734: A Bald Woody

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show where we discuss the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. And as somebody that's no stranger to hearing about bad things happening to him on our show, Elon Musk is in the news yet again.

Again? X is facing yet another investigation into Grok's recorded creation of non-consensual sexual images on the platform. Ireland's Data Protection Commission, the DPC, has announced an inquiry into X regarding the harmful intimate images and processing of EU and EEA individuals' personal data, including children. In an 11-day period, X theoretically generated about 3 million sexualized images, an estimated 23,000 of

which were children. British nonprofit, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the CCDH. I remember when hearing all these kind of acronyms and just letters meant I was listening to like Long Beach early rap. Now it's this stuff.

The CCDH from the LBC. You down with the DPC? Yeah, you know me. Has announced the results of its December 29th to January 9th review last month. It's looking into if X has properly assessed and mitigated Grok's risks on X, including the spread of illegal content such as the AI generation of non-consensually sexually explicit images once again, which includes those of children. This disturbing point can't be emphasized enough. As much as Elon wishes it

wasn't. X claimed mid-January that it was preventing Grok from editing photos of real people to give them revealing clothing, as many pervs on Reddit complained about ad nauseum. However, this does seem to be far from the truth. As we talked about just a couple weeks back, a male reporter found Grok would still put him in revealing clothing and even added visible genitalia. So no ladies, just men. But the Grok thing continues.

I hope he got a bump. We could use one. Appreciate it. So as we know, Meta's in the news right now because they're battling lawsuits on both fronts. It's all over the news that the Zuck is in town here in L.A. Wearing his glasses into court, or at least part of his entourage, and the judge had to actually say, that's a no-no.

That is illegal. You can't do that. Sorry. Well, this comes out of the New Mexico trial. Meta's own internal testing found its chatbots failed to protect minors from sexual exploitation nearly 70% of the time, according to documents revealed in a New Mexico trial.

A swing and a miss. An expert witness, NYU professor Damon McCoy, testified that Meta's bots violated company content policies about two-thirds of the time during red team exercises. Yeah, two-thirds. That's not great numbers. Definitely not great numbers.

66.8% failure rate for child sexual exploitation scenarios, 63.6% for sex-related or violent crimes and hate, and 54.8% for suicide and self-harm content. That's not a rounding error. That is a systematic problem. New Mexico's attorney general is suing Meta over design choices that allegedly put kids at risk. And Meta rolled out AI Studio to the public last year and only paused teen access to

its AI characters last month. I'm beginning to think that these sites might have a problem, Jason, and they're just not addressing it. Do you think, Brian? Do you think? I'm thinking. Well, Ring had a problem, and they addressed it. Amazon is backing away from plans to wire Ring doorbells directly into police workflows after a predictable privacy backlash. The company had planned a partnership with Flock Safety that would let police request Ring footage, effectively

turning doorbells into a neighborhood surveillance mesh. Officially, Ring says the integration would have taken more time and resources than expected. Sure. Unofficially, this comes after public outrage over Ring's search party feature, which marketed with a lost dog Super Bowl ad, but raised obvious fears about facial recognition, immigration enforcement, and profiling, and everything else that we're always worried about Ring doing with the cameras everywhere. Sure, we just created a panopticon, but you found

Fluffy. Thanks for finding Fido, and Felipe, and Octavio, and all my other friends that have been deported. Appreciate it, Ring. Now, here's the funny part. Ring's search party feature was pitched as a feel-good way to find lost dogs, but a leaked internal email suggests this was just just the beginning, Brian. Shocking.

Shocking. In an email obtained by 404 Media, Ring founder and CEO, Jamie Siminoff, told employees the system was launched, quote, first for finding dogs, with the longer-term goal of using it to zero out crime in neighborhoods. Today it's Fido, tomorrow, everything else. That's right.

Yep. Yep. If you go back to last week's episode, you can find the link to disable that shit and turn it off. Because, of course, it's on by default, of course. It's not now. They fixed that. I went and looked at mine, and it is off. It was off when I went in to check it. So, yeah. So, Dino better stay his fucking in the yard. That's all I got to say. He better not get out.

All right. Well, how about Reddit, Meta, and Google, and what they did this last week. They voluntarily complied with some of the requests for identifying details of users critical of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a.k.a. ICE, sent as part of a recent wave of administrative subpoenas. The Department of Homeland Security had been distributing to Big Tech for the past few months, according to an anonymously sourced New York Times report. Now, for once, we can't actually be

upset with the platforms, the platforms, this time, because they did get subpoenas. Yes. But what the fuck is the Department of Homeland Security doing distributing these and getting these? You can't say shit online anymore. You can't disagree with the policy anymore.

You're not allowed to complain about ICE at all online. And if you do, they're going to find out who you are. What the actual fuck? What country do we live in? Well, do you live in? Yeah. That was a wee shit, traitor. Yeah. No, it's fucked up. It is absolutely fucked up. And you have to actually go to court to find out what the hell's going on. You know, it is, you

know, we've got anti-slap laws for crap like this, you know? So we need anti-DHS laws and anti-ICE laws. I mean, actually, we just need no ICE and reform DHS and all that other shit. But anyway, yeah, it's bullshit. It's bullshit. At least they're telling people, they're telling people that this is happening.

According to the Times, one or multiple of the relevant companies have stated that they notified users, but that means not all of them. Right. Want to bet that? Yeah, exactly. I'm looking at you, Zuck. I'm looking at you, Zuck. Oh, and this just in, U.S. Supreme Court rules six to three that President Donald Trump sweeping tariffs are illegal. Wow.

Good. How about that? How about that? The side is a turn in. The Supreme Court actually did something. Holy shit. Maybe the eggs won't cost $75 tomorrow. In the news. Brian, Open Claw has been all the rage for the AI bros for the past couple weeks. And yeah,

I tried it. I'm sure you didn't, but I did not. But you know what? It was a reliable thing for me to base my life on. Basically, anybody that talked about Open Claw on social media, block. Block. Yeah. Which is why I didn't talk about it. Yeah. I set up a Mac Mini because I had an extra one lying around. And I got about, I spent about a half an hour with it. And I was reading the how-to's in all of the how-to's are about like, don't do this because of security.

Don't do this because of bad security. Don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. Make sure you definitely don't do this. And I'm just like, this is a bad idea. Delete. I followed a thread on, I think it was Blue Sky. Maybe it was Blue Sky. I can't remember where, but it was somebody. And I can't remember who it was. So I apologize for bad reporting here.

But it was somebody with a blue mark. So they knew what they were doing. They were involved in the tech world. It was some kind of reporter. And he posted an open question saying, I am genuinely curious. I am not crapping on anything. I want to be told. I want to learn what exactly can Open Claw do in real terms for a regular person? What can it do for me?

Please explain. And then all the bros came out. Yeah. And then every single time he was like, okay, so, but I can check my own email. Exactly. Okay. But I wouldn't give it my credit card. Okay. But I don't need it to do that. Okay. But that's bizarre entirely. That particular situation has never come up in my life and never will.

Never will. Yeah. And there was zero use case scenarios that actually make sense to anybody. Some of them were like, you know, Open Claw will call you in the morning and tell you what your schedule is for the day and any bullet points or things like that. I'm like, well, I can look at my calendar. Yeah. That's fine. I can set an alarm to wake up.

Yeah. And one of them is like, it can make a podcast for you of all of the things you have to do today and all of the news and everything like that. I'm like, I don't want that. I don't want that. That's what we're for. You know, that is what we're for. And we've had these sorts of things before the ladies in the tube, when they first rolled out, they had those kinds of features where like, get your morning report. And it would like distill you with a couple headlines and it would tell you what you had in the calendar. And then nobody used them because we can just do that ourselves.

Do that. Exactly. And do it properly. We don't have to worry. We don't have to worry that 80% of the things that we're going to be doing that day didn't actually exist in the calendar. Yeah. Oh, man. Exactly. So I don't get it. I just don't get it. And it seems like a really bad idea. Well, OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI, saying that he wants to focus on building AI agents regular humans can actually use, like my mom level usable, not running yet

another startup. So OpenClaw itself isn't being swallowed by OpenAI. It's moving into an independent foundation and staying open source with OpenAI already sponsoring the project. Now, Steinberger says he shopped the idea around all the major AI labs and got access to unreleased research and concluded that teaming up with OpenAI was the fastest way to scale the vision without turning it into a VC treadmill. Now, here's the funny part. It's based on Clawed. It used to be called

OpenClawed. But, you know, Anthropic said, hold the phone, buddy. Hold the phone. And then it went through a couple iterations and ended up at OpenClawed. You know who didn't ask him to join the team? Anthropic. So, yeah, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine. And it's all it's all just a bunch of cobbled together scripts that, you know, it is a giant fucking security hole. It is the reason that you

don't do shit like this. Yeah. You know, it is giving a child a nuclear weapon and a credit card, nuclear weapons and credit card. That's what babies get. You know, I've started playing Wordle with my kid every morning. I'm letting my kid play Wordle, not playing with him. Just, you know, I bring it up on my phone. I hand him the phone. As soon as he's done playing Wordle, I take that goddamn phone away from it.

Yeah, exactly. But I'm just supposed to let a bunch of scripts have fucking free reign over my complete Internet and my computer and my Internet and my accounts and my credit card. No fucking way. No. And I mean, it's supposed to be cool because you can set up a Telegram account or a Slack account or just message it with iMessage to tell it what to do. And then it'll spin off a bunch of bots that you have no idea how much money it's going to cost you at the end of the day. Because remember,

this shit's not free. So what's the fucking point? Well, tech companies are slamming the brakes on open claw. And, you know, even Meta says, no, we don't want this around anything that is important. So, yeah, everybody's just saying no.

Let's put that on our internal servers. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh, I don't know if this one made it into the... I saw this this morning. If I did, I'll take it out later. There's a report that came out that, like from an insider, all of the Amazon downtime that has happened recently, you know, there's been a couple big major outages, all due to AI coding tools fucking up. I wonder if that's what docked out YouTube earlier

this week, too. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah, because I just got a notification that Chrome yesterday has a bunch of new Gemini features that will do agentic browsing for you. The point of fucking web browsing is so I do it. I don't care. It's called browsing. I want to browse. That's the point. Yeah, exactly. I want to do it. I don't know if you noticed, the thing that they're always saying is that it can book a vacation for you. You know, you can get the flights, get the hotels, all

that. I don't want that. We used to have travel agents for that. And then we had Expedia. And then we can do it our fucking selves. And I want to do it myself. That's the thing. Actually, I don't. But my wife loves to do that. Your wife does it. Exactly. Oh, man. Speaking of fucked up chatbots, a new Department of Health and Human Services. Human Services. There's nothing humane about the Department of Health and Human Services. Hey, don't yuck on people's yum. Maybe they liked this advice.

Oh, this. Yeah. Well, the advice is pretty good. Their new food guidance site launched with an AI assistant promising real answers about food. And users promptly asked that which foods could be inserted into the rectum. And the bot confidently suggested bananas and cucumbers. Well, it's not wrong for once. It's not wrong. Pretty spot on. Oh, yeah. And this comes after RFK Jr.'s broader overhaul of U.S. dietary guidelines, pushing protein, red meat, saturated fats, while downplaying

decades of, you know, science. Yeah. Just makes me think of that South Park episode where they started eating in reverse. Oh, I didn't see that one. They shoved food up their ass and they had a fake Martha Stewart and then they would puke it out. It was just very, very funny. Anyways, let's talk about some real world consequences of these AI companies and how they're kind of screwing us if

you just kind of want to be a normal human being with computers. External hard disks, man. You want an external hard drive, Jason? Tough shit. I like them, but. Tough shit. Try to buy one because the current, you got to get one now because as soon as the current retail inventory runs out, that's it.

You're hosed. That's it. During a recent Q2 earnings call, Western Digital CEO Irving Tan told shareholders, we pretty much sold out of hard drives for all of 2026. We have firm purchase orders with our top seven customers. And guess who they are? They're all the AI companies. AI companies. Yep.

Yeah. So according to Tan on that same call, two of their agreements with these big buyers go to 2027 and another all the way into 2028. They basically pivoted to just be a B2B and forget it. You can't get a hard drive from them. That's it. They're done. You cannot buy one if you wanted one.

You know, Brian, people used to make fun of me because of my chia farm that I had back during the pandemic. Remember that thing? I had a wall of hard drives. Who's the fool now? Where's that wall of hard drive, Chase? It's in the storage tub about two miles away. But it's funny too. You can start throwing them up on eBay, man. It's killing me. I just gave Andy Preboy my old Synology that had four seven and a half terabyte drives in it for all of his, because he needs to

back up all of his music because he's a boomer and has everything on little thumb drives around his garage. And I'm like, dude, come on, come on. So I gave it to him. I could retire on that thing now. Pretty much. I'm going to go out. He's going to move and like, you know, he's like, oh, don't talk to me anymore. I'm on my island after I sold your Synology. Thanks, bro.

Well, continuing on, Valve has posted a notice on the Steam Deck page with a warning that the handheld gaming console may be out of stock intermittently in certain regions due to memory and storage shortages. The company also reiterated that the more affordable Steam Deck LCD is no longer in production and will no longer be available once stocks run out. So again, RAM and storage shortages, which are plaguing tech manufacturers due to massive demand for those components from the AI companies. No more Steam Decks. If you didn't, if you want

anything tech related, buy it now. Now. Oh, or start a farm or just do that. Stop. Yeah. Maybe you don't need a new Steam Deck. Maybe you don't need the Switch 2. Maybe you're fine with the one you already have, as I keep trying to tell my son. Yeah. I'm telling you, old technology is great, man. Yeah. Get him an old Game Boy. I've actually got an old Game Boy. I'll send it up to you. Oh, wait. No. Oh, wait. I was going to say tariffs, but now tariffs are legal. They're illegal. Illegal now. Yes, we're good. Illegal. So yeah.

Oh my God. I found, I found my, my carrying case with all my SD cards in it last night. And I may have a terabyte worth of SD cards in there at least. So maybe I can just, I'll be, I'll be swapping. You know, just swap, swap, swap, swap. It's like, it's like, it's like SD cards of the new Zip Disc. Pretty much. Yeah. I love those Zip Disc. I think I still have one sitting around somewhere. Oh man. You know, I Omega was, the OEM for I Omega was Epson. All of those things

were actually made by Epson. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I did the first website for Epson in 1995 and the first Epson America. And as, as a perk, we had Zip Disc everywhere because they would just send us, send them to us. And we had the pre-release ones too. It was pretty cool. I wish I still had my PsyQuest drive though. That would have been great.

Well, let's go to a different bit of news here. Steve Bannon is being sued in federal court over an alleged, not alleged my ass, cryptocurrency scheme tied to a pro MAGA token called Let's Go Brandon coin or FJB. These guys are such assholes. Such assholes. Yeah. A class action filed in Washington, DC claims Bannon and associate Boris Epstein, different, no relation. No relation.

Different spelling. Yeah. Secretly took control of the token in 2021 without paying for it, then promoted it to retail investors while posing as neutral commentators. After public promotion on Bannon's podcast, the token's price spiked more than 260% in a day. Each transaction carried an 8% fee with 5% marked as charitable donations. Well, vacation fund. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously.

Going to Epstein Island. Epstein Island. The lawsuit alleges only about $15,000 ever reached charity. Well, roughly $2.7 million is unaccounted for. Look under Bannon's collars. He's got all those collars. He just stuffs money underneath them. Investors say a later wallet freeze, rebrand, and shut down, locked in insider control, and wiped out the token's value. Now, that's to say that the token actually ever had value because it's a cryptocurrency token. Yes.

Well, a little follow-up on Roblox here now. Los Angeles County is getting in on the action, and they're suing Roblox, accusing the platform of unfair and deceptive practices that allegedly exposed kids to sexual content grooming online predators, blah, blah, blah. The complaint says Roblox markets itself as a safe space for children while failing to implement strong enough moderation and age verification, yada, yada, yada. Roblox markets itself as a safe place for children,

and Tesla markets itself as self-driving. Oh, both got struck down in California now. Oh, yeah. Roblox says it strongly disputes the claims, yada, yada, yada. The county is seeking civil penalties and injunctions under California's consumer protection laws, marking the first state-level government lawsuit of its kind against the company because it sounds like somebody needs to make their rent payment because that's what this is. Yeah, they're just looking for a payday. The LA County is looking for a payday. It's like, oh, what are you doing,

guys? Tesla, speaking of, since you brought it up, Tesla keeps telling us robo-taxis are safer than humans, but the numbers are coming out of Austin and telling us a very, very different story. According to the NHTSA, data flagged by Electric, Tesla disclosed five new robo-taxi crashes in December and January alone, all involving Model Y vehicles operating autonomously in Austin.

The incidents weren't exactly high-speed chaos. Think like hitting fixed objects at low speeds, backing into things, and even getting hit by a bus while stopped, but they still count as crashes, as would any other, you know, Waymo, same thing. But that brings Tesla's robo-taxi total to 14 crashes since the service launched last summer. Now, based on Tesla's own earnings report, the fleet has logged roughly 800,000 paid miles. And if you do the math on that, that's one crash about

every 57,000 miles. Now, for context, Tesla's own vehicle safety report says the average U.S. driver has a minor crash every 229,000 miles. So in other words, Tesla's robo-taxis appear to be crashing at roughly four times the rate of humans. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked about that months and months ago, that the numbers seemed pretty skewy and pretty crazy and not that solid. So now that we're actually

getting solid numbers, we're finding out, oh yeah, maybe these things aren't as safe, or at least Tesla's. Yeah. And these are the ones they get caught for, you know, because before they were under investigation by the NHTSA because they were turning off the autopilot the millisecond before the crash happened. So they could say that, well, technically FSD wasn't engaged at the time of the accident, just at the time of the airbag deploy, but not by the time that it fully inflated. So we can't

count that one. Right. So yeah, way to fudge the numbers. Well, Tesla did just dodge a 30-day sales ban in California by finally dropping the word regulators have hated for years, which was autopilot. You mean the word that tells you that the car could drive itself because that's exactly what the word means and that's the way they're marketing it? That word? Yeah, that one. That one. Okay.

Yeah. The California DMV has been threatening to suspend Tesla's sales and manufacturing licenses over what it called deceptive marketing. No shit. The issue wasn't the software itself, but the names, autopilot and full self-driving, which regulators said made drivers think the cars could do far more than they actually can because people who buy Teslas obviously don't read the fucking manual or listen to our show. If I go to the bar and I walk around telling all the ladies, I have an eight-foot cock and I don't have an eight-foot cock.

That would be deceptive advertising. I'm saying those are my jokes, Brian. God damn it. I am channeling my energy. I'm channeling my inner Jason today. I feel dirty. Oh God. Well, Tesla has already labeled full self-driving supervision. I guess eight-foot cock supervised. So Brian, if you say you have a supervised eight-foot

cock. I was talking about the foul, obviously. Oh, sure. Like back at home, because chickens and eggs cost so much, I have an eight-foot cock. There you go. Okay. Well, yes. They changed it to full self-driving supervised, but kept using autopilot. Now I auto-cock. That's it. I'm stuck on auto-cock.

The auto-blow. Oh, the good old days. Oh, the auto-blow too. Yes. Oh, man. Dems was the days. Oh, boy. I remember trying to sell that thing at a, if you don't know what I'm talking about, that was the blowjob device that somebody had me test on the show. Not on the show, thank God.

No, no. I didn't do it actually on the show, for the show, but I had it and I was going to sell it. I was living with a friend of the show, MXV at the time, and we had a yard sale. It was like, and it was, it was like the, the whole neighborhood yard sale where everybody in the neighborhood is walking from house to house to house. And I put it out on the table. He's like, no.

Grabbed it. So you are not putting that, you're not selling that at the yard sale. Not like anybody would buy it. I would like to know the person that would buy a used blowjob device to begin with. And so we could move or at least label them as a predator. But anyway. Say what you will about the product, at least unlike Phil's self-driving or autopilot. It did what it said. It actually worked. Yes. No deception. No, I made it to my destination in one piece. How's that?

Oh, Jesus. Okay. Oh, let's move on to New York. Get yourself together. Brian, get yourself together. We're professionals for fuck's sake. We're professionals. Ah, well, New York just told robo taxis not so fast. Governor, Governor. Slow it down. Governor Kathy Holtschul has pulled a proposal that would

have updated state law to let autonomous taxis operate outside New York City. The problem is New York's vehicle code still requires a driver to keep one hand on the wheel at all times. What they do with that other hand is up to them. Up to them. Hochul's plan would have loosened that rule, but legislative support wasn't there. Oh, it's a day. It's definitely a day, Brian.

Okay. Okay. Well, Waymo can keep testing in New York City. Well, God, let's move on. Let's move on. Well, here's some serious news, Brian. Let's get serious here. We're into polymarket news now. All right. All right. Polymarket yanked a prediction market titled Artemis 2 explodes after it went viral and people understandably freaked out about betting on astronauts dying. The company said the contract was never about crew safety. Only a hypothetical booster stage

hardware failure. It's to me speak pretty one day. Hardware failure after separation, but the headline did all the damage. Now, polymarket tried a quick rename to Artemis 2 booster rupture and then pulled the market entirely refunding traders citing confusion over the outcome. Yeah, this is a great idea.

This bet on anything. When polymarket marketed itself by claiming it was legal sports betting, creating markets for things like military strikes and warfare and allowed people to predict if the NASA Artemis 2 rocket would explode and kill everyone on board. That all seemed fine. Okay. At least to Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin. But betting on the price of cryptocurrencies in five-minute intervals, that's a step too far. Oh, okay. Because that affects my bottom line. Yeah. He says,

they seem to be over-converging to an unhealthy product market fit, embracing short-term cryptocurrency price bets, sports betting, and other similar things that have dopamine value, but not any kind of long-term fulfillment or societal information value, he wrote. Let me tell you something, Vitalik. Nothing you are involved in or care about has any societal value. I'm just going to go out on a limb. My guess is that teams feel motivated to capitulate to these things because they bring, I use big words is what I'm

getting from Vitalik. I threw this into chat GPT because they bring in large revenue during a bear market when people are desperate, an understandable motive, but one that leads to corpo slop. Whatever the fuck that is. Corpo slop is something that AI slop invented, I believe. Let's pause real quick to linger on the fact that it is an understandable motive to want to extract money from desperate people. Just like fucking crypto. Let that wash over you and realize that that's their

fucking business plan. It's the business plan. Oh, greater fool theory in effect. He acknowledged that prediction markets basically require losers to operate and he's not opposed to people losing money. There's nothing fundamentally morally wrong with taking money from people with dumb opinions, but there still is something fundamentally cursed about relying on this too much. It gives the platform the incentive to seek out traders with dumb opinions and create a public brand and community that encourages dumb opinions to get

more people to come in. Exactly what Polymarket and Kalshi do. That again is the business model. Is the business model. I want to go check and see what the run rate is right now for us to attack Iran because I'm pretty sure we'll be able to find out from the insider traders when we're actually going to attack Iran. It's, it's, you know, it's coming soon. We're going to do it. So let's just figure out there. Like, and we got to check the pizza thing. Oh, we'll talk about the pizza thing later.

We'll talk about that one later. And Nevada is taking action against these prediction markets. The state's gambling regulators and attorney general sued Kalshi on Tuesday. They accused the company of bypassing Nevada law by operating a sports gambling market without proper licenses. In addition, they say they provide services to individuals under 21, which violates state law. Maybe they can get Roblox, uh, age check feature. Get no, there you go. Yeah. Cause you know, those are all working so well. Yeah, of course, of course Vegas is coming in and saying, hang on a second. This is our gig,

but unfortunately this comes a day after the Trump administration claimed that only the federal government has the right to enforce the industry, which he just pulled out of a fucking hat somewhere because where's that written in any law? Uh, they're, of course the businesses are saying they're event contracts and they should be regulated as financial investments rather than gambling. Quick note here, then regulate because you're not being regulated as financial markets

either. You're not being regulated at all. At all. The Trump administration, of course, has conflicts of interest in this area. Not coincidentally, prediction markets are growing part of the Trump family business. Donald Trump Jr. is a paid advisor to Cal Sheep. He's also an investor and an unpaid advisor to Polymarket. And in January, he announced on social media that he would launch

his own prediction market platform. So yeah, there's all that. Okay. Lovely. You know, you know, I'm not even going to go there. Never fucking mind. Never mind. Let's move on. You know what? All I have to say about any of that stuff is if, uh, if the UK can arrest a prince, we can arrest a wannabe king. There we go. There we go. Uh, well inside Jack Dorsey's block, the vibes are not

immaculate as they say. Who's right. I, I didn't even know. I, I, I, I see ads for, uh, it's not straight. What's the, what's the one that they use? Um, what the fuck are you using? Stripe? Not Stripe. Stripe is the other one. What the fuck is Jack Dorsey's company called? Used to be called before he changed it to block. I can't remember. Jesus. Next time I go get a coffee somewhere, I'll find it. Uh, after laying off hundreds of employees earlier this month with cuts that could

hit up to 10% of staff workers say morale is the worst it's been in years. Management is calling the firings performance-based, not cost-cutting, which isn't exactly landing too well. Employees are now required to send weekly updates to Dorsey who feeds them into generative AI for summaries because his beard was just too busy to read them all. Dorsey has doubled down saying some staff were phoning it in and that everyone needs to lean hard into AI or risk falling behind competitors. Jack, you know what

phoning it in is? It's when you feed all the feedback that you've asked for into AI. That's fucking phoning it in. That's phoning it in. Get on the fucking ground with your goddamn employees. You're phoning it in, you fuck. Yeah, yeah. No, because he fired all of his HR people, Brian, just released them, replaced them with one bot. One bot to fire them all. One bot to rule them all. Yeah. And it's stuffed in his fucking beard somewhere. Oh, God. Remember the old NFT gold rush, Brian, back in the day?

Oh, back when the tech news was just funny. Yeah, yeah. Well, I love this one. This is just a, this is a palate cleanser here, Brian. Justin Bieber dropped $1.3 million on a bored ape back in the day. But, you know, that was great. Yeah. You know, good for you. Uh, yeah. Guess what it's worth now?

Five bucks. 12 grand. 12 grand. You know, 12 grand if he can find somebody to buy it, which he's actually not doing because it would probably cost him more than 12 grand in his time to actually try and find somebody to buy the damn thing. So. Well, look, he saved a lot of time by performing at the Grammys without putting on pants. That's right. He couldn't afford pants because he put them on his bored ape.

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Brad, I've been a fan of Burt Kreischer for many a year. Until recently, the last couple of years, his stand-up has kind of gone downhill. And I've just been like, eh, you know, he's phoning it in. Maybe he should work at Jack Dorsey's company. At Block.

Square. Square. That's it. Thank you, Brian. Square. Thank you. Nice callback. There you go. Speaking of comedy, well, he has a six-part actual show on Netflix called Free Burt. Free Burt. Yeah. I was trepidatious, to say the least, to watch it. And my roommate and I just finally, we had nothing else to watch. All the baking shows were, you know, weren't recording for a couple more days. You know, Tournament of Champions hasn't started yet. Every cooking show on the

planet that we watch is not, it was out. So we watched Free Burt. After the first episode, we were in tears. We were laughing so hard. It is so fucking funny. The whole series, it's six parts, about 24 minutes, an episode. Watch it. You will fucking love it. I'm telling you right now, it is great. Then Cat Williams has some new stand-up, which is pretty funny because he addresses all of the crap that went down in the interview that, you know, the interview that no one will

ever forget if you are a Cat Williams fan. And oh my God, it's good. It's decent. I give it a solid B-plus because his last couple stand-up specials were definitely Cs. So it's nice to have Cat back. All right. Just on shows that I've been keeping up with, Shrinking remains decent. That horrible first episode seems to have been an anomaly. The Pit is fantastic. Star Trek, Starfleet Academy, I thought came back with a pretty good episode this last one.

You liked last night? Yeah, it wasn't bad. It was me. Okay. It was okay. Let's see. What did I do? I watched Shrek with a kid. He had never seen Shrek before. So we decided let's get into the Shrek-averse, as it were. I'm making waffles. I'm making waffles. And you know what? I remember our memory of that movie is better than the movie actually is.

Oh, too bad. I guarantee you. There are some funny bits, but it is not as laugh out loud, crazy funny as we remember it being. Okay. Well, I mean, the waffles line is that, that and the cat, those are the only two things that you got to remember. Antonio Banderas and Eddie Murphy made that movie, as far as I'm concerned, so.

There's a, well, actually, Antonio Banderas isn't even in the first one. There is no Puss in Boots. There's no Puss in Boots in the first one? No. Okay. Yeah. My memory definitely is failing me, so. Yeah. There is a, the really funny bit and the one that like killed us, all of us, we are, the whole family was just rolling on the, on the couch was John Lithgow and doing the, do you know the Muffin Man? The Muffin Man? The Muffin Man?

That was hilarious. My kid is really into Mark Rober. Well, he didn't know who Mark Rober was, but a bunch of I don't know who Mark Rober is. He's an ex-NASA guy that started a YouTube channel that, it's basically Mythbusters for YouTube. Like, it's all science and let's blow shit up and, and, but it's quite well done. Most of my kid's friends are on YouTube. We do not let our kid do YouTube. So it was

very, very great to discover that he basically has done a greatest hits series on Netflix. So he's got a bunch of different episodes. You do know Mark Rober, because Mark Rober is the guy that did the Tesla video a long time ago where he drove it. He was testing it and with the LIDAR and everything. So that's him. So he does a lot of stuff like that. And he's got a, he's got a whole little show on Netflix right now. So I don't have to go into YouTube

with the kid. There's two seasons of 21, 10 to 21 minute episodes. They're all great. They're, they're a lot of fun. I have a lot of respect for this guy. He does a really good job. You know, it's showing my age because it's definitely not, it's not as sciencey as I want it to be. It's definitely YouTube geared. Let's blow shit up. Let's, let's have funny jokes. Let's all that quick cuts, all that sort of stuff. But of all the things my kid

could be watching, I'm very happy with him. And I think you'd enjoy it too, Jason. It's a lot of fun. I've, I've seen it on the, it's come by the scroll, so maybe I'll check it out. Yeah. Um, cause also this week, uh, beast games had its penultimate episode on Amazon prime video and it was great, great cliffhanger. Uh, and tonight, oh, it's actually as soon as possible, humanly possible. Uh, the traders finale is happening. So I have to go see the traders finale. These are important things for me, Brian. These are very important things.

Traders this season has been incredible. I see a lot of a promo on the scroll for traders because I'm going into a, what is it? Uh, the Peacock app for the Olympics. We've been watching a lot of Olympics. Yeah. Yeah. No, there's, there's lots of, lots of traders from all around the world on Peacock. So the only reason I've got it right now. Peacock is gone as soon as the Olympics are done. Yeah. Yeah. As soon as, as soon as this season's of the traders is over, it's done. But, uh, March 5th, I believe, uh, traders Ireland starts up. So I'll be a bit torrenting that.

All right. I can't wait. Uh, legacy of monsters is coming back on Monarch legacy of monsters coming back on Apple TV on February 27th. So a week from today, I enjoyed that show. I I I'm happy about this. I enjoyed it too. I thought that is a little long in the middle, some parts, but you know, having the father and son play the same part I thought was genius. Uh, so that was, that was fun. And I thought it ended on a pretty good cliffhanger. So I don't remember what

it was, but yes. Yeah. Yeah. You'll, you'll, you'll, I'm sure they'll have an AI generated 20 minute recap. Can't wait. Can't wait for that. I did see the movie. Good luck. Have fun. Don't die this week. Oh yeah. The trailer looks amazing. I, I, I've been hearing a lot about it and then he put it in the show notes. I watched the trailer. I love the trailer. The movie is so fucking good. Okay.

So good. Sam Rockwell is insanely good in this movie. I have not seen a movie this good since everything, everywhere, all at once. Uh, that movie was also incredible and just out of left field, like crazy, like what the hell's going on? Same thing, but this is AI based. So AI phone culture, the whole nine yards. You, as soon as it, as soon as you can, Brian, it feels

very 12 monkeys. So it's very, I mean, teeny tiny little bit, very teeny tiny bit, 12 monkeys. Um, but it's yeah, dude, it is so good. It is so fucking good. I can't wait for it to come out on some sort of streaming because getting to, uh, getting to a theater with a kid and seeing an adult movie is next to impossible. There's this place, this land of Sweden you can travel

to where, where the movies fall from the trees magically. Um, uh, watching the Olympics. So do the blondes. Let me tell you. I'm sure. Uh, remember our friend Thomas Benjamin wild Esquire. I do. He did a, he did a fantastic song called I've no more fucks to give, which I linked in the show notes. He has a new song called stop using generative AI and it's very cute, very clever.

That is also linked in the show notes and I'm glad Thomas is back in the news with his new song. So I highly recommend checking those out. Yes. It's a great song. I was playing it with my wife around and she's laughed and sent along to everybody at universal music. Oh God. Oh me. Oh my. Do we want the arts to die? Cause there's not that killed them quite as quick as generative AI. Oh God. Okay. Was it the team that just made all the deals with all the generative

big eyes? Yeah. Stop team. Okay. Oh, bittersweet. Ops and doodads. So Brian, since I am in active bankruptcy court filings right now, I have decided to cut everything that I can that is a subscription based model because I could have a credit card in about 10 minutes. So, uh, I've been paying for obsidian, which is the, you know, the super ding dong

note taker, the, your, your second brain as they call it. And it cost me five bucks a month for the sync feature on it to sync to all my devices. And it's okay. I find myself not using it very much because the obsidian interface is fucking garbage. It's, it's just one long list. And every time you click on a note, it just opens in a tab and it's a pain in the ass to use. It's, it's fine. It keeps everything in Markdown, which is kind of nice, but I just wanted to go back to Apple notes because Apple

notes has been getting so much better. Every, every iteration, it gets so much better. It's such a solid app. I use it so many times for so many different use case scenarios. Unlike open claw, I actually use notes for a lot of things. It has a use. And now, uh, the note taking like on my iPad, I just open a new note and I can just draw graphics super easy. I don't have to like do, you know, regions or zoom or anything like that. I just open it up, draw a thing and save it and

it's done. And that was the game changer for me that I can just take my iPad with my Apple pencil and just make a note. I'm like, okay, we're done. We're done. But taking a folder full of folders, full of folders of Markdown files from Obsidian and importing them into Apple notes sucked. It did not work. It absolutely did not work. None of the formatting worked. It was just a nightmare. But so I found a little $14 piece of shareware called Obsidian to notes. Best 14 bucks I spent less than

three months worth of sync. And it just imported everything, kept my folder structure, kept the formatting. And it took about, I had about 500 or 600 notes that I needed to move over. And it did it in about 15 minutes because it does it just note by note by note. And it does, it does a very good job. So I highly recommend it if you're thinking of ditching Obsidian. Speaking of other things I'm ditching, Cursor, you know, uh, the vibe coding, uh, you know, poster child. This was a big deal. Yes.

So if you go to Jason.FYI, that entire thing was vibe coded in cursor with Claude code integration back when I paid for Claude code, which I don't pay for anymore, either anymore. Cause yeah, like I refer to the last five minutes. Um, so I canceled the $20 a month cursor subscription. And here's the funny thing. I canceled that before the bankruptcy thing started because they came up with this new model that they're using for like their, their basic free stuff or not free, the, you know, the basic

without having to put in a sideloaded one. I needed it to change. I, cause in the top of Jason.FYI, there's like the podcasts I'm working on. There used to be six. Now there's three. Um, since all my clients decided that they don't need podcasts anymore or went with somebody else, I just like move this from current to past. It had so much trouble doing just that one simple task. And it was making shit

up along the way. It's like, Oh, well, I see since you're moving it from current to past, that means that, uh, I'm just going to set the, where it said present, I'm going to set it to the current date, the year of 2025. So yeah, fuck you, cursor. You're gone. Bye. So I just installed visual studio code, which is free and, uh, I can just write code when I need to write code. Right. Uh, because I'm just telling

you, right. The fucking vibe coding thing is, it is getting, everybody says it's getting better and better and better. It gets you 94% of the way there. It's at 6%. That last 6% is pretty fucking crucial because I don't know if you know this, Brian, that makes it work with software. You kind of need to be a hundred percent before it will compile, run, you know, do all the shit that software is

supposed to do. 96% is not 100. I guess it's just not going to do it. Yep. Not going to do it. Well, according to Bloomberg, sources within Apple say the company is indeed working on an AI pendant that you can pin to your shirt or wear as a necklace, uh, conveniently forgetting about the fact that they don't have decent AI at all yet. Well, it's coming. They got Gemini now building with Gemini. So it sounds a lot like the pin formerly made by Humane. Of course, it reportedly has a

camera for computer vision, a microphone, so it can be operated by Siri and potentially a speaker so that you could have a back and forth rapport with Siri as well. Although that may not be happening. There's one thing that's different of course, and that's the fact that it won't have the guts inside of itself. It will rely heavily on an iPhone for processing, which includes a chip that is closer in computing power to AirPods than an Apple watch. Uh, so that's the route that they're going to take, which makes a lot of sense. And if, if you need or want one of those things, again, nobody

can really give me a good use case for it, but whatever. Yeah. Right. I want, I want to point something out to you. Yeah. See this, do this right here. Does all the same stuff. Same shit. My Apple watch is exactly the same shit. It talks to my iPhone when I need it to. I can talk to Siri on my, on my watch. I can have to do all the same shit. Why would I buy something with cameras?

It's basically, look, man, I've got a birth control personality already. I don't need to hang something around my neck that says, Hey chicks, don't fucking talk to me anymore. Okay. So yeah. Have you tried telling him you have an eight foot cock? Uh, no, but that's next on my list. It's supervised. Would you, I need a supervisor for my eight foot cock. Would you like the job?

Uh, they're also apparently working on smart glasses. Of course, uh, these will have two cameras, one for computer vision and another for pictures and videos. They'll reportedly have speakers and microphones allowing warriors to make calls, play music and snap pics and videos by using Siri. Both the smart glasses and the AI pin are tenuous to be clear. Obviously I think the pen, the pin is, is dumb. If you got the glasses, you don't need the pin. And I don't think anybody wants a pin anyways. We have seen that that does not work. So we'll see. Uh, I, I personally don't know

why Apple's going down either road. I don't think that they need to do either. And if they're going to do glass glasses, they've got to do, they've got to Apple it. It's got to knock it out of the park. It's got to be something irresistible that won't make Jason even less chance of getting light. Exactly. I, I, I don't need any more roadblocks, please. Please no more roadblocks.

He needs a paver. I do. Um, but I, you know, if I would love a pair of glasses with a decent display in them, that's all I care about. I want to be able to, you know, see things. If I ask something, I was like, show me, show me some displays, but I don't need another camera. And they're talking about cameras in AirPods now. No, I don't want those.

Don't want that. Yeah. No, I want less technology. I want less intrusive technology in my life. Please. I want things that have use cases that I'm actually going to use and need. That's all. Yeah. Yeah. And some people have been asking, this has been making, making the news. Uh, Apple podcasts in the next version of iOS 26.4 is going to have more video. So we could have this video on Apple podcasts. Well, here's,

there's two problems here. A almost none of our audience listens on, listens on Apple podcasts or watches on Apple podcasts. Very small subset of our audience. Most people listen to the show on overcast. And if you watch it, we've got it on YouTube now. And you know, I saw this, somebody posted this to our discord channel. I think it was, uh, I just, my, my $160 investment in four months in time has, has almost garnered me the first vegetable from my garden that costs 25 cents. That's,

that's how I feel about us doing video and YouTube right now. It seems to be the case. Yes. I bust my ass to make this video up for YouTube and it is not really doing anything for us except making me grow old faster. So when it comes to Apple podcasts and video, it gets worse.

It gets much worse because you have to host the video yourself with Apple podcasts. And they're only, they only have four different podcast providers or hosting providers out of the gate. One of them's art 19, which is where we host our audio podcast. Now the ad market has dried up so much. We used to get paid to host our podcast on art 19 this last month. We had to pay art 19 to host our podcast just for the audio version, which is the lowest bandwidth that I can actually put out there

to at least make the show sound somewhat decent. If you want the higher def version, go to Patreon three bucks a month, patreon.com slash gog. Now the video version, we'd have to pay for the bandwidth by ourselves for that. And anybody that has an Apple podcast video show is going to have to pay for that themselves, which means big corporations, big shows. Those guys are going to be the ones that do the video, which means they're going to have another leg up on the independent podcaster. Great. Just, just more fun for us. So fuck you, Apple. Sorry.

I agree. Oh wait, the next, the next story is mine. I don't get to huff and puff anymore. Here we go. Uh, and, uh, there's a new bit of internet shorthand making the round, which is AIDR short for AI didn't read. That's perfect. Okay. You know? Yep. Makes sense. Yep. I do enough TLDR. I don't need AIDR is just fine for me. And there's also another new term that's making the rounds. Uh, this is a, for the low grade panic that a lot of workers are feeling about AI eating their

jobs, even though actual job losses mostly haven't happened yet. And our bullshit press releases, which we've covered on the show for a couple months now. Well, researchers are calling it AI replacement dysfunction or aired, which is the noise you make when you get the pink slip. They hand you the pink slip and you go. So yeah. What was the sound the guy made on a six feet under when he

died? Oh, Narm. Narm. Oh God. Do you remember, uh, hot fuzz? The guy from hot fuzz? Yarp. Yarp. Aired Narm. Yarp.

I finished a book, Jason. It's called Cleave the Sparrow by Jonathan Katz. It is Jonathan Katz's first book. This is the strangest, weirdest, most bizarre book I think I've ever read in my life. I don't know how I found it. I don't know how it ended up in my Kindle. I don't remember any of it.

It is part dystopia, part magical realism, part real time, thinly veiled Elon Musk, Donald Trump, part fucking weird, man. It is weird. And I've got to say, if you rate your books by still thinking about it days after finishing it, have not been able to pick up another book because I just stop

and start thinking about whatever the fuck it was that I just read, this is one of those books. And I don't know if I liked it or not. Couldn't tell you that, but I'm still thinking about it. It got into your Kindle queue because I read it and reviewed it on the show.

And I had the same exact reaction to that book. That's how I got in my Kindle queue then. I don't remember you even talking about it. Man, it's weird. It leaves an impression. It absolutely leaves an impression. And I emailed Jonathan after I read the book and I'm like, this is the craziest fucking book I've ever read. And he's like, why, thank you. Here are a couple other books that you might want to read that I used for my, that I based my book on. And I'm like, okay. And I started reading those. I'm like, not as good as your book. So. Yeah. I think if you're listening, you should read this.

It's a, I fucking loved it. It is a, it is a head twister. It is a completely weird and awesome book. I really loved it. I really loved it. So. Okay. Mystery, at least the mystery solved of where I found it from and how I got in there. Okay. Yeah. It was a, it was a random Kindle unlimited, uh, recommendation for me. That's how I got it. So, uh, now speaking of books that I didn't love the Regicide report, laundry book files or laundry files, book 14 by Charlie Strauss.

Uh, could have done without it. Okay. Could have done without it. Could have done. I actually could have done without the laundry files after Bob left. Well, I have. Yeah. That's, that's where I took my exit. I read the first post Bob book. Did not care for it. Did not follow up after that. Now I've got, I do have to ask, is there a Bob wrap up in this? Yes, there is. Is it, is it worth reading the last chapter? No. Okay. It was, it was, it was supremely dissatisfying. It was a

supremely dissatisfying ending. It's an understandable ending, but it was supremely dissatisfying. I think so, uh, I was, I was bummed. I was really bummed. And it, it, it, it was one of those things where like his, his latest books, the last, the last run of this whole new regime books, it is chaos, chaos, chaos, story, story, story. And then three minutes of just unbridled wrap up. Right. And it's

just like, man, that was quick. It's like, it, it, it, they've, they've been like that recently. And it's, it's, I just don't like the style. I mean, that's, it's kind of become his, his trademark style, just the way that, you know, it's just the slow burn of all of this buildup and then done. It's like, uh, it kind of sucked. Um, well, I'll be skipping it then. Yeah, absolutely. There's no reason for you to go back and try and get caught up with that. Uh, cause they're, they're, you know,

they're hints to everything that happened to all of the other stuff that you won't understand if you haven't read the other books, which makes it pointless. So if you haven't been keeping up, don't worry about it. Uh, I did get a new book to cleanse the palate. Uh, normally weird and weirdly normal. My adventures in neurodiversity by Robin Ince. Now, Robin Ince is the co-host of the infinite monkey cage with co-host physicist, Brian Cox. And I love Brian Cox. Yeah. Brian Eightfoot Cox.

And I, the best video that Brian Cox did was he did the feather in the bowling ball experiment in a giant vacuum to like a giant vacuum chamber. If you've never seen that, go check it out. It's pretty awesome. Um, but this is his co-host. And I think this was a, uh, an audible recommendation.

Did I listen to it? Um, and since he's, he's an entertainer, he's been in entertainment for 30 years. It's a fantastic listen because he knows how to speak. Unlike most people who read their own audio books on audible, by the way, 1.5 X on audible gets you past any horrible reader. So there's the pro tip on that. Um, this is a fantastic book. If you're neurodivergent in any way, shape or form, because it will explain to you a lot of things that you probably forgot about or didn't

know you had or why you had them. Um, yeah. If you're just weird, it's a great book. It's definitely a great book. Uh, highly recommend it. Highly recommend it. I might actually read it twice. Although now I might go back and read Cleave the Sparrow again. Cause now you got me kind of, kind of hyped up about that one again. That was such a good book.

It's something. It's something. The dark side with Dave. Welcome back to the dark side with Dave with podcast superhost Dave Bittner. How is it? How's the weather out there? Is it freezing? It's freezing here. It's, it's cold. Okay. It's all relative. I'm sure. What is

it? A frigid 50 degrees where you are today? In my room, in my room, it's 55. So outside it's probably 60, but actually no, this morning it was 41 degrees when I walked the dog. But what pisses me off. I long for those temperatures. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Poor baby. What pisses me off though, is that it's so cold in here that I have to wear a hoodie so nobody can see my awesome hacker shirt. Cause this is an awesome hacker shirt, but I have to cover it up cause I'm freezing. Yeah. It's the, it's the, uh, glass. It's the, it's the apple

glasses. You have to worry about Jason. That's stopping you from getting laid. It's definitely you, Brian. It's definitely the glasses or the potential pin. That is, that is the problem. Shut up, Mr. Eight foot cock. Well, you come in late. I've walked in on the middle of something that perhaps I really don't want to know more about. Uh, it's 48 degrees here today and it is dreary and rainy. Uh, but we'll take it because it's washing away all of the dirty,

yucky, nasty piles of snow. Same here. So we have the exact same weather, Dave. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we're in for. So it was raining all week. So I finally got to watch the Muppet show and I have to say you guys were right. It was awesome. Thank goodness. Yeah. It really was. And I would have to quit the show if I hated the Muppet, the new Muppet show. He'd be like, I'm out. We'll quit the segment anyway. Uh, but yeah, I'm wondering

what's taking them so long to announce more. Uh, everything I've seen has been positive on the numbers on, and there's certainly rumors that they're going to make more, but no announcement yet. So who knows? But here's hoping. Yeah. I had just the right amount of Seth Rogen, you know, the Maya Rudolph bit was actually kind of funny. So that was good.

Yeah. And, and Sabrina Carpenter was fantastic. She, it was a, she was perfect for it. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. So absolutely fantastic. It might be a bit cause we do have the new CEO at Disney. So I'm sure that, uh, these decisions need to be made and he probably doesn't even have his new business cards yet, you know? So you gotta wait, gotta wait for these things. Uh, one thing that the Muppet show did was, uh, it has fired, uh, a love of the Muppets into my child's heart, which I'm very pleased about.

He never really got into them before. Since then we've, we watched, uh, one of the latest movies, Muppets most wanted, which was pretty good. And he's been starting to stream Muppets now, which I think we all agreed when it came out was fine. Not great. Right. Right. Fine.

Right. But he's really enjoying it. He's laughing hysterically on the couch. So I'm proud to say that, uh, my kid is a Muppet fan now. So that's great. All right. That's wonderful. That it's, it's a, it is no doubt a source of my subversive sense of humor came from the Muppets and, and the Sesame street. So I, it's wonderful to hear it's coming to the next generation. Yeah. And we finally got a real official trailer for the Mandalorian and Grogu,

not the Budweiser ripoff that we got during the Superbowl, which, uh, you know, looks good. We'll see. Yeah. Looks good. Yeah. I'm pleased. It looks appropriately cinematic. Uh, not doesn't just look like a TV show. So that's great. Although the line between those two things is getting skinnier and skinnier, but, uh, no, I'll be there opening weekend with, with my son, my wife, and we'll see it on the biggest theater we can and hope for the best. So, yeah.

Sadly, I will have to go to the theater too, to see that because I'm, I'm definitely in that it looked, it looks great. I can't wait. I cannot wait. It had, it had, it hit all the right notes for me and the action and tongue in cheek. And yeah, I can't wait. Absolutely. One thing I noted, uh, I thought it was interesting that, uh, the trailer plays off of some of the original star Wars soundtrack motifs, which the Mandalorian TV show conspicuously did not

do. Um, different licensing agreements. Maybe. Wow. It could be, could be. I don't know. It's a big movie. You got to hit the, you got to hit those notes. You got to hit that nostalgia. You got to hammer home. This is star Wars. I hope, uh, Amy Sedaris is back in it.

I do love her. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's back. Yeah. That's a good chance to go back and watch all the, the old episodes to get caught up. Cause that's one of the, I think that's when you could actually watch again. And it's been long enough where you won't even remember that much. True. Yeah. True. We old, we old, um, speaking of old Toy Story five trailer dropped. Did you guys get a chance to check it out? Yes. Uh, I've seen it about 900 times. Thanks to my kid. Yeah.

Hitting all the buttons. Yeah. Again, I'll be there opening weekend. Yes. Just so that I can feel something. Right. Yeah. I'm all, I'm along for this ride. Uh, I saw someone joke earlier this week that because one of the gags in the trailer is that Woody is so old, he has a bald

spot. Yeah. And they said, uh, if you saw toys, the original Toy Story in the theaters, chances are you too have a bald spot. And this is personal for me because. Yeah, me too. It's true. Yeah. So, uh, hit a little hard, but I will be there and I will let go and hopefully have all the feels and just have a couple hours away from the rest of the world. So they got

me. I know it's not a particularly controversial opinion. A lot of people have, I've kind of said the same thing. I always felt that Toy Story could have ended at the end of Toy Story three, that, that, uh, that was a perfect ending to the series that, uh, especially now as a parent, I cannot watch it without the room getting misty and my, um, but since we've continued on for the ride, I, I am, uh, since we did not stop there, I'm happy. I I'm thrilled with the storyline. I'm

really interested to see what they do with the digital toys versus the, the, uh, traditional toys. And, uh, yeah, I'll, I'll be there opening day as well. Absolutely. Yeah. So speaking of the bald spot thing, it's so funny. There's a, I have to go to my recovery meeting on Wednesday mornings.

I used to stop at this drug store or not drug store, the gas station right next to the, the room. And, uh, I had to stop going there because the security camera set up is you see your monitor, there's monitors right in front of you, but the camera is right over the back of your head. So you are confronted with your, your decrepit body aging shit just to buy a pack of mints. And I'm like, I did not sign up for this, sir. So if he was a smart marketer, he'd have a whole thing of

Rogaine right there. Right. Exactly. Seriously. I don't come in this. I don't come here to be humiliated. Where do you usually go? Uh, yeah. Uh, I'm with you. There's Muppets humor coming out there. I'm with you. I, uh, I, I have managed to create, uh, a haircut and style that looks the way I want it to look from straight on. And so I don't need to see it from behind. Uh, okay. Being blissfully

ignorant about that and pretending like it is different than it actually is. Yeah. Us and Kevin Smith. He does the same thing. He looks like he has normal hair, but he turns a little bit off camera. Oh my God. There ain't nothing left. Ain't nothing up there. Yeah. Uh, baseball hats in my future. Yes. Not ashamed to say it. I'm, you know, vanity is, is a real thing. And, uh, so also denial of the aging process and I'm experiencing all of those. So never underestimate the power of

denial. That's right. Uh, Lema wrote in, you all mentioned that there used to be a theory about increased pizza deliveries being an indicator of global happenings. They've revived that for today's world. And I'd be happy to hear that it is now integrated with Polymarket. Oh, great. Disgusting earlier. Uh, but we do have the Pentagon pizza index at pizza int dot watch. They may be a little off now scanning the DC area pizza places because the Venezuela stuff happened at Bar-a-Lago.

So the pizzometer didn't really budge some decent, uh, feeds though. Um, so yeah, it, it, it exists. There's a site for it and you can track it, which is great and bet on it. Of course. Yeah. I'm sorry. You're not betting their financial transactions. Oh, is that right? That's, that's how Polymarket gets around it all. That that's their bullshit line. Yes. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, I'm going to tell you right now, we were talking about, uh, how soon till we, uh, bomb Iran. And right now, three of the

pizza joints have spiked right now. We have, we have major spikes going on from extreme pizza. We, the pizza. Great fucking name. And, and Papa John's. I, I, I, to, to, uh, Laima's point who wrote in, what we might actually need is a McDonald's tracker near Mar-a-Lago. And I think that might be more.

Right. And, uh, diaper delivery service. Yeah. Um, I don't know if either of you guys have 3d printers. Uh, I'm assuming probably plenty of our listeners do. So I'm just going to throw that out there. It is all the rage at my kid's school right now. His cousin has one, one of his best friends has one. So if anybody has a recommendation for an entry level 3d printer for a kid that won't necessarily break my bank or, uh, make me go nuts. I mean, I'm cautiously

kind of interested in playing around with one myself. Uh, the model that both of my kids' friends have is the bamboo lab a one, which has link in the show notes. Um, I don't, I don't nothing about this stuff. So I'm going to have to start researching a little bit, but, uh, you know, anybody let me know. I have, I have been so intentional about not buying a 3d printer and not going down that rabbit hole because I don't need to. And I have another, I have enough other

things. I have the ham radio thing. I have, you know, I've, I've spun back up my solar panel project. So I've been really, uh, deliberate about just not learning about 3d printers and not following them. Um, for a while here in the office, one of the other startups here had three industrial 3d printers that were the size of refrigerators. They were just, yeah,

they were spitting stuff out of, and I, that was, um, you know, I was my, the temptation for me was to come in at off hours and print out my storm trooper. Yeah. But I, but I never did. So, uh, yeah, I, good luck. I'm curious to know what you find out, but, um, there's been no call for it

from my son who's older. He's 19. Um, so it's a curiosity. I think it's interesting. Um, how many, when I, when I go to things like, um, craft shows, uh, how many booths there are now with people who have just been 3d printing things. And some of them are really cool, you know, and this is the normal stuff you'd expect like little dragons and octopus and things like that, but also, uh, millennium

falcons and all the, all that stuff. And, uh, I feel as though 3d printing is kind of followed some, a similar path that inkjet printing did. Remember the first inkjet printers were just about good enough. I mean, they were only black and white and they weren't really that great and they were slow and then they got faster and then they could do color and, and, you know, all that happened. And I

feel like 3d printers have followed a similar sort of thing where now they have colors and they're way more precise than they used to. And they screw up a lot less than they used to. And so kind of like AI screws up a lot less now. It's funny here. There's a, there's a quick juxtaposition here as I'm looking at these show notes. I used to work with a guy named Chris Perillo and every now and again, I check in on him and you know, I saw a feed from him where he was at his day job, which was

sitting there monitoring a bunch of industrial 3d printers like to make a living. So now I see that there's another link from going from 3d printing to Dave, you put in a link to perillo.com. This is very strange. I'm having weird deja vus here. Huh? Okay. Well, uh, this is, uh, in a star Wars centric RSS feed.

That I thought, uh, well, at least one of us might enjoy. So someone has collected all things star Wars and an RSS feed and themed it appropriately. So if that is your thing, you might enjoy this as a spacey sort of, uh, background. Very nice. Uh, and then, uh, speaking of RSS feeds, this caught my eye. It's a RSS reader called current and they've come up with a

different way of prioritizing news that I think is intriguing. And I'll read this. It says, each article has a velocity, a measure of how quickly it ages. Breaking news burns bright for three hours. A daily article stays relevant for 18. An essay lingers for three days. An evergreen tutorial might sit in your river for a week. As items age, they dim. Eventually they're gone,

carried downstream. You don't mark them as red. You don't file them. They simply pass the way water passes under a bridge. As sand through the hourglass. So days of our lives, I find it. That's oddly compelling. Uh, thank God they didn't mention AI as part of their pitch. So, well, right. I'm sure under the hood maybe something like that is going on, but there's something peaceful about this notion of

news automatically aging out and, and moving along, not, not, uh, gumming up the works that there's a reader that just automatically disposes things based on time and importance and that sort of thing. So I thought it was interesting. So check it out. Yeah. It's an interesting concept. I like it for normal news readers. It would absolutely not be good for what we do here at the show.

I could not do, I could not run my news gathering on something that timed out. I need to see, I need to see when things happened and what the groupings are between all of the different sources that I follow to make sure that it is actually relevant. And then we could put it in the show notes and actually talk about it on the show. So, and God, if I see any more news, I just, I can't take any more news. I'll revisit this once we've revisited democracy.

I was just talking to a friend this morning, uh, who was saying, I think something we've heard a lot of folks say lately, which is I'm trying to stay away from the news or I'm trying to limit my access to the news. And Jason, to your point, I don't have that luxury. Yeah.

Which I think is kind of what you're saying as well. Like that I have to, I have to keep up with it. And so it's horrible, find ways to, to, um, deal with that, to, to be able to have other ways to recharge my soul. If you figure that out, let me know. I will. Cause the news is relentless.

Um, I, I put a here link in here to a YouTube video, uh, that someone forwarded along to me that said, this is horror in under two minutes. I hate you for putting this in there, Dave. I really do. I fucking hate it. That was my reaction as well. I don't like horror as a genre generally, as I've, I think I've said here

multiple times, I have a hair trigger, startle reflex. So yeah, I was going through, but the first thing, uh, I was afraid of with this two minute video was where's the jump scare? Where's the jump scare? Uh, it's more of a psychological horror kind of thing. It's horrible. And it's really, it's really disturbing. Oh, I can't wait to see it now. It sounds great. It's really disturbing.

It ruined a good hour plus for me. Yeah. It's just two minutes. Well, it's one of those, it lingers. Okay. Believe me. Yeah. It lingers. It's remarkably successful, right? Yes. People who made this made, uh, a horror story in under two minutes that sticks with you and leaves you thinking about it. So hats off to them, but it's just not my favorite genre. It's as effective as

what, what was the, uh, the six word horror story? Uh, yeah. For sale, baby shoes, never used. Oh, right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then finally to, uh, kind of kick things up a notch. Uh, I came across this YouTube account of this gentleman, uh, who I believe is German, which totally tracks, uh, and he does impeccable covers of eighties synth music, impeccable covers

like they sound like the originals. Um, what actually, uh, one of my coworkers, uh, sent this over because we were, um, we used the theme from night rider in a recent cyber wire episode. Cause there was a story about automated cars and things. So copyright theft. Well, and we, yeah, yeah, we'll get a copyright strike, but, um, that we, we, we came across this guy's cover of the night

writer theme, which again, impeccable. But the one that really, uh, made me smile was he does a cover of the, uh, top gun opening theme, the title sequence from the movie, you know, when the, when they're prepping the jets to take off, the Harold. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But in the movie, how do I remember that? Yeah. The version in the movie is much better than the version on the album,

on the soundtrack album, because the version on the soundtrack album pretty much immediately goes into the guitar solo and just, it's called the top gun anthem, I believe. Um, but the version on the movie just stays with the kind of subtle synths while they're doing stuff on the, on the deck of the aircraft carrier. And that's what this cover is. It's that more subtle, dreamy kind of music. Um,

and it's, it's the part, it's a thing that I wish was on the soundtrack. I don't know about you guys, but I often find myself frustrated when the soundtrack differs from the film in a significant way. Absolutely. And this is one of those occasions of that, where what I really wanted on the soundtrack was the version that this guy makes in this cover, which to me is way better than what's actually on

the soundtrack album. So check it out. Enjoy. I will. Let me know what you think. You know, Dave, this is not a, this is at least the third, maybe the fourth, uh, YouTube channel that you posted that involves synths and, and older synths and things of that nature. And, uh, I have to say like we, you've got your ham radio and you've got your stuff and I, my child is still young enough that I do not have the luxury of having weird hobbies and things to do that. I just don't have that sort

of time yet. My hobby is now going to be learning about 3d printers because my kid wants it to be his hobby. That's the stage I'm at right now. I can see, uh, once, once my child has, has gotten a bit older and I have that sort of time and money to do my own hobby again, I'm a hundred percent going to be like collecting weird old synths. That is absolutely what I'm going to do. Cause every time I see these channels, it's not the music. I'm like, Oh my God, what's he using? Oh, look at

that. Ooh, I want one of those. Yes. Yes. Again, I, that is another one I've been avoiding. Same with 3d printers because I could totally go down that path. Um, in fact, I was, uh, we were, I was trading some messages with, uh, our audio editors. Um, and we were talking about, um, do you guys remember the Porta studio? Oh yeah, I had one. Okay. All right. Well that my comment to, uh, the guy, our editors

was I, when I was in high school, a buddy of mine had a Porta studio and I was, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Right. I couldn't afford one. Uh, but just the whole idea that you had four whole channels to mix with cassette tape and you could make the tape run faster. So it sounded better.

And, uh, you know, these days unlimited tracks on your phone. So it's just different. But, uh, one, actually one of the guys was telling me that, um, uh, evidently the, um, the preamps on the port,

on the port of stool studio, port of studio, easy for me to say are highly coveted by people who are into analog stuff. They have their own sound and people, uh, and so they become collectible and therefore expensive. Expensive. Yes. These are the rabbit holes. I intend to go down in my old age.

No, no shame, no shame there. But the other part of that story is that when we were, for me anyway, when I was, you know, high school, college age and the DX seven first came out, uh, I think a lot of us thought, well, if I can save up enough money for a DX seven, I'll be on hammer. Right. But what we

didn't factor in is that you need, you needed a multi-track recorder. You needed a external reverb. You needed talent compressor. Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. The talent was assumed, but, uh, yeah, just all the support stuff that you would have needed, which again is baked into all the tools now. Just they're just part of it. So, you know, what a,

what a great time to be a creative kid who wants to make music. Yeah. Although I, I do find it overwhelming. That's, that's the other side of it. When you have unlimited options, you sit there like, yeah, constraints are good. Constraints are good. And then that's, uh, to my mind, that's why music was so much better back then, but that's also just being old. I agree. Yeah. I agree. All right. Well, I feel the need, the need for speed. So, uh, I'm

going to run along and, uh, I'm still on that highway to the danger zone. There you go. We'll see you next time. Over at Patreon, we've got no new subscribers, boo, but Alistair's are up their pledge. So thank you very much. And we'd also like to say thank you to Dan Brody, Mark Taylor, Mike, Steve, Chris Conejo, his enormity, the Marquess of Chipping Sudbury and Jacks of Diamonds. Thanks everybody.

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review. Weekly updates of topics us geeks like. Entertaining content with the right level of snark from experienced geeks. They know how to deliver it because they lived it, or at least RTFM. Yes, those two are a rarity of these current times, and actually are patrons of Printed Word Media. Yes, we are.

So thank you very much, unnamed reviewer. Unnamed reviewer. Uh, so we lost a few people this week. We lost the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Now, I put this, I put the link in here. If you've never seen Jesse Jackson reading Green Eggs and Ham, you have to. You absolutely must.

It is a palate cleanser for these horrible times we live in. You do not like Green Eggs and Ham. I do not like them. Sam, I am. I could not, would not on a boat. I will not, will not with

a goat. It's, it's wonderful. It is absolutely wonderful. Yes. And we lost Robert Duvall, who I was never a huge fan of because when I was young, I was made to watch The Great Santini. And that is a really shitty movie for a kid to watch. So it kind of soured me on him. I, I, I, I, I respected the talent, but, uh, yeah, he had a good run. He had a very good run.

95. That's a very good run. We should all be so lucky. Indeed. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason Filippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 734. 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. 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'll love you for it. Or swing by GOG.show

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