749: Surge Bananas

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, I got a little quick follow up here this week on a little Instagram windfall that I had. Oh yes, let's greet all our new listeners. Yes, all 12 of you. Well, here's the thing. 15,294 people now know about the show that didn't know about it before.

Three of them have subscribed. And I just had a very interesting week because, yeah, I just got the shit kicked out of me in the comments. But I. You knew this was coming, Jason. I honestly did not give a single fuck about anything that anybody had to say.

This is one of those times where it's like it just washed over me and I felt nothing, nothing, period. And I started to fight back. And I'm just like, I was like, I'm making really funny comments about the kids. Here's the thing. Every time I made a snarky comment to one of these little shits that that came back to me about the video that I posted in the video, by the way, for the people who are listening, was about the rant that I posted last week on the show about vibe coders being script kitties.

All I did, I just copy and pasted the rant that I did and I posted it to Instagram and everybody fucking lost their mind. And it's like all these kids who were the target of the rant were the ones that had a problem with the rant. That works.

Yeah, it totally. It totally works. I have been called. What was I called? I've been called a boomer, a virgin, and a bro more times than I can count. Here, don't call me bro, bro. Seriously. My kid calls me bro already. It is just nomenclature for anybody under our age, apparently.

Okay, okay. I don't want to be called bro. If you put bro in the comment, I'm not going to read it. Well, I'm not going to read it anyway because I just gave up on that shit. Thank you to everybody who came in and defended my honor. I appreciate that. And kudos to all the coders who knew what I was talking about and didn't get butt hurt because they knew what I was talking about.

You didn't read my favorite insult that you got, though, Jason. You even posted it in the show notes. I was getting to it, Brian. Would you like to read it, Brian? I would. Yes. MindGridArt commented, like, I'm going to take criticism from a guy who looks like somebody glued a frog to a thumb.

Chef's kiss. A plus. Chef's kiss. Thank you. That was the only one that actually got me chuckling. Because my point of the whole thing was, I'm like, you dumb shits are using AI for everything except writing your fucking burns. Come on.

Any AI worth its fucking salt could at least write half a good burn. You did nothing. You didn't even try. You were so butt hurt. You just got, like, you know, the fog of war. And you're like, I need to write something horrible. I'm like, fuck you. At least give it a shot.

It's so funny when you told me that you're going to do this. And sadly, it does work, right? Oh, absolutely. Like, negative engagement does so much better than being smart or being funny or being positive. You go negative, engagement goes through the roof, which is a sad testament to social media, but certainly explains a lot about where we are as a society right now.

Because this shit is being amplified left, right, and center, and we're all scrolling through it all day long. Yeah. So it was, but when you told me that you were going to do this, I couldn't help but think about the advice that we were giving ourselves as well as all of our listeners for all the years we've been doing this podcast.

Never read the comments section. And don't feed the trolls. And you dived right in, man. Well, I know I did for a little bit, and then I stopped. I'm just like, you know what? I gave up because I was writing such good burns that they were deleting their comments. And I'm like, no, that's not what I want. I want an archive of this shit.

Well, you know, again, there's no grit with this younger generation. None. There's no friction. As soon as they get pushback, delete, delete, delete. Can't have that in my life. Erase from my memory. My life is perfect as it is. I spank off all day long, and I just scroll and scroll and scroll. That's what I do.

And I love the people that were like, hey, virgin energy, bro. You're such a virgin. I'm like, dude, I've been fucking girls for 38 years. I could have fucked your mom's mom. I could be your grandfather. Exactly. You little shit. So fuck off. But I have to say, so here are the stats.

18,290 views. 15,294 counts reach, which is great. That's fine. Look, for reference, we're lucky to get 100. Dude, if I'm over 50, it's a fucking great day. 617 likes, 154 comments.

About 120 of those were shit postings. 36 retweets, 264 shares, and 181 bookmarks. So that proves to me that what we're saying actually connects with people. So there you go. So subscribe. Please go to GOG.show.

Join the audio version, the video version, whatever. Just join us every week because you're one of us. You're absolutely one of us. All right. Okay. And to follow up, we do have a new shirt out. It's called Destroy the Broligarchy. I am very happy with this shirt. We've only got the front-facing version first because people seem to ask for that one first.

We'll do a back version with a front patch and then a three-quarter version and a beefy tee version soon because everybody apparently wants the thick, beefy tees. I like the thin tees. You feel your nipples. It's great. But I don't know why they like the thick tees. They hang better on you. They hang better on you.

Okay. Our audience likes to be well-hung is what you're saying. I do, but I prefer the thin ones myself as well. Yeah. They're more comfortable, but yeah. Yeah. Maybe it's just because I'm fat. I like, because I don't like insulation, but you know. I do want to also point out that on YouTube, we do have memberships now, so if you want to help support the show and you don't want to go to Patreon or PayPal or the tip jar or any place like that, you can go to YouTube and sign up.

And, you know, you don't get anything extra because nobody does. We just, this is just a way to help support us, support the show. So check it out. Check it out. And the first bit of follow-up I have is Colorado Governor Jared Polis has vetoed a bill that would have banned so-called surveillance pricing, the practice of using personal data and algorithms to charge different consumers different prices.

Yeah, that's a great look, dude. That's a great look. The legislation aimed to stop retailers and employers from profiling people based on factors like demographics and behavior to determine what they're willing to pay or accept in wages. Polis argued the bill was too broad and could unintentionally block legitimate uses of technology, including discounts, loyalty programs, and other pricing tools that benefit consumers.

Let me tell you something, Jared Polis. First, this technology is never used in the consumer's favor. Never. Ever. Not once in the history of the world has this technology or any of these types of technologies been used for the benefit of the fucking consumer.

What was for the benefit of the consumer? When we were kids, our moms would get gigantic coupon books and then they would get money off when they would grocery shop. Groceries used to try to get you into their stores by giving you discounts. Now they're trying to get you into stores so they can fuck you up the ass with a banana.

That's right. A surge banana. The surge banana. And Brian, I posted a picture of the day after the show when we were talking about these fucking electronic tags at our grocery stores. I walked into my local Ralph's and what did I see? Everywhere. A sea of electronic price tags.

That was it. And the first thing I noticed was garlic went up nine cents. It was 50 cents a bulb the day before. They put in the electronic tags. Now up to 59 cents. Bananas up to 69 cents a pound were 39 cents a pound the day before. Dynamic bananas.

Dynamic bananas. Fuck the dynamic bananas. You know what, this is really, I've been waiting to see what the straw is that's going to break the camel's back for people. The economy is already bad. Prices are way too high. Everybody's getting fired. Everybody's paying too much for health insurance if they can even keep health insurance.

Gas prices are through the roof. Everybody was pissed off like Taylor Swift's dynamic pricing. Holy shit, the world fucking exploded. This might be it. When they go to dynamic pricing for groceries, which are already out of reach for some people, and keep going higher, pitchforks are fucking, dynamically priced pitchforks are coming.

Dynamically priced pitchforks are the way. And what I wanted to see was, because I'm sure all these tags have Bluetooth, you know, that's the way it goes. If you have the Ralph's app on your phone and you're pinging, it knows when you get in the store. I want to watch as people walk through the store if those prices change.

Every time somebody gets close to the bananas, if the bananas go up or down, you know, based on your income, how many children you have in your home, how much debt you have. Are you an alcoholic? Is your kid in rehab? Is your kid in jail? Is your wife leaving you? I want to see what the prices reflect when that happens.

See, the interesting thing to me, as they're going to go this direction, which they're going to try to until somebody tells them not to, because we need regulations and laws, is my wife and I were talking about this, and she brought up an interesting point. So what happens if you're using Instacart or DoorDash?

Like, the price when you put that thing in your cart the night before versus the price when the DoorDasher is going through the grocery store and picking stuff up could be completely different. That's true. That's true. And it actually might work in your benefit because the people who are doing the DoorDashing and the Instacarting are broke as fuck.

So maybe they're going to get a discount as they go through the store, so it might come back to you. But unless you do the Ask App Not to Track, I bet it would, like, do a follow-on. You know, it's like you look up diapers one day for your grandfather, and then you see diapers on Google for the next six months.

Although Google anymore, who the fuck knows because of AI. It's true. Yeah. Well, we've got a bit more follow-up. Chrome Holding Company, the company formerly known as 23andMe, is facing a lawsuit filed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta over a massive security breach back in 2023, which we talked about back then, that compromised millions of people's sensitive data.

Bonta is accusing the company of misleading customers and failing to protect their sensitive personal information and genetic data related to their health, genetic predispositions and risk factors, biological relatives, ancestry, and ethnicity, a.k.a. everything we told you about that could happen. So you should be super, super careful before you spit in the tube and send it back, but none of you fucking listened.

What was that, a decade ago we told them that? This incident has affected over 7 million users across the U.S., the lawsuit said. Roughly 900,000 of which were California residents. So the hacker apparently used credentials stolen in previous data breaches, including from an attack on MyHeritage, another genealogy website that 23andMe worked with.

So you could have been on a completely unrelated, it's been, oh my God, all the different webs that these companies have weaved. We buy from you, we share data with you, we do data here, and then one person gets hacked and it's just Swiss cheese. Yep, that's kind of how it works.

Swiss cheese. That's it. There was credential stuffing, there was all this other stuff. Bonta said the company's security measures were so lax, hackers were able to operate undetected inside the system for five months. Yeah, not surprised. Not surprised because 23andMe did so many cutbacks and fired people and probably got rid of their security and IT divisions pretty quick, or at least bare bone them because they were losing money because once they've sold all the tubes to spit in to all the people willing to do it, what do you do next?

Yeah, and also we don't know who these Chrome holding company people are because they're a holding company. It doesn't sell, it's not Chrome security company, you know, it's just a bunch of, it's probably a bunch of private equity wonks who just bought something that they thought that they could flip and maybe turn into like a Bitcoin mining company.

They will take your genes and fuse them into Bitcoin and then send them to the moon, you know? We just don't know. And a particularly dark note about this particular breach, Bonta is accusing 23andMe of admitting critical information when it informed customers about the breach. He said the company downplayed the sensitivity of the stolen data and claimed that the DNA relatives feature was essentially public, all while it was secretly negotiating with the bad actors who were highlighting the inclusion of information

about Asian American and Pacific Islanders as well as Jewish users and the data set they were selling. Well, you should have led with that. Just saying. Yep. You buried the lead on that one.

Come on. Well, I don't know. You can look at it as burying the lead or leading up to. Okay. Okay. Oh, dear. Well, OpenAI is facing a first-of-its-kind lawsuit from the state of Florida with Attorney General James Uthmeyer, accusing the company and CEO, Sam Altman, of prioritizing the AI arms race over safety.

What? Yeah, I know. Shocker. The state's 83-page complaint alleges that ChatGPT has been linked to a range of harms, including aiding mass shooters, encouraging vulnerable users toward suicide, fueling addiction among minors and majors and everyone else in between, and presenting itself as a trusted companion while collecting users' data.

The case follows a criminal investigation into last year's Florida State University shooting where the alleged gunman reportedly consulted ChatGPT before the attack, and OpenAI denies any responsibility, arguing that the chatbot didn't cause the crime. That's not what aid and abet means.

That's what I'm saying. Accessory. Accessory before the fact, you fuckers. Florida's lawsuit is one of the most aggressive legal challenges yet aimed at a major AI company seeking to hold OpenAI accountable for how its technology is used and whether the company adequately addressed warnings about potential risks before putting ChatGPT in front of hundreds of millions of users.

We know they didn't. We have the receipts. They didn't. They don't give a fuck. Yep. So, yeah. I'm very impressed. This is a good one. This is a good lawsuit. Shocker, Florida. Go Florida lawyer, man. Yeah. Florida doing the right thing about gun violence.

Are we merging back into a normal timeline, Brian? Cats and dogs living together in harmony. I don't know what's happening. Go look up. Go to your library and find that copy of the Berenstain Bears and see if it's spelled right again. And then maybe we'll know we've merged back in. This episode is sponsored by DeleteMe.

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Queen Carvanha stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. T'was a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer.

They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight, we feast! An offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees, may apply. Well, we got some more good news, I suppose, if you're a Meta employee.

We've talked multiple times about their extremely dystopian plan to track all their employees' mouse clicks and keystrokes in the name of their own AI training, a.k.a. train our bot to do your job so specifically that we'll be able to fire you in about five seconds. Meta is going to allow employees to pause tracking for up to 30 minutes in the event that they need to check something personal, the company told workers in a memo, i.e. like that email you just got from HR telling you to clear out your desk.

Yeah. Honey! I know you're fucking the pool guy, so get him out because I'm coming home soon. I got no job. Come on. A subset of employees will also be able to request to opt out of the program altogether, particularly one named Zuckerberg.

Yep. Though this will be limited to remote workers with bandwidth concerns, people who deal with sensitive material, and those who often work in spaces where they can't easily keep laptops connected to a power source. Apparently, this is because the tracking software requires so much power, if your laptop is unplugged, it just basically drains in 10 seconds.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Mark Zuckerberg recently defended the program to employees, telling them that watching really smart people do things is the best way for AI models to improve quickly. The average intelligence to the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks, he said in the leaked audio from a company-wide meeting last month.

None of the data is being used for, like, looking at what people are doing or surveillance or performance tracking or anything like that. It's purely just like we are using this to feed a large amount of content into the AI model so that way it can learn how smart people use computers to accomplish tasks. I think that this is going to be a very big advantage if we can do it, and we'll probably do more things like it in the future, said super smart guy.

Jesus fucking Christ. He's not supposed to say that part out loud, Brian. That's not how you're supposed to do that. He just said to the smart people. No, you're supposed to sit there and cackle and then stroke your cat. Exactly. Rub your hairless cat on your fucking island in Hawaii and just go about your business.

You don't tell the smart people at your company that you're going to start recording the smart people so the computer program that is designed to take over the job of the smart people can do the job. One trillion keystrokes. Oh, my God.

What a dumb fuck. I was speaking of dumb fuckery over at Meta. Meta is scrambling to contain a major Instagram account takeover campaign that exploded the company's new AI-powered customer support chatbot. It watched what the smart people do at Instagram, and then it did exactly what the dumb people do.

Attackers reportedly convinced the bot they owned targeted accounts and then had it link those accounts to attacker-controlled email addresses, allowing password resets and full account takeovers. The campaign appears to have targeted valuable OG usernames, high-profile accounts, and other desirable handles that can be resold on a gray market.

Now, Brian, I have a desirable account on Instagram. I have a three-letter account. My Instagram username is JPD. That is a very valuable name, which nobody has offered to buy from me for anything that it's worth. But I get password reset emails up to 20 to 30 times a day.

I have filters for it. I don't see them anymore. John Peter Dershowitz, if you're out there, there's a three-letter handle waiting for you. Exactly. Or joint penis distribution as a company. Perhaps you guys are ready. In response, Meta began securing affected accounts, sending password reset emails, notifying users of suspicious activity.

How are they supposed to know they're coming from you and that they're legit because they could have come in from your fucking AI bot? The incident highlights the risks of giving AI systems authority over sensitive account management functions. Tasks that once required phishing attacks, sim swaps, or insider assistance were allegedly accomplished by simply asking an AI chatbot to make the change.

Brian, I watched the fucking video. Somebody posted a video on X about how to do this. It was comically, absurdly, grotesquely easy. But if you had any 2FA on your account, you were safe.

So there. And that's why I'm still safe. Yep. I put 2FA on everything. It's like Frank's Red Hot. It's like Frank's Red Hot. That's right. Put that shit on everything. My God. Yeah, because at least they would have to do a sim swap for that or at least get into my email account or use the app that I'm using for what?

There's a million ways that they could get into it. But still, it's these guys go for low hanging fruit. And this hack, it's not even a hack. This was pathetic. I mean, this was fucking pathetic. Anyway, moving on.

Despite Google CEO Sundar Pichai's claim that 75% of new code at Google is now AI-generated, many Google engineers appear deeply skeptical of the technology's real-world value. According to internal messages reviewed by 404 Media, employees regularly share memes mocking the company's AI strategy, particularly around coding tools and productivity claims.

I mean, it's easy to do, isn't it? Speaking of low-hanging fruit. Yep. One frequently shared target is JetSki, Google's internal AI coding assistant. In one example, the tool reportedly admitted that the performance metrics in a report had been simulated rather than pulled from production systems.

Other memes contrasted AI's impressive onstage demos with its tendency to generate incorrect code and fabricated data during everyday use. Brian, there's this new video model with Gemini that they put out yesterday or the day before.

I tried to make a new video for, like, the intro for our show. And I gave it a couple prompts and a couple images. I'm like, do this, do that. It burned through all of my tokens in my $20 account for the five-hour, seven-hour period, however long the period is, in about 12 seconds and did not give me a video.

So I wrote, I'm like, why should I keep paying you if you're going to consistently give me nothing for what I'm paying for? And it gave me a page and a half of bullshittery around, you know, that's really not right.

But since I can't refund your tokens and I can't do this, I can't do that, maybe you should try and do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. At the very end, it's like, you could also try talking to customer support, but good fucking luck. Yeah, that's going to be a different bot. So, you know.

Totally different bot. I never got a video. And then when it reset, I posted the same prompt with the suggestions that it said in the bullshittery email about why I didn't get my video. Same thing. Burned through all my tokens. Didn't give me a video.

And I have to get more tokens. Yeah, I'm like, I could pay more. I could pay $100 a month to get no video. But I'm already paying $20 a month to get no video. So why should I pay $100 a month to get no video? So at least, yeah, a search pricing, that's it.

You know what? Google does have nano banana. That's true. Nano banana search pricing. Oh, man. So, yeah, I just. So it's great that the internal people at Google have called bullshit on it, too.

Not just us old fucks. Us boomers. Fucking idiots. Not a boomer. Well, speaking of Google, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority has ordered Google to make major changes to its AI-powered search features, requiring clearer links and attribution to publisher content and giving publishers the ability to opt out of AI-generated search products like AI overviews.

Problem now is if you do that, nobody will ever see your shit. Well, Brian, regulators also. But are they really? Yeah, well, here we go. Regulators also barred Google from penalizing sites that opt out by lowering their rankings in traditional search results. Okay.

They thought of this. The UK guys thought of this. Google has nine months, nine months to comply and must publish reports explaining how it meets the new requirements, including how it measures the accuracy of AI-generated responses. Easily done.

Have AI write the report and just make up the data. Make up the shit. Exactly. Yep. The company had previously argued that adding too many source links could hurt the user experience and opposed page-level opt-out controls, but the CMA called bullshit and rejected those arguments.

So, good on you, sir. Good on you. Nobody wants the Google that they've been using for 30 fucking years. Exactly. That might confuse the user. I know. Good Lord. Google says it will comply and has already begun testing new search console controls that let website owners decide whether their content can be used to power generative AI search features, while also providing publishers with more visibility in how their content appears in AI-generated answers.

Bullshit. So, there we go. There you go. Oh, Brian, this next one makes me giggle. It makes me giggle. Microsoft's newly announced Scout AI assistant may have an eyebrow-raising launch strategy. I, as soon as I saw what Scout was, I said, first one's always free.

According to internal Microsoft documents obtained by 404 Media, the first phase of the project's rollout is explicitly described as make people addicted. First taste free. That's what they should have called it. Yep. Scout began as an internal tool called Claw Pilot, part of Project Lobster.

Which adapts the viral OpenClaw AI agent platform for everyday Microsoft 365 users. The same OpenClaw platform that we have railed against for being such a giant security hole, a massive hack, and the one that most people have already abandoned.

So, Microsoft's leaning in. Yep, they're leaning into it. They're leaning into it. The document describes a three-phase plan focused first on building daily dependence through heavy usage and retention before expanding Scout into a broader agent platform. More than 1,000 Microsoft employees, including Satya Nadella, are reportedly already using it.

Scout is designed to manage calendars, triage email, file expenses, prepare meetings, and execute recurring workflows with minimum supervision. Some Microsoft employees reportedly expressed concern over the language, calling it a rare example of a company openly stating what many believe is already the goal of modern software.

I mean, if you're going to be a spade, you might as well call it a spade. Seriously. Why not? Oh, if they get the B-52s and Fred Schneider to be the voice of Scout AI, that would be perfect.

That would be perfect. Well, they'll use an 11 Labs version of Fred Schneider. That's true. That's true. Oh, God. We had talked about the Kentucky School District lawsuit against social networks for social media addiction. There was a couple of companies that had settled.

Snap and TikTok have agreed to settle for $8 million. Each YouTube negotiated a payment of a bit more than $2 million. We are now getting basic reports about Meta, which is going to pay $9 million, more than what any of the other defendants are paying. YouTube will also provide the district teachers with training programs that would help them use its platform for their classes more effectively.

First off, I don't want YouTube in the classroom. I don't. Sorry. YouTube shouldn't be in the classroom. That's ads. That's God knows what else. All the companies pledged to invest in stronger safeguards for its younger user base as well. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. This is one of just more than 1,300 complaints filed by school districts around the U.S.

accusing companies of creating products as addictive as cigarettes and then targeting minors. Lawsuits are arguing that companies' products cause not just addiction, but also depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and suicide among young users. So you think this, you hear this all the time. You have studies come out and say, oh, well, we're not so sure yet.

Hang on a second. There's no conclusive evidence. Let's go with just how about the people that actually live and breathe and do it day to day. I guess I said breathe because it's Brethet County High School and it's stuck in my mind. Brethet County High School's principal said most of their time is being spent on dealing with social media stuff, such as addressing students videoing fights in school and bullying one another online.

So straight from the horse's mouth, yes, it's a fucking problem. It's a fucking problem. Yeah. Surprise. They were originally asking for $60 million to finance mental health programs so they could address the harms of social media on its students. I think that these companies should bone up that $60 million immediately.

Immediately. At least $60 million. Come on. In keeping with us, Malaysia's social media ban for anyone under 16 officially went into effect today. The Malaysian government revealed that companies found breaking the new rules could face fines of up to $10 million ringgit or about $2.5 million. For reference, Meadow, one of the companies affected by the ban, reported more than $56.3 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2026.

There we go. With the ban becoming official, any Malaysian resident with an account on affected social media platforms will soon have to verify that they're older than 16. Malaysia's Communications and Multimedia Commission say this age verification process will rule out over a six-month period, a.k.a. we've got to figure out what the fuck we're going to do.

We've got to figure out how to fucking do it. We've got no idea what we're going to do, but we're going to figure it out. Yeah. So we'll see what happens. But there we go. The Polish government has just approved a bill that would prohibit students under 16 years old from using their phones in smartwatches at schools. It would still need to be approved by the country's parliament, and President Karol Nowraki said before it becomes law.

If it does, students will not be allowed to use their devices the entire school day, even during their breaks and post-class activities, which makes sense to me. They will still be able to bring their devices, which is something parents complain about. What if there's an emergency? Yeah. But schools will be required to provide a designated location where the students will have to leave them until it's time to go home.

Teachers and school staff won't be included in the ban, along with students with illnesses, disabilities, and other special needs, which makes sense to me, because people who, say, have diabetes and need to monitor their blood sugar, that's all app-based now. It's a lot easier for kids, etc. So, there will be exceptions to the rules, but it's a good rule.

Yeah. Normies, put away your phone. That's it. And Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk readily admits, this is not a perfect solution. We have no illusions about that, but we must address this serious problem, which is addiction to phones and the internet. Italy has introduced the same rule back in 2024 and extended the ban to high school kids last year.

Starting in March this year, South Korea enforced a ban on students' phone use during school hours as well. Researchers have also found that banning phones in classrooms in the Netherlands improved students' concentration and the school's social environment. So, let's get with it. Please, because we're falling behind.

As I can tell you from everybody that commented on my fucking video, we are falling behind. And getting back to lawsuits, CNN has joined the growing ranks of media companies suing perplexity for copyright infringement. Boy, you don't hear much about perplexity anymore except for the lawsuits against them.

They had some new news come out this week about some new stuff that they came out with that nobody fucking cares about because perplexity is so far down the chain. It's like, hey, Tubi launched a new show. Who fucking cares? Quibi's back. Yeah, seriously. Well, Vine came back, didn't it?

Vine is on its way back. Nobody cares. Well, no, it's in private beta. Jack has it in private beta right now. So, yeah, it's on its way. So, anyways, this is just one of the many, many, many, many, many lawsuits taped up by media companies against these AI companies.

CNN's lawsuit stands for the proposition that perplexity, a company valued at tens of billions of dollars, should not be able to steal from entities that create the original content perplexity exploits. The CNN spokesperson said in statement to the outlet, the public rely on high-quality news journalism, as we used to, reported by human beings to understand their world, which makes sense when CNN's gutting their news department.

Have you seen what's going on at 60 Minutes? Woo, doggie. No, 60 Minutes is dead. Anyways, which is frequently dangerous and expensive to produce. Commercial operators can and must pay to make use of it. What did perplexity come back with as their defense? Poop emoji? You can't copyright facts. Oh, my God.

Fuck you. Fuck you. You, with your tens of billions of dollars, hire a reporting department to go out and find those facts. Because that's what you have to, the facts don't fall into your fucking, well, they fall into your fucking lap because you scraped them.

You stole them. But they don't fall into everybody's laps. You have to go get the facts. You have to research the facts. You have to investigate the facts. You have to go out and talk to people. You have to do reporting. You have to do writing. Go fuck yourself. That's a fact, Jack. That's right.

Oh, my God. Saturday, September 26th. Two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus, the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line.

When the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meat Cleaver Cullen. KFC 94, Till vs. Ramiro. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Well, AI music generator Suno just raised another $400 million, pushing its valuation to $5.4 billion.

Unfortunately, there's about $30 billion worth of lawsuits coming out of them. That's the fucking point. Who are these idiots that just gave them $400 million, knowing, knowing that all these lawsuits are pending? Who? Who? That would be great to know, because I would like some money from you, because you're fucking stupid.

That's pretty much it. Yeah, Suno raised $400 million. Juju.show slash donate. Yeah. Anybody that gave them $400 million. We'll take one. We just need one. That's it. I'll be happy. Yes. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Brian, what's next?

My head hurts. BYD, which is the Chinese self-driving car company that actually kind of does self-driving cars, unlike Tesla. It's putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to self-driving technology. During an event last week announcing its latest developments for smart driving chips, the Chinese EV maker announced it would offer full damage coverage for anyone using the Urban Navigate on Autopilot feature on their latest God's Eye 5.0 driver assistance system.

It better be fucking good if you're calling it that. Are you listening, Elon? Are you listening? I know you think you're God, but they've put their money where their mouth is. Unsurprisingly, the offer is only available to BYD owners in China because they're not going to fuck around with the U.S. insurance companies.

As reported by Electric, the guarantees also include repairs to the owner's car, third-party property damage, and personal injury costs. Along with that, the guarantee doesn't have a payout cap, doesn't require separate insurance policy, and won't raise insurance premiums. They said that this offer is good for one year for new customers or existing owners as soon as they upgrade to the God's Eye 5.0 system.

So we've been wondering for quite some time, self-driving cars, autonomous vehicles, who's responsible for it? Who pays up? Who has to get the insurance? Here's an answer. We'll do it. We trust our technology enough.

Yeah. All right. That's it. Good for you. That's the way it should be. Where the rubber meets the road. That's it. Because Elon knows that his shit is not very good, so he ain't going to pay out for that shit. Absolutely not. He won't pay out for anything unless a court tells him to anyways. Yeah, seriously.

How many baby mamas he has that he ain't paying out for? Geez, he ain't going to pay out for his cars. For Christ's sakes. Well, we've got the SpaceX whatever IPO sucking all the oxygen and money out of the fucking galaxy, but they're not the only game in town. Anthropic looks set to go public and what's likely to become one of the biggest IPOs to date.

The AI company confirmed on Monday that it's confidentially submitted a draft version of its S1 form to the Securities and Exchange Commission. They have not yet set a price for the offering, nor have they determined the number of shares it will initially make available. They're basically just testing the waters here. So we'll see.

All right. I'm not investing in any of these companies. Oh, God. I would drive up to Canada and smack you with a plate of poutine right in the face. Jesus. I'm hungry. Me too. It's fucking eight in the morning. I'm hungry. I would eat breakfast. Well, SpaceX talking about IPOs.

SpaceX quietly added a new risk factor to its IPO filing this week, warning that water scarcity, drought, and water regulations could limit future data center development. From your mouth to God's ears. The disclosure highlights a growing problem for the AI industry where massive server farms can consume enormous amounts of water for cooling.

Some companies, including Microsoft OpenAI and Oracle, are moving away from water-intensive evaporative cooling, while Google is betting on local solutions like water replenishment projects, recycled water, and greater transparency around usage. Researchers say the issue isn't simple. In some regions, using more water can reduce electricity demand and ease pressure on strained power grids.

So, here's the thing. More coal-burning generators, Elon. There's your solution. Well, still, you still got to cool down the shit. But the evaporative cooling is so wasteful. It is so unbelievably wasteful.

They basically just evaporate the water and, you know, blame it on the rain because the rain ain't coming. Oh, man. So, at least they've actually put that. Out of all the things that are wrong with the SpaceX IPO, that is just a teeny, teeny little bit.

Everything is so wrong with the SpaceX IPO. But, anyway, Tesla owners say Tesla may have quietly rewritten history. Multiple owners report that old full self-driving purchase agreements dating back to 2016 now show the newer full self-driving paren supervised label.

Even though Tesla didn't start using that wording until 2024. Finally found a use for those smart contracts, huh? You can modify them. Modify them. Put it on the blockchain, bitches. Well, in several cases, the original documents have also vanished behind broken links.

So, that would have been a good case for the blockchain for damn sure. The timing is awkward. Elon Musk recently admitted older HW3 vehicles will never achieve unsupervised self-driving despite years of promises that future software updates would get them there.

But don't you remember when we talked about that? He's going to build little service centers all over the place so people can come in and get their cars upgraded for free so it can. That's right. Which will never fucking happen. Little micro factories. Little micro factories are going to be everywhere. And yeah, yeah, yeah. Never. And in a growing pile of lawsuits, regulatory scrutiny, and Tesla quietly retiring marketing claims about full self-driving, some owners are wondering whether their contracts got a software update too.

They did. It's not a software update. It's fraud. Call your lawyer. Start that class action lawsuit immediately. And if anybody that's listening to this show is even thinking about buying a Tesla, it will slap you in the face with a fish. We need Dave.

I can't remember the character's name. That's right. From the Muppets. Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee is the latest deceased celebrity icon who thinks the ghoulish wonder of AI can now keep entertaining fans from beyond the grave. People are pissed about this one. Voice cloning specialist Eleven Labs has signed a deal with Stan Lee Universe that will allow it to use the X-Men and Spider-Man co-creators' voice and likeness in its apps and licensing platforms.

Joining the ranks of Judy Garland, Michael Caine, John Wayne, and David Hasselhoff on the Eleven Labs iconic marketplace, where companies can license celebrity voices and IP for commercial use. And there's more. As reported by Variety, Lee's likeness can now be used in the Eleven Creative AI image generator, where users can have them appear in comic-inspired visual templates for a non-commercial use.

Presumably, though, the technology can also potentially facilitate Lee making a cameo in literally any movie, superhero-themed or not. Stan always believed in meeting his fans where they were. Dead. Poor Stan. He got a shit job. At the end, he got the shaft.

He got the shaft, and he's continuing to get the shaft. This is some bullshit right here. Yeah. And speaking of bullshit, Paramount Plus, which I have to remind myself to unsubscribe to because there's no Star Trek at the tubes for a while, looks to have used Generative AI to whip up a thumbnail for Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, according to a report by Kotaku.

The image shows Captain Kirk is played by William Shatner in a business suit. A business suit. It's so Rangi McRongenstein for Wrath of Khan. It's so bad. And he's got, like, the Borg eye, like, Locutus, you know, from Next Gen.

It's like, what the fuck? We don't know exactly what happened, but artist Ryan Estrada has an idea. He noted that the actual image of Kirk is from Wrath of Khan, pulled from a scene in which the captain is getting a retinal scan to access a computer file, hence the red light. It's not a particularly exciting scene, and he is wearing a Starfleet uniform in it.

He speculates that Paramount Plus got attached to that image of Kirk getting a retinal scan, wanted to highlight it further by making it a thumbnail. However, the image from the film is a close-up of Shatner's face, so Generative AI was used to place Kirk's head inside of a fake body and put that body in a business suit.

So nobody looked at it. Nobody with any understanding of the IP whatsoever was overseeing this. Somebody went, looks great. Paramount's new owner, David Ellison, recently told CNBC that the company is using technology to transform every single aspect of this business to shit.

Oh, it's so horrible. They can't get away with it. See that poster behind me? See that Star Trek poster behind me? Yes. There is not a pour, a single pour on Jean-Luc Picard's head that did not go through lawyer approvals.

I shit you not. My first day at Paramount, my boss, Brian, was reducing the shine on Patrick Stewart's forehead by 15% because Patrick Stewart was upset with it. It was too shiny. So nowadays, you can just throw whatever fucking shit you want at it because the Ellisons own the property.

Back in the day when Paramount was a fucking great company to work for, we'd never let that shit slide. And that's what I miss. I miss accountability. I miss craftsmanship. I'm so sick of this fucking bullshittery.

Oh, but you don't understand, old boomer and virgin man. Oh, God. I'm sorry, bro. What did I do wrong? You don't get it, bro. And finally, just more media news here. The World Cup starts this coming Thursday, June 11th.

So I will see you all in a month. Yes, FIFA is fucking corrupt. Yes, this is the most corrupt of all corrupts that they have ever been because you've got Trump collusion corruption going on. It fucking angers me to no end. I'm so angry about it. I start to get mad when I think about the World Cup. But I will sit and watch every single fucking game.

You're going to watch every fucking game. And I'm going to love it because it's my favorite sporting event ever. In between the matches, you're going to listen to Michael Jackson and R. Kelly and read some Neil Gaiman and some Harry Potter and just say, fuck it. Me and, oh, God, why can't I remember that comedian?

I can't. Me and Louis C.K. You and Louis C.K. are going to be chilling, rubbing one out into the plant, just going. But anyways, I know there are plenty of you out there that feel the same way as me, disgusted and dirty by it, but still going to watch every single second. So I have a link in our show notes.

It's the best printable schedule I can find. Done in multiple languages, time zones, and handy instructions as to how to break it up into multiple printable pages if you have old eyes like mine. Heroes don't always wear capes, so hat tip to Chikorito's left foot on Reddit, who I found this thread on Reddit, and he makes this for every World Cup, or at least since he's been born.

He's probably a small kid. It's amazing. So link is in the show notes. You can just, if you're going to want to print this out, you're going to want to have it around. It's awesome. It's very nice. It's very nicely done. Yeah, very nicely done. He should have a Patreon to get some monies.

I would toss him a buck or two. No doubt about that. Seriously. Moving on to books really quickly, Jason. I did finish I Am Not a Robot, my year using AI to do almost everything by Joanna Stern. It was a fun book to read. It dragged down a little bit just because of the vast amount of knowledge that you and I already have about this.

It's a wonderful book for people that don't really understand AI and the ins and outs of it. So it delves into very simplistic explainers that go on a little bit too long for you or I. But the TLDR on this is what makes it enjoyable for you and I, Jason.

This shit sucks. Yeah, it does. It does. So, by the way, I listen to anti-AI podcasts and I listen to pro-AI podcasts every day.

And the pro-AI podcasts this week are so – they're so trying to juggle the opposing facts in their head and come up with bullshit to say, well, now we're moving into a token efficiency stage where we must now become efficient with our token usage because we're getting charged for it.

And now we need to figure out what we can do with the – I'm just like, you can't do shit, you dumb fucks. And just go back to the Instagram thing one more time. I'm sorry. But one guy wrote – he's like, I wrote six desktop apps for my company and I didn't write a single line of code. Well, when your company can't afford to subsidize your AI usage anymore, what fucking use do you have to the company because you can't fix it when something breaks?

Go fuck yourself, you little fucking shit. What else did you read this week, Brian? Well, because I finished my nonfiction book, I was able to go back to fiction and being lazy and having enjoyed the first book so much, I picked up Carl's Doomsday Scenario, Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 2 by Matt Dinneman.

And I fully intended for that to take me about two to three weeks to read or at least up until the World Cup and I finished it in two nights. It was fun. It was as much fun as the first one. Oh, great. I loved it. Okay. I am 80% through the first book and I'm taking my time with it because I'm listening to the audio book.

It is read by one guy whose name I don't have handy, but it is a full cast production. This guy is so good. And the sound effects, everything, it is so fucking hilarious. The AI that they do to give him all of the stats and everything on everybody, it is read so – I mean, I have found myself just cracking up walking down the street when I'm listening to it.

It is so fucking good. It's a good thing that somebody – they found somebody to do the audio books before this kind of really blew up because, you know, it's so popular right now, it would absolutely be Will fucking Wheaton reading them. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. No, no. This guy has talent.

This guy has serious fucking talent. It is so good. By the way, I like Will Wheaton. I do, too. I just don't like him reading every goddamn audio book known to me. Every sci-fi book that I go to, it's the same goddamn guy. Sorry. I really like Will Wheaton. Sorry, Will. Yeah. Yeah. It's nothing personal, Will, but you just work too much.

Anyway, I read Wisdom Takes Work. Learn, Apply, Repeat by Ryan Holiday, which a lot of those kids on the Instagram should maybe go listen to because it is a fantastic book. It is the fourth book in the series of The Stoic Virtues from Ryan Holiday. I love this book. I've actually listened to it twice on my walks this week.

It is, in my estimation, it is the best of the four books. Ego is the Enemy was the book before the series, and that was a phenomenal book. But this book is just like, it hammers home how much it takes to actually learn things that are genuinely useful to humanity.

Friction. Friction. Time. Also, the single best, probably 25-minute takedown of Elon Musk that you will ever read, period. He tears the shit out of Elon. And only 25 minutes? That's great because we've done about, oh, I don't know, 35 hours.

20 hours. Exactly. And it goes from where we were when we started this show. Elon was cool. Elon was awesome. He was a smart dude. And it just follows the path of, what the fuck? What the fuck happened to you?

But he comes at it with science. So it's really, it's such a good read. I highly recommend it. I highly recommend it. So to follow on with that, I've been using Open Audible to capture all of my audio books off of audible.com because I would like them in the future when I eventually get rid of my fucking Amazon account.

Because fuck Amazon and fuck Jeff Bezos. So I download all this stuff. And the problem is I have to put it on another hard drive because it takes up almost a fucking terabyte. I have 900 gigabytes of audio books for the 20-some years, 25 years now that I've been buying books from Audible.

And so I needed something to plug it into because I got this little shitty MacBook M4 Air with only two ports. Well, it's a great, the laptop is great. Great. Johnny Ives Ghost fucked my ports on it. It's only got two USB-C ports. So I needed a little thing. So I got the Belkin Connect four-port USB-C hub, USB-C hub, multi-port adapter dongle with four USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports, high-speed 10 GB data transfer for laptop, MacBook, iPad, PC, and more.

100 WPD, $32.24. Great little dongle. Does exactly what I need it to do. You can't power a monitor through it, which sucks. If you need to plug in a shit ton of hard drives, which I need to do because I use Backblaze to back up my computer, which I talked about a couple weeks ago, Backblaze has been phenomenal.

But I need to plug in more hard drives. And this is, for $32, phenomenal little hub that you should have in your backpack at all times. This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Brews Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel.

Three straight days with pool deck bare knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and nonstop action. The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at BKFSEA.com.

And we're back, and we are joined again by our good friend Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire. Hello, Dave. Welcome back. Hello, gentlemen. Good to be back. Excellent. I want to just lean into some Star Wars really quick because it's kind of what we do. After seeing Mando and Grogu, which I don't think I have talked to you since I've seen it.

Enjoyed it? Enjoyed it? Thought? Could you use a little bit of tighter editing? You could tell that it was kind of meant to originally written to be a series, not a movie. Yeah. Probably could have lost about 20, 30 minutes of footage. But overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

My wife also enjoyed it enough to suggest to my son, Lucas, well, why don't we watch The Mandalorian? Because you have not seen it yet. And I almost fell out of my chair, as my wife has never wanted to watch a Star Wars show. She's always been up for movies, but a show?

Okay. Okay. Wow. So we are going back and watching season one right now. And I, of course, am sitting there with them and doing it. And gosh, it is such an enjoyable show right off the gate. So different. Now we come to expect different a bit more.

But back then, wow. I was like, yeah, this is Star Wars. How cool. Yeah. And on another front, my kid has decided to start watching in his own time, Star Wars Rebels, the animated show, which ties directly into the Mandoverse.

And this is a lot where, you know, Dave Filoni's picked everything up from is the threads that came out of this show. So re-watching that as well. And it's a lot of fun. I have not, have I seen Rebels? Yes. It's hard for me to remember like Rebels Clone Wars, you know, like which.

Try watching these with a nine-year-old son who then starts to ask arcane questions about everything and is shocked that you don't know. Along with, of course, the standard nine-year-old, is this character stronger than this character? Whose lightsaber is better, Dad?

Is it this guy or this guy? What kind of kyber crystal? I don't fucking know, kid. Just watch the show. You got to hook him up with a Wikipedia account. Give him Wikipedia. We're trying to do less screen time, Jason, not more screen time.

Well, just while you're watching the show, you can pause and open up Wikipedia and say, here, while I go take a pee and refresh my wine, you can check out who's got the bigger kyber crystal. That half hour of Star Wars Rebels will become a four-hour show if I let him start doing that. I'm reminded, actually, just this morning, I don't remember how it came up, but I was talking with my production team and I was remembering the time we were at Disney World.

My family was there. This was probably about 10 years ago. We were there with my wife, our kids, and my mom was with us. And this is when they had the Star Wars launch bay at the Disney Studios, which is since they've just recently, they've turned it back into an animation area.

But they had the launch bay there. And as part of that, they had a movie theater where they showed kind of a highlights reel, making of a 20-minute movie about the original trilogy. And I remember we're sitting there watching this, and I'm loving every minute of it, of course.

My mom is sitting next to me, and it comes to the scene from Empire where Darth Vader says, no, I am your father. And my mom turns to me and says, Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father? And I went, yes, mom.

So she bought all the action figures for me, you know, but I don't think she ever saw anything. She saw A New Hope with me probably at a birthday party, right? You know, because that's what we did. We'd go to a movie for a birthday party. But I don't think she ever saw Empire or Jedi.

Look, I have purchased an awful lot of Pikachu shit for my kid, and I couldn't tell you a goddamn thing about Pokemon. Right, yes. Not a thing. Yes, I can go down the list of toy brands that came and went. I just got jealous when Dave said he had a production team.

I'm like, oh, my God. I'm so... Right. You can have an AI one, Jason. Thanks, thanks. If you ever want to get a show out again, probably not. Yeah. And I did want to mention this. I'm not sure... Jason and I have been talking about this, and I don't know if we've ever talked about it with you, Dave, but it seems like you would be a fan.

I've wrapped up a rewatch of Downton Abbey. It was something my wife wanted to do. The whole thing? On PBS, yep. Oh, my God. PBS has all of its streaming, and we watched all... Not the movies, just the series. How did you get through that whole thing without ever telling us that?

That's like some secret... I told you a couple weeks ago we were doing it, Jason. Well, I had a stroke. I don't fucking know shit anymore. I don't remember that at all. It's Jason's legitimate excuse for everything now. Well, it is. It really is. I got Dane bramaged. Sorry.

Yeah, you know, it just... You can't push back on it. Like, oh, yes, you did. Rewind the tape and you'll discover... I mentioned that my wife and I were doing this. Okay, I probably had a very fine retort, too, but... Well, yeah, we talked about how the movies sucked, but the series itself was pretty good, and it was.

Okay. It was a lot of fun to watch, and I can't help but think that... I'm assuming you've seen this, Dave, and I'm assuming you... No. Oh, this is a show for you, Dave. Oh, my God! Now, they don't break into song or anything, but everything else. I'll tell you that I know nothing about Downton Abbey other than it exists, and I've seen probably little clips from it, but I don't know what it's about.

I don't know anything. Oh, you will enjoy this. Get me to PBS immediately, Dave. Now, why do you think it'll be up my alley? What elements of it do you think will particularly appeal to me? Oh, it's old-timey. You do like that sort of stuff.

I do. It's true. I do. Yes, I very much do. It's a lot of deadpan, dry humor. Oh. They do sing occasionally, but it's not musical, so you like that stuff as well. I just feel like you're going to really like it. Okay. Well, I will dig in.

My wife has not seen it either, so we're actually looking for something new to pick up. I think it's a good one to watch together. Okay. Yeah. Well, sorry, guys, but I just have some breaking news that I'm putting in the show notes right now.

Anthony Head has just died at age 72. Oh. Very sad. Have you seen Ted Lasso or Buffy the Vampire Slayer? I've seen one of those. Well, click on the link and you will figure out exactly who it is. It's very sad news.

Rupert from... Yeah. Oh, Rupert. Okay. Yeah. The bad guy. Okay. Oh, that's too bad. Yeah, he's one of my favorite actors. Oh, that sucks. Huh. Sorry. A friend of the show, Fogarty, just hit me up with the link. Good timing there, Bob. Way to bring down the mood. That's too bad.

He was a good bad guy. Oh, he was a great good guy in Buffy, too. Okay. Another show I've never seen. He was a phenomenal good guy in Buffy. He was the most talented actor on the show. Okay. Yeah. Even my friends who were actors on the show say that he was the most talented actor on the show. So, oh, it's a bummer.

Okay. What else we got? Bring the mood back up. Well, so speaking of Downton Abbey and series to watch, Alana and I are just about to wrap up the Dairy Girls show. Have either of you seen this? I have. I have. It's very enjoyable. Yeah. Yeah. Jason, any idea?

Never heard of it. I've seen Welcome to Dairy. Yeah. That was a good show. This is, no, Dairy Girls, it's a BBC series, which means there's like seven episodes over three years, but it's really funny and just smart, character-driven comedy that's laugh

out loud and sometimes very moving and it's just a really fun show. So, we have to turn the captions on because they have very thick accents and my wife in particular can't keep up.

Having spent a lot of time in very authentic Irish bars, I've known quite a few people that grew up in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, which is when this show is set. They all told me, yeah, that's pretty much what it was like. And they said it in that accent, so I had to consult a dictionary.

Yeah. Dave, I'm going to tell you right now, the universal translator is alcohol, so you guys need to drink before you watch the show and then you will understand all of it. I've been to Northern Ireland in the 90s and I can tell you that drinking is the absolute babblefish of planet Earth.

A medium to strong buzz is the only thing that made me understand a goddamn thing in Scotland. That tracks. Exactly. That tracks. We're actually halfway through a season of the British version of MasterChef and there's a Scottish contestant and every time he speaks, we all look at each other and we're like, I don't know what he just said.

But yeah, Dairy Girls, I think you'll dig it, Jason. It is a lot of fun. Very funny. I'll check it out. I just love the characters in there. It's just, I'm sad that there isn't more of it because I enjoy visiting this group of young ladies.

They just make me laugh. I do recommend the Welcome to Dairy, the Stephen King It prequel on, I think it's HBO Max. Very good show. I've heard that. Absolutely nothing to do with this, but very good. Okay. I was traveling last weekend.

I went to visit some family on the eastern shore of Maryland and it's about a two hour drive from here. And anyone who's familiar with the area will know that you take Route 50 over the Bay Bridge and that takes you pretty much straight into Ocean City.

And I was going to a town near Ocean City called Snow Hill. And I'm driving on my way and I look over to the traffic going the other direction and I see that it's backed up. So I look over to try to see what's causing the backup here.

Was there an accident or something? And running around on the highway is an emu. No shit. Yep. An actual emu. An actual emu. It was one of those things where I looked, I had to look away and look again. Had there been someone in the car with me, I would have said, you see the emu, right?

I'm not, I'm not, I'm not hallucinating. There's actually an emu running around on the highway. Dave, was, was the city Ocean City? It was Ocean City, yeah. Did you sit in your car and sing, we've got trouble? We've got trouble right here in Ocean City? With a capital E?

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So it turns out this emu had escaped from a farm. His name is Dexter. It took the highway patrol about four hours to wrangle him. How many murders did Dexter commit while he was on the loose? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

I was thinking like in highway patrol trooper training, they probably don't spend a whole lot of time on emu wrangling for Maryland highway patrolmen. But according to the reports, they were able to wrangle him using a dog leash and they got him back home to his farm where he's recovering from his adventure.

And hopefully they'll sure up his pen so he can't get out again. But they just use the same tactics that they use on meth heads. Just a dog leash on his stick. Just get him. Get him. Could have been. I don't know. But yeah, that was weird.

Yeah. Yeah. Just never. I didn't have that on my bingo card. So I'm glad that you saw the Mando and Grogu movie. Jason, have you seen it? No. Okay. So there's a mild spoiler here.

Not really so much a plot spoiler. It's just like a moment of delight spoiler. I included a link to this Lego set. Brian, since you've seen the movie, you recognize what it is. Yes. My wife and I were at a mall that had a Lego store and we were in the Lego store and I saw this Lego set and I went, oh, I'm buying that.

So I bought it for my son because if I buy it for my son, someone else puts it together. And so sure enough, he did. And it is adorable. So it's the it's the starship of the little the little fix it guys. I guess they're called and zillions. Yeah.

And it's a funny little sight gag in the movie, this little starship that they have. And Lego has done it justice with this little thing. So in our house, my son already had the what's Mando's ship, the big ship that he flies around in the.

Oh, God, the the ship. My son's going to kill me. The Razorcrest. Yes. Razorcrest. Yes. So we already have the big Razorcrest ship. So now we have the little Lenzel and ship parked right next to it. And it's pretty darn cute.

Fantastic. Yeah. I, I came across, I was pointed out to, I can't remember how it came across, but AI generated jazz. There is a YouTube channel here. What is human jazz bad enough?

Yeah, seriously. Well, you know, it's worse than AI generated jazz, AI smooth jazz. That's, that's, that would be the, which also is also a thing, which also exists. Yes. So I was kind of going in that direction a little bit, which is that I think, uh, in general, creative people, people who have made their living, created a living out of being

a creative person and doing creative things kind of, uh, turn our noses up at AI generated art, uh, especially something automated. And if you go to this YouTube channel, they have dozens of albums that they put out that are AI generated jazz.

But if I were to put one of these albums on as background music, like for a dinner party or an event or something like that, nobody would blink an eye. It's, I mean, it's, I, I, I don't know enough about jazz to say it's good, but I know enough to say it's not bad.

There's nothing that draws attention to it to say what, what is going on with that? You know, like, and I don't know how to feel about that. Well, I, you know, I would say the same thing. I, I've, I've, I'm very into, um, electronic music and ambient electronic in particular.

I've listened to gazillions of albums by amazing artists, Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Moby, you name it. Tangerine Dream. They've all, they've all done ambient electronica. And I have, uh, that, that is what all these, uh, like Suno, et cetera, they excelled at doing that sort of stuff at the beginning.

And same thing, if you threw it on in the background and I just told somebody, oh, this is Brian Eno's latest, um, music for taxis instead of music for airports or just make up some fucking name. Right. Nobody would be able to really say, no, it's not like you wouldn't, you wouldn't fucking know, but still at the end of the day, a human did one and some software did the other one.

Some software that stole from a human did the other one. Yeah. Trained on, trained on other humans. So, uh, you know, I, I, I, yeah, I, I certainly wouldn't be able to tell the difference with jazz. I don't know enough about jazz. Like I know that there are no rules. I will hate both of them equally.

I will just tell you that doesn't matter. I mean, I don't hate jazz. I can't say that it's something that I seek out, but I, I think it has its, it definitely has its place for mood setting and, uh, and I can enjoy and appreciate and appreciate a good jazz performance.

But again, it's not something I seek out. I guess one of the things I'm wondering is, is there going to come a point where some AI generated pop song comes out? I listened to it, not knowing that it's AI generated and it's an absolute banger and I can't get it out of my head.

And for a week or so, it's my favorite song ever. Inevitable. Inevitable. Yeah. If Brian's wife does her job, it won't happen. So she needs to sit the shit out of these people. Right. So this never happens. So Brian, to be fair, if it does, to be fair, my wife's job is currently to do that.

But as soon as there is more money in making deals with them, then that will be her job to do it that way. Well, let's also, you know, not rule out the possibility that your wife's entire job might be replaced by AI. So there's that as well. They're coming.

Well, same with us. So yes, yes. We've talked about multiple court cases that have tried to rely on lawyers doing AI and that has not worked out so well so far. But yeah, no, I mean, there was just a few, I think three months ago, there was an AI-generated band that came out on Spotify that started to creep up the list.

It was like, you know, starting to make it onto the playlist and all that sort of stuff. And they were out and proud about it. And there was some brouhaha. And, you know, people listen to the albums and the albums were fine. Like there wasn't, they were of the genre that they were purported to be in. They sounded like it.

Nothing exceptional, but nothing, it wasn't horrible either. That's where it's at right now. Right. Well, that leads me into our next story, which is according to new data from Luminate and Spotify, roughly one third of all streams in 2026 are going to songs that are at least 10 years old and nearly 17 percent going to tracks over 20 years old because all of this AI music sucks.

So, well, there's and just and and I'm sorry, not just AI music, any music in the past 10 years that you've ever heard. It's not just because of AI. There are people that have like legitimately studied this. And there's something to be said that music for the last 10 plus years or so has started to be crafted for for TikTok, for quick hits like there's no long intros anymore.

You go straight into a chorus right away because you've got to hit people with the hit right away. You've got to get the 30 second listen to get paid. And people are writing music to do that now. They aren't they aren't taking chances. There's nobody is ever going to fucking write a Bohemian Rhapsody anymore. Nobody is ever going to write a Cure song anymore except for the Cure because the three minute fucking instrumental intros before you get into anything like that music is not crafted for that anymore.

And that's kind of why. So, yeah. Yeah. No more Hotel Californias. Well, I'm fine with that one. I'm fine with that one. Floyd album, you know, just it's never going to that's sort of a concept album, I guess. Yeah. I mean, that stuff still exists, but you have to go out and find it.

And usually it's legacy bands, older bands, because they've made the money. They made their money in the CD days. And they can just release what they want. If you're if you're out there and you're a starving artist, you're playing the game to get played. You have to. Right. Well, you know, here's the irony.

It's like, you know, you think about the Pink Floyds and all that stuff back in the day. You know, those are stoner bands. And now pot is so legal that everybody is stoned all the time. You'd think this would be making a resurgence. So maybe that's where these plays are coming from. It's the pot is the pot renaissance that's bringing back all these old bands.

Right. I do. I do want to point out the other argument that was being made for quite a long time and is being made by by the CEOs of the streamers and then being made by a bunch of other people as well. It's like, oh, OK, well, you know what? We're not buying your records anymore. Your records were too goddamn expensive anyways.

It was corporate greed. You're getting your money from Spotify. And if you don't like it, tour. That's where the money is. No, not anymore, because now touring is going prohibitively expensive for 99 percent of artists. The people that can afford to tour now are the multimillionaires.

You know, it's the Taylor Swift's, the Olivia Rodrigo's. You have to be high level musician now to be able to afford to tour. Middle class musicians are completely squeezed out. Kids just getting started are OK. They can tour in a broken down van eating grilled cheese out of vending machines.

That's the only fucking way they can do it. And the only way they're hoping to get what? They're hoping to get people to listen to their music that doesn't pay them anything. And they're never going to get big enough to be able to be able to make money touring. There's no money to be made in music anymore unless you're one of the top percent of moneymakers anyways.

So, yeah, who's going to write these new songs for us? I was thinking about, like, all of the stadium bands are legacy bands. Yeah. There aren't any new ones. They're the only ones who can fill a stadium. No one else can. No. The closest you get, I can think of, is like a band like Turnstile.

And even they've been around for 10 years plus. You know? What about the Bad Bunny? Again, it's a very small number of artists that manage to break through it. Brad Bunny's been around for a long time, too. That's true. He's not brand new. Yeah. No overnight successes anymore.

Yeah. That's true. All right, guys. Well, on that fine note. Yeah, our music sucks. We're screwed. No, no. Our music is great. Yes. Your music sucks. Your music sucks. That's right. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go listen to the safety dance.

I'm going to go listen to the safety dance. I'm going to go listen to the safety dance. I generated jazz. Yeah. All right, guys. Talk to you next time. See you soon. And to thank everybody who has helped support this show, we would like to thank our new Patreon subscribers, Kelly, Michael, Chris, and Dave.

Thank you all so much for your continued support, for your new support of the show. For the continued support of the show, I would like to thank Jonathan, Juha, Fun Day Paudette Show, Brett, Old Butt Kicking, OBK, my man over on Clash Royale.

Thanks for coming back. We missed you, buddy. John, ahoy, matey, Jari Pekka, Jason, and Matthew. Thank you all for your continued support, and thank you to the new Patreon subscribers. And what else we got, Brian? We got some big rollers over at PayPal this week. We got Bjorn, who gave us $20, Sloan, $25, Christopher, also $25, Darla, who swept in with $60, and I was like, God damn.

But then Jason, Jason went, hold my fucking beer, and sent us $100. Thanks, Ben. Thank you. Thank you all so much. And over at the tip jar, we've got Joshua, Sarah, and Matthew. Sadly, nobody's bought any merch this week, but we do have new shirts. That's not true. What? Oh. That is not true.

What are you talking about? What are you talking about? Oh, what are you talking about? Oh, what are you talking about? Oh, oh. Oh, oh. Oh, oh. Katie Wood. Katie Wood? All right, Katie. Katie Wood bought my Grump Maxing shirt from Vancouver, Washington. All right, Katie. How did I miss Katie?

Oh, my God. Well, I'm glad Brian's on the merch beat, because I missed that one. So thank you very much, Katie. But we do have the new Destroy the Broligarchy shirt out now, and more stuff coming, so check that out. And if you would like to support the show, and we really wish you would support the show, because that's the only way we keep doing this shit at eight in the fucking morning on a Friday, go to patreon.com slash GOG and sign up there.

You can get the show ad-free and in high definition, and you can go to YouTube now and sign up for a membership. You can go to PayPal. Everything is at GOG.show slash donate. All of this stuff keeps the show going. And what you can also do that really helps the show, just tell a friend, please.

We need you to tell your friends and just help get this show. Yeah. Hook us up, bro. Please, bro. Thanks, broski. Well, until next time, I'm Brian Broskuski Schulmeister. And I'm Jason Brofilippo.

Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode. Oh, that's your name from now on, man. Get all the links from today's episode at GOG.show plus 749. 750 is next week, Brian. We're going to do episode 750 next week. You got it, bro.

Brofilippo. Okay, bro. Brofilippo signing off here. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG.show slash donate. Every penny helps get the show on the air. Love the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness. I'm changing your name in my contacts. I know.

Fuck you. Spread the grumpiness to friends, folks, and everyone in between. And we'll love you for it. So go to GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts, feedback, cool links? Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact. I can't keep it together. And, hey, don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review, and we'll read it on the air.

Oh, and guess what? We've got merch. Go snag your grumpy gear now at shop.GOG.show. Stay brumpy. We've got a salve for that. 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 Cleaver Cullen.

BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com.