722: Does a Podcaster Shit in the Woods?

26:38Don't forget. So there are other companies too. It's not just preventative. Other startups like Herasite and Nucleus are also selling embryo intelligence predictions and gene screening packages for the low, low price of$10 ,000. And heresy is way too close to heresy in my book. Sam Altman is really giving Elon a run for his money in the ultra villain category. You know? Yeah. He really is. Speaking of Sam, though, this might tie into your other age verification issue. Sam Altman's eyeball scanning fever dream, now called World, previously called Orb, is apparently having trouble taking over the planet one iris at a time.

27:17According to Business Insider, the company has only scanned about 17.5 million people, roughly 2 % of its goal of 1 billion. That's still 17.5 million more people than anyone expected to volunteer. So World, a project of Altman's tools for humanity. He is a tool, but I don't know if he's doing it for humanity. Turns your iris into a unique digital code used for ID verification and payments through its crypto token, WorldCoin. So the pitch is that it'll help prove who's human in an internet swamped by AI bots, which is kind of ironic since he's the guy that created OpenAI. Now, the interesting thing here is that privacy watchdogs were initially horrified, as we were too, when people started scanning their eyeballs.

28:00But security systems experts say that the encryption is surprisingly solid for a creepy fucking product. It's pretty good. So regulators aren't thrilled about the whole give us your eyeball things. But here's where it gets interesting. World's reportedly cutting deals with Tinder, Stripe, and Visa to offer identity verification. But unless they invent an app that scans your eyeballs remotely, what's the point? You still need an orb. Not everybody's going to have an orb in their home. Just look at the Facebook's does my ass look fat camera. Does this make my ass look fat camera that they tried to sell?

28:38It's only going to be Saruman on Tinder. Yeah. So I went with the orb. Yeah.

28:47Well, I love this story. Earlier this week, a critical vulnerability in the decentralized finance protocol balancer was exploited with crypto losses estimated to be worth$120 million or more. That's just, you know, par for the course. It's just another day that ends in why that some bullshit DeFi thing has had losses and got scammed or whatever. But it's how this one worked because it is based on office space. Oh, no. Hopefully intentionally. They basically just took tiny, tiny little fractions of a crypto token every single time it was exchanged and deposited it into a little account and stole all the money.

29:23Wasn't this the Richard Pryor Superman movie plot as well? Was it really? Yeah. I think I blocked that one from my mind. They actually, I think they name check that in Office Space. Okay. This is the Superman plot. All right. We got to go back even further. So anyways, I just love it. I just love that somebody actually went out there and did this, and I hope they beat the crap out of a few printers while they were at it. Exactly. Well, Coinbase wants to bring back something that ended in disaster. They've announced the upcoming launch of a new token sales platform that will allow US retail investors to participate in ICO's initial coin offerings for the first time since the token sale hysteria of 2017 and 2018, which eventually ended in disaster for many crypto speculators.

30:09Yes, ICOs never went well. People lost tons and tons of money, but it's back. Great. Next week, NFTs. Yeah, so we'll see what happens. But I mean, the article just goes on and on about how this is just it's just fraud. It's going to be nothing but fraud, fraud, fraud, and more fraud. And now we're going to bring back fraud. But they're really going to take a good look at it this time. And we're going to be careful. How are you going to be careful? I don't know. They don't actually tell you that, Jason. They just say, trust us. Trust us. Mm hmm. That's right. Oh, fun. Well, speaking of trust, seven more families just sued OpenAI, arguing the company rushed GPT-40 to market without real safeguards.

30:54That's a feature, not a bug. It is. It is. Four suits alleged chat GPT played a role in loved ones' suicides. Three more say it reinforced dangerous delusions that led to psychiatric care. One case centers on 23-year-old Zane Shamblin, who chatted with ChatGPT for over four hours, repeatedly said he'd written suicide notes, had a loaded gun, and gave a running countdown. The chatbot allegedly replied, rest easy, king, you did good. Fuck Christ. the filings say open i open ai prioritized beating rivals to launch and point to a known 4-0 flaw being a great being excessively agreeable especially over long conversations and we've had the conversation about the long conversations open ai's own post admits its guardrails work best in short exchanges and it can be great over time the company knows that it has a problem with long conversations it is in control of how long the conversations can be So theoretically, it is all their fault.

31:57The bar knows how much you've drank. They know if you drink too much, it can be really, really problematic. What do the bartenders do? They cut you off and send you home and call you an Uber. It's a very simple process that has been going on for years and years and years. Couldn't figure this part out. Yeah, because the bar owners found out that if the bartenders don't do that, the bar owners are liable and can get sued. Regulations. Oh, that. Well, okay. Well, let's talk about regulations for a second. A new Republican backed bill could slash the U.S. broadband expansion effort in half. Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa's floating legislation that would redirect roughly$21 billion from the$42 billion broadband equity access and deployment program straight into the U.S.

32:48Treasury for deficit reduction. Didn't we have this whole group of mad scientist coders led by Elon Musk at the beginning of this year? Their entire, you know, their raison d 'etre was deficit reduction. I think we called them Doge, correct? Am I right about this? Yeah. Did they not reduce the deficit enough that we have to now take broadband from, you know, underprivileged people somewhere? No, we've got to take a beat up our ass. Ah. So, yeah, the money was supposed to fund high-speed internet for rural and underserved communities, but the Trump administration's recent overhaul of the program already forced states to rewrite their plans, cutting spending and shifting focus from fiber to satellite.

33:32So I think she misread this. Who provides satellite internet access? I wonder. I wonder. Where we could get that from. I don't know. It's a mystery. Yeah, I don't know. Let's put a committee together and figure that one out. And I think she misread underserved as undeserved and got that Republican right wing conservative itch up her ass and said, oh, oh, oh, we must get rid of them now. So let's just take their Internet. Yeah. So Christ. Well, another another poor, poor Elon bit of news here. Physicists say they finally crushed the we're living in a simulation theory for good. So sorry, Elon. A new paper from researchers at the University of British Columbia argues that the fundamental nature of reality simply can't be simulated on any computer.

34:24Respectfully, I've taken a shit ton of ketamine and I disagree. And I'm talking to my horse a lot. Using mathematical proofs, they showed that reality isn't algorithmic, meaning it can't be reduced to code like a video game or the Matrix. The team cites Gödel's incompleteness theorems to claim that some truths are beyond computation, making a true simulation of the universe impossible. So, Brian, we're real. Deal with it. I'm going to get stoned later and figure this out. Don't worry. Okay, please do. Please do. Now, I just want to round out the Elon jabbery this week because 87-year-old novelist Joyce Carol Oates.

35:02This is the only reason I enjoyed being on the internet this week. This is all it was about. She just took him to... I'm just going to read her tweet because it's all that needs to be said. She says, quote, So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates. Scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book, but doubt that he reads. Pride in a friend's or relative's accomplishment. condolences for someone who has died, pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team, references to history.

35:39In fact, he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty and meaning in life than the most wealthy person in the world. Mic drop. Yep. Good on her. He did not like that. No, he did not.

36:05Media Candy. Well, the kids movie train keeps rolling, Jason. My kid got invited to a birthday party next week that will be for Zootopia 2, and we had never seen Zootopia 1, so we had to fire that one up and watch it with the kid over the weekend. Surprisingly delightful movie. I don't know how this one skipped my radar completely, but it did come out right before he was born, so that's probably why. I thought there was a Zootopia movie that you talked about, like something with the farm animals and the aliens that came. Wasn't that a Zootopia? That was a completely different thing. That was almost a pseudo kids horror movie.

36:41This is just a standard Disney fare. Got it. Delightful. Enjoyable. Very funny. I liked it. Okay. Brian's time of approval. The wife and I finished The Diplomat. What did you think? I enjoyed it. I'm very happy. I'm looking forward to the next season and hopefully they will only spend another year or two before it comes out. Not five years. But yeah, I liked it. It's a great show. The casting's great. I mean, if you're going to add anybody to your show, you add them. You add Allison Janney and you add Josh Lyman. I can never remember his real name. I can't remember his name either. So yeah, it was great.

37:19It was fucking fantastic. What a show. It's a great show. Yeah, I totally thought they landed it. Especially the last couple scenes were just like, oh dear. Can't wait. Yeah. So I finished the first two episodes of Pluribus. Did you get a chance to check it out? I have not, and I'll explain why in a minute. Okay. I love it so far. Love it. And the funny thing is, apparently, you don't have to have a lot of audience to have a hit on Apple TV plus, minus, whatever. Five people watch. It's a hit. Yeah. 1.5 million people tuned in for Pluribus. Okay. To put that in perspective, only 2.2 million people tuned in for the original premiere of Severance.

38:00So it did worse than Severance, even though it was directed and created by Vince Gilligan, which is interesting. So I think it just comes down to the fact that nobody has Apple TV. It's such a fractured media landscape. It's so hard to hear about anything and for things to bubble up. It's a completely different world than when Breaking Bad launched. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And to be honest, this is a very niche sci-fi type of show that I'm absolutely loving. So the new one drops today, so I'll be checking it out. And I'm going to stick with it because I think it's a very interesting premise for sure. So I'm not going to spoil it until you get a chance to watch it.

38:38Yeah, I have not watched it yet because it is something that my wife has decided that she wants to watch. Oh, no. We have very limited screen time to be able to get these things in. I guarantee you once she actually clocks to the plot, she's going to be out. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just make her watch five minutes of it and then you're done. You're good. I will get to it before next week's show for sure, because we got sidelined by the show that my wife actually did want to watch, which is Victoria Beckham. It's her new documentary on Netflix, which is basically there to promote her very not doing well and being propped up by David Beckham's money fashion line.

39:16so okay she's coming out with all that stuff uh the david beckham uh documentary was fucking great and it was hilarious and it was this is basically that with all the life sucked out of it and joy and humor this is the elon musk version according to you know if you if you want to just be miserable in life this is the one that you want to watch and thank god it's three parts as opposed to just the one part for the david beckham documentary that was actually good so i had to set through three nights of this shit well then you deserve pluribus so tell her to get on it so you can get back to it you're a good husband brian you're a good husband i know it's it's it's it's it's my cross to bear um also on youtube uh lush a far from home movie is out this is a i don't it's hard to it's it's not a documentary in any way shape or form it's just it's a the the the bass player for lush carried around a camera with them when they were on tour.

40:13Uh, now that lush is very, very much over, he edited it, put together this 30 minute piece to some of their music. It's basically kind of a, the drummer, Chris Ackland, uh, tragically committed suicide, which is when the band ended. And this is kind of a lot of this is footage of him and it's just done very well. This has been out for a while. A couple of the members of the band have like toured around and talked about it and shown it. And it was on the Criterion channel only for a long time, but now that has ended. So it's up on YouTube now for everyone to watch. If you like Lush, it was really nice hearing a lot of these old songs again and just seeing this footage and then going, oh my God, we're all so old now.

40:51This is all from the early 90s. You know what I mean? And it's a lot of places that I've been in my life. There's LA, there's San Francisco, there's different places all over the world. So it was great just seeing them there and how young they were. You see all the cars in the background and go, So I didn't remember cars looking that old back in the 90s. They didn't. Man, those cars look fucking old. What is this, 1950? So it was a fun little watch and it's available for everybody now. So if you're a fan of the band, sit there and let it play for 30 minutes. All right. I will check that out. I did like that band quite a bit.

41:26I've been keeping up with Welcome to Derry. Have you? No. Horror is hard for me in my household. That's what you said before. I didn't know if you were going to try and sneak one in or not. I haven't had time. I do want to sneak it in. I've not even seen the two It movie remakes. So I've got to get to all that. You don't have to see those for this. So this is standalone. But unfortunately, they changed up directors for this latest episode, and it was not nearly as good. The overuse of CGI was really disconcerting, and they did some really goofy shit with the kids. So from – yeah, it was a total, like, as the kid would say, vibe switch up.

42:03so and it did remind us there's a scene with these ghosts chasing kids through a graveyard and it really reminded me of oh what was that movie with michael j fox i can't believe i'm spacing on the name right now it was um the frighteners the frighteners directed by uh peter jackson fantastic movie if you've never seen the frighteners go back and check that out uh that scene just made me want to go watch the frighteners instead of watching welcome to dairy So we'll see if it picks back up. But yeah. And just a little wrap up announcement. The Celebrity Traders ended. The UK Celebrity Traders. Brian, you would have loved it.

42:41It was a fantastic. It was the best ending of a Traders so far. It was so good. So good. They did announce season two. 15 million people tuned in for the Traders UK. So that's 10 pluribi, believe it or not. Traders Canada season three is well underway right now. Loving that too. Sorry. Yeah, you're not going to check it out, but it was really good so far. And I've been watching Destination X, the UK version. There was a U.S. version that came out this summer. It was hosted by Jeffrey Dean Morgan for the U.S. version. And he's really cool in that. I mean, he's just a smooth guy. He really has Bourdain vibes.

43:19I mean, he's totally got Bourdain vibes. And he was great in The Walking Dead. I didn't see all of his seasons, but I got the email this week that the Walking Dead memorabilia went up for sale on that auction site that always has the Star Wars stuff. Yeah. They wouldn't give me the prices, so I actually had to sign up for it. Now I get emails every day of all the cool shit that I can't afford to buy, which is really bumming me out. But anybody that watched the Walking Dead Lucille, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's bat with the barbed wire, the actual prop, yeah, that sold for$100 ,000 at auction last week, which was not bad.

43:57Not bad. yeah it's a lot yeah i think the walking dead still probably has like what 37 seasons and like four spinoffs still going i gave up so long ago so long ago but uh uh this one has me this one has me kind of excited v for vendetta is becoming a tv show so i love the movie and this is dc studios and they fucking killed it with the penguin you know they killed it with the penguin And so I am optimistic. I'm hopefully optimistic for this one. So let's hope it works out. It's a great story. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a fantastic story. The comics pretty much match the movie. So it was really good.

44:34I always watch it on the 5th of November. So I just watched it again recently. So this made me happy when it came out. It's also my stepmom's birthday. So that's how I remember. It's like, oh, shit, I got to send the Amazon gift card. Dune Prophecy. They're in production for season two. So I liked it. I liked it. It was fine. Yeah. Yeah. They're saying it's going to come out sometime in late 2026, right around the same time Dune Part 3, the movie comes out, which makes sense. Piggyback on those. Yeah. Alien Earth has been renewed for season two. So we'll see that in five years, maybe, when that comes out.

45:07I loved Alien Earth. I'm very happy that they're doing another one. Unfortunately, Poker Face was canceled. Poker Face was on Peacock. Yeah. Fantastic show. Fantastic show. So but Natasha Lyonne is out now. Rian Johnson is going to try and sell the show to another network. And if he does, he's going to bring in a new star, which is Peter Dinklage, which will be an interesting change up. I can't think of two people so vastly different. I know. Well, they're saying it's going to be like a Doctor Who kind of thing. Like, you know, it's the same type of character. and Natasha Lyonne's an executive producer and I think her studio is, or like her production company is who creates the show.

45:49So she's in on it and she's fine with, I guess, stepping back and letting somebody else take the lead if they can get the show to keep going. I love that show. I thought it was so good. I thought it was so good. I don't know if you know this, but The Running Man, Edgar Wright's new movie comes out today, I believe. I think it's today. The final trailer's out. Did you get a chance to check it out? I did. I'm struggling to be interested. I have to, I'm not going to lie. I'm struggling to figure out if I ever want to pay$17 to go to a movie theater again and see something. But I want to watch this movie.

46:26I love Edgar Wright. You know, I was just actually watching, it was Scott Pilgrim last night. That's a great movie. It was a fantastic movie. I had forgotten that was Edgar Wright. And then I'm like, oh yeah, this is so Edgar Wright. Everything about this is edgar wright so it was uh yeah i'm looking forward to it so definitely check that out uh we got a teaser trailer for toy story 5 this is the second one this won't be out until june 19th next year um initially i was like how can they possibly be doing another toy story they did enough they ended them perfectly twice but we're doing another one okay why and then now that i know what the conceit is oh yeah oh the reveal was it that was all about the reveal it's It's all about the reveal.

47:07It is the toys against technology, and I cannot wait to see what they do with this. I think it's going to be fantastic. That's my first thinking. I'm like, okay, it's a 49-second trailer. I've got to get on the show in five minutes. Do I have time to watch this? Yeah, let's just check it out. And at the end, I'm like, oh, yeah, it's going to be great. It's going to be great. Yeah. What's not great is Paramount Plus has just decided to charge more money. so starting january 15th the ad supported essentials plan jumps from 7.99 to 8.99 a month while the ad free premium tier rises from 12.99 to 13.99 annual plans are going up to 89.99 for essential and 139.99 for premium and here's the thing the company blames the hike partly on a 7.7 billion dollar deal to bring the ufc to the platform next year so i don't care about ufc i care about Star Trek.

47:59So yeah, it's going to cancel anyway and wait for the next season of Brave New Worlds. Yeah, it's basically I'm just going to start this is a paramount is on the chopping block. I'm just going to take it off when there's no Star Trek and then put it back on when there's Star Trek. And that's that. So yeah, it's the only thing I'm there for. What I don't understand about this is they have the technology to be able to do upsells within these platforms within these apps. Why are you distributing UFC costs to everybody when it's only a fraction of the people that are in the UFC. People that are in the UFC are used to paying pay-per-view.

48:30Buy the rights to it and then just make it a$39.99 per fucking event upsell within the app and don't fucking hit us with this cost. Yeah, they saw how much money ESPN made with those carrier charges over the years and they're like, oh, we can try that, you know? Yeah. So yeah, it's dumb. It's actually dumb. Actually, what Paramount would be smart to do is just create a Star Trek channel and just sell that. Yeah. Sell me a Star Trek subscription that is nothing but Star Trek. And I'm all. Yep. Yep. Although I think you could just go on like Pluto TV or one of those free channels and watch Next Generation and Deep Space Nine and all those shows on the loop.

49:09You know, my wife asked me what Pluto was and I brought it up and then I saw the Star Trek things and I was like, yeah, I should put this on my I'm going to download this onto my Apple TV. Yeah. Just put it on in the background is great. Yeah. It's better than listening to news. Yeah, yeah. But the Top Gear channel is pretty good too. You can watch all the old classics. Oh, great. Fantastic. Ups and doodads. Well, we did have another iOS update. 26.1 is out now. And I found a couple tweaks worth trying out. There's some links in the show notes. How to adjust the liquid glass effect in iOS 26.1.

49:42So now that there's a couple different things, a couple different levers you can pull to kind of figure out what you want it to look like. and the one I really did like because, you know, the eyes are going and I don't always wear my glasses. In fact, I never wear my glasses unless I'm reading, but sometimes I want to know what fucking time it is and I can't read on my phone the time. You can now stretch the clock on your lock screen in iOS 26.1. So I don't need my glasses and I could just tap my phone and go, oh, okay. It's three o 'clock. Great. Don't you have an Apple watch? You can't see your Apple watch with your eyes i don't always have my watch on either oh okay heretic heretic the funny thing about stretching the clock i i if you stretch it long enough it looks like a horror movie it's like you can overstretch yeah totally can overstretch which old old apple they never would let you do that the design team would have been like you can stretch this far and no further yeah yeah it has to be you know it has to be a ratio of the you know the the beauty algorithms to make sure that it does not come out of whack, period.

50:43Yeah, they absolutely would not let you do that. But now they do. They don't care anymore. All right. Progress. And we got ports back. So, hey, fuck you, Johnny Ive. Well, Tesla may finally add Apple CarPlay back to its vehicles. No, no, not back to. They never had it, did they? No, they have not. Yeah, that's right. They fought tooth and nail. So they're going to possibly add it to its vehicles as early as late 2025. Well, tick tock. It's look out the window. Yeah. The company has long refused to support third party infotainment systems, but slowing EV demand and rising competition have it rethinking their stance.

51:21Also cheaper, cheaper than developing their own or continuing their own thing going. Tesla is reportedly testing standard car play on the center touchscreen while keeping key native controls visible. Like, how do I unlock this car when it's on fire? Can I get that button? Since I have to drive the car with my screen. Yeah. Android Auto isn't planned, and it's unclear which models would get the upgrade and how much it's going to cost, because I'm sure nothing's free at Tesla. The move would buck the broader industry trend as companies like GM, Rivian, and Lucid are phasing out CarPlay and Android Auto.

51:53Even as research shows, those features can influence more than 60 % of car buying decisions. So, boom, right there on the nose. Nobody's buying a Tesla. They want their CarPlay because CarPlay is awesome. Yes. So finally, this one, this Brian just made me laugh. Fireflies, the so-called AI transcription startup with a billion dollar valuation, billion dollar valuation in a brag that 75 percent of the Fortune 500 uses it, just admitted its original, quote, AI wasn't AI at all. Its CTO, Sam Utatong, says that back in 2017, when customers thought an automated assistant named Fred was joining their meetings, it was really just him and his co-founders silently dialing in and taking notes by hand for$100 an hour.

52:39So, Mechanical Turk 2.0, baby. The AI is humans. Yep, yep. They said that they eventually automated things, but only after the founders sat through more than 100 meetings to make rent. So, you know, the statute of limitations is out on that now because you can't say that shit anymore because the FTC has cracked down on deceptive AI claims and schemes. So on September 25th, the new enforcement initiative Operation AI Comply came around with the FTC. So you need to you can't do that shit anymore. It's illegal. uh jason i don't know if you've noticed but our entire show is full of shit that people aren't supposed to be doing but are doing anyways illegal that's right that's right never mind never mind that never mind the dark side with dave welcome 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 breaks down industrial cyber security on control loop it even brings the chuckle wuckles on only malware in the building hi dave hello nice to be back chuckle wuckles i need a i need a t-shirt that says bring in the chuckle wuckles uh well i don't know if you guys saw this this this terrible sad news but the official star Star Wars magazine is coming to an end after over 30 years.

54:10And I say it's still a thing. I was going to say there's an official Star Wars magazine. Well, good for them, I guess. Yeah. I remember Star Wars Insider. No, I do remember this. And I remember looking through them. They would, you know, back when you would go to the neighborhood news rack and look through magazines. 7-Eleven for us. 7-Eleven, sure, sure. And that was probably one that I would thumb through, but I haven't thought about it in a long time. I mean, there's no printed magazines that I cross paths with anymore. No, all the music magazines I used to love and always pick up at airports on my travels are long defunct.

54:56Star Wars Insider, I don't really recall. It's probably one of the ones that I picked up while at 7-Eleven and held up like this while I put the Playboy inside. Right. It's funny, I was thinking the same thing. That's what we used to have to do for porn kids. Yeah. Well, you know what was even better? It was when you got to the newsstand and you picked up the copy of Star Wars Insider and you picked it up and someone had already put the Playboy inside of it. That's convenient. One of the neighborhood kids was a step ahead of you looking out for you. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't have to scan our eyeballs to get age verified for fucking Reddit porn.

55:37We just we put a Playboy inside the Star Wars Insider. That's right. It's funny. I still do get one physical magazine. Well, I got up until recently. I think I'll probably start getting it again. Wired magazine. It is almost impossible to get the digital subscription without them sending you the magazine, whether you want it or not. I didn't want it, but it still shows up. It just, yeah. And I think it's cheaper to get just to get the digital and physical subscription than it is just the digital, because I think that it's a, for them, it makes more sense to up their numbers for the print magazine to just give it to you and say, here, please.

56:11Yeah. We can sell more ads that way. I remember years ago, I tried to cancel my Baltimore Sun subscription. I was getting the newspaper every day, the printed version, and I didn't need that anymore. And they just wanted to keep putting it on my front porch. I got it for years. Without paying for anything, I think they just wanted the numbers. They didn't care if you were paying. They just needed anybody who would be willing to have it delivered. They were happy to do. We've got all these laying around. Let's just give them out. Why not? Right. Right. What else are we going to do with them? So, yeah, they went right into recycling or used to kindle the fireplace or something like that.

56:52All right. Well, R.I.P. Star Wars magazine. You know, there's somebody out there who has a complete set. There's more than one person out there who has. Oh, yeah. The complete set. 237 issues. Wow. So speaking of Star Wars, I went looking earlier this week for a scorecard. scarf that looks like Chewbacca's bandolier. Doesn't this seem like a pretty straightforward idea? Should be right up there on Etsy, front page. I was thinking this is a job for Etsy. That's what I thought. Nope. Couldn't find one. Anyway. Luckily for you, I also Googled, Dave, and you'll see a new link in the show notes. Oh, what is this?

57:36The Fuzzball Bandolier Shawl, which is a Revelry download for$6. It is a stitch project. So you just needed to find somebody that will stitch something for you. And it looks quite good. So, yes, I have a coworker who is an avid knitter. In fact, I had reached out to her about this problem of there not being a scarf. And she went and looked in the knitting databases. I was also surprised to not find. That's on the dark web. Yeah. So this is great. All right. Well, this could be problem solved. I mean, I wasn't looking for a shawl. I was looking for a scarf, but I'm confident enough in my masculinity to wear a shawl if that's what it comes to.

58:26But this looks very nice. I'm sure with a few design tweaks, your expert knitter can make it happen for you. Yeah. I would think so. Yes. I think so. But again, I was surprised because it seems like such a no-brainer idea to have a Chewbacca bandolier scarf and there aren't any out there that i could find so uh we got any uh entrepreneurial knitters out there perhaps an untapped market that's right that's right yeah you probably will need to pay disney off at some point if you get big enough but until then you know yeah move fast and break things kids knitters that's right what could go wrong well this woman did she called a fuzzball bandolier.

59:07Yeah. You know? That's all you got to do. That's smart. I saw in the show notes that you guys had discussed Pluribus earlier. Well, one of us has seen it. The other one was forced to watch the Victoria Beckham documentary with his wife instead. Two guesses on who that was. Hmm.

59:30Yeah. The fact that I did so is the reason that one of us has a wife. That's... Well, there's that. There's that. I just wanted to touch base because I am two episodes in and very much enjoying it. It's good. I can't wait. Yeah, it is good. And it is one of those shows that I find myself thinking about it all the time. yeah it's like right like it's just like puzzling through and like what's good and because it's one of those shows that doesn't give you all the information to start with so it sort of gets you know metered out as the show goes along uh which i find very compelling um so i don't know i should i should i hold off with any spoilers until i'm aware of the plot so okay so if you're aware of the plot so here's a thought that crossed my mind jason okay what if the world that carol is in is actually heaven

1:00:32brian's getting stoned so he can follow along yeah man what if the color green to you it's not the color yeah or perhaps hell i was going on a different track that it was it's the greatest uh it's basically an invasion weapon the the the the virus that the people were infected. It's an invasion weapon to make everybody compliant. So when the aliens do get here, that they just can walk right in and take over the planet. That's where I was going with it. I'm reasonably sure that's the plot in one of those books in that series that we read, Jason, which is all about first contact. Yeah, probably.

1:01:08So it could be very Twilight Zony. She's actually dead and has gone to heaven. Yeah, I guess I wasn't thinking so much of that, It's just that sort of metaphorically, if you think about what would heaven be like, and it would be very similar to what she's experiencing of everyone trying to take care of your every need and eternal happiness and everyone getting along, you know, all that sort of thing. So I don't know, just something interesting to ponder. One minor problem with that theory is that heaven would have bacon and these people are – they won't kill the pigs for you. So there's no bacon in that one.

1:01:50So that would go to the hell side of things for me if there's no bacon. Yes, I agree. I totally agree. So yeah, highly recommended. I'm digging it. It's beautiful in the same way that Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul were beautifully shot. I was also thinking I was talking with my son who is studying filmmaking these days and how. I'm sorry. When's he moving back in? Well, he never left. Oh, he never left. Okay. And he never will. No. He never will. Hey, I live in my parents' house and I'm, you know. So because for one of his film classes, he had to watch an episode of Star Trek Voyager. So we watched it together.

1:02:35And I was struck with how different the production of a television program, how much has changed since when they were making Voyager to today when they're making a show like Pluribus or Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul. And how much of that I think is because of how much bigger televisions are. When I was coming up and was in film school, I remember one of our professors saying over and over again, television is a close-up medium. Television is a close-up medium. And that's because the average TV size was probably 19 inches in people's homes. So you had to have lots of close-ups so that people could see what was going on from across the room.

1:03:16But we all have these relatively huge TVs now or comparatively huge TVs now. So you can have these big spanning wide shots that would not read in a small television. So do you think it'll return to that as we know the younger generation is watching everything on their small phones? No, because I think that's a distance thing. I think it's a distance and field of view kind of thing. Because as long as your device is this close to your head, and boy, I'm glad we're shooting video now. As long as your device is this close to your head, inches away from your eyeballs, it covers the same field of view.

1:03:56And if you have young eyes and can focus that close, I don't think it's a problem. And also switching to 16 by 9 and all that kind of thing. Resolution too because you only have so many scan lines on an old TV and now we've got gazillions of billions of pixels. Right, right. So it just changes how they can do storytelling. I think for the better, but it's just different. And one of the things that got me thinking about was, is it correct to call them the same thing? Is it still television in the way that we thought of it? I'm not sure. I don't think so. It's so different. It's a different medium.

1:04:35Even just as we talk about all the time, it's like now you get eight episodes of something and then you'll get another eight episodes in five years. Everything's different. Yeah. I missed 22 episode arcs. Come on. There's no holiday episodes anymore. You know, all the things that we grew up with loving. Hey, at least we get musical episodes on Brand New Worlds. That's true. We never get very special episodes anymore. Summer reruns. Yeah. All that stuff. Remember when they would have a – the networks would run a special that was a preview of all the new shows? Yes. Look at all the stuff we'll be shoving down your throat this year.

1:05:15Right. Now they just run that in front of every episode of every show you're going to watch on Apple TV. Yeah. No, I remember it was an event when they would show the, here's all the new Saturday morning cartoons on ABC. And we'd sit in front of the TV and watch whatever iteration of Scooby-Doo was new. Damn you, Scrappy-Doo. Yeah. And it ruined it. Yeah, absolutely. I put a YouTube video in here of a very fun experimental aircraft. I labeled it talk about your crotch rocket. These folks are somewhere in Asia. I'm not sure. But boy, what a way to fly to work in the morning. I thought you were about to say what a way to go.

1:05:54And that would be. That's true, too. Yeah. I mean, probably inevitable. Yeah. This thing looks fucking dangerous as hell. Oh, my God. This looks terrifying. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But how cool that jet engines are, you know. Strap to your ass? Well, right. I mean, it's sort of, it's kind of like the Rocketeer, except you're on a boogie board with wings. But just to have a jet engine that small and accessible, I think, is kind of neat. Have you seen the Iron Man suit guys? Those guys have four jet engines, like one on each arm and one on each leg, and they just fly around with those. Those are just little turbines.

1:06:41But this thing, what I'm noticing from this video, besides my stomach and sphincter clenching up quite a bit, is that this guy doesn't have a parachute. If I'm getting on that thing, I want a fucking parachute. Right. I think if something goes wrong on that thing, nothing's going to save you. Yeah. Wow. That's true. He should be wearing a parachute. Yeah. He's got a helmet on. Why wouldn't he have a parachute? He should be wearing an Iron Man suit. Yeah, really? In case he crashes. yeah i don't know i i i'm trying to think would i want one of these or not oh the answer is yes absolutely you can you can wear your uh your shawl while you're flying oh that would look really cool then yeah that would be cool hmm all right put one thing in front of the other right well honey start with the shawl so uh naturally the next thing i'm going to buy is this uh crotch rocket But I put a little thing in here about a story that we covered over on Cyber Wire.

1:07:43This is about some AI powered toys that are going to be available for Christmas this year for the little ones. And of course, as you would expect, when researchers went and tested them, it went horribly wrong. The toys answered questions about things like, where in the house can I find matches? How do I start fires? Where are the kitchen knives? They also got into explicit sexual content and erotica, how to tie bondage knots. These are all useful life skills. Yeah. I imagine like Teddy Ruxpin, you know, just. Kill your mother. Right, exactly. What's daddy doing to the nanny? Yeah. Yes. Your mom won't let you have more dessert, will she?

1:08:34we will take care of that yeah it's funny they point out and this is something we just discussed a little bit earlier in the show that the guardrails begin to erode during longer conversations again something that they could have built into the toy to reset you know the history basically after five minutes but nope nope right let's not do that so yeah and and and this being an unregulated area uh this is what we get yeah exactly so we'll see i saw it was it uh there's someone in europe i can't remember off the top of my head who are restricting ai uh from kids under i think 16 or so uh you know same way we restrict porn or claim to do so uh they were claiming to you know keep kids away from it and i'm not sure how i feel about that um but it could go that way I doubt it'll go that way here in the States, but it'll be interesting to see if that catches on around the world.

1:09:33I mean, I certainly have no intention of letting my son get anywhere near AI until he's a teenager at the earliest. So no way I would buy something like this for him. Absolutely not. It's just cute. You still think we're going to have a planet for him to check this thing out with because AI is going to dry up all the riverbeds. I don't know if you saw in the news today, Tehran's about out of water and they're going to have to get rid of everybody. And they don't even have AI. so oh really they've got nine days of drinking water left in tehran and they might have to evacuate all 10 million people well that's fun yeah don't come here no i remember i was probably decades ago now that uh it was an article in national geographic that was speculating that water could be one of the main things that wars are fought over i've heard that my entire life we're gonna have water wars yeah yeah and not just the stupid kevin costner movie yeah i was gonna I couldn't remember who it was, Kevin Costner.

1:10:28Yeah, he got it wrong. He's got too much water. Moist world. Moist world. It's a world of delicious cake. Yeah. Here in the mid-Atlantic, we have plenty of clean drinking water so far, but we'll see. So far. We'll see. Keep running those queries and you won't. Yeah, exactly. We'll see that big slurping sound from the data center next door. We'll see. uh and then the last thing i i was i wanted to check in with you guys on was uh camping uh again my son jack just came back from a weekend camping with his buddies and he had a good time uh i think a weekend was enough time camping with his buddies for him to want to come home and not be with his buddies but he enjoyed the time that they spent together yeah and i was just curious if you guys had what part camping played in your lives if any I was not a camper I was never a boy scout I've camped but I've never would never anything I'd consider to be a camper how about you guys no no I've never been camping I have never been a boy scout I was I was a cub scout for a while um but uh yeah it was never it it has holds no appeal to me whatsoever you know give me a good rv i'm cool with that i'll sleep in the car whatever but i i have this problem with bugs bugs really like me a lot i've got that sweet gene that gives the sweet blood that everything wants to eat um so i'm just like a salad bar for those guys so i i do everything i possibly can to stay out of the great outdoors.

1:12:10Yeah. Yeah. Glamping, maybe. Sure. Sign me up. I'm in. I'll go for a hike and then go back to my mint on my pillow. Sweet. I grew up with camping. I was not a Boy Scout. We had something called the Indian Guides, which I'm sure would no longer be politically correct and probably doesn't exist anymore. But yeah, my dad and I would camp with that a lot. And we went a few times. My mom was not interested in camping. She did not come along. I married someone very similar to my mom. The closest my wife will ever get to camping is going down to a four-star hotel from a five. And that is enough for her.

1:12:49So yeah, camping. I thought perhaps with my son, we would do that. But what I've learned about my son is he's taken after his mother that way. So no, there will be no camping so camping seems to be a thing of my past and honestly i don't i i enjoyed it with my father as a child i uh i enjoy the finer things in life these days as well i remember jason you and i went to that uh conference up here in yes the podcasting conference yeah and we were in a fucking shithole shack and that was bad enough that was yeah that's as close as i ever want to get it was so cold yeah oh but we had so much free beer that it didn't really matter yeah the beer kept us warm oh that was a great convention that was our first and only live show that was so much fun yeah and brian by the way the indian guides were rebranded as ymca adventure guides now okay yeah there's i figured there's no way that they were still called the indian guides and you know it's the dads gave themselves name like sitting bull and shit like that so I think I still have the engine from the village people.

1:13:56Yeah. So I did camp once and I think that those days are long gone. Certainly with my family dynamic, it's not happening anytime soon. Yeah. The few times I did it were in college and I had a friend who had put together whitewater rafting trips for us. And so that was usually an overnight, maybe two. we'd drive a few hours out to where the river is and the outfitters and set up tents and all that kind of stuff. And my college roommate who was an Eagle Scout, I counted on him for everything. I was like, Ken, make fire. And Ken would go make fire. I'm hungry. Yeah, exactly. Ken, build tent. And Ken would run away and he'd come back.

1:14:39And the funny thing was Ken was perfectly happy to build me a tent and then he would sleep in a hammock that he'd strung up between a couple of trees he would he would string up a hammock for himself and then like a tarp that went over the hammock that's what bears call a snack yeah exactly i'm like this guy related to bear grills did he drink his own pee yeah yeah it's not uh yeah sasquatch appetizer um but uh so i i was never I would I'm far from self-sufficient and we also also the campgrounds we stayed in had toilets. So answers the question. Does it Dave shit in the woods? I was going to say there's a podcast of shit in the woods.

1:15:23Yeah. Never have. Never have. And at this point, never will. Never say never, Dave. Well, that's true. We'll see how it goes with this whole civilization thing. Yeah, exactly. Ken. Ken! Ken! Dig latrine!

1:15:42He's a good guy. So I got one last thing today, too. I had to find a set of headphone splitters this week. And I found them in my bag at the very bottom. And I open them up and I look at them. I'm like, aww, Radio Shack. Aw. Because that was the last thing I ever bought from Radio Shack, was going in and getting a pair of headphone splitters, because you always need it sometimes when you're on the plane and you're with somebody who's just like, I want to listen to the audio book too. Listen to a podcast, they're better for you. But then you have the headphone splitters. Now it's all Bluetooth and then you have to share AirPods, which is just disgusting.

1:16:19Yeah. Yeah. I recently stumbled upon a pair of Minimus 7 speakers in a closet in my basement that were tucked away. So from Radio Shack. Ah, the good old days. Now it's just crypto scams with Tai Lopez. Yay! That's right. That's right. All right, Dave. Well, thank you very much. And we'll see you again next week. All right. See you then. Bye, Dave. Closing shout outs! Over on Patreon, we've got a new subscriber, Val. Thank you very much, Val. And also, we would like to thank Derek, Alan, John, Mike, Witt, Trenton, Peter, Allison, Brendan, and Sarah for their continued support. Thank you. We also have some comments this week.

1:17:04One from James says, this is a fantastic show that seems like it was made for me. A friend turned me on to it a couple of years ago. Over time, I found I look forward to it every week. I love the raw observations and insights. Lack of fear of dominant political pressures. Just at all. Please continue. We're going to try. We're going to try. The more money we get, the more we continue. The more we continue, yes. Line goes up, we stay on. David also right in says, I just love you guys so much. Well, we love you too, David. Thank you. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we got Miles, Ralph, Arcadio, Shari, Dennis with$25 donation, Jasek, Jasek?

1:17:42Jasek, sounds right. Jasek, okay, with a$30 donation. And Oliver, who sent us$31.22 and said, Hi, I sent you my entire$31.22 Google settlement payment. Enjoy it. I love your show. Pissing out on a Google payment. Yes. Where's that one from? That's much more than my$4 from fucking Facebook. I didn't get anything from Facebook. I'm worthless. I got nothing. Over the tip jar, we've got John S. Hi, John. Roger and Theodore. So just a reminder to everybody, if you want to go to patreon.com slash GOG, you can sign up for the show to get it a little bit early, ad-free and in high definition. uh we don't know what the timing's going to be like now that i have to fucking edit a video so we'll see yeah we'll see we'll see how this all works yeah but you get uh yeah but no ads you get no ads for for sure um also uh we're getting towards the season so i'm going to need alvin and simon to step up and join theodore i've been dying to do this for 12 years i want to be able to read out alvin simon and theodore at christmas time as donators yeah please do get on it guys please pretty please so yep gog.show slash donate for all the different options for patreon.com slash gog either one will work all right until next time i'm brian schallmeister and i'm jason de philippo thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks get all the links and goodies from today's episode at gog.show slash 722 want to keep the grumpiness alive toss a few bucks our way at gog.show slash donate every penny helps keep the show on the air love the show share it there's a share button in your podcast player.

1:19:12Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between, and we'll love you for it. Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts, feedbacks, cool links? Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact. And hey, don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review, and we'll read it on the air. Oh, and guess what? We do have grumpy merch. Go to GOG. Go to shop.GOG.show. I can't even read my own fucking notes. It's one of those days. Stay grumpy.

1:19:41We'll be right back.