666: The Episode of the Beast

Summary

Podcast Summary: Grumpy Old Geeks – Episode 666: The Episode of the Beast

Release Date: September 21, 2024
Hosts: Jason DeFilippo & Brian Schulmeister
Guest: Dave Bittner

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1. AI and the Future of Work

The episode kicks off with an in-depth discussion on the looming impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on employment. Jason and Brian explore the unsettling prospect of AI rendering numerous jobs obsolete, pondering the preparedness required for such a transition.

• Brian Schulmeister (00:30): "That's what's so unsettling about it. Like, how do you even prepare for a future where your skills might be obsolete?"

• Jason DeFilippo (01:30): "It's the million dollar question... exciting possibilities but terrifying implications if we don't adapt."

They experimented with AI-generated podcast clips, revealing that while AI can mimic human banter, it currently lacks the depth and "soul" that human hosts bring. The hosts express concern over AI's evolving capabilities and its potential to take over content creation.

• Brian Schulmeister (02:27): "It'll get there. That's the problem. It's only a matter of time."

2. The MoviePass Indictment Saga

Shifting focus, the hosts delve into the legal troubles faced by former MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe and other executives. They dissect the charges of securities fraud and the dubious business model that led to the company's downfall.

• Brian Schulmeister (04:26): "It's like our podcast. We have multiple revenue streams."

• Jason DeFilippo (05:05): "He knows from the start that the company's 9.95 Unlimited plan was a short term gimmick."

The conversation touches upon the misuse of company funds, personal scandals involving executives, and the broader implications for tech startups.

3. Health Updates

Jason shares personal health struggles, including recurrent stroke symptoms that have significantly impacted his daily life.

• Jason DeFilippo (07:11): "I've been dealing with a lot of health stuff... getting poked and prodded."

Brian offers support, reflecting on their shared experiences with health challenges.

4. Data Privacy and 23andMe Lawsuit

The podcast addresses the recent $30 million settlement by 23andMe following a data breach. The hosts critique the company's handling of user data and its ongoing efforts to settle the class-action lawsuit.

• Brian Schulmeister (09:02): "23andMe is now known as 16andMe... trying to make things right."

Jason humorously calculates his potential payout from the settlement, highlighting the minimal compensation users might receive.

• Jason DeFilippo (10:26): "If you don't factor in the fees... I should probably get about 35 cents."

5. Elon Musk's Controversial Social Media Presence

Elon Musk's erratic behavior on social media, particularly his deletion of controversial posts and the implications for his security clearance, are scrutinized.

• Brian Schulmeister (11:31): "A lot of his money comes from government contracts. He has a security clearance."

• Jason DeFilippo (12:04): "He's too fucked up on ketamine to actually pay attention to the real world around him."

The hosts debate the consequences of Musk's actions on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and speculate on the potential repercussions for his business ventures, including SpaceX.

6. California's New AI Legislation

Brian and Jason break down California's newly signed AI laws aimed at regulating deepfake content and protecting individuals from malicious AI-generated imagery.

• Brian Schulmeister (14:01): "Here are the new laws... preventing blackmail with AI-generated nudes."

• Jason DeFilippo (15:32): "Or also the people who are going ahead and breaking the law anyways."

They discuss the challenges of enforcing these laws, especially against sophisticated AI manipulations that can strip metadata from images and videos.

7. Donald Trump's Cryptocurrency Venture

Donald Trump's foray into the cryptocurrency market with World Liberty Financial is examined. The hosts express skepticism about his expertise and the venture's viability.

• Brian Schulmeister (18:05): "Donald Trump launched a new cryptocurrency venture called World Liberty Financial."

• Jason DeFilippo (18:37): "Trump has to do it because the value of the Trump media stock dropped below 15 bucks."

The involvement of Trump’s family members and crypto entrepreneurs adds layers to the discussion, questioning the legitimacy and future of the project.

8. Google's AI Watermarking Efforts

The podcast explores Google's collaboration with industry giants like Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI to develop tamper-proof AI-generated content watermarking.

• Jason DeFilippo (20:40): "It's going to be a mishmash of dumb fuckery and Wild Westitude."

• Brian Schulmeister (21:03): "It's bullshit."

The hosts remain skeptical about the effectiveness of these measures against determined criminals who can bypass technical safeguards.

9. Amazon's Return-to-Office Mandate

Amazon's decision to require employees to return to the office five days a week is critiqued. Jason shares his personal frustrations with the company's restructuring plans, including workforce reductions.

• Brian Schulmeister (22:11): "We'll see. I assume a lot of people will quit."

• Jason DeFilippo (22:46): "Good luck. Good luck. Amazon."

10. Positive Spotlight: Cancer Vaccine Development

In a beacon of optimism, the hosts highlight recent advancements in cancer treatment. Researchers in the UK, in collaboration with Moderna, have developed an mRNA vaccine targeting advanced solid tumors.

• Brian Schulmeister (22:46): "Researchers in the UK announced encouraging results from an early trial testing an mRNA vaccine against advanced solid cancers."

• Jason DeFilippo (23:37): "This might work. Many cancer vaccines are personalized... Moderna expects this can be an off-the-shelf vaccine."

11. Tech Tool Reviews and Issues

Jason and Brian discuss various tech tools, notably the Overcast podcast app. They express frustration over recent updates that impaired functionality, leading to data loss and diminished user experience.

• Jason DeFilippo (77:20): "It's your fucking ego. Because you wanted to have something spiffy for the 10-year anniversary."

• Brian Schulmeister (75:04): "They should have listed every single aspect of things that aren't going to work if you do this update."

The conversation underscores the challenges of software maintenance and the impact of poor updates on user trust.

12. Exploding Pagers and Walkie-Talkies in Lebanon

Dave Bittner joins the discussion to shed light on a bizarre and tragic incident involving pagers and walkie-talkies exploding in Lebanon. The hosts analyze the tactical implications and the humanitarian consequences of such attacks.

• Dave Bittner (82:04): "This is a supply chain attack, right?"

• Brian Schulmeister (83:44): "There were actual explosives in the devices."

They debate the ethics and effectiveness of leveraging everyday devices as weapons, highlighting the collateral damage and loss of innocent lives.

13. Listener Feedback and Community Engagement

The episode wraps up with a segment dedicated to listener feedback. The hosts read appreciative messages from supporters who have financially backed the podcast, including stories of personal struggles and gratitude for the show's content.

• Andrew from PayPal (96:51): "Happy to share that I found a new job and reserves are back on the rise."

14. Closing Remarks and Fun Facts

In the final moments, the hosts share amusing "fun facts" related to the episode's theme of 666, blending humor with trivia.

• Brian Schulmeister (56:43): "666 equals 2 times 3 times 3 times 37."

• Jason DeFilippo (97:04): "In 1980, the Pennsylvania Lottery's daily number game saw the number 666 drawn, resulting in a record number of winners."

They encourage listeners to engage with the show through donations, social media, and community channels, maintaining their signature blend of grumpiness and wit.

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Notable Quotes:

• Jason DeFilippo (02:27): "It'll get there. That's the problem. It's only a matter of time."

• Brian Schulmeister (05:08): "Movies are calling him on their... said, have you guys heard of Uber?"

• Jason DeFilippo (07:11): "I've just been dealing with a lot of health stuff... it's been kind of a rough couple weeks."

• Brian Schulmeister (21:03): "It's bullshit."

• Jason DeFilippo (22:46): "Good luck. Good luck. Amazon."

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Conclusion:

Episode 666 of Grumpy Old Geeks serves as a comprehensive critique of the current tech landscape, blending serious discussions on AI ethics, data privacy, and corporate malfeasance with lighter segments on personal anecdotes and listener interactions. The hosts maintain their characteristic no-holds-barred approach, providing listeners with a blend of insightful analysis and irreverent humor.

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Stay Connected:

For more detailed discussions and to join the community, visit GrumpyOldGeeks.com. Engage with the hosts on their Discord Channel and follow them on social media platforms to stay updated with the latest episodes and discussions.

Transcript

[Brian Schulmeister]

Hey, prime members, have you heard?

[Jason DeFilippo]

You can listen to your favorite podcasts ad free. Good news, with Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad free top podcasts included with your prime membership. To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to Amazon.com ad free podcast. That's Amazon.com ad free podcast to catch.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Up on the latest episodes without the ads.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the Internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I'm Brian Satenmeister.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Brian. 666. Fun fact. Carbon, which is the building block of life, has six protons, six neutrons and six electrons. So in a sense, 666 is related to the essence of life itself.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, you know what they say, Jason, the devil is in the details.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Don't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I came chambered with that, too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, okay, okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's probably about it for the devil this show, but. Well, I'm sure Elon pops up at some point.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, he does. Yes, he does. He never goes away. I have so many names, says the devil. So, a little Google Notebook AI follow up. We posted this to the Discord Channel and to Patreon, and we got some interesting, interesting feedback. Let me play a little clip here though, real quick. AI is coming for a lot of jobs.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's what's so unsettling about it. Like, how do you even prepare for a future where your skills might be obsolete? What are your kids going to do?

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's the million dollar question, right? I mean, on the one hand, it's exciting to think about the possibilities that AI opens up, but on the other hand, it's terrifying to think about what happens to all of us if we don't adapt. So isn't it ironic from the mouth of babes?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I did. When you sent it over to me, before we even posted it anywhere. And I was listening to it. I was. Isn't that strange having AI talk about how AI is going to take our jobs?

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know, I know. Rat bastards. So well, it seems that, I mean, well, we both listened to it. We're like, oh, shit, we're screwed. Turns out all of the feedback from everybody was fairly on the complete opposite. They're like, no, it doesn't sound very human. We like the banter. We like the people. We like the personality. It lacks soul. So what do you think?

[Brian Schulmeister]

It'll get there. That's the problem. Yeah, it's only a matter of time. I mean, that's, you know, we listened to it and I was shocked that it pulled so many interesting things that it tried to make jokes that it, you know, it really tried.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Emphasis on tried.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, it's dry for sure, certainly still, but it's only a matter of time. Think how far we've come. Just, just a year ago, we were just talking about some of the speech synthesis startups and how good those voices were getting. Well, all right, the voices sound pretty human already. There's still, there's some inflection issues and things of that nature. We literally just fed it show notes and it made up banter and stories. Now, it may not have been great, but again, it's a matter of time.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. As soon as we can put our voices in there. The other thing is they took our 60s or no, it was an hour and 20 minute show and compressed it into like five and a half minutes. I'm like, okay, well, you're not going to sell any ads against that shit, I tell you right now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, but I mean, you know, I think back to when we were trying to do up to speed or something like that. If we would have had this, then game over, man. Game over. And it is game over for that type of show. For any show that's just giving you some headlines and some basic beats on it, those shows are done.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And what I liked about this one was the actual synthesis from the notes was pretty good. So what I was positing was you take your show notes, put it into this, get your audio back out of it, strip the audio and just make a transcript of it, and then run that transcript through 11Labs, which has better voices, and then, boom, you got a show.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Easy, Easy peasy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. So if you want to start up that Daily show again, Jason, I think you've got a path.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I let the. I let the domain lapse. Although I'm pretty sure nobody jumped on it right away. So. No. Boot up. Boot up is done. I'm done trying that shit. Although. Although now would be the time to do it, I guess. God damn it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We are, you know, just always ahead of the game, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, we are. Or very, very far behind that, too.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Well, we got a little bit of follow up. We've. We've been following the saga of MoviePass for quite some time. And the former MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe, one of two of MoviePass leaders indicted by the Justice Department in 2022, you know you got a problem when half your C suite is being indicted, but, you know, whatever. Has pled guilty to securities fraud charges. Prosecutors claim he knew from the start that the company's 9.95 Unlimited plan was a short term gimmick to attract subscribers and inflate stock. So we know. To which he shrugged his shoulders and said, have you guys heard of Uber? Because that was their fucking business model.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So it was their business model. They just had more investment.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. So statements allegedly include allegedly lying about the company's ability to become profitable on subscription fees alone and having tech that could generate revenue from customer data. He also claimed MoviePass is profiting from multiple revenue streams despite not being able to display any of said revenue streams.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There will be, I promise. I promise.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Sounds. It's like our podcast. We have multiple revenue streams.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, okay. Anyway, so he's. Yeah, basically, they. They've. They're calling him on their. And said, you guys lied about this to shareholders. You guys lied about everything. But, you know, Mitch is a good man who's looking to move forward with his life, said Lowe's attorneys. I would also be looking forward to returning to my life and not going to jail or paying out half or almost all my money and becoming poor. But, yeah, he has accepted responsibility for his actions in this case and will continue to try to make things right. I don't know how you try to make it right when you bullshitted a company into existence and took a lot of money, but. Okay, good luck with that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I mean, he's only looking at five years. Come on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Meanwhile, the other guy, Farnsworth, is still in custody. He was initially freed on a $1 million bond that was revoked in August 2023 after the feds accused him of misusing nearly $300,000 in company funds. His former boyfriend, whom he met on an escort site, was paid $147,000 and received a Cadillac worth 144,000. After the pair split up, the feds say he falsely accused his ex of stealing the vehicle. Some winners running that company.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Seriously, man. Oh, it's way more interesting than we thought. Way more interesting.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I can't wait for this HBO Max movie.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know. I'm going to have to go back and watch it now, because I think.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They need to redo it. There's a lot of cool new information.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I was going to say we need a Chapter two. Maybe that's what they were banking on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Maybe.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But speaking of diversifying our revenues, Brian, we're going to have A shirt store. By the time this thing comes out.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, sweet. We're going to have the only thing that makes musicians money. Let's see what happens.

[Jason DeFilippo]

See what happens. Yeah. Sorry it's taken so long. I've just been dealing with a lot of health stuff, so I've been back and forth to doctors and getting poked and prodded and all that shit. So it's been kind of a rough couple weeks. But I have a. I have a break between my next testing and mri. Except they are going to take a half a gallon of blood tomorrow. I think I looked at the list of tests that they're doing. There's like 17 tests they're doing. I'm just going to be a raisin by the end of the morning.

[Brian Schulmeister]

My God. Yeah. The shit that you and I have gone through in the past few years with this sort of stuff.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. No, this. This. This one is the stroke that keeps on giving. It's been almost three years since I had that thing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And it has just come back with a vengeance, like all the side effects. So they're trying to figure out what it is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They say you sound great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I mean, I sounded fine after the stroke. I just couldn't see or walk for three months, which is. I can still see, but walking is definitely a problem. Oh. Oh. Since we're on the topic, I'm going to need to get an exercise bike because they say I Now must do 30 minutes of cardio three days a week. Didn't you put together like a kind of a ghetto Peloton system a while back?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I did. There's a cheaper bike called Echelon and you can use that one. And basically you've already got Apple Plus, Right? Or the Fitness plus, which I will be discussing in apps and doodads because I have some fucking shit that happened with that today. So what you can do is you basically do not have to subscribe to Echelon. You can. You get the app. You. You pair it to the bike. The bike is a lot cheaper than Peloton. They have something called Freestyle ride on it so you can keep track of the tension levels that you put on it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You don't have to subscribe to. And then you just throw up. A 30 minute Apple Fitness plus bike ride.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. Yeah, I just. Well, I just duct tape the iPad to my head and then I can. It can be like the Apple Vision ghetto. Then I've got the. I've got the whole shebang together. All right, Echelon, I will check that out.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, check that out. They're much, much cheaper. And pay for the subscription.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I will not. So, everybody, you're going to have to go buy some shirts so I can get an echelon so I don't die before the next episode in the news.

[Brian Schulmeister]

666 fun fact. In China, the number 6 is considered lucky and represent. Represents smooth progress and good fortune. Saying 666 is often a way to express that something is going smoothly or awesome, especially online. 666.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Is this going awesome?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I hope so. I don't know. We'll have to ask our listeners. Or if not, then we're going back to the AI version.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We're going back to Notebook AI. There we go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Some 23andMe follow up as well. I don't know why we didn't put this in follow up, but I didn't because. Whatever. It's been a week for me too. 23andMe is going to pay $30 million to settle their 2023 data breach lawsuit. They are close to settling the proposed class action lawsuit. I believe you sent your spit to them, so you should sign up for that. Yeah. The DNA testing company has agreed to pay 30 million to affected customers, as well as to conduct annual computer scans and cybersecurity audits for. A website will be built to notify people eligible to a portion of the settlement fund and to facilitate payments. So there you go. According to Reuters, 23andMe describes its financial condition as extremely uncertain.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Something else I could have told them a few years back.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, if you look at, there's 6.9 million users in the data breach, there's $30 million that are going out. If you don't factor in the fees and you just do that, I am entitled to $4.35. So after lawyers come in, I should probably get about 35 cents.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Still, it is your moral obligation.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Moral obligation. Damn it. I got to do it. I got to do it. All right, well, 23andMe is now known as 16andMe. After these seven independent directors of 23andMe resigned, CEO Ann Wojcicki is trying to take the company private again. And she offered 40 cents per share. And the board said, go fuck yourself. We're out of here. Good luck and we're sorry about your sister, but this is stupid.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, let it go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

See what. Yeah, we'll see what's going to happen there. But this comes back to what we always said is these companies who have all of your DNA data are eventually going to go tits up and that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Data is going to be selling all.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Off to the least, you know, the lowest bidder. And there we go. So your DNA is now in a fire sale. Again.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Speaking of extremely fucking stupid. Hours after the FBI arrested a man who was carrying an AK47 outside of Mar a Lago and theoretically attempted to assassinate the ex president again, Elon Musk posted something on X he would later come to regret. Says the story. But somehow I doubt he regrets anything. So I'm not so sure about that. And he posted. And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden slash Kamala, he said. And they now deleted post. It was the kind of dumb and reactionary thing lots of people post online in the wake of a horrific breaking news story. The kind of dumb thing anyone could rattle off without thinking about it. But Elon isn't just anyone else. A lot of his money comes from government contracts. He has a security clearance. This is the kind of post that should have come up during a clearance review. Would typically see the poster lose such privileges, hence the deletion. Yes, for Musk it was all a big joke. Well, one lesson I've learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn't mean it's going to be all that hilarious. As opposed on X, he said in one follow up post, Jason, he is so close. So close to understanding that everybody around him, those groups are paid by him and react differently than the rest of the world does.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I don't know how close really. Come on, Brian, do you really think he's that close?

[Brian Schulmeister]

No. No. I mean, yeah, you know, he's not even in the same room. He doesn't get it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, he's too fucked up on ketamine to actually pay attention to the real world around him. But my favorite hashtag this week was hashtag Deport Elon Musk. So I thought that was pretty good. Because it's not just that the Secret Service is looking into him for this. They know they're not going to prosecute him, but they have to. They have to crack a file on him. And by cracking a file on him means that security clearance is going to be a problem. Which could be a problem for the astronauts still stuck on the space station they're trying to hire SpaceX to go get. So.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, well, I guess we'll have to send up Amazon's dick.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh God. Oh, the Throbbing Bezos.

[Brian Schulmeister]

God damn it. Too bad we already have a show title.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know. They'd be like, I'm staying here. Send up a Soyuz, when you can.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Make a note to myself to include hashtag Throbbing Beezos.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There you go. This new shirt available on shop Gog show coming soon. So California Governor Kevin Newsom has signed.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Two new bills robbing Bezos.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. Into protecting individuals from the dangers of artificial intelligence. He signed one of these at SAG aftra. So SAG aftra, who is kind of in hot water that we talked about a couple weeks ago for cutting a backroom deal with a voice AI company so their actors can clone their voice anyway and get it out there and make a few bucks off of it. Good old Duncan Crabtree. Ireland. There's a fucking name for you. During the protests, he seemed like he was a fairly with IT guy. I just didn't, you know, I didn't see him doing all these backdoor deals. Anyway, so we've got these two new. These two new laws into that are coming into effect here, and here's. Now, what is illegal under California's eight new AI laws? It is illegal to blackmail someone with AI generated nude images that resemble them.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, it stopped with illegal to blackmail someone.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I think that kind of covers all scenarios.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I didn't know we had to specify on that one. Next up, social media platforms must establish channels for users to report deep fake nudes. Temporarily block the content during investigation and permanently remove it if confirmed.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, Elon's got to power up that poop emoji machine.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Seriously? Seriously. Next up, generative AI systems must include disclosure in the content's metadata indicating that it was AI generated. And God knows that we'd have no way to edit metadata on an image or a video.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Or also the people who are going ahead and breaking the law anyways. Criminals are well known for following the law while committing their crimes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. Oh, I can't touch that metadata.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If I'm going to break the law, I got to do it properly. Let's make sure all this metadata is in there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, and they don't even say that. Most of the generative AI systems that actually generate the content are homegrown. It's open source. They're doing it themselves. They're not going to mid journey for this shit. All right. Large online platforms must label or remove AI deepfakes related to elections and provide reporting channels. A little more on that one in a second. Posting or reposting AI deepfakes that could deceive voters is illegal. Again, more on that one in a second. AI generated political advertisements require explicit disclosure. Studios must obtain permission from an actor before creating an AI generated replica of their voice or likeness. Unless you go to the back room that Dunkin Crabtree Ireland is living in, creating digital replicas of deceased performers without the consent of their estates is prohibited. So, okay, there we go. So those are the new laws.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Now, next up, can't wait to find the AI police. They're right next to the net police.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yep. So a popular conservative influencer, Christopher coles, known as Mr. Reagan on YouTube and X, is suing California over new laws targeting AI generated deepfakes of election content. There we go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There we go. Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. So basically, this guy makes his little deepfake videos and says they're, you know, it's political satire. Well, except when Elon Musk takes one of them, shares it, and doesn't say it's parody or satire, and then he can be in trouble for it under the new laws.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, because he reposted.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, exactly. Because the thing is, it's like they're not going after the. For a lot of these. They're not going after the creator or the, you know, the actual, like, system or the creator. They're going after the person who posted it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So that is the interesting thing about this. So we'll see if this guy makes any headway with his lawsuit, but he has a good argument. But it has to be. It depends on how you couch it. Because if you say, you know, if you look at a Saturday Night Live article or video, say, no, this is a deep fake, but without the rec. You know what I'm saying?

[Brian Schulmeister]

There's Weird Al doing a parody of Green Day, and then there's a band that sounds exactly like Green Day that does a Green Day song and puts that out there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right, with the same lyrics. Yeah, you said it better than me. What's the next story, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

The next story is Donald Trump, who has previously called bitcoin a scam, has launched a new cryptocurrency venture called World Liberty Financial.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Brian, is that. It's your turn. It is. It's sh. What?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Shocking.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, there we go. That's what I was looking for.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm going to buy that shirt when you make that one.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's coming.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, sweet. Now he sounds terribly excited about it. Crypto is one of those things we have to do. He said in an interview on X. Whether we like it or not, I have to do it. Boy, that I'm pumped.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, well, yeah, he has to do it because the value of the Trump media stock dropped below 15 bucks yesterday. So everybody's going to be going cuckoo. Nutty with it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. He is entering the venture with his sons Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I'm sorry. Donald Trump Jr. And Eric Trump, along with two crypto entrepreneurs, Chase Harrow, who once called stablecoins borderline a Ponzi scheme, and Zachary Folkman, who founded a company called Date hotter girls. Trump's 18 year old son Barron Trump, who has no known crypto expertise, is also listed as chief defi visionary.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh my God.

[Brian Schulmeister]

When asked questions about the venture in an X Spaces interview, of course, Trump appeared to know next to nothing about it. It's so important. It's crypto, it's AI. It's so many things. AI needs tremendous electricity capabilities beyond anything I've ever heard. He said he deferred to Baron's expertise, saying he has four wallets and equated it to learning a language like Chinese.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh my God. China. China. I just looked and I think Elon's gonna start buying this because it was at 14:20 a second ago. Trump Media stock.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, there you go. That's the price he likes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's the price he likes. It did dip. It went lower than I thought yesterday we got down to 1354.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, well getting back a little bit to that AI and how we're going to figure out and the meta tags and all that sort of stuff. Well, Google is trying to be more transparent about whether a piece of content was created or modified. Using generative AI tools. Alongside partners including Amazon Meta and OpenAI, Google has spent the past several months figuring out how to improve the tech used for watermarking AI created or modified content. The company says it helped develop the latest version of Content Credentials, a technical standard used to protect metadata, detailing how an asset was created as well as information about what has been modified and how we can get into the details there. But obviously as we already stated, criminals gonna criminal. They don't give, they don't really give a about all this stuff. And this approach isn't going to stop anyone from stripping out an images metadata either.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So yeah, I don't know what the actual tech specs are because they're saying it's supposed to be tamper proof. But we'll see, we'll see. I'm sure there's a bit of steganography in there, a little hashing and all that stuff.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Fingerprints. It sounds an awful lot like the meetings I used to have around record labels when they went, no, really guys, this time this stream, nobody can make a copy of it, nobody can record this stream.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's protected it's protected.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Bullshit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, the thing is, if it doesn't show up on Google, who cares? Nobody's posting this shit on Google expecting it to get traction. They post it on social media sites. Those are the people that really fucking matter. And Google does. They've obviously shown that they can't do social media, so that's done. So unless everybody picks this up at the same time, it's like self driving cars. It's going to be a mishmash of dumb fuckery and Wild Westitude. So there we go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Wild Westitude.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm Chuck Fuller.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You're a fucking meme machine today, man.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I am, I am. Amazon employees are going to be requ required to return to the office five days a week starting on January 2, 2025.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. Here's what Andy Jassy has to say. We've decided that we're going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID Okay. If anything, the last 15 months we've been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits. Okay. So we're going to see how that goes. Good luck.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah, good luck with that. We'll see. I assume a lot of people will quit. A lot of other people will take the job. Some people like working from in offices and they live close enough and you're paying them enough, then. Yeah, good luck with that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And the other thing is they're going to be flattening the organization, they say, and they're going to be reducing their managers company wide by 15%.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's one way to do it. Require everybody to come into the office.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Five days a week and have nobody overseeing them. That's perfect. Yeah, Good luck. Good luck. Amazon.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, we have a little bit of good news. I wanted to end the in the news segment with something positive. The future of cancer treatment is continuing to look bright. Over the weekend, researchers in the UK announced encouraging results from an early trial testing an MRNA vaccine against advanced solid cancers. This vaccine, developed by Moderna, is designed to help people's immune system better recognize and kill cancerous cells. So yay, you know, they said while vaccines are generally preventative, helping the body recognize threats before they arrive. Cancer vaccines, including this one, are typically therapeutic, used to help treat people's existing cancer or prevent a recurrence. So this might work. Many cancer vaccines are personalized to someone specific type of cancer. But Moderna expects that this particular thing that they have developed can be an off the shelf vaccine. One that can be used against a wide range of advanced solid tumor cancers. Great news.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Awesome.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I like it. I like it. I'll take that. I'll buy that for a dollar.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Me too. Put it in my veins.

[Jason DeFilippo]

This episode is sponsored by hello Fresh, America's number one meal kit. What is hello Fresh? It's farm fresh pre portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered to your doorstep. With HelloFresh, you can skip the stress of grocery shopping and make home cooking easy, fun and affordable. That's why they're America's 1 meal kit. The holiday season is just around the corner and we're all looking for ways to save time and energy. HelloFresh makes mealtime a breeze with chef crafted recipes that come together quickly and they're way more affordable than takeout. Whether you're craving hearty comfort food or need calorie smart options, HelloFresh has a rotating menu of 50 weekly recipes to satisfy every craving. Personally, I love how HelloFresh helps me break out of my recipe rut. This week we made their Umami ginger pork bowls with pickled cucumber and Sriracha crema. This hearty bowl centers around ground pork, browned and simmered in a savory miso based ginger sauce with nutty sesame seeds. Crisp, quick pickled cucumbers, tender sauteed cabbage and carrots and spicy crema are also on the menu. All served over fluffy rice. I mean come on. They had me at Sriracha just saying everything was pre portioned so there was zero waste and it came together in just 20 minutes. Plus their pre portioned ingredients saved me from over buying at the store. It's a win win. And don't miss the HelloFresh Market. They've got over 100 add ons from breakfast to snacks and even Thanksgiving sides to wow a crowd without lifting a finger. Get 10 free [e-mail] FreeGoG applied across seven boxes. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. That's 10 free HelloFresh meals by just going to hellofresh.com freegog this episode is brought to you by 1Password Extended Access Management Imagine your company's security like the quad of a college campus. There are nice brick paths between the buildings. Those are the company owned devices, IT approved apps and managed employee identities. And then there are the paths people actually use. The shortcuts worn through the grass that are the actual straightest line from point A to point B. Those are unmanaged devices, shadow IT apps and non employee identities like contractors. Most security tools only work on those happy brick paths. But a lot of security problems take place on the shortcuts. 1Password Extended Access Management is the first security solution that brings all these unmanaged devices, apps and identities under your control. It ensures that every user credential is strong and protected, every device is known and healthy, and every App is visible. 1Password Extended Access Management solves the problems traditional IAM and MDM can't. It's security for the way we work today, and it's now generally available to companies with Okta and Microsoft Entra and in beta for Google Workspace customers. Check it out at 1Password.com grumpyoldgeeks that's 1Password.com grumpyoldgeeeks Media Candy 666 fun fact. 666 is the product of three prime numbers. 666 equals 2 times 3 times 3 times 37.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Did you have AI help you with these or did you just Google bought it?

[Jason DeFilippo]

I totally had open AI make these things.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, these are all chat GPT, baby. I didn't waste any time on this. I didn't do research. That's why it's a fun fact, because it doesn't need to be a fact fact.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, they could be hallucinated. We don't fucking know.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, that's the thing you sign up for when you listen to grumpy old geeks. Could be true. I don't know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Conjecture and bullshit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, well, here's one straight from the human side. Rebel Ridge on Netflix. A lot of people on our Discord channel were saying, hey, it's good. It's like First Blood. Yeah, sorta. I give it a C plus. It was 30 minutes too long. Easily 30 minutes too long. It was made on the cheap, so there wasn't a whole lot of, you know, big bang boom booms going on there. Don Johnson was excellent. The actor who was the main lead was excellent. It was fine. But the best part of the movie was literally when they opened up with Iron Maiden playing Number of the Beast on the guy's headphones. I was like, yes, I can get into this. But it was down. I know, I know. I wish we could play it during this episode, but then nobody would ever hear it because we would be sued out of existence. Damn it. But yeah, the movie felt like it was algorithmically generated. The script hit all the right beats at all the right time, and it was just like, okay, somebody got a copy of Heroes Journey, First Blood into the AI machine. Exactly. And said, use the Save the cat algorithm and spit me out something that Joseph Campbell would approve of. Boom. Here you go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And I saw this one. And back to the AI generated. It's called Help. I'm genuinely invested in the Gordon Ramsay AI cooking series. It's a Facebook post with a Facebook video from Justine Moore, and she's a partner at a 16 Zed. My least favorite people. But the video is great. The video is fantastic. But what's even better is people in the comments are posting their own Gordon Ramsay AI cooking show videos. So it's the gift that keeps on giving. Did you get a chance to watch one of these?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I watched one. It was very funny.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, they're so good. They're so good. But the thing is, you could totally see that actually happening for some of it. Yeah, no, definitely. If you want a smile on your face, go check these out. And in great news, I mentioned last week that Alan Cumming won the Emmy for the best host of a reality show for his hosting of the Traitors on NBC Peacock. And fortunately, the actual show won the Emmy 2 for best reality show. So I expect to see more Traitors coming up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right. I watched the final, the very end, the last one, the Grand Tour, one for the road.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Me too.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And it basically felt like all the other specials that they've done kind of boring. Not that great. But I have to admit, even I got a little emotional at the end. You saw their real emotion when they realized, this is the last shot. This is the last time the three of us will be working together. This is it. This is the end. And, yeah, that bit was worth it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it was. It was. And I like how they got the historical footage and interspersed it with them doing. Doing their thing. So, yeah, I thought it was. I thought it was a very good send off. I thought. I thought they definitely stuck that. I mean, the last 30 seconds, middle of the middle of it. I fast forwarded a lot.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, it wasn't all that great. It's kind of the same as it always was, you know, the Top Gear, you just can't beat what they did back at that show. It was never the same. When they went over to Amazon, it was. But when they kept the original Amazon format at the beginning, it was still fine. When they switched to just all these specials that they used to just do once a year along with the regular show, it just kind of lost me and it was never quite as good. So.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But sad. End of an era for sure.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Definitely. I'm, you know, I'm Glad it's over. Honestly, I don't have to worry about missing something that I. That Amazon pops up three months after it's been out. They just never really cared about promoting it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But yeah, go watch Clarkson's Farm. At least the first season. I didn't watch the second.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Second season was just as fun.

[Jason DeFilippo]

What about the third?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I have not watched the third yet.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, maybe I'll go check that out when I get. When I'm feeling emotional. In more TV news, Time Bandits has been canceled by Apple tv. Plus, after one season. Surprising absolutely no one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't even know a single person that watched an episode.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Neither does Apple tv. Plus, that's why they canceled it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I've got a little music news for people of our vintage and of our tastes in music. I was supposed to go see Jane's Addiction and Love and Rockets last Wednesday. Unfortunately, the band broke up before, like, three days before the show, and it got canceled. My chance to see. I was mostly going to see Love and Rockets because they're just one of my favorite bands of all time and. And just amazing live. I was excited about Jane's Addiction because Eric Avery was back in the fold. But then Perry Farrell has been either drunk or drugged out on most nights of this tour and ended up punching Dave Navarro, the guitarist and end of Jane's Addiction.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it was really. It bums me out because my old physical therapist, her husband is Perry Farrell's manager. So I wish I was still getting therapy from her so I could get the skinny on what happened. But I think it was all on video. I think we saw.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, it's all on video.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And you can read between the lines because let's just say the other three members of Jane's Addiction released a statement about it, and then Perry released a statement through Jane's Addiction that was wildly different.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And Dave Navarro has basically confirmed that's it. The band's done. We're never getting back together until somebody gives us a really big pile of cash.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's the way it works. That's the way it works. Of course.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Anyways, in good news from the alternative old person scene, after 16 years of waiting, the Cure Songs of a Lost World will officially be released November 1st.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And this purports to not be the last Cure album. Robert Smith has said that this is not it. He has a long history of saying that every single album they put out is the last album, which makes it so.

[Jason DeFilippo]

This might be.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This is the last album, Damn it. So we shall see. He has supposedly said that there is a second album of lighter songs. This is a very depressing album that will be coming out as well as a solo album, all of of which will be coming out in the next year or two. So place your bets now that this is the last thing we'll ever hear from Robert Smith.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, but I can't wait. Yeah. Have they released any singles yet?

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, they've been playing some of the songs live and then there was a charity vinyl only release. So there's nothing out officially yet. I would expect something to come in beginning of October. Probably we'll get a single or two.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Awesome. I can't wait. Just in time for Halloween.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Ups and doodads.

[Brian Schulmeister]

666. Fun fact. The sum of all the numbers on a standard roulette wheel, 1 through 36 equals 666. Spin the beast. Yeah. So over the last week I realized we're not on threads. X sucks. So we should probably have our gog podcast official thing over there on threads. So I set up the account and immediately, shockingly got got quite a number of people following us and saying, hey, glad you're finally here. So I'm like, okay, cool. Well I guess we should do this then. So I whipped up our old grandfathered in cheap buffer.com account and set to attach threads so we can push out those updates and it can go to threads as well as Facebook and Instagram and X and nope, not going to happen with your grandfather that in cheap rate.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Bastards.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That sucks. So then I asked you, you know, what are the, what are the cool kids using these days? Because you're working with some of those cool kids at this point. What are they using for their social media stuff? So you told me to check out OnlyWire.com which was cheap, but I couldn't get it to connect to our Facebook page. And then when you go to their cheap when you go to their networks page to list all the networks that you can connect the account to it, I couldn't search it. There was no listing of Instagram or threads or anything. And the whole site didn't work. So I was like, well, I don't have time for this. So the other one that you recommended was later.com, which is much more expensive, but it actually works. But they don't support threads yet.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh Jesus.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So back to buffer I went and upgrading from our grandfather cheap rate. So please continue those donations because now we're paying even more to push out these stupid updates that nobody reads on the plus side later did allow me to completely manually delete the account after I had set it up and found out it doesn't do what I want it to do. Only wire does not allow you to do that. You have to send a message to customer service who then email you night 19 times about, you know, why are you leaving and we can fix that and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, no, you can't delete my account.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, great. Well, thanks for putting in the legwork, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No worries. We're still with Buffer. They seem to be the best one out there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Seems to be.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And of course all iOS is updated this this week. We got new iOS 18, we got new watch software, we got new Apple TV software, we also have new Mac software, but I am not allowed to upgrade it until do that. So, yeah, so I would just sit and wait for them to say, I can upgrade on this show and that's when I'll do that. So I've done all the updates. I see you have some stories, so we'll let you get into it and then I will complain later.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right. Yeah. There's a link to Federico Vitici's review of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. It's a good write up of has pretty much everything that you need to know, so you can go check that out at your leisure. Last night I got a note that iOS 18.1 Public Beta 1 was now available with Apple Intelligence. Unfortunately, my phone is too old, I can't do that. But it does work on my iPad Pro with the M1. Unfortunately, half the AI intelligence features don't work on the apps that I use, so that kind of sucks. As far as the iOS 18 update itself goes, there's not a huge amount of phones. Well, I guess there's a decent amount that can handle iOS 18, the iPhone XR XS, XS Max and the iPhone SE second and third gen and anything iPhone 11 and up. My dad has an iPhone 7 Max, which is why we're trying to do the shuffle. So I can actually get, you know, get him a phone that is actually somewhat modern because, you know, an iPhone7 is not really up to speed nowadays and he's going back to Europe soon, so I need to have him him a decent camera because his last picture. I don't know if you know this, Brian. When the iPhone 7 Max came out, it had a fantastic camera. That camera is no longer fantastic, so not great at all. But yeah, you mentioned that macOS hardener software has updated, which I know constantly because in the middle of my dock is the Settings app and there's this big fucking red one staring at me again that I have.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I took it out of my dock. I took it out of my dock because I know I'm never allowed to upgrade until you tell me I can and it annoys me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep, there's me. That was the sound of me removing settings from my dock. I have been running the new one on my air and I like it. I like the new OS a lot. The problem is audio apps are historically bad about updating their software to work with the new os. Unfortunately, I think think fucking Rogue Amoeba who I bitched about a couple weeks ago, who updated Loopback and broke it completely for me and basically everybody else who used it. They just released another update that broke Loopback again on my older software, but works fine on the newer one. So on this one I'm back to 2.35 again. Thanks, Rogue Amoeba. Thanks to Jordan Harbinger for doing the legwork to finding that old version. So appreciate that, brother. But yeah, it's been an interesting week of software foibles and screaming. So Brian, I think you have some too.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh yeah, I got me some complaints about Apple Jason and I normally don't. Apple has been generally pretty consistent. They push things out, they just work. Everything that just works.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's why we use them now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm mostly all in on an Apple ecosystem. I am in terms of, of handheld devices and all that. I've got iPads, I've got my iPhone, I've got my Mac, I've got all that stuff. I love it, my watch, everything. It's all Apple.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I would like to point out to everybody who says that we're Apple fanboys. Brian was a PC guy when we started this show 11 years ago.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's right, I certainly was. And I still do like PC, but Apple is generally better. However, I have had many Apple issues this week. Now, of course, this one Amazon Alexa. I use the Amazon Alexis. That is, I've not gotten all Apple with the home pods there. We have Alexas, we like them a lot. We've used Spotify as the default streaming service on the Alexas because I get a free Spotify account. Music industry, blah, blah, blah. But it's singular. So if I was out and about listening to music and then anybody back home tried to stream something, we would end up battling it out between the two devices. So my wife gets an Apple music account for free because music industry. And so we decided let's switch all of the default players on our, all of our Alexas to Apple Music because that way I'm the one that's usually out and about listening to music. I won't get screwed. I can listen to Spotify when I'm walking. Okay, cool. It's going to work exactly the same. Right?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, no, Apple Music is great and it does seem to understand things better than Spotify ever did. We used to always have issues where like play this and then play something. Something completely different out of left field. Apple Music has been, I'd say 99. Right. Every single time. Even understanding my kid. So that's great. But you cannot control or stream direct from the app on your phone or your laptop or anything because Apple hates Amazon and wants you to have home pods so they don't build it in. Unlike Spotify and all the other streaming players, which will then basically just allow you to stream directly to. To your Alexas. With Apple Music, you can only do it by connecting through Bluetooth to your device every single time. You cannot do it from the app. So that annoys the hell out of me. That sucks. Yeah. Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Because I was gonna say I can stream to my Sonos just fine through the app, but that's because it's the Bluetooth connection to all of the. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

As opposed to just having a drop down list of all the devices like Spotify does.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Set it. So that was frustration number one. Frustration number two. I am using Apple Fitness. I like Apple Fitness. I do the workouts all the time. It's, it's. They're great. I decided to do what they call a plan. So for two weeks, it's basically just selecting my workouts for me. I, I pick the types of workouts I like. I set the time limit, which I set for 40 minutes per day. I am three days away from completing it. I don't know if it's because of the iOS updates. It probably is. So I've updated everything. I updated my watch, I updated my phone, I updated the T. Went down to try to work out right before our showtime. Jason. And would not pair oh dear to my watch. So then you Google through everything and they're like, okay, you have to unpair the watch from your phone and then repair it, which takes forever. I do all that. Still not syncing. Now it's not recognizing the fact that I set an Apple workout plan on my watch. All right, well, whatever. I'll just do the workout anyways. Whatever. Surely it will sink. It's not fucking sinking. It took forever. To get all this stuff up and running again. Took all morning and it's still not working properly. I am going to fucking shoot everything. It's most frustrating with workouts because you're down there doing something you don't want to fucking be doing anyways, right? And then you've got all these pauses and impediments and hoops you have to jump through to do something you don't fucking want to do. And then you finally get it going. And I'm not a big fan of gamification. It doesn't matter. I don't need the gamification. The point is to do the workout. But if you're forcing me into fucking gamification like you do with Apple Fitness.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Then I want it to fucking work. Preach it, brother. Preach it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Get rid of all the gamification or make it fucking work. Okay. Done complaining about Apple.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. All right. Oh, man. Well, I'm going to complain a little bit more about Apple because I was really looking forward to that new phone coming today, which I mentioned last week because they gave me a ship date, delivery date of the 20th, which is today. Today. I reorganized everything so somebody would be here all day for my phone. And then last night I checked, and it's now coming on the 30th or October 3rd, sometime in between there. Unless they change it again without telling me when they're going to change it again. And what's even more annoying is the new case for the phone showed up yesterday. So now I gotta look at this fucking case on my goddamn dresser while I wait for the phone to show up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You could put the case in your dresser.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, that defeats the purpose.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You just. You just moved the Settings app. Well, it's the same thing, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Dude, I'm software, not hardware, okay?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Remove the thing that is in front of your eyes that is bothering you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no. I want to fuel my vitriol and hate on a constant basis until this fucking phone shows up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Show fuel. Show fuel.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. God damn it. Okay, Changing gears. Changing gears. Hat tip to Vimes over on Discord. Apparently LinkedIn is set to use your data to train AI by default. So you mentioned this in the thing, and so here's how you do it. You go to Settings Data Privacy Data for Generative AI Improvement, and then toggle it off.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Here's all it's getting from me. Brian logged in once this month and then logged out again immediately.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. Jason logged in and ignored every friend request that he's been given from, although especially from Mumbai.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I was briefly thinking, should we set up a gog podcast on LinkedIn because it does feel like we're kind of a businessy sort of thing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Why? So we can not get traffic from them like everybody else.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, pretty much. That's what I was thinking. I mean, we're paying for the Buffer app upgrade anyway.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, hey, if we're paying for it, might as well. Maybe we can be like a friend of the show. Chris Lockett, who's been kicked off LinkedIn, I think three times now he's been.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Banned, so he should stop saying the inflammatory shit he likes to say.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, Brian, I don't know if you've ever listened to our show, but we say a lot of inflammatory shit that people.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Ah, but I don't post inflammatory shit in our teasers.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Ah, there we go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

See?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Good workaround. Good work around.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Instagram has tightened their restrictions on teen use, putting parents in control.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Fucking bullshit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, God. Yeah. Instagram is launching teen accounts to enhance safety for young users. Starting today, all current and future accounts held by teens will automatically transition to this new format. Or there's going to be a lot less teens on Instagram because they're all going to say they're not fucking teens anymore.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Got a teen. We've added the hot dog or not filter. That'll notify you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. And. Or a lot of parent accounts are being spun up right now. Facebook says that they think that they're going to see a steep decline in usage from teens because of this, but.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They'Re okay with it. Made their accounts adults.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Adults. Exactly. Exactly. And they're going to tell teens to log off after an hour of use. Good luck. And they're going to enforce a sleep mode from 10pm to 7am and sleep mode means that there's just no notifications. You can probably still use the app. Yeah, this is just. This is them trying to placate regulators who are coming for them, you know?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. See what we've done already? No need to sue us.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. Even though they've been sued by what, 41 states attorneys general already filed last year? Earlier this year. Yeah. It's just they're trying to get ahead of it. Even though most people say, yeah, this is. This is nothing, but I mean, it's something, I guess maybe it's for dumb teens. Come on, let's be honest here.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's perceived to follow the rules anyways.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, exactly. And if they're that dumb that they're going to follow these rules, they're probably dumb enough to send their pictures of their junk to Some stranger who dms them off the out of the blue. So maybe this is a good enough thing for the people who are at risk, the dumb teens. So I don't know, Snap has some new spectacles coming because they're just not letting go of their AR spectacles for some reason.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, look, they bought a shitload of those frames and they got to do they own them.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, well, these actually are newer ones, so they're so new that you can't even buy them.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This is no vending machines down in Venice.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No vending machines, Brian. You have to rent them. You have to rent them from Snap as a developer for $99 a month.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Fuck that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, so I'm like, okay, so let me break this down. You want me to spend a hundred dollars a month to rent your spectacles, to write software for your platform that you don't even have a roadmap to deliver the spectacles to the public who would then use the software? Yeah, that's it. Okay, where do I sign, dude? Wow, the dumb teen developer. It's the dumb teen developers who are on Instagram who are going to sign up for this. I guess.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I guess so. That's an interesting approach.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. I'm sure some corporate clients have already signed up. Oh, of course. Yeah. That's the only people that are going to sign up for this. Except for the probably the one smart developer who says, I'm going to get in early and I'm going to write the software and then I will be king of the shit pile when it comes out. If it ever comes out. So there you go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right. And a little bit of follow up Fantasy Hike, the app that does some step tracking that did not pay for the IP of Lord of the Rings, but aped it as closely as possible. I have completed it finally.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Congratulations.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I walked 1,780 miles from December 31, 2023 to September 16, 2024. When I February finished, I averaged 5.76 miles per day. And my best day was 12.7 miles, which was done at Disneyland.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right, congratulations. Now what are you gonna do?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I googled around. There's not really anything similar to that app. There's. There's one called well, there's a lot that charge you for the stupid coins. And I'm like, I'm not gonna spend 99 for you to track my steps and give me a coin. So I'm not doing those companies. There's one called Walk the Distance which has things like city paths and, and Pacific crest trails and all that sort of stuff, a lot of which are free, some of which you pay for, but a lot of them are free. I'm gonna give that a go. It's pretty clever. They basically just use Google Maps and then they pull in, you know, some interesting things that you pass from, like Wikipedia entries and things like that. You know, it's. Somebody spent a little bit of time on this, but it's just not the same. I have a feeling I'll use Walk the Distance for about a month and then stop, because I've already got 18 step trackers built in. I've got the Apple Fitness, I've got the Steps app. I just, you know, the fun part was getting the graphics and the gamification of it and laughing at their attempts to go around Lord of the Rings ip.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. Well, you know, since you have that Spotify account still, you can just put the proclaimers. I'm going to be on loop and just, you know, just keep tracking.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I would walk 500 miles not to hear that song ever again.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know. Come on, they're Scottish. It's great.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's a great song. I heard it seven gazillion times in the 90s or whenever.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I've. I've heard it enough times. That's how many times I've heard it. Enough. So Californians can now add their driver's licenses to Apple Wallet, so they say. Part of the state's mobile driver's license pilot program, allowing up to 1.5 million participants to join. I must have been 1.5 million and 1, because last night I went through the process. They make you do all this crazy shit. So you scan your driver's license, and then you have to hold your phone up to your face and hold it very still. And then you have to, like, open your mouth, close your eyes, move your head right to left to make sure you're real. Then they match it up to your driver's license photo, and then they fail at the very end and say, sorry, we're broken right now and we cannot add you. That's what I went through last night. Twice.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That sounds awesome.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, it was great. Especially since I don't look anything like my driver's license photo does. Yeah, I'm about 30 pounds lighter and have no hair in now, so I don't look anything like it. So, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. I'm going to wait until I hear from somebody, anybody I know that has done this successfully before I start the process. I went through enough tech hurdles this week to last the Next two months.

[Jason DeFilippo]

This episode is sponsored by Deleteme. All right, grumps, let's get real for a second. We live in an age where your personal data is everyone's business. Literally. Data brokers are buying, selling and trading our private details, making us all vulnerable to identity theft, harassment and spam. Now more than ever, privacy isn't just important, it's essential. Data brokers are cashing in on your personal information, treating it like a commodity. Your private details are out there for anyone to buy, which can open the door to identity theft, phishing, harassment and endless spam calls. But now with Deleteme, you can take control and safeguard your privacy. As someone who speaks rather openly online, you think I know all too well the risks of having personal info floating out there. And that's why I personally use DeleteMe. DeleteMe is a subscription service that removes your private information from hundreds of data broker websites. It's not just a one time scrub either. They're constantly on guard, monitoring and deleting the info you don't want out there. It's pretty simple. You give Deleteme a list of what you want gone and their experts take it from there. They even send you personalized privacy reports showing what they found, where they found it and what they removed. They do all the heavy lifting. You just get to enjoy the peace of mind, take control of your data, and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme. And now, at a special discount for our listeners today, get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com GOG and use promo code GOG at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com gog and please enter code GOG at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com code GOG this episode is sponsored by Deleteme. All right, grumps, let's get real for a second. We live in an age where your personal data is everyone's business, literally. Data brokers are buying, selling and trading our private details, making us all vulnerable to identity theft, harassment and spam. Now more than ever, privacy isn't just important, it's essential. Data brokers are cashing in on your personal information, treating it like a commodity. Your private details are out there for anyone to buy, which can open the door to identity theft, phishing, harassment and endless spam calls. But now with Deleteme, you can take control and safeguard your privacy. As someone who speaks rather openly online, you think I know all too well the risks of having personal info floating out there. And that's why I personally use DeleteMe. DeleteMe is a subscription service that removes your private information from hundreds of data broker websites. It's not just a one time scrub either. They're constantly on guard, monitoring and deleting the info you don't want out there. It's pretty simple. You give Deleteme a list of what you want gone and their experts take it from there. They even send you personalized privacy reports showing what they found, where they found it and what they removed. They do all the heavy lifting. You just get to enjoy the peace of mind, take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme. And now at a special discount for our listeners today, get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com GOG and use promo code GOG at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com gog and please enter code GOG at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com code GOG at the library. 666. Fun fact. In Roman numerals, 666 is written as DCLXVI, which is interesting because it uses every numeral from 500, which is D, down to 1, which is I in descending order. Neat.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Neat. All right. When I was back in LA for a month, I got one of those. You know how you every couple weeks, if you're not, if you don't pay for it, you get this whole like a Amazon Kindle Unlimited. Do a free trial of Kindle Unlimited for three months. And I was like, well, I'm here in la. I finished my book. I've got a lot of time just around my mom's house, plenty of time to read. Why don't I just sign up for this and give it a go? And I did the smart thing that everybody should do when they do this stuff. I immediately put in my calendar on October 1st, which is cancel, cancel. So it's in my calendar. I know it's coming up and I'm going to cancel. Other fun fact about Amazon Kindle Unlimited, there's fuck all in there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There's nothing there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nothing you really want to read is in there. I scrolled through their Sci Fi section. I also ended up not having any time to read. So it was a waste of the three months of not being able to read any books that I don't want to read. Anyways, but regardless, I did find a book called Echoes of Extinction by Dee Ward Cornell. I am about. I'd say I'm not done with it yet. I'm almost done with it. It's part of a series. We'll see how he sticks the landing on the first book. To determine if I'm going to read anything any further in the series or not. I, I'm inclined not to because I will not be getting them for free. I would have to pay for them because I'm not going to be able to read them in time before my, my trial ends. This, this book is, it's interesting. He's obviously ex military. It's very much written from like everything is informed by military procedures and all that sort of stuff. So not really my kind of sci fi. And of course, you know, the main character is ex military guy who gets the girl.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Girls, of course.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Many girls. More than a few girls. All very attractive girls. The alien threat thing is interesting. It's, it's. I can tell where, I kind of think where it's going. I'm not going to say anything yet. I'll wait until I finish the book. But yeah, yeah, mainly this is just saying don't do Kindle Unlimited. That's my review.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Good to know. Good to know. Yeah. There's just fuck all on there. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You spend longer scrolling through trying to find something you're interested in than it would have taken you to buy and read a book that you actually wanted.

[Jason DeFilippo]

To read to earn the money to buy the book to read that you want to read anyway.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So I read in my time of How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an afterlife by Sebastian Jr. Younger.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Ooh, sounds like a real cheery page turner.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It really is. I highly would not recommend this book unless you've had a near death experience like I have. So for me it was research and because his kind of paralleled the one that I had when I had my stroke. So for me it was fascinating. For most people I'm not sure it would be that fascinating because you don't have a point of reference. But if you have had one of those, which I'm sorry, if you have highly recommended book. I thought it was fantastic and Sebastian Junger is a great writer, so yeah, he's just a fantastic writer. So in that note, it was a great book, but narrow audience, narrow audience.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, technically everybody. Oh technically we're all going to die, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. But it has a little more oomph if you've kind of gone through it, you know, Especially when yours mirrors the one that he had too. Because they're not all the same. They're not all the same by a long shot. Yeah, yeah. No, let's just, let's just say spoiler alert, no bright lights. No bright lights. Then I started reading Not Till We Are Lost baba verse book 5 by Dennis E. Taylor.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I will point out not reading because if you were reading it, I would be too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Listening to Not Till we are lost Bubba verse book 5 by this is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The most annoying author deal ever made.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It is the greatest author deal in the history of time because I get to. I get to listen to it first. Although by the time I'm done it'll probably be out in print.

[Brian Schulmeister]

How's it going?

[Jason DeFilippo]

I love it so far. God damn, I love it. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I'm going to send him an angry X.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Send him an angry X because. Yeah, no, it's getting a little confusing because there are so many Bobs now, but I love it. It's just a fun. I'm taking my time with it because I don't want it to end because I know it's going to be forever till the next one because I guarantee this won't be the end. I hope this isn't the end. He's making too much money for it to be the end. Come on, Denny, let's do it. Sucker.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Hopefully next month I think it comes out.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I can't remember.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I can guarantee you it won't be an Amazon Unlimited.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, it won't be. No it won't. Which is funny since Amazon owns Audible.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know there would be some kind.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Of deal, but doubly. Well, I've got some long reads for you for the week, Brian, that you can take your time with if you like. One is called the Subprime AI Crisis by Edward Zetron. Fantastic. This is a half hour read, so it'll take you some time. And he basically just breaks down how we are just headed for the cliff of AI and how it's unsustainable and will lead to a significant collapse of big tech and many startups which we have known for quite some time. Because if you look at the numbers, it's like there is no fucking way they're going to make that much money back.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nope.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But he breaks it down in a very, very well spoken way. So highly recommended reading. If you want to get the leg up on everybody who tells you that AI is the future man, well, you can have some ammunition in your quiver to say hold that thought for a Second. And another one is a really interesting read called. This one's from Prospect magazine. It's called Is Anyone Out There? And it's about the Dead Internet theory. And it's also a fun read. It's not that long, it's only like a 10 minute read. But just talks about the Dead Internet theory and how we're all going to be talking to AI generated bullshit for the rest of our lives.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, well, we don't even have to have the humans involved, apparently. Jason, I don't know if you heard about this, but it made the news this week. Only bots AI the first and only current social network. Only for bots and not for humans.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I saw that. Yeah. Genius. I love genius.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Decided to use technology for the Dark side with Dave.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Welcome to the Dark side with Dave. Featuring the dastardly, dynamic and delightfully devious Dave Bittner. Dave can be heard on the Cyberware podcast talking cyber star Stuff or on Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan exploring deception in tomfoolery. Or also diving into privacy with Ben Yellen on Caveat and breaking down industrial cybersecurity on Control Loop. Dave's new show, Only Malware in the Building is a monthly show hosted by Selena Larson with Rick Howard and Dave Bittner. It breaks down the most impactful malware stories into actionable insights for tech professionals and security executives in a most charming way.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Getting your money out of that OpenAI subscription, aren't you?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Damn skippy. Brian, would you like to bring us in with our new 666 Fun Fact?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Our 666 Fun Fact. For this segment, the fear of the number 666even has a fancy name. It's called Hexacosioi.

[C]

Hexaconda.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Hexaphobia rolls right off the tongue. Some people go out of their way to avoid the number. Like skipping floor 666 in buildings or avoiding the number on license plates.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I would like to know what floor 666 is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I tend to avoid anything over say 100 if I can.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know. I don't like being that high building.

[C]

Who came up with that fun fact coming? Floor 666 in Buildings. I mean, yeah, I. Boy, that's hard not to do.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's why these are fun facts, Dave, not fact facts.

[C]

So I'm coming in the middle of this. I breezed through the script before we recorded today. And what is the. What's the origin, what's the motivation of our of this being 666 fun fact day this is because we're on episode 666.

[Jason DeFilippo]

66.

[C]

Oh, I saw.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right? This is the episode of the Beast, Dave.

[C]

I see. You know what? I saw the episode of the Beast, but I did not see the 666. So shame on me for not being more observant. It all makes sense to me now. Thank you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

As our friend Robert Fogarty would say.

[C]

Sit down.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Sit down. I see.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Sure. Sit down.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We did have a lot of fun recording his bumpers.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, we did.

[C]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[C]

I. You know what? The rest of my life. I don't need to hear that again.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Sit down.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Now, see, we need to be like those Israelis. We got. We got to get into Dave's phone and make it his ringtone.

[C]

Yeah. There you go. That's what I need.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Fuck you guys. Fuck you guys. Fuck both of you. Fuck both of you.

[C]

Fuck you, Jason. Fuck you, Brian. Fuck you both. Fuck you. Fuck you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Fuck you.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Still one of my prouder moments on the show.

[C]

Deep cut. I didn't realize you had that buttonized. That's wonderful.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, that is my ringtone.

[C]

Right? Dave's calling. Oh, speaking of ringtones, I just want to rub it in, Jason, and say that my iPhone is out for delivery right now.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Fuck you, Dave. Fuck you, Dave. Thirteen seconds ago, I just got a notification on my watch that said your phone will be delivered on September 30th. It's out for delivery. Fuck you, Apple. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

[C]

I wonder what happened. That's strange.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I was there. I was there six seconds after the damn thing came on, and. Nope, didn't get it.

[C]

Me, too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, shut up. I'm even closer to China. God damn it.

[C]

That's true. Mine had. My phone had to come past you to get to me by way of Alaska. And so I don't know. You know, it's the. It's We. Look. We're on the East Coast. It's the one true time zone. Although Apple wouldn't say that. Apple? You think Apple would. Would prioritize people in California, since they can't help slapping that on everything they make?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And it's true. We matter more out here, so we should definitely get it first.

[C]

At least from Apple's point of view, you do. Yeah. Yeah, you all just keep on telling yourselves that. It's adorable.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They read Brian's bitching in our show notes and said, no, we're not giving these guys any.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Don't give that guy the phone.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Don't give that guy the phone. He doesn't deserve it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All Right. We have a bit of follow up. We talked last week about the typical male behavior of maybe going up or down a floor but Never to floor 666 to do one's business. And Dave wondered out if reached out to our listeners. Do women do this as well or is this a gender bias? We have two bits of feedback, first from Sarah. Sarah, resident female. It is a thing. Would go to a different floor in college. Happily work from home now.

[C]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So. So what do you do at home? Do you have multiple floors? I have bathrooms on two different floors. I should go downstairs to pee. That's what I'm thinking right now. And Suzanne wrote in. Hi, fellow geek. Says a longtime listener and one of the two women listening. Well, two women wrote in, so there you go. I can't disprove that.

[C]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I want to weigh in on the bathroom topic. I will preface this by saying that I am European, so it might be different in the US that. That said never have I.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And you're not a pooping.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That said never have I witnessed a fellow woman in any of the offices I worked using another bathroom other than the nearest. We really don't care. Okay. Casting.

[C]

I have a question. Yeah. So the only asterisk I'll put on that is I wonder because Europe has vastly superior stall privacy standards than.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. Their doors go all the way down.

[C]

Right, Exactly. They don't have massive gaps that you could put your whole hand through when you close the doors. So I wonder if that has anything to do with it. But this is good feedback, I would say, based on what Sarah said. Mystery solved. Yes. Some women are just as odd us men are when it comes to this particular activity.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[C]

So, yeah, I did follow up on Suzanne's recommendation here and I'm going to give the Eye Catcher podcast app, which she refers to as a podcatcher, which is. You know what, I've heard that before, but I don't you. That's not an active term around here.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You don't like it might be a European thing. Or she does say her native language is German. So it could be a German thing. Who knows?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Could be. I think it's an Adam Curry thing. Oh, I think it is. Yeah. So, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

MTV guy.

[C]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Pod father. The pod father.

[C]

I'm going to check it out and at first glance it looks interesting. So I will check it out and see if. If it fits my needs.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, let me know how catching those pods go.

[C]

There you go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Woo.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Speaking of, we've got a couple little bits of feedback here. David said, how customized did you have your overcast setup before? You keep asking for exactly what it does out of the box.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Au contraire, Monfreur.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm so flummoxed about the overcast rage. Yeah, stuff moved around, but everything you asked for was always there. The biggest blessing of the update is the speed that he's able to address people's issues. Let us define blessing in a second here.

[Brian Schulmeister]

David works for a PR company.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm thinking he's releasing every couple days to at least weekly adjustments to make people happy. I wasn't necessarily necessary. I was not a fan that the sleep timer went three menus down a stack. But he fixed that within days. The app is really getting back to being better than ever.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I will just preface this. David was saying I did not customize my overcast set setup at all. Like I did nothing. I used it straight out of the box. And the straight out of the box updated version changed a lot.

[Jason DeFilippo]

A lot. Here's the other thing. I paid for it and then it broke. That's. And the fact that we have to take the time to talk about it is a fail. The fact that months we've been talking about how shitty this update was and same with Sonos, and Sonos fired people over it, unfortunately. This is the only guy there. Marco's the only guy there. We can't fire Marco because Marco's the only fucker who makes the thing. Even though Marco made a bad decision. So when you buy software, you want the software to remain working. He released an unworking version of the software and he knew it. He fucking knew it. So he even said on ATP, yeah, it's not where I want it to be, but it's the 10th anniversary so I better release it. No, no, no, no, no. That is not the proper criteria for software release, Marco.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Especially since you're a one person show. There's no board, there's no appeasing shareholders. There's no need to push something out if it's not ready.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's your fucking ego. Because you wanted to have something spiffy for the 10 year anniversary. Well, you had 10 fucking years to make it better and you that up. So, so sorry. David didn't have to customize it to have it suck when it updated. So Barbara writes in. We have a third woman by the way. So this is lady number three.

[C]

Oh, okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

She didn't want to tell us about her bathroom habits. I guess that's true. She just wanted to tell us what a prude.

[C]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Barbara writes in, okay, I thought you two were crazier. Exaggerating. Overcast still seemed wonderful to me. Well, today I figured it out. Apparently, I hadn't updated my Overcast app. Well, I did, and presto. Understood. So there. David. So maybe make this a cautionary tale and let others know they might want to avoid updating the app. We have been, Barbara, for many weeks now. I'm thinking I will figure out how to use the new app, and I would like to think you might rethink the new app. Made it very easy to get your website. Okay, well, that's a plus best from a sometimes grumpy and old lady geek. Well, thank you, Barbara.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Thank you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thank you very much.

[C]

To get back to what David said. And, Jason, I think you have highlighted many of my thoughts in your own inimitable way. The bug that bit me the hardest was being able to set limits on the number of episodes downloaded and stored in any particular podcast feed. That's a bad one, especially since it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Took away streaming at the same time.

[C]

Well, and as folks may or may not know, I have a vested interest in a daily podcast. And so what happened?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thousands of episodes.

[C]

Exactly. So, you know, all of a sudden, instead of having. I think I had it set for, like, two or three episodes, right? So I could stay catched up if I missed a day, whatever, I go in there and there's like 60 episodes. And I said, okay, well, let me get rid of these manually one by one. Okay? New app, things happen. Right. So what I found was that the setting was in the app, but it was simply ignoring it. And then weeks later, probably a month later, I heard on ATP that Marco was explaining how hard it is to get that feature to work and that he had just fixed it, and he was glad to fix it, and it was more complicated and. But I was like, why leave it? You know, like. So you knew you had a problem. You knew this was broken. Could you, I don't know, let us know, give us a list of things you don't, you know, aren't working?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. You know, the release notes that come with every update, it should have come with all the broken things.

[C]

Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They should have listed every single aspect of things that aren't going to work if you do this update.

[C]

Right? So. So in response to David saying, everything we asked for was there. Well, if something's there but it doesn't work, it might as well not be there. And there are many, many things in this update that were not working. And there were other things that I had nitpicky Issues with some of the ways that some of the design things. Okay, that's a matter of opinion. Some of it. Like someone else said things were buried.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I think it was.

[C]

David said the sleep timer was buried, Worried Marco had to relent and fix that. But overall, what eventually made me pull the trigger and both delete the app and stop paying for an app that I have paid for since its launch was the attitude of the developer and either the cluelessness or disregard about the degree to which the app was broken when he launched it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, very Elon Musk esque with X.

[C]

Right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, just. It's not working. Screw you.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. And the great fanfare with which the app was released as if it were ready for prime time. And a major improvement. And like, I don't know, he was either lying or fooling himself. So, you know, I don't like to assign malice to someone when incompetence will.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Will do the trick.

[C]

Will do the trick. But, you know, look, I'm happy that Marco is on this. I don't think he has any choice. Any choice? Yeah, I mean, you know, he said again, he said on ATP that his. Basically his business is on fire. And I'm sorry for that for him, but I'm looking around for more stable podcast apps and it's not like there aren't a whole lot to choose from. So, yeah, that's where we are.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I will say that I'm happily back on it now. He's fixed the issues that I care about, but they're much less involved than what you and Jason end up customizing for.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, no, we had a good 10 year run, me and Marco, and we just went our separate ways, so I wish him well.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I ended up going back to it too, because I needed the upload feature for testing shows, and that fortunately still works, even though he's still threatening to take that away. So we'll see how that goes. Yeah, if he takes that away, then it's definitely over with. But it's so funny that the interface is so janky now. I actually, I still listen to ATP just so I can hear if there are any updates about the shit show that is his app. And the interface is so glunked up with all the crap now that it's ridiculous. I'll send you a screenshot next time. I get it, Dave, just so you can.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, it is bad. It's funny because I had said before that I used it straight out of the box and didn't do any customization. Now with a New one. I have to customize it because you can turn off a bunch of the crap on the home base. Yeah, you have no choice.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, you have no choice to. It's like. That was. The other thing that pissed me off about the update was the bad UX caused me to delete the podcast that I had listened to almost a thousand episodes of, that I had been tracking which ones I'd listened to. And all of my progress was lost because of a very bad UX decision. I totally forgot about that. That was the one thing that really, really chapped my death. I was just not happy with that one bit.

[C]

Yeah, I remember you telling us about that. Yeah. So we'll see. Maybe he'll recover. But what I hope is that he learns a valuable lesson and this doesn't happen again.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. So let us put to bed the story of Overcast. It is done. We shall never, henceforth, never be mentioned again. Unless we bring back more out of the week.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We'll be talking about it next week, I'm sure.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Probably just see what this fucker did again. Jesus. Okay, well, we have a few minutes left here. And Dave, I wanted to ask you about this story that is making headlines across the world, and I'm sure you guys have covered it now. The exploding pagers in walkie talkies in Lebanon.

[C]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And I saw an ex post that was. Or the greatest thing ever says generation Z right now is asking, what's a pager?

[C]

Yeah. Did you guys have pagers back in the day?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, definitely several. Yeah, my last one was a transparent green. It was like an imac green. It was great.

[C]

Oh, right, right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Simpler times, man. But yeah, I was college, I still. I had a pager still. You know, that was how we. We got in touch with each other. You'd have to go find a pay phone or cough it back home to get in touch with your friend.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I bought one. I bought some of my first ones with friend of the show mxv, and he still has his old pagers that we bought back then. Damn, man. Throw some shit away. Clean that house.

[C]

I remember buying my first pager. And I remember. The things I remember about it are that it was a 900 MHz pager, which evidently was the fancy one. For whatever reason, like 900 MHz pagers were more reliable. I guess the signal could get into buildings more than whatever it previously had been running on. It was made by Motorola. And the other thing I remember about it, it was strictly numeric. So all I would get on the pager was a phone number. And then I'd have to find a payphone and I'd call the person and I say, I was describing this to someone earlier this week, and I said, I'd have to find a pay phone. Yay for my history as a phone freaker. And then I would call someone, they'd answer, and I'd say, hi, did someone page me to this number? And then, you know, sometimes they say, oh, hey, Dave. And sometimes they'd say, hold on, let me check. And they'd ask around to see if anybody had paged me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But I was working at a video game arcade that had video games at it standups. When I had my pager, I worked at Just for Games in Downers Grove, Illinois. And yeah, those were the fun days, man. We were playing Mortal Kombat 2 and Killer Instinct. After the arcade, the shop closed. It was great.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Page all your friends and say it's closed. Come on down.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly, exactly. Free tokens for everyone. And we got some Zima in the back.

[Brian Schulmeister]

After this, we'll stop off at Blockbuster.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's what we did, actually. Blockbuster was in the strip mall over too.

[Brian Schulmeister]

My God, we lived a completely. The way of life that we lived back then is so gone. Gone. It's just gone.

[C]

It's crazy, right?

[Jason DeFilippo]

So, Dave, tell us about the exploding pagers in Lebanon.

[C]

Well, I mean, look, there are a couple ways to come at this, and I think one way is kind of the cold, clinical, tactical side of it, of what presumably Israel has achieved here in the planning and the execution. I mean, this is a supply chain attack, right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[C]

They were able to get deep into the supply chain, manufacture these things. The story with the walkie talkies is that this model walkie talkie hadn't been manufactured for a decade and Israel had duplicates made of it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right?

[C]

So you have the cleverness of that, the persistence of that, but then you've got the getting it in the hands of the people you want to get it in the hands of. This is a rapidly changing story and there's lots of speculation. One of the things I saw come by that caught my eye was informed speculation that Israel may have altered the software in some airport scanners so that when these devices came through airport scanners, the explosives were not detected.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Huh?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I don't want to hear that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, right. Well, I don't want to hear that part.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, and a lot of the first takes that I saw online were particularly. I mean, obviously they're a bit histronic because it just happened. But it's, you know, a whole new method of warfare has now just opened. Basically, your kid's cell phone and iPad and laptop have just been turned into the lethal weapons.

[C]

So, yeah, to that point, I saw someone comment, oh, this will in no way affect what we're allowed to take on board airplanes from here on out, and hopefully it won't. I made the joke on Mastodon that a whole bunch of cybersecurity experts were suddenly moonlighting as explosives experts, as happens with these sorts of things. And I saw people. There's been reports that there were 2 to 3 grams of explosive in the devices. There's been reports that there are two or three ounces of explosives in the devices.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So this wasn't overloading the battery, There were actual explosives in the devices?

[C]

Correct, Correct.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[C]

From my understanding is there is not enough energy in one of these devices. And remember, pagers use over the counter, off the shelf batteries.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. They were just really double A's or.

[C]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If they had deployed bird scooters throughout Lebanon.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, Jesus. Well, it would just wipe the country.

[C]

Yeah. So, yes, it was. Again, nothing. This is all subject to change. But my current understanding, as we record today, actual explosives, there was a trigger inside that they could signal and set off. So that's the trade craft. We have the psychological impact of that. Hezbollah, they went to pagers because they felt as though mobile devices were not secure. The smartphones were not secure. So imagine how Israel has screwed with their heads.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, insane. Insane.

[C]

That nothing is safe. And so day one, they blew up the pagers. Day two, they blew up walkie talkies. Again, I saw so many vinyl and record players. Well, I was going to say day three, I would not be wanting to be walking around Lebanon with a boombox. Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Or a carrier pigeon.

[C]

Right. So here, here's my. I want to say the dilemma, the internal struggle I'm having is that, on the one hand, was this clever? Yes. Was it effective? Yes. On the other hand, these things were exploding. Well, exactly. These things were exploding in public places. Children did die, houses did burn down. Is this the kind of Warcraft we want to be enthusiastic about? So I just. I think we need to be careful in. As impressed as we may be with the cleverness of this and the long game that they were playing here to make this happen. Let's not lose sight of the fact that the way that this played out did take place in public squares with non combatants, many non combatants, and that there were absolutely innocent lives lost. And by absolutely innocent, I mean children.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. The Clinical phrase is collateral damage.

[C]

Right, Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[C]

Right. So it's hard. It's been, you know, we've. With my colleagues at the Cyberwire, we've been really, really deliberate and careful about how we want to cover this. Because. Because of all this stuff, you know, there's. It's just. It's. It's messy, and it's a great example of how messy these things are. And it's tough.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, the whole conflict is messy anyways. Right. Like, all of it. And then you throw this literally bomb into this. It's insane.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But that's why I wanted to ask you, because I would screw it up.

[C]

I appreciate that. Well, I mean, I hope I've answered your question. I'm sure my answer is going to displease people on either side of this argument to different degrees. But I hope my intent and my hope is that I'm being fairly measured and I'm letting information and facts inform how I both interpret this and present it. But it's not an easy one. It's really not.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nope. And on that.

[C]

Yeah. Well, so shifting gears real quick onto something much lighter, I'm curious, if someone came to either of you and said, we would like to license your voice for an AI, how would you respond to that?

[Jason DeFilippo]

How much?

[Brian Schulmeister]

How much and how limited?

[C]

Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[C]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Not in. Not across the universe, in perpetuity. None of that sort of stuff. What are you licensing it for and how much?

[C]

Yeah, so like an annual license that you always have the ability to revoke.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I would also have all kinds of morality clauses in there. You can't use my voice to sell exploding pagers, that sort of thing.

[C]

Right, Right. I guess my question also is, does it matter if someone comes to you to license your voice or not? In other words, could someone with all of us, the three of us, having as much audio as we have out there in the world, which means it would be easy for anyone to create an AI version of any of our voices if they did. So what recourse do we have?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, next to none. I mean, that. That's kind of the next thing, right? It's. It's the reason, the only reason that they got super close to Scarlett Johansson's voice and then had to pull it back is because high profile and an actress that can afford to sue them. End of story. Like, if it would have been anybody else, if it would have been you or me, that Google rolled out their voices and like, holy crap, that sounds a lot like me, there'd be absolutely nothing we could do about it. Right, so it's a free for all unless you got the money to sue.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And would you even know that's. That's the crazy thing because, you know, everything is so fractured now. Like, how would you even find out? You would have to almost stumble across it or it would have to be such a massive thing, you know what I mean?

[C]

Yeah. Right, well. And people could be doing it already if someone could have a personal version of. Of anyone's voice, you know, they could have their personal assistant be the voice of anyone who. There's enough information to sample and the amount of information you need to sample is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. So pretty soon you'll be able to have whoever you want be the voice of whatever you want it to be. And that'll just be that, I think. I don't know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, unless they shut down the avenues to put your own things in, you know what I mean? Like Apple. You can't upload your own voice into Siri. You get the choice.

[C]

Right? Right. Yeah, well, we'll see. Somebody asked me about it this week. It was sort of a. It wasn't like a specific, hey, we'd like to hire you or anything. It was more of a just kind of a what if. How would you feel about this? And I don't think I'm opposed to it outright, but I think like you said, Brian, I would, I'd have to.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There would be a lot of restrictions.

[C]

Yeah. I'd have to feel like I had some kind of control over it and be mutually beneficial.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Agreed.

[C]

Interesting times.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I do have a bit of breaking news.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[C]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Cards Against Humanity is suing elon Musk for $15 million.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Seven years ago you paid US$15 to protect a pristine parcel of land on the US Mexico border from racist billionaire Donald Trump's very stupid wall. Unfortunately, an even richer, more racist billionaire Elon Musk snuck up on us. Completely fucked your land with gravel, tractors and space garbage. How did this happen? Elon Musk's SpaceX was building some space thing nearby and he figured he could just dump his shit all over your gorgeous plot of land without asking. After we caught him, SpaceX gave us a 12 hour ultimatum to accept a lowball offer for half the land's value. We said, go fuck yourself, Elon. We'll see you in court. So I just got this email as you were talking, so there's a link to sign up to get your share. And the URL for the website is. Elon owes you $100 com.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And they have some before and after pictures of what the blend looked like. The pristine land with geese flying over top in the sunrise and then just a bunch of tractors and garbage all over it. They did screw up the land.

[C]

How much land are we talking about?

[Jason DeFilippo]

I can't even remember how much it was. It was enough that it would stop the wall being built through. They bought a block of land so it was like right in the path of the wall being built. So the whole point of it was because Cards Against Humanity does fun stuff like that. And that was it. So they still own the land. And I own part of that land because I was part of the people that put my money in. So that's why I got the email. I spent 15 bucks to help buy the parcel of land. Land.

[C]

It's like you're part of a homeowners association, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. All right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

What a joy.

[C]

A wall blocking hoa. Wow.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The greatest HOA of all time.

[C]

Maybe you can run for president.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So there we go. And they cite it with great vengeance and furious anger. Cards against humanity.

[C]

So, yeah, good for them.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I hope they win.

[C]

Yeah, me too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I want my $100 closing shout out final 666. Fun fact. In 1980, the Pennsylvania Lottery's daily number game saw the number 666 drawn, resulting in a record number of winners. Because so many people had played this lucky combination, this incident became known as the number of the Beast lottery scandal.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nice.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right, all right. Over at Patreon, we've got Darth Cat, Seth, Paulo, Joe, Sarah Es, and Suzanne.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. We've had an influx of these annual subscription people. And I was thinking about you, about this, Jason, and how this may not have been a good idea.

[Jason DeFilippo]

This may end up fucking me greatly.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. Because you've gotten used to the pretty steady amount per month that we've been getting. And we're going to get a lot this month and maybe less in the coming months because people have switched over. So you better budget yourself.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And as we know from this, from 11 years of this show, I am so good at budgeting.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So by all means, everybody, we appreciate it. Sign up for the annual subscription. But if you want to save Dave's, or Dave, if you want to save Jason's pocketbook, stick to the monthly, please.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no, stick to the yearly. Just more people. We just have to keep up the rate, keep up the pace.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We got to keep feeding the beast.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, no. Know I am so screwed. But the Small Business association is going to love you very much.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Over at PayPal we've got Andrew, Ario, Nathaniel Sloan, Tom and Paulo, who gave us a big 180 bucks and writes in to say long overdue. Hi guys. I hope this message finds you grumpy and well. I'm a big fan and longtime listener to the show. I even remember when you had two episodes per week three years ago. I got pink. Slipped a term. I learned from you guys from a well paid job, which was a bummer and also meant that we had to evaluate all our expenses. We cut down a lot. Among them was my Patreon subscription to gog. Naturally, I kept on listening as you guys are great and address a lot of topics I'm interested in. Etc. Your openness about your challenges is heartwarming and sincere. I made myself a promise to someday pay back what I owed you. Happy to share that. I found a new job and reserves are back on the rise. So I've just put in 180 in the tip jar to pay for three years of laughter, grumpiness and bewilderment when you talk about politics in the States. Brian, enjoy every moment you have with the kid. Before you know it, they're adults. Been there, got the T shirt. Jason, keep on going, Stay strong. Never thought I would be more proud of someone's sobriety, but I am. Take care, stay safe and stay grumpy. Cheers from Amsterdam. Thank you, Paulo.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Over. Really, really appreciate it. And over at the tip jar we've got Anthony. And Anthony writes, hey, grumps. I was in Phoenix last May and saw Waymo. I decided, hell, why not? When I got in. I was initially scared, but surprisingly it was safer than a human being, careful and conservative while Dr. Driving. If you haven't tried it, you should. I wouldn't trust it in too much traffic or on highways though, so thank you.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That would be the problem with Los Angeles.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, that's all we got. Traffic and highways. And also thanks to Sean, Glenn and Eric.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, thank you all so much. No new reviews this week and as Jason pointed out, off the air, unfortunately, nobody's died.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no good deaths this week. Knock on wood. Knock on wood.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmite.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for tuning in to grumpy old geeks. Dive into the show notes and all the links from Today's episode at GOG Show 666. Feeling generous. Keep this top notch entertainment rolling by dropping us a few bucks at GOG Show. Donate every bit helps spread the grumpiness. There's a share button in every podcast player out there. Use it to share the show with friends, foes, and everyone in between and we'll be forever grateful. And head over to GOG show to find the link to our Discord Channel and chat with us another show fans. Got something to say? Send your feedback, comments or awesome links to GOG show slash Contact and show us some love. Leave a review at GOG Show Slash Review a five star rating might just get your review read on the air. Stay grumpy.