760: Level 5 Podcasting Accident
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Summary
In episode 760 of Grumpy Old Geeks, the hosts discuss technology news involving AI, legal disputes, data centers, vehicles, and online platforms. They also talk about television, books, electronics projects, retro games, and reported deaths of two performers.
- Jason DeFillippo explains that website feedback had been stored without being emailed to the hosts.
- The hosts discuss an Alabama investigation into OpenAI after an AI agent accessed Hugging Face, along with legal actions involving Uber, TikTok, Meta, Twitch, and Amazon.
- They cover proposed changes to air pollution permitting, alleged AI server exports to China, and vehicle door release recalls in China.
- They discuss LinkedIn’s AI content reporting tool, noise from a Waymo charging site, and Apple’s decision to abandon a planned change to Hide My Email addresses.
- The hosts review television episodes and discuss several books.
- Dave Bittner joins a conversation about learning circuits, an Arduino starter kit, soldering, and maker projects.
- The speakers consider a Bluetooth beacon that could remind people to silence their phones in quiet places.
- They discuss children’s books, foam dart guns, a site tracking AI stories on Hacker News, and a remastered version of Full Throttle before reacting to reported deaths of Dolly Parton and Tim Curry.
Key moments
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Show updates and website feedback
The hosts discuss website feedback that had not reached them by email, their video intro, and new merchandise.
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AI investigations and legal disputes
The hosts discuss the OpenAI investigation and legal actions involving Uber, TikTok, Meta, Twitch, and Amazon.
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Infrastructure and technology news
The discussion covers data center permitting, alleged AI server exports, vehicle recalls, LinkedIn, Waymo, and Apple.
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Television, books, and electronics
The hosts discuss television and books before Dave Bittner joins them to talk about learning circuits.
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Learning circuits and maker projects
The speakers discuss electronics lessons, an Arduino starter kit, soldering, and maker projects.
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Phone reminders for quiet places
A phone ringing during a memorial service prompts a discussion of automatic reminders to silence phones.
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Books and foam dart guns
A speaker describes his son's birthday gifts and recalls foam darts clogging a washing machine.
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Web finds, games, and remembrances
The speakers discuss a Hacker News statistics site and Full Throttle, then react to reported deaths of Dolly Parton and Tim Curry.
Full transcript
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Saturday, September 26th. Two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meat Cleaver Colon.
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BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. We seem to have had a level 5 podcasting accident. 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.
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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, I have a little note about the website feedback form. I feel really bad. We've been getting a ton of feedback, but it hasn't been getting emailed to us. It's been getting stuck on the website. So I was in there fixing stuff the other day. I thought people just didn't like us anymore.
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But there's a ton of feedback in there. So I sincerely apologize to everybody. We're probably going to declare feedback bankruptcy, though, because there's a lot and it's out of date. But starting next week, I sincerely apologize. The website changed a bunch of shit on us. So I've been in there trying to fix it and make it better.
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But, you know, that's what happens when you use another service and they kind of decide to change things on you. We built our podcast in someone's backyard, Jason. We did. We did. And I believe they've been vibe coding their way out of this shit. So, yeah. Oh, and by the way, did you not enjoy the incredible production value of our intro?
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And if you're just listening to our podcast, you will have to go to YouTube to see it. Yes, you will. Yes, you will. It's amazing. It's amazing. Brian, you did a you did a bang up job on that. Sometimes AI isn't horrible, but most of the time it is, which we'll be talking about. Oh, yes, yes, yes. So I do want to also talk about we've got two new shirts.
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We have a you are here shirt, which just describes where you are at in the current dystopia selling like hotcakes. We've already sold two. Count of two of them. It's a bestseller for us. It is a bestseller for us. And we only need to sell three more to actually pay for the shop this this month.
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Yeah, yes. And and we have the new Elon kills baby shirt, which I will show you right now on the YouTube. There we go. It is a beautiful thing. It is a beautiful thing is my favorite shirt that I have made this week. It's the it's the first shirt we've really made that opens us up to litigation.
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No, it doesn't, Brian, because this is this T-shirt is factually correct because I went to Gronk yesterday and I said, give me the names of the babies that have died thanks to Elon Musk and Doe. So I have Nyoga, Nyoga, Nyoga, Ibrahim Karouma, Mohammed Omar, Nada, Omer, Omran, Mohammed Hasim.
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And, you know, there are many, many more. But these are actual names of people who have died, not children, babies, some of them one year old, some of them less. Thanks to the bullshittery that Elon perpetrated on our country with the the USA shutdown and those fucking those by the way, not not just perpetrated on our country, perpetrated on the world.
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And, you know, you don't really hear these names coming out of Elon's mouth because, you know, because none of them are like Joshua or Phil. I found a Jane, but, you know, that's about as close as it gets. But, yeah, you know, these people happen to be, yeah, brown and he doesn't like brown people or at this point, I don't think he likes any people because he's a fucking loser.
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Yeah. But, man, get the shirt. I'm going to be wearing this to Whole Foods today, and I think it's going to go over like a lead balloon, and I'm going to enjoy every second of it. By the way, my list of the tech CEOs and leaders with the R-Evil shirt, that I've worn around.
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I get compliments everywhere I go with that shirt. Everywhere. I'm going to have to get one. I'm going to have to pick me one up. It's a little more subtle than your Elon one, admittedly. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing subtle about this shirt, period. No, it's not supposed to be. No, there's not. Yes. No. It is.
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It's in your face. You have taken a stand when you wear this shirt. Oh, man. I want to talk about the AI hack from OpenAI and the hugging face thing that we talked about last week and maybe the week before. It's been making the rounds down. You're hearing more about what happened on it, and it's starting to piss me off even more because I'm like, you know, if a person did this hack,
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if my program hacked into another company and tried to exfiltrate data, just even hacking into another person's company, we have this thing called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which makes it a felony for you or me, Brian, to hack into somebody else's computer. Just ask Kevin Mitnick.
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Yes. Well, you can't. He's dead, unfortunately. Elon! I was doing my research on it, figuring out why they couldn't be charged with this. And there is some nuance in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act where it comes down to intent. So there is some intent. So if you do just happen to fuck up and hack everybody, well, guess you're okay.
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So, but I mean, this story just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. These guys left this thing unsupervised for days. And as we know, you know, LLMs don't give you the right answer every time. So if you have something on a loop that just goes, give me an answer, work on that answer.
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Give me an answer, work on that answer. And LLMs have no memory. So every time you're prompting it, you're getting the results back from the last call and then plugging it back in. So it doesn't take much to take this thing and skew it to where it just goes out to left fucking field and does what it wants. So they just let it go without anybody going, okay, okay, okay, okay.
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No, not okay. Don't do it. No, not okay. So it's maddening that this is like, they're trying to say that this thing has intelligence and it is broken free and it doesn't. No, it's just a random fucking roll of the dice what it's going to do from input to input to input, you know?
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Well, Alabama has said, I've had enough. Hold my mic's hard lemonade. Hold my moonshine. Yeah. Hold my front teeth. Sorry. That's West Virginia. Alabama's attorney general has opened an investigation into OpenAI after one of its AI agents hacked a technology company hugging face, which we just talked about.
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Alabama is part of a multi-state coalition demanding greater transparency and asking OpenAI to halt similar testing until it can demonstrate adequate safeguards. Like somebody going, okay, okay, not okay. The investigation will examine whether OpenAI violated Alabama consumer protection laws or created an ongoing risk to residents.
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Good for you, Alabama. It's out of left field. I'm just saying. I didn't know Alabama was leading the charge for AI regulation, but hats off to you. Hats off to you. Since we're getting into the law, we're going to be talking about the law today quite a bit. Google is expanding Gemini Enterprise with a new version aimed specifically at lawyers and law firms as the legal sector becomes a major battleground for enterprise AI.
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Gemini Enterprise for legal integrates with existing legal software and data platforms and includes specialized AI agents designed to handle legal and administrative tasks while keeping client data secure and confidential. So with all this legal horsepower that we've got going on, maybe, maybe with the LLMs and the harnesses that are just going willy-nilly, maybe we can have one little check that says, is this a felony or not?
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And if it is, don't do it. How about that? Build that into your next version of the AIs. Can you? If you've got all of this legal horsepower, Brian, come on. You'd think. Is it that hard? You'd think. I mean, you know, they're in separate silos, man. That's what they're going to say.
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Different markdown files. You have a markdown file. Different markdown files. Yeah. You have your goals markdown file and you have your should we do it or not markdown file. And never the twain shall meet. Yep. Yeah, well, when I was like you just alluded to it, but as I was getting stories together for this week's show, I just I just started.
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OK, lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit. So here we go. This is we're entering lawsuit corner with the show right now. Uber has allegedly violated the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. Again, this time to the tune of 824.9 million euros or a 966 million dollar fine.
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The Autotrijd Personaskegevens, or the Dutch Data Protections Authority, hit Uber with a massive fine accusing the company of automatically deactivating driver accounts between 2018 and 2022 without any human intervention. According to the Dutch regulatory agency, Uber has deprived its drivers of income through fully automated decisions, violating the GDPR in the process.
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The investigation was launched after 171 French drivers reported these decisions to a local human rights organization, which eventually led to the AP taking over the case. Since Europe, Ubers, Ubers, Ubers, Ubers, Ubers European headquarters are located in the Netherlands.
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From one moment to the next, they no longer had any income through Uber. Monique Verdier, deputy chair of the AP, said of the drivers who initiated the complaint. A computer should not make decisions on its own that have major consequences for you. Yes. Good luck. Good luck. The AP has previously fined Uber three times, including once in 2018 for 600,000 euros or $701,000.
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And again, in 2023 for 10 million euros or $11.6 million. Uber's previous record high fine came in 2024 when the AP issued a 290 million euro or around 339 million penalty for improperly transferring personal data of European drivers to the U.S.
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Those things are starting to add up. Especially for Uber, because last I checked, they're still in the red. Yeah, I think they had one profitable year. One profitable quarter, Brian. And it was a quarter, remember? And it was all due to accounting shenanigans.
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Accounting shenanigans. We love the shenanigans. All right. They have shenaned before and they will shenanigan. Oh, good shirt. TikTok and ByteDance have reached an agreement with the Department of Justice to settle a lawsuit that claims the app broke children's privacy laws. The settlement is one of the largest recoveries ever obtained for a case related to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, the DOG said in a statement.
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This settlement dates back to a 2024 lawsuit bought by then-president Joe Biden's Justice Department. DOJ alleged that the company had violated the terms in an earlier FTC settlement related to its acquisition of Musical.ly. It further accused the app of violating COPPA by allowing kids under 13 to create TikTok accounts and wrongfully collecting data about children who used it in kids mode.
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The company also frequently failed to comply with requests from parents to delete their children's data or even sets of visibility to zero. They just did nothing. So nothing. Nada. Another lawsuit. Yes. Well, Brian, I got the granddaddy of them all. This one's just hot in off the presses.
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Meta has agreed to pay up to $16.68 billion. We got it this time! Billion dollars. That is a little more than coffee money right there. That is a fuckload of coffee. Yeah, it ain't the trillions we were looking for, but you know what?
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That'll hurt. That'll hurt. That will slow down. That will slow down Zuck's AI shit for about 27 minutes. I think we're going to start on that one. Well, again, the thing to keep in mind about this particular case is there are about 20,000 other exactly similar cases coming down the pipe.
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So this sets the precedent. They're going to get slapped left, right, and center. Yep. And this will overhaul youth protections on Facebook and Instagram, settling claims from 29 U.S. states and avoiding a closely watched federal trial in California. So the company will introduce daily usage limits for teenage users, block access at night, and strengthen controls designed to keep children away from age-restricted content.
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States had accused Meta of deliberately creating addictive products, misleading families about safety, and collecting children's data without parental consent, including for training, machine learning, and generative AI systems. And of course, Meta denies wrongdoing to the tune of $1.668 billion.
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We did nothing wrong. Here is almost $17 billion just because we did nothing wrong. The agreement also resolves separate Cambridge Analytica privacy lawsuits brought by California, Illinois, New Mexico, and Washington, D.C., which will receive $459.3 million, which just seems like, you know, a drop in the bucket after that, the big mama.
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Well, Meta still faces thousands of other cases, thousands of other cases, alleging that social platforms contributed to a nationwide youth mental health crisis. I would just take out youth. I would just say a mental health crisis. Agreed. Similar litigation continues against Snap, YouTube, TikTok, and their parent companies.
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So, yes, this is good news. This is very good news. For once. Great news. Knock your little fucking dick in the dirt, Zuckerberg. Well, one more lawsuit really quickly. A streamer has taken a stand against Twitch and Amazon using his content to train AI models.
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Warren Pandesia, a streamer based in Connecticut, filed a class action lawsuit earlier this week as first reported by Courthouse News. The complaint accuses Twitch and Amazon of not obtaining licensing or permission before using his Twitch streams and videos as a data set necessary to fuel Amazon's AI products.
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Earlier this month, Twitch support posted on X that it added an option to opt out of having your channel content used to train generative AI content models. Shortly after, Twitch hosted an episode of its recurring patch note stream where Mike Minton, the company's chief product officer, said, and I love this, if it was opt-in, nobody would opt-in, when asked by a viewer why the Twitch settings for AI training aren't opt-in, but instead enabled by default.
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No shit, because we don't want to do this. He said the quiet part out loud. He absolutely did. He did not get the memo from the head office. What a dumb shit. What a dumb shit. Yeah. Now, the latest class action lawsuit claims that Twitch and Amazon committed a breach of contract when the companies decided to use its streamers as a free training stock for separate commercial AI products.
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The complaint also accuses the two companies of benefiting from their streamers who lost money or property as a result of defendants' unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent practices. And Amazon isn't the only company that's been hit with a lawsuit for allegedly using content creators for AI training. Earlier this year, three YouTubers filed a class action lawsuit against Apple, accusing the company of scraping copyrighted content to train its AI models.
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So, yes, opt-in. All right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Love it. No, this has been a good weekend in the law here on Grumpy Old Geeks. It has been. It has been. This episode is brought to you by Weight Loss by HIMS.
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Well, let's get to some shitty news, Brian. Okay. The EPA is considering a change to the 1970 Clean Air Act that would remove the 30-day public comment period for new, quote, minor sources of industrial pollution. I would like to say that there are no such thing as, quote, minor sources when you couple that with industrial pollution.
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Yes, the industrial implies at scale. Uh-huh. It sure does. The proposal could make it easier to build AI data centers and other facilities that fall below major emissions thresholds, while reducing opportunities, and here's the fun part, for communities to review or challenge projects before construction begins.
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There it is, right there in the fine print. Critics say the timing is significant as data centers are expanding rapidly and drawing concern over electricity use, water consumption, air pollution, and local environmental impacts. Supporters frame the change as streamlining permitting.
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Fuck you. Opponents argue it would prioritize faster development and less public scrutiny over transparency and accountability. Yes, which is what we fucking want. I'm going to tell you, Brian, this is going to come down to guerrilla tactics, and people are going to start just basically going out and ripping these places up at night.
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I'm telling you. We've got to flock these things. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Jesus Christ. Did you hear about the new flock case where the cop basically 3D printed on his own time some fake flock cameras and put them up around town, and they had a sting operation to see who would come out and knock it down?
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Don't we call that entrapment? Well, you know, that's... No, I guess not. It's a fine line right now, but they're charging him with a crime that is not commensurate with the actual damage that he did. They're saying, well, this was... It's like you actually cut down a flock camera, so it's the value of the flock camera, even though it was basically something the guy printed on his own time for free and said there was no value to it, and they're calling it art.
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But the new 404 podcast talks about it, and it's phenomenal. It is phenomenal. These guys are just getting... They're getting to get raked over the coals for this one, but yeah, it's very funny. But yes, anyway, let's flock this shit out of these data centers. Agreed.
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Although the U.S. has relaxed its restrictions on NVIDIA AI chip exports to China, illegal exports apparently are still taking place. Prosecutors in Taiwan just indicted nine individuals, including NVIDIA and Supermicro employees, for illegally bringing AI servers into China. The defendants colluded with one another at various levels for enormous profit, illegally exporting high-end servers, increasing corporate compliance costs, and severely damaging our nation's international image, prosecutors from the northern city of Keilung said in a statement.
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They did this, the team added, despite being fully aware of NVIDIA and Supermicro's rigorous export control procedures. Although NVIDIA is an American company, most of its chips are manufactured by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world's largest chipmaker by far. The latest Blackwell AI chips are manufactured in Phoenix, Arizona, but are still shipped to Taiwan for advanced packaging prior to final assembly.
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Taiwan is ultra-strict about exports of newer technology, lest it displeas U.S. regulators. Well, what U.S. regulators? What U.S. regulators? And in particular, the Trump administration. Despite Taiwan's clampdown. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Bad actors have found ways to get such chips into China.
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In one instance, $1 billion worth of server racks may have been shipped through Southeast Asian countries like Thailand or Malaysia to circumvent U.S. export controls. In another case, the U.S. charged three people, allegedly exporting $3.5 billion worth of AI servers to China, again, by routing them through third-party countries.
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See, all they had to do is buy the requisite amount of Trump coin. I'm sure that there's a lookup chart that they can find at Trump.com to find out how much they have to pay. Okay. Exactly. Yeah. You know, it's very simple. You know, if Sam Bankman-Fried's parents would get a copy of that, he'd be out of jail by now.
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That's true. They just, you know, they're just waiting. Well, some more China news here. China is recalling nearly 3 million Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles over concerns that emergency door releases are difficult to identify, especially after a crash or low-voltage failure.
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Regulators. That's where all of our regulators have gone, Brian. They've moved to China. That's right. Regulators say the handles can delay occupants escaping or rescuers getting in. Now, we've covered this many times. There's a giant list of people who have died because of these stupid fucking doors.
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But China is the one that's making the move. So Tesla must add warning labels and deploy an over-the-air update designed to lower windows after an accident. China is also recalling nearly 400,000 Xiaomi SU-7 electric vehicles for similar risks. So it's not just Tesla.
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It's they're doing themselves, too. New Chinese rules taking effect next year will require mechanically operable door handles from both sides, likely forcing design changes. The U.S. is considering comparable standards, but final requirements may not arrive before 2030. It just reminds me of the recall scene in Fight Club, you know, where he's telling the woman on the plane the math about doing a recall.
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It's just like that. It's just like that. If you haven't seen Fight Club again recently, go watch it. It is awesome and it has legs. It certainly does. Well, LinkedIn recently began testing a dedicated reporting tool for AI Slop. After only a few weeks, the company says it's already improving the quality of the posts people see in their feeds.
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How can you fucking tell? Sorry. Yeah, it's horrible. LinkedIn sucks. It sucks so bad. It's like just reading people blowing their own smoke up their own asses constantly. Who cares if it's AI or not?
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Anyways, this seems like AI Slop button has been used more than a million times since its launch, probably because every single post seems like it's AI Slop. LinkedIn's chief product officer, Harry Shrevenson, shared in an update. Members are now experiencing 40% less views on what we classify as AI Slop from just a few weeks ago, he wrote.
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The company has so far been cagey in sharing exactly how it's determining what is AI Slop and what it isn't. But they say they use many signals to determine the reach of a post and that it's built safeguards to help prevent individual feedback from being used to unfairly target other members.
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The ironic thing about this, of course, is LinkedIn actually pushed AI Slop for quite a long time, including a button that said, would you like to use AI to help make your post better? I know. Better was in quotes. Yes. Or, sorry, enhance your post and messages.
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But they removed the feature when they rolled out the AI Slop reporting tool, which makes sense. I mean, LinkedIn, I go there every now and again just to post some stuff to see if anybody bites on it. You know, I've got a couple people that I used to work with that have gotten in touch recently, which is really nice.
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It was really nice to catch up with them. And everybody, of course, has the available for work thing on there. Because everybody's available for work. Everybody's fucking available for work. So I was like, ah, God. But yeah, the long form posts that, you know, the douche nozzles that think that they're still businessmen posts, it's just out of control.
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It's out of control. It's such a wasteland. Yeah. You wonder why you're available for work when you post that shit. Come on. Here's another knock in the nuts. Austin park goers say the hum along Lady Bird Lake isn't cicadas. It's a temporary charging site serving Waymo's electric vehicles.
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The facility on the former Austin American Statesman property, besides a walking beside a walking trail, uses natural gas fired L charge generators rather than rather than a connection to the electric grid. God. Videos and complaints describe the equipment is loud enough to disrupt the park, raising questions about the impact of quiet electric transportation.
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Uber, which offers Waymo rides in Austin, says the generators are a temporary solution, while a permanent grid connected charging site is being built. The company says custom sound barriers have been installed around each unit, and a city inspector measured the generator noise at 61 decibels in April, below the property's 70 decibel limit.
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Whether the barriers satisfy trail users remains unclear, but the dispute highlights a broader infrastructure challenge. Rapidly expanding robo taxi fleets still need reliable charging power. But it does blow a hole in the electric vehicles will save the world plan, Brian, doesn't it? Well, we're using gas generators to charge the electric vehicles.
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Electric cars. Yeah. What the flying fuck? What the actual... Oh, fuck. I hate this world. I hate this timeline. I know, it's so fucking bad. I hate this timeline. Oh, God. I mean, sometimes people are like, why the fuck are you so angry all the time?
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And I'm just like, look, read something. I know, I know. Or just listen to our show and send it to your friends. Yeah. It's ridiculous. It is absolutely ridiculous. Here's a little bit of good news. I don't know if you do use sign in with Apple on anything.
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I do. I do. I started to use it because it is fairly convenient. Well, Apple has reversed a planned change to its iCloud Plus Hide My Email service following user pushback. The company had announced two months ago that existing and new Hide My Email addresses would move to a different domain. But it now says that transition will not happen.
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Hide My Email lets users create unique, randomly generated addresses that forward messages to their real inbox, helping reduce spam and protect privacy when signing up for websites and services. Apple has not provided additional details about why it abandoned the domain change, but the reversal means its users can continue using their current Hide My Email addresses without migration concerns.
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And this has to do with like .icloud.com and .appleid.com. It was a switch that would have been really disruptive to probably everybody who's ever used it and set one up because, you know, every website is going to have to go back and change those email addresses that you're logging in with.
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And there's going to have to be a migration period. And it's just like, why, dude, why? Why are you doing that, Apple? You know, I don't know. I've been using the service whenever I sign up for anything new these days because I just figure, why not? It makes a lot of sense. But in terms of like reducing spam and all that sort of stuff, what I've really discovered, though, is if you've had the same email address for over 30 years, nothing makes any difference.
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I get so much spam. Yeah. No, it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. But, you know, most of my shit's in Gmail now and they do a pretty good job, I got to say. So I just I gave up and just I live by the Gmail, which I which I talked about like two episodes ago.
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Now I have to go to a tab in my browser to check my email. I don't have it set through Apple Mail or any shit like that. So nice. So nice. People say, hey, did you see my email? I go, no, no, I didn't. I'm going to check it later today when I'm sitting at my computer and I can open a tab.
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It is glorious. It's glorious. I'm 55 years old and nobody fucking cares about anything that I have to say anymore. So I don't get email besides spam. So it's like, yeah. And just bullshit. So it's great. It's great. And we weren't getting the email from the few people that do care what you have to say because our website email wasn't working.
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The few people I want to fucking hear from, we weren't even getting it. So we fixed that now. Anyways, let's talk about what inspired our wonderful high production intro this week. The latest episode of Star Trek Strange New Worlds, the Muppet episode.
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I'm already annoyed that we're basically just doing concept of the week episodes, which, again, totally fine. Star Trek has always done them. But Star Trek always did them with 26 episode seasons, not 8 to 10 episode seasons, with over half of them being gimmicks.
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And this one in particular. Real quick. I have a question real quick. You know, you talk about the through lines. Like, I remember the through lines on DS9 and Next Gen and Voyager and all those. Those were fantastic full through lines with the individual episodes. Original series.
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Was there a through line in the original series? I thought they were just all one-offs. No. Weren't they? They were pretty much all one-offs. They were like two or three parters or things like that. But they were pretty much all one-offs. Pretty much all one-offs. I'm not even talking about through lines. I'm just talking about exploring strange new worlds.
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Like, that's true. Get away from these concept episodes where you're doing noir and then you're doing a musical and then you're doing a... Anyways, the Muppet episode, I have to admit, I... The first 10 to 15 minutes, I was all over it. I was like, okay, this is actually really, really funny.
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Particularly, Carol Kane's Muppet. I'm dying. Oh, she was great. She was great. Just dying. But the joke wore so thin so fast. Yeah. For me, anyways. Like, I figured out what it was. I figured out what the conceit was, you know? Well, then, of course, yeah.
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I mean, spoiler alert, everybody. It was a fucking dream. Yeah. So, once you figure that out, then it's... And it was telegraphed pretty fucking hard. You know, it wasn't really subtle about what they were doing. But there were parts that were funny, but, yeah, it just...
-
It wore so thin so fast. It is absolutely my least favorite episode of Star Trek Strange New Worlds. Absolutely. And, you know, Star Trek has had a lot of stinkers. A lot of stinkers. Spock's brain from the original series. Anything with Wesley Crusher.
-
Lots of stinker episodes, but this was pretty bad. I don't know. I think that, actually, my least favorite was the one before this one. The noir episode. I could not stand that one. It was fine. Whatever. I just want a normal goddamn episode. Explore World!
-
Yeah. Well, we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. There's a new episode in about, you know, 25 minutes, so we'll get on that. And last night, I watched the latest episode of Ted Lasso, which, even though they say it comes out on Wednesday, it's actually 9 p.m. on Tuesdays when it comes out. Oh. Well, shit, I wish I didn't know.
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I watched it. I watched the latest episode. I did see on our Discord that you are grudgingly admitting that you're enjoying this season. God damn it. I loved last night's episode. Okay. I'm loving this. Like, it's not, of course, it's not going to catch the lightning in a bottle that season one did because of the timing, pandemic, and the newness of it, all of that.
-
Nothing is ever going to be as good as the first season of Ted Lasso was. But this is fun. I'm really enjoying it. Yeah, it is fun. It's, you know, there's not much great going on in the world right now, so the timing just might be right. Yeah. I did see that Black Mirror Season 8 is now in production, so, you know, you got to have your counterpoint, but I am, I am actually, I, I, it took me a while to get through episode one.
-
I'm just like, okay, well, I know he's going to go, so just fucking say yes, hurry up. And then once it started to get moving, I was fine with it. I'm enjoying it. So, yeah. It's no severance. It's no severance. God.
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And Silo, for me right now, is really Dragon. So Dragon. I know where they're going, but I also know that this is Dragon right now. And I know that a lot of other people are feeling the same way because I really haven't seen Hugh Howey, who wrote Silo, the original author that wrote all the books on social media, much talking about the show other than saying he loves it.
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He is out doing full-on damage control. He is posting everywhere, left, right, and center. Just wait. Just wait. The payoff is coming. Oh, wait for the last two episodes. So, yeah, everybody's kind of, I think everybody's feeling the same way. Like, okay, come on, let's go.
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Yeah, I'm like, can we get to season four already? Because this is fucking boring, you know? Reacher is back for season four, and I'm absolutely loving it. It's halfway through. A new episode out today, actually, because today's Wednesday when we record this. I am so looking forward to it. This guy, Alan Richson, is, this is his moment.
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Like, this is his moment. He's fucking everywhere. And, you know, he did the smartest thing he could do. He's like Roy Kent. He's here. He's there. He's everywhere. And he did the smartest thing ever. Like, right before the show came out, he went on a bunch of podcasts, and he bashed the shit out of Trump.
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And everybody loves him for it. So, it's awesome. It's awesome. And it's such a great show. It's just a great show. The Westies finished up their first season run on MGM+. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Highly recommend it. If you have MGM+, which nobody does.
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What the fuck is MGM+. MGM+, MGM+, is where the Vampire Lestat had its run at the beginning before it got transferred to Netflix. Right. So, I imagine the Westies will be on Netflix in about two years. So, check it out.
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But it's a great show. Go to Sweden and grab it. The whole eight episodes are out, and they're fun. I wouldn't say they're fun. It's about gangs and Irish gangs and murder and shit in New York. But for me, that's my happy place. That's fun. Yeah. It is fun. It is fun. The Simpsons Yellow Mirror drops today.
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This is an exclusive episode on Disney+, and it looks fun. I think I'm going to have to watch that today before I watch Ted Lasso, or maybe after. I have not watched an original episode of The Simpsons in at least two decades. Exactly.
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So, I'm just like, let's go. Let's go. But it looks fun, so I'll check it out. You know, it likes me some of that. But the most important thing that happened this week in the media is the Pit season three trailer dropped. Oh. Can we just... It's a great show. It's a great show. Our timeline is so fucked up right now.
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Can we just fast forward? Get our stuff up there. Pretty please? Because I can't wait for this. It is the saddest show on TV, but I love it so much. I'm so glad you got me into that. And I'm so glad I got to binge. I'm so glad I got to binge like the first two and...
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It was like one and a quarter season... One and three quarter seasons. I binged it all. And then I got to the last three that I had to wait week by week. And I'm like, I don't like it week by week. I want my sadness in one go. I like to spread my sadness like butter over fine bread. Okay. Okay.
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Well, we pay an awful lot of money for Amazon Prime. And I don't feel like I get my money's worth really out of it, except for the shipping. You know, Prime Video, fine. There's a couple of things on there that I actually watch every now and then. But of course, you're still getting ads now anyways, unless you want to pay even more.
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One of the few perks... Which I do. Five dollars. Which you do. Five dollars. And I popped on a show yesterday, like Miami Kings about these drug lords in Miami. Fucking commercial. I'm like, what the fuck? You still get a commercial. Yeah. Yeah. They don't care. But one of the perks that I was not aware of that you get automatically with Amazon Prime is a program called Amazon's First Reads, which gets you early access to editor's picks.
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And each month you get to choose one Kindle book for free with your Prime membership, which is kind of cool. Like, I mean, I've only been doing it for two months now, so there hasn't been a lot of stuff I'm particularly interested in. But they usually give you a selection of six to ten books, all kinds of different genres.
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So, it's a free download. Can't hurt. Why not? Grab a free book every week if you're already a Prime member. Yeah. Save it for a rainy day. Exactly. If you didn't know about it. And I'm sure those authors get some kind of stipend, so... One would figure. Why not? So... Why not? So, I did...
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I downloaded one of them, and just out of curiosity, I did try to start to read it. Unfortunately, didn't really care much for it. This one's called, I've Got a New Complaint, Essays on Aging Disgracefully and Other Small Disasters by Lori Notaro. I don't know who Lori Notaro is.
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I'm assuming she's some sort of comedian or writer of some sense. Well, obviously, she's a writer. She's got a book. You know, there you go. You know, the first... I read the first couple chapters, mildly amusing anecdotes, but I kind of want more than mildly amusing for a book.
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Like, if I were her friend, and we were out at lunch, and she told me some of these stories, okay. When I'm trying to read a book that's supposedly comedic, not good enough. So, kind of gave up on that one. Another book that I got halfway into before kind of abandoning, which is why I haven't really said anything at the library recently, is I did pick up The Theory of Everything Else.
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A Voyage into the World of the Weird, A Hilarious Handbook of Mind-Boggling Mysteries by Dan Schreiber. And if you recognize that name, he is one of the members of the No Such Thing as a Fish podcast, one of my favorite podcasts. He does tend to always talk about triptychs and weird things and whatnot and have the crazy outlandish theories on the podcast, which they make fun of him for.
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And this book is all of that stuff from him. And I got to say, just like the Muppet episode of Star Trek Strange New Worlds, the first couple stories were fine. And then you start going, I can't read any more of this. I'm done. I am over this.
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That was enough. Thank you very much. So, kind of abandoned that book. Picked up another book. And this one is sticking. I'm almost all the way done. So, I'll talk about it again next week when I finish it. It's Welcome to Your Life, Love, Death, and Tears for Fears, An Iconic Musician's Journey Through Grief, Addiction, and Recovery by Roland Orzabal, one of the members of Tears for Fears, one of the two.
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And it's a great read so far. I'm really enjoying it. But I will talk about it next time when I finish it. All right. I finished Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench novel by Cory Doctorow. This is a prequel to the other two Marty Hench novels. It was good. It took me a while to get through it because it did kind of drag in the middle.
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And Cory, Cory, Cory, Cory, I know that you now have a subscription to the Food Network because every time somebody in your novels cooks, you feel the need to tell us in detail how they cook the food.
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I know how to baste my steaks with rosemary and butter. I do not need it in my cybercrime, you know, novel. Please stick to your fucking lane. Every fucking time drove me fucking nuts. But, and it was read by Will fucking Wheaton because I listened to the audio book.
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It was a good book, though. It was a nice prequel to the Marty Hench novels, which I really liked the first Marty Hench novel. The second one, not so much because they kind of left it on a cliffhanger waiting for part three. But then he went and wrote a fucking prequel before part three, which kind of annoyed me. But anyway, I do. I got to say from, you know, Cory's kind of redeeming himself with his fiction work with these novels.
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So I like them better than his young adult stuff, which has been kind of, you know, well, I'm not a young adult anymore, so it doesn't really matter. Exactly. Worth a read. Worth a read if you're, if you've read the other, at least the first Martin Hench novel. Read the first one and then this is a good prequel. Then I got into This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Motar.
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Have you heard of this book? I have not. It's a novella. It got the Hugo Award winner for Best Novella and Nebula and Locus Awards for winners for Best Novella for a good reason. God damn. Yeah, you put this on your list, Brian. I will be putting this on my Libby borrowing list because I'm not going to pay $13.99 for a digital version of a novella.
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No, you don't have to do that. No, I use, this is one of my last credits that I got from Audible before I canceled. It was like a four and a half hour, yeah, a four and a half hour listen. Most books are usually in the eight to 14. I've got a 36 hour book on there somewhere. Fucking Christ.
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But no, dude, yeah, get this on Libby. It's awesome. I mean, this is, this is what sci-fi should be. And, you know, I don't know why I've been, I've been getting a lot of time travel books recommended to me lately. So this is just another one that came through the pipeline.
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And out of the, you know, the multiple time travel books that I've read recently, this is the best. This is absolutely the best. As far as just, as far as pure writing goes, you will appreciate this. This is one of the most well-written books I've read in a long fucking time.
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Great. All right. I will put it in my Libby queue. Welcome to the dark side with Dave, with the podcaster who never sleeps, Dave Bittner. Dave covers the daily cybersecurity beat on the cyber wire, bust scams with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans, untangles privacy headaches with Ben Yellen on caveat, digs into industrial security on control loop and still shows up to stir trouble on only malware in the building.
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Hi, Dave. Hello. I found the old intro. It was, it was sitting under a rock. Very nice. Very nice. My resume. Yes. Yes. Do you have any new shows? It's been a while since we've had any updates. Has anything been added to your resume?
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No. No. Anything removed? There's a downturn in the economy. I get it. I get it. Well, since you asked, I'm not doing control loop anymore. Oh. Oh, well, that'll save us, over time, that'll save us about, you know, 10 minutes. Right. Dave has now added the available for work circle on his LinkedIn page.
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On his LinkedIn, yes. Yeah. If there's anybody who wants to underwrite an industrial control systems podcast, I have a. Oh, I'm on it. I got a spare fist. Are you hanging out? It's a niche of a niche, but it's open in my schedule right now.
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So, I want to bring this episode in with some of your inspiration for me, Dave, with all of the work that you did on your keyboard, and I've been excited to get into electronics now. So, I went and found a course called Learn Circuits course on YouTube.
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It's a 10-year-old course that basically just is the basics of electricity and circuits and resistors, capacitors, volts, ohms, all that shit. Great little course. I'm loving it. And I ordered my first Arduino starter kit, the R4, which gets here this week. The funny thing is, is I think, Brian, that entire time I was living in Chicago this last time, I had that Arduino starter kit in my closet that we would joke about that I was going to get to every now and again, and I never did.
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And it didn't make the move? I'm getting to it this time. I'm getting to it this time. I have stumbled upon Maker Top or Maker Graham. My Instagram feed is all people making stuff, period. Oh, well, that's nice. That's all it is. And it is so cool. It reminds me of the early web, you know?
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Everybody's just making stuff, and everybody's giving away the source code. They're giving away the blueprints for all the 3D printing files, for everything they're making, the code to run it, all the chips, the diagrams, those ESP32 chips or whatever. Those things can do a million things, especially hacking tools.
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I got so many hacking tools I want to build now. It's crazy. I'm very excited about this. This is the first time I've been excited about tech in a long time. Well, good for you, going retro. I looked at this Learn Circuits course, and I think I'm going to make my way through it as well, because I feel as though my knowledge and understanding is very patchy, you know?
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Like, I know a lot of what, I know the basics of what a lot of things do, but actually, if you ask me to build a circuit that does something, I could, you know, I could make a light blink on and off, but like, build an amplifier, I'd be like, I don't know.
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Yeah, but, so, yeah, I think that'd be fun. I'm going to go through this as well. I saw the Arduino kit. I'm tempted. I'll let you know how it goes. You're in a shorter project right now. Well, I mean, I still have R2-D2, so that's my, that's my, but the thing is, some of the...
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There could be some crossover here. Exactly. Some of the modifications to R2-D2 involve Arduino kits, so... There you go. I don't know. We'll see. Give me an excuse to solder. Stop me before I solder again. Yeah, well, I mean, I got this kit because it doesn't require soldering at first, so that's good, because I don't know how to solder.
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I need to find a basic soldering kit now and get that. But I tell you what, all I have to do is open my Instagram, because there are a million kits that tell me, you know, nobody wants these old clippy things on your solder kit. You got to get the little things that are magnetic and don't mess up your breadboards and all this stuff. It's like, I mean, I need to start selling microphones and video equipment and all this crap that I have here so I can go buy a 3-D printer and all this other crap now.
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Oh, God. That's why you asked me what 3-D printer I had this week, didn't you? No, no, Kevin Rose was talking about his 3-D printer, and I thought you guys had the same one. Oh, no, he's probably, he has a couple extra zeros in his bank account than I have, so I'm assuming he has a much nicer 3-D printer than I do. His was like 600 bucks.
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You got the, yeah, it wasn't, he didn't get the super duper one, which surprised me, because, you know, just, he burns money by just thinking about it, so. Yeah, soldering is, is actually great fun, I think, because there's both melting and smoke involved, and, but I will say that I feel as though soldering isn't as easy as it was when I was a teenager, and I think that's mostly because they've changed the formulations of
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the solder to make it less toxic, and where's the fun in that? So, if you can't get cancer doing it, who gives a shit? Right, or exposure to lead, and all that good stuff, so I think it's, it's a little more challenging to make the solder flow as easily as it used to, but it's, I, I think you'll, you will enjoy yourself.
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I, I like, I give me an opportunity to solder something, and to me, that's a good time. I used to assist our friend of the show, MXV, because he had, you know, 20 some odd pinball machines in his basement, and he would always be working on something, so I would go down there, and like, you know, he, you'd kind of show me how, how it kind of worked, and stuff like that, so.
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Yeah. I, I really, like, missed out, because, I mean, he had all these boards everywhere, and he'd work on the boards, and now I kind of, after taking this circuits course, I kind of have more of a mental map on how pinball machines even work. Right. I think once you get the basics on how, how these things work, it's just like, oh.
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Yeah. Oh, I get, now I can see, I, it's like. I think you're right. The fucking matrix opens up, it's like, now I know how everything kind of works. Yep. It's just all about how you move electricity around. Yep. It really is. Yeah, it's so cool. It really is. It's so cool. It really is. So, yeah, I, you know, you're, you're, you're going to end up with a Radio Shack 150 in one kit.
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Just trust me on this. Oh, absolutely. It's coming. It's coming. Yeah. It's, my Jeep is broken right now, so, and this, the, the Arduino was part of a gift certificate that I got for my birthday, so I'm kind of tapped out on shit right now until, right, because I'm trapped at home during the heat wave and my car's broken.
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So, until the car's fixed, then there's no more kits coming. So, go buy Elon Kills Baby's t-shirts in mass, please. Lots of them. Jason needs toys. Yes, absolutely. I need toys. This episode is brought to you by Delete Me.
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That's www.joindeleteme.com slash GOG. 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.
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Plus, the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meat Cleaver Colon, BKFC 94, Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN.
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Well, Dave, I know how much you enjoy soldering, but I did see one of your Facebook posts this week, and I know that you were in a situation you did not enjoy, and I just want to briefly address it, the TLDR on this is you were at an event. I'm not going to go into the details. It was a somber one, someone was speaking, and then, of course, somebody's phone starts springing.
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Right. You were like, what the hell, man? And I kind of, I have no fault. I 100% agree with your entire rant, and it was a good one. I personally have not had the sound on on my phone in probably 20 years. I don't know who does.
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Who are you people that leave your sound on on your phone? I think, so. I do. So you're the one. I leave mine on? You're the one. I just, but I don't leave the house, so I don't go any way. Fair enough. Yeah. And so it was a memorial service, and the phone went off with some heavy metal rock and roll in the middle of a eulogy.
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Hopefully not my way to hell. No. Yeah. Oh. But I didn't want to rant without presenting a potential solution. So what I wonder is, could the phone manufacturers, could the people who are responsible for Bluetooth come up with a Bluetooth beacon that indicates this is a quiet place?
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Dave, there's literally just a switch right there. I understand that. Like, how fucking hard is this? Well, we've demonstrated over the past decade, evidently. And I think it's a numbers game, right?
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Yeah. Because if it's one out of 100 people who forget, and I don't think people are, I don't think most people are doing this maliciously. I think they, in good faith, forget. But if we had a system where when you could set your phone, so when you went into a place that had been tagged as being a quiet place, either your phone pops up an alert and says, hey, you're in a quiet place.
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Shall we silence everything? You could say yes. You could also set your phone. Otherwise the alien will come and kill you. Right. Right. Nobody else has seen that movie? Beat you to a bloody pulp. Okay. Or it could just happen automatically. You could set your phone to have it happen automatically. This seems to me like something that's very achievable, and I would love to see someone implement.
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You know why it has not been done, Dave? There is zero money in it. But I also have another gotcha. In the law of unintended consequences, I want to break into your house and make sure you can't call the cops. So I bring one of these Bluetooth, this is a quiet place beacons.
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So now your alarm system doesn't make any noise, or like when the alarm company calls, your phone doesn't make any noise or something. There'll be something, I'm sure, that could be used for nefarious purposes by making sure that somebody's phone stays quiet when it's not supposed to.
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You see how quickly Jason finds the way to use it for pure evil. That's my job. It is a skill. It is a skill. Have you seen the shirt that I'm wearing? Come on. Yeah. It's my understanding that in Europe, at least for a while, it was legal to have jammers in movie theaters and theaters.
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It was. Yeah. So they just, yeah. Hey, and I know how to make those now, thanks to Baker Graham. Right. Right. Just follow, just have one in your back pocket all the time. You can, actually. It's fairly straightforward.
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It'll cost you $32 in parts. Well, Jason, you just had your birthday. My kid, my kid had his 10th birthday this last weekend. First off, I can't believe it's been 10 years, but it has been. Jesus Christ. But I wanted to, I know, I wanted to talk about some of the stuff that he got, some of which for himself, he got some cash.
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So flush with cash, he started collecting, I guess what I'm going to call milk and cookie table books, because it's not a coffee table for him. Oh, I see where you're going with this. Okay. Yes. He got some like high-end stuff here. I've got some links in the show notes. He's really into Kirby.
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That's a Nintendo whole game, like universe thing, plays those games all the time. He bought the Kirby art and style collection by Viz Media, which is just what it says on the tin. It's all the different art and fonts that they use and styles and different drawings for the many, many, many, many years of Kirby games, which like, I'm like, you're 10.
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I was like, this kid has very advanced tastes. I know. I know. Wow. And then he also got the Star Wars, the lightsaber collection by Daniel Wallace, which is this amazing coffee table book with these beautiful photographs of every single lightsaber scene in the Star Wars universe.
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It's amazing. Nice. And yet he remains evil. So he also got Star Wars, The Secrets of the Sith by Mark Sumerick, which is a quite involved read about all the horrible things that the bad guys in Star Wars does. And he loves it. So like a how-to guide?
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Pretty much. Yeah. How to take over the universe. So he's going to follow your, he's following your goth footsteps, but taking it to the next level. Yes. Taking it to the next level. Very dark mall. You can send him to me when he's ready. Right. I'll teach him. I'll teach him the ways.
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Sure. Yeah. But my favorite present that he actually got, and I hadn't realized how big this was when he initially asked for it. And thanks a lot to his aunt for buying it for him. The X-Shot Insanity Motorized Ragefire Gatling Gun with Tripod Foam Gun for Maximum Firepower.
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I had to set this up for him. And oh my God, it is so much fun. I picked that thing up, say hello to my little friend, and I just blasted the shit out of everything. Yeah. Where the hell were these things when I was a kid?
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Well, yes, that's true. We had cap guns and, you know, single suction cup things. But I grew up in North Carolina. We had real guns. Oh, right. So this reminded me of the Nerf guns we had in my first office back in the 90s when we had our Pixel Workshop office.
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I put a photo of that in the show notes that I found. It's a great picture. Yeah, it's from like 1995. The Baltimore Sun did a little, you know, story on us. This new, you know, young kids opening a new shop to compete with Hollywood, you know, that sort of thing.
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And that was the photo they took. So that was the four founding members of that venture. But yeah, we had lots of Nerf guns and we would chase each other around and have fun. And of course, eventually those went to my kids when we closed that office. But what I found was that the little Nerf bullets, which are probably three inches long and I don't know, half an inch thick, little tiny suction cups on the front, they were the perfect size to clog up the drain of my washing machine.
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Yeah, I could see that. And they would just get in there. They'd be in the kids' pockets. They'd be in their laundry baskets. And so every once a month or so, the washing machine would blip, error, 82. And I'd know exactly what it was. And I knew how to, you know, like time me, click, go into the washing machine, take it apart.
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Sure enough, there'd be a Nerf bullet or two clogging up or blocking the impeller that would, there's the pump that would drain the washing machine. So it's one of the things about... You're like field stripping an AR-15. Yeah. It's like timing. Yeah, right. It's, yeah, exactly. It's one of the nice things about almost being an empty nester is that the Nerf bullets are much fewer and farther between, but...
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I am buried in them. Yeah. Yeah. It is fun. I mean... No question, it is fun. I mean, yeah. This thing is insane. Like the next thing we're going to do when he gets home from his camp today is we're going to set up a whole bunch of his Lego figures and we're just going to see how many we can mow down with this thing.
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Nice. Yeah. Well, when he gets to be a teenager, then you can move into Airsoft as well, which is just as fun. Yeah. A little more evil, but just as fun. Yeah. I found a fun little website that just basically does one thing. It tracks how much of Hacker News is AI.
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Just a stupid little website that kind of reminds me of how the web used to be, the little bits of delight that the web used to be. I think it's currently running around 15% of stories on Hacker News is AI. But it also has a clock that counts down how long has it been since a Hacker News story mentioned AI.
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Oh, that's great. That's great. It's been a whole 19 minutes. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So, kind of a little thing of where we are today. I'm pretty sure in the past we've talked about the game Full Throttle. You guys remember Full Throttle? You ever played Full Throttle? Mm-hmm. Jason?
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Not ringing a bell. Ooh, good game. It was LucasArts. What was neat about Full Throttle is that it was completely standalone. It wasn't based on any other pre-existing IP or anything like that. Mark Hamill did a bunch of the voices for it. Mm-hmm.
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But it was great fun. They remastered it, which means they up-rezzed everything and made it 16 by 9. And there's a YouTube video of the full gameplay. So, if you ever played Full Throttle, it's a fun nostalgia trip.
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There were a lot of things in this game I just forgot about. But it was really fun and funny. So, if you ever played Full Throttle, check it out. I think you'll enjoy the walkthrough. Yeah, I just looked at it. No recognition whatsoever. Yeah.
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I definitely played it. Watch the opening of it. The first, there's like a five-minute opening that's just a movie. And it's cinematic and iconic and really just sucks you in to the game. So, I highly recommend it.
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And then, of course, last but not least, we lost Dolly Parton and Tim Curry. What? Oh, sorry. Tim Curry died today. What? Oh, shit. Well, that guy who ran his Tim Curry dead's website is going to be out of the job for a while.
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Oh, man. Oh, damn. He did pass away. Damn. Thanks, Dave. Well, sorry. I figured you guys would have heard by now. There's no point in going on living. Oh, man. So, of course, from my interests, both who had wonderful relationships with the Muppets, and so I included a link to a fun video.
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Dolly Parton actually had her own, let's call it a variety show. And Miss Piggy was a guest star on the show at the Muppets, and Miss Piggy was a guest star on the show at one point. The Muppets were, and Miss Piggy had her own tour bus where she was trying to fashion herself after Dolly, and Dolly was giving her advice on how Miss Piggy could be more country.
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It's very cute. And so have a look and enjoy both Dolly Parton, who by all accounts was a delightful person, and the wonderful Miss Piggy, our favorite drag queen. Yes. I mean, it's hard to find anybody that does not, does not, you can't find anybody that has a bad thing to say about Dolly Parton, really.
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No. You know, I saw a lot of posts, hey, God, wrong 80-year-old. Right. Right. Right. I saw someone say, I asked for Donnie, not Dolly. Ah, yeah. But Tim's 82. That's, so, you know, these things do come in threes.
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So, well. Hey, well, I got, here's hoping. So, here's, here's another one that broke today. Let me see if the name means anything to either of you. J.P. Morgan? Like, the financial institution?
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No. Hmm. Gong Cho. She was on the Gong Cho. No. No. Okay. Yeah. I just remember the guy with the paper bag over his head from the Gong Cho. Yeah, yeah. That's about it. She was someone who made the rounds back in the 70s on game shows.
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She was an actress, sort of. I think one of those, the leading edge of people who are kind of famous for being famous. Right. But she died today. But I don't know that I'll count her in the rule of threes because she's not big enough. No, a little too niche. Yeah.
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Yeah. And we're holding that spot. Yeah. We got a slot, Donnie. We got a slot. We're holding that slot for you. We're saving a seat. Yeah. Reserve parking. When the music stops. Right. Yeah. Mitch already took off. Fuck Mitch.
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He's gone. So, we're saving it for Donnie. Now, man, that bums me about that. All right. That really is. Yeah. Sorry. I didn't. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But I figured it had been a few hours since I saw it that it would have reached you guys by now. I've been busy today.
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But I think tonight, maybe we'll watch Muppet Treasure Island with the kid, and then I'll do a little Rocky Horror Picture Show. There you go. Well, I will watch my favorite movie, The Hunt for Red October. Oh, yes. This business will get out of control, and we'll get out of control, and we'll be lucky to live through.
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Because you got to have the soundboard with a ready to go. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And now I got to put a Tim Curry clip in there, because I wish I had one of those. My favorite quote from that movie is, we must give this American a wide berth. Yep. Yep. I don't know if you didn't hear this one last time, Dave.
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This was a great Jurassic Park Easter egg. I would like to have seen Montana. So this is when Sam Neill dies in Hunt for Red October, and the opening scene in Jurassic Park is Sam Neill in Montana. Oh. Which I just found out, sadly, was California, because I followed a new Instagram account that is a guy that goes to all of the filming locations for all the great movies in the world.
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He's standing there in the same spot, and he's like, yeah, this is California. Oh, well. Yeah. Little movie magic. Yep. Yep. All right, guys. Well, thank you very much, and I'll see you next time. All right. See you next time, and I'll have some news about the Arduino kit.
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I'm looking forward to it. Yes, I look forward to that. Take care. Yeah, it gets here in two days. Woo-hoo. Now let's talk about the people who keep this show on the air. Over at Patreon, we've got nobody new, so you're not helping us keep on the air. So that didn't work this week. That didn't work this week.
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You got to go patreon.com slash gog. But we do want to thank the people who are still supporting us there. Don, Robert, Melanie, Tracy, Desiree, Nolan, and family, Rostron Woods, and Leaf, and Misk.
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Hello. Thank you, Misk, and everybody else who keeps the show going. All right, and Michael gave us a big old $50 donation over at PayPal. Thank you for that. Over at the tip jar, we've got Brett, Kathleen, Alexander, and Jennifer. And over at the merch table, Arnold from Ireland with the big four-shirt order.
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Woo-hoo. Gabriel from Puerto Rico for his kid. Buy one for you, too. You deserve it, Gabe. Come on. And Kay from Florida. So thank you all so much. Now, as I've mentioned before, if you want to keep the show on the air, you got to go to gog.show slash donate.
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It tells you all the different ways you can help keep us going. You can go to patreon.com slash gog. Get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition. And we'll love you forever. You can pay a little more than $3 if you want. But if you do pay for the whole year, you get a discount. We don't know why they did that, but out of our hands. Anyway, please go help support the show.
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We appreciate it. We really appreciate it a lot. We do. My Jeep needs fixing. Until next time, I'm Brian Shilvaxner. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at gog.show slash 760.
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Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at gog.show slash donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. Love the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between. And we'll love you for it.
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And swing by gog.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. It's a lively conversation, and you're more than welcome. Got thoughts, feedback, cool links? Hit us up at gog.show slash contact. And now we know that you are writing us, and we will figure out how to get back to you and put it back on the show. Sorry about that.
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Not our fault. And hey, don't forget to leave a five-star review at gog.show slash review, and we'll read it on the air. And guess what? We've got merch. New merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.gog.show and stay grumpy. Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide.
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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.
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BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com.