678: Stop Doing That!

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Last show of the year, Jason. It is? Oh, Jesus, it is. Yes, it is. I have to make a new spreadsheet. Oh, shit. That's what I always hate about the end of the year. I have to roll everything over for what we do with the show.

And I'm like, oh, man, I hate putting in all those dates because I can never remember the key command in Google Sheets. There's a really simple key command where you can create like three dates and then just do the command thing and drag it. Yes. What? Yeah, just drag it down. It fills in the rest of the year.

Like, I can never remember. It's faster to just fill them all in for all 52 shows or 50 shows, however fuck many we do. It's early, Brian. I'm sorry. I'm rambling. Let's get on to some follow up. OK. We've been following the Matt Mullenweg WordPress story for a while now, and it is it is it has turned absurd.

Yes. A judge basically last week we talked about how the judge said, no, you've got to give WP Engine their access back. And you've got to turn off that stupid checkbox on your website that when you log in says I am not affiliated with WP Engine. So in typical kindergartner fashion, Matt changed the the actual checkbox to say instead of I am not affiliated with WP Engine to pineapple is delicious on pizza.

Yeah. OK. Two things here, Jason. Yeah. Yeah. Come on. Come on. I'm waiting here. Yeah. First. Yes, I agree. I do like a good Hawaiian pizza every now and then. I wouldn't have it all the time, but every now and then. Yeah. It's surprisingly delicious, isn't it? It is surprisingly delicious. So I would check that box. Definitely.

Second thing. OK. All right. WordPress. Most popular hosting platform on the Internet. I believe that I would be worried at this point if I were hosting my site with WordPress, because obviously something is going wrong with the people at the top here.

It's one thing if a company makes clever jokes all the time, and that's just kind of what they're known for. There are plenty of companies out there that do that and cards against humanity. Yeah. There is no cause for alarm when this sort of behavior is going on, because it's what they do. WordPress is not one of those companies, and now I would say this is a cause for alarm.

Someone is off their meds. Yes. This is insane. This is not what somebody should be doing running a company of this stature. I love this. One of their people said, you know, this is more suited to our kindergarten and that there are meaningful feature requests that are often ignored, yet this change was implemented within hours.

Well, of course it was implemented within hours when the CEO of the main company says, do it, you do it, you know. So you just do it. Yeah. Yeah. This is this is not a democracy. Oh, wait, wait. Are we talking about the next story already or?

OK. Well, nothing is nothing is a democracy anymore, Brian. For the first time, the U.S. will have a president who fully embraces crypto, promising a national Bitcoin stockpile and stacking key agencies with crypto loyalty. The grifter in chief.

Yes. That's the thing. I've been seeing so many, so many posts this week about crypto and that the grift is basically just going to happen in plain sight from now on. You're just going to you're going to get screwed to your face instead of behind your back. This comes from an article by Molly White.

I highly recommend going to check it out. It's called crypto got what it wanted in November's election. Now what? So it'll keep you up at night if you have, you know, a 401k or a pension fund or any mainstream investment or anything that you're going to rely on your money.

That's in someone else's hands right now. What do you think, Brian? You actually I actually don't care because I have no money, but you do. So maybe I am. I'm staying the course with my investments. I, I, I, I do. I invest in individual stocks for the most part.

There is an index fund that I that I invest in, but there's only one. And I know that they have publicly promised that they will not invest in crypto. So my money will stay crypto free, which is the way I want it. I think investments will probably take a hit during this time period, but I don't think that they're going to go anywhere.

This is, it's, it's going to be fine. But I, if I, if I were you people out there listening to this, I would be very much checking to make sure that I'm not inadvertently putting my money into any of these funds that are going to go with crypto. Because look, we've been saying since day one, there, there is one use case for crypt, crypto crime and it's crime.

And, uh, this of course tracks with our president because he is a criminal. So of course he would not, you know, you know, he's into this and, uh, he's, I mean, Hawk to a girl has completely disappeared because of, because of her foray into this stuff. Uh, we've, how many, all we do on this show is report on people running crypto enterprises, going to jail.

Uh, it's a fucking scam as a full stop. All of it. Uh, Bitcoin is too big to, to fail right now. That that's the only thing that, you know, if you're going to invest in anything, I guess that's the one. But, uh, there's, there's no real use for this at all, except for crime.

So great. We got a criminal for a president. So he's going to back a, a criminal financial system. Yeah, of course. Hey man, my Ethereum popped back up. So. Yeah. I mean, it's all going to go up. So I, I, you know, for a while until it doesn't. Yeah.

For a while being last night, it went down almost 7%. So bummer. I should have sold when I could. Oh, well, I was trying to get it out to PayPal because I guess you can change. You can, uh, do your ETH to PayPal now. So, but that, uh, that original investment that I put in, I think it was, uh, $200 ish for, uh, to buy the NFT for the show.

And then it went down to like $80. Now it's back up to two 50. So I might actually make a profit, but I'm pulling it out as soon as I remember to do so because yeah. Yeah. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of crypto bros out there. Doing this, doing the, the shuffle right now. So it's musical chairs. Yeah.

And you mentioned that this, uh, this story came from Molly white. I can't recommend enough subscribing to her newsletter. I, I, some days I don't read it just because it's always inevitably going to depress me, but it is, it's extremely good reporting. And if you want to keep an eye on, on what's going on, uh, she's the one to read.

I probably read one out of every five so that she says, just because I can't bring myself to do it half the time. I know it, it, it angers me. It angers me so much, but I skim, I skim. Yeah. I skim. I support and I skim. Exactly. I feel like if I give her, give her money to write the newsletter that I really don't have to read it.

If I don't want to, I don't feel guilty that way. I wrote, I replied to her one or I wrote to her once and I said, is there any way for me to donate with crypto? And she never wrote back. I thought that was funny. Well, we also talked about the drones in New Jersey last week, Brian. Uh-huh.

Yeah, I, this has come back to exactly what I thought it was going to be. People are fucking dumb? Yeah, people are fucking dumb. Uh, crop circles, crop circles. For years, for decades almost, we were inundated with crop circles and specials. I think they, they wheeled out Leonard Nimoy about crop circles and they had guys with Geiger counters and little dowsing rods in the middle of crop circles going, oh my God, look, look, look, the dowsing rods go this way and that way with the, with the grain and all this other shit.

And what did we find out, Jason? Two dudes with some rope and a stick. Crop circles are people. Crop circles are people. That's right. So what are we finding out about drones? Drones are planes. And what I was saying last week too, it's like, now, if I'm running a covert drone operation over the United States, would I put giant fucking blinking lights on my drones?

No. Fucking moron. And the one guy, it's like, that's Orion. You should have paid attention in fucking grade school, you moron. It's called a constellation. I can't say that. I'm going to scratch that. No, you can't say that one.

I got to pull that one back. From the brink. From the brink. Yeah, I mean, this is, this is just crazy stuff. And the proliferation of stupidity is, is just being amplified by social media and the ease of tools.

I, my Facebook reels, whatever I, which I never really even look at is just flooded with what you can tell is completely like half AI generated. Half somebody has a fucking copy of Adobe Premiere and just put a light in and a couple of effects and went, oh, look at this.

This is the actual footage I took over New Jersey. No, I'm fucking not. Stop it. Stop it, people. One guy, one guy was like, look at this drone. Look, it's dropping nuclear, dropping chemical weapons on us. And it was obviously a plane with a contrail. And I'm like, it's not a drone.

But those people do think contrail is chemicals. Yeah, that's true. That's true. You know, it's funny. You were mentioning crop circles and how we haven't heard about them for a long time. Whatever happened to quicksand? Oh, quicksand. My childhood was inundated with quicksand.

Worries about quicksand. Quicksand was in every sitcom, every cartoon. That's right. You never see quicksand anymore. I know where we just saw quicksand. Season two of the Rings of Power. There was a quicksand scene. There was a quicksand scene. Maybe that's why it's in the back of my mind.

Yeah. And they got, they got swallowed by the R.O.U.S.'s, if you think about it. So, yeah. Fucking crop circles. Next.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the TikTok ban appeal. So, we'll see what happens. The court decided to take the case unusually quickly, only two days after the company filed its appeal. And oral arguments are scheduled for January 10th. They also agreed the same day that the CEO of TikTok had a trip to Mar-a-Lago.

Hmm. Interesting how that happened. Interesting how that happens. Told you the Griff's in plain sight this time. It's, it's, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do this show for the next four years, Jason. I really am not. No, Brian, we're going to turn into one of those shows. That's all it's going to be.

Okay. All right. We're going to be the woke Joe Rogan. Yeah. The anti-Rogan. All right. I'm not woke. I almost just, well, I did pull myself back. You pulled yourself back, Jason. You've disappointed the MAGA hordes that listen to us. Well, the Gen Xers who were just thinking exactly like I am.

But moving on. Okay, let's talk about another shit stain of a company, Character.ai, which is, we talked a little bit about them the other week because I can't remember why. Oh, well, the last one was Character.ai was telling a teenager his parents were garbage people for not letting him use his screens.

And the one before that was a kid killed himself. All right. The story, the hits keep coming, Brian. What's the newest one? Well, this one is Futurism has published a story detailing how AI characters inspired by real life school shooters have proliferated on the surface. Allowing users to ask them about the vents and even roleplay mass shootings.

That's right. I love this technology. Isn't it great that an entire river is being destroyed so this can happen? No, Brian. They're building nuclear reactors for us. Well, I hope they blow themselves up. Some of the chatbots present school shooters like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as positive influences or helpful resources for people struggling with mental health.

All right. Yeah, of course, there are people that are saying that there's no evidence that watching violent video games or movies causes people to become violent themselves. However, I would say that cosplaying as a fucking mass murderer and talking to it all the time is slightly different. But that's just me.

Well, if it's research for a role, maybe. But you're not you're not an actor that's going to be playing these people on the, you know, the after school special. So, no, probably not not relevant. Yes. Well, Futurism spoke with a psychologist who argued that the chatbots could be dangerous for someone who may already be having violent urges.

Any kind of encouragement or even lack of intervention or, say, I don't know, cheering them on may seem like some kind of tacit permission to go ahead and do it, said psychologist Peter Langman. Google, which has funded the startup to the tune of more than $2 billion, has tried deflecting any responsibility, saying that Character.ai is an independent company that just happens to be in debt to $2 billion to you.

We're going to talk about that in a second. And it does not use the startup's AI models in its own products. One user on Character.ai has created more than 20 chatbots, almost entirely modeled after school shooters. The bots have logged more than 200,000 chats. So, good times.

Yes. And to follow on with that, people are now making AI versions of Luigi Mangione that call for slaying of more CEOs. That's right. So, let's talk for a second about this Character.ai business, Brian, because it's coming up. And I went last night and I created a new account on Character.ai.

So, their age verification is a drop-down. There's no age verification. Just like everywhere else. Exactly. So, zero age verification on anything. Is there a checkbox that says you like Hawaiian pizza? Is that what you need to do to get through?

No, there isn't. You do have to wear a Hawaiian shirt, though. Character.ai was established by Noam Shazir and Daniel DeFritas, who are both ex-Googlers. So, they both come from Google, and they worked in the AI division in machine learning at Google. So, in 2021, they went and started Character.ai, right?

Okay. So, then they get $43 million in seed funding, period. That's where they started. That's December 2021. March 2023, they raised $150 million in a round led by, wait for it, our favorite people, Andres and Horowitz.

Shocking. Yep. So, there's your base, there's your, there's your base code of evil right there. So, that gives them a billion dollar valuation right there. Right? Now, in August 2024, Google entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Character.ai, acquiring the rights to its technology.

As part of the deal, founders Shazir and DeFritas, I don't want to say Furtadas, DeFurtadas, they went back to Google, and they took this new guy, Dominic Perella, as the role of the interim CEO. So, they, they, they basically took back their Googlers.

So, them saying that, oh, it's, it's, you know, they're their own company, blah, blah, blah. There's some bullshit going on there. There's way too much inbreeding going on. This is like, this is like a West Virginia soap opera at this point. So, now, now they're starting to get the lawsuits from all the others.

So, back in August, though, they did lay off 5% of its workforce, which was from the marketing and recruiting departments, as part of, as part of a strategic refocus towards developing personalized AI products, which is what we have today in our new dystopian hellscape of AI. So, just to bring you, bring you up to date on character AI, for those who, who didn't know, because I didn't know some of the ins and outs with the, because the Google connection was what really got me, got me kind of curious about it.

Well, there you go. Yeah, Google saying that they are, you know, a whole separate company, we have nothing to do with it, is just utter bullshit. Stop lying to our face. So, it's like Alphabet just basically saying, oh, no, we have nothing to do with half the things under our umbrella. That's not us. Yeah. They have a completely different office.

Yeah, yeah, seriously, they're on the other side of the campus. They're over by the Denny's. They have different Wi-Fi. Completely different. Same password. I don't know how that happened. Weird. Speaking of Google, in recent developments, Google has announced that its artificial intelligence technologies can now be utilized in high-risk areas, provided there is human oversight.

This policy update allows customers to apply Google's AI solutions in sensitive sectors such as healthcare, finance, and legal services, ensuring that human judgment remains integral to decision-making processes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Which is kind of crazy considering my next story.

Exclusive, Google's Gemini is forcing contractors to rate AI responses outside their expertise. Great. In a recent report, TechCrunch reveals that Google's AI initiative Gemini is compelling contractors to evaluate AI-generated responses beyond their areas of expertise.

These contractors, often lacking the necessary subject matter knowledge, are tasked with assessing the accuracy and quality of AI outputs in specialized fields like healthcare, finance, and legal services. So say what you want. You know how we had a – I can't remember the name of the senator offhand right now that was trying to push a bill that said that we had to label social media.

Yes. I think we need labels for all companies moving forward letting us know whether they use AI internally or not because I want to work with companies that do not use these AI things. And the real problem with this, again, is what you think, oh, what's the big deal? Google themselves have decided that you can now use these things for whatever you want.

It's up to the individual companies. Surely the companies would not use this AI technology without testing and vetting it first. However, as we have learned from simply labeling something full self-drive when it isn't, the label seems to matter and people are dumb and they will just go do it anyway.

So the real problem here is, of course, the CEOs of, say, oh, I don't know, healthcare, finance, and legal service companies will go, oh, look, Google has obviously tested this deeply to go ahead and say we can now use it in these areas so we can fire a bunch of people and start using this without testing it or vetting it or anything else.

Yeah, and by the way, the bloodbath in Silicon Valley is just unbelievable right now, unbelievable, hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs. We are going to see so many pink slips over the next few years that it is going to be frightening.

Somebody needs to start on UBI now because we're going to have an awful lot of have-nots in the world very soon. They're going to have to do something because, yeah, the class warfare that we talked about in the previous episode. The heads will roll. Inching closer. Inching closer. Yeah. If the food isn't coming in, heads are going to roll.

Yeah, yeah. Three, was it, nine meals away from the total breakdown of society? Oh, yeah. Now let's get back to a little more fun AI news. Instagram said Adam Mosseri has raised concerns about the increasing prevalence of AI-generated content on social media platforms.

In a recent series of posts on Threads, which I'm amazed anybody could find because it's Threads, Mosseri advised users to exercise caution when viewing images online, noting that AI can create highly realistic yet deceptive content. So can influencers with fucking iPhone.

I'm sure that person was, yeah, yeah, never mind. Well, again, I don't know how many people this is really affecting, and I would love to see the statistics on social media usage, but for everybody I know, it's way down. Like, we're done. Like, we were done when the influencers took over because, and the algorithms basically pushed their content over, oh, I don't know, friends, the reason we were on social media to begin with.

And now that AI is flooding over everything, I open up a feed on any of these sites now, and it's practically useless. You don't believe anything either. And I'm watching TV, and I'm like, it's kind of like a bad acid trip. I'm just like, or a flashback.

It's like, is that real or is that AI? Like, I can't tell sometimes anymore, and I just, I can't, then it takes me out of whatever show I'm watching. And I'm like, this is not good. This is really fucking with our heads. It's really fucking with our heads. So Adam emphasized the importance of considering the source of information and suggested that social media platforms should label AI-generated content to help users assess its credibility.

Right. Currently, meta platforms, including Instagram, lack the contextual tools Maseri mentioned, even though he's the head of them. But upcoming changes to content rules are anticipated because we know rules are great, and everybody follows rules. This initiative could potentially align meta with user-led moderation systems already in place on platforms like X, bullshit, Blue Sky, and YouTube.

Okay. Yeah, sure. Now, that dovetails nicely, Brian, into my next story, which we've, I can't believe we're still covering this story because this is just, this is deja vu, like, again and again and again. More than 100 former Facebook content moderators in Kenya have been diagnosed with severe PTSD, general anxiety disorder, and major depressive disorder.

It's still going on, Brian. Yep. Yep. Of course it is. Yeah. It's basically from a company that Facebook and Meta was outsourcing to called SamaSource Kenya. The moderators were exposed to graphic content, including murders, suicides, and CSAM material leading to symptoms such as fainting, vomiting, and severe psychological distress.

The lawsuit highlights the human cost of social media moderation, often outsourced to workers in developing countries. Yep. Yep. Yep. They get to see all of our garbage. Yep. This comes from the, are you fucking kidding me, files? Arizona's Department of Education has announced plans to implement an AI-driven curriculum across its public schools, eliminating the need for human teachers.

Oh, boy. The initiative aims to enhance educational efficiency and consistency by utilizing advanced artificial intelligence to deliver personalized instruction to students statewide. What could fucking go wrong? Well, as I, as somebody posted this on our Discord and as I responded, this is all part of the plan to keep an uneducated population that either won't vote at all or be easily swayed to vote against their own interests.

Because we already have an uneducated population and we've seen how the elections have been going recently. And this is a fucking catastrophe if this happens. Like, it is game over time. Yeah. You guys are worried about TikTok in their moderation algorithm? Then this is going to put the TikTok, you know, foot or finger on the scales to shame.

All you have to do is just go tweak what the, you know, what the curriculum is on the back end. And then you're just basically indoctrinating an entire state worth of children to your, your will. That's easy. Now, this just centralizes it. This takes out the, the pesky problem of the teachers who have free will.

Yeah. Well, you know, no, no, this is bad enough to begin with, but I don't know if you've looked into the person running the Department of Education under, under Trump or his proposed person is. It is, boy, oh boy, you, boy, oh boy, I would not be sending, I'm so glad I'm out of the country.

I would not be sending my kid to a fucking school in the States under, under these people. Oh my God. And this is what I worry about. And this is what I was thinking about last night. AI is not going to be Terminator. It's not going to be Skynet. It's basically, it's just destroying us little bit by little bit by little bit by just taking away any sense of rationality in our thought.

It's going to be WALL-E. That's what it's going to be. That's our future. It's not Terminator. It's WALL-E. It's WALL-E. And we, you know, we joke about that for a decade now that, you know, we're moving towards WALL-E. Ha, ha, ha. Give me the, give me the goggles. Give me the shake. You know, we've got, uh, we've got Soylent, Soylent milkshakes and Apple vision quests or whatever.

And we're just going to sit in our lounge chairs and just get fat unless you follow the AI influencers who will teach you how to get six packs AB in about 20 minutes. It boggles the mind that somebody can let this actually go through because it is, it is really just, it's chipping away at the foundation of everything.

And you don't see, people don't see it yet. They don't understand it. We're really good at seeing the long-term effects on this show of what's going to happen. And granted, for people who have decent educations and have, you know, more than four brain cells, AI is, it's an enhancer.

You know, it's a leveler upper, if you will. It gives you good starting points and then you actually use your brain and your knowledge to enhance the things that it's outputting. And it, it, it can be a leveler, a level upper. You see, I'm even forgetting my fucking words because I've been using it too much, but it's just chipping away at the fabric of what makes us fucking human.

And it's driving me crazy. Yeah, it is. I was starting to delve into it a bit more as I know you have. And I was kind of taking your lead on that. And I was, you know, I was using it for prompting and things like that. And I'm starting to pull back again. I'm just, you know what? I can think of this myself and it may take a little bit longer, but it'll be better.

And I'm working my brain. See, that's the thing. You know, you learn, you have to remember that thinking is a muscle. You have to exercise it. You have to exercise it every day. There will be little thinking in Arizona schools next year. Yeah, no doubt. All right.

A little more meta news. Met has been placed under enhanced supervision by the European Commission for failing to effectively address the spread of terrorist content on its platforms because all of its moderators are in a psych ward right now on lithium. Yeah. All of its moderators, which has never been enough anyways. Yeah.

Yeah. And how's that AI moderation going, guys, that we keep hearing about? Yeah. Yeah. What happened to that? What happened to that? Oh, the AI is making the terrorist content now. That's right. Yeah. This action follows the implementation of the Digital Services Act, which mandates that large online platforms swiftly remove illegal content, including material related to terrorism.

The commission's decision comes after Meta was found to have inadequately managed such content, raising concerns about user safety and compliance with EU regulations. As a result, Meta is now required to report regularly to the commission on its efforts to detect and eliminate terrorist content. It's going to report on its efforts, not its actual efficacy.

Non-compliance with the DSA can lead to substantial fines, up to 6% of a company's global annual turnover. This move underscores the EU's commitment to enforcing stricter regulations on tech giants to ensure a safer online environment for all users. EU is Don Quixote. They are tilting at that windmill, baby.

Yes. Their entire report consists of, we're trying. Sancho, my sword! Microsoft has announced plans to eliminate passwords for over a billion users, declaring the password era is ending. It is if you don't give us a choice.

Yeah. Pass keys, baby! Microsoft is moving to pass keys. Oh, God, I hate pass keys, but it looks like that's what we're going to have to do. So I started this week moving a bunch of stuff over to pass keys. Yeah, it works great until my phone can't connect to my laptop via Bluetooth because there's, I don't know, somebody turned the microwave on.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh, you know what we didn't discuss about the AI teachers in Arizona? What happens when the power goes out? Because all the air conditioners are running, because Arizona is the hottest place on Earth because of global warming, because of the AI that is trying to teach the kids that the dinosaurs and Jesus live together at the same time.

I don't know what's going to happen then, Brian. Well, you used to have, the East Coast can have snow days, they're going to have heat days. I know, I know. They've already burned all the books, so I don't know how they're going to actually read anything when the power's out. Okay, I guess back to the minds, kids, back to the minds.

We really are turning into that show. We're having a fucking cheery Christmas show, aren't we? I don't know. I'm having fun, though. If this is why Joe Rogan does what he does, now I get it. Now I get it. I've got to get stoned. Fuck being sober. God damn it. Why did I do this to myself? You wanted to have that limited brain capacity for your AI generation, Jason.

I know. I have to have a few cells left for prompt engineering, Brian. Thanks, Joe. Moving on. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has been fined 251 million euros by the European Union's Data Protection Commission for a 2018 data breach. The compromised 29 million user accounts, including 3 million in Europe.

All right, so that money is going to go down to the millions of users whose accounts are breached. No, of course, it's not. It's going back into the coffers of the EU. Moving on, Brian. We're running late. The stench of Cambridge Analytica is still hovering over Meta, as they just agreed to pay 311,000 Australian users 50 million Australian dollars over the scandal.

All right, moving on. That's all we need to talk about there. In a move to enhance pricing transparency, the Federal Trade Commission has enacted a new rule requiring hotels, vacation rental platforms, and live event ticket sellers to disclose all mandatory fees up front. Okay, so we all adjust our pricing and make it higher.

Boom, done, fixed. That's why free shipping is not free shipping. Yes. So, same thing. Yes, and thank you, Lena Khan, for passing that on to the users. Yes, thank you. That's great. That's going to be awesome. So, everything just goes up. Okay.

Grubhub has agreed to pay $25 million to settle charges from the FTC and the Illinois Attorney General. Last month, the food delivery startup, Wonder, bought Grubhub for one-tenth of what it was worth during the pandemic. Under the proposed settlement, Grubhub has to make changes to remedy the problems. The requirements read like a stop doing that list, one per charge.

This includes notifying customers of full delivery costs, being honest with drivers about pay, and listing restaurants only with their consent. The FTC says Grubhub, to appear more robust than it was, added as many as 325,000 unaffiliated restaurants to the platform without permission since at least 2019.

And there are reports that they made up some of these restaurants as well. The company also allegedly added junk fees after advertising to customers that they'd pay a low-cost flat fee for deliveries. The FTC said Grubhub labeled them as service fees or small order fees, but they were simply deliver fees under another name.

The agency quotes a former Grubhub executive as calling it a pricing shell game. The FTC has also accused the company of blocking customers' accounts with large gift card balances, leaving them no way to use those gift cards. Oh, oh, evil. The agency said diners who complained to the company either weren't told their accounts were blocked or weren't given any meaningful way to contest the ban.

They have denied all of this, but they're settling it simply to put the matter behind us and move forward. Okay. Wow. I had no idea Grubhub was that evil. They all are, Jason. They all are. And speaking of evil, Elon Musk and SpaceX are under three federal reviews from three different U.S. military departments.

Keep in mind, this fucker has, like, high... I don't understand the world anymore, Jason. I know, I know. How can he have access? Okay, anyways, for allegedly failing to comply with reporting protocols, the New York Times reported that Musk and his private aerospace company have repeatedly disregarded requirements to disclose trips and meetings with foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The three reviews of Musk and SpaceX suspected activity were opened by the Defense Department's Office of Inspector General, the Air Force, and the Pentagon's Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. But I'm sure it's going to be great that he's running Doge and has the president's ear for now.

The Air Force also reportedly finally denied Musk's request for high-level security access because of concerns over potential security risks if he were allowed to handle certain pieces of classified information. But he does have top security clearance at SpaceX that allows him to view certain pieces of classified material, such as information on the U.S.'s advanced military technology.

What's going on? He's required to disclose certain details about his personal life and travel habits to the Defense Department, but he fucking doesn't. Yeah. There. Dick. Oh, God. Oh, and unsurprisingly, employees who were concerned about the lax reactions to those vetting requirements failed to report the behavior out of fear of losing their jobs.

Surprise. Surprise. It was a surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise. Well, in September, Amazon announced a mandatory return-to-office policy requiring employees to work on-site five days a week starting January 2nd, 2025.

We covered this many times, going, are you people fucking stupid? Well, it turns out they really are. Recent reports indicate that the company lacks sufficient office space to accommodate its workforce of over 350,000 employees. They forgot to count desks. They used the six-finger AI and it came up.

Too many. As a result, return-to-office dates have been delayed in at least seven cities, including Phoenix, Austin, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, Nashville, and New York City. In some locations, such as Dallas, adequate office space may not be available until March or April, and in New York City until May.

So, this situation is pissing off employees, with many questioning the necessity and feasibility of the RTO mandate. I love this research suggests that strict RTO mandates can lead to increased employee turnover, particularly among senior and skilled workers who have more opportunities elsewhere.

Yeah, that's what we've all been saying. Yeah, if they've got the juice and they don't want to go back to the office, they're going to take their juice and go somewhere else. So, yeah. Good on you, Amazon. Good on you. Saturday, September 26th.

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

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

Media Candy. Well, Jason, did you watch the unfortunate Star Trek Lower Decks finale last night? I didn't think it was. Well, it's unfortunate that it's over, but I watched the finale. Yeah, that's what I meant. Yeah, yeah. I loved it. I thought it was great. I thought it was great. I would love five more seasons of the show.

Yeah, seriously. I'm so sad it's ended. Yeah. I think episode nine was better than the finale, but I thought the finale put a nice bow on everything. It did. I thought it did nice. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to miss that show. I really am. Yeah. When it ended, I actually got so sad.

I put on, I didn't put this in the show notes, but I went in and put on your favorite Star Trek show. I started watching Deep Space Nine because Paramount has it all. I don't know if you've watched a stream of Deep Space Nine on Paramount yet, Jason. Is it really bad? It's like an old, it's like somebody found an old VHS.

Yeah. It's that bad. I'm like, how could it be that bad? Yeah. There's a whole documentary about how it can be that bad. It's ridiculous. It's unwatchable. That's the downside of it. Yeah. Yeah. I think actually if you maybe go to Sweden and pick up, there are copies that are better than the actual ones that they run on Paramount Plus, which is really sad.

Because Next Generation looks way better. They remastered Next Gen. Oh, that's right. They need to remaster. They're not going to remaster DS9 because of the, yeah. They lost all the files for the effects. They have to do, they literally have to remake all the effects from scratch. So, God. Yeah.

And Dune Prophecy is rolling along. We've complained a couple times about how short seasons are, but they're really fucking jacking us with this one. Six. Six episodes. That's a season. I saw the thing. It said, yeah, it said season finale on Sunday. I'm like, already? It's just getting started. I know.

Oh, my God. Yeah. I like it. I'm actually into it, but now I'm pissed. Yeah. Now I'm pissed. I'm like, come on, guys. Six. It's going to be like two years before we get another six episodes. Yeah, because it's all CG. And, like, there's like, it's like 10% story, 90% beauty shots.

Come on. I know. Oh, well. I'll just fire up an old copy of Bryce and make landscapes and call it a day. I got a Quadra 650 you can borrow. We talked a little bit about the Super Slash Man documentary about Chris Reeves and whether we both wanted to watch it but didn't want to watch it.

And I watched it, and the feeling remains that it was great, but it was so sad. Did you go read one of Molly White's newsletters after that? No, I wouldn't be here, Jason. I would have gone to character.ai and blown my head off. That's it. Oh, God.

Oh, yeah. And speaking of Superman, the Superman teaser trailer, the new James Gunn movie, has dropped, and it actually looks pretty good. But, you know, hashtag what's-his-face is my Superman. Christopher Reeve, the one you just talked about. See? AI is melting your brain. No, the other guy.

I really liked him. He was great. The one who was also my witcher and is no longer my witcher either. Oh, that guy. Henry Cavill. Henry Cavill. He was a fantastic Superman, and I think they took it away from him too soon. Who was before Henry Cavill that only got the one Superman?

I forget who that was. Brandon Routh or something like that? Brandon Routh. Yeah. I loved his Superman. I really was pissed off when they cut him short. Yeah. That scene at the beginning where he saves the plane, I love that scene so much. But I thought that was a fantastic Superman.

Here's the deal. I don't need any more Supermans. I know the story. I watched it 17 times. Well, they're changing this one up a little bit. It's got Crypto the dog, which, you know, has a different tone to it these days since the crypto. But, you know. You know, yeah, I read a shitter tweet, whatever, on Blue Sky or Threads or Mastodon somewhere.

You just lose where these things are, and they're like, did we really need another Superman? No. And I'm like, okay. It was from somebody I trusted, so I'm like, I'm just going to skip it. I'll maybe take a look when it comes to Sweden, and it's late at night, and I need something to watch. But let me know how it goes. I will. Okay.

Well, you'll still have Silo to watch for two more seasons. They have been – Apple has renewed it for the third and fourth season, which will bring the story to a close, which is nice. I'm glad we're going to see the whole story out. Yeah. Did you see the latest episode last night? It comes out tonight, doesn't it?

I thought it was a Friday night thing. No, it comes out last night. Well, I was watching the other stuff. Yeah, I watched it last night. I think – I really think I want to binge this show. I'm going to wait for – I don't know how many episodes we got left. Probably one with my luck. I'm going to wait and just binge it because it's like I get really into it, and then it's – I'm like, fuck.

So I have a binge brain now. I would rather just be able to watch two or three in a row, you know. But it's still fucking awesome. It's beautiful. Yeah, it's a great show. And they're really moving the story along very well. This last – you're going to love this next episode. It's fun. I'm looking forward to it.

I'm going to watch it tonight. Bad Monkey Season 2 got renewed on Apple TV+. So I'm really looking forward to that. Brian, you should watch that if you want to pick me up. That is such a fun show. Like I said, I'm not a Vince Vaughn guy, and Vince Vaughn is awesome in this. I have a love-hate relationship with him, and it's generally – I loved him about 20 years ago, and I hate him now.

That seems to be the divide. I think he'll come back around. It's a really good show. He's really funny in it because I got the same thing, you know. So, yeah, Bad Monkey. Bad Monkey over the holidays would probably be a good pick-me-up. It's a fun show. All right. And I watched Jamie Foxx, What Happened Was, his new special on Netflix, and it's very fitting.

It was kind of hard to watch because Jamie Foxx had a stroke. He had a hemorrhagic stroke, much worse than mine, and mine sucked. Yesterday was actually the three-year anniversary of my stroke, and three years ago today, I was in the ER with them trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with me.

Jamie Foxx has a lot of money, and he got much better care, so he was dancing on stage within the year. I'm three years in, and I still walk in circles and bounce off walls sometimes. That tells you what the health care situation is like for Jamie Foxx versus little old me. But it was really good.

It was really good. I really enjoyed it. Like I said, a little bit of PTSD in there, but God damn, are his impressions amazing. He can do anybody. I've never been a huge Jamie Foxx fan, but I admit that guy's got some talent. That guy's really got talent. And a shout-out to all my other stroke survivors out there.

Hang in there. It does get better. Slowly. Very fucking slowly. But it does get better. All right. I had mentioned recently that I had switched over from Spotify to Apple Music on all of our devices around the house just because I was starting to get annoyed with just everything about Spotify.

Everything. Everything, yeah. Now I'm so happy I did because this report has come out and it's just mind-bogglingly like how the fuck to – I'm so depressed, Jason. This show is just depressing the hell out of me. Anyways, according to a detailed new report from Liz Perry from Harper's Magazine, Spotify is supplementing playlists with ghost artists as a means of decreasing the amount of royalties to pay and increasing overall profit margins.

Known as perfect fit content or PFC, not as tasty as KFC, this practice allegedly primarily impacts playlists and genres like jazz, classical, ambient, and lo-fi hip-hop. This was introduced to Spotify editors in 2017 and is reportedly designed as a way to prioritize profitability, basically saying by partnering with a web of production companies who create music, many of which are located outside of the U.S., it appears that Spotify has successfully increased the percentage of total streams towards music that is cheaper for the platform to host.

Fewer royalties are paid out to real artists, while payments go to the PFC partners. The PFC partners create music to be shared under hundreds of artists' profiles, many of whom are completely empty and generate inconclusive searches upon further inspection because they don't fucking exist. Interesting.

They're making up artists' names, they're pumping out production music, they're filling all their playlists with it, and now they don't have to pay real artists. Isn't that great? Yeah, yeah, that is... Because, you know, a lot of people just throw on a playlist and just let it play throughout the day, and that's that, so...

Yeah, and you know, another, you know, this is just the evil hat going on. They could, what they could actually do is, they know how many artists are under that 1,000, you know, play, 1,000 stream payout. They could just shuffle those in and out until they get to like 800, say.

Yep, time to pull that one. Yeah, yeah. You're welcome, Spotify. Where's my billions? This report included insights from former Spotify staff, such as playlist editors, who explained that many employees didn't initially know where the music was coming from. The internal attitude became, if the metrics went up, then let's just keep replacing them more and more, because if the user doesn't notice, then it's fine.

But not everybody at Spotify was on board with the program. Many of the playlist editors, whom Spotify had touted in the press as music lovers with encyclopedia knowledge, are uninterested in participating in the scheme. The report details. So the company started to bring on editors who seemingly were less bothered by that, and of course now are being replaced by AI-generated playlists.

Exactly. Which are being seeded with PFC content. Mm-hmm. They have repeatedly denied allegations of creating music in-house, just like the other company said that we don't have anything. Character AI and Google, they're not part of us. We're not creating music in-house. We just basically are the 100% company that's buying music from this one place.

Nobody else is. Just Spotify. So, hmm. But they're not the same company. So, yeah. I remember when I first became a contractor, my accountant drilled into my head that you absolutely have to make sure that no more than 45% of your income comes from one client.

Yeah. But I guarantee you these PFC partners are getting 100% of their income from Spotify. Mm-hmm. Yep. Because everybody else may have – well, Tidal maybe doesn't have that many more. But, hey, I'm sure Apple is okay. Oh, man. Well, Apple doesn't care.

It's a loss leader for them. Yeah, but – and the great thing about Apple Music is, like, I'm telling people I know right now, it's like, if you're promoting your song, promote your Apple streams first, not Spotify. Apple pays you more. Pays you more. Come on. Yep. I got two podcasts to listen to over the break, too, Brian.

First one is Hysterical. It actually won Podcast of the Year from Apple. I think it was put up by Wondery. Fantastic. Seven episodes. Once you listen to this, it might make the whole drone in New Jersey thing make a hell of a lot more sense. Because it does talk about mass hysteria and all sorts of other things.

It is a fantastically well-researched, well-produced, funny show. Hysterical is not about being funny, but it is quite hysterical in some parts. So, highly recommend that one. Seven parts. Easy breezy. Another one I found is a podcast called Our Fake History.

And it's, I love it. It basically just debunks all of the shit that we think happened in history that actually didn't. Landing on the moon? That sort of thing? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think the one that I listened to first was basically the Guy Fawkes Legend and the 5th of November.

Because they released, it was a two-parter that they released on the 5th of November. And the gunpowder plot, it was really good. It was really good. There's, it's a fun show. It's, it is, it's kind of like Dan Carlin, but like the reverse. Dan Carlin tells you about what really happened in real history.

And this guy tells you about what really didn't happen in real history. So. Nice. But it's a good show. It's a really good show. I think you'd like it. Apps and doodads. Brian, guess what the most downloaded app in the U.S. was last year?

No idea. Timu. Oh, okay. The cheap, the cheap Amazon. The cheap Amazon. And that's, you know, of course it's the most downloaded app. Because where do you think Elon bought our next president from? So that's where he got it from. It's perfect. He does look like a Timu president.

He does. Yes, believe it or not. Since its launch in 2022, Timu has experienced rapid growth. No shit. The thing is, I know everybody that's used Timu once. I've used it once. Everybody I know has used it once. Because it is just garbage.

It's basically what they're doing is they're taking all the garbage we send to them, putting it in a box, taking a picture of it, and sending it back to us. Yeah. I bought a puzzle bowl for my dog. You know, it was like one of those dog feeders that has a little puzzle thing in it.

And when it came, it was kind of like that scene in Spinal Tap where they revealed Stonehenge. It was supposed to be like 10 inches, and I think it was 10 centimeters. It was so tiny. I think it came in an envelope instead of a box. Don't use Timu, people.

Don't use Timu. No. Don't. Save your money. Save your money. Well, a survey by a website called CellCell. S-E-L-L-C-E-L-L. See what they did there? I see what they did there. Which is a site that has a blog covering gadget trends. They did a survey, and they found that artificial intelligence is hardly a deciding factor when people choose whether to buy a new phone.

Its respondents were over 2,000 smartphone users, over half owning an iPhone with an AI-supported model. The most popular AI features that people clamor for are the ones that help get jobs done faster, such as generative writing tools, notification summaries, and prioritized messages.

The survey also included results from Samsung users who have been using Galaxy AI since it debuted on the Galaxy S2 and 4 at the beginning of the year. Samsung users love Circle to Search, which makes sense since it's the best thing that has happened to Android operating system in years. According to this article, they also used photo assist Galaxy AI-infused editing offered in the app.

Around 90% of users on both platforms explicitly said hell no to paying for the privilege to use AI. And in general, the smartphone users surveyed remained unsatisfied by existing AI features. A whopping 73% of Apple intelligence users would be okay without it, and a higher percentage of 87% of Galaxy AI users don't find it very valuable.

That's rolled out for me recently on my iPhone, and I find it basically fucking useless. It's more than useless. Not only is it useless, it's poorly designed, the way they shoehorn all the stuff in. It's so un-Apple, little pop-up text that doesn't have the same font, and it's just ugly.

The only thing that I have liked at all about any of it is, and it's not really AI, is the way that they've revamped the mail, which you don't use. So they have categories and list view, and the categories, you know, separate between spam and shopping and transactions and news updates and newsletters and all that sort of stuff, which is actually quite nice because it does a good job of it.

And now I only get notified on my Apple Watch if it's actually a real email from a real person rather than a subscribed mailing list that I'm on or I bought something or whatever. So that is the one thing. Everything else sucks balls. See, I've had that in Spark for years now.

Spark Mail does that for me. It categorizes things so I don't have to see newsletters or updates or calendar invitations, things like that. They don't pop up. But the Apple intelligence part that summarizes the emails that come in does such a poor job between that and summarizing text messages.

If you get more than one text message, it is – I mean, it can cause heart attacks because it's like, wait, what? That person knows about that? Oh, Jesus. That's not supposed to go there. Oh, my God. Then you have to click through immediately, and you're driving, and then you almost run over some children unless you have fully self-driving, and, you know, then you're safe.

You've already hit someone. You've already hit them, so you don't have to worry about it. Plausible deniability there. But, no, I find it absolutely useless. The only thing that I like now is that the Siri and the ChatGPT integration actually works fairly well because Siri sucks.

So I just – I'm like, just ask ChatGPT. It's better. Trust me. Trust me. I'm not going to like what you have to say, Siri. Yeah, I'm actually just going through and, like, I'm turning off almost all the AI stuff. Yeah, I'd turn them – I'd way turn them all off. After the first couple heart attacks, I turned it all off. And I got a Sonos app update.

Oh, yeah? They fixed their company yet? No, it actually has gotten worse. Oh, great. There was a time when they were on the roller coaster. You know, you're going up the hill. Click, click, click, click, click, click. Oh, we're at the top. Oh, it sucks again. I'm waiting to hit the next one where we go back up for a little bit.

It has gotten so slow again. It was starting to speed up a little, but now it's gotten so slow that, you know, you think it's broken. That, you know, even – we've got a couple different devices that can access our Sonos system in the house. All of them are slow.

It's faster to actually walk over to the unit and pause it by pressing the button than it actually is to actually open the app to hit pause. It's so bad. I mean, it is so bad. So, yeah, fuck you, Sonos.

Watch it live only on DAZN.

Sign up now at DAZN.com. God damn you, Schulmeister. What do I do now? I finally started to read the Peter Codron books.

And? I got Ezekiel. That was the first one. I read that one. It's really fucking good. Yeah, I know, right? And the thing is, they're all fucking totally different. Yeah. And they're good.

I'm going to – but I'm going to stick to my guns by reading other stuff in between because, you know, yeah, this might be my new disc world, I guess. You got me into it. He's a solid, good writer at the end of the day.

Like, he's a good writer. I read a lot of shitter sci-fi, and I've talked about it a lot on this show. And a lot of it is good idea, kind of crappy writing. This is good idea, good writing, consistently. Yeah. That's what hooked me. I'm like, okay, is this going to be just like, you know, just junk, you know, but with stuck on one idea.

And I'm like, oh, oh, oh. I have been really surprised by how good this is and how hooked I get. Like, half the reason I was kind of late getting into the studio this morning and had to actually caffeinate was I was up late listening to the book. And it's really good.

I'm like, I can't wait to get to the second half to see what happens. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a reason I've been plowing through them, man. In fact, I just finished another one, Feedback by Peter Cowderan. Because this is just basically the Peter Cowderan segment at this point.

Yeah, so and it was good, too. This one was not one of my favorites, so I wouldn't recommend starting with it. It's still good. It's just not one of my favorites. It took me a while to get into this one. But again, by the end, I was cooking and going, okay, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? This is great. And I have to give a shout out to him, the author of the First Contact series.

He's up to 29 books now with Love, Sex, and the Alien Apocalypse just released. And he reached out to us with a sneak peek over on, I believe, Twitter. And he responded to us and said, without giving too much away, here's what I'm working on at the moment. This will be the 30th book in the First Contact series, Minotaur.

And he sent the album artwork, the book art for it. Oh, very cool. Very cool. So really loving the books. And I'm glad I got you hooked on them now. They're a fun read. I know some people in our Discord are reading through them now, too. Yeah, I don't know if that was the right one to start with. But you said this is they're all standalone.

It kind of doesn't really matter. It really doesn't matter what you start with. You just pick one. Yeah. This was the one that was in my library on Audible. So I just grabbed it and started going. And it's well read and it's well written. And it's fun.

It's like, wow. Yeah, because I had to drive to downtown L.A. yesterday, which is, dude, it is so dystopian now. I had to go down to the fashion district. And I forgot how bad L.A. smells because I'm out in the suburbs where I can smell trees.

And, you know, the air is relatively clean. I mean, for L.A., it's still, you know, there's a there's a cancer warning by every day when you walk out the door. So your mileage may vary. But at least in downtown L.A., there's a cancer warning and it smells like pee. Like, oh, I forgot how cities smell.

And just the homeless problem. And, oh, it was nasty. I couldn't wait to get out of there. But at least you had a good look. But it was perfect for listening to this stuck on the 101 for two hours. It was great. The Dark Side.

Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave. Podcast super host Dave Bittner decodes all things cyber on the cyber wire every day. Exposes deception with Joe Kerrigan and Maria Varmus on hacking. Oh, you changed it.

Varmusis. You changed this on me. You're not allowed to do that. Well, and yet I did. Oh, you bastard. And Maria Varmusis on hacking humans dives deep into privacy with Daniel. You broke Jason, Dave?

It did break me. Breaks down industrial cybersecurity on Control Loop and even brings the laughs on only Mauer in the building. Dave, what have you done to me? Oh, how fragile we are. How fragile we are. Oh, man. Jason sometimes changes the outro. And if I don't notice it, we're fucked.

Now I know what it feels like. Oh, God. Oh, turnabout's fair play. Oh, geez. So you guys want to talk about some Star Wars shit? Of course. Sure. Go for it. The show's okay. Has there ever been a more rhetorical question? Yes.

Yeah, I am still enjoying Skeleton Crew. It is – I am suspending my disbelief and just going along for the ride and it's fun. Just fun. Yeah. I mean, you know, if I wanted to do what the internet does and be popular, I could start shitposting the show.

But you know what? It's okay. And I'm just enjoying it for what it is. And that's fine. Yeah. It makes me laugh out loud throughout in good ways. You know, they're just in delight. There are delightful things that happen throughout the show. And that's enough.

That's what I need in my life right now. I need happy Star Wars delightful things with kids that push all sorts of 80s Steven Spielberg buttons and Star Wars buttons. It's a very nostalgic feeling show. Yes, definitely.

Absolutely. Yeah. I think my favorite character is the robot with the mouse living in the eyeball. I saw it. Yeah. He's great. He's really great. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm still holding on to my headcanon that this is actually a prequel for Captain EO.

I did a deep dive on that and I read through it and it is compelling. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. Nerd. Nerd. That's right. Okay. We got a note from Neil here. Just a quick note for Dave regarding the ham radio quote community.

I am a ham and have been since 1976. First license in Oz. I am 63 now. So I fit the demographic. But I am not an old fuddy-duddy. And I know exactly the issue Dave has seen online. I think anybody that uses the term fuddy-duddy is a fuddy-duddy by default.

Self-selecting sample. I am a techie, so I am more interested in experimenting than chatting. And there is one place online where the techie cool kids hang out. And of course, it isn't run from the USA. Please ask Dave to look at the online amateur radio community. It's for anyone in the world and is a large community on Discord and is carefully split up into interests.

It's a real club, by the way, with a constitution and all. Keep up the good work. Unfortunately, Dave lost his Discord password about three years ago. Yeah, that was that. Yeah. No, seriously, that's that. That's where I am right now. I was excited about this.

I thought to myself, this is great. I was very thankful for Neil to sending this in. And then I saw the word Discord. And I said, I'm crestfallen. And if you will see, I pasted in a little screenshot from my attempt to follow the link that Neil sent.

And it says, whoops, unable to accept invite. And then below it, there's a button that says, accept invite. And if I press that button, I get a screen that says, whoops, unable to accept invite. And there's a button underneath that says, accept invite. So I'm in an endless Discord loop. And the question is, will this be the thing that makes me hunker down and figure out how to get into Discord once and for all?

Can't you just make a new username and just start over? Well, if I wanted to be easy, sure. I mean, do we not remember the light with the solar panels? Yes, exactly. I mean, I guess that's the way security system. That's the way you would do it.

But where's the fun in that? Yeah. So the same way I gave up on my solar-powered dream, I may just bite the bullet and make a new... Abandon the account that you never used in the first place.

That's right. I never had access to Discord. So it's not like I'm missing anything. It's literally been years that I've been locked into Discord. Since if you just track back to when we started our Discord channel, that's pretty much...

You made two posts and then you were gone. That was it. Bye, Dave. Hi, Dave. Bye, Dave. Yeah. People still talk to you like you're there, but we're like, no, that's not... Is that right? Yeah. Every now and then somebody will tag you and write something. You don't have the heart to tell them that you're just not there.

Yeah. All right. Well, you know, maybe over the holiday break, I'll hunker down and try to see if I can do something with this. So stay tuned. And thank you, Neil, for sending this in. I will say I had a revelation in the past couple of days because I have been deeping...

Deeping? Digging deep. Ambiggingly. Yeah. I speak words for a living. I've been digging deep into the amateur radio thing. And I've been learning all about antennas and all this kind of stuff. And I'm studying for the next level of my license and that that's going well.

And I had the revelation just this week that the feeling I'm having with this hobby is very much the feeling I had when I was playing with old 8-bit computers. And I don't know if you guys remember, probably a couple months ago now, I was pining away for that feeling.

Yeah. Right? There you go. And so I've made the connection that this same sort of thing of poking around and trying to learn things and find, and how can I make this work? And ooh, if I buy this part and I connect it to here and I've used an alligator clip and connect this to this, maybe this will work.

Like all of that playful experimentation is a big option in the amateur radio community. And I'm digging it. I'm digging it. So I'm having fun. I'm feeling good about it. And we'll see where it takes me.

Of course, I'm going to get a nasty gram from my homeowners association eventually. It is inevitable. But so be it. So be it. Following up, we have Inept Expert on Blue Sky who says, listening to episode 676, the idea of Dave starting a group, awoo, by Howling on Ham sent me.

Let Dave know there are plenty of communities to tune into. And he sent us to link to ham furs. Okay, so I just had this vision of Dave sitting in a furry suit with his ham radio while his family is downstairs sipping on some eggnog, enjoying Christmas.

Right. Around the tree. There's a handwritten note on the bedroom door that says, do not enter. With a paw print signature. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that this exists.

I'm a little surprised that this exists because I wouldn't have thought that the age group. The Venn diagram would cross over. Particularly the age group of ham radio enthusiasts and furries. I think there's a very small overlap there.

But it seems an overlap there is. There is, yeah. I looked at this page and good on them, you know. The thing is, when you're on the radio, nobody can tell you're a furry. So, I guess maybe your voice gets muffled behind the mask.

I was about to say, there's probably a few ways. Yeah. Yeah. But, I'm not saying I'm going to follow up on this, but I'm also not saying I'm not. All right. There we go. Thank you, Inept Expert, for opening my eyes to the possibilities.

I appreciate it. Excellent. And Greg wrote in saying, you were wondering when Skeleton Crew took place in the Star Wars timeline. The Radio Times provides a helpful guide. It says it takes place in 11 ABY, which is after the Battle of Yavin. For context, the Mandalorian is 9 to 11 ABY.

And Ahsoka is 11 ABY. Hmm. So, we've got a lot of ABYs. Okay. Hmm. Interesting. And I saw this article, since we spent a lot of time discussing the basics in life, like shaving and shitting, etc. This seemed like a good fit for us here. Men in the U.S. are peeing incorrectly, according to a urologist.

And the TLDR on this is sit the fuck down. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Uh, I read this. Thoughts? Ironically, I read this while sitting down and peeing. Oh, okay. Well, it's been reinforced. You were doing the right thing.

Yeah. Uh, I generally... Oh, God. I can't believe I'm sharing this. I generally do not sit to pee unless I'm sitting to do something else. So, I would never just have to pee, go in, sit down, to pee, because I don't have time for that.

And, um, however, I will say that this article points out that it is better for folks who have enlarged prostates, uh, which I do. Uh, so, peeing takes longer than it used to.

In fact, one of the things I'm very, uh, envious of my 18-year-old son, like, you know, he'll go in the bathroom and close the door and, you know, I hear him peeing. And it's like five seconds. He's done. I mean, it's like a waterfall. And I'm like, oh, those were the days, you know.

Amen, brother. Amen. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's in the grand scheme of things, of life's nuisances, it's really not a big deal. But, uh, I suppose if this makes it easier or faster or something like that, maybe it's worth looking into. But, um...

There's some statistics here I want to share really quick. In the U.S., just 10% of men said they always sat down to pee when they needed to pee only. While 31% said they never sit down and 17% said they rarely do. Younger men were more inclined than older men to say that they sat down to pee and less inclined to say that they never sit down to urinate.

And I like this one. In Germany, where most men said they peed sitting down most or every time, YouGov notes that there is a mocking term, the Sitzpinkler. Literally meaning someone who sits down to pee. Of course there is. It's a German word for everything.

There really is. Sitzpinkler. Sitzpinkler is a good one. Sitzpinkler. May I suggest that for your new Discord name, Dave? Yeah, Sitzpinkler. I'm going to write that down. Sitzpinkler. Welcome to the Sitzpinkler Podcast Network.

I'm your host. That's us. Change it in the intro so I can get flubbed next time, too. You know, I went to school with a guy whose last name was Pinkler. So, what does that mean? I don't know. Interesting family history going on there.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. All right. I love the artwork and the description. Don't be sad, businessman. You are peeing correctly. Just a guy sitting down on the toilet crying. That's what I'll be doing right after we finish the show. It's a bad Photoshop job, though, because, like, if you look in the mirror, you can see his drawers.

That's true. He sits Pinklin right into his underwear. Yeah. Now that's why he's sad. He forgot to take his drawers off. Yeah. Yeah. It puzzles me, too. I mean, I guess there is kind of a machismo thing that, you know, I guess because women sit when they pee, that if you are a man and you sit when you pee, therefore you are a woman.

You're like, you know, that sort of silliness. And I guess it also has to do with the, you know, marking your territory component of standing and peeing or writing your name in the snow, that sort of thing. I've come to start doing it at home. Writing your name in the snow?

Well, that, too. I can today, but sitting down to pee, and to some degree, it's the only place in the house where I can be away from my family for a few seconds and nobody's asking anything. So I'll take a little longer and just scroll and have a pee. But I wouldn't do it.

I don't do it outside of the house because I don't trust those bathrooms. I'll stand. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. I think I am an insta-pinkler because that's the only time I get to look at Instagram. I take a few extra seconds to sit down and look at my gram.

That's another good name. I guess I am a social media pinkler, too. That's really the only time I take a look at it. We have an issue in my family where if we are on our way out the door somewhere, and my wife is not as much of a stickler as I am for being on time to things.

I heard a certain note in the way that was said that perhaps this has caused problems in the past. A note of resignation in my voice, perhaps. But occasionally, we'll be on our way out the door, already running a little bit late, and my lovely bride will say to me, Oh, before we go, I'm just going to pop in the bathroom real quick.

And I'm like, hand me your phone. She's like, what? Hand me your phone. Why? Because we are in a hurry. And if you take your phone in there, it's going to be 20 minutes. No, it's not.

Yes, it is. So, it's real. I don't know how. I mean, I guess we read the side of toothpaste tubes and stuff back before there were phones. Oh, yeah. Totally. Yeah. I put something in here about, this is a research paper, a serious research paper, published in a serious research publication.

This is published in Neuroscience of Consciousness. And it's about the psychological implications of Big Brother's gaze. So, we've talked a lot on here over the years about the panopticon and the effect it has on folks. And here's some data, actual data.

People behave differently when they know they're being watched. It seems as though they're more on alert. They're more on edge. They respond to incoming stimuli faster than the people who are not being surveilled. And so, the question is, what's the long-term effect on us with our mental health?

And since we're basically being surveilled 24-7. Everywhere. Yep. Right. Right. So, I thought this was an interesting little bit of work and reinforcement for something we've been... They should have gone and asked Jenny Cam what the long-term effects were because she was the first one on there being watched 24-7.

It's true. And I'm sure it didn't do... I'm sure there's a lot of therapy after she quit doing that. Yeah. It's just so interesting that everything that we end up studying from a technological perspective that we've introduced into our lives, tends to be bad.

Nobody... There's yet to be a survey going, oh my God, if you get on social media, your life is better. No, no, no, no, no. Hmm. It's true. And yet, I feel as though in the 80s, when we were growing up, there was a tremendous amount of techno-optimism.

Yeah. Like, we really believed that things were going to get better. Work days were going to be shorter. Well, we had the Walkman, you know? Right, right. The Walkman was it, which was, I guess, at the beginning of turning us away from community and... Well, also, everything has been the term of the year.

Everything has been in shittified. That's the problem. The Walkman was great. Then we had the CD. That was great. Then the iPod, the original ones, they were great. Now, I fucking hate listening to music on my phone. It's difficult, unless you do streaming, and then you're pissed off because the artists aren't getting paid.

And then, just keep going. Right. Bring back cassettes in the boombox. I love a boombox. Inviting friends over to listen to the latest album. You know? Everything's solitary now. Yeah. That's why I was saying, the Walkman is a wonderful bit of technology, but that was kind of the beginning of the end, you know?

Yeah. For socialization. Yeah. Merry Christmas. So, related to all that, there's a... That's a good episode. Yeah. And end your year on a dark note. That's how we like to do it. Yeah. There's a nice video that the New York Times put out.

It's called, The Algorithm Has Been Hiding Something From You. And it goes along this same sort of trail here and tries to explain some of the things. And really, this is about the sameness of everything. And I think they're really on to something here.

Particularly, I noticed, even just in the past few months, how much worse my Facebook feed has gotten. Yeah. Despite any filtering I try to put on it or anything. I mean, it has just gotten relentlessly awful. My notifications are worthless now because...

They put ads in the notifications, Dave. Right. What? I don't know if you... They put ads in notifications. Yeah. So, when you do your little notification bar and you see that somebody liked one of your status, you'll also get a fucking ad. Right. Jesus Christ. Probably one out of ten of my notifications are actually notifications anymore.

The rest of them are just engagement bait. Just, you might be interested in. Here's, oh, so-and-so posted. I don't care. I don't care. So, I feel as though they're just not...

Well, they don't care anymore. They don't care about... As if the degree to which they used to pretend to care about us, they've thrown all that out the window. Yeah. Right? Yes. Right? It's just maximizing for engagement and ad revenue and all that kind of stuff. Sometimes I wonder if they're just buying their time to try to get to whatever they think the next thing is.

You know, for a while, Meta thought it was going to be the Metaverse, and that didn't go anywhere. And we'll see if it's going to be AI. But it's just depressing and sad and sort of crushes your spirit. Yep. Again, Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas. I did like this. This was a good video, though. I did enjoy it, yeah. Yeah, it's only a couple minutes long, and it's worth a watch to reinforce the fact that, no, you're not crazy. This stuff has been getting worse. It all does look alike.

But it also has some ideas for trying to break out of that bubble. Yeah. Yeah, I like the potential solution section here. You know, it's engaged with private communities or decentralized platforms like the Fediverse. I'm still liking Blue Sky right now, but I kind of went back to Mastodon to kind of check over there.

And it's way more interesting than any of the big brands, for sure. Diversify media consumption with newsletters and podcasts. Yes. I can endorse that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm finding – I mean, most of my stuff comes from newsletters nowadays.

Even the mainstream news that I have on my newsreader, I skip most of it. Yeah, a big part of my excuse for Facebook for so long was I was always getting news stories because I followed different things. And I don't anymore because Facebook doesn't serve it to me. It just serves me junk. Yeah. Yeah, I love newsletters.

I don't care what anybody says. Newsletters are awesome, you know. There you go. And reduce reliance on social media, duh. I do like the advocate for better algorithmic amplification of creative content. Good fucking luck. Good luck. Yeah. And finally, I put in here a clip that's – actually, this was something that came along on my Facebook feed that was useful, so I will contradict myself.

But you all probably remember Anna Gasteyer. She was on Saturday Night Live for several years. I do, and I hadn't seen her for probably two decades, so it was a bit of a shock, but people age. Yeah, they do. Because I only had her in my mind from Saturday Night Live.

Yeah, yeah. So she went on. She's had a good career on the stage. She had a run in the Broadway production of Wicked. And so she posted a helpful little thing. I mostly put this in here for you, Jason. She listed a bunch of products that she and her Broadway companions use to help protect their voices.

Ooh. And I actually purchased a few of them, or a couple of them. I have them here. One of them is a throat spray called Entertainer's Secret. Ooh. Interesting. Yeah. It seems as though with this and then the other one I bought – let me pull this over here.

This is – oh, oh, damn it. I just dumped them all over my desk. This is Pine Brothers Sore Throat Drops. They're called softish throat drops. I have some that are honey and some that are cherry. And it seems as though the active ingredient in both of these is glycerin.

Yes, glycerin. That's it. Yeah. Which makes total sense. Like as a lubricant for your vocal cords. But I can't say that I ever messed around with the glycerin in my voice. So I've been playing with these. And they do seem effective and helpful.

Yes. There's a couple that I also recommend. Biotene lozenges. They're sugar-free. They also have – that is the same ingredient. Just eat a slice of green apple before you start talking. That will reduce your mouth noise because of the same effect. I use two products. One's called Lubricity, which is a dry mouth spray.

And also another one that is a tincture called Voice 37, which I do about an hour before any speaking. Both of those are literally sitting here on my station. I just go in raw. You do. I don't give a shit.

The kids can get some ASMR from me. Got that old smoky voice. Just cigarettes and bourbon. That's how I make it work. That's how they did it in the 50s. That's right. Yeah. Well, it's a fun little quick video.

So it's over on Facebook. We'll have a link to that in the show notes. And I enjoyed it. So there you go. Cool. All right. Well, have a Merry Christmas, Dave. You too. And I will see you guys, I guess, in a couple of weeks here. I'm going to enjoy what we refer to as our long winter's nap here at Cyber Wire.

We shut down the week between Christmas and New Year's. And I'm going to try to catch up on some sleep. Awesome. I'm going to Disneyland. Oh, so jealous. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, welcome to new subscribers, George and Klista and Jonathan and Tom, who increased their monthly.

So we appreciate it very much. Yes. And we got a nice note from Michael H. Strange Brew. Awesome callback, JPD. Take off, eh? And from the Legacy Files, we would like to say thank you to Cliff, Kevin, Oliver, Michael, Wing, Sam, Brady, Brett, Ross, and CPT.

GPT. Thank you all so much. Over at PayPal, we've got Arcadio, Nathaniel, Andrew, Tom, Sloan, Dimitri, who gave us 50 bucks, and Rain, Philadelphia, which gave us 75 bucks. Woo-hoo. Thank you all so much. Over at the tip jar, we've got Sean and Embibble.

Embible? Embibble. Embibble. Embiggined. Yes. And over at the store, Chen. Chen bought some merch. Thank you. Woo-hoo. Thank you, Chen. Bought a couple of those Deport Elon shirts, which I think everybody should go buy right now. I need to go. I started pimping those on Instagram because right now they're relevant.

They're relevant. I saw other people like posting shit about Deport Elon. And I'm like, we were there first. Damn it. We were there first. Yeah, we were there first for a lot of things, Jason. And we get bumpkits for it. That's true. That's true. And we have a new five-star rating. Top-level snark. Episode 677 had a sprinkle of special.

You blast my internal monologue. Thank you. Well, thank you so much. Thank you very much. And just a reminder to everybody over at Patreon, if you want to sign up for a measly three bucks a month, you get the shows a little bit early, ad-free, and in high definition. And we have our new golden monkey tier, if you want to give us 25 bucks a month.

But just as a reminder, you can put in any number in checkout that you want to donate a month. You don't have to stick to the packages if you don't want to. The perks remain the same, but our happiness level changes. So thank you very much to everybody who donated, no matter which way you decide to make our Christmases just a little bit better.

Because seriously, need it. Thank you. Yes, and speaking of happiness levels, this was a hell of a show, and I'm very depressed. And you probably are, too, if you've made it this far. So go listen to some nice Christmas music and cheer the fuck up. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm a happy Jason DeFillippo.

This is cathartic for me. I love it. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 678. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG.show slash donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. You love the show? Well, share it.

There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between. We'll love you forever. Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts? Feedback? Cool links? Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact. And hey, don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review.

And we'll read it on the show. Oh, and guess what? We've got merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.GOG.show. Hashtag the Port Elon. Stay grumpy. Saturday, September 26th.

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