731: I Want My 13 Trillion Dollars!

15:15Jason DeFillippo:cutting measures by ubisoft uh the last uh what i think it shut down its halifax studio just 16 days after employees entered into a unionization agreement and last week it shuttered at stockholm studio and announced various restructuring efforts and several other developers under its umbrella. So not going great over there. Vimeo just got hit by a brutal round of layoffs, according to a report by Business Insider. Staffers are posting on various social media sites that layoffs have impacted most of the company, including the entire video team. Video being what they do. So that doesn't sound good.

15:50Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Yesterday, following Vimeo's recent acquisition by a private equity firm i learned that i along with a large portion of the company was being impacted by layoffs wrote the company's former vice president of global brand and creative dave brown he's referring to a firm called bending spoons that bent the hell out of this spoon they bought vimeo for 1.38 billion in the latter half of 2025 and now they're basically canning everybody they did the same thing to evernote back in 2023 and we transfer in 2024 so this is just one of those companies that swoops in buys the shit out of it and liquidates everything yeah it's private equity they're they're shit bags that's you know yeah now what i forgot about actually is how long vimeo has been around for they were founded a full year before youtube and had positioned themselves as being a premium alternative for hosting creative and business adjacent videos so i mean one does

16:44Brian Schulmeister:have to argue is there a place for vimeo anymore no bending spoon says no so yeah no No, they, you know, the problem with Vimeo the entire time was they did not try to maximize shareholder value. They certainly did not. No, they did not. Well, we've got some more pink slip news. Amazon announced another round of layoffs on Wednesday, cutting roughly 16 ,000 employees just months after eliminating about 14 ,000 corporate jobs last fall.

17:12Jason DeFillippo:How much money did they spend on the Melania movie?

17:15Brian Schulmeister:Oh, I don't know, man. I hear it's doing gangbusters out there. I've heard ticket has been sold.

17:22Jason DeFillippo:Tickets. Tens of tickets, Jason. All across the world land. $75 million. I'll answer my own question. $75 million they spent on that. $75 million? $75 million probably would have covered those 16 ,000 employees for a while.

17:40Brian Schulmeister:Probably. But they say their sales are continuing to grow up to 13 % in its most recent quarter.

17:46Jason DeFillippo:So sales are up.

17:48Brian Schulmeister:Let's fire everybody and make a Melania movie. That's great. I know you can't wait to go see it, Brian. It's on your docket for this afternoon, right?

17:57Jason DeFillippo:I got it bookmarked on Vimeo, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to get to it anymore.

18:02Brian Schulmeister:Well, here's a good one. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the European Union is prepping legislation to prioritize tech sovereignty and reduce its dependence upon the United States. Sources suggest Brussels is concerned that future White House executive orders could cut off the region's access to essential data centers and software. Consequently, the EU is reportedly considering the use of its anti-coercion instrument. Oh, that sounds pleasant. A package of trade tariffs originally intended for China to deter American pressure. You know, what could that anti-coercion instrument be?

18:39Jason DeFillippo:Big stick.

18:40Brian Schulmeister:So while the initiative focuses on bolstering domestic companies like AI startup Mistral, The report notably admits arguably Europe's strongest strategic asset, ASML. What's that? Is that this? No, stop it, Brian. Don't even. That's not that. Not that.

18:57Jason DeFillippo:I mean, in an Irish voice, I'd be totally into that. Like a nice little lilting. Stop it.

19:04Brian Schulmeister:Stop it. Tree, dirty, tree. Can I finish this fucking story? No. asml is the dutch company that's the sole creator of the lithography machines required to manufacture the gpus driving the global ai economy hmm that's much less interesting than yeah i know if leverage this monopoly represents a significant economic deterrent meanwhile anxieties over digital reliance are filtering down to the public with some european communities actively seeking local alternatives to u.s based social platforms to insulate themselves from potential

19:40Jason DeFillippo:trade wards their tiktok is doing well i hear in germany all right so we talked a little bit earlier about a class action lawsuit for iphone users if you are one of the unfortunates out there using an android your day has come as well google has agreed to a preliminary 135 million dollar settlement in the class action lawsuit brought by android users who are accused of harvesting their data without consent something google has never done in any ever ever the suit alleges that since november 12 2017 google has been illegally collecting cellular data from phones purchased through carriers even when apps were closed or location features were disabled so set visibility to zero there i guess as reported by reuters the affected users believe google is using their data for marketing and product development meant it was guilty of conversion.

20:33Jason DeFillippo:In U.S. law, conversion occurs when one party takes the property of another with the intent to deprive them of it or exert property rights over it. This would be one of the largest ever in a case of this nature, the payout, according to Glenn Summers, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. So sign up for that. Every user involved in the lawsuit would be entitled to up to$100 from Google, which, of course, giving$100 to all these users denies any wrongdoing. Of course it denies any wrongdoing, yeah. It has agreed to cede consent during the setup process of a new phone from now on. Can we have your data? No.

21:06Jason DeFillippo:So that will be the future, apparently.

21:09Brian Schulmeister:So$135 million settlement for Android users. You know how many Android phones are out there? Hell of a lot more than 135 million. So you're literally getting cents. And it's like you're entitled to up to$100. That's if nobody besides you signs up for the class action, and it's just you and the lawyers.

21:25Jason DeFillippo:By the way, Jason, this is not only the first settlement this week. It is the second settlement this week for Google. And by the way, Jason, it's not only the first settlement of the week for the exact same thing. It is the second settlement of the week for the exact same thing for Google. On January 26th, the company also agreed to a$68 million settlement regarding claims that Google Assistant had been spying on users after being triggered by what is heard as wake words. Again, Google has denied any wrongdoing in the class action suit that they are paying out for.

21:56Brian Schulmeister:See, that's the same thing as that Siri settlement, too. You know, it's just where Siri just picked up the wrong wake word and started going. Well, Kayatonic on Discord sent this one over, and it's the GDPR enforcement tracker. And it's kind of cool. You can just sit there on the crapper or while you're having some lunch and just scroll through all of the companies that have been hit by GDPR. It is a surprisingly large amount of companies.

22:20Jason DeFillippo:It is basically almost all of them, but notably not Disney or Apple. Surprise, surprise.

22:28Brian Schulmeister:So there you go.

22:30Jason DeFillippo:Yet. They'll be there. Well, Waymo has caught the attention of the National Transportation Safety Board as the federal agency launched an official investigation in the company for its robo-taxis improperly passing school buses in Alston, Texas. This latest federal probe stems from a preliminary evaluation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that looked into how Waymo reacts to stop school buses in the Texas city. Apparently, it doesn't. it just drives past them yes uh they said in a memo that the robo taxis were seen repeating the same offense days after a software update that waymo voluntarily did back in december so that didn't fix it so we'll see what happens uh yeah that's that's you know you don't want to pass

23:12Brian Schulmeister:the school buses in between now and then though we have covered the story where waymo is like turning down the actual you know safety side of things and trying to become more aggressive so So, yes, I guess passing school buses is slightly more aggressive.

23:27Jason DeFillippo:There are a few things more aggressive than gunning down children. But that does seem to be the American pastime.

23:32Brian Schulmeister:It is. It definitely is. The land of the inverse trolley problem is what we've got. So as if on cue, a Waymo robo-taxi struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica on January 23rd. Waymo says the child suffered minor injuries. He's like, it's a kid. They bounce. Fucking dust him off. He's fine. It's fine. He's got two legs. Yeah, come on. He only needs one. Well, 3D print them in a replacement, just like they did that dog on the 6 o 'clock news yesterday.

24:02Jason DeFillippo:I don't see local news from L.A.

24:05Brian Schulmeister:anymore, Jason. Well, it's a little cart. We'll put a little leg in a cart, and yeah, that's how it's going to work. So, yes, federal regulators are now investigating. The company told the NHTSA that the vehicle was traveling about 17 miles an hour before breaking hard and hitting the child at roughly six miles per hour after the child entered the roadway from behind a parked SUV. So the crash happened during school drop off hours with other children, a crossing guard and double parked cars nearby. So those those kid drop offs, you know better than me, but I just see them from a distance and it just looks like Lord on the Flies over there.

24:41Jason DeFillippo:Well, no, it's chaos, and a robo-taxi has no business being in that area during those times. That is a simple rule that they could put in. You have to take an alternate route to go around a school area.

24:50Brian Schulmeister:But what if you put your kid in the robo-taxi to take him to school?

24:53Jason DeFillippo:Well, then you're a shit parent.

24:56Brian Schulmeister:Maybe you just have seven jobs and you're trying to pay for his food. Fair enough. You're working at Tesla, and you're worried. Or Amazon. Or Vimeo. Or Vimeo. Or Ubisoft. Or any job in the United States of America right now. And this one I sent you yesterday. Video shows Waymo vehicles slam into parked cars in Echo Park here in L.A. And I just saw it and I was just like, oh, this is a juicy one. No school bus or children in this story, though. So this is it's a different Waymo vehicle than I've seen before. This is kind of like a hybrid minivan one that was coming down the mountain, as it were.

25:32Brian Schulmeister:The thing about this one is that there was a say a quote unquote safety driver who was actually just driving the car. down the hill and he lost control of the car driving that going down the hill and to me i'm saying i wonder how much they paid him to say that no this wasn't a this wasn't a failure of the waymos sir i just was you know i my foot slipped on the way home that's all that's all

25:53Jason DeFillippo:uh but scary as shit let's see that thing coming down the hill yeah uh i put the story in here and i put a bunch of bullet points but you know what i i don't care so i'm gonna tldr this one please The Trump admin has reportedly plans to use AI to write federal regulations. They are planning on using Google Gemini to draft important federal regulations as reported by ProPublica. This is starting with the Department of Transportation. According to interviews with agency staffers, regulations created by the DOT help keep us safe when traveling. See all the above stories about children and other people getting hit by cars that the DOT is doing next to nothing about.

26:28Jason DeFillippo:But what could possibly go wrong, Jason, using AI for important federal regulations? Not that we have many of them left anyways, which is probably why they don't mind doing this.

26:39Brian Schulmeister:Well, if you throw your mind back to last year, Brian, I'm pretty sure we caught the administration using ChatGPT to actually write up the plan for all of the tariffs that we impose upon the world. Remember that? I do. I sure do. Yeah. Yeah. So this is not new news. They've been doing it all along, Brian. Calls coming from inside the house.

27:02Jason DeFillippo:I like this particular quote. Just because these tools can produce a lot of words doesn't mean that those words add up to high-quality government decisions.

27:12Brian Schulmeister:Well, they actually might be better than what we have now, so maybe we shouldn't poo-poo it so much. Man, tree, cow, horse. Camel! Camel! It's a camel! Camel recognition software is required every day upon waking. So South Korea just rolled out what it's calling the world's first fully enforced AI law. And basically everyone is unhappy, but for opposite reasons. The new AI Basic Act forces companies to label AI-generated content, watermarked synthetic media, and run risk assessments on so-called high-impact AI used in things like hiring, loans, and medical decisions. Government regulations? Government regulations.

27:50Brian Schulmeister:Startups say it's a compliance nightmare they're not ready for, while civil society groups say it barely protects actual humans. So fines top out at about$15 ,000. So give these things out like sweet tarts at Halloween. Enforcement gets a one-year grace period. Oh, okay. Yeah, and the bar for regulating truly powerful models is set so high that conveniently none exist yet. So this is just basically, yeah, kind of crappyoka. All right. They're trying. They're trying.

28:23Jason DeFillippo:they're trying to do something uh we talked a bit about anna's archive which is a pirate platform that scraped basically all of spotify uh spotify and the big three record labels universal music group sony music entertainment and warner music group have now filed a lawsuit against the pirates which always goes really well because you know they followed laws and you know suing them is gonna help but uh claiming an eye-popping 13 a trillion dollars in damages now that is not coffee money even to a pirate so nope yeah so they posted on a december 20th blog that they had planned to create the world's first preservation archive for music which is a hell of a way to say we're pirating all this shit but we're preserving it for you available for future generations yes available through bit torrent which they said would ensure that lesser known recordings wouldn't disappear this uh the suit accused them a brazen theft of millions of files containing nearly all of the world's commercial sound recordings according to the full complaint which is uh actually true yes uh the labels and spotify sought a temporary restraining order on january 2nd which they did not respond to by the court appointed date of january 16th as pirates tend not to do so they yeah legal summons fuck you is basically what they said uh they're going to try to shut down all the domain registries which doesn't really matter if you're putting stuff up on bit torrent um so yeah there you go i mean obviously this is this is not good um pirating hurts musicians even though spotify hurts them quite a lot too it's better their payments are better than nothing yeah 13 trillion is a truly insane number more than three times the country of india's gdp for context that would mean each of the 86 million files cause 151 000 in damages which is true if true is massive and it also means they're insanely behind on paying out to their artists if that's how much each of these files is worth yep so there you go did you go

30:21Brian Schulmeister:download it yet brian just to have in your your itunes archive i i have uh i've lost too many

30:26Jason DeFillippo:music archives in my in my years to even bother with this again i will download it i will sort through it and then my hard drive will crash or itunes will foobar the whole damn thing yeah Yeah, that's more likely. Yeah.

30:39Brian Schulmeister:Oh, well, here's some sad news. Amazon is shutting down its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go brick-and-mortar stores, which really kind of – well, the Amazon Go, we had one here on the corner. It failed so miserably because it was a terrible location to start with. There's no parking. There's like three parking spots on the corner of Topanga and Ventura, which as you've been to, very busy, very, very busy intersection. Yes. And there's just no parking. So down the street, though, is our Amazon Fresh store. which we love, absolutely love the Amazon Fresh Store, mainly because there's great prices and no one's ever there.

31:14Brian Schulmeister:So the shelves are 99 % empty. I think they use that basically as a shipping warehouse now, which is what they're going to end up doing. Some places are going to open up as Whole Foods, and they're just going to convert those, and the other ones are just going to go away. On the door yesterday, our friend Brian Blondell went and said it was going to be Friday the 13th in March that it was going to shut down. But we got an email this morning saying February 1st. So I'm going to go get that. We bought like six hams after Christmas. Because they're like four bucks for a 20-pound ham. We just got ham.

31:47Brian Schulmeister:In case of apocalypse, if you want a ham and cheese sandwich, come to our house. Bring the cheese and the bread. We got the ham. Spring cheese and bread. Gotcha. Spring cheese and bread. Yeah, and some Dijon mustard if you got it too. Might that be Grey Poupon? Well, we talked about the SEC before and how they were too busy, you know, to go after the people that deserve it. But the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has agreed to drop its enforcement case against crypto exchange Gemini founded by billionaire Winklevii twins. And so, yeah, this is just another one of the crypto cases that are just getting thrown out, thrown out, thrown out.

32:26Brian Schulmeister:Right. Yeah, take some of that money, invest it in Trump coin, and you can go on your merry way. As long as you pay the tithe, you're good to go.

32:35Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Well, in related news, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss' crypto exchange Gemini have announced the closure of Nifty Gateway, a non-fungible token NFT marketplace that the exchange had previously acquired in 2019. They are currently operating in withdrawal-only mode, and the platform will be closing for good on February 26th. So go withdraw your JPEGs. Yeah, get your JPEGs and your receipts, your very expensive receipts. Yep. NFTs became a key focus of the crypto market from 2021 to 2022, causing much hilarity on this podcast. Yeah, thanks for all the material, guys. And Gemini competitors Coinbase and Kraken also launched similar marketplaces around that time.

33:14Jason DeFillippo:During the time NFT marketplace OpenSea, it also burst onto the scene as a startup darling of the crypto industry, eventually reaching a valuation of$13 billion. But where are they now? Unfortunately, the NFT...

33:28Brian Schulmeister:We're at$13 now. $13.

33:29Jason DeFillippo:Unfortunately, the NFT market has only moved in a downward direction. Coinbase shuttered its NFT marketplace in 2024 after denying that they would be doing so. Kraken also shut down its marketplace in 2024 amidst the lack of demand for any of these fucking bullshit anymore. OpenSea recently pivoted to becoming a multi-chain crypto trading aggregator. Whatever the hell that means.

33:50Brian Schulmeister:What it means is they're going the LO route and they're just going to start selling T-shirts. Yeah, pretty much.

33:55Jason DeFillippo:The CryptoSlam 500 NFT index, which tracks the largest NFT projects on any blockchain, is down 98.98 % since its launch four years ago. In terms of sales volume, data from the block shows weekly sales dropping from the more than$1 billion in 2021. Yes, you were all that fucking stupid. To less than$60 million in the first couple weeks of 2026, which to me is still insanely surprising. That's stupider. That's just dumb. Oh, my God. Most of these people are trying to pivot into everything app products. But, of course, we'll see what happens. And there's all kinds of problems going on and the overhype.

34:34Jason DeFillippo:And who knows what's going to happen with this. Some NFTs are actually still doing reasonably well, but nothing like they used to. But, you know, people still collect Beanie Babies and shit like that. And everybody's getting a little boo-boo. So, you know, people got to do something.

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36:40Jason DeFillippo:media candy well my wife and i finally were able to sit down and start pluribus oh how how nice yeah i've watched uh i've watched the first uh two episodes the the first one was uh intriguing i believe i actually fell asleep during the second one and by the by the time i woke up my wife said i'm done with this okay there you go uh i i'm gonna continue with it uh just because i think the premise is intriguing and i love her as an actress but it's not it's not it's it's not yum in my yum or whatever you're saying is jason i enjoy it i thoroughly it's okay it's very slow moving yes that's what makes it great so personally i'm gonna stick with it i'm going to stick with it but the wife is out so perfect now you don't have to wait for you should

37:33Brian Schulmeister:have done that like a couple months ago we could actually talked about it on the show when it was

37:37Jason DeFillippo:coming out yes but i like to stay married oh well yeah so there's that uh shrinking is back i did not get the chance to watch the first episode yet but i will be watching that tonight so just so everybody knows because you know it's hard to know when shows come back these days anymore i'm pretty

37:52Brian Schulmeister:sure shrinking is impossible to miss it's everywhere that's true everywhere yeah um and another new show which i didn't think i was ever going to give a shit about or watch is a night of the seven kingdoms a game of thrones tale this is a game of thrones thing right yeah yeah the game of thrones joint uh again brian blondel does he's like hey have you checked it out yet i kind of liked it and i'm like i wasn't really planning on it but i had nothing to do that night so i i popped it on and I've watched two episodes so far and I actually thoroughly enjoy it. It is not like Game of Thrones. It's just more like Forrest Gump goes to Westeros.

38:28Brian Schulmeister:It's kind of like that. But I'm enjoying it.

38:32Jason DeFillippo:I liked Game of Thrones until the last, you know, season-ish, last two seasons. But did you watch the spinoff? No, I couldn't get into that one at all. I hated it.

38:42Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. So that's why this is like, this is kind of like Andor. It's kind of like Andor. It's like set in the realm, but not really of it, you know? So, and it's like that. I think the second episode was only 35 minutes long. It was ridiculously short.

38:57Jason DeFillippo:I like that.

38:58Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, but it's worth checking out. We also watched Steel this week on Amazon Prime, which I saw the numbers came in for. She was, speaking of, the lead actress was in Game of Thrones. And we watched all six episodes. It was okay. it wasn't like yay I can't wait for season two because there hopefully won't be a season two I think this is this is good enough to be standalone I think they leave they leave it open of course if they want to make another one because they can make another one out of anything yeah but uh yeah Titanic 2 coming soon to the theater near you but yeah it was okay the numbers weren't there I think it got 7 million hours 7 million download hours uh since the premiere and the guy climbing that stupid building in uh Taipei.

39:45Brian Schulmeister:I think he did 6.3 million. 6.3 million people just waiting for him to fall. That's pretty much it. Yeah. See, if they would have named it Splat, then we could tune into something. But, yeah. I want guarantees. I want a guarantee, damn it.

40:02Jason DeFillippo:All right. We got some big sports ball things coming up, Jason. And as I've ranted about many a time here, the networks and the streamers do a really good job of spreading this stuff around. So you have to subscribe to everything to be able to watch anything. And it's almost impossible to know where anything is these days. So I'm doing my public service here. First off, we've got Super Bowl 60 in New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks on February 8th. So this weekend, starting, or no, next weekend. This weekend is the Pro Bowl that nobody gives a shit about. And it'll be at 6.30 p.m. Eastern time.

40:34Jason DeFillippo:This is bought by NBC. So it will be broadcast on NBC in Spanish on Telemundo and will stream live on Peacock. Those are your choices. You can stream NBC and Telemundo on platforms like DirecTV and Hulu plus live TV. So FUBU and NBC are currently in the midst of a massive contract dispute, so you will not be able to get it there. If you have an NFL Plus subscription, you will also be able to watch it. But of course, because just like MLB Network not having the playoffs or the World Series, the NFL Plus subscription will only let you watch the game on a mobile device rather than on your TV. Okay.

41:13Jason DeFillippo:They also have an app. because reasons. All right. And the Winter Olympics are actually starting this weekend or February 6th. Nope, next weekend too. I'm so off on everything. So everything starts next weekend. They kick off on February 6th. The closing ceremonies will be on February 22nd. So if you are into winter sports, this is your Super Bowl. This will be on NBC as well, which you can view on DirecTV and Hulu Plus Live and the same FUBU restrictions are in place. So if you want to watch any of this stuff, you need NBC or Peacock, basically.

41:48Brian Schulmeister:All right. Got both all set to not watch any of them. I'll be busy because I just got a notification on my phone. Three million Epstein docs have been released this morning. Bullshit. Three million. All right. How redacted are they? I don't know. It just came out. How many black pens died for this release? Well, let's hope they forgot to pay their Adobe bill again and you can just go unredact it, you know, like last time. That was great. That's so good. Yep. So Starfleet Academy, I saw this article. It says, wait, so when is Starfleet Academy set anyway? Well, 32nd century. Yeah. So somewhere in the 32nd century, which is long past all the other stuff.

42:26Brian Schulmeister:Now, I spent a lot of time the past couple days, a lot of time being about an hour, actually watching negative reviews of Starfleet Academy from The Critical Drinker and a couple other people. I mean, come on. The Critical Drinker, that's his shtick. That's his shtick. That's why I watched a couple different ones, too. Right. And now here's the thing. The vitriol flows fresh from these guys. They're not wrong about a lot of things, but they're also missing some of the point, which is it's still Star Trek. It's a fucking kid's show. Come on. Let's get to the point there. Did you watch episode three yet?

43:02Jason DeFillippo:I did. It was my least favorite of the bunch. But even that being said, not mad at it. Did I need polyamorous rogue Klingons? No, not really. I didn't, but, you know, whatever.

43:15Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. It had its moments. It had its moments. It had some terrible moments, but it had some okay moments, too. Weakest of the three. Yeah, the weakest of the three, but the lens flare is killing me. Wow. JJ, JJ, JJ. JJ's brightness looms large. It does. It really, really does. Because I saw another thing where he was, like, complaining about, you know, how he fucked up Star Trek with lens flare. And that came through as one of them. So then when I watched episode three, all I saw was lens flare. I'm like, really? You guys got to do that. Yeah. Wipe your lens down. Wipe your lens down. But yeah, it's okay.

43:49Jason DeFillippo:I'm still going to watch it. Yeah, I'm enjoying it. It's fine. Let's talk about a show that will never have a lens flare. In fact, it's barely lit. Yeah, there's like no lights anyway. You can barely see anything. The first Daredevil Born Again Season 2 trailer has dropped. It will be returning to Disney Plus on March 24th. And we get our first view of my most beloved character from all of this.

44:11Brian Schulmeister:jessica jones is back and kicking ass yeah cannot wait cannot wait teaser looks awesome uh yeah i'll be queuing that one up same day yeah we're super excited about that show so it's the only marvel property i'm into uh ted lasso is getting kicked back to apple tv they'll be

44:31Jason DeFillippo:returning for a fourth season this summer this is the season that nobody asked for but we shall remain cautiously optimistic. Sudeikis will again executive produce and star as Ted alongside Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, and Jeremy Swift. This list leaves out quite a few members of the original series including Emmy nominees Nick Muhammad, Sarah Niles, and Phil Dunster. Good old Jamie Tart. Do-do-do-do-do. I'm going to miss him. He is coaching a second-level women's team this time around. So we'll get a lot of new characters and hopefully the writing will be as good as it was the first time around, but I don't know if you can capture that magic in a bottle twice.

45:10Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, I don't know. The world didn't need it. But we'll see if it's any good. Yeah, like, how are you going to get rid of Nate? Nate was such a great character. Dr. Sharon was very important. I think all three of those were important characters,

45:21Jason DeFillippo:but making way for new characters, Jason.

45:24Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, making way for Jason Sudeikis' paycheck, I think is what it basically is. Like, well, we want you to do another show, but you can have all of the money. We have a little bit left over for these people, but you're going to have to cut a few.

45:35Jason DeFillippo:All right.

45:35Brian Schulmeister:Cut them all. Cut them all. Cut them all. There was an article that said there can be only one first look at the Highlander reboot. Good title that Gizmodo. It's just basically one picture of Henry Cavill. And to me, he just looks like a Timothy Dalton like cosplayer in the photo. But when I look at that photo, I think, God, he would have been a great bond. He would have been a great bond. Would have been a great bond. Absolutely. The thing is, I've been poo-pooing all over the Highlander reboot for quite some time now. I'm kind of coming around. It might be okay. You know why? I watched Highlander 1, the original, the other night.

46:15Brian Schulmeister:I popped it on. It's really bad. It does not have legs. It does not have legs. There could be only one wig. Yeah. The thing that really bugs me about the Highlander reboot, though, is it's Russell Crowe is going to be playing Ramirez. And if he plays his Ramirez like he played his Javert, we're just in for a shit show. That's all I got to say.

46:33Jason DeFillippo:I got to say, I know the guy gets a lot of crap. And he's, I've liked Henry Cavill in everything he's been in. Everything. There isn't the single thing that I've seen that he's in that I've disliked him in. I think if anybody's going to pull this off and make it good, it's him.

46:50Brian Schulmeister:Well, let's hope you just didn't curse the entire production.

46:54Jason DeFillippo:He's cursed enough. He got shit-canned as Superman unfairly. He got shit-canned as The Witcher unfairly. This dude is cursed, even though he's awesome.

47:03Brian Schulmeister:This is going to be the only Highlander reboot where Connor McCloud gets his head cut off in the first five minutes. Sorry, Henry. Just ran out of time for you. Colin Farrell is coming back in that show Sugar. It was a very strange show on Apple TV, the neo-noir drama, with a big twist at the end, which I'm not going to mention here. So if anybody wants to go check it out, don't click on the link that I put in here either because they spoil it right in the first paragraph. But I thought it was a very good show. I thought Colin Farrell was very good in it. Now, granted, if I had the choice, I would rather have another season of The Penguin versus Sugar, but Sugar's in the can and coming no matter what anyway.

47:47Brian Schulmeister:And they don't consult me on these decisions as I found out in the past. So I guess I'm stuck with whatever I got. Let's call Jason. Yeah, he's got a track record. Apps and doodads. Okay, Brian, this time for apps and doodads, I have done something different. I put in 30 links to all of the TikTok drama that anybody who wants to go find out about it can, who hasn't turned on the TV. But let's just do a quick recap. The U.S. company that owns TikTok is now in control of TikTok. Once they did that, they changed the terms of service to be very ice friendly, which caused the first blow up. It was a big blow up.

48:29Brian Schulmeister:Everybody is still going crazy deleting their their TikTok accounts. Yes. The next thing was, well, they broke it. So it didn't actually work, which then led to more people leaving the platform. And there's a new there's a couple social networks. One's called UpScrolled that is now seeing a search. Let me look at my phone. There was another one that I downloaded called Skylight. That is another TikToker clone. Skylight, I'm going to warn you right now, lots of dicks. There's a lot of dicks on that one. So they apparently don't care about what gets posted to that one. I have not checked out upscrolled.

49:08Brian Schulmeister:I probably won't.

49:10Jason DeFillippo:Just to be honest. I'm going to tell you, I'm feeling a little smug at my decision to never get involved with TikTok in any way, shape or form now. and seems to have paid off dividends. I don't feel like I've missed out on anything and now everybody's done with it.

49:24Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, you had Jomo. You had the joy of missing out. I sure did. I absolutely did. I never got too deep into it, but I've spent a couple dozen hours doom scrolling because once you go one, you're done. It's one and done. There goes an hour at least.

49:43Jason DeFillippo:I was reading a lot of these articles as they were breaking too and it's just like, wow, did they screw the pooch so monumentally, although they don't seem to really care. Like, it just became a MAGA government arm of, like, let's collect as much data as we can. Let us know if you're an immigration, if you're immigration status. Yeah, because an app that shows me videos needs to do that. Yeah, exactly. Okay, sure.

50:10Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, no, it's actually worse than when the Chinese had it, which is the fucked up part.

50:15Jason DeFillippo:Well, at this point,

50:15Brian Schulmeister:I'd rather give my data to the Chinese in the U.S. government anyways. No shit. Might be able to order my DJI drone easier. But yeah, this whole thing has just been a fuster cluck. This is what happens when private equity gets involved in the day-to-day business of other people's business. And the government. And the government, yep.

50:33Jason DeFillippo:Oh yeah, I forgot. Aren't there supposed to be less government? Stay out of people's business. That's what the Republic... Oh yeah.

50:41Brian Schulmeister:Except half of them can't read because they didn't go to school. Interesting. So they lost the thread.

50:45Jason DeFillippo:you know just give them all of our money well i've got some uh potentially bad news specifically for you these days jason although i have very fond memories of this company as well because back in my music uh writing days i used an awful lot of their products uh music hardware and software manufacturer native instruments has entered into preliminary insolvency proceedings according to a report by create digital music this is the company behind iconic software such as massive tractor contact and hardware like machine plus uh they also own the brands izotope which i know

51:16Brian Schulmeister:you live in i live live in izotope if they fuck up izotope i'm screwed i am absolutely screwed

51:22Jason DeFillippo:yeah brainworks and the plugin alliance we don't have many specifics as to what this entails and what the future of the company will look like uh we do know that an administrator has been appointed to handle restructuring and potentially sell off existing assets they employ hundreds of people and their fates will also remain uncertain until we learn more. This is not the first time Native Instruments has been forced into a major restructuring, which just lets you know they're not running their company very well because these products are massively popular. Yeah, it's really hard to fuck this up.

51:52Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, it really is. The company experienced plenty of layoffs and uncertainty between 2019 and 2020 before being purchased by private equity, which might explain why things are not getting any better. It's possible new investors will jump on board and it gets back to business as usual. It's also possible everything will be scrapped for parts and sold to the highest bidder. If the company's line of software goes up for a sale, Akai is likely the best bet. I like that company as well. I had a lot of their stuff, and they don't seem to have all the problems. We'll see what happens.

52:20Brian Schulmeister:Okay, I'm just saying if iZotope goes on the market, I hope Universal Audio buys it. That would make sense. Yeah, I would love if they bought it and just, you know, build that into any of the Apollo line that I've got. Oh, that would make my life better. So much better. But, yeah, it's not good. Not good. I got another app here called Whisperflow. It's another one of those talk to your Mac apps because I think you can do it on a PC, too. I think they're a PC. Exactly. That's it. I don't even have to do that. And you save the dolphins. Yeah. I just press. I got a key command here. I press on my keyboard and then it just it pops up and starts to any it'll you know just do voice to text and it'll do it in whatever app you're in which is what's really nice about it I've tried a couple of the other ones and it didn't really work with other apps that well it was like hit or miss

53:10Jason DeFillippo:this one seems to work with everything well given how bad Apple seems to have screwed the pooch on

53:15Brian Schulmeister:the keyboard on iOS maybe I should get this yeah that might that might work too the biggest problem with the keyboard on iOS when you use voices, it's so easy to hit that button again and have your entire conversation sitting there waiting for you when you come back to the text message that you were just bitching about the person you had the text message to and everybody jumped on it. It's like a four pager. And if you don't hit it just right, you've just ruined a relationship. That's the problem with the Apple keyboard. It's one of many. One of many. Yeah, but I use this on my Macs to, you know, just for everything.

53:48Brian Schulmeister:If you're talking to your, a lot of AI guys use it because you can write prompts really easy and long prompts. I use it for emails. I put that shit on everything. I write my text with it. It's perfect so far. I've not had any problems with it at all. Excellent. Yeah, a couple bucks, but free trial. Check it out. It's worth it. The AirTag 2 launched. Looks like it's the same price, same size. Yeah, just got more goo inside. They just put some more goo. What I really want is the precision finding. That's what I really want.

54:20Jason DeFillippo:I really hope that instead of beeping and directions, it does hot and cold. Oh, that'd be good. Colder, colder, colder. Freezing, freezing.

54:28Brian Schulmeister:Now you're getting warm. Burning up, burning up. My ass is on fire. Here I am. Yeah, but the precision location thing works with the Apple Watch Ultra 2, which I do have. So it might be worth picking that up. It's at least one of them for your keys, you know? You should have one on your keys at all times.

54:48Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, I've got three of these. Don't really feel the need to upgrade to the number two, but if I ever need another one, obviously I get version two.

54:58Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, that's pretty much how I think about it too. It's like the ones work absolutely just fine.

55:04Jason DeFillippo:They do exactly what they say on the tin, and I don't feel the need to upgrade.

55:08Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

55:14Brian Schulmeister:The dark side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to the dark side with Dave with a podcaster who never sleeps, Dave Bittner. Dave covers the daily cybersecurity beat on the Cyber Wire, busts scams with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans, untangles privacy headaches with Ben Yellen on Caveat, and digs into industrial security on Control Loop, but he still has time to show up and stir some shit in only malware in the building. Hello, Dave. Hello. I don't know how you guys are doing weather-wise, but I'm done here. On the east coast of the United States, we got a good amount of snow last weekend. But then on top of the snow, we got a couple inches of ice.

55:56Brian Schulmeister:So everything's just ice.

55:58Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, I'm sick of ice on all forms. Yes. I will drink a warm soda.

56:06Brian Schulmeister:Ice doesn't have the stellar reputation all around these days. I'm having an iced coffee because it's nice and warm here. Thanks, Jason. Thanks. It was minus 10 Fahrenheit.

56:18Jason DeFillippo:and that's not with wind chill today here, which is, I've never been in anything like that. No, it's a different kind of cold.

56:26Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah.

56:28Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, when the news says if you're outside for more than 15 minutes, whatever's uncovered is indeed your frostbite, that's fantastic.

56:37Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, yeah. My poor little dog, I take her out and the sidewalks have been cleared, but everywhere that is normally grassy has six inches of snow and then a layer of ice on top of it. And so she just doesn't know what to do. She looks at me like, I'll hold it.

56:56Jason DeFillippo:Sooner or later it has to come out. And sure enough. Yeah, all of our sidewalks are basically just walls of snow on either side that almost come up to full person height, except for the bottom layers are all yellow from people walking their dogs. It's just lovely. Yes.

57:13Brian Schulmeister:As one of my colleagues used to say, dogs, when they pee on things like trees and so forth, that's how dogs gossip. And I feel like my little dog runs from pee spot to pee spot and sniffs this sniff. Oh, you know, Bob's got new kibble. And she leaves her own little comment and then goes on to the next one. Yeah, we call that checking the pee mail.

57:38Jason DeFillippo:It's good. I love it. Well, there's one thing that will actually supersede any talk of Disneyland or Star Wars or anything like that on this particular segment, and that is Muppet news. And literally after we put away our microphones and stacked the headsets after the show last week, the official trailer for The Muppet Show dropped. And it seems fun.

58:04Brian Schulmeister:it does i say i the biggest laugh that got out of me was pepe the prawn uh with a sort of you know an off-color response to somebody's something about kink or something just uh what's her name sabrina carpenter yeah she said i love kink and pepe comes in and says oh hello

58:30Brian Schulmeister:the old Lenny and Squiggy entrance joke for a new generation. Yeah, you know what? I'm optimistic.

58:39Jason DeFillippo:I am too, although I have a particularly controversial take, but I will die on this hill. I do not find Maya Rudolph funny in any way, shape, or form, and I'm very disappointed to see her being one of the main people being in here. I was already a little worried with Stoner Guy, and now we got Maya Rudolph, too. And who knew that Sabrina Carpenter would be the one human that I liked the most in any particular ensemble, but here we are. That's sad. That's very sad.

59:08Brian Schulmeister:Okay. I mean, yeah, I can see that. I enjoy Maya Rudolph on Loot, which is the show she has.

59:17Jason DeFillippo:I would rather pull my eyeballs out and stick hot forks in my ear than ever watch that show again. I never talked about it on our particular podcast. I did try to watch it. I wanted to kill everybody. Everybody. But, you know, to quote Jason, I don't want to yuck on somebody else's yum, but your yum is horrible. Right.

59:39Brian Schulmeister:But you're wrong. You said wrong. Yeah. Yeah. No, fair enough. I mean, you know. Not everybody likes the same stuff. That's true. Related to Muppets stuff, Steve Whitmire, who was the immediate follower to Jim Henson for performing Kermit the Frog, and then hard to believe nearly 10 years ago stopped performing Kermit the Frog, was fired from being Kermit the Frog, wrote a long blog post about the current state of the Muppets and his take on the characters. It follows a lot of the things that we've discussed here about how the main characters seem more like a Beatles tribute band than the Beatles, that sort of thing.

1:00:27Brian Schulmeister:And he talks about the soul of the characters. And it's an interesting piece. I don't think there's anything particularly new or groundbreaking. but it's interesting to see somebody who knows all the players intimately, including Kermit the Frog, to comment on it and have his thoughts echo a lot of the types of things that we've discussed here. So if you're into that sort of thing, it's an interesting read.

1:00:54Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, I bookmarked that. I will read through that later. It definitely looks interesting. There's a new Disneyland documentary, which I find shocking at this point that there's any footage left that nobody has seen or any story that I have not personally seen to be told. This is called Disneyland Handcrafted, and it's an archival footage of the initial build of Disneyland in Anaheim. So I watched it. Of course I did. I've watched all these things. And I was shocked to discover that there were things I did not know. There was footage I have not seen. I did not expect this to hold my interest, much less my nine-year-old son's.

1:01:31Jason DeFillippo:yet he sat there riveted watching this as well. It was actually very well done, very enjoyable. Who knew? I mean, we all knew that it was like a rush at the end, but boy, you get the feeling through this footage and the way it was edited together. As many, many, many people on social media have commented since seeing this, boy, there were no workplace rules back then. Look at all the OSHA violations. I mean, you got shirtless guys smoking cigarettes swinging off of cranes with no ropes, no nothing holding them. I mean, it was amazing watching all this and how they put it together. So, the good old days.

1:02:06Jason DeFillippo:The good old days.

1:02:07Brian Schulmeister:You get no participation trophies at Disney. Yeah. You think about how now they shut down a ride for a year for refurb. Yeah. And they built Disneyland in a year. These guys built the whole thing in a couple months.

1:02:18Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Right.

1:02:19Brian Schulmeister:Right. My understanding, too, and by the way, this is on my list for this weekend. I've been meaning to get to it. I'm sure my wife and I will enjoy it very much. And I'm glad that it gets your stamp of approval. I also recall, I don't know if it touched on this, but I've heard stories about how the guy who sort of brought them to the finish line was sort of this mobster kind of character who just got stuff done. And as soon as they finished, he got fired.

1:02:45Jason DeFillippo:You will not be surprised to hear that the official Disneyland produced documentary does not touch upon that, Dave. Oh, OK.

1:02:52Brian Schulmeister:All right. All right. Well, I can't remember. I'll have to try to look it up for next time. But there's a I believe there was a book written about him and he's quite a character. But he and Walt butted heads on, oh, things like ethics. And but he got it done. You know, it was one of those things. It's like you want to you want to fight about this or do you want your park to open on time? I can't remember his name. So I'll look it up for next time. fantastic all right well i found some good news this week and looney tunes is at the at the tip of the spear i miss looney tunes well they have found a new home on tv after they got axed by fucking zaslov dishbag uh so starting on february 2nd more than 750 classic shorts are moving to turner classic movies another subscription another subscription but it kind of makes sense it's a good home for them uh the rollout begins with a week-long marathon of 45 cartoons starring Bugs Bunny, including his official debut in 1940's A Wild Hair, directed by Tex Avery.

1:03:55Brian Schulmeister:So this is a six-year licensing deal, so they'll get it for six years. Six years. That's it. Stands to reason. So will these be available on demand on, like, TCM.com or something, I wonder? I don't have TCM, so I don't know. I don't either. Yeah. Anybody who's listening that does, write in on February 3rd and tell us how it works.

1:04:19Jason DeFillippo:There you go. Yeah. You know, my son has just shown zero interest in any of this stuff. Not that he's been exposed to it a lot because it's Aslov and, you know, moving targets. Where the hell is it? How do you start? All that sort of stuff. But, I mean, Mary Melodies and all that stuff, just so good. Like, it's just so good. Oh, my gosh. Like, I know opera music because of these cartoons. Absolutely. Solely. Right.

1:04:43Brian Schulmeister:Well, and the Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons are timeless. Just timeless. Yeah. Brilliant. Yeah, that's interesting. I don't know that my kids have much exposure to them either. So that's a place I've failed as a parent. Well, just think about it this way, though. You didn't fail as a parent. When we were kids growing up, we were force-fed this because this was all that was on. We had no choice. You know? It's this or Mutual of Omaha, you know? Wild Kingdom. This is it. We'll hit the heights. No more rehearsing and nursing apart. We know every part by heart. I was sat every Saturday morning. Yeah.

1:05:18Yeah.

1:05:19Brian Schulmeister:Then I would watch Scooby-Doo after, and then they introduced Scrappy-Doo, and I never watched it again. Yeah. Although, have you guys heard the conspiracy theory that everybody's dead except for Fred? No. In Scooby-Doo?

1:05:35Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. No, I will wait until I have an edible tonight, and then I'll look it up. Oh, you mean, oh.

1:05:40Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Scooby snack. I'll dig up the video, see if I can find it, put it in the show notes. But it was a great—somebody sent it to me on TikTok. One of our listeners sent it to me on Instagram, not TikTok. Fuck TikTok. But I watch it, and we were both like, man, we got to go back and watch that because that's a pretty good theory. Yeah, Fred is dead, and he's just doing all this to make up for the fact that he killed his friends long, long ago. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. I did see a Scooby-Doo related thing come by this week that there was a movie that, oh, what was the, Agent 99 in, what was the woman, Maxwell Smart's girlfriend in Get Smart?

1:06:24Brian Schulmeister:She was 99, wasn't she? She was 99, yeah, because, yes, because he was 86, she was 99. Anyway, the actress who plays her, Barbara somebody, Barbara? Barbara Felden. Oh, yes. Thank you. Barbara Felden, yes. Apparently, she was in a movie, and in that film, this is before Maxwell Smart and all that kind of stuff. There's a spitting image of Velma from Scooby-Doo. So there's a theory that they just stole the character of Velma from this character that she plays in this film. So that was new to me. All right. I put a link in here to a YouTube video because I got tired of waiting for Jason to do the work.

1:07:11Brian Schulmeister:I saw this and I'm like, you dick. You're such a dick. Actually, well, first of all, I think we can all agree that I am not a dick. But it came up because we have a crew right now down in Florida at Space Week. and they had taken, because of like limits on the number of personnel we had down there, they'd taken a single camera to record some videos, some interviews, and that got me thinking again about the idea of using a 360 camera to do multi-person interviews. And sure enough, this person did one. I think it's doable from what I've seen here. I wouldn't have done it exactly the way this person did it.

1:07:55Jason DeFillippo:It's a little off-putting at times. And there is a large phallic shadow that is across the table at many points in the interview.

1:08:09Brian Schulmeister:Not from the interviewer, yes. But I wouldn't have panned back and forth using the 360. I just would have cut between the two shots. But it seems like you have enough resolution from this thing to be able to do that sort of thing. So I think it's plausible that someone who had better skills at doing a two-person interview, someone who had more traditional skills at doing a two-person interview could use one of these and pull it off. Yeah. Yeah. No, they definitely did this wrong. You should not pan. You should jump cut. You should absolutely jump cut. Right. But it's funny. I almost use it as my webcam today just so you would shut up.

1:08:51Brian Schulmeister:And I just ran out of time. So it works as a nice webcam if you want to see everything in the garage. Oh, yeah, I'll bet. Yeah. It is a nice webcam. But, yeah, this is kind of the same deal. I was going to do people across from each other. He's got it side by side. But, yeah, it would have been much better with a jump cut, I think. Yeah. I mean, it seems like having people be having the corner of the table in between them is probably most workable than directly across from each other, just in terms of the angles you get on people's faces. So you don't end up with the talking ears, which is you just have a side shot of somebody.

1:09:29Brian Schulmeister:So I don't know. It'd be fun to play with. I'm not going to go buy one, but I don't know. Maybe someone I know someday will be able to report back. It's ready to go. I just don't have anybody to play with.

1:09:41Jason DeFillippo:I was about to say, maybe someday somebody you know will sell one a little bit cheaper than he bought it for Dave. Hey, no, there you go. It's not going anywhere.

1:09:50Brian Schulmeister:It's not going anywhere. Oh, no, no, that never happens. Maybe I am a little bit of a dick from time to time.

1:10:01Brian Schulmeister:Just a quick swing around back to our countertop dishwashers. A kind listener pointed out on Mastodon that, as we were talking about this, The Verge actually had a story on countertop dishwashers. This had come by on my Mastodon feed. Yeah, this had come by on my Mastodon feed, and Mastodon has no algorithm, so that was weird. But I'm just resigned. I'm resigned.

1:10:27Jason DeFillippo:Some of our listeners joined in with the game on Discord and mentioned Animal Crackers multiple times throughout the week, and nobody has been reporting any Animal Crackers ads. We have broken the chain once again.

1:10:39Brian Schulmeister:Well, we may have actually picked something that does not have advertising on the internet. Yeah, Animal Crackers, that's true.

1:10:46Jason DeFillippo:Well, what a market opportunity they're missing out on. Seriously. Get them on the horn. White space. Get a big and a big cracker on the horn. Yeah.

1:10:55Brian Schulmeister:Little bit more follow-up. I've been playing Angry Birds. Thank you. Solid, Joyce. Solid. It really is solid. Yeah. It is. And you can spend as much or as little time as you want on it. And yeah, there's a reason it's a classic.

1:11:09Jason DeFillippo:I particularly enjoyed the Star Wars Angry Birds crossover when that was out. That was a lot of fun. Yeah.

1:11:14Brian Schulmeister:It was fun. It was fun. And I feel like they were just on the trailing edge of getting a little too cute. But I love Star Wars. So there you go. I put a link in here for no particular reason. This is a demonstrator's guide to gas masks and goggles. Okay. Just came across my desk.

1:11:38Jason DeFillippo:Information you may need for some reason. Perhaps someday in the future. In the next few weeks.

1:11:44Brian Schulmeister:Better to be prepared than not. So this is in-depth. This is a 35-minute read.

1:11:53Jason DeFillippo:I hear some of these things are very good for you if you're very cold, like if you're surrounded by a lot of ice. This could be helpful.

1:12:01Brian Schulmeister:That's right. Yes. That's right. That's right. If you don't want any frost to get inside your goggles or your lungs, these devices could be very helpful to protect you against those sorts of things. But this guide, I think, is interesting for as much as what they tell you not to do is what they tell you to do, because there are a lot of things on here that you would think that would be helpful that could actually be not helpful and perhaps even harmful. So, you know, better to be prepared ahead of time. And I hate the fact that I'm seriously thinking about this.

1:12:34Jason DeFillippo:You should know these sorts of things at this point.

1:12:36Brian Schulmeister:Well, what you should do, Dave, is get one of these gas masks and replace the inside of your Stormtrooper helmet with it. So you can just wear your Stormtrooper helmet out there and say that you're cosplaying, but you're actually protected from, I don't know, ice falling on your head.

1:12:52Jason DeFillippo:But he's going to have to adopt the Hoth Imperial Snowtrooper uniform. That's true. Right. Right.

1:13:02Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah, the problem with the stormtrooper helmet is just the visibility out of that thing is just zero. It's just terrible. So you wouldn't actually want to be in any kind of situation. I'm sitting, I'm looking at it right now. You wouldn't want to be in any situation where you had to actually see anything. But yeah, that would be cool. I just put a link in our group chat to my favorite of the masks that they're talking about in the article, which I think we should all adopt, which is the water bottled version of three water bottles and some dirty toilet paper, it looks like. I think he's rocking it.

1:13:42Brian Schulmeister:He's rocking it. With an N95 on the inside. Yeah. I don't know. It's like that guy in college who could make a bong out of an apple. Yeah. Pretty much. It's that thing. And finally, I have a recommendation for a YouTube channel. This falls into the category of something. Sometimes you just want your mind distracted from things. And I've found this channel to be very nice for that. It's called Emma Repairs. And Emma is a piano technician. And she repairs pianos, but mostly electronic keyboards. And it's just something kind of soothing and distracting and nice about it. So, check it out. If you're looking for something else to help distract you from whatever, I enjoy it.

1:14:35Brian Schulmeister:Things, yeah. Yeah, from all the things.

1:14:38Jason DeFillippo:All right. Well, this is actually really interesting. I'm going down the rabbit hole. Don't, don't, come back. We're not done with the show yet, Brian. She fixes a warlitzer. I'm in.

1:14:48Brian Schulmeister:Right. See? Told you. Yeah, it's good stuff. All right, gents. All right, Dave. Take care. Stay warm. See you soon. Stay warm. Stay safe. Please. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got a new subscriber, Javier. Thank you, Javier. And Fat Fat up to their pledge and sent me a very nice email about how awesome I'm doing on the YouTube side of this video podcast that we're making. He's saying it's absolutely perfect. He wouldn't change it. No, it's actually not that. It is a diatribe of all the things that I've gotten wrong. to be fair, they're absolutely all correct, Fat Fat

1:15:32Jason DeFillippo:you're not wrong, but for$20 a month that we're making right now off YouTube they're not happening

1:15:37Brian Schulmeister:I'm working on it, I'm working on it I'm trying to put food on the family, as they say and we'll get to these at some point soon, hopefully get more people to watch it on YouTube and it'll go faster, that's all I'm saying our YouTube numbers are not going like this this would be up and to the right as I'm showing on the video if you were watching the video, it's going like this, which is down and to the right, which is not what is desirable. But so he says, yeah, the YouTube experiment just needs a bit of polish. Working on it. We're working on it. So thank you, Fat Fat. And he signs off by saying, P.S., Deliveroo!

1:16:14Brian Schulmeister:So you're welcome, Fat Fat. Thank you very much. And we've also got other patron subscribers, Ryan, Ramsey, Jimmy, Paul, Doug, Jesslyn, Joe, Brian, Fabian, and Nancy. Thank you all for your continued support.

1:16:28Jason DeFillippo:Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got Charlie, Jonathan, and Judge. Thank you all so much.

1:16:33Brian Schulmeister:Over at the tip jar, we've got Jennifer, Cheryl, and Sean. No merch because we're too busy to make new merch, but it's there. You can get the old merch.

1:16:43Jason DeFillippo:Here, I'll hold it up for the world to see.

1:16:46Brian Schulmeister:I don't know if you can see that or not. There we go. There's my grumpy old Geeks mug. Also used as a pen holder and my voice straws. which I've not used since I got fired from making all the audiobooks. They trigger me, Brian. They trigger me. I hear you.

1:17:02Jason DeFillippo:We do have a new review, a five-star rating from Koch22. Give our modern dystopia a fun spin. This pod is a great way to keep up with tech news that flies under the radar, especially the stories pertaining to our billionaire overlords. I may be 10 to 15 years behind their nostalgia and references. I grew up playing point-and-click Zork games, not text-based. But their takes never failed to entertain. From social commentary to movies and books to new devices and apps that cover it all. Who knew grumpiness could be so enjoyable? Well, I agree, Koch22. Tell 22 of your friends. Yes, definitely.

1:17:35Brian Schulmeister:And just a quick reminder, if you do want to support the show, please head over to patreon.com slash gog or gog.show slash donate and get on the bandwagon and support the show because, yeah, we need it. It's actually the only thing that keeps us on the air. So pretty please. For Patreon, as little as$3 a month, We'll get you the show early, ad-free, and in high definition on audio only. You can sign up for YouTube now to help throw some bucks our way. You can go and send us some money on PayPal. We'll take that, and we'll take straight donations from the tip jar. Anything you want to do to help support the show, including telling everybody you know about it, we'd love you for.

1:18:14Brian Schulmeister:We'd love you for.

1:18:15Jason DeFillippo:You can send us your routing number and your checking account number through Venmo. I mean, whatever you want to do. Yeah, exactly. We'll take anything. We're desperate. And I want to wish a very happy 90th birthday to, I would say, international treasure, Alan Alda.

1:18:29Brian Schulmeister:Yes, indeed.

1:18:30Jason DeFillippo:Happy birthday, Alan. Happy birthday, Alan. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 731. 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. And really, it's the only reason we stay 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.

1:19:04Jason DeFillippo:Got 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 guess what? We've got merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.GOG.show. Stay grumpy and stay frosty. Thank you.