683: There IS a Spoon!

Summary

Podcast Summary: Grumpy Old Geeks, Episode 683: "There IS a Spoon!"

Release Date: February 8, 2025
Hosts: Jason DeFilippo & Brian Schulmeister
Special Guest: Dave Bittner

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Introduction

The episode kicks off with the hosts expressing their frustration over the chaotic tech news landscape, setting the tone for a candid and unfiltered discussion. Jason and Brian dive straight into dissecting the week's tech mishaps without any preamble, emphasizing their no-holds-barred approach to analyzing failures in the tech world.

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Elon Musk & His Tech Crew

Timestamp: [05:38]

Jason initiates the conversation by questioning the recent disclosures about Elon Musk's team, bringing up names like Akish Boba, Edward Korstein, and others who have been implicated in various controversies.

Jason DeFilippo ([05:38]): "I asked on Bluesky, does anybody have the names of these little shits that are running around with Elon?”

Brian adds to the discussion, highlighting Elon’s aggressive stance against those who divulge information about his associates.

Brian Schulmeister ([06:14]): "We need to put together our 'Government is Collapsing' playlist. Oh, we got Big Balls. We got somebody I used to know. We’ll work on this."

The hosts critique Elon Musk's management style and his influence over his team, portraying Musk as a disruptive force within both his companies and the broader tech industry.

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AI Regulation and Mismanagement

Timestamp: [12:20]

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to the European Union's AI Act, which categorizes AI systems into four risk levels. The hosts express skepticism about the effectiveness and practicality of these regulations.

Jason DeFilippo ([14:54]): "The word decimate originally meant reducing by 1:10... but it's often used to mean devastate or drastically reduced."

They discuss the challenges of implementing these regulations, questioning how authorities will differentiate between beneficial and harmful AI applications.

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Ransomware Trends and Law Enforcement

Timestamp: [65:27]

Jason and Brian analyze the decline in ransom payments despite an increase in ransomware attacks. They attribute this trend to better international law enforcement operations disrupting hacking groups and organizations implementing robust data backup strategies.

Brian Schulmeister ([65:53]): "They are just letting the jig be up."

The conversation underscores a shift in how organizations handle ransomware threats, with more opting not to pay ransoms due to the unreliable returns and improved defenses.

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Disney's Exclusive Membership Controversy

Timestamp: [72:20]

The hosts revisit the ongoing saga of the Andersons being ousted from Disneyland's exclusive Club 33. They explore the legal battle, Disneyland's stringent membership policies, and the couple's move to the Magic Castle.

Brian Schulmeister ([72:20]): "The Andersons were kicked out of Disneyland's most exclusive club... they lost their court case."

This segment highlights issues of exclusivity, corporate power, and customer grievances within high-end services.

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Nostalgia for Classic Video Games

Timestamp: [60:51]

Jason and Brian indulge in a nostalgic discussion about classic video games like "50 Mission Crush" and the evolution of gaming platforms. They reminisce about the days of the Commodore 64, TRS-80, and Apple II, lamenting the loss of cross-platform compatibility and the socio-economic divisions among early computer users.

Jason DeFilippo ([61:56]): "I did not spend very much time with the Commodore 64... I was deep into that and I had friends who had them."

This conversation serves as a trip down memory lane, reflecting on the rapid technological advancements and their impact on gaming culture.

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AI in Law Enforcement and Ethical Concerns

Timestamp: [26:22]

The episode delves into the problematic use of AI in law enforcement, specifically referencing the wrongful arrests facilitated by Clearview AI's facial recognition technology. The hosts express concern over the reliability and ethical implications of AI-driven policing.

Brian Schulmeister ([27:05]): "This man clearly has five fingers. If the six finger glove doesn't fit, you must acquit."

They criticize the over-reliance on flawed AI systems that disproportionately affect marginalized communities, calling for stricter oversight and accountability.

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Corporate Layoffs Driven by AI Integration

Timestamp: [32:34]

Jason and Brian discuss the trend of major companies like Workday and Sonos laying off significant portions of their workforce in the name of AI integration. They critique the lack of transparency and the human cost associated with these corporate decisions.

Jason DeFilippo ([33:11]): "Screw you guys, keep it going, Keep it going."

The hosts highlight the irony of companies promoting AI as a growth driver while simultaneously reducing their human workforce.

---

Personal Anecdotes: Upgrading Eyeglasses

Timestamp: [78:15]

In a more personal segment, Jason shares his experience of getting new eyeglasses, discussing the transition from progressive lenses to bifocals to alleviate motion sickness caused by the former.

Jason DeFilippo ([80:17]): "Having the prescription go from edge to edge on the glass rather than running down the middle will help."

Brian empathizes, sharing his own challenges with progressive lenses and the discomfort they can cause, adding a relatable human element to the episode.

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Conclusion

The episode wraps up with shout-outs to Patreon supporters, merchandise promotions, and a reflection on the creative processes of the hosts. Jason and Brian reiterate their commitment to delivering honest and critical takes on the tech industry's failures, encouraging listeners to stay engaged and support the show.

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Notable Quotes

1. Jason DeFilippo ([05:38]): "I asked on Bluesky, does anybody have the names of these little shits that are running around with Elon?"
2. Brian Schulmeister ([07:10]): "We're gonna pull a spoon emoji because we live in kindergarten."
3. Brian Schulmeister ([26:22]): "This man clearly has five fingers. If the six finger glove doesn't fit, you must acquit."
4. Jason DeFilippo ([32:34]): "Screw you guys, keep it going, Keep it going."
5. Brian Schulmeister ([65:31]): "Hopefully it's because they finally got the memo and have proper backups."

---

Key Takeaways

• Elon Musk's Influence: The hosts critically examine Musk's management and the controversies surrounding his team.
• AI Regulation Challenges: They express skepticism about the EU's AI Act and its potential effectiveness.
• Ransomware Decline: Improved law enforcement and better data practices are leading to a reduction in ransom payments.
• Corporate Downsizing: Major tech companies are increasingly leveraging AI to justify significant layoffs.
• Ethics in AI Policing: The wrongful use of AI in law enforcement raises serious ethical concerns.
• Nostalgia vs. Progress: A reflective look at the evolution of video games and the nostalgic longing for classic systems.
• Personal Health Updates: A candid discussion about the challenges of updating eyeglasses and dealing with vision changes.

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This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks delivers a mix of sharp tech critiques, insightful discussions on AI ethics, and relatable personal anecdotes, all wrapped in the hosts' signature grumpy humor. Whether you're a tech enthusiast or someone who appreciates candid conversations about the industry's pitfalls, this episode offers a comprehensive and engaging listen.

Transcript

[Jason DeFilippo]

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[Brian Schulmeister]

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[Unknown Speaker]

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[Jason DeFilippo]

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[Brian Schulmeister]

FDA for safety, efficacy or quality.

[Unknown Speaker]

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.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I'm Brian Schillmeister.

[Unknown Speaker]

What a fucking week.

[Brian Schulmeister]

February is looking to last longer than January date at this point, let me tell you.

[Unknown Speaker]

You know, here's the funny thing. It's going faster for me. I didn't even realize we're a week in already. This took three years in January. I don't know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't know. The news comes fast and furious. None of it makes sense. Most of it's stupid. I mean, it's all stupid. So here we are. It's buckle up, we got a lot more of this coming.

[Unknown Speaker]

I've got to say though, this week I am thoroughly enjoying Blue Sky. I have gotten so much value out of Blue Sky. I nailed it. Getting in early and following the right packs of people that happen to be scientists and things like that. That led me to more interesting people. So I gotten great on the ground news from Washington this week.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's been awesome, relatively speaking.

[Unknown Speaker]

Relatively speaking, yes. Awesome. Awesome is a loaded term. Also, I found like a bunch of really cool substack newsletters that I've been thoroughly enjoying and laughing my ass off at. But the two surprising wins this week were Wired and Rolling Stone.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Got some serious journalism coming out of those two places.

[Unknown Speaker]

What the fuck happened to you guys? Who dusted you off and exhumed the corpse of journalism?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know. Actually, Rolling Stone and Wired both were pretty great for a long time and then were crap forever. And yeah, yeah, I guess they just need the threat of external annihilation to light the fires within, I suppose.

[Unknown Speaker]

Must be. Must be. This is some rock and roll and punk rock shit going on right now. So I guess they're like, okay, let's. Let's. You know, we've got Cyberpunk, Dystopia, which got wired going, and then, you know, this is the perfect time to make Rebellion music. So Rolling Stone obviously woke up, so. Yeah, I can see that, I guess.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Do you remember last time, though? It was Teen Vogue. That's what it was. Teen Vogue. The first time the Mango Mussolini was in office, Teen Vogue was ripping them out every week.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know. They stepped up big time. Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. I wonder if they're. I haven't heard anything about them this time, so.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, you know.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. I think the thing that gets me about this last week is that everybody is now an expert on acronyms because you cannot wade into these waters without trying to figure out what all the fucking acronyms mean. It reminds me of COVID where everybody became a fucking virologist. And with fucking bitcoin, everybody decided that they're a financial expert. And now they're just. They're over the top with the acronyms, but they complain about them. And I'm like, dude, did you not see the inauguration? He started out with ymca. This is going to be the acronym fucking presidency. Come on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, just a quick note on that concept of instant experts in every field. I know. I've also been enjoying Blue Sky. I hardly ever venture over to that. The site formerly known as Twitter anymore, but when I do, I have to say it is amazing. Maybe. Maybe Elon has a point because he has held on to a core user group that are instantly experts in whatever happens to be in the news. Every single one of them.

[Unknown Speaker]

I know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They know everything about air traffic control. They know everything about the price of gold. They now have finally figured out the price of eggs. And the problem there, I mean, they missed that one. No matter what you throw at them, they fucking know.

[Unknown Speaker]

You know what? That's an open access to grok AI.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It must be.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, it is. It is. Educating. Educating the masses. Oh, man. Every time I post something over there, I just. I get such hate spam. Oh, my God. I can't post anything there now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm pretty sure that I've been shadow banned because the occasions that I do actually post something, it's. It's fucking like, you know, it's. It's crickets.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, yeah, no, they've got. They've got the algorithm going on over there. You can. You can actually just watch it in real time. You post anything that's just generic or bubbly, you can watch the view count go up. But if you. If you even mention, if you put the. The word, the letters E and L together, you get blocked. Like, that's nothing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So it's. It's pretty. It's pretty insane. And. And no matter what I do, I have tried blocking Trump's profile and Elon's profile. I have tried ignoring. I have tried to see less of these types of posts. They will not stop.

[Unknown Speaker]

No, you can't. No. Blocking doesn't block. Banning doesn't ban. Nothing does not happen. All right, let's get on to some news in the news. Well, it's kind of more of the same, Brian. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I was about to say there is one topic.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, Well, I just needed the interstitial to play. Come on. This is. We have a formula that we must stick to, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

So we started out the week, and I asked on Bluesky. I'm like, does anybody have the names of these little shits that are running around with Elon? And then almost instantly, Wired came back with the names.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Why, yes, we do.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes. Well, here you go, sir. It was Akish Boba, Edward Korstein, Luke Ferrator, Gautier, Cole Killian, Gavin Klieger, and Ethan Schautron.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I've been wondering what Gauthier has been doing ever since that one hit wonder he wrote.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. I'm telling you, man, it's just a.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Government that I used to know.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's it. Oh, man. I heard him on the radio the other day after he retired. He's like, I just don't want to be that guy anymore.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, Great track, man. I still love to do it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

He's like, I don't want to play it for the rest of my life. I'm like, why not? It's a banger. Come on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Fire.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's fire. It's popping. So I only mentioned the names because. Well, of course, immediately after that, Elon came out and said, I'm sorry. Emperor Elon came out and said that, no, you have committed a crime by saying their names, speaking them aloud, and letting people know. You have thus documented, doxed my people, my minions. And everybody's like, fuck you. You're an idiot.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay, first off, yeah, yeah, okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Just go ahead. I'm just gonna say what everybody already knows and people that care. Nobody voted for Elon. This. This Doge isn't. Hasn't been ratified by Congress. They. They are a rogue group running around basically stealing all of our information.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes. Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay. Just making sure that every. Just in case anybody's been living under a rock.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay. Okay, yeah, just to set the. We just needed to set the baseline there. Yeah, that's right. And I'm just calling him doggy. I'm sorry, I'm just calling him doggy. I can't say Doge because it sounds so fucking doom.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We'll call it doggy because they're fucking us up the ass.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly. Doggy style, baby. Doggy style. So of course, when Emperor Elon speaks, Trump's hounds also jump. So The Trump appointed D.C. u.S. Attorney Ed Martin issued a warning of criminal cons for anyone exposing the identities of the doggy crew. So I wonder if they're going to get Snoop Dogg on there too. That would be great.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's amazing that we can't. Can't publicize the names of private citizens who are working for God knows what kind of entity.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes, an illegal entity.

[Brian Schulmeister]

An illegal entity that has no rights whatsoever to be doing anything that they're doing.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep. So then, and then you look at the demographic of the kids. There's from 19 years old to 25 years old. And then you see headlines like one of Elon Musk's doggy kids just had an explosive screaming and you go, well, yeah, they're 19 to 25. They're just like we talked about me last episode with no couth or decorum in the workplace. This is the fucking same people.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Put a bunch of little Jason's running around.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's what it is. Look, I wouldn't want me running the government.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I absolutely, seriously don't want you running the government, Jason.

[Unknown Speaker]

No, not at all. And one of the other engineers that weren't named in the original list of wired engineers was. What's this guy? Marco Ellis or Eliz. He was 25 years old and he had to resign yesterday because somebody figured out how to use the Wayback Machine and found a bunch of his old tweets. And some of here are just the greatest hits. Just for the record, I was racist before. It was cool.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I feel like we should just put that on our money now.

[Unknown Speaker]

That would be good. That'd be good. Or the next one is pretty good. Would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth.

[Brian Schulmeister]

See, that's what got him in trouble because we're supposed to be tight with the Israelis. Right now we're just turning Gaza into Magaza. That. That's the plan.

[Unknown Speaker]

Gaza. That's it. Okay. Yeah, I'm not even going down that road. Not going down that road at all. So, yeah, this is to the surprise of no one. And I'm sure the other kid. What was his name? Edward Korstein. He's getting pressed because his handle was Big Balls before. And. Yeah, that's just because everybody wanted to say Big Balls on. On the news.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, it does make for a snappy headline. Government being dismantled by Big Balls.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Yeah, it was a fine AC DC song, too. Yep. So I put in a few extra links in there because I feel like.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We need to put together our the Government is Collapsing playlist. Oh, we got Big Balls. We got somebody I used to know. We'll work on this.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, we got to get some doggy style in there for sure. Oh, man. Oh. And I couldn't figure out where to put it in the show this week, but I just have to mention it. I told you I saw this on Blue sky this week, and it was my favorite new term. And it was the bro lagarchy is taking over 110%. So also moving on, doggy employees have been ordered to stop using slack because when you use Slack, you are under Freedom of Information act oversight, which means that they can, you know, the public can.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You can't be a rogue organ if you're using slack.

[Unknown Speaker]

I know. Yeah. I hate to point out the OPSEC on that, but, yeah, that's kind of dumb.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, they're doing it in plain sight. You have one headline here you didn't discuss. I just want to mention this quickly and this. I will even tie this back into music. U.S. government officials privately warn Musk's blitz appears illegal. One has to wonder why they're privately warning instead of fucking doing something about.

[Unknown Speaker]

It, standing up and screaming off the top of the fucking rooftops. And it's not appearing illegal, it is illegal.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So to tie it back to music. I've talked a while back about the guy from Eve 6 and how he was killing it on Twitter. He has moved over to Blue sky, killing it there again as well. He actually tweeted to Schumer, Chuck Schumer, who posted some sort of link about how this crazy stuff is happening. He was like, if only there was some government official that was aware of this that could do something about it.

[Unknown Speaker]

I know. Oh, somebody posted. Somebody posted a video when. When, you know, when the blitzkrieg had just started from some DNC convention with all of these idiots line dancing in front of the stage. And I'm just like, yeah, that's what we're dealing with here. It's down. It's going to be down to the people, down to the People. So, yes, yes, they've been. The doggy employees have been ordered to stop using Slack because they need to move things into the White House system, which is not under the FOIA request. But what they didn't really think about is that, well, the organizations that they are interacting with are not under those same rules as the White House. So you can still do a FOIA request for all of the agencies that they're fucking around with, which is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They're plundering. Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Seems to be fucking all of them. Yes. Now. And the next one which starts to bring everything into focus.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This is from my Wait for that shoe to drop file.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Why don't you take this one, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Sure. Okay. Everybody was kind of puzzled why Elon was going after usaid, an organization that very few people had probably heard of. Sure. I'm sure there are a lot of financial shenanigans of what one or two of things that were brought to light. Like maybe we shouldn't have been giving that money here or there, but that happens with these organizations. My understanding of usaid, after I looked into it a bit, and I actually even know somebody who works for USAID and spoke right now, she's still employed.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, I know people that have been. Yeah, I know people that have already been let go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's an amazing organization that actually does keep our country usa, a lot safer around the world and does good. And it's one of the few things that's out there that actually makes people go, oh, hey, your country not so bad.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So why would he be going after that? And you know, he's dismantling it. It's the only thing in the news for, like, three days straight. What the hell is happening at usaid? Congressmen are going there to knock on the door and get their picture taken, asking, what are you doing? And then not getting any answers because Nobod does shit against this guy. But anyways, big brouhaha. And then this story drops. Elon Musk's enemy, usaid, was investigating Starlight Starlink's contracts in the Ukraine. Yeah, there you go. Now we know why. And it's important to realize that there are three motivations for everything that is going to happen over the next few years. Revenge. Yes. This one. Sheer lunacy and idiocy. That's almost everything else that Trump does. And third, greed. That's it. Every decision that you see this administration make, and I use the term administration extremely loosely, will be based on those three things. Just dial down to which one it is.

[Unknown Speaker]

I think Revenge and greed are the two main drivers right now. Yeah, yeah. So the funny part. Well, now, you know what, let's just keep on with the stories because, yeah, they all kind of tie in together here. Now, I did have a little bit of. I took a little umbrance with Wired for this headline. USAID workforce slashed from 10,000 to under 300 as Elon Musk's Doge Decimates Agency. Well, you know me and my words, man. My problem with the word decimate is the fact that it. It doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that at work. So I asked ChatGPT, I'm like, is it pedantic to point out that the headline USAID workforce slashed from 10,000 to under 300 as Elon Musk's Doge Decimates Agency is technically WR? And ChatGPT came back with, yes, it's a bit pedantic, but also accurate.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But okay, ChatGPT, that is the very definition of pedantic. It's still accurate.

[Unknown Speaker]

Accurate.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You need to add that part.

[Unknown Speaker]

The word decimate originally meant reducing by 1:10. So if USAID's workforce dropped from 10,000 to under 300, that's a 97% reduction, not a 10% one. However, in modern usage, decimate is often used to mean devastate or drastically reduced. So while the headline is technically incorrect in the historical sense, it aligns with how people commonly understand the word today. If you pointed it out, some might appreciate the precision, while others might roll their eyes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Let's cast back our minds, Jason. Once upon a time, artificial intelligence meant what they now called general artificial intelligence, not just machine learning, which is what it actually fucking is.

[Unknown Speaker]

I just love the fact that it told me that people are going to roll their eyes, which is. I knew exactly what they were going to be doing. As soon as I read this thing, I'm like, yep, people are rolling there. Fucking pedantic motherfucker again. Anyway, okay, moving on. The U.S. general Services Administration, or GSA, has removed the spoon emoji from its video conferencing platform, preventing users from selecting it to express themselves. This decision follows a wave of employees using the emoji to protest the Trump administration's fork in the road resignation offer.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, this is the world that we have chosen for ourselves, everyone.

[Unknown Speaker]

I. Yeah, I. I mean, you just can't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We're gonna pull a spoon emoji because.

[Unknown Speaker]

We live in kindergarten. We live in kindergarten. Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I do just want to point out that this fork in the road thing, the resignation offer, is Also complete and utter bullshit. And if you happen to be a government employee and you've been given one of those letters, absolutely do not accept it. Because guess what, the budget hasn't been approved for any of this. It's gone through no official channels. Elon is completely, well, Elon's assistant that's sending out the emails who's like 19 years old, are completely fucking making this shit up.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Yep. So to that. To that end, yes, a judge has blocked the order until Monday. So they've got a little bit more time on it and we'll see what that. But here's the thing. Over 60,000 people have already checked the box that says, yeah, I'll take the money.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Unknown Speaker]

But I did a little. Because I am pedantic, I did a little math on that one. So that's a little more than 2.5% took.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Not quite decimating.

[Unknown Speaker]

Not quite decimating. But for comparison, 8.4% of automattics work workforce accepted their buyout offer to leave. So the US government is technically a better place to work for than WordPress. Sorry, Matt.

[Brian Schulmeister]

By the way, Matt's got to be the happiest guy in the world right now. Talk about getting knocked out of the news cycle.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, my God. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Although he does like to be in the limelight, so maybe he's not happy.

[Unknown Speaker]

I'm sure if he could figure out a way to do it, you know, we would all be using Tumblr for sending in our Social Security checks at this point.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I think he's going to need to pivot to get back in the news cycle. Maybe they're going to call it Word Maga.

[Unknown Speaker]

Ooh, that would be good. That'd be good. I'm sure that there's a way to do it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Maga Press.

[Unknown Speaker]

There's a way. Maga Press would be. That's Twitter. You can't. Or X. I'm sorry, that's taken.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Don't hear much about Truth Social anymore, do you?

[Unknown Speaker]

I see screenshots every now and again and then I have to go. The only. The problem with when people post screenshots from Truth Social is I have to go to Truth Social to fact check it. And 99 times out of 100, it's not true.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They're shocking.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, they're fake. Look, people, you don't have to make fake shit up about Trump because the real shit is just as entertaining.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know. I wish we would stop doing that. Just post the real stuff. It's. It's horrific enough.

[Unknown Speaker]

All you have to do that's all you have to to do. And you know, I know people are going, would you stop talking about no. This administration is at the balls integrated with technology. So we're stuck with it. We're just stuck with it. So sorry.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Unknown Speaker]

This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by Delete Me. 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 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 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 Deleteme 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. 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 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 Deleteme 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 GOG. I did not see this one coming. I did not see this one coming. There's a lot of things this week I didn't see coming. This week. Arizona Senate Finance Committee advanced the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve act, which if passed, would allow up to 10% of the state's public funds to be invested in digital assets. And I don't know if you noticed, Bitcoin has dropped below $100,000 again. What happened to the moon?

[Brian Schulmeister]

What happened with the moon is hovering right around 100k. Apparently that's the moon.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay. It was like 94 last night when I looked at it, so you wouldn't think that that's a big move, but if you're putting your state's public money into it, you'd kind of want, I don't know, something a little bit more stable or. Huh. You know what? I don't want to go back down the history there now. Not to be outdone, Utah's House committee passed a bill allowing its treasurer to invest up to 5% of public funds in bitcoin and stablecoins. Other states, including Texas, Wyoming and Florida, are also exploring similar crypto investments. Massachusetts and Oklahoma are considering broader investments, including NFTs.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh good. I would like my state's public money to be put into Angry Apes. That sounds. Sounds fantastic.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, I'm sorry, we've had a national emergency. Have a jpeg.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, sorry, the link doesn't work anymore because that company went out of business.

[Unknown Speaker]

Can I have a blanket? No, you get a gift.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Fucking great.

[Unknown Speaker]

Now I expect Oklahoma for this shit, but Massachusetts? Seriously? Massachusetts?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. This is not fiscally responsible at all. It's just ridiculous. But okay, have fun with that.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And I love that Arizona was pointing out that the US Government already has a cryptocurrency reserve, but. No, they don't. It's just the money from Ross Ulbricht and. And the Silk Road that they've got sitting around that they just haven't been able to liquidate yet.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. The bitcoin that the government is holding is all taken from criminals. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Part pardoned. I guess we can't say he's a criminal anymore because the criminal pardoned the criminal.

[Unknown Speaker]

No, no, no. He was. He was. Just because he's pardoned doesn't mean he wasn't guilty. He was guilty of the crimes. He just doesn't have to go back to jail. I don't know if you also saw in the news that he. Everybody gave him all this cryptocurrency as his starting off fund, and he blew it all on some meme coins. Because he was fucking around, by the way.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I wanted to mention that really quickly. Meme coin. Now, there was a term that we were using pre meme coin. So in my estimation, using meme coin is actually whitewashing what they actually are, which is shitcoins. That's what we used to call them. We used to call them shitcoins. But nobody in their right fucking mind would put money into something called a shitcoin. So we've renamed it Meme coin, which makes it sound acceptable and good and safe. It's still a shitcoin.

[Unknown Speaker]

Still a shitcoin. Just ask Hawktua. Girl who stuck her head up for five minutes yesterday, posted a new video on YouTube on our YouTube channel, and then immediately took it back down and then disappeared again, so.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, at least she doesn't have a podcast anymore.

[Unknown Speaker]

Somebody actually grabbed the entire thing and posted it to X. So if you want to go watch it, it's out there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But I do not.

[Unknown Speaker]

I don't care. I have no fucks left to give for Hawk to a girl.

[Brian Schulmeister]

She.

[Unknown Speaker]

She overstayed her welcome way, way longer than she should have.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That was a. That was a full 30 minutes. Andy Warhol only allotted 15.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, she should have cashed out when she had the chance. She got greedy. Well, she tried to cash out, but the problem was she'd already made Millions of dollars off of her fucking podcast. Why not just take the money and run? Oh, God. Now here we go. Let's back to some real news. Police in Cleveland, Ohio are facing backlash after a botched murder case relied on faulty AI evidence. Detectives investigating the. February 20th.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We're looking for a six fingered man.

[Unknown Speaker]

With 14 legs. Detectives investigating the February 2024 killing of Blake Story turned to the Northeast Ohio Regional Fusion Center. Now, that's not for actual energy fusion. A fusion center serves as a command center for gathering, analyzing and disseminating intelligence and other public safety information.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All DOGE employees, please leave that fusion center. It is not what we thought it was.

[Unknown Speaker]

Which used Clearview. Remember Clearview AI?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep, yep. We've been talking about them forever. So they've used that software to identify a suspect. K on Tolbert. I need some AI to help me pronounce that. I'm going.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It actually just makes me want to go play Qbert.

[Unknown Speaker]

I hated Qbert. I love that game. I sucked at that game.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, you hated it because you sucked.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly. I hated that. And I hated Zaxon. I didn't like the.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, I love Zaxon.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, see, I think that's a certain type of person that likes those. So based on the AI match alone, police secured a no knock warrant and arrested Tolbert. But a judge later ruled the AI generated six fingered ID unreliable, suppressing all evidence stemming from the warrant.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This man clearly has five fingers. If the six finger glove doesn't fit, you must acquit.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, man, what's up with all the OJ shit back in the news anyway? Come on, he's dead, let's move on. So, yeah, yep, people are still using Clearview. And still going well. Yeah, still going well. Yeah. Here we go. AI driven arrests are on the rise. A Washington Post investigation found at least eight Americans. Here's a real shocker. Every single one of them black have been wrongfully arrested due to facial recognition errors. So shock indeed. Now The European Union's AI act has reached its first compliance deadline. As of February 2, regulators can now ban AI systems deemed to pose an unacceptable risk or harm. This is part of the EU's sweeping AI law, which officially took effect last August. So we've just been, I guess, waiting for the AI police to show up. They're in line next to the Internet police and the Elon police. Now we've got the AI police, none of which exist. So this act categorizes AI into four risk levels with minimal and limited risk systems, facing little to moderate oversight, high Risk AI, like medical recommendations will be tightly regulated. Brian, how are they going to differentiate between the good and the bad and the ugly? Because they all seem to be just as shit as the next one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's fair. That's a fair assessment, Jason. I also wonder.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, because moving on, they might want to check out Deepseek because now it turns out Deepseek's iOS app sends data unencrypted, encrypted, to bite dance controlled servers.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Are you trying to tell me that AI system that when it came out, everybody said, oh my God, this is deeply connected to the Chinese government, lied when they said that they weren't sending the information back to the Chinese government?

[Unknown Speaker]

Bingo.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yet a bunch of people went and used it anyways.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep. Bingo.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, that's awesome.

[Unknown Speaker]

What I love is that it's going fucking dumb. I love it that it's going directly back to ByteDance servers who say that they are not in bed with the Chinese government because of the TikTok deal that's going through.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, no, no, no, no, no, Jason. We have a virtual machine on this server that isn't connected to the TikTok servers. So there's a funnel. One goes directly to the Chinese government and so does the other one. We just don't tell you that.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay. Well, anyway, in more Chinese AI news, Omni Human 1 came out. And this is a kind of a. I don't know how to explain it. You take a still photo and some voice and it makes a movie for you. I'll just. I'll keep it in simple terms because we late. It is trippy as hell. It's still firmly stuck in the uncanny valley though.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's getting better. Did you watch the videos?

[Brian Schulmeister]

No. I'm so sick of this.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, you got to watch these. They're pretty good. They're pretty good. They're still. They're still. Not that. You can still. You still get creeped out, right? You still get creeped out, but it's less creepy. It's AI but with less creepy. Now, this one is the funniest one of the day and quite possibly one of the most explosive ones. Deep Seq we talked about, you know, they made the news last week because they upended the whole AI world saying that, oh my God, you can do this shit for cheap. Taking everything. That's already been done already. Well, researchers created an Open rival to OpenAI's O1 reasoning model for under $50. That's right. Researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington have trained a reasoning model for under $50 in cloud compute credits. The model, called S1, performs on par with top AI reasoning models like OpenAI's O1 and Deep SE R1 in math and coding tests. Yes. So they basically, they're taking them and having them train them on each other now. So these guys use Google's Gemini 2.0 flash thinking experimental version. These guys got to work on these fucking names. It's getting ridiculous. So here's the breakthrough, Brian. This is the breakthrough that these guys figured out when they were. Yeah, they could train it, but to make it really good, they added one word to their. To the questions that they were sending to it and the prompts they were sending to it. Okay, wait. That was the word they said wait. Which helped improve the model's reasoning accuracy because it took the time to think a little more.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Apparently, it's just like a toddler once you think about your answer for a second.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, take some time. Take a little time. Figure that one out. But that doesn't stop Amazon because they've doubling down. They're going to spend $100 billion on AI in 2025, which is up from $78 billion they spent last year. Andy Jassy says falling AI costs will drive even more demand, not less. That's right. We're going to lose money, but we're going to make it up at scale. All right, idiots.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, prepare for a headline. You're going to be hearing a lot this year just to change out the company name. Workday lays off 1,750 employees, citing demand for AI. Now, Workday is an HR and finance management company, and it's the latest tech giant to lay off a massive employees in the name of AI. They announced this on Wednesday. In an announcement titled Changes to Position Workday for the Future, I. E. Without people. The organization shared that it's eliminating about 8.5% of its workforce with the 17,500 people.

[Unknown Speaker]

And the CEO said 1750, not 17,000.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, sorry.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes. You decimated them, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I did. I decimated them quickly. The CEO acted really torn up about choosing AI over people. But he said companies everywhere reimagining how work gets done and the increasing demand for AI has the potential to drive a new era of growth for Workday. So you guys.

[Unknown Speaker]

Screw you guys, keep it going, Keep it going.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Lyft is partnering with Anthropic to bring the startup's AI tech to its platform. Basically, they're starting off with it handling all customer service complaints. So if getting raped in a car by your Driver, you will get a chatbot from Claude to talk to you about it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Now, I have a problem with the name Claude. You know, I've used. I've used Claude quite a bit. It's nice for conversational AI things to come back and you get decent, decent replies. And more human sometimes than ChatGPT can be just less snark, though.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

But, yeah, if I'm getting raped in the back of my lift, do I really want Claude to the rescue?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I want McFly.

[Unknown Speaker]

You know, it could be a Jean Claude Van Damme perhaps.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Maybe. Maybe two trucks pull up and he's balanced between them.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly. Then he just drops in. Boom. And nut slams. He puts his big balls on the problem. There we go. That's right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

According to Lyft, the tool is already helping to resolve thousands of customer issues every day and has reduced average resolution time by 87%. Now, to be fair, I'm sure the vast majority of customer issues that come through are. Your car was five minutes later than I thought it was going to be.

[Unknown Speaker]

And it's been trained on X's data. So it just sends back a poop emoji.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, it sends back a poop emoji. He got a ride, didn't you? Shut the up.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep, yep.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Speaking of Elon again, Tesla sales in Europe are plummeting fast. Electric reports that year over year, sales are down. 18 in the United Kingdom, 31 in Portugal, more than 40 in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands, 63 in France and a whopping 75 in Spain. Overall. The takeaway seems to be that Europeans want Elon Musk and his fancy car company to right off. And yes, that is directly from the article.

[Unknown Speaker]

Awesome.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Some media outlets have linked the company's cratering sales to its CEO's growing unpopularity. You think? But I think Elon doesn't really give a crap too much. Just like here. Because, you know, who needs Tesla when you take over the entire government?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Did you see his reply to the guy from Ottawa who canceled the $100 million Starlink deal?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Unknown Speaker]

He just wrote back in a tweet. Oh, well, you. You are a public company, right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. He doesn't care.

[Unknown Speaker]

He doesn't care. Actually, I don't know if Starling's public part of SpaceX, I. Fuck it, who cares? Who knows? It doesn't matter. And German Road Traffic Agency KBA's website on Wednesday showed the number of newly registered Tesla cars fell 59.5% to 1277. There were 34,500 vehicles that were Registered in the battery electric vehicle segment. So they are getting hammered over there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I mean we knew it was going to happen anyways, even without Elon going full Nazi. Because there's now just a lot of other competitors out there and you don't have to buy a Nazi brand when you can buy an old Nazi brand that's reformed itself.

[Unknown Speaker]

Tell me about it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Volkswagen is working on an entry level electric vehicle that will sell for a base price of around US$21,000. So this is part of the ID line of vehicles that they've got out there. But this will be the first like low price model and it won't be ready until sometime in 2027. But as far I know somebody that's got an ID and everybody seems to like the cars. They're good.

[Unknown Speaker]

I was stuck behind the, the new ID bus, the electric bus on the 101 the other day. Ironically, on the other side of the electric bus was two cybertrucks. I'm getting surrounded. It just reminds me that I saw a great, a great Stephen Fry quote this week. He's like, how do you know Elon Musk isn't a Nazi? Nazi. Nazis made great cars.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Laughing into the abyss. Here we go.

[Unknown Speaker]

Moving.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I saw this article over at Slate that I think everybody should read. It was an interview with Ed Zitron. It's the title of the article is one of Bit tech's Angriest Critics. Explains the problem. It's kind of what we do. But anyways, yeah, I like this. Modern AI is a horizontal enabling layer. It can be used to improve everything. It will be in everything. Everything. That's what came from Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos. What the are you actually talking about? It doesn't mean anything. A horizontal enabling layer like electricity means nothing. The actual thing to say about this is Jeff Bezos says complete nonsense on stage. AI is like electricity. Electricity has immediate use cases. Well, I'm going to use a technical term. Jeff Bezos is talking bullocks. On top of that, we are years into generative AI. Where is the horizontal initiative enablement? Where's the thing it's enabling two years. Show me one thing which you go that you, which you use that you go, oh, damn, I'm so glad I have this. Show me the airplay, show me the Apple pay. Show me the thing that you're like, God damn, I'm glad this is here. I can't think of one. And I'm exactly the little pig that would want it. I'm an enthusiast. I love this crap.

[Unknown Speaker]

Ed is awesome. I love Ed.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's a great article. But that was the key piece for me. I loved it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, he's been, he's been sticking his head up quite a bit this past week. Week. And I mean, he makes a very good point. You know that the, the moat around AI is shrinking very quickly and there is no use case for these people to make their money back, period. OpenAI loses billions of dollars a year. They lose money on every single query you send them. So I encourage Everybody that uses ChatGPT to query the shit out of it. I spent half an hour this week just asking Chat GPT how to dos itself.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Who needs water? Jason?

[Unknown Speaker]

I know. It will tell you how to send itself a query that will give itself a denial of service, which it will get into a loop and over and over again say, oh, I ran out of memory. Oops, I ran out of memory. Oops, I ran out of memory. It is fun for the entire family. I highly recommend it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

Google has quietly removed its pledge not to use AI for weapons and surveillance.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They basically just changed their logo or their catchphrase to we're going to go ahead and be evil.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, they just took out the word don't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, be evil.

[Unknown Speaker]

Or wait, be evil. Perfect. And Medicine Meta has released a new policy outlining when it might stop developing or releasing AI systems it considers too dangerous. The Frontier AI framework identifies two categories, High risk and critical risk AI. High risk systems could aid cyber, chemical or biological attacks, while critical risk systems could lead to catastrophic, unmitigatable consequences.

[Brian Schulmeister]

How big is the team and what are their qualifications that are making these decisions?

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, I'm pretty sure they got the kid that just got fired from doggy for. I'm sure, I'm sure he got picked up by Zuck right away. Yeah. I wonder whatever happened to the Facebook oversight board. If they're still a thing. They got replaced by AI long ago. Yeah. Sonos has announced that it has laid off 200 people in a letter post to its site on Wednesday. The News follows a 100 person layoff in August. And both rounds arrive in the wake of a disastrously botched update to the Sonos app that alienated broad swaths of the premium audio hardware firm's extremely loyal fan base. Me and me being one of them. Not you so much, but definitely me. So, yeah, they're basically laying people off as they're getting ready to release more stuff. Perfect timing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Perfect timing.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep. But guess who's hiring Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Who?

[Unknown Speaker]

Billionaire venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has found its latest star hire, Daniel Penney, the ex Marine best known for choking a man to death on a New York subway. Penny, who walked free after a jury acquitted him, is now joining the firm's American Dynamism Fund because apparently nothing says public safety like a six minute chokehold. In a memo to investors, a 16 Zed partner David Ulovich and a quick note I knew David from open DNS. He joined the dark side and he was very, he was a very cool guy back then. But David justified the hire by saying Penny's military background will help cozy up to police and defense insiders. Because of course, hiring a guy who killed a struggling man in broad daylight is a great way to impress cops. Okay, welcome to America, Brian. Welcome to America.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I forgot I have a bookmark for how to file for my Canadian citizenship open still. Move over there really quick.

[Unknown Speaker]

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[Brian Schulmeister]

Box.

[Unknown Speaker]

Media candy I saw this come through the the wires this week and it was the Devil May Cry shows intro song is so stupidly glori. And I'm like, wait a minute. Devil May Cry has a show? Turns out, yes. Netflix has ordered a new Devil May Cry animation for coming on April 3rd. I talk pretty one day. I'm so used to screaming at AI I forgot how to report regular news now. Yes. So it's a Limp Bizkit song, though, so I don't know how you feel about that. I don't really care about the song so much as I watch the Trade Taylor with the opening credits, and I like the style. I played a lot of Devil May Cry, and this doesn't look almost anything like the game, so I don't know if it's going to land or not, but I'll give it a shot. I'll give it a shot. Anything is better than the real world right now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I agree. Probably explains why I got into this show. I stumbled across Mythic Quest on Apple tv. This is. I'm surprised, Surprised that you never saw this show, Jason. It is.

[Unknown Speaker]

I reviewed it. I reviewed it on the show. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Did you like it?

[Unknown Speaker]

No.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay. I like it. I'm enjoying it. Maybe we just needed horrible times because it's kind of silly. It's a Silicon Valley in the gaming industry, and I, I've basically binged the first season and I've really enjoyed it. It's a shame that Rob McElhony is the star here, but it does nail that character pretty well. The thing I. The issue I have with it is having watched him in welcome to Wrexham, which is him as a real person person. The dude doesn't act. This is just who he is.

[Unknown Speaker]

See? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's probably the guy you're. That I'm thinking of. I watched like, the first 10 minutes of the first episode, and I hated the people so much that I just couldn't watch it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, you're supposed to hate them, but I know.

[Unknown Speaker]

I, I, this is kind. It's kind of like when, when I was watching Black Mirror during the pandemic. And you're like, I can't take that anymore.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

I need, I need that. Yeah. I couldn't. At that time of my life, I couldn't. I don't need to watch more people that I hate on tv. I've got enough of that by turning on the news.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But I'm definitely enjoying the show. It's funny as hell. Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean, it's good. They just came out with season three.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Didn'T they, I think they just dropped the second season because they just stopped for a long time.

[Unknown Speaker]

So, yeah, I knew that they got picked up for another for there was another season that came out, but it's gotten decent reviews. So I'm glad you like it. I'm glad you found something to tide you over in these interesting days.

[Brian Schulmeister]

See that or drink eight bottles of wine. Jason. Trying to be healthy here.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I can't do that anymore, so. So in sobriety, I found Beast Games. I talked about this before when it first came out in its Mr. Beast's Game show on Amazon Prime. They're fighting for $5 million and they've given away lots of money so far. The penultimate episode just dropped where we got down to the last people who are going to be fighting for the last game in the final episode. I love this show so much. It is so good. I'm sorry. Uh, yeah, it's like squid games but with almost no consequences, which I like.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I, I'm just, I, I, I love it. I can't wait for the final episode. I cannot wait for the final episode.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I watched the Grammys this weekend and I put this in the show notes just so I could be pedantic yet again. About the same shit that I've been pedantic about since ever, since forever. The headline is, AI won the Beatles a Grammy 55 years after they broke up. Not good for the Beatles to win the Grammy. I enjoyed the song the first line of the article. With the help of modern machine learning technology, the Beatles were able to release their song now and then in late 2023. There we go. So, AI headline, first line of the article. Modern machinery, machine learning. Just being pedantic.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep. No, I gave up on that one so long ago. But it just pisses me off. It's, it's, it's, it's, you know, one of the greatest hits. One of the greatest hits. Speaking of hits, Dennis Villeneuve is going to be making Dune 3 next because everybody wants him to. Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You cannot do Messiah, Dune, Messiah without doing Children of Dune. And then if you do Children of Dune, you can't do Children of Dune without doing God, Emperor of Dune. So you've got to at least commit to doing all those. And I can't wait to see the big fucking worm.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay, here we go. It's coming soon to a theater near you. In about six years.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. And it'll get dropped because he's never going to want to do all that stuff. It's just not going to happen. It's not a compelling story. It's not a big. Once you get past the first book, it is not whiz bang sci fi anymore.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, hopefully he'll fix it because, you know, they do that nowadays.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, yeah? Yeah. Like, oh, I don't know. Foundation.

[Unknown Speaker]

Foundation. Yeah. But you know, sometimes. Sometimes you get a silo, sometimes you get a foundation. Yeah, maybe. Maybe we'll meet in the middle. This will be the Reese's. Reese's Peanut butter cup of science fiction. Keep your silo out of my foundation. You keep your foundation out of my silo.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Keep your dragons out of my foundation. Because they weren't in any of the books.

[Unknown Speaker]

And he didn't come back to life. No.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I could be here all day telling you everything that's wrong with that goddamn show.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, seriously. Well, speaking of Back from the Dead, Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot starring Sarah Michelle Geller nears Hulu pilot or order with Chloe Zhao directing. So it's interesting, Sarah Michelle Geller not too long ago said, fuck no, I'm not going back to Buffy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I guess the coffers are running low.

[Unknown Speaker]

I think that she saw that Dexter was done. Was brought back from the dead fairly well. And the coffers are probably running very fairly low. But I'm pretty sure she ain't hurting for money. She's done pretty well in the private sector sector, as it were. So I'm looking forward to this. I have no scoop, unfortunately. I mean, I do a show with James Marsters who played Spike and I asked him for a quote and he said, go fuck yourself. No, I didn't get a quote from James.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Phone hasn't rung yet.

[Unknown Speaker]

And he didn't say go fuck yourself. No, I'm just joking. But we are working on season two of Schmachters so you can go check out schmacters.com if you want to go hear some of James's stuff while we wait for Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot. So we'll see how that's going. And finally, Neil Gaiman has been hit with rape and human trafficking suits after months of allegations. Estranged spouse Amanda Palmer also named in multi state filings. Now the human trafficking label on all these lawsuits, that's kind of like the improper lane usage of diddling cases nowadays. They're slapping that on everything.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's true. It's the Frank's Red Hot.

[Unknown Speaker]

It is, it really is. But yeah, this is, this is not surprising. And we did get notification that Sandman will be cut after season two with a bullshit Explanation, Absolute bullshit explanation saying that, you know, we've always thought that we were just going to follow dream story and it turns out we have enough material just to kind of make it through season two. Bullshit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They didn't have to say that at all. They could have just said we're only doing it one more season because. And then waves hand generally around the room.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly. Apps and doodads. Helen writes in. Hey guys, you've probably discussed it before, but I'll ask again. I'm looking for a portable power bank for my I. Which one do you recommend? Thanks. We've actually never discussed it before, so this will be the first time I use the Anker Zolo portable charger. Actually I got the 20,000 mega amp 30 watt power bank with built in lanyard, USB C cable for travel, fast charging battery pack for iPhone 16, 15 series, MacBook, Galaxy, iPad and more. Right now you can get one for $15.99 at Amazon, which is a 40% savings. The list price is $25.99 and that is for the 10,000 Mega amp version. Version. I actually use the 20,000 version which is a little bigger and a little heavier and a little more expensive. If I had to do it over again, I would get the 10,001 because it's got more than enough juice and it's half the weight. But it's great because it's got a built in cable so you just take it out and plug it in and boom. Bob's your uncle.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This looks great. I actually think I might be ordering that 10k one.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, go with the 10k.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I've got an Anker as well, but it's like an old, old, old one. So yeah, I've had it for so long that it basically only has doesn't even have USB C ports on it. So.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh yeah, I got, I got a stack of those. I tell you what though, those things still hold a charge, which is amazing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, the Anker chargers have been fantastic. Like no complaints.

[Unknown Speaker]

So yeah, because my friends who lost all their power out in Simi Valley because we live in a third world country, they came over and I'm just like here, have a stack of power bricks. Because they came over to charge their devices and it got them through like three days worth of no power. So yeah, those old ones still work. It's just the other cabling is whatever. But if you want a small one for the backpack, Brian, I totally get the 10k one. You'll be happy. You'll definitely be happy. And Steve in Silicon Valley Gets the win for this one because everybody did send it to us, but he was the first. The headline is Add fucking to your Google searches to neutralize AI summaries, which is pretty funny. If you're tired of Google's AI summaries serving up bad info, there's a simple workaround. Adding an expletive to your search query disables the AI generated blurb at the top of the results, leaving only traditional blue links. I tried it out, worked fine for me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep, it's solid.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if they fixed it since this came out, but yeah, if I just add fucking in the middle of everything, which I do anyway because I'm Gen X, then it works. I don't get that. That slop. And that slop has become so annoying. I don't know if you notice this, Brian. If you ask it a question, it plays devil's advocate. It will give you both sides of an argument, which drives me crazy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, I am looking for the correct answer, thank you very much.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, no, we asked like about a drug interaction. I just, like, I just wanted, I wanted a Google result about a simple drug interaction and it gave me both sides. Even though there was no drug interaction. I was like, well, you know, this diabetes, whatever. I'm like, drives me crazy. Anyway, Apple is reportedly giving up on its AR glasses again.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Again?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, they can't make it work, so they're just, they're pulling the plug on this one along with the cars and everything else. The project was codenamed N107. When I just see N107, my dyslexic brain goes, isn't that the Enterprise CC 1701? Yeah, but yeah, no, so surprise, surprise, that's out the window, which is kind of a bummer, but I was kind of hoping they were going to be the ones to nail the tech on the AR glasses. But I guess we're still stuck with fucking Meta and Ray Ban for now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I guess so. Well, they may have given up on cars and glasses because they're too hard, but the thing that they have managed to do is take out Evite.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh great, just what I was hoping for.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So they've launched the new Invites app which launched this week. This app will replace ad filled third party options like Evite and Partyful, at least for Apple users to crawl folks together into their walled garden way. So it's a way to create unique invitations and bringing people together for life's most exciting moments. Yeah, so it's basically an Evite clone, but done by Apple so there's no ads and you have to be part of a You need the Apple cloud service icloud and all that to be able to create them. But you can send them to anybody and of course they do things like now you can also add an Apple music playlist and we'll give you a link to Apple Maps and all that sort of stuff. I mean I back in the day when I was younger used Evite all the time. Now that I'm old I just text the three or four people I want to hang out with so I don't really need this crap anymore. But back in the day this would have been great. Evites sucked.

[Unknown Speaker]

So yeah, evites I guess partiful was the new hotness that everybody was using. But yeah, don't know that one either. Speaking of old shit though, like yvite, there's an old site that I used to use called 750words.com by Buster Benson who's an old school software dev from way back in the day. He's back and he's quit all of his other jobs and he's trying to get 750 words back up so he can kind of live off that one. I signed back up and have been writing every day and I just so cathartic. I love that site. I just get a little notice every day say hey, don't forget your. Don't forget your thing and I got a little notification and things to remind me before I go to bed to write my 750 words and I'm sleeping better because I get the shit out of my head.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If I open that up I would type fuck 750 times because that's how I'm feeling these days. But maybe I would get it off my chest and fall asleep.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly, exactly. It's cathartic Brian. Give it a shot. Rakuten is the smartest way to save money when you shop because you earn cash back at over 3,500 stores. Fashion, beauty, electronics, home essentials, travel, dining, concert tickets and more. Your favorite stores like Lowe's, Levi's and Nike pay Rakuten to send them shoppers and Rakuten then passes on a part of that payment to its members as cash back. You're already shopping at your favorite stores. Why not save while you're doing it? It's a no brainer. Membership is free and easy to sign up. Get the Rakuten app now and join the 17 million members who are already saving. Cashback rates change daily. See rakuten.com for details. That's R A K U T E n your cash back really adds up. Your weekly dose of romance and drama has arrived. Season 29 of the Bachelor is is here and Grant Ellis, certified hottie and former day trader, is trading his day job on Wall street for a second chance at everlasting love. New episodes drop every Monday at 8, 7 Central, bringing you fresh twists in Grant's journey to find his soulmate. This self proclaimed mama's boy is all grown up and ready to invest his heart. Will his playful charm win over the house full of hopefuls? Or will the competition prove too much intense? From heartfelt moments to adrenaline pumping dates, each week brings new surprises in the Mansion. Will Grant find his perfect match or end up with a broken heart? Tune in every Monday at 8, 7 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu for new episodes of the Bachelor. 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 single 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, gentlemen. Happy day.

[Unknown Speaker]

I have to say that I, I have to say that you, you guys nailed it with your title on the Cyber Wire the other day. FCC around and find out she and genius.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I can actually take credit for that one. Most days our producer Liz takes the lead on coming up with episode titles and she's very good at it and very clever. But I was writing the script that day and somehow every now and then, you know, you get a little flash of inspiration and that was one of them.

[Unknown Speaker]

So that's perfect.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. No, I like it. I like it. Thank you very much. I, I like, you know how every now and then you, something flashes through your mind as you're writing or you're doing something creative and you think to yourself, this is good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Right?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We occasionally have that happen recording the show and then whoever had it like forgets where they are in the show because we're scrambling to write it down so we don't forget it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right. Seems to me like they're fewer and farther between the more years I have behind me. So when they do happen and I will take them. And so this was a good one. So thank you for the kind words.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes. The muse does not visit as often as we get older.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I like to think we're just more discerning we have years of experience. We. We know when things are really good versus that. That youthful exuberance where we think everything we do is great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I. I'll. I will add, though, that also, more and more, I find that I'll get some strike of brilliance as I'm drifting off to sleep, and I'll say to myself, ooh, I need to remember that for tomorrow. And then I wake up the next day and it's gone.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Just gone.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There's no getting it back. And I'm. It's the worst.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's why I keep my phone next to me, so I can do a quick voice memo. But the problem then is, you know, it's actually better to let it go because it's the worst. When you wake up in the morning, you remember I had a genius idea, and then you look at it in the morning, you're like, oh, that was stupid.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right? Right. It's like blew out of a co. Yeah. Blue avocados need to be frozen frequently. And you're like, what? What? What was I thinking?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Damn you, nyquil.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, right.

[Unknown Speaker]

So Barrett wrote in and asked because we were talking about old, classic video games. Anyone remember 50 Mission Crush? I spent way too much time playing this on my old Commodore 64 back in the day.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nope.

[Unknown Speaker]

No, never played that game. I never played that game, and I don't. And the game is not even. The reason I put this in the show notes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

The reason I put this in the show notes is the website that he linked to. Did you guys look at the link?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I got so.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, my God, I got it. Such a nostalgia boner for this website.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

This is the way.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I love old school design. There's so many. There are tables within tables programmed here. Tables.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes. I was looking at it, I'm like, oh, man, this was. This was the pinnacle. This would have cost you $500,000 back in the day. Day. Seriously?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, it's good stuff, man.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I'm sure there's server side includes going on here somewhere. There's got to be pearl. There's got to be pearl in here. Oh, I would have just. Yeah. Oh, they're using like, PHP forum.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, I loved PHP forum. A lot of those back in the day.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Until it got hacked. Oh, this is using PHP BB on this one. That was. Don't know, man. So what.

[Jason DeFilippo]

What was. Was there a particular moment that took us away from this kind of design? Or did it more happen slowly?

[Unknown Speaker]

Css.

[Brian Schulmeister]

CSS and then cell phones.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, got it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep, that was, that was the death knell for nested table designs.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I see.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, I mean, you can do this with css. I'm sure this is. Is actually probably in CSV.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Probably. Yeah, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But you know what the thing about this game is, I did not spend very much time with the Commodore 64 or the VIC 20 or any of those Commodore machines. They were certainly on my radar and I had friends who had them. But unlike. So my main computer through most of my teen years was a TRS 80 color computer. And I was deep into that and I had friends who had. But then I'd say the secondary computer that I was most familiar with was the Apple ii because we had a lot of those at school and the kids who lived across the street from me had one. But I didn't have anyone like in my close circle who had a Commodore 64 that I had really had a whole lot of time to play with.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, same here. Yeah, yeah. I think the Commodore 64 is like, it was in that weird time where it was like people who had those were right around the same time. I was just learning how to skateboard, so I didn't really do that. And then I got the IBM xt. So when I got the computers, I kind of went straight from, you know, we had an original Apple, the original Macintosh for a little bit and then went straight into the XT. And it was just like, I missed the Commodore 64.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I kind of jumped straight from like Atari to PC. Yeah, I missed all that too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And I think the worlds were a little more insular back then, like platform to platform, because there really wasn't any cross platform compatibility other than typing things in, in basic. But when you got to games like this, you know, they were platform specific.

[Unknown Speaker]

And so there's also, when you think about it too, there was also an economic stratification between who had which devices. You know, so like the TRS 80 people didn't really hang out with the Commodore 64 people, who didn't really hang out with the Atari people because they were from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Kind of. It's like when I went over to my friends with the TRS 80, I'm like, they had a really nice house. And then we, we lived in. We lived in a trailer park, so. And we had an Atari. So.

[Jason DeFilippo]

See, that's funny because to me it was the folks who had the Apple iis who were the top tier.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, yeah, yeah, Those guys were. Yeah, they would not talk to us.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They.

[Unknown Speaker]

They breathe different air. Completely different Air.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right, Right. Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Good times.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, speaking of getting back to our roots, this is a story of that we used to cover on this segment. But I did find it interesting. Ransomware victims paid out 35% less to hacking groups in 2024 compared to 2023, even as the overall number of attacks increased, according to a report by the blockchain research firm Chain Analysis. Large drop from 1.25 billion in ransom payments in 20233 to 813.55 million last year. It came as international law enforcement operations disrupted some major hacking groups and others abruptly closed up shop. Chain Analysis found that the group is growing between how much. The gap is growing between how much money attackers demand in exchange for languishing compromised data and how much victims actually will pay. Reporting from incident response firms suggests the majority of clients are opting just not to pay at all, according to the report. So people are just not paying ransomware people anymore.

[Unknown Speaker]

Hopefully it's because they final got the memo and have proper backups.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, hopefully people are doing that or.

[Unknown Speaker]

They also learned that they, most of the time they don't actually get their data back. So the bad actors in the ransomware business kind of fuck themselves by not giving people the keys after they pay the ransom. So people are always, why am I going to pay? I'm not going to get a key anyway.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The jig is up.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, and the other thing is that many of the ransomware groups switch to having the extortion be their primary way to squeeze their victims. In other words, rather than saying, we're going to shut you down by encrypting everything, saying, well, look at all this stuff we stole. It'd be a shame if this were published publicly.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And so with the backups and people having better encryption and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, they just also, there's more and more. There's more and more of a push like the UK is pushing for public organizations to not be allowed to pay the ransom. So places like hospitals and schools. Because if they're not allowed to pay, then the idea is that makes them less of a target. Because why bother with them if you're never going to get any money from them.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And the rest of the crypto groups ended up moving to Washington D.C. and just took over the Treasury Department. So pretty much they just went to the source. They're like scratching through this. We're just gonna go straight to the money spigot.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, right. Why go after millions when you can have trillions?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Yeah, to the moon.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, so now pivoting to the kind of stuff we talk about more normally on this show now, Disneyland. We talked about this story a bit when it first came out. There's a great long form article. This could be like a true, true crime podcast kind of segment here yesterday tomorrow and banished forever. The Andersons were kicked out of Disneyland's most exclusive club. They would not go willingly. Now we did talk about these guys when it, when it came out, the couple that decided to sue because Disneyland basically kicked them out of Club 33, the private membership club that costs an awful lot of money. It has decades long wait list to get into it. This article is just so long. But it's so funny and awesome and it's such a good, a good read. And it's back in the news because they lost their court case. Disneyland basically won. And of course they're grumbling and saying Disneyland owns all of Orange County. Of course we weren't going to win our case. Right. You know, little, little sour grapes there. And they've moved on to the Magic Castle where they now have a membership. And because they serve lots of alcohol and don't have rules like you can't be drunk. You seem much happier. Right, Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. You know, I had last I thought about the Magic Castle, I know it was, they were worried that it was in the, it was in line for the fires. But I guess Magic Castle's survived.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It did.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Which is good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. And when I was reading that, I had a big thought on Disneyland. This is like the stoner thought or at least Main street and what's left of the original Walt Disney era rides like the Jungle Cruise, Small World and all that sort of stuff. Those of us that spent time there as kids like me, I'm going there now and I'm feeling nostalgic for the world I left behind. And then I realized, well, Walt Disney, Disney originally built it because he was nostalgia nostalgic for his childhood that he's left behind.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And now I'm taking my kid who will be nostalgic for his childhood, where I was nostalgic from my childhood about Walt Disney being nostalgic for his childhood.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's childhoods all the way down.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It is. And you know, then I had an edible and went to sleep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But isn't that the thing? I mean, look, I am totally that person who, who comes into the Magic Kingdom, walks underneath the berm, comes up onto Main street, turns the corner, sees the castle and gets all misty eyed like, that's me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Me too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It casts that spell on me, and I am happy that it happens, and I'm totally willing to take that ride. And I think for me, what it comes down to is that it is a place that I feel safe in that childhood. The safety of a child, you know, the way a child feels safe with their parents. That's the feeling I have when I'm at Disney World. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that escapism, whatever you want to call it, like, I welcome it. Where else in the world do you get that these days?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nowhere.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So I think that's a big part of it for me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's a huge part of it for me. Yeah, definitely.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. But I do wonder your point about the rise. At what point do kids, like, our kids, get on something like Small World and just roll their eyes and go, what is this?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, we're there. My kid is.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Is that right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. My kid will tolerate Small World because he knows his mom really likes it. But the rides that are of more interest to him are definitely the more technological, newer ones. He likes Midway Mania, like, anything that you can, like, shoot at the screen and score points or like Star Tours or all that sort of stuff. So. Yeah. Right. And Jungle Cruise did not have much of an appeal to him.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Interesting. Okay, so I put a link to the an on ride video of pirates in China. I don't know if you have ever seen what pirates is like in the new Disney parks in China, but it is effing amazing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, it is. It's unbelievable.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And they hit most of the same beats as the pirates we have here, but they do it in just a modern way. There's projection, and I mean, it's just so much more dynamic than the pirates we have. What I would love to see Disney World do, my fantasy for how Disney World could handle this would be to build the new pirates right next to the old pirates.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They're never gonna do that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So you got two lines right in the same way that, like, what. When they built the Indiana Jones ride out at Disneyland, the ride is actually out in the parking lot and it's like a half mile walk underground to get to it, you know, like, they could totally do that. You have. On the left is new pirates, on the right is old pirates. Because I think the nostalgia for the original pirates is still there and people enjoy it. It's. It's one of those rides. They call them People Eaters because they do like 5,000 riders an hour. So don't get rid of it. It's long since paid for. But build the new one next to it so that you can choose and then you have the best of both worlds.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I would not mind that either. But I think they will probably run out of space to do that sort of thing because I. People feel that way about a number of rides, so.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. But speaking of that, because just.

[Unknown Speaker]

I just got to say that I, I just, I. I just popped this open because I didn't see it before. I want to go to Shanghai and ride this thing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

This is so cool.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So. So for both of you, I would say you should definitely check out the Disney plus series. I've talked about this before behind the attraction because like when you get into the individual rides like the, the, like, particularly the Haunted Mansion, so they go back into how the original one was built and you see all that cool stuff and it. Interesting. But then they go around and they do all the different parks around the world, the newer parks, the Shanghai and Tokyo and, and all that sort of stuff, and you see how they changed the rides and updated them and changed them for the particular cultures and it's really cool. Like Shanghai also has an awesome, completely different Haunted mansion.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And you get to see a lot of that stuff, so it's. It's totally worth it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And having said all of that, just to recapture that magic and nostalgia feeling around the house, there are a couple playlists out there that we are always just playing throughout the day there. I put in Spotify links for one called Disneyland Music around the Parks, another one called Disneyland Music and Disneyland Park Music. So it's all like Main street and different ride stuff and it just kind of makes you feel like you're wandering around Disneyland. Waft a little popcorn smell and you're good to go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's right. That's right.

[Unknown Speaker]

You don't have any popcorn. Just take your stinky gym shoes off and wave them around the house because. Yeah, it smells like feet.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, pirates. Pirates smells like bromine, which is what they use to keep the water clean.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And I. That's what I use in my hot tub. I use bromine in my hot tub. So every time I open the lid, I'm like, yo, yo ho, yo.

[Unknown Speaker]

Smell the bros. Yeah, yeah, it's great. Well, I just want to put this link in here. This is a perfect opportunity to talk about a link called I don't have Spotify. So if you want to take any of the playlists that Brian put in here and you don't have Spotify. You can paste them into this website and it will create a new link for you to YouTube or YouTube Music or any of the other different sources that will have the same stuff.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I love this. I love this so much.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's awesome.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Because I have an Apple Music subscription, I guess I also have a YouTube subscription because I do have YouTube Premium but. But I don't have Spotify because I have the other two and seems like Spotify especially people younger than me are always sending me things on Spotify and I'm like.

[Unknown Speaker]

Damn kids.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right? And I'm not gonna subscribe to Spotify just to listen to things. So I either do it manually, but this is wonderful. What a great public service. I love it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Isn't it fantastic?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yeah. I put a link in here to a story that caught my eye this week that I thought you guys would enjoy. This is an individual researcher who went down the rabbit hole of seeing how much you're being tracked through in app ads. Basically it's a researcher named Tim. Tim, they call him Tim. And he took an old iPhone that, that was wiped clean, had nothing except the Apple pre installed apps on it. He installed a single app game, it's called Stack by a company called Ketchapp which is a game and this Ketchapp company makes a bunch of different games. So he installed a single game and he installed a logger on the phone to be able to see all of everything that's going on behind the scenes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And not surprisingly it's horrifying and frightening and all of those things, all your, you know, your location data, all sorts of information about you is shared. Even if you have selected in iOS to not share the information.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's shared anyway. A few they say.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Just. Yeah. Also information was shared with meta even though there were no meta apps on the device at all.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Which is interesting. But it collects all kinds of things basically if it can grab it, it grabs it. Things like screen brightness, battery level, how much memory you have available, things like that. So it's an interesting read if you're into to this sort of thing. I guess a cautionary tale. But more it's a message that there's really no way around this. Even if you there. There is no way to block this. Using a modern mobile device by a.

[Unknown Speaker]

Phone is the only way to do it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right? Right. To participate in modern society means that this sort of tracking is happening and there is no practical way to circumvent it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Right. Good times. Good times.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Particularly with the administration in charge at the moment. Yeah. It's just awesome.

[Unknown Speaker]

The thing about this is I'm just so not shocked anymore that this is exactly what's happening. I wish I could be. I wish I could be shocked and outraged, but. Yeah, no, no, we're at the stage.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Of acceptance and resignation.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Next thing you know, we're going to find out that the phones are listening to us.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. I've said it before and. Oh, man, I've said it before and I'll say it again. I. What I really hope happens is that somebody with deep pockets like John Oliver spins up a website where you're able to track your senator in real time, and then we finally get some kind of meaningful privacy legislation. Although I wouldn't put it past them to only protect themselves and no one else.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. You have the secret code, do you not?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right, right. So, one other thing I wanted to talk about today. I am getting new glasses today. In fact, when we finish this call, I'm heading up to the place where I get my glasses. I guess it's an optometrist. I always confuse optometrist with ophthalmologist.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Wouldn't go to a proctologist for it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, not if you wanted an accurate prescription, no. But. So I'm going to get new glasses today, which meant about a week ago I went to get my eyes examined and I knew that I was due for a new prescription. I felt as though when reading my phone, things that were close up, I was right on the edge of straining to see close up stuff. And same, you know, my distance was better. But also my current glasses are progressive lens lenses, which I've had for years. When I gave up contact lenses, I got progressive lenses, which overall I've liked. But what I found is I've gotten to the point where every now and then the progressive lenses give me motion sickness. Yeah. I'm not sure why, but it's true. So when I ordered my new glasses, first of all, I got a new prescription. So, yes, my. It did change a little bit and hopefully I'll be able to see better without straining. But also I got plain old bifocals.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, interesting. I'm curious to hear how that plays out.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. Plain old bifocals.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. I have progressives as well and they are. I can see where you would have the motion sickness sometimes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But the thing about the progressives is like the zone of corrective vision goes down the center of the lens lenses with progressives, it doesn't cover the whole lens. And I think that's the part that gets me. If I'm moving my head around. Like, I've noticed if I'm in a. Like, let's say I'm in a bookstore and I'm scanning across the shelves, trying to see if there's a book title that strikes my fancy, that's when I'll find myself going, whoa, what's going on here? So what I'm hoping is the bifocals. Having the prescription go from edge to edge on the glass rather than running down the middle will help. Having that in my full field of view. The thing I'm bracing myself for is only having two locked in fields of view. Close up and distance, and the hard shift between the two of them.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's what I'm curious about. Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

What I'm curious about is where you found the time machine to go to a bookstore to go browse at actual bookstore. I mean, I think that's. That's very curious to me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it's true. If we have a time machine, then why don't we have optical technology that does not give you motion sickness?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So we'll see. I. I had. I have to say, the vein part of me was a little worried about the bifocals with the line, you know, and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, oh, who am I trying to.

[Unknown Speaker]

Who cares, right? Like, give up the ghost, bro.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it's. It's. It's over.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's just over. If you start wearing them with a chain, your neck, we'll, you know, we'll. We'll have an intervention, but otherwise.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And the second part of my. Oh, okay, so here's the. Here's the. Here's the old. Here's the old part of. Here's the grumpy old part that goes along with the. My purchase of new glasses. The lovely lady at the optometrist who is walking me through all of the options I could get for my glasses said to me, and this coating helps, like, particularly at night, if there are headlights pointing your direction, it helps cut down on the glare. And I said, I want that. I want that because. Because I'm old. I want that.

[Unknown Speaker]

So that's not an old thing, though, man. I've had that every time I've gotten glasses since I was 20 years old. I get all the coatings because it does make a difference. Okay, well, yeah, that's why they're getting expensive and I keep them for so long.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's an old, old thing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay. It's definitely an old thing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You're old before your day.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. The other thing I'm. I'm planning on is if I like these new glasses and I settle into them over the next few days, I think I'm going to order the exact same glasses as sunglasses. So I have prescription sunglasses. Yeah, yeah. Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

I've got the. I've got the ones that turn when I go outside. And. And the thing about them, they're fantastic. I love having the option of when I go outside not having to have a pair of sunglasses. I just wish that there was a button that you could press that would be just immediate purge.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They don't snap back fast enough.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

And the older they get, the longer they take to snap back.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, really? Or is that the older you get?

[Unknown Speaker]

It could be. That is also true.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

But I went to lunch the other day with our friend Brian Blondell and we walked into this Italian restaurant which is very dark after being out in the Southern California sun. And we both look at each other and it's like we start reciting the Blues Brothers thing. Like they're gonna be driving because that's exactly what we looked like.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. Pulling out the flashlight on your phone to read the menu.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's all totally.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Actually I just took my glasses off and just stuck to my nose to it because I can't see anyone way.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Old. Well, go get your glasses, man. Good luck.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Looking forward to it. Right. I won't be bumping into things so much, so we'll see. All right, stay tuned. I'll let you know. To be continued. Thanks, guys.

[Unknown Speaker]

Over at Patreon, we've got Mark, F. Rob, Starboy, Andrew and Mache, and Rachel and Gabriel up to their pledges. Thank you so much. And from the best of list, we've got Eric, John, Wendy, Dan, David, Clarence. Fantastic Wolf, Jonathan, Aaron and Ben. Thank you all so much. And just a quick reminder, if you want to sign up and support us over at Patreon, three bucks a month, easy peasy cheap. We love you forever. You can give more if you want, but what you do get is the show early ad free and in high definition. And if you sign up for a whole year, 5% off.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And over at PayPal, we've got Nicola, Levy, Arnold, Florian and Thomas. Thank you all so much.

[Unknown Speaker]

Over the tip jar, we've got Sarah and Matthew. Thank you very much. And this weekend, merch.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Woo.

[Unknown Speaker]

You guys have been fire. Fire. Those Deport Elon shirts are flying off the shelves.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Gotta. I was looking at that. And I was like, we've got to slap that on a mug.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Oh, I gotta do the mug, and I gotta do the. The big version of it because I have the subtle version, but now the not subtle version. We need. We need the Frankie goes to Hollywood T shirt for version of it. That's what we're doing. I'm gonna do that today. So we've got Jen, David.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Holy crap. I got an idea. Jason, before you get into that, you know the. Those T shirts that were so popular for a while where they would, like, you know, they would list, like, Jan and Brad and. And it was like, every band member.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We need to do Elon and all of his little guys.

[Unknown Speaker]

Elon and his cronies. Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'd buy that. We're gonna end up in jail.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, who cares? Who cares? Oh. So we've got Jen, David, Andrew, Jody, Dan, and Richard. Thank you all so much for buying some merch. Go to shop.gogshow and get yours today. And there will be some new shirts up there soon. And I do want to go through a quick shout out here to Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and the chief executive of the California Community Foundation, Miguel Santiago, Montana. They basically donated $10 million in funding for a local program to help people recover from the fires that we had. Fantastic. Yeah, I'm not a. I've never been a big fan of Snapchat or Snap, but he's stepping up because he's a local, so good on him. Good on him.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Agreed.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep. And if you're. If you're still in the market to buy some more clothes, because we do that. Sober Outfitters, the my little record Recovery T shirt shop is back on the air. So if you. If you do happen to go to recovery meetings and you want to bring some snark with you, go check it out. Sober outfitters.com. i could really use the money. Please go. Yeah. Soberoutfitters.com thank you for your support.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Do it. Until next time, I'm Brian Schillmeister.

[Unknown Speaker]

And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks. Get all the links and goodies from Today's episode @ Goji. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way 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 forever. And swing by Gog show to join our discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts, feedbacks, cool links? Hit us up at GOG Show Contact. And hey, don't forget to leave a five star review at GOG Show Review and we'll read it on the air. Oh, and guess what? Yes, that's right. We've got merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at shop GOG Show Stay grumpy.