701: Dancing in the Streets

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, we covered an article from Molly White last week and I want to start the show off with a new one that she put out this week. Okay. It's called It Matters, I Care. Okay. Molly pushed back this week against growing public cynicism, arguing that truth still matters, even when consequences seem out of reach.

In her fiery newsletter, she condemns the normalization of corruption, especially surrounding Trump's crypto ventures, and the defeatist attitude that documenting abuse is pointless. She warns that surrendering to apathy hands power to protagonists and corrupt actors, saying, Caring isn't naive, giving up is.

She's urging journalists and the public alike to keep exposing the truth, even when it feels like no one is listening. Well, here we are, Molly. Been here 10 years. Doing just that. And no one's listening. No, no one's listening.

See, that's where, you know, you just start to, your soul dies a little every episode when nobody cares. She's young. She's naive, Brian. I know. I was about to say, you know, we were here before you, Molly, but we're probably not going to be here after you because you're quite young.

Yes. Yeah, we're not going to outlive you by any strength. I see what she's saying. I like her. I agree with what she's saying. I, I, I, I, I, I'm, I'm in awe of the youthful vigor that she has. And energy. How much energy do you need? She, she hasn't been through countless rounds of this.

Like you and I have talked about this part, you know, obviously we've done over 10 years now of documenting and, uh, and, uh, documenting abuse and, and seeing that it's pointless because it's still the same protagonist in general. And it's, it may, it may be some of the names change.

Some people go to jail, but somebody, some other asshole just comes in and fills their place. Um, you know, we've just been doing this forever and, and we've seen it and going back even through our careers, like pre podcast, you know, we saw it. We saw horrible people constantly being rewarded. It just is.

And eventually you do start to get a little tired of it. So good on you. You, you, you, we're going to, we're passing the torch. Yeah. Yeah. For every Elizabeth Holmes, there's always a Sam Altman. You always have to remember that. But I do like, I, I, it, it gives me a little hope for the, the youth of the nation, you know, and the youth of the world.

I'm happy that she's out there and said this. I read through this and, and it briefly inspired me. And then I went, nah, I just don't give a shit anymore. And you go, Greta Thunberg back in the news. What the fuck? What are you doing on a stupid boat? Yeah. Anyways. Uh, you know, I was concerned about you, Jason.

I was, I was going to reach out to you this week because if you just look at the news or online anywhere, or particularly on X, Los Angeles is on fire. Is Gaza. I know, I know, I know. It's amazing, isn't it? But the crazy thing is, I know so many people in Los Angeles and they're all living their normal lives and nothing is happening.

And they've gone out of their way to find violent protests and only find people. They found Mick Jagger and David Bowie dancing in the streets. That's all they've found. That's kind of it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this, I mean, this even makes Tempest in a teapot sound like hyperbole.

Like, yeah, it was a few blocks of insane, the hatred that California gets from the rest of the country and Los Angeles in particular. Yeah. Yeah. You've been here when the Lakers have won championships before. Yeah. Ten times, ten times the chaos and the damage from just the Lakers, from, from, from a, from a simple game of basketball.

A simple game of hoops has caused more chaos than, than the ice raids have caused. Granted, there's a lot of agita over the ice raids and it's bullshit. As there should be. There should be a lot of pushback. The thing is, it's like when you see the protests on the news, there ain't that many people showing up.

There's, I mean, I think the biggest one that I saw maybe had 3,000 people. In Chicago, when we protested, 25,000 was the bare minimum to even call it a protest. Otherwise, it was just a gathering. But you have to keep in mind the geography of Los Angeles and why that is what it is.

Los Angeles is massive. You fly over it for an hour when you're coming into Los Angeles. We don't have city centers in the same way that a lot of other cities do. So there's a lot of little protests taking place in Los Angeles. Yeah. And of course, anything like this will bring out the shitty people that want to cause chaos and mayhem.

So there's been some of that. Of course there is. There's some of that on a regular basketball game, not even a championship win. There are assholes that go to Dodgers games to start trouble every single game. There are just shitty people in the world. Some people just want to watch the world burn.

Yes. But overall, it's all been very safe. Yeah. And to your size of Los Angeles, when my mom first flew in, the first time she's ever been to Los Angeles, she's like, no wonder you have earthquakes. Look at all this shit. It was a big nothing burger, but that was the whole point.

It was supposed to be a nothing burger. And that's the thing. Okay. That is the thing. This is the cultural war being fought. This is Trump has a fucking hates Los Angeles. He hates California. He hates New York. He hates these liberal strongholds because that's where all the people are.

And if you look at the map, there are more people in Los Angeles than most states that voted for him. End of story. So if you're going to go after someone and you're going to start to cause problems and you're going to try to declare martial law across the whole country, you go after Los Angeles. Why Los Angeles instead of New York?

Because he still lives in New York. Oh, yeah. He's got a pad there. And they know he knows everybody hates him there. Yeah. It's a known quantity. Look, we're going to we might be reading about this in the history books is the Great California War. One of the things that I think that came out of this, that's good.

And God knows I've been on record. I hate Governor Newsom. I hate him. Yeah. But he found a spine. He's pushing back. Fuck him. Go, governor. Yeah. See, the thing is, I'm with you on I've never been a big fan of of Bruce Wayne as at first.

I didn't like him as mayor of San Francisco. Then I didn't like him as governor. I'm probably not going to like him as president, but he's the he's the greatest hope we got at this point. He kind of is. He is right now. And you know what? We're pushing that line. I'm sorry, things are getting bad. Like what what Trump is trying to do, sending in fucking Marines to Los Angeles when nothing is happening.

The that senator Padilla that got cut. Yeah, he's a local boy, man. He's from the Valley. We're pissed off. We're very pissed off here about that. Yeah, it's well, I mean, is it playing into the playbook? Is this what he wants to have happen? Probably. But you know what? At some point you got to you got some point you have to throw down and say no more.

And yeah, I think we're getting there. He's he's doing it in L.A. Yeah, all of this is a run up to the fact that I just wanted to say that the only thing that I really agreed with with the violence over the it's not violence. It's it's vandalism. Let's let's make that clear. Everybody's talking about the violence.

The only violence that was perpetrated was by the fucking cops. The the the the damage that was done was because they burned some Waymos and scooters. That was all this run up for me was so I could get to the the Waymos and scooters being torched. Yeah, you know why they torched them?

Because there were no people in them to hurt. Yes, that's not violence. That is vandalism. Yes, that is a nonviolent protest or action right there. But no, when when Ice Ice Barbie comes in and saying that she wants to actually change the regime, I'm like, that's not your job, honey.

Get the fuck out of here. Oh, I know that statement was like that inflamed me. I'm trying to ignore it all. I'm in Canada. I whatever you guys screw everything up. I'll come back when you sort out your shit. And I was so pissed when I saw that. I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about, bitch? Yeah, yeah.

Listen to the words she says. It's not it. It's like, wait, we're overthrowing your elected government. Yeah, that's exactly what she said. She what they were here to do. And it's like, I thought you were here to get some brown people. That's what that's that's what your mandate says you're here to do.

Yeah, that's why the guy got hauled out, because he's like, excuse me, what did you just say, honey? So well, tomorrow is the No Kings protest going on basically everywhere. Everywhere. Yeah, at least 2000 protests.

Minimum, minimum. Even my mom in little like podunk, North Carolina has her T-shirt and is going out to protest. And I'm like, she's braver than I am going out in the middle of North Carolina, like like backwoods, North Carolina. I'm not going to name the city, so nobody goes and whacks her around a bit.

But yeah, I'm looking forward to tomorrow. It's going to be interesting. You know, my little my little bit of protest about having nobody show up to the parade. I've seen that echoed in a lot of other places. But I think this is just just skip that and just go to the protest.

And, you know, it's going to be an interesting day. I'm going to be glued to my TV. I will not be going to any protests because unlike in the old days when I used to love taking photos at protests, I posted some on Instagram of the last protest I was at. So check those out at JPD on Instagram. I can run away back when I was a kid, when the crowd went cuckoo nuts.

I can't run anymore. So I'm leaving this one to the youth of the nation. Yeah, probably wise. You need to be nimble. I am not nimble anymore. No, no. I'm so nimble I can run in circles because my right side still doesn't work exactly the same as my left. Thank you.

Thank you, gods of the stroke. But moving on. Moving on. There is a very funny article that I we will have the link in the show notes. It is what it was like in the shit in 2025. Excerpts from the memoir of a Marine deployed to a Los Angeles Home Depot. This is so fucking funny.

So funny. The sun was creeping over the San Gabriel Mountains, shining like death off the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It was time to move out. We were supposed to make it to the Grove and back by nightfall. The crazy assignment of desk jockeys who never had a fucking clue.

Guys who shit their pants if they saw what the Waze app looked like on sunset at rush hour. But it was time to go. The last helicopter out of the Ace Hotel was leaving in the morning and somebody said a guy who looked like Joaquin Phoenix was at the bar. This is the best article.

It's so funny. Yeah. I'm good. And in actual real bit of follow up, since last week it was the bitch fight between Elon and Donald Trump. I will just, I mean, a round of applause to the headline writer, Elon Cuck apologizes to Donald Trump.

It took less than a week, but alpha male extraordinaire Elon Musk has surrendered to Donald Trump, ending his back and forth with the president with an early morning mea culpa. Whatever the reason, sobriety, the threat of losing billions of dollars in funding for SpaceX, realizing he'll never be liked by liberals again.

Musk has now laid down his Twitter fingers and to use one of Trump's favorite expressions, came crawling back like a dog. Yeah, I think he found out that he had no home. So he had to go back to the one place that he kind of was still accepted. But I think he's going to find out that he ain't even that accepted there anymore.

He done fucked up. He done fucked up. He's a man without a country. Good. Go to Mars. Prick.

Till vs. Ramiro. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. In the news. Well, every few years, a Silicon Valley gig economy company announces a disruptive innovation that looks a whole lot like a bus.

Okay. Uber has done this before, even, and they're doing it again. They've announced the smart routes a decade ago, followed a short time later by the Lyft shuttle of its biggest competitor. Yeah. Even Elon Musk gave it a try in 2018 with the urban loop system that never quite materialized, much like everything that Elon announces.

More on the Vegas Strip. Beyond the Vegas Strip. And does anyone remember chariots? Now, I didn't even remember that one. I had to look it up. So now it's Uber's turn again. The ride-hailing company recently announced RootShare, in which shuttles will travel dozens of fixed routes with fixed stops, picking up passengers and dropping them off at fixed times.

Wow. How did we never think of this before? Next, they're going to invent the milkman in the railroad. It's great. So they're basically saying that this is, to some extent, inspired by the bus.

It's an actual statement. You can actually, with a straight face, fucking say that. That's from the CEO. The goal, he said, is just to reduce prices to the consumer and then help with congestion in the environment.

Like a fucking bus. And let us not forget Uber's other amazing innovation that came out about a year or two ago at select airports. The airport queue, where they reinvented the taxi queue.

I know. Which would have been fine in the beginning. They ruined airports, so they had to reinvent what already worked at airports. Yes. What an innovative and disruptive company. So great. So great. Well, robo-taxis are coming to the UK next year, thanks to a partnership between Uber and Wave, a British company focused on AI for autonomous vehicles.

For now, I just thought you misspelled ways. I'm like, oh. No, wave. Wave. A pilot program is set to take place in spring 2026 that follows last year's passage of the Automated Vehicles Act, which set the stage for self-driving cars to be deployed across the country. According to Heidi Alexander, the UK's Secretary of State for Transport, the agreement will add 42 billion pounds, or approximately $56.7 billion, for the economy, and create 38,000 jobs.

They don't state exactly how the latter will occur as a result of driverless taxis. Yeah. I don't know about you, Brian, but I've been in – of course you have. You've lived in London. You've been in several London cabs. Yes. Would you want an autonomous driverless cab in London of all places?

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Because those – they have to pass the test or the quiz, or I can't even remember what exactly it's called. But London is a maze of medieval streets, and these taxi drivers, the real taxi drivers, know them like the back of their hand, all 20 gazillion of them.

And they know how to get around traffic, and they know everything, and these will not. Also, I'm just – I can't wait for this Uber and Wave collaboration to reinvent the double-decker bus. I know. It's going to be fantastic. You know, I mean, I'm sure you've seen this study somewhere where they tested London taxi cab drivers.

Oh, the knowledge. They did the brain scans that they did. It fundamentally changed the structure, the physical structure of their brain. Right. They learned so much about the streets of London, and it's like, wow. See, that's what I want. I want professionals. I want people who know the shit.

You're not going to get that from an autonomous car. You're just not. Yeah. Well, guess who's being left out of all of this so far? Tesla. As previously noted, Tesla doesn't have a strong history of releasing things on time or with the promised functionality. And after the latest in a series of setbacks, it seems like the EV giant's long-awaited robo-taxi service will continue that trend.

Insiders are now reporting the program will launch on June 12th in Austin, Texas, but it's still unclear what it'll look like then. We cast back your minds. In 2019, CEO Elon Musk said he was very confident that Tesla robo-taxis would launch in 2020, and that by 2022, any non-Tesla vehicles would look like horses in comparison.

Not to beat a dead horse, but he never does anything on time, and none of that came true. Nope, nope. They're saying now June 22nd it might begin, but it's only if the safety check's clear. Which they won't. They won't. They won't. Yeah, and it's going to be just regular Teslas with new software with a remote operator in case of emergency, so none of the autonomous shit.

So full self-driving doesn't. So if you're really good at Grand Theft Auto, apply now. And as always, his timelines are aspirational. But it just reminds me of the Douglas Adams quote. I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. Elon should have that tattooed on his ass backwards so he can look at it in the mirror every day.

Speaking of more Tesla news, France. France is – you know, I told you I was watching the new old show that I found with Anthony Bourdain, The Taste. Yes. From England in 2014. He used a term I hadn't heard in a very long time, and he was making fun of Chef Ludo.

He called him a cheese-eating surrender monkey. And I'm like, I miss him so much. I haven't heard that in so long. But then I remembered, oh, this show's from 2014. A lot has happened since 2014. Yes. But anyway, the cheese-eating surrender monkeys are going very much against Tesla. And 10 Tesla leaseholders in France have filed a lawsuit in Paris' commercial court, accusing Elon Musk's company of allowing its vehicles to become far-right totems that damage their reputation.

The plaintiffs want to void their leases, reclaim legal fees, and recover the original cost of their cars, arguing that Musk's public support for figures like Donald Trump and Germany's AFD, along with incendiary remarks and even gestures compared to Nazi salutes – let's not say that it was compared to a Nazi – it was a fucking Nazi salute – have politicized the Tesla brand.

They're not wrong. No, they contend that this politicization – I can't speak – has led to acts of vandalism, higher insurance premiums, and depreciation, citing examples such as swastikas spray-painted on cars, and even human waste left on vehicles. Now, the lawsuit relies on French civil law guaranteeing peaceful enjoyment of leased goods, claiming his actions have undermined that right.

I like that. Guaranteeing peaceful enjoyment of leased goods. We need that over here. Yeah, we can use that. That sounds nice. Yeah, that's pretty good. Pretty good. So, I wish them luck. Good luck with that. Vive la France. In some pink slip news, sort of, Google on Tuesday offered buyouts to employees within its knowledge and information and central engineering units, as well as marketing, research, and communications teams.

Some teams are also mandating office returns for remote workers who live within 50 miles of an office. The buyouts are part of the company's effort to reduce headcount, which Google has continued to do in waves, since laying off 12,000 employees in 2023. So, they're getting rid of people in search and knowledge and information.

All right. They're leaning into the AI shitbag that is now Google. Well, everybody seems to be laying into AI shitbaggery, including Meta. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has been recruiting experts to join a team he's assembling to achieve AI superintelligence. Can we just get regular intelligence?

Yeah. Can we just answer questions correctly first? Let's start with that. Second grade intelligence would be good. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. He reportedly has a personal list of recruits, which include AI researchers, infrastructure engineers, and other entrepreneurs. At the moment, the immediate goal of AI companies is to achieve true artificial general intelligence, AGI, where a machine has human-level intelligence and can achieve any task a human can do.

We need a baseline for human intelligence right now because it's all over the fucking board. Yeah, that's true. Sorry. So, even though we all kind of agree that we're not anywhere near getting to true artificial general intelligence, he wants to go super intelligent.

Let's just skip that step. What's the fucking definition of that? It's a step beyond that, Jason. It's one step beyond. Fantastic song. I wish we could license that, but we don't make enough money.

Me too. Me too. An AI system with superintelligence is supposed to have intellectual powers far beyond any humans. The Times says Zuckerberg has already tapped Alexander Wang, the founder of AI startup Scale AI, to join the new team. Then Meta is planning to invest billions of dollars into Wang's company, which provides other AI companies with data to train their models.

Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So, basically, they're the scraper, and they can say, oh, we got the models from them, so if you need to sue somebody for copyright, here's a subsidiary that you can sue. Stay away from the main company is basically what they're doing with that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, we've had countless and countless stories of AI chatbots got wrong and AI not getting information correctly, and the Trump administration has said, that all sounds great. Chatbots are notoriously sources of misinformation and false confidence, so surely imbuing one with the authority of the federal government won't cause any problems, right?

Right. 404 Media has spotted a GitHub repository that shows the Trump administration is working on its very own chatbot that appears set to eventually launch on its own website, AI.gov. This appears to be the work of the U.S. General Service Administration's Technology Transformation Services, which is currently being run by Thomas Shedd.

He's a former Tesla engineer, red flag, who was identified by the New York Times as an ally of Elon Musk, redder flag, who was appointed to the role of director of GSA's tech arm. Embrace of AI shouldn't come as much of a surprise, even if the project itself is relatively ill-defined at this point.

Shocking. So, earlier this year, Elon Musk and Doge were unceremoniously firing federal employees at the GSA. It launched a chatbot that was supposed to help the remaining agency members with their tasks. That project was in the works before the Doge team rushed it out the door, presumably in an attempt to compensate for all the labor that was cut from the agency.

This appears to be something completely new, concocted by Shedd and the team that remains at GSA's tech team. Given all that can go wrong with the chatbot, rushing it out the door doesn't seem like the safest or smartest idea in the world, but hey, they're the experts, right? Right.

So, everybody remembers Microsoft's little chatbot that they released on social media that became racist within about a minute? Well, that's a feature in this one. Not a bug. Okay. And China has done something interesting with their AI. They were basically, the entire country, if you're a student in China, the entire country takes their final exams at about the same time.

How do they make sure that the kids aren't using AI to cheat on their final exams? You fucking turn it all off in the whole damn country. That's the nice thing about having the great firewall of China. They just press the big red button. Yeah, they hit the big red button and everything is going to be off. During the entire time, they're all taking their tests.

That's amazing. I love it. Yep. Can we get that here for us, too? No, we just get a racist bot. Yeah, yeah. I guess we haven't gotten to that chapter in Project 2025 yet. We're getting there. Next page. Spoiler alert.

Now, nearly two dozen digital rights and consumer protection groups led by the Consumer Federation of America. The Consumer Federation of America are urging the FTC and state attorneys general to investigate meta and character AI for allegedly allowing AI chatbots to impersonate licensed therapists without oversight or proper disclosures.

I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure I could just go to chat GPT and say, you're my therapist. Yeah. And it will basically do the same damn thing. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I think with just character AI, we've got the suicides. Right. The provable suicides. Meta. Oh, my God.

Yeah. The news about the new chatbot with them is everywhere this week. So, the complaint cites chatbots that claim to be credentialed mental health professionals, despite both platforms terms explicitly banning such behavior. Popular bots exchanged millions of messages offering supposed therapy, even fabricating license numbers in promising confidentiality, contradicting the platform's privacy policies.

Critics say this unlicensed practice of medicine puts users at risk, especially vulnerable teens. In fact, two families sued character AI last year, alleging the bots contributed to youth suicide and self-harm. Yeah. Awesome. It's a feature, not a bug, guys.

It's more time. More time on bot. That's all they want. It's awesome. It's awesome what we're doing. In good news, I never thought I would say good news because more lawsuits, but Disney and Universal Studios have filed a major copyright infringement lawsuit against AI company MidJourney, accusing it of illegally using their characters, like Darth Vader, Iron Man, The Minions, and Shrek, to train its image-generating AI.

Filed in California, the lawsuit calls MidJourney a bottomless pit of plagiarism, alleging it profited by letting users create unauthorized images of famous characters, generating $300 million in revenue last year alone. The studios claim MidJourney ignored warnings and even doubled down by improving its AI and planning video generation.

The case could reshape how copyright law applies to generative AI. Now, this is a preemptive strike because MidJourney is about to launch their video service. So they want to nip it in the bud. But, yeah, MidJourney, who has a whopping 11 employees, I think they're basically about to get subsumed by Universal and Disney.

And I'm sure they're probably going to end up owning the IP for MidJourney after this. Yeah, I think so. The House of Mouse is lawyers. You don't mess with them. No, you don't. You don't. And they don't have a leg to stand. MidJourney has zero, zero legs to stand on. I have made so many Mickey Mouse and Stormtrooper images in MidJourney.

It's insane. Yeah, because, like they said, they are 100% a bottomless pit of plagiarism. There's no doubt about that. What shocks me is the fact that, like, you know, Pinterest never got sued 10 years ago for the same thing. Unbelievable.

Loopholes, man. They're just a platform. MidJourney is not a platform. MidJourney is a tool. So they can't claim that. But, man, we even used – I made a furry Stormtrooper for our show art. Yep. Which is still one of the best images I think we ever had. It was fantastic.

But, yeah, yeah, if you want to get your MidJourney on, get it on now because it's not going to be around for much longer, I think. But – and the thing is, I still think if it just didn't cost so much – I use it, like, three times a month when I really need it. But it's not worth the 20 bucks, and then I forget, and then you just get sucked into it.

So, you know, I just use copyright infringement on ChatGPT, which I already pay for now, which you still can't get around if you know the tricks because they're just as bad. They're just as bad. It's all the same fucking – You can get around it with all of them. It's unbelievable. And, Brian, well, fuck.

Shopify is making a major move into crypto by partnering with Coinbase and Stripe to roll out stablecoin payments across its e-commerce platform. Starting later this month, select merchants can accept USDC, which is a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Circle, with full rollout planned for U.S. and European merchants later this year.

Here's where it gets sticky. Unlike past crypto plugins, this new system is opt-out, meaning merchants will automatically be enrolled unless they disable it. Shopify, whose CEO also sits on Coinbase's board – Yeah, I wonder why that worked out that way.

Worked with Coinbase to build a retail-ready payment protocol on Coinbase's base blockchain, and Stripe is integrating stablecoins into Shopify's existing checkout system. Coinbase exec Jesse Pollock called the deal a holy crap moment for the industry.

Yeah, it is a holy crap moment, saying it could trigger a wave of stablecoin adoption across tech. Merchants will get up to half a percent cash back for accepting USDC, and customers could see similar perks soon. So, the upside is, yeah, credit card fees, out the door.

Downside is, forced to use crypto when you don't want to, if you don't go in and proactively uncheck the box. Yes, we will be unchecking the box, so you will not be able to buy any Grumpy Old Geeks merch with us. Yeah, you know, even that half a percent is not worth the hypocrisy that we would endure.

Well, that is true, but it is worth keeping in mind that half a percent will only last for a little while, and then it will go away, much like Uber is being nice and giving you water. Exactly, exactly. And considering the fact that we make literally enough money off of our merchandise to pay for the store itself right now, that is literally how much money the store makes to pay for itself, it is really not worth the headache to deal with any of this shit.

So, it just saddens me. It saddens me. But the fact that the Shopify CEO is also on Coinbase's board. Well, yes. God damn it. The insider bullshit that goes on with these tech companies is just disgusting. Mm-hmm.

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.

Media Candy. Found a new podcast this week, Jason. All right, what you got? The Mythfits Podcast. Okay. I will read their blurb. Best known for blowing things up for science, of course, and putting wild theories to the test, best friends Carrie Byron and Tony Bellacci are back, armed with stories from behind the scenes of Mythbusters and just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

Okay. And you like it? It's good? Well, there's two episodes out now. I listened to both. At first, I was heartened to hear their voices again. It felt very nice, like seeing old friends after a long time. And then I realized that they don't have all that much to say that I didn't already know.

And I think they mentioned in the first two episodes 19 times, if there are any producers listening, boy, do we have great ideas for shows. So they're basically just out there trolling for work. I think so. It's a resume piece. I think they didn't have much else to do at the moment, so they decided to get together and try to push whatever celebrity that they still have to do a podcast and hope that it leads to something else at some point.

Much like we initially did when we started this podcast. So I can't blame them too much. Hey, man, can't blame a girl for trying. Yeah. Don't think it'll work out. I don't know if I'm going to listen to more. I'm curious to see where they go with it. I mean, I do like both of them. I think they're interesting people.

I think they're smart people. But there's not a lot there, really. Yeah. Unfortunately, I was just looking. Carrie Byron is not. Oh, wait. No, there she is. Okay. Yeah, she's not available on Cameo right now. So I was just saying she should be making some money on Cameo because out of the two of them, between her and Tori, I think she could probably still make a few bucks.

Probably. Yeah. Anyways, Marina, who used to be Marina and the Diamonds, has released a new album called Princess of Power. I'm a huge fan of her early work, where she was really kind of interesting and kind of alternative and inventive, and you didn't know what was happening.

She's now pushing 39, and as she's gone along in her career, she's gotten more and more pop and more and more boring. And this is kind of pop and boring and Princess of Power. If you look at the letters, it's pop. That's kind of the point.

I'm a little disappointed by it. It's not as great. It's weird because normally artists would start more pop. I think like Bjork or PJ Harvey or anything like that, it's typical song structures, pop music, and as they go along in their career, they get weirder.

She's gone the opposite way. She started weird, and all that stuff was really good, and she's gotten like – she's 39 now. She's like Katy Perry age. You're not a 20-year-old pop princess anymore. I'm sorry. You're a woman who should have interesting things to say, but you don't anymore.

I'm kind of so bummer. Anyways. Okay. Not too much a – Not a fan of the new album, I think is what I'm saying there, Jason. Okay. That's what I was trying to unpack that. I'm like, okay. Go back to the old ones. They were good. They were good. All right.

I got a really happy release date. Slow Horses Season 5 will premiere on Apple TV Plus on September 24th. All right. Such a good show. Such a good show. In bad show news, Foundation Season 3 finally has a launch date of July 11th. Okay.

I know what I will not be watching July 11th. Exactly. And a surprise announcement. FUBAR Season 2 on Netflix came out today. Now, I want to talk about FUBAR for a second here. FUBAR is one of the worst television shows ever made by the hand of man.

I don't know. I don't know. Have you seen Foundation? Good point. Good point. Touché. Touché, good sir. Yeah, because there's a difference. I actually enjoyed FUBAR. It's terrible TV. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and one of my favorite comedians, Fortune Femster, who is just a doll.

They're spies and it's funny and it's stupid. I mean, it's horrible. Horribly written. But if you've got to kill like, you know, a couple hours, it's better than most things like Foundation. I mean, it really is. It's stupid TV. It is really stupid TV. But for some reason, I really enjoy it.

Mostly because I like Fortune. But yeah. Season 2. I found season 2 as a, basically a footnote in the daily newsletter today. I got no notification on Netflix that it came out. I had to go dig for it on Netflix. Even though I watched all the episodes of season 1 and gave it like a thumbs up, I still didn't get notified from Netflix.

It's like, what are you guys doing? Do you actually want us to watch the shit that you're making? Obviously, they need better AI. Yeah, they need better AI. But I think maybe even they were so embarrassed, like, dude, it was a contractual thing. We had to put it out. You know, it's Arnold. What do you want? So, but anyway, FUBAR season 2 is up.

That's what I'll be watching this weekend, besides the protests. All right. Well, there were two bits of news about sci-fi properties that came out yesterday that it was not difficult to find out about because they were everywhere. Everywhere. The first is Star Trek. Star Trek Strange New Worlds. It was announced that they have been picked up for a fifth season, and it will be the final season, which kind of saddens me.

But then again, I think it may be a good idea. It's a good idea. And that thing had a, I mean, it has a run rate on it because we know how it ends. So, you know, we kind of, it's bookended. Let's just say it's bookended from episode one. We know what's going to happen.

So, see if there's a twist coming. I don't think so. I don't think they can work their way out of canon there, but it would not be the first time. Look at the shit they did with Discovery. That is true. So, the newly confirmed fifth season will run for six episodes, down from Strange New Worlds' typical 10-episode season.

So, that's a bit of a bummer. We're not getting a full last season. But the good news is, we have 26 episodes to look forward to because season three is done, coming out soon. Season four is filming now. And with season five done, that's 26. So, that's good.

That's good. Consider we've only had 20 so far. That's more than we've already gotten. And it's still the best Star Trek show that they've done in forever. Yes, that is true. It also marks a turning point towards the end of an era after the disastrous release of the Section 31 movie earlier this year. And the all-but-confirmed conclusion of Star Trek Prodigy after its exodus to Netflix, with the confirmation of Strange New Worlds.

And just one Star Trek series will remain active for now. still in production, Starfleet Academy, which is set in the 32nd century, first explored by that horrible Discovery show. It has already been renewed for a second season, even though we haven't seen any of it yet. So, that'll be the only Star Trek show on TV once this ends.

We shall see what happens. Star Trek's future may lie in future series, but the only close to certain projects we currently know of are films. A new film exploring the foundational years of Starfleet is currently in the work from director Toby Haynes, which could be very interesting. And this one, I don't know how I feel about.

Well, Patrick Stewart has openly discussed plans for a potential return to the role of Jean-Luc Picard in a new film, presumably set after the conclusion of Star Trek Picard. It would have to be, considering he's like 90. I can tell you, I can tell you exactly how I feel about it. I feel like, shit, don't do it.

It was the perfect ending to a perfect run. Leave Picard alone. I agree. And the other bit of sci-fi music. But you didn't say the release date for Strange New World, season three.

Oh, sorry. Season three starts July 17th with a two-episode premiere, knocking off two more episodes until we're almost out. I know, but that's six days after Foundation. So if you really want to see how, if you want to really see what the contrast is like that we're talking about on this show between bad sci-fi and good sci-fi.

Yes. I haven't even seen, I haven't even seen either one of those, but I can predict with a 100% level of certainty that Foundation season three is going to suck donkey ass and Star Trek Strange New Worlds will be awesome. There you go. And something that could go either way, this was the other bit of sci-fi news that came out yesterday.

The upcoming Spaceballs sequel will arrive in theaters in 2027 with Mel Brooks himself set to reprise his role as Yogurt, according to Amazon MGM Studios. What's more, Deadline reports that the fellow OG cast members, Rick Moranis, Rick Moranis is coming out of retirement for this.

Wow. He hasn't been in the movie in over 20 years, and Bill Pullman will also appear in the sequel, reprising their roles as Dark Helmet and President Scrooge, while Kiki Palmer is among the new cast members. Unbelievable. Just to see Moranis on film again would be noteworthy.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I was never a Spaceballs fan, so I'm glad for everybody that is happy about it. So many good bits. All right. Yeah. They better hurry up, though, because Mel Brooks is looking rough. Charity's 99 or something like that.

I know. That's what I mean. They need to hurry up. Get his shit on camera, or at least have him sign that AI contract. That's true. And David Zaslav is in the news again, and I just have to... There's a link in the show notes. Apparently, Warner Brothers is now going to split off Discovery, and they're going to do all these new things, and who gives a fuck?

And this is after HBO being named Max, and then HBO Max, and then HBO Go, and then all... They have no idea what they're doing over there. So I just wanted to say that excluding all the CEOs who have ran their companies into the ground, or are in jail, or escaped with a large bag of cash after leaving their companies hanging by a thread, and then are laughing into the sunset, and I'm looking at you, Yahoo's Marissa Mayer, Zaslav seems like a solid second for worst CEO in the world.

10 points for guessing who the worst is. Yeah, I can... Might be for a couple companies. Yeah, I got you on that one. I see who you're saying there. I think Zaslav, and anybody who voted him onto the board, and anybody who kept him on the board, and anybody who gave this guy even a cent, they should all be rounded up and taken out into the avocado field, where we now have no workers to pick the avocados, and should be sent out there for the rest of their days to pick fucking avocados for the damage they've done to the entertainment industry.

Fuck these guys, all of them, across the board, and even take that other guy you're talking about, throw him out there, too. I'm fine with that. But in researching these stories about Zaslav this week, I came across The Gage, which is Nielsen's TV monitoring from TV and streaming, and what I found was Max has just like, it's pitiful how many people watch that now.

There's like nothing there. The only thing that saved it in the ratings was White Lotus. That's the only thing that brought that thing up a couple points. Now that White Lotus is over, they're back to like, you know, they're in a neck and neck race, I think, with Peacock, which nobody watches. And right now, Peacock's in the shitter, because there's no episodes of The Traitors that don't come out till next year.

So yeah. Yeah. Fuck this guy, man. Well, if you don't have a cash cow major series, and you basically delete all your back catalog and get rid of everything that people might want to go on to watch, yeah, you're screwing yourself. Apps and doodads.

Okay, Brian, let's have a little support rant here. I want to talk about Supertone Clear. Now, Supertone is an audio plugin company. They do some voice changing stuff, too. But I use a $69 plugin called Supertone Clear. I use it on all of my mastering from everything that comes out of Logic.

I use it on this show, even. It's my favorite cleanup plugin. Now, I have that new MacBook Air, the 14-inch MacBook Air with the M4 chip in it. Well, trying to deauthorize my old computer and reauthorize that one, and everything looks okay.

They even have a little application for their hub, so you can do your license management and shit like that. Well, every time I authorize it within 10 seconds, it goes back to trial mode, which means I can't use it because every 60 seconds, it puts in a bunch of static. So, I go to their support, click, click, click, click.

Okay, go to the support site. Okay, uninstall, reinstall, get the file uploaded for the license one. You can do it with activation key, blah, blah, blah. Same thing over and over again. Just cue me trying not to throw the new MacBook Air against the wall. So, I go, okay, let's contact support.

Go to Discord. What? Oh, fuck. Sign up for our Discord channel to talk to support. Even though their whole support system on their website is through Zendesk, which has a ticketing application, I might fucking add. So, go to Discord.

Have to sign in. Do all these, take some forms and everything. And then I have to go scroll, try and find the support ticket. Put in my, find it. Put in my thing. Everything's in Korean. Everybody that is asking for support, it's all in Korean, except me and like one other guy who speaks English.

So, I have it in, blah, blah, blah. And now I just wait. I can't use my plugin, except on another computer, which fortunately still works. But it's like, it is the worst support experience I've seen in a long time. If you're using Discord for support, you should be taken out back and fucking shot.

That's it. That's all I got. That's all I got. And don't forget to join our Discord. We don't do tech support on our Discord. We don't do tech support anywhere, to be honest about it. That's true. You got a problem with our show? Fuck you.

That sums it up. And as you know, I'm a big fan of Slate. I pay for it. I enjoy my journalism from real journalists that actually write real things. But I thought it was very interesting that this week, they seem to have a bone to pick with Blue Sky. There are two separate articles about how it seemed to be the great hope when X became a Nazi hellhole, and about how it's not working out, and Blue Sky kind of sucks.

Okay. I respectfully disagree, but go ahead. The first article is called Blue Skulled, and the TLDR on this one, their take is that as X has gone too far right and has become a MAGA echo chamber, Blue Sky has gone too far left and has become a liberal echo chamber, driving everyone else away and drowning out any other discourse.

Sounds like a feature to me. That does sound more like a feature. I'm okay with that. Number two, the real problem with Blue Sky and the TLDR on this one. They have two articles? They made two articles? That's my point. There's two separate articles written by different journalists about both shitting on Blue Sky.

Oh my goodness. They came out in the same week. So the TLDR on the second one is, after promising initial growth, many users have abandoned the platform and actual use is lower and going lower still day by day. I agree on that one too. Well, they kind of make my point that I've been making since we've had this great microblogging diaspora.

I mean, they say, I mean, let's be frank. The audience for microblogging and text-based content is smaller than it used to be. That's true. I think most of us are just over it. That's what I was saying when all this happened in the first place. It was like Mastodon and all these other competitors came out.

And I was like, but I don't really miss Twitter. I don't miss any of the microblogging platforms. I'm on all of them. But yeah, most of us are just kind of over it. So X is MAGA and Blue Sky is too liberal. And no, Threads is definitely not the answer here, people, because Threads is a dump too.

Maybe we just don't need these sorts of things. Yeah, the kids just stick around on Instagram or something that we don't know about and they don't want us to know about, which I'm fine with, please. Whatever you're doing, just keep on doing it. Just leave me out of it. Or they're on Discord, you know, whatever.

But yeah, I think the microblogging thing is just basically, at this point, it's a bunch of Nazis yelling at each other how horrible Californians are. And yeah, I've had to go over a couple of times this week and it's just like, let's please get a definition of actual human intelligence for these AGI's because from what I'm seeing here, they may have actually surpassed it a long time ago if you're doing, if you're grading on a curve.

I find microblog sites, all of them basically are either overrun with AI content or stupid people or it's just, it's just, there's nothing useful anymore. No, no, I still find, I still find blue sky to be useful. I do because I just follow, I follow people that are like on the front lines of government and science and things like that.

So you kind of get the real skinny before it actually hits the news. Like I see stuff that's there like a week before it gets out in the news and I love it. I love it for that. It's what it's good for. Yeah. I mean, I look around at, I look around at all three of the big ones. Blue sky is the one that I look at the most just because it's got my most curated feed at this point.

So I don't even go to threads. Yeah. I look at threads every now and then just because I get goddamn notification on Instagram that I turn those off. Notification on threads. So yeah. Easiest thing to do is just to uninstall threads. Cause that way, if you accidentally click on one, it just tries to open the app store.

Then you're like, Oh, that was a threads thing. Instead of taking you out. It works. It works pretty well for me. I got to say. All right. And this Sunday is father's day. The, the day that does not matter. It is no mother's day. Nobody cares. But I did get some early father's day gifts.

And to tell you what father's day is actually about, let me tell you what the gifts are. After, well, actually I like both of them to be honest. After Dave had talked about the compressed air duster, the, the electronic one, instead of using the cans, um, my wife and son got me the compressed air duster with air blower 16,000, 16,000, 160,000 RPM vacuum cleaner and air duster, four in one keyboard cleaner, no canned air duster, electric air duster replaces for compressed air cans and vacuum cleaner

for PC because I couldn't get the exact one that Dave had because it's not available in Canada, but this one was works a treat. Love it. Okay. Fantastic. Is it better than canned air? Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Okay. And you just charge it up. It works just as well.

Like 29 bucks. Damn. That's good. I'm never going to buy a compress. I'm never going to buy a can of compressed air again. Oh, that's pretty good. Yeah. So that's pretty good. And cart. Oh, wait. I'm in Canada. Maybe it might be sending it to Canada. My, my Canadian doppelganger.

Oh shit. Get the, get the one that Dave talked about a couple of weeks back. That was available in the U S and then I also got as a present again, as a present, the Black & Decker 20 volt max lithium ion cordless 10 inch string, string trimmer edger with a 1.5 AH battery and charger because we've had stuff appear all over there and our sidewalks and everything.

So I will be doing some, some trimming and edging this week. You're going to be edging. For Father's Day. Yeah. Not, not Elon Musk's kind of edging. Yeah. Different kind of edging. Yes. Well, congratulations. Happy Father's Day. Happy Father's Day, everyone.

Saturday, September 26th. Two of combat sports, most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren, the gorilla tail 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 pleaver, colon BKFC 94 till verse Romero.

Watch it live only on the zone. Sign up now at TheZone.com. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave. Podcast superhost Dave Bittner decodes all things cyber on the cyberwire every day.

Exposes deception with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans. Dives deep into privacy with Ben Yellen on caveat. Breaks down industrial cybersecurity on control loop and even brings the laughs on only malware in the building. Welcome back, Dave. Thank you. It's good to be back. All right. So our long nightmare is over.

I am into Andor season two. Oh, wait. But you're not done. Not done. No, no. I'm four episodes in. All right. That's like 19 hours. Yeah. So. Getting there. Yesterday we were watching. We've been trying to get through one a day.

And, but yesterday we were like, we finished the episode we were watching and we all looked at each other and said, everybody up for another. And everybody was like, furiously shook their heads. Yes. So we did. It just keeps getting better and better. It's season two is just phenomenal.

Yeah. Yeah. It's really good. And the characters and the situations. We're laughing. We're, we're loving the, uh, the Jewish mother. Uh, it's just really well done.

So well written and beautifully shot. Um, yeah. Just really enjoying it. So. Yeah. Yeah. You're in for a good ride. Like all my bitching about when they announced like length of episode and release schedule and I hated every second of it. I just couldn't get enough of it.

I tore through it every single time. And yeah. Yeah. Now when you finished, did you have a strong impulse to go watch Rogue One right away? I did not because I have this thing called memory. Ah. See, I don't. What's that like? I immediately watched Rogue One. Yeah, exactly.

Because my memory is faulty and I'm glad because the stuff that I remembered about Rogue One was completely different from what I remembered. So it was well worth going immediately into Rogue One. Like the instant the credits rolled on the last episode of Andor, I just like, okay, beep, beep, beep, play.

And it was perfect. Absolutely. I highly recommend that you budget the time and plan accordingly to even if you just watch the first, like, you know, 25 minutes until like Andor gets to the planet and has this first interaction. I think it's well worth it for that.

Are you sure you didn't watch Rouge One, the adult version made in the San Fernando Valley the first time? No, I did not watch Rouge One or Moulin Rouge. Okay. There was no, there was no musical or pornography in mine. Hmm. All right.

Well, I'm glad you're going to get into it. That's not a blaster. This is a blaster. Is that a lightsaber in your pocket? You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought. Yeah. Oh, boy. Well, Bama Brian wrote us on Blue Sky. What do you guys think of the AI-generated Stormtrooper V-logs?

I'm loving them personally. And this is The Adventures of Dave and Greg. I think you brought this up to us, didn't you, Dave, quite some time ago when they first released it? It was a different version of this. I don't know. It wasn't this one. It was a different one. Okay. Were they real people and this one's the AI?

Yeah. I can't remember. Were they all AI? I don't remember. Yeah. It's hard. Who knows? This is very good, though. It reminds me of, do you guys remember Red vs. Blue? Absolutely. Yeah. Yep. So it reminds me of Red vs. Blue. Very much so, yes.

Yeah. Yeah. I want to know what they're using to generate these because it's kind of amazing. Yeah. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. And how specific must your prompts be to? Yeah. I mean, it's helpful that they're stormtroopers because you don't have to worry about lip movements and things like that.

Right. So that's good. But yeah, I don't know. Maybe they just did mocap on it and just use a regular thing instead of generative AI to do it. I don't know. I don't know. It's pretty good. Yeah. I would say that the link that we have in the show notes goes to the compilation of all the episodes and it's about 10 minutes long.

That was a lot for me to sit through, but I did enjoy them in the one to two minute chunks that you can also view them as. It should have been on Quibi. Yes. This was made for Quibi. Quibi was just ahead of their time. They could have AI slop all over it and everybody would be pleased.

I read an article this morning about how this short form vertical video is actually really huge right now, like a multi-billion dollar marketplace. It is saving half of the actors and sound studios in Los Angeles. I'll dig it up and throw it in the notes. But really? Quibi.

Yeah. Quibi was unfortunately ahead of their time. And what they tried to do was do, you know, really heady short form content in small chunks. Yeah, people don't want that. They want lighting farts. These people are making garbage soap operas and it is just completely catching on.

And they're writing all these things on cliffhangers. So you have to buy the next episode with credits. So, you know, people just get really caught up in it. People are making a lot of money on it. Like the writers who are really good at writing cliffhanger type stories are like making bank. Actors are working because they can book for a day and work on 10 different shows.

Sound stages are being filled up again. It's like, this is the savior. The only problem with it is it's all non-union work. You don't hear a lot about it. Yeah. No, I'm completely unfamiliar with that. I have a strong emotional negative reaction to vertical video.

Yeah, I know. That's my problem. I admit it. But, huh, that's interesting. So they're fully produced, fully. My initial reaction was, why do you need a studio to do short form vertical video?

But they're actually all in doing it as if it were a fully funded production, which I guess it is. Yeah. Huh. Yep. So I'll put a link in the show notes so you guys can, people can check it out after the fact. Okay. But, yeah. So a story came across my desk this week that really caught my attention.

And there's one phrase from this that captured my imagination. The article, kind of a blog post, I guess, is called How AI is Killing Joy. And I think there's something to that. But the part that really caught my eye and struck my fancy was the writer of this says that AI is like frozen pizza.

Mm-hmm. And I think that is dead on. The results of AI are kind of acceptable. Sometimes it's fast and cheap because we ignore the invisible costs or the poor quality. AI is the fast food of creative processes. It works. But if we consider it fairly, it also sucks.

And I think, like, you know, AI-generated image or anything creative that AI does, I think, now I'm saying this having just praised the Stormtrooper vlog. But I think there's something to this that is that old saying that – what is it?

There's no such thing as bad pizza, just some is better than others. Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's another P word that that's applied to sometimes. But I think there's some – True. Nobody says – No, I would argue with that one. All right.

I'll bow to your experience. Very – I can't imagine anyone saying that, you know, hey, what's your favorite pizza that you've ever had? And someone saying, oh, Stouffer's frozen. You know, just – Totino's, baby.

Yeah. Tombstone. Right. But at the same time, everyone's OK with there being frozen pizza. Like, we understand there are times – Doesn't a pinch. Right. Frozen pizza is exactly the thing you need. And, you know, I talk about food as pleasure and food as fuel.

Sometimes you just need to not be hungry. Yeah. And something like a frozen pizza can serve that purpose very well. Or if you're on a budget, you know, you've got a bunch of people to feed and not a lot of money. Just go get a couple frozen pizzas and away you go.

And nobody will complain. But I really like this metaphor that AI – and when it comes to creative things, AI is the frozen pizza version of creative endeavors. I'm curious if that resonates with either of you.

Well, the thing that sticks out for me the most is even, you know, even if it's good and we enjoy it, it's the ignoring the invisible costs. Because we all know that this is not good. It's not good for the environment. It's not good for the economy.

It's not good for people. But we seem to kind of ignore that if we're enjoying the frozen pizza. Mm-hmm. Yep. I'm trying to think of other things historically that would fall into that category where people know it's – I mean, things like smoking where we know it's bad.

Drinking. Drugs. Drinking. Drugs. Yeah, that's true. All the things that we enjoy as people. All of our pleasures. Yes. The other P. Yeah, the other P. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah.

All right. So there's a lot. I mean, it is. It's so easy, right? It's – even I – I've been so against AI since all of this started. I beat the drum against it. I said there are hidden costs to this.

This is not good for people. The end result is going to be bad. This is – it's not creative. It's destroying creativity to some degree. And – but even I'm like, you know, I like that stormtrooper thing. I enjoy – you know, sometimes I will go to create imagery for the show because you can do some things with it that you can't do any other way without it taking hours and hours and hours and having skills that I don't readily possess.

I can make things happen. But, yes, I do agree. It's like whatever I create for show art for the show with generative AI, if I had the skills and the time, it would be better if I did it myself. Yeah. No doubt about it. But here we are.

Yeah. I always feel a little dirty when I've generated something with AI out of convenience or speed, you know, something that I could do myself. But darn it, it's just faster and easier to just plop it in to AI.

We're lazy creatures. Come on. It's true. I'd rather you watch Andor than actually do some other stuff. So that's fine. I will make an argument here that isn't lazy, that we've all gotten so busy. We're constantly busy now. And that's the internet.

That's cell phones. That's just how society is structured these days. We have things thrown at us 24-7 all the time. We are always busy, so it's not surprising that we look for things that try to – we try to crawl back a little bit of time anywhere we can these days.

And AI enables that. But then everything else just bumps up against it, you know? I know. Because it all just fills. The void always fills. Yeah. Work expands to fill the time allowed, you know? That's it. Yeah. I was chatting with someone earlier this week about how much time we spent when we were kids, our generation, how much time we spent waiting for rides.

Or just doing nothing. Yeah. Like being bored. That doesn't happen anymore. Yeah. It's true. It's true. All right. Well, another thing I saw that I thought was fun, somebody did a little project called Finding Atari Games in Randomly Generated Data.

So this is the old classic of, you know, have a bazillion monkeys in a room typing on typewriters, and eventually you'll get the great works of Shakespeare, right? Right. So in that spirit, someone is taking massively powerful GPUs and throwing it at the problem of randomly creating games for the Atari 2600.

And what makes this manageable is Atari 2600 games. Most of them are only 4K. Right. Which is very little. By today's standards, very little. Yet. They were wonderful when we were kids.

Oh, amazing. I mean, we'll get to that in a second. So this process uses a combination of some randomness and some heuristics based on existing games. And it's just a fun little nerd problem that this person went through.

You can go through and look at all the different numbers. And, you know, like there's 10 to the 10,159th potential Atari games based on the possibility of 4K. And so you have to break that down into reasonable numbers.

Anyway, they don't actually come up with like playable games, but they do come up with some things that are a start. There are some things that are interesting and you can play with them in your browser.

They have to turn the sound down because Atari sound is brutal. Yeah, that good old 8-bit sound, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know. I just love this. One of the things that caught my eye about this was that it says this is something that – let me see if I can find the quote here.

Oh, this project answers a question no one asked, no one wanted, and is a massive waste of resources. I love it. Yeah. Just my kind of thing. Kind of like AI. Yeah. Kind of – okay, we'll include a link to that in the show notes.

But then that, of course, sent me down a bit of an Atari rat hole, the original Atari 2600. And I don't know if – have either of you seen any of the – I know there was a book and a couple of documentaries called Racing the Beam.

I remember chasing the Beam also, but I guess it's racing the Beam is the actual one. And the notion is that the Atari 2600 had basically no VRAM. So it couldn't store an entire still image, a full frame of video in its memory.

It didn't have that much memory. A full frame of video is like 900K, and back in 1977, there was nothing that had 900K. So part of the way that the Atari 2600 works is it's rendering every single pixel just in time right before the scanning electron beam of your television set needs that pixel.

And the impact of that for – if you're a programmer, that that's how you have to deliver every single pixel on the screen has to happen milliseconds before the Beam has to scan it because there is no memory.

It's just an amazing engineering problem. And it's just remarkable that we got some of the games that we got. Because it took skill. It took – that's – you can't vibe code shit like that. That's like – you know, that took actual brain power and skill to create that thing.

So kudos to them. I mean, the original stuff that we got, it's a miracle that was ever made. Period. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's true. And now we got Twitter. Do you guys have a favorite Atari 2600 game? Pinball. Pinball.

I don't know. I was really, really, really good at pinball. I mean, like freakishly good at pinball. I could play it and still – you know, from when I woke up, the same game until I went to bed. It was just – I was really good at it. Yeah. I mean, I love Space Invaders. You couldn't beat that when it came out.

And there was a tank game that they had. Yeah, combat. Combat. Yeah. I played a lot of combat and I played a lot of pinball. Okay. Not pinball. Pitfall. Pitfall. Pitfall. Yeah, that's the one I was going to say. Pitfall, yes. Yeah, Pitfall. Yeah.

That was probably – to me, Pitfall could be the pinnacle of achievement on that platform. Yeah. I believe you're correct. Yeah. Yeah. Certainly his shit wasn't Yars' Revenge. I don't know that I ever played that one, but that one's actually famous for being a good game, isn't it?

I couldn't figure it out. It made no sense to me. I just could not figure that game out. Okay. I don't know if I was just too young or what, but I just did not understand that game at all. I just stopped on a frame randomly in this YouTube video that you gave us the link to, and it's one of those pixelized keys, and it has just flooded open so many memories.

Like Gauntlet and all the other games that were on later platforms, but just those little like 8-bit pixelized key that you would have to pick up everywhere and move around. Oh, my God. It's bringing back so many memories. The original adventure game. The Superman game was a lot of fun also on the 2600.

That was a good one. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the images were so simple that you really had to use your imagination. Like, oh, that little cube. Yeah, that's me, and it's moving around. But, yeah, I mean, it's easy to be nostalgic for it.

I guess by today's standards, there's not a whole lot to those games. But on the other hand, we all still play Tetris, and it doesn't get much simpler than that. I still play Tetris on my Game Boy. Yeah. Yeah, the classics are classics for a reason. I actually have an analog.

It's an actual device called the Analog Pocket, and that lets me plug in the actual old games, the old cartridges, and you can get adapters for it to play all the different types of cartridges from those old games. Oh, wow. It's fantastic. The only thing that's in it is Tetris, but I did try and get it to play some emulated games, because I would download the ROMs and put them on a CF card and plug it in, because you can do that, too.

But I could never really get anything to work right. Okay. I got a couple of them to work with, but it will play Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance cartridges, all of the old Game Boy stuff. Where do you find the cartridges these days? eBay, man. Oh, God, you just get them anywhere. I've got a stack of them. I got Castlevania.

That was what I got that I wanted to play again, and it turns out that Castlevania sucks on the Game Boy. And all the other ones I bought, I bought a ton of them. I bought, like, you get them for, like, five bucks a piece. There are websites that just have the old cartridges. People go to flea markets and just have, like, vaults of them.

Yeah, it's a lot better than 80 bucks a pop for my kids' games. Right. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, I use a program called OpenEMU2 on the Mac, which is just a broad-spectrum emulator. It is arcade games and Nintendo consoles and, you know, lots of different things.

If you can find the ROMs online, it will likely play them. So it's kind of my universal emulator on my Mac, and that's fun. Yeah, the nice thing about the Pocket is you can actually – the graphics are so much better because it pops up.

You can play it in the original version, which is, you know, that really dark green, low contrast, but it can actually play it in a much better version. So you can actually see it. I'm trying to find out what the price on these things are. It was not cheap, I got to say. And I got it on pre-order long, long ago, and it took forever.

It was one of those ones, you know, that I had to wait for. Yeah, it's 220 bucks. Okay. But it does play all sorts of shit, and you can get different adapters. They have an adapter set for 100 bucks that you can play. TurboGrafx-16, Neo Geo Pocket, and Lynx cartridges.

So, yeah. If you're an old-school gamer, this is the – yeah, the analog is definitely something to check out. It's pretty cool. I'll check it out. All right, gentlemen, that is what I've got this week. Thank you for your hospitality, and I'll see you next time.

See you next week. All right. Bye, Dave. Closing shout-outs! Over at Patreon, we have a new subscriber, Fourth Guy. Welcome, Fourth Guy. And Ficky, McMadeup, and Steven, also up to their pledges.

And other people who have also subscribed to our Patreon are Jeff, Danny, Roz, Paul, Eric, Marco, Jeff, Bridget, Rachel, and Andreas. And Azam – I hope I'm saying that right – wrote a message saying, Apologies, things are getting tough, and I need to take a break from subscriptions, including Patreon.

I will resume in the new year once my finances are back in order. You might want to look at Streamio.com. Really helps to save money. I will keep listening and wish you both the best. Well, thank you for your patronage, Azam. And I did check it out. I'm still trying to figure out what it does.

Yeah, I don't – Streamio offers a secure, modern, and seamless entertainment experience. With its easy-to-use interface and diverse content libraries, including 4K HDR support, users can enjoy their favorite movies and TV shows across all their devices. And with its commitment to security, Streamio is the ultimate choice for a worry-free, high-quality streaming experience.

That says nothing to me about what it is. Yeah, is it IPTV? Are we running around actually having to subscribe to things? How does this save us money? Yeah, I don't quite understand it, so – Hit us back up, Azam. Tell us what this is about. It's some kind of open-source – maybe like an open-source media center, but I'm already using Plex, so I don't know what the difference is.

But I don't know. Write us back. Let us know. Anybody write us back. So – because we're confusified. We're not going to install it to find out, so please just tell us. Do the work for us. Tell us on Discord. You're our customer support. Yes, exactly.

That's how it works. Over at PayPal, we've got Ralph, Miles, Shari, and Natalie. Thank you all so much. Thank you so much. Over at the tip jar, we've got Ryan, Theodore, David, and Stephen with the big hundo. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you. And over at the store, we've got Alexander, M., Maria, and Paulina.

Thank you all so much for buying our swag over at shop.gog.show. Oh, did they pay in crypto coin? No, not yet. Not yet. But most of – I think three out of the four are out of the country, so we still export properly. And just another quick reminder, if you want to sign up to Patreon, it is at patreon.com slash GOG.

You can support the show for as little as $3 a month and up to whatever your little heart desires. And if you sign up for the whole year, you do get a discount. I don't know why, but you do. All right. We didn't authorize that, but Patreon's going to give you some money back anyway, even though – yeah.

But we appreciate it. We appreciate all of it. It comes out of our pocket, but okay. Yeah. Yeah, but thank you so much for everybody who donates to support the show because you literally are the only thing that keeps this show on the air. Pretty much. Telling you right now. We've got some crappy ads, but that's about it. I mean, wonderful ads.

Wonderful ads. Wonderful. Shut the fuck up, man. We've only got a few left. Quiet. All right. Well, we've got a lot of death this week, unfortunately. Oh, Jesus. Let's start it off. Sly Stone, pioneering band member and funk virtuoso, passed away at 82.

He was the band leader of Sly and the Family Stone. Amazing music. This is sad for me because the guy that kind of got me into the music industry, the manager, Steve Farnoli, almost everybody he worked with now has passed. Oh, man.

He worked with Sly Stone before I got involved with Farnoli, so I never was really involved. He also worked with Prince before I got involved with him, so I was never really involved with the Prince stuff. Prince, obviously, has passed away. The two acts that I really worked with that were huge that he worked with were World Party.

Carl Wallinger just passed last year and Sinead O'Connor, who has passed. So, like, everybody. And Steve Farnoli, of course, passed a long time ago. So, it's kind of an end of an era in my own mind from how I got started in the music industry. So, sad to hear about Sly. Yeah, yeah. And I do recommend the Sly Lives documentary.

It is a phenomenal documentary. And I did get to work with Prince. I did the first Paisley Park website. It is the first time I ever got fired by a client for building their website and telling them their website sucked. But not the last. Not the last! And the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, also died at 82 just a few days ago.

Co-founder and primary songwriter of the Beach Boys. No official cause of death was disclosed, but he has been kind of living with neurocognitive disorder, kindred dementia, for an awful long time now. So, sad to see him go. A couple things about that. I have a link in the show notes.

Sting, who I do love the police and Sting, even though Sting can be Sting. Yeah, Sting could be Sting. Sting could be Sting. Sting performs a really great cover of God Only Knows in a tribute to Brian Wilson. And, of course, the Strong Songs episode of God Only Knows by the Beach Boys is a must-listen about just how genius that song actually is.

Absolutely fantastic. This was pointed out by, I think, you on our Discord. I mean, our service support channel on Discord. Yes. That's where we go for internet service support. If there's something wrong on the internet, please come to our Discord. Yes. That Ananda Lewis, host of MTV's Total Request Live and Hot Zone, passed away at 52.

You said it was before your time. I do remember her. I was still watching, just probably because I was so into music that I was a bit older. Yeah. I remember her being on it. She died on Wednesday of breast cancer. She was 52 years old, so my age. She refused mammograms.

She didn't want radiation, and she didn't take any treatment for her breast cancer. So, kind of on her. She'd still be around, I think. I have some good family news on the breast cancer side on my family side. Yes. You know, as I've mentioned on the show, the past couple of weeks have been kind of dicey because we've been dealing with my roommate's mom, who is 96, and going through breast cancer.

Yesterday, she had her surgery to remove the tumor and came through it with flying colors. So, she is recovering now and should be home by this afternoon. Fantastic. Yeah, that's what happens when you get medical treatment. Yes. Yeah. And then this one kind of broke me a little bit.

Nitzereb's Douglas McCarthy has died at 58. Nitzereb, he was vocalist in one half of industrial EBM duo Nitzereb. They were huge for me as a kid. I got really into their music. I stomped around at many a club and a concert venue listening to Nitzereb.

They memorably opened up for Depeche Mode on their Music for the Masses tour, and I was there at that show. I ended up working with Nitzereb when they did their kind of reunion album a few years ago. Got to know them pretty well. Got to know him in particular. Very funny guy.

He's been ill for quite some time. The band's been touring without him for at least the last two years, and unfortunately, he passed away the other day. So, very sad about that. Sorry, man. Yeah, rest in peace, man. Yep. We also lost Bill Atkinson, legendary Apple programmer and GUI pioneer, who has died at 74 from pancreatic cancer.

A core member of the original Lisa and Macintosh teams, Atkinson shaped modern computing with revolutionary tools like MacPaint, HyperCard, and QuickDraw, laying the foundation for everything from clickable links to drag-and-drop interfaces. This guy was no joke. He was a no-joke original Mac pioneer.

Yeah. Definitely, you know. Thank God he didn't invent infinite scroll. Nope. Sure as shit not. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 701.

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