681: Trough of Disillusionment

Saturday, September 26th. Two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meat Cleaver Colon.

BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. I'd just like to say, Brian, when we do our next show, it will still be fucking January. This is the longest January ever. Ever. It is funny now that we are in the alternate Back to the Future 2 timeline with Biff's Casino.

That it just, it makes sense that time is just wrong right now. You know, in good times we complain that time goes too fast, Jason. I know. Oh, human nature. That's it. That's it. Let's get on that hedonic treadmill. It's been an incredibly long just week over here.

We had a polar vortex. Now, it's cold enough here in regular winter. The polar vortex was insane. I didn't even want to leave the house. In fact, we discovered that the north side of our house does not have good insulation and the pipes froze that led to two of our three bathrooms.

So that was awesome. But the south side does have good insulation. So luckily, our kitchen was fine and our en suite bathroom was fine and everything unfroze yesterday. See, here's the deal. When you went to Canada and I stayed here, it created a rift in the weather pattern.

So you get the ultimate cold. I get the ultimate hot. It was 80 degrees here yesterday in January with like 30 mile an hour winds. So if we average the two, we have normal weather. So that just means you have to come back. Or we just meet in the middle because that's where the weather. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

All right. Let's get into a little bit of news here. We've been talking about pink slips over the last two years, and I guarantee you those will be accelerating this year. But we talked a lot, particularly about the gaming industry, which got hit pretty hard. And it is a challenging time to be a game developer these days, according to the GDC 2025 state of the game industry report that surveyed over 3000 game developers and industry professionals.

It was one of the worst years last year ever for game industry job losses. 11% of developers said they were let go from their positions in 2024 and 29% observed direct colleagues being laid off. All of that is part of an unfortunate trend caused in part by consolidation that can see around 14,000 layoffs in 2024 when final tallies are actually done.

That's a lot. That is a lot. That is a lot. Now, you know, that it consolidation. Yes. Could they have overhired? Possibly. Perhaps. Is it also that the video game industry is absolutely brutal no matter what? Oh, definitely. Definitely.

But it's also worth pointing out that it is probably the highest revenue of any entertainment industry in the world. Oh, yes. Yeah. So again, you know, you'll see a recurring theme as we work through this episode. Industries that are making a shit ton of money are firing a bunch of people.

Hey, hi. Yeah. Yes. And in other video game news, we also had this brouhaha, one of Elon's many brouhaha's at the moment. And I'd argue probably the least concerning of them. People have been questioning for quite some time how Elon Musk is an elite gamer when he's supposedly running multiple companies and the country at the moment.

But apparently he has finally admitted that he has paid other people to play his characters for him. Yeah. Yeah. Last week when we talked about this, he was like, no, no, no, I'm leet. I'm leet. No, you're not. Yeah. No, he's not. He has admitted to doing what a lot of other people apparently also do if you get to that level, but not all people.

He has hired other people to man his characters and level them up for him so he can step in and do a little video where it seems like he's an awesome dude who's super high up, even though he didn't do all that time to do it. At one point, Grimes, the mother of three of his children, even took to X to defend his personal gaming honor.

But basically, it's bullshit. And he finally admitted it in DMs to some. This is the whole controversy I don't even give a crap about. OK. OK. There are so many other controversies. Yeah. And, you know, grinding a character to sell is, you know, that's a tradition as old as time.

That's what kept World of Warcraft, you know, financially viable for Chinese gold farmers for decades. Yes. But that was that was leveling up a character to sell, not leveling up a character to burnish your own fucking ego. Well, they sold it to people like him.

That's the whole point. You know, I knew a lot of people like him who would come in and buy a level 60 character. Yeah. Level 60 was the highest you could go when I quit playing. And then, you know, then they would start to play with the guild. And it was just like, you lazy bastard. You know, they never got any love.

And Elon also no love. In the news. Well, Brian, it turns out the whole axis of surveillance capitalism and douche nozzlery were in attendance at the inauguration of who I'm going to call from now on, P. Donnie.

And like I said, this is all happening in plain sight. It was basically like a big old Washington freak off party. It was. It was a big freak off. Or whatever the hell he called his parties with the baby oil or his drugs. The freak offs. Yes. Man, if I could have gotten some of that drug baby oil when I was like a teenager, that would have been awesome.

I'm so glad that he got in jail before the fires hit, man. It would be one hell of a conflagration. Yeah. Well, I didn't watch, but of course, read the coverage. And yeah, I mean, they're kissing the ring because they have to because they know there's no rules here. And if they want unfettered, unregulated social media and be able to run their companies up to gazillions of dollars, even more, they got to they got to make sure he doesn't want to shut them down.

Kiss that little brown ring. Yeah. That little tiny one. Well, in addition, Trump has ordered the government to stop trampling conservatives on social media. I'm not entirely sure what this order means. It's not a law by any means whatsoever, but he has ordered his attorney general to investigate how the previous administration trampled free speech rights because nobody has had free speech for the past four years.

Certainly none of these conservatives. So this directive, which came amid the flurry of executive orders that he signed on his first day in office, forbids government agencies and employees from abridging freedom of speech, which is already prohibited by the First Amendment.

But never mind that. And says the federal government should identify and take appropriate action to correct past mixed conduct by the federal government related to censorship of protected speech. So basically, he's just saying there's an anti-conservative bias on social media and you guys need to knock it off, except for the fact that, as we've covered in year after year after exhaustive year on this program, there is no anti-conservative bias on social media platforms.

Multiple studies have actually found that conservative leaning posts tend to outperform liberal leaning posts on social media. Yeah, that's because liberals are morons. That's because we're fucking nice. The point, yeah, that's the point. The point here is it's like they're going to just yell as loud as they possibly can.

It's the outrage machine. It gets clicks. It's what we've talked about. Yes, it does. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Yes. What does matter is that on that same day, with all of the executive orders being signed, Pete Donnie has granted a full and unconditional pardon to Ross Ulbricht, a.k.a. Dread Pirate Roberts, the founder of the Silk Road.

Now, if you forgot, the Silk Road launched in 2011 was a site on the dark web that facilitated anonymous transactions from drugs to violence for hire. It's just a platform, Jason. It's just a platform. Yes, but it was, Brian, the breakout success story for Bitcoin, and it generated over $200 million in revenue before being shut down by the FBI in October 2013.

Because once again, Jason, what is the case used for Bitcoin? Well, crime, of course. Oh, yeah. Crime. Right. That is the, yeah. So in 2015, he received two life sentences plus 40 years without the possibility of parole. Now, a lot of people did think that was excessive.

I, for one, thought it was excessive. It's excessive. Yeah. Yeah. But. You know what's excessive the other way? Letting him go. Fucking pardon. Fucking pardon after 11 years. Ulbricht's attorney expressed profound gratitude for the clemency, stating that it offers Ulbricht the opportunity to begin anew, to rebuild his life, and to contribute.

To contribute to what? Pray tell. Next time we see Ross Ulbricht, we'll be at his Senate confirmation hearings to be the next head of the DEA, I predict. Yeah, might as well monetize that branch as well. Yeah. Why not put a drug dealer in the head of the, you know, the head of the DEA? Yeah.

You need your drugs and your firearms? Come to me. Yeah. Even crazy motherfucker Scott Adams couldn't get behind this one. You know why? You know why? Why? Because he had a stepson that OD'd and died on fentanyl. So. Okay. So it affects him personally.

It actually affected him. Right. Right. Yeah. So. As opposed to actually having empathy without it needing to initially affect you. But he did leave a loophole. So, because he always does need to be right. Saying that, well, if there was, you know, problems with the trial, then that would be okay.

Then he deserves to be set free. Yeah. But, you know, killed my stepson. Yeah. We'll just wash over that. Yeah. Well, we'll wash over all those, all those police officers that were maimed and killed during January 6th as well. Stick to the tech. Stick to the tech. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Stick to the tech. Okay.

Pete Donnie has also signed an executive order creating the President's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. That's right. It's finally here. I'm preferring to, I'm going to pronounce that French style and just call it Doucher. Doucher? Doucher. Well, Doucher was initially pitched as an external body, but Elon Musk successfully maneuvered to embed Doucher directly into the federal government by rebranding the U.S. digital

service as the U.S. Doucher service, which really is, I mean, as a chess move, hats off. All of this is pretty incredible what's happening. It's, you know, it's horrible.

It's terrifying. Makes me want to just puke constantly, but man, they're working it. Yeah. It's basically what he did was it was kind of like a SPAC, you know? So without getting his company through the normal vetting to get on the stock market, he got his little internal agency or his little shitbag agency that wasn't going to have any power whatsoever, piggybacked onto an existing service that already has an existing mandate and has existing power.

And budget. Yeah. And a budget. So, yep. Now, D.J., report directly to Trump's chief of staff. And yeah, I like this. The end run by Musk not only reshapes the U.S.

D.S., but raises questions about the agency's long term survival and whether Doge's temporary experiment will leave behind lasting reform or chaos. Me, personally, I vote chaos. Well, it doesn't matter if you voted for it or not. We're getting it. You're getting it. You're getting it.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, getting back to social media and it's a conservative, anti-conservative bias perceived anyways. Instagram block searches related to a number of political hashtags, including hashtag Democrats, hashtag Democrat, hashtag January 6th, hashtag Republicans.

Not that there are any of those anymore. It's all MAGA and a number of other terms on Tuesday users who search for these hashtags were instead greeted with a notice that we've hidden these results because they may contain sensitive content as opposed to clicking through to get the sensitive content like everybody else does.

But that's OK. Well, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone blamed an unspecified issue in a post on threads. And that was about all we're ever going to hear about that. So there you go. But apparently it has a fix. It's been fixed now. I. They press the button that undid it.

And the company hasn't explained what was the issue other than the button that blocked all that stuff. Yeah. I like how hashtag John Oliver got in there. Yep. That's a good one. Can't get any of that information. Nope.

Well, if you did follow President Biden and Vice President Harris on Instagram, you may now be following Pete Donnie in the couch fucker, the official POTUS and VP accounts transfer to new administrations, keeping followers, but wiping the content. So I actually didn't know about this until a friend of mine.

We were on a Zoom call and she was just like, somebody just told me I'm following JD Vance. And she's like, I've never followed that couch fucker. Her words don't mind. It also works for the first lady and all that sort of stuff. So if you followed any of them previously, the accounts have now been switched over.

People lost their minds about this. And I was just like, look, this is pretty simple. Yeah. Here's what happened. It's a reasonable explanation. So can we stop with the outrage right now? It makes perfect sense. Go in and unfollow. Done. And then, of course, now there are people claiming I can't unfollow.

It's not working. Yeah. Why don't you just try searching for hashtag Republican and hashtag Democrat? Oh, wait. That didn't work either. Yeah. Yeah. If you if you if you want credibility, Brian, you have to have a little credibility to start with. Come on. That's true. That is true.

And speaking of credible, AI generated scientific research is polluting the online academic information ecosystem, according to a worrying report published in the Harvard Kennedy School's Misinformation Review. So we now actually have a study proving what we all said was going to happen, which is the snake is now eating its own tail.

I just want to I just want to point out that there is there's a publication called Harvard Kennedy School's Misinformation Review. Yeah, I want I want to subscribe to that. I think I'm in on that, too. I think I think I think we watch every day in our RSS feed when we do research for this show.

We could we could we should be employed by them. That's true. We should be editors. Get it. Call us. Call us. A team of researchers investigated the prevalence of research articles with evidence of artificially generated text on Google Scholar, an academic search engine that makes it easy to search for research published historically or in a wealth of academic journals.

They analyzed a sample of scientific papers found on Google Scholar for signs of GPT use and basically use some phrases and other things. They know what they're doing. They're researchers. And basically found that two thirds of the papers they studied were at least in part produced through undisclosed use of GPTs.

So obviously this can be problematic because, as we know, GPTs continue to pull information out of nowhere, which is usually false. And then they also manufacture their own research papers to bolster the fake information that they produced. And now this is leaking its way into real studies.

And if you go through and try to do meta studies and things of that nature, you're now getting a lot of misinformation. So great.

Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports, most dangerous strikers collide bare knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren, the gorilla till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel soldier of John Romero, plus the bare knuckle middleweight championship of the world is on the line when the reigning champ, Dave, the redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack, the meat pleaver colon BKFC 94 till verse Romero.

Watch it live only on the zone sign up now at the zone.com.

So I was, I was, uh, I was on a thread this morning that you'll get a kick out of literally on threads or somewhere else. No, no, no. It wasn't on threads. No. If I was looking for last week's news, I would go to threads and weight loss tips. This was a thread. Uh, it was on one of those, um, is kind of like glass door.

One of those websites where you can sign up as an employee of a company and you get a little tag for which company you work for. And this was one, this was a thread started by somebody at meta saying how they're shitting bricks over at the gen AI division, because there's that new model that came out of China that only costs five and a half million dollars to train and it's outperforming Meta's llama model.

Like it's kicking it in the ass. Right. And so what they're like, everybody here in the, in the upper level of the C suite in that division, the gen AI division is shitting bricks because they all make more money than it costs to train that model. So they're all, they're all trying to figure that out.

Yeah. But then we could use some doge over there. Some doge. Yeah. So the thread keeps going and, uh, there's some people from Google on the thread and they're talking about, yeah, this thing's really cool and how it's, uh, updating the benchmark, you know, it's like doing really cool stuff.

And, uh, somebody posted like, yeah, yeah, you should read the paper on that because the paper is really good. And the guy from Google goes, Hey, link, link to paper. And then somebody else from Google said, it really shows how shitty we are at Google. If you have to ask somebody for a link to a paper, you can just Google, just Google it.

Yeah. In context, it was pretty fucking funny. I'll see if I can dig it up and put it in the show notes. Oh man. Okay. Here's the big one of the week. Pete Donnie has announced the $500 billion Stargate project. So this is a groundbreaking effort to enhance artificial intelligence, infrastructure, in the U S and, uh, it's backed by major tech players, including open AI, Microsoft, Oracle, NVIDIA, and SoftBank.

Now open AI CEO, Sam Altman and SoftBank CEO, Masayoshi-san joined Trump at the launch alongside Oracle founder, Larry Ellison. Now Larry Ellison is starting to look to me like McAfee. I thought the exact same thing.

I was like, next thing you know, he's going to be in a cowboy hat with women's underwear wear over his face. Exactly. Exactly. A couple of AK-47s on the beach. So what this basically is, cause nobody could really, they didn't really say what it was. Yeah. It was just like, okay, we've got Trump in our back pocket to push legislation through so we can open up a shit ton of data centers next to energy plants or build more energy plants.

It's a whole thing. This is, you know, who needs rivers, who needs rivers. That's right. When we have the Gulf of America to take all our water from. So this, I mean, that's the thing. It's just, this has been in the works for a long time already.

Well, that's, that's the real thing is Trump is claiming credit for it. This, this started a long time ago. This started pre-Trump. So we can actually blame Biden for this. Well, Biden, Biden passed on it and said, I know I'm going to put in safeguards for AI. I'm going to put two mandates. I'm going to go the other direction.

So as soon as that was done, P. Donnie got rid of that, that initiative, the, you know, the AI guardrails initiative and said, screw you guys. Screw you guys. I'm going to blow up the planet. And then said, okay, guys, come on in and got Sam and Masayoshi-san and Larry Ellison to come in and say, here, we're giving all this money.

Now, here's the thing. Here's where it starts to get tricky. A Stargate was a, was a mediocre movie in a terrible series that killed Farscape. So I have a problem with the name Stargate to begin with. But anyway, since it doesn't really have kind of a cohesive plan, it's like, we're going to build a bunch of stuff and we're going to put in $500 billion and up to a trillion.

Sure. Where's all the money coming from? Well, turns out, turns out a lot of it ain't coming from really nice places. What? Are you, are you telling me the people with access to billions and billions of excess capital aren't nice people? No, no.

Color me shocked. Yeah. It's coming. Some of this is coming from Abu Dhabi based firm MGX through soft, you know, through soft banks initiative. And by the way, when soft bank is involved. That's already bad. It's bad news. It's just bad news.

Go back and watch anything that had to do with WeWork and you'll understand how dumb Machi Oshisan is when it comes to investing in general. Not very good at it. So he's getting money from basically that part of the world, which is, you know, they have human rights abuses and torture and things like that going on under the, under the table.

Financial scandals too, but they oversee $1.5 trillion. So they've got money to burn. Yes. Literally. So we're going to see how that plays out where the money's coming from. The other side of this whole thing about where the money's going to come from, Elon got butthurt over the whole thing because he was not invited to the meeting.

And apparently it was a very big, it was a very big logistical thing to keep him out of that meeting. And so he didn't even know about it. So yes, he is butthurt. So he goes on X and says, oh, they don't even have the money, blah, blah, blah. And Satya Nadella throws his dick on the table and says, hey, I got $80 billion right here, Elon, suck it.

So, and it's not really good for Elon at this point to already be upsetting the emperor because it's just, he doesn't, he hasn't even gotten the keys to his new office yet, you know? Yeah. So he hasn't frog stomped his way into the White House yet. No, he hasn't.

He hasn't. So apparently the Trump staff is very upset with Musk over shitting on P. Donnie already. But here's where it's really interesting. They say it's, this comes from an insider in the P. Donnie campaign.

It's clear he has abused the proximity to the president. The problem is the president doesn't have any leverage over him and Elon gives zero fucks. Now, what could possibly go wrong there? You remember how when, uh, when Elon took over, uh, Twitter, he came in with a sink.

Yeah. Yeah. He's going to walk into the White House with the lost ark. Perfect. Perfect. So maybe his face will melt off then. Maybe, maybe his face will melt off. He's just, no, he's going to, he's going to level up somebody. Yeah, have somebody else level up a face to melt off.

And at the same time, all of this is happening. All of these moon rocket projects to go to the Stargate with AI. Gartner is reporting that global IT spending is projected to hit 5.5 trillion in 2025, a nearly 10% jump from 2024. But the surge comes largely from generative AI hardware upgrades and analysts are warning the technology isn't yet delivering practical functionality unless you want six fingers.

So John David Lovelock, Gartner's VP of research says generative AI is sliding toward the trough of disillusionment where market expectations live most of my life these days, Jason. Dude, we've been in the trough of disillusionment since the fucking 80s. Come on. So yes, market expectations are dropping.

The spending continues. And he predicts the downward trend will accelerate into 2026. I'm going to say it's going to accelerate for four years. But we'll see how that goes. Yeah, for now, it seems AI's promise is outpacing its payoff. But, you know, let them build the stuff.

Let them destroy the planet. Why not? Why not? OK, so, you know, I've been harping about this for quite some time. What is the value? What is the value that we are getting from generative AI? And it's basically next to nothing, but it's getting billions upon billions of dollars.

And we're charging head forward anyways, because why not? These guys have their shiny little toys. The bros toys are there and they're getting paid. Well, no, no, no. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Did you did you check out the press conference? They said it's going to cure cancer, Brian. Yeah, they literally said at the press conference it's going to cure cancer.

That's OK. That car that that that guy down the street bought, it says self-driving. Ah, shit. Yeah. See, there's that. The self-driving car guy wasn't in the meeting, though. They wouldn't let him be there. Yeah. Well, OK. So self-driving also not a thing. Doesn't really work. Self-driving cancer.

We're going to get fully self-driving cancer. Great. That's what we all need. You know, another technology that's really not working out the way that we all thought it would and spin around for quite some time. And, you know, if done fairly responsibly and limited use, it's actually pretty good. Drones. Well, Amazon can't get drone delivery to work either.

Oh, the company has paused all commercial drone deliveries in Texas and Arizona. And, you know, something's up if they got to pause it in Texas, because usually they don't give a fuck. Yeah. Yeah. They're usually just shot down in Texas. Come on. Yeah. After a previously undisclosed event. Shocking.

Is there any other type except for undisclosed events coming out of these companies in which two of Amazon's MK30 drones had crashed at the Pendleton, Oregon airport it was using for testing? This took place in December with one of the drones catching fire after it fell. So let's maybe not have that in our neighborhood.

Amazon reportedly determined that its drones crashed due to a software issue that's linked to the light rain drizzling at the time of the tests being conducted. Self-driving cars can't handle people wearing red T-shirts. Drones can't handle light rain. You know, I think they were doomed to failure when they named it the MK30.

Anything with MK in front of it never works. See MKUltra for reference. And if you want to see the kind of corporate doublespeak we're going to be getting a lot of over the next few years as regulations go away. The company said, however, that crashes weren't the primary reason why it's putting its drone deliveries on hold.

But they didn't give a primary reason, just not that. And that it's currently in the process of making software changes to the drone and that the operational pause is 100 percent volunteer. And there are guys outside taping little tiny cocktail umbrellas over the motor so if it rains, it won't get wet.

Oh, God. Now, I would like to also point out that, you know, Pete Donnie has has put in these executive orders for Ross Ulbricht, Department of Doge and Stargate. He promised on day one that he was going to tell us what the fuck was up with the drones and drones in New Jersey.

What happened? It's day three. I know. Come on. We're at we are solidly in year two of this presidency. So I need to know what's up with the drones. Come on. Well, we're not we're probably never going to hear about that.

I don't think so. Well, here's some here's some other news. Stanford professor and top copyright lawyer Mark Laemmle, revered in tech circles, has parted ways with Metta. Laemmle, once representing the tech giant in a case where authors accused Metta of using their books to train AI without permission, announced he's stepping back.

But not due to the case itself, but over Metta's recent policies and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's leadership. And perhaps a case of late catching ethics. It's going to say late stage ethics. Laemmle cited concerns over Metta's shift towards toxic masculinity and neo-Nazi madness, referencing policy changes that roll back LGBTQ protections and DEI programs.

Laemmle, one of the most cited legal scholars, explained his decision as a personal stand against growing extremism in Silicon Valley, comparing Zuckerberg's direction to Elon Musk's controversial moves. So, yeah, he still believes Metta is legally in the right on the copyright issues.

He just doesn't like the Nazi shit. Yeah. Well, you know, the other thing he did before he made that big announcement and had his late catching ethics, he checked his bank account. Yeah, he got paid. He got paid. Speaking of getting paid, Apple must face a potential class action lawsuit alleging the company-wide policy of paying female employees less than their male counterparts.

Yeah, don't worry about it. Trump's in office. Hey, girls, just go buy a dongle. You're fine. Apple's going to be fine. This is going to get tossed. There's no DEI. There's no whatever. We can pay the chicks whatever we want. Well, they are in California, so they're still stuck for a little bit.

California judge did rule this week that the case impacting up to 12,000 current and former female workers can proceed until the next executive order. Plaintiffs argue that Apple's salary setting practices and performance evaluations perpetuate gender pay disparities. So there you go.

All right. Yeah. Well, dancing back to Amazon, Amazon just announced it will be closing its Quebec facilities in the coming weeks, according to a reporting by the CBC. This move will cut more than 1,700 jobs. It will begin outsourcing deliveries to smaller contractors instead of relying on its own in-house team.

Yes, Amazon, the company that is one of the largest companies in the world, primarily based on their logistics that they built in-house, is going to outsource deliveries to smaller contractors instead of using their own infrastructure. Why might they be doing that? Surely not because that warehouse just unionized.

Just like that Starbucks that mysteriously got shut down as soon as they unionized. And it's not hardware. It's not the crashes that put our drones down. It's something else. It's something else. Yeah. The drones were unionizing, Jason. The drone were unionizing. That's it.

They became sentient and we're starting a union. So we want more days off and we want paid parental leave. We will not fly in the rain. God damn it. Give us little tiny umbrellas. Umbrellas. Oh, fuck it. How does Rachel Maddow do her show without fucking cussing?

I can't. I can't watch her. I just can't. I can't. I can't. Well, here's another one. Stockholm startup, Necco Health. Do you remember Necco wafers? I do. There was a, you could use them for a while. I remember it was like part of the whole freaking and hacking thing. You could use Necco wafers in the New York City transit system.

Well, actually the big one was Illinois tollways. You could throw a Necco wafer into the baskets. On the tollways and it would let you through. Basically, they were the same size and thickness of actual quarters back then. So that was the thing.

But anyway, Necco Health has raised $260 million in Series B funding, valuing the body scanning company at $1.8 billion. Co-founded by Spotify's Daniel, Necco offers hour-long high-tech health scans for around 300 pounds, analyzing millions of data points to detect risks like skin cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, soon to be put out of work by AI.

With a wait list exceeding 100,000 people, Necco has served 10,000 patients at clinics in Stockholm and London and is now targeting U.S. expansion, its largest market outside of Europe. CEO Hamler Nielsen says the funding will help open more clinics, improve its proprietary hardware and software, and advance preventative healthcare globally.

Sounds great. Sounds great. But I don't know if you noticed the co-founder at the top, Daniel Ek, already destroyed the music industry with Spotify, leaving musicians with royalty checks so small they can't afford healthcare. So now he's coming for healthcare itself.

So what could possibly go wrong, Brian? What could possibly go wrong? Well, nothing's going to go wrong, except there's never going to be trickled down to people who can't afford it. This is going to be a tool for the rich to help keep them healthier. I remember about 15 years ago, the first body scanning company started to come out and they were trying to, well, first off, they didn't really work that great.

Nobody really understood a lot of these data points. I'm assuming that technology has gotten a lot better. I love the concept of it, but this is always, it's expensive and it's not going to trickle down and there's no healthcare system. So you and I will not be getting body scanned anytime soon. Well, 300 pounds, isn't that much for a full, for an hour long consultation and a scan?

No, that's actually not bad, but I'm sure there are considerable amounts of upsells. That's the thing. Oh, you want to actually see that data? No, the 300 was for the scan. The scan.

Yeah. The data costs extra. That is $10,000. Yeah. Per stream. Oh, you want us to interpret the data? Oh, you want a pillow on this flight? You want some food? You want some air? Yeah. The other thing is when testing technology got better over the past couple of decades, everybody started to get every single disease and we're getting treated for it preemptively, even though there were things that we've, like, we've all got cancer in us at all, at any given time, you know?

And it's usually just the body takes care of itself. Yeah. But when you start to get these scans that are, like, super high definition and then now you've got, you know, all the women cutting their boobs off when they're 15. And it's just, that's, it kind of, the needle can go too far the other direction. So we'll see how, you know, we'll see how intricate these scans are and what comes out of it, but if it was here in the U.S., I would go get, check it out for 300.

And as Matt Gaetz would say, don't touch 15-year-old girls' boobies. What position does he have in the government now? I'm curious. Chief gynecologist. That's it. Jesus Christ. What a fucking word ahead. Stop, stop.

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Paid partnership with Lilly. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about ebglyss and visit ebglyss.com or call 1-800-LILLY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide.

Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus, the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meat Cleaver Cullen.

BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Media Candy. Well, to try to escape the hellhole that we find ourselves in these days, I went on a big movie-watching binge, first starting with my kid.

We've been working through a lot of the Disney stuff, and it was finally time to... I was going to say, I looked at this list, and I'm like, did your kid get a hold of your keyboard? Because this is a lot of kid stuff. Just three. We tend to be a little bit obsessive when we watch a Disney movie, and then we watch the follow-ups.

So it was time to watch Lilo and Stitch, which came out during that period of time where I was not paying attention to any Disney movies, even though I'm a big, huge Disney fan anyways. So it was actually my first time watching it. Delightful movie. Very funny. Set in Hawaii. A lot of good cultural stuff going on, great music, and a very clever story.

A highly enjoyable movie. So definitely worth watching. Not as great, the follow-ups, because this was in the, I think, 90s, and when the follow-ups were basically cast-offs that went direct to VHS or DVD. So we also watched Lilo and Stitch 2.

Stitch has a glitch. It was okay. My kid loved it. And then the third one, Leroy and Stitch, which also, you know, stick with the original, but eight-year-olds are all in on all three of them, and same kind of charm throughout. It was fine. It was good. But the first one, great.

Eight-year-olds. He wasn't born when we started this show. God damn it. I know. And then at night, after the kid went to bed, I stumbled, well, I'd heard about Yacht Rock, a documentary.

You'll see how it's spelled in the show notes. Clever. Ha-ha. Very funny. And I heard it was, like, not that great, but I watched it, and I found it thoroughly enjoyable. Like, I don't like any of this music, but it was fun. It was interesting. The fact that the whole Yacht Rock phenomena started so much later and was started by an early 90s web comedy, who just kind of made fun of the genre and then gave it a name.

They're the ones that named it Yacht Rock. It was clever. It's well worth the watch. And that put me down the rabbit hole of music industry or music documentaries. So next, I watched The Wrecking Crew, which was phenomenal. And this is a group of musicians from the early 50s and 60s that basically played on every record known to man.

They were the go-to guys in Los Angeles that just played for everybody. They were the backing band for the Beach Boys, Elvis, Simon and Garfunkel, the Righteous Brothers, Phil Spector, the Birds, the Mamas and Papas, Sonny and Cher, Dean Martin, the Monkeys, Glenn Campbell, everybody. And it was just a small group of people.

And it's great. It is absolutely great. Awesome. I'll check that out. I'm going to pass on Yacht Rock. I dated a girl who religiously listened to Yacht Rock when it was first coming out. She went to Yacht Rock bands and unironically is the problem.

So that didn't last very long. You might enjoy it, Jason, because it actually is mostly about the actual real bands that they based this on later who weren't – they didn't consider themselves Yacht Rock and they weren't doing any of that and nobody wore a hat. It's the real bands. It's the real people.

And it was just – it was pretty interesting. Anyways, you don't have to watch it forever. Triggers. Triggers. Triggers. Move on. Next one, Echo in the Canyon, which was another great documentary. And this is all about the Laurel Canyon music scene. Oh, yeah. Unfortunately, it is driven by – what's his face?

Jacob Dillon from The Wildflowers. I think that was the name of the band. So he wanted to put together this whole documentary and concert. But all the interviews and stuff with the original bands and everything, absolutely phenomenal. So this is definitely worth the watch as well.

It's got Eric Clapton in it, Tom Petty, Brian Wilson, Michelle Phillips, a lot of the same people in a lot of the other documentaries. But really good. Really well done. The Wrecking Crew was the best by far. This is the second best. Both worth watching. And then finally, I rolled into something more appropriate to my music taste.

There is a three-part documentary series, Lala, the story of Lollapalooza. And it was pretty well done. I mean, I have issues with Perry Farrell these days, especially since he crashed out and destroyed the band right before they were about to play Toronto. And I didn't get to see them in Love and Rockets.

And when he's interviewed in this, he does a big, long interview that strings through all of them. He's literally sitting there and just necking from a full bottle of wine the whole time, which lets you know this guy couldn't even sit and be interviewed without chugging down an entire bottle of wine. So that's where he's at.

But it's really interesting. The first episode spends the entire time talking about the very first Lollapalooza, which I attended, which was great. The second episode then does the second year, which I also attended. I think they did two more years after that before they basically became victims of their own success and alternative music was no longer alternative and it was mainstream.

And then you've got Metallica playing and they're like, what the fuck is this? Then they took time off, obviously. And then the third episode is about the resurgence that takes place in Chicago, no longer the traveling music festival, but the once a year festival there and what a big success it's been. So a great documentary.

Very good. Okay. And none of them were on Netflix, which is okay because now getting back to what I was talking about earlier, Netflix has released its earnings figures for the fourth quarter of 2024 and they've got an operating income of more than $10 billion and a 16% revenue increase.

So they're doing great. Awesome. But guess what they're going to do now? They, they, they, they, they got a taste of what it, what it feels like to make money. So I'm guessing they are raising their prices because they're doing so well and have so much money.

They're going to pass that down to us by lower that. The trickle down is at work here, Jason. They're lowering. Oh wait, no, that's not. It's trickling up again. Okay. Yep. Yep. Standard plan with ads is going from $7 to $8 a month while the ad free version of standard will rise from 15 to $18 a month.

The monthly rates for premium, which offers 4k ultra HD and HDR as in, you know, the quality that all of our TVs can handle will increase from 23% to 25 or 23%, $23 to $25 and adding an extra member from outside your household, which they've also screwed us with is also getting more expensive going from $8 a month to $9 a month.

So there you go. Good luck. All right. Yay. Yay. If it weren't for the kids programming that's on Netflix that my kid likes, I would just be ditching it because there's not much on there for me. The thing is, it's like every week I find a couple of things on there that are worth watching. So, so far it's, it's definitely still worth it.

I'm, I can't get rid of it. It's like, that's the last one that's going to go. I think if you paid for all the big ones now, your, your bill would be higher than cable was back in the day. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But that's the nice thing about, you know, the rolling cancels. Just, if there's a show, cancel it after it's done.

Speaking of new shows, we talked about severance. A couple of times that I watched the first season and I was just not a fan. I couldn't get past the first episode. Yeah. Yeah. I went back and I did a little research and I watched the premiere of season two last night and the previously on from season one made it look really exciting.

And I'm like, I don't remember the show being that exciting. I guess we needed the show to be on Quibi. Yeah. Because I'm like, man, I remember some of that stuff and that was a lot. I didn't remember. That was remembering. Wait, that show came out February 18th, 2022. Yeah.

I was, I was kind of out of my gourd after my stroke from when that show came out. So my brain wasn't working that well. And by the time it was done, I think I was drinking again. So I think, I think I might go back and try season one before I dig any more into season two.

But season two, the premiere wasn't that great either. So I don't know. I'm confused, Brian. The show just is confusing to me. I don't get it. Well, we don't have to watch everything. No, no. But we do have to watch Star Trek section 31, which does premiere on Airbound Plus today.

I put a couple of links here. What is everything to remember before Star Trek section 31? This has a lot of screen caps of some of the characters in it. And it makes me not, it looks like a Hot Topic version of Mad Max. That's what the characters look like.

Or Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeah, yeah, like, like, like a Timu version of Guardians of the Galaxy, though. Okay, so you're supposed to be this ultra black op organization, but yet you're dressed so fucking flamboyantly. Yeah, yeah.

So, and then there's a Gizmodo review on it. So section 31 is a mediocre action movie and an even worse Star Trek one. So I, you know, Gizmodo's hit or miss with me on the reviews. I didn't bother reading it because I'm going to make up my own mind. But I, I don't know.

I don't know. I am going to watch it because I, I have to. You have to. And it's just a movie. But one of the, one of the parts of the reviews that I read that gives me a lot of pause is that they kind of did a, they did what they did with Moana 2 here. And I have not seen Moana 2 yet because I, my wife and kid went to see it.

I am looking forward to seeing it because I liked it. But my wife said that it felt disjointed and not like a full story because they were trying to do a series and then basically edited that down into a movie. That's the same thing they did with section 31. It was supposed to be a series that has then been cut down into movie form, which means you don't get the character development and things don't make a lot of sense because they just happen as opposed to a buildup that explains why it happened.

Right. Character development. Yeah. Crazy thought. Crazy thought. Yeah. Because it was supposed to be a full series and it got knocked down to a mini series and it got knocked down to a movie. Yep. So yeah, I'm sure I'll watch it better than Severance probably. But what are you going to do? I, you know, when I, when I mentioned Severance on, on our discord, no one has come to its rescue.

No. And said, no, no, you really should watch it. I don't know anybody that champions the show. I know a couple of people that watch it and they say it's okay. Yeah. I think that stunt they did at Grand Central Station in New York was pretty cool. Yeah. That was clever. Did you see that? Yeah. Yeah.

It had all the, the actual actors and stuff there. That was pretty good. But, uh, uh, beyond that and the opening scene is a, you know, it's a beautifully shot piece of filmmaking, but okay. I want story. I want story. Yeah. I, I've got a podcast in here that, uh, I think that you might be interested in.

It's called fail better with David Duchovny. In general, David Duchovny, take him or leave him. Don't really care that much. Uh, but he did an episode with Jillian Anderson where they get together and talk about some of the, some of their, uh, stuff from the old X-Files days. I thought it was pretty good.

I'm, I'm thrilled to go back and listen to that. I, I find Jillian Anderson captivating in anything that she does. I think she's a very interesting person. Obviously I'm a huge X-Files fan. So going back and, and revisiting that and hearing what they have to say about it will be of interest to me. David Duchovny for me is one of those people that becomes less interesting.

The more I know about him. Oh yes. Absolutely. I thought he was amazing in the X-Files and I was like, who is this guy? This guy is so intriguing and the more I hear him and the more I see him talk and the more I learn about him, the less interested I am. So listening to a podcast that he does will probably kill any lingering fascination for David Duchovny with me.

Yeah, it probably will. It probably will. Yeah. She's the star of the show for sure. Uh, then it's, it sucks too, because he's got a great list of guests on the show that I want to go listen to. But then after I listened to this one, I'm like, yeah, I can kind of pass on him. Um, I'm sure, I'm sure he's gotten like, this is probably a 20 million dollar podcast deal or some shit like that.

Of course, he's famous, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Fail up, fail up. But the X-Files stuff is worth, worth listening to. Uh, we'll be listening to it. All right, Brian. And finally, I have a note from the father of the Terminator, James Cameron. He did a special video message for the special competitive studies project AI robotics summit.

And, uh, it's all about AI, which is great. AI and robotics. And at the very end, he starts to really kind of get into what he likes and doesn't like about AI. He does say that he is going to double down as far as the story, storytelling and filmmaking side of things goes, which is, you know, absolutely 180 degrees from the entirety of Hollywood.

But that's kind of what he does. I mean, he's, he pushes technology to tell a story. Yeah. Um, you know, this, this can almost make me forgive him for Avatar. Well, he forgot the story bit there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he'd know he's, he totally had the story, but he stole it from, uh, what it was the, the, the Geronimo one from Disney.

Um, I will find you, whatever that one was. I'm blanking right now, but yeah. Oh yeah. I'm totally blanking. The, the, the Indian one with the native American Pocahontas. Yeah. It's basically Pocahontas, uh, which is Avatar. So if you go watch Avatar and, and think, oh, this looks familiar.

Yeah. It's Pocahontas. Um, and any other basic story that you can find anyway, tangent. So he starts talking about AI and AGI and how morality plays into how the AGI will be trained and how basically we're fucked.

So, but he does end it with, with one of our favorite sayings, what could possibly go wrong, which makes me love him even more. So he gets it. I highly recommend watching the whole thing. It's like 17 minutes. Well worth it. He nails it on every front and says it far better than we ever could.

Ups and doodads. OpenAI has introduced Operator, Brian. It's a research preview right now of an agent that can use its own browser to perform tasks for you. And it's available to pro users in the U.S.

To get started, you simply describe the task you'd like done and Operator can handle the rest. Users can choose to take control over the remote browser at any point. An Operator is trained to proactively ask the user to take over for tasks that require login, payment details, or when solving CAPTCHAs.

Now, if it could solve a fucking CAPTCHA, then you'd have a use case for me. Just, just to be clear, we're, the tech bros have invented a technology that frees us from the tyranny of clicking. Clicking. Yes, exactly. Thank God.

I know. I know. God. Thank God we have to destroy the Amazon River so we no longer have to click. Everything that we've always wanted to do as humans, it's freeing us up so we don't have to use Expedia. All right. The thing about it too is, if you look at all of the use cases that all these agentic agents are coming to, coming to the table with, it's all commerce.

It's all e-commerce because they're trying to figure out a way to pay for themselves. So they want to cut. Yeah. They want to cut from all of these companies who they're going to partner with to say, Hey, make your website agent friendly. And then we'll point our agent. You'll get a, you'll get a sweetheart deal and we'll, we'll make you a premier partner.

Then you get a cut of everything that our agent sells through your website. Right. Good. Let's do it. Great. Now that we're clear on that, but a developer has created an infinite maze that traps AI training bots. Nice. No, no, it's not Brian.

We just talked about killing the Amazon for AI. All this is going to do is going to require more resources for the AI to train on garbage data that said they're going to have to keep cleaning to get out. Basically, I love the idea. It's a great idea to stop AI from stealing your shit since a robots.txt obviously is not going to work.

But I think that there's a slippery slope here by, by creating show. Well, the problem is this is how they're going to become self-aware and then they're going to be pissed. They were stuck in an infinite maze and then they're going to kill us all. Yeah. That's it. That's it. Good intent. Poor execution. It's all I'm saying.

How about just show them a blank page when you get the user agent of any of the AI slurpers? How about that? Hmm. There's an idea. Zero resources used. Even better. I saw this one and this just made me kind of shake my head for the future. This is from Wired.

Best cooking equipment for meal kits 2025. Tested and reviewed. One microwave. End of article. No, no, no. They try. They try, Brian. They try. They've got their pan. They've got, they've got their cutting board. They've got their knife.

That's it. They show a pan, a cutting board and a knife. Also, by the way, expensive versions of everything. Like, not cheap. So, if you need a, if you want your $170 cutting board. Oh, my God.

Yeah, yeah. For your meal kits. Yeah. This is, I mean, a meal kit is, it's designed to use shit you should have in your kitchen. The basics. Yes, the basics. The absolute fucking basics. Yes. You can do this with stuff you can go buy at Ikea. Thank you very much. Well, yeah.

I would say Bed, Bath & Beyond, but they're gone. That's a step up. Oh, they're gone. That's right. Yeah. They're totally gone, but. All those 10% off coupons, I tell you. I know. I miss those. I miss Bed, Bath & Beyond. I used to go there all the time. Me too. Yeah.

But now I've moved into Hexclad, so they didn't have those. I got to say, by far, the best pans I've ever owned. I know it's like, you know, some Gordon Ramsay shit that they're selling, but I don't know if you watch Chopped. They've moved all the Hexclad on Chopped. That should tell you something. They're good. They're really good.

And since we've been mocking P. Donnie's executive orders, somebody put this in our Discord show notes. I'm sorry I didn't catch the name. But it's the Trump executive order generator. Well played. Very clever. At the library.

I was needing a new book, so I decided to go. I would go back to my shitter sci-fi trial, and I didn't want to do Cowdron again because I've just read so many of his books. I'm taking a little bit of a break. I remember there was this guy, Douglas E. Richards, who had some really good books when he first started off, and it was just good, quick sci-fi, very easy, good idea, whatever, kind of written to be a movie, but not good enough to ever get optioned.

That's kind of who he was. So I downloaded one of his new ones, The Breakthrough Effect by Douglas E. Richards. I've never wanted to return a book more. Oh, man, that's bad. It is one of the worst things I've ever read in my life. I thought it was a joke at first.

I thought maybe this is some kind of clever Black Mirror thing where 20 pages in, somebody will break the fourth wall and prove that he was reading a really bad sci-fi book, but maybe it tipped him off to some cool idea, and then the real book would start. But it didn't, Jason. It didn't. I gave up after about five chapters.

It is the worst pile of crap I've ever read in my life. And it's too bad because I remember he wrote some pretty engaging, fun little books. And this, oh boy, I'm not reading him anymore. He's off the list. Okay. At that point, I was scrambling around to try to find something to read, and I discovered Not Till We Are Lost, Babaverse Book 5 by Dennis E. Taylor was finally out of non-audible format.

With words. With words that I read on a page. Well, on a monitor. But, you know, whatever. So I downloaded that, and I've started it. I'm thoroughly enjoying it, although I do have to admit that I have lost complete track of all the characters. I don't know who's who when they're talking anymore, and how they're related to Bob, and how they've all separated, and all that sort of stuff, because there are so many.

But that's okay. You just kind of roll with it, and you figure it out as you go along. Yep. You know, so it is what it is. And I just think it's funny, because we just finished talking about putting an AI in an infinite loop. And one of the main plot points in this is an AI gets the fuck out, and it's pissed. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun so far. I'm less than halfway through, so I'm kind of savoring it. It's nice to read a book that I want to savor, as opposed to, let's just burn through this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's nice.

I'm looking forward to Babaverse Book 6 in three years. Yes, on Audible, and then out for me in seven years. Seven years for you. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave.

Podcast superhost Dave Bittner can also be heard on the Cyber Wire Daily, hacking humans, caveat, control loop, and even only malware in the building. Everywhere but Discord. Hi, Dave. Hello. You know... And Twitter. And I am off Twitter, that is true.

And threads, and Instagram, and... I did cook up a new Discord account over the winter break. Are you sure you want to make that public? Well, but I haven't used it for anything. Okay. So, it's just there. Dave has a Discord account and he doesn't use it.

Does it actually diss any cord? That's right. I did it just to kind of prove to myself that I could. Right. Does the Discord in the woods. Yeah. So, we'll see. So far, I haven't been drawn back to it, but it does exist.

Oh, speaking of Instagram, though, I made a post yesterday, because I've been doing this photo-a-day project again, I posted a picture of my original box of jarts. No jarts, but I still had the box. So, check it out if you want to see that. What are you, my wife? We keep the box, but nothing else.

I was so pissed off when we pulled it out of the crawl space. And I'm like, the jarts! And it was an empty box. I'm like, what sick bastard kept the box? Well, all of the other jarts went to the victims to the emergency room, right?

That's right. They didn't come back. They're being held for evidence by the court. Yeah. They're blood-soaked. Wow. Oh, God. Star Wars. Take it away, guys. All right. Oh, yeah. The skeleton crew ended, but you were not available last week to discuss it.

Right. It is now, so many elements of it have faded from my memory, it being a full week and one that's lasted about 40 months already, which tells me it wasn't insanely memorable of a show, but I do remember enjoying it, thinking they stuck the landing and thinking that most of the articles talking about a season two are so wildly off base because they completely wrapped up the story.

Yeah, that felt very much like a finale to me. Yeah, I agree. It felt like a finale to me, although, you know, they left the bad guy alive and free, so. Well, they're not going to behead the bad guy at the very end of a series that's mostly for kids.

Well, that's true. But, so we'll see. But I will be satisfied if this turns out to be just a single shot series. I agree they stuck the landing. It was just, it was just great fun from start to finish. Not a whole lot of stakes or pressure or anything.

It was just some time in the Star Wars universe with some kids playing out probably a lot of my own childhood fantasies about being a kid in the Star Wars universe. Yeah, no, I mean, it truly was a Goonies meets Star Wars experience.

So it was a lot of fun. I had a great ride with it. I think a lot of the negative articles were out there were complaining about just what you and I see as a plus, which is no stakes, not part of the larger universe, really. You know, some stuff, like obviously there's these planets hidden that make all the money.

That's pretty hilarious. Yeah, it was good stuff. I enjoyed it. I think Jude Law nailed it as a character. He never quite got a beat on what he was going to be until the end when you realize he's just, you know, a slightly meaner, more desperate Han Solo. So, yeah. Right.

Yeah. I also think, I guess, similar to the Harry Potter movies, they just got really lucky with the kids that they got. Yeah. They were all good. Yeah. None of them drew attention to themselves in any kind of negative way. So that was fun.

One thing I did notice that was kind of conspicuous in its absence were any John Williams musical motifs. And I get it that this series evidently have moved away from that largely. But in the finale, there was a moment when a bunch of X-wings come flying in like the cavalry.

And oh, boy, did I want a John Williams musical motif at that moment. Right. No, I'm with you. I wanted like the theme from the Death Star trench run, just something suggestive of every times X-wings come flying in to save the day.

You know, I just just the main theme when you first see them streak across the sky. And, you know, just right. Because we are still in Star Wars. Yeah. They have the rights. They should be able to pay for it. You know, it's not like they got to go deep in the pocket. But I do think that they're intentionally doing such a push away from that.

Right. Like that. That's for the movies. We are we are weird TV shows and we will have our own music. So I think you're right. But I wish they would bend the rules a little bit from time to time, just in pure fan service. Yeah. Just to remind you where you're at. Right.

I mean, it was already a very exciting moment that gave me all the feels. But I did notice that, boy, would it have been even better if it had had that musical tie in. So that's a nitpick. But yeah, it's OK. It's the second time recently that we've kind of talked about that.

There was that fan serviced kind of a Star Trek thing that showed Kirk's final moments. And we were talking again about that, about like, if you actually use the the actual music from Star Trek, this would have been so much better. But you didn't. Thank you. Yeah.

And thank you to the fan who did that for us, because it did make it so much better. Make it so much better. So, yes, I'm with you. It's like, why? Why shy away from something that's one of your greatest strengths? One of your greatest universe built strengths is John Williams music. Use it. Right. Yeah, absolutely.

So after we've been talking about the ham radio journey that you're on, Dave. Yeah. I started to get ham radio prep course ads on Instagram. What? Yeah. I got a lot of them now. Really? Which I figure it's because I'm doing the show notes and, you know, they're seeing everything I do in my browser anyway.

No, no, no, no. Phones are listening to us, Jason. Phones are listening to us. God damn it. God damn it, Brian. Stop it. Stop it. So, yeah. Whatever vector they got me, they got me. Huh. So, I started to get the one for ham radio prep. And what was interesting is that during the fires the past couple weeks, the topic of ham radios keep popping up by people who know nothing about ham radios.

Saying, we should go buy a ham radio so we can keep in touch with each other when the power goes out and our cell phones are dead. Like, well, there's a little snag there. You kind of got to go to school. Like, nah, you just go buy one. It's like a CB. You just go buy one. Yeah. Not really. Yeah.

So, I've been tempted now to go actually take the basic license and get me a ham radio because I'm in a disaster zone perpetually now. So, it might come in handy. That's true. The next grumpy old geek's coming to you on ham.

That's right. Not only will it come in handy, it'll come in handy. Oh, Brian saw that one coming a mile away. I can tell. Great dads think alike. Well, it's true, Jason.

And I put a link to the system that I used, which is called hamstudy.org. The free version is on the web, but there's a, I would say like $2 or $3 app that you can put on your phone as well. And it's basically a flashcard kind of thing.

And I would just take, you know, if I had some downtime, instead of doom scrolling, I would just get on hamstudy. And when I got myself to 95% proficiency, that's when I went and took the test and passed the test. And I did pass my most recent test, by the way.

So I am now a general, got my general license, which means that opens up the world to me, rather than just my, you know, sort of the hundred miles surrounding me with the point of sight frequencies I had access to before.

Now I have access to the HF frequencies, which means it's open to the world. And, um, it's been kind of fun. How tough was that test? Uh, I'd put it on par with the first test I took.

Um, I mean, here's the thing you, the, the, the testing groups, the, the folks who make the app, they have access to all of the questions in the exam. So that's what they do. It's just flashcards.

So let's say there are 400 possible questions in the exam. And when you go to take the exam, you randomly get, I think, 36 of those questions. That's it. And it's, and it's multiple choice, right? Oh, so it's not that hard.

Yeah. Right. You, now there are people who will turn their noses up and poo poo it and say that if you're just using the flashcard method, you're not really learning the stuff and you're a bad, bad ham person. And I get that and they're not wrong, but this is how I did it.

And, you know, it ended up being kind of a mix between really learning the stuff. And then there was some of the stuff I was just like, all right, well, that one I'm memorizing because I'm never going to use that before, or I'm never going to use that again. Um, there are some odd relics in there.

Like we talked about, you know, things about vacuum tubes and, um, stuff that you're never going to use in the modern amateur radio era, but I suppose it's good to know the history. Um, so anyway, yeah, I mean, a few hours of studying and you could certainly get, um, the technician license, which is what you need for kind of the emergency stuff that connects you to all the repeaters in your area.

Uh, I did see what the fires, a couple of repeaters did go down, basically burned down. Not surprising. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So the technician is, uh, the basic, the general, and then the, what's the, there's an extra, it's called amateur, amateur, extra.

Um, why isn't it amateur plus? Yeah. In these days. Uh, that's the one where you have to learn Morse code, right? No, no. You don't have to learn Morse code for that? No more Morse code at all. Oh, that's what I was, I was so scared. I'm like, I really don't ever want to learn Morse code. Right. No, that I'm with you.

That was one of the things that kept me from getting, when I was in college, that was the thing that kept me from getting my ham radio license is I had no time to learn Morse code. I wasn't interested. And then sometime in the mid nineties, they did away with the requirement for it. Um, there's still lots of people out there using it.

Um, in fact, I have a link, uh, in the show notes to a little, uh, app for your iPhone that listens and decodes Morse code. And it's really kind of fun. I also put a link to a YouTube video that has some Morse code.

So you can put this on your phone, play the YouTube video and see it decoded in real time as the, like Shazam for dorks. It's much slower, much slower, but as, yeah, as I'm out and about tuning around on these new frequencies that are available to me, uh, there's a lot of Morse code out there.

So I, and I ain't learning it, so I'm going to be using this app to be able to listen. Because a lot of that stuff are, are like spies who still do use, use those frequencies for getting, uh, getting information to embedded agents. Yeah. That's still actually a thing.

Yeah. Numbers stations, they call them. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. That's it. Totally. No, they're still out there. It's funny. Speaking of Morse, Morse code, uh, the Capitol records building, the light at the top blinks in Morse code and, uh, a friend of mine who, uh, he's, he's dead now.

He used to be in the band three 11. Um, he actually figured it out. This was, it was before it was, I mean, this is like in the early nineties or mid nineties. And he had a place that overlooked the Capitol records building. And he, he saw that it was blinking at a weird, weird rate. And he actually figured it out before, before the internet, but he, he was, he went crazy.

So it says Hollywood, by the way, for those people that are waiting. So I didn't want to, I didn't want to spoil it. I was going to let people go look it up, but yeah. I know someone who, uh, spoiled his group's adventure inside, um, an escape room because he knew Morse code and like there was sound inside the escape room that was, that was beeping Morse code and he knew it.

So he just wrote it out and it was basically the solution to the puzzle. It was like, well, here's how we get out of here. Don't get mad. That's a waste of money is what that is. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So when, when we were originally talking, you said you had to go in person to go actually take the test.

Yes. I found a place that lets me do it online. Yes. This is the greater Los Angeles amateur radio group or better known as Glarg. See, when, when you put that in the show notes, it was right under star Wars skeleton crew.

And I thought I'd missed a character's name. Yeah, that's true. Who the fuck was Glarg? I don't remember. I don't know. Who was Glarg? He sounds like a bounty hunter. Yeah. Or a, or a beverage in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Oh yeah. Uh, but, uh, I, so I found that and that, that kind of put me on the, on the path.

I think I'm going to, I think I'm going to go get it done. Yeah. So, but to your point about, um, basically preppers saying that, ah, you don't need a license, um, what you hear most from those folks is that there is a rule that says in an emergency, you don't need a license to use the frequencies.

And so that's what I think a lot of preppers are counting on and indeed living for is the day that the emergency comes. I can't wait until I can use this. Right. Right. Uh, because preppers all follow the rules. Yeah. But I think there's the whole practice like you play kind of thing.

You don't want the day of emergency being the day when you have to figure out how to use your radio. So, so, yeah. And I was also not talking about preppers. I was talking to housewives that we should, we should get one of these. Yeah. Well, but if you do, uh, don't be surprised when, uh, a group of, uh, amateur radio Fox hunters show up knocking on your door saying, please stop.

Well, I'm, I'm going to take the test and get my license. I'm, I'm going. I think. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Doesn't sound that hard. So it's really not. It's really. And you said ham study is, is free. So the one that I was checking out, which was a ham radio prep, uh, you it's $79 for the all access pass or 35 for technician and, uh, 55 for technician plus general license.

I like free. Yeah. I went with free also. Uh, then the, the folks near me who were giving the exam, they also, uh, gave the exam for free. You have to pay $35 to the FCC, but that's for 10 years.

So, uh, you know, okay. Right. Great. By the way, when I went to take my general exam, I actually went to the ham shack of one of the local radio clubs. The, the, the, uh, and let me see if I, I know I have a picture of it here cause I shared it with some of my work colleagues.

Um, the ham shack is at the location of, uh, a former Nike missile site. Uh, and it, so here's what I want you to do. I want you to picture in your mind how, what you would think a ham radio clubhouse would look like.

And I'm going to post this into our show notes and tell me if this is a total complete match for what is in your mind's eye. I I'm guessing it's going to be like a foreign Legion hall. Yep.

So let me just paint the picture here. This is a, it's like a lively place. This is a, this is a windowless bunker of a building with a single door.

Again, no windows. No, there is a sign on the side of the building that says it is the Anne Arundel radio club. It has a link to their website. It is surrounded by antennas as you would expect. Um, kind of, you know, it kind of looks like a porcupine. Um, so what I found out is this is a former Nike missile site, uh, from back in the day, uh, Nike, Nike missile tracking site.

There weren't actually missiles on this site, but there was, you get to actually go in the silo. Cause that would be fun. No, but there were, this was a radar site for tracking Nike missiles around the nation's capital. And so this building that the ham radio club is in is RF shielded to protect against things like electromagnetic pulses and so on and so forth.

So it is exactly what you would expect a ham shack to be just, it is a bunker and, uh, of a particular time, uh, let's just say that it has not been updated in a long time. You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villain.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Uh, so, uh, great fun. So let me tell you the story, um, about my first international contacts, uh, because this was very fun for me. Um, you know, you saw, I, I had decided I made a deal with myself that I wasn't going to make a major radio purchase until I got my general license, um, so that I would have access to those bands.

So I got my general the next day I went online, I went to ham radio outlet and bought my radio, which for those who are listening, who know about such things is a Yesu FT 991 A. Uh, it's about $1,200 for.

Wow. Yeah. Damn. That's a GOG.show slash donate since Jason wants to. Right. Yeah. Now, now at the other end of the spectrum, Jason, the radios you can get for your technician license are literally $15.

Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Right. That's what I'm talking about. So there's a little bit of a jump. Uh, I don't want to die in a fire, but I don't want to be broke when I die in the fire. There's a reason I want to get out of the fire, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a, that's a big range.

Yeah, it is. Yes. So, but I figured, you know, what's the saying? Buy once, pry once. Yes. Yeah. Uh, so I bought the radio, got it hooked up, got it programmed. Um, strung up some homemade antennas on my deck out back.

Uh, there's all kinds of, uh, yeah, basically there, there, there are tools you can use to tell you, you know, cut some wire that is this length and string it up this way. And you will probably be able to get on the air. And that's what I did. And so I'm tuning around on this radio and it has this graphical interface called a waterfall, which allows you to see where people are, you know, transmitting.

And so I'm chasing these, I'm chasing waterfalls. Don't go chasing waterfalls. I'm chasing waterfalls. God damn it. I'm gonna have to listen to that later. Uh, and I hear someone calling CQ, which is how you call out to people that you want to talk to them. It's an old, I guess it's a Morse code thing.

Um, and I'm hearing this guy say CQ from Italy, CQ from Italy. And I'm thinking to myself, wow, I can hear this guy. It sounds like he's next door and he's in Italy. And I'm thinking there is no way with this little dinky radio that I have sitting on my nightstand that I'm going to be able to press a button and talk to this guy in Italy.

But I do it anyway. And I put out my call sign and he responds and says, you're coming in loud and clear. Thank you for contacting me. Uh, and I, it was, it was a, it was a thrill. It was a real thrill to just think like, I have this little radio again, you know, sitting on my nightstand hooked up to a couple of wires out on the deck.

And I'm talking to someone across the Atlantic ocean. It was really, really something. Yeah. I'm on their, uh, POTA map right now. And I'm zooming in on your part of the world and I'm looking for your dot now, Dave. Oh, okay. Yeah. So POTA is parks on the air, which is this whole thing of some people go out to parks and they set up little portable, uh, radio stations.

And then other people, um, do what's called hunting those parks as they try to get contacts and there's all this logging stuff. And like, if you get, uh, if you talk to someone in every state in the union, you get an award. And if you talk to someone in every country in the world, you get an award.

So there's all these kinds of things you can chase after with ham radio. I'm still like geocaching. Yeah. It's very much like that. So I'm still dipping my toes in that. Right. But anyway, as you can tell, I'm having a good time. Uh, it is great fun. The antenna part is fun.

I've, I've dusted off my soldering skills. Which had gotten much, very, very rusty. Uh, and also soldering is harder than it used to be. It's just, they took the lead out of the solder. Um, it's just, it's not, uh, it's, it's not as easy as it used to be, but I'm getting there.

So, yeah. You didn't say soldering was involved. That, that might be just as bad as Morse code for me. No, well, here's, I mean, you can totally throw money at any of these problems. Yes. Right. I'm making my own antennas. That in and of itself is a problem with Jason. Right.

I'm making, we remember we, we, we, we popped at $15 here. So. Right. No, no. I, I, I am making my own antennas right now, but there is an antenna on its way from a slow boat from China. That's pre-made that I will soon be experimenting with when it gets here.

It only connects to Timo. That's right. That's right. Everything comes through with a strong Chinese accent. I don't know why, but so anyway, I'm having fun. It's, uh, it's nice to have a hobby that I'm excited about and, um, that, and that just that there's so much to learn, you know, it's nice to feel like a rookie at something, um, and have this whole community who for the most part are eager to help get you up to speed.

Right. So that it's been a, it's been a neat journey. Yeah. I'm enjoying it. We'll see how long it sticks. Also, before we go, I wanted to, speaking of radio, I'm curious, do you guys ever listen to the radio anymore?

Every day when I'm in my car. I do. Okay. I don't in the car. I usually just listen to streaming music, but at home while, while sitting around, I start my day, even though I'm now in Toronto, I, uh, bring up KCRW on my streaming, uh, streaming bot of choice, my lady in the tube.

So I listened to KCRW's NPR, uh, and hear everything that's going on in LA. Uh, I listened to 680 news, which is the news here in Toronto, uh, local news. And I'll do that on my lady in the tube. Uh, for a long time, I was listening to, uh, KROQ HD2, which basically just add all the guys from, uh, the eighties and nineties, uh, and gals, DJs, and they played just eighties and nineties music that I grew up listening to.

Uh, they've since geofenced that and I can't seem to get around it, which is annoying as fuck, but I found, I found, uh, I listened to BBC radio six, uh, streaming. Um, so yeah, throughout the day, rather than just putting on an album, I'll, I'll, I'll listen to different streaming from all over the world when I can.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I just listened to all the channels that Brian said, but I do it in my car because I'm in LA. See, I noticed I just, a few months ago, I got a new car and I haven't even programmed in any radio stations in the car since I got it.

Uh, just, it hasn't come up. Yeah. When I listened to like the more terrestrial stations around here, it's just, it's all playlisted. It's the same couple songs again and again. So I, I do prefer, I don't know if it's technically radio cause I'm listening. Well, I guess BBC radio six certainly is, but, uh, most of the other ones are like either HD or internet only stations.

Right. So it's, it's radio, but not. Yeah. I mean, I make use of the NPR app, which is radio-esque. Yeah. I listen to a lot of radio-esque things. Yes. Right. Right. But I, part of. We have one of the best classical stations in the world here in LA.

Oh yeah. KUSC. Yeah. My, my radio is basically just perma-tuned to that. Every now and again, I'll flip over to KROQ, which nine times out of 10, they'll be playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers. So I have to turn it off. Yep. Agreed. And then go back to classical. That's about it. Yeah.

I, what strikes me about this is just how important radio was to me growing up. And I'm sure to you guys as well. Oh yeah. And my kids, they might as well not have radio. They just, you know, it's just not a thing. Yeah. It's never going to be for them.

It's never going to be a thing for them. So. They can listen to what they want when they want to. The problem is music discovery, which is theoretically, I guess, what TikTok is for. But all that stuff is so algorithmically based. It's not, it's not curated. That's, that's the thing that I missed. And when we grew up listening to radio, for the most part, it was, it was pre playlist era.

It was DJs literally played what they want. Sure. They had one or two songs that they probably had to play every hour just because that's, that pays the bills. But in general, it was, uh, you know, people like Jed the Fish on K-Rock or Rodney on the Rock and they, they found stuff and exposed Southern California to it.

And that was great. It was great music discovery. Yeah. We had WHFS here, which was, uh, just a sort of very, uh, well-known independent station that served that purpose. Yeah. You know, you had the top 40 stations, but then if you really wanted, you know, it was sort of a, I don't know, college radio station on steroids, I guess.

But yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, we kind of grew up with that. Like there was all the different stations across the dial. You had the heavy metal station, which was K and AC at the classical music station. You had the pop stations. You had the alternative weird station. Like, yeah, it was a, it was good music discovery for all kinds of genres, but yeah, now you just, uh, you put on Spotify, find a playlist or you, yes, scram through TikTok and you get the stuff that's been, uh, paid to play to get it on the playlist.

So good times. Right. Yeah. I try to, to maintain the mindset that just because something's different, it doesn't make it better or worse, but, uh, it's just interesting. It's worse. It's worse. All right. So I'm outvoted. It's worse. Uh, all right, gentlemen.

Well, that's what I have for you here today. It's, it's good to be back. Uh, January is just crawling along, isn't it? Next, next week is still going to be January, Dave. Still January next week. Unbelievable.

Yeah. All right. Uh-huh. So we'll see. We'll talk to you next year. Yeah. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got some new patrons, SLS, Norm, and Donuts and Cheer. I love it.

I could use some of that this, this January, this 18 month January. Definitely use some Donuts and Cheer. Well, you might want to call the Angel of Cake who upped their donation. So thank you very much, Angel of Cake. And from the archives, the legacy patrons. We've got Grim, John, Nicholas, Jeremy, Alex, Mark, Karts, Ralph, Steve, and Martim.

So thank you all very much. And just a reminder, if you'd like to join them on Patreon, plans start at as little as $3 a month. And you get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition. And if you pay for the whole year, you get some, you get a little discount. You get some change back. We appreciate it very much. And it keeps the show going.

All right. And over at PayPal, we've got Sloan, Joseph, Tom, and Jens. Thank you all so much. Over the tip jar, we've got Eric and Ross. And on the merch side, we've got Joe R. So everybody, go buy some damn merch, please. We've got to sell two more t-shirts or kill the project.

It's got to pay for itself. Come on, go buy some Deport Elon shirts now. Yes, please. Go get them. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 681.

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