684: Don’t Be a Dick

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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Happy Valentine's Day, Jason. Yeah, whatever. It's that time of year that a flower shop I used once back in 1998 sends me an email from a list I've unsubscribed to every February for the last 25 years.

All right. Tells you how well those unsubscribes actually work. How math works, too, because 1998 is not 25 years ago. Well, just guesstimating. It doesn't flow off as well if I said 27 or 28, you know what I mean? No, it doesn't. It doesn't, I guess. I'm just, you know, I'm just stopping the emails before they happen.

Well, I am much like Elon Musk. Oh, yeah. Some things, some of the things I say will be incorrect, said the agent of chaos, which is, I think, that's something we should have picked as the keystone of our show long, long ago. Oh, I think we're incorrect. Far less.

We are absolutely incorrect. Far less than Elon. Yes. Oh, my goodness. What a week. I just wanted to preface that there will be there will be enough Elon in the show later on. We can have we can have some fun before beforehand. I want to do I do do want to point out something really quickly because it made me chuckle.

I was like, I think it was maybe in a December show or early January and we were kind of bemoaning the fact the fate of the election. And you said something along the lines of, oh, I'm just going to ignore it. What do I care? I'm old and I don't have kids and blah, blah, blah. And who gives a crap?

And at that moment, something in me switched and said, this means Jason's going to go all in pretty soon. And you did. I did. I did. Because whatever you say, I assume is going to be the exact opposite within a few weeks.

I'm never moving again. Yeah. Yeah. What can I say? I didn't I did not factor in the Elon aspect of things. Oh, yeah. Well, and it's all tech. Like, that's the thing. It's all tech now.

So it's hard not to it's in our wheelhouse and it's it's fucking up our wheelhouse. So I know I really, really just wanted to get get on with making fun of A.I., but no. Yeah. Well, speaking about somebody's wheelhouse who got fucked up, James Howells, the British IT worker who mined himself a sizable fortune of the cryptocurrency before accidentally throwing away the hard drive he stored the key on.

We've talked about him many times because he's gone through this many, many different iterations. He's now mulling buying the entire stretch of land where he suspects the drive to be buried just so he can try to dig it up, according to a report from The Guardian. So as I mentioned, he's been doing he's been at this for years now, starting back in 2013, when he revealed to the public that he lost his ability to access the 7,500 bitcoins he mined back in 2009.

At this point, at that point, it was worth about seven million dollars and it's kept going up ever since then. And he's gotten more and more desperate. In 2017, he pleaded with the city of Newport to let him dig for it. The city said no, citing safety concerns because it's a big pile of trash and the risk of encouraging treasure hunters to go on the world's largest dumpster diving expedition.

In 2021, he offered the city 25% of the proceeds if he found the hard drive in exchange for letting him dig up the dump. And I would argue at that point, it's not enough to find the hard drive. It's enough. The hard drive actually has to work so you can get your key back from it, which it most likely won't.

And in 2022, he said if he couldn't go into the dump, he'll send Boston Dynamics robotic dogs to do the digging for him. This was part of a larger 11 million dollar business plan in which he proposed spending three years excavating the landfill to find his hard drive while also turning the site into a mining facility.

The city did not go for that either. So now he just wants to try to purchase it outright. I do want to point out the fact that he actually put together a business plan about this, which is more than most people in Silicon Valley do. Yeah, but he used ChatGPT to do it. Probably, yes. James, I would like to sing you a song.

Let it go. Let it go. Dude, come on. Hey, you're singing Frozen. I'm impressed. I have made so many mistakes in my lifetime, and I have just let them all go at this point because that's all you can do. Dude, if I dwelled on the past like you, I would have another stroke every week.

Come on, brother. Let it go. Let it go. Just move on. And here's the funny part. He's going to find it in the couch eventually. That's where all things are. Well, I've got a little bit more follow-up, too. Okay. Despite the hype, office attendance hasn't significantly increased over the past two years, as working from home remains a major factor in the job market.

Commercial real estate leaders have been hoping that return-to-office mandates would revive office spaces, but data suggests otherwise. Well, so does my limited experience. I know that the company that I used to work for, the new CEO, had mandated a return to office, this time the office being further away from everybody and where the office used to be.

And from what I understand from the people I've spoken to, that has not happened. Everybody is still working from home. They come in every now and then for a meeting, but that's it. I know two or three other people here in Toronto that got mandated return to office a couple months back, and they're all still working from home, too.

Indeed. Castle Systems' back-to-work barometer, which tracks office access, shows that office occupancy in major U.S. markets is still just 54% of pre-pandemic levels, only a slight uptick from early 2023. And yes, hybrid work is dominating.

Like you said, people just want to stay at home and come into the meetings. And Tuesdays, seeing the highest attendance at 63%, while Fridays drop as low as 37%. Yeah, I can also tell that just from parking on my street. Tuesday is the only time that a parking spot opens up. Okay.

The thing, like Fridays here, this is L.A., man. Fridays has always been the greatest day. Shabbat Shalom, bitches. So, it's awesome. Yeah. And now, you know, well, the government's selling all their buildings, so AI is always going to work from home, I guess.

Yeah, shit. They work in a van down by the river until the river runs dry. The river runs dry. Put a couple songs together there. I like that. Mash-up. Mash-up. Dry the Chevy down to the levee. But the AI made it dry. Hop on over to Suno and get yourself a tune to go with that.

Mm-hmm. Except the river ran dry before Suno could make the tune. Yeah. You dried the levee writing the song. That's it. Mm-hmm. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes. The circle of life. All right. An unidentified investor made over $109 million in just two days off of the Trump shit coin.

His name happens to be Dronald Drump. The token promoted just three days before Trump's inauguration, and it surged from 18 cents to a peak of $75 before crashing. Now, a few early traders raked in millions, and sadly, over 800,000 investors.

I want you to soak that in for a second, Brian. Soak in that. Who's holding the bag? There are 800,000 investors in Trump coin. Mm-hmm. Think about that. Just, I want you to chew on it. There are 800,000 people that are stupid enough to spend money on the Trump shit coin.

There's more than that many people that were dumb enough to vote for him. How's them prices of eggs? Do you have eggs? No eggs. No eggs. I'm telling you, man, tofu scramble is the way to go. So, of those 800,000 investors, I scare quote the investors, they have suffered more than $2 billion in losses.

Yep. Yeah. So, there's the follow-up on that. And, you know, the shit coin was never meant to last. It was a power grab, and it's just simply a glimpse of things to come, Brian. It's going to be a lot of this stuff. Yep. Yep. Hype has replaced policy, and fortunes are being made in the shadows, and sometimes right in public, as we have seen, right sometimes next to the Resolute desk.

I don't think anything's going to be done in the shadows anymore, Jason. It's all happening right in front of us, and people are too dumb to care. Yes, yes, and we are just left holding the bag. But, hey, Brian, did you see Elizabeth Holmes is back in the news? Oh, for fuck's sake. Moving on. In the news.

A new study from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University warns that relying too much on regenerative AI could weaken critical thinking skills. Researchers found that as knowledge workers gain confidence in AI tools, they tend to use less independent judgments, which could lead to cognitive atrophy over time.

Duh. I mean, yeah. I remember every single phone number from people that I had their numbers for pre-cell phone. Post-cell phone? Couldn't tell you a single goddamn phone number. You don't use that part of your brain.

So if you're going to outsource thinking, well, and God knows none of you are reading. No. I mean, this is a tale as old as time. And we have said it at the beginning when AI first started to come out. Beauty and the Beast. Since we're doing a Disney episode, apparently. Yeah, we talked about this because this is just the technology moving forward.

But the reason I put this in here, not because it's a no shit moment. I put it in here because the fact that Microsoft, good on them for at least, you know, putting out the time to do the study to figure out where they can make their next move. You know, I think that that's very smart.

That's what corporations should do. Do the research to find out who you are disrupting and how you can sell them something later in the future to solve that disruption that you just caused. Look, that's what I'm saying. We can post a million stories and find them about how Microsoft has done some pretty shady stuff over the years.

Ads in my start bar on my OS that I paid for. That could be one of them. But overall, Microsoft has been a pretty solid, good company, one that I would say fights for the forces of good more often than evil. And I agree. OK, well, we'll just set aside that whole antitrust thing with Internet.

Well, like I said, there's examples. There are examples. Yes, yes. So Thomson Reuters has won the first major AI copyright case in the U.S. A federal judge ruled that legal AI startup Ross Intelligence infringed on Westlaw's copyrighted material.

What about Rachel? See, I've never seen an episode of that damn show, but even I know the characters. You're really not missing much. Yeah, I never enjoyed the show. Yeah. Judge Stefanos Bibas rejected Ross's fair use defense, stating the company meant to compete with Westlaw by developing a market substitute.

Here's where it goes. None of Ross's possible defenses hold water. I reject them all, said the judge in a summary judgment. Love you. That's it. Gavel drop. Boom. I think we need this judge on some of these Trump and Musk cases. I know.

I reject them all. Now get me my delivery. Young clerk. That's good. It's good. Sets precedent. Sets a precedent. I don't know if it's going to matter much. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah. Oh, I don't know.

I don't know. Speaking of AI and copyright, I don't know if you saw, but Adobe launched Firefly this week with a paid subscription to do video. And I didn't dig into it on the Firefly website. I just watched the news reports on my local LA news, and they showed what were supposed to be the cream of the crop demo videos.

They were fucking horrible. Horrible. Like they had newscasters and their lips didn't even line up. Their teeth were popping through their cheeks. It was just a horror show. Actually, that's most LA newscasters when they have their botched surgeries. That's true.

That's true. All right. Moving on to some more fun news. Meta's latest round of layoffs on Monday cut nearly 4,000 employees targeting what the company described as its lowest performers. However, several affected workers say that they were blindsided despite previously receiving strong performance reviews.

A little pat on the head of lollipop and said, little Georgie, you're doing great. Go forth and break things quickly, please. Business Insider spoke with eight former employees who had been rated at or above expectations. Okay.

Yes. But they were later downgraded to meets most without warning, then making them eligible for termination. I'm so glad I never got a job there that I would have to get little labels like that. Wow. And the fact that they actually just changed the label without having another performance review or discussion about it.

I mean, this is obvious. This is they're going to win. If they sue, they're going to win. I don't know. They're going to win something. They're not. You don't want your job back at this point, obviously. But Meta's going to Meta's going to cut off some of its coffee budget and spread it around. Oh, I think they'd want their job back because from the next story, the tech industry's hiring boom has turned into a brutal bust.

Once flush with perks, Silicon Valley is now reeling from relentless layoffs as startups collapse and tech giants shift focus to AI. Formerly secured jobs are vanishing, leaving workers like ex-Indeed engineer, Daylin Moyet, struggling to find work after 160 failed applications.

Many are considering leaving the industry altogether. Can only be so many real estate agents, people. Yeah, no doubt. That's what everybody goes to do. People that leave the music industry, real estate agents. People that leave tech, real estate agents. Yeah. Meanwhile, Meta and Google are slashing thousands of jobs even as big tech remains more valuable than the entire global stock markets with AI taking priority.

The layoffs wave shows no signs of slowing. Yeah. And you can't even go get a government job anymore, which was also your second fallback because those are going away. Those are getting cut left, right, and center. Yeah. For the same reason, AI.

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 Cleaver Colon.

BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Well, I remember back in early January 2024, which it's only a little bit over a year ago, but it feels like a decade at this point, doesn't it?

It has been a decade. I'm sorry. Yeah. Well, in early January 2024, a scant 10 years ago, SEC's official X account tweeted that Bitcoin ETFs have been approved for listing on all registered national security exchanges. But SEC chair, Gary Gensler, quickly announced that they had been hacked and compromised, and that is not true.

The commission later revealed as a victim of a SIM swapping attack, although it admitted that his account was not protected by multi-factor authentication. It was Eric Council Jr. from Alabama who has now pleaded guilty to being a co-conspirator in the unauthorized takeover of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Twitter account last year.

He was really only ahead of the game by about a year, because I'm expecting that announcement at any point in time now. If he'd have just put it in buffer and waited a little bit, it would have been fine. Yeah. His co-conspirators who paid counsel in Bitcoin then changed the SEC's account password to control it before posting the false news along with a fake quote from Gensler.

And obviously, you know, people gamed that to make a bunch of money because Bitcoin rose by $1,000 after the fake announcement went up and then fell by $2,000 when the SEC issued the correction. As for why the SEC's account wasn't protected by multi-factor authentication, the agency previously said that it asked ex-support staff to disable it last July because it was having issues with account access.

Now, if you have ever worked in an office where multiple people need to be able to access a singular account, you know exactly what they're talking about. Oh, yes. Where's John? He's the one with the phone that it's set up on. He's in the shitter. I got to get in right now. Yeah.

Yeah. I've been there, done that. There absolutely has to be a better solution to that. And yeah, anyways. Oh, speaking of the better solution, Kanye West's final solution. Oh, wait, did I say that out loud? Oh, just like Kanye said a lot of things out loud last week. Well, Kanye's account on X has been deactivated after a series of anti-Semitic posts sparked outrage.

It's unclear whether West deleted the account himself or if X removed it. Musk called him and said, dude. Yeah. Come on. Like, yeah, I threw the salute. But what are you doing? That's too much. Reel it in a bit. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it was it was bad. It was bad. But here's the thing. You know, they're saying that, oh, it was because of all the Nazi shit. It wasn't the Nazi shit. I'm going to tell you the truth about why his account was deleted. Very simply, he tweeted, George Farmer, I did not fuck your wife.

Rest easy. Jared Kushner, on the other hand. So you're going to say that you fucked the president's daughter. That's a fuck around and find out moment. Sorry. That's that's why his account was deleted. It had nothing to do with the Nazi shit. Yeah.

Period. But he has merch. So, you know. Well, he had merch. He had merch. Since Shopify saw the merch go up, I actually went and looked at it, too. And it just did not seem real to me either. Shopify took down his T-shirt shop. But it wasn't also for the reasons that you think it was.

They did not take it down because it was anti-Semitic hate content. They took it down because they thought it was going to be fraud because he didn't think that he could fulfill on the T-shirt orders. Yeah. That's why they took the shop. Why even provide a reason?

Just take it down. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're all behind you. Yeah. Except for Elon. Yeah. They should have just taken it down and shut the fuck up. Then they would have been heroes. Yes. Now there's heroes. Europe and Canada. Go have a chat with them. Go have a chat with them, Brian.

No, thanks. Yeah. Well, after that happened, I don't know if you saw the video of the middle finger. Kanye star David T-shirt thing. I did. And first thought was, oh, God, celebrities again. Here comes the COVID song from a bunch of celebrities.

And then I was like, hold on a second. Yeah. Flipping people the middle finger. This is no fucking way. Is this real? No, no. And it wasn't. It was an AI video that was created by an Israeli ad worker, Ori Bejerano.

I'm sure I butchered that name. But yeah, that caused a string of events to exhume the corpse of Scarlett Johansson to come out and bitch and moan about AI some more. So she's calling for new laws after the fake video went viral and she was at the top of the video.

Well, she's not wrong and she's using her platform. But, you know, just make sure it's not. Don't make the law crafted so it's just celebrities. Everybody should have the right not to be replicated by AI. Exactly. Exactly. Come on. Be an equal opportunity activist, please, if that's what you're going to do.

But move. All right. Well, video, though, by the way. Well, I mean, it took me a second. Yeah, I know. It was a pretty well done video. Yeah. We should have put those shirts on our shop, too. Damn it. We might get shut down for fraud. We got to be careful. Yes, we do.

Google is going to start testing a feature this year to help weed out children trying to access adult content on YouTube. I put this in the news purely because the entire article just says machine learning and never once says AI. And I'm very impressed. All right. The machine learning based age estimation model will try to predict whether a user is under 18 and if so, apply appropriate age filter settings to their account.

Now, this is coming not because of the goodness of their heart. This is coming because of a flurry of Google child safety announcements that they have announced because the U.S. Senate is considering a bill that would ban preteens from social media. Don't take away our cash cow.

We will put some things in to pacify you. I just I would like to point out to Mr. Will Shanklin, who wrote this for Engadget. If you'd like, send us your address. We'll send you some stickers for actually getting it right for the first time in a long time. I'm very impressed. Not a single A.I.

mention, even even the shortened M.L. is used rather than A.I. Very well done. Thank you, Will. Warm the cockles of my dead heart. You're doing the God's work. You're doing the God's work. Now, let's talk about A.I. The U.K. government is shifting its A.I.

strategy, rebranding the A.I. Safety Institute as the A.I. Security Institute because they didn't want to screw up the acronym. They had stickers made, Brian. They had stickers made. They couldn't couldn't get rid of them. I see to focus on cybersecurity and national security risks.

This marks a pivot from concerns about A.I. bias and existential threats to prioritizing economic growth and tech development, a.k.a. fuck it is what they're saying. That's it. Pretty much. Yeah. This shift aligns with the labor government's A.I.

heavy plan for change, which promotes A.I. integration into government services, including a new A.I. assistant for civil servants called Humphrey. I mean, I'll give him points for the naming. Humphrey. Tell me about it.

They should have done Jeeves. I know. But they probably would have had to buy out a copyright on. Yeah. Exactly. They would have had to. They'd have had to license that one. But Humphrey. Oh, Humphrey. What are the statistics on our National Food Bank, please?

Cup of tea. Oh, God. Okay. Despite the rebrand, officials insist A.I. safety remains a priority, but not at the cost of progress. Wow. They said the quiet part out loud. Yeah. I think I just nailed it at the beginning.

Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. Speaking of people who are saying fuck it, Jonah Peretti, the founder of BuzzFeed, who destroyed BuzzFeed by having it create just buckets and buckets of A.I.-generated slop, is now deciding that it's just too much of it.

We can't take it anymore. We're done. We're done. So what are they going to do? They're going to create their own social network. They're pivoting. They're pivoting, Brian. They're pivoting. Mm-hmm. I'm trying to wrap my head around how to say this.

Yeah, it's just fucking dumb. No, all you got to do is here's what you say, Jason. Hello. Hello. But they're in the lab developing it now, so. Yes, there's no code to show. There's no code to show. No, there's no code to show. We'll just put it out. How can we do this as cheap as we can?

Ooh, there's this Mastodon code laying around. We can just slap our logo on top of that. Call it a day. That works. Yeah, it works. Here we go. And just a little bit of follow-up here. And Apple, you fucking pussies. Apple Map plans to show Gulf of America following Google.

Yeah. But not all heroes use Apple Maps, Brian. Governor Pritzker from Illinois says he is going to change Lake Michigan to Lake Illinois in a public. Public press conference. Well, you're in the dumbest possible timeline.

I know. This timeline does suck. But it is funny. I mean, my dad still lives in Chicago. And he's like, yeah, Pritzker hates Trump. And he's just always saying, he's going to push back. We're going to be the bellwether of change. I'm like, well, you're the bellwether of snark at this point.

Yeah, there's good memes and snark coming out of this, but nothing real. Yeah, yeah. You can't wipe your tears away with snark, unfortunately. No, but what you do do is you file lawsuits, and they do take some time. So I'm happy to report that even though it's not much, some of these lawsuits have gotten to the courts, and the courts are starting to finally push back a little bit.

If you recall, the CDC and FDA were ordered by Trump and Musk to remove entire sections of their websites and anything related to gender identity and data sets that the entire world is using to do actual, oh, I don't know, science. And U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, insert jokes here, has ordered the Center for Disease Control and FDA to restore the webpages and resources that they had removed to comply with President Trump's executive order.

So he gave them until February 11th at 11.59 p.m. Eastern time to comply. And apparently the CDC website on transgender and gender diverse persons is already back online with a note up top saying that the CDC's website is being modified to comply with President Trump's executive orders.

Which are now being reversed. So finally, we're getting a bit of pushback. This is a temporary restraining order that has been granted as requested by the Doctors for America. They are also suing the Office of Personal Management, or OPM, which issued the memo for the page's removal. As the Washington Post notes, the memo ordered agency heads to end all agency programs that use taxpayer money to promote or reflect gender ideology.

They're bringing everything back. And the lawsuits will continue. Don't call it a comeback. Because the lawsuits will continue on. And this is just going to be whack-a-mole that will last for the rest of our fucking natural lives. And the EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, along with multiple federal employee unions, have filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk and his Doji team to block their access to sensitive and identifying information on millions of Americans.

So we can expect to see big balls in court. Woo. We'll see what happens. But the pushback has started. And so far, almost all the court cases are coming up, of course, saying, yeah, you don't have any legal right to do any of the things that you're doing.

Yep. I got a few more on that one, too. 14 states have sued President Trump and Elon Musk, challenging Musk's role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency. The lawsuit, led by New Mexico, shocker there, argues Musk's unchecked power to eliminate federal jobs and agencies violates the Constitution's Appointments Clause, requiring Senate confirmation for such authority.

There's one. Next up, a group of 26 current and former USAID employees is suing Musk and the department in an effort to stop him from dismantling the agency without Senate confirmation. The lawsuit filed in Baltimore federal court argues that Musk's sweeping actions, enabled by his appointment from Dickhead, are unconstitutional and have put both USAID's foreign aid programs and employees' safety at risk.

So we have a safety issue here. Now, the lawsuit seeks to halt Musk's actions, declaring them unconstitutional yet again and demands legal accountability for what it calls an unlawful power grab. So I went to AI this morning, Brian. It says, how many lawsuits currently are outstanding against Elon Musk and Doge?

And I said, as of February 13th, 2025, at least 26 lawsuits have been filed against Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency. So that's good. And we do have a name for the first person that was killed from these from the USAID dismantling.

Pei Kei Lau, 71 years old, died after being sent home from a hospital that relied on U.S. foreign aid. So she couldn't get her oxygen. And so she basically suffocated thanks to Elon Musk. So thank you. There's the face of that right there.

And, yeah, if you think Elon is upset that people are dying because of this and any of his actions, you've got to remember, Brian, he's got a body count. He's got a body count. His cars kill people all the fucking time. But he just calls it fully self-driving. All right. And, yeah, now he's firing all the investigators that were coming after Tesla.

So what are you going to do? Yeah, it's amazing how all that happens. All these things that are getting shut down by Elon Musk, every single one of them was looking into some aspect of his life. Interesting how that works. Yeah. Or they were in his way to more government contracts.

But remember, he said he's being completely transparent about this process. Right, Jason? He's being completely transparent, and they even made a website called Waste.gov. Yeah, that's where he said you could go to because that's where the transparency will be, Jason. Yes, that's right.

That's where the transparency will be posted. Well, unless you're just a WordPress theme holder page, then that would be what it was. Yes, it was basically a fucking blank theme page when he went to Waste.gov.

Nothing else but a blank theme page. So the government now runs on WordPress, which is scary enough. They have changed it. They have updated it now. Now, if you go to Waste.gov, it says, this content is password protected. To view it, please enter your password below. Now, that's what I call transparency, Jason.

That is transparency, yes. I viewed source on this page. And what does it point to, Brian? The WordPress login. But it doesn't even point to a proper WordPress login because there's obviously no username that goes with it.

And then if you click on it, it says, you get a 403 error that says, access to Waste.gov was denied. You do not have authorization to view this page. Do you know why it's that way? I think you missed the story in the middle here is somebody hacked into it. Oh. They figured out it was WordPress and somehow they hacked into it.

And they – I can't remember exactly what they replaced it with. But, yeah. So it's just going great. The best possible people running this and very transparent. Yeah. Yeah. But you can also go to doge.gov, which was just a blank page for a couple days.

But now they – now they just have their Twitter feed up there. So you get – and it says latest work and showing what it does. There are some tabs at the top. So you can click on savings and it says receipts coming soon, no later than Valentine's Day with a fucking emoji.

I am sorry, Brian, but I do not like my government programs. Oh, wait. It's not a government program. It's not a government program. It hasn't been approved by the government. It hasn't been given any authority by the government. It is nothing. And if you look at the top, it says an official website of the United States government.

And they didn't even capitalize the fucking G. They did not. And where are the privacy policies? Where are the countless things that you're supposed to have if you're a government agency? There's no terms of service. There is nothing. No, but there is a job application form that you can find – that you can fill out.

I'm going to call myself bigger balls and submit my application. Exactly. And if you click on the About tab, it goes to the dumb fucking thing. I can't even speak anymore. It goes to the dumb fucking thing. Yes.

But we do have one hero this week. Robert Garcia, congressman, former mayor of Long Beach, educator, comic nerd, urbanist, progressive, and proud American. Well, did you watch the videos that Robert Garcia dropped this week, Brian? I did. It was very clever, and I'm very proud of them.

Yes. Robert Garcia, in the middle of Congress, went up against Marjorie Taylor Greene, the human slug, and said, well, she put a dick pic into the public record. I am going to put a dick pic in the public record. It pulled out a giant picture of Elon Musk, which was just beautiful.

I'm down with LBC. I am down with LBC. And then he went on Breonna Keller's show on CNN, and she gives this whole, like, do you really think that we should be going down this rabbit hole of publicly calling Elon Musk a dick?

And he just replies, well, he is a dick. I'm like, yes. If the condom fits. He's a fucking dick. And then, of course, Anderson Cooper, not to be outdone later on Tuesday, went after former New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, and basically just said, don't be a dick when they were getting in a fight live on the air on CNN.

I watched it. I was just like, he did just say that. That's fucking awesome. Sununu kind of rolled with it. So that was kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Public quorum is just totally breaking down. It's awesome. Done. It's done. Dude, we are just out the window now after grabbing by the pussy days.

So what are you going to do, Brian? Let's just roll with it. We need the Democrats to really fucking step up and just call a spade a spade or a dick a dick. Right. I would prefer they actually go to work and change things. That would be good. That would be good. Yeah. Can you just – I'm going to go grab a Brondo.

What else you got? Well, after all of that, I do have a bit of good news, actually. Like, legit good news. The odds of a newly discovered asteroid, 2024 YR-4, impacting Earth in 2032 has risen from 1.3% to 2.2%, according to NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies.

So pretty soon, it may not fucking matter anymore. You know, we've had all these programs and movies about averting the catastrophe of the asteroid. Can we just have one that just tries to go and aim it at us? At this point, I welcome our asteroid obliterator.

I know. I saw the news yesterday that they said that there's a 0.03% chance that it would hit the moon. And then I'm like, oh, I missed it by that much. And then I was thinking of seven eves. Yeah. Neil Stevenson might get that sequel after all.

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 Cullen. BKFC 94, Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Media Candy.

I watched a documentary this week, Brian, called Never Surrender, a Galaxy Quest documentary. Okay. Fucking phenomenal. Phenomenal. I found out that one of my friends actually worked on the movie. He was one of the art directors. And I'm like, oh, I found that out by watching the documentary.

I'm like, what the fuck is going on here? So, Galaxy Quest, known as one of the most perfect films ever made. This is one of the best documentaries ever made about one of the greatest movies ever made. So, I highly recommend it. It is on Prime.

So, if you have Prime, go check it out. I'm back to needing those shows now, Brian, that calm me at night and take away the pain of the day. So, I found that I completely missed season two of Wall of Chefs, which is a Canadian cooking competition on the Food Network in Canada.

It is so fucking Canadian, it shits maple. These are the nicest people competing against each other, and they are so subdued. And it's just, I don't know what it is about it that I just love the show.

I've got one episode left, and then I'm going to be forever sad that Wall of Chefs is no more because they canceled it. And, yeah. Well, that's very un-Canadian. They should keep it going, you know. You're doing all right, eh? Sure, maybe not a lot of people are watching, but we really like what you're doing.

You're very nice people. And, frankly, you only cost a few bucks. The main competition centers around the second challenge, which is a chef's fridge. And it shows all these crazy graphics.

And then they go in the middle of the stage in this old fucking refrigerator. They open it up, and there are three ingredients that one of these chefs, like, always keeps in their fridge. And that's, like, the big reveal. What's in the chef's fridge? Cheese? You have to watch it. It's Canada.

There's going to be a fucking beer and some cheese. No, no, no. That's Wisconsin, man. That's Wisconsin. It's pretty close. Same, same. Yeah, yeah. It's a fun show. I'm going to miss it. I'm going to miss it. So, if anybody's got any more low-key cooking shows like that that can keep me sane, shoot them my way, please.

Watch the Harry Potter one, man. It was good. Oh, no. I tried. I just couldn't. I don't know why. Okay. Well, I've continued to watch Mythic Quest. That is doing the trick for me in terms of keeping me sane because it's just kind of silly and funny and ironic and just the right kernel of truth about what those people are actually like.

So, it's good. But, actually, what I discovered is when I talked about it last week, I was like, oh, yeah, I think it's just season two that just dropped. No, it's season four that dropped. We were both wrong. So, this has, like, gone past my three-season rule. So, I'm working my way through season two right now.

It's still pretty solid, but I've been binging, like, two seasons in a row. And, you know, when you do that, the joke starts to run a little bit thin. You need some time away from it. So, I will be taking a break after finishing season two. And then I will probably get back to it as well. I'm also going to be taking a break because The White Lotus season three drops this weekend.

And my wife and I always watch that show together, or at least the first two seasons. So, I will be starting that. But the question is, can it be good without Stifler's mom? She really was the main reason the first two seasons were awesome. I didn't even like her that much. That's the funny part.

So, we'll see. We'll see how it turns out. Yeah, but, you know, it's one a week. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Yeah. Yeah, we'll actually have something to talk about. Like the old water cooler days. It'll be so good. Yeah. And we see the first look this week at the new Mortal Kombat 2 poster with Johnny Cage.

And I saw it, and I'm like, fuck yes. Carl Urban is Johnny Cage. I'm not sure how Carl Urban became, like, the go-to sci-fi guy. But he did. Yeah, he did, for sure. Do you remember, he did one season of a show that was a sci-fi show where he had one leg and he had a sidekick android.

And it was really good. It got canceled because I think it was just too expensive. I don't remember that. But, man, this dude has been in Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek. I mean, there's nothing this guy does. The boys. There's nothing this guy doesn't do. Well, just because he's great.

Yeah. You know, I got no problem with it. I enjoy him. I don't have a problem either. It's just amazing. It really is. It really is. Yeah. Just looking at his, I mean, seriously, looking at all of his movies that he's done in the past fucking 20 years is ridiculous.

They need to go back and AI him into Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse. Yeah. We need him in everything. Yeah. Almost Human was the name of the TV series. No recollection of that. Okay. Yeah, it was pretty good. Oh, you know what I think it really started with? When I really started to know some, I mean, yeah, Star Trek was 2009 when he hopped into that, but Dread was 2012.

Oh, my God. I forgot he was in that. He was that. He was Dread. Yeah. He was phenomenal as Dread. And I was really bummed that they didn't make any more of those. But that movie is a good standalone movie. If you want something to watch this week, it's, that is phenomenal, phenomenal.

But Jesus, I mean, he started, he was in Xena. He was in 12 episodes of Xena back in the day in Hercules, two episodes. This guy's been around forever. Right. Wow. Okay. So that's how he got there. Okay. To answer that short question. But I can't wait to see him as Johnny Cage.

He's getting a little long in the tooth to play Johnny Cage, but yeah, we'll see. We'll see. In other movie news, the Monroeville Mall, famous as the filming location for George Romero's 1978 horror classic, Dawn of the Dead, has a new owner. And it's Walmart. Okay.

Which is just, you know, the title of the article really just kind of puts it to bed. Walmart bought the mall from Dawn of the Dead because subtext is for cowards. Fair enough. So if you've never seen Dawn of the Dead, you probably don't get the joke, but go watch it. It's a good movie.

And I've been to that mall because I used to live in Pittsburgh. So, yeah. That's fun. In just shit news, Netflix is exploring video podcasts to boost engagement, according to Business Insider. Okay. The company has been in talks with talent agents about bringing popular podcasters to the platform despite past skepticism.

The appeal? It's cheap. That's why they want it. It's cheap. Yeah, of course. Of course. Unless you sign Joe Rogan. You can get Hawk to a girl pretty cheap at this point. Oh, man. I'm sure she would probably pay you to get on the network. Damn. Yeah. So they're just going to try and find, you know, probably YouTubers is what it is.

I wouldn't call them podcasters. I just call them YouTubers. There is a difference, you know. There is a difference. But I think the YouTubers might say, screw you, because YouTube CEO Neil Mohan says that TV screens have officially surpassed mobile is the top way people watch YouTube in the U.S.

I don't know if I'd be touting that because that just means that your demographic has gotten old. Could be. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. But, well, we are. I need to break it to you, Brian. But we fucking are.

Everybody else is watching on TikTok. I know. Exactly. That's my point. But here's the funny thing. Even the kids that I talk to nowadays are like, we don't even do TikTok anymore. Too many old people are on TikTok. Like TikTok. Even TikTok is starting to age out, which is crazy. But I watch YouTube on my TV half the time.

So I guess they're right. Apps and doodads. Brian, I want to do a quick PSA about apps with quizzes. Okay. If you're ever on social media and you click on an ad for an app and then they start to run you through a quiz or take a test or anything like that, close the window and run away.

Yep. Just close the window and run away because it's bullshit. Yep. You will not finish the quiz. You will not finish the test. They will ask for the credit card and the money first. That or what you do is you will finish the quiz and then they will send you a thing saying, would you like the results for your quiz? Send us your credit card. Yeah.

Or download the app for your customized package. I love the weight loss ones. The weight loss ones with the chair workouts, you know, for old guys. They're like, how old are you? How much weight do you want to lose? Do you want to do this, that, the other thing? It's all the same. It doesn't matter. Those forms mean nothing.

And what I really love is the fake fucking progress bar at the end saying, please wait a moment while we build your customized workout plan. That does not exist. It doesn't exist. They're emailing you the same workout plan. Everybody gets the same shit. They just want your credit card.

Which you can also get off Google for free. Yeah, exactly. Or YouTube on your TV. Yes. So just don't fall for that shit. It is like a psychological trick to make you invested in the process. And I've seen too many friends fall down the rabbit hole and then they just sign up.

It's like, but it's only three months for $99. I'm like, you spent 30 bucks a month on a free fucking. So there's my PSA for the day, Brian. All right. A new iPhone update patches a flaw that could allow an attacker to turn off a nearly seven year old USB security feature.

The Apple's release notes for iOS 18.3.1 and iPadOS 18.3.1 say the bug, which allowed the deactivation of USB restricted mode, may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals. So unless you plan on getting hijacked or somebody stealing your phone anytime in the near future, you don't have too much to worry about.

But as per usual, do the damn update anyways. Yeah. I'm guessing law enforcement were probably the ones that were exploiting this attack. Yeah, I assume. Yep. So, and the Israelis, of course, with always all their tools.

Yes. Apple has reportedly been ordered by the UK government to create a backdoor allowing security officials access to users encrypted iCloud backups. We're back to this. Here we go. Again, again, again. Come on, Tim Cook. Be the man. The secret order issued under UK's Investigatory Powers Act would grant access to all encrypted files worldwide, not just British users, without notifying them.

No, thank you. That's right. Yeah. Yep. If Apple complies other governments, including the US, China, and others may demand similar access, blah, blah, blah. We know the story backwards, forward, sideways. Governments keep trying to do this. The UK just needs to knock it the fuck off.

But they won't. They won't. For some reason, they think that it's a good idea. So, there it is. All right. And the thing is, nobody else is going to tell you if they've gotten the letters to do it or not. Google's not going to do it. Meta's not going to do it. Because part of the process of this is that you're not supposed to know what's happening.

Yes. So, somebody leaked this that shouldn't have. Yes. For sure. For sure. Yeah. Keep leaking. Keep leaking, people. Keep on leaking. Well, keeping with Apple and surprising news, Apple has actually done something that could save you money. The company is now allowing users to migrate purchases from one Apple account to another.

Transfers can include items such as movies, books, music apps, and more. Sounds good, doesn't it, Jason? Sure, Brian. Sounds great. I've been waiting for that ability, especially now that I have my son's account and I would like to move some of the games that he plays over to his instead of being on mine.

But, you know, this is great. Now, let's run through the easy steps involved in doing this, Jason. Hit me, Brian. You can only move purchases from your secondary account, the one you used for media and purchases, to your primary account, the one signed into iCloud and most other features.

Before starting a migration, check that you are signed into both accounts on your device and that the secondary account isn't part of a family sharing or purchase sharing account. Then, make sure you have two-factor authentication on for both accounts and that they are both linked to the same country and region. You'll also need to spend any remaining balance and not have any rentals or pre-orders.

Then, transfer your things by going to the media and purchases tab and scrolling to migrate purchases. Follow the steps on your screen and then, once the migration is complete, log out of your secondary account on all devices. Heads up, though, you'll no longer be able to use that other account for purchases anymore. Sounds convenient, easy, and useful.

The corpse of Steve Jobs is catching fire rolling in its grave so hard right now. That does not exactly sound like you could transfer things between accounts. It sounds like you could move things out of one account that you can now never use again. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to burn that account to the ground, that's all you can do.

Okay. Well, TikTok's back on the Apple Store. Yay. After more than 25 days, Apple and Google restored TikTok to U.S. app stores Thursday evening. Well, thank God I'm old and TikTok is now for old people. That's right.

So you can also go get your Lemon 8 download and CapCut if you had deleted it. So President Trump gave ByteDance a 75-day deadline to sell TikTok to a U.S. entity or face a ban. And he also proposed a 50% U.S. stake in the company. Despite the uncertainty, TikTok's traffic is recovering.

While rivals like ex-BlueSky and Meta are launching competing video features. Yeah, we knew all that stuff. But the only way that this got back in is the new Department of Justice got in touch with Apple and Google and said, we're not going to prosecute you if you put it back in. Because Apple and Google were like, no, we know this game.

We know this game. You guys are not going to fool us. You know, okay, you said that the ban is not going to be enforced. We leave it in there. Then you come after us. And then you have leverage on us. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We want it in writing that you will not fuck with us. They finally got it. And that's why they put it back in. At least the lawyers at Apple and Google are smart enough to know that, yeah, fool me once.

Fuck you. Don't buy it without it in writing. And Brian, the first ever AI image has been granted copyright protection. Okay. Well, not the first ever AI image, but the first ever AI image is, has, you know what I'm saying. I got it. Finally, finally. It's fucking early, Brian.

It's fucking early. I've been Elon'd all week. For the first time, the U.S. Copyright Office has granted copyright protection to an artwork entirely generated with AI, but with a catch. The image titled A Single Piece of American Cheese was created using Invoke, a generative AI platform.

By the CEO, Kent Kiersey. Now, he made 35 significant edits, selecting, coordinating, and arranging AI-generated elements to form a composite artwork. And the Copyright Office had actually denied him the copyright previously, but he went and sent them a video.

He had to show his work, basically. He showed his entire workflow, and then they're like, okay, fine. Upon closer inspection of the video, they noticed that Kent had six fingers, and therefore, it's an AI video, and now they've taken it away again. Yes, they've taken it away just like Milli Vanilli's Grammy.

You're fucked. Whatever. Okay. I mean, this is what we talked about, is you actually have to go in and make X amount of changes by hand, so. Yeah. It's not even that good of an image. That's the thing that pisses me off. This is all being done for press and stupidity, so.

Yeah. I did it, but you know what? It worked because I went and I checked out the tool that they made it on. It's actually a pretty good tool, and it's not that expensive. So, yeah. This week, I've been using, I use Premiere a lot now. I'm stuck in Premiere Pro for like seven hours a day, and I found that I can actually edit faster on my laptop because of the trackpad placement and the keyboard placement.

I'm pretty good with everything with that, but when I'm working at my desktop, I'm like, I missed the trackpad right by my thing, so I grabbed my Apple Magic trackpad from the office, brought it home. Problem with the trackpad is the back end of it's too tall, so I wanted to flip it around and run it upside down. That's harder than it looks.

Okay. Turns out. I needed to go find, there are lots, I did lots of Googling. I found lots of terminal commands that I could run to flip it around. None of them worked anymore, so that was a bust. But then I found Better Touch Tool, which is a piece of software that you can buy, but they have like a 45-day free trial.

And there's a checkbox that you just select and says, flip it upside down. Flip it up, rub it down. There you go. Worked like a charm. I used the Magic trackpad for about six seconds before I decided that ain't going to work. And scrapped the whole thing.

The upside is I found Better Touch Tool, and it does a whole bunch of stuff, and I'm really glad it had a 45-day trial because I'm never probably going to use it again. But if you need touch tools that are better, go get Better Touch Tool. All right. And a hat tip to Figure 15 over at our Discord, who shared this link.

Now, Jason, I once had a Jeep. I love my Jeep. I know you currently have a Jeep. I know you love your Jeep. I will never be buying a future Jeep until- I know. Unless this changes. So yes, Stellantis, the parent company of Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler, and Ram, has recently introduced full-screen.

I was going to say full self-driving, but we know that's bullshit. Full-screen pop-up advertisements on its vehicle's infotainment systems. So for new Jeep owners, anytime you come to a stop, be it at a red light or in traffic, and if you're in Los Angeles driving on the 405, this would be every five seconds.

Your infotainment screen is now being overtaken by a full-screen advertisement. To return to your navigation or music, you must manually dismiss the ad by clicking it with your finger. Oh, my fucking God. Obviously, the response from drivers has been swift and overwhelmingly negative.

Online forums are filled with complaints about these intrusive ads disrupting the driving experience. One Jeep owner shared their frustration. He highlighted how these pop-ups hijacked the screen at every stop, forcing them to constantly close ads to access essential functions, since we need to use those screens for everything now.

In response to the backlash, through their Jeep Cares representative, they acknowledged that these ads are part of a contractual agreement with SiriusXM. So now, what I couldn't find out was, does this happen if you don't have a subscription with SiriusXM or not? That's curious for me.

I want to know that. So they advise users to tap the X to dismiss the ads. Oh, well, fucking thanks, guys. I hadn't figured, I hadn't thought about that. Jesus. So, yeah, people are pissed off. And obviously, there's privacy concerns here, because for ads to be effective, vehicles must collect and transmit data about drivers' habits, locations, and preferences.

So there's concern about that. How's this data used, stored, and shared? And also, what the fuck are you doing making us have to click away pop-up ads on our screens while we're driving? What the fuck do you think this is? A Tesla? Exactly. Well, fortunately, my Jeep is one of the very old Jeeps that does not have Sirius or just about any feature whatsoever.

So I'm very happy that it is, I have a, you know, a Luddite Jeep. I'm going to keep my Luddite Jeep until the wheels fall off. Knock on wood, that is going to be a long time. But this is bullshit. Total bullshit. At the library.

So I wanted to take a break from sci-fi after having finished the wonderful Bobiverse book and then a bunch of sci-fi books before that. And I wanted to go back to kind of more, you know, non-fiction. Because I do like my history books, but my fun ones, like that James Fell's books that I read on this day in history, Shit Went Down, where he picked, you know, something that occurred every single day and wrote fabulously funny stories about it.

And so I started to get served up some of that stuff because I've read a few of them. And I saw one that looked interesting called Tiny Blunders Slash Big Disasters, 39 Tiny Mistakes That Changed the World Forever, Revised Edition, Tiny Blunders Slash Big Disasters Series by Jared Knott.

And not being an idiot, I downloaded the free trial, or not free trial, but you get the free chapter. Free chapter, yeah. So I read the free chapter and I'm like, oh, this is actually, this is pretty interesting. It was like one event and that was pretty good. Okay, I will buy this book and I will start to read it.

I think he wrote one chapter. And then I think he went to chat GPT and he shat out the rest of these because they were fucking awful. And they were so obviously AI written or he had a ghost writer write their one chapter and he's just a shitty writer.

One or the other, I'm not sure which. I've never returned a book so fast. And it's too bad because it's an interesting concept. And the free chapter that he wrote was actually really good and compelling. But then I like read another one and I was like, this is horrible.

This is like state premise. Do the little wrap up. I'm like, and then the second, the next one was like that too. And then I read one more and I was like, no, I'm not, I'm not going to torture myself by reading through this AI slop. So I returned it.

That's a good business model if you can get it. Yeah. I mean, it was done very well. It just totally suckered me into thinking this is going to be a great book and purchasing it. But luckily I realized it quick enough to return it. So yeah, don't do that. In other book news, back to the way we used to shop for books, and I'm kind of excited about this, Barnes & Noble will be opening up 60 bookstores this year.

Excellent. That's shocking, right? So not only that, they opened 57 stores last year. They plan to open at least 60 this year, thanks in part to a boost from BookTok, according to Axios. It's a significant improvement from back in 2020, when only three new Barnes & Noble's locations were planned, according to Axios.

And obviously they've been shutting them down for a long time. So they spent a decade closing 150 stores and just started ramping up again back in 2023. So again, this is a lot about BookTok and people are, some people are actually starting to read again and sharing it and book planning.

And they're obviously doing the things that, you know, becoming relevant by being more social. Coffee shop, you can sit and read, all that sort of stuff. But I'm very excited. I love bookstores. There's a few around us still, and we go as often as we can. And I just love being in a real bookstore, even though I only really read books on my Kindle now.

Yeah, we got a Barnes & Noble a couple miles away, and it's still nice to go in there every now and again. We covered the resurgence of Barnes & Noble a couple months ago. And it's fascinating. They, like, listen to their customers. Yeah. Amazing. Imagine that. Amazing.

Yeah. Create a compelling environment for the people that actually like reading. And listen to what they want to buy instead of what the booksellers are trying to shove down your throat. What a fucking concept. Oh, my God. And we did talk last time, I think, about revisiting the Bobaverse series after you finished the last book.

And I did just that. I started reading Bobaverse book one again. And I had forgotten a lot about Bobaverse book one. Mainly that the reason that he became the Bob was that the United States was basically where we're at this week.

I was like, oh, no. The dystopian sci-fi of the Bobaverse has come to pass. I had totally forgotten about the breakdown of the United States in the Bobaverse books. Yeah. Yeah. But you know what I love about the book is that it's succinct.

It gets to the point. There's no fluff. Mm-hmm. And it's just so well written. Yeah. It is so well written. If you have not listened to us for the past however many years, drone on about the Bobaverse book series, you have to go get it if you like sci-fi.

It is seriously one of the best sci-fi book series out there. It's a great series. Yeah, and I'm only a little bit into book one again, and I've fallen back in love with it. So I think I might just have to go back through the whole series. So Bob has legs.

This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Bruce 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 nonstop 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. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave.

Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave. Podcast superhost Dave Bittner. She codes 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. I keep saying caveat for some reason.

I've got to fix that. Rakes down industrial cybersecurity on control loop and even brings the laughs on only malware in the building. I don't know why I say caveat. Caveat. Caveat. Caveat. I try and make you sound more hunter-hunter than you maybe are. At least you don't say cravats, you know. Yes.

You'll stick your pinky out when you say caveat. You're in a Maryland having all your crab and all those little things. How's it going, Dave? It's not bad. You know, I mean, I'm hanging in there.

I'm hanging in there. The thread is getting thinner and it's only February. Yes. Right. So I've been checking in with a lot of friends because obviously there's a lot of chaos, particularly near us here in Washington, D.C.

And so I'm checking in with a lot of friends, folks who work in the government, who work in national security and things like that. And for some of them, I ask them how they're doing and they say, oh, I'm just trying to tune it all out. And I think, okay, that's – it would be nice to be able to do that.

As someone whose day job is delivering the bad news, I don't have that option. And so I have to go through it all and analyze it and, you know, look, woe is me, right? I mean, I have a great job, which I very much enjoy, so I shouldn't complain.

But the type of news that we're experiencing today does take, for me anyway, an emotional toll, which I try to counter by doing fun things. But it's hard sometimes. Copious amounts of drugs.

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. You know, I did dry January. Me too. Congratulations. And February and March. But I did dry January just on a whim.

But what motivated me to do dry January is that I've been gaining weight. Right. And so I figured dry – this would be an easy way to cut out a bunch of empty calories if I just don't drink for a month and I'll see if that makes a difference. And it has helped.

I just – I'm thinking of that scene in Airplane. I picked a bad day to quit drinking. Yeah. Precisely. Precisely. It has – I would say it has slowed down the rate at which I'm gaining weight. It's like bumping the brakes slightly.

I mean, yeah, I was raised with comfort food. So it's – that's a hard – that's hardwired into me. So that's a struggle that I'm facing right now and I'm trying to do my best to, you know, not – it's nice to be able to still fit into all of your clothes.

And so that's where I am. It's not easy. It's the little victories, Dave. That's all we have left. Yeah. Right. Right. But, you know, hopefully things will settle down here. I wonder how quickly – or how long can the chaos continue?

I guess we had the answer from the previous run-through of this. The answer is four years and beyond. I guess – At least. Yeah. That's just on the clock. We're not talking about, you know, psychological years. Psychological years, it's never going to end.

But, oh, yeah. Right. Death wears thy sting. Yeah. Try to stay optimistic, but it's a struggle some days. You know, there is another thing that does expand time as we know it and makes things seem interminable, and that would be the song It's a Small World, as we've all been through.

Yes. One of our favorite little bits of family archival footage is, you know, high-ate footage of my father taking a nap while going through Small World.

Just, you know, head back, just completely mouth open, drooling down his chin, just, you know, while Small World is going all around him. And blissfully unaware of what – and, boy, if we could all just do that during that ride, it would be wonderful.

Well, you know, some of us do these days as we've become dads going on the ride. Yeah. I took a really good nap one time in the tiki room. Oh, the tiki room is great. You get your Dole Whip. You sit there. It's cool. Right.

It's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Just took a 20-minute nap. It was great. Well, there's going to be more of it soon. So, okay. More of Small World? Yeah. Apparently, Richard Sherman, the person who wrote it, left a new verse for It's a Small World to Bob Iger in 2023 as a parting gift to the studio that changed his life as part of the Sherman Brothers, which he was one of the old – Yeah.

Wrote many of the great songs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This not being one of them. Yeah. No. Not at all. Oh, I don't know about that. I mean, if a song is – I think this is a familiarity breeds contempt sort of thing for me, Dave. It's – I've heard it more times than I ever need to.

Yes, that's true. Yeah. And it does just dig in there and get stuck in your brain. Yes. Which – so – but is it fair to call that bad? I mean, it's a sign of good songwriting, I suppose. Maybe evil, notorious.

I don't know. How many people ride Small World with their own will, right? Or is it just like, okay, there's a short line. It's air-conditioned. It's air-conditioned. That's the big one. Right. I can nap.

That's really it. It's air-conditioned and it's reasonably long. Yes. Yeah. I'll put these earplugs in and the kids will love it. Yeah. Also, you can sneak a drink in there if you have to as well as someone who used to do that kind of thing. Oh, they have cameras these days.

They do? I do like the little – the little – I think my favorites are the little hula dolls, the little from – I guess from Hawaii. Yes. They're very cute. Yeah. Very cute. All right. Well, getting a new verse. Great. Yeah. That's it. That's all I got for you. You're the Disney guys.

I put it in there. I thought maybe you'd run with it, but hey, fuck it. No, you know. I appreciate all things Disney and I'll have to hear the verse. I don't – did they release it? Is it in the story? I haven't listened. It comes out July 7th. It drops July 7th. Oh, it's dropping. Dropping like it's hot.

Okay. Dropping like it's hot. So the lines for Small World will be around the block. So people waiting to get in to check out the new verse. People will be at rope drop. They'll be sprinting to Small World to be able to check out the new verse for sure. Yes, definitely.

Well, I did put in the story – initially it was because, Jason, you had a story in here about something awful that Trump had did, which, you know, wave around the room and you can hit 20 of them. But you pulled that, but I left this in anyway because I was going to, you know, do a counterpoint and say, look, he's not always wrong.

And his new thing is he basically – you know, he doesn't go through any proper channels. He just, you know, signs executive orders and tells people to do things, which is not how government generally works. He told the Treasury to stop minting the penny, which he's not wrong about that. We don't need the penny.

It's not 1942. And Canada got rid of their penny about 20 years ago. They haven't missed it. Don't need it. So good. Yeah. Yeah. It's just one of those things that he says it's his idea and it's not. Of course it's not. It's been kicking around forever. No, I included a link in the show notes here.

They were talking about this 20 years ago on the West Wing about getting rid of the penny. And basically the Illinois contingent wouldn't allow it to happen because that's where President Lincoln was from and he's on the penny. So my wife tells me that one of the last places that pennies were taken in an automated way was Illinois toll plazas.

You know, you toss your money in, right? And that was one of the last ones to take pennies. I mean, look, people have been talking about getting rid of pennies forever. The whole thing is that it costs more than a penny to make a penny and that all people do with pennies is hoard them because the days of I remember I don't know about you guys, but I remember, you know, my dad had a dish on his bureau in the bedroom where at the end

of the day he'd come home and he'd stick his hand in his pocket and empty out his change, put it in the dish. And then the next day he'd put his hand in the dish and scoop it all up and put it in his pocket. Because when you were paying for things in cash, you wanted to have change. Yep. Well, nobody does that anymore.

So all that happens with pennies is they get hoarded. There was a penny shortage about the past couple of years. Yeah, during COVID there was. I remember. Right, right. But the problem, and I have a link to this story, is that if you get rid of pennies, then your problem just basically bumps up to nickels.

I will point out that this link is on AOL.com, so this story could be 75 years old. That's true. That's true. Well. The problem is the farthing. What are we going to do with the farthing? These shillings are costing us too much money.

That's right. Me thinketh. But nickels cost even more. Nickels are even more wasteful than pennies. Evidently, nickels cost something like 14. Well, get rid of those too. Who the fuck is using them? Come on. Right. So, well, look, we know that as Americans, we are unwilling to adopt dollar coins, as much money as that would save us, because every time we try, people, it just doesn't go anywhere.

So, I don't know. Look, the way this administration is going, we're only going to be able to use Bitcoin anyways. That's true. That's a good point. Trump coins and shit coins. Trump coins. Yeah. No, I've heard good cases made to just say, drop the last decimal point and move on. Yeah.

You know, go to the dimes. That's it. That's all we need. Oh, go to the dimes. Dimes, quarters. Yep. Move on from there. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. The question is, do you round up or do you round down? So, does the consumer benefit or the shop? I think we know the answer to that one, don't we?

No. Yeah. I think history. Yeah. That was a naive question. Yeah. But you bring up an interesting point, Brian. The quarter kind of throws the gum in the works on that. That's true. That's true.

Because then you've still got the five. Yeah. Then you need to keep the nickel around. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, nobody's getting rid of quarters. This is a conundrum. Although, I can't tell you the last time I used real physical money. I use it every single day. But I still have change in my pockets.

I'm just an old man, I guess. God damn it. Yeah. Keep them from tracking you. You know, this is just going to get stuck in Congress right next to, can we get rid of daylight saving time? Ah, yes. Yes. Right.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's true. Can we just get rid of Elon first before we get rid of the penny? Priorities, people. Priorities. Let's bump, let's bump something up the fucking ladder. At least the penny has been approved by Congress as opposed to Elon. Oh, zing.

There you go. There you go. Yeah, that is one of the most frustrating things in my daily Cyber Wire reporting is just having to deal with the irrationality of what's going on because of Mr. Musk going in like a bull in a China shop and just, just farting around everywhere.

Trashing things left, right and center. Here's another thing I don't, here's another part of this I don't understand. What is going on with the board of directors and the shareholders at both Tesla and SpaceX that their CEO can just go, just do something else?

I mean, on the one hand, maybe they're thinking this is- But that's what they've been doing forever. Well, I'm thinking maybe they're thinking this is, yeah, but maybe they're thinking this is actually a good thing because he's not here. The bull in the China shop is not here right now creating the cyber truck. He's over there doing something else and so we can actually get our work done.

That's a real possibility, I think. Well, the problem, though, is the ill will that is being engendered around the world and we've reported on that in last week's show. You know, maybe in America, there's certainly a large fraction of people that love Elon and everything that he does and by all means, sir, destroy our government because you're great.

But the rest of the world, Tesla sales are dropping left, right and center. Starlink is being looked upon poorly and contracts are being canceled and then reinstated when he strong arms them because America. But in general, he is still hurting the brand, even if he's out and about and not physically there making another cyber truck.

He's still killing the brand. Mm-hmm. Killing it. Killing it. Yeah. Winning. So, but yeah, I mean, you know, the problem is that the boards at these companies have been handpicked by Elon to leave him the F alone. So.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. What a world. What a world. I did put a couple links into the, my new Deport Elon and Boycott Tesla shirts. If you are so inclined to go pick one of those up. Oh. Are these your own design?

They are indeed. Oh, very nice. As you can tell, I am not so much of a designer as I was a programmer, but, but I was fairly proud of the Boycott Tesla one because you can take a Tesla logo and turn it into a swastika in under 15 seconds with a little Photoshop foo.

So. Yeah. Look at that. That's a feature, not a bug, according to Elon. That's true. That is true. Right. In the original design parameters. Yeah. Oof. Well, I, before we run along, I wanted to give you guys an update on my glasses situation.

So remember last time we were talking about. Yes, Mr. Franklin. Yes. You know, what's funny is I was thinking about, because we're heading to Disney World in the next couple of weeks. And yes, and one of the places we'll be, of course, we get banned for copyright infringement will be at Epcot.

And one of my favorite things at Epcot is the American experience. But one of the lines, no one will notice. Yeah. Not that old. But Ben Franklin has, you know, one of those lines that the Simpsons has made fun of because of how, I don't know, what do you call it?

Exposition-esque it is, where he says, I may have invented these bifocals that I'm wearing, but I assure you they are not rose-colored. That sort of thing. Just such a Disney presentation line. Anyway, I'm wearing bifocals now.

As we said last week, I am switching from progressives to bifocals. And I have to say, overall, big thumbs up on the bifocals. Really? Okay. Yes, yes, surprisingly so. Um, the things that I've noticed are, uh, it is great to have your full range of vision in focus.

So my peripheral vision is in focus, uh, because as we talked about last week, progressives tend to have this little alleyway down the middle of the lenses that are where the, that's the business end of the lenses. And on the sides, it kind of fades out for some reason.

Um, these are clear edge to edge. So that's one of the things I noticed right away was like, whoa, it's like being a, it's like IMAX. Everything's in focus all over the place, which is nice. Um, and then having the closeup vision down low has been great.

Uh, as I said, my, uh, prescription did change. So part of what I'm experiencing is the benefits of that, that I'm, I am, I am wearing the correct prescription now, which helps quite a bit. Um, I am a week into this. So I am just about not noticing the line anymore.

It is slowly, but surely disappearing from my consciousness, which is interesting. Um, yeah, it does. And I will say that there, all I've noticed so far is there is an odd middle distance, which I'll say is at arm's length.

So the distance that you reach out to, to change the radio station on in your car or the, the HVAC setting in your car, that's the strange little no man's land where either lens is almost right to, to have that resolve, but not quite either of them is perfect.

Right. But it's a trade-off I'll take. Um, so I don't know, Jason might be worth looking into. Uh, I'm digging it so far. All right. I might give it a shot cause I'm due. I'm due. Yeah. And the, you know, the whole line in the lenses thing, like there, it's hardly noticeable anymore.

And you know, like we said last week, who cares? We're old. Yeah. Seriously. That's the least of my worries right now. Yeah. I mean, you know, whatever. I see. Yeah. It is better to see good than to look good. All right.

Well, that's what I have. Actually guy, I'm going to be gone for a few weeks. What? All right. Yeah. So next week I'm traveling for work. I'm actually going to a conference in Orlando for a few days and then I come home and then I turn right around and go back to Orlando for a family vacation, which is like a week and a half, but it covers the next two Fridays.

So I'll talk to you guys in a month. Unless Jason, unless Brian, I get to see you at Disney, uh, you guys are going, right? Uh, not, not in the next month though, unfortunately. Oh, okay. And we do the California one, not Florida man.

Oh, I thought you, I thought, I guess we were talking a while back. You were, yeah, we were thinking about it, but, uh, now that, now that, uh, all this insanity has happened and the tariffs and everything in the Canadian dollar is tanked. It is, uh, unwise for us to do it at this moment to make the Florida trip, unfortunately. Although I will, I will be jealous and I'm looking forward to hearing about it because, uh, I, I do want to get out there.

Or just Epcot and all that sort of stuff has always, uh, stuck with me and I, I want to see it all again. So that would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. The new things that are there since last time I was there is the Tron ride and the update to Splash Mountain. Yeah. The new Tiana thing.

So I'm looking forward to both of those. If the Tiana thing is anything like the one in, in Southern California, it's, uh, they're still working out the kinks. That thing is down more often than it's up. Oh, really? The Tron ride's been going for a while, so the kinks are all out of that. And by all accounts, like it looks phenomenal. So I'm very jealous.

Yeah. Yeah. The only bummer is, um, uh, Big Thunder Mountain is closed for renovation all year. Yeah. And actually, I'm, I'm wondering if the, um, Rivers of America is good, is drained. That's right. They're using AI to design the rest of the park.

The Disney AI in the app is drained the fucking river. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They're, they're taking that out for Cars Land. That's right. Right. Right. So we'll see. But anyway, oh, and there's a new Country Bear Jamboree. New Country Bear Jamboree.

So. That's cool. Yeah. Whatever. Just have a good time. Time away. That's right. Look, since you're going by yourself first, and I cannot recommend this enough because you are enough of a Disney file that you will understand the, the joy that could come of this, I would, uh, tell the family that you actually have an extra day at the conference and, uh, run over to the park by yourself.

Yeah. Believe me, that has crossed my mind. It is a joy and a pleasure to wander through that park solo. Yeah. Are you guys, uh, familiar with, um, that you can get either shopping or restaurant passes to get in the parks?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So the, the thing here is if you just want to go in the park, like to hit one ride or cause I think they give you two hours, um, you can go, basically you pay for a ticket, a shopping ticket. You go in, if you come out within like two hours, they refund the price of the ticket.

So if you just want to go in and do something real quick, it's a way to get into the park without having to pay a full day ticket to get in the park. So a little tip there. Yeah, it is a life hack. It's like, and, but like Brian's saying, if you're, if you're on a trip and you're traveling by yourself and you don't have a whole lot of time and you're thinking to yourself, I can't pay a hundred and whatever dollars just to spend a couple hours.

Yeah. And you really want to see that Ben Franklin hall of president speed. Well, of course, right. Actually, you know what? That, um, reminds me that one of the things I will be avoiding this time is the hall of presidents, uh, because last time we were there, well, kind of the last time we were there,

we went in the hall of presidents and during the show, people were cheering and booing their favorite presidents. That's America now. Yeah. Couldn't believe it. Yeah. It was awful.

Well, you know, when you have a sitting president threatening to kill his vice president, this is where we're at now. It's a blood sport. That's not who they were booing. No. I didn't think so. Yeah. It's Florida. Florida, man. Yeah. So we'll be skipping that, but, uh, oh, well, what a world.

All right, guys. See you in a month. See you in a month. Take care. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got some new subscribers, Andrew and Tony with the gold monkey level. Woo hoo. And Tony writes in, I appreciate you guys and you've genuinely contributed to my happiness for many years.

I feel like a slacker for not kicking in sooner. Thanks so much for the great quality work you do and for sharing the coolness that is you with all of us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks for Nicholas for upping your patronage. And from the hall of fame, we've got Chris, Kevin, Leslie, Phil, Flash, Chris Manchu, Lucas, Jordan, Ray, and Paul.

And I know I butchered Chris Manchu, I'm sure. I don't know. I think you probably did better with that than Andre. Andre. But we'll find out. Andre. Andre. Andre. You guys, as Brian said, we love your money, but man, your names are killing us sometimes.

Do you remember the first season of Project Runway? Barely. Andre. Oh, Andre on tally. Yeah. Oh, God. The things that stick in your mind. Anyways, over at PayPal, we've got Ralph, Miles, Shari, Natalie, Linda, and Arcadio.

All right. And over the tip jar, we've got Theodore, Joseph, and Tony again. Tony, Tony actually hit us up with merch, the tip jar, and the Patreon. That's how you do it. That's a three-peat winner. Damn right. And on the merch side this week, we've got Tony, Gallo, Bill, and Jason.

Thank you so much for buying our goodies. And in sad news, best-selling novelist Tom Robbins has died. I guess it's not that sad. He was 92. So. 92. Quite a life. I look at the picture from this NPR article that you link in here, and it says, Tom Robbins, a 2014 reading, and this guy, so he's 92.

This is, he's in his 80s. Look how good he looks. He looks fantastic. I'm like, there's no way this guy's in his 80s. He looks phenomenal. A little Tim Curry-esque in that photo. Yeah. Yeah. One of my favorite writers of all time, certainly somebody that, you know, when you're a certain age, like in your early 20s, this is the guy.

And I was actually just thinking about that a little bit recently, like my teens and early 20s. Two of the formative people we've lost in a short space of time, for me, like if you talk about like film and TV, you know, it was certainly David Lynch, you know, Twin Peaks was everything.

Books. It was 100% Tom Robbins, you know, and Jitterbug Perfume, Skinny Legs and All, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, all of those books, the magical realism, just phenomenal stuff. Jitterbug Perfume is legitimately probably in my top five books of all time, still. And that is, I'm definitely do a reread for that.

So, you know, and film, TV, books, if Robert Smith fucking kicks the bucket from the cure, I'm going to lose my fucking mind. Knock on wood. Oh, Jesus. You may have done it again. Yeah. You may have done it again. I still say we didn't kill Bowie, but fuck it.

We killed Bowie and fucked up the entire timeline. Everything went to shit after he died. It pretty much was it. Yeah. Sorry about that, Bowie. I've never actually read a Tom Robbins book, so maybe I'll... Oh, dude. You would actually love it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We got a note from Dan.

Dan says, let us know when the larger Elon shirts are available. I'm wearing my first gen right now. Well, Dan, you're in luck. Head over to shop.gog.show and get your big Deport Elon shirts now. I made them big and red, so they stand out. There's also some Boycott Tesla shirts over there now, too.

And Jody writes in, just a thought. Some subtle hashtag Deport Elon Steel tumblers would make great gifts for some of my friends and probably sell nicely at my boutique. Well, Jody, hit me up offline, and maybe we can find a way to send you some at cost. Wow, we're getting into B2B now.

That's right. That's right, baby. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at gog.show slash 684. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few books our way.

I guess we've been talking about books a lot. Well, that, too. 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 for it. Swing by gog.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans.

Got thoughts, feedback, cool links? Hit us up at gog.show slash contact. And hey, don't forget to leave a five-star review at gog.show slash review, and we'll read it on the show. And guess what? We've got merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.gog.show. Stay grumpy, and where's Andre?

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