682: We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Luigi

Summary

Grumpy Old Geeks Episode 682: "We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Luigi" – Detailed Summary

Release Date: February 1, 2025
Hosts: Jason DeFilippo & Brian Schulmeister with Dave Bittner

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1. Generational Shifts in the Workforce

Discussion Overview:
The hosts dive into the increasing trend of Gen Z graduates being let go shortly after being hired. They explore the reasons behind employers' dissatisfaction and the broader implications for the workforce.

Key Points:

• Survey Insights: A survey by Intelligent.com revealed that 60% of nearly 1,000 U.S. business leaders have fired recent Gen Z hires due to perceived inadequacies.
• Common Criticisms: Employers cite issues such as tardiness, inappropriate dressing, and poor workplace etiquette.
• Millennials vs. Gen Z: While previously focused on millennials, the conversation shifts to the challenges posed by the younger Gen Z cohort.
• Educational Gaps: Institutions like Michigan State are now introducing networking skills to address these workforce deficiencies, though some argue it's too late once graduates enter the job market.

Notable Quotes:

• Brian Schulmeister [02:03]: "We know they're intelligent, Brian, because it says it's 10."
• Dave Bittner [04:01]: "The education level has decreased so badly, the education system has failed."

2. AI Controversies and Industry Scrutiny

Discussion Overview:
The podcast delves into the tumultuous landscape of AI development, highlighting issues like data theft claims, the public's growing fatigue with AI, and the ethical concerns surrounding its deployment.

Key Points:

• Deep Seek AI Incident: Deep Seek AI, a Chinese startup, is under scrutiny for allegedly stealing data from OpenAI, leading to widespread meme creation mocking OpenAI.
• Intellectual Property Concerns: OpenAI acknowledges relying on copyrighted materials for training models, a practice common across AI firms like Facebook's LLaMA.
• Financial Concerns: Comparisons are drawn to Uber's unsustainable business model, suggesting that AI companies are similarly mismanaging funds.
• Effectiveness of AI: Hosts express skepticism about the practical utility of AI, citing issues like factual inaccuracies and unnecessary creations (e.g., AI-generated art).

Notable Quotes:

• Brian Schulmeister [11:31]: "We're all fucking sick of it."
• Dave Bittner [12:03]: "OpenAI is built on stealing IP."

3. Geographical Naming Controversies

Discussion Overview:
A quirky yet significant tech news item about Google Maps renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America exclusively for U.S. users is examined, sparking discussions on geopolitical implications and public reaction.

Key Points:

• Policy Ambiguity: Questions arise about how Google handles different names for geographical locations in various countries—whether it displays both names or geo-restricts them.
• Public Backlash: The renaming led to viral meme generation, with other countries like Greenland humorously renaming bodies of water in ways that insult political figures like Trump.
• Meta's Response: Mark Zuckerberg acknowledges internal leaks during an all-hands meeting, adjusting Meta's Q&A format to a pre-voted poll system to control information dissemination.

Notable Quotes:

• Brian Schulmeister [09:20]: "I wonder if I can rename the plot of land where I live Fuckostan and petition them to change that."
• Dave Bittner [10:44]: "It's been the Gulf of Mexico forever. It's never been the Gulf of America anyway."

4. Legal Battles and Corporate Accountability

Discussion Overview:
The hosts discuss recent legal actions involving major corporations, focusing on Uber's lawsuit against fraudulent insurance claims and California's stringent measures against AI companies.

Key Points:

• Uber's Racketeering Lawsuit: Uber alleges that law firms, doctors, and clinics have staged fake car accidents to exploit New York's no-fault insurance system, costing the company substantially.
• California AG's Stance on AI: California's Attorney General Rob Bonta has declared AI companies' operations largely illegal, aiming to curb unethical practices in the industry.
• Meta's Policy Changes: In response to frequent leaks, Meta has revamped its internal communication strategies, emphasizing controlled information flow and pre-voted poll systems for employee queries.

Notable Quotes:

• Brian Schulmeister [30:55]: "Uber is alleging a criminal scheme involving law firms, doctors, and clinics staging fake car accidents..."
• Dave Bittner [20:37]: "Pretty much. The link is in the show notes because it gets really in depth on this and I don't want to."

5. Advancements and Setbacks in Autonomous Vehicles

Discussion Overview:
The conversation shifts to the latest developments in autonomous vehicle technology, highlighting Tesla's robo-taxi initiatives and Waymo's challenges with public acceptance.

Key Points:

• Tesla's Robo-Taxis and Optimus: Tesla plans to launch its robo-taxi service and pilot production of the Optimus humanoid robot by 2025. However, skepticism remains about Elon Musk's repeated overpromises regarding self-driving capabilities.
• Waymo's Vandalism Issues: A Waymo robo-taxi was vandalized by a group of around 40-50 individuals during a street takeover in Los Angeles, raising concerns about the safety and societal acceptance of autonomous vehicles.
• AI-Controlled Systems: Hosts question the reliability of AI in crisis situations, like how autonomous vehicles would handle violent encounters on the road.

Notable Quotes:

• Brian Schulmeister [33:39]: "We know it's not going to happen. We know it's not going to happen."
• Dave Bittner [37:58]: "But they're... And if the people are, you know, dragged from the car and murdered in the street, there's nobody left to sue them, I guess."

6. Media and Entertainment: Cancellations and Reboots

Discussion Overview:
The hosts express their frustrations with recent cancellations and subpar reboots in the entertainment industry, particularly focusing on "Star Wars: The Acolyte" and the challenges of maintaining franchise integrity.

Key Points:

• "Star Wars: The Acolyte" Cancellation: Despite being the second most-watched show on Disney+, "The Acolyte" was canceled, possibly due to toxic fandom backlash rather than viewership numbers.
• Reboot Strategies: Comparisons are made to failed reboots like "Star Trek Section 31," and successes like reboots focusing on legacy characters and thoughtful storytelling.
• Expectations vs. Reality: Hosts lament that high viewership doesn't necessarily translate to franchise continuation, citing Disney's reaction to "The Acolyte."

Notable Quotes:

• Dave Bittner [65:00]: "Only the Coreys I kept."
• Brian Schulmeister [65:16]: "Apparently, Trump is our daddy, which is the most."

7. Nostalgia and the Evolution of Gaming

Discussion Overview:
A heartfelt segment reminiscing about classic video games and the evolution of gaming technology, emphasizing the hosts' personal experiences and the enduring impact of early computer games.

Key Points:

• Favorite Early Games: Hosts share their first experiences with computer games like "Bushido, the Way of the Warrior," "Lost Dutchman's Gold," and "Flight Simulator."
• Text Adventures vs. Modern Games: Contrast between the exploratory nature of text-based games and the action-oriented, sometimes flawed physics of modern titles like "Quake."
• Gaming Community: Reflections on how games like "Rocket Arena" fostered community and competition, leaving lasting memories despite technological limitations.

Notable Quotes:

• Jason DeFilippo [75:58]: "TRS 80 model ones. And so there was a text adventure game, and that was the first time I'd ever laid hands on a computer."
• Brian Schulmeister [81:34]: "We had that in Quake or Quake three. Really had that."

8. Modern Technology Frustrations

Discussion Overview:
The hosts vent about current technological annoyances, including intrusive AI features, cumbersome app functionalities, and the decline of user-friendly interfaces.

Key Points:

• iPhone's Photo Button: Mixed feelings about the new photo button on iPhones—useful for quick snaps but underutilized by some hosts.
• Amazon Music and Apple Features: Criticism of Amazon Music's interface and Apple's notification summaries, which are seen as poorly integrated into existing systems.
• Website and App Overcomplications: Skepticism towards new tech features that complicate rather than simplify user experiences, with a nostalgic longing for the early, more straightforward internet.

Notable Quotes:

• Dave Bittner [56:15]: "iOS 18.3 is here. Jason Wee didn't really notice much..."
• Brian Schulmeister [83:43]: "Brian doesn't have one."

9. Final Thoughts and Recommendations

Discussion Overview:
Wrapping up the episode, the hosts share personal recommendations for books and shows, emphasizing the importance of meaningful content amidst the chaos of modern technology and media.

Key Points:

• Book Recommendations:
  • Dave Bittner praises "Not Till We Are Lost" by Dennis E. Taylor.
  • Brian Schulmeister recommends "The Myth of Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture" by Gabor Maté.
• Show Recommendations:
  • Gravity Falls is highlighted as a sophisticated and engaging animated series worth rewatching.
  • Discussion on "The Expanse" and the need to catch it before it leaves Amazon.
• Tributes: The hosts pay homage to the late Marianne Faithfull, celebrating her impactful life and career.

Notable Quotes:

• Brian Schulmeister [63:28]: "Brian, I'm doing my best."
• Dave Bittner [62:48]: "I'm going to use AI healthcare. Don't, don't AI therapists. Just help me, Eliza."

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Conclusion

In Episode 682 of Grumpy Old Geeks, Jason DeFilippo, Brian Schulmeister, and Dave Bittner deliver a comprehensive and candid analysis of the week's tech news, societal shifts, and entertainment updates. From the struggles of Gen Z in the workforce and the murky waters of AI ethics to nostalgic reflections on classic video games and the frustrations of modern technology, the hosts provide a blend of humor, critique, and insightful commentary. Notably, their discussions on AI controversies and legal battles underscore the growing tensions between technological advancement and ethical standards. Meanwhile, their heartfelt recommendations and tributes add a personal touch, reminding listeners of the enduring value of meaningful content amidst a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Highlighted Quotes:

• Brian Schulmeister [05:10]: "The problem with Gen Z is they have no skills."
• Dave Bittner [14:58]: "I don't need to destroy a lake to have AI make a picture of a platypus eating a pineapple."
• Brian Schulmeister [27:46]: "Nobody gives a fuck about MoviePass as a brand."
• Dave Bittner [41:34]: "We are just nothing but mice in a cage clicking buttons."

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Note: The summary intentionally omits advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections to focus solely on the substantive discussions and insights shared during the episode.

Transcript

[Jason DeFilippo]

This is a mini meditation guided by Bombus.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Repeat after me. I'm comfy. I'm cozy. Cozy.

[Dave Bittner]

I have zero blisters on my toes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Blisters. And that's cause I wear Bombus the.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Softest socks, underwear, and T shirts that give back.

[Jason DeFilippo]

One purchased equals one donated.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Now go to bombas.com wondery and use code WONDERY for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B-A-S.com Wondery and use code WONDERY at checkout. 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 DiFilippo.

[Dave Bittner]

And I'm Brian Schulmeister.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Brian, we've talked a lot about pink slips and how everybody's getting fired nowadays.

[Dave Bittner]

Including me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, and including me. We also talk a lot about millennials. We've always had a soft spot to shit on millennials on this show.

[Dave Bittner]

Don't think it was a soft spot.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But yeah, yeah, soft spot. Like that soft spot on the back of the skull when they're babies and you can hit them really hard, really quick and just. Okay, moving on. So I think we need to move the sights a little bit to Gen Z.

[Dave Bittner]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Because, you know, easier pickings. Why not? I saw this come across the wires this week. Bosses are firing Gen Z grads just months after hiring them. And here's what they say needs to change. So after two years of complaints about young hires, bosses are taking action. Six in 10 employers say they've already let go recent grads who weren't up to the job. So this is a survey. 6 in 10. 60%. A survey of nearly 1,000 U.S. business leaders by Intelligent.com. we know. We know they're intelligent, Brian, because it says it's 10.

[Dave Bittner]

It's what we named our company.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's right. They found widespread dissatisfaction with Gen Z workers. Yeah, I can see that. Do you hang out with Gen Zers very much, Brian?

[Dave Bittner]

No, no, I can't say that. That. I. I do. You know, my time in the music industry, everybody was Washington, my age or older. When I did come to take the job in Toronto, we had some younger hires, but I would say they were solidly millennial, not Gen Z. Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Look, millennials are going to be retiring soon. It's time to put them off the table. We're fucking old now. Yeah. So here are the common Issues being late dressing inappropriately and struggling with workplace etiquette. To me, that just sounds like Gen Xers, so I'm okay with that. More than half of hiring managers say today's grads simply aren't ready for the work. Some colleges are stepping in, like Michigan State, which are now teaching networking skills. Great.

[Dave Bittner]

I think it's a bit late at college level.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Dave Bittner]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The grads have left the farm, as it were.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So it's. The thing is they don't give a shit.

[Dave Bittner]

That's the thing. And I think we all saw that coming. I mean, we just saw. You know, from my understanding, and I personally don't hang out with any Gen Z people, but I do have friends that had kids. You know, I had, I had my kid a little bit late than most. I have a lot of friends that have had kids earlier and they're probably. They're Gen Z now. They're entering the workforce. And I remember hearing stories about, from, from them about, you know, the trials and tribulations they had raising their kids and this a lack of interest in almost everything except for being on their phone. They don't want, they haven't wanted to get out of the house and socialize with friends when they can do it online. Zero interest in driving a car because never leaving the house. And if they do, they'll take an Uber. Zero interest in getting a job because they don't really need money because almost everything that they do is free or being subsidized by their parents. That is their wi fi and their phones. Yeah. So I'm not, not surprised to hear this.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Zero interest in dating. Thanks to pornhub.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah. We are rocketing to. Towards idiocracy. We're three steps away from Brauno, kind of.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Kind of. But, you know, part of me, you know, I have a little kind of affinity for these folks because, you know, that's your lifestyle. Gen Xers were always like that. I mean, I'm sorry, but this, this is. To me.

[Dave Bittner]

No, no, that's, that's 1,000% untrue. I mean. Yes. Okay. Late to work, dressing inappropriately. I don't think we struggled with workplace E. We were able to separate. You know, I need this job and I need this money. So I will be what you need me to be. Or at least I'll play the game enough to get the paycheck and then I'll shit on you on my smoke breaks. And certainly we weren't isolationist the way that Gen Z seems to be. We got, we Met up at malls, we met up at parking lots, we met up at. The reason they started playing crappy classical music and soft rock in every open space is because we filled them.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's true. I, I now, now, on workplace etiquette, I was taken aside by legal on several occasions. Well, you not. Did not talk the way that.

[Dave Bittner]

I'm the bell curve, Jason. Remember, I actually worked with you. I saw you in action. I know. Yeah, yeah, the vast majority of us were. Not you.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I guess telling the VP of the company to blow me in the middle of the office was really not a good idea.

[Dave Bittner]

No, you had to do it the way the rest of us Gen Xers did. And we said, that's a really horrible idea. Not blow me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

See, but the thing is, I was so good at my job, they couldn't fire me. So that's, you know, I go from the Cal Newport School of Be so good. They can't ignore you. The problem with Gen Z is they have no skills. That's, that's, that's. This is where we're headed. So, anyway, I saw this come by today too, which kind of, which made me kind of think maybe this is what's happening. Declassified CIA guide to sabotaging Fascism is suddenly viral. So it's basically a guide from the 1960s written by the Office of Strategic Services, which is a guide to basically saying, don't do shit at work. Slow everything down and be, you know, be a wrench in the, in the machinery of commerce. Right? And I'm like, okay, that kind of tracks with what Gen Z is doing, you know? So simple sabotage. That's great. But then, then I finally found the cause. US students post lowest reading scores in decades. The problem is nobody in the damn country can read. We're tiktoking too much.

[Dave Bittner]

They're uneducated. It's plain and simple. It's. The education level has decreased so badly, the education system has failed. And no, I don't think that you just tear it down the way a certain administration that's in power now does. You fix it. You don't destroy it. Yeah, this saddens me because, I mean, I know I'm in a rarity, and I was even in a rarity back in my day when I was young. I love reading. Reading is one of my absolute favorite things to do. I tore through books as a high schooler. I tore through books in college. I still do. And it's important, and I've made it a priority for my son, and he loves reading. Now, too, and I hope that sticks with him. But I know half again, we're talking eight year olds. A lot of his peers don't like to read, don't want to read, and aren't great at reading. And God knows that's been going on for quite a long time. I mean, we know, we know because we know book sales and we know, you know, library attendance and we know that people just aren't reading.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I remember when I was in school, I'm going to bring this back to tech in a second to land this plane. Trust me, people, trust me. I remember when I was in school, we had the bookmobile. When the bookmobile showed up, that was an event. Then you'd get those sheets that you had to fill in and pick your books and, you know, fantastic book sales.

[Dave Bittner]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And beg your parents for some, for some spare change so you could buy, you know, the next edition of the Hardy Boys or whatever or Bunnicula, which was. I love the Bunnicula series. Those are great. Little vampire bunny. I don't know if you ever read those. They were.

[Dave Bittner]

Dude, I was such a nerd. I had read 1984 in fourth grade, and I'd written, written, written slogans on my backpack.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, okay. But either way, when, when, you know, you, you'd put it in, you'd give them your money, and then, like, you'd forget about it. And then like a month or so later, it probably might have been next week, but back then, time was different. This, this box of books would show up at your desk when the, when the books would arrive, and it was so cool.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And reading was fun and. But when we, when we first started with the Internet, you and I were there at the beginning and, you know, we thought that this was going to be the great leveler for education. We thought, thought that things like Wikipedia would be, you know, a game changer with all of human knowledge at our fingertips. Khan Academy, you know, let's democratize all of education. No, none of it worked.

[Dave Bittner]

None of it worked. And now what do we have? We have AI that just makes shit up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's right. Speaking of making shit up, let's get to the news. In the news.

[Dave Bittner]

Well, Jason, we've got the Gulf of America.

[Brian Schulmeister]

America outside of the fact that making. Making up.

[Dave Bittner]

Making a plane just making up. And what of our. What are our courageous tech leaders doing? They're pacifying the. Yeah, yeah. Google Maps is renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, but only if you're in the US because they're not changing it anywhere else, which actually kind of tracks that this does happen. And is there a policy where if a country, if different countries have different names for something, it will either put both labels or geo restrict which ones it shows. So, fine, I guess.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I wonder if I can rename the plot of land where I live Fuckostan and petition them to change that. So the sovereign land of Fuckostan.

[Dave Bittner]

I mean, the only good thing that's coming out of this is the just sheer amount of memes. It's been phenomenal. Like Greenland put out a map where they decided to rename all their bodies of water and every single one's an insult to Trump. It's fantastic.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. And the president of Mexico even, even hit back, which is very well played. So she found, she found one of the old maps from 1607 where, where you. The US was named Mexican America. Funnily enough, though, in that map it was still called the Gulf of Mexico. So what are you going to do?

[Dave Bittner]

It's been the Gulf of Mexico forever. It's never been the Gulf of America anyway.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No. No. Well, let's talk about our dwindling, dwindling impact on the world. If you have turned on the television, the news, the carrier pigeon this week, you have, you may have seen the. The sheer insanity about Deep Seek AI, the Chinese AI startup that is ruffling feathers across the tech world.

[Dave Bittner]

You know, Fine, I'm glad OpenAI took a few knocks, but what's actually turning out to seem to be is a Deep. It's just not much there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The thing is. Yeah, well, there are some things there that are kind of important. The first is everybody's getting sick of AI and it's the most important thing.

[Dave Bittner]

We're all sick of it. Jeez.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We're all fucking sick of it. The schadenfreude this week that OpenAI got very upset because Deep Seek may have stolen some of their data is just. I have never seen the world come together in memosphere quite like this week.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know, I mean, yeah, half the country is on the anti Trump meme and the other half is on the pro Trump meme. But everybody can get together and mock OpenAI. It is true.

[Dave Bittner]

The criminals got crimed.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know, I know. It's like, oh, somebody's upset that you stole their work. Hmm. Wonder who else could be upset by that.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah. And Gadget had a great headline. OpenAI suddenly thinks intellectual property theft is not cool.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, Seriously.

[Dave Bittner]

Because again, it is important to point out, just in case you've been Living under a rock for some time. OpenAI did admit last year that it would have been impossible to train today's leading AI models without using copyrighted materials. Again, OpenAI is built on stealing IP.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep, so is Llama. Facebook's OpenAI.

[Dave Bittner]

All of them are.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All of them. They all are. They all are. So they basically all steal from each other. And you know, all of this tech comes out of academia anyway. It's just, it's everybody stealing from everybody and everybody's taking these giant, huge, ungodly sized bags of money to waste on this shit. And I was just thinking this morning, I'm like, this just harkens back to Uber. You know, Uber just took all the money that they possibly could from as many investors that they could to waste it on their, their business model, saying we're just going to make it up at scale by losing money and never turned a profit except one year or one quarter. Even where it was just some, some shenanigans in the bookkeeping finally came back to roost. Haven't. Haven't turned a profit since. I guess maybe Uber Eats did a little bit. But the point here is that they're spending all this money and people are wondering why nobody gives a shit about AI because they're losing their jobs to AI. And seeing these people spend all of this money on server farms that they don't get to work at and can probably drive by for 20 minutes on their way to their minimum wage job if they can get it. It's just, it's pissing people off hearing about how much money is being spent on this.

[Dave Bittner]

Well, and again, for, for what? For what? What are we actually really getting from this? Yes. Okay. It helps you write an email, but if you try to use it for research, it, it makes up facts. They all hallucinate, they all tell you incorrect things. If you. Do we need more AI art. We absolutely do not. I do not need to destroy a lake to have AI make a picture of a platypus eating a pineapple. I just don't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Shrimp Jesus. Shrimp Jesus.

[Dave Bittner]

Shrimp Jesus. I mean, what. This stuff is genuinely, for the most part, useless.

[Brian Schulmeister]

What they're saying though, Brian, if you listen to the words that come out of their mouths, they're saying that someday soon they're going to be able to cure cancer and give us all back the time that we so desperately want to spend with our kids, our dogs, our pets, Huddles. We starved in a tiny apartment with.

[Dave Bittner]

17 other families eating dog food.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, eating the dog food because we've already eaten the dogs because we just can't afford anything else.

[Dave Bittner]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No. And, and then Sam Altman comes out and I don't know if you caught this clip on a podcast. He's like, not just yet, but maybe by like 2030. We're definitely going to have to rethink the social contract. I'm like, who the fuck are you to walk into our world and tell us? Because your little computer program is so good at making shit up that you can rewrite how the entirety of fucking society works, you arrogant piece of shit.

[Dave Bittner]

Also, I'd start on that now, by the way. Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, let's not wait until it's too late, which is kind of what we're talking here.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They also don't disclose how much money they spend on security because these guys make the Secret Service probably look like amateurs compared to, you know, with how much security these guys need around them.

[Dave Bittner]

There's so many good memes about that. Like, we're going to need a bigger Luigi.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I have not seen that one.

[Dave Bittner]

Oh, that one's so good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus. Shrimp. Shrimp, Jesus. So, yeah, that's been the week in AI so far. This episode is brought to you by Factor. Ready to crush your nutrition goals this year? Meet Factor, the meal delivery service that makes eating well effortless and delicious. Factor's chef crafted dietitian approved meals are designed to fuel your body and fit your busy lifestyle. And the best part? They're ready in just two minutes. That's right. No prep, no mess, just heat and eat. Factor offers over 40 weekly options tailored to your dietary needs. Whether you're into keto, calorie, Smart, Protein plus or just want wholesome balanced meals plus, they've got add ons like smoothies, breakfasts and snacks to keep you energized all day long. Get ready to savor dishes like chicken and mushroom cauli rice risotto with roasted green beans and pearl onions. Creamy, comforting and guilt free and delicious. We had this on Monday. So good. Parmesan and sun dried tomato chicken penne paired with perfectly roasted vegg for a hearty Italian inspired treat. And the list goes on. They're so good. Factor even helps you stay on track with their keto meals. Proven to help some people lose up to eight pounds in eight weeks. Results may vary, but the convenience that's guaranteed. Eat smart with Factor. Get [e-mail] Grumpy 50 off and use code GRUMPY50OFF to get 50% off your first box. Plus free shipping. That's code GRUMPY for 50 [e-mail] GRUMPTY50OFF to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. That code one more time is grumpy. The number 50 off to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by Deleteme. Have you ever stopped to think about how much of your personal information is floating around online? Your name, address, phone number, even your family details. It's all out there, thanks to data brokers making a profit from your private info. This can lead to phishing attempts, harassment, or identity theft. For someone like me who shares their thoughts online, privacy and security aren't just concerns, they're necessities. As a professional nerd, I know how much work it takes to manually go after all these scumbags. And that's why we here at Grumpy Old Geeks choose Deleteme. Deleteme is a subscription service designed to protect your privacy by removing your personal information from hundreds of data brokers websites. Here's how it works. You provide Deleteme with the information you want removed and their experts take care of the rest. They don't just stop there. They send you personalized privacy reports detailing what info they found, where they found it and what they've removed. It's not a one time fix either. DeleteMe keeps working, constantly monitoring and removing your data so you can focus on living your life instead of worrying about your online footprint. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners. Take 20% off your delete me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com gog and use promo code GOG at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com GOG and enter code GOG at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com, code Goggle.

[Dave Bittner]

Well, there's, there's a little bit more. I, I did want to talk about this one really briefly because I found this one hilarious. And you know, again, on this show we've often talked about we need regulation, we need laws. And as we always talk about with Dave, when Dave comes on, it really only affects. This stuff only happens if it affects the people that are in power and making laws. So it never really happens and it's always way too late. Well, the California's AG is trying to get ahead of the Game here. Rob Bont, he basically came out and issued a statement that basically says, everything that you AI companies are doing is illegal. Everything.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Mic drop done.

[Dave Bittner]

Pretty much. The link is in the show notes because it gets really in depth on this and I don't want to. We've already babbling away like no tomorrow, and it's kind of dry and boring, as it should be because he's the AG and he has to present a lawsuit. But yeah, it's just basically everything that you're doing is illegal. Why are you being able to get away with this?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Didn't stop Uber.

[Dave Bittner]

Nope, nope, never did. But, you know, we spent 10 years on the show screaming about Uber.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, nobody listened. Nobody listened. Yeah, it's almost like. It's almost like blockchain and NFTs never happened.

[Dave Bittner]

They might have listened to us there a little bit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

A little bit. I think we may have. We may have moved the needle a little on NFTs, maybe just a little bit. But the US Copyright Office is back saying that, yeah, you can copyright some AI stuff if humans had a hand in creating it. A significant hand.

[Dave Bittner]

Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So you have to have significant creative input. Yes. Such as modifying or arranging the AI's output. But merely providing prompts does not meet the threshold.

[Dave Bittner]

All right, so if I take Shrimp Jesus and I put a Blur Gaussian filter on it, we're cool.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that might do it.

[Dave Bittner]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That might do it. Yep. Oh, God. So, and here's another one. Brian, you know, you asked, what is it good for? What is AI good for? OpenAI says it plans to let the US National Laboratories, the Department of the Energies Network R and D labs, use its AI models for nuclear weapons security and other scientific projects. Great.

[Dave Bittner]

Now I'm just going to point out something here. You did a little experiment on our Discord Channel where you.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, I did.

[Dave Bittner]

You asked various AI models who you were as a podcaster. None of them got it right. None of them. And then I put myself in and I did it as well. And somehow I'm hosting, basically, I'm hosting a lot of murder, murder, crime and real crime shows. Apparently, this is the tech that is now going to control our news.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah, apparently Joe Rogan owes me a bunch of money because I came from the Joe Rogan show and I too am a true crime podcaster. Yeah, no, it was just pure poppycock, as they say.

[Dave Bittner]

And I am going to point out that if old school Google could tell us who we were.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, even Gemini, Google's actual AI kind of fucked it up. Too. If you just googled Jason DeFilippo, podcaster, you got the actual results of what I've done. But if you ask the AI. Yeah. It just doesn't. It just kind of makes shit up.

[Dave Bittner]

So let's put them in charge of the nukes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly. So OpenAI will work with Microsoft to deploy a model on the supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The model will be a shared resource for scientists from Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia National Labs.

[Dave Bittner]

Yay. Going back to. Nobody ever reads anymore, obviously. Absolutely nobody has read a dystopian sci fi book over there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's Sandia. I think I mispronounced that. David Teeter will let me know if.

[Dave Bittner]

I'm going to be in a gaping hole in a few minutes, so who cares?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Great. Great. Well, some people are fighting back. I don't know if you've seen this. Faceless YouTube channels are gaining traction, Brian, because many creators are using AI tools to automate everything from scripts to visuals. And while some see this as a quick way to profit, others are fighting back against unethical practices like transcript theft. Well, one YouTuber, fami, has taken a creative stand by poisoning her subtitles to confuse AI systems attempting to summarize her content. And this is the only reason I put this in here. Using the ass subtitle format, she embeds invisible junk data that disrupts AI processing while remaining undetectable to human viewers.

[Dave Bittner]

Nice.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, I did not know that there was a ass format, but I am all about the ass.

[Dave Bittner]

I like dot ass. And I cannot lie. All other AI deny.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Why don't you get that AI to write you some. Some song lyrics for that?

[Dave Bittner]

I'd rather hire Weird Al because then it'll make sense.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's true. That's true. I'm sure he could use the. Use the. No, he has all the cash. He doesn't.

[Dave Bittner]

He's fine. Movies, touring, he's fine.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, he's gonna tour till he's dead, so I've never seen him in live.

[Dave Bittner]

Oh, he's great.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's what everybody says.

[Dave Bittner]

Phenomenal. Highly recommend. I mean, you don't have to do it more than once, trust me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But yeah, the one time that I was actually going to go was the year that he was doing the. The tour of just his original work and. Which I'd have been fine with because I don't know if you notice, but Weird Al's original work is pretty good.

[Dave Bittner]

Christmas at Ground Zero, one of my favorites.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nature trail to hell. Come on, come on. All right, moving on here. In the most Onion but not Onion headline this week, everything I say leaks. Zuckerberg says in leaked meeting audio. At an all hands meeting Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg did not discuss the company's recent $25 million settlement with. What did I call him last. Last week? P. Donny. P. Donny, yeah. Which includes $22 million for the future Trump presidential library. Which is fucking ironic since most of his followers can't read however fucking of.

[Dave Bittner]

His ghost written book sitting there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's the. It's the Trump Bible. That's all it's going to be. However, he did acknowledge increasing concerns over internal leaks, stating, everything I say leaks and it sucks, right? Actually no, we think it's fucking great, dude. We just go to llama and see what's in the. In your model since you're stealing probably from your own meeting notes. Due to repeated leaks, Meta has changed its Q and A format, moving to a pre voted poll system. Instead of open questions, Zuckerberg admitted some topics were quote unquote, value destroying to discuss publicly but promised employees could provide feedback.

[Dave Bittner]

I know something else that Zuckerberg has that is value destroying everything.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Meta. Meta, yes. During the meeting he reiterated past comments predicting open source AI will surpass closed systems and discussing metashift to align more with the Trump administration. He says this creates an opportunity for productive relationship with the US Government. Right, Great. You know the only reason he cares about this is because Trump said so many times that he's going to throw his ass in jail.

[Dave Bittner]

Yep. We've got a president that ran for president to not be thrown in jail and now we've got Zuckerberg's kissing his ass to not be thrown in jail.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that's pretty much it. That's is the fear of going to jail all the way down. Don't drop the soap. I guess you're not allowed to say that anymore. I guess that's not woken.

[Dave Bittner]

Oh, you can now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's right.

[Dave Bittner]

Say whatever you want. You can bring back your favorite R word. But don't, please.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm not. I'm not. Don't worry. Don't worry.

[Dave Bittner]

But you totally could.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, yes. Yes. Hey, MoviePass is back in the news. Let's get back to some. Let's go back to the hits, Brian. Let's get back to the hits.

[Dave Bittner]

Oh, can I go watch movies with it now?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I think you can, but they might be moving to crypto and blockchain and web 3, so.

[Dave Bittner]

And digital wallets. And NFTs.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right. Oh, my. Oh, my.

[Dave Bittner]

Great.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dave Bittner]

Wow. See the thing that gets me nuts. Okay, pivot. I understand. I understand that companies need to pivot sometimes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Dave Bittner]

Generally it's when they have a brand name that inspires confidence and loyalty. Nobody gives a fuck about moverpass as a brand. Yeah, it's been destroyed and dragged through the mud. Just shutter it and start something new.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know, like Radio Shack had a brand then that was purchased and then turned into crypto that at least they, they spent decades and almost a century building the Radio Shack brand to destroy it with crypto. MoviePass. We don't even have a decade of MoviePass yet. Come on.

[Dave Bittner]

No. And it's a. It's a brand that's now been destroyed at least three times.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly. There. There are documentaries about how MoviePass has been destroyed, but I guess the argument.

[Dave Bittner]

Would be all press is good press. You know the name, right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's right. And they say, hey, subscribers watched 1 million films last year and we have a mailing list. Yeah, the hits just keep on coming with crypto and moviepass. What do you got?

[Dave Bittner]

Yep. Well, we got some, some unionization news. Whole Foods workers formed the first union since the Amazon acquisition. The majority of workers at a Whole Foods location in Philadelphia has voted to unionize. As. As reported by Reuters. Let's cast back our minds just last week. It's no secret that Amazon isn't exactly a friend to unions because when workers in Quebec unionized last year, but then they shut it down. So I expect that the Whole Foods location in Philadelphia will be the soon to be closed location for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with unionization. So good luck with that, guys.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But yeah, I saw a great joke this week. How do you tell a plumber from a physicist out, have them pronounce unionize?

[Dave Bittner]

No.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Takes a second.

[Dave Bittner]

Yep, got it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, pretty good.

[Dave Bittner]

And then, hey there, last week or a few weeks back, we were talking about the trend in stores everywhere about how everything is locked up and there's one employee who's Gen Z who came late to work and is dressed inappropriately and has a bad attitude and can't be found to open up the thing so you can get your deodorant. So instead you press a button. A button. And you sit there and you wait for 15 minutes until he ambles over and opens it up and you can get your deodorant and then go pay for it. Probably with crypto and how annoying it is and how it makes us not want to shop anymore. And then we feed the Bezos beast to have it. Just show it up at our house because we didn't have to sit and wait for 15 minutes to get the deodorant. And this is how we're destroying our lives. Well, CVS has a new app today that will help solve this problem. Yes, if you get their app, because they're trying to push you to get their app, and you've logged in and you've put in your credit card and you've joined the store's WiFi and you've enabled Bluetooth on your phone, you will be able to unlock cabinets by yourself now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yay.

[Dave Bittner]

Or you could just not have them locked up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Shop at Amazon, like you said. Come on. Yeah, let's make some more big penis rockets for Bezos. Hey, and going back to the hits, Brian, Uber's back in the news. Uber has filed a racketeering lawsuit in New York. A surprising.

[Dave Bittner]

Hold on. It has to be the wrong way around, isn't it? New York has filed a racketeering lawsuit against Uber.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, no. That's what I'm saying. Yes. It's a pivot, Brian. It's a pivot. Okay, so Uber is alleging a criminal scheme involving law firms, doctors, and clinics staging fake car accidents to exploit the state's no fault insurance system. All right, the company claims that since 2019, these groups have exaggerated injuries from minor collisions and subjected victims to unnecessary and invasive medical procedures, including spinal surgeries to inflate insur. Payouts.

[Dave Bittner]

Wow.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Uber, which is required by New York law to carry substantial liability insurance for drivers and passengers, says it has borne the financial burden of these fraudulent claims.

[Dave Bittner]

But we're just an app, Jason.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. Just a platform. Just a platform.

[Dave Bittner]

Yep. We're just an app. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Y. This mirrors a similar lawsuit by the American Transit Insurance Company, which alleged $450 million in fraud.

[Dave Bittner]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

In response to rising insurance fraud concerns, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has proposed reforms to strengthen fraud investigations.

[Dave Bittner]

Meaning they're going to pump it through an AI?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Probably. Probably. Meanwhile, Uber recently influenced legislation to ease insurance requirements for its drivers in the state. So, okay, now I have some experience with this in California from the periphery, seeing some people that go through accidents and how they have to navigate the insurance systems. And there is basically an industrial medical complex that is built around bilking the insurance agencies for everything that they can possibly get. I've seen multiple people go through this, and it's just mind boggling how evil it is. And I was on. I actually did jury Duty in Santa Monica. I think I talked about it on the show when I was going through it and one of the doctors that was up as a, as an expert witness was one of the doctors I knew somebody had gone to that was actually trying to juice the system to get more money out of it. And I tried to call bullshit in the, in the deliberation room and nobody believed me. And I'm like, I give up, I give up. If you're going to give them money, let's give them all the money. So, yeah, so I, yeah, I don't think Uber is probably out of turn.

[Dave Bittner]

No. The whole system is so whacked. You know what happens if you get in a car accident here in Canada?

[Brian Schulmeister]

The state comes by and gives you maple cookies.

[Dave Bittner]

You get treated. Oh that, yeah, there you go. No bills.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No, not here. Tesla has announced plans to launch its robo taxi business and begin pilot production of its unmanned humanoid robot Optimus US in 2025.

[Dave Bittner]

Wait, why do we even need a robot in it? I thought the whole point was the car self driving.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, no, no, the robots for the factories that make the self driving taxis. Come on Brian, get with the program.

[Dave Bittner]

I thought it was like the Rex from Star Tours would be in front of every car.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I remember that.

[Dave Bittner]

Okay, that's not going to happen. We know that's not going to happen.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We know it's not going to happen. We know it's not going to happen. And the funny thing is they Tesla just, just put out a video of. Oh look, our cars can now deliver themselves from the factory to the shipping stations using fully, you know, fully self driving technology. And they think that this is their breakthrough that says, hey, we're going to make it now. We're so. This is so awesome. Well, turns out like BMW and all the German car companies have had that for almost a decade now. This car's been able to drive themselves from the factory to where they need to go inside of the system forever. So this is nothing new. Sorry Tesla. And sorry Elon, you're fucking lying again. And one, one article that I did not have time to put in here, which is so Elon has said for a very long time now that all of the Teslas that have been delivered have the necessary hardware to be fully self driving when the software is enabled. Well, he lied again. So now it turns out that he's going to have to take these cars back and retrofit them with the new computers that are going to be quote unquote, fully self driving. Enabled. Now, none of those computers come with LIDAR cameras or anything of the sort like the Waymos have, which we'll talk about in a second. So this is a big thing. And he says, yeah, yeah, it's going to be painful, but we're going to have to do it. So apparently version 2 of the computers they have will not do it. Version three is somewhat okay in version four, which I guess is shipping now as the one that's going to be the fully self driving. But he's lied about everything else. So what makes you want to believe him for anything that he says?

[Dave Bittner]

I don't know why people would believe a bunch of liars.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't know. I don't know.

[Dave Bittner]

Doesn't make sense.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They sure as hell wouldn't vote for them.

[Dave Bittner]

No, of course not. Somebody that just repeatedly lies and it's proven that he's lied multiple times somehow know they're just running our government now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Yep, yep. Now back to Waymo. Now we talked about how Waymo launched here in Southern California and I've been, I've been kind of excited to try one out. This has made me not want to try one out as much. So the other night over at. By the Beverly Center. Yep. On La Cienigan third.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, yeah. Used to live right around there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah. It used to be a nice neighborhood, right? Yeah, yeah. No, it's a dystopian hellscape. Now a Waymo robo taxi at about 4am was set upon by about 40 to 50 hooligans and scoundrels and basically destroyed. They ripped this thing apart.

[Dave Bittner]

While I applaud the sentiments, well, I applaud the sentiment.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[Dave Bittner]

No, don't do this. And nothing good happens at 4 in the morning. And why 40 or 50? It feels like a flash mob.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It was one of the street takeovers. I don't know. You haven't been here much, much lately, Brian. But we have a. There's a plague in Los Angeles called the quote unquote street takeover where hordes of youngsters in their fast and furious mobiles will basically do donuts in hoot and holler and run each other over until the popo comes and are chased off and they scatter like cockroaches. This is a thing. It is a problem. People are getting killed at these things and they're just annoying and they're stupid. Well, this, apparently this Waymo kind of meandered into one.

[Dave Bittner]

Okay, well I'm not. I'm pretty sure we're not going to be Able to convince these kids they should actually just go read.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, we're not. This is the problem. So I want to know, is there a fucking panic mode on the waymos? Because if I'm a passenger, in a way mo and I am beset upon by said hooligans, I want to press the get me the fuck out of here button. That's going to run them over and say, I will accept liability for any and all injuries that you, you may. May incur in getting me the fuck out of here.

[Dave Bittner]

Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't think that that button exists.

[Dave Bittner]

No. Because they would get sued out of existence from the first person they ran over.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that's the problem. But they're. Yeah. And if the people are, you know, dragged from the car and murdered in the street, there's nobody left to sue them, I guess. But maybe the family of the people.

[Dave Bittner]

But again, make sure you kill them all.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's why they ask you for your personal family history when you sign up for a Waymo account. So they know how to clean the slate when. When it's done that it's kind of troubling that I would like to know how they react in a crisis situation. That's what I would like to know. And I would probably like to have bulletproof glass on them maybe too. That would be nice.

[Dave Bittner]

But real bulletproof glass.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Not Elon, not Tesla. Bulletproof glass.

[Dave Bittner]

Not Tesla, which is quote, quote, bulletproof, quote.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I want Alphabet bulletproof glass. So, yeah, that's the latest news on WAYMO here in Los Angeles.

[Dave Bittner]

But fantastic.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But since we're still in California, a little more California. California law enforcement misused state databases more than 7,000 times in 2023. Now here's where it gets fun.

[Dave Bittner]

Okay?

[Brian Schulmeister]

A state report found officers access the California law enforcement telecommunication System, or clits for unauthorized background checks on concealed carry applicants and even personal vendettas.

[Dave Bittner]

Well, I, I know, you know, you know, you gotta bend it for a little humor.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Come on. Law enforcement is abusing the clits. So you have to, you have to put this in the news. It's important.

[Dave Bittner]

You just touch the clits and it reacts.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know. Yes. And KLITS violations are among the few law enforcement abuses that require mandatory reporting. Because you know you need to be reported when you're abusing the clits. That. Yeah, yeah. No arguments and misuse of the clits has led to 24 officers being suspended, six resigning and nine being fired. So why were you fired, Joe? I abused the clits. I can't help but you know, just.

[Dave Bittner]

That's one of the things you've been waiting all week to do that story.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I just found this five minutes before we went to air. Come on. This just made my day. I'm like, can we have something that's not AI Please? This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by Deleteme. Have you ever stopped to think about how much of your personal information is floating around online? Your name, address, phone number, even your family details. It's all out there, thanks to data brokers making a profit from your private info. This can lead to phishing attempts, harassment, or identity theft. For someone like me who shares their thoughts online, privacy and security aren't just concerns, they're necessities. As a professional nerd, I know how much work it takes to manually go after all these scumbags. And that's why we here at Grumpy Old Geeks choose delete me. DeleteMe is a subscription service designed to protect your privacy by removing your personal information from hundreds of data broker websites. Here's how it works. You provide Deleteme with the information you want removed and their experts take care of the rest. They don't just stop there. They send you personalized privacy reports detailing what info they found, where they found it and what they've removed. It's not a one time fix either. DeleteMe keeps working, constantly monitoring and removing your data so you can focus on living your life instead of worrying about your online footprint. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners. Take 20% off your delete me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com gog and use promo code GOG at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com GOG and enter code GOG at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com, code Goggle Media candy.

[Dave Bittner]

All right, so yeah, we. We got a Star Trek movie, did we? No, we absolutely did not. Star Trek Section 31 came out last week. This is the long discussed show about the shadowy not involved in any way shape with Starfleet except for the Starfleet officer that was put on the task force from section 31 for the show.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And Transporters.

[Dave Bittner]

Transporters with Michelle Yao. And it was going to be a series and we all looked forward to that. And then it got cut down to a movie and we were all still kind of looking forward to it. And then it came out and we, we're just never going to discuss it again.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, you know, this isn't a Star Trek movie, Brian. This is a Power Rangers movie because Michelle Yeoh played Rita Repulsa in this movie.

[Dave Bittner]

It was, We've talked about this before. It's like we, it's, it's not even that it was a bad Star Trek film. It's a bad sci fi film.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's just, it's just a bad film.

[Dave Bittner]

It's just that film, it's not good. It's. Again, people seem to forget what the, the point of Star Trek is. And it's not to be. Sure there's some action, but it's not supposed to be an action movie or an action series. It's supposed to be deep thoughts and ponderings and philosophy and deep questions about life. That's why we like Star Trek. And I don't even know why I'm unintentionally kind of going into a William Shatner cadence when I was doing that, but I did.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There's nothing to do with this.

[Dave Bittner]

And, and, but instead we get pumped out. And that was the problem with the whole reboot with JJ Abrams as well, is we get pumped out these crappy films that aren't Star Trek and it's just not good. And again to, as, as we just said, it's just not even a good movie anyways. It's, it's just crap. And I, I heard that it has the lowest rating of any Star Trek film ever. And to people that have put it that low, I would say go back and watch the first, the first Star Trek movie, Star Trek the Motion Picture. It does not have legs. And I would argue that that is probably the worst Star Trek movie.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I beg to differ. The Undiscovered country takes the cake.

[Dave Bittner]

No, I'd still, I'd put that higher than section 31.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay. This guy, Omari Hardwick, who played Alok Sahar, I just think they couldn't get common for the role because all I saw. Because he was busy on Silo. Exactly.

[Dave Bittner]

I will say that I found some parts of the characters, some of the characters were very interesting. I think had this been a series and they could have spent less time doing action and more time exploring the concepts. It perhaps could have been good, except for the stupid Vulcan that inexplicably had an Irish accent and was actually just a microscopic creature driving the Vulcan meat suit. That character was a fucking waste of time. And the dumb.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The Men in Black Ification of Star Trek.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So no this was just. This was a hot mess. It was just a hot mess.

[Dave Bittner]

If you'd like to go watch some good Sci Fi, you've. You've got a little bit of time left. The Expanse's first three seasons are leaving Amazon very soon, unfortunately. We have to remember that it actually started on Sci Fi Channel for seasons one through three, and then Amazon saved it and brought it back and revived it and kept it going for a few more seasons. And the Expanse is absolutely wonderful. So if you've never seen it, get on it really quick, because I don't think anybody knows where those first three seasons are going to go. Obviously, they're going to land somewhere, but there's no deal in place, as far as I know right now for those first three seasons. So go catch them before they leave. You have until February 7th. And thank you Nerdist for the PSA about this.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nerdist is something that I haven't heard in quite some time.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, we used to. I used to visit that site all basically daily, and I have not thought about them for at least a decade.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. And then this. This podcast would not exist if it wasn't for the Nerdist podcast with Chris Hardwick, who was the head of Nerdist. He was the creator of the Nerdist. And who is. He's. Him and Neil Gaiman are hanging out right now doing. Doing whatever those guys do. I think Chris Hardwick was exonerated, so they say. Because I think he's exonerated now. This is obviously supposition and conspiracy theory because, you know, he married.

[Dave Bittner]

We're just asking questions.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah. The fact that he married a Hearst and had a show on NBC had nothing to do with it at all, I'm sure.

[Dave Bittner]

No.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But what I remembered about Chris Hardwick was a fantastic show he did called At Midnight and At Midnight.

[Dave Bittner]

After Midnight.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, it was at Midnight back in the day. That was the thing, because they used the sign. It Is After Midnight is the technical name for it.

[Dave Bittner]

Gotcha.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Because there's a whole thing. You have to. It was a visual pun, but the thing about it is it was gone. It was a great show. I loved it. I watched it all the time. It has been rebooted on cbs.

[Dave Bittner]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And it is back with. What's her name? Something. Tomlinson.

[Dave Bittner]

Taylor Tomlinson.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Taylor Tomlinson. I was gonna say Lily Tomlinson. No, Taylor Tomlinson.

[Dave Bittner]

I find her appealing. She's got the rizz, as the kids would say.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, she's great. She is great. First time I saw her, years ago when she was just starting out. And I am so glad that she has, she has climbed the ranks to making all the money now since she has a good show. So good for her.

[Dave Bittner]

You don't get paid like you used to.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's true, that's true. Yeah. And there's probably no residuals for that show because it is kind of a timely show. But anyway, I'm very happy that she has a gigantic. And I cannot wait to start watching this. It's on regular cbs. I thought it was just on Paramount plus and I'm like, oh God, am I going to have to go steal this every day at Sweden? I'm not paying for Paramount plus because they just gave me Section 31 and I'm going to boycott them on sheer principle.

[Dave Bittner]

But until, until they bring back the Star Trek series.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly.

[Dave Bittner]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. When's, when's the next one dropping?

[Dave Bittner]

Wow, it's going to be a while. There's, I think they're actually here in Toronto shooting.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh God, come on, hurry up. But yeah, it's on regular TV Monday through Thursday just like the old series was. So I am very much looking forward to that. That was such a good show, such a good show, such a good premise, lots of good stand up comics and I'm sure she is going to be a fine, a fine steward of the brand.

[Dave Bittner]

All right. And speaking of good shows that have been rebooted, kind of remember good old MTV's behind the Music.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I sure do.

[Dave Bittner]

Well, that was great and I loved it. It's on Paramount plus now and they say that it's been rebooted, but not really. So what they've done is for some of the episodes they've gone back and shot new footage and new interviews with the bands that are still around. Like Duran Duran, which was a good one. But for most of them they have not. They've just cherry picked some of the old episodes and put them back up. So I only watched a handful on the genres of music I like. There's an awful lot of rap and hip hop and I just, just don't care enough to watch the episodes. So as far as I can tell, it's only Duran Duran that got the, got the new version. None of the other bands that I watched did. But it's still, it's behind the Music and it's great. And, and I just, it's a wonderful, wonderful vehicle for musicians to talk about themselves and get the history and lowdown of what happened. So that was, it's a, it's a nice Find.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, still not going to get me to subscribe to Paramount plus.

[Dave Bittner]

But once you do for Star Trek, we can watch those too.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay. Yes. Once the Strange New Worlds comes back back, we'll talk. We'll talk.

[Dave Bittner]

And Questlove has put together a documentary called ladies and gentlemen, 50 years of SNL music. So Saturday Night Live music right up my alley. Definitely something I wanted to watch. Nobody I know subscribes to Peacock tv so I could not get a login anywhere to go on and watch this, this movie. You thankfully went to Sweden for me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And to save the day.

[Dave Bittner]

Yes, Jason did save the day link or save the day for me. You sent it to me. I started streaming it last night from my lapy Toppy. But it is almost three hours long. Not three hours. It's like two hours. But this thing aired on NBC originally, so you got to figure that was a three hour time block on NBC if it's two hours of straight video.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right. Maybe it was a multi night affair.

[Dave Bittner]

I don't know. Because God, when was the last time you watched NBC? Yeah, so, so who knows? But anyways, I've watched the first hour. I didn't finish it last night because I finished a book which we'll get to later instead. Phenomenal. It's. It's a really great documentary. It's. It really does go back over the 50 years of, of different performances with behind the scenes discussions and a lot of the comedy sketches that involve music and everything. It's just really great. And it really hits home to remind me how good SNL used to be. Be.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, it used to be phenomenal. Used to be phenomenal.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah. I don't know if it still is. I, I hear they're having a resurgence these days.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's better this. The, the 50. Yeah, the 50 year anniversary episodes there have been some, some winners and a lot of losers. The news is still the best thing to watch, but surprisingly the best episode that I've seen of the the whole run was the Bad Bunny episode. He was hilarious.

[Dave Bittner]

He's a funny guy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was good.

[Dave Bittner]

And the other thing that you alerted me to this week, which I kind of knew about but then forgot and then you reminded me right when it was happening. So I was able to, to take a take a gander was one of my favorite industrial bands from my youth front 242 have decided to retire and they played their final show live in, in Belgium. And the YouTube link is in the show notes if you want to go watch a bunch of 60 year old men that don't quite fit into those outfits anymore, stomping around very slowly.

[Brian Schulmeister]

50 pounds of. In a five pound bag.

[Dave Bittner]

But some great songs, I mean they're one of those bands that the first like three or four albums like I could put on at any point in time and every album after that has sucked. So it is what it is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So speaking of music, old music, I've had this song stuck in my head for a while because I've been having this recurring dream for the past couple weeks. And it. It basically. You remember the beginning of Shaun of the Dead where they did this beautiful TV montage like they were flipping the channels and they were just little snippets of each show that were telling what was going on with the zombie apocalypse that was coming. Yeah, some of the greatest filmmaking ever made as far as I'm concerned. But it starts off with the Smiths Panic on the streets of London, which is the song Panic.

[Dave Bittner]

Great song.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Most people don't listen to the Smiths as much as they used to anymore. Because they should though, because you know, we're old. The. The main refrain of that song is Hang the dj. Well, yeah, in my dream now this is. I had to do a little bit of Googling this morning and I did it through a VPN just so I wouldn't get flagged for national security issues. Hang the dj. Also, you can replace that with Hang DJT and have a completely different song and a completely different set of words. And that's what's been in my dream all week.

[Dave Bittner]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So I'm assuming someone out there has made a song like that. But if you haven't there. I'm just putting it out there. Feel free to. Probably you don't want to do that in America because I think the Secret Service might pay you a visit. Even though it could be done in good fun. But it was just. I don't know. But I got me. Exactly. That's my man right there. But that just got me listening to the Smiths again, which is a good thing because I love lists.

[Dave Bittner]

Let me tell you one of the reasons why people from our generation probably aren't listening to the Smiths as much as we should and newer generations aren't listening to the Smiths as much as they should. Morrissey has done an excellent job of movie passing the Smith brand over the years.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay. Does he have a meme coin?

[Dave Bittner]

No, he's just an ignorant.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, well, kind of been doing that since day one, hasn't he?

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, but he used to Write better tunes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that's true.

[Dave Bittner]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. If you could tap your toe to it, that's fine. But if you do want to listen to the Smiths, I would recommend not going to Amazon Music Unlimited because they're raising their prices again, going from 9.99amonth to 10.99amonth, which is surprising since I don't know anybody that, you know, voluntarily uses Amazon Music for.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, certainly nobody that pays for it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, no, I tried it for a while just to, you know, just to road test it for the show and it's like, yeah, no, surprisingly, it's got a worse interface than Spotify on the mobile app, which is difficult. Which is extremely difficult because the Spotify mobile app is just fucking garbage.

[Dave Bittner]

It is difficult. But if you do happen to listen to most of your music through an Amazon Echo or Alexa or anything like that, and if you've got the screens like I do, so I can call my mom and things like that, it will actually display lyrics if you play the stuff off Amazon Music.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, how nice is that? How nice is that?

[Dave Bittner]

I actually just heard my Amazon Alexa from downstairs. Just try to talk back to me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They got ears. They're listening, motherfucker.

[Dave Bittner]

They do.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But speaking of things that suck, the Night Agent season to on Netflix came out this week. I. The Night Agent was one of those shows that was kind of like, you know, it's kind of like shitter Sci Fi. It's there, you watch it, you know, it's not very good, but then you got to get to the end. Yeah, my roommate and I just, we. We got eight episodes in out of the 10 episodes and said, no, we're not going to waste two more hours. It is so fucking bad. It is poorly written, poorly acted, the plot is just stupid, and you can just see them in ChatGPT going, we need another episode here. Write one. And it doesn't have to make any sense. Don't worry about it. People are going to watch anyway. They'll watch anything on Netflix, which is how this, the season progresses. It's awful. Don't waste your time. That's all I'm saying. Apps and doodads.

[Dave Bittner]

Well, iOS 18.3 is here. Jason Wee didn't really notice much, but they are trying to clearly label their Apple intelligence notification summaries so people don't lose their fricking minds like they were when they first rolled these things out. I left it on for like a hot second just to take a look. It's slightly better. It's still ugly. It still doesn't fit in with their beautiful interfaces and their beautiful layouts. It's. It's feels like they just cludged it on still. I don't think that's ever going to be fixed. And I immediately turned it all back off.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, that sounds about right.

[Dave Bittner]

There you go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. I don't. I have noticed that the little notification things come up, but I turn off that for almost everything anyway, so.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, it's like the opposite of the. The. The. The hot sauce that you put on buffalo wings. You put that on everything. I turn this off on everything.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Seriously?

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah. And I ran across a fun website that reminded me of the promise and joy that the Internet used to be. It's called Stimulation Clicker. And did you play around with this at all, Jason?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm doing it right now.

[Dave Bittner]

It's kind of an art project. It's meant to show how the Internet experience has matured and gotten and shittified and horrible.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Dave Bittner]

And it takes a little while to get into it, but once you do, you'll start to realize, oh, my God, we are genuine. Just. We are just nothing but mice in a cage clicking buttons. This is what our life has become.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, fortunately, we have the new AI agents that will click for us, so we don't even have to do this anymore. Yeah.

[Dave Bittner]

Anyways, it's a lot of fun, so well done, whoever did that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right. Friend of the show, Robert Fogarty sent me this one because this comes back to the. Like, the old jet trackers that Elon Musk had problems with. We now have POTUS tracker at potustracker Us. So if you just want to know where the. Where the felon is at any given time to keep your children away, don't say you don't want to take them to the park or anything. You can go to. Yeah, Potestracker US.

[Dave Bittner]

What are we, 9 days, 10 days in yet, so pretty soon, 17 months. This is just going to be golf courses. That's all you're going to see.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. 11 days. Today is day 11, I think. Something like that.

[Dave Bittner]

All right, well, you can track the POTUS if you want to be tracked by potus, at least until Musk and POTUS as a little thing blows up. You can start using X Payment app because God knows they're not going to keep any of that shit secret.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, yeah?

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah. They're getting ready to finally roll out the payments app the company's leaders have long been promising and absolutely nobody wants to use. The company will introduce X Money later this year with Visa As a partner. According to Yakirino, it will support person to person payments via users debit cards with the ability to transfer funds to a bank account. Much like Venmo, the service will also allow you to deposit money into an X wallet. They have not disclosed any specifics about how this will work for users or how it might make money off the service. X's business is of course struggling. Musk recently told employees that our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we're barely breaking even. Yet we did manage to buy the White House.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly.

[Dave Bittner]

Reported by the Wall Street Journal. So I, you know, nobody, absolutely nobody gave their credit cards to Meta. I'm not sure why Musk thinks they're going to do it at X.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And the interesting thing about this is, nowhere is mentioned Doge. I can't buy Doge with my X wallet. Or maybe my X wallet is just made of Doge. Hmm. That's where they're going to make their money. Yeah, yeah. No, I will not give you my fucking credit card, you asshat. Google is testing a new AI powered feature called Ask For Me, which makes phone calls to local businesses on behalf of users to check service availability and pricing. Now, I just want to know if Bart Simpson is the spokesperson for this because it seems like the ultimate crank call tool that I would love to play with.

[Dave Bittner]

Do you have 10 pound balls? How do you walk?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Is your refrigerator running? Well, you better go catch it.

[Dave Bittner]

If only we had something called websites that usually provide this information.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, or the telephone that you could call yourself with. I don't know how busy you are, you can't call to say, are you open?

[Dave Bittner]

Well, remember they've saved us from the scourge of clicking Jason.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So now this is not a new feature though. Remember they tried this like a couple years ago and you know, so you could call to make reservations for restaurants and as far as I know, I haven't really seen much of it since the technology demo from their demo day stuff. It hasn't really, hasn't really popped. It's not hot. They're not dropping it like it's hot. So, you know. Yeah, they just, they knew that they needed more, more headlines with the word AI powered in it. So they just pulled this one from the, from the.

[Dave Bittner]

What happened we stuck AI into yet? Oh, the old telephone.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, there we go. Soon aitp. Let me wipe that for you at the library.

[Dave Bittner]

Well, one of the reason I only finished an hour of that SNL music documentary instead of the full two hours is I Actually finished. Not till we are lost. Babiverse Book 5 by Dennis E. Taylor. It was delightful. I was so happy to read a really good book again. Thoroughly enjoyable. Massively left open for another book which I went and checked on his website. Actually I had Google call Dennis Dennis and ask him. But according to his website, he is working on future Babiverse books, but that's not going to be what's coming next from him. So we're going to have a little bit of a wait and even longer for me because I'm sure he's still in that shit. Amazon Audible deal.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I love that audible deal. It's great. And I love his one off books. I think his one off books are awesome. I like that he does. He follows our rule for series. He doesn't write. Write the books in order. He just takes a break in between books, writes something different and then comes back to it. I think that is the way to do it because it just keeps those Babiverse books on coming.

[Dave Bittner]

Yep.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I would, I wouldn't mind going back and reading bobaverse book one again.

[Dave Bittner]

I kind of feel like I want to too. Definitely. Because it's gotten so big now. I want to go back to when it was just, you know, just Bob.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, right.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Because Bob was the man. Bob was the man. I am reading a fun book called the Myth of Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor mate.

[Dave Bittner]

God, that sounds. Sounds wonderful. Sounds like a barrel of laughs.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It is a barrel of laughs. No, it's not. It's not at all. If you want to figure out why you do the things you do and who you are, why you are and all that stuff and. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, it's a, it's an eye opening read.

[Dave Bittner]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I'm learning a lot from it and I highly recommend it if you are suffering from undiagnosed childhood trauma, which I think after reading this book, everybody is. That's why nobody's normal. Highly recommend it. Highly recommend it.

[Dave Bittner]

But get right on that. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Just make sure you have.

[Dave Bittner]

Everything isn't shit enough.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Just make sure you have budget for your therapist or you live in a country with, with state sponsored health care.

[Dave Bittner]

Is all I'm saying. I'm just going to use AI healthcare. Don't, don't AI therapists. Just help me, Eliza. You're my only hope.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The Dark side with Dave. Welcome to the Dark side with Dave. Podcast super host Dave Bittner decodes all things cyber on the cyber wire every day. Exposes Deception with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans, dives deep into Privacy with Ben Yellen on Caveat, breaks down industrial cybersecurity on Control Loop and even brings the chuckles on only malware in the building. Hello, Dave.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Hello, gents.

[Dave Bittner]

Got a bit of news here about Star wars the Acolyte, which I think both Dave and I really enjoyed. And I did too. And Jason and a lot. But a lot of Star wars fans and fans may be questionable, did not and were very loud about it. And apparently that may be the real influence that actually cut the series and got it canceled. Because according to Deadline, which shared stats citing research from Luminate, which breaks down television's highs and lows of 2024, it was the second most watched show on Disney plus last year. Now, I don't know much about streaming business, but if you've got a show that is your second most watched show, you tend to keep it around.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Dave Bittner]

Now, I do understand it was incredibly expensive, but you can work on budgets, right? So it appears the toxic fandom that went after the show may have had more to do with it than anything else.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But they still watched. Who cares, Right?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, you know, Jason, I was thinking the same thing. Like, I think about, like, Rush Limbaugh, right. Who I try to think about as little as possible, but when I think about Rush Limbaugh, obviously he had a huge audience, but there were many, many people who listened to him because they hated him.

[Dave Bittner]

Hate watching is a thing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's why I listen to Scott Adams podcast. Right. That's exactly why I listen to that show.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And I'm sure we have hate listeners to this show. I'm sure there are.

[Dave Bittner]

Oh, we absolutely do.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, you should see the mail.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All they want to do is say, what are these idiots going to say now next? So they can feel better about themselves. And that's okay. Just keep your opinions to yourselves and please don't email us at int.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Apparently, Trump is our daddy, which is the most.

[Dave Bittner]

That one always comes in around four in the morning and it's very misspelled. So unsurprisingly, there's a very really drunk Trump fan out there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. So, yeah, I wonder if it came down to the expense or who knows what's happening behind the scenes on this one. It was odd. It seemed, you know, it was its own thing, but I thought that was part of its charm.

[Dave Bittner]

Well, yeah, and they certainly left it on a big, like, Star wars lore cliffhanger. Like, we found the evil daddy that led to Palpatine. You know. Right. And now we're just not gonna tell that story, even though it did very, very well for Disney.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, well, you know, we have the fan made show. Maybe they'll do a comic book or if there's an animated version. There's certainly lots of options. But I'm disappointed that it didn't get renewed. And this is surprising because this, this contradicts what I'd heard earlier, which was that it had been highly rated.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, that's what they said initially. That's, that's what everybody was saying, but apparently not. Not true.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So I wonder what ratings really mean these days on a streaming thing. I mean, obviously nothing will get back to the golden age of where half the nation was tuned in to watch the final episode of mash. But what is considered good for a show like this? How many viewers does that mean? And how do you monetize that?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Measure it in minutes. That's what they do nowadays, they measure it in minutes. So yeah, if you look at the numbers, Percy Jackson and the Olympians got the top spot with over 3 billion minutes viewed. And the acolyte came in second place with 2.7 billion minutes viewed. That's 2.7 billion minutes of human lifespan has been consumed by a show we will never get to see.

[Dave Bittner]

The end of 2.7 billion minutes feels like January.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's for sure. That's true. That's true. I mean, that's interesting because you think about the original blockbusters and certainly a movie like Star wars is up there in the canon of those films. And the success of that was people going to see it over and over and over again, you know, spending $3 on the. Right. Right. And so I wonder if what we're measuring is minutes, then do things like this have many, many repeat viewers? People are watching it over and over again. And that counts for something as well.

[Dave Bittner]

If that's the case. DuckTales is through the roof in this household, I'll tell you that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm sure that there is some algorithm that they run that says, okay, we spent this much money on bandwidth for the 2.7 billion minutes. How many new subscribers did we get? How many? You know, because they can track the subscription attrition and all that stuff based on all the different metrics. I'm sure that it's not just minutes viewed. There's gotta be some more secret sauce behind it if it's correct. Secret sauce? No idea. This just could be some exec at Disney going, well, it doesn't make us look Very good right now. So we better take that show down because people aren't liking it. You know, it could just be that.

[Dave Bittner]

But it's too woken. We have a new administration coming in.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Let's not go there.

[Dave Bittner]

Why not? The whole rest of the fucking world. Ass.

[Jason DeFilippo]

By the way, speaking of rewatching things, my family has taken on a complete start to finish rewatch of Gravity Falls. I don't know if either of you have enjoyed that show, but it's a fun one.

[Dave Bittner]

No, never heard of it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, really? Gravity Falls, it's an animated show. It's about two kids who go to live with their uncle in, I want to say, Oregon, and their uncle owns a roadside like Mystery Shack it's called. So it's one of those places where there's like a jackalope and a. You know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And. But the town is full of all sorts of mysterious things going on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So it's like Eerie Indiana kind of thing.

[Dave Bittner]

It's Goonies meets Twin Peaks.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And it's very funny. It is way more sophisticated than you think it is going into it. It's only two seasons, but it's one of those shows. Now I'm watching it through the second time and knowing how it ends. I'm seeing all of this stuff that leads to the end. Even in the first couple episodes. They're dropping clues about things that are going to be important way down the line. And so it's really fun. It's a smartly done animated show and it's funny and silly and there are lots of fun guest stars on it. So check it out. Yeah, it's worth a.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Where would one stream said Gravity Falls?

[Jason DeFilippo]

I think it's on Disney.

[Dave Bittner]

It's on Disney.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Dave Bittner]

All right. I'll have to check this out with the kiddo.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, exactly. The kiddo will love it. My. My youngest, Jack, who is 18 now, we started watching this together when it came out, which is probably 10 years ago.

[Dave Bittner]

Okay, perfect.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it's great.

[Dave Bittner]

That's got 100% on rotten tomatoes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There you go. Wow.

[Dave Bittner]

Never even heard of it. Awesome. Thanks, Dave.

[Jason DeFilippo]

My gift to you. Yeah, enjoy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Speaking of old shit, the Video Game History foundation has officially launched early access to its digital library, offering a treasure trove of video game history material for free.

[Dave Bittner]

Cool.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Yeah. The online archive includes over 1500 out of print magazines like. Like Electronic Gaming Monthly and Nintendo Power, as well as rare industry trade publications. I don't know about you guys, but EGM was my go to back in the day. Did you guys ever read that.

[Dave Bittner]

No, I never was aware of it, but you know. Yeah, I can't wait for somebody to bring back all the out of print tiger beats.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm sure you still have all of those hidden under your bed, Brian. It's okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Time for a day with Sean Cassidy.

[Dave Bittner]

Only the Coreys I kept.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[Dave Bittner]

You know.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, come on, Leif Garrett. I mean, all those.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, yeah. Classic. Classic.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right. I was reading computer magazines back then. I was not reading gaming magazines. I was not into any of the platforming stuff at that point in my life. I was playing lots of video games, but I was playing them on computers.

[Dave Bittner]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Although this mentions Myst and Riven, I definitely played Myst.

[Dave Bittner]

Me too.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Played that on a computer though, right?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. I mean, I think Myst was the reason I bought my first CD ROM drive. It's also interesting to think back to those days, a game like Myst, where it was just barely able to play video off of a CD ROM drive. You know, like you needed to have a 2x CD ROM drive to just get these little posters, postage stamp things of video.

[Dave Bittner]

God, I'm so nostalgic for the hours I spent an egghead buying new gear and games and leisure suit Larry and thinking that's going to be all salacious. And it wasn't.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I remember while I was playing Myst, I had a friend who was also playing it. I have a specific memory of saying to this friend, have you gotten to the thing with the severed head in the box? And he went, what? No. I said, oh, okay. Spoiler alert.

[Dave Bittner]

That is so my kid right now. Because I just got. He got a Nintendo Switch for Christmas. And like his conversations with his buddies at school now are all about, did you get to the level with the boss yet? And blah, blah, blah, blah. It's so fun to watch.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I remember around that time, Spaceship Warlock was one of my favorite games. It had the same kind of production quality as Myst as far as just like screens with a little bit of video over it. But it was about the song it had. It had a really catchy, terrible song. The game itself was garbage, but the song is what stuck with me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I remember the name. And had you not said it, that is not a memory that I think I ever would have pulled out of my brain archive. The other one I remember was what was there was. There was a game that was. There was a band and their logo, let's say, was an eyeball wearing a top hat. Do you remember this?

[Dave Bittner]

Oh, yes. The residents.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The residents.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yes, the Residents. Yes. They had a interactive experience that I remember going through, and it was very. That was a time when there was so much experimentation going on and people were doing weird things and. Yeah, I remember the Residents. I don't remember what the name of the game was, but it was pretty weird, but fun.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I remember Penn Jillette had something to do with that, too. In with the Residents, a bunch of.

[Dave Bittner]

People played with them without ever letting anybody know. Even, like, Mickey Bareni from Lush is on some Residents songs.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Huh. Interesting. I'm curious.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Bad Day on the Midway from 1985.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There it is. Yep. Bad day on the Midway. The Residents. Right, right. Oh, wow. So I'm curious for both of you. What was your favorite game on the first computer you used? So I'm not talking about an Atari or an nes. I'm talking about a home computer. What was the computer, and what was the game that you played that made you think, oh, oh, we can play games on computers, Brian?

[Dave Bittner]

Well, I had PCs. This is Ms. Dos. I had to Google it to be sure about this. So my Ms. DOS PC, 1983, I was all of 10 years old. I played hours of Bushido, the Way of the Warrior.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Bushido, the Way of the Warrior. I don't know that one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I remember that.

[Dave Bittner]

That was a lot of fun hours.

[Jason DeFilippo]

What kind of. Is it like a side scroller kind of game?

[Dave Bittner]

Side scroller? Like karate game? Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. Yeah, that tracks. What about you, Jason Xill?

[Brian Schulmeister]

That was on my IBM as well. We only had a dual floppy drive on it, and it's from 1984. And yeah, it was just a text adventure game. Okay, that was it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

See, I'm a little ahead of you guys in years. So my first interaction was I went to a computer summer camp, and we had TRS 80 model ones. And so there was a text adventure game, and that was the first time I'd ever laid hands on a computer. And we had a text adventure game called Lost Dutchman's Gold.

[Dave Bittner]

Ooh. On cassette.

[Jason DeFilippo]

On cassette, yes, it absolutely was on cassette. And I've included a link to kind of a. A retrospective review of Lost Dutchman's Gold. And of course, you know, Lost Dutchman's Gold has problematic portrayals of Native Americans. It was 1979. Yeah, it was 1979. The other thing that's interesting about these old text adventure games is that in my mind, I have the image of this vast environment that I was wandering around in and exploring and spending all this time. But then if you actually look at the Map, it was like 12 places, right? And of course they all had a maze to get lost in just to kill time and annoy you. But yeah, it was the first text adventure game I ever played and I was hooked on that thing. It was great fun.

[Brian Schulmeister]

See, looking at that page, I'm looking at that map in awe. Because when I was a kid, I never thought to do that because the one game that drove me mad was the Hitchhiker's Guide game.

[Dave Bittner]

I was about to say that was the first text adventure game I ever got and it upset me so much, I never played a text adventure game again.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Bingo.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, there was another one. It was called Madness and the Minotaur that I played. And it was like, you go into this pyramid and wander around and hope you know there's a minotaur in there. And so you gotta to stay out of his way because he'll kill you and that sort of thing. He's randomly wandering around.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I seem. I remember that. Yeah, I never, I don't. I don't play, but I. I remember it and I. The cassette games, all my friends had them because they had. They had trash 80s. But I would go over there and most of the time we would sit around, wait for it to load and change cassettes and all this and nothing would ever play. And I'm like, I'm gonna go home and play my Atari and go play pinball on my Atari.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right, right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Come over if you want. Right?

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, yeah, I like the Atari. And then. But the thing for of the reasons I never really got into computer games and everything like that is you recall I had an annual passport to Disneyland and there was an amazing arcade that was just next to Space Mountain. That's where we go play games.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I mean, I think, yeah, if you have an arcade in walking distance, that doesn't get much better than that, other than the fact that it costs money.

[Dave Bittner]

Well, there's that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But you know, the second game I had on the xt, the IBM xt was I had a bootleg version, bootleg already, of Flight Simulator 1.0 from Microsoft.

[Dave Bittner]

Oh, I remember that too. I had that as well.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that was awesome. Especially when the old keyboards on the IBMs back then, the function keys were on two rows down the left, which worked perfectly for throttle and flaps. When they moved it to the function keys across the top. I just never played it again. I got so used to playing it with that. I'm like, I could land anywhere, man. Driving my Cessna. It was fun. But yeah, once they changed the keyboard. I'm like, yeah, screw this. I'm gonna go outside and ride my skateboard.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. We had a game on my. I had a TRS 80 color computer and there was a game called P51 Mustang, which was a flight simulator. But what was great about it was you could actually play with someone over a modem.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, wow.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. So you could dog fight someone at, you know, two frames per second, but you could dog fight with someone connected over modem, which in 1984, let's say, was mind blowing. Absolutely magical.

[Dave Bittner]

Basically magic. Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I gotta say, though, the best flight simulator game ever made in combat game, Star Wars Tie Fighter. That was.

[Dave Bittner]

Oh, I love that one. Yeah, that was fun.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Yeah. That was a PC game. That was just awesome.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. It's interesting how every now and then somebody will just nail the combination of the physics and how the physics relate to the fun. And I think it doesn't mean that the physics are perfect or the physics are accurate. They just make the physics fun and that's what works.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We had that in Quake or Quake three. Really had that. That because the physics were a little bit off. You could do this thing called strafe jumping, which was just kind of a glitch in the game physics that if you knew how to flick your mouse just right, you could go like 50% farther on a jump. And you could tell the pros could really like master a map because you could jump to places you weren't supposed to be able to jump. And it just made it so much fun. I have dreams about strafe jumping in Quake.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I remember that in the game marathon on the Mac, you could do a thing like that. You could use your. I think it was your. If you aimed your grenade launcher at the ground.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Rocket jump. It was a rocket jump.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Do the same thing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They moved that to Quake 3. 2. There was actually a version of Quake 3 Arena called Rocket arena where they turned down the self damage from the rockets so you could basically use it as a propulsion system. And it was a whole. It was a whole thing. I had. I. I was part of a Rocket arena league. I had a. I had a sweatshirt and.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Wow.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I actually had a hockey jersey. A Rocket arena hockey jersey. Wow. Yeah. No. Yeah. You want to get into the old school?

[Dave Bittner]

Better times. Better times.

[Jason DeFilippo]

How about that? All right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Oh, man. Old days. Well, I don't know if you guys were big into the Blade Runner 2049 movie.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Haven't seen it.

[Dave Bittner]

No.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, wow. That's a big no.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I mean, I Hear it's good. I just haven't gotten around to it.

[Dave Bittner]

I found it boring.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, yeah. I thought it was kind of boring too. I saw it in the theater. I saw an IMAX in the theater. But the people who did like it. There is an auction going on for another 20 days. There's 200 items up for auction. Some of them are pretty cool, I gotta say. The interesting one that I found is there's a Dave Bautista is in the beginning of the movie, and he's got this little bag that he's carrying. And I saw this on Bruce Sterling's Blue sky account. Right now it's. The asking bid is $300. And he's like, actually, for a bespoke handbag, that's not a bad price. You should go pick that up. And I looked at it. Is that actually a pretty cool bag? But there's some neat stuff in here if you're a fan of that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. I looked through the auction and it is fun. Fun movie stuff, which is always fun.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Just as prop stuff, it's fun to look at, you know, just the graphic design and how they. They put it all together. I think it's kind of cool.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. I'm curious. Moving on to something else. Are either of you actually using the new photo button on the iPhone daily? Okay.

[Dave Bittner]

No.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Brian doesn't have one.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, I don't have one. I'm a generation behind you guys.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, Well, I have it and I've never touched it other than to try it out once, you know, when it was new. But. But I have not at all formed a habit with it or even I don't even think to use it. So. Jason, tell me more.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I've just got it set. So it's like when I take it out, I keep my phone in my pocket. When I just pull it out, if I want to take a quick picture, it's boom, right there. Don't have to log in or swipe or anything. It's just boom, hit the picture and go. It's just nice for taking fast photos. And I mean, honestly, the thing that I used my iPhone for the most with the camera nowadays, because I'm kind of a homebody, I use it to take a picture of our dry erase board in the kitchen that has our grocery list so I can know what I getting when I go to the grocery store in the morning. So I'm a quick drama gras with the photo button on my iPhone to find out if I got to get potato chips or not.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I Do that as well. And I sometimes think about. Because all of my photos automatically get backed up to a cloud account and we have a Google Photos account that is a family account. It's actually called like Bittner Family Photos or something. And so the idea is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Upset man, upset hack, hack.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Whatever you can take. Enjoy a picture of my son blowing out his birthday candles. Go for it.

[Dave Bittner]

Look at all these pictures of this crappy solar panel system that's just not working.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, see, that's where I'm going with this. Is that not only is it an archive of. Of family events, but it is also an archive of successes and failures in life.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Because you say failures.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. All of those things that you're documenting along the way, just that don't seem to be important. Sometimes they're fun to go back and go, oh, that's right, I did try to do that. And I wonder what's going to happen.

[Dave Bittner]

With my kids becoming a homeowner. Like my. My photo album on my phone is half pictures of my kids and half pictures of stuff that I took a picture of because I went to Home Depot to go try to find a replacement part or what did this look like? Or whatever. Yeah, right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Here's a leaking faucet. Yes, exactly. Go replace it. Yeah, but I don't know, I think the fact that they're timestamped and have GPS coordinates on them, someday I wonder, will my kids get anything out of them or will they just look at the pile and go delete?

[Dave Bittner]

I don't want to see anything weird.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it's up to them. So far, there's been nothing inadvertently that I know of been put in the archive. But it wouldn't surprise me if there's.

[Dave Bittner]

There was that time I had to go to the urologist. Kids. Sorry.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right. Exactly. Exactly. Or I was, you know, getting out.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Of the shower, I had the first colonoscopy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Accidentally pressed the button and didn't realize it till 10 years later. Oh, well, okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, that's interesting. The other use case for using the button is when I'm walking the dog. And if I need to take some, like a picture of something outside, I can just do it one hand. I just take my phone out, boom, take a picture and put it back in without having to unleash the dog and say, hold up, let me get the thing, I'll swipe and all that. It's very easy for just quick draw stuff, but once you get in that habit of it, it's second nature.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, I will revisit It. I'll make another pass at it since it has met your approval.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Go into the settings and there's like, tap. You can change some of the tap behavior for auto focus locking and zoom swiping and things like that. It's. It's a fairly robust button. It's not just a click button. It's got touch sensors on it too, so.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right, right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's definitely worth checking out the, the. The functionality of it. Once you do that, you might get a little bit more juiced about it using it more often.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right, I'll give it a shot.

[Dave Bittner]

Cool. All right. One last thing that I threw in the show notes here. It's been passed around a lot between my friends and. And I. I've never been a big John Mulaney fan. I. I've never watched his stand up or anything like that. But as we were trying to kind of deal with this 2.7 billion minute January so far and trying to encapsulate how we feel about it, this is how a bunch of my friends have decided we feel about it. So I've left this link in the show notes. There's a horse in the hospital. This was from his Netflix is a joke thing, which was five years ago, so first Trump term, but still very much spot on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's. Oh, it has legs. It has four legs. It's hilarious.

[Dave Bittner]

It's hilarious. So it brought a little joy to this never ending January. And thank God, today's the final day. But, you know, three. Three years and 11 months to go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's really good. And it used to be my favorite John Mulaney thing. It's now my second favorite John Mulaney thing after the thing with the space monkey. Did you guys see that?

[Dave Bittner]

I have not seen that one, so I'll have to look it up.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, my gosh. Hold on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm a John Mulaney fan, so I'm sure I've seen it, but, Brian, I'm surprised you don't like him.

[Dave Bittner]

I didn't say I don't like him. I've just never seen anything.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, you should definitely. You got a lot to go back and watch now. It's good stuff.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it was. Here it is. I'll put it on the. Put it in the show notes here. It's Beppo the monkey, and it was a sketch he did for Saturday Night Live, and it is absolutely hilarious.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And Delaney just plays a character in this sketch, but it is so funny. I'm happy for the both of you that you get to see it for the first time.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So enjoy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. All right, well, that is it for this week. Thank you, gentlemen, and I'll see you next time.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, next time.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Take care.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Closing Shout out. Over at Patreon, we've got Ian, Robert and Disloyal Broom. Why are you so disloyal? Broom Room. As long as Roomba, as long as you're loyal to us, you know, that's cool. You can be as disloyal as you like.

[Dave Bittner]

Thank you all so much. Over at PayPal, we've got David, Charlie, Judge Simon and Jonathan.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Woohoo. Over at the tip jar, we've got Adam and Jennifer. And Jennifer sent me a little note on the Instagram. She's saying, listening to today's podcast, I'm the reason for those Instagram ads, aren't I? Oops. I will go put an apology in the tip jar. And Jennifer's the one that sent me the. The ham radio video about the guy talking to the iss.

[Dave Bittner]

Ah, there you go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. And just a reminder for people who are thinking about helping keep the show on the air over at Patreon, if you drop us a little teeny tiny $3 a month, you can get the show early ad free and in high definition. And if you want to buy for the whole year, you can even get a discount. So that's [e-mail] Goggle get on it. And some people bought some merch. Merch.

[Dave Bittner]

We're not shutting it down then.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nope. These people are keeping it going. We're not making any money. But yeah, Shopify and Printful are. So we're. We're on the cusp. We're on the. Well, no, it's the end of the month. Never mind, never mind.

[Dave Bittner]

Start over. But we're going to have a. We're going to need a bigger Luigi shirt soon.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, we got to do that, dude. We got to do that. Tim M, Tracy B. And Joe R. Bought some merch. So thank you all very much and just head over to Shop Gog show if you want to pick up yours today.

[Dave Bittner]

All right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I had to put this in here at the end. This sums up the week in AI better than anyone so far, I believe. And a hat tip to Vinnie from this one. This is China's new and cheaper magic beans. Shock. America's unprepared magic bean salesman.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, spot on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah. And this is a. A Canadian site that put this in here at the Beaverton. It's well worth a read if you want a good chuckle. So go check it out.

[Dave Bittner]

All right. And we sadly had to say goodbye to Marianne Faithful. English singer dead at 78. She was a defining voice. The 1960s 60s. She first rose to fame with the song as Tears Go by, which was written for her by the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. And then she continued to have a singing career, but really it was mostly her lifestyle and a high profile relationship with basically every 60s rock star that she ended up shacking up with at some point in time and her addictions and all that sort of stuff. She was a wonderful. I mean, talk about living your life to the full. Like, just read her Wikipedia page. What a life.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Life.

[Dave Bittner]

So we'll be missed.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right. And by the way, that Bad Bunny episode of snl, the, the cameo that week was Mick Jagger.

[Dave Bittner]

So there you go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I'm tying it all together, bringing it in for a landing, as they say. Brian, I'm doing my best. Until next time, I'm Jason Defilipo.

[Dave Bittner]

And I'm Brian Schillmester. Thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks. Get all the links and goodies from Today's episode at GOG Show. 682. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks or away at GOG Show. 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. We'll love you for it. Swing by GOG show to join our discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts? Feedback? Cool links? Hit us up at GOG show contact and don't forget to leave a 5 star review at GOG Show. Review and we'll read it on the show. Oh, and guess what we've got. Merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at shop GOG Show. Stay grumpy.