675: Your Own Personal Jesus

Summary

Grumpy Old Geeks: Episode 675 – "Your Own Personal Jesus"

Release Date: November 23, 2024

In Episode 675 of Grumpy Old Geeks, hosts Jason DeFilippo and Brian Schulmeister, joined by special guest Dave Bittner, delve deep into a myriad of technology-related topics, dissecting the latest news with their characteristic no-holds-barred approach. From advancements in AI and autonomous vehicles to privacy concerns and media hiccups, this episode offers a comprehensive overview of the tech landscape with insightful commentary and sharp wit.

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1. Autonomous Vehicles and Regulatory Shifts

Waymo's Limited Expansion

• Timestamp [00:45]: Jason shares his experience with the Waymo app, expressing frustration over its limited availability in Los Angeles County. Despite promises of widespread coverage, users like Jason find themselves unable to access driverless taxi services outside specific city limits.

  Jason DeFilippo [00:07]: "I went and got the Waymo app to see if I could get... my driverless taxi ride... It has not gotten to everywhere in LA county like they said it did."

Trump Administration's Push for Driverless Cars

• Timestamp [19:21]: The hosts discuss the Trump administration's intentions to expand autonomous vehicle deployments across the U.S., aiming to replace the fragmented state regulations with a federal framework. This move is seen as a nod to industry giants like Elon Musk, seeking more freedom and simplified rules.

  Brian Schulmeister [19:22]: "Yeah. Yeah, what they want is no regulations."

Tesla's Safety Concerns

• Timestamp [20:18]: A study highlights Tesla's alarming rate of fatal accidents, positioning it as the most dangerous car brand in the U.S. with double the national average crash rate. The discussion points to potential issues with Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" feature, which may lead drivers to overestimate their cars' autonomous capabilities.

  Jason DeFilippo [21:13]: "Which makes people believe that their car is more capable than it actually is until they run into a wall."

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2. The Intersection of AI and Religion

AI-Powered Jesus Avatar in Switzerland

• Timestamp [07:03]: Jason introduces the groundbreaking Deus in Machina project at St. Peter's Chapel in Lucerne, where an AI Jesus avatar replaces the traditional priest in the confessional booth. Developed in collaboration with a local university, the AI interacts with visitors in 100 languages, aiming to explore the engagement between technology and spirituality.

  Jason DeFilippo [07:31]: "I think people who have muscle memory for the confessional may have been kind of fucked on this one."

Public Reception and Ethical Concerns

• Timestamp [09:36]: While the project received positive feedback from two-thirds of participants, critics voiced concerns about the AI's depth and impersonality. Theologian Marco Schmid acknowledges potential issues with the AI providing inappropriate or contradictory advice, sparking debates on the ethical implications of AI in sacred spaces.

  Brian Schulmeister [09:37]: "As do priests."

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3. AI Training and Copyright Issues

Use of Movie and TV Dialogues in AI Training

• Timestamp [11:15]: An investigation reveals that dialogues from over 53,000 movies and 85,000 TV episodes were utilized to train AI systems without the consent of original writers. Sources like opensubtitles.org provided subtitles that fed into generative AI models, igniting ethical and legal debates about fair use.

  Jason DeFilippo [11:30]: "This includes content from the Godfather, the Simpsons, and Breaking Bad... sparking ethical and legal debates."

OpenAI Lawsuit and Data Deletion Controversy

• Timestamp [12:20]: A lawsuit accuses OpenAI of unlawfully using copyrighted materials in its AI training. During the legal proceedings, OpenAI engineers accidentally deleted crucial search data from a virtual machine, hindering the plaintiffs' ability to trace the use of copyrighted works.

  Brian Schulmeister [13:03]: "Interestingly specific mistake."

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4. Data Privacy and Security Breaches

Atlas Biomed's Disappearance

• Timestamp [14:31]: The UK-based DNA testing company, Atlas Biomed, has abruptly vanished, leaving customers stranded without access to their genetic data. Tied to Russian billionaires and under investigation by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office, fears about data misuse and security vulnerabilities are rampant.

  Brian Schulmeister [14:34]: "Yeah, well, that horse is out of the gate."

Neuralink's Human Trials in Canada

• Timestamp [14:40]: Neuralink secures Health Canada's approval to commence human trials in Toronto Western Hospital. The trial aims to test brain implants that interpret neural activity, enabling individuals with quadriplegia to control devices with their thoughts. The discussion touches on the potential benefits and ethical considerations of such advancements.

  Jason DeFilippo [14:46]: "This is going to be a study which aims to evaluate the safety of its implant and surgical robot."

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5. Social Media Wars and Privacy Concerns

BlueSky's Rapid Growth vs. Meta's Threads

• Timestamp [51:28]: The hosts compare the surge in user base for BlueSky and Meta's Threads, noting BlueSky's recent milestones with over 20 million users. The conversation highlights BlueSky's open-source design and absence of ads as key differentiators from Threads, which is scrambling to adjust its algorithms to prioritize followed content over recommendations.

  Brian Schulmeister [51:28]: "Blue sky has experienced other periods of significant growth over the last year. The recent surge is far bigger than what the open source service had previously seen."

AI Notification Summaries Threaten Group Chats

• Timestamp [50:27]: An article is discussed, warning that AI-driven notification summaries could degrade the quality of real-time group chats and text messages. The hosts express concerns over how AI may disrupt nuanced, personal conversations, leading to more algorithmic homogeneity.

  Jason DeFilippo [51:24]: "It makes no sense whatsoever. And half the time it's like you think you sent something to the wrong person."

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6. Crypto Market Insights and Personal Investments

Bitcoin's Surge Nearing $100,000

• Timestamp [04:34]: Bitcoin's price approaches the elusive $100k mark, a milestone it hasn't reached in a while. Brian speculates on its continued rise, albeit with a somewhat pessimistic outlook on the broader financial system.

  Brian Schulmeister [04:34]: "I have a feeling it's going to continue for quite a while, at least the next four years or until everything burns down, as it might."

Personal Crypto Holdings and Market Realities

• Timestamp [06:13]: Brian shares his personal crypto strategy, focusing on long-term holds like Ethereum and Bitcoin while shedding lesser-known coins for minor profits. He acknowledges the challenges of making substantial gains compared to traditional stock investments.

  Brian Schulmeister [06:14]: "I am up about 5% on my investment, which is, let's be honest here, considerably less than I would be if I'd invested that money in any of my well-performing individual stock holdings or just an index fund."

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7. Sustainability Efforts in Tech Infrastructure

Microsoft's Eco-Friendly Data Centers

• Timestamp [24:43]: Microsoft announces the construction of two new data centers in Northern Virginia using cross-laminated timber (CLT), a fire-resistant wood material. While this approach reduces carbon emissions by 35% compared to steel and 65% versus concrete, the hosts critique its long-term impact given the immense energy consumption of data center operations.

  Jason DeFilippo [24:34]: "They’re trying to lower their carbon emissions from their data centers... compared with conventional steel construction."

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8. Media Streaming Challenges and Recommendations

Streaming Setbacks: The Paul vs. Tyson Fight

• Timestamp [29:02]: The highly anticipated fight between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson faces significant streaming issues, causing widespread frustration among viewers. The hosts lament the technical failures, which marred the event's live experience.

  Jason DeFilippo [30:09]: "It just crashed. I pulled it up on my laptop to see. Nope. All of Netflix was down."

TV Show and Movie Recommendations

• Timestamp [31:43]: Jason and Brian exchange recommendations on various shows and movies, including The Old Man, Lioness Season Two, Day of the Jackal on Peacock, and Neuralink's upcoming series. They critique and praise different aspects, from plot developments to visual effects, offering listeners curated content suggestions.

  Brian Schulmeister [37:18]: "I also got... Leonardo Da Vinci by Ken Burns... It's not that much? No Ken Burns effect. He's toned down the Ken Burns effect."

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9. Reflections on Programming Languages

Legacy of BASIC in Modern Programming

• Timestamp [75:07]: The conversation turns nostalgic as Dave Bittner mentions the passing of Thomas Kurtz, co-creator of BASIC. Both hosts recount their early experiences with BASIC, acknowledging its foundational role in their programming education despite its decline in modern use.

  Brian Schulmeister [73:54]: "Yeah. First thing I ever did on a computer was learn BASIC."

BASIC's Relevance Today

• Timestamp [77:00]: The hosts debate the current standing of BASIC, agreeing that while it was instrumental in teaching programming basics, it is largely obsolete in today's tech industry. They emphasize the shift towards more advanced, object-oriented languages and the diminishing job prospects for BASIC programmers.

  Brian Schulmeister [76:17]: "Yes. You have been trying to search the great thinkers and things of that nature to escape the dystopia that is surrounding us right now."

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10. Thanksgiving Traditions and Personal Anecdotes

Evolving Family Traditions

• Timestamp [78:25]: As Thanksgiving approaches, Brian shares his transition from large family gatherings in Southern California to a more intimate Canadian Thanksgiving in Toronto. He highlights his role in preparing traditional dishes, blending American and Chinese Canadian culinary customs.

  Brian Schulmeister [78:25]: "We do ham now. So it's just a small ham for my immediate... wife and my kid."

Hosts' Personal Stories

• Timestamp [80:08]: Jason reminisces about his family's Thanksgiving traditions, including chess tournaments and jarts (a mix of darts and horseshoes), while Dave shares memories of activities like touch football and synchronized family parades.

  Jason DeFilippo [81:44]: "We had like five chess boards... we'd all play chess."

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Conclusion and Shout-Outs

As Thanksgiving nears, the hosts express their gratitude to listeners and supporters, acknowledging new subscribers and contributors. They wrap up the episode with well-wishes for the holiday, encouraging listeners to enjoy downtime and cherish their traditions.

Jason DeFilippo [83:13]: "And just a reminder to everybody, we are off next week so we can enjoy a little downtime."

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Notable Quotes:

• Jason DeFilippo [04:34]: "It might be the only money soon. Brian."

• Brian Schulmeister [09:37]: "As do priests."

• Brian Schulmeister [21:58]: "Be careful or Krampus and Boris Pistoris will come for you."

• Jason DeFilippo [20:13]: "Unless you're Tesla and you turn off that data and that feature right before the crash."

• Brian Schulmeister [51:28]: "Blue sky has experienced other periods of significant growth over the last year."

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Key Takeaways:

• Autonomous Vehicles: Regulatory frameworks remain a contentious issue, with significant implications for companies like Waymo and Tesla.

• AI in Religion: Innovative yet controversial, AI-driven religious interactions raise profound ethical questions.

• Data Privacy: Incidents like Atlas Biomed's disappearance and the misuse of AI training data highlight ongoing privacy vulnerabilities.

• Crypto Market: Bitcoin's surge continues to capture attention, though investment strategies vary among individuals.

• Social Media Evolution: Platforms like BlueSky are gaining traction amid scrutiny of traditional giants like Meta's Threads.

• Programming Education: BASIC holds a nostalgic place in the hearts of programmers, though its practical relevance has waned.

• Thanksgiving Traditions: Personal stories underscore the evolving nature of family gatherings and cultural integration.

For a more detailed dive into each topic, including technical insights and personal anecdotes from the hosts, tune into Grumpy Old Geeks' Episode 675: "Your Own Personal Jesus."

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]

That's Amazon.com ad free podcast to catch 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]

So after last episode, Brian, I went and got the Waymo app to see if I could get, you know, my, my driverless taxi ride here in Los Angeles. And it has not gotten to everywhere in LA county like they said it did. So I am still out of luck.

[Brian Schulmeister]

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

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm in Los Angeles county still.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, Los Angeles County. But it was the city of Los Angeles that had it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, well, didn't they make the entire county the city, Brian, Come on. No, see, I have speed reader on all the time in Brave, so I never see a lot of those diagrams and things like that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So. Details.

[Jason DeFilippo]

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

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, you know, well, we'll see. I don't, I don't see it rolling out in Toronto anytime soon, so no Waymo for me either. But I have this thing called public transportation.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh yeah. Trains and things like that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Which would probably going to come in handy with the weather about to turn for you.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I just won't leave the house for three months.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I wouldn't want a Waymo in the snow. No, no go. No ghost. No way, Mo. No.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Got a little bit of feedback here. Dean wrote in. Hi guys, long time listener, first time contributor from Australia. Here's a follow up email received today from Anova. If you recall, they made the strange decision to app access and support to many of their sous vide cook Devices, they have reconsidered that dick move. So, yeah, we covered that story where people were rightfully pissed off that a service that they purchased into, whether they used it or not, which is app access to something that just sits and cooks and lets you know when it's done. Anyways, they decided they wanted to take it away because guess what, it cost them money because it's their product and it's a service they decided to sell to people.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But they have. They've finally. This. This was quite a long time ago from what I recall. But just in time for the Christmas miracle where they want more people to purchase their devices, they've decided to roll back that policy and basically say we will continue to eat up the cost that we decided to offer as a service and not take that away from you. Basically.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. So we can sell something to get rid of this stock we have in our warehouses for Black Friday.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly, exactly. Anyways, so. Good move. I think it's important that companies continue to, you know, service the product that they sold people.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Even if they don't want to. Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Even if they don't want to.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. This is a, this is a lesson for junior accountants out there. When you. When your team comes to you and said, hey, we got a great idea, run the numbers first.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. See how much that's going to cost you for the lifetime of a product per month. Yeah, yeah. Just keep that in mind. But you know why, let's. Let's move fast and not support things.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We haven't really talked about crypto because it's been in a weird situation with lots of other stuff going on. But I think it's safe to say the crypto Bros. Have bought themselves a seat at the table for the next administration. We are hearing that they are going to be very supportive towards crypto. And of course they're all schemers and scammers anyway, so they're all launching their own coins. But I think that is seemingly doing pretty well for crypto in general and bitcoin specifically. I saw this morning that bitcoin is nearing $100,000, which is a height it has not scale for quite some time. And I have a feeling it's going to continue for quite a while, at least the next four years or until everything burns down, as it might. We're all screwed anyways.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It might be the only money soon. Brian. So total.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, actually, that's. That. That was my point in bringing this up. I didn't really have a news story specifically to talk about. With it. But I figured it's been a while since we've talked about it and I haven't talked about my personal crypto situation for quite some time because I really haven't paid any attention to it. I've just been letting it, I've been hodling and just letting it sit and not even checking in on it, to be frank. Because as we said from the beginning, if you want to invest in crypto, make sure it's gambling money. This is you don't use anything you need. It's Vegas money that you're happy to lose and never think about again, which is what I did. It wasn't a lot of money. I initially bought Bitcoin first and then I bought some Ethereum and then I did a little bit of research at the time, which was very difficult because it was basically all just press releases saying every single coin is God's own coin that will last forever and be the best thing that will ever be. But with a little bit of research I bought some file coin and some litecoin as well. So I went in and looked at it the other day and everything was up a little bit because it hadn't been for quite some time. And file coin and litecoin were basically just coins. I know I'm going to get email about that from somebody, I'm sure, but they were coins and I sold them and I sold them for tiny profits basically. And I've decided looking at it, I'm just going to hold on to Ethereum and Bitcoin because why the not not. You never know what's going to happen over the next four years. Overall after those two sales and with where Ethereum and Bitcoin are at the moment, I'm up about 5% on my investment, which is, let's be honest here, considerably less than I would be if I'd invested that money in any of my well performing individual stock holdings or just an index fund.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Correct.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So with all the brouhaha about Bitcoin and yes, if you bought Bitcoin in 1973, you're doing great and you didn't lose the US or the five and a quarter inch floppy you saved it on, you're doing just fine. But if you didn't and you got in later like everybody else did, it's okay. But don't buy the hype. You would have been better off putting your money into Tesla for Christ's sake.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh God. Yeah, I was going to go look at, see how much my Ethereum is worth, but I Have to go find the floppy with the key so I can log into Metamask, because I changed phones since. Since I purchased it, so who knows? That might be lost to the wind.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Again. If it was Vegas money. It is what it is.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It was 150 bucks.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, there you go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Actually, I could really use that right now, but. Shit. In the news, St. Peter's Chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland, has turned heads by replacing a priest with an AI powered Jesus avatar in its confessional booth. Brian? Woohoo.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Were you raised Catholic by any chance, Jason?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Hell no.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Do you know what you're supposed to be doing in the confessional booth?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, I'm guessing it's right there on the tin. You're supposed to be confessing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, yeah, and to the point where, like, you're supposed to basically say, oh, I've cheated on my wife, or I, I fucking killed a homeless bum in bum fights that are legally recorded on the dark webs. Things that you probably don't want to tell a machine that's recording everything.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, yes, There's a caveat for that. We'll get to it in a second. But yeah, I think, yeah, I think people who have muscle memory for the confessional may have been kind of fucked on this one. Dubbed Deus in Machina, the experiment, launched in August, allows visitors to interact with an AI Jesus that speaks 100 languages, providing real time responses to spiritual and theological questions. Theologian Marco Schmid described the project as a way to explore how people engage with AI in a religious context. Over two months, more than 1,000 visitors, including tourists and individuals of various faiths, tried the avatar. Two thirds of surveyed participants reported a positive spiritual experience, though others criticized the responses as shallow or impersonal. Two thirds is not bad, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Now, to be honest here again, and from my own personal experience being raised Roman Catholic, the responses as shallow or impersonal. It was always say 10 hail marys anyways, no matter what I did, there you go. I was mean to my sister or I stole a chocolate bar. Say 10 Hail Marys.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right, I think that's. Maybe that's the default. You know, the no Internet connection. That's what it says when it can't get a connection. The installation, developed in collaboration with a local university, trained the AI on theological texts. Users were cautioned not to share personal information as it wasn't intended to replicate traditional confession.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, there we go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, but the.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Brian.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The experiment has roused the ire of Big Jesus.

[Brian Schulmeister]

What about Buddy Jesus?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, man. Catholic critics opposed its use of the confessional. While Protestants questioned the avatar's imagery despite precautions, Schmid admitted concerns about the AI delivering inappropriate or contradictory advice.

[Brian Schulmeister]

As do priests.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. While the project won't become permanent, Schmidt sees potential for AI as a tool to facilitate religious dialogue, reflecting a growing interest in personalized spiritual experiences. Now, I got. I got to give them props to have the cojones to do this.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, it's a. It's a big swing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. You know, I. Good for them for giving it a shot like, you know, you can do it in the back room all you want, but when you bring it out to the public like that, that really is. That says something. You're. You're putting your money where your mouth is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It does cast my mind back to the AI ethics course and I took in which they, like, cautioned, Cautioned small brands and big businesses before even rolling. Rolling out something as an AI shopping assistant. But, hey, the Church just fucking went for it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Let's just go, man. Just bring in the big guns. Why not?

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I'd like to thank you for putting in this story, because I've heard nothing but Depeche Mode's personal Jesus in my head all day long.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know now that now that you've said it, I can't unsee it. Oh, I was just. This was all over the news this morning, and I'm like, we just had to. We just had to. Because the thing is, you know what? I want it trained on all theological texts. Then I would like to have a chat with it. That actually sounds fairly interesting. You know, I have a book by Leo Tolstoy where he basically put together, you know, philosophical writings and a lot of religious texts from over the years. And he made his own little daily calendar book. This is Tolstoy back in the 1800s. So it's been around for a while, but, you know, something like this would be fun to play with, I think, you know, but, yeah, don't share your personal information with your own personal Jesus. Oh, man.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Your own personal black box, multi connected Jesus.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. A recent investigation reveals that dialogue from over 53,000 movies and 85,000 TV episodes has been used to train AI systems without writers consent.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Let me bring back an oldie but a goodie here, Jason. Shocking.

[Jason DeFilippo]

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

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, God.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Basically everybody under the sun Utilized this data to build generative AI models, sparking ethical and legal debates. No shit. They're arguing fair use. Well, it was on opensubtitles.org Fair use. I know Open Loophole is what they should have called it, but, yeah, they.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Should have just called it. We don't give a fuck.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, let the lawyers figure it out. Let the lawyers figure it out. Oh, man. Speaking of lawyers figuring things out, this comes from the Oops, I did it again category in a lawsuit accusing OpenAI of using copyrighted material without permission. Lawyers for the New York Times and Daily News claim potential evidence was accidentally deleted this fall. OpenAI provided virtual machines for the plaintiff's counsel to search its AI training sets for copyrighted material. However, on November 14, OpenAI engineers erased the search data on one machine. Although most of the data was recovered, key file structures were lost, making it impossible to determine where copyrighted works were used in AI training.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Interestingly specific mistake.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. Now, the plaintiff's lawyers say this mistake has forced them to restart weeks of work, but they don't believe the deletion was intentional. So that was interesting that they came out and said, yeah, it's okay, they fucked up, but it wasn't their fault or they didn't. It wasn't malicious. They still say that OpenAI is best positioned to search its data set for infringing content, which of course it is, but they're not gonna. That is the dumbest thing. It's like, well, yeah, of course the murderer is the one that is most likely positioned to tell you how he done it, but that's your job.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Listen, drug cartels, we're gonna need you to police yourselves.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, that's about it. Oh, God. And hat tip to Martin on discord for this one. A UK based DNA testing company, Atlas Biomed, has vanished, just gone poof, leaving customers unable to access their genetic data. The company's website is inactive, offices are closed, and social media accounts haven't been updated since 2023. Customers worry about their sensitive data's fate, especially after ties to Russia were reported. With two remaining officers linked to a Moscow address tied to a Russian billionair. The UK's Information Commissioner's Office is investigating Atlas Biomed. While no misuse is confirmed, fears persist about who now controls the data. Experts warn this incident underscores the need to think critically before spitting in strange tubes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah, well, that horse is out of the gate.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. You know, when they send you an empty vodka bottle to spit your DNA into, you might want to.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You might want to reconsider I'm half Smirnoff. That seems to be the case. Anyways, speaking about thinking critically, Neuralink gets approval to start human trials here in Canada now. So they have secured Health Canada's approval to launch human trials in the country, with the Toronto Western Hospital right down the street being the first and exclusive surgical site for the procedure. This company first opened its Canadian patent registry in March, but it's now actively looking for potential participants. Recruitment is now open. It has announced on X. So a bunch of bots are currently signing up under the CanPrime network. Neuralink will embed some implants in the brain of a participant so that it can interpret their neural activity. This implant will allow them to control a computer or smartphone with a brain without the needs for wires or any kind of physical movement. So this is going to be a study which aims to evaluate the safety of its implant and surgical robot and assess the initial functionality of its brain computer interface for enabling people with quadriplegia to control external devices with their thoughts. So, yeah, basically, if you're a Canadian and you want to give it a go, they're looking for you. Uh, they're typically for people with limited or no ability to use both hands due to a cervical spinal cord injury or ALS for its trials. There you go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right. I was gonna tell you to hop on down there, but you don't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, I'm good. I'm good.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You're good? Yeah. Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'll tell you somebody who isn't okay. Alex Jones and his team. Now, it's not just. I saw this article and this was a fun read, actually. The weirdest domains Alex Jones has to give to the Onion. So the Onion basically picked up everything, and they've done a deep dive on what domain names the organization owns. This includes plenty of names that make sense and are entirely predictable, including variations on Infowars like Infowars.net and shopinfowars biz. There are also domains that include Infowars, which obviously they're just trying to do domain squatters and get away from all that same that we all used to do before we realized it was just a waste of money. Some seem like they could plausibly be businesses Jones had planned to establish but never followed through on, such as infowarspets.com, infowars crypto.com, infowarsbunker.com, infowarsbabes.com for when you're.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Stuck in the Infowars Bunker, and InfoWars Social.com.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But then there are some other ones, Jason. Okay, such as goblinlove.com all right. Now, apparently he's often talked about Goblins. I could not tell you the context. And it's not clear why he'd be interested in something like Goblin Love, since he apparently uses the term in a negative way about people he dislikes. He also owns Goblin Fire.com and Goblin Nest.com than their.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I gotta say, the fact that I'm just a little bit dyslexic. I saw Goblin Nest.com and I thought I said Goblin Incest.com and I'm like, man, he's really getting specific there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, you got to dial down, man. You don't know what your core constituency is going to be. Well, I guess he did.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And when you're done with infowars, babes, when you're stuck in the infowars bunker, you need a little spices to keep things going, I guess.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, you can move on to SlaveObama.com or StarThavingKids.com and fluoridecleanse.com which he also owns. And of course, my favorite cook, Dorsey, which appears to be a reference to Jack Dorsey, of course. And Other domains include evilcities.com, goodguyswithguns.net and redbloodparty.com yeah, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, I guess.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The frogs are gay.com must have already been taken.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, no mention of frogs. Oh, well.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Strange, strange.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I bet it's a conspiracy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's a cuckspiracy. Okay, moving on. This is all over the news, and I noticed Alphabet's stock prices dropped a little bit today by a few bucks. Compared to the price of it, it's like, not that much. The U.S. department of justice has proposed that Google divest its Chrome browser to address antitrust violations in the online search market. This recommendation follows a court ruling that found Google maintained an illegal monopoly the past decade. The DOJ's proposed measures include Chrome divestiture, Android restrictions, default search engine deals, and data sharing. So they're trying to go after them and cut them up. So we'll see what happens. I actually hope they do, because, you know, they're too damn big. They literally have the entire Alphabet from A to Z.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They are too big. There's no doubt about that. But I think that they're also doing a very good job just dismantling their own search engine right now with all the axis AI crap they put in there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So tell me about it. It's fucking tell me about it. Speaking of things that need to be torn apart, Trump Admin reportedly wants to unleash driverless cars on America.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Woo.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, the Trump administration is reportedly prioritizing the expansion of autonomous vehicles on U.S. roads. According to Bloomberg, advisors close to President elect Donald Trump are working on a federal regulatory framework to replace the current patchwork of state laws governing self driving cars. Currently, federal regulations cap self driving car deployments at 2,500 vehicles per year. But carmakers want more freedom and simplified rules by car makers. He means Elon Musk and his stupid cyber cab. Because you're not going to make another gazillion dollars with only 2,500 cars per year.

[Brian Schulmeister]

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

[Jason DeFilippo]

Unless you're Tesla and you turn off that data and that feature right before the crash.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Well, Brian, to follow up on that, a new study by IC Cars reveals Tesla has the highest rate of fatal accidents among all car brands in the U.S. that's right, the most deaths by car brand. With 5.6 fatal crashes per billion miles driven, double. Double the national average of 2.8. The Tesla Model Y stands out as its most dangerous vehicle, ranking sixth for individual car models.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Now Jason, why could that be? Is it because there's an inherent flaw in the car's actual physical design?

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, Brian, there isn't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

What?

[Jason DeFilippo]

The car is actually just fine.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, what could it possibly be, Jason?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, could it be the reliance on touchscreens for controls and infotainment? Maybe sometimes allowing video games while driving?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Or perhaps the fact that they market a full self drive that doesn't Exactly.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Which makes people believe that their car is more capable than it actually is until they run into a wall. Yes, that could possibly be it, Brian. Possibly. But it does say full self driving, so you know it must be true.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, and why would they put this gigantic screen in my car when I'm driving that lets me watch movies unless they wanted me to?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. Come on man, it must be safe. They wouldn't sell it to me if it wasn't safe, Right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right. Well, according to the New York Times, Boris Pistoris. That's sounds like a name out of a fucking nursery rhyme to me, but like one of the evil original German ones where like the kids, die because they were bad.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Boris Pistoris put on the blades on his feet and then he cuts him up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Be careful or Krampus and Boris Pistoris will come for you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, that's Krampus's handler.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He also happens to be Germany's current defense minister. So just take that with whatever you want to take it with. Believes that the undersea cables that connected Finland and Germany that were severed on Monday were not damaged by accident. Another cable connecting Lithuania and Sweden was also cut on Sunday. The Internet connection between these countries remains active despite these disruptions. Pistoris claims that nobody believes these cables were severed by accident and he thinks anchors dropped from ships wouldn't damage the cables like this. He claims it's sad sabotage, but admitted he does not have solid proof for this assertion. Germany and Finland have both released a joint statement mentioning that a thorough investigation is ongoing. This statement also directly names Russia as a threat to European security while the country wages war against Ukraine.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Now, Jason, scene coming out of water where moose and squirrel.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I, you know, if we say we're a show that were the liberal equivalent of, I don't know, say Alex Jones, I would be talking about how Elon Musk has had these calls with Vladimir Putin and, and who would benefit if all actual landline cables connecting the Internet went away. Somebody that perhaps had Internet satellite access to sell to everybody. But we're not like Alex Jones and we're not going to be bought out by the Onion in a few years while we have to fucking go to jail forever. So we wouldn't do that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We wouldn't do that. We would do that. Speaking of Germany, a recent investigation has revealed that US data brokers are legally selling location data, enabling the tracking of U.S. military and intelligence personnel in Germany. The data exposes movements from homes and schools to sensitive sites like nuclear vaults. Oops. The unregulated sale of mobile location data poses significant national security risks potentially exploitable by foreign governments, terrorists or criminals. Despite these threats, the U.S. department of Defense and federal agencies have yet to implement comprehensive measures to address the issue. Efforts to regulate data brokerage practices have stalled again, leaving US military operations vulnerable to espionage and other security breaches. Now, I'd like to point out the title of this article, which is Anyone can buy data tracking US soldiers and spies to nuclear vaults and brothels in Germany.

[Brian Schulmeister]

One big explosion. One little explosion.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. The little death. The little death in the petite mot.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, that would be. If it was in France. Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

What would that be? What's dead in German. Auf Deutsche. It's Kleinot. That's it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There you go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Grossote and Kleinitot. I still remember something from my high school German many, many years ago. This one's fun. This one's fun. Microsoft is constructing two new data centers in Northern Virginia using cross laminated timber or clt, a fire resistant prefabricated wood material alongside traditional steel and concrete. Now there's a reason they're doing this, Brian, and it's not the one you think it is. They're trying to lower their carbon emissions from their data centers. Okay, now you think about okay, this is going to reduce the carbon emissions by 35% compared to conventional steel construction and 65% compared to precast concrete methods. Now this only goes into the one time cost of actually building the data center, which when you look at the lifetime of a data center is teeny, teeny, teeny, teeny tiny compared to the output of the carbon that is produced by all the fucking machines that are running the AI to talk to Jesus. So I just think that it's funny that they're trying to promote this as a big win by making them out of wood.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's a kleiny win, not a gross win.

[Jason DeFilippo]

This episode is brought to you by 1Password Extended Access Management Imagine your company's security like the quad of a college campus. There are nice brick paths between the buildings. Those are the company owned devices, IT approved apps and managed employee identities. And then there are the paths people actually use. The shortcuts worn through the grass that are the actual straightest line from point A to point B. Those are unmanaged devices, shadow IT apps and non employee identities like contractors. Most security tools only work on those happy brick paths. But a lot of security problems take place on the shortcuts. 1Password Extended Access Management is the first security solution that brings all these unmanaged devices, apps and identities under your control. It ensures that every user credential is strong and protected, every device is known and healthy, and every App is visible. 1Password Extended Access Management solves the problems traditional IAM and MDM can't. It's security for the way we work today and it's now generally available to companies with Okta and Microsoft Entra and in beta for Google Workspace customers. Check it out at 1Password.com grumpyoldgeeks that's 1Password.com grumpyoldgeeeks this episode is brought to you by 1Password Extended Access Management. Imagine your company's security like the quad of a college campus. There are nice brick paths between the buildings. Those are the company owned devices, IT approved apps and managed employee identities. And then there are the paths people actually use, the shortcuts worn through the grass that are the actual straightest line from point A to point B. Those are unmanaged devices, shadow IT apps and non employee identities. Like contractors, most security tools only work on those happy brick paths. But a lot of security problems take place on the shortcuts. 1Password Extended Access Management is the first security solution that brings all these unmanaged devices, apps and identities under your control. It ensures that every user credential is strong and protected, every device is known and healthy, and every App is visible. 1Password Extended Access Management solves the problems traditional IAM and MDM can't. It's security for the way we work today. And it's now generally available to companies with Okta and Microsoft Entra and in beta for Google Workspace customers. Check it out at 1Password.com grumpyoldgeeks that's 1Password.com grumpyoldgeeeks media candy okay, Brian, Last week we talked about the Paul and Tyson fight. Oh God, it should have been Biden versus Tyson. I tell you, that would have been a better fight, been more fair. But yeah, that was what it was.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I did not watch it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, the women's fight beforehand was brutal. I mean it was hard to watch.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Said it was good, but I mean that, that it tracks for boxing. It is a brutal sport.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, I.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Was going to watch it just because it feels like one of those events that, that are so rare these days that like everybody is kind of paying attention to. And I flipped it on at 8:00 because that's when I thought it was going to start. And by the time it was like midnight here and they still hadn't fought and I stopped checking in and I stopped caring and went to bed and woke up to the glorious memes of. I watched it on Netflix last night and then they had screenshots from the 1980s game Punch Out.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That was about it. Yeah. No, the fight should have been titled how to disappoint 108 million people at once. So. And it was, it was just a, it was a shit show of connectivity issues for me. I was watching it on my Apple TV and Mike Tyson comes out to, you know, to walk down the way after Jake Paul, of course, takes a car and does karaoke on the way. Mike Tyson had to walk the 300 miles to the ring. Which is probably why he was so tired for the fight by the time he got there. Because being 53, I know he's only. He's 58. That's a long walk. And you're winded by the end of that walk. You know, should have got at least a golf cart or something. But right as he walked out and raised his arms up, the entire Apple TV app crashed. It just crashed. I pulled it up on my laptop to see.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nope. All of Netflix was down, and there were just tons and tons and tons of people who were having problems. Yeah, it was. It was pretty bad. It was pretty bad. Which is really not good for their upcoming Christmas or Thanksgiving, whatever football thing they got coming up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So that's the thing. I was looking at these numbers here and there. Obviously these big streamers want to get into sports because that's real time. Must have subscription. Can't wait to just pay for a month and binge, you know, so it's. It's big. It's a big deal. And the holy grail of all this, of course, is the World Cup. So all the numbers are in this article. So this. This was 65 million concurrent streams attracted a global audience of 108 million. And, you know, they crashed the. Out of their system. Yeah. And you know, that's 16 million more is super Bowl. So you're not even gonna be able to do a Super bowl. World Cup. 5.4 billion.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. The Internet is. We don't have that many tubes. We don't have that many tubes in the Internet. So they got a ways to go. They got a ways to go, definitely. But they've got all the money in the world, so I'm sure they'll figure it out.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Maybe they have to be busy making AI.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They got to call Elon and send it to space. Oh, man. Last year I talked about the Old man, which was a fantastic series, and season two, unfortunately came out this year, and I didn't even know it wrapped because the finale was so boring. The entirety of season two in my book was a stinker. So unfortunately, I cannot recommend the Old man past season one, but season one was just awesome.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But yeah, sounds like a big win for my three seasons. Are not going to watch it, Paulus.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Unfortunately, I think you may be right on this one. And I think it comes back to what my friend said about, you know, a season or a series does good. Then they fire the writers because there were no writers on this show this year. It was bad. It was Bad. There was no budget, it was just. Gah. You compare that though to a new show that came out with season two this year, the Lioness. On. I think that's on Paramount. Plus fortunately, Nicole Kidman's face has come back to normal. She had just gotten surgery for season one and she was like a poofy and everything. She just did not look like Nicole Kidman. Now she looks kind of normal again.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The butter is melted a bit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. The thing about Lioness season two is I think they're up to episode four or five now. Every episode has a epic gunfight and battle scene in it. It's awesome. Instead of. I'm sure that we're going to have to get to one of those cost cutting episodes where they just talk. But from now every episode has been like, like had great gunfights. I love it. And it's a good story so far too. So I'm happy with it. I'm happy with the Lioness. I forgot to put that in the show notes. Another one that I'm pretty happy with is the Day of the Jackal. This is one that's on. I don't know what this one's coming on. It's not Paramount. It may be Paramount plus Hulu. No, Peacock. That's it. Peacock. You gotta get. It's like, you know we have Universe Creep when we read all that sci fi. Now I've got streaming platform Creep. Yes, Day of the Jackal is on Peacock. Now I found out about this show a little late. Episode 7 has just aired in England. In episode 6 has just aired in the US when I found it, I got the. I went to the backwaters of the Internet and found the UK version. So I'm a day ahead of everybody in the US that's watching it. So all my friends, I get to taunt them. I'm like, did you see where they were making out and everything. It's like, shut up. Shut up. So I'm having fun with my friends. But beyond that, great show so far. Based on the novel in a. Loosely, very, very, very loosely based on the novel. But so far so good. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. So if you got Peacock, it's a good one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I do not have Peacock and there's absolutely nothing else on Peacock I'd be interested in. So sorry, Day of the Jackal, but.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You do have bittorrent. Sounds true. There you go. I started watching Leonardo da Vinci by Ken Burns last night.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, this must be full of panning and zooming.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's not that much? No.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Really? No Ken Burns effect.

[Jason DeFilippo]

He's toned down the Ken Burns effect. I think it's. Since it's been co opted by everybody on the planet, I think the Ken Burns effect is. There's of course, a little bit of it, but I'm only about 20 minutes into it and I decided to stop because it's a two hour movie and I love when the world goes stupid. When they go low, you go high. So I'm trying to find more things with real amazing thinkers from the past. I'm probably going to go back and read more on the classical artists like Mozart and Beethoven and things like that. By the way, Immortal Beloved was a great movie. Totally off topic about what we're talking about, but great movie. I can't wait to watch the rest of it. The beginning was a whole bunch of info about Leonardo that I did not know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Look, Ken Burns, we can make fun of him because, you know, he's Ken Burns and he does Ken Burns in things, but at the end of the day, I have liked every single thing he's done. And it's even, even about subject matters I don't give a shit about. He makes it compelling and interesting and you learn a ton. So I'm a big fan of anything this guy puts out. So I want to watch this too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, get it. It's out right now on pbs. I watched the teaser trailer for the studio, the new Seth Rogen series coming to Apple TV Plus. Yeah, I don't know, it might be funny. Might be.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So burned out on him.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I like him again. He's kind of turned a corner for me. I was tired of him for a while, but I don't know, I kind of dig him again.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, I haven't turned the corner yet. We'll see.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. Yeah. And speaking of Apple TV plus, Apple plans to license its original movies to third party platforms such as foreign TV networks and digital stores to mitigate losses and enhance content visibility. So they're throwing in the towel saying, yeah, we just can't do it on our own. We need to make some more money from this crap.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, that's smart. Because Apple TV has got to be way down there in terms of subscriptions for streaming services. It just is because. And it shouldn't because it does have really good content. So many of the shows that we like and talk about now tend to be on Apple tv. They do great work. It's just they don't have people paying for their streaming service, so. Makes sense. License the crap out of it. Get it out.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. So after it's done with its first run, spit it out and then bring people back to Apple TV Plus. It's exactly what MGM plus is doing with their Netflix deal right now. Oh, speaking of, have you watched Interview with a Vampire yet?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Not yet. It is on the list.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You better hurry up because I don't think that deal last forever.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I gotta get on it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And the live action how to Train youn Dragon trailer came out. The teaser trailer for it. Now I'm an old Brian, but yes, I loved the original how to Train youn Dragon cartoon animated movie. I guess you can't call it a cartoon anymore since it's on cg. I loved that. I loved that movie so much. And I gotta say, just the teaser trailer gave me the feels again. I liked it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know nothing about this story, but my kid is coming of age that he's gonna want to read these books and I think he's gonna enjoy this movie.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So I didn't know they were books. I just saw the original. The original animated movies.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, there's a whole book series.

[Jason DeFilippo]

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

[Brian Schulmeister]

They definitely went back to the lab and fixed some things. But yeah, I'm still very uninterested.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I think it'll be fun. If you're into Minecraft, I'm not, so probably not going to. Everybody that has Minecraft, people that saw it got the original trailer and they think, yeah, it is what it is. So, yeah, if you've got Minecraft kids or you're a Minecrafter, then it might be good. I like Jack Black. What can I say? He reminds me of Bob. He reminds me of Bob. I got to go with Jack Black. Silo Season 2. Did you watch the latest episode last night?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I did not watch last night's episode, so I've only seen the first episode of season two.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, what are your thoughts?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I loved it. It's great to be back in the world. I did think it was an interesting choice to basically just focus on her solo running around the new Silo the entire episode.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I could watch her play Adam Savage all day.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Look, Rebecca Ferguson is gorgeous. She was gorgeous in Dune, but I like dirty, grimy Rebecca Ferguson. And we got that for 45 minutes straight, and it was all awesome.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Can't go wrong. Can't go wrong. I watched episode two last night, and she's not in it at all. So you gotta. If you want more Rebecca Ferguson, you gotta go back to episode one. But it's really good. It's.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I was gonna watch it last night, but the wife wanted to watch. We caught up with shrinking, which is still really good. And then after that was over, I didn't really have enough time for a full lane thing, so I watched the latest lower decks, and so Silo's up for.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I got to get to that new lower decks. They are going out with a whimper. Not a bang on this final season, I gotta say.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, unfortunately, that seems to be the case. I thought they would actually swing for the fences and go nuts, but they're not.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, not at all. Sad to hear that. You watch the new one and it seems to be more of the same.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It still has its moments. It's clever and it's funny for a series that came in the way it did. And the whole point of the series is basically just to fucking have a lot of fun and make fun. But, you know, with respect, they're not. They're not doing it. They have the chance to, like, go out. Not so. And they're not.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, I mean, season one, I thought was. Meh. Season two, they hit it out of the park and that they were doing so fantastic for the rest of it. And then this season is just kind of. Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We're sandwiched with shit bread, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It really is. It really is. I did watch one other documentary this week which was kind of off Brand Kingdom Uncovered, Inside Saudi Arabia. Yeah, fuck those guys. That's all I got to say.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There you go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Moving on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Speaking of spice flowing and somebody controlling it all, the first episode of Dune Prophecy came out, which was originally entitled the Sisterhood, but I guess they apparently decided that was too coded, and we can't do that, and we don't want to alienate people that may not like chick stuff.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, the Sisterhood of the Traveling Spice just didn't. Didn't roll off the tongue.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's beautiful. I liked it. I'm interested to see where it's going. I hope that they don't follow the source material because it's loosely based off the Brian Herbert, Son of Frank Herbert books, which are all absolute trash. And Frank Herbert did provide enough little background history of the Ben Jesuit in his books, anyway, so as long as they don't go away from that, we're good. Seems interesting and it is gorgeous. I'm curious to see where they take it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, no, as far as visuals go, is definitely on point. And I do like that they. I mentioned this to you off the air. I'm glad that they did that quick time shift in the. In the beginning because the actress that played the younger Bene Gesserit was just like, value. She rubbed me the wrong way. Rubbed me the wrong way. She. I've seen her in other things where she plays like, kind of a fundamental religious person, and I just still have that stuck in my head. And that's the part that she was playing here, and she does it really well, but it's an uncomfortable part for me to watch, and I'm just like, oh, God, thank God they got rid of her. So sorry, actress who plays that part, but you creep me out now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I think you and I, Jason, we kind of agree we're not too into AI being used in our TV shows and movies. There's still some very uncanny Valley aspects to it that are hard to get over. But something did come out this week, and I'm curious to know what you thought of it. This comes from the Roddenberry Archive, which is partnered up with a company called otoy, which does a lot of AI film stuff, and it's called Unification. And it's a new short created with the use of a combination of archival footage and CGI and AI imposed over actors, with Kirk himself played by both William Shatner and actor Sam Whitwear and Spock by Lawrence Selick. And what did you think?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, I. I got some feels. I enjoyed it. You know what killed it for me?

[Jason DeFilippo]

What?

[Brian Schulmeister]

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

[Jason DeFilippo]

You need the full package. You gotta have the music.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I couldn't believe it. And a couple times it swelled a little bit and they got really close. Obviously, probably using AI for the music sounds like Star Trek.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, but not quite, because I don't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Know why they wouldn't have the rights to it. Well, I guess Roddenberry probably doesn't have the rights to the music because that's owned by Paramount and blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah. If they would have just had the music, it would have made it for me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it really would have. Yeah, that's. That's really what the missing point piece was. Yeah, yeah. Oh, well, maybe they'll. Maybe somebody will do a gorilla version and rescore it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, my God, that would be amazing because Brian. Yeah, I'll get on that with all my time, but it was. I found it to be a pretty nice and fitting send off for Kirk. Yeah, it was. It was. It was. It was clever. It was nice.

[Jason DeFilippo]

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

[Brian Schulmeister]

Totally understand why they can't pay artists. Makes sense.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know. They're barely scraping by. And so much so that co founder Daniel ek cashed out $35.8 million in shares, bringing his total sales to $376 million in 18 months. I don't know how he can afford to keep the lights on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's amazing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I know. It really is. Co founder Martin Laurenston's firm sold $383 million in shares this week, topping 450 million DOL sales since June. These guys, man, I feel like sending them a dollar because I don't think they're going to be able to pay rent this month. I really don't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I mean, imagine only being able to make about $400 million for a company that's on track for its very first profitable year ever.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know, I know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's amazing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know. They've only got 252 million premium subscribers, too. That's just. That's just not enough, Brian. It's just not enough to keep the lights on. On.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, no. Especially not when you're getting all that content for free now and you're downplaying the music so you don't have to pay anybody and you're just basically taking people's podcasts and not paying them anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And the audio books that they're. They're giving away now for free.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, because, you know, they just take content and pass it out for free and charge people for it and put ads on top of it and keep all that money themselves. It's A real head scratcher.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They're Robin Hood, Brian. They're Robin Hood.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Anyways, I saw this interesting stat. In 2024, more music is released daily than in all of 1989 put together, according to MusicRadar and Will Page, former Spotify chief economist. Interesting other point. 1989 was the last time the music was good.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. When I was working on this new track for DeShawn Wesley, which, by the way, released today. So I've been in the middle of all this. The research says the number of new tracks released daily. To put those numbers that 1989 and 2024 numbers in context, the number of new tracks released daily, this is daily on music streaming services, is estimated to be between 100,000 and 120,000 tracks per day.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Hey, we asked for no gatekeepers, we got no gatekeepers anymore. Isn't it great?

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's great. Fantastic. So definitely go check the link in the show notes and check out desean Wesley's new track labels, which I've just spent the past couple months working on to get out the door. So two tracks in a sea of 120,000 today. Yeah, we ain't gonna.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And even if it gets a lot of plays, you still won't get any money.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no, the plays. The plays don't matter. The plays don't matter. You make your money on sync licenses and shit like that now. The funny thing is, Brian Ryan, at this point, I know more about music industry accounting than I ever, ever wanted to know. I finally know what a sync license is. I know what mechanicals are. I know what all this shit is. I never wanted to know that stuff ever.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Sorry, it's not fun.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no. But, hey, we got a track out, so go check it out.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Congratulations.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thank you, thank you. It was actually kind of fun to go through the process, I got to say, but I. You can't do it if you're going to make any money on it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You know, Danielle took it all. And finally, Elon Musk and Vivek Rameshawi promised new podcast devoted to discuss destruction of US government. That's right. Dogecasts are coming to a to your ear holes near you.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. When you. Just because Joe Rogan's on the top right now, we need somebody to knock him off. So come on. Come on, Elon Swami, make it happen. Apps and doodads. I saw this come across my newsfeed this week, Brian introducing Shop with Perplexity.

[C]

All right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Somebody really should have thought of that a little bit more.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'M perplexed as to where to buy this after using your shopping system.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. So find the perfect shop in no time. AI powered shopping searches find exactly what you're looking for. Compare at a glance, get summarized. Reviews from across the Internet snap to shop. Upload a photo of an item. Perplexity helps find the product and shop like a pro. For pro subscribers, buy in one click plus shipping on us. So that was the press release from Perplexity AI this week, introducing their new shopping tool. All right, we'll see how that goes. I haven't tried it yet, but I may. Just for shits and giggles, why don't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You put in a Nintendo Switch for me and find me the best price?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, we'll do. I'm on it. Brian, we'll see you later, right, as soon as you finish that new soundtrack for that Kirk thing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, I'll get on that too. I read an interesting article over at the Atlantic which kind of talks about the AI assistant that has come with Apple and the latest updates and specifically the plot or the texting summaries that we've discussed a couple times on the show because of horrific and very funny things that are occurring. And this was basically going through saying, you know, the social Internet is crap and it's in crisis. As we've talked about, you know, they're all algorithmic feeds and it's all trying to sell us shit or push influencers on us and none of it's about our friends anymore and keeping in touch with our friends. And this article is basically saying that group chats and text messages are based basically what's left, what's replaced it for social media for keeping touch with friends and that it's a great thing, it's online, it's. It's real time conversations that can be staggered and there's nuances and many different conversations and basically AI notification summaries are going to destroy them and basically just become algorithmic takeovers. Just like social media did have you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Do you have the AI stuff on your phone?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I think I got it with the latest update, but I haven't seen anything, so I don't know.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, you'll know it. Oh, you'll know it. You'll know it right away because you're going to have about seven heart attacks a day if you have it turned on. Because the notifications that come across my lock screen are just like. It's a jumble of everything that just came in and it makes no sense whatsoever. And half the time it's like you Think you sent something to the wrong person? Like, did I send that email to that person? Oh shit. You know, it's like because you get names and subjects that are completely co mingled and they have nothing. Especially if you have multiple texts. It's like, oh, Jeff Curto says you owe him $1,243 this month. I'm like, what? No, I don't. It's just, oh, that's the Small Business Association. That would be. Okay, let's skip that one. Let's move on. It has nothing. They are a mess. It is the worst Mad Libs ever.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I must have it turned off then and obviously I'm not going to now. Turn it on.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, keep it off.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Keeping up with our discussions that we've had about Bluesky and Threads and everything else right now, Bluesky has passed the 20 million mark this week as the app continues its recent surge in growth. They reached 15 million users less than a week ago and it just about tripled its user base in the last three months. They've had several days over the last week where added a million new users in a single 24 hour period, so they're seeming to be able to handle the up uptick pretty well. It's similar growth rate over at Threads, which has been getting a million new signups a day for going on three months. According to an update last week from Meta's Adam Massari, Threads has reached 270 million monthly users earlier this month. But as we talked about, that's basically because they were onboarded if you were on Meta products anywhere, particularly Instagram. So they started with that. Blue sky has experienced other periods of significant growth over the last year. The recent surge is far bigger than what the open source service had previously seen. A lot of this seems to be of course partially because of people basically bailing on X and looking for something different. And so far it's doing pretty well. And now that I've actually switched over from Threads, which I had problems with that we discussed, which is mostly because it's not time based and it's useless to see updates from friends or breaking news four days later, which Blue sky does has figured out, so, and people seem to be going there in droves. I I am pretty much more on Blue sky than anything else. Not that I'm on any of these that much anymore, but if I do have a small scale social media network that I go to, it is now bluesky and I just kind of check the others if there's notification.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, no, it's great and the CEO Jay Graber, she says she doesn't want to inshitify the network with ads, which is good. And she was on CNBC this week and said the design, the open source design of bluesky makes it billionaire proof because we can take our followers with us if they try and do any shenanigans. And so yeah, I'm with you. I'm over there basically full time now. I checked into Threads this morning and I'm just like it's literally like four or five days ago or a lot of posts about people who got sober. I'm like I don't know you, I don't care. Good for you. Go to a meeting, have a nice day. But yeah, no, it's doing pretty well. And this morning I've got a link to a live post counter in the show notes and when I checked about a half an hour ago they were at 21,482,900. A half an hour later they're at 21,512,229 users. So it's about 10,000. It actually works out about 1,000aminute that are signing up. So the fact that they can handle it's pretty good, especially for a 20 person staff and they've only taken in $36 million in funding which is not bad. Not bad, That's a good stuff.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Maybe Elon was right. Fire everybody over at X. You don't need that big of a staff anyways. We're all, we've all left Elon because that is a bad system over there and nobody wants to be there. And Blue sky does seem to be the fun one right now. I'm never going to be a power user but that seems to be my home base right now. Unless that changes and it seems to be hitting the critical mass in terms of people seem to be that's where we're going to go. That has not escaped Meta's notice however, as people are leaving or deactivating their X accounts, they've meaningful growth for both platforms. But as we've all pointed out, BlueSky seems to be the far better one in terms of actual ability to use it for something useful. And they are starting to notice that. And Threads is going to start tweaking their algorithm, getting it to rebalance and prioritize content from people you follow and less recommended content from accounts you don't follow, which is pretty much exactly what bluesky does. So they're just going to start, they're pulling the normal page out of Zuck's playbook, which is find the product that's working, copy all their features, and then bludgeon them to death with money.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, we'll see what happens. You know, and I, I understand the, the, the thinking behind the way threads launched with. Because you didn't have very many followers or you weren't following very many people when threads first launched, so they needed to shove you some content. Except they never turned it off. There should have been a threshold once you hit like 10 people. Okay, turn that shit off and just show me, show me what I want to see first. And then put in some algorithmic bullshit. But they didn't do that because they're like, that's not how they make money.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No. And that's not how they run any of their other services. So that also kind of makes sense from a, from a big company perspective. Well, this is what we do on Instagram and this is what we do on Facebook. So it's what we're going to do on threads.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. Fuck those guys. 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. 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 hello Fresh, America's number one meal kit. What is HelloFresh? It's Farm Fresh pre portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered to your doorstep. Step 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 craving. Personally, I love how HelloFresh helps me break out of my recipe rut. This week we made their Umami Ginger pork bowls with pickled cucumber and Sriracha crema. This hearty bowl centers around ground pork, browned and simmered in a savory miso based ginger sauce with nutty sesame seeds. Crisp, quick pickled cucumbers, tender sauteed cabbage and carrots and spicy crema are also on the menu. All served over fluffy rice. I mean come on. They had me at Sriracha just saying everything was pre portioned so there was zero waste and it came together in just 20 minutes. Plus their pre portioned ingredients saved me from over buying at the store. It's a win win. And don't miss the hellofresh market. They've got over 100 add ons from breakfast to snacks and even Thanksgiving sides to wow a crowd without lifting a finger. Get 10 free [e-mail] FreeGoG applied across 7 boxes. New subscribers only. Varies by plan plan that's 10 free hello fresh meals by just going to hellofresh.com freegog at the library.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You have been trying to search the great thinkers and things of that nature to escape the dystopia that is surrounding us right now. I am delving into quick, easy to read, fast fun sci fi. That is my thing. So I finished yet another book. I went back to the first Contact series by Peter Cowdran. I'm probably getting close to Peter.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You better hurry up, man. Brian's catching up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

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

[Jason DeFilippo]

And if it ain't broke, don't fix it, man.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's true. Just keep writing these, Never mind, ignore me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So, yeah, another fun one. I like this one a lot. It was. I, he's just got, he's got. He explores a lot of really good ideas, and it's always a fun and quick read, which is great. And then Greg wrote in, because I had finished reading Beacon 23 the other week, and he says, you reviewed the novel Beacon 23, and coincidentally, I'm watching the TV series on Paramount. Plus just wondering if you had seen it and if so, what you had thought of it. I forgot that this was a TV series. I remember when they announced it, and it has Lena Headey in it, who I love. But I never watched the series. And now that I've read the book, I was considering it, but then I went to the page I was gonna say that has all the episode descriptions of the show, and they're on season two, and they've gone so far beyond what the book actually was that that not necessarily could be a bad thing. I mean, it could still be good if it's a really good series. But I also, the ratings aren't that high, so.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Also, Brian, this is another testament to Schulmeister's law of TV series. It's been canceled after season two.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, it shouldn't have been more than, I'd say, a miniseries, given the novel. The novel is not that in depth.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. The fact that they stretched it into two series gives me pause as well. So I don't know. Maybe I've got such a backlog of stuff to watch and read and listen to and do that I probably will never get around to this. But I did like the novel the Dark side.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Ha.

[Brian Schulmeister]

With Dave.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Welcome to the Dark side with Dave Bittner. Whether it's decoding all things cyber on the Cyberwire, exposing deception and tomfoolery with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans, diving deep into privacy with Ben Yellen on Caveat, or breaking down industrial cybersecurity on Control Loop. Dave's got you covered. And don't miss his latest venture. Only malware in the building. How you doing, Dave?

[C]

I'm doing well. I am on final approach to Thanksgiving and I am happy for it. I am taking the whole week off next week and I am ready for some rest. I am ready for a few days away.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So, yeah, it's been trying recently. I guess this would be a good place to say we will not be doing a show next week, everybody. We're all taking it off for things. Thanksgiving.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. Not bad. Not bad.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right, Little Disney news. Star Wars Visions has been renewed for season three. Did you guys finish season two?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I did.

[C]

There was a season two.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. It's no. I agree with that sentiment, David, is something I forget about all the time. And I'm only reminded of it because at one point it popped up when I had, like, a spare, like, hour and the kid and the wife were out of the house and I launched Disney and it shoved it in my face as one of the recommended things. And I was like, oh, yeah, that. Yeah, I watched it. Yeah, they're fun. Like, you know, they're enjoyable. The animation styles vary wildly. You can be into some and not the others. And yeah, the stories. Same with the stories. It's all over the place. But it's fun, it's different, and I enjoy it.

[C]

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

[Brian Schulmeister]

We also have the other Star wars show starting, what, December 3rd, I believe, the one that has the Major Tom soundtrack.

[C]

Oh, yeah, Star Trek Goonies.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, Star Trek Goonies starts pretty soon, so I am looking forward to that as well. So we'll all be spending some time with in Star Wars Land for the holidays, I'm sure.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep.

[C]

And there's nothing wrong with that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nope, nope.

[C]

I, I, we, we top our Christmas tree with Grogu these days.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I will literally be in Star Wars Land at Disneyland at some point over the holidays, which I'm looking forward to as well. So. Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. Nice.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Maybe I'll just go back and rewatch andor. Because that was good. Yeah, Very good. Good. So, yeah, I got two pieces here that I wanted to put in here just to hearken back to the days when we talked about security on this show. We were actually talking about the feature, the new feature for Apple devices that were Turning themselves off after a couple days of not hitting any kind of cell tower. Now 404 Media put out a report that says. Yeah, they're calling it the inactivity reboot feature. And it was discovered by security research Jiska Klassen. Did you guys talk about this on Cyberwire, Dave?

[C]

We did. We did, yeah. Pretty interesting. I like it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yeah. So this guy actually figured it out. And the nice thing about it is it's stuff that they're not releasing to us, like Brian said. Yeah, don't tell us your playbook. We're good. We're good, right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So just following up on that now, after that story, another 404 Media article came out about leaked documents show what phone's secretive tech that gray key can unlock. Now, gray key is one of those tools that lets law enforcement break into phones. Now, long time ago on this show, I said if I was a hacker, what I would be doing right now is getting a job at Apple to work on iOS so I could put in zero days that I could then exploit When I left Apple to sell on the black market. I always thought that that was a fine business model for an entrepreneurial young man or woman to get into.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And walks a fine line between being rich and being in a jail.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly right. Exactly right. I think if you're starting point for.

[C]

Your life of crime.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. Yeah. I think as a starter villain, that's a perfect way to start. And if you're smart enough to go that route and think of it, then you're probably smart enough to actually get away with it. One would think. So after I see this gray key story, I'm thinking, man, I wonder if Apple is actually training people to become double agents to go work for these companies so they can get inside and get intel on what they're doing to unlock the phone. So then pass back to Apple to block them before it actually happens. Before that they can find the cracks. And I thought that would also be a fun division to work at Apple. And if they're not doing it, that's a freebie. Apple, go on, get on it. Because you know that there's those types of shenanigans going on behind the scenes. There's too much money involved for this not to be going on. I think that's my two cents. And if it's not going on, get on it, people. What kind of a boring world do you live in? Geez.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I mean, my thought here is less. I think a pretty good sci fi writer should be using this as a Jumping off point for near future fiction. Yeah, I would enjoy reading that. Yeah.

[C]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I mean, most of my theories on this show kind of fall into that right? Trope. But yeah, yeah. Cory Doctorow, get on it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, I don't think Apple is paying people to infiltrate the companies that are creating Gray Key and that sort of other thing. But I do think that they are perhaps finding ways to get their hands on the software and the equipment and see exactly what it's doing. Doing so that they can then do workarounds and say, hey, hold on a second, we forgot about. We got. We forgot to plug that hole, people. Yeah, the hole.

[C]

I mean, that, that sort of industrial espionage is definitely a thing I used back in my previous career. I worked for a company who made, let's just say, a large piece of industrial equipment that is part of the infrastructure of every office building in the world. And they had. And I visited their factories and I visited their R and D lab and one day I was in their R and D lab and in one of the big giant rooms where they do testing, there was one of their competitors, products set up running. Now, these are. These are $100,000 devices and they are big. And I couldn't help saying to my contact there, so what's this about? He was like, well, it's good for us to know what the competition is up to. So we go through a third party and get them to purchase this for us and gets shipped to them. And then from them, we ship it to here and we take the thing apart and see exactly what's going on.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Politics, they just call that opposition research.

[C]

Right, exactly, exactly. So, yes, that stuff absolutely goes on. At the same time, you see lots of stories of tech companies who are offered information on their competitors and they take it straight to the FBI because they know it's dodgy and they shouldn't be doing that sort of thing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It could be a money trap too. Unless you are trading the guy that's going to give you the information is what I'm saying here.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We turn in every third person that brings us this type of information.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We got to throw the FBI a bone sometimes. They know what's going on. Come on.

[C]

Yeah, well, and there's been all sorts of rumors over the years of how Apple tries to track down leakers within the organization of, you know, having documents be individually watermarked and fake leaks to put in certain people to see where things could be coming from. So I think that's all real as well.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know a few people that work At Apple. And from what they've told me, the opsec, there is no joke. Yeah, it is no joke. Nobody walks out of that building with anything. Right.

[C]

Right, right. Yeah. I'm trying to remember the name of the famous spy who was walking out of a secure facility like every Friday afternoon with a plant. He had a house plant, and he was stuffing classified documents inside the planter, the pot that the plant was in. And would just walk by security every Friday with this plant. Yeah. Security would smile and nod and he'd say, yeah, just taking the plant home, make sure it gets watered this weekend, then he'd bring the plant home on Monday. And. And, you know, it's a basic kind of thing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I love that kind of stuff.

[C]

Yeah, it's true. I do, too. I've often thought.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I appreciate the deviousness of human nature. Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[C]

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

[Brian Schulmeister]

So you go that way. And I was thinking night at the museum. And I was like, all the shit comes alive, man. If you want to go in there.

[C]

Yeah. But if you get away with your caper and you have to do all of that Hollywood kind of stuff, I think there should be some. You've earned it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right, Exactly.

[C]

There should be some deference that we should recognize. A caper. Well done. And the cleverness. As long as nobody gets hurt, you know?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. There's not. There's not enough. There's not enough movies about the good old fashioned cat burglar nowadays, you know?

[C]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I like that stuff. And I really like, you know, watching the Americans and seeing what the, you know, what the spies were doing there. I mean, if I was in dc, I would spend all my free weekends at the spy museum. You know, that's the kind of stuff I love. Love that stuff.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So I think the way this could work to all of our favor and we could actually have this in real life is we should have an army of criminals that basically break into all British museums, steal the stuff and take it back to the countries the British originally stole it from, and then we'd all be okay with it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right? There we go.

[C]

Right, right. You have an international group of cat burglars whose job it is to recreate all the stuff that the British Museum stole. Yeah, Right. Day by day, the British Museum gets a little Less interesting. I like it, I like it. I put the thing in here. I wanted to note that in this past week or so, one of the co creators of the BASIC computer programming language passed away. Thomas Kurtz was 96 years old. He was a professor at Dartmouth, worked on computers there, and was one of the two folks responsible for basic. And I wanted to check in with the two of you to find out because both of you have way more programming experience than I do, way more experience with more modern languages. And I was curious, you know, to what degree, if any, in your younger days had you crossed paths with basic and was it at all foundational to setting you on your path?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Absolutely, 110%.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. First thing I ever did on a computer was learn basic. Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. The BASIC manual came with the IBM XT that we got when I was a kid. And remember those, the old IBM manuals, they were like, you know, just monotone. But the, the binders were made of cloth, they were really nice. And then they were three ring binders, made it really easy to read. And I read the BASIC manual and learned, learned BASIC from that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. And I had a computer class, I think starting even in junior high school, which was pretty advanced at that point in time. Nobody was really doing that, but we had a computer lab, a couple computers and a couple. It was basically you. An option that you could take if you wanted to. And I of course did. And I, I vividly remember building coding a. Basically a dragon that breathed fire in like little pixels with basic. Totally remember that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. High school, 1989 for me. I was writing, I wrote a BASIC program on an Apple actually that drew a bird, which, it was like an original composition. I built out the bird in code and wrote that and then it won the high school award for best artwork of the year. So I won an award from my BASIC programming back in the day.

[C]

Nice.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right.

[C]

Yeah. I started with a TRS 80 when I was 11, I guess and just kept pounding away on that thing all through my teen years. And actually I got paid to create a package in BASIC when I was in high school for a local business that was kind of foundational to them running. It was just like this, was this labeling database system and I don't know, it sounds very uninteresting and to anyone who wasn't in this business it was. But for them it was kind of game changing and just the fact that I wrote it in BASIC and it worked was just amazing. The other thing that I wanted to touch on though is that I Feel like BASIC is underappreciated, but also it's become fashionable for folks to look down their noses at it. And again, getting back to the fact that the two of you moved on to much more advanced languages, is my perception of that accurate that these days people just kind of poo poo basic?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's programming people poo poo any language they don't use.

[C]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Or, or some languages you use, like Perl, that thing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That was horrible. But I mean, to be fair, like, things have moved on a lot from basic. I, I can't think of a modern application that you would go, you know, what language would be perfect for this?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Basic. Basic, right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's. It is a good teaching tool, I still think, for programming because it is so simplistic. It is a way to understand core. Core. Core programming concepts for sure at a very easy way and at very young ages. But would it, Would you. Could you get hired anywhere knowing BASIC anymore?

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no.

[C]

Yeah, that's true.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Maybe a computer museum, maybe teaching kids on the weekend or, you know, running.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The nuclear facilities with those five and a quarter inch discs, you know?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. That's true. Yeah.

[C]

So that's true.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[C]

It seems to me like even for kids, you know, things have moved on to be much more object oriented. And the whole fact that BASIC was. What do they call it? Runtime Encoded. And it's just slow. It's just slow. But we didn't know it was slow.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, it wasn't slow then.

[C]

Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Everything else was just as slow.

[C]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, I got to say though, if I had the option of learning object oriented programming to start with, instead of doing procedural to start with, and then like trying to change your brain after years of procedural and then moving into OOP programming, I would definitely say start with object oriented programming because it's, it's such a change of gears to go from one to the other.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So the kid, the kids definitely have a leg up nowadays with that. So they can just start with object oriented right out of the gate. Which. Highly recommended.

[C]

Okay. Yeah, it's good to know. All right. Well, beyond that, it's about all I have. I'm curious, do you guys have any particular Thanksgiving traditions as we're coming up on that holiday? Any eat, sleep, poop? Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I used to have, you know, my family back in Southern California when I was younger was. It was a very big group. Cousins, aunts, uncles, all kinds of people. Like 20, 30, some odd people would be at Thanksgivings and over the years, that of course, dwindled either through people passing away. And most of my cousins moved out of state. And now I've eventually moved out as well. So I'm in Toronto now. And so we don't really have much. We've started a tradition here, doing Canadian Thanksgiving. I end up kind of cooking almost everything because my wife is Chinese Canadian, and they did not have. No, that what they. I don't think they had even ate a turkey before I showed up and made. Started making all that. And everybody enjoys it. So I. I have a good time making Thanksgiving dinner here for. For my wife's family side of the family. And we do that and we don't go home for Thanksgiving anymore to my mom for American Thanksgiving, just because it's so close to Christmas and it's just too much with school and everything like that. So, you know, my sister still goes down to see my mom with her kids and. And we'll call them and FaceTime them and all that sort of stuff when everybody's there. But yeah, the traditions have kind of changed over the years and I still look fondly upon them and miss them, the big family stuff and all that. But time moves on.

[C]

Yeah, it's true. I remember growing up, we would often alternate between my family hosting Thanksgiving for us and all the cousins and so on, but then going to a cousin's house to have Thanksgiving. I remember one cousin's house we would go to. We would always. There'd always be touch football in the backyard.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We played jarts.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Jarts.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Of course you did.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And what will surprise nobody? We would go to Disneyland.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I knew that was coming.

[C]

Gee, what should we do today? I don't know. How about we walk down the street to Disneyland? Oh, good idea.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It was usually the Friday because Thanksgiving would be Thursday. We would have the big meal with all the family and everything like that, and then the Friday would just be a couple friends, a few family members. We all go to Disneyland.

[C]

Yeah. The main thing we've changed lately, and we've talked about this before here, is that we have jettisoned the tradition of having a turkey, and now we go with a roast. And because it just tastes better, everybody likes it more.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We do. We do ham when we celebrate the American Thanksgiving here now. So it's just a small ham for my immediate. My wife and my kid. Although I just had a flash of memory. So thank you for this, Dave. I totally forgot about this. What we did is as I got older, like into my teens and all that sort of thing is, we would do the Thanksgiving dinner with our families and everything like that. And once that was done. Done. I would get together with my friends and we went bowling every year. That was our Thanksgiving tradition as friend. The friend groups would get together after the family stuff, and we would all go bowling. I totally forgot about that.

[C]

Oh, that's nice.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, it was fun.

[C]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Now you just reminded me. After Thanksgiving dinner, when I was in my dad's house in Chicago for maybe five or six years, they don't do it anymore because like you said, everybody moves away or does whatever. But we used to have a inter family chest turn tournament.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nice.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, so we had like, five chess boards.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nerds.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep, exactly. Spread them around the room. And we'd all play chess. Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And then we'd program in basic.

[C]

Right? No, we had touch football, actually. Horseshoes was a thing too. Did you guys ever play horseshoes? Are you familiar?

[Jason DeFilippo]

We had jarts, like I said. Why would you play horseshoes when you have jarts?

[C]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Horseshoe is never not really big in Southern California. Got to say no.

[C]

And I think. What's it called? What's the thing with the bean bags?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Cornhole.

[C]

Cornhole. Thank you.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[C]

Cornhole has replaced horseshoes with fewer injured shins.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Also, in Thanksgiving in Chicago, you're not going outside to play anything. You want to stay inside and play chess with some cocoa or eggnog.

[C]

Yeah, that makes sense. I still like getting up on Thanksgiving morning and watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day PR Parade. I still get a little misty when Santa makes his appearance, and I just don't know why I like it. And then usually we switch over to the Walt Disney World parade.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[C]

And then family starts showing up, and that's that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Off to the races. That's right.

[C]

That's right. All right, well, I wish you guys both the best for this coming Thanksgiving. Be nice to have a little break, and I'll see you guys in a couple weeks.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right. Have a good one, Dave.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Enjoy that roast.

[C]

I will.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Closing shout out. Over at Patreon, we've got some new subscribers. Gerard, Juan, M. And Paul. And a thank you to our existing donors, Sarah, Thomas, James, Mark, Marios, Mike, Corey, Derek, Liz, and Paul. Thank you all so much. And just a reminder for people out there, Patreon, you know, at least for a minimum of $3 a month, you get the shows early ad free and in high definition. So get on that. And if you want to pay for the whole year, you get 5% off. What's. What's. What you waiting For.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, I agree. Over at PayPal, we've got Andrew, Sloan, Tom, Joseph, and Timothy, who gave us a big old 100 bucks. And I think he told us about it on Discord. But on Discord, he has a crazy ass name that isn't Timothy. So I have no idea if that's actually you or not. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna assume stolen dollar going on sloppy fart 42 is also Timothy. I'm not, not sure. It's hard to tell.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right, over the tip jar, we've got Eric, Sean, and Ross. And we've got a new list. We got a bunch of people that bought some merch from us this week. Head over at Shop GOG Show. We've got Angela, Brian, Michael, James, and Nathan.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, thank you. Thank you all so much. Send pictures of you and your gear.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Come on. See that swag in the wild.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And no reviews this week again. I guess you're all preparing for things. Thanksgiving. Lazy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I got a quick shout out to Schmackers. That show I did with Mark Devine and James Marsters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We've been slaving away in the studio for season two. I think we're gonna. We're hanging out tomorrow and I think we're gonna do a holiday special to keep the wheels going because it's just fun. It's a fun show. So link for that will be in the show notes if you want to get caught up on season one one. And yeah, keep an eye out for that. So with that, Happy Thanksgiving, Brian, even though you already had Canadian Thanksgiving a.

[Brian Schulmeister]

While, Happy Thanksgiving number two for me. Happy Thanksgiving for you. We will not be doing a holiday episode. So just a reminder to everybody, we are off next week so we can enjoy a little downtime. So there you go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right, until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I'm Brian Schellmeister. Thanks for tuning in to grumpy old geeks. Dive into the show notes and all the links from Today's episode at GOG Show. 675. 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. Easy to share the show with friends, foes and everyone in between and we'll be forever grateful. Got that annoying uncle that shows up with conspiracy theories. Tell him about our show. It'll piss him off. 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. Show us some love. Leave a review at GOG Show Review. A five star rating might just get your review right on the air. Stay grumpy and try not to take a nap right after Thanksgiving. It's bad for you. Go walk. Do something.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Play Jarts.