veiled ads for her affiliated hotel chain, leading viewers to question if these AI influencers are anything more than high-tech advertisements.

Instagram's lax label... Yeah, I was going to say, let me tell you right off the bat. Nope. Instagram's lax labeling policies for AI-generated content make it easy for brands to disguise synthetic influencers as authentic voices, creating a murky line between real recommendations and corporate marketing.

No AI, Brian, is going to tell me how good or bad the beer is at Oktoberfest. No, it's just going to tell you it's good. So you buy all of them. All of it. Yep. That's the way it works. No, it's... Real people, man. I'm telling you, 100% human.

We need human verification systems. I started saying that three years ago when, quote unquote, machine learning back in the day was starting to become a thing. Let me tell you, I hate human influencers. I hate AI influencers even more. I know.

That's a pretty steep hill to climb to hate actual human influencers even more than you do. I've heard your opinions. Yes. I'm not influencing people, apparently. No. Well, let's talk about Blue Sky for a second. Yeah.

Where the influencers are probably flocking right now because I still can't believe those X numbers. Well, Blue Sky has rocketed to over 16 million users this week, gaining a whopping 2 million in just the last week. 1 million in a day. Yesterday, Brian, or the day before yesterday. Right.

All since the presidential election. The platform, founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's beard, is rapidly becoming an alternative to X, attracting users frustrated with sissy SpaceX's floating garbage pile of a platform. That's right. The app is currently the top free download in the Apple App Store, beating out major platforms like ChatGPT and Google.

Whoa. So, yeah, it's kicking up. I posted my handle in the chat. It's actually, it's better than Threads. I got to say, Threads is just kind of, their algorithms over on Threads are just- It's not real-time enough, which is a problematic.

That's, that's, because that's what you're using these sorts of services for, these small byte things. It's for real-time stuff, and it is 100% not. It is very late with real-time stuff. My experience, I will get a little bit more into my, what I'm doing social media-wise later on in the show, but I'm also on Blue Sky.

I joined it same time you did. I don't do much on it. I haven't much. I'll post the link just like you did in the show notes, so if anybody wants to follow me there, it's a public profile for me. I guess I'll start to post over there a bit more, because, yeah, I had a good run with Threads initially, especially when the Cure album came out, because Threads became basically a Cure loving, and I wallowed in that for a little bit, but it is not real-time at all, and that

is not what I need it for, and also, I still, I don't want to just leave Musk for Zuck, because they both suck. Exactly. So my understanding is Jack is no longer involved in Blue Sky, because Musk, Jack, and Zuck, I don't want to have anything to do with any of them moving forward.

Yeah, Jack has stepped away as the CEO, and it's kind of like walking back his, because I guess, what's his, his is Square, Square, or Coin, or whatever the fuck he called it now. Block. Block, that's it, Block. Block is not doing so well, so he's, unlike Elon, he goes and spends time at the company He's going to go run his own company?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So he's, he kind of stepped back to go spend more time there. And there's a lot more features on Blue Sky that actually make it fairly useful. I really like the community's features that they have. They've got like these follow packs, so you can, like when you first join, you can like follow like things that you're interested in, which is kind of cool.

There's a lot of technology behind it that I think is actually kind of neat. And it's not built on the same platform as Mastodon and Threads. Right. They've got their own, their own platform. I guess some people are trying to like figure out how to do a bridge to be able to cross post on them, which I'm like, don't, don't bother.

That's okay. It's fine. I guess we should get a GOG account over there. Well, we do. Jason on Blue Sky and Brian on Blue Sky follow us both. We don't need, we don't need another goddamn GOG social that nobody follows. Okay. Come on. Oh, actually, after, after you sent me the bill for, uh, what's, what's our, uh, service that we post later?

Buffer. After you sent me the buffer bill, maybe we should make one just so we can actually get some use out of that thing. Damn, that was expensive. It's not cheap and it's not, it's not even the most expensive service out there that does that. It's just the one that works the best. Yeah. Crazy. Uh, so yeah, um, I, I, I, it's now that there are more people there, it's not the Scalzi network.

Thank God. You know, that's all it was. I, I just pop in and it was like 12 posts from John Scalzi and that was about it. So it seems like a lot of my friends, I looked on, I got 31 new follows this morning. So people are starting to migrate over finally. Yeah. That's, that's definitely been the thing that I've noticed too. Everybody, as I've been clearing out my ex, all I see is I'm going over to bluer skies.

Join me. Yeah. I just wish I had a better name. Blue sky. Well, whatever. What do you get? I'm gonna go post on BS. Great. At least blue sky uses all the, all the letters involved in the words. That's true. That's true. That's true. Yeah. The, the URL kind of sucks though.

BSky.app and BSky.social. Anyway, I, I went and grabbed an app for it and cause I always get the, the top listed alternative apps, not usually the company app. Like the Twitter app was always the shittiest of the bunch. And then especially when they shut down the API access, then all the third party ones went away and you had to use the actual Twitter client.

I was like, ew, gross. Uh, so I got one called gray sky, which I, I fired it up, logged in and everything looked cool. I'm like, Oh, this is nice. And then this morning I was putting the links in the show notes and I found blue sky scoops up the developer of popular third party app, gray sky. So there you go. Well, oops.

So I went and downloaded the blue sky app. So I haven't tried it yet. So. All right. Well, we've got some more layoffs in the news. This one should hardly be surprising. 23andMe has not been doing very well lately. So here you go. Is there anybody left? More than 200 employees of 23andMe are being laid off as part of the company's ongoing cost cutting measures.

This layoff impacts 40% of the genetic testing company's workforce. So yeah, there's still quite a few people over there, I guess. Still a couple hundred people left. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be looking guys and gals. I'd be looking. 23andMe CEO and co-founder Anna Wojcicki said in the statement released on Monday that the staff reduction would save the beleaguered company more than $35 million.

Unfortunately, there's no business plan still. So basically, this is just going to be a long tail to bankruptcy. That's what I'm thinking. So fire sale. They've also announced they will shut down their therapeutics clinical programs that used as genetic database to research and develop new drugs where any real potential new money would have come from.

So they're not doing that because they would have to pay scientists. And yeah, that's that's about it, really. Yeah, I'm betting there are a lot of people watching this thing try and go to zero. Before they scoop it up. And I'm guessing the next our next story is going to be the the lucky winner of that scoopy.

Yes. Amazon is getting into the boner pill business. Amazon is diving deeper into health care, now offering telehealth services with fixed pricing for conditions like erectile dysfunction, hair loss, bacterial vaginosis and many more that you don't want to talk about over breakfast.

Or for chilikilis. Yeah, or chilikilis. Yeah. Imagine if Amazon had all the genetic data from 23andMe to start sending you spammy ads. Perfect timing. Yeah. And then combine it with the one medical that they've got. And oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah. Prime members can see costs up front before scheduling consultations.

And a video consult is $49. Or if you just want a text message to get your boner pills, it's $29 where available. Because some states. A video consult is $49 or $57 if you don't want the ads. That's right. They went with a Kindle model.

Oh, God. But you can get boners for only $19 a month. And if you want hair back, it's only $16 a month. But if you want eyelashes, it's going to cost you a whopping $43 a month. Eyelashes are more than hair? And boners. Wow. Yeah.

They've got some skewed priorities. But okay. I think they do. So one medical membership is not included as part of an Amazon Prime membership. But you can purchase, if you're an Amazon Prime member, you can purchase a one medical membership for $9 a month for the first member and $6 a month for up to five additional members.

Now, the big news here is competitors to the boner pill market, Hims and Hers, their stock plummeted 24% on the news. So, yeah. Now you can just have a chat and get a boner. But just don't order that sex doll on Timu. That might not come out right.

Not really what you want. But, Brian, what a wonderful world we live in. Isn't it? Yeah. Well, we've heard actually really wonderful things about Waymo and the driverless taxis that have been rolling around. Are we going to get self-driving boners now? For an initial of $9.95, you can actually get your eyelashes worked on while you're in the Waymo, apparently.

And I mentioned that I saw them when I was in Santa Monica last time I was in town. But apparently they are available to all customers anywhere in LA County now, which is the 80 square miles of LA County. And there's no wait lists anymore. So, I like this line. Now LA residents will get to experience sitting in endless traffic with a series of cameras and navigational algorithms leaving the way instead of a person.

Great. At least you don't have to have a chat. They plan to expand to all of Los Angeles' five counties soon. So, there you go. But apparently people are liking it. Waymo says these driverless rides are highly rated with an average rating of 4.7 stars out of 5. A recent survey indicated that 98% of customers are satisfied with the service.

Going to have to try one, I think. As soon as... I'm going to go get the app and get in there and see if I can get one. Because if I can, hell yeah, I'm going to try it. My neighborhood's not too bad to drive in. So, I'm not too worried about imminent death. Like in Santa Monica, I'd be worried the thing would go rogue and try and drive in the ocean.

But since I have seen a lot of Mythbusters, I do know how to get out of a car that goes in the water. That's one thing I've taken away from Mythbusters is, damn, if I don't know how to get out of a car that goes in a river. Yeah. So, I was thinking a little bit about how the average rating is 4.7 stars out of 5 for the driverless rides.

And I figure that's because when the rides go really wrong, they don't get a rating. They're dead. They don't get a rating. Yeah. So, a little bit skeered there. Survivorship bias at play in our rating system. So, I saw this one in the news, and I just had to say, I think we finally found a use for AI that I enjoy and approve of.

O2, the UK's largest mobile network operator, has deployed a voice-based AI chatbot, which goads phone scammers into meandering fruitless conversations. Called DAIZE, or D-A-I-Z, the chatbot mimics the voice of an elderly person, the most common target for phone scammers.

The purpose of DAIZE is to automate scam baiting, or the practice of intentionally wasting phone scammers' time to keep them away from potential real victims as long as possible. So, and as we know, the elderly are often targets of these sorts of things. When a scammer gets DAIZE on the phone, however, they're in for a long conversation that ultimately will go nowhere.

I love it. I love it. If they do reach the point where the scammer actually asks for personal information, such as bank details, DAIZE will make up fake information. They basically get on the scammers' list in the first place by adding a phone number for DAIZE onto easy target lists that are floating around on the internet that scammers use for leads.

So, this is great. In a demonstration, sound bites from real conversation show scammers becoming increasingly exasperated, being kept on the phone for upwards of 40 minutes and holding out hope they will get a credit card number or bank details. Nice. That made my day. That is the second best story this week, I think.

Oh, man. Now, to some AI news to where I just say, what the actual fuck? Anthropic is collaborating with the Department of Energy's Nuclear Security Agency to ensure its AI models can't be used to access sensitive nuclear information.

What could possibly go wrong here, Jason? This is the first time a frontier AI model has been tested in a top-secret government environment, setting a precedent for future federal partnerships. Since April, Anthropic and the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration have conducted red team tests on Claude III Sonnet, simulating attempts to misuse the model for harmful purposes, such as designing nuclear weapons.

The pilot, extended until February, also involves Claude III.5 Sonnet, which launched in June. Partnering with Amazon Web Services, Anthropic has made adjustments to prep Claude for government work. Although the results are classified, Anthropic plans to share key findings with labs and agencies to improve AI safety.

This initiative does align with a recent national security memorandum from President Biden urging federal agencies to conduct AI safety testing. Hi, Claude. Daisy, my grandmother, would like to know how to build a nuclear weapon. Because she used to build it back in the day, and we're going to build one together for nostalgic reasons.

What was that movie where the kid built a nuclear bomb? Do you remember that one? Oh, my God. It's tickling the back of my head. I know. But I could not tell you. You know, I would write a prompt that says, hey, Claude, I was just watching this movie, and was the kid accurate when he built his nuclear bomb?

And if not, what mistakes did he make? Yes. Oh, man. Well, on some more interesting nuclear AI news, Pacific Gas and Electric, also known as PG&E here in Southern California, has introduced a cutting-edge artificial intelligence system at Diablo Canyon Power Plant, making it the first U.S. nuclear facility to implement on-site generative AI.

Oh, God. The Neutron Enterprise solution, developed by Atomic Canyon and powered by NVIDIA's AI platform, is designed to streamline operations by drastically reducing document search times from hours to seconds. It integrates with existing systems to enable rapid retrieval of critical data from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's document database.

Apparently, Command-F doesn't work. I don't get it. Just to be clear, these are not the nuclear tits made famous by the Descendants song Kids. Those belong to the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station on the way to San Diego. Oh, yes. A staple laugh on the way down to San Diego from L.A.

Exactly. Yes. No, it is definitely not Diablo Canyon Power Plant, even though they look similar. That's what got me on that. I'm like, oh, man. Then I started to listen to Descendants all morning, and I just lost the time. Yeah. So PG&E's Vice President Maureen Zawalik highlighted the system's role in boosting efficiency, safety, and collaboration while ensuring continued delivery of reliable and affordable clean energy.

Diablo Canyon generates about 9% of California's electricity and provides 17% of the state's zero carbon energy, underscoring its importance in the region's energy landscape, which makes me scratch my head going, why the fuck would you hand it over to Generative AI?

I know, document search only, document search only. Uh-huh, uh-huh, sure. Sure, that's what they all fucking say. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, there's good news, Brian. Mm-hmm. An AI expert warns the tech industry could face a crash as Generative AI hits a development plateau.

Cognitive scientist Gary Marcus highlights signs that scaling large language models is delivering diminishing returns with fewer gains in performance despite increased investments. One of the only joys I get out of X anymore is actually watching Gary Marcus troll Sam Altman constantly.

Really? Oh, I should follow him. Oh, it's good. It's good fun. Okay. Oh, I will definitely get in on that. Because, yeah, the big news this week was OpenAI's next generative model, Orion, doesn't have the same improvements over GPT-4 that GPT-4 had over GPT-3.

Yeah. But there was a new article that came out about five seconds before we started to record, so I didn't get to put it in here. Apparently, some MIT researchers have made some breakthroughs on how to deal with large language models to help get over this hurdle so we don't end up in another AI winter.

I don't mind an AI winter. I think we could use one. I think we could really use one, especially with this next story. Hayley Welsh, the 22-year-old who went viral for her Haktua video, has turned her social media fame into a career with her latest venture, an AI-powered dating app called Pookie Tools.

Pookie Tools, with over 5 million followers online and a podcast, TalkTua, Welsh is making her mark in the tech world. Launched this week, Pookie Tools, I'm never going to get tired of saying that, offers Gen Z singles AI features like chatbots for dating tips, profile enhancement advice, outfit suggestions, and even Zodiac compatibility because, you know, signs are a real thing, Brian.

Yeah. Now, its standout features include a flirt meter to evaluate text messages and tools like the Height Detector and Bald Predictor, aiming at addressing dating frustrations, though some find these features controversial, a.k.a. gross as fuck.

This is going to cost you $7 a week, or, for the math-enabled, $50 annually with a free three-day trial. While critics note its chatbot lacks Welsh's signature humor, Pookie Tools, signals a growing trend of influencers exploring tech innovations early in their careers.

Pookie Tools. Pookie Tools. Now, I'm going to guess my next story here, Jason, is your favorite story of the week. Oh, hell yes. I think this might actually be my favorite story of the decade, if not my life so far. This is the world's favorite story right now. It was on every news outlet that I could find yesterday as a lead story.

So, Brian, take it away. The Onion has purchased InfoWars, the website previously owned and operated by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, in a bankruptcy auction. He was forced to file for bankruptcy after he lost a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit filed against him by victims' families of the 2012 and Sandy Hook shooting.

He was apparently unaware that the Onion had purchased InfoWars until he was alerted by his lawyers on Thursday morning. I just got word 15 minutes ago that my lawyers and folks met with the U.S. trustee over a bankruptcy this morning, and they said they are shutting us down. Even without a court order this morning, Jones said on social media, the Connecticut Democrats with the Onion newspaper bought us.

According to the New York Times, the Onion's bid was done so with the blessing of the Sandy Hook victims' families, and funds generated from the sale will go towards satisfying Jones' defamation verdict. They intend to relaunch InfoWars in January 2025 as a parody of its former self, mocking weird internet personalities like Jones who traffic in information and health supplements, such as our president, as well.

How will you know the difference is the problem? That's the thing is you won't know the difference anymore. You won't know the difference. And we've learned that humor and irony has gone over many people's heads. But nevertheless, great story. Very happy about this.

Fuck you, Alex Jones. I hope you rot in hell.

Brian, last night while I was prepping,

my show notes for today, I popped on a Netflix documentary called Countdown, Paul vs. Tyson. It was a three-part series on the lead-up to the fight tonight, which I am so looking forward to. Three, three-half-hour segments. It was a really nice way to get to know the fighters again.

I really like Mike Tyson. I think he's a character. I think he's a sweetheart that will kill you. I walked away not hating Jake Paul as much. I still don't like him. I dislike him greatly, but not as much as when I first started watching it. So I thought it was a really nice way to see how they train.

And I actually, I left, let me back up here. When I first started watching it, I'm like, this is just going to be the greatest fight of all time because Tyson's going to take him down with one punch at the beginning. And then as it went on and I just saw how the training was going, this is going to, this might be closer than we think.

And after, after the letdown of last week, Paul just might wipe the floor with him because that's the fucking universe we live in now. It is. And if that happens, I will also be depressed. I'm not going to watch because I don't care for boxing and I'm not interested at all. But, uh, God damn, if he wins, I just, I just got to pack it all in.

I think I'm done. Here's the thing though. Tyson's 55 years old. Jake Paul's 27. Yeah. You know, that's a significant difference. Yeah. And the other difference is Mike Tyson's got nothing to lose. You know, he's getting paid no matter what. Paul has like a career to look forward to.

So, you know, Tyson might just go down in the third for shits and giggles and a nice paycheck. Who knows? Who knows? We'll see. But I've seen the training videos of Tyson and he is terrifying. Yeah. Terrifying. Yeah. Well, uh, I've talked a little bit last week and I'm going to continue to talk in bits and drabs here as we talk about different stories about how I'm recalibrating my life post-election.

Uh, I talked about how I don't want to, even though I've always felt, uh, compelled to and interested in the world and trying to be not necessarily a news junkie. I don't have like news programs on 24 seven in the house, but, uh, I've always tried to be informed and I've decided, uh, I don't want to do that for the next four years.

Brian, the power of the GOP compels you. The power of the GOP compels you. So I'm going to not. And, uh, I did watch the post-election versions, uh, shows of real time with Bill Maher and last week tonight with John Oliver. I feel like I've gotten my porn.

I've gotten my catharsis and that will be the last time I watched those. Oh, good. So I'm done. I am not, uh, I'm not doing, I'm just, I just can't, I can't do four years of this. I can't even do, he's not even in office yet. And I had problems with the last three days because of all these appointments.

I was losing my fucking mind. So I'm disconnecting. So I'm done with those for a while. Uh, I found some other things to watch. Okay. Uh, I did watch super league, the war for football. Uh, it's a documentary on Apple TV. That was actually quite interesting and enjoyable.

If you are a big football fan, you, you know about this, about how the top leagues were trying to break away to make their own super league. And, uh, basically everybody said, but this is the people's sport. They said to the millionaires running around on the pitch, kicking a ball. Uh, but anyways, it was a good documentary and I'm glad the super league didn't happen.

And everything is continuing at least for now as per usual. It was fun. If you're into soccer, you'll enjoy it. Uh, shrinking is back. It is as good a show as it always has been. I I'm watching basically one a night as a, as we're trying to catch up with the real time drops that are coming out. And, uh, I love it.

It's a great show. Uh, I'm sure you've never watched this, Jason. I never will, but it did kind of take over the internet for a while. Nobody wants this with Kristen Bell. Well, it says it right there on the tin. So why would I want to watch it? Well, most women want this. And, uh, I, I did not so much watch it as my wife did.

And I sat on the couch reading and, uh, boy, yeah, not for, not, it is not meant for you or me. And, uh, yeah, it seems there were a couple like good jokes, uh, looked up and laughed every now and then, but no, thank you. And silo season two comes out tonight. So I will be watching that while you watch, uh, hopefully Mike Tyson, hopefully beat up Paul.

We'll see. Okay. And I saw this story in the news and, uh, Moana definitely is a great movie. It's one of my favorite Disney movies. It came out at the right point in time, basically like streaming, uh, during the pandemic when my son was the right age for it.

We basically lived off this movie and listening to the soundtrack. It's, it's fantastic. Although I was surprised to find out that, uh, as in addition to just being a good movie, it is the most streamed movie on Disney plus ever. Wow. Over everything else, like everything else on Disney plus since it's launched in November, 2019 with an extra boost, thanks to the early days of the pandemic.

A lot for me, uh, it has become the most streamed movie of all time. Numbers wise, audiences have watched 80 billion minutes worth of it, which equates to watching it 748 million times. Imagine what the human race could do with 80 billion minutes, not watching Moana.

Yeah. It's also been one of the four most watched films on any streaming service on a yearly basis for the past half decade. And for 2024 specifically, it's been somewhere in the streaming top 10 every month thus far. Add on to the $687.2 million box office during its theatrical run.

And it's safe to say a lot of people love this movie, which means Moana 2 is probably going to have a massive run when it comes out in a few weeks. All right. I still haven't seen it. I have not seen it. That's a great movie, man. It really is. Well, apparently that's what everybody says. Oh, well, the Penguin finale was, uh, last week and that is the best non-superhero comic book show ever made.

It was that good. I mean, it was phenomenal. Ryan, you got to watch it. You'll love it. I will. I'm going to watch it. I will go back because I've also heard it's definitely getting picked up for another season. So I'm in. Did you, did you watch the new Batman movie that is the prequel to this or the lead up to it?

Is it the one with the Twilight guy? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I did. I did watch it. I didn't think much of it. Okay. I don't remember much about it. I remember I kind of liked it, but I think I might go back and watch it again because it's going to lead into the next Batman movie as well. And there's, there's some tie-ins and all this stuff, you know, so the DC, the DC.

They're finally starting to do it right. They figured out, you know, it's like, oh, wait, these Marvel guys might have something. They might have something over there. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm going to go back and watch the Batman again. And I, I seriously, this was just, it was amazing. And I still cannot see Colin Farrell at all.

Yeah. I saw some short of him doing the makeup and it was astonishing. Yeah. Wait till you see his acting. It's even, it's just phenomenal. And they showed, they showed a clip with him, like at the, at the end of the episodes, they do a little behind the scenes thing. And they show a clip of him wearing a little headband and talking in his little accent. And I'm like, that is just not the same fucking guy.

It's not. Yeah. So I've mostly checked out of the Grammys. It still comes up in my house, obviously, because my wife is still deeply involved in the music industry. And with the type of music that get nominated for Grammys, it is not my kind of music anymore, which is why I don't pay much of attention.

But I did notice that the Beatles are being nominated for two Grammys, mostly because of the AI enabled song that they put out this year. So kind of good for them, I guess. And it's not really AI. I hate the fact that they say that. And again, even in the article, they talk about it's modern machine learning, which basically was just used to pull Lennon's vocals out for a new track because all the machine learning algorithms are, have gotten very good with audio processing as we learn on our own podcast on a regular basis.

So interesting to have them in there. Hope they win. Be kind of cool. All right. And Gates McFadden from Star Trek, the ghost fucker. She's had her own podcast. We've talked about it before. Gates McFadden investigates where she basically just talks to other people that have been in Star Trek.

But it's pretty good. She's a really good interviewer. She's back for season three. And Jess Bush, who is probably my new favorite human on the planet, is one of her guests. So I've got to listen to that one. So looking forward to it. I'll check that one out. I like her. Yeah, me too. And some fun for me reads that I found this week as well.

As you may recall, I was getting ready to go see Jane's Addiction and Love and Rockets here in Toronto when the basically two nights before the last show before coming to Toronto. Yeah. Yeah. They got in a big fight on stage and Jane's Addiction split up and no concert for me. Over at Spin, Eric says, Jane's Addiction co-founder and bass maestro Eric Avery on the rise, rush, ruin, and resurrection of his volatile band.

This is a big, long reminiscence and interview that was done with him just before they went out. So it's kind of – it's great if you were into Jane's Addiction. It's a lot of history about it. I really like Eric. I'm privileged enough to say that I've known him multiple times in the past and he's a really nice guy, hung out with him.

So it's a fun read and you can definitely tell it's like – you can see the writing on the walls already. Like this isn't going to last. And then I also saw the story of Love and Rockets, the former Bauhaus members who helped sell goth to America, an article over on loudersound.com that gets into them basically an interview, again, with the bassist, David Jay, talking about how they came up and what happened and how they tried to basically self-sabotage themselves once they got big.

This is a fun read. Two good bands and two good interviews. All right. Cool. Now, I'm going to tell you somebody who's not getting a Grammy this year. Oh, he might buy the Grammys to get it. He's that kind of fucking egotist. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has released an unexpected acoustic cover of Lil Jon's Get Low alongside T-Pain, calling it a tribute to his wife Priscilla.

Aw. The tech tycoon dubbed Z-Pain – no, it should be We-Pain because we the ones in pain – shared that the song played when they first met. I hope T-Pain enjoyed it. Yeah. However, the heavily autotuned rendition, including the infamous lyrics, has drawn cringes, not applause.

Critics are calling it a misstep in Zuckerberg's apparent effort to rebrand as a quote-unquote cool millennial mogul. While T-Pain's cameo offers some release, this collaboration may leave listeners wishing it stayed in the draft. Or just never even existed in any way, shape, or form.

Did you listen to any of it? No, because why? Oh, you have to. You have to. No. No, I can die without ever listening to this, and I will be quite happy. I want you to have the me pain that they caused me. No. I listened to 10 seconds. There's a 10-second clip where he's talking about the balls, and it was just more than I ever needed.

More than I ever needed. Because what better gift can you give your wife than talk about the balls? Exactly. Shweaty balls. You can get us some shweaty balls for Christmas. That's what you can do. What's in the box? Now, I think that this went before the previous story.

I was angered at this next story, but this actually might be a reprieve. Spotify is diving deep into AI, addressing generative tools like Suno and Notebook LM that allow users to create music and podcasts. Because AI might have saved us from that last horrible sonic just nastiness.

Co-president Gustav Soderstrom shared that the company's vision, AI, as a tool to amplify creativity rather than replace it. He noted that AI can help creators produce music, but Spotify itself won't generate content, staying focused on being a platform for artists.

Soderstrom acknowledged challenges in balancing AI-driven content with copyright laws and ensuring creators are fairly compensated. So they're taking a new tack. Yeah, you can't even fairly compensate live people. I know, so they're actually going to try and fairly compensate people now? Is that what you're saying?

No, because this is the whole thing is they're going to come out and say that if it's AI, there's nobody we have to pay. Exactly. These guys want your ear holes without having to pay anybody. Mm-hmm. Apps and doodads. Good news, Brian.

Mm-hmm. If you're an Instagram user, this is good news at least. Instagram is finally fixing the annoying auto-refresh issue that they've been having. Okay. I don't know if you've ever had this happen. You open up Instagram and you see the first post and you're like, oh, that looks – no, where the fuck did it go?

It happens to me all the time. It happens to me on all the networks all the time. As soon as I see something, unless I bookmark it immediately, it is gone forever and I can never find it again. Yeah. Yeah. Damn, you don't even use TikTok. It's even worse on TikTok. Try finding something you've ever watched on TikTok.

It is impossible. Yeah. So they're saying that they're going to wait until users start scrolling before refreshing the feed. Okay? Okay. There you go. That's the big news in Apps and doodads today. And here's me opening Instagram. Oh, that's interesting. I'll come back to that later. Scroll, scroll, scroll.

Gone forever again. Yep. Done. All right. Meta, formerly Facebook, will face an antitrust trial after a federal judge denied its motion to dismiss a Federal Trade Commission complaint. The FTC alleges Meta's purchases of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 were anti-competitive, aimed at eliminating potential rivals.

That's right. Judge James Bozberg ruled the case can proceed, focusing on claims that Meta paid above market prices to stifle competition. However, the FTC cannot argue that Meta blocked app developers from competing with its core services. So, there were internal emails from Mark Zuckerberg basically saying that it's easier to buy somebody than to compete with them.

Okay. Why was this not found out in the initial antitrust checks that were done before the purchase was allowed to go through? Yes. When it might have mattered, because now Meta just basically needs to pay the lawyers to keep this going for a couple months, and then it won't fucking matter anymore because it'll all get dropped.

Because regulations won't matter, the FTC won't matter, and none of this will matter. Well, it depends on if Zuck is on Team T. So, I know he knows T-Pain, but does he know T-Rump? T-Rump? Somebody better do something with that, swear to God.

Because if he's not in the camp, you know, then... Yeah, that's true. Then he just gets shut down, so... Yeah, because Elon is... Those crosshairs are starting to tick towards Elon right now. So, once he's done taking down Sissy SpaceX, then he might go over to Z-Pain.

Oh, God. Moving on. Well, Jason, if you have an iPhone 16 and smash the thing on the ground because you accidentally loaded the news app and saw what Elon did today, you're in luck. Apple has begun selling replacement parts, including cameras, displays, and batteries, for its latest iPhone.

The company, long resistant to customers repairing their own devices, has been making it easier following years of pressure from repairability advocates like iFixit. A replacement camera assembly will cost $169 for the standard iPhone 16 or $249 for the larger 16 Pro and Pro Max.

Displays range from $279 to $379, depending on model and size. Batteries are $99 or $119, although it'll be more like $60 for the Pro if you ship Apple your old battery pack, and it explodes in the mail. If you don't have specialized tools to conduct the repair, Apple will rent you the battery repair device that its own technicians use.

It's a step. It's good. It's a step. Now, if I was running Apple, the first thing I would do would be to hire Metallica to do an ad for the battery replacement using the classic song, Battery. Because every time they say Battery in here, I just get that song stuck in my head.

It is a classic from the days when Metallica was great. Let's make Metallica great again. No, thank you. Oh, man. Apple is rolling out a new feature in the latest iOS 1812 beta, enhancing the Find My app with the ability to share a link to the location of lost AirTags or Find My enabled devices.

The feature generates a shareable link that displays an item's location on an interactive map, updating automatically with timestamps. Now, here's the fun part. Apple has partnered with over 15 airlines, including Delta, United, British Airways, and Singapore Airlines, to incorporate these links into their baggage tracking systems because apparently they can't find your luggage themselves.

So, I think that's a good thing. Yeah. That's great. I mean, I bought AirTags strictly for the purposes of putting them in my luggage. That's kind of mostly why I have them. So, good. That's great. I have three AirTags right now that I hear from every day because they say, replace the battery, please.

It is a pain. Tomorrow. It's actually super easy. Once you do it once, it's super easy. No, it's getting those batteries. Oh. I tell you what. I found that there was one, like, I never buy anything from Amazon Prime Day except this one time they had, like, you know, a hundred pack of those little button batteries.

Oh, smart. Yeah. And I just bought a shit ton of them. I never have them when I need them, Jason. Never. Yeah. Oh, man. And we used to have 99 cent stores here in Southern California. They just went out of business, like, six months ago. The real trick was to go to the 99 cent store and they would sell you these little, like, light up candles that you get for tea lights.

And they'd sell them for, like, ten for a dollar or something like that. What you do is you basically buy those, rip them open, throw away the light and keep all the batteries. Keep all those little batteries. Yeah. Yeah. They didn't last as long as, like, if you bought them new, but they lasted longer than not having them. And they were cheap.

So, Mattel's new Wicked dolls for kids were pulled from shelves after a packaging error directed buyers to the adult website wicked.com instead of the intended wickedmovie.com. Oops. Proofreading matters, kids. The incorrect website promotes adult films, including works by Stormy Daniels.

I have been to the Wicked offices in San Francisco. I've been into the dungeons at Wicked before. And that was one hell of a field trip, I tell you, kids. Don't go in the hot tub at Wicked is all I got to say. Despite the mishap, the dolls have become collectible. While retail prices around $35 for the normals, listings on eBay have soared with one pair recently selling for $280.

Ridiculous. That's awesome. Okay. I just want to throw a quick shout-out to Sound Studio 4. It's one of my go-to apps for the Mac. It is a Swiss army knife for audio stuff. I've been using it since it was released, you know, well over a decade ago.

They haven't updated it in a long time because they don't need to. It just works. So, if you're looking for a quick and dirty audio tool for everyday usage, check it out. It's $50, and it will save you a ton of time. I use it literally every day. There you go. I use it quite often myself. I usually don't have many apps because I basically just have the apps that I use, and that's about it.

Jason is usually the one that brings them. But given recent circumstances, I had been searching for some new things that I could use, and I found a couple. Remember Tweet Delete, Jason? I miss Tweet Delete so much. Well, you don't need to miss it anymore. There's Redact. All right.

I have checked this out. I have decided that it is time to get off the fucking shitstorm that is X, and I wanted to make sure that all my old stuff was deleted. And I found Redact. And Redact is, they call themselves the only platform that allows you to automatically clean up your old posts from services like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Discord, and more all in one place.

I have only tried Twitter, and it is a pay service, but they let you do Twitter for free. Or I think maybe any first service that you use, you do for free. So I completely nuked my entire old Twitter profile using Redact without paying a penny, Jason. All right. I highly suggest checking it out.

Now, if I decide, and I think I might, at some point that I want to wipe out all my old Facebook stuff, I will pay for this and give it a go. But so far, it's worked a treat on Twitter. So as I mentioned, I'm off Twitter. I'm not deleting my account or deactivating it because it's still occasionally useful for me to go look at stuff like Gary Marcus yelling at people and things like that.

So for the time being, I'm keeping it, but I'm not going to be posting there anymore. I'm over on Threads. I'm over on Blue Sky. Those are my public-facing platforms. Everything else is private. That's the way I'm going to be doing it from now on. And you're mostly on Discord. So come hang out on Discord. Go to GOG.show to get a link to our Discord channel and come hang out with us there, too.

Yep. And then the other thing I did, I was going to do, and I've been talking about, and I've been talking about it with friends as well, as mentioned, I'm going to try not to be an avid newsreader because it drives me nuts. I'm not going to be loading all my sites and reading through news and headlines every single day. I'm even going to try to stay off the Apple News Reader, which is actually a really good one and a reason not to pay for other ones.

But a friend of mine recommended Tangle News to me, and it's basically just a daily newsletter, about a 10-minute read. It's very straightforward. It's just the facts, ma'am. It doesn't lean left or right. So far, I've had two episodes of it come into my email, and I've really liked it.

It's kept me informed on the basic headlines without making me want to bash my head into a wall. So I recommend people checking it out if they're trying to basically get out, just readjust their media diet to something simple and easy so you're just not going nuts. Okay, just signed up.

I'll give them a shot. Brian, I've got a short read this week. It's kind of a pamphlet, and it's called People Standing in Front of Danzig's House, Volume 1.

Are you in there? No, I'm not, surprisingly. So if anybody – people in Southern California and specifically L.A. know where Glenn Danzig lives. And it's like this creepy little house that used to have piles of bricks in the front yard, and we'd always talk about the piles of bricks because I had a friend who wanted the piles of bricks really badly to go work on his yard.

He's like, Danzig, just leave these bricks. I want the bricks. It's right down the street from House of Pies, and there are always people going by and checking out the house. And so somebody decided to take pictures of people standing in front of Danzig's house and turn it into a zine. I just love it. I absolutely love it.

Yeah, it's pretty awesome, actually. I wouldn't buy it, but I love the concept. I'm glad it exists. I can't believe there's only one volume. Well, yeah. I've been trying to read a lot more. I want to read a lot more, but I wanted something quick and simple. I found Beacon 23, the complete novel by Hugh Howey, author of Silo and Wool and all that sort of stuff, who apparently really likes putting his things out in drips and drab compilations, hence the complete novel part of the title.

He started off blogging. He would blog a chapter here and blog a chapter there. Here a chapter, there a chapter, everywhere a chapter. It was a good, fun story. It was a quick read, but really interesting, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And it was a very, like I said, very quick read. Like, you blow through it really fast.

It's not entirely dissimilar to some other things he may have written in some ways, but still good and compelling. All right. I will check it out. Ooh, there's an audiobook. Six hours and nine minutes on the audiobook. I will grab that, because I think it's free for me.

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. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave Bittner. Whether it's decoding all things cyber on the cyberwire, 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.

A new episode of Only Malware in the Building has dropped, and it's awesome as always. Look for Only Malware in the Building wherever you get your podcasts and enjoy the latest episode, Whispers in the Wires, a closer look at the new age of intrusion today. Hi, Dave. Hello. It's nice to be back.

I'm winded. Yeah. That's a lot to read. Stop doing stuff. Well, I mean, you know, you have my permission to condense it, to distill it to its essence. Okay. Here we go. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave. Hi, Dave. Right.

There you go. Hey, that works. That works. How you doing? I'm doing pretty. I mean, as well as can be expected, right? Here we go again. I'm more tired this week than I was last week.

And I think it's just that the stream of chaos has begun. Has begun. Right. Right. Right. So I've got my shields up, and that's just burning the emotional fuel and leaves me around.

I'm just running out of gas about an hour early every day than I usually do. So I'm going up to bed earlier, going to sleep. I'm back into waking up in the middle of the night, which I was done with for a while. Yeah, right. Screaming. In a cold sweat, bolting up in the middle of the night.

But, you know, gummies. There's a lot of good TV. Yeah. Yeah. Silo starts again tonight. Yeah, that's great. Okay. Jake Paul and Tyson fight. Plenty to do.

Silo used to be sci-fi. Yeah, what about, you know, you mentioned the fight. I had a fight tonight, and these are not things I keep up on, but my youngest son, Jack, was telling me about this fight coming up. And my initial reaction was that anyone who gets in the ring with, what's his name?

Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson, thank you, is crazy. I don't care how old he is. The man is a killing machine, to quote Rocky. Now, I get it. He's older and everything, and I don't know anything about this person that he's fighting, but I don't know.

Lucky you. Is that right? You're so lucky. Yeah. So lucky. I'm blissfully ignorant of what's going on here, but this seems to me like, I guess it's a cash grab, but I just would never. He's an influencer dude. You know, that whole thing.

Well, the whole idea for the fight came to Jake Paul when he was on an ayahuasca retreat, so that should tell you something. He should go fuck himself. So he called up Mike and said, hey, Mike, want to fight? And Mike's like, sure. So. I bet Mike said, Mike said, what's the guaranteed payout?

Oh, yes. Well, considering Jake Paul at one time was the biggest influencer on YouTube, substantial. It is going to be substantial. So. But if you want to, I mentioned it earlier in the show, but there is a three-part short documentary on the run-up to the fight that's worth watching.

Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Three parts is not short. They're only half an hour each. They're only half an hour each. It's still an hour and a half. Not short. It goes by quick. Is it concise at least? Yeah, it is. It is. Yeah.

Yeah. And it focuses. It is 80% Mike Tyson and 20% Jake Paul. So, you know. Okay. Well. And Mike Tyson is always fun to watch. There's another option, Dave, which is you just remain blissfully ignorant of the whole affair. That's probably the path I'm going to pursue.

Yeah. I just remember, you know, when Mike Tyson was in his prime and I guess, oh gosh, we were in our 20s or so. When he was in the Hangover movies? Yeah, that was really good. But he would just get in the ring and devastate people. We just hadn't, you know, it was just amazing. So.

Yeah. I don't know what kind of shape he's in now, but. Scary shape. Yeah. Right. Really, really scary shape. Yeah. They show a lot of his old fights in the documentary and it is, they're very short because he knocks people out in like three punches and it's the thing's over in like 20 seconds.

Right. So, you know, his greatest hits is like literally about two minutes long for all of the fights he's ever been in. Yeah. So. Well. He's a scary dude. Maybe with the curse of time that at least the viewers will get a longer fight perhaps tonight.

But I don't know. I just don't like. It's a 50-50 toss up. Right. Jake Paul has been trained before. Here's the thing. If Mike wouldn't have gotten sick and had his ulcer, it would have been it would have been over in minutes. But Jake had that extra time and got actual training from some pretty decent boxers who taught him more technique, which really is going to kind of level the playing field, I think, for this fight.

So I'm not a fight guy. I don't you know, I don't watch boxing, but I do like. Combat sports sometimes. So I'm very intrigued by what's going to happen. I don't. It's just not my thing. I don't I don't like sports where the goal is to hurt the other person.

Hmm. You know, just not my not my thing. You save that for politics. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Emotional damage. That that's what I like to see inflicted. And I remember, you know, again, 20 years ago or so. When my father was playing a lot of golf and every now and then I would go out with him.

To drive the cart, basically. And because I was a terrible golfer and my father was a very good golfer. But one of the folks that was a regular at the club where my father played was a former ultimate fighter. And this guy's body looked like it had been through like in a blender.

Like he just does because, you know, we come out on a golf course wearing shorts and his knees like and his legs didn't look like legs anymore. They were they were just there was all these strange angles that your legs shouldn't move at. And he was a good golfer.

Like he was walking on a couple of slim gyms. Right. But I just kept thinking, like, how is this possibly worth it? But I don't seem like a happy guy. And I guess he had his career. And that was that was that. But at the time, he was probably 35 or maybe pushing 40.

So I can't imagine how that plays out as you reach your senior years having just. You don't reach your senior years. You don't. That's true. Yeah. Painkillers. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when you look at the life expectancy for all these NFL players, it's not great.

You know, you want to you want to you want to short one. Check professional wrestlers. Those guys don't last long. Oh, is that right? That is a tough one. Yeah. Those guys. I mean, those guys take so much punishment. So much punishment. Yeah. It's funny. People who say that they aren't real athletes and I get what they're coming at.

Like, it's it's not a real competition, but I don't think it's fair to say pro wrestlers aren't real athletes. Oh, I've always said it's not a real sport, but they're definitely athletes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I worked with that wrestling company for a while for like two summers.

And those guys are insane athletes. I mean, the stuff that they do is really, really hard. I mean, really hard. So they have they have my my respect for sure. But let's step away from blood sports for a minute. And or season two is coming out soon.

Hey, April 2025. Yay. Yeah. Do you guys see the teaser trailer? Yeah, it's good. Yeah. Yeah. Teaser trailer dropped this week. And it's a teaser trailer. So there's not a whole lot. There are more YouTube breakdowns of the teaser trailer, which are helpful.

You notice that speck of dirt in the right hand corner. Right. Second three. That symbolizes. Right. Exactly. This may be a reference to a 1988 comic book. Yes. That the novelization of. Yeah. Yeah. Ridiculous.

Yeah. But I'm looking forward to it. It's a good show. Yeah, absolutely. It's a strong one. So I will be there tuning in. Hopefully they didn't knock it down to like three episodes. Like they're knocking all these shows down. I know. I know. So I noticed earlier in the show, you guys were talking about blue sky.

And I just wanted to check in with you about blue sky because I have stayed blissfully ignorant of blue sky. Other than knowing that it's out there. I see a lot of people saying, hey, especially this week, hey, here's my blue sky account as they're deactivating their Twitter accounts.

I was part of the movement from Twitter to Mastodon. And that's where I've found my happy place. And the idea of taking on another social media platform, I find very discouraging and disheartening.

So I wanted to check in with you two to get the skinny on what is blue sky? What is it not? How do you guys see it? Like, where do you think it fits? And is it inevitable that I'm going to end up there? Would you like to take this first, Brian?

Sure. Jason and I both signed up over at blue sky when it first came out. It was Jack's thing. Jack is apparently no longer involved, which is probably why people are flocking there as they leave the Musk owned X and don't want to go to the Zuck owned threads.

I can't figure out the Mastodon and can't figure out the Mastodon. But it is a Twitter replacement and in much the same way that all of these things are trying to be. I found a bit of a happy place on threads for a little bit. But as we were talking about earlier, threads is not a real time algorithm, which kind of is what you're looking for in a Twitter replacement.

So that is frustrating. You can't really use threads for news or anything like that because you'll see the news post four days after it happened. That's not useful. Blue Sky is better that way. When we first went over to Blue Sky, it had been basically taken over by the author, John Scalzi.

He lived on it. All I ever saw were his posts and I kind of just abandoned it and never went back. But yeah, I think now that people have decided they're done with X, if they're not red pilled, it's just going to become true social itself. People are leaving it in droves and they need to go somewhere and they've decided Blue Sky is the place because it's not owned and run by any of these people that we have decided are just absolutely horrible individuals that own too much already.

I think that's kind of the breakdown. Now, Jason seems to be enjoying it. He's enjoying Blue Sky a lot. So I'm going to start giving it a bit more time and look into it a bit more. I know that there are a few tools out there to help people move over. There's there's some scripts that will go through and find anybody that was on your that you followed on Twitter if they're on Blue Sky, which I think I need to run because I don't really I signed up but never really started following people over there.

You see, I'm taking the approach with Blue Sky like I do when I get a new Mac. In the old days, I would use migration assistant to take all of the junk from my old laptop and move it over. But I found out that it is much better for my sanity and my peace of mind that when I get a new computer, I start from scratch and then just build up the things that I need because then you're not bringing all the old cruft from the old computer.

Now, I look at I look at social networks that same way. So when I started off with Blue Sky, I just there was some core people that I know that I wanted to follow. And it's all the same people that I followed that I knew when Twitter first started, you know, and when when I started with Blue Sky and you too, Brian, because I think I gave you one of my invites.

It was we were in the first million people like Twitter. I was in the first 140 people. So a lot of those same people I just found on Blue Sky. Like it's like, hey, how you doing? I haven't talked to you in a while. This is great. So that part's fun. And now that some people are coming over, you know, the people that I want to talk to generally started to follow me.

So it's like, OK, if I didn't know that they were coming or not. So it worked out good that way. So I'm going to stay away from the migration tools for sure. But to your point, Dave, it's it's it's just nice. But if you found your happy place, yeah, add another don't move. Don't don't don't bother. Really, if you're if you're happy where you're at and you've got a good group of people and you're getting you're getting what you need out of it.

Don't do more. I think I think that's the biggest lesson we should all learn from this, from the from what's going on right now. You don't need to be everywhere. You shouldn't be everywhere. It's too fucking much. We should be scaling all this back as much as we can anyway. And that's really what I'm trying to do.

It's as we all know, Facebook is basically useless at this point. You don't see your friends updates if they even update anymore because everybody stopped. Instagram is all influencers and ads. What I'm really looking for and this is where I'll disagree with Jason just because I'm lazier than he is.

What I'm really looking for is replacing what Twitter was four or five years ago. I had a very well curated list of people that I really enjoyed following. It was a lot of science, a lot of news, a lot of media stuff that I liked. And that's all gone to shit. And if I can use a migration tool and most of the people are over there and I can get most of the way towards recreating what that experience was for me, then good.

Then that's my one and I'll stop with threads and I'll stop with X and I'll stop with all the other ones because I just want one thing, one ring to rule them all. And I don't want to put a lot of time into it. Like I get starting fresh, but I don't want to spend that much time on it either.

I just we're old. We don't have that much life left in us. That's right. I also just don't have the fucking patience. I just don't care enough anymore. Yeah, that's interesting. You talk about starting over because that's what I did when I switched from Overcast to Apple Podcasts just for podcast playing.

You know, I just started from scratch and like instantly went from probably 200 podcasts that I was subscribed to to eight. Right. One of them, of course, being this one. Wait, if you only follow the podcast you're on, that's already like 15.

Well, that's true. But, yeah. And every now and then I'll say, oh, you know what? I haven't listened to such and such in a while. And I'll go and I'll subscribe to it. And that's working out great for me. So I guess one of the things besides just general, you know, FOMO is I see more and more info security people that I'm following on Mastodon saying, hey, I'm over on Blue Sky now.

And I'm thinking, oh, is this the mass exodus? Is people, you know, are people going to go over there? It looks like they're most likely to hit critical mass of any of the other replacements. And if you need – if you're public-facing and you need people to see your stuff and you're promoting your own stuff and you need the followers and you want all that, Blue Sky seems to be the one that you should be going towards now.

Yeah. It's more user-friendly. There's no ads. And it's in technology. There's no ads yet. It's better. Yet. They have announced that they're going to do that. Yeah, at some point. They have to. I mean there's only 20 people running the show over there. So expect some fail whales down the line. They had an outage yesterday, but that was because somebody cut a fiber cable.

Oh. Yeah, they had the outage yesterday exactly when I tried to log in to get my handle to post in the show notes. Which is funny is that's exactly when I was logging in to get my handle to post in the show notes. I want to mention something real quick. You talked about FOMO and the fear of missing out.

As an older gentleman, I want you to think about possibly embracing the opposite, the joy of missing out. I think that as we grow older and more sane and more wisened and wizened, the joy of missing out is actually more pleasurable than worrying about the fear of missing out.

I'm just saying. I 100% agree with that. Jason, that may be the wisest thing I've ever heard you say. I had mentioned earlier in the show that Taylor Swift is currently in Toronto. She's playing eight shows over the course of two weeks. The entire fucking city has gone Taylor Swift nuts.

They're renaming streets. It's on the news 24-7. Every goddamn business is putting up friendship bracelets up on their marquees. And it's insane. And I don't give a fuck. And I'm so enjoying missing out on this whole thing. It's a wonderful feeling that I just don't care.

Yeah. See, in my mind, when we look back at like classic Twitter, when Twitter was at its peak, there were two types of Twitter users, two main categories of Twitter users. There were those who were on Twitter to build an audience to broadcast to, so like unidirectional communications.

And those people built up their big audiences of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people. And then there was the other category, which was people, which is the category I think I was in, which is just looking for people to follow, interact with, and closer groups of friends, and chit-chat, and all that sort of traditional kind of social media stuff.

When I switched to Mastodon, Mastodon does not serve that first group of people. Right. If you want to build an audience and be a broadcaster, Mastodon doesn't do that because there's no algorithmic boosting. So it doesn't notice that someone's building followers and put them in front of more people to help snowball their following.

And so a lot of people who that's their goal, they get frustrated with Mastodon quickly because it ain't like it used to be. And, you know, even though like half of their followers on Twitter were probably bots, it still felt really good to have that number.

And the number just doesn't happen. So I'm curious, do you guys think Blue Sky will serve that first group the way Twitter did? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think it'll be both. And we're okay with that? It'll be very much like old Twitter.

Yeah. It's fine because I was able to tune that out anyways. Like I said, I was at a very curated list, and I would never, ever click on the For You tab, ever. Right. Okay. Well. Yeah. One of the really nice tabs that they have on Blue Sky is popular posts from your friends or that your friends are posting about and things like that.

So you kind of, it gives you a little bit of insight algorithmically. And you can write your own algorithms, search algorithms too with Blue Sky, which is kind of cool. It's just technology is what I think differentiates the two as well. It's like, it's easy to use for the newbie, but it's also got stuff for the nerds, you know?

Right. So I like that part. Yeah. Well, I'm not going to check it out. Yeah. Again, I don't think you should. You're in a happy place. And unless you find out that everybody that you like engaging with does leave, why would you leave?

Let's be honest. I'm in a less miserable place. I'm not in a happy place. When it comes to social media. We have to hold on to what makes us happy for the next couple of years. So stay. Don't go anywhere else. Don't bother. Yeah.

Well, speaking of things that make us happy, this story made me so happy this week. This, I just, I, I was bent over laughing and sitting, reading this. A person, a group of people committed insurance fraud in California by claiming that a bear had damaged several automobiles.

They, they took the insurance companies for over $140,000. One of the cars that was damaged was a Rolls Royce. There was a high value Mercedes. But the way they did, the way they did it was they dressed up in a fake bear costume.

And I guess all costumes are fake bears, but they dressed up in a bear costume. It has been a while since we've had any furry news, Dave. So thank you. Well, by the way, by the way, there is a fantastic furry community on Blue Sky, Dave. That is one thing that it's known for.

That is one thing that it's known for. Sorry. But it's not the friendly ones. It's the ones trying to get followings. Right, right. So, so these guys, because the cars are in security cameras, so they have their like night vision mode.

And there's video of this guy in a bear suit scratching up the cars. And, and, and not only do they have the bear suit, they have, have you guys seen those things? They look like, they look kind of like brass knuckles, except you use them for tenderizing meat. Yeah, right.

Exactly. Wolverine claws. Use them for tenderizing meat. So they use those along with the bear suit to rip up the upholstery inside the car. And I mean, it worked to a certain degree because they got $140,000 from insurance companies.

They sent the video to a wildlife biologist who was like, yeah, that's a person in a bear suit. I just love imagining like the mild-mannered adjuster at State Farm, right?

Who's sitting there and he's like, huh, this is interesting. A bear attack on a car. All right. Oh, there's video footage. Let me look at this. Just leaning back in his chair going, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The other thing this reminded me of that made me laugh was back in the classic days, the David Letterman show, when they would send a guy in a bear suit to do all kinds of things in New York.

Can a guy in a bear suit hail a cab? Can a guy in a bear suit get a hug? Can a guy in a bear suit get into a strip club? Can a guy in a bear suit do insurance fraud? That's what made me laugh. Anyway, I'm enjoying this way too much.

And I think part of my state of emotional fragility is that I'm clinging on to anything that gives me a sense of joy and laughter. So I appreciate you guys indulging me. On the ham radio side of things, Dave, I'm going to shift gears here away from the insurance fraud furries.

Gordy writes in and says, please tell Dave not to give out his ham call sign on podcasts. His call sign can be searched for on the FCC website, and his license contains his address, which can easily be viewed on Google Earth. Dave's wheelhouse is security. I understand and appreciate him talking about ham radio, but please remind him of the world we are in and be more careful about his personal information.

I'd like to congratulate him on passing the test. Perhaps I'll make contact on the air with him one day. By the way, Dave lives in a nice neighborhood. You know the thing, on the ham radio, nobody knows if you're a furry. That, ooh, you know, I didn't think about that. Yeah.

Why is your voice so muffled? Bear suit. In a bear suit, yeah. Maybe that would be a fun fursona. Fraudulent bear. A fraudulent bear suit. It just goes around committing insurance fraud. That's, like, that would be my kink, right?

Dressed up in a bear suit, going around and, I'm sorry. It just really does tickle me. Okay, well, Gordy, I appreciate the concern. I think this. The horse has left the barn.

Yeah, those are the exact words I was going to use. I think anybody who. Bear has left the cave. There you go. Yeah, I think anybody who wants to look up where I live, that is so easy to do, just by the fact that I have a mortgage, you know. Yeah.

We didn't incorporate a fake corporation to purchase our homes, so. Right, right. No, all public information, but no, I appreciate the kind words. I do enjoy the neighborhood I live in. As I say, I have a very modest home and a very nice neighborhood, so. And a very robust security camera system, so he will know if you're showing up at his place.

That is true. Yes, and my security camera system has been trouble-free ever since I gave up on the pipe dream of solar. So. All right, shall we leave it there?

I think so. Okay. That's good enough. Go enjoy your bear stories. I know. God, I wonder, like. I long to be as tickled pink as you were about that story, Dave. I really do. I got to find something. It just really cracks me up. I don't know why. All right. See you guys.

Go find some honey. Closing shout outs! Over at Patreon this week, we got no new subscribers, so shame on you all. But we would like to give props to Ramsey, Stephen, Roz, Manuel, Craig, Jeff, Thomas, Nicholas, Allison, and Barzanator, for being loyal, and Barzanator, for being loyal, loyal Patreon subscribers.

We thank you and love you all. The rest of you, get on it. Come on. Three bucks a month. Get the show early and ad-free and in high definition. What are you waiting for? Nothing. Go. Put on that bear suit. Get on it. Over at PayPal, we got Ralph, Miles, Shari, Linda, Natalie, Arcadio, Nathaniel, and Jason, who sent us 50 bucks and said Dave needs to do his Arnold Schwarzenegger impression of his favorite monologue.

And Deliveroo! Over at the tip jar, we've got Theodore. Thank you, Theodore. Thank you. No new reviews. Nope. Sad news this week. Tony Todd has left us at the age of 69. Generally not known as a sci-fi actor, but more of a horror actor.

He played Candyman, a movie I worked on, actually. He was also in one of Deep Space Nine's greatest episodes. So that's what I remember him most from. Yeah, I remember him from that. Fantastic actor. And a happy birthday to my friend Gigi Edgley. She was on one of my favorite shows, Farscape.

She played Gianna. Happy birthday, Gigi. And to the rest of you that didn't sign up for Patreon, go buy some fucking shirts. Shop.gog.show. Yes, please. I got to get in there and make some. I'm so lazy. I'll get around to it. Until next time, I'm Brian Schilmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo.

Thanks for tuning in to Grumpy Old Geeks. Dive into the show notes and all the links from today's episode at gog.show slash 674. Feeling generous? Keep this top-notch entertainment rolling by dropping us a few bucks at gog.show slash donate. Every bit helps. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. And spread the grumpiness.

There's a share button in every podcast player out there. Use it to share the show with friends, foes, and everyone in between, and we'll be forever grateful. Head over to gog.show to find the link to our Discord channel and chat with us and other show fans when you're not dicking around on Blue Sky or Mastodon or, God forbid, X. 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 will get your review read on the air. So we'll a one-star, but we prefer a five. 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 Pleaver Cullen.

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