689: What Would Dave Do?

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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Happy 13th anniversary, Brian. My God. You know, Brian, when we started this show 13 fucking years ago, we started with the premise of making fun of people who taught other people how to make money on the internet.

Right. And, you know, they were basically selling courses. This was the big thing that was hip at the time, which was selling courses. How to make money on the internet. How to make money on the internet. Exactly. The Ouroboros of the grift. And I saw a headline this week that just cemented the fact that we are not getting any better as a species.

We're getting worse. It's just a, we're sliding down the poop emoji of life. People are using AI to create influencers with Down syndrome who sell nudes. I guess it's better than children. Well, that's a different, that's a different article.

Yeah. And I think Sean Bonner kind of summed it up on, on Blue Sky when I posted this. He was just like, I didn't really know where this was going word for word until the end. It was just like, or however you put it, it was, and I was reading it too. I'm like, okay, people who are using AI to create influencers. And then I, then it just, then it went off the rails. I'm like, then I, then I'm going to, then it went with Down syndrome. And then I'm like, oh my God, what a horrible, who sell nudes. I just give up. I just give up.

Yeah. That's not great. So a network of Instagram accounts is using AI to deep fake people's faces, altering them to appear as if they have Down syndrome, and then funneling viewers to adult content sites where they cash in. Now these accounts, still videos from real creators, use AI tools to modify them and link to the same pay-to-play adult platforms.

But, but Jason, they've got moderators for this, don't they? No, no. No? Instagram doesn't have, but they've got machine, sorry, they've got AI moderators. No, they don't. Okay. No. Instagram, sleep at the wheel. No moderation, no crackdown, no accountability. No.

We're just a platform? Just a platform. Okay. Maybe just a platform. It's all part of a despicable new industry called AI pimping, where these scumbags teach each other how to create fake influencers, automate engagement, and profit from the content. Yeah.

This isn't the only one. There are other trends that include women with amputations. And yeah. Now, here's the thing. I'm just, I'm not here to yuck on somebody's yum. You know, there are obviously people out there who get off on this shit. So whatever, you know, your kink is your kink.

No. Well, I mean, I guess on the plus side, Jason, they've finally answered our question that we put out 13 years ago. How do you make money on the internet? Use AI generated down syndrome people to sell nudes. There we go. Okay. Question answered. Well, the next article that I found really just kind of hammers home the point.

Human intelligence sharply declining. Turns out it's not just your imagination. People are actually getting dumber. Okay. A wave of studies, including the University of Michigan's monitoring the future and international PISA tests, show significant drops in concentration, problem solving, and reasoning skills across teens and young adults and adults and the elderly and everyone in between.

And I think my dogs are even becoming cognitively impaired. Those markers are basically markers for intelligence. So the decline has been getting worse since the mid-2010s, well before the pandemic. But COVID-era disruptions clearly accelerated the slide.

I've got some good news on this front for you, Jason, actually, I suppose. Well, now that Dodge has gotten rid of the Department of Education, we won't know anymore that we're getting dumber. Oh, okay. That's right. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, bright side. Well, you know, a society that can't think critically or do basic math isn't just annoying, Brian, it's dangerous.

And we are headed for a brando and electrolyte-filled future where ignorance is the norm. It's also bad for us. Yeah. Less listeners. Well, could have told you that. I know you don't look at the stats, but I do. I don't because I like to stay in a good mood every now and then.

I cry myself to sleep every night. Well, I'm going to give a hat tip to Grumpy Jedi on our Discord for this one, although pretty much all of our listeners, all five of them, sent us this. Yeah. The entire internet sent it to me, yes. Yeah. This is the Mark Rober, the YouTuber, who actually, after I watched this one, I went and looked at his page and pretty cool stuff.

Like, I'm not a big YouTuber guy, but I bookmarked him. Yeah, no, he's really good. He's been around for a long time. Yeah. He did the Can You Fool a Self-Driving Car video where he took a Tesla, which does not use LiDAR, just cameras, and a car that uses LiDAR-based self-driving.

And let's just say the Tesla did not do well. No, which I fucking told you so. Yeah. You've been saying this since day one. Day one. The instant that they said that they're not going to use LiDAR and they're going to use cameras, I said, yeah, there are problems with that. A lot of them. So this guy has a bigger budget than we do.

All I can afford to do is go, yeah, I fucking told you so. But he can afford to go out and crash a couple of cars. Yeah. So what really lured me into the video was the Disneyland part, which I particularly enjoyed. He snuck a little tiny LiDAR device into Space Mountain and the Haunted Mansion and a few other rides and mapped them out.

And then he uses an army of 3D printers. He had like 20 of them lined up to print out the actual track for Space Mountain and make a little card. That was great. I loved it. But the whole thing was, I sent this to, I have a good friend that's been an Elon Musk apologist.

Not so much anymore. But for quite a long time. And owns a Tesla. And I was like, so what do you think about this video? He's like, yeah, I might have to get rid of the Tesla. Good luck. Good luck. Good luck. You can't right now. I have so many friends who want to sell their Teslas.

They're just getting so much shit from people. And they're like, we can't sell it. And they're like, we can't sell it. You know, they're underwater on it. And it's Hollywood. Nobody has any money anymore. Everybody's broke and just barely making buy. So they can't get rid of it. And they're just like, yeah, stop being mean to us.

We bought it when he was so cool. You know? I saw a whole article about people that have taken logos from other cars manufacturers and put it on. I'm like, it's still a Tesla. You can tell. Yeah. That's been going around for a couple of years. And it's like, you're not fooling anybody.

But I think you just need to get the sticker that said, I bought it before he was a dick. You know? Yeah. I think that's a good one. Nobody's going to. Well, people shouldn't give you shit for that. No. But the thing that still scratches my head every day, and I see it at least once a week, a Cybertruck with new dealer plates.

I'm just like, okay, that's it. You're done. You're done. Well, I've got a story about the people that have been buying those. Do tell, Brian. Do tell. If you just rolled off the lot with your shiny new Cybertruck, thus informing the village that you're the biggest asshole in it, you're going to have to take it right back.

Tesla is recalling more than 46,000 Cybertrucks due to a potential safety issue. According to a filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the armored vehicle's can't rail, a cosmetic exterior trim panel, also should be can't self-drive. Yeah. Just saying.

Could detach from the truck, potentially leading to injury or a collision. Now, why could it detach from the truck? Because they fucking glued it on. Yeah. And didn't test the glue for environment. Yeah. Just like they didn't test the headlights for snow.

Yes. This recall covers all 46,096 Cybertrucks manufactured between November 13th, 2023 and February 27th, 2025. Given that the vehicle launched in late 2023, that is basically just about, well, all of them. All of them. Yeah.

Since Tesla began deliveries of its unusual pickup truck, the Cybertruck has been plagued by manufacturing problems and quality issues. Now, Jason, if you had not read the notes that I put in here and had to guess the number of recalls the Cybertruck has had in two years. Okay.

What would you say? Four. Nine. Holy shit. Nine times. Nine recalls in two years for this pile of shit. Nice. Okay. That's impressive. That's very impressive.

Yeah. See, the glue for the Cybertruck is the not using LiDAR of the Teslas. I would like to point out, though, if you are thinking about vandalizing a Cybertruck or a Tesla, you just don't because they do have sentry mode also.

I mean, don't fuck with a Tesla just because of what I just said. But Cybertrucks, I am all for fucking with Cybertrucks and Cybertruck owners, but you're probably going to get caught because they do have, quote, unquote, sentry mode, which is they're filming all the time. Although there is some funny YouTube videos about how the video fills up pretty quickly and the battery drains and you could be bricking your Cybertruck by using sentry mode.

Yada, yada, yada. Anyway, but still, just don't fuck with somebody's Tesla. Make fun of them if they have a Cybertruck all day long, all day long. And the dealerships have at, you know, Tesla takedowns every weekend. There's 500 of them going on. I'm 100% for that.

You have every right to go ahead and do a protest in front of a Tesla dealership. I only wish that there were Tesla dealerships on every single middle school and elementary school and high school across the country because they get protected better than schools do. Yeah, that's true. That's true. And to that point, Brian, I do have to roll back something I said last week because I think I've changed my mind on something.

OK. I said that. Severance sucks again. Well, we'll talk about that later. I was saying that, you know, Elon is sacrificing his pawn for his power and he doesn't care about Tesla. Everything that's been happening in the news has led me to believe that actually Tesla is very important to him.

Well, it's because the majority of his wealth is wrapped into Tesla stock. Yeah. And I think that he was hoping that it would it wouldn't go down as fast as it's going or there wouldn't be such a such a blowback. But the fact that he's trying to protect the value of Tesla so hard right now to the fact that they're doing infomercials on the White House lawn and yeah, all that stuff makes me think that Tesla is actually fairly important to them.

So double down on your protests. That's all I'm saying. Let's drive that stock down. Yeah, absolutely. Which is still massively overvalued. So got a ways to go. Got a ways to go. Now, I do have a quick recall story because Cybertrucks are not the only trucks that have recalls.

You know, this is just this is just a funny anecdote from yesterday. My my roommates Bronco would not start. So I'm like, OK, it seems like the battery's dead. Whatever. I went out, took my little battery starter jumper that I got from Amazon for 50 bucks. Those things are amazing.

By the way, if you don't have like a battery powered car jumper in your car for all time, get one. They're like one in the back of my car. They're amazing. Fuck jumper cables. These things. That's the way to go. Just make sure you charge it every six months. So I went out. I charged it up a bit and it started.

Went off from every way. I'm like, go to the go to the tire store down the street. Go to Hank's tires in the in the valley. By the way, if you ever need tires or batteries or car stuff, go to Hank's tires. They're awesome. If you're in the valley, if you're in the valley, our listeners are right there. Yep. I'm telling you, it's by Ventura and Winnetka.

It's awesome. So they get there. They test the battery like that. The battery's fine. So she's like, OK, I'm driving. She starts driving home and she gets to the corner of DeSoto and Ventura. And the car dies in the middle of the road. Middle lane, Ventura Boulevard, middle of the day. So I get a I get a panic phone call like I'm stuck in the middle of the road.

I got called AAA. Help, help. So I have a cone, a big orange cone that Spectrum left in my backyard one time when they were screwing around with the telephone pole. So I grabbed that, threw it in the Jeep, get out there, pull behind her, put the cone out, put my blinkers on and we wait out for the tow truck.

And I have to say, everybody in the valley who was nice and stopped and asked if we needed help, it was all the Persian folks. They were like, oh, like, hey, you need some help, my friend. You need some help. Everybody was awesome. We got like five people asking if we needed help, all Persian and one British guy who was just funny as shit.

He was awesome. So thank you to all of you. All the white people were flipping us off. So fuck you, whiteys. Anyway, so we're sitting there and she pulls out her purse and she's got all these papers and she pulls out this stack of papers and she says, I wonder if this is related to this recall notice I got.

And I look at it, I pull it out and I read what the recall is and pretty much word for word what was wrong with her car. Awesome. And I'm like, when did you get this? And I look at the date, June 2024. The fact that she had been driving around for nine months with the recall notice in her purse saying, maybe I should take care of this one day.

But those recalls, they don't really matter very much. You know, it's like one in a million that you're going to get hit with it. Perhaps we should reference your earlier story. Human intelligence is sharply declining. No, she's just a girl, you know, girls and recalls and cars. But it was we had a good laugh over it.

But so if you have a cyber truck, go get it taken care of because recalls that are that get past the NHTSA's, you know, firewall of they're legit. They're legit because no car manufacturer ever wants to have a recall. You know, just go look at go watch Fight Club if you want the math on it.

So it's important that when you do get a recall, you go take care of it. And if you happen to be a cyber truck owner, you've got nine of them. Nine of them. So, yeah, head on back to that dealership if you can get past the protesters. Saturday, September 26th.

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

KFC 94, Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. In the news. A contractor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, which has been in the news an awful lot lately,

and many other U.S. government agencies has developed a tool that lets analysts more easily pull a target's individual's publicly available data from a wide array of sites, social networks, apps, and services across the web at once, including Blue Sky, OnlyFans, and various meta platforms, according to a leaked list of the sites obtained by 404 Media.

The list names more than 200 sites that the contractor, called Shadow Dragon, pulls data from, sends immediately to CatTurd2 on X, and makes available to its government clients, allowing them to map out a person's activity, movements, and relationships.

This news comes after ICE detained Mohamed Khali, a prominent Columbia University protester and green card-holding legal permanent resident of the U.S. on Saturday with the intention of deporting him. It also comes as Secretary of State Marco Rubio is reportedly launching an AI-fueled catch-and-revoke effort to scan the social media accounts for tens of thousands of student visa holders' social media accounts looking for what Axios reported as foreign nationals who appear to support Hamas or other designated terror groups.

There's been no better time not to post shit on social media. Yep. No doubt. Yep. They are trawling everything now. So, you know, use those encrypted personal messaging platforms that you may be aware of that don't come from China.

Yeah. Or meta. Or anywhere. Or anywhere, really. Just write notes. Yeah, yeah. Post-its. Post-its. That's the way to go now. Get some pigeons. Maybe we'll get some carrier pigeon net. Or sneaker net, as we used to call it.

Yes. Sneaker net. All right. The U.S. government is scrambling to reinstate over 130 cybersecurity workers unlawfully fired by the Trump administration. A federal judge ruled the mass layoffs at CISA and other agencies violated employment laws, forcing their return.

CISA is now urgently trying to contact those affected, but admits it doesn't have full records of who was fired. The agency is asking former employees to send personal details via email to verify their status. So this is a follow-up to the story we talked about last week about the firings over at CISA.

Now, the fact that they don't have records on everybody that was fired is troubling, is troubling. Maybe they should just get a LinkedIn Pro subscription. Maybe Doge will let that pass, because I'm sure he's friends with Reid Hoffman at some point. Or, I don't know, is Reid on the red side or the blue side nowadays?

Hard to tell with the billionaires over there. But, you know, who knows? Who knows? But that's just, come on, get your shit together, guys. Yeah, that's a little crazy. And a little pro tip to everybody out there that has a job at the moment. If you do get let go, or if you quit, or whatever, for any reason you leave a job, go to your human resources department and absolutely make sure that they have contact info for you.

Such as your personal email address, your personal cell phone, whatever. Because you'll be shocked and surprised to hear how often something like your tax documents will not be sent to you the next year. Because they have no idea how to contact you, because they're idiots. Oh, that killed me one year.

That killed me. It was a tax document for $26,000. Like, I ended up owing $26,000 in taxes, because they couldn't get me my tax document. And by the time I figured this all out, the company had disbanded, and nobody knew where the records were anymore. And I ended up having to pay $26,000 for that problem.

So, absolutely do that. Make sure you do that. Good fucking tip. Good tip. Evan Feynman, who directed the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment, or BEAD. Oh, God, these people. Program, meant to bring high-speed internet access to rural areas, has exited the role as of last week, after he was not reappointed for a new term, according to ProPublica's Craig Silverman.

An email sent to staffers, which Silverman shared screenshots of on Blue Sky, Feynman warned against changes proposed by the new administration that could benefit technology that delivers slower speeds at higher costs to the household paying the bill in order to line Elon Musk's pockets.

Yes, because they are supposedly switching over to Starlink, because government efficiency, slower, higher cost. Yeah. Uh-huh. Efficiency. Mm-hmm. So, there you go. Good luck out there in rural America.

Yeah, the whole Starlink thing is... Also, those satellites keep fucking falling out of the sky. Oh, good. Well, that's actually an upside. Well, he keeps replacing them. That's the downside. Yeah. But the only... The other downside is, you know, everybody else is seeing that, oh, there's a market for space-based internet, so everybody's spinning up their companies, except the problem with that is it's just the same fucking billionaires.

Bezos is working up for his Amazon, you know, penis rocket space internet thing. So, who the fuck knows? There's no winner here. Can we get back to cables? Stay out of space. Lay a goddamn cable. Yeah, I miss a series of tubes.

The internet always needs to be a series of tubes. Agreed. Not wormholes. A judge has rejected Elon Musk's latest legal maneuver against OpenAI, shutting down his request for a preliminary injunction and dismissing several of his claims entirely.

The lawsuit, which OpenAI calls a self-serving attempt to slow them down, stems from Musk's failed attempt to merge OpenAI's for-profit arm into Tesla. Court filings show Musk left OpenAI after losing control and later launched his own AI company, XAI, while simultaneously suing OpenAI for evolving its structure.

So, the courts are smelling what the Elon is cooking, and they're saying, we ain't having it. That's right. Good. Everything that Elon has done when it comes to AI. Remember the open letter to whoever the fuck it was to where all the people said, we need to slow down on AI development. And Elon signed it.

He was behind it. He signed it and said, we need to – for the sake of humanity, we need to slow down. And we said that that's bullshit. He's just trying to slow down the competition. And 100% right on that. Yep. Nothing he has done has shown that he is scared of AI in any way, shape, or form.

So, another lie from the Muscovites. Shocking. Well, and there's been some lies everywhere involved with AI, as we know. There's a really great article over on The Atlantic. The Unbelievable Scale of AI's Pirated Books Problem. Now, this has come to the light thanks to that lawsuit from Sarah Silverman and a bunch of other people saying that, you know, you trained all your data on our copywritten material without asking us, getting permission, or paying us.

So, there's a – I love this article. I didn't realize how involved it all got. So, it says, when employees at Meta started developing their flagship AI model, Lama 3, they faced a simple ethical question. And I agree. It is a simple ethical question.

The program would need to be trained on a huge amount of high-quality writing to be competitive with products such as ChatGPT. And acquiring all that text legally could take time. Should they just pirate it instead? What is the ethical answer to that, Jason? Move fast and break things. So, yes. It is a simple yes.

Well, that's what they did, but that's definitely not the ethical answer. The ethical answer is no. Meta employees spoke with multiple companies about licensing books and research papers, but they weren't thrilled with their options. Let's keep in mind that Meta is one of the biggest companies in the world with an incredibly large amount of free cash laying around.

But licensing some books seems unreasonably expensive, wrote one research scientist in an internet internal company chat in reference to one potential deal, according to court records. A Lama team senior manager added that this would be an incredibly slow process. They take like four-plus weeks to deliver data.

Oh, four-plus weeks. Weeks. Oh, no. That's incredibly slow. Wow. In a message found in yet another legal filing, a director of engineering noted another downside to this approach, and this is the one that's the real kicker for me and tells me that they are just fucking evil.

The problem is that people don't realize that if we license one single book, we won't be able to lean into the fair use strategy. Right. So basically, if we pay anyone, we'll have to pay everybody. Yep. Yeah. That's pretty much it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's awesome. So they basically use Library Genesis or LibGen, one of the largest of the pirated libraries that circulate online. It currently contains more than 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers. Now, the reporter over at the Atlantic actually put it into a damn database, and you can search it and find everything that's in there, which is pretty amazing.

I had a little fun with that. I checked out Stephen King, and of course, all of the Gunslinger series is in there, the Dark Tower, which means Blaine the Mono is apparently AI canon. Okay. Do you remember Blaine the Mono? Not good. Okay.

I don't, but I take your word for it. I take your word for it. No, that's, yeah. So the lawsuit is ongoing, but all this stuff is coming to light. And, yeah, they just, they just, it was going to be too expensive for them.

It's not. They can afford it. And it would take too much time up to almost a month. And so they just said, fuck it. We're going to steal everything. Yeah. So we've got some, we've got some other legal news on this. California lawmakers are debating Assembly Bill 412, a new proposal that would force AI developers to identify every registered copyrighted work used in training their models.

Sounds fair on paper, but critics say it's a death sentence for small developers. The bill would require even tiny startups or hobbyists working out of their garage to track content in a system so outdated, it's basically a digital card catalog. But big tech, well, they've got the lawyers and the cash to deal with it.

But the little guys, for them, AB 412 means endless compliance headaches, legal risks, and no time left to actually build anything. And here's the kicker. Copyright law is federal. So a state-level attempt to regulate it could get tossed out in court anyway. And if AB 412 passes, it won't stop AI.

It'll just hand the keys to big tech, which we know don't give a shit anyway. Listen to the previous, you know, article that we just talked about. It's regulation that looks good on headlines, but just kills the competition. So, and... But call me crazy.

Yeah, crazy. But fuck you and your competition if you're doing it and it's illegal. Yeah. That's like saying, well, we can't keep putting these smaller criminals in jail because the bigger criminals have better lawyers. So let's just not put anybody in jail.

No, the whole point is it's a waste of time. It's a waste of time. Well, I agree with that. But I disagree with the premise. Oh, I don't disagree with the premise at all. I disagree. I disagree that California shouldn't be dealing with this because copyright is federal. Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent agree with that.

But it's just such a stupid, like, we can't do this because of the little guy. It's... You're... Well, stop it. Just neither... The big guy and the little guy shouldn't be doing it. Well, let me get to my next article, Brian. OpenAI is pushing for Donald Trump's upcoming AI action plan to classify AI training on copyrighted works as fair use, claiming it's essential for U.S. national security and AI dominance over China.

Got it. That's right. OpenAI argues AI doesn't copy, but learns patterns to create new content. Fuck you. To avoid legal setbacks, OpenAI wants federal protection from state and international copyright laws and liability shields for AI companies.

If AI companies lose fair use protections, U.S. innovation could slow while China surges ahead. But if OpenAI gets its way, creators might lose control over their work to corporate AI giants. And to that I say, might? Might lose control? No, they've already lost control.

That's why there's lawsuits about this. It's a very simple premise here, guys. Your AI is illegal. Period. What you train it on is illegal, as it currently stands. Again, though, should we be surprised by this, I would like to remind all of our listeners right now that Pinterest exists still and is actually worth $21.8 billion.

Yeah. A company that entirely exists on ripping off copyright. Yeah, completely because of copyright theft at an unimaginable scale. So we have kind of decided that we don't give a shit. I know. I know. I should put my – I should get back on that lawsuit train.

I made some decent money off of going after people who stole my photos for a while, but I don't even know if you can do that anymore. It's fair use now, Jason. Fair use. Yeah. I'm glad my entire life's work is fair use. That's great. That's great. Well, here's another little note for the nail in Tesla's coffin.

Let's end on a high note. China's EV giant BYD unveiled a 1,000-volt Super E platform that claims to add 12 miles of range in just 10 seconds. That's faster than filling your gas tank and leaves Tesla's chargers looking like dial-up.

The catch, it only works on two brand-new models, and it's China only for now. And, yeah, your mileage may vary depending on conditions like snow and communist roadblocks and things like that. I don't know. I seem to remember a period of time when all those Chinese-made hoverboards were catching fire on airplanes.

That's true, too. That's true. But I don't think Timu put out this new supercharger. Yeah, if you have the supercharger by Timu, then, baby, just go to the next station. But, yeah, no, this is pretty big news if they can pull it off.

U.S. companies might have to fair use the plans from that.

Media Candy. I got a little follow-up, Brian, on White Trash Wins Lotto, the musical that we've talked about on the show many times. There's a wonderful, wonderful interview with the writer and creator of White Trash Wins Lotto, Andy Preboi, on YouTube that he did after the release.

And I highly recommend checking it out if you have had a chance to check out the musical. It is a phenomenal interview. Andy kills it. And if you haven't heard the musical yet, there's a link in the show notes. If you want a good chuckle, that's what it is. It's a musical about young Axl Rose coming to Hollywood for fame and fortune, and it is fucking hysterical.

It was a blast. I do remember going with you to see it a long time ago. 25 years ago, Brian, 25 years. Well, if he ever takes it on tour again, there's a new tool from Spotify that'll let you know. I actually think this is kind of, even though I've transitioned away from Spotify, I like this.

I think this is great. They now have custom playlists, which will highlight artists with upcoming shows in your area, which is fantastic. So Concerts Near You will update every Wednesday with 30 songs from artists that align with your interests and are playing close to you. Tapping on a track will reveal details about the relevant show as well as links to buy tickets.

You'll be able to share this playlist and any event info with friends to see if any shows catch their interest. This is fantastic. I mean, I don't even know how to find concerts anymore. We've lost music newspapers and things of that nature. I remember I used to get the LA Weekly every week and scan the concert listings to see what was coming up.

Of course, that's when concerts were announced and you could buy tickets about like a month or two ahead of time instead of the fucking five years that you have to do it these days. Yeah. But yeah, I think this is a great, smart little thing that they're rolling out. I'm going to have to check it out. And I was wondering about how they get your location data.

You need to go to the live event section of the app and then you can set your location there. That's where they get that location info. I'm like, are they just following me where I'm at? They're like, hey, around the corner, you know, Wonder Stuff's having a reunion show. Go see it. Like, oh, shit.

Actually, they are, but it's only in England. And I mean, everything follows you around these days. It's shocking to me that Spotify actually put in something where you'd have to actually do it yourself instead of just we're going to take all your information. Yeah. We're just going to ping wherever you're at right now.

Yeah. I saw this one, Brian, and I thought of you. Musical mashup maker William Marotny created this curious remix of Hootie and the Blowfish singing their two hits, I Only Want to Be With You, and Hold My Hand to the Music of the Smiths' Cemetery Gates. I thought it was pretty good. Well, you know what?

What it does is it really solidified for me that much of the genius of the Smiths, and no offense to Morrissey fans, much of the genius of the Smiths was Marr and the music. Like, it even makes Hootie sound all right. Yeah, it does. Because the music from the Smiths is just phenomenal.

Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. And unfortunately, I saw this, there's a new trailer out for the movie Ballerina from the world of John Wick. Yes, a new trailer for Ballerina came out starring Anna de Armas as a vengeance-fueled assassin named Eve.

Now, I like her. She's cute. She's beautiful. Yeah, very beautiful. The problem is I don't see her as an action hero because I watched the trailer and, yeah, not really buying it. You kind of need Charlize Theron or something. Yeah, yeah.

Somebody with just a little bit more substance. Some definition in their arms? Yeah, kind of, kind of. And, you know, this kind of looks like an AI version of any of the John Wick movies where they just cut and pasted her face on John Wick because the actions are the same.

It's the same fucking movie. The only interesting bit is that John Wick shows up himself since it's a prequel. You know, it kind of happened in that time in between the movies because all the good characters are back then, like everybody's dead in the future. So let's go back to when everybody was still cool and try and make some movies out of that, except everybody gets older.

But I don't know. I'll watch it on late night TV, I'm sure, because the John Wick movies were awesome. Okay. You just got to be in the mood for the ultraviolence. Right. I've got a quick rundown of a bunch of stuff that I happened to catch this week.

Speaking of ultraviolence. Moana, too. Yeah, I never got to see that. My wife and kid went over the Christmas break to go see it in theaters, but it finally dropped on Disney Plus. So we all watched it this last week. I was a bit worried because I'd read all the articles saying, oh, you know, it was going to be a series.

And then they decided to just turn it into a movie. So it's a bit cut and paste and I can see some of that. But at the end of the day, it was still great. Like it was a good, fun movie. Like I liked it. They left it open for more. I hope that they do another one at some point, but actually just focus on making it a movie.

It does suffer a bit from Hamilton guy. What's his what's his name? Lin-Manuel Miranda did not do the songs for this one. He did the songs for the first movie. So the songs aren't quite as good, but still a lot of fun. I have caught up with Mythic Quest, which is now on season four.

And I have to say, much like Silicon Valley, it was enjoyable as a premise. And as I've stretched it out and tried to make an actual story and make you care about the characters, it is definitely suffering. I am. Okay. Season one was a blast and I'm rapidly losing interest.

Rapidly by making it all the way to season four, you mean? Well, that's not rapidly, Brian. That's a slow decline into madness. It's because I've been binging it. If I if this was like a once a week thing, I would have forgotten about it a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of once a week thing, we had new episodes of the White Lotus.

Very good. I like it. We actually went back and watched seasons one and two of the White Lotus last week. Right. Because just to get caught up to, you know, because there's nothing else on. Well, also part of the reason I've watched so much Mythic Quest. Yeah. But it was fun to catch up on.

Season two is definitely slower than I remembered. But yeah, it caught up at the end. I'm just there's going to be more episodes of this season of White Lotus than any other season. And apparently there's they've already started casting for season four. Of course. For White Lotus. So I thought this was supposed to be the end.

But I guess ka-ching when the register when the register sings, you got to keep going. You know, for me, that show is is less about the actual plot and what goes on and more about the cinematography and and, you know, travel lust. Like it's beautifully shot in these amazing locations, which.

Yeah. I'll take more of that. Yeah. And Sam, what's his name in this? This episode. Oh, my God. Sam Rockwell. That was that was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life. It was hilarious. So good. So good. So uncomfortable. Oh, it was great.

Just just just just the Walton Goggins facial expressions as he's taking it all in was just. Oh, my God. The memes. The memes, Brian. The memes. Do it for the memes. Yes. Yeah. Also watched the latest Daredevil. Good. Caught that last night. Yeah.

Nice to see Punisher back, even if only for a small cameo. It's good. Yeah, it's good. It's good. It's good. And I somehow completely missed out on the fact that the Wheel of Time season three had dropped a little while ago. You don't have a fire TV, Brian. You need a fire TV because you can't boot up with them telling you 17 times at the Wheel of Time season three is out.

I do not have a fire TV. So I did not get any of those ads whatsoever. So I was quite happy to discover because I never launched Prime for anything, Prime Video, but I did for some reason. I was like, oh, hey, Wheel of Time's back. So I've caught up on that. I'm enjoying it. This is one of the rare sci-fi slash fantasy series that has come out that I have not read the books for.

So I'm certain I'm missing a lot of the nuance. And there are things that were probably extremely important that just kind of blew past me. But it's fun. It's it's well shot. It's it's like a budget Lord of the Rings. OK, OK. So remember that when you talk to people about Foundation, because you didn't read the you like this one.

Maybe have you heard about people who read the books on this and hate this show? Because maybe we have a reverse Foundation thing going on here. Could be. Could be. Yeah. And Max is continuing its assault on animation, 255 classic Looney Tunes shorts that survived the Warner Brothers Discovery owned streaming services last purge in 2022 have been taken down, meaning that the entirety of the original 511 episode Looney Tunes library is no longer available on the platform or anywhere else.

So they're just getting rid of this stuff left, right and center. And I mean, I kind of understand it. It's like my kid has zero interest in the Looney Tunes doesn't care. It doesn't cost them that much to keep it up there. I want to put David Zaslav in a Cybertruck and set it on fire.

I'm sorry. This guy just pisses me off. Yeah, there's there's just so much stuff that's being pulled. It's it's crazy. I mean, put it somewhere for God's sake. And then Ivan wrote in, this will make it easier for Brian to watch the Dodgers from Snow Mexico, meaning Canada.

Spectrum is finally offering Snow Mexico. I like that. It's pretty funny. I wish I wish we had better tacos if we were actually Snow Mexico. Spectrum is finally offering a streaming only subscription for the Dodgers. For the first time this season, Dodgers fans can stream Sportsnet LA without needing to buy something else they might not want.

Spectrum is offering a streaming only subscription to the Dodgers television channel for $29.99 per month or $199.99 per year. The company announced on Monday. The streaming subscription includes live and archive games, pregame, postgame, now postseason and offseason coverage and additional programs such as backstage Dodgers.

Although Sportsnet LA cut back on such programming last year. The biggest problem with this has been for bars because most bars have satellite like DirecTV or whatever. And so no bar in LA has ever had the Dodgers games. So this might help them if they want to pony up 200 bucks a year to have Dodgers games.

But let me go off on a rant here about how bullshit sports subscriptions are specific to this. Now first, I can pay more for just Dodgers games, or I can subscribe to MLB.tv and get all Major League Baseball games for less money, $149.99 per year, as opposed to $199 for just the Dodgers games.

Now technically this has local blackouts, but that's what VPNs are for. So pay less and get MLB and you can watch other games too. And go to GOG.show slash VPN. Yes. Secondly, post-season coverage does not mean post-season games.

I don't know what it means. I guess it means talking heads talking about the game after it happened, because all post-season games are usually given to networks like Fox or TNT or TBS. So you won't get those with the Spectrum or MLB TV subscriptions. You will still need access to Fox, TBS, TNT, or whoever happens to have the rights for all those post-season games.

And don't get me started on the nightmare that is international soccer and the various national leagues and competitions and international competitions. You basically have to buy fucking everything to watch games. Go read a book, Brian. Or just pirate it. Yeah. There's that too. Damn it.

That's what I do. Four people listen to this. Somebody with authority might come get you. Oh, wait. There's nobody with authority anymore. Yes. It's fair use, Jason. Fair use. I am fair using my international football obsessions. You're just consuming it for the patterns, not for the content.

That's right. I'm watching the pattern of the ball moving across the screen. That's all. It's fair use. Exactly. What shouldn't be fair use, though, is Starship Troopers, because it looks like Neil Blomkamp is working on a remake. Now, Starship Troopers for me is one of those almost perfect movies, and it should never be touched.

I love that movie. You either love it or you hate it. There's no middle ground with Starship Troopers. Either you get it or you don't. And I get it. I love it. So no, goddammit, no. Leave your hands off of this one, Neil. It's like another Crow remake. We're the bad guys. Spoiler alert.

And Neil, District 10. Where the fuck is District 10? District 9, your coming out moment, was one of the best movies that has been around for the last 20 years. It was phenomenal. Everybody wants District 10.

It was original. It was great. It was so good. And some of the other movies that he's made are just phenomenal. Don't go back to Starship Troopers. Give me District 10, please. Yep. Starship Troopers is just fine as it is. Oh, it's perfect.

Absolutely perfect. Here, Neil, if you want a job, go work with Mark Cuban, because he posted the dumbest fucking video that has ever been created to Blue Sky. So, I don't know if you've seen the video, Brian. No. Don't.

Don't. I put a link in the show notes. If anybody sends you... I'm not even going to read what it's about. It's just... It's this weird Magonian nightmare creation AI slop thing. If anybody says, oh, you got to go check out this video, don't.

That's it. I'm just going to tell you right now, save your three minutes, save you a click, just stay away from it. Mark Cuban has gone down some crazy madness road, but it's really not good. It's really bad. Really bad. John writes in, stubborn old geeks, you guys are funny with your doubling down against severance.

The brilliant show you admit you haven't even watched enough to know if you'd like it, according to the study you yourselves reported on. I certainly don't work for Apple or any company with any interest in severance. Oh, well, your loss. I'm amused that you feel compelled the next week to cite articles from a couple of authors who have been critical of the show's pace or other aspects of it.

Did you really think the show was worthwhile? Only if 100% of critics loved it? There are countless people on this planet who somehow don't like the Beatles, Haagen-Dazs spelled incorrectly, ice cream, authentic New York pizza, et cetera. I still love the GOG podcast, even if I'm convinced you have questionable taste in media.

I'm sure you're excited for another saccharine sweet season of Ted Lasso and Juno Temple's Scary teeth, heroin addict-looking face, and creepy pulsating forehead bane. Different strokes, stay grumpy and stubborn. John, you probably could have done this without, like, personally attacking an actress, I'm going to say.

Yeah. That bit kind of sucks. I mean, it's right. Yeah. Anyways. Whatever. Okay. Here's the thing that's been pissing me off for the past three weeks or four weeks once we first fucking mentioned severance. Nobody listens to the words that come out of our mouths, apparently.

Only that we don't like severance. That's all they hear. And they say that we didn't, we've never watched it. I watched the entire first season of severance. I went back last week and watched the entire fucking thing again to make sure I didn't miss something. And no, I, it was the same fucking show.

Still fucking boring. Could have been. I watched the first episode. I could tell it right then and there. Not into this. Look, it's decent, but you could tell this, this wasn't even from a novel. This wasn't even from a short story.

This is a, this is a short idea that some guy came up with on the crapper when he was stuck. This is literally the cocktail napkin sketch. That's what happened with this. Yes. It is way too overdrawn for what it is. I get it. You like it.

I started watching season two. I'm three episodes into season two and I fell asleep halfway through episode three because it was so fucking boring. Look, it's decent. Leave me the fuck alone. We have watched the show. I just don't like it. That's all. I don't even like Ted Lasso.

We, but we shit on Ted Lasso. Everybody thinks that we're all gung ho for Ted. What the fuck? Listen to the words that come out of our mouths. And I, yeah, I don't like the Beatles either or Haagen-Dazs. So yeah. What? What's your fucking point? And Chicago pizza is better.

Not the deep dish, the thin crust. Fuck New York pizza. Beatles are pretty good though. Saturday, September 26th. Two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle.

Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the meat pleaver Cullen.

BKFC 94. Till versus Romero. Watch it live only on The Zone. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Apps and doodads. Apple is facing a federal lawsuit over claims it falsely advertised its Apple intelligence features for the iPhone 16.

The lawsuit argues Apple misled consumers by heavily promoting AI features like a more personalized Siri, which was later delayed. And Apple pulled some ads but hasn't fully addressed the marketing claims, leaving buyers with devices that lack promised features. The case, filed in San Jose, seeks damages for affected customers.

The lawsuit says that the promotion of Apple intelligence features, quote, drove unprecedented excitement, end quote, as Apple aimed to, quote, convince consumers to upgrade at a premium price point, quote. No, it didn't. It did not drive unprecedented excitement.

All I heard from anybody that watched an AI commercial about Apple said, no, we don't want that. We don't care about that. Exactly. I want the new camera. It absolutely did not drive excitement at all. No. Good luck with that lawsuit. Everybody upgrades their phone for the fucking camera. Get over it. Nobody wants that fucking AI shit.

I turned it off. Everybody does. Yep. Instantly. Another update this week, though. Mac Whisper Pro has updated. After two years, we finally released our most requested feature, automated speaker recognition in Mac Whisper 12. If you're a pro user and you use a Whisper Kit model from the Manage Models screen, the app will now automatically group your transcript by speaker.

Great for interviews and podcasts, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a great start, but I can't edit the transcripts in line. So, boo. You give me nice things and I still shit on it. That's right. Yeah. I wish you could edit the transcript because it's close, but it's not totally there yet.

It's just about as good as Otter at this point. So, that means the last line is usually shifted a little bit. And all I want to do is just do fine tuning on it and it would be perfect. The Whisper transcription is great. A Mac Whisper Pro subscription or the price point is phenomenal.

It's a great piece of software. So, they're almost there. They're almost there. Yep. Now, the big kerfuffle this week. Amazon Echo users will no longer have the option to process their Alexa requests locally, which means all of their voice recordings will be sent to the company's cloud. And the world shit a brick over this one.

What are you asking your Echo that you're so worried about? All they're going to get from me is me requesting it to start playing music and what time is it and set a timer. That's it. Well, everybody's worried that the thing's always recording. So, everything that you say gets sent up to it.

I mean, that could be true, but they're definitely hiding that then because right now you can go see every single voice recording through their app or through their website. I can't remember which. So, they're either lying about that or they're not doing that. Well, I mean, there's been several high-profile court cases where the thing was tripped and there are recordings of people getting murdered and shit like that.

So, there are some exceptions to the rule on how much stuff is being recorded and sent off. Because remember, it's always listening. It's listening for the trigger word. So, it could be literally sending everything up or at least the first 30 seconds before the trigger word and the first 30 seconds after you stop.

You just don't know. That list is a curated list. Let's just say that, you know. It would be nice if they were transparent about it. Fuck you. I know. But the thing for me, what bothers me more about it is just it's getting worse.

Like, it's horrible. Like, I'm going to probably not get another Echo when it becomes time. I'm going to switch to something else because it's just bad. It doesn't understand anything anymore. Well, have you tried the new Echo Plus? Well, no, because you have to buy a new device yet for that.

Yeah, see. And you have to pay, what, 20 bucks a month or some shit like that? Yeah, not going to do any of that. Yeah. Yeah. Something else I'm not going to do is get a Roku. Yep. Roku has begun running video ads on your device that you bought and paid for that automatically play before loading the home screen, as reported by Ars Technica.

This is impacting owners of Roku-branded smart TVs that you purchased and streaming sticks that you purchased and continue to subscribe to, so long as the device runs through the company's proprietary OS. It is worth noting that Roku users already see commercials on the home screen itself. Yep, we do.

Bullshit. I've got three Roku TVs. I know all about this. Yes. Yes. Let's say they have confirmed the new ad placement, but say it's just a test. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. Unfortunately, this is not rolled out broadly. I can tell you from the Roku TVs that I have.

I checked. When you go to the home screen, basically what I need, I need, the only reason I need to go to the home screen is so I can get to my Apple TV because the Roku OS is shit. So I go to switch input devices, and on the inputs, there's an ad on the right third of the home screen is an ad.

And sometimes they change the background. If somebody buys a whole takeover, they can theme the OS to be Moana 2 or whatever. It's obnoxious. Well, they consider it a feature, not a bug. Let me read this finely crafted piece of horse manure here.

Our business has and will always require continuous testing and innovation across design navigation content and our first-rate advertising products, the statement read. Yes, because I purchased your device for your advertising products. Give it to me for fucking free, then.

Our recent test is just the latest example as we explore new ways to showcase brands and programming while still providing a delightful and simple user interface. Bullshit. What a load of shit. Andre wrote in. Hello, Andre. Hey, guys.

Okay, just returning to the Mac world. Need some advice on apps you guys recommend. Mac cleaner for getting rid of unwanted apps and cleaning up Drive browser. Jason, you talk about a package of apps you bought that was a lot cheaper than a lot of individual apps. What was that? Please take it away, Jason. It's called Set App, and there's a link in the show notes.

And, yes, that is an affiliate link. So, please go click on that so we get a dollar. We need that dollar desperately. And once you get that, you want to get CleanMyMac. You want to get Bartender. You want to get iStat Menus. You want to get Downy. There's a million things on there you want to get.

I will put up a list this week and put it in the show notes of all the good stuff that you can get. But, yeah, I live and die by Set App. I need it on all my machines. All right. And also, I know you've been using Brave, so we can talk a little browser stuff. And you've been using that for a while.

I was on Vivaldi for a long time, but just this week I decided to transition because Vivaldi seemed to be slowing down quite a bit. And there were a lot of non-functioning major sites like Instagram for whatever reason. And some people in our Discord also said that Vivaldi seemed a lot slower than it had been.

So, it was time for me to switch. I didn't want to go to Brave because I hate that they bake in crypto. You can turn that off, by the way. I know you can, but still, it's annoying. I decided to, and besides for the show, I should use a different browser, I decided to go to China and get Opera.

You mean, so you went back in time because you used to use Opera. I did. I used Opera a long time ago before I switched over to Vivaldi. So, so far, it's a lot faster. The built-in ad blocking caused some issues with a number of sites as well as not blocking 100% of the ads. So, I disabled that and installed Ublock as an extension, which solved the problem.

And so far, so good. Until today, when we decided to record and the program that we use, Riverside, did not load in Opera. It told me it's not only in Chrome-based browsers. And I was like, this is a Chrome-based browser. I don't know why I did it like Shatner. I'm going to pimp for Brave here because their built-in ad blocker works fantastic.

It's got a speed reader mode, which lets you just, you know, cut everything out and just read the copy. It's really good. So, I'm still on the side of Brave, even though I don't like the creator, Brendan Icke. He can go suck a bag of dicks. But the browser, it's decent.

And it works with Riverside because I'm on it right now. Yeah. I got Vivaldi open for that. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to the Dark Side with Dave.

Podcast superhost Dave Bittner decodes all things cyber on the cyberwire every single day. Exposes deception with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans. Dives deep into privacy with Ben Yellen on caveat. Breaks down industrial cybersecurity on control loop. And even brings a little laughs on only malware in the building.

I had to get that last line out. Good save. Good save. Laugh. Laugh. Little Jerry Lewis there. Ladies. Yeah. Hey, kid. Drink some laughs. Come on over here. Yeah. Oh, man.

Yeah. Happy day, Dave. How are you? How's things over in the land of D.C. area-ish? Well, it's, you know, look. Flaming Teslas driving by. I mean, it's, yeah.

Starling satellites falling out of the sky. Right. It's all, we're all in this together. And, you know, like we are physically close to a lot of the nonsense that's going on. And so the line coming out of the unemployment office reached your door yet?

Yes, that's exactly the point. Here in Maryland, we are particularly vulnerable to all of the government layoffs. And it's funny because I, a friend of mine who I have not touched base with lately, but years ago, we had a conversation about this and, and, and he can justifiably have an, I told

you so moment with me because years ago we were talking about employment and the state of Maryland and he was saying that Maryland is much too dependent on, much too dependent on federal employment. And what happens if the government decides to stop having all these government employees?

And my response was like, that's going to happen. You know, like the, come on, the government's going to not have so many federal employer employees. Well, here we are. And, uh, and sadly, uh, for so many people around here, uh, and it's, it's come to pass and it is happening.

And so it is affecting people I know and people around us and, you know, there's all these cascading effects of course, with real estate. And, uh, we're just, I was just reading how, um, we're likely going to have a really down, um, tourism season this summer because people from other countries aren't going to come here.

I can a hundred percent testify to that. I know a bunch of people here in Canada that had planned trips to the U S and are no longer taking them. Well, it wasn't, wasn't a government official came out yesterday from Canada saying, don't go to the U S. That's right. Uh, then, uh, the UK, I believe Germany, and I believe France have all put out notices, uh, not saying don't go to the United States, but more here's be sure, you know, what you may

be getting yourself into if you do go to the United States, because even folks from our allied countries are being locked up by border folks or turned around and sent home. I saw just a few minutes ago, there was some, um, I can't remember the name of the band, but it was a, like a punk rock band that was from the UK.

I saw that as well. Someone you're familiar with. Yeah. Yeah. I do. I actually, I know the band is like, Hey, I, I can't remember the name of it offhand, but I saw that the other day and I was like, Oh my God. Yeah. They got turned around. It's not just personal travel. It's not just family vacations. It's a, it's bands.

Like a lot of bands aren't going to tour the U S they don't want to deal with it. And it's, um, it's professional travel. It's I, I read an article the other day about, uh, all kinds of professors all over Europe that are, aren't going to come to conferences that are held in the U S because they're worried. So, right. Right.

And then the reverse of that is we're, we're going to have a lot of brain drain here because, um, so many of our scientists are going to go overseas and, and places like France are actively courting them and saying, we have research money, please, please come, come to us.

You know, it reminds me, not unlike how many, um, very talented German scientists we had here in the U S after world war two, uh, you know, fleeing the Nazis, um, after working for them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, once the rockets are up, who cares where's it come down?

It's not my department says Werner von Braun. That's right. Um, operation paperclip. So it's a lot. Let me just say that it's a lot. And it's a lot that weighs on you. Right. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Um, and I, you know, I, it just, part of my job is to wade through a lot of this stuff and try to make sense of it and try to help explain it for people.

Um, it's interesting to me how we have gotten more complaints than usual, uh, people, listener, uh, long time listeners saying, um, I wish you guys would stay out of politics.

Stay in your lane. Yeah, we get that. Stay in our lane. And, but how many people have told you to watch Severance? I was reading through the show notes on that and I don't know what you guys have set yourselves up for, but it sounds like, I don't know.

Dave, we simply said, we don't want to watch the show. That's it. Okay. It's been weeks. I thought season one was boring and now season two came out. I'm like, I'm going to skip it. I didn't really care for season one that much. It was just like, oh my God. You fool. I can no longer trust anything you say.

Jane, you ignorant slut. Right. So for us with the coverage, obviously there's a lot going on that is in our lane. And I think the point is, is that for so long, cybersecurity was sort of apolitical or at least had bipartisan support.

And now all of this other nonsense in DC and other places, they have veered into our lane. And so we don't have any choice but to cover it. I would love to not cover it, but we're stuck in that situation where, uh, particularly, you know, if someone is, uh, an avid follower of, um, the current president and his administration, anything you say is, uh, is you stating facts is, uh, controversial.

So it's tough. Um, I feel like we, we, particularly this show, we, we did that out the first, uh, the first administration. Yeah. The first, we lost half our audience and that was about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you're, if you're still listening, you're on, you're on our team.

Well, until the severance, until the severance thing, we lost more listeners over severance than we did Trump. Believe it or not. You're just shaving off the audience that is interested. That's, that's my goal. That's my goal, Dave. Shave it off. I want to get to, I want to get to inbox zero.

Right. It's just going to be the three of us. We won't even need to publish anymore. We'll just save us some money. We'll save us some money on, on, yeah. On bandwidth. Right. Right. Um, so, you know, it's, it's draining. Um, but no, I know worse for me than for everybody else who's going through all this sort of chaos.

And so we do our best and, uh, try to be thankful for the things we have and hug our loved ones for just a little bit longer every day and, and do, do what we can to, to help make things better. Okay.

So. How's that working out for everybody? I mean, that's my aspirational statement. It's a good minute by minute, minute by minute of, uh, how that actually plays out. Some, some days I sit here and I go, I think, uh, uh, what would Dave do?

WWDD. Oh, that's my new slogan. How would Dave approach this? How could I make this sunny side? Oh, man. I don't need that kind of pressure, Brian. Okay. As he sits there in a stormtrooper helmet and a full furry suit.

Yeah. No. This is how I'm getting through the day. Sitting, sitting in a stormtrooper helmet and a furry suit in an empty bathtub, rocking back and forth, crying. That's, that's what I'm doing. Yeah. Whatever floats your boat, man.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's switch gears. Shall we? Okay. Let's do it. Uh, I saw this device come by and it's called the Seneca and it is a extreme high end keyboard and by extreme high end.

So it's a computer keyboard, $3,600, pretty much as handmade as something like this could be. And this is one of those clicky mechanical type keyboards that, you know, there, there are clicky keyboard enthusiasts, people who love their clicky keyboards.

So I'm curious what you all had experience with. For me, when I think of clicky keyboards, I think of the Apple extended keyboard too, which is a sort of a classic keyboard for a long time in on planet Macintosh. I think of the IBM original keyboard.

Yep. Yeah. Keys down the left. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's. I hate clicky keyboards. I want my keyboard silent. If I had this, I'd spray it with WD-40 every five seconds. You put it in a cone of silence. I had two thoughts about this.

I, at first it's insanely expensive and I, I, you know, it's only going to be, it's only going to be like the jagoffs for running social media companies that are going to buy these things. But, uh, it reminds me of like when I used to go, I gotta say the, the first thing I thought of is I'm going to go to Kevin Rose's house and he's going to have one.

He's totally going to have one of these. Yep. Absolutely. Uh, it does remind me of the, the heyday of malls in my twenties when I would walk around with like my girlfriend or whatever, and you'd pass the shop that had one bag and one pair of shoes and you just know, okay, that's going to be insanely expensive.

And on the website itself, it's not a buy button. It says, learn about buying. Huh? So those are, they have to vet you. You have to fill out a credit application or. Apparently. There's a, there's a multi-stage interview process.

I'm thinking they only build them if you order them. Right. I don't, I don't know what the deal is here, but, uh, yeah. When you click on that, it goes to offering details. This is the first public offering of the Seneca. Each unit will include a special name plate with serial number out of 100.

The offering opens on 24 March at 1130 AM Pacific time. Echo. Set a reminder. The components of each Seneca are machined and molded to order in small batches as part of fixed offering batch, as part of fixed offering batch, such as this one.

Okay. Uh, learned right on your Seneca. Each board is then individually assembled right here in California, according to the requested client specifications. Okay. I didn't know you get specifications. Oh, you get different finishes. Oh, there's a plasma ceramic and titanium finishes.

Ooh. Oxide gray. Travertine. Heat shield. And Veracity titanium. Yeah. So it starts at $3,600. Yes. Yes. You can, uh, yeah, there's a wood riser that you can get instead of a little plastic thing that does the job pretty well on all my other keyboards.

Um, retro key caps made in Germany. Uh, yeah, I can see this. Like if I were like, uh, if I were working on a movie, some retro movie, I would definitely order a bunch of these keyboards and have a massive budget. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody has a budget for that anymore. So they would be going to the, they'd be going to Goodwill and finding the old IBM keyboards and spray painting them.

That's probably what they do. I don't see a USB option. No. And there's no Bluetooth built into this. I don't think so. You're going to have to have. But you see the beautiful cable that comes out of it. I'm sure that cable probably costs like, you know, $800.

That's an Apple caliber cable. That is. That really is. It's a hundred dollars at least. It's got grommets and bushings and all sorts of stuff. Yeah. So Brian, you were saying you don't like clicky keyboards. Nope. And I liked clicky keyboards when they were the standard premium keyboards that came with our computers.

Um, but recently I, I went back and tried a clicky keyboard and I, it was awful. Like it was the thing that struck me about a clicky keyboard was how slow it was, uh, because the travel is so long and there's so much more.

Yeah, there's so much more effort and I, I can appreciate the, um, the aesthetics of it, the feedback and the sound and all that sort of thing. There's something nostalgic about that. But, um, these keyboards we have today with this super shallow keys and, and minimal travel, they're just so much more efficient than the clicky keyboards were in my experience.

You know what we need to do? We need to EV our, our, our current keyboards. They just, we, little sound recording every time you press a key should play. Oh, there you go. You can do that. Brian, I would like to point out here, the gentle sound of the Seneca is often likened to raindrops.

It has a soft, it has a soft, intentionally vintage sounding thock without being obtrusively clacky. Okay. So this is, this brings me to my next question. Are clicky keyboard enthusiasts, their own version of audiophiles?

Uh, in that they're, in that they're incredibly annoying, then yes. Well, I mean, the joke about audiophiles, like an audiophile is a person who has more money than sense, right? You have not heard this music until you've listened to it on its original vinyl pressing with my $7,000 diamond head needle.

Right. And my amplifying system from Bound and Lome. Oxygen-free cables. Yes. Yeah. Sounds great in my AirPods. Well, and I think, I heard something about audiophiles recently. Let me see if I can get it right here. They said that most people use their stereo equipment to listen to your music.

And audiophiles use your music to listen to their stereo equipment. Yeah. And I think that's right. Yeah. I think the clicky keyboard people can be categorized in the same group as the pen enthusiasts. Oh, okay. There are, there are podcasts about pen enthusiasm.

Right. There as well. Right. And I've said people really like premium watches. Yep. So that's, like, I don't have a problem with that. Also, going back to Kevin Harris, yeah. Yeah. I don't have a, I mean, it's not for me, but I don't have a problem with people who enjoy the best of something.

And I would say, you know, this keyboard is certainly trying to be that. It doesn't seem, it doesn't strike me that this keyboard is snake oil in that it does seem to be extraordinarily well made. Who knows? But, yeah. Theoretically, because we still haven't seen one and we'll never see one.

Right. This is one of those things, I think, like, the audiophile thing, the watches, the pens, this keyboard, this is God's way of telling you you're making too much money. Yes. Yeah. And have too much time on your hands. And, yeah, you need to get, you need to get a life.

If you're spending $3,600 on a keyboard, I think maybe donate some to charity. I don't know. Yeah. Sell that Cybertruck you've got. Oh, no, no, no. This is a totally different design aesthetic, Brian. The Cybertruck aesthetic is not, I get this design aesthetic.

I get the people who would get the, this is for Johnny Ive, you know, the wannabe Johnny Ives. He built his own. Yeah. That's true. That's true. We're actually using Johnny Ives' keyboard now on our Mac. That's true. And even Johnny says clicky keyboards suck.

So maybe go with Johnny. Right. It's for people who fancy themselves Johnny Ive disciples. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Look. Yeah. I get, I get, I get a Porsche. I do. I really do. But if you think you're going to get laid from this keyboard, you're not.

Oh, hmm. That's interesting. Yeah. And I do not see a blowjob port on it. So definitely not worth the money. Blowjob port. That's extra money. Yeah. That's part of the add-ons that you have to. Yeah. I mean, at those prices, you know, what, if you were clapping.

That's the old joke about the vacuum cleaner, the incredibly expensive vacuum cleaner. It better fucking blow me. Yeah. Yeah. You get the Seneca and it's just got a, got a flashlight duct tape to the bottom of it. But it's premium quality meant to evoke the real blowjob.

That's right. They use artisanal duct tape. Artisanal blowjobs. So anyway. My changing gears, a combination of something that happened in my life yesterday and something we talked about on the most recent episode of Hacking Humans.

My son, Scott, has a dog and the dog's name is Griswold. And Griswold is a, yeah, Griswold is a, like a pit bull mix. He's mostly pit bull. And he's got one of those kind of like tiger stripe coats.

You know what I mean? He's very, very, very pretty dog. He's got one, a big head, kind of like Bammers was, you know, it's like, it's like bone and muscle. You know, it's, I call his head a meatball because it's just this solid thing. And, and he kind of, he's adorable.

He's lovable. He's a sweetheart and just goes around the house knocking things over with his tail because he's also kind of clueless. Yeah. That guy, by the way, is called a brindle. Brindle. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So he, he's a really good dog and he's probably about five years old or so.

So anyway, he stopped eating a few days ago and my son took him to the vet and they did some examinations and some x-rays and turns out he has, or had a blockage in his intestines, which means he probably ate something, you know, who knows?

So now they had to go in and do emergency surgery. Well, you're not getting that keyboard anytime soon. That's usually, that, that surgery usually costs you about a Seneca and a half.

So of course we went ahead with the, so let me, let's, let's back up a second. If you guys were to guess, what does emergency surgery for, to remove a blockage in a large dog's intestines, what's the going rate for?

It's got to be around five grand. I was going to say, it's a Seneca and a half, $5,000. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. More. Higher? Higher. 7,000. Whoever's closest without going over wins. Higher? Oh, no way.

10 grand. 10 grand. Yep. Wow. 10 grand. Wow. It's doubled since the last time I, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's three Senecas, man. That's three Senecas. Yeah. Um, that's really, really high because I know somebody that had that done two years ago and it was five and it was, with a really nice Beverly Hills vet.

Yeah. So. I know a veterinarian that needed a Seneca. This, that's right. Um, yes, it is. It is high. And, uh, just. But can you put a cost on your. Well, that is, that is, yes, that is both funny, but also true.

Yeah. Um, so, and I just want to say like, I don't have $10,000 just sitting around like, like I mean, I'm in a, I mean, I'm in a position where my wife and I are in a position where we can juggle things around and make adjustments and put ourselves in a situation to be able to make this happen.

You know, like, uh, and, uh, and all of that good stuff, which is truly good stuff. But what this brings me to is we were talking about, uh, on hacking humans this week, uh, there was a story about scams and people, um, scamming, uh, Google maps, like business locations on Google maps.

And the scammers were targeting what they call duress verticals. This was a new term for me. I think that was the band that didn't come to the States. Duress verticals. Yeah. Either that or it's a, it's a, a window treatment, uh, store, uh, welcome to duress verticals.

Um, but duress verticals are basically the things that you're in a position of duress. And so you are not going to be shopping around for them. So emergency vets, tow trucks, um, funeral directors.

Yeah. Like all these, all these kinds of things. High end keyboards. High end keyboards. Right. I can't type on this. So anyway, it was a new term of art for me. And, uh, I, it was just funny that I found myself, uh, in the midst of one.

I didn't know if you guys had been familiar with that term. No, I haven't heard that. I understand it. The new, the other new term we learned at the beginning of the show was AI pimping. So I don't know if, so we've got two new terms this week. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome to vocabulary today. Yeah.

All right. Well, um, that's what I have today. Thank you, gentlemen. I will see you guys next week. And, uh, Dave do take care. Try not to Google how to get a 10 K real quick. Yeah, that's right. Closing shout outs.

Over at Patreon. We've got nobody new, but James, James came through and up this pledge. So thank you very much, James. And from the, from the archives, we've got Steven, Vanessa, Brody, Greta, Michael, Glenn, Kevin, Nolan, runner 609 and Tony.

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Thank you. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeVillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at gog.show slash 689. 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.

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