683: There IS a Spoon!

This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Brews Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel. Three straight days with pool deck bare knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and non-stop action.

The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at BKFSEA.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. What a fucking week. February is looking to last longer than January, Dave, at this point, let me tell you. You know, here's the funny thing. It's going faster for me. I didn't even realize. We're a week in already. This took three years in January. I don't know.

I don't know. The news comes fast and furious. None of it makes sense. Most of it's stupid. I mean, it's all stupid. So here we are. Buckle up. We got a lot more of this coming. I've got to say, though, this week I am thoroughly enjoying Blue Sky. I have gotten so much value out of blue sky. I nailed it getting in early and following the right packs of people that happen to be, you know, scientists and things like that that led me to more interesting people. So I have gotten great

on the ground news from Washington this week. It's been awesome. Relatively speaking. Relatively speaking. Yes. Awesome. Awesome is a loaded term. Also, I found like a bunch of really Substack newsletters that I've been thoroughly enjoying and laughing my ass off at. But the two surprising wins this week were Wired and Rolling Stone.

Got some serious journalism coming out of those two places. What the fuck happened to you guys who dusted you off and exhumed the corpse of journalism? I know. Actually, Rolling Stone and Wired both were pretty great for a long time and then were crap And yeah, yeah, I guess they just need the threat of external annihilation to light the fires within.

Must be. Must be. This is some rock and roll and punk rock shit going on right now. So I guess they're like, OK, let's let's you know, we've got cyberpunk dystopia, which got Wired going. And then, you know, this is the perfect time to make rebellion music. So Rolling Stone obviously woke up. So yeah, I can see that, I guess. Do you remember last time, though? It was Teen Vogue. That's what it was.

Teen Vogue. The first time the Mango Mussolini was in office, Teen Vogue was ripping them out every week. Oh, no, they stepped up big time. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if they're I haven't heard anything about them this time. So, you know, yeah, I think the thing that gets me about this last week is that everybody is now an expert on acronyms, because you cannot wade into these waters without trying to figure out what all the fucking acronyms mean. And it reminds me of COVID, where everybody became a

fucking virologist. Then with fucking Bitcoin, everybody decided that they're a financial expert. And now they're just they're over the top with the acronyms. But they complain about them. And I'm like, dude, did you not see the inauguration? He started out with YMCA. This is going to be the acronym fucking presidency. Come on. Well, just a quick note on on that concept of instant experts in every field. I know I've also been enjoying Blue Sky. I hardly ever venture over to that the site formerly

known as Twitter anymore. But when I do, I have to say it is amazing. Maybe maybe Elon has a point because he has held on to a core user group that are instantly experts in whatever happens to be in the news. Oh, every single one of them. I know they know everything about air traffic control.

They know everything about the price of gold. They now have finally figured out the price of eggs and the problem there. I mean, they are experts, Jason. No matter what you throw at them, they fucking know. You know what? That's that open access to Grok AI. It must be. Yeah, it is. It is educating, educating the masses. Oh, man. Every time I post something over there, I just I get such hate

spam. Oh, my God. I can't post anything there now. I'm pretty sure that I've been shadow banned because the occasions that I do actually post something, it's it's fucking like, you know, it's it's crickets. Oh, yeah. No, they've got they've got the algorithm going on over there. You can you can actually just watch it in real time. You post anything that's just generic or bubbly.

You can watch the view count go up. But if you if you even mention if you put the word the letters E and L together, you get blocked like there's nothing. So it's it's pretty it's pretty insane. And no matter what I do, I have tried blocking Trump's profile and Elon's profile.

I have tried ignoring. I have tried to see less of these types of posts. No, they will not stop. No, you can't. No. Blocking doesn't block. Banning doesn't ban. Nothing does. Amazing. All right, let's get on to some news. In the news.

Well, it's kind of more of the same. Yeah, I was about to say there is a there is one topic. Yeah, well, I just needed the interstitial to play. Come on. This is OK. We have a formula that we must stick to, Brian. OK, so we started out the week and I asked on Blue Sky.

I'm like, does anybody have the names of these little ships that are running around with Elon? And then almost instantly Wired came back with the names. Why? Yes, we do. Yes. Well, here you go, sir. It was Akish Boba, Edward Corustein, Luke Ferretor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Klieger, and Ethan Chaltron.

I've been wondering what Gautier has been doing ever since that one hit wonder he wrote. Yeah, I'm telling you, man. It's just a government that I used to know. That's it. Oh, man. I heard it. I heard him on the radio the other day after he retired. He's like, I just don't want to be that guy anymore.

OK, great track, man. I still love it. Yeah. He's like, I don't want to play it for the rest of my life. I'm like, why not? It's a banger. Come on. Fire. It's fire. It's popping. So I only mentioned the names because, well, of course, immediately after that, Elon came out and said, I'm sorry, Emperor Elon came out and said that, no, you have committed a crime by saying their names, speaking them aloud and letting people know.

You have you have thus doxed my people, my minions. And everybody's like, fuck you. You're an idiot. Well, yeah. OK, first off. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Just go ahead. I'm just going to say what everybody already knows. The people that care. Nobody voted for Elon.

This is doge. Isn't hasn't been ratified by Congress. They are a fucking rogue group running around, basically stealing all of our information. Yes. Yes. OK. Just making sure that every just in case anybody's been living under a rock.

OK. OK. Yeah. Just to set the we just needed to set the baseline there. Yeah. That's right. And I'm just calling them doggie. I'm sorry. I'm just calling them doggie. I can't say doge because it sounds so fucking doge. We'll call it doggie because they're fucking us up the ass. Exactly. Doggy style, baby. Doggy style. So, of course, when Emperor Elon speaks, Trump's hounds also jump.

So, the Trump appointed D.C. U.S. attorney Ed Martin issued a warning of criminal consequence for anyone exposing the identities of the doggy crew. So I wonder if they're going to get Snoop Dogg on there, too. That would be great. It's amazing that we can't publicize the names of private citizens who are working for God knows what kind of entity.

Yes. An illegal entity. An illegal entity that has no rights whatsoever to be doing anything that they're doing. Yep. So, and then you look at the demographic of the kids. They're from 19 years old to 25 years old. And then you see headlines like, what if Elon Musk's doggy kids just had an explosive screaming tantrum?

And you go, well, yeah, they're 19 to 25. They're just like we talked about me last episode with no couth or decorum in the workplace. This is the fucking same people. Put a bunch of little Jasons running around. That's what it is. Look, I wouldn't want me running the government.

I absolutely don't want you running the government, Jason. No, not at all. And one of the other engineers that weren't named in the original list of wired engineers was Marco Elez. He was 25 years old and he had to resign yesterday because somebody figured out how to use the Wayback Machine and found a bunch of his old tweets.

And here are just the greatest hits. Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool. I feel like we should just put that on our money now. That would be good. That'd be good. Or the next one is pretty good. Would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the earth.

See, that's what got him in trouble because we're supposed to be tight with the Israelis right now. We're just turning Gaza into Magaza. That's the plan. Magaza. That's it. Okay. Yeah. I'm not even going down that road. I'm not going down that road at all.

So, yeah, this is to the surprise of no one. And I'm sure the other kid, what was his name? Edward Coristine. He's getting pressed because his handle was Big Balls before. And, yeah, that's just because everybody wanted to say Big Balls on the news.

Well, it does make for a snappy headline. It does. Government being dismantled by Big Balls. Yeah. It was a fine ACDC song, too. Yep. So, I put in a few extra links in there because why not? I feel like we need to put together our The Government is Collapsing playlist.

Ooh. We got Big Balls. We got Somebody I Used to Know. We'll work on this. Yeah. We got to get some doggy style in there for sure. Oh, man. Oh, and I couldn't figure out where to put it in the show this week, but I just have to mention it. I told you. I saw this on Blue Sky this week, and it was my favorite new term, and it was the broligarchy is taking over.

Yes, the broligarchy. Yeah, 110%. So, also, moving on, doggy employees have been ordered to stop using Slack because when you use Slack, you are under Freedom of Information Act oversight, which means that they can, you know, the public can subpoena.

You can't be a rogue organization if you're using Slack. Slack. I know. I hate to point out the OPSEC on that, but yeah, that's kind of dumb. I mean, they're doing it in plain sight. You have one headline here that you didn't discuss. I just want to mention this quickly, and I will even tie this back into music.

U.S. government officials privately warned Musk's blitz appears illegal. One has to wonder why they're privately warning instead of fucking doing something about it. Standing up and screaming off the top of the fucking rooftops, and it's not appearing illegal. It is illegal. So, to tie it back to music, I've talked a while back about the guy from Eve 6 and how he was killing it on Twitter.

He has moved over to Blue Sky, killing it there again as well. He actually tweeted to Schumer, Chuck Schumer, who posted some sort of link about how this crazy stuff is happening. He was like, if only there was some government official that was aware of this that could do something about it.

Oh, somebody posted a video when the blitzkrieg had just started from some DNC convention with all of these idiots line dancing in front of the stage. And I'm just like, yeah, that's what we're dealing with here.

It's going to be down to the people, down to the people. So, yes, yes, they've been the doggy employees have been ordered to stop using Slack because they need to move things into the White House system, which is not under the FOIA request. But what they didn't really think about is that, well, the organizations that they are interacting with are not under those same rules as the White House.

So, you can still do a FOIA request for all of the agencies that they're fucking around with, which at this point seems to be fucking all of them. Yes. Now, and the next one, which starts to bring everything into focus.

This is from my wait for that shoe to drop file. Why don't you take this one, Brian? Sure. Okay. Everybody was kind of puzzled why Elon was going after USAID, an organization that very few people had probably heard of. Sure. I'm sure there are a lot of financial shenanigans of one or two things that were brought to light.

Like, maybe we shouldn't have been giving that money here or there, but that happens with these organizations. My understanding of USAID, after I looked into it a bit, and I actually even know somebody who works for USAID. Used to. Right now, she's still employed. Oh, I know people that have been, yeah, I know people that have already been let go.

It's an amazing organization that actually does keep our country, USA, a lot safer around the world and does good. And it's one of the few things that's out there that actually makes people go, oh, hey, your country, not so bad. Exactly. So why would he be going after that? And, you know, he's dismantling it.

It's the only thing in the news for like three days straight. And what the hell is happening at USAID? Congressmen are going there to knock on the door and get their picture taken asking, what are you doing? And then not getting any answers because nobody does fucking shit against this guy. But anyways, big brouhaha. And then this story drops.

Elon Musk's enemy USAID was investigating Starlink's contracts in the Ukraine. Yeah. There you go. Now we know why. And it's important to realize that there are three motivations for everything that is going to happen over the next few years.

Revenge. Yes. This one. Sheer lunacy and idiocy. That's almost everything else that Trump does. And third, greed. That's it. Every decision that you see this administration make, and I use the term administration extremely loosely, will be based on those three things.

Just dial down to which one it is. I think revenge and greed are the two main drivers right now. Yeah. Yeah. So the funny part. Well, you know what? Let's just keep on with the stories. Let's keep rolling. Because the hits keep coming, Jason. Yeah. They all kind of tie in together here.

Now, I did have a little bit of – I took a little umbrance with Wired for this headline. USAID workforce slashed from 10,000 to under 300 as Elon Musk's Doge decimates agency. Well, you know me and my – Words, man. My problem with the word decimate is the fact that it – it doesn't mean that.

It doesn't mean that a word. So I asked ChatGPT. I'm like, is it pedantic to point out that the headline USAID workforce slashed from 10,000 to under 300 as Elon Musk's Doge decimates agency is technically wrong? And ChatGPT came back with, yes, it's a bit pedantic, but also accurate.

But OK, ChatGPT, that is the very definition of pedantic. It's still accurate. You need to add that part. The word decimate originally meant reducing by one-tenth. So if USAID's workforce dropped from 10,000 to under 300, that's a 97% reduction, not a 10% one.

However, in modern usage, decimate is often used to mean devastate or drastically reduced. So while the headline is technically incorrect in the historical sense, it aligns with how people commonly understand the word today. If you pointed it out, some might appreciate the precision, while others might roll their eyes.

Let's cast back our minds, Jason. Once upon a time, artificial intelligence meant what they now call general artificial intelligence, not just machine learning, which is what it actually fucking is. I just love the fact that it told me that people are going to roll their eyes, which is I knew exactly what they were going to be doing as soon as I read this thing.

I'm like, yep, people are rolling there. I'm like, oh, fucking pedantic motherfucker again. Anyway. OK, moving on. The U.S. General Services Administration, or GSA, has removed the spoon emoji from its video conferencing platform, preventing users from selecting it to express themselves.

This decision follows a wave of employees using the emoji to protest the Trump administration's fork-in-the-road resignation offer. Yeah. This is the world that we have chosen for ourselves, everyone. I, yeah.

I mean, you just can't. We're going to pull a spoon emoji because. We live in kindergarten. We live in kindergarten. Unbelievable. I do just want to point out that this fork-in-the-road thing, the resignation offer, is also complete and utter bullshit.

And if you happen to be a government employee and you've been given one of those letters, absolutely do not accept it because guess what? The budget hasn't been approved for any of this. It's gone through no official channels. Elon is completely – well, Elon's assistant that's sending out the emails, who's like 19 years old, are completely fucking making this shit up.

Yeah, yep. So, to that, to that end, yes, a judge has blocked the order until Monday. So, they've got a little bit more time on it. And we'll see what that – but here's the thing. Over 60,000 people have already checked the box that says, yeah, I'll take the money.

But I did a little – because I am pedantic. I did a little math on that one. So, that's a little more than 2.5% took that offer. Not quite decimating. Not quite decimating. But for comparison, 8.4% of Automatic's workforce accepted their buyout offer to leave.

So, the U.S. government is technically a better place to work for than WordPress. Sorry, Matt. By the way, Matt's got to be the happiest guy in the world right now. Talk about getting knocked out of the news cycle. Oh, my God, yeah. Although, he does like to be in the limelight.

So, maybe he's not happy. I'm sure if he could figure out a way to do it, you know, we would all be using Tumblr for sending in our social security checks at this point. I think he's going to need to pivot to get back in the news cycle. Maybe they're going to call it Word MAGA.

Oh, that would be good. That'd be good. I'm sure that there's a way to do it. MAGA Press. There's a way. MAGA Press would be – that's Twitter. You can't – or X, I'm sorry. That's taken. Don't hear much about True Social anymore. Do you? I see screenshots every now and again. And then I have to go – the only – the problem with when people post screenshots from True Social is I have to go to True Social to fact check it.

And 99 times out of 100 – It's not true. They're fake. Shocking. Yeah, they're fake. Look, people, you don't have to make fake shit up about Trump because the real shit is just as entertaining. I know. I wish we would stop doing that. Just post the real stuff.

It's horrific enough. That's all you have to do. That's all you have to do. And, you know, I know people are going, would you stop talking about – no. This administration is at the balls integrated with technology. So we're stuck with it. We're just stuck with it.

So, sorry. Yep. I did not see this one coming. I did not see this one coming.

There's a lot of things this week I didn't see coming. This week, Arizona Senate Finance Committee advanced the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act, which, if passed, would allow up to 10% of the state's public funds to be invested in digital assets. And I don't know if you noticed, Bitcoin has dropped below $100,000 again.

Yeah. What happened to the moon? What happened with – The moon is hovering right around 100K, apparently. That's the moon. Okay. It was like 94 last night when I looked at it. So you wouldn't think that that's a big move. But if you're putting your state's public money into it, you'd kind of want, I don't know, something a little bit more stable or – I don't want to go back down the history there.

Now, not to be outdone, Utah's House Committee passed a bill allowing its treasurer to invest up to 5% of public funds in Bitcoin and stable coins. Other states, including Texas, Wyoming, and Florida are also exploring similar crypto investments. Massachusetts and Oklahoma are considering broader investments, including NFTs.

Oh, good. I would like my state's public money to be put into Angry Apes. That sounds fantastic. Oh, I'm sorry. We've had a national emergency. Have a JPEG. Oh, sorry. The link doesn't work anymore because that company went out of business.

Can I have a blanket? No. You get a gif. Fucking great. Now, I expect Oklahoma for this shit, but Massachusetts? Seriously? Massachusetts? Yeah. This is not fiscally responsible at all.

It's just ridiculous. But OK. Have fun with that. Yeah. And I love it that Arizona was pointing out that the U.S. government already has a cryptocurrency reserve. But no, they don't. It's just the money from Ross Ulbricht and the Silk Road that they've got sitting around that they just haven't been able to liquidate yet.

Yes, the Bitcoin that the government is holding is all taken from criminals. Mm-hmm. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Pardoned. I guess we can't say he's a criminal anymore because the criminal pardoned the criminal. No, no, no. He was – just because he's pardoned doesn't mean he wasn't guilty.

He was guilty of the crimes. He just doesn't have to go back to jail. I don't know if you also saw in the news that everybody gave him all this cryptocurrency as his starting off fund and he blew it all on some meme coins because he was fucking around. By the way, I wanted to mention that really quickly, meme coin.

Now, there was a term that we were using pre-meme coin. So in my estimation, using meme coin is actually whitewashing what they actually are, which is shit coins. Yeah, that's what we used to call them. We used to call them shit coins, but nobody in their right fucking mind would put money into something called a shit coin.

So we've renamed it meme coin, which makes it sound acceptable and good and safe. It's still a shit coin. It's still a shit coin. Just ask Hawk to a girl who stuck her head up for five minutes yesterday, posted a new video on YouTube, on our YouTube channel, and then immediately took it back down and then disappeared again.

Well, at least she doesn't have a podcast anymore. Somebody actually grabbed the entire thing and posted it to X. So if you want to go watch it, it's out there. I do not. I don't – I have no fucks left to give for Hawk to a girl. She overstayed her welcome way, way longer than she should have.

Yeah, that was a full 30 minutes. Andy Warhol only allotted 15. Yeah, she should have cashed out when she had the chance. She got greedy. She got greedy. Well, she tried to cash out. But the problem was she had already made millions of dollars off of her fucking podcast. Why not just take the money and run?

Oh, God. Now, here we go. Let's back to some real news. Police in Cleveland, Ohio are facing backlash after a botched murder case relied on faulty AI evidence. Detectives investigating the February 24 – We're looking for a six-fingered man. With 14 legs.

Detectives investigating the February 24 killing of Blake's story turned to the Northeast Ohio Regional Fusion Center. Now, that's not for actual energy fusion. The fusion center serves as a command center for gathering, analyzing, and disseminating intelligence and other public safety information.

All Doge employees, please leave that fusion center. It is not what we thought it was. Which used Clearview. Remember Clearview AI? Oh, yes. Yep, yep. We've been talking about them forever. So they've used that software to identify a suspect. K-On Tolbert.

I need some AI to help me pronounce that. I'm going to K-On. That actually just makes me want to go play Q-Bert. I hated Q-Bert. I love that game. I sucked at that game. You hated it because you sucked. Exactly. I hated that and I hated Zaxxon. I didn't like the – Oh, I love Zaxxon. Yeah, see, I think that's a certain type of person.

It likes those. So based on the AI match alone, police secured a no-knock warrant and arrested Tolbert. But a judge later ruled the AI generated six-fingered ID unreliable, suppressing all evidence stemming from the warrant. This man clearly has five fingers. If the six-finger glove doesn't fit, you must acquit.

Oh, man. What's up with all the OJ shit back in the news anyway? Come on, he's dead. Let's move on. So, yeah. Yep. People are still using Clearview. Yep. It's still going well. Yeah, it's still going well. Yeah.

Here we go. AI-driven arrests are on the rise. A Washington Post investigation found at least eight Americans – here's a real shocker – every single one of them black – have been wrongfully arrested due to facial recognition errors. So, shocking.

Indeed. Now, the European Union's AI Act has reached its first compliance deadline. As of February 2nd, regulators can now ban AI systems deemed to pose an unacceptable risk or harm. This is part of the EU's sweeping AI law, which officially took effect last August.

So we've just been, I guess, waiting for the AI police to show up. They're in line next to the Internet police and the Elon police. Now we've got the AI police, none of which exist. So, this act categorizes AI into four risk levels, with minimal and limited risk systems facing little to moderate oversight.

High-risk AI, like medical recommendations, will be tightly regulated. Brian, how are they going to differentiate between the good and the bad and the ugly? Because they all seem to be just as shit as the next one. That's fair. That's a fair assessment, Jason. I also wonder.

Yeah, because moving on, they might want to check out DeepSeek, because now it turns out DeepSeek's iOS app sends data unencrypted to ByteDance-controlled servers. Are you trying to tell me that AI system that when it came out, everybody said, oh, my God, this is deeply connected to the Chinese government, lied when they said that they weren't sending the information back to the Chinese government?

Bingo! You had a bunch of people went and used it anyways? Yep, bingo! Okay, that's awesome. What I love is that it's going... God, people are fucking dumb. I love it that it's going directly back to ByteDance servers, who say that they are not in bed with the Chinese government because of the TikTok deal that's going through.

Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, Jason. We have a virtual machine on this server that isn't connected to the TikTok servers, so there's a funnel. One goes directly to the Chinese government, and so does the other one. We just don't tell you that. Okay, well, anyway, in more Chinese AI news, OmniHuman 1 came out, and this is a kind of a...

I don't know how to explain it. You take a still photo and some voice, and it makes a movie for you. I'll just keep it in simple terms because we're running late. It is trippy as hell. It's still firmly stuck in the Uncanny Valley, though. Okay. It's getting better. Did you watch the videos?

No, I'm so sick of those. Oh, you got to watch these. They're pretty good. They're pretty good. They're still not... You can still... You still get creeped out. Right. You still get creeped out, but it's less creepy. It's AI, but with less creepy. Now, this one is the funniest one of the day, and quite possibly one of the most explosive ones.

Deep Seek, we talked about, you know, they made the news last week because they upended the whole AI world, saying that, oh, my God, you can do this shit for cheap, taking everything that's already been done already. Well, researchers created an open rival to OpenAI's O1 reasoning model for under $50.

That's right. Researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington have trained a reasoning model for under $50 in cloud compute credits. The model, called S1, performs on par with top AI reasoning models like OpenAI's O1 and DeepSeek's R1 in math and coding tests.

Yes. So, they basically... They're taking them and having them train them on each other now. So, these guys use Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking experimental version. These guys got to work on these fucking names. It's getting ridiculous.

So, here's the breakthrough, Brian. This is the breakthrough that these guys figured out when they were... Yeah, they can train it, but to make it really good, they added one word to the questions that they were sending to it and the prompts they were sending to it.

Okay. Wait. That was the word. They said, wait, which helped improve the model's reasoning accuracy because it took the time to think a little more, apparently. Well, it's just like a toddler. Why don't you think about your answer for a second?

Yeah. Take some time. Take a little time. Figure that one out. But that doesn't stop Amazon because they're doubling down. They're going to spend $100 billion on AI in 2025, which is up from $78 billion they spent last year. And Andy Jassy says, falling AI costs will drive even more demand, not less.

That's right. We're going to lose money, but we're going to make it up at scale. All right. Idiots. Well, prepare for a headline you're going to be hearing a lot this year. Just to change out the company name, Workday lays off 1,750 employees, citing demand for AI. Now, Workday is an HR and finance management company, and it's the latest tech giant to lay off a mass of employees in the name of AI.

They announced this on Wednesday in an announcement titled, Changes to Position Workday for the Future, i.e. without people. The organization shared that it's eliminating about 8.5% of its workforce with the 17,500 people. And the CEO said, he seemed to act.

1,750, not 17,000. Oh, sorry. You decimated them, Brian. I did. I decimated them quickly. The CEO acted really torn up about choosing AI over people, but he said, companies everywhere are reimagining how work gets done, and the increasing demand for AI has the potential to drive a new era of growth for Workday.

So, fuck you guys. Screw you guys. Keep it going. Keep it going. Lyft is partnering with Anthropik to bring the startup's AI tech to its platform. Basically, they're starting off with it handling all customer service complaints.

So, if you're getting raped in a car by your driver, you will get a chat bot from Claude to talk to you about it. Now, I have a problem with the name Claude. You know, I've used Claude quite a bit. It's nice for conversational AI things to come back and get decent replies and more human sometimes than chat GPT can be.

Just less snark, though. Yeah. But, yeah, if I'm getting raped in the back of my lift, do I really want Claude to the rescue? I want McFly. You know, it could be a Jean-Claude Van Damme, perhaps. Maybe. Maybe. Two trucks pull up, and he's balanced between them.

Exactly. Then he just drops in, boom, and nut slams. He puts his big balls on the problem. There we go. That's right. According to Lyft, the tool is already helping to resolve thousands of customer issues every day and has reduced average resolution time by 87%. Now, to be fair, I'm sure the vast majority of customer issues that come through are your car was five minutes later than I thought it was going to be.

And it's been trained on excess data, so it just sends back a poop emoji. Yeah, it sends back a poop emoji. He got a ride, didn't you? Shut the fuck up. Yep. Yeah. Speaking of Elon again, Tesla sales in Europe are plummeting fast. Electric reports that year over year, sales are down 18% in the United Kingdom, 31% in Portugal, more than 40% in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands, 63% in France, and a whopping 75% in Spain.

Overall, the takeaway seems to be that Europeans want Elon Musk and his fancy car company to fuck right off. And, yes, that is directly from the article. Awesome. Some media outlets have linked the company's cratering sales to its CEO's growing unpopularity, you think?

Go figure. Go figure. But I think Elon doesn't really give a crap too much, just like here, because, you know, who needs Tesla when you take over the entire government? Yeah. Did you see his reply to the guy from Ottawa who canceled the $100 million Starlink deal? Yeah. He just wrote back in a tweet, oh, well.

Fuck you. You are a public company, right? Yeah, he doesn't care. He doesn't care. No, he doesn't. Actually, I don't know if Starlink's a public part of SpaceX. Fuck it. Who cares? Who knows? He's still a dick. It doesn't matter. And German road traffic agency KBA's website on Wednesday showed the number of newly registered Tesla cars fell 59.5% to 1,277.

There were 34,500 vehicles that were registered in the battery electric vehicle segment. So they are getting hammered over there. Well, I mean, we knew it was going to happen anyways, even without Elon going full Nazi, because there's now just a lot of other competitors out there.

And you don't have to buy a Nazi brand when you can buy an old Nazi brand that's reformed itself. Tell me about it, Brian. Volkswagen is working on an entry-level electric vehicle that will sell for a base price of around $21,000. So this is part of the ID line of vehicles that they've got out there.

But this will be the first, like, low-price model. And it won't be ready until sometime in 2027. But as far as I know somebody that's got an ID, and everybody seems to like the cars. They're good. I was stuck behind the new ID bus, the electric bus, on the 101 the other day.

Ironically, on the other side of the electric bus was two Cybertrucks. I'm getting surrounded. It just reminds me that I saw a great Stephen Fry quote this week. He's like, how do you know Elon Musk isn't a Nazi? Nazis made great cars.

I'm laughing into the abyss. Here we go. Moving on. I saw this article over at Slate that I think everybody should read. It was an interview with Ed Zitron. The title of the article is, What of Tech's Angriest Critics Explains the Problem?

It's kind of what we do. But anyways, I like this. Modern AI is a horizontal enabling layer. It can be used to improve everything. It will be in everything. That's what came from Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos, what the fuck are you actually talking about? It doesn't mean anything. A horizontal enabling layer, like electricity, means nothing.

The actual thing to say about this is Jeff Bezos says complete nonsense on stage. AI is like electricity. Electricity has immediate use cases. Well, I'm going to use a technical term. Jeff Bezos is talking bullocks. On top of that, we are years into generative AI.

Where is the horizontal enablement? Where is the thing it's enabling? Two years. Show me one thing which you use that you go, Oh, damn, I'm so glad I have this. Show me the AirPlay. Show me the Apple Pay. Show me the thing that you're like, God damn, I'm glad this is here. I can't think of one, and I'm exactly the little pig that would want it.

I'm an enthusiast. I love this crap. Ed is awesome. I love Ed. It's a great article, but that was the key piece for me. I loved it. Yeah, he's been sticking his head up quite a bit this past week. And, I mean, he makes a very good point, you know, that the moat around AI is shrinking very quickly, and there is no use case for these people to make their money back.

Nope. OpenAI loses billions of dollars a year, and they lose money on every single query you send them. So, I encourage everybody that uses ChatGPT to query the shit out of it. I spent half an hour this week just asking ChatGPT how to DOS itself.

Who needs water, Jason? I know. It will tell you how to send itself a query that will give itself a denial of service, which it will get into a loop and over and over again say, oh, I ran out of memory. Oops, I ran out of memory. Oops, I ran out of memory. It is fun for the entire family.

I highly recommend it. Okay. Google has quietly removed its pledge not to use AI for weapons and surveillance. They basically just changed their logo or their catchphrase to, we're going to go ahead and be evil. Yeah, they just took out the word don't. Yeah.

Be evil. Dun, dun, dun. Or, wait, be evil. Perfect. And Meta has released a new policy outlining when it might stop developing or releasing AI systems it considers too dangerous.

The Frontier AI framework identifies two categories, high-risk and critical-risk AI. High-risk systems could aid cyber, chemical, or biological attacks, while critical-risk systems could lead to catastrophic, unmitigatable consequences. How big is the team and what are their qualifications that are making these decisions?

Well, I'm pretty sure they got the kid that just got fired from Doggy. I'm sure he got picked up by Zuck right away. Yeah. Who the fuck knows? I wonder whatever happened to the Facebook oversight board, if there's still a thing.

Oh. They don't do anything. They got replaced by AI long ago. Yeah. Sonos has announced that it has laid off 200 people in a letter posted to its site on Wednesday. The news follows a 100-person layoff in August, and both rounds arrive in the wake of a disastrously botched update to the Sonos app that alienated broad swaths of the premium audio hardware firm's extremely loyal fan base, me, and me being one of them, not you so much, but definitely me.

So, yeah, they're basically laying people off as they're getting ready to release more stuff. Perfect timing. Perfect. Yep. But guess who's hiring, Brian? Hmm. Billionaire venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has found its latest star hire, Daniel Penny, the ex-Marine best known for choking a man to death on a New York subway.

Penny, who walked free after a jury acquitted him, is now joining the firm's American Dynamism Fund, because apparently nothing says public safety like a six-minute chokehold. In a memo to investors, A16Z partner David Ulovich, and a quick note, I knew David from OpenDNS before he joined the dark side, and he was a very cool guy back then.

But David justified the hire by saying Penny's military background will help cozy up to police and defense insiders, because, of course, hiring a guy who killed a struggling man in broad daylight is a great way to impress cops. Ah, okay. Welcome to America, Brian. Welcome to America.

Fuck. I forgot I have a bookmark for how to file for my Canadian citizenship open still. I'll just move over there really quick.

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.

KFC 94, Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com.

Media Candy. I saw this come through the wires this week, and it was the Devil May Cry show's intro song is so stupidly glorious. And I'm like, wait a minute, Devil May Cry has a show? Turns out, yes. Netflix has ordered a new Devil May Cry animation for coming on April 3rd.

I talk pretty one day. I'm so used to screaming at AI, I forgot how to report regular news now. Yes, so it's a Limp Bizkit song, though, so I don't know how you feel about that. I don't really care about the song so much as I watched the trailer with the opening credits, and I like the style.

I played a lot of Devil May Cry, and this doesn't look almost anything like the game. So I don't know if it's going to land or not, but I'll give it a shot. I'll give it a shot. Anything is better than the real world right now. I agree. Probably explains why I got into this show.

I stumbled across Mythic Quest on Apple TV. This is, I'm surprised that you never saw this show, Jason. I reviewed it. I reviewed it on the show. Did you like it? No. Okay, I like it. I'm enjoying it. Maybe we just needed horrible times, because it's kind of silly.

It's a Silicon Valley in the gaming industry, and I've basically binged the first season, and I've really enjoyed it. It's a shame that Rob McElonny is the star here, but it does nail that character pretty well. The issue I have with it is, having watched him in Welcome to Wrexham, which is him as a real person, the dude doesn't act.

This is just who he is. See, I'm pretty sure that's probably the guy that I'm thinking of. I watched the first 10 minutes of the first episode, and I hated the people so much that I just couldn't watch it. Yeah, you're supposed to hate them. I know. It's kind of like when I was watching Black Mirror during the pandemic, and you're like, I can't take that anymore.

Right. I need that. Yeah, I couldn't. At that time of my life, I couldn't. I don't need to watch more people that I hate on TV. Fair enough. I've got enough of that by turning on the news. But I'm definitely enjoying the show. It's funny as hell. Yeah. I mean, they just came out with season three, didn't they? I think they just dropped the second season because they just stopped for a long time.

Yeah. I knew that they got picked up for another season that came out, but it's gotten decent reviews, so I'm glad you like it. I'm glad you found something to tide you over in these interesting days. It's either that or drink eight bottles of wine, Jason. Trying to be healthier. Yeah, I can't do that anymore. So in sobriety, I found Beast Games.

I talked about this before when it first came out, and it's Mr. Beast's game show on Amazon Prime. They're fighting for $5 million, and they've given away lots of money. So far, the penultimate episode just dropped where we got down to the last people who are going to be fighting for the last game in the final episode.

I love this show so much. It is so good. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's like Squid Games, but with almost no consequences, which I like. Yeah. I'm just – I love it. I can't wait for the final episode. I cannot wait for the final episode.

I watched the Grammys this weekend, and I put this in the show notes just so I could be pedantic yet again about the same shit that I've been pedantic about since forever. The headline is, AI won the Beatles a Grammy 55 years after they broke up. Good for the Beatles to win the Grammy.

I enjoyed the song. The first line of the article, with the help of modern machine learning technology, the Beatles were able to release their song now and then in late 2023. There we go. So, AI headline, first line of the article, modern machine learning.

Machine learning. Just being pedantic. Yep. No. I gave up on that one so long ago, but it just keeps coming back. It still pisses me off. It's, you know, one of the greatest hits. One of the greatest hits. Speaking of hits, Denis Villeneuve is going to be making Dune 3 next because everybody wants him to.

Okay. You cannot do Dune Messiah without doing Children of Dune, and then if you do Children of Dune, you can't do Children of Dune without doing God Emperor of Dune. So, you've got to at least commit to doing all those, and I can't wait to see the big fucking worm. Okay. Here we go.

It's coming soon to a theater near you in about six years. Yep. And it'll get dropped because he's never going to want to do all that stuff. It's just not going to happen. It's not a compelling story. It's not a big – once you get past the first book, it is not whiz-bang sci-fi anymore.

Well, hopefully he'll fix it because, you know, they do that nowadays. Oh, yeah. Yeah, like, oh, I don't know, foundation. Foundation. Yeah. But, you know, sometimes you get a silo. Sometimes you get a foundation. Yeah. Maybe we'll meet in the middle. This will be the Reese's peanut butter cup of science fiction.

Keep your silo out of my foundation. Don't keep your foundation out of my silo. Keep your fucking dragons out of my foundation because they weren't in any of the books. And he didn't come back to life. No. Well, I could be here all day telling you everything that's wrong with that goddamn show.

Yeah. Seriously. Well, speaking of Back from the Dead, Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot starring Sarah Michelle Gellar nears Hulu pilot order with Chloe Zhao directing. So it's interesting. Sarah Michelle Gellar not too long ago said, fuck, no, I'm not going back to Buffy.

Well, I guess the coffers are running low. I think that she saw that Dexter was done, was brought back from the dead fairly well. Right. And the coffers are probably running very, fairly low. But I'm pretty sure she ain't hurting for money. She's got a, she's done pretty well in the private sector as it were.

So I'm looking forward to this. I have no scoop, unfortunately. Since, I mean, I do a show with James Marsters who played Spike and I asked him for a quote and he said, go fuck yourself. So, no, I didn't get a quote from James. His phone hasn't rung yet. Fuck you. And he didn't say, go fuck yourself.

No, I'm just joking. But we are working on season two of Schmackters. So you can go check out Schmackters.com if you want to go hear some of James's stuff while we wait for Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot. So we'll see how that's going. And finally, Neil Gaiman has been hit with rape and human trafficking suits after months of allegations.

Estrange spouse Amanda fucking Palmer, also named in multi-state filings. Now, the human trafficking label on all these lawsuits, that's kind of like the improper lane usage of diddling cases nowadays. They're slapping that shit on everything. That's true. It's the Frank's Red Hot. It is.

It really is. But, yeah, this is not surprising. And we did get notification that Sandman will be cut after season two with a bullshit explanation, absolute bullshit explanation, saying that, you know, we've always thought that we were just going to follow Dream's story.

And it turns out we have enough material just to kind of make it through season two. Bullshit! They didn't have to say that at all. They could have just said, we're only doing it one more season because, and then waves hand generally around the room. Exactly. Apps and doodads!

Helen writes in, hey guys, you've probably discussed it before, but I'll ask again. I'm looking for a portable power bank for my iPhone. Which one do you recommend? Thanks! We've actually never discussed it before. So, this will be the first time. I use the Anker Zolo Portable Charger.

Actually, I got the 20,000 mega amp 30 watt power bank with built-in lanyard USB-C cable for travel, fast charging battery pack for iPhone 16, 15 series MacBook, Galaxy, iPad, and more! Right now you can get one for $15.99 at Amazon, which is a 40% savings. The list price is $25.99.

And that is for the 10,000 mega amp version. I actually use the 20,000 version, which is a little bigger and a little heavier and a little more expensive. If I had to do it over again, I would get the 10,000 one because it's got more than enough juice and it's half the weight.

So, but it's great because it's got a built-in cable. So, you just take it out and plug it in and boom, Bob's your uncle. This looks great. I actually think I might be ordering that 10K one. Yeah, go with the 10K. I've got an Anker as well, but it's like an old, old, old one. So, yeah, I've had it for so long that it basically only has, doesn't even have USB-C ports on it.

So, time for an upgrade. Yeah, I've got a stack of those. I tell you what, though, those things still hold a charge, which is amazing. Yeah, the Anker chargers have been fantastic, like no complaints. Yeah, because my friends who lost all their power out in Simi Valley because we live in a third world country, they came over and I'm just like, here, have a stack of power bricks because they came over to charge their devices and it got them through like three days worth of no power.

So, yeah, those old ones still work. It's just, yeah, the cabling is whatever. But if you want a small one for the backpack, Brian, I totally get the 10K one. You'll be happy. I will. You'll definitely be happy. And Steve in Silicon Valley gets the win for this one because everybody did send it to us, but he was the first.

The headline is, add fucking to your Google searches to neutralize AI summaries, which is pretty funny. If you're tired of Google's AI summaries serving up bad info, there's a simple workaround. Adding an expletive to your search query disables the AI-generated blurb at the top of the results, leaving only traditional blue links.

I tried it out. Worked fine for me. Yep, it's solid. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if they fixed it since this came out, but, yeah, if I just add fucking in the middle of everything, which I do anyway because I'm Gen X, then it works. I don't get that slop. And that slop has become so annoying.

I don't know if you notice this, Brian. If you ask it a question, it plays devil's advocate. It will give you both sides of an argument, which drives me crazy. Yes, I am looking for the correct answer. Thank you very much. Yeah. No, we asked about a drug interaction. I just wanted a Google result about a simple drug interaction, and it gave me both sides, even though there was no drug interaction.

I was like, well, you know, there's diabetes, whatever. I'm just like, drives me crazy. Anyway, Apple is reportedly giving up on its AR glasses again. Again. Yeah, they can't make it work, so they're pulling the plug on this one along with the cars and everything else.

The project was codenamed N107. When I just see N107, my dyslexic brain goes, isn't that the Enterprise? NCC-1701? Yeah. But, yeah. So, surprise, surprise, that's out the window, which is kind of a bummer.

But I was kind of hoping they were going to be the ones to nail the tech on the AR glasses. But I guess we're stuck with fucking Meta and Ray-Ban for now. I guess so. Well, they may have given up on cars and glasses because they're too hard. But the thing that they have managed to do is take out Evite.

Oh, great. Just what I was hoping for today. So, they've launched the new Invites app, which launched this week. This app will replace ad-filled third-party options like Evite and Partyful, at least for Apple users, to corral folks together into their walled garden way.

So, it's a way to create unique invitations and bring people together for life's most exciting moments. Yeah. So, it's basically an Evite clone, but done by Apple. So, there's no ads and you have to be part of a – you need the Apple Cloud service, iCloud and all that, to be able to create them.

But you can send them to anybody. And, of course, they do things like, now you can also add an Apple Music playlist and we'll give you a link to Apple Maps and all that sort of stuff. I mean, I, back in the day when I was younger, used Evite all the time. Now that I'm old, I just text the three or four people I want to hang out with.

So, I don't really need this crap anymore, but back in the day, this would have been great. Evite sucked. Yeah, Evite – I guess Partyful was the new hotness that everybody was using, but – Right. Yeah, I don't know that one either. Speaking of old shit, though, like Evite, there's an old site that I used to use called 750words.com by Buster Benson, who's an old school software dev from way back in the day.

He's back and he's quit all of his other jobs and he's trying to get 750 words back up so he can kind of live off that one. I signed back up and have been writing every day and I just so cathartic. I love that site. I just get a little notice every day. I say, hey, don't forget your thing.

And I got a little notification in things to remind me before I go to bed to write my 750 words. And I'm sleeping better because I get the shit out of my head. If I open that up, I would type fuck 750 times because that's how I'm feeling these days. But maybe I would get it off my chest and fall asleep nice.

Exactly. Exactly. It's cathartic, Brian. Give it a shot.

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 Meek Pleaver Colon.

BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to the Dark Side with Dave.

Podcast superhost Dave Bittner decodes all things cyber on the Cyber Wire every single day. Exposes deception with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans. Dives deep into privacy with Ben Yellen on caveat. Breaks down industrial cybersecurity on Control Loop and even brings the chuckles on only malware in the building.

Hello, Dave. Hello, gentlemen. Happy day. I have to say that I have to say that you guys nailed it with your title on the Cyber Wire the other day. FCC around and find out. Genius. Genius.

I can actually take credit for that one. Nice. Most days, our producer Liz takes the lead on coming up with episode titles, and she's very good at it and very clever. But I was writing the script that day, and somehow, every now and then, you know, you get a little flash of inspiration, and that was one of them.

That's perfect. Yeah. No, I like it. I like it. Thank you very much. I, I, I, like, you know how every now and then you, something flashes through your mind as you're writing, or you're doing something creative, and you think to yourself, this is good.

Yeah. Right? Yes. We occasionally have that happen recording the show, and then whoever had it, like, forgets where they are in the show because we're scrambling to write it down so we don't forget it. Right, right. It seems to me like there are fewer and farther between the more years I have behind me. So when they do happen, I will take them, and so this was a good one.

So thank you for the kind words. Yes, the muse does not visit as often as we get older, it turns out. That's right. I like to think we're just more discerning. Oh, that could be. We have years of experience. We, we know when things are really good versus that, that youthful exuberance where we think everything we do is great.

Yeah. I will add, though, that also more and more, I find that I'll get some strike of brilliance as I'm drifting off to sleep, and I'll say to myself, ooh, I need to remember that for tomorrow. And then I wake up the next day, and it's gone. It's gone.

Yeah. There's no getting it back, and I'm, ugh, it's the worst. That's why I keep my phone next to me so I can do a quick voice memo. But the problem then is, you know, it's actually better to let it go because it's the worst when you wake up in the morning and you remember, I had a genius idea.

And then you look at it in the morning and you're like, oh, that was stupid. Right, right. It's like, blue avocados, yeah, blue avocados need to be frozen frequently. And you're like, what? What? What was I thinking? Yeah. Damn you, NyQuil.

Yeah, right. So Barrett wrote in and asked, because we were talking about old classic video games, anyone remember 50 Mission Crush? I spent way too much time playing this on my old Commodore 64 back in the day. Nope. No. I never played that game.

I never played that game and I don't, and the game is not even the reason I put this in the show notes. Okay. The reason I put this in the show notes is the website that he linked to. Did you guys look at the link? Yeah. I got so, oh my God, I got such a nostalgia boner for this website.

Okay. This is the way we used to make them. I love old school design. There's so many, there are tables within tables programmed here. Tables, tables, yes. I was looking at it and I'm like, oh man, this was the pinnacle. This would have cost you $500,000 back in the day. Oh.

Seriously. Yeah. It's good stuff. Man, yeah. I'm sure there's server-side includes going on here somewhere. There's got to be Perl. There's got to be Perl in here. Oh, I would have just, yeah. Oh, they're using like PHP forum.

Oh. Oh, I loved PHP forum. Yeah. A lot of those back in the day. Yeah. Until it got hacked. Yeah. Oh, this is, they're using PHP BB on this one. Don't know, man. Yeah. So, what, was, was there a particular moment that took us away from this kind of design or did it more happen slow?

Cell phones. CSS and then cell phones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. That was, that was the death knell for nested table designs. I see. Well. I mean, you can, you can do this with CSS.

I'm sure this is actually probably in CSS. Probably, yeah. Yeah, but you know what, the thing about this game is I did not spend very much time with the Commodore 64 or the VIC-20 or any of those Commodore machines. They were certainly on my radar and I had friends who had them, but unlike, like, so my main computer through most of my teen years was a TRS-80 color computer and I was deep into that

and I had friends who had that, but then I'd say the secondary computer that I was most familiar with was the Apple II because we had a lot of those at school and the kids who lived across the street from me had one, but I didn't have anyone like in my close circle who had a Commodore 64 that I had really had a whole lot of time to play with.

Yeah, same here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think the Commodore 64 is like, it was in that weird time where it was like, like people who had those were right around the same time I was just learning how to skateboard. So I didn't really do that. And then I got the IBM XT.

So when I got the computers, I kind of went straight from, you know, we had an original Apple, the original Macintosh for a little bit and then went straight into the XT and it was just like, uh, yeah, I missed the Commodore 64. I kind of jumped straight from like Atari to a PC.

Yeah. I missed all that too. Yeah. And I think the worlds were a little more insular back then, like platform to platform, because there really wasn't any cross-platform compatibility other than typing things in, in basic. But when you got to games like this, you know, you, they were platform specific.

And so, yeah, there's also, when you think about it too, there was also an economic stratification between who had which, uh, devices, you know? So like the, the TRS-80 people didn't really hang out with the Commodore 64 people who didn't really hang out with the Atari people. Cause they were from different socioeconomic backgrounds, kind of.

It's like when I went over to my friends with the TRS-80, I'm like, they had a really nice house. And then we, we lived in, we lived in a trailer park. So, and we had an Atari. See, that's funny because to me it was the folks who had the Apple IIs who were the top tier.

Oh yeah, yeah. Those guys were, yeah, they would not talk to us. They, they breathed different air, completely different air. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good times. Mm-hmm. Well, speaking of getting back to our roots, this is a story of, that we used to cover on this segment, uh, but I did find it interesting, uh, ransomware victims paid out 35% less to hacking groups in 2024 compared to 2023, even as the overall number of attacks increased,

according to a report by the blockchain research firm, Chain Analysis, a large drop from 1.25 billion in ransom payments in 2023 to 813.55 million last year, it came as international law enforcement operations disrupted some major hacking groups and others abruptly closed up shop.

Chain Analysis found that the group is growing between how much of the gap is growing between how much money attackers demand in exchange for relinquishing compromised data and how much victims actually will pay. Reporting from incident response firms suggest a majority of clients are opting just not to pay at all, according to the report.

So people are just not paying ransomware people anymore. Well, hopefully it's because they finally got the, got the memo and have proper backups. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully. People are dealing with it. Or they also learned that they, most of the time they don't actually get their data back. So, you know, the bad actors, the bad actors in the ransomware business kind of fucked themselves by not giving people the keys after they pay the ransom.

You know, so people always say, why am I going to pay? I'm not going to get a key anyway. Yeah. Right. The jig is up. Well, and the other thing is that the money, many of the ransomware groups switch to having the extortion be their primary way to squeeze their victims.

But rather, in other words, rather than saying, we're going to shut you down by encrypting everything, saying, well, look at all this stuff we stole, it'd be a shame if this were published publicly. And so with the backups and people having better encryption and all that kind of stuff, yeah, they just, also there's more and more, there's more and more of a push, like the UK is pushing for public organizations to not be allowed to pay the ransom.

So places like hospitals and schools, because if they're not allowed to pay, then the idea is that makes them less of a target, because why bother with them if you're never going to get any money from them? Yeah. And the rest of the crypto groups ended up moving to Washington, D.C. and just took over the Treasury Department.

So pretty much. They just went to the source. They're like, screw this. We're just going to go straight to the money spigot. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Why go after millions when you can have trillions? Yeah. Yeah. To the moon. That's right. All right. So now pivoting to the kind of stuff we talk about more normally on this show now, Disneyland.

We talked about this story a bit when it first came out. There's a great long form article. This could be like a true crime podcast kind of segment here. Yesterday, tomorrow, and banished forever, the Andersons were kicked out of Disneyland's most exclusive club. They would not go willingly.

Now, we did talk about these guys when it came out, the couple that decided to sue because Disneyland basically kicked them out of Club 33, the private membership club that costs an awful lot of money. It has decades-long wait lists to get into it. This article is just so long, but it's so funny and awesome, and it's such a good read.

And it's back in the news because they lost their court case. Disneyland basically won. And of course, they're grumbling and saying, Disneyland owns all of Orange County. Of course, we weren't going to win our case. You know, little sour grapes there. And they've moved on to the Magic Castle where they now have a membership because they serve lots of alcohol and don't have rules like you can't be drunk.

They seem much happier. Right. Right. Last I thought about the Magic Castle, I know they were worried that it was in line for the fires, but I guess the Magic Castle survived. It did. Which is good.

And when I was reading that, I had a big thought on Disneyland. This is like the stoner thought, or at least Main Street and what's left of the original Walt Disney era rides like the Jungle Cruise, Small World, and all that sort of stuff. Those of us that spent time there as kids, like me, I'm going there now, and I'm feeling nostalgic for the world I left behind.

And then I realized, well, Walt Disney originally built it because he was nostalgic for his childhood that he's left behind. Right. And now I'm taking my kid, who will be nostalgic for his childhood, where I was nostalgic for my childhood, about Walt Disney being nostalgic for his childhood.

It's childhoods all the way down. It is. And, you know, then I had an edible and went to sleep. But isn't that the thing? I mean, look, I am totally that person who comes into the Magic Kingdom, you know, walks underneath the berm, comes up onto Main Street, turns the corner, sees the castle, and gets all misty-eyed.

Like, that's me. Me too. It casts that spell on me, and I am happy that it happens, and I'm totally willing to take that ride. And I think, for me, what it comes down to is that it is a place that I feel safe in that childhood, the safety of a child.

You know, the way a child feels safe with their parents, that's the feeling I have when I'm at Disney World. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that escapism, whatever you want to call it.

Like, I welcome it. Yeah. Where else in the world do you get that these days? Nowhere. So I think that's a big part of it for me. It's a huge part of it for me. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. But I do wonder, your point about the rides, at what point do kids, like our kids, get on something like Small World and just roll their eyes and go, what is this?

Oh, we're there. My kid is... Is that right? Yeah. My kid will tolerate Small World because he knows his mom really likes it. But the rides that are of more interest to him are definitely the more technological, newer ones. He likes Midway Mania, like anything that you can shoot at the screen and score points or like Star Tours or all that sort of stuff.

So yeah, Small World and Jungle Cruise did not have much of an appeal to him. Interesting. Okay. So I put a link to an on-ride video of Pirates in China. I don't know if you have ever seen what Pirates is like in the new Disney parks in China, but it is effing amazing.

Yeah, it is. It's unbelievable. Yeah. And they hit most of the same beats as the Pirates we have here, but they do it in just a modern way. There's projection and I mean, it's just so much more dynamic than the Pirates we have.

What I would love to see Disney World do, my fantasy for how Disney World could handle this would be to build the new Pirates right next to the old Pirates. They're never going to do that. So you got two lines, right?

In the same way that like what when they built the Indiana Jones ride out of Disneyland, the ride is actually out in the parking lot and it's like a half mile walk underground to get to it, you know, like they could totally do that. You have on the left is new Pirates on the right is old Pirates because I think the nostalgia for the original Pirates is still there and people enjoy it.

It's it's one of those rides. They call them people eaters because they do like 5000 riders an hour. So don't get rid of it. It's long since paid for, but build the new one next to it so that you can choose and then you have the best of both worlds.

I would not mind that either, but I think they will probably run out of space to do that sort of thing because people feel that way about a number of rides. So, yeah. Yeah. But speaking of that, because just I just I just I just popped this open because I didn't see it before. I want to go to Shanghai and ride this thing, right?

This is so cool, right? So for both of you, I would say you should definitely check out the Disney Plus series. I've talked about this before behind the attraction, because like when you get into the individual rides like the like particularly the Haunted Mansion.

So they go back into how the original one was built and you see all that cool stuff and it's really, really interesting. But then they go around and they do all the different parks around the world, the newer parks, the Shanghai and Tokyo and all that sort of stuff. And you see how they changed the rides and updated them and change them for the particular cultures.

And it's really cool. Like Shanghai also has an awesome, completely different Haunted Mansion. Yeah. And you get to see a lot of that stuff. So it's totally worth it. Yeah. Okay. And having said all of that, just to recapture that magic and nostalgia feeling around the house, there are a couple of playlists out there that we are always just playing throughout the day.

I put in Spotify links for one called Disneyland Music Around the Parks, another one called Disneyland Music and Disneyland Park Music. So it's all like Main Street and different ride stuff. And it just kind of makes you feel like you're wandering around Disneyland. Waft a little popcorn smell and you're good to go.

That's right. That's right. If you don't have any popcorn, just take your stinky gym shoes off and wave them around the house because it smells like feet. Well, pirates, pirates smells like bromine, which is what they use to keep the water clean. Yeah. And that's what I use in my hot tub.

I use bromine in my hot tub. So every time I open the lid, I'm like, yo-ho, yo-ho, yo-ho. Smell the bros. And then tell no tales. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I just want to put this link in here. This is a perfect opportunity to talk about a link called I Don't Have Spotify.

So if you want to take any of the playlists that Brian put in here and you don't have Spotify, you can paste them into this website and it will create a new link for you to YouTube or YouTube Music or any of the other different sources that will have the same stuff. I love this.

I love this so much. That's awesome. Because I have an Apple Music subscription. I guess I also have a YouTube subscription because I do have YouTube premium. But I don't have Spotify because I have the other two. So but it seems like people, especially people younger than me, are always sending me things on Spotify.

And I'm like, damn kids. Right. And I'm not going to subscribe to Spotify just to listen to things. So I either, you know, do it manually. But this is wonderful. This is what a what a what a great public service. I love it.

Isn't it fantastic? Yeah. Yeah. I put a link in here to a story that caught my eye this week that I thought you guys would enjoy. This is an individual researcher who went down the rabbit hole of seeing how much you're being tracked through in-app ads.

Basically, it's a researcher named Tim. And they call him Tim. And he took an old iPhone that was wiped clean, had nothing except the Apple pre-installed apps on it. He installed a single app game.

It's called Stack by a company called Ketch App, which is a game. And this Ketch App company makes a bunch of different games. So he installed a single game and he installed a logger on the phone to be able to see all of everything that's going on behind the scenes.

Right. And not surprisingly, it's horrifying and frightening and all of those things. All your, you know, your location data, all sorts of information about you is shared, even if you have selected in iOS to not share the information.

Right. It's shared anyway. F you, they say. Right. Just, yeah. Also, information was shared with Meta, even though there were no Meta apps on the device at all. Okay.

Which is interesting. But it collects all kinds of things. Basically, if it can grab it, it grabs it. Things like screen brightness, battery level, how much memory you have available, things like that. So it's an interesting read if you're into this sort of thing.

I guess a cautionary tale, but more it's a message that there's really no way around this. Even if you, there is no way to block this using a modern mobile device. Right. Don't buy a phone is the only way to do it. Right. Right. To participate in modern society means that this sort of tracking is happening and there is no practical way to circumvent it.

Great. Yeah. Right. Good times. Good times. Particularly with the administration in charge at the moment. It's just awesome. You know, the thing about this is I'm just so not shocked anymore that this is exactly what's happening. Right.

I wish I could be. I wish I could be shocked and outraged. But, yeah. No. No. We're at the stage of acceptance and resignation. Yeah. Next thing you know, we're going to find out that the phones are listening to us. Yeah. I've said it before and I'll say it again.

What I really hope happens is that somebody with deep pockets like John Oliver spins up a website where you're able to track your senator in real time. And then we finally get some kind of meaningful privacy legislation. Although I wouldn't put it past them to only protect themselves and no one else.

Yes. You have the secret code. Do you not? Right. Yeah. Right. So, one other thing I wanted to talk about today. I am getting new glasses today. In fact, when we finish this call, I'm heading up to the place where I get my glasses.

I guess it's an optometrist. I always confuse optometrist with ophthalmologist. Wouldn't go to a proctologist for it. Well, not if you wanted an accurate prescription, no. But, so I'm going to get new glasses today, which meant about a week ago I went to get my eyes examined.

And I knew that I was due for a new prescription. I felt as though when reading my phone, things that were close up, I was right on the edge of straining to see close up stuff. And same, you know, my distance was better.

But also, my current glasses are progressive lenses, which I've had for years. When I gave up contact lenses, I got progressive lenses, which overall I've liked. But what I found is I've gotten to the point where every now and then the progressive lenses give me motion sickness.

Hmm. Yeah. I'm not sure why, but it's true. So, when I ordered my new glasses, first of all, I got a new prescription. So, yes, it did change a little bit. And hopefully I'll be able to see better without straining. But also, I got plain old bifocals.

Oh, interesting. I'm curious to hear how that plays out. Yeah. Yeah. Plain old bifocals. Yeah. I have progressives as well. And they are – I can see where you would have the motion sickness sometimes. But – The thing about the progressives is, like, the zone of corrective vision goes down the center of the lenses.

Yeah. With progressives. It doesn't cover the whole lens. And I think that's the part that gets me when if I'm moving my head around – like, I've noticed if I'm in a – like, let's say I'm in a bookstore and I'm scanning across the shelves trying to see if there's a book title that strikes my fancy.

That's when I'll find myself going, whoa, what's going on here? So what I'm hoping is the bifocals having the prescription go from edge to edge on the glass rather than running down the middle will help having that in my full field of view. The thing I'm bracing myself for is only having two locked-in fields of view, close-up and distance, and the hard shift between the two of them.

That's what I'm curious about, yeah. Yeah. What I'm curious about is where you found the time machine to go to a bookstore to go browse at Action Books for. I mean, I think that's very curious to me. Yeah, it's true. If we have a time machine, then why don't we have optical technology that does not give you motion sickness?

Yeah. So we'll see. I have to say the vain part of me was a little worried about the bifocals with the line and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, oh, who am I trying to – Who cares? Right. Give up the ghost, bro.

Yeah. It's over. It's just over. If you start wearing them with a chain around your neck, we'll have an intervention. But otherwise, just let go. And the second part of my – oh, well, okay. So here's the old part of – here's the grumpy old part that goes along with my purchase of new glasses.

The lovely lady at the optometrist who is walking me through all of the options I could get for my glasses said to me, and this coating helps, like particularly at night, if there are headlights pointing your direction.

It helps cut down on the glare. And I said, I want that. I want that. Yes. Because I'm old. I want that. So – That's not an old thing, though, man. I've had that – every time I've gotten glasses since I was 20 years old, I get all the coatings because it does make a difference.

Okay. Well – Yeah. That's why they're so damn expensive and I can keep them for so long. It's an old thing. Yeah. Okay. It's definitely an old thing. Before my time. You're old before your day. Yeah. The other thing I'm planning on is if I like these new glasses and I settle into them over the next few days, I think I'm going to order the exact same glasses as sunglasses.

So I have prescription sunglasses. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I've got the ones that turn when I go outside and the thing about them, they're fantastic. I love having the option of when I go outside not having to have a pair of sunglasses. I just wish that there was a button that you could press that would be just immediate purge.

They don't snap back fast enough. Right. And the older they get, the longer they take to snap back. Oh, really? Yeah. Or is that the older you get? It could be. That's also, that is also true. Right. I went to lunch the other day with our friend Brian Blondel and we walked into this Italian restaurant, which is very dark after being out in the Southern California sun.

And we both look at each other and it's like we're starting, you know, reciting the Blues Brothers thing. Like they're going to be driving that because that's exactly what we looked like. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Pulling out the flashlight on your phone to read the menu. It's all good. Totally. Yeah. Actually, I just took my glasses off and just stuck my nose to it because I can't see anyway.

Yeah. Old. Well, go get your glasses, man. Good luck. Good luck with your bifocals. Looking forward to it. Right. And I won't be bumping into things so much. So, we'll see. All right. Stay tuned. I'll let you know. All right. To be continued. Thanks, guys. Closing shout outs.

Over at Patreon, we've got Mark F, Rob, Starboy, Andrew, and Mach-A. And Rachel and Gabriel, up to their pledges. Thank you so much. And from the best of list, we've got Eric, John, Wendy, Dan, David, Clarence, Fantastic Wolf, Jonathan, Aaron, and Ben.

Thank you all so much. And just a quick reminder, if you want to sign up and support us over at Patreon, three bucks a month, easy peasy, cheap. We love you forever. You can give more if you want, but what you do get is the show early, ad-free, and in high definition.

And if you sign up for a whole year, 5% off. Woo-hoo. And over at PayPal, we've got Nicola, Levy, Arnold, Florian, and Thomas. Thank you all so much. Over the tip jar, we've got Sarah and Matthew. Thank you very much. And this week in merch, woo, you guys have been fire, fire.

Those Deport Elon shirts are flying off the shelves. I was looking at that, and I was like, we've got to slap that on a mug. Yeah. Oh, I got to do the mug. And I got to do the big version of it. Because I have the subtle version, but now that he's- We need the not subtle version. We need the Frankie Goes to Hollywood t-shirt version of it.

That's what we're doing. I'm going to do that today. So we've got Jen, David. Oh, holy crap. I got an idea, Jason, before you get into that. You know those t-shirts that were so popular for a while where they would like, you know, they would list like Jan and Brad and blah, blah, blah. And it was like every band member.

Yeah. We need to do Elon and all of his little guys. Elon and his cronies. Okay. I'd buy that. Good. We're going to end up in jail. Oh, who cares? Who cares? Oh, so we've got Jen, David, Andrew, Jody, Dan, and Richard.

Thank you all so much for buying some merch. Go to shop.gog.show and get yours today. And there will be some new shirts up there soon. And I do want to go through a quick shout out here to Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and the chief executive of the California Community Foundation, Miguel Santana.

They basically donated $10 million in funding for a local program to help people recover from the fires that we had. Fantastic. Yeah. I've never been a big fan of Snapchat or Snap, but he's stepping up because he's a local.

So good on him. Good on him. Agreed. Yeah. And if you're still in the market to buy some more clothes, because we do that, Sober Outfitters, my little recovery T-shirt shop, is back on the air. So if you do happen to go to recovery meetings and you want to bring some snark with you, go check it out, SoberOutfitters.com.

I could really use the money, please. Go. Yeah. SoberOutfitters.com. Thank you for your support. Do it. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at gog.show slash 683.

Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at gog.show slash donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. Love the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between. We'll love you forever.

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Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.gog.show. Stay grumpy. 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.