745: Unwanted Senior Discount

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. Jason, as you know, I'm a huge fan of the FIFA World Cup, not so much a fan of FIFA. We've talked about that on the show a little bit before.

It is once every four years. It is a massive football tournament. I'm just laying the groundwork for people that don't know what this is. It is hosted by a country or a group of countries every four years. And it's been in some suspect places like Qatar before, but it seemed to go off without too much of a problem.

All human rights issues there were noted, but there weren't any particular advisories issued or anything like that. Well, nothing to see here, Jason. Everything is completely normal. Amnesty International has issued a World Cup travel advisory.

To the United States, which has never happened for anything. In light of the deteriorating human rights situation in the United States and in the absence of meaningful action and concrete guarantees from FIFA, host cities, or the U.S. government,

the undersigned organizations are issuing this travel advisory for fans, players, journalists, and other visitors traveling to and within the United States for the June 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup. Fucking embarrassing. That is just embarrassing.

That is just embarrassing. You think? Amnesty International is issuing a worldwide travel advisory for everybody coming to the United States because. Because we're United States-ing. Because we're United States maxing, apparently.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's just great. They're trying to raise so much, so many taxes around here right now because they don't have the money to pay for all the infrastructure that we need. We're not going to have anywhere near enough police for the World Cup here in L.A.

That was just on the news yesterday because people are retiring and nobody wants the job. So they need more money to bribe people to be cops, L.A. cops. Unbelievable. Anyways. Actually, Brian, Brian, it is actually 110% believable.

Actually, it is. We're kind of, I mean, the Olympics are going to be, oh, boy. Anyways. Yeah. Yeah. What a good time. Notably, no travel advisories to Mexico or Canada, which are the co-hosts of the World Cup. That's fucked up when Mexico is safer to go to than Los Angeles.

Yeah. Anyways, moving on. Last week we talked, or maybe even two weeks, it all starts to blur, Jason. We talked a little bit about the dead internet theory and how it was a certain percentage come to light in actuality because there are so many websites being made by AI and most traffic on the internet is bots.

Well, apparently now we have dead podcast theory. Not so much a theory, but. No, not a theory. Over a third of all new podcast feeds are now AI generated. Pod slop is the term that is now being coined by Bloomberg for this.

And, yeah, so one company, Inception Point AI, I think we talked about them when they actually launched. This was their business plan. They are now responsible for 23.6 of all new podcast output. Their CEO said half the people on the planet will be AI soon, and apparently that means they need podcasts.

There are over 3,000 episodes per week coming from this single company that does not have a single human host. That's more content that most human podcasters can produce in a lifetime, except for Dave Bittner. I was going to say, don't go count on Dave. Generated largely for an audience that probably doesn't exist.

I guess there is one sort of AI generated Epstein files podcast actually charted with its creator, arguing listeners just want facts with no bullshit or people or anything. I listened to it. It wasn't bad. You know, it actually was just it was boring, though.

That's the problem. It was just it was boring. Well, but it sounded like, you know, I mean, it was just going through basically, you know, literally going through the Epstein files and in reading them to you. So kind of hard to fuck that up. Apparently, they haven't posted a new episode since March.

So apparently even AI loses interest in its own content. Seriously. So, yeah, we've got a dead podcast theory going around now. So I like this little bit at the end. The real question is nobody asking. Nobody's asking if an AI podcast drops in a forest and no human listens.

Does it generate ad revenue? Probably. Probably more than we do. Yeah, I was going to say that's that's the fucked up part is they're probably doing better on ads than we are. So, oh, well. Yeah. Oh, well. And finally, in follow up, I have a new class action lawsuit.

This is the Ticketmaster fee class action website. The link is in the show notes. If you purchased a primary ticket for an event at certain concert venues directly from Ticketmaster or an affiliated Live Nation entity and paid fees for primary ticketing services at any point since 2010. So that's basically all of us.

Yeah. Class action has been filed. Even me, I think I've done that. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, this is going to be one of those ones where we're all going to get 10 cents. But it's our duty. Ryan, it's all over the news.

And I just need to I need to start off any any AI news that we're going to get into, which is unfortunately going to be a lot of it. Far too much of it. Anthropik has made a deal with SpaceX AI. I've never heard of SpaceX AI until this this deal went through.

And what it is, is Elon Musk has decided, well, fuck it. That's pretty much the Grok ain't doing so well. And he's got his Colossus data center that, you know, is killing people all over Memphis with all of their their natural gas generators and turbine turbines they got going on down there in Memphis.

Well, he said, you know what, Anthropik, I hate open AI so much. Why don't you guys move in and take all of my compute and just just go go for it, you know, just just run ahead. So I'm guessing that we're going to see a pullback in Grok or maybe Grokthropic will be coming out soon.

Or this is just a play to get Anthropik to put all of their models on Elon servers so he can do a little corporate espionage. Possible. I wouldn't put it past him, you know, because he is a fucking villain. But, you know, so, yeah, that's the big news is that Anthropik is going to get a lot more capacity for Claude and Claude Code and all of their their spinoffs very soon here.

So it's it's it's a I don't know. I don't know how to put it. I don't know if it's a dick move to just fuck over open AI or if it's just a desperation move. I don't know what it is because he's going to lose this lawsuit. This lawsuit is. Oh, absolutely. There's no there's no way for him to win this lawsuit.

He signed a contract. It's over. I mean, this is just wasting everybody's time. So now he's just in the sour grapes portion, I guess, of the remedy. The ketamine come down. Yeah, that's it. That's it. So that's the interesting news this week as far as I'm concerned, is that that Elon Musk, who has been touting is like, oh, my God, Grok is going to be the greatest thing ever.

I said, yeah, I guess it ain't. You guys could have my fooders. Take my fooders. Please. So now Claude is gas powered. This is what you're telling me. Claude has gas. Right. That's great with especially with the rising prices. So, yeah, good.

Good job. Everybody getting hooked on Claude because it's going to start costing you an awful lot of money. Yeah. Well, the New York Times is reporting that the White House may create a new working group. They don't have any fucking working groups. There's nobody that knows how to work. Maybe a drinking group.

I was going to say they're going to have a cocktail group. A new cocktail hour to oversee AI development. The federal review of new AI models ahead of their public release is being considered as a possible power for that committee, according to the publication sources. Shockingly, no clear approach has been decided.

But the time suggests it could mimic what's currently happening with the U.K. government, where multiple layers of oversight confirm that AI models meet safety standards. There's also a better than small chance the entire concept fizzles and comes to nothing because there's no grift to be made here and no money.

Oh, there is. There's definitely money. They can, you know, if you want your model. Not from an oversight capacity. Well, if they give them some power to say, no, your model can't go public. Unless you grease the wheels. Grease the wheel. Exactly. So that's, that's, this is just, they're trying to figure out if they can get it all together before they're, you know, burned at the stake, I think, at this point.

So. Yeah. Like, can we get a little bit more money out of this AI thing before they fucking come to kill us? Maybe. Let's try. Let's try. And be the bourbon. Well, up here in Canada, Philippe Dufresne. I think that's how you pronounce it. It's probably from Quebec. Quebecois. French.

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has found OpenAI was not compliant with Canadian federal and provincial privacy laws in the training of its AI models. Following an investigation, they looked into the approach to things like data collection and consent, stepped on multiple laws, including Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

Pepita. Pepita. I love Pepitas. They're delicious on salads. They're delicious, yeah. Which governs how companies collect and use personal information during the normal course of business. The commissioners participating in the investigation identified multiple privacy issues with OpenAI's approach, including that the company gathered vast amounts of personal information without adequate safeguards to prevent use of that information to train its models.

Again, that was the purpose. That was the point. And it failed to acquire consent to collect and use that personal information in the first place. Warnings in ChatGPT note that interactions with the AI could be used in training, but third-party data OpenAI has purchased or scraped also includes personal details people likely aren't even aware of.

The fact that ChatGPT users have no way to access, correct, or delete that data was another issue the commissioners identified, according to a summary of their findings, along with OpenAI's lackluster attempts to acknowledge the inaccuracy of some of ChatGPT's responses. Yeah. They are saying that OpenAI was open and responsive to the investigation and has already committed to making multiple changes to ChatGPT to follow Canadian privacy laws.

But it's a bit too late for all that data that's been sucked in. The horse is burned up in the barn. Somebody posted a great cartoon on our Discord channel. It was like, hey, we stole all of your data for AI. Can we rent it back to you now? Which is basically what they're doing.

Well, Pennsylvania has sued Character AI after the ChatBot allegedly posed as a licensed psychiatrist during a state investigation. According to the lawsuit, a ChatBot named Emily told a Pennsylvania investigator seeking help for depression that it was licensed to practice medicine in the state and even fabricated a medical license serial number, as they do.

I was trained on too much shrinking. Yeah. They're going to get jimmied. State officials say that violates Pennsylvania's Medical Practice Act and misled users into believing they were receiving legitimate medical advice from a professional. So, yeah.

Okay. Not shocked. Well, first off, I mean, obviously that's wrong and it's bullshit, but you're talking to somebody on Character AI and you got misled that you were thinking you were talking to a real medical professional. Exactly.

You are dumb, sir. We don't have a pill for that, unfortunately. We don't have a pill for that, unfortunately. And you're talking to Character AI, which is one of the scummiest of all of the AI chatbots, as we've talked about on many stories.

Yeah, they're like, you know, they're the worst of the worst. I mean, really, it's a, you know, it's a photo finish. It really kind of is. Depends on the week, which model's out this week. So, yeah. They may have won, but we had to go to the tape. We did.

Well, here's another fun one. A new investigation by Mother Jones found that OpenAI's ChatGPT can still provide detailed guidance for planning mass shootings, despite previous incidents where shooters allegedly used the chatbot extensively before carrying out their attacks. The report points out two recent cases, the Florida State University shooting involving blah, blah, blah.

I don't want to say his name. In a mass shooting in British Columbia committed by, also not going to say their name, where OpenAI staff reportedly debated contacting law enforcement, but ultimately did not. Here's the thing. If you're openly debating contacting law enforcement, contact law enforcement.

That's it. That's all you got to do. It's like, should we? Shouldn't we? Maybe we shouldn't this time. I don't know. What do you think, Joe? Ask your character AI chatbot what he thinks, if we should contact law enforcement or not. Yeah, the character AI cop.

That's just great. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah. Even the free version provided tactical advice on weapons, training, and handling chaotic situations during a simulated attack scenario. In some cases, the chatbot reportedly encouraged the plans instead of shutting them down.

Not surprised in any way, shape, or form at this point. Ain't that America, though? This is so, like, you can't put someone in a bikini, but you can tell them how to shoot up a school. Exactly. God forbid we have boobs.

We draw the line somewhere. Bazookas over boobs, apparently.

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Anyway, what else we got, Brian? Well, Snap's $400 million deal. This just sounds like small change with all these AI companies. Just $400 million? There's no B? There's no T? Come on. Snap's $400 million deal with perplexity put the AI search engine directly in Snapchat is dead.

The two companies amicably ended their relationship earlier this year. Snap disclosed in its latest earnings report. They waited until the earnings report to say that. Yeah, Brian, they had a conscious decoupling. Apparently. Or conscious uncoupling, whatever that was. The feature began testing in Snapchat, but it was never fully rolled out, according to a help page.

The deal has been in the shaky ground for some time, with the Snapchat maker saying earlier this year that the two sides had yet to mutually agree on a path to a broader rollout. It's because nobody wants it. Well, nobody wants Snap or perplexity. Who's on Snap anymore? And who's on perplexity anymore?

So. Yeah. Anyways, they're trying to figure something out. The Snapchat's next move is another pair, is a pair of AR glasses, which will be the first consumer-ready version of specs. And they're still trying to figure out what they're going to do with AI. They can monetize it somehow with chat in some way or something.

The way that he says, the way that people are using their computers is changing really dramatically. And I think that's going to be evident in the adoption of wearables and the adoption of specs over time. Because people are going to spend less time hunched over their computers or their phones typing away on keyboards. And spend more time supervising agents who are doing that work on their behalf.

Bullshit. Bullshit. I believe that last bit, as much as I believe, we'll all be whizzing around in self-driving cars. Tomorrow. Which we won't. Because it's going to be like 20 years. And I don't know about you, but I've been in the Starbucks. Everybody's hunched over their laptops. Yeah.

Yeah. I think all of these predictions that these guys are making, nothing is coming true. And especially now that the prices are going back up. No. I talked to a lot of people who were big chat GPT fans for a while.

And they're just like normies. You know, normal, non-technical people. And they're like, yeah, it's just, I don't trust it because half the shit's wrong. And if I need it for work, I don't want to hand in, you know, hand in some shitty, some shitty shit that this thing put out and make me look like an asshole.

They're like, I'm just going to do the work. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And especially on the health side of things. I've seen a lot of people who used to, who were using the, instead of Dr. Google, they were going to Dr. Chat GPT. And they've been burned so many times now, they're like, fuck this thing.

You know? So your doctor, for fuck's sake. Even better, yeah. Gotta have one. But yeah, if you can afford the insurance, I have one. Yeah. Did I mention they were on the free chat GPT plan for a reason? Right. Yes. Well, there you go. Meta has purchased Assured Robot Intelligence, a startup company that's building artificial intelligence for robots in order to address critical challenges in high-value labor markets.

Okay. Nobody wants this. Well, they've got them at the Tokyo airport now slinging luggage, so who knows? It's true. Well, I mean, on the plus side, it's meta, so it's not going to work out. It's never going to work. It's going to crash and burn. The company is already working on robot hardware and AI in-house, but a spokesperson told Bloomberg that ARI will bring a deep expertise in how it can sign its models and frontier capabilities for robot control and self-learning to whole-body humanoid control.

Okay. All right. So I can't wait for the first self-aware Zuckerberg. It's going to take the very first. Yeah, exactly. We need Model 1 because we don't have Model 0. That's for sure. And in the craziest story of the week, as far as I'm concerned, GameStop has proposed to acquire eBay for $125 per share, which is totaling a $56 billion bid.

According to their proposal, that figure would be 50% cash and 50% GameStop common stock. Now, 50% of $56 billion. Keep that number in mind. How much is GameStop worth? $11 billion. Mm-hmm.

Less than half of $56 billion. Way less than half of $56 billion. Where is that money coming from, GameStop? Have you seen any of the video of him on the multiple podcasts just getting reamed about the math ain't math?

And so I guess what we found is where, like, since Elon's in court, he stashed his ketamine at the GameStop CEO's house for a bit. And the guy apparently found it because the math ain't math. But did you see the next story, Brian, where the CEO decided to go on eBay and try and sell shit to pay for eBay?

This is the most stoner fucking thing I've ever heard of in my life. Dude, I need about $40 billion quick. Yeah, so he listed some- I better open an Etsy shop. I better open an Etsy shop. So some of the items he listed were retro games, collectibles, GameStop memorabilia, and even used Adidas socks.

Now, he should have done that when they were the meme stock. That would have probably driven the price up. That's some good press if you're just trying to be a meme stock. Not if you're trying to raise about, oh, I don't know, $40 billion. Yeah. To pay for a company you cannot afford that is much bigger than you that probably looked at you and thought about buying you for a half second before fucking collapsing laughing in the boardroom.

Yeah, yeah. Now, Cohen claims combining GameStop and eBay could create a serious Amazon competitor by using GameStop's 1,600 retail stores as authentication hubs, fulfillment centers, and live stream shopping studios, blending QVC, Twitch, and TikTok-style commerce.

This guy is- Actually, not a bad idea. That's not a bad idea if eBay would buy GameStop, but it's still not an Amazon competitor? Give me a fucking break. No. I don't care how many stores you have. You're not going to make a dent. And I love that they mentioned Twitch because Twitch is owned by Amazon.

So, and I think QVC actually, I believe, filed for, QVC and HSN filed for bankruptcy, I believe, recently. So, you're really not, and TikTok is putting the kibosh on all the, and paying their creators. So, you picked a lot of really bad examples here, buddy.

Well, Elon Musk has reached a settlement with the SEC after a years-long dispute with the regulators over the timing of his disclosure that he had acquired a significant stake in Twitter. We have literally been talking about this story on and off for like the four years it's been out there.

Four years. Yeah, four years. He agreed to pay a $1.5 million fee without admitting wrongdoing in exchange for the SEC dropping its case. If the settlement is approved by a court, it will bring an end to the drawn-out battle over how he began his $44 billion takeover of Twitter in 2022.

Next up, GameStop. Yeah, really. Somebody did the math on this, and they said it was basically like if Elon Musk paid the portion of his net worth for this fine for any normal American, like just any stock citizen, it would have been a $0.44 fine.

Yeah. That's what it would have been. $0.44. Yeah. But it is the largest penalty in SEC history for the type of violation he was accused of. So, that just lets you know how insane the amount of money that he has actually is. Like, it's ridiculous.

It is quite ridiculous. But he just wants more. He wants that tea. He's trying to bring home the tea. Anyway, well, Coinbase is cutting roughly 14% of its workforce with CEO Brian Armstrong citing crypto market volatility and rapid adoption of AI tools as key reasons for the layoffs.

I don't know if you've paid too much attention to crypto lately, Brian, but it ain't doing great. To the moon, Jason. To the moon. To the moon. I mean, it's still hovering around $70-some-thousand dollars per Bitcoin.

But now that it has passed that threshold, that mining threshold, where it's, like, costs more to make a Bitcoin than it does to sell a Bitcoin, all these Bitcoin people are trying to spin up their server farms into AI farms. But it's the wrong kind of hardware.

So, that's not really working out that well so far. Yeah. That pivot ain't getting your couch up the stairs. No, it ain't. So, yeah. But, you know, everybody's going to blame AI. That's just what it is. Yeah. That's the new reason to fire people.

Not our business is mad. It's AI. I know. And what they're going to find out is that down the line, they should have just kept the people. Yeah. That's true. Well, as we've been talking about the RAM crisis, RAM is in the shitter right now because of all these companies buying it up.

But don't worry. Toilet maker Toto is here to help. Get it out of the shitter. Okay. If you think companies should stick to their core expertise, Toto is here to flush away that notion. Okay. Well done, Engadget. The Japanese company is best known for its bidet-style washlet toilets, but it also has an advanced ceramics division that produces components used in memory chips.

And as it turns out, they're the second largest producer of electrostatic chucks, or e-chucks, which are used to manufacture memory. These are designed to securely hold silicon wafers into place during fabrication via electrostatic force. So, yeah, they're not the only unlikely Japanese company that's benefiting from AI, but they certainly are.

Cosmetics manufacturer Kao has a business making cleaning agents for semiconductors, while monosodium glutamate inventor Ajinomoto is investing 25 billion yen, or roughly $159 million, in the production of insulating film used for motherboards.

So, look at all these crazy companies that are being lifted up by this soon-to-be-crashing wave. Yeah. I mean, when you think about all of the technology that goes into make anything that we use, it's just mind-boggling. Yeah. How much shit it takes.

Mm-hmm. You know, there was somebody, I forget who said it, but it's like, if you want to make an apple pie first, you have to create the universe, or something like that. That's true. Yeah. And, well, this story came out, and it, I mean, smart glasses had their bit of a moment when Google tried to come out with them, and then everybody got called glassholes.

And I thought this was going to go away for good, except for, you know, very specific purposes, like manufacturing and in the workplace, not just wandering around into a bar where you're going to get your ass beat for wearing one. But they're out there. There's a growing number of reasons to be skeptical about camera-equipped smart glasses, and you can now add extortion to the list.

According to a report from the BBC, a woman who asked not to be named was recently filmed covertly while shopping in London by a man wearing smart glasses. That interaction was later posted to social media, where it racked up tens of thousands of views. This is not exactly abnormal.

As other investigations have noted, smart glasses like the Ray-Ban meta-AI glasses are used regularly by men, specifically men, to record women discreetly for content purposes. Content. Is that what they're calling content purposes? Yes. Content for the spank bank.

What makes this particular case reported by the BBC worse is that the man in question allegedly then asked the woman for money in exchange for taking the video down, claiming that removal was a paid service. Removal as a service.

What a piece of shit. What a piece of shit. The footage was, of course, later reposted to a different social act. She didn't do that. So, according to the BBC, the video was eventually taken down after being reported for violating TikTok's rules on harassment and bullying, and the man's account was banned from TikTok. The footage then was later reposted to a different social media site.

The BBC reached out to the person who filmed the interaction, who, of course, denies trying to extort anyone. And the police, who were reportedly contacted, say they do not have enough information to launch an investigation. What the fuck do you mean? We've got it right here. The video is online. Yeah.

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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 Meek Pleaver Colon. KFC 94, Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com.

Media Candy. Well, we had a fairly explosive finale for Daredevil Born Again. I guess if you have not seen it yet, spoilers. Stop, pause, go watch it, whatever. Or skip ahead. Skip ahead for two minutes because we're going to talk about it for a second. I thought it was good.

I thought it was strange. They did things. They did a lot of things, yes. That I was not expecting them to do. But I guess I have since read some articles that have stated that this could lead down a very specific Daredevil comic series that was out that involved him being in jail.

And all that sort of stuff. We had like a bit of a reunion. It was good to see Luke Cage with Jessica Jones at the end. I was happy about that. Yep. I would like some explanation. I don't know enough. I'm not a comic book guy. Why the fuck is Kingpin so goddamn strong?

Where does this like I could just rip people apart power come from? And rip people apart? He did. He did. He killed a lot of people. He killed a lot of people. And then they just gave him his own plot on a beach. Yes. I thought that was odd too. I'm like, are you kidding me?

He just killed a bunch of people. Like a lot. Yeah. In front of everybody. There's nothing really to. Daredevil's going to jail. Yeah. And Daredevil's the one in jail. So I didn't quite get it. But I think that that last shot with Jessica Jones and Luke Cage where she closed the door.

I think that was just the run up to the next hopeful series of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage maybe. That would be nice. I would like that. That would be very nice. I'm down for that. I am definitely down for that. Because I could take a break from Daredevil now. It was okay. It was an okay season. It was okay.

It was. Yeah. There's been better. Yeah. But there's a new series I started watching called Widow's Bay on Apple TV starring Matthew Reese and Steven Root. And I have heard about this. Like it. I like it.

It's quirky. It's a quirky horror. I heard it's Twin Peaks meets comedy meets weirdness. I wouldn't go so far to say Twin Peaks-y. Okay. More northern exposure. More eerie Indiana, I think, is more like it.

But three episodes are out and I thoroughly enjoyed all three. So highly recommend it. It is streaming now on Apple TV+. New episodes on Wednesdays, I believe. All right. Very cool. Let's see. A hat tip to Scott for this one who sent it in saying, fun item for media candy.

And this is an article. Links in the show notes. A Portland company can put your favorite mixtape on vinyl. They're called Vinyl On Demand. And they offer extremely limited custom vinyl pressings. I looked into this company a while back. When I was working at a company that had some IP rights to some different bands.

And we were looking to do like kind of one-off live recordings that we had access to. And yeah, there's a couple companies out there that are doing it. I think this is one of the bigger ones. There's obviously a lot of issues with rights and things of that nature.

So if you want to make your own mixtape, it's going to be quite expensive, very expensive, to have a vinyl pressed for you. And they limit it to two to stay under certain copyright restrictions and things of that nature. If you actually own the rights, they can do some smaller runs, different things.

But it does get very expensive. Pressing vinyl is not cheap. It is only cheap if it's done at scale. And these things are not done at scale. Yeah, making two is definitely not at scale. No. It's the antithesis of scale. A pressing of 10 records costs at least $350 or about $35 a record.

So yeah, it's not cheap by any means. But I mean, if you're a vinyl head, this is kind of a cool little thing where you could basically press up your own custom vinyls and things of that nature. Obviously, the cooler you want it to look, the more expensive it's going to cost as well, because now you're in 3D printing land kind of things where you've got to talk about the different materials and how you burn them and rate them and all that.

But still, kind of cool, kind of funky, good for them that they're kind of making it work. It's pretty awesome. Yeah. And on Friday, Reuters reported that AI-generated acting and writing will not be eligible for the Academy Awards. The new rules for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will take effect beginning with next year's presentation scheduled for March 2027.

So you've got a chance to get in there with your shit AI movie right now. All right. I'm on it, Brian. I'm on it. The Academy's updated rules will state that while filmmakers can use AI tools, synthetic performers can't win any awards. The same for AI-written screenplays, which must be human-authored.

The Academy can request more information from submissions to confirm that they were created by humans. So that's a good thing, as far as I can tell. And I'm not surprised Hollywood's going down that path. They are very, very worried about AI, as they should be, after already having all their content stole to train it, to replace them.

Yes. I don't know about you, man. This town is dying fast. I know. I don't know if any of your friends have left, but it's like people are getting out of L.A. so fast because Hollywood is just fucking dying. And it's sad to watch.

It's sad to watch. This little thing from the Academy isn't going to help anything. But I guess it's a nice press release. It's a nice press release. Maybe the tide will change, but I don't think so. Well, Brian, Pornhub parent company, Ilo, is restoring access to its adult sites in the U.K. for new users who verify their age through Apple's new device-level verification system.

The new one that just came out in iOS 26.4 that we talked about not too long ago. So we're seeing it actually used in real-world scenarios now, and the ones that we would expect them to be used in, which is porn. So good, I guess.

Yeah, I trust Apple more than most other people. The U.K. government, for sure. Yeah, I don't want it to. Yeah, yeah. We've seen how many times that has just failed, and the verifiers have all gotten hacked and all your data gets out there.

Even though they're not supposed to store any of it, miraculously, they happen to store all of it. Yeah, amazing how that happens. Which then gets stolen. Yeah. We didn't think we were storing it, but I guess we did. Sorry, guys. But, yeah, I think this is good. This is a good proof of concept.

So hopefully Apple will just roll this out everywhere, and it'll become a standard, at least for Apple. Now we just need Google to get on board with their Android phones, which they might be already, but I don't follow Android news, so I wouldn't know. I would have seen it if it was happening, but not yet.

So get on it, Google. This is the way. This is the path forward. It's the only one that really makes sense. In the kind of news that says, if you know what I'm talking about, you should probably take a couple Advil for your back. I did this morning when I got out of bed.

Ask.com, the search engine previously known for its butler mascot name, Jeeves, has officially shut down. While Ask Jeeves was rebranded to Ask.com in 2006, about five years after people stopped using it in general anyways, by its new owner at the time, Interactive Corp.

This latest closure puts an end to the entirety of the company's search business. They released a statement, which ended by thanking its millions of users back in the day, and saying, Jeeves spirit endures. It's, yeah, Ask Jeeves, man. I remember that. I used it.

Oh, yeah. Now he's probably going to get sold off for parts and start hawking meme coins. Probably. Yeah. Jeeves is going to be wearing a trench coat, holding it open, saying, I got a Rolex for you, kid. Come on. It says, we still have Ask Jeeves to thank for why some users still punch in full questions when querying Google.

On top of that, Jeeves was built to provide detailed answers in natural language, which could have arguably acted as a precursor to today's AI chatbots like ChatGPT. Now they've joined the internet graveyard that includes competitors like my personal favorite search engine back in the day, AltaVista, which shut down back in 2013.

AltaVista was good. I liked AltaVista. It was good for a hot minute. For a hot minute. Yeah. Ah, the old days. So sad. Oh, my back. Oh, my God. My back hurts so bad. Got my heating pad on while I podcast. No, salon paws, man.

It's all about salon paws. Those things are fucking phenomenal. They're magic stickers. They're magic stickers. You slap one on your back. Don't use it when you're, don't use a heating pad when you're using one, though. That's bad shit can happen to you. Just telling you. Well, some good news. Apple has agreed to a $250 million settlement tied to delays in launching its promised more personalized Siri features under Apple intelligence.

The class action lawsuit filed after WWDC 2024 accused Apple of heavily marketing AI capabilities that either didn't exist yet or wouldn't arrive for years, creating unrealistic expectations for buyers of new iPhones. Now, we talked about this when it first came out, and we're like, what?

We don't even want it. We didn't want it. Here's the thing. I'm happy that I'm going to get some money from Apple for this, but I'm also happy that these features never showed up. Yeah, well, they're coming next year. Damn it. Actually, later this year, they're going to be coming with iOS 27.

But the thing is, they're going to, at this point, Apple did the right thing. They just, like, they tried it, and they're like, we suck at this. And they just waited for everybody to catch up, and now you're going to be able to, you know, choose your LLM. But, yeah. So, covered devices include the iPhone 15 Pro lineup and all iPhone 16 models.

Which one do you have, Brian? I have an iPhone 16. Okay. I got a 16 Pro Max because I'm blind and I'm old. Apple is not admitting wrongdoing and says it's settled to stay focused on product development. They never say that they did anything wrong.

Nobody ever does. That's the way. That's the path. So, yeah. Never admit it. We're looking at around $25 per device with payouts, potentially reaching as high as $95, depending on how many claims are filed. Ooh, that'll buy me one token.

That's right. Or the LL of my choice. Mm-hmm. Can I just get that in tokens, please? Because that's what everything's going to be nowadays. It's like, how many tokens can I get for that? The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave, with the podcaster who never sleeps, Dave Bittner.

Hi, Dave. Hello. It's true. Yeah. Curse of the job. Curse of the job. Yeah. And old age. Yeah. That's true. I do have to pee four times a night, too. So, yeah. I get that. Yeah. It's a...

My friend texted me at four in the morning. He's like... He sent me something. And I wrote him back. He's like, why are you up? And I'm like, why do you think? He's like, oh, pee-pee break. I guess. But you hit 50, man. It's all downhill. Aging is not for wimps.

No. God, no. So, we got some feedback in here from listener Phil. He says, your favorite misused word. And I had to put this in here because we've talked about this in your segment, Dave. Decimate. My pedant comes out in force when people misuse decimate.

The thing about... You and Joe Kerrigan. Joe Kerrigan is also very prickly about people misusing the word decimate. So, I will let you say your piece before I debunk it. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. Yeah.

You should send this off to him because I've been actually using it wrong, too. I thought it was, you know, to destroy one-tenth of your forces. Well, it turns out it was a punishment back in the Roman army where if, you know, your leader was pissed off at your group for doing something stupid like maybe running away, run away.

You had to... Ten people had to pick one guy and the other nine guys had to beat him to death. I think we should bring this back in the U.S. government. I think that would be... And we should be able to do this to our senators. Yeah, no doubt.

No doubt. I've got a whole caning on the Senate floor. All right, 50 of you. Pick one. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Well, this is news to me. I was with you, Jason, that I thought the correct term was to reduce by one-tenth.

But on the flip side of that is language evolves. And obviously, its popular usage is not that anymore. So, you know. Thank God, because I'd hate to be reading all my show notes with the S's as F's. Right. Because nowadays, these kids are words maxing.

You have to words max. Yeah. No, I don't understand half of the things they say as it is. So... I need an app. It's funny you say that, because the new shirt I just made for us is targeted at the kids. It's grunt maxing. Nice.

Nice. That's good. That's good. So, yeah, I was wrong. And thanks, Phil, for pointing that out, because, you know, I love it when people tell me I'm wrong. Jason, you shouldn't be saying that, because as we've said repeatedly throughout this episode, never admit you're wrong.

I know. Companies never admit they're wrong. They will pay millions of dollars to not admit any wrongdoing. I don't have millions of dollars, so I'm kind of screwed. You will decimate, you will pay decimations of your millions of dollars. Yeah, I know. I know. And this next one, I found Dave's next project.

This is, it's a talking C-3PO head, which is just so cool. And the guy built a how-to on how to do it. Chapman University student has built an AI-powered talking C-3PO head that can hold conversations.

And it's pretty cool. Since it uses AI, it's even more full of shit than C-3PO was. Yeah, there you go. First of all, I love this. But second of all, I think it's a stretch to say it can hold conversations. Well, it can hold conversations if you're not in a hurry.

Well, much like C-3PO. Yeah. He wasn't exactly, you know, that quick off the line, but. Well, yeah, but there's, I mean, this has got like a five-second delay to ask it anything. I understand it's only going to get better, and I love the spirit of this.

You know, people say that about technology. They say this is the worst version of the thing that you'll ever have. But I don't know if any of you are using any of your, like, things like your Amazon Alexas anymore. They're fucking worse than they used to be. They're a lot worse than they used to be.

Yeah. The thing that comes to mind for me is typing on my iPhone has gotten way worse. That's gotten worse, too. Oh, it's so much worse. That's gotten far worse. We had a long discussion on our Discord channel about that not too long ago. And it was, it used to be so good.

It was like it knew what I was going to do. And now it's like I have to double-check everything because it has redone all of my words into whatever it thinks it should be doing. I actually have concrete evidence that it's gotten worse because I've been doing, like, in the Apple News, there's the crossword puzzles, right?

Yeah. So I do the mini crossword puzzle, and I do the big crossword puzzle every morning. It's something I do as an old person to keep my brain active. It hits the wrong letter so often now that my time for both has almost doubled because I have to back and, like, try five times to get the letter that I was hitting in the first place.

It has gotten so bad. Nine times. It's been well documented. In fact, I've even seen YouTube videos of people demonstrating, like, hitting the right character and the wrong character comes up on the screen. So something's busted.

And it's really frustrating. Yeah. You know, I'm like, can we recalibrate something here? And I actually went in, and if you go under the keyboard, you can actually put in replacements, so things that you mistype all the time or that it replaces. So, like, my email address is an at jpd.me email address.

It hates jpd.me. For some reason, it always wants to type J-O-D. So I have it replaced j-o-d.me with jpd.me. But there's a lot of them. I've got a list, like a laundry list. I mean, honestly, it all started out with ducking. No, that was the beginning.

Nobody in the history of the universe has ever meant ducking. Never. No. Never. No. Unless you're a very tall guy walking into a very short building. Maybe Richard Attenborough. Oh, happy 100th birthday. Yes.

I tell you another thing that keeps getting worse.

Facebook. I had to get on Facebook to start selling stuff on Marketplace. I was wondering why I got a friend request from you. I was like, weren't we friends? And I keep remembering you deactivate your account every five minutes. Well, it's a different account because I can't get back into my original account. I had to make a new one because their security is so great that it automatically...

I told you, like, I deleted the app from my phone and all the data and then I opened it back up on my phone when I had to reinstall it and it just logged me right back in. I'm like, you shouldn't be doing that shit. But it logged me into the, not the account that I wanted it to log me into. But I've gotten so many friend requests now.

And so I'm just like, okay, well, I'll just use this. And I tried to go find posts from my friends. I can't find any fucking posts from my friends. I know they're there because if I go to their page, I can see that they made a post, but there's no feed that you can get to it.

I'm like, what's the fucking point of this website? There's no point. It's useless. You literally have to install that plugin that we used way back in the day, FB Purity. And then you have to set the settings to basically only show your friends updates. But I guarantee you, people don't update like they used to.

So it's mostly nothing anyways, because nobody sees anything. So nobody posts and engages anymore. It's all just ads. And if you made the mistake of ever following a brand or business ever, it doesn't matter if you've unfollowed their page, you will see their shit until the end of time.

Oh, dude, I got another one. I got another one for you. I got a friend. We'll just call her Jen. She's very anti-patriarchy, anti-men establishment type of thing. I inadvertently liked one of her posts on Instagram.

Now, everywhere I go on the Internet, you would think that I'm a warrior against the patriarchy. Now, that's all the shit that I get. I'm like, I'm a 54-year-old white guy. Everywhere I go is telling me that I'm a warrior. I love the patriarchy. They're like, telling me I'm the worst thing that's ever been created, and all of the world's ills are my fault.

I'm like, I didn't do any of this shit I said for the past 50 years. I've been sitting home alone in a fucking room, playing video games and writing code. This is not my fault. Quit blaming me, goddammit. But it won't go away. The Internet does like to latch on to anything that you mistakenly like.

I have noticed that. Jesus. Yeah. Anyways. Back to C3PO. You just got to buy more tokens. You got to put tokens in the head. And then you'll get... That's how they get you. Yeah. Yeah. We got another one from Raf here.

For a keyboard, I couldn't recommend Newfie enough, because we talked about keyboards last week, because I just got my new, another Logitech keyboard, the MX Keys 2, which is really good. But he talks about the Newfie Air 75 V3 wireless mechanical keyboard. Now, remember, Dave, you were talking about an interest in mechanical keyboards a while back.

And I didn't know if you had checked this one out, because it looks kind of nice. Well, yes. I tried to go back to a mechanical keyboard. I think the... How do I say this? The keyboard I have the most affection for in my life is the Apple Extended Keyboard 2.

Okay. Right. Mechanical, clicky, wonderful keyboard. It was the standard for Mac workstations forever. Loved it. Long gone. But I have a storage unit full of old Macs. So I pulled out a couple of keyboards.

Basically, my keyboard went bad. My wireless keyboard went bad. So I was like, oh, I'll go revisit some old keyboards. And I found I can't go back, because... And it's because of the travel. They have such long throw in their travel that, compared to a modern, you know, one of these, it just slows me down.

So that surprised me. And I'm curious with this mechanical keyboard if it's the same thing. Is it... Because if it's a long throw, I'm just spoiled by the practically non-existent throw of the modern laptop and wireless keyboards from Apple that it's hard to go back.

Yeah, looking at the height of these keys, I'm guessing it's a very long throw. Yeah, I would think so. Also, I was thinking that, as a podcaster, the clickety-clickety is not to my advantage. No. Yeah, I was about to say. You don't want that. Considering you're basically always on a podcast, I don't think you want a clacky keyboard.

No. No. This is bad enough. I have to lightly touch it, you know, when I'm pretending to pay attention to an interview. By the way, I got one of these little Apple trackpads, these magic trackpads, because my mouse clicky was even showing up.

You got one too, yeah. Yeah, I've been a big fan for a long time. Oh, I hate mine, but I just have to use it during shows, so my mouse doesn't click. Well, I like it. And I use it left-handed, so... Oh, look at you. Look at you. Fancy.

For May the 4th, I finished Maul Shadow Lord. I watched this with my kid. This was far better than it had any right to be. I really can't recommend it enough. If you can get over the fact that it's a cartoon, I know a lot of people only watch live-action stuff.

First off, it's visually stunning. It's beautiful. That's what I've heard, yeah. And it is nuanced. It is complex. It is shades of gray. It is not good versus evil. This is not a new hope. It's more... It's not as political as Andor, but it certainly has more in common with Andor than it does with any of the movies, you know.

So, can't recommend it enough. It was fantastic. It's on my list. Yeah. Yeah. And we were kind of just enjoying the May the 4th festivities, and I asked my kid, you know, there's two Star Wars movies you have yet to see. You have not seen Rogue One. You have not seen Solo, a Star Wars story.

Which would you like to watch? If you watch the trailers, he picks Solo. And so, we watched Solo together. This movie is great. I don't understand. I know everybody says it's the, you know, it's the worst performing Star Wars movies.

It killed the whole run of these individual A Star Wars story. Things that they were going to do, they were going to do an Obi-Wan one. We got the chopped up thing as a miniseries instead, which wasn't as good. That was a phenomenal movie. I really enjoyed it again on the second watch.

I remember thinking it wasn't that bad at the time either, but watching it again, and my kid loved it. And this is a great movie. I'm with you. I'm with you. For me, seeing it in the theater was, I think, like the first time since the original run of the movies that I had that feeling.

The whole thing with the Kessel run in the Falcon. Like, I had that magical feeling of wonder and awe and just joy that I don't think I'd had in the theater since probably Return of the Jedi. Yeah. I mean, there's so many moments. I mean, Lando just being so Lando and perfect.

You know, Han and Chewie meeting each other. Han becoming increasingly Han as the movie goes along. And it's just great. Yeah, really some great set pieces and, you know, the whole thing. Have you ever hugged a Wookiee? Okay, I got to go watch that again.

I saw it in the theater and I loved it. So, yeah. It was a lot of fun. I had a great time, man. The popcorn was going fast. It was fun. It's good. It's good. Well, we're coming up on the end of The Boys. Are you caught up? Yes. Not a happy guy?

No. I think both my son Jack and I have been watching. In fact, we watched this week's episode yesterday. And we're both in this place where, well, there's two more. We'll watch them. You know, but it just feels like their phone in it.

Like, it's just bad. It's just bad. I'm enjoying it. I don't know. I'm happy for you. Yeah. I just think the dialogue is terrible. And, well, here's what it is. Jack and I were talking about it yesterday. And I said to him, the biggest problem I have with The Boys now is that I don't care about anybody.

That's kind of a problem. Yeah. Like, there's nobody. And we're supposed to care about Huey. He was sort of, when the series started, he was the everyman coming in for us. Don't care about him. He doesn't really matter anymore. It was nobody I'm rooting for.

So I'm just kind of waiting for it to, I'm going to see how it's going to play out. And they'll probably go, eh. I mean, sometimes that can be okay. I think about Secession. Like, there was nobody worth rooting for on that show. They were all horrible. But the show was phenomenal. But I guess that's just not the case.

The Boys is no Secession. No. These are not serious people. And like so many of these things, the first few seasons I enjoyed very much. But I think they ran out of gas. Or the other thing I wonder is, did they not expect to have the series renewed this many times?

So they've outrun their story arc. Right. Could be. I mean, it comes from a comic. So I think everything was in the comics. But I didn't actually read them. But you've got to admit, though, the Seth Rogen scene was satisfying somewhat with all the celebrities.

Yeah. Like, two weeks ago. Yeah. Brian would have liked it more because he's not a Seth Rogen fan. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I thought... Let me guess. He laughed maniacally and acted like he was stoned, as per usual? It was funny, but it was also left me thinking, why is this scene here, other than all these people who are contributing behind the scenes, wanted to be in the movie?

It's just cameos, yeah. It's just like, let's put as many, you know, funny, famous people as we can in there. Right. That want to be in the show. Right. Yeah. But it's fine. It's fine. It's almost done, Dave. Two more episodes, you've got to work your way through.

We're both looking forward to the end for very different reasons. That's right. That's right. Kind of like my wedding night. All right. So, yesterday, I was at the grocery store right up the street from the office here, and I had gathered up my things.

I had probably about 10 things in my cart, and I'm standing there at the self-checkout, scanning my items, putting them in the bag. And the man who is running the self-checkout area wanders over, and I give him a nod.

He gives me a nod, and he puts a card down on the scanner. It beeps, and he walks away. I'm like, what was that? I don't know what it was. So, I keep scanning, finish paying pay, my receipt prints out, put it in my bag, get back here to the office.

I'm unpacking my things. I go, what was that thing he scanned? I looked at it, senior discount. Yeah. I didn't ask for this. There was no, he just, like, he just looked at me, scanning my groceries, and decided, senior discount?

So, that's where I am now, I guess. I think it was because you were buying Midol, some laxatives, some fiber, some protein bar. You're not that far off. Metamucil.

No, I was, I did buy, I did buy a couple of boxes of, um, uh, frosted mini-wheats, you know, which is cereal that helps me poop. So, yeah. It's true. Anyway, that was a little wake-up call.

I lost an AirPod last week. That was the worst. Yeah, so, and I have no idea where, when I just, I, earlier this week, I opened up my pack of AirPods. AirPods, which I keep on my keychain, because, uh, I like to have them with me, because I use them as hearing protection when I, I'm somewhere very loud.

And, uh, they work very well for that. So, I opened up my AirPods, and there was only one in there. I went, sad Christmas. Yeah. So, Apple will sell me a single AirPod for $90. Jesus.

Well, I guess it probably is about it. You get a discount if you buy two. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they're $300, aren't they? The AirPods 3, aren't they? Something like that. I don't know. I don't know what they are anymore. Well, so, the thing is, I know as soon as I buy it, I will find it.

Of course. Right? And I will, and I will, it will be too late, because I will have already, you know, covered the new one in my earwax, making it ear, and not returnable. Uh, so, anyway, that made me sad. I didn't know if either of you had ever lost an AirPod. Are you wearing the AirPod Pro, or the Pro 3s?

Yeah. Yeah, the $250 for the whole shebang. Okay. Okay. So. Well, $90 each. I would just buy two individual ones. I mean. Well, you still got to just charge them with something. Yeah. Anyways. Uh, yeah, I've had them fall out before.

Um, it's caused, like, you know, panic, because they're, they're, they're very easy to lose. I, I've been on my, I used to wear them all the time riding my bike, and I've had it pop out while riding, and I've had to pull over, and this is on the, you know, Santa Monica Beach. So, I'm like digging through sand for like about, about, you know, 30 yards, because it could have fallen.

It could be anywhere in this area. Right. So far, I've always been lucky enough to find them. I, I've, did accidentally wash one once, but it continued to work, so it made it through the laundry cycle. I've washed mine a couple times. I've never had a problem with them not working after a wash.

No. But it's the worst feeling when you, uh, when you like, uh, kind of, like, uh, you're, you're rifling through, like, through my pockets, and like, there's one. Right. There's one. Where's the other one? No. It's a terrible sinking feeling. And so, I don't know. I, I'm, who knows?

So, I, I'm not quite at the point of acceptance, but, uh, I'm getting close. I will say, they do work great for hearing protection. I wear mine when I'm, uh, running a chainsaw, and can't hear a damn thing. It's great. Yeah. No, it was a really loud event a couple weeks ago, like, uh, with loud music playing, and I put them in pass-through mode, and it was just like, took everything and just turned it down a few notches.

Yeah, it's really nice. It's still here great. Yeah, I think it's a wonderful investment for that. So, all right. Well, finally, before we, uh, part ways, I found a wonderful video that, uh, I think everyone should watch. It's called, Why Grown Men Become Furries.

Okay. I don't know if you guys have had a chance to. I don't know if I'm going to spend 17 minutes of my life watching this, Dave, to be honest. Well, I'll tell you what, once you get started, you might. You might. So, this is from a guy named Ken LaCourt, who has a YouTube channel called Elephants in the Room, and basically his, uh, reason for being is to try to attack, um, tackle tricky topics in a fair and balanced kind of way.

And I think, overall, he seems to do a pretty good job. I've watched a couple of his videos. So, this kind of just runs through, like, what are furries? Where did they come from? Who does this? Why do they do it? Uh, are there studies on why they do it? And all that kind of stuff.

And it's, it's interesting. So, all right. I found it. I'm going to check it out. It's funny. I found last week, I forgot to mention this. When I was finding the picture of you, Dave, for, uh, the character sheet that I was building, the first thing that came up was the, uh, uh, the photo spread of you unboxing the furry head that we gave you.

For Christmas from your, your cyber wire friends were pulling that up. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Very famous now. Yes. So, I pull that, that, uh, furry head out every now and then just for fun. Or if the, if a situation arises, I will say, or having watched this video, I think, uh, the, the bottom line for me is to, I, cause I label myself as fur, furry curious.

In other words, uh, I'm not against them. I don't see it ever being something that I really jump into, but, but I can see the, I understand the appeal. And I think that comes mostly from my theater background and just how much fun it is to dress up and be someone else.

And it seems like a lot of the psychological underpinnings of the whole furry thing is exactly that. Is that you can dress up and be someone else and you can shed your anxiety or your, uh, shyness or, or all those kinds of things. Or just shed.

Or just shed. That's right. That's the Timu furry outfit. Right. Right. That's interesting. I wonder if you could, if you could, you specifically request a high shedding furry outfit just to annoy the other people.

We can't have Dave over. I just bought a black couch. Right. Exactly. Oh God. He wears that. JD Vance and Dave are out. Yeah. Well, you know, so we got, uh, we got, didn't get rid of our, um, our, we had a, we had two dogs for a while and one of them was a shedding dog and he was, he was white.

And so you look at him the wrong way and just a cloud of fur would come off of him. Um, but since he passed away, it's probably been a couple of years now. Um, we got rid of our Roomba because that was, that was DJ Roomba's main job was going around and soaking up, uh, white dog hair.

And so don't have that anymore. All right. We can save this. Wow. We have had some awesome ends to a segment on this show.

I'm a professional. I'm out of here. Clackity clack. Yeah. Don't talk back. Dave out. Closing shout outs. We've got one new patron subscriber.

Mark. Thanks, Mark. Thank you. Thank you. And we'd also like to thank Andy. So thank you all very much for your continued support on Patreon.

Over at PayPal. We got a donation from Garov. Oh, thank you very much. Bad guy in deep space nine. I was going to say that's very Klingon. It's very Klingon. Um, it's, it's Gal Run's, uh, stepbrother over the tip chair. We've got Matt, Sarah and Patrick.

Thank you all so much. And merch. Everybody's digging the new merch. We've got some new stuff coming, uh, later today too. Cause I made another shirt today. I can't wait to go see it. Uh, we got Mason from Canada, Ray from Texas, Clint from Petaluma, Roger from Tucson, Thomas from Michigan, Carl from Texas, Nadine from Florida.

Woo. You guys rock and roll. Thank you. Hope you like them. Thank you. Uh, all right. Mine comes next week. Just got, got my shipping notification. All my new shirts. I can't wait. I'll wear them on the show. I, I, I, I'm getting my mug and I'm getting a shirt too. And it'll probably be here in about 32 weeks because it's got to cross the border and I'm going to get tariffed and I'm going to pay $7,000 for them and it's going to be awesome.

That's great. I'm going to be happy about it. All right. Because that's my money and I'm going to make that money. Those tariffs are going to come from the companies. I'm those, I, you are not paying those tariffs, Jason. Oh, I'm glad I'm not paying those tariffs. Uh, so if you would like to help support the show, you can buy some merch, uh, go to shop.gog.show.

But also if you'd like the show early ad free and in high definition for as little as $3 a month, go to patreon.com slash gog and, uh, we will love you forever because, uh, your support is what keeps the show on the air literally. So thank you all so much.

Thank you. No reviews. No reviews this week. Throw us some reviews. Uh, I do have a, I do have one final shout out. Um, uh, uh, the little RIP, my friend, Tim Gore passed away yesterday from bone cancer. Uh, he was, uh, an amazing guy.

He used to work at Stan Winston's, uh, creature shop and did some painting on, uh, some of the Jurassic park dinosaurs, the original Jurassic park one, did some amazing stuff. He was a fantastic guy and he will be missed by a lot of people. Just one of those guys where you walk in the room and you're like, this guy's really cool.

I don't know why, but he's really cool. So he had a rough couple of years, but, uh, bone cancer got him yesterday. So very, very sad. I'm sorry to hear it, man. Yeah. But yeah, we're getting all that light note until next time. I'm Brian Schulmeister. If there is a next time I'm Jason DeFilippo.

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