685: Bezos, Jeff Bezos

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

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

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, I got a little follow-up here. One of my favorite things in the world is the single-use website. Right. And we have a bonanza this week. Okay. I love the first one that I found. It's the 88 by 31 GIF collection.

Ah, this is memories. I remember making these. Oh, so many of them. So many of them. Yes. All the old-timer web folks will notice these and go, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes. They littered AOL. They littered everything. Like, every website had to have these.

And a lot of these are just kind of random and bizarre. But there are some ones in there that I totally remember. You know, there's definitely the AOL Instant Messenger ones in there. Lots of Netscape ones, Mozilla ones. Yeah.

Internet Explorer. Made with cascading style sheets. Ooh. See, that was getting near the end. That's near the end, yeah. Yeah, that was getting near the end of anybody using those buttons when CSS started to come out. But because you didn't need the buttons after you had CSS.

So, yeah. Yeah. So, it's a fun little walk down memory lane. There you go. Then, the next one I found was trumpgolftrack.com. Ah. Now, this one I thought was a pretty clever one. Soon to be taken down? I don't know if you can. I don't know if you can take this one down.

Let's see. Because it's all public data. And it's on its own web server. So, we'll see. So far, days in office, 32. Days spent golfing, 9. Times spent golfing, 28.13%. Price of egg tracker, price of gasoline tracker, all going up.

Exactly. That's the best part about it. But you know what? You guys, you're owning me. You've owned me. Does it make you feel better now? You own the lib. Jesus Christ. We're a bunch of idiots. Oh, yeah. That's a fun one. That's a fun one. That's a fun one.

Yeah. Then, the next one we have is arewedoomedyet.org. This is – I figured this was going to be an Elon tracker, but it's not. It's the asteroid. Because, yeah, we're going to possibly get hit by an asteroid. The problem with arewedoomedyet.org is it's out of date.

They need to update it. No, no. They have updated. But it says it's a 0.2749% chance, and I thought we were up to 3% now. Oh, but you have not been paying attention. I have not. Oh, am I out of date? We have been on a wild ride. Well, since the election, but particularly in just the last couple days.

Earlier this week, the chance of the asteroid hitting Earth climbed again to a 1 in 32 chance of hitting Earth. And we all said our silent thank yous. Yes. So, it went up to 3.1% chance of Earth impact. However, they have now done a new calculation.

And unfortunately, these odds have plummeted to near zero as astronomers' calculations of the asteroid's path have been updated to indicate the Earth is almost certainly not going to be in the space rock's plans. It has gone down to 0.28% or a 1 in 360 shot.

Oh, so it is correct. Man, I had my hopes up. Yes. They're calling it the city killer, and I'm like, which city? Where do I got to move? Can we pick it? Yeah. Yeah, seriously. Do we have a choice in the matter? Can we vote? Can we vote?

Yes. So, yeah. Unfortunately, our method of escape from this hellhole has diminished. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, this week, we do have lots of news about the Department of Government evisceration. Also a great one-use website because it does nothing.

Seriously. But we can all change the content, which is fantastic. Let's just go have our word with it. I think maybe – see, Kara fucking Swisher took my doggy style, so I can't do it. And I'm glad, too, because it really sounded dumb when she said it, too.

So, I'm like, okay. I think maybe the ESS. I'm just going to call it Elon Schutzstaffel. I think that actually sounds like it might be a little bit more on the nose. That does sound good. You know, it isn't Kara's delivery. It's the fact that she keeps repeating it and pauses because she thinks it's so witty.

That's the thing that's so annoying. She's waiting for the laugh. Yeah. She's like, aren't I clever? Every single time she says it. Yeah, I knew when I said it that it was kind of a stretch. I'm like, yeah, maybe. I'll let you run with it, you know. Yeah, yeah. I only did it for one episode, so, you know. I pulled it back last episode.

I'm like, no, this ain't going to fly. All right. Let's get on to some news. Now, this one just came in this morning, and the headline almost takes care of the whole thing.

I cannot describe how strange Elon Musk's CPAC appearance was, so here's a literal transcript instead. Subtitle. This is, I emphasize, not a parody. So, here's to sum up the summary. So, Elon made a very bizarre appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC.

You know, every time I see that, I just imagine them all on the breathing machines, which they probably all are on anyways, but that's the CPAP. So, yeah. So, he made an often incoherent but meme-filled interview with Newsmax host Rob Schmidt. He wore a MAGA hat and some gas station sunglasses he stole from the corpse of Kara Swisher.

And he was greeted with cheers as he waved around a chainsaw gifted to him by Argentina's president, Javier Millet, calling it the Chainsaw for Bureaucracy. And, you know, of course, I just wish he'd cut his own head off with it, but that sadly didn't happen.

He rambled through a mix of internet memes, political grievances, and conspiracy-laced claims, at one point declaring, I am become meme, and accused the left of trying to outlaw comedy. And this one's really rich. On Ukraine, he denounced the war as a graft machine, arguing it's enriching elites while costing lives.

Kind of like fully self-driving Teslas. Or Doge. Yeah, yeah. I think I am become douche is more like his running slogan nowadays. But did you get to check any of it out? No. I just can't anymore. It's bad enough that he's just creeped into everything.

He used to do that anyways, and it was just business crap, so I didn't really care. But now that, you know, he thinks he's fucking some politician or whatever, and he's... I can't. I can't. I'm physically tense when I see him. I didn't think it was possible to have somebody who lied more than Trump, but I guess he just talks more than Trump.

Like, he just can't get... He can't... He doesn't shut up, and it's all lies. All of it. Like, and provable, and it doesn't matter. Like, he'll say something, and just immediately... Well, we'll get to that, because... We got plenty of demonstrations here. Immediately, people point out and put out the actual facts, and it just doesn't matter.

So... Yeah. See, what we figured out is 47 at least has the wherewithal to go play golf for 27% of the time. Yes. So we don't have to hear him all the time. So the golf is actually saving us, the American taxpayer, from having to deal with the bullshit. Yeah. So... Yeah. Well, unfortunately, he outsourced, so...

Yeah, he did outsource. To a fucking South African. He outsourced to an immigrant. Wait, way to go. Wait, hold on a second. I thought we were supposed to not be doing that. Yeah, shouldn't he be on a plane by now? More hypocrisy. Okay. Tesla is running into some problems with people hacking off the cables of their superchargers.

Now, they say that they're being stolen because people want to sell the copper, which can be worth up to $5.20 a pound. I think it's just a... That doesn't even buy a fucking pack of eggs. Seriously, you can't even buy some eggs for that. Eggs cost more than copper.

So, you know, I just think it's a sign of civil disobedience. But Tesla's Max DeSiger confirmed on X that the company is testing the Die Defender Wrap, which explodes with blue dye when cut, marking the thieves and the cables. A mark of pride, I might say.

Additionally, cables will now be engraved with property of Tesla to deter resale at recycling centers. I'm sorry if it says property of Tesla. I am proudly hanging that on my wall. Thanks, man. Reports show these measures are already in place at some Seattle stations, but it's unclear if they'll expand further.

Tesla says it's continuing to explore more security options. I just can't believe that you can just walk up to a supercharger and cut the cable off. Shouldn't you get zapped or something? Come on. I don't think it's a live cable until you're paid the money. Paying for it, of course. Yeah, they're not going to waste any juice on that.

So here's an announcement. Tesla supercharging stations have cables that can be cut anytime. So do with that what you will. Do with that what you will. Yep. We're just providing information. We're just asking questions.

We're that podcast now. Yeah, we are. Protesters gathered outside Tesla showrooms across the U.S. on Saturday, demonstrating Elon's deepening influence in government. Organizers cited 37 protests nationwide under the hashtags Tesla takedown and Tesla takeover.

As outrage grows over douche's role in orchestrating mass federal layoffs through his Department of Government of Israel. I got to learn to say that without staring. You know, I have – okay, obviously I'm anti-Elon at this point and I'm all for public demonstration.

It's the only thing we have left because, you know, what else are we going to do at this point? But I do have a problem. I don't think it should be directed at Tesla. I think it needs to be directed at Elon. Let's be honest. Elon has not done diddly squat at Tesla in a long time.

He's averaging over 100 tweets a day. He's speaking to a bunch of elderly right-wing people that have breathing issues. He's all over the place. He's trying to muddle with Germany's election since he's already screwed with ours. He's supposedly running Doge. He's supposedly running Neuralink.

He's supposedly running Starlink. I mean, he's not doing shit at Tesla. If Tesla had a fucking brain at this point, the board would fucking boot him out or make him some honorary dick-rific and just push him out of the way. But they don't. Whatever.

Here's the thing. You protest Tesla to take the Tesla stock price down to take away his funding. He doesn't care. Take away his funding. I don't care. Here's the deal. I care. It makes me feel better. Okay. It makes me fucking feel better. That's the thing, though. It's like he does not give a shit about any of these companies right now.

And, yes, a lot of his money is on paper, but he's also somehow managed to hack himself into the direct government money pipeline. He's not going to be worried about money anytime soon. See, I disagree with you about him not caring about these companies because if you look at everything that's being done right now with the people that he's targeting, he's going after people that come after his companies.

I got another story in a short order that just came out today about more government agencies that he is deliberately targeting that get in the way of his companies. I have a story. I have a couple of those stories as well. But my question to you is, is this like Trump?

Is it really about the money or is it about revenge? Is he just a thin-skinned dickhead going after people? Oh, he's definitely a thin-skinned dickhead. Definitely a thin-skinned dickhead. All right. Well, during these protests, the flagship showroom in San Francisco, somebody in the building, it's coming from in the building, taped up a sign to the window that said, we hate him, too.

The problem is in the building. Yes, it is. Yeah. Not all heroes. Not all heroes. Here's a fun one. Just take a breath away for a second. The New York Times is officially integrating AI tools into its newsroom and product teams because why the fuck not?

In an internal email, the paper introduced Echo, Echo, Echo, an AI-powered summary tool along with a suite of AI products for editorial and web development. Journalists can now use AI to suggest edits, brainstorm interview questions, and conduct research.

But they're barred from using it to draft or significantly revise articles or input confidential sources. Well, that's a good thing, I guess. Yeah. I suppose those are some good guardrails for it. I'm almost okay with that if they actually do that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's interesting. They're using – they have approved AI programs including GitHub Copilot for the coding, Google's Vertex AI for product development, and select Amazon and OpenAI tools, who they are suing right now. They're suing OpenAI and Microsoft.

And it kind of does make sense that they are allowed to use these internally since they were – Trained on their own data. They were trained on their own fucking data. So they're like, why not? Yeah. So, yeah. Kind of makes sense. Kind of makes sense.

Well, the Doge Axe is swinging wildly and freely, basically shit canning people all over the government, including the hardworking folks at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who are quickly trying to rehire a number of federal employees who were laid off over the weekend because they're working on combating the bird flu, which is kind of important right now.

But, Brian, I don't know if you saw the interview with the guy from the government. He says, chickens can't fly, so why do we care? They really should have had Herb Tarlick give that – God is my witness. I thought turkeys could fly.

Oh, no. That was the main guy from the station. It wasn't Herb Tarlick. Oh, yeah. But anyway. Anyways. Yeah. I see that clip every Thanksgiving. It's an oldie but a goodie. I have a T-shirt. It's great. Nice. As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

So the employees were working on combating bird flu and were let go as part of a mass purge underway at every federal agency spearheaded by American oglyarch Elon Musk under the banner of Doge. The statement explained that many of the positions were in the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, exactly the kind of jobs you'd want to have good people for given the possibility of meat and poultry infected with bird flu entering the U.S. food supply.

So there were several positions supporting that were notified of their terminations over the weekend, and we are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters. He's just running around and firing people that nobody wants fired. And this is not the first time workers at federal agencies have been let go by Trump's goons only to be rehired in a chaotic scramble.

This one, I'd argue, slightly more important. Roughly 300 employees of the National Nuclear Safety Administration, a subagency of the Department of Energy, were fired last week until somebody notified the Trump regime that these are the people responsible for securing the nation's nukes.

Yeah. So then they went back to try to hire them back. Yeah. Yeah. So there are a number of lawsuits that are trying to stop this dismantling of the government, and they're currently being litigated, but there have been some bad signs recently that the courts may not save us.

For starters, several reports indicate that Trump's underlings simply aren't following court orders, which, by the way, is the nightmare scenario. If they just decide to ignore on any court order, we are screwed. And also, judges are also not always finding in favor of people who are attempting to defend the country's institutions right now.

Ah. And the purging of federal employees carried out by Doge just somehow manages to keep cutting staffers involved in anybody that was investigating Elon Musk's companies, as you pointed out. According to a report from Reuters, several employees at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who were tasked with managing reviews and applications related to Neuralink somehow managed to get fired over the weekend.

This is not the first time. Basically, anybody that's involved in looking into any of Elon's business is getting fired. So that's who's getting targeted most by the wonderful people that are trying to save us money, theoretically.

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 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. Yeah, and moving on with that thread, this one just came in.

A key government team overseeing autonomous vehicle safety is being slashed nearly in half by the ESS, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or the NHTSA, who we talk about a lot on this show because they're always... They're keeping us safe from these self-driving cars that people just want to unleash on the roads.

Yes, and the exploding cyber trucks. Well, they're losing 70 to 80 employees as part of a broader 10% workforce reduction across the agency. Among the cuts, engineers, safety grant specialists, and experts on issues like crash testing and impaired driving. Notably, the impaired driving is for Congress, so they can still drive drunk and not get tickets in.

It's the special Kennedy arm. Yeah, it really is. The Chappaquiddick branch has been... Look it up, kids. See, we can make fun of both sides. Yeah. Notably, three out of seven members of the NHTSA's new autonomous vehicle oversight office were let go, raising concerns about reduced scrutiny of Tesla's driverless technology.

One former engineer warned that federal expertise on these systems is now almost non-existent. Great. I love this. Critics argue these reductions will weaken oversight of self-driving tech from Tesla, Waymo, and others. And I reply, that's the fucking point. Yeah, it's a feature, not a bug.

It is a feature, not a bug. Speaking of that, Elon Musk has now decided that Community Notes on X is a bug, not a feature, mostly because he's getting fact-checked himself. Yeah. So, Elon Musk now has a problem with Community Notes, the crowdsourced fact-checking feature that started as Birdwatch and launched at scale after he purchased Twitter.

So, under his own command, this is what he rolled out for basically fact-checking and all that sort of stuff. But he says, unfortunately, Community Notes is increasingly being gamed by governments and legacy media. Musk posted, working to fix this. Based on the rant his tweet descended to into afterwards, his issue appears to be with how X's Community Notes contributors have been treating misinformation about President Zelensky and the war in Ukraine.

Musk quotes a post from an X account that claims polls showing Zelensky has a 57% approval rating in Ukraine are not credible. Because it's probably higher. Because it was true. Information like that being challenged on X doesn't jive with President Trump's description of Zelensky as a dictator or Musk's desire to use the platform as an unofficial arm of the current administration.

So, we have no idea what fixing Community Notes looks like, but it probably will be gamed just the same way all of X's algorithm has been. So, you know, Musk gets to do what he wants and nobody actually questions him anymore. Yeah. I'm sure Grok AI will play into this somewhere along the way.

Well, he's got issues with Grok AI, too, because Grok was not exactly returning favorable comments about Elon when queered, either. It never has. It never has. Because it can't. Because if you feed in what Musk actually is, it will return dickhead.

So, Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, reported a $400.9 million loss last year, as revenue fell 12% to $3.6 million. The company says the losses stem from stock-based compensation and accounting adjustments.

A revenue-sharing change with an undisclosed ad partner also impacted earnings. Trading under the ticker DJT, Trump Media recently launched a streaming service and applied for investment fund trademarks. CEO Devin Nunez says the company aims to support U.S. energy and manufacturing while offering an alternative to woke investment funds.

Woke investment funds. Aren't you supposed to be a fucking social network? Wait, wait, wait. Where's the pivot? I missed the pivot. I love that the losses are basically just the people pulling money out. The money grab. Yeah. The money grab.

To quote the great Johnny Rotten, you ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Yeah, no shit. My God. No shit. It's just so brazen. If we had revenue of $3.6 million, you and I, Brian, could make a social network so much better than True Social.

It'd be ridiculous. That's insane. It's insane. It's not hard to build the actual thing. It's hard to scale it and get the people to go to it, which they haven't done because they don't need to. Yeah. It's amazing they made $3.6 million, to be honest.

Yeah. All right. So 47's administration is reportedly pressuring Romanian authorities to lift travel restrictions on controversial influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan. Because, of course, I mean, that's – But I thought we were all about Pizzagate and human trafficking spearheaded by the Democrats.

We're against trafficking. Oh, it's okay when Andrew Tate does it. It's okay when our people do it, when our influencers do it. It's okay when our influencers do it. Yes. Makes sense. Makes sense now. Yep. Yep. So they're dual citizens for the U.S. and the U.K., and they do face charges in Romania.

There's a million documentaries about these little douchebags out there if you want to go spin the Netflix wheel and go find one or two or 20 of them. Yeah. Yeah. So they're charged with human trafficking, sexual misconduct, and money laundering. If you've seen these guys or seen any of the documentaries, it's like, yeah, that tracks.

That totally tracks. So they do not have house arrest anymore, so they can freely move about the country. They just can't leave the country, so that's why we're getting involved with this. Romanian Foreign Minister Emil Jerezanyu stated that while U.S. expressed interest in the case, no undue pressure was applied, emphasizing Romania's independent judiciary.

Sure, buddy. All right. Sure. You know, at some point in the future, they're all going to just be sitting in Russia along with Trump. And Snowden. He better hurry up and pardon Snowden because, you know. I mean, he's already got the Dread Pirate Roberts and everybody else. Yeah. He needs to pardon Snowden.

He needs to pardon Sam Bankman-Fried. And then these guys. I mean, this is like, you know, the bro A-team right here. Come on. I was thinking they're going to have a horrible theme song, though. They will have a horrible theme song. Who's going to write it? Ted Nugent? I think so.

Nextdoor founder Nirav Tolia is back as CEO, aiming to revive the struggling neighborhood-based social network. Are they pivoting to be non-woke and you can now use the N-word? Is that the deal? Oh, probably. Let's see here. The platform, once thriving on local engagement, has seen you the growth stall amid misinformation, toxicity, and declining ad revenue.

Now, Tolia is betting on AI to turn things around. Since his return, weekly active users have grown 13% to nearly 46 million. And Nextdoor is focused on improving content quality and engagement. I love it. The company is using AI to moderate discussions, personalize content, and enhance community interactions while keeping its proprietary data in-house.

And the new AI is just going to be called Brown or Not, because that's all Nextdoor ever was. It was a place where you could. I think we really decided that nobody wants a hyper-local social network. Like, I don't want to know my neighbors that well.

I don't want to talk to my neighbors that well. It was just full of Karens. They should have just called it Karen. It was full of Karens. Karens and Peckerwoods. That's all it was. Well, let's talk more about good old free speech social networks, you know, X, which claimed to be the big free speech one.

But Elon, of course, can't help himself, and he's taking aim at federal workers and organizations throughout the government, throughout Doge again. He's now blocking links to Signal, the URL used by encrypted messaging service that allows people to quickly contact others directly. The blog Disruptionist reports federal workers have used Signal to covertly report relevant and dangerous activities.

Anybody who attempts to post a Signal.me link in a DM, public post, or their profile page will receive error messages, such as, This request looks like it might be automated. To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, we can't complete this action right now. Please try again later. Damn.

Damn. And anybody trying to click existing Signal.me links gets a message stating, Warning, this link may be unsafe. The link you are trying to access has been identified by X or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with X's URL policy. Okay.

I like that they put in our partners. Yeah, they're trying to hang it on, quote, unquote, our partners, which we know X has no partners. So, because Elon stopped paying everybody when he took over. I do have to say, I do like the title Disruptionist for the blog. That's a good name. That's a good one, right?

Good branding. Ah, remember when OpenAI got all upset about DeepSeek stealing their IP when OpenAI is based on stolen IP? Did it seem like the height of hypocrisy, Jason? Sure do. Well, Uber said- Like it was yesterday, Brian. Well, Uber said, hold my beer.

Oh, okay. Uber is suing DoorDash, accusing the biggest food delivery provider in the U.S. of putting pressure on restaurants to exclusively use its services. Fucker. Hence, Uber's business model. Yeah. According to the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, Uber filed a lawsuit in California on February 14th.

Happy Valentine's Day. Uber said it filed a lawsuit after hearing from restaurants across the country that were left with no choice but to cave to DoorDash's demands or pay the price. Just like Uber. Just like Uber. Yes. DoorDash allegedly threatened to charge higher commission rates for handling orders made through its marketplace if the restaurant is also on Uber Eats.

In its complaint, Uber said that in one instance, the company threatened to raise a restaurant's commission rate by 30% per order placed. The lawsuit stated another instance where DoorDash allegedly told a restaurant that it would cost them millions of dollars in additional fees if it also teamed up with Uber. In addition, DoorDash allegedly threatened to demote restaurants also available on Uber within its app.

Just like Uber. Just like Uber, yeah. Uber is now asking the court to compel DoorDash to change its business practices. The power of Uber compels you. Yes. The power of Uber. To be 15 minutes late and then have a car cancel on you.

And missing half my fucking fries. Yeah. Oh, man. So I got to say, Uber and DoorDash, they both suck, obviously. But when my beloved Paquito Moss was on DoorDash and they were just fine, then they did move to Uber Eats, I'm sure through some strong arm or something, wherever there.

My bill went up when they moved to Uber Eats, not down. So that kind of throws a monkey wrench in their argument there. And finally, Paquito Moss just said, screw both of you guys. We're just going to go with that third-party ordering platform, which has been phenomenal.

I pay less. I get my stuff still fast as can be. And it's still delicious. So I hope more restaurants move to that model and say, fuck both of these guys. I hope those guys get some planes, because that's the only way I'm getting Paquito Moss. Oh, yeah. Well, just come to visit, Brian.

Come to visit. I will. I'll be there. America welcomes you back with open arms. And you might get deported for free, so you can get your return flight. You just might end up in Guantanamo instead of Toronto. It ends with an O. What's the difference? Come on. At least it's warmer. Yeah.

Meta is launching the Walterworth Project, a 50,000-kilometer undersea cable to boost global internet connectivity across five continents. With landing points in India, the U.S., Brazil, and South Africa, the multi-billion-dollar project aims to support AI-driven innovation and strengthen Meta's control over everything.

Pretty much, yeah. This is interesting, because, I mean, we talked a lot about when Meta first, back when they were Facebook, were moving into the metaverse. And somebody did the math on how much bandwidth it was going to take to actually run a metaverse, and it was just completely unsustainable.

So I think this project probably started back then. And now they're like, oh, but we're AI now. We're AI. So who knows? Maybe they'll keep it. Maybe they'll cam it. I just don't know if I want Meta owning the cables. I don't, yeah. But somebody's got to, I suppose. I think Google owns half the other cables already, so it's all, whatever.

But Meta has announced LlamaCon, and I still keep reading this as laughing my ass off, Con, because it is their first generative AI dev conference. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. How exciting. I know. Coming April 29th, all attendees might get an extra finger.

Or legs. Or legs. Yeah, you get legs this time. Or, and if that one's not up to your speed, you can go to MetaConnect, which is in, that was in 2024. The new one's coming in September this year, if you want to go to a meta conference.

I can't think of anything less appealing than going to a meta conference, except maybe going to an Android conference. I can think of one thing less appealing, not physically going and going to the meta conference in the metaverse. Metaverse, yeah.

Why does my neck hurt? God. Have you seen the new metaverse ad, though? I thought it was from The Onion. Legit. Legit from The Onion? Yeah. It's pretty bad. It's fucking horrible.

Yeah. This is an ad for Horizon Worlds. It's 44 seconds. It has been pulled by meta, but thank the Lord that you can go to, you know, that bastion of free speech X and still watch it. Yeah, it's just, I can't describe it.

You just, it's one of those things you just have to go experience for yourself. It is so horrifically terrible. And you know they had to have meetings. And this was launched. This wasn't like, you know, a back room thing. This was signed off on. This was signed off on by multiple AIs. I mean, people.

And made it out the door. So, yeah. All that money that they've spent. And they can't get 45 seconds worth of ad going. It's insane. It's so bad. It's so bad. And, you know, it's stuff we've been saying a long time. And I know that occasionally we do have people that are actually, you know, pretty high up in the tech world that listen to our podcast.

And I'm theorizing right now that Microsoft Satya Nandala is one of them. Because he just did a speech. We're talking about AI. And he basically clicked off every single point that we've been making on the show since we started talking about AI.

Hey, Satya. Can I get a free key to Windows 11 without any ads, please? That'd be nice. Can you take the ads out of the start bar? That's just insane. It's insane. Anyways, he gave a barn burner. The world has yet to turn any of today's AI hype and spending into a meaningful lift in the actual economy, says Microsoft CEO Satya Nandala.

Can I get an amen? These comments were made during a podcast interview in which he put a measuring stick on AI's true impact. Bupkis. Success will be measured through global economic growth rather than arbitrary benchmarks of how well AI programs can complete challenges like obscure math puzzles.

Those are interesting in isolation, but have no practical utility. He said essentially that artificial general intelligence, the so-called AGI that could replace humans in most tasks, will not happen. And either way is an unnecessary distraction when the industry needs to get practical and just try and make money before investors get impatient.

Yep. It can't just be supply side. Meaning the hundreds of billions being invested into AI companies today does not count as real GDP growth because eventually there needs to be actual demand on the other side for the products being built or else these companies will crash and burn.

And as we keep pointing out, us as consumers do not want the AI they keep cramming into every product. I don't want it in my Apple phone. I don't want it on Facebook the few times I'm actually on there. I don't want AI in everything. And that's all you people are doing trying to get us to use this shit that isn't usable.

The early reception of Microsoft's co-pilot and AI agent for enterprises has not been good with companies and even insiders at Microsoft complaining it is lackluster and not worth the cost. Microsoft and Google have begun incorporating AI chatbots into their standard enterprise subscriptions rather than trying to charge extra, essentially forcing them on users following low adoption, meaning nobody wants to pay for it.

Nobody wants to pay for it. So now they're shoving it down our throats for free to try to get us to use it. And so they can say, look, we have 200 billion users. Klarna, the buy now, pay later company, garnered a lot of attention after its CEO said last year would have replaced most of its customer support representatives with AI chatbots.

The CEO recently walked that claim back as reports found that Klarna had essentially just replaced a basic phone tree system with AI, which is not revolutionary and likely resulted in many customers quitting chats out of frustration. Many banks tried replacing their L1 customer support with bots in the past to bad results as that as well.

So in that sense, Nadella is trying to slap tech executives awake and tell them to cut out the hype. Good luck. There's way too much money involved. Yeah. Yeah. The dick measuring contests have been going on because with Grok coming out, the Grok V3 coming out this week and OpenAI going back and forth on the benchmarks.

This is one of those things where like everybody is coming saying, oh, our model is better than this. Our model is better than that. And they just keep changing the, you know, what's the old Microsoft joke? How does a Microsoft engineer change the light bulb, change the standard of dark, you know?

Well, again, to Nadella's point, that's kind of what he's saying. It's like you keep hitting all these benchmarks, but we don't have a usable, viable case for this yet. We have nothing to use this on. And I found that I've been using the LLM Studio, you know, the one that you can install on your computer.

If you've got, if you've, if you've got any of the M1 or M series max, you can install LLM Studio and download most of the, you know, decent size, you know, like five to seven billion token models. And it works just fine for most things that you would end up paying for.

So I'm like, okay, yeah. Where is this? Why do we need all these data centers now? We've done all the training. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Specialized models is where, you know, if this is going to be anywhere, it's going to be in specialized models for specialized uses that don't fucking hallucinate.

Once they get that, that sorted out, but trying to do AGI, he nailed it. It's not going to happen. No, it's just not going to happen. No. And if you are somebody out there that is invested in any of these AI companies, Bank of America issued a report in late 2024, warning that AI remains in its early stages and is following the trajectory of the internet.

Yet in the 1990s, going back to our little gifts at the top of the show, implying that there will be a correction similar to what occurred in the dot-com boom. So he also, Nadella, echoed similar concerns of a wash out coming. Yeah. Except when we were done with the internet boom of the 90s, we ended up with fiber optics everywhere.

We had massive infrastructure. Exactly. So we're going to have a bunch of like, you know, dead data centers with rotting NVIDIA GPUs in them. So I, by the way, if you invest in NVIDIA, I would dump that shit fast because everybody's coming out with their own chips in the next like six to 12 months.

And I'm still riding the video a little bit longer, but it's going away soon. Yeah. I was going to say, you might want to just keep an eye on the horizon because that horse is going to bolt pretty soon. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one more AI story and coming soon to a dystopia near you, robotics company Figure has unveiled Helix, a breakthrough vision language action model that lets humanoid robots understand language, see their surroundings, and perform complex tasks, all with a single neural network.

Let's see a non-edited demo video of that, please. Yes, perform complex tasks in this case is a guy putting some Whole Foods groceries down on the counter and saying, put these away for me, robot. And the robot's putting them away very slowly, which is probably sped up 100 times, even though they don't mention that.

They're very slow and very creepy. And there are parts in the video where they hand things to each other, and then they look at each other knowingly, and it's like, hmm, what are they doing there with that? And I love this, too.

There's a tab on the website labeled Master Plan that's just fucking ominous because it's hanging over you while you watch these two little soulless automatons put away the nourishment for me and you, Brian, that the meatbags that we are will someday be overthrown by.

I do not approve of this at all. At all. So. Yeah. No, thank you. Yeah. No, no. You got to watch the video. It's, it's, uh, yeah. I don't, I do not approve. I do not approve. And finally, though, for some good news, a new Washington Post-Ipsos poll shows Americans are increasingly furious with Elon Musk's role in the White House, with 49% disapproving of his job, slashing government programs, and firing federal employees.

And the degree of animosity shouldn't be understated either, with 41% strongly disapproving, while only 8% somewhat disapproved. So. Yeah. People are, people are finally fucking waking up. It's about time. They listen to our show. They, so tell all your friends to listen to the show, because we could use some more grumpy army out there.

Come on, please tell everybody.

Media Candy. Well, speaking of dystopian robots, I watched The Wild Robot with the kiddo this weekend. A very good movie. Oh, good. I, yeah. I've heard nothing but good things about it.

It was, it was wonderful. It really was. Of course, the dystopia is there. This robot breaks its programming and becomes nice and good. Does not come from a good place. The rest of the robots, not good, not nice. Okay. Very dystopian. But, uh, yeah, no, this is a, it's phenomenal.

It's a, it's a really nice, fun movie. Hmm. And then I watched The Gorge. No spoilers. Just, is it good? Hmm. Ah, damn it. It starts so well. It is a great concept and, and it really, you know, it's, it's a, you're, it's like lost.

You're, you're trying to figure out the mystery. And then once you know what the mystery is and becomes just an action movie, it's a lot less interesting. Ah, bummer. But I would say the first hour was great. That's kind of where I'm, I'm like at the first half hour and I'm like, this is really good, but I have to get some sleep because I have to go bitch about Elon Musk tomorrow.

So, I mean, you know, as far as an action movie goes, it was pretty good. So just think of it as a movie in two parts. Both are, both are good in their own ways, but as a whole, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I could just have a whole movie looking at her, so that's okay.

Yeah. No, she looks great in this movie too. Yeah, she did. She really does. The dark hair is a, is a good thing. That's a feature, not a bug. Yeah. And speaking about, uh, things that are only good partially through, I watched the SNL 50 anniversary special. Uh, and, uh, yeah, you know, it's just like SNL.

There was about five laps in three hours. Okay. See, that was what I was worried about. They, they ran it on the news the next day here, like some of the quote unquote highlights and it was all music stuff. And I'm like, I don't care about the music side. I want to see the skit side. Well, they broke those into two different specials there.

Oh yeah. There was one music performance, I think, or two, but it was like three hours long. It was mostly sketches. My problem with it is they really kind of just focused on the last 20 years for the most part. Like they had some people from the early days and, you know, the heyday, which I think for you and I was probably about the same.

It was like that nineties. It's, you know, with Dennis, Eddie Murphy, Eddie Murphy, Dennis Miller behind the news desk, Jan Hooks, you know, all those people not in there at all. Uh, well, I'm glad I deleted it then because I did, I did see the, uh, the, uh, in memoriam for the questionable sketches, which was pretty funny.

I mean, I, that alone, I'm like, that was good. I, I, that was four minutes long and that was perfect. I'm like, okay, we're good. We're good. And speaking of us, SNL and Lum, I'm actually looking forward to this. There will be a documentary on the late comedian, Norm Macdonald. It's in the works at Netflix from filmmaker Judd Apatow, who also did the Gary Shandling and George Carlin documentaries, both of which were great.

And, uh, I love Norm. So looking forward to that. Yeah. Norm was, Norm was an acquired taste. I really, I really liked him more. The more I watched him, the more I liked him. The, if I watched him just a little, I'm like, what the fuck's up with this guy? But then as you get into it, you see the genius that he was. So yeah. Yeah.

He was, uh, he was often on the, uh, Adam Carolla podcast back when Adam Carolla was tolerable and he was a shining star on it every single time. Just hilarious. So, and, uh, in a move that will. Quite literally shake and stir the future of the James Bond franchise.

Amazon MGM Studios has announced a new joint venture with Bond producers, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. And basically in doing so, Amazon MGM will now gain creative control of the franchise following the closing of the transaction. So it's Bezos, Jeff Bezos from here on out.

Does anybody care about Bond anymore? Well, that's the thing. And that my wife and I were talking about that and the Broccoli's and their half brother, Wilson got a, got, I think a billion dollars for this. And I'm just like the Bond franchise is so of a different era.

It just doesn't play well anymore. And I'm not sure what you're getting. And I, I know the Broccoli's pushed against it a long time, uh, from Amazon because they were just like, we don't want a Marvel style expansion of the franchise. We don't want TV show spinoffs. We don't want multiple film projects, which is exactly what Amazon's going to try to do to get back the investment.

But I'm just wondering why is, is, I don't know if the demand is there or the interest and you would have to completely rebuild a Bond franchise from the ground up because the old one just, the stuff played out. It's just feels played out to me.

It's totally played out. I mean, you can only have that same story over and over. I guess Batman, they still make those. They still make Spider-Man. They still make Superman. That's true. What the hell are we talking about? We're totally wrong, I guess. Exactly. There's going to be series. How many Star Wars movies can we watch? Oh, shit. I mean, I think I would be in if they went back to the original film roots.

I would like, I would like some comedy. Yeah. Some comedy, some misogyny, some gadgets. Old school. Just go watch that SNL In Memoriam skit and get your plot out of that. Yeah. I mean, that, that did actually have, you know, the Sean Connery in there too. So we could go back with that.

Yeah. I mean, I could be, if they did a good miniseries set up, that would be fine with the history and all that stuff. You know, the, the, the prequel, as it were, that could be good. But I'm like, I'll just, I'd just rather go watch Slow Horses right now. That is, when it comes to British spy stuff, I am way more intrigued with that show than I would be about seeing another Bond.

It just feels like a no-win situation with Bond, because if you just bring back what it was, you're going to be accused of being boring. If you change it too much, you're going to be accused of changing it too much. If you go normal, you're going to be called woke. If you go red wing, red pill, you're going to be called, you know, racist, misogynist.

You're, you're, you're, no matter what you do, people are going to be pissed off and you're never going to get a hundred percent of people on board with you. So. Yeah. But then again, we thought they overspent on Lord of the Rings and that series kind of came out. Okay. So the series is great, but they still overspent on it. Oh yeah.

Yeah. They definitely overspent on it. Yeah. Uh, the white Lotus season three, first episode dropped this week. I thought it was delightful. Personally. I have not watched it yet because we had a, an incredibly long, uh, weekend with the kid and just didn't get any personal time, but my wife and I plan on watching it this week.

Yeah. And I'm kind of jealous you get to watch two in a row now. So that's true. Yeah. I did watch a, uh, well, I watched the first three parts of a documentary called Scamanda, which is a documentary about one of these, uh, fucking women who claim they have cancer and take everybody's money.

The funny thing is, this is like a trend right now. There's that, there's Scamanda. There's another one on, um, on Netflix. I think it's called apple cider vinegar, but, uh, her, her, the, the, the, the woman's name is bell Gibson, which, and she's Australian.

So every time I hear her name, I'm thinking Mel Gibson, my roommate, the same way. We're like, he's can't get Mel Gibson out of my head. Uh, so she's another, you know, uh, cancer scammer. It's apparently cancer scams. I think Billy Bush has another podcast out right now about another cancer scammer.

So there's a thing about chicks who get cancer that you can't trust anymore. So, uh, but it's decent out of all three of them. This is, it's a really good one. It was on, uh, we're watching it on Hulu. I think the last one aired last night and comes out on Hulu today. So by the time you hear this, it should be all out, all four parts.

Uh, we watched Sly lives, AKA the burden of black genius about Sly and the family stone on Hulu. Fucking phenomenal. Highly recommended. Awesome. I do want to watch that. I got to figure out how to get Hulu. Yeah. This is a quest love joint. I know that's mixing, mixing metaphors there, but, uh, quest love did a great job on his last, uh, movie.

So I was very excited to see this one and this one, this one delivers. This one really delivers. And we didn't even realize till we, till we started. Sly's still alive. Oh yeah. He was dead. Yeah. He lives down in Texas. He's still going. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but this evening I'll be watching Reacher season three.

Yeah. First couple of those dropped. I like Reacher. It's just fun. It is mindless meat bag fun. It's like, you know, if you just could, if they, if Rambo had a series, it'd be like that. It's good. It was like the first blood, not the, where he goes back in Vietnam with the guns and everything.

This is just, just go watch Reacher. It's fun. And, uh, we do get daredevil born again, March 4th, and they are exploring bringing back some of the other defenders. Yeah. Which the only one I care about is, yeah, I just care about Jessica Jones and I'd like Luke Cage back and Jessica Jones.

We do not need the iron fist. Thank you very much. We do not need the iron fist. Luke Cage. I think Luke Cage got, got, uh, got the short straw. He, that was going to turn into a great series. That guy was good. The series was good. Um, they just didn't put enough into it, you know? Agreed.

Um, yeah. But, and the other one I really liked, it's not listed here as Punisher. Punisher was fantastic. That was really good too. Well, I think he's in, I think he's part of, he was originally going to be there no matter what, so. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, uh, last of a season two, we got a drop date April 13th for seven episodes.

So that'll be good. So this is where the Mandalorian, you know, scuttled off to, so I didn't show up in the other season, uh, just his voice. Um, I'm a huge fan of the last of us. So I'm going to, I'm actually going to go back and watch the, the whole of season one again, because I think it was worth watching.

Uh, all right. And we have a drop date for Apple's murder bot series, May 16th, my birthday. We also have the first few images of Alexander Skarsgård in the, uh, in the suit, both with the helmet on and helmet off. So we'll see. Don't foundation it, silo it.

I accept one of the executive producers comes from foundation. So we'll see. I know. I'm a bit worried. I'm not going to lie. You know, I, I think I said this when they first announced it. I always assumed murder bot was a woman. Me too. Yep. Me too. So yeah, that's what really threw me.

I'm like, yeah, without the helmet, I'm like, not a chick. So in a surprising turn of events, Apple TV plus says that severance has become its most popular show ever overtaking Ted Lasso. Do they include being forced to watch commercials and endless promos and trailers for it?

Cause in that case, I've seen it too. Yeah. Seriously. Seriously. No, thank God for the skip intro button. Cause every, every show you watch on Apple TV plus has a fucking promo for that. I'm still not going to watch season two. Sorry. Yeah. I don't care. Yeah.

Nobody on our discord has jumped to the rescue and said, Hey, you guys really got to watch it. It really stuck the landing. Come on. It's a great show. A couple of people said they like the show and they think it's good, but, uh, nobody's, nobody's like fanboyed over it. Nobody. Yeah. Uh, I started listening to a new podcast.

Why do we do that? It's from BBC radio four. It, uh, stars Ella Al-Shamahi, who I discovered from no such thing as a fish. She was a guest a couple of times and I've followed her since then because I think she's quite clever, quite funny. And, uh, this, this is a good little series. It's been enjoyable.

So it's an anthropologist guide to the modern world, investigating the origins of everyday human habits and behavior. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's fun. Sounds, sounds fun. I was just going to say that sounds fun. Okay. I'll have to check that out because I need some non-dystopian news nowadays.

Yeah. It's kind of upbeat and nice, which is also very good. Shocker. Uh, and this last one, this is what the theater should have been doing all along before movie pass came along. I was talking to my friend Dean the other day. He's an actor. So, which means he has a lot of time on his hands to go watch movies during the day.

He had signed up for the AMC, uh, Stubbs, a list, which, uh, is a kind of a subscription plan. It's 24 99 a month and you get three movies a week and, uh, up to three movies a week. But that includes like the big ones, like IMAX and things like that.

So, which can cost you like $27 a ticket. If you're going to go see some of the, you know, the tentpole movies. So pays for itself after one movie and he's a movie file. So I went and I looked it up and so up to three movies every week, it says free ticket reservations online, free size upgrades on popcorn and fountain drinks.

I take umbrage with the fact that it says free cause you're just right at the top. You're paying 24 99 a month. It's not free. It costs 24 fucking 99 a month. Uh, you get large popcorn and fountain drink birthday gifts. Woo. Uh, no upcharge for premium formats like the IMAX, like I mentioned.

Um, and you still get, you do get rewards points too, for the things you buy and you get $5 of rewards points earned right away, priority lane access. So you don't have to stand in line, even though are there lines at movies anymore? Not, I thought that was the, I thought that was the problem. The movie theaters that there were no lines every more, uh, and your points never expire.

So, uh, it looks like a good, if you go to AMC a lot or have one in your neighborhood, this sounds like a really decent package. He was raving about it. I mean, it makes sense. This is what it, you're exactly right. This is what movie pass should have done and didn't. And, uh, we'll see if they make any money off of it or not, or if it works out for them.

If I were a teenager, I'd be all over this. Yeah, no, definitely. Or in my twenties or in my thirties. Well, you, you kept on going to the cinema like that. I did not. Yeah. I w I didn't breed or get a wife or anything like that.

I really even have a steady job. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was, I was set. This was right in my wheelhouse. I saw this next device come across the feed and I'm like, I like this thing. It's called the ink console.

It's basically an, uh, an e-ink reader with some, uh, some buttons on it and some speakers. And, uh, you play interactive games on it. Kind of like, you know, the, the one we talked about last year, like a Zork and hitchhiker's guide and things like that. It's got rudimentary graphics.

It is totally a throwback, man. There are 15 people out in this world that this is made for. Exactly. And I'm one of them. I'm one of them. Yeah. Play while you read interactive inventory and health options, SD card and digital formats, ink paper, uh, open source, create your own game books, blah, blah, blah.

It's still kind of in development, but, uh, I want one, which I will never, I'll never use it. That's the thing. I want one, but I will never ever use it. Yeah. Anyway, it's cool. It's being crowdsourced, of course. Yeah. Yeah.

But this guy's got, got some history of putting some decent stuff out. So it's not, he's not just a flash in the pan. Oh, I think it's cool. Don't get me wrong. I just don't think that they're going to sell very many of them. Oh, I don't think so either. I, this isn't going to be a mass market hit at all. Absolutely not. Yeah. No. But for, you know, weirdos like me, I think it might be something cool.

Um, and I found, I was actually setting up a new website this week over at node host or preferred, uh, preferred website hosting company link in the show notes, go check out node host. Uh, and I found that you could do a one click install of, of course, WordPress and blah, blah, blah.

But there was another one that I saw that was a flat file CMS called blued it. I think that's, I don't know. B-L-U-D-I-T. Blued it. Yeah. Blued it. Blued it. I think blued it sounds better. So I go with blued it. You get a nice bounce with your blued.

I know. You got to get the blued, blued, blued it. It's just fun to say. It's like saying luge. I just, you just ASMR'd me for the first time ever. Like I hate that shit. And, but I could listen to you say that all day.

Blued it. Blued it. Oh my God. I'm not even joking. God damn it. I installed this thing and it was delightful. I set up a little, little website in like just a few seconds, copy and pasted some stuff in there.

I think I'm going to, uh, move my blog over there and start writing again. Cause I was looking for a blog engine that wasn't WordPress and something simple that I could just have up there and post some photos and, and some writings up there. And this is perfect. So, um, it's just like a little tiny set of PHP scripts and you can get blued it pro if you give them like two bucks a month.

I'm finally going to actually listen to our own podcast. I'm just going to find that little segment. That's going to be my ringtone. Every time I text you. Blued it. Oh God. If I wasn't lazy, I would actually do that.

So we got this message from Steve, who is a stroke survivor. He left a voicemail, but it got cut off. But the gist was that this brain training app is better than the rest. Um, cause he, we saw that we were talking about, uh, luminosity before and he record, he highly recommends brain HQ. Have you ever tried brain HQ, Brian?

Uh, no. I mean, if you go back 10 years and listen to my journey through, uh, luminosity, uh, I will never use one of these ever again. Cause there's no science behind it or anything. It's fun, but you get too, too gamified and sucked into it. And it's, it should, I mean, I suppose there are use cases for it, obviously, you know, stroke survivors and things of that nature.

But, uh, for normal people, read a book, do a crossword puzzle. Jesus fucking Christ. Use your brain. Well, this one, this one is actually a little different. It does have, uh, it, it is more science backed and it has different, different, uh, it's, it's kind of like going to the doctor almost because some of the, I played one game, uh, that was more about, um, peripheral vision timing and things like that.

It reminded me a lot of the stuff that they were doing for me at the doctors. Right. So, uh, the problem is it's like a hundred bucks a year and I don't have a hundred bucks to sign up for it. So, but you can do one game a day for free. I used impulse, the brain training app. I brain training in quotes, scare quotes for that for basically three years and I beat it.

Um, and, uh, I, yeah, I, I, I just, I've run through that entire thing. Yeah. Here we go. The brain HQ brain training program represents the culmination of 30 years of research in brain science and neuroplasticity. It was designed to buy an international team of neuroscientists led by Michael Mereznich, world famous for his discovery of adult brain plasticity, a breakthrough that showed that anyone can strengthen and enhance their brain.

So it's got an actual quote unquote team behind it, but I don't know. I don't, you're, you're, you're. So did luminosity. Exactly. Your mile, your mileage may vary. Yeah. If you have fun with it, then it's, it's not going to hurt. No, it's not. It's definitely not going to hurt.

Yeah. So give it a shot if you want to. Uh, I'm, I'm going to keep going with it. I just have to add it to my things do every day list. Cause otherwise I'll forget. Right. Cause I need brain training. Ironically. Uh, but yeah. So thanks for sending that one in Steve.

I like it. I actually, like I said, though, the one that I tried was, was pretty good. Pretty good. Cool. Well, if you bought one of Humane's AI pins, guess what? You've been given 10. You can count them on your fingers or your toes, unless you used AI.

In which case you get too many days. You get, you get 12 days. Yeah. 10 days notice that your pins will be discontinued. Now, nobody saw that coming in a note to its customers. The company said AI pins will continue to function normally until 12 PM on February 28th.

On that date, users will lose access to essentially all of their devices features, including, but not limited to calling messaging, AI queries, and cloud access. The fact does note that you'll still be able to check on the battery life of your useless fucking brain. I was going to say the battery life of your new paperweight.

Humane is encouraging its users to download any stored data, like anybody has any, as it plans on permanently deleting all remaining customer data at the same time as switching its servers off. Do you really? How much did this thing cost? A lot. It was like 700 bucks. It was something ridiculous, plus subscription.

Yeah. The company said it will refund customers who are still within the 90-day return window, like anybody's bought one of these in the last 90 days. 90 days, yeah. So long as they submit by February 27th. It also notes that users who opted to wait for a replacement for the device's combo fire hazard and charge case will now be refunded the portion of their original purchase price that was allocated to the charge case, because we forgot about that.

The things were blowing up. Today's discontinuation announcement was brought about by the acquisition of Humane by HP, which is buying the company's IP for $116 million, but clearly has no interest in its hardware business, so they're basically ripping the company apart and taking a few of the engineers that worked over there and calling to make a better fucking printer that doesn't explode.

Yeah, it's a charging case fire sale. So goodbye, Humane AI. You were a fun punching bag. It's over. Yeah, sadly. This comes from the What the Fuck Amazon News. So I talked about my creatine on the show and how it's been helping me more than the brain training apps have.

So I went and I re-upped this week, and I got an email from Amazon that says, item hidden for privacy in the email. It said quantity one, had the price for it, but the name of it was completely missing from the email, and I'm like, this is an email directly to me for an item that I just bought on your website, so who are you hiding my item name from, specifically?

Who is reading my emails that I don't know about that you know about? Well, turns out, probably Google and anybody else who's buying email data to sell me on other things. This comes back to they're not listening to you. They're reading your email.

So whenever you see ads around the internet for specific products, they've apparently been scraping Amazon sales receipts to figure out what to sell you. Yeah. So they can sell you ads for shit that you've already just bought like they normally do.

Yeah. So that was a weird one. I just thought. So, yeah. Closing shout outs! Over at Patreon, we've got new patron, Michael, and we've got Jack, who upped their subscription, so thank you very, very, very much.

And over at the Hall of Fame, we've got Cameron, Juha, a big fridge, Anthony, James, Jeffrey, Andy, Kyle, Brent, and Mario. Go Luigi. Mario quit us. Over at PayPal, we've got Nathaniel, Andrew, Joseph, Sloan, Tom, Linda, who wrote in and said, I've decided to increase my monthly donation as your show is helping me stay somewhat sane amid societal chaos.

I couldn't figure out how to increase the payment amount on the PayPal webpage, so I canceled the $10 monthly donation and set up a $25 monthly donation. Cheers and thank you. Definitely five stars. Well, thank you, Linda. Thank you, Linda. And also, a thank you to Jason, who gave us a big $50 donation this week.

All right. Jason's Unite. Jason's Unite. Over at the tip jar, we've got Sean, Adelante, and Ross. Woo-hoo! And over at the merch table, we've got Catherine, Joe, and Jeff. So go get your Deport Elon shirts now. Mine just came last night. They look beautiful.

I'll be wearing it out in public today. Ha ha! All right. We've got some new reviews this week. Tony gave us a five-star review. Best in the business. Jason and Brian have been keeping me entertained, informed, and laughing for a decade or better at this point. These two grumpy old geeks are the most down-to-earth, legit, intelligent, and funny guys podcasting today.

The content of their show is fresh, relevant, and delivered every week in a way that feels like a conversation with a couple of your smartest and funniest friends. Their decades of industry involvement traces that the evolution of the internet itself and is foundational to their insights and observations. Dave Bittner fits in well and adds his own special sauce to the mix.

The three of them feel more like old friends than podcasters. The show is technically perfect. The audio is magic. Jason is the best producer at podcasting. This show is a genuine treasure. P.S. No AI was used in the writing of this review. We should feed it into the AI. Let's start getting our names right.

Yeah, let's train that shit. Come on. And the actual podcasts were on. Yeah. Thank you very much, Tony. And two nerds in love wrote in with this five star. I've always refused to listen to podcasts because they're often not ADHD friendly. My partner insisted I listen to this one and I was immediately hooked.

Now I notify him when new episodes are released so we can listen to it at the same time. This podcast has made my partner want to read more books, which is impressive because he's dyslexic. Me too. We also enjoy the host's bluntness no matter what topic they're discussing. Thank you for providing us with entertainment each week.

You know, when you're not screaming or crying over the current state of affairs. Well, thank you two nerds in love. Bunch of woke pussies writing in trying to appeal to our other base. Yeah. Did it work? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, go Elon. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. I want to give a shout out to a friend of the show, Andy Stochansky, who I believe is still our outro music that he wrote for us.

Yes, he is. We still use that? Yeah, the guy who never listens to the fucking show. Yes. Bloop. I'm going to listen for that. We went to see him play on Wednesday night. He's got a new album coming out soon and a new single, I think, that dropped today. He's over on Instagram at House of Andy. So give him a follow over there.

Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmester. 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 685. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG.show slash donate. Every penny helps to keep the show on the air.

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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 air. Oh, and guess what? We've got merch! Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.GOG.show. Stay muted.

Every time. It's me.

Beated British challenger. Jack the Meek Pleaver Cullen. BKFC 94. Till vs. Ramiro. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com.