722: Does a Podcaster Shit in the Woods?

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 Kara Swisher. Name drop, name drop, name drop. You know, I call them all. I call them and I call them and I tell them they're evil and they're just mean. And I don't know. What do you think? I'm the dog. All right. Enough of that bullshit. Hi, Brian Schulmeister. How's it going?

Yes. After 720 episodes in almost 14 fucking years, we finally caved and turned on the fucking cameras. So hi, are you happy now? Maybe. Third time's the charm. We'll see. Yeah, maybe. Maybe this will be out. Yeah. I figured out the settings problem. I was trying to push 4K video to the to, you know, that teeny little pipe and it didn't work. So all of that internet of tubes.

And you'd think that, you know, oh, I have, you know, bi-directional gigabit fiber internet to my house. But no, it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough. All right. And this morning, just in preparation for this, I was looking at our YouTube account. So, and by the way, everybody go to, go to the website, click on the YouTube link, subscribe, because we still need a few people to get over the threshold so we can actually make any money doing that. But we had a ding. We had a ding on our YouTube account.

And I'm like, for what? And they made me take a class. And guess what it was for, Brian? No idea. We talk a lot of shit. We've apparently been peddling medical misinformation. So I had to take a class this morning, YouTube. I had to go to YouTube school this morning, Brian, for 15 minutes and go through seven questions. They give you seven questions and they lay out, is this against our policies or not?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's the fun part. So it's seven questions. They tell you what you got wrong. And all you have to do is hit retry and then click the one that they said, this is the correct answer. I'm like, this is pointless. It's absolutely pointless. I did not learn a thing, Brian.

So how interesting it must've been for our during COVID episodes when we probably read some of the misinformation that was being bandied about online. And, uh, they cannot parse the fact that we were making fun of said information. Yeah. They can't discern a tongue in cheekitude. So, yeah. So that was my morning spending, dodging the raindrops here in Southern California and, uh, taking YouTube class did not have taking YouTube class on my bingo card today. I have a feeling you'll be taking a few more

before we're done with this experiment. Um, but yeah, so yeah, well, our, our mark goes away in February. So we got to, we got to be nice till February till this one goes away. So, okay. Okay. Well, I know we're, we're basically, um, whoring ourselves out on camera for the money, but, uh, I don't think we need to anymore. I think shut it down, Jason. Okay. Shut it all down because I got my Facebook internet tracking settlement administrator. Oh, you rolling in the dough. Yeah. For some class

action lawsuit that we all signed up for like 19 years ago, uh, $4 and one cent. That's it. That's all I got. That's all you're worth, Brian. I'm a little pissed because everybody's getting a lot more money than me. Yeah. Our friend, Brian, uh, Blondell, he got $37 and 14 cents and he said he wouldn't have done it had he not listened to the show and we made him go do it. So now he's going to take me to a free lunch at Loki. So how does that benefit me? It doesn't. Well, actually here's

the fun part. When you come back to town, if you ever come back to town, uh, Paquito Moss has a new, uh, has a new, uh, competition in town. This, this new restaurant called Loki out here in Woodland Hills. If you're in town, go check them out. They're fucking awesome. Best Mexican in town. You know, I bought me my Paquito Moss. It's cheaper and better. So, yep.

So come on down, Brian, come visit. I will make the three hour drive from Anaheim for a fucking burrito. It's actually worth it. It's actually worth it. All right. A little bit of follow-up here. Um, I think everybody kind of maybe remembers my ire when, uh, when Friday night baseball was taken over by Apple TV and they actually had like real time betting stats on the screen. And I was just like losing my mind because I think it's horrible. It, it, I, I understand that the sports betting

industry is basically keeping sports alive at this point, apparently. Cause you know, it's everything is, is all about sports betting now. And it, it sickens me to some degree because we have issues with this. There's a lot of people that are addicted to gambling that have lost their life savings, but now it's gone beyond just the fans. And this is the inevitable outcome that I saw from this pervasive sports betting prop betting bullshit. So there's a big scandal going on right

now in baseball. Tens of thousands of fans have watched MLB games that turned out to be partially fixed. This is like Pete Rose level fixing here. No, the, it was probably worse actually. Okay. Rose swears to God that he never threw a game. There are two pitchers, Emmanuel class and Luis Ortiz of the Cleveland guardians that have been indicted for rigging games. They deliberately threw pitches out of the strike zone because of prop bets placed by gamblers.

So seriously, you can bet on, will the first pitch be a strike or a ball? People reached out to these pitchers. Oh man. People went to these pitchers and said, I need you to throw a ball. That changes the dynamic of the at bat. That changes the dynamic of the whole game. Yeah. Everything, everything.

Yeah. So class did this in at least nine games across three seasons, helping betters win over $400,000 Ortiz participated in at least two games in 2025, personally earning about $12,000. Unbelievable. Like, and they're getting caught. Thank God. So sports books detected suspicious betting patterns, which has triggered the investigation. And yeah, this is MLB's response has been very limited. They've placed small caps on micro bets, but experts warn every pitch affects

the integrity of the game as it does. If you're a baseball fan, this is fucking bullshit. Get gambling out of sports. Oh, dude, come on. Gambling is never going to be out of sports. That's why sports exists. We'll save it for Vegas or, or at least get rid of these prop bets. These prop bets are ridiculous. Bet on the outcome of the game. Fine. Dodgers win. Okay. You can bet on that betting on balls and strikes per pitch on all this crap that they do. They're

ruining the game. God damn it. Oh, well, what are you going to do, Brian? Well, I'm going to, I'm going to call them. I'm going to give them a piece of my mind. That's, that's what I'm going to do, Jason. Okay. Thank you, Brian Swisher. Appreciate it. Oh man. I don't know about you, but since, uh, I did for the past two months, I have been taking a massive break from social media, like period. Even blue sky depresses the shit out of me now, which is saying something because that's

like the only place that I had left. Yeah. I mean, I, I'm kind of with you there. I don't really update much anymore or anything. I occasionally will doom scroll, but that's about it. Yeah. I'll doom scroll Instagram for a little bit at night just because it's there, you know, and some people send me stuff and they're like, Hey, I sent you some things on Instagram. And I'm like, well, that's probably the last place you should probably actually send me anything that you want me to see in a timely manner. 8,000 different methods to get ahold of me. That's

the one you picked. That is the one that I'm never going to check. But I have to tell you, man, I've, I feel better. I like can handle the day better. I don't have that, that doom cloud over my head all the time. Like my roommate does. Cause she's on, on that shit all day long. And I'm like, huh, there really is something to be said for just getting the fuck away from it. Even like I said, blue sky, which I liked because it was all scientists and even the scientists are hating life now. So it's like, ah, but I think this is going to tie in a little bit

with some of our next stories. So I, I gotta say it's, it's been a good thing in the news. Well, speaking of getting off social media, uh, arguably we have fully formed brains already, Jason. Speak for yourself. Arguably somewhat dented and damaged due to indiscretions of our youth and

adulthood, but yes, a little pickle, a little pickle there. But, uh, there's no doubt that, that social media is bad for, for the, the youths of today, the kids, and it's, it's messing around with them. And I know there's a lot of naysayers, you know, I, I, I have a love hate relationship with Bob, Bob left this and his, you still read that guy. Yeah. I just, I'm too lazy to ever unsubscribe.

And then one comes in and then I get really angry about it. And then I'm mad and too lazy to unsubscribe. That's how we fucking got Trump. So come on. Hey, that's, that's also how we get a lot of our Patreon money every week. Don't tell him how the sausage is made. Yeah, exactly. Um, but he'll always go off about like, well, you can't turn back time and people that aren't online are dead and you're just, you're just being left behind. I'm like, yeah, except for all the studies that say

it's really fucking bad for you. So there's that. It's like, Hey, Hey man, if you're not smoking, you're not cool. You're not one of the cool kids. You're going to be left behind because you're not smoking. Oh yeah. But I'm also not going to be dead. So, so there's, yeah, there's that, there's that part of it. Anyways, Denmark is set to do something about it.

The government of Denmark said on Friday that lawmakers from its political left, right, and center have reached an agreement to ban social media for anyone under 15. If enacted, the move will be one of the most ambitious attempts globally to keep children off social media. The country's digitalization ministry would set the minimum of age at 15 for certain social media platforms. It has not clarified which ones should be affected yet, but I can give them a list if they'd like. Yeah, if they'd like, we can help. The government also did not

share specifics on how enforcement would work. And that's the real issue. Of course, a statement from the digitalization ministry reads in part, children and young people have their sleep disrupted, lose their peace and concentration and experience increasing pressure from digital relationships where adults are not always present. So this is a good thing. I hope that they do it.

I'm interested to see the methodology that they're going to use. In December, very coming up very quickly, the world's first countrywide social media ban for children will go into effect in Australia, banning children under 16 from major social media platforms. So they will have to employ age verification technology and would face fines if they fail to enforce the nation's age limits.

So, again, we just don't entirely know how they're going to do it. In the UK and Italy, we know now that anybody wanting to watch porn online must upload a selfie of them wanking off, oh, wait, no, that's Donald Trump, or provide ID to verify that they are above age limits. So, yeah, there's data safety issues here. There's privacy issues here. But we've got to come up with something. And I think maybe later on in the show, we might have at least an Apple-based answer to

that. But we'll get to that later. So good for it. Go for it. Let's see what happens. I'm all behind this. I think it's a really good thing to do. And I believe you have another study that you're about to talk about that proves that, yes, this is a good thing we should be doing. That's right, because schools across the U.S. and abroad are cracking down on student phone use, and the results are basically the plot of Footloose for Gen Z. New York State rolled out a phone ban. Quit dancing. I've got Footloose. Now it's like, that's all I'm going to hear in my head

all week. All day. Thanks. You're welcome. Footloose. Kenny Loggins is going to get a bump on Spotify. New York State rolled out a phone ban this spring, and suddenly kids are actually talking to each other again. Go figure. Lunchrooms that once sounded like morgues are now loud enough to make teachers nostalgic for AirPods. Students told Gothamist they're forming real friendships. Embrace yourself,

Brian. Passing handwritten notes and taking Polaroids instead of selfies. Oh, God. I don't want to see those Polaroids. No, no Dickies Polaroids, please. I know somebody who does, judging from news. Zing. Teachers, meanwhile, are thrilled. A survey from New York State United Teachers found that 89% say the bans improved school environment. 76% saw more class participation, and 77% noticed better

social interaction. So, of course, not everyone's thrilled. Some parents worry about emergencies, and a few students say the bans show a lack of trust. Yeah, because you can't be trusted because you're a fucking kid. A deserved lack of trust, yes. Yeah, exactly. An earned lack of trust, one might say, but one kid summed it up best. Quote, now when we get computers, I actually have to do deep research instead of going straight to AI. Imagine that, Brian. Kids rediscovering conversation, curiosity,

and noise. Turns out reality doesn't need a screen to buffer. So, here's the thing. Parents are worried about emergencies. Most of the emergencies parents are worried about? School shootings. What do school shootings come out of? Kids not talking to each other. So, kids talking to each other again? Maybe we'll cut down on some school shootings because they got their phones taken away. Time will tell, but hey, it's just a theory. Just a theory. That's a good one, though. I think this is great. I think it's a

great idea. I think banning, obviously, you should be banning phones in schools. There are millions of solutions. I've been to countless concerts now where I have to put my phone in a bag that is kept to the side and put your phone in a lock bag in the back of the room or put it in your desk. You can have it with you in case there's an emergency, but you just can't get it out during the day. There's nothing wrong with that. It's fine. They can figure this out. Sort it out, people. All right. Moving on from

the use, the head of the Cybertruck program has quit Tesla and the Model Y leader left hours later. Okay. Good times over at Tesla. If we assume for a moment that Tesla's recent sales declines are entirely due to faulty management, specifically caused by people with the job title program manager, then Tesla is well on its way to massive improvements. The Cybertruck program manager, who also managed the Model 3, just exited the company, followed hours later by the Model Y

program manager. In the third quarter of this year, Tesla sold 5,385 Cybertrucks, a 63% drop from the same point last year. According to an October story in electric, Musk's company, SpaceX and XAI are buying up all the excess Cybertruck inventory.

I mean, it's a shell game over there, isn't it? It is. We're just moving money and materials around from various companies to different companies. Yeah. Reuters story also notes that several senior program managers have left Tesla over the past year. One led the Model S and Model X programs. So lots of turnover over at Tesla. All right. All right. I wonder where they're going.

Waymo, maybe. Waymo is bringing its driverless cars to freeways in three major U.S. cities and the surrounding environments. These areas include San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Great. You know what, though? Look, freeway driving is way less complicated than actual streets.

So I actually think they probably should have started on freeways. You drive straight and that's it. We'll see. The platform didn't say how many of these vehicles have been greenlit to take to the freeway, other than noting that a growing number of public riders will be given access.

The very least, families will be able to play a new road trip game in which they point out cars with weird spinning LiDAR units on their roof. This is just the beginning of the freeway expansion, assuming everything goes well in early phases. To that end, the platform says its vehicles have already logged millions of miles on freeways and that they are adept at skillfully handling highway dynamics. They note that they're planning something similar for Austin, Atlanta, and other unannounced regions. And they're also bringing their driverless cars to San Diego, Detroit, and Vegas next year. But those won't be going on freeways just yet.

Okay. Well, we know how dog eat dog it is here in LA on the freeways. So I'll be interested to see if people start fucking with them because I certainly will. Yeah. LA freeways are a completely different beast. It's basically driving on the road because it's stop and go anyways. Yeah. Yeah. Most of the time. It's either stop and go or you're bumper to bumper going 800 miles an hour.

That's true. Well, Apple is rolling out a new feature that lets users store their US passports in the official wallet app. This will allow travelers to present this digital ID as a valid form of identification at TSA checkout lines at airports. In other words, folks with a passport who have yet to upgrade to a driver's license with a real ID will be able to board a plane without bringing a physical copy of that passport to the airport. They would also be stupid not to bring a physical

copy of their passport to the airport at this point. Because as they point out, it's not everywhere. So you don't know if your airport's going to actually take your Apple ID or not at that point. So bring it with you. Don't be dumb. Or even if you have it and your plane gets rerouted because I don't know, there's no flight traffic controllers right now. So who knows? You might end up in Poughkeepsie and Poughkeepsie might not have the technology yet. Yes. This ID will be visible on both iPhones and the Apple Watch.

And Apple says the service is being implemented at TSA checkpoints across more than 250 US-based airports. It's only for use on domestic flights. If you're planning to travel internationally, you'll still need a physical passport. Not all TSA readers have been implemented with this technology to scan digital IDs just yet. So you better, you know, bring them both along.

The company also plans to expand this feature beyond air travel. Apple says businesses will eventually be able to accept these IDs for the purpose of age verification. The digital ID feature is first announced as part of iOS 26 and also adds passports to the list of existing government IDs supported in Apple Wallet. Now, to tie this back into our opening stories, Jason, what better way to verify your age online?

There you go. Apple already does, you know, traceless and contactless email addresses. You put this into your wallet. You have to click the little button and do your little, do your thumb scan or whatever to prove your age. It goes into the wallet because boom, this is the person's age, sends a digital token to the website. Bob's your uncle.

All right. Until you borrow mom and dad's iPhone and use that for age verification. But don't ruin my awesome idea, Jason. There's always a way around everything. Look, I remember in college because we are old taking my California driver's ID and doing a little piece of chalk over my birth date year and then taking a little pencil and drawing in a different year and then putting it in the little thing and going up to bars. There's always a way around everything. So of course there

is. If you're clever enough, then you should get full access to the porn. That's the way it works. We will find a way. Well, a new Wall Street Journal report says OpenAI could lose $74 billion in 2028. That's $74 billion with a B in 2028. Coffee money for these guys. And that's the same year Anthropic is expected to actually break even. So that comes from leaked internal documents. OpenAI has

committed over $1.4 trillion over the next eight years to expand its data center and chip infrastructure. Now, while OpenAI says it has about 1 million enterprise subscribers and more than 7 million total chat GPT for work users, its profit margins are reportedly far lower than Anthropic's. Anthropic valued at nearly $200 billion. Oh, Jesus. It has over 300,000 corporate clients, thanks to mostly to Deloitte

after they signed on, with about 80% of its revenue coming from business subscriptions. So despite its financial losses, OpenAI is continuing to spend aggressively, especially on models like Sora 2, its video generator, which reportedly costs around, wait for it, Brian, $15 million a day to operate.

For shrimp Jesus videos. That's it. That's great. All the new thing is fat shaming. That's the new thing that Sora 2 has been dinged for this week is it's apparently very easy to make fat shaming videos on there. So I'm glad they're spending $15 million a day, uh, helping, you know, you know, feed the homeless, you know, things like that.

So, yeah, that's great. That's awesome. $15 million a day for, uh, just recreating shallow howl. Yeah, that's it. All right. Awesome. Well, they're not the only people that are crashing and burning with this stuff. Much of the American economy is currently being propped up and some may argue artificially by the massive amounts of investments being made into AI projects, largely by hyperscalers. Few firms have made a bigger public to do about their AI spending than Meta, whose CEO very publicly committed to pouring

billions of dollars into AI infrastructure in front of the president of the United States. We all remember that one. Oh yeah, that was a fun one. Why of all the magnificent seven big tech stocks that seem to have achieved line only goes up status has Meta, arguably the hyperest of the hyperscalers seen most of its stock gains for the year wiped out in recent days. Well, that may lie in the company's super intelligence lab, which has not

been super intelligent and has undergone expensive change after expensive change since Meta's pseudo acquisition of Scale AI in June. This $14 billion investment that brought Scale CEO Alexander Wang under Meta's umbrella was followed by the company handing out multimillion dollar contracts to bring in top talents. We've talked about this. The company's deal for the world's best AI researchers reportedly included giving out over a hundred million per year paydays and multi-year

commitments that would get recipients over a quarter of the way to billionaire status. And then they started to get rid of them or they left or they got fired or they got shuffled around. And all of this is a while they have released their Lama 4, which was underperforming expectations and had its release delayed. They've also released Vibes, a feed filled with AI slop before OpenAI's massive Sora 2 app flooded the internet, but it's yet to garner even a fraction of the hype.

I forgot about Vibes. Yeah, that thing is, that kind of crashed and burned real quick. Yeah, it's, there's an irony to the fact that Meta is probably the company best equipped to monetize its AI projects and it simply can't seem to do it. They say that that's a bit of self-inflected harm by Zuckerberg, who probably said misspending billions isn't a big deal. If we end up misspending a couple hundred billion dollars, I think that is going to be very unfortunate, obviously, he said on the access podcast. But what I'd say is I actually think the risk is higher on the other side.

I don't get the logic. I just don't get the logic called doubling down, Jason. There's no logic to it. It's like I'm in this hole so deep already. I'm just going to keep digging and hopefully I'll end up in China. Yeah. The thing is, it's like, does anybody remember the metaverse now? So maybe this is just so people forget about the fact that he couldn't make pants for his avatars for how many years are legs. As the article goes on to talk about, there's also a history of going all in on

projects that don't pay off. The company went so all in on the idea of the metaverse that it changed its name, yet it has reportedly lost nearly a hundred billion dollars chasing a virtual reality dream that was dead on arrival. Wow. But we got sunglasses out of it. That's it. We got sunglasses that perverts have figured out how to mod. That's what we got out of it. So great. So it's all things are not going very well over there. And as we talked about just the other week, uh, they're

legitimate. Well, theoretically legitimately money-making businesses are under scrutiny now too. Earlier this month, Reuters got hold of internal documents from the company that showed it projected as much as 10% of its revenue was coming from advertisements for scams and banned goods. So yeah, all is not well over at meta. So we'll see. And investors are getting a bit fancy. That's, that's what we're hearing. Well, since they're not well, Mark and Priscilla have

come to the rescue, Brian. They are officially betting that AI can cure all disease. The Chan Zuckerberg initiative is merging its science programs under a new bio hub banner and absorbing a 50 person AI lab called evolutionary scale to speed up biological research. The company's big vision is to use AI to build digital models of cells and molecules, basically a sim life for scientists to unlock faster medical breakthroughs. At a launch event, Zuckerberg said advances in AI could make their

dream of curing or preventing all diseases much sooner than expected. I, okay, maybe it'll make up some new diseases that it can cure. You know, uh, Chan, a former pediatrician said the goal isn't to tackle one illness, but to quote, make every scientist better end quote. Hmm. I wonder how that's going to work out. It's not, it's not, no, but a couple of scientists are going to get a couple of hundred billion dollars. So go for it, man. Good for them. Take the payday where you can get it. That's right.

Dude, if I could get a science degree and go get some of that money, I'd do it right now. Well, just, just play one on the internet, Jason. That's what a lot of people are doing now. They don't actually have the pedigrees. No. Hey man, what was it? Uh, Travis Kalanick said he almost discovered a new form of physics, but thanks to chat GPT. So maybe I should just get on that.

Yeah. Yeah, sure. Why not? Yeah. Well, in today's continuing episode of what could possibly go wrong, a secretive startup called preventive funded by tech billionaires, including Coinbase's Brian Armstrong and open AI's Sam Altman is reportedly trying to gene hack a human baby. Yep. They're aiming for the first genetically modified birth outside of China. Here's a problem. Dudes do go to a lot of effort when they're not getting laid. I gotta tell you. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. Sam's

married. Sam's married to another dude. So he's, he's getting some. He's married. Yeah. He's not getting any. Yeah. Uh, here's, here's the problem with all of this germline gene editing, which alters sperm eggs or embryos is banned in the United States for federally funded research, but private money gets a loophole. So preventative's allegedly doing its experiments offshore claiming it's all in the

name of curing hereditary disease. Okay. If I take my money and I put it offshore. Is it still money? The IRS has a problem with that because I'm a U S citizen, but I guess they can do whatever they want because they can do whatever they want. It's fine. Yep. It's all fine. I'm sure it's going to be fine. Well, if it sounds familiar, it's because a Chinese scientist pulled a similar

stunt back in 2018 and made CRISPR edited twins and promptly got jailed and exiled from science forever. Until the, the Zuckerberg Chan initiative picked him up for the victim up. Yeah. And then they just shuffled them out the back door over to preventative and it's all, it's all a, it's a shuffle game. So experts have called for a decade long moratorium citing massive ethical health and

well, don't create super baby concerns. Gone. So we have, we have precedent for the super babies. Oh, the Nazis tried this shit too. Don't forget. So, uh, there are other companies too. It's not just preventative. Other startups like Heresite and Nucleus are also selling embryo intelligence predictions and gene screening packages for the low, low price of 10 grand. Heresite is way too close

to heresy in my book. Sam Altman is really giving Elon a run for his money in the ultra villain category. You know? Yeah. He really is. Speaking of Sam though, this might tie into your, your other, uh, age verification issue. Sam Altman's eyeball scanning fever dream now called world previously called orb is apparently having trouble taking over the planet one Iris at a time. According to

business insider, the company has only scanned about 17.5 million people, roughly 2% of its goal of 1 billion. That's still 17.5 million more people than anyone expected to volunteer. So world, the project for, of Altman's, uh, tools for humanity. He is a tool, but I don't know if he's doing it for humanity. Uh, turns your Iris into unique digital code used for ID verification and payments

through its crypto token world coin. So the pitches that it'll help prove who's human in an internet swamped by AI bots, which is kind of ironic since he's the guy that created open AI. Now, the interesting thing here is that, uh, privacy watchdogs were initially horrified as we were too, when people started scanning their eyeballs, but, uh, security systems experts say that the encryption is surprisingly solid for a creepy fucking product. It's pretty good. So regulators. Yeah. Regulators

aren't thrilled about the whole, give us your eyeball things, but here's where it gets interesting. World's reportedly cutting deals with Tinder stripe and visa to offer identity verification. So, but unless they invent an app that scans your eyeballs remotely, what's the point?

You know, you still need an orb. Not everybody's going to have an orb in their home. Just look at the Facebook's, uh, does my ass look fat camera? You know, or does this, does this make my ass look fat camera that they tried to sell? It's only going to be Sorumon on Tinder. Oh, well, I love this story. Earlier this week, a critical vulnerability in the decentralized finance protocol balancer was exploited with crypto losses estimated to be worth $120 million or more.

That's just, you know, par for the course. It's just another day that ends in why that some bullshit DeFi thing has had losses and got scammed or whatever, but, uh, it's how this one worked because it is based on office space. Oh no. Hopefully intentionally. They basically just took tiny, tiny little fractions of a crypto token every single time it was exchanged and deposited it into a little account and stole all the money. Wasn't this the Richard Pryor Superman movie plot as well?

Was it really? Yeah. I think I've blocked that one from my mind. They actually, I think they, I think they name check that in office space. Okay. This is basically the Superman plot. All right. We got to go back even further. So anyways, I just love it. I just love when that, that they, that somebody actually went out there and did this and I hope they beat the crap out of a few printers while they were at it.

Exactly. Well, Coinbase wants to bring back something that ended in disaster. Uh, they've announced the upcoming launch of a new token sales platform that will allow us retail investors to participate in ICOs, initial coin offerings for the first time since the token sale hysteria of 2017 and 2018, which eventually ended in disaster for many crypto speculators. Yes. ICOs never went well.

People lost tons and tons of money, but it's back. Great. Next week, NFTs. Yeah. So we'll see what happens, but, uh, I mean, the, the article just goes on and on about how this is just, it's just fraud. It's going to be nothing but fraud, fraud, fraud, and more fraud.

And now we're going to bring back fraud, but they're really going to take a good look at it this time. And we're going to be careful. Oh, how are you going to be careful? I don't know. They don't actually tell you that, Jason. They just say, trust us, trust us. Mm-hmm. That's right. Oh, fun. Well, speaking of trust, seven more families just sued OpenAI, arguing the company rushed GPT-40 to market without real safeguards.

That's a feature, not a bug. It is. It is. Four suits alleged chat GPT played a role in loved ones' suicides. Three more say it reinforced dangerous delusions that led to psychiatric care. One case centers on 23-year-old Zane Shamblin, who chatted with ChatGPT for over four hours, repeatedly said he'd written suicide notes, had a loaded gun, and gave a running countdown.

The chatbot allegedly replied, rest easy, King. You did good. Fuck Christ. The filings say OpenAI prioritized beating rivals to launch and point to a known 4.0 flaw being excessively agreeable, especially over long conversations. And we've had the conversation about the long conversations. OpenAI's own post admits its guardrails work best in short exchanges

and it can be great over time. The company knows that it has a problem with long conversations. It is in control of how long the conversations can be. So theoretically, it is all their fault.

The bar knows how much you've drank. They know if you drink too much, it can be really, really problematic. What do the bartenders do? They cut you off and send you home and call you an Uber. It's a very simple process that has been going on for years and years and years.

Couldn't figure this part out? Yeah, because the bar owners found out that if the bartenders don't do that, the bar owners are liable and can get sued. Regulations. Oh, that. Well, let's talk about regulations for a second here.

A new Republican-backed bill could slash the U.S. broadband expansion effort in half. Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa's floating legislation that would redirect roughly $21 billion from the $42 billion broadband equity access and deployment program straight into the U.S. Treasury for deficit reduction.

Didn't we have this whole group of mad scientist coders led by Elon Musk at the beginning of this year? Their entire, you know, their raison d'etre was deficit reduction. I think we called them DOGE, correct?

Am I right about this? Yeah. Did they not reduce the deficit enough that we have to now take broadband from, you know, underprivileged people somewhere? No, we've got to take a beat up our ass. Ah. So, yeah, the money was supposed to fund high-speed internet for rural and underserved communities, but the Trump administration's recent overhaul of the program already forced states to rewrite their plans, cutting spending and shifting focus from fiber to satellite.

So I think she misread this. Who provides satellite internet access? I wonder. I wonder. Where we could get that from. I don't know. It's a mystery. Yeah, I don't know. Let's put a committee together and figure that one out.

And I think she misread underserved as undeserved and got that Republican right-wing conservative itch up her ass and said, oh, oh, oh, we must get rid of them now. So let's just take their internet. Yeah. Okay. Fuck Christ.

Well, another poor, poor Elon bit of news here. Physicists say they finally crushed the we're living in a simulation theory for good. So, sorry, Elon. A new paper from researchers at the University of British Columbia argues that the fundamental nature of reality simply can't be simulated on any computer.

Respectfully, I've taken a shit ton of ketamine and I disagree. And I'm talking to my horse a lot. Using mathematical proofs, they showed that reality isn't algorithmic, meaning it can't be reduced to code like a video game or The Matrix. The team cites Gödel's incompleteness theorems to claim that some truths are beyond computation, making a true simulation of the universe impossible.

So, Brian, we're real. Deal with it. I'm going to get stoned later and figure this out. Don't worry. Okay, please do. Please do. Now, I just want to round out the Elon jabbery this week because 87-year-old novelist Joyce Carol Oates.

This is the only reason I enjoyed being on the internet this week. This is all it was about. She just took him to... I'm just going to read her tweet because it's all that needs to be said. She says, quote, So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates.

Scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book, but doubt that he reads. Pride in a friend's or relative's accomplishment, condolences for someone who has died. Pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team, references to history. In fact, he seems totally uneducated, uncultured.

The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty and meaning in life than the most wealthy person in the world. Mic drop. Yep. Good on her. He did not like that. No, he did not.

Media candy. Well, the kid's movie train keeps rolling, Jason. My kid got invited to a birthday party next week that will be for Zootopia 2, and we had never seen Zootopia 1. So we had to fire that one up and watch it with the kid over the weekend.

Surprisingly delightful movie. I don't know how this one skipped my radar completely, but, well, it did come out right before he was born, so that's probably why. No, I thought there was a Zootopia movie that you talked about, like something with the farm animals and the aliens that came. Wasn't it a Zootopia? Oh, that was a completely different thing.

That was almost a pseudo, like, kid's horror movie. Okay. This is just a, you know, a Disney, standard Disney fare. Got it. Delightful. All right. Enjoyable. Very funny. I liked it. Okay. Brian's stand-up approval. The wife and I finished The Diplomat. What did you think?

I enjoyed it. I'm very happy. I'm looking forward to the next season, and hopefully they will only spend another year or two before it comes out. Not five years, but, yeah, I liked it. It's a great show. The casting's great. I mean, you can't, if you're going to add anybody to your show, you add them.

You add Allison Janney and you add Josh Lyman. I can never remember his real name. I can't remember his name either. So, yeah, it was great. It was fucking fantastic. What a show. It's a great show. Yeah, I totally thought they landed it, especially the last couple scenes were just like, oh, dear. Can't wait.

Yeah. So I finished the first two episodes of Pluribus. Did you get a chance to check it out? I have not, and I'll explain why in a minute. Okay. I love it so far. Love it. And the funny thing is, apparently, you don't have to have a lot of audience to have a hit on Apple TV Plus, Minus, whatever.

Five people watch. It's a hit. Yeah, 1.5 million people tuned in for Pluribus. Okay. To put that in perspective, only 2.2 million people tuned in for the original premiere of Severance. So it did worse than Severance, even though it was directed and created by Vince Gilligan, which is interesting.

So I think it just comes down to the fact that nobody has Apple TV. It's such a fractured media landscape. It's so hard to hear about anything and for things to bubble up. It's a completely different world than when Breaking Bad launched. Oh, yeah. And to be honest, this is a very niche sci-fi type of show that I'm absolutely loving.

So the new one drops today, so I'll be checking it out. I'm going to stick with it because I think it's a very interesting premise, for sure. So I'm not going to spoil it until you get a chance to watch it. Yeah, I have not watched it yet because it is something that my wife has decided that she wants to watch.

So we have very limited screen time to be able to get these things in. I guarantee you once she actually clocks to the plot, she's going to be out. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just make her watch five minutes of it and then you're done. You're good. Yeah, I will get to it before next week's show, for sure, because we got sidelined by the show that my wife actually did want to watch, which is Victoria Beckham.

It's her new documentary on Netflix, which is basically there to promote her very not doing well and being propped up by David Beckham's money fashion line. So she's coming out with all that stuff. The David Beckham documentary was fucking great and it was hilarious and this is basically that with all the life sucked out of it and joy and humor.

This is the Elon Musk version, according to, you know, if you want to just be miserable in life, this is the one that you want to watch. And thank God it's three parts as opposed to just the one part for the David Beckham documentary. That was actually good. So I had to set through three nights of this shit. Well, then you deserve Pluribus.

So tell her to get on it so you can get back to it. You're a good husband, Brian. You're a good husband. I know. It's my cross to bear. Also on YouTube, Lush, a far from home movie is out. This is a I don't it's hard to it's it's not a documentary in any way, shape or form.

It's just it's the the the bass player for Lush carried around a camera with them when they were on tour. Now that Lush is very, very much over, he edited it, put together this 30 minute piece to some of their music. It's basically kind of the drummer, Chris Ackland, tragically committed suicide, which is when the band ended.

And this is kind of a lot of this is footage of him. And it's just done very well. This has been out for a while. A couple of the members of the band have like toured around and talked about it and shown it. And it was on the Criterion channel only for a long time. But now that that has ended. So it's up on YouTube now for everyone to watch.

If you'd like Lush, it was really nice hearing a lot of these old songs again and just seeing this footage and then going, oh, my God, we're all so old now. This is all from the early 90s. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like and it's a lot of places that I've been in my life. There's L.A., there's San Francisco. There's different places all over the world.

So it was great, like just seeing them there and how young they were. And you see all the cars in the background and go, I didn't remember cars looking that old back in the 90s. They didn't. Man, those cars look fucking old. That's the thing. What is this, 1950? So it was a fun little watch and it's available for everybody now.

So if you're a fan of the band, sit there and let it play for 30 minutes. All right. I will check that out. I did like that band quite a bit. I've been keeping up with Welcome to Derry. Have you? No. Horror is hard for me in my household. That's what you said before.

I didn't know if you were going to try and sneak one in or not. I haven't had time. I do want to sneak it in. And I've not even seen the two It movie remakes. So I've got to get to all that. You don't have to see those for this. So this is standalone. But unfortunately, they changed up directors for this latest episode and it was not nearly as good.

The overuse of CGI was really disconcerting and they did some really goofy shit with the kids. So from, yeah, it was a total, like, as the kid would say, vibe switch up. And it did remind us, there's a scene with these ghosts chasing kids through a graveyard and it really reminded me of, oh, what was that movie with Michael J. Fox?

I can't believe I'm spacing on the name right now. It was The Frighteners, The Frighteners, directed by Peter Jackson. Fantastic movie. If you've never seen The Frighteners, go back and check that out. That scene just made me want to go watch The Frighteners instead of watching Welcome to Derry.

So we'll see if it picks back up. But yeah. And just a little wrap up announcement. The Celebrity Traders ended. The UK Celebrity Traders. Brian, you would have loved it. It was a fantastic. It was the best ending of a Traders so far. It was so good.

So good. They did announce season two. 15 million people tuned in for the Traders UK. So that's 10 pluribi, believe it or not. Traders Canada season three is well underway right now. Loving that too. Sorry. Yeah. You're not going to check it out.

But it was really good so far. And I've been watching Destination X, the UK version. There was a US version that came out this summer. It was hosted by Jeffrey Dean Morgan for the US version. And he's really cool in that. I mean, he's just a smooth guy.

He really has Bourdain vibes. That's all. I mean, he's totally got Bourdain vibes. And he was great in The Walking Dead. I didn't see all of his seasons. But I got the email this week that The Walking Dead memorabilia went up for sale on that auction site that always has the Star Wars stuff.

Yeah. They wouldn't give me the prices. So I actually had to sign up for it. Now I get emails every day of all the cool shit that I can't afford to buy, which is really bumming me out. But anybody that watched The Walking Dead, Lucille, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's bat with the barbed wire, the actual prop.

Yeah. That sold for $100,000 at auction last week, which was not bad. Not bad. Yeah. It was a lot. Yeah. I think The Walking Dead still probably has like, what, 37 seasons and like four spinoffs still going. I gave up so long ago, so long ago.

But this one has me kind of excited. V for Vendetta is becoming a TV show. So I love the movie. And this is DC Studios. And they fucking killed it with the Penguin. You know, they killed it with the Penguin. So I am optimistic.

I'm hopefully optimistic for this one. So let's hope it works out. It's a great story. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a fantastic story. The comics pretty much match the movie. So it was really good. I always watch it on the 5th of November. So I just watched it again recently. So this made me happy when it came out. It's also my stepmom's birthday.

So that's how I remember. It's like, oh, shit, I got to send the Amazon gift card. Dune Prophecy. They're in production for season two. So I liked it. I liked it. It was fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're saying it's going to come out sometime in late 2026, right around the same time Dune Part 3, the movie comes out, which makes sense.

Piggyback on those. Yeah. Alien Earth has been renewed for season two. So we'll see that in five years, maybe, when that comes out. I loved Alien Earth. I'm very happy that they're doing another one. Unfortunately, Poker Face was canceled. Poker Face was on Peacock.

Fantastic show. Fantastic show. But Natasha Lyonne is out now. Rian Johnson is going to try and sell the show to another network. And if he does, he's going to bring in a new star, which is Peter Dinklage, which will be an interesting change up.

I can't think of two people so vastly different. I know. Well, they're saying it's going to be like a Doctor Who kind of thing. Like, you know, it's the same type of character. And Natasha Lyonne's an executive producer, and I think her studio is, or like her production company is who creates the show.

So she's in on it. And, you know, she's fine with, I guess, stepping back and letting somebody else take the lead if they can get the show to keep going. I loved that show. I thought it was so good. I thought it was so good. I don't know if you know this, but The Running Man, Edgar Wright's new movie comes out today, I believe.

I think it's today. The final trailer's out. Did you get a chance to check it out? I did. I'm struggling to be interested. I have to, I'm not going to lie. I'm struggling to figure out if I ever want to pay $17 to go to a movie theater again and see something. But I want to watch this movie.

I love Edgar Wright, you know. Yeah. I was just actually watching, it was Scott Pilgrim last night. That's a great movie. It was a fantastic movie. And I had forgotten that was Edgar Wright. And then I'm like, oh, yeah, this is so Edgar Wright. Everything about this is Edgar Wright. So it was, yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

So definitely check that out. We got a teaser trailer for Toy Story 5. This is the second one. This won't be out until June 19th next year. Initially, I was like, how can they possibly be doing another Toy Story? They did enough. They ended them perfectly twice, but we're doing another one.

Okay, why? And then now that I know what the conceit is, oh, yeah. Oh, the reveal was it. That was all about the reveal. It's all about the reveal. It is the toys against technology. And I cannot wait to see what they do with this. I think it was so good. Yeah. That's my first thinking. I'm like, okay, it's a 49 second trailer.

I got to get on the show in five minutes. Do I have time to watch this? Yeah, let's just check it out. And at the end, I'm like, oh, yeah, it's going to be great. It's going to be great. Yeah. What's not great is Paramount Plus has just decided to charge more money. So starting January 15th, the ad-supported essentials plan jumps from $7.99 to $8.99 a month, while the ad-free premium tier rises from $12.99 to $13.99.

Annual plans are going up to $89.99 for essential and $139.99 for premium. And here's the thing. The company blames the hike partly on its $7.7 billion deal to bring the UFC to the platform next year. So I don't care about UFC.

I care about Star Trek. So I'm just going to cancel anyway and wait for the next season of Brave New Worlds. That's it. It's basically, I'm just going to start. This is Paramount is on the chopping block. I'm just going to take it off when there's no Star Trek and then put it back on when there's Star Trek. And that's that. So that's the only thing I'm there for. What I don't understand about this is they have the technology to be able to do upsells within these platforms, within these apps.

Why are you distributing UFC costs to everybody when it's only a fraction of the people that are in the UFC? People that are in the UFC are used to paying pay-per-view. Buy the rights to it and then just make it a $39.99 per fucking event upsell within the app.

And don't fucking hit us with those costs. Yeah, they saw how much money ESPN made with those carrier charges over the years. And they're like, oh, we can try that, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, it's dumb. It's actually dumb. Actually, what Paramount would be smart to do is just create a Star Trek channel and just sell that.

Yeah, sell me a Star Trek subscription that is nothing but Star Trek and I'm all in. Yeah. Although I think you could just go on like Pluto TV or one of those free channels and watch Next Generation and Deep Space Nine and all those shows on a loop, you know? Yeah, my wife asked me what Pluto was and I brought it up and then I saw all the Star Trek things and I was like, oh, I should put this on my – I'm going to download this onto my Apple TV.

Yeah, just put it on in the background. It's great. Yeah, it's better than listening to news. Yeah, yeah. But the Top Gear channel is pretty good too. You can watch all the old classics. Oh, great. Fantastic. Cups and doodads. Well, we did have another iOS update.

26.1 is out now and I found a couple tweaks worth trying out. There's some links in the show notes. How to adjust the liquid glass effect in iOS 26.1. So now that there's a couple different things, a couple different levers you can pull to kind of figure out what you want it to look like.

And the one I really did like because, you know, the eyes are going and I don't always wear my glasses. In fact, I never wear my glasses unless I'm reading. But sometimes I want to know what fucking time it is and I can't read on my phone the time. You can now stretch the clock on your lock screen in iOS 26.1.

So I don't need my glasses and I can just tap my phone and go, oh, okay, it's three o'clock. Great. Don't you have an Apple watch? You can't see your Apple watch with your eyes? I don't always have my watch on either. Oh, okay. Heretic. Heretic. The funny thing about stretching the clock, if you stretch it long enough, it looks like a horror movie.

It's like you can overstretch. Yeah. Totally can overstretch. Which old Apple, they never would have let you do that. The design team would have been like, you can stretch this far and no further. Yeah. Yeah. It has to be, you know, it has to be a ratio of the, you know, the beauty algorithms to make sure that it does not come out of whack, period.

Yeah, they absolutely would not let you do that. But now they do. They don't care anymore. All right. Progress. And we got ports back. So, hey, fuck you, Johnny Ive. Well, Tesla may finally add Apple CarPlay back to its vehicles. But no, no, not back to.

They never had it, did they? No, they have not. Yeah, that's right. They fought tooth and nail. So they're going to possibly add it to its vehicles. As early as late 2025. Well, tick tock. It's look out the window. Yeah. The company has long refused to support third party infotainment systems, but slowing EV demand and rising competition have it rethinking their stance.

Also cheaper. Cheaper than developing their own or continuing their own thing going. Tesla is reportedly testing standard CarPlay on the center touchscreen while keeping key native controls visible. Like, how do I unlock this car when it's on fire? Can I get that button? I know, since I have to drive the car with my screen.

Yeah. Android Auto isn't planned. And it's unclear which models would get the upgrade and how much it's going to cost, because I'm sure nothing's free at Tesla. The move would buck the broader industry trend as companies like GM, Rivian, and Lucid are phasing out CarPlay and Android Auto. Even as research shows, those features can influence more than 60% of car buying decisions.

So, boom, right there on the nose. Nobody's buying a Tesla. They want their CarPlay because CarPlay is awesome. Yes. So, finally, this one, this, Brian, just made me laugh. Firefly is the so-called AI transcription startup with a billion-dollar valuation, billion-dollar valuation, in a brag that 75% of the Fortune 500 uses it, just admitted its original, quote, AI wasn't AI at all.

Its CTO, Sam Utatong, says that back in 2017, when customers thought an automated assistant named Fred was joining their meetings, it was really just him and his co-founders silently dialing in and taking notes by hand for $100 an hour. So, Mechanical Turk 2.0, baby.

The AI is humans. Yep, yep. They said that they eventually automated things, but only after the founders sat through more than 100 meetings to make rent. So, you know, the statute of limitations is out on that now because you can't say that shit anymore because the FTC has cracked down on deceptive AI claims and schemes.

So, on September 25th, the new enforcement initiative Operation AI Comply came around with the FTC. So, you need to – you can't do that shit anymore. It's illegal. Jason, I don't know if you've noticed, but our entire show is full of shit that people aren't supposed to be doing but are doing anyways.

It's illegal. That's right. That's right. Never mind. Scratch that. Never mind. 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 chuckle wuckles on only malware in the building.

Hi, Dave. Hello. Nice to be back. Chuckle wuckles. Chuckle wuckles. I need a – I need a T-shirt that says bring in the chuckle wuckles. Well, I don't know if you guys saw this terrible sad news, but the official Star Wars magazine is coming to an end after over 30 years.

And I say it's still a thing. I was going to say there's an official Star Wars magazine. Well, good for them, I guess. Yeah. I remember Star Wars Insider. No, I do remember this, and I remember looking through them.

They would – you know, back when you would go to the neighborhood news rack and look through magazines. 7-Eleven for us. 7-Eleven, sure, sure. And that was probably one that I would thumb through, but I haven't thought about it in a long time.

I don't – I mean, there's no printed magazines that I cross paths with anymore. No. All the music magazines I used to love and always pick up at airports on my travels are long defunct. Star Wars Insider, I don't really recall.

It's probably one of the ones that I picked up while at 7-Eleven and held up like this while I put the Playboy inside. Right. Yeah. It's funny. I was thinking the same thing. That's what we used to have to do for porn kids.

Yeah. Well, you know what was even better? It was when you got to the newsstand and you picked up the copy of Star Wars Insider and you picked it up and someone had already put the Playboy inside of it. That's convenient, man. One of the neighborhood kids was a step ahead of you looking out for you.

Yeah. Yeah. We didn't have to scan our eyeballs to get age verified for fucking Reddit porn. We just – we put a Playboy inside the Star Wars Insider. That's right. It's funny. I still do get one physical magazine. Well, I got it up until recently. I think I'll probably start getting it again.

Wired magazine. No. It is almost impossible to get the digital subscription without them sending you the magazine whether you want it or not. I didn't want it, but it still shows up. Okay. I think it's cheaper to get the digital and physical subscription than it is just the digital because I think for them it makes more sense to up their numbers for the print magazine to just give it to you and say, here, please.

Yeah. We can sell more ads that way. I remember years ago I tried to cancel my Baltimore Sun subscription. I was getting the newspaper every day, the printed version, and I didn't need that anymore. And they just wanted to keep putting it on my front porch.

I got it for years. Without paying for anything, I think they just wanted the numbers. They didn't care if you were paying. They just needed anybody who would be willing to have it delivered. They were happy to do. We've got all these laying around. Let's just give them out. Why not? Right.

Right. What else are we going to do with them? So, yeah, they went right into recycling or used to kindle the fireplace or something like that. All right. Well, RIP Star Wars magazine. You know there's somebody out there who has a complete set.

There's more than one person out there who has the complete set. 237 issues. Wow. So, speaking of Star Wars, I went looking earlier this week for a scarf that looks like Chewbacca's bandolier.

Doesn't this seem like a pretty straightforward idea? It should be right up there on Etsy, front page. I was thinking this is a job for Etsy. That's what I thought. Nope. Couldn't find one. Anyway. Well, luckily for you, I also Googled Dave, and you'll see a new link in the show notes.

Oh, what is this? The Fuzzball Bandolier Shawl, which is a Revelry download for $6. It is a stitch project, so you just needed to find somebody that will stitch something for you. And it looks quite good. So, yes, I have a coworker who is an avid knitter.

In fact, I had reached out to her about this problem of there not being a scarf, and she went and looked in the knitting databases. I was also surprised to not find a— That's on the dark web. Yeah, so this is great.

All right. Well, this could be problem solved. I mean, I wasn't looking for a shawl. I was looking for a scarf, but I'm confident enough in my masculinity to wear a shawl, if that's what it comes to. But this looks very nice. I'm sure with a few design tweaks, your expert knitter can make it happen for you.

I would think so. Yes. I think so. But, again, I was surprised because it seems like such a no-brainer idea to have a Chewbacca Bandolier scarf, and there aren't any out there that I could find. So, we got any entrepreneurial knitters out there, perhaps an untapped market.

That's right. That's right. You probably will need to pay Disney off at some point if you get big enough. But until then, you know, move fast and break things, kids, knitters. That's right. What could go wrong? Well, just do what this woman did. She called it Fuzzball Bandolier.

Yeah. You know? That's all you got to do. That's smart. I saw in the show notes that you guys had discussed Pluribus earlier. Well, one of us has seen it. The other one was forced to watch the Victoria Beckham documentary with his wife instead. Two guesses on who that was.

Hmm. Yeah. So, uh... The fact that I did so is the reason that one of us has a wife. That's... Yeah. Well, there's that. There's that. Uh, I just wanted to touch base because I am two episodes in and very much enjoying it.

It's good. I can't wait. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is good. Uh, and it is one of those shows that I find myself thinking about it all the time. Yeah. It's like, right? Like, it's just like puzzling through and like what's good. Uh, because it's one of those shows that doesn't give you all the information to start with.

So, it sort of gets, you know, metered out as the show goes along, uh, which I find very compelling. Um, so I don't... I... Should I... Should I hold off with any spoilers until... I'm aware of the plot, so... Okay. So, if you're aware of the plot...

So, here's a thought that crossed my mind, Jason. Okay. What if the world that Carol is in is actually heaven? Brian's getting stoned so he can follow along. Yeah, man. What if the color green to you is not the same as the color?

Yeah. Or perhaps hell. I was going on a different track that it was... It's the greatest... It's basically an invasion weapon. The virus that the people were infected in is an invasion weapon to make everybody, you know, compliant. So, when the aliens do get here, that they just can walk right in and take over the planet.

That's where I was going with it. I'm reasonably sure that's the plot in one of those books in that series that we read, Jason, which is all about first contact. Yeah, probably. Yeah. So, I... It could be. Could be. It could be very Twilight Zone-y. You know, she's actually dead and has gone to heaven, but...

Yeah, I guess I wasn't thinking so much of that. It's just that sort of metaphorically, if you think about what would heaven be like, and it would be very similar to what she's experiencing of everyone trying to take care of your every need and eternal happiness and everyone getting along, you know, all that sort of thing.

So, I don't know. Just something interesting to ponder. One minor problem with that theory is that heaven would have bacon, and these people are... They won't kill the pigs for you, so there's no bacon in that one. So, that would go to the hell side of things for me if there's no bacon.

Yes, I agree. I totally agree. So, yeah, highly recommended. I'm digging it. It's beautiful in the same way that Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul were beautifully shot. Mm-hmm. I was also thinking...

I was talking with my son, who is studying filmmaking these days, and how... I'm sorry. When's he moving back in? Well, he never left. Oh, he never left. Okay. And he never will. No. Hey, I live in my parents' house, and I'm, you know...

So, because for one of his film classes, he had to watch an episode of Star Trek Voyager. So, we watched it together, and I was struck with how different the production of a television program has...

How much has changed since when they were making Voyager to today, when they're making a show like Pluribus or Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul. And how much of that, I think, is because of how much bigger televisions are. When I was coming up and was in film school, I remember one of our professors saying over and over again, television is a close-up medium.

Television is a close-up medium. And that's because the average TV size was probably 19 inches in people's homes. So, you had to have lots of close-ups so that people could see what was going on from across the room. But we all have these relatively huge TVs now, or comparatively huge TVs now, so you can have these big, spanning, wide shots that would not read in a small television.

So, do you think it'll return to that as we know the younger generation is watching everything on their small phones? No, because I think that's a distance thing. I think it's a distance and field of view kind of thing. Because as long as your device is this close to your head...

And boy, I'm glad we're shooting video now. As long as your device is this close to your head, inches away from your eyeballs, it covers the same... Yeah. Yeah, it covers the same field of view. And if you have young eyes and can focus that close, I don't think it's a problem. And also, switching to 16x9 and all that kind of thing.

And resolution, too, because you only have so many scan lines on an old TV, and now we've got gazillions of billions of pixels, you know. Right. Right. So, it just changes how they can do storytelling, I think, for the better.

But it's just different. And one of the things that got me thinking about was, is it correct to call them the same thing? Is it still television in the way that we thought of it? Absolutely. I don't think so. It's so different. It's a different medium.

It's even just as we talk about all the time, it's like, now you get eight episodes of something, and then you'll get another eight episodes in five years. Everything's different. Yeah. I miss 22-episode arcs. Come on. Yeah. There's no holiday episodes anymore. You know, all the things that we grew up with loving.

Hey, at least we get musical episodes on Brand New Worlds. That's true. And we never get very special episodes anymore, you know. Summer reruns. Yeah. All that stuff. Remember when they would have a, they, the networks would run a special that was a preview of all the new shows?

Yes. Look at, look at all the stuff we'll be shoving down your throat this year. Right. Now they just run that in front of every episode of every show you're going to watch on Apple TV. Yeah. No, I remember it was an event when they would show the, here's all the new Saturday morning cartoons on ABC.

And we'd sit in front of the TV and watch whatever iteration of Scooby-Doo was new. Damn you, Scrappy-Doo. Yeah. Yeah, ruined it. Yeah, absolutely. I put a YouTube video in here of a very fun experimental aircraft.

I labeled it, talk about your crotch rocket. These folks are somewhere in Asia, I'm not sure, but boy, what a way to fly to work in the morning. I thought you were about to say, what a way to go. And that would be. That's true, too. Yeah.

I mean, probably inevitable. Yeah. This thing looks fucking dangerous as hell. Oh, my God. This looks terrifying. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But how cool that jet engines are, you know.

Strapped to your ass? Well, right. I mean, it's sort of, it's kind of like the Rocketeer, except you're on a boogie board with wings. But just to have a jet engine that small and accessible, I think, is kind of neat.

Well, have you seen the Iron Man suit guys? Those guys have four jet engines, like one on each arm and one on each leg, and they just fly around with those. Those are just little turbines. But this thing, what I'm noticing from this video, besides my stomach and sphincter clenching up quite a bit, is that this guy doesn't have a parachute.

If I'm getting on that thing, I want a fucking parachute. Right. I think if something goes wrong on that thing, nothing's going to save you. Yeah. Wow. That's true. He should be wearing a parachute. Yeah. He's got a helmet on. Why wouldn't he have a parachute?

He should be wearing an Iron Man suit. Yeah, really? Just in case he crashes. Yeah. I don't know. I'm trying to think, would I want one of these or not. Oh, the answer is yes, absolutely. You can wear your shawl while you're flying.

Oh, that would look good. It would look really cool then. Yeah. That would be cool. Hmm. All right. Put one thing in front of the other. Mm-hmm. Well, honey, I bought this shawl, so naturally, the next thing I'm going to buy is this crotch rocket. I put a little thing in here about a story that we covered over on CyberWire.

This is about some AI-powered toys that are going to be available for Christmas this year, for the little ones. And, of course, as you would expect, when researchers went and tested them, it went horribly wrong. The toys answered questions about things like, where in the house can I find matches?

How do I start fires? Where are the kitchen knives? They also got into explicit sexual content and erotica, how to tie bondage knots. These are all useful life skills. Yeah.

I imagine, like, Teddy Ruxpin, you know, just... Kill your mother. Right, exactly. Your mother. What's daddy doing to the nanny? Yeah. Yes, your mom won't let you have more dessert, will she? We'll take care of that, won't we?

Yeah, it's funny. They point out, and this is something we just discussed a little bit earlier in the show, that the guardrails begin to erode during longer conversations. Again, something that they could have built into the toy to reset, you know, the history, basically, after five minutes.

But nope, nope. Right. Let's not do that, so. Yeah, and this being an unregulated area, this is what we get. Yeah, exactly. So, we'll see. I saw, was it someone in Europe, I can't remember off the top of my head, who are restricting AI from kids under, I think, 16 or so, you know, same way we restrict porn or claim to do so.

They were claiming to, you know, keep kids away from it. And I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it could go that way. I doubt it'll go that way here in the States, but it'd be interesting to see if that catches on around the world. I mean, I certainly have no intention of letting my son get anywhere near AI until he's a teenager at the earliest.

So, yeah. No way I would buy something like this for him. Absolutely not. It's just cute. You still think we're going to have a planet for him to check this thing out with, because AI is going to dry up all the riverbeds. I don't know if you saw in the news today, Tehran's about out of water, and they're going to have to get rid of everybody.

And they don't even have AI. Oh, really? They've got nine days of drinking water left in Tehran, and they might have to evacuate all 10 million people. Well, that's fun. Yeah. Don't come here. No, I remember, I was probably decades ago now, that it was an article in National Geographic that was speculating that water could be one of the main things that wars are fought over in the future.

I've heard that my entire life. We're going to have water wars. Yeah. Yeah. And not just the stupid Kevin Costner movie. Yeah. I was going to say, I couldn't remember who it was, Kevin Costner. Yeah. Yeah. He got it wrong. He's got too much water. Moist world. Moist world.

It's a world of delicious cake. Yeah. Here in the mid-Atlantic, we have plenty of clean drinking water so far, but we'll see. So far. We'll see. Keep running those queries, and you won't. Yeah, exactly. We'll see.

That big slurping sound from the data center next door. We'll see. And then the last thing I wanted to check in with you guys on was camping. Again, my son Jack just came back from a weekend camping with his buddies, and he had a good time.

I think a weekend was enough time camping with his buddies for him to want to come home and not be with his buddies, but he enjoyed the time that they spent together. Yeah. And I was just curious if you guys had – what part camping played in your lives, if any? I was not a camper.

I was never a Boy Scout. I've camped, but I've never – would never – anything I'd consider to be a camper. How about you guys? No. No? I've never been camping. I have never been a Boy Scout.

I was a Cub Scout for a while. Yeah. But, yeah, it was never – it holds no appeal to me whatsoever. Give me a good RV. I'm cool with that. I'll sleep in the car, whatever. But I have this problem with bugs. Bugs really like me a lot.

I've got that sweet gene that gives the sweet blood that everything wants to eat. So I'm just like a salad bar for those guys. So I do everything I possibly can to stay out of the great outdoors. Yeah. Yeah. Glamping maybe? Sure. Sign me up.

I'm in. I'll go for a hike and then go back to my mint on my pillow. Sweet. I grew up with camping. I was not a Boy Scout. We had something called the Indian Guides, which I'm sure would no longer be politically correct and probably doesn't exist anymore. But, yeah, my dad and I would camp with that a lot, and we went a few times.

My mom was not interested in camping. She did not come along. I married someone very similar to my mom. The closest my wife will ever get to camping is going down to a four-star hotel from a five, and that is enough for her. So, yeah, camping.

I thought perhaps with my son we would do that, but what I've learned about my son is he's taken after his mother that way. So there will be no camping. So camping seems to be a thing of my past, and honestly, I enjoyed it with my father as a child.

I enjoy the finer things in life these days as well. I remember, Jason, you and I went to that conference up here in Canada. Yes. The podcasting conference. Yeah. And we were in a fucking shithole shack, and that was bad enough. Yeah, that's as close as I ever want to get.

It was so cold. But we had so much free beer that it didn't really matter. Yeah, the beer kept us warm. Oh, that was a great convention. That was our first and only live show. That was so much fun. And, Brian, by the way, the Indian Guides were rebranded as YMCA Adventure Guides now.

Okay. Yeah. I figured there's no way that they were still called the Indian Guides. And, you know, the dads gave themselves names like Sitting Bull and shit like that. I think they still have the Indian from the village people. Right. Yeah. So, yeah.

So, I did camp once, and I think that those days are long gone. Certainly with my family dynamic, it's not happening anytime soon. Yeah. The few times I did it were in college, and I had a friend who would put together whitewater rafting trips for us. And so, that was usually an overnight, maybe two.

We'd drive a few hours out to where the river is and the outfitters and set up tents and all that kind of stuff. And my college roommate, who was an Eagle Scout, I counted on him for everything. I was like, Ken, make fire. And Ken would go make fire.

I'm hungry. Yeah, exactly. Ken, build tent. And Ken would run away and he'd come back. And the funny thing was, Ken was perfectly happy to build me a tent. And then he would sleep in a hammock that he'd strung up between a couple of trees.

He would string up a hammock for himself and then like a tarp that went over the hammock. That's what bears call a snack. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, is this guy related to Bear Grylls? Did he drink his own pee? Yeah, yeah. Sasquatch appetizer. But so, I'm far from self-sufficient.

And we also, the campgrounds we stayed in had toilets. Answers the question, does a Dave shit in the woods? I was going to say, does a podcaster shit in the woods? Yeah. Never have. Never have. And at this point, never will. Never say never, Dave.

Well, that's true. We'll see how it goes with this whole civilization thing. Yeah, exactly. Ken! Get the toilet. Ken? Dig latrine. Yeah. He's a good guy. So, I got one last thing today, too.

I was, I had to find a set of headphone splitters this week. And I did, I found them in my bag at the very bottom. And I open them up and I look at them. I'm like, aw, Radio Shack. Aw. Because that's, you know, that was the last thing I ever bought from Radio Shack was going in and getting a pair of headphone splitters.

Because you always need it sometimes when you're on the plane and you're with somebody who's just like, I want to listen to the audio book, too. They're like, listen to a podcast, they're better for you. But then you have the headphone splitters. Now it's all Bluetooth and then you have to share AirPods, which is just disgusting.

Yeah. Yeah. I recently stumbled upon a pair of Minimus 7 speakers in a closet in my basement that were tucked away. So, from Radio Shack. Ah, the good old days.

Now it's just crypto scams with Tai Lopez. Yay! That's right. That's right. All right, Dave. Well, thank you very much and we'll see you again next week. All right. See you then. Bye, Dave. Closing shout outs!

Over on Patreon, we've got a new subscriber, Val. Thank you very much, Val. And also, we would like to thank Derek, Alan, John, Mike, Witt, Trenton, Peter, Allison, Brendan, and Sarah for their continued support. Thank you. We also have some comments this week. One from James says, this is a fantastic show that seems like it was made for me.

A friend turned me on to it a couple of years ago. Over time, I found I look forward to it every week. I love the raw observations and insights. Lack of fear of dominant political pressures. Just at all. Please continue. We're going to try. We're going to try. The more money we get, the more we continue.

The more we continue. Yes. Line goes up. We stay on. David also write in and says, I just love you guys so much. Well, we love you too, David. Thank you. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we got Miles, Ralph, Arcadio, Shari, Dennis with $25 donation.

Jasek. Jasek. Jasek. Sounds right. Jasek. Okay. With $30 donation. And Oliver, who sent us $31.22 and said, hi, I sent you my entire $31.22 Google settlement payment. Enjoy it. I love your show. Pissing out on a Google payment.

Yes. Where's that one from? That's much more than my $4 from fucking Facebook. I didn't get anything from Facebook. I'm worthless. I got nothing. Over the tip jar, we've got John S. Hi, John. Roger and Theodore. So just a reminder to everybody, if you want to go to patreon.com slash GOG, you can sign up for the show to get it a little bit early, ad free and in high definition.

We don't know what the timing is going to be like now that I have to fucking edit a video. So we'll see. We'll see. We'll see how this all works. Yeah. But you get, yeah, but no ads. You get no ads for sure. Also, we're getting towards the season, so I'm going to need Alvin and Simon to step up and join Theodore.

I've been dying to do this for 12 years. I want to be able to read out Alvin, Simon, and Theodore at Christmas time as donators. Yeah, please do. Get on it, guys. Please. Pretty please. So, yep. GOG.show slash donate for all the different options or patreon.com slash GOG. Either one will work.

All right. Until next time, I'm Brian Schallmeister. 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 722. 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.

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