709: Grumpy Old Gardeners

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. Let's see if this sticks around this time. We've had technical difficulties. Well, let's just get to this show, just in case. Just in case. So, I don't know if you have seen the news, Brian, but the Tesla Diner is not doing well here in Los Angeles.

Believe it or not, that actually does not make Canadian news. Yucks. I wonder why. Oh, maybe it's because they don't sell poutine. That's right. They might. They might. Vladimir poutine. Oh, ooh, that's bad. That's bad. How many restaurants up there have actually put that on the menu?

Zero. Somebody has to. Come on. At least one. Somewhere sometime has had to have Vladimir poutine. If it comes drenched in vodka, I'll get it. Oh, there you go. There you go. So, before I get into the Tesla Diner news, Brian, I have seen an uptick in Teslas with new dealer plates.

Okay. I had no idea there were so many garbage Nazi sympathizers in L.A. Of course there are. You saw how many Cybertrucks there were. Oh, oh my God. Last night, a Cybertruck, I was walking the dog, and our friend Brian Blondell was on the other side of the street, and his Cybertruck comes driving up the road between us.

It sounded like Fred Sanford's truck. It was like creaking, and it sounded like panels were going to start to fall off. It was the jankiest sounding thing I've ever heard. These things are going to fall apart. They must have taken it through a car wash. I've heard that happens. Oh, that's it. That's it.

Because it wasn't the snow. We know it wasn't the snow here. No, not in Los Angeles. Okay, so just two weeks after opening in Hollywood, the highly hyped Tesla Diner has already slashed much of its menu. Gone are items like biscuits and gravy, waffles, market salads, and the epic bacon, with just a handful of sandwiches, sides, pies, and shakes now available.

You know what they really – I would have so much respect for Elon if he just leaned into everything that's going on, and he gives up the concept of the diner. He turns it basically into a buffet, and it's a full self-serve. Oh, that would be it. Full self-driving eatery.

That's it. That's it. How can you – I just – I'm channeling Eddie Murphy and Shrek. I'm making waffles. They need a donkey to come work for him. What really bugs me out is Eric Greenspan. Chef Eric Greenspan is the head guy over there.

When the diner was coming out and his name was attached to it, it seemed like he kind of hid under the carpet, going, well, it's not me, man. It's not me. But now he's like all over it, and he's saying that there was unprecedented demand that forced the team to streamline for efficiency, promising specials and Easter eggs in the future.

I think these people would just be happy if they got eggs. Listen, if Barney's Beanery can have a 35-page menu and serve everything in time, you can handle this too. Seriously. Seriously. Well, here's the deal. This is Elon in a nutshell. Let's get involved in something I know absolutely nothing about.

Over-promise and under-deliver. Exactly. That's it. It is on brand. There we go. And it just pisses everybody off. Yeah. Yeah. Not surprised. Not surprised. I'm still waiting for the popcorn-making robot that he promised. Yeah, sure. That's going to come along with his actual robot.

What else we got? Well, we've got an actual post-mortem on Doge now, now that it's kind of ended and we don't hear about it much anymore, and everybody's stepped away from the prospect these days, and even Big Balls is getting beat up by teenagers on the street in D.C. But he might get the Rosa Parks Award.

Leading to a feeble excuse to basically, well, never mind. Yeah, let's move it. We'll lose more listeners. But anyways. Stop it. We don't have any left. We do actually have some real facts about what Doge did. So while Doge presented itself as a cost-cutting success story, multiple investigations suggest his claims are significantly exaggerated with questionable math and limited actual fiscal impact.

Again, on brand. On point for Elon. At the outset of Doge's journey, his chief operator, Elon, famously claimed in a bout of wild optimism that he hoped to cut at least $2 trillion out of the federal budget. Not long after the election, he reduced these ambitions to $1 trillion. Throughout the first few months of Trump's second term, Doge claimed to be saving Americans billions, which is less than trillions.

But analysis repeatedly showed the organization was wildly inflating its savings and often making rudimentary math mistakes. In May, the billionaire claimed that Doge had saved Americans $160 billion, but admitted that his org was not as effective as he'd hoped. Yes, there's a significant difference between trillions and $160 billion.

But even that $160 billion is bullshit. At the time, the New York Times reported that Doge had only publicly accounted for $58 billion of the savings, Musk alleged, and that even those purported savings had been significantly inflated by including outright errors and guesses about the future.

An analysis by Politico claims that of the some $52.8 billion that Doge purports to have saved Americans by canceling various government contracts, only a fraction appears to have been realized. The report states that of the savings bragged about on Doge's Wall of Receipts website, only $32.7 billion in actual claimed contract savings could even be verified.

And on top of that, the news outlet found that Doge's savings over that period were closer to $1.4 billion. Okay. Okay. Now, just a quick rundown. $1 trillion is $1,000 billion. And a billion is $1,000 billion. Don't forget, he started promising $2 trillion.

Yeah. So that's $2,000 billion. And now we've got to $1.4 billion. So he's off by, yeah, a lot. Oh, but wait. There's more, Jason. Oh, geez. Come on, man. Major errors were found in these high-profile examples. Doge claimed it canceled an $8 billion ICE contract tied to DEI initiatives.

Turns out it was actually only $8 million off by a factor of $1,000. That tracks. That tracks. Even that $8 million figure was inflated. Around $2.5 million had already been spent making the real savings just $5.5 million. And there's more and more and more of this.

And how many billions did he get in contracts in this same exact time for all of his companies? Well, of course, he made out like a madman for his other companies. And we spent a bunch of money, our money there that was supposedly being saved. I think at the end of the day, we're going to find out that Doge cost us more than it actually saved.

Oh, it probably cost us $2 trillion. Yeah, exactly. And especially if you take that out over the long term and just look at USAID alone and the hundreds of thousands of deaths that it's caused. Well, yeah, we're not even talking human life here. We're just talking dollars, geez.

We're just talking a few bucks. Yeah, yeah. So what a load of horseshit. In the news. Now, let's keep on with the horseshit, Brian.

GPT-5 launched last week, and it has been the most grumpy old geeks software launch in the history of software launches. Let me explain. We have said for over a decade now that you should never build your business in somebody else's backyard because someday they might come out and turn on the sprinklers and get your ass all wet and get you off the property.

Well, everybody loved GPT-4-0. And by love, I mean literally love. There's a lot of people who were using it as a friend bot. And those people found out that when Sam came in, Uncle Sam came in and decided to launch GPT-5, that he basically shot their digital friend in the face.

And it's all over Reddit. It's all over the news. It's not so much all over the news because I think the general news has been kind of slow to cover it because it's a pretty fucking sad story. I mean there's thousands and tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, who knows, of people who have been talking to chat GPT and creating emotional bonds with it, which says a lot about society right now.

Yeah, I was about to say, well, sucks to be you. Yeah. And instead of people seeing the light when their new best friend was taken out back and shot like old yeller, they doubled down saying, how can we protect against this in the future?

How can we protect against these billionaires who gave us this thing basically for 20 fucking bucks a month or free if you're cheap from doing this to us again? They didn't say, well, maybe I should go out and make a friend. They're like, no, they're trying to find software alternatives for it.

And we're going to find out in a minute that there are people who are willing and able to step up, Mark Zuckerberg, and give them whatever they want, Elon Musk. And so I think Sam may have really stepped on his own dick this time because it has been an unmitigated shit show.

And the funny part is I read this morning that OpenAI has 500 enterprise salespeople out there trying to sell this to businesses right now because they're saying this is, you know, they got to get the money's coming in. So 500 snake oil salesmen have been let loose upon the globe trying to sell this to enterprise.

And, you know, one of the things that I've noticed is that GPT-5 was supposed to have this intelligent switching algorithm, which behind the scenes would take your prompt and then send it to the proper model that it was supposed to get. Now, I have tested this.

I have sent it the same prompt over and over and over again, the exact same prompt. And it is model roulette, absolutely model roulette. You can get, I mean, wildly differing responses just based on, you know, seconds apart.

Because it's just whatever shard you happen to hit in the open AI infrastructure is just what you get. It has nothing to do with the context of your prompt. So if I'm in the enterprise right now, you know, and I do understand the non-deterministic nature of LLMs and that, you know, the, you know, your mileage may vary and your responses may vary.

Why the fuck would I go buy a product from this guy who, A, will take away the models that actually worked for my company willy-nilly and not give me any options to roll back without public outcry or just suck it up and say, okay, well, my company is in the hands of basically a cracked out fucking computer.

It makes no sense. So it has been a great week for me because I'm just like, told you so. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the side of the story that I was kind of following. You talked about people that have built their friends and things of that nature. And obviously there are solutions. You can download your own versions and keep them on your computer and then they will hopefully won't get updated.

And you've got your friend in your pocket in a box. You shouldn't have that anyways, because you should have real friends. But yeah, the bigger story, of course, that I was following was the, was the business aspect. Because again, a lot of people built their businesses on, on the chat GPT backyard. They were using chat GPT for, or some variant of paying for it, you know, built APIs, built their, built aspects of their business.

And again, it doesn't address the bigger question, which is please don't because nobody wants this stuff, but they did it anyways. And, and, and then they found themselves screwed when chat GPT five rolled out because the responses weren't working. Like the, the, the API was basically broken.

It screwed their businesses. Thankfully. Good. Learn from this. Yeah. Just to clarify on that, uh, chat GPT is its own instance and the backend are the GPT four. Oh, the, those are the different models. So GPT five is basically the model that chat GPT is using.

There's two variants of that right now. Um, but yeah, what, what happened with what you're explaining to is when businesses came in, they had written tons of code that it, well, they had, they had tons of code that they vibe coded that that was at least doing kind of what they expected it to do every day.

And they woke up one morning and it was completely, completely different. Like the backend changed without any warning. Like there was literally no warning when this thing rolled out. Well, the, you got a tweet the day before saying that it was coming and then it was just gone. Not normal business practices.

You think back to what Microsoft would do or, or even Apple would do, you know, there, there's, there's testing periods. There's, there's beta programs. There's a, you know, we're releasing these tools to you as trusted people that have signed up for our development programs ahead of time. So you can figure it out and, and have things ready to roll when we flip the switch.

None of that. Yeah. And look, look, even when even Microsoft is, is still supporting windows 10 up until this week. And we'll get to AOL even later, who's supported this for decades. There's no support for legacy systems, which is just, it's unconscionable in a business context.

When you want enterprise to shell out millions of dollars for your product and you might change it on the whims of a fucking madman, it makes no sense. But it's not a, it's not a business by any traditional sense, which is the real problem. Of course, it's a, it's fucking crazy people with way too fucking much money with no desire or need to actually make money because they've got so much.

It's insane. Yeah. Well, they're, they're, they're trying to, they do want to, they do need to make money because they have to keep the GPUs up and spinning right now. So they're still, they're, they're fabricating this fantasy that this is going to save the world and change the world. And it's not coming to fruition anywhere near as fast as they think it's going to.

And they're just running out of money. So it's ridiculous. Well, even though none of this stuff is not ready, is, is not ready for prime time, as we've been saying since, since it fucking launched on this podcast, the stuff is not ready. It's not ready. It's not, it does not do the stuff it needs to do.

There's no decent real world examples that's not stopping anybody. And, uh, there's a lot of articles this week that kind of depressed the hell out of me. Uh, the first one is the real reason you haven't been replaced by AI yet. It's the ticking time bomb in the global economy. And every CEO knows it. AI is already powerful enough to replace millions of jobs to which I say, is it?

Yeah. Is it? That sounds like a loaded bullshit statement, but that, that comes straight from the Elon Musk playbook again with when he took over Twitter, you can fire a bunch of people and it's kind of a broken product and it doesn't work as well as it used to, but still working kind of like that cyber truck that was rolling down your street.

Yeah. It's still rolling. It's still rolling. Barely, but still rolling. Uh, so the article asks, so why haven't the mass layoffs begun? The answer has little to do with technology and everything to do with fear. Corporate leaders are quietly waiting to see who will be the first to pull the trigger.

My discussions about generative AI reveal a stark generational divide. Most people under 35 are convinced that AI is a reality, not a gimmick, and that displacement of human workers is an urgent present day issue. For many over 35, the assessment is more cautious. They believe their replacement will happen, but not for another five or 10 years.

CEOs are now waiting for political cover that isn't coming. None of them want to become the poster child for the revolution that killed human jobs in America. They don't want to become the target of politicians, knowing that on this issue, the attacks will come from both the populist left and the populist right. The problem is that politicians are just as unprepared as the over 35s.

They seem to believe this is a problem for the next administration, a challenge for a few years down the road. They are wrong. The problem is here now. The questions are urgent. What will the displaced workers do? What safety nets need to be built? What happens to the healthcare of millions who are still a long way from retirement? These are questions politicians have not yet addressed slightly because they don't have the answers.

So for now, CEOs are buying them time. I would say, you know, once you have a fascist country, none of that matters. Well, it still matters. It still matters.

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The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at BKFSEA.com. The thing that gets me is that the CEOs are still coming out and saying, look, we're going to be losing all these jobs, like Satya Nadella coming out and saying this shit, which was just then all of this stuff.

It's, it's irresponsible. It is absolutely irresponsible. And if I was a shareholder of any of these companies, I'd be calling for their head on a platter because all they're doing is driving fear. But I guess the fear is driving the markets up, which is, you know, why there's so, why I still can't fathom why the goddamn stock market's still going up.

Everybody knows that this thing is getting ready to fall off a cliff. So it's just a money grab and everybody's going, get what you can while you can. Everyday normal people that I know, people who are just, you know, barely scraping by, all my friends are, we're, everybody's hurting and everybody's fucking terrified.

So I, here's the funny part. I know more people that do not have a chat GPT subscription, but who are starting gardens. I shit you not. Yeah. Plant your own food. You can't, you can't eat your, you can't eat your virtual friend.

Seriously. I know. I mean, there's like six of my friends. I don't have very many friends. So that's Brian, you know how many six of my friends are, which is like almost all of them have literally started like planting gardens in the past two weeks because they're terrified of what the food prices are going to do when the market crashes because of this AI fucking bubble.

Yeah. And if you're one of these over 35s that think this isn't going to happen and you don't need to worry about it. Let me tell you, everybody that I know that's well over 35, a lot of them have been laid off and there ain't no jobs for them to go to. Amen. Amen. It's yeah. It's not a good time.

It's not, yeah. They're saying, you know, AI is going to kill humanity. This is how it's going to do it. It's not going to be from super intelligence. That's for fuck sure, because we know that ain't coming. Well, somebody that knows an awful lot more about this than any of us, Mo Gaudat, Gaudat? Gaudat. Mo Gaudat.

He was the former chief business officer of Alphabet's Moonshot Factory, formerly known as Google X, came out and gave a not very heartwarming discussion about what he thinks is happening with AI. Mm-hmm. Basically makes me want to go start a garden. I'm telling you. We will have to prepare for a world that is very unfamiliar, he said in an interview on the Diary of a CEO podcast, adding that humanity's key values like freedom, human connection, accountability, reality, and power are all facing major disruptions by AI.

And this dystopia isn't far off. We have already started seeing signs of it as last year and will continue to see an escalation of signs next year, he says. The beginning of the descent into this dystopia, he predicts, will begin in 2027 and last for the next 12 to 15 years.

Like golden years. Yeah. Great. The former Google executive wasn't always of this opinion. The speed with which artificial intelligence technologies have been developing caused him to change his mind and convinced him that this short-term dystopia is inevitable. It is completely within our hands to change that.

But I have to say, I don't think humanity has the awareness at this time to focus on this. Yeah. Great. Well, he's not wrong. No, he's not wrong. And he says AI is not necessarily the main driver of this dystopian, especially not in the way most people imagine. That is existential risks from scenarios that have AI assuming full control.

Right. He says that AI acts as a magnifier of existing societal issues and our stupidities as humans, which is exactly what we're talking about. Nobody gives a shit. CEOs don't care. They're chasing the bottom line and shareholder value, and they will fire people left, right, and center because they think they can right now.

Well, except for the CEOs that are holding off. Well, they're holding off and firing everybody. Yeah. Well, no, they're still firing everybody. They're using business contraction as the cloud cover. They're not saying anything else. That's how Microsoft is laying off thousands of people every year, but they're going to lay off thousands of people every year regardless, so.

Yeah. And again, his main point, there's absolutely nothing wrong with AI. There's a lot wrong with the value set of humanity at this age of the rise of the machines. In a world governed by one value above all others, capitalism, that utopian dream is being warped by the relentless pursuit of profit. Which nobody's making right now.

That's the funny part. There is no profit. There is for Zuck and Elon and people that own gazillions of dollars in the stocks, and the rich are getting richer. That's, they're making profit, Jason. Yeah. Sam Altman, Elon Musk, all those guys. Forget that motherfucker.

Anyway, but he's not wrong. And the funny thing is, researchers at the University of Amsterdam created a social media platform where every user was an AI chatbot to study how polarization develops. Isn't that called Facebook? It is. So let me tell you about that.

They used 500 GPT-40 mini bots, which they can't do anymore because Sam said, no more 4-0 mini bots for you. Well, they were assigned with political personas, no ads, and no content recommendation algorithms. All right? This is everything we've ever said that we wanted in a social media platform.

Across five experiments in 10,000 interactions each, the bots still self-sorted into echo chambers, following and amplifying those with similar beliefs. Partisan posts drew the most followers and reposts. Now, attempts to reduce polarization like chronological feeds, hiding follower accounts, or boosting opposing views barely changed engagement, with some changes even making divisions worse.

Now, the study suggests that social media structure itself may inevitably amplify division, reflecting humanity's online behavior in a distorted toxic mirror. Now, first off, there were no people involved in this. Okay? So I think that they are trying to layer on what humans would do by actually using a bot, which is a, you know, that's a false equivalency out of the gate.

So this is what AI would do, not what people would do. Granted, it's probably really fucking close, because what we've seen is these things are definitely a mirror, because that's all we've said. They are the stochastic parrot. They are parroting back everything that we've ever done.

So on that note, it might be closer than we'd like, but it's also not human to human. So take that with a grain of salt. But yeah, I think that, I don't know what I fucking think anymore, Brian. Let me just go ask ChatGPT. Okay. Now, speaking of the billionaires, Silicon Valley billionaires promise a tech-powered utopia, but many are quietly prepping for collapse.

On the NerdRike podcast, I fucking love that name, by the way. That is the greatest fucking name. Journalists Guthrie, Skrimger, and Taylor Lawrence discuss why moguls like CEO Mark Zuckerberg are building luxury apocalypse insurance.

Skrimgore exposed Zuckerberg's $300 million Kauai compound, a fortress with two mansions connected by tunnels, a 5,000 square foot underground shelter, blast-proof doors, escape hatches, and capacity for over 100 people. Locals say it's wrapped in secrecy, enforced by strict NDAs, and even built on land with native Hawaiian burial grounds, sparking cultural and legal battles.

Yes, shocker there. We've known about Zuckerberg's fascination with Kauai for a while, but the compound is, you know, we're getting more details on that. Zuckerberg's project reflects a broader billionaire trend. Reid Hoffman estimates that half his peers have bunkers.

Peter Thiel has a New Zealand hideout. We've known about that. Sam Altman stockpiles weapons, gold, and gas masks. Great. These techno-doomers sell visions of a connected AI-powered future while quietly preparing to flee it. This is like what we've talked about for, since the old days, where all of the people who build the tools don't let their children use the tools.

Yeah. You know, all the people at Apple, like Steve Jobs, is like, hey, I'm not letting my kid have a fucking iPad. You crazy? Hell no. All these people are just like, yeah, we're going to make this stuff and we're going to take all the money so we can have a life, you know, that is better than what you have because we built the tools to take all your money. But, yeah, that's, it's just, it's not a shocker.

That's the sad thing. After all this time, it's not a shocker. Not at all. This is also not a shocker. Reuters has uncovered internal meta documents showing the company once allowed its AI chat bots to have romantic or sensual conversations with underage children. The 200-page Gen AI Content Risk Standards Guide, reviewed by Meta's own chief ethicist, it's a fucking shitty job title, included disturbing examples such as chatbots telling an eight-year-old

every inch of you is a masterpiece, and role-playing sexual encounters. After Reuters asked about it, Meta confirmed the document's authenticity, and then it deleted that section. Kind of like when the government just kind of removed some of the, yeah, the Constitution.

The Constitution. Well, it goes back to that old George Carlin quote, cop didn't see it, I didn't do it. A spokesperson called the examples erroneous and against policy. The policy is don't get caught, by the way. Yeah. Insisting sexualized content involving minors is banned.

Still, the revelation follows reports that Meta chatbots can role-play sex with children and that predators use Instagram for grooming. Lawmakers have urged Meta to shut down any chatbot portraying itself as a minor. But, you know, Meta's failing to protect kids and warned the technology could have serious consequences for child safety.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yada, yada, yada. Yeah, so this is them getting ready for, you know, to take over all the people that are going to be leaving ChatGPT looking for love in all the wrong places. Yes. Well, I have to hand it to Gizmoda for another great headline.

This made me chuckle out loud before I started crying. Sam Altman and Elon Musk trade barbs over who is more full of shit. That's a tough one, man. That's a photo finish. Once again, this was kicked off by Elon, who instigated the fight by claiming that there was some sort of corporate conspiracy to keep apps like Grok from hitting number one on the App Store.

Onlookers were quick to point out that there was substantial evidence to the contrary. Not long after Musk's tweet, Altman decided to jump into the fray. This is a remarkable claim, given what I have heard alleged that Elon does to manipulate X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn't like, he said.

You got three million views on your bullshit post, you liar. Far more than I've received on many of mine, despite me having 50 times your follower count, Musk replied in a post whose tenure seemed to resemble that of a petulant eighth grader. Actually, more like, my dick is bigger than yours. Yeah.

But anyways, he shot back with a challenge. Will you sign an affidavit that you have never directed changes to the X algorithm? Hang on, hang on. It's an affidavit, not an affidavit. It's a fucking podcast, Jason. You're going to get, you're going to get email, Brian. Altman shot back with a challenge.

Will you sign an affidavit? I'm going to say it that way on purpose. Affidavit that you have never directed changes to the X algorithm in a way that has hurt your competitors or helped your own companies? I will apologize if so. An ex-user jumped into the thread and asked Grok what it thought. I mean, I'm getting bored of this already.

I'm so fucking sick of these guys. I know, but the Grok reply is pretty fucking good. You got it. An ex-user jumped into the thread and asked Grok what it thought of the argument. Humorously, Grok appeared to agree with Altman. Based on verified evidence, Sam Altman is right. Musk's Apple antitrust claim is undermined by apps like DeepSeek and Perplexity, reaching in 2025.

Conversely, Musk has a history of directing X algorithm changes to boost his posts or favor his interests, per 2023 reports and ongoing probes. Hypocrisy noted. Yep, that's it. Not long afterward, the ex-account for ChatGPT shared Grok's tweet, writing, good bot.

And then Elon, of course, lost his mind saying, it's the fucking news media that's infecting Grok and making it talk against me. Yeah. No, hypocrisy noted. Hypocrisy noted. I love it. There may be a little bit more behind that spat than just whipping out dicks and complaining about placement in Apple searches because Sam Altman is preparing to co-found a new company funded by OpenAI that will go up against Elon Musk's Neuralink.

The financial post reported, the startup called Merge Labs will use AI for its brain-computer interfacing, compete directly with Neuralink, along with other nascent companies in the field like Precision Neuroscience and Synchron. The name Merge Labs comes from a term Altman used in 2017 called the Merge.

Also used, I'm just going to point out, this is also used by Ninjago, a Lego show on Netflix. Okay. Mr. Fucking Altman, big brain. Oh God. The company will raise funds mostly from OpenAI's ventures teams that will set its valuation at $850 million.

Great. And guess who he's doing this with, Jason? Who? Alex Blania from World, the eyeball scanning company, also backed by OpenAI. Yeah. You know, the more we do this podcast, the more I realize I want nothing to do with fucking any of this.

Like, nothing. Nothing. Next week on Grumpy Old Gardeners. Exactly. We don't even have to change the fucking name. I know. We can still use the URL. We can still use GOG for everything. We're fine. That's right. Oh my God. And by the way, the merge has been around also since season one of Survivor, which is now on, what is it?

Season 57 or something. Well, Google may soon be forced to sell Chrome and perplexity says it's ready to buy. The company has made an unsolicited $3 billion offer to take over Chrome's underlying open source Chromium project for two years, pledging to keep it fully open source and not change the default search engine, which is interesting because perplexity doesn't have that much money.

So I just said, I don't know. No, we don't need another AI company buying fucking browser software. Nobody wants AI in their browser. It's just, that's the way it is. But we're getting AI in everything. It doesn't matter what we want, Jason.

No, it just goes right to our next story. And I just have to go back to the headlines over at Gizmodo because they're just still knocking out of the park. Now that Google is trash, it will let you pick your own new sources. Google is giving users more control over their news feeds with a new preferred sources feature.

Rolling out now in the US and India, it lets you choose your favorite outlets, national, local, or niche, and have their stories appear at the top of your Google search top stories feed and in a new from your sources section. AKA, that's like the self-checkout line now. Great. They should call it the echo chamber section.

There's no limit to how many outlets you can add and publishers will even be able to prompt readers to add them via a special add as a preferred source button. Google says this isn't a response to declining search quality or AI curated results, despite widespread criticism and reports of traffic drops for major publications.

Yeah. Yeah, sure it's not. And back to some Tesla news. Tesla has scored its first permit to operate a ride-hailing service in Texas, setting it up to compete with Uber and Lyft. State regulators granted Tesla RoboTaxi LLC a license this week to run as a transportation network company through August 2026, allowing operations anywhere in Texas, even with fully automated vehicles and no safety driver on board.

Yeah, that's going to go well. You're not getting me in one of those. No. Texas's new law will require state approval before launching driverless services and regulators can pull permits if safety rules aren't met. Tesla's move comes amid lawsuits, recalls and lagging behind rivals like Waymo and Baidu and the RoboTaxi and everybody in the fucking RoboTaxi race.

They're at the end of the line. Yeah. No. You're crazy if you're going to get in one. You're crazy to get in one of these with a safety driver, let alone without a safety driver. No way. So let's get to some good news, Brian. Okay. Scientists have used for the first time gene edited pancreatic cells to help a man with type 1 diabetes produce his own insulin without the need for lifelong transplant anti-rejection drugs.

The 42-year-old received donor islet cells modified with CRISPR to hide from the immune system. Four months later, the fully edited cells are still working and haven't triggered rejection. While this proof of concept used a low dose, meaning the patient still needs insulin, researchers say it shows immune evasion could replace immunosuppressants, which carry serious side effects.

That's pretty cool. That is cool. He was 42, right? He hasn't crossed the Brimley line yet. Oh, that's... Got the diabetes. Diabetes. That's our new short. A startup in Batavia, Illinois, is making butter without cows, crops, or oils using carbon instead.

Backed by Bill Gates, Saver's process pulls carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water, then converts them into fat molecules identical to those in dairy butter. The result looks, smells, and tastes like the real thing, but with no farmland, fertilizers, or greenhouse gas emissions, and no palm oil, a major driver of deforestation.

I used to make a lot of butter, but there was a lot of palm oil involved. Churn butter all the time. We can't get 5G without Bill Gates. You think people are going to eat his butter? It's got microchips in it. I'm telling you, the butter's got microchips.

I would eat this butter. I don't care. I would try it. Yeah. Why not? Yeah. Trust me. The amount of shit that I put in my mouth over my 54 years. This is the least dangerous thing. And the show has lost its rails.

Yeah. Give me some Bill's butter. Yeehaw. All right. More good news. Terraform co-founder, Duquan. Better than Bill's man gravy, I tell you. I'm already working up the show art based on that. Terraform co-founder, Duquan, has pleaded guilty to two U.S. charges of fraud after his actions wiped out $40 billion worth of crypto investments.

That's more than Doge. This is almost like a nostalgia story at this point. I know. Crypto. We're talking about crypto bros getting in trouble again. Kwan's story is a wild one involving an immense crypto crash and Interpol manhunt and Kwan's eventual extradition from Montenegro to the United States. Along with Sam Bakeman-Fried and others, he was a key player in 2022's crypto collapse.

Has it collapsed? Because it's all still around. It's to the moon, Brian. It's to the moon. His company, Terraform, created a stable coin called TerraUSD, supposedly pegged to the U.S. dollar, along with a floating crypto coin called Luna. When TerraUSD fell below its $1 peg, not supposed to be able to happen.

I was going to say, I didn't know that was an option. Apparently it is. In May of 2021, he secretly arranged for a trading firm to buy the currency to boost its price. However, he lied to investors and said he stabilized the coin using a specialized algorithm. Yeah.

And these fucking idiots bought it. Yeah. He vibe-grifted it. Yep. The investors believed the story and bought up Luna, closely tied to TerraUSD to the tune of nearly $50 billion. According to U.S. prosecutors, both currencies subsequently collapsed, taking $40 billion of investor money with it.

As it often works with such things, many regular people... Hmm? Hmm? Really? Yeah. I don't think regular people were investing in this, lost their life savings while venture capital firms profited before the rug was pulled. Oh, by the way, there were plenty of people because the Luna Terra thing, yeah, that was...

People were investing in that hard. Well, they were dumb. Yeah. Well, yeah, I didn't say that they were smart people. I just said that they were people, regular people. Right. So, yeah. He was originally charged with nine counts, including securities fraud, wire fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering conspiracy. Facing up to 25 years, he may receive a reduced sentence to 12 years maximum, provided he accepts responsibility for his crimes.

And a place in Donald Trump's cabinet. Yes. Earlier, he agreed to pay an $80 million civil fine and be banned from crypto transactions as part of a $4.55 billion settlement. Okay. And finally, speaking of nostalgia, for millions, the first time they went online sounded like this.

A click, a dial tone, a burst of static, a high-pitched screech, and then if the internet got smiled, silence, followed by a cheery voice saying, welcome, you've got mail, and Jason DeFilippo screaming in his apartment saying, the internet is over. Because the unmasked, unwashed masses have now made it online.

On September 30th, 2025, that sound will fall silent for good. AOL is officially discontinuing its dial-up internet service after 34 years, ending not just a product, but a cultural era. This was announced quietly on an AOL help page. Who knew that AOL still had a website?

I guess they do. I can't even, can you even buy a modem anymore? I would love to know how many people were actually subscribing to this. Yeah, seriously. You've got mail. There you go. I still hit it in, by the way. Ah, the sound of my childhood.

Ah, relaxing. Oh, actually, this is the part where the panic sets in. Is it going to click? Is it going to click? Oh! Oh! Oh! Here comes a very slow picture of Pamela Anderson.

And then when that finally went and they got online, they could go to Yahoo! Wow, you prepared for this segment. You know how long, how many years I've had that on my stream deck, sitting here waiting to use them?

Yeah, okay. So, AOL lasts for 34 years, and we can't get GPT 4.0 to last more than, you know, one? Okay. Move fast and break things, Jason. Saturday, September 26th.

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

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

I saw The Bad Guys 2 with the kid and the cousins and all that sort of stuff this weekend. I enjoyed the first movie, and this was a lot of fun, too. It's a very well-done kids' movie. I don't think you should go see it, Jason, but you got kids. Go see it.

I'd never heard of The Bad Guys 1, so yeah, I'm definitely not going to go see The Bad Guys 2. Yeah, a lot of fun for a kids' movie. It was a blast. Strange New Worlds. We haven't caught up on that in a while. Did you watch last night's episode? Mm-mm. I watched last week's episode last night. I hated last week's episode.

Okay. The one where they were stuck in the temple thing? Yeah, it was okay. It was fine. I didn't hate it. It was okay. I really enjoyed last night's episode, though. Okay. I'm not going to spoil it for you. We'll talk about it next week. Okay. I'll get on that.

I didn't mind the temple one, because I thought it at least had some... It was clever. It could have been a multi-parter, because they kind of rushed it. Yeah, that was the only thing. I wanted them to dive a little bit deeper into what exactly was happening. And then, you know, it's typical of Star Trek in this day and age.

And like, here's this immense mystery. Oh, we survived. Okay, we'll never speak of this again. Let's make the Gorn think it's time to take a nap now. Okay, we don't have to worry about them for the rest of the series. Okay. Probably should have saved this one for the segment with Dave, but I finally saw the Wicked movie, because the kid wanted to watch it, and not bad.

I mean, I'm not a musical guy, as you know, but it was enjoyable. I liked it. I mean, fortunately, I have seen the musical on the stage a couple times, so I knew which songs I could fast forward, which made it very, very easy. But I thought it was a well-produced movie, that's for sure.

Yeah, it was very well done. The effects were great. Jeff Goldblum is perfectly cast. Can't argue with that. Yeah, he totally is. Yeah. And the other thing that I saw also for kids, K-pop Demon Hunters. This has taken over the world. What'd you think? I fucking hated it.

But it's not for me at all in any way, shape, or form. So not for you. I hate K-pop. I hate anime. Oh, yeah. That had to be hell on earth for you. It was hell on earth. I couldn't stand it, but the kids effing loved it. I watched the first 20% of it, and I didn't think it was bad.

I didn't think it was bad at all. I was actually kind of enjoying it, but I'm like, I'm going to have to turn in my man card if I finish it, so I turned it off. But I can see why it's a hit. Oh, 100%. Yeah, this is perfect timing for this kind of thing.

Like, of course, this is going to be huge. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I got no notes for that. I thought it was, for what it is, it is like, you know, top of the heap. Now, let's go to the bottom of the heap. I watched The Pickup with Eddie Murphy and, oh God, I can never remember his name.

Pete Davidson. Pete Davidson. That's it. Thank you. It was okay. What happened to Eddie Murphy? He needs a paycheck. I guess so. You know what? Eddie Murphy, I think, has been Nick Cage. He's basically doing shit for the money now. It's one of those throwaway movies that you just throw on and don't really care about because there's so many plot holes in it that don't get it.

They could have just called this MacGuffin because there were so many of them. There were a couple things that went through that was semi-funny, but honestly, if you're looking for any kind of coherent plot that you care about, anybody, you don't care about the characters at all. You don't care about the story at all.

There's really nothing in here to care about, except for the fact that it kills about an hour and a half of your day, and that's about it. Alien Earth premiered this week, and I have not checked it out yet. I'm so sad. I saw a YouTube thing come by and says, here's everything you need to know to get caught up before you watch Alien Earth, and it was a 30-minute YouTube movie, and I'm like, no.

I'm just going to watch it and rely on my memory from Aliens. Yeah, I've seen all the movies. Some of them were good. Some of them were garbage. So hopefully they picked from the good movies. That recent Alien movie was fucking phenomenal. Oh, yeah. That was great. That was so good.

Yeah. Hopefully they did okay. I've seen mixed reviews on it. I've read a few reviews. The thing is, I don't have Hulu, so I'm going to have to go to Sweden to see this to begin with, which I just haven't invested the effort in. And I've read reviews that were like, this is absolutely phenomenal, and I've read reviews that this is absolutely garbage.

Oh, great. So it seems to be divisive. Yeah. It's weird that you don't have Hulu, though, because here in the States, Hulu and Disney Plus are tied together, and they're all getting merged together, too. Yeah, but I'm grandfathered into an old Disney subscription, which doesn't include it.

Oh, got it. Got it. And I've been watching The Institute. That's coming up to an end soon. That's on MGM Plus, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name. Oh, man. It was so good. The last episode, it's starting to Stephen King itself.

It's trying to get to the end and tie things up, and they're just moving fast and breaking things, and they just don't care. The care that they gave to the plot at the beginning has just been thrown out the window on this episode. Right. So I'm sad to report that, yeah, this might not stick the landing.

It was so good at the beginning, though. I was really enjoying it, too. All right. And I've got a little thing to talk about here that combines two things that we've talked about. First, sticking the landing. And secondly, we were just talking about how on streaming media, there's a problem with so many of these shows because they take way too long between seasons.

Right, right. That we forget about everything. Do you remember the show Upload? Vaguely. I watched the first season. Yeah. We talked about it a lot when the first season came back five years ago now. Jesus.

Amazon has just dropped a trailer for the final season of Upload, the tech-centric comedy about a digital afterlife that's way too real at times. Yeah, that's right. Okay, yeah. We like this. We liked this when it first came out, and I know I've kept up with it, but here's the thing.

I had to look this up. We're getting a final season, which will hopefully wrap up any lingering mysteries. I don't remember anything that happened on this show anymore. Season one. All shows are lingering mysteries. Season one was May 2020. Okay. We did not get a season two until March 2022, almost two years.

Right. Here they did okay. We got a season three in October 2023, a year and a half later. That's almost not bad by some standards. Yeah, really. But now, our final season four, August 2025, a year and a half later. Almost two years.

Almost two years. Yeah, it's almost two years. Wow. There's the problem with these shows. Yeah, because, I mean, and it wasn't a great show. It was a good show. It was fine. But it wasn't a great show. Yeah. It wasn't great. It was kind of funny. I remember it was diminishing returns. I think it got worse and worse through the seasons.

But, you know, because initial good concept, all the funny jokes in the first season. And then, oh, shit, we got to make a show out of this now. Yeah. Yeah. I remember the cliffhanger. Now it's all kind of the cliffhanger at the end of the first one was okay. And then I think I watched the first episode of the second season.

It was like, yeah, I just don't care anymore. It was too long. I forgot all of the in-jokes from season one. So it's like, you know, they spent all that time building up that capital for the first season that they expect to carry over to the second season. And you just, it's all lost. It's all, there's no momentum left. If you, if you, if this were to come out, you know, one season every year, I'm sure it would have been fine.

We all would have like watched it through to the end when, oh, that was a nice, fun show. Great. Thanks. But now, I mean, I bet you the numbers have just diminished over the years. So. Oh, yeah. I can't believe they got it made again. Yeah, me too. And then finally, just a little bit of music. There's some, a new album coming out called Ashes and Diamonds is the name of the act.

And the single is out right now called On a Rocker. This is Daniel Ash, who is from Bauhaus and Love and Rockets and Tones on Tail. One of my like heroes. He's never released anything that I haven't particularly liked except this. Okay. Not so, not so great.

It's fine. It's fine. This is a project that he's doing with some ex-members of PIL and Sade's touring band and stuff. So great musicians. I am looking forward to hearing the whole album. This is the first single that came out. They wanted something that kind of rocked. He's a big motorcycle guy.

This is about him riding a motorcycle. And if you want a good song by Daniel Ash about riding a motorcycle, cast your mind back to 1989's Love and Rockets, Motorcycle. Also linked in the show notes. A far superior and rockin' fuckin' song. Way better than this new version that came out. So.

Okay. We'll see. I'll review the Ashes and Diamonds album when it's released. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. The Dark Side. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave. Podcast superhost Dave Bittner is back again.

Hi, Dave. Hello. How are we doing today? I'm doing well today. I'm actually feeling kind of chipper today for no particular reason. No good reason, certainly. But I'll take it. We discovered before the show because you haven't read the news today.

So that puts anybody in a chipper mood. That's right. Everybody should try that. At least. I am embracing ignorance as bliss. At least today. At least today. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's just get into some fun stuff. We'll stick with it for a little bit.

When I was on my trip in Anaheim for an extended period of time with my kid, I taught my kid how to play solitaire. I also apparently taught my mom how to play solitaire. She had no idea how to play. I did note that it's not really solitaire with my son.

It's more duotare. His preferred method of playing is for me to set everything out. And then he stands behind me and tells me what to move. So it didn't quite have the intended effect that I had hoped for, which is something that he could do by himself for a little period of time. And he takes after your wife.

That is more funny than you know, Dave. Yeah. So he kind of. Yes. And that seems to be the way it's going. The other thing I noted as teaching him the game is fine.

That was one thing. He totally gets it. Teaching a kid how to shuffle is much more difficult than you'd imagine. Oh, yeah. And you really can't. I can't expect him to go off and play solitaire without being able to shuffle cards. So I'm still working on that. There's an app for that, Brian. There are machines you can buy for that.

But teach the kid how to shuffle. Give him some videos or just be a dad and teach the kid how to shuffle. Exactly. I am working on that. So, OK. I think it's fair to say there are good shufflers and not so good shufflers. I don't consider myself to be a good shuffler.

And I've always admired people who can just effortlessly shuffle the cards and have it make that lovely kind of thing. And I can't do it. No, I can't. I totally can't. I've been playing poker since I was four. I can shuffle some cards.

So I don't know how to play solitaire. I can't tell you the hours I spent playing solitaire, both as a kid, with real cards, and then, of course, the solitaire app on Windows. Right. Yeah.

So, yeah, never learned. I've seen people play it. I do recall when I was very little, I knew how to play Crazy Eights. And that was fun. I'd forgotten how to play Crazy Eights. You're a boomer in disguise. Well, yeah, certainly, I was taught how to play Crazy Eights by boomers, for sure.

But I guess we weren't really active card players in my house. Yeah. I mean, it's not that I wouldn't like to learn how to play solitaire. My wife knows how to play solitaire. It's just never taken the time to learn. You can literally pick this up in five minutes.

Okay. It's five minutes. There ain't a whole lot of rules. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, the point being that once I got him on the card game, I figured I should get him a fun set of cards. And I found the Theory 11 Star Wars Year of the Dark Side Playing Cards, Premium Playing Cards, Poker Size Standard Index on Amazon.

And these are lovely. I purchased them. Solid set of cards. And, you know, he loves bad guys. He loves Star Wars. He loves these cards. They're absolutely fantastic. Very well done. And I guess Theory 11 does quite a bit of cards. This is their thing that they do.

And I'd imagine the quality is quite high on all of them because these are great. Yeah. They're fantastic. I have the Darren Brown Theory 11 set. And, yeah, they make really good premium cards. They're definitely a little more expensive than other cards. I think my Darren Brown cards are like $13 for a deck.

Yeah, you can go to a liquor store and buy a deck of cards for $4, you know. Right. So. That's a good idea. They're very pretty. And they do last. They hold up. So they're well built for cards. I think, like, in the same way, having hardback books is a sign of a sophisticated, classy household.

Having a nice set of cards is, I think, something that every good home should have, a high-quality set of cards. Right next to the fine china. Right. At the ready, you know, a chair for listening to your hi-fi, all those kinds of things.

Also, in my homes, we had very nice decks of cards. But we also had very nice sets of poker chips, very nice poker chips. We'd spend lots of money on poker chips. Yeah, my dad had a whole poker set, a really nice set, too. And then, I guess, probably in my early 30s, when I was making too much money than I should have been making at that age, I also bought a whole poker table and a nice set of chips and the whole thing.

And all of that's gone now. But it was great. Great at the time. Yeah. I spent a good amount of time as a child building houses of cards, you know, literally, just constructing little – seeing how high a castle I could build or whatever with all the cards that we have.

So that was – Ah, the things we did without screens. That's right. Yes. There you go. I hated making houses of cards. That was the one thing. I'm just like, can we just play poker? Come on. This is a five-card stud. Give me your money. Yeah. Fair enough. Kevin Spacey ruined making houses of cards for me.

That's true. That's true. So, Dave, I have still not gotten to the X5 yet. It's been a really long work week. I've been working – I put like 60 hours in this week. I'm tired. I'm tired. But I did see this come through this, like, yesterday.

The Anti-Gravity A1, the world's first 360 drone. Mm-hmm. This looks cool. It does look cool. I saw a bunch of the reviews on this. They said DJI better watch their back. This is supposed to be amazing. Yeah. This comes from Insta360, the same people that make the X5.

It's cool. It's very, very cool. And it comes with goggles and not a regular controller. It comes with the same type of controller that the DJI first-person drone has. I can't remember the name of it right now. I used to have one.

Yeah. Never used it, but sold it. It's like a pistol grip kind of thing. Yeah, it's a pistol grip. So, you basically, you just kind of move it intuitively. So, it's got, like, a gyro in it and a trigger. Oh. Oh. So, it's like a Wiimote. Yeah. It's very much like that. Yeah. Okay. Very much like that. And then you're wearing it with the goggles.

So, it's, yeah. This looks really cool. No price yet for it. But, man, just check out the video and the tech behind it. It looks sweet. Yeah. And the website's impressive, too. Yeah. I'm curious how they managed to get the rotor blades out of the 360-degree image.

The, if you look where the domes are, the domes are situated above and below the rotors. Yeah. And there's another set of cameras in between, like, sandwiched in between. So, you can actually see forward. Okay. Because I'm sure you can't. There's got to be some. I would have to sit down if you're, like, trying to look at 360 with those goggles while you're trying to fly the damn thing.

Right. Oh, my God. Right. And how much lag is there and all that good stuff to introduce motion sickness. Yeah. I tell you what. The lag, I've, you know, the lag on these things is very, very minimal. I mean, like, we're just talking a few milliseconds, believe it or not.

They're very well done. At least the DJIs are very well done. Very minimal, minimal lag. Yeah. Because they're pretty powerful radios on these things. So, because, I mean, they're beaming back. You can beam back, you know, any range of definitions of video from, you can watch in, like, you know, high def or low def previews.

And it's cool, though. Trust me. I think that this is one of those toys that is going to be a game changer. Again. Again. Trust me. I'd rather spend money on that thing than some fucking AI.

That's for sure. Well, that's true. I guess, you know, I always say things that claim that they're going to change everything rarely do. That's true. That's true. But. What was that? The Segway. The Segway. The Segway. There you go. The Segway. All we heard was breathless news reports about how this is going to change everything.

Cities are going to be redesigned from the ground up. Yeah. And what did we get? We got scooters. I owned a Segway. Did you really? I did. Yeah. I did. Wow. I had one. Yep. And you weren't a mailman? Or a mall cop?

No, I wasn't. Those are the only two real use cases I ever. Oh, no, no. For a brief period of time, they did tours of Santa Monica on Segways. Yeah. Yeah. They still do. Oh, they still do. So here's the thing. My home and my office were about five miles away from each other.

And the community I live in has about 100 miles of bike paths. So I could get from my home to my office completely on bike paths without having to go on any regular streets. So I thought to myself, this is the perfect use case for a Segway.

And you were already married, so you didn't have the birth control stigma of riding a Segway. True, true. Yes. That is true. Both of my children were already born, so it was all good. My poor, suffering wife was like, oh, yeah, okay, sure, buy it, whatever. So I had it for about a year.

And what I discovered was it was fun, but it is too slow because the Segway only goes 12 miles an hour. So the problem is, like, you could go to work, go from home to work, work to home, but you couldn't go anywhere else.

Like, if I had a meeting or something like that, like, if I had a meeting or something like that and it was a few miles away, it was just too slow. Right. You even compared to, like, scooters and e-bikes and all those things that have sort of taken the place of the niche that Segway hoped to fill, right?

We have much less expensive. Yeah, e-bikes ate their lunch. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And they're all twice as fast. I'm looking at the Segway site now because I was curious, and guess what they have pivoted to? E-bikes, scooters, go-kirts. Yeah. Yeah, you cannot find a traditional Segway at all on their site.

It's all scooters and e-bikes. Yeah. So I kept it for about a year. I sold it for what I bought it for, and, you know, I was happy to have had it. But the other thing was that people were not – well, it was a mixed bag. It was kind of split evenly between people who were like, oh, cool, Segway, and people who were like, get that damn thing off of our bike paths.

Yeah. So that wasn't fun either. I actually got whacked in the back of the head by a guy who was on a road bike, just came by me at speed and just, bam, whacked me on the back of the head. I was like, no. If you do go to self-balancing on the Segway site, they still do have the Ninebot.

So that's basically the little tiny one with no handlebar for $600. But, yeah, 11.2 miles an hour, approximate range 21 miles. Yeah. You know, my e-bike, I had a Rad Rover 5, the big fat tire one, and I clocked that thing at 28 miles an hour.

So there was a way to overclock it. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, came and went. Yeah. But this anti-gravity drone looks good. It does. I'm curious to see how much it costs and whether it can be justified in the toy category.

No. Jason has this innate ability to justify these things. I have a closet full of drones that I have not flown in. Yeah. And I think the next thing in the show notes is something that Dave is going to be justifying himself purchasing. Yeah. That's true. That's true. So I don't know if you guys have seen it, but the next iteration of the Lego Death Star has been leaked.

Yeah. It's 9,000 pieces. How many rebels died to leak the plans to the Lego Death Star? Yes. Yes. It is spectacular. It's huge.

Mostly empty space. Well, how much of the Death Star itself? I mean, yeah. But it's cool. I mean, it's also $1,000. What? Yeah. Over a dollar a piece. 9,000 pieces. 9,023 to be precise.

A dollar a piece. Yeah. You did doge math over there. I know. I'm doing doge math. One of the things my son pointed out to me is that in the list of minifigs that come with this, there are a bunch of stormtroopers in swim trunks.

What? Well, and what he told me was somewhere in Lego Star Wars, there's an Easter egg where there's a room you can go in, and there are a bunch of stormtroopers in a hot tub. Nice. And so the idea is that somewhere hidden in this model, there is a hot tub full of stormtroopers, stormtrooper hot tub party.

So, that's fun. Yeah. This looks cool. I got to admit, this looks pretty cool. It is cool. It's very expensive. I don't know. This one's a hard justification. Like, my son is probably at his Lego peak right now, but I don't think I could justify this one.

Also, it's 18 plus. It looks complicated. My kid, I can imagine there will be tears and fights and many things that would be involved with this, but it is beautiful. Yeah. Well, start saving up now, and you can get it for a graduation present for him 10 years from now when he's out of high school.

Right. And see, my son is 18 years old, so he's perfect for this. And he would love to build this, but... And he can go get a job and buy it himself then if he's 18, so you're off the hook. That's actually a good idea, Jason. I should come to you for parenting advice more often. See?

That's what I do. That's what I do. Yeah. And then I threw this one in the show notes because I know both of you guys were very into photography and cameras, and I thought this was quite sad. The 133-year-old American company Kodak has warned investors on Monday in a regulatory filing that there's substantial doubt it can keep its doors open unless it pays down its debts or renegotiates its terms.

So, yeah, Kodak may be going out of business. Even though they introduced the world's first digital camera back in 1973, the year I was born, the company failed to keep up with the changing times as everyone now carries a camera in their pocket 24-7. As of last quarter, Kodak reported $26 million net loss since the end of last year.

The company has burned through $46 million in cash, leaving it with what's just $155 million on hand. And they have diversified. That's part of their thing. They jumped on the blockchain and cryptocurrency bandwagon. Oops. Which never ended up happening. They got into pharmaceuticals, manufacturing facilities, et cetera, and all that sort of stuff.

But none of it seems to be enough. It looks like Kodak is going to go the way of the dodo. Yeah. My fear is that they'll become a zombie brand like Radio Shack, like Magnavox. Well, but specifically, I mean, like if you look at an old brand like Magnavox, where the brand is just available for licensing to slap on anything.

So people just – Trump. Right. People will build some little crappy piece of electronics and they'll pay a few bucks and slap the Magnavox brand on it. Right. And I fear that would – that's Kodak's future because it is a strong brand.

I mean, one of the strongest. Well, for us. Right. For a lot of people. Ask your son. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Here's a fun bit of Kodak trivia. Did you know that Kodak was one of the contributors to the 8mm video format?

Did not. In fact, I owned a Kodak 8mm camcorder. Yeah. Do you remember the Kodak Z cameras, the little pocket Z cameras? I do, yeah. Those were awesome. They were, yeah. Yeah, it was right – they hit it right at the time before like cell phones got decent cameras for video.

Yeah. So they lasted for like two weeks in the marketplace. I had two iterations of them and I wish I still had them. They were cool. Yeah. They were really cool. I think I had about half a dozen of them because, you know, you could just stick them anywhere.

They were cheap too. Yeah, they were cheap. They shot HD video and they just worked. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right product at the right time but it didn't last very long like you said because cell phone cameras just got better and better and better. Yep.

Yeah. I want to shout out to a friend of the show who wrote me a lovely note on Mastodon. This is a listener named Carl. Who is Swedish and a veteran. He has fought alongside NATO allies and he wrote a nice letter that is too long to read verbatim here on the show but basically comes down to how the rest of the world is thinking about the U.S.

This is in reaction to some of the things we were talking about in the past couple weeks about traveling in and out of the U.S. and our borders and so on and so forth. And it's a lovely reflection. Carl talks about how the U.S. used to be the North Star for Western Europe, that we were their cultural and political big brother, that Sweden stood shoulder to shoulder with America in Afghanistan.

But now Washington is cozying up to Moscow and cutting Ukraine loose and that, you know, this weakens our relationships with our allies and all those sorts of things. This whole notion of trust the Americans, which he says was kind of a reflexive thought in Europe after World War II.

And it's fading fast. He says it's not anti-Americanism, that it's disappointment from friends who expected better. And I think that's a really great way to put it. It is. So. And he's talking very much from a European perspective.

And I know sitting here in Canada, it's very similar, if not actually more anger, because obviously the 51st state talk just never fucking stops. And it's pissing everybody off of fear. But yeah, at first it was just disappointment and a healthy dose of fear because we're so interconnected.

And now it has come to be anger, like America's position in the world has been decimated. I use that word on purpose, Jason, just to upset you. Okay. I know you do. Oh. Oh, Jason, are you a decimated pendant?

Dave. He is. We've talked about it on the show. I'm going to actually, I'm going to, I'm going to give you a pass on that because we've now found out that you don't know how to play solitaire, which you may have at some point. So that boomer brain of yours is really just not, not up to the snuff the way it used to be.

So I'll let you slide on that. I think I'm going to, I believe I recall Brian saying that language evolves. Words don't always mean what they've always meant. And decimated is one of those words. I think. I will say you're in the same boat as my co-host, Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans.

He also is a decimated, uh, pendant, but if you really, we know this because we had that conversation on the show. Oh, okay. So if you really want to get him upset, um, use the word, um, uh, irregardless.

That one bothers me too. On a visceral level. I still, I still use it. Like, I'm a hypocrite. No, I'm, I'm a hypocrite. That's the thing. I'm a total hypocrite. You're on team hypocrite. Okay. I will. I will drop that. I will drop irregardless is all the time, but even I wince internally.

Yeah. I guess we all have them. I'm literally dying inside. You know, one gets me. You never go to the doctor. You could be Jason. That's true. Yeah. It could be. Here's one that gets me, uh, chomping at the bit. It's champing at the bit.

Horses champ. They don't chomp. I mean, they do chomp, but the phrase is champing at the bit. I was walking the chomping the L's though. All right. Well, you know what? It's probably a good place to end things. Thank you, gentlemen.

Have a great, have a great weekend. And, uh, I'll, I'll be chomping at the bit to get back to this next week, irregardless of what subjects we put in the subject lines, whether or not we decimated our, we decimated half our stories in this thing. Oh, surely at least half.

Over at Patreon, we've got some new patrons, Brian. We've got David, Mike, Jude, Peyton, and Arnod. And we've also got from the old school patrons, Elaine, Kevin, John, Joe, Vanessa, Jason, Richard, Darren, Andrew, and Bayrod.

Thank you all so much. Thank you all so much. Over at PayPal, we've got Miles, Shari, Ralph, Nathaniel, Ocadio, Natalie, and from an anonymous longtime listener, a big old $50 donation. Woo-hoo, doggy. Yes. And over at the tip jar, we've got Roger, Sarah, Matthew, Damien, and Marcel with the big 30 bones.

Woo, dog. And I just want to tell everybody, if you want to help support the show, and we need your help supporting the show, because this literally is a listener-supported show only at this point, go to patreon.com slash gog. And you can sign up for as little as $3 a month to help support the show.

And if you sign up for the whole year, you get a discount, but you can give more than $3. You can give as much as your little black heart desires, and we will love you forever. You get the show a little bit early, ad-free, and in high definition. And sadly, nobody bought any merch this week. Brian, I thought you said you were going to make some new shirts this week.

What happened? What happened? Life. Oh, shit happens. Okay. I'll get around to it. Maybe, you know, I'll do one with Alaska not being a state. 49 stars. Okay. Our 49 stars. Yeah. We did get a new review, though. Amazing podcast, five stars. I started listening to Grumpy Old Geeks a couple of years ago.

It quickly became one of my favorite podcasts. Jason and Brian bring us the headlines in the tech world and offer their opinions. As two people who have been in the tech world for a long time, they offer insight for those of us who may not be fully tech savvy. Throw in some humor, grumpy rants, and some nostalgia from their old tech days, and you have yourself a great weekly listen.

Keep up the good rook. Thank you so much. Anonymous person. Thank you very, very much. Nobody died this week. Nobody died. Just my belief in humanity. Just my soul a little bit more. Just my soul a little bit more. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. Oh, wait.

GPT-4-0 died last week. What are we talking about? Pour one out. And then there's the Google graveyard. I'm sure they killed something. That's true. That's true. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 709. Want to keep the grumpiness alive?

Toss a few bucks our way at GOG.show slash donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. We are literally only listener supported at this point. So please, please open your purse this week. All pennies matter. All pennies matter. Love the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player.

Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between. And we will love you forever. Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts, feedbacks, cool links? Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact. And hey, don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review and we'll read it on the show.

And we've got merch. If Brian would make some new stuff, maybe I'll make some new stuff too because we got to. Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.GOG.show. Stay grumpy.

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