735: We’re Walking on Sunshine

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

BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. 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. Brian, you missed the bus on this one. I'm sad to say. So, a 37-year-old tax economist dumped his entire $342,000 life savings into Cauchy prediction markets, betting that federal spending would keep rising despite Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency promising to slash waste and balance the budget.

Well, we've talked about you betting on Elon's downfalls for a while, and this guy beat you to the punch because he won. He got, he cashed out of roughly $470,000, pocketing $128,000, which is about a 37% return on the downfall of Elon Musk.

I mean, that's a hell of a bet to put your entire life savings out there, but a pretty strong one, as we've talked about a lot on this show, everything that Elon says is bullshit. Everything he touches turns to a poop emoji. It kind of does. So, you know, good for this guy. You know, here's a win. It's very funny.

It makes the news because everybody's down on Elon right now, as they should be. But, you know, I just, where are all the stories about people that have lost their life savings? Because we're going to start hearing a lot of those. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. They're out there. This is not good. And once we actually have a sane government, this shit's going to get regulated until it's gone.

Gone. Gone, daddy, gone. Yeah, we've got more stories about that coming up. All right. Well, I've got some more stories about Elon right now. Some more follow-up. Tesla is still on the hook for the $243 million verdict after a U.S. judge rejected the EV maker's bid to overturn the jury verdict from last year.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom upheld the jury's decision to hold Tesla partially responsible for a deadly crash that happened way back in 2019 and involved the self-driving autopilot feature. You know, the one that California said you can't use that name anymore because it doesn't autopilot, it auto-kills.

It's more Decepticon than Autobot. Yeah. I never even watched the damn show or the cartoon, but I just know the sound. Anyways, I mean, this is Elon's playbook, right? So he gets sued, he loses, he counter-sues, and eventually the counter-suit gets tossed out of court.

That's what he does. He just tries to keep things in court all the time. Anytime he loses something, he has to counter-sue against it, and he's doing it again because, as we just talked about, in California, the California's DMV basically said, you cannot use the term autopilot in full self-driving to sell cars.

They won a case on that. Tesla was forced to clean up its marketing language or risk a suspension of its sales license. But, of course, Elon did what Elon does, and he's suing them back right now. So if you want to bet on something on Cal sheet, if Musk has been sued, bet on a counter-suit.

Bet on the counter-suit, yep, yep. Well, he's just taking a page out of his Cheeto friend's playbook, you know? I know. Just keep him in court. Keep him in court. So they filed a complaint on February 13th alleging that the DMV wrongfully and baselessly called Tesla a false advertiser, even though they are basefully and, quite correctly, false advertising the autopilot.

Yeah. Yeah. And he also said it was unconstitutional. What? Because why the fuck not? If you're making shit up anyways, you got to fucking go for the fences, man. I'd say shoot for the moon, but let's shoot for Mars.

Let's shoot for Mars. No, no, no. We, we, we, moon now. Oh, that's right. We dialed back Mars. We're going to the moon. We're going to the moon. To the moon. Oh, last week we talked about Jack Dorsey and Jack Dorsey's beard and his Jack Dorsey's beard's AI. And we couldn't even remember the name of his company.

Remember? Yeah. That is so far out of public consciousness these days. We could not remember. But then I just go, oh yeah, he's a blockhead. Bingo. Yeah. Yeah. And Square was, Square is the subsidy under that, that you get to every coffee shop and barista known to man knows how to use a Square terminal.

Did I tell you the story? I think I may have shared this on the show. Actually, they don't always know how to use them. Yeah. Did I tell you the story about when my dad went to go get coffee and the Square terminal broke and the girls couldn't figure out how to make change for a $20 bill? You did, yes. Yeah. And that's how bad we've gotten us. And no wonder we have the government we do.

And that was pre-AI. Right. Just, just, just, you know, roll that one up and smoke it. Well, Jack has finally pulled the, pulled the bandaid off the beard and he is going to cut 4,000 jobs at Block, slashing the company from over 10,000 employees to under 6,000.

Under 6,000. Brian, I don't know what they're going to do with just under $6,000. Well, they're going to spend all that money because the stock popped 24%. Which is a sad indictment on the state of the stock market right now, because this is what's, what's, you're rewarding just fucking firing people.

Hey, the Dow's $50,000, Brian. It's over $50,000. Screw your liberties. Yeah. So Dorsey framed Thursday's cuts is proactive, even empathetic, because he said it's so demoralizing for the, for them to, you know, just eke out the, you know, the firings.

And see all the corpses of their, their fallen comrades on the floor. Like, let's just clear the decks. Let's just clear everybody out. Now, here's the thing. This is the first time that they're actually, that people are backing up their firing claims and saying it's because of AI. So Block CFO Amarita, oh, yeah.

So the cuts will position the company to move faster with smaller, highly talented teams using AI to automate more work. So far be it for me to call Jack and his beard a fucking liar, but bullshit. Well, Jack used AI to get rid of these 4,000 people, remember?

So technically he is using AI, you know? So, yeah, no, I don't think that's the case. I think the problem is, because we could not even remember the name of the company, Block, things haven't been going well over there. That's the reality. Square has already, it's got as much market share as it's going to get.

There's no growth there to be had. That's done. What else has he got? Not much. I think he, I think that Block had overhired, as they do, because they were expecting a lot of gains. The gains never happened. And now you've got way too many employees and not a hell of a lot of business.

Yeah. Well, you also have to remember, too, Block is named after the blockchain, and we're in the middle of the worst crypto downturn ever. Yes. So things are not going well. You can't support 10,000 employees. What you got going on? So maybe he's just using AI as a cover. Exactly.

Because the crypto market has just tanked and all of his, basically his investment in crypto has just halved in the past couple months. Look, I've been wanting to kind of mention this for a while, that Jack Dorsey's kind of gone off our radar recently. He's a horrible CEO.

A lot of these guys are. Oh, I will, yes. And that's the real problem here. If you think back to Twitter, and if you listen to our show for a long time, you've heard me talk about this forever. At the time, Twitter's market share and mind share was so far above and beyond what they actually were compared to other social media networks.

They didn't have the amount of people on them. They didn't have the engagement on them. They didn't have all the features, and they weren't even trying to do new features. But somehow, Twitter was the go-to for everybody. It had the right people on it in terms of reporters and celebrities. It had the right lack of features that made it super simple, easy to use.

It was used in late-night bits. It was on every billboard everywhere. It was, you know, the Twitter handles for things. Yep. How do you fuck that up and Jack manage because he's a shitty CEO? Any real CEO, anybody that had been trained, had gone to, you know, business schools, had put in the work, had known what to do, would have been able to do something with Twitter other than sell it to another shitty CEO.

Well, you have to remember what Jack started out as. He was just a coder in the back room. He was one of us. And Twitter was a side project. Yeah, he is on the spectrum with the rest of us. He does not belong in the C-suite. I'm sorry. Yeah. He doesn't have the narcissist gene for it. Are we surprised that he's not running Blockwell either?

Duh. No. He doesn't know what he's doing. No. Well, a little more AI news before we actually get to the news, a little more follow-up. Goldman Sachs just threw out some cold water on the AI hype cycle saying all that massive spending on artificial intelligence.

I'm stuttering over my words because this is just such a fun story. That all the spending on artificial intelligence added basically zero to U.S. GDP growth last year. All those gazillions of dollars that were being spread around did not meaningfully add to the GDP.

Yep. They spent hundreds of billions of dollars. And this year they're saying they're going to spend $700 billion, which I call bullshit on. There's not $700 billion to go around right now, especially with open AIs, you know, in the ring. They don't have the money. They just don't. Show me the money. Show me the money.

In my mind, I just see this graph. And it just goes straight up like that. And you know what it is? It's time, you know, since we were in tech. Yeah. And the bullshit hype over all these stupid fucking technologies that we've dealt with.

Push technology. A little bit of hype. Oh, blockchain. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. We're going to spend so much money. So much hype. NFTs to the fucking moon. And now, crypto. Oh, my God. Blockchain. Bitcoin. And now we're at fucking AI and people have gone apeshit motherfucking mad.

And this is all. We don't want it. We don't need it. It fucking sucks. And it's doing shit for us, except firing people. But it's here to stay. I know. It's not going anywhere. It's too big to fail now. There's too much money in it. Too many billionaires are involved and too much of their money is in it.

And we're never getting out of this shit. The thing is, it's going to be consolidated in the next year or two. Open AI, I think, is going to go the way of the Dodo. They have overextended themselves. Anthropic is probably going to win the business category with Claude. I still fucking hate the name Claude.

Hey, my name's Claude. It reminds me of Joe Pesci. And he's like, they fuck you with the AI. They fuck you with the prompt. That's what they do. Yeah, they fuck you with the Claude. And Google's going to win. Absolutely. They are just tearing it up right now.

Well, they're swimming money. They do. That's the thing. They've got the money to actually back it up. And they've also got the technical chops. And Meta is going to step on their own dick time and time and time again. That $200 million hire that they just had just left because it sucked at Meta and went to open AI.

So he's just bouncing paycheck to paycheck to get all the monies he can. And he'll probably end up at Google. Probably. And what's the playbook? It's the Uber playbook. It's the spend the most money to drive everybody else out of business. And if you've got the most money, you're going to win. Yeah.

And that's what Zuckerberg's like, you know, planning on. But it didn't really work with the Metaverse. And let's see how it's going to work. This guy has never had an original idea in his fucking life. So why do you think now he's going to like just magically spend his way out of it? He's not. But, you know, he's spreading the money around.

So take it while you can get it, I guess. Anyway, let's get back to this. I just want to clear this up here. So, yeah, the popular narrative has been that AI investment is juicing the economy. And even President Donald J. Cheeto has argued that AI is making the U.S. economy the hottest in the world, but that state regulations could choke off that growth.

Whatever. Some economists backed that up, pointing that big spikes in information processing equipment and software as major contributors to GDP. But, but Goldman's chief economist, Jan Hatsius, says, not so fast, brother. A lot of that AI hardware, especially the advanced chips, are imported.

So in U.S. companies by processors from Taiwan or South Korea, that spending shows up in those countries' GDPs, not ours. Ah, but tariffs, Jason. Tariffs. Yeah, well, we know how that ended up. Yeah. They're going to pay for them. Yeah. And in a survey of nearly 6,000 executives, about 70% said they're using AI, but roughly 80% of that 70% reported no meaningful impact on jobs or productivity.

So way to go, guys. It's just a firing mechanism. That's all AI is.

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Shopify can help you build upon it. Start your free trial on Shopify.com. In the news. Well, let's talk about Sam Altman for a minute because, boy, did he step on his thing.

He stepped on his orb? He stepped on his orbs? At last week's India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, industry leaders convened to discuss the future of artificial intelligence and how best to squeeze it into the parts of your life you haven't even considered or ever wanted. Also in attendance was OpenAI's Sam Altman, who earned numerous headlines over the course of the event for his words and antics.

He started off by saying the claims about chat GPT consuming 17 gallons of water for each query or whatever are completely untrue, totally insane, and have no connection to reality before qualifying that, okay, maybe it was a valid concern when his company used to do evaporating cooling in data centers.

Okay. He went on to say that there is a fair concern about the amount of energy data centers eat to crank out the most soulless slop you'll ever see, but suggests that the onus of responsibility for dealing with AI's ravenous appetite falls to the energy sector itself, which Altman feels needs to move towards nuclear or wind or solar very quickly to give us the power for the shit that nobody wants.

Great. But it gets better, doesn't it, Brian? Oh, it gets better. He then stunned the crowd and firmly re-entered the discourse with a mind-blowing truth bomb for those who still felt AI was consuming too much energy. It also takes a lot of energy to train a human, Altman rejoined.

It takes like 20 years of life and all the food you eat before that time before you get smart. And not only that, it took like the very widespread evolution of the 100 billion people that have ever lived and learned not to get eaten by predators and learned how to figure out science and whatever to produce you, and then you took whatever you took.

So, if you compare a chat GPT query asking whether you can stick this up your butt or not and the amount of energy required, it really isn't that much compared to all of human evolution, Jason.

I'm so glad he cleared that up for us, Brian. I am so glad he cleared that up for us. Social media quickly took to roasting the remarks as dystopian and deeply antisocial and anti-human. Now, just to go back to him talking about, you know, how all the specific amounts being thrown around the 17 gallons of water for each query or whatever being completely and totally untrue.

We have no way of knowing this because there are no regulations in place requiring data centers to disclose their water and energy consumption. Center employees and business partners are typically muzzled by nondisclosure agreements. So, even if they wanted to tell us, they can't tell us because of companies like, oh, I don't know, open AI.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, great. Great. We need whistleblowers. We need whistleblowers. But there's no, there's no water left to whet their whistle, Brian. Whet. Whet. Oh, I'm sure a lot of people don't realize that when you say whet to your whistle, it's W-H-E-T.

Yes, I'm sure they don't. But, you know, if they ask chat GPT, they can get the right answer. Exactly. It takes 17 gallons to wet my whistle, says chat GPT. And it's still, oh, we do seem to have spelled that wrong. My apologies. We'll make sure we note that for the future.

Yeah. And then they go to spell it. I spent 17 times on new, I didn't even get the new nano banana, but I spent 17 times trying to get nano banana to create this background today in 1080p, 1920 by 1080.

And it just kept giving me squares. And I kept saying, no, you're wrong. And it's like, you're right. Let me try that again. It would just give me the same fucking square over and over and over and over again. So I probably went through 400 gallons of water until I took it into another program and said, here, make it like this. Yeah. This is also useful, though. I mean, it's very useful.

It is. It is. I'm glad we're banking the entire world economy on it. It's fantastic. I'm going to bet my life savings on Kalshi on that AI is going to fucking fail. Oh, I wouldn't take that bet. I would not take that bet. Anthropic has been in the news this week because of the dust up with Dario Amadai and Pete Hegseth, two people I would definitely not like to be stuck in an elevator with.

So Anthropic just told the defense secretary to go pound sand because the Pentagon reportedly demanded the company strip out safeguards, blocking mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, giving them a Friday deadline and threatening to label Anthropic as supply chain risk or even invoke the Defense Production Act.

By the way, I just want to stop for one second to point this out. The only two things that Anthropic said you cannot do, mass domestic surveillance in the United States, you can't do that, and fully autonomous weaponry.

That's it. That's all we're saying you can't. Anything else is fair game. Everything else is fair game. Whatever else you want to do, fine. But we have our limits, and those two, which are pretty fucking extreme, we're saying no to. And that's a no-go for Kegsmith. Yep.

So they, and even this week, Anthropic has decided to, like, pull back some of their safeguards, and they're just like, yeah, we were a little over-heavy-handed. You know, we're the safety AI company, but we don't need to be that safe, if you know what I'm saying. Oh. So, yeah, they put out a press release last night.

Dario Amade put it out, saying that, yeah, we're not going to do that. We're going to stick to our guns. And by the way, Pete, Pete Kegstand, you are contradicting yourself by saying that we are, are we integral to U.S. security, or are we, you know, a threat to U.S. security?

You can't have both. They're contradicting statements that you're making. So, what the fuck, dude? Yeah. But, you know, at least I would say good for Anthropic to sticking to their guns, even though I think this is just a fucking PR maneuver. Yeah. Well, Kegstand sat there for a few seconds, stroked his chin, then he lifted about 800 pounds or some bullshit, and then drank some milk in a hot tub with Kid Rock.

And then once he got out of that, he, oh, that was the other asshole. Sorry. That's the other guy. And they ate a dead whale and it was strapped to their car. Well, he thought for a couple seconds, which really exhausted him because he's not used to it, and wondered, well, what AI company would be willing to do whatever the fuck?

Because they have no scruples whatsoever, and they landed quickly on GROC. Oh, of course. So, the U.S. Department of Defense has reportedly reached a deal to use Elon Musk's GROC in its classified systems. Yeah. According to Axios, that follows news that the Pentagon is, well, yeah, all the other stuff that we just talked about.

So, last year, they ordered GROC, along with ChatGPT, Gemini, and Anthropics Claw to be approved for government use. Up until now, it's only been Anthropic, but since they've had this kerfuffle, they're turning to GROC, which should be great because...

Wait, you said the Department of Defense in here, and I think there's a lot of people that are contradicting each other right now in the news. Yes, there are. Because it's the Department of War now, isn't it? Hasn't it been relabeled, the Department of War? Well, yes, it's been relabeled in that they put up a sign for a photo op.

Okay. But then they realized that changing the letterhead was going to be too expensive, and then there's all those business cards. The business cards haven't arrived, yeah. I mean, who needs it? Like, we've told everybody it's the Department of War. That's good enough, right? Yeah. We took the picture. Yeah, the Gulf of America, Department of War.

Yes, yes, yes. And we would put Trump in front of everything temporarily for their picture, and then we'd take it down. It's fine. Yeah. Well, let's move on to some more shitty news. At least 30 cities have dumped Flock Safety, the AI surveillance company that wants to end crime by carpeting America with license plate readers since the start of 2025.

Activists organized through the open source site D-Flock have been pressuring local governments to pull the plug, and it's working in places like Flagstaff, Eugene, and Santa Cruz. Flock's network is part of a larger web. Don't forget Winona. Sorry, I just went Route 66 in my mind because of the Flagstaff.

I was just thinking Lockhead up in Santa Cruz driving his Mustang going, get these fucking cameras out of my goddamn city. I don't know. Doesn't he want them? I think he went in that direction. I don't know. Flock's network is part of a larger web of more than 77,000 AI-powered plate readers logging where you drive and when.

Supporters call it public safety, but critics call it a rolling location tracker that's already led to wrongful arrests, racial profiling, and cops treating glitchy AI hits as probable cause. Don't forget tracking people who are leaving Texas to go get abortions in other states and other states that are doing that stuff. So, yeah, that's – so, you know, people are starting to dump those, but it gets better.

Across the country, Flock's AI-powered license plate readers and surveillance cameras are getting wrecked. Once locations leak, they're reportedly torn down, smashed, or cut off poles, sometimes with calling cards left behind. Probably not the smartest thing to do when you're actually destroying somebody's property.

Just saying. Unless it's the army of the 12 monkeys. Then you can leave your calling card. Cops in places like Louisville are now keeping camera locations secret because as soon as they go public, the hardware disappears. You'd think that these are network-attached cameras. They would have a way to figure out who took them down, but maybe they can only read license plates and not faces.

I don't know. From Oregon to Virginia to California, it's open season on the solar-powered snitch boxes. Flock, backed by $275 million from, wait for it, our favorite people on the world, Andreessen Horowitz. Shocking. Yeah, no shit. Pitches its networked cameras, gunshot detectors, and even drone as first responder tech as crime-killing infrastructure.

Those gunshot detectors have been just lambasted here in L.A. They put them all over the place, and none of them work. None of them work. CEO Garrett Langley has suggested widespread deployment could basically eliminate crime in America. Not white-collar crime, you fucker.

We reported last week that the Ring partnership actually imploded after the public backlash, so that has been taken down as well. All right. Well, let's double back around to AI and how it's going to save us all, and we're all investing so much money in it.

And, you know, we're trusting the highest levels of government to put AI into everything now, and they're going to do all that. And, of course, you know, let's look at one of the better ones, Google. Google sent out an AI-generated news alert that included the N-word, according to reporting by deadline. Yes, it was a push notification that featured a link to the story by the Hollywood Reporter regarding an incident at the recent BAFTA Film Awards that involved somebody with Tourette's that was in the back and said some things he wasn't supposed to say.

And bafflingly, it was not removed from the broadcast, even though they had a 12-minute delay on it, so somebody could explain that as well. Must have been an AI editor. I don't know. But, yeah, so then Google's AI just took that headline and sent out a push alert with the N-word.

I got it from here, guys. Yep. Let me take it. I got it. Google has since apologized and said that it has removed the offensive notification. A bit late. It's everywhere. And is working to prevent this from happening again. Here's a thought, a human editor.

Or just a word filter list. Somebody, a word filter list. We built those into our chatbots. We built those into our message boards. It's not that hard. I wrote that shit in Perl in 1994. I think you can figure it out.

Obviously not. Maybe they need to use Claude code to work up the code for their- They've got to network 750 Mac minis to be able to do a fucking ban list for words. Well, let's get back to some more fun news.

Prediction Market Cal. She just booted a California political candidate and a YouTuber over insider trading, giving us a peek at how this whole betting on the future thing is actually policed. In one case, a former gubernatorial candidate alleged- I like saying gubernatorial. Sounds like you're on the Muppet Show.

I know. A candidate allegedly placed trades on his own race. Cal, she froze the account, slapped on a five-year ban, and fined him ten times the trade amount and reported it to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the government agency that oversees prediction markets.

They oversee it. They don't do anything about it, I'm sure. Yeah. So in another case, though, an editor named Artem Kaptur for MrBeast's YouTube channel was nagged after he placed about $4,000 in bets and was flagged for statistically suspicious winning streaks.

He was fined over $20,000, banned for two years, and reported to the CFTC. Now, do the fines really count, and are they legally enforceable, Brian? Fuck if I know. Who knows? I don't know. None of this shit seems legal to me, but here we are.

Yeah. And it's funny, too. When I first put this article in here, they weren't naming the editor from YouTube. They kept the name under wraps, but I guess somebody figured it out and found out it was one of MrBeast's guys. And $4,000 in bets? You work for MrBeast.

That's like, you know, I've seen how much money that guy gives away on the daily. I just watched the ending of Beast Games. You know, in one episode, he gave away over $6 million. So, come on. I'd ask for a raise and stop nickel and diming your way out of it.

Well, the thing is, though, Jason, a lot of people are actually addicted to gambling, which is why this is a real fucking problem. It's a problem. That's right. I forgot about that. Yeah, there's that. Silly old me. Yeah. Well, speaking of unscrupulous insiders, let's just keep the party going.

A popular pro-Trump ex-account called Johnny Maga with nearly 300,000 followers, I don't know how many are humans, but who knows, appears to be run by a current White House staffer, according to reporting from Wired. The account has been amplifying official administration messages, including posts defending ICE actions and boosting a racist AI video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, calling it a masterpiece.

Public records link the account to Garrett Wade, a rapid response manager at the White House who helps run the same official feeds his anonymous account promotes. Well, the connection reportedly includes a shared phone number and confirmation from a source close to the White House. So, if accurate, that means a government staffer may be moonlighting as an independent MAGA influencer, blurring the line between official communications and what looks like grassroots supports.

So, let's add Garrett's name to the ever-expanding list of shitbags to revisit when the walls come down. I'm just going to say on the scale of things that is coming out of the White House that that's illegal. This is fucking chicken shit feed. Tempest in a teapot on this one. This is the fucking president's doing this shit.

Yep. Anyways. But at least we know, at least we have the name of one of the guys who's probably behind some of that AI shit that's, he probably made the Michelle and Barack Obama masterpiece. Probably. Because we've been trying to figure out who that guy is, a girl, that is running that shit. So, I think we have a lead.

We have a lead, people. All right. Well, a common theme in online age verification laws is the tension between user privacy and preventing children from accessing harmful or inappropriate content. We have been following this story as people are trying to figure out how to do it, since laws are being passed about it.

Regulations are going out everywhere. The UK is now sending a not-so-subtle message to Reddit on the subject to the tune of 14.5 million pounds, or almost $20 million. The nation's Information Commissioner's Office, or the ICO, has accused the company of using children's data and potentially exposing them to inappropriate content.

Children under 13 had their personal information collected and used in ways that they could not understand, consent to, or control, they wrote in a statement, which left them potentially exposed to content they should not have seen, a.k.a. all of Reddit. This is unacceptable and has resulted in today's fine.

In July of 2025, Reddit began requiring age verification to access adult content in the UK in compliance with the Online Safety Act. However, that's only used to block under 18 users from sexually explicit, violent, or other mature posts. The platform also prohibits users under 13 from accessing it altogether, and enforcement of that policy is, unsurprisingly, lax.

It merely requires users to declare when signing up that they are over 13. That's it. Yeah, that's it. That's legally binding, right? Yeah. The ICO described the method as easy to bypass. You think? Check. Well, we talked about Discord's attempts at age verification as well.

Earlier this month, they said they would be enacting an age verification policy. The platform faced some initial concerns from users about turning over their IDs and personal information, particularly given how poorly similar policies have been going elsewhere, as well as with some of the companies that Discord was planning on using, which were promptly hacked.

Yeah. Data was everywhere. See the last two episodes of this show for more information on those. Yes. Today, or I guess about two days ago now, Discord announced that it will delay this oncoming thing and make some changes to its plans in response to the ongoing backlash.

The first change is that Discord is postponing global rollout of age verification plans until the second half of 2026. The second bit being they have to figure out what the fuck their age verification plans are going to be. Yep. They are going to offer alternatives to how users can confirm ages, including verification by credit card.

Again, not necessarily something I'm going to give Discord, unless I know how they're storing it. This should allow people to access age-gated content without sharing an ID or performing a face scan. The company is also promising more transparency about its vendors, since some of the vendors have already screwed up. They said they will not work with any partners for face scans unless the tests are performed completely on-device.

And they are building a new spoiler channel option so that servers with select age-restricted channels won't have to require all members to verify their ages. So we'll see what happens, but they're buying themselves some time to roll this out. Now, what we have always been saying is that perhaps this could be device-based.

Yes. Let's let Apple handle it. Say, I don't know. Well, Apple has started blocking users under 18 in certain regions from downloading apps. The company has introduced new age verification tools. Those will help developers meet their age assurance obligations under upcoming U.S. and regional laws, including in Brazil, Australia, Singapore, Utah, and Louisiana.

The company sent a news release on its developer site. That's where the laws are being passed, Jason. That's why. Brazil, Utah, and Louisiana walk into a bar. Are you over 21, says your phone? It's so fucking weird. So, yeah, I mean, Apple's rolling something out.

The App Store can perform those checks automatically. Developers may have separate obligations to independently confirm that their users are adults, Apple wrote. So they're dipping their toes in but not saying where the end will be all yet. But, look, it's going to go that way. I think we all know that. So, Apple's gearing up to do age verification.

Yeah, yeah. So that's on device. What about your home computer, though? You know, that comes down to that, too. Well, you know, we already got 2FA, right? You got to get your phone out half the time to log into stuff. So, what do you do if you don't have a phone? You're fucked. I mean, I guess you can't get your porn.

I don't know what to tell you, people. Yeah, you got to go to the titty bar like the old days. But we're already doing 2FA, so the idea that you have to have a phone, oh, no, I can't get onto the website. Tough shit, right? Yeah. And I was thinking about Discord, too. You said you would never give Discord your credit card, but a lot of people already do give Discord their credit card.

Because they buy orbs and whatever the crap, you know, the boosty stuff and, you know, all that crap. Yeah, that's true. So, there's a lot of people that have that, but a lot of kids also have used their parents' credit cards, so. Yep. Yeah. It's a tough one. It's a slippery slope, Brian.

It's a slippery slope.

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Well, Brian, Netflix has officially bowed out of the bidding war for Warner Brothers, clearing the way for Paramount Skydance and setting off a fresh round of merger anxiety across Hollywood.

Oh, man. I got a giant bit of copy here that I was originally going to read, and I'm just going to say that this sucks. Because I didn't want Netflix to buy Paramount, and I sure as shit didn't want— You mean Warner.

Warner. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Warner. I didn't want Netflix to buy Warner. I didn't want Paramount to buy—I didn't want anybody to buy Warner. I wanted somebody to take David Zaslav out back and shoot him in the face so everybody can get back to work instead of all of these business bros screwing up everybody's livelihood in this town.

And now that the deal has been inked, as it were, we've got to still wait for a regulatory approval, which is a joke. This is just— Well— Everybody is patting David Zaslav on the back. He's like, you got $30 or $31 per share when it was worth $7 before, and, you know, yay, all the shareholders are happy, all of the business people are happy, the C-suite people are happy.

You know who's not happy? Everybody that makes entertainment in this fucking town. That's who's not happy. Yeah, I mean, it's not good any way around. You don't want to see consolidations of industries. That's just what we're going to start seeing more and more of. Netflix, this is a win, because they're way overpaying for Discovery, way, way overpaying for it, for Warner Brothers and everything.

So Netflix is not spending that money now. They also get a couple billion dollars, I think, for the deal falling through. Yeah, $2.8 billion that Paramount has to pay, too. So suck it, Larry and Son. It's an absolute win for Netflix. Their stock is probably going to go up, which, fine.

It's a win for Zaslav, unfortunately. Another horrible CEO, but he played the game enough to get vast overbids for it. And, again, you know, the shareholders win there. It's a massive win for Trump.

You know, he's got the regulatory approvals going to sail through, because those are his guys over at Paramount Skydance. So, of course, it's going to sail through, and, you know, another big right-wing-run company. So, you know, a loss for your speech there.

We're going to—CNN's dead, dead in the water now. I mean, it was kind of crap anyways. It's been going bad for a long time. But, anyway, you know, just on a personal note, like, the amount of debt that the Paramount-Warner combined companies have, Star Trek's dead.

They're not going to spend any money on Star Trek. We're not going to get feature films anymore. We'll be lucky to get a series or two out of this. I don't know how this company is going to survive. They're so in debt. It's unbelievable. I think it's all going to come crashing down. Yep.

Or they're just going to start generating AI slop and hope for the best. I don't see anything else coming out of this. That's the downside. And just so many people are going to lose their jobs here in Hollywood with the consolidation. I mean, and everybody's been holding their breath waiting to see what happens.

And I'm sure people were just in tears yesterday when they found out it was going to be Paramount. And, you know, I mean, I worked at Paramount back in the day, and it was my favorite place in the world I've ever worked. And it's just, it pains me. It saddens me so much now that this is what's happened to it. And, yeah. And Star Trek.

Star Trek's hosed. So hosed. Absolutely hosed. Which is sad, too, because I was starting to finally get into Starfleet Academy. I thought last night was the best episode that they've had so far this season and reminded me the most of old school next-gen Star Trek. I felt that this episode had those, had the beats, the tones, it had the beats, it had the feels, it had everything.

It hit, I think, I think that one hit on all cylinders. And I had to go check to make sure it wasn't the finale. I even didn't mind Tilly. And I hated her on Discovery. I saw her walk on set, and I was just like, oh, you gotta be shitting me. And then she walked on, and she fucking ate it up. She ate it up.

She was fantastic. Yeah. It was a good episode. I enjoyed it. Yep. Bob Picardo fucking nailed it. Everybody. I thought it was great across the board. But yeah, there's two more episodes for this season, and it's probably the last we're going to see. Yep. Yeah, we'll see about that.

So upon your recommendation, I started to watch, and I finished the entire season of A Night of the Seven Kingdoms. It doesn't take much. It's not that long. No, which is what I loved about it. I loved the fact that they were 20, 30-minute episodes. I guess it was more 30, 40.

Let's be real. But yeah, it was great. I'm going to not spoil this, because I recognize that there are a lot of, you know, we live in a different age now where not everybody watches everything right when it first comes out. It's also set in Westeros, and a lot of people, like me, coming off the end of Game of Thrones, went, fuck that shit.

I'm never watching any of that stuff ever again. Me too. That was me. That was me. I watched the first episode of that Rising Dragon or whatever, and I was like, I'm out. Don't care. I heard about this, and I was like, I'm out. Don't care. Not even going to watch the first episode until you told me to.

I loved this show. Yeah. I highly recommend that people watch this show, especially the first couple episodes, because they were whimsical. They were funny. They weren't dark and heavy, and it wasn't, there were no heavy big stakes.

Nothing. It was just some random people living, and it was awesome, but it being a Game of Thrones property, it had to get fucking weird and heavy real quick. Yeah, it did. And boy, did it, but I still think that they pulled it off, and I thought it was really good, and a little bit of a spoiler here.

I love the fact that they teased the next season with the Night of the Nine Kingdoms, because there's actually nine kingdoms, not seven, and then I just started thinking about Mel Brooks and History of the World. I present to you these seven, nine, nine kingdoms. Yep.

So, huge shout out to our friend Brian Blondell for this one, because I wasn't going to watch it either, but he insisted. He said it was really, really good, and I'm like, okay, I'll watch the first one, and as soon as I watched the first one, I was hooked. Yeah. I was just like, yeah, I'm in. The casting is phenomenal. Like, it was like, the dunk is great.

Just great. Like, loved it. I loved it. So good. So good. What wasn't so good was the Night Agent season three. The Night Agent season two was so terrible that I was just like, oh, do I have to really watch season three? And there was nothing on this week.

So it was like a weekend. We had nothing in the queue or the can, and we're like, okay, we'll give it a shot. We just knocked it out last weekend and the last one on Monday, and it was really not very good. And the numbers show it. Everybody bailed after season two because season two was so terrible.

It got like, it was down like, you know, massive amounts from the premiere from the last season. The first season was actually terrible too, but it came at a time when, you know, we were in a, you know, just a drought of content. So I think I will, if you haven't seen it, skip it.

If you have seen it, you know what I'm talking about. So. Okay. And here's, here's what, this comes from the Dear God Why files, but then I finally got to the point where I'm like, okay, maybe. Director Adam Wingard has bailed on the long gestating sequel.

He was co-writing with Simon Barrett with no explanation beyond moving on. And we're talking about here, Face Off 2. Face Off 2. They switch faces back. This time they switch again. They go back to the, where it was, but they also bring their family members to switch faces too.

So they're now grown children swap faces along with them. But I don't, they could be fun. I mean, come on. The only thing that gets me is bring John Woo back because he made that movie. I mean, I, I, I still have a soft spot in my heart for Face Off.

I worked on that movie. I met John Woo on that movie. And I, it was just, I, I got a soft spot for it. That's why I'm like, don't do another one. Don't do another one, but if you are going to do it, just go find John Woo. I think, I don't, I don't think he's doing much these days.

So. Well, uh, coming from the exact same place, dear God, why? And then, okay, well, maybe, uh, we've been talking about this for a bit, but Hulu has officially greenlit a pilot of, uh, Ryan Coogler's X-Files reboot. It's a project three year in the making. Okay.

I don't know how I feel about this. Uh, if you don't know Ryan Coogler, he, uh, had 16 Oscar nominations for Sinners, including best original screenplay and best picture. He also wrote and directed Creed, Black Panther, and Black Panther, Wakanda forever. As you can guess, there might be some African-American people playing the main characters in this reboot.

Yes, absolutely. So, uh, maybe, I don't know. X-Files is something I feel so complicated about anyways, because I so dearly loved it. And they so dearly botched it all up at the end and made me not care about it as much as I probably should.

I probably remember it a lot more fondly than it is actually good. So. Yeah, it's terrible. Don't go back and rewatch it. It's terrible. Also from the dear God, why, but okay, maybe here we are again. Have you seen Sinners yet?

I have. It's phenomenal. Oh, so good. Yeah, it's really good. So fucking good. Yeah. And everything else in Creed is amazing. Okay, maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's awesome. So, you know, if anybody, it's in good hands. It's in good hands. You know, we'll see.

The smoking man better be smoking blunts. That's all I got to say. It's Snoop. Oh God. If they don't cast him. Oh, that would be fucking awesome. Oh, well, we finally got the official, the final official trailer for Mortal Kombat 2.

It comes out May 8th. I am so in for this movie. This will probably be the last thing that Warner Brothers ever does that's good. So. Even that's debatable. Yeah, I'm definitely not going to see Mortal Kombat 3. But the first Mortal Kombat, the first in this series was amazing.

They did it justice. They did the whole story justice. And, you know, coming from a Mortal Kombat super fan, spending years of my life playing Mortal Kombat 2 and 1, 2 and 3. Not so much 1, but I started with 2. And I had a Mortal Kombat 2 and 3 in my house for years.

So, this also has a soft spot in my heart, you know. Right. I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to it. And Johnny Cage, I can't wait. You know, there better be a goddamn good Scorpion Johnny Cage fight in there because that is the best pair up in the actual game itself. So, we'll see. And in your neck of the woods, Brian, Google just acquired Producer AI and plans to plug it into its Lyra 3 music model under Google Labs, letting anyone type, make it a lo-fi beat and spit out fully formed tracks in minutes.

You can prompt the lyrics, instruments, vibe, and basically outsource the entire creative process. And Google says it's about enhancing human artistry, the same way an AI filmmaker enhances cinema. Well, reports of the early demos come back that it's, yeah, fucking generic. Shocking.

Shocking. Yeah. I tried to listen to the Dropping Names and Other Things podcast. This is the Jonathan Franks and Brent Spiner. We're not going to talk about just Star Trek. Okay, maybe we're going to talk about a lot of Star Trek. Okay, I guess if we don't talk about Star Trek, nobody's going to listen to this podcast. Yeah.

I've listened to the first episode with LeVar Burton. It was all right. They had a gimmick where they rang a bell every time they dropped a name. And as you can guess, that got tiresome within about 20 seconds. Yeah. And I don't know if I'm going to go back and listen anymore.

It was fine. So when you put this in here, I went and clicked on it. And the latest episode is with Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk from the Once We Were Spacemen podcast, also Firefly and everything else under the sun. And so I started to listen to it, and I got to say, the audio quality threw me off.

It's not great. It's bad. It's bad. They are obviously just like literally sitting around a table with maybe a, what were those mics called? The fucking Blue Yetis. The Blue Yeti right in the center of the table. Yeah. Yeah, it's really, you know, disconcerting how bad it is for that level of quality.

Now, if you go to the Once We Were Spacemen podcast, which I think I pimped a couple weeks ago on the show, with Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk, that show is top-notch quality. I mean, absolutely top-notch. They're both, you know, voice actors, so they have home studios. It sounds amazing.

The people who produce the show is Nathan Fillion's production company, so right there, you got something good behind it. And they actually did, in their last episode, they did a name drop thing, too, which is actually pretty fun. They did a funnier take on it than ringing a bell. They have a little bit, and it was actually entertaining.

I highly recommend Once We Were Spacemen, the podcast. That one I listen to all the time. But, yeah, I don't think dropping names, I don't think that's got legs at all. Tops and doodads. Well, OpenAI is reportedly hard at work developing a series of AI-powered devices, including smart glasses, a smart speaker, and a smart lamp.

All of them will use more power than the entirety of human evolution up until now. God, an asshole. According to a report by The Information, the AI company has a team of over 200 employees dedicated to the project. Why do they need employees? Can't they just have the AI make the AI? Dude, they've got Johnny Ive.

What are you talking about? Johnny AIve. The first project scheduled to be released is reported to be a smart speaker that would include a camera, allowing it to better absorb information about its users and surroundings. No. I wonder if anybody had thought of that before. Oh, I only have 20 in my house already, and I've had them for almost a decade.

Wow, how groundbreaking, guys. Yeah. Never would have thought of that one. According to a person familiar with the project, this would extend to identifying objects on a nearby table. Hey, is that a fucking pencil? How many gallons of water did we use for that? Jesus Christ.

The camera will support facial recognition features similar to what other people have already. Okay. Okay, so we're not really breaking new ground here is what you're saying? No, and they're going to do some powered smart glasses, you know, like Meta has, and other people as well. Oh, but the lamp.

Nobody has a smart lamp yet. Nobody thought of the lamp. We can put AI into a smart fucking lamp. How much ketamine did they have to take before they figured out, dude, we put it in the lamp.

Importantly, it may be a lava lamp. I would buy that. That would be cool. Oh, man. You know what, though? I'm not saying that these guys are the right guys to do it. I'm not saying that Meta is the right people to do that. This type of technology where you can have glasses on that tell you what's around you, guess who it's good for?

The blind. Blind people. The blind. Exactly. But why do we need that when we've got Elon's company that kills monkeys that puts things directly into your brain? Oh, that's right. That's coming, too. Never mind. Okay, we don't need this stuff. Wait, can we put a lamp into our brains directly?

So when you get an idea, it literally lights up above your head. Unfortunately, my brain is the lava lamp. It's just globs. Exactly. If you leave it on too long, it explodes. Well, we've got some new Instagram news.

Instagram says it'll start notifying parents if their teens repeatedly search for suicide or self-harm-related terms, rolling out in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada in the coming weeks. Repeatedly. If you search for it once, you're off the hook. Up to five times I can contemplate suicide before it pings my dad.

Yeah, great. It says the app already blocks that content and pushes helplines, but now it'll ping mom and dad, too, assuming both accounts have supervision turned on. The move lands as MetaFights lawsuits over addicting kids and failing to protect them, while regulators in places like the U.K. and Australia tighten the screws with age checks and outright bans.

Instagram says it worked with experts to avoid alert spam. Hold on a second. Do the experts mention to the people at Instagram that perhaps they don't use Instagram to search? Maybe they're going to Google or going into ChatGPT.

ChatGPT nowadays to search. Just saying. Just saying. Okay. Remember the good old days when we had Dark Sky, the weather app that mostly worked even in Southern California when I was right along the beach? I miss it. I miss it. It did not work in San Francisco that much. But if you were inland, it did.

If you were on the beach, you're fucked. Yeah. But yeah. So Apple acquired them in 2020 and basically killed them off by 2022 and integrated much of its tech into its native iOS weather app, although you wouldn't know it because it still works like crap. It sucks. And never as good as Dark Sky ever did. But they are back.

The Dark Sky people, the team behind it, have a new iPhone app called Acme Weather, named straight out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. What if they had to pay David Zaslav any money for that? It is not free. You get a one-week free trial. So I downloaded it to give it a go, but it's $20 a year after that.

Or no, $25 a year. Sorry. There's an iOS version now. An Android version is forthcoming. It is not pretty. Dark Sky was very pretty. Yeah. That was what made Dark Sky, Dark Sky. Beautiful. Which is why Acme Weather is not that interesting to me, and I will not be paying $25.

I have already canceled the subscription that starts automatically when you download it. I mean, it gives you the seven-day trial or whatever. Yeah, the seven-day trial. And I will be removing it from my phone. And it's just, I didn't see much of a difference. What they're trying to do is they're trying to basically consolidate all the different weather forecasts from different sources and give you a prediction.

It's a prediction market for weather, except you can't bet on it. That's coming soon, probably. Probably. Probably. Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting idea. I pay $25 a year for Carrot weather already, so I'm not going to spend another $25 for another weather app. Carrot does exactly what I need it to do.

And it lets me pick which leather, like leather. That's the leather stations are in the Castro. Now, the weather station, like local weather stations, I can pick which one's like near to my house that actually gives me up-to-the-date closer weather. It's really good. They just integrated the weather channel data this week, too, and did some other new stuff.

Highly recommend Carrot Weather. It works great for me. Cool. Yeah, and it's snarky and it's funny, and, you know, it's like a one-guy show, too. So I always like to help single-parent developers, I guess. Oh, back to the smart glasses.

A hobbyist just dropped an Android app that alerts you if someone nearby might be wearing smart glasses like Meta's Ray-Bans, which we've seen all over mainstream media this week. I just want to talk about it a little bit because the mainstream media gets a shit ton of it wrong. It scans for specific Bluetooth signatures tied to Meta, Luxonica, and Snap, and throws up a notification if it detects what looks like a pear.

With reports that Meta is exploring facial recognition features for its glasses, the developer calls this a small act of resistance against creeping surveillance. So it's not perfect. It still fucks up every now and again, but, you know, it's a start. It's an interesting way. Like, it's a good proof of concept, I think. So we'll see how that pans out.

But yeah, this shit was all over the news this week. I hope they call it a glass holes. Saturday, September 26th. Two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero.

Plus, the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line. When the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meat Cleaver Colon, BKFC 94, Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN.

Sign up now at DAZN.com. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave, with podcaster who never stops sleeping. That didn't come out right, because I can't read today.

Hi, Dave Bittner. How are you today? Oh, you just woke me up. I know, there you go. Sleeping through life, yes. Sleepy Dave. Sleepy Dave. Sleepy Dave, yeah. Snoozing and snoring, absolutely. I don't know why you'd listen to that guy's podcast, Sleepy Dave.

There you go. Yeah, that's me. Flubs aside, how are you doing today, Dave? Hanging in there. We'll get to that. Excellent. Okay. We'll get to that. Well, I'll bring us in then. Dave, you are the person that introduced me to the Strong Songs podcast by Kirk Hamilton, which I enjoy.

I listen to it religiously. Anytime an episode comes out, I listen to it right away. This last weekend, he released a new episode, and I was taking my kid to his swim class, where I basically just walk in minus 30-degree weather to get to a 90-degree humid pool, and sit there with the same clothes on for 45 minutes, poured out of my mind.

With your glasses steam up, yeah. But it's always a good time to listen to a podcast, particularly one about that length. So I started the latest episode of Strong Songs, Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie. I did not expect to be openly weeping at my kid's swim practice, but I did find myself doing so.

This is one of the best episodes he's ever done. First off, of course, it's a great song anyways, but when he breaks it down and relates it to everything that we're kind of dealing with right now as people in the society, wow.

It's the terror of knowing what this world's all about. You mean that part? Boy, it hits. It hit hard. Yeah. I'm with you. And I listened to it the past couple days on my way into work, and one of my colleagues here, the person who heads up our editing team, came into my office, and he was like, did you hear the new Strong Songs, Under Pressure?

Yeah, it's really good. It's really good. But, yeah, to your point about Kirk Hamilton's call out about the relevance of this song to modern listeners, it really got me thinking about my emotional capacity.

And it's kind of related to, remember last week I shared that dead grandma video? Yes. Thank you for that. I had almost forgotten about it. That was, oh my God. I watched that after the show, and I was just like, oh, that's, oh.

I don't have kids, and I was just like, oh. Yeah, so it's a sentence I never thought I'd utter, you know, after last week's show with a dead grandma video. But it got me thinking about how, in general, I don't like horror movies.

I particularly don't like things with jump scares, because, as I've shared many times, I have a hair-trigger startle reflex, and it is just unpleasant for me. Because of that, I avoid certain types of movies.

But what listening to Strong Songs made me realize is that how much I've been protecting myself because of the amount of things that require emotional energy that are being forced upon me and us,

that we have no choice but to deal with, that I'm limiting my exposure to other things that maybe during different times I would try out. Right. You know, like my son would say, oh, I really think you should see this movie.

And I'm like, is it scary? He's like, yeah. I'm like, no, I'm good. I'm out. Yeah. I'm awful. I'm scared enough. Right, right. I've read the news. So I don't have the capacity for, like, the pleasurable expenditures of that kind of emotional energy, because I feel so drained just from the day-to-day, everyday things that we're being bombarded with.

Does that make sense? That makes complete sense. Yes, it does. Because my relation to that is actually through what I listen to, the music I'm listening to, because I tend to enjoy either extremely sad, you know, think the cure, Depeche Mode, or extremely angry, nine-inch nails, hard industrial.

That's my, like, default setting for music. I like that stuff. I like the way it makes me feel. I can't fucking listen to it right now. I just can't. I'm already too depressed and too angry to listen to depressing and angry music.

I find myself having to listen to just, like, fucking bubblegum bullshit, because... Show tunes, my friend. Yeah, show tunes. I'm listening to the shit you guys listen to. Right, right. And I fucking hate it, but it's all I can do right now, because literally, like, I'm already too deep into those emotions that I can't do what I would normally pleasurable.

Listened to that sits in those emotional contexts. Right. Brian's going to come in next week singing the theme to Carousel. Dude, it's so fucking bad I'm listening to Casey and the fucking Sunshine Band. Oh, yeah. Get down tonight.

Yeah. I think there's nothing shameful. Well, I think there's nothing shameful. You probably do. In those kinds of guilty pleasures of empty calories of music, you know, sometimes I just need to turn on and crank up safety dance, you know?

No, look, I like that stuff as well. You know, give me a good 80s synth pop playlist, you know? Right. That's all happy and bouncy. Right. But my point being, like, that's all I can listen to right now, because I can't listen to anything darker or heavier. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. To that point, like, there have been times in my life when I relied on certain types of media to help enable an emotional release when I needed one. And it feels like I'm talking about porn, but I'm not.

If you would have struck the emotional release from that statement, I would have been concerned. No. Like, sometimes if I felt just pent up and, like, I need a good cry, you know, like, there was, like, a scene from- Still sounds like porn. Yeah. Scenes from Saving Private Ryan.

Right. You know, like, just like, oh! And it's not, it's weeping. It's like you were saying, it's weeping. It's not crying because you're sad. It's weeping because you, there's no alternative emotional release. Yeah. And sometimes that can be healthy to do.

And as men, we tend not to do that. So, anyway. Yeah, I completely save it for being beside a pool in the middle of a swim lesson. Right. Right, right. That's when men cry. That's what I hear. And all the moms are sitting around like- Looking at me like, who the fuck is this guy?

Yeah. Why is, who's that guy in the long black trench coat? Watching kids in bathing suits. Wearing the boots. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, I guess it's good to be self-aware of these things, but I throw it on the pile of things that makes me sad for the time that we're in and hopeful that-

I have enough time left that this too shall pass and perhaps we'll have happier days like we've had in the past where I don't think about some of the things that I think about every day because they're just being taken care of and handled.

Yeah. All right, let's move on. On a completely different level, Matthew wrote in, this video explains the lore of Coruscant. It's pretty cool. And there's a YouTube link, which will be in the show notes. I did, I watched about the first 25 seconds of this and then even my super geeky brain tuned out.

So, yeah. Yeah. I skimmed through it and it's cool. It is, if you want to take a deep, deep, deep dive into Star Wars planet nerdiness, here's your chance. It is well-researched and pretty complete.

So, that's fun. Yeah. It reminded me of, there's a robot chicken joke, like a throwaway joke on robot chicken and about planets that have a single biome, like the ice planet Hoff and desert planet Tatooine and they went to a water planet and there's a city planet, like, and wondering

if, because, you know, Earth has many biomes, so why would an entire planet be a biome? So, anyway, needless to say, there's lots of conversation online about whether or not this is possible, whether Earth is the outlier with our multiple biomes. And, so, if you want to dig into that, but I couldn't find the robot chicken clip, but I'm pretty sure it's just a little throwaway thing, you know, in between the static.

Right. Yeah. I watched it and I was, at the end of it, when I was scrubbing through, she got into fractals and, like, how Coruscant was kind of laid out using, like, fractal geometry and it just really reminded me of KPT Fractal Explorer, the Kai's Power Tools Fractal Explorer back in the day. Yeah. So, I had to go, I just had to go find a link, there's a link in the show notes where you can see the old interface.

If you used to use it. Oh, yeah. It brings back a little bit of the feels. Oh, yeah. Definitely. Yeah. What a wild interface that was and playful back in the day. It also reminded me of KPT Bryce, which was a landscape generator. Yep.

Oh, I have an anecdote about Bryce. Okay. Do you know the band World Party, Dave? Mm-mm. It does Put the Message in the Box, Way Down Now, a bunch of songs that you'd probably recognize from that kind of 80s alternative vein. Yeah. The lead singer, Carl Wall, well, it was basically a one-man band.

Carl Wallinger was a very good friend of mine. He passed away recently, unfortunately. But people who were big fans of his music were clamoring for quite some time, and particularly the 2000s, because he hadn't released any music for a while.

And I can tell you the reason that he didn't release any music for a while is he discovered KPT Bryce. And musicians are strange creatures at the best of times, and Carl was a, I'd say, large to gigantic fan of smoking weed.

And he spent four years doing nothing but making Bryce landscapes. Wow. Wow. It was probably one landscape, and it took four years for it to render. Yeah, right? That's funny.

I wonder how Bryce would run under emulation these days. I bet it'd be pretty fast. Well, you'd get a Claude bot, and... Yeah. Different architectures. I don't even know how that would work. Yeah. My recollection, or my Bryce anecdote is right after it was released, me and one of my co-workers who was a 3D rendering and animation guy, we were flying out to the NAB convention in

Las Vegas from Maryland. And so when you do that, you fly over the part of the country that looks like Bryce. Bryce Canyon. Yeah, Bryce. Yeah, exactly. And my friend and colleague had never seen that part of the country before. And I remember him looking out the airplane window and saying, God, it looks just like Bryce.

I know. Yeah. It does. Amazing. Amazing. I actually put a link in the show notes to this photo. This is a picture that I generated in Bryce on a... I think it was either... I think this had to be a Quadra 840 AV. It took about 36 hours to render.

Wow. And it's just a little sci-fi experiment that I did with a kind of... I think I was listening to War of the Worlds or something. This was just a weird interpretation of a War of the Worlds thing that was just... It's garbage. It's throwaway. But the time it took to render, I am so invested in this image.

And then I printed it out on... We had one of these printers at Kinko's that used basically melted wax to print. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I remember this. This thing was printed on that, and then it was laminated. Dysublimation? Is that what it was? Dysub? I don't think it was dysub.

Okay. It was a really weird technology that rarely worked, was super expensive, and goddamn slow. I remember those, yeah, waxy printers. Yeah, we got rid of that thing for our first Fiery, which was great because it ran on an SGI. So that was my first SGI little iris box.

But yeah, so this is my last remaining piece of Bryce art. So I threw it in there. Actually, I'll post it on Discord. So go to the show channel on Discord because I can't do images in the show notes. But yeah, it was fun. It was fun. Do you remember the Mac game Marathon?

Oh, yeah. Of course. Dude, of course. He asks rhetorically. All right. I'm going to, let me post a link in here. So one of the things with Marathon is you could alter the shapes and the textures in the game, and then you could send and share that.

Back in the day, I created a whole set of shapes called KPT Shapes. Oh, no way. And evidently, you can still download them. There it is. Looks like I created them on March 18th, 1995. Wow.

And yeah, so the internet never forgets. When you were making these, I was at Paramount working on Star Trek First Contact with our friend Dave Riegler, and we had the entire department after hours playing Marathon. We had the entirety of our, the print division at Paramount wired up playing Marathon.

Yes. It was great. Somewhere in this set of shapes, and it's been lost to the tunnels of my mind, there is a corridor that you go down in Marathon that is now lined with pictures of my dog. It was an Easter egg I put in there, and I don't remember where or how.

I just remember that I did it. So there it is. If anybody wants to patch a Marathon with shapes inspired by Kai's power tools. Oh, man. One of the first things I think I probably shared on the internet from way back when.

God, 1995. Yeah. 30 years ago. 30 years ago. Crazy. Oh, so we're all Apple Watch users, right? Yes. We've all got our Apple Watches. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I thought the upgrade to Apple Watch OS 26 was so really subpar, and I'm just like, I don't see what the big deal is.

And I'm trying to get the thing, like the flip to mute thing to work, and I'm just, I'm not finding any of this stuff. And then I finally realized that I'd been stuck on the iOS or the watchOS beta 11 track because I'd manually set it to go on the beta downloads, and I never upgraded.

And I'm sitting there beating my head against the wall. And so I finally got it installed, and it kind of looks exactly the same except for the part where you type your number in. But so I haven't found anything that exciting, except the Notes app.

The Notes app is in 26. But you got to check your, I just went for months now, wondering why, why is everybody so, this just doesn't work right. I don't know. I tend to just sort of let my watch do its own thing. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to it, which is fine.

It seems to be happy with that and gives me what I need. I did notice today, my car is in the shop today getting an oil change, and the shop called and left a message, and my watch buzzed, and the message was on my watch.

It wanted to tell, the recording of the message that they left was on my watch, and I don't think I'd seen that before. So that was cool. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I'm excited to kind of dig into it now. And it still drives me crazy. I don't know if many people do this, but we've talked about the power user.

Like, put the crown on the inside thing. Yep. I did that. Thanks to you. I think we all do it. Yeah. I think we all do that now. And I see people out on the street, like, not having it flipped around it, like, you know, straight out of the box. I'm like, ah, noob. Fucking noob. Yeah.

The only trouble with that is if you're wearing heavy clothing, like in the wintertime, sometimes your sleeves can bump up against those buttons. Yeah. It's better than my wrist hitting the crown all the time. That's true. That's what would happen to me. It would just hit it all the time. You get a little dimple in your wrist there from where you're bumping up against it.

Pretty much. Pretty much. And just some old school news. Mr. Clean has been retired at 68. So, that made me sad, you know, because as we are getting older, talking about video games we've made 35 years ago and shit like that, or 30 years ago, yeah, it was kind of sad.

He's in the retirement home along with the Maytag repairman. And Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben. Yeah. Well, one can assume Mr. Clean, given his look, has probably moved to Palm Springs. That's true. That's true. That's true. If you know, you know. Well, I was going to say, maybe he and the Maytag repairman are long-time companions.

Maybe. Who knows? That reminded me of my childhood disappointment with scrubbing bubbles. I didn't have strong feelings about them, do tell. I love scrubbing bubbles. Yeah. So, I found this old commercial from the 70s of scrubbing bubbles.

And I remember watching TV, probably The Price is Right or something, and seeing the commercials for scrubbing bubbles, going to the grocery store with my mom and just begging her to buy a can of scrubbing bubbles because I wanted to see the little bubble guys scrubbing the tub.

And we got home and I sprayed the tub and it was just foam. And I was like, what the hell? I've been lied to. I've been lied to. False advertising. I thought, I really thought little guys with eyes and little scrubby things were going to come out of this spray can and clean the tub for me.

And so, I lost a little bit of innocence that day. Well, I prepared you for the world we live in now. You're going to be so mad at me, Dave. There was a giveaway that they had with scrubbing bubbles and you could get toy scrubbing bubbles.

And I had the toy little scrubbing bubbles, little plastic guys when I was a kid. Oh. I had like three of them. It was great. Okay. eBay. Here we come. I was just thinking about old tech this week too.

I was doing a chat with somebody and it was, I'm going through this stuff with bankruptcy that I'm dealing with and I had to do this class and I had to talk to a person afterwards. And it's just a generic online chat. And I'm typing things into the text box and I'm doing this thing where I'm like, I would type something, then I would erase it, then I would type something else and then erase it.

And I'm just like, it reminded me of ICQ because ICQ back in the day, you could see what other people were typing. Yeah. I didn't know that the first time I got on ICQ and I was talking to a girl I liked and I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to say to her. And I'm typing this, deleting it, typing it, deleting it, typing it, deleting it.

Oh yeah. And then she's like, are you okay? And I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, I can see everything you're typing. And I'm like, oh shit. Yeah. It was not a great day. It was not a great day. Yeah.

We didn't last long. Let's just say that. You found him. Is that the guy? I must be. Close enough. I mean, my memory doesn't last last week. It's close enough. Yeah. Yeah. How much is he? Oh, that's a good question.

He is currently $16.99 or best offer. What a deal. Wow. Yeah. Vintage $19.90. This is not the one I had then. Okay. No. No. I was a kid. So, we're probably looking 70s. Mm-hmm. Right. So. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, there are lots of them on here. So, it seems like this was a thing for a while. Yeah. But, yep. Yeah. It's very similar. Yeah. Very similar. So, get it and fill out your collection, Dave. You can, you can, you know, fill in with some scrubbing bubbles and then squirt them and move them around the tub.

Yeah. Maybe I'll do that. Make him do his thing. Maybe I'll do that. I just, yeah. I mean, this is the category of things that I would love to have, but I really don't need and don't have a place for. So, I'll just pretend. I'll look at it and imagine that I have it.

But I don't understand. I have an entire folder of bookmarks in my browser that is just stuff like that. It's stuff that I think is really neat that I'm probably never going to purchase, never going to get. Just, I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got one last thing that I got to run past you guys today. Speaking of weird things that I don't need that I, whatever.

So, for Christmas, my bathroom is usually a cornucopia of fart sprays because I'm a dude and I need to have a very fresh smelling bathroom because my bathroom is right next to my roommate's office and she would like it smelling fresh.

Sure. So, for Christmas, she got me a little- I would start with looking at your diet if it's affecting the other room. Yeah. She got me these little travel packs. People who are watching on YouTube can see this right now. It is a Poo-Pourri travel sprayer and they're amazing. But as I got them, I look at it and I look at the back of it and on the back, there's a little, which looks like a Wi-Fi symbol and it says, tap, poo, win.

And I'm like, what is this? It says, simply tap your phone above to gain exclusive access right now. And it says, sprit, tap, and poo. There is an RFID tag built into this little disposable fart spray bottle so you can download an app so you can- So you can- You can what?

My poops actually have a EULA now is what I'm trying to get to. Oh, wow. Okay. We have gone too far. We have absolutely gone too far. GOG.show slash Jason's Poops. Yeah. Great. Now we're going to have to make that URL because somebody's going to- Yeah.

No, don't go to there. Don't go there. I was just like, how much technology do we actually need, guys? Come on. Not as much as we have. That is for sure. Now, is that the one that you spray in the bowl to create the little film of oil that keeps the stink from- No.

No, okay. No, this is you spritz the room before you drop trow and then it permeates while you go and then it- I see. Then it cleans the air. And they're wildly effective. And this little, one of these little guys, she got me two of these, has lasted me from Christmas till now and it's only half gone.

So they're a fantastic value for the price. I must say. Is this like part of your daily carry that you get up in the morning and you put on your watch and you put that in your pocket? No, I do have it in my backpack when I go out, along with some dude wipes. Gives new meaning to the go bag.

Yeah, it is. That is my go bag. For sure. That's all I got, guys. Yeah, that's enough. I think we're good. Yeah. See you next time. Bye, Dave. See you next time. Closing shout outs!

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If you go to Patreon, you get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition. As early as I can get it, because this is a sprint. This is a sprint, not a marathon to get this thing out the door. But everything, every little set helps keep the show on the air. And we mean that from the bottom of our black little hearts.

That's right. And we had a little bit of news earlier about talking about being old. And, well, we've lost the King Nerd, Jason. Yes, I saw. Robert Carradine has died at age 71. He unfortunately took his own life. He had been struggling with over two decades with bipolar disorder.

And ultimately, it got the best of him. This article on Deadline says, The actor is best known for his roles in The Long Riders. No. He's best known for his role in Revenge of the Nerds. Yeah, period. I didn't know he was in anything else, actually. I didn't know he had a career outside of Revenge of the Nerds.

Nor did I. I guess he was on Lizzie McGuire as well. You know, obviously, a famous older brother, Keith Carradine as well. But, yeah. So, sad to hear Robert Carradine has passed. Yeah. Too bad. Too bad. And a big thank you to everyone that has chimed in with their thoughts regarding 3D printers.

I have been inundated with your thoughts about it. It's all been very useful and helpful. So, thank you all so much. Awesome. Awesome. Well, until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at gog.show slash 735.

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