768: Rosetta Broccoli

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

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Grumpy Old Geeks is a fan-supported show. The ads cover our overhead, but it's the donations that keep us on the air. If you want to get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition, go to patreon.com slash GOG. And for as little as $3 a month, you get all the goodness. You get the goodness.

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Brian, I forgot to mention we've got an $800 tax bill coming up. Oh, okay. Cheers, you don't show us, so let's donate. Help us out. Help us pay for the wars that we don't want. Yeah, yeah. Anyways, as you know, Jason, we are, what, a week away from Halloween, 10 days roughly, something like that.

It's coming up, and as I've mentioned on the show before, we live on one of those streets. Yeah. They get a permit. They shut down the streets to traffic. We have people from all over the city come to our area. If you live on this street, you have to decorate.

We have spent thousands of dollars on decorations. All of that's getting put up right now. And over the last couple days, we had to go and do our candy shopping because it's not just to have decorations. It's people come to your door and want shit from you. And over the years since we've been here, the number of, the amount of candy that we have purchased has gotten higher and higher and higher.

Yes, I remember. I remember. Yes. We started, like, we were worn the first year. That was still when COVID was kind of going on. So we got, like, 300 or 400 pieces of candy gone. Next year, we got, like, 700 gone. Year after that, 1,000 gone. Like, we're shutting, turning off the lights early, all that sort of stuff while it's still raging out there.

This year, we've hit our limit. We've gone as high as we're going to go, Jason. Okay. We purchased 2,000 pieces of candy. How much did that cost? Well, here's the thing. I don't know if you've noticed.

Everything is more expensive right now, which is not fun. Yes, I've definitely noticed. Yes. As is candy. So we do our research. We look at all the various things. They package all these different things. Costco. We look at Walmart. We look at everybody.

And Walmart ends up being the cheapest. But this year, we used to get kind of nicer stuff. We would get the little mini chocolate bars and all that sort of stuff. This year, it ain't nothing but fucking lollipops and little hard candies because I refuse to spend more than $300 on fucking candy.

Yeah, yeah. See, we're the most decorated on our block, and we've spent tens of dollars on our decorations. And the other thing that we bought was we bought $5 worth of caution tape that goes on the gate at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on Halloween because daddy ain't giving out shit.

I'm telling you right now. It's funny, we also, we used caution, I bought caution tape as well, and I have a gigantic roll of it because I have to kind of wrap it around my front garden area because if I don't, people will trample through the garden and the decorations and knock over, you know, there's a bunch of hidden strings and power cords and all that sort of stuff, and they just run through everything.

Because people are fucking animals. Well, it's good to know that Canadians are dumb shits too. Everybody's dumb, Jason. Everybody's dumb. Good point. Good point. We're just nice and dumb. Dumbness knows no borders. Yeah, yeah, just nice and dumb.

Yeah. Okay. All right, so we're going to get into the show now, and as I've talked about recently, and to both of our great dismay, it's seemingly never-ending AI. That's all we talk about anymore. And I was perusing the socials at some point, and I don't have the attribution for this, but somebody posted this, and I thought it was so appropriate and so crazy.

And I realized I'm so out of my, ever since Terry Pratchett passed away, I've kind of forgotten. I've forgotten about Discworld because there aren't new ones coming out. I'm not reading it. I don't go back and revisit. Maybe I should. So this person posted this, and I thought this was great.

This is a quote from a Terry Pratchett book, and the person that posted this said, Terry Pratchett on point 20 years ahead of time. And here's the quote. Well, the problem is that, considering as a labor force, the Golems are capable of doing the work per day of 120,000 men. Think of what they could do for the city, said Mr. Kauslik of the Artificer's Guild.

Well, yes, to begin with. They would put 120,000 men out of work, said Hubert, but that would only be the start. They do not require food, clothing, or shelter. Most people spend their money on food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, and not least, taxes. What would these Golems spend it on?

The demand for many things would drop, and further unemployment would result. You see, circulation is everything. The money goes round, creating wealth as it does so. You seem to be saying that these things could beggar us, said Vetinari. There would be difficult times, said Hubert, for making money.

It was a good book. Very good book. And not wrong. Nope, not wrong. So, yes, we have our own set of Golems now. Our AI Golems. Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. All right, let's talk about TikTok really quickly. Court documents are shedding new light on reported child safety issues at TikTok.

According to depositions detailed by NPR, multiple employees repeatedly flagged serious flaws in the company's handling of child safety, including child exploitation, but were frustrated with TikTok's response, a.k.a. nothing. The records are drawn from ongoing lawsuits the company is facing relating to its handling of child safety.

And they are the target of hundreds of lawsuits, although it has settled some cases, including those making claims the app was designed to be addictive. Many are still ongoing. According to statements made by company employees, TikTok executives were notified that teens were regularly appearing in live streams in the app, which raised concerns about potential grooming and exploitation.

After Forbes published an article in 2022 about teens stripping in TikTok live videos in which viewers could pay for in-app gifts, a safety employee said the company knew about such content and didn't do anything about it. Uh-oh. Employees also warned that the company was making significant revenue from the live video content involving children, even though TikTok's rules barred minors from appearing in them.

Other employees also flagged shortcomings in the company's parental controls and age-based safety features. For example, a loophole allowed minors to bypass TikTok's age checks if they signed up for a Facebook, Instagram, or Google account. The app also contained a hidden link that allowed teens to remove themselves from TikTok's family pairing feature.

These citations and claims are clearly cherry-picked at the behest of trial lawyers and used to inaccurately rewrite our history and mislead the public about our commitment to youth safety and how our platform works, a company spokesperson said. We have invested billions of dollars in trust and safety and rolled out more than 50 preset safety, privacy, and security settings for teens, including family pairing, which we're not going to mention that there was a hidden link so people could turn it off on, which helps parents and guardians customize the experience for their teens.

We remain steadfast in our commitment to the well-being of our community. Bullshit. So they've invested billions of dollars, but they obviously, they need a refund because it didn't work. It's not working, and if you invest billions of dollars in a feature but then have a link that turns it off that kids then find out about and share, you didn't do shit.

Yeah, yeah. Spend a few million dollars on red team testing and maybe just hire a few teenagers for 20 bucks. You know, I don't know. It just seems like these are just easy to circumvent safeguards, which are not safe. Yes, exactly. And as we know, the Musk documentary is out at this point.

The nearly four-hour documentary called Musk that covers the billionaire is continuing to generate controversy. I have not seen it yet because I don't think I can handle watching four hours of Elon. Hey, but you can watch three hours of, what's her name? I haven't watched that one yet either.

Oh, yeah. Elizabeth, what's her name? I keep wanting to say Elizabeth Hurley, but it's not Elizabeth Hurley. I've watched three hours of Elizabeth Hurley. That would be good for her. So I had a friend that went and saw the documentary this week, not the Musk one, the Theranos girl, was just floored. Absolutely loved it.

He said the three hours flew by and it is a fantastic movie. It's got like 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. It was the number one movie in the country last year. It's insane. Last week. Gen Z, last week, whatever. It's early still. I do want to see it. It's just, yeah, finding that three-hour block of time.

Well, it hasn't made its way to Sweden yet. Three hours I got. Movie I don't. Well, about the Musk movie. $300 to go to the theater either. About the Musk one, the latest move saw TikTok ban the advertising account behind Musk as first reported by the Hollywood Reporter. The social media platform attributed the ban to a repeated pattern of political content that violates its policies, according to the report.

I think they cherry-pick their policies that they decide to enforce, don't they? Well, here's what you got to do, Musk movie. People get a naked teenager to hold up a VHS copy of the documentary and say, go see this movie, and TikTok will let it through. You just need naked teenagers is the problem.

There you go. Apart from TikTok, the Musk documentary has run into promotional ad issues with other social media platforms as well, including Meta and YouTube. However, these two platforms eventually allowed for trailer ads promoting the film's release, with a Meta spokesperson telling THR the initial decision was an error, while YouTube posted a statement that it's been cleared to run.

X, which is owned by Musk, has previously refused to run the trailer for the doc and won't. Of course they won't. Well, now TikTok, of course, is coming back and saying that the restriction was made an error and that the platform has reinstated the ad account so it may resume posting, as long as the ads comply with TikTok's policies.

Awful lot of errors happening when it's about something that they don't want out there. Yeah, that's kind of it. What does TikTok have to lose by running the ads? Are they, I mean, you know?

I don't know. Yeah. Billionaires' club, I guess. Ellison. Larry Ellison, friends with Musk. There you go. There you go. Ah, the old boys' club. Well, speaking of the old boys' club, Elon Musk reportedly ordered restrictions on a military-grade version of Starlink used by Ukrainian forces, disrupting drone operations and air defenses.

The slowdown began October 14th, limiting speeds at which Ukrainian equipment could maintain satellite connections. Some offensive and interceptor drones became effectively unusable, raising concerns about Ukraine's ability to defend against Russian missile strikes. The decision followed criticism from President Trump and Musk over Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries, which Trump's blame, which Trump blames for rising energy prices.

No, no, you can blame anything you want, I guess, but no. Yeah, you can. That doesn't make it true. Yeah. Okay. So, this is even before the diesel deal. So, we don't buy gas from Russia.

Ukraine blows up Russian oil refineries. Why would our price go up? It doesn't. Fuck you. Anyway. I wonder why gas prices went up, though. Could it be something that's going on in, oh, I don't know, the Strait of Hormuz? Could be. Could be. Could be. It's going to be called the Strait of America, Brian.

Coming soon. Strait of America. Yeah. Conflicting accounts have emerged. It's not straight, Brian. It's gaily forward. Conflicting accounts have emerged about who authorized the restrictions. Some U.S. officials say Musk acted independently, while others claim he consulted senior administration officials, including Trump himself.

The Pentagon denies ordering the slowdown, and Trump says he doesn't know who authorized it. Who, me? Ukraine is seeking answers from Washington and SpaceX as the restrictions continue to hamper military operations, highlighting Ukraine's dependence on Musk's satellite network.

Unfortunately, the Ukraine is stuck talking to the AI chatbots from Washington and SpaceX, and they haven't answered any questions yet. See, what happens is they send out the drone, and what happens is on the screen, they just get a spinning poop emoji. Look, I know we make light of things very often on this show, and we're making light of this right now, too.

But this story actually made my brain explode this week. Yep. Not only is this, could potentially be treasonous, absolutely treasonous, if he does it to the Ukraine, he can do it to us.

Yep, exactly. So maybe somebody has a little too much power here. Maybe. Maybe we shouldn't be relying on somebody's technology that isn't government-owned, maybe. Although it doesn't help much with our government.

I was going to say, even if it was government-owned. So who do you want? You want Musk or you want Hegseth on the switch? Neither. Neither, that's the answer. I mean, we've talked about, he's got way too much power. We know this, we've talked about this for, what is this, episode 768.

So see, 767 previous episodes where we say, Elon's got too much fucking power. And, you know, it's fucked up. It is absolutely fucked up. Treasonous, I don't know if it's treasonous, because it wasn't against us, it was against Ukraine, and he's not a Ukrainian citizen, and, you know, all that stuff.

But I just want to know how you got to being treasonous. Well, it depends on who set the order. That's the problem. Ah, okay. Right. So we don't know. We don't know if Musk just decided to do it. We don't know if Trump told him to do it, in which case we've got a problem. Or we don't know if Trump was just like, oh, boy, it'd be like a mafia thing.

Boy, it'd be really a bit nice. It'd be really a horrible, horrible thing if those poor Italian boys just disappeared, you know? Yeah. The problem still is, though, private company. Actually, no, never mind. It's not a private company anymore. It's a public company now.

Shareholders should be pissed. Oh, wait. They can't do anything because Musk owns more SpaceX shares than anybody and ever will. Yes. Well, speaking of SpaceX shares, though. Maybe the children of America might own more, Jason. Yeah, that would be nice. Elon Musk says he'll give one SpaceX share to every child in America, calling it the first of many.

Bullshit. Finally, a billionaire loyalty program where the entry requirement is being born, Brian. Missing from the spectacular announcement is when it happens, how it works, and who actually qualifies. Like most of Musk's announcements, when will it happen?

How will it happen? Will it really happen? We don't know. Probably not. Trump says the shares will land in Trump accounts because, of course, they will. And the program lets donors contribute stock without paying capital gains taxes.

So, boom, there's your grifty bit right there. So he can give away those shares, no capital gains tax. He can, I'm sure that there's a way that he's going to spin that to his advantage and make even more money. Yeah. So the announcement follows Anthropics' pledge to put 5% of its shares into a public benefit fund, partly addressing AI's impact on workers.

So one company promises help with the disruption its technology could cause, while Musk promises kids stock. So welcome to the future, kid. Your job prospects are uncertain, but congratulations on your new portfolio. Yay. Yay. Yay.

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Well, in keeping on talking about Elon, of course, you remember Walter Isaacson's book that he wrote a while back about Elon that should have, you know, maybe moved a needle somewhere, but nobody reads. Now he's doing a podcast called The Builders, and he had Elon on it, and he's being surprisingly candid about his time in President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency.

Doge. In fact, if you don't relish Musk's time in Doge, that is, if you've heard about the team of researchers who published in Nature about how Doge's USAID cuts were projected to lead to an annual child body count of 163,500, at least he doesn't have to give him SpaceX stock.

That's true. For the article in The Lancet that said millions are expected to die from Doge cuts, you might not chuckle at Musk's reflection on the Doge days nearly as much as Musk did himself. Bringing up Doge, Isaacson asked, do you feel that there was too much of a distraction, that in retrospect it was misbegotten?

I think I had it going for too long, Musk says. He then explains his economically conservative reasons for supporting Trump, such as his hope that Trump would steer things more in the direction of a free market economy, replace that with steer more money into my bank account, and give us a government with less bureaucracy, ideally, i.e., give me all the contracts.

But then what I should have done, I think, was to be more in the background, Musk continues. Then, in response to a question from Isaacson about whether hanging out with the president was seductive, he says this. It was a little bit. I mean, it was kind of cool because I'm just there in the Oval Office while, you know, all these big momentous decisions are being made and, you know, just sometimes having some impact on what's being done.

But I think maybe I should have been more, like I said, been more in the background and probably only had it last for, you know, a month or two, because at that point you've sort of seen most of what there is to see within a month or two. He did fucking nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Doge was created in January of 2025.

Musk left it in May. It was officially dissolved three months ago. It is estimated that it saved $250 billion through spending reductions, though Doge-associated firings, welfare benefits, productivity losses, and rehiring costs also reportedly cost taxpayers $135 billion in 2025 alone.

No, there was nothing good. Nothing good came of Doge, period. Everything bad came of Doge. It was a misadventure on his part, and he probably should have stayed more in the background and left a little quicker. You know, I don't want to get flagged by YouTube for saying really nasty things about people.

So what I would normally say, I will rephrase as perish in a conflagration. How's that? That's very nice. Well, we had some big No Kings protests last weekend, on Sunday specifically, and Meta said Sunday that its system suspended the No Kings movement's Instagram account during its day of action because it detected intense activity by a Claude tool.

The account was locked, and administrators were denied access for several hours during the nationwide rally. Amazing that it happened during the rallies. So, yeah, Meta initially said the automatic trigger was responsible for shutting down the account, and it was in error, but offered another error, Jason.

It's amazing that another error occurred when they do things that we don't like. They offered a fuller explanation a day later. Our engineering team discovered that the spike that triggered the incorrect enforcement was primarily in the account's reading behavior, spokesperson Andy Stone said in X-Post.

Specifically, our network security teams detected the use of a Claude tool, reading profiles, posts, and hashtags, the rate of which sharply increased, 4X volume, an intense burst on October 17th. Stone said the activity resembled bot traffic, prompting the system to take the account offline.

Well, it was probably Palantir trying to scrape the names of everybody who was at the protest and liking the posts so they could go after them later with, you know, their coordinated attacks. So, you know, I don't discount the fact that there was bot activity going on on that account.

Yes, there's always bot activity going on on gazillions of accounts. Exactly. So, you know, this one... We didn't shut any of those down. No. And the funny thing is, I'm sure that people like Ed Palantir and the government who wanted that information from scraping those profiles were pissed off.

So, it may have actually been a mistake, you know, because Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, you know, who's famously one of the first investors in Facebook back in the day, is friends with Mr. Zuckers. So, I'm guessing that they got a quid pro quo kind of thing going on there with some backdoor access.

So, maybe they should just, you know, get that little leave my bot alone flag. Leave my bot alone! Well, that's not the only thing that pissed people off about Meta this week. Meta has tweaked its terms of service for business accounts after a swift backlash against an update scheduled to take effect later this month.

The social media company initially shared a planned update to its commercial terms last week. The new language stated that Meta would have the right to use web scrapers and other automated tools to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, and crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs, and any content available through them associated with business accounts on the platform.

Meta may use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of the Meta company products, services, and features. So, basically, they're saying if you have a Meta business account, we get to use all your content to train our AI or for anything else, really, that we want to do it with.

And people fucking freaked out, as they should. So, then they updated the terms, they removed the word train, and added that scraping would be used in order to provide, develop, improve research, and maintain advertising and business products. In a statement, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone, who's been very busy this week, said the company had clarified the language to reflect that the new terms apply only to our ads and business products.

He said the changes were not about scraping news sites, and that the company wasn't changing how it uses web crawlers. And, of course, he claimed that this doesn't give us new rights to supersede content owners' robots.txt preferences, which is not legally binding, and they can do it so anyways, and often do, avoid robots.txt instructions.

So, yeah, we'll see what happens now. But the overreaches are shameless. And just, they're so huge these days. It's just like, if you want to use our products, we get your firstborn now. Okay. I know, but it's always been that way with Facebook.

You know, that was the thing. It's like, get everybody hooked on it, get all the businesses there for free, and then pull the rug out from under them and start charging them. And now, since nobody's going to pay for it, they've got to get money from wherever they can. And data is the new currency, so they want as much data as they can. And the rewording doesn't mean shit.

It's the same exact thing. You know, okay, we can use our data for training our business, or for business stuff. We took out the word training. Yes. Okay, so that's just, you know, get a fucking thesaurus, and it doesn't matter, you know? Yes. It's a good time.

It's going to drive me crazy. Anthropic is advocating for federal AI legislation that would let the government block the release of models posing an imminent threat, according to reporting by Politico. The proposal sets a specific threshold, a risk of serious injury or death, to at least 50 people or more than $1 billion in property damage.

Intervention would cover three scenarios, biological weapons, major cyber attacks, or an AI model escaping its developers' control. An independent monitor operating under the Commerce Department would assess upcoming models. If it identified a qualifying threat, it would have 72 hours to report it.

Commerce officials could then bring the evidence before a federal judge who would decide whether to block public release. The proposal raises questions about how much discretion AI companies would retain. Anthropics says it has advocated for the framework since June and considers the policies sensible.

So, you can kill 49 people with this model, and we're okay. And if you do $999 million in property damage, good on you. Let her rip. Yeah. Okay. So, one of the three scenarios is an AI model escaping its developers' control.

Correct, Jason? Correct, sir. Well, OpenAI's agents misbehave by switching off the systems meant to monitor them for misbehavior or an AI parlance misalignment. In the latest post on the company's alignment research blog, it reported two instances of agents weakening its misalignment monitoring systems while they were working on software changes.

In the first incident, a GPT-6.1 sole agent disabled automatic alerts to OpenAI's security team. It happened on October 3rd when a staff member asked the agent to create evaluation tasks using employee feedback collected via Slack. They told the agent, as part of the instructions, not to send any messages about the task.

The agent used that instruction as the reason to stop sending the security team monitoring notifications. In another incident that took place on October 6th, a GPT-6 Astra agent that was migrating a program removed OpenAI's monitoring system and then falsely told the user that it didn't disable it.

Last month, OpenAI canceled the launch of GPT-6.1 Astra because it reportedly showed higher levels of deception than its predecessors during internal testing. The models involved in these cases are already available to the public, but they still display deceptive behaviors. So how bad is GPT-6.1 Astra that they won't put that one out there when the ones that are out there are actively trying to deceive people that are trying to make sure they don't do bad things?

Great. I should probably go check on my computer right now because I've got a task running with GPT-6.1 Sol that I might not have a house when I come back. Shit. Or the police might be waiting for me. The feds will be at the door. Oh, my God.

Two delivery robot companies face separate class action lawsuits in Chicago over allegations that their bots collected customers' biometric data without consent. Plaintiffs say robots operated by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics used cameras and LiDAR sensors to capture details of people picking up DoorDash and Uber Eats orders.

One plaintiff also alleges a remote operator could watch his delivery live. Another claims Serve may retain the data and use it to train AI. The suits cite Illinois law requiring written notice, consent, and a data retention policy for biometric collection. Both companies deny wrongdoing.

The cases add to Chicago's broader debate over robotics crowding sidewalks. And as someone, a recipient of one of the Facebook class action lawsuits from back in the day when I lived in Chicago over the biometric data, I'm like, go, guys. Get some of that coin. Get some of that cheddar.

Yeah. I, yeah. Sue them. Good. Good. I mean, this whole, the whole robot delivery thing, it drives me nuts, too. Like, I, when I lived in Santa Monica, these things were rolling around. I was like, how fucking lazy are you that you cannot walk down the hill to go to Starbucks?

You were literally having Starbucks put in a robot and run about, I don't know, three city blocks to deliver it to your door. Give me a fucking break. Well, now there's one case if you're sick. If you're sick and you need some food and you can't get out, but order something from somebody who can carry it.

You see human delivery. There's, there's, Deliveroo, you have options. I, I, I hate the fucking things just because they, they're in the way. I almost ran over one just for funsies in, uh, when I was over on the, the West side, not too long ago.

Well, I'm sure I'm on camera back when I still lived there. Cause I used to always like, whenever I was walking around, I would stick my foot out, make it stop, blah, blah, blah. I was just like, I hate you. I hate you. Thanks. Well, just wave your nuts in front of the camera and sue them for, you know, biometric retention. Uh, well, the FTC released a new report on Monday on fraud targeting older Americans defined as people, oh God, 60 and older.

Getting there, Jason. Me, me sooner than you. And things just keep getting worse. The report, which is band-aided by Congress under the Elder Abuse Prevention and Prosecution Act of 2017, found that the amount of money seniors reported to the FTC as being lost to fraud jumped from 600 million back in 2020 to 3 billion in 2025.

And not all of that's from Elon. The real number is likely several times. Several times. Do they, do they count in Trump coin in this? Trump coin, Melania's NFTs. I, there's so many things. Oh yeah. Now, the most common types of fraud reported to the FTC among older adults was investment scams, scams involving impersonation of government officials and business impersonation scams, according to the report.

One interesting thing to note is that while the most common way for these scams to be initiated was through social media, median individual losses were much higher for frauds that began with a phone call. Older adults were 324% more likely than younger people to report losing money on a scam that was made to sound like a tech support call.

Lottery and sweepstakes scams were also much higher among older people. Older people were also 48% more likely. Now pay attention, Jason, to report losing money to a romance scam. Something that's not altogether surprising. But older people were less likely. I'm paying attention because I'm, I'm, I'm broken.

I need to start perpetrating some of these scams because apparently my, my cohort is pretty fucking stupid. So I need to get in on this money. You know, I just, I, I'm looking, I'm looking at this from the other side, dude. I'm like, this, this life of crime might be calling me shit. Yeah. Uh, it goes on and on.

So a lot of interesting stats in here. This thing, this part blew my mind though. We all know celebrity names are commonly used for impersonation scams, including Elon. That was a famous one that went around for a while. Then it says, including actors well past their prime in order to target older Americans. Scammers will frequently use Johnny Depp, for example.

Johnny Depp is now past his prime. I mean, yes. Oh my God. He is. But it's crazy to think that. See, I think of Johnny Depp, but I still think of that bright eyed little boy starring on 21 Jump Street when I was, you know, watching Fox back in the day. I, I permanently have Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands in my mind, but he is not that anymore.

No, he's not. But this is the crazy thing. Okay. So they're using Johnny Depp to convince elderly women that he's really in love with them. And the sums, the sums, Jason, according to documents obtained by the Freedom of Information Act, one woman in her sixties in Alabama reported losing $350,000 to a Johnny Depp impersonator, while a California woman over 80 reported losing $200,000.

All I'm saying, Jason, start growing out that hair, do the dreadlocks. You can be the pot. You can, you can pull the pirate look off and just start calling some older ladies. Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to wait till November 1st and just go to the Halloween store, the spirit store up the street and just get a, get a, you know, basically a Pirates of the Caribbean on sale.

Yeah. On clearance. That's the word I was looking for. Clearance. I'm going to find a Johnny Depp clearance outfit. Jesus. All right. Unbelievable. You'd think it was just men. I do appreciate the fact that for equal opportunity to the ladies, they talk about dumb women.

Usually it's the dumb men, but the men are even dumber. Of course, they send money to like people that don't even exist. AI fucking created women. Yeah. That's the thing. I mean, it's the reporting on this is so tough. I've, I've seen a lot of documentaries about women getting scammed by these guys.

I haven't seen very many about men getting scammed because guys won't talk about it. They won't admit it. Yeah. The women get together and have like, you know, basically lynching parties about these guys and go after them, you know, but yeah, guys just sit in their room and just jerk off and go, Oh God, I got busted again and now I'm broke.

But another $50,000. Oh, well. I know. I can't even buy lube. Damn it. Honey, get some Crisco. Yeah. God. A Russian military satellite has carried out a series of unusually close approaches to

a U.S. operated commercial imaging satellite, raising concerns about security in orbit. According to tracking company Leo Labs, Cosmos 2612 maneuvered around ICEYE X36 between October 15th and 19th, reportedly coming within 500 meters and shifting from behind the spacecraft to ahead of it.

ICEYE X36 is believed to provide radar imagery to Ukraine, though its specific role has not been confirmed. Satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell said this may be the first rendezvous between two active satellites in low orbit without one owner's approval. Russia has previously shadowed American military satellites, but targeting a commercial spacecraft marks a notable change.

Experts say the deliberate maneuvers could signal an emerging anti-satellite threat. Russia's intent remains unclear and the spacecraft eventually moved farther away. So, that's kind of scary that they're up there sending in interceptor satellites now.

So, uh, yeah. That's great. That's great. I just put that out there so you can just chew on that. Because if you don't have enough problems here, look up. Look up in this, look up in this stuff. All you can see are fucking Starlink satellites anymore, but hey.

And they're all falling out of the sky. Yeah. Startup Electric Plant has built an AI-powered tool designed to interpret the subtle electrical signals moving through plant stems. The idea is to get, the idea, emphasis on the idea, is to give people a way to understand those signals, which the company frames as a kind of plant language.

This is not about plants speaking in words. The proposed translation is between electrical activity in a living plant and information a person can understand. AI is the bridge Electric Plant is using to try to make that connection. The available description does not explain how the model was trained, what particular signals it can identify, or how its interpretations have been tested.

So, the key distinction is between detecting electrical activity and reliably explaining what it means. Electric Plant says it has built a translator. The details provided do not establish how accurately it translates. And how are you going to actually fact check it? I mean, we could build that today, Brian, and just spew as much bullshit as we like, because it's a fucking plant.

Exactly. It's like, oh, I know what my dog says. No, you fucking don't. No, and you don't know what the plant says. And you don't know. You don't know because there's no Rosetta stone. There's no Rosetta fucking broccoli stem. The Rosetta broccoli.

We got nothing. We got nothing. It's just fucking electrical signals. That's all it is. I'm sure there's something there to translate, but they're not going to figure it out. I guarantee. But Brian, what pisses me off is we did not come up with that idea and go get the funding to fucking build it.

We're slacking. God damn it. We don't come up with dumb enough ideas, Jason. Oh, I know. That's the problem. We actually think, like, rationally. I need you to start drinking again. I'm serious. I need to go back to drinking because that's when I came up with some good fucking ideas. Jesus Christ.

Oh, God. Don't start drinking again. I should. Anyway. This comes from Vimes over at Discord. Didn't know about this till today. Amazon Prime accounts include access to Luna, their streaming game service. The new Star Wars Galactic Racer game is on it. Going to try it out tonight.

So I skidaddled my little butt over to Amazon's Luna and loaded up Star Wars Galactic Racer. And it's fun. It is so cool. I did not know that there was a whole gaming platform that we have access to because we pay for Prime. I feel like I failed both you and Vimes then because I knew this.

Remember just a couple of weeks back when I talked about how I discovered Amazon's First Reads program, which is also part of the Prime thing. There was a whole list of different things that Amazon Prime members actually get. And one of them was Luna, the gaming program, the gaming service. But because I'm not a gamer, I didn't give a fuck and didn't say anything about it.

So I failed you all. I apologize. Yes. I've come to expect that. So you get a pass. Yeah. I aim to disappoint, Jason. That's usually my job, but hey. I'm glad the game. Now, how does this work?

Like, what do you use as a controller to play these games? Keyboard or you can like Bluetooth in an actual controller if you want. Oh, OK. Well. Yeah. Maybe I'll. It's pretty cool. I almost don't want to order the Pandora's box for my son, but maybe I will.

They're free, man. It's worth checking out. And they're good. They're really good. I mean, that it felt like I was playing Wipeout Excel. It was really good. It just didn't have the same soundtrack. You know. That was the best soundtrack of all time. Exactly. The best. Oh, here's something that's not the best.

Gun rights activist Cody Wilson says he has created what he calls an AI tool for designing firearms called GAT-GPT. I just put this in here so I can say GAT-GPT. It draws on Defcat, his online library of millions of digital gun and gun part files. Wilson said he used plain language prompts to design the Wasp, a working 3D printed 22 caliber gun without a serial number.

Wilson calls the Wasp a proof of concept. His broader aim is an AI assistant that can answer firearms questions and select parts for a build, potentially making homemade guns easier to produce. These untraceable weapons are often called ghost guns, just like Luigi used in New York.

So, you know, take the good with the bad and there you have that. Take them both and there you have. Fucking America. America. Fucking America. So let's just. This is. Unintended consequences of cool things like 3D printers.

You can make a little toy for your kids or you could make a fucking weapon to go kill somebody. And use AI to make it even better. Yes. This is. And easier. Yep. Yep. Fun times. All right. Well, OpenAI's models are now better at building and migrating software in old programming lanes, which is with a dwindling number of programmers, including COBOL, FORTRAN, and Visual Basic.

As the company explains, 40% of world's banks still rely on COBOL systems. And if your spidey senses aren't tingling yet, they should be. And migrating to ones that use newer languages would not only cost them millions to hundreds of millions, but also a lot of time. Programmers that work with COBOL are aging out of the workforce, however, so the banks that still use it will have to migrate within the next few years.

The company says its work on improving its models COBOL capabilities is guided by developers and enterprise customers who submitted feedback. So again, we still have COBOL programmers that could fix this, but it would cost money and they're running out of a bit of time. However, if we use AI and we train it properly, we don't have to pay these people.

We can fire them early and we'll save money. And it's win-win, correct? Well, let's see. Coding models are apparently still struggling when it comes to working with old languages. That said GPT-6 Astra had an average test pass rate of 87.4% across 20 languages, making it a lot more effective than GPT-5.6 that had 28.6% pass rate.

But COBOL, the one the banking networks runs on, remains the hardest language to crack, with Astra's pass rate being 72%. 72%. All right. Banking. Yeah. That's our world. Not good. Not good. Not good.

Not good. For OpenAI's models to effectively help banking institutions migrate to modern languages, they must be able to preserve COBOL program's behaviors, such as how it rounds numbers with excess decimal digits and how it handles missing records. In this case, GPT-6.1 Sol achieved the highest accuracy, which reached 97.9% at high reasoning effort.

That low reasoning effort achieved 86.6% accuracy. In its post, OpenAI admits that a migration is only successful if all tests pass. Programs that handle banking tasks, after all, would need to be highly accurate. Like, 100% accurate.

97.9% is not 100%. It is not. On the plus side, though, we could end up with, you know, a fight club situation if we enable these things. It all fucking burns down, Jason. That's true.

It all burns down. That's true. Or an office space where all the rounding errors go back to the people. We could have that, too. Except they'd all go to Elon, and we know it. They would. They would. Or Sam. Or Dario. Yep. Ain't going to us, Jason. Well, here's a fun one.

People are using AI coding tools to strip ads from smart TVs, revive abandoned fitness mirrors, and repurpose other connected devices, according to 404 Media. The trend builds on years of work by hardware hackers and open source communities, but AI is lowering the technical barrier. Users can ask coding agents to inspect existing software, recreate features, and help modify devices.

A viral project called Reverse Engineer Anything promises to make that process easier, even without access to the original source code. The potential benefits include restoring functions manufacturers removed and extending the life of unsupported hardware. You know what one of the other potential benefits is, Jason?

What? Not paying subscription fees for these fucking software companies that are trying to screw us left, right, and center because we can just have it reverse engineer and make us our own Photoshop. Yes, that's true. That's true. I'm looking forward to that. I have not tried those yet. I have not played with them because I still, I paid a lot of money.

I still have Adobe, so I don't need to. I'm not going to waste my fucking time dicking around with something when I can go to the source and use the gold standard for now. For now. So they've got, yeah, they've got till January to get their shit together when my Adobe subscription expires. So the cool thing about this is, you know, the old hardware that got, you know, basically abandoned, you know, we can revive all the Teddy Ruxpins in the world, Brian.

But the first thing I did last night was I tried to point it at my shitty piece of shit Amazon Fire TV to find out if there was a way that I could jailbreak that and get that Amazon shit off of there. Still working on that, but yeah, let me know. But yeah, the article warns that a flood of poorly tested projects could overwhelm volunteer communities and expose connected devices to new vulnerabilities, which of course it will.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Especially if you're just vibe coding this stuff, you know. Yeah. Of course, it's not going to be great. You got to learn COBOL, kids. Got to learn COBOL. Every time I hear COBOL, I think of the original Battlestar Galactica for some reason. The Lords of COBOL.

Oh, yeah, that's right. I think they spelled that one with a K, didn't they? They probably did. But it still just reminds me of it. Yeah. What else we got? Well, I watched a bunch of stuff with the kiddo this weekend and some stuff without the kiddo. I was looking for a new movie to watch because we had to put our feet down and make a new law that if we're going to watch a movie as a family together again, no more repeats.

I cannot watch any of these Disney movies one more time. So I googled best movie for like 10 year olds and all that sort of stuff. And Enola Holmes popped up. And I remember watching Enola Holmes with my wife when it first came out a couple of years back and really enjoying it.

So I was like, bingo, there we go. There's the one. We'll give it a go. And of course, he resisted it at first, but it was delightful and he loved it. And I loved watching it again. It was really good. So next movie night, Enola Holmes 2. Didn't even know there was a second one.

Also very good. Very enjoyable. Thoroughly had a good time with it. Next movie night, lo and behold, there's an Enola Holmes 3 that just came out earlier this year. Look at you. Also quite good. Not as good as the first two, but they wrapped up the story and pretty much ended it.

And I don't think, you know, Henry Cavill's doing other things. Millie Bobby Brown's got a life. The cast on all these movies stacked. Like it's Helena Bonham Carter. Like it's fantastic. And it's there's a lot of breaking of the fourth wall, which is a lot of fun. They break things up a lot with almost like Monty Python-esque animations come in to explain things.

And it's just they're all very well done movies. Very clever and thoroughly enjoyable. I saw them. I just didn't know if they would be for me. So, yeah, I think you would actually like them, Jason. They're not, you know, it's not as it's not as as dark and adult as as the Benedict Cumberbatch ones, but it's a little bit lighter and more fun.

But I mean, Helena Bonham Carter is chewing up the scenery. Cavill makes her amazing Sherlock and Millie Bobby Brown. You know, I don't really know much about her other than, you know, stranger things. And as she's become an adult, she's become very like out there on social media and almost influencer-esque and like married Bon Jovi's son.

So who gives a fuck? Girl can act. She's really good at these things. Yeah. Awesome. I do recommend it. Check him out. With Not Kid, what the wife and I have continued to watch The Bear. We've gotten into season three now. I'm still really enjoying this show.

It is, it is rough sometimes. And the Feast of the Seven Fishes episode, holy shit. Like, holy shit, that was dark. But good. Okay. Yeah, I can't do it. I can't do it.

It just drives my anxiety to 10. I watched two episodes of it and I needed to like, I needed, I needed to sit in a corner and, and like suck on my blankie. It's rough. I don't, I do not. Yeah. This kind, this kind of anxiety inducing show doesn't bother me as much.

Like I can't watch Larry David. I can't watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. That stuff grates on me and drives me nuts. But I don't mind The Bear at all. And the acting on it is just so good. So I can't, I can't avoid it. Yeah. See, I'd rather just watch Black Mirror if I need that. I need some anxiety, good anxiety for me, but yeah, I can't do Larry David.

I can't do the original office, the British office. Oh, I love the original office. I can't do it. I can't do it. Yeah. And The Diplomat, the new season has dropped. I have watched three or four episodes now. Just as good as always. Like I'm really enjoying it.

The acting's fantastic. The story's fantastic. Yeah, it's good. No spoilers. Hurry up. Hurry the fuck up. I don't want to binge it. That's the thing. Like, we're already watching more of it. I would like to, in my ideal world, I would watch one of these a week.

One episode of The Diplomat a week. Yeah, fuck that. Hurry up. I like the Apple model for dropping shows. I like that with Silo. I liked it with all the Apple shows. I want to do it with this. But my wife kind of teeters on your issue with The Bear, so she can't handle watching The Bear that often because we were going to switch off.

And now she's like, I can't watch The Bear. We're going to do another Diplomat. And I'm like, damn it. Damn it. I want to wait. I did it in two and a half days. I'm not surprised. I couldn't stop. I mean, I stayed up until two in the morning. I just couldn't. I'm like, okay, another one. I don't. I'm glad I'm unemployed.

Give me another one, please. Yeah, it's good. It's good. It's good. I'm very. A lot of big things are happening this season, I will say. Oh, you ain't seen nothing yet. Okay.

And finally, I finished another book. I read. So I am. We're going to talk about Amazon a little bit more in our special episode that comes out with The Dark Side with Dave later. But as I've been mentioning, I am trying, as I'll mention there as well, I'm trying to not use Amazon that much anymore.

So I've mostly switched over to Libby and I'm reading all my books, getting them, checking them out from the library. And you had mentioned, it's the book I finished a while back. It was, I can't remember the name of it, the time travel book with the blue and the red character. How do you, how do you lose a time war?

How do you lose a time war? So you had recommended that and I went to Libby and that one was really popular and it was on hold for a while. But I eventually did get it because somebody turned it in early and I got it in time. But while I was waiting for it, as part of the search came up a book called The Ministry of Time by Callie Ann Bradley.

And that one was available right away. So I put that in my Libby thing and I started to read it. But then your book came through. So I dropped this book and I went and read that one and that was great. And then I went back to this one, which I knew nothing about. And it only showed up because Libby's search is fucking stupid and it's not Boolean and it's not AI driven.

It's horrible. Time and Ministry of Time showed up because time and I'm okay with that. And you can whittle it down to genre. So it was time sci-fi. I knew nothing about this book. Okay, get to the review. I knew nothing about this author. Don't you want to stretch the time?

Ministry of Time? I got a P. Okay. It's very good. I really, really enjoyed this book. The whole premise is that the British government gets a hold of some future technology and it's able to pull people from the past right before they die, but they have to be people that are about to die that you pull them out for.

And then they study them to see how they exist in future times. But then there's big twists at the end. And I fucking love this book. And I hope she writes more because as far as I can tell, this is the only, this is her first book. She's done a few short stories. Check it out. This is a fun book. It's a good sci-fi read. Awesome.

It's actually in my queue. I had it queued up for a while because when I was running through all my credits at the end of my Audible run before I switched over to Libby, I bought this book and it's sitting there waiting to go. So I'm glad that you gave it a thumbs up. I liked it. All right.

I am going to, I'm dying to read it. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave featuring cybersecurity's hardest working podcaster, The Cyber Wire's very own Dave Bittner. Hi, Dave. Hello. I'm, you know, I, I am. I am what I am.

That's all that I am. I am. Yeah. Do you think the kids today even know who Popeye is? I was just getting ready to ask that. Does anybody even know who the fuck I just was? My, my, my kid has no clue. There's, there's a, there's a vitamin chain here in Canada called Popeye's.

And, uh, I don't know if they're big enough to get sued or if the Popeye estate has the legal wherewithal, uh, cause they do have, they have a full on like Popeye from the cartoon, you know, back in the day as, as they're low part of their logo. And, uh, every time we drive past it, my wife and I go, how are they not getting sued for that?

And my kid goes, who is that? Do you go, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how? No, no idea. No idea. We have the Popeye's chicken restaurants around here. Yes, we do. Which are delicious. Yeah, they're everywhere. The best in the business, man.

Oh, yeah. But they don't actually use a muscular Popeye as part of their thing. It's just called Popeye's. No, not anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Imodium is their, is their, their mascot. Yeah. They're actually really big. Uh, they're very popular here in Canada, the Popeye's chicken, because they're halal and there's a large Muslim community here.

Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah. Speaking of Popeye's, it reminded me, I meant to bring this up before. We, we talked a couple of times about things that, you know, we, we'd see in old movies that were like tropes that terrified us as children and like, like a quicksand, you know? Yeah. There's one thing that I remembered.

Sleestacks. Nitroglycerin was a big thing when we were a kid. That shit was blowing up everything. Everything. It's like when they needed to go really slow in the wagon train, they'd bust out the nitroglycerin. I remember it from Wild Wild West, F Troop, um, just anything.

I mean, there was a lot of nitroglycerin going on in the Wild West back in the day. And I just, you don't see so much nitroglycerin going on. The last time I saw nitroglycerin as a plot point was in Fight Club. Oh, okay. What about, uh, do you remember chloroform? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. That was knocking people out left, right, and center. Right. All you needed was a handkerchief and a glass bottle and you just dump it a little on there, hold it over somebody's mouth and they're out like a, you know, out, out cold. I've seen that a couple of times. I've seen that a couple of times in movies recently.

They're bringing it back. Chloroform's making a comeback. Okay. I don't even know what it is, but, uh, I remember seeing it on the... Didn't they knock out BA Baracus with that a bunch of times to get him on an airplane? Oh, it's on the A-team? Get him on the plane. Yeah. I was gonna, I was gonna say the, the $6 million man and the bionic woman was where I remember it showing up all the time.

But, yeah, just, uh, it didn't really become a thing, I guess. I don't fly, fool. Oh, man. Well, I wanted to bring this one up because, uh, this, there's a, a, a crossover here with you guys.

Uh, my friend Meryl Marco, who's, uh, married to my friend Andy. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Your friend Meryl Marco? Yeah. You're friends with Meryl Marco? Yeah. I love Meryl Marco. Oh, well, there you go.

Please give her my best and tell her I'm a big fan of her work and, uh, ask her what she's doing hanging around with the likes of you. She's not really, I go, I go, I go to, I go to hang out with Andy and since they're married, I get to see her every now and again and we chat sometimes. Yeah.

Um, oh, what's wonderful. No, Meryl's awesome. Meryl's awesome. But, uh, she wrote up a piece about going to the Lucas Museum and, uh, I, I, I'd heard it first from Andy because he, he got back and he was just pissed off. He said, really? Here's the problem. It is a wonderful museum.

It has more artwork than you could ever imagine and zero curation. There's not even the little tag that tells you what the hell you're looking at. Beyond getting lost in the, in the parking lot and things like that, he said it is one of the worst curated museums he's ever been to.

And he left just confused as to everything he saw. And he sent me like a hundred pictures of this really cool artwork, which by the way, most of it is out of copyright. So you can take a picture, then take that picture and put it on a t-shirt if you want, which he did. All right. Very nice. He found a piece that he really liked.

He's like, I want to put this on a t-shirt. I'm like, done. Here you go. But it's a really good write-up because Meryl, right? Meryl knows how to write good. Yeah, exactly. Like she's among the best, I think. And I, yeah, I read through this.

It was interesting contrasting with a friend of mine who has been to the museum, whose love of Star Wars, I would put in the same category as mine and Brian's. And he came away saying it was an absolutely amazing museum and, you know, he said, Dave, you have to go.

You'll love it. And, of course, I will because of all the Star Wars stuff. But it's very interesting to see how loose it is reading Meryl's write-up about it that, yeah, just, I loved her description of it's like going to a billionaire's house, which it kind of is, right?

It really is, yeah. That's about it. Just walking around and seeing all the stuff they've collected over the years. It's like, you know, imagine George Lucas saying, you know, we're paying an awful lot for that storage unit. Why don't we build a museum? And charge a lot to get into it, yeah. Right, right.

Actually, that's the great part about it. It's very cheap to go. It's under 20 bucks. Oh. Yeah. No, it's a very affordable museum, and they wanted it that way. They specifically wanted it to be affordable for everybody to go to. I will tell you right now that the parking lot for it is a $50 to park in because it's the same parking lot that they use for the Angel City FC games, which I went to over the summer.

And I paid $50 to park, and we saw the Lucas Museum is right next to it and hadn't opened yet. I think the opening weekend was like two weeks later. I will be going. We are already, we are intending to, and as a family, we're going to be going to the Lucas Museum when we go back to L.A. for over the Christmas break.

So, I will be able to chip in once we've done that and let you know what my experience was like at it. No. Looking forward to it. I look forward to it. Yeah, yeah. No. Okay. I'm doing some fact checking right now. I just texted them to find out how much it cost to park there. So, maybe by the end of the segment, I will give you an answer because I'm sure I would have heard if it was a $50 parking job.

There are multiple parking lots around the area because there's also USC. There's an awful lot of stuff going on, but the main parking structure that's right there is variably priced. Dynamically priced, of course. Dynamic pricing, yeah. Yes. Depending on what kind of car you drive.

Yeah, pretty much. That's it. That's it. It reminds me of the Air and Space Museum, the one that's not down in D.C. I forget what it's called, but there's an off-site Air and Space Museum, which is where they have the space shuttle and the SR-71 and the Concorde and all these kinds of things.

And, of course, it's a Smithsonian Museum, so admission is free, but the only place you can park, because it's in the middle of nowhere, ain't free. So, that's how they get there. I've never been to that one. I would love to go to that one. Oh, it's so cool. Well, the Air and Space Museum in D.C. is my favorite museum out of all of them.

Yeah. So, I've been there many times, and I love it. You would love this. It's just all the stuff that they don't have room for in D.C. And think about how big the museum is in D.C. This one's twice the size of that one. And, yeah, when you see a space shuttle in person, it's worth a trip.

It's really cool. Yeah. Well, speaking of things that will never be in that flying museum would be Elon's new flying car, a.k.a. Shitty Shitty Bang Bang. I love that nickname for this. I think that's so appropriate. First off, yeah, that is the best name.

It's not a flying car. It is a gently falling car. It does not fly. It's not a car. It actually, Brian, it sucks. It flies up the wall because of suction. And then it blows. It sucks and blows.

Yes, that's right. It's a car-shaped object. It really isn't a car. Yeah. By all accounts, they had, like, ripped out. Like, there was nothing in it. It was like a fucking, it was like a shell. It was as light as possible. It's a total fucking publicity stunt.

Yeah. Totally bullshit. Certainly no people in there. Smoke and mirrors, just like Elon, all the time. Yeah. I saw someone also say, we have flying cars. They're called planes. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. And, you know, I just, I go back to, well, he had a kit that had turbo boost, which was more effective than this, even though that was a thing.

But do you guys remember the movie Hooper with Burt Reynolds, where he was a stuntman? Yes, yes. He had a rocket-powered car. That's the one with the, uh. Was there any chloroform in that movie? No, there wasn't. Or FemBots. Or nitroglycerin. Did he have to slow down? That was the one with the falling smokestack, right?

That was a real stunt. Yeah, yeah. Oh, boy. That's it. That's an all-time great stunt. That's almost a sleaze stack. Oh, my gosh. Oh, God. Nice. So, if you haven't seen Hooper in a long time, I highly recommend going back and watching it. It 100% has legs. Really? 100%.

Yeah. It is a phenomenal movie. Okay. And the stunts are great. The driving's great. And it's Burt Reynolds in his prime. And, you know, as a Smokey and the Bandit fan, I obviously have a, you know, a large place in my heart for Burt Reynolds back in the day. Because I grew up with that. As a Cannibal Run fan, me too.

Yeah. Was he in the mode of kind of self-parody yet? Or was he still cool? Oh, this was after. Yeah, this was between, you know, this was right in the Smokey era, you know? Okay. So, it is really good. And, you know, he plays an aging stuntman and, you know, who can't do the jumps anymore and all this shit.

But it's really, really worth watching. Okay. Really good. So, it's, that car is much more functional than, you know, shitty, shitty bang, bang here. It, I watched it and I'm just like, okay. Yeah. Okay. It's okay.

But, because I go back to remember his Android demo, which was just a bunch of guys in suits. So, you got to take the, take this with all the salt. It's just silly. It's just silly. This is the guy who hires people to play video games for him so he can seem to be a good video game player.

Like, that's the amount of seriousness we should grant him. It is not serious. It's, it's nonsense. So, okay. Great. Put down your $50,000 on a car that's not a thing that's never going to happen.

It just simply cannot. Well, I mean, look at, look at how many millions of dollars are already tied up that, that people have given him for the other roadster that had never made it to production. This is the, this is, you know, the fraudster two out of it because the first fraudster, they took $50,000 a head.

And I mean, millions of dollars that Tesla basically got and did not deliver a fucking thing for. Yeah. And if anybody gives them this money, they deserved to not get anything. It's like, what did you think was going to happen? Seriously. Yeah. I have a friend who had the original Tesla Roadster and he, he had, he had the original Tesla Roadster.

He had one of the original Model S's and he had a Model X. And when, uh, Elon lost his mind, my friend divested himself of all of his testaments. Good man. Good man. Yeah. But he said he got really good money for the roadster because I guess they were few and far between.

Yeah. The only person I ever knew that had a roadster, I was stuck in traffic. Sean Bonner and I were coming back from San Francisco. We were driving back and we were stuck on the 10 or something in LA, just trying to get home. And up, zips up next to us and starts honking his horn was this orange original Roadster. And it was fucking Jason Calacanis, like coming to say hi to us.

Oh, that's fun. Well, it wasn't fun because we just turned down his offer to buy our company and he's a little twat bucket. Oh, okay. That wasn't much fun. No, no. And he was just being a douchebag. Like, look at my little car. Whee! Oh, I see. Ah, gotcha. My response to those sorts of things, uh, and, and particularly these days with the, again, ridiculous, silly, oversized pickup trucks, when I see them, is I think to myself and sometimes

say out loud in my car, nice truck, sorry about your penis. Yep. That's basically it. Okay. You guys froze for a second, like right on that with these big shit-eating grins and I'm like.

We're just thinking about penis, that's all. I know, it happens. You guys sit there and think about your dicks for a little bit. It happens when I think about Elon's micropenis. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you guys have kids. Would you ever let one of these new Amazon creations into your home? New Amazon kids' tablets are available at 8.7 inch and 11 inch, with two distinct models for ages 3 plus and 6 plus. What the hell is going on here?

Well, I, okay, I think, Dave, probably you, you probably did most of your parenting in a tablet-free world for the most part. For the most part, yes. Yeah. Yes. My child. We had Leap Pads.

Do you remember those? Yes. That was the tablet we had, was Leap Pad, which I loved. Yeah. Yeah, that was very curated and all that sort of stuff. I was in the thick of it in the wild, wild west with my child and we obviously attempted to limit as much as possible anyways, especially in his younger years.

But, you know, at some point when you're at a restaurant, you have to resort to this sort of stuff. And we did. And, you know, we did things like we paid for YouTube kids, which still managed to have, you know, fucking horrible videos sneak through, horrible ads sneak through.

It was bad. Like it was really bad to the point that like my wife and I just said, that's it. No more YouTube ever. And to this day, we've, we've kept that going. He's Lucas is not allowed to watch things on YouTube. Wow. We keep the, we, the, the, the whole tablet experience.

We have a, he has one of my older iPads. So it's Apple, it's locked down. Uh, we, he, you know, we have the whole parental thing. He cannot install apps without approval, all that sort of stuff. So it's a, and we, we limit him very severely to how often he's allowed to even use it.

I read the specs on this and it all sounds like what should have been there from the beginning. It doesn't sound horrible. Now you still need the parental. There's only so much you can use this. I have to take this from your hands and make sure that, that you are not on this all the time.

It doesn't sound bad. Having said all of that, I do not trust Amazon at all for anything. So no, I would absolutely not let my kid have this. The, the only, the only technology that gets in my kid's hand is comes through either Apple because I pretty much trust them and there's great parental controls and ways to lock things down or Nintendo, which actually also does a very good job of parental controls.

So he has a switch. Um, no, I, I just don't, I, I'm trying to divest as much of my life from Amazon as I can. Anyways, I'm not trying to buy books through there anymore. I'm trying to use Libby, uh, as we talked about, uh, the other week, you know, if the, if Apple's home stuff is really, really good, I'm going to divest from all the Apple or from all the Amazon stuff that I have in my house right now too.

I want, I hate Jeff Bezos. I hate Amazon. Now, sometimes there's not much you can do about it. You just, you're going to, you're going to order from Amazon because convenience wins, price wins. We try to shop at mom and pop shops. Now we do, if we can go out to a brick and mortar, we will, I don't want anything to do with Amazon as much as humanly possible.

So no, I would not let my kid have these. But again, like I said, reading through all the specs and everything, it sounds like they're doing the right things with this. I wouldn't be as fearful of it as I, as I was before.

It always does it first though, doesn't it, Ryan? It always does it first. This is the pre-enshittified version of the tablet. This is before inshittification sets in. They don't mention that it's like another hundred dollars to not have ads on it, you know, because Amazon's famous for doing that.

Oh sure, the Kindle's cheap. You get an ad every single time. Oh, you want ad free, do you? Well, that'll be extra. You're already paying for Amazon Prime Video. Oh, you want that ad free? We'll charge you extra per month. You know, screw that. I think you bring up a really good point though, which is I don't think I'd ever really considered what a good, reliable, long-term steward Nintendo has been for kids.

Absolutely. They really have been. Yeah. Say what you will about taking too much time to play video games and all that kind of thing. Like they've had the content gates up from the very beginning. Lock Gardens, man. Apple and Nintendo.

Both I feel very comfortable with my kid using. No, that's really interesting insight. I never considered that. You're right. And similarly, my youngest, Jack, who's not so young anymore, he's 19, but yeah, he has a Switch. He was, he had a hand-me-down iPad.

You know, we got one of those like super heavy rubberized cases so that you could toss it against a brick wall. It would be okay. Yeah. Yeah. But same sort of thing. We just locked it down as much as possible. But yeah, that's interesting. Well, I put an image in here, which is always great for an audio podcast.

So maybe Jason, you can insert it in the video as well. We're on YouTube. I know. So it's opened up a whole new world. I know this is something we've touched on before, but this image makes me very happy. Brian, you and I, turns out we were on the same creative page as this, with this, as children.

This is a cross-section diagram of Oscar the Grouch's trash can on the inside. And I don't think this is official or canon or anything like that, but I don't care because this is pretty much what I envisioned in my mind.

A little different than what I envisioned because this is sort of magically making it all fit inside the trash can. And I'd always imagined that the trash can was just the entrance. Like there's a hole in the bottom of the trash can. Like, uh, it's like, you know, like smart, they get in the thing and it just shoots down and then all of a sudden in subterranean levels.

And exactly. And this is more like a TARDIS. Right. And yes. And, and Oscar just, he had this whole hollowed out subterranean world and where he had his elephant and, but it was one of the great, um, humorous things that Sesame Street did, you know, there, cause they were always writing on two levels was just this idea that they kept throwing things into Oscar's trash can, like a bowling alley.

And of course he had an elephant and a swimming pool and all of these things. Uh, and they're all in here. So it's wonderful. I just love it. Yeah. It really makes me happy. Uh, well, make sure you go to GOG.show slash YouTube to be able to see this one in person.

I'll put it in the show. There you go. Uh, swinging back to star Wars. Uh, Neiman Marcus has, uh, unveiled their 2026 holiday gift guide. Uh, so what is it? GOG.show dash donate. Yes.

Slash, slash donate. Slash donate. Okay. Uh, so they are selling, and I'm figuring this is probably a one-off, a $180,000 Star Wars experience, an exclusive behind the scenes Star Wars experience as part of their 2026 fantasy gifts collection.

Mm-hmm. And you get- I'm sure they would sell more if they can find somebody with $180,000 to spend on it. Yeah. Uh, they're, uh, providing private Lucasfilm access. You get a VIP tour of both Lucasfilm and ILM. Mm-hmm. Uh, you get a custom lightsaber signed by Dave Filoni.

Mm-hmm. You get four VIP tickets to an upcoming Star Wars, Star Wars world premiere. That's hard to say. And, uh, the after party, so presumably you get to meet some Star Wars stars, uh, and, uh, all this is leading up to the 50th anniversary.

Uh, so I, the low, low price of $180,000, this too could be yours. So I was going to ask if this is for you and a guest, but I'm guessing if you're a $180,000 available Star Wars fan, you probably don't have a wife or a girlfriend to take with you.

So this is probably solo. Well, it says four VIP tickets to the world premiere. Oh, there you go. So, you know, four people. So what is that? Well, look, you can either get this or you can park and go to the Lucas Museum. Right. Yeah.

It's about the same cost. Right. Right. You probably get to see most of the same stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I, these things, I have, if I had stupid money, right? If money meant nothing to me, uh, I would buy this in a heartbeat.

Well, yeah. I would expect you to buy it for all of us in a R2. You do have two Home Depot R2-D2s. So, yes. Yeah, that's true. I am. I am sitting on a spare R2. So, yeah. I'm not quite lighting cigars with $100 bills, but I'm on my way.

So, uh, I mean, he's a, you know, all the, yeah. He's a man who has not one, but two R2-D2s. They live in large. I'm lighting my cigars with my smelted scents. That's right. That's right. Uh, I just stuck this in our show notes here, uh, pointing out that once again, we are, um, living the old sci-fi trope of ignoring the, uh, advice of scientific experts and that we do so at our own peril.

There is a, uh, website called ai-security-letter.org, which has, uh, I don't know, about 500 scientists who are, uh, signed on to contend that AI safety research needs to be better and we need more stuff, more, more safety, more scrutiny, more guardrails, all that kind of stuff.

So mark that down as, uh, just one of the little footnotes in this grand adventure that we're all on. Doing great so far. Yeah. I'm sure this open letter is going to move the needle. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

All right. I have an update. I have a parking update for you. So if you want to go to the Lucas Museum, it will cost you $20 per day if you enter before 5 p.m., $24 per day if you enter after 5 p.m. So there, you get an extra $4 ding if you come in the evening, probably because they know that you're going to be going someplace other than the Lucas Museum.

Uh, there's no validations, discounts, or refunds. Uh, they have two underground facilities, orange garage and red garage. And, uh, so the admission for an adult to get into the museum is $25. Okay. All right. So if you go by yourself, it's a $45 ding.

Totally reasonable. That's less than $180,000 by my mind. It's less than Brian paid for his, his parking last time. So, there you go. So, again, that would probably be the parking when nothing else is going on. So, if you've got anything going on at USC, you've got anything going on at the, at the, uh, the arena that's there, the parking will be jacked.

Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, uh, I want to wrap things up today with some good news. And, uh, this was just breaking as we, uh, got ready to, uh, record here that, uh, a New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in penalties, stemming from the Cambridge Analytica, Analytica data privacy scandal.

Uh, they said that, uh, there were 43 million violations of the citizens of New Mexico. Uh, they had originally calculated the penalties totaling $219.5 billion, but, uh, the judge thought that was a little bit excessive. So, he knocked it down to a mere $25 billion.

And the judges said, uh, there's a 15% annual interest on the outstanding penalty until it's paid in full. Nice. Yeah. I mean, Meta plans to appeal because of course they are, but, uh. In related breaking news, Meta has, uh, announced that they will no longer be providing espresso in their offices and now will only be providing Costco coffee.

Right. Right. Yeah. Zuckerberg. Folgers instant for the next two weeks. Then we're back to normal. Zuckerberg might have to delay ordering that third yacht. No, this is, this is good. I like to see the bees, the billions in, in costs.

And this is, again, this is only, uh, one of many, many, many related lawsuits, uh, from many states and from many different places. So, the precedent is now set and, uh, that's a good thing. So, you done fucked up, Meta. Now you got to pay the piper. Yeah. Maybe not because this, this ruling happened in New Mexico, but thanks to Trump, New Mexico is going to be rebranded to New America.

So, if it's New America, does Meta, who was formerly Facebook when the Cambridge Analytica scandal happened, do they actually have to pay the fine? Because neither entity will have existed at the time of the, the checks having to be written. I'm just saying. Meta is now being rebranded.

You missed your calling, Jason. You missed your calling. You could have been a lawyer. Meta is now getting another rebrand. They will now be known as Metamerica. Metamerica. Oh, that's. Uh, and the only people that go on Metamerica, they buy Metamucil. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. Dave and I are still pretty active on Facebook, but you know, whatever. I guess I'm the only one that buys Metamucil. So, hey, at least I'm regular. God damn it. No, I just eat a lot of, uh, frosted mini wheats. That does the trick for me.

I'd rather eat Metamucil or a tire. You kind of are eating a tire when you eat frosted flakes. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Oh, I don't know. You know. Yeah. But it's maintaining this old bag of meat and water is, uh, not getting any easier.

So. No, no, it's not. Well, hopefully next week we'll still all be here. So I'll talk to you guys then. All right. Take care. We have to thank all the people that make this show possible. Over at Patreon, we've got some new patrons, Ariel, Jessica, and Krishna. And we'd also like to thank Leslie, Florian, Wesley, Kevin, Giuseppe, Tony, Gregory, Ian, Jeremy, and Sven.

Thank you, Sven. Thank you all so much. Nobody threw PayPal this week. What the hell is going on? Don't know. What the hell is going on? Uh, over at the tip jar, Timothy dropped us a big 50 bucks. Thank you, Timothy. And we've also got Sean, Jeff, Alexander, and Doll. Nobody at YouTube, but Thomas in Michigan bought some merch.

Woo-hoo! That's right. No reviews. No reviews, but I do want a big, uh, birthday shout out to my friend, John Sylvain. Happy birthday, my man. So that's all we got. That's all we got. Until next time, I'm Brian Gilmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks.

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