669: HamFest

Summary

Grumpy Old Geeks Episode 669: HamFest Summary

Release Date: October 12, 2024
Hosts: Jason DeFilippo, Brian Schulmeister, with Dave Bittner

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1. WordPress vs. WP Engine Drama

The episode kicks off with a heated discussion about the ongoing conflict between Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic (parent company of WordPress), and WP Engine. Jason and Brian delve into the complexities of trademark infringement accusations leveled by Matt against WP Engine for using "WP" in their branding.

• Jason DeFilippo explains, “[Matt] has been trying to strong arm these people for money for ages” ([01:01]).

• Brian Schulmeister highlights the company’s internal turmoil: “An alignment bonus was offered, and 8% of WP Engine took it up” ([03:25]).

The hosts criticize Matt’s approach, suggesting it reflects broader issues within tech oligarchs. They argue that Automattic’s significant commitment to WordPress core development doesn't excuse the overreach in trademark enforcement.

• Jason DeFilippo states, “Shutting off WordPress users on WP Engine from getting their plugin updates was a complete and utter overreach” ([04:55]).

2. Irvine Police Department's Tesla Cybertruck

Jason and Brian transition to discussing the Irvine Police Department's adoption of Tesla’s Cybertruck, emphasizing concerns over its practicality for law enforcement.

• Brian Schulmeister remarks, “The new cybertruck is only going to be used for the DARE anti-drug program. It’s not suited as a patrol car” ([11:30]).

• Jason DeFilippo critiques the promotional choices: “The promo video set to music from the Terminator... they do know that the bad guy in the second movie is dressed up as a cop” ([12:07]).

They express skepticism about Tesla’s vehicles meeting the demanding needs of police work, especially in high-speed pursuits.

3. Apple Intelligence and AI Summaries

The hosts explore Apple’s upcoming AI features, particularly the text summarization tool introduced in iOS 18.1.

• Jason DeFilippo shares a cautionary tale: “Man learns he's being dumped via dystopian AI summary of texts” ([18:43]). He narrates how an AI summary of breakup texts stripped personal emotions, making the experience feel dystopian yet manageable.

Brian questions the efficacy and sensitivity of AI in nuanced human interactions, pondering its broader implications.

4. Issues with X (Formerly Twitter)

Discussions shift to the legal and operational challenges facing X (formerly Twitter).

• Brian Schulmeister reports, “Despite X's decision to abide by the Brazilian Supreme Court, it isn't back online due to payment errors” ([19:48]).

• Jason DeFilippo adds, “X paid its fines to the wrong bank, delaying restoration for five to seven business days” ([20:44]).

The duo also touches upon X's failed legal maneuver in Australia, where the company claimed it should not be held accountable under the name "Twitter," a stance dismissed by the courts.

5. Internet Archive Under Siege

The Internet Archive faces multiple denial-of-service attacks coinciding with a previous data breach.

• Brian Schulmeister summarizes, “The Internet Archive has been hit with a series of DoS attacks during a breach disclosure” ([21:13]).

• Jason DeFilippo expresses concern over the platform’s security: “It's more disconcerting that it was two separate entities that took them down” ([22:09]).

They lament the vulnerability of crucial internet resources to malicious attacks.

6. Instagram and Threads’ Moderation Backlash

Aggressive content moderation on Meta’s Threads and Instagram platforms has sparked user backlash.

• Jason DeFilippo notes, “Instagram and Threads head Adam Mosseri is looking into moderation complaints” ([23:20]).

• Brian Schulmeister cites a specific incident: “Verge writer Umar Shakir had his Instagram account disabled after being mistakenly flagged as underage” ([23:42]).

The hosts criticize the overzealous use of AI in moderation, leading to unwarranted account restrictions and deletions.

7. Decline of Web Development Tools

The conversation turns to the declining popularity and usage of traditional web development platforms like WordPress, despite available alternatives.

• Brian Schulmeister observes, “There are viable, much better alternatives to WordPress out there, but they aren’t gaining traction” ([07:41]).

• Jason DeFilippo adds, “Most people aren’t making websites like they used to; everything’s app-based these days” ([08:15]).

They discuss platforms like Ghost and Directus, acknowledging their niches but questioning their widespread adoption.

8. Media and Entertainment Reviews

The hosts share their opinions on recent films and TV shows, ranging from superhero narratives to avant-garde cinema.

• Jason DeFilippo praises The Penguin: “The makeup with Colin Farrell is just... he is not in there. It’s amazing” ([26:19]).

• Brian Schulmeister criticizes The Joker, with Jason admitting, “I lasted 37 minutes. I tried. I just couldn’t do it” ([28:43]).

They also touch on upcoming spin-offs and documentaries, reflecting on quality and audience reception.

9. Tesla’s Cyber Cab and Manufacturing Critiques

Tesla’s latest venture, the Cyber Cab, is scrutinized for unrealistic promises and poor build quality.

• Jason DeFilippo cynically remarks, “This thing's never coming out. It’s going to cost $30,000 and come out... maybe by 2030” ([61:59]).

• Brian Schulmeister adds, “Even the Teslas that have been around are shoddily built, frankly” ([62:25]).

The hosts draw parallels to past disappointments with Tesla’s product launches, emphasizing skepticism toward Elon Musk’s commitments.

10. Ham Radio and Technological Nostalgia

Dave Bittner brings a nostalgic perspective, contemplating obtaining a ham radio license for preparedness during natural disasters.

• Dave reflects, “Ham radio has stepped up and provided useful functionality during natural disasters” ([67:13]).

• Jason DeFilippo empathizes with the sentiment: “Maybe this would be a fun thing to do, a fun project to get my license” ([73:12]).

The conversation highlights the balance between embracing old technologies for practical uses and resisting the urge to cling to nostalgic gadgets that no longer serve a purpose.

11. Community Engagement and Feedback

Towards the end, the hosts mention feedback from listeners, including tips and suggestions on app functionalities.

• Jason DeFilippo addresses a listener’s request: “You can use shortcuts automation to toggle screen rotation on an app-by-app basis” ([51:43]).

• Brian Schulmeister shares community observations: “We see a lot of fake posts about celebrities on Threads” ([39:24]).

They encourage audience interaction through donations and reviews, though noting a quieter response in this episode.

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Notable Quotes:

• Jason DeFilippo ([01:01]): “Matt just has a bug up his ass because they're eating his lunch over at WP Engine.”

• Brian Schulmeister ([03:25]): “Not insignificant.”

• Jason DeFilippo ([04:55]): “Shutting off WordPress users on WP Engine from getting their plugin updates was a complete and utter overreach.”

• Jason DeFilippo ([11:30]): “The new cybertruck is only going to be used for the DARE anti-drug program. It’s not suited as a patrol car.”

• Jason DeFilippo ([18:43]): “Man learns he's being dumped via dystopian AI summary of texts.”

• Brian Schulmeister ([23:42]): “Verge writer Umar Shakir had his Instagram account disabled after being mistakenly flagged as underage.”

• Jason DeFilippo ([26:19]): “The makeup with Colin Farrell is just... he is not in there. It’s amazing.”

• Jason DeFilippo ([28:43]): “I lasted 37 minutes. I tried. I just couldn’t do it.”

• Brian Schulmeister ([39:24]): “We see a lot of fake posts about celebrities on Threads.”

• Jason DeFilippo ([61:59]): “This thing's never coming out. It’s going to cost $30,000 and come out... maybe by 2030.”

---

Conclusion

Episode 669 of Grumpy Old Geeks offers a critical and in-depth analysis of the latest tech controversies, ranging from corporate disputes to the pitfalls of AI moderation. The hosts blend nostalgia with skepticism, particularly highlighting the decline of once-dominant platforms like WordPress and the questionable advancements of firms like Tesla. Personal anecdotes and community feedback enrich the discussion, providing listeners with both expert opinions and relatable insights. Despite the apparent decline in listener engagement, the episode remains a comprehensive exploration of current tech struggles, embodying the show’s signature blend of grumpiness and geekery.

Transcript

[Brian Schulmeister]

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[Jason DeFilippo]

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[Brian Schulmeister]

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[Jason DeFilippo]

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[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 Schulmeister.

[Jason DeFilippo]

WordPress drama this week, Brian. Oh, the drama.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, now I have to admit I have not particularly followed this because I knew I didn't have to because you are so deeply enmeshed in this. So I figured I'd get the whole. I'd get the entire story from you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, well, here's. I mean, we started to talk about it when it first hit the fan with little Matty, Matt getting up on stage at WordPress Con, whatever, and saying that the great evil are these people at the WP engine. So the way that this thing started to break was that, oh, okay, Matt just has a bug up his ass because they're eating his lunch over at WP Engine. Well, it turns out that is true, but it began long before the WordPress convention. And he's been trying to strong arm these people for money for ages.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And he's using all sorts of tactics, but the main tactic that they're using is trademark infringement on the WordPress trademark.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So because they use WP in their.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Name, apparently in some of their documentation, they overreach and they overreach on some of their claims, saying that, you know, there are certain things you're allowed to do and certain things you're not allowed to do. Hence the name WP Engine and not WordPress Engine. Yes, but it's been going back and forth and it's been. I've been hanging out on the Reddits just to watch, to see. I wanted to see where the zeitgeist was because I had made a post on threads saying this is the beginning of the end for WordPress. Matt proves to be as petty as the rest of the tech oligarchs, even though he puts on a nice boy front. That and I hate that fucking software with unbridled vehemence. So starting with that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, you always swing soft at the beginning.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know, yeah, yeah. You know, I slide in low so nobody knows what my real position is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, very subtle.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And so I got some blowback from Matt himself who came in and was like, here's a better article. And he says, he's like, hey, you still got my phone number? It hasn't changed. I'm like, dude, you haven't given me your phone number in 20 years. So I've taken all of the presosphere in.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, look, let me tell you something. I'm looking right now at Slate, which does not really get deep into Internet culture or tech very often. Top of the fold. First story I see there is some reality TV level drama happening at WordPress right now.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, that's kind of it. That's in Slate right now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Throw that in the show notes too, because we got a list. Yeah. So he offered an adjustment bonus for people who were not. Or an alignment. Yeah, an alignment bonus for people who just weren't aligned with his ideals on how he saw this thing shooting down and breaking down with WP engine and 8% of the company took him up on it, which is over 100 people.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Not insignificant.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, including the WordPress executive director left. So I thought that was interesting. And he's saying that 92% of the company decided to stay and left $128 million on the table or something close to that. I'm like, okay, yeah, way to flip the script on that when you just lost almost 10% of your company because you made a really dumb thing happen.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, and the bigger take for me on that is that this must not be the best place in the world to work because as soon as somebody was throwing a bit of money to leave, 9% of the company did.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's what I was thinking too. I was like, might be. I mean, we don't know what type of people left. Could have just been customer service because it was a nice deal to take, but when that, when the executive director leaves that. Actually that's. I'm pretty sure that that's an alignment for moral values. So David Hanemeyer Hanson has a nice write up on it. Calling Automattic is doing open source dirty, which is kind of where I fall with this too, because this whole thing is around the for profit branch of WordPress and somebody who's using the open source software however they want, which is the deal you make when you write open source software. Once it's out of the barn, you cannot control where it happens. The only thing that you have rights to are what's in that license that you put that you release the software under.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly. See, I don't see the problem here at all. I mean, I can see that there was some overreach. And yes, maybe WP Engine should have been smacked a little bit and saying, hey, come chill out a bit with using our logos and saying that you do this or that when you can't and you don't. But the underlying business model that WP Engine has because WordPress is open source. There's no issues there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, there isn't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

None.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And he's just butthurt that they're better at it than they are.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And what WordPress is doing. WordPress.com is gifting these man hours per month back to the core of WordPress and they're saying that they're doing over 3,800 hours per month with engineering back to the core of WordPress and WP engine is doing about 40 hours. Well, here's the thing, Matt. Nobody said you had to give 3,800 hours per month back to the. Back to.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, you're choosing to do that. And by the way.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If you're putting that many hours into this product, why does it still suck?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Why does it suck? That's the first thing that I thought of. I'm like, that's a lot of man hours and this thing is still a flaming piece of shit. What the hell. So it's, it's very fun to watch on the outside. Matt overreached for sure. He did a really dumb thing, which means he's. He doesn't have anybody around him really. I think that guides him.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It feels very Elon Musk. He's got a bunch of yes men around him and that's about it. Except for when he actually put the cards on the table and he found out 9% of the company.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. I don't even know if he has yes men around him. Because he's a nice guy. He's a nice guy. And one of my friends wrote in the Threads article, he's like, I remember we all had a party at Matt's apartment when WordPress hit 100,000 downloads. So it was like a big milestone for him back then. He was a nice kid, but you give somebody a billion dollars in free run of their own empire that runs half the Internet, somebody's going to get a big head and do something stupid. That's just the way of the world. And look, the name of the company is Automattic. His name is Matt. He put it in the middle of the name of the company. So if you want to talk about some ego moves, there you go. So he's not immune. He might be a nice guy, but he's still a billionaire tech oligarch as I still put it. So there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, I mean there's no doubt about that. I mean, unfortunately most of the Internet runs off WordPress. It's not going away. It's never going to go away. But yeah, this is just, I don't know, you know, is he having a midlife crisis? Something is going on. This is just stupid.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. I just don't think WordPress.com is raking in the bucks that it was before. And they're losing traction because most people aren't making websites like they used to anymore.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, that's the real thing. You're seeing a decrease across this industry wide. It's not just WordPress that's suffering. There are viable, much better alternatives to WordPress out there. Things like Ghost that are just not getting traction at all. Because no one cares. Yeah, no one cares.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Ghost has good traction because they have their, their newsletter interface, you know, and the fact that you can do paid newsletters with it. That's where Ghost really comes in and shines. I found another one that I was in doing a little bit of research. I found one called Directus, which was neat because it kind of takes your, your database schema and then just builds the UX on top of it. I love that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that's really cool. I was looking at that when he put it in the show notes. Yeah. The reality is that there's very little money being put towards web resource anymore to websites. Nobody's developing websites. Nobody's putting a ton of money into websites. Everything's app based these days.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. And to do that your whole backend is going to be API driven. And the word site, Word site. Too many words in my head today. The website is just a front end with the least bit of effort that they could possibly do, you know, and.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Personally I think it's a shame. I like websites. I like it when people still put a lot of money and time and effort into things. I like it when I'm surprised by new sites out there that are doing something that unexpected. I think it's a real shame that we're not spending more time developing things for the web. Even if it, God forbid, happens to be on WordPress.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's an overreach on a blogging platform for what they've done anyway. It's A kludge. And the one thing that really got me, that was the trigger for me to write that that thread was. This is a quote from Matt that he did with an interview he did at the verge. He says, WordPress.org just belongs to me personally. Okay, yeah, that's not a good thing. That's really not a good thing. So he says, in my role as owning WordPress.org, i don't want to promote a company which is A, legally threatening me, and B, using the WordPress trademark. That's part of why we cut off access from the servers. This still comes back to the plugin directory. And WordPress.org hosts the plugin directory, which takes up, I'm sure, a metric shit ton of resources, as well as the theme directory. Well, here's the deal. You don't have to do that. You did that on your own to promote WordPress. That wasn't, you know, that's on you, man. If people want to use it, then make it use. If it's going to be a commercial thing, make it a commercial thing. Figure that out. But do that. Not without shutting people off in the real world, because that's shutting off WordPress users that are on WP engine from getting their plugin updates was a complete and utter overreach. And really, that's what fucked his credibility.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, if you were coming out now and you were trying to decide on what platform to go with, would you do this? Absolutely.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Drupal, baby. No, that has been the fun part. I see all the stuff that we used to use back in the day that we just were like, yeah, I don't want to use that. I want to use that. Drupal is back in the news and Laravel is back in the news, which I hated.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All of those are horrible. The problem with WordPress, I mean, as awful as it is, it makes sense to use it just because there's so much stuff available. It's so flexible in such a horrible way. But it beats all the other competitors. It really just does so well.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I mean, that's if you want to do self hosting. And nowadays it's like, if I'm going to do something hosted, I'm going to Squarespace. Fuck it, right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know, they do that just as well.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Find out what your maximum requirements are and then find the least friction option out there for you. And WordPress is never the option with the least friction.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Absolutely not. Well, more than a few people sent this into us because we had been talking about Jason's great white whale hunt for the LAPD cybertruck out there. This is not the LAPD cybertruck, but there is one down in the city of Irvine. And they released a new promotional video on Tuesday to show off their new Tesla cybertruck. The video is every bit as cringey as you'd expect, but there are a few details that weren't expected. For starters, the new cybertruck is only going to be used for the DARE anti drug program. I can't believe that's still around rather than as a patrol car. And perhaps more oddly, the promo Vizio music uses music from the Terminator movie franchise.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No. There we go. Way to go, guys. Yeah, Read the room, Orange County. Read the room.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Now, they say the Irvine Police Department is excited to unveil what we believe is the first police Tesla cybertruck in the nation. Los Angeles is not that far from Irvine, so maybe they should talk to each other, because if you've seen that LAPD one around, they're the first one in the nation.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, and I've seen it twice. And like I said, this is an lapd. It looks like a black and white LAPD squad car with the circle city of Los Angeles logo on the white door, but the rest of it's black. This is a straight up LAPD looking cybertruck.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, it would not surprise me because reports have trickled out that a company called Unplugged Performance, which is based in Hawthorne, California, was making a big push to equip cops in Southern California with Tesla technology. So that's just south of Los Angeles, and that's where SpaceX and Tesla have large facilities, so not surprising there. And again, the video, the promo video set to music from the Terminator. They do know that the bad guy in the second movie is dressed up as a cop. And the movies are actually about how cops are bad and power corrupts. Realize that, Right? And apparently there's also issues with did they get permission to use said music? And it's looking like no, probably not.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And this is an interesting one too, to talk about police and the cybertrucks. Three police chiefs in Northern California have independently concluded that Teslas are unfit to serve or protect. So this is an article from the SF Gate, and they spoke with three police chiefs who have independently come to the same conclusion. Teslas are not equipped to handle the demands of modern policing. Studies have shown the U.S. transportation sector contributes 29% of the country's overall greenhouse gas emissions. If law enforcement can't rely on the most commercially available EVs in this push toward a greener future, it casts doubt on how realistic Newsom's push really is. And this is from our lovely governor trying to make new inroads to wherever he can. I've watched enough high speed chases on the news daily because that's our sport, you know, our national sport in Los Angeles. There's no way that these Teslas could hang with them for as long as they go sometimes. 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 in the news.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Apple Intelligence is coming, Jason. Apparently it will start rolling out on October 28th. According to Bloomberg. They said last month that it was targeting October for the release of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1 and Mac OS Sequoia 15.1, which will bring some of the first Apple Intelligence features to the iPhone and all other Apple devices. But it did not set a firm release date at the time, so hopefully we'll find out by end of month. The first wave of Apple Intelligence features will include the Text editor and summarization tool, writing tools, along with the smart audio recording and transcriptions for mail, notes, pages and other apps. Which means we'll start doing our podcast via Notes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, we will also likely cheaper yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We will also likely see the new Memories feature in Photos, which is designed to be an easy to use editor for making movies with images from the gallery, and Cleanup, which can remove objects from the backgrounds of images. I think they don't really need AI for that. But, you know, I guess it'll be better if they do it. So we'll see.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I've had it for a couple weeks now. The text summarization and the mail summarization is horrible. Absolutely horrible, right? Yeah. It is not good. And as our next story will tell you exactly why it's not that good. Man Learns He's Being Dumped Via Dystopian AI Summary of Texts A New York software developer, Nick Spreen, was dumped via an AI generated text summary on his iPhone 15 Pro. Using Apple's upcoming Apple Intelligence feature, which summarizes text messages, the AI summarized several breakup texts from his girlfriend with a blunt message, no longer in a relationship, wants belongings from the apartment.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't know, I think I'd actually appreciate that short summary without all the, I'm sure, very personal bits and very angry bits that were left out of it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Spreen commented that while the AI added distance, felt the AI at a distance felt dystopian, it also made the breakup feel much more manageable.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, well, there you go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There you go. You, Sarah. Correct.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe I'm wrong about all this AI stuff.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Maybe. Yeah, maybe it does have a purpose.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh boy. Well, Despite X's recent decision to abide by the demands of the Brazilian Supreme Court, X still isn't back online in Brazil, at least as of yesterday. And that's at least in part because it paid its fines to the wrong bank.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oops. How do you manage that?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't know. But in late September, X had named a legal representative for the country, as they were ordered to do, and took down the accounts that they were ordered to do, like a handful of them because, you know, Elon was just being a prick and said he wasn't going to do it. But then he finally did it, and the last hurdle was to pay off the fines that had racked up, reportedly amounting to roughly $5 million. Citing Friday's court filings, Reuters reports that X paid its fines and requested to have their services restored. But then the justice, Alexandra de Moraz, said the funds went to the wrong bank and the decision will have to wait until they've been transferred, which will take five to seven business days.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Can you pay an extra $5 to have it done that day? Like with the fast transfer they have now?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. You maybe wire it? I don't know the routing number. And do you have swift code? We've got to sort this out. How do you screw that up is beyond me, but then again, it is two big agencies. So there you go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

X has also lost a legal fight in Australia in which the company tried to avoid a $400,000 fine by claiming that Twitter no longer exists. The creative legal apartment. Well, first off, they're not exactly wrong.

[Jason DeFilippo]

In an existential realm. Yes, it definitely does not exist anymore.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. The creative legal argument, which was first spotted by Ars Technica, came amid a more than year long dispute with Australia's E Safety Commission. The commission had asked the company, then known as Twitter, to provide details about its handling of child sexual exploitation on the platform last February. In its response, X failed to answer a number of questions and left some sections entirely blank, the commission said in a statement last year. And as a result, they got the fine for non compliance and attempt to fight the fine. That led to X to claim that it shouldn't be responsible since Twitter had ceased to exist. You asked Twitter for this? We aren't Twitter. We are X. Australian feather. Federal Judge Michael Whelahan, however, found the claim unconvincing, saying that X's argument required leaps in logic that were not supported by adequate explanation. Yeah, it's a good one. It's a good try though.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Got to give good attempt, I guess.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And we had been talking about the Internet Archive recently. They've had a rough week. They've been hit with a series of denial of service attacks this week that have taken the service offline. According to security researcher Troy Hunt, the attack came just as the Internet Archive was preparing to disclose a previous breach of its site that resulted in the theft of more than 31 million records. Hunt, who owns have I been poned service, said the timing of the two attacks appear to be entirely coincidental and there are likely multiple parties involved. It's clearly not just one attack, so that's unfortunate. I do like the service, but I don't know why they're being targeted, but they certainly are at the moment.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep, yep. I got, I got my have I been pwned notification. When, when that happened this week. And it's kind of more disconcerting that it was two separate entities that, that, you know, took them down. It's like, hmm, okay, yeah. What, what, what, what do you got going on over there? Like, how bad is your security that you can get. You get fucked over by two people on the same. The same week. Yeah, it's funny, I found out about this because I was actually going to the Wayback Machine for the first time in a very long time and I'm like, why is the Wayback Machine, bro, Broken it Things. Solid as a rock. Guess I got it just the right time.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right. Instagram and Threads are facing growing backlash over aggressive moderation on threads. The topic of threads moderation failures is trending, with users reporting accounts being restricted or deleted for minor issues, such as linking to controversial articles or using common phrases. Instagram and Threads head Adam Mosseri has responded to some complaints stating that he's looking into it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, to be fair, death to the great Satan. America is a common phrase, but one that probably should be moderated.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, probably. Okay, I noticed that there was an uptick in Blue sky chatter on threads this week, most of it being, oh, hey, blue sky's here. Who do they. And other people going, yeah, I posted the same thing over on Bluesky and got two comments, and here I got 1,500. I think I'm going to stay here. So that was kind of that. But yeah, even Verge writer Umar Shakir had his Instagram account disabled because the platform mistakenly flagged him as underage. Despite submitting ID proof meta's moderation upheld the ban, leading to the permanent loss of all his posts and connections.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. Okay, well, you know, look, we've complained that there was no moderation, that there needs to be moderation, and I think what we're learning is the solution is not to do our AI moderation because.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I was going to say the llama. They've got llamas running around in the, in the customer service department now, I.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Fear is absolutely not working. So I think we need to put a pause on this, people, because, yeah, that you're screwing with people's lives. And again, it's their own fault. Like we've always said, we're. Everybody's building their, their, their houses in somebody else's backyard here.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So even if you use WordPress, it turns out to be that way, it seems. Apparently. So, yeah, we usually have some science news here that is uplifting and restores your faith in humanity. Well, I have some science news, but sorry, Brian, it's not going to restore anybody's faith in humanity. China has launched its first batch of Internet satellites as part of the Shifan constellation, aimed at competing with SpaceX's Starlink. However, these 18 satellites have sparked concern among astronomers due to their brightness, which interferes with night sky observations. Experts warn that the Xinfan satellites are even brighter than SpaceX's, posing a serious issue for research astronomy and creating visible streaks in telescopic images. We're just going to be locked in another 20 years, Brian. So Mars Forget about it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

A couple of these things are going to start hitting each other and it's just going to be. We're going to have that whole seven Eves thing happening.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. The whole cascade failure.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So just. That's fine. We don't have to go anywhere anyway.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Just Elon. Let's get him out first.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Media candy. Okay, we're going to start off with some good stuff this week. Brian the Penguin. I'm finally into the Penguin. Three episodes in, that's all there are. Best thing on tv.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I've heard it's like a good gangster thing that it doesn't really. Didn't even really need to be in the DC universe at all.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, I like that it is because it's one of those ones where it takes the super villains and the super and just turns them into normal people. There's no superpowers or anything like that. It is a great gangster story and that's what the Penguin story always was. So cool. But the makeup that they do with Colin Farrell is just. He's not in there. When you watch him, between his performance and the makeup, he is not in there. It's amazing. But the story's fantastic. It's really dense. Lots of story per hour. And the effects are top notch. So all in all, I am loving the Penguin.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm just laughing a little bit because back in the day when Colin Farrell was having his, I guess we would say, troubles.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He would occasionally be a Main street local in Santa Monica, and I have seen him not be in there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I was across the bar from him and he was not in there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Awesome.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm glad he sorted himself out.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, me too. Because it's amazing. Definitely watch it. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Have you had a chance to check that one out yet, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I have not. I will be. My son's a bit too young for it, so I have to wait until it's going to be on a streaming thing and watch it at night.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. It is on a streaming thing now. Now you can rent it if you like. This week. I would wait till it's free, personally.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay. Yeah, I'm not in a rush, to be honest.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, don't be. Don't be in a rush. It was. It was. Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's. I've heard it's good. Not amazing, but good.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's. I would put, you know, the new Ghostbusters movie a little bit higher than Beetlejuice. They're on the same kind of the same level with you Know historical accuracy and things like that. But I like the Ghostbusters movie more.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You want to go. Go for the old ones.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, in my opinion, and it's not, you know, it's not completely out of the blue opinion, a lot of people agree Tim Burton's been on a bit of a downward trajectory, so even revisiting one of his most beloved IPs is probably not going to save that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, it didn't. But it had Winona, so who cares? Who cares?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Who cares?

[Jason DeFilippo]

I watched the new Salem's Lot that came out this week on Max. Skip that one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I've heard it's not great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Skip it. Go to the 1979 version, which is also available on Max.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So if you're going to. If you're going to take the time, watch the old one. I've watched them both. The old one is still the best, hands down. The new Joker movie came out last week, too.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, boy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, now I've seen variations of. I've never walked out of a movie before in my entire life, but here we are.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's that bad. It is really that bad. I lasted 37 minutes. I tried. I tried. I just couldn't do it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. I have zero interest in this at all to begin with. And what I've read of it. I will absolutely never, ever watch this. And just seems it's not even bad enough to be, like, amusingly bad. It's just.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no, it's bad.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's the thing. It is really just bad. Did you see the original? The part one?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I didn't. Because I don't care.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Like, for me, it's like, you're never going to beat Heath Ledger as the Joker. And if you want to go back before that, I still have a soft spot, speaking of Tim Burton for Jack Nicholson's Joker. And I just don't like what's his face. Yeah, I can't stand the guy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So there you go. I thought the first one was okay. You know, it was a new type of Joker and new type of reboot, but yeah. Oh, man, they killed it on this is Bad.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I hear the twist at the end is kind of like, oh, really? Come on.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. I couldn't even get that far. I was hoping to get through it, but it was like over two hours long. And I'm like, no, I just can't do it. Can't do it. I'd rather just watch. It's Halloween season. I want to go watch something scary. Not something just bad. This is really interesting news because I'm a fan of the show Ray Donovan. There's a new spin off coming called the Donovans, but it's with Guy Ritchie, which I'm happy about because his latest Netflix Fair was amazing. The gentleman highly recommend that the movie and the series. This is a Paramount plus series, which is interesting since Paramount. I thought Paramount was cutting back. Cutting back in bailing water because everything's sinking over there, especially once you hear the cast on this one. Tom Hardy, Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan are all near their final agreement signing, so hopefully they'll get that done because that's a pretty good cast.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, that's a great cast and I got it. Now that. Now that Maggie Smith has passed, I'm down to Helen Mirren is like my, oh my God, you're a hot 90 year old.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's what you got. That's where we're at, Brian. We've passed that Rubicon in life.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. We moved from Maggie Smith and we're holding on to Helen Mirren.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's it. That's it. We talked about the show Chaos that was on Netflix recently, and I thought the first episode was decent.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I was getting ready to consider watching it until this news hit the wire.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Chaos has been canceled. Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So there you go, not watching it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Apparently they were pretty deep into season two pre production, but Netflix cut the cord when they looked at the numbers. Yeah, I couldn't bring myself to go back to watch the second episode. Every time something else would come up, like scrolling TikTok was even more interesting. I'm like, I'd rather just sit here and doom scroll for a little bit than fire up the tv. But on some good news, Reacher has finally got its early season renewal for season four. So that's over at Amazon Prime. I love Reacher. It's a good show. Highly, highly recommended.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, there you go. Earlier this week, HBO aired a documentary about bitcoin that claimed to reveal the identity of cryptocurrency's anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. This is called Money Electric. And journalist Cullen Hoback chased the identity of the mysterious creator and came to a controversial conclusion. And by controversial meaning absolutely anybody involved says, there's no fucking way it's the sky. According to Hoback, Satoshi is software developer Peter Todd. He has repeatedly said he is not Satoshi, but did he wink? I don't know. And the cryptocurrency community has roundly rejected the theory. Todd is a bit of a trickster and a troll. Others in the film describe him as a contrarian. He was in his early 20s when Bitcoin appeared. And he did post on Bitcoin Talk, a forum where Satoshi posted before vanishing from the Internet. Todd is a character in the documentary present for large portions of the film as a kind of jester figure. More than once, Todd looks directly at the camera and says, I am Satoshi with a shit eating grin on his face. And then for the record, I am not Satoshi. He told CNN after the documentary aired. And as I mentioned, the cryptocurrency community has firmly rejected the theory. In the film, Bitcoin ambassador Samson Mao says, Peter was ruled out a long time ago. So, okay, so nothing there, I guess.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I don't know. The guy did the QAnon documentary and basically found Q, so give him some credit for that. And I was trying to listen to the Hard Fork episode this morning because I had the filmmaker on, so I fell asleep though. I think I'm just going to watch it, just to check it out because it's something to watch. That's not chaos since I don't have to watch episode two of that anymore.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's true.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Got some time on my hands.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We were talking about Green Day last week. They are also in the news again. Green Day's dookie has been demastered. So if you want to listen to Dookie, the seminal album that kind of broke them, you can now hear what Basket Case might sound like through a big mouth Billy Bass, listen to welcome to paradise via Game Boy Cartridge and Enjoy or not when I Come around from a Wax cylinder. Other formats that they've released include an answering machine, a toothbrush, an animatronic stuffed animal, floppy disk, doorbell, Fisher Price record, hit clip, and a mini disc. It's kind of clever, actually. You can hear what they sound like on the Dookie Demastered website. But if you want to own one, you'll need to be lucky. Made a certain number of each of these and you actually have to basically enter a lottery to be able to buy them.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I think I'll pass.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I think I'll pass. It's fine. It's cool.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And it's not their first album, which you, you, you said the right one. There's the breakout album. Everybody I see is it's Green Day's first album. No, it's not. They have.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, no, no. It's. It's the one that. It's the one that actually did something. That's when people went, oh, who's this band?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, Green Day's. First album was 39 smooth and they only sold 3,000 copies of that one. Amazon is since we were just talking about Reacher, which I did have to watch with ads this last season. God damn it. Amazon is attempting to dismiss a class action lawsuit related to its Prime Video Services ad supported tier. The lawsuit filed in California claims Amazon misled subscribers by introducing ads and charging an extra $2.99 per month for an ad free experience. Plaintiffs argue this violated their expectations and constitutes a breach of breach of contract. Well, Amazon wrote this in their motion to dismiss that they filed on Friday. Even though Amazon has the right to increase the prime membership fee, plaintiffs and other prime members paid exactly the same fee for prime before and after the change to Prime Video. Access to Prime Video is just one of the many prime benefits that Amazon may change in its discretion. But plaintiffs still have complete access to Prime Video and all of its content and pay nothing extra for it. In other words, even though Amazon could permissibly change or remove entirely any any prime benefit, it did not do so with Prime Video. Gotcha. Sorry. They're right. They're absolutely right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They are absolutely right. Is it a dick move that they did it?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, 100%.

[Brian Schulmeister]

100%. Is it a illegal move that they did it? No.

[Jason DeFilippo]

UPS and do dads.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, my kid is at the age where he's starting to ask about basically, well, gaming in general, because I've tried to keep that as much away from him as possible, but certainly more the online gaming systems like his friends are playing, like Minecraft and Switch and Roblox and all that sort of stuff. So Roblox is going to be a hard no, thanks to the story I just read.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Tell us why, Brian. Tell us why.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm researching Minecraft and we're going to get him a Switch, Nintendo Switch for Christmas this year. So that'll have to be enough. He'll have to survive not being targeted by predators and bots on Roblox's platform because apparently that's what's happening all over the place. I know it, I understand it happens on Minecraft too. But you can do family friendly servers or I could even set up my own server for him and his friends to play on. And you know, there's ways to protect it. But Roblox has, is not doing that great. They've been targeted by a short selling firm, Hindenburg Research, which is a great name.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Great name, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Over allegations that the company inflates the numbers of real humans on its platform and has not gone far enough to protect children against predators. I'm sorry, are they talking about X or Roblox?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Really?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Same, same. So this is less than ideal to be targeted by them. The firm is famous for revealing in 2020 that the EV startup Nikola faked a demonstration of its flagship power truck. Me too. We talked about it. They were forced to pay investors 125 million, and founder Trevor Milton was eventually charged with defrauding investors and sentenced to serve four years in prison. I don't think any of that's going to happen with Roblox, but basically they're just saying they're being completely dishonest about their daily active user count and have different internal numbers than what it provides to its public investors. You cannot do that. Multiple former Roblox employees that Hindenburg spoke with said the company can track players who have multiple accounts, even though it told the SEC that it could not do that. The allegations related to child safety on Roblox are more serious, but not new. As recently as July, Bloomberg published a lengthy expose detailing instances of adults grooming children through the platform, including one instance in which a man paid for an Uber to bring her to his home across state lines.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oops.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. For a platform that sees 500 or 50,000 chat messages sent every second, Roblox has just 3,000 moderators tasked with scanning user content. It also relies on AI, which, as we've discussed a little earlier in the show, maybe not be working out so well for moderation. And the platform recently had hundreds of active accounts under different varieties of the name Jeffrey Epstein. So, yeah, not going to be doing Roblox with the kid.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And we touched on this a little bit earlier about the things going on with Instagram and Threads, but if you're active on Meta's Threads app, which I have been dipping my toe into, but this is what I'm encountering, encountering a lot, and it's kind of keeping me away from it. All the engagement bait that is flooding the for you feed now. Instagram Adam Mossari has acknowledged the issue, saying the company is working to get it under control after a spike in such posts. He didn't say what steps the company is taking, but he said there would be more to come on the issue. Yeah, this shit's all over. Like, I don't know which is worse, X is for you MAGA feed or the insane threads for you feed. This is all fucking engagement bait. It's just horrible.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Horrible. I don't know. Which ones do you get the most? Because the ones I get are they all start off with, I don't know if anybody cares, but there's a lot of that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I see a lot of fake posts about celebrities that have not died dying. There's a crap ton about workout and losing weight and all that sort of stuff. And just there's so much of it. So much of it. And a lot of like, I'm going to have this explosive story that I can't wait to tell you about on my blog. And then if you like, look at it, there's just nothing. And they never write anything ever.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I'm getting hundreds and hundreds of hey, I'm like, X days sober posts.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, a lot of that, too. A lot of sobriety, a lot of how to quit drinking, a lot of all that sort of stuff.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm surprised you're getting that too, because I figured I was getting it just because my keywords.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I figure I get it because they have next to nothing to work off from me. So I'm getting it from you because we're friends.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, could be. Could be. But I know those are total engagement baits because you look at them and they've all got just tons and tons of likes and hearts. I'm like, okay, good luck.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I was briefly getting into threads and now I'm kind of turned off by it because every time I load it up, I'm just buried under that crap.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's the thing. It's like after I got pretty good engagement on that mullenweg thread and of course half of it was people telling me I'm a dumb fuck, and the other half were like, right on, bro. So just kind of ignore it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So the Internet?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, the Internet, basically. Oh. The one thing that I did say that I wanted to kind of clarify that I forgot at the beginning, I said, this is the beginning of the end for WordPress. People took that as me saying, oh, WordPress is dead. WordPress is dead. No, no, it's just the beginning of the end. The cracks in the armor are there. He shit on the bagel too much this time and people are going to choose new platforms as they become available. So this is a market opportunity for people to change. That's all. It's.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The decision makers have looked at this and went, we are going to avoid this platform moving forward.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Because, I mean, look, you can't kill these things. Drupal is still around. Come on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The sun will expand and take up the entire fucking solar system and there will still be sites running WordPress.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I guarantee some some dumbass is still going to be there going why can't I get my woocommerce thing to look like I want it to? 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 Entrance and in beta for Google Workspace customers. Check it out at 1Password.com GrumpyOldGeeks that's 1Password.com GrumpyOldgeeks this episode is sponsored by HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit. What is HelloFresh? 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 number one 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 overbuying 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 at the library. Brian, I'm sorry, but I read a new Audible original this week. I'm sorry? I listened to a new Audible original this week by John Scalzi called Constituent Service.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm surprised he didn't release it on Blue Sky.

[Jason DeFilippo]

He probably did. It's a very short story. It's only three hours long, but it's read by Amber Benson, who is a Buffy alum. She does a great job. And it's about aliens on the planet and a human going into municipal service in a sector of the city that is overrun by aliens. Or not overrun, but that's where most of the most of the people that live there are aliens. It's cute, it's fun, and you can't read it yet. Although I think this is old. I think it's an old story. So there may be print versions of it out there, but the audio version's new. I think he's just finding old shit that he's got in the drawer and selling it to Audible because he's too busy on Blue sky writing nothing. But it was good. I liked it. And if you have an Audible Premium account, it's free, which is how I really found it because flip it through like here, would you like some free stuff? I'm like, I always want some free stuff. Come on. I also read Earn It Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers by Steve Pratt. Steve Pratt was one of the founders of Pacific Content, which was a major podcast publishing house that got bought by Rogers Communication, who ultimately destroyed it and shut it down. Way to go, Rogers. It's a good book on how they built and basically did their podcasting division. And it's very smart stuff. These guys were the Navy Seals of podcast production for a while. So if you're in that game, there's some good stuff in there. There's definitely some good stuff. None of it really Appropriate for us because we've been in the business too long and we're kind of screwed. We've been doing it for 11 years. But if we start a new show, Brian, we're set.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We're set.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's a good marketing book, though. Highly recommended. And in just a couple days, Brian, new Neal Stephenson.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't know if I'm going to read this.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, okay. But, Brian, it's the first installment.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Here's the thing. I like it when he does Near World or Near world sci fi. Like future world, Near Future. I like it when he does massive future sci fi. I don't like his historical stuff. I haven't liked a single book he's written that's been historical. And this is historical.

[Jason DeFilippo]

See, I like some of them. Diamond Age, I still think is his best book. I liked Cryptonomicon a lot.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I hated it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. If you don't like Cryptonomicon, then you're definitely not going to like the Baroque Cycle, which I listened to. Absolutely.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I bought the whole goddamn thing. I use it to press laundry.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's about what it's good for. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I'm going to wait for a few reviews to come out for it because. What was the last one? Termination Shock.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I listened to the audiobook version, but I had bought the hardcover, thinking that, oh, I'm just going to sit down and read the hardcover. No, I ended up putting up in the little library down the street where it's been for like six months. Nobody wants it. Poor Neil. But, oh, you know what I did find, though? Thirty years ago, Neal Stephenson wrote a little story, a short story in Wired magazine called Spew, which was the name for my first website 30 years ago. I have a copy of the Wired magazine where he's on the COVID that has that short story in it that I just found the other day.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, there you go. I'm trying to think like the last. Okay. I didn't hate that last Neal Stephenson book as much as you did. I read it all. It was fine. But I'm thinking back, like, the last book I actually really liked from him came from 2011. It was Remdy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's the last time I liked the book of his.

[Jason DeFilippo]

What's funny is I thought that was William Gibson in my mind, in my memory, I'm like, wasn't that William Gibson?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, wait, did Seven Eves come out after that? Which I did love that one.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So Seven Evils was good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that was really good.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Anyway, I'm surprised he didn't do a follow up on 7eves, which was ready for a follow up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, I know I was made for it. He was. And even in the back of the book he talked about exploring the universe more because he did such a good job of universe generation. And then I was perfect. Left.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So crazy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. But no, now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Anyway, speaking of your. Yeah, yeah, no thanks. Pass on that. Speaking of yours, for free from Audible, I. I still have my Amazon Unlimited Kindle Unlimited that actually ends on Sunday. Because I had found the one book, the Mists of Time or the Echoes of Extinction series, I'm now cruised through and finished the third book on it. I'm breaking my rule because I don't want to have to pay for any of these books, Jason. And since I've got the free trial, I'm powering through. Yeah, and they're all fine. It's very, you know, it's crapper sci fi. You know, it's insane characters that this just never would be this smart or this powerful or make all the right decisions or have all the wonderful things happen to them happen. So it is what it is. You've got your hero Mists of Time, Echoes of Extinction, Book three by De Ward Cornell finished. And I'm zooming through book four because I have until Sunday, otherwise I'm gonna have to buy it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Get reading.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The Dark side Ha. With Dave welcome to the Dark side with Dave with podcast super host Dave Buettner. Dave is the host of the Cyberware podcast for all your cybersecurity news, the co host of Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan discussing how humans are mean, the co host of Caveat with Ben Yellen because people are nosy and the host of Control Loop because industrial machines have feelings too. Dave is also the co host of Only Malware in the Building, a shiny new show that comes from our friends over at N2K. And who's the other company? Dave?

[C]

I always get this proof point, proof point.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There you go. So check out all of Dave's amazing work. So it's not all for nothing, right?

[C]

What we lack in quality, we make up for with volume.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There you go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. And by the way, this is episode 669 of Grumpy Old Geeks. That's a lot of crap.

[C]

Nice. Nice.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They're still digging for gold.

[C]

Oh man.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So I got a little follow up this week. Joe writes in hi Grumps. It was mentioned that you wish iOS had an app specific screen rotation lock. Something I wished for as well. Not too long ago, I realized you can use shortcuts automation to toggle screen rotation on an app by app basis. It works flawlessly. I can share specifics on the setup, but also it's likely spelled out online if googled, which it was. So I found one of those. But thank you, Joe, and thank you everybody else that wrote about that, because I got a lot of them. Hey, idiot. It's there. Just got to go find it in shortcuts. I'm like, oh, just where I look every day for something. Yes.

[C]

Well, yeah, I mean, it's not just find it in shortcuts. It's make it, program it, develop it in shortcuts. So I'm happy that this is here, but I think it's a great reminder of how powerful shortcuts is. Every now and then, I'll see something come by where someone has done something absolutely bonkers using shortcuts. That is amazing. And for me, at this point in my life, totally intimidating, you know?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. I always think about the shortcuts app, and then I just never, ever launch it or do it. They should enable you to share, like, applets, but then I guess it opens up the whole system and causes problems.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So I think there is a way to do some shortcuts that you can share at least with yourself and anybody on your icloud account. I did that once for a shortcut. But the thing about shortcuts is it just reminds me of work. Right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

True, Right?

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm like, I did that shit for 30 years, guys. I just don't want. I just want a button that says, don't twist it when I roll over in bed.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's all I want.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Now I'm having, like, nightmare flashbacks of writing all the drag and drop, like, batch automated droplets that I used to make for Windows machines to do my work and.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, God.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh. Doing defragging and.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, geez.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And then like, oh, my God, so much stuff. So many dragon droplets.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I had a ton of them for Debabilizer.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, Debabilizer Graphics. That's right.

[C]

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. That was a scripting machine.

[C]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We did the preliminary poster for the Truman show in De Babelizer. Our friend Dave Riegler sat there for a weekend and wrote out a way to do it. Indie babble. It wasn't perfect, but it looked pretty damn close.

[C]

Wow, that's neat.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. I missed a Babyzer.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[C]

That's what. Anyway, I mean, talk about a great piece of software that, you know, did exactly what it said it was going to do. Did it? Well, I mean, that thing was rock solid and in everybody's toolbox back in the day.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, yeah. The good old days. Well, thanks, everybody. I haven't tried it out yet, but maybe I will this weekend.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There you go. Do some work. David writes in Love the latest show, and after listening to your discussion with Dave about USB C, I thought you might all enjoy this fascinating video looking inside a USB C cable. Keep up the great work. And it's a lick link to Adam Savage, and it's a look inside Apple's 130 USB C cable. First off, I would never buy $130 cable. And secondly, I lasted about 15 seconds into this video before I went. Nope, don't care.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, I watched him Savage and did the same. Oh, good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Dave did.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right.

[C]

Well, I watched this when it originally came out, which was a few months ago, I guess, maybe even longer. And I don't know, we'll have to swing back around, put a pin in the disdain for Adam Savage. But I enjoyed this video. I think it is remarkable what's inside of this cable. It ain't just wires, folks.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's practically.

[C]

It's its own little computer.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's a computer.

[C]

Yeah. Inside this cable, and it's amazing that it works at all. So, once again, just amazing technology and engineering that makes it all work like magic.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. Now let's unpin that pin. Jason, why the disdain for Adam Savage these days?

[Jason DeFilippo]

I don't know when that flipped. There was a time when I loved Adam Savage and I loved his stuff. I think it comes back to his old podcast being so bad that, oh, the audio quality. The audio was so terrible, and they just didn't care.

[C]

That's true.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And it made me so angry that I really wanted to listen to it because I liked Adam and I liked the crew, but the podcast was so bad, it just left me angry. And I think that that's the. I think that's my genesis story of Adam Savage becoming a supervillain.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So I don't feel as strongly as you do. What I feel I did was I burned out on Adam Savage. I. I have topped up the amount of Adam Savage I need in my lifetime. And, like, I remember.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I remember when the pie. The. I remember when the cherry went on that pie, and that was the end of the expanse.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Floating in space. I remember that moment where you were just like, that guy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He's in everything, and I didn't need him there. And it totally took me out of the Expanse. I read his book. I didn't mind it. And I think the thing for me is I don't like tested. I don't like Adam. Adam. Adam needs Jamie. There's something about the combination of them that makes it good. And I love Same as Top Gear.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's the same as Top Gear. You need all three or it's none.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[C]

Ernie without Bert. Yeah, yeah, it's Ernie without Bert.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, definitely. So. So, you know, Adam Savage by himself has a zero inch interest for me anymore, but I would watch the shit out of mythbusters anytime it comes on tv, so.

[C]

Well, I like tested and I like watching. I like what. I like watching Adam answer listeners questions. And I think part of what I enjoy about it is his general tone of positivity in a cynical world.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I agree. And that's probably why I hate him.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, same here.

[C]

Right? Who needs that?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Who needs that shit? We all know it's bad.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, fair enough.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right, so I wanted to go into a little bit of film here because Dave's on with us, and I thought he might have a take on this megalopolis. Any of you guys planning on seeing it?

[C]

No, Certainly not in theaters. I'm curious. In the same way that you can't look away when you drive by a car crash. I've heard. I've read some reviews. I've heard most people say that it's terrible and it's a waste of time and money and the human spirit, but every now and then.

[Jason DeFilippo]

See, that's the Joker. They got their movies messed up. That's the. That's the new joker.

[C]

Well, all right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Have you seen the one review that has gone viral?

[C]

I don't know which one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's not a real reviewer. It's somebody on X, of course. But it basically just said, this movie is a flaming pile of shit, but you get to see Audrey Plaza's titties.

[C]

Oh, okay, okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's gone beyond viral. It's hilarious. This is what the movie will be remembered for, that particular tweet.

[C]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I have to keep watching. I got. I got about 25 minutes into it last night.

[C]

Oh, you did? Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, and it's interesting, actually. I kind of was. And I just hate Adam Driver. I'm just not, you know, on Team Adam. Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Not my Kylo Ren.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, not at all. Not at all.

[C]

No Adam Savage. No Adam Driver.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's the Adams.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Fuck. Adam Carolla.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. All right. Adam Neumann.

[C]

Adam West.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Adam West. No, we like that one.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We'll keep him, he gets a pass. He's grandfathered in, literally. So it reminded me a lot. I don't know if you guys have seen the movie Titus, the old Titus Andronicus retelling with Anthony Hopkins from back in the 90s.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, it was a modern. It was. It was. It was kind of an avant garde telling of Titus and it was brilliant. I love that movie. And this. This had flavors of it. Not. Besides not having Anthony Hopkins, which is a. You know, one was something that you want. There's definitely a lot of talent in there. There's definitely a lot of talent in there in Megalopolis. I don't know about the writing so far. It's very strange. It is very strange. I would think it would probably be fantastic if you were like the director and stoned out of your gourd the.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Entire time, as apparently he might have been.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, exactly. By all accounts, allegedly. It was allegedly. But I think I'm going to actually, I'm going to finish it. I'm going to stick with it because I found it more interesting than the Joker. The Joker was just mitigated shit.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But this is. This actually has. Has the makings of something just weird and trippy. I don't know.

[C]

See, I tend to like movies that are bold, that take bold swings. Like, I like. For me, if you tell me the.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Last Jedi is your favorite Star wars movie, I swear to God.

[C]

No, no, no, no, no, no.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You're joining Adam Savage in the ship pile.

[C]

No, no. I'm thinking of, like, Moulin Rouge. Like, Baz Luhrmann films.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Love that movie.

[C]

Yeah. Like, you know, it's self aware, it's bold, it's stylistically bold, self conscious of its own style. And some people don't like that, but I do. I like it. And so that makes me wonder if I might enjoy this for that as an art piece.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So far, I like it. It doesn't make any sense yet at all.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, it looks very pretty.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it is. Yeah. So, okay, I'll finish up my review next week when I get a chance to finish it. It's not super long, so I'm happy about that. But, yeah, it is definitely not a mass market movie, I think, by any stretch yet.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's absolutely being marketed as if it is.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. With fake reviews and everything.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, let's move on to something else. Let's talk about Tesla's Cyber Cab. Because, Dave, you said you like when we come up with random topics and we just go, so here's a random One, Sure. I stayed up last night to watch the live unveiling, which was an hour late.

[C]

Had to wait for Elon to come down.

[Jason DeFilippo]

To dismount his ego for a minute. So I stuck it out to listen to about 15 minutes of his until he got to the time when we talked about how much it was and when it's coming out. This thing's never coming out. This decade, forget it. It's going to cost 30 grand and come out. They're going to go into production by late 26, maybe 27, maybe 29 or 30. Look at 30.

[C]

So let's remember the cybertruck, which was going to cost $40,000 and come out in a year or two. And what, it came out at $100,000 and took four or five years? Something like that. And is a piece of crap.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Absolutely.

[C]

I'm just saying build quality, the thing's a piece of crap. You drive down the road and pieces fall off. That's not $100,000 car. I'm sorry.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, look, even the Teslas that have been around for quite some time now are shoddily built, frankly. They're just not great machines.

[C]

Right, right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But. And they have shitty customer service, which makes it even better.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. No, it's, it's, you know, it's a dumpster fire. It's just, I don't understand why we continue to give this man the attention that we do. I wonder. I'm trying to think of a comparison. So is Musk the PT Barnum of our age?

[Brian Schulmeister]

He's got a lot more power or money than P.T. barnum ever did.

[C]

Right. So I was thinking the same thing. So is he. What happens when Richie Rich grows up.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Or fails to grow up?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Or fails to grow up? Yes.

[C]

Right, right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Pretty close.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, it's just, it's somebody that gets everything that they want and has created a complete fantasy world around themselves. And somehow so many people seem to buy into it, to feed it. I don't get it.

[C]

Right. And to me, this is the thing. One of the biggest issues with allowing billionaires, and as I've said here before, I believe the fact that billionaires exist is a policy failure. I have nothing against rich people, but I do think when you get to the point of being a billionaire, which I consider to be wealth hoarding, we have a problem. And one of the big problems is these folks. You get this class of people who through their wealth get to lead consequence free lives, and that throws things out of balance. And that's what we've got with him.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. I agree.

[C]

He's a man child, but has tremendous power. Huge government contracts with SpaceX and just the notion that people are relying on him during natural disasters, I think is terrifying.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It is. It's 100% terrifying. It's.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He's become a government unto himself and to some degree. And that's horrifying.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, I think that back to the Cyber Cab. It's just a joke. It's silly. It's.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm looking forward to Dave's new podcast. We love Elon on all things going well in Elon's world.

[C]

Maybe I could. Yeah, I'll team up with a virtual the Elon AI, something like that and just talk about.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, Grok. You can get it now for 9.99amonth over at X. Right. I just could not see myself ever getting in one of these because it goes back to the. For me, it's just still, they're using the wrong technology. They need to be using lidar cameras. Just cannot tell depth.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He said. It's so crazy. What. How polarizing he has become because as I've said, obviously he has a gazillion fanboys and they're not all bots on X. Some of them are actually real people.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, they were all shouting we love you, Elon last night.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know, but even here in Canada, which is somewhat removed from all of this, the politics and all of that, I have a friend here that has a Tesla and he felt the need to tell me we bought it before we knew he was an asshole.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, I've seen that bumper sticker a lot.

[C]

Yeah. No, I have friends of mine who have. I have a friend who is quite well to do and owned every Tesla there was. So bought the Roadster had, I think the first Model X. No model. What was the Model S Was the first one. First Model S like east of the Mississippi had a Model Y. Had a. You know, just was in on all of them. But then at some point when Elon revealed his true self, my friend just sold them all. Got rid of all the Teslas and got other much nicer electric cars.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[C]

You know, loves the electric cars. But, you know, so someone who has the ability to do that. And I would say most people do not have the ability to just no uninvest in those and. And replace them.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, you know, I mean even I know people don't have the kind of things that I had which I never bought a Tesla But I was heavily invested in Tesla and Elon did make me an awful lot of money. But when he same thing, when he revealed his true self, I divested myself of Tesla. I sold all my shares. Like I don't have a share anymore. And I won't, never will.

[C]

Yeah, well, yeah. I wonder what the true effect of all that is on Tesla, the company, because I know a lot of folks who previously would have considered getting one and now wouldn't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think it's got to be hurting. So, yeah, you can't make it up with, you know, a bunch of crazy ass people buying Cybertrucks. That's not going to save the company. You actually really need a real car that people want, right? Yeah.

[C]

Right. Yeah. How many cybertrucks could you possibly sell?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Apparently all of them in my neighborhood.

[C]

Because everywhere we've got a few of them around here and I just shake my head every time one rolls by. I don't understand it, but I hope it makes their buyers happy. So, speaking of natural disasters, I'm thinking about getting my ham radio license.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Is this hurricane sparked or magnetic storm sparked?

[C]

No, no, it is hurricane sparked. So as I mentioned here before, when I was in college, my roommate was a ham radio expert. He was president of the ham radio club at our university. We had a whole rig in our room and all of his friends were into this. So I was very ham radio adjacent. So I got to see all the stuff. I got to participate in a lot of the stuff I used. I went to ham fests with him and enjoyed that. You know, very geeky. We had to explain to my girlfriend that ham fests were not actually about ham and bacon.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I would be very disappointed if I went with you. I went to the Renaissance fair with you. I got the turkey leg. I'm up for ham fest.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there's some folks on Mastodon that I follow who are ham radio folks. And they were talking all about the degree to which ham radio has really stepped up and provided useful functionality during these natural disasters. And I've been playing with a little software defined radio kit. You know, I got an old MacBook Pro with a little dongle. You plug into the USB port with an antenna and you can just tune into Spectrum, which is great fun. You know, you listen to the local airport and the local ham repeater and all that kind of stuff. So I was just thinking like, you know, why not? Why? What's keeping me from doing this? Is this something? Were there to be trouble in my area. Would it be beneficial for me to have a ham radio license? I think it may be. I don't think it'll be that hard to get, especially with the experience and just being around it as much as I was. I suspect I'm certainly not going in blind, having been around it as much as I have. So I thought, why not? Maybe this would be a fun thing to do, a fun project to get my license. There are all kinds of super cheap ham radio rigs now from China, of course, differing degrees of quality.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So one also has to question, will they actually work in some sort of maybe non natural disaster since they're all from China.

[C]

Right, right. And I did get. So yeah. So here's the flip side of it, and this is my concern, which is I went to a ham fest earlier this year, having not been to one in 20 years, and it was depressing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Not a lady in sight.

[C]

Well, no. Well, that's. That. That hasn't changed. It's always been that way. But first of all, this takes place at the local fairgrounds. It was about an eighth the size of what it used to be in terms of the number of people who were there, the dealers, the people. Because it's very much like a flea market kind of environment. People buying and selling stuff. And it was just old white guys with long beards.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So it's the same.

[C]

Well, it's the same, but distilled. Right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[C]

Like these are the lifers who are still in the hobby, who are hardy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Enough to have survived.

[C]

Right, right. So I wonder about putting time into something that is in decline. But the thing is, I'm not going at it for social reasons. I don't anticipate myself hanging out on the ham radio at night chatting and trying to collect the first off, you'd.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Have to grow a beard.

[C]

Well, that I can do. I could do that overnight, but I don't know. So that's what I'm worried about.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, the only thing I would say to you is we ourselves are also in decline. So getting into something that's in decline, that's. That's going to be our lives, that moving forward, what's left of it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's it. Right, Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I think about that when I think about my personal music choices when I go to concerts these days, I'm like, okay, well, we're just all old and we're in decline. And so band and why is it so loud? Yeah, exactly. And the other thing is, will it bring you joy? And that's all that really matters. If you think doing this will bring you joy? If there's such a low barrier to entrance for you to dip your toe in anyways, why not?

[C]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You're not stuck with it if you decide you don't like it, Dave.

[C]

That's the thing. And it's a low investment. And also, I think part of what spurred this was my feeling of meh after the last round of iPhones came out. Right. Like, I'm feeling like so much. I need a gadget.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I need new technology.

[C]

Right, Exactly.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Like a ham radio.

[C]

I just need something. I need to. I need to spark up some old vacuum tubes, get on the wireless to Istanbul. Yeah. So I think I need to scratch my gadget itch. And I don't know, I think I'm.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Liking your second post in our notes here as a good gadget scratch as opposed to ham radio. Personally.

[C]

Yeah, I want this, but I don't need this.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. That I would get.

[C]

So I put a link in here to a TRS 80 computer on eBay, which I used to have. I used to have one of these. This exact computer I used to have. Somewhere along the years, I no longer have it. And that makes me sad. The problem is I don't need this. Like, I look at it. So this is what I want to talk to you guys about. I look at this on ebay and I want it, but I don't need it. I don't have a place for it. I don't have time for it. All of the things that I would have to do to reignite this. I'm chasing nostalgia. I'm chasing feelings I had when I was 15 surrounding this device that are impossible for me to catch.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[C]

And so I'm trying to have the discipline to look at this thing, enjoy it from afar. Know, boy, wouldn't it be nice to have that? But have the wisdom to know that despite the fact that I can totally afford this thing now, I don't need it. And it will ultimately lead me to disappointment.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I think you answered your own question.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I was going to say, I think you got it. Got it and won there, Dave.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Although, again, to play devil's advocate, what would be the harm in grabbing it now, putting it in, say, your attic or your garage for, you know, those days when the podcast dollars aren't running in anymore and you're down to.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Just for the garage sale.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You're down to nine or ten shows. That's all. That's. You got plenty of free time.

[C]

Yeah. The problem is, well, there's several Problems. But an issue is that this. All of these old computers run in emulation. So I can run. I can wanna boot one of these up. I do it in my browser, for God's sake. And all the software is available, all of it. All of it. So if I want to play. But it's not the same. It doesn't feel the same, but it's never gonna be the same. I don't want.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You can never go home again, Dave.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You can never go home again.

[C]

That's right. That's that. So that's what I'm getting at. That's the feeling I'm getting.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You're feeling old.

[C]

Yeah, I know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know? You know, I guess the weird. The closest thing I have to that. I mean, there's many things, like the music thing, but the one that struck me and it changed. And I'll tell you why it changed. For me, it's been going back to Disneyland as an adult because that was such a part of my youth, of my teenage years. And there are so many memories associated with it and friends and shenanigans and life experiences learned for the first time. And it all took place at Disneyland. So it's a very nostalgic, heavy, and triggering place for me. And it was always weird to go back as an adult. But the thing that changed it is now going with my son and seeing it through his eyes. That's made it bearable again. So I think you need to get your kid into Radio Shack, TRS 80 and ham radio and you go ham festing with him.

[C]

Oh, yeah, that's gonna happen. Just what every kid, every teenage boy dream wants to do. Go to go to a ham fest with their dad. Oh, my gosh, that'd be just so great. Yeah. The Disneyland thing, I think, is like, if you've ever went back to your old middle school or your old elementary school and you go in the gym and you're like, this is so small. Like, what? These hallways are so small. Everything's so small. Yeah, it's like that. But, boy, I mean, you had the world's greatest playground.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, I absolutely did. And I'm always very pleased with that. People are always just like, didn't you ever get sick of it? Or how it's so fake and it's Disney? And I'm like, I had the best fucking childhood you've ever heard of.

[C]

Right, Right. So cool.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm gonna tell you a little quick story, Dave, before we wrap here.

[C]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So I went. I went down that memory hole not long ago with Cameras. Because when I was, you know, when I was a young lad, I couldn't afford really nice cameras. And it was the time when the Nikon F4 had come out and I'd always wanted an F3, and I wanted all of these different cameras. And I had a Pentax K1000, which you could buy at Sears for $99.

[C]

Great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Love that camera. Eventually I bought one of those. I bought a Nikon F3 and I bought a Nikon F4 off eBay. Those things I dragged around the country for years, they would sit on my. They would sit on my shelf. I finally got some film, took it out, shot a little bit with the film, never got it developed, and then ended up selling them for half of what I paid for them at the garage sale. It's fun to then now when I see them, I'm like, man, I wish I had those cameras. And I'm like, slap myself and go, no, no, you don't. No, you don't. They just take up space and they cost, right?

[C]

No, you don't need the thing. You just need the idea of the thing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, that's it. You know, And I look at ebay now and I see them, and as you posted this, I'm looking at Quadra 840avs. And I'm like, oh, it'd be fun to have one of those. And they're $1,600. Like, oh, no.

[C]

Really? Wow.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yeah. For a mint condition 840AV or 1499. Yeah. But, yeah, no, the time has passed. Move on.

[C]

I know I need to do.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But if you're going to do the TRS 80, get the chassis, rip it out, rip out the guts, put in a micro PC that you can run all the emulators on, and then plug that into your tv. So you have the box, you have the keyboard feel, you got the clickety click, but you have all the software ready to go at actual human speeds now. You don't have to wait.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's like those Atari joysticks they sold at Urban Outfitters for a while that basically had all the games built into it. Just the joystick, right?

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, well, all right, Dave. And solve the problems. Yeah.

[C]

Well, thanks, guy. I'm gonna go leaf through some old Radio Shack catalogs. I'll.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'll send you the link.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Closing shout outs over at Patreon. Nobody signed up. What's wrong with us, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Quiet week. We've only got two people over at PayPal. Ralph and Miles. Thank you both so much.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nobody at the tip jar and no reviews. What happened Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

And nobody notable died.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh man, did this week actually exist?

[Brian Schulmeister]

This is a horrible outro, man.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, I guess let's cut it here. Until next time. I'm Jason DeFilippo.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I'm Brian Schilmeister. Thanks for tuning in to grumpy old geeks. Dive into the show notes and all the links from Today's episode at GOG Show 669. 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, even Overcast we checked. Use it to share the show with friends, foes and everyone in between and we'll be forever grateful. Head over to GOG show to find the link to our Discord Channel and chat with us and other show fans. Got something to say? Send your feedback, comments or awesome links to GOG show contact and show us some love. Leave a review at GOG Show Review A five star rating might just get your review read on the air. Stay grumpy.