675: Your Own Personal Jesus

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The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at BKFSEA.com. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo, discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. So, after last episode, Brian, I went and got the Waymo app. To see if I could get, you know, my driverless taxi ride here in Los Angeles. And it has not gotten to everywhere in L.A. County like they said it did.

So, I am still out of luck. No, no, no, no, no, no. There was a map on that story. It was definitely just one specific part of Los Angeles, and they were going to expand to the rest later. And, you know, you're not even technically in Los Angeles as far as I'm concerned.

I'm in Los Angeles County still. Yeah, Los Angeles County, but it was the city of Los Angeles that had it. Oh, well, didn't they make the entire county of the city, Brian? Come on. No. See, I have Speed Reader on all the time in Brave, so I never see a lot of those diagrams and things like that.

And details, yes. Yeah, details, exactly. But, yeah, no, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, that whole area is definitely in now. So, I sent it over to some friends in WeHo who like to go out and party. I'm like, you might want to check this out. Give it a shot. Yeah. You know?

Well, we'll see. I don't see it rolling out in Toronto anytime soon, so no Waymo for me either. But I have this thing called public transportation. Oh, yeah, trains and things like that. That's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, which is probably going to come in handy with the weather about to turn for you.

Oh, Christ. Yeah. I just won't leave the house for three months. Yeah. I wouldn't want a Waymo in the snow. No. No go. No go, Snow Waymo. No. Got a little bit of feedback here. Dean wrote in. Hi, guys. Long-time listener, first-time contributor from Australia.

Here's a follow-up email received today from Anova. If you recall, they made the strange decision to app access and support to many of their sous-vide cooking devices. They have reconsidered that dick move. So, yeah, we covered that story where people were rightfully pissed off that a service that they purchased into, whether they used it or not, which is app access to something that just sits and cooks and lets you know when it's done anyways.

They decided they wanted to take it away because, guess what? It costs them money because it's their product and it's a service they decided to sell to people. Yeah. But they have finally, this was quite a long time ago from what I recall, but just in time for the Christmas miracle where they want more people to purchase their devices, they've decided to roll back that policy and basically say, we will continue to eat up the cost that we decided to offer as a service

and not take that away from you, basically. Yeah, so we can sell something to get rid of this stock we have in our warehouses for Black Friday. Exactly. Exactly. Anyways, so good move. I think it's important that companies continue to, you know, service the product that they sold people.

Yeah, even if they don't want to. Yes, even if they don't want to. Yes, this is a lesson for junior accountants out there. When your team comes to you and says, hey, we got a great idea, run the numbers first. Yeah, see how much that's going to cost you for the lifetime of a product per month. Yeah.

Just keep that in mind. But, you know, why? Let's move fast and not support things. Yeah. Yeah. We haven't really talked about crypto because it's been in a weird situation with lots of other stuff going on. But I think it's safe to say that crypto bros have bought themselves a seat at the table for the next administration.

We are hearing that they are going to be very supportive towards crypto. And of course, they're all fucking schemers and scammers anyway. So they're all launching their own fucking coins. But I think that is seemingly doing pretty well for crypto in general and Bitcoin specifically. I saw this morning that Bitcoin is nearing $100,000, which is a height that has not scaled for quite some time.

And I have a feeling that's going to continue for quite a while, at least the next four years or until everything burns down, as it might. We're all screwed anyways. It might be the only money soon, Brian. Well, actually, that was my point in bringing this up.

I didn't really have a news story specifically to talk about with it, but I figured it's been a while since we've talked about it. And I haven't talked about my personal crypto situation for quite some time because I really haven't paid any attention to it. I've just been letting it. I've been hodling and just letting it sit and not even checking in on it, to be frank.

Because as we said from the beginning, if you want to invest in crypto, make sure it's gambling money. You don't use anything you need. It's Vegas money that you're happy to lose and never think about again, which is what I did. It wasn't a lot of money. I initially bought Bitcoin first, and then I bought some Ethereum.

And then I did a little bit of research at the time, which was very difficult because it was basically all just press releases saying every single coin is God's own coin that will last forever and be the best thing that will ever be. But with a little bit of research, I bought some Filecoin and some Litecoin as well. So I went in and looked at it the other day, and everything was up a little bit because it hadn't been for quite some time.

And Filecoin and Litecoin were basically just shit coins. I'm going to get email about that from somebody, I'm sure. But they were shit coins, and I sold them, and I sold them for tiny profits, basically. And I've decided looking at it, I'm just going to hold on to Ethereum and Bitcoin because why the fuck not?

You never know what's going to happen over the next four years. Overall, after those two sales and with where Ethereum and Bitcoin are at the moment, I'm up about 5% on my investment, which is, let's be honest here, considerably less than I would be if I'd invested that money in any of my well-performing individual stock holdings or just an index fund.

So with all the brouhaha about Bitcoin, and yes, if you bought Bitcoin in 1973, you're doing great, and you didn't lose the five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy you saved it on, you're doing just fine. But if you didn't and you got in later like everybody else did, it's okay, but don't buy the hype.

You would have been better off putting your money into Tesla, for Christ's sake. Oh, God. Yeah, I was going to go look and see how much my Ethereum is worth, but I have to go find the floppy with the key so I can log into MetaMask because I changed phones since I purchased it.

So who knows, that might be lost to the wind. Again, if it was Vegas money, it is what it is. It was $150, yeah. Yeah, there you go. Actually, I could really use that right now, but... Oh, shit.

St. Peter's Chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland, has turned heads by replacing a priest with an AI-powered Jesus avatar in its confessional booth.

Brian, woo-hoo! Were you raised Catholic by any chance, Jason? Hell no. Do you know what you're supposed to be doing in the confessional booth? Well, I'm guessing it's right there on the tin. You're supposed to be confessing. Well, yeah, and to the point where, like, you're supposed to basically say, oh, I've cheated on my wife or I fucking killed a homeless bum in bum fights that are legally recorded on the dark webs.

Things that you probably don't want to tell a machine that's recording everything. Yes, yes, there's a caveat for that. We'll get to it in a second. But, yeah, I think people who have muscle memory for the confessional may have been kind of fucked on this one. Dubbed Deus in Machina, the experiment launched in August allows visitors to interact with an AI Jesus that speaks 100 languages, providing real-time responses to spiritual and theological questions.

Theologian Marco Schmid described the project as a way to explore how people engage with AI in a religious context. Over two months, more than 1,000 visitors, including tourists and individuals of various faiths, tried the avatar. Two-thirds of surveyed participants reported a positive spiritual experience, though others criticized the responses as shallow or impersonal.

Two-thirds is not bad, Brian. Now, to be honest here, again, and from my own personal experience being raised Roman Catholic, the responses as shallow or impersonal, it was always say 10 Hail Marys anyways, no matter what I fucking did. There you go. I was mean to my sister or I stole a chocolate bar.

Say 10 Hail Marys. All right. I think maybe that's the default, you know, the no internet connection. Yeah, that's what it says when it can't get a connection. The installation, developed in collaboration with a local university, trained the AI on theological texts.

Users were cautioned not to share personal information as it wasn't intended to replicate traditional confession. Okay. There we go. Yes, but, Brian, the experiment has roused the ire of Big Jesus. What about Buddy Jesus? Oh, man. Catholic critics opposed its use of the confessional while Protestants questioned the avatar's imagery.

Despite precautions, Schmidt admitted concerns about the AI delivering inappropriate or contradictory advice. As do priests. Yeah. Yeah. While the project won't become permanent, Schmidt sees potential for AI as a tool to facilitate religious dialogue, reflecting a growing interest in personalized spiritual experiences.

Now, I got to give them props to have the cojones to do this. I mean, it's a big swing. Yeah. You know, good for them for giving it a shot. Like, you know, you can do it in the back room all you want, but when you bring it out to the public like that, that really is, that says something.

You're putting your money where your mouth is. It does cast my mind back to the AI ethics course I took in which they, like, cautioned small brands and big businesses before even rolling out something as an AI shopping assistant. But, hey, the church just fucking went for it. Let's just go, man.

Just bring in the big guns. Why not? And I'd like to thank you for putting in this story because I've heard nothing but Depeche Mode's personal Jesus in my head all day long. I know. Now that you've said it, I can't unsee it. Oh, I was just – this was all over the news this morning, and I'm like, we just had to.

We just had to because – the thing is, you know what? I want it trained on all theological texts. Then I would like to have a chat with it. That actually sounds fairly interesting, you know? I have a book by Leo Tolstoy where he basically put together, you know, philosophical writings and a lot of religious texts from over the years.

And he made his own little daily calendar book. This is Tolstoy back in the 1800s, so it's been around for a while. But, you know, something like this would be fun to play with, I think. Yeah. You know? But, yeah, don't share your personal information with your own personal Jesus. Oh, man.

Your own personal black box multi-connected Jesus. Yeah. A recent investigation reveals that dialogue from over 53,000 movies and 85,000 TV episodes has been used to train AI systems without writer's consent. Let me bring back an oldie but a goodie here, Jason.

Shocking. That's right. That's right. This includes content from The Godfather, The Simpsons, and Breaking Bad, sourced from subtitles, uploaded to opensubtitles.org. And that's just for the Jesus AI. Yeah. I'm the one who knocks.

Oh, God. Yeah. Basically, everybody under the sun utilized this data to build generative AI models, sparking ethical and legal debates. No shit. They're still – they're arguing fair use. Well, it was on opensubtitles.org. How the fuck is it fair use? I know.

Open loophole is what they should have called it. Uh-huh. But, yeah. They should have just called it. We don't give a fuck. Yeah. Let the lawyers figure it out. Let the lawyers figure it out. Oh, man. Speaking of lawyers figuring things out, this comes from the oops, I did it again category.

In a lawsuit accusing OpenAI of using copyrighted material without permission, lawyers for The New York Times and Daily News claimed potential evidence was accidentally deleted. This fall, OpenAI provided virtual machines for the Plaintiff's Council to search its AI training sets for copyrighted material. However, on November 14th, OpenAI engineers erased the search data on one machine.

Although most of the data was recovered, key file structures were lost, making it impossible to determine where copyrighted works were used in AI training. Interestingly specific mistake. Exactly. Now, the plaintiff's lawyers say this mistake has forced them to restart weeks of work, but they don't believe the deletion was intentional.

So that was interesting that they came out and said, yeah, it's OK. They fucked up, but it wasn't their fault or they didn't. It wasn't malicious. And they still say that OpenAI is best positioned to search its data set for infringing content, which of course it is. But they're not gonna.

That is the dumbest thing. It's like, well, yeah, of course, the murderer is the one that is most likely positioned to tell you how he done it. But that's your job. Listen, drug cartels, we're going to need you to police yourselves. Yeah, yeah, that's about it.

Oh, God. And hat tip to Martin on Discord for this one. A UK-based DNA testing company, Atlas Biomed, has vanished. Just gone. Poof. Leaving customers unable to access their genetic data. The company's website is inactive, offices are closed, and social media accounts haven't been updated since 2023.

Customers worry about their sensitive data's fate, especially after ties to Russia were reported, with two remaining officers linked to a Moscow address tied to a Russian billionaire. The UK's Information Commissioner's Office is investigating Atlas Biomed. While no misuse is confirmed, fears persist about who now controls the data.

Experts warn this incident underscores the need to think critically before spitting in strange tubes. Yeah, well, that horse is out of the gate. Yeah. You know when they send you an empty vodka bottle to spit your DNA into, you might want to reconsider.

I'm half Smirnoff. That seems to be the case. Anyways, speaking about thinking critically, Neuralink gets approval to start human trials here in Canada now. So they have secured Health Canada's approval to launch human trials in the country, with the Toronto Western Hospital, right down the street, being the first and exclusive surgical site for the procedure.

This company first opened its Canadian patent registry in March, but it's now actively looking for potential participants. Recruitment is now open. It has announced on X. So a bunch of bots are currently signing up. Under the CAN Prime Network, Neuralink will embed its implants in the brain of a participant so that it can interpret their neural activity.

This implant will allow them to control a computer or a smartphone with their brain without the needs for wires or any kind of physical movement. So this is going to be a study which aims to evaluate the safety of its implant and surgical robot and assess the initial functionality of its brain computer interface for enabling people with quadriplegia to control external devices with their thoughts.

So, yeah, basically, if you're a Canadian and you want to give it a go, they're looking for you. They're looking specifically for people with limited or no ability to use both hands due to a cervical spinal cord injury or ALS for its trials. There you go. All right.

I was going to tell you to hop on down there, but you don't. No, I'm good. I'm good. You're good? Yeah. Okay. I'm okay. All right. I'll tell you somebody who isn't okay. Alex Jones and his team. Now, it's not just the fact. And the frogs. Don't forget the frogs. I saw this article, and this was a fun read, actually.

The weirdest domains Alex Jones has to give to the Onion. So the Onion basically picked up everything, and they've done a deep dive on what domain names the organization owns. This includes plenty of names that make sense and are entirely predictable, including variations on InfoWars like InfoWars.net and ShopInfowars.biz.

There are also domains that include InfoWars, which obviously they're just trying to do domain squatters and get away from all that. Same shit that we all used to do before we realized it was just a waste of money. Some seem like they could plausibly be businesses Jones had planned to establish but never followed through on, such as InfoWarsPets.com, InfoWarsCrypto.com, InfoWarsBunker.com, InfoWarsBabes.com.

For when you're stuck in the InfoWarsBunker. And InfoWarsSocial.com. But then there are some other ones, Jason. Okay. Such as GoblinLove.com. All right. Now, apparently, he's often talked about goblins. I could not tell you the context, and it's not clear why he'd be interested in something like GoblinLove, since he apparently uses the term in a negative way about people he dislikes.

He also owns GoblinFire.com and GoblinNest.com. I got to say, the fact that I'm just a little bit dyslexic, I saw GoblinNest.com, and I thought it said GoblinIncest.com. And I'm like, man, he's really getting specific there.

Well, you got to dial down, man. You don't know what your core consistency is going to be. Well, I guess he did. And when you're done with InfoWarsBabes, when you're stuck in the InfoWarsBunker, you know, you need a little spices to keep things going, I guess. Well, you can move on to SlaveObama.com or StartHavingKids.com and FluorideCleanse.com, which he also owns.

And, of course, my favorite, CookDorsey, which appears to be a reference to Jack Dorsey, of course. And other domains include EvilCities.com, GoodGuysWithGuns.net, and RedBloodParty.com. Yeah. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

I guess thefrogsaregay.com must have already been taken. Yeah, no mention of frogs. Oh, well. Strange, strange. I bet it's a conspiracy. It's a cuck-spiracy. Okay, moving on. This is all over the news, and I noticed Alphabet's stock prices dropped a little bit today.

I have a few bucks compared to the price of it. It's like, not that much. The U.S. Department of Justice has proposed that Google divest its Chrome browser to address antitrust violations in the online search market. This recommendation follows a court ruling that found Google maintained an illegal monopoly over the past decade.

The DOJ's proposed measures include Chrome divestiture, Android restrictions, default search engine deals, and data sharing. So they're trying to go after him and cut him up. So we'll see what happens. I actually hope they do because, you know, they're too damn big.

They literally have the entire alphabet from A to Z. They are too big. There's no doubt about that. But I think that they're also doing a very good job just dismantling their own search engine right now with all the AI crap they've put in there. So tell me about it. It's fucking useless. Speaking of things that need to be torn apart, Trump admin reportedly wants to unleash driverless cars on America.

Woo! Yes, the Trump administration is reportedly prioritizing the expansion of autonomous vehicles on U.S. roads. According to Bloomberg, advisors close to President-elect Donald Trump are working on a federal regulatory framework to replace the current patchwork of state laws governing self-driving cars.

Currently, federal regulations cap self-driving car deployments at 2,500 vehicles per year. But carmakers want more freedom and simplified rules. By carmakers, he means Elon Musk and his stupid cyber cab. Because you're not going to make another gazillion dollars with only 2,500 cars per year.

Yes, and what they want is no regulations. Right now, we're going slow and gentle with regulations. And rightfully so, given every story we talk about on this show week after week about a fucking self-driving car doing something horrible, and then they have to step back and take a few more steps back, and then they have to report what happened, and then they have to fix it.

Unless you're Tesla and you turn off that data and that feature right before the crash. Yes. Yeah. Well, Brian, to follow up on that, a new study by IC Cars reveals Tesla has the highest rate of fatal accidents among all car brands in the U.S.

That's right. The most deaths by car brand. With 5.6 fatal crashes per billion miles driven, double, double the national average of 2.8. The Tesla Model Y stands out as its most dangerous vehicle, ranking sixth for individual car models.

Now, Jason, why could that be? Is it because there's an inherent flaw in the car's actual physical design? No, Brian, there isn't. What? The car is actually just fine. Well, what could it possibly be, Jason? Oh, could it be the reliance on touchscreens for controls and infotainment, maybe sometimes allowing video games while driving?

Or perhaps the fact that they market a full self-drive that doesn't? Exactly. Which makes people believe that their car is more capable than it actually is until they run into a fucking wall. Yes, that could possibly be it, Brian.

Possibly. Ah. But it does say full self-driving. So, you know, it must be true. Yeah. And why would they put this gigantic screen in my car when I'm driving that lets me watch movies unless they wanted me to? Exactly. Right. Come on, man.

It must be safe. They wouldn't sell it to me if it wasn't safe, right? Right. Well, according to the New York Times, Boris Pistorius, that sounds like a name out of a fucking nursery rhyme to me, but like one of the evil original German ones where, like, the kids die because they were bad.

Boris Pistorius put on the blades on his feet and then he cuts them up and made cookies. Be careful or Krampus and Boris Pistorius will come for you. Yes, that's Krampus' handler. He also happens to be Germany's current defense minister, so take that with whatever you want to take it with.

Believes that the undersea cables that connected Finland and Germany that were severed on Monday were not damaged by accident. Another cable connecting Lithuania and Sweden was also cut on Sunday. The internet connection between these countries remains active despite these disruptions. Pistorius claims that nobody believes these cables were severed by accident and he thinks anchors dropped from ships wouldn't damage the cables like this.

He claims it's sabotage but admitted he does not have solid proof for this assertation. Germany and Finland have both released a joint statement mentioning that a thorough investigation is ongoing. This statement also directly names Russia as a threat to European security while the country wises war against Ukraine.

Now, Jason. The scene coming out of water were moose and squirrel. You know, if we say we're a show that were the liberal equivalent of, I don't know, say Alex Jones, I would be talking about how Elon Musk has had these calls with Vladimir Putin and who would benefit if all actual landline cables connecting the internet went away?

Somebody that perhaps had internet satellite access to sell to everybody. But we're not like Alex Jones and we're not going to be bought out by the onion in a few years while we have to fucking go to jail forever. So we wouldn't do that. We wouldn't do that. We wouldn't do that.

Speaking of Germany, a recent investigation has revealed that U.S. data brokers are legally selling location data, enabling the tracking of U.S. military and intelligence personnel in Germany. The data exposes movements from homes and schools to sensitive sites like nuclear vaults.

Oops. The unregulated sale of mobile location data poses significant national security risks, potentially exploitable by foreign governments, terrorists or criminals. Despite these threats, the U.S. Department of Defense and federal agencies have yet to implement comprehensive measures to address the issue.

Efforts to regulate data brokerage practices have stalled again, leaving U.S. military operations vulnerable to espionage and other security breaches. Now, I'd like to point out the title of this article, which is Anyone Can Buy Data Tracking U.S. Soldiers and Spies to Nuclear Vaults and Brothels in Germany.

One big explosion, one little explosion. Exactly. The little death. The little death and the big death. Oh, that would be if it was in France, yeah. Mm-hmm. What would that be? What's dead in German?

Auf Deutsch. Es kleine Tote. That's it. There you go. Es große Tote in kleine Tote. Or kleine Tote. I still remember something from my high school German many, many years ago. This one's fun. This one's fun.

Microsoft is constructing two new data centers in Northern Virginia using cross-laminated timber, or CLT, a fire-resistant, prefabricated wood material alongside traditional steel and concrete. Now, there's a reason they're doing this, Brian, and it's not the one you think it is.

They're trying to lower their carbon emissions from their data centers. Okay. Now, you think about, okay, this is going to reduce the carbon emissions by 35% compared to conventional steel construction and 65% compared to precast concrete methods. Now, this only goes into the one-time cost of actually building the data center, which, when you look at the lifetime of a data center, it's teeny, teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny, compared

to the output of the carbon that is produced by all the fucking machines that are running the AI to talk to Jesus. Right. So, I just think that it's funny that they're trying to promote this as a big win by making them out of wood. It's a kleine win, not a grosse win.

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.

Media Candy. Okay, Brian, last week we talked about the Paul and Tyson fight. Yeah. Oh, God. It should have been Biden versus Tyson. I tell you, that would have been a better fight. Been more fair. But, yeah, that was what it was.

I did not watch it. Yeah, yeah. The women's fight beforehand was fucking brutal. I mean, it was hard to watch. Everybody said it was good. But, I mean, that it tracks for boxing. It is a brutal sport. So. Yeah, yeah. It was. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think, yeah, I was going to watch it just because it feels like one of those events that are so rare these days that, like, everybody is kind of paying attention to. And I flipped it on at eight o'clock because that's when I thought it was going to start. And by the time it was like midnight here and they still hadn't fought. And I stopped checking in and I stopped caring and went to bed and woke up to the glorious memes of I watched it on Netflix last night.

And then they had screenshots from the 1980s game Punch Out. That was about it. Yeah. No, the fight should have been titled How to Disappoint 108 Million People at Once. So, and it was just a shit show of connectivity issues. For me, I was watching it on my Apple TV and Mike Tyson comes out to, you know, to walk down the way after Jake Paul, of course, takes a car and does karaoke on the way.

Mike Tyson had to walk the 300 miles to the ring, which is probably why he was so tired for the fight by the time he got there. Because being 53, I know he's only, he's 58, that's a long walk and you're winded by the end of that walk, you know. Should have got at least a golf cart or something. But right as he walked out and raised his arms up, the entire Apple TV app crashed.

It just crashed. I pulled it up on my laptop to see, nope, all of Netflix was down. And there were just tons and tons and tons of people who were having problems. Yeah, it was, it was pretty bad. It was pretty bad, which is really not good for their, their upcoming Christmas or Thanksgiving, whatever football thing they got coming up.

So that's the thing. I was looking at these numbers here and they're obviously these, these big streamers want to get into sports because that's real time. Must have subscription. Can't wait to just pay for a month and binge, you know, so it's, it's big, it's a big deal. And the Holy grail of all this, of course, is the world cup.

So all the numbers are in this article. So this, this was 65 million concurrent streams attracted a global audience of 108 million. And, you know, they crashed the fuck out of their system. Uh, and you know, that's 16 million more is Superbowl.

So you're not even going to be able to do a Superbowl world cup, 5.4 billion. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. The internet is, we don't have that many tubes. We don't have that many tubes in the internet. So no, they got a ways to go.

They got a ways to go. Definitely. But they've got all the money in the world. So I'm sure they'll figure it out. Maybe they have to be making AI. We get, they got to call Elon and send it to space. Oh man. So, uh, last year I talked about the old man, which was a fantastic series and season two, unfortunately came out this year.

And I didn't even know it wrapped because the finale was so boring. It was the entirety of season two in my book was a stinker. So unfortunately I cannot recommend the old man past season one, but season one was just awesome. Well, yeah. Sounds like a big win for my, my three seasons are not going to watch it policy.

Unfortunately, I think you may be right on this one. And I think it comes back to what my friend said about, you know, a season or a series does good. Then they fire the writers because there were no writers on the show this year. It was bad. It was bad. There was no budget. It was just, uh, you compare that though, to a new show that came out with season two this year, the lioness on, uh, I think that's on Paramount plus, uh, fortunately, Nicole Kidman's face has, has come back to normal.

She had just gotten surgery for season one and she was like a poofy and everything. She just did not look like Nicole Kidman. Now she looks kind of normal again. Um, the butter is melted. Exactly. The thing about lioness season two is it, I think they're up to episode four or five now.

Every episode has a epic gunfight and battle scene in it. It's awesome. Instead of, I'm sure that we've going to have to get to one of those cost cutting episodes where they just talk. But from now, every episode has been like had great gunfights. I love it.

And it's a good story so far too. So I'm happy with it. I'm happy with the lioness. I forgot to put that in the show notes. Um, another one that I'm pretty happy with is the day of the jackal. This is one that's on, I don't know what this one's coming on. It's not, it may be paramount plus. No, peacock.

That's it. Peacock. You got to get, it's like, you know, we have universe creep when we read all that sci-fi. Now I've got, I've got streaming platform creep. Uh, yes. Day of the jackal is on peacock. Now I found out about this show a little late. Uh, episode seven has just aired in England and episode six has just aired in the U S when I found it.

I got the, uh, I went to the backwaters of the internet and found the UK version. So I'm a day ahead of everybody in the U S that's watching it. So all my friends, I get to taunt them. I'm like, did you see where they were making out and everything? So it's like, shut up, shut up, shut up. So I'm having fun with my friends, but beyond that great show so far based on the novel in loosely, very, very, very loosely based on the novel.

But so far so good. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. So if you've got peacock, it's a good one. I do not have peacock. And there's absolutely nothing else on peacock I'd be interested in. So sorry, day of the jackal, but you do have BitTorrent. So there you go. I started watching Leonardo da Vinci by Ken Burns last night.

Oh, this must be full of panning and zooming. It's not that much. No, really? So far, no Ken Burns effect. He's toned down the Ken Burns effect. I think it's, you know, since it's been co-opted by everybody on the planet. I think the Ken Burns effect is there's, of course, a little bit of it.

But I'm only about 20 minutes into it and I decided to stop because it's a two-hour movie. And I love when the world goes stupid, when they go low, you go high. So I'm trying to find more things with, you know, real amazing thinkers from the past.

I'm probably going to go back and, you know, read more on the classical artists like Mozart and Beethoven and things like that. By the way, Immortal Beloved was a great movie. Totally off topic about what we're talking about, but great movie. I can't wait to watch the rest of it. The beginning was a whole bunch of info about Leonardo that I did not know.

Look, Ken Burns, we can make fun of him because, you know, he's Ken Burns and he does Ken Burns-y and things. But at the end of the day, I have liked every single thing he's done. And it's even about subject matters, I don't give a shit about. He makes it compelling and interesting and you learn a ton.

So I'm a big fan of anything this guy puts out. So I want to watch this too. Yeah, get it. It's out right now on PBS. I watched the teaser trailer for The Studio, the new Seth Rogen series coming to Apple TV+.

Yeah. I don't know. It might be funny. Might be. I'm so burned out on him. I like him again. He's kind of turned a corner for me. I was tired of him for a while, but I don't know. I kind of dig him again. All right. I haven't turned the corner yet.

We'll see. Okay. Yeah. And speaking of Apple TV+, Apple plans to license its original movies to third-party platforms such as foreign TV networks and digital stores to mitigate losses and enhance content visibility. So they're throwing in the towel saying, yeah, we just can't do it on our own.

We need to make some more money from this crap. No, that's smart because Apple TV has got to be way down there in terms of subscriptions for streaming services. It just is. And it shouldn't because it does have really good content. So many of the shows that we like and talk about now tend to be on Apple TV.

They do great work. It's just they don't have people paying for their streaming service. So it makes sense. License the crap out of it. Get it out there. Yeah. So after it's done with its first run, spit it out and then bring people back to Apple TV+. It's exactly what MGM Plus is doing with their Netflix deal right now.

Yeah. Oh, speaking of, have you watched Interview with a Vampire yet? Not yet. It is on the list. You better hurry up because I don't think that deal is going to last forever. I got to get on it. Yeah. And the live action How to Train Your Dragon trailer came out, the teaser trailer for it.

Now, I'm an old Brian, but I loved the original How to Train Your Dragon cartoon, animated movie. I guess you can't call it a cartoon anymore. It's CG. I loved that. I love that movie so much. And I got to say, just the teaser trailer gave me the feels again.

I liked it. I know nothing about the story, but my kid is coming of age that he's going to want to read these books. And I think he's going to enjoy this movie. I didn't know they were books. I just saw the original animated movies. Oh, there's a whole book series. Oh, okay. I recommend the movies.

I think they're really good. They're beautiful. Beautifully done. And the new Minecraft movie trailer finally came out. We made so much fun of it last time I had to throw it in here. It's an improvement. I'm still not going to go watch it, but it's an improvement over that teaser trailer that they had.

They definitely went back to the lab and fixed some things. But, yeah, I'm still very uninterested. Yeah, I think it'll be fun if you're into Minecraft. I'm not, so probably not going to watch it. Everybody that has, like, Minecraft people that saw it, like, got the original trailer.

And they think, yeah, it is what it is. So, yeah, if you've got Minecraft kids or you're a Minecrafter, then it might be good. I like Jack Black. What can I say? He reminds me of Bob. You know, he reminds me of Bob. I got to go with Jack Black. Silo Season 2.

Did you watch the latest episode last night? I did not watch last night's episode, so I've only seen the first episode of Season 2. Okay. What are your thoughts? I loved it. It's great to be back in the world. I did think it was an interesting choice to basically just focus on her solo running around the new silo the entire episode.

I could watch her play Adam Savage all day, you know? Look, Rebecca Ferguson is gorgeous. She was gorgeous in Dune, but I like Dirty Grimey Rebecca Ferguson, and we got that for 45 minutes straight, and it was awesome. Can't go wrong. Can't go wrong. I watched Episode 2 last night, and she's not in it at all.

So if you want more Rebecca Ferguson, you've got to go back to Episode 1. But it's really good. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I was going to watch it last night, but the wife wanted to watch. We caught up with Shrinking, which is still really good, and then after that was over, I didn't really have enough time for a full lane thing, so I watched the latest Lower Decks.

And so, silo's up for it tonight. Wow, I've got to get to that new Lower Decks. They are going out with a whimper, not a bang on this final season, I've got to say. Yeah, unfortunately, that seems to be the case. I thought they would actually swing for the fences and go nuts, but they're not. No, not at all. Sad to hear that you watched the new one, and it seems to be more of the same.

Bummer. Oh, well. It still has its moments. It's clever, and it's funny. Yeah. For a series that came in the way it did, and the whole point of the series is basically just to fucking have a lot of fun and make fun, but with respect, they're not doing it.

They have the chance to go out nutso, and they're not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because, I mean, Season 1, I thought, was meh. Season 2, they hit it out of the park. I thought they were doing so fantastic for the rest of it, and then this season is just kind of... Yeah. Yeah.

It's a sandwich with shit bread, Jason. It really is. It really is. I did watch one other documentary this week, which was kind of off-brand. Kingdom Uncovered Inside Saudi Arabia. Yeah, fuck those guys. That's all I got to say. There you go. Moving on. Speaking of spice flowing and somebody controlling it all, the first episode of Dune Prophecy came out, which was originally entitled The Sisterhood, but I guess they apparently decided that was too coded, and we can't do that.

And we don't want to alienate people that may not like chick stuff. Yeah. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Spice just didn't roll off the tongue. It's beautiful. I liked it. I'm interested to see where it's going. I hope that they don't follow the source material, because it's loosely based off the Brian Herbert, son of Frank Herbert books, which are all absolute trash.

And Frank Herbert did provide enough little background history of the Ben Jezeret in his books anyway. So as long as they don't go away from that, we're good. Seems interesting, and it is gorgeous. I'm curious to see where they take it. Yeah, no, as far as visuals go, it's definitely on point.

And I do like that they, I mentioned this to you off the air, I'm glad that they did that quick time shift in the beginning, because the actress that played the younger Ben Jezeret was just like, she rubbed me the wrong way.

Rubbed me the wrong way. I've seen her in other things where she plays like kind of a fundamental religious person, and I just don't have that stuck in my head. And that's the part that she was playing here. And she does it really well, but it's an uncomfortable part for me to watch. And I'm just like, oh, thank God they got rid of her.

Yeah. So sorry, actress who plays that part, but you creeped me out. Now, I think you and I, Jason, we kind of agree we're not too into AI being used in our TV shows and movies. There's still some very uncanny valley aspects to it that are hard to get over. But something did come out this week, and I'm curious to know what you thought of it.

This comes from the Roddenberry Archive, which is partnered up with a company called Otoy, which does a lot of AI film stuff. And it's called Unification, and it's a new short created with the use of a combination of archival footage and CGI and AI imposed over actors, with Kirk himself played by both William Shatner and actor Sam Witweer, and Spock by Lawrence Selleck.

And what did you think? Yes, okay. I got some feels. I enjoyed it. You know what killed it for me? What? The soundtrack. I kept waiting for the...

If they would have had the actual Star Trek music, I think I would have leaked. I think there would have been dust. It needed the music. And if it had the music, I probably would have forgiven all the rest of it, and I just would have loved it unconditionally.

You need the full package. You got to have the music. I couldn't believe it. And a couple times, it swelled a little bit, and they got really close. Obviously, probably using AI for the music. Like, make something that sounds like Star Trek. The lawyer said, don't it back, boy. Don't it back, yeah. But not quite, because I don't know why they wouldn't have the rights to it.

I guess Roddenberry probably doesn't have the rights to the music, because that's on my Paramount, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If they would have just had the music, it would have made it for me. Yeah, it really would have. Yeah, that's really what the missing point piece was. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, maybe somebody will do a guerrilla version and rescore it.

Oh, my God. That would be amazing. Brian? Yeah, I'll get on that with all my spare time. But I found it to be a pretty nice and fitting send-off for Kirk. Yeah. Yeah. It was clever. It was nice. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

If you're listening to the show and feel like doing something and sending us a copy, we wouldn't be mad at that, is all I'm saying. All right. So, Spotify, getting back to music, Spotify stock hit a record high this week, briefly reaching $477.50 after its Q3 earnings announcement, though it settled at $458.32, giving the company a $92 billion market cap.

Totally understand why they can't pay artists. Makes sense. I know. They're barely scraping by. Mm-hmm. And so much so that co-founder Daniel Ek cashed out $35.8 million in shares, bringing his total sales to $376 million in 18 months.

I mean, I don't know how he can afford to keep the lights on. That's amazing. Yeah, I know. It really is. And co-founder Martin Lorenzton's firm sold $383 million in shares this week, topping $450 million in sales since June.

Man, these guys, man, I feel like sending them a dollar because I don't think they're going to be able to pay rent this month. I really don't. Yeah. I mean, imagine only being able to make about $400 million for a company that's on track for its very first profitable year ever.

I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. It's amazing. I know. They've only got $252 million premium subscribers, too. That's just not enough, Brian. It's just not enough to keep the lights on. No. No, especially not when you're getting all that content for free now and you're downplaying the music so you don't have to pay anybody and you're just basically taking people's podcasts and not paying them anything.

Yeah. It's hard to understand. Yeah. And the audio books that they're giving away now for free. Yeah. Because, you know, they just take content and pass it out for free and charge people for it and put ads on top of it and keep all that money themselves. It's a real head-scratcher. They're Robin Hood, Brian.

They're fucking Robin Hood. Anyways, I saw this interesting stat. In 2024, more music is released daily than in all of 1989 put together, according to Music Radar and Will Page, former Spotify chief economist. Interesting other point.

1989 was the last time the music was good. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. When I was working on this new track for Deshaun Wesley, which, by the way, released today. So I've been in the middle of all this.

The research says the number of new tracks released daily, to put those numbers, the 1989 and 2024 numbers in context, the number of new tracks released daily, this is daily, on music streaming services, is estimated to be between 100,000 and 120,000 tracks per day.

Hey, we asked for no gatekeepers. We got no gatekeepers anymore. Isn't it great? That's great. Fantastic. So definitely go check the link in the show notes and check out Deshaun Wesley's new track, Labels, which I've just spent the past couple months working on to get out the door. So two tracks in a sea of 120,000 today.

Yeah. And even if it gets a lot of plays, you still won't get any money. No, no. The plays don't matter. The plays don't matter. You make your money on sync licenses and shit like that now. The funny thing is, Brian, at this point, I know more about music industry accounting than I ever, ever wanted to know.

I finally know what a sync license is. I know what mechanicals are. I know what all this shit is. I never wanted to know that stuff, ever. Sorry. It's not fun. No, no. But, hey, we got a track out. So go check it out. Thank you.

Thank you. It was actually kind of fun to go through the process, I got to say. But you can't do it if you're going to make any money on it. No, no, no. Tanyolek took it all. And finally, Elon Musk and Vivek Rameshanwi promised new podcast devoted to discuss destruction of U.S. government.

That's right. Dogecasts are coming to your ear holes near you. Great. Yeah. When you just – because Joe Rogan's on the top right now. We need somebody to knock him off. So come on. Come on, Elon Swami. Make it happen. Apps and doodads.

I saw this come across my news feed this week, Brian. Introducing shop with perplexity. All right. Somebody really should have thought of that a little bit more. I'm perplexed as to where to buy this after using your shopping system. Exactly. So find the perfect shop in no time.

AI-powered shopping searches. Find exactly what you're looking for. Compare at a glance. Get summarized reviews from across the internet. Snap to shop. Upload a photo of an item. Perplexity helps find the product. And shop like a pro. For pro subscribers, buy in one click, plus shipping on us. So that was the press release from Perplexity AI this week, introducing their new shopping tool.

All right. We'll see how that goes. I haven't tried it yet, but I may just for shits and giggles. Why don't you put in a Nintendo Switch for me and find me the best price? Okay. We'll do. I'm on it, Brian. We'll see how that works. Right as soon as you finish that new soundtrack for that Kirk thing. Okay.

I'll get on that, too. I read an interesting article over at The Atlantic, which kind of talks about the AI assistant that has come with Apple in the latest updates. It's in specifically the texting summaries that we've discussed a couple times on the show because of horrific and very funny things that are occurring.

And this was basically going through saying, you know, the social internet is crap and it's in crisis, as we've talked about. You know, they're all algorithmic feeds and it's all trying to sell us shit or push fucking influencers on us. And none of it's about our friends anymore and keeping in touch with our friends.

And this article is basically saying that group chats and text messages are basically what's left, what's replaced it for social media, for keeping touch with friends. And that it's a great thing. It's online. It's real-time conversations that can be staggered. And there's nuances and many different conversations.

And basically, AI notification summaries are going to fucking destroy them and basically just become algorithmic takeovers just like social media did. Do you have the AI stuff on your phone? I think I got it with the latest update, but I haven't seen anything, so I don't know.

Oh, you'll know it. Oh, you'll know it. You'll know it right away because you're going to have about seven heart attacks a day if you have it turned on. Because the notifications that come across my lock screen are just like, it's a jumble of everything that just came in. Right. And it makes no sense whatsoever.

And half the time, it's like you think you sent something to the wrong person. Like, did I send that email to that person? Oh, shit. You know, it's like because you get names and subjects that are completely commingled and they have nothing, especially if you have multiple texts. It's like, oh, Jeff Curto says you owe him $1,243 this month.

I'm like, what? I'm like, no, I don't. It's just, oh, that's the Small Business Association. That would be, okay, let's skip that one. Let's move on. It has nothing. They are a mess. It is the worst Mad Libs ever. I must have it turned off then, and obviously I'm not going to now turn it on.

Yeah, keep it off. Keeping up with our discussions that we've had about Blue Sky and Threads and everything else right now, Blue Sky has passed the 20 million mark this week as the app continues its recent surge in growth. They reached 15 million users less than a week ago, and it just about tripled its user base in the last three months.

They've had several days over the last week where I added a million new users in a single 24-hour period, so they're seeming to be able to handle the uptick pretty well. It's similar growth rate over at Threads, which has been getting a million new signups a day for going on three months, according to an update last week from Meta's Adam Masari.

Threads has reached 270 million monthly users earlier this month, but as we talked about, that's basically because they were onboarded if you were on Meta products anywhere, particularly Instagram. So they started with that. Blue Sky has experienced other periods of significant growth over the last year. The recent surge is far bigger than what the open source service had previously seen.

A lot of this seems to be, of course, partially because of people basically bailing on X and looking for something different, and so far it's doing pretty well. And now that I've actually switched over from Threads, which I had problems with that we discussed, which is mostly because it's not time-based, and it's useless to see updates from friends or breaking news four days later, which Blue Sky has figured out.

And people seem to be going there in droves. I am pretty much more on Blue Sky than anything else, not that I'm on any of these that much anymore. But if I do have a small-scale social media network that I go to, it is now Blue Sky, and I just kind of check the others if there's a notification.

Yeah. No, it's great. And the CEO, Jay Graber, she says she doesn't want to and shitify the network with ads, which is good. And she was on CNBC this week and said the design, the open-source design of Blue Sky makes it billionaire-proof because we can take our followers with us if they try and do any shenanigans.

So, yeah, I'm with you. I'm over there, you know, basically full-time now. I checked into Threads this morning, and I'm just like, it's literally like four or five days ago, or a lot of posts about people who got sober. I'm like, I don't know you. I don't care. Good for you. Go to a meeting.

Have a nice day. But, yeah, no, it's doing pretty well. And this morning, I've got a link to a live post counter in the show notes. And when I checked about a half an hour ago, there were 21,482,984 users.

A half an hour later, there were 21,512,229 users. So, it's about 10,000. It actually works out about 1,000 a minute that are signing up. So, the fact that they can handle it is pretty good, especially for a 20-person staff. Yep. And they've only taken in $36 million in funding, which is not bad.

Not bad. That's a good, yeah, that's pretty good so far. Maybe Elon was right. Fire everybody over at X. You don't need that big of a staff. Anyways, we've all left Elon because that is a bad system over there and nobody wants to be there. And Blue Sky does seem to be the fun one right now.

I'm never going to be a power user, but that seems to be my home base right now unless that changes. And it seems to be hitting the critical mass in terms of people seem to be that's where we're going to go. That has not escaped Meta's notice, however. As people are leaving or deactivating their X accounts, they've burned meaningful growth for both platforms.

But as we've all pointed out, Blue Sky seems to be the far better one in terms of actual ability to use it for something useful. And they are starting to notice that and Threads is going to start tweaking their algorithm, getting it to rebalance and prioritize content from people you follow and less recommended content from accounts you don't follow, which is pretty much exactly what Blue Sky does.

So they're just going to start. They're pulling the normal page out of Zuck's playbook, which is find the product that's working, copy all their features, and then bludgeon them to death with money. Yeah, yeah. We'll see what happens. And I understand the thinking behind the way Threads launched because you didn't have very many followers or you weren't following very many people when Threads first launched.

So they needed to shove you some content, except they never turned it off. It should have been a threshold. Once you hit like 10 people, okay, turn that shit off and just show me what I want to see first and then put in some algorithmic bullshit. But they didn't do that because that's not how they make money. No, and that's not how they run any of their other services.

So that also kind of makes sense from a big company perspective. Well, this is what we do on Instagram and this is what we do on Facebook, so it's what we're going to do on Threads. Yeah, yeah. Fuck those guys.

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The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at BKFSEA.com. You have been trying to search the great thinkers and things of that nature to escape the dystopia that is surrounding us right now.

I am delving into quick, easy-to-read, fast, fun, sci-fi. That is my thing. So I finished yet another book. I went back to the first Contact series by Peter Cowderon. I'm probably getting close to have read all of them at this point. Peter, you better hurry up, man. Brian's catching up. Write faster, bitch.

I did like this one a lot. This is another good one. He's got an impressive batting average for these good first Contact stories, I've got to say. I like him as a writer. I hope at some point he explores a more deeper, huge, long series because I enjoy his writing.

Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, man. That's true. Just keep writing these. Never mind. Ignore me. Yeah. So, yeah. Another fun one. I like this one a lot. He explores a lot of really good ideas, and it's always a fun and quick read, which is great. And then Greg wrote in, because I had finished reading Beacon 23 the other week, and he says, You reviewed the novel Beacon 23, and coincidentally, I'm watching the TV series on Paramount+.

Just wondering if you had seen it, and if so, what you had thought of it. I forgot that this was a TV series. I remember when they announced it, and it has Lena Headey in it, who I love, but I never watched the series. And now that I've read the book, I was considering it, but then I went to the page that has all the episode descriptions of the show, and they're on season two.

And they have gone so far beyond what the book actually was that that not necessarily could be a bad thing. I mean, it could still be good if it's a really good series, but I also, the ratings aren't that high. Also, Brian, this is another testament to Schulmeister's Law of TV series.

It's been canceled after season two. Well, it shouldn't have been more than, I'd say, a miniseries, given the novel. The novel is not that in-depth. Okay, okay. Yeah, the fact that they stretch it into two series gives me pause as well. So, I don't know, maybe.

I've got such a backlog of stuff to watch and read and listen to and do that I probably will never get around to this. But I did like the novel. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with 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 cybersecurity on Control Loop Dave's Got You Covered. And don't miss his latest venture, Only Malware in the Building.

How you doing, Dave? I am doing well. I am on final approach to Thanksgiving, and I am happy for it. I am taking the whole week off next week, and I am ready for some rest. I am ready for a few days away.

So, yep. It's been trying recently. I guess this would be a good place to say we will not be doing a show next week, everybody. We're all taking it off for Thanksgiving. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, not bad. Not bad. All right. A little Disney news. Star Wars Visions has been renewed for Season 3.

Did you guys finish Season 2? I did. There was a Season 2? Yes. It's totally, no, I agree with that sentiment, Dave. It is something I forget about all the time. Right. And so I'm only reminded of it because at one point it popped up when I had like a spare like hour, and the kid and the wife were out of the house, and I launched Disney, and it shoved it in my face as one of the recommended things.

And I was like, oh yeah, that. Yeah. I watched it. Yeah, they're fun. Like, you know, they're enjoyable. The animation styles vary wildly. You can be into some and not the others, and the stories, same with the stories. It's all over the place. But it's fun, it's different, and I enjoy it.

No, it's a good reminder. I'll jump back into it. It's something that my son and I like to watch together. He, in particular, enjoys the varied animation styles. So, yeah, it's a good reminder to check it out again.

So I will try to do that, maybe over the winter break. We also have the other Star Wars show starting, what, December 3rd, I believe? The one that has the Major Tom soundtrack. Oh, yeah. Star Trek Goonies. Yeah, Star Trek Goonies starts pretty soon.

So I am looking forward to that as well. So we'll all be spending some time in Star Wars land for the holidays, I'm sure. And there's nothing wrong with that. Nope. Nope. We top our Christmas tree with Grogu these days. Look, and I will literally be in Star Wars land at Disneyland at some point over the holidays, which I'm looking forward to as well.

So, yeah. Yeah, nice. Maybe I'll just go back and re-watch Andor. That was good. Yeah, that was good. That was very good. So, yeah, I got two pieces here that I wanted to put in here, just to harken back to the days when we talked about security on this show. We were actually talking about the feature, the new feature for Apple devices that were turning themselves off after a couple days of not hitting any kind of cell tower.

404 Media put out a report that says, yeah, they're calling it the inactivity reboot feature, and it was discovered by security researcher Jiska Klassen. Did you guys talk about this on Cyber Wire, Dave? We did. We did, yeah. Pretty interesting.

I like it. Yeah, yeah. So, this guy actually figured it out. And the nice thing about it is, you know, it's stuff that they're not releasing to us. Like Brian said, yeah, don't tell us your playbook. We're good. We're good. Right. Yeah. So, just following up on that.

Now, after that story, another 404 Media article came out about leaked documents show what phone's secretive tech that GrayKey can unlock. Now, GrayKey is one of those tools that lets law enforcement break into phones. Now, long time ago on this show, I said, if I was a hacker, what I would be doing right now is getting a job at Apple to work on iOS so I could put in zero days that I could then exploit when I left Apple to sell on the black market.

I always thought that that was a fine business model for an entrepreneurial young man or woman to get into. And walks a fine line between being rich and being in a jail. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Right. It's a good starting point for your life of crime. Yes. Yeah.

I think as a starter villain, that's a perfect way to start. And if you're smart enough to go that route and think of it, then you're probably smart enough to actually get away with it, one would think. So, after I see this GrayKey story, I'm thinking, man, I wonder if Apple is actually training people to become double agents to go work for these companies so they can get inside and get intel on what they're doing to unlock the phone so then pass back to Apple to block them before

it actually happens, before they can find the cracks. And I thought that would also be a fun division to work at at Apple. And if they're not doing it, that's a freebie, Apple. Go on. Get on it. Hmm. Because you know that there's those types of shenanigans going on behind the scenes.

There's too much money involved for this not to be going on, I think. That's just my two cents. And if it's not going on, get on it, people. What kind of a boring world do you live in? Jeez. Well, I mean, my thought here is less. I think a pretty good sci-fi writer should be using this as a jumping off point for near future fiction.

Yeah. I would enjoy reading that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, most of my theories on this show kind of fall into that trope. But yeah. Yeah. Cory Doctorow, get on it. No, I don't think Apple is paying people to infiltrate the companies that are creating gray key and that sort of other thing.

But I do think that they are perhaps finding ways to get their hands on the software and the equipment and see exactly what it's doing so that they can then do workarounds and say, hey, hold on a second. We forgot to plug that hole, people. Yeah.

Plug the hole. I mean, that sort of industrial espionage is definitely a thing. I used, back in my previous career, I worked for a company who made, let's just say, a large piece of industrial equipment that is part of the infrastructure of every office building

and they had a, and I visited their factories and I visited their, their R&D lab. And one day I was in their R&D lab and in one of the big giant rooms where they do testing, there was one of their competitors products set up running.

Now these are, these are a hundred thousand dollar devices, you know, and they, and they are big and I couldn't help, uh, you know, saying to my contact there, so what's this about? He was like, well, you know, it's good for us to know what the competition is up to.

So, um, you know, we go through a third party, uh, and get them to purchase this for us and it gets, and, uh, gets shipped to them. And then from them, we ship it to here and we take the thing apart and see exactly what's going on.

So politics, they just call that opposition research. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly. But, you know, so yes, does that, that stuff absolutely goes on at the same time. You see lots of stories of, um, like tech companies who are offered information on their competitors and they take it straight to the FBI because they know it's dodgy and, you know, they shouldn't be doing that sort of thing.

So it could be a honey trap too, unless you, unless you're, unless you are trading the guy that's going to give you the information is what I'm saying here. We turn into every third person that brings us this type of information. We got to throw the FBI a bone. Sometimes they know what's going on. Come on. Yeah. Well, and there's been all sorts of rumors over the years of, of how Apple tries to track down leakers within the organization of, you know, having documents be individually watermarked

and fake leaks to put in certain people to see where things could be coming from. So I think that's all real as well. I know a few people that work at Apple and from what they've told me, the OPSEC there is, is no joke. Yeah. It is no joke. Nobody walks out of that building with anything.

Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It was that, I'm trying to remember the name of the, the famous spy who was walking out of a, a secure facility like every Friday afternoon with a, with a plant, you know, he had like a house plant.

Uh, and he was stuffing classified documents inside the planter, you know, the, the pot that the plant was in and would just walk by security every Friday with this plant. Just taking my plant home. Yeah. And security would smile and nod and he'd say, yeah, just taking the plant home, make sure it gets watered this weekend.

And then he'd bring the plant home on Monday and, you know, it's this basic kind of thing. Yeah. I love that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's true. I do too. I appreciate the deviousness of human nature.

Like for me, if you go to the trouble of a good old fashioned caper, right? Like you're breaking into a museum to steal the hope diamond and you're doing things with cables and you're dodging lasers and you're all of the things that we see in movies.

So you go that way. And I was thinking night at the museum and I was like, all the shit comes alive, man. Yeah. Go in there. Yeah. But if you get away with your caper and you have to do all of that Hollywood kind of stuff, I think there should be some. You've earned it. Right. Exactly. There should be some deference that we should recognize.

A caper well done and the cleverness. As long as nobody gets hurt, you know. Yeah. There's not enough movies about the good old fashioned cat burglar nowadays, you know? Yeah. I like that stuff. And I really like, you know, watching the Americans and seeing what the, you know, what the spies were doing there.

I mean, I've, if I was in DC, I would spend all my free weekends at the spy museum, you know, that's the kind of stuff I love. Love that stuff. So I think the way this could work to all of our favor, and we could actually have this in real life, is we should, we should have an army of criminals that basically break into all the British museums, steal the stuff and take it back to the countries the British originally stole it from.

And then we'd all be okay with it. There we go. Right. Right. You have an international group of cat burglars whose job it is to, to repatriate all the stuff that the British museum stole. Yeah. Yes. Right. Day by day, the British museum gets a little less interesting.

I like it. I like it. Uh, I put the thing in here, uh, I wanted to note that, uh, in this past week or so, one of the, uh, co-creators of the basic computer programming language passed away. Uh, Thomas Kurtz was 96 years old.

Uh, he was a, uh, professor at Dartmouth, uh, worked on computers there and, uh, was one of the two folks responsible for basic. And I wanted to check in with the two of you to find out, uh, because both of you have way more programming experience than I do, way more experience with more modern languages.

And I was curious, you know, to what degree, if any, in your younger days, had you crossed paths with basic and, and was it at all foundational to setting you on your path? Absolutely. You 110%. Yeah. First thing I ever did on a computer was, was learn basic.

Yep. Yeah. The basic manual came with the IBM XT that we got when I was a kid. And remember those, the old IBM manuals, they were like, you know, just monotone, but the, the, uh, binders were made of cloth. It was really nice. And then in their three ring binders made it really easy to read.

And I read the, the basic manual and learned, learned basic from that. Yeah. And I, I had a computer class, I think starting even in junior high school, which was pretty advanced at that point in time. Nobody was really doing that, but we, we had a computer lab, a couple of computers and a couple, it was basically you, an option, uh, that you could take if you wanted to.

And I, of course did. And I, I vividly remember building, uh, uh, coding a, basically a dragon that breathed fire and like little pixels with basic totally remember that. Yeah. Yeah. High school, 1989 for me, I was writing, I wrote a basic program, um, on an apple actually that, uh, drew a bird, uh, which it was like a, um, an original composition.

I, I, I built out the bird in code and wrote that. And then it won, uh, the high school award for best artwork of the year. So I won an award from my basic programming back in the day. All right. Yeah. I started, uh, with a, you know, TRS 80 when I was 11, I guess, and, um, just kept, you know, pounding away on that thing all through my teen years.

And actually I got paid to create a package in basic when I was in high school for a local business that was kind of foundational to them running. It was this like this, it was this labeling database system.

And I don't know, it, it, it, it sounds very, uh, uninteresting. And to anyone who wasn't in this business, it was, but for them, it was kind of game changing. And, uh, just the fact, you know, that I wrote it in basic and it worked was just amazing.

The other thing that I want to touch on though, is that I feel like basic has, is, is underappreciated, but also it's become fashionable for folks to look down their noses at it. And again, getting back to the fact that the two of you moved on to much more advanced languages.

Um, do you, do you, is my perception of that accurate that these days people just kind of poo poo basic? Yes. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's programming people poo poo any language they don't use. Yeah. Or, or sometimes languages you use like Pearl.

Fuck that thing. That was horrible. But I mean, to be fair, like things have moved on a lot from basic. I, I can't think of a modern application that you would go, you know what language would be perfect for this? Basic. Basic. Right. It's, it is a good teaching tool.

I still think for programming, cause it is so simplistic. It is a way to understand core, uh, core programming concepts for sure. And a very easy way at a, and at very young ages, but would it, would you, could you get hired anywhere knowing basic anymore?

No, no. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Maybe a computer museum. Maybe. Teaching kids on the weekend. Or, you know, running the nuclear facilities with those five and a quarter inch discs, you know? That's true. That's true. So. That's true. Yeah. It seems to me like even for kids, you know, things have moved on to be much more object oriented and, um, you know, the, the whole fact that basic was, uh, what do they call it?

Runtime encoded. And it's just slow, slow, but we didn't know it was slow. Well, it wasn't slow then. Right. Right. Everything else was just as slow. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, I got to say though, you know, I, if I had the option of learning object oriented programming to start with instead of doing procedural to start with, and then like trying to change your brain after years of procedural and then moving into, uh, to programming, I would

definitely say start with object oriented programming because it's, it's such a change of gears. A hundred percent. Agreed. One or the other. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the kid, the kids definitely have a leg up nowadays with that. So they can just start with object oriented right out of the gate, which highly recommended.

Okay. Yeah. It's good to know. All right. Well, beyond that, uh, it's about all I have. I'm curious, do you guys have any, uh, particular Thanksgiving traditions as we're coming up on that holiday? Any, any. Eat, sleep, poop. Yeah. Uh, I used to have, you know, my family back in Southern California when I was younger was, it was a very big, uh, group cousins, uh, aunts, uncles, uh, all kinds of people like 20, 30 some odd people would be at Thanksgiving.

And over the years that of course dwindled either through people passing away and most of my cousins moved out of state and now I've eventually moved out as well. So I'm in Toronto now. And so we don't really have a much, we've started a tradition here doing Canadian Thanksgiving. Uh, I ended up kind of cooking almost everything because my wife is Chinese Canadian and they did not have what they, I don't think they had even ate a turkey before I showed up and made, started making all that and everybody enjoys it.

So I, I have a good time making Thanksgiving dinner here for, for my wife's family side of the family. And we do that and we don't go home for Thanksgiving anymore to my mom, uh, for American Thanksgiving just because it's so close to Christmas and it's just too much with school and everything like that.

Um, so, you know, my sister still goes down to see my mom with her kids and, and we'll call them and, you know, FaceTime them and all that sort of stuff when everybody's there. But, uh, yeah, the, the traditions have kind of changed over the years and, uh, I, I still look fondly upon them and miss them, you know, the big family stuff and all that.

But, uh, time moves on, you know? Yeah, it's true. Uh, you know, I remember growing up, we would, uh, often alternate between my family hosting Thanksgiving for, you know, us and all the cousins and, and so on.

And, um, and then, but then going to a cousin's house to have Thanksgiving. I remember one cousin's house we would go to, we would always, there'd always be, uh, a touch football in the backyard. Uh, as part of the... And what will surprise nobody, we would go to Disneyland.

Yeah, I knew that was coming. Gee, what should we do today? I don't know. How, how about we walk down the street to Disneyland? Oh, good idea. It was usually the Friday, like, cause you know, Thanksgiving would be Thursday. We would have the big meal and with all the family and everything like that.

And then the Friday would just be, you know, a couple of friends, a few family members. We all go to Disneyland. Yeah. The main thing we've changed lately, uh, we've talked about this before here is that we have, uh, jettisoned the tradition of having a turkey. And now we go with a roast instead because it just tastes better.

Everybody likes it more. We do, uh, we do ham when we celebrate the American Thanksgiving here now. So it's just a small ham for my, my immediate, my wife and my kid. Although I just had a flash of memory. So thank you for this, Dave. I totally forgot about this. What we did as I got older, like into my teens and all that sort of thing is that we would do the Thanksgiving dinner, uh, with our families and everything like that.

And once that was done, I would get together with my friends and we went bowling every year. That was our Thanksgiving tradition as friend, the friend groups would get together after the family stuff and we would all go bowling. I totally forgot about that. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. It was fun. Yeah. Now you just reminded me after Thanksgiving dinner, when I was, uh, in my dad's house in Chicago for, for maybe five or six years, I did.

They don't do it anymore because like you said, everybody moves away or does whatever, but we used to have a, uh, inter-family chess tournament. Nice. Oh. So we had like five chess boards. Nerds. Yep. Exactly. Spread them around the room and we'd all play chess. Right. And then we'd program in basic.

Right. No, we had touch football. Actually, horseshoes was a thing too. Did you guys ever play horseshoes? Are you familiar with that? We had jarts. Like I said, why would you play horseshoes when you have jarts? Yeah. Horseshoes never, not, not really big in Southern California. Gotta say. No, and I think, um, what's it called?

Uh, what, what's the thing with the, the beanbags? Um. Cornhole. Cornhole. Thank you. Yeah. Cornhole has replaced, uh, horseshoes with fewer injured shins. Also in Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving in Chicago, you're not going outside to play anything.

Uh, stay inside and play chess with some cocoa. Yeah. Eggnog. Yeah. That makes sense. I still like getting up on Thanksgiving morning and watching the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade. I still, I still get a little misty when Santa, you know, makes his appearance and I just don't know why.

Just, I, I like it. And then usually we switch over to the, uh, the Walt Disney World parade. Right. Um, you know, and then family starts showing up and that's that. Off to the races. That's right. That's right. All right. Well, I wish you guys both the best for this coming Thanksgiving.

Uh, be nice to have a little break and I'll see you guys in a couple of weeks. All right. Have a good one, Dave. Enjoy that roast. I will. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got some new subscribers, Gerard, Juan, Em, and Paul.

And a thank you to our existing donors, Sarah, Thomas, James, Mark, Marios, Mike, Corey, Derek, Liz, and Paul. Thank you all so much. And just a reminder for people out there, uh, Patreon, you know, at least for a minimum of $3 a month, you get the shows early, ad-free, and in high definition.

So, get on that. And if you want to pay for the whole year, you get 5% off. What's, uh, what's, what you waiting for? All right. I agree. Over at PayPal, we've got Andrew, Sloan, Tom, Joseph, and Timothy, who gave us a big old 100 bucks. And I think he told us about it on Discord, but on Discord, he has a crazy ass name that isn't Timothy.

So, I have no idea if that's actually you or not. So, I'm going to assume SloppyFart42 is also Timothy. I'm not sure. It's hard to tell. All right. Over the tip jar, we've got Eric, Sean, and Ross. And we've got a new list.

We've got a bunch of people that bought some merch from us this week. Head over at shop.gog.show. We've got Angela, Brian, Michael, James, and Nathan. Well, thank you. Thank you all so much. Send pictures of you and your gear. Yeah. Exactly. All right. Come on. See that.

See that swag in the wild. And no reviews this week. Again, I guess you're all preparing for Thanksgiving. Lazy. Boo. Boo. Boo. I got a quick shout out to Schmackters, that show I did with Mark Devine and James Marsters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

We've been slaving away in the studio for season two. I think we're going to – we're hanging out tomorrow, and I think we're going to do a holiday special to keep the wheels going because it's just fun. It's a fun show. So link for that will be in the show notes if you want to get caught up on season one.

And, yeah, keep an eye out for that. So with that, happy Thanksgiving, Brian, even though you already had Canadian Thanksgiving a while ago. Happy Thanksgiving number two for me. Happy Thanksgiving for you. We will not be doing a holiday episode, so just a reminder to everybody, we are off next week so we can enjoy a little downtime.

So there you go. All right. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. 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 675. Feeling generous? Keep this top-notch entertainment rolling by dropping us a few bucks at GOG.show slash donate.

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Got something to say? Send your feedback, comments, or awesome links to GOG.show slash contact. Show us some love. Leave a review at GOG.show slash review. A five-star rating might just get your review right on the air. Stay grumpy and try not to take a nap right after Thanksgiving. It's bad for you. Go walk.

Do something. Play Jarts. Go walk. Go walk. Go walk.