741: Moon Joy

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. I forgot where we were for a second, Brian. We're only six seconds in and I already had a brain fart.

That's all right. So you're the big Dodgers fan and it's baseball season and I'm going to hear about it endlessly. But I just saw, I saw the score come through this week that the Dodgers played the Toronto Blue Jays where you are ensconced up in Canada. And it was 14 to two. It was.

That's like, that's like a basketball game score. That's not like a baseball game score. What the hell? It's worth a reminder that the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers were the two teams playing in the World Series just a scant few months ago. So they were the other best team in baseball, which we beat. Maybe not very popular up here in Toronto. Yeah, yeah. They spanked them hard.

Four to one or something like that. And then because normally these teams never would have met during the normal season because they're in completely different leagues, etc, etc. But the rules. One's in a different country. I'd like to point out. One is in a different country. But they changed the way they do things a couple seasons back. So every team plays every other team at least once throughout the season. And they switch years. So next year, the Blue Jays will play the Dodgers

in L.A. So when they do come here, since I've been living here, we've made a point of trying to go. So the third game was Wednesday, I believe. And it was an afternoon game as opposed to the night games, which run a little late for me to take the kids. So we pulled the kid out of school a bit early, said they had a dentist appointment, and went off to the parents and went off to what I call the Dodger game. Everybody else here calls the Blue Jays game. And unfortunately, the Blue Jays actually did win

that one. So it sucked for me. Okay. And everybody else was pretty happy. So okay. Yeah, okay. It was a good time. It's good. I do love my baseball. Anyways, we do have a bit of follow up. Ireland is testing out a digital wallet that will conduct age verification for social media users. Again, we've been talking about this every show now. And the question is, how do we do age verification? So they are trialing what they're calling the government digital wallet, which will

include a way to verify users' age to access social media platforms. The government's Department of Public Expediture, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform, and Digitalization. That's running out of room on that business card. Yeah, seriously. Said people could store digital versions of their birth certificates, driver's license, European health cards, and more. They haven't laid out when this digital wallet will graduate beyond testing. But Ireland is required to create one by the end of

2026 as part of a European Union regulation. So I guess everybody in the EU will have to do it. So it looks like that's the way they're going to go. Kind of makes sense to me. Yeah. Get the government involved. Yeah. Then you just know. I mean, come on, it is 2026. You should be able to do this shit by now. You'd think. You'd think. And we do have even further follow up. Yet another country is doing a social media ban for kids. Greece will ban children under

the age 15 from using social media starting next year. Prime Minister, oh boy, Garakios Mitsotakis, I think that's pretty good, made the announcement in a video posted on TikTok where the kids that are about to get banned are. So I guess that makes sense. In which he referenced anxiety, sleep problems, and addictive design features as the reason for the ban. They've been pretty proactive in their approach to tackling excessive screen time for children, having already banned mobile phones

in schools back in 2024. They will be requiring social media companies to uphold new restrictions by verifying the ages of their users. So Greece is kicking it over to the social media companies instead of setting up their own wallet, apparently. We'll see what happens there. Parents would also need to download an app called Kids Wallet, which is backed by the state that could be paired to their child's device and block access. The prime minister conceded that he would likely incur the

wrath of his country's young children, but fuck them, they can't vote yet. Exactly. I didn't say that part, but... Well, good for them. Good for them and good for Ireland. I mean, the tide is going everywhere except for the good old USA.

Yeah, yeah. We just get, we just get polymarket here now. We'd rather have children all messed up. We do. It makes for a much more complacent workforce. Exactly. And a very uninformed voting population. Assuming we get to vote. Assuming. That is a very big assumption, Brian.

We'll see. In the news. Oh, Brian, the fucking irony of this next one is just, it's just kicking me right in the nuts. Rivals, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are teaming up. Yes, actually cooperating to stop Chinese competitors from basically speed running their models via something that they

call adversarial distillation. Now, basically what they're worried about is these Chinese companies coming in and taking away all of their protected IP from their models that they spent all the money training up on our data. Right.

Right. So, they're worried that somebody's going to steal what they have already stolen. I would love the Chinese companies to just go ahead and say, hey, free use. Yeah, they are. Good. A lot of the, yeah, a lot of these companies are doing, like DeepSeq, you know, those are open models. A lot of these Chinese companies are releasing the models, which is great.

We had a saying when I was a kid, turnabout is fair play. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you remember when DeepSeq first came out, like Google lost gazillions of dollars in market share because they're like, hey, we can do this on old hardware and we don't need all of those super duper, you know, GPUs that everybody else gets that we can't buy over here. So, they did something that was called innovation. Yeah, they actually innovated instead of just saying that we just need the biggest and baddest

hardware from NVIDIA. We can use the old ones and still make some great shit. But it is just fucking hilarious that OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are all getting butthurt because these other teams are coming in and just basically reverse engineering their models. How dare you do the things we've been doing? I know. God damn it.

Not to us. We do it to you. What else we got, Brian? Well, we've been talking a lot about these prediction markets, polymarket, and we haven't even mentioned Calci for a while because polymarket's been the one mostly in the news. But they made the news this week. The third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled on Monday that New Jersey has no authority to regulate Calci's prediction market, allowing people to bet on the outcome of sports events. Except we know it's not just sports events.

It's everything. Yeah. The power rests with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. The panel ruled two to one. And the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is headed by President Donald Trump appointee Michael Selig, who vocally and actively supports prediction markets like Calci and polymarket, calling them exciting products.

Oh, yeah. It's worth noting here that Donald Trump Jr. is a paid advisor to Calci and an unpaid advisor to polymarket. And True Social, which is run by the Trump media and technology groups, is set to start a prediction market of its own. So their own person, who's in charge of their own bullshit commission that they've decided is in charge of regulating this, says, hey, we don't need to regulate this. See how that works?

Yeah. We have said since day one that the grift is going to be happening in plain sight, and it is absolutely happening right in front of our very eyes. We should bet on it on polymarket, actually. We really should. The one, as I mentioned, it was two to one in favor of prediction markets and New Jersey not being able to basically block them. The dissenting opinion came from U.S.

Circuit Judge Jane Richards-Roth, part of our thin black line. Yeah. Mostly women judges. Yep. Saying that the Calci's offerings were virtually indistinguishable from the betting products available on online sportsbooks such as DraftKings and FanDuel. So, yep, here we go. The New Jersey Attorney General has asked the Third Circuit to rehear the case. Good luck with that.

Yeah, seriously. Yeah, not for another two and a half years, whatever. Six and a half, you know, heat deaths of the universe at this point is what it feels like. But we'll get there. We'll get there eventually, Brian. Maybe. Hopefully. Maybe. Now, this next story is actually really interesting. The FBI was able to recover deleted signal messages from an iPhone by extracting data stored in the device's notification database.

So, in a recent case, investigators assessed cached notification content, which can include message previews if that setting is enabled, even after the signal app had been removed from the device. Oopsies. Now, only income. What was that? I said, that's an oopsies. It sounds like to me, it sounds like some bad programming on Apple's part.

Like, if you remove the app, it should go through those sorts of things and pull out notifications and all the things that are stored. It should take everything from the app off. I guarantee you right now that there are some coders at Apple who are tasked with that exact issue because, yeah, the housekeeping should have taken care of this. You know, when the app ID is deleted from the phone, you should go through that and find anything with that app ID, you know, notification and scrub it.

And let's stick a little pin on the concept of somewhat sloppy Apple programming these days because we're going to return to that in apps and do dads. Okay. Okay. So, only the incoming messages were the ones that were covered because, you know, you can set that to say show on lock screen, show preview on lock screen.

Yeah. So, this is the user being stupid to begin with. You don't do that. You should never do that because the whole point of having your phone locked is that people can't see what's going on on your phone. Especially if you've gone out of your way to get an app such as Signal, which is supposed to be encrypted and safe and private.

Whoopsie. Yeah. So, yeah, this was just a kind of a fuck up on all levels from Apple to the user. You know, Apple should have fixed this. The user should have known better. But, yeah. Yeah, they were all convicted.

I mean, that's a good, I mean, well done on the FBI's part. Yeah, I got to give them that because I didn't think there was anybody home at the FBI anymore. You know, there's actually some people left at the FBI that know what the fuck they're doing, which is amazing. But, yeah, yeah, good job. All right. We got some pig slip news. GoPro, we'll cut and hold on a second. Let's backtrack.

I didn't even realize GoPro was still around. I thought that they had like pretty much kind of disappeared and because I haven't heard GoPro. GoPro had the second best marketing for a while, only seconded Twitter, as I've always talked about, because Twitter's Twitter's actual like name Q score, as they used to say in the biz, was so much higher than actual usage. And the same thing with GoPro. Like you could not, GoPro almost became the Kleenex of cameras for a long time.

Yeah. Everybody said GoPro. That hasn't happened for quite some time. In fact, GoPro had completely disappeared from my mind until Artemis 2, when they basically mentioned that they had custom GoPro cameras on the outside of the damn ship. And I was like, GoPro? And then next thing you know, GoPro's in the news again. Anyways, they cut 23% of their global workforce by the end of this year as the action camera pioneer looks to reverse its fortunes in the competitive market. That's 145 employees. That'll be laid off with the restructuring process commencing in the second

quarter of 2026. At the end of the first quarter, GoPro's total number of employees stood at 631 and expects the costs to cut it between $11.5 million and $15 million, which is honoring service severance packages and healthcare benefits. Again, it costs them millions of dollars to get rid of all these people.

Yet companies, when they fire people, stock price goes up. Cost them money, but the stock price goes up. To the moon! To the moon! To the moon! Literally, for GoPro, to the moon! Despite their layoffs, GoPro is optimistic about 2026, banking on the fact that it was actually mentioned back in the public consciousness thanks to a rocket ship, as far as I'm concerned.

No, they've got an AI-centric processor, which will spearhead a new era of performance and innovation for the company. So, they're going to launch a bunch of new cameras with AI plastered all over it. It's a fucking camera. Keep your AI out of my camera. AI is in everything, man. I'm going to go buy a pack of AI gum.

Yeah, when your juicy fruit has a Eula, you're in trouble. Look, I'm a purist and I refuse to buy those products. I will only buy machine learning gum. Exactly. Exactly. It's interesting, though, because, yeah, DJI and Insta360 have basically eaten their lunch.

Right. You know, Insta360 came out of nowhere, and I'm using one of their cameras right now. It's a beautiful camera. I've got their 360 camera, and they do basically everything that GoPro does, but kind of better. Right. You know, and DJI, DJI's cameras are okay, but, you know, we know them for the drones, you know, mostly.

Yeah, because, I mean, you know, we even just recently had the Winter Olympics, and that, you know, I remember the Olympics for a while, GoPro was plastered all over everything, and they were using GoPro cameras, et cetera, et cetera. It was all drones, and they didn't, obviously, they didn't pay the money because nobody was mentioning brand names. Those were custom, yeah, well, those were custom-built drones.

Okay. That makes sense. Yeah, so I saw the write-up for the guy who actually piloted those drones. Those are very custom-built drones, and, yeah, there was no, and then I don't think they can, well, the Olympics are, where were they this year? Italy? Italy. I can't even remember. I didn't even watch, except for when, what's-her-name, Broker Lake, but, because DJI, you know, has had problems here in the States.

Yeah. I was in Italy, so they should have been fine, theoretically. But, yeah, those were all custom, and I got to say, I've had GoPro cameras, and I found them to be absolutely lackluster. The one place that I, that you can still see that they're in use, every week, Guy's Grocery Games. They got them taped to the grocery carts. That's it. So, if they can get Guy Fieri on board, maybe they'll make that comeback, so.

This is an interesting one. OpenAI is backing an Illinois bill that would limit when AI companies can be held liable, even in worst-case scenarios like MASH casualties or billion-dollar damages. The proposal, SB3444, would shield so-called frontier AI developers as long as they didn't act intentionally or recklessly and published safety and transparency reports.

Well, I don't, I haven't seen many safety and transparency reports from OpenAI, and they have absolutely acted intentionally and recklessly with their sycophantic fucking AI. But this makes sense. This is a stinking of, we're just a platform. Yeah, this is exactly it. This is, you know, they're trying to get ahead of it. They're trying to get ahead of it, and they're just going to fight the regulation as much as they can until, it's just so funny, like, let's be regulated. Sort of.

Sort of. You know, until it comes down to the... On the little stuff. Yeah. Just a little bit, but, you know, but don't... We're not going to take off anybody's clothes, but if they kill themselves, that's on them. Yeah, exactly. We will make sure that you can't put your friend in a bikini, but fuck it, if they kill themselves, who gives a shit?

Or somebody else. Yeah. That's great. I love how they cherry pick the things that they're going to care about. Totally cherry picking. So, we'll see if this goes through. Early polling in Illinois shows about 90% of respondents oppose giving AI companies a liability shield. So, in Illinois, if you remember, they are at the frontier of the facial recognition stuff. I got a pretty decent-sized check from Facebook because they actually used my, you know, they trained their

facial recognition on my, you know, basically bio photo. Right. And, you know, so good for Illinois. You know, you would think that they're, you know, just some country bumpkin Midwest state, but, you know, it's got Chicago. Second city, baby. That's it. Well, not anymore, but once.

Well, yeah. So, yeah, this, they're going to slap the shit out of them. They're not going to let that go through, I don't think. And I would just mention Artemis 2 and the GoPros. By the way, Artemis 2 is coming back today. They will be landing late. I can't wait. It's going to be awesome. I can't wait to watch it. It's going to be just amazing. I've been nerding out over this the entire time. It's been fantastic. But I've just mentioned Artemis 2 and their GoPros. And of course, that's not really the company that got the most mention

out of this or the most mileage out of this. That would be first Nutella and the floating Nutella jar, which was fantastic. And secondly, Apple and their iPhones. And I just put this article in the show notes. Artemis 2 astronaut puts all of our iPhone moon photos to shame.

NASA astronaut. Reid Weissman took a photo of the far side of the moon with an iPhone 17 Pro. And then they put that up on the screen and it is just beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. Links in the show notes if you haven't seen these photos. It's science, man. Science. I know the fucking world is shit right now, but boy, did we need this. And boy, have I loved all this.

Oh, every second. Every second of it has been a lifeline to not killing myself thanks to open AI. My roommate's a boomer and she's just like, well, what's the big deal? We've already been to the moon. We've done this stuff before. I'm like, not since we've been alive, us Gen Xers, you know? So it's a big fucking deal because it's like, it's hope. It's something.

Also, we're doing it again. We didn't do it for 50 years. We were giving, I just, I saw an article I didn't put in the show notes. I saw a map of all the fucking private spacecraft and satellites that are around the earth. We gave it away to stupid companies and fucking Elon. This is us. This is our government doing it for us, for science. And that's it, not for fucking profit. And that's a big deal. Yeah, that is a big deal. And I love that,

you know, they're trying to cut NASA's budget again and they, and they're basically, everybody's pushing back saying, fuck no. Yeah. You know? No, we love this stuff. We want this stuff. This is what I want my money to go to. Cops and doodads. This is from the, you have exactly one job file.

Mercedes-Benz recalls us some G-Wagon EVs due to the risk of the wheels falling off. When you build a car, you have really one job. Keep the fucking wheels on. They have issued a recall for every Mercedes-Benz G580 with EQ technology with the 2025 model year as first spotted by inside EVs.

The current wheelboats could allow a wheel to loosen or detach from the vehicle, potentially affecting 3,734 models that are on the road. The issue here was the wheelboats were not adapted to the increased vehicle mass and higher torque load associated with the electric variant.

So they use the same chassis and all the stuff, except EVs are a lot heavier. Yeah. And they did not take that into account. Okay. I think, I think 3,700 out of those 3,734 G-Wagons are in my neighborhood.

They're fucking everywhere. And I hope the wheels fall off of these fucking things. I saw one the other day because I drive a Jeep, you know, and I'm surrounded by these assholes and G-Wagons. And somebody actually had a bumper sticker that said, enjoy your Jeep, peasant, on his G-Wagon.

Right. Oh, yeah. So I hope your fucking wheels fall off. That's what I'm saying. They do say it's unlikely to occur in real-world operating scenarios, and they will fix it for free if you take it to the dealership. You get new nuts. You get heavier nuts. That's what you get.

These nuts. That's what you get. If you're using an older Kindle, you're probably going to get screwed. Amazon has sent out emails to some of its users with a warning that it's discontinuing support for Kindle e-readers and Fire tablets released in 2012 or earlier.

Yes, that is a long time ago, but yes, it has one job. You read a book with it. Why should it be discontinued? It's so funny because the first Kindle that ever came out, the Kindle One, I bought it with the 3G subscription or whatever so you could get it over cellular, you know, get your books over cellular.

And I gave it to my mom, and she had been using it for another decade. They never discontinued any support for that thing, so it's amazing that they're finally doing it now. But yeah, it's an e-ink reader. Why would you discontinue support for that?

It doesn't really make any sense. You can still read books you've downloaded on the devices. You'll no longer be able to purchase, borrow, or download new ones as of May 20th. In addition, if the device has an issue that can only be solved by a factory reset, you're fucked. It breaks it.

Deregistering it will also render it unusable. On Kindle Fire devices, users won't be able to purchase or download content anymore, but other services will remain functional. This includes the very first Kindle, the Kindle 2, the Kindle DX, the Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Kindle 5, and the first version of the Kindle Paperwhite.

And Gadget asked Amazon why it decided to cut off support for those models, much as we have, and they said, those models have been supported for at least 14 years, some as long as 18 years. But technology has come a long way in that time, not for an e-reader.

It's an e-ink tablet. What the flying fuck? What? What? So they said, also, it only affects approximately 3% of its current users, whom it's now urging to upgrade. It gave them a promo code for 20% off select Kindle devices, as well as e-book credits if they purchase a new model by June 20th.

Our newer Kindle devices bring meaningful improvements to screen quality, performance, and accessibility, and you'll have access to your complete Kindle library and the Kindle store, the company wrote. Sure, yeah, but the old one works. Fine. Yeah, it fucking works. Why are you just making jokes?

I think that everybody who gets these 3% of the current users that are going to get their device bricked should go find where Jeff Bezos is going to be and just throw them at him the next thing, just like the tomatoes of our new society. I mean, I get it's not a lot of users, and I get you might have to have some old code hanging out and some maybe delivery methods have changed and all that sort of stuff.

So you've got some legacy code in the system to send a book to an older thing. But so what? They bought it. It's their product. It's not even that ancient. It's an e-reader. It's not complicated. This is total bullshit. Screw you, Amazon. 100%. 100%.

And I got a new gadget, Jason. I've been, as you know, my wife and I are kind of foodies. We love to cook. We basically take our knives to get sharpened at least once a year, which started to get a little bit pricey. My wife is very connected to popular culture. She likes her people.com and getting her gossip.

That's her downtime. That's her brain breaks from when she's yelling at, you know, Spotify or whoever she has to yell at for the day. So at some point recently, Ina Garten talked about her knife sharp. She was cooking on one of her reels, and Jennifer Garner posted something about, how do you keep your knives so sharp?

And then she responded to Jennifer Garner, because celebrities only talk to each other, and talked about some like $300 electric knife sharpener that she has and uses at her house that's amazing. And we looked at it, and we went, wow, that thing is beautiful, but we don't need a $300 knife sharpener.

How about the $80 one? And we tried out the Presto 08800 Eversharp electric knife sharpener two-stage system, silver black. Does exactly what it says on the tin. You know, this is going to basically recoup the cost in one year in terms of knife sharpening, and did a beautiful job.

The knives are great. Slice through everything now. It slices, it dices, it cuts through a fucking can, Jason, just like the late night commercials. It's so funny. I've heard that these are like, you know, like chefy chefs would never use these things because they kind of destroy the blade as they go. But if it's sharp, then it's sharp, I guess.

And I think it will destroy, I mean, it definitely, like this one will not do serrated edges, that it will destroy that. And it does take off a little bit, obviously, but it's micro and, you know, it's going to be decades before I've ruined the knives. Yeah, I should just get one of these. I've got our friend Brian Blondell loaned me his very fancy knife sharpening kit that requires an iPhone app, and it's got like, it's a whole thing.

And it's like, you know, this looks much easier. And for, it's only $47.99 right now. Yeah. I can't afford that, but maybe at some point I'll get one. Maybe when I fly back for the summer, I'll bring it with me, Jason. Bring it with so I can just sharpen my knives. Yeah. I'll charge you the fee, you know.

Yeah. I'm in the middle of bankruptcy, so a knife sharpener is probably not the best use of my It's a bit of a luxury item, I'd say, Jason. And yeah, just a little more elbow grease and you'll be fine. Yeah. I think I'm just going to use it. I'm going to use the stick in the stone right now to make them sharp.

And we were talking a little bit earlier about some oopsies by Apple programmers. And it's my opinion, you know, I still love Apple. I'm all Apple, all Apple infrastructure. I'm going to stay that way. I'm going to stay in the Apple environment. Which is so funny because when we started this show, you were the PC guy.

I know. I was. I got converted. I was into it. But I do have to say, as everything has gotten more complicated, and it certainly has with all the various devices that we have and all the apps and everything is a lot more complicated and interconnected now, cracks have appeared in Apple's once titanium-stealed programming.

You know, it used to be 100% if you had an Apple product and you paid for it and it would work. Absolutely would work. It would be very rare to have any bugs or errors. And if there was, they fixed them too sweet. But that has not been the case anymore.

I think it's just all gotten too complicated. So we talked about the signal issue where, you know, if you remove the app, it should have pulled out all those notifications and deleted those as well. Okay. They figure it out. You find it. You fix it. Great. There's another one. And this is, I came across this one.

Admittedly, it's a very small use case. But as someone who uses this flow daily, it's extremely annoying to me. Okay. This is with Apple Fitness, a recent update bug. They have stacks in the workout app. So you can stack a bunch of the different workouts together.

You can order them. And then when you play them, they'll play in order. Right. And as you finish each workout, it basically removes it from the stack. So it's very convenient. So like on Sundays, when I'm at my kid's swim class, I will literally go through and I will make my workouts for the entire week.

So I'll do something like a 20 minute head workout, a 20 minute strength workout, a 10 minute, you know, stretching and meditation thing. And then the next day, I'll do a different set of three different workouts. And then when I go down in the morning to do my workout on my Apple TV, which connects to my Apple watch, I just pull up the stack.

I hit play. It does the three in order that I want to do. I just boom, boom, boom, do my three workouts. And then I hit stop. And because I've done them all, it deletes them all. The next day I come down, my next three workouts start and it goes through the whole week like that. And it's been beautiful and wonderful until the last update.

And now for whatever reason on Apple's on the Apple fitness app on Apple TV, it randomly reorders your stack. Okay. No rhyme, no reason, no matter what order I put it in.

If I reorder them on the Apple TV app, the next time I load up Apple TV, it will re-scramble them all in a completely random order. It is fucking infuriating. You sure you're just not hitting the shuffle button? There is no shuffle button. There's no shuffle button.

And, you know, I Googled it, of course, in the Apple forums and on Reddit, everybody's kind of saying the same thing to people that all do exactly what I do. And it's just, we have to wait for an update. They're aware of it. Nobody has responded to anything.

It just, we're... Yeah, you're in the Apple limbo. Because it's funny. I don't want to be working out anyways. And now you've added friction. Oh, that sucks.

Yeah. It's a drag. I'm sure it'll get fixed. But here I am locked in with my Apple watch and my Apple phone and my Apple TV and my Apple fitness. And it doesn't fucking work the way it used to. You're so grumpy. The really shit thing is Apple makes it almost impossible to go backwards.

Like you can't go back to a previous version. And then what I would have to do, but probably, I would probably have to go back on my watch, on my Apple TV, on my phone. In your phone. Yeah. So, you know, just fix it, Apple. Just fix it. I mean, yes, it's not that big.

First world problems. This episode is brought to you by Delete Me. Delete Me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable.

It's easier than ever to find personal information about people online. Your address, your phone number, even your family members' names can end up floating around on data broker sites. And that can have real-world consequences. More and more bad actors are using that kind of information to target people, whether it's for harassment, scams, or worse.

As someone with an active online presence, privacy is really important to me. I've spent years putting content out in the world, and that also means my personal information is constantly at risk of being scraped, indexed, and resold. It's not a great feeling. Delete Me is doing the cleanup work for me, removing my data from hundreds of data broker websites so I don't have to spend hours chasing it down myself.

The New York Times Wirecutter has named Delete Me their top pick for data removal services, and it's easy to see why. This is one of those things you don't think about until it becomes a problem, but by then, it's already out there. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me, now at a special discount for our listeners.

Get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeliteme.com slash GOG and use promo code GOG at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is go to joindeliteme.com slash GOG and enter code GOG at checkout. Joindeliteme.com slash GOG, code GOG.

This episode is brought to you by CleanMyMac, your silent partner guarding your flow and attention. Think about how you actually use your Mac. You're in the middle of something, editing audio, rendering video, juggling a dozen browser tabs, and suddenly the machine starts fighting you. Spinning wheels, random slowdowns, storage warnings at the worst possible moment.

That's friction, and friction kills momentum. CleanMyMac is designed to remove that friction without getting in your way. It's notarized by Apple and built by MacPaw, and it works quietly in the background, so your Mac just keeps going. It clears out system junk, broken downloads, and duplicate files, so you're not wasting time guessing what's safe to delete.

The SmartCare dashboard gives you a quick, clean view of what's going on and lets you optimize performance in a couple clicks. If your machine starts running hot or lagging, the assistant steps in with real fixes, not vague suggestions, so you can get back to work fast. And there's even Cloud Cleanup, which scans your iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, and more to find space hogs.

Without sending your data anywhere, everything happens locally on your Mac. The point isn't cleaning your Mac. The point is staying in your flow, finishing the project, hitting the deadline, keeping your head in the work instead of troubleshooting your machine. Get tidy today. Try seven days free and use our code OLDGEEKS for 20% off at clnmy.com slash OLDGEEKS.

And the OLDGEEKS is all caps. So if you can't remember that, just go to the show notes and click the link. If you have a Mac, you need CleanMyMac. So go get it today.

Media Candy. Brian, I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. The Pit's so good, isn't it? I have not been able to stop watching The Pit. I'm five episodes in on season two, and I'm trying to slow down now. I was doing two a night, and now I'm just like, I took a break because The Boys came out, so I had to start watching The Boys last night.

I fell asleep like halfway through episode two, but it's really good. I really am enjoying the final season of The Boys, but The Pit is just so fucking good. It's the West Wing of medical dramas. That's what I'm saying, man.

It's competence-born. It's literally just competence-born. I'm there for it. I'm totally there for it. I'm thoroughly enjoying the second season. We're keeping up with it. We'll watch the latest episode tonight. But yeah, it's just so it's well-written.

It's well-acted. It's just great. It's totally solid. Yeah, 100%. And I still, there's no other medical procedural drama that I'm ever going to watch. Me either. Except for this one. Nope, this is it. I hate the genre. This is the one.

Yeah. Seriously. Shrinking ended its third season, I feel like. Yeah, third season, I think. Third season, yeah. Okay. I don't know if I'm going to watch if there's a fourth. This feels very Ted Lasso-y to me. It has started up here and just kind of went...

Get those occasional episodes that are really good. But overall, it's just... Again, you can't fault the acting. You can't fault a lot of it. But it's just, they're stretching believability. Like, I just don't see how these people can all just be hanging out with each other all day, every day.

Or why they would, because so many of their personalities are so massively different. And some of them are just... Anyways, it's... I'm glad the show has existed. I don't know if I'm going to take it much further. Okay. Because you've been bitching about it since the thing came on the air this season.

This season has been so all over the map. And it's just nothing matches up to that first season. I felt the same way about Ted Lasso. Although I feel Ted Lasso was a stronger show overall than Shrinking. Well, this comes back to the point that I made for with Hacks. You know, when I found out what they do over at shows that actually, like, win Emmys and are award winners.

Yeah. They fire the writing staff. Yeah. Because they're just going to let the show coast on the awards that they've already gotten. And then they just hire cheaper writers to come in and do it. And I think Shrinking probably... I mean, I don't know for a fact. No, they haven't. It's still the same writers, which is... Yeah.

They're just out of ideas then. I think they just... The well's fucking running dry. The well is dry, my friend. Okay. Well, scrap that one. Yeah. Daredevil. I've still been watching that as well. I don't... I...

They better inject Jessica Jones soon. That's all I got to say. Because I do feel it's same old story over and over again. It's... I... So many of the beats are exactly the same on this show. They didn't... They... Sure, they changed, you know, the people and the places and the things and all that.

But at the end, it's starting to feel very MCU formulaic. No, I need something to shake it up. Okay. Yeah, I'm behind because every time I went to go watch Daredevil, I'm like... The pit. But I've got an episode of The Pit to watch. Which says something. Because normally, Daredevil would be right at the top of my queue.

The top of the list. Yeah. You know, I'm such a huge mark for Daredevil, but the fact that it's... It is kind of like the same... It's the same fight scene over and over again, too. Yeah. I've seen that fight scene since season one, you know? I could use less fight scenes and more interesting drama happening.

Although, something did happen at the end of this episode that's probably going to shake up the next few. So, we'll see. Okay. No spoilers. No spoilers. I'll get caught up. I'll get caught up soon. I promise. All right. And as first reported by Deadline, Amazon MGM Studios have announced on Friday that the upcoming Spaceballs movie will hit theaters on April 23rd, 2027.

Okay. Great. It's in the can. It's done. We got to wait a whole year for it. What the fuck? Why? Why? Yeah. Like... Come on. Mel Brooks doesn't have that much time left. Let's get it out while he's still around. Yeah. Mel Brooks might not be around by the time you're actually going to put this movie out.

And, you know, you had a brush... You had a lot of publicity about it, and you're still getting a little bit. This isn't like the new... It's just Star Wars that we've waited 20 years for. It's just fucking Spaceballs. It should be funny. But it's not like everybody's waiting with bated breath to run out and see this.

Put it out already. Yeah, seriously. I mean, and they've got traction right now because Amazon MGM Studios put out Project Hail Mary. So they've got a space movie that, you know, that has some legs right now. So they should piggyback off of that and just get it out there. And especially, yeah, if you want Mel Brooks to do a press tour, you better fucking hurry up.

You know? I agree. Yeah. I don't understand why they're sitting on it, but there you go. You know, Jeff Bezos is so much smarter than me. Yeah. They better hurry up before they decide not to support it anymore because it's too old. And, you know, you have to get a 20% off coupon to get Spaceballs 3, you know?

Because you can't watch it on your old Kindle. Right. Go there. And instead of raising prices again, Netflix may have to lower its subscription costs, at least in Italy. A court in Rome recently ruled that Netflix owes its Italian users a refund for price hikes between 2017 and January 2024 and a reduction to previous subscription costs.

On top of the refunds, Netflix Italia would have to inform its affected subscribers of their right to have a refund. This is how you do things, people. The lawsuit was originally filed by Movimento Consumatori, a consumer rights organization based in Rome.

They said that more than 25,000 Netflix users have complained that they're not satisfied with the price increases over the years. Me too. Yeah, me too. According to lawyers representing the consumers, premium subscribers are entitled to a refund of roughly 500 euros, while standard tier customers should get back about 250 euros.

That is a significant chunk of change. That's serious money. Yeah. That's a lot of pasta. They also said that if Netflix doesn't immediately reduce prices and refund its customers, the consumer rights organization would pursue a class action lawsuit to recover funds. A Netflix spokesperson told Reuters that it would appeal, adding that the company takes customer rights very seriously and believe our terms have always complied with Italian laws and practices.

On the other side of the world, Netflix again raised prices for U.S. customers, this time across all of its tiers. Yeah. So what's that money paying for? Well, they just released a free app called Playground for smartphones and tablets. This is a gaming app for kids aged eight and under.

It's available to all Netflix members on any tier, and the company promises it doesn't have ads or in-app purchases. It works without mobile or Wi-Fi connections, which makes it the perfect companion for long airplane rides or grocery trips and addicting your kid to Netflix at a young age. There you go.

I mean, their gaming is actually pretty good. Like, we're still playing Boggle, the Netflix game, almost nightly. And my kid is destroying us now, and it's teaching him new words, which is fantastic. But we are, you know, we're very much limiting his screen time, especially we did so way more when he was under eight, which is exactly, you know, eight and under is what this is geared right towards.

So we'll see. How old's your kid now? He's turning 10 this year, man. Jesus Christ. Time, it flies. When we started this show. He didn't exist. He did not exist. That's insane. Insane. Well, I would like to pimp another show that I've got called Anonymous, a recovery and addiction podcast.

We finally started releasing new episodes. So season two has come out this week. So if you're into that kind of thing, go check it out. It's anonymous.show. Link will be in the show notes. I'm guessing because it's anonymous, you're not putting it up on YouTube like our show? No, there's no video for this one.

And I'm technically breaking the rule right now by saying that I'm involved with it. Anonymous except you. Yeah, pretty much. I broke my anonymity a long time ago. But this season, we've got some amazing guests on there. Can't tell you about it.

Yeah, can't tell you about it. But we're kicking it up a notch. We're kicking it up a notch. So check it out. I think it's a great show. Download numbers would not back me up on that. But, hey, what are you going to do? So I had talked about Breath, the new science of a lost art by James Nestor a couple weeks back.

I officially have given up on it. Okay. I thought you'd given up on it when you talked about it last time. I got this book. I liked like 10 seconds of it. The rest was shit. I got really stubborn about it. And I was like, well, there's got to be some nuggets in here. There's got to be some actionable stuff.

I must be doing something. This will improve my life if I keep reading this. And I will get an actionable insight into how to breathe that I didn't already know or I didn't pick up in the first, basically in the fucking book flap. And no, no, I just stopped.

I gave up. So I've gone back to some of the first contact books. So hopefully I'll finish one of those up by next week. Okay. Well, I have a book to recommend to you. This is an older book. It's called 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman. And it kind of says it's a time management book, but it's more kind of a life management book because 4,000 weeks is about the average time that we have to live, you know, if you run the numbers on it.

And I am way past the 2,000 mark. So, you know, for me, it's like I get a little fire under my butt now and again when I read books like this because I'm like, there's definitely far fewer days ahead than are behind, you know. So, and it's really well written.

The audio book is, I think, I forget who's reading the audio book, but it's really well done, the audio version of it. But I can't recommend this book enough. It's really, really good. And, you know, I read a lot of these kind of books to just take the piss out of them.

This one's actually solid. This is an actually solid self-help book that I thoroughly recommend. So, yeah, check that one out when you're done with your next first contact book because you've got to be running out of those at some point. I mean, you can't write them that fast. He's writing them that fast as far as I can tell.

Okay, okay. And I have been working my way through Mouse, the comic from 1992. Did you ever read Mouse? I did. I did, yeah. It's phenomenal. You know, this is absolutely phenomenal. This came out while I was in college, so of course I read it.

This is, you know, this is like a strident, like, you know, fucking as woke as woke can be, so better read Mouse. Okay. Yeah, I'd never got around to reading it, and I finally picked up a copy, and it's been sitting on my shelf. And I'm like, well, since we're going through it right now, I should probably bone up on it.

And, wow, it's amazing. I can't wait to get to the second book and finish it up. Yeah, and this administration can't wait to enact the second book. I know. I'm reading in real time is how it's going. I'm just following along. Oh, see, it's like reading the news. Yeah, pretty much.

Pretty much. So, go check it out. Yeah, between Mouse and the Lego videos being put out by Iran, that's all the news you need. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave, with podcaster who never sleeps, Dave Bittner.

How you doing, Dave? It's nice to see you again. Oh, I'm best described as hanging in there. Been a good week. Not a good week. By good, I mean horrific. You know what I mean. It's just been something. Here we are. But there's Artemis, too. There's Artemis, too, Dave. Yes, yes.

We've all pinned our hopes on this, and if this thing fucking challengers today, that's it. I'm out. Yeah, I have more on Artemis 2 later in my comments. Fantastic. Okay. First thing. First things first. We have new Star Wars. We should always lead with this.

We have Maul Shadow Lord has dropped on Disney+. I watched the first episode with the kid yesterday. Solid. I like it. Really? Yeah. Really? Okay. Dark. You know, underworld-y, as it should be. It's the plot. So, yeah.

Episode one, pretty good. Episode two is out, and then they start to drop weekly. So, be watching the second episode when the kid comes home from school. All right. Well, I was not planning on checking that out, but with your recommendation, I will. I can't say that Darth Maul moves me in any way, shape, or form.

I just don't really care much about him. But if you say it's a good show, I'll check it out. Yeah. They really flesh out his character in the animated series, a bunch of the different ones. So, but you do start, like, I'm pretty up on his story, and he's almost, you almost feel sympathy for him, to some degree.

I mean, he's still an asshole, because, you know. Okay. But so far, so good. I am enjoying it. I got to say that they've really been knocking it out of the park with these animated series. They've been pretty good. Well, I mean, I just want to tag on to that idea about shows we've been watching.

I saw you guys earlier in the show talked about Shrinking and The Boys. I just thought I'd piggyback on to those. I have not watched the season premiere of The Boys yet, but it's on my list. It's very good. Highly recommended. The first two episodes are solid.

Yep. Okay. Well, I did not go back and watch the, what's the other one where they're in college? Oh, yeah, you should. I know. It's really, really good. It's actually, I think, it rivals The Boys as far as quality goes. Yeah. I mean, I watched it up until the first episode of the most recent season, and the first episode of the most recent season was so bad that both my son and I were like, yeah, we're out of here.

It gets so much better. You have to, that episode was a stinker, but it gets a lot better. A lot better. Okay. And then we had the season finale of Shrinking. How'd you guys come away feeling about that? A couple thoughts on that that I had really quickly.

I felt that it kind of followed the same arc as Ted Lasso in terms of diminishing returns every season. Nothing has quite matched the first season. I felt that it was a satisfying conclusion for the season, and then they immediately followed that with news that it had been renewed for a season four, and I went, no!

That was a good end. Yeah. Yeah. And I found that this season in particular was very hit or miss with episodes. There were some episodes that I was just like, what is even happening? And then there were other episodes that did have the feels.

So, personally, I feel like they could have walked away, and it would have been a pretty good show, and more than a bit worried about a season four. Yeah. I would agree with every point that you made there. So, here's hoping, but we know how these things usually go.

Yeah. So, I put this in here because I know it's security, and we generally don't talk about security anymore, but this is kind of a big deal, I thought. And it's worth talking to you guys about, because I want to get your read on it and see if this is a tempest in a teapot or, you know, just more AI bullshittery.

Treasury Secretary Scott Besson and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell convened an urgent meeting with major Wall Street Bank CEOs to address concerns about a new AI model from Anthropik and its potential impact on cybersecurity. The focus is Anthropik's latest system called Mythos, which the company says is capable of identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities across major operating systems and web browsers.

Regulators are concerned that tools like regulators, who are the regulators? Regulators are concerned that tools like this could enable a new generation of highly sophisticated cyberattacks, particularly targeting systematically important financial institutions. Now, this has been making a round. At this point, Jason, just really, at this point, the regulators is one guy in a basement office saying, where's my stapler?

That's who the regulators are in the government now. That's it. Yeah. I, I, I've seen, I've seen the reports on the bugs that this thing has found so far, like in the Linux kernel and all sorts of other shit. Right. And people are kind of getting trippy about it.

And, and it's so, it's so everywhere right now that Palantir stock is tanked because they think that this is, you know, that like, this is going to put Palantir out of business, which is very interesting. That'd be great. But, um, what are you guys seeing and what are you guys thinking about this? Well, uh, like you, you're right.

It's been in all the news, all the cyber news lately. Um, I think initially a lot of folks kind of poo-pooed it, that it was really just marketing and PR that, um, Anthropic was hyping their new model and they were making it exclusive access to a few companies because it's so powerful.

It can't be released to the rest of the world and that it was just. You know, BS and whatever. Um, but then the people who were actually using it started talking about it. And like you said, some of the bugs that it was finding started coming out and some of them are decades old.

Uh, it's finding all sorts of things. So my take on it is that the main concern is that this tool will, uh, cause an avalanche of bug reports that there won't be time to mitigate.

And that's, we're already seeing that. It's like, you know, we're already seeing those things. It's like the same thing with, with Apple's app stores because vibe coding has, has enabled so many people to release, like things are now coming faster than anybody can check them. Then, then, then there's any oversight, then there's any, anything like, right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So I seem to be real, you know, that's the thing is like, these are like real zero days that they're finding here, which, you know, if the bad guys get a, get ahold of these, which is why everybody's freaking out. It's like, this could, this could really be like a major fucking thing.

Right. And what's the solution here? And I was surprised to see that, you know, well, more AI, obviously, um, cause that'll solve everything. But, um, I was surprised to see the, this meeting with the treasury secretary and the federal reserve chair.

That was unexpected. Uh, but I guess in retrospect, it makes sense. Um, I don't know. I, I, I, I hate to say that I feel a little numb with all this kind of stuff because it is coming so fast and, and the rate continues to accelerate.

And I've, it for just for myself, I'm finding it hard to process all of it, uh, every day and figure out how do we possibly mitigate these things? I guess it's so far out of our previous experience and our history and knowledge of how to contend with something like this.

When we have a threat that is coming at machine speed, um, I don't know, hold onto the bar. We'll see how, because this is going to go in, this is going to fall into the hands of the bad guys. Count on it.

If not already, it is too valuable to not. Um, so, well, and if Anthropic built one, somebody else is going to build one within a few weeks and, you know, maybe they're not going to be as, as, as, uh, circumspect about trying to keep it contained.

Um, you know, it's, it's a Pandora's box that we've really opened with this stuff. Well, and on, on top of this, you have the fact that Anthropic is still banned by the federal government, you know, it's just, today we reported on the fact that, uh, there was a judge who upheld the Pentagon ban while it makes its way through.

In other words, didn't put a stay on it, uh, to allow it to stand. So in the, in the midst of the treasury secretary and the federal reserve chair getting together with the wall street CEOs to talk about this thing, we have Anthropic in the middle of a pissing match with the Pentagon when what's really needed is everybody getting along and figuring out, you know, how, how we're going to handle all these things.

So it's chaotic shocker. It's chaotic. Yeah. Welcome to 2026. Yeah, absolutely. No, I, and, you know, I've been trying to keep up with all the AI news and it's just, it's impossible.

It's absolutely impossible. It's a fire hose torrent of just, yeah. And trying to figure out, like to Dave's point earlier, trying to figure out what is just PR bullcrap versus what's real news and what these things can really do versus what they're saying they can do it to try to get some more money.

And it's, it's, it's fucking exhausting. It is. Absolutely. Yeah. So we'll keep an eye on this one for sure. Yeah. So, um, I wanted to follow up, uh, I meant to talk about this last week, but it slipped my mind. Uh, I guess a few weeks ago before I went off to RSA, we were talking about the strong songs podcast, which we're both, uh, well, we're all fans of.

Um, and so, uh, when I was on my way back from the RSA conference, loaded up my phone with podcasts to listen to. One of them was the latest episode of strong songs in which he covered both sides now by Joni Mitchell.

I'm halfway over the continent, 30,000 feet, and I'm weeping like a baby. Uh, and to be fair, there's something about being in a plane and the, the, the, that makes me weepy anyways.

I think I cried to like one of the Batman movies once because, you know, you're, you're on a plane, you maybe have had a, you know, Jack and Coke and, uh, the oxygen is what it is. Right, right, right. You're feeling, you're already feeling a little isolated and, and restricted and, and all those kinds of things.

Um, but you know, I, I, I had never, I've obviously, I know the song both sides. Now I had never really dug into it deeply. Yeah. It's just kind of part of the firmament. Like it's, it's there and it doesn't, it was a bit before our generation. So we don't feel it.

Like my biggest exposure to it, it probably comes from love actually, you know, Emma Thompson listening to it. And yeah. And he digs into the history of it, how she made this song when she was in her twenties and then she revisited it when she was in her fifties and compares the recordings, you know, one accompanied by guitar, the other by an orchestra and how different it is when you consider it in your twenties and versus when you're in your fifties.

And again, I'm weeping. And, but, uh, one of the things that, um, what's his name? Kirk, I think is the host of that show. Kirk Hamilton. Yeah, he said, uh, he, he was, he was talking about, uh, conversations with his dad.

Now, coincidentally, I'm listening to this on the anniversary of the passing of my father. So I'm already primed to be a big emotional mess. Right. But it hadn't hit me.

It was sort of been the back of my brain. And then he starts talking about things with his dad and conversations. And, and, uh, he, he, he said this phrase, he said, as you get older, your passions soften into wisdom. I was just like, Oh my God.

It's so true. It's so true. You know, I don't know the, the, um, under pressure episode. And then the both sides. Now I actually, I'm a little worried about Kirk. I feel like I should drop him an email and say, are you trying to kill us?

Or are you not doing well yourself? I don't know what's going on, buddy, but, uh, can you, can we get a fucking happy episode? Can we do a disco song? Can we, can we? Right. We village people in here. Yeah. Let's unpack walking on sunshine. Yes. Yes.

Please. Something stupid and meaningless. Yeah. That's no, it was a, it was a very impactful episode. And obviously, you know, same, same thing, you know, being in my early fifties now, it's not a song I really thought about much, but as he breaks it down and you're listening to it and then you, you know, Jesus Christ, it is one of those episodes like under pressure and this one have destroyed me.

Yeah. No, it's again, I guess I got to listen to it. I listened to under pressure and I was just at the end, I was just like, give me a tissue. But okay. But I think it's good. I mean, I, I think it's because I think like for me anyway, there's a difference between weeping and crying, you know, like crying I do when I'm sad, but weeping is more of like an emotional release and it's not necessarily sadness.

It's just, it's a, some sort of escape valve. And so I feel good on the other side of a good weeping session, I think, or at least relieved. How'd the guy sitting next to you feel about it? Well, it was a gal and, uh, fortunately she was very into whatever she was watching on her iPad.

So, you know, I'm sitting there a blubbering mess. I had the window seat. Yeah, exactly. I had the window seat. So I'm looking out, you know, uh, the clouds below. At the clouds that she's singing about. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh, I'm above the clouds before I was below the clouds.

Anyway, I've seen both sides now, Dave. I've seen both sides. I know. I know. Literally and metaphorically. Uh, somehow I missed that the marathon game had launched. And it's been out for a couple of weeks now. Yeah. So explain to me, how can I play this?

Uh, I think you need to go get yourself a console or a PC. So this will play on a, on my PS5, my son's PS5. I do believe it's out for the PS5. I was going to get it, but like I mentioned before in the show, I'm going through bankruptcy and I don't have money for things like that right now. So I won't be, I won't be checking it out.

But yeah, it's, it's, it's out and, uh, the reviews were pretty decent that I read. So that's what I saw. It's a decent game. I watched some gameplay and it seems it has that feeling of old marathon, which was a classic and very important to me.

Um, but, uh, the other, but the flip side of it is like all modern first person shooter games, they're so twitchy now, everything moves so quickly. And I'm hoping that there's a way, there's a setting that I can slow that down. There's old guy mode.

Yeah, exactly. There is. There actually is on most of these games now. Give it a little jelly to, to not give me motion sickness. So, yeah, I, I, I mean, my thing is I like first person shooters. I'm a Quake three arena guy. I mean, that's what I, that's what I came up on.

You know, I was semi pro. I, I actually played in a lot of tournaments and I was really good at it, but I need a keyboard and a mouse, like doing the thumb thing just does not work for me. I just do not like first person shooters. If I got to use that stupid controller, you know, give me a keyboard and a mouse any day of the week and I will mop the floor with you, but using the little thumb sticks, I suck.

They're too sensitive. Even if you turn the sensitivity all the way down, it's like, still, it's like my thumbs don't work that way. I'm not a kid. I need a mouse, please mouse and a rail gun. And I'm, I, I'm good to go, but yeah, if you check it out, let me know. I'm, I'm, I'm, I would like to play it, but like I said, can't right now.

Yeah, no, I get it. So yeah, I'll have to get my son to spring into action and make it. So, which is more and more what happens these days. Just Jack, make this remote work. Okay, dad. I hate to admit it, but it's where I am.

This is so much, there's only so much extra mental cycles. And so we've been, we've been tech support for our families, our whole lives. It's time that it's good that you can now offload some of that to your son. Damn straight, you know, it's his turn. Damn straight, damn straight.

So, uh, I'm curious if I had a little nostalgia moment, uh, and I'm curious if you guys are old enough to be in this zone where this would affect you or resonate with you, I guess is a better word for it. Uh, one of the shows that my wife and I watch when we're falling asleep, or I'd say one of the shows we put on while we're falling asleep is the love boat.

Uh, it is gentle, uh, it's funny, it's nostalgic. I particularly like it because of all the old Hollywood people who show up on it. You get vaudevillians on love boat.

Charo. Rope and Burl. Right, exactly. Yeah. Charo. Charo, yeah. Yeah. Um, Kate Smith. Uh, and so we had love boat on, uh, earlier this week and I'm watching love boat and starting to fall asleep and one of the guests come on and I said, I said to my wife, I said, I'm probably wrong here, but I think that's pinky Tuscadero.

Now, does that name mean anything to either of you? Of course it does. Okay. Brian. Uh, yes, but I have to say I saw these things on Sunday morning repeats. So I, I, a bit later than you guys probably. So like, I've not been, I watched, I watched that live.

Yeah. I didn't watch these live. This was when I was taken to my grandparents' house and, uh, deposited in front of the TV on Sunday afternoons while my, my dad did things around my, you know, fixed things around my grandfather's house. So I watched them on Friday night when my mom would dump me at my grandparents' house because she wanted to go have her free time.

So, but I watched, I watched love boat with my grandparents because it was, it was love boat. And then right after love boat was fantasy Island. Right. Right. Right. So, and it turns out I was right. I, I figured if she wasn't pinky Tuscadero, she was someone from Greece, but no, it was pinky Tuscadero.

Uh, and ladies in Greece, right? The pink ladies are in Greece. Right. And I think pinky Tuscadero had the pinkettes was her, uh, little squad of, uh, minions. And, uh, and then later there was... And Stockard Channing was one of the original pink ladies who was then awesome as the first lady on West Wing.

Correct. Correct. Stockard Channing, a 35 year old high school student. Yes. Well, they all were back then. Yep. It was, it was, uh, you know, we, we graduated a bit when the 24 year old Johnny Depp was in 21 Jump Street as a high school student. And yeah. Right.

Right. So, of course, pinky Tuscadero, uh, had a sister named leather Tuscadero who later came on the show. Anyway, I have a link to the YouTube clip of, uh, Fonzie and pinky breaking up, which is a real, uh, not quite as tear jerking as strong songs, but perhaps nostalgic to some of you.

But then the other thing... Fonzie saw both sides now. That's right. Pinky and leather. Oh my. Um, but then the other thing that's reminded me of, we were talking about the evil Knievel stunt cycle. Yes. Fonzie had his own stunt cycle and it was comparatively lame.

Was it? Because it, it, uh, it very famously jumped over sharks. Well, this one didn't. So, I included a link to a YouTube commercial for Fonzie's garage, which was a toy.

Uh, and so it's Fonzie's garage where you get to fix cars and, and spend time with Richie and Potsy and Ralph Malfe, but they also have Fonzie's stunt cycle, which instead of jumping over things, turns around in a circle. Ooh, that's exciting.

That's... Yay. It's like, it's got training wheels on it. It's really lame compared to, uh, the evil Knievel thing. And, and what is what, when I first remembered that Fonzie had a stunt cycle, I thought to myself, they must've just taken the evil Knievel stunt cycle and just rebadged it, you know, put a leather jacket on it.

Yeah. Put a, you put a leather jacket on evil Knievel and paint his hair darker and, you know, bam, bam, boom, you got Fonzie, but that's not what they did. They made us his own stunt cycle. That was very lame. So it's a fun commercial though of its time. I do like those old commercials.

What I, what I do wish that, uh, when, when they have these reruns of these shows from the seventies and the eighties, I wish they ran the original commercials. I would, I would love, I would watch, I would watch the shit. Out of like, I would actually skip the show. Like, I don't even want to see the show.

I just, I want to see all the original commercials that ran when this show ran. I want the live feed from back in the day. Well, and there's plenty of that on YouTube. You can go find strings of seventies commercials and, and you can find original shows that would still include the commercials. Yeah. The reason I haven't done that is I'd, I'd be withering away and still watching it right now.

Like I, I wouldn't have shown up for this. I probably wouldn't eat. I would just be sitting there scrolling endlessly. Old McDonald commercials. Better than watching what's on the air now. So that's true. That's true. Old McDonald land commercials are weird. They are weird. Like psychedelic weird.

I guess it was, cause it was the time. I mean, the base of the McDonald land was a ripoff of HR puff and stuff. So I guess that was the aesthetic that they were going for and it's weird. Well, the last thing I have here is a video that NASA posted about the Artemis astronauts put together a little, little music video.

It's called moon joy. It's wonderful. One of the flight directors said, if you can't take love to the stars, why do we even do it? And so it's a happy little boost. Oh, I think when we all could use one.

So here's hoping that they touched down safely later this evening. But this is a nice little video. So highly recommend it. It made me smile and made me happy. And that was so much appreciated. We need more of that. We do.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Take the win. All right, guys. Until next week. Until next week. All right. See you guys. Take care. Closing shout outs. So I don't know if you guys didn't hear the last episode where we said that this is an ad supporter of a fan supported show because we don't have ads that much anymore.

We have no new patrons. So but we do want to thank our current patrons. Peter, Brian, Jade, Howard, Andrew, Hot Wings, FTW, Darrell, Derek and Geeky, Grump I Am and Ben. So thank you guys for still sticking with us.

We appreciate it very, very much. We absolutely do. And over at PayPal, thank you to Florian who made a donation. And over the tip jar, we've got Patrick and John. Hi, John. And so if you guys want to help support the show and keep us on the air, we really appreciate it. Go to GOG.show slash donate and you can find ways to donate there.

Or you can go to Patreon.com slash GOG and sign up for as little as $3 a month. And you can get the show early, ad free and in high definition. That's right. High definition. So check it out. We appreciate it. Seriously. We sure do. And hip hop pioneer Africa Bambata has died at the age of 68.

He's one of the founding figures of hip hop culture. And the hip hop alliance has confirmed that he passed away in a statement. The organization said Bambata helped shape a global movement rooted in peace, unity, love and having fun, playing tribute to his role in the emergence of hip hop as both a musical genre and cultural force.

Unfortunately, in his later years, his reputation was overshadowed by allegations of child sexual abuse and trafficking, which he denied. But that's why we haven't heard too much of him. He said the TMZ had reported the artist died in Pennsylvania due to complications from cancer on Thursday.

Africa Bambata is somebody that appeared a lot in the music that I listened to. He did some stuff with Johnny Lydon from the Sex Pistols, Time Zone, which is a great song. Absolutely fantastic. And he also appeared on a lot of EDM and stuff that I was listening to. And yeah, well, I don't know if we're sad or not, because apparently he was not that great of a guy.

So yeah, kid toucher. Yeah. So there you go. What you going to do? I don't know. Everybody seems OK with Michael Jackson. So here we are. And the president. Oh, yeah, that too. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Woke Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 7401.

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 and punch a fascist. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between. We'll love you for it. Swing by GOG.show to join our discard and chat with us and other show fans.

Got thoughts, feedback, cool links. Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact. And don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review. And we'll read it on the show. And guess what? We've got merch snagged up here now at chop.gog.show. And stay... Wrong boob. Wrong boob. And stay grumpy.