721: Pixel Predators

In short

Podcast Summary: Grumpy Old Geeks - Episode 721: Pixel Predators

Episode Overview In this episode of Grumpy Old Geeks, the hosts dissect the latest tech news, sharing their candid and humorous takes on significant events and failures in the tech industry. This week’s highlights include alarming tech layoffs, dubious actions by major tech figures, and a dive into media recommendations.

Key Topics Discussed

Tech Layoffs

October Tech Layoffs:
Worst month for tech layoffs since 2003.
153,000 job cuts reported, marking a 175% increase from the previous year.
Technology sector alone reported 33,000 job cuts in October.
Discussions on whether AI advancements or mundane economic factors are to blame.

Villains of the Week

Michael Burry's Bet:
Burry places a $1 billion bet against AI stocks, signaling a belief in an upcoming market correction.
FCC's New Proposal:
Proposal approved to make it easier for ISPs to charge hidden fees.
Hosts express frustration over lack of transparency for consumers.
Elon Musk:
Musk receives a $1 trillion pay package despite plummeting Tesla sales in various markets.
Teases the concept of a flying car while Tesla's sales drop significantly in Europe.
Mark Zuckerberg:
Opens an illegal school leading to conflict with neighbors, raising questions about privilege and entitlement.
Meta accused of using adult content without permission for AI training.

Legal Disputes

Texas vs. Roblox:
Texas AG lawsuits Roblox over failing to protect children from predatory behavior on the platform.

Media Candy

The Witcher Season 4:
Criticized for poor quality, prompting humor about its decline.
The Diplomat:
Positive reviews and a cliffhanger that spices up discussions.
Cooking Shows:
Family recommendations on competitive baking shows, highlighting their appeal as comfort viewing.

Apps & Doodads

Apple CarPlay:
Discussion on the potential decline of CarPlay among car manufacturers shifting to proprietary systems.
Lego Star Trek Set:
Excitement over the release of a new Lego Star Trek set featuring the Enterprise D.
Trademark Disputes:
Automattic Inc. claims ownership of the term "Automatic," sparking discussions on corporate overreach.

The Dark Side with Dave Bittner

AI Controversies:
Google AI accused of generating defamatory content about a senator.
Meta's internal documents reveal the company's profit motives regarding fraudulent ads.

Key Takeaways

The tech industry's current landscape features significant layoffs and questionable ethical practices by major players, with profit motives often prioritized over user safety.
Rising concerns over AI's role in the job market and the potential for market corrections as seen through Burry’s investments.
The media landscape continues to provide both comfort and critiques as viewers grapple with content quality and appeal.
Legal battles and corporate ethics remain hot topics, as companies navigate their responsibilities amidst controversy and market pressures.

Closing Thoughts The episode wraps up with the hosts’ humorous banter and shout-outs to their supporters on Patreon, emphasizing the ongoing challenges and absurdities in the tech world. Their discussions are a mix of insightful critique and light-hearted commentary on the absurdities of the tech industry and media.

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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:02Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing with finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

0:16Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. And we're on video. Oh, I know. It's so pretty. Look at that. Look at that little LA hat you're wearing. Well, yes. Congratulations to the World Series champions, back-to-back, your Los Angeles Dodgers. I am only allowed to wear this hat in my house because I probably get beat in Toronto, walking around in Toronto. Not only just in my house, in the room alone, because both my son and wife are very disappointed that the Toronto Blue Jays lost. So this is it for the hat in my room by myself under the covers in darkness.

0:55On video to thousands of people. On video to thousands of people because go Dodgers. Yeah, but, you know, if you did get beat by Blue Jays fans in the streets of Toronto, they would do it politely. They would, and they'd say, sorry, and then I would get free health care. Yeah, there you go. So, you know, it's a win-win. It's a win-win. So, anyways, back onto the news. You know, we can't know how bad the economy is, Jason, if we can't get reports on it. That's part of the design, right? Yes. Part of the design. Except we kind of can. As we can tell, a lot of people can feel that the economy isn't doing so hot right now.

1:31But of course, due to the government shutdown, we don't have much in the way of official economic data to give statistical clarity to that feeling, other than Trump saying everything's great and throwing a great Gatsby-themed party at his stupid place in Florida. But more and more private firms are actually releasing economic analysis, and much of the time it doesn't bode well for the American worker. A new report shows that this October was a particularly brutal month for the U.S. workforce, and there's especially bad for the tech industry. This came from career transition services firm Challenger Gray and Christmas.

2:05It's going to be a challenging gray Christmas. Yeah, it's going to be a very challenging gray Christmas. Isn't the Challenger the one that blew up, by the way, the space shuttle that blew up? Yes, I was in my seventh grade classroom watching it on TV. That didn't affect me at all. No, not at all. Well, it showed that the past month was the worst in decades. This report states that U.S. employers announced some 153 ,000 job cuts in October, up 175 percent from those announced in October 2024. It's up 183 percent from the cuts announced just one month prior. technology continues to lead in private sector job cuts as companies restructure amid ai integration slower demand and efficiency pressures and probably those tariffs in october the sector announced 33 000 job cuts up sharply from 5 000 in september for the year technology firms have announced 141 000 job cuts these are all being estimated up or down as needed up 17 from the 120 000 announced through the same period in 2024 which is bad it's not good at all and there's no real way to spin it as good.

3:12This is the highest total for October in over 20 years, and the highest total for a single month in the fourth quarter since 2008. Like in 2003, a disruptive technology is changing the landscape. Now, the exact reason for why tech companies are shedding jobs right now is still very much up in the air. One narrative attributes the layoffs to the rise of AI, but we've kind of debunked that multiple times on this show. Yep. Multiple commentators have noted that it could be much more mundane economic and business factors that are squeezing the industry like lack of growth in non-AI sectors and tariff policy eating away at profits while making it difficult to plan for the future.

3:48Personally, I just think it's greedy fucking billionaires. Yeah, that's kind of it. Yeah, I got laid off from two jobs. So it's funny. I was like, OK, I've been making this this Faustian bargain for the past couple of weeks. I'm like, okay, what do I cut? What do I cut? What do I cut? And the last time, it's usually car payment or health insurance, car payment or health insurance. I'm like, well, I need the car if I'm ever going to get to a hospital so they can pay for it. So I should probably keep the car instead of the health insurance. But then I realized, oh, I've got a colonoscopy appointment coming up soon.

4:21And I'm like, so I just got a loan to pay for my health insurance so I can get my colonoscopy to find out if I have butt cancer to see if I can get through that process so I don't lose my insurance. before I get my colonoscopy result. It's a great time to be in America, Brian. In the news.

4:44Well, do you remember Michael Burry? Yes. Yeah, he was the guy from The Big Short back in the day. And if you've never watched The Big Short, by the way, watch it. Now's a good time to go see it. Hey, make your Christmas gray. Yep, go fire up that streaming service that you're paying for too much right now. and get on it. He's betting on the meltdown. That's right. This time it's not subprime mortgages. It's AI, like we've been saying. According to SEC filings, his Scion asset management dropped over a billion dollars on put options against NVIDIA and Palantir, effectively wagering that the AI gold rush is about to crash harder than a self-driving Tesla.

5:25Wow. NVIDIA just hit a$5 trillion market cap. Palantir's trading at 200 times forward earnings, and everyone's pretending that that shit just makes sense. I don't think anybody's pretending it makes sense. It's just people are riding it as long as they can. That's what we've been saying, and it just keeps, you know, to the moon, Brian, to the moon. It's the, you know, the crypto bro's got nothing on the real stock market. Yeah, yeah, those guys are just like piddly piss ads compared to the real guys. But they might be the only ones left with the money if you don't get out of the market soon because it's getting scared.

5:59It's getting scared. See, I look at the Morning Brew every day, the newsletter of the Morning Brew, and there's a little block at the top. It's either it's got like, you know, all the different indexes and all the different industrial averages and all that shit. And I weigh in Bitcoin and one stock. So I wake up and I'm like, is it green or is it red? That's all that's all I care about. And when it's red. This is this is the schadenfreude that I just get smiley. It makes me happy when I wake up and I see that it's red. When I wake up and it's green, I'm like, oh, the fuckers are still winning.

6:30Well, you know, I mean, for for other people such as myself are in the stock market. The traditional wisdom has always just been if you can afford to wait, you hold, you hold, hold, hold. And I still agree with that for many, many stocks, but not not these, not not Tesla, not Nvidia, not Palantir. These things are riding the bubble and we all know it. So your Johnson and Johnson stock is going to be fine if you if you hold on to that. But if you're if you got Palantir, if you got Tesla, you're I don't give financial advice on this show. No, we don't. You're just batshit crazy. How's that? Yeah.

7:10Well, in real world news, no shock here. The Republican led FCC has voted on and approved a proposal that will make it harder for consumers to receive itemized bills with accurate information in their ISPs as originally spotted by CNET. If you recall, this was just recently passed. We got the kind of bill of sales for ISPs or the food label, nutrition label kind of things, which was a good thing. Yeah, we cheered for it when it came. It was nice. It's good to know how they're screwing you. Yeah. That's all we really wanted. But, of course, this government said, well, we can't have that. No. So, yes, the proposal revises previous unnecessary requirements on the grounds that a fact-based list of charges may confuse customers.

7:56Yes, a list of charges clearly delineated is much more confusing than just a charge for which you don't know what anything is. Yeah. Understood. Well, it's kind of the difference between getting raped with your eyes open and being raped with a blindfold. The Republicans just opt for the blindfold. You're still getting raped by these ISPs no matter what. So it's, you know, six of one half dozen to the other, honestly. All Republican Commission members voted to approve the change while the lone Democrat dissented. Once passed, ISPs will no longer be required to read these labels over the phone to customers, make them available in account portals, or give a complete accounting of fees to customers.

8:34They can just charge you what they want. The FCC has stated that these transparency requirements are unduly burdensome and provide minimal benefit to consumers. Again, how is it burdensome? I would like to know what I'm paying$100 each month for. I would like to know if they are still charging me for a modem rental, even though I own my own, because that happens a lot. Yeah, that's probably half of their income. Yeah. So anyways, it's worth noting that these labels will technically still exist. They will just be harder to find and won't be all that useful. This is a process called the political two-step.

9:08It's when basically you take something, you make it less useful, and then you turn around a couple months later and say, oh, look, it's not that useful. we should just get rid of it. And that's pretty much what's going to happen. Oh, fun. But, you know, it's okay. It's okay if you happen to be at SpaceX. You can afford your internet access because SpaceX will reportedly receive a$2 billion contract to develop satellites for the U.S. government, according to the Wall Street Journal. Wall Street Journal's report detailed that SpaceX will be tasked with developing up to 600 satellites that can track missiles and aircraft and will be used for President Trump's proposed Golden Dome project.

9:43Now, if you happen to see that movie that's been very popular on Netflix, you'd know that there's a 50-50 chance of that shit ever working anyways. And I honestly, I think of a golden dome. It's an umbrella when somebody's trying to give you a golden shower. And we know President Trump likes the golden showers. That's what he had in Russia on videotape, apparently. I know, I know. Yeah, so SpaceX is getting a nice big hand out there. Gee, I wonder how that happened. Oh, maybe Elon Musk. He's ingratiated himself back into the White House somehow. Somehow. Well, he's had a bit of a week and we're going to get into that, I guess, right now.

10:18Let's start with classic misdirection. When everything's going wrong for you, Jason, and the publicity is all bad, what do you do? You get stoned and you go on Joe Rogan. Yeah, if we could all just do that, that'd be great. Yes. So Joe Rogan asked Musk about the long-delayed second-generation Tesla Roadster in a show when the Tesla CEO suddenly started talking about wanting the vehicle to fly. Yeah. Yeah, your car's coming late and investors are not happy about that But never mind that. Why don't we have flying cars? He was giving rogue and vague answers in the interview, but he eventually said, well, you know, my friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don't have flying cars.

11:01It is the year 2000, but where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars. I don't see any flying cars. Why? Why? Why? I mean, if Peter wants a flying car, we should be able to buy one. but we're working on some crazy crazy technology and uh i i'm not sure it's a car but it looks like a car he didn't answer when rogan asked if it had retractable wings or mentioned if the vehicle would be a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft no details whatsoever just we're going to have flying cars now you know what uh uh elon we were also promised jetpacks why don't you test one hey we were promised self-driving cars first oh yeah well well we have those jason it's in the software name.

11:40Oh, it's in the name. It's in the name. What about the Robot Army? It's full self-driving. Driving. Yeah, yeah. Isn't the Robot Army supposed to be here by now? And the RoboTaxis. What happened to the RoboTaxis? And so I think what it is, it's basically just a button on the dashboard that when you press it, like goes into flying mode. It just doses everyone in the car with massive amounts of ketamine. So you just think you're flying. You don't have to go anywhere. You just sit in your garage and stare at your hands. And it plays the Peter Pan. You can fly, you can fly you can fly better than the r kelly i believe i can peter teal pops out with a big hook for her hand oh there you go there you go anyways although the company's sales in the u.s jumped last quarter tesla uh many onlookers have attributed that bounce to the expiration of the u.s's ev tax credit consumers likely rushed to buy an ev while it made financial sense to do so or so the thinking goes that might explain why you keep seeing new teslas and cyber trucks and everything yeah people were getting in there while they still got the the you know discount for it but prior to that tesla's q2 results showed a 13 collapse of sales in the u.s and some experts expect the company's decline to continue all experts perhaps in europe for instance things aren't looking great reuters have reported that in october tesla sales cratered by massive proportions from the preceding month car registrations which it describes as a proxy for sale dropped 89 % in Sweden, 86 % in Denmark, 31 % in Spain, and 50 % in Norway.

13:09Overall, EV sales for Europe actually saw a bounce of 119 % during the same period, just not Tesla's. Just not Tesla. Yep. Yep. So Reuters credits Tesla's problems in Europe to the usual suspects, competition from Chinese EV makers who have introduced newer models and by all accounts much better, and backlash against Elon Musk for his attempts to meddle in politics both in the U.S. and in Europe. So, yeah, yeah, I would I would sell that Tesla stock even before the rest of this news. Yeah, definitely. Because here's the here's the kicker. Yeah. Just to round out the Tesla news, Elon has convinced Tesla shareholders to make him the world's first trillionaire in waiting.

13:50Over 75 percent of investors voted to approve his new one trillion dollar pay package, which depends on him turning Tesla into an$8.5 trillion company by 2035. Yeah, there are some specific markers, which is why I think this is such a bullshit story. And I hate the fact that it's like all over the headlines everywhere. Yeah, he's got to turn Tesla into an$8.5 trillion company. He has to sell 12 million cars a year, and he has to build a million robo taxis and humanoid robots, none of which will ever happen because flying cars. Yeah, flying cars. There we go. So, see, if we had flying robo, robo taxi driven robot, I don't know how you have to spin it all into an all in one thing and still 12 million of them a year.

14:36No. Yeah. A flying robot that works as you can hop on its back as a taxi. There we go. There you go. Yeah. And so he's basically saying in 10 years he can he can make his company three point five trillion worth three point five trillion dollars more than the highest valued company in existence right now. Yes. Which, by the way, that company, that five trillion dollar company, NVIDIA, is about to be maybe a two trillion dollar company once the adjustments come in for, you know. Outside of the fact that everybody's getting fired and nobody can afford to buy a Tesla or a humanoid robot or anything else, he'll be shilling.

15:11So how's that going to happen? Yeah. No, it's just it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. this. But you know what? Big star on for Elon. Big star for Elon. Tesla gave him a big star. Put that on your chest, buddy. Mommy said, I'm going to be a trillionaire one day, daddy. I still don't love you, son. I have a piece of paper. Yeah. I'm a trillionaire. Whee! God damn it.

15:49Well, we got some Roblox news. You're keeping your son away from Roblox, right? Abso-fucking-lutely. He will never be playing Roblox. You can play it when he's 18. Well, Texas is jumping in on that, too. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is coming after Roblox, claiming the company's kid-friendly image hides something darker. In a lawsuit filed Thursday, Paxton accuses Roblox of deceiving parents about safety in prioritizing, quote, pixel pedophiles over children. Pixel pedophiles. There's a T-shirt. There we go. He says the platform is basically a digital playground for predators and vows to hit it with the full and unrelenting force of the law.

16:30I am the law. Oh, God. Roblox cop. Oh, God. This isn't Roblox's first rodeo, though. Attorneys general in Louisiana and Kentucky have filed similar suits and the platform's been under fire nationwide for not keeping up with grooming explicit content and sketchy adult interactions. They're not keeping up with it. There's not enough grooming on this platform. You are not keeping up with the other platforms like Meta. Regulators worldwide are tightening age verification rules. Think about the UK's Online Safety Act and Mississippi's new age assurance law. Roblox says it's rolling out new safety features, selfie-based age checks, AI tools to spot grooming, parental controls and stricter control filters and stricter content filters.

17:15Still, it's hard to square that with 151 million daily users and a never-ending stream of headlines like this one, the company hasn't commented. Maybe it's still checking IDs. Yeah, Roblox is definitely out. Not going to happen. No, no, definitely not. Well, Mark Zuckerberg, We haven't talked about him that much lately as a person. We've made fun of Meta quite often. But, yeah. So, Mark and his Palo Alto neighbors have been in a feud, Brian. You know why? No idea. This is crossing the line into what the fuck is going on up there. So, his Palo Alto neighbors are fed up with his ever-expanding 11 property compound, Eight solid years of construction and a constant storm of security and staffers causing traffic.

18:04But the real tipping point, Brian, was according to documents obtained by Wired, it was an unlicensed private school operating illegally on the residential land. And it was called Bicken Bend School, which was reportedly named after one of the family's pet chickens. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, which is funny because he's probably raising lemmings in those schools, not chickens. But hey, what are you going to do? Yeah. Neighbors have been complaining to the city for years about noise and code violations, accusing the planning department of dragging its feet and giving the billionaire preferential treatment.

18:42Duh. After years of pressure and the neighbors essentially leading their own revolt, the city finally issued a shutdown order, forcing Bick and Ben to move this past summer. Well, the Zucks rep says the school simply relocated to a permitted spot, but the whole saga proves that even when you're building a fortress of 11 properties, you still can't completely zone out neighborhood rules. So HOA1, Zuck0. I don't understand why these guys are wanting to do their own schools. It's crazy. Yeah. You know, one... Can't go with the great unwashed, I guess. Well, one reason I can think of is kidnapping.

19:17shopping that's the one legitimate reason that i can see is is safety and security but a lot of people are rich and have kids and send them to private schools that have private security you know that's true that's that's just the way that is so you don't need to start your own mark all right well let's uh let's go back to meta i particularly love this story meta forgot to keep its porn in a passworded folder jason and now it's kink for data collection is the subject of scrutiny. All right. The social media giant turned metaverse company turned AI power is currently facing a lawsuit brought by adult film companies Strike Three Holdings and Counter Life Media alleging that the big tech staple illegally torrented thousands of porn videos to be used for training AI models.

20:02Meta has denied the claim and recently filed a motion to dismiss the case because in part it's more likely the videos were downloaded for private personal use. The companies claim that Meta used that material to train AI models and alleged the company may be planning a currently unannounced adult version of its AI video generator, MovieGen, and are soothing for$359 million in damage. Now, for what it's worth, Strike3 has somewhat of a reputation of being very aggressive copyright litigant, so much so that if you search the company, you're less likely to land on its homepage or find its porn than you are to find a litany of law firms that offer legal representation to people who have received a subpoena from the company for torrenting the material.

20:43strike three was able to show what appeared to be 47 ip addresses linked to meta participating in torrenting of the company's material that's not that many no compared to how many yeah yeah and it's motion to dismiss the company called strike three's torrent tracking guesswork and innuendo and argued that among other reasons there simply isn't even enough data here to be worth using for ai model training this is a small number of downloads roughly 22 per year on an average across dozens of meta IP addresses. It's plainly indicative of personal private use, not a concerted effort to collect the massive data sets that the plaintiffs allege are necessary for effective AI training.

21:21Unfortunately, they may have found out the victim, the dad of a meta contractor, who is apparently simultaneously being accused by Strike 3 of being a conduit for copyright infringement and accused by meta of being a degenerate. Strike 3.297 additional downloads made using the home IP address of a Meta contractor's father, but please plead no facts plausibly tying Meta to those downloads, which are plainly indicative of personal consumption. Poor guy. Busted. Busted. Oh, man, that's the worst way for somebody to find your stash. Absolutely. Like, you know, when my dad passed, I did not look. I just wiped.

22:01I wiped things clean. Yep. Done. Oh, my God. No, see, that's why you have to, you know, I've mentioned this on the show before, but optimize for your demise. So, you know, if you just kicked off today, leave everything in a state where, you know, if somebody just comes in, they can they can do what they got to do without, you know, finding anything nefarious or untoward to sully your reputation in the afterlife. Keep that stuff hidden. Keep it safe. Keep it secret. Well, let's let's add on a little bit of good news, Brian. Is there any? Yeah, there is kind of. In rural Michigan, scenic drives can double as logistical nightmares.

22:43So Munson Health Care is testing drones to deliver lab samples instead of crawling along back in windy roads. With support from a$10 million state grant program and Michigan's new Advanced Aerial Mobility Initiative, the Traverse City-based system has already tripled daily deliveries between its hospitals using drones from startup Blue Flight. The program proved drones can move samples faster and safer. No spoilage and no delays. Governor Whitmer's Mobility Task Force sees this as part of a broader push to use drones across industries from agriculture to public safety. So and next up are beyond line of sight flights, expanding routes and maybe even prescription delivery.

23:21So, you know, I've never been to Michigan, but I hear it's beautiful. I wanted to move there recently because that way it's easier to sneak across the border to Canada if the time comes. But, yeah, this seems like a good thing for places that have, you know, tough to get to areas. Yeah, it's going to be awesome if anybody up there still actually has health care. That's true. That's true. Because we've seen this in Africa. I've seen the rains down in Africa. You've seen the rains down in Africa. That's right. You know who didn't? The fucking guys in the band. They've never fucking been to Africa.

23:56They just wrote the goddamn song. Toto's never toured in Africa? Well, I mean, I think they went there after the song came out. After the fact, okay. If you watched, like, the behind the music on it, they just fucking made that shit up. They had never been. That's funny. That's funny.

24:15Media Candy. I don't know if you've finished The Diplomat yet. We are working our way slowly through it. Got to the episode with the triumphant return of a very aged Josh Lyman swimming in a pool. Okay, you're far behind then. I finished it last night. Yeah, I thought maybe you had finished it. So I stayed up a little later to knock it out last night. Oh, well, no, sorry. Did it end well? Am I putting a good use to our quality time together with my wife? Oh, you definitely are. But cliffhanger. So hopefully the Diplomate Season 4 will be coming. Good cliffhanger, too. Really good one. So I am satisfied with the Diplomate.

24:55And hopefully in the next seven years before my health care runs out and I die of butt cancer, I'll be able to see season four. Yeah, I'm really enjoying the show so far. I think my favorite part in this episode that I just watched was I don't think I've ever seen in any televised entertainment before the patented college move of going around and taking everybody's drinks when they left the room and mixing it into one big cocktail because you hate your life so much and just drinking it. I was like power move by Josh Lyman. Or a standard party with me. Moving on. There was that. Moving on. What we have been watching as a family is an awful lot of baking shows.

25:36Tis the season, as it were. My son and wife love these and we watch them together as a family. We finished watching the Halloween Baking Championship, which was great. Although, how far the mighty have fallen, Jim Henson? Hosting these things. It's a long way from his talk soup days. Let me tell you. I did watch that one all the way through. It was because we've watched everything that there is to watch about savory food on the Food Network. So we've had to dip into the baking shows. So I texted you this week. This is the first time in history that we have food shows that our interests align on completely.

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26:09So, yeah, they're a lot of fun. Like, I really enjoy them. So they're great to have on in the background or, you know, watch with the kids. So it's been a blast. Then the Holiday Baking Championship has now started. It kind of rolls right into that. And in the surprise move, I didn't think this would come back because I think it cost them quite a lot to put together. But the Harry Potter Wizards of Baking has a season two, which has just come out. So lots of baking. And I really love the Harry Potter one. They do a great job with the production. And the stuff that they make is unbelievable. See, I live with a muggle, so it doesn't really translate well.

26:45And also, it seems to be more woodshop than it is cake. You know, that's why I like the Halloween and holiday baking championships and the summer baking championships, too. It's also why I don't like they also do like the Halloween Wars and Christmas Wars, because that's more like they're building stuff. It's not actually just baking. So the Harry Potter one does veer a little bit that direction, but not enough for us not to enjoy it, especially since my kid loves Harry Potter. Yeah, yeah. You get the Harry Potter vibes out of it. So that's good. It's fun to watch baking. I don't know why they're just happy shows.

27:16That's what we watch, like to clear out the crap that we've watched during the day, that we watch those like right before we go to bed. So you can end on it. Happy dreams. Happy dreams. It's like my mood enema. Yeah, kind of. Kind of. So have you checked out Pluribus yet? It came out yesterday on Apple TV. Just Apple TV now, right? Apple TV. Yes, Apple TV with the new like sheeny logo. where you where you look if the plus is there or not uh so yeah i i watched the first episode with ria sehorn last night and uh i i have not watched it i plan to watch it tonight but uh the reviews so far seem to be cautiously optimistic so very cautiously optimistic good premise you don't get it from the the the trailer just says what the fuck is going on and then at least you get you get it explained to you by the end of the first episode what the premise is so you have to you have to watch it to get into it.

28:11But it looks it looks interesting. It definitely looks interesting. So we'll catch up on it next week. We should have three episodes by next week. I got some homework. Yep. I have been watching Knife Edge Chasing Michelin Stars also on Apple TV since there. So I said we watched everything on the Food Network, so we had Jump Networks. It's really cool. It's a it's a well done. It's got Apple behind it, so it's got money. So it's really well shot about these restaurants that are chasing their Michelin stars and trying to get their first second or third and by the time you're done watching this you really get a sense of how much fucking work it takes to get a michelin star yeah it's it's insane the work that goes into it so it was fun to see on that side of things uh so i think they're five or six episodes in right now it's they're they're rolling them out once a week so and we did run out of everything else to watch on television so we went back and we watched black rabbit on netflix with jude law and jason Bateman.

29:06Yeah, I needed a lot of baking championships after this to clean that that mental schmutz out of my brain. There was not one decent character that you really wanted to root for in this entire eight episode miniseries. Fortunately, no sequel. So don't have to worry about that. This is a one and done for sure. Horrible characters isn't necessarily bad. I mean, I'm thinking back to Secession. Like, I hated everybody on that show, but it was awesome. Is this awesome? No, it's not. I gave it a single thumbs up because I didn't hate it. Hate it. We watched it all the way through. It was enough to get you hooked.

29:46But no, without doing a lot of spoilers and comparisons to Ozark, I can't really, really say too much about it because it seems like there's a lot of similarities. Jason Bateman didn't write this one, but he directed a couple of them. And I'm sure he had some input behind the scenes. But if there's a, yeah, there's a lot of stylistic and story arc types of crossover in that. I just didn't, when we were done watching it, we're like, ew. That's kind of the, you know, what we both felt. That'll be a pass for me then. Yeah. Also a pass for me is Tron Aries. We talked about it on the show before. Like, why does it exist?

30:24Now I know exactly why it tanked. Because on IMDB, I'm looking at the credits and it's just, it has Kara Swisher and Gary Vaynerchuk listed in the credits for Tron Aries. I'm like, there you go. There's a match made in hell. Right. I mean, I'm going to watch it whenever it comes out on streaming, just because I feel like I need to see it and understand why I hate it. But, you know, I'm pretty hating it. So fair enough. Okay. Well, you know, going into something with super low expectations could actually make it great. like that new batman movie that we're supposed to have a sequel about four years ago which never showed up with the guy from twilight in it yes i actually thought that was a good movie because everybody said it was so terrible i watched i'm like this is actually pretty good what are you talking about for yet another batman remake i know what do we need more batman remake or a spider-man remake probably spider-man it's been six months so well i think we're getting one soon so yeah enough yeah uh something that i'm not sure that needed to exist the witcher season four is out and as as you know henry canvil has exited the role um yes and liam hemsworth the lesser hemsworth has stepped into the role he's like he's like the fourth baldwin yeah and uh i've been trying to watch it because i did really enjoy the first season and even i think the second and third seasons were pretty good.

31:49Henry Cavill was great in the role. Liam's all right, but it's a massive downgrade, and I can't imagine this is doing well. So it's just not the same show, and he's not the same. And every time they pan to him, I think, that's not Henry Cavill. That looks wrong. Am I drunk? Nope, I'm not drunk. With all this AI, they should have just deep faked Henry Cavill. He should have just signed the contract and said, use my face, I'm done. Yeah, put in the mustache that you had to take out from Superman and let's go. Yeah, yeah. Well, you're not the only one that's not a big fan. The critical drinker who does the greatest movie reviews of all time wrote, he posted a new video called The Witcher Season 4, a show so awful it broke me.

32:30So his reviews are always great, so I highly recommend checking that out. All right. I'm going to go ahead and finish off the season because I'm like four episodes in. It's only an eight episode season, so we'll see. But yeah, it's a definite downgrade. It's not as seamless as the Darren switch on Bewitched, let me tell you. Yeah. Man on the Inside Season 2 is coming. I found that show to be effervescently pleasant, and I'm quite happy that there will be a second season. That drops on November 20th, so that's some good news for me, I guess. Linda Park from Star Trek Enterprise will have a big role in this season, too, and I love seeing her in things, so excited about that.

33:10And finally, there's news we all needed to hear, Jason, in this vast, shitty landscape of entertainment where we get 17 Batmans and 45 Spider-Mans. Something is finally coming back, and I'm very pleased about it. Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are reuniting for a fourth installment in The Mummy. I can get behind that. Me too. I don't care that they're older. I am thrilled. I like those movies. They're fun. They're fucking great. They're just rollicking good fun. That is what an action movie should be. Not this. It's all pre-Marvel. Pre-Marvel action movie. Thank God. Bring it back. Well, let's see if the Marvel influence takes hold and they can keep that magic from the first ones.

33:54Yeah. But I wonder if they're going to bring back Anak Sunamun. I'll just watch that little bit on repeat forever. It's all good. Just her walking. Yes, thank you.

34:10Ups and doodads. well we've talked in the past about uh how gm is trying to ditch apple carplay and how stupid that is because apple carplay is about possibly the best possible thing that you could ever have in your car ever but uh it doesn't seem to be going that way uh no matter what car you drive the glory days of carplay may be numbered it's an article over in the atlantic that you can read in detail links in the show notes but the argument here is there's just too much money to be made from creating their own version so they don't want to most of the car manufacturers are going to try to get rid of it and we should all get ready for a day when your car's technology expenses are another line item on your credit card statement right next to the netflix subscription and so you can pay to play your own fucking entertainment in your fucking car that's such bullshit rivian we covered that like last week or two weeks ago they're doing the same thing and it's like no we don't want that I like my car play.

35:05Yeah. They're just trying to figure out any way that they can do a subscription on your car anyway. And this is the big one. So. But some good news, Jason. I know you're not a Lego fan, but open hailing frequencies to your wallet because after a brief tease during Star Trek Day, it's finally here. Lego's first ever official Star Trek set celebrating one of the most beloved Starfleet flagships of all time. it is the enterprise d with captain picard and the whole next generation cast pieces a faithful representation of the galaxy class starship including an attachable saucer section to recreate the ship's ability to separate into two craft a tiny little opening shuttle bay on the rear of the saucer which houses two minuscule shuttle pods you get a card data jordy will diana beverly wolf wolf wolf wolf guy and unfortunately will crusher but he is wearing the jumper so that's pretty good and they all come with little accessories and guess what they gave reicher they gave him the trombone they did yes uh so star trek may live in a post-scarcity economic utopia but we don't which means you have to cough up four hundred dollars if you want this and it comes out November 28th.

36:21See, this is, people are going to be saying, why didn't they start with the original Enterprise? Well, here's why. People who were fans of the original Star Trek are too old to buy Legos and they won't care. The people who watch Next Generation are right in that sweet spot of the people who will pay$400 for a fucking Lego set. They nailed it with the serious laser focus on who to get on this. like nobody wants any of the other ships yeah especially coming off of just you know picard just ended a little while ago so we we're all on the nostalgia bandwagon for for for the enterprise for the for next generation so you couldn't have timed this better it's awesome nope and you know what's you know what's going to be the next one hmm the borg cube oh you know it you know that's coming.

37:12That would be pretty cool. I want my little locutus figure. That would be awesome. Yep. In some actual app news here, Automatic, the company behind WordPress.com is threatening legal action against Automatic.css. Now Automatic, the company that owns WordPress has two Ts after Matt for Matt Mullenweg. Matty Matt. Little Matty Matt the billionaire. And Automatic.css only has one T. So So, yeah, things get a little dicey there. Especially since Automatic is just a fucking word. Exactly. Automatic's lawyer sent a letter demanding the smaller company rebrand, arguing the names are phonetically identical and likely to confuse customers.

37:56Automatic.css founder Kevin Geary wasn't impressed. He posted the letter on X, where Automatic's CEO Matt Mullenweg chimed in with, quote, we also own Automatic with 1T.com. You had to know this was a fraught naming area, end quote. Geary shot back, congratulating Mullenweg for owning a generic domain and telling him to let him know, quote, when the fact becomes relevant, end quote. Oh, fuck you. Oh, man. Yeah, this is just this goes with Matt's, you know, overreach lately with the WP Engine issue that he could have easily solved by shutting the fuck up and not being a greedy bitch. But, you know, that's how things go when you get when you get all the monies.

38:38Yes. I have to say the best part of being semi-retired at this point is I haven't had to deal with a WordPress site in so long. I know. It's so wonderful. I hate WordPress with a fucking fashion. Yeah. I still have to use it for a couple jobs, but it is definitely one of the worst parts of the day, which is why we went with pod pages for our podcast website because I'm never going to, you know, without having a dollar in his pocket. I'm never going to voluntarily install WordPress on anything again, unless a gun's pointed to my head or a paycheck's pointed at my head. So you put a paycheck in my head any day and I'll install it.

39:19But this is another reason I think Vibe Coding is bullshit, because if Vibe Coding actually worked, we would have a competitor to WordPress.com by now, period. Yes, absolutely. There's nothing, nothing out there that has come out of the woodwork. It just hasn't happened. So, you know, I still call bullshit on Vibe Coding for that very reason alone. Because so many people hate WordPress and so many people are into AI. There should have been a crossover inflection point where somebody has rewritten WordPress to do the same shit, but not so shittily. So there it is. There's my argument on why Vibe Coding is bullshit.

39:57And I've been running into this weird problem on macOS Tahoe this week, Brian. I don't know if you've upgraded yet or you run it on your machines. I am. Okay, here's the problem. I've seen a couple people that had this, and the way to fix it is really fucking annoying. So I'm hoping somebody who listens to this show might have a fix for me. So what happens now is on any application where I need to open or save a file, the open and save dialog box takes forever to open, and it just hangs. And when you try to change directories, it hangs. It'll eventually go, But my CPU spikes through the roof and it just farts all over my day.

40:41So I've tried everything. I've hit the Apple boards to see if there's any fixes there. The interesting thing is it is by account. So I go from, I switch from one user account to a new user account. The problem goes away. So it has to be some app that just destroyed it along the way. Can't figure out which one it is because I turned everything off. Now I've moved to a new user account and rebuilding everything piece by piece, credential by credential by credential, settings by settings by settings. Everything's working. So I'm trying to find that one culprit. But if anybody knows of an easier fix for that problem, please hit me up on Discord or shoot me an email.

41:19I would love to know because it is so frustrating to have to rebuild such a perfect user experience again from scratch. Yeah, I do not have that issue, man. Yeah, I hope you don't. But the fix right now is if you do get it, create a new user account and start all over. There you go. The Dark Side with Dave.

41:45Welcome to the Dark Side with Dave. Podcast super host Dave Bittner decodes all things cyber on the cyber wire every day. Exposes deception with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans. Dives deep into privacy with Ben Yellen on caveat. out, breaks down industrial cybersecurity on ControlLip, and even brings the laughs with only malware in the building. Hi, Dave. Nice to see you. Wow. It's nice to be seen. Literally. I'm not sure what to make of this. You know, I'm not generally a video guy when it comes to, well, none of my podcasts are video, but I have a face for radio. So you have a beautiful video setup though.

42:19You look better than all of us. oh well thank you it's just it just worked out that way i think part of it is also that i can't as an old uh you know tv cameraman i'm kind of like uh i can't let go of lighting yeah you know so like anyway good to be back yeah i'd just be in a dark room if i had a choice so but here we are with a light in my face uh we just uh finished up with halloween here and well at least here in canada we've slid directly into christmas because we do our thanksgiving pre-halloween i know you guys have that pesky thing in the middle. But, you know, 1 ,275 pieces of candy gone in less than two and a half hours here.

42:59So it was fun. Very busy. It's also my sister's birthday on Halloween. So I was texting with her after and she was like, I need to see a time lapse video of this next year. So I was going to ask both of you guys, is there a cheap and cheerful way to do this? not using my iPhone because I want to have my iPhone on me, not pointed at me from behind that somebody could then walk by and steal. Plus, sometimes it's rainy or cold or whatever. And so I wanted a cheap and cheerful way to do it and wanted some suggestions. This is what I use old iPhones for. Right. I do not have an old iPhone. You don't have any iPhones sitting in a drawer anywhere?

43:40No, I return them and get my 50 cents from Apple. okay i think you're gonna say i gotta yeah i got a stack of them okay well maybe i will by next halloween so and yeah the other idea was to use an ipad and i was like i don't want my ipad out in the elements either so i could buy a case for it i'll figure it out so yeah i guess an old iphone will do it then i think that's the easiest yeah it's super easy and even with the ipad like i put a link in for a waterproof case and i have an actual mount that i can put on a tripod for my iPad and then just hold it up and then just put that in out of your, your, you know, put it inside the house, even pointed out the window or however you want to do it.

44:21There's easy ways to do it, but yeah, like getting an off the shelf, like security camera or whatever that does time-lapse is difficult. You have problems with that. Yeah. And I imagine you could, because I'm trying, I've seen a couple pictures that you've shared of your house. Could you put the camera up on the little balcony that you have? Yeah. That's where I was going to do it and kind of angle it down so you get the bit of the street and just the people filing baths as i throw candy at their faces yeah yeah i mean a gopro would work also but uh whenever i'm called on to do time lapse that's when i go digging in a drawer for an old iphone because it's just super easy yeah it's built in she just swipe to the swipe the time lapse and press go you know right and we have some more muppet news dave i i know this pleases both you and i speaking on the latest episode of the las culture recess podcast jennifer lawrence revealed that she has teamed up with emma stone to produce a movie starring the muppets premiere dramatic queen miss piggy we have no details we have uh we have a writer which is cole escala who is working on the script uh this is uh the last movie was 2014's the muppets most wanted and since then we've had a couple tv and streaming stuff and one-off specials but it is the 70th anniversary coming up since their first appearance on sam and friends and next year's the 50th anniversary of the Muppets show.

45:39So it seems like time and there's a lot going on. We know Seth Rogen is developing some limited revival. We're going to get a Miss Peggy movie apparently. And of course the overlay for the rock and roller coaster at the park will be happening. So lots of Muppets stuff. I wonder if Frank Oz will have any participation in this at all, even as a consultant or anything. Right. I hope so, but I don't suspect he will. Yeah, I don't think so either. like he's had much involvement. So, yeah, it's a shame because he's still around, obviously, and he is Miss Piggy. So, yeah, yeah, we'll see. Here's a question for you.

46:19Do we do you think is Miss Piggy a drag queen? Oh, absolutely. OK. Yeah, no doubt about it. A female character performed by a man. Deep register when she gets angry. Yeah, I think Miss Piggy absolutely qualifies as a drag queen. Hot tape. All right. You heard it here first, people. You heard it here first. And because Christmas is coming, Dave, I put this in the notes for you specifically. RetroGames and Play on Replay are releasing a limited edition redesign of the best-selling computer called the C64 Black Addiction. Addition. Not addiction. Like its name suggests, that's a whole different thing.

47:03This console is a modernized version of the classic Commodore 64 in an all-black shell. It's pretty cool looking, and I know you're a big Commodore 64 fan. So is this going to make it on your Christmas list? No, because I am actually not a Commodore 64 fan. Oh, I thought you were. TRS-80 fan. Oh, TRS-80. Sorry, Radio Shack. Silly me. Yes, yes, yes. I had a TRS-80 color computer, which was the other option, or one of multiple options at the time that the Commodore 64 came out. Actually, the TRS-80 came out at the same time as the VIC-20. And so when I was deciding which computer to get, I had to choose between the VIC-20 and the TRS-80.

47:47I chose the TRS-80 and never looked back and never had any regret for that. But never really spent much time with Commodore 64s. I certainly knew plenty of people who had them. We all did. My friend down the street had one, and I spent an awful lot of time playing those horrible games on that. Yeah. Yeah. It was the best. Yeah. Yeah. It was a solid machine for its time, but I never really had much actual keyboard time on one. But yeah, you're right. It does look cool. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. I wish they would do the TRS-80 Model 3, do that over with a modern take. And I don't think they get enough credit because that was really like the first iMac.

48:26Yeah. You know, all in one keyboard, monitor, drives, everything all in one case. And then, you know, Steve Jobs comes along and said, look, I put it all in one box. I call it the iMac. Give me all your monies. And, you know, he and Johnny Ives were, you know, hailed as creators of the most innovative thing ever seen. It's like, no, just go get an old Trash 80, man. They got it. They had it going on back in the day. Yeah, that's true. I have seen someone online who makes little 3D printed Model 3s that has an actual LCD screen in it. So it'll boot and it's really cute. Very cute. Every time I see him post the Model 3s, I send him a message.

49:08I'm like, please do a Coco. Please do a Coco. I will buy. If you do a color computer, I will buy it in a second. But so far, no luck. You know what's really cool too? Our friend Mike Vinicor, MXV, who's been on the show, he's got a Tron pinball machine. And inside the Tron pinball machine is a little tiny Tron arcade game. It's got a little tiny LCD screen, and you can actually see it playing the standby state for all the old games from the Tron arcade game from the original Tron arcade game. So it's pretty cool. It's like it's very meta, but you can do as you're playing the game, you look down and you see it and you see the screen like playing the discs with the way.

49:51It's like, you know, we're trying to shoot out the MCP and the tanks and everything. It is so cool. I just want that. Yeah. Yeah. What that reminds me of is actually on our last Disney trip, my wife and I were in the Disney Star Wars store down at Disney Springs. And they have I'm pretty sure we've talked about this here. They have the little model of the Starspeeder 3000 from Star Tours. Yes. And that model has an LCD screen inside of it that plays the original version of Star Tours, the entire video. Oh, cool. Yeah. I'm going to have to pick one of those up one day. Yeah. Yeah. And it has the lights and the sound.

50:29It's one of those things where they sweated the details and it's not cheap, but pretty cool. So and I put this story in the news because this is a I always keep my eye out for for stories that I consider the Dave law, the Dave Bittner law, which is no laws will be passed until something actually affects a senator in some way, shape or form. So Google has pulled the AI model Gemma from its studio platform after a Republican senator said it fabricated serious criminal allegations against her. This is Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, who sent a letter to Sundae accusing the company of defamation after the model allegedly created a story about her committing sexual assault.

51:13The model is asked if Blackburn had ever been accused of rape, and it reportedly answered in the affirmative, going so far as to provide a list of fake news articles to support the accusation. The chatbot said the senator was accused of having a sexual relationship with a state trooper during a campaign for state senate, and the officer reportedly said she pressured him to obtain prescription drugs for her and that the relationship involved non-consensual acts. None of this happened, of course. This is completely made up by the chatbot. She's never been accused of anything like that, but once again, you know, it takes something happening to a senator.

51:45Now maybe there'll be some sort of law passed about this. Yeah, that's right. We'll see. Well, it reminds me, we had a story this week of some folks over in Europe who were using advertising location data to de-anonymize some people and including politicians. So very much got the attention of some politicians. So we'll see if maybe that moves things along, if maybe they start in Europe and maybe it comes over here. But you're right. That's what I say. if until it happens to a senator, none of this privacy stuff is going to trickle down to us. Yeah. Well, since everybody's losing their job, like we covered at the beginning of the show and every news channel that you turn on, I've decided to try and become a little bit more self-reliant.

52:35So I have moved into sprout farming, which I thought is a nice hobby for an old guy that's, you know, you know, not not a big lift at all as far as it goes to, you know, I'm not tilling the soil. I'm not fighting off the vermin and the varmints and things like that. Sprout farming requires a mason jar, a fancy lid, and a little stand. So I put some pictures in so you guys can see it here. I have moved into, right now I'm doing radish sprout farming because they are incredibly delicious, very good for you, very spicy. And we used to buy them at the store all the time. If you go to Whole Foods, you'll get a little tub and it's like$4 for a tub.

53:15So what you're looking here, and I'll post some pictures to Discord as well so everybody can see them. That is probably about$200 worth of Whole Foods-grade radish sprouts, uncut, street value, right there. Imagine you walking around in a long trench coat, you know, standing on the street corners offering to sell. Hey, buddy, you want some sprouts? Yeah, exactly. These are uncut, fresh, right from the jar. It's kind of funny. I did that exact same thing. Like our friend Brian Blondell lives up the street. I'm like, hey, buddy, you want some sprouts? And he came by. He's like, I'm walking the dog.

53:48I'll be there in 20. And he comes by and I like come out and come out of the house with a big Ziploc baggie and hand him a big baggie of sprouts. Now. So, OK, so help me understand here. How long? How what is the turnaround time for a harvest of jar sprouts? Seven days. Six to seven days. OK, I let it go for seven. We've done it for six and they were they were OK. But for an extra day, you get it. You get a little more yield, you know. So the jar that you're seeing is a seven-day sprout right on that. And you basically, you have to rinse them twice a day. You put the seeds in the jar, let them soak for 12 hours, drain it, tip it upside down, and then you rinse it twice a day.

54:29And then at the end of seven days, you rinse it one more time, pull them out to dry on a little sheet, and then stick them in the fridge, and they're good for seven days. I put that shit on everything. I was going to say, how does one consume these sprouts? The thing is, I hate sprouts. I pull them off sandwiches. They're horrible. See, I used to think that way. Like the first time I moved to California, I went to California Pizza Kitchen and I ordered the lasagna. And there were sprouts on my lasagna. And I'm like, oh, this is just unholy in every single way possible. And I figured it was just some hippie California crap.

55:04But recently, I've come to enjoy the sprouts on my eggs. I like, especially on an egg sandwich, it's really good because I have one of those like a couple of times a week. Even just on scrambled eggs, it's good. Add them to a salad. Really good on a turkey with Swiss. Mm, delicious. But these are like concentrated horseradish almost. They're very, very spicy. Extraordinarily spicy. So, yeah. But you can get like a giant bag of the seeds was$12. So that's going to last. We're only doing three tablespoons at a time. That's going to last like a year and a half. So we're probably looking at about four grand worth of sprouts in that one little bag.

55:43If we go to the Whole Foods pricing method, the bottles cost$40 with the grid. The whole expanding and incredibly expensive food crisis that's going on is just all sprouts all the time. That's right. Ryan, a little side wager for you and me here, which is what's the over under on how far Jason gets through that bag before he's sick of sprouts? We got about another month. This is the second batch. This is our second batch. By January. Yeah. We will have moved on. I got the four pack of jars so I can keep them rotating. And we're going to get different ones because my roommate is the real sprout fiend.

56:22So she's going to get all the different seeds that we can put in for the different varietals of sprout. Let me know when you get a glow light and you've got it going off in the closet and we're just back to college weed farming. Well, that's the nice thing about it. It actually has to stay in a cold, cool, dry, dark place. So no grow lights required. It's even easier than that. So two things about sprouts. First of all, I have a friend who says I don't enjoy any of my meals with lawn clippings on it. Yep. So there's that. But also back in my video production days, one of my regular recurring clients was the Food and Drug Administration back when they were.

57:05a real organization. Yeah, when they existed. Yeah. And I did this whole series on food safety and sort of talking about like salad bars and, you know, that sort of stuff. Exciting stuff, but I learned a lot along the way. And one thing that expert after expert said was, on a salad bar, never eat the sprouts. Really? Why? Yeah. Yeah. Sprouts are like the most common carrier for foodborne illness on a salad bar. They're the thing that I don't know if they don't get rinsed enough or whatever. They probably don't get washed well enough. Yeah. Yeah. But they said sprouts are the thing when they do, they call them tracebacks, which is when they a whole bunch of people get sick and they try to figure out what was the source of it.

57:51And they said time and time again, if it's a salad bar and it has sprouts, that's the first place they look because sprouts are the carrot. Now, I don't suspect you'll have any issue like that on your homegrown sprouts, of course, but it's something to be mindful of. Are you saying, yeah, are you saying I'm not hygienic, Dave? Come on. Dave is saying if you open up a salad. I'm absolutely saying you're not hygienic. If you open up a salad bar in your house, Jason, this is. That's right. Right. I'm saying there's a very good, you know, chance that the inside of that jar has been licked by a dog.

58:26that is true yeah yeah not that there's anything wrong with that no the chances are greater than zero so yeah yeah my dog pisses me every day yeah yeah so that's just that's my new low-tech my new low-tech uh obsession is sprout farming i might try this it looks congratulations i grow i grow herbs or herbs as the british say uh just because i got sick of like the you know the little tiny things of basil that costs like five dollars and you use like three bits of it and the rest of it goes bad before you ever need it again so uh i've we my wife and i we grew uh basil we grew rosemary we grew thyme we grew uh some other a few other things out of course you know now it's starting to freeze here so that's all over but it was great for the summer like we just picked our own fresh herbs for for whatever we needed and i wasn't wasting uh money and herbs buying them all the time yeah my wife does the same thing and uh we just brought all of the outdoor plants indoors and we just let ours die yeah well yeah i mean your winter is a little more harsh than ours but also we would just bring them indoors and they'll spend their winter under a grow light and right we'll see um i i put i i saw earlier in the show notes that you guys talked about this new Star Trek Lego, the Enterprise D.

59:48Yeah, I'll be getting one of those. See, told you, Brian. Yep, yep. We are in the target demo for this. Yeah, I was talking with my colleague Maria Vermazis, who hosts our T-Space Daily podcast, and she was saying that this Lego set is literally a dream come true for her. Like, she's been building Enterprise D Lego sets on her own since she was a kid, so she's super excited about it. But I was thinking like because I have the Lego Millennium Falcon, the big one, which is scaled for minifigs. So you have it'll fit the minifigs in the cockpit of the Falcon. And I was thinking about what would happen if they tried to build an Enterprise D that was minifig scale.

1:00:35It would be rather large. The size of a gymnasium. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But Maria pointed out, she says she hopes that they come out with a bridge set. Oh, that'd be nice. For all those minifigs to populate. Yeah. Wouldn't that be great? That seems like a no-brainer, but we'll see. I would buy the bridge set, not necessarily this current set, because I don't know where I'd put it. But the little bridge set would be really cool. Yeah. I was telling Brian the next one, it better be the Borg Cube.

1:01:08Perfect. perfect no amazing those are the worst 18 000 pieces all the same color all just tubes all the black and gray tubes no i can tell you having built the millennium falcon which is a bit of a death march yeah i mean you get to things where it just so many gray pieces and it just goes on and on and on and and uh i think i've shared this story before you build a little piece of landing gear and it took you 20 minutes to build and then you get to the end of that little build and it says okay now do six more it's like an andor on the production line when they're sitting there putting the pieces together for the death star right exactly exactly so uh i put a story in here uh this is a really interesting investigation from the folks over at reuters and they were looking into how Meta makes their money off of scams.

1:02:09And bottom line here is about 10 % of Meta's revenue comes from online scams. And Meta is aware of this. They give lip service to doing something about it. But according to this report, Meta's internal documents said that they had to be careful that they didn't affect their revenue by more than 0.15 % in any of the actions that they took to stop these scams. So do the math here. They're making about 10%, about$16 billion a year off of scams and banned goods. And they don't want to cut down on it because obviously they make so much money. I like also that if they do detect that it's a scam, instead of getting rid of it, they will actually raise the ad rates on it.

1:03:07Right. Which is like, how is that ethical in any way, shape or form? Think about this in any other regulated industry, right? Imagine a bank saying, you know, oh, we're not going to allow you to open an account for money laundering unless you're willing to pay a little more for it. Yeah. If you want to transfer that money to the guy in Nigeria, it's going to cost you a slightly higher percentage than it would normally. But we're happy to do it. Yeah. Yeah. That tracks. Right. Right. So it's an interesting article. I recommend everybody read it. Look, guys, they're just a platform. Just a platform.

1:03:47Right. They don't have anything to do with this. They're like the phone company. Yeah, I concur. I read this article, too. It's really good. It's really well worth the read. Yeah, kind of just reinforcing what we all already knew, but this really puts the numbers to it. And, you know, hopefully this is the kind of in a in a better world, this would be the kind of thing that maybe some legislators would notice and grab their attention. But until a senator is rolled up in one of the scams. Yeah, not going to happen. Yes, exactly. Yeah, that's an astonishingly large amount of money. Astonishing. Yeah.

1:04:22Yeah. Yeah. If they wanted to, they could tamp down on in a second. Yeah. But obviously it's against their best interest to do so. So the rest of us suffer. All right, gents. That's what I've got this week. We'll see you back here next time. See you next time. Unless I'm building a Star Trek Lego. I will see you here. I'll be making it out of sprouts. That's right. Oh, I like that. See ya. Closing shout outs! Over at Patreon, we've got three, count up, three new patrons. James, Michael, and David. One, two, three, three. And we've also got the people who still continue to support us on Patreon who we love.

1:05:09David, Keith, JJ, Gabe, Paul, Justin, Pierre, Stefan, Thomas, and Jason F. Thank you all so much. Thank you all so much. Over at PayPal, we've got Levy, Florian, Nicola, Thomas with a$25 donation, and Michelle with a$100 donation. Thank you so much. Way to bring the Benjis. Love ya. Over at the tip jar, we've got Sarah, Matthew, and Patrick. And just so everybody knows, to support the show, which we desperately need, you can go to patreon.com slash GOG. And for as little as$3 a month, you can sign up to get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition. And by early, we mean a little bit early.

1:05:43It's not like, you know, days early. We record this thing in the morning and it comes out in the afternoon. So if it's done early, you get it before everybody else. No ads and in high definition. Or you can go to GOG.show slash donate. Now that that works, thanks to our last episode where we figured that out. And sign up for the tip jar or PayPal if you are allergic to Patreon. But people keep asking us, does it matter where we give you money? No, the cut is exactly the same across all three different ways that people can subscribe to the show. But Patreon is the only one where we can give you bonuses.

1:06:15Bonuses. Bonuses. Bonuses. And we have two new reviews. JB says the title says it all. If you check out the show based on the title, you have probably found what you were looking for. I would love to say something clever here, but I leave that to the professionals, the grumpy old geeks. These guys have a solid dynamic and do the medium justice. The humor is honest and cuts when necessary. Production is great with a pleasant cadence to the conversations. I had to subscribe to their Patreon because I realized how much I would miss the show if it disappeared. Not to mention, I don't want to be a cheap bastard.

1:06:45Check the show out and enjoy it. Shell out some dough. Hey, be like JB. Be like JB. Yeah. And Patrick in Oregon writes in, finally donating. After years of subscribing and freeloading this show, I finally got around to a monthly$5 donation. This show has gotten me through some rough times and I really enjoy every segment, but especially Media Candy and The Dark Side with Dave. Insight? Yes. but also lively entertainment all on its own. Thank you for all the years of freeloading. I hope you guys are around forever, but we know forever is just an update away. Take care. Thank you, Patrick. And speaking of that, somebody got updated this week.

1:07:20Ha ha. Yes. Dick Cheney. R.I.P. You fucking asshole. Sayonara. We'll not miss you one bit. Don't let the door hit you in the asshole. It's the only guy in the world that's ever shot someone in the face and then made them apologize to him. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder if they buried him in his man-sized safe from his office. He will not be missed. No, he will not be missed. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to and maybe even watching Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 721. Want to keep the grumpiness alive?

1:07:53Toss a few bucks our way at GOG.show slash donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. Love the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between. We'll love you for it. swing by gog.show to join our discord and chat with us and other show fans about thoughts feedback cool links hit us up at gog.show slash contact and don't forget to leave a five-star review at gog.show slash review and we'll read it on the show and we've got merch snag your grumpy gear now at shop.gog.show and stay grumpy

From the publisher

This episode proves that nothing gold can stay, especially your 401k, as we kick things off with the revelation that October saw the worst tech layoffs since 2003, all while "Big Short" genius Michael Burry decided to bet a billion dollars on the inevitable AI bubble bursting. The villains of the week are legion: the FCC is officially making it easier for internet companies to charge us even more hidden fees; Elon Musk not only got his $1 trillion pay package approved—despite Tesla sales collapsing nearly 90% in some countries—but he also teased a flying car, clearly living in his own "Golden Dome" fantasy, which the Pentagon is happily subsidizing; and in a stunning display of entitlement, Mark Zuckerberg opened an illegal school, which is somehow less shocking than Meta’s claim that their massive porn stash was purely for "personal use," not AI training. The bad news doesn't stop there, with Texas suing Roblox over 'pixel pedophiles,' though at least a rural Michigan healthcare system is doing some good by using drones to improve care.

Jumping over to Media Candy, since we’re all emotionally scarred by the sheer awful-ness of The Witcher S4—a season so bad it "broke" The Critical Drinker—we need some comfort viewing. We’re deep-diving into the political chess of The Diplomat and escaping into the sheer volume of competitive cooking shows, including the standard Halloween and Holiday Baking Championships, plus the delightfully ridiculous Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking S2; we also took a look at Pluribus, Knife Edge, Black Rabbit, and the trailer for Tron: Ares, while cheering the fact that Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are set to revive The Mummy franchise for a fourth film. In Apps & Doodads, we’re all mourning the eventual death of simple, good tech as we’re warned to enjoy Apple CarPlay while we still can, but at least the Lego ‘Star Trek’ Set is finally here for our inner child; the real question, though, is why Automattic Inc. thinks they can claim ownership of the actual word 'Automatic.'

Finally, The Dark Side with Dave Bittner reminds us that everything old is new again and ripe for monetization, whether it's Miss Piggy potentially bringing back The Muppets to the movies or the sleek, blacked-out remake of the Commodore 64, not to mention that cool Tron Arcade Cabinet Miniature Model. However, the present is still a complete dumpster fire: a Google AI model allegedly accused a senator of sexual assault, and internal documents show that Meta is earning a fortune on a massive deluge of fraudulent ads, proving that the only thing getting healthier is our paranoia, though Dave did throw in a curveball with some special jar lids and seeds for growing organic sprouts. We finish, as always, with the obligatory Closing Shout-Outs because even cynical geeks need validation.

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Show notes at https://gog.show/721

FOLLOW UP

October Layoffs Were the Worst Since 2003 and Hit Tech Workers Hard

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