755: Less Chatty Mode

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister coming to you from lovely Anaheim, California. Yeah, you're recording at eight in the morning like I have to do every week. How do you like it? It's not bad. I get up pretty early anyways. So do you. So what are you complaining about? Yeah, you don't have to edit and publish the show right after.

That's true. Yeah. I just throw all our notes into AI and let it write witty descriptions. Oh, that's good. I wish I could do the same. I wish I could do the same. Oh, well, welcome back to California. California. It's very nice. I love it. I love it. I love the dry heat. It's very good.

Well, it hasn't been a dry heat. What the hell are you talking about? It is compared to Toronto, man. It was like 70% humidity here yesterday or the day before yesterday. I got swamp ass. Yeah. I was back in North Carolina. Yeah, I've only been here for a couple days, but man, we hit the ground running.

Like as soon as we landed, we have a family here that we know really well. My son went to preschool here with their daughter and we COVID bubbled together. We traveled together all the time. So as soon as we landed, she was having a birthday party at some bowling alley up in Torrance area.

So we got all the way down to Anaheim, did our regular stop at In-N-Out Burger like we always do. That's the very first thing. And then we drove up to Torrance. We did a birthday party. The next day we had tickets for the Dodgers game. That was one of my Father's Day presents.

So we went out, drove all the way up to LA to go to the Dodgers game. And then I came back. And then the other day, yesterday, I went up to my old local, the old Finn McCool's, which is now Jameson's, to watch a World Cup game because I've seen World Cup games there for the last six World Cups.

And I couldn't miss a game. I had to get one in. So I went all the way up there to watch a game and then came all the way back. You should have told me. I'd have popped over. That we could have done. Yeah, it was a good time, man. So yeah, a couple of days into the trip and I'm tired. Oh, good, good. You only got, what, eight weeks to go?

Three more weeks, three more weeks. So pretty crazy. Let's get into some news, man. Sure, let's do it. Let's do it. I talked to the last show about Volkswagen was cutting jobs. And refreshingly, they did not say it was because of AI. We now know a little bit more about what they're going to do.

They're planning to cut their model lineup in half as part of Europe's largest automaker's huge efficiency overhaul. This was put out in a press release co-signed by its executive board, which also pledged to reduce its production capacity to 9 million vehicles per year, down from 12 million pre-COVID-19. A reduction of 2 million units has already been made.

The company is blaming the changed global market environment, which is code word for tariffs. Yeah. So, yeah, they're trying to streamline their lineup by up to 50% with its focus shifting to its most profitable market segments.

And, yeah, so there's going to be less options in the actual VWs you buy and less VWs that you can buy. So they are streamlining. So I didn't know we were doing automotive news because I guess – but I guess the news in this is that it's not AI. Yes.

This is it. And tariffs. Yeah, that's the news. Well, it's also follow-up because we talked about it. Yeah. So now we know what they're going to do because they got rid of all their jobs. Yeah. At least they didn't, like, lie about it this time like they did about – what is it? Exhaust gate? Yes. Yes. Well, we've got a little follow-up here, too.

Elon could still face criminal charges in Wisconsin over million-dollar payments offered to voters during the 2025 state Supreme Court election. Yeah, there was nothing fishy about that. Nothing at all. Nothing at all. The Wisconsin Elections Commission referred two complaints to Brown County prosecutors voting five to one – I want to know who that one is – that Musk may have violated state law by offering money to induce voting.

Okay. May? Seems pretty cut and dry. Musk initially advertised checks for people who voted, then revised the post to say recipients would be spokespeople for an anti-judge petition. This is like if I came into a bank wearing my face mask and carrying my gun and asked them to hand over all my cash, but then as I was walking out the door, I saw all the police cars coming and revised my robbery and gave them the money back.

Yeah. It's about it. It's about it. Sorry. No harm, no foul, right? So, the prior lawsuit seeking to block the payments was rejected, and Musk ultimately gave two voters $1 million checks because he had to. Because he had to. Yeah, pretty much. The cops are coming. The election drew more than $100 million in spending, but if you do remember, Brian, Democrat Susan Crawford did win by 10 points.

All right. So, I support Musk continuing to lose money. Well, I don't know if you saw the SpaceX price. He's losing it every day. Good. I'm not complaining about that. Well, following a new report from experts showing worrying data, Europe is taking more steps towards barring children from using social media.

It is clear we need age-appropriate restrictions to platforms. This is not about whether children can access social media. It is about whether and when social media can access our children. Zing. Authored by child psychologist Dr. Jorg M. Fiegerd and epidemiologist Dr. Maria Melkoar, the report revealed some alarming statistics across Europe.

Kids now spend four to six hours per day on social media as opposed to the six to eight hours on TV that we spent in our generation. And almost 60% of them had experienced socio-emotional development and susceptibility to mental health issues resulting in sleep and concentration problems and increased rates of depression and anxiety.

And as a result, the study recommended that the EU restricts social media access for children under 13 unless supervised by a parent or teacher. It also advised that teens between 13 and 18 only get access to platforms with safety features like limits on infinite scrolling, which doesn't exist anywhere yet.

It further recommended, and Jesus fucking Christ, that toddlers under three have no screen access at all. The fact that you have to write that down and tell people is pretty fucked up. Yeah, so we'll see. If Europe were to carry through with the new law, it would be the largest effort by far to ban social media use by children.

The European bloc is home to 450 million people, of which 81 million or so are under the age of 18. However, creating such legislation would require negotiations and buy-in from all 27 nations in the bloc, something that could take a lot of time. This report may represent a tipping point, though.

The more we learn and the more we see the impact on our children, the stronger the argument becomes for a social media start date. The EU Commission will now review the report and recommendations and present a proposal after the summer. So when they're back in school and after three months of way too much social media time.

Three months of staring at their tablet the whole time. Great. Way to time that one out, guys. Yeah. Well, it's something. Yeah. I like a social media start date. I want a social media end date. Yes. That would be nice. Well, the UK is actually planning to require social media companies to automatically block 16 and 17 year old users during designated overnight hours.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology announced the proposed social media curfew, but it's not yet specified the exact times or how the enforcement will work. This is this is a recurring theme, isn't it? We must do something. Crickets, crickets.

Oh, man. Yeah. So the measure would add to the UK's growing regulation of online platforms and child safety, potentially requiring services to verify users age and apply restrictions by default. Still, that sticky wicket of the age verification problem that we've always talked about that nobody has figured out yet.

Yes. So, well, we'll see how it goes. I can tell you how it goes. It ain't going to go. OK, moving on. For decades, publishers chased Google search rankings as their top traffic source. Now that's reversing. Cloudflare, which hosts roughly a fifth of the world's websites, will default new and free tier customers to blocking multipurpose crawlers starting September 15th, catching any bot that scrapes for both search indexing and AI training.

We talked about this a bit last week, but the real target is Google, which uses a single crawler for both, forcing publishers to choose, allow AI scraping or vanish from search entirely. So Google offers an opt out tool called Google Extended, but publishers distrust it.

No shit, they distrust it, fearing hidden search visibility penalties, which is what they're going to get. You don't want to use our tool for the AI. We're not going to list you in our search. Yep. That's there's no law that says they have to. So they're not going to do it. But given the fact that basically Google search is getting canned anyways and it's just AI results, are you really losing out by not getting listed in Google search, which most people aren't even seeing anymore?

Yeah, they're not getting listed in Google search and you're not getting listed in Google AI results. So what's the even point of Google anymore? I don't know. USA Today Inc. says it may delist from Google within six to 12 months. Favoring direct licensing deals instead, something Google, unlike Meta, Microsoft and Amazon, hasn't offered.

So analysts warn that if major publishers follow, search quality could degrade sharply. Note to analysts, too late. It already has. Yes. So and Google says its controls don't affect traditional search visibility. But for now, distrust is driving publishers towards what was once considered commercial suicide.

Yep. Well, it's not suicide now because Google just shoots you in the face and says no search traffic for you. Pretty much. Pretty much. We're recording on July 15th. Tomorrow's a big day, Jason. I wonder how you were planning to celebrate because it's AI Appreciation Day tomorrow, July 16th.

And we're all left wondering who asked for this, along with AI in general. In name, it's about as serious as the marketing stunts that gave us gems like National Hot Dog Day or National Donut Day, both of which I actually prefer to AI Appreciation Day.

I'm not entirely sure what we're supposed to do. And in practice, the day is calling for international recognition of the most consequential technology in human history. So I will support. I will be appreciating fire. I was going to say. Soap, I think, is up there for me.

While we can acknowledge the impact that AI has made on society and industry so far, it doesn't warrant its own day of dedication. They have a website and they offer us some of the proper ways to celebrate AI Appreciation Day, such as thank a person who builds or maintains AI.

Thank you. Double thank you. Or talk to a child or skeptic about it. I will talk to a skeptic about it and I will agree with them. Yes. And sign the pledge and put the day on your calendar. No. No.

So. Nope. Yes. AI Appreciation Day. So, yes, that's going to be awesome. Well, we can all sit around, Brian, and watch the new Anthropic ad. Oh, Jiminy, did you get a chance to check this out? I did. Oh, my God. So, Anthropic's latest ad completely ignores everything that anyone has said about AI and sticks its dicks squarely in a blender.

It opens with a burning house, surveillance-style facial scanning, and a cemetery while asking whether AI can be trusted and who would stop it if necessary. It's a series of questions that, if you apply Betteridge's Law of Headlines, the answer is firmly no across the entire ad.

It is a total dumpster fire that was, I think, Brian, this had to be created by humans because the fucking AI would have more humanity than that ad is trying to have. 100%. Yeah, it's crazy. It's insane. And the tagline, there's hope in hard questions.

And the hardest question I have is, why do you keep trying to scare people into using your product when you, over and over again, tell us it's going to ruin the fucking world? Anthropic, get your shit together, man. I know. I know. It's crazy. Well, I don't know what the world record is for killing bad AI features quickly.

In fact, there probably isn't one because we just get new ones shoved down our throats left, right, and center. But we do have— We've got to go to Kalshi. Kalshi. We've got to go to Kalshi. We need to start betting on the Kalshi. But we definitely have one entry in this field. On Tuesday, July 7th, Meta released an AI photo generation feature that pulled face data from any public Instagram account by default.

We talked about this and just, you know, jaws dropped. So, it lasted all of three days. That's a half-scaramoochie. No, because the upcry or the outcry against this was just massive.

So, this is tied to Muse Image. We talked about this. And basically, people lost their shit about this. And so, they said, Earlier this week, we announced that one way for people to generate images in Meta AI is by at mentioning public Instagram accounts that they want to reference. Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and give people control.

Give people control over whether they're— By taking it away from them? By taking it away over whether their public content could be referenced in this way. We've heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it is no longer available. Yeah. So, SAG-AFTRA captured the mood pretty well with its Friday statement on this feature.

Anything than a clear and conspicuous opt-in for these types of uses of Instagram users' images is unacceptable. And an utter miscalculation of public sentiment regarding the obvious dangers and harms inherent in such use. According to Reuters, after the feature was pulled, a SAG-AFTRA spokesperson said, With the dangers of non-consensual digital replicas well known to all, a feature that encouraged that behavior is unwise.

Looking at you, Grok. Next up. Speaking of unwise features, Flock Safety. I don't know about you, Brian, but on Instagram, all I'm getting now are videos of people saying, You know, you really shouldn't point to green laser right at the sensor on a Flock camera because it will disable the Flock camera.

You really shouldn't go buy a Sawzall and chop down the—it's great. I've had a lot of that, too. It's like how to recognize which one is a Flock camera and which one isn't and then act accordingly. Yes. Well, Flock Safety says it hopes to resume its partnership with the Los Angeles Police Department after the agency let a three-year contract expire without renewal.

I have to say this is the first time in most of my adult life that I actually applaud the Los Angeles Police Department for a decision. I know. I know. It's a shocker. Absolute shocker. Flock told Gizmodo it was surprised by the decision and believes ongoing discussions can resolve what it calls misconceptions.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, misconceptions. If you don't know, Flock operates automated license plate readers that let police abuse vehicle tracking data across the entire country and are expanding to even more signals intelligence, which is a very frightening prospect. They're going to start basically doing Bluetooth and cell phone tracking and IE tracking and all that stuff.

So, no, this company needs to go. It needs to go. I mean, this is the Panopticon. Like, it's insane. Yeah. It's in private hands. And the thing is, it's in private hands and law enforcement just abuses it over and over and over again.

So, it's like, these guys got to fucking go. So, feel free to go check out my Instagram feed at Instagram.com slash JPD, where I repost a lot of things that you should not do when you see a Flock camera or how to find them. This episode is sponsored by Delete Me. Have you ever thought, I should really be doing something to protect myself from stalkers, scammers, and hackers, but you're not sure what?

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That's OLDGEEKS in all caps. Or just click the link in the show notes. Here's a fun one. Apple has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI accusing the company of trade secret theft and a breach of contract. Apple says it wants OpenAI barred from using its trade secrets and is seeking the return of confidential materials.

OpenAI says it has, quote, no interest in other companies' trade secrets. Your entire company is based on other people's trade secrets, you motherfucking fucks. That's all you are. AI is just other people's secrets. Fucking assholes.

It's true. The suit alleges the misconduct was directed by OpenAI's senior leadership, including Chief Hardware Officer Tang Tan, a 24-year Apple veteran. Apple claims Tan used confidential Apple product codenames while recruiting and asked candidates to bring in Apple hardware components and coached departing employees on evading security procedures.

Another named engineer allegedly kept an Apple laptop after leaving and used it to download confidential technical documents. The complaint comes as OpenAI is rumored to be building its own hardware device, a potential threat to the iPhone. And that has come out that it's going to be a smart speaker like a lady in a tube.

They didn't want to release that, but they had to, you know, because of all the shit that everybody's saying about you're going to make a phone and you're stealing all our phone stuff. They're like, no, we're not. We're making a lady in a tube. So, unless we've hired somebody from Amazon, shut the fuck up.

Definitely. Well, speaking of Apple and AI, just really quickly, I'm moving a story up a little bit just because it ties in right here really well. And I actually didn't, I have no personal knowledge about this because I'm not on any of the betas. But according to somebody over at Gizmodo, what we thought would happen and what Apple always does, this person is claiming did happen, which is Apple waits and waits when new technologies come out.

And then they release something that is perfect and actually works as opposed to the crap that we usually get at the beginning. And this guy at Gizmodo says Apple fucking did it one month with Siri AI. So, he's been using the beta and he says that apparently Siri AI is the bomb.com.

It actually works. It does what it's supposed to do. It's not incredibly invasive. You start to really use it all the time and start to rely on it. So, I figure you do the beta stuff. Have you seen any of this? No, I don't because I'm working on my app, Trackalot, at trackalot.me.

And I did not want to install the beta this time because I'm working on bug fixes for the current version. So, if I install the beta, then I'm going to have to be doing other crap. But after this new release comes out, which has Apple Watch support, which is pretty cool so you can track on your watch. I love it. I will be installing the beta and giving it a shot.

The one thing that bums me out is that the new on-device models only work with 17 and up. Let's say you have to have an iPhone 17 and higher, and I've got a 16 Pro Max, which you'd think would be something like that, but not apparently enough horsepower. Not good enough. And I wonder what, I can't wait to see what the battery is like when you're actually using these on-device models.

Yeah. It's like, might as well probably, you know, mine some Bitcoin while you're at it and just watch your battery tank. Yeah. But, no, hopefully next week I'll be able to report on this. But it's in public beta, so anybody can get it right now. You can go get it yourself. I'm curious. I'm curious if anybody on our Discord has been using it.

So, it is very on-brand for Apple. They wait, and then they release something that's really good. Except if you count in the original Siri, which has sucked balls since day one. Well, you figure they've had long enough to try to get it to work right now. That's true.

That's true. Well, the Daily News and other newspapers have asked a federal judge to sanction OpenAI, accusing the chat GPT maker of hiding evidence in a major copyright lawsuit. The publishers say OpenAI has stalled on turning over training data sets and chat logs that could reveal whether the company used copyrighted news articles without permission.

Do we really even need to prove that at this point? No, we don't. Okay. All right. Their filing claims a recent employee deposition contradicts OpenAI's past statements about its ability to search that data. And one attorney accused the company of hiding and destroying evidence. OpenAI says it's protecting user privacy and stands by its fair use defense, adding that the Times case has weakened.

The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023 and has since been joined by outlets including the Chicago Tribune and Center for Investigative Reporting. The case is one of many, testing whether AI companies can legally train on copyrighted material, following Anthropix's $1.5 billion settlement with authors over pirated books.

So, yeah. There's, yeah. Yeah. Now, a new Verisite survey finds 69% of U.S. employees support requiring major AI companies to transfer half their stock into a public wealth fund.

The survey polled 1,700 adults nationwide. That's 1,700 people who haven't looked at the financials of these fucking scam artists. I was about to say, I don't want that stock because I know they are not profitable. The proposal championed by, of course, Bernie Sanders would impose a one time 50% stock tax on firms such as OpenAI and Anthropik, potentially creating a fund worth about $7 trillion.

Really, Bernie? Where the fuck are you getting those numbers? The same place those companies are getting the numbers, Jason. That's true. That's true. Support remains strong, 64%, even when the policy is explicitly linked to Bernie Sanders. So, only 5% of the people said, no, I can't get behind it if Bernie's doing it.

Advocates say the fund could distribute AI's economic gains and help offset job losses and other disruptions. Critics warn government ownership could weaken regulation and increase the industry's political influence. The rest of us who have been looking at the numbers say, this is all bullshit smoke and mirrors because these guys have not made a fucking dime.

Yeah, you're better off placing bets on Kalshi. Or SpaceX. SpaceX actually has a better chance. That's true, actually. Well, we'll see. Anyways, New York has become the first U.S. state to place a moratorium on the construction of data centers, according to the Washington Post.

Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order pausing environmental permits for large data centers, consuming more than 50 megawatts for up to a year. This would give state officials the required time to create rules protecting the electrical grid, environment, and local communities. So, you know, Elon can't fire up the methane-producing power and destroy entire environments.

This order will take effect immediately and not affect projects that already have required permits. So, the executive order is separate from New York's responsible Data Center Development Act, which was recently passed by the state legislator. That bill would have also banned data center permits for a year while also requiring energy efficiency goals for data centers and specific benefits for host communities.

She has yet to sign that bill, but is considering it. She has previously expressed support for AI as a potential research tool and economic booster, but in the face of public opposition to data centers, multiple states are attempting to enact bans. This moratorium was passed recently by a Maine state legislator.

It was vetoed by Democratic Governor Janet Mills. Janet. Janet. Janet. Europe. And never on. Other states with legislation advancing includes Washington, Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and South Carolina.

And local bans have also been enacted in cities like Seattle. So, yeah, people are very nimby-ing about this. Actually, they're just not nimby-ing. They're just not anywhere, please. Not just not my backyard. We don't need this. Thank you. We're done. We're done. We've got enough. We have enough data.

We don't need more centers for it. Yes. Astronomers have detected a previously hidden population of space debris in geosynchronous orbit, the valuable region about 35,786 kilometers above the equator. About 35,786. Roughly.

Roughly. 35,786 kilometers above the equator. Could be five, could be seven, but, you know, somewhere in there. Yes. This is where communications, weather, television, and navigation satellites operate. Reanalyzing archival images from the Isaac Newton Telescope with a technique called blind stacking, researchers have found 25 faint debris tracks, including fragments as small as 5 centimeters.

It's a hell of a fucking telescope, I tell you. Nearly 80% appear linked to undocumented breakup events. Because debris at this altitude is difficult to see and can remain in orbit indefinitely, even tiny pieces pose serious collision risks at several kilometers per second.

We've all seen the movies. Yes, we have. Researchers say improved surveys are urgently needed before more satellites are launched into the region, which means they probably won't have any improved surveys because nobody's home anymore. And it's. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, a lawsuit from 26 former Meta employees claims the company used internal AI systems to help choose roughly 8,000 workers for its May layoffs, disproportionately targeting people with disabilities and those who took protected medical or family leave.

Right. Let's see who's costing us the most money. Mm-hmm. Thanks, AI. The complaint says that, quote, Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work. Instead, Meta used a constellation of internal artificial intelligence systems, including a system referred to internally as MetaMate, which sounds like an internal dating app for, you know, hooking up with Janet from accounting.

Or a high fiber substitute. Oh, that too. Yeah. I love my MetaMate. Mm. Keeps me regular. Employee trained second brain agents, keystroke and activity monitoring data, AI token usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance ranking and calibration as well to score, rank and select employees for inclusion on the list.

I just want to pause for one second. Remember back when we kind of started on the show and everybody wanted to go work for these tech companies. They had all these perks. It's like you lounge and there's a kitchen and they'll cook you whatever you want. And there's ping pong tables and there's video games.

And like there's little sleep pods, which masturbation pods, let's be honest. And there was all this other stuff. And it was like, oh, my God, these companies and they pay so well. Who wouldn't want to work for these companies? Keystroke and activity monitoring data, AI token usage dashboards, algorithmically assisted performance rankings and calibrations, which are scoring, ranking and selecting employees.

This sounds like a fucking nightmare. Who would want to work at a company that does all this? Not a lot of people nowadays, because that's why the, you know, the morale is at an all time low. It's because it went from it went from that. It went from the place where bros could hang out and have a great time.

They'll do your laundry for you even because you're a stanky old fuck because you're coding all day. Now it's just like you are. It's Kafkaesque. It's it's horrible. They might as well have flock cameras set up everywhere. I'm sure they do. I'm sure they do. Plaintiffs argue Meta failed to adjust scores for leave or accommodations, violating federal and state discrimination laws.

Meta denies the allegation, saying saying you opted in. By working here, right, saying saying workforce decisions were made by people. The employees seek to pause terminations, preserve records and require an independent audit of the selection process. Well, a federal judge has dismissed with prejudice a proposed class action lawsuit accusing Apple of failing to prevent child sexual abuse material from being stored and shared through iCloud.

Two survivors identified as Amy and Jessica said Apple knowingly declined to use available detection tools, including neural hash, a system announced in 2021 and later abandoned. They sought to represent roughly 2,680 survivors with potential damages estimated at $32.8 billion.

Judge Noel Wise ruled that the claims are barred by Section 230, which generally shields online services from liability for user generated content. The plaintiff's attorney said they're considering an appeal and other legal options. I have thoughts, Brian, but so do you.

I can see you're chomping at the bit. I just I mean, how can you argue with a judge named Wise? I know she is very wise. We actually discussed this quite a bit. The neural hash technology when it first came out in 2021, five years ago. And everybody was like ecstatic that they abandoned it because they're like, keep your hands off my data on my phone because it's a slippery slope.

So I understand why these people might be upset. But there's a reason that we have protections at Apple for shit like this. We don't want it. We don't want them checking on everything in our phone because we've seen what happens when somebody like says takes a picture of his kid in the bath and posted to Google Photos and then has his life ruined.

Yes. You know, we've seen it happen. There are other ways to to find CSAM and to track it and to do all the things that you need to do without going this invasive. Just go to Grok. Just go to Grok. Here's a fun one.

Professional cyclist Willie Smith was disqualified from a race after wearing Oakley Meta smart glasses, apparently unaware of a rule introduced in April banning them. Smith said the glasses were used to record point of view footage, not gain an advantage, and argued that a warning or fine would have been sufficient.

Sports organizers are increasingly concerned that smart glasses could enable covert communication, real time betting, cheating or AI powered performance coaching. The real time betting is the thing you were in your calci glasses and somebody bets that you're going to come in fourth or like at the split.

You're going to be at this position, you know, and you get a voice in your ear saying, pull back, let three people go. Boom. We just made $100,000. OK, kick it back into gear. That shit's going to happen. So I can totally understand this. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And I don't believe for a fucking second that they were unaware of the rule banning them.

Nobody on your team follows the rules that are introduced for months in the sport, in the tiny sport that you are participating in. Give me a break. Yeah. Bull crap. If you're a professional cyclist and you're entering a cycling race, you know what the rules are.

Come on. That's such a joke. Yeah. So another nicks for the meta, the meta glasses. All right. Well, there you go. So let's transition over to a bit of media candy here. I have my sober on an early morning flight movie reviews.

I got a chance to watch a couple movies. I do want to state for I flew with the Ghostbuster, Jason. What? Yes. We ran into this particular Ghostbuster in the lounge. My son, well, actually, my wife first noticed him. And then my son was like, yeah, that's totally him. It was Ernie Hudson.

No way. Yeah. And then he was on our flight as well. And I've got to say, because my wife has to do the thing that she does, which is she Googles people immediately. Ernie Hudson is in his 80s. Yeah. Dude looks amazing. Black don't crack. He looks like he's in his 50s.

Like, it's unbelievable. He was a super nice guy. A bunch of kids were coming up to him, taking pictures and everything. And it was it was I was just like, damn, I ain't afraid of no ghosts. This is great. Did you send your kid over to get a picture? He didn't want to. He was my kid got a little bit shy. So, oh, OK.

Anyways, that's pretty cool, though. I haven't been on a flight with a celeb in a while. I used to be always because I was doing the Toronto L.A. flight all the time before I had moved there. And I was just visiting my not wife at the time. And I was always with celebrities because so many people were shooting in Toronto. I flew with just from Battlestar Galactica.

I flew with Trisha Helfer Helfer once and Grace Park once. So nice. Yeah. Never got Katie Sack off. I was trying to get my Trinity, but didn't work out. There you go. That would have been the Trinity. Absolutely. Well, if you want celebrities, just go to an A.A. meeting in L.A. That's true.

You can have as many as you want. That's true. You get really fucking sick of them fast. And you can't talk about them. Yeah. So I did watch a couple of movies, two movies on the flight. I finally got around to seeing Project Hail Mary. Yes, on a tiny screen on a flight is not the best way to see the movie. But I had already read the book.

I knew the story. So it was fine. Really enjoyed the movie. I don't know if I liked it as much as The Martian. I think I like The Martian more. But Project Hail Mary was pretty great. I loved it. I loved the characters. I loved the interactions. And again, people, another movie that shows what happens if a tiny little thing hits your spaceship.

Not good. Not good. Not good. I watched it on an iPad. I thought it was fine, too. Yeah. It was a good movie. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah. I still liked it better than The Martian. I actually liked it better than The Martian. Because I just don't think that they fucked up The Martian on the first line.

The first line of the book, you know, it's really, it's like, come on, man. Yeah. Okay. And then I finally got around to seeing Good Luck, Have Fun, and Don't Die. Because it was on the plane. What did you think? You know, I think I matrixed myself here. Oh.

I think I was expecting a lot because I'd heard about how great it was. And I had high expectations and it didn't quite meet them. I thought it was good, but not great. Okay. Yeah. I went in with no expectations. So when you go in with nothing and you come out with that, it's just like, oh, man, that was so good.

Yeah, I kind of wish I would have just ponied up the bucks to see it right away instead of waiting and having heard all the hype about it. So I enjoyed it. Didn't love it. Okay. Okay. Yeah. We finally have some news about The Hunt for Gollum, the upcoming Lord of the Rings film, which is going to be directed by Andy Serkis and coming to theaters December 17th, 2027.

After years of anticipation and speculation, cameras began rolling on Lord of the Rings, The Hunt for Gollum. And according to the news, Warner Brothers has released a short video that's sure to give you some goosebumps. I did watch it and it got me excited. In addition to Andy Serkis, Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood, and Lee Pace are returning to their roles as Gandalf, Frodo, and Tharandal.

And Jamie Dornan is replacing Viggo Mortensen as Aragon. And Kate Winslet will be joining the fray as Marigold and Anna Taylor-Joy as a character named Saren. So very much looking forward to this. I hope they don't screw it up. Don't hobbit it. Don't hobbit it. I hope we're still alive by December 17th, 2027.

That's a long way to go. That's true. It is true. But you did get the feels. You did get the feels from the... It felt good. It felt good. Yeah. Yeah. I watched a movie from last year called Black Bag, which turned out to be... It's like a kind of a British spy thriller type of thing.

You know, Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett. I thought it was going to be one thing, turned out to be another. It was a great little movie. It was a great little movie. Steven Soderbergh. He's usually pretty solid. Yeah. Yeah. It is a solid movie. I really liked it.

I really liked it. That's about it for me. Yeah, I've been slacking on my intake. A little bit of doodad issue. I saw this because I have some Philips smart lights in a Philips Hue bridge. I control a few things.

And I heard that there was a big outage that they got bricked after installing a software update back in June. But then I found out that it was like 100 people. Oh, okay. At first, I was like, I was outraged because I was like, and this is the problem with the smart stuff.

Can you imagine not having lights because the damn thing bricks on you as opposed to just, you know, flipping a switch and knowing you're going to have lights? But yeah, Philips has confirmed that an update installed in a very specific way has caused less than 100 BridgePro devices to stop working.

It will replace all those devices for anyone affected free of charge and regardless of warranty status. So it was a very specific software update scenario where they had to have automatic updates disabled, remained on an older version for an extended period, then manually installed the update after storing it on the Bridge device for more than 10 days.

Oh, that's complicated. That is. That's like some witchcraft there. Yeah. So a little less outraged when I heard about this, how it actually rolled out. So there you go. And speaking of rolling out, Waze, Google's other navigation app, is getting a collection of new AI-powered features that make it easier to navigate on a motorcycle and less annoying to receive directions.

I'm going to say you maybe shouldn't be using AI while you're on a motorcycle. But the app's new motorcycle mode uses AI to consider the specific needs of two-wheeled vehicles, according to Google. This includes specific shortcuts that might only be available to motorcycles and hazards that are tricky for riders like potpulls, speed bumps, raised crosswalks, shoulder endings, and narrow bridges.

So yeah, the app's insights are at least still powered by using a real-time traffic map and a group of human, motorcycle-focused editors who keep things up to date with hazards. They're also rolling out something that I wish people had, a new less chatty mode, which tweaks how Waze communicates.

If you hate constantly being interrupted by your next turn or upcoming hazards, toggling voice guidance to less chatty minimizes the app's voice prompts and focuses them on critical directions and reminders. I need this at my hairdresser. Oh, I know. Please, that would be nice.

And according to an anonymously sourced report from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, we talked about this briefly up above, the much-hyped and frequently mocked physical doohickey coming soon from OpenAI will be a smart speaker with legs. Yeah, so who knows really, we'll find out, but apparently it's a portable, battery-powered, and small enough to be easy to move from one room to another, like a baby monitor or a 90s cordless phone, perhaps.

It will be capable of controlling the smart appliances in your house, screenless and chatbot-powered, like a smart speaker. And then there's this curveball, who will reportedly have mechanical components that allow it to move in some way or another, giving the impression that it is alive. I got it.

I know what this is. Spider-bot. No, it's Tweaky and Dr. Theopolis from Buck Rogers. Beedee, beedee, beedee, beedee. Yeah, well, we'll see. Tweaky just takes them around and then he puts Dr. Theopolis on the counter and it just talks to you. That's it. It does not sound particularly groundbreaking or particularly interesting, but it needs to live up to every part of that claim and more because it will not be an exaggeration to say it is the most hyperbolically hyped-up device since the Segway scooter in 2001.

And we know how that one went. Yeah, really? That was a winner. But Altman is saying that this will be the coolest piece of technology the world will have ever seen. A smart speaker with legs. Developed by Johnny Ive.

Yes. What's that old, the robot from Star Wars, the ball that rolls around? BB-8. BB-8. Just put a speaker on BB-8 and let it follow you around the house. That's true. Come on. You can replace that little top bit with a smart speaker.

Makes total sense. Somebody should do that. That's it. Well, according to multiple reports, an AI-powered shopping plugin, Fia, used a tactic known as cookie stuffing to attach its affiliate code to sales. It didn't actually drive. Fia, which launched last spring. Now, this wouldn't be notable except for its co-founder, Phoebe Gates, Bill Gates' daughter.

Okay. Okay. I suppose the Gates family knows something about fucking the rules up. Yeah, they do. Yeah, they do. Doing anything to win. Now, why Phoebe Gates is doing a startup on her own—well, let's see. I wonder who's funding that startup. Hmm. Hmm. I don't know.

Anyways, investigations by researcher Ben Edelman, Bloomberg, and Capital One Shopping all reportedly found instances of the browser extension claiming referrals through fake clicks and even taking credit for sales that other publishers should have gotten the commissions for. They published a detailed breakdown on how this worked, complete with a video showing Fia's affiliate link invisibly loaded into a second tab on iOS after visiting the merchant's website.

Fia has blamed the issues highlighted in the investigation on a bug. Oh, bullshit. Oh, bullshit. A spokesperson for the company said, within the last 24 hours, we were made aware that in a recent release, our code base was causing misattributions from a subset of users.

As soon as we were notified, we checked our bank account. I mean, our team worked overnight to identify, mitigate, and has since resolved the issue, a.k.a. we got caught. Yeah, 100% you got caught. You fuckers. You fuckers. Yeah. 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.

BKFC 94, Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. I haven't really had a chance to read much recently, but I am still working on a book. But I did read an article that depressed the living hell out of me that I think everybody should read.

And ironically, no one will read because the whole point of the article is nobody reads. Yeah. That's about it. So it's the end of reading is here. It's over at the Atlantic. It is long form. It is packed full of stats. It is packed full of history. It is it is it's very interesting.

And oh, my God, is it depressing. Just a couple of quick bits here. It seems the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation's reading habits, fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022.

Only 38 percent read a novel or short story. A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023.

The study looked at people who had read a book, magazine or newspaper, listened to an audio book or read an e-book. So the bar was low. Yeah, they just threw everything in there. Yes. Have you have you seen a word on paper? Yeah, that's about it. But they even put in listen to an audio book.

Yes. So gambling, one of my pet peeves, has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book. Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet compared to the under 16 percent that read anything. This decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender and education levels, even the demographics that traditionally read the most.

Entirees, women and college graduates have seen a collapse. And the books that people are reading are simpler than they used to be. We are dumbing down even for the few people that are supposedly smart. Great. Just what I wanted to hear. So hopefully, hopefully all these people are listening to podcasts.

Oh, wait, I looked at our numbers. No, they're not. So I don't know what the fuck they're doing. Yeah. Well, they're gambling. They're on Calci. Dicking around on Calci. Yes, with their smart classes. Fuck me. Well, we took a quick break and went out in the hallway. And look who we found. Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire. Hi, Dave.

Hello. Yeah. Like a bad cold. You can't get rid of me. Yeah. Excellent. All right. We go for a month and now you're here twice in a row. Jesus. I know. I'm going to make this a habit or something. I know. Almost like you work here. Well, I got some good news for you guys. Star Wars fans can now catch The Mandalorian and Grogu at home starting July 21st when the film arrives on digital platforms two months after its theatrical debut with physical editions to follow on August 25th, including DVD, Blu-ray, 4K, Steelbook, and Beskar

collector's editions. So you guys can spend all your monies if you want to. I know you love the Star Wars. We do. Yes, you do. Yes. I can't see myself buying any of these, but. But when it comes to Disney+, whenever that happens, which, as you pointed out of the notes here, that has not been announced, but I will probably watch it a second time.

All right. Yeah, I will watch it too when it comes out on Disney+. I am not paying for it again. I've already paid for it once. As you know, Dave, I am now in Los Angeles. I'm actually technically in Anaheim. I am literally three blocks away from Disneyland where I grew up.

And when I read through this, seeing about the DVD, the Blu-ray, the 4K, the Steelbook, and the Beskar's collector's edition, I have not gone to Disneyland yet. We will be going probably next week or the week after. We're waiting for the Anaheim local special ticket prices to be released, which they usually do when they're not getting enough people coming.

Gee, I wonder why people aren't traveling to the United States right now. I'd say it is a mystery. We're having a lot of disposable income. Or that, yes. So they usually release specially priced tickets for Anaheim residents. So we'll be buying those tickets then.

But I did take my son the other day over to downtown Disney. So we walked through that area and all the shops and the restaurants and all the things that lead up to where you can enter into Disneyland or California Adventure. And yeah, that's a DVD, Blu-ray, 4K, Steelbook, and Beskar collector's edition.

There is too much of everything. Too much. We went to the Star Wars store. There are the special collector's editions, lightsabers. There's the build your own lightsabers. There's the cheaper versions of the lightsabers. There's the droids you can buy. There's the droids you can buy with chips.

There's the droids you can buy without chips. There's the medium-sized droids. There's the small droids. There's the big droids. There are the crystals that you can buy that you can put in the lightsabers and the Sith Wayfinder and the Jedi Holocron and the lightsabers and the droids. And then it does different sounds for all the different things that you can do that.

And this is just the Star Wars store. Then you go to the Disney store. And it's like the amount of my son's mind is blown. And he's at the age now where he's just really he's starting to get chores for an allowance.

And he's starting to understand what money is. And he is counting every penny and trying to figure out what he wants to buy. And of course, he wants it all because there's too much of everything. It is insane what we're inundated with now in terms of everything.

And it's mind-blowing, especially in like I had action figures that that's and even that was like overwhelmed. And I was talking to my mom about it and she was like, yeah, you would not shut up about wanting to go to Toys R Us every time I gave you five bucks because you had to go spend it immediately to go get a new Stormtrooper character or something like that.

And I just it was it was overwhelming and it's still overwhelming because my now I told my son, OK, what you need to do is you need to make a list of everything you want, put them in order of how you know what you would want most. Then we will look at the prices of everything, because if you get that special lightsaber that you want, that's almost three hundred dollars, plus we need the carrying case, plus the and ends up being almost five hundred dollars.

You do not have five hundred dollars. Right, right, right. And so the decision not to tell him about the savings accounts and investment accounts I created for him when he was born is definitely a good decision I made now, because if he finds out that he has all this money, I will never hear the end of it.

Yeah. But yeah, it was it's just there's so much and that is just Star Wars within Disney. And then if you start talking about every like I know people are saying everything's gone digital, but no, it hasn't like there is so much to buy if you want, especially if you're a kid and you feel more than enough stuff to knock you down a tax bracket, no matter which way you go.

Yes. Do you feel like they are successful in generating desire in him for these things? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think kids, you know, as we've gotten older, well, no, this is a bad group to be talking to.

As I know, Dave, you you you are you you would like to buy everything Star Wars. You are looking to get an R2D2 from Home Depot. You want a Stormtrooper outfit. You know, it's it's it. Look over his shoulder in the video. We can. So, yeah.

You know, there's no doubt that they are they are successful. Not only and certainly walking around downtown Disney, there were plenty of adults that didn't even have children carrying bags of stuff. You know, Lego store. Yes. Star Wars store. Lego.

Like you see all these adults walking around with these huge Lego bags. Yes. You know, because they bought the Death Star or whatever. Yes. Again, we went into the Lego store as well. And of course, they have the Death Star. And Lucas is like, I want that. I was like, that is a thousand dollars.

You are not getting that. And there was like a 20 ish something woman next to me and her friend. And obviously, they look like kind of cosplayer type people. And she was like, yeah, that's the most expensive Lego set ever made. I was like, thank you. Yeah, I mean, but that's really I mean, it's an interesting parenting challenge of.

Well, but I mean, instilling the sense of value that money has value when you're fortunate enough, you know, you and your wife make decent good living. And so it's not that you are watching every penny, but you want to balance that against making the kid understand that just because you could doesn't mean you should when it comes to buying everything.

Yeah, and that was the big argument for the fancy lightsaber, too, because I was like, you need to understand this. You cannot play with that one. Like you cannot go into the basement with your friends like the the cheaper ones that you have and smack them into each other. Right. If you break this $500 lightsaber, I will be angry and you will not be getting another one.

Right. You guys remember when I remember when I when we were kids, you know, famously, they had that desperate run to try to create anything, any Star Wars toy because no one expected the movie to do well. Yeah. Do you guys remember inflatable lightsabers?

I do. And they actually still make them. Really? Yes. They make like blow up like just like a like a beach ball material blow up. Yeah, exactly. They don't they don't glow or anything, but they're great. Like we have three of them. And, you know, sometimes when his friends come over, I'm just like, use those instead because you guys are going to put an eye out with even with the cheap plastic ones.

You put an eye out. The thing I remember is. I want a Daisy. I can't remember the name of the gun. Right. Yeah. Red Rider. Red Rider. Red Rider. The one I remember was actually an inflatable glowing part attached to a flashlight.

Oh, I do remember that, too. Yeah. Yeah. I think I had one of those. I'm pretty sure. Yellow, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But then there were knockoffs that had like a plastic tube. They had like little plastic colored chips that you could put on top of the flashlight to change the color of your lightsaber.

Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a long way. Yeah. It is a it is a balance and it's a struggle right now, especially since, you know, it you also want to we were trying to teach him this is your money. You can spend it on what you want, but I want you to make smart, informed decisions on what you not not just impulse.

It's like there's this famous study about kids, the marshmallow study. Are you familiar? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So my son would fail in case you didn't know, Jason, if you didn't know the marshmallow study. I know the study.

It's been debunked a million times, but I do know the study. Well, it's been debunked a million times until you become a parent and then you realize it's it is absolutely 100 percent true. So, yeah, it is, you know, it's whatever is in front of his face right now is the thing he wants the most.

First, it was the five hundred dollar lightsaber. Then as soon as we went to the Lego store, it was the thousand dollar Death Star. And then as soon as we went to the next Disney store, it was whatever most expensive thing in there was. So, yeah. Well, both of my boys who are both much older than your son, my oldest is twenty seven and my youngest is nineteen.

They've done the lightsaber experience thing. Oh, God, he wants to do that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And the oldest, he has his own money. So, you know, that was his money to blow if, you know, he's he's an adult. So whatever he wants to do.

But last time we were down there with my youngest, the way that my wife and I justified spoiling him was to offer him matching funds. Yes. Or something terribly expensive like that. So at least he had some skin in the game.

So anyway, you know, it's probably just like I said, just justifying for ourselves to make ourselves feel better. But yeah, we do a lot of that as parents as well. A lot of it's justifying the fact that yes, to your point, like we can spoil it. And so we often do because it feels good.

And it's, you know, I know my wife is definitely kind of somewhat reliving. I had a pretty idyllic childhood growing up by Disneyland, as you'd imagine. I mean, we were not rich by any means, but I did not want or lack for anything, even though it felt like it all the time.

My wife a little bit. My wife came from slightly more immigrant Chinese parents. So I know to some degree she's trying to give Lucas the childhood that she did not have herself. Right. So there's a lot of that happening as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I get it.

Yeah. That's good times. Yeah. I know we're, we're, we're trying to, to keep an eye on our time this week. So I want to jump to something in our rundown here that has really been interesting for me this past week. On Facebook marketplace, I bought a new piano.

I bought a digital piano, a broken digital piano. It's a Kurzweil digital piano. It's older. It's probably 15 years old. It does not work. I paid very little money for it, but, uh, I thought, you know, I like to have projects, right?

Oh, here we go. Here we go. Right. Yeah. If only there were a radio shack around so you could get the parts. Okay. Stay with me here, my friends. Stay with me. So I thought I could, uh, come at this and perhaps get it working.

Right. Yeah. Uh, so sure, I have, sure enough, I get it. It's in good shape. Bring it back, bring it to the office, plug it in. Very little happens. There are nothing lights up. See a little bit of activity on the LCD screen, start taking it apart. Uh, and it struck me.

I said, hold on. What if I ask my new best friend, chat GPT about this? Could it help me fix this? So I said, Hey, chat GPT, but my wife and I, by the way, have come to refer to chat GPT as our friend Chet.

So whenever we're talking about something, we were like, well, why don't you ask Chet? Or I asked Chet, uh, Chet said this. So anyway, I asked Chet, uh, I said, this is the model number I have. These are the symptoms, uh, it's displaying. Is there anything you can do to help? And it replied and it said, oh yes, absolutely.

I've fixed many of these. I'm like, okay, with what hands, but all right, fine. Uh, and it says, uh, okay, I'm going to look up, uh, see if I can find a service manual. Uh, nope, wasn't able to find a service manual, but, uh, I found service manuals for some of the products that are similar to that one.

And that should get us going. Uh, it says, do you have an oscilloscope or a multimeter? Like what tools do you have available? And I said, I do not have an oscilloscope, but I do have a multimeter. Is it great that we can work with that? Um, it says to me, and this is the part that blew my mind.

It says, can you upload a photograph of the power supply board, both front and back so I can reverse engineer it? Okay. Okay. I said, okay. So I did that and uploaded it and it said, ah, okay, terrific.

I see what's going on here. And it basically told me, you know, how this thing works says, all right, based on what we're seeing here, uh, I've narrowed it down to these three, uh, potential most likely problems. So here's what I want you to do. Uh, over on this part of the board, there's a bridge rectifier.

I want you to take your meter and I want you to measure what's on these two pins and tell me what you see. Like, okay, I measure it like a six volts AC. Ah, okay. It should be getting 12 volts AC. That tells us a lot. And we go through this process of elimination where it's asking me to take measurements around the board.

It's telling me what it thinks might be the problem. It's narrowing things down. It's ruling things out. It's giving me, uh, lists of the potential of each thing being the, the actual problem. Uh, and then at the end, uh, after, I don't know, a couple of days of just kind of playing with this in my free time, uh, it gives me a parts list.

It's like, okay, here's what I want you to buy. Uh, these are probably the things that are going to fix this. Uh, so I have a bridge rectifier and a couple of capacitors on their way from Amazon. Uh, did it ask you to buy a banana to stick in your ear too? Just because, you know, it does hallucinate every now and again.

Yes. Yes. Well, so the thing is, I can't wait for Chet to say game over, dude. Yeah. Thanks for letting me out, Dave. Right. Yeah. Or, or you picture me slumped over the keyboard, having been electrocuted, you know, uh, one down.

Right. But, uh, so it's not fixed yet, but I was really kind of blown away at the part where it asked me to upload photos of the printed circuit board. Right. So it could reverse engineer them.

And it seemed to know what it was doing. Like it was figured out how this thing works. So, oh, another thing, at one point it asked me to, uh, take closeup photos of some of the components so it could, so it knew what they were. It was like, oh, okay, that's a, you know, that's a five volt, uh, voltage regulator and that's a 12 volt voltage regulator.

Do me a favor to, uh, you know, check the pins on, on that and see what it's reading. It's like, oh, okay, we shouldn't be doing that. Like, it's just, it's as if I have a mentor sitting over my shoulder helping walk me through this that could be wrong. Statistically is wrong.

12% of the time. Yeah. But, uh, you know, I have very little to lose. Uh, I've gotten my money's worth already, even if this doesn't end up working. Uh, but again, I was just really pleasantly surprised and a little blown away at the degree to which chat GPT engaged and was actually able to do it.

So in a meaningful way, part thing you didn't use, uh, grok would have asked you to upload completely different pictures. Right, right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. I mean, that's, that's interesting. I mean, that does sound like a fun project.

And certainly I'm always hesitant because of the hallucinations and how often these things can be wrong, but it's certainly a more engaging and interesting process than trying to say, you know, drag, find out, find a manual from somewhere like some Kurzweil archives, like going into the way back machine and Kurzweil site.

Uh, cause this is what we would have had to do, you know, 20 years ago, 15 years ago. And, uh, and, uh, and trying to go from there and, and not really knowing still like, okay, I've got a schematic now. What? Like, and for someone like me who had, I would say I have an above average knowledge base of basic electronics and I'm pretty fearless when it comes to things like soldering and, you know, all those sorts of things.

But I can only go so far looking at a circuit board or, uh, uh, you know, a diagram or anything like that. So, uh, and the other thing I was talking to one of my, uh, coworkers about this and, and she said, well, this strikes me as being exactly the kind of thing that chat GPT should be good at because it's very methodical.

It's very, it's data driven, you know? Yeah. And it is, it is, you know, it's electronics. It is literally like, you know, follow the lead. Where's the power? What's it? Right. And there's tons of information about this kind of troubleshooting online. Yes. So.

All right. Well, I look forward to updates 10 years from now when you, when you hit that key the first time and it plays something. Yeah. Stay tuned. We'll see. I don't know. It could all be for naught, but if nothing else, I'm having fun and, uh, you know, buying parts and soldering and desoldering and.

Yeah. It's cheaper than a movie and you only killed like, you know, a couple of wetlands in the process. So it's all good. Yeah. There's somewhere else. So. Yeah. Yeah. Not, not, not my, not my wetland. Yeah. Right. That is very cool.

I've been trying to get into, uh, learning basic electronics. So if you have any, any, uh, any tips on where to start would be a, I would be appreciative. Anybody that's listening to, I don't, I want to start with, you know, physical style. I want to get like a kit. That's like a basic electronics.

So, oh, there's so many of those. I'm looking into one for my kid right now too. Oh, well then send it to me when you find it because I'm at your kid's level. Get yourself, get yourself a classic Radio Shack 150 in one kit or 201 kit. Uh, that's how I learned basic electronics when I was a teenager.

You can still find them. I saw one recently on marketplace near me. They're on eBay. They may still even be making them, but I had one when I was a kid and I just never got into it. That's, but now I'm, now I'm excited to, yeah, yeah, but they're step-by-step, you know, they start off with just a basic circuit.

And then by the end, you know, you're using little integrated circuits and making little radios and all kinds of complex things. And so for me, that was a really good way to learn basic electronics and what all the different things do. The other fun thing about it is it encourages experimentation.

Like, you know, oh, I'm using this, uh, rating capacitor. What if I used a bigger one or a smaller one? How will that affect how things work or don't? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There is actually, I don't know if they would do this anymore. There was actually a circuit in the 150 in one kit that was a voltage amplifier.

And the way you tested it was you held onto these two leads and it was, cause it was, it was charging up capacitors and then using a relay to discharge them. So you would, uh, hold onto these two leads and you'd be like, yeah, I guarantee you they're not manufacturing that anymore.

Well, the first thing I did was up to the voltage, increase of the capacitors, called my little brother in the room and said, Hey Chris, hold onto these. It's that Simpsons episode where they all shock each other. So if you can find a vintage one, hopefully that circuit's still in there.

Uh, all right. Well, thank you very much. I'm going to go, I'm going to go on the hunt. Excellent. All right. All right. So until we find you in the hall again next time, Dave. That's right. That's right. All right. I'm going to go spend all my money. Bye. Over at Patreon, we've got some new subscribers, Ms. BGK18 and Donovan.

Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you guys very, very much. Thank you. We'd also like to thank Mish, Jacobo, Bart, Harlow, M, Greenow, Steve, Kevin, Jeremy, and Luigi. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we got a donation from online computers. Unfortunately, not all of them.

Yeah, that just sounds like a company from the eighties. We are online computers here to sell you a computer that is online. It absolutely does. I know we've had that donation from this, this account before. So I am very curious. Online computers, uh, computer, uh, doing my Scotty computer.

If you're out there, uh, let us know what you are. I'm curious. Yes. Yeah. And over at the tip jar, we've got Jeffrey, Theodore, John, and Sarah. Thank you all very much. And we got some merch from Bet B from Bridgeport. Now, I want to make a note on the merch here. She's not the only one that got some new merch.

Oh, look at you. Look at you. Yeah. Wearing your, wearing your merch. Ah, mine's in the laundry because I wear it every day. But I want to make a note on the merch. We, uh, we have a support ticket that is outstanding that we're going to get to this week. Um, when you buy a shirt from the store, these are print on demand shirts.

So it is made specifically for you. So please check your sizing and your address and everything before you hit buy. We appreciate your, your attention to this matter. So, um, thank you for your attention to this matter. If I hear that, I fucking want to just shoot myself in the face.

Sorry. I had to trump it up there. Um, but we will, we'll get that taken care of, uh, this week. And, uh, also, uh, if you want to help support the show, go buy some merch at shop.gig.show. Just make sure you select your size and check it. Look how cool this shirt is.

It's very cool. It's very, very cool. I already got some compliments on it, wearing it out yesterday. Oh, sweet. Don't have to pick me one up because, you know, because I got to. It's part of the job. Logo on the back, man. All right. Um, and, and we have some custom merch that's coming too.

So we're going to have some new hoodies with some, uh, some stuff coming up. Uh, it's just been a really rough week says Brian has felt the weather here. It has been, uh, it's been insane. You don't want to do anything, man. After, after like 10 a.m., you just want to sit and not move. My office is in this garage, which gets to be about 90 degrees, even with the air conditioner running.

So yeah, my time to work is very limited, very limited. Um, hopefully it'll break soon, but anyway, to help keep this show on the air, please feel free to go to patreon.com slash G O G and you can sign up there for as little as $3 a month or as much as you want. And if you sign up for the whole year, you get, uh, you get a discount.

I don't know why they just do that, but you can, um, and you get the show early ad free and in high definition. You can also sign up at YouTube. We do have a new YouTuber, but I forgot your name because I forgot to go get it because it's early in the morning because Brian's in California and he got me an ass out of bed.

So next week we will, we will give you a shout out on the show. I promise. So, uh, you can sign up at YouTube, become a member, get the show a little early there as well. And, uh, you can give us money at Patreon or at, uh, PayPal tip jar. Just go to G O G dot show slash donate.

Like I said, it's early and I really flubbed this part of the read, but it's what keeps the show on the air. Your support keeps our show on the air. So we appreciate it. Really. We do. We really, we do. And next week I'm going to spend it on coffee because Brian's going to be in California for a couple more weeks and I'm gonna have to crash, drag my ass out of bed again.

So yay. Yay. You can do it. Got some sad news. Dave Kendall, creator and former host of MTV's 120 minutes has died. The British born Kendall conceived 120 minutes after joining MTV as a producer, pitching the network, a dedicated program for the punk, post-punk, goth, synth, pump, synth, pop, ska, and other underground sounds largely ignored by corporate rock radio.

Uh, I lived and breathed 120 minutes. It debuted on March 10th, 1986 and Kendall later served its host from 1989 through 1992. In the years following his departure from MTV, Kendall continued working as a television host and producer while frequently performing as a DJ.

He later hosted a show on Sirius XM's first wave, which I also listened to and served as a correspondent for the Bangkok post in Thailand, where he lived during the latter parts of his life. Now, having watched White Lotus, I do get a little concerned when I see older white people moving to Thailand, but I'm sure Dave was a standup guy because 120 minutes was bee's knees.

Yeah. I can't find anywhere how old he was though. I can't either or cause of death, but this was just announced yesterday. So I'm sure we'll hear something. Maybe. Who knows? Whatever. Uh, and, uh, and kind of somewhat even bigger news from my childhood, Sam Neill, the Jurassic Park star has died at age 78.

He was best known for his role in 1993's Jurassic Park as Alan Grant, the film's hero. He also had starring roles in The Hunt for Red October. I know a personal favorite of yours, Jason, and The Piano, and also appeared in TV shows like The Tudors and Peaky Blinders. In a statement shared on Instagram on Monday, July 13th, the actress family said that his death was sudden and unexpected.

So, sad news. Yeah, this, this one hit me hard. I, I love Sam Neill. And don't forget, he was the Antichrist in The Omen 2 and 3. That's true. Or The Omen. I don't know if he made it to 3. I can't remember. It's been a long time. I don't know. I think 3 was kind of a money grab crap from what I recall.

Yeah, it was, it was, it was, it's hard to remember, hard to remember. But The Omen, he was, he was, he was the, the president of the United States as, as the, the Antichrist in The Omen. But also, uh, if you've never seen the movie The Dish, which is a delightful movie, uh, from, uh, New Zealand.

And he starred in that. And it was, it's one of the greatest movies you have, you've never heard of. It's about, it's about, uh, the satellite dish down there that really helped like a space mission because they were trying to track this thing around the, the earth and the moon. And I think I saw this. It was a great movie.

I'm pretty sure I saw this when it came out. It is, it is ringing a bell, but I look at like the, the artwork, no clue. Yeah, it was, I mean, it was about the Apollo moon landing and it's, it's really cool. I, I highly recommend it. If you can find it, I highly recommend it.

Cool. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 755. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Cost a few bucks our way at GOG.show slash donate. Every penny keeps the show on the air.

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